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Pakistan: Procedures to obtain a driver's license; appearance of driver's licenses (2013-January 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 13 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol PAK105715.E Related Document(s) Pakistan : information sur les procedures a suivre pour obtenir un permis de conduire; l'aspect des permis de conduire (2013-janvier 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Pakistan: Procedures to obtain a driver's license; appearance of driver's licenses (2013-January 2017), 13 January 2017, PAK105715.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589460c54.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Procedures to Obtain a Driver's License

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an official from the Pakistan High Commission in Ottawa indicated, without providing further detail, that the issuance of driver's licenses in Pakistan is handled both by the Pakistan Highways and Motorway Police and by traffic police offices in the provinces (Pakistan 20 Dec. 2016). The website of the Pakistan National Highways and Motorway Police states that the "Drivers Licencing Authority" (DLA) was established in 2014 in Islamabad, and further notes that the DLA "would be extended to the provincial capitals in the next phase and thereafter to the rest of the country" (ibid. n.d.a). Further information on the DLA could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

1.1 Requirements and Procedures at the National Highways and Motorway Police

The website of the National Highways and Motorway Police indicates that in order to apply for a driver's license from the DLA, applicants must submit the following:

a valid copy of the Computerized National Identity Card (CNIC);

a challan (receipt) for 600 Pakistani rupees (PKR) [approximately C$7.67]. For Learner's Driver Permit, the fee is 300 PKR [approximately C$3.84]; and

a copy of a blood group report (Pakistan n.d.b), issued by a "registered laboratory / hospital" (ibid. n.d.c).

The applicant is also required to bring his or her personal copy of the Highway and Motorway Code Book to the DLA (ibid.). For conversion cases, the applicant must further provide his or her original license (ibid. n.d.b).

The website of the National Highways and Motorway Police provides information regarding the procedures at the DLA to obtain a driver's license in the following paragraph:

After having his or her CNIC verified against the National Documentation and Registration Authority Database (NADRA), the applicant undergoes a medical examination to check vision, hearing, blood presure or "any other deleterious disease." Following the medical test, the applicant provides information on his or her personal data, including address, phone number, email address, blood group, and, if applicable, passport number and details of previous driver's licenses. The applicant also provides the required documentation outlined above. Subsequently, the applicant provides an electronic impression of his or her thumb and an electronic signature. The applicant is also photographed. They must then take a theory test on traffic signs and rules. After a learner period of 42 days, which the applicant is granted upon receiving a pass mark on the theoretical test, a "fresh applicant" must the pass two practical driving tests in order to receive a driver's license. This 42-day learner period does not apply in case of conversion of a license. If the applicant fails either the theoretical or practical tests, he or she can retake the failed test after 14 days. If the applicant fails three attempts at the tests, he or she will have to undergo the entire application process again (ibid.).

The website of the National Highways and Motorway Police also indicates that the minimum age for issuance of a driver's license is 18 years, with the exception of the driver's licenses for a "Light Transport Vehicle (LTV)" (21 years), "Heavy Transport Vehicle (HTV) [and] agricultural and construction machinery" (22 years), and "Public Service Vehicle (PSV)" (23 years) (ibid. n.d.d).

Regarding the validity of driver's licenses, the same source provides the following details:

Learner's driving permit of Motorcycle / Motorcar / LTV / HTV / PSV / Tractor (Agriculture) shall be valid for six months, however the applicant can appear for practical driving test after 42 days Learner's driving permit of construction / agriculture machinery shall be valid for one year, however the applicant can appear for practical driving test after six month Foreigners Driving Licence shall be valid for the duration of valid Pakistani Visa International Driving Permit shall be valid for one (01) year All other categories of Driving Licences issued under these Rules other then [sic] PSV licences shall be valid for 5 years PSV Licences shall be valid for three years unless otherwise provided in these Rules, canceled/suspended by the Authority or a competent Court earlier. (ibid. n.d.e)

1.2 Requirements and Procedures in Provinces

1.2.1 Punjab

The website of the Driving License Information Management System (DLIMS) of the province of Punjab indicates that in order to obtain a learner's driving license, an applicant must provide a copy of the CNIC, a fee of 60 PKR [approximately C$0.77], a medical certificate (for candidates aged 50 or older), and obtain a copy of the Code Book of Traffic Rules & Regulation from the Traffic Police Office (Punjab n.d.). The learner's permit is issued on a daily basis and is valid for six months (ibid.). The same source states that the minimum age required to obtain a learner's driving permit for "motor cars," motorcycles and LTVs "(Rikshaw, Taxi, Tractor Commercial)" is 18 years; to obtain a learner's permit for an HTV verhicle, one must be at least 22 years of age (ibid.).

According to the DLIMS website, in order to obtain a permanent driver's license, an applicant must provide an application form, original learner's driving permit "of at least six weeks," a medical certificate, three passport-size, "fresh," "attested" photographs, an "attested" copy of the CNIC, and the fee (ibid.). Additional information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. A copy of the application form is attached to this Response.

1.2.2 Sindh

A document on the website of the Sindh Police describing the standard operating procedure for the "e-driving license system" indicates that in order to obtain a learner's driver's license, an applicant myst provide two copies of recent photographs, and a copy of a valid CNIC with the original (Sindh Police n.d.). The procedure to obtain the learner's driving license involves filling out application and medical forms available at the reception desk, obtaining a slip of 100 PKR [approximately C$1.25] for the medical fees, and "appear[ing] before [a] doctor for a medical fitness certificate" (ibid.). Once declared fit, the applicant pays the required fee, and "moves to the snap shot counter" (ibid.). According to a fee schedule posted on the Sindh Police website, the cost for a learner's driving license is 100 PKR (ibid. n.d.b.).

According to the same source, the fee for a permanent driver's license for a motor car with 3 year validity is 960 PKR [approximately C$12.06], and one with a 5 year validity is 1260 PKR [approximately C$15.82] (ibid.) To obtain a permanent driver's license, an applicant has to provide two recent photographs, a valid copy of the CNIC with the orignal, and the valid original driver's license (ibid. n.d.a.). The applicant follows the procedures as described above, but following the medical test, he or she must "appear for oral/written tests" and if those are passed, take a "physical driving test" (ibid.). When those tests are passed, the applicant has to pay a fee of 250 PKR [approximately C$3.14] (ibid.). The same source indicates that "the period prescribed to obtain perm[a]nent driving licenses after issuance of learner's driving licenses" is 42 days for cars, motor cycles and "invalid carriage[s]" and 90 days for transport vehicles (ibid.). The "age limit" to obtain a license to drive a private motor vehicle is 18 years; one must be at least 21 years old to drive an LHV; and an applicant must be at least 22 years of age to drive an HTV (ibid.).

Further and corroborating information on driver's licenses in the provinces of Pakistan could not be found among the sources consulted within the time constraints of this Response.

2. Appearance of Driver's Licenses

Without providing further detail, the official at the Pakistan High Commission in Ottawa indicated that driver's licenses "may vary in format" as they are issued either in "electronic card" or in booklet format (Pakistan 20 Dec. 2016). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Pakistan. 20 December 2016. High Commission in Ottawa. Correspondence from an official to the Research Directorate.

Pakistan. N.d.a. National Highways and Motorway Police. "Drivers Licensing Authority - Introduction." [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Pakistan. N.d.b. National Highways and Motorway Police. "How to Get a Driver's License?" [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Pakistan. N.d.c. National Highways and Motorway Police. "Documents Required for Different Categories of Licenses / Permits." [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Pakistan. N.d.d. National Highways and Motorway Police. "Minimum Age for Issuance of Driver License/Permit." [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Pakistan. N.d.e. National Highways and Motorway Police. "Validity for Different Kinds of Licenses/Permits." [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Punjab. N.d. Driving License Information Management System (DLIMS). "How to Apply." [Accessed 20 Dec. 2016]

Sindh Police. N.d.a. "Standard Operating Procedure Issuance of E-Driving License System." [Accessed 11 Jan. 2017]

Sindh Police. N.d.b. "Driving Lincense Fee Schedule." [Accessed 11 Jan. 2017]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Pakistan  National Highways and Motorway Police; Punjab  Police.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; EU  European Asylum Support Office; Factiva; IRIN; Keesing Reference Systems; Norway  Landinfo; Punjab  Police; Switzerland  State Secretariat for Migration; UN  Refworld, ReliefWeb; US  Central Intelligence Agency, Department of State, Embassy in Islamabad.

Attachment

Punjab. N.d. "(Form A) From [Section 7 (2) of the Motor Vehicle Ord. 1965]: Form of Application for License to Drive a Motor Vehicle." [Accessed 16 Dec. 2016]
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.
Tunisia: The situation of women who live alone, whether they are single or divorced, particularly in Tunis; incidence of their social status, level of education and financial autonomy on their situation; whether they can access employment and housing; support services available to them (2014-October 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 20 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol TUN105651.FE Related Document(s) Tunisie : information sur la situation des femmes vivant seules, qu'elles soient celibataires ou divorcees, particulierement a Tunis; influence de leur statut social, de leur niveau d'education et de leur autonomie financiere sur leur situation; information indiquant si elles peuvent acceder a un emploi et a un logement; services de soutien qui leur sont offerts (2014-octobre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Tunisia: The situation of women who live alone, whether they are single or divorced, particularly in Tunis; incidence of their social status, level of education and financial autonomy on their situation; whether they can access employment and housing; support services available to them (2014-October 2016), 20 January 2017, TUN105651.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589462124.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Situation of Women in General

Sources report that measures protecting and promoting equality between men and women are set out in the Constitution of 2014 (Freedom House 14 July 2016; Bertelsmann Stiftung 2016, 25; AI 2016, 12; Human Rights Watch 2016) and in the Code of Personal Status [of 1956] (ibid.; Freedom House 14 July 2016). Freedom House states in particular that the Code asserts the equality between women and men (Freedom House 14 July 2016). The Tunisian Constitution [translation] "guarantees the equality of opportunities between women and men to have access to all levels of responsibility in all domains." (Tunisia 2015, Art. 46).

However, sources note that the Code of Personal Status also contains provisions that discriminate against women (Human Rights Watch 2016; AI 2016, 12; Bertelsmann Stiftung 2016, 25). This includes a provision identifying men as the head of the family (AI 2016, 12; Bertelsmann Stiftung 2016, 25) and is also apparent in provisions concerning the care of children and inheritance (ibid.). In its Transformation Index 2016, the Bertelsmann Stiftung Foundation [1] states that there are "widely shared conservative social norms [in the country]," noting in particular that "[w]omen are disadvantaged in some areas of the law and its actual implementation by the courts, an in many other areas of social life" (Bertelsmann Stiftung 2016, 12). Similarly, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 of the United States (US) Department of State reports that there are "societal obstacles to the full economic and political participation of women" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 1). This same source explains that "[s]ocietal and cultural barriers significantly reduced women's participation in the formal labor force, in particular in managerial positions" (ibid., 18).

A report on a mission to Tunisia presented to the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council by the Working Group on the Issue of Discrimination Against Women in Law and in Practice notes, however, that "women have been increasingly working outside the home and hence significantly contributing to the maintenance of the household" (UN 30 May 2013, para. 34). Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 adds that "[t]he law explicitly requires equal pay for equal work [for women and men], and the government generally enforced it" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 18).

In correspondence sent to the Research Directorate, the President of the Women and Leadership Association (Association Femmes & Leadership), an NGO working to improve the participation of women in public and professional life in Tunisia (Jamaity 29 June 2015), stated that

[translation]

Tunisian society has greatly evolved in terms of [women's autonomy] since 1956, but we are also experiencing a setback and conservatism in the attitude that has flared up following the revolution in January 2011. Today, we see phenomena, thankfully isolated, that we would never have thought possible in the past[:] rape, sexual harassment, regression of freedoms of certain women, etc. (Association Femmes & Leadership 1 Nov. 2016)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. Situation of Women Who Live Alone

2.1. Women Who Live Alone and Access to Housing

The President of the Women and Leadership Association stated that [translation] "single women (not single mothers) and divorced women live normally in Tunisia" (ibid.). In correspondence sent to the Research Directorate, a representative of the Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights (Ligue tunisienne de defense des droits de l'homme, LTDH), which has also worked as part of two Tunisian women's associations, also stated that

[translation]

Tunisian women are increasingly living alone. Besides [reasons relating to divorce, being single or a widow], living away from family may now stem from professional life or a training program. (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016)

However, the Representative noted that [translation] "the status of divorced women and widows is still difficult to assume, which is why women tend to fear this situation. Nevertheless, they have the option to divorce when it is deemed necessary" (ibid.). Amnesty International (AI) also reports that divorced women are the victims of [AI English version] "stigma" (AI 25 Nov. 2015, 22). The organization adds that, according to a lawyer that it consulted, who works in the area of domestic violence, [AI English version] "divorced women are, in general, perceived badly by society" (ibid.).

The President of the Women and Leadership Association added that women can access all the services themselves, stating that [translation] "they do not need a guardian if they are adults ([older than] 18 years)" (Women and Leadership Association 1 Nov. 2016). The Representative of the LTDH also explained that

[translation]

the pressure of modern life pushes women (who have degrees and varied know-how) to assume all their responsibilities in private and public life. Thus, they are also called on to manage their own assets and those of the family. They are expected to open bank accounts and rent spaces without any male help. (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016)

However, the President noted that [translation] "the only hiccup is the owner of the house, for example, who cannot rent to a single woman, which is quite a common occurrence, primarily for young women" (Women and Leadership Association 1 Nov. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The Representative emphasized that [translation] "the freedoms of women living alone are still under the watchful control of the family and societal perception, particularly in workingclass areas" (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016). According to the President,

[translation]

the situation of single women is still exposed to greater violence, in particular, from neighbours, colleagues, and so on. In some cases, they may be assaulted at home or in front of their homes simply because they invited friends or family over, especially when this includes men. (Association Femmes & Leadership1 Nov. 2016)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

For information on the situation of women who have had a child out of wedlock, please consult Response to Information Request TUN104988 from December 2014.

2.2 Importance of Social Environment, Level of Education and Financial Autonomy

The Representative reported that [translation] "the situation of single women (single, widowed or divorced) varies depending on her social environment" (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016). She added that there is

[translation]

protection for women based on their level of education, their socioprofessionnal "upgrade," and their material affluence. Women's economic autonomy guarantees their freedom and invulnerability. This autonomy strengthens the ability of women to assume the status of single women and take on the responsibilities of singleparent families. These are the situations that women are increasingly facing in Tunisia. (ibid.)

In the same vein, the President stated that the statuses of single and divorced women [translation] "vary based on their socioprofessional category. When they are managers and educated and at an appropriate financial level, they generally manage without any issues" (Association Femmes & Leadership 1 Nov. 2016).

2.3 Situation in Big Cities, Particularly in Tunis

According to the President, [translation] "the big cities [like Tunis] are more open and less restrictive" for women who live alone (ibid.). However, the representative stated that [translation] "in inland cities, social relationships are still strongly influenced by 'tradition' and patriarchal culture" (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016). She also adds that there are

[translation]

distinctions between the rural population [] and the coastal strip, where efforts are concentrated in terms of investments and infrastructure, providing greater job opportunities and, in turn, justifying a progressive rush toward the capital. (ibid.)

She also stated that [translation] "it is relatively easier to forge a path, as a single woman, in the capital" (ibid.). Similarly, the President stated that

[translation]

Greater Tunis is different because it is the largest agglomeration and, as a result, people are less familiar with each other and one can melt into the crowd. However, this also depends on the neighbourhoods and those who live there. Vertical housing in highend neighbourhoods is a lot less restrictive than workingclass neighbourhoods with semidetached and dense housing. (Association Femmes & Leadership 1 Nov. 2016)

The Representative also gave as an example

[translation]

[that a] welltodo divorced woman living in the rich neighbourhoods of the capital has many layers of protection: cultural tolerance, personal privacy, material affluence protecting against any promiscuousness. (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016)

2.4 Access to Employment and Workplace Harassment

According to the President, [translation] "with regard to employment, there is no discrimination in legislation or in most practices" (Association Femmes & Leadership 1 Nov. 2016). However, the Representative stated that "discrimination in access to employment and career development is a general concern for women. It would be difficult to prove that single women are more likely to fail" (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

However, the Representative added that [translation] "the data show, however, [that single women] are more likely to be subjected to sexual harassment at work and elsewhere" (ibid.). Similarly, the President also stated that

[translation]

when a woman is divorced or a single mother, several forms of harassment or exploitation are apparent. Their work time is not managed in accordance with the limitations [they have]. At this level, one's private life occasionally becomes a source of indiscretion and is not treated with respect. (Association Femmes & Leadership 1 Nov. 2016)

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 also states that sexual harassment is "a problem" in the country, but explains that there is no data to measure its extent (US 13 Apr. 2016, 17).

3. Support Services

Information on the support services provided specifically to women living alone was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within time constraints of this Response. However, the Representative of the LTDH stated that

[translation]

the issue of the autonomization of women is a central theme in terms of the current concerns of women's associations working on equality issues relating to inheritance and violence considered major barriers to women fully benefitting from their fundamental human rights. (LTDH 24 Oct. 2016)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] The Bertelsmann Foundation is a private German foundation whose objective is "to promote research and understanding in the areas of religion, public health, [] international cultural exchange, democracy and government, and civic engagement" (Bertelsmann Stiftung n.d.).

References

Amnesty International (AI). 2016. Tunisie: Communication au Comite des droits economiques, sociaux et culturels [ONU], 59e Session, 19 septembre - 7 octobre 2016. [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Amnesty International (AI). 25 November 2015. Les victimes accusees : violences sexuelles et violences liees au genre en Tunisie. (MDE 30/2814/2015) [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Association Femmes & Leadership. 1 November 2016. Correspondence sent to the Research Directorate by the President.

Bertelsmann Stiftung. 2016. BTI 2016 - Tunisia Country Report. [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Bertelsmann Stiftung. N.d. "The Beliefs Behind our Work." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Freedom House. 14 July 2016. "Tunisia." Freedom in the World Report for 2016. [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. 2016. Rapport mondial 2016 : Tunisie. [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Jamaity. 29 June 2015. "Association Femmes & Leadership." [Accessed 4 Nov. 2016]

Ligue tunisienne de defense des droits de l'homme (LTDH). 24 October 2016. Correspondence sent to the Research Directorate by a representative.

Tunisia. 2014. Constitution de la Republique tunisienne. [Accessed 16 Jan. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 30 May 2013. Human Rights Council. Rapport du Groupe de travail sur l'elimination de la discrimination a l'egard des femmes dans la legislation et dans la pratique : Additif Mission en Tunisie. (A/HRC/23/50/Add.2) [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. Department of State. "Tunisia." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Association BEITY; Association des femmes tunisiennes pour la recherche et le developpement; Association tunisienne des femmes democrates; Aswat Nissa; Ligue tunisienne des droits politiques de la femme; Professor of history and women's studies, Universite de la Manouba; Union nationale de la femme tunisienne; Voix de femmes.

Internet sites, including: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse; Babnet Tunisie; Baya; Credif; Directinfo; ecoi.net; L'Economiste maghrebien; Erudit; Factiva; Femmes tunisiennes; France  Cour nationale du droit d'asile; FIDH  Forum tunisien pour les droits economiques et sociaux; HuffPost Tunisie; IRIN; Journal des femmes; Kapitalis; Le Monde; Mosaique FM; Nawaat; Overseas Development Institute; La Presse de Tunisie; Realites; RFI; Le Temps; Tunisie-Radio; Tuniscope; United Nations  Refworld; Webdo.tn.
Turkey: Information on the 2014 law on military service, including possibilities for exemption by paying a fee; implementation of the law (2014-September 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 30 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol TUR105749.E Related Document(s) Turquie : information sur la loi de 2014 sur l'exemption du service militaire, y compris sur l'application de la loi; information sur d'autres lois concernant l'exemption payee du service militaire (2014-octobre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Turkey: Information on the 2014 law on military service, including possibilities for exemption by paying a fee; implementation of the law (2014-September 2016), 30 January 2017, TUR105749.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589463394.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

This Response to Information Request replaces TUR105615 of 28 October 2016.

1. Military Exemption Law of 2014

Turkish media sources report that the Turkish government passed a law in December 2014 allowing men to pay a fee of 18,000 Turkish lira (TRY) [C$7,736] to be exempt from compulsory military service (Hurriyet Daily News 3 Dec. 2014; Daily Sabah 15 Dec. 2014; Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014). Two media sources indicate that the Parliament passed the law on 10 December 2014 (ibid.; Al Monitor 10 Dec. 2014), while one stated that it was on 3 December 2014 (Daily Sabah 15 Dec. 2014). According to sources, the law allowed men aged 27 and older [in December 2014] to apply for the exemption (ibid.; Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014; Al Monitor 10 Dec. 2014). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative of the Association for Conscientious Objection (Vicdani Ret Dernegi, VR-DER), an Istanbul-based organization founded in 2013 that campaigns for conscientious objection in Turkey, similarly indicated that the law was for people born before 1988 (VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016).

Sources state that the average Turk cannot afford to pay the fee for military exemption, and only wealthy people can afford it (ibid.; Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014). According to Cihan News Agency, a Turkish media source, the buyout program is often aimed at the group of men who postponed military service to attend university (ibid.). The VR-DER representative noted that the fee for exemption, which is around US$9,000, was nearly the annual income of the average Turk (VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016). The World Bank similarly indicates that Turkey's gross national income (GNI) per capita was US$9,950 in 2015 (World Bank n.d.). According to the VR-DER representative, state banks offered "'military exemption loans'" targeting the middle class (VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016). Al Monitor similarly states that banks began offering 36-month credit lines for 18,000 TRY following the introduction of the law (10 Dec. 2014).

Media sources report that the Turkish military opposed the military exemption law, claiming that it would lead to a shortage in manpower (Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014; Hurriyet Daily News 3 Dec. 2014), and cause tensions with poorer conscripts unable to afford the exemption fees (ibid.). Cihan News Agency reports that, according to an opinion poll of the Turkish population conducted by the group Argetus, 36 percent of those polled disapprove of paid military exemption (Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014). The VR-DER representative also stated that the law was "highly criticized by society because it was discriminatory against the poor" (VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016).

2. Implementation of the 2014 Law

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an official at the Embassy of Turkey in Ottawa stated that this law was "fully implemented," and that all Turkish citizens who met the requirements of the law were able to benefit from the legislation (Turkey 24 Oct. 2016). Sources indicate that the deadline to apply for paid military exemption was 13 February 2015 (Daily Sabah 15 Dec. 2014; Turkey 24 Oct. 2016; VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016), allowing people approximately 2 months to apply (ibid.; Turkey 24 Oct. 2016). Two sources report that, according to the Turkish Prime Minister, 203,824 people paid the exemption fee to opt out of compulsory military service under this 2014 law (ibid.; Cihan News Agency 20 Feb. 2015). Similarly, Trend News Agency (Trend), an Azerbaijani news agency, cites the Turkish Ministry of Defense as stating that, as of 18 February 2015, more than 200,000 people had applied for paid military exemption (Trend 18 Feb. 2015).

Media sources indicate that authorities planned to use the money raised from the military exemption fees for procuring arms (Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014) or modernizing the Turkish Armed Forces (Hurriyet Daily News 3 Dec. 2014). In February 2015, sources reported that Turkey raised 3.6 billion TRY [C$1.54 billion] (Cihan News Agency 20 Feb. 2015) or 3.7 billion TRY [C$1.59 billion] (Jane's Defence Weekly 25 Feb. 2015) from the 2014 military service exemption fees (ibid.; Cihan News Agency 20 Feb. 2015).

3. Past Implementation of Military Exemption Laws

Sources report that there were four other times when Turkey implemented similar laws allowing men to pay a fee to be exempt from military conscription (Cihan News Agency 12 Dec. 2014; Al Monitor 10 Dec. 2014; Daily Sabah 15 Dec. 2014): 1987, 1992, 1999, and 2011 (ibid.; VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016). According to media sources, approximately 193,000 people benefitted from these other military exemption laws in total (Daily Sabah 15 Dec. 2014; Cihan News Agency 20 Feb. 2015). Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News indicates that in 2011, the military exemption fee was 30,000 TRY and people over the age of 30 qualified (Hurriyet Daily News 3 Dec. 2014). The same source indicates that 66,000 people applied during that year (ibid.).

The VR-DER representative stated that military exemption laws are only implemented for a few months and it is unknown when they will next be implemented (VR-DER 6 Oct. 2016). The Representative explained that military exemption laws are dependent on societal pressures, the government's need for money, and the situation between the army and the PKK [Kurdistan Worker's Party] (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Military Exemption for Expatriates

Daily Sabah, an Istanbul-based newspaper, reports that in January 2016, Turkey introduced a law allowing Turkish citizens that are at least 38 years old and who are living abroad to be exempt from compulsory military service for a fee of 1,000 euros (EUR) [C$1,467], which was lowered from 6,000 EUR [C$8,789] (Daily Sabah 26 Jan. 2016). According to the Istanbul-based media source Turkish Square, Turkey's Consulate General in New York issued a statement indicating that the law applies to Turkish citizens over 38 years old and with a "residence or working permit for at least three years or who have worked for at least three consecutive years outside of Turkey" (Turkish Square 11 Feb. 2016). Daily Sabah likewise states that the law applies to people who have been living outside Turkey for at least three years or have worked for at least three consecutive years outside Turkey (26 Jan. 2016). According to Turkish Square, people can apply for this exemption at Turkish consulates abroad or at military recruitment offices in Turkey until 31 December 2017 (11 Feb. 2016).

The Official at the Turkish embassy stated that the legislation governing the military service exemption of Turks living abroad is the "Law on the Amendments to the Military Law," which was adopted on 14 January 2016, and is valid from 27 January 2016 to 31 December 2017 (Turkey 24 Oct. 2016). The same source stated that the purpose of the legislation is to allow Turkish citizens who are permanent residents or have work permits abroad the right to be exempt from compulsory military service for a reduced fee (ibid.). The Official indicated that the person must meet the following requirements:

Applicant must not be older than 38 years old,

Applicant must transfer the amount of 1000 Euro or equivalent amount in other currencies mentioned in the law to the official bank accounts,

The said amount must be deposited in a single transfer,

Applicant must prove that he is a legal resident in a foreign country (permanent resident, employee or employer)

Applicant must prove that he had this status for a total of 1095 days in the country where he applied to the Turkish Diplomatic Mission. (ibid.)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Al Monitor. 10 December 2014. Metin Gurcan. "$8,700 Will Let Young Turks 'Buy Out' Their Military Service." [Accessed 30 Sept. 2016]

Cihan News Agency. 20 February 2015. "$1.5 Billion Extra for Buying Arms." (Factiva)

Cihan News Agency. 12 December 2014. "Breaking the Spell of the Armed Forces' Importance in Turkish Society." (Factiva)

Daily Sabah. 26 January 2016. "President Erdogan Ratifies Law on Military Exemption Fee." [Accessed 11 Oct. 2016]

Daily Sabah. 15 December 2014. "Application for Paid Exemption from Military Service Open." [Accessed 30 Sept. 2016]

Hurriyet Daily News. 3 December 2014. Murat Yetkin. "Will Early Elections in Turkey Follow Paid Military Service?" [Accessed 11 Oct. 2016]

Jane's Defence Weekly. 25 February 2015. Lale Sariibrahimoglu. "Turkey Raises $1.5 BN from Exemption Fee." (Factiva)

Trend. 18 February 2015. Rufiz Hafizoglu. "Turkey Intends to Buy New Military Equipment." (Factiva)

Turkey. 24 October 2016. Embassy of Turkey in Ottawa. Correspondence from an official to the Research Directorate.

Turkish Square. 11 February 2016. "Military Exemption Fee Reduced for Turks Living Abroad." (Factiva)

Vicdani Ret Dernegi (VR-DER). 6 October 2016. Correspondence from a representative to the Research Directorate.

The Wold Bank. N.d. "Turkey." [Accessed 26 Oct. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: European Bureau for Conscientious Objectors; International Fellowship of Reconciliation; Professor of Politics, Acadia University.

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; ecoi.net; European Bureau for Conscientious Objectors; Factiva; Freedom House; Human Rights Watch; International Fellowship of Reconciliation; Jamestown Foundation; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Small Arms Survey; Turkey  Consulate in New York, Embassy in Ottawa; Turkey Analyst; UN  Refworld; US  Department of State; War Resisters' International.
Turkey: The Fethullah Gulen Movement, including structure, areas of operation and activities; procedures for becoming a member; roles and responsibilities of membership; treatment of supporters; the Gulen Movement in Canada, including connections with organisations in Turkey and ability to confirm an individual's involvement with the Gulen Movement in Turkey (2014-September 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 29 September 2016 Citation / Document Symbol TUR105626.E Related Document(s) Turquie : information sur le mouvement de Fethullah Gulen, y compris sa structure, ses activites et les regions ou celles-ci sont exercees; la marche a suivre pour devenir membre; les roles et responsabilites des membres; le traitement reserve aux adeptes; le mouvement Gulen au Canada, y compris ses liens avec des organisations en Turquie et son aptitude a confirmer l'engagement d'une personne aupres du mouvement Gulen en Turquie (2014-septembre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Turkey: The Fethullah Gulen Movement, including structure, areas of operation and activities; procedures for becoming a member; roles and responsibilities of membership; treatment of supporters; the Gulen Movement in Canada, including connections with organisations in Turkey and ability to confirm an individual's involvement with the Gulen Movement in Turkey (2014-September 2016), 29 September 2016, TUR105626.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589464384.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources indicate that the Fethullah Gulen Movement is also known as Hizmet, which means "service" in Turkish (CBC 21 July 2016; BBC 18 Dec. 2013; New York Times 26 July 2016).

Fethullah Gulen is a Turkish Islamic scholar who has been living in self-imposed exile in the US since 1999 (CBC 21 July 2016; DW 27 July 2016). The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) states that Gulen built his reputation as a Muslim preacher with "intense sermons" and "espouses a philosophy that blends a mystical form of Islam with democracy" (CBC 21 July 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a non-resident senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies' Silk Road Studies Program stated that

[t]he Gulen movement started in the 1970s when Gulen was an Imam, and there was a huge emotional impact of his speeches. The movement took off in the 1990s, becoming a political power. The movement was already well established in Turkey prior to Gulen's move to the United States in 1999. (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016)

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative of the Intercultural Dialogue Institute (IDI), an organization founded in 2005 by Turkish Canadian entrepreneurs inspired by Gulen's work and teaching, indicated that

Hizmet started as a religious movement in Turkey back in the 1960s through the sermons of Fethullah Gulen in mosques. Over the years, it was transformed into a civil society movement, and the movement became a transnational movement by the participation of people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds through schools and other institutions in their respective countries. (IDI 21 Sept. 2016)

According to the website of the Gulen Movement (www.gulenmovement.us), the objective of its participants is "to attain God's good pleasure based on the conviction that 'service to humanity is service to God'" (Gulen Movement n.d). The same source indicates that the Movement is primarily composed of Turkish Muslims, but there are also others from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds (ibid.).

Some media sources state that there are "millions" of Gulen followers (New York Times 24 Apr. 2012; BBC 18 Dec. 2013). The CBC reports that it is unknown how many members there are, but quotes Bessma Momani, a senior fellow at the University of Waterloo's Centre for International Governance Innovation, as stating that there may be as many as four million members in Turkey, accounting for 5 percent of the population (CBC 21 July 2016).

A 2012 article published by The New York Times describes the Gulen Movement as "one of the most influential Islamic movements in the world" (24 Apr. 2012). The Globe and Mail also states that Gulen is "one of Turkey's most influential and controversial Islamic scholars" (25 July 2016).

According to the New York Times, Gulen fled to the US in 1999 "amid accusations of plotting to overthrow the secular government" (New York Times 24 Apr. 2012). The same source states that during that time, a taped sermon appeared in the media instructing his followers to "'move within the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers'"; he claimed the tape was doctored, and he was acquitted of the charges in 2008 (ibid.).

Politically, sources indicate that Gulen was a former ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prior to a deteriorating in their relations in 2013 (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016; DNA 17 July 2016) due to Gulen supporters in the police instigating corruption investigations against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) (ibid.; Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016). According to the Senior Fellow, in the time period from 2008-2012, the Gulen Movement "was regarded as even more powerful than Erdogan" and some people joined the movement for the connections and power that it provided (ibid.). He stated that there was a "climate of fear around Gulenists" and that "Gulenists were known to fabricate cases against people who criticised them or to reveal a person's secret" (ibid.). In 2012, the New York Times wrote that "[a] culture of fear surrounding the so-called Gulenists, however exaggerated, is so endemic that few here will talk openly about them on the telephone, fearing that their conversations are being recorded and that there will be reprisals" (24 Apr. 2012). According to Deutsche Welle (DW), from 2008 to 2011, there was "a series of coup trials and purges against Kemalist military brass based on fabricated evidence" which were instigated by "Gulenist prosecutors and police with the backing of Erdogan" (DW 27 July 2016). The same source quotes Dani Rodrik, an economist at Harvard University who has written about Gulen and the coup trails, as stating that "'it should be clear to any objective observer that the Gulen movement goes much beyond the schools, charities, and inter-faith activities with which it presents itself to the world: it also has a dark underbelly engaged in covert activities such as evidence fabrication, wiretapping, disinformation, blackmail, and judicial manipulation" (ibid.). Media sources indicate that prior to the break between Gulen and Erdogan, Turkish authorities jailed critics of the Gulen Movement, including journalists (CBC 21 July 2016; BBC 18 Dec. 2013) and a police chief who wrote a book critical of the movement's influence on the police and judiciary (ibid.).

Media sources report that Turkish authorities have accused Gulen of running a "'parallel'" structure within the Turkish state (CBC 21 July 2016; Globe and Mail 25 July 2016; DNA 17 July 2016), particularly within the judiciary, education system, media and military (ibid.). CBC quotes Bessma Momani, a senior fellow at the University of Waterloo's Centre for International Governance Innovation, as indicating that the majority of Turks believe that the Gulen Movement is "a parallel government" and distrust them (CBC 21 July 2016). DW reports that, according to a poll conducted by a Turkish research organization, nearly two-thirds of those polled believe that Gulen was behind the coup attempt in July 2016 (DW 27 July 2016). The same source states that "the opaqueness of [the Gulen Movement's] funding and infiltration of the state has for years made it the target of secular suspicion about its motives to establish an Islamic-inspired state" (ibid.).

2. Structure

According to their website, the Gulen Movement is a "combination of both informal service networks and institutionalized services, such as aid and relief organizations, schools and dialogue societies" (Gulen Movement n.d).

The Senior Fellow and the IDI representative indicated that the Gulen Movement is loosely structured and has no strict or central hierarchy (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016; IDI 21 Sept. 2016). Similarly, the BBC reports that the movement has "no formal structure" and "no visible organisation;" the source cites advocates as stating that people involved in the movement "simply work together in a loosely affiliated alliance inspired by the message of Mr. Gulen" (BBC 18 Dec. 2013). The IDI representative explained that

The connections between each organization vary significantly. These connections may exist at personal level, as well as institutional and professional level depending on the collaboration and partnership between the organizations. There is a wide-variety of project based partnership happening within the movement. (IDI 21 Sept. 2016)

In terms of leadership within the movement, the Senior Fellow stated that

[t]here are certain people who have geographical responsibility and these regional leaders meet with Gulen fairly regularly. However, from what I know, Gulen is rather vague at these meetings and does not micro-manage. He will give instructions such as "we should do more for education in the Balkans" rather than giving specific instructions. (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016)

Corroborating and further information on regional leaders within the Gulen Movement could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to a 2010 study of the Gulen Movement published on the movement's website by Helen Rose Ebaugh, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Houston, local circles of the Gulen Movement are typically organized according to members' location, as well as their professions and/or education; for example, doctors within a neighbourhood will meet together with other Gulen-inspired doctors (Ebaugh 2010). The same source indicates that "organizing on the basis of natural groups, such as professions or occupational groups, also facilitates recruitment" (ibid.).

The Senior Fellow explained how the movement contains different levels of supporters, as follows:

The Movement has an inner circle of activists and an outer circle of people who support or sympathize with Gulen's message or the movement's ideals.

The inner circle of activists is mainly composed of people who were recruited into the Movement as teenagers. . . . Gulenists would identify students from poor backgrounds and help them to be successful in their education--by offering tutoring or schooling on the weekends, accommodations if going to a school in a different region etc. These students were paired with a mentor, who acted in the role of an elder brother or sister (called "abi" or "abla" in Turkish). The mentor was also responsible for the spiritual development of the student.

These students were encouraged to work in civil service and business after completing their education. . . . They particularly joined the police, judiciary and military. During the 1990s, the military, which is very secular, started purging Gulenists in the officer corp and created a vetting process to try to prevent suspected Gulenists from becoming officers. When Erdogan came to power, these restraints were reduced and the vetting procedures were dropped. In the police, Gulenists were particularly focused on controlling the intelligence gathering branch.

The teenagers recruited into the movement as students continued to be active in the Gulen Movement and to donate to their charitable causes. In addition, Gulenists within the state apparatus networked with Gulenists outside the state (such as businesses, media, charities etc.). In some cases, Gulenists used the people in this inner circle of activists who were in the police, judiciary and military to fabricate court cases against critics of the Gulen Movement.

Regarding the outer circle of supporters, there are a lot of people attracted by the public message of the movement. A lot of the people who follow the general message are not aware of some of the hardcore things that occur within the inner circle of Gulen activists. (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to the BBC, "followers are said to donate between 5% and 20% of their income to groups affiliated with the movement" (BBC 18 Dec. 2013). Further and corroborating information about funding could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Activities and Areas of Operation

DW indicates that Gulen operates "a vast global enterprise of schools, businesses, media outlets and charities" (DW 27 July 2016). The same source notes that Gulen-affiliated institutions are located throughout the world, including in Africa, Central Asia, the US and Europe (ibid,). According to the website fethullah-gulen.org., the movement has opened "hundreds" of schools and colleges in Turkey, as well as in 160 countries (fethullah-gulen.org n.d.). DW similarly states that the movement has schools in more than 140 countries (DW 27 July 2016). The Gulen Movement has also established private hospitals and health clinics (fethullah-gulen.org n.d.a.).

Sources indicate that the Gulen Movement established their own business association, the Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists (TUSKON), which was headquartered in Turkey, with offices in Washington and Brussels (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016; Hurriyet Daily News 6 Nov. 2015), Moscow and Beijing (ibid.). The Turkey-based Hurriyet Daily News describes TUSKON as an umbrella organization founded in 2005 that represents "'seven business federations, 211 business associations and over 55,000 entrepreneurs from all over Turkey'" (Hurriyet Daily News 6 Nov. 2015). The Senior Fellow noted that TUSKON was disbanded after the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey (Senior Fellow 13 Dept. 2016).

Sources state that the Gulen Movement is active in the media (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016; fethullah-gulen.org n.d). According to fethullah-gulen.org, the Gulen Movement established the second largest media conglomeration in Turkey, which includes Turkish and English language newspapers, six TV stations, two radio stations, and publishing houses (ibid.). The Senior Fellow similarly noted that they owned media outlets, including Zaman, Today's Zaman, Samanyolu TV and others (13 Sept. 2016).

4. Membership Procedures and Roles

Sources indicate that there is no formal membership in the Gulen Movement (BBC 18 Dec. 2013; Gulen Movement n.d) and "no entry or exit protocols" (ibid.). Sources further state that the movement does not issue membership cards (CBC 21 July 2016; fethullah-gulen.org n.d.) or have an "official joining ceremony" (ibid.). According to the Senior Fellow, there is no central membership register, no membership number and information about membership is "very opaque" (Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016). He also noted that

[s]ome dissidents of the Gulen Movement who left it said that Gulen members who were commissioned in the military were required to go to their big brother/mentor and swear allegiance to Gulen on the Koran. Some have said that other members in the Movement are also required to swear allegiance to Gulen, while others have said that allegiance to Gulen is only implied. (ibid.)

The same source stated that Gulen members are reluctant to self-identify (ibid.). According to sources, it is difficult to determine if someone is a Gulen follower (ibid.; CBC 21 July 2016).

Regarding membership, the website of the Gulen Movement states that participation is voluntary and varied depending on the participant; some participants "actively support all projects" in addition to supporting the "ideas and principles of the movement," while others only support some principles and are only involved in those activities or are not involved in any activities (Gulen Movement n.d.). The IDI representative explained:

There is no formal membership to the movement. Different types of voluntary participation are possible. The types of voluntary activities include financial donations, volunteering, participation in spiritual conversation circles, serving as a non-paid board member or advisor or committee member, or a paid position with a formal organization. There might be membership in formal organizations depending on the structure and legal framework of each country where these organizations are operating. (IDI 21 Sept. 2016)

According to their website, the Gulen Movement does not offer monetary incentives and participants "choose to embody highly cultural, ethical and spiritual values, rather than to accrue worldly goods and material gains" (Gulen Movement n.d).

5. Treatment of Members and Supporters

The Globe and Mail indicates that after December 2013, Erdogan closed schools and media outlets associated with the Gulen Movement and conducted "purges and reshuffles within the police force and judiciary to marginalize Mr. Gulen's followers" (The Globe and Mail 25 July 2016). Similarly, CBC reports that since 2014, Turkish authorities shut down Gulen-affiliated preparatory schools, media outlets, and Bank Asya, a Gulen-affiliated bank (CBC 21 July 2016).

According to an article in Turkey Analyst, a publication of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Joint Center that provides analysis and news on domestic and foreign policy issues in Turkey (n.d.), since November 2015, the AKP "intensified and broadened" their campaign against the Gulen Movement, but instead of targeting Gulen's followers who "engaged in genuine criminal activity or abuse of powersuch as the members of the police and judiciary responsible for the notorious Ergenekon and Balyoz investigations," [1] the AKP prosecutors targeted "journalists, businesspeople and academics who appear to be guilty of little more than sympathy for Gulen's publicly expressed calls for moderation, non-violence and interfaith dialogue" (Turkey Analyst 21 Dec. 2015).

Hurriyet Daily News reports that in November 2015, Turkish authorities raided the offices of business groups that were part of TUSKON as part of an investigation into the "'Parallel State Structure Terror Organization/Pro-Fetullah Terror Organization' (Fethullahci Teror Orgutu)" (6 Nov. 2015).

Sources indicate that the Turkish government has categorized the Gulen Movement as a terrorist organization (Human Rights Watch 3 Aug. 2016; CBC 21 July 2016), calling it the "Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization" or FETO (CBC 21 July 2016). Human Rights Watch notes that being labelled a terrorist group allows Turkey to apply "overbroad terrorism laws against suspected Gulenists" (Human Rights Watch 3 Aug. 2016).

According to sources, Turkish authorities blame the failed coup attempt in July 2016 on Gulen and have requested that the US extradite him (New York Times 26 July 2016; CBC 21 July 2016;). The US Secretary of State made a statement indicating that the Turkish authorities would need to provide "'legitimate evidence that withstands scrutiny'" before the US would extradite Gulen (CBC 21 July 2016). Sources report that Gulen denied involvement in the coup attempt, but did not rule out the possibility that some of his followers may have been involved (CBC 21 July 2016; New York Times 26 July 2016).

The Turkey Analyst states that Erdogan declared a 3-month state of emergency in July 2016 following the attempted coup in order to "cleanse" Turkey of Gulen supporters (Turkey Analyst 22 July 2016). Human Rights Watch also notes that the state emergency allows the government to "rule by decree with minimal oversight from parliament and none from the constitutional court" (Human Rights Watch 3 Aug. 2016). According to sources, following the coup attempt, Turkish authorities detained or jailed "thousands" of people (Globe and Mail 25 July 2016; CBC 21 July 2016), including judges, political figures, journalists, and members of the military, while thousands of public service employees lost their jobs (ibid.). DW similarly reports that after the coup attempt, "[m]ore than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers and civil servants have been arrested, suspended or put under investigation as part of a wide reaching crackdown" (DW 27 July 2016). According to Human Rights Watch, the Turkish government's purge "goes far beyond" punishing those involved in the coup attempt, and has targeted people based on "their perceived association with the Gulen movement" (Human Rights Watch 3 Aug. 2016). Targets reportedly include people in "the judiciary, prosecutors' office, police, the media, the civil service, schools, universities trade unions and hospitals" (ibid.).

Amnesty International (AI) reports that people detained as a result of the purge following the attempted coup, based on information obtained from their lawyers, were "being held arbitrarily" with "no evidence establishing reasonable suspicion of criminal activity" and that "[s]ome of the questioning by judges was entirely irrelevant to the events of the coup attempt, and appeared intended to establish any link to Fethullah Gulen or institutions sympathetic to him" (AI 24 July 2016). The same source states that detainees have been "subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country" (AI 24 July 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

6. Gulen Movement in Canada

Sources indicate that the Gulen Movement is active in Canada (Gulen Movement Canada n.d.a; Senior Fellow 13 Sept. 2016; IDI 21 Sept. 2016) in the form on the Intercultural Dialogue Institute (IDI) (ibid. Gulen Movement Canada n.d.a).

The IDI has branches in nine cities in Canada (ibid.; IDI n.d.) including Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, London, Hamilton, Vancouver and Kitchener/Waterloo (Gulen Movement Canada n.d.a). According to their website, the IDI was established in 2010 and aims to "advance social cohesion via (through) personal interaction by promoting respect and mutual understanding among people of all cultures and faiths through dialogue and partnership" (IDI n.d.). Their activities include organizing "social, educational and cultural activities such as lectures, seminars, conferences, discussion forums, luncheons, informative dinners, programs for students and youth, intercultural exchange trips, courses, [and] outreach programs" (ibid.).

The IDI representative stated that, in addition to the IDI, there are other Gulen-inspired organizations in Canada active in promoting cultural activities, business functions and education (ibid. 21 Sept. 2016). Some of these organizations are members of the umbrella organization Anatolian Heritage Federation, although the federation does not have a "formal or official relationship" with Fethullah Gulen or the movement (ibid.). Gulen-inspired organizations and institutions in Canada include the Nile Academy in Toronto, the Nebula Academy in Edmonton and the Turkish Canadian Chamber of Commerce (TCCC) (ibid.). According to the Gulen Movement Canada website, there are "several Gulen-inspired relief organizations in Canada," such as Northern Lights, an Ottawa-based NGO that aims to provide relief to disaster victims and the poor (Gulen Movement Canada n.d.b). The IDI representative indicated that there are 25 organizations that are members of the Anatolian Heritage Federation, and "each organization has its own board and governance structure" (IDI 21 Sept. 2016). He estimated individual membership in these organizations at approximately 800 people, but noted that the AHC "does not have a list of individual members and volunteers of these organizations" (ibid.).

Media sources report that Turkey has asked the Canadian government for information on people in Canada with the Gulen Movement, but Canadian officials have stated that they needed to be presented with evidence of crime rather than allegations before taking any actions (Globe and Mail 21 July 2016; National Post 28 July 2016). Requests for this information were reportedly made both before and after the coup attempt (ibid.).

According to the IDI representative, the Turkish-Canadian Chamber of Commerce (TCCC) used to have a memorandum of understanding with TUSKON prior to the government closure of the business association, and "through this connection, TCCC might be able to confirm involvement of business people within the Hizmet movement" (IDI 21 Sept. 2016). The same source indicated that Nile Academy has been recruiting students from Gulen-inspired schools in Turkey and abroad and that administrators and board members of Nile Academy might be able to confirm the involvement of teachers and administrators working at these schools, parents sending students to these schools and the sponsors and founders of these schools (ibid.).

The source further indicated that:

Individual participants of the Gulen Movement in Canada and the Intercultural Dialogue Institute do not have the capacity to confirm an individual's membership or involvement with the Gulen Movement.

However, officers of Intercultural Dialogue Institute might be able to provide a non-definitive, subjective evaluation of a person's affiliation with the movement based on factors such as employment history (such as employment in Hizmet affiliated organizations and institutions), as well as involvement in voluntary activities with and donations to affiliated organizations, or sending their children to Hizmet affiliated schools. (ibid.)

Information on whether the IDI has ever issued such evaluations could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Amnesty International (AI). 24 July 2016. "Turkey: Independent Monitors Must be Allowed to Access Detainees Amid Torture Allegations." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 18 December 2013. "Profile: Fethullah Gulen's Hizmet Movement." [Accessed 6 Sept. 2016]

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). 21 July 2016. "Who is Fethullah Gulen, the Man Erdogan Blames for the Coup." [Accessed 14 Sept. 2016]

Daily News and Analysis (DNA). 17 July 2016. "Turkey: Who is Cleric-in-exile Fethullah Gulen and Why is He Being Accused in the Coup Attempt." (Factiva)

Deutsche Welle (DW). 27 July 2016. "Turkey's Coup Attempt: Real and Imagined Threats." (Factiva)

Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 2010. "The Gulen Movement: a Sociological Analysis of a Civic Movement Rooted in Moderate Islam." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

Fethullah-Gulen.org. N.d. "On the Structure of the Hizmet Movement." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

The Globe and Mail. 25 July 2016. Simon A. Waldman. "Is Erdogan Seeing Gulenists or Ghosts?" (Factiva)

The Globe and Mail. 21 July 2016. Laura Stone. "PM Urges Turkey to Respect Rule of Law." (Factiva)

Gulen Movement. N.d. "Participation in the Movement." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

Gulen Movement Canada. N.d.a. "DialogueIntercultural and Interfaith Dialogue." [Accessed 14 Sept. 2016]

Gulen Movement Canada. N.d.b. "CharityGulen Inspired Relief Organizations." [Accessed 14 Sept. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. 3 August 2016. Benjamin Ward. "The Government Response to Turkey's Coup is an Affront to Democracy." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

Hurriyet Daily News. 6 November 2015. "Ankara Police Raid Gulen-linked Business Group TUSKON." [Accessed 14 Sept. 2016]

Intercultural Dialogue Institute (IDI). 21 September 2016. Correspondence from a representative to the Research Directorate.

Intercultural Dialogue Institute (IDI). N.d. "About." [Accessed 14 Sept. 2016]

The National Post. 28 July 2016. Laura Hensley. "Turkey Says U.S.-based Cleric Gulen Could Flee for Canada." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

The New York Times. 26 July 2016. Fethullah Gulen. "I Believe in Democracy for Turkey." (Factiva)

The New York Times. 24 April 2012. Dan Bilefsky and Sebnem Arsu. "Turkey Feels Sway of Reclusive Cleric in the US." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

Senior Fellow, Silk Road Studies Program, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 13 September 2016. Telephone interview with the Research Directorate.

Turkey Analyst. 22 July 2016. Gareth H. Jenkins. "Post-Putsch Narratives and Turkey's Curious Coup." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

Turkey Analyst. 21 December 2015. Gareth H. Jenkins. "Stoking the Fires: Crises, Conspiracies and Miscalculations." [Accessed 7 Sept. 2016]

Turkey Analyst. N.d. "Home." [Accessed 29 Sept. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Gulen Movement of Canada; Professor of political science, University of Utah; Professor of politics, Acadia University; Professor Emeritus of sociology, University of Houston.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Factiva; Freedom House; International Crisis Group; Jamestown Foundation; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; UN  Refworld; US  Congressional Research Services, Department of State.
Turkey: Information on the Nufus Kayit Ornegi [extract of civil registry], including format, purpose, and issuing body; information included on the document, including family members and whether an individual can request the omission of particular family members, such as siblings; availability of fraudulent Nufus Kayit Ornegi (2014-September 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 13 September 2016 Citation / Document Symbol TUR105610.E Related Document(s) Turquie : information sur le Nufus Kayit Ornegi [extrait du registre civil], y compris la presentation, l'objectif et l'organisme qui le delivre; information contenue dans le document, y compris les membres de la famille et information indiquant si une personne peut demander l'omission de membres de la famille en particulier, comme les membres de la fratrie; l'accessibilite des Nufus Kayit Ornegi frauduleux (2014-septembre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Turkey: Information on the Nufus Kayit Ornegi [extract of civil registry], including format, purpose, and issuing body; information included on the document, including family members and whether an individual can request the omission of particular family members, such as siblings; availability of fraudulent Nufus Kayit Ornegi (2014-September 2016), 13 September 2016, TUR105610.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5894656c4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources translate the Nufus Kayit Ornegi [or Nufus Aile Tablosu (Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016)] as a "Civil Register Copy" (Turkey 9 Sept. 2016), a "certified copy of an entry of birth" (Professor 7 Sept. 2016), a "Document of Birth Record" (Lawyer in Gayrettepe 7 Sept. 2016), a "family registry" document (Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016; US n.d.), or an "[e]xtract of civil registry" (Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 7 Sept. 2016).

In a telephone interview with the Research Directorate, a lawyer in Istanbul who specializes in child custody cases indicated that the purpose of the Nufus Kayit Ornegi is to show its holder's "family connections" (Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016). Similarly, in correspondence with the Research Directorate, a lawyer in Gayrettepe who specializes in child custody cases explained that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi shows its holder's relatives "and their current status (names, dead/alive, date of birth, [etc.])" (Lawyer in Gayrettepe 7 Sept. 2016).

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a professor of law at Istanbul University indicated that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi is an official document and is "essential to prove your identity" when applying for a visa, a pension, or employment (Professor 7 Sept. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an attorney at Istanbul-based Yarsuvat Law Firm, a firm that specializes in, among other fields, criminal law and civil law, stated that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi can be asked by any "administration" and can be required, among other instances, to apply for a job or to acquire a gun license (Attorney 7 Sept. 2016). Sources indicated that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi can also be used for inheritance matters (ibid.; Professor 7 Sept. 2016; Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016).

1.1 Issuing Authorities

According to sources, the Nufus Kayit Ornegi is issued by the General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality (ibid.; Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 7 Sept. 2016; Lawyer in Ankara 7 Sept. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a lawyer at the Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office, who specializes in litigation and private law, explained that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi is issued by Civil Registries, which are "usually incorporated" under the District Governorships that can be found "in every town" in Turkey (Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 7 Sept. 2016). Without providing further detail, the same source indicated that it can also be provided by a court of justice in "certain cases" or by a public notary for a "certificate of inheritance" (ibid.). Additional and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The Professor explained that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi includes the issuing authority's seal, as well as the signature of "authorized public officers" (8 Sept. 2016). A copy of a Nufus Kayit Ornegi which was sent to the Research Directorate by the lawyer in Gayrettepe is attached to this Response.

1.2 Procedures and Requirements to Obtain a Nufus Kayit Ornegi

According to the lawyer in Istanbul, the Nufus Kayit Ornegi can be requested by the individuals themselves, or by a judge or a court (Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a second lawyer at the Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office, who specializes in private law, indicated that, as per the website of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior,

[a]ccording to Article 44 (g) of the Law No. 5490 on Population Services, the individual, his/her spouse, guardian, parents, children or person representing them with a power of attorney are authorized to collect the civil registration document directly at the Population Directorates. According to the same paragraph, no  third party other than  those persons listed above can receive an extract or information on the civil registration document. (Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 9 Sept. 2016a)

According to the professor, in order to obtain the Nufus Kayit Ornegi, a person must apply in person at the Civil Registration Office with their Turkish identity card and "[i]n general, the office issues [the document] within two minutes" (7 Sept. 2016). Additional and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. Information Included in the Nufus Kayit Ornegi

The Professor indicated that the Nufus Kayit Ornegi includes

your personal information (your Turkish citizenship number, gender, place of birth, date of birth, marital status, death record, residence address) and your family information (family members' full name, their Turkish citizenship number, gender, place of birth, date of birth, marital status, death record, residence address). (Professor 8 Sept. 2016)

According to the attorney, the Nufus Kayit Ornegi includes

the name, surname of the owner, the registration information, the gender, the descendants, wife/husband['s] information, Turkish ID numbers of those, name of the parents, place of birth, religion and marital status and date of death and marriage. (7 Sept. 2016)

The first lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office stated that, "[a]s a rule," the information about family members includes gender, date and place of birth, marital status, parents' names, date of death, "[n]umber of the registered [C]ivil [R]egistry official book, and family number" (7 Sept. 2016).

Sources indicated that family members included in the document are the individual's father, mother, siblings, spouse and children (Professor 7 Sept. 2016; Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016).

In contrast, the second lawyer at the Yamaner & Yamaner Law Firm and the lawyer in Ankara indicated that, if an individual is single, their Nufus Kayit Ornegi only includes their parents and their siblings, whereas, if the individual is married, it will only include their spouse and children (Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 9 Sept. 2016b; Lawyer in Ankara 7 Sept. 2016). According the first lawyer at the Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office, it is at the Civil Registry's "discretion" to include, in the Nufus Kayit Ornegi, the siblings of a person who is not married (7 Sept. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to the second lawyer at the Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office, a court of justice may ask the General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality for an individual's Nufus Kayit Ornegi that includes additional family members, such as grandparents, uncles or aunts (Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 9 Sept. 2016b). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to the lawyer in Gayrettepe, there are four types of Nufus Kayit Ornegi:

the first one provides information about the holder;

the second one provides information about the holder and his or her spouse and children;

the third one provides information about the holder and his or her parents and siblings; and

the fourth one provides information about "everybody," but it is provided "when somebody dies in order to help the inheritance cases" (9 Sept. 2016).

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Request the Omission of Particular Family Members

Sources indicated that the name of a family member cannot be removed from the Nufus Kayit Ornegi (Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office 7 Sept. 2016; Attorney 7 Sept. 2016; Professor 7 Sept. 2016). Without providing further detail, the Professor stated that this interdiction follows the Turkish Civil Code and the Civil Registration Services Code (ibid. 8 Sept. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The lawyer in Istanbul indicated that "[i]t is impossible to remove the name of a family member" from the Nufus Kayit Ornegi (Lawyer in Istanbul 7 Sept. 2016). The same lawyer indicated, however, that

it can happen that a family member was not registered at birth. In this case, the family member will not be included in the [Nufus Kayit Ornegi]. In order to include this family member, you would have to open a case with the Nufus Mudurlugu [General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality]. (ibid.)

4. Availability of Fraudulent Nufus Kayit Ornegi

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an official at the Turkish Embassy in Ottawa stated, without providing further detail, that a document claimed to be a Nufus Kayit Ornegi "can be fraudulent" (Turkey 9 Sept. 2016). According to the Professor, "some persons" issue fraudulent Nufus Kayit Ornegi, especially for visa applications, although "it is not common in Turkey" (7 Sept. 2016). The attorney stated that "it is possible to recreate these documents, imitating the signature" (7 Sept. 2016). According to the lawyer in Gayrettepe, the Nufus Kayit Ornegi "can be copied and changed" (Lawyer in Gayrettepe 7 Sept. 2016). The same source indicated that the only security feature to validate the veracity of the document is the seal of the General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality (ibid.).

The Professor indicated that Turkish citizens used to be able to obtain their Nufus Kayit Ornegi on the Internet, but the Turkish government phased out the practice to prevent fraud (7 Sept. 2016). According to the lawyer at the Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office,

[f]or a brief period in 2012, individuals were able to apply and receive extract of civil registry via online system (E-Devlet). However, these documents may be deemed as forgery since they were not signed and approved by [the] General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality. (7 Sept. 2016)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Attorney, Istanbul. 7 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer, Ankara. 7 September 2016. Telephone interview.

Lawyer, Gayrettepe. 9 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer, Gayrettepe. 7 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer, Istanbul. 7 September 2016. Telephone interview.

Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office. 7 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office. 9 September 2016a. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Lawyer at Yamaner & Yamaner Law Office. 9 September 2016b. Telephone interview.

Professor of law, Istanbul University. 8 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Professor of law, Istanbul University. 7 September 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Turkey. 9 September 2016. Turkish Embassy in Ottawa. Correspondence from an official to the Research Directorate.

United States (US). N.d. Embassy of the United States, Ankara. "Obtaining Copies of Birth Certificates, Vital Records and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad." [Accessed 6 Sept. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Lawyer in Adana; lawyer in Ankara; two lawyers in Istanbul; Turkey  Deputy General Director of the General Directorate of Civil Registration and Nationality.

Internet sites, including: beycan.net; bodrumbulletin.com; devlette.com; ecoi.net; Turkey  Istanbul Directorate of Civil Registration and Citizenship Affairs; UN  Refworld; US  Department of State; uzmanbilgisi.com.

Attachment

Turkey. N.d. "Nufus Kayit Ornegi." Sent to the Research Directorate by a lawyer in Gayrettepe, 7 September 2016.
Tough choices for Afghan refugees returning home after years in exile

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 3 February 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Tough choices for Afghan refugees returning home after years in exile, 3 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589466fa4.html [accessed 5 November 2022]

2016 saw a surge in the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, which has been hosting large numbers of Afghan refugees for four decades. More than 370,000 registered Afghan refugees returned home from Pakistan in 2016 - a 12 year high - compared to just over 58,000 the year before. Pakistan continues to host some 1.3 million registered refugees.

UNHCR has just completed an analysis of returnee monitoring data to better understand the background and current situation of refugee returnees in Afghanistan. The study was based on face-to-face interviews with 4,285 people at their point of arrival and telephone interviews with some 1,300 returnees. It was based on random sampling after people had been back for three months.

According to the data, refugees present multiple interlinked factors influencing their decision to return. These include economic hardship, harassment, fear of arrest and deportation in Pakistan - with marked differences between the first and second halves of 2016. In the first six months of 2016, 73 per cent of returning refugees cited economic hardship as a key reason for their return while only 41 per cent mentioned this in November. In the latter half of the year, factors relating to pressure by authorities, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as well as fear of arrest and deportation figured more prominently in refugee decision-making to return home. For example, only 8 per cent cited fear of arrest and deportation as a factor in the first half of 2016, while 37 per cent mentioned it by November. Refugees also cited a perceived improvement in the security situation in some parts of Afghanistan, a reduced fear of persecution, the government's promises of land and shelter upon arrival, UNHCR's assistance package and a desire to reunite with their families as factors influencing their decisions.

The increase in returns began mid-year and peaked in October 2016, amidst a worsening environment for Afghans in Pakistan in the late summer. Several other factors were identified through our interviews with Afghans before they returned home, including:

- the introduction of formal border management controls at Torkham - requiring Afghans and Pakistanis to have passports and visas to enter the other country for the first time - separating families, and affecting business between the two countries;

- a heightened anxiety over Proof of Registration cards validity, its extension and registered Afghans future stay in Pakistan;

- the enhanced implementation of Pakistan's National Action Plan against terrorism affected both Pakistani and Afghan nationals. As the largest group of undocumented nationals in the country are Afghans these security operations did have a direct impact on many undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan;

- the campaign of the Afghan government in Pakistan - Khpal Watan, Gul Watan ("home sweet home") asking Afghans to return home.

Afghans have had to make tough decisions to return or stay according to the options available to them and refugees have been impacted by the shifting regional political and security dynamics. Throughout 2016 in Pakistan, UNHCR has informed Afghans of their rights, intervened in cases of unlawful arrest and detention and worked closely with authorities at all levels when reports of harassment were received. With our partners, we have intervened in 5,895 reported cases of arrest and detention of registered Afghans in Pakistan, securing the release of almost all. The number of known arrests declined from its peak of 1,691 in August to 216 in December 2016. UNHCR continues to advocate with the Pakistani authorities for the extension of the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards for Afghan refugees beyond 2017.

UNHCR does not promote refugee returns to Afghanistan given the enduring conflict in different parts of the country and its limited absorption capacity. However, it is our clear mandate to help those who decide to return. Our monitoring survey showed the cash grant of $400 typically lasted two to three months and supported people with their initial reintegration needs back in Afghanistan. The vast majority of refugees (75 per cent) spent the cash grant on meeting their immediate humanitarian needs - on food, shelter and transport. 15 per cent were able to make investments in businesses or sustainable livelihoods, 11 per cent said they could build a sustainable house.

Of those surveyed by telephone three months after their return to Afghanistan, 52 per cent said they were able to return to their province of origin. The remaining 48 per cent said they chose another province due to lack of shelter, land, livelihood opportunities or insecurity in their home areas. Despite the challenges, 93 per cent of respondents said they were warmly received by communities and 75 per cent said that three months after their repatriation they felt they had made the right decision to return.

UNHCR shares concerns that the pace of returns in 2016 far outstripped Afghanistan's capacity to help people reintegrate after years - in most cases decades - of refuge in Pakistan. Many of refugees returned to uncertain futures in Afghanistan. Returning refugees have to rebuild their lives amidst increasing levels of internal displacement, insecurity and levels of violence not seen since the fall of the Taliban in 2002.

UNHCR calls on the Government of Afghanistan and the international community to redouble their efforts to create conditions for sustainable returns. We note that $15.2 billion was pledged by donors in Brussels in October last year for Afghanistan. Urgent progress is needed to turn these pledges into concrete, government-led programmes that benefit all Afghans, including returning refugees, undocumented returnees, and internally displaced people.
Zimbabwe: Additional charge against Pastor Mawarire a desperate ploy to keep him behind bars

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Zimbabwe: Additional charge against Pastor Mawarire a desperate ploy to keep him behind bars, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58947fa44.html [accessed 5 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 additional charge of "Insulting the Flag of Zimbabwe" slapped on Pastor Evan Mawarire this morning is a deliberate ploy to prolong his detention and block his human rights work, Amnesty International and CIVICUS said today.

The Pastor was due to appear in court this morning and make a bail application after being arrested yesterday on arrival at Harare International Airport and charged with subversion in relation to his peaceful human rights work.

He has committed no crime but to take a stand against human rights violations," said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Southern Africa.

The move by the authorities to add the charge appears to be intended to delay the presentation of Pastor Mawarire before a court, in contravention of the Constitutional provision that requires that all detainees appear before court no later than 48 hours after the arrest.

"The charges against Pastor Evan Mawarire are clearly politically motivated and designed to intimidate and harass him. He must be immediately and unconditionally released. He is the victim of a government bent on criminalizing dissenting voices." said Sara Brandt, Policy and Research Analyst, CIVICUS.

Pastor Evan Mawarire was arrested on 1 February 2017 at Harare International Airport as he returned to the country after being forced to flee to the USA. He is being held at Harare Central Police Station.

Background

Pastor Evan Mawarire, founder and one of the leaders of the #Thisflag movement, led several anti-government protests in 2016 against corruption, human rights violations and the declining economy in the country.

He was previously arrested on 12 July 2016 and charged with incitement to commit public violence after leading a national shutdown between 13 and 14 July 2016. He was released after a magistrate found his arrest to be unconstitutional and dropped the charge against him.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Romania: Bucharest police hit, arrest German cameraman at protest

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Romania: Bucharest police hit, arrest German cameraman at protest, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589488cb4.html [accessed 5 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) condemns German freelance cameraman Christian Gesellmann's violent arrest by police officers while covering an anti-government demonstration in Bucharest last night.

The police hit Gesellmann and held him for several hours for refusing to delete or surrender the video he had shot of clashes between police officers and hooligans during the protest.

Gesellmann was not clearly identified as a journalist and did not have a Romanian press card. But it would not have taken the police long to confirm that he was indeed a journalist, instead of detaining him and confiscating his video recording.

Journalists in Romania often report being the targets of intimidation. Many cases of political and economic harassment have been registered in the past two years.

"We ask the Romanian authorities to respect the law and to no longer demand that journalists surrender or delete video recordings or photos," said Pauline Ades-Mevel, the head of RSF's EU-Balkans desk. "It is the job of journalists to cover events. Any interference of this kind in their work constitutes a violation of media freedom."

Romania is ranked 49th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
Another adjournment in jailed radio reporter's trial

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Another adjournment in jailed radio reporter's trial, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589489e34.html [accessed 5 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 latest hearing in Radio France Internationale reporter Ahmed Abba's trial before a Yaounde court lasted just three minutes today before the trial was adjourned yet again.

As a result, Abba has no chance of being released until the next hearing, which has been set for 8 February. He has been held for more than 18 months, ever since his arrest in northern Cameroon, where he is RFI's Hausa-language correspondent.

Today's hearing was quickly adjourned because, according to one of the court's three military judges, the main judge, a civilian, was unable to attend because he was travelling.

Abba's trial, which began several months after his arrest, has already been adjourned many times for a range of reasons including the prosecution's inability to produce witnesses, the court's refusal to recognize the competence of experts and failure to adhere to scheduling.

He is charged with failing to report terrorist activity to the authorities - a charge created by Cameroon's 2014 terrorism law.

"All those who have had access to the prosecution case file say there is nothing in it," said Clea Kah-Sriber, the head of the Africa desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

"Ahmed Abba's detention for more than 18 months and the constant adjournments in his trial amount to psychological torture. We urge the authorities to release him at once and to finally examine the substance of the case against him, so that everyone can see that he is innocent."

Expert reports on evidence seized at Abba's home were due to have been examined at today's hearing. One of his lawyers, Clement Nakong, said the reports were compiled in unilateral manner by the prosecution.

Abba was visibly in poor health when brought into court for today's hearing, observers said. He reportedly spent yesterday in the infirmary of Yaounde's main prison after falling ill.

Two other journalists and a university professor have been facing similar charges since October 2014 but they have been released pending the outcome of their trial.

Cameroon is ranked 126th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index.
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Feb. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EOS Inc. is pleased to announce that it is now OTCQB full service eligible since January, 2017. The Company's stock had been upgraded and began trading on the OTC Venture Market exchange under the ticker symbol EOSS.

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/35248368-51a2-413d-bd93-0a93c251c982

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/5bdaf1b2-916f-44fd-b300-9c0400989d28

For celebration, a Warm-Up Banquet of Pan Asia EOS family was held in Shenzhen, China right before Chinese New Year. Over 200 leaders of EOS associates from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia attended the meeting. Mr. Yu Cheng Yang, CEO of EOS Inc. and his consultants were invited and attended the banquet.

Mr. Yang said, We have exciting news for everyone that EOS Inc. is now OTCQB full service eligible. Our stock had begun trading on the OTC Venture Market exchange.

We will have more advantages to moving up to the OTCQB exchange, including providing investors with a greater degree of transparency by more news releases through global media and a product information site enabled with Augmented Reality services. It significantly broadens our potential investor base and represents our continued commitment to enhance the entire value of shareholder. It is a new milestone and a honorable achievement created by long-term co-creation of all EOS family members.

ABOUT EOS INC.:

EOS Inc. is a holding company registered in Nevada, USA, who has a vast distribution network associates with many dealer companies providing health care, beauty care, and environment friendly cleaning products in Asian countries.

The new development in 2017 include more new products being introduced to the channels, a new exhibition pavilion launched in Quanzhou, China, and a EOS venture exhibition center being set up in Singapore.

In this New Year banquet, some 3D INTERACTIVE FAIRYTALE BOOKS were showcased to the guests with amazing 3D stereo images printed on paper pages which is never seen before. These books were provided by ABLE VISION Ltd., who created such 3D illustration books combined with interactive audio-visual effects.

The showcase indicates that EOS Inc. will not only continue to expand its existing business, but also intend to constructive investment in 3D educational media contents forward global children education market in the near future.

For more information on EOS, Inc. please visit the website: https://eosinc999.us/

Forward-Looking Statements:

Statements made in this press release are forward-looking and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, general business conditions, managing growth, and political and other business risks. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this paragraph and the risks and other factors detailed in EOS' reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. EOS INC. undertakes no duty to update these forward-looking statements.
RSF decries mystery about murders of two journalists in Mali

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, RSF decries mystery about murders of two journalists in Mali, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58948b5c4.html [accessed 5 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) reiterates its appeal to the French and Malian authorities to shed light on the many unexplained aspects of the murders of French journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon in Mali more than three years ago.

A report broadcast today by the France2 TV channel's investigative programme "Envoye Special" challenges the official account of the murders of Dupont and Verlon, who worked for Radio France Internationale.

The official investigation has stalled because of the limited judicial cooperation between the French and Malian governments. The French government has classified many relevant documents as "defence secrets," thereby preventing their use by the judicial authorities, while the security situation in northern Mali has prevented any visit to the murder scene. No witness has ever been questioned.

Geoffrey Livolsi, one of the journalists who did the "Envoye Special" report, told RFI this morning that most of the people they tried to speak to "both in France and in Mali and Niger" had been contacted by the "the local intelligence services, who had made it clear to them that they should not speak to France2's journalists."

The "Envoye Special" reporters were also unable to get the French authorities to give them an interview or provide any comment.

"This case continues to be shrouded in complete darkness," RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. "We want answers and more transparency in the handling of this investigation. There are people who have information. They must be questioned by judicial officials so that we can finally find out the truth."

RSF registered as in interested civil party in this case in France on 13 January. The same day, it joined the Association of Friends of Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon and RFI's Society of Journalists in staging a protest outside the main law courts in central Paris to demand progress in the investigation.

Mali is ranked 122nd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2016 World Press Freedom Index. France is ranked 45th.
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Title O.N. v Refugee Appeals Tribunal and Minister for Justice and Equality and Attorney General Ireland and I.N. v Refugee Appeals Tribunal and Minister for Justice and Equality and Attorney General Ireland

Publication Date 17 January 2017

Country Ireland | Zimbabwe

Citation / Document Symbol [2017] IEHC 13

Cite as O.N. v Refugee Appeals Tribunal and Minister for Justice and Equality and Attorney General Ireland and I.N. v Refugee Appeals Tribunal and Minister for Justice and Equality and Attorney General Ireland, [2017] IEHC 13, Ireland: High Court, 17 January 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/cases,IRL_HC,58948de84.html [accessed 5 November 2022]
Nigeria: High Court ruling saves Mpape residents from mass demolitions

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 3 February 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Nigeria: High Court ruling saves Mpape residents from mass demolitions, 3 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589491d54.html [accessed 5 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.

Following today's Abuja High Court ruling on Mpape settlement, Abuja, Morayo Adebayo, Amnesty International Nigeria's Researcher said:

"The Abuja High Court judgement declaring the planned demolition of Mpape community illegal comes as a massive relief to its hundreds of thousands of residents.

"The judgment which declared that Nigerian authorities have an obligation to refrain from forced evictions and make policies towards realising the right to adequate housing and security of tenure for the residents is a landmark judgment and a victory for housing rights in Nigeria.

"We urge all state governments across Nigeria to take heed of this ruling and take immediate steps to stamp out forced evictions. The ruling is a victory for the residents of Mpape who have lived with fear of forced eviction since 2012.

"Amnesty International, calls for a moratorium on mass forced evictions across Nigeria, until there are laws or regulations in place to ensure compliance with safeguards enshrined in international law."

Forced evictions are prohibited under international law in all circumstances and even evictions ordered by a court must be conducted according to due process. Consequently, the government must consider all feasible alternatives to an eviction in consultation with all affected people. Any person affected by a proposed eviction must be served adequate written notice, within a reasonable time period. Other due process safeguards must be followed, including the provision of legal remedies and compensation. No one should be left homeless and the government should provide adequate alternative accommodation for those who cannot provide for themselves

BACKGROUND

In July 2012 the Federal Capital Development Authority department of development control served Mpape residents with notices to quit without having first conducting adequate consultation or offering any alternative options, accommodation or compensation; contrary to the requirements of international law.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Cameroon: ARTICLE 19 condemns internet shut downs

Publisher Article 19 Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Article 19, Cameroon: ARTICLE 19 condemns internet shut downs, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589493c24.html [accessed 5 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.

ARTICLE 19 strongly condemns the ongoing Internet shut downs in North West and South West regions of Cameroon. The shutdowns came in response to protests by Anglophone citizens, unsatisfied with what they believe is bias by the government in favor of Francophone Cameroonians.

"Cutting off Internet access for specific groups or areas deprives people of an essential tool for civic engagement, and damages connectivity on the Internet as a global network of networks. This response is another step in a very worrying, repressive trend that is sweeping across the African continent. Individuals, governments and companies need to stand together to keep Internet open and available as a crucial instrument for the exercise of the right to freedom of expression," said Niels ten Oever, ARTICLE 19's Head of Digital.

The measures taken by the Cameroonian authorities ordering the state-owned Cameroon Telecommunications company CAMTEL, and the companies that operate as CAMTEL'S backbone, to restrict access to the Internet for the predominantly English speaking North West and South West regions of the country starting end of January 2017, amounts to a serious interference with the right to freedom of expression. As such, this restriction - and the outlawing of the activities of various Anglophone groups - must be assessed for their compliance with international human rights law and constitutional guarantees, particularly at times when the enjoyment of freedom of expression is critical to peaceful protest.

ARTICLE 19 believes that the Internet shut down, which includes social media websites and communications tools, amounts to an interference with the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by Article 16 of the Cameroon Constitution. Under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and its equivalent in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (Article 19) and the African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights (Article 9), Cameroon must ensure that restrictions on freedom of expression comply with a three-part permissible limitations test: they must be in accordance with the law, in pursuit of a legitimate aim, and necessary in a democratic society.

Access to the Internet is a crucial means by which individuals enjoy their rights to express and communicate, receive and impart information, and politically organise and associate. In the digital age, unfettered access to the Internet and its many tools for communication is a cornerstone of any vibrant democracy. It plays a particularly important role during moments of political change, including elections, protests and strikes, during which individuals rely on social media to become informed about ongoing events and share their views.

ARTICLE 19 calls upon the Cameroonian government to restore Internet access for all its citizens, and refrain from using restrictions on Internet access as a tool to repress dissent and limit freedom of expression.

Copyright notice: Copyright ARTICLE 19
EU migrant policy in Africa built on incorrect Niger data

Publisher IRIN Author Kristy Siegfried Publication Date 31 January 2017 Cite as IRIN, EU migrant policy in Africa built on incorrect Niger data, 31 January 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589495154.html [accessed 5 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 European Union has been touting a faulty figure for migration reduction through key transit country Niger as it looks to expand a policy of giving more development aid to African nations if they crack down on people smuggling and migrants, IRIN can exclusively reveal.

When the International Organization for Migration released figures in early December showing a dramatic drop in the numbers of migrants transiting through northern Niger to reach Europe the previous month, EU officials seized on them as evidence that its strategy of partnering with African countries to curb irregular migration was working.

On the back of EU funding specifically for the purpose, IOM has been monitoring the movements of migrants through Niger since February. Between then and the end of November 2016, the agency recorded more than 417,000 migrants transiting through northern Niger en route to Algeria and Libya, with movement peaking during the summer months.

In November, IOM raised eyebrows when it reported that just 1,525 migrants had been recorded moving north towards the borders  a massive drop compared to 12,600 the month before.

Days later, the figures had been included in a progress report on the Partnership Framework with Third Countries, an EU strategy for securing African countries' cooperation in tackling irregular migration. A press release also cited them noting that "results in priority countries are taking shape, including first decreases in migratory flows".

Except the 1,525 was wrong. A "technical problem" with a database had produced the incorrect figure, according to Monica Chiriac, a spokeswoman for IOM's Niger office. In fact, IOM had recorded nearly 11,500 migrants heading for the Libyan and Algerian borders in November, a figure that only represented a small drop compared to October.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, has been using the incorrect figure to promote the success of the bloc's policies as it looks to sign agreements linking aid to migration controls with five African countries  Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and Ethiopia.

A deal, now signed with Niger, involves 610 million euros in development aid, some of which, according to the EU, is not tied to migration cooperation.

Critics say the EU policies largely serve only to push migrants to take more difficult and dangerous routes. They are urging Brussels to propose more legal pathways for refugees and economic migrants.

With arrivals to Italy via Libya and the Central Mediterranean remaining at high levels towards the end of last year, experts and even MEPs had expressed scepticism about the Niger figures. But the EU has continued to refer to them as it pushes ahead on similar cooperation deals.

"There was indeed a mistake in the November report (technical problem with the database update which only reconciled later on). The numbers in the December report are the correct ones. The EU is aware and have since rectified," Chiriac wrote in an emailed response to an IRIN query.

However, no recent public statements or press releases from the EU have acknowledged the error.

As recently as last Wednesday, the EU issued another press release citing developments in Niger as evidence the Partnership Framework is showing how "effective cooperation can have impact on the flows towards the Mediterranean".

And a joint communication to the European Parliament and the European Council the same day went further and was still quoting the incorrect figure.

"The work taken forward with Niger under the Partnership Framework should be fully exploited to slow down flows through the southern Libyan border. The number of persons leaving Niger to attempt the dangerous crossing of the Sahara has fallen from over 70,000 in May 2016 to around 1,500 in November 31," it said.

"This successful model, which has been proven to reduce numbers, should be replicated with other regional partners, notably Mali, Chad, Egypt, Algeria and Sudan, as well as in other countries covered by the Khartoum and Rabat processes."

*In an email to IRIN, an EU spokesperson described the failure to use the correct, updated figure in recent publications as "regrettable" and added that "While we are looking into this internally, this does not change the fact that the Partnership Framework approach is yielding results and that the approach can impact the flows towards the Central Mediterranean."

*This explanation from the EU came after publication of the initial story and was added later
Afghans Debate Role of Local Militia

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 31 January 2017 Reference ARR 565 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Afghans Debate Role of Local Militia, 31 January 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58949a0f4.html [accessed 5 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 profusion of local militias in the northern Afghan province of Baghlan are presenting a serious threat to security, according to participants in a recent IWPR debate.

The situation is further complicated by the semi-legal status of some of the armed groups, recruited by the government to try and help keep order.

In many parts of Afghanistan, villagers organised local units to resist the Taleban, improve security and allow reconstruction work. These irregular forces became known collectively as the National Uprising Movement. Some were absorbed into the Afghan Local Police (ALP), separate from the regular national police but formalised to bring them under the authority of the interior ministry.

Zabeullah Shejah, head of press at Baghlan police headquarters, acknowledged that there was a confusing array of groups operating in the province.

"National Uprising groups are people who support the security forces, and these groups are ready to defend and protect Baghlan province," he said. "The Uprising groups are under government control. Baghlan police want to stop those armed people who are without [local] police uniforms."

Other, more problematic militias were operating in more remote parts of the province, he told more than 130 attendees at the January 24, 2017 debate.

"Illegal armed groups can be found in Burkah, Dahanah-ye Ghori, Nahrin, and Andarab districts and in some other areas of Baghlan," Shejah said. "These groups want to create chaos in these areas, but Baghlan police is committed to stop their illegal activities."

Afghanistan has a troubled history of militia groups in its recent past, and Baghlan provincial council member Bismillah Attash warned that although local police received funding from central government they could endanger the country's future security.

Legal expert Ghulam Rabani Fayaz agreed that formal oversight was essential.

"Groups who are willing to support the people and security forces should be organised by the government after going through due legal process so they can work according to the laws of the country," he said. "The activities of such groups should be monitored. If the government doesn't monitor them, they will start killing people and will create chaos in the region."

Civil society activist Hameed Sherzai backed up these concerns, adding, "We have received reports claiming that illegal armed groups are involved in killings and violence, but the government has been unable to stop them."

He continued, "In some Baghlan districts the illegal armed groups outnumber the security forces and they are more powerful and more dominant."

The actvist described one incident in which a local strongman had unilaterally acted to block the water supply system to 3,000 families.

"When the government cannot stop an armed man, how will it stop the activities of hundreds of armed groups?" he asked.

Sherzai also reported that a leading businessman had been recently shot to death near the local National Directorate of Security office. The same gang had reportedly then killed another person in Pul-e Khumri, he said, adding, "These cases have not been investigated yet."

Debate participant Anita asked whether the proliferation of local militia was a recent development for Baghlan.

"There did not used to be many illegal armed groups in Baghlan in the past, but now the activities of these groups have increased in many areas of the city and the districts," Sherzai replied. "After they were sanctioned under the name of the National Uprising forces, illegal armed groups have increased in Baghlan and are now a big problem."

Debate participant Farhanaz said that the event had been enlightening.

"Many of the problems people in Baghlan face were raised during this debate," she said. "We believe that government officials will focus more on their duties and responsibilities after listening to the ideas we discussed."

Her fellow participant Anosha praised female involvement in the debate, adding, "Today's event will surely affect people's lives. The residents of Baghlan are so worried right now about security problems. Security in Baghlan province, especially in Pul-e Khumri, has become really precarious."

This report was produced under IWPR's Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan.

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Georgia: FGM Criminalised Following IWPR Investigation

Publisher Institute for War and Peace Reporting Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Institute for War and Peace Reporting, Georgia: FGM Criminalised Following IWPR Investigation, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58949a8c4.html [accessed 5 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.

Female genital mutilation (FGM) has been criminalised in Georgia following an IWPR investigation that revealed the practice was ongoing in an area in the east of the country.

The Georgian government and human rights groups said that they had all been previously unaware that ethnic Avars living in three villages of the Kvareli district, which borders Russia's Dagestan republic, routinely carried out the procedure.

IWPR's November 2016 report sparked a rapid response from the state institutions, with the office of Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili taking immediate action.

"The first thing I did was convene a meeting with some NGOs, UN agencies and IWPR in order to get more information about the practice," said Sopo Japaridze, advisor to the prime minister of Georgia on human rights and gender equality issues. "I wanted to learn more about the experience of other countries dealing with the same problem and to plan further action accordingly.

"I also held a meeting with officials from various state agencies where we discussed short and long-term strategies regarding FGM-related issues," she continued.

The ministry of justice then quickly moved to prepare a package of legislative amendments to bring Georgian law into compliance with the Council of Europe (CoE)'s Istanbul Convention, which bans FGM. Parliament is expected to approve the amendments in its upcoming session.

At the same time, the state agency on religious issues met with faith leaders and families in the three villages affected, while the state ministry on equality and civic integration organised a meeting with students and teachers in one of the local public schools.

The ministry of labour, health and social affairs also put together and published a brochure on health risks of FGM.

Japaridze emphasised that the problem had to be treated with great caution to ensure it was eradicated rather than continued in secret.

"The issue is very sensitive and requires a thoughtful approach by the state," she said. "This is to avoid consequences such as denial of the practice or it moving underground."

The first step was to raise awareness, she said.

"We will make sure that community members are aware of subsequent complications of the practice, both from its medical and legal perspectives, and we hope that with the help of legislation and qualified professionals we ensure that FGM is prevented."

IWPR's investigation was also immediately picked up by all of Georgia's leading broadcast media.

Republished in Russian, Georgian and English, the revelations sparked intense debate both in popular news and discussion programmes and on social media.

"The [IWPR] article brought to public attention a limited yet extreme form of violence against girls and women practiced on the territory of Georgia, which cannot be justified by any 'traditions,'" said Erika Kvapilova, country representative of UN Women, a body which campaigns on this issue.

"Raising awareness about FGM as a gross form of violence, and education about the health and other implications of FGM on girls and women is as important as banning such practice by law."

Kvapilova stressed that state agencies and the public defender's office were taking the problem extremely seriously.

"The public defender visited the location and verified with local people and health care providers that this so-called 'rite of passage' on small girls was practiced there," she said.

"The public defender issued a statement condemning the practice as an extreme form of violence and an abuse of human rights, with negative implications on both health and personal wellbeing. The statement was followed by a public debate with ministry of health specialists who underlined the importance of addressing the problem effectively, including through education about the health implications of FGM.

"The issue has been taken very seriously by the Georgian authorities, as well as by civil society partners working towards ending violence against women and girls in Georgia," Kvapilova concluded.

The author of the IWPR investigation, Aida Mirmaksumova, was also honoured for her campaigning journalism. In December 2016, the Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics and UN Women awarded her a special prize for "unveiling important problems in the field of women's rights".

Explaining why the jury had chosen to award Mirmaksumova this special prize, Georgian Charter of Journalistic Ethics executive director Natalia Dzvelishvili said, "No one had known about these [cases of FGM] before.

"This work became the starting point for very important discussions on women's rights, not only in society, but among government officials and the prime minister as well," she said. "As we all know, this investigative report led to changes in legislation. So the jury decided that this very piece was one of the most important and influential reports of 2016."

Copyright notice:  Institute for War & Peace Reporting
English Finnish

eQ PLC FINANCIAL STATEMENTS RELEASE

3 February 2017 at 8:00 a.m.

January to December 2016 in brief

The Group's net revenue grew by 16 per cent to EUR 35.4 million (EUR 30.5 million from 1 Jan. to 31 Dec. 2015).

The Groups net fee and commission income increased to EUR 33.2 million (EUR 28.5 million).

The Groups net investment income from own investment operations was EUR 2.2 million (EUR 2.1 million).

The Groups operating profit grew by 23 per cent to EUR 16.2 million (EUR 13.2 million).

The Groups profit was EUR 12.8 million (EUR 10.5 million).

The consolidated earnings per share grew by 23 per cent to EUR 0.35 (EUR 0.29).

The net cash flow from own investment operations was EUR 4.4 million (EUR 7.2 million from 1 Jan. to 31 Dec. 2015) and the change in fair value was EUR -1.0 million (EUR 0.3 million).

Dividend proposal EUR 0.35 (EUR 0.30) and proposal for equity repayment EUR 0.15 (EUR 0.20) per share.

October to December 2016 in brief

In the fourth quarter, the Groups net revenue grew by 5 per cent to EUR 9.2 million (EUR 8.8 million from 1 Oct. to 31 Dec. 2015).

The Groups net fee and commission income increased to EUR 8.6 million (EUR 8.3 million).

The Groups net investment income from own investment operations was EUR 0.7 million (EUR 0.4 million).

The Groups operating profit grew by 12 per cent to EUR 4.2 million (EUR 3.7 million).

The Groups profit was EUR 3.3 million (EUR 2.9 million).

The consolidated earnings per share grew by 12 per cent to EUR 0.09 (EUR 0.08).

Key ratios 1-12/16 1-12/15 Change % 1012/16 1012/15 Change % Net revenue, Group, M 35.4 30.5 16% 9.2 8.8 5% Net revenue, Asset Management, M 25.6 21.7 18% 7.0 5.6 26% Net revenue, Corporate Finance, M 7.9 7.0 12% 1.6 2.8 -43% Net revenue, Investments, M 1.9 1.8 8% 0.6 0.4 64% Net revenue, Group administration and eliminations, M 0.0 0.0 0% 0.0 0.0 0% Operating profit, Group, M 16.2 13.2 23% 4.2 3.7 12% Operating profit, Asset Management, M 12.0 9.6 25% 3.3 2.3 41% Operating profit, Corporate Finance, M 3.7 3.4 9% 0.7 1.5 -56% Operating profit, Investments, M 1.9 1.8 8% 0.6 0.4 64% Operating profit, Group administration, M -1.4 -1.6 12% -0.4 -0.5 19% Profit for the period, M 12.8 10.5 23% 3.3 2.9 12% Key ratios 1-12/16 1-12/15 Change % 1012/16 1012/15 Change % Earnings per share,  0.35 0.29 23% 0.09 0.08 12% Proposal for dividend and equity repayment per share,  0.50 0.50 0% Equity per share,  1.74 1.91 -9% 1.74 1.91 -9% Cost/income ratio, Group, % 53.0 55.1 -4% 54.1 56.2 -4% Liquid assets, M 16.7 21.6 -23% 16.7 21.6 -23% Private equity investments, M 19.2 22.5 -14% 19.2 22.5 -14% Interest-bearing liabilities, M 0.0 0.0 0% 0.0 0.0 0% Assets under management,  billion 8.8 7.6 15% 8.8 7.6 15%

Janne Larma, CEO

eQs result was excellent in 2016. We managed to increase our net revenue by 16 per cent to EUR 35.4 million and our operating profit to EUR 16.2 million. The Groups profit for the financial period increased by 23 per cent to EUR 12.8 million, i.e. 35 cents per share. The results of all segments grew from the previous year.

The Groups balance sheet remains very strong. The market value of eQs own private equity investments totalled EUR 19.2 million and liquid assets amounted to EUR 16.7 million at the close of the year. The Group has no interest-bearing liabilities.

eQ Asset Management grew and improved its profitability, excellent returns in the funds

eQ Asset Management was able to increase its net fee and commission income by 18% per cent to EUR 25.6 million. The profitability of the segment improved markedly, and the operating profit grew by 25 per cent to EUR 12.0 million. Particularly real estate and private equity asset management grew strongly. In 2016, net subscriptions for EUR 247 million were made in eQs real estate funds, and both funds gave very good returns to investors. The return of the eQ Care Fund in 2016 was 9.8 per cent and that of the eQ Finnish Real Estate Fund 10.5 per cent. Private equity asset management also consolidated its position and gained a lot of new capital. We raised a record amount of capital, EUR 160 million, to the eQ PE VIII North fund of almost 80 investors. In addition, our private equity asset management obtained several new asset management clients. The equity and bond funds as well as asset management portfolios of eQ also showed excellent results in return comparisons. During the past three years, 93% per cent of eQs funds registered in Finland that the company manages itself have surpassed their benchmark indices.

Advium had a successful year

eQs corporate finance unit Advium had a successful year. Advium acted as advisor in 14 finalised transactions, and its net revenue increased by 12 per cent to EUR 7.9 million. The operating profit of Advium rose to EUR 3.7 million. Advium held its market leading position in large real estate transactions and was chosen the best Finnish investment bank in the real estate sector, already for the tenth time, in a survey made by the distinguished Euromoney magazine. In addition, Advium took the fourth place in TNS Prosperas M&A Advisors 2016 Finland inquiry.

Advium acted, for instance, as advisor to the Finnish Government, as it sold 49.9 per cent of Patria to Norwegian Kongsberg for EUR 279 million. In addition, Advium advised Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company as it divested six office properties to funds managed by NIAM for EUR 160 million. Advium further acted as advisor to the LocalTapiola Group in three separate real estate transactions in 2016.

The profit of the Investments segment improved from the previous year

The operating profit of the Investments segment was EUR 1.9 million (EUR 1.8 million). The net cash flow of investments was lower than the year before, i.e. EUR 4.4 million (EUR 7.2 million). The market value of the private equity investments was EUR 19.2 million at the close of the year.

Dividend proposal and outlook

The Board of Directors dividend proposal for 2016 is 35 cents per share, and in addition, the Board proposes an equity repayment of 15 cents per share.

The asset management business grew well in 2016, which gives an excellent starting point for the year 2017. We expect that the net revenue and operating profit of the Asset Management segment will grow in 2017. In accordance with our disclosure policy, we do not issue profit guidance for the Corporate Finance and Investments segments. The results of these segments are highly dependent of factors that are not dependent of the company. Consequently, the operating profit of these segments may vary considerably and is difficult to foresee.

***

eQs financial statements release 1 January to 31 December 2016 is enclosed to this release and it is also available on the company website at www.eQ.fi.

Additional information: Janne Larma, CEO, tel. +358 9 6817 8920

Distribution: Nasdaq Helsinki, www.eQ.fi, media

eQ Group is a Finnish group of companies specialising in asset management and corporate finance business. eQ Asset Management offers a wide range of asset management services (including private equity funds and real estate asset management) for institutions and individuals. The assets managed by the Group total approximately EUR 8.8 billion. Advium Corporate Finance, which is part of the Group, offers services related to mergers and acquisitions, real estate transactions and equity capital markets.

More information about the Group is available on our website www.eQ.fi.
Moscow's Double Game in Afghanistan

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Stephen Blank Publication Date 1 February 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 11 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Moscow's Double Game in Afghanistan, 1 February 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 11, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58949d644.html [accessed 5 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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

With multiple global crises competing for urgent public attention, it is not surprising that Western media and governments have failed to keep pace with Russia's double game in Afghanistan. But in fact, Russian actions there provide a revealing "tutorial" on Moscow's real approach to the issues presented by terrorism (see EDM, January 17). On one hand, Moscow is trumpeting its desire to lead an international coalition with the United States against terrorism to legitimate its intervention in Syria and deflect attention from its aggression in Ukraine. But on the other hand, it is, according to all accounts, simultaneously upgrading contacts with the Taliban (Thekabultimes.gov.af, January 31).

For example in late December 2016, Russia, Pakistan and China jointly discussed how to prevent the Islamic State (IS) threat they see in Afghanistanwhere conditions have been deteriorating for some time in their eyes (Valdaiclub.com, August 15, 2016)from spreading into Central Asia (Sputnik News, December 29, 2016). Predictably, the exclusion of Afghan officials at these trilateral talks regarding Afghanistan infuriated the government in Kabul (Al Jazeera, December 27, 2016). In particular, the representatives of Russia, Pakistan and China jointly agreed to pursue a "flexible approach to remove certain figures [i.e. of the Taliban] from sanctions lists as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement," according to Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova (1tvnews.af, December 27, 2016). Russia's motives here may look opaque, but in reality they are not as mysterious as they seem. For all the talk of a global anti-terrorist coalition, it is clear that for Russia there are "useful" and "not so useful" terrorists. The Islamic State in Afghanistan clearly is not useful, except insofar as it furnishes motives for expanding Russian military presence in Central Asia. But the Taliban, which is evidently much less dangerous to Moscow, becomes useful because support for it continues to weaken the Afghan state, thus ensuring that Russia will always have a voice there. Indeed, the Russian ambassador to the tripartite conference with China and Pakistan, Zamir Kabulov, admitted that Moscow has no peace plan for Afghanistan (Afghanistantimes.af, December 31, 2016).

Moscow's flirtations with the Taliban have multiple objectives: they are a tool for Russia to retain a voice in Afghanistan, to deflect the Islamic State from Central Asia, as well as to draw nearer to Pakistanwhich itself would be the sponsor of any anti-government movement in Afghanistan for its own reasons. In addition, Moscow apparently still believes the residual Western forces in Afghanistan pose some sort of threat to Russia. Kabulov has even charged that the United States is purportedly seeking permanent military bases there (Afghanistantimes.af, December 31, 2016). As a result, Moscow's support for the Taliban is predicated on the latter's willingness to allow the preservation of a Russian role in Afghanistan. Alternatively, the Kremlin can use the continued existence of the Taliban to invoke a hypothetical terrorist threat to Central Asia, thus justifying its enduring military presence there as well.

On the other hand, Russia characterizes the Islamic State in Afghanistan as a bad terrorist group, presumably because it could actually threaten Central Asia and thus force Russia to make good on its claims that it is the gendarme of Central Asia. As such, Moscow's argument that it is a fit partner for an anti-IS or other anti-terrorist coalition proves to be groundless when one looks closely at Russian activities in Afghanistan.

Indeed, Moscow's utterly cynical and utilitarian approach to deciding who is a terrorist and with whom it must or must not collaborate is of long standing. In 2007, Russia's ambassador to Israel, Andrei Demidov, called on Israel to open a dialogue with Hamas. But when asked about Russia's refusal to talk with the Islamist Chechen insurgency, he stated that the Chechen problem is an internal Russian issue: "We decide how to settle the problem." Moreover, in complete defiance of the facts, he claimed that Moscow had in fact already settled Chechnya by peaceful means and created a government, a legislature and a judicial system there. He even recommended that Israel learn from Russia's actions in the Chechen republic (Jerusalem Post, February 16, 2007).

Ambassador Demidov's hypocritical statement highlights the true realpolitik calculations behind Russian policy. It also reveals Moscow's implicit belief that Israel is not truly a sovereign state while Russia is: so while Russia's sovereignty is inviolable and not open to any outside input, it can command Israel to negotiate with terrorist groups that seek its destruction. Not surprisingly, back in 2010, Israel replied that Hamas is no different than the Chechen militant groups in the North Caucasus. "Just as Israel unconditionally supported Russia in her struggle against Chechen terror [sic], we expect equal treatment in our struggle against Hamas," the Israeli foreign ministry declared (Haaretz, May 12, 2010).

Moscow's double game regarding various terrorist organizationswhether they are in Syria, Israel or Afghanistanis, indeed, nothing new. And any government seeking to build an anti-terrorist partnership with Russia should remember the old Latin phrase caveat emptor (buyer beware) and take appropriate precautions before it buys the same dead horse for the second or even third time.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Displacement wave expected if Mosul, Hawiga fighting intensifies

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Alex Court Publication Date 3 February 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Displacement wave expected if Mosul, Hawiga fighting intensifies, 3 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5894a20a4.html [accessed 5 November 2022]

As many as 250,000 people could be driven from their homes in Mosul in the coming months, as fighting escalates in densely-populated western areas of Iraq's second largest city.

Over 160,000 people have been displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since October 17, with some 83 percent finding safety in camps and emergency sites run by UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its partners.

"We are currently able to provide some 11,000 families with shelter," UNHCR spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told a press briefing today. "The Agency continues to seek additional land for new camps, reception and transit areas, to assist people closer to Mosul."

Despite insecurity and the danger of fresh fighting, nearly 30,000 people from Mosul and surrounding areas have returned to their homes since October 2016. Now, some of them are leaving again.

"Returnees are keen to resume their lives," Saltmarsh added, saying that people had decided to return after learning that schools and government offices in their local areas had re-opened.

In recent days, UNHCR staff have reported that several families have come back to Hasansham and Khazer camps. Those families said they had decided to return because of lack of services and bad conditions.

In some places, security and the lack of food and water is so acute that some people rely on emergency relief items, including kerosene, which they receive while staying in the camps.

Elsewhere in Iraq, UNHCR reports increasing numbers fleeing Hawiga due to deteriorating living conditions. The area, 130 km south east of Mosul, is also expected to see increased military operations.

Up to 114,000 individuals could be displaced from Hawiga, according to inter-agency planning estimates. So far, 82,128 people have fled since August 2016.

"Those leaving Hawiga face grave dangers including ambushes," Saltmarsh said emphasizing that people face particular risks when moving across the Hamreen Mountains. "Most travel at night to evade checkpoints and armed groups, which adds to dangers," he added.

People staying in camps such as Al-Alam Camp continue to battle harsh winter conditions including high winds and low temperatures

"It's very cold," said mother-of-four Zahra, in Al Alam camp. "My children are all sick because of the cold weather."

UNHCR has distributed emergency items, including quilts and blankets, to more than 178,000 people, and provided nearly 53,000 people affected by the Mosul conflict with protection assistance.

The Agency's 2016 Mosul emergency response appeal for US$196 million was 57 percent funded. For 2017, UNHCR has appealed for US$578 million to provide protection to internally displaced Iraqis and Iraqi refugees in the region.

* Warda AlJawahiry and Caroline Gluck contributed reporting from Al Alam Camp..
Hancock, MD, Feb. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PetLife Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTC QB: PTLF) (the "Company"), a developer of a new generation of high potency veterinary cancer medications and nutraceuticals for pets, is pleased to announce the addition of Geoffrey Broderick, who comes to PetLife with extensive experience in the pet industry, as the new company President.

Mr. Broderick, with over 25 years of business experience and multiple degrees, is a Product Development expert, a Business Consultant, and a Legal Advisor. Having augmented his professional expertise on state, national, and international levels, Broderick has also had a substantive career well beyond his professions. As a commissioned officer in the Army National Guard and a graduate from Officer Candidate School with honors, Mr. Broderick has valuable leadership skills and the mental strength of a soldier. His father, Dr. Geoffrey Broderick, DVM, invented the first natural pet food (Cornucopia), and is considered the worlds most famous veterinarian. Thus, Geoffrey started off his Product Development career early on by helping to develop and expand this brand new (Natural) pet category, which eventually became a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Geoffrey went on to develop the very first Antioxidant Supplement for pets (Cornucopia Super-Food.) Eventually, he also formulated, designed, and created the very first super- premium wild bird food, which ended up becoming the official bird food of the National Wildlife Federationthe largest wildlife organization on the planet. Over the years, he has used his talents, education, and experience to successfully lead several other companies, organizations, and firms through all stages of their transitional development. PetLife expects to quickly capitalize on Geoffreys experience, talents, connections, and family history.

With his dad being a world-renowned veterinarian, pets have always been a significant part of Geoffreys life. His interest in PetLife stems from his love for animals and the realization that he is on the ground floor of the next big thing, according to Geoffrey. My dad has spent the last 50 years developing the products to help prevent cancer and significantly prolong the lives of pets all around the world, so when I heard about PetLife, how could I not get involved with a company that shares the same vision that my family had for over 50 years in developing nutraceuticals, drugs, supplements, and pet foods with the intention of stopping and preventing cancer and other diseases prevalent in companion animals. He went on to explain in a recent press conference, Our goal is to build a cutting-edge pet pharmaceutical/nutraceutical company addressing these multiple diseases. With my familys extensive history in this industry, we have grand plans to develop multiple products. Geoffrey is excited about all the proposed products that PetLife will be developing this year. Having my thumb on the pulse of the pet industry,

my family immediately recognized this huge opportunity. Our family pioneered the preventative nutritional journey for pets, and Im happy to once again be part of the continued expedition toward the battle my dad set out to end so long ago.

Alongside his business expertise and professional proficiencies, Geoffrey is also academically well-accomplished, and (with several degrees, including an MBA and Doctorate) he feels he can bring his corporate experience and Product Development skills to the core of PetLife. He stated, I dont believe Ive ever seen a company with such potential, while at the same time being such a perfect fit for everything I can bring to the table. He adds, Im ready to make a difference!

Dr. Salvagno, PetLife CEO, commented PetLife is gaining worldwide attention in the pet industry, and Mr. Broderick recognizes the potential of our strong future. Mr. Broderick and his familys extensive knowledge, proven success, and hands-on industry experience will certainly prove to bring tremendous value to our company.

PetLifes 506 Private Placement Memorandum is available only to accredited investors.

About PetLife Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

PetLife Pharmaceuticals (OTCQB: PTLF) (http://www.PetLifePharma.com) is a registered US Veterinary Pharmaceutical company, incorporated in 2012.

PetLife's mission is to bring its new, scientifically proven, non-toxic, potentiated bioactive nutraceuticals and prescription medication, VitalzulTM, to the world of veterinary oncologywith the ultimate goal of preventing cancer and extending the life of pets suffering from cancer while improving their quality of life. In the US alone, consumer spending on domestic companion animals reached over $60 billion in 2015 with over $29 billion spent on veterinary care and medications.

Safe Harbor

Safe Harbor statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: PetLife encourages those interested in our Company to rely only on information included in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission which can be found at www.sec.gov. Statements released by the Company, that are not purely historical are forward-looking within the meaning of the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the company's expectations, hopes, intentions, and strategies for the future. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties that may affect the Company's business prospects and performance. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Risk factors include but are not limited to general economic, competitive, governmental, and technological factors as discussed in the Company's filings with the SEC on Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K. The Company does not undertake any responsibility to update the forward-looking statements contained in this release
A look back on all of our reporting of the Delphi murders since 2017
Chinas Lunar New Year celebration, just ending, is a time for summing up and reviewing the past yearboth the good and the bad.



Obviously, for the worlds second largest economy, Chinas slowing growth rate is of concern.



But as China enters the Year of the Rooster, President Xi Jinping can take comfort in Chinas growing economic influence in the world and the recognition the country has gained as a rising power.

Xi assumed a high-profile role at the G-20 Summit in Hangzhou last September as well as more recently at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.



He was the first Chinese leader ever to attend, and CEOs gathered there welcomed his apparent embrace of globalization.



At home, Xis four-year-long crackdown on corruption appears to have become popular among many ordinary Chinese citizens, who resent land seizures and the wealth acquired by local Communist Party officials.



On the negative side, the countrys huge rich-poor gap persists, and Xi clearly still has far to go to eliminate endemic corruption among Party officials.



To understand the past years downside, two books published in 2016 can help us to understand why a relatively high-level widespread corruption still exists in China, while at the lowest level of society, poverty and social ills such as prostitution persist.



Rich officials, poor workers



In his new book Chinas Crony Capitalism, China scholar Minxin Pei has meticulously documented the ways in which Communist Party officials and their relatives collude with Chinese businessmen to enrich themselves.



Pei, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California, examines 260 typical cases of corruption that were exposed in Chinese state media. They show how Chinas economic rise has enriched Party officials.



But Pei digs deeper than the Chinese press in analyzing these cases and drawing conclusions about a system that breeds corruption.



A second book, titled simply Lotus, is a novel that provides deep insights into the lives of the migrant Chinese workers whose cheap labor has created Chinas economic miracle.



Among those workers, thousands of women who feel crushed by assembly-line factory work in the big cities have turned to prostitution. A character named Lotus is one of them.



Author Lijia Zhang creates a sympathetic portrait of this young prostitute, at the same time shedding light on the plight of Chinas migrant workers.



As journalist and writer Ian Johnson says in a review, Zhang's book opens a window into a land of underground sex trade, corrupt police, desperate migrants, and flawed characters trying to make the right decisions.



What links Zhang and Minxin Peis two very different books is the insights they provide into the underside of Chinas economic success.



Widespread corruption



In the introduction to his book, Minxin Pei quotes President Xi Jinping himself on the widespread nature of corruption in China.



Here in part is what Xi said back in October, 2014:



Corruption in regions and sectors is interwoven; cases of corruption through collusion are increasing; the exchange of power for power, power for money, and power for sex is frequent.



President Xi, says Minxin Pei, obviously has good reason to worry.



According to Pei, the symptoms of corruption in China that Xi himself graphically describes are those of a Leninist regime in late-stage decay. And he doesnt believe that Xis anti-corruption campaign can reverse this trend.



Pei traces the origins of Chinas crony capitalism to the early 1990s. Following the Beijing massacre of 1989, Chinas economy stalled. The then supreme leader Deng Xiaoping re-launched economic reforms with the aim of encouraging private enterprises, reducing the role of state-owned enterprises and making the economy more efficient.



But the resulting decentralization of political and economic power left the ownership of huge state-owned assets, such as land and mines, unclear. Party officials and their businessmen allies were able to move in and use these assets to create wealth for themselves.



Another view



To keep this in perspective, Andrew J. Nathan, a professor of political science at Columbia University, notes that crony capitalism is not the only kind of entrepreneurial activity in China. Some of Chinas largest and most successful firms are authentically private, he says.



In a review of Peis book published in the current edition of The New York Review of Books, Nathan asserts that Pei may exaggerate the degree to which corruption threatens the survival of the regime.



But a number of scholars agree that Pei has made a major contribution to our understanding of the flaws in Chinas model of economic development.



According to Huang Yasheng at the MIT Sloan School of Management, no one has detailed the evolution of corruption in China as ably and as comprehensively.



Pei also shows how Party officials and businessmen follow evening banquets with visits to prostitutes and brothels as a way of strengthening their ties.



And offering a prostitute as a kind of prize to a Party official at the end of an evening becomes in effect a bribe.



Sympathetic portrayal



In her book titled Lotus, novelist Lijia Zhang vividly describes this practice for Western readers.



But Zhang also does much more.



Her sympathetic portrayal of the life of a prostitute named Lotus working at a massage parlor in the economically booming city of Shenzhen also turns out to be a love story and a testament to one womans strength.



Lotuss story begins as a typical one for many migrant workers, the unsung heroes of Chinas economic rise.



Her massage parlor in Shenzhen lies hundreds of miles to the southeast of her rural village in Sichuan Province, and she can rarely afford to make a trip home.



Her main aim in life is to send money home to assist her family and ultimately to help her brother Shadan realize his dream of entering a university. He would be the first in his poor village to achieve this goal.



Her family has been told that Lotus is working in a Sichuan restaurant in Shenzhen and not as prostitute.



Hard to eliminate



Like so many migrant workers, she had arrived in Shenzhen to work in a factory outside the city. Her cousin, nicknamed Little Red, had talked her into taking the job. But after her cousin died in a fire at the factory, she decided to find work in the city.



When her lack of a high school diploma disqualified her from the best jobs, she turned to prostitution, first as a street walker and later in a massage parlor, often fronts for prostitution.



While officially illegal, prostitution has become an industry in China that would appear to be hard to eliminate, though police do launch periodic campaigns against it. One of the most dramatic scenes in the novel describes a raid on her massage parlor in which some of Lotuss friends are beaten.



The camaraderie among the girls while under detention, their jokes about their plight, and the offer of one to share what little money she has to pay off the police becomes one of the most touching moments in the book.

Its hard to imagine that a book on this sad subject could be uplifting, but this one is.



Dan Southerland is RFA's founding executive editor.
Police in the Chinese capital sealed off a large section of the boulevard on iconic Tiananmen Square on Friday after a military jeep overturned and rescue services were called to extinguish a fire, eyewitnesses told RFA.



Footage of the scene shot by eyewitnesses and seen by RFA showed white smoke or steam billowing from a vehicle on the tarmac, just meters from where the portrait of late supreme leader Mao Zedong hangs over the Tiananmen Gate.



In scenes reminiscent of an Oct. 28, 2013 jeep suicide attack in the same location, rescue teams rushed to the scene while police moved back passersby, shouting at them to make way for a security cordon.



Five people, including two tourists, died in the 2013 attack, which the ruling Chinese Communist Party blamed on Islamic militants.



Video seen by RFA of Friday's incident showed a red prefix on the license plate of the jeep, indicating a military license for an off-road vehicle.



Beijing police said in a statement via their official microblog account that the incident was a "traffic accident."



"A motor vehicle overturned at 7.20 a.m. on the north side of the National Museum [on Chang'an Avenue], injuring the driver and a cyclist," the statement said, but gave no further details.



A Beijing resident who declined to be named said she thought the vehicle belong to the People's Armed Police (PAP) force.



"It looked like armed police, because they use those red letters, which I think were WJ [short for armed police, or wujing]," she said.



She said the incident may have been linked to the recent arrests of several top officials in the armed police, as part of President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive.



'Very mysterious'



A source familiar with military affairs told RFA, information about the incident was restricted even within army and military circles.



"This is very mysterious ... a lot of people saw that it was a military license plate," the source. "The location was just meters away from the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of State Security, so very few cars would dare to drive recklessly on that stretch of road, particular military vehicles."



"I think that there must have been a chase or some other kind of emergency for them to overturn the jeep like that."



He confirmed that there had been a number of detentions in the higher echelons of the armed police in recent days.



"These jeeps are used all the time by the ministry, but the lower ranks aren't allowed to drive them," the source said. "So of course it's easy to link this with the recent internal clean-up operation in the ranks of the armed police, because that is what has been happening."



An officer who answered the phone at the Beijing municipal fire department's Tiananmen branch declined to comment on the incident.



"It's not convenient for me to tell you that," the officer said. "You can call the main fire brigade propaganda center, OK?"



And an officer who answered the phone at the Tiananmen Square police station said they didn't know the circumstances.



'Playing it down'



Petitioner Wu Jixin told RFA said the authorities appeared to be deliberately playing down the significance of the incident.



"They are just playing it down by saying it was an accident," Wu said. "Who knows what the government is playing at? I just don't think their account is necessarily correct; I don't think it was an accident."



"Accidents don't just happen there," she said. "For example, if petitioners try to commit suicide around there by drinking pesticide, the authorities never say it was a petitioner. They are afraid of the impact it might have."



Fellow petitioner Huang Xinmin agreed that the area is too tightly monitored for random accidents to happen there.



"I have never seen a traffic accident happen there," Huang said.



Reported by Wong Siu-san and Goh Fung for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by Ding Wenqi for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.




Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have jailed an online activist who tweeted about the smog that shrouded the provincial capital Chengdu this winter for "spreading rumors."



The netizen, identified only by the online nickname Xinhai, had sent out a post on social media claiming that the city had issued a "red smog alert" on Jan. 5, police in Chengdu said, according to local media reports.



"The Chengdu city meteorological bureau has put out the first red alert in the city's history," the tweet said. "It alerts us that Chengdu will see the worst smog in 2,000 years of history, with the air quality index over 700, maybe over the cancer-causing threshold of 800."



The tweet was posted on Twitter-like Weibo platforms, on the smartphone chat app WeChat, and on the popular chatroom service QQ, and was retweeted in large numbers.



Its author was handed an administrative sentence, which can run up to a maximum of 15 days by police without the need for a trial, for "spreading rumors," the Chengdu Commercial News reported.



Online freedom of speech activist Xiucai Jianghu said the police had no way of proving that the tweet was inaccurate, however.



"It's not exaggerating one bit to say that this is the worst air pollution in 2,000 years," he said. "There wasn't any smog during imperial times in China."



"They were just telling the truth, and that hurt the government's image."



He said the jailing was part of an ongoing bid to spread a climate of fear among social media users.



"They want to suppress free speech and create an atmosphere of terror, so nobody will dare say anything bad about the government online again," Xiucai Jianghu said.



"It's not rumor-mongering just because it made the government look bad," he said. "They wouldn't say it was rumor-mongering if you praised the government and covered up something bad that they did."



No malicious intent



Shandong rights lawyer Shu Xiangxin said the accusation of rumor-mongering doesn't stand up in law.



"To show rumor-mongering, you have to prove malicious intent," Shu said. "Well-intentioned criticism doesn't count as rumor-mongering, and it should be encouraged."



"It is against the law, and against legal principles, to hold someone under administrative detention on such a pretext," he said. "It basically means that their powers are getting broader and broader."



"This leads to a situation in which everyone feels threatened, and where great damage is done to freedom of expression."



Chengdu residents, unused to the toxic brown haze that regularly engulfs more northern cities like Beijing, were quick to complain about the smog that engulfed their city.



The authorities launched a crackdown on spontaneous public protests after several days of heavy smog hit the city last December.



Schools banned the wearing of face-masks in the classroom, while the ruling Chinese Communist Party's propaganda machine issued strict guidelines banning coverage of the pollution protests.



The clampdown followed sporadic protests, on and offline, that included the placing of face-masks on sculptures in downtown Chengdu, after which police threw a security cordon around the city's central Tianfu Square.



Reported by Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.




A diplomatic standoff between Beijing and Seoul appeared to intensify on Friday after a sharp fall in the number of Chinese tourists traveling to South Korea amid growing tensions over its plans to deploy a U.S. missile defense system.



Bilateral ties began to cool when South Korea announced plans to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), as a way to defend against North Korea's ever-developing nuclear and missile technologies.



Reports say China has now banned mass company chartered flights to South Korea in response, while Seoul recently turned down visa applications for language teachers at Beijing's Confucius Institutes in the country.



Beijing has also blocked shipments of various South Korean products, including cosmetics, according to the South Korean news agency Yonhap.



The agency said tourist arrivals from mainland China on mass company outings on chartered flights looks set to fall by up to 20 percent from 130,000 during 2016.



Citing the government's Korea Tourism Organization, it said the overall number of Chinese tourists last year hit a record high of 8.04 million.



"January is usually a slow month for group tours, but still the drop was more than visible," the agency quoted an official as saying.



Threat to China?



Beijing's foreign ministry on Wednesday denied there was any official ban on trips to South Korea, saying that cultural and economic ties are formed on the basis of "public opinion," and that Seoul would do well to note that many Chinese people oppose THAAD.



The South Korean government says THAAD is needed to defend against North Korean nuclear attacks, but Beijing says the system could extend its radar into China, posing a threat to national security.



In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said its government-funded Confucius Institutes in South Korea were set up at the request of South Korean universities, and called on Seoul to ensure the correct visa procedures were followed for their staff.



He said the affected Confucius Institutes were in touch with the South Korean government to sort the matter out.



"As a Chinese government department, we hope that both sides can work hard, and that the Confucius Institute can continue to help South Korean people learn Chinese, to play a positive role in increasing bilateral mutual trust and friendship," Lu told a daily news briefing on Friday.



But the South Korean justice ministry denied the decision on visas was linked to the dispute over THAAD.



Beijing-based political activist Zha Jianguo said the nuclear threat posed by North Korea is pushing Seoul closer to the United States, which is bad news for regional peace and stability.



"Now, South Korea is saying that they won't be renewing any more visas for Confucius Institute teachers in the country, which tells us that they aren't going to give in easily to China on this," Zha said.



"I think that the general direction things are going in looks extremely bad for China, because if the alliance between Seoul and Washington continues to get stronger, there's a strong likelihood this could lead to military action in the end, against North Korea," he said.



He said any U.S.-South Korea alliance could reasonably be expected to win a war on the Korean peninsula, which would have massive political repercussions throughout the region, including China.



Beijing to blame



Hebei-based journalist Zhu Xinxin said the Chinese authorities are opposing THAAD in the name of peace, but blamed Beijing for its failure to aid a resolution of the Korean problem.



"On the face of it, this is just a diplomatic dispute, with each side taking tit-for-tat measures," Zhu said.



"But I actually think that South Korea has made a very good choice here, because everyone knows that the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party uses the Confucius Institutes to promote its ideology throughout the rest of the world," he said.



Relations between staunch U.S. ally South Korea and communist China were poor for decades in the wake of the Korean War (1950-1953), but growing economic ties led to warmer ties in recent years.



Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.




Laos has broken ground on an ambitious high-speed railway project linking the countrys western border with Thailand to Vietnam and is likely to begin full construction this month, according to sources.



Giant Consolidated, a Malaysian company that will construct and operate the 220-kilometer (140-mile) railway, held a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the laying of the foundation for the project last month in Savannakhet, multiple sources in the province confirmed to RFAs Lao Service.



The Dec. 18 event was held in Outhumphone districts Ban Naxai, the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.



An official from the Lao Ministry of Planning and Investment, citing sources at Giant, told RFA that full construction on the railway was likely to begin this month.



According to Giant Consolidated, work is expected to begin in January, said the official, who also asked not to reveal his name.



The official did not provide further details on construction plans for the project.



Malaysias Giant was in November 2012 awarded a contract to construct and operate the railway from Savannakhet, on Laoss southwestern border with Thailand, to the Lao Bao border gate with Vietnam in the east.



RFA was unable to contact the company to confirm that it plans to proceed with construction in January, or whether it had obtained a loan it had sought in connection with the project.



Officials use shovels to ceremoniously break ground on the Savannakhet-Lao Bao railway project, Dec. 18, 2013. Credit: Source in Savannakhet Source in Savannakhet Moving forward



Giant appears to be steaming ahead with the project after what may have been a minor derailment last year.



In June, an official from the Lao Ministry of Public Works and Transportation in Vientiane told RFA that a groundbreaking ceremony for the railway was originally scheduled for sometime in August following Giants completion of a mandatory environmental impact assessment needed for construction to begin.



It is unclear whether the study has since been submitted to authorities, or whether Giant has delivered findings to provincial officials from a survey of the construction site it conducted early last year.



In April, a Lao railways official told RFA that before launching construction, Giant also needed to carry out a project design study, which it expected to complete by August.



Construction of the railway, which also links Savannakhet city to Vietnams Danang port city, is expected to take four years.



A financial institution reportedly had agreed in April last year to provide a U.S. $5 billion loan to Giant to fund the construction, but it is unclear whether the arrangement was confirmed.



Second rail line



Laos was also in negotiations to borrow U.S. $7.2 billion from China to fund a second planned rail linea 420-kilometer (260-mile) project linking the capital Vientiane to southwestern China.



In July, a senior official at the Chinese Embassy in Bangkok told RFA that Beijing was waiting for Thailand to confirm that it will proceed with the project before finalizing the loan.



Laos assumed sole ownership of the project after a Chinese construction company pulled out of a joint partnership because it decided the project would not be profitable enough.



Legislators and the Asian Development Bank have cautioned that the project is unaffordable and could sink the country into debt.



Laos has no coastline or seaports, and the rail links are expected to lower the cost of exports and consumer goods and help drive the impoverished countrys socioeconomic development.



The countrys current rail system consists of a 3.5-kilometer (2-mile) link over the Mekong River between Vientiane and Thailands Nongkhai.



Reported by RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.




The Myanmar government said Friday that authorities have detained a key suspect in the cold-blooded killing of human rights lawyer and ruling party advisor Ko Ni on Sunday at Yangon airport.

Acting on information from the gunman Kyi Lin, police have arrested Aung Win Zaw, 46, in connection with the murders of Ko Ni and taxi driver Ne Win, who had given chase after the attorney was shot at close range in the back of the head, a statement issued by the Presidents Office said.

Ko Ni, a 63-year-old legal advisor to the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party that came into power last April, had just returned with a delegation of government and civic leaders from a trip to Indonesia where they participated in a workshop on interfaith tolerance and reconciliation.

Upon learning that the man who asked Kyi Lin to kill Ko Ni in exchange for a car had gone to southeastern Myanmars Kayin State, police officers set up roadblocks during the night to capture Aung Win Zaw, who is now being held as an accomplice to murder, the statement said.

He was arrested on Hpa-an Bridge at about 4 a.m. on Jan 30, it said.

Myanmars police and military are working together on the investigation to find others involved, it said.

The Presidents Office also repeated a request that members of the public remain vigilant for acts that might disrupt social peace and tranquility and to notify authorities if they witness any religious agitation.

Social media reports about a statement that Kyi Lin allegedly gave to police had indicated that a man named Myint Swe hired him to murder the lawyer. Media reports then said the man had been arrested in southeastern Myanmars Karen state, though police officials there denied it.

The New York Times also reported that Myanmar police had arrested three other people in Ko Nis assassination, including Myint Swe, near the Myanmar-Thailand border.

UN report on atrocities

The murder comes at a time when religious tension between Myanmars Buddhist majority and Muslim minority is running high. A crackdown in Rakhine state by Myanmar security forces on Rohingya Muslims since October has left hundreds dead and forced about 66,000 villagers to flee to safety in neighboring Bangladesh, according to United Nations estimates.

Some of the Rohingya who fled have accused Myanmar security forces of extrajudicial killings, torture, rape, and arson during the lockdown in northern Rakhine.

The U.N.s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued a report on Friday documenting atrocities against the Rohingya based on interviews with more than 220 people who fled.

The attacks against the Rohingya population in the area (killings, enforced disappearances, torture and inhuman treatment, rape and other forms of sexual violence, arbitrary detention, deportation and forced transfer as a result of violence and persecution) seem to have been widespread as well as systematic, indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity (as the High Commissioner concluded already in June 2016), the report said.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmars de facto leader, told U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein on Friday that the government would investigate U.N. allegations of atrocities against the Rohingya, Reuters reported.

A national-level commission investigating violence in the northern part of Myanmars Rakhine state has already paid two visits to the affected areas but, in an interim report it issued in early January, said it had found no cases of genocide or religious persecution of Rohingya Muslims living in the region.

The commission also said that its interviews of local villagers and women had yielded insufficient evidence of rape to take legal action, though its investigations into accusations of arson, torture, and illegal arrests were still under way.

Rights groups have blasted the commission for refuting allegations of abuses by security forces deployed in the region since October.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Tursunjan Memet, one of the web administrators of the Uyghur-language website Misranim, in northwestern China's Xinjiang region in an undated photo.

Chinese authorities have rejected a request for a visit by the terminally ill mother of a webmaster for a popular Uyghur website who has been held incommunicado since his arrest in March, RFAs Uyghur Service has learned.

Tursunjan Memet was one of at least five bloggers and website administrators arrested last year in a crackdown on popular Uyghur websites before the month-long Islamic fasting month of Ramadan.

Memet, an active blogger and one the chief administrators for the Misranim website, was detained on March 29 when authorities took him from his house in Korla (in Chinese, Kuerle), the capital city of Bayingholin in the Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang, his father told RFA.

Memet Qari told RFA that six plainclothes police came to their home, arrested his son, and confiscated some of his books and his desktop computer.

When they left, they warned us: Dont say anything about the detention of Tursunjan. Dont say anything to anybody, even your close relatives. Keep silent. Otherwise, it will not be good for your son and your family, he told RFA.

Since the arrest, the elder Memet and his wife have been unable to talk to their son, even though Tursunjans mother is terminally ill, he said.

My wife, who is on her deathbed, told me that she wanted to speak with our son, he said. This is her final request. I am so sorry. I called several times and told them of my wifes final request, but the Aksu police flatly refused to allow it.

To Chinese authorities in Aksu, Tursunjan Memet is a criminal, he said.

Tuyghun Juzhang, the deputy director of Aksu prefectures security bureau, told me without mercy: Your son is a political prisoner. He is accused of the crime of instigating ethnic hatred and separatism. None of your family members, not even your sick wife, can meet or speak with your son until he is taken to trial, he told RFA.

Along with Memet, police also detained Ablimit Ghojabdulla, Omerjan Hesen, Ababekri Muhtar, and Akbarjan Eset in the crackdown.

Muhtar is the founder of the Misranim website and is a well-known social activist. Eset is the founder of the popular Uyghur website Baghdax.

Both were both detained by police before the Ramadan month that ran last year from June 6 to July 5. Muhtar was released later in the summer. Iit is unclear if Eset is still in custody.

Cases linked

Hesen was detained by Chinese police in Aksu prefecture in March 2016. A native of Aksu, he worked as journalist, writer, and translator at the radio and television station in Aksu and was an official in Aksus forestry bureau.

Hesen is well-known as a writer and social activist in Xinjiangs Uyghur community.

On May 31, he was expelled from the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and removed from his position for breaking party discipline.

The partys expulsion announcement accused Hesen of publishing essays attacking the CCP and the governments ethnic and religious policies.

In his writings, he distorted the history of Xinjiang in order to instigate ethnic hatred and attack Chinas unity and territorial integrity, the notice said.

Memet Qari told RFA that his son and Hesen are still being held in Aksu Prefectures central detention center.

My son Tursunjans case is linked with Omerjan Hesen, he said. The writers penname is Bozqir, and he and my son have been held at the Aksu central detention center since last year.

The elder Memet told RFA that the authorities told me that my son has a close relationship with Omerjan Hesen.

They explained to me that my son had helped to publish a paper on the Misranim website written by Omerjan Hesen Bozqir, he added. According to their explanation, Omerjan Hesens paper instigated ethnic hatred and separatism.

Rights groups accuse Chinese authorities of heavy-handed rule in Xinjiang, including violent police raids on Uyghur households, restrictions on Islamic practices, and curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people.



China regularly vows to crack down on what it calls the three evils of terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism in Xinjiang.



But experts outside China say that Beijing has exaggerated the threat from Uyghur separatists, and that domestic policies are responsible for an upsurge in violence that has left hundreds dead since 2012.

Reported and translated by Eset Sulaiman for RFA's Uyghur Service. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
A Vietnamese activist known for filming protests against a polluting steel plant has been charged with abusing democratic freedoms, RFAs Vietnamese Service has learned.

Nguyen Van Hoa, 22, was arrested by police on Jan. 11 as Vietnamese authorities picked up several activists in advance of the Tet holiday, but police notified his family of the charges only on Friday, according to a police notice.

Hoa is accused of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe upon the interests of the State, the legitimate rights and interests of organizations and/or citizens under Article 258 of Vietnams penal code, the police notice said.

Article 258 is one of several statues that Hanoi uses to prosecute dissidents. If convicted, Hoa faces up to seven years in prison.

While Hoa has been held for weeks in Ha Tinh province, his family has been prevented from seeing him, a family member told RFA.

We went there to visit him, but the police did not let us, the relative told RFA. Today we received their notice and we are still waiting for more information from them.

Hoa had done nothing wrong, the relative said.

Hoa only does charity work, asking for justice and truth, she said. He only wrote about the truth; he did not do anything wrong.

Others also arrested

Hoa, who blogged and produced videos for RFA, is among a group of activists arrested before the Tet new year celebration including Tran Thi Nga, who was accused of propagandizing against the administration under Article 88 of the penal code.

Nga is well known for defending the rights of Vietnamese migrant workers and victims of government land grabs.

The seizure of land for developmentoften without due process or fair compensation for displaced residents is a major cause of protests in Vietnam and other authoritarian Asian countries, including China and Cambodia.

Article 88 is considered a national security offense and carries a sentence of between three and 20 years of imprisonment. It also allows the incommunicado detention of Tran Thi Nga during the whole period of the investigation.

In June, the Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics Group acknowledged it was responsible for the release of toxic chemicals from its massive steel plant located at the deep-water port in Ha Tinh Province.

The April spill killed an estimated 115 tons of fish and left fishermen and tourism industry workers jobless in four central provinces.

Vietnam's government said in a report to the National Assembly in July that the disaster had harmed the livelihoods of more than 200,000 people, including 41,000 fishermen.

The company pledged $500 million to clean iup and compensate people affected by the spill, but the government has faced protests over the amount of the settlement and the slow pace of payouts.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Brooks Boliek.
At least eight Afghan security force members have been killed by the Taliban in the northwestern province of Faryab, a police spokesman said on February 3.

Spokesman Abdul Karim Youresh said the attackers killed four police officers and four members of a local defense force aiding police at a checkpoint in the Almar district during the night.

All of the victims belonged to one family.

Youresh said the Taliban carried out the attack with the help of one of the men posted at the security station. He said that the man was associated with the Taliban but had recently pretended to have left the militant group.

He said the man, a relative of the commander in charge of the station, had been allowed to join the security force after tribal elders gave guarantees on his behalf.

Meanwhile, Gul Agha Roohani, chief of police in eastern Nangarhar Province, said that 12 suspected Islamic State militants were killed when they attacked security posts in the district of Kot early on February 3. Roohani said one police officer was also killed.

Separately, provincial Governor Mohammad Alias Wahdat said an unknown gunman fatally shot a cleric and his wife in eastern Paktyka Province on February 2 in the Yusof Khail district.



Police said there were no immediate claims of responsibility.

Based on reporting by dpa and AP
For a third straight night, anticorruption protesters demonstrated in the Romanian capital, Bucharest. Tens of thousands of people gathered outside the cabinet building on February 2. They demanded that the Social Democrat-led government abolish a decree that would grant amnesty to dozens of officials accused of corruption. (RFE/RL's Moldovan Service)
So y'all may have noticed that there's this little debate going on over who started the latest round of fighting in the Donbas.

One eyewitness says this. And another says that. And another one says something else.

But here the thing: The argument over who started the recent escalation in and around Avdiyivka misses a very important point -- and ignores a very important fact.

And that is that the only reason there is a war in the Donbas -- the only reason -- is because Russia wants there to be a war in the Donbas.

This is not a civil war. This is not a conflict where culpability is shared by both sides.

This is a manufactured war and Russia manufactured it.

This is aggression by Russia against a sovereign state and it's been going on for nearly three years.

And as a result, nearly 10,000 people have lost their lives.

That is where the focus should be.

Debating about who fired the first shots in Avdiyivka is not only ridiculous, it plays right into the hands of Vladimir Putin's propaganda machine.

Because this is exactly the debate the Kremlin wants us to have -- one that focuses on the minutiae and perpetuates the fiction that this is a domestic conflict between two Ukrainian factions.

And one that allows Moscow to express grave concern about the fighting in Ukraine and offer its services as a peacemaker when, in fact, it is the aggressor.

Putin's Kremlin is masterful at manipulating the environment and framing the debate in its favor.

Theyy did it in Georgia. They're doing it in Ukraine. They've been doing it for years. And we shouldn't keep falling for it.

Keep telling me what you think on The Power Vertical's Twitter feed and on our Facebook page.
European Union leaders meeting in Malta have agreed on new steps to curb the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.

The February 3 summit in the island nation also aimed at shoring up unity in the face of the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

The meeting was shadowed by concerns about relations with the United States under President Donald Trump, who French President Francois Hollande said has put "unacceptable" pressure on the EU.

The leaders of the 28 EU nations endorsed a plan to stem mass migration from Libya that includes more funding for the country's UN-backed government, help in fighting smuggling gangs, and improving conditions for migrants on the ground.

Concrete projects include training, equipment, and support for the Libyan coastguard to stop boats heading to Italy, helping the country better protect its borders, upgrading camps for migrants in Libya, and supporting voluntary repatriation for those willing to return to their countries of origin.

The bloc vowed to respect human rights and international law in dealing with migration, saying it would seek close engagement with UN refugee and migration agencies.

The EU says that most of the 181,000 people who came via Libya in 2016 were illegal economic migrants, unlike the asylum seekers arriving in Greece from Syria.

Advocates for migrants have decried inhumane camp conditions in the largely lawless North African country and raised concern that they could be endangered if repatriated to their homelands.

During the summit in Malta's capital, Valetta, 27 heads of state and government were also holding evening talks focusing on the bloc's future after Britain's exit from the European Union -- known as Brexit.



British Prime Minister Theresa May attended the summit but was not expected to participate in Brexit-related talks.

May did brief her counterparts over lunch on her visit last week with Trump, who has caused concern in Europe by voicing strong approval for Brexit and questioning the effectiveness of the NATO military alliance.

The U.K.s Guardian newspaper said May urged other leaders "to work patiently and constructively" with the United States.

But the report added they rebuffed her efforts to act as a liaison between Trump and Europe.

The Guardian said a scheduled meeting between May and Merkel was called off. A Downing Street source denied it was a snub, insisting they had covered everything they wanted during an informal "walkabout," the report added.

On January 31, European Council President Donald Tusk urged unity in dealing with challenges he said are "more dangerous than ever before" in the history of the bloc and said "worrying declarations" by Trump were part of a welter of external threats that also included an assertive China, an aggressive Russia, and "terror and anarchy in the Middle East and in Africa, with radical Islam playing a major role."

Asked in Malta if he felt threatened by Trump, Tusk said, "No, I don't feel threatened, but think there is room for explanations."

"Sometimes, I have an impression that the new administration does not know the EU in detail -- but in Europe, details matter," he added.

Upon arrival at the summit, Hollande criticized what he said was pressure on the EU from Trump, who has predicted a breakup of the bloc.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be," Hollande told reporters.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the best way for the EU to deal with the new U.S. administration is to push forward with its own plans.

"I [have] already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands," Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.

Trump has faced criticism inside and outside the United States for suspending the entire U.S. refugee program for 120 days, indefinitely shutting the door on Syrian refugees, and barring citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen -- from entering the United States for 90 days.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern suggested that U.S. foreign policy had contributed to immigration.

"America has a shared responsibility for the flow of migrants through the way military intervention was carried out," he said, without elaborating.

Still, Trump did have at least one defender. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the EU should focus on its own matters instead of criticizing Trump's border policies.

"I am watching with surprise the neurotic European reactions to the decision of the United States," Orban said. "The United States is not part of the European Union. It's an independent state -- and as an independent state, it has the right to define its border policy, its foreign policy, and its migrant policy."

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and AFP
Over the past five years, Iranian officials and state media have touted the "indigenous" ingenuity in the Islamic republic's mass-produced Mohajer-6 combat drone, which Russia has deployed in its war against Ukraine.

But a new investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, has found that electronic components underpinning Tehran's production of the Mohajer-6 are far from homegrown.



The Mohajer-6 drones contain components produced by companies from the United States and the European Union, both of which have sanctions restricting the export to Iran of such technology that can be used for both civilian and military purposes  dual-use technology.

The presence of these components in the Mohajer-6 does not mean their producers are in violation of U.S. or EU sanctions, and RFE/RL does not have evidence that this is the case.

The investigation also found Mohajer-6 components produced in China, including a real-time mini-camera made by a Hong Kong firm that said it was "very sorry" that its products were being used in war.

At least one major foreign-produced component of the Mohajer-6 has previously been identified by reporters in a Mohajer-6 recovered from the battlefield by the Ukrainian military: an engine made by the Austrian manufacturer BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Bombardier Recreational Products.

But Ukrainian intelligence assesses that the Iranian combat drone contains components from nearly three dozen different technology companies based in North America, the EU, Japan, and Taiwan, the Schemes investigation has found. A majority of these companies are based in the United States.



A Schemes reporter who personally inspected the foreign-made drone parts identified components produced by at least 15 of these manufacturers.

These include parts made by the U.S. technology firm Texas Instruments, which said in a statement that it does not sell into Russia or Iran and complies with applicable laws and regulations.

To identify these components, Schemes reporters examined parts of the Mohajer-6 drone that the Ukrainian military shot down over the Black Sea near the Mykolayiv region coastal town of Ochakiv. They also reviewed Ukrainian intelligence records on the sources of these components.

The drone also contains a microchip bearing the logo of a California technology company and a thermal-imaging camera that Ukrainian intelligence says may have been produced by a firm based in Oregon or China.

Both Western officials and experts on illicit technology transfers say Iran has built a broad, global procurement network using front companies and other proxies in third countries to obtain dual-use technology from the United States and the EU.

"Exporters will look at the request coming from the [United Arab Emirates] or another third country, and they'll think that they're selling to an end user based there, when really the end user is in Iran," Daniel Salisbury, a senior research fellow with the Department of War Studies at King's College London, told RFE/RL.

In September, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions specifically targeting Iranian companies that Washington links to the production and transfer of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to Russia for deployment in its war on Ukraine. Fighting rages with no sign of an end more than eight months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion on February 24.

"Non-Iranian, non-Russian entities should also exercise great caution to avoid supporting either the development of Iranian UAVs or their transfer, or sale of any military equipment to Russia for use against Ukraine," U.S. Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in a statement announcing the sanctions.

Chinese Cameras, California Chips

Development of the Mohajer-6, the latest model in a series of drones Tehran has used since the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, began in 2017, while mass production began the following year. During a ceremony commemorating the Islamic Revolution, then-Iranian Defense Minister Amir Hatami said that the new tactical drone could perform surveillance, reconnaissance, as well as help destroy targets.

Hatami extolled what he described as the drones domestic design, a portrayal echoed in later reports by Iranian media.

"The homegrown drone was made through cooperation among the army, Defense Ministry, and Quds Aviation Industries," the English-language Tehran Times quoted an Iranian military official as saying in July 2019.

The dismantling of the Mohajer-6 drone recovered by the Ukrainian military shows that the UAV is packed with foreign components.

One of these parts is a bright-orange real-time mini-camera produced by the Hong Kong-based company RunCam Technology. Documents seen by Schemes show that Ukrainian intelligence has also identified RunCam as the producer of the camera, which likely assists in remote guidance of the drone.

Founded in 2013, RunCam is involved in the development and production of so-called "first-person-view" real-time cameras. "Our users are our friends," the company's website states. The site says that RunCam has two authorized Iranian dealers.

Reached by Schemes for comment about the use of its camera in the Iranian drone deployed by Russia in its war on Ukraine, RunCam said in an e-mailed response: "We are very sorry to know that RunCam's products were used in warfare. RunCam is specialized in producing products for model aircraft hobby. We never contact any customer related to military."

The provenance of the Mohajer-6 drone-s thermal-imaging camera is more difficult to determine. A Ukrainian intelligence assessment reviewed by Schemes indicates it could be the Ventus Hot model produced by Sierra-Olympic Technologies, based in the U.S. state of Oregon, but that it also resembles a cheaper analog available for sale by the Chinese company Qingdao Thundsea Marine Technology.

Qingdao Thundsea Marine Technology said in an e-mailed statement that the company did not "have any business with Iran," because "it will affect our business." The company said it specializes in marine services and is not involved in manufacturing. It also said that it did not have a single successful order for its online advertisement of the thermal-imaging camera resembling the one recovered from the Iranian drone.

Sierra-Olympic Technologies did not respond to a request for comment on the possible use of its thermal-imaging cameras in Iranian combat drones in time for publication.

Microchips recovered from the drone also featured the logos of the California-based company Linear Technology Corporation and its parent company, the Massachusetts-based semiconductor company Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI). ADI did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the possible use of its technology in the Iranian combat drone.

Schemes reporters also observed among the components of the Iranian drone a voltage step-down converter produced by Texas Instruments. The company said in an e-mailed statement that it "does not sell into Russia, Belarus, or Iran."

"TI complies with applicable laws and regulations in the countries where we operate, and does not support or condone the use of our products in applications they weren't designed for," Texas Instruments said.

Schemes reporters also saw several components produced by the California-based technology manufacturer Xilinx, whose parent company is the multinational semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), also based in California.

According to Ukrainian intelligence, one of these Xilinx components was integrated into a video data-link module located in the wing of the Mohajer-6 that helped carry out attack missions.

"This module transmits information from the board to the missile head. That is, guidance for the missile. With the help of this module, it was possible to guide the missile to the target," a Ukrainian military intelligence representative told Schemes.

AMD did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

'No Authorization'

Previous media reports about the components of the Mohajer-6 drone, including by CNN, have shown evidence that its engine was produced by the Austrian manufacturer BRP-Rotax GmbH & Co KG, whose parent company is the Quebec-based Bombardier Recreational Products (BRP).

The Canadian company responded to the reports on October 21, saying in a statement that it "has not authorized and has not given any authorization to its distributors to supply military UAV manufacturers in Iran or Russia."

"As soon as we were made aware of this situation, we started an investigation to determine the source of the engines," BRP said. .

But Schemes reporters found that the authorized Rotax distributor listed on the Austrian manufacturer's website advertised itself as a Rotax aircraft engines distributor for Iran as recently as December 2020.

The distributor, the Italian company Luciano Sorlini S.p.a., has posted multiple magazine advertisements on its websites in which it describes itself as a Rotax distributor for numerous countries. Prior to January 2021, Iran was listed among these countries.

The Rotax website also lists a Tehran-based company -- MahtaWing -- as an official service center for its engines. The company, known in Persian as Mahtabal, conducts repairs of Rotax engines, including the Rotax 912 iS, the engine that was found in the Mohajer-6 combat drone recovered in Ukraine.

BRP said in an e-mailed statement on November 4 that while Luciano Sorlini S.p.a. is the appointed distributor of Rotax aircraft engines in Iran, "since 2019, no Rotax engines have been sold in Iran, and we will not sell any engines to Iran moving forward."

The Canadian company said it had "internal controls" that "significantly" restrict the sale of its products for military purposes.

"For example, the sale of any BRP product to operators with any military activity in Iran, Turkey, and Russia is strictly prohibited," BRP said. "We conduct our business in compliance with all EU, Canadian, and U.S. applicable regulations."

BRP described the Iranian company MahtaWing as a "local service center" that "offers maintenance services for previously sold aircraft engines."

Shahriar Siami of RFE/RL's Radio Farda contributed to this report.
Kazakhstan's powerful Deputy Prime Minister Imanghali Tasmaghambetov has been dismissed from his post.

Kazakhstan's presidential press service said on February 3 that Tasmaghambetov was removed by a presidential decree because he is being transferred to another, unspecified position.

Tasmaghambetov, 60, has been considered a possible successor to 76-year-old Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev, who has been running the Central Asian republic since 1989.

In different periods, Tasmaghambetov served as defense minister, education and culture minister, chief of the presidential administration, the mayor of Almaty, the mayor of Astana, and the governor of the oil-rich region of Atyrau.

Based on reporting by KazTAG and Tengrinews


The regional police chief in the north of Kosovo has been suspended after he was accused of refusing to implement the government's policy on phasing out license plates issued by Serbia when Kosovo was still part of the country.

Nenad Djuric was suspended after the Police Inspectorate of Kosovo announced on November 3 that he is suspected of criminal offenses related to his refusal to implement the plan.

Minister of Internal Affairs Xhelal Svecla said that the refusal to implement the governments decisions represents a serious threat to the security and stability of Kosovo.

The Kosovo police is one [force] and all its members should have the same mission: the rule of law and the creation of a safe environment for all citizens regardless of difference, Svecla said on Facebook. We will not allow any action that violates this mission, and together with the Kosovo Police we will continue its implementation.

The main party representing Serbs in Kosovo, Serbian List, said that the decision to suspend Djuric was illegal.

Goran Rakic, chairman of the party, said that the Serbs should "strengthen and build" their own institutions in northern Kosovo in cooperation with Serbia.

Rakic said that he has called an extraordinary meeting of the Serbian List with the mayors of four municipalities in the north of Kosovo with Serbian majorities. The meeting will be held after the "illegal and anti-Serbian decision" to suspend Djuric, he said.

Radic said he will call on Serbs to vacate institutions in the north, including judicial, police, and other institutions.

Meanwhile, the head of the office for Kosovo in the Serbian government, Petar Petkovic, told a news conference on November 3 that Djuric was suspended because "he stood in defense of the Serbian people."

He questioned what mistake Djuric had made by refusing to participate in the decisions of Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti, which are political."

Djuric said on November 2 that the police in the north would not implement the government's decision to issue warnings to drivers who have cars with license plates issued by Serbia.

Djuric was appointed regional police commander in the north in June 2013 after Kosovo and Serbia reached the first agreement on the normalization of relations in the dialogue mediated by the European Union.

The agreement stated that the regional commander in the four municipalities with Serbian majority is to be appointed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Kosovo.

Kosovo has attempted several times this year to require its Serb minority to change their old car plates from before 1999 when Kosovo was still part of Serbia. Authorities began implementing the latest plan to phase out old vehicle license plates on November 1.

Kurti announced the plan last week, saying drivers would first be given warnings during an initial three-week period starting on November 1. That is to be followed by a two-month period when 150 euro ($149) fines will be issued. There will then be another two-month period during which temporary license plates will be valid.

If drivers do not change their plates by April 21, their vehicles will be confiscated, according to the government decree.

Kosovo and Serbia fought a war in 1998-99, with Kosovo eventually declaring independence from Serbia in 2008.

Ethnic Serbs in the north of Kosovo have been using car plates issued by Serbian institutions since the end of the war with the acronyms of Kosovar cities such as KM (Kosovska Mitrovica), PR (Pristina), or UR (Urosevac).

The government in Kosovo regards the plates as illegal but until now has tolerated them in four northern municipalities with Serb majorities.
Moldova's pro-Russia President Igor Dodon has proposed a new flag for his country that would eliminate similarities the current banner has with the flag and coat of arms of neighboring Romania.

Dodon said on February 2, Moldova's statehood day, that he wants lawmakers and civil society to discuss the idea and come up with legislative proposals "in the weeks or months ahead."

Legal experts conclude that changing Moldova's national flag would require parliamentary legislation that is unlikely to be approved by the current ruling coalition.

That's because the three parties in the pro-European Union governing coalition control a majority of parliament's 101 seats while Dodon's supporters in the Socialist Party of The Republic of Moldova (PSRM) control only 25 seats.

Meanwhile, critics of Dodon's plan say it is part of his broader efforts to steer Moldova away from a course toward the EU membership that Romania has already achieved.

Dodon's supporters in the PSRM have used the flag that he proposes at public demonstrations and gatherings in the past.

Common Heritage

That banner -- which Dodon claims is based on a flag from Moldovan history -- features a solid red background instead of the current blue, yellow, and red tricolor shared by both the Moldovan and Romanian flags.

Historians say the tricolors of the current flags of Moldova and Romania reflect a common heritage dating back long before the late 19th century when the lands of present-day Moldova formed part of the Kingdom of Romania.

Dodon's proposal also would remove the eagle from Moldova's flag -- a symbol that is similar on the coat of arms of both Moldova and Romania.

Instead, the new design suggested by Dodon would retain the head of an ox, a star, a flower, and a crescent from Moldova's coat of arms.

That imagery has long been a symbol of the historic principality of Moldavia -- a region dating back to the 14th century composed of territories that now form parts of Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Valentin Constantinov, a historian at Moldova's Academy of Sciences, told RFE/RL that Dodon's claims are a "gross manipulation" of history aimed at serving his political agenda.

Dodon has promised to strengthen Moldova's ties with Moscow -- vowing to join the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union.

Since his inauguration in late December, he has taken other steps seen as part of an attempt to steer the country off its path toward membership in the EU, of which Romania is a member.



On January 3, Dodon stripped former Romanian President Traian Basescu of his recently acquired Moldovan citizenship -- declaring that Basescu had obtained it illegally.

Basescu, while president of Romania from 2004 to 2014, had pushed for Moldova to reunite with Romania and move closer to the EU.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Moldovan Service


KIROV, Russia -- Prosecutors have asked a Russian judge to convict Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny and hand him a suspended five-year sentence in a retrial he says is aimed at barring him from running for president in 2018.

The state prosecutor made the request on February 3 as the politically charged trial of Navalny, an anticorruption crusader and fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, drew to a close at a court in the provincial city of Kirov.

The judge said he would issue the verdict on February 8.



In a defiant final statement, Navalny accused "Putin's band" of stealing Russia's wealth from its people and vowed to continue his political activities regardless of the trial's outcome.

He promised the judge and court staff that he would serve them and all other Russian citizens if elected president.

When the judge ordered him to speak only about issues related to his case, Navalny said that everything he says is related to the case because the case is "politically motivated."

"Unfortunately, in modern Russia a courtroom is the only platform where honest people, including me, are able to openly and freely express their political views," Navalny said.

Ban On Holding Office

A key leader of large antigovernment protests in 2011-2012, Navalny also leads an organization that has published several reports alleging corruption among allies of Putin. He was convicted in 2013 of large-scale theft in a trial he said was Kremlin-orchestrated retribution for his opposition activity.

The Supreme Court threw out the verdict last year and ordered a retrial -- a move he and his supporters say removed a prohibition on running for office. Navalny announced in December that he would run for president in a March 2018 election, in which Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, is widely expected to seek a new six-year Kremlin term

A five-year suspended sentence, the same as the one he was handed at the initial trial, would reinstate the prohibition on holding office but would keep him out of prison -- an outcome opposition activists say the Kremlin favors because he could become a political martyr behind bars.

At the February 3 session of the Lenin District court in Kirov, some 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow, Navalny asked for an acquittal, saying he is not guilty, and promised the judge, the court secretary, and a bailiff in the courtroom that he would "improve their lives" if elected president.

Travel Restriction Dropped

Acquittals are rare in Russian courts, which government opponents and rights activists say do the bidding of the Kremlin and local authorities, and Navalny has predicted he will be convicted.

The prosecutor asked the court to hand Navalny's co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov a four-year suspended sentence and fine them 500,000 rubles ($8,350) each.

Navalny was convicted of fraud in a separate case in 2014 and given a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence.

At he end of the court session on February 3, Judge Aleksei Vtyurin adjourned the trial and said he would pronounce the verdict on February 8.

The judge said that both Navalny and Ofitserov are free to leave Kirov until then, dropping a previous order in which he had said they must stay in the city until the verdict and sentence are announced.

Navalny had refused to sign a pledge to abide by the order, saying he would not abandon plans to attend the opening of a campaign office in St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown, on February 4.
Norway's security service says civil-servant e-mail accounts have been targeted by hackers believed to be associated with Russian intelligence.

The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) said on February 3 that no classified information had been taken when nine personal civil-servant e-mail accounts were targeted in "spear-phishing" attacks.

PST spokesman Martin Bernsen said the agency was warned earlier this year by an unnamed foreign agency about "targeted attacks" against the security service, Norway's Labor Party, the military, and government agencies.

"The attacks had a signature that indicates those behind the hacking can be identified as APT29," Bernsen said. "They can be traced back to Russia."

He said APT29 was an another term for Cozy Bear, a hacker group that last year broke into U.S. Democratic Party computers and some U.S. government accounts.

"Spear-phishing" attacks involve emails that appear to be from known entities. If opened, hackers can launch malicious software onto the computer network of the recipient.

On January 31, the Czech government reported that dozens of e-mail accounts at its Foreign Ministry had been breached in a similar attack. Czech officials said they beleive the attack was "conducted by a foreign country," but did not name it.

Based on reporting by AP, CTK, and dpa
Massive street protests in Romania against the weakening of anticorruption laws continued into a fourth day on February 3, with tens of thousands of citizens coming out in cities across the country.

"Repeal it, repeal it" and "Corruption kills," read banners carried by demonstrators in Bucharest's main square, where more than 100,000 people protested.

Despite the growing protests, the government has refused to withdraw a decree it issued on January 31 that decriminalized some official misconduct.

The decree has plunged Romania into crisis, splitting political leaders and bringing an estimated 250,000 people onto the streets nationwide, including some 120,000 in front of the government headquarters in the capital's biggest square on February 3, police said.

WATCH: Romanian Anticorruption Protests On February 2

The decree was issued barely a month after the Social Democrat-led government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu took office.

President Klaus Iohannis has defied Grindeanu, filing a Constitutional Court challenge against the measures, saying they damage the rule of law and the fight against corruption.

The countrys ombudsman, Victor Ciorbea, on February 3 also joined the fray on the protesters side, filing his own challenge with the Constitutional Court.

General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar welcomed the court challenges and said his office had its own case before the Court of Appeals.

The Constitutional Court has given the sides until February 7 to submit opinions before deciding on the timing for the next steps.

The decree allows officials involved in graft with family members or involving amounts of less than 200,000 lei ($47,500) to avoid jail.

The government says the measures were needed to align Romania with a European Union directive on the presumption of innocence and the right to be present at trials.

It also said the action was needed to help ease overcrowding in prisons.

Many complained the decision was taken by emergency government decree instead of through parliament.

"There would have been plenty of time to discuss such things in a regular, parliamentary procedure, so no one can claim any urgency, said Ciorbea, the ombudsman.

Countries including Germany and the United States have expressed concern about the emergency decree.

With reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters
ON MY MIND

Hybrid warfare. Nonlinear warfare. New generation warfare. Cross-domain coercion. Active measures. Reflexive control. And the Gerasimov doctrine.

There is certainly no shortage of terminology or jargon to describe Russian military tactics and strategy.

And on today's Power Vertical Podcast, we'll try to move beyond the catchphrases and take a closer look at Russia's strategic doctrine, strategy, and capabilities.

What is Moscow actually doing? What is it trying to do? What are the Kremlin's goals? How is it mixing kinetic and nonkinetic tactics? And what does this portend?

Joining me will be military analyst Michael Kofman, a fellow at the Wilson Institute's Kennan Institute and a research scientist at the CNA Corporation; and Johan Norberg, a senior analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency.

Also on the podcast, Michael, Johan, and I will take a close look at Russia's force posture and military strategy in the Baltics.

So be sure to tune in later today!

IN THE NEWS

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has expressed "strong condemnation of Russia's actions" in eastern Ukraine and warned that Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Crimea is returned to Kyiv.

European Council President Donald Tusk is calling on Russia to use its influence with separatists in eastern Ukraine to end an upsurge of fighting that has caused many casualties and aggravated the humanitarian situation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the Ukrainian government of provoking this week's flare-up in fighting with Russia-backed separatists in the Donbas.

Kazakhstan's Foreign Ministry says the co-sponsors of the Syrian peace talks will meet in Astana on February 6 to monitor implementation of the cease-fire in the war-torn Middle Eastern country.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says he hopes relations between the European Union and Russia will improve in the near future and encouraged all parties to increase cooperation.

Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka says the former Soviet republic must resist what he called efforts to sow "chaos and conflict" and must avoid tension with neighbors.

Belarus is lashing out at Moscow after Russia said it had established a security zone on the border between the closely linked neighbors.

The European Parliament has voted overwhelmingly to approve visa liberalization for Georgia, paving the way for Georgians to travel to the European Union's Schengen zone without obtaining visas.

WHAT I'M READING

Why Ukraine Matters

Adrian Karatnycky has a piece on The Atlantic Council's website on why Trump cannot ignore Ukraine.

"For all the discussion about renewed U.S.-Russia cooperation, Trump would be wise to reject the temptation to reach a 'big power' agreement with Putin over the heads of Europe, Russias immediate neighbors, and Ukraine, in particular," Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and co-director of its Ukraine in Europe Initiative, writes.

"Indeed, a lasting basis of cooperation with Russia will be impossible without an intelligent approach to enhancing the security and sovereignty of Ukraine and responding to the fears of a region which stands at the pivot of Putins geopolitical ambitions."

Paul McCleary has a piece in Foreign Policy arguing that Putin is testing U.S. President Donald Trump early with Ukraine attacks.

Also in Foreign Policy, Alexander Motyl, a professor at Rutgers University-Newark, asks: "Will Ukraine lose by winning?"

Russia's Hard Power

Military analyst Michael Kofman, a fellow at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute (who will appear on today's Power Vertical Podcast), has a piece in The National Interest on The ABCs Of Russian Military Power.

"The Russian military that the United States faces in 2017 is not the poorly equipped and uncoordinated force that invaded Georgia in August of 2008," Kofman writes.

"This is why the magnitude and potential impact of the current crisis is far greater than that inherited by the Obama administration in 2009. Following reforms launched in October 2008, and a modernization program in 2011 valued at $670 billion, the armed forces have become one of Russias most reliable instruments of national power."

How To Survive A Cyberattack

Linda Kinstler writes in The Atlantic on what we can learn from the Baltics about "how to survive a Russian hack."

"Since 2007, Estonia has emerged as one of the leading players in detecting and combating Russian meddling, both online, where it arrives in the form of coordinated cyberattacks and propaganda campaigns, as well as through more conventional forms of espionage," Kinstler writes.

Russia's 'Crescent Of Instability'

In Politico, Jacopo Barigazzi and Davin Herszenhorn argue that Russia is creating a "crescent of instability" to tighten "its grip on Europe's periphery."

"As they gather Friday for an informal European Council summit on the island of Malta, a striking new geopolitical landscape has come clearly into focus: a crescent of Russian influence, arching from Donetsk in the east to Tripoli in the west," Barigazzi and Herszenhorn write.

"Having cemented Russias role as the dominant belligerent against a pro-Western Ukraine, where the half-frozen conflict in the east has flared up in the past week, and in Syria where a fragile cease-fire has taken hold with Moscows ally Bashar al-Assad still in power, President Vladimir Putin has turned his attention to Libya."

The Tao Of Dugin

Bloomberg has a feature looking at the role of the nationalist religious philosopher Aleksandr Dugin in Vladimir Putin's Kremlin.

Moscow's Wish List

Andranik Migranyan, director of the Kremlin-backed Institute for Democracy and Cooperation, has a piece in The National Interest explaining what Russia hopes to gain from the Trump administration.

A New Equilibrium?

Also in The National Interest, former U.S. State Department official Thomas Graham argues for "a new equilibrium" in relations between Washington and Moscow.
Protests in Romania against the weakening of anticorruption laws went into a third night on February 2, with tens of thousands of citizens taking to the streets in cities across the country.

Despite drawing the largest protests since the fall of communism in 1989, the government refused to withdraw a decree it issued on January 31 decriminalizing some official misconduct, barely a month after the Social Democrat-led government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu took power.

The move plunged Romania into a political crisis, with President Klaus Iohannis filing a Constitutional Court challenge, saying the measure damages the rule of law and the fight against corruption.

Police said the crowds late on February 2 rivaled the estimated 250,000 who took to the streets across the country the day before, with some 80,000 people gathered in front of the government's headquarters in Bucharest's biggest square.

The decree allows officials involved in graft with family members or involving amounts of less than 200,000 lei ($47,500) to escape jail.

"The fight against corruption needs to be advanced, not undone," said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, which warned against undermining Romania's progress toward meeting EU standards of justice.

Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters


AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine -- "Attack. Counterattack. Attack. Counterattack."

That's how Kyiv regiment commander Yevhen Deydey described the battlefield maneuvering taking place on February 2, as Russia-backed separatists stepped up attacks against Ukrainian government forces in this embattled eastern Ukrainian city for a fifth straight day.

Ukraine bolstered its defenses with scores more troops and large-caliber artillery, including main battle tanks, which were seen by RFE/RL trundling toward the front line and positioned in the courtyard of a nine-story apartment building pocked with massive holes from direct artillery strikes.

Our tanks are preparing for battle. This is a real escalation."

These sorts of heavy weaponry are supposed to remain well back from here, under a 2-year-old cease-fire deal that international monitors say has been routinely violated by Ukrainian forces and the Russia-backed separatists they are fighting.

"Our tanks are preparing for battle," Deydey said inside the Ukrainian Army's forward-most command center, peering out a shattered window at his arsenal standing by in the courtyard. "This is a real escalation."

The outburst of violence since January 29 has shattered a monthslong relative lull in fighting, pushed the city of Avdiyivka to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe, and heightened fears that full-scale warfare could reignite at any moment.

The racket of small arms, mortars, howitzers, and even tank fire -- collectively referred to by soldiers as "the disco" -- never let up here on February 2, and, in fact, grew in intensity throughout the day. The rumbling of Grad rockets pierced the winter chill as they came crashing down on military positions and civilian homes, not in ones and twos but by the truckload. Each multiple-launch rocket system carries up to 40 of them.

Ukraine's military said fighting had pushed the death toll to at least 23 people, including civilians, since January 29 and closer to a total of 10,000 since the war erupted in April 2014.

Yulia Paevska, a volunteer medic who goes by the nickname "Tyra" after the U.S. supermodel-turned-TV-personality Tyra Banks and calls her colleagues her "angels," told RFE/RL she had not seen fighting on this scale in Avdiyivka for two years.

"There is so much Grad. And it's so expensive. I have no idea who pays for it," she said in a nod to Russia's putative -- but stridently denied -- support for the separatists.

Paevska said her team treated five wounded soldiers on February 2, including one with a serious shrapnel wound to his leg. She had been awakened four times overnight by incoming shelling.

Deydey saw a Russian hand in the tactics employed by fighters on the other side, who he said made several attempts to outflank his soldiers but were repelled by the Ukrainians.

"When the artillery strikes are especially accurate, and repeatedly, we know it's professional [Russian] army guys," he said.

Deydey displayed evidence of what he said was Russian psychological warfare targeting Ukrainian defense forces: text messages sent from mysterious numbers addressed to Ukrainian soldiers that read, "You are just meat to your commanders," "Your body will be found when the snow melts," and, "You're like the Germans in Stalingrad."

He shrugged off the messages and said he did not want to have to fight and would prefer peace.

"We have tried for a cease-fire," he said, "but each time it is broken in minutes."

Russia has denied direct involvement in the fighting, and President Vladimir Putin at a news conference in Budapest on February 2 accused Kyiv of provoking the latest lethal bout and using it as a ploy to win support from new U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump's flattery of Putin has prompted considerable anxiety in Kyiv, which fears the new U.S. administration may lift sanctions imposed against Russia after its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.

WATCH: Intense Fighting Prompts Evacuations In Eastern Ukraine

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, sought to assure Kyiv and others of Washington's commitment to Ukrainian territorial integrity on February 2. In her first public statement from the UN Security Council, Haley called Crimea "a part of Ukraine" and vowed, "Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine."

She said the "dire situation" in Ukraine as fighting surges "demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions."

Residents of Avdiyivka who have been without electricity, water supplies, and heating in temperatures well below freezing since January 29, when shelling knocked out power to this city of around 22,000 people, would love nothing more than a respite from the violence.

But within hours of Haley's remarks in New York, Avdiyivka residents Tamara and Olena told RFE/RL early on February 3 that they had spent the night in a cellar.

"The artillery was nonstop," Tamara said, the worst since January 29.

Another local, Serhiy Kovalenko, thrust a gloved hand out to show two pieces of shrapnel that he said came from a blast overnight in the courtyard of his mother's apartment.

"Return this to Putin and tell him the sad people of Avdiyivka say thank you," he added.

Oleksandr, a pensioner who lives in the old town that butts up against the front line, said on February 2 that the level of fighting was "probably worse" than it was in 2014. He did not provide his last name out of fear of being seen as critical of Ukraine's government.

"Unfortunately, [this violence] is nothing new," Oleksandr said, gesturing to the summer kitchen in his yard that was obliterated by a shell late on February 1. "We have been living this nightmare for two years."



And yet, like most people here, he won't leave.



"I was born here and I will die here," he said. "If it's [by a shell], so be it.

"We all end up in the ground somehow."
AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine -- International monitors in Ukraine have warned of "an incredible amount of cease-fire violations" by both sides six days into an uptick of hostilities between pro-Kyiv forces and Russia-backed separatists.

The warning comes amid fresh reports of an intensification of shelling in and around residential areas in war-torn eastern Ukraine, where dozens of people have been killed, including civilians, and scores injured since January 29.

Lamberto Zannier, secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), issued a statement on February 3 calling on both sides to "consider the fate of the trapped civilians and to prioritize their safety." He called for an immediate halt to the fighting and strict observance of the cease-fire conditions.

In Avdiyivka, a government-held city of around 22,000 residents near the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, locals told RFE/RL that the shelling overnight on February 2-3 was the worst they had seen in the current flare-up. They talked of spending the night in cellars under "nonstop" bombardment.

Early on February 3, at least six Ukrainian tanks were spotted on the move in Avdiyivka.

And several apartment buildings appeared to have been damaged overnight by artillery fire, including one whose fifth floor took a direct hit.

At the city's School No. 2, where volunteers were distributing aid, Andriy, a 25-year-old psychologist with Ukraine's emergency services, told RFE/RL that he had been busy speaking with bereaved residents.

He said he had noticed recently -- even when shelling was heaviest -- that locals "don't react" to the violence or losses of life anymore.

"It has become normal for them after three years. But it is not normal," he said. "They don't want to show their weakness."

"Everyone should be afraid," he added. "The man who is not afraid is a stupid man."

Like 'Early Days' Of Conflict

Speaking to reporters in the center of Avdiyivka on February 3 with artillery blasts punctuating his statement, Alexander Hug, head of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said the fighting was reminiscent of "the early days" of the nearly 3-year-old conflict.

"The sound we hear back is from weapons that should not be here," Hug said. "They should be long that way and the other way locked up, at least 15 kilometers behind the contact line, where the first withdrawal line stops; for larger caliber weapons, that is even further back."

Other Ukrainian regions and international aid groups are shipping humanitarian supplies to the region, where the fresh fighting has prompted major evacuation and aid efforts. Many areas are without heat or electricity in subzero temperatures.

The UN, EU, and other international players have issued urgent pleas for negotiations to avoid a "catastrophe" in a conflict that has killed more than 9,750 people since April 2014 despite a shaky, internationally brokered cease-fire.

"Deescalation is only possible, in the long run and sustainably, if weapons are withdrawn and if the distance between the fighting position is increased so that the tensions there can be reduced," the OSCE's Hug said. "Temporarily, a cease-fire must be agreed immediately so that people here in Avdiyivka can go back to normal life, that infrastructure can be repaired. These people have been without heating, without electricity...for the vast part of this week, since Sunday morning [January 29]."

"This is not normal," he added, "and it is only due to the fact that these guns are here that should have long been withdrawn."

Moscow Urged To Use Influence

On February 3, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he had urged Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to use Moscow's influence to end the recent escalation in Ukraine.

Earlier on February 3, Kyiv blamed the escalation of fighting on "Russian occupational forces."

Deputy Ukrainian Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze's office cited 114 instances of shelling and said enemy forces were "attacking throughout" the so-called line of contact and in areas near the cities of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Mariupol. The statement said shelling damaged a school that was being used to provide heating for civilians in Avdiyivka.

Separatists have accused the pro-Kyiv side of thousands of bombardments over the past week.

On February 2, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley blamed "aggressive actions" by Russia for the fresh hostilities and reiterated Washington's commitment to keeping Western sanctions against Moscow in place.

Russia, which denies military involvement despite mounting evidence of its military and economic support for the separatists, has blamed Kyiv for the latest fighting.

The OSCE's Hug, however, accused both sides of violating the cease-fire agreements.

"We have seen on both sides an incredible amount of cease-fire violations," he said. "Cease-fire violations require guns; guns require personnel."

With contributions from Brussels and Prague


The new U.S. ambassador to the UN has, in her first appearance at the Security Council, said that the United States will not lift sanctions on Russia until it returns Crimea to Ukrainian control. Ambassador Nikki Haley also condemned Russia for "aggressive actions" following the recent upsurge in fighting in eastern Ukraine. (Reuters)
Chinas Debt-Trap Diplomacy

NEW DELHI  If there is one thing at which Chinas leaders truly excel, it is the use of economic tools to advance their countrys geostrategic interests. Through its $1 trillion one belt, one road initiative, China is supporting infrastructure projects in strategically located developing countries, often by extending huge loans to their governments. As a result, countries are becoming ensnared in a debt trap that leaves them vulnerable to Chinas influence.

Of course, extending loans for infrastructure projects is not inherently bad. But the projects that China is supporting are often intended not to support the local economy, but to facilitate Chinese access to natural resources, or to open the market for low-cost and shoddy Chinese goods. In many cases, China even sends its own construction workers, minimizing the number of local jobs that are created.

Several of the projects that have been completed are now bleeding money. For example, Sri Lankas Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, which opened in 2013 near Hambantota, has been dubbed the worlds emptiest. Likewise, Hambantotas Magampura Mahinda Rajapaksa Port remains largely idle, as does the multibillion-dollar Gwadar port in Pakistan.

For China, however, these projects are operating exactly as needed: Chinese attack submarines have twice docked at Sri Lankan ports, and two Chinese warships were recently pressed into service for Gwadar port security.

In a sense, it is even better for China that the projects dont do well. After all, the heavier the debt burden on smaller countries, the greater Chinas own leverage becomes. Already, China has used its clout to push Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand to block a united ASEAN stand against Chinas aggressive pursuit of its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Moreover, some countries, overwhelmed by their debts to China, are being forced to sell to it stakes in Chinese-financed projects or hand over their management to Chinese state-owned firms. In financially risky countries, China now demands majority ownership up front. For example, China clinched a deal with Nepal this month to build another largely Chinese-owned dam there, with its state-run China Three Gorges Corporation taking a 75% stake.

As if that were not enough, China is taking steps to ensure that countries will not be able to escape their debts. In exchange for rescheduling repayment, China is requiring countries to award it contracts for additional projects, thereby making their debt crises interminable. Last October, China canceled $90 million of Cambodias debt, only to secure major new contracts.

Some developing economies are regretting their decision to accept Chinese loans. Protests have erupted over widespread joblessness, purportedly caused by Chinese dumping of goods, which is killing off local manufacturing, and exacerbated by Chinas import of workers for its own projects.

New governments in several countries, from Nigeria to Sri Lanka, have ordered investigations into alleged Chinese bribery of the previous leadership. Last month, Chinas acting ambassador to Pakistan, Zhao Lijian, was involved in a Twitter spat with Pakistani journalists over accusations of project-related corruption and the use of Chinese convicts as laborers in Pakistan (not a new practice for China). Zhao described the accusations as nonsense.

In retrospect, Chinas designs might seem obvious. But the decision by many developing countries to accept Chinese loans was, in many ways, understandable. Neglected by institutional investors, they had major unmet infrastructure needs. So when China showed up, promising benevolent investment and easy credit, they were all in. It became clear only later that Chinas real objectives were commercial penetration and strategic leverage; by then, it was too late, and countries were trapped in a vicious cycle.

Sri Lanka is Exhibit A. Though small, the country is strategically located between Chinas eastern ports and the Mediterranean. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called it vital to the completion of the maritime Silk Road.

China began investing heavily in Sri Lanka during the quasi-autocratic nine-year rule of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, and China shielded Rajapaksa at the United Nations from allegations of war crimes. China quickly became Sri Lankas leading investor and lender, and its second-largest trading partner, giving it substantial diplomatic leverage.

It was smooth sailing for China, until Rajapaksa was unexpectedly defeated in the early 2015 election by Maithripala Sirisena, who had campaigned on the promise to extricate Sri Lanka from the Chinese debt trap. True to his word, he suspended work on major Chinese projects.

But it was too late: Sri Lankas government was already on the brink of default. So, as a Chinese state mouthpiece crowed, Sri Lanka had no choice but to turn around and embrace China again. Sirisena, in need of more time to repay old loans, as well as fresh credit, acquiesced to a series of Chinese demands, restarting suspended initiatives, like the $1.4 billion Colombo Port City, and awarding China new projects.

Sirisena also recently agreed to sell an 80% stake in the Hambantota port to China for about $1.1 billion. According to Chinas ambassador to Sri Lanka, Yi Xianliang, the sale of stakes in other projects is also under discussion, in order to help Sri Lanka solve its finance problems. Now, Rajapaksa is accusing Sirisena of granting China undue concessions.

By integrating its foreign, economic, and security policies, China is advancing its goal of fashioning a hegemonic sphere of trade, communication, transportation, and security links. If states are saddled with onerous levels of debt as a result, their financial woes only aid Chinas neocolonial designs. Countries that are not yet ensnared in Chinas debt trap should take note  and take whatever steps they can to avoid it.
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Estimados amigos,

Les doy cordialmente la bienvenida a este Blog informativo con articulos, analisis y comentarios de publicaciones especializadas y especialmente seleccionadas, principalmente sobre temas economicos, financieros y politicos de actualidad, que esperamos y deseamos, sean de su maximo interes, utilidad y conveniencia.

Pensamos que solo comprendiendo cabalmente el presente, es que podemos proyectarnos acertadamente hacia el futuro.

Las convicciones son mas peligrosos enemigos de la verdad que las mentiras.

There are decades when nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.

You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.

No soy alguien que sabe, sino alguien que busca.

Only Gold is money. Everything else is debt.

Las grandes almas tienen voluntades; las debiles tan solo deseos.

Quien no lo ha dado todo no ha dado nada.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

If you know the other and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.
A prominent Republican lawmaker sent letters to colleagues this week saying five bills, most of them related to abortion, would not be taken up in committee, sparking outrage among abortion-rights advocates who said important legislation dealing with womens health had been buried without a hearing.

Del. David B. Albo, R-Fairfax, also unilaterally quashed two anti-abortion bills from conservative lawmakers, including a measure to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

In letters dated Wednesday, Albo said the House of Delegates courts committee he chairs would have to meet late tonight or over the weekend to take up political bills that he thinks have no chance of becoming law. Lawmakers are coming up on Tuesdays deadline to finish work on their bills and, if passed, send them to the other chamber.

As you know the committee historically kills bills associated with liberal politics, and the governor vetoes bills associated with conservative politics, Albo wrote.

A group of progressive organizations and Democratic lawmakers held a news conference Thursday denouncing the move as a blow to women, transparency and the legislative process.

This is a pattern with our Republican caucus, said Del. Jennifer B. Boysko, D-Fairfax, who received a letter saying her bill to declare in state code that women have a fundamental right to abortion would not be taken up.

They kill bills without allowing them a hearing. They kill bills that arent on an agenda, with perhaps only 20 minutes notice to the patrons. They kill bills in unrecorded voice votes.

This is antithetical to the open exchange of ideas that we celebrate here in Virginia, said Del. Sam Rasoul, D-Roanoke, a member of the General Assemblys bipartisan Transparency Caucus.

The left-leaning group Progress Virginia issued a news release calling Albos move political shenanigans.

In an interview, Albo said he targeted all hopeless bills dealing with constitutional law.

The group thats doing the rabble-rousing is only listing pro-choice bills or calling it anti-women, Albo said. Its all the bills.

He rebutted critics suggestions he wasnt making time for womens issues by noting that the criminal law subcommittee met at the Capitol until 10 p.m. this week working on a bill to allow local law enforcement agencies to arrest terrorism suspects even when the planned act would occur outside Virginia.

The opposite can be said, Albo said. I dont have time to work on bills that have no chance of ever becoming law, because I have to stop terrorists from blowing up kids in other states.

In his letter, Albo highlighted as passable bills that require the committees attention legislation targeting texting and driving, drones peeping into windows, and overhauling the states DUI law in response to a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Albo said other lawmakers could overrule his decision if there were enough votes in the committee to revive the bills not taken up.

Three of the nixed bills were sponsored by Democrats. The other two came from Republicans.
By Angela Banks and Nathan B. Oman

Religion often plays a role in Americas immigration policies. In the 1970s, for example, Soviet Jews suffering persecution at the hands of the communists were welcomed to America as refugees. However, we also have an ugly history of exclusion based on religious bigotry. In the past, the government has targeted both Catholic and Mormon immigrants, groups that proved to be peaceful, productive and patriotic citizens. Unfortunately, religious fear is again shaping policy.

Following through on a campaign promise to keep out Muslim refugees, President Trump has banned all refugees for 120 days, all refugees from Syrias brutal civil war until further notice, and non-refugee Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian, Sudanese, Libyan, Somalian, and Yemeni nationals for 90 days. While his executive order does not explicitly mention Muslims, it is clearly directed toward Islamic countries and will make it more difficult for Muslims fleeing violence to gain sanctuary in the United States.

The president claims that the ban is necessary to tighten screening for potential terrorists. However, it simply is not true that under current procedures refugees are inadequately vetted. It takes months  sometimes years  to complete the process, which requires applicants to prove that they are not tied to terrorist groups. The order is a solution in search of a problem.

Refugees are first screened by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, which collects biodata and biometrics, and interviews the applicant. The United States then conducts its own screening. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, State Department and the National Counterterrorism Center all screen each applicant. The agencies look for information indicating that the individual is a security risk, has connections to known bad actors, has outstanding warrants, or has committed immigration or criminal law violations. Individuals who pass this security check are interviewed by Homeland Security agents and fingerprints are checked against FBI, DHS and Department of Defense databases.

In addition to singling out refugees from Muslim countries, the executive order also requires that new regulations favor refugees who are members of minority religions facing religious persecution in their home countries. While it is unclear precisely what this will mean in practice, as applied to Middle Eastern refugees it is potentially troubling.

It is undeniable that Christians and other minority religions have suffered persecution at the hands of ISIS, Iran and others. Trump rightly recognizes that the United States should extend asylum to those fleeing such attacks.

However, the majority of those seeking asylum for persecution in the Middle East are Muslims who reject militant forms of Islam. Singling out these victims of radical Islamic terrorism for indifference because they are Muslim is a terrible mistake. It is not the act of a strong nation, but of someone who is frightened of suffering and powerless people because they happen to be Muslim.

First, it will do nothing to keep Americans safe from terrorism. There are more than a billion Muslims on planet Earth. Being Muslim doesnt convey any useful information about whether someone is a terrorist. Our energies would be better spent identifying actual terrorists rather than excluding their victims.

Second, those fleeing persecution at the hands of radical jihadists are precisely the people most likely to turn against murderous perversions of their own religion. These are Muslims who the United States should be supporting and encouraging rather than turning away.

Third, singling out Muslims for special indifference alienates our allies in the war on terrorism. They are rightly horrified at Americas actions, which makes cooperation with them more difficult. This hinders the fight against terrorism.

Fourth, it encourages the belief in the Arab world that America hates Muslims and is indifferent to their suffering. This is precisely the message that radical Islamic terrorists use to recruit their next generation of jihadists.

Finally, singling out any group of persecuted people for official indifference on the basis of religion violates Americas deepest traditions of religious freedom and equality. We have no established or preferred church. Rather, we are a nation created for those fleeing the pernicious idea that the state should play favorites among religious believers. Trump has called on the nation to reject that tradition.

We should not listen.
Trump, Iran, and Stability in the Middle East

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MADRID  It is unfortunate that so few international agreements have been reached in recent years. During a period when great-power competition has generally trumped cooperation, two significant exceptions  the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement  offer hope that formalized, multilateral responses to global challenges are still possible.

But now Donald Trump is threatening to renege on both agreements, and his election as President of the United States has revealed their fragility. If the US withdraws from, or fails to comply with, either deal, it will strike a heavy blow to a global-governance system that relies on multilateral agreements to resolve international problems.

To see what is at stake, consider the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the E3/EU3+3 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany and the European Union). The JCPOAs first anniversary coincided with Trumps inauguration, so it is worth recalling how it came about  and what could happen if it falls apart.

Europeans first made contact with Iran about the issue back in 2003, when they negotiated with then-Secretary of the Iranian National Security Council, Hassan Rouhani. Both sides even reached an agreement in 2004; but it did not last long. In 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejads election as President of Iran marked a turning point. While the negotiations officially continued, scant progress was made. Meanwhile, Irans nuclear program advanced rapidly, even as its people suffered under heavy economic sanctions.

Rouhani won Irans presidential election in 2013. When he had negotiated with European diplomats in 2003, Iran had a modest nuclear program, and could enrich uranium only with great difficulty. Ten years later, it had installed thousands of centrifuges. Fortunately, tireless diplomatic efforts during the two years following Rouhanis election culminated in the JCPOA.

Of course, there were vocal critics in the US who did not welcome the agreement, or the prospect of negotiating with Iran at all. And other countries in the Middle East feared that the agreement would alter the regional balance of power and damage their own interests.

Opponents of the deal offered three main reasons for rejecting it: Iran could never be trusted to fulfill its commitments; the agreement would unacceptably elevate Irans regional status; and Iran did not deserve the time of day.

In the year since the JCPOA was implemented, has Iran fulfilled its commitments? The International Atomic Energy Agency says that it has. Iran has allowed the IAEA to inspect every site that the agency has requested to see  including those from which it was barred before the agreement  and has granted inspectors access to its electronic systems and chain of enrichment.

The IAEA insists that no country has ever been more closely monitored. As the International Crisis Group points out, Trump is the first US president in more than two decades who enters office not needing to worry about Iran crossing the threshold to nuclear weaponization undetected.

To be sure, many of us had hoped that the agreement would noticeably improve Irans relations with its neighbors and the US, and that has not happened. The agreement created a diplomatic window to stabilize the region, but that opportunity was squandered. The wars in Syria and Yemen have continued, rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran seems unlikely any time soon, and Russia is visibly asserting itself in the region.

But the blame does not rest with the JCPOA, which was negotiated as a delimited non-proliferation agreement. Taking regional diplomacy any further at that time would have been impossible. But, given the new period of uncertainty under Trump, the European negotiating parties should now assume responsibility for maintaining the JCPOA, and they should urgently propose an initiative to increase stability in the region.

Russia and Turkey convened a meeting in Kazakhstan this month for Syrian rebel groups and the Syrian government to begin peace talks. This effort should be expanded to include other parties, and be used as a first step toward building regional trust. All stakeholders will benefit from putting their energy into peacemaking instead of attacking the Iran agreement.

It is chilling to imagine the current situation without the JCPOA. Troubled Saudi Arabia would like to end its military intervention in Yemen, but that is no easy feat. Iran is commencing a presidential election campaign, while reeling from the death of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the architects of the Islamic Republic. Turkey is seeking an outcome to the Syrian conflict that aligns with its own policy toward the Kurds.

Russia needs to withdraw its troops from Syria  an intervention that has been bleeding its economy. And the EU still needs to resolve the refugee crisis, in a context of regional stability.

Trump should think seriously about Americas interests, and those of the region. If he does, he will realize that the alternative to contributing to regional stability is to risk an even greater nightmare.
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RICHMOND  A bill to prohibit Virginia law enforcement agencies from quickly identifying officers involving in shootings passed a House of Delegates committee Thursday on an 11-8 vote.

The bill, which could make it a crime to identity an officer before six months have passed since a shooting or an investigation is completed, cleared the House General Laws Committee and now heads to the floor for a full vote. Two Republicans and six Democrats opposed the bill in the GOP-controlled committee.

The legislation, pitched as a way to protect police officers and their families during tense times, is supported by rank-and-file law enforcement groups. It has drawn opposition from transparency advocates and the NAACP, who fear it could erode trust and block local police chiefs from handling situations as they see fit.

We know that local law enforcement at that level has an opportunity to make the right decision, said Robert Barnette of the NAACP Virginia State Conference.

Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia, said she was disappointed to see no department leaders at the hearing standing up for their ability to swiftly communicate with the public.

There is a disconnect between the way the line officers perceive it and the way the management of the departments do, Gastanaga said.

Del. Jackson Miller, R-Manassas, the bills sponsor, acknowledged that police chiefs may not be fully supportive.

But you do have all the organizations that represent the men and women that work the streets, Miller said. Because they understand that their family could be the one that receives retribution from an angry public if misinformation is put out.

Some opponents of the bill have suggested it could lead to absurdities where an officers name is widely known but no public official could comment under threat of being found guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor, which can bring up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

One such flaw seemed to be identified and corrected Thursday after Del. Todd Gilbert, R-Shenandoah, confirmed with staff that the law would also bar the officer who pulled the trigger from going public with their side of the story.

What if an officer wanted to be proactive about defending himself or herself in the media following a shooting in which they felt they were justified? Gilbert asked.

Language will be added to the bill to specify that it doesnt apply to the officer involved.

Miller said police departments would still be free to communicate specifics of how a shooting unfolded.

Its a name. Thats it, Miller said. Every single detail of an incident can still be put out to the public. Except a name.
RICHMOND, Va.  Democrats' plans for a well-ordered march to the Virginia governor's election this fall are being redrawn on the fly.

The unexpected decision of former congressman Tom Perriello to challenge Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam for the Democratic nomination upended more than a year's worth of preparation to take on the Republicans. The primary battle disrupts the plan to roll out a statewide coordinated campaign for candidates up and down the ticket, causing grumbling around the state Capitol and raising fear that Democrats are losing an advantage in a race of unusual political significance.

The party is well aware the whole country is watching Virginia after the dramatic presidential election. As the only state with both a governor's race and the whole House of Delegates running this fall, Democrats nationwide view it as a crucial offensive against President Trump. As Jesse Ferguson, a former aide to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, put it in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The resistance starts in Richmond."

In the original vision, Northam's big war chest - about $2.5 million on hand, the most of any candidate - would have provided a huge head start on a crowded Republican field. National donors would already be lining up for a statewide push.

Instead, Northam's funds will have to pay for the fight against Perriello - a promising, attractive politician who many in the party like. National donors will probably stay on the sidelines until a single candidate emerges in the June primary, and the candidates will focus on areas of biggest Democratic turnout, such as Northern Virginia.

"For a whole lot of people I know, it's kind of an uncomfortable situation," said state Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, who was the party's nominee for governor in 2009 and who represents some of Perriello's relatives outside Charlottesville. "People are already committed to Ralph, but they like Tom. I like Tom. ... But I'm not wavering in my support of Ralph."

With Republicans firmly in control of the state legislature, the pressure is high for Democrats to hang onto the executive mansion. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, D, delivered Virginia as the only Southern state to go for Clinton but is prohibited by the state constitution from serving a second consecutive term.

Republicans have a four-way race on their hands for the nomination but went into the year planning for a wide-open contest. Democrats woke up to the Perriello news on Jan. 5, and Northam's campaign - which is backed by McAuliffe and the vast majority of other elected Democrats - has been regrouping ever since.

"To me, the worst thing you could do is overreact," said state Sen. Chapman "Chap" Petersen, D-Fairfax, a longtime Northam ally. "You need to have your own plan and stick to it."

Northam, 57, was elected lieutenant governor in 2013 after serving in the state Senate since 2008, representing the Eastern Shore. He checks off a lot of boxes for a Democratic candidate - he's a retired Army major who favors gun control and a pediatric neurologist who gets high ratings from women's health advocates.

Still, Northam surprised many Senate colleagues when he ran for higher office - his muted, country-doctor demeanor does not always translate well to large groups. But he built strong loyalty in the state Capitol and with McAuliffe, and his status as lieutenant governor positioned him as the Democrats' standard-bearer for this year's gubernatorial race.

The party had hoped to present a united front - no Democrat has won the governor's seat in recent years after going through a primary battle, as opposed to being nominated in a convention and saving resources for the general election.

"We've had to make a couple modifications" to the campaign, Northam acknowledged in an interview. Before, he said, "we were focused on the general election in November."

But he played down the consequences of having to gear up for a primary fight. It will not change his message, he said, and it will draw more attention to the party earlier in the year.

Other Democrats expressed anger at Perriello. A former one-term congressman from Charlottesville, Perriello, 42, became close with former president Barack Obama and served several diplomatic roles for that administration. He is a formidable opponent for Northam, energetic and capable of tapping populist zeal - but his timing stung.

"We could be in a different situation if we had just had some advance notice that we were going to be in the middle of a primary," said one Democratic official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal party affairs. Northam's organizers "have had to totally reevaluate their campaign plan generally," the official said.

That hitch is "to the detriment of every other Democrat who is on the ballot this year" because it delays the broader coordinated campaign, the official said.

Northam has heard some of the grumbling about the delay in the coordinated campaign, but said the legwork he has done over the past few years should stand him in good stead with the rest of the Democratic ticket.

"I counted up. I've done over 180 appearances over the last year for delegates, for senators, for local folks that are running in elections," he said. "So we've been doing a lot of grass-roots work, traveling around. I've put over 100,000 miles on our Prius in the last two years. So we've helped a lot of people. I've got unwavering support from folks across the commonwealth."

Perriello makes no apologies for entering the race. He has said the timing was determined by when he stepped down from his diplomatic job in late December, because the Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from participating in politics.

Whether Democrats were right to hope for an orderly coronation of Northam remains to be seen, he said in a recent interview. "Everyone's going to have to make their own decision on that," Perriello said. "The things that I hear from Democratic voters across the state is, one, most of them didn't know that a governor's race had even started; and two, that they feel like it should be the voters in the party who decide who the nominee should be."

Now that the shock of his announcement has subsided, some Democrats say the primary could be a good thing. U.S. Rep. Gerald Connolly, one of the few elected Democrats who has yet to endorse a candidate, said competition is always better.

"The Democratic political establishment in Virginia had decided two years ago that this was done, put a fork in it, we've decided there will be no contest, and we can all start planning for the general election in November," he said. "This will be a real test of that establishment and of Ralph's campaign itself. Can you quickly repivot to this challenge and use it as an opportunity to really put yourself on fighting terms in November? Or are we going to see machinery that's kind of rusty and lying in a dusty field somewhere because you weren't anticipating any challenge?"

The primary race will at least give the candidates a chance to introduce themselves to voters, who hardly know them at all. Recent polls have indicated that the overwhelming majority of Virginia voters have no opinion about any of the candidates in the race.

And while national donors may wait out the nominating contest, few doubt that they will show up en masse once there is a nominee.

Virginia "was going to be a top investment, and it will continue to be a top investment," said Jared Leopold, spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, which funds races nationwide.

The other advantage of a primary is that it will generate lots of data about voters. Virginia holds open primaries, meaning voters do not have to be a party member to cast their ballot. If only one party holds a primary, anyone can help select the nominee.

But voting in two primaries is prohibited, so Republicans and Democrats alike will see where their most committed voters are in the June races. That will help the nominees know where to concentrate their efforts in November.

Northam supporters say he has an edge over Perriello for the nomination because of his lengthy preparations.

"Ralph has lined up the community leaders. At the end of the day in a primary, having key people with deep roots in the community who are willing to mobilize their networks to support you will matter," said state Sen. Barbara Favola, D-Arlington, another Northam ally from his time as a senator.

And if Perriello is counting on whipping up a Bernie Sanders-like outsider campaign, the timing of the June primary could be a liability. A lot of Sanders's support came from college students, and "those folks are not going to be on campus in June," Petersen said.

At some point, Petersen said, Perriello and Northam will have to go negative against one another. That is a little hard to envision - Perriello calls Northam a "great lieutenant governor," and Northam has not shown a nasty streak. In fact, Northam said he and Perriello have promised each other to keep things positive.

The first order of business, though, is simply getting out in front of voters. There, Northam has a potential handicap compared with Perriello, who has been barnstorming around vote-rich Northern Virginia.

As lieutenant governor, Northam must preside over the state Senate every day. And until the General Assembly wraps up its session on Feb. 25, he is barred by state law from fundraising.

Northam says he does not worry about being stuck in Richmond while Perriello travels the state. "I don't look at that as a disadvantage," he said.

Clark Mercer, Northam's chief of staff, said the first straw poll of the campaign was two weeks ago in Fairfax County, and Northam won handily. "The lieutenant governor won, I think, 130 to 20," Mercer said. "Every supervisor in Fairfax that has a D next to their name, the lieutenant governor's done an event for."

"The exact number," Northam interrupted, "was 121 to 20."

Northam has made some weekend trips, such as participating in the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21.

And in some ways, the state comes to him.

His staff said he attends more than a dozen events a day during the legislative session, appearing at Richmond rallies for gun control, women's health and in support of the Affordable Care Act - each time addressing crowds from all over Virginia. And every day, the Senate opens with greetings to visitors in the gallery from various members' districts, giving Northam a chance to deliver personal messages.

One recent day he was able to greet 4-H clubs from far corners of rural Virginia ("I've been through there many times and always enjoy visiting," he said about Wythe County), leaders of the Precast Concrete Association and a group from the Virginia Society of CPAs ("We need to have a competitive tax code with other states in order to attract business to Virginia," he told them).

At that moment, though, Perriello was campaigning at a health-care center in Falls Church, after he had already taken doughnuts to a fire station in Fairfax County and then visited a brewery, part of a grueling schedule of hitting all nine of the county's magisterial districts in one day.

Perriello also was in the crowd - and on TV - last weekend at Dulles International Airport with demonstrators angered by Trump's executive order restricting Muslim travelers. Northam, committed to events in the Richmond area, responded from afar - tweeting out a sober video of himself alone at a podium, reading a statement of protest that was retweeted 35 times.
RICHMOND  State lawmakers swatted down a proposal Thursday that would have closed a major gap in oversight exposed by the death of inmate Jamycheal Mitchell at Hampton Roads Regional Jail.

No single state agency currently investigates deaths in Virginias local and regional jails. Unless its obvious a crime has been committed, jails largely police themselves and arent required to release their internal investigations to the public.

A hallmark piece of the legislation from the bipartisan joint commission studying mental health care reform in Virginia would have funded two investigators to review deaths in jails. It also would have removed the current members of the Board of Corrections, a citizen panel appointed by the governor, and replaced them with nine experts who were willing and able to oversee death investigations.

The two investigators and the added responsibility would have cost Virginia $200,000 in the upcoming fiscal year and $275,000 each year thereafter  a minuscule sum compared with the states two-year, $105 billion budget, said Brian Moran, Virginias secretary of public safety and homeland security, who spoke Thursday afternoon on behalf of Gov. Terry McAuliffes administration.

Its a disappointment, Moran said. This is an important expenditure. The tragedy that occurred in Hampton Roads Regional Jail needs to be addressed.

But Del. Christopher Peace, R-Hanover, said that other priorities need to be funded first  such as raises for Virginia State Police officers  in this tight budget year.

We dont have the money, said Peace, who made the motion that killed the bill in a meeting of the House Appropriations public safety subcommittee Thursday morning. Thats the main thing right now. And what Im saying is, even though we dont have the money to fund these specific recommendations, theres nothing that would prevent the state police, the office of the inspector general or the Board of Corrections from directing investigations of these suspicious deaths or complications from mental health issues.

Moran and Del. Rob Bell, R-Albemarle, who carried the legislation in the House of Delegates, said none of the three options Peace outlined is viable. All three were studied by the joint subcommittee studying mental health reform.

State police only conduct criminal investigations, not administrative reviews of policies and procedures, Moran and Bell said. Most of the deaths in local and regional jails dont rise to the level of needing a criminal investigation, but they warrant a review, they said.

The Office of the State Inspector General has refused to take on the responsibility, Bell and Peace said. But Peace said McAuliffe could force the agency to conduct jail death investigations.

Bell expressed frustration at the inspector generals office, which initially was assumed to be responsible for jail death reviews as the states top watchdog. The office reviews deaths at state mental hospitals.

But state Inspector General June Jennings maintained after Mitchells death that her office lacked the authority to get records from jail officials. The office conducted a review that was roundly criticized by lawmakers and Jennings own employees for not getting to the bottom of how Mitchell, a mentally ill 24-year-old, wasted away under nearly constant supervision.

You could make an argument that it is the inspector generals job, Bell said. All I know is they didnt do it, they dont want to do it, and theyre continuing to maintain that unless we change things, they wont do it.

Jennings said in an email Thursday that her employees would indeed take on the responsibility if the General Assembly decided to give it to them, but her office would need additional resources.

Bell said lawmakers decided it would be best not to turn to an agency that didnt want the responsibility, so they began to look elsewhere. Thats when they started considering the Board of Corrections.

Peace said the Board of Corrections could make jail death investigations a priority without the funding requested by Bell.

Theres a healthy skepticism at least from the budget folks that believes there are existing resources within many state agencies and that they need to take a look at that first, Peace said.

The Board of Corrections is not a state agency and it does not have any staff members. The Virginia Department of Corrections, which is a state agency with staff members, oversees prisons but not jails.

Another one of Bells bills requesting $4.2 million for mental health screening of inmates in jails also failed to advance on Thursday, but Bell said he believes it can be accomplished without the money.
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Did you know that sloths are able to spend most of their time hanging upside down from tree branches because their internal organs are attached to their rib cages to keep them from weighing down their lungs, permitting them to breathe easily? Anyway, here are this weekend's subway changes.

South Ferry-bound 1 trains will make express stops from 34 St-Penn Station to Chambers St from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday.

Flatbush Av-Brooklyn College bound 2 trains will make express stops from 34 St-Penn Station to Chambers St from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 6:30 a.m. Sunday, and again from 11:45 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Also on that track, trains will run express from Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr to Franklin Av. from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday.

3 trains will operate to/from New Lots Av from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. Trains on the New Lots Av-bound track will run express from Atlantic Av-Barclays Ctr to Franklin Av from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday.

All 4 trains will make local stops from 125 St to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. Trains will not run at all between New Lots Av/Utica Av and Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall during that time. On the Woodlawn-bound track, trains will run express from 149 St-Grand Concourse to Burnside Av from 3:45 a.m. Saturday to 10 p.m. Sunday. All trains will run every 16 minutes between Woodlawn and 125 St, with some Woodlawn-bound trains terminating at 125 St; this change is in effect from 7:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, and from 9:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday.

5 trains will not run at all between Bowling Green and Grand Central-42 St, with that change in effect from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday.

Main St-bound 7 trains will run express from Queensboro Plaza to 74 St-Broadway, starting at 3:45 a.m. Saturday and ending at 10 p.m. Sunday.

All A trains will reroute along the F line between W 4 St-Wash Sq and Jay St-MetroTech from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. Brooklyn-bound A trains will stop at 163 St and 155 St from 12:01 a.m. Saturday to 5 a.m. Monday.

All C trains will reroute along the F line from W 4 St-Wash Sq to Jay St-MetroTech from 6:30 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.

World Trade Center-bound E trains will run express from Forest Hills-71 Av to Queens Plaza from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 7 a.m. Sunday, and again from 11:45 p.m. Sunday to 5 a.m. Monday. Trains on that track skip Briarwood and 75 Av from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday.

F trains will not run at all between Coney Island-Stillwell Av and Church Av from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. Coney Island-Stillwell Av bound trains will skip Sutphin Blvd, Briarwood, and 75 Av from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday, as well as 23 St and 14 St.

L trains will not run at all between 8 Av and 14 St-Union Sq from 11:45 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday.

Astoria-Ditmars Blvd bound N trains will run express from Queensboro Plaza to Astoria-Blvd, with that change in effect from 6:45 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday.

Manhattan-bound R trains run express from 71 Av to Queens Plaza from 6:30 a.m. to midnight on Saturday and Sunday.
On Friday night, a timely edition of MOFAD @ Night will spark conversation around immigration, cultural identity, and what it means to be American through an exhibit called Chow: Making the Chinese American Restaurant. The exhibit features a Tofu with Crab Sauce tasting designed by Chef Jeremiah Stone (Contra / Wildair), a live fortune cookie machine demo, and a collection of beautiful artifacts. In addition to the snacks and hands-on education, the $20 ticket will also cover two drinks. Doors open at 6 p.m., last call at 7:45.

On Saturday night, top Upper East Side chefs will square off at Art of Food, a tasting event that challenges chefs to create dishes inspired by Sothebys-curated art. The event, in its second year now, is hosted by Food Network star and celebrity chef Geoffrey Zakarian and his wife Margaret Zakarian, the president of Zakarian Hospitality. For $185, a VIP ticketthe only one still availablegets you early entry, access to a VIP bar and lounge, plus unlimited food, wine and spirits.

Here at Gothamist, we dont subscribe to the dominant social narrative that ice cream is not a wintertime dessert. Join the rebellion by heading to Oddfellows Ice Cream Co. on Saturday afternoon for an Ice Cream Social to benefit Alzheimer's patients. From 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., the parlor will donate 10% of their sales to CaringKind, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting and supporting those with Alzheimer's and related dementias. And the cherry on top (sorry): free topping station all afternoon!
Cllr Allen Cowles.

COUNCIL opposition leader Allen Cowles called for Rotherham to be a pilot town for compulsory ID at voting stations.

The Government will run trials in 18 areas next May, requiring voters to produce a passport or driving licence to reduce voter fraud.

Cllr Cowles put forward a motion at last weeks council meeting for Rotherham to be part of the pilot.

The UKIP group leader said: Electoral fraud measures prevent a crime which threatens the UKs democratic system and there are few barriers to potential fraud in England.

These proposals simply asked that photo ID or other form of identification be presented at a polling booth before you can cast your vote.

This happens in many other countries. What are Labour really afraid of?

Cllr Bob Walsh, Labour, said he agreed with the principle - but could not support it while there was no proper national ID database.

Party colleague Cllr Wendy Cooksey said she suspected the move would be more about discouraging low income voters than cutting election fraud.

Leader Cllr Chris Read said there had been no reports from RMBCs electoral services from anyone who found themselves unable to vote in the past ten years.

Cllr Emma Hoddinott said some people might miss out if they voted on their way home from work and forget their ID.

Cllr Cowles said: This was the best response in opposition to the motion. Forgive me but in this country, polling stations are local, most people live within a very short distance of their local polling station.

If you forget your identification, it does not require a flight to go and get it.

The ID scheme could be rolled out nationwide following next years pilot.
Kimberley Diamonds is raising more than A$4-million through a non-renounceable pro-rata rights issue to fund operations at its Lerala diamond mine, in Botswana and repay some existing loans.

The rights issue will close on February 15.

Eligible shareholders would be allowed to purchase one new share for every existing Kimberley share held, with the shares to be priced at 2c each.

Kimberley Diamonds had raised additional debt of A$ 2.9 million since 1 October 2016, and repaid A$ 1.0 million debt.

It also had a total debt of A$ 22.6 million as at 1 December 2016.

The Lerala Mine comprises five diamond bearing kimberlite pipes and an existing diamond processing plant that had been recommissioned, with Lerala restarting diamond processing operations in April 2016.

Lerala produced 9,338 carats last November.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




The pace of decline in Switzerlands global watch exports slowed in December as Chinese orders grew and shipments to the U.S. recorded their best month of the year.

Total exports fell 4.6 percent to $1.66 billion (CHF 1.66 billion), one of the shallowest drops of the year, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. The improvement came about even as the number of working days in December was one less than in 2015.

Shipments to China jumped 28 percent to $139.9 million (CHF 139.6 million) as a resurgence that started in the summer continued, while U.S. orders grew 11 percent to $179.5 million (CHF 179.1 million).

The global result was nonetheless dragged down by a 16 percent slump in exports to Hong Kong to $209.3 million (CHF 208.9 million). The slump was, however, less steep than Hong Kongs 25 percent plunge during 2016.

Full-year total exports slumped 10 percent to $19.45 billion (CHF 19.41 billion). Exports to the U.S. slid 9 percent and Chinese orders slipped 3.3 percent.




The Chairman of The Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), Praveenshankar Pandya has said in a press statement that the Union Budget 2017-18 presented on 1 Feb 2017 by Hon. Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley is a progressive and transformational budget that will take India to the next phase of socio-economic growth and signifies that the Government is moving towards a policy and system based administration; towards transparency and objectivity in decision making; towards targeted delivery; and a formal economy.

Among the several positive takeaways for the industry were the focus on export infrastructure; Trade Infrastructure for Export Scheme (TIES) to be launched in 2017-18; the reduction in income tax for smaller companies with annual turnover up to Rs. 500 million to 25%; setting up of 100 International Skill Centres; prohibition of cash transaction more than Rs. 300,000; and strong steps to penalize willful defaulters of loans to banks.

However, according to Pandya, there were some areas with regard to ease of doing business that still remain to be addressed in the case of the gems and jewellery sector. These included investment in infrastructure like Jewellery Parks all over India; encouragement to international trading to make India a global trading hub for diamonds and precious stones that will also give a boost to local manufacturing; schemes for furthering employment generation in both domestic and export sector of gems and jewellery; encouragement to more gem and jewellery export entrepreneurs as part of Start Up India; minimal rate of duty on export of diamond under the Goods and Services Tax regime based on the equivalence principle; permission for sale and specific exemption on taxation of income from sale of rough diamonds at the Special Notified Zone (SNZ) and introduction of presumptive taxation and abolition of the Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) for gem and jewellery exporters.

Aruna Gaitonde, Editor-in-Chief of Asian Bureau, Rough & Polished






ALROSA converts company vehicles and equipment to natural gas

03 february 2017 News

The Mirny and Aikhal mining divisions of ALROSA received another seven natural gas vehicles made in Russia - three KAMAZ trucks and four NefAZ passenger buses. The motor column trip along the winter road from Ust-Kut to Mirny proceeded in normal mode. The new vehicles will start operating in the coming days.

The conversion of motor vehicles employed by ALROSA to natural gas is one of the main stages in the miners Program for Innovative Development and Technological Modernization, the purpose of which is to reduce operating costs and environmental burden, as well improve safety.

The study of toxicity produced by gas-engine powered vehicles showed that emissions of toxic substances by such vehicles into the environment is significantly lower compared with diesel and gasoline engines. It is expected that the conversion of the companys vehicles and equipment to natural gas will permit to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2023. Natural gas is the safest motor fuel. It is attributed to the fourth fuel grade, which is the safest.

"The safety of vehicles using natural gas is complete. All the vehicles have special equipment detecting leaking gas, if there is any. Methane is lighter than air and in open space it immediately rises into the air without forming dangerous concentrations. All the companys motor vehicle storage buildings are well ventilated and equipped with appropriate alarm and ventilation systems," said Sergey Patsiansky, the chief of the Mirny Mining Division motor pool.






Epiris announced it has agreed the sale of Audiotonix, a manufacturer of audio mixing consoles, to Astorg, a European private equity firm. Electra Private Equity PLC (ELTA.L) is expected to receive proceeds from the sale of 203 million pounds.

Audiotonix specializes in the design and manufacture of audio mixing consoles for live events and broadcast sound. Its three premium brands (Allen & Heath, Calrec and DiGiCo) support live sound for a variety of purposes such as concerts, TV broadcasting, theatre shows and major international live events.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Homeserve Plc (HSV.L) announced it has acquired shareholdings in Checkatrade in the UK and Habitissimo in Spain, two separate businesses that provide access to tradespeople performing home repairs and improvements via online platforms. The combined consideration for these two acquisitions was 37 million pounds.

Checkatrade, based in Selsey, provides online directory of customer recommended tradespeople with nearly 1 million customer visits a month, resulting in approximately 1.3 million jobs per annum. HomeServe has acquired a 40 percent interest in the with an option to increase its position by a further 35 percent in two years.



Habitissimo is an international online business that provides support for home improvements and repairs, connecting homeowners to trusted local tradespeople. Based in Mallorca (Spain), Habitissimo receives over 3.6 million customer visits a month, resulting in approximately 0.25 million jobs per annum across nine countries in Europe and Latin America. HomeServe has acquired a 70 percent interest in the business with an option to increase its position by a further 30 percent in either four or five years' time.

HomeServe said the Group is trading in line with management's expectations and expects to deliver good growth in the year ending 31 March 2017. The next scheduled trading update is 6 April 2017.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
Sweden's industrial production declined for the third consecutive month in December, defying economists' forecast for an increase, preliminary figures from Statistics Sweden showed Friday.

Industrial production dropped a calendar-adjusted 0.9 percent year-over-year in December, faster than November's 0.1 percent slight decrease. Meanwhile, economists had expected a 2.7 percent rise for the month.

Among sectors, the strongest decrease came from the manufacture of industry for other transport equipment, by 10.9 percent. At the same time, the industry for basic metals registered a notable growth of 11.4 percent.

Month-on-month, industrial production fell a seasonally adjusted 1.8 percent from November, when it increased by 1.1 percent. In contrast, it was expected to rise by 0.5 percent.

For the whole year 2016, total industrial production advanced 1.8 percent as compared to 2015.

Another report from the statistical office showed that orders for industry gained 4.7 percent yearly in December, reversing a 2.8 percent decline in the prior month. Monthly, orders rebounded 0.5 percent from November, when it slid by 0.5 percent.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
President Donald Trump has promised to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment which deprives pastors who endorse candidates of their tax-exempt status.

Under the 1954 legislation named after Lyndon Johnson, churches, charities and other non-profit organizations are prohibited from taking a position with respect to political candidates, and participating in any political campaign.

Those who violate the rule will not be eligible for tax-exemption.

Speaking at National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Hilton Thursday, the President said he will get rid of, and totally destroy, the Johnson Amendment and "allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution."

Trump doesn't have the power to abolish the amendment, which would require action by Congress.

Trump, who received support from evangelical Christians for his White House win, declared that religious freedom is under threat in the United States. He vowed that his administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in the US. "America must forever remain a tolerant society where all faiths are respected, and where all of our citizens can feel safe and secure," he added.

On a different note, Trump reminded that the world is under serious threat in so many different ways. "We're going to straighten it out. When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. It's time we're going to be a little tough, folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen anymore," he told the prayer meeting.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
The new U.S. President warned that he doesn't rule out a military attack targeting Iran.

Donald Trump's comment on Iran was before the meeting with Harley-Davidson Executives and Union Representatives at the White House Thursday.

To a question, if a military action is off the table in Iran, he replied: Nothing is off the table.

It comes a day after the United States put Iran "on notice" for test-firing a ballistic missile and carrying out a deadly attack on a Saudi warship in the Red Sea. It consolidates a change of course by the new U.S. administration towards Tehran after an improvement in ties achieved by the Obama Government.

And in a fresh tweet Friday, Trump followed up with another anti-Tehran rhetoric: "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!"

Answering another question at the White House Thursday, Trump refuted reports that his government has eased sanctions against Russia. The question was raised by a reporter in an apparent reference to the Treasury Department statement that it has amended the previous government's recent sanctions to allow U.S. companies to export products to Russia.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Americans are sharply divided along party lines over President Donald Trump's recent ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, according to the results of a new CBS News poll.

Fifty-one percent of Americans said they disapprove of the travel ban announced last Friday, while 45 percent approve.

The poll showed a stark partisan divide on the issue, as 85 percent of Republicans approve of the move but an identical 85 percent of Democrats disapprove.

Trump has repeatedly defended the executive order as part of an effort to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the country.

Thirty-six percent of Americans said the ban will make the U.S. safer from terrorism, although just as many said it makes the U.S. less safe from terrorism. Twenty-two percent said it will have no effect.

The survey also found that 40 percent of Americans approve of Trump's performance as president thus far, while 48 percent disapprove.

CBS News noted the percentage that approve is the lowest of any president just after his first inauguration since the Gallup began taking those measures in 1953.

The poll of 1,019 adults was conducted February 1st and 2nd and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

(Photo: Gage Skidmore)

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Political News
Gold futures were flat Friday, preserving its best weekly gain since June.

April gold settled up $1.40, or 0.1%, at $1,220.80 an ounce, for a weekly gain of about 2.6%.

Geopolitical tensions including saber-rattling between the U.S. and Iran raised gold's safe haven appeal.

In retaliation for a recent ballistic missile test, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed a new wave of sanctions against Iran.

President Donald Trump indicated he would not be as kind to Iran as his predecessor.

"Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump said in a post on Twitter early Friday.

An encouraging U.S. jobs report put a cap on gold's rally.

The U.S. generated 227,000 new jobs in January to mark the biggest gain in four months, the Labor Department said this morning. The unemployment rate rose to 4.8% as more Americans were looking for work.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
Crude oil futures were slightly higher Friday morning amid mounting tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

Traders also considered the tug of war between OPEC and non-OPEC nations regarding the global supply glut.

March U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures settled 29 cents higher at $53.83 a barrel. The contract was up about 1 percent for the week.

In retaliation for a recent ballistic missile test, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed a new wave of sanctions against Iran.

President Donald Trump indicated he would not be as kind to Iran as his predecessor.

"Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump said in a post on Twitter early Friday.

Meanwhile, U.S. energy companies continued to ramp up production.

Baker Hughes said the U.S. rig count jumped for the 13th week in 14. Drillers added 17 rigs to 583, the most since October 2015.

In economic news, the U.S. generated 227,000 new jobs in January to mark the biggest gain in four months, the Labor Department said this morning. The unemployment rate rose to 4.8% as more Americans were looking for work.

Hourly wages rose 0.1% to $26 an hour. Over the past 12 months wages have climbed 2.5%, a solid increase after years of stagnant wages.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Market Analysis
About Me

I am a retired professor. I last taught at Ewha Womans University, mostly composition, research writing, and cultural issues, but also the occasional graduate seminar on Gnosticism and Johannine theology and the occasional undergraduate course on European history. My doctorate is in history (U.C. Berkeley), with emphasis on religion and science. My thesis is on John's gospel and Gnosticism. I'm also an award-winning writer, and I recommend my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, to anyone interested. I'm originally from the Arkansas Ozarks, but my academic career -- funded through doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships (e.g., Fulbright, Naumann, Lady Davis) -- has taken me through Texas, California, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, and Israel and has landed me in Seoul, South Korea. I've also traveled to Mexico, visited much of Europe, including Moscow, and touched down briefly in a few East Asian countries. Hence: "Gypsy Scholar."

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Yemen rejects attempt to link Yemeni resistance against aggression with U.S.-Saudi-Iran dispute







SANA'A, Feb. 02 (Saba)  The Republic of Yemen rejects any attempt to link between the national duties of the Yemeni army and popular forces in defending the country against Saudi-led aggression coalition and any U.S.-Saudi dispute with Iran, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said in a press statement received by Saba on Thursday.

In comment on the White House Wednesday statement about Irans latest missile test and attempts to link it with the Yemeni armys shelling against the enemy Saudi warship, the ministry said that such statement and other remarks made by senior officials at the U.S. administration contained false facts in an apparent and botched attempt to link Yemens self-defense and protection of its coasts and land against the Saudi aggression war with the U.S.-Iranian dispute. "



The attempts seek to find any justification for a number of international powers to intervene in the Red Sea and the Yemeni coasts and land, said the ministry.

The ministry expressed confidence that the new U.S. administration knowns well that the Republic of Yemen calls for peace, stability and supports all efforts to fight terrorism and financiers in the region and world and that Yemen is keen on the security and safety of the waterways and the navigation lines in the southern Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab Strait.



The ministry said that any attempt to impose a military intervention in the area will not work, making clear that the safety, security and stability of waterways are linking to immediate end to the Saudi-led aggression war and their all-out blockade against the Yemeni people.

It said that Yemen welcomes all peace efforts to achieve a political settlement and regain peace to the whole region.



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By SA Commercial Prop News - I-Net Bridge

Curro Holdings Ceo, Chris van der Merwe said stronger operational cash flows as well as existing bond and loan facilities were sufficient to fund the companys growth initiatives for the foreseeable future.



Interim results released by PSG-controlled private education venture Curro Holdings yesterday went some way to restoring the markets faith in its high growth proposition.

Curro, which is on target to operate 80 schools by 2020  rebounded 4% on the JSE yesterday following a 76% gain in its bottom line to 9c/share.

This followed more than a fortnight of share price weakness. Curro is one of the most expensive shares on the JSE, trading on a demanding historic earnings multiple of about 200 times.



Wayne McCurrie, senior portfolio manager at Momentum Asset Management, reckoned the Curro story was not that different to media conglomerate Naspers. In a high earnings multiple scenario you have to believe in the growth story.



He argued that Curros market rating seemed justified based on the large jump in interim earnings. The growth is off a low base, but if you assume earnings are doubling each year, then the valuation  is not that unrealistic.



In terms of sustaining growth, there is also some reassurance to be taken from the improving quality of Curros earnings measured by the conversion of profit into cash. In the interim period, net operating cash flow came in at R87m (or 29c/share), more than matching earnings before interest and tax of R69m.



Curro CEO Chris van der Merwe said stronger operational cash flows as well as existing bond and loan facilities were sufficient to fund the companys growth initiatives for the foreseeable future. Curro  which has held several rights issues to raise new capital since listing in 2011  is building 10 new schools this financial year, and has pencilled in an average of seven schools a year until 2020.



Dr van der Merwe said it was possible that Curro, which will have 43 schools at the start of next year, could surpass its official target of 80 schools by 2020.



Officially, well stick with the original target. But if we build 10 schools a year we will go past 80 schools  so there might come a time when we have to reconsider our targets.



Mr McCurrie believed that Curro was on a strong growth footing even though competition was inevitable in affordable private education.



Every time it becomes clear there is a high growth niche, it tends to attract new entrants.



Believe me, competitors will come and eventually slow Curros growth and restrict their margins. Although Curro  which has got a big head start on potential competitors  are probably safe for a couple of years yet, he said.



But more sceptical market commentators still question the markets optimistic rating  pointing out that as a fast-expanding entity there is development risk in Curro.



One commentator, who asked not be named, said that while noone could dispute that Curro was well positioned in a very sweet spot in education, it would be challenging to keep growing at a pace that justified the current market rating.



Doubling earnings off a low base is one thing but doing it every year might get more difficult  especially when annual earnings move up to the 40c/share to 50c/share.
Trinamool Congress MP on Friday protested against the Narendra Modi government in the Parliament House complex on Friday, alleging that it was indulging in "vendetta politics" in a probe into a chit fund scam.

Half an hour before parliament was to meet for the day, the Trinamool Congress members gathered near the statue of Mahatama Gandhi shouting slogans against the Centre.



They said the Centre was harassing Trinamool leaders because the Mamata Banerjee-led party raised its voice against Modi's demonetisation policy.



On Thursday also, the TMC members staged a walkout from Rajya Sabha levelling the same charges against the government.

They also alleged that the Central Bureau of Investigation was being misused by the government.



TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay was recently arrested in connection with an alleged chit fund scam of the Rose Valley company.
The Union Budget for 2017-18 was easily the most anticipated one in recent times. The public was seeking the government's policy stance after its bold attack on black money with demonetisation. On a related note, the market was also looking forward to the government's response to the demonetisation-induced slowdown.

The Economic Survey had also raised expectations of a radical move like Universal Basic Income (UBI). With a wide range of expectations tied to the Budget on a year when growth expectations were low, it was bound to have a few hits and misses.



Coming to the positive aspects, the Budget was high on decibels with its take on black money. It took the fight against black money and corruption to its very root by targeting the funding of political parties. The maximum amount of funding that parties can receive in cash has been reduced to Rs 2000. Besides political funding, the Budget targets big-time offenders that flee the country by proposing a new law to confiscate their assets till they submit to the jurisdiction of the appropriate legal forum. Finally, cash transactions, in general, have been limited to Rs 3 lakhs. The continuity in the government's anti-corruption stance after the widely debated demonetisation was necessary to take the attack on the stock of black money to its flow in the economy.



Secondly, a similar continuity in the governmentas stand was seen in the area of fiscal consolidation. The government has displayed an unwavering commitment to maintaining a stable fiscal regime since its first Budget for 2014-15, despite temptations to splurge in order to revive a slowing economy. The Budget promises to maintain a fiscal deficit of 3.2 percent of GDP in FY2018 and achieve the FRBM-recommended target of 3 percent in the following year.



This should send a positive signal to the credit rating agencies and attract funds from abroad, which is urgently required in an investment-starved Indian economy.

Third, as per market expectations, the government gave a push to capital expenditure that was needed to stimulate the slowing economy. According to our estimates, the government's capital expenditure saw an increase of 2.3 percent since the last Budget. Infrastructure witnessed a much-needed push with higher allocations to roads and highways than last year amounting to Rs 97,000 crore. Further capital expenditure was seen in the area of renewable energy with an allocation of Rs 3,000 for nuclear power alone. This fiscal stimulus should partly compensate for the lack of private investments in the economy.



Other positives in the Budget were seen in the gradual nudge towards digitalisation with duty exemptions on cashless transaction in PoS terminals and online rail booking.



Positive steps were also taken towards ensuring affordable housing. A housing coverage of 1 crore was promised under the Housing for All scheme. Further, 100 per cent rural electrification by 2018 was also promised. In another welcome move to encourage entrepreneurship, MSMEs were given tax reductions of 5 per cent.



The latter move should give a slight fillip to muted private investment sentiments in the country. However, that is one area where the Budget could have contributed more effectively. Private investment, which has been at its weakest in recent times and makes up two-thirds of the country's total investment, needs urgent revival. This was especially needed in the Budget, considering that economic growth is not expected to be high. Moreover, the government is limited by its promise to remain within the FRBM recommendation to replace private investment with public spending.



Higher private investment could have been achieved with a targeted strike on the rising stressed assets of banks. The acetwin balance sheet problem" highlighted by the Economic Survey is impeding the lending practices of over-leveraged banks and thus hurting new investment across the country. In fact, the Budget has allocated Rs10,000 crore for recapitalisation of banks in 2017-18, but the strategy has failed to improve the situation in the past. The government needs to take the Economic Survey's recommendation of the establishment of a Public Sector Asset Rehabilitation Agency or a similar institute that tackles the problem of stalled infrastructure projects. There is an urgent need to tackle the problem of NPAs head-on before the situation festers and stalls the overall economy in the process.



A second miss in the Budget was in the education and health sector. Since India has one of the lowest spending on health and education, more budgetary allocations are always welcome. However, as it often happens when the fiscal situation is tight, the two sectors were merely paid lip service. A few initiatives within the sector were taken up, but substantiated policy actions to improve the quality of institutions within the sector were lacking. It is high time the Indian government perceives such budgetary allocations as an investment rather than a cost to the exchequer.



All in all, the Budget aimed at fulfilling the heightened expectations that it had generated, especially with the government's take on black money. However, it is hoped that future government actions address the issues it has left wanting.



On an immediate basis, reviving private investment and dealing with the problem of NPAs need innovative policy redressal to renew the long-elusive Indian growth story.
Violence continued in the Nagaland capital on Thursday as a mob went on rampage, burning down several government properties and vandalised government vehicles in protest against Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang's refusal to meet their demand on local body polls.

Over a thousand tribesmen armed with spears and machetes took to the streets and set afire the old secretariat building which housed the offices of Kohima Municipal Council, Regional Transport Office and Nagaland State Disaster Management Authority and damaged government vehicles.



The tribal bodies were demanding the resignation of Zeliang's cabinet following the government's decision to hold local body elections in 12 towns across the state and the killing of two persons in the state following clashes between the police and the public at Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland on Tuesday night.



Naga People's Front legislator Neiphrezo Keditsu on Thursday submitted his resignation as Chairman of Nagaland State Mineral Development Corporation (NSMDC) Limited on moral ground since one of the person killed at Dimapur police firing happens to be from his own village.



"The situation is totally volatile. The mobs are on rampage. We are making all attempts to bring the situation under control," Nagaland Police Chief, L.L. Doungel told media.



Troopers of Assam Rifles have been deployed in Kohima to assist police to tackle the situation.



The tribal bodies vowed to continue with their protests till Chief Minister Zeliang steps down.



The state government has shut down internet and mobile data service to stop the spread of rumours through social networking sites, a government official said.



Zeliang, who said he is distressed by the unfortunate turn of events in the last few days, asserted he enjoys the full support of not only his party legislators -- the Naga People's Front and Independent legislators besides the BJP legislators and party have also reaffirmed their support.



On the demand of his government's resignation, Zeliang said: "Making unreasonable and unconstitutional demands such as asking the entire cabinet to tender resignation when the ministry have undisputed, unquestionable majority and support of the entire assembly, is simply unacceptable and non-negotiable."



Confirming the resignation of Keditsu "owing to immense pressure from various quarters" on moral ground, he said no other legislator has resigned.



Appealing to citizens not to indulge in senseless vandalism and arson destroying public properties and spreading fear and panic in the minds of peace-loving citizens, he said that the government had been lenient enough to give in to the demands of the agitators even though it was steadfastly abiding by the Constitution.



He also appealed to all social media users to be responsible and desist from spreading false, malicious rumours.



"Governments come and go, and people in authority change but public property, which belong to all of us, shall continue to belong to us and posterity. It would be sheer stupidity on our part to destroy our own property since it would be akin to cutting off our own limbs," said a statement from his office.



The tribal bodies have been opposing the Naga People's Front government's decision to hold the elections with 33 per cent women reservation, stating it infringes on the special rights for Nagaland guaranteed by Article 371 (A) of the constitution.
Patient care in over 700 government hospitals and dispensaries in Himachal Pradesh was again hit on Friday as more than 3,000 doctors went on strike for two hours.

owever, emergency services worked in the state's major hospitals.



The strike followed the Himachal Pradesh Medical Officers Association's call for mass casual leave for a day on January 23 over its demands, including safety of doctors and pay parity.



Patients at the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Shimla and the Rajendra Prasad Medical College at Tanda town in Kangra district were worst hit as even resident doctors joined the strike.



Association president J.N. Chauhan said they had already given a notice to the government over their strike.



"We met the Chief Minister recently and apprised him about demands. The government doesn't seem to be positive towards our demands. We have no option but to continue with the protest," he said.



Chauhan said the doctors would continue till February 12 and if the demands were not met, they would again go on a mass casual leave.

The association has claimed that a doctor after facing humiliation from politically connected people in a hospital in Una suffered a heart attack.



Congress legislator Bambar Thakur is also accused of misbehaving with a government doctor last December over issuing a differently-abled certificate.



Health and Family Welfare Minister Kaul Singh said the government was bringing a bill in the ensuing budget session to ensure safety of the doctors.



"We are going to make assault on the doctors on duty a non-bailable offence," he told media.
Busting an online fraud to the tune of Rs 3,700 crore, the Uttar Pradesh police have arrested three persons alleged to have duped nearly 6.5 lakh people through an online portal, police said on Thursday.

Busting one of the biggest internet frauds, the Special Task Force (STF) of Uttar Pradesh police arrested the trio of Anubhav Mittal, Sridhar Prasad and Mahesh Dayal from Sector 63 in Noida on Wednesday and seized nearly Rs 500 crore.



"The accused used to run a portal 'socialtrade.biz' under which an investor had to pay anything between Rs 5,750 to Rs 57,500 in the company's account to become the member and earn Rs 5 per click.



"Registered under the name of Ablaze Info Solutions Pvt Ltd. in Noida, they used to constantly change the portal's name. So far they defrauded over 6.5 lakh people collecting around Rs 3,700 crore," Superintendent of Police (Uttar Pradesh STF) Triveni Singh, told media.



Mittal, said to be the kingpin, holds a B.Tech degree and hails from Ghaziabad. Prasad is from Visakhapatnam and Dayal is from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.



Launched in August 2015, the portal offered four different packages' to the investors to earn money. After paying the money to the company, the investors were asked to like pages and click on the links they were sent.

"The company claimed it earned Rs 6 for every click and gave Rs 5 of it to the investors. However, the links sent by the company were fake," said the officer, adding police were looking for other people suspected to be involved in the fraud.



Besides seizing Rs 500 crore from a bank, police have seized various documents including the balance sheet of the company, list of directors and other officials and list of investors.



The STF has also informed the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Income Tax department and market regulator SEBI about the case.
The US President raised questions about whether the University of California should continue receiving federal funds after demonstrators at the Berkeley campus forced the cancellation of a speech by Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos.

"If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" Donald Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

The 33-year-old Yannopoulos is a vocal far-right supporter of Trump and self-proclaimed Internet troll. His comments have been criticized as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist.

He was forced to cancel a speech on Wednesday at UC-Berkeley when protests against his appearance turned violent.

Writing on his Facebook page, Yiannopoulos said he had been evacuated from the Berkeley campus when "violent leftist demonstrators" put up barricades, set fires and threw rocks and fireworks at the building's windows.

Hundreds of protesters gathered on Wednesday afternoon at Berkeley and some of them clashed with police.

Once Yiannopoulos's speech was cancelled, the gathering turned into a celebration with music and dancing as police looked on.

Yiannopoulos, a controversial British writer, works as an editor for Breitbart News, a media outlet run until last August by Steve Bannon, who is now the chief strategist for Trump at the White House.
The US government has said that Israel's construction of new settlements on occupied Palestinian land "may not be helpful" in achieving peace, a White House statement said.

Although it clarified that the Donald Trump administration has not taken an official position on the matter, Efe news reported.



"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace," said the White House in the statement on Thursday, admitting "construction of new settlements or expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."



The White House was responding to Israel's decision on Tuesday to build 3,600 new homes on Palestinian territory in the West Bank.



The new authorisation came a week after Tel Aviv had given the green light to building another 2,500 homes.



This was the first critical statement about Israel made by the new US administration, which had appeared to be adopting a much more favourable stance toward Israeli policies than former President Barack Obama.





In the statement, the White House said that - before adopting an official position on the matter - it hoped to be able to discuss the problem directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 15 when he visits Washington.



Since Trump took office on January 20, Israel has authorised construction of 5,500 homes in settlements on the West Bank and 566 in the Palestinian zone of East Jerusalem.



The UN Security Council in December 2016 - with the abstention of the US - approved a resolution urging Israel to halt all settlement expansion activity, but Trump, who at the time was President-elect, criticised that diplomatic move.



European nations such as Spain and France have "condemned" the recent Israeli decisions to increase the size of its settlements in the occupied territories, while the UN and the European Union have expressed "concern."



Palestine, meanwhile, has asked the UN Security Council to "take responsibility" and act to force Israel's compliance with the resolution.
A suburban Chicago doctor, Neil Sharma, has been convicted of receiving bribes in a deal that he claimed could provide the briber millions of dollars in business, according to federal prosecutors.

Sharma appeared on Thursday before federal Judge Frederick J. Kapala in Chicago and admitted that in 2015 he asked for and accepted bribes totalling $10,000 for sending patients to a company that provided skilled nursing services.



Sharma, 36, was the medical director of managed care services company that had a contract with Illinois to provide skilled nursing services to patients covered by two government health insurance programmes, Medicare for senior citizens and Medicaid the poor.





His company, in turn, made contracts with three other companies for the skilled nursing services.



The person who gave the bribe and the company the person worked for were not identified by the prosecutors.



Sharma admitted that the additional business he promised in exchange for the bribe would have brought in millions of dollars, according to the prosecution.
Bill Self, Kurtis Townsend won't be on sidelines for KU's first four games
It is their first Networking Event in Samoa and for this year they kick started with opportunities to connect and network with likeminded businesses, people, entrepreneurs and professional to discuss how they can support each other.

They are the Samoa Business Network. Held at the Tanoa Tusitala on Thursday night the event was called the Samoa Networking Evening.

It was to identify opportunities to collaborate and work together, to refer business and share local and overseas contacts.

Samoa Business Network Representative in Samoa, Afamasaga Jackie Curry-Malolo, explained during her presentation what S.B.N is all about.

Our Vision is to enable a successful worldwide network of Samoan Businesses & Entrepreneurs, she said.

The Samoa Business Network was created in order to provide a forum of support for small Samoan owned businesses in Aotearoa New Zealand; to provide them with strategic advice, guidance and support in the form of formal workshops, and informal network evenings.

Our Mission is to provide a platform for Samoan Businesses & Entrepreneurs to network, collaborate & also make a positive difference in our community.

It is also our aim to become a centre for members within our Samoan Community, who wish to pursue their dreams in business, to help inspire, mentor and guide them along their journeys.

The Samoa Business Network Incorporated also presents a unique opportunity for Samoan Businesses to foster relationships with one another and other businesses through the exchange of ideas, collaboration, and networking and training, most of which comes from the wealth of knowledge and experience of existing business owners who are already a part of the network.

The groups aim is to work together, to refer business and share local and overseas contacts. And just work collectively to make a positive difference for Samoa and for our community (in Samoa and overseas).

We encourage you to come along with business cards, ready to network and meet new people. Find out what others are offering in their business and professional roles. We also have some great speakers lined up for you.

We especially encourage anyone who has returned home from overseas recently to set up business or start a new job, to come along and meet people from the local business community and other sectors. Success is about creating our own opportunities and this is a great platform to do just that.

The Samoa Business Network Incorporated is a non-governmental and non-profitable organization which was formally established as an Incorporated Society on April 23rd, 2013.

However, the movement, and work leading up to the formal establishment began in September of 2012, thanks to the shared vision and direction of its current leader Laura Keil-Hall, a Business Manager at the Bank of New Zealand at the time now working for the Ministry for Pacific Peoples as a Business Partnerships & Development Manager and Rasmus Pereira, an Entrepreneur & Businessman as well as Tim Baice, Pacific Co-ordinator at the University of Auckland who played a pivotal part in formalizing this group.
The gorgeous backdrop of the blue Pacific Ocean provided the perfect environment for a day to remember for Faamoa Kirisome and Nicholas Turcinskis.

The loved up couple made the trip to Samoa to tie the knot.

Last Thursday, they were joined by friends and family at the stunning Amoa Resort at Siufaga Savaii for their special day.

The pair promised to love each through the good times and the bad times during an intimate wedding ceremony at Amoa Resorts new jetty overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

The wedding was particularly special for Faamoa who hails from Iva and Lalomalava. She met Nicholas in Sydney.After years of courtship, Nicholas proposed to his wife to be with his mothers engagement ring.

The engagement ring is 45 years old and was left to Nick by his mum when she passed. The couple, guests and their families celebrated the sweet occasion into the night.
The inaugural Pasifika Youth Cup has been deemed a massive success.

The Under 16 and Under 18 tournament saw players from across New Zealand converge in Cornwell Park in Auckland to represent their various Pasifika Cultures.

In the Under 16s event, Samoa claimed honours defeating Tonga, whilst in the Under 18s event it was the hosts, New Zealand Maori, who claimed the honours, also defeating Tonga.
Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi wants Samoans to make more babies. He has criticised the concept of family planning, saying this has slowed the growth of Samoas population. What do you think? Opinions vary on the subject. Today, Misiona Simo asked people on the streets for their opinion on the issue and this is what they said:





Apiseta Lokeni,

54, Nuu Fou

I dont think its good to have many children; its good for those who have a lot of money and those who have good jobs. I think it depends on people if they want to make babies or not. It depends if they can afford them or not because we all know that life it really hard nowadays.

Leota mailei,

55, Moamoa

I think its good to have more children; there is no bad thing about it. If you want to stop having children, that is up to you. I dont agree with this thing called family planning as well. As you know, there are couples who are trying to have babies and want to have babies. So the good thing about having a lot of kids is that other couples who dont have kids can adopt from you. That is why I dont think we should have family planning. Back in the day, couples had heaps of children and it was easy for us to do things because the more the merrier. God should be the only one to stop you from having children if he thinks you have enough. But we should never do it on our own.

This is because children are gifts from God and every human born to this earth is useful to do Gods willing. Who knows maybe your son will grow up to be the next Prime Minister of Samoa? Thats why we should never use family planning. Thats Gods role. That is why I dont support family planning. God said for us to multiply and have many children as many as the sand on the beach. So thats what I think.





Anthony Tofilau,

22, Matautu

We all know that children are a gift from God. I dont think having too many kids is a good idea, its good to increase our population but at the same time we also need to think about the future. Not only the future of our children but also the future of our country. And it depends on the family if they can afford. We should push through and increase the level of education.

Sineva Alefosio,

19, Vaitele

How can we say we need to increase the population when our economy cannot support the current population? I strongly disagree. The fact of the matter is that increasing the population will also increase the rate of unemployment. There will be too many people and yet there are not enough jobs for them. Weve got a small country and it cannot support a large number of people; it will only make it overcrowded, which will result in the pollution of the air and also the environment. Hats off to family planning for playing an awesome role in developing the country because it helps control the amount of children a family can support. What we really need to increase is the level of education.

Miracle Shalom Ioane,

20, Lotopa.

Family planning is vital. For young couples, it is a way to control the number of children they can afford to have so that they dont have to struggle in raising the children. However, if our government thinks that increasing the population is a positive thing for us, I would say that they should have benefits for the children. Its true that there are benefits of having 10 children but thats the problem, the benefits are in the future! What about the struggles of today, tomorrow, and the next day? Some commit crimes like robbery just because they want to provide for their children. Id say, we make our choice of when to have kids because after all, the whole country is not going to help you raise your children. 99% of the struggle is on an individual or on the couple.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump on Thursday warned Israel that constructing new settlements "may not be helpful" to Middle East peace efforts, shifting toward a tougher line with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Still, the White House made clear that the Trump administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity," departing from previous administrations that have considered the settlements illegitimate.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements. Shortly before taking office, he vigorously criticized the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

But in a statement Thursday, the White House said, "While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House said the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington later this month. The two leaders are scheduled to meet at the White House on Feb. 15.

The U.S. statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

Netanyahu repeatedly clashed with President Barack Obama during the Democrat's eight years in office, and Trump has vowed to be a better partner for Israel. Following the U.N. vote, Trump tweeted, "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"  referring to the date of his inauguration.

Trump has already appeared to slow his promises to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a promise often made by presidential candidates, but never carried out in office because of fears the move would inflame tensions in the region.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone Thursday with Netanyahu.

The prime minister's vow to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside. Netanyahu's pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona, but Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

Speaking at a ceremony in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed "great pain" over the removal of Amona.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some cases subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

"This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two-state solution - with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign - much harder to achieve," said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Police initially said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.

On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

"The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance," police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

Slogans including "Death to Zionists" and a swastika comparing the Israeli police to Nazis were scrawled on the synagogue walls. The police later began dragging young protesters out of the building.

Speaking to Israel Radio from inside the synagogue, the rabbi of Amona said the protesters were peacefully resisting the uprooting of the outpost. He spoke above loud noises and shouting in the background. Earlier Thursday, police removed protesters holed up in a small home nearby.

Police said 24 officers were lightly injured throughout the evacuation, and 13 young protesters were arrested.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. It witnessed violent clashes 11 years ago when police demolished nine homes found to have been built on private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court last year determined that the entire outpost was built illegally and ordered it demolished.
Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi has paid tribute to the recipients of the Government's Honours and Awards for 2017.

Twelve outstanding individuals were honoured for their services to Samoa during a special ceremony at Gym One, Tuanaimato, last night.

Among the recipients of the honours was Samoas World Heavyweight champion, Lupesoliai Laauliolemalietoa Joseph Parker who received the Order of Merit Award. He shared the honour with former Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, Mase. Dr. Fetuao Toia Alama

Namulauulu Galumalemana Netina Schmidts services to Samoa in the area of education earned her the Officer of the Order of Samoa.

Hans Kruse was also the recipient of the Office of the Order of Samoa- Third Class. Leilua Galuvao Dr. Faaali Aloaina received the Member of the Order of Samoa while Fuaolefaulepouli Soonalote Naseri was the recipient of the Head of States Service Award.

The Head of States Service Medal was presented to Afemata Tunumafono Apelu Aiavao, Lafaitele Aiga Poasa Tupae Esera, John Desmund Luff, Falenaoti June Leo Oloialii, Maria Muagututia Sefo and Tuliafiafi Tofa Togaiu Li'o.

The award winners were congratulated by Prime Minister Tuilaepa last night.

According to Tuilaepa, the initiative was born in 1984 during the reign of the late Tofilau Eti Alesana as Prime Minister.

It was not easy to come up with a decision at first so they assigned me and Lauofo Meti Meredith to come up with a plan for this programme to honor the service of our people.

It used to be an annual programme, but we decided that it will lose its value and importance if we do it annually.

Tuilaepa said the awards recognise exceptional service to Samoa in different areas of expertise.

So this year,we are recognising some of those with different expertise who have been serving the country and the communities for a long time, making a big difference to Samoa.

The Prime Minister added that the awards used to be presented during the Independence Day ceremony.

But we stopped having it around that time because weve seen that it was taking away the spirit of Independence celebration.

People paid more attention to those receiving medals than the actual purpose of Independence Day. So we decided to have it separated from Independence Day.

Asked about the eligibility criteria, Tuilaepasaid members of the public are free to nominate. The nominees are then assessed by a special committee who come with a final decision.

More details and photos from last nights award ceremony in tomorrows Sunday Samoan.
Cox Communications has rolled out nearly 250 Wi-Fi hot spots in San Diego, joining Time Warner Cable in offering Internet connectivity to its customers outside of the home.

San Diego Countys largest cable provider turned on the hot spots today in Point Loma, Ocean Beach, Hillcrest, North Park, Chula Vista, National City and Imperial Beach, as well as all six Cox Solutions Stores countywide.

The move highlights how cable companies are offering more services beyond the traditional TV, Internet and phone services in the home as their subscribers become more reliant on mobile devices.

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Cox subscribers with Preferred, Premier or Ultimate Internet service have free access to Cox Wi-Fi hot spots. That is the majority of our customers, said Ceanne Guerra, a Cox spokeswoman. Basically 75 percent of our customers have one of those levels of service.

Customers with Cox Essential Internet service  the lowest tier of Internet service that Cox offers  will not be able to access the hot spots at no charge.

But Cox is offering Essential subscribers and noncustomers free access to the hot spots for a limited time, said Guerra. We have about a one-hour trial, she said. They will be able to test it even if they are not Cox customers.

In September, Time Warner Cable rolled out about 300 Wi-Fi hot spots in its footprint in San Diego County, which generally is located in central San Diego and North County.

Both Time Warner and Cox are part of Cable Wi-Fi, an alliance of mostly cable providers that share access to their Wi-Fi hot spots with customers across the U.S.

In the county, that means Time Warner subscribers can access the Cox hot spots at no charge, and vice versa.

Across the U.S., Cable Wi-Fi offers more than 300,000 hot spots to subscribers of participating cable companies.

Cable firms have been rolling out Wi-Fi hot spots in part to compete with telephone company Internet service providers such as AT&T, which gives its land-line Internet and mobile data subscribers access to thousands of Wi-Fi hot spots nationwide.

In addition to San Diego, Cox Wi-Fi has launched in Las Vegas, Phoenix, Connecticut, Northern Virginia and Sun Valley, Idaho.

Coxs San Diego hot spots are fairly robust, offering 15 megabits per second download capacity and four megabits per second upload, said Guerra. As with most Wi-Fi hot spots, the more people who are using the service, the slower it tends to become.

People can visit the companys website to find exact Wi-Fi hot spot locations in San Diego, said Guerra. The company may boost its Wi-Fi footprint locally  depending on the popularity of this initial rollout.

This really the first round, said Guerra. We certainly want to add more hot spots for our customers.
A previous version of this story quoted from a California officials email describing attorney Patrick Webb, who represents opponents of the casino, as a semi-vexatious litigant. No court has found that Webb is a vexatious litigant, and Webb disputes that officials characterization. See Webbs letter to the editor.

The judge overseeing hearings on whether to grant Hollywood Casino in Jamul a permanent liquor license has recused himself.

Administrative Law Judge John W. Lewis presided over two state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control hearings in November.

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In a letter to concerned parties and formally addressed to county Supervisor Dianne Jacob, Lewis said he was concerned that emails that had been sent to him could prevent a fair hearing.

The emails made several references to information presented to Lewis by attorney Patrick Webb, who represents opponents of the casino, about whether the Jamul Indian Village is a proper tribe.

The emails also included:

Ramona Prieto, the acting director of the ABC

Peter Williams, attorney for the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency

Joginder Dhillon, senior advisor to the governor for tribal negotiations. He is also the former acting director of the California Gambling Control Commission.

Williams wrote to Dhillon that despite ABCs protest, (Lewis) took it under consideration, even though it was far outside of his jurisdiction.

The casino opened in October with a temporary license to serve alcohol. The casino is on land belonging to the Jamul Indian Village and its gaming facilities run by San Diego Gaming Ventures, LLC.

The hearings are part of a long application process that casino management must go through in order to get an ABC-approved alcoholic beverage license.

Jacob Rambo, chief counsel for ABC, said a new judge, yet to be chosen, will decide the matter on existing record.

A new hearing is neither desirable or necessary, he said.

Then it will be up to Prieto at the ABC to approve or reject the finding. Appeals are likely to follow..

Those who have protested against the Jamul Indian Village and Hollywood Casino over the years include a group called the Jamul Action Committee. That group has been fighting the casino since 1988.

In the past year, more than 1,000 residents of Jamul sent letters of protest to the ABC. Many of them said casino patrons who have been drinking will make Highway 94 more dangerous. More than 180 letter-writers were invited to attend the November licensing hearings.

The $360 million venue off Highway 94 is open 24 hours a day and currently serves alcohol from 10 a.m. until 1:30 a.m.
Traffic concerns raised by some Carlsbad residents this week failed to stop the momentum behind Poinsettia 61, a proposed development in the citys Aviara neighborhood that includes 123 homes, neighborhood parks, habitat preservation and the long-awaited missing link of Poinsettia Lane.

Carlsbad planning commissioners called the plan fantastic and an example for other developers to follow. They voted unanimously to recommend the City Council approve the project.

The citys approval of Poinsettia 61 is a key condition in the resolution of a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit North County Advocates that alleged the citys General Plan update and Climate Action Plan do too little to protect open space.

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Also part of the proposed settlement is a requirement that Poinsettia 61 developer Lennar Homes sets aside land for habitat preservation and pays to build a neighborhood park on the 3.1-acre site of the old Buena Vista Reservoir on a hilltop in the Old Carlsbad neighborhood.

About a dozen residents addressed the Planning Commission on Wednesday before it voted on the housing plan. About half the speakers supported the project, and the other half raised concerns about the traffic and noise it would bring.

The residential development includes construction of about one-third mile of Poinsettia Lane between Cassia Road and Oriole Court, which will complete an important east-west connection between Interstate 5 and El Camino Real.

One of the costliest parts of the road, which Lennar will pay for, will be a bridge over a canyon to allow a wildlife corridor to pass safely beneath traffic.

This is a fantastic project, said Commissioner Kerry Siekmann, citing the designs of the homes, the bridge, the open space and more. You just used your brains on this by concentrating the development on previously disturbed land  I dont have anything negative to say.

Other commissioners said they understood the concerns about traffic, but that as commissioners they had to consider the greater needs of the community.

We dont pander to the few at the expense of the many, said Commissioner Velma Anderson.

The commission agreed that Lennar and the city should continue to look for ways to reduce traffic and noise, but that all the requirements were met for the project.

The project is expected to go before the City Council and then the California Coastal Commission later this year.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
Community members are set to gather for an interfaith vigil tonight in Carlsbad.

The North County Islamic Foundation, Christ Presbyterian Church, the Jewish Collaborative of San Diego and St. Thomas More Catholic Church invite the community to participate in the candlelight vigil for victims of the mosque shooting in Canada and mosque fires in Texas.

The vigil is from about 5 to 6 p.m. at the crossing of El Camino Real and La Costa Avenue.
Tom DeLonge is preparing to direct his first feature film.

Entitled Strange Times, the movie sounds almost autobiographical, given the blink-182 co-founders longtime passions for skateboarding and UFOs.

According to an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Strange Times will focus on a rebellious group of San Diego skateboarders, who take it upon themselves to investigate extreme paranormal activity around town, only to embark on an adventure that they could have never imagined.

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The movie follows last years release of DeLonges books, Strange Times: The Ghost in the Girl and Sekret Machines Book 1: Chasing Shadows.

DeLonge is co-writing the film the script with Ben Kull, his collaborator on the 2014 animated short film, Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker. Music for the film will be provided by Angels & Airwaves, which teams DeLonge with San Diego multi-instrumentalist Ilan Rubin, whose other credits include Nine Inch Nails and Paramore.

The movie will be produced by DeLonges company, To The Stars.

I grew up in Southern California as a disaffected young skateboarder who broke the occasional law or five, and I was always dreaming about the world around me, obsessively looking for the more unusual and imaginative experiences that life has to offer, DeLonge told The Hollywood Reporter.

Thats the inspiration behind Strange Times, which is about the tribe of broken youth and the restless spirit that inspired me to form blink-182 and seek out adventure.

DeLonge co-founded blink-182 in Poway in 1992. The pop-punk trio went on to achieve international stardom. In early 2015, DeLonge either quit or was fired from the band.

The groups subsequent album, California, came out in 2016 and features Matt Skiba in place of DeLonge. In December, the album earned blink the bands first-ever Grammy Award nomination (for Best Rock Album). The 59th annual Grammy Awards will be held Feb. 12 in Los Angeles.

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Tom Delonge and Ilan Rubin come from different places musically and have collaborated on The Dream Walker, the new album by Angels and Airwaves. Video by John Gastaldo/U-T San Diego

Tom Delonge and Ilan Rubin come from different places musically and have collaborated on The Dream Walker, the new album by Angels and Airwaves. Video by John Gastaldo/U-T San Diego

Twitter @georgevarga

george.varga@sduniontribune.com
Billy Crystal is surely not the only comedy legend who earned his first big laugh as an elementary school student, but he may be the only one who credits his initial success to being clumsy in the cafeteria line.

I had my food on my tray, he recalled. I tripped, by accident, and dropped the tray  and everybody laughed. The next day I came in and dropped it again! And here I am, 60 years later, still dropping trays.

What Crystal is not noted for dropping are f-bombs, whether its in his interviews, his books, his Broadway hit, 700 Sundays (which got its start at the La Jolla Playhouse in 2004), or in his classic comedy movies, which include When Harry Met Sally, City Slickers and Analyze This.

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But the veteran star made a four-letter exception during a recent 30-minute phone conversation previewing his Feb. 16 solo show, Spend the Night with Billy Crystal, at Jacobs Music Centers Copley Symphony Hall. (Ticket information appears at the conclusion of this article.)

His uncharacteristic expletive came during a discussion of cellphone use at concerts, plays and other live arts events. Its an increasingly ubiquitous phenomenon that prompts the otherwise affable star to seethe with frustration and anger.

You have no idea how disconcerting and insulting it is that somebody is so short-minded as to be texting, or checking their messages, while youre talking on stage, Crystal said. Its awful, especially in theaters.

I was performing on Broadway and someone in the second row, a woman, was on her phone  constantly  as soon as I came out. I started playing the whole show to her, saying: Get the f--- off of your phone! 

Pardon me, Crystal said to his interviewer, who required no apology for the justifiable epithet. Then I could see her mouth go, to whomever she was talking to: I have to go; hes looking at me.

Crystal let out a loud sigh of exasperation.

Men will put their phones in their shirt pockets, and it lights up and looks like E.T., he lamented. And, on stage, you hear it ring and are interrupted by it. Using cellphones is one of the worst traits about audiences and its like its accepted now.

One of the things I hate about performing is the disrespect people have. So I hope people will be more responsible. We work very hard with the ushers in the theaters I perform in to make sure people dont use their phones.

Why audience members pay good money for their tickets, only to rudely blather on phones or text and check emails during performances, remains a mystery. Not so, the solution, which has less to do with policing by ushers than with common sense and respect from attendees.

Its up to people to turn their phones off, Crystal agreed.

This need they have to be in touch with (other) people all the time is really sad to me. I get it if you are a doctor whos on call. But, otherwise, if youre coming to a show, arent you coming to get away from all that?

Here are highlights from our far-ranging interview with Crystal, who discussed 

His Spend the Night with Billy Crystal tour: We call it that because people feel like they are at the dinner table with me. Its that personal to them, and that relaxed, and thats what I love about it. Im on my feet 90 percent of the time, telling stories and recollections, showing film clips. Its a very fun night of re-living memories.

Drawing from current events in his show: You know, I dont do much of that, though its hard not to now. These other comics out there say something, and somebody boos or yells. Theres so much anger out there. Ill talk about current events in a certain way, but its not my focus. Whats funny today wont be funny tomorrow.  Its a very confusing time and a very edgy time now. Somehow, it doesnt feel like this is our country  it will take some time for things to settle.

The La Jolla Playhouse: My experience in La Jolla was such a great one. When we work-shopped 700 Sundays there in 2004 with Des MacAnuff, who would later direct the show, it was a turning point in my life. I think we did 14 or 15 shows there, and  five months later  we were on Broadway. It was so fast! And it was incredible to work with such talented people as the ones in La Jolla. It gave me the confidence to be funny and touching.

His breakthrough role on the TV series Soap: I never thought about it as This will make me famous. I thought: This is a really daring show, and if we can do it right, it could be important. It wasnt about what it would do for me, but what I could do for this character. I thought that, if we could play it right, we could do something that hadnt been done before (a gay character in a sitcom) on TV. I hadnt seen it in so many years and recently found some DVDs of Soap. I watched it, and thought: You know what? This was on 40 years ago! I was really proud about it.

Craving the spotlight from a young age: I needed that attention. To get out in front of people, its one of the places I feel most comfortable. Im an uncomfortable person in front of small groups. But in front of 200 people, or 2000, Im comfortable.

His tenure as a middle-school substitute teacher: When I would come in, I was what they called a per diem floater. So I would report every day. If anybody was out, Id take over any kind of class, even if It was something I wasnt skilled at, which was everything! But mostly, Id teach was English and phys ed. Id take questions from the students and sometimes break in new material. Because I was just starting out in comedy. And if somebody is in a chair, looking at you in a classroom, its really no different than in a comedy club.

Doing a Spinal Tap reunion: Hey, yeah, of course. One last tour! But I want the royalties on the Mime is money hats! (Crystals character in the 1984 movie, This is Spinal Tap, was Morty, the mime, waiter, who memorably declared: Mime is money! Come on, move it!).

Advice for Jimmy Kimmel on hosting the Oscars: I was talking to Kimmel the other day. Hes very witty and did a really good job on the Emmys. When everybody asks me about hosting the Oscars eight times. I tell them: Just look like you want to be there. Work hard to write good jokes and dont over-stay your welcome. Just pick your spots and make sure the show moves along. The most important thing is having a really good time. And its difficult for the audience, because theyre all nervous and uncomfortable. So pick jokes that work.

Jack Palance doing one-armed push-ups during his 1992 Oscars Best Supporting Actor acceptance speech: I think it was the greatest set-up for a joke in Oscars history. Plus, I was one who had helped create that part (for Palance) in City Slickers. Jack was in the first movie I ever saw as a kid, Shane. And here I was in City Slickers, acting with him in a role he won an Oscar for doing. It was such a thrill. And that happened to be one of the better shows in the history of the Oscars. Because he did (the push-ups). it gave me a running start for the rest of the show. Did I send him a thank-you card? Um, no  he already had the Oscar!

His creative impetus: I havent stopped working since high school; I really havent stopped. I love to tell stories. I love to create things from out of the blue, and create new people, characters, stories, movies. Whatever they end up becoming is just an extension of the stories you tell from the time youre a little kid. I was always imitating my relatives.  I was always interested in creating someone else and becoming someone else.

Retirement: I never even use the word. I got to know (comedy pioneer) George Burns pretty well. I was with him in Las Vegas when he was 95, and I watched him do an hour and a half performance. Afterward, I asked him: Will you ever retire? And he said: To what? What would I do? 

Spend the Night with Billy Crystal

When: 8 p.m. Feb. 16

Where: Jacobs Music Centers Copley Symphony Hall, 750 B St., downtown San Diego

Tickets: $71-$221

Phone: (800) 745-3000

Online: ticketmaster.com

San Diego Theater  On Now Video: Bruce Springsteen's solo trip to Broadway On Now Video: Inside the rehearsal room of SDMT's Damn Yankees! 2:22 On Now Video: La Jolla Playhouse-bred shows earn key Tony nominations 3:05 On Now Video: Broadway moment has arrived for La Jolla Playhouse's 'Come From Away 0:33 On Now Video: Lamb's Players Presents "An American Christmas" 2016 1:21 On Now Old Globe's 'Grinch' ready to rumble again 0:52 On Now Little Miss Sunshine at La Jolla Playhouse On Now Working the Magic On Now San Diego Repertory Theatre presents "Federal Jazz Project" On Now An American Christmas

Twitter @georgevarga

george.varga@sduniontribune.com
In 1989, Christopher Ashley teamed with a couple of other young New York theater artists to stage Buzzsaw Berkeley, a late-night musical spoof about a deranged choreographer with chainsaws for arms.

It was demented, that show, the La Jolla Playhouse artistic director says now of the piece he created with playwright Doug Wright (later a Pulitzer Prize winner for the Playhouse-birthed I Am My Own Wife) and Michael John LaChiusa (who became a five-time Tony Award nominee).

But it was madness with some meaning: Ashley says the show captured the kind of anxiety about sexuality and AIDS at that moment. It was like: Someone is out to kill anyone who is having promiscuous sex  or making musicals! Musicals sort of stood in for the joy of forbidden physicality.

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It was also born of a moment when youre young enough that anything is possible, and you could make something extraordinary or something truly terrible  and you dont know which its going to be.

Then Ashley pauses, and adds: I dont know if thats just about young people. That could still be true.

This is not (in case you were wondering) the preface to an announcement that the Playhouse is about to revive Buzzsaw.

But as Ashley, now 52, marks a decade of Playhouse artistic leadership this year, the theaters programming reflects in many ways his wide-ranging tastes and his zeal for introducing new work and fresh voices.

Tomorrow night, the Playhouse hosts a concert reading of Come From Away, a musical that was born at the La Jolla theater in 2015. Next month, that show  based on a real-life episode in which thousands of stranded air passengers were adopted by a tiny Canadian town on 9/11  begins performances on Broadway.

Sending shows to Broadway is nothing new for the Playhouse, of course: Come From Away will be the 27th Playhouse-connected work to make the journey (with the play Indecent soon to follow as the 28th) since two-time artistic chief Des McAnuff presided over the theaters revival in 1983.

But while Ashley has extended that legacy with such Playhouse shows as Chaplin, Hands on a Hardbody and Memphis (which he directed to a best-musical Tony Award in 2010), he has also intensified the theaters commitment to commissioning and developing new plays and musicals.

And with the Without Walls initiative, which grew from a series of site-specific and immersive shows into a full-blown festival of works (held twice now), he has helped midwife some boundary-busting theater that occasionally might rival the long-ago Buzzsaw for sheer surprise and daring.

Ashley forges into his second decade of Playhouse artistic leadership with a trio of big musical projects that, while not the most edgy the theater has ever done, reflects the range of artistic partnerships he has built in his time here.

Besides Come From Away  an uplifting, ensemble-based show built around the homegrown music of Newfoundland  Ashley is also directing Freaky Friday, a Disney-associated musical adaptation that opened this weekend.

And in May comes Escape to Margaritaville, the Ashley-directed musical based on the songs of Jimmy Buffett; that show is scheduled to hit Broadway in 2018.

What ties the projects together?

Theyre all shows I like, Ashley says with a laugh, balking a bit at the idea of a theme that unites them.

One of the things you do as artistic director is youre always balancing tones, he says. I want some dark and some light, I want some small and some big, I want some musicals and some language-based (plays), I want some family and some politics. There are all of these kinds of axes that youre trying to create a balanced season around.

But definitely my work in this season has an aspect of celebration to it.

That aspect, he adds, has not been true of all the shows staged since he arrived at the Playhouse in October 2007.

Darrell Hammonds show  there were some dark things in that play, Ashley says of the former Saturday Night Live stars deeply confessional 2015 solo work, a Playhouse world premiere.

Glengarry Glen Ross is a pretty savage play. (Ashley staged the David Mamet drama in 2012.) Ive certainly directed some plays with some real edges and teeth on them.

But I would say that different artists have different modes and phases they move through. (And) I would say my eye tends to go toward: How do we bring people together, and how do we create a celebration on the way out?

Artistic journeys

With 10 years under his belt at the Playhouse, Ashley has now lived in San Diego longer than any other place besides New York (where he spent 20 years).

Its a contrast to his peripatetic early life: The Chicago-born Ashleys family (his late dad was a philosophy professor, and his mom is a retired author of academic books) moved frequently, and he estimates he lived in 17 different places before entering Yale University.

Long before college, though, he had become a theater devotee, thanks in part to a favorite uncle whom he saw take the stage as King Arthur in a high-school production of Camelot.

Watching my uncle, whom I idolized, with the crown and the ermine cape, singing those songs from Camelot  I just thought that was the most glamorous thing to do and be, he recalls.

Ashley jumped more or less straight into directing out of college, gradually making a name in the New York scene. One of his big breaks was staging the 1992 Paul Rudnick play Jeffrey, which he later also directed for the big screen.

He eventually landed on Broadway, with such musicals as The Rocky Horror Show, All Shook Up and Xanadu.

But Ashley had been eyeing the Playhouse for a long time, and was up for the job of artistic director both in 1994, when McAnuff left for the first time (he was succeeded by Michael Greif), and in 1999 (Anne Hamburger was chosen to replace Greif but left after about a year, spurring McAnuffs return.)

When McAnuff departed again in 2007, the job was finally Ashleys.

I dont know why La Jolla Playhouse has always been the theater that was my idea of exactly where I should end up, he says now. But I definitely more aggressively went after running the Playhouse than almost anything else in my life.

Part of what he loves about running an institution and programming entire seasons, as opposed to freelance directing, is that you can create such a more complicated portrait of the world; you can have such a more nuanced conversation about what its like to be alive in America right now, Ashley says.

He seems to have had little trouble adjusting  both to the scope of the job and to San Diego.

I love it here, says the director, who makes his home in the Pacifica neighborhood of eastern Pacific Beach with his boyfriend of 2 years (a scientist) and their rescue dog, Murphy. I love being able to be indoors and outdoors and then indoors again.

What keeps him excited about what he does? Ashley cites both the Playhouses artists and its audiences.

He praises the sense that anything is possible onstage, and how much pride the staff here takes in impossible tasks that get conquered.

And he adds, I think the theatergoers here are adventurous and inquisitive and interesting. I love what they say in talkbacks after performances.

As audiences go, (ours) is such a pleasure to make theater for. I feel as though theyre in it for great reasons.

Amanda Naughton (right) in rehearsals for Christopher Ashleys 2010 La Jolla Playhouse staging of Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream. (Eduardo Contreras / U-T file photo)

A decades highlights

La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley picks a few shows and developments that stand out during his 10-year tenure:

A Midsummer Nights Dream (2010): Ashley directed this Shakespeare adaptation, a show that was staged visually upside-down and featured the San Diego Youth Symphony. Putting the symphony onstage was a crazy idea that really could happen because they wanted to do it, he says. And all the upside-down-ness was possible because the shops here are so amazing and fearless.

Come From Away (2015): Ashley says of the Broadway-bound, 9/11-inspired musical: Watching the audience watch that play (in its original Playhouse incarnation) was really satisfying, because most people were simultaneously working through their own memories of that week. (It was) personal to everyone in the audience.

WoW Festivals (2013 and 2015): (Theyve been) as good as it gets for me, Ashley says. I love that sense that its art and its a party. And the blurring of lines between art and reality I find really satisfying.

Commissioned plays: Theres something special about sitting down with a writer and saying, What are you excited about, what ideas do you want to explore? And then taking the ride until its a full production. (Among the 14 or so commissions during Ashleys tenure: Milk Like Sugar, The Darrell Hammond Project, The Bitter Game, Miss You Like Hell, The Last Tiger in Haiti and Hands on a Hardbody.

Des McAnuffs mentorship: The man who brought the Playhouse to national prominence (and is now a Broadway regular) has returned twice in recent years, to direct Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and Sideways. McAnuff will be back again in late 2017 to stage a new musical about Donna Summer. Says Ashley: Hes an artist I have so much affection and respect for.

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Twitter: @jimhebert

jim.hebert@sduniontribune.com
The abstract paintings of Italian artist Siro Cugusi defy a clear definition. The colors and textures suggest dreamlike, imaginary scenes with a variety of shapes that seem both real and surreal.

Siros paintings do not correspond with reality, agreed Reesey Shaw, the director of Lux Art Institute. His works derive from his dreams, subconscious, fleeting thoughts and abstract ideas. He rejects traditional narrative painting to demonstrate his own personal language.

Cugusi, the current Lux resident artist, uses canvas, wood, pages from books and varied types of paper as a base. His paintings often have a combination of oils and other media, including acrylics, spray paint, enamel, pencils and pastels, applied in multiple layers. The result is not so much a picture, but a state of thoughts and feelings he calls a visual language.

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Generally, art gallery visitors are accustomed to looking at an abstract painting, and then reading the title to learn what it represents. Cugusi, however, does not give his works a name. Each is assigned a letter or a number or both.

I do not want people to lock in on the name of the painting, Cugusi said through a translator. I do not want them to think about the concept based on the title. My paintings are a kind of visual language. People will see the concepts and the colors. They will see the steps and the layers. They will clearly see the whole process.

An exhibit of 12 Cugusi paintings is on view through March 18. Cugusi is living and working in the artists pavilion through Feb. 18. Three days a week, visitors can meet him and see him create a large oil painting for Lux.

The artist refers to himself as a forager of ideas and feelings, which he collects in notes, photos and sketches of memories, events and people.

My art results from all my experiences everywhere I go, Cugusi said. I am in constant search for inspiration. I collect impressions of my everyday life and absorb what is around me.

Those thoughts and memories will find a way into his work, sometimes years later.

Cugusi is from Sardinia, an island off Italy. He has studied and exhibited in cities such as Florence and Paris. He values what he learned in these places, but I realized how different and frenetic a big city is, he said.

Sardinia is calm and relaxed. I can connect with nature. It provides an isolation so that I can do the art I want to do without contaminating influences.

Shaw noticed Cugusis work during her many art exploration travels. He seemed a perfect choice to be part of the 10th anniversary of the artist-in-residence programs global theme.

We particularly look for artists from unusual places using unexpected materials with unique visions, she said. Siro is a painter of unusual imagination and scale.

I was intrigued and excited to bring him from a town of 3,000 in Sardinia to do a project with Lux.

I am grateful to have the chance to be here, in San Diego, Cugusi said. All my experiences here will become a part of me.

His time at Lux has already given him a fresh outlook. He said he is using colors he hasnt used in years.

The artist described his personal process of painting in terms of being a father creating a son.

My paintings are my sons, Cugusi said. To create something means to give form to something that does not have a form. To give form is to give life.

Gaugh is a freelance writer.

Lux Art Institute artist in residence: Siro Cugusi

When: Artists studio: 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday through Feb. 18. Exhibit: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday through March 18.

Where: Lux Art Institute, 1550 S. El Camino Real, Encinitas

Admission: $5; free parking

Phone: (760) 436-6611

Online: luxartinstitute.org
Following a special Friday ceremony in Maine, the Navy is scheduled to take possession of the guided-missile destroyer Rafael Peralta, named for the valiant San Diego Marine killed in Iraq in 2004.

The $1.5 billion vessel successfully completed initial sea trials on Dec. 16. The Peralta is the first destroyer of its kind built by the Bath Iron Works following a four-year lull in the Navys Arleigh Burke-class destroyer procurement program.

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The warship is slated to remain at the shipyard in Maine until the spring. Then its crew will begin the long voyage to San Diego, the destroyers future homeport, where it will be officially commissioned.

Its a small ceremony, but its a big moment in the life of a ship, said retired Navy Capt. Bob Kopas, the San Diego Navy Leagues vice chairman of the Peraltas commissioning committee. The Navy is taking control of the ship for the first time. For the commander and many in the crew, theyve been preparing years for this event.

In a similar ceremony in 2009, Kopas took command of the amphibious assault ship Makin Island, which also is homeported in San Diego.

Officials at Bath Iron Works and Naval Sea Systems Command declined comment on Thursday, but Marines cheered the news that the warship is one day closer to arriving in San Diego.

Our everyday lives are better because of Sgt. Peralta. Hes a constant reminder to us about what it means to be a Marine, said Lt. Col. Stephen Slade Mount, commander of Wounded Warrior Battalion West.

Mounts headquarters is located within Camp Pendletons Sgt. Rafael Peralta Wounded Warrior Center. Peraltas portrait not only graces the wall of the complexs main building, but his family continues to attend functions there, including the units annual Marine Corps birthday ball.

Peraltas mother, Rosa, is the sponsor of the destroyer. A great naval honor, she will bestow the name upon the warship during its formal commissioning  tentatively scheduled for late July or early August  by uttering Man our ship and bring her to life, a command that triggers an eruption of patriotic applause from the crew and audience.

Both the Marine complex and the Navy destroyer reflect efforts by both services to keep Peraltas heroic name alive following his tragic death.

Sgt. Peralta died on Nov. 15, 2004 during the brutal Second Battle of Fallujah.

Assigned to A Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, he led a scout team as they cleared buildings of insurgents. After storming into their seventh house that day, Peralta immediately drew enemy automatic weapons fire.

Wounded, he fell to the floor and fleeing insurgents tossed a grenade that skittered to a rest near his head. Without hesitation, Peralta snatched the explosive to his body, absorbing the brunt of the blast to spare the lives of his team, according to his citation for the Navy Cross, Americas second-highest award for battlefield valor.

Although the Marine Corps recommended Peralta for the Medal of Honor, in 2008 Secretary of Defense Bob Gates downgraded the commendation. He expressed concerns first raised by a review panel that the Marine might have been too wounded to realize what he was doing with the grenade.

The Gates decision sparked an effort that continues inside the military and on Capitol Hill to upgrade Peraltas award to the Medal of Honor, but his successors in the Pentagon  Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel  declined to overturn the original ruling.

In 2015, Peraltas mother accepted his posthumous Navy Cross and pledged to donate it to the warship, where it would be prominently displayed.

U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a former Marine who fought in the First Battle of Fallujah in 2004, said Fridays scheduled hand off of the warship to the Navy should serve as an awesome reminder of the sacrifice and valor of Peralta, a moment to pause and remember the heros family and spark a new push for the Pentagon to reopen his Medal of Honor case.

Three guys are alive today because of the Marines heroism, said Hunter.

The Alpine Republican vowed post a Friday letter to Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the new Secretary of Defense, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis, urging them to award Peralta the nations highest battlefield decoration.

Born in Mexico City in 1979, Peraltas family brought him to the United States. A graduate of Samuel F. B. Morse High School who later attended San Diego Community College, Peralta did not receive his green card until he enlisted in the Marines in 2000 but he died an American citizen.

He is buried at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in Point Loma.

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cprine@sduniontribune.com
Last summer, as ISIS fighters swept toward his home in northern Iraq, slaughtering infidels and demolishing their communities, Fadi Hirmiz grew frantic.

ISIS was getting closer and closer to our village, Hirmiz said through an interpreter. I was afraid for my family, for our kids.

A 38-year-old Chaldean Catholic, Hirmiz was trapped in the sectarian crossfire ravaging Iraq. The Shia Muslims leading Baghdads central government and army seemed deaf to his pleas. And this Christian knew the Sunni-led ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, would be worse, demanding that he, his wife and two children convert to Islam or die under the sword.

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 While these refugees have found a safe haven in El Cajon, the friends or relatives they left behind in Iraq now face what one man calls a Christian genocide.

Poor and illiterate, Hirmiz could think of only one place to turn: El Cajon.

My wifes cousin is a friend of Mark Arabo, Hirmiz said, citing a prominent East County Chaldean. Thats how we got help.

Today in El Cajons 60,000-plus Chaldean population  after Detroit, the second largest concentration in the United States  theres a palpable sense of panic. While these refugees have found a safe haven here, the friends or relatives they left behind in Iraq now face what one man calls a Christian genocide.

That man is Mark Arabo, president and CEO of the Neighborhood Market Association, which represents dozens of independent retail stores, most of them owned by ethnic Chaldeans.

Born and raised in East County, Arabo is a first generation Iraqi-American. Yet this 32-year-old retains an immigrants stereotypical drive. Impeccably groomed and tailored, he has a Beltway politicians polish and a true believers passion. Hes like a preacher whose fire and brimstone sermons can make his own congregation nervous.

He blasts Washington politicians  including those who have received his campaign donations  for their apathetic and pathetic response to this crisis.

Obama is failing on this issue completely, he said. Our Congress is turning a blind eye to a full-blown genocide.

Growing impatient, last year Arabo founded the Minority Humanitarian Foundation, a nonprofit that supports Chaldeans and other persecuted religious minorities  and, he said, runs an underground railroad that transports Iraqi refugees into San Diego.

While Arabo would not reveal details of his operation, Hirmiz said his familys escape was engineered by the El Cajon resident. Their journey began on Aug. 15, 2014, when they boarded a truck in their northern Iraqi village, Batnaya, and rode to the Turkish frontier. There, a contact supplied them with a packet of plane tickets  from Turkey to a European hub, Europe to Mexico City, Mexico City to Tijuana.

Hirmiz and his fellow travelers fly into Mexico, Arabo said, because the U.S. demands visas of foreign travelers. His refugees lack those documents.

This has to do with the flexibility of Mexican officials, he said, and the inflexibility of the American officials.

After a night on the border, Hirmiz and his family entered the United States at San Ysidro on Sept. 1. Their request for asylum is still under review.

We believe this country has freedom, Hirmiz said. We want to practice this freedom.

Arabo insists his makeshift, freelance operation is necessary: The underground railroad wasnt our first choice. It was our last choice.

Others are skeptical. Critics within the local Chaldean community note that these expensive journeys  the estimated cost for a family of four: $25,000  rely on a shadowy network of anonymous guides.

I would not leave people in the hands of smugglers, said Besma Coda, chief operating officer of Chaldean & Middle-Eastern Social Services, a nonprofit based in El Cajon. They are not good people.

Others cite the 27 Chaldeans now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Otay Mesa. To date, 15 have been ordered deported and five face criminal charges for entering the U.S. under false pretenses. Several had been granted asylum in other countries. Others were using aliases, a red flag when terrorists have vowed to attack America.

Its just a very huge national security concern for the agency, said Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE. We are doing our due diligence to ensure that anyone who gets admitted to the country on any kind of visa, that we have their true identity.

Its too dangerous in this world.

Similar fears, of Islamists waging jihads against unbelievers, haunt local Chaldeans. Sanaa Jibrael recently visited Arabos office. Speaking the Chaldean dialect, she explained that her sisters family faces daily harassment and threats. She begged Arabo to spirit them out of Iraq.

He told her he is working on it, an interpreter said, trying his best. He will not give up on her.

Dangerous hairstyles

Chaldeans have been settling in El Cajon for decades, often one step ahead of their tormentors. Codas family, for instance, arrived in 1980 when her father feared retribution from Iraqs then-ruler, Saddam Hussein.

We left everything behind, she said. But at least we had passports and identification.

This is the hardest time for the Middle East, the hardest time for Iraq.

Federal statistics support that claim. In 2004, the year after American forces had ousted Hussein, only 66 would-be Iraqi refugees arrived in the U.S. By 2013, with the Islamic State group on the rise, the number had grown to 19,487.

Martin Shamasha, who took his wife and three children out of Iraq in 2012, said life in their homeland had become unbearable. Running his villages liquor store, he received death threats from militant Islamists.

I used to think about what they were going to do to my wife and children, he said through a translator. My only option was to leave.

In interviews with local Chaldeans, a persistent theme is the lawlessness of Iraqi society. Even before the Islamic States 2014 campaign in northern Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda sympathizers and others attacked residents for perceived infractions of Sharia law.

Sanaa Jibraels adult son, who worked as a barber near Baghdad, feared for his life in 2010. His crime?

He was making American hairstyles, she recalled, and they didnt like that. They threatened him.

Salam Qassyounan fought for his country in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, losing his left leg to a mine and enduring 16 years in an Iranian prison. Released in 1998, he returned to Iraq and the woman he had married 10 days before marching off to the front lines.

Meeting him at the border, his wife saw a stranger: You are not Salam.

She would eventually recognize and embrace her long-lost husband, and they rebuilt their lives together. Yet the veteran felt uncomfortable in his own country. Walking in Baghdad, the Chaldean heard an imams sermon broadcast in the streets.

He was announcing, Dont buy anything from Christian. We will take all these things without money. Dont live with them. Dont respect them, Qassyounan recalled.

Soon after, he took refuge in Sweden. Unable to take his wife and children there, he eventually obtained a U.S. visa and followed his family to El Cajon.

I feel I am now human, he said. We Christians are not humans in our country. Not just Christians  even the Yazidi.

With the rise of the Islamic State, non-Muslims feel even more threatened. In Christian towns captured by the terrorist group, girls have been kidnapped and men executed. Last week, The New York Times reported on the systematic rape of non-Muslim women by Islamic State fighters, who tell their victims that these crimes are sanctioned by Allah.

Women are being sold in the market for $300, $400, said Besma Coda. They beat them and sexually assault them. That is not something I can hear and just shut my mouth and watch.

Still, she deplores the underground railroad. While praising Arabo  I know his work and it is very much appreciated in the community  Coda worries about immigrants who trek halfway around the world without official sanction or support.

Thats not the right way, she said. The right way is to advocate for people.

We lost everything

Similar arguments are heard in Washington. Arabo flew to the capital in June 2014 and again last month, meeting with White House and State Department officials and members of Congress. He carried a thick binder stuffed with 70,000 applications. Each, he said, had proper identification and sponsors in the United States.

Each, he said, could be saved with a U.S. visa  a document now impossible to obtain in Iraq.

Our embassies are closed, they are not processing, Arabo said. And the U.N. is dysfunctional on this issue.

While Arabo received a sympathetic hearing from both Democrats and Republicans, he faces hurdles.

There is definitely consensus that we should strive to save any person from the atrocities of ISIS and that involves attacking ISIS as much as it does supporting a range of diplomatic options, said Joe Kasper, a spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, the Republican whose district includes El Cajon. But also its important that the Chaldean cause isnt hurt as a result of a systemic pattern of falsification or certain methods of attempted entry.

Under federal law, a foreign national already living openly and safely in a third country cannot be granted asylum in the U.S.

On June 25, Devid Benjamen Nooh Yako tested that law. Walking into the San Ysidro Port of Entry, he requested asylum for himself, wife and two children, saying they had been threatened by Islamists.

You Christians are infidels, one anonymous caller said, Yako claimed. Wherever you go we will kill you. We will cut your heads off. We will cut your throats.

Terrifying  if true. But Homeland Security agents say that Yako and his family had been living in Sweden since at least 2010.

A month before Yako sought asylum, Thamer Sadek Eshoa made a similar plea in San Ysidro  yet neglected to mention his true name (Tamar Sadiq Eshoa Qarandal) or current nationality (German).

And last November, Swedish citizen Manhal al Kajo tried to pass himself off as an Iraqi refugee named Manhal Hazim Korkis.

Cases like these undermine efforts to bring into the U.S. large numbers of Chaldeans. Kasper noted that Hunter understands why this group feel besieged, especially in Iraq.

But, still, Kasper said, that cant be a reason to openly urge or condone skirting the law or process.

Arabo said the 27 Chaldeans now in custody were not passengers on his underground railroad. There may be some fraudulent cases, he noted, but huge numbers of worthy Chaldeans, Assyrian Catholics, Yazidis and others are in need. Last week, the International Organization for Migration calculated the number of displaced Iraqis at 3.1 million.

Evan Petrus, a former employee of the coalition forces in Iraq, qualified for a visa in 2010. Yet this Assyrian Catholic didnt want to leave his village, Qaraqosh, until the Islamic State shelled his neighborhood last August.

He grabbed his daughter and wife, pregnant with their second child, and joined the exodus out of town. People wore vacant expressions, wept or looked terrified. He watched as two mothers brawled over a loaf of bread, each desperate to feed her children.

The journey was grueling and long  it took six weeks to reach San Diego. Today, Petrus works the night shift at an East County convenience store, going home at sunrise to his familys tiny apartment. He misses friends and relatives, the familiar sights and sounds of home.

Life, he said, is very different and very difficult.

When he calls former neighbors, though, he hears horror stories  daughters and wives who have been kidnapped, men who have vanished, families forced to pay crushing taxes to the Islamic State.

We lost everything, Petrus said. Still, I thank God. This will be a better world for my children.

It would be an even better world, Arabo said, if Washington would devise a way to grant visas. Although the U.S. embassy in Baghdad no longer processes applications, that doesnt have to be an insurmountable obstacle. Arabo noted that, until the recent reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuban refugees had been processed in the U.S.

While he pledged to continue conducting the underground railroad, Arabo admitted that his train is too far small for this massive job.

We are saving one here, two there, five, six there, he said. We need something much more robust like we did in the fall of Saigon or in Bosnia.
Public defenders representing Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman presented a litany of challenges to the governments 17-count indictment on Friday, arguing that hes being held in overly restrictive conditions and that his extradition from Mexico may have been illegal.

Guzman, wearing a dark navy jumpsuit, stayed silent and still as the attorneys spoke, occasionally conferring with a translator.

He has pleaded not guilty to a wide swath of charges, including drug trafficking, conspiracy and murder. He is currently allowed a single hourlong exercise break a day and can only visit with a select team of defense attorneys.

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We arent even allowed to give Mr. Guzman a glass of water, defense attorney Michelle Gelernt told the court. Even Guzmans wife is unable to visit him  she saw him for the first time since his extradition in court on Friday, Gelernt said.

Judge Brian M. Cogan ruled that the famously elusive Guzman would continue to be kept under tight security at the discretion of law enforcement officials.

This may put defense counsel under burdens that are somewhat unusual, but the defendants public history is somewhat unusual, Cogan said, making a tongue-in-cheek reference to Guzmans celebrated prison escapes in Mexico in 2001 and 2015.

A police motorcade transporting Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman crosses the Brooklyn Bridge headed back to Manhattan after his hearing at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Friday. (Justin Lane / EPA)

At the center of the hearing was an argument by Guzmans defense team challenging the Mexican extradition orders that sent Guzman to the United States in the middle of the night in January on the final evening of the Obama presidency.

The orders, defense attorneys argued, never contained the charges Guzman now faces in New York, which means he could be tried in another jurisdiction, such as Texas or California, or the extradition orders could be found illegal altogether. The attorneys argument was based on speculation, because they hadnt actually seen the orders. On Friday, Cogan ordered that the documents be released to Guzman and his defense team.

I dont care whether Mr. Guzman refuses them and they have to be dropped on the floor, Cogan said, ordering Mexican consulate officials to ensure Guzman and his legal team had access to the paperwork.

But Gelernt later told reporters that Guzman and his lawyers met with Mexican officials after the hearing. He said the officials once against refused to give them the papers without Guzman signing for the documents, which Cogan said Guzman was not required to do.

I cannot imagine any lawyer in this circumstance would allow Mr. Guzman to sign a document that he was not able to read or that we were not able to review and advise him on, Gelernt told reporters.

The circumstances of Guzmans legal representation also came up at the hearing. Prosecutors argued that Guzman had significant assets as a former billionaire drug trafficker and shouldnt have to rely on public defense attorneys in the first place.

Yet defense attorney Michael Schneider told reporters that Guzman was in no position to hire an attorney for himself.

We think its ridiculous that the government expects Mr. Guzman to choose a counsel when he is locked up 23 hours per day. If they want him to hire a lawyer, we believe he needs to be able to speak with his family and confer with them about his wishes for counsel.

Cogan allowed Guzman to retain his public defense team to get things moving in the run-up to trial, but said he would revisit the issue as needed.

Guzman is being held in New Yorks Manhattan Correctional Center, which has been nicknamed the Guantanamo of New York for its isolated cells and foreboding atmosphere.

For court appearances, he is shuttled into Brooklyn via a convoy of law enforcement vehicles which often snarls morning traffic. On Friday, his motorcade was accompanied by police helicopters overhead.

Armed officers outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn are among the extra security precautions in place for the legal proceedings against Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. (Justin Lane / EPA)

Still, in a hearing earlier in the week without Guzman in attendance, Cogan ordered Guzman to appear in person Friday rather than by video conference, agreeing with defense attorneys that he needed to be present in person throughout his trial.

The security precautions havent stopped inmates in other facilities, awed by El Chapos legendary status, to pledge their loyalty to him and offer their help in setting him free, however. A group of prisoners in a private prison in California even released a video swearing their allegiance to Guzman.

Hansen is a special correspondent.

ALSO

Murder, torture, drugs: Cartel kingpins wife says thats not the El Chapo she knows

Video shows California prisoners offering protection and escape help to drug lord El Chapo

El Chapo says hes depressed by prison life, complains of psychological torture

UPDATES:

12:10 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Michelle Galernt and background on the case against Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.

11 a.m.: This article was updated with more details from the court appearance.

This article was originally published at 8:15 a.m.
A man who after learning the techniques of so-called pickup artists took part in the rape of an intoxicated woman in downtown San Diego was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison, the maximum allowed under the law.

Jason Berlin, 28, pleaded guilty to the rape charge in November 2015. He was sentenced in San Diego Superior Court.

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He and two other men, all of whom were linked to a company called Efficient Pickup, were charged after a 31-year-old woman reported finding her attackers on the company website along with posts in which they blogged about the night in October 2013 when they sexually assaulted her.

Co-defendants Jonas Dick and Alexander Markham Smith also were convicted of rape charges. Dick, 28, pleaded guilty to rape of an unconscious person in January 2016. Smith, 27, was convicted last year in trial of rape of an intoxicated person and rape of an unconscious person.

Both men were sentenced to eight-year prison terms.

Judge Jeffrey Fraser, the same judge who sentenced them, chose the maximum prison term for Berlin even though the prosecution had asked for a lesser term of six years.

The judge noted that Berlin had no previous criminal history and had testified for the prosecution in Smiths trial. (Berlin agreed to testify but was offered no deal for a lighter sentence.)

After reading aloud from a transcript of Berlins testimony, the judge said he did not believe the defendant told the truth when he made comments indicating the victim had consented to have sex.

The defendant degraded that woman. He made her into a simple sex object.  This was the ultimate violation of this womans body, mind and spirit, Fraser said.

Defense attorney Vikas Bajaj asked the judge to consider placing Berlin on probation. He argued that his client, who was recently diagnosed as having an Autism spectrum disorder, testified truthfully in Smiths case, and that his condition makes it difficult for him to read social cues or express emotions in ways others might find appropriate.

Mr. Berlin is absolutely embarrassed that he even became involved in this, said Bajaj, who called the co-defendants in the case predators.

Smith and Dick were instructors at Efficient Pickup, which aimed to teach men how to seduce and have sex with as many women as possible. Berlin had been their student.

He was taught the wrong thing, Bajaj said. Its as simple as that.

Deputy District Attorney Lisa Fox said she believed Berlin was truthful when he testified, but that he didnt seem to understand the gravity of what he did to the victim.

He not only raped her while she was intoxicated and unconscious, he bragged about it, Fox said.

Berlin said in court that he did not intend to do any harm the night of the incident, and that he was ashamed and embarrassed that his actions contributed to the victims pain.

Rape victim did her own detective work to find pickup artists who assaulted her 

According to court documents, the victim and a female friend had been at a bar in the Gaslamp Quarter in October 2013 and left about 2 a.m. As they waited for a taxi, the women were approached by Smith and Dick, who invited them to an apartment on J Street.

Berlin, who paid for the apartment, was there when they arrived.

The victim was raped while she was passed out inside one of the apartment bedrooms and separated from her friend. She reported the rape to police immediately but also did some investigation on her own, conducting internet searches for the men who had been in the apartment.

At first, she only had one identifying piece of information. Her friend had remembered a name: Jonas Dick.

As he had at previous hearings, the judge again commended the victim for her work on the case, adding that without it the defendants might never have been caught. Although police went to the apartment and knocked on the door immediately after the rape was reported, it took months for them to obtain a search warrant and make arrests.

Fraser said he respects the San Diego Police Department, but in this particular case, they dropped the ball.

The only reason they made the arrest was you, Fraser told the victim.

The woman spoke frankly at the Friday hearing, reading directly from the online posts she had uncovered. She said some of the words in those posts continue to make her skin crawl.

Its indescribable to explain what its like to read about our own rape in journal format, the woman said in court.

Berlins mother sobbed in the courtroom, as the woman described her fuzzy memories from the night of the incident, including the physical pain she felt from being sexually assaulted and then being forced out of the apartment like throwing laundry out the door.

She said she didnt know the defendants names that night but has entered them into internet search engines countless times since then.

When I stumbled upon this pickup artist world, it consumed me, she said. I tried to read to learn as a way to protect myself so I can identify who has been brainwashed with this lifestyle.

On Friday, the woman said she came to court  as she had many times while the case was pending  to bring attention to the pickup artist community and how the men prey on women, including herself.

That night was not an oops or a coincidence of events, she said. It was strategically planned by these men who not only manipulated and raped women regularly, but blogged and profited from it (through) their fans, followers and students.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield

UPDATES:

12:45 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from the sentencing hearing.

This article was originally published at 11:45 a.m.
Nine people face felony charges in San Diego County stemming from an auto insurance fraud ring in which the perpetrators filed bogus claims for collisions and thefts that never happened.

The suspects were identified through a two-year investigation called Operation Persistent, conducted by the San Diego Automobile Insurance Fraud Task Force.

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State and local authorities said Thursday that the fraud ring had filed 34 false clams for auto property damage over several years, using schemes that included staging collisions and using vehicles that were already damaged.

The fraudulent claims totaled about $200,000 and about $125,000 was paid out, authorities said. Among the insurance companies identified as victims were Allstate, Access, GEICO, Infinity, State Farm, Rental Insurance Services, Fred Loya, Nationwide, Alliance, Farmers, Nations and Travelers.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones said in a news release that insurance fraud is not a victimless crime.

We all pay for these crimes when insurers pass along the losses through higher premiums, Jones said.

According to the District Attorneys Office, the people charged in the case are: Yesenia Perez, 26; Darice Orozco, 37; Oscar Vargas, 31; Jesus Diego, 31; Roberto Ramirez, 27; Abel Ramirez, 31; Maria Linares, 24; Juan Augustin, 30; and Francine Moreno, 25.

Six of the defendants were arrested on Jan. 31, and police are still searching for Moreno. Two defendants were not arrested but received notices to appear in court.

Roberto Ramirez, Abel Ramirez, Vargas and Orozco pleaded not guilty this week in San Diego Superior Court. The others are expected to be arraigned this week and early next week.

The task force that investigated the case is supervised by the state Department of Insurance and is made up of law enforcement officers from multiple agencies including the District Attorneys Office and California Highway Patrol.

The National Insurance Crime Bureau also provides support to the task force.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield
Dozens of Democratic politicians and progressives are calling for investigations into Mickey Kasparian, the influential union leader who was accused late last year of sexually harassing one of his employees and retaliating against two others.

In a letter sent to the executive boards of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 135, the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, and the state and county Democratic parties, the group said Kasparian must be suspended from his position at both labor organizations through the duration of the independent investigations.

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Separately, the Democratic Womans Club of San Diego wrote a letter to the county Democratic Party asking that Kasparian be suspended from his role as a delegate to the partys state Central Committee.

And Lee Burdick, former legal adviser and chief off staff to former San Diego Mayor Bob Filner, likewise urged in the labor groups and county Democrats to investigate, and to suspend Kasparian in the interim.

If you do nothing and wait for some court or other agency to act, you will do significant harm to your credibility and, consequently, your ability to act on behalf of your members and the progressive Labor movement you purport to represent, Burdick wrote in a letter sent Tuesday.

Kasparian has categorically denied allegations contained in lawsuits that say he pressured a subordinate into a lengthy sexual relationship and fired another after he inaccurately suspected she had double-crossed him on a political matter. The letters not only question those denials, but they show a division between progressives.

After the absence of any action by the leadership of these groups to address these issues, it has now become clear that if we do not insist upon it, the complaints of these women may be dismissed and diminished in a manner that does not allow them any due process in their own workplaces, says the letter signed by 46 progressives.

The message from the Democratic Womans Club contains similar sentiments.

A statement from Local 135 said that people who complained about Kasparian in lawsuits and interviews with news media were fired for cause.

It is profoundly disappointing that individuals, by signing on to a letter, would choose to ignore the facts, or turn their backs on our members, the union said. We may be living in bizarre times, but facts still matter. Lawsuits are not truth, especially when they are filed by those who have failed to do their jobs.

In late December, Sandy Naranjo and Isabel Vasquez filed lawsuits against Kasparian and their employer, Local 135. Naranjo said she was wrongly fired after her husbands rival union took a position on a San Diego political issue that Kasparian disagreed with. Kasparian said she was fired for falsifying time cards and mileage reports.

Vasquez said she was pressured into a 15-year sexual relationship with Kasparian, her boss. Kasparian said he had no intimate contact with her.

After Kasparian was sued, another woman at Local 135, Anabel Arauz, said she was demoted after she said she would be a good character witness for Vasquez and her boyfriend made critical post about Kasparian on Facebook. Letter signers said that Kasparian needs to be suspended during any investigation because of the potential for retaliation.

Kasparian, who has led Local 135 since 2003, said he has done nothing wrong and that many of his accusers merely disgruntled.

Of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits only Naranjo was terminated, but in court documents she said she was not fired for cause but rather as political retaliation. On Wednesday the union that represents Naranjo and other labor organizers at Local 135 dismissed a grievance she filed.

Vasquez retired in July. Kasparian said he did not have any intimate contact with her, and other employees at Local 135 said there was no indication of anything other than a friendly professional relationship between the two. Kasparian and his supporters alike all said that Vasquez ended her career on good terms and was not disgruntled when she left the union.

Some of the women who complained in interviews with the media about how Kasparian treated them were fired, but they also said it was not for cause but rather for a slight or minor disagreement with their boss.

The Democratic Party did not return requests for comment and the state party had not seen the letters, according to a spokesperson.

Among those signing the main letter were San Diego City Councilman David Alvarez, public interest attorney Cory Briggs, former Assemblywoman Lori Saldana, four other members of city councils, elected members of school districts, clergy, and several politically-active Democrats.

The letters come after protests and requests for Kasparian to resign, including demands from former San Diego City Councilwoman Donna Frye and Irene McCormack Jackson, the former communications director for disgraced ex-San Diego Mayor Bob Filner who was the first woman to step forward and accuse him of sexual harassment.

It is our belief that the appropriate remedy is for Mr. Kasparian to resign, Frye and McCormack Jackson wrote in their Jan. 25 letter. At a minimum, we urge you to conduct an independent investigation regarding these allegations against Mr. Kasparian. We also urge you to take the actions necessary to protect the current employees, such as placing Mr. Kasparian on administrative leave until this is resolved.

Labor boss sued twice, accused of sexual harassment 

Women who worked for labor boss said he created a toxic office culture 

The letter signers wrote that they need to address allegations of sexual harassment in part to have a moral high ground over President Donald Trump, and the allegations against the commander-in-chief and his own admissions to actions that amount to sexual harassment.

Because of Mr. Kasparians standing in the progressive community, our ability to stand up against cultures of discrimination, bullying and harassment is compromised, unless we are able to resolutely acknowledge that we hold ourselves to the same standard that we demand from the nations President and his supporters, they wrote.

The letter with 46 signatures was organized by Sara Kent, a paralegal who said the allegations against Kasparian upset her, and reminded her of the scandal that consumed Filner. It germinated from a few conversations and social media posts between her friends, and concerns increased with time.

It really sort of became this groundswell of these people who really felt that something needs to happen rather than just let the court process run its course, she said.

Arauzs demotion was the tipping point, and it became clear that more direct action was needed, Kent said.

Hes doubling down, she said. And I think thats really whats making people react and want to act and not wait.

The letter was not widely circulated for signatures, but once it was released more people said that they wish to add their name, Kent said.

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1841
San Diego police raided two illegal pot shops in Grantville Thursday, seizing 54 pounds of marijuana products, a gun and $8,000 in cash.

Two employees at each dispensary were issued citations for marijuana sales and operating an unlicensed business, narcotics unit Lt. Matt Novak said Friday.

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With these two raids, investigators have closed 20 illegal dispensaries in the city this year. Novak said the team has about a dozen left on its list.

Investigators served search warrants at Purx Wellness and Green Hive dispensaries about 8 a.m. on Thursday. They are located in the same Mission Gorge Road strip mall one building apart from each other, near Mission Gorge Place.

From Purx Wellness, investigators seized 29 pounds of marijuana and marijuana-based products, several vials of steroids, business records and $6,000 in cash, Novak said.

Seized from Green Hive were 24 pounds of pot and products, a handgun, records and $2,000 in cash,

Novak said detectives have not yet discovered whether the two shops have the same owner or operator.
A woman is suspected of fatally shooting her husband before turning the gun on herself in their San Carlos home Wednesday, San Diego police said Thursday.

Candace Smith, 69, and James Smith, 68, were found dead in their Bell Bluff Avenue home after a family member called police about 10:25 a.m. to ask that officers check on them.

The two bodies had gunshot wounds, San Diego homicide Lt. Mike Holden said.

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Investigators revealed Thursday that three years into their 29-year marriage, a car accident left James Smith with a traumatic brain injury that required full-time care. Since then, Candace Smith was her husbands primary caregiver.

Recently, James Smiths health deteriorated, Holden said.

Detectives said Candace Smith shot her husband before turning the gun on herself Wednesday.

PREVIOUS: Married couple found shot in apparent murder-suicide in San Carlos

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Email: david.hernandez@sduniontribune.com

Phone: (619) 293-1876

Twitter: @D4VIDHernandez
Despite the terror she felt when her husband wrapped his hands around her throat, Mariel Cota didnt think to mention being strangled when she called police.

It took years for her to realize she had survived one of the deadliest forms of domestic violence.

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Officers, at the time, didnt think to ask about it. Now, a new countywide protocol will ensure police, and other trauma care providers, are better trained to detect, document and respond to cases of strangulation.

It will help officers identify and document what has happened, how it has happened and what evidence they need to collect... to save lives and hold offenders accountable, said San Diego police Chief Shelley Zimmerman.

Zimmerman and a number of county leaders announced the protocol at a press conference at the District Attorneys Office Thursday.

Experts say strangulation is a particularly dangerous form of domestic violence. Victims can fall unconscious in seconds and be dead in minutes.

In San Diego County, 15 percent of domestic-violence homicides between 2008 and 2015 were strangulation cases. One of the five domestic-violence homicides in the city of San Diego last year was a strangulation case.

If victims survive, they can be left with serious, long-term injuries like memory loss, traumatic brain injury and stroke. They are also nearly eight times more likely to end up victims of homicide than victims who suffered another form of abuse, according to a study done by the San Diego City Attorneys Office in the 1990s.

We need to identify these people and do something about it if were going to prevent that homicide, said San Diego County Deputy District Attorney Tracy Prior.

While it can be highly lethal, strangulation often leaves behind few physical marks. To help police better detect and document cases, officers will now be required to ask victims of domestic violence if they were strangled. If so, an additional two-page questionnaire will help to detail what happened.

Officers are also being encouraged to continue cataloging evidence in follow-up interviews, since bruises or symptoms may not appear for days.

City Attorney Mara Elliot said proof of strangulation can add months to a jail term, or even years if it is determined to be a felony.

It makes it easier for juries to convict, and it allows prosecutors to seek longer sentences for this calculated offense, Elliot said. The longer the abuser is behind bars, the longer victims have to move out, to get counseling, to acclimate to a life without violence and to move on with their lives.

The protocol also calls for the development of a new training video for dispatchers and officers, which will be rolled out in April. A public service announcement to help educate domestic violence survivors about strangulation has also been developed.

Although much of the training being developed is designed for first responders, more than 60 community partners and non-profits, including medical professionals, helped develop the protocol over a a six-month period.

Mariel Cota knows how life-changing assistance from law enforcement can be.

Her husband began abusing her in 2005. Three years later, during an argument at their home in Descanso, Cota decided shed had enough. She told him she was going to call police, and he snapped. In a flash, his hands were around her neck.

I will never forget the look in his eyes, she said Thursday. He didnt look like my husband at all.

Although she didnt realize until later she had been a victim of strangulation, the help she received from officers that night eventually gave her the courage to take her children and leave her abuser.

Officers and deputies have a window of opportunity to help victims understand how dangerous strangulation can be and to connect them with help, Cota said.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

(619) 293-1546

lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com
Jack Vincent told friends that when he was in his mid-30s, he was ready for a career change.

Hed had a four-year stint as a U.S. Marine, helped lay concrete for the building of Hoover Dam and labored many years working heavy construction.

So, looking for a job that didnt involve hours of physical labor, he began a foray into work in AM radio. And while he sat in chairs for the rest of his career, he actively made a lifetime of memories for himself and the listening public as a disc jockey.

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He was known as one of the KCBQ Good Guys along with Happy Hare and Don Howard, said his lifelong friend and fellow DJ Shotgun Tom Kelly. They were like local celebrities, they made a lot of public appearances. They were there when Elvis came to town.

Mr. Vincent died of natural causes Jan. 29 at his home in Santee. He was 99.

Born on Nov. 7, 1917 in Youngstown, Ohio, as John Vincent Oatsdean, Mr. Vincent dropped out of high school in 10th grade and joined the U.S. Marines in 1942.

Discharged from the military in July 1946, he settled in Southern California. During his tenure in construction, Mr. Vincent was also part of the building of Boulder Dam, also known as Hoover Dam, in Nevada.

Upon deciding on that fateful career change, he attended a radio broadcasting school in Hollywood and found a job in the early 1950s working at KXO-AM in El Centro. He then moved on to KFXM-AM San Bernardino.

In 1955, he was hired by Lee Bartell at KCBQ AM Radio as an announcer broadcasting from what is now known as the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon Boulevard.

When KCBQ upped its transmission to 50,000 watts in 1958, Mr. Vincent began broadcasting an all-night show from what was once the stations transmitter site, located on Mission Gorge Road in Santee.

The Santee site is where the stations antennae were located to be able to broadcast to the public. The towers eventually came down but it was there that he started to build a loyal following, Kelly said.

Kelly, whose real name is Tom Irwin, spent his working career as a disc jockey for several stations in San Diego and for K-EARTH 101 in Los Angeles.

According to Kelly, Mr. Vincent received many visitors while on the air at the KCBQ Santee transmitter site during the 1960s.

Kelly was in high school at Mount Miguel at the time, and he remembers being among many who enjoyed watching Jack doing his show.

Kelly aspired to someday be a radio personality and Vincent encouraged him by always saying: Someday youre going to be on the air just like I am, he said..

Kelly, and his wife, Linda, took care of Mr. Vincent when his health began to decline in his later years.

Mr. Vincent was on the air from 1955 to 1970, then transferred to the KCBQ engineering department where he was employed until he retired in 1982.

The words dignity, honor, class and intelligent barely scratch the surface to describe Jack, said his friend, Scottie Rice, chief engineer at KSDS Jazz 88.

He described Mr. Vincent as a friend to everyone he met.

Passing at the age of 99 seems like a long life, but somehow it seems too short, as all who were around Jack treasured and enjoyed every minute, Rice said. Jack smoked cigars, drank whiskey and red wine, and enjoyed every day.

If we can take anything from Jacks life, remember to enjoy everything you do, and every person you know.

Mr. Vincent was married to to his wife Nona from 1952 until her death in 2005.

He was preceded in death by his brothers, Albert and Harold, and a sister, Helen.

He is survived by a nephew, Scott Oatsdean and his wife Susan, of Wichita, Kan., and their two children; and a niece, Cheri Oatsdean, of Wichita.

Mr. Vincent will be buried with full military honors at 1 p.m. on Feb. 27 and then will be interned at Miramar National Cemetery.
Walk around the campus at either Grossmont or Cuyamaca College and youll see a rich diversity of ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds among the 30,000 students.

The two community colleges in eastern San Diego County welcome all students seeking an education, no matter who they are or where they came from.

Among the students at the colleges are 3,800 refugees and immigrant students, mostly from Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries.

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East County has the second-largest population of Iraqis in the United States, behind only the Detroit area, so it makes sense that many of the new arrivals would turn to one of the public colleges in the area.

Between 2011 and 2015, San Diego County had 12,163 refugees  almost 43 percent of all refugees arriving in California. More than 8,600 of those refugees coming to San Diego were from Iraq.

Ive heard the stories of many of these refugee students and they are strikingly similar. They left their home country because they could no longer live in a land filled with war and destruction.

Leaving almost everything behind, they lived in limbo  sometimes for years  in another country while they were vetted for approval to live in the United States.

To get their visas, they had to reveal every aspect of their lives to immigration authorities and prove they had a sponsor in the United States, all while putting their lives on hold as they anxiously waited and waited.

They came to the United States with little money and unable to speak the language, relying on their relatives and minimal government assistance to subsist while they adjusted to a new culture totally foreign from their previous life.

Yet they are so happy to be in the United States, no longer fearing for their safety every day. They want to succeed and make a new life for themselves. They want to provide for their families and contribute to American society.

When I heard about President Donald Trumps ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries  including Iraq  I thought about the Grossmont and Cuyamaca College students I knew who had overcome tremendous challenges to come to the United States and get their education.

Students like Meron, the Grossmont College student whose family fled Iraq when he was 11, living in Turkey for a year until they were able to move to El Cajon.

When he came to the U.S, he spoke no English. By his sophomore year at Grossmont High School, he was taking advanced placement classes and had a 3.9 grade point average.

Hes now fluent in four languages and will be graduating in June with three associate degrees, with plans to transfer to San Diego State University and pursue a career in international business.

Or Maysaa, who lived in Baghdad, Iraq, but was forced to flee to Syria with her baby daughter. After she moved to El Cajon in 2011, she started attending adult school so she could learn English.

Then she started attending Cuyamaca College full time in 2013 and, with a 4.0 grade point average, was valedictorian at the colleges commencement last June.

I want to encourage students, single mothers and refugees to continue their education because nothing is impossible to achieve with hard work, she said.

Meron and Maysaa are just starting out in their careers, but others left fulfilling jobs behind when they fled to the U.S.

The Welcome Back Center at Grossmont College has helped more than 4,000 physicians and other medical professionals get certified and find work in health fields in the United States so that they can make use of the skills and talents they developed in their home countries.

Noor was a pharmacist in Iraq who hoped to continue in her field through the help of the Welcome Back Center when she moved to East County in 2014. Her two brothers, both physicians in Iraq, were also planning to come to the United States.

These are not terrorists. They just want the same things every American wants  life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Krueger is the communications and public information director for the Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District.
During his first week in office, President Trump signed a series of executive orders pertaining to refugees, visas and immigration. Although presented under the guise of national security, make no mistake about it: these policies undermine American pluralism and are inconsistent with the values that make our nation great. They do absolutely nothing to enhance the security of American citizens and, in fact, introduce a number of redundant, unnecessary, and cruel bureaucratic hurdles to those here and abroad who view our country as a beacon of hope and prosperity.

Opposing view: Travel ban: Trumps legal order will make nation safer

The most egregious order bans Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocks entry into the U.S. for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. This order is an affront to common decency, and San Diegans should recognize that we can stay safe and welcome refugees at the same time. Anyone, including President Trump, who claims otherwise is being both deceitful about our capabilities as a powerful country and cruel to the most vulnerable people in the world.

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After all, the U.S. has a rigorous process for vetting refugees that is tightly controlled by our intelligence community. Following an initial screening process by the United Nations, U.S. agencies like the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and State Department take over. These agencies use overlapping and repetitive methods, including extensive interviews, health checks, biometric data analysis, and background checks, to dive into refugees backgrounds. Syrian refugees in particular must undergo additional steps of security clearing  the entire process can take an average of 18 to 24 months to complete, and it sometimes lasts longer than three years.

To state it simply, the system is exhaustive, and it works  President Trumps Muslim ban, on the other hand, definitively does not. In fact, the executive order harms our national security by providing a recruiting tool for the very terrorists we must defeat and damaging the relationship our nation has with any future allies. Moreover, it does not make any sense.

Set aside the fact that the executive order, using the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as its rationale, does not ban those who share a nationality with any of the hijackers. The list is something of a mystery; there have been zero deaths caused by immigrants from its seven countries since 1975, and it conveniently exempts several countries where the Trump family happens to conduct business, including Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

The real problem, however, is that there exists no magical list of countries  Muslim-majority or otherwise  from which banning travelers could keep us perfectly safe from any future attack. This ban of desperate refugees and innocent immigrants is ultimately an empty gesture that will do nothing but embarrass the U.S. on the world stage and alienate many of the very people we rely upon as partners in the fight against ISIL.

More than 1,000 San Diegans protest at Lindbergh Field this week after President Donald Trumps recent travel ban. (Nancee Lewis / San Diego Union-Tribune)

For we have promised those who work alongside us abroad a home in the U.S. due to the abuse and risk of death they face for helping us. Yet even if they get their visas, their families are left behind for a time and therefore remain vulnerable to those who may wish them harm for aiding the U.S.

The truth is that these patriots, these men and women who sacrifice their safety and their lives to help defeat our enemies, should not have to wait for a visa. They should be welcomed as soon as their service is done. When American forces leave their region, they shouldnt be left to a devastated country and potential death. We absolutely must get this right in future conflicts or we run the risk of missing out on valuable intelligence and regional context.

Now with our government failing to uphold our promises to our allies, it falls to all of us to prove ourselves.

We must offer those suffering abroad another choice  one apart radicalism or death and instead founded in safety, opportunity and prosperity.

We must offer those who would come to our country, whether just for a visit or to start a new life here, that which we have always offered immigrants from around the world: a chance to succeed on their merits and live up to our values.

By choosing this American way over fear and hate, we provide a powerful moral rebuke to the administrations draconian, xenophobic policies and make our nation stronger through our defense of our founding values of freedom, equality and inclusivity. We must honor our promise to the world.

I encourage you to join more than 350 veterans from across the nation to tell President Trump to rescind this order. Sign the letter today at www.honorourpromise.org

VanDiver is a Navy veteran, director of the Truman National Security Projects San Diego Chapter, and serves as an advisor to No One Left Behind. Twitter: @ShawnJVanDiver
Last Friday, President Donald Trump began to implement the promises he made to the American people during the presidential campaign by signing an executive order designed to make America safe again. This order imposes a temporary 90-day ban on travel to the United States for citizens of seven countries, one of which  Iran  is a sworn enemy of the United States, and the other six  Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen  are devouring themselves in violence.

Opposing view: Travel ban: An egregious mistake that will haunt U.S.

This order also temporarily suspends all refugee admissions from all countries for 120 days, and bars refugees from Syria indefinitely, while the government improves the vetting process for the admission of immigrants and visitors and to minimize the possibility that terrorists might enter the U.S. by posing as refugees.

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This order does not apply to U.S. citizens, and the administration has clarified the order to make clear that it does not apply to legal permanent residents  so-called green card holders  who have previously been granted permission to live and work in the U.S., or to dual nationals who are citizens of one of the seven countries and any other country (or example, Australia and Iran).

Nor is this a ban on Muslims; there are dozens of Muslim-majority countries around the world that are being treated exactly the same as our most trusted allies. There are also provisions that allow for exceptions for emergency medical issues or other compelling circumstances.

President Trumps critics immediately questioned his authority to take this action, and several federal district court judges have halted implementation of parts of this order pending further judicial review, notwithstanding that previous presidents have taken similar action.

In fact, even then-President Obama used his executive authority to slow the processing of Iraqi refugees in 2011 for similar reasons  fear that Muslim extremists might use the refugee system to enter the United States.

Authority for this action comes from the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA) passed by Congress many decades ago. On Jan. 23  less than two weeks ago  the Congressional Research Service issued a report entitled Executive Authority to Exclude Aliens: In Brief, describing this authority:

Section 212(f) of the INA is arguably the broadest and best known of these authorities. It provides, in relevant part, that Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States [emphasis added], he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or non-immigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Over the years, Presidents have relied upon Section 212(f) to suspend or otherwise restrict the entry of individual aliens and classes of aliens, often (although not always) in conjunction with the imposition of financial sanctions upon these aliens.

Neither the text of Section 212(f) nor the case law to date suggests any firm legal limits upon the Presidents exercise of his authority to exclude aliens under this provision. The central statutory constraint imposed on Section 212(f)s exclusionary power is that the President must have found that the entry of any alien or class of aliens would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.

According to the Congressional Research Service, other provisions of the INA also support President Trumps actions:

Beyond Section 212(f), other provisions of the INA can also be seen to authorize the Executive to restrict aliens entry to the United States. Most notably, Section 214(a)(1) prescribes that the admission of any alien to the United States as a nonimmigrant shall be for such time and under such conditions as [the Executive] may by regulations prescribe. ... Section 215(a)(1) similarly provides that it shall be unlawful for any alien to enter or depart the United States except under such reasonable rules, regulations, and orders, and subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe. In the past, the Executive has relied upon Section 215(a)(1), in particular, to exclude certain aliens. For example, President Carter cited to Section 215(a) when authorizing the revocation of immigrant and non-immigrant visas issued to Iranians during the Iran Hostage Crisis.

These authorities have never been successfully challenged in the past, and it is unlikely that the appellate courts will sustain the lower court actions to prevent the president from exercising this power. From as early as the 1890s, the Supreme Court of the United States declared that immigration policy was solely the province of Congress and the President, recognizing the plenary power of the President to execute the laws enacted by Congress without judicial intervention.

Almost unnoticed in this executive order was another significant exercise of presidential authority. Acting under authority given to him by Congress, President Trump lowered the number of refugees for 2017 to 50,000 from the all-time high of 110,000 authorized by his predecessor.

Certainly, a temporary ban for 90 or 120 days on travel from these seven countries is a reasonable and necessary step to ensure the safety of the American homeland. Clearly, President Trump is carrying out the promises he made during the last election, promises that were endorsed by the American people and which led to his election. Unlike his predecessor, who was the worst president in history in terms of immigration enforcement, President Trump intends to do everything in his legal authority to make America safe again.

Nunez, who was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California from 1982-1988, is chairman of the board fort the Center for Immigration Studies. Website: cis.org
Regarding Lets roll on marijuana regulations, California (Jan. 29): As California starts paving the way to pot use, a few things are abundantly clear. Our democratically led Legislature must be high.

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They say itll take 10 years to figure this mess out. They need 20 different types of fees and permits (thats taxes). Agents of the state can trespass on private property without a warrant to look for illegal growers who havent paid the fees.

Lawyers have to figure out how to avoid federal lawsuits. But the most stupid result? Its very, very bad to smoke cigarettes but OK to smoke joints.

The black market for marijuana will actually thrive.

Russ Stumman

Escondido

Supervisors should be ashamed of their raises

Regarding Supervisor warns county could face $100M budget cut (Feb. 2): Its really ironic that the county supervisors announced a $100 million shortfall just days after they gave themselves a huge raise that will increase their pensions and add to the shortage.

They have no conscience and I cant wait until theyre gone.

Harold Poyner

San Diego

McConnells hypocrisy is on display for all

Regarding Trump picks Gorsuch for Supreme Court (Feb. 1): One could laugh when Sen. Mitch McConnell says, The president is entitled to have his Cabinet appointments considered, if the stakes werent so high or integrity so sparse or the Constitution in such low regard.

Letters and commentary policy

The U-T welcomes and encourages community dialogue on important public matters. Please visit this page for more details on our letters and commentaries policy.

E-mail letters@sduniontribune.com

Mail: Andrew Kleske, Reader Outreach Editor San Diego Union-Tribune P.O. Box 120191 San Diego, CA 92112-0191.

You can also leave a comment below

What part of Judge Merrick Garland and President Barack Obama does Sen. McConnell not remember being responsible for?

Gloria Espeseth

San Carlos

We cant give Trump any sort of free ride

Regarding Dont give up already on President Trump (Jan. 27), by giving Trump a chance, the U-T Editorial Board obeys Steve Bannons instructions to the media: Keep your mouth shut!

Until all appreciate that we the people and our nation now merely reflect Trump  the great/superior brain, one who knows more than the generals, one who alone can do whatever the nation needs  we will not understand what happens or what we need to do.

If we and events reflect back that he is the greatest, all is well. If otherwise (pictures of Obamas 2009 vs. Trumps 2017 inaugural crowds), someone will have hell to pay.

Remember, if Trump feels like millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton, thats good enough. Damn the facts. Our two choices  believe Trump or our lying eyes.

Cheryl Martin Ede

San Diego

Reaction to refugee ban just keeps pouring in

Regarding Faulconer criticizes Trump refugee ban (Jan. 31): I salute Mayor Faulconer for his courageous opposition to President Trumps executive order barring refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Mayor Faulconer stands with many other Republican leaders who either oppose Trumps order outright or, like Reps. Darryl Issa and Duncan Hunter, severely criticize its implementation. I am glad to see these leaders putting country before party.

Catherine Thiemann

Pacific Beach

* * *

The president placed a temporary ban on immigrants from the seven countries for the purpose of setting up a vetting process.

These seven countries either do not have information to give us or have had their papers destroyed and cannot provide information. ISIS has stated that it will insinuate its people in the Syrian refugee population, and that would be disastrous to give any such ISIS members refugee status.

I would think that the Muslim refugees and immigrants who came here to get away from the violence in their countries would welcome this temporary ban and would support a vetting process. I ask that everyone calm down and wait until the president can put in a process that would protect all of us and resume a family unification process for the immigrant families.

Kim Vaughn

San Diego

* * *

It is an interesting coincidence that the countries like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, which have provided our worst terrorists, are not on the banned list, and they have business dealings with our illustrious president.

Is anybody looking into this? Nobody seems to do anything about his disregard of ethics, the law and the Constitution. Hopefully, they are thinking that, given enough rope, he will hang himself  and at the rate hes going its looking like it might not take too long.

B. Graniero

El Cajon

* * *

OPEC Muslim nations that made much of the world suffer with high oil prices for decades should not be eligible as refugees because now they are feeling the pinch with ordinary low prices caused by fracking. This should be part of Trumps vetting process.

Peter Hall

Coronado

Plenty of people show the same disrespect

In her letter to the editor Wearing the flag shows disrespect for nation (Feb 1), Ann Sisco asserts that a woman photographed wearing an American flag as a hijab is tangible proof that Muslim women do not understand nor respect the honor of this country.

So if Sisco disagrees with one womans choice, she condemns all Muslim women? And by her logic, when I see a photograph of a white male at a GOP rally wearing an American flag cowboy hat, should I assume all white males disrespect our country?

If Siscos absurd notion werent so dangerous, it would be laughable. Sadly it seems to be acceptable these days to paint people with a very broad brush and jump to conclusions about their intentions.

For the record, I think the stars-and-stripes cowboy hats are adorable and always assumed the people wearing them did so as a show of patriotism. Why cant we give this woman in the photograph the same benefit of the doubt?

Jennifer Coburn

Del Cerro

Liberals afraid to listen to opposing views

Regarding Breibart editors speech canceled due to protest (Feb. 2): I can certainly understand UC Berkeley and UCLA having to cancel this guest speaker (Milo Yiannopoulos).

Nothing can be more terrorizing to free-thinking, open-minded, left-wing liberals than having to let someone else listen to a person with a different point of view than their own trying to exercise his freedom of speech.

Bob Crowell

Vista

Want to see more letters that appear only online? Follow @UTLetters on Twitter and UTOpinion on Facebook.
Kellyanne Conway, a top adviser to President Donald Trump , admitted Friday that she made an error a day before when she told a TV personality that two Iraqi refugees had plotted and carried out what she called the Bowling Green massacre. No such massacre ever happened.

Conway made the claim during an interview with MSNBCs Chris Mathews on Thursday. In it, she said former President Barack Obama enforced a similar ban on refugees from Iraq as a result of the massacre and that people didnt know because it didnt get media coverage.

President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre, Conway said.

The incident to which Conway may have been referring did not involve a massacre. Two Iraqi nationals living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, were arrested in 2011 and eventually sentenced on terrorism charges in 2013, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

No attack ever occurred and fact-check sites including factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, and snopes.com have called Conways comparison of Trumps travel ban to an earlier action by Obama faulty and mostly false because Obamas slowdown of Iraqis applying for a single type of visa affected one type of visa from one country and not a temporary travel ban on entry from multiple countries.

The two men, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan, were accused of attempting to send weapons and funds to Al Qaeda soldiers fighting U.S. troops in Iraq. Hammadi was sentenced to life in prison, Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in prison to be followed by supervised release for life.

On Friday, Conway tweeted that she made a mistake and suggested taking a deep breath.

For those who recognize Conway as the White House adviser who coined the term alternative facts, her mistake was not overlooked and it was consequently mocked on Twitter. The mockery went so far that someone created a website accepting donations for the Bowling Green Massacre Victims Fund. The donation button goes to the ACLUs website.

Others took a different approach and pointed out that despite Conways mistake, the case in Bowling Green underlines a real threat to Americans abroad or on U.S. soil.

Did Conway make an honest mistake or is this part of a larger problem the administration faces in making statements? Share your thoughts with me.

Have some thoughts to share?

Join me in a conversation: Shoot me a private email with your thoughts or ideas on a different approach to this story. As always, you can also send us a tweet.

Trump adviser Kelleyanne Conway gets ready to go on television outside the White House, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2017, in Washington (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez
Once again, parents are being admonished to put down their cellphones and pay attention to their kids.

The latest plea comes from a daycare center in the Houston area which put up a sign that reads:

You are picking up your child! GET OFF YOUR PHONE!!!!

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Your child is happy to see you! Are you happy to see your child? We have seen children trying to hand their parents their work and their parents are on the phone. We have heard a child say Mommy, Mommy, Mommy ... and their parent is paying more attention to their phone than their own child.

It is appalling. Get off your phone.

The post went viral on Facebook, and got picked up by the media, creating a sensation similar to earlier ones. For years, schools and child care workers have been pleading with parents to set their phones aside.

Theres a flip side to this, too. Schools also are urging parents to find ways to get their children to put their own phones away.

Americas addiction to the phones doesnt appear likely fade. Apple reported this week that it recently experienced a big surge in iPhone sales. And analysts estimate that 55.6 million mobile phones will be sold in the U.S. in 2017.

Cybersecurity Playlist  On Now Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slams Equifax On Now LA 90: Yahoo data breach worse than originally reported On Now Lifelock offers to protect you from the Equifax breach  by selling you services provided by Equifax 1:02 On Now California beer maker thrives in Germany On Now Cyberattacks on Hollywood On Now Hackers gain access to OneLogin On Now What is WannaCry? On Now Senate overturns privacy rules for Internet providers On Now Online pirates claim to hold Disney's latest 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie hostage, demand ransom On Now Yahoo warns users of malicious activity

Twitter: @grobbins

gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com
Keneshia Johnson is among 250 students at Crawford High School to get a free mobile hotspot device and wireless Internet access under a pilot project that took effect Thursday.

Its a big deal for the 17-year-old on a couple of fronts: It allows her to use her school-issued laptop at home for homework and even to surf YouTube at Netflix, and it will give her more time to sleep in the mornings.

I usually get up extra early so I can get to school and log on my computer to finish up my homework, said Keneshia, an eleventh-grader who gets to Crawford up to an hour before classes start at 7:15 each morning. Now I can actually use my school laptop at home. My family is allowed to use it, too. 

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The San Diego Unified School District is part of a national project that gives free mobile hotspots to students whose family cant afford Internet access at home.

Under a partnership Sprint, the 1Million Project aims to help curb the so-called digital divide that contributes to the achievement gap among student groups.

An estimated 5 million U.S. families with school-aged children have no internet access at home, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureaus American Community Survey data. At the same time, roughly 70 percent of teachers assign homework that requires web access, creating a homework gap that educators say puts these students at a disadvantage academically.

Its so easy to take Internet access for granted, said Richard Lawrence, principal of Crawford, where 80 percent of the 1,100 students qualify for subsidized meals based on family income. This program allows students to log on to computers to study at home or on a bus. It opens up access to a world of information for their parents, too.

Sprint and the Sprint Foundation are working on the multi-year initiative to reach one million low-income students across the country by providing them with connectivity to use with school district-provided computers.

We have heard some powerful and heart-wrenching stories from disadvantaged students about their efforts to find connectivity to keep up with their school assignments when they dont have home Internet access, said Kevin Kunkel , Sprints Regional President for Southern California.

San Diego Unified Superintendent Cindy Marten said the program compliments the districts technology initiative that has put take-home laptops and other devices in the hands of 16,000 students in 44 schools this year, including every student in the elementary and middle schools that feed into Crawford in and around City Heights.

We are recognizing what our students need and trying very hard to give it to them, Marten said. We want our students to be able to learn 24/7 and we want to give them access to modern learning tools.

Giving students Internet access at home not only allows them to work on lessons from their regular classes, it allows them to study for online make-up classes offered at Crawford and better compete with online charter schools.

San Diego was chosen as one of the projects 11 markets nationwide to pilot the Sprint initiative with 4,000 students. Educators will study the pilot program through the end of the school year in preparation for a full roll-out at the start of the 2017-18 school year.

The socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of San Diego Unified made it a good candidate for the project, officials said. Families with a household income of $40,000 or less are dramatically less likely to have broadband internet access at home, according to a recent report from the Public Policy Research Institute.

Schools and school districts that want to apply to participate in the program can visit www.sprint.com/1million project for more information.

maureen.magee@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @MaureenMagee
After being flooded with requests, the San Diego Humane Society has stopped accepting applications to adopt about 90 of the more than 120 Yorkies rescued last month from the home of an elderly Poway couple.

More than 1,600 people have already submitted applications, according to Humane Society officials, who had originally planned to keep accepting the paperwork until noon Saturday.

The agency will review the applications and forward the ones that are approved into a lottery system, said spokeswoman Kelli Schry.

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Adopters will be contacted individually to schedule appointments to complete the adoption, she said.

Ninety-two of the dogs were taken Jan. 20 from the couples home following neighbor complaints. The dogs were living among the feces and urine that covered the floors and walls of the four-bedroom house. The smell was so strong the officers were forced to wear masks, said Stephen MacKinnon, chief of law enforcement for the San Diego Humane Society.

An additional 29 dogs were removed from the same location on Jan. 24, Schry said. Additional dogs were also retrieved from an off-site location, she said.

The society has repeatedly refused to identify the elderly couple or disclose the second location.

The dogs are all Yorkie and Yorkie mixed-breeds, Schry said. They have been cleaned up by volunteers and also spayed or neutered.

On the Humane Society website, the agency thanked those who submitted applications and reminded others that there are more animals available for adoption.

We are touched by the communitys enormous response, the announcement said We will review the applications, select adopters via lottery and contact them accordingly. Meanwhile, there are many more pets who would love to find new homes. Come visit us.

Steve Dreyer of U-T Community Press contributed to this report.
BUTLER, Ala. (AP)  Carrie Johnson and Gladden Smith are bound together by a single, deadly moment  a moment for which she says she has forgiven him, a moment he says he never intended but cannot change.

Although Johnson and Smith lived in the same rural county for years, they have never spoken about it: that sickening moment in 1971 when Smith ran over Johnsons daughter, Margaret Ann Knott, and killed her during a civil rights protest.

I dont hate him in any way, Johnson said, explaining that she did not want her surviving children to live with hate.

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___

The civil rights movement dragged on longer in Choctaw County than many other places, well into the 1970s. Near the Mississippi state line in the timber country of western Alabama, schools desegregated after protests and a federal lawsuit in the late 1960s. Not until later did black people become fed up enough to take action over economic inequality in the county, where the courthouse square has two monuments to Confederate dead, including a statue that looks out over the spot where Margaret Ann Knott died.

Blacks worked as janitors and store stockers in the county seat of Butler, but whites always got the higher-paying positions. Whites held all elected offices in the county of 16,500 people, which is about 55 percent white.

When blacks began organizing protests there, Johnson already was a respected teacher with deep community ties through schools and church. She was a natural to help lead a push for better jobs and wages.

Longtime residents remember a hot summer of protests, with blacks filling the streets and boycotting stores. Dozens of state troopers were called at one point amid a rumored plan to burn down the courthouse.

To judge by the local newspaper, however, all was calm. The Choctaw Advocate didnt cover the protests until after that Saturday when Gladden Smith drove into town.

___

Smith, a south Alabama native who was assigned to Butler in his job as an agent with the U.S. Agriculture Department, had been working out in the county that morning of Sept. 11, 1971. He drove into the town in his government pickup, stopped at the office and got into his personal car before heading toward home through the courthouse square.

I remember coming through the intersection and seeing people over to the side, Smith, 71, told The Associated Press during a recent interview at his home in rural Escambia County, near the Florida line. I didnt know what I was getting into.

Demonstrators were staging a sit-in in the middle of an intersection ahead of him on the other side of the square. Pictures taken by the town photographer, Jack Hopson, show people everywhere.

Smith drove through one intersection and then another, where he turned left. Witnesses said people were chasing the car and hitting it as he approached the intersection where Knott and other protesters sat in the road.

Smith was worried the crowd was after him, but he stopped at a red light.

They were rocking that car trying to turn it over and everything, he said. You get caught in a life-and-death situation and you have to make a decision.

Smith said he eased forward. Demonstrators moved, he said, and then he felt the thud.

I knew I had hit something, but I thought it was a leg, he said.

Seated directly beside Knott on the pavement as the car approached, demonstrator Willie S. Jackson had a different view.

People started hollering that a car had broken the line, said Jackson, now 64. I stood up and sure enough a car was coming with people running behind it.

Before Jackson knew it, the front bumper of Smiths car was against Knotts back. Overweight, she was struggling to get up after others already had fled, Jackson said.

A front tire rolled over Knott, and the vehicle seemed to stand up in the air, said Jackson. People grew frantic.

They were beating on it. I was, too. We were trying to get him off her. We would have lifted the car off her, but then he gunned it, said Jackson.

Smith doesnt remembering accelerating quickly. The sheriffs official account  printed afterward in the county newspaper  said only that Smith eased through the intersection at a safe rate of speed. Some said Knott was pushed down into the cars path, but nothing was ever proven.

Smith said he saw a police officer just up the street and stopped. He told the man what had happened and drove home but was soon in the county jail.

Knott was rushed to the hospital, where she died before sunset.

She just kept saying, I died for freedom, I died for freedom, Jackson recalled.

Carrie Johnson had been at a church preparing for the next civil rights demonstration when her daughter was fatally injured; she got the news later in a phone call.

___

Johnson, now 86 and retired from the school system, wanted Smith prosecuted for something, although she wasnt sure what.

A demonstrator signed a warrant charging Smith with murder, but Smith was quickly released on bond. Yellowed courthouse records show prosecutors called as many as 53 witnesses to testify before a mixed-race grand jury that considered a charge of second-degree manslaughter and declined to indict him.

The criminal case was concluded by the end of the month, and no one has been prosecuted since in Knotts death.

Smith said his insurance company paid a $10,000 settlement.

Johnson was deeply wounded, but she thought of her other five children, including Margaret Anns twin sister, Mary Ann. Johnson feared what anger or a quest for vengeance might do to Mary Ann and her sons, plus the unborn boy she was carrying at the time.

So Johnson, a Christian, said she made the only possible decision by forgiving Smith and trying to put herself in the drivers seat that day.

Ive tried to tell my children this, and other people: Imagine yourself (as a white) in a crowd of blacks and they are taunting and shaking your car and rocking your car, she said. I dont hold it against him because I really dont think he deliberately did it.

___

Nearly 120 miles away at his rural home ringed by pine trees and azaleas, Smith wishes things were different.

If I hadnt got up that morning I would have probably been a lot better off, he said. But it happened.

Smith, who retired in 2000, still owns a home in Butler but only visits occasionally. Yet he and his wife and their three sons, now grown, spent much of the last four decades in Choctaw County.

Smith, a deacon in his church, said the family remained despite taunts and threats directed at his sons while they attended integrated public schools. They stayed despite threatening telephone calls and cars that drove slowly by their home.

It was either stay there or run, he said. What I tried to do was do a little bit extra or whatever for the black community. I was trying to do my job, but I was also trying to show that I didnt mean no harm.

Johnson also stayed, at one point serving with Smiths wife on a school committee. Hundreds attended Knotts funeral, and leaders formed a biracial commission which reached an agreement that ended the demonstrations within a week.

Donors gave money for a $4,700 granite monument meant to be erected outside the courthouse in memory of Knott, but the white-controlled commission refused permission to install it. Chipped and stained, the three-piece memorial now lies outside Richard Moores stone-cutting shop in Meridian, Mississippi.

Johnson said shed like to talk to Smith, to tell him she doesnt want him prosecuted and doesnt hold him responsible for her daughters death.

Smith demurs at the idea, saying he made his peace with God.

I ask the Good Lord to help put behind me the things I cant change, said Smith.
The first commercial-scale solar energy field in the county was officially opened Friday in Borrego Springs.

The 200-acre solar farm by NRG Energy, Inc. consists of 102,000 photovoltaic panels, each one measuring roughly 3 by 6 feet.

The 26-megawatt Borrego Solar Generating Station can produce enough power to meet the annual needs of about 21,000 homes. The huge field lies off Borrego Valley Road about three miles northeast of downtown Borrego Springs. It was built last year by contractors Sunora Energy Solutions of Phoenix, which employed 250 workers laboring in the desert sun.

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NRG Senior Vice President Randy Hickok said the plant could have been bigger  the company owns 308 acres in the Borrego Valley that decades ago used to be a vineyard  but 26 megawatts is the most that can be transferred through the existing 69-kilowatt transmission lines in the area.

We built it as big as the power lines can accommodate, Hickok said.

The energy the farm produces goes to two places. It connects directly to one line that powers homes and businesses in Borrego Springs, with the remainder going in a line that connects to the main energy grid.

San Diego Gas & Electric has signed a 25-year power agreement with NRG to buy the electricity.

The plant is run automatically. The 102,000 solar panels are all connected to a computer that moves them, ever so slightly, all day long to track the sun across the sky. There is no storage component. When its sunny, electricity is produced. At night the electricity stops flowing.

Only a skeletal staff of a couple of people work at the site. Fencing with barbed wire surrounds the site and security cameras monitor the area. No security issues have arisen since the plant was completed early this year, officials said.

Borrego Springs is a perfect place for such a system because the sun shines on average 264 days a year.

Its intense sunlight and nice flat land and friendly people that were supportive of the project, Hickok said. This part of Southern California is one of the best solar resources in the world.

Friday mornings grand opening, under sunny skies and in 80-plus degree temperatures, was attended by about 75 locals and energy officials. The event was mostly ceremonial; the farm has been producing energy for several months.

Hickok said the size of the Borrego facility is the future of commercial solar plants. Although far bigger solar fields exist elsewhere in the country and world, he said most future solar farms will likely be the size of the Borrego plant or smaller because of transmission issues and because they are easier to get approved.

NRG Energy, based in New Jersey, is a Fortune 300 company with interests in various energy projects including fossil fuel, nuclear, solar and wind. Its proposing to build an air-cooled power plant near the coast in Carlsbad.

Solar is a big part of what the company has been doing the past three years, Hickok said, and he said the future is almost limitless. Borrego is one of eight large-scale solar facilities in the companys portfolio in New Mexico, Arizona and California.

He declined to say how much the Borrego plant cost to build.

The Borrego Springs community, overall, appears to support the facility. Business leaders were thrilled when it created 250 construction jobs last year, many of which went to locals.

The only complaint was about the dust the construction created. When winds pick up in the Borrego Valley, and they often do, the dust from the solar field was pronounced. Officials say that problem has been reduced now partly by a sprayed concoction consisting partly of ground palm leaves that makes a hard covering on the ground.
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Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- Sprayers are devices that used to apply pesticides, insecticides on plants to control pastes and diseases. Sprayers are also use to apply herbicides to control weeds and micronutrients to promote growth of plants. The sprayers breaks the chemical solution into fine droplets and distribute the insecticides uniformly over the plant. A good sprayer should produce steady stream of liquid in desired droplet size so that plants to be treat get covered uniformly. The sprayer should convey adequate pressure so that sprayer should reach all foliage over the plant. The sprayer are operated manually as well as by power.



Crop Sprayers Market: Drivers & Restraints



Food drives the world. In addition to clean water, acquire sufficient food is major concern for majority of peoples in the world which makes the agriculture one of the biggest and important industry in the world. Agricultural productivity is not only the prime factor for countries economy but also for the health and security of its population. So importance of agricultural in countries economy is major driving factor for crop sprayer market.



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Population explosion, increasing incomes, declined natural sources and changing climate conditions affected food prices to rise and agricultural productivity once again become a major concern. Strategies to increase food productivity imparts the use of technology in agriculture. Such strategies will helps to drive crop sprayers market.



Green revolution have changed the concept of traditional farming. Extensive efforts to modify farming methods assisted to increase the food production in Asia Pacific and Latin America. There are some regions in Middle East and Africa where many effort were taken to apply the green revolution approaches but failed. So there is need to help the farmers to use farming equipment in farming. Farmers in undeveloped countries does not have disposable income to use modern techniques in farming. So there is need of government initiatives to assist the farmers.



Crop Sprayers Market: Market Segmentation



Crop sprayers market can be segmented on the basis of Capacity of Sprayers



Ultra Low Volume Sprayers (less than 5liters/hectare)



Low Volume Sprayers(5 to 400 liters/hectare)



Manually Operated

Knapsack Sprayers

Rocker Sprayers

Pedal Operated Sprayers

Stirrup Sprayers

Power Driven Sprayers

Knapsack Power Sprayers



High Volume Sprayers(More than 400 liters/ hectare)



Self-Propelled Sprayers

Mounted Sprayers

Trailed Sprayers



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Crop Sprayers Market: Regional-Outlook



The global Crop Sprayers market has been divided into seven key geographical regions which includes, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific will be dominating market for Crop Sprayers. Countries like India, China, and Indonesia are major agricultural promoting countries in Asia Pacific. There will be demand for Low volume sprayers in India as there is farming in small plots. Farming land in India is bisected. China and Indonesia will demand High volume sprayers. Asia Pacific is followed by North America. North America is major producer of wheat, corn and soybean. Latin America is also the lucrative market for crop sprayers market. Green revolution have lead the Latin America as prime agriculture region. Brazil and Mexico will be important countries for Crop sprayers market. Western Europe also contributes for Crop sprayers market. Germany and Netherlands. Netherlands is one of the prominent producer of vegetables and flowers. Eastern Europe also important market for Crop Sprayers. Middle East and Africa is lags behind in Agriculture. But countries like Israel, South Africa, and Nigeria have proved the development in Agriculture. So there is opportunity to expand the crop sprayers market in this region.



Crop Sprayers Market: Key players



Some of the identified players in the global Crop Sprayers market are,



Chafer Machinery Group

Househam

John Rhodes AS limited

Boston Crop Sprayers

Cleveland crop sprayers limited

Avison Sprayers

S & K sprayers

Foggers India Pvt ltd.

ASPEE India

Crystal Crop Protection Pvt Ltd

Taizhou Sunny Agricultural Machinery Co., Ltd.,

Zhejiang Ousen Machinery Co., Ltd.
Laurel, MD -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- Maryland-based creative agency Blue Artists, LLC has released its February podcast featuring guidance for entrepreneurs and creative-types with a focus on brand awareness through community engagement and social media.



"Build Your Difference" is designed to help visionary people build distinguished brands that inspire and engage a growing audience. Each month's podcast focuses on a different theme such as brand awareness, email marketing, self-publishing, videography, photography or website development. The format includes a feature story, news about Blue Artists' clients and a producer's segment.



Blue Artists' mission is to help powerful and visionary people build distinguished brands that inspire and engage their growing audience. The February Client News segment features two Blue Artists clients who are staying true to that mission by engaging their respective community to the fullest:



William Jones, author and founder of Afrofuturism Network, shared his knowledge of black comic book heroes and illustration techniques at three events in the Washington metropolitan area during the month of January. Jones presented two youth comic book illustration workshops at Montgomery (Md.) County Public Libraries held in conjunction with their inaugural MoComCon event and gave a presentation followed by a book signing at Sankofa Video, Books and Cafe in Washington, DC. Jones is the author of "The Ex-Con, Voodoo Priest, Goddess, and the African King: A Social, Cultural, and Political Analysis of Four Black Comic Book Heroes."



Rev. Charles Moorer was selected as Pastor of the Week by the Indiana Wesleyan University Alumni. Rev. Moorer, lead pastor at Divine Direction Christian Church in Indianapolis, Ind., was featured in an IWU Alumni blog article, titled "'Insuring that the Message of Grace is Delivered': Elder Rev. Charles T. Moorer, Jr.  Pastor of the Week." The article conveys Rev. Moorer's devotion to his ministry and church, and the connection between his faith and his roles as a pastor, author, musician, educator and business owner.



The February "Build Your Difference" feature segment explores a topic that makes many creatives and entrepreneurs cringe: self-promotion. Blue Artists producer Pierre Walters explains how creatives and entrepreneurs can make noise about their brands without being "salesy" or pushy.



While answering a question from a podcast listener, Walters delves into the realm of social media and the time it takes to build a brand's social media presence during the monthly producer's segment.



The podcast is available to Blue Artists' clients and anyone interested in learning how to build their brand at www.Community.Blue-Artists.com.



Distributed by Blue Artists, the "Build Your Difference" podcast team includes Walters, podcast producer/host Desiree Moodie, content producer Sarah Miller, and host Jim Denison.



About Blue Artists

Blue Artists is a creative agency that believes strongly in the inspirational power of great stories. They aim to collaborate with amazing people to tell first-rate stories that can shape the future of their brand by inspiring their audience and themselves.



For more information on Blue Artists, visit www.blue-artists.com or find them on Facebook at Blue Artists, LLC.



Media Contact:

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Seattle, WA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- The report "Rigid Plastic Packaging Market by Raw Material (PE, PET, PP, PVC, EPS, PS, Bioplastics), Type (Bottles & jars, Trays, Tubs, Cups & Pots), Production Process (Extrusion, Injection Molding), Application, and Region - Global Forecast to 2021", The rigid plastic packaging market size is projected to grow from USD 189.43 billion in 2015 to reach USD 262.68 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 5.71%



Browse 113 market data tables and 60 figures spread through 193 pages and in-depth TOC on "Rigid Plastic Packaging Market - Global Forecast to 2021"



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The global rigid plastic packaging market is driven by factors such as cost-effectiveness of rigid plastic packaging, strong growth in the food & beverage industry, and increase in consumer expenditures for packaged products. The growth in healthcare industry and increase in demand for packed products present a great opportunity for this market to grow in the future. The rigid plastic packaging market is witnessing demand, owing to the rise in manufacturing activities.



Beverage segment projected to be the largest-growing during the forecast period



The beverage segment is projected to be the largest-growing in the rigid plastic packaging market on the basis of end-use industry, and this trend is projected to continue during the forecast period. The expectations of quality, hygienic products, and growth in health awareness are driving the rigid plastic packaging market in the beverage sector.



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PE is projected to be the largest-growing segment during the forecast period



Rigid plastic packaging market, on the basis of material, has been classified into PE, PET, PP, PS, PVC, EPS, and bioplastics. The PE segment accounted for the largest share in 2015 due to its numerous benefits such as ease of processing, barrier to moisture, strength/toughness, flexibility, and ease of sealing.



Asia-Pacific projected to account for the largest share in the rigid plastic packaging market by 2021



Asia-Pacific, with emerging economies such as China and India, is expected to drive the rigid plastic packaging market. China is projected to account for the largest market share and dominate the Asia-Pacific rigid plastic packaging market by 2021. The growth in healthcare, food, and beverage industries is expected to drive the demand for rigid plastic packaging in China. In addition to this, the country's large consumer base, overall positive economic environment, and increase in manufacturing activities is expected to drive the demand in the rigid plastic packaging industry.



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The major players include Amcor Limited (Australia), Bemis Company, Inc. (U.S.), Berry Plastics Corporation (U.S.), RPC Group Plc (U.K.), and Reynolds Holdings Group (New Zealand). Companies have adopted strategies such as mergers & acquisitions to cope with the increase in demand in the emerging markets.



Browse Related Reports:



Caps & Closures Market by Type (Plastic Caps & Closures (Screw Caps, Dispensing Caps, Others)), Metal Caps & Closures (Screw & Lug, Can Ends, Crown Caps, Others), Other Caps & Closures (Corks, Others)), Raw Material, End-Use Industry - Global Forecast to 2021



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/flexible-packaging-market-1271.html



Flexible Packaging Market by Material (Plastic Film, Paper, Aluminum), Printing Technology (Flexography, Rotogravure, Digital), Type (Stand-Up Pouches, Retort Pouches), Application (Food & Beverages, Healthcare, Cosmetics & Toiletries) - Global Forecast to 2021



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/caps-closures-market-1314.html



About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.



M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.



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St. Paul, MN -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- Stephen Hopkins was from Hampshire, England. He married his first wife, Mary, and resided in the parish of Hursley, Hampshire. They had three (3) children: Elizabeth, Constance, and Giles; all baptized there. It has long been claimed that the Hopkins family was from Wortley, Gloucester, but this was disproven in 1998 with the discovery of his true origins in Hursley.



http://mayflowerhistory.com/hopkins-stephen/



Stephen Hopkins went with the ship Sea Venture on a voyage to Jamestown, Virginia in 1609 as a minister's clerk, but the ship wrecked in the "Isle of Devils" (Bermuda). Stranded on an island for ten months, the passengers and crew survived on turtles, birds, and wild pigs. Six months into the castaway, Stephen Hopkins and several others organized a mutiny against the current governor. The mutiny was discovered and Stephen was sentenced to death. However, he pleaded with sorrow and tears. "So penitent he was, and made so much moan, alleging the ruin of his wife and children in this his trespass, as it wrought in the hearts of all the better sorts of the company." He managed to get his sentence commuted. Eventually the castaways built a small ship and sailed themselves to Jamestown. How long Stephen remained in Jamestown is not known. However, while he was gone, his wife Mary died. She was buried in Hursley on 9 May 1613, and left behind a probate estate which mentions her children Elizabeth, Constance and Giles.



Stephen was back in England by 1617, when he married Elizabeth Fisher, but apparently had every intention of bringing his family back to Virginia. Their first child, Damaris, was born about 1618. In 1620, Stephen Hopkins brought his wife and children Constance, Giles, and Damaris on the Mayflower (child Elizabeth apparently had died). Stephen was a fairly active member of the Pilgrim group shortly after arrival, perhaps a result of his being one of the few individuals who had been to Virginia previously. He was a part of all the early exploring missions, and was used as an "expert" on Native Americans for the first few contacts. While out exploring, Stephen recognized and identified an Indian deer trap. And when Samoset walked into Plymouth and welcomed the English, he was housed in Stephen Hopkins' house for the night. Stephen was also sent on several of the ambassadorial missions to meet with the various Indian groups in the region.



Stephen was an assistant to the governor through 1636, and volunteered for the Pequot War of 1637 but was never called to serve. By the late 1630s, however, Stephen began to occasionally run afoul of the Plymouth authorities, as he apparently opened up a shop and served alcohol. In 1636 he got into a fight with John Tisdale and seriously wounded him. In 1637, he was fined for allowing drinking and shuffleboard playing on Sunday. Early the next year he was fined for allowing people to drink excessively in his house: guest William Reynolds was fined, but the others were acquitted. In 1638 he was twice fined for selling beer at twice the actual value, and in 1639 he was fined for selling a looking glass for twice what it would cost if bought in the Bay Colony. Also in 1638, Stephen Hopkins' maidservant got pregnant from Arthur Peach, who was subsequently executed for murdering an Indian. The Plymouth Court ruled he was financially responsible for her and her child for the next two years (the amount remaining on her term of service). Stephen, in contempt of court, threw Dorothy out of his household and refused to provide for her, so the court committed him to custody. John Holmes stepped in and purchased Dorothy's remaining two years of service from him: agreeing to support her and child.



Stephen died in 1644, and made out a will, asking to be buried near his wife, and naming his surviving children.



BAPTISM: 30 April 1581 at Upper Clatford, Hampshire, England, son of John and Elizabeth (Williams) Hopkins.

FIRST MARRIAGE: Mary, possibly the daughter of Robert and Joan (Machell) Kent of Hursley, co. Hampshire, prior to 1604.

SECOND MARRIAGE: Elizabeth Fisher on 19 February 1617/8 at St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, co. Middlesex, England.

CHILDREN (by Mary): Elizabeth, Constance, and Giles.

CHILDREN (by Elizabeth): Damaris, Oceanus, Caleb, Deborah, Damaris, Ruth, and Elizabeth.

DNA HAPLOGROUP: R1b-M269



Contact Adam Green!

c: 801-809-7766

e: g3president@comcast.net



Master Christopher Jones and several business partners purchased the ship Mayflower about 1607. Its origins prior to that remain uncertain. Its first documented voyage of record was to Trondheim, Norway, in 1609. Andrew Pawling hired the ship to take a cargo of London goods to Norway, sell them off, and buy Norway goods (lumber, tar, and fish) to return back to England. Unfortunately on the return voyage, the Mayflower encountered a severe North Sea storm and the master and crew were forced to toss most of Pawlings goods overboard to lighten the ship. The home of Master Christopher Jones: Harwich, co. Essex, England.

http://mayflowerhistory.com/



Following that, Christopher Jones seems to have stuck with safer trading routes. The Mayflower made numerous trips primarily to Bordeaux, France, returning to London with cargoes of French wine, Cognac, vinegar, and salt. The Mayflower could freight about 180 tons of cargo. The Mayflower also made occasional voyages to other ports, including once to Malaga, Spain, and twice to Hamburg, Germany.



Upon returning from a voyage to Bordeaux, France, in May 1620, the Mayflower and master Christopher Jones were hired to take the Pilgrims to Northern Virginia. This was the first recorded trans-Atlantic voyage for both ship and master, though Christopher Jones had several crewmembers, including pilot and master's mates John Clarke and Robert Coppin, who had been to the New World before.



The Mayflower was supposed to accompany another ship, the Speedwell, to America, but the Speedwell proved too leaky for the voyage so the Mayflower proceeded alone. Departing on 6 September 1620, the ship was at sea for 66 days, arriving November 9. The ship and crew overwintered with the Pilgrims and departed back for England on 5 April 1621, arriving back to England on May 6.



Christopher Jones took the ship out for a few more trading runs, but he died a couple of years later in March 1621/2. The ship was appraised for probate purposes in May 1624, and was referred to as being "in ruins." It was only valued at 128 pounds sterling, and was almost certainly broken up and sold off as scrap.



St. Paul, Minnesota General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Introduces New Geneology Resource Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



The End of the Mayflower: "Mayflower's End," by Mike Haywood. The Mayflower returned to England from Plymouth Colony, arriving back on 9 May 1621. Christopher Jones took the ship out on a trading voyage to Rochelle, France, in October 1621, returning with a cargo of Bay salt. Christopher Jones, master and quarter-owner of the Mayflower, died and was buried at Rotherhithe, co. Surrey, England, on 5 March 1621/2. No further record of the Mayflower is found until May 1624, when it was appraised for the purposes of probate and was described as being in ruins. The ship was almost certainly sold off as scrap.



The claim, first originating from J. Rendel Harris' book The Finding of the Mayflower (1920), that the Mayflower ended up as a barn in Jordans, England, is now widely discredited as being a figment of an overzealous imagination on the tercentenary anniversary of the Mayflower's voyage, combined with a tainted oral history. None of the evidence has withstood subsequent investigation. Regardless of the lack of evidence for its authenticity, it has been featured in National Geographic on several occasions and is a tourist destination. It is important to realize that in 1624, when the ship was scrapped, it was not at all famous, and nobody would have thought twice about letting it rot away.



Adam Paul Green was born to a multi-talented beauty queen Mother and a Father who, in addition to being a US Army Spy and a Counter-Intelligence Special Agent, was also a highly accomplished entrepreneur. Adam was taught at a young age that, in both life and business, loyalty is a requirement for success. He's had the honor of working directly with his father in several of the family businesses. In fact, this is where he learned crucial entrepreneurial skills and honed his talents with international business strategies and venture capitalism.



http://www.MarketingChocolateInternational.com

http://www.AdamPaulGreen.com

http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



Adam earned his Bachelors of Science Degree in International Business and Marketing from the University of Utah. He was hand-picked by the President of the University's renowned School of Business to compete with dozens of other ambitious nationwide-graduates for the opportunity to secure a lucrative job within a prestigious Fortune 100 company.



http://www.mxicorp.com/fab/

http://www.Twitter.com/AdamPaulGreen

http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



About MayflowerHistory.com

MayflowerHistory.com, the Internet's most complete and accurate website dealing with the Mayflower passengers and the history of the Pilgrims and early Plymouth Colony. The website was first created back in 1994 (when the web was still mostly text!) as a simple, but complete, passenger list of the Mayflower. It has grown over the past twenty years as the author, historian Caleb Johnson, has researched and compiled material.



http://mayflowerhistory.com
Seattle, WA -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- The report "Surgical/Operating Microscopes Market by Application (Neuro and Spine Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Ear, Nose, and Throat Surgery, Oncology, Urology, Documentations), End User (Hospitals, Outpatient Facility) - Global Forecast to 2021", provides a detailed overview of major drivers, restraints, challenges, opportunities, current market trends and strategies impacting the global market along with estimates and forecast of revenue.



Browse 69 market data tables and 28 figures spread through 115 pages and in-depth TOC on "Surgical/Operating Microscopes Market"



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The global surgical/operating microscopes market is poised to reach USD 915.6 Million by 2021 from USD 508.1 Million in 2016, at a CAGR of 12.5% from 2016 to 2021.



The increasing use of fluorescence image-guided surgery (FIGS), increase in the number of surgeries and growing demand for MIS, advancements in healthcare facilities, technological advancements, and customized microscopy solutions are the key factors driving the growth of the global surgical/operating microscopes market. However, factors such as high cost of advanced surgical/operating microscopes, implementation of excise tax by the U.S. government, and high custom duties on medical devices are restraining the growth of this market to a certain extent.



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The global surgical/operating microscopes market is segmented on the basis of application, end user, and region. On the basis of application, the market is segmented into neuro and spine surgery, plastic and reconstructive surgery, ophthalmology, gynecology and urology, oncology, dentistry, ENT surgery, and documentation.



In 2016, the neuro and spine surgery segment is expected to account for the largest share of the market due to the increasing demand for surgical/operating microscopes in neurosurgery. However, the oncology segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This can be attributed to the increasing prevalence of cancer around the world.



On the basis of end user, the surgical/operating microscopes market is segmented into hospitals and outpatient facilities. In 2016, hospitals are estimated to account for the largest share of the global surgical/operating microscopes market. The growing usage of surgical/operating microscopes in complex neurology, ENT, and dental procedures, and implementation of less-invasive surgical instruments during MIS procedures in hospitals are key market drivers in this end-user segment.



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In 2016, North America is expected to account for the largest share of the global surgical/operating microscopes market. Factors such as the growing demand for minimally invasive surgical procedures, infrastructural advancements in healthcare facilities, and increase in the number of surgeries are driving the growth of the North American surgical/operating microscopes market.



About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.



M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.



We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.



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Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil extracted from the reddish pulp of the oil palms. Sustainable Palm oil is naturally reddish in color because it has the component of high beta carotene. Sustainable palm oil means the palm oil which is manufactured under the guidance and rule of the Roundtable on sustainable palm oil (RSPO). To produce certified sustainable palm oil, manufactures has to follow the environmental and social criteria set by RSPO. It can also be kept in the room temperature. Palm oil also contains very little cholesterol. It is also used in products where animal fats are not accepted for the religion issues. It has been noticed that the palm oil is used in several industries to make the ultimate product. Those industries are also growing. So the demand of the palm oil will be more. So the market will expand very fast in the stipulated period of time.



Global Sustainable palm oil Market Dynamics:



The market of sustainable palm oil market is anticipated to be driven by the various used of the product in a different way. It has a great cooking properties, even it can be used in the high temperature. Its smooth and creamy texture and having no smell make it a perfect ingredient for many recipes like it is used in the bakery (specially for biscuits). It has a natural perspective effect which helps the longevity of the food byresisting the oxidation that spoils them. It is also the highest producing vegetable oil crop which makes it very efficient. It needs less land required by other oil crops to produce same quantity of oil. It makes this cheaper than the other oil in the market. Sustainable palm oil is also used in the cosmetic industry. Sustainable Palm oil ingredients are used in the skin care products, make up products. Due to have the rules and regulations of RSPO the producers are not able to destroy the environment and wild life. It keeps the social interest towards sustainable palm oil production and the conflict cannot be created between the communities and workers. Palm oil is available as an ingredients such as palm kernel oil, palm kernel stearin, palm kernel olein, partially hydrogenated palm oil, asorbyl palmitate, Palmate, Sodium Laureth Sulphate etc. Palm oil used as a frying fat for many food items, as a shortening in bakery products.



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Global Sustainable Palm oil Market Segmentation:



Sustainable palm oil market can be segmented on the basis of application of the palm oil such as food, soap and detergents, pet food and cosmetics. Then food also can be sub segmented such as bakery, ice cream & other frozen desserts, confectionery products and margarine. Palm oil market also can be segmented on the basis of types of the palm oil availability in the market such as palm kernel oil, red palm oil, fractional palm oil, white palm oil.



Global Sustainable palm oil Market: Regional Outlook:



Geographically, the global palm oil industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Indonesia and Malaysia captured the highest market share in terms of the production of palm oil. Other production countries are Thailand, Columbia, Nigeria and Ecuador. China got the first position in terms of consumption of palm oil followed by EU, India, Indonesia and United States. Malaysia was the highest exporter of palm oil.



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Global sustainable palm oil Market Players:



The major players identified across the value chain of global sustainable palm oil market include New Britain palm oil limited, Golden agri resources limited, IOI corporation Berhad, Wilmer international limited, Cargill, SIPEF group Belgium, Kulim berhad, Sime Darby plantation sendirian Berhad, Hap seng Plantation Holdings Berhad, Kuala lampur kepong Berhad.and United Plantation Berhad
Wellington, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 02/03/2017 -- WebDesign499 is pleased to announce that the professional web design agency specializes in website design, search engine optimization, e-commerce and advanced web development at the best prices in the entire South Florida area. Businesses of all types and sizes can take advantage of the dedication, expertise, creativity and the results which are provided for each client. The techniques and skills of the professionals are employed in creating a website which ensure a comprehensive, integrated solution to web and visual communication needs.



There is more to a quality website than just a design. WebDesign499, a Wellington SEO and West Palm Beach SEO agency and Web Design Company has been operating for more than fifteen years in the area, bringing the websites of clients to life. The expert team uses vivid colors, seamless navigation and exceptional marketing, as well as social media and SEO expertise to bring about return on investment.



The company serves clients throughout South Florida, with more than three hundred clients, organizations and companies from Boca Raton to Jupiter. The industries include real estate, construction, legal firms, accountants, retail stores and restaurants. The professional team works with schools, non-profits, organizations, churches, and many other business and organization sites. The customized solutions meet the customer's requirements within the budget constraints.



The team at WebDesign499 can provide solutions for clients who need content on the website, blog, e-commerce applications or other purposes. Whether the client requires a new website or requires help to maintain an existing website, the professionals can work out a plan to suit the requirements. The team has the knowledge and expertise to take care of website design, graphics, content, programming, and internet marketing. Large or small jobs are handled with equal skills.



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[CAIRO] Experts and stakeholders in Egypt warn of imminent water poverty as a result of the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is about to become operational. Meanwhile, agricultural production consumes about 85 per cent of the countrys water resources, half of which goes towards rice irrigation.

Rice cultivation consumes more than 10 billion cubic meters of water annually, or more than one-sixth of Egypt's share of Nile water, Khaled Ghanem, professor of Organic Farming in Al-Azhar University, told SciDev.Net. And this does not account for the water used for cultivation in unauthorized areas, estimated to be about a third of that used in authorized ones, he explained.

But there could be a solution, in the form of a machine that ploughs fields in a manner that saves about half the amount of water usually used for irrigation, and a quarter of fertilizers used in cultivation. A specially imported unit, which sows rice seedlings mechanically, is mounted on the machine.

This machine will save a lot of irrigation water in Egypt each year, which will help the country face these challenges and direct the water saved towards cultivating other crops. Khaled Ghanem, Al-Azhar University

The machines Egyptian inventor, Mohamed El-Sayyed El-Hagarey, a researcher at the Desert Research Center in Cairo, was granted the prestigious WatSave Award for Young Professionals from the International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID) during the Second World Irrigation Forum held in Thailand in mid-November.

In an interview with SciDev.Net, El-Hagarey explained his motivation for inventing the machine. He said that during cultivation, rice requires complete submersion in a layer of water 10-15 cm above the soil surface, which demands huge amounts of water and fertilizers.

He designed the soil and water management machine to tackle this. The machine makes V shaped lines into the soil, at a depth and width of 20cm, and sows rice seedlings automatically. This operation maintains the water level necessary for rice to grow in the V-shaped troughs, which is less than the water used in conventional agriculture that requires the entire plot of land to be completely submerged.

The machine was tested in a field in Kafr el-Sheikh governorate, which is known for rice crop cultivation in Egypt, with good results. It reduced the amount of water used by half, and the crop yield increased by 4.6 per cent, Al-Hagary said.

Atef Sweilem, water management and irrigation expert at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, (ICARDA), praised the machine, but added that saving water and fertilizers would not tempt small farmers to buy it, as the increase in the yield was not huge. He pointed out that the rice agricultural plots owned by most farmers do not exceed half an acre.

Saving water and fertilizers does not mean much for farmers, who get water for free and fertilizers subsidized by the state, Sweilem explained.

Therefore, he believes that Egypts ministries of Agriculture and Water Resources and Irrigation should play an important role in supporting farmers financially and with training in using the machine.

Al-Hagary said the machine costs about US$5000, but needs further development before it is ready for commercial production.

He intends to re-submit a proposal to the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in Egypt, hoping it would support further development of the innovation. An earlier proposal made in 2014 went unanswered, and he had to design it at his own expense.

Ghanem believes that Egypt needs to use this machine widely range for several reasons, the most important of which is the implications of Ethiopias Renaissance Dam on Egypt's share of water. He also referred to the effects of climate change including drought, desertification, and an increase in evaporation rates, as well as the water wasted along the Nile.

This machine will save a lot of irrigation water in Egypt each year, which will help the country face these challenges and direct the water saved towards cultivating other crops, Ghanem said.

He added: The concerned ministries might not pay attention to this innovation. The solution is to establish major companies to market similar innovations that can be funded by low-priced stocks, making them available to a larger number of consumers.

This piece was originally produced by SciDev.Nets Middle East and North Africa desk.
The holographic principle makes scientists understand the universe easier.

The Telegraph reported that scientists at the University of Southampton with colleagues from Canada and Italy describe the universe as a "vast and complex" hologram. While people tend to imagine the universe in 3D, a 2D picture of the infinite astronomical region makes it easier for scientists to study the cosmos.

Proposed by physicist Leonard Susskind in the 1990s, the hologram gives a flat surface an illusion of having depth. According to Susskind, many of the laws of physics can be explained mathematically with the use of two dimensions. This theory was supported by cosmologists as the holographic principle could help them figure out how gravity works in miniature scales.

It worked the same in this recent study conducted by Niayesh Afshordi, Claudio Coriano, Luigi Delle Rose, Elizabeth Gould and Kostas Skenderis. They used the principle to study the origin of the cosmos and found out that using a 2D scale is better at displaying data than their 3D scale.

"We test a class of holographic models for the very early Universe against cosmological observations and find that they are competitive to the standard cold dark matter model with a cosmological constant (CDM) of cosmology," the researchers wrote in the study's abstract.

"These models are based on three-dimensional perturbative superrenormalizable quantum field theory (QFT), and, while they predict a different power spectrum from the standard power law used in CDM, they still provide an excellent fit to the data (within their regime of validity)," they continued. "By comparing the Bayesian evidence for the models, we find that CDM does a better job globally, while the holographic models provide a (marginally) better fit to the data without very low multipoles (i.e., l30), where the QFT becomes nonperturbative."

This study has been published in the journal American Physical Society.
Billionaires just got a go signal to mine the Moon for trillions of dollars worth of gold and platinum.

The Sun reported that billionaire Naveen Jain, co-founder of Moon Express and former Microsoft employee, was given the permission to mine the Moon in search for gold, platinum and other minerals worth trillions of pounds.

Moon Express announced on Tuesday that the company has been given $20 billion by wealthy donors to dig the Earth's satellite. A small robotic spacecraft will be sent by the space exploration company to find water, Helium-3, gold, platinum and other valuable rare Earth metals on the Moon's surface.

"Moon Express now has all the capital it needs to land its small robotic spacecraft on the surface of the moon in November or December of 2017," he told CNBC.

Partnering with NASA's engineering team, the company also aims to help researchers form human space colonies for future generations.

"This year is a watershed year for Moon Express and America's commercial space industry," Moon Express' co-founder, president and CEO Bob Richards said. "Just before the presidential election, NASA released a call for concepts for payloads to the moon to be delivered by private companies. That shows a rising tide of interest in the moon by our nation's space industry."

NASA has already given Moon Express licenses to space launch complexes 17 and 18 at Cape Canaveral from the U.S. Air Force. The company, which has been running for six years, now has a team of 30 people with contracts for payroll from commercial and scientific agencies.

Plans of sending the international lunar observatory to the Moon and retroreflector arrays to test principles of general relativity theory and lunar geology have been made, as well as the delivery of human remains and DNA samples for space burial from Celestis.
A new test developed by NASA scientists could improve their chances of detecting aliens, albeit in the form of extraterrestrial microbes, according to a recent report. The team of scientists have created a chemistry technique to observe the patterns of amino acid, also known as the building blocks of life, by developing a tool to sniff out alien biosignatures in just a few grams of seawater.

According to a Gizmodo report, the newly created technique is 10,000 times more sensitive than similar methods used by NASA's Mars Curiosity rover. In addition, the newly tailored method is ideal for hunting for signs of life in Jupiter's moon Europa as well as Saturn's Enceladus.

"The astrobiology community has recognized amino acids as uniquely interesting targets in the search for life," said Peter Willis, study's lead author. "However, the technologies available for performing these analyses are lacking in terms of sensitivity and the number of amino acids that can be analyzed, particularly in the area of chiral analysis."

However, by determining the chirality, the new technique will offer a rapid and sensitive test for alien biological activity. Furthermore, the process can differentiate between 17 types of common amino acids at really low concentrations.

The research team at NASA has already tested the technique at the salty and alkaline Mono Lake in California, which is said to be chemically similar to the Enceladus' ocean. Some time in the future, the scientists want to send the tool on a spacecraft to look for signs of life elsewhere in the Solar System.

Jonathane Lunine, an astronomer at Cornell University, has cautioned that the new technique has to be tested more and proven before it is ready to be sent out in space, though. Furthermore, apart from chiral molecules, other indicators such as hydrocarbon patterns will be required to know that scientists have found extraterrestrial life.
A freakish photo of an Australian boy surfing the waves as a shark lurks beneath the water has gone viral.

Fox News reported that Eden Hasson, 10, was surfing at Samurai Beach in Port Stephens, Australia, when his father Chris Hasson took a picture of him. While reviewing the photos, Chris was surprised to see what looked like a great white shark lurking in front of his son and beneath the waves.

"I quickly called him in and whistled," Mr. Hasson told Associated Press. He added that his son "saw a shape in the wave and thought it was seaweed and felt something as he went over the top - he got his leg rope caught on something - but he thought nothing of it until he saw the photo."

Eden told Australian TV that he was thankful he was oblivious. Otherwise, he would have panicked and got into a lot of trouble.

"If I was on the wave and saw it, I probably would've freaked out and fell off," he said recalling the time he brushed with the predator. "I was lucky I didn't fall off."

His father said he was just prompted by a "gut feeling" to review the photos. "I just had a gut feeling so I went into the photos and zoomed in and went 'No way'," he said, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The shark was probably a small great white, James Cook University shark researcher Dr. Andrew Chin noted. "From the angle, it looks like the shark was spooked and is rolling away from the board to escape it," Dr. Chin added. "There is no way that this is a hunting approach."

Eden was indeed lucky to be spared from danger as there have been 18 shark attacks recorded in Australia in 2015. 13 of those were in New South Wales where a 41-year-old Japanese surfer lost his life.
World Wetlands Day referred to as Ramsar Convention is commemorated every year on Feb. 2. Its theme for 2017 is "Wetlands for Disaster Risk Reduction." It aims to raise awareness the purpose and need of wetlands on the planet Earth.

Wetlands are land areas that are drenched with water permanently or seasonally. Most wetlands have vegetation of aquatic plants that differ them from other land forms or water bodies. They are considered the most biologically diverse of all ecosystems. They serve as habitats for various plant and animal lives.

Wetlands could reduce the impacts of floods, droughts and cyclones in the communities. They could also purify the water and make shoreline stable. Among the wetland types are marshes, swamps, fens and bogs. The sub-types include carr, mangrove, varzea and pocosin.

This type of land area could be visible on all continents except Antarctica. The largest wetlands are the West Siberian Plain, Amazon River basin and the Pantanal in South America.

According to UNESCO, the World Heritage Convention conserves these endangered ecosystems. These include the Sundarbans National Park in India and the Sundarbans in Bangladesh, which have the largest area of mangroves in the world. The mangroves prevent flooding and act as buffers against saltwater intrusion and erosion, while some types of wetlands reduce the risk of drought.

One of the wetlands in the world is the Okavango Delta in Bostwana, a World Heritage Site, and is considered one of the most important wetlands in the world. It comprises of swamps that have the area of 15,000 sq km during a dry season. It is inhabited by some of the world's most endangered species of large mammals.
The mobile device of destruction, which was the telephone that Adolf Hitler used to order the deaths of millions of people, will be sold at auction in the United States this February. Hitler's phone was recovered from the Fuhrer bunker and was stored in a box at an English country house since 1945.

Hitler's phone - used to order millions of deaths - to sell at auction https://t.co/CRZPDvAWg1 pic.twitter.com/oEUErmQiRy  Soniasuponia (@Soniasuponia) February 1, 2017

The phone dubbed as the "arguably the most destructive weapon of all time" could be sold for as much as $300,000 when it goes up for sale on Feb. 19. The phone is already chipped and on its backside, the name Hitler and a swastika are engraved. It is a Bakelite phone made by Siemens. The Alexander Historical Auctions in Maryland called the phone as "Hitler's mobile device of destruction" that sent millions to deaths around the world, according to Fox News.

The auction house noted that the British officer, Ralph Rayner, recaptured the phone from Hitler's bunker while visiting Berlin on the orders of Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery just days after the end of the war. He was probably the very first non-Soviet victor to enter Hitler's bunker.

Rayner's son, Ranulf, 82, inherited the phone after his father's death in 1977. Ranulf told CNN that his father did not see it as a relic of Hitler's glory days, more as a battered remnant of his defeat, a sort of war trophy. He added that his father never thought it would become an important artifact.

According to Ranulf, his father said that he could still smell burning flesh. He remembered his father's description of the underground shelter where Hitler spent his final days. He described it as a "dreadful hellhole."

Ralph Rayner also recaptured a porcelain Alsatian, which was made by slave laborers in Dachau concentration camp. Ranulph hopes that Hitler's phone and the Alsatian model will be bought by a museum, rather than by a private collector. He further said that he does not want them to be hidden again. "I want them to remind the world of the horrors of war."
The United Way of Hartsvilles Annual Giving Campaign is continuing into the New Year.

We started in the fall, said Joann DeLong, executive director of United Way of Hartsville. We have 21 donor companies with employee payroll deductions going to United Way. Many of the same companies do a corporate donation also.

United Way has about 15 Community Partners, DeLong said. Applications are sent out in June and due back to United Way in August.

In December, the board decides which community partners we want to support, she said.

Community partners this year and request are:

Boy Scouts of America, uniforms and camp for less fortunate boys; Girl Scouts, sashes/guide books and camp for less fortunate girls; Salvation Army, rent, electric and water assistance for many struggling families; Hartsville YMCA, after school child care, within the elementary schools, for low income families; Boys & Girls Club, after school/summer programs, tutoring and dues for low income families; Free Medical Clinic, primary care, medications and medical supplies for low income families; CareSouth Carolina, specialist care and life saving services  MRIs, CT scans, surgery, etc. that the patient would otherwise go without; American Red Cross, emergency shelter, medications and clothing for many fire victims; Pee Dee Speech and Hearing, hearing and speech services, focusing on infants and low income families; Darlington County Council on Aging, providing approximately 36,707 meals each year to elderly residents; Darlington County First Steps to School Readiness, Countdown to Kindergarten  a six week summer visitation program for at-risk children entering kindergarten, and Born Learning publications, Kid Basics in the Welcome Baby Bags at Carolina Pines; Pee Dee Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Assault, community victim assistance  meeting the immediate needs of the victims by operating a 24-hour crisis line, supporting the operations of the Durant Center, providing medical exams, forensic interviews, family advocacy and counseling and abuse prevention education services; and Darlington County Disabilities and Special Needs Board, group home/direct services for 213 residents with special needs, including job training and education in classroom settings.

Every Community Partner must submit an annual application and host a site visit if requested every year. These visits include a tour and brief presentations.

Each year, we evaluate our Community Partners to ensure that funding is going to successful programs with measurable, sustainable results, said DeLong.

In addition to funding Community Partners and their services, DeLong said the United Way of Hartsville provides funding for specific programs that are not part from their Community Partners but from to other non-profits. From grant funds, United Way of Hartsville is able to help community programs and initiatives such as: Born Learning Trails at Byerly Park and Pride Park; the new computer room at the Boys & Girls Club; three annual Coats for Kids coat drives and Hunger Busters Program through Carolina Kids, which provides weekend food bags for North Hartsvilles low income students; and working with Habitat, providing foundations for two new homes in Hartsville. Through their Storm Disaster Relief program, United Way of Hartsville provided food, water, ice, diapers and wipes and other items to storm victims during the past year. They also replaced two roofs.

The money we raise (during the annual campaign) goes to projects of our Community Partners, she said. No annual giving funds are used for special initiatives.

The funds for these requests come from special money or donations from Hartsville Heroes, DeLong said.

I think everyone should have a need in their lifetime to understand the needs of others, DeLong said.

The focus this year for United Way is going to be children and families, meeting their needs and finding the resources, she said.

For examples, she said they recently had a request for four beds in two weeks, and a request for clothing, food, and a wheelchair ramp in the past year.

We want to try to meet those unusual requests that come in, she said.

Housing needs are a little more difficult to fill.

Give me a day or two and Ill try to meet every other need, she said.

The board bid goodbye in June 2016 to Rodger Fuller, Senior Vice President of Paper/Engineered Carriers U.S./Canada, who served as Board Chairman for the previous eight years and accepted the Board Chair position for the Governor's School  Hartsville.

The goal set this year by the board and its new chairman, Rob Tiede, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Sonoco Corp, is $300,000. Last year United Way surpassed its goal by raising $301,300.

I have to thank all the companies that support United Way, DeLong said. Without them we would not be able to do what we do. I dont think the employees realize what their payroll deductions and one-time gifts mean to the community.

The United Way ask that you donate one hours pay per month, your Fair Share, which will make all the difference in the world to a local family in need.

To learn more about the United Way of Hartsville and how you can help, contact Joann DeLong at 843-206-4303 or unitedwayhartsville@gmail.com or visit UnitedWayHartsville.org.
Helena College Dean and CEO Daniel Bingham will leave Helena College in June to become a mission president for the LDS Church in Sydney, Australia, directing the work of 170 missionaries from all over the world.

His steady and confident leadership has earned admiration and praise from his staff and Montana's top education leaders.

Among his many accomplishments over the past 12 years, Bingham has overseen enrollment double at Helena College.

Its currently around 1,500, Bingham said, but has peaked at 1,750.

We have expanded our programs in the past decade, both in technical programs and general education, he said.

Nursing, fire and rescue and business are just a few of the programs that expanded significantly.

General education courses have particularly grown, not only to help students seeking professional and technical degrees, but also preparing students who want to go on to pursue four-year degrees at other Montana campuses.

The core credits are 100 percent transferable to any other institution in the state, Bingham said.

Also, under Binghams leadership, Helena College is now the largest single feeder school to Carroll College.

Helena College now partners with a wide array of area businesses, such as Boeing and Pioneer Aviation, so Helena College can offer cutting-edge job training for those eyeing employment in aeronautics.

It also partners with local school districts, offering dual enrollment classes for high school students who want to earn college credit.

And it offers Access to Success with Helena Public Schools, providing high school dropouts a high school diploma completion program.

Its just been fun to watch this institution grow, Bingham said.

He acknowledges just how hard his staff works, with some taking on two or three job descriptions to meet the needs of the students.

Im extremely proud of the staff and faculty and the administration at this college, he said, for how they put every ounce of effort they have into helping the students be successful.

His staff, likewise, has lauded his work.

Based on their nomination, Bingham was named 2014 Boss of the Year by the Helena Area Chamber of Commerce.

This is like a family, said Bingham. A family works together and sticks together for the common good.

There would be no boss of the year, he said, without a family of the year.

Binghams looking forward to his new challenge in Sydney. Its a beautiful city and wonderful people. ... Its a huge melting pot of cultures.

When he was 19 years old, he served a two-year mission in Melbourne, Australia. Im very familiar with the Australian people.

And having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, hes looking forward to being near the ocean for the next three years.

Bingham was very, very instrumental is the growth of that institution and the maturation of that institution from its vo-tech roots, to community college. ... Its very much a full-service community college that has a robust transfer mission, yet still providing some great career, technical education for the community, said Commissioner of Higher Education Clayton Christian.

Christian served on the Montana Board of Regents prior to becoming Montana Commissioner of Higher Education in 2011. During those years, hes had a close-up look at Binghams work and accomplishments.

He oversaw a couple remodels that really brought that facility into the modern educational facility that it is today. Its been a real transformational period for Helena College, and Daniel was a great inspiration while that happened.

Christian praised Bingham as a quiet, steady, confident leader who oversaw a lot of change with a very steady hand. He kept his eye on the target in the long run.

I truly have enjoyed working with Daniel."

These words were echoed by Interim University of Montana President Sheila Stearns, who is the former Commissioner of Higher Education.

He was able to interweave stability with innovation and with an overriding sense of confidence that we can do this at Helena College, said Stearns.

It was kind of an unstable and kind of rocky transition -- not of his making, she said, at the time Bingham stepped in.

He created stability on one hand, she said, but he did it with a sense of we can change but not at such a breakneck pace that we dont do it wisely.

His leadership "provided a sense of optimism for the future, but also a sense of confidence in our stability right here and now. ... It kind of invigorated people when they could have been feeling unsettled.

She said he changed that to a feeling of: We can pull together and build an even stronger college.

When asked about Binghams qualities, Stearns responded with five adjectives: confident, determined, energetic, creative and kind.

You put those five things together and tell me youre not going to have a successful administration.

All of Montanas two-year vo tech schools transitioned to become comprehensive community colleges, she said, adding that Helena College did that in a particularly smooth and deliberate and confident way -- to embrace change. The campus changes were all made to better meet the needs of local communities.

Helena College "did it methodically, wisely and thoughtfully. His leadership guided it every step of the way.

While Stearns was Commissioner of Higher Education, she and Bingham became friends during commutes together to Missoula for various meetings.

When you have windshield time, you become friends. ... He became a person that I developed a real deep sense of his integrity and values and leadership. I came to really admire him and became very fond of him. I will miss him.

So far, there is no firm plan for Binghams replacement, Christian said.

Bingham announced his departure to his staff late Thursday afternoon.

Advertising for his position will begin soon, said Christian. If the search is successful, a dean will be in place in July. If the search takes longer, an interim dean will step in.
About 50 Helena businesses have signed up for Open to All-Helena, an initiative aimed at increasing the visibility of LGBTQ patrons, employees and their supporters.

Kim Leighton, Pride Foundation regional development organizer, said the reaction to the project is encouraging. Leighton helped organize a rally Thursday evening at Hub Coffee to voice support for the LGBTQ community locally and nationwide.

"We're not going anywhere," Leighton told the crowd packed into the downtown eatery.

Identified by stickers featuring Helena's skyline in front of a rainbow flag, Open to All-Helena participants aim to provide a safe haven and develop policies and procedures that create a welcoming environment.

Leighton said two Helena businesses, The Painted Pot and Murry's, have updated to gender-neutral bathrooms recently.

The movement has extended to churches and other nonprofit organizations.

Thursday's gathering was spurred by news of a proposed executive order that critics say could lead to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender or gender identity if it is signed by President Donald Trump.

Anna Doran, owner of Big Dipper Ice Cream, said she heard about the anticipated order on Facebook.

"I said, 'oh hell no.' You're not going to do this to my friends," Doran said to those gathered.

Doran said she wanted to attend the rally to offer her support as a business owner and friend.

"I love all you guys," she added.

Shalon Hastings, who owns Hub Coffee and Taco Del Sol in Helena, said she finds it an honor to have workers who are comfortable being themselves.

"Look at this amazing crowd that is here to celebrate that as well," Hastings said.
2017 will be the final season when cruise ships can dock at Frihamnen. The area will form part of a major urban development with the construction of homes and offices, forcing the current cruise terminal to find a new location.

The new central cruise terminal will be at Stigbergskajen in Masthugget. The quay and part of the terminal building, Amerikaskjulet, are being restored and will be ready to welcome vessels from spring 2018. The new name, America Cruise Terminal, evokes memories of the terminals illustrious past.

'The location is ideal as it is within walking distance of the inviting and vibrant districts of Majorna, Linne and Haga, and just a short journey by public transport or chartered bus into the city center,' said Jill Soderwall, vp cruise at Gothenburg Port Authority. 'Now that the beautiful and historically significant Amerikaskjulet is about to be revived as a passenger terminal, cruise guests can look forward to a warm and authentic reception.'

Amerikaskjulet was constructed in 1912 and operated as a passenger terminal until 1975. The building was then converted into offices, however the quay has been used occasionally by naval vessels and school ships. Part of Amerikaskjulet will now be converted into a reception hall with a tourist information office, souvenir shop and other facilities.

The maximum length for vessels calling at America Cruise Terminal will be 225 meters, 25 meters longer than the maximum length at Frihamnen.

'We believe that America Cruise Terminal will lead to more cruise companies including Gothenburg on their itinerary,' Soderwall said. 'The extremely keen competition to attract cruise ships makes a good welcome extremely important.'

Around half the ships that call each year sail under the Alvsborg Bridge and dock centrally. The largest vessels will continue to dock at the terminal at Arendal.

Before America Cruise Terminal's 2018 inaugural season, the whole of the outside of Stigbergskajen will be renovated. Ten meters of the quay will be demolished and rebuilt, the bollards will be reinforced, ramps will be constructed and parking spaces for buses will be created.

It is an old quaythe first in Gothenburg for ocean-going trafficand it is in considerable need of repair and renovation, Soderwall said, adding the port is working 'flat out' to have things ready for the first call in 2018.

Seventeen vessels are already booked for the new terminal.

Completed in 1912, Amerikaskjulet at Stigbergskajen was one of the first buildings in Gothenburg built entirely of concrete. Swedish American Line began operating in 1915 and from there the companys large trans-Atlantic liners departed.

For many years the arrival and departure of Gripsholm, Drottningholm, Stockholm and Kungsholm were the cause of great public celebration for local people, who lined the quayside waving banners and flags. One of the more famous passengers was Greta Garbo, who emigrated to the US in 1925.

Swedish American Line went on to become one of the worlds leading cruise operators with a very exclusive clientele.

Passenger traffic came to an end in 1975.

Gothenburg's modern cruise business peaked in 2014 with 73 calls, carrying 108,000 passengers. That declined to 52 calls with 100,000 passengers in 2015, and last year there were 34 calls with 56,000 passengers.

The port cited 'keen competition from other ports, particularly in Denmark.'
Construction is due to start this summer and the new quay should be completed late next year, ready in time for the 2019 cruise season.

Cruise business is growing fast at the Finnish capitals port, with 243 cruise calls during the 2016 season.

According to Kimmo Maki, the ports ceo, Helsinki is proving to be an increasingly popular call for cruise lines, and passenger volumes are growing fast. German tourists are the largest single group but other Europeans, US and Canadian visitors are also drawn by the appeals of the north European city.

Helsinki is also attracting a growing number of Chinese visitors who fly in to join cruise ships in the Hernesaari harbour.

Last month saw the commissioning of Tallink Groups new 230m LNG-powered Megastar, a fast ferry operating on the Helsinki-Tallinn route built in Finlands Meyer Turku shipyard. A new passenger terminal is being built for the 2,800-passenger vessel  West Terminal 2  which is likely to be completed in June. For the moment, the vessel is operating out of the ports West Terminal 1 and receives LNG bunkers from trucks.

However, Maki says the port will be considering an investment in its own LNG bunkering infrastructure in due course, which will be of interest to cruise lines.
The new sailings are available through Nov. 4, and all are now open for sale. This means a total of 11 Cuba cruises on Empress of the Seas, starting with the inaugural voyage from Miami on April 19 and then the subsequent departures from Tampa.

A Royal Caribbean spokeswoman confirmed to Seatrade Cruise News that Cuba had authorized the additional deployment. Until now, no other US-based operators are known to have been approved by Cuba for sailings beyond May.

On Dec. 9, Royal Caribbean opened three cruises, on April 19, April 30 and May 20, and said details of summer itineraries would be announced at a later date.
The executive order on 27 January makes citizens of the seven countries subject to the temporary 90-day ban on entry to the US  Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Iran and Libya has left the international business community scrambling to understand the implications.

In a letter to the UK Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, Boris Johnson, Nautilus secretary-general Mark Dickinson expressed the organisations deep concern about the effects of the executive order on its members.

There are serious safety and welfare issues at stake if seafarers are unable to join or leave their ships as planned. Some owners are already being advised not to arrange crew changes in the United States for citizens of the identified countries, including flights with transit through the US, and the already restrictive policies for seafarers shore leave in many US ports  we fear  likely to become even more extreme, Dickinson said.

The letter also said that the fact the order called for a review into suspending the visa interview waiver programme for travellers from 38 countries also presented worrying implications.

I am therefore writing to request that the UK secures the appropriate clarity and safeguards on the rights of British seafarers to shore leave, transit, transfer or repatriation to the US, the letter said.
Mike Munck sat in a collapsible chair he brought with his sign stuck in the snow next to him as he waited for Fridays rally in support of immigrants and immigration to begin.

Keep America Great! Ban ignorance, not immigrants! his sign stated, a sentiment that would be echoed by others who brought signs with them in protest of President Donald Trumps executive order that temporarily scaled back immigration.

"I am a descendant of immigrants. Are you? No Ban, No Wall Montana for All and Say No to UnAmerican Trump, read some of the other signs that would be held in protest of the ban.

Trumps order blocked refugees from any country from entering the United States for 120 days and those from Syria indefinitely. For 90 days, the order blocked entry into the United States for citizens of seven primarily Muslim nations: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Munck is retired. He last managed the St. Peters Hospital Foundation where he worked for 24 years, he said. He lists his past employment and concludes by saying he has lived here 44 years.

He came to the rally in protest of what he considers to be ignorance going on in the nation regarding the ban on immigrants, the rationale that led to the ban and the irrational fear that it continues to stoke, he said.

Munck makes note that Americas the richest country on Earth and yet singles out seven of the poorest, the most poverty stricken and war-torn countries for the ban.

The ban denies safe refuge to women and children who are dying every day and involves countries that had nothing to do with any terrorist attack on the United States, he said.

The fate of the foreign nationals around the work who risked their lives through their work with the United States to protect its interests also concerns him.

Its appalling from a moral perspective. Its appalling from a national security perspective," he said.

Were all immigrants. Thats part of what makes this country such a great country, the diversity of the people that are here," he added.

Nothings ever going to be 100 percent. Will somebody sneak through? At some point. But a blanket ban on all immigrants is just doing more harm than good, in my humble opinion, Munck 62, said.

I think its important that people in America stand up and visibly say No, this is not what we are for. These are not our values. We dont support this.

Around 300 people filled the area of the Downtown Walking Mall at the trolley for the rally despite the bitter cold.

Annie Hanshew, an organizer of the Montana for Immigrants event, said the demonstration wasnt associated with any other group, although similar rallies were being held in Billings, Missoula and Bozeman.

This rally, she continued, is to protest the presidents order that we feel is un-American.

When speaking to the crowd, she said this event was to let friends and neighbors know we dont support the hate and fear that is being directed at them.

This was also to let state and federal lawmakers -- as well as the governor -- know that these beliefs are not shared by those at the rally, she said.

Hanshew was pleased with the turnout, which was roughly twice what she expected based on responses on the Facebook page where the event was organized.

Rallies allow the public to narrow down the options of what is acceptable in American politics, she said and added thats the point of grassroots Democracy.

Carolinn Hagan was among the rallys participants and said afterward, I think were being unjust to (immigrants) and somebody needs to step up for their rights."

All but Native Americans are immigrants to this country, she added.

I dont support the presidents immigration ban, said Valerie Hellemann, also a Helena resident.

She explained it was her duty as an American citizen to stand up for the constitutional rights of immigrants and United States citizens.

The rally is effective, she added, because our citizens have come out and are visible.

And we know were not alone, and our immigrants know that were here to support them," she said.

Rally participants took postcards that were offered to them addressed to Montanas congressional delegation. Those that would appeal to Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., went much quicker than those addressed to Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.

Hanshew was pleased as she handed out postcards.

I think it went great. Short and sweet so that people dont freeze to death. I think its pretty impressive to see this many people.

The very fact that people are coming to get these postcards suggests that they care about spreading the message, and I think theres a lot of work to do both here and around the country," she said.

I personally think that cultural diversity is the thing that has always defined American greatness, Hanshew said.

We dont all have to share the exact same culture, but we can learn from each other -- different perspectives, different backgrounds, different religions. That needs to constantly be refreshed.

So when immigrants come here, when refugees come here, they just add to the vibrancy of Americas community," she said.
"We know that snakes use their tongues to pick up scent cues in their environment," explained Wits researcher Xavier Glaudas, in a statement. "But these snakes were extending their tongues out of their mouths for up to 30 seconds, which is dramatically longer to what they do when they are just using their tongues to 'smell' their environment."

In a process called "lingual luring," the snakes were essentially fooling frogs into thinking their tongues were something the frog would like to eat - a tasty invertebrate such as a worm. Curious, and hungry, the frogs hopped too close, and then it was too late for them to beat a retreat.

That was the discovery made by a pair of University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) researchers, who recorded and then pored over thousands of hours of video of puff adders hunting. The footage revealed a bit of trickery the snakes were using to draw frogs closer to them  just close enough to strike and snare the poor amphibians.

Africa's deadly puff adder is a serious ambush predator, with fierce fangs and powerful venom. However, it turns out the striking reptile has another weapon. Its tongue is a forked instrument of deception, if you're a frog.

Although other animals  some wading birds, aquatic snakes and alligator snapping turtles  use tongue luring, "this is the first time that it is reported in a terrestrial snake," Glaudas said.

What's more, only frogs got the lingual luring treatment. Glaudas and research partner Graham Alexander never caught the snakes using the hunting maneuver on other kinds of prey, such as small mammals. That told the scientists that the snakes were making foraging decisions based on the type of potential food within view, which indicated that snakes might have more going on upstairs than typically thought.

"Our study reveals the diverse predatory strategies and complex decision-making process used by 'sit-and-wait' predators, such as ambush-foraging snakes, to catch prey, and indicates that snakes may have higher cognitive abilities than those usually afforded to them," Glaudas and Alexander wrote, in a paper on their findings published in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Social Biology.

RELATED: A Brown Snake Devours a Python in This Gruesome Video

The discovery was "complete luck," according to the humble Glaudas, but it was hard-won luck, as he and Alexander watched the equivalent of nearly 200 days of footage of puff adders stalking prey on the Dinokeng Game Reserve in South Africa. That came after tagging and tracking the reptiles and leaving cameras in place overnight to study the snakes at work.

"We really wanted to have a closer look into the secretive lives of these fascinating animals, and specifically study their foraging ecology," said Glaudas.

Another secret-life behavior the researchers noticed in their study involved the puff adder's tail, which waved and appeared to Glaudas and Alexander to be another luring technique. But, the tail-waving didn't win the snakes any food during filming.

"We suspect that this behavior is also used to attract prey, as it is pretty common in snakes, including adders, but we weren't able to observe prey capture with the videos," Glaudas said.

WATCH VIDEO: How Snakes Got Their Venom
It was Hitler's version of a cell phone. The red, chipped, corded phone likely traveled with the dictator wherever he went.

Its handset was made to stay firmly in its cradle, unless rotated 60 degrees - a sign that the telephone was taken on bumpy travel. It was also outfitted with a braided connection cord ending in four metallic loops that would have fit into pin-type connectors for quick connections.

Now the Chesapeake City, Md.-based auction house, Alexander Historical Auctions LLC, plans to place the phone, through which the dictator likely barked out deadly orders, on the auction block on Feb. 19.

The starting bid for the Siemens-made phone, which the house calls "Hitler's mobile device of destruction," is $100,000 and bids are expected to go as high as $300,000.

Previous auctions for other artifacts connected to Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party have raised concerns that the items may be bought by Nazi sympathizers, or that the sales are a cynical way of profiting from a dark period in global history.

RELATED: Hitler Had 'Tiny' Penis, Historians Claim

In June 2016, a buyer who said he came from Argentina spent more than 600,000 ($647,000) on Nazi memorabilia, including one of Adolf Hitler's jackets, at a controversial auction in Germany.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned the event as a "scandalous and disgusting" way to make money.

In April 2014, the Vermot de Pas auction house in France canceled a Nazi memorabilia auction after Jewish groups objected to the sale.

But Bill Panagopulos, owner of Alexander Historical Auctions, says that such protests have not been an issue for his U.S.-based auction house. He told Seeker that people who bid on their historical items are strictly wealthy history buffs - often Jewish - and not neo-Nazis.

Nazi sympathizers, he said, are more likely to buy "cheap plaques or Nazi flags. They're not going to be spending big money on real historic artifacts like these."

Most Nazi-related items that have gone on auction were originally confiscated by Allied officers following Germany's defeat in World War II. According to Alexander Historical Auctions, Hitler's red telephone was taken by British Brigadier Sir Ralph Rayner.

Rayner had been ordered to establish contact with Russian Allied forces in Berlin on May 5, 1945, the day after the German surrender. Russian officers then offered Rayner a tour of Hitler's official residence, office and bunker.

Rayner's son, Ranulf Rayner, 82, recalled in a recorded YouTube video for the auction house that during the tour his father saw a black phone beside the bed of Hitler's longtime companion, Eva Braun, and a red phone beside Hitler's bed. The Russian officers offered the black phone to Rayner as a "trophy of war," but Rayner refused, saying he "loved the color red." So the Russian officers then offered him Hitler's red phone.

RELATED: Hitler Used Cocaine and Had Semen Injections

The phone, made specially for the Fuhrer, is inscribed with an eagle above a swastika, a formal symbol of the Nazi Party, and the full name Adolph Hitler appears below.

The auction house is offering another item Rayner picked up during his tour of Hitler's headquarters - a porcelain statue of a German Shepherd, made at the Dachau concentration camp. Bids for that item start at $12,000.

"It's a pretty nasty thing," Ranulf Rayner told CNN, "just as sinister as the phone."

WATCH: Why Hitler Was Obsessed With American Cowboys
Since President Trump signed an executive order to temporarily ban citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., there have been many offers to assist those left stranded by the decision.

AirBnb has offered free housing to refugees who have nowhere to stay due to the ban, and both Canada and Scotland have reaffirmed that refugees are welcome in their countries.

Upon hearing that Iranian scientist Samira Asgari, who was heading to Boston to begin a postdoctoral fellowship on tuberculosis, was not allowed to enter the U.S., two plant scientists from Austria were inspired to take action as well.

Jurgen Kleine-Vehn tweeted Saturday, "I can't believe this is happening." Magnus Nordborg soon responded, "I think we can host people who are stuck, right? Preferably in a suitable lab, of course."

"I have found myself stranded and there are, of course, many historical examples," Nordborg told Seeker. "Thus I volunteered my lab on Twitter, and Jurgen Kleine-Vehn quickly followed suit."

Maria Leptin, director of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), reached out to Nordborg to discuss the possibility of creating a resource for scientists who are stranded because of the ban.

RELATED: An Uneasy Silicon Valley Denounces Trump Immigration Ban

"There was widespread frustration here in Europe, and a general desire to help," Leptin told Seeker. "Some people and institutes had begun to offer help to stranded scientists, and it occurred to us that EMBO was in a good position to bundle these efforts, using our wide network of top scientists."

This idea quickly turned into a movement aimed at protecting the integrity of science.

On Tuesday evening, EMBO launched the Science Solidarity List, which is "offering temporary bench or desk space, library access and possibly even accommodation for US-based scientists who are stranded abroad due to the White House Executive Order 13769."

The idea caught on very quickly, gaining 380 volunteers from 31 countries within 24 hours. "Because we knew about the views of our colleagues throughout Europe, I expected that many scientists would contribute to this list," Leptin said. "But we are overwhelmed by the uptake. This evening, at the beginning of day two, we still receive offers every few minutes."

The majority of volunteers are from European countries but the list has received offers from scientists in Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, China, Brazil and Canada, among others.

"EMBO was founded to foster international scientific exchange," Leptin said. "We believe this is a core value of the research community, and is necessary for the advancement of science and scientific careers."

WATCH: The Dark History of Immigration Bans in The U.S.
A whale in distress in Norwegian waters had to be euthanized on January 28, and now an autopsy of the animal has revealed that its stomach contained 30 plastic bags and a large amount of microplastics, the materials its likely cause of death.

The animal, a Cuvier's beaked whale, had become stranded multiple times off Sotra, an island west of Bergen, Norway. It was ultimately deemed too sick and malnourished to be helped and had to be put down by local authorities.

Later, the whale was given to the University of Bergen, where researchers studied its remains. They found the plastic bags in the cetacean's stomach and said the objects were the probable cause of death of the animal.

University of Bergen zoologist Terje Lislevand said the whale clearly would have been in great distress, its insides clogged. "The plastic was like a big ball in the stomach and filled it almost completely," Lislevand told Bergens Tidende.

Curvier's beaked whales, which can grow up to about 22 feet long (the whale off Norway was about 20 feet long), typically eat squid and various species of deep-sea fish. Lislevand told Bergens Tidende that the animal was likely the first whale of the species to be documented off Norway.

RELATED: How Does Your Plastic Bag Get Into the Ocean?

The whale is not, however, the first to be found with plastic filling its stomach. A gray whale off Seattle had the same problem in 2010; a humpback whale was found with microplastics in its stomach in 2012; and last year 13 sperm whales off Germany were found to have ingested plastic waste and even car parts.

Meanwhile, as Seeker reported in October 2016, plastics have found their way into a wide range of animals that live at 1,000- to 2,000-foot depths.

The problem is likely to grow more widespread, some experts have asserted. A January 2016 report estimated that by 2050 the word's oceans would hold more discarded plastics than fish, when measured by weight. And a November 2015 study on American refuse found that while trash from the coastlines represents most of the man-made material that ends up in the ocean, even deep-inland waterways can be pathways to the sea for garbage.

WATCH VIDEO: How Much Trash Is in the Ocean?
Press Release

February 3, 2017 Cayetano: Philippines is not about hatred or violence "Come to the Philippines and please look at us from a different perspective." This was the message of Senator Alan Peter Cayetano to the delegates of the National Prayer Breakfast being held in the United States, consisting of leaders from different religious and business groups across the globe. "We invite you to come to the Philippines and see for yourselves that the Philippines is not about hatred and violence as being shown in the international media." He encouraged the foreign leaders to come and visit the country to discover for themselves the natural beauty of the country, and get to know Filipinos who are loving, kind and hospitable. Cayetano also took the opportunity to discuss to the international community his insights on the Philippine war on drugs. "The war on drugs is not a war to kill criminals," Cayetano clarified. He explained that the anti-drug campaign is not a war against life but a war to fight for the lives of all Filipinos. Cayetano noted that the Philippine government and even President Duterte have acknowledged that there are law enforcers who abuse their power, but he added that this should not be a reason to stop the entire drug campaign in general. He said, "President Duterte is being potrayed in the international community as a 'violent' man. But a 'violent' man does not want peace for anyone." He added that, in contrast, "Our President is doing everything to make the peace talks successful, achieve lasting peace, and win the war against illegal drugs," the Senator added. Cayetano compared the rogue cops in the law enforcement agencies like the PNP to the corrupt personnel in tax agencies. "When tax collecting agencies become rigged with corruption, we did not tell them to stop collecting taxes, but we cleansed the agencies," he said. Cayetano explained that there may be weaknesses in the systems and opportunities for corruption and abuse but the important thing is that the cleansing is on-going. Finally, he urged the participants in the National Prayer Breakfast to pray for the Filipino leaders to gain wisdom and fear of the Lord as the Philippines continues to address the problem of illegal drugs.
Lacson to PNP leadership: Follow up good start to internal cleansing bid

Philippine National Police chief Ronald dela Rosa is off to a good start in implementing a much-needed internal cleansing of the police force but will need to go beyond scolding cops linked to wrongdoing, Sen. Panfilo M. Lacson said.

Lacson, who headed the PNP from 1999 to 2001, said the public expects more positive action other than a strong reprimand, such as meting out the commensurate punishment for erring police personnel.

"Magandang mensahe, symbolic ang push-up at ang mura and everything, but it should go beyond that. Ang hinihintay ng tao, ano bang positibong aksyon aside from meting out the appropriate or commensurate punishment?" he said.

He also said the PNP leadership should take proactive measures as well, to discourage police personnel from engaging in wrongdoing.

"After nito, anong gagawin para ang future incidents hindi na maganap? Yan ang mas importante," he said.

On Wednesday, an angry dela Rosa lashed out at police personnel tagged in the robbery-extortion of Korean tourists, during a visit to Angeles City.

Lacson said dela Rosa had told him the setup for an internal cleansing mechanism in the PNP is complete, and will go full blast soon. "Sabi ko kailangan may impact. Hindi pwedeng pabagal-bagal kasi alam mo ang pulis, di tatablan ng pagkahinay-hinay," he said.
Maranao and Maguindanao Weavers Featured at the National Museum

In celebration of National Arts Month, Senator Loren Legarda invites everyone to join the weaving demonstrations featuring weavers from Maranao and Maguindanao on February 4, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm, at the Reception Hall, 4th Floor, National Museum of Anthropology, Finance Road, Manila.

Demonstrators include langkit weavers Saadira Basmala, Monawira Basmala and Salika Maguindanao from Marawi City, Lanao del Sur, as well as inaul weavers Haja Normina Collie, Amelia Ades, Normina Odin and Sarika Pendatun from Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao.

"This February, National Arts Month, I invite everyone to learn more about our weaving culture. This is an opportunity to interact with weavers and discover what makes their weaving techniques unique from others," said Legarda, who is the patron of the country's first permanent textile gallery, the Hibla ng Lahing Filipino at the National Museum.

The weaving demonstration is part of the Lecture Series on Philippine Traditional Textiles and Indigenous Knowledge, which Legarda and the National Museum initiated since 2012 to perpetuate weaving and indigenous knowledge.
PANGILINAN PUSHES FOR COMPULSORY DNA COLLECTION PRE-CREMATION

MANILA - To help stop the burning bodies of evidence, crematories must keep proper records to aid investigations requiring identification of cremated remains, Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan said Friday.

Pangilinan has filed Senate Bill 1312, or the "Mandatory Collection of Biological Specimen and Identification Samples Act of 2017." The proposed measure requires crematories to keep books of record containing the name, age, sex, and residence of each person whose body is cremated. It also requires crematories to keep in file digital photos, dental impression, and biological samples for purposes of DNA analysis. These records are to be open at reasonable times for inspection.

In the bill's explanatory note, Pangilinan noted the ease with which criminals bury all traces of their crime through cremation.

"Appropriate measures must become necessary to ensure that cremation will not be taken advantage of by criminal elements to obstruct investigations and ultimately, the delivery of justice," said the Liberal Party president.

Pangilinan earlier filed Senate Bill 1307 which pushes for mandatory autopsy in suspicious death cases. This measure requires forensic autopsies be conducted in 12 instances, including deaths resulting from commission of crimes, deaths occurring under suspicious circumstances, and deaths occurring in prison or penal institution or while in custody of the police.

Senate Bills 1307 and 1312 were filed in response to the unprecedented killing of over 7,000 people in the government's war on drugs, and the kidnap-slay case of South Korean businessman Jee Ik Joo that earned the ire of the international community.

"Measures must be put in place in order to specify proper cremation procedures, ensure that accurate examinations are conducted, and investigations are not hampered on cases when a crime is committed," Pangilinan added.
Big game hunters may be able to sport a new color for safety next season under a bill introduced by a state committee.

Big game hunters are required to wear 400 square inches of visible fluorescent orange, and the Senate Fish and Game Committee voted 9-2 Thursday to introduce a bill that would give them the option to wear fluorescent pink instead.

As a committee bill rather than one introduced by a lawmaker, it needed a three-quarters majority to be introduced. The bill failed by one vote on Tuesday with one committee member absent, gaining the needed support on Thursday.

(Were) trying to add an option color more attractive to the female hunters or guys who like pink, Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, said Thursday.

On Tuesday, Sen. Jill Cohenour, D-East Helena, voiced support for the bill in part to appeal to younger hunters by adding color choices.

Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, voted against the bill. On Thursday he explained that he believes safety colors should be optional, and he was concerned the bill would further cement them in law.

A measure to make hunter orange optional failed during the 2015 Legislature.

The bill must still go through a yet-to-be-scheduled committee hearing to see if it advances for full Senate consideration.

A bill allowing Wisconsin hunters to wear pink became law last year. Similar measures have gained traction in other states as well, including Colorado and Michigan.
Protesters of right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos speaking engagement at UC Berkeley argued that even freedom of speech has its limits.

As one demonstrator put it Wednesday night, Milos hate speech is not allowed here. When its hate speech, our free speech is to shut him down.

Thats the law in many European nations, where slurs based on race, sex or national origin are forbidden, but not in the United States, where the First Amendment protects free expression, including speech that might be loathsome to many.

Legal analysts say a public university isnt required to let outsiders speak on campus, and is also free to invite selected speakers without giving equal time to opposing views. But once a university creates a forum  for example, by allowing Berkeley College Republicans to host their own speakers  it cant exclude invited guests, including someone as controversial as Yiannopoulos, based on the content of the speech or fears of a violent reaction.

There is no legal concept of hate speech, no exception to the First Amendment, any more than there is for unpatriotic speech, unpleasant speech or rude speech, Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, said Thursday. He said the university could choose to invite its own selected speakers, but must let campus groups make their own choices.

Yiannopoulos, a self-described gay conservative, has been touring college campuses, making speeches with content that seems designed to insult and anger liberal students. In a December talk at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he disparaged a male-to-female transgender student, showed the students picture to the audience on a screen, and said the students attempt to change gender identity had failed because I can still bang him.

His Berkeley speech was canceled Wednesday after a student demonstration was taken over by masked protesters who smashed windows and set fires.

Last month, more than 100 Berkeley faculty members signed a letter to Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, urging that Yiannopoulos appearance be canceled because he engaged in harassment, slander, defamation and hate speech.

In response, Dirks said he deplored Yiannopoulos words and actions but was legally obligated to let him speak.

Yiannopoulos has been widely and rightly condemned for engaging in hate speech directed at a wide range of groups and individuals, as well as for disparaging and ridiculing individual audience members, particularly members of the LGBTQ community, Dirks said in an open letter Jan. 26. But the Constitution, he said, prohibits UC Berkeley, as a public institution, from banning expression based on its content or viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are hateful or discriminatory.

The U.S. Supreme Court set the standard in a 1969 ruling that overturned the criminal conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader for making racist exhortations to his followers. Mere advocacy is constitutionally protected, the court said, unless it includes incitement to imminent lawless action.

Matthew Coles, a constitutional law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco, said speech can be forbidden only when it involves personally directed threats and intimidation.

Urging supporters at a rally to assault others immediately, or burning a cross on someones lawn are the types of expression that can justify exclusion as well as criminal prosecution, Coles said.

But its not just getting up and saying generally hateful things, Coles said. And if protesters create a security risk, he said, government institutions like UC and the police must try to halt the threat before taking steps to remove the speaker.

One of the faculty members who signed the letter to Dirks said Thursday that she still thinks the university should have canceled the invitation to Yiannopoulos.

We can support free speech, said Wendy Brown, a political science professor, without choosing to host those who gleefully attack our most vulnerable, seek deportations and bans of our students and faculty, trample the principles of equality and respect ... and in other ways aim to destroy the institution.

Chronicle staff writer Sarah Ravani contributed to this report.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @egelko
Heavy rain hit San Francisco early Friday, kicking off a wet weekend and a series of storms stretching into next week.

San Francisco received 0.32 inches of rain, much of it falling just before dawn, and was expected to receive double that throughout the day, said Bob Benjamin, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

The main event went through this morning, Benjamin said. We will be experiencing showers for the remainder of the day.

The Oakland Hills are expected to receive 0.75 inches of rain, while Livermore should see about a third of an inch. Just under half an inch was expected to hit San Jose, he said.

While the storm system should taper off Saturday morning, Benjamin said the Bay Area will likely see isolated showers Saturday and Sunday.

Meanwhile, a rain system expected to roll in next week could bring more rainfall.

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.

Were expecting a fairly wet week, Benjamin said.

The storm Friday morning flooded several roads around the region, including Highway 29 near Junction Road in Napa. Also in Napa County, a large bolder broke loose and blocked Deer Park Road in Deer Park Friday morning, but road crews quickly removed it and the road was reopened by about 6:30 a.m.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
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A two-alarm fire that started in the basement of a grocery market in San Franciscos Chinatown Friday morning left one person injured, officials said.

A call came in to the San Francisco Fire Department about 7:45 a.m. reporting a blaze around Stockton and Pacific streets, said Sgt. Francis Feliciano of the San Francisco Police Department.

The fire was burning at 1199 Stockton Street, a two-story commercial building that houses the Chong Hing grocery market  where the fire occurred  along with Natural Tea Shop, San Francisco Poultry and a Verizon Wireless Infinitel Communications store.

One person, only identified as an adult victim, was rescued from the building sustained minor injuries, according to fire officials.

Mayor Ed Lee arrived on scene shortly before 10:30 a.m., patting firefighters on the back, and meeting with senior citizens affected by the fire. The Red Cross was on scene providing services.

Four fire trucks responded to the scene where the busy intersection of Stockton and Pacific streets was roped off. Firefighters searched the building to look for potential victims. The fire was contained in about two hours.

Feliciano said the cause of the fire was under investigation after firefighters found the origin.

They went inthey couldnt find the source. They went up to look for it and they still couldnt find it, Feliciano said. Then it turns out it was in the basement.

Smoke poured out of a seafood market as firefighters battled the blaze and a long yellow fire hose snaked into the building. Concerned employees of several businesses in and around the building were milling around outside the scene, unsure of how much damage to expect.

No evacuations were ordered, but fire officials told those in the area to close windows and doors due to the heavy smoke.

Filipa Ioannou and Jenna Lyons are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com, jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi, @JennaJourno
Alphabet CEO Larry Page once proposed that we set aside a small part of the world free from laws because there are many, many exciting and important things you just cant do because theyre illegal or theyre not allowed by regulation.

At least in theory, the country got one step closer to Pages experimental paradise this week, when President Trump signed an executive order requiring two regulations to be deleted for every new one issued by a federal agency.

Trump hailed the order as a way to unburden businesses and grow jobs. But while some traditional industries agree that government regulations make doing business onerous, some in the entrepreneurial tech world worry that fewer regulations would be bad for companies.

Emerging industries, whether its autonomous cars or home-rental services like Airbnb, actually welcome government regulations that they see as leveling the playing field and helping them grow. Limiting those rules, some experts say, would actually do harm.

5 key areas for tech regulations President Trump says he wants fewer regulations. But some new innovations require new rules to grow. Self-driving cars: The industry, currently facing a patchwork of state rules, is looking for consistent federal regulations. Gig economy: A new category of workers could let online marketplaces offer benefits and training without making them employees. Drones: The Federal Aviation Administration isn't moving quickly on rules, leading some companies to test flying robots overseas. Wearable devices: The Food and Drug Administration has called most such devices "low risk," not requiring regulation, but that could change as they grow more sophisticated. Online advertising: How companies use people's data is evolving quickly, as Internet advertising grows more sophisticated. See More Collapse

Trumps Monday order, legal experts said, was poorly drafted and confusing. Its most likely effect is to slow down the regulatory process, making it more difficult for rule makers to grapple with technological advances that fundamentally change how our society works and leave existing regulations out of date.

Regulations take a long time to put in place, and they take just as long to get rid of, said David Chavern, former president of the U.S. Chamber Center for Advanced Technology and Innovation. So the idea that somehow theres this equation, where for every one you plop on you just knock two off is pretty simplistic.

The burgeoning field of self-driving cars is a key example. There are currently no federal laws that cover autonomous vehicles, which has led to a confusing patchwork of regulations that vary from state to state.

As companies race to develop vehicles that dont require human drivers, local governments are trying to figure out how to keep roads safe and woo this growing sector. John Simpson, a director at Consumer Watchdog, said self-driving cars will eventually need a federal safety standard.

But what should regulators junk to make room for self-driving rules? I dont know of any unreasonable or particularly burdensome National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regulations, said Simpson. Federal motor vehicle standards exist for good reason.

When Silicon Valley startups are small, they often protest regulations that stand in the way of new ideas. But as they gain popularity and attract millions of dollars in venture capital, they seek to influence rule making instead of opposing it.

Uber and Airbnb are two key examples. The San Francisco companies once argued that their apps, which allowed drivers cars and hosts spare beds to find paying customers, fell outside of existing rules covering taxis and hotels. Those existing industries saw things differently. The resulting legal and political disputes more often than not led to new laws and regulations, like Californias creation of a category of transportation network companies to cover Uber and Lyft, and San Franciscos rules governing short-term rentals.

We want regulatory certainty, so there are rules that people are following that work, said Chris Lehane, Airbnbs head of global policy and communications, in a November editorial board meeting with The Chronicle.

Ride services and home rentals are likely to remain under state or local regulation. But for those seeking income as part-time drivers or casual hoteliers, questions remain about the nature of their relationship with the companies that often dictate how they run their businesses.

Some have proposed a category that lies between regular employment and independent contractor status for such gig workers. The creation of a dependent contractor status would require a wide number of tax and employment rules, allowing such companies to offer training and benefits to casual workers without turning them into employees.

Evolving areas of hardware, too, are challenging for regulators. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study last year found that the United States, which has been slow to issue nationwide regulations on drone use, isnt even in the top 10 countries for drone testing. Poland was the best, the study found.

Wearable devices that track steps and other health data may also require clearer regulations as they grow in sophistication. The Food and Drug Administration said last year that it did not intend to regulate low risk devices. But as wearables gain the ability to gather more detailed, medically relevant information, that may require a fresh look.

Also racing past regulators abilities to regulate them are Google and Facebook, which have data on billions of consumers that they use to target ads. The European Union has generally taken a stronger stance on online privacy than U.S. regulators. But in order for these companies to operate globally, they may need new rules in the U.S. to line up with regulations elsewhere.

While Trumps executive order has come under intense scrutiny for being extremely arbitrary and unrealistic, there is some wisdom in it, said Ian Adams, a senior fellow with the R Street Institute, a conservative think tank.

It gives us a mechanism that forces us to review whats on the books, he said.

Being forced to get rid of some regulations before creating new ones could be a good thing for an agency like the Federal Communications Commission, which has many outdated rules bogging it down, said Kathleen Abernathy, a former FCC commissioner who is now a senior adviser at Frontier Communications.

Outdated rules that impose costs on companies could be eliminated with no impact on competition or quality of products and services offered to consumers,she said Thursday at an industry panel in Washington.

For some in Silicon Valley, the arbitrariness of the two-for-one swap ordered by Trump rubs analytical minds the wrong way.

Like most things in life, there are few simple solutions, said Carl Guardino, chief executive officer of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a trade association. And in Silicon Valley, we deal in specifics  in data, not dogma. Which regulations do you think have run their course? Or have been inefficiently handled, or arent worth it?

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani
Bill Hutchinson / Bill Hutchinson / The Chronicle

One man was killed and another critically injured in the yard of a Richmond apartment complex Thursday, marking the East Bay citys second homicide of 2017, police said.

The double-shooting, which broke out near the intersection of Second Street and Ohio Avenue around 12:30 p.m., was not random, said Lt. Felix Tan, a spokesman for the Richmond Police Department.
Sierra LaMar remains frozen in time. She was a smiling 15-year-old with her head cocked to one side and her tongue out in the last selfie she took on the last day she was heard from.

But now, nearly five years later, Sierras teenage friends have grown into young women as the trial in her alleged murder begins. On Thursday, they took the witness stand, crying as prosecutors showed them the last selfie and remembering the bubbly cheerleader who vanished, her body never found.

Antolin Garcia-Torres, 25, could face the death penalty if convicted of kidnapping and murdering Sierra. He is also charged with trying to kidnap and carjack three women from Safeway stores in 2009 in Morgan Hill, the same city Sierra disappeared from.

The prosecution and defense had more than nostalgia on the agenda as they questioned Sierras old friends. Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney David Boyd asked the women about Sierras hobbies like cheerleading, listening to music, and actively using Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, aiming to paint the portrait of a well-adjusted teen who wouldnt just vanish out of the blue.

Defense attorney Alfonso Lopez, however, pressed as to whether the women knew of Sierra being unhappy in Morgan Hill or attending rowdy house parties in Morgan Hill or Fremont. He emphasized the fact the friends who testified only spent time with Sierra at school to suggest she might have led a fast nightlife that they hadnt taken part in. The type of life that could have led to her disappearance. But none of her friends remembered her on the stand as a partier.

Karissa Pugh, now 19, who was the last person to hear from Sierra, tried unsuccessfully to hold back tears as she testified. On March 16, 2012, at 7:11 a.m., Sierra had texted Pugh ye  an abbreviation of yes  in response to Pugh asking Sierra to bring makeup to school so they could share.

Boyd sought to dispel any suggestion by the defense that Sierra had wanted to run away as he questioned Pugh, a former classmate from Ann Sobrato High School in Morgan Hill.

Did you see anything that would lead you to believe that she would abandon all her friends? the prosecutor asked.

No, Pugh said.

Her mother?

No.

Her father?

No.

Anyone?

No.

Months before she vanished, Sierra had moved from Fremont, and Lopez questioned Pugh about Sierras reluctance to move.

From what she told you she didnt want to be in Morgan Hill, did she? Lopez said, possibly hinting Sierra might have wanted to runaway, as he had done in pre-trial motions.

Pugh, like many of Sierras friends, admitted the girl had not been happy about leaving Fremont, but Boyd suggested the reaction was normal for any teen switching high schools.

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.

When Claire Normoyle, 20, took the stand, she tried to keep her composure as she spoke about Sierra.

She was my best friend, she said.

But when Boyd displayed Sierras last known photo, Normoyle couldnt hold back her tears.

All of Sierras friends knew what she liked. Her favorite shoes were red Converse, her favorite brand of makeup was Mac.

One of the only traces of Sierra that was found after her disappearance was a shirt belonging to her friend Brittany Stonehouse.

Stonehouse, 21, testified that she had loaned Sierra her custom-made Sharks jersey the day before she went missing.

She just said, goodbye. She said, thank you again, Stonehouse recalled. That was it.

When Boyd displayed the jersey as evidence, Stonehouse reached for tissues as she wept.

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JennaJourno
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Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee wants Stephen Bannon, the White House chief strategist, booted from his permanent position on the National Security Council, an unprecedented appointment by President Trump.

By placing Steve Bannon - a man who has promoted the alt-right and white nationalism - at the center of our nations most senior diplomatic and intelligence council, President Trump has placed our national security in grave danger, Lee said in a letter addressed to Trump. There is no place for such inexperience and bigotry at the center of Americas national security apparatus.
Evan Sernoffsky / Evan Sernoffsky / The Chronicle

San Jose recorded its fourth homicide of 2017 when a 20-year-old man was shot to death, police said Thursday.

The victim, Tri Vo Minh Nguyen of San Jose, was killed Tuesday night in the 1900 block of Tully Road in East San Jose, police said.
Elsie Arntzen entered the Montana House chamber Friday afternoon as the first Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction in decades, doubling down in her State of Education address on a promise to scale back advocacy some had considered political.

For 12 years, I have been honored to serve shoulder-to-shoulder with you in these chambers as well as with our esteemed colleagues in the Senate, she said, also recognizing other statewide elected officials and tribal leaders as important collaborators.

But I have to tell you, the former teacher said to chuckles. Sometimes you have reminded me of my class of 10-year-olds.

The joke, in part, referenced political disagreements that Arntzen argued in her campaign had bled into the operations of the Office of Public Instruction.

We are providing informational testimony on bills and their fiscal implications, she said, departing from the practice of previous superintendents to sometimes speak in support or opposition of legislative proposals regarding education policy. Its my sincere commitment to depoliticize this office and honor you, honor you the Legislature, as you are the lawmakers.

Arntzen repeated two slogans throughout her address that she described as priorities of her administration: Montana Proud and Montana Hope.

She emphasized the need to teach students about state history and values, highlighting Indian Education for All and a new arrangement by which the Agriculture Literacy Program will be jointly operated with the Department of Agriculture. She also said that educators and other school staff do important work providing hope for students and their future, academic or otherwise.

Being Montana proud, includes hope. Our school counselors are on the front lines protecting our students, she said, urging legislators to support strengthened mental health resources in schools to reverse the states high ranking for youth suicides.

Among her priorities, Arntzen also listed the need to support students who are gifted and talented or who have disabilities, although -- in line with her promise to let legislators make policy decisions -- did not testify in support of some legislation to bolster that work earlier this session. Other priorities included efforts to help schools recruit and retain quality teachers.

She also urged legislators to approve her budget proposal, which reinstates some funding sources the governor had suggested replacing with different monies but Arntzen argued would leave local taxpayers on the hook for more.

I am responsible for leading one of the largest agencies in our state government, she said. The budget I have offered is fiscally responsible and funds Montanas obligation to our public schools. That is why my priority this session is to make sure you do right by our students, our taxpayers and pass my budget.

In one statement, she also appeared to reference earlier criticisms of how previous superintendent Denise Juneau submitted some required data on testing scores to federal officials while also speaking to growing public concerns about over testing students.

Assessment must be purposeful and with meaning for student success. The data must be governed with integrity and with respect for student privacy, she said, later adding: I was elected gatekeeper of our Montana schools from federal overreach.  Local control, flexibility: These are Montana values I will be advocating for at the federal level.
DAMON WINTER/NYT

President Trump has chosen a leader for a new federal task force he is creating to deregulate the nations colleges and universities: Jerry Falwell Jr., president of a Christian university in Virginia, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Falwell, 54, son of the late conservative televangelist and Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell, heads Liberty University, a religious school founded by his father. In 2009, the school barred students from forming a College Democratic Club because the Democratic Party platform supports abortion and gay rights.
Californias roads are crumbling.

Reports routinely show our state has some of the poorest pavement conditions in the country, with high-tax liberal strongholds of San Francisco and Oakland leading the way. The culprit? Misplaced spending priorities.

If you spilled your latte when hitting that huge pothole on the way to work, thank your elected leaders.

Gov. Jerry Brown says he has a fix for it  a 42 percent gas tax hike, plus a new $65 vehicle registration fee that includes hybrids and electric vehicles. He claims the increases are needed because repairing Californias highways cant be funded with existing revenues.

Why not?

Budgets are about priorities and the governor and legislative leaders have a say on how tax dollars are spent. State revenues have grown by roughly 50 percent in just under 10 years. And, apparently, Brown thinks the state can afford a $68 billion  and growing  high-speed rail project that still hasnt found a way to deal with the Tehachapi Mountains.

In addition to about $7 billion in annual fuel tax revenues, the state also collects a carbon tax from oil companies that brings in about $2 billion. Oil suppliers pass the tax on to us at the pump. The Legislative Analysts Office estimates this adds, at minimum, 11 cents per gallon to the cost of gasoline.

Where is all the money going?

Huge amounts go to projects that dont improve roads. Much of the carbon tax revenue will end up funding high-speed rail. The Democratic-controlled Legislature rejects every bill to direct these dollars toward reducing emission-generating traffic gridlock.

If Browns plan to raise the gas tax passes  which seems likely given the new Democratic supermajority  Californians could end up paying as much as 80 cents in combined federal and state taxes for each gallon of gasoline  a rate far higher than any other state. Not to mention we already have some of the highest gas prices in the nation.

It isnt the elite who are squeezed by these costs. It is the less fortunate who struggle to find affordable housing and often must travel further to their workplaces.

Sadly, this is all by design.

Many Democrats envision a society where everyone is reliant on public transit. This green vision is attractive to Millennial voters, who tend to be issue-driven idealists. They believe we should all pay a little more to save the planet.

Thats troubling, given the findings in a new report that shows Millennials are poorer and less employed than their Baby Boomer parents.

There are alternatives to raising taxes. The public should call upon the governor and Legislature to first consider the following ideas:

Audit the California Department of Transportation for savings. Experts agree Caltrans has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in recent years, not counting the new Bay Bridge.

Use cap-and-trade and existing revenue streams to target traffic gridlock and tackle deferred road maintenance.

Enact legislation to ensure transportation dollars are spent on actual transportation projects, and require the California Transportation Commission to prioritize projects that provide the greatest economic benefits.

As both California and the Bay Area so aptly demonstrate, high taxes do not guarantee good roads. If our leaders have failed to properly prioritize and manage our existing tax dollars, is it really wise to give them more?

George Runner is a member of the State Board of Equalization.
Free speech is a proud hallmark of Berkeley. The objectors to Milo Yiannopoulos offensive rhetoric should take no comfort in their success in denying him a public soapbox. This was a defeat for free speech. After all, the excuse of public safety concerns to silence a voice could well be used in the future to quash a speaker from the far left considered to be too provocative for public consumption.

Yes, Yianopoulos is a hate-spewing loudmouth who thrives on conflict. After his opponents forced a cancellation, the night turned violent in a crowd that included troublemakers who had nothing to do with the original protest.

The aftermath is splintering in several directions. President Trump, predictably enough, responded with a veiled threat to cut off federal funding the university. He suggested the university was responsible for the mayhem, a knee-jerk conclusion thats way off base.

Campus police, who said they were prepared, were overwhelmed by the protest. In addition, Berkeley students are angry at the that their school, made famous by the Free Speech Movement, is tarred by a fringe group of organized troublemakers.

A university or any other public gathering spot must allow for free expression. In this case, the breaking point was Yiannopoulos, a flashy self-promoter with far-right views on race, gender and immigration. His toxic message, too far fetched to take seriously, is calculated to inflame and infuriate.

A demonstration was expected and even welcomed. Though the threat of violence was in the air, Berkeley campus leaders said there wasnt a choice about canceling the talk. The U.S. Constitution is unequivocal, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said in a campus memo, and the university cant bar views that are hateful and discriminatory.

Yiannopolous became the acid test of that guarantee. Short of inciting violence or direct harm  such as the old adage about shouting fire in a crowded theater  he has the right to speak his mind. Hate speech, like it or not, is free speech.

As the demonstration got out of control Wednesday night, university security canceled the speech, regrettably but responsibly  but that did not prevent the mayhem that followed.

The harried speaker, hustled away amid the chaos, got just what he wanted: publicity and sympathy from his pathetic followers. The campus, which correctly stood up for his right to speak, is feeling the public backlash. Thats especially undeserved since most of the violent protestors came from elsewhere, according to other demonstrators who didnt toss fireworks or knock down police barricades.

A principled defense of free speech doesnt mean just guaranteeing your right to express yourself. It requires standing up for the rights of others whose views you find objectionable, even repulsive.
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Milo Yiannopoulos, a professional provocateur, provoked not only protesters who shut down his speech at UC Berkeley but also President Trump, who suggested Thursday that federal funds be withheld from the campus as a result  and professors, politicians and students, who expressed disbelief about that possibility.

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Trump tweeted.

Trump issued his 140-character diatribe one day after five people were injured in a melee on and around UC Berkeleys Sproul Plaza that led campus police to cancel the speech by Yiannopoulos, a writer for the right-wing opinion site Breitbart News. The event, hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans student group, was heavily fortified by the police because students and others had threatened to shut it down, as they had done days earlier at UC Davis.

Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

UC Berkeley, perhaps the best-known public research university in the world, received about $400 million in federal research funding last year, supporting a broad range of innovations, from the development of new ways to detect infectious diseases to understanding science at the nano-level.

A third of UC Berkeley students also rely on federal Pell Grants to fund their education, according to the university. Last year, they received nearly $200 million in financial aid from the federal government.

Trumps tweet largely serves as political chum to his conservative base: He gets to lash out at an iconic liberal bastion of higher education  UC Berkeley  and highlight images of protesters causing damage.

Although the president has no direct say in whether UC Berkeley students and researchers get funding, his office makes budget requests to Congress for such agencies as the U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, the nations main source of nonmedical research grants.

While taking Trumps tweeted threat seriously because it comes from the presidential bully pulpit, UC officials and Californias lawmakers nevertheless believe Trump has little power on his own to cut funding directly aimed at UC Berkeley.

As I understand it, there is no law empowering the president to unilaterally withdraw federal funding from a university based on its action to protect public safety, said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, in whose district the university is based.

University of California President Janet Napolitano told The Chronicle in January that federal funding is judged on its merits and cant easily be yanked because a politician demands it.

It doesnt work that way, Napolitano said after Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Costa Mesa (Orange County), suggested in December that federal funds should be withheld from UC because Napolitano  the former secretary of homeland security under President Barack Obama  issued a statement saying UC would not help federal officials pursue students in the country without documentation.

In the end, Napolitano said, wiser heads prevail.

But on Thursday, her office was eerily silent about Trumps threat and ignored repeated requests for comment.

UC Berkeley officials declined to comment on the presidents tweet, but spokesman Dan Mogulof said federal funding provides financial aid to low-income students and supports basic research that supports the greater good, Californias economy and the national economy.

Professors, however, did not hold back in saying that Trump is simply wrong when he says that UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and that it practices violence on innocent people.

I was involved in some of the campus preparation (for the Yiannopoulos speech), and I think Berkeley took extraordinary measures to allow free speech to continue, said Robert Powell, chairman of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate and a political science professor who has a $288,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Yiannopoulos was hosted by the student Republican group and not by UC Berkeley itself. But campus officials had refused demands to cancel the event from critics of the self-described provocateur, citing his First Amendment right to express himself. The speech was canceled at the last minute, when a group of masked anarchists joined a large protest at Sproul Plaza, tore down barriers, broke windows and set a police generator on fire.

Campus police said Thursday they are reviewing video to see whether they can identify any of the 150 or so people in masks they said hurled Molotov cocktails, set fires, threw fireworks at police and damaged property amid about 1,500 peaceful protesters Wednesday night, causing $100,000 in damage. Police also arrested two people suspected of punching and throwing a glass bottle of red paint at student hosts of the event.

Berkeley took very strong measures to ensure that Yiannopoulos would have an opportunity to speak, so the premise of the presidents statement is mistaken, Powell said. Theres no basis for even suggesting that Berkeley was trying to limit Yiannopoulos speech. I dont know the law, but I dont believe federal funds could be withdrawn or withheld on this basis.

The U.S. Department of Education declined to comment about whether federal financial aid could be withheld at Trumps request.

Aya Collins, a spokeswoman for the National Science Foundation, also declined to comment on Trumps statement. But she said funding requests are reviewed in a fair, competitive and in-depth manner, and are judged on two criteria: intellectual merit and broader impacts. At least three independent scientific and academic reviewers evaluate most proposals.

However, Collins said the agency is part of the governments executive branch, and its funding is part of the budget that the president submits to Congress for approval.

And because the executive branch has been less than predictable lately, people are on edge.

I find it deeply troubling that the president of the United States has threatened the funding of a public university to hold it accountable for the actions of outside agitators, said Ralph Washington, president of the UC Student Association, adding that most of the protesters were students exercising their right to free assembly.

Tyrone Gayle, a spokesman for Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said: While Milo Yiannopoulos has peddled sexist, racist and conspiracy-laden rhetoric that Sen. Harris finds abhorrent, she strongly objects to last nights acts of violence. President Trumps threat to cut funding for our universities that could jeopardize lifesaving research is irresponsible and will be met with firm opposition by the California congressional delegation.

Yiannopoulos did not respond to a request for comment.

Nanette Asimov and Joe Garofoli are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com and jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NanetteAsimov and @JoeGarofoli
Foggy San Francisco can be a gray city, but inside Bellota the amber light of Spain infuses both the restaurants food and decor.

We wanted to warm up the space a lot with our color palette and finishes, says interior designer Kendall Wilkinson. The geometry and the light has a cathedral, stained-glass window feeling intentionally.

Bellota, the newest restaurant from Bill Russell-Shapiros Absinthe Group, is located in the historically recognized Gift Center & Jewelry Mart at 888 Brannan St. in SoMa. When it came time to turn the industrial space into a Morisco-flavored fantasy, the group looked to Wilkinson, who is also doing a refresh in collaboration with Sagan Piechota Architecture on the other restaurants in the groups portfolio.

From the saffron-hued leather walls of the booths to the brass oil lanterns hanging from the pillars and hand-fired, Moorish-style tile at the bar, the space evokes the spirit of the Mediterranean.

Chef Ryan McIlwraith went to Spain with his team at the beginning of the project, Wilkinson says. They came back with all this imagery from restaurants and food-making facilities there that had all these patterns. That was one of the big jumping-off points.

The restaurants kitchen became another unexpected feature that informed the design. With its center location nonnegotiable  it is immediately visible at the entrance  Wilkinson made it into another design element.

We didnt want it to look industrial and commercial; we went to brushed burnished brass, she says. In restaurant design, theres a lot of functionality we deal with that can inform design.

Although pillows from Wilkinsons textile line with Fabricut add pops of color, she says that overall, the team didnt soften the space too much. It has a great, old world quality to it with the ceilings and industrial cement, Wilkinson says. We kind of let that be part of the story.

Bellota, 888 Brannan St., S.F. http://www.bellotasf.com .

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com
Just because Januarys over doesnt mean weve let up on our self-improvement goals. Whatever your skin care issue, chances are theres a product that targets it, and a local startup elegantly addresses the quotidian challenge of building a better deodorant. In a fashion rut? Dare to bare Feb. 18 for the Undie Run, then take a cue from the late Mary Tyler Moores winning office style.

 Laura Compton

Face time The gyms great for keeping muscles in shape, but how to improve skins appearance? NassifMDs BioClock Dermaceuticals (by Dr. Paul Nassif of TVs Botched) offers Day Therapy Day Creme and Night Therapy Antioxidant Night Serum, both with vitamin C and Retinol, said to stimulate collagen production and reduce fine lines. (My facialist noticed a difference for the better after Id used a set of trial products for eight days.) $90 for the duo, www.hsn.com. For rosacea, Jan Marinis RosaLieve uses azelaic acid, an anti-redness peptide and concentrated tea and oat extracts to reduce reactivity (1 oz., $85), while its new Hyla3D, released this month, hydrates and boosts collagen and elastin in aging and sun-damaged skin with multiple forms of hyaluronic acid, 1 oz., $125, at www.janmarini.com.

 C. Z.

Go Native Those concerned with a potential link between antiperspirants with aluminum and breast cancer (no conclusive evidence yet exists, according to www.cancer.gov) have San Francisco company Native on their side. The deodorant makers product is paraben- and aluminum-free and uses baking soda, arrowroot powder, coconut oil and other natural ingredients to keep users fresh-smelling. Style tried and liked the jasmine & cedar and coconut vanilla, although one user noticed powdery residue on her clothing. $12 per stick, $30 for a three-pack, at www.nativecos.com.

 C.Z.

Remembering Mary Reflecting on the fashion legacy of actress Mary Tyler Moore, who died Jan. 25 at age 80: In her role as Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show she popularized Capri pants, a controversial choice in the early 1960s, which later became a signature for the character. In the 1970s, her professional wardobe on The Mary Tyler Moore Show helped define chic, no-fuss office wear for a generation of women entering the workforce for the first time. It still looks amazingly on-trend in 2017. In honor of the star, wear a knit cap and throw it in the air: Youre gonna make it after all!

Tony Bravo

Bare it Instead of running from the challenge of finding the perfect Valentines Day gift, just ... run! The fourth annual Cupids Undie Run in San Francisco on Feb. 18 allows you to buy your own lingerie (sexy? sporty?) and do some good while in it. Participants (like those in Seattle in years past, below) pay $35 each to sip cocktails at Pedros Cantina and then go for a 1-mile fun run in their skivvies along the Embarcadero to raise money for neurofibromatosis and the Childrens Tumor Foundation. www.cupidsundierun.org.

 Carolyne Zinko
BILLINGS  When a pair of rural Republicans announced Wednesday they would vote against Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos' confirmation, Democrats needed only one more defection to swing a 'no' vote. It sparked a flurry of speculation about other rural Republicans that could flip.

Don't expect it to be Montana Sen. Steve Daines.

Daines has been an ardent supporter of DeVos, a Detroit billionaire, and said that she endorses his education proposal that would make sweeping changes to federal funding and let schools opt out of federal accountability programs.

That hasn't stopped local education advocates from burning up the phones.

"As a 27-year educator it was excruciatingly painful to listen to this woman, whos supposedly going to be the face of public education," said Missoula Education Association president Melanie Charlson.

The Missoula union has a postcard-writing campaign, board members wrote letters and the group has taken to social media. In Billings, the local union hasn't launched a formal campaign, but president Rita Wells said that many members have been contacting Montana's senators.

"(DeVos) has absolutely no experience with public education," Wells said.

DeVos' confirmation hearing left many teachers and education groups miffed by her support for easing laws banning guns in schools and her apparent confusion about a federal law for students with disabilities.

DeVos' signature issue is the expansion of school choice she helped drive in Detroit. Many public school advocates have argued that Detriot's system has a checkered record of success and poor accountability.

In rural states, experts have questioned whether programs supporting vouchers or charter schools would have a significant effect; having a small population across a far-flung area often means that there are few choices other than local public schools. Advocates argue that if small schools lose per-student money, it would have a disproportionate effect on the quality of education.

Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, one of the Republicans who defected Wednesday, specifically questioned DeVos' rural chops.

"I'm concerned that Mrs. Devos' lack of experience with public schools will make it difficult for her to fully understand, identify and assist with those challenges, particularly for our rural schools in states like Maine," a statement from her office said.

No Senate Democrat has said they will vote for DeVos, including Montana's Jon Tester, who blasted her school choice advocacy.

A Daines spokeswoman said that his office has gotten calls urging both support and rejection of DeVos, and that Daines' stance remains unchanged.

A Thursday search of Twitter posts citing Daines' account with DeVos' name showed many tweets urging 'no' votes. A Tester spokesman said his office heard from more than 3,000 people on DeVos, 95 percent of which urged a 'no' vote.

Critics have also zeroed in on political donations to Republican senators from DeVos and her family; Daines received $5,200 from DeVos in his 2014 campaign, and $41,600 from other members of her family. Daines and other senators, who have received almost $1 million in total from the Devos family, have brushed off calls to recuse themselves from DeVos' confirmation vote.

DeVos' confirmation still appears likely as no other Republicans have indicated they'll vote against her. A political analysis story from "Education Week" speculated that Republican leadership was unconcerned by the public defections of Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

"Those two senators can please voters in their home states who don't like DeVos, without ultimately sinking DeVos' nomination and facing political backlash from GOP leadership and (President Donald) Trump," it reads.

Democrats protested when Republican leaders limited questioning at DeVos' confirmation hearing; outside of DeVos' school choice advocacy, there's little known about her education policies.

Her apparent support for Daines' accountability opt-out is perhaps her most illuminating statement on the topic; during an exchange with Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine in her hearing, she responded to repeated questions about whether she would support applying the same accountability measures to any school that receives taxpayer money with the phrase, "I support accountability," four times in a row, including when Kaine asked, "do you not want to answer my question?"
Like much of Californias history, the story of Amador County, and its wines, dates to the Gold Rush days, when many Europeans flocked to the Sierra seeking their fortune.

But the immigrants found a different kind of fortune when they discovered that the mountains foothills were fertile enough to plant a most familiar crop: grapes.

Neither gold nor grapes boomed for long.

By the 1920s, the gold mines had closed and Prohibition had kicked in. More than 100 established wineries were forced to shut their doors, drying out Amador County financially and alcoholically.

It wasnt until Napa had its wine revival in the 1970s that Amador, too, experienced its wine region comeback. Vintners were so excited to make and sell wine again, it seems to have been an instance of What else can we grow and where else can we grow it?

Luckily for those brave souls, the abandoned Amador farmland was still fertile. So Amador got back on the map as a (albeit small) wine-producing region, today hosting just over 40 wineries, predominantly in the Shenandoah Valley.

Amadors revival may have coincided with Napas, but its the question, What else can we grow? that makes the region stand out on a California wine country map.

On paper, Zinfandel is king, with 60 percent of the countys plantings dedicated to the grape and wineries engaging in fisticuffs over whose Old Vine Zin is truly the Esteemed Elder.

But upon closer inspection, its clear Amadors niche is as a land of seemingly infinite varietals. The countys climate and terroir most resemble that found in southern Europe  think Italy, Spain, Portugal and southern Frances Rhone Valley.

So what youll find is a huge selection of bold-flavored, food-friendly wines associated with those cultures: Barbera, Sangiovese, Roussanne, Marsanne, Grenache, Mourvedre, Tempranillo  and those are just some of the more common names.

Grafting new vines and experimenting with winemaking methods comes with a bit of a laissez-faire attitude.

Why not try something? asks Dick Cooper, owner and proprietor of Cooper Vineyards, whose Amador family farm dates to the walnut orchards of the early 20th century. He credits the success of Amadors experimental wine growers both to the terroir  the Sierra Series sandy loam soil and its abundance of water  as well as the free exchange of ideas and knowledge among growers and vintners.

Ashley Long, assistant winemaker for the more recently established Amador Cellars, agrees, saying the quality soils, the warm climate and the close-knit community of family-owned wineries attracted her family to the area in 2000. And because of these elements, the Longs have been able to expand outside of their original Zinfandel planting to include a whole portfolio of Mediterranean-inspired wines.

Even though we are a small winery, we are currently working with 15 different varietals, says Long. We are extremely lucky to have a climate that allows for this.

Those ties to the land, fellow wine producers and wine consumers make Amador County stand out for visitors. Most tasting rooms are walk-in friendly, provide complimentary flights and more often than not are hosted by someone with direct ties to the wines or vines.

I think folks are looking for experiences as well as wines, says Jeff Runquist, owner and winemaker of Jeff Runquist Wines. When their paths intersect with a winemaker or winery owner, it makes their day.

Though Runquist sources his fruit from all over California, he has chosen to establish his business in Amador because he feels the personal connection between winery and wine consumer is much more common in Amador than in many other wine regions. We make good wine, he says, but we also make memorable experiences.

It seems the same attitude that first brought vintners back to Amador in the 1970s is attracting a new stream of curious wine drinkers today  those who dare to ask, What else can we drink and where else can we drink it?

If you go

Take the opportunity to taste as many varietals as Amador County has to offer. These are just a few wineries that present a sense of history, family, fine wines and  bonus point  complimentary pours.

Terra dOro: No other winery has as prominent a place in Amador County wine history as Terra dOro. Founded and established by Cary Gott in 1973 under the Montevina label, this is the first winery to set up shop post-Prohibition. And if Zinfandel is the king of the county, then Terra dOro is its palace. Their Deaver Vineyard contains one of the oldest original Zinfandel plantings in Amador County, serving as the parent cuttings for about 80 percent of the Zinfandel grown in the area.

When visiting Terra dOro, taste through their various Zinfandels and experience how the eclectic terroir of Amador affects the varietals flavors and textures.

Wine to try: 2014 TdO Deaver Old Vine Zinfandel ($24)

20680 Shenandoah School Road, Plymouth; (209) 245-6942. www.terradorowinery.com. Open 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily. Free.

Cooper Vineyards: The Cooper family has been farming in Amador County since 1919, when Grandpa Cooper left his San Francisco medical practice to tend a walnut orchard. Not until current owner Dick Cooper graduated from UC Davis in the 1970s did the Coopers consider grafting grapevines. But they wanted to think outside the Zinfandel box. Friend Darrell Corti, of Sacramentos famed Corti Brothers grocery store, gave the Coopers a tip. Mr. Corti pulled his pocketbook out, retrieved a $1 bill and wrote Barbera and Nebbiolo on it, remembers Dick Cooper. With no Nebbiolo to be found, the Coopers turned to neighbor Cary Gott of Montevina, who was willing to sell a bit of Barbera rootstock.

Today, Barbera is Cooper Vineyards flagship wine, the one that customers flock to the tasting room to buy in bulk. But Id be remiss if I didnt mention Dick Coopers wine to try  his newly released Primitivo.

Wines to try: 2013 Barbera ($29); 2012 Primitivo ($38)

21365 Shenandoah School Road, Plymouth; (209) 245-6181. www.cooperwines.com. Open 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Thursday through Monday. Free.

Vino Noceto: The name Vino Noceto has become synonymous with Sangiovese. Inspired by their time spent in Chianti visiting the Chianti Classico and Brunello vineyards, proprietors Jim and Suzy Gullett were drawn to the Mediterranean climate of the area when deciding where to buy their first parcel of land in the mid-1980s. Coincidentally, it was also Darrell Corti who helped the Gullets find local cuttings of Sangiovese with true Tuscan origins. Again, it was founding winery Montevina, owner of nine Sangiovese plants (supposedly brought to the United States via briefcase import in the early 1970s) that kindly shared the coveted rootstock with the new neighbor.

From a meager vineyard of two-thirds of an acre and an inaugural vintage of 110 cases in 1990, Vino Noceto has sprawled to include 25 acres of grapes, producing 9,000 cases annually  including 6,000 cases of seven different Sangioveses.

Wines to try: 2013 Noceto Sangiovese ($19); Non-Vintage Rosso, Super-Tuscan Red Blend ($19)

11011 Shenandoah Road, Plymouth; (209) 245-6556. www.noceto.com . Open 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday-Friday; until 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Free.

Jeff Runquist: One of Jeff Runquists first jobs in the industry was working the cellar at Montevina in the early 1980s. Although hes since worked at several wineries throughout the state, Amador County has had the greatest influence on him as a winemaker. He says the overall laid-back and welcoming attitude of fellow winemakers makes it easier to practice and promote innovation and creativity  whether in the fields or cellar. And Runquist does, indeed, practice creativity: If youre looking for a place to experience the broad spectrum of Amador wines, including a few obscure varietals, then Jeff Runquist is your one-stop shop. Variety is the spice of life, he says.

Wine to try: 2014 Alicante Bouschet ($29)

10776 Shenandoah Road, Plymouth; (209) 245-6282. www.jeffrunquistwines.com. Open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday-Monday. Free.

Amador Cellars: We are farmers first and foremost, says winemaker Ashley Long. And thats the sense you get as you walk along a scenic landscape of rolling vineyards toward the barnlike structure that is the winery, fermentation cellar and tasting room of Amador Cellars. This is the embodiment of the bucolic, boutique beauty that defines the area.

A family business, five members of the Long clan run every part of the winemaking operation, from grape-grafting to tasting room management. And what youll taste from Amador Cellars are wines that speak to this home-style atmosphere. On a recent visit, the GSM Reserve was one to rival any Rhone Ranger  dusty, earthy aromas, minimal use of oak; its a well-rounded red wine that celebrates the soil and lush greenery of the land over obvious fruit.

Wines to try: 2013 Syrah ($28); 2012 GSM Reserve ($34)

11093 Shenandoah Road, Plymouth; (209) 245-6150. www.amadorcellars.com. Open 10:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Free.

 Stacy Briscoe
WASHINGTON  President Trump warned in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart that he was ready to send U.S. troops to stop bad hombres down there unless the Mexican military does more to control them  comments the White House described as lighthearted.

The White House said Thursday that the remarks, in an excerpt from a transcript of the hour-long conversation, were part of a discussion about how the United States and Mexico could work collaboratively to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements, and make the border more secure.

An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details publicly, described the conversation as pleasant and constructive.

You have a bunch of bad hombres down there, Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, according to an excerpt. You arent doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isnt, so I just might send them down to take care of it.

The comments came last Friday in a phone call between Trump and Pena Nieto. The excerpt from the transcript did not detail exactly whom Trump considers bad hombres, nor did it make clear the tone and context of the remark.

The Mexican government said the negative statements reported an Associated Press story did not occur during the call.

The remark offers a rare and striking look at how the new president is conducting diplomacy behind closed doors. Trumps remarks suggest he is using the same bravado with world leaders that he used to rally crowds on the campaign trail.

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Trump told the large crowd that his calls with world leaders have to be tough.

When you hear about the tough phone calls Im having, dont worry about it, just dont worry about it, he said. Theyre tough.

The president added that the world is in trouble and the U.S. is being taken advantage of by other countries. Were going to straighten it out, he said.

Eduardo Sanchez, spokesman for Mexicos presidential office, said the conversation was respectful, not hostile or humiliating. It is absolutely false that the president of the United States threatened to send troops to Mexico, Sanchez told Radio Formula on Wednesday night.

The U.S. and Mexico cooperate on everything from migration to antidrug enforcement to major environmental issues.

Vivian Salama is an Associated Press writer.
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/AP

Power was back on for more than 2,000 people affected by an outage Thursday afternoon in San Francisco, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials said

The outage started around 2 p.m., and was affecting customers in a narrow strip that cuts from Market Street north through Union Square to Columbus Avenue in North Beach.
"The rule book has been thrown out. It's absolutely acceptable to use violence. They are 100% certain to use it against us."

That's a quote that I saw in The Guardian from one of the protesters last night at Cal.

"Black bloc" anarchists turned a peaceful protest into a violent protest.

They were angry about far right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos being invited to talk on campus.

Even though I vehemently disagree with their tactics, I'm trying to understand where these anarchists are coming from.

Today I went to a website called itsgoingdown.org. And they offered this explanation for the violence:

We must counter any tolerance for white supremacist ideologies by normalizing a militant response.

If you try to come to our communities openly advocating harm to us, our neighbors, family, friends or others in our community, then you will be driven out.

The broken windows in Berkeley were an act of self-defense.

If you're a Muslim threatening white people in the United States with violence, you may find yourself on the kill list.

If you're an educator promoting leftist ideals in the classroom, you may find yourself fired.

But, if you're a white person advocating for violence against Muslims, the trans community, or people of color, you may find yourself speaking at universities and getting a book deal.

We will not sit idly by as we are dehumanized and targeted.

Above all, we will not tolerate white supremacy in our communities.

--- https://itsgoingdown.org/

As I mentioned in a previous post. I have NO issue with protesting.

I grew up in Berkeley. I was involved in many anti-Vietnam War protests.

My ONLY issue is the violence. I think it's wrong.

And more importantly I think it hurts the message.

The anarchists and protesters may have kept Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking last night.

But in the process they made him even more famous.

Is that REALLY a victory for them?

Frank Somerville is a contributor to SFGATE and anchors the 5, 6, and 10 p.m. news on KTVU. This post originally appeared on his Facebook page.
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A UC Berkeley student and a Stanford student, both Muslims, have joined forces and filed a lawsuit against President Trump over his executive order banning travelers entry to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim counties.

The suit, filed Thursday in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that Trumps executive order, which affects even those with valid visas, is an unconstitutional and discriminatory ban against Muslims.

In their suit, filed on their behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Stanford student Hadil Al-Mowafak, a national of Yemen, said Trumps order prevents her from returning to the United States to continue her studies if she goes to Yemen to visit her husband, as she had planned.

My story is the story of so many other people ... I can't leave the U.S., I can't go home, I can't come back, Al-Mowafak said Thursday. I don't know what's going to happen next."

As Al-Mowakak spoke to The Chronicle, a federal judge in Seattle issued a temporary, nationwide restraining order freezing parts of the executive order that cuts off entry to the country by refugees and immigrants from some Muslim-majority countries. It was not immediately clear how the ruling would affect the situation of Al-Mowafak and the other students.

The UC Berkeley student, an Iranian national and PhD candidate identified only as John Doe, said Trumps order means he cannot accept a Silicon Valley job offer under a program for recent foreign graduates.

Both students complained that the executive order has been marked by chaos and confusion and that it constitutes an unlawful attempt to discriminate against Muslims and to establish a preference for one religion over another, according to the lawsuit.

The two students were joined in the suit by a third student, Yemeni national Wasim Ghaleb from Grossmont College in San Diego, who said he was prevented on January 28 in London from boarding a flight to Los Angeles, despite holding a valid visa.

Under the executive order banning entry to the U.S. for nationals of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, the United States. is unfairly targeting Muslims in making decisions about who to detail, interrogate, deport or entirely refuse entry, said ACLU lawyer Julia Mass.

The students were joined in the suit by Jewish Family and Community Services of the East Bay, whose executive director, Avi Rose, said Trumps order was similar to past discrimination against the Irish, the Jews, the Chinese  its happened to a lot of people in our nations history.

Trumps order, signed Jan. 27, also:

 Suspends the U.S. Syrian refugee program, established under the Obama administration, indefinitely.

 Bans citizens from the seven majority-Muslim countries listed from entering the United States for 90 days from when the order was signed, except those who are green card holders.

 And Suspends all refugees from entering the country for 120 days.

The Chronicle has written about this issue and how Trumps executive order has sparked an uproar in the Bay Area and across the nation. Here are the links:

 More than 1,000 protesters rally at SFO against immigration ban

 Bay Area Dems bids to stop Trump travel ban blocked in Congress

 SF officials say they will not follow Trumps immigration orders

 Immigrants from Muslim nations fear what Trump changes will bring

Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @SteveRubeSF
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It's early February, which means there's an important item at the top of some local beer-lovers' to do lists: find Pliny.

Now in its 14th season, Russian River Brewing Company's elusive Pliny the Younger triple IPA only ships out to a handful of select beer pubs the first week of February. This year's Pliny season begins Friday and runs about two weeks.

It will be headed to the San Francisco Beer Week Opening Gala in limited quantities on Feb. 10, but if you won't be attending  and if you're also not keen on waiting up to eight hours in line at the Santa Rosa brewery  you may want to hit up one of the bars around San Francisco and Oakland that has historically received a keg of Pliny the Younger in the past.

Bars in the Bay Area, to be clear, are never 100 percent sure that they'll be receiving a keg of the white whale ale.

Rather, like beer Santas, Russian River distributors pop by to deliver surprise shipments of the Younger somewhat unannounced. This list comprises the bars that have usually received a keg and have a good chance of receiving one this year. Be sure to keep watch on these bars' social media accounts.

Be warned, there may be lines at whatever bar taps their shipment (and it will sell out quickly), but if you've never tasted the five star-rated beer, you might want to make this your year  it's certainly not losing any popularity with the thirsty masses.

See the above gallery for which bars have been known to pour Pliny the Younger.
IKEA reportedly plans to unveil a new line of rugs and textiles made by Syrian refugees.

The project is expected to create 200 jobs for refugees in Jordan, most of them women.

CNN Money reports that IKEA is currently working with local women's organizations to kick off the initiative. The retailer says hours will be flexible to accommodate women caring for family members.

The rugs and textiles will be part of a limited-edition run in 2019 and sold locally and in select Middle Eastern markets.

Jordan currently hosts over 650,000 Syrian refugees  10 percent of the entire displaced population, says Amnesty International.

On Monday, IKEA country manager Lars Petersson wrote in a letter to employees: "We are committed to continuing to stand for the dignity and rights of everyone."

In the letter, which was published online, Petersson informed employees that the company would be offering free legal advice and mental health counseling to co-workers potentially affected by the President Trump's immigration ban.

According to CNN Money, the rug initiative predates the immigration ban by at least 90 days.

IKEA also recently developed a flat-packed refugee shelter with the UNHCR. The innovative shelter won the 2016 Beazley Design of the Year award.

The Swedish retailer just gave shoppers another reason to get lost in its warehouses.

Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com.
Uber Technologies is offering its drivers an average of about a dollar apiece to dispose of alleged labor code violations that their own lawyer said might be worth billions.

The San Francisco ride-hailing company asked a Los Angeles judge Wednesday to approve a $7.75 million settlement to resolve claims stemming from the companys refusal to give California drivers the protections and benefits of employees. The accord doesnt require Uber to stop classifying the drivers as independent contractors.

The claims by Steven Price, who sought to represent as many as 1.6 million California drivers in a class action, were brought under the states Private Attorneys General Act, which gives employees the right to step into the shoes of the state labor secretary to bring enforcement actions. Under the 2004 law, the state keeps 75 percent of any penalties won. Attorneys for employers have nicknamed it the bounty hunter and sue your boss law, because of the remaining 25 percent is a reward for the workers who bring the case. Thousands of such lawsuits have been filed in the past 12 years.

The Price case poses a special threat to Uber. The company in September won an appeals court ruling that potentially eviscerated a more advanced class-action case in federal court in San Francisco by forcing the vast majority of 385,000 California and Massachusetts drivers in the case to proceed through arbitration one at a time. But claims like those filed by Price in state court cant be shunted into arbitration.

Christopher Morosoff, a lawyer representing Price, said at a June hearing in San Francisco that his case cited 17 labor code violations, compared with just two claims  tips and mileage  in the federal case for which the penalties under the act were estimated at $1 billion by the state agency that oversees labor code enforcement.

Do the math there, he told U.S. District Judge Edward Chen at the time. The numbers may be staggering, and they may be in the billions, and you may not want to look at them, but they are real.

In Wednesdays filing, Morosoff and attorneys for Uber urged the Los Angeles judge to approve the accord, calling it a reasonable and fair compromise and the largest settlement under the Private Attorneys General Act.

This settlement appropriately balances the objective of the ... statute and the risks of litigation posed to each side, while avoiding an unjust result, they wrote.

The agreement calls for about $1.7 million to paid to drivers and earmarks about $2.9 million in penalties for Californias Labor and Workforce Development Agency, with the rest of the settlement sum going toward attorney fees and administration costs. The amount each driver gets depends on how many weeks they have actively driven for Uber.

An Uber spokeswoman said the company is pleased with the settlement and looks forward to resolving other cases. Morosoff didnt immediately respond to a call seeking comment.

Uber said in a court filing that the Price settlement would resolve the claims of drivers who used its app from July 8, 2013, until the date a Los Angles judge signs off on the deal.

Court approval of the accord isnt a sure thing. In the San Francisco case, which would have resolved claims for tips and mileage valued by the drivers lawyer at $852 million, Chen rejected a $100 million settlement in August. He said the $1 million allotted to resolve claims was inadequate in light of those claims being valued at as much as $1 billion.

Joel Rosenblatt is a Bloomberg writer. Email: jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net
The number of women sitting at the table in corporate boardrooms across the country is rising very slowly, but it is rising.

Just over 15 percent of all director seats at publicly traded U.S. companies were held by women as of Dec. 31, according to a study by Equilar, a corporate research firm. Thats up from 14 percent a year earlier and from 12 percent in 2013.

The trend is toward more equal representation on boards, but parity wont happen until the end of 2055 unless the pace picks up, according to Equilar. Thats nearly 40 years away, which may be about when girls born today begin sitting on corporate boards.

Demonstrating how far off gender parity remains, 738 companies still have no women on their boards. Last year, nearly 60 companies that had no female directors since at least 2011 added one or more women.

Even so, its still much easier to find a woman in the boardroom than in the corner office, according to a separate, global survey of 3,400 companies by Credit Suisse. While women occupied nearly 15 percent of board seats at the end of 2015, only about 4 percent of CEOs are women.

Companies in other countries have moved closer to gender parity than the United States, and government pressure has played a big role. Several European countries have set quotas and targets for how many corporate board members should be women. Thats why women held 24 percent of European board seats at the end of 2015, the highest rate in the world.

Investors are taking note. Companies with at least one female director tend to have higher stock returns and better corporate performance than those with all-male boards, Credit Suisse says. Of course, this may be a case of correlation rather than causation, and better-performing companies may be more welcoming to women, rather than vice versa.

Regardless, having women in the most senior leadership positions has other benefits, companies say.

At American Water Works Co., the nations largest publicly traded water and wastewater utility, five of the nine board positions are held by women. And thats something that customers, regulators and employees, both current and potential, see, said BJ Holdnak, senior vice president of human resources.

We want to look like the customers and the employees that we serve in our local markets, she says. The board, starting in 2012, really began to focus on assuring that they were diverse and looked like and represented the company.

American Waters majority-female board is an anomaly. Just 21 of the 3,525 companies in Equilars survey have half or more of their board seats held by women. Equilar based its study on the Russell 3000 index, a broad measure of publicly traded companies.

It also runs counter to the male-dominated utility industry. Nearly 80 percent of workers across the industry are men, according to Labor Department statistics.

Connecticut Water is another utility that has a majority-female board. It also says it didnt start with the explicit intent of having more women than men on its board. Instead, it happened as the byproduct of looking for a more diverse group to represent its shareholders, customers and employees. Five of the companys eight director seats are held by women.

Its a bit of an arduous process, looking for someone that fulfills what were driving for in our cultural focus, says Kristen Johnson, corporate secretary and vice president of human resources at Connecticut Water. Weve been super-lucky to find individuals that populate the board like that, and it just so happens that five of them are women.

Stan Choe is an Associated Press writer.
Mayor De Blasio of New York is a perfect example of what's wrong with this country. Let's protect the illegal immigrants that are committing crimes against our legal citizens by protecting them with the federal dollars that are provided to extradite them when they commit felony crimes. If I was a New York local, I think that would upset me. Let's protect the illegals that are committing crimes instead of our own people. I know there are plenty of immigrants that are here illegally, but they are doing good things. Sanctuary cities like Urbana, Chicago, and others should think about what they are doing. It's about time we started taking care of our own first.
Next time you do a recipe search on Google, you'll be able to take things a step further and specify exactly what types of flavors you're looking for in the finished dish.

The search giant has updated its Google app algorithm to allow you to narrow down your search by things like ingredients, flavors, and cooking method. Now when searching for a recipe, you'll see a number of clickable options below the search bar that you can use to narrow your search down even further and get closer to the perfect dish.
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FAIRFIELD, Conn. - The former president and publisher of Forbes magazine has been charged with attacking a school bus full of young children in a road rage incident.

James Berrien, 64, of Sturges Highway, Westport, Conn., was charged Tuesday with breach of peace and disorderly conduct after police said he terrified more than a dozen elementary school children.

He was released on a promise to appear in court. Berrien did not return calls for comment.

His lawyer, Robert Golger, said Berrien strongly disagrees with the police report of the incident and looks forward to his day in court.

Police said on Dec. 21, they began receiving calls from angry parents and Danny Castro, the driver of a First Student school bus, regarding an incident with Berrien on Morehouse Lane.

Castro later told police he had been driving south on Morehouse Lane with more than a dozen students coming home from Dwight School. As the bus approached the intersection with Cedar Road a silver BMW convertible driven by Berrien approached the intersection.

Police said the bus driver told them he waived Berrien to proceed first but despite his motions the car didnt budge. So Castro told police he began to proceed into the intersection.

Suddenly the BMW lurched forward into the buss path, police said. Alarmed, Castro slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting the car causing several of the children on the bus to be thrust forward into the seat in front of them.

Berrien began to get out of his car in front of the bus and police said Castro took evasive action, driving over a lawn to get away from Berrien. But they continued that Berrien began tailgating the bus and when it stopped to let children off at Cedarbrook Lane he blocked it again with his car.

Police said Berrien then attempted to force his way into the bus, pushing aside children trying to exit. Castro managed to get the door closed but police said Berrien pried it open, got on the bus and began screaming and waving arms as the children huddled in the back in fear.

Castro stood up and physically blocked Berrien from coming further into the bus and police said Berrien left but then began pounding on the buss sides and back. He then drove off.

Police said Berrien was identified from the buss surveillance video. They said he claimed he saw the bus was traveling at an excessive speed and stopped it for the childrens protection. However, police said his version was not supported by the video or the buss monitoring system.

Letha Coker, operations manager for First Student in Fairfield, said company regulations prevent her from commenting on Berriens arrest.

Berrien is also former chairman of the board of Connecticut College. He is currently a principal in an executive search firm in Westport.
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This article originally appeared on Hoodline.

Keeping your eyes glued to your cellphone screen, bracing for the Trump administration's next move, definitely cuts into valuable people-watching time.

Luckily, we and many of our loyal tipsters are scanning the horizon for you. And today, we've noticed an interesting trend: people and their not-so-average pets roaming city streets.

Above is one such fellow, posted on Imgur Wednesday.

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That is a photo of a man walking a bootie-wearing duck up Van Nesspast a luxury real estate firm's officewith two tiny dogs peeking out of his pockets.

Despite uncertainty in the air, birds aren't the only nontraditional companions getting some exercise this week. Yesterday, Hoodline tipster Lucky sent in another gem (see the gallery above).

Amid challenging times, we hope to see many more unexpected cuddly creatures staying active.

Update, 10:40am: Not only did the bunny above take a little walk, it was lovingly serenaded by one of Market Street's jazzy street performers. See for yourself, thanks to Twitter user @ns0n:

If you too spot an unusual leashed companion in your neighborhood, text (415- 200-3233) or email (tips AT hoodline DOT com) a pic our way, and we'll share it with the masses. Because we all need more reasons to smile right about now.

See something interesting while you're out and about? Text Hoodline and we'll see what we can find: (415) 200-3233.
Kellyanne Conway, the adviser to President Donald Trump who coined the phrase alternative facts, is facing another round of criticism and fact-checking after she falsely spoke of a Bowling Green massacre by Iraqi refugees. She acknowledged and corrected her statement Friday morning on Twitter.

Conway made the comment during an appearance Thursday night on MSNBCs Hardball night as she discussed with host Chris Matthews the executive order by Trump that suspended immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

I bet its brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered, she said.

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In fact, no Bowling Green massacre ever happened.

Conway did not specify whether she meant an attack in Kentucky or Ohio, but the closest circumstance to what she described occurred in Bowling Green, Ky., in late May 2011.

Two Iraqi citizens, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan, were indicted on federal terrorism charges. According to a Justice Department news release from January 2013, the two men had attempted to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq with the aim of killing U.S. soldiers there.

Both defendants pleaded guilty to the federal charges, and Hammadi was sentenced to life in federal prison while Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, with a life term of supervised release.

On Friday morning, Conway admitted she had made an error: Honest mistakes abound, she wrote on Twitter  and pointed to missteps the media had made in covering the Trump administration.

As for her overshadowed assertion that Obama had instituted a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after the Bowling Green arrests, thats not quite true either: While the Obama administration slowed the visa process, some Iraqi refugees were admitted to the United States in every month of 2011.

Conway did clarify that, yes, she had been referring to the case of Hammadi and Alwan. Yet, by pointing to an ABC News article from November 2013, she undermined her claim that the story didnt get covered. It did.

Joe Coscarelli is a New York Times writer.
Republicans in statehouses across the U.S. are devising legal tools to regulate public dissent as demonstrators take to the streets to protest President Trump in waves not seen since the Vietnam War.

At least 10 bills to limit protests have been introduced in recent months. North Dakota is considering protection for motorists who unintentionally kill protesters blocking roads. Washington State Sen. Doug Ericksen would punish those who disrupt our economy. Next week, North Carolina state Sen. Dan Bishop will call for imprisoning people who taunt ex-officials, after former governor Pat McCrory was pursued down a Washington, D.C., alley by a group chanting Shame!

That extends over the borderline of decency, Bishop said in an interview.

Many of the bills, which critics say impinge on constitutional freedoms, were filed before Trumps election in response to Black Lives Matter and oil-pipeline protests. Theyve gained fresh relevance amid global womens marches and nationwide airport demonstrations over Trumps immigration ban, including at San Francisco International. On Wednesday night, black-clad protesters set fires and smashed glass at UC Berkeley, forcing the cancellation of a speech by a conservative writer Milo Yiannopoulos.

Trump has expressed disgust with the displays.

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view  NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Trump tweeted Thursday.

At the state level, bills have been proposed in Missouri to prohibit demonstrators committing illegal acts from wearing masks or robes; in Iowa, to levy five years in prison for traffic disruptions; in Washington, to punish protesters who interfere with commerce; and in Minnesota, to keep roads clear and allow governments to sue violators for costs. All are awaiting committee hearings or other legislative hurdles.

Ive been monitoring free speech legislation for about a dozen years now, and Ive never seen antiprotest legislation in the states anywhere near as large as were seeing this year, said Lee Rowland, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. Its no coincidence that the bills are being introduced as record numbers of people protest, she said.

In Michigan, State Rep. Gary Glenn said he will reintroduce a bill to increase penalties for pickets who interfere with business or the enjoyment of ones home. The legislation, driven by demonstrations at the residence of an attorney general and $15-an-hour pay demands at fast-food restaurants, died in December.

A bill like this is all the more needed in the current environment, Glenn said.

In recent years, opponents of financial injustice, police brutality and pipeline projects such as the Keystone XL have rekindled mass demonstrations  some with violent elements at their fringes  at a scale unseen since the Vietnam War. Unrest after police shootings cost Ferguson, Mo., at least $5 million, and Baltimore at least $20 million, according to officials.

Elise Young and Janan Hanna are Bloomberg News writers.
WASHINGTON  President Trump opened his first appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast with a prayer for the television ratings of the man who succeeded him as host of The Celebrity Apprentice.

They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. We know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tube, Trump joked, prompting laughter from the audience. I want to just pray for Arnold for those ratings.
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration ordered sanctions Friday against more than two dozen people and companies from the Persian Gulf to China in retaliation for Irans recent ballistic missile test, increasing pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with the country.

Those singled out by the Treasury Department include Iranian, Lebanese, Emirati and Chinese individuals and firms involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. They are now prohibited from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens. The overall impact is likely to be minimal on Irans economy, though some of the people and companies have relationships with Irans hard-line Revolutionary Guard military forces.

The days of turning a blind eye to Irans hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over, Michael Flynn, President Trumps national security adviser, said in a statement.

Although White House spokesman Sean Spicer acknowledged that much of the legwork had occurred under President Obama, he said the Trump administration acted swiftly and decisively after Irans recent missile test and Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen firing on a Saudi naval vessel.

It is Trumps first package of penalties against Iran, reflecting his insistence on a tougher stance toward Tehran. Throughout his election campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran, and he pledged to crack down if elected.

Iran has acknowledged that it conducted a missile test in recent days. But it insists the test didnt violate the 2015 nuclear accord it reached with the United States and five other world powers, or a subsequent U.N. Security Council resolution extending an eight-year ban on ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Washington, under Obama and Trump, and its Western allies agree the matter is separate from the nuclear pact but maintain that the missile tests violate the U.N. ban.

Iran already has a formidable arsenal of thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and other U.S. allies in the Middle East, as well as American bases, and has undertaken a series of tests in the year and a half since the nuclear agreement. The U.S. said the latest launch was of a medium-range missile, and an American defense official described it as failing re-entry into the Earths atmosphere.

In a tweet Friday, Trump wrote, Iran is playing with fire  they dont appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me.

Despite the tough talk, the new sanctions represent a continuation of the Obama administrations limited punishment for Irans ballistic missile activity and avoid a direct showdown with Tehran over the nuclear deal itself. The sanction targets were drawn up before Obama left office and dont affect Iran Air, a big Iranian bank or any major government entity, making it unclear how effective theyll prove as deterrents.

None of the new penalties reversed Obamas suspension of sanctions under the nuclear pact.

Iran said it would be undeterred.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Friday that his country was unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Well never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense.

Vivian Salama and Matthew Lee are Associated Press writers.
DECATUR  Sometimes, children just need somebody willing to listen.

That's the idea behind the row of cups in Kristin Portis' classroom at Franklin School. Each cup represents a different mood, and each child has a Popsicle stick with his or her name on it to place inside the cups in the morning to show how they feel.

If I notice that kids are mad or upset, I will pull them aside one by one first thing in the morning and have a conversation with them about their feelings, so they can express their emotions, Portis said.We get on a personal level and build relationships, so they know we're not just teachers. We're also people that care about them.

Six schools in Central Illinois are part of a pilot project in trauma-informed schools, helping not only teachers and administrators, but all adults who work with kids, to see through a trauma-informed lens, as it's known. The schools are Franklin and Muffley Schools, Phoenix Academy, Argenta-Oreana, Sangamon Valley and Deland-Weldon schools. The hope is to expand the pilot project next year until all area schools are involved.

Kids who are affected by trauma react differently. Their brains develop and are wired differently from children who have not dealt with trauma.

It's not just one incident, said Stephanie Strang, principal at Franklin. It's a series of incidents. We're all trying to get our minds around it. It's complicated.

Heather England, also a teacher at Franklin, uses tried-and-true card games like Go Fish as a way to engage students' brains and have some fun with them. She said that when kids act out in class, she first tries talking to them, letting them tell her what's upsetting them, instead of sending them out of class. It could be as serious as that their parents are divorcing, or as simple as they had an argument with another child, but upset kids can't concentrate on learning.

Sometimes I just want someone to listen to me, she said. I just want to complain for a minute and I'll move on, and the kids are the same way. They just want to hear that their feelings are acknowledged. I'll tell them, 'I'm really sorry that happened to you.'

The Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration has awarded a grant to provide training and awareness activities to teach school district personnel and community members how to approach their work with this awareness. Trauma can affect brain development, emotional and physical health, and weaken the immune system.

The agency's statistics show that nationally, six in 10 youth have been exposed to violence in the past year. That includes witnessing violence, assault with a weapon, sexual victimization, child maltreatment, and dating violence, with 1 in 10 suffering an injury. Cost to the health care system as a result of violence and abuse is $333 billion to $750 billion annually, and 75 to 93 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have experienced some degree of trauma.

Social worker Frances Godfrey at Enterprise School has had to help an abused child who was removed from his home, who is no longer attending Enterprise, and other kids facing trauma of all kinds. Listening is the main way to help, she said, recognizing that a child is having a particularly hard day, and letting that boy or girl sit in her office and talk it out.

They just need to know that somebody cares, she said. For some of them, school is their only safe place.

The grant for Project Aware has two components, said Brooke Harris, project manager for Decatur's schools. The first is providing mental health services, including prevention and early intervention. The second is teaching adults about Youth Mental Health First Aid, training them to spot red flags that something may be going on with a child. It's not diagnosing or treating in any way. Harris likened the process to knowing CPR and handing the person over to the professionals as soon as they can get there, but providing first aid until then.

An eight-hour training curriculum is free to anyone interested in it, thanks to the grant, she said. They've reached out to teachers, churches, the Boys and Girls Club, everywhere kids might spend time, and parents are encouraged to consider it, too.

It's really about creating trauma-sensitive environments, Harris said. It's making sure our students are able to receive the care and access the care they'll get in the school system. We want to make sure they know they can get that care outside the school system.

Trauma, as it's being used in this context, doesn't necessarily mean a big life event, though it can. It's not only applicable if a child's parent has died, or the family has had a house fire, or the child is the victim of abuse or neglect. Children growing up in poverty, who worry about having clean clothes, enough to eat and whether the electricity will still be on when they go home from school, are also experiencing trauma. Children and adults who are under unrelenting stress, no matter the cause, react differently, and a situation or event that they might otherwise handle easily can cause a violent flight-fight-flee reaction due to stress-related changes in brain chemistry.

Decatur schools have 70 percent poverty on average, said Lawrence Trimble, director of Student Services, and while many people believe that county and rural schools escape most of the problems of an urban district, those areas have a lot of the same problems with poverty and chaotic home lives that Decatur has.

Adults have coping skills that children lack, techniques to calm toxic stress reactions. Kids often lack executive function, using the frontal cortex, and instead react emotionally and instinctively. Trauma can cause post-traumatic stress disorder in children, too, which is defined as anxiety and flashbacks triggered by a traumatic event.

It's not that schools are being instructed to not correct misbehavior, Harris said. It's that the trauma-informed mindset will help the adults recognize that the behavior might well be a symptom and not the problem, and to deal with it accordingly.

It's discipline versus punishment, Trimble said. (Senate Bill 100) is about restoring and repairing, not labeling.

That bill, which sharply curtails suspension and expulsion and went into effect last year, requires schools to exhaust all other avenues before resorting to those measures. When a kid's behavior is not willful disobedience and disruption, but emotional distress he or she lacks the tools to handle, punishment doesn't help. It only adds to the distress the child is already feeling.

At the same time, Trimble said, teachers and other adults risk compassion burnout, pouring so much into trying to help that they deplete their own reserves, and that's not good, either. Part of the training is to teach the helpers how to avoid that, with mindfulness and rest for themselves as needed. Teachers learn relaxation techniques and yoga.

Books that help create the trauma-informed mindset, which are being used in training at the pilot schools, include Lost at School by Ross W. Greene, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, by child psychiatrist Bruce D. Perry and Help for Billy by Heather T. Forbes.

All kids can do well, Trimble said. This is a lens, not a program. It's a theory of thought, a way of doing business, a viewpoint and a mind shift.
WASHINGTON  Warning that religious freedom is under threat, President Trump vowed Thursday to repeal the Johnson Amendment, an IRS rule barring pastors from endorsing candidates from the pulpit.

I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution, Trump said during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, a high-profile event bringing together faith leaders, politicians and dignitaries.

He also pledged to take more immigration action in the name of religious liberty.

In the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination, Trump said.

Trump did not detail how he will scrap the IRS rule, which he has previously pledged to do away with. The rule has been in place since 1954, but it is very rare for a church to actually be penalized. And while some conservative Christians would like to see it abolished, others, especially the younger generation, support a separation of church and politics.

The repeal does not appear to have widespread public support. Eight in 10 Americans said it was inappropriate for pastors to endorse a candidate in church in a poll released in September by Lifeway Research, a religious survey firm based in Nashville.

For many religious conservatives, whose overwhelming support propelled Trump to the White House, a more pressing issue they hope Trump will address is conscience protections for faith-based charities, schools and ministries who object to same-sex marriage and abortion.

Religious conservatives, who saw a series of defeats on same-sex marriage, abortion and other issues under former President Barack Obama, have been bolstered by Trumps win. In a letter last year to Roman Catholics, Trump pledged, I will defend your religious liberties and the right to fully and freely practice your religion, as individuals, business owners and academic institutions.

Trumps Supreme Court pick this week was also considered a positive sign.

A favorite of conservatives, Neil Gorsuch serves on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where he sided with Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor when they mounted religious objections to the Obama administrations requirement that employers provide health insurance that includes contraceptives.

Catherine Lucey is an Associated Press writer.
CHICAGO -- Many high schools across the country require that sophomores take the preliminary SAT or the practice ACT in preparation for the junior-year tests, which help determine their competitiveness at highly selective schools. When they do this, the students have the option to fill in a bubble on their answer packet agreeing to let prospective schools contact them in the future.

This is how it came to be that on the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, my mailbox was stuffed with 12 (and counting) ego-stroking letters from colleges across the country for my youngest son.

Seeing them all at once served to highlight the baffling array of unsolicited pitches students and their parents must wade through when trying to decide where to spend untold thousands of dollars on a chance at a degree.

By turns, these letters, most often signed by the university's director of admissions, said my son was "a talented student with a bright future," "unique," "motivated" and "accomplished." Some were more flattering than others: "I know a future leader when I see one -- and from what I can tell about your successes so far, you're going places."

Some employed a supportive, consultative tack: "I want to help you prepare to catch the attention of admissions staff at any college (as you've certainly caught mine)." And: "Because I'm interested in you and your continued success, I want to help you find the school where you'll be happiest and truly excel."

All offered personalized listicle-style "guides" -- ostensibly a free and helpful gift of insight into the college admissions process, but really designed to convert letter readers (who have been provided with individual usernames and identifier numerical passwords) into website visitors.

There's "4 Tips for a Successful College Search," "5 Smart Ways to Select Your Ideal College," "5 Signs a College Is Worth It," "Five Ways to Find a College That Maximizes Your Potential," "5 Reasons Your Application Will Stand Out," "The Seven Things Students Forget When Choosing a College," "7 Tips for Motivated Students" and my non-numerical favorite: "Your 'Wow' Factor -- and How to Use It to Start Your Career."

I'd share some tips but none of these guides were accessible without logging in and inputting lots of personal details about mom and dad's finances and contact information into super-spammy looking websites.

Although three out of the 12 inquiries that we got were from actual universities with long-standing reputations and ties to their campus communities, others were -- to two parents with three graduate degrees between them -- obviously sketchy.

One school, which in its letter boasted about "state-of-the-art facilities and the latest technologies" and professors that "take the time to get to know students and do what it takes to help them succeed," was described in bracing terms on a consumer complaints website.

Called "shady," "only in it for the money" and a "sham," one student posted about this "university" in the hopes of starting a class-action suit: "Please, if you are tired of their predatory lending practices and false promises, call me and let's work together."

I'm not suggesting that all universities and colleges that do heavy direct-mail marketing are scams, but it used to be that a simple check about whether a school was non- or for-profit could set your mind at ease -- and that's no longer the case.

But it tends to be the degree mills, the for-profit schools and poorly regulated distance learning schools that pour millions of dollars into complex digital marketing recruitment strategies. These tactics put the most vulnerable applicants -- first-time college students and their families -- at greatest risk.

Last February, the Department of Education created a Student Aid Enforcement Unit to respond more quickly and efficiently to allegations of questionable actions, misconduct or suspected fraud by higher education institutions. It aimed to build on steps the Obama administration had taken to protect students from aggressive recruiting practices. The actions include the creation of consumer tools to help families make more-informed college choices, gainful employment regulations aimed at ensuring that students at career colleges don't leave campus with crushing debt, and enforcement of the ban on incentive compensation from recruiters.

But until all these efforts truly get off the ground, the onus is on parents.

As you get your bundles of college come-ons, check with the Federal Trade Commission's resources (https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0206-college-degree-scams) for avoiding degree scams, for investigating accreditation and for direct links to reputable sources for comparing university programs. Deciding where to go to college is too consequential to get wrong.
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Sam Wolson/Special to the Chronicle

San Franciscos Democratic Assemblyman David Chiu will invite immigration advocates to meet Friday to tell the public personal stories about the lives of tenants who are in the country illegally.

Tenants who are undocumented know their landlords have the power to destroy their lives with a single phone call to ICE, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, says Chius announcement of the event.
Armenian Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandian, during a meeting today in Yerevan, told visiting European Commission Director General for Enlargement Christian Danielsson that Armenia placed great importance on deepening multi-sector relations with the European Union.

Nalbandians ministry team and Danielssons delegation discussed ongoing negotiations to draft a new legal document outlining the parameters of Armenia-EU relations subsequent to Armenia joining the Russia-backed Eurasia Economic Union.

The two also discussed Armenias participation in various EU programs.
BRUSSELS  The European Union has been torn by crises in recent years, but few of the EU leaders gathering for a Friday summit could ever have imagined that a White House committed to Europes breakup would be one of them.

The leaders of the European Unions 28 nations convened in Malta to discuss how to slow migration and recommit themselves to their union following Britains decision to file for divorce. But the careening, unpredictable President Trump has shoved his way onto the agenda in the first meeting of European leaders since his inauguration.

European countries sometimes complained that former President Barack Obama neglected them in favor of a focus on Asia. But they never believed he was actively campaigning for the destruction of a political and economic union that has enjoyed bipartisan U.S. support ever since World War II.

Trump has moved into the White House with little change in his campaign rhetoric backing Brexit and appearing supportive of those nations that may want to follow. Trumps victory also has energized a host of right-wing parties in Europe that are skeptical  or openly hostile  to the powers in Brussels.

European leaders are now watching the Trump administration with increasing alarm, fearful that the United States could be the biggest threat yet to a bloc already mired in discord.

It is unacceptable that there should be, though a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be, French President Francois Hollande said on his way into the summit in Valletta, the capital of Malta.

The concerns have spiked to the point where European Council President Donald Tusk listed the United States alongside terrorism, Russia and China as threats to the European Union in a letter to European leaders this week laying the groundwork for the summit.

The change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation, with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy, Tusk wrote.

But as with so many flash points in a union that stretches from the tip of Portugal to the frontier with Russia, there was no immediate agreement about how to handle Trump.

The EUs fears come even as NATOs worries have eased in recent days, following the confirmation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired general who served for a time inside the defense alliances command structure. Trump has described NATO as obsolete, but NATO officials increasingly believe that he is simply pushing for reforms, not its breakup.

Michael Birnbaum is a Washington Post writer.
PARIS  Paris was plunged into panic again when soldiers guarding the Louvre Museum shot an attacker who lunged at them with two machetes Friday and shouted Allahu akbar! as the historic landmark went into lockdown.

The threat appeared to quickly recede after the assailant was subdued, but it cast a new shadow over the city just as tourism was beginning to rebound after a string of deadly attacks. Coming just hours before Paris finalized its bid for the 2024 Olympics, it also renewed questions about security in the City of Light.

The soldiers quick action put an end to what French President Francois Hollande said was no doubt a terrorist attack at one of Paris most renowned tourist attractions.

French prosecutor Francois Molins said the assailant was believed to be a 29-year-old Egyptian who had been living in the United Arab Emirates, though his identity has not yet been formally confirmed.

Everything shows that the assailant was very determined, Molins told a news conference, adding that the attacker, who was shot four times, was in a life-threatening condition in a hospital.

Antiterrorism prosecutors took charge of the investigation as police carried out raids near the tree-lined Champs-Elysees linked to the attack, which came two months after authorities carried out a special antiterrorism exercise around the Louvre.

Molins said the attacker was not carrying any identity papers but investigators used his cell phone and a national data base of visa applicants containing their photos and fingerprints to determine that he was a resident of the United Arab Emirates who arrived in Paris on a tourist visa on Jan. 26.

Two days later the suspect bought two military machetes at a gun store in Paris, the prosecutor said. He also paid $1,833 for a one-week stay at an apartment near the Champs-Elysees.

In the apartment, police found an Egyptian passport and 965 euros ($1,040), as well as a residence permit, drivers license and a credit card all issued from the UAE, Molins said. He said the suspects return flight to Dubai was scheduled for Sunday.

Fridays attack targeted an entrance to a shopping mall that extends beneath the sprawling Louvre, a medieval former royal palace now home to the Mona Lisa and hundreds of other masterpieces.

Waving two machetes over his head, the assailant lunged at the soldiers patrolling in the mall, shouting Allahu Akbar! or God is great! Molins said.

One soldier fought him off and was slightly injured in the scalp. Another soldier fell to the ground as the assailant tried to slash him, then opened fire, shooting the attacker in the stomach. When that didnt stop him, the soldier fired three more time, gravely wounding him. The backpack the man was carrying contained cans of spray paint, but no explosives, Molins said.

The 1,200 people inside the Louvre were first shuttled into windowless rooms as part of a special security protocol before being evacuated. The museum remained closed for the rest of Friday but will reopen on Saturday, said Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay.

Sylvie Corbet, John Leicester, and Raphael Satter are Associated Press writers.
JERUSALEM  Israeli settlers on Friday shrugged off White House criticism of settlement construction, convinced they have the sympathies of President Trump. The Palestinians, still wary of Trump, warned that the settlers hard-line stance could spell the end to a two-state solution to the conflict.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements, an issue at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that was a frequent source of friction between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Barack Obama. Israeli nationalists believe they now have an ally in the White House and have made no secret they will push for more settlements in the West Bank.

The White House said Thursday that although the administration doesnt believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

The unexpected warning came hours after Netanyahu pledged to establish the first new West Bank settlement in more than two decades as soon as possible, promising to make up for a court-ordered demolition of an illegal settlement outpost.

Israeli security forces dismantled the West Bank outpost of Amona earlier in the day amid clashes between police and dozens of hard-line settlers who had barricaded themselves in a synagogue.

Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers council, said his group thanks the White House for asserting that our communities were never an impediment to peace. Using the biblical name for the West Bank, he said nothing is more natural and morally just than Jews building in Judea.

We look forward to working closely with our friends in the new Trump administration to build a brighter future all, he added.

The settler movement is a potent political force in Israel, and Netanyahus narrow nationalist coalition government is dominated by settlers and their supporters.

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem along with the Gaza Strip  areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war  for their state. The Palestinians and much of the international community consider all Israeli settlements illegal and view them as a hindrance to reaching a two-state solution to the conflict.

Today, about 400,000 Israelis are living in West Bank settlements, in addition to roughly 200,000 Israelis in East Jerusalem, also captured in 1967 from Jordan.

Ian Deitch is an Associated Press writer.
1 Ukraine fighting: International monitors on Friday strongly urged the warring sides in eastern Ukraine to silence their guns as heavy artillery and rocket barrages have continued to pummel residential areas. At least 33 people including civilians have been killed in fighting this week and several dozens injured in the worst violence in the region since 2015. The death toll between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatist rebels that began in April 2014 has exceeded 9,800, according to United Nations figures.

2 Damage control: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis assured Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Friday in Tokyo that the United States would stand by its mutual defense treaty with the country, despite statements by President Trump during last years campaign that suggested he might pull back from U.S. security commitments in Asia. Earlier Friday, the Pentagon chief wound up a two-day visit to South Korea, where he sought to reassure officials that the U.S. commitment to defend their country, particularly in the face of North Koreas accelerating nuclear threat, was also unchanged.
SYDNEY  Australians are used to seeing their relationship with American presidents as pals across the Pacific whose world views mesh and whose major disagreements are too few to count. That was, however, before Donald Trump picked up the phone.

Word that President Trump blasted Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a call Saturday because of a refugee deal between the two nations bewildered this country of 25 million people which, in many ways, had long seen its closest military and diplomatic ally as a kind of benign big brother.

While experts say the alliance isnt under threat, Trumps tough talk could work in the prime ministers favor  if the deal holds. The revelation that the U.S. president characterized his conversation with Turnbull as the worst call by far among four world leaders he spoke with Saturday, could generate some badly needed sympathy for the prime minister.

It also could provide a reality check for future policies by Australia  which has stood by Americas side in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also is increasingly engaged as a political and trade partner with Asia.

It forces us to drop romantic notions of the alliance and now be more realistic, said a former Australian foreign minister, Bob Carr, speaking at a forum in Singapore, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Thursday.

Australia has more at stake in U.S. immigration policy than many other developed countries. The agreement with the Obama administration to settle roughly 1,250 men, women and children in the United States  if they can pass security checks  is seen as vital to the political fortunes of the Liberal-National coalition government.

Turnbull and his Cabinet are desperate to resolve the fate of the Iranians, Sri Lankans and others living in two detention camps that have caused Australia international embarrassment.

But Trump is regarded with suspicion by many Australians, and the leader-to-leader tension could blunt opposition party attacks that Turnbull hasnt done enough to challenge the U.S. presidents immigration policies.

Turnbull wouldnt confirm details of the call, but alluded to Trumps hostility. We have had very frank and forthright discussions in which each of us has expressed our views, he said in a radio interview after news of the conversation broke. As Australias prime minister, it is my job to stand up for Australia.

Many Australians are wary of economic refugees arriving to take advantage of their generous social security system, a fear that has prompted political parties from both sides to house asylum seekers who arrive in boats on two isolated spots in the Pacific Ocean, the nation of Nauru and the island of Manus in Papua New Guinea.

A. Odysseus Patrick is a Washington Post writer.
Metro Performance Glass shares dropped 17.5 percent after the company said annual profit was likely to be similar or lower than the prior year as costs were higher than expected and local sales were behind expectations on dwindling work in Canterbury and a dip in Wellington.

The Auckland-based company, which has more than half the country's glass processing market, said it expects net profit to be in a range of $19 million to $20.5 million in the year ending March 31 versus a profit of $20.5 million a year earlier. Revenue is expected to be $240 million-to-$245 million versus $188 million in the prior period. The guidance includes seven months of trading from Australian Glass Group with sales estimated to be in a range of $27 million to $29 million. Metro Glass bought AGG in August for A$43.1 million.

The shares, which listed at $1.70 on the NZX in 2014, last traded at $1.56.

Nick Dravitzki, equity analyst at Devon Funds Management, said the market was clearly disappointed by the earnings number, which was at least 10 percent below what was expected. "The issue seems to be their cost base is higher than expected," he said.

The company said "sales have recently lagged behind the companys expectations due to a fasterthanexpected slowdown in the Canterbury residential market and a shortterm drop in activity in Wellington following the November 2016 earthquake."

In a conference call with analysts and investors chief executive Nigel Rigby underscored that the company is "going well" in a revenue sense but said a recent learning curve as it scales up production, distribution and technological capability has increased costs.

He expects the situation to improve after the current financial year. "Certainly, over the three months April to June we'd be looking for improvement," he said. He said "it's been an interesting four or five months" with Canterbury slowing, the earthquake in Wellington causing delays and the company's learning curve "but don't see that as a baked in scenario."

He also underscored that momentum in the commercial project markets has continued to fluctuate, with certain large projects in particular facing protracted installation timetables. "This volatility has resulted in inefficiencies for Metro Glass in production planning and inventory and labour management," according to the company.

Rigby said issues in the commercial sector had definitely impacted the company's earnings, in particular the delays. He noted, however, "it's the reality of the sector" and something the company is going to have to get used to, in particular in a booming market.

He was upbeat about AGG. "We are now five months into the acquisition and it is tracking to expectations... There are no surprises to date," said Rigby.

Earlier, chairman John Goulter said the supportive construction market outlook will ensure revenue growth for several years but the company needs to focus further on automation, process and cost saving across manufacturing, logistics and glazing.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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A strike at Lyttelton Port Co's container terminal will go ahead this weekend despite positive talks with the Maritime Union of New Zealand.

The planned industrial action for Feb. 11 and Feb. 12 will proceed, and the Maritime Union has also issued a strike notice for Feb. 17 until Feb. 19.

"While negotiations this week have been positive, MUNZ has not been prepared to withdraw these strike notices," port marketing manager Simon Munt said in a statement. Mediated bargaining will resume next Wednesday "with a view to achieving a settlement very soon," he said.

A spokesman for the Maritime Union today said that "negotiations have progressed and we are keen to sign an agreement, but not any agreement."

Between 160 and 180 Lyttelton Port employees are part of the Maritime Union covered by the collective contract for the container terminal, which employs more than 250 people. Port management wants to line up work rosters more closely with the company's operating needs.

The existing Lyttelton agreement was set to expire on March 7, 2016, and negotiations for a new collective agreement started in January last year, with 30 meetings in the second half of 2016. On Dec. 1, union members unanimously voted to go on strike after rejecting a proposal by port management, with the outstanding issues over planned changes to the start and finish times for night shift workers by up to four hours.

According to Munt, the port has contingency plans in place to manage container shipping this weekend and it is providing reduced receiving and delivering services during the industrial action. CityDepot will now open Monday from 7am to 3pm, he said.

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nws TIMO-FERRY.jpg

A draft rendering of what the three new Staten Island Ferry boats, designed by Elliott Bay Design Group, will look like, and the late Det. Russel Timoshenko.

(Advance composite photo/Elliott Bay Design Group)

CITY HALL -- A Staten Island Ferry boat could be named in honor of fallen Det. Russel Timoshenko.

Councilman Joseph Borelli, Minority Leader Steven Matteo and Brooklyn Councilman Mark Treyger plan to introduce a resolution calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Department of Transportation to name one of three new vessels after the Bay Terrace hero.

Timoshenko was shot on July 9, 2007, after pulling over a stolen vehicle in Brooklyn and died five days later. He was 23 years old and promoted to detective posthumously.

"Though his life was cut short by a cowardly act of violence, his brave legacy should be preserved -- and what more fitting way to do that than have his name emblazoned on the ferry that has become an icon of the borough he called home," Matteo (R-Mid-Island) said in a statement.

The first of three new Staten Island Ferry boats will be named for the late Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis and the next boat class will also be designated for him.

Last year, a group of Russian-Americans started a petition to name one of the other two boats after Timoshenko. As of Thursday, 5,731 people had signed on.

Timoshenko and his family are Belorussian immigrants. Borelli's office said naming a ferry for him would help youth learn about a Russian-American hero and serve to acknowledge more than 600,000 Russian Americans living in the city.

"I am proud to say he is a Staten Islander, and extremely honored to be organizing this effort on behalf of his parents, who are my neighbors, and friends, and who have been helping the families of other fallen police officers cope with their loss over the last ten years," Borelli (R-South Shore) said in a statement. "Their strength is inspiring."

Borelli's office said the resolution is currently being drafted and will be introduced as soon as possible.

Michael Belogorodsky, former president of the Russian American Officers Association, said, "Russel gave his life to make our streets safer and we should do whatever we can to ensure that he will never be forgotten."

The mayor's office and the Department of Transportation will make naming determinations on the remaining two ferries. This will be done with community input, though what form that will take is unclear.

"We are grateful for Det. Timoshenko's work protecting the lives of New Yorkers," de Blasio spokesman Raul Contreras said. "We look forward to working with constituents and elected officials to determine the future names of our public spaces and ferries."

The Ollis class of boats will be the first added to the city's eight-ferry fleet in more than a decade, replacing the old Kennedy ship, the Andrew J. Barberi and the Samuel I. Newhouse.

The new 4,500-passenger vessels will be designed to operate more safely in extreme weather and will be modeled after the popular John F. Kennedy ferryboats, complete with outdoor promenades. All three will have the same design.

The first boat is expected to be delivered in 2019.
CITY HALL -- Staten Island has become a hunting ground for deer poachers, but only one has ever been caught.

City and state authorities have tracked dozens of illegal hunting incidents as Staten Island's deer herd has grown in the last decade.

Official accounts show at least eight deer were likely killed by poachers in the last three years, though Staten Islanders have reported dozens more dead, many with their heads and antlers cut off as trophies.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, has investigated roughly 27 tips about deer poaching in the borough since January 2014.

Some dead deer were found with clear signs of being hunted by gun or bow and arrow.

In a few cases, evidence like a tree stand or bait pile indicated poaching. Witnesses have also reported hearing shots or seeing hunters in camouflage walking into the woods with weapons.

A Mariners Harbor man wielding a bow and arrow was caught setting up bait piles in November 2014 in what's believed to be the first illegal deer poaching case in New York City history.

No one else has been arrested or ticketed since.

DEC said recent investigations came up cold.

"Poaching is a serious issue and DEC aggressively investigates any reports of illegal hunting activity," said DEC spokesman Sean Mahar.

FEWER OFFICERS ASSIGNED TO STATEN ISLAND

Three DEC officers were assigned to Staten Island in 2014 to identify deer poachers and investigate other violations of the state's environmental conservation law.

Only two are currently assigned to patrol the borough now.

DEC said this is because of routine staffing changes, and noted that officers in the other boroughs can assist those on Staten Island as needed.

The officer who used to be in charge of investigating illegal hunting on Staten Island told retired police lieutenant Michael Reilly in March 2015 that the state relies on help from the community to catch poachers.

"I am aware and investigating multiple incidents where people are illegally killing deer with what appears to be archery equipment in the Tottenville area," stated Edward Piwko, who has since been promoted. "Most of the perpetrators then remove the head or just the deer's antlers and leave the rest.... I need the assistance of the community to help stop this illegal activity."

CITY TRACKS DEER DEATHS

Hunting is illegal in New York City, but that hasn't stopped the poachers.

Staten Islanders have reported hearing gunshots in the woods late at night. Occasional early morning chatter on the police scanner has also suggested illegal hunting.

The city began tracking reports of dead deer in Staten Island parks in October 2014.

The Parks Department started the database in partnership with DEC when the bodies became more frequent and as authorities found mounting evidence of illegal deer hunting.

The department said poaching activity has occurred in most of the city's large parks.

"Hunting is illegal in all five boroughs, including in our parks," said Sarah Aucoin, Chief of Wildlife and Education at Parks.

The NYPD referred questions about illegal hunting to the DEC.

BODIES PILE UP

The Parks Department said two deer were found dead of apparent poaching on Nov. 3 last year.

One was located near Conference House Park. Another was discovered in Silver Lake Cemetery by the city contractor hired to perform vasectomies on Staten Island bucks to manage the borough's herd.

That deer had a hole near its heart on the left side, likely made by an arrow. This couldn't be verified by checking for an exit wound, though, because the carcass was too deteriorated, the Parks Department said.

Five others died of apparent poaching in 2015, according to a copy of the Park Department's "deer mortality" database obtained by the Advance through a Freedom of Information Law request.

"Deer laying dead in bushes," authorities wrote of one carcass found in Schmul Park in Travis on Dec. 30, 2015. "Antlers removed."

Four deer were shot to death or likely killed by gunshot during a span of four days earlier that spring.

On April 2, 2015, a dead deer with a gunshot wound was found on the trail near Forest Hill Road and Travis Avenue in New Springville.

The same day, another deer with a possible gunshot wound was found behind 77 Church Ave. in Travis, near the William T. Davis Wildlife Refuge. "Antlers had been removed," officials reported.

A third was found that April 2 with a gunshot wound near 40 Old Mill Road in the Staten Island Greenbelt. "Possible deer stand found as well," authorities wrote.

Days earlier, on March 30, 2015, another deer with a gunshot wound was discovered by the pond near London Road on Lighthouse Hill.

STATE ASKS FOR COMMUNITY HELP

DEC officers probe most instances suggesting illegal deer hunting. The department is aware of the eight deaths, but said investigations didn't yield any actionable leads for follow up.

The Advance reported in 2014 that officers spent a year using night vision goggles, thermal imaging, license plate information and community tips to track down one poacher.

David G. Oakes was caught carrying a bow, dressed in camouflage gear, in Schmul Park behind the playground on Nov. 11, 2014. He was setting up cans and bait piles to lure deer.

"I was hunting today over bait, and took an 8-point last year from a bait pile in this spot," Oakes told the officers, according to court papers. He was charged on several counts spanning 2013 and 2014.

DEC stressed the importance of community vigilance in tracking down illegal hunters.

"DEC encourages members of the public to report poachers by using DEC's toll-free 24 hour hotline 1-844-DEC-ECOS (1-844-332-3267) to help ensure strict enforcement of environmental laws that protect the State's natural resources," Mahar said.
WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test, increasing pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with the country.

Those targeted by the Treasury Department include various agents, companies and associates involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. The action blacklists the Iranian, Lebanese, Emirati and Chinese individuals and firms from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States," John E. Smith, the Treasury Department's acting sanctions chief, said in a statement.

"We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior," Smith said.

The sanctions are the first against Iran in Donald Trump's new presidency, reflecting his desire to take a tougher stance toward Tehran. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

Iran has a formidable arsenal of thousands of short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and other U.S. allies in the Middle East, as well as American bases.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump said: "Iran is playing with fire -- they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me."

Despite Trump's tough talk, the new sanctions represent a continuation of the Obama administration's limited punishment for Iran's ballistic missile activity and avoid a direct showdown with Tehran over the nuclear deal itself. The targets were drawn up before President Barack Obama left office, according to officials familiar with the planning, though they said a more muscular statement of U.S. intent would be delivered by the White House later Friday.

None of the new penalties reverse the Obama administration's suspension of sanctions as part of the 2015 nuclear accord. Obama himself promised after the deal to continue going after Iran with non-nuclear penalties in response to missile launches, terror support or human rights abuses, and did so in January and March of last year.

Still, it's unclear how effective Trump's move will prove in halting Iran's missile development. The new sanctions don't affect Iran Air, a big Iranian bank or a major government entity, and appear to be a warning shot across the bow by the new U.S. president.

"This is part of a much broader strategy and merely a sign of coming attractions," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who is advising the administration and Congress on Iran-related issues. "The focus is clearly on missile procurement networks and represents a first step in the administration's escalation against Iran's missile program support for terrorism and other malign activities."

Iran said it would be undeterred.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Friday that his country was "unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense."

"Our missile drills are a show of our might," added Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. "We are living in a world of wolves -- wolves such as the arrogant government of America. In this world of wolves, should we remain unarmed and they do whatever damn things they want? No way! This will never happen!"

Tehran has argued at times that any new U.S. sanctions would violate the seven-nation nuclear deal. The agreement compelled Iran to halt its enrichment of uranium, a material that can be used in atomic bombs, in exchange for broad relief from U.S. and international sanctions that were crippling the Iranian economy. Trump has ridiculed the arrangement as a terrible deal, but America's closest allies in Europe as well as Russia and China are committed to it.

Iran also says it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear program has been sharply curtailed. The U.S. and Western countries argue otherwise, noting that Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago. That agreement was codified in a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in parallel, but separately, to the nuclear accord.

Friday's sanctions come after Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation for Iran testing a ballistic missile and supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The rebels this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemen's internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

On Wednesday, Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said: "We are officially putting Iran on notice." Trump then backed up that statement in a tweet.

In Washington, top lawmakers who've sought a sterner policy toward Iran applauded Trump's decision.

"It is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations," said Sen. Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Republican chairman.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said the "swift and decisive response proves that our new administration is serious about holding the Iranian regime accountable for its illicit behavior."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Whether or not a Mariners Harbor woman who admitted to drug charges avoids a jail sentence is entirely up to her.

Shonntay Jordan, 40, pleaded guilty Friday to felony and misdemeanor drug-possession counts stemming from a Sept. 20, 2015 bust in her community in which cops allegedly found 240 plastic bags of heroin in her handbag.

Jordan, who is out on $3,500 bond, can retain her freedom and vacate the felony conviction provided she completes a drug-treatment program through Treatment Alternatives for Safer Communities (TASC).

She potentially faces incarceration should she fail.

According to the court documents and Advance reports, Jordan was a passenger in a Ford Expedition that was illegally standing at a bus stop on the 300 block of Grandview Avenue at about 11:30 p.m.

A cop in an unmarked car approached the vehicle, and as he did so, the officer saw Jordan begin to exit the SUV from the rear street-side door, said the decision.

At that point, the cop saw two glassine envelopes allegedly containing what appeared to be heroin on the floor of the rear passenger compartment.

The officer also observed the handbag on the rear seat next to where the defendant had been sitting, said court papers.

Other cops took the bag to the police stationhouse where the arresting officer found 240 envelopes of heroin inside the bag, along with two IDs and a cell phone, court documents said.

Most of the bags were labeled "Dope," the Advance reported, citing court papers. Cops said one envelope bore the brand "Jaguar."

The defendant was charged with felony and misdemeanor counts of criminal possession of a controlled substance.

She subsequently moved to suppress the heroin discovery; however, state Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi denied the motion.

Last spring, Ozzi ruled Jordan had relinquished her expectation of privacy and the Fourth Amendment right against unlawful searches and seizures when she "voluntarily" exited the vehicle in which she was riding and left the back door open.

The judge determined the officer was "justified" in approaching the SUV, because it was violating traffic laws. Afterward, cops had the authority to search the handbag's contents at the stationhouse because Jordan had abandoned it, he said.

Jordan pleaded guilty Friday to third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance - the top count against her - and to seventh degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.

If she completes the TASC program, the top count plea would be vacated, and Jordan would be sentenced under the misdemeanor conviction to three years' probation.

Should she fail, the felony conviction would remain, and she could be sentenced to anywhere from one to nine years in prison.
The way of the empty hands The Simi Valley Shotokan Karate Dojo recently hosted a two-day seminar at Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District headquarters featuring a trio of karate experts. The Oct. 22 seminar was...

Slide into winter fun at SnowFest The Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District is bringing snow to Simi Valley. SnowFest will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sun., Nov. 6 at Rancho Madera Community...
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Childrens rights expert consultant Nils Kastberg and Mrs. Shermina Powell-Richardson, Sint Maartens representative in the Kingdom Taskforce for Childrens Rights and the Department Head of Youth Affairs, had a consultation session with a delegation of the Council of Ministers on Thursday, February 2. The delegation consisted of Deputy Prime Minister / Minister Justice, Mr. R. Boasman; Minister of Finance, Mr. R. Gibson Sr.; Minister of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport Affairs, Ms. S. Jacobs and Minister of Public Housing, Spatial Planning, Environment & Infrastructure, Mr. C. Emmanuel. Both Prime Minister / Minister of General Affairs, Mr. W. Marlin and Minister of Public Health, Social Development and Labour, Mr. E. Lee were off island at the time of the meeting. The ministers present were informed on the importance of improving childrens situations on the island, the need for collaboration and cooperation among ministries to address the matter comprehensively and the need for investment in the quality of care.





In her introductory words, Minister Jacobs stressed that issues related to the topic of the youth of Sint Maarten, not only directly affects her own Ministry, but also that of Public Health, Social Development and Labour, Justice and Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunication and ultimately influences the entire society. For this reason, decisions on the vision to move forward including the financial consequences need to be made jointly.





Mr. Kastberg stated that investing in Sint Maartens sovereignty is essential to build the wealth of the country. This means finding ways and means to increase the income base as well as change the mindset to underpin the progress of the sovereignty of Sint Maarten; two elements that go hand in hand. The Ministers present were provided with statistics and real life stories related to the youth of Sint Maarten illustrating the gravity of the situation. The ministers underscored that prevention and collaboration are key elements in the process. To display the will to move forward and to underline the urgency of the matter, a separate brainstorm session with the full Council of Ministers will be scheduled at the beginning of March 2017. The action plan of all those projects, programs and initiatives that require collaborative preparation and execution will form the basis of the discussion. This action plan is a chapter within the draft Integrated Youth Policy which is currently being upgraded by the Department of Youth Affairs and should be readily available by the end of February.





Mr. Kastberg services as a childrens rights expert has been made available through the United Nations Childrens Fund UNICEF the Netherlands and he has been assisting Sint Maarten since 2015. In preparation of the Kingdom Conference scheduled for March 2017, several meetings with stakeholders have been scheduled to formulate a Comprehensive Educational Vision. The conference is in continuation of the Action Plan Children Rights by the Kingdom Taskforce and is attended by representatives of the four countries within the Kingdom and focuses on the area of the family as central and the upbringing of the child.




Above, one of one of the newer buildings on Epic System's campus. The Verona-based company currently faces three federal lawsuits over its overtime pay practices.
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ACT arts minister Gordon Ramsay will nearly double the arts projects spending for 2017 after outcry from local artists over an "unprecedented" drop in funding.

In December, it was announced 14 projects would share in about $250,000 of funding through artsACT in 2017, compared to about $730,000 in 2016.

Arts minister Gordon Ramsay. Credit:Jamila Toderas

Mr Ramsay said as a result of community feedback, an extra 14 projects would be funded. It is understood the money will be brought forward from the next ACT budget.

"I am delighted that the ACT Government is providing an additional $230,000 for arts projects to occur in the 2017 calendar year on top of the $248,000 announced in December 2016. This will fund a further 14 projects," Mr Ramsay wrote on his Facebook page on Friday afternoon.
Hospital cleaners like Linda Morrison can now afford to put new tyres on the car or take their kids to the movies.

And they finally feel respected.

Union delegate Linda Morrison says cleaners are too often the forgotten staff of the hospital. Credit:Jay Cronan

Ms Morrison, 63, is one of almost 150 cleaners at Canberra Hospital rewarded with a bonus after having their pay frozen for almost five years.

"The cleaners haven't had a pay rise since June 2012," she said.
A man who police allege was the "ringleader" of a violent rape attack against two sex workers in Canberra has been committed to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court.

Rashid Mohamud Abuuh, 23, pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual intercourse without consent, threatening to inflict grievous bodily harm with an intent to have sex, and aggravated robbery over the ordeal in March 2016.

Rashid Mohamud Abuuh outside the ACT Magistrates Court after an earlier court appearance.

It's alleged he was in the company of two other men, who have also been charged, when they attacked the two women in a Reid apartment.

Police alleged in a statement of facts the sex workers were threatened at knifepoint, stripped of their clothes and repeatedly raped by the three men during the attack, after one of the accused booked a "full service".
Prosecutors have successfully appealed a decision not to convict a woman who crashed her car into a group of cyclists while she was dazzled by the sun.

At about 7.13am on April 15, 2015, Spozmai Nozhat drove her Mazda into two of the riders as they were all travelling east on Baldwin Drive in Giralang.

Ingrid Kimber was seriously injured when she was struck by a car while riding her bike one morning.

They suffered serious injuries that included cracked bones, as well as bruising and lacerations to internal organs. One, a woman, was thrown onto the car's bonnet and suffered a compression fracture to her vertebrae.

In August last year, Magistrate Robert Cook found Nozhat guilty of two counts of negligent driving occasioning grievous bodily harm but acquitted her of the offence, noting her unblemished criminal history as well as her high-regard in the community.
Lyneham mother Emma Browning fears her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression is about to take a step backwards.

Eighteen months ago, when she began her treatment with Gungahlin Mental Health Team, she couldn't leave the house or answer the door for fear of crowds and people.

Emma Browning, who has been told she will have to change psychiatrists, fears this will set back her recovery from post traumatic stress disorder and depression. Credit:Rohan Thomson

Today she can go out alone and talk confidently, but her hard-won recovery could be about to halt, she says.

Soon to move into community housing in Ainslie, five minutes away, Ms Browning was told she would have to change psychiatrists.
"One of the things I like telling people is that my family came here in 1827, because people don't expect it," he said. "Muslims come from a wide range of places. "There are Muslims in Canberra who have Torres Strait Islander ancestry, with people in their family whose experience with Islam pre-dates white settlement. "There's a whole range from 400 years ago to people who arrived yesterday. "Each group that's moved here has brought a different culture."

Mr Hashmi said he joined MPV because he supported the aims and objectives. "I didn't join the organisation to challenge stereotypes that are external to the Muslim community," he said, "but internal to the community. I want to show young people growing up that they don't need to follow their parents' culture. "There's a big challenge in all migrant communities that parents have grown up with the culture from where they came from and children are growing up with a different culture. "That cultural difference between the parents and the kids is always something that's going to happen, but I'm someone who people that are younger than me can look to and see that I have the same culture as them." The almost 6000 Muslims in Canberra come from more than 50 different countries.

Mr Hashmi said the cultural differences from such a diverse group were as broad in the Muslim community as they would be among people from Christian countries. He said young Muslims generally think the same as young Christians and believe there should be separation between organised religion and government. "As for what happens overseas, the same things that motivate Trump happened in [some Muslim] countries as well," he said. "That's not a good representation of Islam; the factors that are driving it are not religious piety. They're social inequality and so forth. "If you think about America and how Christianity plays into politics there, that is an incredibly complex issue and it's true for every country in the world as well.

"For me to sit here in Australia, without having lived in another country and talk about Iran's problems, I'm never going to know." Mr Hashmi said he didn't understand why some Australians were supporting parties like One Nation, which wants an inquiry into Islam. "Even if I understood why people are afraid of Australia becoming like Afghanistan, their policies don't prevent that," he said. "You need to not be very critical of how she [Pauline Hanson] views the world to actually follow her. "I completely agree that we don't want Australia to become an Arab dictatorship, I'm completely on board with that, but whether policies like those of Donald Trump take us further away or closer to that is a different question."

Mr Hashmi said most Australians were tolerant and he's never personally experienced any racism. "I've heard of cases where people have got upset about something, but it's usually the action of individuals and not a systemic problem," he said. "But my experiences are shaped by the fact I have an Australian accent and nobody picks me as being a foreigner by look. "For someone who has a heavy accent and wears hijab and looks visibly different, their experience is likely to be very different to mine because so much goes on how you look and what you sound like." MPV has held "meet a Muslim" events where non-Muslims can ask questions about Islam.

"There are studies that show prejudice against Muslims drops significantly if you know one Muslim," Mr Hashmi said. "From that study the [MPV] Melbourne group adopted this format where people could come in and ask whatever they want. "We have a number of Muslims there who give different responses, so you can see how opinions are different between people and why they think that." Tanya Hashmi lives that difference by not wearing a headdress of any kind. "I have personal views about the necessity of wearing hijab and I know many Muslims will think differently to me," she said.

"That's one of the aspects of Islam, that your traditional image of a Muslim woman wearing a long dress and hijab is just one of the wide variety of ways that Muslim women dress. "I think the image of Islam being very varied has become compressed, both through the media and through the wider representation of the Saudi Muslim as what people think of as the standard. "Some [Muslim] people will disagree with me, but I know a lot of people feel the same as I do." Dr Hashmi said the headdress was more a historical tradition than a religious one. "Looking back at paintings of women from 15th century England, women covered their hair; it was the norm," she said.
State Debate: Bruce Thompson says redistricting decision may be more trouble than it's worth
Virgin Australia on Friday posted a 37 per cent fall in second-quarter underlying earnings before taxes as tough conditions persisted in the domestic aviation market.

Australia's second-biggest airline reported an underlying profit before tax of $45.9 million for the quarter ended December 30, compared with an underlying profit before tax of $73 million a year earlier, in a trading update to the ASX.

Virgin will report first-half results later this month. Credit:Edwina Pickles

On a statutory basis, including restructuring charges associated with a cost-savings program, it reported a profit before taxes of $13.1 million.

The second quarter is typically the most profitable of the year for the airline.
Pressure is mounting on Australian airlines to make fresh cuts to capacity after Virgin Australia's softer than expected second quarter left investors worrying about the state of the aviation market.

The share prices of both major airlines kicked down after the announcement on Friday, to the tune of just less than 2 per cent for Qantas and 2.3 per cent for Virgin.

What is now increasingly clear is that massive fare discounting, a feature of the aviation landscape for the past year, does not seem to have spurred demand significantly but continues to put pressure on airline yields.

Adding to Virgin's particular woes was its move to pull its discount brand Tigerair out of the Bali market after issues with the Indonesian government approvals.
Liquidators to failed satellite company NewSat are seeking more than $270 million in damages from its former managing director Adrian Ballintine and former chairman Richard Green.

If successful, the action could lead to bankruptcy actions being taken against both former directors who have also been referred to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for investigation by the group's bankers.

Receivers to the company from McGrathNicol filed the action in late January in the Federal Court alleging both Mr Ballintine and Mr Green breached their directors' duties on several occasions while managing the group.

The company was once touted as being "pretty capable" by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who as the then communications minister believed NBN Co should be considering using NewSat's satellites instead of building its own.
On the glorious US ski slopes of Vail where the rich and famous carve their way through white powder by day and socialise by night, it's often hard to avoid running into others. Two Australians in the news this week - media mogul Kerry Stokes and Sheila McGregor, the woman who resigned from the board of his Seven West Media on Thursday - would almost certainly have crossed paths.

Stokes, who often uses his palatial Colorado ski lodge to host business contacts, could well have entertained McGregor as a guest as they are believed to have been old friends.

Her decision to quit was announced hours before Seven West's board exonerated its chief executive, Tim Worner, from a series of accusations against him including misuse of his company credit card and use of cocaine during work time, raised after an affair with an office staffer, Amber Harrison.

Mr Worner had apologised to Seven's staff for the affair in late December, saying that "a lot of the allegations are factually incorrect".
In order to combine its Sydney properties at Telopea and Dundas, the Anglican Church has acquired a Rydalmere industrial site for $8.25 million. The 5000 square metre site at 32 South Street will be developed as the new church for the Parramatta LGA parish, serving several surrounding western Sydney suburbs.

To fund the acquisition, CBRE's capital markets team of Peter Vines, Alex Mirzaian and Tom Sheridan was engaged to negotiate the sale of the church's Dundas and Telopea sites. The Dundas Anglican Church, metres from the station at 79 Kissing Point Road, sold for $7.6 million to an Asian investor/developer, a record result for the area.

Multiplex has completed the rejuvenation of Darling Harbour, delivering M&L Hospitality's redevelopment of 161 Sussex Street. Credit:John Gollings

"The competitive sales campaign received 45 inquiries and 10 contract requests, underpinned by the site's significant development upside with potential for 48 apartments at a proposed value of about $160,000 per unit," Mr Mirzaian said.

Hyatt Regency
The Sydney Harbour Marriott hotel has undertaken a $15 million refurbishment as it prepares for a busy few years as visitation increases at the new International Convention Centre.

The hotel sector is one of the busiest with a number of new developments across the Sydney city area, in what is described as an undersupplied market.

Refurbishment of Sydney Harbour Marriott hotel is part of a changing hotel sector in the capital city.

These include the soon-to-open Sydney Sofitel at Darling Harbour, the new Hyatt Regency, formerly the Four Points Sheraton, the Ribbon site and the planned Ritz-Carlton at The Star, also at Pyrmont.

The new ICC will allow a vast increase in the number of conferences and exhibitions, which will lead to a rise in demand for hotel rooms in coming years.
But the double dissolution is a heavy and clumsy weapon to deal with blocked legislation. In 1901, when legislation was leaner and each bit more significant, it was a different matter. But these days, with so much legislation and with a Senate that seems permanently without a majority, it makes government very difficult. Obviously, the Senate should remain a house of review, but it should not be a huge disrupter. It is easy for minor parties to reject every "nasty" and applaud every "goodie", but a government has to do both if it is to be fiscally and socially responsible. Politics has changed so much that the double-dissolution election is far too cumbersome as a means of resolving deadlocks. I agree with Abbott that we should remove double dissolutions from the Constitution. But his proposal that rejected legislation could go straight to a joint sitting would emasculate the Senate. You may as well not have it. Abbott obliquely referred to his own fate and said that a prime minister who could not get the government's program through would not survive.

Under his plan, his 2014 budget full of nasty surprises would have gone straight to a joint sitting and been passed. In effect, Abbott is saying that, once the people have voted for a government with a majority bigger than the Senate cross bench, that government should get all its legislation through, even if it included stuff not mentioned at election time, such as GP co-payments, reductions in the dole etc etc. A better, more accountable method would be as follows. If the Senate twice rejects legislation passed by the House and at the next ordinary election the Government is returned, the legislation should not have to return to the Senate, but be passed by the House alone. In effect, the people's vote would cancel the Senate's earlier rejection of the legislation. This is perfectly democratic. After all, the actual legislation would have gone before the people. It would not be some vague promise or vague mandate to do something like "budget repair". It would guard against undemocratic surprises, such as the 2014 budget, being foisted on voters. But it would allow a government to eventually get its way without disruptive double dissolutions.

If, however, the Senate retained the power to reject legislation at least until after a supervening election won by the government, it would remain an effective house of review. The government would get the choice of accepting Senate amendments or having to delay the legislation until it was put to an electoral test. It is dangerous for governments to always get their own way immediately and to have no checks or balances. But it is equally dangerous for governments not to be able to enact their legislative program. There are other advantages to removing double dissolutions. Without them, it would be easier to have fixed terms with, say, elections on the last Saturday in November every three years. (If you went for four-year terms, senators' terms would be an overly long eight years.) Fixed terms would be better for business and everyone involved in politics and administration. People could plan better. Double dissolutions are bad because they disrupt the election cycle. This is because senators take their seats immediately and their terms are back-dated to the previous 1 July. For practical purposes the House election has to be held at the same time as the next half-Senate election, so its term gets shortened by however long the back dating is.

At the 2 July 2016 double dissolution election, it meant a back-dating of only one day, but if a double dissolution election was held in, say, March, it would mean the next House of Representative's term would be cut by nine months. As it is, governments do not like winter elections so the present parliament is likely to be cut by two or three months with a March or April 2019 election. Abbott said the paralysis in parliament had a direct effect on the prime minister. He said a prime minister who could not get the Government's agenda through could not expect to survive. But Abbott's solution goes too far because under his proposal a government could get a hidden agenda through after an election. Indeed, Abbott seems to have misunderstood what happened. He did not survive, not because he could not get his hidden agenda through, but precisely because he revealed the hidden agenda after the election.
Tim Royle, of Chatswood, suggests someone remind Donald J. Trump that Her Majesty is also Queen of Australia and he may have to ride in the Australian State Carriage if he really wants a ride down The Mall as part of the proposed State Visit. "Better still, he walks behind until he learns to respect others."

Rodney Bassetti asks (C8 AGL) "And is there anything private any more." No - Rodney - and we know where you live." Ron Schaffer, of Bellevue Hill.

Wondering how far away a thunderstorm was when I was a child in suburban NYC, I was taught to count "one, one thousand; two, one thousand;" between lightning and thunder to guesstimate miles away, writes J-Alice Hofler, of Dee Why. "Wednesday night I did not have to count anyway to accommodate the shorter distance of a kilometre as the storm was soon directly overhead with simultaneous lightning and thunder. But how do Aussie kids guesstimate distance? How about using Diamantina as a river (C8) spacing for counting? I find its name melodious."

The standard duration of an amber traffic light (C8) is simple - four seconds. But camera-recorded red light penalties appear to be more complex. The people who issue the traffic fines tell me the cameras are activated "when any part of the vehicle crosses the stop line after the red light" (my emphasis). This is clearly unreasonable." Kevin Eadie, Drummoyne.

Over 10 years while walking our dog, I have noticed Australia Post motorbikes somehow have tyres that kill grass. It is not caused by repeated crushing of the grass, but happens in one-off situations. The tyres every now and then cause the grass to turn pale and eventually die, just by one run over it. At the moment we have three separate very distinct tracks across our lawn. Do C8ers have any idea what may cause this? Michael McFadyen, of Kareela.
It has the potential to become as potent an international symbol of protest and resistance as the iconic 1960 Alberto Korda photograph of Che Guevara that has for decades adorned millions of T-shirts, or the early emblem of the women's liberation movement: the clenched fist inside the symbol for women.

I'm talking about the pink pussy hats that first appeared at the women's marches in the United States, and around the world, the day after the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

They were a brightly coloured, cheeky, instant visual rejoinder to the brag about women, caught on tape, by the man who would become the 45th President of the United States, that he could "grab 'em by the pussy".

Before this episode, the word pussy was not used in polite company and certainly not in print - unless in inverted commas to indicate it was slightly scandalous.
When US President Donald Trump signed an executive order on immigration last week, he not only put a temporary halt to entry from citizens of seven, largely Islamic, countries, he also suspended the US refugee program for four months. The order goes on to limit the total number of refugees accepted by the US in fiscal year 2017 to 50,000.

This does not mean the US must accept 50,000 refugees  former president Barack Obama had set the limit at 110,000 and accepted less than 85,000, still the highest level of his presidency  but even if the US does accept the full 50,000 this will be a significant step down from its current intake.

Refugees, most of them from Eritrea, during a rescue operation in the Mediterranean. Credit:Emilio Morenatti

The UNHCR estimated that there were 21.3 million refugees worldwide in 2015 and 65.3 million forcibly displaced persons. There are many millions more living in abject poverty desperate for a chance at life in the first world. The vast majority of refugees come from the Middle East and Africa.

Although there are more than 140 parties to the UN Convention on Refugees and the subsequent Protocol, in practice there is a clear division: refugees are hosted overwhelming by poor countries, while reported resettlement falls almost exclusively on 20 or 30 rich, Western nations.
Lennart Nilsson, an innovative Swedish photographer whose micro-cameras bared some of life's previously impenetrable and breathtaking moments  most memorably a human embryo's maturation from the instant a sperm cell fertilises an egg  died on Saturday in Stockholm. He was 94.

Nilsson fused artistic and scientific virtuosity to blaze a new frontier in photography, especially within the womb. He transformed himself into a daring explorer, leading viewers of his images  in books, magazines and television documentaries  on fascinating journeys deep inside the human body.

Lennart Nilsson was a daring explorer, leading viewers of his images  in books, magazines and television documentaries  on fascinating journeys deep inside the human body.

To do so he incorporated electron microscopy, endoscopic fibre optics and custom lenses.

"I'm just a photographer who happened to be fascinated with mankind," he said on his website.
In population biology a refugium, or simply fuge, is a protective place for a relict population that has become threatened in its native habitat. Paradoxically, refugiums often make things worse for individuals and populations remaining in nature.

The vast royal greenhouses at Laeken, near Brussels, are such a refugium. Built as a pirate showcase for the extraordinary biodiversity of the Congo rainforest that Leopold II had so brutally colonised, they now preserve these fast-disappearing species. Yet the paradox: the 800,000 litres of fuel oil burnt each year to keep these plants alive help drive the climate change that is destroying what natural populations remain.

Illustration: Simon Bosch

Another refugium is the evangelical rapture. Relying on expected end times, as seen by many in the "Trumpocalypse", it yields such gems as the "rapture index", reported in the Daily Mail this week, which lists anti-semitism, droughts, false prophets and civil rights as signs of imminent end. When the excrement really hits the whizzer  the idea goes  the faithful elite will be airlifted bodily, rapturously, to heaven, leaving the rest of us to our miserable fate.

The paradox? Given the number of evangelical Christians in Sydney leadership  and that a 2011 survey that found "six of ten evangelical leaders believe in the rapture  a few would actually believe this arrogant nonsense. That way - naturally counting themselves amongst the liftees - it's suddenly easy to treat climate change as no big thing.
In watching and reading the news on Donald Trump's presidency, my overwhelming sense is of confusion. Opinions are all over the place, defying any convenient binary division into left and right, good and evil.

I've read compelling accounts for and against both Hillary Clinton and Trump. Some of the most critical of Clinton (and Barack Obama), and insightful about Trump, have come from the socialist left  because they fall outside mainstream political analysis.

Illustration: Joe Benke

It helps to distinguish between the leaders' personalities and policies and the political system in which they operate. If you believe the US political system is capable of solving the problems that America (and the world) faces, then voting for Clinton might have been the way to go, given her experience and despite her ties to Wall Street and hawkish approach to foreign relations.

If you don't believe the current system can deliver, then there were reasons to give Trump a shot, however flawed the man and many of his policies.
This week, President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old Federal Appeals Court judge to the Supreme Court as part of his long-term strategy to change the complexion of the Court and influence American society for decades to come.

Gorsuch, an arch-conservative whose record on social issues should scare anyone other than the radical right, has an interesting back history.

President Donald Trump has nominated arch-conservative Federal Appeals Court judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Credit:AP

Gorsuch was 15 when his mother, Anne Burford, was appointed by President Reagan to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Her tenure was short. She set about dismantling the EPA, slashing its budget by 22 per cent, eradicating regulations protecting the environment and tried to carve a 30 by 40 mile area of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Delaware where ships could incinerate toxic waste.
A wealthy fundraising body linked to the Liberal Party has quietly begun bankrolling the organisations behind two of the Coalition's biggest crossbench supporters in the finely balanced Senate.

The Cormack Foundation has donated more than $40 million to the Liberal Party over the last 18 years  including more than $3 million in 2015-16  making it one of the party's biggest benefactors.

The foundation is an investment company and "associated entity" of the Liberals that donates dividends from its share portfolio. It has stakes in a number of blue-chip companies  including the big four banks, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Telstra and Wesfarmers  raising about $3.9 million last year.

But for the first time in its 30-year history, the foundation last year donated to parties other than the Liberals  giving $25,000 each to the conservative Family First and the libertarian Liberal Democrats, according to the Australian Election Commission annual returns released this week.
The ground floor of the Art Gallery of Ballarat is no serene viewing space this Thursday, but rather loud, chaotic and dirty. Dusty, at least. Masking tape, bubble-wrap and white title plates are strewn all about the dark parquetry floor. Men with sleeve tattoos are working power drills and belt-sanders, unpacking the custom wooden crates of a travelling exhibition and fixing their contents to white walls.

Jan Dirk Mittman is here, too, hand holding chin, coolly assessing the layout, making sure his "mud map" for more than 50 works has the right flow aesthetically, thematically and chronologically. "It is a bit of a tight hang," says Mittman, 48, the curator at Burrinja Cultural Centre in the hills outside Melbourne. "You do it on paper first, but you need to look at it in the space, play with a few ideas.

The fallout from humanity's nuclear exploration, he points out, is an ongoing history. Credit:Simon Schluter

The exhibition, Black Mist, Burnt Country: Testing the Bomb, Maralinga and Australian Art, opened in Sydney in September, moved to Victoria's goldfields, and will visit another eight locations in four states over the next two years, starting with Swan Hill on February 24. Mittman, Ray-Bans dangling from the neckline of a sweat-soaked Calvin Klein polo shirt, is the man who drew it all together. "I'm German, and I grew up under the cloud of nuclear war and this looming threat," he says. "So when I looked at the story of nuclear testing in Australia, it gave me chills."

It was the early 1950s when Liberal prime minister Robert Menzies allowed the British to test nuclear bombs in the outback. "This was a time when Aborigines were considered flora and fauna," Mittman says. "Their traditional lands were big, open, empty spaces, seen as perfect for these undertakings. But the impact of these explosions was catastrophic."
In a letter, Yates wrote: "I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution's solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right. "At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive Order is lawful." Boom. And her strong stance for justice did not go unnoticed.

Angela Merkel German Chancellor Angela Merkel, considered Forbes Most Powerful Woman in 2014 and hailed by TIME as the leader of the free world, has taken a cool, measured stand against Trump in the face of his travel ban. She took the time to explain The International Refugee Convention to Trump over the phone, outlining the humanitarian responsibilities it entails to the new President, who seems to have disregarded it entirely. Whilst Merkel has fears for the impact of terrorism on her own country, a spokesperson for the Chancellor said she believes "the necessary, decisive battle against terrorism does not justify a general suspicion against people of a certain origin, or a certain religion". When Trump was elected to government, Merkel congratulated him, simultaneously explaining the conditions of her cooperation with the new President,

"Germany and America are connected by values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views," she said in a statement, adding: "I offer the next President of the United States close cooperation on the basis of these values." This is not the first time Merkel has stood her ground in the face of machismo, standing up to Putin in the midst of Russia's conflict with the Ukraine in 2015. It seems after 12 years in power Merkel is perfecting a well-rehearsed diplomatic strategy to deal with men intoxicated by their own power. Samantha Bee Comedian Samantha Bee has not been shy about her disdain for Donald Trump, using her show Full Frontal as a platform to hilariously articulate her hatred for the new US President. Since Trump's election, Bee has been taking direct action against him, most recently announcing her intention to hold a counter event to the longstanding White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.

Bee has organised the event, which she has called, "Not The White House Correspondents' Dinner", to ensure that regardless of how the event at the White House unfolds, Trump will receive the roasting he deserves. Seeing as Hollywood has been pretty vocal about its disdain for Trump, and many celebrities have been vocal in disagreeing with the President's politics, it seems a safe bet that more famous faces will be on the guest list to Bee's event than the official dinner. Teresa Shook Teresa Shook, a grandmother from Hawaii, who had never really considered herself an activist, turned her upset over Trump's election into one of the largest days of protests in United States history, which is a pretty big deal. Shook channelled her anger and disappointment on election day and came up with the idea to organise a March on Washington; she asked a friend how to create a Facebook event, and overnight 10,000 people had registered their interest in joining her in her protest.

Shook's idea eventuated in 500,000 protesters uniting under a common desire to protest for the rights of women and minorities, threatened by Donald Trump, and thousands more protesting across America and around the world. The march also incited a lasting desire to protest under Trump, and is hailed as enlivening the public to demonstrate against the new President. The crowd for The Women's March on Washington is estimated to have been three times larger than that for Trump's Inauguration the day before. This meant that on Trump's first morning waking up in the White House, Washington was occupied by hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrating against his presidency, which unsurprisingly angered him. Not bad for a rookie activist. Lauren Duca Lauren Duca is a 25-year-old freelance journalist who made headlines around the world in December after publishing an essay for Teen Vogue, titled "Trump is Gaslighting America", which went viral and, along with some notable TV appearances and Twitter spats, has made her something of a household name and got people talking about how the magazine for teenage girls had suddenly turned into a heavyweight of political commentary.

Before Trump's election Duca was writing mostly celebrity and pop culture news. After the election her focus changed. "It felt like nothing I was working on mattered anymore," she said. Honourable mention: Katy Tur NBC news correspondent Katy Tur has been hailed as living symbol of Trump's hostility towards news media, having been taunted and personally targeted by Trump during her coverage of his presidential campaign. Tur refused to respond, and remained committed to her coverage, continuing to probe Trump on Mexicans, immigration and why he had chosen to manufacture his clothing line overseas.
Lucrative training contracts for the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Defence have been awarded to a private college group that has been under investigation by the federal government.

The new contracts between ACTE, trading as Evocca, and the Department of Defence and the AFP come after the college graduated just 12 per cent of students over a three-year period while earning $180 million in taxpayer-funded student loans under the scandal plagued VET FEE-HELP scheme.

A spokeswoman for the AFP said the selection of the training provider "met all government purchasing and procurement requirements".

The tenders, worth more than $200,000, have been awarded under several different company names, including Dimension Data Learning Services, to supply training for less than five months in software courses, electrical services and general training.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, joined by Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Colo., meets with reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday following a GOP strategy session. Ryan gave a strong defense of President Donald Trump's refugee and immigration ban to caucus members and said he backs the order, even though he said during the presidential campaign that he didn't agree with Trump's pledge to prevent Muslims from entering the United States.
Veronica Manouk was 20 when she noticed a mole on her left calf no bigger than a texta mark had grown into an "ominous, dark, horrible-looking thing".

Just a few weeks later, groggy after an emergency surgery, she looked down at the cavernous gouge where her perfect, whole limb used to be.

"It was horrific. It looked like I was attacked by an ice-cream scoop," Ms Manouk laughed sardonically.

Cancer in all its forms can seem like a faraway, abstract spectre that affects other people. But Ms Manouk will never forget the visceral menace of Australia's leading cause of disease burden in Australia.
Our religious convictions are largely utilitarian. We baptise or christen our children in the hope it might give them the edge when choosing private schooling later down the track. Some of us only seem to care about Christian rituals when it looks like "the Muslims" are trying to take them away. The worst thing you can call another Australian is stuck up. We deride people who can't take a joke, even if that joke is at their expense. We think calling something un-Australian is a serious attack, even though we know we can't define what being Australian is. When I started this research 10 years ago, John Howard was prime minister. For a democracy of startling stability, we've had a period of almost Italianesque turmoil, with constant big party instability, too many prime ministerial switches, ministerial scandals and one-term governments. I've seen the cynicism about politicians become even more acute, matched in part by cynicism about the media that is supposed to act as check on their power. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote "hell is other people". Before I started this work I believed him. I feel differently now. Ten years of researching other people has changed me as a person. I am more of an optimist than a cynic. I don't think it pays to underestimate Australians. Still Lucky is an account of the best intentions and impulses as well as some of the darker, contradictory tendencies in our national character. Where is the long-term vision for the future?

In discussion groups, the most consistent criticism levelled at our political leaders over the last decade has been their lack of long-term vision and planning. Regardless of who was in the prime minister's chair, Australians have asked the question loudly and often  where are we headed? While the focus has primarily been on the shape of a future economy, the jobs we will have and the industries that will sustain us, the concern has been social as well. What will our neighbourhoods and cities look like? What kind of houses will we live in? Will we still have a strong and affordable healthcare system? What direction will our education system take? How will we look after the very old and the very young? Over the years, there have been certain areas of policy where this lack of long-term vision and future planning has been particularly evident to the community. In 2007 it was managing our water resources. "It's the government's fault we've got no water. They should have thought about it before." "The fact that no government has done anything about it, yet we live on the driest continent in the world  it's criminal." In 2010 and 2011, which saw some sharp and well-publicised increases in electricity prices, Australians complained about the lack of investment in renewable energy. "Why aren't we doing more about solar energy and building more wind farms?" (Interestingly, concern about water and energy resources has continued on and off, regardless of the public interest and engagement with the broader issue of climate change.) Across the last decade, Australians have regularly voiced their concerns about a lack of planning and action from both federal and state governments around infrastructure of all kinds. "Our hospitals are run down. Our trains are shit." "We have been waiting since last century for that new road and it hasn't happened. It will never happen." "The population is expanding, but the infrastructure isn't increasing to keep up with it."

These criticisms include IT infrastructure as it relates to the national broadband network, another uniformly popular idea among voters (especially those in regional Australia) that seems to cause dissent and division within party politics. This critique has also extended to a concern about the fundamentals of the tax system. Is it structured to cope with the inevitable demographic changes that will occur? "Australia's tax system won't be able to afford the future." "These issues are what the government should be dealing with, and they're not." Australians like to think of themselves as savvy, able to see through the bullshit to the real agenda, the true motivations. They believe they have become more demanding and questioning consumers, able to stand up and complain if they've received a poor product or service. We're not going to be duped by advertising, marketing or politicians. This fear of being fooled creates an almost perverse desire among the electorate to see everything politicians do as self-serving. As aware as we are of the tricky tactics of corporations and advertisers, we are unsurprisingly cynical of and sensitised to the role polling plays in political decision-making. We imagine this is worse now than it has been in the past. "There were principles attached to policies before. Now they're driven by fear because of the polls; they have a certain number of people they listen to and react to that rather than sticking to their principles."

It's easy for Australians to say they want politicians who have an ambitious, long-term vision for the country. That they want politicians to do what's right rather than what's easy, what might help them win the next election. "Someone's got to risk the vote ... No one wants to make the hard decisions." But our fear of being fooled, our cynicism, means we are primed to assume the worst of our politicians. The road to political reform is tough, and even tougher to explain and sustain at a time when many of us resist the idea we should personally pay the price for progress. Difficult reforms are often predicated on people losing something in the short-term to gain something in the long-term. After decades of affluence and government largesse, this is harder and harder for voters to accept. The public might claim to want long-term plans but these are short-tempered times. In our nostalgia for strong leaders of the past, we tend to forget how unreceptive we were at the time to their tough talk. Former treasurer and prime minister Paul Keating is the ultimate example of this. Hugely unpopular when he was in Parliament, the reaction to his pronouncements about the nation and the economy ("This is the recession we had to have") were rarely well received outside the Canberra press gallery. I've heard Labor-leaning voters in groups talk wistfully about the stability of the Howard era (especially his bold moves on gun reform). I've had conservative voters reflect that we were too hard on Gillard, and praise her management of a hung Parliament while still pushing through important policies like the needs-based education reforms recommended by David Gonski and the National Disability Insurance Scheme. Our desire for straight-talking, visionary leaders focused on the hard task of reform works more in theory rather than practice. This conflict between what people want for the future and what they'll accept today is strong enough to merit a special name; I call it "the Keating problem". It will take a particularly deft leader to solve it, to combine long-term vision with the ability to manage the politics of the moment. The election of 2007 brought a surge of hope that such a leader had emerged; we are still recovering from the disappointment.
As the temperature reaches new heights, so does the sale of air-conditioners as Sydneysiders seek cool relief in their homes.

Sydneysiders should expect a hot weekend as temperatures soar to 32 to 36 degrees in the city and up to 43 in the west. Nights will also be warm with a minimum of 24 and 25 across the state.

Air conditioning sales soars with the heat Credit:Andrew Babington

A spokesman for the Bureau of Meteorology said: "As it stands there will be mid 30 in the city to low 40 degrees in the west with a chance of thunderstorms in the evening, but most particularly in the western parts of the city."

"The hottest day will be on Sunday but it will be expected to cool down in the middle of the week with Tuesday and Wednesday in the low 30s in the west and high 20s in the east. The heat will be creeping back next Thursday."
It was supposed to be a family holiday to discover his homeland of Egypt.

But when a Sydney teenager was detained and tortured after he allegedly ran away to join Islamic militants during the disastrous trip, the holiday led to a mental breakdown, his father claims.

The boy on the street in Bankstown before his arrest. Credit:Channel 7

Nine months after returning to Australia, the boy was one of two youths who was arrested in Bankstown last year, allegedly moments away from an Islamic State-inspired knife attack.

Chilling details of the Bankstown plot can be revealed for the first time following a court hearing in which the boy's father painted a sad picture of his son's descent into radicalisation.
The NSW Greens' supreme decision-making body is being asked to consider the integrity of the ballot which saw Dawn Walker preselected to fill a seat in the upper house, opening the way for a push to overturn the result amid escalating factional tensions.

In December Ms Walker won the ballot to replace retiring upper house member Jan Barham by just 13 votes over Kelly Marks, a former staff member in the office of the late Greens MLC John Kaye.

Dawn Walker won the ballot to replace retiring upper house member Jan Barham in December.

But the returning officers' report, obtained by Fairfax Media, states they "have identified areas of concern which may have bearing on the integrity of the preselection process".

"While it is difficult to raise these issues for the consideration of the State Delegates Council, it is the role of the SDC to consider them as the supreme decision-making body of the Greens NSW in order to make an informed decision about the outcome of the preselection," the report states.
Specialist fire crews have been called to Westmead Hospital in Sydney's west after six men were possibly exposed to "hazardous material".

The men were contaminated at a building site and made their own way to the hospital, where staff contacted emergency services.

In a statement, Westmead Hospital said the men arrived in the emergency department at around 4pm and were receiving treatment.

"All patients are in a stable condition," a spokeswoman said.
Victims of the notorious paedophile priest Brian Joseph Spillane have told of devastating and lifelong effects suffered due to the sexual abuse experienced at a prestigious Catholic country boarding school between the 1970s and 1990s.

Spillane, 73, sat with his back to the public gallery and refused to look at the victims during the harrowing accounts given to the Downing Centre District Court on Friday.

Former priest Brian Spillane outside court in 2008. Credit:Dean Sewell

The former teacher at St Stanislaus' College, Bathurst, in central west NSW, has been found guilty of a string of child sexual abuse charges over a series of trials that have taken place since 2008.

A non-publication order on Spillane's name and the school, known as "Stannies", has been lifted after a jury found him guilty of several charges of buggery, indecent assault and sexual assault late last year.
A 15-year-old girl reported missing from an Upper Mount Gravatt school, has been found safe and well on Saturday morning.

The teenager was reported missing on Friday afternoon and police held concerns for her welfare due to her age and because it was out of character.

Police thanked the media and public for their assistance in finding the missing teen, less than 24 hours after she was last seen.

Police thanked the media and the public for their assistance, as the child was located as a result of feedback received from social media.

The girl was described as Caucasian with a slim build, about 165 centimetres tall with dark-brown hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a maroon school uniform.
Asian tourists have spearheaded double-digit growth in international visitations to Queensland, with a 13 per cent increase in the year to September 2016, leading Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to urge Queenslanders to learn Chinese.

Of the 2.55 million international visitors to Queensland, 485,000 were from China - an increase of 33.5 per cent in a year - making it the state's largest international source market.

There was a 13 per cent increase in Queensland's international arrivals in the year to September 2017. Credit:Jorge Branco

Tourism and Events Queensland data showed Chinese expenditure in Queensland grew 24.1 per cent to $1.1 billion in the year ending September 2016.

Ms Palaszczuk said Queensland needed to be better equipped to welcome Chinese visitors.
A Queensland man has been sentenced to four years behind bars after setting up fake adult website profiles of his former partner, who was left "living in fear" as dozens of random men turned up to her house expecting sex.

In some cases, the profiles directed men to rape, gang rape, or torture the woman, whose address and phone number were also published online.

Her face was superimposed onto naked women and she was described as an "extreme no limit slave pig" with "no rights whatsoever" and left afraid to leave the house for fear of being raped.

Ryan Kotynski, 42, pleaded guilty to stalking Robyn Night, misusing her identity and possessing child exploitation material, which was discovered when police searched his home in relation to the stalking.
Microsoft is asking US officials to grant exceptions for law-abiding, visa-holding workers and students from President Donald Trump's immigration order, channelling the outrage expressed by many in the technology industry with a proposed solution.

Such individuals are low-risk  having already undergone a rigorous vetting process  and face immediate hardship as a result of last week's order, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a letter to the secretaries of State and Homeland Security. Smith said he believes the two officials are empowered to take the necessary steps to allow certain people entry into the country. The exemptions sought would cover workers with visas sponsored by US-based companies and students with ones obtained via a US-based school.

Microsoft is proposing a change to the president's recent executive order Credit:Bloomberg

"We believe such an exception under the existing framework of the Executive Order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the Executive Order's security-related objectives," Smith wrote in the letter and a related blog post.

The US technology industry responded immediately and with outrage to last week's action from the new president, which set a 90-day ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as well as a 120-day halt on all refugees.
Victorian jet-skiers may be subjected to tougher testing before they get in the water, amidst growing concerns about the actions of rogue riders.

Last year, Ivan Maqi was sentenced for five years for killing a father after hooning in a swimmers-only zone off Port Melbourne.

A jet-skier at Port Melbourne beach gets a bit close to a swimmer. Credit:Leigh Henningham

In 2012, the then 21-year-old had stuck Robert Brewster on the first day he had taken a jet-ski out.

Last month, a 16-year-old was arrested after crashing his jet-ski into a boat at Portarlington.
How do you know if your child is simply being naughty or has behavioural issues?

Many parents of prep children "don't understand what is normal", according to experts.

Parents often read too much into normal childhood behaviour. Credit:Upyanose

This is reflected in Education Department survey results, which show that one in five Victorian parents are concerned about their son's behaviour when they start school

One in ten parents said they were concerned about their daughter's behaviour.
Perth Zoo has celebrated the birth of another Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo.

Haroli was the size of a jellybean back in July 2016, but is now starting to become noticeable - he follows the arrival of Mian who was the first Tree Kangaroo to be born at the Zoo in 36 years.

"Haroli and Mian are half-brothers, both fathered by 'Huli who came to Perth Zoo from Queensland in 2015 after being identified as the best genetic match for the breeding program," said fauna keeper Kerry Pickles.

"Mother Doba is a first time mum and is very cautious with her joey who has been keeping his head out of the pouch more frequently."
Ankara: German Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed the importance of freedom of opinion in talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, during a visit meant to help improve frayed ties between the two NATO allies.

In her first trip to Ankara since a failed military coup in Turkey last year, Dr Merkel said she had agreed with Mr Erdogan on the need for closer cooperation in the fight against terrorism, including against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, left, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, Turkey, on Thursday. Credit:AP

Germany and Turkey have been at odds over Ankara's crackdown on dissidents since the abortive July 15 coup, as well as its allegations - rejected by Berlin - that Germany is harbouring Kurdish and far-left militants.

"With the [attempted] putsch, we saw how the Turkish people stood up for democracy and for the rules of democracy," Dr Merkel told a news conference on Thursday, when asked about concern over proposed constitutional changes that would strengthen Mr Erdogan's powers.
As the dust settles from the now-infamous phone call between Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull, the world's media is beginning to focus on the issue that caused their spat.

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to call a refugee deal with Australia a "dumb deal" and declare he would "study it".

US President Donald Trump has called a deal between Australia and the Obama administration "dumb". Credit:Getty Images

"Do you believe it?" he wrote. "The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia."

Since then, media organisations in the United States, the UK and New Zealand have put the deal  and the 1200 people it concerns  under the microscope.
Delhi: Ansuya Deshmukh recently realised her dream  to write her name. The name she has had her entire life but could not write because she never went to school. At 90, she's relieved she has managed it.

"All my life I have been illiterate. It's like being only half human. But what could I do? My parents were too poor to send me to school. Now I can die knowing I can write my name,' she said.

Older women attend school in Phangane, a village in the Indian state of Maharashtra. The school aims to empower the elderly women and break taboos around widowhood. Credit:Allison Joyce/Newslions

Deshmukh, a widow, has lived in Phangane, a village in India's Maharashtra state, ever since she was married.

Her two sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren live with her. It's her youngest granddaughter who escorts her to school every morning.
Donald Trump greets attendees during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday. Credit:Getty Images "It clearly has ramped up the threat level," said Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary near Charlotte, North Carolina, said the political environment created the perfect storm to repeal the amendment: Trump is in the White House, Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and there are 10 incumbent Senate Democrats who'll seek re-election in 2018 in states that Trump won last November. President Trump, third from left, prays with members of his family, his inner circle and Father Paul Scalia, son of late Judge Antonin Scalia after the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, fifth from right, to the Supreme Court. Credit:Twitter/@POTUS "You have a significant number of Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2018 in states that Mr Trump carried with significant margins," said Land, a member of Trump's 25-person Evangelical Faith Advisory Board.

"My guess is their constituencies ... want the Johnson Amendment killed. Of course, when they're up for re-election, that has a way of sharpening their attention." Jordan's King Abdullah, left, talks with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during the National Prayer Breakfast, on Thursday. Credit:AP Trump has a big hurdle. He'll need 60 Senate votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrats control 48 of the Senate's 52 seats, and 41 votes are needed to cut off debate. And Republicans have bigger priorities. "I think it's too early to tell what gets repealed, what doesn't get repealed," said Republican Mark Meadows, head of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. "I think right now, most of the focus is on tax reform than the subtleties of some of the other issues. So I would say the probability is not high only because there are different priorities right now. But that's not to say it's nonexistent." Rutgers University students and supporters gather for Muslim Prayers during a rally to express discontent with President Donald Trump's executive order. Credit:AP

Then there are Senate Democrats, few of whom are expected to back the measure. Americans have mixed views about houses of worship delving into politics. A 2014 Pew Research poll found that almost 60 per cent of Republicans think churches should be able to express their political views, while 42 per cent of Democrats agreed. However, only 38 per cent of Republicans and 28 per cent of Democrats thought that houses of worship should endorse political candidates. A 2016 Pew poll of Americans who attended religious services found that 14 per cent had heard clergy speak for or against one of the presidential candidates. Nearly 1 in 10 churchgoing Americans - 9 per cent - said they had heard clergy speak out in favour of Democrat Hillary Clinton, while 1 per cent said they had heard clergy speak favourably of Trump.

Religious Freedom Trump's move to repeal the amendment comes at the same time as he is sending conflicting signals about religious freedom in the US. After denying his immigration travel ban from seven mostly Muslim countries was a "Muslim ban", Trump justified the ban as needed to prevent a "beachhead of intolerance" from spreading in the United States. In the presence of Jordan's King Abdullah II, a Muslim and a descendant of the prophet Muhammad, Trump said "our nation has the most generous immigration system in the world. There are those who would exploit that generosity to undermine the values that we hold so dear. "There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle - not right."

Trump said his administration's new system would ensure that people entering the US embrace American values, including religious liberty. New presidential order? The Trump administration is said to be considering a proposed executive order, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, that would provide individuals and organisations wide latitude in denying services, employment and other benefits on the basis of their religious beliefs White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Thursday, the White House was considering how to allow Americans to opt out of complying with federal policies and regulations on the grounds of religion, a move that critics said could open the door to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender or gender identity. "There's clearly a lot of evidence in the last couple of years of the government coming in with regulations and policies that have, frankly, denied people the ability to live according to their faith," Spicer said during his daily briefing.

"People should be able to practise their religion, express their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. And I think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way, in the name of political correctness." In the event that the order is actually issued, multiple groups are already preparing to challenge it on the grounds that it effectively sanctions discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, women and minorities. Lambda Legal chief executive Rachel Tiven said in an interview that it amounts to "an invitation to theocracy. It is the privileging of some religions over others, and an invitation by members of those religions to flout the law." While the draft document does not mention Christianity by name, it specifically outlines views held by conservative Christians - including opposition to abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the idea that a person's gender can differ from their anatomy- as beliefs deserving protection. The measure prohibits the Treasury Department from penalising those who believe, act or decline to act "in accordance with the belief that marriage is or should be recognised as the union of one man and one woman, sexual relations are properly reserved for such a marriage, male and female and their equivalents refer to an individual's immutable biological sex and as objectively determined by anatomy, physiology, or genetics at or before birth, and that human life begins at conception".
Donald Trump speaking to Malcolm Turnbull n the Oval Office of the White House. Credit:AP Ironically, the Post's report on Trump dissing Turnbull came during what had the appearance of a respite from the wall-to-wall protests and executive-order madness of the new President's first days in office  Trump didn't care, but Turnbull could reasonably have expected that with no leaks in the intervening days, the ugly detail of his unpleasant exchange with Australia's most important ally would stay under wraps; and in naming his pick to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court, Trump's choice of the youthful originalist Neil Gorsuch was well within the bounds of Republican expectations. But when Trump anointed Gorsuch at a live-televised ceremony under grand chandeliers in the East Room at the White House, as much as all eyes were on the nominee, many also wondered about the rumpled figure standing off to the left, an enigmatic grin creasing his ruddy complexion. Donald Trump with Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon in the Oval Office during the call to Malcolm Turnbull. Credit:AP This was Bannon, well known to Americans since his appointment as Trump's campaign chief last year and, since winning the election, his appointment as Trump's chief strategist. But it was not until this week that they understood the enormity of the power amassed by this brash, bumptious newcomer to public service. In some quarters, he's already referred to as President Bannon.

As Team Trump trooped into the White House, different power bases were ticked off by analysts  Bannon and his policy adviser sidekick Stephen Miller were the outsiders, some would say the bomb throwers; and Vice-President Mike Pence and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus were the GOP establishment guys, who many in the party believed had used the transition process to outmanoeuvre Bannon by stacking the White House with their hand-picked establishment loyalists. Steve Bannon. Credit:Bloomberg The underlying belief was that Trump didn't have the bottle  but Bannon is Trump's bottle. Between those two was the Trump family beachhead  the President's son-in-law, trusted confidant and counsellor Jared Kushner; and floating between these three powerbases on an issue-by-issue basis, was Kellyanne Conway, a key campaign figure who Trump has also appointed as a White House counsellor. None expected the shakedown to be as quick as it was. But amidst the chaos generated by the executive order by which Trump shuttered the global US refugee program for four months, and indefinitely in the case of those from Syria, and put a bar on arrivals from seven majority-Muslim countries, Trump slipped another executive order into the mix  he was appointing Bannon to the National Security Council  on which, more in a minute.

Wrecking ball. Illustration: Richard Giliberto. All this - the messages from Trump, the rate at which he threw them out and the extent to which Americans were seeing the unvarnished, unrestrained Trump - is attributed to Bannon's brilliance. In declaring Bannon responsible for making "Trump the disrupter" the accent for these vivid first days in office, Time magazine quoted a veteran Republican who said: "It's already over, and Bannon won." And this from BuzzFeed, in the crazy first days of Trump's migration crackdown: "A weekend of chaos and conflict has produced one piece of clarity: Steve Bannon is the central force shaping Donald Trump's presidency." Bannon seemed to concur with Time's assessments that he was the one who kept the doctrine pure, he was the true believer who was in it not for money or position, but to change history. "What we are witnessing now is the birth of a new political order," Bannon said in an email to The Washington Post.

And that's the thing. For much of the campaign and even into the transition period, a lot of what Trump had promised was dismissed as campaign theatrics  more hot air from the New York blowhard. The underlying belief was that Trump didn't have the bottle  but Bannon is Trump's bottle. Historically, an army of advisers swarms around a new president, telling him what he can't do; but Bannon marches into the Oval Office each day, telling Trump what he can do. And he does it  sometimes secretly, like much of the groundwork on the migration crackdown. Increasingly his decisions are seen to be in line with Bannon's instinctive gut feeling  which insiders say is much like Trump's. It's not surprising that Bannon could elbow Priebus aside. But amid speculation that Washington politics is proving to be more of a challenge than they had expected, some wide-eyed reporters are asking what happened to Kushner and his wife  Trump's daughter, Ivanka. Kushner is rated as a steadying, mollifying influence on Trump. An explanation being offered for some of the wilder rides by the administration  usually on Fridays  is that Kushner absents himself from the White House to observe the Sabbath rituals of his Jewish faith. But some suspect that he is being undermined and is less able to haul Trump back from Bannon's pyrotechnic sphere of influence.

Kushner's predictions in meetings with the business community that Trump would be "rational" when it came to his dealing with Muslims and building a border wall didn't hold up  and usually mild-mannered, the son-in-law reportedly was enraged by the collapse of a deal on which he had laboured to ensure that a meeting between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto would proceed. "Kushner was f---ing furious," according to a source quoted by Vanity Fair magazine. "I'd never once heard him say he was angry throughout the entire campaign, but he was furious." In the main, Trump's commitments have been to those who he calls "the forgotten people". Uniting the political tribes of the US is not at the top of his list and he doesn't dwell on healing divisions  quite the contrary, in fact. Miller, the policy chief, shares Bannon's penchant for disruption, explaining to CBS News: "Anytime you do anything hugely successful that challenges a failed orthodoxy, you're going to see protests. In fact, if nobody is disagreeing with what you're doing, then you're probably not doing anything that really matters in the scheme of things." Bannon and Miller reportedly were the authors of Trump's "American carnage" inauguration speech, and the duo are presumed to be the authors of most of Trump's executive orders. Similarly Bannon is said to have influenced Trump's decision to have a portrait of Andrew Jackson, the so-called angry president, near his desk.

For Bannon, the NSC appointment was pure political gold  Americans and the world can only guess at what it might mean for them. Already, even before Trump's nominated secretary of state, former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson, had been approved by the Senate, the President has, with the aid of Bannon and Michael Flynn, their worrisome national security adviser, signalled what The Washington Post describes as the abandonment of traditional diplomacy in favour of concentrated decision-making by these few aides, infusing a combative, iconoclastic foreign policy with their "America First" ethos. Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, used her first visit to UN headquarters in New York to announce that Washington would be on the watch for those who "don't have our back" and she paused, before adding: "We're taking names." As Trump hectors China and Iran, the worry for some observers is that even as Tillerson settles behind his desk at the State Department, Trump and his gang will have so articulated a world view and a belief in how it should be managed that Tillerson will have to fight to be heard. Trump's reorganisation of the Security Council to accommodate Bannon is staggering  not only has he elevated a political adviser to a seat on the NSC principals committee, a Cabinet-level forum that tries to deal in fact; he has made Bannon's rise all the more powerful by downgrading the NSC standing of the heads of the military and intelligence.

Bannon, a former US Navy officer and admiral's aide, Goldman Sachs investment banker, Hollywood producer and Breitbart flame-thrower, is now on par with the secretaries of defence and state. "The last place you want to put somebody who worries about politics is in a room where they're talking about national security," Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, defence secretary and CIA director in two Democratic administrations told The New York Times. "I've never seen that happen, and it shouldn't happen. It's not like he has broad experience in foreign policy and national security issues. He doesn't. His primary role is to control or guide the President's conscience based on his campaign promises. That's not what the National Security Council is supposed to be about." And if, as a Democratic appointee, Panetta sounds partisan, George W. Bush's last chief of staff, Josh Bolten, seemingly agreed. Having barred Karl Rove, Bush's political adviser, from NSC meetings, he argued at a conference last year that a president's decisions made with his NSC advisers "involve life and death for the people in uniform" and should "not be tainted by any political decisions". Trump reportedly respects Bannon because being independently wealthy, he doesn't need the job, and for his pleasure in blowing things up  he is said to have told a fellow guest at a party that he was like Lenin, sharing the Russian revolutionary's eagerness to "bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today's establishment".

More troubling, given Bannon's NSC appointment, is information shared by his former Hollywood writing partner, Julia Jones, who describes his obsessive interest in wars and warfare. "Steve is a strong militarist, he's in love with war  it's almost poetry to him," she told The Daily Beast last year. "He's studied it down through the ages, from Greece, through Rome  every battle, every war  Never back down, never apologise, never show weakness  He lives in a world where it's always high noon at the OK Corral." But public opinion moves fast when you are having fun. A Public Policy Polling survey released on Thursday shows that 40 per cent of Americans already want to impeach Trump  up from 35 per cent just a week ago. In the meantime, American commentators are running out of words to describe Trump's excesses. This is what The Washington Post's Kathleen Parker is reduced to as she attempts to describe the unfolding early days of Trump: "Every day is a jack-in-the-box  or a dozen  a fresh page from Hieronymus Bosch's sketchpad." Malcolm Turnbull gets the picture. Trump sketched it at Thursday's National Prayer Breakfast: "The world is in trouble, but we're gonna straighten it out, OK? That's what I do  I fix things. We're gonna straighten it out. Believe me."
Willemstad/PHILIPSBURG:--- The management of Insel Air has sent home the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company on Wednesday Albert Kluyver. According to information received from well-placed sources, the Government of Curacao took the decision to have the top heads of Insel Air sent home after they pumped NAF 33M into the company that has gone belly up.

The Curacao government also decided to appoint Gilles Filiatreault a former executive of BWIA who was discharged from that company due to improper behavior with a flight attendant. Filiatreault is no stranger to the airline industry as he also worked for LIAT. Besides that, the Canadian businessman was also involved in a huge corruption scandal in 2007. Beneath this article, the link to Gilles Filiatreault housing project that led to an investigation can be viewed.

In the meantime, all the MD -80 from Insel Aruba and Curacao are still grounded, while the Fokker are in operation. So far the MD-80s are not airworthy and as such may not be released anytime soon. Insel Aruba has been using on one Fokker 70 while Insel Curacao has three Fokker -50 in operation.

Click here to read about the Quebec scandal involving Gilles Filiatreault
From DigiKidz to DigiTeenz; passing on the torch

PHILIPSBURG:---At the start of 2014 Foresee Foundation launched DigKidz@St. Maarten, a comprehensive ICT project aimed at providing students, teachers and management with the infrastructure, tools and training to make learning and teaching more engaging and productive in a technology driven world. After the successful launch of DigiKidz Foresee Foundation, in collaboration with Milton Peters College and St. Maarten Academy are embarking on a new project called DigiTeenz. The DigiTeenz program for secondary schools comes in as a logical successor to the previous DigiKidz, granting students access to innovative 21st-century education throughout all subject areas.

The two largest secondary schools on St. Maarten are very excited about this project which will have its official kick-off in the upcoming weeks.

Ms. Tallulah Baly, Principal at St. Maarten Academy, Academic section, conveyed her sentiments that the students from the DigiKidz schools, who are our feeder schools, solidify our need to become a DigiTeenz school, integrating Technology in the schools curriculum and daily school operations. Furthermore, the Academy recognizes their responsibility to cultivate lifelong learners and ensure that their students become equipped with 21st-century tools. Additionally, as a CXC (Caribbean Examination Council) school, E-Testing has become a reality as of January 2017, which accelerates our the schools preparation to accommodate on-line testing and further upgrades in technology integration.

Mr. de Visser, General Director of MPC and Sundial has observed the backlog that not only his schools but many schools in the Caribbean encounter. He sees technology as a necessary tool in education and not even as an innovation, as we first have to close the digital gap and catch up with worldwide technology developments. According to Mr. de Visser, ICT is not making the students smarter, but it gives them the tools to be successful in the world of today allowing opportunities for personalized learning.

For the age group of 12 to 18, more than anyone else, the Virtual World is Unstoppable and Technology is an integral part of teenagers personal lives, their future studies and careers. Jose Sommers, President of Foresee Foundation reiterates that Our students have been crying for the past 20 years about the lack of technology in our education system!. With the excellent opportunity of private funding by Windsong Foundation, a Caribbean based philanthropic charity foundation geared towards educational funding for children under the age of 18 years,

the two schools will become prepared to close that gap and meet the needs for over 1,500 students.

The Foresee Foundation (4C-Foundation) was established in 2013 with vision to bring 21st century learning to St. Maarten classrooms. It has since launched a number of programs including DigiKidz at three schools, the MediaLab program at the Philipsburg Jubilee Library and the Caribbean Technology in Education Conference and EXPO (CTEC). The foundation in a joint partnership venture with St. Maarten Academy and Milton Peters College is now getting ready to move on to the next program and they will start soliciting for additional local funding, looking forward to assistance from the local community, its businesses and other organizations.

~If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow.~

Text with attached picture:

Passing on the torch from DigiKidz to DigiTeenz
PHILIPSBURG:---The Ministry of VROMI would hereby like to inform the public and the residents of St. Peters that works will commence at the Prins Willem Alexander School in St. Peters on Friday, February 3rd, 2017. The works, which is phase 1 of the total construction of the school, consist of three stages, namely: 1) asbestos removal, 2) demolition and 3) construction.

The works will be carried out by the General Contractor Designers Choice N.V. in collaboration with The Asbestos Specialist BV from Curacao and will be supervised by Independent Consulting Engineers supported with Engineering staff from Royal Haskoning-DHV from the Netherlands.

In preparation of stage 1 of the works, on Friday, February 3rd, 2017, the school will be barred off and no longer accessible for the public. This also includes the pathway adjacent to the school, which connects the Apricot Road with Cupper Drive. The closure of the pathway will last until Friday, February 10th, 2017. This will allow a safe distance of 5 meters, which is required while the asbestos-containing material is removed.

After completion of stage 1, stage 2 will commence with thereafter the transition to stage 3. The execution of the works will commence Thursday morning at 7:30 am. Completion of phase 1 is expected by Mid-August 2017. During the execution of the works, the Ministry is kindly requesting the cooperation of the residents of St. Peters and surroundings.

Further information about the Project Construction of the New Prins Willem Alexander School can be obtained at Ministry of VROMI; Department of New Projects Development and Planning, tel. 542-4289, Project Manager, Ms. Rena Richardson, email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and/or Department Head New Projects Development and Planning, ing. Kurt A. Ruan, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Providing more space for growth  PRIMUS DELPHI GROUP is moving

Posted by Publisher Hardware

PRIMUS DELPHI GROUP GmbH will be moving into the recently completed office premises in Bergfeldstr. 9 in Holzkirchen, near Munich, on February 17, 2017  just a few minutes drive from the old site. The relocation to more modern and larger premises reflects the continuing success story of the Oracle Platinum Partner and the associated continuous personnel and economic growth.

After more than 10 years in our offices in Warngau, it simply got too tight for us. The number of employees is constantly growing due to the expansion of our market position, especially in the areas of Oracle ERP Systems and Oracle Cloud Services. The demands on infrastructure and equipment have increased, meaning that we have had to look for a new suitable offices premises, explains PDG Managing Director Michael Binder.

In addition to the central location and the good connections, the office building impresses with its attractive appearance and its high-quality technical equipment. The best working conditions are thus offered to employees of PDG in the south, thereby further expanding the companys service portfolio for Oracle products and technologies.

Those responsible for selecting the new premises also had an eye on the growth prospects. Currently, PDG has several vacancies for Oracle software developers and application consultants to fill. By selecting the location in Holzkirchen, we have laid the groundwork for further growth both in the medium and long term.
All for One Steeb AG Figures for 1st Quarter of Financial Year 2016/17 Show Further Strong Gains in Sales and Earnings

Posted by Publisher Internet

 Sales: EUR 79.4 million (+12% over prior year)

 EBIT: EUR 6.4 million (+10% over prior year)

 Group earnings: EUR 4.4 million (+20% over prior year)

 Earnings per share: 88 euro cents (+21% over prior year)

 Equity ratio of 41% (30 Sep 2016: 39%)

 SAP S/4HANA and cloud services as the business of the future

 2016/17 forecast confirmed

All for One Steeb AG, the Number 1 in the German-speaking SAP market, today published its unaudited results for the period 1 October to 31 December 2016.

All for One Steeb improved sales 12% from EUR 70.8 million to 79.4 million in this 1st quarter of the financial year 2016/17. Sales revenues from outsourcing and cloud services (including software maintenance) increased 10% to EUR 31.4 million (Oct  Dec 2015: EUR 28.6 million) and account for a 40% share of total sales (Oct  Dec 2015: 40%). Three-month revenues from the sale of software licenses posted a major gain of 28% to EUR 17.0 million (Oct  Dec 2015: EUR 13.3 million). The continued high rate of utilisation within the consultancy business resulted in consulting revenues increasing to EUR 29.3 million (Oct  Dec 2015: EUR 26.9 million) for a gain of 9%.

The EBIT improved 10% to EUR 6.4 million (Oct  Dec 2015: EUR 5.8 million) for an EBIT margin of 8.0% (Oct  Dec 2015: 8.1%). The EBT increased to EUR 6.2 million (Oct  Dec 2015: EUR 5.2 million) for a gain of 19%. Earnings after tax increased 20% to EUR 4.4 million (Oct  Dec 2015: EUR 3.7 million). The equity ratio as at 31 December 2016 was 41% (30 September 2016: 39%). The number of employees rose to 1,355 as at 31 December 2016 (31 December 2015: 1,229).

Digital transformation is progressively reshaping the world of established key industries as well, and everyone could feel how truly upbeat the atmosphere is during the All for One Steeb Mittelstandsforum that was held in November 2016. Our SAP S/4HANA and cloud services digital business of the future is moving ahead and we expect it to be a source of significant growth opportunities for many years to come. We remain committed to our forecast for the financial year 2016/17 that projects revenues to range from EUR 280 million to 290 million and an EBIT of between EUR 18.5 million and 20.5 million, remarked All for One Steeb CEO Lars Landwehrkamp. Economic setbacks continue to pose the greatest risk.

All for One Steeb AG will be publishing its complete quarterly statement for the 3-month period as scheduled on 9 February 2017.

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All for One Steeb AG (ISIN DE0005110001) is the number 1 in the German-speaking SAP market and a leading IT service provider. The full-service providers portfolio comprises end-to-end services and solutions across the entire IT value chain, from management and technology consulting, SAP industry solutions and cloud applications up to highly scalable hosting and cloud services out of its German datacenters, where All for One Steeb is orchestrating highly available IT operations for all business-related IT systems  including SAP solutions as well as Microsoft Exchange or Sharepoint. This is why market observers also rank All for One Steeb amongst the leading IT service providers for Outsourcing and Cloud Services, SAP HANA, Business Analytics and Performance Management, Human Capital Management, Application Management Services or Communications and Collaboration. As an SAP Platinum Partner, All for One Steeb is a reliable general contractor and serves with more than 1,300 employees over 2,000 clients in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, mainly among the manufacturing and consumer goods industry. As a founding member of United VARs, the largest global network of leading SAP partners, All for One Steeb guarantees a comprehensive consulting and service portfolio as well as the best local support in some 80 countries. In the financial year 2015/16, All for One Steeb AG achieved a turnover of EUR 266 million. The company is listed in the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

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FOX LAKE  It never hurts to have a former sheriff living in your town.

Fox Lake Police Chief Jim Rohr shared his appreciation for former Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls after a traffic arrest went awry.

Rohr shared on the Fox Lake Police Department Facebook page Wednesday night that he responded to a traffic crash in downtown Fox Lake:

While investigating the crash, I was forced to take an individual into custody, Rohr wrote on Facebook. Normally, this is not a problem. Today, however, it became one as the arrest became physical with an adult male weighing over 300 pounds. I would like to publicly thank and commend Fox Lake resident Todd Nehls for recognizing that I was in trouble and coming to assist me in gaining control of this individual and helping to lessen injuries to all involved.

Nehls, who is the emergency police services coordinator at the Wisconsin Emergency Management Association, was driving back into Fox Lake, where he resides with his family.

Nehls served Dodge County for 36 years, with 10 of those years serving as the Dodge County Sheriff.

As he was driving, Nehls said he was listening to radio traffic and heard about the accident in Fox Lake.

Rather than turning in my driveway, I thought Id see how they were doing at the accident scene, Nehls said.

When he came upon the scene, Nehls noticed Rohr was in trouble and pulled over while activating his red lights before going over to assist the police chief.

I would hope any citizen would do what I did, Nehls said.

Todd is a fine example of many of the people in Fox Lake that I know would act in the same manner under these circumstances, Rohr said in his Facebook post.
The Marvel Comics universe is vast and seemingly ever-expanding.

Home to such familiar faces as Spider-Man, the X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, Marvel is also the source for Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Deadpool and scores of other superhumans, genetic mutants, and otherwise altered beings.

There are, of course, humans helping keep this universe in order (somewhat), such as the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division tasked with tracking the activities of such altered beings and ensuring they dont mess with humanity too much.

Legion, premiering Wednesday on FX, is yet another thread in the rich tapestry of Marvel influence on the small screen. (In addition to ABCs Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Netflix carries Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Daredevil, and has scheduled Iron Fist, The Defenders and The Punisher for release later this year; ABC has plans for The Inhumans to premiere this fall.)

The Legion series is the story of David Haller (Dan Stevens), a schizophrenic institutionalized and comfortable with the rhythms of his structured environment. His companion and fellow patient, Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), a chatty long-time addict who exudes optimism, is the yin to his silent yang.

Into their relatively calm and predictable world comes a wrench in the form of Syd (Rachel Keller), to whom David is drawn inexplicably, and their subsequent pairing sets his world out of orbit. He starts to question whether schizophrenia and mental illness has been the cause of the voices and visions that have plagued him over the years; could his behavior be the result of mutation, in the manner of Wolverine, Mystic, Beast and the rest of the X-Men?

Created by Noah Hawley, the man behind Fargo, Legion is inventive and odd, designed to leave viewers not quite sure whether what theyre seeing is real or hallucinatory. Stevens, whose previous television role as Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey is eons away from this latest project, is superbly twitchy and confused as David. And Plaza, familiar as dark and sardonic intern April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation, also sparkles in a vastly different characterization. Jean Smart, a veteran of Fargo as a hard-nosed crime-family boss, plays a therapist whose goal is to help David see who he really is and what he might be capable of.

Legion premieres at 9 p.m. Wednesday on FX.

Another day, another crisis: When 24: Legacy premieres Sunday after the Super Bowl, the only signs of its predecessor 24 might be the Counter Terrorism Unit at its center, and the ticking clock, counting down the time left to eradicate the latest terrorist threat. Gone are Jack Bauer and his partner in crime-stopping, Chloe. Leading the charge this time around is Eric Carter (Corey Hawkins), an Army Ranger who believes the identities of his team have been compromised. Helping him out is Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto), a former CTU director who led the raid of Carters team to kill a known terrorist. The clock starts now as the pair prepare to thwart a terrorist plot on U.S. soil. 24: Legacy premieres Sunday at 9:30 p.m. (or thereabouts, depending on the length of the Super Bowl) and continues at 7 p.m. Monday on Ch. 47.

What else is new? APB, starring Justin Kirk as a tech billionaire who takes over a Chicago precinct after his best friend is murdered, premieres at 8 p.m. Monday on Ch. 47. And Bravo continues its foray into scripted fare with Imposters, a drama about a con artist and the trail of destruction she leaves in her wake that might be catching up with her, premiering at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
Weather update: Notre Dame places tailgate restrictions as result of NWS wind advisory

As the result of a wind advisory issued by the NWS for the South Bend area Saturday, Notre Dame has placed restrictions on tailgate activities.
A man shot in the parking lot of a South Side shopping center Thursday evening suffered non-life-threatening injuries, Madison police said.

Lt. Kelly Donahue said the victim was conscious and breathing when police arrived on the scene near the Steinhafels store on the Beltline frontage road around 7:30 p.m. He was taken to a local hospital.

Donahue said police were sent to the parking lot at 2164 W. Beltline for a report of people shooting at each other. No other injuries or property damage were reported.

Investigators and detectives were at the scene.

No information on a suspect was available.
The three candidates for Seat 6 on the Madison School Board tout diverse skills and experiences each says separates her from the others.

Cris Carusi brings a decade of parent advocacy and a work history that includes leading a nonprofit organization and teaching English to children in Nepal while in the Peace Corps.

Kate Toews has managed large staffs and budgets, led a startup company as CEO and worked with students and staff in a large urban school district.

Ali Muldrow, a Madison East High School graduate, trains student leaders and works to promote educational inclusiveness and access.

The top two vote-getters in the Feb. 21 primary will face each other in the general election April 4. Incumbent Michael Flores is not running and has endorsed Muldrow.

In the trenches

All three candidates have school-aged children. Carusi has the longest tenure as a district parent  her children are in high school and middle school.

Shes been attending several School Board meetings every year for about a decade, she said, and shes been involved in parent-teacher organizations. She helped start the advocacy group School Community Alliance for Public Education.

In the wake of the presidential election, a lot of people are realizing they need to work for change at the local level, Carusi said. Ive done that for 10 years. Ive been down in the trenches.

Through that work, she has come to place a high value on quality teachers and says they need small class sizes and access to more wrap-around student services  psychologists, social workers, support staff  to close achievement gaps. As a board member, she would focus resources on the classroom, including retaining and supporting great teachers, she said.

Ive seen a lot of plans and curricula come and go over the years, but the one constant has been the relationships that develop among parents, teachers and students, she said. We all need to pull together to defend our public schools and confront inequalities.

Get great people

Toews, too, stresses the critical importance of hiring high-quality classroom teachers and then supporting them. Her work in both business and public education has taught her this, she said.

I do believe it comes back to talent, said Toews (pronounced Taves). In my experience, the best way to be successful is to get great people and keep them. We have a hard time retaining teachers and attracting teachers of color. I want to help find ways to make this district the best place to work.

Early in her career, she trained students and staff in leadership and civic engagement at public schools around the country. She then became a staff member at a public high school in Boston, running a peer mediation program that sought to resolve conflicts and keep students in the classroom.

She would couple her strong passion for public schools with a skill set that includes an MBA degree, she said.

We are lucky in Madison to have many resources, but we still need to make good choices to prioritize those resources, she said. I have experience managing large staffs and budgets, and those are skills our schools need from the board.

She has children ages 1, 4 and 7. The oldest attends a district elementary school.

Diversity important

Muldrow is director of youth programming and inclusion for GSAFE, a Madison nonprofit organization with a statewide mission of creating just schools for LGBTQ+ youth. The letters are an acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning and others.

One part of her work includes facilitating a course for young people on the foundations of leadership. She believes LGBT youth of color in particular need to see themselves as potential community leaders, and she would like to be a role model for them. She is black and identifies as bisexual.

Diversity on our School Board is important, she said. Its one thing to say, Ive worked toward ending racial disparities. Its another to say, I know exactly what its like to be poor and black and go to school in Madison. Im that person. I know what its like to have teachers treat you really badly at school or call you stupid in front of your class or label you learning disabled or all of the above. I think valuing my experiences and my insight is part of valuing students of color.

Her children, ages 2 and 7, attend Isthmus Montessori Academy (IMA), a private school that board members voted Monday to turn into a public charter school starting in the 2018-19 school year.

Differing approaches

Muldrow was among parents who urged the board to approve the IMA proposal. Her older daughter has thrived with the Montessori approach after having had a traumatizing experience at a district 4-year-old kindergarten site, Muldrow said. Her daughter had begun crying before going to school and was getting in trouble for things Muldrow and her partner felt were typical kid behaviors.

Muldrow believes charter schools can provide innovation and diverse options. She stressed she would support only instrumentality charter schools, meaning ones that are part of a public school district.

Carusi and Toews are less enthusiastic about charter schools and said they would have voted against the IMA proposal. Carusi said she would give future instrumentality charter school proposals a fair hearing but in general said nurturing innovation in neighborhood schools should be the top priority. She had concerns that the IMA proposal did not ensure equitable enrollment, a solvent budget or enough legally mandated support for students with disabilities.

Toews said the IMA proposal did not meet district standards in key areas, and she felt it did not meaningfully improve district goals to close the achievement gap. In general, she is not in favor of charter schools, she said. But she said shes a realist and that going forward, the district likely will see more charter proposals and needs to maintain a high bar and be strategic in how it evaluates them.

Pathways concerns

On Personalized Pathways, another big district issue, all three said they see benefits but have reservations. The initiative, to begin being phased in this fall, intends to help high school students explore college and career options.

I think there is good in Pathways and that a lot of kids will benefit, Carusi said. But I also think it is a clear example of a top-down initiative that needed more community and teacher input.

Carusi would need to see a meaningful evaluation of its success before agreeing to expand it to all students, she said. Toews said the board needs to respect the fact a lot of parents and students are really excited about it, though she has heard others say they are concerned. The first pathway this fall will be an opportunity to start collecting data and to keep listening to parent and student feedback, she said.

Its very important that we evaluate what works and what doesnt and continue to improve it in dialogue with the community, Toews said.

Muldrow said for some kids, Pathways could work really well. But she would insist on flexibility, perhaps through a design-your-own-major component so students never feel locked into a particular path.

As a student, your relationship to the future should be limited only by your imagination, she said.

Two-part report: This is the second of two articles on Madison School Board candidates prior to the Feb. 21 primary. A story Thursday discussed the three Seat 7 candidates.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Mainly cloudy. A few peeks of sunshine possible. High 82F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low 66F. Winds light and variable.
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UW-Madison is at a crucial point as Wisconsin prepares to debate its next state budget, and badly needs new public funding to stay competitive with its peers and reverse a slide in research rankings, Chancellor Rebecca Blank said Thursday.

Blanks speech to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents laid out the case she and UW-Madisons supporters are making to lawmakers as they craft the 2017-19 budget: The UW System and its flagship campus are a key piece of Wisconsins economy, and further cuts jeopardize its standing among top research universities.

After absorbing cuts in five of the last six budgets, early signs indicate the UW System has better prospects this time around. Gov. Scott Walker has said the budget proposal he will announce next week will include new funding for the System tied to how universities perform in certain metrics, on top of funding to make up for an in-state tuition cut he proposed last month.

That makes Blank optimistic, she told the Regents. But she laid the blame for UW-Madisons drop in rankings  including its fall out of the top five in the National Science Foundations survey of research spending  on declining state funding that has led the university to spend less on students and faculty than its competitors.

Im very encouraged by the things that Im hearing from the governor and from legislators in terms of reinvesting in the whole University of Wisconsin System, and Im hopeful that we can all work together to change some of these worrisome trends, Blank said.

Walker has downplayed the National Science Foundation ranking, saying UW-Madison places high in other rankings and remains a research powerhouse.

Blank told the Regents new state funding would go toward hiring faculty members in high-demand fields, pursuing innovative educational technologies and bolstering financial aid with a new program for first-generation college students, Blank said.

The program, which officials announced Thursday, pledges to cover the cost of tuition for one year for first-generation college students from Wisconsin who transfer to UW-Madison from one of several public two-year colleges in the state. UW-Madison would cover two years of tuition for first-generation students who are also eligible for the federal Pell grant.

But Blank said the program  which would cost $1.5 million per year  will depend on UWs budget.

I cant do this if I get budget cuts again this year, Blank said after her presentation. If we get some reinvestment in the university  in whatever form that comes  it will be a very high priority for us to launch this program.

Asked if the proposal would affect his vote on UWs funding, Rep. Dave Murphy, R-Greenville, noted that the initiative was not part of the Systems request for a $42.5 million increase in state support, and said other colleges and universities have funded similar programs through donations.

Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, co-chairman of the Legislatures powerful Joint Finance Committee, said he supports efforts to make college more affordable, but wanted to know more about changes to the rules for transferring between two-year schools and UW-Madison.
The Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder uses several telescopes to survey the sky.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

You know how long it takes to pack the car to go on holidays. But there's a moment when you're all in, everyone has their seatbelt on, you pull out of the drive and you're off.

Our ASKAP (Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder) telescope has just pulled out of the drive, so to speak, at its base in Western Australia at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO), about 315km northeast of Geraldton.

ASKAP is made of 36 identical 12-metre wide dish antennas that all work together, 12 of which are currently in operation. Thirty ASKAP antennas have now been fitted with specialised phased array feeds, the rest will be installed later in 2017.

Until now, we'd been taking data mainly to test how ASKAP performs. Having shown the telescope's technical excellence it's now off on its big trip, starting to make observations for the big science projects it'll be doing for the next five years.

And it's taking lots of data. Its antennas are now churning out 5.2 terabytes of data per second (about 15 percent of the internet's current data rate).

Once out of the telescope, the data is going through a new, almost automatic data-processing system we've developed.

It's like a bread-making machine: put in the data, make some choices, press the button and leave it overnight. In the morning you have a nice batch of freshly made images from the telescope.

Go the WALLABIES

The first project we've been taking data for is one of ASKAP's largest surveys, WALLABY (Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY).

On board the survey are a happy band of 100-plus scientists  affectionately known as the WALLABIES  from many countries, led by one of our astronomers, Barbel Koribalski, and Lister Staveley-Smith of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), University of Western Australia.

They're aiming to detect and measure neutral hydrogen gas in galaxies over three-quarters of the sky. To see the farthest of these galaxies they'll be looking three billion years back into the universe's past, with a redshift of 0.26.

Neutral hydrogen gas in one of the galaxies, IC 5201 in the southern constellation of Grus (The Crane), imaged in early observations for the WALLABY project. (Image credit: Matthew Whiting, Karen Lee-Waddell and Barbel Koribalski (all CSIRO); WALLABY team, Author provided)

Neutral hydrogen  just lonely individual hydrogen atoms floating around  is the basic form of matter in the universe. Galaxies are made up of stars but also dark matter, dust and gas  mostly hydrogen. Some of the hydrogen turns into stars.

Although the universe has been busy making stars for most of its 13.7-billion-year life, there's still a fair bit of neutral hydrogen around. In the nearby (low-redshift) universe, most of it hangs out in galaxies. So mapping the neutral hydrogen is a useful way to map the galaxies, which isn't always easy to do with just starlight.

But as well as mapping where the galaxies are, we want to know how they live their lives, get on with their neighbours, grow and change over time.

When galaxies live together in big groups and clusters they steal gas from each other, a processes called accretion and stripping. Seeing how the hydrogen gas is disturbed or missing tells us what the galaxies have been up to.

We can also use the hydrogen signal to work out a lot of a galaxy's individual characteristics, such as its distance, how much gas it contains, its total mass, and how much dark matter it contains.

This information is often used in combination with characteristics we learn from studying the light of the galaxy's stars.

Oh what big eyes you have ASKAP

ASKAP sees large pieces of sky with a field of view of 30 square degrees. The WALLABY team will observe 1,200 of these fields. Each field contains about 500 galaxies detectable in neutral hydrogen, giving a total of 600,000 galaxies.

One of the first fields targeted by WALLABY, the NGC 7232 galaxy group. (Image credit: Ian Heywood (CSIRO); WALLAY team, Author provided)

This image (above) of the NGC 7232 galaxy group was made with just two nights' worth of data.

ASKAP has now made 150 hours of observations of this field, which has been found to contain 2,300 radio sources (the white dots), almost all of them galaxies.

It has also observed a second field, one containing the Fornax cluster of galaxies, and started on two more fields over the Christmas and New Year period.

Even more will be dug up by targeted searches. Simply detecting all the WALLABY galaxies will take more than two years, and interpreting the data even longer. ASKAP's data will live in a huge archive that astronomers will sift through over many years with the help of supercomputers at the Pawsey Centre in Perth, Western Australia.

ASKAP has nine other big survey projects planned, so this is just the beginning of the journey. It's really a very exciting time for ASKAP and the more than 350 international scientists who'll be working with it.

Who knows where this Big Trip will take them, and what they'll find along the way?

Douglas Bock, Director of Astronomy and Space Science, CSIRO and Antony Schinckel, ASKAP Director, CSIRO

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.
Martian rovers have the incredible advantage of exploring another planet, but the incredible disadvantage of being limited by time.

A typical geology expedition on Earth would have a team doing an overall survey of an area before deciding on a specific area of study. On Mars, however, while scientists do their best ahead of time to study orbital observations of a rover's study area, for the most part, rovers travel from spot to spot (that look interesting from a distance) without the luxury of having a team to survey the area ahead of time.

It should be emphasized that the NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, and the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity have returned an incredible amount of science this way. Also, the general concept of the research area does become clear as the rover drives further. However, when it comes to looking for a specific features such as biosignatures  one of the stated goals of NASA's Mars 2020 rover  it's possible that an extra tour around the site could make searching for the signatures more efficient.

RELATED: NASA Watchdog Warns Mars 2020 Rover Could Miss Its Launch Date

So, geologists recently published a study in the journal Acta Astronautica discussing what could be achieved if the rovers did a survey, or overview, before carrying out focused science operations.

The Opportunity rover has been making tracks and science history on the Red Planet for more than 13 years. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

As a veteran of the NASA rover teams, Aileen Yingst said the overview method has only been done a handful of times, such as when Curiosity explored Pahrump Hills in 2014. The Opportunity rover, which as been exploring Mars since 2004, has also done it once.

"The idea is that we want to get the most bang for our buck," Yingst, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute, told Seeker. "When we are on Mars and we have expensive and very complex, important resources that are doing our geology work, we want to make sure as scientists we are making the best decisions."

The study took place near a unit of sedimentary rock south of Green River, Utah. (Green River is roughly three hours southeast of Salt Lake City.) Two human "rovers" were commanded to do observations of the unit, just following the instructions sent from a simulated mission control.

RELATED: Mars Rover Curiosity Can Now Fire Laser by Itself

They moved ahead a few feet at time, just as a rover would when commanded remotely. One rover did an overview walk first and then returned to do science, while the other went from target to target. In this initial test, what the team found is that the walkabout provides context, and allows the team to pass by sites that initially looked interesting in orbital pictures, but proved not to look so unique up close. For example, a clay signature seen from orbit could just be stuff weathered off the top of rocks, Yingst said.

"That means that you know going in the second time around how important or not a site might be, because you have the whole picture in your head," she said. The research found that when looking at an area where many close sites are candidates for in-depth studies, the walkabout method likely saves time and increases science return.

Yingst has another paper in the works that explores what happens if three competing teams go to the same site  a walkabout team, a target to target team, and a team of geologists surveying the site using traditional geological methods. The results are still being analyzed, but are expected to be released later this year.

WATCH VIDEO: Here's Why We Can't Live Stream From Mars

Originally published on Seeker.
A robotic spacecraft launched in September to return samples from an asteroid will spend about 10 days this month on a side job hunting for asteroids that may be accompanying Earth as it orbits the sun.

So far, scientists know of only one so-called Earth Trojan asteroid, which was discovered in 2010 by NASA's infrared WISE telescope. The 1,000-foot object, known as 2010 TK-7, orbits roughly 60 degrees ahead of Earth.

Osiris-Rex will pick up the hunt on Feb. 9, searching 60 degrees ahead and 60 degrees behind Earth's present position. These regions, known as Lagrange points, are among several locations where the gravitational tug-of-war between Earth and the sun balances out, making for potentially stable orbits for asteroids or other objects. NASA, for example, plans to position the James Webb Space Telescope, its follow-on to Hubble, at a Lagrange point about 1 million miles from Earth.

Jupiter has a large group of Trojans in tow, bodies that scientists say are key to understanding how the solar system formed.

Could similar primordial asteroids be circling Earth?

RELATED: NASA's Bold Asteroid Sampling Mission Launches

"That would be the most fascinating thing we could discover," Osiris-Rex lead scientist Dante Lauretta, with the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory told a NASA science advisory group last month.

Compelling as the science may be, Lauretta authorized the moonlighting job because it provides an excellent dress rehearsal for some key sleuthing Osiris-Rex will do to help ensure its safe arrival at the asteroid Bennu in 2018.

Astronomers don't know if Bennu has any small moons in orbit. Ground-based telescopes can only spot objects larger than about 65 feet.

"That's a substantial object and we'd obviously want to know that it's there and plan our operations accordingly," Lauretta said.

Osiris-Rex is due to put itself into orbit around Bennu for a two-year study and sampling mission.

For target practice, as Osiris-Rex hunts for Earth Trojans it will attempt to locate several known objects in the main asteroid belt.

"It's a great opportunity to exercise the operations system," Lauretta said.

Osiris-Rex's detective gig will run from Feb. 9 through Feb. 20, with two days off due to spacecraft thermal issues.

WATCH VIDEO: Does the Earth Have a Second Moon?

Originally published on Seeker.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, left, attending a Jan. 23 meeting with President Donald Trump, says he is seeking input on ways to amend, but not overturn, an executive order restricting travel by people from several nations.

WASHINGTON  As scientists and others protest a White House executive order restricting immigration from several nations, many in the space industry are not yet taking a stand on the issue.

The executive order, signed by President Donald Trump Jan. 27, blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. It also suspended the entry of refugees into the U.S., regardless of nation of origin, for 120 days.

The order generated protests across the country, particularly at major airports where travelers deemed to be in violation of the order were detained. Organizations also filed legal challenges to the order, leading in some cases to legal injunctions against its implementation. [6 Things to Know About Trump and NASA]

Those protests extended to the scientific community, concerned that the order would restrict the travel of scientists and prevent them from studying or working in the United States. A Jan. 31 letter from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, signed by more than 150 other organizations and universities, called on the president to rescind the executive order.

"The Executive Order will discourage many of the best and brightest international students, scholars, engineers and scientists from studying and working, attending academic and scientific conferences, or seeking to build new businesses in the United States," the letter stated. "Implementation of this policy will compromise the United States' ability to attract international scientific talent and maintain scientific and economic leadership."

Among those organizations signing the letter were the American Astronomical Society, American Geophysical Union and American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. "Closing our borders to people from certain countries and certain ethnic or religious backgrounds recalls some of our darkest days and goes against our national principles," Kevin Marvel, executive officer of the American Astronomical Society, said in a statement accompanying the letter.

International organizations have also weighed in against the ban. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), in a Jan. 30 statement, said it was "profoundly concerned" about the effect the executive order, and possible reactions from other nations, "could have on international collaboration in astronomy and the mobility of scientists."

The IAU organizes a triennial conference, the General Assembly, last held in Hawaii in 2015. The release noted the event attracted 3,000 astronomers and generated up to $20 million in economic benefits for the state. "We want to continue organizing scientific meetings in the United States of America as well as anywhere else in the world," IAU General Secretary Piero Benvenuti said in a statement. "Scientific progress benefits all humankind, and exchange meetings should include scientists from all countries."

Other organizations, though, are taking a wait-and-see approach to the executive order. The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), an international organization of space scientists, is holding its next large conference, the 42nd COSPAR Assembly, in July 2018 in Pasadena, California. For now, those plans are unchanged. [50 Years of Presidential Visions for Space Exploration]

"There is nothing at this point in time that would compromise this event," said Jean-Louis Fellous, executive director of COSPAR, in a Feb. 2 statement to SpaceNews. "COSPAR was founded in the times of the Cold War to overcome political obstacles and encourage international cooperation in space research. This remains one of the COSPAR's goals."

While space science organizations have been largely outspoken against the executive order, many companies and industry organizations are keeping quiet. Few have made a statement either opposing or supporting the order.

"We're not yet certain of the full impacts of the new immigration policy," David Melcher, president and chief executive of the Aerospace Industries Association, said Feb. 2. "We understand there is the potential for our member companies to be affected. It will take some time for those implications to become apparent."

Melcher added he wanted to work with the Trump administration "to find the best balance between our national security requirements and supporting our industry's potential to create more high-skill, high-paying jobs through international trade."

In the space industry, direct implications of the policy may be limited because of export control regulations that often require employees to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. For example, job postings on SpaceX's website routinely include language requiring applicants to be citizens of permanent residents "to conform to U.S. Government space technology export regulations," even for seemingly mundane positions like shipping clerks and dishwashers.

A few industry executives have spoken out against the order. "The best of America is open, courageous and compassionate. That's when we're strongest. The [executive order] should be withdrawn," George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, tweeted Jan. 29, commenting on a statement from Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticizing the executive order.

One of the central figures in the debate about the executive order is Elon Musk, chief executive of SpaceX and a member of the President's Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of executives asked by the administration to provide advice on various issues. Musk requested on Twitter Jan. 29 "specific amendments" to the executive order, saying he would "seek advisory council consensus & present to President."

Musk added, though, that he did not expect the White House to revoke the executive order, as many have demanded. "There is no possibility of retraction, but there is possibility of modification. It's just a non-zero possibility," he wrote.

In a statement Musk posted on Twitter Feb. 2, he said he would discuss the issue at the advisory panel's next meeting Feb. 3. "In tomorrow's meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy," he wrote.

Musk, himself an immigrant from South Africa, appeared to distance himself from the policy itself. "Advisory councils simply provide advice, and attending does not mean that I agree with the actions by the Administration," he wrote. That statement came after another member of the council, Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick, announced Feb. 2 he was resigning from the panel in response to a backlash of criticism directed at the company after the executive order's release.

This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
As Madison-area leaders express defiance and outrage at a White House crackdown on illegal immigration, a Republican state lawmaker recirculated a bill Thursday penalizing so-called sanctuary cities with fines of up to $5,000 a day.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Janel Brandtjen, R-Menomonee Falls, would prohibit counties and municipalities from passing ordinances, resolutions or policies that bar employees from inquiring about immigration status, notifying the federal government about anyone living in the country illegally or assisting with immigration enforcement.

Municipalities that violate the law would be subject to a loss of $500 to $5,000 a day in state funding.

The bill is similar to one that passed the Assembly last year amid a large immigrant rights protest at the Capitol, but didnt come up for a final vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.

One difference is this version would allow citizens to file lawsuits with a court that a municipality is not complying with the law. Under last years bill, only the attorney general, a district attorney or sheriff could have filed a complaint.

In a memo to lawmakers seeking co-sponsors, Brandtjen noted there is no legal definition of a sanctuary city but municipalities would become subject to penalties by passing a resolution or enacting a policy that would block employees from asking about immigration status before providing a service.

Everybody deserves to be in a safe community, Brandtjen said in an interview. All this does is say that the state of Wisconsin needs to uphold federal laws.

President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order reversing many of the immigration enforcement policies from the Obama administration, including one that focused deportation efforts on terrorists, criminals and gang members, rather than undocumented immigrants jailed for minor local offenses.

Trump is encouraging a program to deputize state and local police to enforce federal immigration law.

Elected leaders in Madison, Milwaukee and other cities around the state have said they wont change policies in response to Trumps executive order. Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke has said he plans to participate in Trumps local immigration enforcement program.

Madison is considering a resolution that would prohibit the use of city resources for enforcing federal immigration law and inquiring about immigration status and designate City Council offices as a safe space.

Mayor Paul Soglin, who has said he will veto the resolution if it contains the safe space provision but otherwise supports it, said the city plans to oppose Brandtjens bill.

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, said Brandtjens bill is a way to put the machinery in place for mass deportations and profiling.

She said it doesnt promote safety, because it makes immigrants afraid to contact police to report crimes, and it also infringes on a local governments constitutional right under the 10th Amendment not to enforce federal law.

Voces de la Frontera is planning a general strike for Latinos and immigrants on Feb. 13 with a rally in Milwaukee to protest Trumps executive order, Sheriff Clarkes plans and the state sanctuary cities bill. Neumann-Ortiz credited a similar strike last February, which included a rally at the Capitol, with stopping the previous bill from passing.

We should be thanking them instead of coming up with ways to racially profile and harass, Neumann-Ortiz said. Theyre a critical part of our state economy.

The Senate version of the bill that passed the Assembly last session was sponsored by Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, who hasnt decided whether to co-sponsor the latest version, according to his chief of staff, Mike Mikalsen.

Were still working on a few tweaks, Mikalsen said.

One possible change could be instead of reducing a municipalitys state aid, the bill would make it easier to sue counties that release from jail someone whom immigration officials have asked be detained, but goes out and commits a crime.

There are concerns about penalizing municipalities in which boards or city councils pass resolutions with no binding authority on law enforcement, Mikalsen said.

Mikalsen said the bill was held up by Republicans who raised concerns about the impact on businesses that rely on immigrant labor.

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said he was reviewing the bill but has not indicated its chances of passing this session.

We should be thanking them instead of coming up with ways to racially profile and harass. Theyre a critical part of our state economy. Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera
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Gov. Scott Walker has appointed an Army veteran from Ripon as the new secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs with instructions to look into persistent reports of serious deficiencies in care at the states largest veterans nursing home.

Daniel Zimmerman replaces John Scocos, who resigned effective last month amid a flurry of published reports about inadequate care at the King Veterans home.

Walkers office said in a press release Thursday the governor is directing Mr. Zimmerman to immediately conduct a thorough assessment of the operations at Wisconsins veterans homes.

Last year, Walker and Scocos pointed publicly to the nursing homes high quality-of-care ratings while defending it against newspaper articles on complaints about poor care.

In December it came to light that the federal ratings should have been downgraded but a reporting omission by the state caused an eight-month delay.

Ratings were lowered last year because of serious quality-of-care problems discovered after the February death of a 94-year-old resident and because of additional citations issued after a regularly scheduled inspection.

Federal regulators notified the veterans affairs department in June that it was being fined $76,900 after rejecting the states appeal of the most serious violation. In September, a legislative committee ordered an audit of the veterans homes. In November Walker announced Scocos would resign.

Federal regulators had notified the state on June 1 that it was being fined $76,900 in connection with the most serious citation, but the penalty wasnt made public until December after a request by the Wisconsin State Journal.

Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said the governors top concern is the care of Wisconsins veterans.

The union that represents workers at the home said they would welcome change, but that would mean the department would need to treat front-line staff better to reduce turnover and job vacancies that have been a problem since Walkers Act 10 devalued employees by eliminating most public-sector union rights in 2011.

Overburdened staff have been struggling to provide the best possible care for King residents despite years of short staffing, Rick Badger, executive director of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 32, said in a statement.

Without a fundamental improvement in the way staff are treated, the underlying conditions that make it hard to provide the best possible care will not change, Badger said.

The union represents certified nursing assistants, food service workers, custodians and others at King, where there are more than 700 beds for veterans and family members.

Evenson said Walkers efforts have delivered new employee positions, scheduling practices and increased compensation to help counter a national shortage of nurses.

The state also appropriated $100 million to replace a vacant residence hall and make other improvements.

Thursdays release from the governors office said Walker has also told Zimmerman to schedule regular discussions with veterans groups.

The only group mentioned by name in the release was the County Veterans Service Officer Association, which has been unhappy with state changes affecting them.

Zimmerman retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2008 after 25 years that included assignments in military intelligence, the governors office said.

While in the Army, Zimmerman received the Bronze Star Medal twice and the Meritorious Service Medal five times, the governors office said. Zimmerman holds a masters degree in homeland security from American Military University in Charles Town, West Virginia, and received his bachelors degree from UWLa Crosse, the press release said.

After retirement he worked as a training consultant for the federal National Guard Bureau and as an exercise officer and threat planner for the state Department of Military Affairs emergency management division, the release said.

Zimmerman has served as vice president of the Ripon Area School District Board of Education, chairman of Big Hills Lake Management District, and president of two non-profit charitable organizations.

Zimmerman wasnt among seven applicants the governors office disclosed in December.

His appointment is effective immediately, the governors office said.

Dans career is defined by public service, Walker said in the release. Wisconsins veterans deserve the best care and services possible, and with Dans experience in the military and government, I know he will serve as a tireless advocate for Wisconsins veterans.
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Rula and Abdul plied the narrow aisles of Madisons Istanbul Market on Tuesday, looking for spices and other staples, such as dried jute leaves, that are hard to find in their new country.

The Syrian couple arrived in Madison with their daughters, ages 5 and 8, on Jan. 20, the day President Donald Trump was sworn into office.

A week later, Trump issued an executive order indefinitely barring Syrian refugees such as Rula and Abdul and temporarily blocking citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, at least until new extreme vetting rules can be written.

The goal, the president said, is to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of America. The order is being challenged in several courts; critics charge it unfairly targets refugees.

In Wisconsin, Trumps immigration order and earlier executive actions calling for local police to help with immigration enforcement and threatening to strip federal funding from states and cities that harbor undocumented immigrants are creating fear, uncertainty  and pushback.

Madison Mayor Paul Soglin has declared that while city police will honor federal requests to detain serious criminals, We will not use our local police department as a tool to enforce federal immigration laws. Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney made a similar vow.

Refugees from around the globe

In 2016, Wisconsin received 1,877 refugees from nearly 20 countries, according to U.S. State Department figures, including four of the seven nations on the banned list: Iraq, Somalia, Sudan and Syria.

Among the new arrivals in 2016 were 119 Syrians. To qualify as a refugee, an immigrant must be persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution based on ethnicity, race, religion or other factor. Once they arrive, refugees are legal U.S. residents.

Gov. Scott Walker vowed in 2015 that Wisconsin would not accept Syrian refugees after terrorists who had traveled to and from Syria killed 120 people in Paris. The governor later acknowledged he has no legal authority to block their entrance, although Trumps latest executive order calls for possibly giving states and local governments more control over immigration.

Wisconsin serves as a pass-through for federal money used for resettlement by designated nonprofit agencies. That amount totalled $5 million in 2016, said Joe Scialfa, spokesman for the state Department of Children and Families.

The agency estimates Wisconsin has taken in 75,000 people from 50 countries since the 1970s when the first wave of refugees came  Hmong people from Laos, tens of thousands of whom died helping the United States in the Vietnam War and the secret war in Laos.

City welcomes new refugees

Rula and Abduls resettlement was the culmination of a four-year quest. Rula, an elementary teacher, and Abdul, a chef, left their homeland in 2012, joining millions of Syrians fleeing a brutal five-year civil war in which an estimated 400,000 people have been killed. They asked that their last names not be used for their own safety.

Through a translator, Rula said their home in Syria was burned, and the family fled to Jordan, initially living in a refugee camp. Her daughters grew ill, Rula said, and the family moved in with others in the city of Amman, and later moved to the suburbs. For two years, their oldest daughter was unable to attend school, Rula said.

Ten months ago the family was approved for refugee status, although Rula and Abdul still did not know where they would end up.

She was just counting minute by minute to leave the country and come either to the USA, Norway or Canada, said Rihab Taha, a caseworker for Jewish Social Services who translated for the Syrian couple.

Once refugees arrive in Wisconsin, local agencies, including Jewish Social Services, Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities and others help to line up services such as temporary cash assistance, housing, health care, enrollment in school and participation in Wisconsins welfare-to-work program, W-2.

Becca Schwartz, resettlement coordinator for Jewish Social Services, said she is helping three Syrian families in Madison, including Rula and Abduls family. Resettlement of two more Syrian families and a group from Eritrea are now on hold, she said. In Sheboygan, a family of nine scheduled for resettlement by a different agency has been blocked by Trumps ban on refugees.

Its really frustrating because we are trying to do some important work. It makes me worry for the safety and security of the people we wouldve been settling here, Schwartz said.

Schwartz said her agency in Madison has been flooded with offers of help for the new arrivals, including jobs, apartment furnishings and volunteer translators.

Very painful

Asked about Trumps indefinite ban on refugees, Rula said it is very painful because there are many others eager to come here for a better future, for a better education for their kids.

Taha, the caseworker, is also an immigrant. A native of Sudan, she came to the United States 17 years ago. Now a U.S. citizen, Taha has three American-born children. Because of the debate about immigration, Taha said her 10-year-old son has asked whether his family will be allowed to stay.

Mom, is it true that Donald Trumps gonna kick all the Muslims outside the United States? Taha recounted, fighting back tears. I dont want him to feel that he is not welcome here because he is Muslim or brown or African or based on any category. But I dont know. I hope things will get better because I live here, I have my friends here, I have my work here, my job, my home, my car. Come on, I mean, this is a free land.

Taha said Rula also worries how her familys new life in America could be affected by shifting U.S. policies.

I said to her, Do you think the new orders will affect your status or your benefits from being here? and she said, I dont know, I dont want to think about it. 

Wisconsin Public Radio reporter Alexandra Hall contributed to this report.
HARTFORD  U.S. senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy said Friday they have plenty of tough questions for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, but the two Democrats stopped short of declaring outright opposition to President Trumps pick.

I have some grave, serious concerns, Blumenthal said during a news conference in the state Capitol complex. He seems to favor corporate interests over individual rights ... A mainstream thinker must also have the grip and gumption to stand up to the president and say no.
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ROXBURY  Greg Cava says the best way to find out what the voters of the 32nd state Senate District are thinking is to get out of your bubble of friends and meet them door to door.

He visited countless homes in the 10 classic New England villages last fall, and now in chilly winter hes doing it again.

Cava, a Democrat from Roxbury who serves on the Region 12 Board of Education, lost to incumbent Sen. Rob Kane, R-Watertown, by a more than two-to-one margin last November in the Republican-leaning district, which stretches from Bethlehem to Oxford and includes such metro Danbury towns as Southbury, Washington, Roxbury and Bridgewater. Kane resigned last month and was approved by the General Assembly recently to become one of the two state auditors of public accounts.

Much is at stake in the special election. The state Senate is deadlocked with an even number of Republicans and Democrats, and a Cava victory would tip it back into Democratic control.

Cava, an attorney specializing in land development, last month defeated Robert Van Egghen at the Democratic convention in Woodbury. He now faces Republican state Rep. Eric Berthel of Watertown and petitioning candidate Dan Lynch of Middlebury in the Feb. 28 special election.

Cava said he has raised enough money to qualify for a $72,000 grant from the Citizens Election Program. Berthel also recently qualified.

Republicans reportedly have held the seat for more than 100 years, even though such notable Democrats as Bethlehems Ken Curran, who managed three campaigns for U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, and Woodburys John McCarthy, a former ambassador, ran against Kane, who served for nine years.

Cava said he agrees with Murphy that if you dont tour neighborhoods you get a skewed perception of the electorate.

He said the prime topic has been better-paying jobs in a mostly suburban state that lacks a brain hub such as the Route 128 corridor near Boston which has attracted a large number of millennials who are less inclined to being tied down to buying a home in the suburbs.

Connecticut has a lot of small municipalities and people in most municipalities in the state want a lot of control over what happens in their town, Cava said. They want them to stay the same. We have some regional planning, but each town decides what it will accept. Its not a planning agency that decides where the airport or the waste facilities will be. To some extent it stymies the growth of large industry.

With economic development, we need to think long term, he said.

Cava said Gov. Dannel Malloys First Five/Next Five program is a step in the right direction, since it has provided financial incentives to such corporate giants as ESPN, Bridgewater Associates and Cigna in Connecticut for a commitment to add jobs over the coming years.

But what happens when those incentives end? Cava said.

He said the state needs to develop small business incubators, leverage its premier fiber-optic network and establish more private/public partnerships.

Cava said in the district some of the 1,400 acres at the state-operated Southbury Training School, which is expected to close most of its operations and be ceded to the town, might be ideal for a partnership between a research and development firm and the University of Connecticut.

He said he wants the roughly 100 residents at the facility to be able to continue living there for the rest of their lives.

Cava said he is not thrilled with Malloys performance, but I realize it was a difficult climb entering office six years ago, facing a $3.7 billion budget deficit over a two-year cycle. He spread the pain around and in the process a lot of people have become unhappy.

UConn economist Fred Carstensen recently told CT Mirror that in the face of a projected $1.5 billion deficit for the next fiscal year and pension obligations that are only 35.5 percent funded, taxes will have to be increased.

I dont want to have to raise the income tax, Cava said. But were going to have to look at it being more graduated so that we increase it gradually over a series of years so that we dont have this repeat cycle of deficits. We have to find a balance.

On another topic, he said he supports a Democratic plan to gradually raise the states minimum wage from the current $10.10 to $15 an hour over the next five years.

$15 an hour is barely at a level to sustain people, Cava said.

He said he also supports legislation to make incentives for municipalities to establish tax deferral for elderly residents, which make up a considerable segment of the population in the district.

Under the proposal, Cava said they could keep their taxes level for years and then pay the balance when they sell their homes.

He said, Towns have the ability to do it, but not every town does it.
The state is suing a Stamford doctor and her husband for defrauding Connecticuts employee drug prescription plan and costing taxpayers up to $200,000, the Attorney Generals Office said.

State Attorney General George Jepsen on Thursday filed suit in state Superior Court in Hartford, claiming Kwasi Gyambibi, an employee of UConn-Stamford, and his wife, Dr. Kakra Gyambibi, committed fraud by issuing expensive, medically unnecessary compounded medications to state employees enrolled in the state employee pharmacy benefit plan.

The allegations in this case involve a scheme to take advantage of the states prescription drug benefit program by convincing state employees to try prescriptions for very expensive compounded drugs [that were] prescribed by a doctor who never established a physician-patient relationship and who, in fact, never even met face-to-face with the patient, Jepsen said.

The suit claims Kakra Gyambibi, a doctor employed by a Stamford physician group, violated the Connecticut Fair Claims Act by providing compound drugs  a mixture of various ingredients she prescribed  to state employees her husband recruited through his work at the college.

The state also alleges Dr. Gyambibi did not create records documenting the care provided, and many patients never used the drugs even though the prescriptions were automatically refilled and billed to the state prescription plan.

This doctor utterly failed to adhere to even a minimal prudent standard of care and, therefore, this alleged conduct represents not only a serious abdication of her professional and ethical responsibilities but an egregious abuse of the prescription drug benefit plan and the taxpayer dollars that fund it, Jepsen said.

The Gyambibis could not be reached Thursday for comment. Kakra Gyambibi is listed as a hospital internist at Stamford Hospital.

The lawsuit seeks penalties and damages resulting from the couples alleged actions. Jepsen said his office continues to investigate the case, including the couples motive and whether any profit was derived from the alleged fraud.

The suit claims the Gyambibis met with Advantage Medical and Pharmaceutical, which provided drugs, prescription pads and promotional material. Advantages business model uses commission-based marketing representatives to market its products, including compound drugs, the suit notes.

Between June 2014 and March 2015, the suit claims Kwasi Gyambibi convinced co-workers to try compound drug prescriptions offered by Advantage for their health ailments. The state alleges that Kwasi Gyambibi assured those co-workers the compounded drugs were effective and his wife, a doctor, would write prescriptions for them.

Kwasi Gyambibi provided his wife with his co-workers personal and prescription benefit card information, which was then submitted to Advantage, the suit claims.
T he Duke of Westminsters ancient property business Grosvenor is used to thinking in centuries but, even by its standards, 2016 was a year of change.

Following a Brexit vote that casts a shadow over London property, the sudden death of the sixth Duke, Gerald Grosvenor, last summer passed on the title  and the billions that come with it  to his 25-year-old son, Hugh.

Grosvenor itself embarked on a management reshuffle that has put the engaging Craig McWilliam in charge of its UK and Ireland business since the beginning of this year.

Exactly 340 years after Sir Thomas Grosvenor married heiress Mary Davies (her portrait has pride of place in reception), and with it the 500 acres of swamp that would become Mayfair and Belgravia, McWilliam runs a business with 5.7 billion in assets at the last count. Much of it is made up of the most prized real estate in the country. And, as a chief of one of Londons four Great Estates, his job is to protect and grow the business for future generations. No pressure, then.

The 45-year-old, who has been with the company since 2010, isnt expecting imminent revolution as the new Duke has his own life beyond Grosvenor  specifically a job at a company turning coffee grounds into biofuels. And his father created a structure that left him chairman of the shareholding trustees, but essentially devolved the running of the business to others.

The new Duke, I think, has the luxury of choosing how much involvement he wants with the business on a day-to-day basis. He is very interested in it and does know everyone here, and is very familiar with what we do, but doesnt have to come in and feel an obligation to run it... If I inherited a business like that, youd imagine you wouldnt rush in and try and change everything too quickly because youd want to figure out what it is and what you want from it.

McWilliam seems just the type for a hereditary business like grand old Grosvenor. He likes old buildings, old motorbikes and old cars. His father was a surveyor, so it was probably inevitable that he ended up studying land economy at Cambridge  although, as a grammar-school boy from York, hes far from the archetypal hooray public-school types and sportsmen generally found on the course. You would go into lectures, and sat at the back there would be these huge mountains of men with Sellotape over their ears.

He worked first for property agent Chestertons in Newcastle but, in the unappealing aftermath of the early Nineties recession  buildings were burned down more often than they were let, he comments drily  he soon found his way down to London.

He met his wife  yet another surveyor in the capital (our eyes met across a box of files). Their two children are probably resigned to the inevitable.

Now they live in Bloomsbury and he walks to Grosvenors Mayfair headquarters every day. The weekends are more likely to find him buzzing around in classic cars like his 1933 Sunbeam, which he bought recently after parting with his absolutely lethal three-wheeled Morgan. They are quite basic machines. Lots of noise, oil and no brakes.

Grosvenor has an appealing culture but he really cut his teeth in the much different worlds of investment banking and private equity, working first for Warburg Dillon Read (now UBS) and then European property firm Rodamco. He joined Grosvenor from Fortress, a full-on US investment giant set up by a bunch of fixed income traders and investment bankers, and far more hard-nosed than the family business at which he has ended up.

And theres a glint of the private-equity man when he chuckles at ripping the face off his current employer in a few deals during the course of his career. He once bought a building off Grosvenor and sold it on for 1 million more than he paid before hed even signed the contract (that pleased me a lot).

"Misconceptions about the capital are fuelling jealousy from elsewhere, such as over booming house prices."

Years ago, he also snaffled a portfolio of buildings dotted around Mount Street, Berkeley Square, Brook Street and Grosvenor Street off it for 60 million. After joining the company, he was having to buy some of them back  and paid 60 million for just one building.

Now he has to look to the longer term, adapting Grosvenor to the demands of a capital in a period of growth not seen since the early 19th century. The business has always been changing, knocking down villas in the eponymous square to build mansion flats in the Thirties, and before that turning homes into offices when the railways came.

But at the moment McWilliams patch isnt pulling its weight. He prefers offices to flats, and wants his buildings full of hundreds of workers rather than a few very wealthy and possibly absentee owners.

He also seeks to be more open to shoppers and visitors, through events such as the Summer in the Square annual bashes. Mayfair has less jobs and less people than Soho or Fitzrovia. It feels at odds with what the centre of London needs to have a district that is not working hard to accommodate as much growth and activity as possible.

Across the wider West End, that means addressing an acute shortage of office space and finding funding for the 1 billion in public-realm improvements, including pedestrianising Oxford Street, identified over the next 15 years by the West End Partnership. He argues passionately that Westminster Council should keep more of its business rates to encourage investment, breaking a terrible stand-off between firms demanding growth and residents worried about the traffic.

Under the current regime, the council bears all the costs, their residents bear all the impact, and all the money goes to central government. Theres a complete mismatch between the cost and the benefit.

Oxford Street is a particular concern. Buses all crawl along at five miles an hour, they almost need cattle prods to push pedestrians out of the way. Its not fit for purpose. It is not on the path of being a successful place in the future, and that is what worries me.

Concern: Oxford Street / PA

McWilliam was a Remain voter who liked the idea of being a European citizen. But he is also concerned the political climate has turned against spending money in the capital since the leave vote. You do worry... theres a sense that London has had lots of investment and everybody has done tremendously well, and therefore London ought not to be able to keep any of its tax because its needed to pay for other things. But that misses the trick because if London is allowed to invest a little bit to drive growth, you end up with more tax.

He adds: You hear things, anecdotal comments from people running local government outside London  not anti-London but more its our turn or bring it to Manchester or Leeds. I worked in Newcastle, and frankly there was absolutely cack all going on there until the EU funded everything... But there is an opportunity in London to create value for everybody in the UK.

Misconceptions about the capital are fuelling jealousy from elsewhere as well, such as over booming house prices. People outside London simply assume its creating enormous value for Londoners. In fact, what it has done for most Londoners is make them extremely poor because less than 50% own a home. In a standard-of-living assessment of wealth, people have got better off outside London than in London.

Grosvenor had half an eye on a property slowdown, which the EU referendum brought into closer view. Timings have been tweaked but the groups plans are still intact, McWilliam says. If the market is difficult because of a lack of certainty, well feel that difficulty and itll be disappointing, but it wont hurt us.

Thats the sense of perspective that comes from working for a company said to have weathered 30 downturns over three centuries.
P rivate-equity house Electra today pocketed 203 million on the sale of audio equipment firm Audiotonix.

Epiris, Electras recently renamed investment arm set to split from the firm in June, sold the business to European buyout group Astorg.

Epiris formed Audiotonix after acquiring Allen & Heath for 42 million in 2013 and combining it with Calrec and DiGiCo, which it bought a year later. The enlarged group, led by 44-year-old chief executive James Gordon, has worked on live events like Adele concerts and the Rio Olympics and has quadrupled earnings in four years.

Epiris partner Charles Elkington said: This has been a fantastic deal for Epiris and its investors.

Electra, which also owns TGI Fridays, is undergoing a major shake-up following a campaign by activist investor Edward Bramson, whose vehicle Sherborne has a near-30% stake in the firm.

Epiris is being spun off after being sacked as Electras portfolio manager and is now seeking alternative sources of funds.
R eckitt Benckiser shareholders paid Rakesh Kapoor 23 million last year, but you wonder if theyre getting much Cillit Bang for their buck when you look at the business he wants them to buy.

Mead Johnsons latest annual report shows the baby milk maker has 26% of its global sales reliant on just two customers: Walmart (14%) and DKSH (12%). Risky.

Meads big overseas market is China, where youd think an end to the one-child policy would boost sales.

But despite births being up 8%, China baby milk sales at Nestle and Danone are broadly flat. Meads are down 5% in Asia.

Doing its manufacturing in Guangzhou doesnt help, as Chinese mums shift to imported milk after local health scares.

Then theres the Donald Trump effect. What happens if the President embarks on a trade war with China?

Theres Trump risk in the US, too. Material volumes are reliant on the state-funded Women, Infants and Children programme for low-income Americans.

The president hasnt yet copied Margaret Thatcher by becoming Donald Trump, milk snatcher, but hes not keen on welfare. As Meads filings say, substantial changes to WIC could have a material adverse effect on its business.

Reckitt investors should think hard before agreeing this deal. They could end up sucking on a dummy.
WASHINGTON  Many people deserve thanks for the coming accession of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court: Donald Trump for winning the election. Hillary Clinton for losing it. Mitch McConnell for holding open the high court seat through 2016, resolute and immovable against furious (and hypocritical) opposition from Democrats and media.

And, of course, Harry Reid.

God bless Harry Reid. Its because of him that Gorsuch is guaranteed elevation to the court. In 2013, as then-Senate majority leader, Reid blew up the joint. He abolished the filibuster for federal appointments both executive (such as Cabinet) and judicial, for all district and circuit court judgeships (excluding only the Supreme Court). Thus unencumbered, the Democratic-controlled Senate packed the lower courts with Obama nominees.

Reid was warned that the day would come when Republicans would be in the majority and would exploit the new rules to equal and opposite effect. That day is here.

The result is striking. Trumps Cabinet appointments are essentially unstoppable because Republicans need only 51 votes and they have 52. They have no need to reach 60, the number required to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are powerless to stop anyone on their own.

And equally powerless to stop Gorsuch. But isnt the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees still standing? Yes, but if the Democrats dare try it, everyone knows Majority Leader McConnell will do exactly what Reid did and invoke the nuclear option  filibuster abolition  for the Supreme Court, too.

Reid never fully appreciated the magnitude of his crime against the Senate. As I wrote at the time, the offense was not abolishing the filibuster  you can argue that issue either way  but that he did it by simple majority. In a serious body, a serious rule change requires a serious supermajority. (Amending the U.S. Constitution, for example, requires two-thirds of both houses plus three-quarters of all the states.) Otherwise you have rendered the place lawless. If in any given session you can summon up the days majority to change the institutions fundamental rules, there are no rules.

McConnell can at any moment finish Reids work by extending filibuster abolition to the Supreme Court. But he hasnt. He has neither invoked the nuclear option nor even threatened to. And hes been asked often enough. His simple and unwavering response is that Gorsuch will be confirmed. Translation: If necessary, he will drop the big one.

Its obvious that he prefers not to. No one wants to again devalue and destabilize the Senate by changing a major norm by simple majority vote. But Reid set the precedent.

Note that the issue is not the filibuster itself. Nothing is sacred about it. Its routine use is a modern development  with effects both contradictory and unpredictable. The need for 60 votes can contribute to moderation and compromise because to achieve a supermajority you need to get a buy-in from at least some of the opposition. On the other hand, in a hyper-partisan atmosphere (like todays), a 60-vote threshold can ensure that everything gets stopped and nothing gets done.

Filibuster abolition is good for conservatives today. It will be good for liberals tomorrow when they have regained power. Theres no great principle at stake, though as a practical matter, in this era of widespread frustration with congressional gridlock, the new norm may be salutary.

What is not salutary is the Reid precedent of changing the old norm using something so transient and capricious as the majority of the day. As I argued in 2015, eventually the two parties will need to work out a permanent arrangement under which major rule changes will require a supermajority (say, of two-thirds) to ensure substantial bipartisan support.

There are conflicting schools of thought as to whether even such a grand bargain could not itself be overturned by some future Congress  by simple majority led by the next Harry Reid. Nonetheless, even a problematic entente is better than the free-for-all that governs today.

The operative word, however, is eventually. Such an agreement is for the future. Not yet, not today. Republicans are no fools. They are not about to forfeit the advantage bequeathed to them by Harry Reids shortsighted willfulness. They will zealously retain the nuclear option for Supreme Court nominees through the current Republican tenure of Congress and the presidency.

After which, they should be ready to parlay and press the reset button. But only then. As the young Augustine famously beseeched the Lord, Give me chastity and continency, only not yet.
U S President Donald Trump was today closing in on a victory for his protectionist policies, as Samsung confirmed it was considering building a plant in the US.

The South Korean company, which currently makes TVs, fridges and other appliances in Mexico, said plans for a similar facility across the border were in the evaluation stage, it was reported.

It would not say whether Trumps policies were behind the deliberations, but Trump thanked Samsung in a tweet, adding: We would love to have you!

LG Electronics is also debating building a US factory.

Meanwhile, deputy Bank of England governor Ben Broadbent claimed Trumps presidency had boosted the UK economy.

Thousands to protest Donald Trump on day of MPs' debate on state visit

His arrival in the White House with pledges to cut taxes and hike infrastructure spending had lifted business confidence, Broadbent told the BBC.

He acknowledged some other proposals had sparked concern but said: So far its been positive for global sentiment, and for that reason, and to that extent, for us as well.
Review at a glance









P rints are absent from Tate Britains Hockney retrospective, opening next week, so this is a welcome show. It gathers etchings made in his shift from precocious student to professional artist, crucial works in his trajectory: through them, he realised he could make a living as an artist.

Indeed, Hockney pictures himself selling prints to William Lieberman at the Museum of Modern Art in his version of Hogarths The Rakes Progress, 16 prints documenting a 1961 New York trip  the supreme accomplishment of his early etchings. They brim with technical flair and chutzpah and a lyrically expressed personal content. In his first print he paid homage to his heroes, poet Walt Whitman and Mahatma Gandhi, picturing his awkward self beside them, scribbling I am 23 years old and wear glasses.

Hockney the self-confessed seven-stone weakling is a consistent presence, whether measuring himself against classical male beauty in a self-portrait or watching over musclebound joggers in Central Park. He grapples with and celebrates his homosexuality, in homages to Whitman and Greek poet Cavafy, in pictures of gay culture in New York and in portraits. Particularly striking is Jungle Boy, with a naked snake collector face-to-face with one of his phallic specimens.

This dazzling display of the print- makers art finds Hockney at his best: boldly announcing his talent and laying his life and loves bare.

Until March 10, Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert; hh-h.com

Visit standard.co.uk/arts for the latest news and reviews from Londons arts scene

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Review at a glance









S ince his 2007 debut with Shotgun Stories, starring Michael Shannon, Jeff Nichols from Little Rock, Arkansas, still only 38, has made a whole series of stunningly good indie films set in the American South. All are about ordinary people facing extraordinary challenges within their families and communities.

Take Shelter (2011) also stars Shannon, as a man who, believing an apocalyptic storm is coming, tries to build a shelter to save his family, Jessica Chastain playing his puzzled wife. You are left unsure if his fears are justified. Mud, from 2012, is a distinctively Mark Twain-flavoured story of two 14-year-old boys forming a relationship with a runaway man, Mud, hiding out on an island in the Arkansas River  a role that helped Matthew McConaugheys subsequent career to blossom.

Midnight Special, released last year, was a turn into sci-fi, in which an estranged father (Shannon again), supported by a loyal trooper friend (Joel Edgerton), faces up to the realisation that his weirdly gifted young son, whom he rescues from a religious cult, belongs to another world entirely, not with him and his wife.

Nichols always creates a completely distinctive texture in his films, beautifully conveying how people affect one another and how they relate to their rural landscapes, often without a word being said.

Loving, a real-life story about an inter-racial marriage in hardscrabble Virginia in the Fifties, is Nicholss finest film yet. Seeing it in Cannes last year, although admiring it greatly I cautiously rated it at four stars, for it seemed, compared with the pyrotechnics of other directors at the festival, understated to a fault. Yet it stayed with me over the following months in a way the kaleidoscopic carnage films (thanks, Nicolas Winding Refn) did not.

Seeing it again this week, first thing in the morning, fresh as a daisy and sober as judge, I felt close to tears from beginning to end. Thats quite odd, because this is not a film in which the most tragic or even dramatic events tear at your heart: its about happiness, ultimately vindicated. And to make ordinary happiness feel this moving is a great feat.

In 1958, Mildred Delores Jeter, then 18, of mixed African-American and Rappahannock Native American descent, from backwoods Caroline County, Virginia, fell pregnant, and her construction worker white boyfriend, Richard Perry Loving, 24, took her to Washington to get married. When they returned to Virginia the couple were arrested, at home, in the middle of the night, under the inhuman anti-miscegenation laws then still prevailing in 16 Southern states, specifically Virginias Racial Integrity Act of 1924  part of the dreadful, too-little-remembered eugenics campaign in the US at that time which also involved mass sterilisations, well before Nazi Germany went down this path.

In 1959 the Lovings pleaded guilty and were sentenced to a year in prison, suspended on the condition that they left the state and did not return for 25 years.

They moved to Washington but they wanted to be at home, with their families, in the country, in a rural community shown, in this film at least, to be without racial prejudice, united by poverty and proximity.

In 1964, after Mildred wrote to the Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the American Civil Liberties Union took up the case, pro bono, pursuing it all the way to the Supreme Court which, in Loving v Virginia of 1967, vindicated them, declaring marriage to be one of the fundamental civil rights of man, a freedom not to be denied by invidious discrimination, a judgment with far-reaching consequences, including ultimately for same-sex marriages.

So this could well have been, at the time of Black Lives Matter, a big angry civil rights drama, full of courtroom blood and thunder. It is not, though. It is quiet, intimate and faithful to this loving couples simple wish to be together.

It opens in the dark, in close-up, on the lovely, delicate face of Mildred (Ethiopian/Irish actor Ruth Negga) as she says softly, Im pregnant. Theres a pause. Then next to her Richard (Edgerton), misleadingly impassive at first, begins to break into a smile. Good, he says quietly. Another pause. Thats real good. Hes a man of strong emotion but never too many words. A rock.

Both Negga, Oscar-nominated for this, and Edgerton are wonderfully good. People talk nonsense about the chemistry  why not origami?  supposedly evidenced in films like La La Land. What you see here is better: two people who unmissably love each other and just want what they already have. To be allowed that.

At the time of the case the real Lovings were photographed for Life magazine by Grey Villet (a delightful cameo from Michael Shannon) and filmed at home, footage which was included in a 2011 documentary The Loving Story. Both Negga and Edgerton have, quite physically, modelled their performances closely on their originals, you can see. Asked in an interview what people will respond to in this film, Negga simply cited their love for each other. In the documentary the energy between the two is almost tangible, and people can see it when they see our film and are struck by the radiance. Theyre moved by it. They think, I want that one day. In any shape or form. Yes.

Richard takes Mildred out to an open field half a mile from her house and asks her if she likes it. Yes, I like it, she says. Then: Richard, stop this  I dont know what youre saying.

I bought it, this whole acre  Im going to build you a house right here  our house, he says simply, before asking her to marry him. At night, drawing up a plan, he asks her what she thinks about having the bedroom in the back. I like it however you make it, she replies.

And then the racist police chief (Marton Csokas) throws them in prison, abusing Richard for breaking Gods law  all mixed up, dont know up from down. They are separated. When both finally make bail Richard goes secretly to her home in the night. Its me, its OK  oh, I got you, he whispers.

It is Mildred, though, who, unhappy with their three small children growing up in the hard streets of Columbia District in Washington, gently persuades Richard to go the full legal route with the ACLU lawyers (Nick Kroll and Jon Bass).

All he wants is to be allowed quietly to go back home and not bother anybody. A civil rights march is glimpsed on TV but thats not what its about for them, even when one of the lawyers tells them if it works out for you, it could work out for a lot of other people too. The couple dont even attend the Supreme Court hearing. Asked if he had anything he wanted his lawyers to say on his behalf, Richard Perry Loving famously replied: Tell the court I love my wife, and it is just unfair I cant live with her in Virginia.

Nichols, who wrote as well as directed this film, truncates this, Richard saying even more directly: Tell the judge I love my wife. He has perfected here a deceptively simple, casual and linear form of storytelling (exquisitely shot in widescreen by the cinematographer of all his films, Adam Stone) that allows his actors to shine  and Negga has contributed the most luminous performance imaginable. If neither she nor Natalie Portman take the Oscar later this month, La La Land will have done its worst.

Cert 12A, 123 minutes

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L ondoners must come together to generate the ideas, the money and the imagination needed to tackle the capitals homelessness crisis, the mayors housing chief told an audience last night.

James Murray, Sadiq Khans deputy mayor for housing, said it was vital the city works to reverse a trend which has seen the number of rough sleepers more than double in just five years.

Speaking at a lecture to raise funds for the Standards Young & Homeless Helpline appeal at the National theatre, he said: The sad reality in London is that homelessness and rough sleeping have both risen in recent years.

But although things have gotten worse there is some cause for optimism  its the coming together to do something about the problem.

We clearly need to do more. We need to come up with better ideas and have the resources and funds to put into that.

I would want all Londoners to understand what homelessness  in its widest sense  really means.

If people understand how pervasive it is, the effects it has, how its hidden, effect on young people and families.

I think the goodness of Londoners means we rise to the occasion.

Moving scenes: Sarah Lee stars in emotional play Love / Sarah Lee

Sarah Sands, editor of the Standard, chaired the discussion - Homelessness, better or worse in 2017? - an assessment of Londons success and failures in countering the housing crisis.

Panellists included playwright Alexander Zeldin, Centrepoint chief executive Seyi Obakin and Louise Walker, a spokeswoman for charity Shelter.

Mr Zeldins critically-acclaimed play Love follows the story of three families placed into temporary accommodation to explore the links between homelessness, mental illness and austerity.

He told the audience: I think this problem is so vast and so profound that to limit it just to homelessness is a mistake.

We need to fund local authorities more, fund councils better and we need to resource the vulnerable in our society better.

Ms Walker told the audience how she was made homeless along with her four children after the breakdown of her marriage.

She spent a year living at a friends home before the council moved her and her children into a bed and breakfast - an experience that left her feeling demonised.

Ms Walker, who worked with Zeldin on developing his play, saidd: I was treated as though I had made myself homeless.

They make you feel as though you have brought this upon yourself and you deserve what you get. I didnt want to go to them for help, but I did assume that when I went there they would be able to help.

That should be the case; but often that door is shut in your face and its the charities having to pick up the pieces.

A lot of them are underfunded and they are struggling as well. To pass the buck and ask charities to bear the brunt of it is asking too much.

Centrepoint chief executive Seyi Obakin said: There is no question in my mind it is getting worse.

It seems to me that our system is in denial.

You just need to look at the numbers the number of people sleeping rough in London has gone up from 3,900 in 2010 to just over 8,000.

Back in 2010 there was 330 young people under 25 sleeping rough in London, today there is 830 of them  thats more than double.

She added: I think there is a case that us as a society and in the community must work together to try and solve the problem. If I could do one thing it would be to get the system to think about people as people, rather than boxes.

Proceeds from the debate will go to Centrepoint to help run the helpline.
T oday I am delighted to announce that the Evening Standards Young & Homeless Appeal has smashed through the 3 million barrier.

More than anything, this remarkable achievement is testament to the extra-ordinary generosity of you, the readers, and your commitment to fighting the scourge of youth homelessness.

In such a prosperous and thriving city, it is shameful that so many thousands of young people find themselves sleeping rough or in perilous temporary accommodation.

This money will enable the creation of Centrepoints Young & Homeless Helpline.

This free helpline will be the first centralised youth homelessness advice service and will provide those who are at risk of sleeping on the streets with the help they need, when they need it.

But that is not all. Thankfully, we now have the money to also help give vulnerable young people the training they need to get into work, treat their mental health issues and learn the skills they need to achieve successful independent lives.

Most of the 3 million has been raised from Londoners, whether responding to Centrepoints adverts on the Tube, vouchers in this paper or the charity auctions running on the Evening Standard website.

Corporate donors have also played their part. The Asos Foundation, The Arsenal Foundation, Cameron Mackintosh, Deliveroo and Airbnb, in particular, have been extraordinarily generous.

But we would not have hit 3 million without the backing of some of Londons leading names from business, the arts and politics. Sadiq Khan, Theresa May, Tim Farron and Jeremy Corbyn have pledged their support, along with Ed Sheeran, Ellie Goulding and Phil Collins.

In particular, I would like to recognise Prince William, whose call for action was the inspiration behind the whole campaign and who will be there supporting the Helplines volunteers when it launches in 10 days time.

On behalf of the Evening Standard, Centrepoint, and thousands of the countrys most vulnerable young people for years to come, I would just like to say: Thank you.
A t the beginning of this week, Owen Jones mobilised thousands of Londoners to gather at Downing Street on a drizzly Monday night to protest against President Trumps travel ban. On Tuesday the socialist author hit the headlines for challenging Piers Morgans accusation that the protests were hypocritical. By Wednesday, Jones was ready for some escapism. He watched The Bodyguard.

I dont often enjoy what I do, which is why I have to watch trashy Nineties films, says Jones, who despite being teased for looking like a teenager is 32 years old. People on the Right think the Left protest for a laugh but protests are not fun and politics is a necessary evil, a mean-spirited world. I do it because the stakes are so high.

Jones apologises for being late  he was locked out of the flat he rents in the Corbyn heartland of Islington and shares with a hyperactive cat named after the first Labour MP, Keir Hardie. He buys the tea, although he speaks too quickly to drink it, casually summoning statistics and quoting economists.

He organised the protest on Twitter and Facebooka at 3am on Sunday. I went to bed and the next morning it had gone like wildfire. Trumps election was a shock, a lot of people felt in 2016 they were spectators to a horror film, and they were stuck yelling at the TV. With this protest people thought they could do something by putting pressure on our government.

Thousands to protest Donald Trump on day of MPs' debate on state visit

Anti-Trump sentiment transcends party politics, he says. Rachel Johnson was on the demo, although her brother is Foreign Secretary. Jones likes Johnson: she published his first article, in The Lady, giving him 200 to pay the rent when he was skint. Since then hes become a figurehead for the Left, despite insisting he had no game plan. All that happened was I wrote a book, Chavs, in 2011 and was asked to go on TV.

Since then, weve had a tidal wave of populism. Its about scapegoating foreigners for the ills for society. People have different views on immigration but this has been a sobering moment where people have been grabbed by the lapels and think its gone a bit far and we cant let this continue. If Trumps bigotry, misogyny and authoritarianism arent challenged at the outset and if you get a reputable ally, like Theresa May, standing side by side with him, it will empower him.

What does he make of the argument that Trump wants protests, to exhaust the Left and paint them as hysterical bad losers? Theres no point trying to second-guess Trump. If we end up with a situation where the most powerful man on Earth implemented the bigoted ban he did and no one protested, that would be alarming.

Jones organised a protest in Whitehall against the travel ban imposed by US President Donald Trump (NIGEL HOWARD) / NIGEL HOWARD 

Despite being democratically elected Trump is weak, says Jones, with calamitous popularity ratings only two weeks into his presidency.

Jones is on a roll now. Its important at the outset not to normalise Trump and these global protests are stopping that. Theyre putting pressure on democrats in America not to work with him because that will normalise and strengthen him.

Jones was in Washington DC for the inauguration and met Trump voters. They were a chirpy lot in their red hats. They werent bothered by what Trump says about women, they said, Thats how all men speak, dont you speak like that? I didnt correct them or say my sexuality precludes that. He went on the anti-Trump Womens March, where his favourite banner was, Im not a sign guy but Jeez.

Theresa May declines to deny Donald Trump told her about his 'Muslim ban'

Jones has a ready rebuff to the argument that protests only serve to give the liberal elite a comforting ego boost, listing protests that have changed history. LGBT people wouldnt have their rights without protest. I dont think protest will solve everything. I urged people to write to their Conservative MPs to put pressure on Theresa Mays Trump policy. Shes leaving the single market, which we dont have to do. Well end up being a client state of Trumps America. I dont think thats taking back control of Britain.

Thousands of protesters march to Downing Street in Trump rally 1 /48 Thousands of protesters march to Downing Street in Trump rally Caricatures: Unflattering pictures of the UK and US leaders. AFP/Getty Images 'No to racism': Protesters outside Downing Street. AFP/Getty Images Demo: Crowds packed out Whitehall to Parliament Square. PA Thousands: Westminster police tweeted this photo. MPS Westminster 'One nationality': Many signs carried pro immigration messages. REUTERS Dogs against Trump: One protester takes a break at the Westminster rally. REUTERS Speaker: Shadow Attorney General Shami Chakrabarti speaking to the crowd. Getty Images 'Full of garbage': A sign in Downing Street. Getty Images Prime Minister: Many banners carried messages targeting Theresa May, Getty Images 'Dump Trump': The signs carried personal attacks on the US President. Getty Images No Trump: Protesters chant and march. Getty Images Never again: Some posters looked back to the past. AFP/Getty Images Packed: Many protesters remarked at the amount of people. AFP/Getty Images Standstill: Buses had to divert because of the crowds. PA Anger: People demonstrate during a protest at Downing Street in central London. PA Crowds: Hordes of people took to the streets. Getty Images Anti-Trump: Thousands of people have slammed the President's policy. Getty Images Messages for May: Demonstrators hold placards as they protest outside Downing Street. Getty Images 'Never again': Demonstrators march along Downing Street. Getty Images 'Muslim ban': Londoners marched with placards with messages for the PM. Getty Images NO: The anti-Trump rally spilled onto the road. Getty Images Humour: A sign drawing on a Mary Poppins pun. Caroline Lee Chants: The crowds were heard chanting 'shame on May'. Getty Images Welcome refugees: Protesters on Monday evening. PA Landmark: The iconic London eye seen in the background. PA 'Dangerous': One of the anti-Trump protesters. Lydia Ruffles Anti-Trump: Signs carried harsh words for the US leader. Emma Gibson Blocked: Protesters said Whitehall was brought to a standstill. Garry Knight 'Resist': A sign in Whitehall. Spectrum SINO Radio 'Bridges not walls': Many of the banners carried pro-globalization messages. Jessica Voorsanger Rally: The first crowds forming at the protest, which began at 6pm. Garry Knight United: Stop the War Coalition joined the protest. PA Gathered: People listened to speakers who fired up the crowd. Getty Images We stand together: Among the figures who were expected to attend were Lily Allen and Ed Miliband. Getty Images March: Some of the protesters holding placards. Getty Images Together: People of all ages joined in the rally. Getty Images

He admits that its tiring, struggling. Resignation is a danger, saying injustice is like the weather, theres no point complaining because it will still rain. That has to be challenged and it is why optimism is important. My parents were Leftie and wanted me to stay away from the Left, sack it off, because they thought theyd wasted their lives. My rebellion was against their defeatism. He stays positive by taking a long view. Things change but only if people will it to be. There is a massive mountain to climb. We are up against creeping proto-fascism.

Jones was in America researching his new book, The Politics of Hope, which I appreciate sounds like satire. I chose to write it partly to cheer myself up. Hes travelling the world talking to people who are struggling to find out what they think works. He likes meeting people but the next part is a slow process. I dont enjoy writing, which is a problem. Im not even that good. I do it as a means to an end to raise issues.

Thousands join London protests against Donald Trump travel ban

A failure of communication on the Left is something Jones is painfully aware of. He admits hes guilty of chin-stroking. The left, myself included, has failed to get its message across and the populist right has benefited. He is still a firm Labour supporter but if there was a leadership election he says: The Left has failed badly. Id find it hard to vote for Corbyn.

"Theres no point trying to second-guess Trump", says Jones

Hes sympathetic, though, to the Labour leaders three-line whip to vote for Article 50. If youre seen to overturn the democratic will of the people, that will upset many. Equally, some Labour MPs dont have a choice but to rebel because they represent Remain constituencies.

When Corbyn announced he was standing for leader, Jones thought he wouldnt get on the ballot paper and itd end up embarrassing the Left. Jeremy said to me, If I get 25 per cent of the vote, thats good, isnt it? Jones saw him as a transitional figure who stood out of duty when the party risked moving to the Right. He didnt expect to win. Has that lack of ambition caused problems? They have made lots of bad mistakes. Theres been a lack of strategy, communication, vision. If theres an election now Jeremy will go and a new leader will probably shift the party to the Right. He wont last unless he turns things around.

Would Jones go into politics? What I do is politics. Ive been asked to stand repeatedly, without sounding big-headed. I wouldnt rule it out but Id only do it if I thought it was useful. At the last election I tried to support candidates from backgrounds under-represented in Parliament. There are lots of white men who used to be journalists in politics  take Boris Johnson and Michael Gove  thats not a good precedent for me.

Hed back a younger leader, able to keep Labours fractured coalition together. Blairist centrism is dead. He loves Ed Miliband and would like to see him in the shadow cabinet.

Criticising Labour is thorny ground. Jones doesnt want to get a violin out but has received death threats from the far-Right and vicious insults on the Left. There are Labour supporters wedded to Corbyn as an individual who wont take any criticism whatsoever. Ive been called a Right-wing careerist for questioning Corbyn and got a lot of stick. The idea of witch-hunting people who dare to criticise your leader looks cult-like and doesnt attract anyone. And women with opinions get horrible abuse  some men hate women with opinions both on the Right and the Left.

Tragically, hes lost friends over politics. What matters is living a happy life and politics is about building a world where that is possible. When politics is so polarised that it gets in the way of friendships, thats sad.

Owen Jones and Piers Morgan go head to head on Good Morning Britain

Theres a strand of performance on social media, he says, that is corrupting any kind of political debate because these people arent about being rational. At the moment people are posting pictures of Jones at an event with controversial alt-Right poster boy Milo Yiannopoulos. I remember him being mischievous, says Jones. Now hes this pin-up for the proto-fascist movement. Its partly performance and bizarre attention-seeking. You wonder whether he believes it.

A robust defence of his own rationale comes easily to Jones. His family berate him for being Right-wing while his twin sister, a tattooed Berlin-based artist, the pretty, cool one, once said I was part of the system. His parents were Trotskyists who met leafleting in Balham in 1968. His mother was an IT lecturer and his father started out working full-time for the Militant Tendency before taking a job at Sheffield City Council, because they had four kids and fighting for the revolution doesnt pay the bills.

Rachel Johnson isnt his only Right-wing comrade and lots of his friends arent political. If that was the case Id go mad.

Would he go out with a Conservative? He blushes. I cant wear a badge saying Ive never kissed a Tory because that would be factually wrong. Id find it hard to imagine going out with a Conservative because what I believe is so central to everything I do. Im writing about hope because I think things can change. The future does not belong to Donald Trump.

Follow Susannah Butter on Twitter: @susannahbutter
L ast summer, the day before the EU referendum on 23 June, the BBC published the results of a comprehensive survey of MPs attitudes towards Brexit. They were as follows: 479 wished to remain in the EU and 158 preferred to leave. Thats a majority of more than three-to-one in favour of staying in Europe.

This week, barely eight months later, those very same MPs (give or take the odd by-election) voted as follows on Article 50: 114 in favour of staying in the EU and 498 preferring to leave. Thats more than four to one the opposite way.

Try explaining that.

I tried, during a conversation with an American friend. Theyre still confused  and so am I. Someone will say its the will of the people and yes, it was the will of those people, on that day, with the information they had been given. But these particular people  our MPs  are appointed to do more than rubber-stamp the wishes of their constituents. Theyre there to make informed decisions on BEHALF of their constituents.

At least they used to be, before this week.

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Since the referendum there has, inevitably, been a lot of talk about democracy. And a lot more since Trump won the US election. But which kind of democracy, you may well ask, since no one can agree which kind is the best. Or, to put it another way, the most democratic.

If you asked me, for example, what to do when people are divided roughly half-and-half between two conflicting views, Id say you seek a compromise that seeks to satisfy both parties; or at least implement the more popular decision while making concessions to the minority, in recognition of their substantial opposition.

That sort of wishy-washy please-everyone view seems to have gone firmly out of fashion in todays political landscape.

Donald Trump doesnt see it that way and nor, it seems, does our Parliament. They seem to believe that however close the result, however divided the people, however extreme those opposing views may be, there is only one winner. And the rest, to put it in the sort of language Trump likes to use when he tweets, are just #LOSERS.

Which is fine if youre talking about sport, and possibly even acceptable if youre talking about war. But it seems plain wrong to me when youre talking about peoples future.

Trump has made it patently clear that in his opinion government is not about compromise any more: its about Winners and Losers. And Losers suck even though he was the loser if you look at it in terms of the popular vote. Two-thirds of American voters did not vote for Trump. But the only thing that counts, apparently, is the official result. And in that hes the #WINNER.

No time for losers: Donald Trump / REUTERS

And so to Brexit. Just as with Trump, two-thirds of UK voters didnt vote to Leave but in Trump terms theyre #LOSERS, albeit because a large proportion of them didnt get around to voting to Remain. And that could have been because they were confused, or complacent, or undecided, or just plain lazy.

So, looking at the the slender margin of the vote, the only certainty is that were bitterly divided.

For everyone who tells you Brexit was the will of the people youll find someone else (me, for example) who finds it hard to call a decision supported by one in three potential voters the will of the people.

Yet there they were in the House of Commons on Wednesday night, the young and the old and the sick (but not my local MP Diane Abbott) and the vulnerable and even a baby, trying to convince us that they had to vote for something they didnt agree with  at least didnt agree with eight months earlier  because it was the right thing to do for the country. The will of the people, no less.

Missed vote: Labour's Diane Abbott / BBC

You may think thats right. You may think Parliament is there to carry out the will of the people. But its not. The truth is, it has a higher purpose than that. Our MPs are supposed to be smarter than us. So sometimes Parliament is a buffer against the will of the people. And its meant to be.

If it wasnt, we would probably still have hanging, we would probably go to war even more often than we do, we would probably pay far lower taxes  or no taxes at all; racist violence would be at an all-time high, and there would probably be civil war on the streets.

As Edmund Burke pointed out 260 years ago, a member of Parliament owes his constituents not merely his hard work, but his judgment; And he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

His words, and principles, which didnt stop him losing his seat at the next election, were echoed rather more recently by Labour MP Chris Bryant, in an excellent New Statesman article, attributing the rise of political extremism to social media.

This, he argued, encourages people to express their not-necessarily well-informed views at painful length to an audience of like-minded sycophants: the so-called echo chamber effect. It has the added effect of trying to turn MPs into delegates mandated online, he said: something they were never elected to be.

The job of an MP is also to provide leadership, to exercise his or her judgement, to see each issue against the wider context, to form alliances that can deliver change and to be a forceful advocate, Bryant explained, going on to give the classic example of restoring the death penalty.

The pollsters tell us this would be popular. Perhaps a majority of my constituents would vote for it in a referendum. But whatever the majority for the death penalty, I would never vote for it, as I have regularly made clear in general elections. If that is the dominant issue for a voter, then he or she should vote for another candidate.

Some might say that makes Mr Bryant anti-democratic but he  and I  would not agree, because if MPs always had to follow the majority view of their constituents, even on matters of conscience and however small the majority, then there would be no point in having a Parliament at all.

If we just become ciphers for online referendums we shall narrow debate and render our country ungovernable, added Bryant, before dropping the big bombshell: I even have a sneaking feeling that if Twitter and Facebook had existed in the 1930s, MPs under threat of deselection might not have ended appeasement and fought the Nazis."

He was speaking in 2015, at the tail end of what now seems like a sepia-tinted age of enlightenment before Brexit and Trump. But his words seem somehow more relevant than ever.
A n incredibly brave London secondary school student has created an inspiring poem about being transgender.

Zack Richards, 15, identifies as a man and wrote the poem to help other transgender young people feel less alone.

He said creating the poem allowed him to express the gender dysphoria he has experienced.

Supported by his teachers at Woodside High School in Wood Green, Zach recorded the poem as part of the schools LGBT History Month celebrations.

It was emotionally challenging to write the poem but it was also freeing," he told the Standard.

Zach said creating the poem was 'freeing' / Woodside High School

As I wrote it I felt as if all the bad memories escaped. It was empowering to perform the poem because actually saying the words out loud helped me to really confront them.

There have been times when I have felt very alone. I hope by sharing this, others may feel less alone and not doubt themselves.

My school does a lot to celebrate equality and diversity and through marking events like LGBT History Month, it prompted me to think about the person I want to become which made me reflect on the sort of help I needed.

My school is really open about offering support to anyone and thats really important.

He added that his message to other young people experiencing gender dysphoria is that: Its almost certain that youll go through a period of self-doubt and thats fine.

Doubt doesnt make you less than who you are. Take every ounce of courage you can find and use it to shape yourself into the person you want to be.
A husband and wife who ran an east London butchers stole 230,000 by setting up their own secret till and hiding the money from the shops owner.

Shop manager Kevin Quirk, 54, and sales supervisor Brenda Quirk, 52, pocketed the money over a period of nine years by tallying it up through a second till at Dewhurst of Stratford.

After detectives caught him red-handed, Mr Quick claimed the second till was for beer money and staff bonuses.

Between June 2006 and February 2015 the married couple, from Buckhurst Hill, stole 230,000 from Roy Cook, the owner of Dewhurst in The Mall.

Mr Cook became aware a second, secret till was being used by the Quirks for all cash received between Monday and Thursday.

Butcher: Kevin Quirk, 54, was sentenced to two years imprisonment suspended for two years. / Met Police

He employed a private detective who covertly visited the shop wearing body cameras and saw cash sales being put through the unauthorised till.

The Quirks were arrested and found guilty of theft by employee in December last year. They both denied the offence.

DC Georgina Black of the Met Police said she was pleased the couple have been brought to justice.

She said: This crime is particularly horrible because the Quirks abused their position of trust and stole thousands of pounds for their own personal gain.

Butcher's wife: Brenda Quirk, 52, worked as a sales supervisor at the Stratford shop. / Met Police

They have shown no remorse for their crime and have failed to admit their guilt throughout.

"Id like to thank Mr Cook for coming to us and for his assistance throughout the investigation.

"I hope this will send a clear warning to anyone else who thinks it is okay to steal from their employer."

On Friday the pair, both of Walnut Way, Buckhurst Hill, were sentenced at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Mr Quirk was sentenced to two years imprisonment, suspended for two years. He must carry out 300 hours of community service and pay a victim surcharge of 100.

Mrs Quirk was sentenced to eight months in jail, also suspended for two years. She was ordered to carry out 100 hours of community service and pay 100 to the victim.
A gang of robbers was jailed for more than 30 years today for blowing up cash machines in an audacious spree of raids on banks and post offices across London and the Home Counties.

Jamie Duggan, 26, and Anthony Rodwell, 27, were both jailed for 12 years and Trevor Collins, 26, for nine years at Kingston Crown Court.

The three men carried out 27 highly dangerous attacks on cash machines in west London suburbs, Surrey and the Thames Valley between July 2014 and April 2015.

Police said it was only luck that members of the public were not killed or seriously injured by the explosions which destroyed cashpoints and sent debris flying more than 40 yards away.

The gang would pump highly volatile oxyacetylene gas into the machines, stand back and then ignite it from around 16 yards away.

Police said it was a miracle noone was hurt / Met police

Detective Inspector Scott Hartley of the Flying Squad said: It was sheer luck that nobody was killed due to the actions of this gang.

They handled an extremely dangerous substance carelessly and with complete disregard for the safety of others.

Given that this series of crimes involved 27 offences, it is fortunate that no unsuspecting members of the public were injured.

He said in one case debris was blown more than 40 yards away. If this debris had struck a member of the public or a passing car the resulting injuries could easily have been fatal, he said.

Anthony Rodwell, 27, pleaded guilty along with two other men / Met police

However, police said 19 of the attempts failed and the gang failed to get inside the machines while on three occasions they were disturbed.

"It was sheer luck that nobody was killed due to the actions of this gang. They handled an extremely dangerous substance carelessly and with complete disregard for the safety of others.

In eight successful attempts the gang escaped with 356,330 in cash. The damage they caused was estimated to be more than 320,000.

Jamie Duggan, 26, was jailed for 12 years. / Met police

The gang used stolen vehicles or ones with cloned plates. On one night in October 2014, three premises were targeted in little more than an hour.

Eight of the raids took place in Hounslow, four in Hillingdon and eight in Ealing. There were also three offences in Surrey and three in Thames Valley.

Premises targeted included banks, post offices, supermarkets and corner stores with ATMs.

Trevor Collins, 26, of Hayes, was jailed for nine years. / Met police

Detectives identified one gang member from his DNA left at the scene of one of the raids.

Jamie Duggan, 26, of Staines-Upon-Thames, Anthony Rodwell, 27, of Ashford and Trevor Collins, 26, were all sentenced on Friday.

All three pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to conspiracy to commit burglary with intent to steal and conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life
It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the peoples representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge  stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, after his nomination Tuesday to the U.S. Supreme Court

A U.S. president selects a distinguished judge to join the Supreme Court. If youve followed these nominations in the 30 years since the demonizing of Robert Bork, you know what comes next:

The nominee becomes a chew toy. Senators of the opposition party, stoked by interest groups they serve and protect, say he or she is a troubling choice, out of the American mainstream. They annotate flaws, indiscretions and the chew toys writings with which they disagree.

Members of both major parties play this sorry game. President Trumps nomination of federal appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch of Colorado is no different.

Moments after Gorsuchs brief and humble remarks to the nation Tuesday night, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Nebraska, quipped that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is about to tell Americans that Judge Gorsuch kicks puppies and heckles piano recitals. Schumer promptly declared his serious doubts about whether Gorsuch should be confirmed. Schumer also said its up to Gorsuch to prove that hes in, yes, the American mainstream.

Wrong. Gorsuch doesnt have to prove anything his stellar record has established. Its up to Schumer and his colleagues to vet Gorsuch, preferably with open minds, and decide whether hed be a good justice. The process includes hearings notorious for long-windedness from preening senators.

Example: In 2005, during the questioning of nominee John Roberts, Sen. Joe Biden warned Roberts to give short answers, then filibustered for 12 of his assigned 20 minutes. As Roberts responded, Biden deployed theatrics that The Washington Post described as the full Al Gore: While Roberts spoke, Biden shook his head, put his face in his hand, pouted and glared disgustedly.

Theres a much better way for senators to provide their advice and consent. First, a word about the Gorsuch nomination:

It comes as Democrats are justifiably furious about the shabby treatment that, in 2016, Republican senators gave to President Barack Obamas nominee to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Obama sought to fill what had been a conservative seat with a liberal jurist, Merrick Garland.

We strongly urged, as is our custom, that the Senate evaluate Garlands exemplary record and Vote him up or down, but vote. Republicans stonewalled, disingenuously claiming that Obama, so late in his presidency, should leave the nomination to the next president.

Republicans said they were merely following the dictate of, again, Biden: In 1992, with a Republican president and a Democratic Senate, Judiciary Chairman Biden said that once the political season is underway, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee and essential to the process.

The Gorsuch pick offers both parties a chance to end these selfish antics. Early reviews suggest hes fair-minded, brilliant, collegial  and the sort of conservative Trump told voters hed nominate.

New York University law professor Richard Epstein, who disagrees with Gorsuch on some issues, on Wednesday gave us his verdict: He is all around a terrific guy, and if he is out of the mainstream then no Republican appointee to the bench is within it.

Nor is he like Scalia in temperament. He thinks first, then writes, does not have any strong intellectual crusades on anything from standing to abortion to gay rights.

Critics say Gorsuch defers to corporations and scorns government regulation. Those are areas senators should explore. The rest of us should ask whether the critics fault Gorsuchs application of laws, or merely dislike the outcomes of the cases. It is fair to ask whether his rulings reflect the Constitution or his own beliefs. Democrats can draw a question from an episode involving Scalia, whom Gorsuch admires:

In 1989, Scalia cast a deciding vote to uphold flag burning in Texas. A year later he opposed a federal law against flag burning. His votes, he said, upheld constitutional free speech  yet violated his principles: If it were up to me, I would put in jail every sandal-wearing, scruffy-bearded weirdo who burns the American flag. But I am not king.

Nor are U.S. senators, whose convictions shouldnt be the chief issue in any confirmation process. Yet in hearings, senators tend to ask show-off, hot-button questions that they know nominees are too smart, and too ethical, to answer candidly. A wordy question essentially asking if a nominee agrees with the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade elicits an earnest but vague nonresponse; the future justice likely will hear abortion cases, and doesnt want to suggest bias....

Wed urge less attention in hearings to previous court decisions and more focus on how a nominee views key passages in the Constitution. What does this amendment mean to your jurisprudence? How, if at all, would you recast it? Does it conflict with such-and-such in the Bill of Rights? In short, explore how a nominee thinks rather than playing gotcha over how he or she may vote in future cases. Judging isnt legislating. Its about, well, judgment....

Maybe vetting will unearth reasons why senators should reject Gorsuch. Any conclusion should emerge from a fair, efficient process, not from reflexive reactions driven by senators  and their pet interest groups  politics. Then:

Vote him up or down, but vote.
A man who was naked from the waist down was arrested on the Tube at Waterloo.

The man was arrested for outraging public decency after shocking commuters at about 6pm on Thursday.

The British Transport Police Dip Squad tweeted: We have just arrested a male for Outraging Public Decency #Waterloo naked from the waist down on the tube!!

In this weather!! Oh dear.

A spokeswoman for BTP said: A man was spotted by officers wearing very little clothing at Waterloo last night, at around 6pm, and taken into custody.

She added he has now been released without charged.
A "manipulative and nasty" rapist who lured a tourist across London before attacking her at a railway station has been jailed.

Salah Koubar, 20, tricked the victim into following him on a series of bus journeys from a bustling Soho bar to West Dulwich station, lying about where he was taking her.

After striking up conversation on a night out in Wardour Street, Koubar convinced the 29-year-old to catch a bus with him, claiming he was taking her to Westminster. Instead he led her in the direction of Brixton.

When the woman became uneasy, Koubar grabbed her phone and handbag and forced her onto another bus.

She managed to grab her belongings and fled the bus - deep in south London  but was followed by her rapist who then viciously attacked her.

Mugshot: Salah Koubar, 20, tricked the victim into following him across London. / British Transport Police

Koubar was arrested two days later after police scoured CCTV videos.

He denied the assault and was found guilty at Blackfriars Crown Court last month.

The Sudanese national, who lives in Densole Close in Beckenham, was jailed for seven years on Friday.

Senior investigating officer Detective Inspector Ian Trantum, said: "Koubar is a manipulative and nasty individual who deliberately exploited the victim's vulnerability and unfamiliarity of the city.

"He led her away from the busy city centre and raped her where he knew it would be quiet."
A schoolboy is in a life-threatening condition after he was stabbed in the neck in a gang brawl in south London on Friday afternoon.

Witnesses described seeing a boy pull out a knife and stab another boy as a group of fighting teenagers loitered around a busy shopping street in West Croydon.

Police were on routine patrol in Poplar Walk at around 4.30pm when they came across the large gang of youths.

Officers discovered one of the boys, aged 14, had been knifed in the neck.

An air ambulance was scrambled and officers gave first aid to the injured boy while they waited for paramedics.

The 14-year-old was taken to a south London hospital by the London Ambulance Service. He is in a serious and life-threatening condition.

A photo taken in the aftermath of the stabbing, which happened near to North End, shows several police officers crowding around the injured teenager as flashing police cars surround the scene.

Police cordoned off the road with tape by the Santander at the corner of Poplar Walk and North End, near to West Croydon bus station.

Four teenage boys were arrested in connection with the incident on a route 198 bus on the nearby London Road. The weapon was found dumped in West Croydon bus station, police said. It has been sent off for forensic testing.

A spokesman for the Met Police said: "At the time of the incident the pedestrian area of Croydon town centre was very busy with people. Trident detectives are appealing for any witnesses to the incident or events afterwards, or anyone with any information about the incident, to contact them."

Anyone who may have seen anything that may help police is asked to contact 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.
G ang members are escaping the full force of the law for horrendous crimes inflicted on girls and young Londoners because police are failing to use trafficking and modern slavery legislation against them, a Home Office minister has warned.

Sarah Newton, the minister for safeguarding, said it was very concerning that the strongest punishments were not being pursued as she announced an investigation into the failings.

She said that efforts to tackle county lines activity  in which women and children are used to smuggle drugs from the capital to other parts of the country  also needed to improve.

Under the Modern Slavery Act of 2015, which was brought in by Theresa May as Home Secretary, it is an offence to arrange or facilitate the travel of another person with a view to them being exploited. Examples include using a person to carry drugs or sending them to be sexually exploited.

Minister for safeguarding Sarah Newton / Jeremy Selwyn

The crime is committed even if the victim consented and the maximum penalty is life imprisonment.

Ms Newton said the Government was determined to eradicate gangs and would also redouble efforts against knife crime.

Her comments came during a visit to the Safer London charity in Southwark. She heard from staff about their work helping young people avoid being drawn into gangs or to exit them. Some of the charitys frontline workers warned that funding cuts and a lack of housing for those leaving custody were hindering rehabilitation.

But the most serious complaint was what one anti-gang worker described as the refusal to use trafficking legislation by the Crown Prosecution Service and police to tackle gang members despite loads of trafficking cases.

Mrs Newton said: This is very serious organised crime and real exploitation. It would help if people were being convicted for being slavemasters.

She added: A definite action point is to work with the police about the use of modern slavery provisions... Were not using the full force of the law to bear down on what are horrendous crimes.

Detective Superintendent Tim Champion, from the Mets Trident Gang Crime Command, said: In relation to county lines, we target those who exploit young persons to supply drugs on their behalf. This includes looking at any opportunity to prosecute gang members for human trafficking or modern slavery offences.

A CPS spokesman said prosecutors sought to bring the most appropriate charges and that in gang cases this included offences created by the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
T wo men have been rescued from the roof of an oil storage refinery in south-east London after a huge fire broke out.

Dramatic pictures show smoke billowing from the three storey building in Erith after the blaze broke out on Friday afternoon.

Six fire engines and 35 firefighters and officers rushed to the scene along Manorway to tackle the fire.

Firefighters earlier rescued two oil workers from the roof of the building. Another two men fled before fire crews arrived.

Builder David Letchford, 31, was working on a construction site opposite the oil refinery when the blaze broke out.

Thick black smoke billows from the fire at the oil refinery in Erith / @David_Letchford/Twitter

He told the Standard: I was working on the site when my colleague called me over and asked if I had seen all the smoke.

I was watching and then suddenly the flames shot up and thick black smoke was blowing towards us. It absolutely stunk as well.

We could see a Tesco factory next to the refinery had been evacuated but we kept working even though you could see people watching it.

Everyone was nervous because of what type of building it is but the firefighters were quick to get it under control.

Mr Letchford said firefighters were damping down the flames shortly after 3pm.

The building contains two oil refinery cylinders.

A spokeswoman for the London Fire Brigade said: Six fire engines and 35 firefighters and officers are tackling a fire at an oil storage refinery warehouse on Manorway in Erith.

"Firefighters have rescued two male workers from the roof via an internal staircase. Two further men left the ground floor before the brigade arrived.

"A three storey building containing two oil refinery cylinders is alight.

"The Brigade was called at 1.11pm. Fire crews from Erith and surrounding fire stations are at the scene."

The cause of the fire is not known at this stage.
P upils at a London school may be given face masks to protect them from toxic air, the Standard reveals today.

Governors at Archbishop Sumner Primary in Lambeth are due to discuss the drastic measure at their next meeting.

Chairman of governors Adam Matthews said: Im genuinely considering whether we need to issue pupils with face masks. It will be a proposal from me as chair. My hope is it is supported.

Fellow governor the Reverend Angus Aagaard, team rector for north Lambeth parish, supports giving out the masks. It saddens me but if needs must so be it, he said.

Smog: London's air pollution seen from Primrose Hill / Jeremy Selwyn

The masks would be for pupils to wear to and from school, with parents rather than teachers deciding if they should do so. Rev Aagaard, a father of two whose vicarage is on polluted Kennington Cross, a short distance from the school, believes radical measures are needed on filthy air.

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We are at the coalface. We have to wipe gunk off the windows everyday, he explained. I can taste it, smell it and almost feel it. This is an issue we can no longer ignore. There is a duty of care to children, one another and what we have inherited.

Some Londoners are considering leaving the capital due to air pollution levels

The governors meeting is next month and the face mask proposal comes after air pollution in Lambeth peaked at very high in mid-January.

Scientists say evidence shows childrens lung growth can be stunted by toxic air, significantly blamed on diesel vehicles, as well as being linked to other respiratory and cardiac problems.

Support: parent Tracey Gilbert backs the masks proposal

Parents were supportive of the face mask idea.

Mother-of-two Tracey Gilbert, 47, a management consultant who has asthma, said: We shouldve taken action beforehand to stop pollution getting to the point where its a reasonable consideration to give children masks to walk to school.

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Elen Ghebre, 42, a mother of three who lives in Kennington Cross, believes pollution is getting worse, adding: So Im very happy for the masks idea because it would improve their health and safety.

Mr Matthews, a father of three young children, said parents were planning a Carnival for Clean Air after Easter focused on Kennington Cross. They would seek legal permission to close busy Kennington Road and Kennington Lane at the junction. But some parents seem prepared to go further.

London Pollution - In pictures 1 /20 London Pollution - In pictures PA Sunrise: Pollution lingered over London on Tuesday morning Jeremy Selwyn A cyclist wearing a face mask rides between taxis taking part in a protest to highlight congestion and air pollution Getty Images A smog filled traffic rush hour in the East End of London Jeremy Selwyn Pollution detector App 'Blue Air' near the Houses of Parliament Blue air Thick smog hangs over London's Docklands PA Traffic pollution in North London Jeremy Selwyn Air pollution surrounds The Shard in London Jeremy Selwyn Getty Images Sunrise over a misty polluted London from Primrose Hill Jeremy Selwyn St. Paul's Cathedral is seen among the skyline through the smog AFP via Getty Images A thick layer of smog was visible above London William Smith/@williamsmithorg A cold layer of air can be seen trapping pollution close to the ground and across the London skyline Pete Buckney This image taken near the Royal Observatory in Greenwich shows a thick layer of fog hanging over London Anna Rolls The City of London covered in smog seen from Hampstead Heath Getty Images

Speaking as a parent rather than school governor, Mr Matthews added: Parents are considering taking direct action and blocking roads after school because they are so frustrated at the lack of action to address pollution from diesel cars. The Government, in particular, just seems absent. We have reached breaking point.

Theresa May pledged at Prime Ministers Questions that the Government would step up action on dirty air.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan is introducing a daily T-charge, of around 10, for the most polluting vehicles to drive into central London. Westminster is to charge diesel drivers 50 per cent more to park in the Marylebone area.
F irefighters raced to the scene after a blaze broke out in a pub in Westminster next to the Home Office.

Some 21 firefighters attended the fire in The Barley Mow pub, popular with civil servants, at about 9.30am on Friday.

One person had fled the building, in Horseferry Road, and part of the first floor and the kitchen were alight.

A spokeswoman for the London Fire Brigade said firefighters worked quickly to contain the fire and stopped it spreading to other parts of the building.

She added the LFB had received five 999 calls alerting them to the blaze, which has now been put out.

She said: Fire crews from Lambeth, Chelsea and Soho fire stations are attending the incident.

The cause of the fire is not known at this stage.
T heresa Mays bid to be the EUs link with President Trump hit turbulence today as European Union leaders angrily hit out at the president at a summit in Malta.

Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Mr Trump did not seem to understand the detail of how the EU worked.

In a withering putdown he said he did not feel threatened by Mr Trump because the new administration does not know the EU in detail, but in the European Union details matter.

Austrian leader Christian Kern said the EU could respond to Mr Trumps hostile attitude by binding closer together as a bloc.

Its not a threat, it could be a catalyst for a strong, more united Europe, he said. It is an alarm call to see if we are the right track.

Theresa May began her mission to become the go-between by appealing to the other 27 leaders to spend more money on defence in order to secure future backing for Nato from Mr Trump.

However, her appeal was rebuffed by Swedish deputy prime minister Margot Wallstrom whose country is not in Nato.

Ms Wallstrom told BBC radio: No I dont think that that is in the making at the moment.

Winning Mr Trumps promise of 100 per cent backing for Nato was a key success in Mrs Mays visit to Washington, but in return she promised to pass on his concern that most EU countries are not paying their fair share of military spending.

The Prime Minister did not speak to the press as she arrived at the Grandmasters Palace in Valletta.

She was only invited to the first part of the summit as the other 27 EU nations planned to hold talks on the future of the EU after Brexit without her.
A fresh legal challenge to the Governments plans to exit the European Union has been blocked by the High Court.

Parliament has already given the Government the authority to start formal Brexit negotiations with the EU in March, following a landmark case in the Supreme Court last month over parliamentary sovereignty.

The new challenge argued that Parliament needed to separately give its consent to take Britain out of the European Economic Area (EEA) and the Single Market.

Last Junes referendum on membership of the European Union did not mention the single market, but Theresa May has said she will take Britain out of it on the back of the vote.

Several countries are not part of the European Union but remain members of the EEA, the most famous of which is Norway.

But on Friday judges at the High Court blocked the legal challenge saying they would give their reasons later.

Last month, after weeks of resistance, Government ministers were forced to accept that triggering Article 50 - the formal process for leaving the EU - would have to be approved by parliament.

The Supreme Court dismissed the Government's argument that they could invoke the exit clause using their executive powers bestowed on them through the royal prerogative.

The most recent challenge to the Governments plans to leave the European Union was bought by Adrian Yalland and Peter Wilding, who heads-up the pro single-market organisation British Influence.

There were also a second set of claimants who did not wish to be identified for fear of becoming the targets of the same type of abuse suffered by Gina Miller, the lead claimant in article 50 case at the Supreme Court.
A London MP has banned an outspoken constituent from voting for him after a blistering row over Brexit.

Senior Labour party figure John Cryer hit out at university lecturer Professor Eric Heinze, who he claimed emailed him a patronising stream of drivel and branded him an elitist with no backbone.

Professor Heinze had heavily criticised the pro-Brexit MP for not discussing his views on leaving the EU in his bimonthly newsletter and asked to be removed from his mail-out list.

In retaliation, the Leyton & Wanstead MP said: I am in receipt of the patronising stream of drivel which for some reason you saw fit to send me.

I will remove you from my list. In return I would ask that you do not contact me again - and do not vote for me.

Woman admits to voting brexit on Question Times because of straight bananas

You clearly have no regard for democracy or accountability. I, on the other hand, am a democrat with little regard for elites. You are clearly an elitist and presumably you find it difficult to fathom why ordinary people were given the vote in the first place. You could come to a surgery and debate this face to face. I doubt you have the backbone for that.

Ben Sims, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesperson for Leyton and Wanstead, said: By supporting Brexit, John Cryer is showing just how out of touch he is with the majority of his constituents who voted to remain. But worse still, when questioned by a voter he has the arrogance to tell them never to contact him again. At a time of uncertainty, we deserve far better than this.
One of the applause lines of Donald Trumps presidential campaign was his suggestion he would bring back waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.

Trump later drew back to some degree from that sickening suggestion, but the idea that his administration might subject suspected terrorists to torture keeps resurfacing.

Last week it was reported that a draft executive order is circulating that contemplates modifications in interrogation practices and implies current limits are too restrictive. ...Equally ominous, the document also floats the idea of re-establishing overseas detention centers operated by the CIA at which high-value alien terrorists would be interrogated outside the reach of U.S. law.

Barack Obama ordered the closing of such black sites shortly after he took office in 2009. At the same time Obama ordered CIA interrogators to abide by the standards of the Army Field Manual, which prohibited waterboarding and other inhumane interrogation methods. Congress later wrote that requirement into federal law.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the proposed executive order was not a White House document. But The New York Times quoted three administration officials who said it had circulated among staff members of the National Security Council.

Meanwhile, Trump told an interviewer for ABC News he has spoken to intelligence experts who were big believers in waterboarding. Not only that: He said he had asked people at the highest levels of intelligence: Does torture work? And the answer was, Yes, absolutely.

To be fair, Trump said he would defer  for now anyway  to Secretary of Defense James Mattis who said hes not a believer in torture. The president added I want to do everything within the bounds of what youre allowed to do legally. ...

The problem is that those legal boundaries could change: The draft executive order is a catalog of possible changes, all of them bad, which is why the White House needs to strongly and clearly disavow the document. Torture isnt a subject on which the administration can afford to send mixed signals.
A former Tory Chancellor has said the imprisonment of a London mother in Iran on secret charges could harm the thaw in relations with the West.

Norman Lamont, who is Britains trade envoy to the country, said the jailing of charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe might damage Irans future prospects for investment.

His remarks came in a House of Lords debate on what the Government is doing to try and free the mother-of-one, who is serving a five year prison sentence.

Mr Lamont, who was appointed envoy following the much-heralded Iranian nuclear deal, asked foreign office minister Baroness Anelay: Is it not the case that this treatment of Nazanin not only is a tragedy for her but is harming prospects for investment and the future of the Iranian people?

He pointed peers to a statement by President Rouhani of Iran who said his country must make visitors feel safe and welcome if they are to attract more investment and commercial engagement with the wider world.

He was backed by ex Lib Dem leader Lord Menzies Campbell who said the case could undermine relations with Iran following the 2015 deal which lifted a number of punitive economic sanctions.

Lord Campbell asked: Would it not be unfortunate, to say the least, if the fact that this matter is not resolved should sully or undermine that emerging and improving relationship?

He said her imprisonment had disappointed many who supported the Iran nuclear agreement and who have welcomed the improving relations between Iran and the UK.

Baroness Anelay, said she agreed and added the Government stands ready to help the family and are exploring other legal avenues after the latest court appeal failed.

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by Irans Revolutionary Guard in April 2016 as she attempted to board a flight back to the UK with her two-year-old daughter Gabriella.

The pair had been on holiday visiting family when both of their passports were confiscated.

Gabriella, who is a British citizen, has had to remain in the country and is being looked after by her Iranian grandparents, while her father Richard is unable to get a visa to visit.

Mr Ratcliffe, an accountant from West Hampstead, released an English translation of an emotional letter penned by his wife in Farsi to their daughter from prison.

She said: Forgive me for the distance and for all the moments of loneliness that both of us, or rather, the three of us endured.

"Forgive me for all the nights I was not by your side to hold your warm, little hand till you fall asleep.

"Forgive me for all those moments you missed the bosom of your mother, for all those teething fever nights that I was not there for you; forgive me.

The pair have been separated since Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffes arrest.
A n army of student cyber warriors is to be recruited to combat attacks from China, Russia, terrorists and other threats.

National Cyber Security Centre chiefs announced plans to offer 4,000 bursaries, specialist training and paid work placements to 1,000 of the brighest and best students by 2020.

The new cyber rookies will be about to start university or in their first year, so normally aged 18 or 19.

By the time they graduate, the CyberFirst programme aims to have equipped them with the skills to immediately start work at the NCSC headquarters, based in Victoria, central London, the GCHQ spy-listening centre in Cheltenham, or at companies, including in the City.

NCSC boss Ciaran Martin said: A thousand cyber first graduates is a thousand steps on the way to building the world-class cyber security workforce at a national level. These are skills we desperately need.

These bursaries are a brilliant opportunity for the brightest and best.

The recruitment drive came as a powerful group of MPs published a damning report on Britains cyber security defences.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee argued that the UK ranks below Brazil, South Africa and China in keeping phones and laptops secure.

Meg Hillier, committee chairwoman and Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch, said: Government has a vital role to play in cyber security across society but it needs to raise its game.

Ministers had taken too long to consolidate the alphabet soup of agencies tasked with safeguarding the UK from cyber-attacks, the MPs added.

They issued their warning amid increasing concern about Russian cyber-attacks after Moscow allegedly interfered with the US presidential election in Donald Trumps favour.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon warned last night that Russia is weaponising information and accused Moscow of using cyber weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery in a series of attacks on western countries.

The Kremlin has denied it sought to interfer in the US election.

But Brian Lord, a former GCHQ deputy director of intelligence and cyber operations, warned that Britain is particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks from foreign states like Russia, and criminal gangs, which do not operate under the same legal standards.

He said the security services only have a few people who are able to counter cyber-attacks in an uneven battlefield where cyber foes do not operate under the same kind of shackles.

Last year, 93 recruits, out of more than 800 applicants, were given places on the CyberFirst scheme and the number is more than doubling to 250 in 2017.

Most of them would be expected to get a job on graduation after more than 20 companies pledged their support for the cutting-edge programme.

Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer said: This Government is determined to face up to the growing challenge of

cyber threats and grow the talent we need for the future.

That is why we are boosting our CyberFirst scheme by increasing the number of student places to 250 by the end of this year, and up to 1000 by 2020.

Each student would each receive an annual 4,000 bursary to study a relevant degree, eight to ten week placements at GCHQ, a GCHQ Cyber Academy, with industry partners, or at GCHQ cyber summer schools during university holidays.

Companies financially supporting CyberFirst include BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin Vodafone, Thales, Qinetiq, Airbus, Raytheon, BT, Northrop Grumann, CISCO, as well as City of London Police.
A n American astronaut has returned from space younger than his twin, scientists have said.

Scott Kelly was subjected to a number of tests after he landed in Kazakhstan last year following 340 days in space.

The same tests were also carried out on his identical twin brother Mark.

Scott was found to be 2ins taller and 15lb lighter than when he travelled in to space.

Twins: Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly are both astronauts / Robert Markowitz/NASA

Now, researchers have discovered a growth in the 52-year-olds telomeres - repetitive sequences at each end of a chromosome, The Times reported.

Telomeres typically shrink with age, however, Scotts grew longer than his brothers before shrinking back after a few months on Earth.

The discovery could jeopardise future space expeditions as the lengthening of telomeres has been linked with cancer.

Christopher Mason, assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at Cornell Weill Medicine in New York, told the Times: It may be because the astronauts exercise extremely regularly on the International Space Station (ISS).

On Earth you might go to the gym on Tuesday and then decide you cant be bothered on Thursday and go to the pub, but you cant do that on the ISS.

Food and exercise are very controlled and you dont have so many margaritas.
P resident Trumps relationship with Israel was thrown into doubt last night after he questioned the building of new settlements on occupied land.

Mr Trumps extraordinary about turn came after maintaining an unapologetically pro-Israel stance throughout his election campaign.

His unexpected stand against settlement construction was all the more embarrassing for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because it came in a White House statement released just hours after the Israeli leader announced plans to establish the first new settlement of 2,000 homes on the West Bank for two decades.

While Britain, Germany and the European Union have spoken out against the new spike in settlement activity, the statement insisted Mr Trump had yet to take an official position on the issue.

But it added: While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu / REUTERS

The Washington Post claimed the Trump administration has also pulled back somewhat on its pledge to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The move to distance the US from Israels settlement policy is certain to bring a contentious twist to the planned meeting between the two leaders in Washington on February 15.

Mr Netanyahu didnt see eye to eye with President Obama, but quickly announced plans to build more than 6,000 new settlement homes after Mr Trumps election triumph, perhaps assuming they were on the same page.

There was little to suggest in any of Mr Trumps past remarks about Israel that he would take issue with Mr Netanyahus pro-settlement government.

He blasted Mr Obamas refusal to block a UN resolution criticising settlements last year and vowed to stand side-by-side with the Israeli administration in October.

His choice of David Friedman, a financial backer of settlements, as US Ambassador to Israel was seen as further proof that he wouldnt stand in Mr Netanyahus way.

Thousands join London protests against Donald Trump travel ban

David Halperin, the executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, told the Washington Post that Mr Trump was sending a message to Mr Netanyahu.

Its a warning sign to the Israeli right that their celebration (of the new administration) may be premature, he said.
A French soldier shot a machete-wielding attacker outside the Louvre in Paris today in a major terror alert at the world famous museum.

The suspected Islamist terrorist shouted Allahu Akbar - God is great in Arabic - before being gunned down when he attacked soldiers.

Security guards had challenged the man to open his rucksack in one of the most secure buildings in the French capital, but he refused and pulled out a knife.

The attacker, who was said to be carrying two knives including the machete, was shot in the stomach and was said to be in a "serious condition".

The moment soldiers shot the attacker in the Louvre in Paris

A photo taken by a tourist on a mobile phone showed the moment the solider opened fire at the attacker in the museum.

French newspaper Le Parisien reported that the attacker was about 30 years old and had no identity papers on him.

Paris prefect Michel Cadot, who was at the scene soon after the attack, said: He lightly wounded a soldier, and then five bullets were fired at him.

Mr Cadot said the attack happened soon after 11am at the top of an escalator that leads down into the Carrousel du Louvre, an undergound shopping complex beneath the museum.

Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum following a terror alert / AP

The attacker was rushed to the Georges-Pompidou hospital, where his intensive care unit was under armed guard. The soldier, a paratrooper, suffered minor injuries.

A spokesman for the military force that patrols key sites in Paris says the four-man patrol of soldiers tried to fight off the assailant before opening fire.

Spokesman Benoit Brulon says the soldier who was slightly injured by the attacker was not the soldier who opened fire. He also said there were 1,000 people inside the museum.

A shop worker who was in the shopping centre at the time of the attack said: We heard gunfire and reacted immediately  shutting down the grills in front of the shop, and retreating into the back.

Louvre Paris Shooting - In pictures 1 /12 Louvre Paris Shooting - In pictures Pictures from inside The Louvre Museum in Paris where tourists are being evacuated into locked down halls Twitter via Wang Feng Pictures from inside The Louvre Museum in Paris where tourists are being evacuated into locked down halls Twitter via Wang Feng Police and rescue workers car park outside the Louvre museum in Paris AP French police officers and soldiers patrol in front of the Louvre museum AFP/Getty Images Police officers cordon off the area next to the Louvre museum in Paris AP French police officers patrol near the Louvre museum AFP/Getty Images French police attend shooting incident at the Louvre in Paris BBC Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum AP A French soldier stands guard near the Louvre museum AFP/Getty Images

The 19-year-old man, who asked not to be named added: Once the all-clear was given by the police we got out as quickly as possible. Im on my way home.

You always hear about the possibility of terrorism, especially in the area around the Louvre, but this was the real thing.

Olivier Majewski was just leaving his scooter in the parking area beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people, 30 or 40, running and screaming theres been a terror attack.

The 53-year-old said he hid for about 15 minutes before making his way upstairs. He said people were clearly scared. They were panicked, he said.

Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist Mayor or Paris, soon arrived at the scene to praise the extreme efficiency of the soldiers who foiled what could have been a very serious attack.

Evacuation: Visitors to the Louvre Museum were told to leave following the serious security alert / Twitter

Mr Cadot added that the attack happened at the top of an escalator that leads down into the shopping complex.

He said the knifeman "appeared to be acting alone", and that the words used pointed to extremist terrorism.

The suspect's rucksack was searched, but there was no sign of any explosives.

The soldier opened fire in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping area, which is also the entry area of the museum.

Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum / AP

It is always packed with thousands of tourists from all over the world, all of whom have their bags inspected before entry.

By 11am, the entire area was shut down, as hundreds of extra soldiers and police flooded into the area.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the attack at the Louvre was clearly terrorist in nature, while the Paris prosecutors office has opened an investigation into attempted murder... related to a terrorist enterprise.

Spokesman for the Interior Ministry Pierre-Henry Brandet said: This event reminds us that the threat is present and that security is the business of all.

Tourists wait for information inside the museum / Twitter via Wang Feng

A second suspect who may have been involved in the Louvre attack was later arrested, said police.

The Louvre is the most popular museum in the world with more than 8.6 million visitors last year and houses works including Leonardo Da Vincis Mona Lisa. People inside were held in secure parts of the building until they could be evacuated.

"Weve been told to leave  its very frightening," said John OShea, a 52-year-old Canadian who was with his wife and young son.

"Everybody is talking terrorism, but we really dont know whats going on. Apparently a number of shots were fired."

The museum was completely sealed off and trains were not stopping at the Metro station.

Video footage taken at the scene showed police cordoning off the area and directing traffic away from the incident.

France is under a State of Emergency following a series of murderous attacks carried out by Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorists.

On November 13 2015, 130 people were murdered in a single night of violence which included attacks on the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert venue and cafes and restaurants.
A family of Syrian refugees separated for two years are reunited in the US  despite President Trumps controversial travel ban.

Father Fadi Kassar hugs his daughters Hnan, eight, and Lian, five, while wife Razan looks on in tears.

Mother and daughters arrived at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York yesterday on a flight from Jordan.

They had been en route to join Mr Kassar in the US last weekend but were stopped from boarding a flight in Ukraine after the president announced an indefinite suspension on refugees from Syria. The trio spent an anxious week with relatives in Jordan as immigration officials and Connecticut senator Chris Murphy tried to secure an agreement for them to complete their trip.

Mr Kassar joined family members in Connecticut after fleeing the war and has spent the past two years working to earn enough to bring his family over.

Mr Murphy said in a statement: Tonights good news for the Kassar family is only a dim light of hope.

There are hundreds of other families out there crying themselves to sleep because they wont be able to see their loved ones.
C oncern over the spectre of alternative news emanating from the White House took on a whole new meaning last night after President Donald Trumps senior advisor Kellyanne Conway blamed two Iraqi refugees for a massacre that never happened.

The Presidents former campaign manager cited the Bowling Green massacre while defending Mr Trumps controversial US travel ban imposed on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee programme after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," she told MSNBC presenter Chris Matthews.

"Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered," she added.

The only problem was that the so-called bloodbath was a figment of Ms Conways imagination.

President Donald Trump signs executive orders as his senior team looks on / Getty Images

And it wasnt covered because, well, there was nothing to cover.

Critics on social media quickly poured scorn and ridicule on the advisor, who has frequently challenged the media as an outspoken apologist for her boss.

Finally, the "massacre" was being discussed in the media, just not in the way that Ms Conway may have wanted.

The White House didnt return a call for clarification early today, but its thought that Ms Conway may have been referring to two Iraqis - Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 41 - who were jailed for taking part in attacks against US troops in their homeland.

Both men did live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, when they were arrested in 2011 - but theres no evidence of them carrying a "massacre" or any other violent offence on US soil.

Explainer: what is an executive order?

Ms Conways comparison between Mr Trumps controversial executive order temporarily banning entry to the US to people from specific Muslim nations and a "six-month ban" on Iraqis allegedly instituted by President Obama was also debunked.

Mr Obama did order a review of vetting procedures for Iraqi citizens in the wake of the capture of Hammadi and Alwan, but it wasnt a ban on travel to the US.

The debacle comes less than a fortnight after Ms Conway defended false claims made about the size of the crowd at Mr Trumps inauguration as "alternative facts".

She said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave "alternative facts" when he described the Washington crowd on January 20 as "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration."

Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie claimed the president was "playing with fire" and risked making the nation less safe with his travel ban.

Writing in the New York Times, Ms Jolie, 41, said Mr Trump's decision to turn away refugees would cause "more instability, hatred and violence".

"Refugees are men, women and children caught in the fury of war, or the cross hairs of persecution. Far from being terrorists, they are often the victims of terrorism themselves," she claimed.

"Every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear."

The actress - whose father Jon Voight is a Trump stalwart - referred to her six children, who she said were "all born in foreign lands and are proud American citizens".

"If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire. We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against."

The Hollywood star has shied away from the spotlight following her split from Brad Pitt. She said the world was witnessing "the worst refugee crisis since World War Two."
H undreds of tourists including Londoners were locked inside the Louvre in Paris today after a machete-wielding attacker was gunned down in a major terror alert at the historic museum.

French officials said 250 visitors were held in secure parts of the museum after the suspected Islamist terrorist shouted Allahu Akbar  God is great in Arabic  before being shot when he attacked soldiers.

Security guards had challenged the man to open his rucksack in one of the most secure buildings in the French capital, but he refused and pulled out a knife.

The four-man patrol of officers on duty tried to fight off the assailant before opening fire, military officials said.

Louvre evacuated following shooting of machete wielding terror suspect

A thousand tourists were inside the museum at the time of the attack, which happened soon after 11am at the top of an escalator that leads down into the Carrousel du Louvre shopping complex.

Tourists huddle on the floor inside the Louvre / Twitter via Wang Feng

Many were swiftly evacuated from the museum but about 250 people were shepherded into safe rooms and lock inside.

They were allowed out in small groups following a tense wait of more than an hour.

French police secure the site near the Louvre Pyramid in Paris / REUTERS

Connor Bakhuizen, 18, from Woking in Surrey, who was visiting the French museum as part of a college trip, said he was ushered into a safe room with fellow students.

The teenager told the Standard: We were waiting in the foyer for our teachers to organise us for a tour when we were suddenly rushed into another room in the museum.

Louvre Paris Shooting - In pictures 1 /12 Louvre Paris Shooting - In pictures Pictures from inside The Louvre Museum in Paris where tourists are being evacuated into locked down halls Twitter via Wang Feng Pictures from inside The Louvre Museum in Paris where tourists are being evacuated into locked down halls Twitter via Wang Feng Police and rescue workers car park outside the Louvre museum in Paris AP French police officers and soldiers patrol in front of the Louvre museum AFP/Getty Images Police officers cordon off the area next to the Louvre museum in Paris AP French police officers patrol near the Louvre museum AFP/Getty Images French police attend shooting incident at the Louvre in Paris BBC Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum AP A French soldier stands guard near the Louvre museum AFP/Getty Images

The situation was calm for a while and then we were rushed upstairs really suddenly and have been kept in a safe room since about 10pm and now we are being let out safely.

I called my family but was told to turn off my phone and we sat in silence for about 10 minutes. That was the scariest part but soon the mood lightened up.

Hector Clark, a Londoner on a four-day trip to Paris, was also locked inside the Louvre with other tourists.

Soldier shoots 'attacker' outside Louvre museum in Paris

He told French news site the Local: It was intense and everyone was scared at first because the situation was unclear but people settled down after we heard from the head of security that it was safe.

"We got evacuated to the top floor, everything was calm and well handled, we have been up here for an hour or so but we are being allowed to leave now.

Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum following a terror alert / AP

Some witnesses who were waiting to leave the Louvre said they heard gunfire and could smell smoke.

Students Mei Xiayou and Ying Zhang said all the visitors were led to a safe area, which was packed with people.

"We were standing in the safety area and after half an hour, we smelled some smoke and then thought 'maybe this is true, there might be gunshots'," said Ying Zhang.

Visitors shared photos from inside the museum on social media as they waited to be let out.

The Louvre is the most popular museum in the world with more than 8.6 million visitors last year and houses works including Leonardo Da Vincis Mona Lisa

A second suspect who may have been involved in the Louvre attack was later arrested, said police.

The attacker was rushed to the Georges-Pompidou hospital, where his intensive care unit was under armed guard.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays spokesman said travel advice for the French capital had been amended due to the incident.

The spokesman said: The travel advice to Paris has been updated, basically exercising caution in the area affected. Our threat level remains where it is.

"The Foreign Office has been liaising with their counterparts in France. Obviously, we are ready to assist if required.
A stunned Quebec is in mourning. Flags are at half mast, vigils are being held, and expressions of solidarity with the Muslim community are flowing in from all quarters.

Sunday nights outrageous, murderous attack on innocent worshippers, which has taken at least six lives, seriously injured several more people and left many children fatherless, is getting the vehement condemnation it deserves.

Ordinary Quebecers of all faiths and none have recoiled at the violence and its heartbreaking toll.

In the wake of the attack, many questions have yet to be answered. But what is already far too clear is that innocent people were killed simply for who they were: Muslims. This massacre, all the more offensive because it targeted a house of prayer, by all appearances was a hate crime.

It was as pointless as it was tragic. What warped objectives did the gunman or gunmen think they were going to achieve?

Was the aim to drive Muslims from Quebec? Was it to stoke divisions within Quebec society? Was it nothing more complicated than an expression of hatred pure and simple?

Its disconcerting to think that discourse painting Muslims as people to be feared might have been one of the factors behind this attack. There has been far too much dog whistle politics in recent years, both in Quebec and by those who made niqabs an issue in the last Canadian federal election. If so, that would be a particularly bitter irony. Assault weapons are not to be found under burkas, it seems, but in the hands of those who would do innocent Muslims harm. Who has reason to fear whom?

Was the attack influenced by the current discourse south of the border in America? Was it merely a coincidence that it was committed the same weekend U.S. President Donald Trump enacted entry prohibitions on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries? The presidents defenders were quick to say this was not a Muslim ban, and that citizens of many other Muslim countries were not affected. But in the context of Trumps statements on the campaign trail, it would be hard to see it otherwise.

Or were there other twisted motives?

Regardless of what motives may have been at play, however, the attack on innocent worshippers was an attack on all of us. And therefore it is incumbent on all to show solidarity in the face of this horror. In due course, the accused will have to answer in court. In the meantime, the unity of our condemnation must be the only response to these repugnant actions.
CHICAGO  President Donald Trumps executive order on refugees was a combination of ineptitude, irrelevance, counterproductivity and malice, lamely rationalized as a matter of public safety. Like many of his actions, it raises the question: Is he doing this because he doesnt understand how badly it will work or because he doesnt care?

In symbolic and constitutional terms, this anti-Muslim measure is hugely important and regrettable. But in a practical sense, there is less than meets the eye. The attention to what Trump proposes to do to refugees who want to come here distracts from a bigger issue that affects more far more displaced people.

Some 4.9 million Syrians have fled their war-racked country. The vast majority have wound up in Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan. In 2015, the Obama administration admitted a grand total of 1,682, and last year, it took 12,587. Under Trumps executive order, until further notice, the number will be smaller: zero.

For the millions who would not have been allowed to come regardless, though, Trumps order is beside the point. They were suffering exiles before, and they are suffering exiles still. Its no wonder that many dream of making their way to America or Europe, even at grave personal peril.

But letting them in involves two costs that concern many Americans, particularly those who voted for Trump. One is the risk of bloodshed by violent extremists masquerading as refugees. That danger happens to be microscopically tiny.

Refugees typically face a wait of 18 to 24 months to come to the United States, and they have no say on whether they are sent here or somewhere else. Any applicant who raises the slightest doubt gets the heave-ho. Syrian terrorists intent on killing Americans would look for an easier, quicker way.

The other cost, however, is not so improbable. Its the expense of resettling these people, most of whom need considerable time and aid to adjust to their new lives.

The Center for Immigration Studies, which favors reductions in immigration, estimates that each Middle Eastern refugee admitted to the U.S. costs taxpayers $64,370 over the first five years. Plenty of Americans resent having to bear that burden.

Opponents of Trumps executive order, however, think we have an obligation to help the innocent victims of President Bashar Assads savage war. Some insist we have a special duty because of our refusal to use military power to stop the slaughter.

But even under the most optimistic scenario  which has no chance of coming to pass under the current president  we can take only a tiny fraction of these refugees. The rest have a better chance of squeezing through a straw.

There is a way to help them, though, that should appeal to both Trumps supporters and his critics: aid to the displaced in the countries where they are now living. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says it needs $4.63 billion this year to meet the basic needs of these exiles  including food, shelter, medical care and schooling.

That works out to $940 per refugee  or just 7 percent of the annual cost of resettlement in this country. Many of the refugees would no doubt prefer to remain in the Middle East, where they wouldnt have to adapt to our culture and language, and this aid would make that easier.

But the UNHCR has failed to persuade donor nations to match their generosity to the scale of the emergency. Last year, it got $2.7 billion for Syrian refugees, just 59 percent of what it needed.

If the U.S. government is going to close the door to these lost souls, why not at least offer financial help to ease their plight? This option wouldnt carry the danger of terrorists reaching American soil, and it wouldnt require great public expense. Nor would it inflame anti-American furies as Trumps policy is likely to do. If anything, it would win friends.

Its not likely to happen, though, because nothing is less popular with the American public than foreign aid. A 2013 poll by the Pew Research Center found that for 18 of 19 programs tested, majorities want either to increase spending or maintain it at current levels. The only exception is assistance for needy people around the world.

In this case, prevention would be a prudent approach. We can try to spare ourselves the problem of the Syrian refugees. But we cant expect it to cooperate.
A State Journal analysis of state Department of Transportation data showing speeding citations that led to convictions from 2013 through 2015 shows:

Holiday boost: The four-day Memorial Day weekend (Friday through Monday) was the busiest weekend for law enforcement agencies writing speeding tickets all three years. The three busiest days in the state during that three-year period for tickets were May 24, 2013 (1,011 tickets); May 22, 2015 (982); and May 25, 2013 (845). All were part of the Memorial Day weekend.

Holiday slump: Conversely, the days with the fewest speeding tickets written during the three-year period all fell around Christmas. Just 56 citations were written on Dec. 25, 2013, followed by Dec. 23, 2013 (100), and Dec. 24, 2013 (102). Dec. 25, 2014, ranked 12th-lowest with 136 speeding convictions, and Dec. 25, 2015, ranked 15th-lowest with 142.

Gender breakdown: Men accounted for 314,846 citations, or 59.8 percent of the state three-year total; women received 211,365 speeding tickets, or 40.2 percent.

In Dane County: The busiest venue for speeding tickets in Dane County is the circuit court, which handles tickets issued by the Dane County Sheriffs Office and State Patrol, followed by Madison Municipal Court, where Madison Police Department tickets end up. Municipal courts in Middleton, Fitchburg and Verona followed. Tiny Blue Mounds had 257 more speeding convictions than the city of Sun Prairie, which ranked No. 22 among county communities for speeding convictions despite having the second-highest population. Police in Black Earth and Mazomanie wrote the fewest in the county.

On two wheels: Motorcyclists accounted for six of the eight highest speeds clocked on radar from 2013-15, including the fastest overall speeder. That distinction went to a Minnesota man who was driving a motorcycle 146 mph near Balsam Lake in Polk County. Initially charged with first-degree reckless endangerment -- a felony -- the man reached a plea agreement that led to three lesser charges that included reckless driving, resisting arrest and speeding more than 45 mph over the speed limit, online court documents showed. He paid $1,170 in fines.

In the zone: The speed zone that drew the most speeding tickets was 25 mph (19,817), followed by 55 mph (18,182), 35 mph (10,146) and 30 mph (8,793).

Speed demons: The fastest speeders clocked in each major speed zone: 15 mph speed limit (speeder was going 75 mph), 20 mph speed limit (65 mph), 25 mph speed limit (93 mph), 30 mph speed limit (127 mph), 35 mph speed limit (105 mph), 40 mph speed limit (101 mph), 55 mph speed limit (146 mph), 65 mph speed limit (143 mph). The 70 mph speed limit on Interstate highways was instituted in mid-2015, and the fastest speeder convicted in that half-year was clocked at 123 mph.

97 mph over: The most extreme speeder in any zone during the three-year period was a 31-year-old former Beaver Dam resident who was cited and later convicted for driving 127 mph in a 30 mph zone in Dodge County in August 2013. An account of the incident in the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen said the man told police he didn't think he was speeding.

School speed: In Grant County, a 29-year-old man was convicted of driving his motorcycle 75 mph in a school zone with children present in June 2013.

Oldest speeders: A 97-year-old Dodge County woman was the oldest person ticketed for speeding during the three-year period. She was pulled over for traveling 37 mph in a 25 mph speed zone in Horicon on Sept. 23, 2013. A 97-year-old woman from Dane County was ticketed for driving 52 mph in a 35 mph zone in Dodge County on July 20, 2014. Also, a 97-year-old man from Monroe County was ticketed for driving 79 mph in a 55 mph zone in La Crosse County on June 9, 2015.

Out-of-staters: It may not surprise anyone that motorists from Illinois amassed the most tickets of any out-of-staters (3,999). Minnesota was second at 1,522. California was third (566), followed by Michigan (507), Florida (497) and Texas (376). Neighboring Iowa was a surprising eighth (287). Mexican drivers led all foreigners (34). Five drivers from Slovakia and two from Algeria also picked up speeding tickets during the three years.
More than most Americans, Nebraskans know the worth of water. Water sustains our lives and livelihoods: our families rely on clean water; our ag producers depend on it to raise the crops and livestock that feed a hungry world.

Clean water doesnt just sustain our physical health; it also sustains our economic health. Agriculture is our states number-one economic engine. That engine runs on water.

But for too long, faraway bureaucrats in Washington have believed, and behaved, as if they know better than Nebraskans when it comes to keeping water clean. In May 2015, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Army Corps of Engineers issued a final rule revising the definition of waters of the United States or WOTUS for all Clean Water Act programs.

Washingtons harmful rule greatly expands the scope of federally protected waters, far beyond the original intent of Congress. This heavy-handed regulation would affect all Nebraskans, our families, communities, and small businesses. One of the more cumbersome provisions redefines navigable waterways to include run-off streams and ditches that are dry most of the year.

Nebraskans know this definition would be laughable if it didnt also pose serious economic harm to so many Nebraskan families. If your property has a low spot that fills up after a heavy rain, you could be subject to severe restrictions on the use of your own land as well as expensive fines.

We all want clean air and clean water, but the WOTUS rule is gross federal overreach. It is completely unprecedented.

I am confident that its days are numbered.

In October 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a stay blocking the implementation of WOTUS nationwide. And with a new administration about to take office, Congress has an opportunity to roll back this harmful rule.

With Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, I introduced a resolution in the U.S. Senate to make this intention crystal clear. Our resolution expresses strong disapproval with the Obama administrations WOTUS rule and states that the rule must be withdrawn and vacated. By it, we put Washington regulators on notice.

As a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I have backed measures to require the EPA to respect citizens constitutional rights. For years, I have worked to force the agency to operate within, not outside, the law. I am eager to work with new leadership at the EPA to bring the agency back to its core mission.

Americans want an EPA that serves as a faithful custodian of our environment, not a regulatory bully that tells us how to use our own land or the water on it.

For Nebraskans, true environmental stewardship means a close relationship with the land. We understand it nurtures not only our bodies, but also our souls. This comes from our daily encounter with those vast pastures and open skies. It comes from the wonder of a thunderstorm on the prairie and the silence after a snowfall. The bureaucrat in the Washington office building doesnt have this relationship. We do.

Moving forward in 2017, I look forward to a new era at the EPA, one in which Nebraskans are trusted to look out for the land they love, and their economic livelihood isnt threatened from afar.

Thank you for taking part in our democratic process. I look forward to visiting with you again next week.
Burns has run the farm for 18 years, but says she is ready to return to Raleigh. Before she does so, she wants to leave her farm in the hands of a "committed couple," which is why she is calling for 200-word essays from people about why they want to own the 12.88 acre organic farm. The deadline is June 1.
With one hand holding a bottle of champagne and the other an oversized certificate declaring him the winner of $1 million from Publishers Clearing House, Bruce Saunders stood on the front porch of his western Davie County Monday and rattled off a list of things he plans spend his spend money on  medical bills, fixing his lawnmower and helping family members.
President Klaus Iohannis said that he discussed on the sidelines of the informal European Council meeting in Malta this Friday with almost all European leaders who were in unison to voice "concern" at the situation in Romania.

"In the breaks of the event I had multiple talks with almost all European leaders. People wanted to learn from me what happens in Romania, how the situation develops and I couldn't go through it all over again because it would take too long, but it is important to know that they are all vividly interested, they all are concerned and hoping for Romania to do everything possible to firmly stay the course of rule of law," the head of the state said after the first session of the European Council in Malta.

He emphasized that all the European leaders with whom he discussed appreciated the fact that the Romanians have a "powerful voice." "They were left positively impressed when I told them that hundreds of thousands of Romanians rallied in the streets to defend the rule of law in Romania. Everyone, I repeat this, everyone would deeply regret if Romania took steps back from the rule of law status," the President said.

President Iohannis, attending on Friday the European summit in La Valletta, discussed on the sidelines of the event with several European leaders, German Chancellor Angela Merkel included.

Agerpres
The ambassador of the United Kingdom in Bucharest, Paul Brummell has had a 'good meeting' with Chief Prosecutor of the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA), Laura Codruta Kovesi on Friday, according to the diplomat's Twitter account.

I had a good meeting with the Chief Prosecutor of the DNA, a key institution in the fight against corruption in Romania, Paul Brummell wrote on Twitter.

The UK Embassy in Bucharest on Thursday expressed concern regarding the Emergency Ordinance announced on 31 January that might reduce the scope of the corruption offenses, but also in respect to the 'very limited nature' of the previous consultation of the parties involved.

The UK is one of the long-run supporters of Romania in its efforts to strengthen the rule of law and in the fight against corruption. We always had a productive dialogue on this subject with Romania's Governments, regardless of their political colour. We collaborated with Romania throughout many years in order to help it fulfill the duties assumed within the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), the UK Embassy mentioned.

The Embassy recognizes the Government and the Parliament duties to establish the legislation of the country, but expresses concern regarding the recent amendments that could lead to the "reduction of the scope' in the fight against corruption.

Although it is Parliament's and Government's prerogative, which were democratically elected, to establish the country's legislation, by observing the Constitution, we are concerned that the emergency ordinance announced on 31 January 2017 might reduce the scope of the anti-corruption offense. Moreover, we are concerned in regards to the very limited nature of consultation with the parties involved, the diplomatic mission in Bucharest points out in the message on Thursday.

agerpres.
Some companies bloom wherever they happen to be planted; others need to be transplanted to somewhere with the right nutrients.

Adarza BioSystems, now based in OFallon, Mo., is among the latter. Founded in upstate New York based on research at the University of Rochester, the diagnostic technology firm came to St. Louis in 2013 in search of funding, facilities and expertise.

Four years later, Adarza employs 20 people here and is gearing up to hire a half-dozen more. It has raised $31 million, much of it from local investors. It even found a clean room  a pollutant-free facility suitable for electronics manufacturing  to lease on the OFallon, Mo., campus of SunEdison Semiconductor, which makes silicon wafers.

St. Louis gives us the opportunity to pull from a very rich pool of resources and get the right people in the right place at the right time, says Bryan Witherbee, Adarzas president.

Witherbee, a former Monsanto and Pfizer scientist who joined the company last month, is one of those timely hires. As chief scientific officer at GenCell Biosystems, an Irish company that had a small office in St. Louis, he scaled up manufacturing of a product designed for medical researchers.

That happens to be the stage where Adarza finds itself. The company has developed a technology that deposits up to 400 antibody droplets on a silicon chip less than a quarter-inch square. When a blood sample or other fluid is placed on the chip, the droplets detect proteins that are indicators of, for example, insulin levels, cancer or inflammation.

Adarza has proven that its technology works, and has talked to enough researchers to know theres a market. Witherbee said the company hopes to be mass-producing the arrays in 15 to 18 months.

If it hits that target, Adarza will be one of the fastest St. Louis medical-technology startups to commercialize a product. Most drug and device firms here are at earlier stages, doing research or testing.

What made it very attractive to us was when they demonstrated that not only was the technology feasible, it was also scalable, says Jay Schmelter, a RiverVest managing director.

RiverVest typically invests with a five-year horizon, and Schmelter said the firm believes Adarza can achieve an exit  either a sale or an initial public offering  within that span.

If that happens, it will be an important win for St. Louis medical-technology ecosystem. BioGenerator, launched in 2003 to nurture homegrown startups, has occasionally lured firms from other cities that lacked the money or the facilities they needed.

Adarza was one of those. Charlie Bolten, a BioGenerator vice president, recalled that the initial investment happened quickly. They were in a spot in Rochester where there wasnt a lot of capital, he said. They also needed to be where there were potential customers and industry expertise, and we had both.

Witherbee said St. Louis has proven to be the ideal place to build this particular company. Adarza isnt at the finish line, he cautions, but its on a path that should lead there.
St. Louis largest and most energy-intensive buildings will soon have help identifying opportunities for savings after the Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a bill this week that establishes an energy monitoring, or benchmarking, requirement for certain commercial properties.

The bulk of the large commercial buildings that will be affected by the ordinance are in Ward 7, which includes much of downtown.

Sponsor Jack Coatar, 7th Ward alderman, says building managers were largely receptive to the measure, since many are already taking steps to trim electricity consumption.

In November, St. Louis became one of 20 cities nationwide to be selected for the benchmarking initiative, known as the City Energy Project.

A joint venture of the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Institute for Market Transformation, the project provides both the funding and technical support for tracking energy usage in large buildings, giving them the tools to save power and money.

The program aims to enable $1.5 billion in annual energy savings nationwide by 2030.

We know that large, commercial buildings produce far more greenhouse gases than small residential buildings, Coatar said.

Coatar said the only buildings that will have to report energy usage information in the first year of the program are St. Louis city buildings.

Were going to smooth out the process using our own buildings, said Coatar.

He said privately owned buildings would join in the second year of the effort. Coatar said he does not envision the program eventually being expanded to other types of buildings.

Ashok Gupta, a Kansas City-based senior energy economist for the NRDC, was surprised by how quickly the city has put the project into play.

I cant believe this bill passed as quickly as it did, Gupta said. I dont think any other city has passed it this fast.

Gupta said the project would help connect any poor performers with utility rebate programs for improving efficiency or Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing.
St. Louis development officials are considering two proposals to renovate the former St. Lukes Hospital on Delmar Boulevard as offices, apartments and stores.

Most recently the old hospital at 5535 Delmar was the site of St. Louis ConnectCare, which filed for bankruptcy in 2013. The citys Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority owns the vacant building complex.

Behind one of the redevelopment proposals is Maxine Clark, founder and retired chief executive of Build-A-Bear Workshop, and Bob Clark, chairman and chief executive of Clayco Corp. Their proposed project is called Delmar Divine.

The other proposal, called Grand Missourian International, is from Prad Sabharwal, managing director of Ananta Advisors, an international real estate investment firm based in St. Louis.

Sabharwal and Bob Clark, who is not related to Maxine Clark, made separate presentations about their projects Jan. 24 at a two-hour closed meeting of the LCRA board. Otis Williams, executive director of the St. Louis Development Corp., said afterward the board will get more information before deciding which project to support.

Both projects propose renovation of the existing buildings.

Grand Missourian International plans include apartments, a movie theater and workshops for makers of clothing, home furnishings and other items. Among the firms involved in the proposal is Tropicana Leisure Hospitality, an international resort developer based in Mumbai, India.

The project would produce 500 jobs, according to the presentation to the LCRA board.

Sabharwal declined this week to discuss his project. He said through a spokesman he would speak about the plan after the LCRA board selects one of the proposals.

An aspect of both plans is a potential St. Louis home of Teach for America, a nationwide organization that places new college graduates as teachers in inner-city schools. Teach for America currently has 80 teachers in St. Louis, according to the organizations website. Maxine Clark is a member of the groups local and national boards.

She said some of Delmar Divines 160 apartments could provide affordable housing for Teach for America participants.

Clark, who has focused on education issues since retiring from Build-A-Bear in 2013, said Delmar Divine could be a base of operations for nonprofit organizations unable to afford pricier offices. She said she began considering such a project years ago and recruited Bob Clark, a longtime acquaintance, to the effort.

Were both get-it-done people, she said.

Clark said their projects name is a reference to the Delmar divide, the oft-cited description of the race-and-wealth line that splits the city between the mostly poor and nearly all black north and the wealthier, mostly white south.

Delmar Divine could help erase the divide, said Clark, adding that it could prompt redevelopment north toward the KIPP: Victory Academy elementary school on Arcade Avenue and Better Family Lifes housing renovation project in the Page Boulevard area.

Clark is chief executive of the Clark-Fox Family Foundation, which aims  in its words  to fund the future of St. Louis through education, community initiatives, and economic development.

She said Delmar Divine residents and businesses would benefit from the Loop Trolley streetcar line, which is a block west of the old hospital, and two MetroLink stations in the vicinity.

Bob Clark said Thursday that Delmar Divine is more of a community gesture than the projects Clayco typically undertakes. He said that clustering nonprofits at the Delmar site could allow them to share some facilities, such as conference rooms, and exchange ideas.

The two redevelopment proposals resulted from the citys decision to market the former St. Lukes hospital, which dates to 1904.

Gershman Commercial Real Estate began promoting the property three years ago. Its initial marketing brochure pictured the old hospital getting redone for retail use, an assisted living center, other residences and medical offices. Historic preservation tax credits, low-income housing tax credits, tax-increment financing and federal New Markets Tax Credits might be available to a developer, the brochure said.

St. Lukes occupied its first building on Delmar in 1904, with additions constructed as needed, according to a neighborhood history Norbury Wayman wrote for the city in the 1970s.

Hospital expansion occurred after the Presbyterians joined the Episcopal church in supporting the hospital, according to Wayman, an artist and historian. More sections were added until the large building that faces Delmar was completed in 1969.

The nonprofit ConnectCare opened in 1998 to replace the St. Louis Regional Medical Center operated by the city and St. Louis County. St. Lukes opened its current hospital in Chesterfield in 1975 and moved the last of its Delmar operations there a decade later.
Old Salt Union has entered a new chapter.

The Belleville-based bluegrass band has signed with Nashville, Tenn.-based Compass Records, the label founded by musicians Alison Brown and Garry West that specializes in bluegrass, folk and Americana sounds.

Old Salt Unions Jesse Farrar (upright bass, co-lead vocals) says the label contract was a long time coming. The band will celebrate with a signing party Feb. 17 at Old Rock House.

There have been a lot of ups and downs, Farrar says. And we still have a long way to go.

He says Old Salt Union from day one  and well before then, with fiddle player John Brighton  has done everything itself on a grassroots level with no real support or backers.

We all just put the pedal to the floor and went for it, Farrar says. It has been a long journey doing it by ourselves, but now weve got some support.

The band had been doing its own marketing, public relations, distribution, publishing and more, as do many bands on its level, Farrar says.

Oh, and they also had to make music.

We had to find time to get to the gigs and to be creative, which can be a burden with all the business to take care of, Farrar says. What Compass does is take care of all of those burdens.

He stresses that Old Salt Union will remain hands-on with its own career, but having support from Compass makes everything easier, allowing the band to focus on the music and shows.

Old Salt Union had negotiated with other labels for representation in the past, but nothing panned out. The band and Compass went back and forth for three months before everything was ironed out.

We were all on the same page, Farrar says. And not only are they great people but they have great connections, and theyre a great team. It felt right.

We sat down (as a group) and said, Man, are you gonna do this? The other labels werent giving us what we needed.

Compass was able to offer Brown, a renowned banjo player, to the mix. Shes a phenomenal musician, and she has a good head musically.

The artist lineup was another draw. On the Compass roster are names like Victor Wooten, the Proclaimers, Ron Sexsmith, the HillBenders, the Infamous Stringdusters and many others.

The roster is littered with artists we respect. In our heads, if its good for the greats, then its good for us.

Old Salt Union hopes to collaborate with other Compass acts. Were entering into a family, and thats the goal, Farrar says. The record label wants to see us succeed, so theyre going to put us in front of as many people as possible.

Old Salt Union  its most recent release is the 2016 EP Cut & Run  wants to get something out as soon as possible, likely re-recording the best songs from previous releases.

We want to redo them and do them right, Farrar says. The idea is to start as close to zero dollars as possible. We dont want to start with a big debt. Thats the first move.

The songs the band is resurrecting have been played many times the last few years. Since originally recording the songs, Farrar says, the band has changed and perfected them.

They will sound different. Theyve matured and grown into new arrangements.

Recording at Compass studios in Nashville should bring a new finesse to the recordings.

Old Salt Union already knows its way around the studios. Last year, long before the band was in talks with the label, it won Compass studio time as part of a music festival competition. The band recorded On My Way there. We got to work with Alison (Brown) hand-in-hand, Farrar says.
Appears that KSDK (Channel 5) newsman Mike Rush is taking an offer he couldn't refuse.

The Houston, Texas native is heading back to his home state to become the main co-anchor at KVUE (Channel 24) in Austin.

There, Rush will be an anchor on the 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. newscasts. The station is owned by Tegna, which also owns KSDK.

A six-years veteran of KSDK, Rush anchors the 6 p.m. cast on Fridays and has spearheaded numerous investigative reports.

Rush fans will have ample time to get their last glimpses, as station news director Karin Movesian noted that March 10 will be Rush's last day on KSDK.
Diamond DeDual is ashamed to be an American.

The 27-year-old hairstylist lives in Cuba, Mo. Thats Donald Trump country. Nearly 80 percent of voters in Crawford County voted for the nations new president in the November election.

But one of Trumps first actions has been devastating to DeDuals family.

Four months ago, she and her husband, Mariwan, had their first child, Arrow.

Thanks to the presidents executive order barring immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S. for at least four months, Diamond isnt sure when shes going to see her husband next, or when he will see his son.

Hes stuck in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, caught in a presidential crackdown on immigrants and refugees that is splitting American families.

Im completely shocked that, as an American, Im even having this conversation, DeDual told me Wednesday.

She and Mariwan met in Rolla.

He was a student at Missouri University of Science and Technology, working on a masters degree in petroleum engineering. Mariwan is Muslim in the way that a lot of St. Louisans are Catholic. Its the faith of his father, but he doesnt actively practice. He was in the country legally on an F-1 student visa.

The couple got married in Iraq in September 2015 and lived there for about a year.

Every single person I came in contact with was so friendly, Diamond says of her time in Kurdistan. They love Americans.

When she became pregnant, the couple decided Diamond should come back to Missouri to have the baby. The health care was better, and Mariwans job prospects would be, too. So they started a new visa process, this time applying for a spouse visa.

The case was approved by the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Service, says their St. Louis-based attorney, Jim Hacking. It was forwarded to the National Visa Center. Mariwan went to the U.S. Embassy for the final step of the process, a personal interview. He left his passport with them and was supposed to get it back this week.

Then Jan. 27 happened. Trump instituted a ban on immigrants entering the country if they came from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iraq. His executive order also stopped Syrian refugees from entering the U.S. The order created chaos as various federal departments hadnt been consulted and werent sure how to react when immigrants already flying to the U.S. landed at airports. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained a stay on a portion of the order, allowing those who had entered the country under legal visas to stay.

But that didnt help the DeDuals.

Before Diamond flew back to Missouri, the couple sold most of their possessions to prepare for a new life together in the United States. Without his passport, however, Mariwan is now stuck, separated from his wife and son, unable to complete the immigration process in which he had already been vetted twice, once as a student, and again as a spouse of an American citizen.

He cant go anywhere right now, Diamond says of her husband. Hes living on the floor with a teapot and a space heater.

The nations immigration system was already broken, Hacking says. Now Trump has thrown it into utter chaos.

American citizens who are married to individuals from the seven Muslim countries are being denied the ability to bring their spouses to the U.S., Hacking says. This is true despite months and months of processing and vetting by USCIS and the State Department. The procedures are already in place to check their criminal background, and they have to go through an interview. My citizen clients are being treated as second-class citizens with no individualized determination that their spouse did anything wrong. Its not fair.

Diamond and Arrow are living with Diamonds father. She talks to Mariwan by iPhone and Facebook. She waits, and watches her baby grow, and wonders how much of his early life his father will miss.

He wants to see his son, Diamond says of Mariwan. Its not like hes never been here before. He lived here for five years. Hes a good man, an educated man.

But thanks to President Trump, hes isolated from his American family, kept out of the U.S., because of the faith of his father.

I am absolutely ashamed of being an American right now, Diamond says. Nobody ever treated me this badly in a Muslim country.
CLAYTON  A man from Maryland Heights was acquitted Friday of manslaughter in the killing of a gunman who wounded the defendants brother and another man in a Florissant tavern in 2013.

After about three hours of deliberations, a St. Louis County jury returned a not guilty verdict on a charge of voluntary manslaughter against Douglas Layman, 40. He had been accused of kicking, stomping and elbowing Edward Mueller on Oct. 25, 2013, inside the Pirates Cove bar at 470 Howdershell Road.

Mueller, 63, of Florissant, died about three hours later of internal bleeding from blunt force trauma to his abdomen, officials said. Mueller had shot Laymans brother and another man over an ongoing feud stemming from a previous fight over a beer. They survived.

Im just glad its over, a visibly relieved Layman said after Fridays verdict. This was a tragedy. Im ready to go home.

Layman said standing trial had taught him to distrust police.

The night of the killing, Mueller shot Laymans brother and his friend after they exchanged dirty looks and words, Prosecutor Teresa Bomkamp told jurors in opening statements this week. As people scattered, she said, at least three men tackled Mueller to the floor, disarmed him of his .45-caliber pistol and held him down as Layman stomped, kicked and elbowed him in the abdomen.

Laymans attorney, Scott Rosenblum, said there was no evidence Layman made contact with Mueller, and insisted that witnesses could not clearly recall what happened. He also said that even if Layman had attacked Mueller, he would have been within his rights to defend himself and his brother against a wild man with a gun.

The trial was in St. Louis County Circuit Judge Ellen Siwaks courtroom.

Pirates Cove, now closed, was the bar where another man, Randy Feger, 44, was fatally injured in a beating Nov. 8, 2012, during a washers tournament.
Gov. Eric Greitens on Thursday blamed Obamacare for helping create the states broken budget.

It was at least the third time since taking office on Jan. 9 that Greitens has publicly blamed former President Barack Obamas health reform law without explaining how it contributed to the states fiscal woes. Greitens unveiled his budget proposal Thursday.

On Thursday in Nixa, the new governor quantified the financial burden, asserting the state is required by Obamacare to spend an additional $350 million on health care.

After the governors address, in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other media outlets, Dan Haug, Missouris acting budget director, attributed the higher costs to pharmaceutical spending within the Medicaid program.

An increase in caseloads also was blamed by a Greitens spokesman for driving health care spending higher.

In an email to the Post-Dispatch on Jan. 18, spokesman Parker Briden wrote: Obamacare has caused the cost of health care to go up in every state, across the entire country. This year, health care expenditures and caseloads were higher than expected and continue to rise, contributing to our budget problems.

Caseloads is typically a term used for those with Medicaid coverage, the state-run health insurance for the poor and disabled.

Even though its Republican-led Legislature refused to expand Medicaid, Missouri did see enrollment in the program for mostly low-income Missourians and children increase by almost 103,000 from 2010 to 2016, said Tim McBride, a health economist at Washington University and member of the committee that oversees the states Medicaid program.

Almost all those new enrollees were children who were eligible to enroll in the states coverage  even prior to the Affordable Care Act  because of the federal Childrens Health Insurance Program, referred to as CHIP.

As a result of publicity for the Affordable Care Act and the push to enroll individuals in health insurance plans, more Missourians likely found out their children were eligible for the CHIP program, which grants coverage to children with a family income of up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, McBride and other policy experts have said. Thats $48,720 for a family of two and $73,800 for a family of four.

A majority  63 percent  of those enrolled in the states Medicaid program are children, according to 2016 figures with the Missouri Department of Social Services. But disabled individuals drive 47 percent of the spending.

Kids are cheap but nonetheless when you add up that many extra people coming in, it adds something to the state budget, said Abigail Barker, data analyst at the Center for Health Economics and Policy at Washington University.

With the increased scrutiny on Medicaid spending, and calls to repeal the Affordable Care Act among Republicans, policy experts and providers are concerned about potential funding changes to Medicaid, which insures nearly 17 percent of Missouris 6 million residents.

Currently, Medicaid is funded by both the state and federal government. The federal government matches a percentage of what the state spends on enrollees.

Typically, the federal government provides a larger portion of funding due to the percentage match. For example, for each $1 Missouri spends on Medicaid costs, the federal government matches it with $1.72, according to the Missouri Budget Project, a nonprofit think tank that advocates for policies that benefit the poor and analyzes budget and tax policy.

Overall, the federal government provides 51 percent of the funding for Missouris Medicaid program, 31 percent comes from a tax on health care providers, leaving the state with 17 percent, according to data with the Missouri Budget Project.

But all that would change if there was a switch to a block-grant system, a proposal by Republicans.

Block grants would cap federal spending given to states, giving them a lump sum instead of a percentage match. That switch could put pressure on state budgets, their credit ratings and lead to weaker financial profiles for health care institutions, according to a Standard and Poors report from 2016.

On one hand, a block grant would give states more control over their Medicaid programs instead of having to agree to certain terms as a condition of receiving the federal match.

But receiving just a lump sum, likely based on what the state currently receives, might pressure states to reduce expenditures by reducing coverage for some, according to Standard and Poors.

For states, this could lead to more acute fiscal strain during recessions when falling incomes correspond to increased enrollments, according to the Standard and Poors report.

The report says a block grant arrangement could expose states to the full brunt of economic recessions.
Gov. Eric Greitens administration has dismissed Missouri Public Counsel James Owen, whose office represents consumers in utility rate cases.

Owen confirmed that the he was terminated Friday afternoon and that his replacement would start on Monday. He said he had no indication who that might be.

The Office of Public Counsel staff advocates for ratepayers in front of the Public Service Commission, which sets rates for monopoly utilities like Ameren Missouri and Laclede Gas.

Owen, an appointee of former Democratic Governor Jay Nixon, said he thought he was developing a good working relationship with the new governor Republican governor and he was given no indication why he was fired.

Past heads of the office have stayed on even when there is a change of party in the Governors Mansion. Former Public Counsel Lewis Mills was appointed by Republican Matt Blunt, but Nixon kept him as head of the office until 2014.

Owen pointed out the office is in the midst of the year-long process of arguing two significant rate cases with the states largest utilities, Ameren Missouri and Kansas City Power and Light. And he said new rules are pending that would scale back when PSC Commissioners have to disclose meetings with utility representatives. He's had no indication there will be other turnover among his former staff.

It seems like bad timing to do this, Owen said. I think it really lets the public down.

Representatives from the governors office and the Missouri Department of Economic Development, which oversees the Office of Public Counsel, did not immediately return messages.
JEFFERSON CITY  Missouri Republicans are committed to funding the rollout of a voter-approved photo ID law taking effect this year, even as declining tax revenue and growing Medicaid costs have led to a budget shortfall of nearly $500 million.

The law requires Missourians to show photo identification before voting, or sign a binding legal document that says they are who they say they are.

But it also requires the state to foot the bill to provide photo identification to anyone who doesnt have one and wants one, absorbing the costs of any documents needed along the way, including birth certificates, divorce decrees, marriage licenses, social security cards or naturalization papers to prove citizenship.

Without sufficient funding for those costs, the personal identification requirements shall not be enforced," the law says.

But while the estimated cost of implementation ventured well into the millions, Gov. Eric Greitens has only recommended about $300,000 for the changes in his proposed spending plan, which he unveiled on Thursday.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican whose office is tasked with paying fees involved in getting photo IDs to voters, said the process is just beginning.

This is just the first step in a difficult budget year and I am confident that the legislature, the governor and I will work together to make sure that the will of the people is followed, Ashcroft said.

But for others, the low appropriation raised a red flag.

It was a concern, said Rep. Justin Alferman, R-Hermann, who sponsored the photo ID law. But in talking with the governors office yesterday, they are in lockstep in making sure we implement photo ID.

A spokesman for the governor was not immediately available for comment.

In the fiscal analysis for the law as it passed out of the Legislature in 2016, more than 300,000 individuals could be eligible for a photo ID at no cost, either because they dont have one or their photo ID on file has expired, based on figures from the state Department of Revenue.

The analysis then assumes half of those Missourians might try to acquire an ID for free, for an estimated $11 million price tag in 2018.

Alferman contends that fiscal note is likely inflated, not taking into account factors like inactive registered voters.

He said it also relied on figures from former Secretary of State Jason Kander, A Democrat, who has been very outspoken again the photo ID law  most recently, speaking on the House floor to call on lawmakers not to pass any further restrictions.

Meanwhile, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri say theyre going to watch the budget process to make sure the state has a plan to pay for those seeking the IDs.

Underfunding it doesn't show commitment to the voting process, said Daniela Velazquez, a spokesperson for the ACLU.

Rep. Scott Fitzpatrick, a Shell Knob Republican who chairs the House budget committee, said the legislature will work with Ashcroft to fund the IDs at a level both are comfortable with, finding other areas to cut if the governors numbers are too low.

Its my feeling that voting is important enough that we fund whatever the requirements are to make sure people are able to get to the polls, Fitzpatrick said.

As lawmakers grapple with how to pay for it, the law could still face legal challenges down the line.

While Republicans have praised the change as a way to fight voter fraud, Democrats say it disenfranchises certain groups of voters, including the elderly, the poor, students and people of color.

Courts in North Carolina and Wisconsin cited voter disenfranchisement ins striking down voter ID laws, but experts say it could be tougher to mount a court challenge in Missouri because lawmakers sent a constitutional amendment to voters, 63 percent of whom approved the change.
Nixa, Mo.  Missouris new governor introduced a $27.6 billion budget plan Thursday that offers a slight boost in cash for public schools, but could boot as many as 21,000 elderly and disabled residents out of nursing home and home care programs.

The spending plan also cuts millions from higher education and public school transportation.

Unveiling his first budget blueprint at a preschool in Nixa, Republican Eric Greitens said he is committed to making the tough decisions necessary to bring high-paying jobs to Missouri while spending our tax dollars more wisely.

The outline would spend $336 million more than the current budget, but it would not raise taxes and would not offer raises to state workers, who are the lowest-paid in the nation. It would cut 188 positions from the state workforce of about 54,700, which already is at a 20-year low after former Gov. Jay Nixon reduced 5,100 positions over the past eight years.

Although Greitens blames the federal Affordable Care Act for forcing spending reductions in the current and proposed budget, a summary shows he would spend about $130 million more in state funds in the department that oversees Medicaid funding.

Missouri lawmakers have declined to accept an expansion of Medicaid that would have been largely paid for by the federal government, with some costs to be borne by the state.

The reduction for in-home care and nursing home care would save an estimated $52 million. Under the proposal, about a third of the 60,000 people who receive the aid would no longer qualify because of tougher eligibility requirements.

The proposed reduction was alarming to Carol Hudspeth, executive director of the Missouri Alliance for Home Care.

Were deeply concerned about the impact the changes will have on our elderly and disabled, Hudspeth told the Post-Dispatch on Thursday.

Medicaid providers also would see a 3 percent cut in their reimbursements from the state as part of a separate push to save money, said acting budget director Dan Haug.

Greitens, elected as an outsider, made no mention of those cuts during his speech. He used the backdrop of a school for his announcement instead of unveiling his budget in a traditional speech to a joint session of the Legislature.

He continued an election-time theme of blaming lawmakers in the capital city for many of the states ills.

The fact is, Missouris budget is broken, Greitens said. For decades, insiders, special interests, lobbyists and prior politicians have made a mess of our budget.

Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, R-Joplin, shrugged off the attacks. Well let rhetoric go where it goes. Im pretty thick-skinned, Richard said.

Greitens said the location of his speech, south of Springfield, was chosen because of his belief that schools must not lose money despite a tight budget. The proposal slightly increases funding for K-12 education, but it cuts programs affecting the St. Louis area, including a $2.9 million urban teaching initiative.

State aid for school busing programs also is being slashed by $31 million, drawing the ire of local school boards.

The continued cuts to school transportation funding often have to be made up at the local level, and that can have an impact on money available for the classroom, said Melissa Randol, executive director of the Missouri School Boards Association. State revenue continues to fall short of the level needed to fully fund our public schools.

The budget proposal also reduces core funding going to the states two- and four-year colleges and universities by $90 million.

That wasnt an easy decision, Greitens said of higher education reductions. Im confident this year they can tighten their belts just like the rest of us.

Paul Wagner, executive director of the Council on Public Higher Education, warned that the governors budget could result in college tuition hikes.

The cuts will slow our progress on keeping higher education as affordable as possible and as accessible to as many Missourians as possible. We look forward to working with the Governor and General Assembly to lessen or eliminate this cut so as to keep tuition increases and service reductions as low as possible, Wagner said in a statement.

Said Greitens: I dont think that we need to raise tuition on our students. I dont think that our students should be made to pay for the mistakes of our past politicians and the promises they made.

Although the governors speech was warmly received at the school, not everyone attending the event was supportive.

Im worried about comments the governor has made that sound like he wants Missourians to choose between providing our kids with adequate health care or education, said Lexi Amos, 34, whose 13-year-old son with a disability attended the Nixa school. Thats not a choice we should have to make.

State revenues this year have lagged behind estimates, primarily because of a slowdown in corporate income tax collections brought on by a change in law that altered how companies can pay their taxes.

Already, Greitens has reduced spending in the current fiscal year by $146 million to keep the budget in balance.

Greitens is backing a series of legislative initiatives that he believes will create more jobs in Missouri. They include a right-to-work law that critics say will weaken unions, as well as changes to the states legal system that he hopes will ease litigation costs for businesses.

His proposal also would restore $2.5 million that was cut by Nixon last year from the states public defender system. And it would pay the $12 million yearly debt payment for the Dome at Americas Center, formerly the Edward Jones Dome.

Although the Department of Public Safety will see a $5.2 million decrease, Greitens did earmark funding for bullet-proof vests and nonlethal weapons such as Tasers. The lions share of cuts in the department are coming from the directors office. The governor also allocated $250,000 to create a Blue Alert system that would establish a statewide notification system if an officer is attacked.

He also wants to spend $11 million to fight opioid addiction.

Greitens, who has been to Washington twice since being sworn in less than a month ago, is banking on help from President Donald Trumps administration for roads and other spending.

Hes also hoping to reap some savings by investigating the states tax credit programs.

We are doing a complete and total review of every state tax credit program to see where that money is going, Greitens said.

The budget process now moves to the House and Senate for further debate. The Legislature must approve the budget by May 5.

We have known for months now that this budget was going to be tight. But we are ready for the challenge and ready to get to work, said Sen. Dan Brown, R-Rolla, who chairs the Senate budget committee.

Kurt Erickson reported from Jefferson City.
JEFFERSON CITY  A state fund responsible for helping to jump-start small businesses throughout Missouri faces a nearly 80 percent funding cut under Gov. Eric Greitens proposed spending plan.

The Missouri Technology Corporation, a public-private partnership that provides seed money for tech startups, would see its budget shrink to $5 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1 from the current $22.9 million.

The proposed reduction comes as the chief executive, a Republican, has repeatedly said he wants to create jobs as part of his agenda.

Were going to build a Missouri with more jobs and higher pay, Greitens said in an informational video explaining the overall $27.6 billion budget proposal Thursday.

On Friday, the governors office did not respond to requests for comment on the proposed cut. A spokeswoman for the Department of Economic Development, which helps administer the program, did not return messages.

But Rep. T.J. Berry, R-Kearney, signaled that Greitens proposal may face an uphill climb in the Legislature, which will now begin piecing together its own version of a spending plan.

Berry, who is on the MTC board of directors, said people involved in startups were alarmed at the size of the reduction.

Ill work to get some of that money back, Berry said Friday. It is critically important.

Donn Rubin, president of industry group BioSTL and an MTC board member, said a decrease in funds wouldnt shut down the program but could make it tougher to keep up with other states at a time when there is stiff competition for startups.

There are still resources for the MTC. But at that level, a lot of opportunity will be left on the table, said Rubin, who formerly served as chairman of the corporation.

The Legislature has until May 5 to pass its budget, which Greitens can fully or partially veto.

Greitens, who took office on Jan. 9, faces lower-than-expected state revenue because of a drop in corporate tax proceeds because of a Republican-led effort to reduce business taxes. At the same time, the state is grappling with the rising cost of providing health insurance to low-income residents.

Since it was launched in 2005, the MTC has assisted at least 91 startup companies.

As of last year, the corporation had invested more than $30 million during its lifespan, which has helped the companies receiving the aid raise over $350 million in additional private capital.

Among the companies that have been aided by the MTC is LockerDome, a St. Louis-based tech company that received $200,000 in 2012.

The state later sold its stake in the company, resulting in the states receiving more than $400,000.

Other companies that the state has a stake in include Adarza BioSystems, a maker of medical diagnostic tools, and Better Weekdays, a job-matching platform.
President Donald Trump's administration warned Thursday that new Israeli settlement activity could potentially hamper the peace process, a new stance for a White House that's remained adamant in its support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Despite the shift, the White House said it hadn't taken an official position on Israeli settlements, saying it would wait until Trump meets with Netanyahu later this month to formally develop a position.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement.

"The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month," Spicer said.

Netanyahu is due at the White House for talks on February 15. Israel announced a large new expansion of projects shortly after Trump was sworn in.

Trump lambasted the previous administration for allowing a United Nations Security Council resolution to pass that condemned Israel's settlements. The move drove a wedge between the incoming and outgoing administrations during the transition period after Trump spoke out vocally against the resolution.

Shortly after taking office, Trump spoke with Netanyahu in a conversation that both sides described as warm.

Israel since then has announced new plans to establish a settlement in the West Bank, replacing the illegal Amona construction that was demolished this week. The announcement represented the first new settlement activity in several years.

President Barack Obama was sharply critical of settlement activity, a stance that caused friction between himself and Netanyahu. Trump, meanwhile, has signaled a more tolerant view, naming a US ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, who supports an expansion of settlements.
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David Mills, Alison Mills and Michael Bancroft.

AN Ilmington man and a couple from Moreton-in-Marsh have been jailed for a total of 24 and a half years after being found guilty of a multi-million-pound fraud.

David Mills, aged 60 and from Moreton-in-Marsh, led the scheme, which saw Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) incur losses in the region of 250million.

He was jailed for 15 years at Southwark Crown Court yesterday, Thursday, after being found guilty of one count of conspiracy to corrupt, four counts of fraudulent trading and one count of conspiracy to conceal criminal property earlier this week.

Seventy-three-year-old Michael Bancroft, from Ilmington, was jailed for ten years after being found guilty of one count of conspiracy to corrupt, three counts of fraudulent trading and one count of conspiring to conceal criminal property.

Mills' wife, Alison, 51, was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to conceal criminal property and sentenced to three and a half years in prison.

Three other people involved were handed sentences totalling 19 years.

The complex fraud involved former banker David Mills, employees at Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) and private business advisors, dating back more than a decade.

Those involved created a network of associations where legitimate struggling businesses were exploited by their bank managers who directed them to employ the services of expensive external consultants in return for bank loans.

Many of the businesses affected by the groups actions went into liquidation resulting in job losses, financial hardship, marital breakdowns, the loss of their homes and serious ill-health.

The scheme eventually saw the bank incur losses of around 250million. The six-year investigation by Thames Valley Police involved 150 officers and staff, and saw the authorities collect 500,000 documents in evidence.

Police say the group used their ill-gotten gains to fund their lavish lifestyles, trips abroad and even, in the case of David Mills, a luxury yacht.

Also jailed were:

Lynden Scourfield, 54, for 11 years and three months, after being convicted of pleaded guilty to conspiracy to corrupt, conspiracy to launder the proceeds of crime and four counts of fraudulent trading

Mark Dobson, 56, was convicted of conspiracy to corrupt and conspiracy to conceal criminal property and sentenced to four and a half years in prison.

Tony Cartwright, 72, was sentenced to three and a half years after being convicted of fraudulent trading and conspiracy to conceal criminal property.

Stephen Rowland, specialist prosecutor from the Crown Prosecution Services Specialist Fraud Division, said: Many people have had their lives ruined by the corrupt behaviour of Lynden Scourfield, David Mills and their associates.

He added: This was a complicated prosecution due to the volume and complexity of the financial transactions and the large sums of money involved. But in the end, thanks to the work of prosecutors and investigators, the jury were left in no doubt that the actions of these six defendants were criminal.
Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned multiple entities and individuals involved in procuring technology and/or materials to support Irans ballistic missile program, as well as for acting for or on behalf of, or providing support to, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).

This action reflects the United States commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and destabilizing activities in the region and is fully consistent with the United States commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). More specifically:

OFAC designated several networks and supporters of Irans ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his Iran- and China-based network, an Iranian procurement company and its Gulf-based network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an Iran-based procurement network connected to Mabrooka Trading, which was designated on January 17, 2016. This action was taken pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13382, which targets proliferators of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery and supporters of such activity.

OFAC designated a key IRGC-QF-run support network working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his associates Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat and Yahya al-Hajj, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon. This action was taken pursuant to E.O. 13224, which targets terrorists and those providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism. The IRGC-QF was designated under E.O. 13224 on October 25, 2007 for its support to numerous terrorist groups.

OFAC designated Ali Sharifi, an individual providing procurement and other services on behalf of the IRGC-QF. This action was taken pursuant to E.O. 13224.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States. Todays action is part of Treasurys ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA, said Acting OFAC Director John E. Smith. We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior.

As a result of this action, all property and interests in property of those designated today subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

Abdollah Asgharzadeh Network

Abdollah Asgharzadeh is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG). Asgharzadeh is an Iranian businessman who has been procuring controlled and dual-use technology and materials for over a decade to support Irans ballistic missile programs, primarily for SHIG. He has previously worked to procure items on behalf of Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO). AIO is the Iranian organization responsible for ballistic missile research, development, and production activities and organization, including SHIG and the Shahid Bakeri Industries Group (SBIG). AIO, SHIG, and SBIG were identified in the Annex of E.O. 13382 in June 2005.

Tenny Darian is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, support for, or services in support of, Asgharzadeh, and for acting, or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Asgharzadeh. As an example of their procurement activities, Asgharzadeh and his associate Darian have sought to purchase and ship foreign-produced ball bearings, which are among the items required by SHIG to produce the Shahab-2 short range ballistic missile and Shahab-3 medium range ballistic missile.

Asgharzadeh and Darian have coordinated the procurement of dual-use and other goods for SHIG through intermediary companies that obfuscate that the goods are for SHIG and will support Irans ballistic missile program.

East Star Company and Ofog Sabze Darya Company are two such Iran-based companies used for shipments of dual-use and missile-related items to Iran. East Star Company is being designated for being owned or controlled by, or acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Asgharzadeh. Ofog Sabze Darya Company is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Asgharzadeh and Darian.

Since 2013, Asgharzadeh has relied on a network of trusted China-based brokers and their companies to assist his procurement of dual-use and other goods for SHIG. Asgharzadeh and Darian work with three China-based brokers  Richard Yue, a sales associate of Cosailing Business Trade Company; Jack Qin, an employee of Ningbo New Century Import and Export; and Carol Zhou  to import dual-use and other components and goods.

Yue is being designated for providing or attempting to provide financial or material support for Asgharzadeh. Cosailing Business Trading Company Limited is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Asgharzadeh.

Yue and Cosailing Business Trading Company purchase goods from other China-based suppliers on behalf of Asgharzadeh. Yue and Cosailing Business Trading Company have both accepted financial compensation from Asgharzadeh and Darian in exchange for dual-use goods destined for Iran, including U.S.-origin goods.

Qin is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Asgharzadeh and Darian.

He is another China-based intermediary for Asgharzadeh and arranges transport to Iran of goods destined for Asgharzadehs customers, including SHIG, and accepts payment in return. Qin uses Ningbo New Century Import and Export Company, Ltd. to facilitate shipments for Asgharzadeh to Iran. Ningbo New Century Import and Export Company, Ltd. is being designated for providing or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Qin.

Zhou is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Asgharzadeh and Darian.

Gulf-Based Rostamian Network

MKS International is being designated for providing financial, material, technological, or other support to AIO and SBIG. Since 2011, MKS International has been involved in procuring controlled and other technology and materials to support Irans ballistic missile programs, primarily for AIO and SBIG. MKS International utilized multiple front companies in order to circumvent export laws and sanctions.

Kambiz Rostamian is MKS Internationals CEO and is being designated for acting for or on behalf of MKS International and Royal Pearl General Trading. He has dealt directly with and received payments from AIO for the procurement of goods. Rostamian has also acted as a direct intermediary to purchase parts through MKS.

Rostamian is also CEO of Royal Pearl General Trading, which is being designated for acting for or on behalf of MKS International. Royal Pearl General Trading is a front company for MKS International that has worked with SBIG and AIO to procure components for Irans ballistic missile program.

Iran-based Network Working with Navid Composite and Mabrooka Trading

Ervin Danesh Aryan Company and Mostafa Zahedi

Ervin Danesh Aryan Company is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Navid Composite. Navid Composite was designated pursuant to E.O. 13382 in December 2013 as an Iran-based subsidiary of U.S.- and UN-designated Sanam Industrial Group, an entity designated in July 2006 pursuant to E.O. 13382 for its involvement in Irans ballistic missile program. Ervin Danesh Aryan Company created previously-designated Mabrooka Trading to import sanctioned goods into Iran. Mabrooka Trading was designated pursuant to E.O. 13382 in January 2016 for having provided, or attempted to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support to Navid Composite.

Ervin Danesh Aryan Company has contracted with Navid Composite since at least 2015 for the procurement of laboratory equipment. Ervin Danesh Aryan Company facilitated the financial transactions, transportation and shipping costs, and post-sale servicing for these goods on behalf of Navid Composite.

Mostafa Zahedi is being designated for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Ervin Danesh Aryan Company and Mabrooka Trading. Zahedi, as an employee of Ervin Danesh Aryan Company, sought to acquire carbon fiber production equipment from foreign suppliers.

Zahedi also procured or attempted to procure via Mabrooka Trading carbon fiber-related production equipment from outside Iran on behalf of Navid Composite.

Zahedi and E.O. 13382-designated Hossein Pournaghshband, the Director of Mabrooka Trading, have procured for Mohammad Magham, the Managing Director of Navid Composite, and Navid Composites PAN-based carbon fiber production line since at least 2014. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fibers are the chemical precursor of high-quality carbon fiber. Carbon fiber, found in high-tech and common daily applications, is used in missiles and solid propellant rocket motors. Zahedi used Pournaghshband to procure goods from foreign suppliers ultimately destined for Magham.

Since as early as mid-2014, Zahedi, occasionally acting as an employee of Mabrooka Trading, procured PAN and carbon fiber equipment from foreign suppliers for Ervin Danesh Aryan Company, on behalf of Navid Composite. He also coordinated financial transactions between suppliers and Navid Composite for these goods. Zahedis procurement on behalf of Navid Composite was also in coordination with E.O. 13382-designated Chen Mingfu.

Mohammad Magham

Mohammad Magham is being designated for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Navid Composite.

Since late 2014, Magham, Navid Composites Managing Director, worked with Zahedi and Mabrooka Trading to procure goods from foreign suppliers for use in Navid Composites carbon fiber production operations.

Navid Composite and Magham also contracted with other Iran-based companies in mid-2015 to supply PAN fiber. The PAN fiber was for Navid Composites production facility in Rasht, Iran. Magham also worked directly with E.O. 13382-designated AIO Director Mehrdad Akhlaghi Ketabachi to manage the financials of Navid Composite. Ketabachi was designated in January 2016 pursuant to E.O. 13382 for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of AIO.

Ghodrat Zargari and Zist Tajhiz Pooyesh Company

Ghodrat Zargari is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, financial, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, and for acting or purporting to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Mabrooka Trading. Zist Tajhiz Pooyesh Company is being designated for providing, or attempting to provide, material, technological, or other support for, or goods or services in support of, Mabrooka Trading.

Ghodrat Zargari has served as the Iran-based technical sales advisor for Mabrooka Trading and senior technical and marketing manager of Iran-based Zist Tajhiz Pooyesh Company. In this capacity, Zargari worked with Pournaghshband and Mabrooka Trading, as well as China-based broker and Mabrooka Trading associate Mingfu, to ship goods through China to Tehran, Iran.

Lebanon-Based IRGC-QF Network

Hasan Dehghan Ebrahimi, an IRGC-QF official based in Beirut, Lebanon who maintains direct ties to senior IRGC-QF officials in Tehran, is being designated for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC-QF. Ebrahimi has facilitated cash transfers to Hizballah worth millions of dollars, including through U.S.-designated Hizballah construction firm Waad Company.

Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat and Yahya al-Hajj are employees of Ebrahimi and are being designated today for acting for or on his behalf.

Ebrahimi and his employees use a network of Lebanon-based companies with ties to the broader Middle East to transfer funds, launder money, and conduct business. Ebrahimi is the manager of Maher Trading and Construction Company, which has been used to launder funds and smuggle goods to Hizballah and is co-located with Waad Company in Beirut. Maher is being designated today for being owned or controlled by Ebrahimi.

Reem Pharmaceutical, Mirage for Engineering and Trading, and Mirage for Waste Management and Environmental Services are being designated today for being owned or controlled by Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat. Since 2011, Farhat has been the Chairman of the Board of Reem, a Lebanese pharmaceutical company that also does business in Iraq and Kuwait. In addition, he is the general manager of Mirage for Engineering and Trading, a Lebanon-based construction company that also manages projects in Iraq worth millions of dollars. Since 1999, Farhat has also been the general manager of Mirage for Waste Management and Environmental Services, a Lebanese environmental services company specializing in the cleaning, collection, recovery, disposal, and treatment of waste.

Ali Sharifi

Ali Sharifi is being designated for acting for or on behalf of the IRGC-QF. As of 2015, Sharifi worked to procure aviation spare parts on behalf of the IRGC-QF. Sharifi has also worked to procure other sensitive items from sources in the Middle East and China on behalf of the IRGC-QF.
By Greg Roumeliotis and Michael Flaherty

(Reuters) - Hudson's Bay Co has made a takeover approach for struggling retailer Macy's Inc, people familiar with the matter said, trying to push further into the U.S. market where it already owns the Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue chains.

While the Toronto-based company faces major financing and operating challenges in completing a deal to buy Macy's, which is trying to overhaul its operations, it could use its existing foothold in the U.S. to save on administrative costs and have more negotiating power with its vendors.

Shares of Macy's closed up 6.4 percent at $32.69 on Friday. Hudson's Bay rose to C$10.39.

Talks between the companies are at an early stage, one of the people said. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Hudson's Bay said it does not comment on rumors or speculation, while Macy's declined to comment.

Macy's, the host of New York's annual Thanksgiving Day parade, is in the midst of a turnaround engineered by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren, who assumed leadership of the company in 2004.

Lundgren is set to step down this year, and could earn $80.24 million if there is a change of company control, according to a filing.

Macy's has also been under pressure from activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP since 2015 to separate its real estate from its retail business to better monetize its real estate assets. Starboard estimated those assets to be worth $21 billion.

Starboard held around 1 percent of Macy's stock as of Sept. 30 last year, making it the company's 15th largest shareholder.

Starboard founder Jeff Smith did not return calls seeking comment.

PRIME REAL ESTATE ASSETS

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Macy's has around 900 stores in the U.S., which includes its Bloomingdale's outlets and its flagship store in New York City's Herald Square.

Hudson's Bay is well known for making money off its real estate assets. After buying Saks for $2.9 billion in 2013, it secured a $1.25 billion 20-year mortgage for its Fifth Avenue flagship location in New York, valuing the property at $3.7 billion.

Should Hudson's Bay acquire Macy's, it will likely bring similar real estate prowess to the jewel locations owned by the retailer. Still, should Hudson's Bay opt to sell some of Macy's less desirable locations, it would have to compete with a flood of properties for sale, as other struggling retailers also shed properties.

Hudson's Bay has traditionally financed deals through its joint ventures, giving it the ability to pull off deals that many peers might struggle to do without impacting their credit rating.

It has a partnership with Canada's RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust and with U.S.-based Simon Property Group Inc.

Hudson's Bay could raise equity and debt against its real estate portfolio to fund the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Cowen and Company said in an analyst note that Macys has attractive qualities for a buyer, including a low price to earnings valuation of 10 times, $2.8 billion of free cash flow and a large real estate portfolio. But chances of a deal were dim, the note said.

Macy's struggling turnaround and the continued pressure it faces from Amazon make a deal unlikely, Cowen said in the note, adding that Amazon itself could be a potential buyer of the company, given its expansion into physical stores.

Amazon did not immediately return a request for comment.

Founded in 1670, Hudson's Bay began as primarily a fur trading business and once owned more than 40 percent of what is now Canada, and also a significant portion of Minnesota and North Dakota.

It was acquired in 2008 by mall developer NRDC Equity Partners, headed by Richard Baker. The company, which is still run by Baker, went public in 2012.

(Additional reporting by Lauren Hirsch in New York, Solarina Ho in Toronto, Nandita Bose in Chicago and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Bernadette Baum and Bernard Orr)
New York, NY (PRWEB) February 03, 2017

Invest in Finland, part of Finpro, the Finnish investment, trade and travel promotion agency, joins the top players in the global information security industry at the RSA Conference. Kristina L. Garca, Director - East Coast USA and Richard Stanaro, Director - West Coast USA, will participate in the event, meeting with industry executives and providing insight into the business opportunities in Finland.

Finland offers a strong tech ecosystem for foreign companies, with eminent collaboration between universities, research institutes and industries as well as Europe's highest ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP, according to UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Moreover, the Nordic country has been consistently ranked among the most innovative countries in the world by the likes of World Economic Forum and Bloomberg.

Finland is the undisputed cyber security leader in Europe. Finnish companies and individuals are world-renowned for their inventions and efforts to improve security. Currently, the Finnish cyber security sector is comprised of approximately one hundred companies, from global players such as F-Secure, Accenture and Cisco to ambitious startups such as Mepin, Trusteq, and Nixu. Many key encryption protocols behind today's strongest encryption systems were invented in Finland. Finns have core expertise not only in encryption, but also threat prevention data privacy, and identity management solutions. Finland is forerunner in the use of mobile signatures as the universal authentication method for digital services.

"Finland is an optimal location for R&D activities. In information security, we have a strong resume of research in the likes of cryptology, vulnerability, data security management and mobile device security," says Arto Pussinen, Head of ICT & Digitalization at Invest in Finland. The number of startup and growth companies developing security solutions for mobile web services is rising.

Foreign investors are welcome to experience first-hand the strength of Finnish innovative technology companies and entrepreneurial spirit. Companies across various industries profit from the highly educated and talented workforce in Finland that is ready to take on the new challenges in today's digital world.

Invest in Finland's cost-free services include economic and industry data, identification of locations, and introductions to industry experts, research institutions, companies, and government agencies.

More information:

Finpro's Invest in Finland assists international companies in finding business opportunities in Finland and produces information about Finland as an investment location. In addition, Invest in Finland develops and coordinates the national FDI promotion work networking actively with regional and international actors. Invest in Finland also compiles information about foreign-owned companies in Finland. For more information, please visit http://www.investinfinland.fi

Finpro helps Finnish SMEs go international, encourages foreign direct investment in Finland and promotes tourism. Finpro is formed by Export Finland, Visit Finland and Invest in Finland. Finpro is a public organization with 240 professionals working in 36 export centers in 30 countries and 6 regional offices in Finland. http://www.finpro.fi Finpro Growth for Finland

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2017/02/prweb14034220.htm
LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Robix Environmental Technologies, Inc. ("Robix" or the "Corporation") (CSE: RZX)(CSE: RZX.CN)(FRANKFURT: R0X) announced today that the Corporation, subject to regulatory approval, has granted incentive stock options to purchase a total of 2,559,000 common shares, at an exercise price of $0.22 per common share, to a director, officer and consultants of Robix. The options expire on February 3, 2020, in accordance with the Corporation's stock option plan. Robix has determined that exemptions from the various requirements of Multilateral Instrument 61-101 are available for the issuance of the options to the director and officer of the Corporation (Formal Valuation - Issuer Not Listed on Specified Markets; Minority Approval - Fair Market Value Not More Than 25% of Market Capitalization).

Robix also announced that it intends to settle outstanding indebtedness of $275,000 through the issuance of 1,375,000 common shares of the Corporation at a deemed price of $0.20 per common share (the "Debt Settlement"). The common shares issued in connection with the Debt Settlement will be subject to a hold period of four months from the date of closing.

Finally, Robix also announced that it has settled an outstanding debt of Formation Fluid Management Inc., which company was acquired by Robix on October 7, 2016 (see Robix's October 11, 2016 news release), in connection with a change of control fee owing to Canaccord Genuity Corp. pursuant to a financial advisory letter. Pursuant to the settlement, Robix agreed to pay Canaccord $250,000 plus GST and issue 750,000 common shares, which common shares are subject to a hold period that expires on June 4, 2017.

About Robix:

The Corporation is an "industrial products/technology" company, offering to investors a unique opportunity to participate in a leading company in the business of ownership of patents, and their development from commercialization to worldwide expansion through various business arrangements. Robix owns a Clean Ocean Vessel ("COV") patent, which is an oil spill recovery vessel design with the capability to recover oil in rough and debris laden sea conditions. Robix has recognized a worldwide market opportunity for effective containment, recovery and disposal equipment, particularly in the oil spill protection industry, and it proposes to develop a business model as a service provider, and/or equipment provider under licensing agreements with other industry participants, wherein Robix will use its COV patented design solution.

Neither Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts: Robix Environmental Technologies, Inc. Nathan Hansen President & CEO 250-683-8957 [email protected] Robix Environmental Technologies, Inc. Robin Ray Chief Financial Officer 403-327-3094 [email protected] www.robixfuels.com

Source: Robix Environmental Technologies, Inc.
By Andrei Makhovsky and Andrew Osborn

MINSK/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Belarus said on Thursday it suspected Russia was trying to restore a formal border zone between the two countries, a move it said flouted agreements on freedom of movement and trade and raised questions about Moscow's real intent.

Belarus spoke out after the publication of three decrees signed by Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), that ordered border zones to be set up in three Russian regions adjacent to Belarus.

In the years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, border controls existed but were removed as the two countries, both former Soviet republics, grew closer again.

"The Russian side took a decision to set up border zones on the frontier with Belarus without advance warning, flying in the face of all existing agreements," Maria Vanshina, a spokeswoman for the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, said on Thursday.

"Many people get the impression that these actions are designed to restore full control over the Belarusian-Russian border, something that was scrapped more than 20 years ago."

Russia and Belarus have long been part of a political and economic union that provides for open borders and allows citizens from both nations to work and settle in the other without going through immigration formalities.

But relations have soured since Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko criticized Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014.

Since then, the two have fallen out over gas pricing, with Russia cutting oil deliveries to Belarus, while Russian moves to try to expand its military presence in Belarus have come to nothing.

Lukashenko, who has often played Russia and the West off against each other to extract concessions from each, has responded by becoming friendlier with the West.

Belarus said last month it would allow visa-free entry for the citizens of 80 countries, including the United States and the European Union, for visits of up to five days.

Soon afterwards, Russia's FSB border guards were ordered to mark up border zones in three Russian regions next to Belarus, to erect signs indicating their status, and to fix the exact place and time when people and vehicles could enter the areas.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Thursday.

(Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
BEIJING (Reuters) - China will launch the trading of green certificates for solar and wind power on July 1 in a bid to help reduce government subsidies to the renewables sector, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Friday.

In a pilot program, the NDRC said solar and wind producers would be issued tradeable certificates, proving that electricity has been generated through renewable energy sources.

Renewable energy users such as private and state businesses would be encouraged to buy the certificates, which would then entitle them to an unspecified payment. Each certificate would represent 1 megawatt hour of power, the NDRC said.

Solar and wind power producers who had sold their certificates would no longer receive a direct subsidy for electricity production, it said, without giving further details.

The NDRC said it would monitor the pilot program and could launch a mandatory green certificate scheme in 2018.

Renewable energy makes up about 11 percent of China's energy consumption, with producers granted heavy subsidies.

China said last month it would cut the guaranteed subsidized prices paid for electricity supplied to its national grid by newly built large-scale solar power plants and onshore wind turbines starting Jan. 1.

The NDRC said the change reflected the decreasing cost of renewable energy production and would reduce the burden of state investment in the sector.

(Reporting by Meng Meng and Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Richard Pullin)
By Katharine Houreld

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Armed cattle herders have been flooding onto farms and wildlife conservancies in drought-ravaged northern Kenya, leading to violence in which at least 11 people have been killed and a tourist lodge torched, residents said on Thursday.

The residents have accused some local politicians of encouraging herders to bring tens of thousands of cattle onto farms and ranches to drum up support for the August elections.

Cattle rustling and competition for grazing have long troubled the area, which is a popular safari destination for visitors, but severe drought and political rivalries ahead of the elections have exacerbated the situation, residents said.

"The drought has been a problem for years but people have been living peacefully. This (flare-up) is because of politics," said Francis Narunbe, a local chief of the Turkana tribe.

Elections in Kenya have often been marred by violence, fueled by tribal rivalries and disputes over land. After the disputed 2007 vote, more than 1,200 were killed after political protests turned into ethnic clashes.

In Laikipia, north of Nairobi, herders from the Samburu and Pokot tribes tend to back the opposition, while smallholder farmers from the Turkana and Kikuyu ethnic groups usually support President Uhuru Kenyatta's Jubilee party, said Martin Evans, head of the Laikipia Farmers' Association.

"There's political incitement," he told Reuters.

Lawmakers representing constituencies in Laikipia and the surrounding area could not be reached for comment.

County Commissioner Onesmus Kyatha said the situation was under control and blamed drought in the region for the tensions. "It is a conflict over pasture," he said. "Once the rains come, they will leave."

The rainy season usually starts in March or April.

Three people were killed and two injured in December when they tried to recover stolen animals, said Narunbe. Another man was killed in clashes with police when a tourist lodge was torched on Sunday, Kyatha said.

Small farmers also say armed herders have robbed them.

"Two months ago, my brother was killed and they (the herders) took 42 goats," said shopkeeper Emuria Lorere. "They killed seven people."

Wildlife conservancies say wild animals have been killed, including six elephants, and pasture has been destroyed. Five tourist lodges in the Laikipia have shut in the past month.

"It's the worst we've ever seen it," Frank Pope, the chief operating officers of Save the Elephants, told Reuters. "It's competition for the last grass."

(Editing by Edmund Blair and Ralph Boulton)
(Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Friday issued an order delegating further authority to its staff in absence of a quorum on the Commission starting Feb. 4.

FERC needs at least three of the five commissioners to have a quorum. It will only have two commissioners, Cheryl LaFleur and Colette Honorable, once commissioner Norman Bay leaves on Friday.

Last week, President Donald Trump appointed LaFleur as acting chairman, which prompted Bay, the former chairman, to announce he would step down on Feb. 3.

Changes at the top of FERC prompted several energy firms to request the agency make decisions this week on proposed natural gas pipelines to avoid potential construction delays.

FERC on Thursday approved construction of Energy Transfer Partners LP's (NYSE: ETP) Rover gas pipeline from Pennsylvania to Ontario.

Other companies hoping for decisions this week include units of Spectra Energy Corp (NYSE: SE) (NYSE: SEP) on the Nexus pipeline, Williams Cos Inc (NYSE: WMB) (NYSE: WPZ) on Atlantic Sunrise, TransCanada Corp (NYSE: TRP) on Leach and National Fuel Gas Co (NYSE: NFG) on Northern Access.

As part of the delegation to the staff, FERC said the Director of the Office of Energy Market Regulation can accept and suspend rate filings, take action on uncontested filings and can accept settlements not contested by any party.

The Commission said on Friday it "anticipates that it will lack a quorum for an indeterminate period in the near future."

The Commission said the additional authority granted to agency staff will last until the Commission again has a quorum and moves to lift the delegation order.

When regulated entities make rate filings that, in the absence of Commission action, would take effect without suspension, refund protection or the ability for protesting parties to appeal, the Commission said its general practice has been not to allow that to happen.

By issuing the order Friday, the Commission said it intends to ensure that FERC staff has authority to prevent such filings from taking effect during the no-quorum period.

FERC also said staff can extend the time for action on matters where it is permitted by statute.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Chris Reese)
A logo of Ford is pictured on a car at the 86th International Motor Show in Geneva, Switzerland, March 1, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - U.S. auto-maker Ford (NYSE: F) said on Friday sales of its vehicles in South Africa remained resilient, despite a challenging start to the year as safety concerns led to the recall of thousands of vehicles, a senior company official said.

In January, Ford recalled around 4,500 Kuga SUVs sold in South Africa after dozens of reports of the vehicles catching fire spontaneously due to engine overheating.

With a total of 6,634 vehicles sold last month, Ford sales were up 1.7 percent compared to the same month last year, while the company's overall market share was 14.5 percent, Ford said in a statement.

"We are encouraged by and grateful for the continued customer confidence in the Ford brand... despite the challenges relating to the safety recall announced in January for the 1.6-litre Kuga sold in South Africa in 2013 and 2014," said Gerhard Herselman, general manager for sales at Ford's sub-Saharan region.

He said Ford was committed to addressing customer concerns as it sought to limit the impact among affected customers who complain that Ford was tardy in its response to the Kuga problem.

South Africa's new vehicle sales rose 3.7 percent year-on-year to 50,333 units in January, data from the trade and industry department showed this week.

(Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Adrian Croft)
By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) - A top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday Iran will not yield to "useless" U.S. threats from "an inexperienced person" over its ballistic missile program.

U.S. President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said on Wednesday the United States was putting Iran on notice over its "destabilizing activity" after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Trump echoed that language on Thursday, saying in a tweet "Iran has been formally put on notice" after his administration said it was reviewing how to respond to the launch that Iran said was solely for defensive purposes.

Iran said on Wednesday it had tested the new ballistic missile but said it did not breach a nuclear deal reached with six major powers in 2015 or a U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the accord.

"This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran ... the American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless," Ali Akbar Velayati said, without identifying any U.S. official specifically in his comments.

"Iran does not need permission from any country to defend itself," he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency. Khamenei is the country's most powerful figure.

A U.S. official said Iran had test-launched the medium-range ballistic missile on Sunday and it exploded after traveling 630 miles (1,010 km). Iran said it had been a successful launch.

A series of tests conducted by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in 2016 caused international concern, with some powers saying any launch of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles would violate U.N. Security Council resolution 2231.

NUCLEAR DEAL

The IRGC maintains an arsenal of dozens of short and medium-range ballistic missiles - the largest in the Middle East, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Under the nuclear agreement, most U.N. sanctions were lifted a year ago. But Iran is still subject to an U.N. arms embargo and other restrictions, which are not technically part of the deal.

Trump has frequently criticized the Iran nuclear deal, which restricts Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions, calling the agreement weak and ineffective. He tweeted on Thursday that Iran "should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them".

Iran's Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan told the semi-official Tasnim news agency on Thursday: "The missile test on Sunday was successful ... the test was not a violation of a nuclear deal with world powers or any U.N. resolution."

German newspaper Die Welt, citing unspecified intelligence sources, reported on Thursday that Iran had tested a home-made cruise missile called "Sumar" that is capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Tasnim news agency two years ago published pictures of the Sumar missile, reporting that it was successfully test-fired.

While Iran says its missile program is aimed at displaying the country's "deterrent power and its ability to confront any threat", some IRGC commanders have said that Iran's medium-range ballistic missiles were designed to be able to hit Israel.

Iran refuses to recognize Israel.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Alison Williams)
YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria will soon pay all the overdue cash stipends it owes former militants who signed up for an amnesty in 2009 in the Niger Delta oil hub, the government said on Thursday.

Militants have threatened to resume attacking oil facilities should the cash payments not be made.

"We advise all to remain calm as all stipend arrears and other outstanding payments under the program will soon be paid," the office of the government amnesty program said in a statement.

The government has been holding talks with militants to end attacks on crude pipelines, which reduced Nigeria's output by 700,000 barrels a day for several months last year.

Authorities had originally cut the budget for cash payments to militants to end corruption. They later resumed payments to keep pipeline attacks from crippling vital oil revenues.

Two months of stipends were paid out in January, but the amnesty office said foreign schools fees and other allowances had not been sent by the federal government yet.

Each former militant is entitled under the amnesty to 65,000 naira ($213.68) a month plus job training.

President Muhammadu Buhari met Niger Delta leaders and representatives for the militants in November to discuss their demands but little progress has emerged publicly since then.

The militants and residents who sympathize with them say they want a greater share of Nigeria's oil wealth to go to the impoverished region.

Crude sales make up about 70 percent of government revenue and the attacks have worsened an economic crisis brought on by low global oil prices.

($1 = 304.2000 naira)

(Reporting by Tife Owolabi and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Larry King)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault on Friday that a flare-up of violence in eastern Ukraine may nullify two-year long efforts to pacify warring sides, Russia's foreign ministry said on Friday.

Ayrault also told Lavrov that Moscow should do everything to ensure the escalation ends in eastern Ukraine, where two years of negotiation have failed to bring peace.

They also discussed Syria in a phone call, it said.

(Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Thailand's Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai gestures during a news conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangkok, Thailand, February 2, 2017. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom

By Patpicha Tanakasempipat

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand has stepped up prosecutions for human trafficking and hopes its status will be upgraded in the annual U.S. Trafficking in Persons report, the foreign minister said on Thursday.

The report, which ranks countries based on anti-trafficking efforts, matters to Thailand's junta as it tries to fully normalize relations with Washington and to show it is tackling tough issues better than previous civilian administrations.

Last year, Thailand's status was upgraded a notch to Tier 2 "Watch List". It had been downgraded to the lowest level, Tier 3, after a 2014 coup.

"We believe that any government would have a good feeling about, or even admire, what we have done," Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai told a news conference. "We certainly are hopeful we'll be viewed favorably."

In 2016, Thailand investigated 333 cases, prosecuted 301 people and convicted 268, he said. In last year's TIP report, Thailand reported investigating 317 cases, prosecuting 242 people, and convicting 241.

The military government has vowed to crack down on human trafficking, particularly in Thailand's multi-billion-dollar seafood industry.

But rights groups say millions of migrant workers remain vulnerable to abuse in fishing, the sex trade and other industries.

Don did not expect any change in U.S. emphasis on the importance of fighting human trafficking under new President Donald Trump, but said it would remain a priority for Thailand anyway.

"We'll keep on as we have done," he said.

Thailand submitted its report on anti-trafficking efforts for the year 2016 to the United States on Tuesday. The U.S. State Department's TIP report usually comes out in June.

(Additional reporting by Aukkarapon Niyomyat; Editing by Matthew Tostevin, Robert Birsel)
By Stephanie van den Berg

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The United Nations' highest court ruled on Thursday it has the authority to adjudicate in a maritime boundary dispute between Kenya and Somalia over stretches of the Indian Ocean potentially rich in oil and gas.

Somalia asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to rule on the maritime boundaries between the two coastal nations in 2014 after negotiations over the 100,000 square kilometer stretch of sea floor broke down.

The ruling means Somalia's boundary demarcation claim against Kenya can proceed, potentially affecting hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation rights Kenya has already granted in the roughly triangular area of contested ocean.

Companies that have been awarded Indian Ocean exploration blocks by Kenya include Tullow, Erin Energy, FAR and Dominion, though it is not clear if their parcels lie within the affected area.

Judges rejected Kenya's claim that a 2009 agreement between the two countries amounted to a commitment to settle the matter out of court, depriving the court of jurisdiction.

"The court finds that Kenya's preliminary objection to the jurisdiction of the court must be rejected," presiding judge Ronny Abraham said, reading from the judgment in the tribunal's ornate courtroom.

Speaking outside the court, Kenya's Attorney General Githu Muigai said his country would "vigorously prosecute its case" in the upcoming hearings on the demarcation dispute, which have yet to be scheduled.

Kenya had a central role to play in fighting the maritime security risk from the Al Shabaab Islamist militant group in the pirate-infested waters, he added, and said the court case would not change this.

"Kenya maintains the view that litigation can resolve only one aspect of a wide range of complex issues the parties must agree upon," he said.

Cases at the ICJ, which rules on disputes between states over international treaties, can last many years. Its rulings are binding, though the court has no enforcement powers and countries have been known to ignore its verdicts.

(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; Writing by Thomas Escritt; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
By Alex Dobuzinskis and Mica Rosenberg

LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge in Los Angeles has ruled President Donald Trump's administration must allow immigrants with initial clearance for legal residency to enter the United States from seven Muslim-majority nations, despite an executive order ban.

Tuesday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr follows decisions by federal judges in at least four other states that also limited the executive order Trump issued on Friday.

But it goes further, by focusing on a large group of people from the seven nations of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - the countries targeted in the executive order - who are outside the United States and trying to enter.

In the temporary ruling, Birotte ordered U.S. officials to refrain from "removing, detaining or blocking the entry of plaintiffs or any other person ... with a valid immigrant visa" who is arriving from one of the seven nations.

According to the U.S. Department of State, immigrant visas are the first step to becoming a lawful permanent resident, or a green card holder.

Birotte's ruling does not apply to tourists, students or business travelers with non-immigrant visas.

The U.S. Department of Justice is reviewing the order and would have no further comment, a spokeswoman for the agency said in an email.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security cited its policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

Trump's executive order has not only caused consternation for the nations involved but among other Muslim-majority countries, allies such as Germany and Britain and career State Department officials.

Attorney Julie Ann Goldberg, who brought the case on behalf of more than two dozen plaintiffs of Yemeni descent, including U.S. citizens, said they sought the ruling after learning of a move by the U.S. State Department to cancel the immigrant visas of people from the seven countries.

More than 200 people with immigrant visas who left Yemen and are related to U.S. citizens or legal residents are stranded in Djibouti across the Bab el-Mandeb Strait from Yemen and were barred from flying to the United States, Goldberg said by telephone from Djibouti.

"It's terrible because I have children here who are without their parents," she said.

Some other children in the group are U.S. citizens whose parents were traveling with immigrant visas, she added.

In Boston, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs on Sunday issued a ruling, to last seven days, that barred the detention and removal of approved refugees, visa holders and permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries.

By early Thursday in Djibouti, Goldberg said, no one from the group she represented was being allowed to leave for the United States. She accused the Trump administration of "absolutely ignoring" rulings she believes should allow their departure.

In an email, a State Department official confirmed the agency had provisionally revoked "relevant visas as defined" under Trump's executive order.

The White House said on Wednesday it has issued updated guidance on the order clarifying that green card holders require no waiver to enter the United States.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
By Ed Cropley

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Imposing an external "trusteeship" government on South Sudan to try to end a three-year ethnic civil war and potential genocide in the world's youngest nation would only make its security situation worse, Uganda said on Thursday.

Patience towards President Salva Kiir's government in Juba has worn thin as the refugee numbers have grown, fuelling talk in international policy circles  including the opinion pages of the New York Times - that "trusteeship" is a viable solution.

However, Ugandan Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Okello Oryem rejected the notion, saying such interference would be opposed even by Kiir's sworn enemy, Riek Machar, currently under house arrest in South Africa.

"I don't think it's a good idea," said Oryem, the principal foreign policy voice in Uganda, one of South Sudan's most powerful neighbors.

"That's a colonial mentality. If an attempt was made to have trusteeship in South Sudan, then I think even the Machar side would resist it and fight it," he told Reuters in an interview. "That's an idea that should not be mooted."

South Sudan gained its independence from Sudan in 2011 but tensions between its many different ethnic groups quickly surfaced and civil war broke out in 2013 between Kiir's largely Dinka security forces and units loyal to Machar, a Nuer.

An internationally brokered peace deal restored some calm, although that broke down in July last year with heavy fighting between the rival forces in Juba, after which an injured Machar managed to flee to neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Uganda sent in troops when hostilities first broke out in 2013, a move that Kampala says prevented ethnic slaughter on a similar scale to the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

However, criticism of its action and suggestions it had ulterior motives meant Uganda was not prepared to re-commit any troops, even under the aegis of a Regional Protection Force mooted last year by the African Union, Oryem said.

"We were misunderstood by the international community and all hell broke out - we were being accused of everything under the sun and being told to leave," he said.

"We've told them we are not going to go back," he added. "Uganda has no more interest in sending its troops and boys to South Sudan."

Separately, army spokesman Richard Karemire said the overall security situation in South Sudan had improved since Machar's flight from Juba. He also voiced support for the removal of Machar, once Kiir's deputy, from circulation by South Africa late last year.

"Would South Sudan sleep in the absence of Riek Machar?" Karemire said. "Every time there is a problem, he is in the middle of it. This is something we've got to ask ourselves."

(Additional reporting by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
The embassy of United States in Islamabad has clarified reports of upcoming travel ban on Pakistan after the recent development in which newly elected American president Donald Trump imposed travel restrictions on seven Muslim countries.

The US embassy spokesperson stated that Pakistan is not being considered for visa ban as of yet. The travel and visa policy for people coming from Pakistan will remain the same.

Read more: Trump suspends US refugee program, entry from seven Muslim countries

Earlier, Trump was criticized for his move restricting people from seven Muslim countries; Yemen, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia, from entering the United States. However, Saudi Arabia and UAE defended Trump administrations call.

It was reported that there are talks going on in Washington on whether to add Pakistan in this list or not and the decision to halt Pakistanis from entering America will come soon. However, the US embassy spokesperson has clarified the news.

Also read: Iran to respond in kind to Trumps insulting visa restrictions: Foreign Ministry

It must be noted that Reince Priebus, who is the White House Chief of Staff, also defended Trumps call and went on to say that other Muslim countries like Pakistan should also be added in that list.

Meanwhile, Trump administrations decision has stopped immigrants from these seven countries from entering the US for 120 days. Muslim Ban had trended on twitter after the call.
Addressing the inauguration ceremony, the premier expressed satisfaction that work on the motorway is "60 per cent complete".

"Today, people are witnessing a naya Pakistan being built," Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said. "Motorways are no longer a distant dream. All promises will be fulfilled by 2018."

"Today the world is seeing a naya Pakistan."

"We spent day and night trying to strengthen the economy. Today the nation is beginning to stand on its own two feet."

"Bridges, interchanges and service roads are being built. On the other side, work on the Multan-Sukkur motorway has been intitiated... Building the nation is not a game," he added.

"When we took the reigns of the country, we were in a sorry economic state. There were youngsters with skills but no one to employ them. In such times, there are negative forces that try to mislead these youngsters," he cautioned.

"Any country in the world that has become modern started with creating better infrastructure... and Pakistan could have seen the progress that we started in 1999 had we not been stopped halfway through," he said.

"Electricity had abandoned us, as if it was unhappy with is. But we have started bringing it back to Pakistan. 1,000 megawatts will be added to the grid this year," he said signalling the government's intent to rely more on renewable energy.

"Load shedding will end completely in 2018. Solar power and wind mill projects are being created. We are looking ahead, thinking of the future requirement for power," he added.

"These are the problems we are focusing on, we don't have time for dharnas," he said in a veiled reference to his opposition.

He challenged the opposition to compete against him on the basis of progress and development.

Construction on the 136-kilometre-long six-lane motorway began in Sept 2015 and is expected to be completed by March 2018 at a cost of Rs36 billion.

The completed section of the M-9 has four interchanges  the Dada Bhoy, Industrial Valley, Nooriabad and Thano Bola Khan interchanges.

These interchanges will provide access to various areas, including Keer Thar National Park, Jhampeer, Kinjhar Jheel and Thano Ahmed Khan.
Nine Pakistani sailors stranded onboard the Kuwaiti cargo ship near the port of Suez returned home on early Friday morning.

The sailors after arriving at Jinnah International airport expressed their gratitude to the Pakistani Embassy for executing preparations for their repatriation.

The captain of the ship was not able to return with the crew as he was in hospital due to ill health, however he is expected to reach Pakistan in four to five days, confirmed chief engineer Muhammad Khaliq.

The sailors said that the Sindh government did not extend any cooperation for them and they have reached home after a long struggle.

A total of 17 Pakistani sailors were stranded onboard the MV AKKAZ which is anchored in the Suez Canal after the Egyptian government confiscated the vessel for non-payment of dues.

The MV AKKAZ owned by a Kuwaiti company and chartered by a Dutch firm had set sail from Abu Dhabi on August 11, 2016 bound for Port Said and Alexandria in Egypt and then onwards to the Netherlands.

However, upon reaching the Suez waters in October the vessel was not allowed to enter due to mechanical failure and expiry of its technical license. The stranded sailors according to the vessels Chief Officer Jameel Jangian are owed approximately Rs. 20 million by the shipping corporation in dues.
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A wanted man who fled from a police alcohol check point at Greerton led police on a chase to Matapihi before abandoning his vehicle.

The vehicle was stopped at a Greerton police alcohol check point about 9.45pm, says Western Bay of Plenty road policing manger Senior Sergeant Ian Campion.

When the driver became aware that he had a warrant to arrest, he drove off.

Several police cars gave chase, following the man east along SH29A to Matapihi where the vehicle was found abandoned at the side of the road.

A dog team was called but he wasnt located.

Ian is urging the man to give himself up.

Police are aware of who the individual is obviously, and further inquiries to locate him will be made.

I call on him to make a voluntary appearance at a local police station today to get the matter sorted.

Police are looking for a 40-year-old Tauranga man.
Ian Bell is scarred for life and wouldnt have it any other way.

The American body modification specialist, who hails from Minnesota, is heading to Tauranga for The New Zealand International Tattoo and Art Expo on February 18-19.

The 26-year-old is one of several international artists wholl showcase their work alongside a handful of the top local and national tattooists during the two-day event which is now into its seventh year.

Ian, wholl also be the only artist doing scarification at the expo, says itll be his first time visiting New Zealand and he couldnt be more excited about it.

I have been doing body modification professional for five years, and Ive been traveling almost full time for two years now.

Im beyond excited to visit New Zealand, to work, and to take an extra few days and explore.

As the name suggests, body modification is the deliberate altering or augmentation of a persons physical appearance or anatomy, and theres all sorts of modifications  from tongue splits and subdermal implants, piercings, tattoos and scarification, to breast implants and tummy tucks.

Ian discovered the world of body modification while perusing the internet at the age of 13, saying it immediately caught his attention and has kept it ever since.

On my body, I have my tongue split, a decent amount of tattoo and piercing work, an RFID chip in my hand, and 10 implants in various parts of my body. The most extreme modification I have would probably be the amount of silicone implants that I have in my genitals.

Im not kidding, Ive got eight of them.

An example of Ians scarification work. Supplied Photo.

While hes incredibly proud of the scarification work he carries out for people, Ian says performing earlobe reconstructions for people is an aspect of the job which gives him the greatest satisfaction.

Sometimes having stretched ears makes it hard for people to obtain gainful employment in certain fields, and being able to give people an opportunity to peruse their dreams is an amazing feeling.

With the differing types of body modification ranging from the timid to the extreme, Ian says theres no such thing as a typical client nowadays and he works on people who come from all walks of life, all have different careers, and all want different modifications.

Needless to say  theres not much that surprises Ian anymore.

But the most appreciated and trusted I feel is when someone trusts me to pierce their childs earlobes.

As simple as it is, its an incredible feeling watching the sheer excitement and happiness on an eight-year-olds face when they see their earlobes pierced in a mirror for the first time.

The International Tattoo & Art Expo is on Saturday, February 18, 11am-10pm and Sunday, February 19, 11am-7pm, at Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre in Tauranga.

Tickets cost $20 and are available online from Eventfinda and on the door. For a full list of artists and performers, visit www.tattooart.co.nz
Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister Maggie Barry says applications for the second round of funding to support regional cultural amenities is now open.

And Tauranga MP Simon Bridges has seized on this opportunity to get stuck into the Tauranga, Western Bay of Plenty and regional councils and corporates to support his call for a museum for Tauranga.

Millions have gone to Whanganui, Nelson, Whakatane, and even Gore last year and these are all centres that are far smaller than us, says Simon.

Whanganui, for example, would be under half Taurangas size and received a $10 million grant from the Government for the Sarjeant Gallery that will bring in both domestic and international tourists to their city.

Im sure we can obtain money from this museum fund. But it requires a number of players to step up on this.

Tauranga Mayor Greg Brownless says its great the Government has funds available for heritage projects such as a museum.

Like many things though, big issues to grapple with if Tauranga is to have a museum are not only the initial capital costs but the ongoing operational costs that need to be met every year.

But Simon says the council has previously, with less generous funding from government, made decisions to build a museum.

But at the moment [the councils] seems to be taking their time on this.

The Regional Culture and Heritage Fund replaced the former Regional Museums Policy and will have $12 million available for Round 2, subject to the calibre of applications received.

It will support a range of important regional institutions, which may be struggling to get capital, says Maggie.

Applications will be considered for building projects, renovations and additions to venues such as theatres and opera houses, museums, galleries, heritage buildings with collections, and whare taonga.

Simon believes the Bay of Plenty Regional Council also has to step up.

This museum, this cultural centre wont be just for Tauranga, but will be regionally significant and we know at the moment regional council has significant funding coming in through their asset ownership of the port, a Tauranga-based facility.

Our corporates are also enjoying the best times theyve ever had, and the best conditions theyve ever had in New Zealand.

They can afford to be good corporate citizens on this. In doing good for the community, theyll also be doing good for their businesses building support for their operations for the long term.

Doug Leeder, chair of the Bay of Plenty Regional Council, says the council predominantly has responsibility for dealing with environmental issues, with the primary focus around soil, water and air.

Funding museums is not something regional councils generally would get involved in.

We, as the Bay of Plenty Regional Council have several funds that community groups especially can tap into and Im referring to people such as the estuary care groups, again you can see the environmental focus as opposed to a museum, which we fund. Most of those people are volunteers and I think its important that their efforts are actually recognised in terms of trying to support them as much as we can.

Also, I understand the debate about the museum for Tauranga has been ongoing for some time.

And Tauranga City Council has had numerous engagements with their community over this. They are best placed to talk about the opportunities and the challenges. Those organisations such as gambling organisations that put money back into the community I think in this instance are better suited for the likes of applications to go to in the first instance.

The funding the council receives via the Port of Tauranga directly reduces the amount of general rates paid across the whole region.

The Bay of Plenty Regional Council doesnt directly receive a dividend payment from the Port of Tauranga. It receives an annual dividend directly from Quayside Holdings Limited, who are the entity that own a majority shareholding in the Port, and therefore receive a dividend from them.

The dividend received by Council from Quayside Holdings is $20.8 million in 2016/17.

This funding is put into a pot called "general funds".

This also includes other investment interest receipts that provides another $9 million that effectively reduces general rates in 2016/17.

Hypothetically, if this $20 million dividend was not received, general rates would need to double across the whole region. This is because council also raises $20 million in general rates in 2016/17.

The average regional council rates (in the Tauranga area) is $165 (for the year).

It is a different average amount in each of the Regions territorial authorities.

At Western Bay of Plenty District Council, Mayor Garry Webber is appreciative of the funding made available by Government, but with reservations.

Im not really in support of where Simon is coming from, says Garry. But in terms of the Government initiative of making the funds available, I suppose weve got to be happy for any pennies that fall from heaven in this day and age.

Traditionally, its the other way where central Government impose regulations on us and we have to bear the cost so its great to see some money coming back the other way. And I think whether its Western Bay or Tauranga City, if weve got a genuine cause that we believe should be funding then we really have to get into it.

And yes the Tauranga museum and Tauranga Art Gallery would be logical applicants as would be The Elms, but from Western Bays perspective, weve got our own museum in Katikati. Like all art galleries and museums, they are resource hungry, and funding from anywhere is appreciated. So we wouldnt stand in anyones way applying to the fund but I wouldnt be surprised if nationwide it was oversubscribed.

Civic Amenities Group chair Paul Adams believes Tauranga City Council needs to make a decision.

"I was grateful for the help and support that our Tauranga MP, Hon Simon Bridges gave to CAG when we obtained a commitment from Government to contribute a third of the capital cost of a new CBD museum, says Paul.

TCC has procrastinated in making a timely decision on the CBD revitalisation, and so the offer from Government has not been taken up. Instead the Government has provided funds to other towns, and Whanganui has just been gifted $10m for its museum.

TCC needs to stop procrastinating, says Paul, make a decision on CBD projects, and sort out where funding is coming from.

"I think the National Government offer to help fund some of the civic amenities such as a museum, can be resurrected, but TCC needs to make a firm decision now, and show the courage required in creating CBD civic amenities that our City desperately needs, as the fifth largest city in NZ, but currently having the worst CBD and lacking civic amenities that smaller cities and towns already proudly own and use to attract visitors and residents into the heart of the CBD. Currently, Tauranga City Council pays to store much of the museum collection in a warehouse.

I think it would be better for council to contribute that same amount to a museum if it eventuated, says Greg. But the issue of funding the rest of the costs remains.

So we need to know the cost of both building and running a museum, and how much of that the Government can contribute. Then we need to know where the rest of the money will come from.

Simon is optimistic regional council will support the museum.

A number of people over the last few years have been sceptical of a massively expensive palace that no one visits, says Simon.

We dont need to make that mistake. We can do a reasonable job cost-effectively and many hands will make light work.

Last year 71 per cent of Tauranga respondents to a poll commissioned by the MP gave a resounding Yes to the plan for a museum.

If we dont act, the opportunity will be lost and the money will go elsewhere, says Simon.

I understand Rotorua is wanting more funding for cultural amenities.

My view is that that funding should come here. It will be a very short-sighted bunch of leaders if we think we can keep on dithering.

Theres no point in mucking about on these things, says Simon. Weve got to do the right thing.

Were a 130,000 person city now. Every other city of 50,000 let alone 100,000 has a museum. I appreciate theres a lot of people who prefer the speedway or getting out on the water to being indoors in a museum.

I get that, but its still important that cities have these things and there are a lot of people who would deeply value it.

It would be a real drawcard for the region and an amenity that brings people in as we try and foster our growing tourism offering.

The RCHF is a contestable fund of last resort. Applicants have to show they have already secured funding from local government and philanthropic contributions on the one-third, one-third, one-third principle.

Current recipients:

$368,000 towards Hamiltons Meteor Theatre redevelopment;

$1.5 million towards Whakatanes Museum and Research Centre redevelopment;

$10 million to Whanganuis Sarjeant Gallery - tagged towards the redevelopment and seismic strengthening of its heritage-listed Queens Park building;

$400,000 to the Whanganui Museum for its redevelopment;

$1.5 million towards the restoration of the Nelson School of Musics auditorium;

$110,000 towards Gores Eastern Southland Gallery project to establish a Muka Studio Wing for its arts centre.

The second round closes March 10 with successful applicants announced within a few months.
Members of a group that meets monthly to share advice and information about horses has been able to help someone with no experience to rescue and adopt an abandoned horse.

Silvia Willers, 62, originally from Germany, explains that when she heard about a herd of horses that were roaming wild near Marbella in 2012, she felt she had to help out adopt one, despite having no experience of the animals and a self-confessed fear of them.

Silvia, who lives in Sayalonga, said that if nobody took on the horses they were going to be destroyed; that was when Edina came into her life. However, little did Silvia know at the time that her newly acquired pet was pregnant. A few months later Edina gave birth to Francisca, named after Saint Francis of Assisi.

Silvia says she has received an enormous amount of help from the group about training and teaching the two horses to trust humans, using techniques similar to the 'positive training' method more and more dog owners and behaviourists are turning to.

"Horse friends and riders, horse whisperers and owners, who support each other in any questions we have about horses in general," is the definition members give of their group.

Anyone interested in joining their meetings does not have to own a horse, but should describe themselves as a "horse-lover," explains Angelika Rieger, who leads the group. The meetings are held in La Barca restaurant in Algarrobo Costa and are generally held in German, English or Spanish, depending on the attendance.
The British Ambassador to Spain, Simon Manley, spoke to members of the British Chamber of Commerce on Marbella on Friday, urging calm among business leaders in the face of the uncertainty surrounding the future Brexit.

'Brexit and beyond' was the theme of his talk, which was introduced by Derek Langley, Andalusian vice president of the BCC, and preceded by the mayor of Marbella, Jose Bernal.

see also The English Cemetery welcomes the British ambassador

Manley reassured British business owners in Spain that the objective of the British government in the Brexit negotiations will be to achieve the best possible result for all sides. He assured that the British government would continue to look after businesses already established in Spain as well as safeguard the rights of British citizens living in the EU. "It is our objective to make sure that the extraordinary relationship between the two countries continues to prosper," he said.

The ambassador also reminded those present that Britain's prosperity was built on the principles of free trade and that that would continue after the UK's exit from the EU. "We're leaving the EU, we're not leaving Europe," he said. "Geographically we'll stay in the same place, our values will remain the same."

In relation to the movement of people, Manley insisted that the UK wanted to control its borders, not to impede free movement: "We want people to keep coming to study and to work in the UK and there isn't a country more open to business than ours."
"Every night people get robbed," says the owner of a popular nightclub in La Nogalera in Torremolinos. Residents and visitors are enduring a state of "defencelessness" after several organised criminal groups have established themselves in the area known as a benchmark of gay leisure in southern Europe.

The narrow alleyway where the majority of the area's gay bars are located seems to be the area chosen by these criminals: "They wait at the start and the end and target customers."

The fact that very few of these crimes are reported encourages the thieves. The Spanish LGBT Confederation (Colega) doesn't classify these as hate crimes but admits that the attacks "have a clear homophobic element" as the assailants know that the chances of the crimes being reported are lower due to "shame or fear".

The president of Colega in Torremolinos, Santiago Rubio, calls for "more security and higher police presence" at La Nogalera, even during the week when there are fewer people frequenting the establishments, making people, especially drunk tourists returning to their hotels in the early hours, more vulnerable.

For their part, the Torremolinos town hall claims that the crimes are "isolated and not coordinated", adding that the number of crimes has not increased. Despite this, last week they announced that police presence would be stepped up "in response to appeals from residents and business owners".

Many nightclub owners have come together and are preparing a document in which they are appealing for institutional help to tackle the problem. "We are not worried about our premises because we all have security measures and cameras. But we are worried about the general safety of the area. It's very easy to rob someone here, especially if there are no police officers to be seen." The arrest and then subsequent release of offenders is another reason for indignation: "They pick them up, let them go and then they rob again. They are laughing in our faces."

In the letter, they propose the installation of surveillance cameras, employing private security, and the strategic placement of police cars in the area.
Andalucia, Costa del Sol and Malaga city tourist board representatives were out in force at the Dresden travel fair last weekend, as southern Spain sought to increase the amount of visitors from the eastern German region of Saxony.

The event, which was open to the general public, is one of the most important in Germany and 40,000 visitors were expected to attend.

This was the second year that tourism representatives from Malaga city exhibited, thanks to a partnership deal with TSS, a network of 3,200 central European travel agents which is based in Dresden and headed by Malaga-born Manuel Molina.

The Andalucia region had a stand in Dresden too. / Feliz Lorenzo

Direct flights

Molina pointed out that Saxony was still a developing market for southern Spanish destinations as it is only 25 years since the fall of the old communist regime. However he added that having a direct flight now from Malaga to Dresden was key to future success.

To coincide with the fair, SUR published a full-colour 'Viva Andalucia' supplement that was distributed inside the main local newspaper, Sachsische Zeitung.
A journey into the origins of the culture of Al-Andalus, a place to experience new sensations through design, architecture and craftsmanship. That is The Unique World of Basil Al Bayati, a museum and cultural centre which is scheduled to open in March after more than three years of preparation.

This project, the brainchild of Iraqi architect Basil Al Bayati, is located in a building which was designed by Jeronimo Cuervo and constructed in 1877, at number 3, Calle Marques de Guadiaro, between Calle Alamos and Calle Beatas. Now aged 70, Basil Al Bayati is finally going to fulfil his dream of showcasing in this completely restored venue the best of all his work, which includes not only architecture but also furniture design and even literature.

"I came to Malaga in 1976 and I liked it because it reminds me of Baghdad, where I was born," explained Basil in one of the most luxurious areas in the building, the space which is going to be the cafeteria.

For this architect, who has designed some of the most remarkable mosques, hotels, universities and hospitals in Europe and the Arab countries during the past 30 years, including the central mosque in Edinburgh, a museum such as this in the very heart of Malaga will enrich the city. "I had offers to do this in the UK and Germany, but I wanted it to be here because the concept fits in better," says Al Bayati.

Basil Al Bayati in one of the several rooms of the museum / Fernando Gonzalez

The project was expected to cost more than one million euros, but that sum has almost doubled because of numerous improvements which were added after the works began. The ground floor will house a book and gift shop where some of the books published by Fabulist - also owned by Basil Al Bayati - will be on sale. These will include architecture, fiction, the psychology of creativity and the history of the Muslim era of Andalucia. On the first floor, the cafeteria has hand-carved wooden ceilings and lamps which were made especially in Turkey. The food served here will be ecological, and vegetarian.

The second floor is a room for temporary exhibitions, and will house displays of architecture, ceramic items and furniture, among others. The intention is to establish links with the Architecture School of Malaga university and the College of Architects, to work on joint projects.

On the third floor there will be an area for workshops and conferences, and the fourth floor will be a residence for Basil Al Bayati, who also owns other homes on the Costa del Sol. Finally, the terrace will be open so people can enjoy the wonderful views of the cathedral and the Alcazaba fortress.

Metaphoric style

The museum, which will publish a catalogue of its own, is filled with pictures of Al Bayati's designs and very unusual antique Arab-style furniture. The work of this architect, who has had offices in London and Kuwait in the past, is outstanding for the originality of shapes, and the imagination and fantasy of his designs.

It is what is called 'metaphorical architecture', a style which uses oneiric forms and nature to configure the appearance of the buildings. This is the world of Basil Al Bayati, a genius of forms and design which, in a few weeks, will be on view for all those who visit this latest attraction in the old part of the city centre.
British Ambassador to Spain, Simon Manley, visited the English Cemetery in Malaga on Friday morning as members of the cemetery's trust, led by president Bruce McIntyre, offered him a guided tour of the premises and showed him the site where the new retaining 'green' wall will be built.

Construction on this wall is due to start in two months time after it was given the green light by Malaga city hall who granted funds for the project. As the cemetery is classified as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC) by the Junta de Andalucia, the city hall will pay 90 per cent of the 100,000 euros needed, while the foundation will pay the remaining ten per cent. The works are expected to last three months.

Malaga mayor, Francisco de la Torre, was also invited on the tour and the ambassador extended his thanks for his support of the foundation.

The pair proceeded to lay wreaths on the graves of former consul William Mark and British Hispanist Gerald Brenan.
The former head of the 'Parque Animal' animal protection centre in Torremolinos, Carmen Marin, who has already been found guilty of ill-treating animals and faking documentation, may soon be facing a new trial in Malaga's courts.

She is alleged to have used the association's funds for personal purposes, including 104,382 euros to modernise and decorate a cosmetic beauty clinic owned by one of her daughters, and also to adapt the lift in one of the buildings she owns.

According to a notification sent from a judge in Torremolinos to the official prosecution authorities and private prosecution in this case, Carmen Marin used money from the animal rescue centre, which received tens of thousands of euros from Torremolinos council in the form of grants and to finance the incineration of animals, in a well-known supermarket, a car hire firm and a major wholesale store.

The bank accounts of Parque Animal, which is registered as a non-profit-making organisation, were also allegedly used by Marin and her family to pay for a course of driving lessons, monthly gymnasium membership and a security system for a private home.

The judge also considers that there is evidence to indicate that Carmen Marin paid for stays in luxury hotels in Marbella, Lisbon, Salamanca, Nerja, Bilbao, Jerez de la Frontera, Marrakesh, Boston and St. Petersburg, and that all these costs, which amounted to thousands of euros, were charged to the current accounts of the animal protection centre in Torremolinos.

The judge also says it looks as if the association's president used the funds to pay more than 11,000 euros in restaurants between 2008 and 2010.

According to the judge, Carmen Marin wrote cheques for more than 23,000 euros from the animal protection centre's accounts and Felipe Barco, her right-hand man, who has also been found guilty of ill-treating animals, used the charity's funds to buy a Nissan pick-up. Marin is also said to have bought a Citroen C3 worth 14,490 euros in the name of her daughter.

In the notification to the prosecutors, the judge explains that these deeds could indicate misappropriation of funds, and she has asked them to draw up a formal request for further investigation to be carried out.

She has also found evidence of possible fraud in the renting of premises ceded by the town hall to a third party.
On 20 February, Malaga will be hosting the 25th Hispano-French summit, which will be presided over by Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy and French president Francois Hollande.

The decision to hold the summit outside Madrid is thought to have been made in order to highlight Malaga's existing links with France and due to Mayor Francisco de la Torre's passion for that country. In 2015 the first branch of the Centre Pompidou outside France opened in the city.

This is not the first time that Malaga has hosted an important summit for Spanish and French leaders, as in 2002 the then prime minister, Jose Maria Aznar, received French president Jacques Chirac there.

At this month's summit, the subjects discussed are likely to include the challenges faced by the EU following Britain's decision to leave, the refugee crisis and the implications of Donald Trump as US president. It will also give both leaders a chance to stress the benefits of the EU, although Francois Hollande will not be standing for re-election in the French presidential election this year.
Growing criticism of the Junta de Andalucia's management of the public health service dramatically increased this week after the resignation of two key regional government bosses.

The deputy minister for Health, Martin Blanco, and the director of the Andalusian public health service, Servicio Andaluz de Salud (SAS), Jose Manuel Aranda, left their posts.

The move came after mounting street protests, particularly in Granada and Huelva, but also in other cities including Malaga, Jerez and Seville, against SAS plans to merge hospitals and other reorganisation.

Spiriman leads rallies

In Granada the protests have been particularly well attended in recent months, with as many as 43,000 taking part in a rally last October. The huge turnouts in that city have been largely attributed to a 40-year-old doctor, Jesus Candel, who has driven a campaign across social media, branding himself as a pseudo-superhero called Spiriman.

Speaking in support of the protests in Granada, Candel said, "We want [the Junta] to open its windows and let fresh air in to clean out some 'tricksters', as I call them".

Head of the Junta, Susana Diaz, has previously defended her record on public health provision, describing it as "the jewel in the crown", however the last straw for her health officials' positions appears to have come last Sunday, when 5,000 people protested in Jerez.

Not all budget spent

Diaz's PSOE-led government now faces a political fight to rebuild credibility in their management of SAS.

Opposition parties stated in a debate in the regional parliament this week that the resignations were not enough and that a change of model for the health service was needed.

The PP party has pointed out that of the 98 million euros of new investment planned in health services last year, only 27 million had been spent by the 30 November.
There were no surprises this Monday, when Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE) released initial data on the country's economic performance in 2016. In the final quarter of last year, the Spanish economy posted growth of 0.7%; overall, it expanded by a widely-predicted 3.2% in 2016. The INE's final statistics are expected in March, but they are unlikely to differ significantly from those released this week. Spain, then, retains its position as one of the fastest-growing economies in the eurozone, even during a year in which it lacked a proper government for ten months.

The farcical political limbo was finally terminated at the end of October last year, when the Socialists agreed to abstain from voting against Mariano Rajoy's bid to form the new administration. They thus enabled the unpopular Galician to come back for a second term as prime minister - a move for which they were praised and denounced in equal measure. The ideological compromises of their decision aside, though, the Socialists can be credited with snapping Spain out of political instability - and at great cost to the cohesion of their own party.

Indeed, some now fear that civil war within the PSOE - a war that was sparked last autumn by its accommodation of Rajoy and the subsequent resignation of its leader Pedro Sanchez - threatens to derail Spain's economic recovery just as last year's political deadlock did.

Paxti Lopez, former head of the Basque regional government and a politician on the left of the PSOE's increasingly centrist stance, has announced himself as a candidate for its new leader (a post expected to be filled by June). Lopez and Sonchez - who is standing again for the leadership - are appealing to those in the PSOE who were dismayed by its tacit support of Rajoy in October. The fear is, then, that if either of these two are at the helm of the Socialists come June, Rajoy's minority government will find it a lot harder to keep the country running smoothly.

It's certainly true that Rajoy would face greater opposition in congress if either Sanchez or Paxti take charge of the PSOE in a few months' time. Their unwillingness to cooperate would slow down the rate at which legislation is passed and new projects approved, both of which help to maintain economic growth.

Yet Monday's INE statistics on last year - for the majority of which Spain had no government - suggest that the impact of further political deadlock or limbo on the Spanish economy would be minimal. If Rajoy plays his trump card and calls another election in the spring, he risks tipping Spain back into the administrative vacuum that defined 2016; but as the precedent of last year indicates, Spain's GDP expansion would probably continue anyway, albeit at a slightly slower rate.
HOLLAND PATENT, N.Y. -- Students were forced to evacuate Friday morning after a bomb threat was made at an Oneida County school.

An unspecific bomb threat was made at Holland Patent Middle School at 11:49 a.m., said the Oneida County Sheriff's Office. The school is at 9601 Main St. in Holland Patent.

School resource officers evacuated students from the school, deputies said. Utica Police Department K-9s, deputies and school staff then searched the building.

The building was deemed safe just after 1:30 p.m., deputies said. Students reentered the building and classes resumed.

The threat remains under investigation. Deputies asked anyone with information to call (315) 765-2219.

In addition to deputies and police dogs, members of the New York State Police, the New York State Environmental Conservation Police and the Holland Patent Fire Department responded to the scene.
SOLVAY, N.Y. -- A man accused of robbing a bank Thursday morning was found mere blocks from the bank with the stolen cash on him, Solvay police said.

Michael T. Saxton

Michael T. Saxton, 41, of Syracuse, was charged with robbery and petit larceny.

The robbery occurred just before 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the Solvay Bank at 1537 Milton Ave. in the village of Solvay.

Saxton is accused of entering the bank and handing a note to a teller demanding money. He did not threaten to use a weapon and left the bank on foot with the cash, said Detective Michael Niedzialek.

An officer was near the bank on a traffic detail and responded within 30 seconds of being dispatched.

That officer radioed a suspect description and a responding officer spotted a man two blocks from the bank matching the description. The man, identified as Saxton, had an undisclosed amount of cash and was arrested, Niedzialek said.

Saxton was arraigned in Solvay Village Court and ordered held at the Onondaga County jail without bail. Niedzialek said Saxton is known to police, but declined to give a specific criminal history.

The Milton Avenue branch of Solvay Bank was previously robbed in October.
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Corey Slattery, left, and Connie Ingoldby, right, are being indicted for the December 2016 murder of Aikeem Hudgins.

(SYR)

BREWERTON, N.Y. -- A Central New York man killed in December was strangled, stabbed and dismembered with a chainsaw, according to the Onondaga County District Attorney's office.

The man accused of killing Aikeem Hudgins, 29, of Syracuse also tried to bury the body parts, but ended up burning them, a prosecutor said, confirming details in a new indictment.

Corey Slattery, 28, of Cicero, had been charged second-degree murder and concealment of a human corpse.

The indictment this week added three more charges: second-degree strangulation, third-degree criminal possession of a weapon and fifth-degree conspiracy, the DA's office confirmed Thursday.

Prosecutors met with Hudgins' family Thursday morning to go over Slattery's indictment and bring them up to speed on the investigation, prosecutors said.

The remains are being transferred out of state to Texas for further forensic testing, Chief Assistant District Attorney Melinda McGunnigle said.

Many things about the case -- like a motive for the killing -- are still unknown.

Slattery is scheduled to appear in court Friday to face the charges in his indictment.

Court documents previously obtained by syracuse.com suggested Hudgins' death was particularly violent when they revealed authorities had only recovered some of his remains after his body was burned to hide the crime.



Slattery lured Hudgins to his residence at Apartment 9F of the Bayshore North Apartment complex at 9462 Chalkstone Course near Brewerton, Cicero sometime between Dec. 8 and Dec. 12, 2016, records showed.



Slattery strangled Hudgins and stabbed him, a district attorney prosecutor confirmed.



A witness to the crime said they heard the murder happen and saw Slattery and Connie Ingoldby, 48, of 263 Bankrupt Rd., Phoenix, in the apartment with the dead body when the crime happened, according to court records.



Slattery later dismembered Hudgins with a chainsaw and attempted to bury his body, officials confirmed. When that didn't work, he tried burning it, they said.



Ingoldby is facing one new charge, fifth-degree conspiracy, on top of her previous charges of first-degree hindering prosecution and concealment of a human corpse for her role in the murder.



Some of the remains were recovered by authorities, but it is still unclear where, according to court documents.



Authorities have yet to officially identify the body as Hudgins, who was reported missing by his family Dec. 9 after he wasn't seen for about two days. But police came to Hudgins' mother's and father's homes to tell them their son was dead, family members said.
joe and frank.JPG

Syracuse Corporation Counsel Joseph Fahey and Police Chief Frank Fowler speak to Syracuse.com about the impact of President Trump's immigration policy.

(Douglass Dowty)

Syracuse, NY -- Syracuse police have never made a habit of asking residents whether they are in the country legally, Police Chief Frank Fowler told Syracuse.com.

And nothing that President Donald Trump has done in his first two weeks in office will change that, he added.

There's been confusion over what exactly Mayor Stephanie Miner's declaration of Syracuse as a "sanctuary city" actually means for immigrants.

For the time being, nothing.

That's because Trump has not ordered any changes in local immigration practice. The designation could mean more in the future if orders or laws are passed that Miner's administration feels are anti-immigrantion.

But that's down the road.

"It hasn't changed one single thing," Fowler told Syracuse.com Thursday. "Local law enforcement, as a rule, we are not in the habit of enforcing immigration laws."

Local police prioritize enforcement of state criminal laws, local ordinances and traffic laws, the chief said.

"Our work is derived from human behavior," the chief said. "People either see something or do something...we have no way of knowing if someone is illegal or not."

Syracuse police routinely cooperate with federal law enforcement -- including immigration agents -- on criminal cases.

And nothing Trump has done so far will lead Syracuse police to withhold cooperation from their federal counterparts, said Joseph Fahey, the city's top lawyer.

But federal law makes it impossible for the president to force local law enforcement to arrest undocumented residents, Fahey said.

Local police have no authority to arrest someone simply for being in the country illegally, Fahey added. Technically, that's a federal civil violation that doesn't fall under the laws local police uphold.

Asking residents if they were legal or not would be a meaningless exercise because city police can't take them into custody even if they were illegal, Fahey said.

Arresting illegal immigrants is up to federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Deportations for simply being here illegally are extremely rare.

Some communities nationwide have entered official agreements with ICE to tackle illegal immigration, but Syracuse is not one of them.

And ICE isn't really aggressive in catching otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants, according to its own published priorities.

In fact, 99 percent of deported aliens in 2016 fit into categories that include danger to national security or public safety, recent re-entrants or fugitives from previous deportation orders.

Only 5,000 people were deported in 2015 for simply being in the country illegally for an extended period of time, according to ICE stats. About 95,000 others were caught soon after they crossed the border. And both numbers are small compared to the 240,000 total people deported.

In his seven years as police chief, federal agents have never asked Syracuse police to arrest someone solely for illegal immigration, Fowler said.

Fahey noted that Trump's temporary ban on immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries doesn't have any effect on policing within the country.

"It's repeating existing immigration law," Fahey said of the order's effect on local communities.

So who's at risk?

If the city is right that Trump cannot order police to arrest illegal immigrants, then who should be concerned?

In short, anyone arrested for any type of crime or violation. That could be anything from being drunk and disorderly to murder.

Once someone is lawfully taken into custody for breaking another law, ICE can request that person be detained to investigate his or her immigration status.

"Once they're inside the jail, that matter can come up," Fowler said. "What happens after we deliver (a suspect) to the jail, that matter is between the sheriff and the ICE services."

Right now, immigration detainers are also few and far between.

Onondaga County Sheriff Gene Conway said last week that federal agents have not asked the local jail to detain any undocumented immigrants during the sheriff's two years in office.

And only 110 such detainer requests have been issued since 2007, according to a Syracuse University study.

But that could easily change. If Trump wanted to be more aggressive, he could order ICE to investigate the legality of more inmates accused of crimes.

That also plays into ICE's priorities, which focus on deporting those who break the law -- from plotting terrorism to committing violent crimes.

Fahey, a retired judge, noted that serious criminals are already asked their immigration status in court and are at risk of being deported.

But otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants do not appear in danger of being stopped and asked about their citizenship, absent some other reason.

That's what got former Phoenix, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio in trouble. The sheriff was held in contempt by a federal judge in 2016 for refusing to stop profiling Hispanic residents as part of an illegal immigration crackdown.

Parsing the law

So if being in the country illegally isn't a crime, what is it?

It's a federal civil violation. There's no mention of it in state or local law.

But it's still the law of the land, right? Yes, but immigration law specifically states that local municipalities are not required to enforce it, Fahey said.

That's why the definition of a "crime" versus a "civil violation" is so important.

It would take more than an executive order by the president to force local law enforcement to round up illegal immigrants: it would take an act of Congress to change the law.

Is rounding up illegal immigrants bad for police?

No one knows exactly how far Trump's promise to crack down on illegal immigrants will go.

But Fahey argued that creating fear among illegal immigrants could hurt citizens and non-citizens alike.

That's because immigrants are often key witnesses to major crimes, he said. It's already extremely hard to get witnesses to come forward and cooperate with law enforcement.

It would be nearly impossible if a witness was afraid that cooperating would lead to his or her deportation, he argued.

It's not clear if any immigration crackdown would provide an exemption for witnesses in criminal cases.

But the fear of being deported could hinder investigations of crimes against U.S. citizens, he concluded.

"It's going to impede the ability of police to keep citizens of the community safe," Fahey said.
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John Giocondo (left) leaves court June 30, 2016 with his lawyer, Paul Carey.

(Douglass Dowty | ddowty@syracuse.com)

Deputy John Giocondo mug shot

Syracuse, NY -- A suspended Onondaga County jail deputy was found guilty today by a judge of stealing and taking a sedative while on-duty at the downtown lockup.

John Giocondo, 50, of Liverpool, was found guilty of misdemeanor drug possession, petit larceny and official misconduct in the Nov 14, 2015 incident, according to the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office.

Prosecutor Michael Mordue convinced City Court Judge James Cecile that Giocondo was the one who stole a sedative -- Librium -- from a blister pack kept by jail nurses.

Defense lawyer Paul Carey had argued that no one saw Giocondo steal the pill and there was no direct evidence linking him to the theft.

But a witness told police that Giocondo was "out cold" later in his shift.

Giocondo was not sent to the jail himself after the verdict today. A misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in jail.

Cecile decided the deputy's fate at trial after Giocondo waived his right to a jury trial.

Giocondo is also facing a similar charge in the town of Clay, accused of stealing prescription drugs from a retired sheriff's deputy.

He has a long history of alcohol and substance abuse, according to paperwork filed at the time of his arrest.
flumayo.jpg

A woman sick with flu symptoms.

(Mayo Clinic)

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Flu activity continued to grow in New York during the week ending Jan. 29, killing another child and hospitalizing 961 people statewide, according to a state health department report.

There have been four pediatric flu deaths so far this season, all of them in New York City.

The state received 5,235 lab-confirmed flu reports during the week ending Jan. 29, a 20 percent increase over the previous week.

The Onondaga County Health Department received reports of 205 lab-confirmed flu cases for the week, up 90 percent from the previous week. Central New York is seeing the highest level of flu activity in the state.

Lab-confirmed cases represent the tip of the iceberg because most people who get the flu do not get tested.

The flu is a contagious respiratory illness that can cause mild to severe illness, hospitalization and death. Older people, young children and people with health conditions such as asthma are at high risk for serious flu complications. The federal government recommends annual flu vaccinations for everyone 6 months and older.

So far this season most people hospitalized with the flu have been 65 and older.

The health department's weekly report also shows Upstate hospital emergency departments are seeing a spike in patients coming in with flu symptoms.

Because of all the flu activity, Syracuse hospitals are advising people with flu symptoms to not visit patients.

Contact James T. Mulder anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-470-2245
Arctic shuttle tankers set records

Sovcomflots (SCF) three Arctic shuttle tankers in the Shturman Albanov series have passed the one million tonnes crude oil shipment milestone.

The vessels ship oil produced at the Novy Port oil and gas condensate field from the Gulf of Ob (Kara Sea) to Murmansk. The millionth tonne cargo of oil was loaded on Shturman Albanov on 29th January, 2017 at the Arctic Gate marine terminal located near Cape Kamenny (Gulf of Ob). By this time, the SCF tankers had completed 33 voyages carrying Novy Port grade oil since last autumn. The first cargo was loaded on the lead ship of the series, Shturman Albanov, on 12th September, 2016. SCFs three Arctic shuttle tankers  Shturman Albanov, Shturman Malygin and Shturman Ovtsyn  were designed to carry crude oil from the Yamal Peninsula to Murmansk all year round under a long-term contract with Gazprom Neft. They fly the Russian flag and are registered at St Petersburg. On her maiden voyage, Shturman Ovtsyn sailed from South Korea across the Russian Arctic to the Novy Port oil terminal in winter. In December last year, she left Samsung Heavy Industries shipyard in South Korea. On 21st December, she transited the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea in a convoy escorted by the nuclear-powered icebreaker 50-Let Pobeda. The two other vessels in the convoy were a heavy lift carrier and a general cargo ship. On 3rd January, the convoy arrived in the Gulf of Ob. While the other two vessels berthed at Sabetta, at the northern end of the Yamal Peninsula, the Shturman Ovtsyn sailed deeper into the Gulf to Cape Kamenny and the Novy Port oil terminal without icebreaker assistance. Never before has a convoy of commercial vessels transited the Northern Sea Route, from the east to the west, at this time of year, SCF claimed in its newsletter. The three shuttle tankers were delivered by Samsung to SCF last year. Another three sister vessels are still under construction. All six will be deployed shipping oil between the Novy Port and Kola Bay, where the FSO Umba is anchored as a transhipment storage vessel. The new Arctic tankers are 259 m long, 34 m wide and have a deadweight of about 42,000 tonnes. They were all built to Arc7 Ice Class notation. Designed for sailing in shallow waters, the ships have a draft of only 9.8 m and a wider beam than normal for tankers of this size. They are all of the double-acting type fitted with ABB Azipods and when going astern they are able to break through 1.8 m of ice and 1.4 m of ice while going ahead.




Dualog to challenge IT solutions boundaries delivery

Ship-to-shore data communications services company Dualog has launched a company that aims to change the way software providers deliver IT solutions to the global shipping industry.

Known as Innovation Garage, the new entity will draw on the skills and talents of the best IT developers in the business to deliver the highly innovative products and solutions that tomorrows shipping industry will need, the company claimed. Working alongside Dualogs existing research and development teams, Innovation Garage will interface with customers and the industry to drive software thinking to new levels. It is being developed upon a long tradition of start-ups in the IT industry, as Facebook, Google, Apple, and Hewlett Packard all started out in a small room or a garage. And the famous HP rules of the garage  where tools and ideas are shared, there is no politics or bureaucracy, and where radical ideas are not bad ideas  will serve as the mantra for the Innovation Garage team, Dualog said. This initiative is part of a wider and broader strategy by Dualog to deliver enhanced communications and application platforms for the global shipping industry. Shipping is demanding more data and more analysis, the company explained. Morten Lind-Olsen, Dualog CEO, said the idea behind Innovation Garage was about working with our existing customer base of 3,000 ships to prepare for the future. Dualog is founded on the DNA of Innovations at Sea, Delivered with Passion, and has always been known as a company ready and able to meet any challenge. Broadband at sea is becoming more available and affordable which again opens up a new world of opportunities to our customers. The area of Internet of Things is one focus area that is very much unexplored and where the shipping industry is facing many challenges such as with existing hardware as well as understanding and fully exploiting Big Data. Innovation Garage gives us the opportunity to drive in fresh blood into the IT industry and look to the future in a new way. We are recruiting people at the forefront of the industry from all over the world. We want to work with people who can contribute in a passionate way and have a track record of creating exciting new ideas. They will work closely with our growing number of R&D people because, given the challenges facing the shipping industry, we need to ensure high expectations are met and even exceeded. Innovation Garage will be at the forefront of software research and development in the shipping industry, he claimed. Lind-Olsen also said that the shipping industry is undergoing a green shift that has to be controlled and managed. At Dualog, we are offering a communication and application platform that can meet these demands head on. We will be the preferred digital platform and initiatives like the Innovation Garage will help the industry develop its ships into the integrated sailing offices it wants them to be. That is how we are preparing for the future, he explained.




Markets - Unprecedented number of January deliveries

BIMCO has reported that an unprecedented 5.5 mill dwt of crude oil tanker capacity (up 220% from January, 2016), has already been delivered in 2017, quoting preliminary data from VesselsValue.com.

January this year alone has accounted for 22% of the total number of crude oil tankers delivered in 2016. In comparison to the totals recorded in 2015 and 2014, this years figure amounted to 48% and 51%, respectively.



Crude oil tanker deliveries amounting to 2.5 mill dwt in January 2016 also hit record levels in relation to the previous two years. However, this level has been dwarfed by the huge number of deliveries in January, 2017. BIMCOs chief shipping analyst, Peter Sand, said; This record-high crude oil tanker delivery growth is troubling, and worsens the balance between supply and demand, due to sluggish demolition in this segment.



From January 2014 until January 2017, demolition amounted to only 8 mill dwt, which represented an astonishingly small proportion of 2.2% of the current crude oil tanker fleet.



This development in January highlights the fact that the crude oil tanker market faces headwind for the current year already, he warned. The lions share of the January deliveries was taken up by 12 VLCCs (preliminary figure), which totalled 3.68 mill dwt and represented 67% of the months total. To put this into perspective, the total number of VLCCs delivered in 2016, 2015 and 2014 was 14.4 mill, 6.25 mill and 7.6 mill dwt, respectively. In addition, 943.000 dwt of Suezmaxes and 903.500 dwt of Aframax vessels were delivered. . BIMCO said that this year, it will continue to publish its series of analysis on the Road to Recovery for the crude oil tanker market. US-based broker Charles R Weber said in the weekly tanker report that this quarter will see an additional 86 mill barrels of vessel capacity delivered across all the crude oil size ranges. This surge comes as yards deliver the vessels ordered in 2014 and 2015 when forward fundamentals indicated a narrowing supply/demand balance. Unfortunately for owners, this increase in deliveries will come at a time of near term demand uncertainty and during a two year lull in vessel phase outs. Weber said that supply growth headwinds will likely remain a feature of the market until mid-2018 when it is forecast that the crude oil fleets will have peaked and the number of phase-outs will exceed the number of deliveries, resulting in a period of negative fleet growth which is likely to last for a few quarters thereafter. By mid-2018, the moderating delivery levels will likely allow demand to catch up with supply, which should support a new upcycle in earnings, Weber said. Given the current decline in asset values and slow period rates, the broker said that after a difficult 2017, those taking an opportunistic approach may view asset prices and period rates during the first half of next year as attractive entry points.




Poulovassilis to lead Aegean Shipping

Aegean Shipping Management has appointed Apostolos Poulovassilis to the position of CEO with immediate effect.

Poulovassilis joined the company at an important point in its development, with the upgrade of its tanker fleet in full progress with a clear focus on operational and environmental excellence, the company said. George Melissanidis, Aegean Shipping Management chairman, said: We are very pleased to be appointing someone of Poulovassilis caliber and experience to Aegean Shipping. He has demonstrated throughout his career the ability to develop and lead successful teams and deliver impressive results. I look forward to working with him to create the next chapter of Aegean Shippings success story. Poulovassilis has had more than 27 years of experience in the marine industry, first with Lloyds Register reaching the level of Regional Manager for Europe, Middle East & Africa, and most recently with Eletson Corp as COO. My first priority is to lead Aegean Shipping into the next phase of its sustainable development and expansion of the Green Fleet. Coming into the company at this critical point is a huge responsibility, but I am very happy to have been given the opportunity to play a part in Aegean Shippings evolution, Poulovassilis said.








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Snap Inc., the parent company behind Snapchat, filed today the relevant documents for their initial public offering (IPO). These S-1 documents give us a first glimpse into the company's operations, revealing exactly how much money Snapchat generates and how many users the service has.

Currently, Snapchat is losing a ton of money. In fact, they're losing significantly more money than they generate, leading to a cost of revenue that's higher than the revenue itself. In 2016, Snap Inc. reported revenues of $404.4 million, but it lost an enormous $515.6 million through the same period. These losses are up significantly from 2015 when Snapchat made a $372.9 million loss on $58.7 million of revenue.

The S-1 filing has also reveals that Snap Inc. pays $400 million per year to Google for cloud services. In other words, the amount it costs to host Snapchat's infrastructure is only slightly less than their yearly revenue.

Snap Inc. admits in their filing they "have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability."

As expected, Snap is hoping to raise $3 billion from this IPO to give the company a valuation north of $20 billion. With the company in such a weak financial state, and the disappointing long-term results of IPOs from similar companies like Twitter and Groupon, Snap Inc. may struggle to reach these targets.

The IPO did reveal that Snapchat has 158 million daily active users, with growth appearing to continue. 43% of Snapchat's users are in North America.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has told the ride-hailing firm's employees that he is stepping down from Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum. The move is a response to mounting criticism over what some people perceived as his support of the President.

With so many tech companies unified against Donald Trump's immigration ban, Kalanick had come under fire for his position as a government advisor. The New York Times reports that some of his staff had questioned what it would take for their boss to step down.

"Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community," Kalanick wrote in a company email. "I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."

The situation was made worse after Uber refused to show solidarity with New York City taxi drivers who were striking at JFK airport last Saturday. The firm even announced that it was switching off surge pricing halfway through the strike, making it look as if it had been profiting from the protests.

The company's actions led to a #DeleteUber campaign, which saw a reported 200,000 people remove the ride-hailing app from their phones. The bad publicity led to Uber's announcement that it had created a $3 million legal fund to help its drivers affected by the ban. But in many people's eyes, it was too little, too late.

How much Kalanick's decision helps Uber remains to be seen. Tesla boss Elon Musk, who also sits on the council, believes the best way to bring about change is to remain on the forum. In a tweet yesterday, the Space X CEO said he would express objections to the executive order at a meeting today, and hopes that his position will help bring humanity closer to a "multi-planet civilization."
After weeks of insisting that only Apple could enable it to access encrypted data on the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorism suspect Syed Farook, and Apple arguing that complying with the FBI's order would set a bad precedent for users' privacy rights, the government agency eventually found help from a third party but refused to identify that organization or the techniques that were used.

An Israeli newspaper later reveal the identity of this third party as Cellebrite. Now, some of the tools used by the Israeli mobile phone forensics company have found their way to the public, after a hacker stole 900GB worth of data from them, including documents that suggest Cellebrite sold its technology to the governments of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Russia.

Cellebrite's main product is a laptop-sized device called the Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED), which can rip data including SMS messages, emails, call logs, and more from thousands of different models of mobile phones, as long as the UFED user is in physical possession of the phone.

The cache of leaked data includes alleged usernames and passwords from clients for logging into Cellebrite databases. There are also a number of directories for different smartphone brands, with each folder containing various exploits the UFED tool could employ and access via a Python script.

The iOS-related code found in the cache is similar to scripts created to jailbreak iPhones and includes modified versions of Apple firmware altered to break security on older iPhones. However, it seems the tools for cracking the San Bernardino shooter iPhone were not leaked.

"The debate around backdoors is not going to go away, rather, it is almost certainly going to get more intense as we lurch toward a more authoritarian society," the hacker that leaked the files wrote. "It's important to demonstrate that when you create these tools, they will make it out."
Preliminary findings in a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report highlight what's described as persistent cracking of turbine blades responsible for pumping fuel into SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets.

Industry officials say the crack-prone parts are potentially a major threat to rocket safety and may require a redesign. NASA has reportedly warned the space flight company that the cracks pose an unacceptable risk for manned flight.

A spokesperson for SpaceX told The Wall Street Journal that they have qualified their engines to be robust to such cracks but are modifying the design in order to avoid the cracks entirely. The changes will be part of the final design, the spokesperson said, adding that NASA will help qualify engines for manned spaceflight.

The Journal highlights the fact that SpaceX has delayed its first unmanned launch from the renovated pad at Cape Canaveral by at least two weeks.

In September of last year, if you recall, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad during a routine pre-launch test. After an extensive investigation, it was determined that one of the three composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) inside the second stage liquid oxygen (LOX) tank failed.

SpaceX's latest launch delays at Cape Canaveral don't seem to be related to the turbine issues. Instead, the company is performing additional testing of ground facilities following the renovation.

The final report from the GAO is expected in the coming weeks, the publication notes.
The European Union is finally ready to ditch roaming charges across Europe after a decade of negotiations in this regard.

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, representatives from the European Parliament, Council and Commission taking part in the negotiations finally agreed on price caps to limit how much carriers have to pay one another when their customers travel in other European countries.

No Roaming Fees For Mobile Users In Europe

Under this agreement, EU mobile users will not have to pay extra for calls, texts, and data usage when abroad. The only condition for customers is to stay within the contract limits and within the EU  roaming charges will still apply in territories outside the EU.

Reaching this agreement was the last step necessary for carriers to scrap roaming charges across the EU. The new scheme will go into effect on June 15.

"This was the last piece of the puzzle. As of 15 June, Europeans will be able to travel in the EU without roaming charges," says Andrus Ansip, vice president of the Digital Single Market for the European Commission. "We have also made sure that operators can continue competing to provide the most attractive offers to their home markets. Today we deliver on our promise."

Good news from last night: End of #roaming charges confirmed. EU negotiators agreed on wholesale prices https://t.co/PeD6dCn5mu #trilogue pic.twitter.com/941voeJ782  DigitalSingleMarket (@DSMeu) February 1, 2017

Roam Like At Home, But Not For Non-EU Travelers

Since 2007, the EU has been making notable efforts to make mobile phone use abroad more affordable, and in 2013, it promised to abolish roaming fees across the EU altogether. EU mobile users have long been waiting for this to happen, and it's finally settled. The EU calls this plan "roam like at home."

The plan benefits people who live or have stable ties to an EU member state and have a SIM card associated with a local carrier. This means that non-EU customers can't just buy a SIM card in one country and enjoy free roaming across the EU.

Taking advantage of "roam like at home" will not require any official registration, but networks could require customers to show proof of residency, study, or employment in an EU member state.

British mobile users, meanwhile, will be able to take advantage of this new roaming scheme for as long as the UK is still in the EU, but it remains unclear just how high the post-Brexit roaming fees will be.

Price Caps For Networks Charging One Another

The officials also agreed on specific price caps to limit the amount that carriers can charge one another when their customers travel abroad and use each other's networks. Prices are capped at 3.2 cents per minute for voice calls, 1 cent per text message, and 7.7 euros per GB of data. The price of data will gradually decrease over the next five years by at least 1 euro per year, so 1 GB of data should not cost more than 2.5 euros by Jan. 1, 2022.

With the final piece of the puzzle now solved, all that's left is for the European Parliament and Council to formally approve the agreement so that carriers can get ready for the new scheme and price caps in June.

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Samsung is gearing up to expand its mobile payments platform and will be launching Samsung Pay Mini, the stripped down version of Samsung Pay, in home country South Korea in Q1 2017.

The mobile payment system, however, will not be exclusive to Samsung Galaxy devices alone and will be compatible with all Android smartphones.

The announcement confirms that anyone who has a compatible Android smartphone will be able to deploy Samsung Pay Mini. The app focuses on mobile-based shopping rather than payments. The good news is that the app is compatible with devices that have an HD screen, as well as run on the older Android Lollipop.

Samsung Pay Mini Release

Samsung will reportedly have a pre-event on Feb. 6 before it officially launches the app on home ground. Reportedly, any user who has a Samsung Card is eligible to download the Pay Mini app's trial version from the Google Play Store.

However, the Samsung Pay Mini app will be exclusive to South Korea at launch, which means that consumers in the United States will not be able to use it as of now.

How Is Samsung Pay Mini Different From Samsung Pay?

Samsung Pay Mini, however, will not support offline payments unlike Samsung Pay. The new app has been designed only so that it can offer support for online payments.

The mobile payment service is intended for online stores specifically and will offer support for lifestyle, store memberships, as well as transportation. Some online stores affiliated with the service will also offer a rewards program. The more a user shops using Samsung Pay Mini in South Korea  for now  the more rewards they will be able to earn.

Samsung Pay Mini focuses on online payments and looks to offer a dedicated solution for the platform.

Unlike Samsung Pay which is compatible with select Galaxy devices, the downgraded variant i.e. Samsung Pay Mini is expected to have greater cross-platform compatibility and may work for iOS as well based on previous reports. However, Samsung has not confirmed if the service will eventually offer iOS support.

It is not clear whether Samsung Pay Mini also supports Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST), a notable feature on Samsung Pay.

Previous reports have suggested that the Samsung Pay Mini app will offer users an easy solution for storing their credit and debit card details, which will expedite the payment process.

To make transactions more convenient, the Samsung Pay Mini app is said to store receipts so that users would know what they have purchased. However, Samsung Korea's announcement does not detail if this feature is included. Moreover, the app is said to deploy fingerprint authentication, as well as a six-character password for enhanced security. Whether Samsung Pay Mini deploys this security feature is also not known.

U.S. Release

Samsung has not shed light on when the Pay Mini app will make its way to Android users in the United States. However, the company is expected to bring the new service to other markets as well.

Samsung Pay Mini is expected to boost the company's service offerings portfolio, but whether users will take a shine to the same remains to be seen.

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Scientists who reported the discovery of remnants of an ancient continent under the Indian ocean island Mauritius have called for broader studies on the supercontinent Gondwana's split to decipher the linkages with the undiscovered micro-continent Mauritia.

Lewis Ashwal of the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and colleagues confirmed that the island nation Mauritius was sitting on top of a sunken continent that is billions of years old.

The study was published in Nature Communications.

According to Ashwal, the pieces of Mauritia formed after the splintering of Gondwana supercontinent is still spread over the Indian Ocean.

The sunken continent was formed when India broke away from Africa billions of years ago. Gondwana disintegrated 200 millions of years ago with splinters later becoming Africa, Australia, South America, and Antarctica.

Broader Study Required

According to the research, the presence of a continental crust has been indicated by the old Mauritian zircons showing the ancient crust's affinity with Madagascar, which is 700 km west of Mauritius now. It said a broad reconstruction that traces linkages of Mauritius and the continental fragments as an erstwhile part of the ancient nucleus of Madagascar and southern India needs to be attempted.

"We are studying the break-up process of the continents, in order to understand the geological history of the planet," said Ashwal, also the study's lead author.

Rock Analysis

Analysis of volcanic rocks in Mauritius led the scientists to establish the Mauritius connection firmly. Finding plenty of zircons at the beaches, which were extremely old and spewed by volcanic eruptions, the team was led to clear conclusions. There was a huge age disparity between the young Mauritius that was just 8 million years old and zircon crystals aged at least 3 billion years.

"The fact that we have found zircons of this age proves that there are much older crustal materials under Mauritius that could only have originated from a continent," said Ashwal.

Finding such old minerals in the relatively young Mauritius led to the surmise that the island was sitting on top of a sunken continent.

Huge Gravity Pull

The discovery came in the aftermath of the high gravitational fields exerted in some parts of the ocean thanks to the extremely thicker crusts.

Beneath the sea, huge chunks of land that sank got attached to the ocean's crust.

Experts conclude that Mauritia must have been a small continent. When India and Madagascar started drifting apart, Mauritia felt the stress and stretched far and eventually broke up.

The assumption is that Mauritia sank into the sea 84 million years ago.

"It's like plasticine: when continents are stretched they become thinner and split apart," noted Martin Van Kranendonk at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

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Congressional investigators have sounded the alarm on turbine wheel cracks in the Falcon 9 rocket as well as other worrying aspects of SpaceXs manned launches in the future.

According to Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Government Accountability Offices preliminary findings show a pattern of issues with turbine blades pumping fuel into the rocket engines  the first to publicly identify a serious defect affecting SpaceXs reusable rocket, especially with the final reports release in the coming weeks.

Cracks In Manned-Mission Plans

The cracking-prone areas are deemed a major issue in the rockets safety, industry officials warned, saying it may entail redesign of the rockets turbopumps or the part of the system that delivers propellants to the engine. NASA has warned SpaceX of the said cracks unacceptable risk for manned missions, they added.

The issue surfaced as the Southern California-based company has delayed its first unmanned launch for at least two weeks, pending further testing of ground facilities. The planned blastoff has been rescheduled to no earlier than the middle of February.

SpaceX projects launching over double the eight rockets it blasted off in 2016, seeking to meet its NASA commitments and address a backlog of commercial missions. It envisions to eventually bring its total launch to about once a week past the decades end, including a couple of its Falcon heavy booster rockets  whose development has been years behind schedule, and maiden flight is poised for later this year  every year.

In a previous interview with WSJ, NASA acting administrator Robert Lightfoot said the cracks continued to emerge during tests as recent as September last year.

Were talking to [SpaceX] about turbo machinery, Lightfoot said, adding they know how to fix them but expressed uncertainty on whether there will be a shift to bigger turbopumps.

The final government report will reportedly also focus on unrelated matters potentially threatening to delay manned launches by both SpaceX and its rival firm Boeing, with conclusions from external expert research. Investigators are said to have determined that both companies will likely miss a 2018 target to kickstart manned missions to the International Space Station.

Modifying Engine Design

In response to the GAOs preliminary findings, SpaceX said it will fix the potential problem involving cracks.

[We have] qualified our engines to be robust to turbine wheel cracks, SpaceX said in a statement emailed to Reuters. However, we are modifying the design to avoid them altogether.

Last month, the Elon Musk-owned company resumed flights after a nearly five-month investigation into why its rocket exploded as it was being fueled for a routine pre-launch test  its second accident since the Falcon 9 rocket debuted in June 2010. The accident was linked to a burst helium canister in the second-stage liquid oxygen tank of the rocket, an issue unrelated to the turbopumps.

In late January, Musk announced that an upgraded Falcon 9 rocket version will be soon launched to deliver an EchoStar Corporation satellite to space. The upgraded version of the Falcon 9 rocket, also known as Block 5, would greatly enhance the performance and reusability of the rocket that is likely to be commissioned for flight by 2017s end.

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The LG G6 smartphone  the successor of LG G5  is expected to be introduced this month, and rumors pertaining to the handset have gathered momentum.

The LG G6 will be $50 more expensive than its predecessor due to the improvements, according to the latest buzz.

The LG G6 is also expected to be priced differently in other markets based on the specifications or features offered. The higher price point for the LG G6 will obviously be for its top-end features.

What Are These Specifications?

LG has reportedly decided to alter the specifications of the handset based on the market the device will be released in. For example, the wireless charging coil will be carried by the LG G6's international variants and not the South Korean model.

The Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST), however, will only be made available for LG G6 smartphones that will release in South Korea. This move from LG is due to the fact that MST-led payments are not popular in other parts of the world.

According to rumors, the LG G6 will be IP68 certified which means that the smartphone will be able to withstand being submerged in up to five feet of water for nearly 30 minutes. This feature will be welcomed by consumers as the modular LG G5 was not water resistant.

Speculations are rife that the LG G6 will sport a 5.7-inch LCD display with a resolution of 2,880 x 1,440 pixels. The upcoming smartphone will apparently have the aspect ratio 2:1. Thanks to this ratio, the smartphone's bezel will reduce to 0.08 inch on both the top and bottom.

The smartphone is also expected to feature 32-bit DAC audio support. Reportedly, the wireless charging support will only be available for the European variant of the LG G6. The device will also offer support for a dual camera and will include a fingerprint scanner, which is positioned at the rear of the handset.

Price Increase: Is It Justified?

With so many enhanced features, the price of the LG G6 is said to be around the $770 mark, which makes the next-gen smartphone $50 more than the LG G5.

According to an analyst, the higher price of the LG G6 is quite acceptable because of its premium features. Moreover, the fact that both Apple and Samsung will likely be increasing the price point for the rumored iPhone 8 and Galaxy S8, respectively, justifies LG's supposed decision to increase the flagship LG G6's pricing.

The company is expected to unveil the LG G6 at its press event on Feb. 26, the smartphone is expected to be made available in home country South Korea in March.

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It remains a mystery why we sleep, whether its for saving energy, clearing away the waste present at the brain, or that need for animals to be safe and sound from predators and external factors. But a pair of new studies just might enrich the discussion further.

Their key finding: people sleep to forget certain things learned every day. Learning, after all, entails growing neural connections, which enable neurons to send signals to each other efficiently. New memories are stored in these networks.

Shrinking Brain Synapses During Sleep

Back in 2003, University of Wisconsin-Madison biologists Drs. Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli proposed that these synapses or neural connections grow so robustly at daytime that brain circuits become noisy. They argued that during sleep, the human brain cuts back on such connections to sift through the noise.

Over the years, they have discovered indirect proof supporting the so-called synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. Without this synaptic homeostasis, synapses could burn out akin to how an electrical outlet become overloaded with too many appliances plugged in.

"During sleep, we are much less preoccupied by the external world  and the brain can sample [or assess] all our synapses, and renormalize them in a smart way," Cirelli told Live Science.

Now, the scientists have direct evidence of their hypothesis after finding in a four-year experiment the shrinking of synapses in mouse models while they slept. Sleep then appears to be a method for the brain to keep learning new things and forming new memories.

Further Evidence Of Synaptic Homeostasis

In the second study, a team from Johns Hopkins University explored the hypothesis by focusing on proteins in mouse brains. They fortified evidence that sleep recalibrates brain cells responsible for memory and learning, such that the animals can solidify lessons learned and use them once they wake up.

Creating a tiny window through which they could peek into mouse brains, the team targeted the hippocampus and cortex. They purified proteins from receiving synapses in sleeping and awake mice, finding a 20 percent decrease in receptor protein levels in sleeping mice. What this indicated was a general weakening of synapses in the sleeping bunch.

Lead author Dr. Graham Diering said their findings advance the idea that mouse  and presumably human  brain can only store so much before it demands recalibration.

Without sleep and the recalibration that goes on during sleep, memories are in danger of being lost, he said in a statement.

In the separate experiment of Tononi and Cirelli, the scientists found that pruning synapses in a lab dish did not strike every single neuron, with one-fifth of the synapses remaining unchanged. What this could mean: synapses encode the most stable and important memories that should not be altered or tampered.

Tononi dubbed it as forgetting in a smart way, and Cirelli believed this selective trait by the brain in pruning synaptic connections remains a mystery to explore.

Some researchers, however, remained cautious of the findings, saying they might not be definitive proof of the hypothesis at all. Sleep researcher Marcos G. Frank from Washington State University said, for instance, that it could be difficult to determine whether those brain changes at night result from sleep or by ones biological clock.

The findings were discussed in the journal Science.

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At the end of last year, reports revealed that Apple has serious plans to begin manufacturing iPhones in India. However, the company was being held back due to its aversion to the government's meddling with the design of its products.

It seems that the challenges blocking the way of iPhone production in India have now been cleared up, as Apple is set to begin manufacturing iPhones in the country within two months.

Apple iPhone Production In India Starting Soon

According to a Bloomberg report, Apple will start the assembly of iPhones in India by the end of April. The company has assigned Taiwan-based Wistron Corp. for the assembly of the devices, with the factory to be located in the technology capital of Bangalore in the region of Karnataka.

The information was revealed by IT minister Priyank Kharge, who executives of Apple met with last month to finalize the timeline on when iPhone production can start.

Earlier, there were reports of the Karnataka only welcoming a proposal by Apple to start manufacturing iPhones in the state. However, there was said to be no deal or agreement yet between Apple and the government for the launch of iPhone production. A source did say that if Apple would start the assembly of iPhones in Karnataka, it would be in a facility being set up by Wistron on the outskirts of Bangalore, which is information that turned out to be true.

With Apple starting iPhone manufacturing in India by April, previous reports on such a timeline have been confirmed. It has been claimed that Apple will manufacture the next iPhone in India, and with import and excise duties to be eliminated, it is possible that the price of the device will go down.

A report from last week stated that Apple had a constructive meeting with the Indian government on the discussion of the plan to open an iPhone production facility in the country. Apple had a list of demands, though, including custom duties waivers and extensive tax breaks.

The Significance Of iPhone Manufacturing In India

The production of iPhones in the country reveals that Apple has a renewed focus on India, which has claimed the title as the fastest-growing market for smartphones in the world.

According to Kharge, the iPhones that will be made in Bangalore will target the domestic market, boosting the supply and presence of Apple's devices in the country. Kharge added that the government will help Apple if it will look to form partnerships with other contract manufacturers in Bangalore in addition to Wistron.

Apple shipped 2.5 million iPhones into India last year, which is the record for the company in terms of sales and revenues. Despite this, Apple just barely made the top 10 list of smartphone manufacturers in the country and is now looking to have a deeper grasp of the market, as growth in other locations such as China have slowed down.

Apple only held less than 2 percent of the shipments of smartphones in India, which is a figure that the company is looking to boost, especially given the estimate that 750 million smartphones will be sold a year in India by 2020.

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The Venezuelan government will increase cooperation with Colombia's military and police forces to face transnational crimes caused by drug trafficking, announced Friday by the Minister of... | Read More
Board members for the Baton Rouge North Economic Development District will interview the top three candidates for the district's permanent executive director job on February 16.

The board spent more than half an hour in a closed-door executive session Thursday evening after its search committee for the executive director recommended permanently hiring Interim Executive Director Rinaldi Jacobs.

Instead of agreeing to hire Jacobs, the board members asked for the resumes of the top three candidates and proposed interviewing them in a special meeting.

Group debates role for BRAC in north Baton Rouge economic development efforts Some members of the Baton Rouge North Economic Development District voiced concerns this wee

For the second meeting in a row, board members also expressed concern about the possibility of entering into a formal relationship with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber. BRAC, the city-parish's economic development arm, proposed entering a formal relationship with the district in January.

But Baton Rouge North Economic Development District Chairman Ronald Smith said a recent meeting to hash out the details of a relationship with BRAC "did not fare as well as I originally thought it should have."

Board members continued to question BRAC's commitment to north Baton Rouge and the chamber's track record, or lack thereof, in the area. While south Baton Rouge has flourished over the past decade thanks to help from BRAC, north Baton Rouge has continued to suffer, some board members said.

Gary Chambers, who sits on the board, insisted that the district should take a "go it alone" approach because BRAC has "chosen not to do" economic development in north Baton Rouge.

"Those Kumbaya festivals that we have participated in have led to the demise of north Baton Rouge," Chambers said.

Others disagreed, though.

"We need to continue to open ourselves up to the resources of the entire community," said Stephanie Cargile, another board member. "I don't think we should shut ourselves off from any organization. I'd like us not to draw lines the sand."

Smith said he will continue to meet with BRAC about the proposal.
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Former Veterans Affairs Secretary David LaCerte, who was accused last year by state investigators of mismanaging an agency tasked with caring 
Gov. John Bel Edwards has issued a one-page notice officially calling the Louisiana Legislature into a special session this month to address a $304 million shortfall in the state budget.

The governor had said last week that he planned to call the budget-cutting special session, which is slated to start at 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 13 and end at midnight Feb. 22.

The official order, which came out Friday afternoon, doesn't offer lawmakers an opportunity to raise taxes, though it does include the option of increasing some fees and pulling money from the state's reserves, in addition to cuts.

Edwards, a Democrat, wants the GOP-controlled Legislature to pull $119 million from the state's Rainy Day Fund to lessen the mid-year blow to state agencies' budgets.

Some members of the Legislature have criticized that plan, saying that they think more of the shortfall should be addressed through cuts.

Edwards is expected to unveil his entire plan for the $304 million deficit on Monday.

Edwards said he hopes to spare K-12 education, colleges and universities, social services and prisons. The cuts won't come easily, he warned legislators last week.

"They're going to be deep and they're going to be painful," he said.

The special session will be the third Edwards has called to address the budget since taking office in January 2016.

A special session typically costs the state about $50,000 a day, based on legislative estimates.
Recently, Congress passed legislation to make the Hyde Amendment permanent. This would make the discriminatory policy that denies abortion coverage to people enrolled in Medicaid into law. First passed in an annual budget bill 40 years ago, Hyde has spread like a disease. Abortion coverage is banned for military service members and their families, federal employees, immigrants and more. These bans also affect Peace Corps volunteers  something I was dismayed to learn when, as a Peace Corps volunteer, I became pregnant.

I happily served in Togo in West Africa for two years. During my service as a cultural ambassador of sorts, I faced amoebas, parasites and malaria as I worked on food security and womens rights issues. While challenging, this wasnt the hardest part.

The hardest part came when I returned home, found out I was pregnant and also that, despite health insurance coverage being one of the few benefits provided to volunteers, I was denied coverage for an abortion.

I was 23 years old, had no job lined up, and after two years out of the country, the only money I had was my small Peace Corps stipend. Instead of using it to resettle in the United States, I spent one-fourth of it to pay for an abortion and travel expenses for my appointment.

Reflecting on the recent anniversary of Roe v. Wade, I am grateful I had an abortion. I knew I would not be able to raise a child on less than $3,000 with no job prospects and a weakened immune system.

It does not define who I am, and I feel no regret of having an abortion, but I regret that this is not something everyone can access. Even though I was able to get the abortion I needed, it was a financial burden that shed light on the inequality experienced by women and transgender people in need of affordable, safe reproductive health care.

Thats why I joined the New Orleans Abortion Fund while living in New Orleans  a local organization providing financial assistance to clients unable to afford the full cost of an abortion. My commitment to NOAF means I continue to volunteer remotely while completing my studies at Vermont Law School. Our work in Louisiana is of extreme importance for low-income residents, and others throughout the Deep South.

These federal abortion policies were not established to protect women, but to prevent us from making our own decisions. Right now, were facing a president who has repeatedly promised to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Its up to us  those of us whove struggled to make ends meet, and anyone who shares our moral outrage at politicians interfering with our decisions. The future is ours to fight for.

Whitney Shields

law student

Bethel, Vermont
Melinda Gonzalez, an LSU anthropology major, speaks after LSU students staged an 11:00 am class walkout and gathered in the LSU Quadrangle to protest the executive orders of Pres. Donald Trump concerning the Muslim ban and the border wall with Mexico Wednesday Feb. 1, 2017, in Baton Rouge, La..
Wanniassa retired public servant Geoff Mason never imagined when he signed up to be an organ donor, the person he would end up helping would be his own daughter.

His and wife Janette's middle child, Susannah, was a healthy, sports-loving teenager who rarely got sick but who ended up having to receive one of her father's kidneys when she developed an auto-immune disease.

Wanniassa's Geoff Mason was able to give his daughter, Susannah, the gift of life when he donated one of his kidneys to her. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

The condition - pauci-immune glomerulonephritis - attacked her kidneys and meant she could barely walk and constantly felt tired and nauseous.

The then undiagnosed condition caused her kidneys to almost fail, putting her on an emergency airlift to The Children's Hospital at Westmead for treatment in April, 2012.
Annual helicopter patrols will begin Monday to ensure the reliability of Canberra's electricity network.

ActewAGL will have a chopper in the air for three weeks as part of its ongoing maintenance program.

Helicopter patrols begin Monday in the ACT to check poles and wires.

Works manager Clinton McAlister said the patrols would cover roughly 2400km of overhead powerlines to inspect vegetation around poles and wires.

"In suburban areas the helicopters fly around 310 metres above the ground in order to survey the network," he said.
Devotion. It is hard to come by. But not when it comes to dogs.

In this snap of her red heeler kelpie cross, Wally, Jessica Strain is reminded why she has always thought he was a "once-in-a-lifetime dog."

Wally wrapping himself around me as he loves to do. Taken in 2013. Credit:Jessica Strain

The cheeky pooch is known to put on his most serious 'you know I adore you' face - a way of picking up his owner's spirits.

"That's him," she said. "He is a bit of a goose but he is very loyal."
Refunds Customers who had booked tickets to Bali would receive a full refund, the airline said. Passengers due to travel from Bali to Australia on Friday would be taken on other carriers, including Virgin Australia, Some customers received a text message on Thursday night, alerting them to the cancellations. Fairfax Media understands some travellers received the SMS message at 11.15pm, after Tiger's customer call centre had closed for the night.

Other passengers would be contacted "as soon as possible", the airline said.

A statement on the airline's website said its call centre was "experiencing a higher than usual volume of calls". All refunds would be automatically processed within the next two to four days and sent to customers, the airline said. 'I feel so lied to' Angela Credit:Facebook Angela from Oak Park in Melbourne and her husband were booked to fly to Bali on Saturday morning. Tiger still has not contacted her to let her know their flight has been cancelled.

"I feel so lied to," she told Fairfax Media on Friday afternoon. "If they had [have] refunded [us] earlier, I could have secured another reasonable fare." Angela paid $791 for the tickets on Tiger. She had to spend $1900, not including baggage, to book tickets with another airline on Friday afternoon. "There was zero communication. I work at the airport, I spoke to staff and was constantly told that all was fine." "Seriously, we could have gone to Europe. I have already exchanged my money and paid for accommodation that was non-refundable."

Julia Roscoe Credit:Facebook Julia Roscoe, who had planned to fly to Bali with three others mid-February, said her entire holiday has been "absolutely ruined" by Tigerair's permanent cancellations. As a small business owner, Ms Roscoe rarely gets time off and she said she had booked this holiday well in advance in September last year. When Tigerair was suspended in the beginning of January, the 28-year-old's partner phoned the airline to ask about their flights. "They assured us that our flights would not be affected and when I requested a refund, just in case, so I could make alternate plans, they refused and again insisted that our flights would not be affected," she said.

Ms Roscoe said there is no way she could afford other flights now and could only cancel the trip, which includes non-refundable bookings for accommodation, transfers and tours. "They insisted that wouldn't happen," she said. Tigerair had been carrying hundreds of passengers to Bali each day from Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth since March 2016. Last month however, Indonesia revoked the Virgin Australia Holdings unit's permission to fly, saying it did not meet charter flight regulations. The budget subsidiary of Virgin Australia had been expected to resume flights to the island on Friday, but on Thursday evening said final approvals had not been received.

"Providing a reliable, low-cost service is critical for Tigerair Australia and our customers, and therefore our only option is to withdraw from flying to Bali altogether," Tigerair chief executive Rob Sharp said in a statement. On Thursday night, the airline said all affected customers had been "proactively notified" about the cancellations, but angry customers flooded the airline's Facebook page complaining that they had not been given adequate warning. "Drove 500 kilometres to Adelaide after being told it's a go ahead. Text at midnight to cancel. Pathetic," passenger Steve Hunter wrote. Another passenger, Morgan Davies, said: "You would have [known] by close of business today whether you could fly or not and yet still chose to wait til you told your customers. You have lost my business for life." Tigerair's domestic flights have not been affected and will operate as normal.

Consumer advocate group Choice said Tigerair customers had been given a "raw deal" and should be compensated for both time and money lost. "Tiger's apologies are unlikely to move customers who have spent time and money planning their dream holiday to Bali only for it to turn into a logistical nightmare," Choice spokeswoman Nicky Breen said. "From the last minute cancellation for those booked on flights today to the decision to permanently withdraw operations from Bali, customers have been given a raw deal from Tiger. "For many travellers this is hard earned annual leave and pre-booked accommodation that they can't get back." Angus Kidman, editor in chief at comparison site finder.com.au,

"Even if people have travel insurance, they are going to say 'you have to take it up with the airline first'," he said. Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester said the matter was one between the airline and the Indonesian regulator. "However the Australian government continues to work collaboratively with the airline and the Indonesian government. I am advised that Tigerair is taking immediate steps to minimise the impact for the affected passengers," Mr Chester said. Virgin Australia made the decision to give up on the Bali route for its international unit after posting a 37 per cent fall in second-quarter underlying earnings before taxes on Friday, as tough conditions persisted in the domestic Australian market. Australia's second biggest airline reported an underlying profit before tax of $45.9 million for the quarter ended December 30, compared with an underlying profit before tax of $73 million a year earlier.
Clive Palmer's wife has been called to give evidence into the collapse of his Townsville refinery company, Queensland Nickel.

The Federal Court order summoning Anna Palmer to answer liquidators' questions came after a similar directive was issued to the former politician's nephew, Clive Mensink, and just a week before the hearings were due to resume.

Registrar Murray Belcher's order also called PwC partner Derreck Vickers and Mr Palmer's long-time business associate Domenic Martino to give evidence.

All three were required to bring "a number of documents".
Embattled former coal baron Nathan Tinkler has been permitted to fly to New York for a job interview, after a Sydney judge lifted a travel ban imposed by his bankruptcy trustee.

Federal Court Justice John Nicholas on Friday set aside a decision made last month by the trustee of Mr Tinkler's estate preventing him from travelling to the US.

Former mining magnate Nathan Tinkler outside court on January 27. Credit:Daniel Munoz

The former mining magnate had made an urgent application on January 27 to travel to New York to attend a job interview on February 1 and to visit the four children from his first marriage in Hawaii.

Justice Nicholas rejected the earlier application, saying he was not going to make a decision on the same day.
To be clear, this isn't a case of the new CEO not being able to perform. Under Larsson's leadership, Ralph Lauren developed a smart turnaround plan and executed well against it.

It would be an understatement to say this doesn't bode well for the 50-year-old label. A "Stefan Larsson bump" had reinvigorated the company in the past year, as he moved quickly to fire employees, close stores, and refashion the dated brand into a modern, fast-moving company that better catered to today's shoppers. No longer.

Ralph Lauren has announced that Stefan Larsson, the superstar CEO appointed to revive the struggling lifestyle brand little more than a year ago, would leave the company in May, citing clashes with founder and chairman Ralph Lauren on how to jump-start the business.

Ralph Lauren stock fell more than 11 per cent on Thursday partly because investors felt misled by the founder. Credit:Bloomberg

The stock fell more than 11 per cent on Thursday partly because investors felt misled by Lauren, the founder, who had persuaded them in June that he was ready to at least partly turn over the reins of his company to Larsson. Investors, and many new executives, came to Ralph Lauren because of Larsson's track record of running successful operations.

The corporate world is littered with examples of executives who just weren't ready to let go. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, for instance, said in December he would step down as CEO for the second time in the company's history. He admitted that, the first time he tried to relinquish control, he wasn't "emotionally prepared" to do so.

Ralph Lauren's explanation that its founder couldn't see eye-to-eye with his successor raises doubts about whether he will ever step aside and let someone else run the business. That includes not just supply chain and operations, but the emotional side of the business, such as design and style, that truly defines the brand's DNA.

Of course, things turned out well for Starbucks investors when Schultz returned and jolted the coffee chain back to outsize sales gains and profitability. The difference is that Schultz stepped away while the company was going strong, only to see it falter in his absence.
In a week in which President Trump gave Australia a stark demonstration that he's going to smash conventions, it seems apt the Letters team reconsider one of our own. An email from Ann Mary Garnsey, of Wahroonga, is the catalyst: "I hope that in light of recent events concerning the new American President you will rethink your tips on writing a letter to the editor saying that anyone who mentions the Nazis has lost the argument."

Our admonition is related to Godwin's Law  devised by US lawyer Mike Godwin  which states: "As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches one." An accepted corollary of this law is that the first person to mention the Nazis has demonstrated a lack of intellectual rigour and has lost whatever debate they were engaged in.

The rise of Donald Trump has prompted a change in the rules of writing letters to the Herald's editor. Credit:AP

The idea behind adopting this standard was to stop glib comparisons to a dark chapter in world history. But even before the rise of Donald Trump, a blanket ban on the Nazis was a bit glib itself. In 2015, Godwin wrote in The Washington Post: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler or Nazis when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician." We agree and will amend our rules  but will be taking care that any references are thoughtful and not repetitive.

And we want to hear from you for a new project: Letters that Change Lives. Let us know if writing a letter to the Herald or even reading one has altered your life or those of others  inspired you, consoled you, opened up opportunities, changed government policy, or any number of other possibilities. We want to hear your stories via letters@smh.com.au.
Let's get one thing straight. All the furore about Donald Trump's angry scolding of Malcolm Turnbull during a telephone conversation and the derisory "dumb deal" tweet that followed could have been avoided entirely. The government should have done the right thing, long ago, by processing the refugees on Nauru and Manus Island and, if appropriate, bringing them to Australia.

The deal with the United States, struck in the last months of the Obama administration, carried the potential to relieve the unnecessary punishment of those languishing in Pacific camps. But such an arrangement was necessary only because of Mr Turnbull's cruel stubbornness.

Malcolm Turnbull decided to take chance and forge ahead with an unnecessary arrangement. Credit:AP

The Australian government made the decision to hold people on Nauru and Manus, and the Australian government  not the US and not Donald Trump  has the principal obligation for their welfare.

In the warped way Mr Trump looks at the world, it is understandable why he has rebelled against this deal. This is not to excuse his prejudicial profiling of Muslims as a threat, or his lamentable allegation that the refugees are "illegal" or could be Boston bomber-like terrorists. But Mr Trump has long made his bigotry plain. In his transactional view, he has inherited rather than invested in this arrangement.
Last Sunday a teenage boy, feeling trapped and hopeless, attempted to end his own life by hanging himself in a detention centre on Nauru. The Iranian born refugee was reacting to US President Donald Trump's executive order, which authorises a temporary travel ban against seven Muslim dominated countries, including Iran, and a suspension of the US refugee program. The teenager, who has spent more than three years of his short life on Nauru, feared that he would never be able to leave the island because the executive order would jeopardise a deal brokered by Australia with the previous Obama administration for the resettlement of refugees from Nauru and Manus Island in the United States.

Since the ban there have been confusing and conflicting messages from the Australian government and the White House on their fate. While the Australian government has attempted to reassure the public that the US will honour the resettlement deal, a tweet from the US President sent on Wednesday night DC time all but confirmed that the deal was in danger.

Even if the deal is to be honoured, there is confusion about what it will in fact achieve. The agreement between Australia and the US does not commit the US to taking any refugees. It simply requires that the United States allow refugees to express an interest in being resettled there. That is, even if the US deal was to go ahead, it may not result in any concrete outcomes for the men, women and children trapped on Nauru and Manus Island.

The refugee deal has had a significant impact on Australia's approach to the United States. In contrast with numerous world leaders, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has declined to criticise President Trump's executive order, presumably for fear that such criticism may threaten the refugee resettlement deal. This deal therefore, that may achieve little, is costing Australia its international reputation and Malcolm Turnbull his credibility.
An RSL NSW state councillor who resigned recently on principle over the financial scandal engulfing the league has made a frank admission that "no one of that era is completely exonerated" as the leadership faces a looming grassroots backlash.

Fairfax Media can also reveal that one state councillor is the subject of an investigation over whether Bondi Junction sub-branch, of which he is secretary, has illegally denied membership to an RAAF veteran.

Dr Rod Bain says some councillors and staff had failed to keep the rest of the RSL coucil informed about the financial issues. Credit:Phil Hearne

Bill Harrigan, a former Australian Federal Police officer, could face a disciplinary tribunal if an RSL investigator finds evidence he has used his power to exclude dissenters as the veteran claims. Mr Harrigan denies the allegations.

The state councillor who has resigned, Rod Bain, told Fairfax Media that information was withheld from some councillors about the financial issues that are now the subject of investigations by police, the charities watchdog and internal auditors appointed by the league's national council.
It is probably not a surprise for anybody to read that Donald Trump is, according to sources who blabbed to Axios, a man who is interested in whether people "look the part".

That this comes from a man who is one gust of wind away from a bad hair day (and let's not even talk about his hue) should perhaps be a little skew-whiff. But we know it isn't, because as Jess Cartner Morley noted when examining Hillary Clinton's battle with fashion during the presidential campaign, men are held to different standards when it comes to style.

Groomed for power: Stephen Bannon is said to be the only person exempt from Trump's dress code. Credit:Getty

This is where Steve Bannon fits in, and we'll get to that later. Anyway, it's even less surprising that Trump also apparently likes the women who work for him to "dress like women". A phrase that later lit up Twitter with women posting photos of themselves dressed "like a woman" in their work outfits. You know, police officer uniforms, army uniforms, doctors scrubs ... because, there are many things that women wear to work. Reportedly for team Trump, dressing "like a woman" means looking "neat and orderly." But it also means, according to the Axios source, that women who worked for him  even in the not very glamorous job of schlepping along to doorknock on people's homes and convince them to vote for Trump  felt pressure to wear dresses to "impress Trump". A fairly tall order it must be said, given Trump once declared Heidi Klum to no longer be a "10".

Given that one of Trump's jobs was owning the Miss Universe beauty pageant where the literal purpose is to judge women on how well they fit into ascribed (and stringent) standards of appearance, this is again, not surprising. And it must be said that Trump is also rather opinionated on how the men who work for him dress and was thought to be very unimpressed with the cut of his press secretary Sean Spicer's suit on his first press conference, but pleased with Mitt Romney's jawline and general Senatorial aesthetic.
Police are still at a loss to understand why a quiet year 11 student at Bonnyrigg High School allegedly went on a stabbing rampage during roll call on Thursday morning.

A 16-year-old boy, who cannot be identified due to his age, appeared in Parramatta Children's Court on Friday charged with wounding with intent to murder his science teacher Carolyn Cox and two counts of wounding a person with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

It's alleged that, just after the first bell rang out at 8.42am, he walked into a room in the science block and stabbed a 15-year-old female student in the shoulder blade and a 16-year-old male student in the chest.

A few minutes later, he allegedly stabbed Miss Cox, 48, in the back with intent to murder her.
A 92-year-old man has been charged with sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl at a home on Sydney's northern beaches, police say.

The man was arrested in Manly on Thursday and charged over the alleged sexual and indecent assault of the schoolgirl last month.

The man is related to the girl he is accused of abusing, and cannot be named for legal reasons.

Detectives from the State Crime Command's Child Abuse Squad launched an investigation after receiving a report that the girl had been assaulted on January 19.

Detectives took the man to Manly police station, where he was questioned.
Queensland Law Society immediate past president and criminal lawyer Bill Potts said mental illness, alcohol or drugs were often involved in domestic violence cases. Mr Potts said the society needed to deal with the causes, such as mental health, alcohol or drugs, rather than locking people up and throwing away the key. "Rather than simply deny bail to the 99 per cent of people who do not breach bail in these circumstances and who are more than prepared to obey the orders which are made by the court, we should in fact ensure that the courts have the proper and appropriate means to monitor the fluctuating states of the mental condition of people who appear before them," he said. "People can appear to be quite sane when they're applying for bail but their condition may change if they utilise drugs or alcohol or if their depression comes back." Mr Potts said courts should be notified of a defendant's deteriorating mental health situation by hospitals, police, neighbours or "anybody who is in the position to see the person is hanging on by a thread or losing their sense of reality".

"Courts are able to order mental health assessments ... If there's any change in that, the person books themselves back in hospital, the spouse notices that they're deteriorating, that sort of thing ought to be told to the court, so up to date information is available to the courts. "Rather than laws which on their face may be populist, what we in fact need is better resources for a court system that is stretched to breaking point. "People act in these things, sometimes out of an explosion of rage or anger, but more often out of despair and where that's tied up with a recognised mental illness." Also on Thursday, Mr Ryan said he would speak to the Premier and Attorney-General about Ms Bradford's family's comments suggesting ankle bracelets could be used to track accused DV offenders. "I've got an open mind on that and I'm happy to talk with the Premier and the Attorney-General about that very thing," he said.

"As I mentioned before, just a couple of moments ago, the Queensland Police Service is a world-leading police service in terms of being an early adopter of technology, so where there is technology to assist us in keeping Queenslanders safe, I've got a really open mind." Mr Potts said about 23,000 applications for domestic violence orders were made each year, which involved up to 46,000 couples. "We simply cannot and ought not to have a rule that prevents people from getting bail because we simply do not have enough jails and secondly there is simply no need for such a course of action," he said. When questioned on whether his proposed law reform could lead to prison overcrowding, Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls said he believed the issue could be managed. Mr Potts said people's hearts must go out to the family and friends of Ms Bradford and people quite properly questioned what went wrong and whether lessons could be learnt.

"But I'm concerned that sometimes in the desire to do good and to prevent harm that we in fact can cause injustice," he said. Mr Potts said there had also been "unfounded and quite hysterical abuse" directed at Magistrate Colin Strofield, who allowed Mr Bradford to be released on bail. "It's all very well for people to be wise with 20/20 hindsight," he said. "We should be trying to ensure that our hardworking magistrates at the coal face of justice are given support and resources." Queensland Council for Civil Liberties vice president Terry O'Gorman said reversing the onus of proof for bail would result in defendants spending many months on remand before their cases were heard, when some would be found not guilty.

"[It will] cause innocent domestic violence accused to spend many long months in jail only to be acquitted or have the case later dropped," he said. Mr O'Gorman said the Teresa Bradford tragedy should not be ignored but it did not demonstrate a systemic problem with the domestic violence bail system. But he said the council supported a proposal to make police tell domestic violence complainants when the alleged perpetrator was released on bail. Women's Legal Service coordinator Angela Lynch said the WLS supported calls to reverse the bail laws where risk assessments identified red flags for victims' safety. She said the WLS also supported urgent consultation with stakeholders and experts.
The stopwatch shows that it was all over in less than 65 seconds.

So as auctions go this sale, held in a sprawling warehouse in the western suburbs of Melbourne, was a rather quick one.

Wool growers Jarod Koschitzke and his father Greg Koschitzke inspecting wool before Thursday's auction. Australian wool prices are at a record high. Credit:Joe Armao

But for the farming family looking through the glass into the wool auction room, two of whom had travelled hundreds of kilometres to be there, it was 65 seconds well spent.

Greg Koschitzke and son Jarod watched intently as the bids for 36 bales of the family's fleece wool climbed and climbed, as Elders auctioneer Rex Bennett called the auction at a speed that would impress any seasoned Melbourne Cup caller.
The only identifying feature left of 32-year-old Brendan Bernard was a shabby, but distinctive tattoo of a devil holding a spray can.

It was found on a forearm that had floated to the surface of the Maribyrnong River in January 2015, the grim discovery made by someone walking along a popular waterside track in the city's north-west.

Brendan Bernard, whose severed forearm was found in the Maribyrnong River on February 5, 2015.

More parts were found as weeks went by, but it was this tattoo that unlocked his identity for homicide detectives after his family recognised the little red figure on the news.

In the Supreme Court in Melbourne on Friday, three men were handed substantial sentences for the chilling and callous murder and dismemberment of Mr Bernard, which began over, as Justice Christopher Beale said, a "meagre debt of $60".
A West Australian doctor has been struck from the medical register by the State Administrative Tribunal for engaging in a sex act with a patient.

Doctor Vinpin Lal accused his patient - who cannot be named for legal reasons - of trying to extort money from him after she performed oral sex on him in a consultation room in November 2013.

A WA doctor has been struck from the medical register for sex with a patient. Credit:AFP

He accused the woman of forcing herself on him - but has since admitted the act was consensual.

The patient was cleared of blackmail charges after a trial in the District Court in 2015, but Lal's professional conduct during the incident remained under scrutiny with the SAT.
US President Donald Trump says his conversation with Malcolm Turnbull was "very civil", after news of an adversarial phone call between the allies hit headlines around the world.

On Thursday, the Washington Post broke news of the tense call, with White House sources saying Mr Trump labelled a refugee deal between the US and Australia "the worst deal ever".

He also complained the call was "the worst by far" of any world leader that day, before abruptly ending the conversation 25 minutes into the scheduled hour, sources said.

This account was confirmed to Fairfax Media by an Australian cabinet minister, who described the report as being "broadly accurate".
Los Angeles: An Iranian man turned away from Los Angeles International Airport under President Donald Trump's executive order barring people from seven Muslim-majority nations has arrived back in the US under a federal judge's order.

Ali Vayeghan arrived at the Los Angeles airport Thursday, where he was greeted by family members. They handed him a bouquet of California-grown flowers.

Vayeghan declined to comment on Trump or the order when speaking with reporters at Los Angeles International Airport but said through an interpreter, "This is what human rights look like."

Other well-wishers sang, "This Land is Your Land."
Rex Tillerson, who ran Exxon Mobil for a decade before signing on as Donald Trump's Secretary of State, is reportedly "baffled" that the White House didn't consult with him on its controversial executive order restricting travel and immigration from seven mostly Muslim countries.

James Mattis, who retired as a four-star Marine Corps general and supervisor of the US Central Command before becoming Trump's Secretary of Defence, is said by the Associated Press to be "particularly incensed" about exactly the same thing.

President Donald Trump with his main advisers Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner. Credit:AP

Both men - seasoned, thoughtful managers with bucketloads of experience and insight - probably thought that Trump recruited them to his cabinet to be trusted advisers. They may be in for more surprises, however, because there's a good chance that Trump sees them merely as hood ornaments atop the little engine of state he's building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

For most of Trump's career he has trusted only a small group of longtime loyalists at the Trump Organisation, and even then he has often tightened the circle further to family members.
Washington: Tensions between the US and Iran escalated on Friday as the Trump administration announced new sanctions and told Tehran it was "playing with fire," prompting Iran to respond that it won't be bullied.

The deterioration in relations came as the US sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 entities days after the White House had put Iran "on notice" over a ballistic missile test on Sunday.

In a statement on its website, the US Treasury listed the sanctioned individuals and entities, some of which are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.

The announcement comes after Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that Tehran would only ever use its military might in self-defence.
Study Reveals: Car Brands Which Best Retain Value in the US

0.png Car Value Depreciation Ranking Study illustrates depreciation of car values globally, and by brand in the US. A Ford tops the ranking in the US for retaining value longer, closely followed by Toyota among 13 top selling brands. A Of the top 13 brands researched, Chevrolet retains the least value. A US came in third to last in cars keeping value after 34700 Miles. London, United Kingdom, 01/02/2017 - Online used car dealership Carspring (https://www.carspring.co.uk/) conducted a study (https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/) to better understand the depreciation of car brands in the US. As part of a campaign released January 25th 2017, Carspring has conducted additional research to illustrate the actual devaluation percentage in each country as well as a depreciation ranking by brand in the US. The goal of the update is to give the public a view as to how cars lose value in the US versus other countries, as well as comparing how the top selling twelve brands in the US depreciate in value compared with one another. As conveyed in the table below, among the top 13 selling brands in the US; Ford retain the most value, 41.85% after 56000 Km or 34700 Miles. At the other end of the spectrum, Chevrolet calculates with a devaluation rate of 56.71% for the same usage. Us-ascending.png A As illustrated in the table below, cars in the US are third to last in keeping value after 56,000km or 34,700 miles, behind New Zealand and the UK. Worldwide-BL.png Methodology: For the devaluation percentage per country Carspring looked at the top selling car brands in the world and compared cars with an average use of 56000 Km or 34700 Miles (14000 KM per year) versus the cost of the same model the year it was first out in the market. For the UK brand devaluation analysis we researched cars with an average use of 56000 Km or 34700 Miles (14000 KM per year) A We looked at all models each of the brands rated in the UK for the past 5 years. Data sourced from hundreds of online outlets, as well as brick and mortar retailers across all of the 5 biggest cities of each market. All data and currency exchange rate correct on 27th January 2017. VAT included in final costs. For models, brands and other factors visit the results landing page here. (https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/) This data is a follow up of the 2017 Used Car Price Index by Car Spring released in January 25th Press Release Below Global Used Car Price Index 2017 Study by Carspring reveals the sharp difference in the value of used automobiles around the world. A The US is the the most affordable country to buy used cars worldwide A Singapore is the most expensive country to buy every model A Car depreciation varies significantly depending on the market London, United Kingdom, 25/01/2017 - Online used car dealership Carspring (https://www.carspring.co.uk/) conducted a study to better understand the depreciation of second-hand cars around the globe. While comparing the value of used cars between nations is known within the industry to be a challenge, Carspring have made it their mission to understand the global market and to offer transparency on the subject for the public. The Global Used Car Price Index 2017 (https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/dollar/) offers an insightful overview of the value of various brands across different economic regions and car markets. The 40 countries researched include the majority of the largest car producing nations, plus other countries of automotive interest, whilst brands were selected based on global popularity. Where no direct model comparison was available between nations, they identified comparable global models per brand and selected models with similar mileage and engines. With these conditions defined, they researched all used cars currently available in the market for each model, plus those sold in the past 12 months from hundreds of online outlets and brick and mortar retailers in 5 of the biggest cities in each market. For the full methodology and results of the study with the interactive table of findings, please go here. (https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/dollar/) aThe fluctuating value of used cars around the world has always mystified buyers and experts alike,a??? states Carspring's Co-founder Maximilian Vollenbroich, aBut we took it upon ourselves to make the complicated simple and present a snapshot of the current global value of used cars.a??? The results for *|Country|* are as follows: *|Country|* ranked *|#|* overall Car Type Price Ranking Car Type Price Ranking GM *|GM - (Chevrolet / Opel / Vauxhaull)|* *|2 GM - (Chevrolet / Opel / Vauxhaull)|* Fiat *|Fiat |* *|2 Fiat |* Renault *|Reno|* *|2 Reno|* Land Rover *|Land Rover|* *|2 Land Rover|* Hyundai *| Hyundai |* *| 2 Hyundai |* Mercedes *|Mercedes|* *|2 Mercedes|* Ford *|Ford |* *|2 Ford |* Pickup *|Pick-up (Nissan) - (toyota)|* *|2 Pick-up (Nissan) - (toyota)|* VW *|VW |* *|2 VW |* Hybrid *|Toyota (Prius)|* *|2 Toyota (Prius)|* NB: As Renault is not available in the US and Canada, the Renault column is ranked out of 38. The overall findings of the 2017 Used Car Price Index (https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/dollar/) are as follows: Top 5 Most Affordable Top 5 Most Expensive Country Ranking Country Ranking USA 1 Singapore 40 UK 2 Denmark 39 Russia 3 Norway 38 Czech Rep. 4 Finland 37 South Africa 5 Turkey 36 > Full list of results (https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/dollar/) < Further findings include: A Singapore is the most expensive country to buy a used car for every model due to the countryas extremely high taxes on automobiles. A India is the most affordable country to buy a used General Motors Chevrolet / Opel / Vauxhall at an average price of $4,757. A Denmark is the second most expensive country to buy a used General Motors Chevrolet / Opel / Vauxhall at an average price of $15,435. A Bulgaria is the most affordable country to buy a used Renault vehicle at an average price of $8,251. A Denmark is the second most expensive country to buy a used Renault vehicle at an average price of $19,806. A Czech Republic is the most affordable country to buy a used Hyundai vehicle at $8,812.. A A Denmark is the second most expensive country to buy a used Hyundai vehicle at an average price of $19,631. A Canada is the most affordable country to buy a used Ford vehicle at an average price of $6,753. A A Norway is the second most expensive country to buy a used Ford vehicle at an average price of $17,795. A Croatia and Slovakia are the most affordable countries to buy a used VW vehicle, tied at an average price of $10,212. A Denmark is the second most expensive country to buy a used VW vehicle at an average price of $22,627. A USA is the most affordable country to buy a used Fiat at an average price of $6,106. A India is the second most expensive country to buy a used Fiat in at an average price of $19,755. A Bulgaria is the most affordable country to buy a used Land Rover at an average price of $29,147. A India is the second most expensive country to buy a used Land Rover at an average price of $58,576. A Mexico is the most affordable country to buy a Mercedes at an average price of $16,844. A Denmark is the second most expensive country to buy a Mercedes at an average price of $42,438. A India is the most affordable country to buy a Pickup at an average price of $5,272. A Hungary is the second most expensive country to buy a Pickup at an average price of $34,434. A Latvia is the most affordable country to buy a Hybrid vehicle at an average price of $14,528. A Denmark is the second most expensive country to buy a Hybrid vehicle at an average price of $43,174. . ### Contact Ricky@abcd.agency for more information Quote 2: aAt 2nd overall, the UK currently has a comparatively favourable position in the study.a??? States Carspring's Co-founder Maximilian Vollenbroich, "but with a hard Brexit on the horizon, the future of the UK Automobile market remains unclear.a??? Publishers are allowed to publish this data and graphics; we kindly ask that you give credit and link to the source: https://www.carspring.co.uk/global-used-car-price-index/dollar/. About Carspring: Carspring is an online used car dealership, launched in May 2015, on a mission to make buying a used car simple and stress-free. With Carspring, you log online, find your car and spread the cost with a monthly payment plan. The company then delivers an RAC-approved used car directly to your door, wherever you live in the UK. Itas buying used cars, without bad surprises. ______________________ If you would rather not receive future communications from ABCD Agency UG, please go to https://eu.vocuspr.com/OptOut.aspx?3364417x533287x71657x1x5409552x24000x6&Email=submit%40theautochannel.com. ABCD Agency UG, CharlottenstraAYe 2, Berlin 10969, x x Germany
All-New Ford F-150 Raptor Now On Its Way to Customers in China +VIDEO

DEARBORN, MI - February 3, 2017: Ford has started shipping its all-new 2017 F-150 Raptor  the ultimate high-performance off-road pickup truck  to eager customers in China, marking the first time any U.S.-built F-Series truck has been officially exported to China.

F-150 Raptor is a class of one among off-road performance vehicles, with purpose-built engine, chassis and suspension  all of which enable it to travel fast over challenging desert landscapes or crawl along rocky terrain, from Baja to the Gobi Desert.

Ford is one of Americas top exporters, and F-150 Raptors appeal and unmatched off-road performance has earned the truck a loyal following around the globe, said Joe Hinrichs, Ford president, The Americas. Export to China enables us to bring a new group of enthusiasts into the Ford family.

Exported as a four-door SuperCrew model, the second-generation F-150 Raptor leverages the latest advanced technologies, including a military-grade, high-strength, aluminum-alloy cab, while its muscular body is uniquely composite. The all-new Raptor features an exclusive high-output version of the 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine, plus a Ford-built 10-speed automatic transmission and advanced six-mode Terrain Management System.

Other one-of-a-kind F-150 Raptor features include a Ford Performance-engineered high-strength steel frame with custom Fox Racing shocks with higher ground clearance, BFGoodrich off-road tires and full dual-performance exhaust system.

Raptors unique looks and capability have generated amazing buzz at every auto show weve brought it to around China, said David Schoch, Ford group vice president and president, Ford Asia Pacific. F-150 Raptor is another example of our commitment to offer a wide range of vehicles for customers in China  everything from SUVs to high-performance cars and trucks.

F-150 Raptor is one of more than 12 new Ford Performance vehicles coming by 2020. It joins Ford GT, Focus RS, Shelby GT350 and Shelby GT350R in a growing Ford Performance lineup.

The all-new Ford F-150 Raptor is built at Dearborn Truck Plant in North America.




SPRINGFIELD - Americans for Prosperity-Illinois has joined an uphill battle to stop a 33 percent income tax hike and more debt the Illinois Senate will be considering next week when lawmakers return to the state Capitol.

Illinois Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) has reportedly worked out an agreement with Minority Leader Chris Radognothat will increase the state's debt by $7 billion while sending the state's income tax rate back up to 4.99 percent.

And that's not all...
Auto Lab Radio Talk - LIVE From NYC Saturday February 4, 2017 7AM- 9AM







Auto Lab Talk Radio

The Auto Lab Radio Show is Broadcast every Saturday 7 to 9 AM On New York City's WNYM Radio AM 970 and Streamed Worldwide On The Auto Channel

This Weeks Show Broadcast Date: February 4, 2017

Car Question or Concern? Call Toll Free 888-692-7234

Auto Lab is a 28 year old interactive automotive-focused New York area radio call-in show hosted by Professor Harold Wolchok. Each week a cadre of experienced hands-on automotive experts are in-studio with advice for the New York area's 12 million people, providing listeners with honest, practical and street-smart car repair and buying advice.

Auto Lab is also about the automotive industry, its history, and its culture, presenting the ideas and advice of leading college faculty, authors, and automotive practitioners in a relaxed, conversational interactive format.

Listeners can hear the past 18 years of archived Auto Lab shows as simulcast on www.theautochannel.com.

Listen - Auto Lab Page (Includes Audio-on-Demand Archives, Auto Programs at Community College Database, Guests Pictures

This Weeks Show: February 4, 2017

Auto Lab In-Studio Experts Discuss: Repairs, Second Opinion, Regular Maintenance, How To's, Safety, Used and New Car Buying, Ombudsmen Suggestions

Harold Bendell- Major Auto

Fred Bordoff-Bronx Community College-Automotive Technology Department, CUNY

Tim Cacace-Master Mechanix

David Goldsmith - Urban Classics Auto Repairs

Jerry Pastore-D & J Diagnostic

Johanna Pastore-D & J Diagnostic

Joanne Porcelli, Esq

Michael Porcelli - Central Avenue Auto Repairs & I-CAR

Nicholas Prague- MTA and Rockland Community College, SUNY

Auto Lab Correspondents Report Auto Safety News, New Car Reviews, Technology and Latest Auto World Information That May effect You!

Broadcast Date: February 4, 2017

Robert Erskine, Senior European Correspondent, Suffolk England

OOH WHAT A LOVELY FACE!

Russ Rader, Vice President Insurance Institute for Highway Safety

NISSAN TITAN FAILS TO HOLD UP IN SMALL OVERLAP TEST

Sharon Sudol & John Russell Senior Correspondents

2017 CHEVY VOLT
NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 3, 2017 -- This October, The National WWII Museum will embark on an inspiring seven-day, six-night tour of France, based on Alex Kershaw's New York Times best sellers  "Avenue of Spies" and "The Bedford Boys"  with the author himself serving as featured historian. Guests will get an up-close view of the beaches of Normandy, while hearing stories of sacrifice about the Bedford Boys who came ashore with Company A, 116th Regiment, 29th Infantry Division during the first wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day.





Paris

This breathtaking tour will then take participants through the sprawling avenues ofwith Kershaw, who will provide depth and context to the espionage that occurred there more than 70 years ago.

"Avenue Foch, one of the most upscale and exclusive streets in Paris, was home to 'Avenue of Spies' protagonist Dr. Sumner Jackson and his family," says Kershaw. "Their address at Number 11 was both a meeting place for the French Resistance and a drop site for crucial information. High-ranking Nazis took up residence nearby putting the Jackson's in constant danger. These are the types of stories the tour group will hear in order to bring to life the courage and bravery that inevitably helped America win World War II."

Prior to touring in the "City of Lights," participants will also visit historic sites throughout Normandy, including Omaha Beach, where the landing craft transporting the Bedford Boys came ashore, as well as Utah Beach, St. Lo and Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where paratroopers landed during the pre-dawn hours of D-Day. Touring in Normandy will culminate at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, where guests can pay respects to the fallen Bedford Boys, nine of which are among the 9,387 Americans buried in the soil they helped to liberate.

Soldiers and Spies will take place from October 12 through 18. Pricing for the tour is $5,995 per person based on double occupancy, which reflects an $800 per couple early booking savings discount when reserved by March 31, 2017. The program features luxurious accommodations at Hotel Villa Lara, the only four-star boutique hotel property in the Normandy region, and at the Westin Paris  Vendome. Most meals, beverages and all gratuities are also included. For a detailed itinerary and registration information, visit http://www.ww2museumtours.org or call 877-813-3329 Ext 257.

The National WWII Museum tells the story of the American experience in the war that changed the world  why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today  so that future generations will know the price of freedom and be inspired by what they learn. Dedicated in 2000 as The National D-Day Museum and now designated by Congress as America's National WWII Museum, it celebrates the American Spirit, the teamwork, optimism, courage and sacrifices of the men and women who fought on the battlefront and served on the Home Front. For more information, call 877-813-3329 or 504-528-1944 or visit nationalww2museum.org.
Lexus 2016 Year In Review - Worldwide







Toyota City Japan February 2, 2017

Sales

Lexus International today announced it sold 677,615 vehicles during the 2016 calendar year. This robust sales performance represents a 4% increase over calendar year 2015 (652,451 units). The 2016CY sales performance is also the 4th consecutive record year of sales for the globally emerging Lexus brand.

"We are pleased with our global sales in a very challenging luxury market where customers have more choices than ever. Such sales help validate the customer focus of our brand, the products, and the design direction of Lexus globally. As we continue to expand, our hope is to maintain this steady and sustainable growth, balancing the growth and sales between our established markets and emerging regions." said Lexus International President Tokuo Fukuichi.

Established Lexus operations in Japan, Europe, China, East Asia and Oceania all posted new annual sales records. Within Europe, the best ever sales performance (74,316 units) for the region was propelled by growth in 10 countries that enjoyed their strongest sales efforts to date. Japan's 5th consecutive year of best-ever sales (52,149) units also helped propel the Lexus brand into the number two position in the luxury market. Lexus sales in China eclipsed the 100k threshold for the first time in the brand's history in that market with 109,151 total sales.

Calendar year 2017 will see the Lexus brand bring the flagship LC coupe to market in addition to a reborn LS sedan. These two premium models signal the brand direction for Lexus with their passionate styling, performance and visionary technologies. In addition, the UX Concept revealed at the Paris Auto Show in September of 2016 embodies some the latest Lexus thinking in a small-crossover vehicle category.

Lexus International Executive Vice President Yoshihiro Sawa added, "2017 will see us push develop our Lexus brand as the all-new LC coupe and LS sedans arrive to market. The styling language, performance, identity and emotion communicated by these two important models will help better communicate our evolving luxury life style brand image to global consumers."

Brand Initiatives

Lexus will continue its decade-plus long partnership with the world's largest design event, the Salone del Mobile di Milano (Milan Design Week). The Lexus Design Award is an annual collaboration with world-renowned designers that encourages up and coming designers to create unique installations that express true luxury in unique interpretations of design.

In summer of 2017, Lexus will have a role in the Luc Besson directed science fiction epic Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets. The film's hero, Valerian played by Dane Dehaan, pilots a Lexus Skyjet which is a visionary interpretation of future transportation and was the result of collaboration between Lexus Design and the film's creatives.

The Intersect By Lexus luxury culture and cuisine brand experience space and design gallery in Tokyo celebrated its third anniversary last summer. A second Intersect By Lexus gallery is now open in Dubai UAE for guests to enjoy Lexus experiences outside of their cars, and a third Intersect By Lexus gallery is scheduled to open in New York.

Lexus entered international motorsports in 2016, with active programs racing the RC F coupe in Japan's Super GT GT500 series and in the German VLN endurance racing series at the famous Nurburgring circuit. In North America, Lexus USA will be debuting two RC F GT3 coupes at the Rolex 24-hours of Daytona endurance race. These vehicles will compete as the 3GT team on the IMSA GTD series of pro sportscar racing.

Product News

The year 2017 will see the LC500/LC500h arrive in showrooms offering a new coupe flagship to customers who want superior dynamics and breakthrough styling in one seductive vehicle. Lexus' Multi-stage Hybrid technology also first appears in the LC coupe. This innovative system uses mechanical multi-speed transmission and software to help maximize the driving experience of the highly reliable power split device used to balance engine and electric motor output on hybrids. For the driver, the 10 discrete speeds the new hybrid system creates helps deliver the sensation, acceleration and reflexes akin to the mechanical 10-speed automatic equipped on the gasoline version.

In 2017, at the North American Auto Show, the all-new LS 500 debuted the brand's 3.5-liter V6 twin-turbo. Boasting 415 horsepower, this new engine breaks ground in terms of efficiency and per-liter output in the class. The all-new LS goes on sale during the 2017.

Lexus revealed the pre-production version of the coming LS 500 flagship sedan to great acclaim: at the North American International Auto show the LS earned an "Eyes on Design" interior awards for Best Interior Design. This award comes on the heels of the two awards won by the LC coupe the prior year which shares architecture and design language with the all-new LS.

The Most In-Depth Lexus Vehicle Shopper's Research - Anywhere!
if the people of Biafra want Republic of Biafra, it will be a reality during my administration. ----Donald Trump Donald Trump I wi...
LEBANON - State Senator Kyle McCarter is taking his message against the bi-partisan agreement to raise the state income tax rate 33% directly to the people of Illinois, via Facebook.

This week every morning he's produced a short video from his small manufacturing business that points out another negative aspect of the budget Senate President John Cullerton has said will be voted on February 7.

The views of McCarter's Facebook videos has reached the tens of thousands - and one of the latest focuses on the effect the measure will have on the already overburdened small manufacturers spread throughout the state:

The other videos can be viewed on his Facebook page HERE.
Honoring the helpers Awards recognize those who support autism community

Thirteen community members and providers were recognized for their resilience, passion and heart at the 2022 Awesome in Autism Awards ceremony. The 14th annual event, hosted by Autism Society Ventura County, was held Oct. 20 at Wood Ranch Golf Club...

Go purple to support those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer November is the busiest month of the year for cancer awareness campaigns. Im going to focus on one of thempancreatic cancer because its a type weve seen a noticeable rise in over the last few years. And because it remains...

Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of unused or expired medications. Crush the Crisis will take place...

Alzheimers Foundation to host free conference The Alzheimers Foundation of America will host a free virtual educational conference from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tues., Nov. 15. The event is part of the foundations 2022 national Educating America Tour. The conference, which is free and open...
January 27-February 2, 2017

Classic jewels were the rule this week! Dont forget to vote for your favorites in the poll below

Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images





10. Queen Letizia of Spain wore her gold hoop earrings, which feature interior embellishments, to receive the Board of Directors of the Islamic Comission of Spain at Zarzuela Palace in Madrid on Thursday.

VALERY HACHE/AFP/Getty Images

9. In Monaco, Princess Charlene chose classic diamond stud earrings for Fridays balcony appearance at the Palais Princier during the Sainte-Devote festivities.

ERIC LALMAND/AFP/Getty Images

8. Elegant diamond and pearl earrings were the accessory of choice for Queen Mathilde of the Belgians at the ATD Fourth World-Belgium Association in Brussels on Thursday.

Chris Jackson  WPA Rota/Getty Images

7. The Battersea Dogs and Cats Home welcomed their new patron, the Duchess of Cornwall, for a visit on Wednesday. Camilla wore some of her favorite pieces of jewelry, including diamond and pearl earrings and her engagement and wedding rings, plus a pin featuring the organizations logo.

ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP/Getty Images

6. Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands wore bright red and gold earrings for a major equestrian event in Amsterdam on Saturday.

OLAF KRAAK/AFP/Getty Images

5. Beatrixs daughter-in-law, Queen Maxima, selected glittering diamond hoop earrings on Wednesday for a visit to the IMC Weekendschool on Tour in Haarlem.

PIROSCHKA VAN DE WOUW/AFP/Getty Images

4. Princess Margarita of Bourbon-Parma (the daughter of Princess Irene of the Netherlands) wore earrings from her own collection at a launch for her latest jewelry designs in Waalre on Monday.

CLAUDIO BRESCIANI/AFP/Getty Images

3. In Sweden, Queen Silvia wore a golden brooch with pearl jewelry (earrings, necklace, and bracelet) to welcome German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Stockholm on Tuesday.

Arthur Edwards  WPA Pool/Getty Images

2. On Monday, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom wore the Queen Mothers Palm Leaf Brooch for a visit to the Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia.

Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images

1. Without a doubt, no royal lady glittered more this week than the Duchess of Cornwall, who wore her elaborate diamond drop earrings with her modern emerald necklace (possibly a Saudi gift) for a British Asian Trust reception in London on Thursday.
Activists in the quickly mobilized effort to oppose Uber were celebrating Thursday evening after their message finally broke through.

Less than a week after a massively successful social media campaign using the hashtag #DeleteUber implored users to ditch the ride-sharing app, the companys CEO, Travis Kalanick, announced he would step down from President Trumps economic advisory council.

The campaign sprang up Saturday night, after Uber turned off surge pricing to and from JFK International Airport, where thousands were protesting Trumps executive order temporarily banning entry for people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Dan OSullivan, a Chicago-based writer, was the first to tweet the hashtag in response to Ubers move, and at one point Saturday night, #DeleteUber was the No. 1 trending topic in the country as social media users screenshotted images of themselves deleting their accounts.

In a message to The Daily Beast on Thursday, OSullivan called Kalanicks decision a crushing victory but said it was only a first step in mitigating Ubers other problems.

This is a crushing victory for a company that only a week ago, saw its CEO, Travis Kalanick, smugly assuring the world that his role advising Trump was in everyones best interest, OSullivan wrote in a direct Twitter message to The Daily Beast. Evidently, something has changed in the past week. The difference was consumers, laborers, and activists coming together to, in some small way, make sure that any corporation collaborating with Trump to enhance their own business interestsoff the backs of vulnerable refugees, Muslims, and migrantswill pay a price.

#DeleteUber was just one of many elements of recent protests, both online and in person, of Trumps agenda. Just Thursday, a number of Yemeni-American bodega owners shut down their stores to protest the implementation of Trumps executive order.

And this mass mobilization of peoplefrom the enormous Womens March just one day after Trumps inauguration to thousands rushing to stand in solidarity with individuals trapped at airportsappears to be having an early impact in the nascent administration.

I think the #DeleteUber was an admittedly modest attempt to assist these protests, and put a price tag on any corporations collaboration with Trump, OSullivan told The Daily Beast. Harley Davidson already canceled a planned appearance by Trump in Milwaukee because they were concerned about protest. If the goal here is to frustrate Trumps agenda, isolating him and making it costly to the bottom line of any corporation mulling a relationship with him seems like a pretty good tactic to me.

In a memo to Uber employees obtained by The New York Times, Kalanick said he had spoken with Trump on Thursday and told him he would leave the council.

Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community, Kalanick wrote. I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that.

Prior to the announcement, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance had planned a protest at Ubers New York headquarters, saying on its website: As massive protests continue calling for an end to this inhumane and bigoted executive order and as the movement grows stronger and broader, Trump customs and border control continue to violate the Federal injunction.

Meanwhile, Ubers CEO is picking out which suit to wear to his first meeting on Trumps advisory council, the alliance said. This is after setting up a phony fund while his army of lawyers fight wage theft and minimum wage cases brought forth by workers across the country.

A representative for the alliance did not respond immediately to a request for comment from The Daily Beast. But a tweet from the alliances account said Kalanicks move is not the end of the fight.

The alliance had announced last Saturday that it would strike for a limited period of time during the protests in solidarity with the immigrants affected at JFK.

Jim Conigliaro Jr., the founder of the Independent Drivers Guild, which represents and advocates for nearly 50,000 Uber drivers serving New York City, released a statement praising Kalanicks choice to leave.

This is an important show of solidarity with the immigrant drivers who helped build Uber and number over 40,000 in New York City alone, he said in the statement, which was provided to The Daily Beast. We are heartened that Uber has listened to the drivers and the community on this important issue that is so integral to the promise of the American dream.

For OSullivan, Ubers problems stretch beyond its initial compliance with the Trump administration. He said that despite Kalanicks letter, its not yet time for users to redownload or start reusing the app.

This is bigger than Travis Kalanick advising Trump as a crony, and thus advance Ubers business interests, OSullivan told The Daily Beast. Uber operated blithely during the NYTWA work stoppage at JFK, because it would never occur to a company like Uber to put people and principles before making a buck. I personally dont see why anyone would want to use such a service.

As for their treatment of their own drivers, the independent contractor scam, and their usurious means of keeping drivers poor and in hock to the company, [those] need to be changed, now, he added.

But for now, Kalanicks departure from Trumps council is an encouraging start.
In March 1969, a memo warned President Nixon to expect increased violence on college campuses that spring. Good! Nixon wrote across it.

The president knew something about civilization that social science research later confirmed: Violent demonstrations, riots, and property destruction did not threaten his government. On the contrary, these spectacles made average citizens more sympathetic to the kind of law-and-order policies Nixon wished to enact.

Its a shame that todays anti-fascist and anarchist black bloc rioters on college campuses have not absorbed this lesson.

On Wednesday night, 150 masked protesters attacked a planned Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley. Yiannopoulos, an editor at the explicitly pro-Donald Trump news outlet Breitbart, holds views anathema to the black bloc and is one of the most recognizable unofficial surrogates of Trump-ism.

While students at Berkeley and other campuses have previously engaged in censorship, the group that struck campus the other night mostly consisted of non-students, according to reports. The masks, of course, make it hard to tell.

The protesters launched Roman candle fireworks at the building where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak. They smashed windows and tore down a police barricade. Using gasoline, they managed to start a large fire in the middle of the street that at one point threatened to engulf a nearby tree. At least one person who had come to see Yiannopoulos was beaten bloody during the skirmish. The university administration had no choice but to cancel the event, as Yiannopoulos was evacuated from campus.

In 1964, Berkeley students birthed the free speech movement in order to liberate the campus from prohibitions on political speech. In 2017, Berkeley burned as misguided protesters censored the speech of someone whose political views they disliked.

Yiannopoulos deserves plenty of criticism. His views need no introduction: He routinely insults women and minorities, likens feminism to cancer, mocks transgender people, and makes vile comments about people who criticize him. His headlines at Breitbart are so offensive that presidential candidate Hillary Clinton actually read them off during a televised speech about the extremism of Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who headed Breitbart before joining the campaign.

When conservative student groups invite Yiannopoulos to speak, they arent necessarily endorsing his deeply offensive message, or Bannons, or Trumps. They are necessarily engaging in a performative free speech demonstration. Conservative students are frequently censored by public university administrations for even mundane kinds of expression (i.e., handing out copies of the Constitution), and bringing Yiannopoulos to campus is a form of revenge.

Those groups deserve criticism, too. It cant be too hard to find a conservative speaker who would gleefully trigger delicate campus liberals while also adding something of substance to the debate. Yiannopoulos isnt even a particularly strong vehicle for the anti-censorship message, given that his own supporters lash out at their critics with just as much illiberal fervor, and occasionally, with violence.

All that said, it remains a fact that Berkeley is a public university, and students should have the right to bring someone to campus who has the sole intention of hurling insults at people. Public universities should serve as bastions of unfettered free expressionboth because the First Amendment requires it and because free speech is the condition under which enlightened thought flourishes. As left-leaning intellectual Noam Chomsky famously put it, If we dont believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we dont believe in it at all.

The principled argument for free speech obviously isnt persuasive for the masked resistance that considers Trump and his surrogates an existential threat to civil society that must be opposed by any means necessary.

They should consider this: The means they deployed at Berkeley will help Trump-ism in the long run. Fascism is not undermined by tactics that are themselves inherently fascist.

If the Nixon anecdote doesnt persuade them, violent protesters should read Omar Waslow, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University. Waslows study found that violent protest movement in the 1960s and 1970s provoked a backlash among conservative voters (PDF). Violent tactics drove voters into the arms of the more right-wing, law-and-order candidate, according to Waslow. Nonviolent protests, however, did not correlate with any statistically observable backlash.

Other studies have reached similar conclusions about the likelihood of violent protests to fail, or even backfire, relative to nonviolent protests (PDF). And of course, when protesters prevented Trump himself from speaking at an event during the campaign, a poll of likely Republican voters found that they were more likely to vote for Trump because of the behavior of the censors.

The vast majority of Americans have never heard of Yiannopoulos, and would find his views abhorrent. By effectively shutting down his speech, protesters up his profile, even as they put him in an undeservedly sympathetic light and they they turn their own violent and destructive behavior into the story. It makes them look bad, and adds to Yiannopouloss image as a victim of liberal intolerance. Indeed, after Wednesday nights incident, Yiannopoulos wrote on Facebook that his book, Dangerous, was back on Amazons top 30 bestsellers list.

Theyre just making him more famous, Kevin Quigley, a UC Berkeley sophomore who attempted to attend Yiannopouloss speech, told me in an interview. I feel like the best way to figure out our differences is through discussion, not just breaking stuff.

Some may say that desperate timesthe election of Trumpcall for desperate measures, even though those measures have often failed in the past. I would ask them to take a mental picture of Nixon gleefully learning about the increased violence on college campuses, and then replace Nixon with Trump, who has just learned from Bannon that anti-Yiannopoulos protesters resorted to violence to shut him down.

Would Bannon and Trump be saddened to learn this news? Or would they see it as an opportunity?

Oh, by the way, heres what Trump tweeted at 6:13 a.m. Thursday morning:

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

Quite the mystery, huh?
The Trump White House has chosen as the CIAs deputy director a veteran clandestine spy, Gina Haspelan insider respected across the agency for her time in the field, but controversial for her role in the Bush-era harsh interrogation program.

Undercover her whole career, Haspel served as chief of staff to then-CIA counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez when al Qaeda suspects were subjected to waterboarding and other techniques like sleep deprivation at so-called black sites from Europe to Asia. She reportedly ran one of those sites, before working at the counterterrorism center where Rodriguez decided to destroy more than 90 videotapes chronicling some of the interrogations.

Her proximity to the program stymied Haspels chance to lead the clandestine service under the Obama administration. Her selection now is a clear signal that the Trump administration is closing the books on the controversyor at least is prepared to ignore any Democratic and human-rights critics of the appointment.

President Donald Trump has said he wont return to enhanced interrogation methods, deferring to his Defense Secretary James Mattiss rejection of so-called EITs as torture. Congress passed legislation making the U.S. Army Field Manual the only legal procedure for interrogation. But Haspels appointment will signal that CIA officers need no longer be haunted by having followed what they thought were lawful orders at the time.

There will be people who will be upset. While she wasnt in the operations chain, she was working there when the tapes were destroyed, said one former senior intelligence officer, speaking anonymously in order to discuss the once-classified program.

'Her background makes her unsuitable for the position, wrote Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), in a letter to the president Thursday. Wyden and Heinrich were among those on the Senate Intelligence Committee who helped produce a 6,000-plus page classified report on the program, denouncing it as ineffective and calling the techniques torture.

The ACLU called Haspel a person who has been the subject of credible reports of having run a secret CIA torture prison and then lobbied to destroy evidence of the crimes committed there, said its Washington deputy director, Christopher Anders, in an email. [New CIA Director Mike] Pompeo must explain to the American people how his promotion of someone allegedly involved in running a torture site squares with his own sworn promises to Congressmade just two weeks agothat he will reject all forms of torture and abuse.

The CIA disagrees with the Senate reports conclusions and insists Haspel had no role in destroying evidence from the program, but will not comment further on her time undercover.

The destruction of videotapes was thoroughly investigated by the FBI and Justice Department, which decided not to pursue charges in 2010, said CIA spokesman Heather Fritz Horniak on Thursday. Since that time, former CIA officer Jose Rodriguez has been quite clear in public that the decision to destroy the videotapes was his and his alone.

She drafted a cable instructing a field station to destroy videotapes of CIA interrogations of senior al Qaeda operatives, but did so believing that it was lawful, wrote former acting CIA Director Michael Morell at The Cipher Brief. I personally led an accountability exercise that cleared Haspel of any wrongdoing in the case.

The choice of an experienced insider is welcome news to an agency bruised by Trumps derisive tweets about the intelligence community and his controversial speech in front of the memorial to the CIAs fallen.

Pompeo interviewed nearly 70 current and former CIA officers over the last several weeks to make his choice, according to a former senior intelligence officer familiar with the process, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential deliberations.

The two most important qualities in the profession are judgment and discretion, and she has them in abundance, said former acting director of the CIA John McLaughlin in an interview. The CIA announcement included a raft of statements of support, including one from Obama administration Director of National Intelligence Gen. James Clapper. She has the broad-gauged experience from both foreign and domestic assignments to serve as the right arm for Director Pompeo, Clapper said.

Haspel already has solid working relationships with partner intelligence agencies in the U.K. and Europe, key to the intelligence sharing needed to track the so-called Islamic State and al Qaeda, among other threats, and shes well-versed in the inner workings of the CIA drone program, another former senior intelligence official said, speaking anonymously to discuss CIA matters.

Haspel joined the CIA in 1985, serving extensively overseas, often as chief of station in many of her assignments, according to a statement Thursday from the agency. Her multiple posts in Washington, D.C., include deputy director and chief of staff of the National Clandestine Service, deputy director of the National Clandestine Service for Foreign Intelligence and Covert Action, and a stint at the CIAs Counterterrorist Center.

Her counterterrorism experience is a nod to the ranks of officers whove served in war zones battling al Qaeda and ISIS, among others, since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. And most important for the women serving at the agency, her appointment is a nod to efforts to promote more women to senior posts. The first woman to hold the deputy post was Avril Haines, under the Obama administration, but Haspel will be the first career woman officer to rise this high.

Thereve been a lot of questions over the years about the glass-ceiling aspect. She is the breakthrough, said another senior intelligence officer who has worked with Haspel, describing her as a female Bob Gates, who went on from CIA service to run the agency, and later run the Pentagon. Its only a matter of time before a woman runs the CIA, the official said.

Known as practical and down to earth, and an avid reader of mystery novels, shes fought fiercely on behalf of those who work for her, including those who faced investigation under the Obama administration for taking part in the interrogation programand the loved ones of those lost.

Whenever we lost an officer or had an officer in distress, this is a woman who said, We have to take care of them, said Robert Richer, former associate deputy director of operations for the CIAs counterterrorism center. She speaks truth to powerand stands up for those she works with.
Early Wednesday morning, President Trump threatened to withdraw federal funding from UC Berkeley after the university cancelled a speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos amid violent protests on campus.

Trump reaffirmed his contempt for nuance in a tweet blaming Berkeley for the actions of a group of masked anti-fascist protesters on Tuesday night, who hurled fireworks and bricks at the building where Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak hours later. Some used police barricades to smash the buildings windows and set fire to gasoline-powered light outside the venue, prompting security forces to deploy tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd.

Thousands turned out for the demonstration, which was reportedly peaceful until riots broke out around 5 p.m. Most of the vandals were reportedly not students, but affiliates of the antifa movement who justified using violence to combat Yiannopouloss hateful rhetoric.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks had refused demands to cancel Yiannopouloss appearance last week, explaining in a letter to the university community that the constitution prohibits Berkeley, a public institution, from banning expression based on its content or viewpoints, even when those viewpoints are hateful and discriminatory.

Dirks called Yiannopoulos a troll who has been widely and rightly condemned for engaging in hate speech directed at a wide range of groups and individuals. The chancellor denounced Yiannopouloss tendency to target individuals in his audiences (he mocked a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee last month), but said his words and deeds do not justify prior restraint on his freedom of expression and insisted that the university cannot lawfully censor or prohibit events, or charge differential fees.

In threatening to withdraw federal funding from Berkeley on grounds that the university does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view, Trump willfully overlooked the fact that university officials did everything they could to prohibit censorship of Yiannopouloswho has called Trump his daddy--despite many faculty members and students vehement objections to his appearance on campus. That protesters overwhelmed security reinforcement does not discount the universitys efforts.

It is troubling to assign collective guilt in the way the presidents tweet seemed to do, suggesting that the university itself had somehow condoned the violence or facilitated it when they had done the opposite, said Will Creeley, vice president of legal and public advocacy at FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education). Creeley also noted that there is no legal provision for President Trump to deny a public or private institution federal funds on account of their treatment of speech.

Even if Trump tried to get Congress to pass such a law, Creeley said the events at Berkeley Wednesday night would be a weak impetus for that kind of legislative action.

Lee Rowland, Senior Staff Attorney specializing in free speech at ACLU, agreed: Even if there were some magical ability for the federal government or the president to punish a university for speechand there absolutely is not under current lawUC Berkeley did everything to make sure the event happened.

If the university violates first amendment they will certainly get their comeuppance in the form of a constitutional lawsuit, Rowland continued. But the federal government has not conditioned federal funding on the speech or viewpoints on schools that receive grantsand rightly so if we value academic freedom and freedom of expression.

Trumps attack on Berkeley came a day after his administration reportedly appointed Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, to spearhead new presidential task forces reforming the Department of Education. The task forces will focus on overregulation and micromanagement of higher education, a Liberty University spokesman told NBC News on Tuesday night.

Trumps misguided censure of Berkeley for its alleged intolerance of people with different viewpoints seemed particularly ironic in light of the news about Falwell Jr., who was one of the first prominent Christian Evangelicals to support Trump and reportedly pulled an anti-Trump article from Liberty Universitys student newspaper last October.

Earlier that month, a spokesman for the group Liberty United Against Trump told The Daily Beast that the presidential candidates critics at the university face intimidation, and that Falwell has really thin skin and doesnt like to be disagreed with.

Sound familiar?
Vladimir Kara-Murza took ill on the train back from Tver, where he had just exhibited a film commemorating the life of slain Russian dissident and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov. He joked that maybe Siberia hadnt agreed with him, according to a mutual friend. Evidently remote from his mind was that he was about to befall the same catastrophic shutdown of his body that nearly cost him his life two years ago.

Early yesterday morning, Kara-Murza was placed in an intensive-care unit in a Moscow hospital, then put on life-support and into a medically-induced coma. His organs have failed him. As of this writing, no one knows why. Eerily whats happening is exactly what happened to him before. The clinical picture, according to his doctors, is the same as last time, Kara-Murzas wife Evgenia told RFE/RL.

The last time was in late May 2015. Kara-Murza had just returned from a fairly uneventful lunch in Moscow with a fellow opposition activist from RPR-Parnas, the party to which he and Nemtsov belonged, when he began sweating profusely, growing dizzy and then vomiting before passing out completely. For about a week, and after a time-wasting misdiagnosis of a cardiac defect, his condition deteriorated gravely. His lungs, liver, kidney and heart stopped working and he developed swelling in the brain. Doctors assessed his chance of survival at 5 percent. He was only 33. Nemtsov had been shot in the back just steps from the Kremlin three months earlier in a crime whose true mastermind will never been identified.

Kara-Murzas caregivers in Moscow attributed his sickness to poisoning, but indicating that it was self-inflicted. The patient, they said, had overdosed on citalopram, a common SSRI anti-depressant he had indeed been taking for years, a claim eagerly lapped up by LifeNews, a media organ with ties to Russian intelligence, to dispel the immediate and natural suspicion of foul play. Perhaps hed mixed the drug with other contraindicated anti-allergy medication or alcohol, even though he hadnt been drinking the day he first experienced symptoms? For a time, there was a special emphasis placed on his use of Flonase, the over-the-counter nasal spray which, taken with SSRI drugs, rarely, if ever, kills you.

As such, credible medical experts cast doubt on this theory. Evgenia also noted that her husbands Russian doctors were quite opposed to performing a more comprehensive toxicology screen and taking new blood, hair, urine and nail samples to have them tested by external specialists. Kara-Murza has dual Russian-British citizenship, and yet the British embassy in Moscow was reliably the picture of stiff-upper-lipped uselessness about the possible murder attempt of one of their own on foreign soil. Unbelievably, he survived.

Kara-Murzas father, also called Vladimir, was rather straightforward in conversation with the BBC: He was perfectly healthy before, hed had no chronic illnesses. Its clear hes been poisoned. But by what or who, we dont know.

Though we could all guess. Putins enemies have had a bad habit over the years of ingesting things they shouldnt, from dioxin to polonium to killer flowers.

The younger Volodya, as we call him, is an international activist and a fixture in Washington, D.C. where he was formerly the bureau chief of RTVi, a Russian-language television station, and a writer for World Affairs Journal. He is also a long-time friend and colleague of mine.

We worked together at the Institute of Modern Russia, a New York-based think tank, for several years before he left to serve as a chief representative for Open Russia, an nongovernmental organization reactivated by the man who had founded it before he, too, took a trip to Siberia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil tycoon whom Putin jailed in 2003 and then unexpectedly released in 2013 after Khodorkovsky served nearly ten years in a labor camp, made Volodya his point-man in the country the oligarch-exile can never return to so long as Putin remains in power. (Full disclosure: Khodorkovskys son Pavel was president of the Institute and the familys trust financed the activities of the think tank.)

If Volodya and I ever quibbled it was about language, and he was always right. Why do journalists always say Russia, hed ask, when they mean Putin or the regime? He abhors the idea, endemic in the Washington foreign policy establishment, that there was a cultural or historical determinism which fated his homeland to remaining a delicately-managed Nigeria with snow or Upper Volta with nukes. To him, this was a cheap Orientalism borne of fatalism and stupidity. Why cant Russia have civil society, democracy and the rule of law? It did once, after the fall of the Soviet Union, however imperfectly and briefly.

Still, so long as justice cannot be had at home, Volodya felt it morally feasible to enlist the United States on his side to hold the unjust accountable when they traveled abroad. He spent much of his time stateside lobbying Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a law intended to sanction and blacklist the crooks, thieves and gangsters who now run his country by looting it, only to spend their ill-gotten fortunes in London, Dubai and New York.

Well before Ukraine, Syria, the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency, this piece of human rights legislation constituted, in Putins imagination, the most exigent threat against him from the West. It was a palpable hit against the murderous kleptocracy he had constructed and whose longevity depended on the Wests see-no-evil connivance.

Being a confidant of one prominent opponent of the Kremlin is risky. Being a confidant of two is pushing it. Being a confidant of three is uninsurable.

In February 2016 Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen warlord-president widely suspected of having a hand in the murder of Nemtsov, posted to Instagram a surveillance image of Volodya and former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, another RPR-Parnas member, as they were exiting a popular restaurant in Strasbourg, the headquarters of the Council of Europe, to which Russia is a party. They were photographed by Russian intelligence and Kadyrov then superimposed an optical scope, the kind used in long-lens professional cameras, or in high-powered rifles, on the image. He also attached a message: Kasyanov has come to Strasbourg to get money for the Russian opposition. WHOEVER DOESNT GET IT, WILL!

Many in the opposition interpreted it as a death threat and would have regardless of the actuarial timeline. (Nemtsovs murder was the previous year.) Creepily, however, Kadyrov had used more or less the same phrase, Whoever didnt get it, will, on May 25, 2015a day before Volodya succumbed to poisoning.

When I saw him, months after his first ordeal, at a restaurant in Washington, he he looked as if hed lost about 100 pounds. He could only walk with a cane, the result of lingering nerve damage to the left side of his body. In full health, Volodya bears a minor resemblance to Lenin (strong, bald pate; neat goatee, slightly Asiatic mien) and I can remember drawing a perhaps indelicate comparison between two workaholic revolutionaries who eluded their assassins.

Volodya was absolutely certain that hed been poisoned on orders of the siloviki, the strongmen of the regime. He speculated as to how and where it might have occurred. Here I feel duty-bound to point out that if my friend has got a self-jeopardizing impulse in him at all it is that he is committed to remaining in Russia to carry out his important work. He was going to return to Moscow after he fully recovered. Evgenia and their three children would remain in Washington.

Are you sure you want to go back? I asked him that night. If they missed the first time, wont they try again a second?

What good can I do here? he answered. The whole point is to educate Russians about their country and what it can be before an entire generation grows up with no concept of freedom. How can I do that from here?

I had no response then, but I now I badly wish he had tried to find out.
The men who came ashore from the Mexican Navys landing ship Papaloapan wore blue jerseys over their uniforms emblazoned with a single word in big white letters.

MARINA

They were Mexican Marines, landing in Mississippi in September of 2005 to assist in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They brought 250 tons of food, a pair of helicopters, eight all-terrain vehicles, and seven amphibious vehicles. They were joined by units of the Mexican Army, which traveled overland in a convoy of 35 vehicles carrying another 162 tons of food as well as a field kitchen that served 170,000 meals. The legislative assembly in Mexico City also did its bit, with each member kicking in a days pay for the storms victims.

One American who seems to have kicked in nothing at all was Donald Trump. The IRS filing by his foundation for that year shows contributions to numerous worthy causes, ranging from The Reporters Committee for Freedom of Press ($10,000) to The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation ($25,000) to the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance ($25,000), but not a cent for Katrina victims.

That, even though Trump was in New Orleans four days before the storm to announce that his next project was the 70-story, $400 million Trump International Hotel & Tower New Orleans. A three story high banner in blue announced Redefining Luxury in New Orleans and proclaimed a single word in outsized white letters.

TRUMP

Then the hurricane hit. Trump was already preparing to abandon the project as the Marines in the MARINA jerseys continued to labor in the hot sun, delivering relief supplies and clearing wreckage.

After 20 days, the Mexican Marines returned to their home country and resumed their primary mission, which was and is to hunt down the bosses of the drug cartel. They were again wearing body armor, not jerseys stenciled with MARINA in big white letters.

In 2009, U.S. authorities tipped off the Mexican Army to the location of cartel leader Arturo Beltran Leyva. The army proved to be what is politely termed risk averse, and the U.S. turned to the Mexican Marines, who immediately sprang into action.

After a 90-minute firefight, Beltran escaped, but the Marines soon after tracked him down with a little more help from the U.S. The fighting resumed and Beltran was shot to death. A grenade blast killed one of the Marines, 30-year-old Ensign Melquisedet Angulo Cordova of Tabasco.

As was reported by The Daily Beast , Angulo was buried with full military honors, culminating in a graveside ritual similar to the one conducted after a U.S. service member is killed in action. Mexicos secretary of the navy presented Angulos mother with the flag that had covered his coffin, solemnly thanking her for her sacrifice.

Her son, the secretary said, had done his duty to the last moment of his life serving his country, his people, and honoring his family.

The mother, Irma Cordova Palma, spoke to reporters afterward.

Thinking as a mother, I used to feel very sad and hurt for the families of soldiers and police who had been killed. It would make me cry, she said. And now, now it is my turn.

That night, more than a dozen gunmen armed with assault rifles burst through the front door of the Angulo home. They murdered the fallen Marines mother, and his sister, Yolidabey, as they slept. His brother, Benito, and aunt, Josefa Angulo Flores, died despite the efforts of paramedics to save them. A hand-lettered cartel sign, or narcomanta, went up outside a nursery school, threatening further reprisals and implicitly suggesting the victims could include even the youngest children of the Marines.

The atrocity and the threat made the Marines only more determined. They made numerous big busts and then the biggest, catching up with Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Loera, known to the world as El Chapo, in February of 2014. He escaped from prison via a tunnel in July of 2015.

In January of 2016, the Marines caught up with El Chapo again. Five of his men were killed in the ensuing gunfight, but El Chapo survived.

El Chapo fought extradition all last year, but the Mexican authorities apparently decided they did not want to risk the embarrassment of having him escape again. They seem to have been seeking to strike a conciliatory note without simply caving in when they placed El Chapo aboard a plane that landed in New York at 9:30 p.m. on inauguration eve, during Barack Obamas final hours as president. El Chapo appeared in Brooklyn federal court on Inauguration Day, two hours after Trump took the oath of office.

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto was slated to visit the new American president, but canceled after Trump ordered the building of the border wall that he had promised during the campaign.

Trump and Pena Nieto did speak on the telephone on the morning of Jan. 27. Such conversations between heads of state are routinely transcribed and the Associated Press obtained what it reported to be excerpts.

You have a bunch of bad hombres down there, Trump tells Pena Nieto in one excerpt. You arent doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isnt, so I just might send them down to take care of it.

Some of the Mexican military is no doubt risk averse, but the courage of the Marinas in tracking down a succession of the biggest of the bad hombres should not be doubted in whatever tone, be it light-hearted as the White House insists, or threatening as some reports have suggested. The Mexican government maintains that the conversation was constructive, though it reiterates its pledge that it will never pay for Trumps wall.

El Chapo is scheduled to appear in court again on Friday. His people have demonstrated on many occasions that they can build tunnels under any wall. His undoing came as the result of a bridge; the close cooperation between U.S. authorities and the Marinas.
Women everywhere can take heart: President Trump doesnt only promote grabbing pussies; he seems to enjoy grabbing Republican congressional leaders by their balls too.

In just two weeks since taking the oath, Donald Trump has taken over Capitol Hillhis presence is felt everywhere.

Though his presence hasnt necessarily been helpful.

Efforts to move to substantive policy debates have been stymied, frustrating leaders who seem to now be spending the bulk of their time deflecting questions about the errant president, defending his new executive orders or watching over their shoulders to make sure they dont offend the naked emperor.

And, make no mistakehes watching.

Trump and his allies have taken a more hands on approach than previous administrations in dealing with the nations legislative branch, which is alarming ethics watchdogs, Democrats and even some Republicans.

None are more affected by Trumps erratic behavior than Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryans a wonk who wants to transform Americas tax system and revamp Obamacare in the GOPs image. Instead in his weekly press conference on Thursday he had to deflect questions about Trumps latest embarrassing tirade against Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an Obama-era agreement to accept a measly 1,250 refugees.

Australia is a very central ally. They are and theyll continue to be, he told reporters before getting a question about Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Apprentice. Im not going to comment on this stuff.

Ryan may have been able to laugh off that question, but the Trump-sized stone that promises to hang around his neck for the next four years only seems to be getting heavier as the days roll on.

Party leaders across Capitol Hill were blindsided last Friday when Trump unveiled his controversial executive order to temporarily ban immigrants from seven majority Muslim nations from entering the U.S.

We were briefed on the contents of it as it was being rolled out, Speaker Ryan told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday. While he now backs the executive order, the episode pulled the veil back on congressional and White House relations, and Trump, at least for now, is in the drivers seat.

It turns out much of the controversial order was written by staffers from the House Judiciary Committee who reportedly had to sign non-disclosure agreements in order to work with the White House.

Thats left Republican leaders on the defensive all week, because the staffers never informed the top GOP congressional brass what they were doing and the White House in turn never thought to loop congressional leaders in on their expansive plan.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte had to fall on the sword for his party this week amidst the embarrassment the surprise executive order cost the party.

Its commonplace for Republican and Democratic staff to lend their expertise to presidential transition teams, Goodlatte said at the National Press Club in answer to a question posed by The Daily Beast.

He refused to answer a question about whether his staff signed non-disclosure agreements, even after being chased down the hall of the press club by 10 or so reporters who sought a simple Yes or No from the powerful chairman.

Critics argue his office shattered the sacred constitutional mandate that power be separated between Congress and the White House. The ethics watchdog the Campaign for Accountability called on the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether the staffers broke any laws or internal House rules in crafting the order at the behest of the White House. Democrats also seized on the unforced error.

Why would I look at Goodlatte as anything other than as a pawn of the president of the United States, if his staff has already written the legislation that were supposed to be considering? Thats bad, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), a member of the Judiciary Committee, told The Daily Beast. People expect there to be checks and balances in their government. This is not a dictatorshipat least not yetand hes not Dear Leader to which we all bow.

Nothing seems to be too small for Trump himself to weigh in on via Twitter, and nothing seems to be sacred to the new administration, like the notion of separation of powers. Thats unsettling some conservatives.

But the puppet master should have stayed behind the curtain, or at least in his own white box down the street, because even some Republicans who agreed with the thrust of the executive order voiced displeasure over having congressional aides working behind the scenes for the White House.

I think, generally speaking, that the branches need to do their own thing, Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-VA) told The Daily Beast. They need to communicate with one another, but were separate branches for a reason. And we should remain separate and we should be vigilant in protecting our prerogatives as a House and the Senate.

Other Republicans raised concerns over the potential that White House officials purposefully went over senior lawmakers and policy professionals heads by using young, inexperienced Hill staffers to do their political bidding.

To me the troubling part is that the executive order was not vetted with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the Department of Defense, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told The Daily Beast. That to me is the bigger issue.

Its not all bad news.

Since capturing the White House, Vice President Mike Pence has become a regular at the Capitolhe even got a new office on the House side of the Capitol on top of his office for being President of the Senate.

Lawmakers have welcomed his presence, particularly since Pence once walked the halls as a congressman giving him special insight into the unique pressures of their jobs.

Every Tuesday the silver haired VP arrives at Capitol Hill flocked by an entourage of young staffers, military aides and enough Secret Service agents to take out a third world army.

Over his eight-year tenure, now retired VP Joe Biden rarely came to the Capitol, leaving most of the nitty gritty details of policy making to the nations lawmakers. But, much like his Republican predecessor, Dick Cheney, who regularly sat in on Senate Republican policy meetings, Pence is at the Capitol to keep congressional Republicans on the same page as Trump and his team.

Hes very very helpful. He comes and talks about what their plans are, Sen. John McCain (R-AR) told The Daily Beast. I know that it helps to have vice presidents of your own party to come over and have lunch with you.

Pence even escorted Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch to his first meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but Trump stole the spotlight.

While Gorsuch did his traditional, grueling round of get-to-know-you-chats in lawmakers offices, Trump sent a signal to McConnell and other Senate Republicans: He once again prodded them to disband the upper chambers long-standing filibuster rule by employing the so-called nuclear option, which would allow Gorsuch to be confirmed by a simple majority.

"If we end up with that gridlock I would say, if you can, Mitch, go nuclear,'" Trump told reporters on Wednesday. "Because that would be an absolute shame if a man of this quality was put up to that neglect."
At the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, before the meteor hit, mammals were squirrely beasts that lived in caves and crevices and holes. Because they were so small, our first warm-blooded ancestors were able to survive the impact that killed the scaly predators that had driven them underground to begin with. They stayed alive by being quiet enough to go unnoticed, small enough to escape. A great strategy for a warm-blooded vertebrate, a spineless one for a politician.

Its easy to hide from the fight for survival if the fight is mythic in scale. And at this particular moment in history, things feel apocalyptic. For Trump foes, the heroes of the Trump period have been cartoonishly good Good Guys like Sally Yates , the associate attorney general who Trump fired for standing up to his Muslim bana principled, brilliant woman with a small-town haircut. Theyve been young Obama-appointed district judges with first names like Ann and Judith, or a telegenic trio of diverse women organizing a march that ended up being one of the largest single-day demonstrations in U.S. history. Two female Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, have thrown the confirmation of Trumps would-be Education Secretary Betsy DeVos into question. DeVos, a billionaire megadonor who never attended public schooland maybe plagiarized some of the answers she submitted in response to a Senate questionnaire really flunked her Senate committee hearing, thanks in part to a grilling from Elizabeth Warren, who is no stranger to yelling at people on C-SPAN.

The villains in this fight have been as cartoonishly bad as its heroes have been good. Jared Kushner, slumlord. Donald Trumps large adult sons Eric and Don Jr., either of whom could have adequately played a body double in the Christian Bale film adaptation of American Psycho, provided theyre far enough in the background that the camera doesnt fully capture the weakness of their Trump chins. Reince Priebus, a sniveling, shifty-eyed schemer. Steves Bannon and Miller, who, if literally drawn as cartoons, would be represented as a drunken bear demanding to see the manager at Applebees and a weasel issuing a foreclosure notice. Trumps almost entirely male cabinet of developers and climate deniers and fact-ignorerers hellbent on advancing their own financial interests over the interests of the country. Reports on just who has the presidents ear change by the day, because the White House is all infighting and chaos that spills out into the world, like shock waves from an interstellar impact centered on Washington.

America wants to be entertained, which is why an entertainer is the President. America wants heroes and villains, which is why its searching for narratives about rightness and wrongness to slap on a messy, complicated reality. America wants the news to be broken down into a cover-song version of a song it already knows. Its hard to resist a good battle of the sexes narrative, especially when the gender breakdown of Team Trump versus The Resistance seems so lopsided.

But women are no more to be celebrated for being the ones standing between Trumps nihilistic vision and reality than they are to be blamed for handing him the election. Nor are men exclusively the malignant whispers in Trumps ear as he signs orders barring children from war zones from finding safety on U.S. soil. Al Franken, John McCain, and John Lewis have vocally opposed the President. Ivanka Trumpwhere the hell is the self-proclaimed advocate of women and children while her father enacts his cruel agenda, by the way?and Kellyanne Conway have been enthusiastic Trump surrogates. This isnt a battle between men and women. The first weeks of the Trump administration tell the story of people who stood up to fight and people who made themselves small and hid. The people who showed up versus the people who didnt.

Donald Trump didnt win the electoral college vote because he got a record number of individual votes. The fact that he lost the popular vote by 3 million has driven him so off his rocker that his goon Kellyanne Conway had to introduce the phrase alternative facts into the lexicon. Trump won because the people who should have been standing up stayed home or were silenced. And if Trump is able to enact his agenda, it wont be because Steves Bannon and Miller are brilliant political minds. It will be because people who should be doing something decided theyd rather get tiny and hide in a hole than stand up and fight like the future depends on it.

People who shrink away from this moment must not be let off the hook. Paul Ryans soggy self-preserving nincompoopery shouldnt go unnoted in the minds of the public or in history books. Mitch McConnells 180 on whether or not the President knows what hes doing, his passive acceptance of the Trump agenda should be an indelible and damning part of his legacy. The Democrats who soaked up photo ops at camera-friendly protests and did not fight Trumps more offensive nominees tooth and nail should have inboxes and foyers full of dissatisfied constituents until they put their money where their mouths are. Virginia Rep. David Brat, who whined about angry female constituents confronting him about his support of the Obamacare repeal, should be remembered as a political coward. Same with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, former primary foes of Trump who painted Trump as dangerous and immoral only to support him as though nothing had happened. Cruz even went so far as to refuse to endorse Trump at the Republican convention, a stand Im sure he thought was pretty tough, until he endorsed him shortly thereafter. Wheres Jeb Bush? Go ahead and write it down. Make your own political shit list. Hang it above your desk. Add and subtract as necessary.

Assigning meaning to an event as its unfolding is foolish; time is what assigns meaning, not your immediate reaction. At least, thats what the meditation podcast Ive listened to when my stress tooth grinding keeps me up at night keeps telling me. But one thing is fairly certain: history doesnt forget the noisy voices once the dust settles, the winners and losers. People of the future that awaits after all this will celebrate those who exhibited bravery, on one side or the other. Theyll deride the aggressively malignant. Theyll cheer the heroic. Theyll give Oscars to actors and actresses who play both. But the people who are truly letting their country down at times like these are the ones who run and hide in the woods until the dust settles. Political self-preservation in dire circumstances is just about the same as cowardice.
TOKYOOn Christmas evening, Dec. 25, 2015, newly hired Ms. Matsuri Takahashi, 24, threw herself from the top floor of the dormitory of Dentsu, Japans largest and most prestigious advertising firm.

Last September, the Mita Labor Standard Inspection Office announced the results of its investigation and ruled that Takahashis suicide was actually karoshideath from overwork. And it was not the first time a Dentsu employee had succumbed in that way.

The incident was followed by the release of a Japanese government white paper which found that 93 people had committed suicide or attempted suicide due to overwork in 2015.

The case became the focus of a backlash against Japans chronically awful working conditionsconditions that allegedly have worsened under the reign of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The Japanese government proposed this week a plan to put a cap on working hoursat a maximum of 100 hours of overtime in a monthbut is it any more than a perfunctory gesture? Japanese press and labor experts are skeptical.

According to Japans labor laws, in principle only eight hours of work a day or 40 hours a week is allowed. One hundred hours of overtime adds, in effect, 12.5 workdays to that monthwhich means working seven days a week and then some.

Death from overwork and ceaseless overtime are closely related to the rise of what in Japan are known as burakku kigyo, loosely translated as dark companies or evil corporations. Generally the reference is to firms in which working hours are long and brutal, unpaid overtime is endemic, and harassment at workincluding sexual harassment and bullyingis part of the workplace culture.

The word was once a synonym for front companies run by the yakuza, but the business world has shown that it can be just as ruthless and exploitative as your average nine-fingered gangster.

In 2013, a year after the militantly pro-business and right-wing Abe government took power, burakku kigyo was chosen as one of the top 10 buzzwords of the year.

For the last five years, a group of journalists and labor activists have selected some of Japans most infamous firms for The Most Evil Corporation of The Year Award and, not surprisingly, Dentsu won top place last year.

Mister Donut might be a contender this year. It was reported on Monday that the operator of a Mister Donut franchise was ordered by Tsu District Court to pay 46 million yen ($408,000) in indemnities to the family of a 50-year-old store manager who passed away five years ago due to overwork. He had died in his car mid-commute from fatal arrhythmia. The judge ruled, For six months preceding his death, the man worked 112 hours of overtime a month. There was physical and mental stress causing illness that can be linked to his passing away.

Following the ruling, the franchise owner issued a statement saying, We will take this verdict gravely and the whole company will work to improve the labor environment.

It is almost the same line that Dentsu has now used twice. In fact, Japanese firms always say this when caught working their employees to death.

***

Many people outside Japan wonder why people dont just quit their jobs rather than working themselves to death. Its not that simple. Stoic endurance is considered a virtue in Japan and leaving the office before ones superiors or seniors is considered rude.

In addition, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the number of jobs that are counted as regular employmentthat is, lifetime employment with benefits and a chance for promotionhave fallen from a national average of 85 percent in the 80s to fewer than 60 percent at present.

Good jobs are hard to find and employers use that leverage to force remaining employees to put up with horrific workloads. When newly hired, they are expected to last at least two years at a job before changing workplaces; otherwise they are looked upon by society as unreliable. The result is that fresh college graduates, like Ms. Takahashi, are much more likely to endure terrible job conditions in hopes of being able to find another good job down the road.

She had been assigned to the Online Advertising division of Dentsu, a division that reportedly had been staffed by 14 people before her arrival and cut down to six during her employment. Her family said that her supervisor constantly berated her for her failure to keep up with the onerous workload.

In online posts she made before her death, Takahashi lamented, When youre in the office 20 hours a day, you dont understand what youre living your life for anymore. (Its so pathetic) you come to laugh. Another in November of 2015, read, Whether Im working to live or living to work, I dont know anymore. Thats life.

Ichiyo Matsuzaki, an expert on workplace stress at Tsukuba University also notes, Many people who commit suicide due to overwork are so sleep deprived at the time that they lose the ability to make rational judgements. Death seems like the easiest solution to them.

***

Matsuri Takahashis death sparked a chain reaction in the business world that came to be known as Dentsu Shock. The company is one of the most well-known in Japan, and its fall from grace garnered much publicity. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare took a surprisingly harsh stance with the firm, and labor inspectors raided its offices in November.

The investigators concluded that Ms. Takahashi had worked over 105 hours overtime in a one-month period prior to her death, exceeding what the ministry calls the Karoshi (death from overwork) Line which is 80 hours of overtime in a month. Anything over 100 hours is considered a serious threat to the wellbeing of the employee. The ministry uses this as a guideline to determine the likelihood of health problems in relation to overwork.

The response to this case was surprisingly swift. On Dec. 28, the ministry referred to the Tokyo Prosecutors Office charges for violations of the labor laws against Dentsu and an executive who was Ms. Takahashis direct supervisor. So there is a chance that someone will be indicted.

The Labor Inspectors Office is also investigating the firm to see whether it intentionally had employees hide their overtime working hours. Usually a case like this would take more than a year before being referred to the prosecutors.

The Abe governments response to the scandal has been reactive and measured. On Tuesday, at the Upper House Budget Committee meeting, when pressed about a cap on working hours, Prime Minister Abe said, We are moving forward so as to clear the standard for karoshi, and went on to indicate that he is considering the maximum allowable hours of overtime to be capped at 100 hours a month.

It did not seem to occur to him that the goal of the labor standards laws is not to just avoid death, but to actually create a better and humane working environment.

Indeed, Abes government is planning to amend labor laws so as to introduce a system which entirely removes paid overtime for certain specialized white-collar jobs. If there is no overtime pay, essentially there is no record of overtime for the unlucky beneficiaries of the new system. The contradiction is not lost on the general public.

***

Noted economic journalist Hiroko Ogiwara, quoted in a Nikkan Gendai article published on Jan. 31, points out the schizophrenic nature of the governments attempts to deal with the problem:

The fact that they came up with a 100-hour cap is because PM Abe is listening to those running the businesses, not the people working. Japanese business executives at their core would like for employees to work as much as they can without dying.

Dentsus case shows that even when a company is singled out for reprimand, abusive work practices dont necessarily end.

The president and CEO of Dentsu, Tadashi Ishii, announced he would resign to take responsibility for the death of his employee. On Jan. 18, a Dentsu executive announced that five board members would receive penalties of a three-month 20-percent pay cut. Even as early as October 2016, Dentsu implemented a system in which all office lights would be shut down from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. It seems like they are taking it all seriously.

But what has really happened? Are things really improving? Some Dentsu employees who spoke with The Daily Beast said that long working hours still continue after the lights go out. According to the monthly business magazine Zaiten, published earlier this week, newly implemented work time restrictions on the Dentsu workers means more overtime, for their subcontractors.

The article notes, The subcontractors find themselves in a bind, where they are only getting paid what was promised in the beginning but having to take on the workload that Dentsu has abruptly abandoned, causing days of late nights of meetings and trouble shooting in a new territory with an empty promise they will be repaid someday. Its always the ones at the lowest rung who suffer.

Thats Japan Incorporated. The buck just gets passed down to the next lower ranking worker on the totem pole.

Haruki Konno, an expert on Japans labor problems and author of Evil Corporations: The Monsters Eating Up Japan, has noted that the proposed caps on working hours wouldnt be enough to solve Japans labor issues.

A cap on working hours is important, but this isnt close to being enough and 80 hours of overtime a month should be the absolute maximumand thats not ideal, said Konno. Japan really needs to pursue penalties more severely when violations occur and in order to do that there needs to be an increase in the number of labor standard inspectors. Furthermore, even if the first two measures are taken it would be impossible to police the situation if there is no proof. As of now, companies are not penalized for not having kept records but it should become a subject of concern and regulation.

In the end, it seems that without strict enforcement of the law and substantial penalties for violating labor laws, the proposed (barely survivable) working hours cap by Abe is no more than a colorful Band-Aid on a lethal problema Band-Aid that barely prevents death from over-work, even in a good month.
The executive order on immigration that Donald Trump signed late last week didnt just stop refugees from coming to the U.S. and keep out nationals from seven Muslim-majority nations. It also revoked more than 100,000 visas, according to a Department of Justice lawyer.

The eye-popping revelationwhich Trumps State Department says isnt completely accuratecame Friday morning in federal court in Alexandria, when Judge Leonie Brinkema questioned DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni about the impact of the executive order. Reuveni was there arguing for the Trump administration and against lawyers for the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as plaintiffs who had been unable to enter the U.S. because of the presidents order.

And Reuveni said that more than 100,000 peoples visas were revoked on 6:30 p.m. on Saturday when the president signed his executive order.

The number 100,000 sucked the air out of my lungs, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center helping represent two plaintiffs, told reporters after the hearing. I think you could almost hear the collective gasp in the courtroom when the government attorney stated that number.

During the hearing, Brinkema noted that though shes presided over court cases regarding 9/11, she had never seen a public response like the one Trumps executive orders generated.

I have never had so much public outpouring as Ive seen in this case, she said. Its amazing.

This order touched something in the U.S. Ive never seen before, she added.

The State Department disputes that number, and says fewer than 60,000 people had their visas revoked because of the presidents executive order. A State Department official said the revocations are temporary, and that some visas may be reinstated on a case-by-case basis after 90 days.

Regardless, its more evidence that the presidents executive order had a far-reaching, global impactchanging thousands of lives in an instant.

The Boston Globe reported that the State Department memo which officially revoked all those visas didnt become public until it was filed in court as part of a lawsuit against Trumps executive orders; the memo indicates it was signed on Jan. 27, but wasnt filed in courtand, thus, made publicuntil Jan. 31.

Asked if the State Department made any efforts to publicize the memo before Jan. 31, a State Department official emailed this: We cannot confirm or comment on internal U.S. government correspondence, and we do not comment on ongoing litigation.

The Department of Homeland Security didnt respond to a request for comment on whether it would target people whose visas were revoked for deportation. Throughout his presidential campaign, Donald Trump frequently stated that people who stay in the U.S. for longer than their visas allow will be a top enforcement priority for his administration.

Removing visa overstays will be a top priority of my administration, he said on Aug. 31, 2015, when he rolled out his immigration policy proposal. If people around the world believe they can just come on a temporary visa and never leavethe Obama-Clinton policythen we have a completely open border. We must send the message that visa-expiration dates will be strongly enforced.

Will that apply to people whose visas he himself revoked without warning? Well have to wait and see.

The push-back against Trumps executive order is far from over. During the hearing, Reuveni noted that the executive orders have generated massive legal pushback. He said the Trump administration was currently being sued in 10 courts over the order, and would be lawsuits in 20 more tomorrow. It wasnt clear if Reuveni was being facetious or not, and once the hearing was over he ducked out of the courthouse without talking to reporters.

In the ongoing legal battles over Trumps executive order, a key question will be whether the executive branch has the power to unilaterally revoke visas en masse. Sandoval-Moshenberg told reporters after the hearing that he thinks the administration lawyers are misinterpreting a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the State Department the power to revoke visas without judicial review.

After the issuance of a visa or other documentation to any alien, the consular officer or the Secretary of State may at any time, in his discretion, revoke such visa or other documentation, the provision reads.

The Trump administration clearly believes that provision gives them the authority to revoke thousands of visas. Sandoval-Moshenberg disagrees.

It is not to be used en masse to cancel over 100,000 visas with the stroke of a pen, he said.

Its a fight that will play out in court, where Trumps attorneys will be spending a lot of time.

Editors Note: This story was updated on Friday, Feb. 3, at 7:30 p.m.
The choreography of royal dating is convoluted series of steps.

Long established and evolved to protect both the royals and their prospective delicate love interests from the famously enthusiastic U.K. press, they rarely deviate from it.

With his new girlfriend, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry doesnt seem to feel the need to toe the line.Holding hands may not seem noteworthy, normal people do it all the time, but PDAs are not something for which the British royal family are particularly renowned.

Which is why photos of Harry, 32, and Meghan, 35, hand-in-hand on the streets of London have caused such a stir.

It is a sign of his confidence in her ability to handle the attention that they continue to date in public, this week returning to chief London celebrity haunt Soho House on Wednesday evening. Photographs may be banned inside, but outside every diner knows they will run the gauntlet of the inevitable shutterbugs.

The Sun pictures show Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in the city holding hands. The couple were snapped as they went for dinner, reportedly at the club at which they were introduced by friends last year.

They are dressed down, the prince again sporting the teal beanie that he wore to a theater date with Meghan back in December, while she wears an untucked shirt and slacks.

Harry has been protective, verging on the strident, in his defense of Meghan and this relationship. In November, he issued a remarkably strongly worded letter during which he hit out at the press and social media.

In the 406-word statementwhich was described by Londons Telegraph as the equivalent of starting a pub fightHarry wrote that a line has been crossed.

Meghan has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment He referred to a smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces.

Apparentlyaccording to The SunMeghan has virtually moved into Harrys Nottingham cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace and the couple have been inseparable for the past five weeks since the actress finished filming Suits.

Now The Sun is putting us on notice for a spring engagement.

Theyve taken things to the next level. Theyre practically living together. She cooks for him, he pops out to the gym, and theyre just enjoying hanging out, the friend told The Sun.

Meg has always enjoyed spending time in London, but shes really putting down roots.

Previous reports have suggested that Meghan has already been introduced to Prince Charles in advance of The Announcement.

Undoubtedly the Los Angeles native appears to have been spending more time here, having been photographed up and down Kensington Church Street, a quaint road adjacent to the palace.

But now with pictures of the couple hand-in-hand, expect a sudden uptick in Harry Fever.

Theres nothing to take the sting out of the still-imminent Trump state visit with Queen Elizabeth like the sniff of a royal wedding in the air...
If it is difficult to write convincingly about a stranger, it can be even more so trying to get it right when the subject is a dear friendin this case, Frank Pellegrino Sr., who died of lung cancer on Tuesday at the age of 72.

My family and I valued him both professionally and personally and among my many reasons for being sad about his passing is the probability that this marks the end of an amazing era at the raffish, thoroughly authentic Raos.

Raffish and thoroughly authentic also describe the man who was largely responsible for the overwhelming and continued success of this red sauce Italian-American restaurant in East Harlem. After decades, it is still considered the toughest reservation in the U.S. with its 10 tables mostly time-shared by local tycoons and assorted VIPs. As the nightly dining room greeter and captain Frank refused so many reservation requests that he earned the nickname, Frankie No.

Last year when he and his beautiful wife Josephine came to a birthday party thrown for me, he began his remarks with a plea that none of the other guests ask him for a dinner reservation.

Of medium height and compact build, the impeccably dressed, dapper Frankie grew up in East Harlem where his food-loving parents settled after emigrating from the Campagna region of Italy. There he developed a quintessential New York combination of class and style with Runyonesque street smarts.

In fact, his own personality informed the roles he was given for his day jobthat of an actor, who had prominent parts in TV dramas such as The Sopranos and intermittently on Law & Order, as well as in films such as Goodfellas, Mickey Blue Eyes and Broadway Danny Rose, a film by Woody Allen, who was, naturally, a Raos regular.

Many years ago, I was introduced to author Norman Mailer who immediately blurted out, Ah! The woman who ruined Raos!

And my ruination of Raos was where this idyll began. On Aug. 19, 1977, when I was the New York Times restaurant critic, my three-star review of Raos was published and, according to Frankie, things up there were never the same again. Phones rang off the hook in the then eight-table boite that was closed on Saturdays and Sundays. We didnt know what hit us, he said. We didnt read or know about restaurant reviews and the only paper we read was the New York Daily News. We figured if we closed for a three week vacation the whole thing would blow over. So far, it has not.

A few weeks after my review appeared, I had a call from David Durk, a whistle-blowing member of the New York Police Department. He asked me if I knew Raos was a mob hangout and wondered if I had read his 1976 book, The Pleasant Avenue Connection. I said I had not and that the only thing concerning me was Raos functioning as a bona fide restaurant, although I was tickled at the frisson his information created. It sort of spiced things up, a few flakes of pepperoncino sprinkled over the pasta sauce.

Such a notorious clientele along with a comfortable coterie of followers that included writers, actors, politicians, and CEOs made Raos an already successful restaurant. Taken there for the first time by a friend who swore not to reveal my identity and by other regulars on two subsequent visits, I was blown away by the cozy but vaguely conspiratorial look of the place: The restaurants red facade was almost the only illuminated spot on the dreary corner of Pleasant Avenue and 114th Street. A couple of steps down from the sidewalk, then as now the dining room had a low pressed-tin ceiling and the walls were paneled with photos of celebrities and Christmas ornaments, which I later learned sparkled there year-round, immediately looked inviting and, well, authentic.

Frank with his warmly diffident smile held forth at our table and recited the menu (there was none printed) and took orders and made suggestions as diners liberally fed the juke box. Then came the food: a sprightly, sunny seafood salad, baked clams under a crisp mantel of breadcrumbs, garlic, and oregano, and even a perfectly fried sandwich of mozzarella in carrozza, a childhood favorite of my late husband, Richard Falcone. Next were simple but perfect pastas: linguine marinara or with white clam sauce, and orecchiette with broccoli and sausages. The main courses were equally impressive: the famed lemon chicken in a bronze glaze of citrus, and sausages or pork chops with vinegar cherry peppers, were winners on my various visits. Simple, maybe even trite dishes, but not so trite since they were expertly prepared from prime ingredients. Fortunately, Frank authored four cookbooks that include all of Raos most beloved specialties, plus a lot more in the same delectably soul-warming style.

That cooking was the province of the owner Vincent Rao whose father Charles had opened the place in 1896. Tall and straight, Vincent Rao always wore a Stetson hat as he was assisted by his wife, Anna Pellegrino Rao, Franks aunt, who wore dark sunglasses and was dressed in immaculate white from head to toe. With her death, just a few months after Vincents in 1994, Frank along with his cousin Ronald Straci became the owners of the establishment.

In addition to the original location, you can now find jars of Raos pasta sauce and condiments in your neighborhood supermarket, and there are outposts of the restaurant in Las Vegas and Hollywood run by Frank Pellegrino, Jr., Frankies son. But for me, the only Raos exists Brigadoon-like, on that enchanted corner of East Harlem.

Although the work of many deserve credit for Raos success, it was Frank Pellegrinos tough dedication to perfection combined with his gracious appeal that kept the staff and the clientele loyal and, always, coming back for more.

The guy really was a doll.
Robert De Niro has not taken the rise of President Donald Trump well.

Last summer, after Trump had accepted the Republican nomination, the actor called him totally nuts, adding God help us. Two months later, in a leaked Get Out the Vote campaign video, he added, He talks how hed like to punch people in the face? Well, Id like to punch him in the face.

The day after the election, De Niro admitted that he probably would not get the opportunity to sock Trump in the mouth, but his ire towards the 45th president of the United States has barely subsided since then. And it was on full display when he visited The View on Friday morning to promote his new film, The Comedian.

Asked by host Joy Behar about his threat of violence towards then-candidate Trump, De Niro explained, I said that because he said that about somebody, that he would like to punch them in the face. How dare he say that to the crowd? How dare he say the things he does? Of course I want to punch him in the face.

It was only a symbolic thing, anyway. It wasn't like I was going to go find him and punch him in the face, the actor clarified. But hes got to hear it. Hes got to hear that, you know, thats how he makes people feel. Its not good to feel that way. Its not good to start that stuff up, but at the same time sometimes when people are bullies like that, thats what you have to do to shut them up. Bully them back.

De Niro was among the New York celebrities to gather outside Trump Tower on the eve of Inauguration Day and speak out against the incoming president. Alec Baldwin did his SNL impression for the crowd and De Niro decided to preempt any potential mean tweets from Trump by reading some of his own.

Less than two weeks after Trump had blasted Meryl Streep as the most overrated actress in Hollywood, De Niro read of himself, De Niro should give back his Oscars. Voting was rigged. Theres only one true Raging Bull and that is Vladimir Putin.

Before President Obama left office, he included De Niro in his final round of Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients. I was honored to be honored, he said on The View. Obama was, to me, a great president. He tried to do what was right, and thats all I can say.

When you have people going in there just to winits not about winning, its about whats right for the country, the people, De Niro added, comparing Obama to Trump. And we hear a lot of lip service about that, and even from Trump. But now is the time to see what hes going to do. So far, it doesnt look good.
CLARKSTON, GeorgiaTwenty miles east of Atlanta sits a low-slung little town of 17,000 that could almost pass for any other in the American South. Train tracks split the town in half. Hulking gas stations serve commuters driving toward the interstate. Shops off the main drag are a little past their prime, but theyre nearly all full.

But inside those stores youll see why Clarkson is unlike any other town in Red State America. An Asian grocery store stands next to a Shawarma grill, around the corner from Tran Auto Repair and Refuge Coffee Company. At Clarkston Village, the main strip mall in town, women in flowing Muslim head scarves mix with Latino families and Asian teenagers. If youre there at dinner time, you can eat Himalayan, Halal, Thai, Burmese, or African.

The ethnic restaurants and stores may be unfamiliar to people passing through, but they are often the only thing thats familiar to many in Clarkstons diverse population, more than half of whom are foreign born. Many of those are refugees who fled their own disintegrating cultures to apply for asylum in the United States. Once screened and accepted overseas, the U.S. passed them on to non-profit resettlement agencies. Many of those agencies identified Clarkston years ago as a nearly ideal landing spot for people transitioning to a new life in America.

The town struggled at several points to accommodate the newcomers, but is now a multi-cultural hub. The local elementary schools website is translated into 104 languages. A Yelp page lists the 10 Best Mosques near Clarkston. Time magazine hailed it as the most diverse square mile in America.

And thats why last week, news of President Donald Trumps executive order on immigration sent shock waves through Clarkston. In addition to restricting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries, Trump put a four-month moratorium on nearly all refugees; cut the number of refugees to be admitted this year from 110,000 to 50,000; and banned all arrivals from Syria indefinitely.

In response, Clarkston mayor Edward Terry called an emergency city council meeting to discuss what it would mean for the town. More than 100 people showed up to a meeting that typical draws three or four. Local residents said they knew the executive order would have major effects in Clarkston, but no one knew exactly what those effects were or how long they will last.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Terry said the executive order will have a huge impact, especially on his local economy. As a mayor, vacant apartments are always a concern, he said. Resettling refugees rent about 1,000 apartment units every year in Clarkston. Thats a big deal.

Altogether, Terry said the refugee population accounts for roughly $2 million per year locally on rent and utilities and more than $1 million on groceries at local businesses. The resettlement programs provide them with six months of financial support for housing and necessities and 91 percent are self-sufficient when the aid stops.

Terry likes to call Clarkston the Ellis Island of the South and everyone in Clarkston seems to call him Mayor Ted. He is Southern-born, white, and a near-evangelist for immigration after living in Clarkston for six years. His next-door neighbor is a Cuban refugee who used to play the tuba in the Havana Symphony and recently thwarted a burglary in Terrys home.

They are exactly the kind of people you want in your community, he said.

At the city council meeting, Ahmed Hassan, one of two immigrants on the council, said he felt the countries named in Trumps executive order were not chosen fairly.

But still, I am not angry for the administration, Hassan said. Right now it is only temporary. Things change.

Awet Eyasu, a council member originally from Eritrea, said he sees the executive order as a balance between security and constitutional rights. Although he said he had his own opinion of Trump, I definitely sympathize with the administrations concerns, that we might have some bad apples join in all good apples, he said. We have been good apples, I believe.

The rest of the meeting was reserved for local residents to ask questions about the executive order, but one-by-one, they stood to give a message to Donald Trump and the country that has accepted them. Several said they wanted to Trump to come to Clarkston to meet refugees himself.

Donald Trump should know we are human beings, we have to love each other, said Amina Asman, a 70-year-old Muslim refugee who now conducts community outreach in the area. Donald Trump, we forgive you and we love you.

Dr. Gulshan Harjee was born in Tanzania, and had to flee to Pakistan, Iran, and eventually America to complete her schooling. She now runs a primary care practice near Emory University with 24 employees and a free medical clinic in Clarkston.

I have seen and experienced many regimesdictatorship, communism, socialism, and democracy, she said. This is the greatest nation in the world, the kindest and most compassionate and nothing will change in terms of those values.

Another former refugee, who had been a policy planner in Bhutan, said the people making the policies in Washington, including Republican Sens. Johnny Isakson and David Perdue, should visit Clarkston. I have never seen my senators, he said. We would like them to come listen to us and take our message to the president and show him that refugees are not only badthey are also good people.

An Iraqi refugee who had worked with the coalition forces said he would be the first to defend America from terrorists, as he did in Iraq alongside American troops. Its my country now. I lost my country, he said. I love this nation.

Unlike the angry rhetoric on cable news and Capitol Hill over Trumps executive order this week, the conversation that unfolded in Clarkston was nuanced and thoughtful. The people there gave Trump what Clarkston, and by extension America, has given thempatience, respect, the benefit of the doubt, and an invitation to come to their home.

I say this in all sincerity to Donald Trump, come to Clarkston, Mayor Ted told me. Its a sincere invitation for him to see for himself. Come on to Clarkston. Youll see a success story.
NBA Star: Ref Called Me a B**** A** Mother****er

SAY IT TO MY FACE

The Mavericks Spencer Dinwiddie says official Tony Brothers was out of line.
In Europe, energy giants EDF, Engie (France), E.ON, RWE (Germany) and Vattenfall (Sweden), as well as utilities TVO (Finland) and CEZ (Czech Republic), have all been downgraded by credit rating agencies over the past year. All of the utilities registered severe losses on the stock market.

French utility AREVA has accumulated 10 billion (US$10.9 billion) in losses over the past five years. Share value 95% below 2007 peak value. Standard & Poor's downgraded AREVA shares to BB+ ('junk') in November 2014 and again to BB- in March 2015. The company is to be broken up, with French-state-controlled utility EDF taking a majority stake in the reactor building and maintenance subsidiary AREVA NP will then be opened up to foreign investment. The rescue scheme has not been approved by the European Commission.

The AREVA rescue scheme could turn out to be highly problematic for EDF as its risk profile expands. EDF struggles with US$41.5 billion debt, downgraded by S&P, shares lost over half of their value in less than a year and 87% compared to their peak value in 2007.

RWE shares went down by 54% in 2015.

In Asia, the share value of the largest Japanese utilities TEPCO and Kansai was wiped out in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and never recovered. Chinese utility CGN (EDF partner for Hinkley Point C), listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange since December 2014, has lost 60% of its share value since June 2015. The only exception to this trend is the Korean utility KEPCO that operates as a virtual monopoly in a regulated market.

In the US, the largest nuclear operator Exelon has lost about 60% of its share value compared to its peak value in 2008."

The nuclear power 'renaissance' ... or a dead cat bounce?

Global nuclear power capacity increased by 9.2 gigawatts (GW) in 2016. By contrast, renewable electricity capacity growth was 153 GW in 2015 and almost certainly greater in 2016.

In broad terms, nuclear power has been stagnant for the past 20 years. Using figures from the World Nuclear Association (WNA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency, global nuclear capacity has grown 12.7% over the past 20 years and 5.7% over the past decade. But those figures include idle reactors in Japan and the inclusion of those reactors is, as former WNA executive Steve Kidd states, "misleading" and "clearly ridiculous".

The World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) excludes 34 idle reactors in Japan (and one each in Taiwan and Sweden) from its calculations of current nuclear capacity. Using WNISR figures, nuclear capacity has grown by 1.7% over the past 20 years and it has declined by 4.6% over the past decade.

Year Global nuclear power capacity Dec. 1996 347 GW Dec. 2006 370 GW Dec. 2016 391 GW (WNA - including reactors in long-term outage) 353 GW (WNISR - excluding reactors in long-term outage)

If we look more closely at recent figures, the picture is a little confusing. Global nuclear power capacity increased "slightly" in 2016 according to the pro-nuclear WNA while the anti-nuclear WNISR said that a "significant" number of new reactors came online. If there's some confusion now as to the trajectory of nuclear power, that confusion is likely to grow in the next few years.

To explain, let's first look at WNA figures on reactor construction starts:

Year Number of power reactors under construction 2008 34 2011 63 2014 71 2017 60

The nuclear power 'renaissance' never materialised in the since that the number of 'operable' reactors has hovered between 430 and 450 for the past 20 years, with no clear trend in either direction. (The number of operating reactors is currently 406 according to the WNISR, which excludes reactors in long-term outage.).

But we can see the 'renaissance' manifest in the sharp increase in construction starts in the few years preceding the March 2011 Fukushima disaster. Those reactors are starting to come online, and more will come online in the next few years. Thus 10 reactors came online in both 2015 and 2016 (a number not previously reached since 1990). And the number of grid connections over the past five years (32 from 2012-2016) was considerably greater than during the five years before that (17 from 2007-2011).

How will this play out in the coming years? Here are predicted reactor start-up (grid connection) figures compiled by the WNA:

Year Number of anticipated reactor start-ups 2016 12 (but only 10 actual start-ups) 2017 18 2018 10 2019 8 2020 7

We may have been premature in declaring the nuclear renaissance dead. Indeed we're right in the middle of the renaissance. It will likely span around three years and it will be more a dead cat bounce than a renaissance. Last year, 10 reactors were grid connected and four were permanently shut down. In 2017-18, the WNA anticipates 28 grid connections; the true number will fall short of that figure but grid connections will exceed permanent shut-downs.

But that's as good as it gets for the nuclear industry. In truth, the industry is in a world of pain.

The reactor fleet is ageing; most reactors are late middle-aged - the average age of the world's nuclear reactor fleet is 29 years. The number of permanent shut-downs is on the rise and that trend is certain to continue:

Thus 6-10 reactors will need to be commissioned each year for the next 20-25 years just to maintain current nuclear capacity.

The number of reactors under construction is slowly dropping. Using WNA figures, 71 reactors were under construction in January 2014 compared to 60 in January 2017. According to WNISR figures, the number is down from 67 to 55 over the same period. Again, that trend seems near-certain to continue because of a sharp drop in reactor construction starts: 50 from 2007-2011 compared to 31 from 2012-2016. Last year, there were just three construction starts.

Hollow, pyrrhic victories

Most of the nuclear industry's wins in 2016 may turn out to be hollow and pyrrhic.

The decision to go ahead with two EPR reactors at Hinkley Point in the UK may be a blessing or a curse for the industry. Other EPR projects face mounting problems - long delays; spectacular cost increases; ongoing inquiries into the integrity of EPR pressure vessels; and in the case of the EPR under construction in Finland, litigation.

EDF faces additional problems as a result of Brexit, the UK's impending withdrawal from the European Union, which will, significantly, include withdrawal from the Euratom treaty. The post-referendum fall in the value of Sterling will cut its income, while costs will remain roughly level; EDF's ability to import skilled workers to build the reactors is also in doubt. And the Euratom exit creates a host of additional uncertainties.

And even if construction at Hinkley Point goes to plan and to budget, the obscene subsidies will turn the British public against nuclear power for decades to come. Eight of the UK's 15 power reactors are scheduled to be shut down over the next decade, and it's unlikely that new reactors will keep pace with closures.

Toshiba's problems, meanwhile, are adding significant doubt to the future of the Moorside nuclear project next to the notorious Sellafield site in Cumbria, where the company is meant to be building three Westinghouse AP1000 units.

Last August, Russia announced plans for 11 new reactors but there is no likelihood that all will be built and every likelihood that few if any will be built. Already there is some backsliding from the August 2016 announcement.

In a November 2016 referendum, voters in Switzerland rejected a proposal to impose time limits on the operation of the country's five power reactors. Nonetheless, pre-Fukushima plans for new reactors have been abandoned. Switzerland is tracking towards a nuclear phase-out by attrition. One of its five reactors is to be closed in 2019, and the others will likely all be closed by the end of the 2020s (or by 2034 according to Nuclear Energy Insider) ... much the same outcome as that envisaged in the defeated referendum proposal.

The nuclear industry in Sweden certainly had some wins in 2016, but they may not amount to much. There is no longer an end-date for nuclear energy in Sweden other than a non-binding aspiration to exit the industry by mid-century and a (contradictory) aspiration to be 100% renewable-energy powered by 2040; existing reactors can be replaced with new ones (at the same sites); and a nuclear capacity tax will be abolished.

But there are no plans for new reactors and no likelihood of any in the foreseeable future. Keeping existing reactors operating is proving quite a challenge. One reactor closed in 2015 (leaving Sweden with nine), and three more closures are scheduled by the end of 2020.

'South Africa formally launches new build programme', Nuclear Engineering International reported in December 2016. But in fact, plans to build new reactors have been deferred - the latest projection is 1.4 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2037 followed by more later - and plans for new reactors may be scrapped altogether once President Jacob Zuma is ousted.

Corruption has undermined South Africa's nuclear new-build program and developments in a widespread kick-back and bribery corruption scandal in Brazil's nuclear program was one of the biggest stories of 2016. Corruption has claimed numerous scalps - not least Othon Luiz Pinheiro da Silva, considered the father of Brazil's nuclear program, who was sentenced to 43 years in prison in August 2016. The partially-built Angra-3 reactor remains frozen due to the corruption scandal and a lack of funding.

Belgium: 10-year extensions for two of Belgium's seven reactors were approved in late-2015. But all reactors are still scheduled to closed by the end of 2025. There has been ongoing controversy over the safety of Belgium's reactors - in particular Doel-3 and Tihange-2 - including strenuous efforts by politicians and the public in neighboring countries to force the closure of the reactors.

USA: The nuclear industry had a couple of wins last year, convincing state legislatures in New York and Illinois to stump up billions to keep ageing reactors operating. However the number of operable reactors has decreased from 104 to 99 in recent years and the pattern of slow decline is certain to continue - 44 out of the 99 reactors have been operating for 40 years or more.

Misery

In some other important nuclear countries, there were no victories for the nuclear industry last year, pyrrhic or otherwise ... just misery.

France: The French nuclear industry is in its "worst situation ever", former EDF director Gerard Magnin said last November. Just one reactor is under construction - the Flamanville EPR that is many years behind schedule and three times over-budget.

EDF will need to spend around 100 billion (US$107 billion) upgrading its fleet of 58 reactors by 2030, the country's state audit office has said, to meet new safety requirements and to extend the lives of the units beyond 40 years.

In 2015, concerns about the integrity of some EPR pressure vessels were revealed, prompting investigations that are still ongoing. Last year, the scandal was magnified when the French Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) announced that at least 400 of the 10,000 quality documents reviewed by Areva contained anomalies, affecting a range of reactor components in many countries.

Both Areva and EDF are financially stressed, to put it mildly - hence a taxpayer-funded bailout agreed last year. A government-led rescue of Areva and the wider nuclear industry may cost the state as much as 10-billion, Reuters reported in January 2017, and in addition to its "dire financial state, Areva is beset by technical, regulatory and legal problems."

French finance authorities raided the offices of EDF in July 2016 as part of a probe into EDF's disclosure of information to the market regarding domestic nuclear maintenance costs as well as planned reactors in the UK.

Last year, former Areva chief executive Anne Lauvergeon was placed under formal investigation for the "publication of inaccurate accounts" and the "spreading of false information" in relation to the acquisition of a number of African uranium mines.

Japan: Only two of the country's 42 'operable' reactors are actually operating. The future of Japan's nuclear program remains a guessing game, but projections are being steadily reduced. According to the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency and the IAEA, installed capacity of 42.4 GW in 2014 could fall to as little as 7.6 GW by 2035 "as reactors are permanently shut down owing to a range of factors including location near active faults, technology, age and local political resistance."

Another reactor was permanently shut down in 2016 (Ikata-1) in addition to five shut-downs in 2015 and the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors shut down in the aftermath of the March 2011 disaster. Japan also decided last year to permanently shut down the troubled Monju fast breeder reactor. For all the rhetoric about Generation IV fast reactors, and the US$100+ billion invested worldwide, only five such reactors are operating worldwide (three of them experimental) and only one is under construction (in India).

Late last year, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry revised the estimated cost of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, and compensating victims of the disaster, to around US$187 bnillion (175 bn). The latest estimate is four times greater than estimates provided in 2011/12. Indirect costs (e.g. fuel imports, adverse impacts on agriculture and fishing, etc.) are likely to exceed the direct clean-up and compensation costs.

India has 22 operable reactors (6.2 GW capacity) and five under construction. In early 2015, India claimed to have resolved one of the major obstacles to foreign investment by announcing measures to circumvent a liability law which does not completely absolve suppliers of responsibility for accidents. But that hasn't led to any construction starts; indeed the last construction start was in 2011.

Newcomer countries: The WNA claims that "over 45 countries are actively considering embarking upon nuclear power programmes." Codswallop. Only two newcomer countries are actually building reactors - Belarus and the United Arab Emirates. Numerous potential newcomers have deferred or abandoned nuclear plans over the past two years, including Chile, Indonesia, Vietnam and Lithuania (which operated reactors until 2009).

Newcomers will be few and far between. Moreover, some countries - including Germany, Belgium, and Taiwan - are deliberately phasing out nuclear power, while nuclear power faces attritional phase-outs in some other countries (e.g. Switzerland).

The July 2016 World Nuclear Industry Status Report noted that over the past two decades, only two countries started power reactors for the first time (Romania in 1996 and Iran in 2011) while two countries closed theirs (Kazakhstan and Lithuania).

China: With 35 operable power reactors (up from 30 at the start of 2016), 22 under construction, and many more in the pipeline, China remains the only country with significant nuclear expansion plans. There are indications of a slow-down with only two construction starts in 2016. There were 25 construction starts from 2008-2010 and 15 in the six years since.

Yellowcake blues

"It has never been a worse time for uranium miners", said Alexander Molyneux from Paladin Energy in October 2016.

"No major commodity had a worse 2016 than uranium", Bloomberg said in January 2017. "In fact, the element used to make nuclear fuel has had a pretty dismal decade."

Uranium mining ramped up 5-10 years ago in anticipation of the nuclear renaissance that never materialised. Hence a glut, hence the low price. The price has fallen for seven of the past nine years. The spot price fell 41% in 2016, sinking to a 12-year low (US$18 / lb U 3 O 8 in November).

The spot price averaged about $26 last year, and is expected to average just $23 in 2017 according to the median forecast of analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg in December 2016. "I don't think there's a mine profitable at current spot prices", Leigh Curyer from Canadian uranium miner NexGen Energy told Bloomberg.

The long-term contract price fell from $44 in January 2016 to $30 in December. It would need to double to encourage the development of new mines. KPMG noted in December that "uranium producers are expected to reduce production and cut costs through 2017 and 2018, with high cost mines likely to scale back or close. New projects are expected to remain on hold." RBC expects the sector will be oversupplied until around 2024.

The uranium enrichment industry is in much the same place as uranium mining. The spot uranium enrichment price has fallen consistently since the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and it fell by a third between early 2015 and late 2016 to reach an all-time low.

And since cheap, abundant enrichment capacity can substitute for newly mined uranium (either by extracting more uranium-235 during uranium enrichment, or re-enriching tails), this has and will continue to keep uranium prices down.

Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter, where a longer version of this article was originally published.

Also on The Ecologist today: 'Endgame for Cumbria's nuclear nightmare - Moorside or Doomrise?'.

Nuclear Monitor, published 20 times a year, has been publishing deeply researched, often critical articles on all aspects of the nuclear cycle since 1978. A must-read for all those who work on this issue!
Along with many other universities, Northwestern students held a rally last Wednesday in opposition to President Trump's Executive Order on immigration and refugees. As reported by the Daily Northwestern,

Hundreds of students and faculty gathered outside the Multicultural Center on Wednesday afternoon to demonstrate against President Trumps recent immigration action, the culmination of an orchestrated walkout from classes in protest of the executive order. . . .

The #NoMuslimBan Walkout was organized by the Immigrant Justice Project and various other groups on campus in response to Trumps order, a 90-day ban prohibiting citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  from entering the United States. The executive order also blocks refugees from entering the country for 120 days, and it prevents Syrian refugees from entering indefinitely. Walkout organizers collected more than $1,000 in donations to the National Immigrant Justice Center and the Council on American Islamic Relations in Chicago.

When the rally convened, banners on the front of the Multicultural Center read,

#NOMUSLIMBAN WALKOUT

and

NOTHING MATTERS WHEN YOUR IDENTITY IS UNDER ATTACK

Midway through the rally, however, a third banner was unfurled above the others. This was the display on the Multicultural Center for the remainder of the rally:

At the risk of stating the obvious, I have two observations:

First, it is entirely possible to be pro-Israel while deploring Trump's visa restrictions and refugee ban (especially, as in my case, pro-Israel but anti-occupation and anti-Netanyahu). Indeed, one could conceivably be pro-Trump while finding the EO objectionable and offensive.

Moreover, an effective movement in opposition to the EO is going to require the broadest possible coalition. It will not be able to succeed if rally organizers continue to impose ideological barriers to participation.

UPDATE: In response to a comment, let me make it clear that the banner was displayed by rally organizers; it was not a random sign that someone brought to the event. If it had been the latter, I would not have posted the photo.

SECOND UPDATE: An NU assistant dean who attended the rally has this letter in today's Daily Northwestern. Here is the gist:

Two things about this concern me. First, it seems to me that the group who organized the demonstration deceived the Northwestern community. The demonstration was presented as a response to the Trump administrations action, not to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus administration. Second, as a result of what appears to be an act of deception and co-option, an opportunity for a single-minded full-throated condemnation of President Donald Trump and his administration by the full Northwestern community was sadly squandered.

Organizers have to make a choice. Do they want to lead an ideologically pure movement, or do they want to organize a politically effective one?
With spring just around the corner, a fresh start is at the forefront of many peoples minds. This February, Birminghams NEC will welcome thousands of aspiring business owners who are looking for a change of direction to The National Franchise Exhibition.

The event will showcase a wide variety of national franchise opportunities alongside essential expert advice, equipping entrepreneurs with all the necessary tools to build and sustain a successful business.

Globally recognised companies, including McDonalds, Platinum Property Partners, Dream Doors and Esquires Coffee, will be on hand to offer attendees an insight into what it means to be part of a top franchise brand.

An exclusive partnership with the British Franchise Association ensures that all exhibiting franchises have proven that they operate a viable and ethical business model, allowing visitors to explore their options with confidence.

The franchise industry is testament to the fact that age is just a number, with research indicating that the average age of new franchisees is 41 years old. Would-be entrepreneurs at any stage of life should give serious consideration to the benefits a proven business model has to offer.

At last years event, visitor Greg De Saulles commented: At the ripe old age of 45 and after 10 years working in the financial services sector, I decided to make a career change and set up my own business. Its something Ive always wanted to do, but havent had the capital or opportunity to explore it in the past. Because Im new to franchising, I wanted to come to a show that was bfa-approved and be able to speak to independent advisors and experts.

With franchises to suit all budgets and interests exhibiting at the event, The National Franchise Exhibition is unmissable for anyone serious about making the dream of becoming their own boss a reality.

Anytime Fitness, Entrepreneur Magazines Global Number One Franchise 2016, is sponsoring the event for the third consecutive year in support of their ambitious growth plans. The global gym company now operates over 110 franchised clubs across the UK and will be looking for enthusiastic potential franchisees at the event to join the booming fitness market.

Fast-food giant McDonalds are on the look-out for exceptional new business partners and will be hosting McDonalds Franchisee Recruitment Insight Sessions on both days of the exhibition. These give visitors privileged access to a selection of McDonalds recruitment decision-makers to uncover exactly what it takes to be part of the world-class franchise.

Throughout the event, attendees will also have access to a goldmine of free advice from industry professionals. An extensive programme of seminars loaded with expert guidance about investing in a franchise, as well as franchising an existing business, will ensure that visitors leave the event with a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of franchising. Free one-to-one sessions are also available in the finance and careers clinics, and experienced advisors from Ashtons Franchise Consulting will be on hand to give potential franchisors high-quality commercial insights.

For those keen to keep on top of the latest business trends, the Growing Your Own Business Conference will return to the exhibition to equip entrepreneurs with start-up and business growth strategies. Inspirational keynote speakers, including Angela Enright, successful businesswoman and founder of online childrens shoe store Huntleys Shoes, will share their personal stories and the secrets to their success.

Adrian Goodsell, Franchise Sales Director at Venture Marketing Group, organisers of The Franchise Exhibitions, comments: Investing in a franchise or franchising your business is a big step. We offer visitors the opportunity to meet face-to-face with top brands, obtain essential knowledge and see how others have made a success from franchising, all under one roof, to help them make an informed decision about their future.

To see how you can advance your career in franchising, book free tickets to The National Franchise Exhibition. Visit FranchiseTickets.co.uk.

For the latest news and updates about The National Franchise Exhibition, follow @UKFranchising on Twitter and join in the conversation. On other platforms, please join The Franchise Exhibitions Group on LinkedIn and like the FranchiseInfo page on Facebook.

1 bfa NatWest Survey 2015 2 The 2016 Franchise 500

Published: 25 September 2015

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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 ...
Republican candidates make final campaign pitch in Burlington

Reynolds, Grassley, Miller-Meeks, and other Iowa Republicans made their final pitch to supporters during a campaign stop in Burlington on Friday.
NORWALK  The Board of Educations hefty plans to construct a new school and expand and renovate several others would be dramatically pared down if the decision rested solely on Norwalk Director of Finance Robert Barron.

In his capital budget recommendation for the next five years released late Wednesday, Barron included funding to cover only 41.69 percent of the Board of Educations total $245.5 million plans.

Under Barrons recommendation, the construction of a new K-8 building for Columbus Magnet School on the Nathaniel Ely School campus would be fully funded.

The expansion and renovation-as-new to transform Ponus Ridge Middle School into a pre-K-8 STEM magnet school would be partially funded.

Plans to renovate-as-new the current Columbus Magnet School building would not be funded. Jefferson Magnet School renovations would also go unfunded.

My recommendations are based on the department priority put within the debt capacity of the city, Barron said Thursday of his budgetary decisions.

The Norwalk Board of Education's facilities plans have been in the works for well over a year as the district looks to meet the needs of its growing enrollment and update its aging buildings.

The board has acted swiftly to push the plans forward in the past several months as the district runs roughly 750 seats short, that figures is expected to grow to over 1,000 by 2025 and nearly 400 kids are stationed in 15 portable trailers that are nearing the end of their designed lifespan. Various aging school buildings were also deemed in need of renovations.

School district officials seemed off put by Barrons recommendation.

Were disappointed in these recommendations, as the amount proposed does not fully fund the plan that the Board of Ed has approved, said Brenda Wilcox Williams, spokeswoman for Norwalk Public Schools. The School Facilities Plan is an integrated plan that relies on the completion of all four projects to catch up to our growing student population.

Mike Barbis, Board of Education member and chair of its Facilities Committee, shared a similar thought.

We all voted as one package, Barbis said It's not pieces to be taken apart. Its all interlinked.

The bulk of the schools hefty capital budget plan  approved by the Board of Education in January  amounts to $70.91 million and would go toward the Ponus Ridge Middle School project. Barrons recommendation included $44.82 million of that total to pay for the full expansion of the school, with a downgrade in the type of renovation it receives from from as new to accomodate STEM programming.

Barrons recommendation fully funded the roughly $45.88 million needed to construct a K-8 school building at the former Nathaniel Ely School campus.

Another $36.61 million toward renovating the current Columbus Magnet School building to turn it into a K-5 International Baccalaureate Early Years Programme magnet school went unfunded in Barrons recommendation.

Roughly $32.06 million to go toward the renovation of Jefferson Science Magnet School, which would subsequently lose its temporary trailers and magnet-school status and become a neighborhood school, also went completely unfunded in Barrons recommendation.

I dont understand how the finance directors recommendation could just cancel the renovations at the old Columbus (Concord Street) and Jefferson Schools, Barbis said. Those buildings are both in really bad shape.

Williams said the school district was particularly concerned that we may not be able to relieve overcrowding and the use of portable classrooms with the removal of Jefferson from the budget.

An additional $60 million was requested by the board to cover everything from curriculum materials and textbooks to paving and concrete for the new, expanded or renovated school sites. Barrons recommendation covered merely $11.63 million of that total.

Cuts to those funds, as outlined in Barrons recommendation, include eliminating $50,000 for electrical assessment work at Fox Run and Cranbury elementary schools and $150,000 proposed for cafeteria renovations at Rowayton Elementary School. Parents and community members voiced strong support for those budget items at the Planning Commissions Wednesday evening Capital Budget public hearing.

It is disturbing that the finance director is making these recommendations but has yet to attend one presentation of the Facilities Master Plan by the Board of Education, Barbis said. How did he determine his recommendations? Does he not understand the part about our enrollment growth? Does he not understand the number of kids in South Norwalk being bused around the city to their detriment?

Superintendent of Schools Steven Adamowski and Tom Hamilton are expected to meet with Mayor Harry Rilling to discuss the implication of the recommendations, Williams said. The Facilities Committee of the Board of Education will be also be meeting to discuss next steps.

The citys Planning Commission will makes its recommendations on the school districts Capital Budget Feb. 23. That will be passed on to the mayor by March 5, per city charter, who will then make his recommendation to the Board of Estimate and Taxation by March 15. Finally, that board will pass its recommendation to the Common Council by April 1, which must approve a final capital budget by April 15.

KSchultz@thehour.com; 203- 354-1049; @kevinedschultz
WESTPORT  The First Selectman is speaking out with concern over a possible new route for Amtrak through town.

I wanted to be on record, First Selectman Jim Marpe said at the Jan. 25 meeting of the Board of Selectmen. The projects realization may be decades away, but, nevertheless, I believe that the Federal Railroad Administration needs to hear from the communities that will be affected even now.

The plan, NEC Future, could speed up some Northeast Corridor service, but has sparked concern over the potential route through Connecticut.

Marpe sent a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration dated Dec. 28 which he presented to the selectmen at the January meeting. The Federal Railroad Administrations report, Tier I Final Environmental Impact Statement, shows new routes for the Northeast that, in some places, diverge from existing rails.

As the plans unfold, Marpe hopes officials will have in mind that Westport would harbor at minimum extreme concern, if not strong objection to the route as seemingly mapped.

While he supports enhancing the regions rail system, Marpe wrote in his letter, he is concerned the high-speed route is not along Westport and area towns existing tracks, potentially impacting coastal resources, property owners and the Saugatuck neighborhood.

Moreover, it appears that the proposed additional tracks (either along an embankment or aerial structures) will pass through the Saugatuck area of Westport, but not along existing railroad rights-of-way, Marpe wrote to the plans program manager. Westports Saugatuck area is only now beginning to enjoy a full revitalization more than 50 years after the construction of I-95 split this unique and historic area in half.

He continued by calling on the plan to avoid a similar disastrous impact and work to maintain and enhance the quality of life in this distinctive neighborhood.

Marpe said in an interview he is pleased the route would still pass through Fairfield County, but is concerned the potential route could have a dramatic impact on the Saugatuck neighborhood, creating another barrier for people to move to the area and possibly adding additional congestion. The town is investigating a plan to make the neighborhood more pedestrian friendly and continue its revival, under the Saugatuck Transit Oriented Development Master Plan Steering Committee established last fall.

A major rail line cutting through the area would undo a lot of efforts that have already been made and that will continue to be made to make that a thriving and even more accessible area for the community, he said.

His concern for coastal resources, referenced in the letter, is for the potential environmental impacts, in particular, the effects on the water table and watershed of the Saugatuck River and nearby Long Island Sound from a major rail structure.

Marpe is working with other local leaders in the Western Connecticut Council of Governments to encourage a public hearing on NEC Future in Fairfield County, hoping Westport residents could have a convenient venue to voice concerns and ask questions of federal officials in the near future.

NEC Futures plans claim the new rails would shave time off Boston to New York and New York to Washington, D.C., trips, among other benefits.
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The mother of a former Serbian Playboy model, Slobodanka Tosic, 30, claims that her daughter is innocent and was framed in the case of a Bosnian mobster who survived an attempted murder.

According to its online database, Interpol is currently searching for the model, but her mother, Jadranka, has addressed the media to explain that Tosic merely left Bosnia because she had "lost confidence" in its justice system.

Slobodanka Tosic, 30, was found guilty of luring her then-boyfriend, mafia boss Djorde Zdrale, to a failed assassination attempt by his rival, Darko Elez in 2006.

Tosic, who graced the cover of the magazine in 2008, was said to have set up a date with Zdrale to lead him to Elez's crime syndicate, where she allegedly signaled a gunman to open fire.

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She was sentenced on charges of accomplice to murder, The Washington Times reported.

Now she's reportedly fled from house arrest, but her mother told the DailyMail that Tosic is innocent.

"She was allowed to move within eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina" Jadranka told that UK outlet, while she was in the house that once imprisoned Tosic. "When they wrongly accused her, we knew she needed to move to Serbia to protect herself. She is a great girl and her youth was destroyed by this case. She is not hiding but she is tired all of this. She feels helpless."

Jadranka also said her daughter was framed.

"There is no way she will surrender. No surrender!" Jadranka said. "Slobodanka will not return to Bosnia."

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This is not the first time that police have had to search for Tosic. In 2014, she fled to Croatia and was extradited back to the country.

Her Sarajevo-based lawyer Vlado Adamovic said his client is hiding at an undisclosed address in Serbia.

"She was not the part of a gang. Those people knew her because she was popular, but she was not the part of a gang. She is not a criminal," her furious mother told MailOnline.

"She is a victim of this process. How come they do not know who shot [Zdrale] but they know my daughter was helping? Isn't that suspicious? She was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for helping to organize a murder attempt but the court does not even know who the shooter was."
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NORWALK  When Naramake Elementary School students Alexandra and Gabriel Duque first learned late last year about the conflict in Syria, they felt compelled to act.

Though only in the fourth and third grades, respectively, the images and descriptions of the conditions of the Syrian people  particularly children  the two students saw and heard on the news and in their Scholastic Weekly Readers at school led them to search for ways they could take action locally.

They were so sad to hear about what was going on with the children in Syria, that they were desperate to help, said the Duques mom, Cherie Duque, who is also a third grade teacher at Naramake.

So, the students came up with an idea to raise money for the kids in Syria. They met with Naramake Principal Jane Wilkins to pitch the idea and were approved.

They soon connected with Courtney Nields at Save the Children in Fairfield who runs the emergency relief operations and began a school-wide fundraiser from Jan. 20 through Feb. 11.

The kids, along with their friend Leigha Fudella, made signs to advertise the fundraiser and put them up all around school. They went to every classroom to announce the start of their fundraiser and made weekly announcements to remind students.

Across town at Roton Middle School, students in Mark Jacksons seventh-grade enrichment class unknowingly embarked on the very same endeavor.

As the class delved into current events late last year, depictions of the Syrian conflict left a lasting impression on many of the students.

We saw children who didnt have food or water, said Christine Costin, 12. They were fighting to get to trucks of food. They didnt have bedrooms and stuff it was destroyed.

We learned ... we take things for granted, said Madeline Oliva, 12. When we saw what happened over in Syria we felt like we needed to do something.

Its really, really bad there, said Lynaria Brown, 12. They dont have what we have here They are injured and in hospitals and dont have a lot of money

So the class decided to start a fundraiser for Save the Children as well.

After getting permission from Roton Principal Joseph Vellucci, the students collected money at lunch and made announcements. They also had a bake sale and handed out flyers and took them home. Jackson advertised the fundraiser online.

The whole point of this fundraiser was to help the children over there, Jackson said.

The two fundraisers come at an interesting time in U.S. politics. President Donald Trump recently signed a controversial executive order banning people from seven countries  including Syrian refugees  from coming to the U.S.

Jackson said that is something the class hasnt focused on.

I try not to pay attention to that, Jackson said. The kids havent asked about it too much.

At Naramake, classroom teachers are holding money until the fundraiser ends Feb. 11. Duque will then give a final count and present the money to Save the Children. So far she estimates Naramake has collected about $500.

Rotons fundraiser ended Friday with a total sum of $1,000 collected.

Jacksons student Lucy Grillo, 12, said the fundraiser took a group effort.

We really needed the help of all of our classmates and Mr. Jackson, Grillo said. It would have been a lot more difficult to find ways to raise money.

She and other Roton students, such as Samantha Zeller, 13, said they learned a lot about teamwork in the process.

We learned about social skills such as presenting and group work through this, along with real-world problems that are going on.

KSchultz@thehour.com; 203- 354-1049; @kevinedschultz
A recent report has Aetna considering moving as many as 1,600 of its 4,000 workers to Boston requiring 400,000 square feet of office space.

Increasingly after GE and Bristol-Myers Squibb it looks like Connecticuts major firms are leaving high-tax, high-cost Connecticut. Will the Governor offer a bribe/subsidy to have Aetna stay?
WILTON  Despite recent reforms, police agencies across the state are still making it difficult for the public to obtain basic, legally required information regarding police misconduct complaint forms and processes, according to a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut.

Under a 2014 state law, all police agencies in the state, including municipal departments, state police troops, and special agencies such as university departments, are required to adopt or exceed a model complaint policy created by the Police Officer Standards and Training Council.

This requires all police agencies to make their complaint policies publicly available on their websites and at municipal buildings separate from the departments themselves, as well as accept all complaints, including those submitted anonymously, online, by mail, over the phone, or by a third party.

During community forums hosted throughout the state by ACLU-CT, however, members of the public described a chilling disregard for these rules among some police agencies, explained Meghan Smith, one of the reports coauthors.

These requirements are not simply suggestions for police agencies to take or leave. They are critically important for building community trust in police, and they carry the weight of the law, wrote Smith in the study.

People from across the state expressed concern for notarization requirements, in-person and in-station filing requirements and lack of access to complaint forms outside of police stations.

In the resulting October 2016 study, the ACLU-CT found that there are nearly one million people living in municipalities around the state where police departments were found to be non-compliant with state compliant law or policy.

Furthermore, an examination of 102 police agency websites found that 40 had failed to clearly post their complaint policies and/or complaint forms online.

In a followup telephone survey of 60 police agencies, they also found that 42 percent contradicted state law by suggesting that they did not make complaint policies fully available to the public. Nearly one-third stated or implied that they would not accept anonymous complaints.

While anonymous complaints may not be fully heeded in some parts of Connecticut, Capt. John Lynch of the Wilton Police Department stressed the importance of residents complaints about police misconduct, whether anonymous or not.

We take every tip, even if it is hearsay from someone else, and we look into it, Lynch said. We are accountable to our community and we want to the best job that we can for them.

Where most local police department websites tend to bury their civilian complaint links beneath other links on their homepages, and others dont even advertise the tab on their homepage at all, Wiltons complaint submission link cant be missed, with its boldfaced text that is a few points larger than all surrounding text.

In 2016, Lynch said that the Wilton Police Department received 10 citizen complaints last year. While most complaints come to nothing, Lynch said that some have led to procedural changes and officer discipline in the past.

It helps us identify if officers need training in certain areas or if changes need to be made, so its a really helpful tool for us. And it just helps provide the feeling of transparency and accountability to the public, Lynch said.

For Norwalk, the study shined a light on some policies that needed some slight amendments.

The study found that Norwalk was a part of the 30 percent of agencies statewide that indicated that their complaint forms needed to be turned in in-person.

Since the study was conducted, Norwalk police have made police complaint forms readily available on their website, and these forms can now be transmitted via email or in letter. However, these avenues of complaint still create paper trails that prevent complainants from remaining anonymous.

Lt. Terry Blake, a Norwalk police spokesman, said that the issue with anonymous complaints is trying to verify the information in them. Without a name to the complaint, police have a hard time following up.

We do request that an individual does come down and speak to a supervisor, but that is most certainly not a requirement. ... As a matter of policy, we would certainly contact the complainant and interview them to find out what exactly happened, Blake said.

To ensure that departments take the states mandate seriously, the ACLU-CT report also recommended that the state institute punishments for departments that dont comply.

Since, as the study states, the police agencies widespread lack of compliance with existing complaint law and policy only underscores that police cannot consistently police themselves in this area, the ACLU-CT recommends that the state should withhold state funds from departments that fail to comply.

Other suggestions include establishing an improved universal statewide complaint policy, requiring law enforcement agencies to track and public report complaint data

One of the goals of this report was to improve transparency and accessibility, Smith said. Were glad that some departments have used this as a learning opportunity to post their policies online and to make their complaint processes more accessible for people.

ptomlinson@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1046; @Tomlinson_PE
WILTON  Teen dating violence can take the form of name calling, repeated texting, or punching and kicking.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines teen dating violence as any physical, sexual, psychological, or emotional violence experienced within a dating relationship between a current or former dating partner, whether in person or electronically.

CDC found that, among high school students who date, two in 10 females and one in 10 males experience physical or sexual dating violence  which is likely to last until adulthood.

In recognition of Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, the Wilton Domestic Violence Task Force and a coalition of local organizations are sponsoring a full day of programs on Wednesday, Feb. 15, to educate and raise awareness about the issue.

As the chairperson of the task force and as a mother of three daughters, Im concerned about the issue of dating violence in general, McNamara said. What we really want is to empower...

At Wilton High School, students will participate in an activity period during the school day with programs tailored to each grade, focusing on how to identify unhealthy relationships, recognize early warning signs and help peers at risk.

Later that evening, the task force  in conjunction with Teen PeaceWorks, Wilton High School PTSA, Wilton Library and Wilton Youth Council  will present Dont Be Prey, Be Empowered at 7 p.m. in the Brubeck Room at Wilton Library.

This program includes a free showing of the award-winning film, The Hunting Ground, which focuses on the incidence of sexual assaults on college campuses across the nation.

Just this past fall, the task force was made aware that a former Wilton High School student was raped at a prestigious college, McNamara said.

Im really disheartened by the victim blaming that goes on, she said. I think that we need to keep speaking about this until theres some sort of social shift and awareness about victim blaming instead of looking to identify or protect the assailants.

The condensed, 45-minute version is appropriate for middle and high school students and will be followed by a panel discussion regarding consent, reporting and resources.

Four representatives from the Domestic Violence Crisis Center, The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education, the Womens Center in Danbury and the Wilton Police Department will lead the discussion, including task force member Lt. Robert Cipolla.

Cipolla will speak to the importance of reporting, as domestic violence, in general, is an underreported crime, he said.

Sometimes its difficult as a teenager to understand what a healthy relationship is, Cipolla said. And thats why were putting on events like what were doing on February 15, to educate and raise that awareness.

To register for the documentary viewing, visit www.wiltonlibrary.org/events/ or call 203-762-6334.

SKim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044; @stephaniehnkim
WASHINGTON  It is the gist of much Neil Gorsuch coverage that he is a brilliant jurist with one large weakness: being firmly anti-choice. Exhibit A is his book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, in which he scandalously defends the idea that all human beings are intrinsically valuable.

The intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong, he continues, along the same shocking lines.

Gorsuchs detractors see in such statements an existential threat to legal abortion in the United States  though nowhere in the book does the judge define human life to include developing life in the womb.

Gorsuchs allies will defend him by saying that the author of the book has no relationship to the judge who punches in at the text-parsing factory. The work of an originalist and textualist is never undone. It consists mainly of consulting the dictionary to find the plain meaning of words, not applying the principles of moral philosophy. It would not matter if Gorsuch were a utilitarian or a eugenicist; his only duty is to the obvious meaning of laws written by others.

The argument is both useful and absurd. Of course the most basic moral beliefs of a judge matter, in the sense that moral convictions (and upbringing and experience) determine a worldview that none of us can escape. All of us make ethical judgments on the purposes of law and morality that pervade our approach to both.

The largest changes of our time  with massive legal consequences  have been in the realm of moral ideas. Legal liberals quote Justice Anthony Kennedy more like scripture than precedent: At the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

The liberalism of Eleanor Roosevelt  a commitment to universal human rights  has largely been replaced by Kennedys elevation of personal autonomy. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which Roosevelt helped shape) honored the inherent dignity and ... the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family. In the aftermath of World War II, her emphasis was on defending the vulnerable. Kennedys version of liberty is the right of competent adults  by definition, the strongest members of the human family  to define and pursue their own universal mystery.

Is there really no legal consequence in choosing between these two liberal visions of the good? Gorsuchs fine book is a sustained explanation of how and why our most basic conceptions of liberty matter so much. A legal theory that elevates personal choice, even in matters of life and death, is claiming a great deal  even more than many of its advocates wish to admit. If a suffering cancer patient can rightfully ask a doctor to end his or her life, why not a depressed 21-year-old? Or a widow in despair? If autonomy is the rule, there can be no limit, save individual will.

On the other hand, if only the hopelessly ill are allowed to receive a doctors help in killing themselves, a utilitarian social message is unavoidably sent. The general right to life, in this view, is overridden only in cases where people become burdens on themselves and others. How does this not become a social message to the ill and infirm they have a duty to depart? This role also transforms the medical community  making it the means by which a society disposes of life no longer worth living.

There are, as Gorsuch notes, unbelievably difficult choices in the shadow world between life and death. This requires both sensitivity and legal space. But the combination of a personal ethic of absolute autonomy and a social ethic of utilitarianism leads toward some scary territory. The right to die quickly becomes a social duty. And people who should be singled out for particular, loving care are encouraged to become instruments of their own death, with quick and convenient help. This is not a slippery slope but a logical consequence.

There should be one bright, legal and social line here: that, as Gorsuch wrote, all human beings are intrinsically valuable, including those who have lost, or never gained, the ability to determine their own concept of existence.

I want a Supreme Court nominee for whom the promises of the Declaration of Independence are the moral and legal context for reading the Constitution. A nominee who believes  even when all human care fails  that Americas basic law still stands for the weak and vulnerable. There is no greater good.

Michael Gersons email address is michaelgerson@washpost.com. (c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group
HS Football: North Penn upsets Pennsbury in instant playoff classic

With the game on the line, North Penn coach Dick Beck opted to go for the win with a two-point conversion attempt against Pennsbury.
This week on Segue on WSIE 88.7 FM, Greg Budzban, PhD, dean of the Southern Illinois University Edwardsville College of Arts and Sciences (CAS), sits down with two professors from the College of Arts and Sciences to discuss their exciting new project engaging East St. Louis students in environmental research in their own community.

Danielle Lee, PhD, visiting assistant professor in biological sciences, and Ben Greenfield, PhD, assistant professor in environmental sciences, spotlight their proposed project for a targeted funding initiative that would engage students within the TRIO Upward Bound programs in SIUEs East St. Louis Center in environmental research within their own community.

Through her research, Lee seeks to discover how ecology and evolutionary components contribute to the behavior of animals. While studying the African giant pouch rat, Lee became fascinated with techniques used to engage people informally in science education. She worked with the Department of Conservation within Missouris state parks and soon enough, she began sharing her love for urban ecology with the public.

As an environmental health scientist whose work has taken him across the country to study various environmental factors including soil analysis, drinking water quality and air pollution, Greenfield is intrigued by how the environment that people encounter affects their health.

Environmental education is an exciting way to learn about educating people while they are outside, Greenfield says. The world out there has all kinds of phenomena. You look in the soil and see different bugs or look at the ponds and see fish or other little critters. All kinds of things are out there, and it is a very interesting template in which people can learn both about science and about the environment.

It provides an amount of engagement and motivation, because it becomes real to students, Budzban says. It affects you personally. There is a powerful impact to students when they see that it can affect both themselves and their community.

Getting students interested and involved in environmental sciences can lead to a world of fantastic opportunities, Greenfield believes.

Jobs as environmental outreach coordinators, land use managers and conservation biologists have a lot of benefits, he says.

In the duos project, the researchers will engage students from the East St. Louis area in environmental investigations in their own backyard.

These students are already amazing observers, Lee says. They are experts of the ecosystem in their neighborhood. We will start by empowering them with that information and encourage them to start jotting down their observations, questions and what they plan to do.

Lee hopes that with her own insight into mammology, the students could perhaps research and capture small animals to record what species live in their neighborhood. Depending on how many they catch, they plan to observe their behavior.

More than anything, Lee says, this is an opportunity for the students to truly see science come alive. Too many students in classrooms are used to sitting down and hearing the history of other peoples discoveries. This is their opportunity to make their own discoveries.

Urban developments are commonly misconstrued as ecological deserts when it comes to studying wildlife. Lee and Greenfield aim to dispel and dismantle that myth, and actively engage students in their own native environments.

East St. Louis has a long history in terms of various types of economic change and environmental justice concerns, Greenfield says. From an ecosystem perspective, this might represent a benefit. We might find some very interesting and exciting surprises.

Theres a tradition in environmental health research called community-based participatory research. This is the idea that the community members are actually the most knowledgeable about what is relevant and important to study in their particular area based on their own concerns. These students have spent most of their lives in East St. Louis, and probably have ideas about what matters to them in their environment and what their concerns are.

The team hopes to introduce the students to various methods of environmental testing during their project, including water-testing kits, soil testing instruments and more. From their research, they hope to be able to create a standardized template that will encourage other citizen scientists to get out in their own community and do some environmental science projects of their own, ultimately with a goal of sharing their data with others.

Catch this episode of Segue at 9 a.m. this Sunday by tuning in to WSIE 88.7 FM.

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Linkedin Azis Anwar Fachrudin (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Over the last few months, two cases involving three accusations have implicated Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab. One relates to a statement he made about Pancasila, which led to Sukarnos daughter Sukmawati accusing him of insulting the state symbol.

Another pertains to his denigrating remark about the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for which he is accused by the Indonesian Catholic Students Association (PMKRI) of insulting christianity and by the Students Peace Institute of hate speech.

The number of cases can be counted as three, actually, by adding his comment of more than a year ago when he criticized a Sundanese greeting. Knowing about the prosecution regarding these cases, I believe there are many who share my mixed, ambivalent feelings. On the one hand is a realization that the law on blasphemy is problematic, so that it should not be used and it should be repealed.

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Linkedin IGB. Dharma Agastia (The Jakarta Post) Singapore  Fri, February 3, 2017 08:24 2101 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0be0b212 3 Opinion communism-revival,communist,communist-purge Free

A specter is haunting Indonesia  the specter of communism. Everyones freaking out about it, despite the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) having been banned for almost 50 years now.

The beginning line of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engles' Communist Manifesto bears a striking resemblance to Indonesias current socio-political situation, in which communism has once again been resurrected as the surreptitious bogeyman aiming to usurp the throne of todays government.

The recent surge of communist-phobia can be traced to the 2014 presidential election. In a libelous pamphlet entitled Obor Rakyat, Jokowi was framed as a member of the PKI. Since then, labeling someone as antek PKI (related to the PKI), such as Kivlan Zens accusation toward Budiman Sudjatmiko and Benedict Anderson, has become more common.

This new-found phobia has had multiple agencies starting witch hunts to find alleged symbols of a potential communist resurrection. The Indonesian Military (TNI) has cracked down on people selling and wearing T-shirts bearing the hammer-and-sickle logo. Bank Indonesia had to issue a clarification regarding its signature rectoverso logo on bank notes, which some parties claimed was similar to the communist logo (surely Marx would be turning in his grave).

Either in jest or seriousness, an Islamic cleric tweeted about the Alexis Hotel, claiming that its exterior facade could be read as PKI. Even the military continues to push the narrative that the PKI still exists and represents a latent threat to the country, which is used to justify the controversial bela negara program and TNI commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyos proxy war agenda.

How did communist-phobia spread?

One interesting aspect to consider in the spread of this communist-phobia is the role of the marketplace of ideas in propelling its spread. The egalitarian nature of the internet has allowed people from all walks of life to participate in discussing and spreading information.

This allows free debate of ideas, with equal exposure to both sides of the argument.

In the marketplace of ideas, it is expected that equal exposure to debate on communism, the PKI and its role in Indonesian socio-political history will foster greater understanding in the layperson. However, as Cass Sunstein in On Rumors (2014) argued, the marketplace does not always work because we, as humans, have a tendency to give in to biases and groupthink, which are amplified on social media. A person who has previously held a belief (e.g. Communism is bad) will tend to group with those who share similar beliefs and be more defensive when presented with an opposing opinion. This is what Sunstein calls polarization. Sunstein also argues that informational cascades, which are easily formed through social media, encourage people to believe in things that the crowd already believes in.

As Nazi leader Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.

One of the flaws of the marketplace is that often the person with the loudest voice is more listened to than the person with the most informed voice.

Communist-phobia is propagated by iconic figures who are influential with their followers. Their followers then participate in the information cascade through spreading and sharing content from the figure. Unfortunately, there arent enough counter-narratives that are capable of reaching an equal audience. This is further exacerbated by the formation of echo chambers facilitated by the block or mute button. Once someone becomes entrenched, it would require tremendous force to dislodge them. In the process, we may end up further galvanizing their beliefs.

How do we manage communist-phobia?

A practical measure would be to counter the narrative through the mechanisms of the marketplace of ideas. If there is one loud voice spreading communist-phobia, there should be an equally loud voice debunking communist-phobia. While this may not have an immediate effect, it is expected to gradually build up into a larger force that could bring equilibrium to the marketplace. In other words, it is an endless battle of words. We are starting to see such resistance in the United States, with alternative Twitter accounts being set up to counter President Donald Trumps denial of science.

At the systemic level, however, I risk restating an oft-repeated solution: education. That being said, it is the only method that excels in the long run if we were to fully equip citizens with the faculties needed to separate fact from fiction. It is especially important in this post-truth world that we live in right now, where alternative facts exist and biases are more prevalent in guiding discussion.

A critical approach to history is desperately needed. Our school textbooks need to be rewritten not to reflect old biases and New Order narratives. Growing up in Indonesia, I was fed constantly with the idea that the PKI was evil and atrocious. It was not until I was exposed to critical interpretations of Indonesian history that I began to question the official version presented to me as a child. Communism is that monster in the closet that we feared as children because we didnt know its true nature.

There is no easy and fool-proof way to combat communist-phobia. It requires a concerted and concentrated effort on all parts of the country. We need not be worried of the latent danger of communism; we should be more wary of parties trying to conjure a bogeyman to divert our attention from their ulterior intentions.

***

The writer is a postgraduate student at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Singapore, majoring in strategic studies. He is an alumnus of President University. His research interests are Indonesias defense and security policy, maritime security, civil-military relations and future warfare. He can be reached on Linkedin, email, or on his blog, Scribbles from the Ivory Tower.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Eugenie Merieau (The Conversation)  Fri, February 3, 2017

Since the death of King Bhumibol on October 13 2016, his son King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun or Rama X has disregarded the provisions of the Thai constitution and its conventions to an extent unprecedented in the modern history of the nation.

First, he declined to accede to the throne immediately at the death of his father, asking for some time to grieve. As a result, Thailand had no king for 47 days.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the military dictator who seized power in a coup in 2014, ruled by decree using article 44 of the 2014 interim constitution granting him all legislative, executive and judicial power.

Vajiralongkorn has also refused to put into effect the new constitution adopted by referendum on August 7 2016. It replaces the 2014 interim constitution granting all powers to the head of the military.

This move might have been welcomed by pro-democracy supporters, who rejected the draft as empowering the army and the constitutional court at the expense of the rights of the Thai people. But the articles the king didnt like do not, in the words of the prime minister, involve peoples rights and freedom at all, rather they are about His Majestys authority.

The new king has interfered in the constitution-making process to demand changes aimed at expanding his own powers in three key areas.

First, he insisted on reforming the provisions on regency to allow him to spend time abroad without appointing a regent to represent him pro tempore (in his absence). This would allow him to reign from Munich in Germany, where hes been living for the last couple of years.

The change was approved on January 13 by the junta-appointed National Legislative Assembly in an unanimous vote.

Second, he asked to end the need for a countersignature on all royal acts. Details are not yet known but this means that the king alone will be able  in specific matters  to sign executive orders and decrees. The move is reminiscent of absolute monarchy, and a ten-member panel has been appointed to make the requested change.

Finally, Vajiralongkorn wants to recover royal crisis powers that the current constitutional draft had transferred away from the king to the constitutional court (article five). The junta-appointed officials who drafted the 2016 constitution to allow this transfer did so because they feared the erratic and improper use of nominal powers granted by the constitution by the new king. These include executive and legislative veto powers and the right to dissolve the legislative assembly.

It is also highly likely that they feared that the use of the crisis powers themselves would lead to further crises. Indeed, crisis powers as defined in article five are indefinite and uncircumscribed; they are founded on customary law, a reasonable interpretation of which is the only limit to the scope of powers granted to solve a crisis.

They were exercised rarely and with caution by King Bhumibol during his 70-year reign, allowing the monarch to build his own reputation through major political crises.

In 1973, 1976, and 1992, he put an end to confrontations between protesters and security forces and appointed prime ministers of his choice. But nothing suggested  at the time of the drafting of the 2016 constitution  that the new king would act as carefully as his father had in the past.

For these reasons, the constitutional court was endowed with general powers to manage crises instead of the king. Now the king wants these powers back, most likely through the addition of privy councillors to the crisis committee, so that they can participate in the selection of a neutral non-elected prime minister in case the crisis procedure is triggered.

By directly requesting specific articles of the constitution to be removed or modified - or both  and going way beyond his constitutional role, King Rama X shows that the fears that had guided the drafting of the 2016 constitution were well founded.

Royal meddling in the constitution

In Thailand, constitution-drafting has always been a negotiating process involving the king. But this process is hidden behind a facade of consensus, as Thai constitutions are said in their preambles to have been benevolently granted by the King to the Thai people.

In 1951, one of the first actions of the young Bhumibol to reassert the role of the monarchy against a rising military was to refuse royal assent to the new constitution and send his recommendations to the prime minister on the drafting of a new document. In 1974, he even demanded a revision of the constitution after its promulgation. Both requests were acceded to.

Its natural that someone who has a legislative or constitutional veto is involved, albeit secretly, in the legislative or constitutional decision-making process. And when it remains secret  as it was under King Bhumipol  the king wears the clothes of constitutional monarchy. But Thailand has almost never been a functioning constitutional monarchy as most of its political history is that of military rule.

After the promulgation of the 1997 constitution, the country appeared to have finally become a perfect constitutional monarchy. All acts of the monarch were to be countersigned by the prime minister; legislative veto was never used (or so it seemed); the judiciary showed strong independence; and the army was seemingly under civilian control.

The Thai monarch was then seen as little more powerful than the British queen, mainly due to informal characteristics, such as his personal charisma. The only apparent difference with the British parliamentary monarchy was the existence of a powerful privy council whose access was denied to cabinet members and the prime minister.

But if Rama Xs demand that his royal acts be valid without a countersignature by the prime minister, a minister or the president of parliament is met, the Thai constitutional framework will have nothing left in common with constitutional monarchy or the Westminster model. The new king will be able to reign and govern through his personal privy council.

As Vajiralongkorn transforms the nominal powers granted by the constitution into real powers to be exercised at his own discretion - something article five was precisely designed to avert - a restoration of a hybrid form of monarchical rule is now underway in the Land of Smiles.

Eugenie Merieau, Lecturer, Sciences Po  USPC

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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Linkedin Lurong Chen (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017 13:24 2101 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0be19691 3 Opinion US,Asia-Pacific-region,global-economy,TPP,Trans-Pacific-Partnership Free

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is stranded, but the United States pivot to Asia is not. For the foreseeable future, the AsiaPacific relationship will remain an American foreign policy priority. Its abandonment of the TPP is more likely to be a signal that the US will seek better trade deals, than a lightsout for its involvement in Asia. The US will stay here, but is likely to ask for a higher appearance fee.

The US and Asia depend on each other. On the one side, Asia is a large market for the US. It will make much more sense for the US to create jobs and stimulate economic growth through strengthening economic ties with Asia than to move in the opposite direction, towards trade protectionism or isolationism. Moreover, the US also needs Asia to support its leadership in global governance.

On the other side, Asias development needs cooperation with the US. This is not only because of the importance of Americas advanced technology and its military, political and economic power.

More importantly, it is evident that Americas role as an external auditor or even a mentor in promoting other countries domestic market reform has greatly contributed to the regions transition and facilitated Asias integration into the global economy.

Even for China, it was the enhancement of Sino-US relations that helped Chinese economic reforms and open-door policy look promising to the world. Similar motivations may have driven countries like Vietnam and Malaysia to join the TPP.

The TPP was part of the US pivot to Asia strategy, but it was just the tip of the iceberg. To the US, although the plurilateral trade agreement with eleven other countries may not generate as much economic interest as eleven individual US bilateral agreements could do, at least it saved time and created a circle big enough to attract more countries to join.

It was the way the White House showed the US Asian partners that the US involvement and leadership in AsiaPacific institutions [] can benefit everyone, as Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state at the time, stated in 2010.

The idea of pivot to Asia was born from a global trend that has (re)oriented the center of the worlds economic gravity to the East. It may be true that China, the frontrunner, has attracted most of the attention.

But deep behind the scenes, it is the rapidly expanding international production-sharing network that fuels rising Asia and fosters the global shift to the region as a whole.

China has been increasing its influence by exploring its economic power in Asia over the years. By contrast, the influence of the US and Japan in the region has been declining, especially after the Bush administration redirected US foreign policy to the overriding concerns of counterterrorism and non-proliferation. Americas disengagement from the region created a space for Asian countries to find their own way to shape the future of region.

The progress of Asian regionalism reinforced the eastward shift of global power, and the 2008 economic turmoil triggered by the US credit crunch accelerated this process. Upon sensing the changing landscape of East Asia, the Obama administration acted quickly and announced that the US was back in Asia to become more deeply involved in the region.

President Donald Trumps Asian policy is not clear yet. But it is sure that the US will still pivot to Asia despite abandoning the TPP. To prepare for the new challenge, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should get ready to move as a group in case the US re-lifts the flag of bilateralism.

This calls for intra-regional institution building as well as panAsian collaboration. Internally, ASEAN needs a stronger institution that allows the 10 member states to have one voice in talks, which would give them more power in negotiations than they could have in one-to-one talks.

Externally, concluding the RCEP would not only consolidate ASEANs role as a functioning center of Asian regionalism  it would also effectively strengthen ASEANs cohesion amongst its member states.

***

The writer is economist with the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA), Jakarta. The views expressed are his own.

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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.
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Linkedin Good Indonesian Food (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017 16:36 2101 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0be2774c 3 Food bakso,meatball,food,#food,restaurant,#restaurant Free

Due to the number of office buildings in the area, it is no surprise that one can find a multitude of eateries in Setiabudi in South Jakarta  including those that serve Western, Asian and Indonesian food  inside the air-conditioned confines of a shopping mall or by the roadside. If youre in the vicinity on a culinary hunt, you might just come across a place called Cemplon.

Found right across from SMA 3 Setiabudi high school, the place can be rather invisible to the naked eye as it is housed in a normal dwelling place. Thank goodness, then, for the large signboard saying ATM BNI and another smaller one with the joints name on it that are placed in front of the establishment.

Upon entrance, it was as if I had found a cozy port in a storm. Besides being known as a spot for lunch, Pusat Jajan Cemplon can also be your new favorite hangout  especially with the rattan chairs and wall sockets for those who may want to go about their own work here.

So, what does cemplon actually mean? According to owner Ibu Pudjiati, it is loosely translated as a young girl who loves to snack. It was founded in 2009, which was a year after Ibu Pudjiati had opened Mbah Jingkrak. While it once featured a Balinese theme to its decor and ambiance, it now presents a rather musical concept, which can be seen from the wall decorations to the plastic place mats, as well as the songs that we all know too well blasting from the radio.

(Read also: Queuing for a bowl of hot 'bakwan Malang' in East Jakarta)

What makes this place unique is the bakso (meatball) pushcart inside that is used to cater to visitors who order mie ayam (chicken noodles), bakso and bakwan Malang (fried wonton with tofu, noodles and meatballs in soup). On the tables are small containers filled with gorengan (fritters) and sate telur puyuh (quail egg satay) that can be devoured as is or combined with other dishes. Apart from noodles and meatballs, you could also find a variety of nasi goreng (fried rice) choices, rice with fried or grilled chicken, roti bakar (toast), es krim goreng (fried ice cream), chicken katsu (breaded deep-fried chicken cutlet), nasi sop iga (beef rib soup with rice), pempek (fried fishcake) and cap cay (stir-fried vegetables) here.

The sweltering heat of the afternoon prompted me to order a glass of es teh lemon (iced lemon tea) to rejuvenate my throat as I waited for my two dishes to be prepared: bakso Cemplon (Cemplon meatballs) and siomay (steamed dumplings). Comprising a bowl of meatballs with rice vermicelli, yellow noodles, a piece of egg, meatballs and two smaller sized meatballs, the bakso was quite savoury despite its rather overly stiff texture. Alas, the broth tasted a bit bland so I did not manage to finish it. The fish flavor of the siomay was rather prominent, while the peanut sauce was flavorful and a tad spicy. However, I believe it would have tasted even better if it was served hot.

Interestingly, Pusat Jajan Cemplon is offering a partnership deal with business companies. With only an e-mail sent to cemplon_cp@yahoo.com and a scanned business card copy, every single employee of a company that has already registered will be able to get a 10 percent discount when eating here by just showing your company ID card. A very attractive arrangement indeed. (kes)

Rating: 2/5

Category: Beef, fish

Jl. Setiabudi 2, No. 19, Setiabudi, South Jakarta

Contact: 021 3218 9791

Open Sunday to Friday, 10 a.m. - 10 p.m. (closed on Saturdays)

Rp 50,000 (US$3.70) per person

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
The annual Indonesia Fashion Week will return for its sixth installment from Feb. 1 to 5 at the Jakarta Convention Center in Central Jakarta, bringing new goals to develop local fashion crafts.

(Read also: Indonesia Fashion Week 2017 to showcase local crafts)

The flagship event of the Indonesian Fashion Designers and Fashion Entrepreneurs Association (APPMI) plans to present 25 shows involving about 200 designers, seminars and talk shows, as well as an exhibition featuring 520 fashion brands, including from Myanmar, Lebanon, India, Australia, Italy, Malaysia and South Korea.

The highlight of the five-day spread themed Celebration of Culture will be the transformation of local crafts in the hands of designers for them to enter the international market. (wir/kes)
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Linkedin Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017 09:27 2101 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0be0cb2d 4 Art & Culture Indonesia-Fashion-Week,culture,local-designer,designer,fashion,#fashion Free

Indonesias largest fashion event started with a mission to reinvent traditional fabric while promoting the tourist industry.

Indonesia Fashion Week (IFW) 2017 president Poppy Dharsono said the five-day event, which opened on Wednesday, would showcase the continuous efforts of the Indonesian Fashion Designers and Fashion Entrepreneurs Association (APPMI) to develop and promote the countrys cultural heritage.

Through this event we are not only trying to familiarize Indonesians with traditional fabrics and crafts from throughout the country, but we hope the Indonesian fashion industry would be more appealing to foreign markets, said the co-founder of APPMI.

Industry Minister Airlangga Hartanto, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, Creative Economy Agency (Bekraf) head Triawan Munaf and Bank Mandiri distribution director Hery Gunardi attended the opening ceremony at the Jakarta Convention Center in Senayan, Central Jakarta, as representatives of the sponsors.

Inspired by the governments plan to promote 10 tourist destinations, namely Toba Lake, Tanjung Kelayang, Tanjung Lesung, Thousand Islands, Borobudur Temple, the Bromo-Tengger-Semeru Mountains, Mandalika, Labuan Bajo, Wakatobi and Morotai, this years IFW focused on the rich variety of woven fabrics, songket and batik, as well as the traditional motifs of embroideries.

(Read also: Indonesia Fashion Week 2017 to showcase local crafts)

May Myat Watso at the Indonesia Fashion Week 2017(JP/Jerry Adiguna)

The venue was also designed in line with the theme Celebrations of Culture. The details used on the runways and in the exhibition areas and the selection of models reflected Indonesian cultures. At the center of the exhibition area is a circular stage where APPMI designers placed their works, each using woven fabrics from 22 different regions of East Nusa Tenggara.

Attended by government officials and representatives from foreign embassies, IFW was kicked off with a parade of all 55 designers to showcase their latest works in 20 fashion shows to be held until Sunday.

Australian designer Jamie Sortino also enlivened the opening day by bringing his couture collection, Hymn to the Flora, which was inspired by hydrangea flowers. Dominated by blue and purple, the collection consists of long gowns and wedding dresses with classic silhouettes that look like they popped out of romantic fairy tales.

Nicole Watts, the wife of Australian Ambassador Paul Grigson, said the country also took part in IFW last year and has been involved in many fashion and cultural events, including with three designers of different backgrounds in a Muslim wear festival in Indonesia.

(Read also: Bringing Indonesia's Muslim fashion to the New York stage)

Tyramona at the Indonesia Fashion Week 2017(JP/Jerry Adiguna)

It refers to the diversity of fashion in Australia and the diversity of fashion here in Indonesia. Its a bond that we all share, she said in a press conference.

Bekrafs director for local marketing, Sappe M. Sirait, underlined that the agency was currently focusing on the development of hijab fashion as part of the strategy in a road map to make Indonesia the capital of Muslim wear by 2025.

We can see from the start of this event how the modest wear of hijab fashion has been transformed to stylish wear appealing to the masses in the predominantly Muslim population. Fashion is one of the big six sources of the creative economy, besides film, animation, music and crafts, as well as cuisine, and we fully support the development of the industry.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017 13:16 2101 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0be18c78 1 Science & Tech Piaggio,vespa,technology,droid,#technology Free

Piaggio, the company that introduced the Vespa scooter in 1946, is scheduled to launch another promising innovation: Gita -- a robotic personal helper.

Pronounced jee-ta (Italian for short trip), the autonomous cargo carrier looks just like a blue orb that uses two bicycle wheels to navigate. The new creation is intended for shopping or for lugging cumbersome items, said Piaggio Fast Forward CEO Jeffrey Schnapp as quoted by Slash Gear. He also mentioned that Gita can be sent on missions while you are busy doing something more pressing.

A YouTube video demonstrating the use of the new smart vehicle shows that it can function autonomously in a mapped environment and perform tasks like fetching an order from a shop, carrying groceries, helping with stock at a warehouse and also dog-walking. Furthermore, cargo can be stowed in the compartment after opening the lid at the top of the porter.

Sixty-six centimeters in height, the spherical mobility aid can track its owner and carry a total capacity of 20 kilograms at a speed of 35 kilometers per hour, allowing its owner to stroll at ease.

(Read also: 'Avatar' style robot takes baby steps in South Korea)

Having the ability to move both indoors and outdoors, Gita is said to have a communicative personality and the ability to learn as reported by Dezeen.

Moreover, Piaggio Fast Forward suggested that the battery-powered robot is designed and engineered with the same attention to safety, braking, balancing and vehicle dynamics that you would expect of a high-performance motorcycle.

The transportation and robotics industries tend to focus on optimizing tasks and displacing labor, were developing products that augment and extend human capabilities, instead of simply seeking to replace them, Schnapp added.

As stated in The Star, Piaggio's aim is to provide a greener substitute to cars and scooters to accommodate short commutes, while at the same time persuade users to walk out more journeys.

Gitas prototype will be launched in Boston by Piaggio Fast Forward on Feb. 2. (nik/kes)
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Linkedin Lindsey Rupp and Kim Bhasin (Bloomberg)  Fri, February 3, 2017 17:16 2101 9b519824cb3263083aedb70a0be2c058 2 Lifestyle IvankaTrump,Ivanka-Trump,Nordstorm,fashion,#fashion,department-store,DonaldTrump,Donald-Trump,#DonaldTrump,#Donald-Trump Free

Nordstrom Inc. will stop selling the controversial Ivanka Trump brand this season, a move that follows boycott threats and concerns about the first daughters conflicts of interest.

The department-store chain made the decision based on sales, according to a statement from the Seattle-based company. It offers thousands of brands and cuts about 10 percent each year based on how well they perform, Nordstrom said.

In this case, based on the brands performance, weve decided not to buy it for this season, the company said.

Nordstrom has come under fire from the Grab Your Wallet campaign, a critic of the administration that is asking shoppers to boycott retailers that carry Ivanka Trump or Donald Trump goods. Ivankas business also has drawn criticism for blurring the lines between brand promotion and politics. Her company sent a style alert to journalists in November promoting a gold bracelet that she wore during an interview on CBS Corp.s 60 Minutes.

The Racked fashion website reported earlier Thursday that the products had begun disappearing from Nordstroms e-commerce selection. And the Grab Your Wallet campaign declared victory for helping prompt the move.

I am absolutely thrilled, and I know the vast majority of Grab Your Wallet participants will be as well, said Shannon Coulter, a co-founder of Grab Your Wallet.

(Read also: Trump's business ties around the world)

Early partner

Nordstrom was one of the first retail partnerships for Ivanka Trumps footwear after it was launched in 2011. Marc Fisher Footwear, a closely held shoe company, is the licensee for the products. Despite the Nordstrom setback, Ivanka Trumps brand continues to push into new categories: It recently added baby bedding and fashion jewelry.

Co-President Pete Nordstrom addressed the controversy surrounding the partnership in a November e-mail to employees, according to Fortune. He said the company had heard from customers threatening to boycott the chain if they continued or discontinued its relationship with Trump.

This is a sharply divisive subject, he said. No matter what we do, we are going to end up disappointing some of our customers. Every single brand we offer is evaluated on their results -- if people dont buy it, we wont sell it.

In November, the company posted a response on Twitter to a shoppers open letter calling for Nordstrom to stop selling the brand.

We hope that offering a vendors products isnt misunderstood as us taking a political position; were not, the company said at the time. We recognize our customers can make choices about what they purchase based on personal views and well continue to give them options.
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Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Thu, February 2, 2017

It was an uncommon scene in a country that officially recognizes only six religions when a court allowed on Thursday a witness to take the oath in a native faith before a hearing.

The oath was pledged by Dewi Kanti, an adherent of Sunda Wiwitan in West Java, just before she took the witness stand at the Constitutional Court, in favor of the petitioners, who are challenging provisions they feel undermine the civil rights of followers of indigenous faiths.

Another witness, Shidarta, a legal philosophy scholar, said the Sunda Wiwitan oath-taking was a precedent. "The oath was based on a native faith, not a mainstream religion. If the bench recognizes such an oath, then there is no reason for other institutions to reject [their identity as native faith followers], including in terms of civil administration matters," he told the bench.

The petition was filed by four followers of indigenous faiths, including Sunda Wiwitan. They are challenging several provisions in the Civil Administration Law that prevent them from obtaining ID and family cards.

(Read also: Government demands MK settles religious column plight)

They are seeking to alter the provisions to allow them to state their faiths on civil documents that require them to fill in the religion column.

The Civil Administration Law was amended in 2013, but the revision maintained the "discriminatory" provisions in question, but allows people of indigenous faiths to leave the column blank.

Dewi told the bench that "discrimination is not justifiable on any grounds, including religious or cultural. (evi)
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Linkedin Indra Budiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Anies Baswedan is proposing to split the Jakarta Culture and Tourism Agency in two should he be elected later this month. He argued that the two were very different fields and that keeping them in one agency would make policymakers lose focus.

Anies noted that the decision to connect culture and tourism in the capital in one agency had been made a long time ago and was no longer applicable today.

While tourism deals with commercial and economic activity in Jakarta, culture is merely about the culture and what the city wants to do to preserve its heritage and culture, Anies said, as quoted by tribunnews.com

(Read also: Prabowo targets key battleground area to back Anies)

He said the development of culture and heritage should be separated from tourism, because it did not have a commercial aspect but focused on preservation measures. He added that he would also ask artists and cultural observers to take part in developing heritage sites and culture in Jakarta.

The central government in the past has also included culture and tourism in one ministry, but later returned culture to the authority of the education ministry. (evi)
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Linkedin Harun Yahya (The Jakarta Post) Istanbul  Fri, February 3 2017

It is no doubt that the Syria issue has been on the global agenda for the last six years. There have been attempts at peace talks by the UN since 2012 yet nothing has brought an expected solid solution.

Recently, however, with Turkeys rapprochement with Russia and Iran, new promising steps have been taken to put an end to this bloody conflict. The results of the last meetings were the Astana peace talks held in the Kazakh capital on Jan. 23-24.

Turkey has experienced a rough time regarding its relations with Russia for almost a year following the downing of the Russian jet on the Turkish-Syrian border. However, after making some initiatives to normalize the ties with Russia, both countries underwent a rapid process of reconciliation with significant achievements in terms of military, trade and energy deals during the last few months.

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Linkedin Primastuti Handayani (The Jakarta Post) Seminyak, Bali  Fri, February 3, 2017

Following the recent launch of its Jenius digital mobile banking app, private lender Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional (BTPN) will use the facility to strengthen its presence in Indonesia's major cities as part of its efforts to attract technology-savvy customers.

So far we will only focus on exploring the market in Jakarta, then Bandung [in West Java], because of our resources, Djemi Suhenda, BTPN's vice president director, told a group discussion late Thursday in Seminyak, Bali, without going into details.

Jenius as a mobile app available for iOS and Android operating systems. The digital banking service was launched four months ago and the app has since been downloaded by about 1 million phone users.

(Read also: BTPN ventures into small and medium enterprises)

However, it is too early to reveal the exact number of Jenius customers, Djemi said.

Out of 25 million bank customers nationwide, 10 percent of them complain about things regarding basic services such as long queues and fees. Digital banking helps customers deal with these issues, he said.

Djemi added that BTPN would still need to offer more programs to improve the popularity of Jenius. So far, the bank works with ride-hailing app Uber in providing a 50 percent discount for Jenius customers, as well as with The Goods Dept, a curated department store for Indonesian designers and selected global brands. (hwa)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Cigarette ad spending for television and print media surged 45 percent to Rp 6.3 trillion (US$470.8 million) in 2016 amid a ban on cigarette ads on billboards in Jakarta and sporting events nationwide.

This is understandable because cigarette firms shifted to television after ads were banned on billboards and sporting events, said Asjaya Indosurya Securities analyst William Surya Wijaya on Friday.

The Jakarta administration has banned cigarette ads on billboards since Jan. 13, 2015, while the central government has banned them at sporting events since Dec. 24, 2012.

William added that the surge also occurred amid restrictions on TV and print media.

(Read also: Cigarette ad ban aims to protect children, lawmaker says)

Cigarette commercials can only be aired on TV from 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m., while on print media such ads are only allowed in publications that do not target women, children or teenagers. The rule is stipulated under Government Regulation No. 109/2012 on tobacco control.

Cigarette companies were the second top ad spenders in 2016 after ranking third in 2015, Nielsen data shows.

Dunhill cigarettes was the top spender last year. The producer, publicly listed PT Bentoel Internasional Investama (RMBA), a member of the British American Tobacco Group, multiplied its ad spending for the brand by nearly sevenfold to Rp 955.7 billion last year. (bbn)
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Linkedin Syamsul Huda M. Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo  Fri, February 3, 2017

Heru Widodo, the lawyer of Rusli Habibie, a gubernatorial candidate and a convict serving a probationary sentence, has confirmed his client will continue to run in the Gorontalo gubernatorial election, which is scheduled for Feb. 15.

However, he said there was a possibility that legal problems would pose a threat to his clients position if he won the Gorontalo election.

Although someone with a convict status can run in a regional election, should he or she win the election and be named an elected candidate, he or she still will face legal uncertainties because of his or her status as a convict with a court ruling that is final and legally binding, Heru said.

He said his client had filed a judicial review on the 2016 Regional Elections Law to contest an article stating that convicts cannot run for office while former convicts have to reveal their criminal record to the public.

Rusli can run in the Gorontalo election according to a General Elections Commission (KPU) regulation, under which someone with a convict status can still become a regional election participant.

Rusli is serving time on probation. He was found guilty in a defamation case against former Gorontalo Police chief Budi Waseso, who is now National Narcotics Agency head.

Apart from Rusli and his running mate Idris Rahim, two other candidate pairs, Hanah Hasanah-Toni Yunus and Zainuddin Hasan-Adhan Dambea, will run in the election. (ebf/evi)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Investigators from the office of the junior attorney general for special crimes have named former state-owned enterprises (SOE) minister Dahlan Iskan a suspect for his role in alleged corruption surrounding the procurement of 16 electric cars.

Attorney Generals Office (AGO) spokesman Muhammad Rum said investigators had issued the letter declaring Dahlans status as suspect on Jan. 26.

Contacted separately, Dahlans lawyer Pieter Talaway claimed he had not yet been informed about the matter.

As of now, [Dahaln] has never been summoned as a suspect [in the case], he said, as quoted by kompas.com.

Previously, the AGO had named two suspects in the case. They were Dasep Ahmadi, former PT Sarimas Ahmadi Pratama director, and Agus Suherman, former partnership and environmental program head at the SOE Ministry.

Dasep was found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison.

(Read also: Former minister Dahlan tried for corruption)

The 16 cars were used as passenger shuttles during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Bali in 2013.

Dahlan was also previously named a suspect in a graft case revolving around the sale of the assets of an East Java province-owned company. (bbs)
The governments efforts to achieve an electrification ratio of 100 percent by 2019 sound admirable, but business players and experts have expressed doubts over the effectiveness of newly passed regulations to boost power procurement.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry issued three decrees on electricity on Thursday, namely Decree No. 10/2017 on electricity sale and purchase agreements, Decree No. 11/2017 on gas for power plants and Decree No. 12/2017 on renewable energy for electricity procurement.

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Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, February 3 2017

A group of farmers from East Kalimantan has accused a company linked to Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan of illegally taking over their lands, an accusation strongly denied by the company.

PT Perkebunan Kaltim Utama (PKU) president director Suaidi Marasabessy, a Democratic Party politician, said the allegation was unfounded because the dispute occurred in 2005 before PKU was taken over by Toba Sejahtera Group in 2013.

Toba, the flagship holding of Luhuts companies, only has around 10 percent of shares in PKU, which manages an oil palm plantation.

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Linkedin Moses Ompusunggu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3 2017

Having lived in Jakarta for more than two decades, 56-year-old American Mark Winkel said there was one word to describe the capital: complicated.

Many people like things to be simple in their lives, but I dont think people looking for a simple life want to live in Jakarta, Winkel, the principal consultant for public relations firm Prisma who resides in South Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

A home to about 10 million inhabitants, the sprawling metropolis is bracing for the gubernatorial election slated for Feb. 15.

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Linkedin Moses Ompusunggu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Having lived in Jakarta for more than two decades, 56-year-old American Mark Winkel said there was one word to describe the capital: complicated.

Many people like things to be simple in their lives, but I dont think people looking for a simple life want to live in Jakarta, Winkel, the principal consultant for public relations firm Prisma who resides in South Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

A home to about 10 million inhabitants, the sprawling metropolis is bracing for the gubernatorial election slated for Feb. 15.

Although foreigners in the city have no voting rights, many of them, having lived in the city for years, even decades, have strong opinions about how the city leader should improve the capital.

During their campaigns, all three candidate pairs  Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono-Sylviana Murni; incumbents Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama-Djarot Saiful Hidayat; and Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno  have outlined a number of plans aimed at easing all the complexity of life in Jakarta, ranging from traffic congestion and bureaucracy to economic disparity.

Japanese business consultant Hiroaki, who has been living in Jakarta for 25 years, said a change in the capitals governorship would possibly affect the investment climate in Jakarta. Foreigners may live in cities near Jakarta like Bogor, but business is always carried out in Jakarta, said the 47-yearold Hiroaki, who was born in Fukuoka.

Hiroaki, who declined to give his family name, said under the leadership of Ahok, who is currently on trial for blasphemy, he had seen improvements in several aspects of life in Jakarta, such as the bureaucratic process of business licensing.

If a new governor is elected instead of Ahok, there are likely to be changes and that might affect potential investors, Hiroaki said, adding that such a thing was normal in any part of the world preparing for a new government.

In spite of all the complexity, some foreigners actually find Jakarta a nice place in which to live.

Often, they feel more at home in Jakarta than their countries of origin. I feel somewhat strange when I return to my country. It is as if I am a foreigner [in my own country], said MJ Kim, a 53-year-old South Korean and CEO of a courier firm based in Ragunan in South Jakarta.

Kim said he did not really follow the news about the Jakarta gubernatorial election but said he knew that the incumbent was seeking reelection. In my opinion, he has good qualities, he is honest and tough.

Kim, who has been living for 21 years in the capital and currently resides in Fatmawati in South Jakarta, said that one thing the new governor needed to do was improve traffic conditions.

A new Jakarta governor will have his work cut out for him, one task being congestion, Kim said.

Pakistani Amir Haral, who has lived in Jakarta since 2013 and works in the telecommunications sector, said he hoped the next Jakarta governorship would be an administration with proper processes and procedures and would provide solutions to the traffic and air pollution problems.

Kims and Harals opinions were also echoed by Winkel, who said he was unwilling to sit in a car for hours to go somewhere it used to take only minutes to get to. So I think thats the biggest issue.

Winkel said whoever was elected Jakarta governor needed to focus on making Jakarta a livable city, adding, however, that there was no easy solution to reduce the complication of living in Jakarta.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Indonesia's Gini ratio decreased slightly from 0.397 points in March 2016 to 0.394 points in September, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) has said.

The drop was because of considerable spending and better distribution of development, said BPS head Suhariyanto as reported by tribunnews.com on Friday, adding that the decline of the Gini ratio occurred both in urban areas and in villages.

The Gini ratio is a measure of inequality in which zero represents complete equality and one represents complete inequality.

(Read also: Indonesia's inequality narrows to 0.39 in March)

He said the Gini ratio in urban area dropped to 0.409 in September from 0.410 in March, while the Ginti ratio in villages dropped to 0.316 points from 0.327, indicating that the wealth distribution in villages was much better than in urban areas.

It was a further drop of the countrys Gini ratio as the BPS previously recorded that in September 2015 it was at 0.402 points.

Previously, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo stressed the importance of addressing inequality within society. He ordered his ministers to create policies to address socioeconomic disparities in the country.

Although Jokowi acknowledged that although the country's Gini had decreased significantly since 2015, the government still had a lot of work to do. (bbn)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, February 3 2017

In a bid to bring thousands of small and medium industry players (referred to locally as IKM) to the global market, the government plans to provide web-hosting services for dozens of IKM centers across the nation.

The facilities will allow businesses to carry out online sales as well as update the authorities on their business performance in real time.

This gives producers a new way of selling [goods] and improving their businesses, said Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto during the recent launch of the e-Smart IKM program.

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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3 2017

Having long shaken off its image as a massively opposed ride-hailing app in Indonesia, regional player Grab has announced its plan to invest US$700 million in Southeast Asias largest economy in the next four years.

The move is related to President Joko Jokowi Widodos goal of transforming Indonesia into a $130 billion digital economy by 2020. One of the governments economic policy packages issued last year specifically addresses this vision.

We are doubling down on our leadership here in Indonesia. This symbolizes our commitment in Indonesia and our confidence that digital Indonesia, the digital economy 2020, will become a reality, Grab group CEO and co-founder Anthony Tan said on Thursday.

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Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

President Joko Jokowi Widodo on Thursday encouraged his predecessor, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, to submit a request for an audience with him at the State Palace.

The president said he would certainly approve Yudhoyonos request. I have repeatedly said that a time will be arranged for a meeting if there is a request sent [from Yudhoyono] to the State Secretariat, he said.

Former president Yudhoyono on Wednesday expressed his intention to talk directly with his successor to discuss a number of issues, including his suspicion that the current government had illegally tapped his phone. Jokowi, Yudhoyono said, had been willing to meet him, but his inner circle had prevented him from doing so.

(Read also: Jokowis inner circle prevents him from meeting me: SBY)

The relationship of Jokowi and Yudhoyono hit a new low on Wednesday after the former president accused the government of conducting illegal wiretapping on him following a claim made by Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama that he had evidence that Yudhoyono had phoned a top Indonesian Ulema Council cleric to encourage him to issue a fatwa on the blasphemy allegations against Ahok.

Following a violent rally last year that Jokowi said had been exploited by his political rivals, Jokowi invited members of the political elite, including Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, to the State Palace to ease tensions.

Yudhoyono was the only political bigwig left out. (ary)
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Linkedin Azis Anwar Fachrudin (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Fri, February 3 2017

Over the last few months, two cases involving three accusations have implicated Islam Defenders Front (FPI) leader Rizieq Shihab. One relates to a statement he made about Pancasila, which led to Sukarnos daughter Sukmawati accusing him of insulting the state symbol.

Another pertains to his denigrating remark about the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, for which he is accused by the Indonesian Catholic Students Association (PMKRI) of insulting christianity and by the Students Peace Institute of hate speech.

The number of cases can be counted as three, actually, by adding his comment of more than a year ago when he criticized a Sundanese greeting. Knowing about the prosecution regarding these cases, I believe there are many who share my mixed, ambivalent feelings. On the one hand is a realization that the law on blasphemy is problematic, so that it should not be used and it should be repealed.

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Linkedin Severianus Endi (The Jakarta Post) Pontianak, West Kalimantan  Fri, February 3, 2017

West Kalimantan Police recorded an increase in drug cases found in the area of the border between Indonesia and Malaysia on Borneo, from 375 cases in 2015 to 531 in 2016.

The volume of drugs confiscated, in particular crystal methamphetamine, also increased from about 6.3 kilograms in 2015 to 97.6 kg the following year.

An officer with the West Kalimantan Police, Adj. Comr. Cucu Safiyudin, said Friday the numbers of cases were increasing because the police had stepped up efforts to hunt down drug dealers. Another factor was the improved road access between the two countries, he said.

Its the order of the West Kalimantan Police chief Insp. Gen. Musyafak, he said, referring to the first factor mentioned.

Central Kalimantan Police revealed Friday they had conducted a drug operation from Jan. 12 to 29 in cooperation with the West and South Kalimantan Police and arrested 24 suspects in 15 cases.

The Central Kalimantan Polices anti-drug director, Sr. Comr. Ignatius Agung Prasetyoko, said in a statement made available on Thursday that drugs were mostly distributed overland.

The route passes through three provinces and they use cars, Ignatius said.

During the two-week operation the police seized 164.47 grams of crystal methampetamine and five ecstasy pills, Rp 6 million (US$449) in cash and 27 cell phones. (evi)
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3 2017

The massive infrastructure projects that the government plans have kept European investors interest alive as the latter seek to boost their businesses in Indonesia.

European Business Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia (Eurocham) has found that business confidence among European investors is on the rise, thanks to what it describes as a more supportive business climate.

A joint European business confidence index 2016 will be published in March that will show latest development in the confidence.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Jakarta acting governor Sumarsono said he had received reports suggesting that some sub-district heads in the capital expressed support to certain candidates ahead of the Feb. 15 gubernatorial election.

[Civil servants] neutrality is key to the success of democracy in Jakarta, but Ive heard that some sub-district heads are helping to support certain candidates. I discovered this via WhatsApp, Sumarsono said at the East Jakarta mayors office on Friday, as quoted by kompas.com.

Soni, however, said that he had not received proof of the accusations.

These heads may be dismissed but not yet because there is no proof yet, he said.

(Read also: System in place to prevent voters using fake e-KTPs: KPU)

Soni has served as acting governor because incumbent Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama and his deputy Djarot Saiful Hidayat are on leave for campaigning.

Sonis service at the city administration is scheduled to end when the campaign period ends on Feb. 11.

However, Ahok is likely to be suspended because he is on trial in a blasphemy case, leaving Djarot to temporarily take over the governors position upon Sumarsonos departure.

Soni said he had planned to meet all district and sub-district heads, as well as community unit and neighborhood unit heads, before Feb. 11. (bbs)
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Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

The Jakarta administration has signaled that it will proceed with its controversial reclamation project, saying that it has completed the necessary strategic environmental assessment (KLHS). Jakarta Development Planning Board (Bappeda) head Tuty Kusumawati said on Thursday that the administration had completed the assessment, which was required by the Environment and Forestry Ministry, so the project could go forward.

We have completed the KLHS as the basis for the contractor to revise its environmental impact analysis [Amdal], she said.

Tuty was referring to private developer PT Muara Wisesa Samudra (MWS), a subsidiary of developer PT Agung Podomoro Land (APLN). MWS received the permit to build Islet G in 2014 from Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, who also issued permits for other islets: F,I, K and H.

The project came under public scrutiny after the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) arrested former city councillor Muhammad Sanusi for allegedly receiving bribes from APLN, linked to the deliberation of bylaws related to the reclamation project.

The environment ministry evaluated the reclamation project and concluded that it was mired in apparent maladministration. The ministry later advised the administration to suspend work on the project.

Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar previously said the relevant parties should fulfill certain requirements prior to proceeding with the project. The requirements included revision of the Amdal taking into account technical designs for power plant pipes, sedimentation mitigation and sailing routes for traditional fishermen.

Such plans should also be adjusted in Jakartas assessment [KLHS], Siti said earlier.

Recently, the city council included two draft bylaws  the zoning of Jakartas coastal areas and small islands bylaw and Jakartas north coast strategic area spatial planning bylaw, in its deliberation list this year.

Tuty said that while waiting for the deliberation of the two bylaws the city had issued the KLHS by using the indicative trace of the National Coastal Integrated Capital Development (NCICD) in Gubernatorial Decree No. 1685/2016.

The project should be integrated with Phase A of the NCICD project as mandated by President Joko Widodo, she said.

Separately, National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) chief Bambang Brodjonegoro said the reclamation project needed to widen the gap between the coastline and islet G in Jakarta Bay to make way for shipping traffic.

To accommodate bigger interests, islet G should be expanded, Bambang said as quoted by kompas.com.

The gap between islet G and the coastline should be widened to 500 meters from the current 300 meters in order to allow more space for vessels to pass through, said Bambang.

The controversy over the reclamation project resurfaced on Tuesday when fishermen and environmental activists, grouped under the Coalition to Save Jakarta Bay, staged a rally in protest at an Amdal publicity event organized by MWS.

How come they are publicizing the Amdal now, when the construction is already 20 percent complete? the coalitions lawyer Tigor Hutapea asked.

(Read also: National planning agency proposes changes to islet G construction)

Tigor claimed that the project had adversely affected the livelihood of the fishermen, had caused flooding and disrupted the operation of the nearby coal-fired power plant in Muara Karang.

Separately, acting Jakarta governor Sumarsono said publicizing the Amdal was done with his consent.

Sumarsono claimed the company could collect feedback from residents about the project, but it was not permitted to discuss the details of the project since the final approval to continue the project had yet to be granted by the environment ministry.

The ministry is now speeding up the process to determine the fate of the project, Sumarsono said.
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Linkedin Corry Elyda (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

The Jakarta administration inaugurated on Friday a unit that will lead the effort to fight against illegal levies at a regional level.

Acting Jakarta governor Sumarsono said during the launch that the unit, called the Illegal Levies Eradication Unit, was formed in accordance with the mandate of President Joko Jokowi Widodo to eradicate rampant illegal levies throughout the public service.

I hope the unit will be able to detect and come up with effective ways to scrap the levies, he said at City Hall.

The launch was attended by representatives of many government institutions, including the Jakarta Police, the Jakarta Military Command, the Ombudsman and the National Intelligence Agency (BIN).

Sumarsono said the unit would be manned by 287 personnel, comprising 43 officials from the Jakarta provincial administration and 244 from the provinces five municipalities and one regency.

The unit will follow up on complaints and reports from residents on illegal levies within the city administration, he said, the practice usually occurs during processes such as the issuing of business permits, certificates, ID cards or passports.

He added that residents could report any demands for illegal levies through the website inspektorat.jakarta.go.id/lapor-pungli.
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

In their investigation into alleged screen grabs of WhatsApp sex chats that supposedly took place between Firza Husein and Islam Defenders Front leader Rizieq Shihab, the Jakarta Police summonsed witnesses just days after the case was reported to the force.

We have questioned six witnesses who know or understand information related to the case, Jakarta Police spokesperson Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono told The Jakarta Post on Friday.



He refused to reveal names, but said that a digital forensics expert was among the witnesses questioned.

The police changed the status of the case from a reported case to an investigation on Tuesday, one day after a group calling itself the Student Alliance for Anti-Pornography filed a police report and claimed that the screen grabs had disrupted public order.

On Wednesday, the police raided Firza house in East Jakarta and confiscated bed sheets, pillows and a television.

The police have yet to name any suspects in the case and will question more witnesses, Argo said

We do not plan to summon Rizieqs wife yet, but if the investigators need a statement from her, we will question her, Argo said.

Argo said that Firza, who has been named a treason suspect, and Rizieq, who is under investigation for allegedly insulting state ideology Pancasila, could both be charged under the 2008 Pornography Law and the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law if found guilty of producing or spreading pornographic material.



Rizieq has denied the allegations, saying that it was an attempt to discredit him. (dmr)
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Linkedin Dylan Amirio (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

The government discussions regarding the Jakarta-Surabaya special train route are currently deliberating if the route will be served by an electric-based train or a diesel train.

Coordinating Maritime Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan explained during a meeting with state-owned railway operator PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI) and the Indonesian Toll Road Authority (BPJT) on Friday, an alternative option was suddenly thrown on the table in terms of a diesel engine train for the route.

Luhut explained that the preliminary estimation for the diesel technology is about Rp 22 trillion (US$1.65 billion), which is far cheaper than the preliminary calculation for an electric train, which is in the area of Rp 82 trillion.

I suppose we will make the decision in about two weeks, Luhut suggested on Friday.

(Read also: Jakarta-Surabaya project may become high-speed train)

Both technologies for the 150 km per hour Jakarta-Surabaya train route will still likely come from Japan.

Feasibility studies for the special train route will likely take place in March. The studies will be funded by the Indonesian government before combining results with the Japanese study.

Furthermore, the Transportation Ministrys director general for railways Prasetyo Boeditjahjono explained on Friday that the route will likely be a normal speed train rather than a high speed train. It is also still uncertain if the route would involve any elevated tracks.

The government is looking at an operational date of 2019. (bbn)
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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura  Fri, February 3, 2017

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) is looking into possible corruption involving a reportedly fictitious project to build a 24-kilometer road worth Rp 89 billion (US$6.6 million) in Jayapura regency.

KPK officers searched the Papua Public Works Agencys office, administrative secretary office of the Papua governor and the Electronic Tender Service room on Wednesday.

Yesterday a KPK team searched the room of the head of the Public Works Agency and a room of an officer for documents related to the road construction connecting Kemiri and Depapre, Papua Secretary Hery Dosinaen said Thursday.

(Read also: Papua has high level of corruption investigations: KPK)

The KPK was investigating special allocations for the province disbursed in 2015.

Public Works Agency head Michael Kambuaya said he was questioned as a witness by the KPK. Its not a fictitious project. We carried out the project, he said.

Hery defended his superior, saying Papua Governor Lukas Enembe supported the effort to curb corruption within his administration. He said the administration had signed a memorandum of understanding with the KPK on electronic planning and budgeting. (evi)
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Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Legendary rock band Slank, along with dozens of other famous musicians, are scheduled to perform during a large campaign rally of incumbent Jakarta Governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama and Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat on Saturday.

Slank drummer Bimbim said on Friday that the concert aimed to involve Indonesian musicians in a celebration of democracy. He emphasized that the participation of the musicians was voluntary.

Its our conscience that encourages us, not money, Bimbim said.

Slank vocalist Kaka and drummer Bimbim sing on stage during a media gathering at the Djakarta Theatre, Jakarta on Dec. 16.(JP/I Gede Dharma JS)

Guitarist Ridho said the concert would also voice appeals to attendees to stand up for a better Jakarta.

[Ahok-Djarot] are brave and honest in handling the complex bureaucracy. Thats the similarity between Ahok and Slank, Ridho said.

Noted musicians Tompi, Once, Sandhy Sondoro, Kikan, Krisdayanti, Dira Sugandi, Shanty, Gita Gutawa, Project Pop, Happy Salma and Iwa K. are also scheduled to perform at the concert, which will take place at the Ex-Driving Range Senayan in Central Jakarta.

Ahok-Djarots campaign team spokesman, Ansy Lema, said Slank would also release a campaign song for Ahok entitled Gue 2 (I am two).

(Read also: Mass campaign rallies have little impact on boosting support: Researcher)

Slank is renowned for their songs that bring an anticorruption and antidrug message, Ansy said.

Slank has also been chosen as an anticorruption ambassador by the Corruption Eradication Commission's (KPK) and an antinarcotics ambassador by the National Narcotics Agency (BNN).

During the 2014 presidential race, Slank was also featured in the campaign of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo and Vice President Jusuf Kalla. (bbs)
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Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Gender equity in Indonesias academia is not all doom and gloom as the percentage of women researchers in the country is higher than the global average.

However, research on gender and women is severely lacking, with women mostly identified as mere objects in studies, a study shows.

The study, conducted by the Bogor-based Sajogyo Institute using data from the Research, Technology and Higher Education Ministry between 2013 and 2015, shows that women account for least 30 percent of grant recipients from the ministry every year.

More than 30 percent of researchers who lead research funded by the ministry are also women.

The number of female researchers is almost the same as male researchers in the country, Sajogyo Institute researcher Budiyono Zaini said.

The figure is higher than the global average of 28.4 percent of women researchers. It is also higher than the average percentage of women researchers in East Asia and the Pacific, which is 22.6 percent, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

In terms of number, the gap between female researchers and male researchers is not too big compared to other countries. So there is enough opportunities for women to be active in research, the ministrys research director, Ocky Karna Radjasa, told The Jakarta Post.

However, women researchers are largely concentrated in top universities, he said.

There are four categories of universities in the country, rated by quality. From the 3,246 universities in the country, only 25 are in the highest-quality category. The second category comprises only 76 universities.

These top 25 universities are dominated by the best universities, such as the University of Indonesia and the Bandung Institute of Technology, and they have no problem in terms of gender equity. But how about the remaining universities? Ocky said.

The rest consist of low-quality, higher-education institutions.

The recruitment of women academics will be very limited [in poor-quality universities], with male-dominated recruitment, said Ocky.

Besides an uneven distribution of women researchers and lecturers, Ocky pointed out that there was an alarmingly low amount of research done on gender and women in the country.

According to the study, only 3 percent of research funded by the ministry was related to gender and women in 2013. This percentage dipped to 2 percent out of more than 12,000 research projects in 2014 and 2015.

While the number of research projects increased substantially from 2013 to 2014, the issue has been static. There hasnt been an attempt to enrich our perspectives on gender issues, Budiyono said.

Besides the low quantity of research on gender, the quality of gender research in Indonesia is also lacking, he added.

Gender issues are vast. However, gender research here is limited to seeing sex as a research topic, Budiyono said.

The lack of research to broaden gender perspectives has led to a lack of policies that are gendersensitive in Indonesia, Budiyono said.

Gender is a national issue that spans many sectors, and universities have to support it because social transformation comes from the scientific world. It reconstructs our society through policy intervention. Thats the role of science, isnt it? he said.

Ocky said the ministry planned to allocate a research budget specifically for gender issues from 2018 in order to increase the number of gender research projects in the country.

Last year, I launched a new research scheme on social and humanistic studies. But thats still too general. So this year I will introduce a new scheme on gender equity and children in the 11th revision of the ministrys research guidance book, he said.
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Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

MNC Securities, which is owned by diversified conglomerate MNC Group, has broken Indonesian records for rapidly opening branches as the company opened 44 branches during 2016.

With the additional 44 branches, MNC Securities currently has 78 branches across Indonesia. In 2017, the company plans to open another 22 branches to reach a target of 100 branches.

The opening of branches is to increase retail business, for which the transaction portion is currently still around 40 percent, while the remaining 60 percent comes from institutional customers, president director Susy Meilina said.

"We are spreading our seeds now to catch more retail customers, who are relatively more persistent in times of crisis than institutional customers, she said during the trade opening at the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) building on Friday.

(Read also: MNC Bank aims for upgrade to upper-mid size by 2019)

She said the cost of opening branches was not high because they were located at the groups properties, in IDX representative offices and investment galleries in universities.

Currently MNC Securities has adjusted net working capital (MKBD) of Rp 191.04 billion with total daily transactions of Rp 350 billion a day, placing it in 14th place among securities with the biggest transaction values in Indonesia.

Securities is the original business of MNC Group founder Hary Tanoesoedibjo, who started it in 1989. At that time, it was still a one-man company, with Hary saying he did almost everything by himself. "We cannot ignore the securities business, because MNC began there," Hary said.
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Linkedin Jon Afrizal (The Jakarta Post) Jambi  Fri, February 3, 2017

Jambi Police will deploy 186 officers to safeguard elections in three regencies, which will be held on Feb. 15 as part of simultaneous elections in a total of 101 provinces, cities and regencies nationwide.

The three regencies are Tebo, Sarolangun and Muarojambi.

"We want to ensure that security in those three regencies is under control on the voting day, Jambi Police chief Brig. Gen. Yazid Fanani said on Friday.

(Read also: Tebo in Jambi faces shortage of polling booths)

The force, he went on, would deploy 62 officers for each regency. "High-ranking police personnel will also be on the sites, along with the police chiefs of each respective regency, Yazid said.

Yazid also called on the public to help keep their neighborhoods safe. "We hope for safe and sound elections, he added. (trw)
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3 2017

For mother-of-one Anita Hanny, 32, a private-school education is the only choice for her son who is set to enter elementary school later this year, despite the burden of the fees, which have meant having to move to another city to avail of more affordable schooling.

Anita and her husband are set to uproot their lives and relocate to Bandung in West Java in preparation for their 5-year-old son beginning first grade in July. Both will leave their jobs in Jakarta and leave the home they rent in the BSD residential area in South Tangerang for a new chapter in their lives.

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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Following the dismissal of state energy firm Pertaminas president director Dwi Soetjipto and deputy president director Ahmad Bambang, the companys shareholders have decided to permanently remove the position of deputy president director from the companys structure.

Pertaminas president commissioner Tanri Abeng told reporters on Friday that the position would be removed as it had been deemed ineffective. The position was initially created to allow for better supervision over the companys processing and marketing operations.

However, based on the shareholders meeting, there will no longer be a deputy president director position, he said during a press conference on Friday.

(Read also: Pertamina president director, deputy sacked over 'leadership issues')

Tanri explained that the board of commissioners had suggested a revitalization of Pertaminas board of directors in order to increase teamwork within the firm, which was needed to support the many strategic tasks it had been assigned.

Even if we maintain the nine director positions, the nomenclature will change and so will our focus, he said.

Dwi and Ahmad were stripped of their positions on Friday due to leadership issues and a lack of communication, which the board of commissioners believed to be the cause of several lags in Pertaminas performance.

Dwi was appointed president director in late 2014, while Ahmad Bambang was elected deputy, a position that had not existed prior to his appointment, late last year.

The board of commissioners has 30 days to find a new president director. In the meantime, Pertaminas director of gas and renewable energy Yenni Andayani has been appointed to temporarily lead the company. (hwa)
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

The government announced on Friday the dismissal of state-owned energy firm Pertaminas president director Dwi Soetjipto and deputy president director Ahmad Bambang from their positions, citing leadership issues and a lack of teamwork.

The notice to replace Pertaminas president director and deputy president director was handed over this morning and it is effective today. One of the factors observed by the [state-owned enterprises] minister and the board of commissioners is that there is a leadership problem, the ministrys deputy for financial and business services, Gatot Trihargo, said in a press conference.

Gatot said the two executives had communication issues that would potentially have put the energy company in jeopardy.

(Read also: State juggernauts at row over major power project)

This is an issue because Pertamina has big responsibilities in the future and has many strategic tasks. This means that the management has to be solid and we have decided that there needs to be a revitalization of the internal structure.

Dwi was appointed president director in late 2014, while Ahmad Bambang was elected deputy, a position that had not existed prior to his appointment, late last year.

The board of commissioners have 30 days to find a new president director. In the meantime, Pertaminas director of gas and renewable energy Yenni Andayani has been appointed to temporarily lead the company. (hwa)
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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) semarang  Fri, February 3, 2017

A police task force has uncovered two cases of illegal levies in Brebes and Blora regencies in Central Java.

In Brebes, a village head in Sirampong district allegedly demanded Rp 1 million for every land certificate that his office helped to issue last year, despite the central government having announced that the land certification program is free of charge.

(Read also: Illegal levies task force vows to create deterrents for civil servants)

A former local councilor in Blora, along with three husbandry agency officials, allegedly conspired to embezzle government grants aimed to help 60 farmer groups purchase cattle in 2014. The suspects reportedly took 10 to 50 percent of the funds allocated to each farmer group. The Supreme Audit Agency estimated that a total of Rp 1 billion of state losses had been incurred by the crimes.

The village head has delivered 210 certificates. We have confirmed that he took levies from 204 land owners, said Central Java special crimes director Sr. Comr. Lukas Akbar Abriari.

He also said the village head shared the illegal levies with three other village officials. (wit)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

With the absence of a special lobby group to promote their collective interests overseas, local crude palm oil (CPO) producers have set a moderate growth target for the commoditys export this year.

The Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association (Gapki) expects to increase exports by 7.56 percent to 27 million tons this year from 25.1 million tons in 2016, while production will likely increase by 12 percent to 38.7 million tons in the worlds biggest producer of the commodity.

Exports in 2016 dropped 5 percent from 25.1 million tons in 2015, which the association mainly attributed to the absence of special trade deals and a special body to intensify marketing efforts amid competition with Malaysia, the worlds second largest CPO -producing country.

Local producers have also been introduced to the governments mandatory biodiesel mix policy, in which CPO is used as a mix in biodiesel in the local market.

Exports in 2016 dropped slightly due to various factors, but we expect it to be temporary. We set a sober target for exports this year as we expect challenges to remain more or less the same, GAPKI secretary-general Togar Sitanggang said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Gapki estimated that the 27 million tons in exports would come from the shipping of 5.5 million tons of CPO, 18 million tons of refined CPO, 1.5 million tons of Palm Kernel Oil (PKO) and refined PKO, and 500,000 tons of CPO substance as a mixture for biodiesel, while 1.5 million tons would come from the oleochemical industry.

Despite various regulatory and marketing challenges, the use of CPO in biodiesel mixes in the domestic market was projected to increase by 11.1 percent to 3 million tons this year.

Exports to most countries dropped last year for a variety of reasons. Delivery to India, Indonesias biggest buyer, for example, fell slightly by 0.26 percent to 5.78 million tons because of unaligned tax policies.

Indonesia imposes a higher export duty for CPO than for refined CPO while India adopts the same rate for both commodities.

We also dont have any special trade deal with India so that big export number has purely been done on a transactional basis. Should we have our own Palm Oil Council, we could approach them better and improve in trade, Togar said.

Unlike Indonesia, Malaysia has relied on the Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) to boost marketing efforts for the international market. It, for example, has organized the Malaysia-Iran Palm Oil Trade Fair and Seminar, scheduled for next week, to sustain Malaysias CPO exports to the Middle Eastern nation.

The making of the Indonesian Palm Oil Council was pending lawmakers approval of the oil palm bill, which has become one of the priority bills for the House of Representatives this year. The bill, if approved into law, will serve as a legal basis for the establishment of the council, which will consist of government officials, experts and businesspeople.

The council, once formed, will work to tackle international and domestic challenges to develop sustainable oil palm business.

Every export destination country has specific issues to tackle. So we need to handle this with specific [solutions], said Gapki executive director Fadhil Hasan.

Challenges in other countries include the preferential trade agreement (PTA) that has yet to be reviewed with Pakistan, the gateway to the South Asian market, and the absence of a free trade agreement (FTA) with Turkey, the gateway to the Middle Eastern market.

(Read also: Palm oil product exports to EU to rise despite 'negative campaign')

China, meanwhile, increased its soybean vegetable oil production last year, hence the decrease in purchases of Indonesian palm oil in the past year.

Nevertheless, exports to the United States and European Union last year increased by 42.76 percent and 3.25 percent to 1.08 million tons and 4.37 million tons, respectively, amid the increasing demand for palm oil for their food industries.

Indonesia benefits from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which bans the use of trans-fat, a lipid not found in palm oil, while a negative campaign against the commodity in the EU has not affected exports as indicated by sales.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, February 3 2017

The latest survey of 32 cities across the country by the Regional Autonomy Watch (KPPOD) has found that an increasing number of municipal administrations, including those in the less-developed eastern region, have become reform-minded.

It was positive to see that Gorontalo in the northern part of Sulawesi and Pontianak in West Kalimantan were at the top of the governance reform ranking last year because of their business-friendly attitudes and concerted efforts to efficiently deliver public services. This development is quite encouraging because the 2001 regional autonomy has moved second-level administrations (regencies and cities) to the front line of economic development challenges.

Advancing governance reforms further, in particular at the local level, is key to achieving economic and social success and the country needs champions or catalysts to accelerate the pace of governance reforms.

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Linkedin Marifatul Amalia (The Jakarta Post) Illinois  Fri, February 3 2017

Hilary Hoynes, along with Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, in their research entitled Consumption Responses to In-Kind Transfers: Evidence from the Introduction of the Food Stamp Program convinces us that for infra-marginal people, food stamp benefits increase food consumption by a similar amount to an equivalent cash transfer.

Roughly speaking, we can say that cash transfers, or in Indonesian Bantuan Langsung Tunai (BLT), could be as good as an in-kind transfer.

However, there are some issues that make cash transfers unpopular with certain people.

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Linkedin Indra Budiari and Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3 2017

All three tickets in the Feb. 15 Jakarta gubernatorial election have come up with different approaches to address unemployment, which is a major problem in the capital.

The Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno pair, for example, believes that increasing opportunities to become an entrepreneur is the best way to generate jobs. Anies-Sandiaga is offering the OK-OCE (One District, One Center of Entrepreneurship) program, which observers believe is one of the pairs key successes in attracting voters.

The Indonesia Statistics Agency (BPS) Jakarta found that in 2016, around 650,000, or 6.12 percent of the Jakarta population, were unemployed. The rate was lower than the 7.23 percent in 2015.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Aside from operating buses, PT Transportasi Jakarta (Transjakarta) is set to provide boats serving routes between Jakarta mainland and the Thousand Islands, an executive said on Friday.

The expansion is needed to enable better transportation facilities for passengers to and from both areas, said Transjakarta president director Budi Kaliwono.

To reach the goal, however, the city-owned company is currently conducting a study to examine the social impacts of the proposed operation.

"We are waiting for the study results on various social aspects. Principally, we are ready once the Jakarta administration assigns us [for the new operation]," Budi said as quoted by beritajakarta.com. "We ask residents to be patient. We hope the study will finish soon and residents can enjoy cheap and feasible transportation." (agn)
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Linkedin Eric Newcomer (Bloomberg) San Francisco  Fri, February 3, 2017

Uber Technologies Inc. Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick is stepping down from President Donald Trumps business advisory council after criticism from customers and drivers.

Kalanicks participation on the council, along with more than a dozen other U.S. executives, prompted blow-back on social media after Trumps controversial executive order on immigration. It snowballed into a #DeleteUber campaign that benefited rival Lyft Inc.

Ubers CEO wrote in an e-mail to employees that he had spoken briefly Thursday with the president about his concerns with Trumps ban of immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries. Kalanick, 40, told the president that he would no longer be involved with the advisory council, he wrote in the e-mail obtained by Bloomberg.

Immigration and openness to refugees is an important part of our countrys success and quite honestly to Ubers, Kalanick wrote. There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that. The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America.

(Read also: Trump's travel ban will spark radicalization)

Members of Trumps Strategic and Policy Forum include the CEOs of BlackRock Inc., Blackstone Group LP, General Motors Co., IBM, Tesla Inc. and Walt Disney Co. The group was created to provide the new president with guidance from a variety of industries on business and economic issues. But after Trump kicked off his first days in office with several dramatic and controversial policies, the companies have faced calls from customers and employees to disassociate from the administration.

Whats striking is the kind of tumult and chaos that were observing in the aftermath of these executive orders, said William Howell, an American politics professor at the University of Chicago. I cant think of a single clear historical analog for this kind of behavior and certainly not two weeks into a presidency.

Kalanicks departure from the council and public condemnation of Trumps immigration order opens him up to a possible retaliatory attack from the president, said Howell. Trumps next council meeting is planned for Friday. Disney CEO Bob Iger wont be attending due to a previously scheduled board meeting. Teslas Elon Musk said he plans to be there, as does GMs Mary Barra.

Advisory councils simply provide advice and attending does not mean that I agree with actions by the Administration, Musk wrote in a tweet Thursday. I understand the perspective of those who object to my attending this meeting, but I believe at this time that engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good.

While Musk and others have faced resistance over their involvement on the council, criticism of Uber has been the loudest. Kalanick has long cultivated a combative reputation after years spent fighting with governments around the world. Customers and drivers were incensed not only over his role on Trumps council, but some also said his initial response to the immigration ban -- outlined in a memo to staff last Saturday -- wasnt sufficiently critical.

Kalanick also drew fire over his handling of a taxi protest of Trumps immigration order last weekend in New York City. Uber shut off its surge pricing feature soon after the strike was due to end. The rationale was to avoid the appearance of seeking to profit from the disruption, but the move backfired. It left some with the impression that Uber was trying to break up the strike and spawned a social media movement aimed at encouraging customers to defect from Uber, using the hashtag #DeleteUber.

Lyft seized on its San Francisco rivals missteps. The startup promised $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union over four years and put out a strong statement condemning Trumps ban. Before the controversy, Lyft was ranked 54th on Apples App Store. By Jan. 30, it was seventh, surpassing Uber, according to research firm App Annie. Lyfts ride-hailing app has since fallen below Ubers.

At least 200,000 people deleted their Uber accounts this week, which is significantly more than average, said a person familiar with the matter. However, the number of new users exceeded deletions, the person said. Uber said the app has 40 million people using it each month globally.

The Independent Drivers Guild, a group funded in part by Uber, surveyed ride-hailing drivers early this week about whether they intended to switch apps in protest. About half said they would.

On Thursday, the guild applauded Kalanicks decision to leave Trumps advisory council. This is an important show of solidarity with the immigrant drivers who helped build Uber, Jim Conigliaro Jr., the groups founder, wrote in an e-mailed statement. We are heartened that Uber has listened to the drivers and the community on this important issue that is so integral to the promise of the American dream.

Politics stirred discomfort within the walls of Ubers headquarters as well. Thuan Pham, the companys chief technology officer who came to the U.S. as a child refugee of Vietnam, wrote an e-mail to staff after Trumps election comparing him to former Chinese leader Mao Zedong and U.S. President George W. Bush and his wars.

For the next four years, I will not even utter the name of this deplorable person because I do not accept him as my leader, Pham wrote in an e-mail first published by Business Insider. I will instead do everything I can to help defeat him and his destructive agenda over the next few years.

Uber faced pressure from its employees, based in predominantly liberal San Francisco, and drivers, many of whom are immigrants. However, Uber had a lot to gain from having a direct line into the White House. The company is pushing for friendly rules toward autonomous driving and maintaining drivers status as independent contractors not eligible for employment benefits. Uber will continue to serve on the Trump administrations Transportation Department committee on automation, along with Lyft.

Kalanick had never spoken to Trump before their call today, said a person familiar with the matter. Ubers CEO supported Hillary Clintons presidential bid and joked early in the campaign at a University of California, Los Angeles, event that he would move to China if Trump were elected. He still lives in San Francisco.(dan)
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post)  Fri, February 3 2017

Easy and fast to make, instant noodles are becoming ever more popular with busy urban dwellers, like residents of Jakarta. Many eateries have seen the potential market and taken instant noodles to a whole new level by cooking them in different ways. Here are five restaurants that offer a unique slant on instant noodles:

Whats Up Cafe

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Linkedin Panca Nugraha (The Jakarta Post) Mataram  Fri, February 3, 2017

West Nusa Tenggara's Domestic Politics and National Unity Agency says it has been continuously monitoring the movements of seven religious groups it called "hard-line" in the province.

The agencys head, Lalu Syafi'I, said the seven groups were Majelis Mujahidin Indonesia (MMI), Jamaah Anshorut Syariah (JAS), Jamaah Anshorut Tauhid (JAT), Tauhid Wal Jihad (TWJ), Khilafatul Muslimin (KM), Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) and Jamaah Islamiyah (JI).

We continue monitoring the movements of these hard-line groups so that their existence will not cause conflicts in the community, Lalu told a press briefing held at the gubernatorial office in Mataram on Thursday.

He said these groups still intensively worked toward and indoctrinated people in jihad, calling for the upholding of sharia and for the implementation of the caliphate system.

They as well continued developing mass bases and membership both through religious gatherings and through Islamic boarding schools, the office said.

However, he said, his agency had no authority to ban their activities as the groups were officially registered as organizations with legal standing.

As other religious organizations, their existence is guaranteed by the state. We cannot ban people from religious gatherings. As long as their activities are not deviant, not disturbing other groups and not causing conflicts, there is no problem, Lalu said. (yun/evi)
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Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Young teacher Syamsul Maarif, 25, immediately raised his hand when an MC of the Young Voters Festival asked the audience for questions during the event that was held recently at Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) in Central Jakarta. The event was coorganized by the Jakarta General Elections Commission (KPU Jakarta) to encourage young people to vote in the Jakarta gubernatorial election on Feb. 15.

How would you improve the living standards of young teachers who are active and energetic and have the same workloads as their seniors, but are paid less? Syamsul asked Jakarta gubernatorial candidate Anies Baswedan.

Syamsul, a West Jakarta resident, has just started his teaching career at the Indonesian Education University (UPI) in Bandung, West Java. He said most of his fellow teachers, including those in Jakarta, had been expecting higher salaries and guaranteed pensions through the state-sponsored civil servant promotion scheme.

Toni, a 23-year-old private company worker who lives in Menteng, Central Jakarta, had a different concern. He said that he wanted to quit his job and start his own business, but did not have enough capital to realize his dream. Therefore, he urged the candidates to follow through on their promises to create entrepreneurship programs .

With less than two weeks remaining before the election, three candidate pairs running for the Jakarta election  Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono-Sylviana Murni, Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama-Djarot Saiful Hidayat and Anies Baswedan-Sandiaga Uno  are trying to woo young voters. This group is quite small in number, but they have significant influence on a candidates fate in the election as most of them are swing voters or undecided, KPU Jakarta reported.

In all, 28.9 percent of the 7 million registered voters in the city are aged between 16 and 30, while 10.7 percent of them are early voters, according to KPU Jakarta.

KPU Jakarta invited all candidates to the Young Voters Festival, which was held on Tuesday and Wednesday, to promote their programs. Agus-Sylvi attended the event on Tuesday, while Anies-Sandiaga attended on Wednesday. Ahok-Djarot, who were scheduled to speak on Wednesday, did not attend due to other commitments.

Besides promising to help young people in various employment sectors, the three candidate pairs all emphasize one thing: creating a supportive environment for young people to run businesses; a promise that makes sense given the recently booming entrepreneurial trend.

The Agus-Sylviana ticket, for instance, wants to create 100 entrepreneurship centers across Jakarta, while Ahok-Djarot want to create co-working spaces for young people to turn their ideas and creativity into businesses.

Anies-Sandiaga, on the other hand, have come up with the idea of establishing 44 business districts in the city and introducing a dual-system program for vocational high schools that would enable students to study two days at school and work three days in private industries.

Jakarta has more industries than any other region in the country. Why shouldnt we make use of them? Anies said at a campaign event on Wednesday.

Anies, who is former culture and education minister, has spoken about education issues more than the other two candidates. For example, he said that he would allow universities in the city to use the city administrations land to reduce operational costs and in turn tuition fees.

The youth-outreach programs offered by the three candidates, however, are considered shallow by many as they do not touch on the real problems, or are short on details.

Lia Toriana of Youth Proactive, an organization which engages young people in political literacy programs and corruption eradication efforts, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday that the candidates should not only focus on creating entrepreneurs. She urged candidates to focus more on creating comprehensive programs related to education. Education is what young people need today, Lia said, adding that candidates should create more detailed programs, including budget allocations for education.

Youth Proactive conducted research during the 2014 presidential election and found out that young people were mostly interested in candidates who could display honesty and a commitment to eradicating corruption. Showing a commitment to corruption eradication and good governance was likely to help candidates win the hearts of young voters along with presenting detailed programs on health care and education, Lia addded.
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Linkedin (The Jakarta Post) Pontianak  Sat, February 4 2017

West Kalimantan Police recorded an increase in drug cases in the area bordering Indonesia and Malaysia on Borneo, from 375 cases in 2015 to 531 in 2016.

The volume of drugs confiscated, in particular crystal methamphetamine, also increased from about 6.3 kilograms in 2015 to 97.6 kg the following year.

An officer with the West Kalimantan Police, Adj. Comr. Cucu Safiyudin, said Friday the number of cases had increased because the police had stepped up efforts to hunt down drug dealers. Another factor was improved road access between the two countries, he said.

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Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, February 4 2017

The country has long been short of medical specialists, with only 12.7 doctors per 100,000 people.

The situation is even worse for people in the regions, as a large proportion of medical specialists prefer to work in Jakarta.

While the capital has the highest number of medical specialists in the country with 67 doctors for every 100,000 people, West Nusa Tenggara only has two doctors per 100,000 people, the lowest ratio in the country.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Star) Kota Baru, Malaysia  Fri, February 3, 2017

Muslim men who plan to take on more wives can now head to the north-eastern state of Kelantan instead of southern Thailand, a state official said.

State Family Development, Welfare and the People's Wellbeing committee chairman Mumtaz Md Nawi said the state government would help men who wanted to get married, irrespective of whether they were bachelors, or were already married.

"This is to encourage the birth of more Muslim children," she told reporters after attending the 17th Disabled Persons' Day on Thursday (Feb 2).

"The Kelantan Government will assist those who intend to have more children by taking second, third or fourth wives," said Mumtaz.

"We will give them comprehensive information and counselling to guarantee that the children from these marriages will turn out to be good Muslims.

"This move is also to discourage such husbands from going to a neighbouring country to marry as that would result in many problems including property divisions and the rights of the other wives," she said.

(Read also: Polygamists to file judicial review on marriage law)

Mumtaz said the state government wanted to encourage more women to give birth to "excellent children".

"It is not for men to take advantage of the policy by taking more wives simply to appease their lust."

She said marriages that were based on lust, and not responsibility, were bound to end up in divorce.

"A responsible husband and father is very important for children to grow up physically and spiritually healthy," she said.

Six years ago, the Kelantan government created a furore by attempting to give incentives to those who wanted to practise polygamy.

The then senior exco member Wan Ubaidah Omar was reported as saying that the main condition for the incentive, which would include monetary assistance, was for the husbands to inform all the women involved of his marital status and at the same time, make it known to society. (dan)

This article appeared on The Star newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Australia and Indonesia agreed on Thursday to focus on cyber security in their fight against terrorism and transnational crimes after a meeting in Jakarta.

The agreement was reached at the third ministerial council meeting on security and law despite the ongoing suspension of military cooperation between the two countries.

The meeting highlighted an array of issues related to counterterrorism, such as deradicalization, cyber intrusion, as well as tracing and stopping those funding terrorism online.

Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto, who led the Indonesian delegation, noted that both countries had openly exchanged views on the development of regional security dynamics and the importance of maintaining stability in the region.

The meeting today [Thursday] was held in an open, constructive and friendly atmosphere, so we expect that it will result in tighter and stronger cooperation in law and security, Wiranto said in a press conference at the conclusion of the meeting.

(Read also: Indonesia restores military ties with Australia after latest neighborly dispute)

Australian Attorney-General George Brandis, who led his countrys delegation, said it was the first time cyber security had been included as a topic of the meeting.

Brandis said both countries were working closely together in response to increasing cyber security threats .

He added that cyber security had been the subject of long discussion during the meeting and was the focus of several agreements reached between the two countries.

Although the topic has been discussed since the inaugural ministerial council meeting in Jakarta in December 2015, concrete measures have only been initiated this year, signifying the growing importance of the matter to both nations.

The Indonesian Foreign Ministrys East Asia and Pacific director, Edi Yusup, said Indonesia was confirmed to attend a workshop on cyber security in Australia in the coming months.

The workshop in Australia will be an opportunity to learn how the country develops cyber-security policies and strategies, he told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the meeting, adding that the place and date of the meeting was yet to be determined.

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (AUSTRAC) and its Indonesian counterpart centre (PPATK) announced on Wednesday that they would launch a new project later this year to enhance Indonesias ability to face the increasing number of online threats, especially those related to detecting and cutting flows of funds related to terrorism and crime.

The cooperation is part of the agencies efforts to cut the financial lifelines of terrorism in an agreement signed ahead of the meeting.

Australian Justice Minister Michael Keenan emphasized the importance of continued cooperation between the two agencies, especially on intelligence sharing to monitor financial flows, prevent terrorism and halting the funding of organized crime.

We will increasingly share the intelligence that we need to tackle illegal money flows, Keenan told the Post.

Brandis stressed that focusing on the flow of money was one of the most effective ways to combat growing terrorism.

One of the important agenda items of this council today and of the ongoing work between our agencies and our officials is to work together to choke off the flow of funds to terrorist organizations, Brandis told the press conference.

Maritime security was also highlighted in the meeting. On the issue of the South China Sea, both countries stressed the importance of maintaining security and stability in the region.

The two are like-minded in their call to respect and uphold the international rules-based order of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), especially as a peaceful solution to the dispute.

Wiranto further reiterated Indonesias stance as a non-claimant state.

Indonesia and Australia have agreed to maintain regional stability together, especially to avoid conflict related to the South China Sea, which could disrupt relations between the countries and automatically disrupt the regional economy and security, he said.

The meeting also discussed issues of concern to each country. The Indonesian minister specifically noted illicit drugs and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing as key issues for Indonesia.

The fourth ministerial council meeting is expected to be held in Australia later this year and build upon the agreements established by the ministerial council over the course of the three prior meetings.

Separately, Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said that relations with Australia remained in good shape, aside from the pending investigation results related to the suspension of military cooperation.

Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo was notably absent from the meeting, despite Wirantos office having issued a confirmation of his attendance ahead of the event.

Gatot suspended military cooperation with Australia in early January following the discovery of materials at a military training center in Perth that were deemed offensive.
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Linkedin Asila Jalil (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, February 3, 2017

Indonesia aims to strengthen unity within ASEAN during the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) retreat, which will discuss the development of the region and the current global situation that could affect the regional bloc.

The ministers who will be present at the meeting in Boracay, Philippines, on Feb. 19 to 21 will also bring about a set of issues from their countries and we could cooperate together to solve these issues and develop stronger ties within ASEAN, Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir told a weekly briefing on Thursday.

President Rodrigo Duterte, who officially became ASEAN chairman at a ceremony in Davao on Jan. 15, stressed that the Philippines would hold fast to ideologies and values that the grouping was pursuing as well as persist in cooperation in order to realize common aspirations.

Duterte affirmed that ASEAN would achieve its goals via policies and guidelines, cooperation, coordination and consensus.

Meanwhile, Arrmanatha said Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi would visit Singapore on Feb. 9 to 10 for bilateral meetings in conjunction with 50 years of diplomatic relations.

Retno will meet Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to focus on maritime cooperation and security relations, areas of concern raised during Lees visit to Semarang, Central Java, for the Leaders Retreat in November 2016.

We will also focus on terrorism and ways both countries can cooperate in terms of intelligence and information sharing to combat the possible rise of terrorism in our region, Arrmanatha said.

The issue of border protection will also be discussed as both countries had signed a sea border treaty, which was ratified by the Indonesian government last year, for the eastern part of the Singapore Strait in 2014. We still have border limitation issues, which will be identified in the meeting.

(Read also: ASEAN secrets Trump should know)

During her visit, Retno will also give a public lecture at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies regarding Indonesias foreign policy under President Joko Jokowi Widodo. Before visiting Singapore, Retno is scheduled to visit South Africa and Mozambique on Feb. 6 to 8.

The Foreign Ministers newly appointed director of African affairs, Daniel Tumpal Sumurung Simajuntak, said that Africa was one of the main priorities for Indonesia in 2017 in terms of bilateral relationship reinforcement.

This will be her first bilateral visit this year and Africa will be our main focus as we will try to work on developing stronger economic ties, said Daniel.

Retno will also be delivering the Indian Ocean Rim Association [IORA] summit invitation from President Jokowi to the prime ministers of both countries, as [the IORA summit] will be held next month in Jakarta.

In light of the issue of a detained Indonesian police unit in Sudan, Arrmanatha said there was no concrete proof that showed that luggage found containing a large number of weapons and ammunition belonged to the Indonesian Formed Police Unit (FPU) VII.

A joint investigation between the National Police and the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur [UNAMID] was still ongoing and we will try our best to bring them back as soon as possible, he said.

UNAMID has told us that our team was one of the best in Darfur and they truly appreciated our help and support in the peacekeeping mission in Sudan.

The North Darfur administration have detained an Indonesian police unit that was in the process of returning home after serving in Darfur for one year as part of UNAMID.

The officers were prevented from leaving the country when El-Fasher Airport security seized a large number of weapons and ammunition found in luggage alleged to have belonged to the Indonesian FPU, which the unit denied.

 The writer is an intern for The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin News Desk (Associated Press) Geneva  Fri, February 3, 2017

U.N. human rights investigators have chronicled new accounts of crimes including beatings, disappearances and brutal killings of children as young as 8 months old by Myanmar security forces against the Muslim Rohingya minority.

A U.N. human rights office report on Friday cites accounts of 204 people interviewed by U.N. staffers after fleeing to neighboring Bangladesh since October. The report says crimes against humanity were "very likely" committed.

U.N. rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein deployed the team after Myanmar's government denied repeated requests for access to the worst-hit areas of Myanmar's Rakhine state, where many Rohingya live.

Read also: Rohingya refugees in Indonesia worried by Trump presidency)

The report is likely to raise pressure on the governing party of Nobel Peace Prize-winning Aung San Suu Kyi amid allegations that soldiers have been killing and raping Rohingya and burning their homes.(dan)
Hroan Zokari of Stop 1 Gourmet Deli was one of hundreds of bodega owners to close up yesterday as part of a protest against Donald Trumps immogration policies. The Lower East Side businessman said: Were not gonna take this laying down Its gonna show not only New Yorkers but its gonna show nationwide what immigrants do for this country. We play a role in every community. [Daily Beast]

Extell is offering 50% commissions upfront as an incentive to brokers selling One Manhattan Square, the massive condo complex being built on the Lower East Side. [The Real Deal]

As part of AEG Lives acquisition of Bowery Presents, the LES-based company will be moving out of its Ludlow Street offices into a space in the Flatiron District. [Commercial Observer]

Another look at the beautiful eastern window at the Museum at Eldridge Street. [Untapped Cities]

MOMAs Paul Jackson is joining the New Museum as communication director. [Art News]

Chinese Tuxedos menu reveals both the past and the present. [The New Yorker]
(front page)

Workers mobilize solidarity against deadly assault in Quebec mosque

Militant/Maggie Trowe

QUEBEC CITY  A steady stream of people came by the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre and mosque here Jan. 31 to offer support for the Muslim community two days after a gunman attacked worshipers gathered for evening prayers, killing six and leaving 19 injured, five critically. They joined in discussing and debating what led to the attack and what to do about it.

Expressions of solidarity have poured out to the Muslim community. The night before thousands of people had come to a government-backed vigil here, thousands attended one in Montreal and similar actions took place across the country.

Police have charged Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old student at Laval University with a record of anti-immigrant online posts, with six counts of first-degree murder.

While we were here, a Quebec-born nurse from a nearby hospital stopped by to light a candle and add it to the growing mass of messages of solidarity, candles and flowers in front of the mosque. A Guatemalan-born truck driver came straight from work to place flowers at the site. A Moroccan-born worker who had grown up in the area told the Militant he knew several of the victims.

Those killed were Karim Hassane, 41, an Algerian-born information analyst for the Quebec provincial government; Azzedine Soufiane, 57, a Moroccan-born owner of a small butcher shop; Aboubaker Thabti, 44, a pharmaceutical worker born in Tunisia; Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, an accountant who hailed from Guinea; Ibrahima Barry, 39, also Guinean, who worked for Revenu Quebec; and Khaled Belkacemi, 60, an Algerian-born professor of agricultural science at the University of Laval.

Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York, traveled to Montreal to join Philippe Tessier, Communist League candidate for mayor of Montreal, at the Jan. 30 Montreal vigil. Both came here the next day to show solidarity and join supporters knocking on doors in the surrounding working-class Sainte-Foy neighborhood. They distributed a statement issued by Tessier and Katy LeRougetel, Communist League candidate for mayor of Calgary, Alberta, condemning the attack (see below).

I had to come to pay my respects, Rollande Veilleux, a nurse, told Tessier and Hart outside the mosque. When I went back to college after my kids grew up, I studied with several Muslim students. We helped each other on the tests and got very close. The Montreal vigil and others around the country were backed by the government of Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who claims all Canadians stand together, Tessier said.

But this attack and others on Muslims and mosques  from Calgary to Sept-Iles  are the inevitable consequence of the climate created by the capitalist rulers in Canada and their government, he said, quoting from the statement he and LeRougetel put out. They promote anti-Muslim hysteria to serve their war aims and to justify spying on mosques and Muslims.

Veilleux took a copy of the statement and bought a copy of the Militant.

Attacks on Muslims in Canada more than doubled from 2012 to 2014. A mosque in Levis, a nearby suburb, closed for two days after the attack. Members of the mosque in the Montreal suburb of Dorval have organized volunteers in a nightly patrol since 2008, when the mosque was vandalized in the first of nine attacks.

I walked by the vigil at the mosque last night, Tristan Rondeau, a university student, told Hart when he knocked on his door. It was good to see such an outpouring of solidarity, and signs like Muslim Lives Matter.

I was at the vigil in Montreal last night, together with Philippe Tessier and his supporters, Hart told Rondeau. We came to offer our solidarity and to discuss our program for a way forward for working people out of the crisis of the capitalist system.

Rondeau told Hart he works at McDonalds and paints houses to get by, while he is also a student. Workers have to take on multiple jobs to survive in the U.S. too, Hart said. Our sister parties in both countries campaign to help build a movement of working people capable of taking power out of the hands of the capitalists, whose system breeds horrors like the killings here. Rondeau and his roommate both signed up to get Militant articles in French.

Quebec City factory worker Karine Morissette read the Communist League statement. She said she liked it, but told Tessier she thought it would be difficult to make the kinds of changes he proposed.

The biggest challenge for the working class is to overcome what the capitalists tell us, that we cant do anything to change things, Tessier said.

He pointed to the example of the Cuban Revolution, which involved the vast majority of working people there. The Cuban workers and farmers overthrew the dictatorship of capital and built a new society based on values of human solidarity, totally different from the dog-eat-dog society we live in, he said.

Tessier told her about The Working Class and the Transformation of Learning: The Fraud of Education Reform Under Capitalism, a pamphlet by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes. He describes how education, like other institutions under capitalism, is organized to shore up the crisis-wracked system. To transform work and make lifetime learning a possibility for all is a good reason to make a socialist revolution, he said.

I agree we have to build that kind of movement, Morissette told the communist candidate.





Related articles:

100s protest attack on Islamic Center in Davis, Calif.

Communist League protests Canada mosque attack







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(front page)

Chinese rulers advance, Washington seeks to slow decline in Asia, Pacific

As it took office, the administration of President Donald Trump threatened trade sanctions against China, along with action to curtail expansion of Beijings deployment of military forces in the South China Sea.

The moves reflect concerns of the U.S. rulers at Chinas capitalist rulers ascending economic and military weight in Asia and the Pacific. Chinas rise comes at the expense of Washington, which saw domination of the region and its lucrative trade routes as the rightful fruits of its bloody victory in the second imperialist world war.

At the same time, Trumps America First course and his decision for Washington to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal has fueled growing uncertainty among the U.S. rulers allies in the region.

Beijings massive growth of capitalist industry, investment and trade over the past 30 years has meant increasing competition for U.S. imperialism. Capitalist bosses throughout Asia and the Pacific have become ever more dependent on economic relations with China.

Beijings new weight was reflected in the top billing given to Chinese President Xi Jinping at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 17-20. The forum is an annual gathering dedicated to free market capitalism and trade liberalization.

Xi, who is also secretary general of the Chinese Communist Party, gave the opening address, standing as the foremost defender of unbridled capitalism and globalization.

We must remain committed to free trade and investment. We must promote trade and investment liberalization, Xi told the heads of state, billionaire hedge fund managers, Hollywood glitterati and other privileged invitees. No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.

These developments reflect the sharpening competition between the masters of the first and second largest capitalist economies in the world.

Over recent years the Chinese government has carried out major dredging in the South China Sea, turning reefs and islets into islands, and building ports and runways that can host ships and aircraft. In response, then President Barack Obama said Washington would make a pivot to project more power in Asia, and the U.S. Navy has conducted ongoing freedom of navigation military patrols.

Trillions of dollars in trade passes through these waters every year.

Were going to have to send China a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops and, second, your access to those islands also is not going to be allowed, Trumps secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson told a Senate confirmation hearing Jan. 11.

The Philippine government won an international court ruling in July last year upholding its claims to territory occupied by China off its coast. But Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has refused to press the issue, instead seeking closer ties with both Beijing and Tokyo. He ordered an end to Philippine participation in U.S. naval patrols.

At a news conference Jan. 29 Duterte threatened to abrogate a 2014 security treaty with Washington that allows U.S. troops, warships and planes to rotate deployments at Philippine bases. Washingtons posturing against China was putting the Philippines at risk, he said.

Trumps plans for the region revolve around seeking to stop the decline of the U.S. rulers competitive edge. Administration figures say a major naval buildup in East Asia is coming to counter China. U.S. trade officials have also threatened to impose hefty tariffs on Chinese goods.

Trump junked the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, saying it would disadvantage U.S. bosses seeking trade and investment and that it didnt go far enough to counter Beijings government-aided economic expansion.

The TPP was a 5,500-page agreement negotiated last year by the governments of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States. Its numerous regulations aimed to establish a web of economic and political connections that would enable Washington to call the shots in Asia, Obama had said.

At the same time, Trump named Terry Branstad, Republican governor of Iowa and long-time friend of Chinese President Xi, as his choice for ambassador to Beijing. Branstad says he wants to expand U.S. trade with China.

Trumps moves have led to a new round of maneuvers by capitalist rulers seeking to advance their competitive positions in the region.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull urged the other 11 signatories to push on with the TPP without Washington, and even suggested that Beijing itself could be invited to head the anti-China agreement. That was immediately rejected by Tokyo, with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declaring the deal was meaningless without Washington. Japans capitalist rulers run the second largest economy in Asia.

Meanwhile, Beijing has said it will now forge ahead with its own alternative to the TPP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. The RCEP is a less regulated trade agreement that includes the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations along with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and China. Talks on the agreement are set for Japan in February. A number of countries in Latin America have indicated a desire to join.

One thing is sure  deepening competition, as Trump seeks better deals in Asia for U.S. capital and Beijing pushes its economic and political expansion, means increased attacks on the wages and working conditions of working people.





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(feature article)

Communist League protests Canada mosque attack

The Communist League condemns the brutal massacre at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City that killed six people and critically wounded five other worshippers at the mosque. We call on workers, farmers and defenders of democratic rights to condemn this vicious attack. We call for the arrest and prosecution of those responsible. We join with those in the streets across Canada and the world protesting this heinous act. We join those protesting the U.S. governments ban on citizens from seven countries with Muslim majorities from entering the U.S.

This attack and others on Muslims and mosques  from Calgary to Sept-Iles  are the inevitable consequence of the climate created by the capitalist rulers in Canada and their government. They promote anti-Muslim hysteria to serve their war aims and to justify spying on mosques and Muslims by CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service] and the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police]. The fact is that most victims of Islamist terrorism are Muslims. And the world capitalist crisis also provokes a rise in Jew-hatred and anti-Semitic attacks  a deadly danger for the working class.

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau voted for Bill C-51, now known as the Anti-Terrorism Act, passed in 2015 by the previous Conservative government. He has yet to fulfill his campaign promise to change problematic sections of the law. We oppose police spying. History has shown it is aimed above all at the working class and our unions. For example, despite widespread support Mohamed Harkat, who was arrested in 2002 under an anti-terrorism act and spent years in prison and under house arrest, is still threatened with deportation to Algeria.

While talking peace, for more than 25 years the Canadian government has participated in and given support to the endless imperialist wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. As the worldwide capitalist economic crisis deepens with no end in sight, there will be more attacks on democratic and political rights and on workers and our unions at home, as the Canadian propertied rulers accelerate trade wars and shooting wars abroad.

Stop the attacks on Muslims and mosques! Stop attacks on Jews and synagogues! Oppose assaults on democratic and political rights! Canadian and U.S. troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria!





Related articles:

Workers mobilize solidarity against deadly assault in Quebec mosque

100s protest attack on Islamic Center in Davis, Calif.







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(The following is an imaginary symposium. The dialogue (except for the goofy shit) is adapted directly from these books: On Writing (2000) by Stephen King, On Directing Film (1991) by David Mamet, This Year You Write Your Novel (2007) by Walter Moseley, Reading Like a Writer (2006) by Francine Prose, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005) by Jane Smiley, and How Fiction Works (2008) by James Wood. Apologies to all. Enjoy.)

MODERATOR

Everybody, shut up. Just be quiet. Now, I realize that a group of writers like yourselves would jump all over the chance to point out the irony of me beginning a symposium on dialogue by telling everyone to shut up, but I dont want to hear it, okay? Spare me. Lets just get this over with. Jane Smiley, lets begin with you.

JANE SMILEY

Thank you, Moderator. To dare to write about many different characters, and to keep them straight without the help of actors, is in many ways a bold endeavor. It imposes several duties upon the author.

MODERATOR

Like what, for instance?

JANE SMILEY

Well, each time a character speaks, he is likely to speak in a way that differs from every other character and also from the narrator because distinctiveness is one of the main methods an author has to organize his characters so the reader can keep them straight.

MODERATOR

Interesting. A very practical observation. Dialogue helps differentiate characters. Good.

JANE SMILEY

I have mentioned order, in the sense that the readers dont want to get the characters mixed up, but there is also the progress of the plot. Characters in dialogue are required to more or less move the story along. If they are just sitting around chatting meaninglessly, then the novel comes to be about the meaninglessness the characters are demonstrating.

DAVID MAMET

Excuse me, I completely object.

JANE SMILEY

Jesus. Of course.

MODERATOR

To what do you object, Mr. Mamet?

DAVID MAMET

You dont have to narrate with dialogue. The only reason people speak is to get what they want.

JANE SMILEY

I wasnt finished, Mr. Mamet. First of all, I said more or less move the story along. I understand that dialogue isnt how you tell a story. But certainly dialogue must in some way pertain to the narrative, even if they arent speaking of the literal plot. Depending on his role in the novel, though, a character is also required to have something interesting to say that simultaneously deepens the readers knowledge of him, deepens the readers knowledge of other characters, deepens the readers understanding of the story, and best of all, deepens the readers knowledge in general.

DAVID MAMET

No, no, no. The purpose of dialogue is not to carry information about the character. In the first place, there is no such thing as character other than habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago. It just doesnt exist.

WALTER MOSLEY

Wait one minute! Why are we letting David Mamet in here? Are we all aware that hes talking about films, not novels?

DAVID MAMET

Yes, but Ive written novels.

WALTER MOSLEY

Yeah, like two. The Village and The Old Religion.

DAVID MAMET

And Wilson: A Consideration of the Sources.

WALTER MOSLEY

Okay. Whatever, well call it three. But either way, I think your view of dialogue is greatly skewed by playwriting and filmmaking. So let me please interject a bit. Were talking about the use of dialogue. That alright?

MODERATOR

Sure, do whatever you want. See if I care.

WALTER MOSLEY

First, I agree with Dave over there that dialogue shouldnt be used for exposition. Many new writers use dialogue to communicate information such as My name is Frank. I come from California. This is the simplest use of dialogue. Its okay for a job interview or a chance meeting in a bar, but in a novel, dialogue is meant to be working overtime.

But I also agree with Jane about the many uses of dialogue. Every time characters in your novel speak, they should be: (1) telling us something about themselves; (2) conveying information that may well advance the story line and/or plot; (3) adding to the music or the mood of the scene, story, or novel; (4) giving us a scene from a different POV (especially if the character who is speaking is not connected directly to the narrative voice); and/or (5) giving the novel a pedestrian feel.

MODERATOR

Pedestrian? Why pedestrian?

WALTER MOSLEY

Thought you didnt care, Moderator?

MODERATOR

Dont push your luck.

WALTER MOSLEY

To answer your question: Absolutely. Making the dialogue seem pedestrian might seem counterproductive to the passionate writer. Here you are, telling us a story of profound feeling in which the main characters are going to experience deeply felt transitions, and Im asking you for ordinary and prosaic dialogue. If you can get the reader to identify with the everydayness of the lives of the characters and then bring them  both reader and character  to these rapturous moments, you will have fulfilled the promise of fiction. The reader is always looking for two things in the novel: themselves and transcendence. Dialogue is an essential tool to bring them there.

MODERATOR

Okay, okay. Lets get another voice in here. Francine Prose, youve been sitting over there quietly. What about you? Do you think dialogue should be pedestrian?

FRANCINE PROSE

Thank you, Moderator. In one sense, yes, I do think that. Among the things I remember hearing when I was beginning to write was the following rule: you shouldnt, and actually cant, make fiction dialogue sound like actual speech. The repetitions, meaningless expressions, stammers, and nonsensical monosyllables with which we express hesitation, along with the cliches and banalities that constitute so much of everyday conversation, cannot and should not be used when our characters are talking. Rather, they should speak more fluently than we do, with greater economy and certitude. Unlike us, they should say what they mean, get to the point, avoid circumlocution and digression. The idea, presumable, is that fictional dialogue should be an improved, cleaned-up and smoothed-out version of the way people talk. Better than real dialogue.

Then why is so much written dialogue less colorful and interesting than what we can overhear daily in the Internet cafe, the mall, and on the subway? Many people have a gift for language that flows when they are talking and dries up when they are confronted with the blank page, or when they are trying to make the characters on it speak.

MODERATOR

And you also agree that dialogue shouldnt be used for exposition?

FRANCISE PROSE

Well, in extreme cases, yes I think I would warn against inventing those stiff, unlikely, artificial conversations in which facts are being transmitted from one character to another mainly for the benefit of the reader:

Hi, Joe.

Nice to see you again, Sally.

What have you been doing, Joe?

Well, Sally, as you know, Im an insurance investigator. Im twenty-six years old. Ive lived in Philadelphia for twelve years. Im unmarried and very lonely. I come to this bar twice a week on average, but so far have failed to meet anyone I particularly like.

And so forth.

But even when novice writers avoid this sort of dialogue, what they do write often serves a single purpose  that is, to advance the plot  rather than the numerous simultaneous aims that it can accomplish. To see how much dialogue can achieve, its instructive to look at the novels of Henry Green, in which many of the important plot developments are conveyed through conversation.

MODERATOR

Oh, wonderful! Finally, some examples! Ive been waiting for over a thousand words for this.

FRANCINE PROSE

Throughout Greens work, dialogue provides both text and subtext, allowing us to observe the wide range of emotions that his characters feel and display, the ways in which they say and dont say what they mean, attempt to manipulate their spouses, lovers, friends, and children, stake emotional claims, demonstrate sexual interest or unavailability, confess and conceal their hopes and fears. And it all passes by us in such a bright, engaging splash of chatter that only slowly do we realize how widely Green has cast his net, how deeply he has penetrated.

MODERATOR

Example, please.

FRANCINE PROSE

Yes, okay. Here it is:

Did your father happen to mention that hed taken me out the other afternoon? she inquired.

No, the boy said in an uninterested voice. Should he?

We ran across each other in the street. Im afraid I cant afford anything like the gorgeous meal he provided.

But currys my favorite, Peter claimed. I wish I had it every day. Decent of you to ask me.

No, because I do truly enjoy seeing you. It takes me out of myself. And youve little idea how few there are I could say that of. Though, dyou know, it could be true about your father. Hes so terribly handsome, Peter.

The boy broke into mocking laughter, with his mouth full.

Look out for the curry, she warned. Youll blow it all over me and the table.

When he had composed himself he said, Well I once ate a green fig looked exactly like Dads face.

Then, after a brief pause to discuss a mutual friend:

Are your parents still in love? she asked.

My mother and father? God, I suppose so. Are yours?

Not a bit. No.

Peter went on eating.

They dont even share a room.

A little later:

How long have they been married?

Lord, dont ask me. I wouldnt know.

All in all, I imagine they were still very much in love, she suggested.

I expect so, he said.

You wont tell them I mentioned this, will you?

In this passage from his final novel, Doting, nineteen-year-old Annabel Payton has invited Peter Middleton, a student two years younger than herself, to have lunch at an inexpensive Indian restaurant near her office. Annabel has a crush on Peters father  as the awkward, somewhat thick-headed Peter may or may not be aware  and is attempting to extract information about Peters parents from her lunch companion. Word by word, the dialogue captures the rhythm of someone trying to discover something without disclosing something else, of an interlocutor who cannot stop pushing until she finds what she is seeking. Its a model of social inquisition carried out by someone who doesnt much care about the person she is interrogating, except that she would like to keep him from forming a low opinion of her and from figuring out what she is doing.

At the end of the scene, Annabel asks Peter if he thinks his mother is beautiful:

Yes, he said, rather gruff. As a matter of fact.

Me too, she echoed, but in a wan little voice. She has everything. Hair, teeth, skin, those wide-apart eyes. By any standard your fathers a very lucky man.

Why?

To have such a wife of course. Would you say she liked me, Peter?

Fairly, yes. No reason not to, is there?

Oh none, she agreed casually.

MODERATOR

Lets get technical for a second. Why is that scene so suggestive of things without spelling them out? What makes Greens use of dialogue so effective?

JAMES WOOD

Can I step in here for a moment?

MODERATOR

Oh, I didnt realize we had critics here, too.

JAMES WOOD

Well, Im also a novelist. The Book Against God. Anyone? Anyone?

MODERATOR

We havent read it. But go on. Maybe a critics opinion will be useful here.

JAMES WOOD

Wonderful. In 1950, Henry Green gave a little talk on BBC radio about dialogue in fiction. Green was obsessively concerned with the elimination of those vulgar spoors of presence whereby authors communicate themselves to readers: he never internalizes his characters thoughts, hardly ever explains a characters motive, and avoids the authorial adverb, which so often helpfully flags a characters emotion to readers (she said, grandiloquently). Green argued that dialogue is the best way to communicate with readers, and that nothing kills life so much as explanation.

MODERATOR

So you think the excerpt that Francine presented is effective because of the lack of explanation?

JAMES WOOD

Yes, information is communicated silently, slowly, through careful accumulation of a characters actions, their words.

Heres a working example. Green imagined a husband and wife, long married, sitting at home one evening. At 9:30, the husband says he is going across the road to the pub. Green noted that the wifes first response, Will you be long?, could be rendered in scores of different ways (Back soon? When will you be back? Off for long? How long will it be before you are back?), each one capable of a distinct resonance of meaning. The crucial thing, maintained Green, was not to hedge the dialogue with explanation, as in:

How soon dyou suppose theyll chuck you out?

Olga, as she asked her husband this question, wore the look of a wounded animal, her lips were curled back from the teeth in a grimace and the tone of voice she used betrayed all those years a woman can give by proxy to the sawdust, the mirrors and the stale smell of beer of public bars.

Green felt strongly that such kind of authorial assistance was overbearing, because in life we dont really know what people are like. We certainly do not know what other people are thinking and feeling. How then can the novelist be so sure?

MODERATOR

Do you agree with all of that? It seems a bit strict, doesnt it? Almost overbearing?

JAMES WOOD

Yes, youre quite right. Green, counseling against being overbearing, is laying down a fair amount of prescription himself, and we do not need to take his doctrine scripturally. Notice that when Green does his parody of explanation, he also falls into a deliberately breathy, second-rate style (wore the look of a wounded animal), whereas we can imagine something more continent, less offensive: Olga knew what time he would come home, and in what state, stinking of beer and tobacco. Ten years of this, ten years. Fulsome explainers like George Eliot, Henry James, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth and many others would all have to retire themselves in Greens universe.

MODERATOR

Okay, okay. Lets take a pause for a moment. What have we learned here so far? Anything? It seems that every rule you try to make about dialogue has many contingencies, many exceptions, ways around it. Characters shouldnt speak in blatant exposition but subtle forms of expository information are allowed. They should sound like real people but not exactly like real people, as normal conversation consists of ums and ers and likes and, truthfully, uninteresting filler. Writers should let the characters speech say more about them than the narrator, though we have numerous successful examples of writers who break this rule. Finally, dialogue should always be performing multiple tasks at once. Is there anything else? Anything practical? Anything at all like a rule?

STEPHEN KING

Yes, I have something to add.

MODERATOR

Go on.

STEPHEN KING

Adverbs. I can be a good sport about adverbs, though. Yes I can. With one exception: dialogue attribution. I insist that writers use the adverb in dialogue attribution only in the rarest and most special of occasionsand not even then, if you can avoid it. Just to maker sure we all know what were talking about, examine these three sentences:

Put it down! she shouted.

Give it back, he pleaded, its mine.

Dont be such a fool, Jekyll, Utterson said.

In these sentences, shouted, pleaded, and said are verbs of dialogue attribution. Now look at these dubious revisions:

Put it down! she shouted menacingly.

Give it back, he pleaded abjectly, its mine.

Dont be such a fool, Jekyll, Utterson said contemptuously.

The three latter sentences are all weaker than the three former ones, and most readers will see why immediately. Contemptuously is the best of the lot; it is only a cliche, while the other two are actively ludicrous.

Some writers try to evade the no-adverb rule by shooting the attribution verb full of steroids. The result is familiar to any reader of pulp fiction or paperback originals:

Put the gun down, Utterson! Jekyll grated.

Never stop kissing me! Shayna gasped.

You damned tease! Bill jerked out.

Dont do these things. Please oh please. The best form of dialogue attribution is said. All I ask is that you do as well as you can, and remember that, while to write adverbs is human, to write he said or she said is divine.

MODERATOR

Okay, good. A rule of sorts. I like it. Yes, Mr. Mamet?

DAVID MAMET

To get what they want! Thats why people talk!

MODERATOR

So what do you want, Mr. Mamet? Why are you talking right now?

DAVID MAMET

I want future generations to make great art! Im trying to help.

MODERATOR

Help us now by being quiet. What was the point of this symposium? Have we really learned anything? Lets get the writer in here.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Yes?

MODERATOR

What was the point of this? What, could you not think of something to say yourself?

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Well, kind of. I realized that I didnt have anything new to add about dialogue. All the observations I could make Id first heard articulated in these books. What could I add?

MODERATOR

Thats laziness disguised as modesty, Mr. Clark. Im not buying it.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Well, the other thing was that none of these writers had anything definitive to say. Everything they said had some qualification to it. Or, if they were more stringent, I could think of a great counter example. So I thought that if I put a bunch of voices together and showed how difficult dialogue is to even talk about, Id maybe contribute something useful.

MODERATOR

Let me spoil it for you: you didnt.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Oh. Sorry.

JAMES WOOD

Can I go now? Ive got a long flight.

WALTER MOSELEY

Me, too. Plus Im hungry. The invite said there would be snacks. I dont see any snacks.

JANE SMILEY

Everyone up for a bite to eat?

WALTER MOSELEY

Sure.

JAMES WOOD

Alright.

FRANCINE PROSE

I could eat.

DAVID MAMET

Fuckin a.

JANE SMILEY

Not you, David.

(DAVID MAMET exits, pursued by a bear.)

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Ha ha!

JANE SMILEY

Or you, Jonathan. None of us even know who you are.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Oh. Sorry.

WALTER MOSELEY

Plus you only put us all together because ours were the books you happen to have on your shelf.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

But at least that means I bought all your books!

WALTER MOSELEY

Yeah, yeah. Whatever, man.

(Everyone exits except for MODERATOR and JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK.)

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Looks like its just you and me.

MODERATOR

Were the exact same person. So, basically, youre by yourself in your room.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Like always.

MODERATOR

And youre talking to yourself.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

Yeah. Funny. In a symposium about dialogue I end up alone, talking to myself.

MODERATOR

And what does that tell you?

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

That dialogue is a conversation a writer has with himself, a conversation he has with his characters and a conversation between characters. That its all three. That, ultimately, the art of dialogue lies within the writer, determined by how he perceives people, human interaction, motivation. That dialogue, as much as it speaks to a characters identity, speaks to the writers as well. That rules are almost impossible. That a writer has to engage with dialogue, be in conversation with it, so to speak.

MODERATOR

I was going to say that you need some real human friends. I mean, listen to yourself: youre talking to yourself about fake characters talking to each other. Pretty sad.

JONATHAN RUSSELL CLARK

You know whats worse? To me, it isnt sad at all. If the only dialogue I have in my life is the dialogue of great writers, I dont have a whole lot to complain about. Theyre great conversationalists, at least.

MODERATOR

Yeah. At least youve got that. Come on. Save the document and be done with this.



END

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
LGBT history month begins this week. Celebrated in February, the event is used to educate out prejudice against those in the LGBTQ+ community. In 2017, the focus will be on Citizenship, PSHE and Law as the year marks the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales.

Le Gateau Chocolat

To mark the occasion, the Theatre Royal Stratford East is offering discounts on some of its shows this season, which celebrate or are inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community.

The first show on offer is Le Gateau Chocolat: Black. Voted as one of the Top 10 Cabaret Stars in Time Out London, Le Gateau Chocolat is renowned for his drag shows merged with a contemporary opera performance.

His one-man show is running from 4th April to 8th April and will feature songs by Nina Simone, Purcell and Whitney Houston to name but a few.

The performance will tell an intimate story of personal mental health, depression, hopes and fears. Described as Upfront and poignantly personal by The Stage, Le Gataeu Chocolats return is highly anticipated.

Following this, Smother by 201 Dance Company will run from 13th to the 15th April. The show explores the relationship of two young men through the medium of dance. After a sell-out run at Edinburgh Fringe 2016, award winning choreographer Andrea Walker directs a cast of seven dancers in a fast-paced, intimate performance.

In July, the theatre will play host to Summer in Love. The play features a cast of transgender actors who tell the story of four London lads, who are secretly homeless and broke, as they seek the attention of a stunning Filipino girl during a record-breaking heatwave. The new romcom will run at the theatre from 8th July to the 29th July.

For this month only, Theatre Royal Stratford East is offering 20% discount using code LGBT85 on these three upcoming shows.

You can find out more about the productions and tickets here.

For more information on LGBT history month, click here.
And finally - February is here! But If you've yet to banish those January blues, I've got a top tip to help you get rid of them for good... yep you guessed it: spice up your wardrobe!

Fashion is what I use to cheer myself up on dreary mornings and stressful weeks. On the whole I put a lot of care into my outfits, subconsciously planning in my head before I sleep what Im going to wear the next day.

A lot of people have the mentality that its only university, they cant be bothered to dress well for lectures, etc. However, its just part of my daily routine to get ready.

My style is very much trend orientated, mixed with personal twists and preferences.

Im riding a thrifty kinda hype at the moment and making a conscious effort to rediscover some old items in my wardrobe. So, to start Monday right I team my old much-loved denim skirt with a white flute sleeved jumper and another favourite my pink coat  the ultimate item for any Clueless fan!

Patterns are a fun way to add expression into your wardrobe and brighten up a dull day. What I love about this dress is that its effortless to style but still makes it look like youve tried. I am a big fan of chunky shoes, so I team this dress with Vagabond boots and a velvet mini backpack.

For a long day in uni involving a three-hour workshop and a stint at the library, something more comfortable was definitely in order. These pleated trousers and nude bodysuit are the perfect choice. Its basically like wearing loungewear outside. Whats not to love?

Towards the end of the week timetabled events stop, which gives me time to work on my blog. I love oversized t-shirts at the moment and I used this day to experiment with a new look. As a massive fan of the embroidery trend this top was a steal from Boohoo, teamed with another bargain - these 5 trousers from H&M. Its a look thats a little different from my usual one, but I know Ill wear again.

This is my routine for the week, trying to challenge myself a little whilst still sticking to some things I know and love. Pretty items like the embroidered t-shirt and the patterned dress are a great way to start your day cheery and positive.
With another Groundhog Day passing, we take a long look back at Harold Ramiss classic American comedy and the legacy it left behind.

Believe it or not, Groundhog Day is actually a real holiday. Held every year on the 2nd February in the United States, its basically exactly what Bill Murray witnesses in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania in the now legendary film of the same title. A bunch of people wait for a groundhog to show up, and if its sunny when it does, winter will be a little longer that year. Its a fairly strange tradition.

As is the Ramis comedy in question too to be fair; Bill Murray wakes up every morning on 2nd February and relives the exact same 24 hours over and over and over again, right down to the very same blast of Sonny and Cher from his alarm clock.

Aside from a few, much older exceptions that stray from the formula quite wildly, Groundhog Day pretty much invented the time-loop genre, and in the process gave Hollywood one of its most unusual, but worthwhile, new templates.

Murrays Phil Connors isnt a particularly likeable guy: hes rude to his co-workers, dodges old friends and spends the first wad of re-lived time basically being a selfish arse. But through the magic of the time-loop movie, we not only get to experience some fairly mind-bending comedy, we also get to see something incredibly inventive character wise. Despite being peppered with any number of various supporting characters and one-off cameos (look out for a young Michael Shannon), the only one we ever really care about is Connors since, clearly, hes the only one who knows what we know.

Its a pretty basic little storytelling device, but one that made sticking with Murrays character a matter of necessity. Later variations have switched things up a bit; Doug Limans brilliantly fun Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt action-vehicle Edge of Tomorrow found a way for its leads to both be in the know (which worked wonders for caring about their relationship), whilst Duncan Joness even better Source Code played more towards a sci-fi twist on the idea.

But one thing always remains: through the time-loops and the repeated actions, we the audience start to feel even more at home in what were watching and even more comfortable with the people were watching. We learn with them and so theres always that extra layer of understanding.

And whilst the time-loop bonanza is still raging across Hollywood, even popping up in Marvels most recent hit Doctor Strange last year, well always remember the first to really nail the formula, and just what it did for not only more cerebral storytelling, but for character engagement too.

Groundhog Day is obviously still out in the UK now.
Five of the world's "most international" universities are in the UK, according to research undertaken by the Times Higher Education.

list Theranks universities on the number of international students and staff they have, as well as the reputation of the university worldwide.

No UK universities made the top five. The rankings placed the Swiss institutes ETH Zurich and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne first and second respectively. Third place went to the University of Hong Kong.

The UK made up half of the top ten. Imperial College London came fifth, followed by the University of Oxford who just pipped their rivals Cambridge (eighth). UCL and LSE rounded up the top ten in ninth and tenth place.

Ten UK universities made the top 20. Kings College London was ranked 11th, followed closely by the University of Edinburgh at 13th. Warwick came 17th, with Glasgow and Manchester rounding up the 20 most international at 19th and 20th.

In the full list of 150 universities, 13 of these were UK institutes. Durham was ranked 26th overall, with York and Bristol coming in at 28th and joint 29th respectively.

All but one of the universities ranked in the top 20 were English speaking universities.
Believe it or not, there was a time when students, liberals, radicals and their like protested at UC Berkeley to assert their right to free speech.

That right, they knew, was the root from which many others grew. Whether it be the right to protest against segregation or McCarthyite persecution, the right to hold and proselytise political causes and beliefs, the right to protest against the Vietnam war; without free speech there can be no opposition.

Many of these protests were met by violence. The police behaved, and were authorised to behave, in the most thuggish manner. Their superiors, and the establishment Right, argued that some views were too disruptive and dangerous to be allowed a hearing. One of the more famous encounters between William Buckley and Gore Vidal took place against this backdrop. It's worth looking it up.

That the situation has now inverted itself is a sorry thing indeed. Whatever one thinks of parasites like Milo Yiannopoulos, the sight of students treating their opponents in the manner the state once treated them should fill us with shame and anger.

"Hate speech is not free speech" is their slogan. This is morally and practically indistinguishable from the old conservative rebuke to the free speech campaigners. That this fact is lost on the placard-waving fire-bombers is proof that we live in an age which, for all it claims otherwise, has scant knowledge of history. We are, then, doomed to repeat it.

Auden wrote that "I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn, / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return."

In the case of yesterday's 'protestors', they are the ones doing the first evil. We should be fearful of what may one day be carried out in return.
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When it comes to educating area residents about the dangers of substance abuse, one woman with local connections is among the best in the state.

Detective 1st Lt. Mary Kapp from the Michigan State Police recently was named the 2016 Prevention Person of the Year by the Michigan Prevention Association.

Kapp received her award in Lansing late last year during the Michigan Prevention Associations annual Burning Issues Conference.

Kapp is a section commander with the Michigan State Police Downriver Area Narcotics Organization.

She has worked in law enforcement for 30 years and was honored for her work collaborating with area prevention coalitions, such as the Stop Underage Drinking and Drugs Coalition, the Taylor Substance Abuse Prevention Task Force and the Downriver Anti-Trafficking Coalition.

Over the years, Kapp has spoken at numerous community events and in area high school classrooms, educating adults and teens about the risks associated with underage drinking and drug use.

She also has collaborated with local police departments to collect and safely dispose hundreds of pounds of expired and unwanted prescription pills, pills that if misused or abused could have caused injury or death.

Over the past 12 months, we have collected over 990 pounds of prescription drugs through local police departments and MSP drug boxes, Kapp said.
How many people have already voted absentee in South Dakota ahead of Election Day?
Youve always been interested in pursuing an MBA. Isnt teaching high school math going to get you off track?

When I have told people that I am planning on joining Teach For America to teach high school math in Los Angeles next year, I have received many positive reactions. My high school teachers and college advisors are all very excited that I will be returning to my community to give back. My parents are beyond excited to have me back in LA after four years far from home. But, admittedly, they are also a bit confused because I never declared an education major or intended to become a teacher.

I have grappled with how to best respond to these questions. Do I tell them that leading a classroom is the most challenging profession I could have chosen for next year? Do I tell them I cannot wait to be a role model for young men and women growing up in communities like mine? Do I tell them I dont really know how business and teaching come together, but that I am certain that I need to give back to the community that gave so much to me?

When it comes down to it, its all of those aforementioned reasons, plus one more. I believe that the classroom is a powerful place for social change, where all my identities and experiences can come together to help pave a different path for my future students. When I think about the issues that I am most passionate about  immigration, educational inequity, first-generation college students, income distribution, and Latinx cultural expectations  Ive come to realize that there is no other place to tackle them head-on than in the classroom.

As an Economics and Spanish double major, I have narrowed my studies to public education funding and the effects on low-income communities. Nothing gets me angrier than seeing the marginalization or intimidation of our countrys poor class. I thought a lot about how I could influence these issues after graduation, and came to realize that I needed to learn more about education management and policy. For this reason, committing to TFA made sense. Through teaching, I will be able to gain invaluable experience in our education system from the perspective of a teacher and a school leader. Furthermore, I will have the opportunity to pursue a masters degree in Urban Education during my two-year commitment to further expand my knowledge on education and better prepare myself for an MBA program that may potentially drive me to a career in education management.

I know Ill face incredible obstacles as I tackle these complex and systemic challenges. But, I also know that my skills will grow to thrive in different settings and gain a strong network of innovators to lean on. But whats more, Ill continue to shape my values and beliefs, find my voice as a leader, and more clearly define the impact I want to make on the world.

Ive worn many hats during my time as a student Treasurer of Student Organization of Latinx (SOL), Workshop Facilitator for Crecemos Unidos (CU) and Teach For America Campus Ambassadorand all of these experiences have helped to define who I am, my values, and what Im most passionate about. But, through these different experiences, Ive found a common thread: we must be the change we seek in this world.

Whether it is education, law, technology, politics, or any other career path, it is important to discover what drives you. With the looming question about what to do after graduation, and the pesky questions from friends and family, I challenge you to find a platform. Let that guide you to create real change in whatever it is you are meant to do.

So as you consider which path youll forge after graduation, I encourage you to listen to the voice that tells you to do whats a little unexpected. Listen to the experiences that have defined your college career thus far. Step out of your comfort zone. I hope youll find that your path is richer for it.

-Jose Esquivel 17

esquivel17@grinnell.edu

Economics | Spanish

Teach For America

Campus Campaign Coordinator
By Nandita Banik

baniknan@grinnell.edu

At this years graduation ceremony, stand-up comedian, actor, writer, podcast host and Pakistani-American Kumail Nanjiani 01 will join the ranks of Zadie Smith and Judith Butler in addressing the class as a commencement speaker.

Most recently, Nanjiani has lent his voice to Prismo for the Emmy Award-winning animated series Adventure Time. He is also in the main cast for the Emmy Award-nominated series Silicon Valley where he plays Dinesh Chugtai, a programmer specializing in Java.

After getting his start in Bobs Underground Cafe, Nanjiani graduated with a double major in computer science and philosophy. His last visit to Grinnell was in 2010, during which he performed stand up at Harris Center for students including Paul Hutchisons Taking Comedy Seriously tutorial class.

Choosing a commencement speaker involves a committee, nominations and a list of potential people to invite. Jenelle Veit, Coordinator of Commencement and Conferences, forms a commencement committee every year including students from the graduating class. Last April, she formed the 2017 committee. They assisted with last years commencement and nominated speakers for this year.

Even though there are no general guidelines to the nomination, the students felt that speakers from past years have been often writers and therefore they decided to choose someone outside of the writing world. After they narrowed down the list to around 10 speakers, they sent it to administration executives, who can rearrange the order of the names and eliminate any they feel necessary. However, Veit states that usually there is no rearrangement of the list. In fact, this year the executives went forward with the top person on the list  Nanjiani.

After the first name is finalized, Veit contacts agents and they work together on the logistics. She admitted that the lengthiest part of the entire process is working out the dates and contract with the speaker. Luckily, this year, Grinnell got their first pick. Nanjiani agreed to come back to Grinnell and will be speaking on May 22.

Veit also mentioned that she is open to suggestions. So far, Nanjiani has nothing else planned for his visit to campus, but if anything else comes up she would be happy to speak to his agent.

I am really excited. I have followed him on Twitter for a long time. He [was] a computer science major, politically active and funny on twitter  he is the perfect Grinnellian. I am glad we have someone who can do good for the world and talk on stage, said Toby Baratta 17.

Baratta mentioned that as the SGA Diversity & Outreach Coordinator, she is especially pleased that Grinnell has started inviting more diverse commencement speakers. Her hope, as a computer science major, is that Nanjiani will be open to drinks with the computer science department.
By Philip Kiely

kielyphi@grinnell.edu

Grinnell College has recently hired Ologie, a Columbus, Ohio-based marketing and strategy firm, to further the colleges marketing and outreach efforts. The company has a large roster of higher-education clients and intends to build a powerful platform for Grinnell to tell its story.

In a presentation last Thursday, representatives from Ologie described the goals for the partnership.

[One goal is to] raise the awareness, recognition, visibility and reputation of Grinnell College with prospective students and their parents, current students, faculty and staff, alumni, business and community leaders and other key external audiences, said Patrick Locy, a senior account manager at Ologie.

This sort of language is common in the industry, but essentially the company intends to help promote Grinnell as a prestigious institution.

Some of this language is  what happens when you take marketers and the people who write contracts and put them together, Locy said.

The College hired the firm as a continuation of the previous work done on marketing, specifically the Arts and Sciences Survey and the Crane Research.

To keep the momentum going, we had done this work with art and science, we had done the work with Crane, and really just the acknowledgement that we need to continue down that path and that we need to be competitive in the marketplace, said Jim Powers, director of communications at Grinnell College.

The College selected Ologie out of a number of top firms.

We sent out a number of RFPs [request for proposal], we had identified about 15 nationally known firms that specialize in higher-ed marketing ranging from really small boutique firms to larger studios  narrowed it down to three, and invited those three firms to campus. They made presentations, we reviewed the material, thought about fit and chemistry with Grinnell and then made an offer to Ologie once we got excited about their work, Powers said.

The firm hasnt produced much yet, as they are still getting a feel for the campus and culture.

Right now were very much amid the strategy phase, Locy said.

The companys philosophy on higher-ed marketing is to build a compelling brand through interesting, authentic stories. The brand, or the complete image of the College, is supposed to truly represent the campus experience.

At some college campuses brand can be a dirty word, but we dont agree with that.  Great brands are built on clear positioning and a great story, said Kyle Kastranec, an associate creative director at Ologie.

The presenters emphasized that all communications and marketing need to be authentic and truthful in order to have the desired impact.

[Ologie makes a] genuine representation of the culture, campus, and experience, said Erin Burk, an executive strategy director at Ologie.

The firm will also assist with the implementation of Vision 2030, President Kingtons long-term plan for Grinnell.

All of these efforts can work together really well, Burk said.

Hopefully, with the help of Ologie, Grinnell will be able to continue to tell its ever-growing story effectively and enticingly.
A lot of people are mad at him, but the people elected him. Thats the democratic thing, you know what I mean. Harpers and everybody else are writing the magazines being like, ah Trump Trump, okay, well then how did he get there. I mean, Im not the president, thatd be cool but to be honest with you, Im probably not qualified. We got here by immigration, I get that. I dont remember a lot of terrorism back then, but Im not really the person to say yay or nay on that. If they need something fixed, call me. Other than that, I figure the President and his advisors probably know more about it than I do.
By Zane Silk

silkzane@grinnell.edu

In a time of dramatic political events on the national level, two first-year students are shaking up campus politics by reviving Grinnells Republican club. Russell Abernathy 20 and Peter Z. 20 hope their chapter of campus Republicans will increase political diversity and provide a platform for like-minded students.

In high school, Abernathy was involved in a small Republican club, while Peter Z.s school lacked any similar opportunities. Given that both were looking to college as a chance to become politically active, it may seem counter-intuitive that they chose as school with a well known leftward tilt. However, for Peter Z., the ideological makeup of Grinnell was actually a reason to attend.

One of the big reasons that drew me here is that I wanted to have my opinions challenged. I dont want to be just with people who believe the same things I do, just preaching to the choir. Grinnell certainly isnt the choir, Peter Z. said.

The pair has received some pushback from their peers, which has varied in intensity. However, both are staying committed to welcoming those who fundamentally disagree with them.

I received a few comments, like people calling us racists or bigots, and thats something  I have encountered a fair amount. And to those people  we are always open to discussion, Abernathy said.

Perhaps surprisingly, the co-founders have also received plenty of positive feedback from those who disagree with their viewpoint. One such example comes from the recent Posse Plus retreat.

The vast majority of people I talked to were very supportive, if not of our ideologies of us being able to express our viewpoints in a very far-left college, Peter Z. said.

The response, unsurprisingly, has been warmest from fellow conservatives. The clubs private Facebook group has about 40 members just one week after the group began hanging posters, a number which suggests there may be a surprising number of conservative students at Grinnell. It is those students that Peter Z. and Abernathy say that the club is first and foremost here to serve.

We wanted to create a more permanent political club that represents traditional conservative ideals, represents the constitution  to allow students that otherwise felt alienated based on their political affiliation or ideological viewpoints, to give them a space to express their ideas, Abernathy said.

Both Abernathy and Peter Z. are adamant that the Campus Republicans do not support any particular politician. However, as Trump pushes the Republican Party towards white nationalism and economic protectionism, the co-founders commitments to the individual rights, constitution and free markets may leave them increasingly far away from the GOP mainstream. And yet, for the time being, they are sticking with the Republicans.

Because our main point of view is to support the group of people that best uphold constitutional ideals  if the time comes that the Republican Party no longer meets that we will reevaluate  the clubs standpoint, Abernathy said.

During the period between when the club was founded in late November and its first public meeting on February 1, Abernathy and Peter Z. have been focused on getting things up and running. Alongside launching the clubs weekly meetings, the pair is currently applying for funding from the Student Government Association (SGA) and getting ready for Learning to Lobby on February 5. The event, which aims to provide students with tools for political advocacy, is being organized by SGA with involvement from both the campus Republicans and their Democratic counterparts. Looking further down the road, the co-founders have many ideas.

In the works, we have some panels for people to come and ask questions about our club, the party, our ideology  So thats really to open the communication lines to a lot of people that otherwise might not know much about what we stand for, Abernathy said.

Starting either late this semester, or early next year, wed like to starting bringing in speakers to campus. Then, were looking to host more policy focused events, maybe one or two every semester, Peter Z. said.

While they know the clubs increasing visibility will lead to further pushback, both Abernathy and Peter Z. believe strongly in the value it will contribute by adding to Grinnells political diversity and by creating a space specifically for students on the right.

Its a place for people of like-minded ideologies to discuss their opinions without ridicule from people that do feel extremely angry against the Republican Party, Abernathy said. Its a place for those to come and talk about their opinions without being shamed or attacked.

Editors note: Peter Z.s name was changed at their request for confidentiality reasons after the article was published.
By Lily Seibert

seibertl@grinnell.edu

Last spring, the College launched a Peer Organizational Mentoring program, currently staffed by Juliet Torres 19 and Jane Jordan 18. The program, funded by an Arthur Vining Davis grant, aims to help students with a variety of academic struggles ranging from procrastination to navigating extracurricular activities. Several students have already made use of the guidance and advice that the mentors offer.

Ive used academic support services on campus before and I felt like I understood how to navigate that system to help other people, said Jordan.

Both mentors went through a lengthy application process that included participating in three interviews, providing a resume and cover letter and displaying their own study habits. Since then, they have noticed certain patterns associated with the kinds of questions they get most frequently and which methods of assisting students have been effective.

The majority of the people I worked with last semester were first years who just needed help with knowing what type of resources there wereI reassured them that it is a hard transition into college, but these are now things you have to consider: time management, how to read, how to write. A lot of that stuff isnt really

enforced in high school as much as college, Torres said.

Often though, the component of emotional support becomes just as important as concrete study advice.

A lot of the time its just nice to have someone to talk to about itand people often, in my experience, will figure out in talking about it what the next steps are for them with often very little prompting from me. Theres a certain amount of stigma attached with struggling academically, so having this resource is huge, Jordan said.

While some students stop by only once to ask a minor question, others have made regular appointments with the mentors and developed relationships. In particular, Torres worked with a first year who was nervous to attend office hours. For multiple weeks, they discussed strategies and proper etiquette for confidently approaching a professor.

We talked about how to introduce yourself, what to talk about, also the benefits of talking to your professor. You feel a lot more comfortable in the class  No matter how extroverted you are, it can be really intimidating to go in and talk to your professor, Torres said.

Working towards the future of the program, the mentors plan on spreading the word regarding their presence on campus as well as on the work they do to help others. In order to accomplish this goal, they will plan study breaks as well as increase their presence on social media.

Additionally, they will begin a partnership with a program connected to academic advising that supports first years struggling academically. In the meantime, the mentors continue to make a difference through their opportunity to help fellow students with organizational difficulties.

Our position exists with paid professional staff, but I think its really unique to have students providing this kind of resource, Jordan said.
The United Naga Council (UNC) on Friday said the central and Manipur governments have taken cognizance of their demands, urging them to withdraw the ongoing economic blockade in the state.

The UNC  which has imposed the economic blockade since November 1, 2016 over the creation of seven new districts carved out from Naga inhabited areas, said the final decision on the economic blockade would be taken after a thorough discussion with the rest of its members in Manipur.

"The Manipur government as well as the central government have taken cognizance of their demands. We will talk to the other members in Manipur about the economic blockade," said a senior UNC leader on the condition of anonymity.

The central government, Manipur government and the UNC held tripartite talks on Friday over the ongoing economic blockade which has crippled normal life in the state.

The meeting was held under the chairmanship of Satyender Garg, Joint Secretary, Northeast at the Home Ministry.

Tension has been simmering in Manipur due to the economic blockade called by the UNC in the state, which has existed for almost three months now over the creation of new districts in Manipur from Naga inhabited areas. National Highways 37 and 2 have been badly affected due to the blockade.

The Election Commission has set March 4 and 8 for the state assembly polls.

Although the blockade started on November 1 when the state government was planning to create new districts by bifurcating the existing Naga-dominated areas, it intensified after the government ignored the agitation and went ahead to declare Jirbam as a full-fledged district.

The state government also created new districts of Kangpokpi, Tengoupal, Pherzawl, Kakching, Noney and Kamjong.
The Congress on Friday declared 60 candidates for the Manipur Assembly elections, fielding Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh from his traditional seat of Thoubal.

The list, released by party general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, came almost a month before the polls in the state.

Manipur would witness a two-phased election on March 4 and March 8 for its 60-member assembly.

The ruling Congress is the first and only party in Manipur which has announced the names of all 60 candidates for the elections.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had announced the names of 31 candidates few days ago and is yet to come out with the remaining 29 candidates.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh said that the policy is to give tickets to the sitting MLAs. However, tickets were given to those who have a bright chance to win.

Two-time winner, Okram Landhoni, Chief Minister Singh's wife, is not contesting the elections this time. A few weeks back she had announced her retirement to make room for her son Surjakumar. He was given the party ticket from the Khangabok constituency from where his mother won for two consecutive terms.

Okram Henry, a nephew of the chief minister, also got the party ticket for the Wangkhei constituency. The sitting Congress MLA Yumkham Erabot had joined the BJP. Last time, Henry contested unsuccessfully.

Prominent Congress minister N Biren recently resigned to join the BJP. In his place, another politician, N Rajen was given the Congress ticket in Heingang constituency.

Thounaojam Shyamkumar, a TMC MLA, was one of the MLAs who had joined the Congress sometime back. Despite the police claim that he has a nexus with militants, the party ticket was given to him. Shyamkumar, however, denied the police charge.

The names of 60 candidates which were recommended by the state election committee was approved on Thursday by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh and Manipur Congress president T N Haokip had rushed to Delhi to have the list approved.

Congress leaders said that they are not expecting mass resignations as was the case with the BJP. The disappointed aspirants had resigned and joined some other parties.

A party leader said: "Of 60 constituencies, there were single applications for the Congress tickets in 41 seats. In case of the remaining seats, there is no dissatisfaction over the selection of the party candidates."

In the 2012 elections, the ruling Congress faced a ban from six insurgent groups. There was bloodshed to drive home the message that the armed groups mean business.

However, the Congress scripted political history by winning 42 seats, something never done by any other party.

Besides, it is the only party which has been in power for three consecutive terms with Ibobi as the undisputed leader. No chief minister could even complete a five-year term before.
Amid a surging wave of humanity that turned out across the length and breadth of Lambi to give him an effusive welcome, Punjab Congress president on Friday went door to door, and corner to corner, listening to the woes of the people in Parkash Singh Badals constituency and assuring them that their troubles and turmoils were now at an end, with the Congress all set to wrest the constituency from the Akali veteran.

As tens of hundreds of men, women and children came out of their houses to meet their `messiah, as they see him to be, Captain Amarinder inched his way through the roads of Lambi, stopping every few minutes to speak to the villagers, who could not wait to catch their saviours glimpse, and grab his ear to share their problems.

With Congress flags fluttering all over the area, the poll verdict already seemed to be out, Captain Amarinder told mediapersons accompanying him on his visit to his constituency, where he has taken on Badal to teach him a well-deserved lesson for life. Lambi goes to poll on Saturday, along with the other 116 assembly constituencies in Punjab.
The evergreen hippy song Hare Krishna Hare Ram from the 1971 film with the same name is back with a more pepped up electrifying twist from the makers of Commando 2.

The recreated song, which features Vidyut Jammwal, Adah Sharma, Esha Gupta Gupta and Freddy Daruwala is already making waves with its catchy tunes and mass appeal as the stars dance to the choreography of Feroz Khan.

The stunning visuals and casts rugged grunge look is adding to the charm to the already sassy number.

The groovy number has been composed by Pritam and Gourav Roshin with Armaan Maliks vocals.

Vipul Amrutlal Shah's Commando 2 directed by Deven Bhojani is all set to release on March 3, 2017.
Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia D'Souza, who have always been known as the cutest couple of the film industry, have celebrated their five-year long romantic journey as husband and wife by exchanging lovely messages on social media.

Riteish, 38, and Genelia, 29, tied the knot in 2012. The couple share two kids, both sons, together.

Genelia showered her love on the actor husband by thanking him for "changing the meaning of 'Home' from a place to a person for me."

"I will always hold onto you so tight and that's because I know something so amazing doesn't happen twice

"Happy Anniversary @riteishd Thank you for changing the meaning of "Home" from a place to a person for me

#mykindalove #wedidgoodhoney #tothebestandrestofourlives," Genelia wrote alongside a picture of her hugging Riteish.

Calling himself blessed for being married to the actress, Riteish also took to social media to congratulate his wife on their fifth wedding anniversary.

"I look at you and find my self, a stronger self, a better self, a happy self, a blessed self. Happy Anniversary Baiko @geneliad #5Years," Riteish posted alongside the picture of him and Genelia in Indian wedding attire.
The beginning of an article about a celebrity sets the tone straightaway. The writer either extols the subjects virtues from start to finish, or wields a hatchet with merciless glee. But this is about Fawad Khan and hopefully will be a balanced one. Lets begin with the thought that people act as though he is an overnight star, but stalwarts know better. He was in a Pakistani film marketed as being of superior quality to the standard guns-and-girls fare our industry put out with depressing regularity. He became a heartthrob, with the sort of intensity and drama that strikes a chord among audiences of all ages, not just in Pakistan, but elsewhere as well.

What happened next is the blueprint of A Star is Born and every rip-off made of it. Fawad was lauded, praised, and eventually (inevitably) noticed by Bollywood. (Once Hollywoods garish stepbrother  loud and frantic, endlessly churning out a single formula with different actors  Bollywood is now stylish, authentic and exploratory while still being nearly as prolific as ever. Indian cinema has matured and with it, the scope for actors). So back to Fawad.

He was invited in and he delivered. His debut seemed tailor-made, capitalising on his personal strengths as well as his roots (by roots I mean the Indian fantasy wherein all Pakistanis wear sherwanis, perform salaams and say aray mian before the start of every sentence). More than the film, it was the enthusiastic reception he received from the Indian media and fans that sealed the deal. They adored him. Fawad Khan had made it.

We all know what happens once a star has arrived. They are suddenly everywhere  juicy tabloids, stylish spreads, unsubstantiated rumours and adverts for sparkly shiny lifestyles. Fame is fickle and forgetful, so one must strike straightaway. Here is where it gets tricky (yes, even more than playing a gay man in a film while being Muslim and Pakistani). Endorsements are enticing beyond doubt, and who would say no to a pile of money for just standing around and looking pretty? So rather than shun the opportunity to make a killing, the key here is discernment and balance.

Fawad Khan endorsed the Oye Hoye chips brand with humour and a degree of self-deprecation, while the Silk Bank campaign stood out because of his distinctive voice and style. Discernment because even if they are offering you a million bucks, it doesnt mean you jump onto any bandwagon without a thought. Think of your image! What is a stylish, sexy celebrity doing chewing Shahi Supari? Well, Fawad has done well in this regard, displaying a level of mature circumspection that more experienced celebrities have not. He has chosen a small number of big brands in key categories, all of which allow him to display different sides of his personality fit with his image and retain an element of credibility (compared to Shah Rukh Khan driving a hatchback: yep, I bet he picks the kids up from school every afternoon in that nifty little car!).

He picked tech and did Samsung, which is rapidly edging out Apple to be the best phone brand around (notwithstanding its recent explosive troubles). He picked snacks with Oye Hoye, a campaign that garnered much buzz for its hilarious treatment of the star. Fawad endorsed the brand with humour and a degree of self-deprecation (no one can look good in that curly wig  no one).

He picked finance  a prestigious sector and here too he did things slightly differently by opting neither for a multinational bank nor a local giant, but for the mid-range Silk Bank. The campaign, while typical of what the financial sector goes in for (glossy, tinges of blue, smooth accents and polished looks), stood out because of Fawad with his distinctive voice and style. Overall, therefore, he has picked them right.

Some celebrities are literally everywhere, staring at you from TV screens, popping up on your monitor, peering at you from pole signs it gets annoying and tiresome and eventually dull. In fact, dull to the point where the mere hint of a particular celebrity makes you change channels, close the window or even change your route. Wasim Akram is a prime example, endorsing everything from batteries to banks to beverages (how thrilling to watch him fling a bit of Ariel into the washing machine at an angle designed to confound it!) so that eventually even the most diehard fan gets a bit sick of his face.

Fawad has avoided this trap. He picks brands carefully and sticks to a few. The result is greater appreciation and the perception of credibility. You can almost believe the guy uses a Samsung, eats Oye Hoye and maintains an account with Silk Bank (compared to Wasim Akram doing Ariel-inspired laundry while gulping Pepsi and Facebooking on his brand new Dany phone).

Lets take this last bit further in concluding. We are all aware of the current issues between Pakistan and India. Fawad has been the target of some controversy, along with fellow Pakistanis working across the border. There is even talk in India of a ban and other such steps. It is a mark of Fawads self-respect and poise (along with other Pakistani performers) that he maintained his silence for a time (he seems to believe in letting his work speak for itself) and only recently came out with a diplomatic statement that focuses on thanking people for their support, instead of pointing fingers.

On the whole, Fawad Khan seems to have a winning strategy; one that other celebrities should consider. Whether he sticks to this or not remains to be seen.

dawn/ ann
In the 19th century, German philosopher Karl Marx began to analyse and explore the relationship between economy and the workers within the system. He investigated the consequences of the capitalist and the strong relationship between class inequality and culture. Specifically, Marxist sociology looks at how economics defines social roles and expectations. However, this is a wider subject that covers the scientific study of behaviour.

In India, sociology as a discipline was first introduced around 40 years ago in the University of Bombay. Subsequently, it was adopted by the universities of Lucknow, Calcutta, Madras and Mysore. This subject is considered as an offbeat career option. But once students are able to comprehend what it comprises, they are most likely to consider as a valuable choice not just for the purposes of earning, but for their perspective towards the broader global issues.

A graduate with this subject will be able to understand and engage with the incidents influencing the world. One will be equipped with the tools required to make sense of the ever-changing social world and offer solutions for complex problems. Usually, students who are genuinely interested in the social issues of the country are the ones who pursue sociology, but a majority of them lose interest with time.

Sociologists are researchers who study about the beliefs and decision-making process of different individuals and groups. They use scientific methods to find empirical answers to complex questions relating to diverse communities, social changes and their interactions. As part of their research, sociologists carry out surveys, interviews and interact with several people, irrespective of class, creed and caste. On the basis of their findings and interpretations, reports and articles are presented and utilised for different welfare purposes by the government and other private and public organisations. They evaluate the conduct and custom of different social groups and institutions to get a deeper understanding.

Studying sociology not only helps in understanding the human society but also assists to categorise social behaviour systematically. Through this, one is able to delve deeper, examine its changing nature and study its impact on everyday life. Thus, studying about various issues, cultures, and behaviours stimulates analytical thinking, creativity and communication skills. These are highly sought after by employers in the job market.

At undergraduate level, a candidate with +2 passed from any recognised board is eligible for admission. However, the criteria differ from college to college. At postgraduate level, one must have a Bachelor's degree in any stream from a recognised university. Most universities need the candidate to have obtained at least 50 per cent marks at undergraduate level to secure admission at the postgraduate level.

One can find jobs in social services, education, criminal justice, welfare services, government, counselling, charities and the voluntary sector. Sociology graduates are usually found in a wide range of occupations that mainly focus on the challenges and demands. There are a range of specific abilities and skills associated with a degree in sociology. The skills include capacity to judge and evaluate evidence, understanding the complexity and diversity of situations, collecting information and making logical arguments, etc.

This is a good fit for a career in business as it enables to move between sectors, make connections and spot patterns. In marketing, it helps in mapping the shape of the society, identifying different types of people with characteristics, lifestyles and attitudes. In journalism, sociology would help in writing features, analysis and think-pieces. Interpretation and evaluation of evidence, communication, and working in a team are some of the skills that employers look for in such graduates.

With a Masters degree, one can apply as an assistant professor in colleges. In order to become a senior professor, a PhD degree in the subject is required. Students can also find job opportunities in consultancy firms, human resource departments, news agencies, counselling firms, NGOs, etc.

After obtaining a Masters degree one can pursue MPhil or Phd to further their knowledge on the subject. There are a number of institutes in India offering degree for this course. Some of the colleges are Banaras Hindu University, Chennai; Indira Gandhi National Open University, Delhi; Kurukshetra University, Kurukshetra; Manipur University, Imphal and North Eastern Hill University, Shillong.

The writer is Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Edunuts
The Centre today asked Assam Rifles to ensure safety of Nagaland Chief Minister T R Zeliang, amid ongoing violent protests in parts of the state protesting 33 per cent reservation for women in Urban Local Bodies (ULBs).

On Wednesday, violent mobs went on the rampage in the Nagaland capital vandalising and setting on fire government offices and vehicles, prompting deployment of five columns of army to bring the situation under control.

"I have talked to the Director General, Assam Rifles and told him that the Nagaland Chief Minister and his residence have to be saved," Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said.

He also appealed agitating people to shun violence.

"We understand the sentiments of the people, but this is no way that you attack the cabinet and vandalise government (institutions)," the Minister said on the sidelines of a function here.

He asked people to understand the attempts made by "some forces" who are trying to provide tool to the agitation.

Rijiju said central forces have already been deployed there to ensure safety of people.

The Nagaland government has been facing stiff opposition from tribal bodies over introduction of 33 per cent reservation for women in the urban local bodies.

The urban local bodies elections have been due in the state for over 16 years.

The Zeliang government decided to hold the polls following an interim Supreme Court order in a case filed by the Naga Mothers' Association for a directive to the state government to implement 33 per cent reservation for women in the ULBs, like in many other states.

Apparently under pressure from the protesters, the state government yesterday declared the elections process null and void there.

Anger was brewing in the state since the killing of two protesting youths in police firing at Dimapur on Tuesday.

"We are sad for all those who have been killed in police firing. We appeal to the people there to follow the due process and ensure proper last rites for the dead bodies," Rijiju said.

He said that the Centre would provide any support sought from it by the Zeliang government.

"If the state government seeks any other support, we are ready to provide it. Nagaland is a sensitive state and it is important to ensure law and order there at any cost," the Minister said.

Activists of several tribal groups yesterday vandalised the State Election Commission and Deputy Commissioner's office and set ablaze the Kohima Municipal Council building.

The Regional Transport office and that of the Excise Department were also set ablaze by violent mobs demanding the resignation of the Chief Minister Zeliang and his entire cabinet for going ahead with the ULB polls despite opposition from powerful tribal groups that are against 33 per cent reservation for women in the municipal bodies.
The Supreme Court (SC) on Friday sought a response from the Gujarat government on a plea challenging the promotion and three-month extension of DGP PP Pandey, who is an accused in the killing of Ishrat Jahan and associates in an alleged shootout and is out on bail.

Gujarat's Acting Director General of Police, Pandey, was given a three-month extension of service on Jan 31, the day he retired.

The state government's recommendation to extend Pandey's services was approved by the Union Home Ministry.

Besides heading the Anti-Corruption Bureau, Pandey was holding the charge of the Director General of Police of the state.

A 1980 batch IPS officer, Pandey was arrested in July 2013 in connection with the killing of Ishrat Jahan, a 18-year-old girl from Mumbra in Mumbai, in the alleged gunfight.

The IPS officer was released on bail in February 2015 after remaining in jail for 19 months. After his discharge on bail, he was not only promoted by the state government but also given the additional charge of the Director General of Police.

Senior police officer Julio Ribeiro had challenged Pandey's appointment as DGP in the Gujarat High Court, which, however, turned down the petition.

Pandey has appealed to the special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court to dismiss the charge against him in the alleged shootout.

(With inputs from agencies)
Authorities on Friday placed Huriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest to prevent him from leading a protest march in the city.

Separatists had called for protests after Friday prayers against a West Bengal court awarding a death sentence to a Kashmiri  Mushtaq Ahmad  from south Kashmir's Kulgam district.

The Huriyat Conference (M) Chairman was placed under house arrest in his upscale Nigeen residence.

He was scheduled to lead the march in old city's Nowhatta area.
The Lok Sabha was on Friday adjourned for the day after opposition members led by Trinamool Congress created a ruckus over the arrest of two of their MPs.

TMC members trooped near Speaker Sumitra Mahajans podium, shouting slogans against the central government and displaying placards denouncing the arrest of their MPs Sudip Bandopadhya and Tapas Pal.

Congress members too joined in and shouted slogans near the Speaker as the pandemonium forced Mahajan to adjourn the house for the day.

Earlier, the Trinamool members staged a protest near Mahatma Gandhi's statue in the Parliament complex against the arrest of Sudip Bandopadhyay.

Bandopadhyay and Paul were arrested by the CBI in connection with the Rose Valley chit fund scam.

The Lok Sabha was earlier adjourned twice in the pre-lunch session after opposition members disrupted the proceedings over various issues.

Soon after the house met, Congress members sought permission from the chair to raise some issues but the speaker said that it was possible only after Question Hour.

The house was earlier adjourned till noon.

When the house reassembled, Mahajan disallowed the notices of adjournment given by various members including Saugata Roy of Trinamool and JP Yadav of Rashtriya Janata Dal.

Despite opposition protests, the Speaker continued with the listed business.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley introduced the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Bill amid opposition from Trinamool's Saugata Roy.

The Payment of Wages (Amendment) Bill was introduced by Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya.

The opposition members again rushed towards Speaker's podium and started shouting slogans. Amid the din, Mahajan adjourned the house till 1 pm.
Terming Congress-SP alliance as "opportunist and immoral", Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the family drama of ruling Samajwadi Party is "heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy".

"The alliance between Congress and SP is opportunist and immoral. Akhilesh Yadav has made an alliance but did not give space to his father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) even on the carrier of the 'bicycle' (SP symbol) and gave its handle to Congress.

"The family drama of SP is heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy," the senior BJP leader said at a press conference here.

Asking voters to discard the alliance, Naidu said if they wanted to remove the tag of "BIMARU" state from Uttar Pradesh, they should shun it and elect BJP.

BIMARU is an acronym formed from the first letters of the names of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.

It has a resemblance to a Hindi word "Bimar" which means sick and used to refer to the poor economic conditions in these states.

"We will work on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's motto  reform, perform and transform  and change the face of UP," Naidu said appealing to people to repeat their 2014-like support to BJP in the assembly polls.

BJP and its ally Apna Dal had bagged 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014.

The Urban Development Minister alleged that Akhilesh Yadav government in the state did not send proposal for PM Awas Scheme even after several reminders sent by his ministry.

"We had got a survey done in UP that showed requirement of over 30 lakh houses. When UP was asked, it said requirement was of over 17 lakh houses only. But even after several reminders, we did not get a proposal from the state," he rued.

The BJP leader said Uttar Pradesh would progress only if it voted his party to power to enable the state to work in tandem with the BJP-led NDA at the Centre.
Sri Lankan authorities on Monday arrested five Indian fishermen for poaching in the country's territorial waters.

The authorities also seized one trawler used by the fishermen in the seas of Mannar in the island's north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Fisheries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera had said that Indian fishermen will continue to be arrested if they poach in Sri Lankan waters.

Amaraweera said the government was also looking at resolving the dispute in a diplomatic manner.
At least 92,000 people have been displaced since the last October attacks on police posts in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, UN officials told reporters here.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Thursday made the remarks by citing information from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Xinhua news agency reported.

This includes some 69,000 people who have fled across the border into Bangladesh, Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The UN estimates that 23,000 people remain displaced in the north of Maungdaw Township where security operations continue, the spokesman said.

"After a three-month interruption in most aid deliveries provided by UN agencies and partners in northern Rakhine, the government has allowed an incremental resumption of some activities," Dujarric said.

"With international staff still facing severe movement restrictions, national staff are distributing food and other items in most villages," he said.

"While health clinics and nutrition centres have re-opened in most areas, few people have been accessing them, as the situation remains tense," he said. "People are still afraid to move freely to access services, and movement is restricted by a travel pass requirement."

The UN is calling for the relaxation of travel restrictions in northern Rakhine, both for local people who are impeded in accessing humanitarian aid and basic services, as well as for staff from aid organizations, he added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Friday that Tehran was "unmoved" by the United States threats and only relies on its own defence means amid hostile rhetoric against the country, including hints of military aggression, emanating from Washington.

"Iran is unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif said on his Twitter account.

"We will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defence," the Iranian minister pointed out.

In another tweet, published minutes later, Zarif challenged Iran's enemies to verifiably and sincerely declare the defensive nature of their military programme.

"We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defence. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement," he said.

Zarif's tweets also contained a video of him responding to reporters on Iran's defensive missile programme during a conference in Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2016.

Referring to Iraq's eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s, Zarif said during the conference, "We are entitled to the rudimentary means of defence which we need in order to prevent another (executed Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein around the corner (from) attacking us with chemical weapons because the international community has failed miserably in protecting the Iranian people, in safeguarding international humanitarian law."

Just days earlier, the US president threatened Iran that military options were "not off the table" in response to the country's missile test.

The US claims that a recent missile test by Iran violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the world powers, including Washington.

Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said on Thursday that Iran's "successful" recent ballistic missile test had neither breached the deal nor the resolution.

"Iran's missile tests are not, and have never been, in violation of the JCPOA or Resolution 2231," Dehqan added.
A man has reportedly attempted to attack a French soldier near Paris' famed Le Louvre art gallery on Friday.

The soldier opened fire in self-defence near the Carrousel du Louvre shopping centre around 10 am, according to the local media.

French daily L'Express reported that the suspect was carrying a knife. He is said to have been injured in the shooting.

A spokesperson for the French Interior Ministry said a "serious public security incident" was underway, saying security forces were at the scene, the Independent reported.

The Carrousel du Louvre has been evacuated amid a heavy police presence following the incident.


US President Donald Trump's granddaughter has become a star on Chinese social media following a Twitter video that shows her singing a New Year song in Mandarin, the media reported on Friday.

In the video, posted by her mother Ivanka Trump and already viewed by millions in China, Arabella sings a song in Mandarin while swinging a small colorful dragon  a symbol of the ancient Chinese culture  and wishing viewers a happy New Year, Efe news reported.

"Arabella singing a song she learned for #ChineseNewYear. Wishing everyone an amazing year to come during these days of celebration," tweeted Ivanka, who also wrote "Happy New Year" in Chinese characters.

The video was posted after both Ivanka and Arabella made a surprise visit to the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., during Lunar New Year celebrations on Wednesday.


French President Francois Hollande on Friday criticised "unacceptable" pressure on the European Union from his US counterpart Donald Trump, who has predicted a break-up of the bloc.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be," Hollande told reporters at an EU summit in Malta.

"Who really knows what the US president wants, particularly for the transatlantic alliance, and on the sharing of expenses that he calls a burden," Hollande added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile said the best way for the 28-nation bloc to deal with a US administration that seems ambivalent to Europe is to push forward with its own plans.

"I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands," Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.

"And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations," she added.

"That is why for me, talks about Europe are here in the foreground and not to deal with other parts of the world."

In Malta, the EU leaders are to discuss relations with Trump during the second half of the summit, after major talks about cutting illegal migration across the Mediterranean from Libya.

Trump has alarmed many in Europe by previously backing Britain's decision to leave the EU, predicting that more countries will jump ship and calling the US-led NATO military alliance "obsolete".
The US ambassador to the UN made a strong condemnation of Russia at the UN Security Council, calling on Moscow to de-escalate violence in eastern Ukraine and saying that US sanctions against Moscow would remain in place until it withdraws from Crimea.

"The US continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," said Nikki Haley, in her first appearance at the UN Security Council on Thursday.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."

Haley was speaking at an emergency UN Security Council meeting about a sudden upsurge in violence in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army.

Her remarks were notable for the stark difference between her rhetoric and US President Donald Trump's, reported CNN on Friday.

"I consider it unfortunate that the occasion of my first appearance here is one in which I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," she said.

"We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions."

"The sudden increase in fighting in eastern Ukraine has trapped thousands of civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure and the crisis is spreading, endangering many thousands more," Haley added. "This escalation of violence must stop."

While Haley's remarks echoed many speeches delivered by the Obama administration's UN ambassador, Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters that he thinks "there is a change in tone" with the new US administration. He added that he wasn't surprised by Haley's speech.

Fighting between Russian-backed rebels from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and the Ukrainian army exploded a day after Trump had his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, according to the report.

Russia accused Ukraine of starting the escalation.

Churkin said that Ukraine was "desperately, frantically trying to achieve a military settlement to the conflict."

He blamed Kiev for the recent escalation, saying it was meant to keep the issue "on the international agenda" and "at the same time suck in with their reckless confrontational policy newly elected heads of state".
US Defence Secretary James Mattis on Friday reiterated Washington's security commitment to Seoul and vowed to overwhelmingly respond to any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

"America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told the media here.

Mattis made the remarks during a press briefing before he began talks with South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo, to discuss ways to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The retired Marine Corps general arrived here on Thursday for a two-day visit for talks with top South Korean officials.

On Thursday, he met with South Korea's Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn to underscore the "priority" that the US President Donald Trump's administration places on the Seoul-Washington alliance.

It is his first overseas trip since he took office less than two weeks ago.

Mentioning ways to counter saber-rattling by North Korea, Mattis, on Thursday said: "Due to North Korea's threatening rhetoric and destabilizing behavioor, we are taking defensive steps like deploying the highly effective THAAD anti-missile unit to South Korea to protect its people and our troops that stand with our ally."

In July 2016, Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the THAAD  Terminal High Altitude Area Defence  anti-ballistic missile system to South Korea this year to better defend against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

In other efforts, Mattis stressed the need to expand "trilateral venues of cooperation with Japan, where the mutual defence of the three countries is best served through teamwork."

Mattis is scheduled to depart for Japan on Friday afternoon after paying his respects at the National Cemetery in southern Seoul.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Overcast. High around 75F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional light rain late. Low 66F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
Still Standing: Four the Moments legacy honoured at Nova Scotia Music Week

When a quartet of Halifax women began singing together a cappella in the name of social justice in 1982, there was little in the way of a music industry at play in Atlantic Canada. And even if there had been, its likely that Four the Moment would ...
Patnaik's close aides say that to understand him, one has to understand his empathy

By Pratul Sharma/Photos Sanjay Ahlawat
Actress and human rights advocate Angelina Jolie on Thursday said US President Donald Trump's executive order barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries hurts vulnerable refugees and could fuel extremism.

Without directly naming Trump, Jolie, who has served as a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in a New York Times opinion piece that discriminating based on religion was "playing with fire."

The Oscar-winning actress added that as the mother of six children, "all born in foreign lands and ... proud American citizens," she believed in the need for the nation's safety, but said decisions should be "based on facts, not fear."

"I also want to know that refugee children who qualify for asylum will always have a chance to plead their case to a compassionate America. And that we can manage our security without writing off citizens of entire countrieseven babiesas unsafe to visit our country by virtue of geography or religion," she wrote.

Trump's executive order bans citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days. Refugee admissions were suspended for 120 days while Syrian refugees were barred indefinitely.

The move has not only caused consternation for the nations involved but among other Muslim-majority countries, allies such as Germany and Britain and career State Department officials.

Hollywood's celebrities have also been using their spotlight to slam the president's ban.

Jolie, 41, has received an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian work. Last year, she visited refugee camps in Lebanon and Greece, meeting with families fleeing war in the Middle East.

The actress warned that by "implying Muslims are less worthy of protection, we fuel extremism abroad."

Jolie's op-ed is the first comment she has made publicly since filing for divorce in September from her husband, actor Brad Pitt. The former couple share three adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia, and three biological children, who were born in France and Namibia.
White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has hinted that Pakistan may be added to the list of countries whose citizens are barred from entering the US.

While Priebus did not identify Pakistan by name, sources close to the Trump administration have said it is a matter of time before Pakistan is included in the list of nations whose passport holders are barred from entering the US.

US sources say the President is keenly aware of who gave Osama Bin Laden shelter and from where most of the worlds terrorism has emanated. Signals have already gone out to the Pakistani authorities about the impending decision which led to the current house arrest of LeT head Hafiz Saeed.

Though not known to many, Kuwait, a Muslim-majority country has imposed ban on issue of visas to Pakistani nationals since 2011, along with Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Security concerns from radical elements and rising cases of drug trafficking from Pakistan were some of the reasons for it being placed on this list. Further, Kuwaits deepseated suspicion regarding the Pakistani governments links to terror groups has resulted in the country not providing visa waiver to Pakistani diplomatic and official passport holders, in contravention to the visa waiver agreement for these two categories of passports, signed by the two countries.

And despite the Pakistani Foreign Office pursuing this matter with the Kuwaiti authorities for years, there has been no progress. On the contrary, the involvement of three Pakistani nationals in the bombing at the Shia Imam Jafar al Sadiq mosque in Kuwait, that killed 27 people on June 26, 2015 has further hardened Kuwaits stance vis-a-vis Pakistan.

While there has been no public reaction to the Kuwaiti order, there was increasing concern among the Pakistanis after Priebus hinted that Pakistan may be added to the list of countries whose citizens are barred from entering the US.

The Pakistan government reacted to this possibility with a warning that in case of such a move by the US, it would reduce its cooperation with Washington in the fight against Islamist terror groups in case.

However, Imran Khan, leader of the PakistanTehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party came out in support and hoped that the Trump administration would consider stopping visas for Pakistanis to travel to the US. In his view, such a move would help Pakistanis focus on developing their own country.

Similarly, Arif jamal , a USbased security and Islam expert, responded to the Presidential order by stating that Trumps travel ban made no sense without Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on the list.

With the country being more and more associated as the hub of terrorism, it is indeed surprising how Pakistan in the first place did not figure in the US list. It has become increasingly imperative that in order to force countries like Pakistan to end sponsoring terror groups, tough measures like visa bans are implemented. Such bans would directly hurt the elite in the country, who in turn were likely to build pressure on policy-makers to do a re-think on terror-related policies.
US President Donald Trumps executive order suspending the entire resettlement programme for 120 days and banning indefinitely the arrival of Syrian refugees is a repudiation of fundamental American values, an abandonment of the United States role as a humanitarian leader and, far from protecting the country from extremism, a propaganda gift to those who would plot harm to America.

The order also cuts the number of refugees scheduled for resettlement in the United States in the fiscal year 2017 from a planned total of about 110,000 to just 50,000. Founded on the myth that there is no proper security screening for refugees, the order thus thrusts into limbo an estimated 60,000 vulnerable refugees, most of whom have already been vetted and cleared for resettlement in the US. The new policy urgently needs rethinking.

Refugees coming to the United States are fleeing the same violent extremism that this country and its allies are fighting in the Middle East and elsewhere. Based on recent data, a majority of those selected for resettlement in America are women and children. Since the start of the war, millions of Syrians have fled not just the military of President Bashar Assad but also the forces of Russia, Iranian militias and the Islamic State.

There are also thousands of Afghans and Iraqis whose lives are at risk because of assistance they offered American troops stationed in their countries. Of all the refugees that my organisation, the International Rescue Committee, would be helping to resettle this year, this group, the Special Immigrant Visa population, makes up a fourth.

Giving haven for those persecuted for their politics is a core American value. The more than 62,000 Cubans resettled by the committee since 1960 would find this executive orders denial of refugee needs not just insulting, but bizarre.

The order also suggests that the resettlement programme should make persecuted religious minorities a higher priority, implying that they have been neglected in the past. This is incorrect; existing law already places strong emphasis on religious persecution among the criteria for resettlement. For example, most of the refugees from Iran  a Muslim-majority country  who are resettled by my organisation are not Muslim.

Compared with other types of immigrants, refugees are the most thoroughly vetted group to enter the United States. The resettlement process can take up to 36 months and involves screenings by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Department of Defense, the State Department and the National Counterterrorism Center and United States intelligence community. According to the Cato Institute, the chances that a citizen here will be killed by a refugee are one in 3.64 billion; an American is far more likely to be killed by lightning than by a terrorist attack carried out by a refugee.

The United States can be proud of its wide network of refugee champions, for good reason: Refugee resettlement is an American success story. And this is true not just on the coasts but across the country. In the 29 cities where the Rescue Committee has resettlement offices, elected officials like the mayor of Boise, Idaho, and the governor of Utah, along with police officers, school principals, faith leaders and small-business owners, actively welcome refugees. They do so out of a sense of a moral obligation, of course, but also because they have witnessed the myriad ways refugees have enriched their communities over the years.

To take one example, over the course of a decade, refugees created at least 38 new businesses in the Cleveland area alone. In turn, these businesses created an additional 175 jobs, and in 2012 provided a $12 million stimulus to the local economy.

There is a further concern raised by the presidents refugee ban. When the United States abjures its responsibility to the worlds most vulnerable people, it forgoes its moral authority to call upon the countries of Europe, as well as poorer nations like Lebanon, Turkey, Kenya and Pakistan, which host over 5 million refugees among them, to provide such shelter.

Historically, the United States has welcomed the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and this has helped cement Americas leadership of the international order. But why should others continue to bear their heavy burdens when the United States wont? Support for refugees is not charity; it is a contribution to the global stability on which all nations dependand this is especially important at a time when the world faces a heightened threat of terrorism.

Terrorists are strategic in their work and their messaging. The civilised world must be equally strategic in its response. Where extremists seek to foster a clash of civilisations, democratic governments should not play into their hands.

That is what a ban on specific nationalities does. It is not right, it is not needed and it is not smart.

In 1980, when Congress passed the Refugee Act with bipartisan support, President Carters secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph A. Califano Jr., said the refugee issue required the United States to reveal to the worldand more important to ourselveswhether we truly live by our ideals or simply carve them on our monuments.

That still resonates today. Expert review of the resettlement vetting process is part of good government. Hasty dismissal of carefully developed systems is harmful in and of itself. It is also a distressing departure from fact-based policy making.

The world looks to America for enlightened leadership. Its citizens seek the same from their government. Refugee policy is a telling test for every nation. The United States passed that test for so many years, so it is a tragedy for it now to fail when its commitment is needed more than ever.

Miliband is former British foreign secretary and president and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.
The following is via OnlySimchas.com:

After the only mosque in the small Gulf Coast city of Victoria, Texas mysteriously burned down on Saturday, the Jews of the only synagogue in Victoria handed the Muslims a key to their building.

Though there are several churches in the area, the Jews were the one to make the offer so the Muslims would have a place to worship while rebuilding.

Everyone knows everybody, I know several members of the mosque, and we felt for them, said Robert Loeb, the president of Bnai Israel, a Reconstructionist synagogue.

The community in Victoria held an interfaith event on Sunday in front of the mosque. Local donations and a GoFundMe page, helped the mosque raised over $900,000 in one day for rebuilding. The Jewish Anti-Defamation Leagues southwestern arm also attended the event.

The causes of the fire are unknown, according to the New York Times.

Jewish community members walked into my home and gave me a key to the synagogue, Shahid Hashmi, a surgeon and one of the founders of the mosque, built in 2000, told the Times.

READ MORE: ONLYSIMCHAS.COM
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday 6 Shevat expressed his pain over having to evict the families of Amona. Speaking during a memorial for former MK and Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman, Netanyahu explained we are a nation of law and order and he was thereby compelled to carry out the High Courts ruling.

He stated he appointed a team on Wednesday to begin the work of establishing a new yishuv which will serve as the new home for Amona residents.

Unfortunately, Mr. Netanyahus call to residents to leave the community peacefully were ignored by the youths holed up in the shul as they attacked police during that operation. Despite their resistance, the expulsion was completed in line with the courts ruling.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
The Ministerial Law Committee next week is expected to discuss a bill that would ban the sale of fur and fur products in Israel. Violating the law would carry a six-month prison term and/or a fine. There is a clause in the bill excluding items worn or used for religious tradition, hence shtreimals would not be included in the ban.

Other exclusions include using fur products for scientific research and fur from cattle, sheep and camels. Over two-dozen opposition and coalition MKs have signed supporting the bill.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Police and inspectors of the Ministry of Agriculture and veterinary services confiscated six tons of illegal slaughter, which was taken to be destroyed. The operation took place on Wednesday, 5 Shevat, in Tamra. The owner of the establishment, 31, a local resident, was taken for questioning.

5.5 tons were apprehended in Tamra and another half-ton in nearby villages.

Tamra is an Arab city located in the lower Galil, about 20km east of Akko.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
President Donald Trump likes to go with his gut. But when it came to picking a Supreme Court nominee, he forced himself to go by the list.

Trumps campaign promise to pick from a list of 21 prominent conservative judges became the driving force behind the selection process that culminated Tuesday in the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, a federal appeals court judge. The list was crucial in solidifying support from evangelicals and calming broader worries that the unorthodox politician might go rogue on a lifetime appointment.

As a result, the decision-making was perhaps more orderly and ordinary than typical for the improvisational businessman and ex-reality TV star, according to a half-dozen White House aides and associates. They spoke on condition of anonymity about the search because they were not authorized to publicly discuss private deliberations.

Trump, at times, chafed under the restraints; at one point he flirted with searching for other options. He decided against his vice presidents initial choice. And, along with jurisprudence and intellect, Trump factored in a qualification he applies to many of his personnel decisions.

The young, clean-cut Gorsuch just looked the part, Trump told an associate.

Hes perfect in just about every way, Trump said Tuesday night, during the prime-time introduction of Gorsuch at the White House.

The moment was a year in the making.

Justice Antonin Scalia died last February, creating an unexpected opening on the nine-member court. Weeks later, Trump met with several prominent conservatives, including Heritage Foundation head Jim DeMint, at the offices of the Jones Day law firm in Washington. The group decided the conservative think tank would suggest a list of possible judges to the campaign staff, said John Malcolm, director of the Heritage Foundations Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

Malcolm published the suggested list shortly afterward. Trump, in an unprecedented move for a presumptive nominee, culled his own list from those names, made it public and pledged to choose one of them. Scalias seat was being held open by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who refused to hold a hearing on President Barack Obamas nominee, federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland.

Eleven more names, including Gorsuchs, were added weeks later.

Trump said he would keep his promise and even urged Republicans who dont like me in the race against Democrat Hillary Clinton to come home if for no other reason than to put a conservative on the court.

I believe that was a turning point on the campaign, said Ralph Reed, the founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. I believe it solidified his standing among evangelicals and other social conservatives. I think it was essential to him strengthening his position among Republican voters, which was weaker at that point than for a traditional, more conventional nominee.

Along the way, Trump told those close to him he understood the importance of a decision that could reshape the nations highest court for decades, as well as his own legacy.

Trump, who spent little time considering the Supreme Court before the campaign beyond criticizing decisions he did not like, became interested in the late Scalia and his career, aides said. He repeatedly told audience he would find a justice in the mold of Scalia.

Trump began discussing his decision with close associates and family members over the winter holidays at his Florida resort and began again in earnest after the first of the year. While he was satisfied with the names hed put out there, he at times suggested he was willing to veer off the list, and met with Andrew Napolitano, a former judge turned Fox News legal analyst, to discuss the decision. Trump ultimately returned to a narrower focus, mindful that breaking the promise would make him appear to be just another Washington politician going back on his word.

Trump interviewed four finalists: Gorsuch; Thomas Hardiman, who sits on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals; 11th Circuit Court Judge Bill Pryor; and Amul Thapar, a federal district judge in Kentucky.

The candidates also interviewed with White House counsel Don McGahn, Vice President Mike Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon. Pence had initially favored Pryor, while Bannon pushed for Gorsuch, according to two people familiar with the process. A spokesman for Pence did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Associates close to Trump say the president took the interview process seriously, discussing the finalists judicial philosophies.

He was engaged and very mindful of the awesome responsibility the president has in making these decisions, said Leonard Leo, the Federalist Societys executive vice president, who advised Trump on his pick, reprising a role he played for George W. Bush. At one point he said he wants to get this right. He took this very, very seriously and he wanted a process.

(AP)
One hundred and fourteen years ago, a government rabbi at the office of Nikolayevs Jewish community opened the purple-covered Registration Book of Jewish Births of 1902-03 (5662-63) and filled out the second entry box on the page:

Dates of Birth and Circumcision:

Jewish: Born, 11 [Nissan]; Circumcised, 18 [Nissan]

Secular: Born, [April] 5; Circumcised, [April] 12

Place of Birth: Nikolayev

Fathers Rank and Name; Mothers Name: FatherHereditary Honored Citizen Levi son of Zalman Schneerson, Levik. MotherChana

Name and Gender of Child: Boy, Menachem Mendel.

With this handwritten notation in Russian and Hebrew, entered long ago into a book that today lies in the municipal archives of a mid-sized Ukrainian city, begins the documented story of the life of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. Its a fitting opening for Early Years, a newly released book that sets as its goal the telling of this dramatic story solely through primary sources and original documents.

Its been more than 15 years since work commenced on Early Years. Written by Rabbi Boruch Oberlander and Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkinproduced by Jewish Educational Media (JEM) and published by Kehot Publication Societythe result is 550 intricately footnoted pages much of it recently discovered, accompanied by striking high-resolution pictures and archival document scans, many published for the first time.

Years of painstaking research have gone into telling the story of the Rebbes early lifeit ends just after the Rebbes 1928 wedding with Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka Schneersonand Early Years is representative of the dedication of a wide network of researchers to track down every available piece of paper to tell that story. Its a search that led them to archives in Ukraine, Russia, Latvia and Germany; wild goose chases through Belarus; and a continuous game of phone tag in Israel.

Early Years is the systematic compilation and presentation of nearly every document and piece of archival data available to the authors, and while ordinarily an author leads the reader through a desired narrative, here, readers create their own.

Telling the Story

There was a time not so long ago when many of the people who remembered the Rebbe from his youth were still alive. Classmates and relatives told stories about life in Yekaterinoslav, as his hometown of Dnepropetrovsk was known before the Russian Revolution; those who crossed paths with him later, in Leningrad, Riga, Berlin and Paris recalled the quiet, noble young man they had encountered.

The first known effort to record the Rebbes early biography was undertaken by journalist Nison Gordon and appeared in 1962 as an 11-part Yiddish-language series in Di Yiddishe Heim.

Gordons articles were based primarily on interviews he conducted with the Rebbes mother, Rebbetzin Chana Schneerson. Rebbetzin Chana committed some of her memories to paper as well, beginning to write her memoirs shortly after her arrival in the United States in 1947, most of which has since been published (by Kehot in pamphlet form in both the original Yiddish, and translated into Hebrew, English, French and Spanish; its also available online at Chabad.org). Much of what we know about the Rebbes youth comes from her.

Between 1989 and 1991, Rabbi Mordechai Menashe Laufer published his groundbreaking, three-volume Hebrew-language Yemei Melechthe first full biography of the Rebbe. Oberlander, a student at the time and fascinated with history, assisted Laufer in his work.

He did a tremendous job with the amount of information that was available at the time, says Oberlander, who has directed Chabad-Lubavitch of Hungary since 1989 and heads Budapests Orthodox Rabbinate. Anyone wishing to learn more about the Rebbes experiences growing up faced an immediate hurdle: The fact is, the Rebbe spoke very little of himself, and when he did, it was almost solely for the purpose of teaching a lesson or highlighting a certain point.

The Rebbe almost never mentioned names when he spoke either, explains JEMs Rabbi Levi Greisman, Early Years project manager and lead researcher. Generally, you find names only in specific letters to people. There was almost never such detail when he publicly recalled specific events.

Another challenge was the lack of access to archival information, all of which had been firmly locked away in Soviet state archives. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, these archives suddenly become accessible, and much was discovered. For example, one of the only extant photos of the Rebbes father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, comes from his 1939 NKVD arrest file discovered at that time.

During his initial work with Laufer, Oberlander realized that many of the dates during which events in the Rebbes life were said to have taken place were inexact. It was like we knew the Rebbes bar mitzvah and his wedding, and when he came to New York, says Oberlander. That was what we could be sure of.

Not knowing the Rebbes exact movements throughout pre-war Europe made it difficult to pin down events as well. Studying the Rebbes voluminous talks and letters, Oberlander began to jot down exact dates and locations that he came across, placing them in chronological order. With the publication of the Rebbes journals, Oberlander was able to add many more dates to his document, which slowly grew from 10 pages to more than 200.

A Historical Puzzle

Meanwhile, Shmotkin and the team at JEM were embarking on their My Encounter with the Rebbe oral history project. The advanced age of those who would have remembered the Rebbes formative years made interviewing them the projects top priority. JEM worked diligently to identify and locate these individuals, and record their testimonies, but, as explained in Early Years: In order to contextualize the testimonies in the film, the [JEM] team needed to understand the Rebbes early life and his movements between locations in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Latvia, Poland and France, so they embarked on a quest for concrete documentation, searching government and private archivesan effort which unearthed many previously unpublished documents.

We had all of these documents in our hands, but film has its limitations, says Shmotkin, executive director of JEM. So the decision was made to gather the material into a book. Hearing of Oberlanders independent work, the two projects merged. Shmotkin began to envision writing a different type of history booka biography based primarily on documents, relying on testimonies only if they were supported by the documents.

In addition to uncovering new documents and tracing the origins of old ones, the team worked hard to unravel mysteries in plain sight: The Rebbes and Rebbetzins old Soviet passports are a case in point. While the existence of their passports at the Latvian State Archives has been known for yearsthe late Chabad historian Rabbi Yehoshua Mondshine was the first to begin analyzing the Rebbes passportthe authors and researchers working on Early Years went to extreme lengths to decode the many pages of the documents.

The Rebbes passport contains stamps and visas in six different languages, says Shmotkin. Carefully deciphering and translating it was a huge amount of work.

Early Years provides this overview explaining the passports importance:

In preparation for their departure from Russia [following the R. Yosef Yitzchaks release from Soviet prison in 1927], passports were issued for the Rebbe and Rebbetzin, initially to be valid for one year.

Over the next five years, the passports would be extended a number of times. Many details of the Rebbes and Rebbetzins movements between Tishrei 5688 and Teves 5693 (October 1927-January 1933), would be recorded in them.

In Kislev 5693 (December 1932), when the Rebbe and Rebbetzin would apply for Latvian Nansen passports [Nansen passports were issued to stateless persons under the auspices of the League of Nations], they turned in their Soviet passports to the Latvian authorities, and they remain in the Latvian State Archives alongside the couples many entry and residence visas applications through the years.

Collectively, they provide a wealth of information on the Rebbes and Rebbetzins movements, their dates of travel, border crossings, and residences.

The books Appendix provides 15 pages with the complete breakdown of both passports, an extraordinary level of detail. Every stamp and handwritten notation needed to make sense, says Shmotkin, describing the process of analyzing the handwritten notations and various stamp shapes and colors, while slowly piecing them together.

On Oct. 1, 1927, the Rebbe received his Soviet passport, Soviet exit visa and Latvian entry visa. At the end of the month, he received a telegram from his father, R. Levi Yitzchak. The telegram is addressed to a pseudonym, Mendel Wolfson:

24 October, Letter-Telegram, Dnepropetrovsk to Leningrad, 25/11 Basseinaya St, Wolfson, Mendel.

May Gd grant you a good trip. May He guard your goings and comings now and forever. May you always be blessed in all things, and go in the good path all of your days. All the best, and only the best! May you be successful all your life.

These are my soulful blessings from the depths of my heart.

Your father, who loves you with an eternal love.

Levik

The next day, the Rebbe left the Soviet Union for the last time, entering Latvia at Ritupe. It would be another 20 years before the Rebbe would be reunited with his mother. He would never see his father again. Despite leaving, the Rebbes connection with and efforts on behalf of Soviet Jewry would continue for decades.

Your Turn Now

The last few years have seen the release of a number of books on the Rebbe, most notably Joseph Telushkins bestselling Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History (Harper, 2014), and My Rebbe (Maggid, 2014) by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel (Steinsaltz).

For biographical information, the authors of these and virtually every other recent study of the Rebbes life relied heavily upon the voluminous research conducted in preparation of Early Years, which was made accessible to them by JEM. Now, this same source information is available to all.

It is in this sense that Early Years is unlike a typical biography. To the extent that there is a narrative voice, it is only meant to help organize and provide context to the copious amounts of information being presented. And herein lies one of the main pleasure of reading Early Years: It offers the process of discovering the Rebbe for yourself.

Biographies or history books, they draw a general picture and fill it in with details, says Rabbi Shmotkin. This book doesnt do that. We included many, many details that another book wouldnt have, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential.

One must carefully engage with the documents to learn how the Rebbes childhood and home impacted his worldview, and to see how these formative years influenced and shaped him, and in turn changedand continue to changethe world. But which lessons and insights to take away and apply to day-to-day life? That is up to the reader.

Early Years is available on JEMStore.com, Kehot.com, and at local bookstores throughout the United States and Israel.

(Source: Chabad.org)
President pro tempore of the United States Senate Orrin Hatch, Ezra Friedlander  2016

WASHINGTON, D.C.  U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), U.S. Representative Christ Stewart (R-UT), and U.S. Representative Grace Meng (D-NY), introduced a bi-partisan and bi-cameral bill to award the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award bestowed by U.S. Congress, to the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. (Read legislation online).

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadats inspiring trip to Jerusalem and his historic speech to the Knesset, where he proposed ending 30 years of hate and enmity between his country and the State of Israel.  said Ezra Friedlander, CEO of The Friedlander Group founder of the Anwar Sadat Congressional Gold Medal Commission that is spearheading the advocacy effort to secure 2/3 both Houses of Congress/criteria for passage of the legislation.

In a series of meetings arranged by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and held at Camp David, Sadat and former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin negotiated the peace treaty that came to be known as the Camp David Accords.

meeting.

In the office of President pro tempore of the United States Senate  Fall 2016. l-r Khaled El Menshawy, Mohamed Samir  Embassy of Egypt, Ezra Friedlander, Doug Dynes, JC Cardinale  Office of Orrin Hatch

What is most remarkable about Sadats diplomacy is the dramatic first step he took toward peace by visiting Israel before negotiations commenced. This symbolic yet courageous action and his speech to the Knesset electrified the world at large riveted the people of Israel generating goodwill which significantly contributed to the success of the peace negotiations, continued Friedlander.

Sadat boldly addressed the Knesset declaring, Together we might build a durable peace based on justice, to avoid the shedding of one single drop of blood from an Arab or an Israeli. It is for this reason that I have proclaimed my readiness to go to the farthest corner of the world.

Sadat took countless personal risks to achieve a society grounded in peace and diplomacy  an endeavor that ultimately cost him is life, explained Sen. Orrin Hatch. Thus, awarding Sadat with the Congressional Gold Medal celebrates and gives homage to Sadats courageous, remarkable, and enduring imprint on history.

At the Egyptian Embassy  may 2016. Khaled El Menshawy, Mohamed Samir  Embassy of Egypt, Ezra Friedlander, Doug Dynes, JC Cardinale  Office of Orrin Hatch

President Sadat was the first Arab leader to recognize Israel. He displayed courage and vision when he negotiated the Peace Treaty, fundamentally changing the course of history in the Middle East for the better, said Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Awarding him the Congressional Gold Medal honors this legacy and underscores the enduring commitment of the United States to upholding the Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel.

Sadat was a once-in-a-generation leader, said Rep. Chris Stewart. He demonstrated a moral and political courage that is rare among world leaders, and which transformed the course of history. Its wholly appropriate that we recognize that courage with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Ezra Friedlander, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin Committee on Foreign Relations (Ranking Member)  2014

Anwar Sadat was an extraordinary leader, visionary and peacemaker who as President of Egypt became the first Arab leader to visit and recognize Israel, said U.S. Rep. Grace Meng. Awarding him with the Congressional Gold Medal would be an outstanding way to honor the enduring legacy he left behind, and pay tribute to his courage, and the contributions he made to peace in the Middle East. Im proud to help introduce this bill, and I urge the House and Senate to pass it.

The goal is for the Congressional Gold Medal to be presented to Sadats widow, Mrs. Jehan Sadat and a member of the Egyptian government in honor of the centennial of Sadats birth in 2018. The Medal will remind the world of Sadats steadfast contributions to the history of peace in the Middle East and the enduring treaty with the State of Israel which greatly contributes to Middle East stability, serving the national security interest of the United States.  concluded Mr. Friedlander.
The following was sent out to all OU affiliated Synagogues on Thursday. Additionally, you can read the Halachic analysis and ruling here:

Within mainstream Orthodoxy, more women than at any prior time in Jewish history are learning and teaching Torah, with passionate commitment and at unprecedented levels of scholarship and professional achievement. Motivated by yirat shamayim and ahavat Hashem, they seek not only to learn, but to teach and inspire others. Similarly, highly qualified and dedicated women are increasingly assuming leading roles in Orthodox communal life, both as professionals and within the laity. These positive developments have transformed the face of synagogues and the Orthodox community.

As women have assumed an expanding array of roles, including leadership positions of all sorts, often closed to them in the past, it becomes our challenge  and responsibility  to help define the contours of professional synagogue roles that may be played by women that are permissible within the bounds of halacha and our mesorah  and that conform to the norms of traditional halachic process.

Accompanying this memorandum are the Responses of the Rabbinic Panel to two questions posed to it by the Orthodox Union, in reference to professional synagogue roles:

1. Is it halachically acceptable for a synagogue to employ a woman in a clergy function?

2. What is the broadest spectrum of professional roles within a synagogue that women can perform within the bounds of halacha?

The Need to Address These Issues

The Orthodox Union presented these issues to our Rabbinic Panel for several significant and interrelated reasons. First, many Orthodox Union synagogue Rabbis, and their lay leadership, have requested the Orthodox Union to serve as a conduit for definitive guidance in this complex arena.

Second, the Orthodox Union concluded that the community would benefit greatly by receiving comprehensive, fully elucidated responses regarding womens professional roles that would inform and educate our increasingly sophisticated community membership. This was an instance in which brief and narrow responses  a simple yes or no  would be insufficient.

Third, over the past several years, certain synagogues have chosen to have women assume rabbinic roles and responsibilities, or rabbinic-like titles, never before practiced within Orthodox Judaism. As a lay body it was our impression that the issues presented were perceived, certainly by segments of our community, as aspects of Orthodox communal practice not necessarily governed by halacha. Other segments of our community believed that such practices were halachically

organization, the Orthodox Union felt it was of critical importance that we respond to these contemporary religious issues in the manner undertaken by our community for millennia  by presenting questions to our leading Rabbinic authorities, from whom we and our communitys Rabbis have regularly sought guidance on critical and sensitive matters of halacha and hashkafa.

The Process We Followed

The Orthodox Union recognized that matters of religious practice cannot be decided by lay bodies. It was our view that such determinations should be made  in the time honored tradition of Orthodox communities throughout the millennia  by a group of leading rabbinic scholars. To that end, we identified rabbis each enjoying an exceptional national reputation for scholarship and integrity, each a significant, recognized talmid chacham; individuals to whom large segments of our communities rabbis routinely turn for psak on issues of significance and who have, as a consequence, dealt with national issues in communities both large and small, and both homogeneous and heterogeneous in hashkafa. We also sought to include several panel members who are, or were, themselves pulpit rabbis.

With these criteria in mind, we approached the following distinguished poskim (listed in alphabetical order), who each agreed to serve on the Rabbinic Panel:

 Rav Daniel Feldman  Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University; Rabbi of Ohr Saadya of Teaneck, NJ

 Rav Yaakov Neuburger  Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University; Rabbi of Congregation Beth Abraham of Bergenfield, NJ

 Rav Michael Rosensweig  Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University

 Rav Hershel Schachter  Rosh Yeshiva and Rosh Kollel, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University

 Rav Ezra Schwartz  Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University; Rabbi of Mount Sinai Jewish Center in Washington Heights, NY

 Rav Gedalia D. Schwartz  Av Beis Din of both Beth Din of America and Chicago Rabbinical Council

 Rav Binyamin Yudin  Rabbinic Faculty, Yeshiva University; Rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Torah of Fair Lawn, NJ

Over a period of many months, the Rabbinic Panel met frequently, both in person and by phone.

The Orthodox Union, is enormously grateful to each of these individuals for their past and ongoing commitment to the community, but in particular for the countless hours, and profound seriousness and thoughtfulness, with which they assumed this responsibility.

As part of our process, we also convened a series of forums to enable members of the Rabbinic Panel to hear from a broad and diverse group of women and men regarding their perspectives on the issues being addressed. Forum participants included pulpit rabbis, educators, yoatzot halacha, communal professionals and lay leaders. In addition to meeting in small groups with members of the Rabbinic Panel, forum participants, as well as other community members, submitted brief statements outlining a variety of perspectives; each of these written statements was provided to the Rabbinic Panel.

Some Observations on the Responses of The Rabbinic Panel

We note, at the outset, that the American culture of personal autonomy and the egalitarian ethos inexorably clashes with the Torah values of placing normative halachic conduct above individual choice and halachic dictates above individual freedom. This clash is particularly pronounced in the area of gender equality in religious practice. Many have raised, and pondered, the following question: if women serve as CEOs or senior executives of major corporations  as they surely do  if they can head

 how can we fail to provide them with identical opportunities within the institution seemingly most significant to us outside of our families  the synagogue.

As Orthodox Jews, we believe in the deference to rabbinic authority, accepting the authority of gedolim and poskim, who in each generation translate Hashems will into practical policy and specific application for the Torah community. Reared in the modern world, we believe in self-actualization and the ability to choose our own paths; yet as Torah Jews, we subordinate the Western emphasis on autonomy to our willing and unabashed embrace of deference to the values and principles conveyed by the Torah, as interpreted by our leading Torah scholars and halachic authorities. Halacha and halachic advocacy do not belong to the purview of circulated petitions, op-ed pieces or Facebook posts. Religious practice must, rather, be the product of a halachic weltanschauung, as elucidated by our mesorah and the careful, systematic explication of Torah and Torah values by renowned halachic authorities, applying time honored methods of halachic analysis developed over the millennia, and accepted over the millennia. The exploration of halacha must reflect the aspiration of uncovering G-ds will, even when uncomfortable or difficult to comprehend.

Second, we recognize that too often, the centerpiece of our communal discourse has been on what women cannot do within our synagogue structure, rather than how they contribute to, enhance and advance synagogue life. That emphasis is, in our view, both misplaced and fundamentally counterproductive to advancing our communal needs and maximizing the contributions that can be made by the totality of our community, both men and women.

Accordingly, we note that just as the Rabbinic Panel has made clear that women serving in clergy roles or holding clergy titles is at odds with halacha and our mesorah, the Panel has also proclaimed  and celebrated  the important, and fundamentally successful roles that women can and must play within our communal and synagogue structures, including as educators and scholars. Women must be encouraged to share their Torah knowledge, and their enthusiasm and wisdom, with the broader community.

We therefore urge all segments of our community to recognize and focus upon what unites us. As articulated by the Rabbinic Panel, women can and should teach Torah, including at advanced and sophisticated levels; give shiurim and divrei torah; assume communally significant roles in pastoral counseling, in bikkur cholim, in community outreach to the affiliated and unaffiliated, in youth and teen programming; and in advising on issues of taharas hamishpacha, in conjunction with local rabbinic authority, when found by a communitys local rabbinic and lay leadership to be appropriate. Let us focus our energy and communal creativity on increasing and enhancing the contributions that women make to our shuls and communities, rather than being consumed with limitations.

Third, we feel it important to comment on Yoatzot Halacha. The Rabbinic Panel recognized that Yoatzot Halacha have strengthened religious observance in many segments of our community. In these communities, the introduction of Yoatzot Halacha trained and certified by Nishmat, has resulted in a substantial increase in the number of hilchot nidda and related sheelot posed by women, who are asking far more sheelot than ever before, and receiving responses from a cadre of dedicated, knowledgeable and committed women. While the Rabbinic Panel did not unanimously encourage the institution of yoatzot, they concluded that a Yoetzet Halacha may be employed with the approval of the communitys rabbinic and lay leadership, and, where employed, should continue to work in close consultation with the community rabbi(s). We believe that the recommendation of the Rabbinic Panel that the utilization of Yoatzot Halacha continue to be evaluated by poskim and communities alike, is a useful one that will foster greater exposure to and awareness of the importance of this institution, and recognition of the significant role of yoatzot in many of our communities.

Fourth, in Kohelet, Shlomo Hamelech taught that: Divrei hakhamim bnachat nishmain.

The words of the wise are most likely to be heard when communicated pleasantly. Efforts must be made to create an atmosphere of education and persuasion, rather than fulmination and coercion. In that spirit, the Orthodox Union has striven, and will continue to strive to encourage achdut and mutual respect. Ultimately, our community will be far better served by convening and promoting substantive dialogue and sophisticated discourse on issues that are, often, complex and nuanced. Such dialogue should bring together our eminent poskim and roshei yeshiva, our pulpit rabbis, and our laity, both men and women. Likewise, community leadership should endeavor, within the bounds of normative halachic conduct, to reach out and be inclusive, and resist pushing away any individuals who are committed to the observance of halacha and who seek to remain within the Orthodox camp.

The Broader Communal Agenda

Quite apart from the specific questions posed to the Rabbinic Panel, it is clear that numerous issues regarding the role of women within the Orthodox community remain unresolved, and require serious communal attention. Many of these challenges are not new, but have been highlighted to the Orthodox Union by comments of both men and women in the course of the series of forums that were convened by the Orthodox Union for the benefit of the Rabbinic Panel, and in the attendant written submissions we received.

We, therefore, underscore that the responses of the Rabbinic Panel that we transmit today are but the beginning of a process and not its end. We envision a continuing process of dialogue and exploration to begin to address these  and other  critical issues in a deliberate manner.

Many forum participants noted that our community would benefit greatly, and the synagogue experience would be enhanced by, an even greater presence of women functioning as educated, knowledgeable and halachically committed role models, teachers, and pastoral counselors, modelling the joy and fulfillment of Torah learning, of teaching, leadership, spiritual growth and emotional support in time of need. The failure to fully embrace the talents of women and encourage women to assume greater lay and professional roles is a tragic forfeiture of communal talent. We should focus on creating and institutionalizing roles for women that address the needs of Orthodox Jews today, by removing barriers that impede women from further contributing to our community, in halachically appropriate ways. We should fully utilize their talents and commitment, thereby fostering shmirat hamitzvot, enhancing limmud torah and expanding the richness and vibrancy of Jewish life.

Further, we must ensure that the community does not inappropriately disparage the sincere quest of many women for growth in limmud Torah, or in communal participation, as being improperly motivated. When applied, this blanket attitude not only alienates growth-oriented Torah Jews, but also diminishes the next generations access to talented and passionate teachers of Torah, and role models.

This subject likewise merits the thoughtful consideration and attention of our community.

Other issues likewise require careful review, exploration and communal consideration. For example, consideration should be given, within acceptable halachic parameters, to developing appropriate titles for women of significant accomplishment, holding professional positions within the synagogue and communal structure, thereby acknowledging their achievement and status. Though such titles could not  and should not  connote ordination or rabbinic function, the Rabbinic Panel has made clear that words  and titles  matter. In short, the dignity accorded such positions must be commensurate with the importance we place on them. As a result, we urge our community, with sensitivity, creativity and full regard for halachic and hashkafic norms, to constructively consider whether and, if so, how to design both appropriate job descriptions and titles for the critically important

roles described above. Such titles would make manifest the degree of skill, training, and preparation necessary for such roles, and the significant status and respect to be accorded to them. We further urge consideration of the related issues of tenure, compensation (including pay equity) and benefits accorded such roles. We resolve to utilize our organizational resources to foster such communal dialogue.

Finally, certain forum participants emphasized the need for greater communal attentiveness to, and rabbinic focus on, the spiritual engagement of women in synagogue services, particularly within certain community segments, and at certain critical life stages. For example, while many within the community, both women and men, feel an inadequate sense of connection, some women, upon completing their Jewish studies in high school and beyond, may not find the same sense of religious engagement in shul attendance as may be enjoyed by certain of their male counterparts. Whether, and, if so, to what extent, such feelings are widespread require careful communal attention and consideration and, if found to be significant, must be addressed in deliberate and concrete ways.

We recognize that the issues raised above are hardly the only ones that must be considered. We, as a community, should strive to identify others that must be placed on the communal agenda, and that require both meaningful attention and deliberation, and creative solutions.

The Way Forward

We offer the following observations:

1) The unity and health of our community will be impacted by the degree to which approaches are identified to substantively encourage, support and expand womens engagement in synagogue communal roles, within the bounds of halacha as explicated by the Rabbinic Panel. It is essential that the voices of individuals who are yirei shamayim and committed to Torah values, both men and women, are heard in communal discussion and leadership. Accordingly, the Orthodox Union commits to explore and identify approaches by which the concerns identified herein, and other challenges and opportunities, can be discussed and studied.

2) The OU undertakes, and will continue to strive, to live by the principles enunciated in this Statement. On the professional side of the organization, the OUs recruitment, training, mentoring and promotion of talented women within our professional ranks has been a key organizational priority for the past several years. We have significantly enhanced our maternity/parental leave policy, as well as our part-time and telecommuting work options, to create a more family-friendly work environment. We established the OU Womens Affinity Group as a forum for professional women within our organization, where women can gather on a regular basis for seminars, networking and brainstorming on issues of common concern. We instituted a new compensation system whereby each program position within the OU is assigned a grade and corresponding salary range, thereby ensuring pay equity across the board. And while there remains much work ahead, our management ranks are now beginning to reflect the totality of the talent pool within our community, both male and female.

On the lay leadership side, following consultation with our Poskim, the 2015 OU elections included six talented women elected as national officers. Women populate our commissions and committees, bringing their skill and expertise to bear for the benefit of Klal Yisroel.

But there is much more that the OU can  and should  seek to achieve. The OU is, therefore, in the process of forming a new Department of Womens Initiatives. This Department will be led by a senior professional, and will allow us to coordinate all of our programming for women, whether serving our communitys schools, shuls or individuals directly. The objective of this initiative is to advance the spiritual, religious and communal engagement of women at all stages of life, in all segments of the Orthodox community, in areas of personal and professional growth, including Torah study and community leadership.

3) We adopt as a statement of OU policy the Responses of the Rabbinic panel transmitted herewith and anticipate that Orthodox Union member synagogues will act in accordance with these Responses. The OU, through its Synagogue Standards Commission, will enter into a dialogue with synagogues to encourage and facilitate implementation of the Responses. In addition, the OU will explore various ways in which all shul members, women and men, can enhance their synagogue experience and realize greater spiritual enrichment.

Further, the OU will work with member synagogues, at the request of their respective Rabbinic and lay leadership and with their cooperation and guidance, to encourage womens involvement in all appropriate areas of leadership and participation within such member synagogues.

Moishe Bane

President

Howard Tzvi Friedman

Chairman of the Board

Allen I. Fagin

Executive Vice President / Chief Professional Officer

(YWN World Headquarters  NYC)
Federal judges on opposite coasts are due Friday to hear legal arguments defending President Donald Trumps travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The ban is sure to reverberate through the courts on a likely path to an appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Heres a look at how the legal issues may play out:



Q: WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN COURTS TO CHALLENGE THE PRESIDENTS EXECUTIVE ORDER?

A: The American Civil Liberties Union, several attorneys general and immigrant advocacy groups went to federal court to block Trumps action, which barred entry of refugees for four months and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries  Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen for three months and Syrians indefinitely.

Federal judges in Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Virginia, issued temporary restraining orders blocking at least parts of the order.

The Brooklyn judge on Thursday extended her order until Feb. 21, and a Justice Department lawyer said the government would ask her to throw out the case.

Further hearings are scheduled around the country to determine if temporary orders should be upheld and extended.

Because the emergency petitions were made ex parte, meaning the federal government had little or no time to respond, hearings Friday in Boston and Seattle will give the government a better opportunity to defend the presidents order after the chaos that ensued last weekend when travelers were stranded at airports.



Q: WHAT IMPACT HAVE THE TEMPORARY COURT ORDERS HAD?

A: Many of those detained at airports were released, some before court orders were issued and more afterward. In Boston, all the named plaintiffs detained at Logan International Airport were freed, said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

In New York, two named plaintiffs from Iraq were released, though the judge anticipated the case could expand to a class action representing a broader array of people, including tourists, students and permanent legal residents with green cards.

In several cases, visitors with visas that were valid when issued arrived on U.S. soil to find the State Department had revoked those privileges. Some were turned around and, in some cases, deported.

The federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the U.S. government Tuesday not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S.

But the government has maintained that order and similar ones do not apply because the visas are no longer valid. The named plaintiffs in the L.A. case, a group of Yemenis still in Djibouti, were not allowed to board planes to the U.S.

Jayashri Srikantiah, a professor at Stanford Law School and director of the Immigrants Rights Clinic, said that while the court order appears to clear the way for entry, a more fundamental barrier exists.

The first step is for them is whether they can obtain a valid boarding pass, Srikantiah said. They need to be permitted to board so there can be a discussion at the border about what happens next.



Q: WHAT ARE THE LEGAL ISSUES JUDGES NEED TO SORT OUT?

A: The main issues before the courts are whether Trump had the authority to issue the executive order and whether it was constitutional. The constitutional questions include whether the travelers were entitled to some kind of hearing before being barred and whether their religion played any role in their treatment.

On the issue of due process, a legal permanent resident will have firmer standing in court than someone on a tourist visa, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

The religion issue has played out publicly with advocates and protesters claiming Trumps action was intended to ban Muslims. The president tweeted that it was not a ban on Muslims and was not about religion.

However, several of the lawsuits point out Trumps campaign rhetoric about banning Muslims and statements about making exceptions for Christians from the seven countries.

The government cant single out one religion for harsher treatment than another, Vladeck said.

That issue presents the strongest argument for those who have the weakest legal standing in U.S. courts, such as a refugee whos never set foot in the country, Vladeck said.



Q: WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF COURTS RULE INCONSISTENTLY?

A: With different challenges filed in so many courts, there is likely to be confusion going forward, legal experts said.

You have the opportunity, frankly, for a dizzying array of judicial decisions trying to parse out how it applies to different groups of noncitizens, Vladeck said.

The Department of Justice is likely to take a case to a court of appeal to try to make sense of the many rulings, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.

Of course, those appellate courts could disagree, which has happened on many major issues including gay marriage and ultimately put the issue before the Supreme Court.

The high court would probably not hear the case until the fall. The orders, which could be extended, are due to expire long before that.

This order will not be the final word on it, Blackman said.

(AP)
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Five Towns Jewish Times

Leading medical experts in the United States claim that anti-vaccine advocates are putting the nation at risk. Who are these anti-vaccine advocates? From where did they originate and what do they want? And what does halachah have to say about the issue?

There is a biblical mitzvah of taking safety precautions, as the verse states, Vnishmartem meod lnafshoseichem (Devarim 4:15). Should the view of the anti-vaxxers set aside this Torah mitzvah? Are there other possible mitzvos involved here as well? And, finally, are vaccinations obligatory?

The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia reports that last year there were 79 cases of measles in teh United States. They further state that 1] The majority of people who got measles were unvaccinated. 2] Measles is still common in many parts of the world including some countries in Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. 3] Travelers with measles continue to bring the disease into the U.S.

and 4] Measles can spread when it reaches a community in the U.S. where groups of people are unvaccinated.

There are approximately 20 million cases of measles worldwide each year. In 2013, close to 150,000 people worldwide died of measles. According to Time magazine, one in ten Americans believe that the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) is not safe for healthy children. This is terribly sad, because measles was eliminated from the United States in the year 2000; the outbreaks come from abroad. The virus is highly contagious and can remain in the air many hours after an infected person has left the room.

Its also not a harmless, risk-free disease. Aside from the risks of pneumonia and encephalitis and possible fatal consequences, measles can cause deafness and can be extremely painful, too. Pregnant women who contract the disease are more likely to miscarry, and cancer patients with weakened immune systems are placed at grave risk.

Many anti-vaxxers have not vaccinated their children, and some have actually fudged the documentation about it to allow their children into schools and camps that would otherwise not accept them. Senator John McCain has been among the anti-vaxxers, and it has even been reported that there is a leading gadol bYisrael among them.

Anti-vaxxers have not only entered Disneyland (the cause of a 2015 major outbreak); they are in our yeshivos and day schools too. Three years ago, there were outbreaks in Brooklyn and in Monsey, two vibrant Orthodox Jewish communities. The fact that these outbreaks occurred in religious Jewish communities is also cause for chillul Hashem. The following is a historical overview, followed by a halachic analysis of the topic.

How It Started

The anti-vaccination advocates have two concerns that are often intertwined. The first is the MMR vaccine itself. They believe that there is some heretofore unidentified element in it that causes autism. The second is that some vaccines contained the preservative thimerosal, which contained ethyl mercury, a type of mercury that had been suspected of causing autism. Thimerosal has actually been removed from the MMR vaccine with no accompanying drop in the incidence of autism. No matter; this has not impacted the anti-vaxxer movement.

The MMR vaccine is given twice. The first dose is administered to infants between 12 and 15 months of age and the second vaccine is given between the ages of 4 and 6.

The impetus for the growth of the anti-vaxxer movement initially came from a 1998 study published in the February 28 edition of the Lancet by Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist, and 11 colleagues. The Lancet is a highly prestigious medical journal published in England. The study supposedly linked autism in children to the MMR vaccine. The Lancet article also said that autism has origins in the gastrointestinal systems of children.

Wakefield then made a tour of the United States in the fall of 1998, and in that tour he gave an interview at a Defeat Autism Now conference. In the interview, he conflated his own patients with those mentioned in his study. Wakefield had treated patients with diarrhea who did not have autism. He had conflated them with autistic patients that he had never seen or treated. In November 2000, Wakefield even appeared on CBSs 60 Minutes.

The combination of the article, the tour of U.S.-based autism groups, and Wakefields appearance on 60 Minutes caused a storm in both the medical and parenting worlds.

Doctors questioned how a serious study could have used such a small sample size (there were 12 subjects) to make such a revolutionary claim about vaccines that have been around for a half-century. They further questioned the uncontrolled nature and design of the study.

The main criticism expressed by many, however, was the fact that there was a serious logical fallacy at play. The Latin expression of this fallacy is post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning that we infer that subsequent events are caused by prior events. But this is not necessarily so; just because event Y happens after event X, it doesnt mean that Y is caused by X. An oft-cited example of this fallacy is that the rooster crows immediately before sunrise; therefore, the rooster causes the sun to rise. Autism is not detected at birth. It is generally not officially diagnosed until shortly after the time that one normally gives the second MMR vaccine, between 4 and 6 years of age.

Parents took action by refusing to vaccinate their children and creating a distrust of the medical communitys public policies on vaccination. Within a very short time, the United States experienced a 300% increase in people who were not vaccinating their children. All this with no proof.

Further Developments

In the March 6, 2004 edition of the Lancet, 10 of the 12 Wakefield co-authors published a retraction of their interpretation of the data. The Lancet editors also admitted that Wakefield had failed to disclose something crucial: Wakefield was being funded by lawyers who were representing parents in lawsuits against the companies that produce vaccines. (They eventually lost the lawsuit, but not for lack of trying.)

This information had been revealed by British journalist Brian Deer. Deer went on to win awards for his investigations, which also prompted an ethics-violation query by the British government. Apparently, since 1996, two years before he published the study, Wakefield had been receiving funding from Mr. Richard Barr of Alexander Harris Solicitors, one of the leading law firms in Luton, Bedfordshire. Barr had been funding Wakefield through the UK Legal Aid Fund, which paid bills submitted by a company owned by Wakefields wife. Wakefield had received the astounding sum of $750,000 (or rather its British pound equivalent) from Barrs efforts. Another lawyer organization was funding Wakefield as well.

Almost six years later, in February 2010, the Lancet finally retracted the original 1998 article in its entirety. This time the editors stated that Wakefield was, in fact, guilty of scientific misrepresentation. Wakefield had stated in his initial article that the sampling was consecutive, when in fact it was selective. Wakefield was cherry-picking his results, seriously skewing any true analysis of the data.

The Great Damage Done

The damage done by the Wakefield article, the 60 Minutes segment, and the hoopla generated by it all has entrenched itself into our society so that people are dubious of vaccinations. This has led to the outbreak of measles at Disneyland and can further endanger the nation. The statistic of 1 in 10 Americans is no laughing matter.

In the 17 years since the publication of Wakefields article, dozens of legitimate studies have been conducted that show that there is no correlation between autism and vaccinations. Thimerosal has been eliminated in this country and there is still no lowering of the incidence of autism. What has happened is that we have expanded our definition of autism and autism-like symptoms.

Benefits Of Vaccines

Historically, public policies of widespread vaccination have saved countless lives. In the late 1790s, Edward Janner noticed something remarkable about milkmaids. For some reason, they were immune to smallpox. Janner realized that anyone who was exposed to cowpox developed immunity to smallpox. In 1798, he developed and promulgated a vaccine for smallpox that saved millions of lives. The author of the Tiferes Yisrael begged and pleaded that people take the vaccine, calling Janner one of the chassidei umos haolam, righteous gentiles of the world.

Smallpox has killed over 300 million people. It was eradicated completely because of vaccination programs, and the last smallpox-related death was in 1978. In the early 1800s, vaccines did not have preservatives and some of them were tainted. Now the vaccines are much safer.

Mitzvos Involved

It is this authors contention that vaccinations involve the fulfillment of a number of Torah mitzvos, aside from the basic mitzvah of vnishmartem mentioned at the beginning of this article. We must also make sure that we not allow the greedy actions of others to adversely affect our health, the health of our children, and the fulfillment of our Torah obligations. We should also make our best efforts not to allow misinformation and fraud to affect crucial decisions in our lives.

Hashavas Aveidah. The verse in Parashas Ki Seitzei (Devarim 22:2) discusses the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah, returning a lost object, with the words, Vhasheivoso lo, and you shall return it to him. The Gemara in Sanhedrin (73a), however, includes within its understanding of these words the obligation of returning his own life to him as well. For example, if thieves are threatening to pounce upon him, there is an obligation of Vhasheivoso lo. In other words, this verse is the source for the mitzvah of saving someones life. It is highly probable that it is to this general mitzvah that the Shulchan Aruch refers in Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 325. This is certainly the case with vaccinations, because vaccinations save lives.

Thy Brothers Blood. There is a negative mitzvah of not standing idly by your brothers blood Lo saamod al dam reiecha (Vayikra 19:16). This is mentioned in Shulchan Aruch (C.M. 426:1) and in the Rambam. When people get sick and chance death because of our inaction, we are violating the commandment of Lo saamod al dam reiecha.

Lo Suchal Lhisalem. There is yet another negative commandment associated with the positive commandment of hashavas aveidah, and that is the verse in Devarim (22:3), You cannot shut your eyes to it. This verse comes directly after the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah. The Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, in his HeEmek Sheeilah, refers to this mitzvah as well.

Vchai Achicha Imach. The Sheiltos (Sheilta #37), based upon the Gemara in Bava Metzia 62a, understands the words in Vayikra (25:36), vchai achicha imach, and your brother shall live with you, to indicate an obligation to save others with you. The Netziv in his HeEmek Sheeilah understands it as a full-fledged obligation according to all opinions. He writes that one must exert every effort to save his friends life, until it becomes a matter of pikuach nefesh for himself. The Netzivs position would certainly advocate that vaccinations are obligatory, even if it involves a slight dangerwhich in modern times has been virtually eliminated.

Vahavta Lreiacha Kamocha. The Ramban, in Toras HaAdam Shaar HaSakanah (pp. 4243), understands the verse of And love thy neighbor as yourself as a directive to save our peers from medical danger as well. We thus have a total of six Torah mitzvos involved in vaccinating our children.

Is It Obligatory?

It seems that in a situation where there is concern for an epidemic, poskim have ruled that vaccination is obligatory. (See Minchas Tzvi, siman 9, and Rabbi Eliezer Yehudah Waldenberg, ztl, in Tzitz Eliezer, and Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein, shlita). How effective is the vaccine? With two shots, the efficacy rate for the MMR vaccine reaches 97%.

What about the issue that there will invariably be people with allergic and or other negative reactions to vaccinations? The language of the Shach (Y.D. 336:1) is informative. He writes that a doctor should not say, What do I need this anguish for if I err and unintentionally kill a patient? One could perhaps extrapolate from the words of the Shach that we should do whatever we can to ensure that the population

is protected through proper vaccination.

In Teves of 5745 (winter 19841985), the Steipler Gaon was asked about a case where the measles vaccine was apparently problematic. He advised them to make sure that the next batch was problem-free and instructed them to take the vaccine (Orchos Rabbeinu, p. 350).

Should one violate Shabbos for a vaccination? Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, ztl (Shulchan Shlomo 329:1, 2) has a fascinating definition for what constitutes safek pikuach nefesh, possible risk to life. He writes that if from a sociological perspective people are not rushing to get the vaccination as soon as possible, then it is not considered enough of a danger to warrant Shabbos violation. He writes that this is the case even if there is an actual danger.

What about the rabbinic views that there may be substance to the anti-vaxxer view? Carefully researching the data behind a halachic question can be daunting at times. Occasionally, though rarely, the background information behind a question may not be sufficiently researched because the gadol or posek relied upon someone else, who did not properly weigh the issue or evidence. In recent years we have seen this when gedolei Torah reversed their rulings on the proper berachah for cashews; whether bran is considered animal food; and whether people can distinguish between pasteurized and unpasteurized wine.

Leading gedolim with whom this author has consulted in recent monthsRav Chaim Kanievsky, shlita, and a leading gadol in the United Stateshave said that when someone has done the research and is sure that the background information behind a psak is faulty, there is an obligation to respectfully publicize the correct information.

It is this authors hope that the information in this article will help serve to protect us all from illness. Amen.

The author can be reached at [email protected]
The conviction of a Navy sailor who took photos of classified areas inside a submarine is getting a new look from the Trump administration.

An attorney for Kristian Saucier, who is serving a one-year prison sentence, said he was encouraged by President Donald Trumps national security adviser to seek a pardon. Trump has said he is reviewing the case.

Saucier pleaded guilty last year to unauthorized detention of defense information for taking the photos inside the USS Alexandria when it was in Groton, Connecticut, in 2009. In pleading for leniency, he argued the prosecution was driven by sensitivity about classified information amid the scandal involving Hillary Clintons emails.

The Justice Department at that time was under pressure to do something, his attorney Ronald Daigle Jr. said. So he got prosecuted for it. I dont think its fair because she didnt get prosecuted for anything.

Saucier has said he merely wanted service mementos, but federal prosecutors said he was a disgruntled sailor who put national security at risk by taking photos showing details of the submarines propulsion system and reactor compartment and then obstructed the investigation by destroying a laptop and camera. Prosecutors also rejected comparisons to Clintons use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

After Trumps election, Daigle discussed the case in an hour-long November meeting inside Trump Tower with Michael Flynn, the presidents national security adviser, who encouraged a formal pardon request, Daigle said. Jeffrey Addicott, a professor at St. Marys University School of Law, filed the request for a pardon. In an interview last week with Fox News Sean Hannity, who had previously had Sauciers mother on his show, Trump was asked about a possible pardon and said he was reviewing the case.

I think its very unfair in light of whats happened with other people, Trump said.

Tom Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, declined to comment on the pardon request.

The investigation began in 2012 when a waste station supervisor in Connecticut found Sauciers cellphone with the submarine photos atop a pile of demolition trash and alerted a retired Navy friend who contacted the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.

Saucier, who is from Arlington, Vermont, was a 22-year-old machinist mate on the nuclear-powered attack submarine when he took the photos. He knew they would be classified but he wanted to show his family what he did in the Navy, his lawyers said. He denied sharing the photos with any unauthorized recipient.

Saucier began serving his sentence in October at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, and Daigle said his client is optimistic about a pardon.

He is very thankful and grateful that it seems like the president and White House are actually listening and maybe going to take a look at the case, Daigle said. So his hopes are up.

(AP)
Wire recordings of Holocaust survivors singing melodies at a refugee camp in France in 1946 have been heard for the first time in decades, thanks to university employees in Ohio who pieced together a device to listen to them.

The University of Akron says the six songs were sung by survivors in Henonville, France, for Dr. David Boder, a psychologist who was among the first people to record Holocaust survivors telling their stories. He recorded on steel wire, capturing the melodies with lyrics in Yiddish and German.

Some spools were donated to the university in the 1960s and archived, but the content wasnt discovered until a recent project to digitize the recordings.

The Akron Beacon Journal reports one woman sang melodies that had been sung in a Polish ghetto and a forced-labor camp.

(AP)
The future of one of Britain's biggest nuclear power stations has been thrown into doubt after Toshiba looked set to pull the plug on the 10billion project.

The Japanese giant, which has a 60 per cent stake in the planned NuGen nuclear project in Moorside, Cumbria, plans to withdraw from its lead role in the venture, according to sources.

The company is embroiled in an accounting scandal that has left it wrestling with a multi-billion dollar write-down of its US-based nuclear subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric.

Shame: Toshiba president Masashi Muromachi bows his head as he announces new management following the billion dollar accounting scandal

It is claimed the firm overpaid by several billion dollars for another nuclear construction and services business.

The scale of the write-down, the details of which will be revealed on February 14, could be around 4.8billion, according to sources.

Toshiba and its partner in the Cumbria project are looking for new investment with fears the Japanese firm is ready to pull out altogether.

If it does, it throws in to doubt the future of a key plank in Britain's plans to replace ageing nuclear reactors.

The NuGen project, which aims to supply power to about 6m homes from 2025, costs more than 10billion to build.

Westinghouse UK, Toshiba's British subsidiary, is providing the reactors for the planned project, the rest of which is owned by French company Engie.

Once built, it would be one of Europe's largest nuclear power plants.

The Government is being urged to guarantee funding for the power station. Justin Bowden, the GMB union's national secretary for energy, said: 'The Government should step in now to fill any gaps in funding and ensure the project continues to move forward as quickly as possible.

It is bonkers that we should rely on foreign investors to ensure facilities which would guarantee our energy needs for the future are built.'

Engie, which is working on the project alongside Toshiba, said it is currently seeking investment and is continuing to evaluate the site and design of the Moorside plant.

An Engie spokesman said: 'The NuGen partners are working with the British government and regulator to obtain the necessary permits and determine contract conditions.

'In order to secure the project's investment needs, NuGen and its current shareholders, Toshiba and Engie, are actively reviewing debt and equity financing alternatives.

That means, in particular, seeking new investors to join Toshiba and Engie as equity participants in NuGen for the project's development.'

Toshiba became one of the nuclear sector's biggest players with the purchase of Westinghouse in 2006, the height of a short-lived boom.

But the industry was left battered by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, which was caused by the tsunami that followed the Tohoku earthquake off the coast of Japan.

A Toshiba spokesman said it was reviewing all its nuclear power businesses outside Japan but said 'Nothing has been decided at this time, including the impact on our Moorside nuclear project.'

NuGen declined to comment.
Amanda Staveley represented a group of Abu Dhabi investors

Barclays has been ordered to hand over a dossier of potentially explosive emails in its battle with financier Amanda Staveley.

The bank is accused of fraudulent practice in a 7billion fund-raising drive which saved it from collapse eight years ago.

Bosses allegedly loaned 3billion to Qatari backers which they then used to buy shares in the struggling bank, keeping it out of Government hands.

There are also questions over 322million in advisory fees the bank paid to the investors around the same time.

Staveley, 43, represented a group of Abu Dhabi investors who separately took part in the same rescue package.

She claims her business and clients were unfairly treated because their terms were different and is suing the lender for more than 700million, plus interest and costs.

Her battle took a major step forward last night when the High Court ordered the bank to hand over a cache of documents relating to ex-financial services chairman Richard Boath.

Boath was willing to hand over the documents and has been helping the Serious Fraud Office in a criminal investigation. But Barclays had been fighting the claim.


Sir,



Some people may not understand the importance of Swazi schools being made to teach Christianity only for religious education.



Swaziland is a Christian country and as such we must emulate Christ in all we do. At no time in the Bible did Jesus teach about other religions except the Kingdom of God. It is high time Swazis started acting in a truthful manner, especially in the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God. II Corinthians 6 says, as Christian believers we must not be yoked together with non-believers.



There is a solid and profound history of how Swaziland came to be known as a Christian country. King Somhlolo had a vision where Swazis were told to choose the Bible instead of money, hence Christianity was the first faith to be introduced to the nation. This nation has been blatantly insulting God by insisting on teaching other religions in schools.

Any believer who knows her/his God would know that it is abomination to allow what has been happening in our schools concerning religious education.

The PM was once a teacher and who better than him could have effectively listened and acted by making this progressive and nation-saving decision.



Swazis need to know that they cannot compromise the Word of God. The Bible warns; You shall have no other gods but me, says Jehovah. The fact that other religions are allowed in Swaziland does not mean that they must then be given equal or senior status over Christianity. Those who cannot stomach Christianity and want their own to supersede, it is better that they go back with their faith to where they came from. It is not wise for Swaziland to continue cajoling with other religions. What shall it profit our nation to lose our only hope, God and the security we have in Him, for what?



The Christian faith, is not an issue of human rights or international Charters, Bills or Policies. Those are good but when we talk about the nations Christian faith we are talking about being Godly not just good. We cannot and we should not compare God Almighty to organisations and beings. If the church of Jesus Christ is sleeping in Swaziland, now is the most crucial time for it to wake up and rise.



NC Dlamini




HAPPY PEOPLE: Parliament leadership posing for a picture. The PM is flanked by Senate President Gelane Zwane (2nd L)and her Deputy Ngomuyayona Gamedze (L) and on his right is Speaker Themba Msibi and Esther Dlamini, the Deputy Speaker.

LOBAMBA  If the positive energy between the Prime Minister (PM), Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini and Presiding Officers yesterday is contagious, then the Fourth Session of the 10th Parliament will be a peaceful one.



The PM, the Senate President Gelane Zwane and Speaker Themba Msibi were all smiles and unusually friendly towards each other yesterday as they toured the Parliament premises on a final inspection in readiness for the State Opening today.



The trio, who were joined by Clerk to Parliament Ndvuna Dlamini and Deputy Presiding Officers Ngomuyayona Gamedze and Esther Dlamini, first toured the marquee where the luncheon will be served. The PM also later confirmed that he had a good meeting with the presiding officers in Parliament as there was no tension. I am looking forward to a successful State Opening, said Dlamini.



During a press briefing yesterday, the PM said he was also looking forward to the address that would be made by His Majesty King Mswati III this morning.

When the King speaks, everyone ,including Cabinet and parliamentarians and the entire nation has to listen and take the directive from him, he said.

He said he was earnestly praying for a successful opening. He said today not only Swazis would be listening to the King, but the world at large.

Roles will be changed tomorrow (today) as we will all listen to what the King will be saying, said Dlamini.

Last year there was great tension between the presiding officers and the PM following the appointment of members of the Parliamentary Service Board (PSB) and, as a result, they did not participate in the Parliament opening planning sessions.




MBABANE  He has had many doors shut in his face of late, but former Lubulini Member of Parliament (MP) and Ncadweni Christ

Ambassadors leader Timothy Myeni has been appointed into the RSTP Board.

RSTP is the acronym for the Royal Science and Technology Park, which is a parastatal under the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT).



Myenis appointment into the seven member board was confirmed by ICT Minister Dumisani Ndlangamandla.

In 2015, Myeni was declared undesirable by South Africas Department of Home Affairs and as a result he would not be allowed into that country until 2020.



Locally, he has been involved in a battle over land for a church he wants to construct in Matsapha.

However, Myenis gods smiled upon him as he joins highly-qualified professionals into the RTSP Board, which is chaired by Professor Musa A. Dube.



The vice chairperson of the Board is another highly qualified professional.

Dr Rejoice Maseko and Dr Velephi Maseko. Another professional is Professor Cebsile Magagula, who is a member and Draughtsman.

Attorney Ndzingeko Dlamini is also a member of the Board.

The rest of the members are Ndumiso Ngozo and Myeni.



The board has been appointed into office for a period of three years and is expected to vacate office on October 25, 2019.




MBABANE  Legally speaking, if a family member engages in sexual intercourse with another, their act amounts to incest, which is criminal.



However, a daughter to a princess openly declared in court that she was in a sexual relationship with a prince, who, according to the family tree, is her uncle.



Making an observation on the unclear sexual relationship between the two family members was Mzwandile Dlamini, who is representing Machawe Sibhaca Ndzingane, who is alleged to have raped Prince Ncabenis girlfriend at Ludzidzini.



After telling her side of the story before the Mbabane Principal Magistrate, Fikile Nhlabatsi regarding the rape incident, Dlamini established during cross-examination that the survivor, *Susan, was a descendent of the late Prince Makhungu, while her boyfriend was the son of Prince Ncaba.

This, after *Susan also continuously referred to him as prince.



It transpired that Prince Ncaba, the father to Prince Ncabeni, shares the same father with Prince Makhungu, who is the grandfather of Susan.

Customary, Prince Ncabeni is a brother to Susans mother, which results in Susan being Ncabenis niece.



The family tree was confirmed by Susan during the course of her rape trial. Defending her love and affection for the prince, she informed the court that the fact that prince Ncabeni and her mother did not share the same parents meant that they could be involved in a love relationship.

This was after Dlamini had asked her what she considers their act to be.



According to you, is what you are doing Swazi or taboo? asked Dlamini.

In reponse, Susan said there was nothing untoward about their relationship.



Meanwhile, when narrating her rape ordeal in court, she said she dreamt enjoying sexual intercourse with her boyfriend (Prince Ncabeni), only to find that the pleasure was literally from a stranger when she gained her conscious.
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By Tom Allon

The ingenious framers of our Constitution got most things right. It is amazing that a document crafted in the 18th century can be largely intact now in a very different world than the one in which it was conceived. Their plan to structure a government system that would check the power of the executive  the checks and balances  allowed us to succeed and make progress even when our president was misguided or made a mistake.

We saw a great illustration this past weekend after the president decided to ban travelers from seven Muslim nations from entering our country. In dictatorships or monarchies, no one would been able to overrule this pernicious attempt at excluding people for their religion. In America, within a few hours of this executive action, a judge in Brooklyn was able to temporarily right a potential wrong. I live across the street from the federal courthouse in Brooklyn and it was amazing to watch the lights flick on Saturday night for an NYCLU injunction that led to a hearing and a stunning rebuke to Trump.

Wow. Thats a real democracy in action and it heartened millions of Americans who worry that we are going off a cliff with this new administration.

Im sure this stay is just the beginning of a long battle, but round one ended encouragingly and it reminded everyone that in America citizens have lots of power and legal mechanisms to fight the White House.

No other country in the world has such a robust and resilient form of government. In addition to the checks and balances we have our First Amendment, protecting freedom of religion, speech, the press, and the right to assemble.

This is one of the more stunning pieces of forward-thinking in governance. It is another bulwark against an out-of-control executive branch, and it has never felt more important in my lifetime than it has these past few weeks.

The peaceful protests that went on around the country the day after the inauguration  engineered and mostly populated by women  were evidence of the strength of our democracy and our unparalleled tradition of free speech.

It showed our fellow citizens, the rest of the world, and, hopefully, the incoming administration that the power to assemble and protest is one of the most powerful rights Americans citizens retain.

More than 4 million protesters around the country sent a message to the incoming administration that there is a movement brewing that will resist attempts to trample on the rights of minorities, women, immigrants and other oppressed groups.

The Womens March on Washington will undoubtedly be a thorn in this governments regressive side, and one hopes that it will translate into efficient political organizing and encourage more women to run for national office.

This past weekend, a pop-up demonstration at Kennedy Airport illustrated the passion and solidarity of those who were appalled by the anti-immigration actions of the new president.

If you build a wall, we will tear it down, they chanted. A quick mobilization at airports, within hours, is an astounding modern development made possible through the powers of social media. Like the Arab Spring of a few years ago that toppled longtime leaders in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Yemen, the power of viral protests should never be underestimated.

The press is called The Fourth Estate because it belongs in our system of checks and balances. As a graduate student at the Columbia School of Journalism in the mid-80s I was taught good journalism comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

Truer words could not be spoken about the role of the media in America in this scary moment. We need a strong, independent, and fair press to question, probe, and expose the misuse of power.

The media needs the support of the citizenry against manipulation by the government so we dont degenerate like other countries have when the government made the media the enemy.

Steve Bannons chilling words last week that the media is the opposition party and should shut up are not far removed from the bullying tactics in Nazi Germany in the mid-20th century. And we know where that went.

So, as citizens of the most democratic country in history, we must exercise our power to assemble, protest, organize, and support our free press.

The resistance has just begun.
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By Gina Martinez

A Massachusetts man has been charged with multiple hate crimes for allegedly attacking a Muslim Delta Airlines employee at John F. Kennedy airport last week, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.

Robin Rhodes, 57, of Worcester, Mass., was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court and charged with assault as a hate crime, harassment as a hate crime and unlawful imprisonment as a hate crime, the DA said.

The bigotry and hatred that the defendant is accused of manifesting and acting upon have no place in a civilized society  especially in Queens County, the most culturally diverse county in the nation, Brown said. Crimes of hate will never be tolerated here and when they do regrettably occur, those responsible will be brought to justice.

According to the charges, a Delta employee who wears a hijab was sitting in her office in the Delta Sky Lounge in Terminal 2, between 7:10 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. Jan. 25 when Rhodes, who was waiting for a connecting flight to Massachusettes, allegedly came up to the door and stated Are you fing sleeping? Are you praying? What are you doing?

Rhodes then allegedly punched the door, which hit the back of the victims chair, the criminal complaint said.

According to the charges, when the victim asked Rhodes what she did to him, he acknowledged that she had done nothing to him but then allegedly kicked her in the right leg, Brown said.

The victim moved to a corner of the office to get away from him. However, Rhodes allegedly kicked the door, stepped into the office and blocked her from leaving, Brown said.

When someone came to the office and tried to calm Rhodes down, Rhodes moved away from the door and the victim ran out of the office to the lounges front desk, Brown said. Rhodes allegedly followed her and and got down on his knees and began to bow down in imitation of a praying Muslim and shouted epithets about Islam and ISIS.

Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you. You can ask Germany, Belgium and France about these kind of people. You will see what happens, he said, according to the complaint.

The victim suffered substantial pain and redness in her right leg as a result of Rhodes alleged actions.

According to the complaint, as Rhodes was arrested he told officers I guess I am going to jail for disorderly conduct. I couldnt tell if it was a man or woman because their back was to me and they had something covering their head.

Rhodes was ordered held on $50,000 bond/$30,000 cash bail and was set to return to court Feb. 8 . He faces up to four years in prison if convicted.
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By Mark Hallum

The travel ban issued by President Donald Trump for Muslims traveling from seven countries has Queens organizations on high alert to protect their members from what Asad Bajwa of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Center in southern Queens called a breach of the Constitution.

Ahmadiyya is an organization which has openly rejected terrorism in every form and advocates for the separation of government and religion. It has a global membership in the tens of millions and provides legal representation as one of its many services. The group has a mosque located at 188-15 McLaughlin Ave.. in Hollis.

The Constitution does not allow discrimination based on religion, race, etc., said Bajwa, a Queens Village resident. Our community understands that you have to vet whos coming, but to discriminate based on religion  that is what is very troubling to me as a New Yorker and a Muslim-American.

Bajwa, director of public affairs for Ahmadiyya in the United States, had contacts who are green card holders in Yemen when the executive order was issued and faced uncertainty over whether they could return home even if they were permanent U.S. residents. Tensions were high until the order was clarified for them the day following the ban, and they now know they can return.

We have advised them not to travel outside the country, because if youre traveling and they add more countries, then you may not be able to come back, Bajwa said. Our legal association has given advice not to travel outside the country if youre a green card holder.

Ahmadiyya has set a priority to fight extremism over the past 15 years, Bajwa said, which includes making its presence in communities known and presenting the peaceful side of Islam through national media.

The implication that you can target based on religion or race or profession or color this is a very troubling start because it will tear the fabric of our society, Bajwa said. Our main concern is not only for us but for the society at large. We live in a very beautiful society, and we dont want to see that happen, which can happen.

State Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Fresh Meadows), a strong advocate for the Muslim community, issued a statement calling on Congress to strike down the executive order.

On Friday, the president issued a morally reprehensible and unconstitutional executive order that seeks to ban certain refugees and immigrants from entering our country, Weprin said. This order is a slap in the face to all Americans, a nation built on the backs of immigrants and refugees fleeing persecution and violence, and must be opposed by every person of character on both sides of the aisle. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us and a ban on any faith is a ban on all faiths. As such, I look forward to seeing congressional action to overturn this executive order and will continue to fight for the premise of religious freedom and equality in our great state of New York.

Non-Muslims are even taking cautionary steps.

Jagir Singh Bains of the Sikh Cultural Society in Richmond Hill worries that the intensifying political climate and the recent travel ban could have implications for the Sikh community because the most common physical depiction of a Muslim terrorist resembles members of his own religion.

At his Gurudwara Sunday, he told fellow worshipers to act with caution since Sikhs are often confused with Muslims, who also wear a turban and beard. Bains saw cases of mistaken identity unfold following 9/11 when members of his own community were attacked on the streets and convenience stores.

A Feb. 5 meeting will be called to address these concerns and advise the Sikh community on how to conduct themselves with details of the meeting pending.

According to Bajwa, the best action for Muslims facing uncertainty with travel should contact a good lawyer, the ACLU or Amhadiyyas legal association.
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By Patrick Donachie

Advocates for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women vowed to continue pushing for clemency for women imprisoned on non-violent drug offenses despite the law-and-order stance of the new presidential administration, according to speakers at a forum sponsored by the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.

The Real Women Real Voices symposium, held in Vanderbilt Hall at New York Universitys Law School Jan. 25, brought together formerly incarcerated women to share their stories and views on panel discussions. The evening also included phone calls from two women currently serving time in prison.

Andrea James, the councils executive director, said she hoped the symposium would be a call for action for the attendees, particularly the law students in the audience who may end up as prosecutors.

We wanted to talk about the policies, as the experts in this field, she said. We are working to create a system that is based on human justice.

James founded the council in December 2015 to advocate for women in and out of prison. She also founded Families for Justice as Healing and was a 2016 recipient of the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award.

Espousing the motto nothing about us without us, the council wants to ensure that incarcerated and formerly incarcerated womens voices are included in the debate over prison reform.

The council currently involves more than 1,000 women in and out of prison, with chapters in 22 states, and forum attendees came from as far away as Oakland, Calif., and Atlanta, Ga., according to Topeka Sam, the councils national director.

At one point, the council set up a video chat with Alice-Marie Johnson, 61, who is currently serving a life sentence for a nonviolent drug offense.

Having served more than 20 years of her sentence, she originally asked President Barack Obama to grant her clemency as a part of his Clemency Project 2014, but was denied, nor was she among the more than 200 commutations Obama issued during his last week in office.

Johnson acknowledged that she made terrible choices more than 20 years before, but said her choices in prison had been far different. Johnson said she had an exemplary conduct record in prison and her clemency request had the support of the warden, prison staff and three members of Congress.

She expressed sorrow for those inmates who are languishing in prison, whose dreams have been shattered, whose hopes have turned to hopelessness, whose tears could fill a river.

But Johnson renewed her commitment to continue fighting for clemency despite the disappointment that she was unsuccessful with President Obama.

So many people are quick to say, you do the crime, you do the time. But that time should be just and fair, she said. Theres no middle way on justices highway. You have to pick a side.

The council and other organizations advocate for clemency for inmates like Johnson, and James said it was important to keep fighting, because sometimes their efforts are successful. She pointed out Ramona Brant, a panelist who had been granted clemency by Obama in 2015.

We used to carry Ramonas picture with us around the country, James said. Now we carry Ramona.

Brant was arrested in 1993 in North Carolina and charged with conspiracy  a conspiracy Brant said began long before she even arrived in the state. She received clemency in Dec. 2015 and later met with Obama to speak about issues surrounding mass incarceration, such as housing discrimination against former inmates.

Like many throughout the evening, Brant expressed worry about what the Trump administration would mean for women and girls still incarcerated, but she said she was determined to remain optimistic.

We hope something good will come out of this administration, she said. I doubt it, but youve got to believe in the unbelievable.
Strong defense, pair of goals from Shaye Bailey hands Freedom WPIAL Class 1A championship

A shutdown defense and a pair of second-half goals from junior Shaye Bailey led the Freedom Bulldogs to a convincing 3-0 win over Springdale Friday.
Albany has been blessed with a long history that can only be matched by a few other cities in our country. A city as old as ours is bound to have a lot of buildings that have their own stories to tell. Sure, we're lucky to have the architectural wonder known as the New York State Capitol in our backyard Other treasures, like the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and Albany City Hall, seem to be around every corner. But what about all of those other buildings? The buildings that we pass by every day and never really give much thought besides a fleeting, "Oh well that's pretty." They have their own history to tell as well. Here are eight Albany buildings that we need care about because they are as unique to this city as you or I.

59 N. Pearl Street

Built: 1792

What's There Now: Pearl Street Pub

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE:This building has had many lives, including as a Woolworth's, and the former Jillian's bar. Those by itself aren't anything too exciting, but the building's original incarnation is an eyebrow-lifter. Would you believe that this building is the oldest surviving Executive Mansion in Albany? The building, now home to the Pearl Street Pub, served as DeWitt Clinton's home during his time as governor. Clinton, whose claim to fame is the building of the Erie Canal, spent many nights looking over plans and documents here for his now-celebrated ''Clinton's Ditch." That's a pretty remarkable thing not just on a local level but on a national level too. The Erie Canal transformed the country when it opened in the 1820s. Traveling to Chicago and even to New Orleans was no longer dangerous and slow. Clinton, one of the country's most-underrated politicians, poured everything he had into New York state, and it showed. DeWitt Clinton holds a very grim "first" as well. He was the first New York governor to die in office, and 59 N. Pearl St is where he lost his life. At the time of his death, he was over $6,000 in debt (about $175,000 today). He died penniless and his entire estate was auctioned off in this building in June 1828. If you have a keen eye, outside cemented in the sidewalk is a plaque commemorating DeWitt Clinton's former home. Sharing space with some of history's elite is rare, but here in Albany, bar patrons get to do it every day. That's something very special, whether they know it or not.

100 Holland Ave.

Built: 1933

What's There Now: Vacant

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Chances are you've never heard of Jesse Leonard and that's understandable. But hundreds of examples of his work sit all throughout the city. He was a home builder with a personality the size of a city block, at least that's probably what he'd tell you. Many homes in Albany's west end were built by Leonard, including 100 Holland Ave, a Tudor-style home that he built for himself to retire to. To say a developer's retirement home would be chockfull of eye candy would be an understatement for the Leonard House. At the back door a large tile mosaic reads "cave canem," Latin for "beware of dog." Its interior is even more fun. Tony Opalka, Albany's city historian, calls it "one of the most unique interiors within the city." The solarium is tiled and has a fountain. A copper horse gallops up the wrought-iron bannister. Bathrooms have bamboo and leaf imprinted in the wall plaster. Dark wood trim and cabinetry run throughout. The little details are endless. It was exactly what the man that helped build Albany wanted. Character and lots of it. Jesse Leonard was a showman, and his home is essentially an extension of himself. Currently the Leonard House sits vacant, along with five other Holland Avenue Tudors that were built by Leonard. It would be interesting to know what Jesse Leonard envisioned for Holland Avenue when he built his final six homes. Perhaps he thought it would become a street similar to Manning Boulevard, with large unique homes on every lot. That is not what it became. Unfortunately, 100 Holland Ave, one of the most unique homes in Albany, is now paying that price.

2 Ash Grove Place

Built: 1839

What's There Now: Residences

Why Should You Care: This unique building is the former home of Capt. Samuel Schuyler. While no relation to the famous Schuylers, he made his name operating a steamboat business between Albany and Manhattan. The building in its original state isn't really an amazing structure to behold. It's boxy and white with some marble accents. The home's "wow'' factor derives from the absolutely insane-looking belevedere the captain had added to his home's roof. Most belevderes of the time were square. Schuyler's is a circle and it's enormous. One obvious reason why Schuyler may have built the belevedere was his profession. He owned a steamboat business and he lived six blocks away from Steamboat Square. It just made sense to climb a flight of stairs to check on what had arrived into port instead of going for a nightly stroll in the bitter winter. After the death of Capt. Schuyler in 1894, the home became the South End medical dispensary for the poor. The operating room was on the top floor due to its abundance of light. The building is now a small apartment building and those residents probably have no idea they're living in an old hospital. Creepy.

1 Columbia Place

Built: 1852

What's There Now: Under renovation

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Erastus Dow Palmer may not be a household name now, but for much of the 19th century he was one of the premiere American sculptors. His work was lauded around the world and he did much of it at 1 Columbia Place. Not only was this building his studio, it also served as his home, and he opened his doors to many other American artists to work and collaborate there. The building became a who's-who of 19th-century artists. Palmer's most notable piece of work made at this studio was "The Angel at the Sepulchre," located just a quick trip away in Albany Rural Cemetery. If indoors is more your thing, a copy of it exists at the Albany Institute of History & Art. In 1869, Palmer moved his studio around the corner to Lafayette Street, and his old studio became the first home to St. Agnes' School. By the 20th century, 1 Columbia Place became a revolving door of businesses that included a fire insurance company and a telephone union. In 2014, it partially collapsed due to summer flash flooding. The good news is it's been shored up and renovations are ongoing.

518 Broadway

Built: 1847

What's There Now: Saati Deli & Catering

Why You Should Care: Christmas is a special time of year for many, and our Albany ancestors helped shape the holiday we know today. Sure, Troy can lay claim to "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," but Albany is no slouch when it comes to holiday cheer. 518 Broadway just happened to be ground zero for a Christmas first. When the building was completed in 1847, it was known as the Temple of Fancy. Great name right? It was a mid-19th century variety store, that sold a variety of things. In 1842, Richard Pease, the owner, became the first person to use Santa Claus in an advertisement. About eight years later he would be the first to print an American Christmas card, right on-site at 518 Broadway at the good ole' Temple of Fancy. Nobody really knows for sure when it was printed. Some speculate it was as early as 1847, the year he opened his new store, though it was probably 1849 or 1850. The exterior looks completely different now, but it still has the same layout as when jolly old Saint Nick was just an advertising product of Albany.

188 Washington Ave.

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Built: 1869

What's There Now: National Association of Social Workers

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: The Merchant House is probably one of those buildings that you've gone past hundreds of times and never noticed it. Admit it. It's something even I can admit, too. It's not flashy, it doesn't have a one-of-a-kind feature to make you scream, "We need to save this!" In fact everything about it is quite quiet. The house was built in the late 1860s for the family of Walter Merchant, a local produce dealer. Merchant lived in the house until his death in October 1896. His funeral was also held in the home's front parlor, which was common during the Victorian Age. His wife, Caroline, followed suit four years later. The Italianate Revival house has a front yard, rare for the area. The yard is contained by its even-rarer original 19th-century cast-iron fence. The Merchant House is a representation of how this section of Washington Avenue used to be. The social elite once thrived here. Row houses and mansions once lined both sides of the street from South Swan to Lark. One by one they came down, replaced by office buildings. All but two. The Merchant House and the Fort Orange Club down the street endure. While the Fort Orange Club is absolutely stunning and much older, it's also gone through a series of renovations and hardly resembles its original design. The unaltered Merchant House stands as the only reminder of how Washington Avenue's wealthy once lived. She's all that's left.

53 N. Pearl Street

Built: 1861

What's There Now: Dr. Elisa Perreault Optometrist

Why You Should Care: The building was originally built by the Architectural Iron Works of New York and throughout the years a vast array of businesses have come and gone. In the 1870s, the Folsom Business School, the precursor to Bryant & Stratton, made its home here. In the 1880s it was the Wooster Furniture Company. At the beginning of the 20th century, Julius Saul moved his clothing store, named Saul's, to the building. Saul is the person responsible for the 1906 renovations that added the top floor to the building, along with the bust of George Washington that sits like the main jewel in the building's crown. The Wooster Building  I just named it so let's run with that  is also the last remaining Albany building with a cast-iron facade. (There weren't many to begin with.) In the early 1970s, this building was slated for demolition with the extension of Pine Street. Last-minute intervention by Mayor Erastus Corning 2nd saved its life, and 40 years later the building continues to impress. In the land of Albany architecture, 53 N. Pearl would be our white rhino.

412 Broadway

Built: 1830s

What's There Now: The Argus Apartments

Why You Should Care: Once home to the Albany Argus, Albany's main 19th-century Democratic newspaper. The Greek Revival building has a curved front, the only one of its sort in Albany. Couple the unique front with its mansard roof and you have yourself a beautiful building that architectural enthusiasts love to gawk at. Daniel Manning, Grover Cleveland's secretary of the treasury, was once the president of the Albany Argus in this building. There was always a lot of news in this building. Sometimes, the building itself made headlines. In 1895, popular local lawyer and closet poet William Morange met his demise here, falling down an elevator shaft. In 2015, the Argus wrapped up its commercial-to-residential conversion, adding 32 units to a growing downtown Albany housing market.
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With more than five decades in business journalism, Jane Bryant Quinn will share her knowledge about managing one's financial future in Albany next week.

At the heart of her advice is a simple philosophy: Managing your money well is an investment in yourself.

"That's what I love writing about," Quinn says. "How do you manage money for your future?"

The event, organized by Women@Work, is set for 5 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Albany Institute of History & Art, 125 Washington Ave., Albany. The cost is $25 for new Women@Work members and $20 for current Women@Work members. Registration is open online.

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Quinn's career has consisted of long-running columns in Newsweek magazine, Good Housekeeping, Woman's Day, and a newspaper column syndicated to 250 papers by The Washington Post. She has worked extensively in television as a financial correspondent on the "CBS Morning News" and "The Evening News with Dan Rather." On PBS, she hosted her own program, "Take Charge!" And in 2010, Quinn cofounded The Daily Voice, which brings local news to communities online. She has received numerous awards, including an Emmy for excellence in TV journalism and a Loeb Award for Lifetime Achievement in business journalism.

But when she entered the field of business writing some 50 years ago, women were a rarity.

That when a McGraw Hill editor told Quinn she'd be covering money stories, something at the time she said she "knew nothing" about.

"(My editor) told me to learn," she says. "I turned out to have an affinity for it. I never would have guessed."

By age 27, she had built a strong reputation and eventually became editor of a newsletter called Business Week Letter, published by McGraw Hill in 1969. Newsletters were as popular as blogs at that time.

"I had to go by my initials so no one would know I was a girl," she says.

But that wasn't the first of her obstacles. When she was 21, she took a job at Newsweek distributing mail, seeing it as a way "to get her foot in the door," she says. It didn't take her long to discover only men went into the writing training programs there, so she left after nine months.

Since, she says she's seen "huge changes" in journalism.

"It was legal to pay women less for the same job men did," she says, adding at one point she made 30 percent less than men with the same job.

Quinn now writes a finance column for AARP monthly business, addressing the many issues facing people ages 50 and older, including preparation for retirement, retirement affordability, making money last, when to claim social security, the best investments, health care and finding the right financial advisor.

Quinn's latest book, "How to Make Your Money Last: The Indispensable Retirement Guide," was just updated for 2017. Her previous book, "Making the Most of Your Money NOW," a comprehensive guide to personal finance, is now in its third edition.

Today, she lives in New York City, and is married with two children and six stepchildren.

She says while the law has sought to equal the playing field for women since the days she was paid less than her male co-workers, family obligations still sit mostly on the shoulders of women, presenting economic challenges.

"If you're not getting wage increases and can't pay for childcare, you can't work," Quinn says. "(The idea that) there is a perfect family-life-work balance is a myth."

Better opportunities exist now for women to leave the workforce and return later, though, she says, adding that she saw "investing in childcare as investing in myself."
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COHOES  A proposal to turn a historic shipyard into a waterfront attraction drew a crowd inside Peebles Island State Park's Visitor Center Thursday to begin discussing what would be appropriate for the site.

The 6-acre, state-owned property is the site of the former Matton Shipyard, which was open from 1916 to 1983. It is located in the Peebles Island State Park at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers.

Buildings on the property have been damaged by flooding and only three are salvageable, attendees were told. Those include the small former watchman's building at the front of the site, the carpenters' shop and a building that had stores on the first floor and offices above.

Any use of the property will have to take into account that the land is subject to flooding, said William Price, vice president of Fisher Associates, the firm hired by the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to examine uses for the site.

"The floods are fairly significant," Price said. "They have taken their toll on the buildings."

Ideas discussed include walking trails, a place to launch kayaks, or a boat-building operation.

Price said he hopes neighboring communities work to attract restaurants, hotels and other complimentary businesses.

Five decades of paperwork from the business has been preserved, he said.

"It is an amazing collection," he said. "We know virtually every detail of every boat that was built."

After gathering input, the consultant plans to develop a list of ideas and cost estimates to be presented to the public in late April or May.

"There isn't going to be a grand Disney plan we drop on this," Price said. "It's going to be incremental, and it's going to be long."

No conceptual plans for Matton shipyard are being introduced by @ErieCanalway tonight. That will happen in late April or May. pic.twitter.com/D3BiVn7at5  Tim O'Brien (@timobrientu) February 2, 2017

Otto Madsen of Cohoes and Richard R. Davis Jr. of Malta both worked in the shipyard before it closed.

First owned by John Matton, who opened the shipyard in 1916, the business remained in the family until 1966. Bart Turecamo purchased it but continued to operate it under the Matton name.

Davis worked there from Sept. 11, 1979 until it closed in 1983. He started as a diesel mechanic and became a machinist.

When he was hired, he said, "I thought it was always going to be there."

Madsen was employed from 1981 to 1983 first as a laborer, then as a welder/fitter.

Both want to see it become an attraction.

"I'd love to see Cohoes and the state have a marina," Madsen said. "I'd like to see it as a functional place where people can walk around."

"I'd like to see some kind of historical museum related to the ship-building process that was done here," Davis said.

Cindy Rakowski, a Cohoes resident, said it would make sense not to add permanent structures but to use the site for flooding-resistant purposes like bike paths.

"It would be nice, living in this community, to have a place to launch a kayak," she said.
Albany

In the wake of scandal at SUNY Polytechnic Institute, the governing boards of the school's twin development nonprofits have quietly been stocked with veterans of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration.

The entities in question are Fuller Road Management Corp., which was set up to develop properties such as the nanotechnology school's central campus off Fuller Road and downtown Albany's Smart Cities Technology Innovation Center at Kiernan Plaza, and Fort Schuyler Management Corp., which was established to fulfill similar duties for several large development projects across upstate, including the RiverBend solar panel factory in Buffalo and a film production facility outside Syracuse.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds have flowed through the nonprofits  an arrangement that has been criticized by good-government groups who note that transparency laws that apply to state bodies do not govern the school's offshoots.

Four months after the Cuomo-controlled Empire State Development Corp. effectively took over management of SUNY Poly's development portfolio, the boards have been remade  largely in the governor's image.

On Wednesday, the Fuller Road website listed just four board members: Robert Blackman, a Capital Region real estate broker; Cuomo's former state Department of Transportation Commissioner Joan McDonald; Brad Johnson, a former adviser to former Gov. Mario Cuomo; and Robert Samson, a retired IBM executive who served on Andrew Cuomo's SAGE Commission on government efficiency.

On Thursday morning  a day after the Times Union inquired about the makeup of the board  Fuller Road's website was updated to show the addition of six new board members, four of whom have worked for Cuomo.

The new additions are Michael Frame, SUNY Poly's vice president of external relations and chief of staff (who will serve as chair); former Albany County Executive Michael Breslin; Megan Daly, who served as deputy director of Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Councils initiative; Franklin Hecht, a former chief financial officer for the state Office of General Services who left state service in 2015; Kristin Proud, Cuomo's former commissioner of the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance; and Ken Tompkins, who recently retired as Empire State Development's Mohawk Valley director.

On Wednesday, the list of board members on the Fort Schuyler website listed Fuller Road carry-overs Samson (who was identified as chairman) and McDonald, as well as Michael Evke, CEO of the scoreboard company Eversan, and Robert Geer, SUNY Poly's senior vice president and chief operating officer.

On Thursday, the four Cuomo administration veterans  Daly, Hecht, Proud and Tompkins  were added to the Fort Schuyler board.

RoAnn Destito, the current commissioner of the state Office of General Services, served on both boards as recently as September, but resigned on Sept. 15 in a letter that cited "my work obligations and schedule."

The Fuller Road board does not appear to have met since early August, while the Fort Schuyler board last met on Sept. 13  two days before Destito's departure, and nine days before the unveiling of a federal criminal complaint against former SUNY Poly president and CEO Alain Kaloyeros, former top Cuomo aide Joe Percoco and six upstate development executives. All but one of those businessmen had sought and secured contracts for projects managed by the SUNY Poly nonprofits, including the RiverBend plant and the "film hub" outside Syracuse.

Kaloyeros had served on both nonprofit boards, though he stepped down from those posts a year ago as the federal investigation was under way.

The Sept. 22 federal complaint revealed that longtime Cuomo associate Todd Howe, a lobbyist and consultant who had done extensive work for SUNY Poly, had pleaded guilty to numerous felonies connected to what prosecutors said was a wide-ranging scheme to trade bribes for legislative favors and competitive advantages. Howe has been cooperating with federal investigators since June.

The same day, Kaloyeros and Capital Region developer Joe Nicolla were named in a state complaint that alleged bid-rigging in the development of a SUNY Poly student housing project.

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With the exception of Howe, all have pleaded not guilty. Kaloyeros was immediately suspended from his leadership role at SUNY Poly, and subsequently resigned.

A day after those arrests, Cuomo announced he was handing management of the school's development portfolio to Empire State Development. He subsequently blamed much of the scandal on poor controls over the procurement process used by the nonprofits, and has proposed stepped-up oversight such as the creation of a "chief procurement officer" within the Executive Chamber  though that concept has been criticized by some as duplicative of the powers of the state Comptroller's office, only less independent.

The nonprofits' bylaws were rewritten in November to give greater influence to Empire State Development. The Fort Schuyler bylaws, for example, call for an 11-member board composed of four members appointed by the SUNY Poly Foundation, four appointed by the SUNY Research Foundation, and three appointed by the board itself. Five of the 11 must be recommended by or approved by Empire State Development, whose president and CEO can serve as a non-voting "advisory representative" to the nonprofit board, or designate someone for that role.

On Monday, Kaloyeros filed court documents asking a judge to compel Fort Schuyler and Fuller Road to pay his legal expenses and fees connected to the state and federal charges, as well as his ongoing effort to retain his SUNY Poly faculty position.

In late October, the onetime physics professor signed agreements with both nonprofits that stated they would cover his legal bills through Sept. 22, the date of his arrest. The complaint alleges that none of his legal bills incurred after June 30 have been paid.

A SUNY Poly spokesman said no one from either nonprofit signed either agreement.

cseiler@timesunion.com  518-454-5619  @CaseySeiler
The North American P-51 Mustang was a single-engine, air-superiority fighter and bomber escort which served the Army Air Corps during World War II in all theaters. The sleek design was built around the massive V-12 engine driving an even larger propeller. The aircraft was famously used in the European theater to escort massive formations of allied bombers striking deep in to the heart of the Third Reich.

According to official Tinker history documents and photographs, the Oklahoma City Air Depot conducted maintenance and modifications to 25 Mustangs from Jan. 1951 to Dec. 1953.

The P-51 was generally armed with six .50 cal. machine guns, three in the leading edge of each wing root. It could also carry up to 2,000 pounds of external stores including bombs, rockets and long-range drop tanks. The V-12 engine is very efficient at high altitudes which allowed it to remain with striking bomber formations. There were five distinct versions of the Mustang beginning with the P-51A, P-51B, P-51C, P-51D with high-visibility bubble canopy, and P-51K. There were also multiple reconnaissance variants and even a Twin-Mustang; two P-51s joined together with a center wing and flown by one pilot, known as the P-82.

The all-black pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group were trained in Tuskegee, Alabama, and flew P-47 Thunderbolt and multiple versions of the P-51 Mustang. The Red Tailed Tuskegee Airmen gained not only fame, but the everlasting respect of the bomber crews they escorted over Europe by attaining one of the lowest combat loss rates of any escort unit in the European theater.

The P-51 had moved from front-line service to a dependable, but aging mount with the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves by the time the Korean War kicked off. The Air Force was quickly transitioning in to the jet age by this time, but soon found it still needed tough aircraft like the F-51 which could handle rough airfield and maintenance conditions. The F-51 Mustang was put in to the fight flying from airfields in Japan and the Korean Peninsula in support of United Nations troops. Some of the Air Forces most recognizable combat leaders at the time and in later years, such as General Daniel Chappie James Jr., flew the Mustang during their early careers. The final operational F-51s were retired from service with the Air National Guard in 1957.

Manufacturer: North American

Aircraft type: P-51

Nickname: Mustang

Crew: 1

Power plant: One Rolls Royce/Packard-Merlin V1650 in-line V-12 piston engine creating 1,490 horse power

In-service dates: 1940-1957

Number produced: 14,068

Tinker connection: Maintenance and preparation for Korean War use
By Press Trust of India: Chandigarh, Feb 3 (PTI) All the arrangements are complete for the conduct of the Punjab assembly polls on 117 seats tomorrow with "unprecedented" security arrangements being made for the smooth and peaceful elections.

Punjab Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) V K Bhawra said "unprecedented" security arrangements have been made for the polls as compared to arrangements made in previous elections.

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"Around one lakh security personnel including paramilitary forces have been deployed in these elections," said Bhawra who is also the nodal officer for state polls.

Unlike previous polls, police check posts continued to stay at several locations before the 48 hours of the polls on the directions of the Election Commission, he said.

With Punjab set to witness a three-horse poll race, the Election Commission has set a target to achieve 85 per cent polling during 2017 assembly polls.

"The election machinery is ready for the February 4 polls," Punjab Chief Electoral Officer V K Singh said while addressing media here this evening.

He informed that voting would start at 8 AM and would go on till 5 PM for the 117 assembly constituencies.

As many as 22,614 polling stations including 14 auxiliary polling stations have been set up at 14,177 polling locations in the state, the CEO said.

Asked about the vulnerable polling stations, Singh said there are 5,500 vulnerable stations and around 800 are critical polling stations in the state.

A total of 1.98 crore voters are eligible for voting comprising 93.76 lakh women and 415 third gender. There are 4.05 lakh first time voters of 18-19 years of age, he said.

There are 364 NRI voters in the state. Besides, there are 1.05 lakh service voters in the state, he said, adding there are 65.36 lakh are urban voters while 1.33 crore are rural ones in the state.

Singh said, "There are 1,145 candidates including 81 women in the fray for the elections."

On Amritsar Lok Sabha by-election seat, nine candidates are trying their luck. There are 13.80 lakh voters in the Lok Sabha seat. MORE PTI CHS AKA DIP

--- ENDS ---
In the first issue of the Tinker Take Off for 2017 we discussed the F-4, the greatest air battle of the Vietnam War, Operation Bolo, and the 8th Tactical Fighter Wings famous leader, then-Colonel Robin Olds. However, Olds did not conceive or conduct the greatest air battle of the Vietnam War alone. The 8th Tactical Fighter Wing was filled with great Airmen, and none were better than Olds vice commander, then-Colonel Daniel Chappie James Jr.

During his career, Chappie James Jr. became the first African-American general in the United States Air Force and was later the first African-American four-star general in any American military service branch. He was born Feb. 11, 1920, in Pensacola, Fla., as the last of 17 children to a laborer and a teacher. James mother taught all her students what she considered the 11th commandment: Thou shalt never quit. He passed away of a heart attack Feb. 25, 1978  just three weeks after retiring. His nickname came from copying an older brothers nickname, Chappie, after Baby Dan no longer suited his 64, 250-pound frame.

Chappie James Jr. grew up wanting to be a pilot after seeing the planes constantly taking off and landing at nearby Pensacola Naval Air Station. After being expelled from Tuskegee his senior year for one too many escapades, he attended the civilian pilot training program there at Tuskegee. After completion, he joined the Army Air Corps as a 2nd lieutenant and continued to teach flying to young cadets. Chappie did not see combat until the Korean War, flying 101 combat missions. Later, during the Vietnam War, he flew 78 combat missions. In fact, it was his actions during the Vietnam War that makes him not only an Air Force hero, but an 8th TFW Wolf Pack legend.

In 1966 Chappie James Jr. was sent to Ubon Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, first as deputy commander for operations and later on as vice commander to Colonel Robin Olds for the 8th TFW. Together Blackman and Robin planned the famous Operation Bolo MiG sweep, the most successful air operation of the war with the highest total kill of any air mission during that war. Both Chappie James Jr. and Robin Olds personally led flights on this mission that gave the Wolf Pack its name. Later through his illustrious career, Chappie James Jr. was commander of the 7272nd Fighter Training Wing at Wheelus Air Base, Libya, when Colonel Gadhafi succeeded in his revolution there. James leadership and diplomatic skills were put to full use in that delicate situation in which the new anti-Western, radical Libyan leader sought to expel the Air Force. Back home James speeches on Americanism and patriotism were so well regarded, many were read into the Congressional Record. Chappie James also went on to be vice commander of Military Airlift Command and eventually was promoted to four-star grade and assigned as commander in chief, NORAD/ADCOM in 1975. This meant he had operational command of all U.S. and Canadian strategic aerospace defense forces.

Chappie James was taken from us all too soon at the age of 58, but he lived a remarkable life. His civilian awards alone, including many honorary doctorate degrees, are too many to list here. In 1969, after almost 30 years passed, Tuskegee awarded James a Bachelor of Science degree based on the numerous credit hours he had earned during his military career. He overcame extreme poverty, racism - including segregation in the military when he first joined - and combat in multiple wars to set a great example of how great we all can be if we follow the 11th commandment. His memorial at Arlington National Cemetery says, in part: This is my country and I believe in her. Ill protect her against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The 8FWs first Wolf II was among Americas best and a great example of how to embody our Air Force Values.
For the second year in a row, Aras Follain was the charity chosen to get the money raised from the Church of Irelands Christmas Tree Festival.

A spokeswoman from the festival said Aras Follain was chosen because it was a local charity; people coming to the festival were interested in the information Aras Follain was providing, and they were impressed in the way that clients of Aras Follain, who had originally come there for help, were now in a position to come back and give help themselves, through staffing their table at the festival.

The cheque for 2,000 was handed over to Kevin Whelan, chair of Aras Follain, by the Christmas Tree Committee. Margo ODonnell Roche, co-ordinator of Aras Follain, said: We are so happy and grateful to be the recipient of this fundraising. Not only will the money itself contribute to our ongoing mission to help the people of Nenagh, but it is such an endorsement of the work we do and how it is benefitting people.

She thanked the festival committee for the donation, and assured them it will be used well. Id like to invite anyone in Nenagh who feels theyd like a bit of a chat, or support, or help, to contact us. You can find out more at our website www.arasfollain.ie or phone us at 067-41906 or 085-8607856," she said.
A short list of nominees for the 2016 Tipperary International Peace Award has been announced today by Tipperary Peace Convention.

The award recipient will be announced in the coming weeks and will be presented with the International Peace Award in Tipperary on a date to be confirmed in 2017.

Previous recipients of the Tipperary International Peace Award include; Former South African President the late Nelson Mandela, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, The late Senator Gordon Wilson from Enniskillen, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former President of Ireland, Professor Mary McAleese and her husband Senator Martin McAleese, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who later went on to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Richard Haass, Former UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon and and last year's recipient Former US Secretary of State, John Kerry.

The shortli st of nominees are as follows:

Amal Clooney, nee Alamuddin, is a Lebanese-British lawyer, activist and author. She is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, specialising in international law and human rights. She has been part of several United Nations commissions and tribunals. Her clients include Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his fight against extradition. She has also represented the former Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy. She is married to the American actor George Clooney.

Roscommon-born and Kenyan-based, Fr. Patrick Devine is a member of the Society of African Missions with 25 years experience of helping to mitigate conflict and poverty in Africa. In 2009, he set up the Shalom Centre for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (SCCRR) in Nairobi that has had remarkable success under his leadership in replacing conflict and violence with peace and co-operation in renowned conflict areas.

A former Provisional IRA leader, Martin McGuinness was MP for Mid Ulster from 1997 until his resignation in 2013. Following the St Andrews Agreement and the Assembly election in 2007, he became Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland with the DUP leader Ian Paisley becoming First Minister. On 5th of June 2008 he was re-appointed as Deputy First Minister to serve alongside Peter Robinson, who succeeded Paisley as First Minister. He resigned as Deputy First Minister on January 9th in a protest over the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal and announced on Jan. 19th that he would not be standing for re-election to the Northern Ireland Assembly due to ill health. He was Sinn Fein's unsuccessful candidate for President of Ireland in 2011.

Amnesty International is a global movement of more than 7 million people who take injustice personally. They campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all. In Ireland, their 18,000 members, campaign on issues like reproductive rights, ending torture and protecting migrant & refugee rights, among others. They are currently actively campaigning for the release of Irish born Ibrahim Halawa, who is imprisoned for over 3 years in Egypt and have declared him to be a Prisoner of Conscience.

Syrian White Helmets

When the bombs rain down, the Syrian Civil Defence rushes in. In a place where public services no longer function, these unarmed volunteers risk their lives to help anyone in need - regardless of their religion or politics. Known as the White Helmets these volunteer rescue workers operate in the most dangerous place on earth. More than 50 bombs and mortars a day land on some neighbourhoods in Syria. When this happens, the White Helmets rush in to search for life in the rubble - fully aware that more bombs may fall on the same site. These volunteers have saved 78,529 lives, and this number is growing.

Lady Rabab al Sadr is a Lebanese social & human rights activist & philanthropist. She adopted and promoted the social vision of her brother, Imam Musa al-Sadr, who encouraged her to join the Imam al-Sadr Foundation in Lebanon in 1960 & devote herself to social work and humanitarian aid. Al-Sadr oversees the girls' section of the foundation, providing much-needed economic assistance & social guidance to orphaned and dependent girls, regardless of their religious background. Al-Sadr strongly believes in the central role of education for women as a means for social change & personal growth.
Justin Wayne Stokes, 34, (pictured) and Sheena Denise Delp, 30, were arraigned at 2 p.m., Thursday, on charges accusing them of running a heroin dealing operation out of their West Walnut Street home  where their two-year-old child reportedly lived.
Bilingual Call Centers Growing in Importance

America is a giant melting pot. Regardless of current political agenda, the fact remains that a majority of your customers may not speak English today. Couple that with a globalized economy and the need for companies that offer support in alternative languages has grown substantially.

If youre a company that wants to show customers you care and are there to provide the support they need, youll want to consider adding bilingual agents  even if only on an as-needed basis. Think about scheduling these agents for times of the day when maybe non-English customers are calling in or you have found need most assistance.

In todays multicultural society it will only benefit you to be ready when needed.

The first thing youll want to think about is who your business is targeting. If youre an online retailer, chances are you have global reach  so the more language support you can offer, the more it will be in your favor when a customer has questions or needs help with a purchase.

A recent Monet Software (News - Alert) blog addresses the topic of bilingual call centers and why you may want to consider the option.

Another industry the blog points to where having bilingual support would be beneficial is the Travel and Tourism market. How else can you offer especially your international customers the necessary information to make arrangements for their travels? Chances are if they have to pick a provider they struggle to communicate with over someone who can just help them in a smooth communications process, they are going to choose the later.

Finally, and maybe one of the more important verticals to make use of bilingual call centers is Healthcare. Everything from having to make appointments to ordering prescriptions and billing become easier and a more pleasurable experience for all involved when agents and patients can communicate effectively.

Are you serving your customers best?

Edited by Maurice Nagle
[February 03, 2017] A.M. Best Affirms Credit Ratings of The Hartford Steam Boiler Group's Members

A.M. Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating (FSR) of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Ratings (Long-Term ICR) of "aa+" of the members of The Hartford Steam Boiler Group (HSB). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable. (See below for a detailed listing of the companies.) The ratings recognize HSB's superior level of risk-adjusted capitalization, consistently favorable earnings and unique market profile. HSB is a leading provider of equipment breakdown (boiler and machinery), specialty engineering insurance and equipment inspection services, and it continues to maintain this position with superior loss control capabilities, technical expertise and a unique equipment failures database. The rating affirmations also reflect the group's synergies with Munich Reinsurance America, Inc. and its ultimate parent, Munich Reinsurance Company (Munich Re). HSB's relationship with Munich Re has provided access to new markets. Furthermore, HSB's robust enterprise risk management (ERM) practices receive additional benefits from Munich Re's extensive ERM resources. HSB management has been very successful in managing through underwriting cycles, and has the expertise and resources required to take advantage of existing and new underwriting opportunities. HSB Group's product expansion and enhancement efforts beyond its core business line include homeowners and farmowners equipment breakdown coverage; employment practices liability; identity recovery, data compromise and cyber liabilty coverages; and insurance for renewable energy facilities.



A.M. Best believes that the members of HSB Group are well-positioned at the current rating level. However, positive rating actions could occur if there were upward rating movement at the ultimate parent level. Factors that may lead to negative rating actions include a sustained, material deterioration in operating performance or substantial deterioration in risk-adjusted capitalization, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). The FSR of A++ (Superior) and the Long-Term ICRs of "aa+" have been affirmed for the following members of The Hartford Steam Boiler Group:

The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company

The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company of Connecticut

The Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company of Canada

HSB Specialty Insurance Company

HSB Engineering Insurance Limited This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Best's Credit Ratings. A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2017 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. #### View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005415/en/

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[February 03, 2017] Innovus Pharma Announces the Approval to Commercialize Zestra in South Korea Through its Partner J&H Co. LTD

Innovus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("Innovus Pharma") (OTCQB Venture Market: INNV), an emerging over-the-counter ("OTC") consumer goods and specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in the commercialization, licensing and development of safe and effective non-prescription medicine and consumer care products to improve men's and women's health and vitality and respiratory diseases, announced today that its partner J&H Co. LTD, a South Korean company ("J&H"), received approval to commercialize Zestra from the Korean Government. Innovus Pharma announced on November 29, 2016 the signing of an exclusive license and distribution agreement with J&H for the commercialization of Zestra in South Korea. The exclusive ten-year agreement includes a minimum of $2 million per year in sales of Zestra to the Company for a total of $20 million over the life of the ten-year term of the agreement. "We are pleased with the expedited process taken by our partner to secure approval to import and commercialize Zestra in South Korea and we look forward to shipping our first product to that country this month," said Innovus Pharma CEO, Dr. Bassam Damaj. Zestra is currently exclusively partnered with Orimed Pharma in Canada, DanaLife in select European markets, Sothema Labs for the Middle East and North Africa, Elis Pharma in Turkey and certain select markets, Oz Biogenics for Myanmar and Vietnam, Biotask in Malaysia, J&H in South Korea and non-exclusively to PT Laras Bumi Resources, LTD in Hong Kong. Zestra is currently approved to be marketed and sold in Canada, India, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates ("UAE"), the United Kingdom, Morocco and South Korea. In addition to the United States, the largest market for Zestra, Innovus Pharma currently generates Zestra revenues from the following markets: Canada, Morocco, certain European countries and Hong Kong. About Zestra and FSI/AD Zestra is a patented blend of natural oils clinically-proven in double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trials in 276 women to increase in a statistical significant manner the arousal, desire and sexual satisfaction n FSI/AD women. To the Company's knowledge, Zestra is the first NHP product to receive approval for the indication of FSI/AD in Canada. To date, to Innovus Pharma's knowledge, no product has been approved to treat FSI/AD, a persistent or recurring inability to attain or maintain adequate sexual excitement until the completion of a sexual activity.



Approximately 43% of women in the United States age 18 to 59, or 50 million, experience some form of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) according to a published study. (Laumann, E.O. et al. Sexual Dysfunction in the United States: Prevalence and Predictors. JAMA, Feb. 10, 1999. vol. 281, No. 6.537-542). The FSD market is estimated to be more than $1 billion per year. For more information on Zestra visit www.zestra.com. About Innovus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Headquartered in San Diego, Innovus Pharma is an emerging over-the-counter ("OTC") consumer goods and specialty pharmaceutical company engaged in the commercialization, licensing and development of safe and effective non-prescription medicine and consumer care products to improve men's and women's health and vitality and respiratory diseases. Innovus Pharma delivers innovative and uniquely presented and packaged health solutions through its (a) OTC medicines and consumer and health products, which we market directly, (b) commercial partners to primary care physicians, urologists, gynecologists and therapists, and (c) directly to consumers through our on-line channels, retailers and wholesalers. The Company is dedicated to being a leader in developing and marketing new OTC and branded Abbreviated New Drug Application ("ANDA") products. The Company is actively pursuing opportunities where existing prescription drugs have recently, or are expected to, change from prescription (or Rx) to OTC. For more information, go to www.innovuspharma.com, www.zestra.com; www.ejectdelay.com; www.myvesele.com; www.sensumplus.com; www.myandroferti.com; www.beyondhumantestosterone.com; www.getbeyondhuman.com; www.trybeyondhuman.com; www.recalmax.com. About J&H Co. LTD Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, J&H is a holding company involved in the retail sales and distribution of consumer products through its many subsidiaries including, Lotte retail stores in South Korea, Hermes, Janemoor Global Korea, Sonnenmoor Korea, JimmyJane Korea and The Gadget. In addition, J&H is the Korean partner for JD.com, or Jingdong Mall (formerly 360buy), one of China's largest B2C online retailers and electronic commerce company and a major competitor of Alibaba's Tmall. For more information, please visit: http://ir (News - Alert).jd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=253315&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2085773. Innovus Pharma's Forward-Looking Safe Harbor: Statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, as amended: with the exception of the historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that may individually or mutually impact the matters herein described for a variety of reasons that are outside the control of the Company, including, but not limited to, projected revenues from the sale of the Zestra product in South Korea, projected online subscribers, estimated market for its products, and statements about achieving its other development, growth, commercialization, financial and staffing objectives. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements as actual results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained herein. Readers are urged to read the risk factors set forth in the Company's most recent filing on Form S-1, annual report on Form 10-K, subsequent quarterly reports filed on Form 10-Q and other filings made with the SEC (News - Alert). Copies of these reports are available from the SEC's website or without charge from the Company. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005089/en/

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[February 03, 2017] Nidec Founder Addresses Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer Employees

NEWTOWN, United Kingdom, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The founder and CEO of Nidec has visited Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer to outline his vision for the future of the businesses. Shigenobu Nagamori, who launched Nidec in Kyoto, Japan in 1973, presented to Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer staff at their respective headquarters in Newtown, UK and Angouleme, France on February 2 and 3. The events were simultaneously broadcast to Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer staff across the world. Mr Nagamori spoke about the opportunities presented to both businesses following the pre-announced acquisition, and was positive about the impact Nidec could have in the future. Questions were invited from existing staff members regarding investment, job security and proposals for future growth. The First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones AM, attended a meeting with Mr Nagamori to discuss the future of Control Techniques. Mr Nagamori said, "We are pleased to welcome Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer into the Nidec family. We have strong ambitions for both companies to grow, and Nidec is committed to providing the necessary support and investment to make that happen. "Industries which require the use of electric motors, and therefore drives, will form the backbone of the world's economy in the future. Look at the expansion in the use of robots, electric vehicles and drones. All these items need motors, and all those motors need drives. There are clear opportunities for Control Techniques, Leroy-Somer and ultimately Nidec to prosper here. "Our policy is to put the systems in place which will encourage growh. We will hire and train high calibre people, and encourage those already working for the businesses to enhance their abilities. We will put great emphasis on research and development. As an R&D engineer myself, I know that it is technology which will ensure our businesses succeed. Control Techniques, Leroy-Somer and Nidec offer each other great synergy, and working together we can improve and make our goals a reality."



Nidec boasts a strong track record of facilitating growth among its business, through investment in engineering, design and resources. It has also demonstrated a clear strategy to drive growth in both companies, as well as providing considerable benefits to customers through a far wider range of available products and services. Both Control Techniques' and Leroy-Somer's product ranges offer a complementary fit with the Nidec line-up, bringing significant benefits for all parties and, importantly, their respective customer bases. The combination will now allow Nidec to sell the entire range of products as a package into all key market spaces, while also allowing Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer access to new markets.

Nidec manufactures electric motors and related components, including small precision motors, motors for automotive, commercial and industrial applications, and medium voltage motors and generators. It employs around 140,000 people worldwide and has operations in over 40 countries. It has been actively developing a new growth platform with particular focus on appliance, industrial and commercial business. Xavier Trenchant, President of Leroy-Somer said, "We are proud to integrate a business striving to become the world's No.1 comprehensive motor manufacturer and to join forces to meet the needs and expectations of our worldwide customers. With such a dynamic and trustworthy company, we look towards the future with confidence." Scott Anderson, president of Control Techniques, said, "We believe this is a tremendous opportunity for us to join, work with and contribute to an industry-leading brand which believes in our products and will enable us to grow as businesses." Press contact: [email protected] Related Images image1.jpg image2.jpg This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nidec-founder-addresses-control-techniques-and-leroy-somer-employees-300401942.html SOURCE Nidec

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Tejas Sovani, Executive Sous Chef, Amaranta, The Oberoi, Gurgaon

Chef Tejas Sovani, executive sous chef at Amaranta, The Oberoi Gurgaon has been Noma-fied--that's how we describe him after his three-month stint at Chef Rene Redzepi's two-Michelin-star restaurant Noma in Copenhagen, Denmark. The young chef is back in his kitchen cooking up an exciting storm of Indian flavours with a delicious contemporary twist. So while at his restaurant, don't be surprised when you hear fancy culinary terms such as sous-vide, flash-grilled and dehydrated. Expect minimalist plating and maximalist flavours.

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My food story

After graduating in hotel management from the Oberoi Centre for Learning and Development (OCLD), I was inspired to give cooking my all; it became a passion, an obsession. I wanted to showcase the best of Indian flavours to an ever-evolving audience in a way that would wow them. All the executive chefs that I have worked with during my career have been my mentors. I feel there's something I have learnt from each one of them--unique and inspiring--that has made me who I am today, a bold, playful and confident chef.

Indian with a Tejas twist

At Amaranta, we believe in personalising each interaction with our guests. We spend time explaining the menu and the finer nuances of the dishes such as the ingredients, method of preparation and the cuisine philosophy to them so that they feel for the food like we do. My personal style is what I call a 'play-ted menu', blending authentic regional recipes and unusual flavour pairings to curate a truly memorable experience. A meal here is like a culinary journey in itself, where stories are told via food that is rooted in the familiar but plated to play with your senses. The menu is brimming with modern techniques and ideas such as dehydration, sous-vide and fermentation (things that I picked up during my training years) but we make sure that the flavours are easily identifiable and not lost in transition.

Diversity is the name of the game

The inspiration for the menu we have carefully crafted is diverse--from havelis in Lucknow and traditional "gams" in Saurashtra to the rarified classics of the Jain Paryushan to the 'deras' of Punjab. So on the new menu you can find dishes such as Kolkata Street Bento Box, Lal Maas Kachodi with Aloo Subzi, a Farsan medley with Dabeli Bao, Khakra Crisps, Dhokla Pakodas and Chilli yogurt dip.

The Noma experience

To say that I enjoyed working with Chef Rene Redzepi at Noma would be an understatement of the century. Rene is a visionary and always breaks down a dish from its grass-root level to dig deeper into the history of the flora and fauna of that particular region, and we present our menus at Amaranta in much the same way.

Inspired by him, at Amaranta I have a team of six regional cuisine specialists from Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bengal and Rajasthan who have been handpicked from small-town eateries, to protect the authenticity and simplicity of their cuisine. Their repertoire spans century-old recipes to recently evolved runaway successes. Attention to detail is everything. Foraging at Noma, for example, meant starting very early in the morning to source a list of ingredients for the menu. We used to head out in our jumpsuits and gum boots accompanied by a few chefs who have a degree in Botany, for our daily visits, so that they could help us procure the best possible herbs and ingredients. Our discoveries included wild berries, exotic varietals of plums, wild mushrooms, garlic flavoured Chantrelles and nettles that are grown in the wild. It was quite an experience and made me realise how important fresh ingredients are for a chef.

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Changing times

Today, the world has a whole new understanding of Indian food, where individual regions are claiming the spotlight. I keep exploring small town markets in search of key seasonal ingredients and authentic regional recipes that are coupled with constant experimentation for our menu. Chefs today have refined recipes, create new dishes, pay more attention to the quality of ingredients and sophisticated presentation. One must know that no matter how successful you are in adapting your cuisine to suit foreign palates, all revolutions have to be indigenous. Indian chefs are inspired to curate menus primarily keeping Indian guests in mind and are looking beyond the usual dishes to create a revolution.

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Bite-size explosions

There's a certain rhythm that underlines interesting storytelling with each dish in a tasting menu. Right from the fusillade of starters, one can enjoy bite-sized portions high on flavour, texture with elements of surprise, each designed to give the guest a glimpse of what's to come. At Amaranta, our culinary philosophy is everlasting freshness, with an ability to put a twist on recognisable Indian flavours, and we want that to be the highlight in a guest's dining experience.

Going ahead

Everyday cuisines are being discovered and re-discovered. For example, the curry has adapted to whichever environment it has been exposed to. And in a way, it has managed to grow beyond India. Marrying ingredients and creating something new will always be the motto. And like all experiments, there has to be a right mix of instinct and intelligence. In the last 100 years, there have been multiple lifestyle changes, in the way the climate has changed, agriculture, farming and so on. It is important that we care for our ingredients. It's crucial to pay attention to the freshness and authenticity of the produce you work with.

Favourite dining experience

I have immense admiration for Chef Rene Redzepi of Noma for his food, for he has a passion for experimentation and a love for local seasonal ingredients like no other chef in the world. His playful deconstruction of dishes and the classical fine dining approach to fresh ingredients is awe-inspiring. My all-time favourite restaurant in the world is the renowned restaurant Mugaritz, tucked away in a quiet corner of Spain. The dining experience there is unlike any other -simple, thoughtful use of ingredients and gorgeous presentation. That is my food philosophy too.

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As told to Mohini Mehrotra

--- ENDS ---
[February 03, 2017] A Reason to Celebrate: Onlineprinters Welcomes its 600,000th Customer

NEUSTADT AN DER AISCH, Germany, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Congratulations from technology partner Heidelberger Onlineprinters starts the new year with news of success: Having expanded its clientele by 100,000 new customers in 2016, the company welcomed its 600,000th client in January 2017. "Last year, we defended our position as one of the market leaders in the European online printing sector, producing more than 2.1 billion printed products shipped to over 30 countries," says Dr. Michael Fries, CEO of Onlineprinters. Rainer Hundsdorfer, CEO of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, congratulated him on achieving this milestone. The manufacturer of offset printing presses is a long-term technology partner of Onlineprinters. Onlineprinters GmbH is the biggest print shop in Europe to process 3b sheet sizes. In the offset printing department, the company uses only printing presses from Heidelberger for its successful business model. For its in-house digital printing and LFP operations, the provider of online print services relies on technology made by HP and Durst. (Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/464410/Onlineprinters_600_000th_customer.jpg )

One-stop shopping experience: Around 80 new products "Having offset printing, digital printing, LFP and processing under one roof allows us to introduce new products and services promptly when our customers want them," Fries emphasises and says that this allows his company to respond easily to market needs and win new customers. In 2016, Onlineprinters added almost 80 new items to its range of products. "This has taken us another big step closer to our goal of offering a one-stop shopping experience to our customers," CEO Fries explains the corporate strategy. Onlineprinters is the oly major European print shop to offer self-adhesive labels on rolls with optional same-day production. Moreover, new formats were introduced for various products. Brochures are now available in the handy 17 x 24 cm pocket format, business cards can now be ordered in 5 x 5 cm square size. Personalisable advertising tools include two ballpoint pen designs, sticky notes in various sizes and shapes with and without die punching. Since December 2016, customers have also been able to purchase exclusive letterpress-printed business cards.



More service for existing products Also the service was further upgraded. "Labels on rolls are a good example of our ongoing efforts to improve our service. By investing into new technology, we have slashed production times by several days for this product," CEO Fries explains. The trend towards smaller print runs requires an increasing number of printed products to be available more quickly, because they are ordered on shorter notice. Onlineprinters has catered to this trend by expanding the same-day print option to standard folders and folders with matt lamination. This means that the folders are produced on the same day the order is received. Writing pads are another example of shorter delivery times.

Global expansion course is continued After taking the two new investors Bregal Unternehmerkapital and Project A Ventures on board, the company's 2017 objectives include two-digit sales growth, profitability increase and the addition of new products. Dr. Michael Fries announces: "We will continue to push our international growth efforts. In January, our Czech web shop went online. 2017 will see even more activities to this end. We are already operating web shops in ten languages. We are now realising more than half of our turnover abroad; this trend will become stronger in the next years." About Onlineprinters Onlineprinters GmbH is one of Europe's leading online print providers. In line with the motto "Print simply online!" the company sells printed products to 600,000 customers in 30 European countries through its 16 web shops. Internationally, the company is known under the brand name "Onlineprinters"; in Germany it operates under the name "diedruckerei.de". The product range comprises 1,400 printed products from business cards, stationery and flyers to catalogues, brochures and large-format advertising systems. The formula to successfully produce customised prints in terms of Industry 4.0 rests on three pillars: online sales, fully integrated production from ordering to shipping and gang run printing. The latter uses so-called combined forms to collectively produce print jobs, therefore minimising costs and reducing the environmental impact. Selected products allow customers to choose the option of same day printing (produced on the same working day), overnight delivery, climate neutral production and custom size specification. Onlineprinters GmbH employs a staff of 650 and produces over two billion printings per year. The video "A look behind the scenes of Onlineprinters": https://youtu.be/1uIQE_QFYIs?list=PLEriQeICU0iuXDVlzuMg8mXs75QhR8tGa Press contact:

Onlineprinters GmbH

Patrick Piecha

Head of Press & Public Relations

Rudolf-Diesel-Strae 10

91413 Neustadt an der Aisch

Germany

Phone: +49-9161-6209807

+49-174-3077250

[email protected]

http://www.onlineprinters.com



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[February 02, 2017] Biogas Market: Asia Pacific Anticipated to Witness Significant Growth Till 2020: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2016-2026

LONDON, Feb. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Energy crisis is an emerging issue and the world is struggling to find a suitable environment-friendly energy option for its denizens. The global energy market is expanding rapidly. The soaring demand for energy is presently greeted with the help of fossil fuel. Industry experts believe that the demand in the energy market will grow manifold in the forthcoming years. There is an urgent need of an alternate source of environment-friendly energy to fill up this gap in the market. An environment-friendly energy source is a must, as greenhouse emissions are acutely disturbing the environmental balance. The growth of biogas as an alternate and green energy source is the only hope for the modern world.



The global biogas market is likely to soar within the assessment period. The market will witness a CAGR of 6.5% in terms of value in the years to come. The global biogas market showcased a promising growth in 2015 as the sales spurred and the total value of the market swelled above US$ 24 Mn. The regions such as Latin America and Asia Pacific will play an important role in the growth of the global biogas market within the period of assessment.



North America and Western Europe ruled the roost until the end of 2016, but the Asia Pacific region is predicted to propel its growth within the next few years. North America is projected to gain 200 BPS over the period of forecast. Western Europe is estimated to gain 230 BPS over the projected period and is projected to remain dominant during the period of forecast. Owing to increasing demand for electricity and vehicle fuels in the region, Asia Pacific is anticipated to gain 310 BPS over the assessed period.



Anatomy of the Asia Pacific biogas market



Asia Pacific is the land of hope for investors as it is predicted to double up its market worth and is likely to cross US$ 6000 Mn by 206 end. This particular region of the global biogas market is predicted to represent a bright incremental dollar opportunity within the foreseen period. Asia Pacific is likely to emerge as the most attractive region in terms of market share and CAGR in the next 10 years. The sale value of the regional biogas market is anticipated to cross US$ 6800 Mn from an approximate current value of US$ 2800 Mn by the close of the assessment period.







The favourable climatic conditions and massive availability of live stocks is likely to keep the market afloat in this region. The Asia Pacific market will register a CAGR of 9.2% in terms of value over the foreseen period. In terms of volume, consumption of biogas in Asia Pacific is anticipated to reach above 8,700 ktoe by the end of the forecasted period, registering a CAGR of 8.2% over the projected period. Countries such as India and China are predicted to fuel the development of the regional biogas market. Biogas sales are currently soaring in India and this market will project a suitable incremental dollar opportunity within the period of assessment.



Countries such as India and China are passing through a rapid industrial evolution. These countries are blessed with an agriculture friendly climate and possess a massive reserve of agricultural waste. These factors are likely to expedite the expansion of the Asia Pacific regional biogas market.





Agriculture segment is estimated to lose 110 BPS by 2026 end. The segment is indicated to incline towards high value-medium growth during 2016  2026. The municipal segment is predicted to gain 130 BPS during the studied period. Biogas from sludge, landfills, etc. can offer lucrative growth opportunities in this region. Industrial & others segment is likely to witness sluggish growth during the assessment period.



The application segment of the Asia Pacific biogas market is likely to witness several prominent market shifts within the foreseen period. The electricity segment is indicated to lose more than 35 BPS by the end of the forecasted period while the heat segment is projected to gain more than 68 BPS during the period of assessment. Biogas fuelled heating systems installed in China , India and other countries of the Asia Pacific region are expected to create a growth opportunity for this segment by the end of the period of forecast. Vehicle Fuel & others segment is projected to incline towards low value-low growth during 20162026.

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Website: www.reportbuyer.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biogas-market-asia-pacific-anticipated-to-witness-significant-growth-till-2020-global-industry-analysis-and-opportunity-assessment-2016-2026-300401743.html SOURCE ReportBuyer

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[February 03, 2017] UAE Exchange Inaugurates Extended Smart Branch at Vanasthalipuram

KOCHI, India, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- UAE Exchange India, the renowned financial hub inaugurated its extended smart branch at Vanasthalipuram to serve the customers with much more advanced services. Mr.Jitta Rajashekar Reddy, Corporator of Vanasthalipuram inaugurated the extended premise in the presence of Mr. N. Gopi, UAE Exchange Zonal Head-Andhra & Telangana; Mr. T. Srinivas Reddy, Regional Head-Hyderabad; Mr. Praneeth, Branch Head, other employees and customers. Mr. Gopi shared, "UAE Exchange India is all set to swipe off financial emergency with its comprehensive mobile wallet and taking a digital move to surprise every customer with personalised features like never before." (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20161121/441477LOGO )



The wave of demonetization has transformed the developing nation from its stem to stern to adopt the fastest and secure mode of digital payments. Ongoing digital revolution has paved the way for the nation to think digital and adopt instant means to supersede the hurdles of conventional payments. 'Digital India', the mission to empower the common populace digitally has gained attention throughout the nation among various echelons. Therefore, Mobile wallets and digital payments are adopted as the best solutions to cope up with the immediate financial requirements in the all situations. XPay Cash wallet facilitates mobile and DTH services, wallet-to-wallet transfer, money transfer to bank account, electricity and other utility bill payments and payments to merchants for buying goods and services and a lot more other services.

About UAE Exchange UAE Exchange India is one of the pioneers of financial services renowned for its penchant quality and optimized service trends, creating a niche for itself in the industry. Connecting people and creating progress with the finest of quality is the vision of the company that has an extensive reach of 376 branches serving a population of 1.25 million people under the proficient support of 3375 employees. The company has been instrumental in providing cost-effective service in foreign exchange, money transfer, air ticketing and tours, loans, XPay cash wallet, insurance and share trading. Media Contact:

Reeba V K

[email protected]

91-9656004356

Public Relations

UAE Exchange & Financial Services Ltd.



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[February 03, 2017] BlueConic Adds Recommendations Engine Powered by its Customer Data Platform

BlueConic, the world's simplest and most accessible customer data platform (CDP), announces the BlueConic Recommendations Engine, a new feature enabling marketers to automatically deliver truly one-to-one content and product recommendations in real time to visitors. Companies of all sizes can benefit from this capability -- increasing engagement with their brands and delivering information that interests users to drive purchasing decisions. Many brands are investing in tools to drive personalized information to users, yet those efforts often fall short. Typical recommendations are based on content or products that received the highest clicks from all traffic or very large segments of users, rather than individual interests. Using machine learning and proprietary algorithms, the BlueConic Recommendations Engine combines individual user profile data with key attributes and metrics to deliver recommendations that are aligned with individual user behaviors and preferences. Customers have seen between 30 and 50 percent higher click-through-rates compared with existing recommendations tools. BlueConic uses Apache Spark big data processing technology to handle the high-volume machine learning tasks required for real-time recommendations. Technical benefits of the BlueConic Recommendation Engine include: Automatic collection of all profile, content and statistics data thrugh a few clicks to install the BlueConic tag (News - Alert), with no configurations needed by IT;

A scalable recommendation engine that works for both small and large companies hosting extremely high online traffic volumes;

A pluggable, extensible set of algorithms that can grow in the future;

A recommendation delivery engine that doesn't require its own real estate and instead can be placed in any position or format on your website;

Recommendations that can be used across channels and devices.

Out-of-the-box and easily configurable dashboards for marketers to view results by the number of views, clicks and conversions for every recommendation in real-time and historically.



Bart Heilbron, Founder and CEO of BlueConic. "Recommendations for a single person challenges the industry standard in order to help marketers increase customer loyalty and sales. BlueConic has developed an incredibly easy way to integrate high-value recommendations into existing marketing processes and campaigns." About BlueConic

The future of marketing hinges on the ability to identify, understand, and interact with customers on an individual basis. It is BlueConic's mission to drive better outcomes by translating intent into insight to improve marketers' actions. More than 120 brands, including Boston Globe Media Group, RAEN Optics, Volvo, and Ahold, currently leverage the BlueConic customer data platform to drive cross-sell and upsell initiatives, increase conversions and decrease waste to grow incremental sales and revenue. Founded in 2010, the company is headquartered in Boston, with offices in Europe. Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) @BlueConic and "Like" us on Facebook.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005014/en/

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[February 03, 2017] Great Basin Scientific's Shiga Toxin Direct Test Clinical Evaluation and Cost Analysis Published in Journal of Clinical Microbiology

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 03, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Great Basin Scientific, Inc. (OTCQB:GBSN), a molecular diagnostics company, today announced the Journal of Clinical Microbiology published results of a study analyzing the sensitivity and cost effectiveness of the Great Basin Shiga Toxin Direct Test in detecting Shiga Toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) from stool specimens. The results of the study demonstrate an advancement in STEC detection, concluding that the molecular assay from Great Basin provides clinicians with a more cost-effective, rapid and definitive patient diagnosis, when compared to culture and EIA methods, enabling physicians to make more timely decisions on the appropriate course of treatment.

Reducing the cost and labor associated with testing stool culture specimensgenerally one of the most expensive and labor intensive tests for hospitals and labsis providing significant value to our hospital administrator and lab director customers, said Rob Jenison, chief technology officer and senior vice president of R&D at Great Basin Scientific. The study also determined that the superior sensitivity and more rapid turnaround time, when compared to routine culture methods, aids in infection control efforts and identification of potential outbreaks 24 to 72 hours sooner. Led by Dr. Blake W. Buchan from the Department of Pathology at The Medical College of Wisconsin, MI, the study found that Great Basins Shiga Toxin Direct Test was 93.2 percent sensitive and 99.3 percent specific for detection of stx1 and stx2, and 95.7 percent sensitive and 99.3 percent specific for detection of E.coli serotype O157. Based on the data from this analysis, culture and EIA-based methods for detection of STEC are only 33 percent sensitive when compared to molecular tests. The total time to result for Great Basins Shiga Toxin Direct Test is approximately two hours, compared to approximately 36 to 48 hours for culture-based methods. Great Basins Shiga Toxin Direct Test is priced relative to common culture and Enzyme Immunoassay tests, at $24 per test, and provides a cost savings from routine stool culture when accounting for the tota material and labor involved. Furthermore, the study concluded that Great Basins Shiga Toxin Direct Test increases the positive identification of Shiga Toxin-producing E.coli by three to four times, when compared to similar test panels.



The Great Basin Shiga Toxin Direct Test is the only stand-alone test to meet the Center for Disease Controls recommendations for the identification of high-virulence serotype O157 in conjunction with detection of STEC. The Company announced the commercial launch of the Shiga Toxin Direct Test in August 2016, and the test also has CE mark designation under the European Directive of In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices. Great Basin Scientifics molecular diagnostics system offers low-plex (one to three analytes), mid-plex (four to six analytes) and multiplex (syndromic) testing, with commercial assays available for the detection of STEC, Group B Streptococcus (GBS), Toxigenic Clostridium difficile (C. diff), and a Staph Blood Culture Panel for identifying bloodstream infections caused by MRSA and other Staphylococcus species. Continuing the Companys efforts to expand its menu of sample-to-result assays to diagnose infectious disease, Great Basin Scientific has five additional tests on their product roadmap, including a Stool Bacterial Pathogens Panel and a Bordetella Direct Test, both of which recently completed clinical trials and have been submitted to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) for 510(k) clearance; and a Nasal S. aureus Pre-surgical Screen, Candida Blood Infections Panel, and CT/NG Test, which are currently in development.

About Great Basin Scientific

Great Basin Scientific is a molecular diagnostics company that commercializes breakthrough chip-based technologies. The Company is dedicated to the development of simple, yet powerful, sample-to-result technology and products that provide fast, multiple-pathogen diagnoses of infectious diseases. The Companys vision is to make molecular diagnostic testing so simple and cost-effective that every patient will be tested for every serious infection, reducing misdiagnoses and significantly limiting the spread of infectious disease. More information can be found on the companys website at www.gbscience.com. Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements regarding events, trends and business prospects, which may affect our future operating results and financial position, including but not limited to statements regarding the Companys anticipated revenue growth, anticipated FDA approval of current pending assays, commercialization of future approved assays, and the Companys general development plans of sample-to-result technology and products. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially, and reported results, should not be considered as an indication of future performance. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the assumptions of management in the revenue projections not occurring as anticipated, delay or denial in obtaining FDA approval of pending assays, uncertainty in the Companys ability to commercialize new assays, changes in customer needs, competition in the industry being greater than anticipated, our limited operating history and history of losses; our ability to develop and commercialize new products and the timing of commercialization; our ability to obtain sufficient capital to continue as a going concern and implement our business plan; and other risks set forth in the Companys filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the risks set forth in the Companys 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. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and Great Basin Scientific specifically disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. Media Contact: Nirav Suchak ICR 646.277.1257 [email protected] Investor Relations Contact: Betsy Hartman Great Basin Scientific 385.215.3372 [email protected]

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[February 03, 2017] Ashton Bentley Forges Closer Ties With Samsung to Deliver the Meeting Room of the Future at ISE2017

LONDON, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Two of the new innovations released by Ashton Bentley at ISE2017 will mean closer ties with Samsung as the company unveils its vision for the meeting room of the future with its new Wave OS platform. Firstly, the new 'smart' ab Displays that integrate all the audio-visual hardware, control and unique operating system required for a meeting room into a single unit, use Samsung (Public Information Display) PID panels to provide stunning image quality. "Samsung is proud to supply Ashton Bentley with 55" FHD PID panels to integrate into its intelligent meeting room systems. Integrators can also now incorporate Samsung professional off-the-shelf displays into their own system designs with the new integrators abox range from Ashton Bentley. This meeting room evolution allows the usual advantages of Ashton Bentley technology now combined with Samsung professional displays - a winning combination!" commented Oseung Yang, Vice President and head f the LCD marketing team at Samsung Displays.



In addition, Ashton Bentley is releasing the 'brains' behind its integrated room solutions as separate units, called 'abox'. This now enables integrators to design and build their own systems around Ashton Bentley core advanced but simple to use technology. The abox provides a single box solution for the heart of any custom meeting room, whilst allowing these rooms to be controlled, managed and monitored via the IP based abSee platform. Tony Leedham, Commercial Director of Ashton Bentley added "allowing integrators to design their systems around third party products, was a decision brought about from relationships we have with companies such as Samsung. We believe the future of meeting room technology can only be realised through partnerships, and we are already exploring new opportunities"

For more information about Samsung PID displays please visit https://pid.samsungdisplay.com For more information about Ashton Bentley please visit http://www.ashtonbentley.com Price and availability: A complete room system with Wave OS is available from 6,000. Further details available on booth 14-P400 in hall 14 at ISE 2017 About Ashton Bentley: Ashton Bentley is a British manufacturer that's leading the way with innovative meeting room technology. It designs and manufactures a range of out-of-the-box videoconference, telepresence and presentation audio-visual room environments that simplify all aspects of deployment, operation, support and management. For more information, visit http://www.ashtonbentley.com/

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[February 03, 2017] INVESTOR ALERT: Brower Piven Encourages Shareholders Who Have Losses In Excess Of $100,000 From Investment In The Southern Company To Contact Brower Piven Before The Lead Plaintiff Deadline In Class Action Lawsuit

The securities litigation law firm of Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation, announces that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on behalf of purchasers of The Southern Company (NYSE: SO) ("SO" or the "Company") common stock during the period between April 25, 2012 and October 29, 2013, inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors who wish to become proactively involved in the litigation have until March 24, 2017 to seek appointment as lead plaintiff. If you wish to choose counsel to represent you and the Class, you must apply to be appointed lead plaintiff and be selected by the Court. The lead plaintiff will direct the litigation and participate in important decisions including whether to accept a settlement for the Class in the action. The lead plaintiff will be selected from among applicants claiming the largest loss from investment in SO common stock during the Class Period. Members of the Class will be represented by the lead plaintiff and counsel chosen by the lead plaintiff. No class has yet been certified in the above action. The complaint accuses the defendants of violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by virtue of the defendants' failure to disclose during the Class Period adverse informatio about the progress of the plant being built in Kemper County, Mississippi ("Kemper Plant"), reassuring investors that the project would be completed by the critical May 2014 deadline, even after cost overruns and other delays began to materialize.



According to the complaint, following an October 2, 2013 announcement that the Company would not be able to meet its deadline and would be required to repay $133 million in federal tax credits, an October 30, 2013 press release disclosing an after-tax charge of $93 million, the value of Southern Company shares declined significantly. If you have suffered a loss in excess of $100,000 from investment in SO common stock purchased on or after April 25, 2012 and held through the revelation of negative information during and/or at the end of the Class Period and would like to learn more about this lawsuit and your ability to participate as a lead plaintiff, without cost or obligation to you, please visit our website at http://www.browerpiven.com/currentsecuritiescases.html. You may also request more information by contacting Brower Piven either by email at [email protected] or by telephone at (410) 415-6616. Brower Piven also encourages anyone with information regarding the Company's conduct during the period in question to contact the firm, including whistleblowers, former employees, shareholders and others.

Attorneys at Brower Piven have extensive experience in litigating securities and other class action cases and have been advocating for the rights of shareholders since the 1980s. If you choose to retain counsel, you may retain Brower Piven without financial obligation or cost to you, or you may retain other counsel of your choice. You need take no action at this time to be a member of the class. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005650/en/

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[February 03, 2017] A.M. BestTV: Insurers Laud Markel at Leader of the Year Event

This A.M.BestTV episode highlights the annual Insurance Leader of the Year dinner, where 1,500 insurance executives gathered in New York, NY, to honor Anthony Markel, vice chairman, Markel Corporation, as 2016's Insurance Leader of the Year. Click on http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=insuranceleader217 to view the entire program. This year's dinner raised more than $2.3 million for the Peter J. Tobin College of Business and School of Risk Management of St. John's University. "I could not believe it. I thought someone was pulling my leg," said Markel. "I have so much respect for all of the honorees that have previously received this award that frankly, I had no idea I would be considered, much less receive it. I was really overwhelmed." Other people that appear in this episode: Kevin Kelley, chief executive officer, Ironshore ;

; Alan Kaufman, Chairman, president, chief executive officer, H. W. Kaufman Financial;

Steve DeCarlo, chief executive officer, AmWins Group; and

Brandon Sweitzer, dean, School of Risk Management, St. John's University. Recent episodes of A.M.BestTV include: Institutional Investors Drawn to Life Settlement Market : Attendees at the annual Life Settlement Institutional Investor Conference in New York, said there is renewed interest in the repurchasing of life policies but it faces a range of challenges: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=lisa217.

: Attendees at the annual Life Settlement Institutional Investor Conference in New York, said there is renewed interest in the repurchasing of life policies but it faces a range of challenges: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=lisa217. Personal Lines Sector Holds Sole Stable U.S. Property/Casualty Outlook: A.M. Best Senior Managing Director and Chief Rating Officer Stefan Holzberger reviews highlights from A.M. Best's annual Review/Preview report for the U.S. property/casualty insurance industry, including how automobile, homeowners and commercial writers are responding to a challenging underwriting environment and an abundance of capital: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=pc117. Repeal of Affordable Care Act Could Trigger Range of Impacts : A.M. Best Senior Director Sally Rosen and Senior Financial Analyst Wayne Kaminski examine provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that might be subject to repeal and how their removal could affect U.S. health insurers: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=aca117.

: A.M. Best Senior Director Sally Rosen and Senior Financial Analyst Wayne Kaminski examine provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that might be subject to repeal and how their removal could affect U.S. health insurers: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=aca117. Life/Annuity Insurers Respond to Reserving, Product Changes: A.M. Best Senior Managing Director and Chief Rating Officer Stefan Holzberger outlines highlights from A.M. Best's annual Review/Preview report on the life/annuity sector, including the introduction of principles-based reserving for new business, regulatory changes and insurers' efforts to more closely tie products to the interest rate environment: http://www.ambest.com/v.asp?v=lifeannuity117.



A.M.BestTV covers exclusive A.M. Best information and reports, targeted topics and key developments in the (re)insurance industry every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Sign up for alerts of episodes at http://www.ambest.com/multimedia/ambtvsignup.html. View A.M.BestTV episodes at http://www.ambest.tv. A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright  2017 by A.M. Best Company, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005659/en/

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[February 03, 2017] 4-H Tech Wizards Program Recognizes Axalta for Educating Tomorrow's Leaders

Axalta Coating Systems (NYSE: AXTA), a leading global supplier of liquid and powder coatings, is excited to announce that three employees from its Mount Clemens, Michigan facility received awards from Michigan State University Extension's 4-H Tech Wizards program. The Tech Wizards program focuses on building healthy mentoring relationships between caring adult role models and youth as they interact through STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) related topics and activities. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005693/en/ From left to right: Axalta's Kris Wright, Gary Weaks, Karen Putinsky and Jakob Schroeder pose with their 4-H awards. (Photo: Axalta) For the past three years, Gary Weaks, OEM Operations Quality Manager-North America, Karen Putinsky, Quality Technician and Kris Wright, Chemist mentored students at Mount Clemens Community Schools. For their efforts, 4-H awarded Putinsky and Wright with the Mentor Award and Weaks received the prestigious Mentr of the Year Award. 4-H also presented a Friend of 4-H Award to Jakob Schroeder, Mount Clemens Plant Manager on behalf of Axalta.



"4-H's recognition of our employees and our Mount Clemens facility is an honor," said Schroeder. "At Axalta, we believe in giving back to the communities in which we work and live. It is truly exciting to help educate and inspire tomorrow's scientists and engineers right here in Mount Clemens." "Mount Clemens 4-H Tech Wizards has been tremendously impacted by not only the financial support Axalta has given the program, but also by the support it has shown to its employees as they continue mentoring in the youth program," said Lisa Kelley, Program Coordinator 4-H Tech Wizards. "Kris, Karen and Gary are wonderful, dedicated mentors. Their consistent involvement with Mount Clemens Community Schools has provided a welcoming, learning environment for these students. The youth are excited when they come to 4-H Tech Wizards knowing that the mentors always bring fun projects to work on, which usually include a new power tool or chemistry experiment."

About Axalta Coating Systems Axalta is a leading global company focused solely on coatings and providing customers with innovative, colorful, beautiful and sustainable solutions. From light OEM vehicles, commercial vehicles and refinish applications to electric motors, buildings and pipelines, our coatings are designed to prevent corrosion, increase productivity and enable the materials we coat to last longer. With more than 150 years of experience in the coatings industry, the 12,800 people of Axalta continue to find ways to serve our more than 100,000 customers in 130 countries better every day with the finest coatings, application systems and technology. For more information visit axaltacoatingsystems.com and follow us @Axalta on Twitter and on LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005693/en/

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[February 03, 2017] Allgeier Strengthens Operations With Acquisition of Ciber Germany and Ciber Denmark

BREMEN, Germany, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Allgeier SE , one of the leading IT companies for Business Performance, today announced an agreement with Ciber , Inc. (NYSE: CBR), a leading global information technology consulting, services and outsourcing company, to acquire its business in Germany and Denmark. With this acquisition, Allgeier builds on an established presence in Germany and Denmark and reinforces its position as a leader in providing fully integrated IT solutions and IT services. The transaction is expected to close in February following receipt of regulatory approvals. "This acquisition reflects our strong commitment to the future of SAP and the value for our customers by bringing Enterprise IT- Services and new SAP technologies together," said Hubert Rohrer, Member of Executive Board of Allgeier SE. "Our interests are completely aligned with Ciber as we transition, support and deliver for our customers." "The sale of Ciber Germany and Ciber Denmark is consistent with our announced strategy to divest non-core assets," said Ciber President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Boustridge. "With Allgeier, we have found a terrific home for our German and Danish employees and customers." About Allgeier SE

Allgeier SE is one of the leading IT companies for digital transformation: with a growth strategy oriented to innovations and future trends, as well as an integrative business model, Allgeier seizes the opportunities that digitalization offers. Three operating segments, each with their individual specialist or sector-related focal points, work together for more than 3,000 customers from almost all business sectors. With more than 6,100 salaried employees and more than 1,300 freelance experts, Allgeier offers its customers an extensive one-stop-shop range of solutions and services. With a highly flexible delivery model, Allgeier covers the entire IT service spectrum from on-site through to nearshore and offshore: with a strong business pillar in India, the company secures flexibility and maximum scalability of services, as well as highly quaified high-end software development expertise. Allgeier customers include globally operating groups as well as innovative medium-size business operations that aim to secure strategic advantages through high-performance IT solutions, intelligent software and flexible personnel services. This Munich-based, fast-growing Group maintains more than 90 branches in German-speaking countries, the rest of Europe, as well as in India, Singapore, Vietnam, Mexico and the USA. Allgeier generated EUR 445 million of revenue in 2015 (continuing operations). Allgeier SE ranks first in the 2016 Lunendonk list of "Leading German Medium-Sized IT Consultants and System Integrators". According to the Lunendonk 2016 market segment study "The Market for Recruiting, Mediating and Managing IT Freelancers in Germany", Allgeier Experts ranks among Germany's top three IT personnel service providers. Allgeier SE is listed on the Regulated Market of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (WKN 508630, ISIN DE0005086300). For more information, visit: www.allgeier.com.



About Ciber, Inc.

Ciber partners with organizations to develop technology strategies and solutions that deliver tangible business value. Founded in 1974, the company trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CBR). For more information, visit www.ciber.com and follow us on Twitter , LinkedIn , Facebook , Google Plus and our blog . Ciber, Inc.'s Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 relating to Ciber's operations, results of operations and other matters that are based on Ciber's current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections. Words, such as "anticipate," "believe," "could," "expect," "estimate," "intend," "may," "opportunity," "plan," "positioned," "potential," "project," "should," and "will" and similar expressions, are intended to identify these forward-looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. For a more detailed discussion of these risks, see the information under the "Risk Factors" heading in Ciber's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2015, and Ciber's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended September 30, 2016, and other documents filed with or furnished to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Other than as required by law, Ciber undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Contact

Scott Kozak

Ciber, Global Communications, Investor and Industry Relations

303-967-1379

[email protected] Allgeier SE

Corporate Communications & Investor Relations

Dr. Christopher Groe

Wehrlestrae 12

81679 Munich

Tel.: +49 (0)89/998421-0

Fax: +49 (0)89/998421-11

e-mail: [email protected]

Web: www.allgeier.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/allgeier-strengthens-operations-with-acquisition-of-ciber-germany-and-ciber-denmark-300402079.html SOURCE Ciber, Inc.; Allgeier SE

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Narendra Modi wants to get the Aam Aadmi Party de-registered due to fear of loss in Punjab and Goa, which go to polls on Saturday. Income tax department found factual discrepancies in donation records to the party during 2013-14 and 2014-15.

Kejriwal has hit out at PM Modi on many occasions in the past.

By Press Trust of India: The income tax department has claimed to have found that the audit reports prepared by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for donations amounting to about Rs 27 crore have discrepancies.

In a report submitted to the Election Commission, the department, which has been investigating the donations' list of the party over the last one year, has said that the records of donations made to the AAP during 2013-14 and 2014-15 had "factual discrepancies" and did not match with the actual funds received by it from various donors.

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Parties prepare audit reports, in consultation with their charted accountants, and submit a copy to the I-T department as per law.

ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES WORTH RS 27 CRORE

Officials said that the alleged discrepancies in donation records of the party were worth about Rs 27 crore and added that the treasurer of the party had acknowledged "certain errors" in these records in their communication with the taxman.

Also read | Punjab polls: Modi targets Kejriwal at Faridkot, tells AAP to go back to Delhi

The I-T report, they said, has suggested that the violations are in contravention of tax laws that govern political donations as stipulated under the Income Tax Act, 1961.

The officials added that this could form the basis for the cancellation of tax exemptions given under the I-T Act to AAP and could also follow a stringent action of de-registration of the party, but all such decisions were the domain of the Election Commission exclusively.

MODIJI RESORTING TO DIRTY TRICKS: KEJRIWAL

Referring to the development, AAP's national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal alleged that it was a "dirty trick" by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to get the AAP de-registered due to fear of loss in Punjab and Goa, which go to polls on Saturday.

"Modiji's dirty tricks. Losing badly in Goa n Punjab, he tries to de-register the winning party 24 hours before elections. Shameless dictator," he tweeted.

The AAP is fancying its chances in Punjab, where it is faced with a triangular contest withCongress and incumbent SAD-BJP combine. In Goa too, the AAP is hopeful of disturbing the ruling BJPs prospects.

Also read | Kejriwal hits out at PM Modi again, says Gandhis have some 'secrets' of him

WATCH VIDEO

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[February 03, 2017] U.S. Army Mission Command Awards Contract to Systematic Inc.

CENTREVILLE, Va., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Army Mission Command announced the award of a multi-million dollar contract to Systematic Inc. for its Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) C4I product, SitaWare. The U.S. Army has selected Systematic Inc. as a new supplier of IT solutions to the US military. With the SitaWare solution, the U.S. Army gets a command and control system that provides the warfighter with greater situational awareness at all levels of command, as well as easier cooperation with other forces and greater security. Systematic Inc. President and retired U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres is excited to bring the capability to the Army. "SitaWare meets most of the Army's C4I requirements straight out-of-the-box," said Torres. In addition, he highlighted SitaWare's open architecture which allows for integration with legacy and third party systems. "It also has built-in support for international information exchange standards providing unmatched interoperability with international allies and intra-operability between U.S. forces," Torres said. "With this award, SitaWare will become a key component of the Army Common Operatig Environment, and Systematic will work with Mission Command and industry partners to develop a common framework to enhance intra-operability between U.S. and Coalition Partners."



Press information: https://www.systematicinc.com/

https://defensetech.org/2017/02/02/command-and-control/

http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=Blog-army-awards-contract-command-and-control-planning-system About Sitaware

SitaWare is a software product suite providing robust situational awareness of blue and red force data at all levels of command. Each dedicated product in the suite is specifically designed for the challenges facing commanders in headquarters, mounted and dismounted environments, to provide unrivalled tactical data communication.

SitaWare was selected as the architecture framework for the Command Post Computing Environment, allowing for immediate third party development of integrated Command Post, Mounted and Dismounted tactical computing capabilities. About Systematic Inc.

Systematic Inc. was incorporated in 1997 and has offices in Centreville, Virginia. It supplies software products and services to the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and Homeland Security on some of the nation's most sensitive programs. Further information Rafael Torres

(Col Ret) US Army

President, Systematic Inc.

Email: [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-army-mission-command-awards-contract-to-systematic-inc-300402141.html SOURCE Systematic Inc.

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A look back on all of our reporting of the Delphi murders since 2017

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On Thursday, Maran and his brother Kalanithi got a major relief when a court dropped the charges against them and others in the alleged kickback of Rs 742 crore in the Aircel-Maxis deal.

By India Today Web Desk: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) today moved the Supreme Court against the discharge of former Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran and others in the Aircel-Maxis case. The ED also urged the Supreme Court not to release the properties attached in the case. The court refused, for now, to grant a stay on the CBI court order discharging Maran, his brother Kalanithi and others for now.

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The matter will be heard again in the Supreme Court next week, on Wednesday.

The Special Public Prosecutor for the ED Anand Grover had earlier told the Supreme Court that the CBI Special Court did not follow proper procedure while discharging Marans in the case.

Grover said the Marans were not asked to a furnish bail bond while they were discharged. The prosecutor also said that the trial court had ordered the release of the Marans' attached property. Both these orders, Grover said, are wrong.

The CBI has alleged that Maran, as a Union Minister in the UPA government, used his influence to help Malaysian businessman TA Ananda Krishnan buy Aircel by coercing its owner Sivasankaran to part with his stake.

Sivasankaran alleged that Maran favoured the Maxis Group in the takeover of his company. In return, he alleged, the company made investments through Astro Network in a company stated to be owned by the Maran family.

Also read: Dayanidhi Maran, brother Kalanithi let off in Aircel-Maxis deal by court; setback for CBI, ED in crucial 2G case

On Thursday, after six years of remaining under a cloud of suspicion, Maran and his brother Kalanithi got a major relief when a special CBI court dropped the charges against them and others in the alleged kickback of Rs 742 crore in the Aircel-Maxis deal, saying that the "perception of suspicion" was not backed by concrete evidence.

Special CBI Judge OP Saini, in scathing observations, said that no minister or senior government officer would be safe if "contradictory oral statements" of witnesses are made legally acceptable.

Judge Saini discharged Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran, Kalanithi's wife Kavery Kalanithi, South Asia FM Ltd (SAFL) Managing Director K. Shanmugam and three companies -- SAFL and Sun Direct TV Pvt Ltd (SDTPL) and South Asia Entertainment Holdings Ltd, Mauritius in two related but different cases.

Dismissing the cases against them, the judge said the oral statements, which were used by the CBI and ED to frame charges, were a "dangerous trend" and that if it were allowed "anybody and everybody in the government can be made to face prosecution".

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By Press Trust of India: agst 2G court order

New Delhi, Feb 3 (PTI) The prosecutions attempt to restrain the special 2G court from releasing the attached properties and execution of bail bond of Maran brothers -- Dayanidhi and Kalanithi -- after their discharge in the Rs 742.58 crore Aircel-Maxis deal cases today met with probing question from the Supreme Court.

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A bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar was not in an agreement with the grounds taken by senior advocate Anand Grover, who was appointed by the apex court as SPP, to lead the prosecution on behalf of CBI and the Enforcement Directorate, saying that the discharge of the accused made it clear that this case was not of money laundering as alleged by ED.

"The simple logic is that this money (Rs 742.58 crore), considered to be that of laundering, is not found to be that of the proceeds of the crime," the bench, also comprising Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud, said during the hearing in which the SPP was also told that he has not cured many of the defects in the plea which was raised in the morning.

However, when Grover tried to press for the relief in the absence of proper appeal filed either by CBI or ED, the bench said as per the special courts order, this money was not a "part of the crime" alleged against the accused and this being so, then "there was no money laundering".

The bench gave an opportunity to the SPP to "prepare" his case and "address arguments on Wednesday".

Before the matter was posted to February 8, Grover tried to explain that why he himself moved the apex court without waiting for ED to file an appeal against the order of the special court which held that no case of conspiracy was made out against any of the accused persons in the case.

Grover said that ED will file a proper appeal after consultation and approval but due to urgency in the matter, he has moved the apex court with only two prayers that the bail bonds should not be executed and the attached properties should not be released.

He said that CBI will also take his opinion and his juniors would prepare a draft which will finally go to the Law Ministry for vetting.

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The bench asked Grover as to why he didnt approach the Delhi High Court with a revision petition as the issue of bail bonds is a too trivial. (More) PTI ABA MNL SJK RKS SC

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A sarpanch and his two aides thrashed a widow after she objected the installation of a water tank in front of her house. They dragged her, kicked her in the face and stomach.

By India Today Web Desk: A shameful act hit the headlines after a video started circulating on the internet.

In the video, a sarpanch, along with his two aides, are seen beating a widowed woman mercilessly in the Anantpur district of Andhra Pradesh.

The police arrested village sarpanch Mekala Nagaraju, his follower Chandrasekhar and another person, following a complaint from the 40-year-old victim Sudha and her brother.

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Also Read ||Video of old woman trying to escape the track before a Mumbai local train crushes her goes viral||

Nagaraju and Sudha belong to the ruling Telugu Desam Party and are also the members of the local Janmabhoomi committee which works towards the development of the village, according to a Hindustan Times report.

Watch the contemptible act here:

#WATCH: Woman beaten by village Sarpanch & his friend in Andhra Pradesh's Kuderu,as she refused to agree for construction outside her house pic.twitter.com/XLIL2m0bYa ANI (@ANI_news) February 3, 2017

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

According to Kuderu police sub-inspector V Raju, Sudha raised an objection over the installation of a water tank in front of her residence which was supposed to be located at the sarpanch's house.

"She picked up an argument with the sarpanch over the relocation of the water tank. An enraged Nagaraju started beating her up and the others joined him," sub-inspector told Hindustan Times.

PUNISHMENT

The police booked Nagaraju and two others for assaulting a woman with intention to outrage her modesty, assaulting to dishonour a person, and hurting a person without provocation.

They were initially released on bail but were taken back into custody again.

Also Read ||Husband cuts off wife's ears with a knife, still walks free||

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The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) asked Congress to use the reauthorization of the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) to finally protect Americans during the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) in seemingly every aspect of modern life.

"The implications of Internet of Things for consumer privacy and security are far-reaching," the privacy group said in a letter to the head of US House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology. "If the NTIA fails to develop appropriate safeguards, the country will face growing risk."

EPIC isn't alone in thinking IoT devices are a threat. Everyone from Google, which announced in December 2016 a new platform meant to help IoT companies secure their products, to Virginia Senator Mark Warner has called for safer connected devices. These products are threatening on both the individual and national levels. Allowing manufacturers to continue to release them without basic protections is like asking for something bad to happen.

Indeed, some of those bad things have already happened. Popular services like Twitter and Spotify were unreachable for several hours in October 2016 because of an attack on critical infrastructure by malware-affected IoT devices. In December, the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology said nations could exploit vulnerabilities in IoT devices for their own purposes, which could lead to a dangerous back-and-forth between various countries.

EPIC asked NTIA to address these problems with consumer protections that:

Promote Privacy Enhancing Techniques (PETs) that minimize or eliminate the collection of personal information.Ensure routine security updates for IoT devices; andCarefully assesses IoT deployment for critical functions, including transportation, home security, and medical devices.The NTIAs multi-stakeholder processes are simply not working  they result in weak, voluntary self-regulatory regimes. Industry self-regulatory programs do not provide meaningful privacy protections. The NTIA should support a strong legal framework that protects American Internet users and promotes public safety.
The company formerly known as Snapchat is going public. Snap Inc. submitted documents to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to hold an initial public offering (IPO).

Here's how the company described its mission in the S-1 it filed with the SEC:

Snap is a camera company.We believe that reinventing the camera represents our greatest opportunity to improve the way that people live and communicate. Our products empower people to express themselves, live in the moment, learn about the world, and have fun together.In the way that the flashing cursor became the starting point for most products on desktop computers, we believe that the camera screen will be the starting point for most products on smartphones. This is because images created by smartphone cameras contain more context and richer information than other forms of input like text entered on a keyboard. This means that we are willing to take risks in an attempt to create innovative and different camera products that are better able to reflect and improve our life experiences.

Snap is looking to raise $3 billion with a valuation between $20 billion and $25 billion. That makes it the biggest IPO in the West since Facebook. Twitter's valuation reached $24 billion when it went public in 2013, but Facebook set the record with its $104 billion valuation in 2012. While these social networks have varying revenues and profits, the general thinking is that investors pay such prices to buy into the companies' futures, not presents.

The IPO comes shortly after Snap re-branded itself from Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging service for which it became famous, and introduced a connected eye-wear product called Spectacles that allows people to easily record videos and share them with their friends. That $130 gadget is currently only available from a "Snapbot" vending machine in Venice Beach (and apparently one in NYC), but Snap is likely to make it available in more markets as it ramps up production.

Combined, all these developments mean everything is coming up Snap. It's releasing new products, expanding its market, and looking to reinvigorate the public market's interest in consumer tech companies. Twitter, on the other hand, is scrambling to update its service just to survive a little longer.

The company announced in October that it planned to overhaul its service to attract more users, convince existing users to stick around, and prove to investors that it can thrive as a standalone company. It also revealed that Vine, the six-second video service, would shut down in "coming months." Then in November, it updated its anti-harassment features to curb what critics have called rampant abuse that occurs on its social media platform.

This disparity makes sense. Although Twitter has become an important force in the spread of information, Snap has arguably had a bigger influence on the way people communicate. Twitter gave the world the hashtag; Snapchat popularized one-to-one communications that aren't permanently stored on a company's servers just waiting to be seen by law enforcement or criminal hackers. (Or at least attempted to do so, with varying degrees of success.)

Snapchat also has more users than Twitter and is more popular with young people. Now that Snap has released Spectacles, the company also has a foothold in the hardware market, whereas Twitter has struggled to make new software products last for long. (Remember #Music? Nobody does.) Soon people are likely to say the same about Vine, and if it can't compete with the surging popularity of Facebook Live, the live-streaming Periscope service.

There's always the possibility that Snap is over-reaching with this IPO, given its relatively limited userbase of 160 million people and financial situation. Snap's revenues grew between 2015 and 2016--from $58.7 million to $404.5 million--but its losses also grew from $372.9 million to $514.6 million. The company also warned in the "risk factors" section of its S-1 that it "incurred operating losses in the past, expect[s] to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability." Those aren't the most heartening of phrases to hear from a company seeking billions of dollars.

But for now things are looking better for a company previously dismissed as a "sexting app" than they are for Twitter, which has been at times heralded as the global town square, and a successful public offering could make the disparity between the two companies' fortunes grow even wider than it is now.
Symantec revealed (opens in new tab) three malicious Android apps that click on ads without their user's knowledge or consent.

Two of the apps--Fast Charge 2017 and Fast Charger X3 Free--have been downloaded between 10,000 and 50,000 times in North America. (Google's Play Store publicly releases only broad ranges.) The third, Clear Master Boost And Clean, has been downloaded between 5,000 and 10,000 times. All three use a variety of methods to prevent users from learning their real purpose or stopping them from earning their creators some more money.

Symantec said the apps "use delayed attacks, self-naming tricks, and an attack list dictated by a command and control server" to evade detection and find targets. These features "are relatively common on their own, but have not been seen together," the company said. Given their popularity, the difficulty with which they are stopped, and their ability to receive new targets from central servers, the apps could earn their operators a pretty penny.

"Even on the Android platform, an app can appear to be many things to many different interfaces," Symantec said. "These specific apps use one name on the home screen while hiding under a different process name. In one example we encountered, the app title was Fast Charger on the home screen, while the process name according to the Settings > Apps dialog appears as android. Once the app hides by deleting itself from the launcher, all thats left is a process called android; an unlikely candidate for a user to force quit."

Ad-focused schemes can be quite lucrative. White Ops revealed in December 2016 a system called Methbot that watches up to 300 million video ads each day to earn between $3 million and $5 million daily. These apps probably don't have anywhere near as much reach, but they're still an easy way for someone to make a buck. And, unlike other Android malware, these apps didn't pose as a popular game or use a third-party marketplace to do it.

Symantec, as always, recommended some best practices for avoiding malware:

Keep your software up to dateDo not download apps from unfamiliar sitesOnly install apps from trusted sourcesPay close attention to the permissions requested by appsInstall a suitable mobile security app, such as Norton, to protect your device and dataMake frequent backups of important data

Some of those, like paying attention to app permissions or frequently backing up mobile data, would be useful here. But it seems like things will only get harder for people who worry more about avoiding malicious apps in general than about responding to specific threats discovered by security companies.
You may have noticed that Bruce Springsteen is currently in Australia, playing ten-hour sets, and wearing the knees out of his jeans with all the sliding around on stage hes been doing. You may have also heard that earlier this week, Donald Trump basically hung up on our Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after a phone conversation about refugees and probably whether or not Crowded House count as an Aussie band or not.

Bruce wasnt happy at all with this respect of disrespect, and while in Melbourne sided with our entire country by covering Dont Hang Up, an early 60s hit for The Orlons. He said to the crowd: We stand before you embarrassed Americans tonight. Were gonna use this to send a letter back home, before kicking into the track.

Check out the original below, and read Springsteens former comments about Donald Trump, in which he admits he is very frightened.
Today, Golden Robot Records drop the live recording of one momentous night in Brunswick  the night Rose Tattoo took to the stage of Bombay Bicycle Club and cemented their place in the annals of rock n roll history.

After supporting Guns N Roses on their Australian tour, the Tatts intend to relive those heady days, tearing up the same old venue (now called Bombay Rock) and fulfilling the prophecy of late band member Peter Wells.

Gary Angry Anderson remembers Wells insight like it was said yesterday  it came at the moment the band found out their single Bad Boy For Love had hit the peak of its success.

We were standing in a pub on City Rd and a mate came in and said the Tatts just went pucker number 1, thats Bad Boy! says Anderson. Pete turned to me in the wonderful way that hes got with wisdom and said Youll be singing that fucking song for the rest of your life, ya cunt.

Sadly, Wells is one of six former Tatts to have died in the bands 40-year history, but Anderson carries on in their stead under the same banner, writing and recording in the new Golden Robot studios.

Im to do a new solo album. The lineup thats gonna play the Guns N Roses show, as theres no Tatts lineup that exists, is my band, the Angry Anderson Band, he says. The Tatts thing is in limbo at the moment while [drummer Paul] DeMarcos still in jail.

While DeMarco does time for gun running, Anderson is turning to young guns to revitalise the old style; folks like Golden Robot Records founder Mark Alexanders son Jagger, who Anderson says cuts a very tasty swing.

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What I see the next Tatts lineup being Well trade off what we do best, which is rock n roll or the blues, but well write and record music thats more reflective of today. We always wanted to make not as many albums but evolve musically.

Watch the video for Rose Tattoos Rock n Roll Outlaw below:

Anderson has been in the fortunate position to witness the evolution of the scene over four decades in the industry. He must therefore, be a genuine authority on how rock n roll has shifted and changed over time.

Thats not as easy as it may seem to answer, he says. I may be opening myself up for the Old Fogey award, but I dont think rock n roll is represented in its truest form [today]  everythings rock n roll. Well, everything isnt!

Rock n roll is a very clearly defined genre of music. The term rock n roll is derived from black people wanting to describe the sexual act. Rockin n rollin is like boogie woogie, it can all trace its origins back to sex It has to syncopate, it has to shuffle, it has to swing. [Modern bands] rock, but they dont roll.

For Anderson, the genres always been an instinctive thing, something buried in the bones that the Tatts appropriated and teased out of their listeners.

The reason that people cant resist it is because its a natural rhythm, he says. Its derived from the black feel of music which has got a history that goes back hundred and hundreds  if not thousands  of years of interpreting the natural body grooves, not only in song but in dance.

Somewhat ironically, he still has a bugbear for the most prominent genre in modern music; one thats also core to black cultural expression through music. Its a frustration that seconds his self-nomination for the Old Fogey Award.

I was one of those completely ignorant people that said Id give hip-hop five years, 10 at the most, and here it is still driving us nuts, he says. Its a legitimate form of music black people, not your Lionel Richies, etc., but the kids on the street finally had a voice in music.

You can argue the benefits of it their heroes and the people they look up to glorify the abuse of women and the violence of young men against one another as young males in their songs, and thats probably the downside of hip-hop music, but there is an upside to it as well.

Genre battlefield lines (and racial politics) aside, Anderson is optimistic about where music is headed, even if his beloved blues are under-represented.

Historically, all music evolves and then gets to a certain stage and revitalises itself, he says. There were calls in the seventies, before the Sex Pistols and all that happened, that music had died. Music didnt die, it was just journalists being overly dramatic. You know, video was gonna kill live music  that never happened, it was never gonna happen! They said the same thing before the Beatles.

The next iteration of the Tatts will be its swansong, by Andersons admission, but hell no doubt be a familiar face on the pub rock circuit. Theres new material coming, but hell never escape Petes prophecy  hell be singing that same fuckin song for the rest of his life, without a moments regret.

Rose Tattoo open for Guns N Roses on Tuesday February 7 at Brisbanes QSAC Stadium, and on Friday February 10 and Saturday February 11 at Sydneys ANZ Stadium.

Get your hands on Tatts: Live in Brunswick here
Sen. Claire McCaskill: A ban that makes America less safe

President Trumps entry ban on immigrants and travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries  and refugees from anywhere  is making our country less safe, and has compromised our most sacred values.This ban has handed a potent recruiting tool to international terrorists by communicating that America is at war with Muslims.And in addition to refugees, its left behind even those Muslims who put their lives, and the lives of their families, at risk to help American military servicemembers in war zones. This weekend, on U.S. soil, our government detained and handcuffed an Iraqi translator who risked his life to support U.S. troops. Its appalling.The notion that our government would prioritize one religion for admittance to our nation flies in the face of our sacred, founding values of liberty and freedom of religion.We cannot, and I will not, sit idly by while this happens. As the top-ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, Ive demanded a meeting with DHS Secretary Kelly. Ill be fighting, and I urge you to pick up the phone and call the White House, write letters and emails, march  use your voice to speak out for whats right.
TOP ECHELON KANSAS CITY INSIDERS REVEAL GROWING FEAR THAT JASON KANDER MUST CHALLENGE SEN. CLAIRE McCASKILL IN ORDER TO SAVE MISSOURI DEMOCRATS FROM COMPLETE ANNIHILATION!!!

The reality is that Missouri Democrats can't build their hopes for a comeback with a renewed commitment to divisive gender identity politics, the wage gap myth and love of abortion.

There's a struggle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party that starts with a renewed commitment to core principles rather than pointless opposition and obstructionism which only serves to hold back progress endorsed by Missouri voters.Accordingly and because our blog community has been noting an upcoming fight that everyone is too afraid to consider . . .Sen. McCaskill is. Also, we must remind our blog community to look past cable new propaganda and remember thatalong with an OUTRIGHT SWEEP OF STATEWIDE OFFICES that pushed the Missouri Democratic Party further into Super-Minority status.Tragically, Sen. McCaskill seems to be ignoring the will of voters and instead working to support the protest agenda currently dominating the local news cycle.ith respect to the Senator . . . Let's explain that she has had her time to lead Missouri and now that time is over.The Sen. McCaskill love affair with Prez Obama was probably her career pinnacle and helped this state earn increased standing amid otherwise backward, rural GOP reactionary politicos who mostly focused on pouting on talk radio and starting their journey toward online trolling that inevitably won the Presidency.However, Sen. Claire's influence or lack thereof was demonstrated clearly when Hillary Clinton was defeated and, again, Missouri Democrats were decimated at the voting booth by a margin much to big to be written off by allegations of Russian hacking.Closer to home, Sen. Claire has aligned herself with some of the worst lady politicos in Kansas City like-- A desperate politico who is widely derided for working to create divisive primaries for Democratic contenders in the name of feminism.Also, pictured in fair use of this image with Sen. Claire isin an election where many felt she was actively working to disenfranchise voters and was never was clear about where exactly she lived while attempting to run for KCMO City Council . . .Both Legislator Williams and Ms. Garza exemplify the radical feminist politics that Missouri voters soundly rejected in the historic 2016 Trump victory.And so . . .And this brings us to an inevitable confrontation betwixt Jason Kander and Sen. Claire as young vs. old ideals are set to clashMissouri Democrats are serious about avoiding the implosion of the world's oldest continuous political party.Like it or not, and as Jason Kander has been constantly pointing out on cable TV new chat shows . . .Mr. Kander outpaced the top of the Democratic Party ticket in both of his elections. His military record is something that voters in Missouri have shown they respect. His political priorities seem to focus on voter rights, protection of veterans and ethics reform rather than the social justice platform touted by Sen. Claire McCaskill.Real talk: Even in political disagreements, TKC has always liked Jason Kander not only because he taught me how to use the Missouri State Ethics website for research when he didn't have to BUT ALSO because Mr. Kander has shown his enthusiasm for the law and the rules that govern the political process throughout his career. TKC won't ever be a fanboy cheerleader but there aren't very many politicos in the entire U.S. who understand the importance of policy put into practice.In the final analysis, throughout his career supporters of Jason Kander have talked about. Now, as the Democratic Party in Missouri stands at the precipice of complete annihilation and absolute irrelevance, voters are in need of elected leaders with the courage to change course and respect the will of voters. Mr. Kander is once again presented with a unique opportunity to shift the status quo for his own party. A primary defeat of Sen. Claire McCaskill would render any Republican opposition insignificant and would prove that Democrats in Missouri are serious about looking toward the future. Planning for the 2018 election cycle is already underway and the fate of the Democratic Party in Missouri now rests with those few leaders who are unafraid to take a new path. The fate of Missouri Democrats rests with Jason Kander.Developing . . .
This clip is interesting if only because it offers anand also seeks to welcome and invite immigrants amid the Prez Trump immigration crackdown.It's a bold statement of acceptance . . . Especially given that nobody seemed to care thatthan any other White House leader in history.However, the Kansas City Muslim immigrant welcome message makes sense given thatYou decide . . .
Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos appointed on Thursday the ministrys economic inspector, Stavros Thomadakis, as new head of Greeces financial crimes squad (SDOE)

Greek Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos appointed on Thursday the ministrys economic inspector, Stavros Thomadakis, as new head of Greeces financial crimes squad (SDOE).

Thomadakis is replacing Konstantinos Christou, who resigned to take over the post of Secretary for Transparency in the last government reshuffle last November. He has served as director of the Research and Safeguarding of Internal Revenue Agency and the General Secretariat for Public Revenues.

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
By Shivan Chanana: A car rally was held in the national capital today. Working professionals and school children protested against the atrocities on animals and the illegal animal trade taking place at the Bangladesh border via Bihar and West Bengal. Organized by an animal protection organization Dhyan Foundation along with People For Animals (PFA), the rally saw hoards of people in at least 500 cars decorated with banners and our national flag.

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"United Humans Against Atrocities on Animals" was the theme of the rally which began from Kasturbha Gandhi Marg and made its first pitstop at the office of the resident commissioner for West Bengal at Baba Kharak Singh Marg, and then moving on to Bihar Bhawan in Chanakyapuri. "Mafia-Police nexus, bandh karo bandh karo" read one of the banners and the slogan was raised by the large crowd in unison outside their vehicles while protesting outside the West Bengal resident commissioner's office.

When asked about the photographs of slaughtered camels and cattle on the banners stuck to the cars former Miss India-Universe Nikita Anand, spokesperson of the Dhyan Foundation, said, "Camels and cattle both are sold for meat - yes, camels as well and all illegal of course! We have faced a lot of hardship in saving camels and cows in the states of Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal. The growing police-mafia nexus cost us animal and human lives and the mafia used the money to fund terror. Some policemen and administration people are of great help but majority do not want to enforce the law of the land, and anybody can guess the reason. Our volunteers have no security and are constantly under threat".

Animal trafficking and terrorism are seldom spoken in the same breath but maybe that is reason why illegal animal trafficking is a flourishing trade across Indian borders. "Funds generated through animal trafficking are all unaccounted. There has been a clamp down on black money since the announcement of demonetisation drive but there has been no fall in the expansive animal trade. Now, instead of cash, arms and drugs are received as compensation. Maximum numbers of camels are caught near the Bangladesh and Pakistan borders. Why? This is a national issue concerning the security of the country" said Kaushik of Gau Gyan Foundation.

"Recently, 16 camels were rescued 10 km short of the Pakistan border, it's clear we are supplying camel meat to the Pakistan army and terrorists," said socialite and animal activist Poonam Kapoor. "Thanks to police inaction, lakhs of camels and cows have already been slaughtered in and around the Bangladesh border. One camel costs Rs 1 lakh, so you can imagine the money generated. Here we would give an example of Kishanganj in Bihar, 61 camels were rescued near Bangladesh border two months ago but the judge is sitting on the case and not allowing the camels to return to their natural habitat in Rajasthan. Three have already died in this delay - Why? 16 camels caught just off the Pakistan border last week, what were they doing there? So many other batches of camels caught in that area. What are they doing near the Pakistan Bangladesh border? It is an organized mafia generating black money, and a threat to India and this is why we are carrying out this rally and protesting" said Kapoor, who spent last two months fighting a legal battle for rescued camels in Kishanganj, Bihar. "Honorable prime minister has taken path breaking steps against black money to curtail terrorism, I request him to go to the root of this evil, which is cattle and camel smuggling into Bangaldesh. It generates trillions in black money, guns come in via these routes, funds terrorism, and these are well known facts. This evil originates pan India and eradicating it will not slow, but put an end to black money and terrorism" said Yogi Ashwini, guiding light of Dhyan Foundation.

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The car rally was organized outside West Bengal house and Bihar Bhawan to push authorities to enforce the law in their states and safeguard animals. The camel has been declared as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). Recent cases of camel trafficking in the past December 2016 and January 2017:

Kishanganj (Bihar): 61 Camels rescued by two lady activists fighting a legal battle facing continuous threat from the Trafficking Mafia. Kishanganj (Bihar): 71 Cattle saved by SSB at the Nepal Border. slampur (West Bengal): 36 Camels rescued by Dhyan Foundation Volunteers in the Hub of Trafficking Mafia from being smuggled to Bangladesh for illegal slaughtering. The camels are safely transported to Sirohi . Malda (West Bengal): Supporting the rescue of 60 Camels amidst constant threats, from being smuggled to Bangladesh for illegal slaughtering. Jodhpur and Kotputli (Rajasthan): 60 camels in Jodhpur and 13 in Kotputli were rescued from being taken out of the state for slaughter towards Bangaldesh. Gurgaon (Haryana): Over 100 camel found in Gurgaon en route to Dasna, UP for slaughter. Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh): 13 camels were rescued in Ghaziabad.

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The Hellenic Federation of Enterprises' (SEV) weekly bulletin warned of a continuing decrease in incomes with a simultaneous increase in consumption in Greece, saying this is a major risk to a sustainable economic recovery in the crisis-bedeviled country.

SEV, Greece's largest and most influential employers' association and corporate advocate, said a divergence between consumption and disposable income is linked with already negative rates of savings. The bulletin warned of an intensified trend whereby resources already withdrawn from banks, or derived from liquidations of assets, will be used for consumption.

The juxtaposition of higher consumption amid decreasing disposable incomes is not conducive for a viable recovery of the Greek economy in 2017, SEV's bulletin noted.

Moreover, an increased scrutiny on the Greek economy picked up this month due to months' long impasse in concluding the second review of the Greek economy and in setting a course for after 2018, when the current bailout ends.

JP Morgan predicts that the leftist SYRIZA-led coalition government will eventually overcome differences with creditors in the coming period and avoid snap elections, while finally concluding a second review of the Greek program.

High political cost

A less likely possibility, at roughly 40 percent, is an election in Greece this year. JP Morgan qualifies this scenario by citing what it calls the high political cost entailed in concluding the review with creditors.

Regardless of any return to the ballot box, however, the NYC-based investment bank foresees that in the end Athens and creditors will reach an agreement to continue the bailout program, a development that will minimize "Grexit" speculation.

In pointing to a possible election result, JP Morgan predicts a center-right government, one that is more effective and able to forge a productive relationship with creditors.

Finally, Credit Suisse publicized five possible scenarios for the current impasse in negotiations with creditors, namely:

-- a quick resolution, i.e. this month

-- a further delay in order to continue negotiations

-- brinkmanship, reminiscent of July 2015

-- Early elections before the summer, and finally,

-- Grexit

As per the last prospect, however, CS is quick to note that there's nary any support in the Greek parliament for such an option, " even less so in the country", basing its argument on recent opinion poll results.

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
Greece recorded a surplus in its trade balance with Egypt in the January-October 2016 period, totaling 163.32 million euros, down 47.1 pct compared with the corresponding period in 2015 (308.56 million euros), the Greek embassys economic and trade affairs bureau in Cairo said in a report.

The report said that bilateral volume of trade fell 18.9 pct in the 10-month period to 1.092 billion euros, from 1.347 billion in the same period in 2015. The value of Greek exports to Egypt totaled 627.88 million euros in the January-October period, down 24.2 pct from 2015, while imports from Egypt totaled 464.56 million euros, down 10.6 pct from 2015.

The report said that Egypt ranked 10th among the most important destinations for Greek exports, absorbing 3.0 pct of total Greek exports. On the other hand, Egypt ranked 20th among Greeces suppliers, with a market share of 1.28 pct of total Greek imports.

Read more here.

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A Turkish national was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of spying, Greek authorities announced. Cengiz Uyugur, 51, who is chief engineer of a cargo ship named M/V Makbule Ana under a Turkish flag, was arrested while taking photographs of the dockyard in Salamis. According to sources, the man was detected by Greek navy officers, who in turn informed the coastguard of Elefsina.

The man was taken into custody where a trial date was set by the court after his photographs were seized. The Greek Ministry of Shipping and Island Policy released a statement on the incident, while a portion of the Turkish media has covered the news linking it to the recent surge of provocations over the isles of Imia between Greece and Turkey.

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Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is due to meet in Athens at 15:00 on Friday with the UN Secretary Generals Special Adviser on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias is due to meet in Athens at 15:00 on Friday with the UN Secretary Generals Special Adviser on Cyprus Espen Barth Eide.

Eides meeting comes few day after the meeting of President Nicos Anastasiades meeting with the Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci. Both leaders have requested the UN to prepare the continuation of the Conference on Cyprus in early March. Their next meeting is expected on February 9.

The UN official during his stay in Athens, will also meet with the diplomatic advisor of the Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras, Vangelis Kalpadaki.

CYPRUS-GREECE COORDINATE ACTION

Athens is in constant communication and coordination with Cyprus over negotiations. Greece have repeatedly stated that is committed to achieving a just, sustainable, solution, based on UN Security Council resolutions, with elimination of the guarantees and the withdrawal of the occupying troops.

According to sources President Nicos Anastasiades and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will meet in Nicosia in the next following days as they island is preparing for a new Conference on its ethnical issue.

The same sources confirm that Athens and Nicosia have various issues to discuss in order for the Conference to continue, including the demand from Turkey that the four basic freedoms be provided to Turkish citizens following a Cyprus solution, Greco-Turkish relations, the customs union between Turkey and the EU.

Source: SigmaLive Greek

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Greek judges invited the International Association of Judges to take action after Ankara issued angry response to the Greek courts ruling on the extradition of 8 Turkish officers

Greeces Association of Judges and Prosecutors invited the International Association of Judges on Thursday to take action after the Turkish government issued an angry response to the Greek courts ruling regarding the extradition of the eight Turkish officers.

The Supreme Court decided last month not to extradite the officers who were accused by Turkey of participating in the failed coup attempt last July, citing concern over human rights abuses in the neighbouring country.

The three decisions of the Supreme Court of Greece acknowledged that a potential extradition would endanger their lives and expose them to torture and humiliation and, with these considerations, it decided not to extradite them, the association said.

After the decision, Turkey issued arrest warrants for the eight army officers and accused Greek courts of allowing impunity for criminals and the violation of the rights of the victims, in contrast to the principles of international law and rules.

As it becomes apparent, the Turkish government is directly questioning the irrevocable rulings of the Supreme Court of Greece, accuses our country that it allows impunity for criminals and that it protects illegal people, while it also threatens the country's international relations, the association said.

We are of the opinion that with its stance, Turkey is attempting to put unacceptable pressure on Greeces judicial system. We ask the International Association of Judges to assess the situation as it stands and make the appropriate announcements and interventions, it added.

Read more here.

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A Catholic nun in Spain has sparked outrage in the Catholic Church after suggesting that Virgin Mary might not have been a virgin after all. Sister Lucia Caram was speaking on a talk show over the weekend when she let slip her belief that contradicts one of the key pillars of her faith. I think that Mary was in love with Joseph and that they were a normal couple, and the normal thing is to have sex, Caram told Risto Mejideon during Sundays Chester in Love programme. According to Roman Catholic faith, the Virgin Mary is believed to have become pregnant with Jesus, the son of God, by immaculate conception.

Its hard to believe and to take in. Weve stuck with rules that we have invented without reaching the true message, she added. Her remarks were denounced by the Bishop of Vic, who issued a statement reminding people that Marys virginity was not up for debate.

The belief that Mary was a perpetual virgin forms part of the faith of Church from its beginnings and that this truth of faith was collected and proclaimed by the Second Council of Constantinople, being the primary Marian dogma observed by Catholic and Orthodox Christians, he said. Such statements do not conform to the faith of the Church.

Sister Lucia is no stranger to controversy. The nun has over 180,000 followers on Twitter and is a vocal supporter of Catalan independence. She has appeared on numerous chat shows and cooking programs.

Source: rt.com

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US President Donald Trump's administration could hit Iran with new sanctions as early as Friday following Tehran's test-fire of a medium-range ballistic missile, said a report.



However, sources provided the caveat that nothing is ever final, until President Trump announces it, according to NBC News.



Trump has tweeted that "Iran is playing with fire," and warned Tehran that he wont be as kind as former President Barack Obama. His comments come after Tehrans missile test this week.



On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn said the White House was putting Iran "on notice."



Two officials tell NBC News that the new sanctions are in response to the continuous terrorist activity of Iran and repeated ballistic missile tests, but will not violate the existing Iranian nuclear deal.



Meanwhile a defiant Iran has vowed that it will not bow to threats from the US and would continue its missile activity.



A senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, criticised the "extremism" of Trump, who has declared Iran was "on notice" after it test-fired a ballistic missile on Sunday. according to CNN.



Following a meeting on Thursday with Harley-Davidson executives in the White House, Trump declined to rule out the prospect of military action against the Islamic republic, said the report.



"Nothing's off the table," it quoted him as saying.



The tensions between the two countries have been simmering since the election of Trump, a harsh critic of the nuclear deal with lran that the Obama administration brokered.



Last week, Trump announced a temporary travel ban on nationals from Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries, barring them from entering the US.



The sudden escalations of US-Iranian tensions have raised concerns about the future of the nuclear accord with Iran, which put stringent limits on the country's nuclear program. It allowed sanctions to be eased and business with Iran to recommence.



Trump has been a longtime critic of the accord, which was brokered after two years of talks with the five members of the Security Council and Germany in 2015.



At some points, Trump vowed to strictly police the agreement. At others, he threatened to tear it up, said the report.



Iran has confirmed that it test-fired a missile on Sunday but insisted it did not violate the nuclear deal because this missile is not capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. It was the first launch of its kind since Trump took office.
A lot of travelers feel bad when they put their furry friends below in the cargo bay during flights. But that's just the way most airline policies are to keep the cabin in order. However, one Japanese airline went outside the box and allowed passengers to have their dogs sit with them in the cabin.

The 'wan wan jet' charter service took flight in Narita airport just around Tokyo and traveled southwestern Japan in Kagoshima Prefecture. The flight was a different experience because the passengers sat with their dogs.

According to Metro, the Japanese airline also offers flight packages to passengers that would not only allow them to sit with their pets but also includes hotel accommodations and transportation. The travel package costs around 150,000 or $1300 dollars. A lot of passengers have availed the package because of this unique experience.

The Japan-owned airline company launched its first services that allowed dogs to travel with owners back in December. The Daily Mail reported that the flight was fully booked in just an hour and a total of 60 people and 30 dogs boarded the plane.

Japan has a large dog-owning population and an estimate of 12.3 million dogs outnumber the number of children living in Japan. The Japan Pet Food Association reported that 18 percent of the people living in the country owned a pet.

But it's not the first plane that took flight in Japan which allowed dogs to on board the cabin. In fact, another Japanese company, All Nippon Airways, launched trial flights to Hokkaido Prefecture that boarded 87 passengers and 44 pets.

During ANA's flight, the pets were locked in cages that were attached to the window seats. Also, there was a veterinarian on board for the duration of the flight.

With Japan starting to allow dogs to sit with their owners, it's not going to take long that other airline companies would do the same thing too. In fact, Middle Eastern airline companies have been doing the same thing too, but they only allow falcons to travel with owners.

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World leaders were shocked when US President Donald Trump agreed to sign the executive order that would ban 7 countries to enter the United States. The 90-day travel ban is now effective and would ban citizens coming from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

According to CNN, the seven Muslim-majority countries that were included in the executive order were already stated as "countries of concern" before Trump went to office as president. Sean Spicer, who is the White House Press Secretary, stated that the travel ban was based off on the Obama administration's actions.

"There were further travel restrictions already in place from those seven countries," Spicer said. He pointed out that the Trump administration is only pushing through in safe-guarding the country by implementing that executive order.

There was a law before that granted 38 countries to have its citizens enter the US for 90 days without a visa. However, in December 2015 during Obama's period, the congress passed a law that would remove the waiver. It applied to foreign nationals who visited countries that were considered as a "safe haven" for terrorists.

Now, in February 2016, when countries like Libya, Somalia and Yemen were included in the list, President Trump included those seven countries in the executive order. Trump even stated in one of his interviews that his travel ban policy is not far from Obama's policy of banning visas for Iraqi refugees.

Mr. Trump also stated that some of the foreign nationals coming from Islamic countries were the cause of the numerous terrorist attacks. This is the reason why these seven Muslim-majority countries were added to Trump's banned list.

However, research would prove otherwise because according to according to the BBC, most of the terrorist-related attacks that happened since the 9/11 bombing were caused by US-born citizens. The attacks that happened in Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and San Bernardino were caused by citizens born in the US.

It's still an issue that's been going on for weeks whether Trump's 'decisions are a step for progress or failure. However, the banned countries are also considering of banning US citizens to enter into their countries and Iraq already did it.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) US Vice President Mike Pence today defended President Donald Trumps executive order halting immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, saying that "any fair-minded person" would understand the directives intent.

"Any fair-minded person looking at the Presidents action knows that what President Trump has done is essentially imposes a pause on countries that have been compromised by terrorism, so that we can evaluate the screening process and establish an extreme vetting so that people coming into this country dont represent a threat to our families and to our communities," Pence was quoted as saying by Fox News.

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"Its an indefinite pause with regard to Syria, but with regard to the other countries, were going to be calling on the Department of Homeland Security, all of our team to work together to evaluate how we can continue to go forward with immigration from those countries but not compromise the safety and security of the American people," he said.

Pence asserted that the ban imposed on seven Muslim-majority country is not a Muslim ban.

"Clearly, its not a Muslim ban. Its not in any way associated with religion," he said.

"This president made it clear in this executive order that we are not going to compromise the safety and security of the American people with regard to these seven countries that the Obama administration identified as compromised by terror, that the Congress has identified. Were take a pause. Were going to step back and were going to put safety and security of the American people first," Pence said in response to a question.

Pence said the they are now reviewing the list.

"This list has really garnered around whether the countries that were looking at have the internal systems that we can be certain that people are who they say they are," he said.

"And with regard to other countries, Saudi Arabia being among them, we have confidence that they have the kind of safeguards, the kind of law enforcement, the kind of screening in their country that when a person presents a visa or attempts to come into the United States, that we know they are who they present as," Pence said.

"The Obama administration and the Congress have identified these seven countries as having systems that have been compromised through strife, through the advent of terrorism, in the case of Syria through civil war, so that we need to step back to make sure that we have the additional safeguards," Pence said.

Trump has a lot of priorities, but his number one priority is the safety and security of the American people.

"And thats why this decisive action took place," he said. PTI LKJ UZM

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As part of holiday packages due to the 150th Anniversary of Canada, luxury train trips through Canada's National Parks are being offered. The trip will traverse through Western Canada and the Canadian Rockies.

The promo, aptly called Go Solo promotion for solo travellers, is a scenic train getaway passing throughout British Columbia, Alberta, and the Pacific Northwest, according to Travel + Leisure. Passengers will be given the per person rate of a double occupancy booking. The luxury tourist train is offering 65 packages.

Passengers will be riding on carriages with domed roofs to give them a wider view. They will be seeing rainforests, snow-capped majestic mountains, flower filled meadows, waterfalls, and the country's national parks, which are offering free admissions due to Canada's 150th Anniversary. Some of Canada's parks are Jasper National Park, where they will have magnificent views of the Rockies and Banff National Park.

Some of the packages included are the Journey Through the Clouds Discovery Drive, an eight-day and seven-night trip through views of Whistlers Mountain and Fraser Valley; the Canadian Rockies Highlight package, which passes popular spots like Banff and Lake Louise; and Canadian Rockies Circle, a nine-day journey to view the Rockies up close on the same route which is known for uniting the country 150 years ago.

Another package is the Journey through the Clouds Discovery Drive, an eight-day and seven-night adventure along mountain, lakes, and waterfalls as travellers head through Vancouver, Jasper, Lake, Kamloops and Calgary. This particular offer is available only until 15 May, 2017 but on certain Rocky Mountaineer packages.

The promotion, which qualifies for GoldLeaf and SilverLeaf packages are leaving in April or May of 2017 for five days or longer. Savings differ depending on hotel stay, journey length, excursions additions, and the time of travel. "Canada was also named the top country to visit in Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2017."

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
For the past few years the countries in Europe, as well as some places in the United States and Australia, have suffered unforgettable wounds from its angry Muslim minorities. The Muslim mayor of London (UK), Sadiq Khan, said that terror attacks are 'part and parcel of life in a big city.' This statement somehow implies that the attacks in Paris are either inevitable or justified. But there is one country that continues to resist the notion without ever experiencing even the slightest semblance of such tragedy - Japan.

An analysis provided by English Democrats and All Four Estates demonstrate how certain political and cultural elements effectively put together the pieces of the puzzle. Here are some of the main reasons why Japan is pretty much immune to Muslim extremists and terror attacks:

300-year Isolation. One of the reasons why foreign terror attacks do not thrive in Japan is because this archipelago has an indelible history of isolation, to begin with. For 300 years under the Tokugawa rule, entry and exit across the Japanese waters warrant execution. It wasn't until the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry in the 1800's that Imperial Japan was 'forced' to open its international borders for trade.

Nipponjin & Gaijin. Furthermore, Japanese society does not blur the clear distinction between Japanese and outsiders. At the outset, foreigners (including Muslims) can NEVER occupy the same social category.

One Out Of 100,000. As confirmed by the leader of Japan's Muslim community, there are only roughly 1,300 Muslims in the country. They don't have enough numbers to foster effective mass anarchy. The government likes to keep it that way.

Demographic Crisis

In line with clearly identifying foreigners, its immigration policy is extremely meticulous. The government is doing everything in its power to preserve its homogenous majority in the succeeding generations.

Yukawa & Goto Martyrdom. The filmed execution of two Japanese nationals by ISIS in 2015 cemented the negative impression about Muslims for all the proud Japanese people. It is unfortunate that, as unfamiliar as the religion of Islam already is in Japanese society, its lasting reminder is a terror attack against their innocent countrymen.

See Now: The U.S. had the highest number of Most Wanted properties, dominating the Hotels.com Loved By Guests Awards 2018
Poor planning will always create vacation disasters. Planning includes the itinerary and clothes to bring. But travelers' budgets will remain the "heart" of any vacation plan. Given the immense number of temptations travelers can encounter while in location, it would be best to remain faithful to the vacation budget where possible -- and these are five ways to ensure just that.

It pays to know the amount needed to deal with all types of fiscal risks during the vacation. Ask friends or veteran travelers in the location. Some destinations only need $600 to taste everything and stay in great accommodation. European destinations, such as Russia, could be terribly expensive requiring more than $4000 for a week's worth of vacation in just one country alone.

Nomadasaurus recommends keeping track of all expenses while in vacation -- even those terribly misjudged decisions. Every dollar spent -- including any cents or pence -- is to be noted down to maintain focus on fiscal goals to avoid even going past to your overhead amounts. The reason to save more money during vacations is there will always b that one moment travelers would want to spent a bit more during their vacation.

Being knowledgeable about public transport pays off greatly especially if travelers are not picky contending with local traffic. Public transportation systems in Europe are well-maintained with all systems often nominal. Russia -- an expensive European destination -- is not as expensive if one knows the tips and tricks around the world-renowned Metro.

Avoid added expenses by exchanging your money into your destination's currency in a local bank before you leave. The airports can legitimately "cheat" you from the original value of the currency. Banks follow the actual value of the currency. Should they charge for exchange rates one would see it as a fair rate than most airports would -- helping you avoid unforeseen budget costs.

According to Real Simple, sticking to budgets during vacations is important but it is valuable to gauge if travelers had received value for money for all expenses. For example, buying cheap souvenirs at the airport can save lots but the quality suffers. Well-spent money on quality handcrafted materials are better souvenirs that last for a great length of time.

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On May 17, 2016, CNN Philippines reported that the newly elected Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, is planning to impose a nation-wide liquor ban reminiscent of the system applied in his hometown (Davao City) for many years. Contrary to popular misconception, this policy is more aimed at rooting out violent public drunkenness than curtailing social drinking entirely.

After all, revelry and social drinking is an inseparable part of Filipino culture. Unlike in other countries, Filipino drinking circles are literally just that - carousers sitting in a circle and passing around a single glass, each taking turns in the communal drinking. Any foreigner who aims to bridge the language gap could start with these few key terms used in the predominantly Bisaya-speaking Southern Philippines:

Pulutan. In the archipelago of diverse local dialects, some popular Tagalog (national language) words easily penetrate other parts of the country. 'Pulutan' is derived from the Tagalog root word 'pulot' which literally means 'hand-pick.' Practically in every Filipino drinking circle, 'pulutan' is exclusively reserved for a category of 'finger fare' eaten during drinking sessions such as potato/corn chips, peanuts or leftover meat viands.

Gunner. This fashionable term often used to describe the specific navy personnel, is understood in the drinking circles of Southern Philippines as 'someone who pours the drinks.' But unlike the bartender or the butler, he or she sits in equal stature with the rest of the group. On a comical side note: a binge drinker for a gunner spells trouble for the group.

Shot! One of the most common key terms in Bisaya-speaking circles, 'shot' is more like an expression than a noun as understood in English. One would somewhat equate it to the Sino-Japanese expression 'kampai' but it is usually intended to hasten the person to drink up.

Tama. In common Tagalog, this word means 'correct.' But in the context of drinking in Southern Philippines, 'tama' means the degree of 'intoxication' or 'wooziness.'

Maoy. For the Bisaya-speaking people, 'maoy' aptly describes the excessive outpour of emotions when a person is too drunk to think straight. 'Maoy' is a very common occurrence for people who are drinking their heartaches away.

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Last week, Marvel Studios announced that the production for the upcoming film, "Black Panther" had already began and that the film will be shot in both Atlanta and South Korea. The film will include a huge car chase that will take place in the port city of Busan, a province in the southern part of South Korea. The shooting will take more or less two weeks starting from late March through early April.

The city of Busan is famously known as the venue of the coveted Busan International Film Festival, one of Asia's biggest film festivals. The city is also know for its beautiful landmarks like Gwangalli Beach, Gwangandaegyo Bridge and Jagalchi fish market as well as the Sajik-dong area that will become the backdrop for an epic car chase that will happen in the film.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the chase will be between the protagonist Black Panther and the villains. The epic pursuit will include 150 vehicles, 700 persons, helicopter and firearm props that shoots blank shells. The Busan Metropolitan Government have already informed the residents and provide warnings that the filming process will cause noise and traffic restrictions.

During the production of "Avengers: Age of Ultron" last 2015, Marvel Studios gave up on some of the filming locations in Seoul that was previously leaked as reported by Variety. However, the Busan Film Commision with help from Mr. Romance Film Productions, asked Marvel Studios to consider Busan as a filming location. "Last November, the city invited Darrin Prescott, the film's second unit director, to pitch Busan as the film's potential shooting location," said the Busan Film Commission.

Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige previously confirmed "Black Panther" will be one of the nine films that are afoot through 2019. Feige also confirmed that a Korean actor will have an appearance in the upcoming film.

The film will follow the story of T'Challa after the events of "Captain America:Civil War", after his father's death. He will return as the new king to the isolated yet technologically advanced nation of Wakanda. However, his resolve as a king and as the Black Panther will be tested as a new enemy emerges and puts all of Wakanda and the whole world in danger. "Black Panther" will have a worldwide release in February 16, 2018.

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By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Feb 2 (PTI) Slamming the government for failing to follow its instructions, a miffed Election Commission today asked the Cabinet Secretary to ensure that ministries do not approach it directly seeking model code clearance for Cabinet proposals.

In a strongly-worded note, the poll panel also said it will not entertain last-minute requests seeking approvals as it leads to creating "undue pressure" on it.

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Referring to the January-27 letter addressed to him, the Commission told Cabinet Secretary P K Sinha that despite repeated instructions, "a tendency is being observed to flout the instructions of the Commission. Matters relating to Cabinet are sent directly to the Commission and that too at the last moment leaving no time for the EC to appropriately consider the issue.

"It leads to creating undue pressure on the Commission to give priority of such reference over its other urgent time- bound business," the poll panel said.

Expressing "unhappiness" at non-compliance of its directions, it asked Sinha to ensure that its instructions are followed by Union ministries and departments.

"While making reference to the Commission, it should specifically be ensured that at least 48 hours is available... so as to convey its decision in time. Otherwise, it would be very difficult for the Commission to entertain such references," it said.

On January 27, the poll watchdog had taken umbrage to certain union ministries failing to seek its concurrence before taking decisions which can affect level playing field during assembly polls in five states.

It had then specifically mentioned that the Finance Ministry, Niti Aayog and the Defence Ministry "failed" to refer important matters to it during the model code period. The code came into force on January 4 and will last till polls are over.

"The Commission has noted that in certain cases, the ministries/departments took decisions, which have effect of disturbing level playing field of poll-bound states, without referring the matter to the Commission, particularly by Niti Aayog, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Finance," the letter had said. PTI NAB ZMN

--- ENDS ---
This programme, party insiders say, is Chief Minister Harish Rawat's flagship programme for youth and a part of his election campaign.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: While Punjab and Goa are set to get inked tomorrow, political parties are going all out to woo voters in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. Congress is banking on roadshows and joint rallies of its vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, while in Uttarakhand, it has launched the Har Sangh Harda programme.

This programme, party insiders say, is Chief Minister Harish Rawat's flagship programme for youth and a part of his election campaign.

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To ensure that these cards are available to the youngsters, the party has set up stalls at its offices and in markets. Party workers are also conducting door-to-door exercise across the state and are ensuring these cards are made available to the people.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS OF HAR SANGH HARDA Providing one job per household to each youth between the ages of 18 and 35 years by 2020. Till such employment is provided, the youth will be given skill training and a stipend. An unemployment allowance of Rs 2,500 per month for a period of up to 36 months will also be provided through a 'Berozgari Bhatta Card'.

Through this move, party hopes to rope in youth.

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The school's staff accused the principal of sending lewd messages to female students on WhatsApp.

The principal Kumar Thakur is out on bail presently.

By Rohini Swamy: The principal of a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Bengaluru has been charged and arrested for harassing female students in school.

The case was taken up after a nodal officer from Childline filed a complaint based on the calls he received from the school's staff, accusing the principal of sending lewd messages to students on WhatsApp.

The complaint stated that the principal would call girls to his room and let them out only after half an hour of making indecent conversation.

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The Bengaluru police arrested Kumar Thakur, the principal under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO Act), but he was later remanded to judicial custody and is presently out on bail.

PRINCIPAL SENT ON LONG LEAVE

The police have recorded statements of the staff of the school and the counselors from Childline whose help was sought to register the complaint.

Officials of the state education department say that under the Karnataka Child protection policy, a person booked in such charges should be suspended, but since KVs do not fall under the state government, Thakur has been sent on a leave.

The state officials are now looking at amending the act to bring central schools under the policy.

Also read: Child rights commission in Tamil Nadu demands ban on PETA website for sexually explicit content

Also read: NHRC notice to Bihar govt on student death due to sexual harassment

Also read: Telangana shocker: Girl's throat slit for resisting sexual advances

--- ENDS ---
25-year-old Ugandan girl Nakayiki Florence met Ishan in a pub, where he agreed to pay her Rs 5,000 in exchange of a sex act.

Florence demanded more money from Ishan at her residence, refusing to which they both got into a heated argument.

By Rohini Swamy: A Uganda national was murdered in Bengaluru after a spat went awry over payment in exchange for sexual favours.

25-year-old Ugandan girl Nakayiki Florence met Ishan in a pub, where he agreed to pay her Rs 5,000 in exchange of a sex act.

HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED According to reports, Florence demanded more money from Ishan at her residence, refusing to which she held him at knife-point. After a heated argument, Ishan grabbed the knife from her and stabbed her to death. It is believed that Florence's friends arrived at the spot and assaulted Ishan. Ishan is an Mtech student from Himachal Pradesh, who had come to Bengaluru looking for a job. The Bengaluru Police Commissioner Praveen Sood has taken stock of the situation. An investigation is underway.

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Also read: Mumbai: Cops crack brutal rape-murder of female doctor after nearly 2 months

Also read: Delhi: College students protest Dalit minor's rape, murder in Bihar

Also read: Bengaluru: A murder and a suicide, all for love

--- ENDS ---
It took cops three hours of drilling to recover the body from the concrete tomb. The accused, a 32-year-old man, has confessed to the murder, police say.

By Hemender Sharma: In a shocking incident in Bhopal a 32-year-old man strangulated his live in partner, put her into a wooden box, converted the wooden box into a cement slab by pouring several bags of cement concrete and water into and slept on it every night for almost two months before police drilled out the body that was burred in concrete at a home in the city's Saket Nagar suburb and arrested the accused late Thursday night.

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The youth Udyan Das led a lavish lifestyle in Bhopal, he moved around in a Mercedes car and lived alone in his house the BHEL township in the Saket Nagar area.

According to the police Udyan Das first met the victim who has been identified as 28-year-old woman Akanksha Sharma on Facebook about two years ago. "Akanksha left her home in Bankura in West Bengal telling her parents she was moving to the United States about two years back. But instead of moving to the US she came to Bhopal and started living with Udyan Das," Police said.

Also read: MP Police launches mobile app MP e-Cop for women safety

Family and friends of Akanksha claim they used to receive telephone calls from her till about two months back and when the calls stopped her father got suspicious and registered a missing persons complaint with the Bankura police

The Bankura police traced the calls to Bhopal and questioned Udyan Das on Thursday. Das initially tried to mislead the police but after grilling confessed he had killed her.

Accused Udyan Das Click here to Enlarge Accused Udyan Das

On being questioned where he had disposed off the body, Udyan revealed he had put the body in a wooden box and put cement and concrete along with water into the box to convert it into a slab. After the slab dried he converted it into his bed on the first floor of his house and used to sleep on it.

On late Thursday night police drilled the cement slab for three hours and extracted body parts of the dead girl from it.

Also read: MP to hold survey to monitor crimes due to liquor addiction

According to neighbours and tenants who live on the ground floor of the house they had seen the girl come into the house several times. The last time she was seen was around two months back. "Though we knew him for the past 25 odd years he hardly used to interact with anyone. He used to lead a lavish lifestyle and claim that he had a factory in Raipur. We thought since was the only child of his parents he must be getting money from them," a neighbour told.

Victim 28-year-old Akanksha Sharma from Bankura (West Bengal). Click here to Enlarge Victim 28-year-old Akanksha Sharma from Bankura (West Bengal).

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Das initially told the police that he was an Ex-IITan and had worked in the US in the past. He also claimed that he had got married with Akanksha in a temple and that the two had together travelled to the US where his mother lived. His father retired from the Bharat Heavy Electricals and passed away a few years back.

According to the police the motive behind the murder is still not clear even though the accused is claiming that he killed his live in partner as he suspected her of having an affair with another man.

A murder case has been registered against Udyan Das and parts of body extracted from the cement slab are being sent for DNA matching, police said.

--- ENDS ---
New Delhi, February 3

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal on Friday turned down former Tata Sons chairman Cyrus Mistrys lawsuit against the companys extraordinary general meeting on February 6.

The company has called a shareholders meeting on Monday to have Mistry removed from the position of the companys chairman.  Agencies
Zahid Hussain

WITH one stroke of the pen Donald Trump last week slammed the doors on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries throwing the United States and the world into unprecedented chaos. This vile piece of legislation targeting people belonging to one particular religion smacks of the worst kind of racism the world has witnessed in recent history  and it is just the beginning. Extreme vetting of travellers from Pakistan and Afghanistan has already been ordered and a complete ban on them is not being ruled out. The registration of the Muslim population in the US is also reportedly under consideration, setting a cruel precedent somewhat reminiscent of Nazi rule.

Seemingly, the travel ban has been imposed to make the country more secure but there has not been any instance of a citizen of one of those seven countries being involved in terrorist activities in the US. In fact, all those countries have been the target of American military aggression and victims of terrorism themselves. Iraq particularly has been destroyed by the American invasion, the action Trump had strongly condemned during his election campaign. No wonder such xenophobic actions taken by the Trump administration are being celebrated by jihadist groups like the militant Islamic State group. It has provided fuel to their radical narrative of Islam versus the West. A pro-IS website has described banning Muslims from entering America as a blessed ban. All the countries on the ban list have been fighting IS on their soil. Notwithstanding the massive protests across the US and in western capitals, Trumpism seems unstoppable. Understandably, more worried are Washington's traditional allies with a reckless president at the helm of the world's sole superpower which is the linchpin of the geopolitical order. Now this order is threatened by the policies of a rogue leader. Understandably, Trump's radical steps are cause for serious concern to Pakistan too. Notwithstanding the friendly phone conversation between the Pakistani Prime Minister and Trump soon after the latter's election in November, the signals from Washington have not been encouraging. It was clear from the outset that the new administration would exert increasing pressure on Islamabad to crack down on Pakistani militant groups such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

True to character, the Sharif government waited passively for things to pass. But now there is sign of panic with Trump moving fast on his election promises and the impending threat of extending the travel ban to Pakistanis. The dramatic crackdown on the JuD and the decision to place Hafiz Saeed under house arrest highlights panic. Interestingly, the crackdown came hours after the publication of a report in a national daily claiming that Pakistan was threatened with sanctions if it did not act swiftly against the group. For many years Islamabad had resisted pressure from Washington and other countries to clamp down on the groups that were still being protected under various pretexts despite Pakistan's war against militancy. It was apparent that the JuD was the new banner for Lashkar-e-Toiba, the most lethal of Pakistani militant outfits that was banned in 2002 because of outside pressure. Pakistan was forced to close down JuD offices after the outfit was put on the list of terrorist organisations by the United Nations. But the action was short-lived as a Lahore High Court bench found no grounds for banning the group, providing Islamabad with a convenient excuse to defy international pressure. Hafiz Saeed roamed around freely addressing rallies and appearing on primetime TV, reinforcing international scepticism regarding Islamabad's double standards in dealing with the scourge of militancy and extremism. The 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks involving members of the banned outfit intensified the call by the international community for action against the JuD and its leaders. The anger grew further after Zaki-ur- Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the carnage, was freed by the court. All this obscured the success in containing militant violence inside the country.

But now, the belated and somewhat half-hearted action against the JuD and confinement of its leaders may not satisfy the international community, particularly the Trump administration. The pressure will intensify to crack down on the banned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar who has resurfaced after keeping a low profile for several years. The JeM disintegrated into various cells after being proscribed in 2002 and many of its senior members were involved in terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. Maulana Azhar came into focus again late last year after JeM was accused of masterminding the attack on the Indian air force base in Pathankot. Cases have also been registered against some JeM leaders suspected of involvement in the attack. But Maulana Azhar has remained free. Pakistan has been able to block the move in the UN Security Council to declare him a terrorist with the help of China. But this can't be sustained for long. It will be another test for Islamabad.

Yet another pressure point for Pakistan is the detention on treason charges of Dr Shakeel Afridi who helped CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Trump had vowed to get him released and bring him to the US. This presents a very tricky situation for the Pakistani government. It remains to be seen how Islamabad avoids any punitive action by a rogue American administration. Although the Trump administration still does not have a clear Afghan policy, the issue of how to deal with the crisis remains a source of conflict between Islamabad and Washington. There is some indication of continued US demand on Pakistan for taking action against the Haqqani network, the strongest faction of the Afghan Taliban believed to be operating from its sanctuary in Pakistan.

There is no doubt that Pakistan should have acted against the groups in its own national interests long ago. It will certainly bring more humiliation if we wait for the Trump whip. Have we not already been trumped?

By arrangement with the Dawn
The Army is out in Kohima and the Naga peace accord seems to be going the way of many of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiatives. Hardly anyone now remembers the live telecast of the Prime Minister presiding over a `framework agreement' with a powerful Naga militant faction in August 2015. Mr Modi was then on a roll and this event too was hailed as epochal. The few voices that doubted the viability of a hastily cobbled secret accord were quickly shushed. Since then one Naga militant leader has passed away and another is struggling to meet the expectations of his cadre promised jobs in government security agencies as the price for being seen at the negotiating table in New Delhi.

In the past two years the North-East has unravelled in several ways from the security point of view. The latest violence in Nagaland is ostensibly against 33 per cent reservation for women in local elections. Such a step is politically correct. But people are out in the streets because there is lack of trust. They feel this is the thin edge of a wedge to interfere in their age-old tribal customs. Elsewhere, smaller Naga tribes are making open their unhappiness with the Central Governments peace accord, while in Manipur Nagas have been blockading Imphal for over three months, resulting in immense suffering to the people and ambushes of army patrols are on the rise in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

The impression that has gone around after the wholesale defection of legislators to the BJP in Arunachal Pradesh and its silence over Nagas blockading the Imphal Valley has been that New Delhi is interested in a simple power grab in all north-eastern states. Otherwise, why were the CMs of Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh not consulted on the pact with the Naga militants? The answer: because all three CMs at that time were with the Congress. The North-East has a more complex and mutually antagonistic social tapestry than any other part of India. The dependence on capable spymasters to politically swing the region to the ruling party has its obvious limits.
Kuldeep chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, February 3

A two-hour strike by doctors today affected health services in hospitals across the state. Doctors at the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital observed the strike from 9.30 am to 11:30 am causing inconvenience to patients.

Though the emergency services continued as usual, patients were at the receiving end. While some waited for hours in the OPDs, others sought treatment at private hospitals.

Lokinder Thakur, a patient, said, The strike has harassed poor patients who came all the way from Rohru, Chopal, Rampur and other peripheral areas for treatment.

Earlier, doctors protested against the state government for its failure to resolve the long pending issues despite assurances by the Chief Minister.

Though Principal Secretary (Health) Prabhodh Saxena has invited members of HP Medical Officers Association (HPMOA) for talks on February 7, the association has already stated the protest would continue till February 12. They have threatened to go on mass casual leave in case their demands were not met.

Apart from HP Medical Officers Association (HPMOA), Residents Doctors Associations at Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital and Dr Rajinder Prasad Government Medical College, Tanda, too have joined the strike. Medical officers staged protest at district and civil hospitals across the state for two hours today.

The president of HPMOA Dr JN Chauhan said in view of the recent attacks on doctors at Bilaspur and Una, the HP Medicare Services Persons and Medicare Service Institutions (prevention of violence and damage to property), Act, 2010, should be amended to make assault on doctors on duty a non-bailable offence. RDA demanded the government should bring an ordinance regarding the Mediperson Safety Act, in the upcoming Assembly session.

Kangra: Doctors across the state observed a two-hour pen-down strike today in support of their long pending demands. Dr Susheel Sharma, spokesman, Himachal Pradesh Medical Officers Association (HPMOA), rued the state governments indifferent approach towards their demands accepted in August, 2014.

He demanded that an act of violence against medical and paramedical staff should be made a non-bailable offence under the HP Medicare Act.

Himachal Medical Officers Association demanded that doctors appointed on ad hoc basis should be regularised after three years of service; quota of PG doctors be increased to 90 per cent from 66 per cent; regular DPC should be held for appointment of assistant professors in medical colleges on the basis of seniority; dental and Ayurvedic doctors appointed as district programme officers under the NHM be withdrawn and sanitation,security services outsourced.  OC
Srinagar, February 3

At least six persons were injured in Friday as clashes broke out between protesters and security forces in Nowhatta area of the city and Pulwama district in south Kashmir.

Clashes broke out in Nowhatta area soon after the Friday prayers concluded inside the historic Jamia Masjid here as groups of youth indulged in stone-pelting on police personnel in the area, a police official said.

The security forces fired tear smoke shells and used batons to chase the miscreants, the official said.

He said at least three persons were injured in the clashes which were going on till last reports came in.

Among the injured is chief photojournalist of PTI S. Irfan, who had gone to cover the incident.

As the security forces were chasing away the protesters, I tried to take a safe position during which my safety helmet came off. As I turned to pick up the helmet, I was struck by a stone, Irfan said.

The photojournalist said he was rushed to a hospital by his colleagues, where he was discharged after first aid.

Clashes also broke out in Pulwama town in south Kashmir where youth pelted stones at security forces, who had launched a search operation, following information about presence of militants in the area, the police official said.

He said three persons were injured in retaliatory action by security forces to chase the protesters away.

Meanwhile, normal life was affected across Kashmir due to strike called by separatist groups in support of their demand for right to self-determination.

Shops and business establishments remained closed, while public transport was mostly off the roads in the Valley.

However, private vehicles were plying on all major roads of the Valley despite the strike call.  PTI
Tribune News Service

Srinagar, February 3

Amid a shutdown called by separatist leaders over death sentence to a Kulgam youth by a Kolkata court, protests erupted at various places in Kashmir after the Friday prayers, affecting normal life.

The protests led to clashes between protesters and the police forces in downtown Srinagar. Stone-throwing protesters also hurled a petrol bomb towards the CRPF men near Jamia Masjid in the Nowhatta area of Srinagar. The petrol bomb hit one of the jawans.

The protesters were chased away by the police and CRPF men who resorted to teargas shelling and fired in the air.

Two photojournalists Farooq Khan and S Irfan, covering the incident, also received injuries in the clashes at Nowhatta. S Irfan was later discharged from a hospital after being provided medical aid.

Protests and clashes after the Friday congregational prayers were also reported from Sopore town of Baramulla district in north Kashmir. Reports said that groups of youth held protests leading to clashes between protesters and policemen. The police lobbed teargas shells and fired in the air to quell the demonstrators.

Separatist leaders, Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Faroq and Mohammad Yasin Malik, who had been jointly issuing protest calendars during the 2016 unrest, had called for a shutdown and protests against the death sentence to Muzaffar Ahmad Rather, a youth from Kulgam district in south Kashmir, by a Kolkata court recently. The separatist organisations have also expressed concern over the death sentence and demanded release of all detainees convicted of death sentence and life imprisonment.

The moderate All Parties Hurriyat Conference chairman, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who was scheduled to lead a protest rally from Jamia Masjid here against the death sentence, was kept under house arrest, preventing him from leading the protest rally, a party spokesman said.

The strike affected normal life across the Valley. Shops and business establishments remained closed. Passenger transport was off the road while private vehicles and autorickshaws plied in the city and elsewhere in the Valley.
On Board ICGS Bard, February 3

Six days after the oil spill off Chennai coast, over 2,000 personnel from different agencies stepped up cleanup efforts on Friday, even as the Coast Guard believed it may take at least 10 days to clear the sludge from the site of collision of two ships in Ennore port.

Coast Guard Eastern region Inspector General Rajan Bargotra said the Directorate General of Shipping has ordered an investigation into the oil spill that has blackened the shores of Chennai since two ships collided last Saturday.

Describing the incident as a "major accident but a minor (oil) spill," Bargotra said "oil spill has occurred in nearly 34,000 sq m in the Eastern coast of Bay of Bengal" amid reports that marine life has been affected.

Volunteers wearing gloves could be seen scooping up thick tar with shovels off Kamarajar Port, formerly Ennore Port.

The mishap occurred at about 4 am when 'M T BW Maple', with a flag of 'Isle of Man', was leaving after emptying Liquefied Petroleum Gas and M T Dawn, Kanchipuram, loaded with petroleum oil lubricant (POL), was on its way to berth at the Kamarajar Port.

"Oil spill has occurred in nearly 72 km off the eastern coast from Ennore Port to Mahabalipuram. About 12 km was affected by the spill and about 250 metres, in RK Nagar Kuppam area, has been most affected," he told reporters on board a Coast Guard ship in Bay of Bengal.

Noting that 72 tonnes of oil sludge has been collected, he said, 54 kilolitres of oil mixed with water was collected through super sucker equipment.

"An inquiry has been ordered by DG Shipping and based on that we will be able to know exact amount of oil spilled into the sea on the day of the incident," he said.a

Bargorta said that although the coasts of Marina beach and Elliots Beach in Thiruvanmiyur would be cleaned by Saturday evening, the South coast area would take longer.

"At least 10 days will be needed to clean the Ennore Port area (where the incident had occurred)," he said.

Bargotra later said 2,600 personnel from various agencies along with Coast Guard, Tamil Nadu Police Coastal Security Group, Pollution Control Board, Fire and Rescue Department, State Highways, Chennai Port Trust, Chennai Corporation, volunteers from various colleges, universities and NGOs are involved in clean up operations.  PTI
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 3

Scholars and poets from India, Iran and a host of other nations will gather in Chandigarh in March third week for Bedil conference, a poetry session and exhibition being organised by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) in collaboration with the Punjab government.

Named after famous Persian poet Bedil, the event would witness about 20 speakers from India and 18 from abroad, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Afghanistan (besides Iran). There would also be scholars from some western universities.

Speaking to The Tribune, ICCR Director General Amarendra Khatua said the idea behind taking the Bedil conference to Chandigarh was following the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take major diplomatic and cultural events to cities other than Delhi so that other other people too could partake in these activities.

As such, Ramayana festival was recently held in Ayodhya and Jazz festival in Port Blair. We have 25 million Indians living abroad and our aim is to use the diaspora link to promote our culture, he said.

The council, meanwhile, is sending secondary school teachers (instead of only PhD scholars) who can teach Hindi to its centres abroad. Again, he pointed out, instead of sending a teacher who only taught yoga for an hour, the ICCR was sending those who could teach yoga, Vedas as well as Sanskrit in non-Muslim majority nations. The ICCR has almost 100 chairs abroad and 25 centres and now the idea is to build a panel of eminent people.

The ICCR is not a part of the Ministry of Culture, but a soft power footprint facilitator of the government, said Khatua.

The ICCR gets 6,000 foreign students each year and the Director General said their aim was that these students should go back as Indias goodwill ambassadors.
By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, Feb 3 (PTI) The BJP will contest 195 seats in the 227-member Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the elections for which are scheduled on February 21.

Unlike the last BMC polls in 2012, BJP is contesting this election sans any tie-up with old ally Shiv Sena.

On January 26, Uddhav had announced that his party would contest the upcoming civic polls in the state all alone, putting to rest speculations about forging of ties with its ally BJP.

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Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar declared the list of candidates late last night.

The party has left 32 seats for its allies.

Today is the last day of filing nominations for polls to Indias richest civic body.

A statement issued by Shelar early today said the BJP has fielded 117 Marathi candidates.

Some nominations in the list have raised eyebrows as they are kin of BJP leaders.

BJP MP Kirit Somaiyas son Neil has been nominated from ward no 108 in Mulund West.

Deepak Thakur, son of Maharashtras Minister of State for Women and Child Development Vidya Thakur, will contest from ward no 50 in Goregaon.

Besides, city BJP chief Ashish Shelars brother Vinod will contest from ward 51. Vinod is a sitting corporator from Malad, but his ward is now reserved for women.

In Colaba, legislator Raj Purohits son Aakash will be the party candidate from ward no 222. Aakash is politically active in the area and was a BJP nominee on BEST committee.

BJP legislator Ameet Satams brother-in-law Rohan Rathod will contest from ward no 68 in Andheri West.

In the neighbouring Versova, the BJP has nominated Yogiraj Dhabhalkar in ward no 60. He is legislator Bharti Lavekars nephew. PTI VT GK GK SNK

--- ENDS ---
Beijing, February 3

Playing down reports that it was behind the detention of JuD chief Hafeez Saeed, China on Friday said it is sending a top official to Pakistan for talks on counter-terrorism amid mounting pressure on Islamabad from India, Afghanistan and the US to rein in militant groups.

Vice-Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping will visit Pakistan for talks on counter-terrorism, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a media briefing here while replying to a question whether the talks would include a discussion on militant groups in Pakistan and concerns of Afghanistan and India.

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

While Lu did not provide any details, Cheng is expected to be in Islamabad from February 6 to 9.

Lu also gave a guarded reply to a question whether China was behind Pakistans sudden move to detain JuD chief and the 2008 Mumbai attack mastermind Saeed.

While his house arrest was attributed to ward off pressure from US President Donald Trump, some Pakistani media reports said pressure from China prompted Islamabad to act against Saeed.

Lu said for a long time Pakistan has made enormous efforts and sacrifices on counter-terrorism.

China supports the independent strategies made by Pakistan in counter-terrorism and engage in international cooperation on counter-terrorism, he said, hinting that Saeeds detention was Pakistans own decision.

China supports international cooperation on counter-terrorism. We consistently maintain that such cooperation should be based on mutual respect, he said.

China is set to host a major international summit in May this year on Chinese President Xi Jinpings ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) project, a multi-billion dollar initiative to revive the Silk Road. China wants maximum participation, including from India and the US.

Lu said leaders of 20 countries expressed interests to attend the conference but gave no details.

More than 100 countries and international organisation gave their support for OBOR project and over 40 countries and international organisations signed agreements or letters of intent to join it, Lu said.

Officials say besides Trump, China was also keen on the participation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But the Sino-Indian relations were bogged down by China blocking Indias move to ban JeM leader Masood Azhar as a global terrorist by the UN like Saeed.

China also blocked Indias bid for membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).

Over Azhars issue, China also faced allegations from India of double standards in fighting terrorism.

Officials say it is to be seen how much of these issues would figure in China-Pakistan counter-terror talks.

Also China is investing vast sums of money into the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is part of the OBOR, over which India has raised objections as it passed through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

China was also concerned about stepped up terror attack in its Muslim Uyghur majority Xinjiang province which is also the starting point for OBOR.

Chinese and Pakistani border guards have been holding joint patrols to curb infiltration.

The Afghan government too has raised strong pitch against Pakistans reluctance to crackdown on the Haqqani network which is creating havoc in Afghanistan, scuttling all moves to restore peace in the war torn country.  PTI
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 3

Political slugfest today broke out over the death of E Ahamed with the Congress and Left alleging delay in the announcement of his death to save the Union Budget on February 1 and the government requesting the opposition not to politicise the matter.

The Lok Sabha had to be adjourned today at 1 pm after the Congress and Left MPs disrupted proceedings seeking a parliamentary probe into the way Ahameds death was handled.

Congress Mallikarjun Kharge led the demand in the Lower House and in the Rajya Sabha, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury voiced the same concern asking for an investigation.

Later Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad also raised doubts over the timing of the death alleging the announcement was delayed so that the Union Budget could be presented. Under conventions, the Lok Sabha is normally adjourned on the day of the death of a sitting MP though the NDA Government went on with the Budget despite Ahameds death in wee hours on February 1.

Ahamed, the sitting Mallapuram MP, had collapsed during the Presidents address to the two Houses on January 31 and was rushed to Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, which has denied the allegations of foul play.

Hospital Medical Superintendent AK Gadpayle said Ahamed (78) was suffering from diabetes, hypertension and coronary artery disease. All possible efforts were made but he succumbed to death on February 1 at 2.15 am due to complete heart failure.
New Delhi, February 3

Arvind Kejriwal on Friday mounted a stinging offensive against Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of voting in Punjab and Goa Assembly polls, calling him a shameless dictator and alleged that he was trying to get Aam Aadmi Party deregistered.

Questioning the timing of a reported move by the Income Tax Department to recommend to the Election Commission to cancel Aam Aadmi Partys political party status, the Delhi Chief Minister claimed that it is a dirty trick that the Prime Minister has used to avert the BJPs drubbing in the two states, which go to polls tomorrow.

Modiji's dirty tricks. Losing badly in Goa n Punjab, he tries to de-register the winning party 24 hrs before elections. Shameless dictator https://t.co/XMSdXj1OSg  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) February 3, 2017

Modijis dirty tricks. Losing badly in Goa n Punjab, he tries to de-register the winning party 24 hrs before elections. Shameless dictator (sic), the AAPs national convener said on twitter.

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

The AAP is fancying its chances in Punjab, where it is faced with a triangular contest with the Congress and incumbent SAD-BJP. In Goa too, the AAP is hopeful of disturbing the ruling BJPs prospects.

Read: AAPs donation records incorrect: I-T dept to EC

According to media reports, the Income Tax Department had yesterday asked the Election Commission to cancel AAPs status of a political party and a trust for allegedly filing false and fabricated audit reports on donations of more than Rs 27 crore.  PTI
Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 3

The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to the Gujarat Government on a petition questioning the promotion and three-month extension given to Director General of Police PP Pandey, an accused in Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar asked the state government to respond to the petition.

On behalf of the petitioner, senior advocate Kapil Sibal told the Bench that Pandey was first granted bail and then reinstated only to be promoted to the top post. Now he has been rewarded with a three-month extension despite being an accused in a murder case, he said.

Pandey, who was due to retire on December January 31, 2017, was granted the extension by the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet.

Pandey was head of the state crime branch when 19-year-old Mumbra girl Ishrat, Javed Shaikh, alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar were allegedly killed in a fake encounter with police on the outskirts of Ahmedabad on June 15, 2004. The Gujarat Police had said those killed were terrorists.

But a special investigation team set up on the orders of the Gujarat High Court said it was a fake encounter. The high court transferred the probe to CBI.
Varinder Singh & Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Lambi, February 3

On poll eve, three main stakeholders in Punjab  Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, state Congress chief Capt Amarinder Singh and Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal  spent the day in varying styles. All three were confident of forming the next government with an overwhelming majority.

Capt Amarinder, accompanied by his son Raninder Singh and Congress activists, toured a few villages of the Lambi segment and allowed the public to have pictures with him.

The Congress leader went door to door, interacting with people. In every house, he repeated his message to voters, Dont forgive them (Akalis) and dont fall for false promises. Refrain from allurements offered by selfish political outfits, who have looted Punjab.

He claimed the Congress would win 70 to 75 seats. He was confident of winning both Lambi and Patiala Assembly seats. Time has come to revive the golden days of Punjab and Punjabiyat.

During his door-to-door interaction with people who gathered in large numbers, he listened to their problems. Dont be afraid of Sukhbirs goons. Theres nothing to worry about. I will teach Baba Badal a lesson, he assured.

Unlike Capt Amarinder, Badal spent the day resting at his palatial house in Badal village. The Chief Minister has taken ill because of exertion, said a SAD leader. Badal met a few party activists at his home in the morning.

Apart from some media persons and security personnel, hardly anyone was present outside the Badals mansion.

The Chief Minister predicted 75 to 80 seats for the SAD-BJP alliance. Our Panthic vote is intact. If the Congress or AAP comes to power, it will be a setback for the poor and farmers, said Paash, as Badal is known in his native village.

His son Sukhbir was in Amritsar today with his wife Harsimrat Kaur Badal to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple. The Deputy Chief Minister flew in from Delhi, where he had gone to meet his children after the campaign got over on Thursday evening.

The couple returned to Badal village late in the evening.
Bharat Khanna

Tribune News Service

Bathinda/Mansa, February 3

Robby Brar, AAP youth coordinator of Rampura, was allegedly shot at in the thigh in the wee hours today. He is undergoing surgery at a hospital at Bathinda. The police are yet to record his statement.

AAP Rampura Phul candidate Manjit Singh Bitti claimed that Robby was attacked by SAD leader and former Market Committee chairman Parveen Kansal alias Rocky, the right hand of Rampura Phul SAD candidate Sikander Singh Maluka.

He alleged, Our youth incharge was shot at by Rocky and his accomplices following a heated argument that took place when our workers objected to the distribution of liquor and money among the voters. The Akalis are distributing cash and liquor openly.

Both AAP and SAD held press conferences and blamed each other, besides holding the police responsible for the violence.

Manjit Singh Bitti alleged, We lodged a complaint with the election observers about the Akalis distributing cash, but no one came. Then, our workers chased away the Akali workers who sped away in their cars. After hiding in a colony, they opened fire at AAP workers.

Akali workers then kidnapped our coordinator Robby Brar and took him to Rockys farmhouse where he was tortured and then shot at. The police, conniving with Akali leaders, reached the spot very late, he alleged.

On the other hand, Rocky claimed that some goons came to his house, threatened him and pelted stones, besides opening fire.

He said, I informed the police, but they did not come. Many bullet shells, stones and a pressure cooker were found lying outside my farmhouse. Later, I found a man  claiming to be an AAP worker  lying injured there.

Swapan Sharma, SSP, Bathinda, said, Everything has been recorded on CCTV cameras. One party chased the other till the farmhouse. Then, the other party went after the first one. A clash occurred and a person got a bullet injury. No one has given us any statement. But we had taken action on merit and registered two separate cases.

In another case, an AAP worker from Nangal Kalan village of Mansa district has alleged that he was attacked by Congress workers. He had objected to the distribution of liquor in the village on Thursday night.

AAP worker Ajaib Singh, who is admitted at the Mansa civil hospital, said, Congress workers, including former Congress sarpanch Jagmel Singh, his accomplices and Kala Singh, attacked me with sticks after I objected to liquor distribution.

But Jagmel Singh claimed that there has been no fight between Congress and AAP workers. The AAP worker got into a fight with some villagers who are not Congress supporters.

SHO Kotdharmu said, On the complaint of injured Ajaib Singh, a case has been registered against Kala Singh, a former sarpanch and an unidentified person.

20 booked for clash

Tarn taran: In all, 12 Congress workers and eight SAD activists have been booked in connection with a clash among them in Naushehra Pannuan, 16 km from here, last evening. The police said workers of the two parties were canvassing for Patti candidates when the clash took place. Adaish Partap Singh Kairon is the SADs Patti candidate, while Harminder Singh Gill is the Congress nominee. OC

Liquor bottles seized

Hoshiarpur: The district police, in three cases, recovered 137 bottles of liquor during checking. The Tanda police have recovered 126 bottles of liquor. Police Head Constable Paramjit Singh checked a car parked near the Government College in Tanda from which 114 bottles of liquor were recovered. The Tanda police also raided the house of Dharamveer in Baghiari and recovered 12 bottles of liquor. The Sadar police recovered 11 bottles. OC

Man held with cash

Ferozepur: The police recovered over Rs 12 lakh in unaccounted cash from a Toyota Fortuner on Friday. The driver, who was arrested, failed to give information about the source of the money and its owner. The police have impounded the vehicle. In another incident, 58 boxes of Indian-Made Foreign Liquor were seized from a councillor in Talwandi Bhai block. OC

Rebel Congress candidate booked

Moga: On the directions of the SDM-cum-Returning Officer Charandeep Singh, the police had registered an FIR against rebel Congress candidate Manjit Mann contesting elections in the Moga assembly constituency under section 126 of the Representation of the Peoples' Act and 188 of the IPC at the Moga City (I) police station for campaigning even after the end of the electioneering period. tns

Brawl in Gidderbaha

Gidderbaha: Congress and SAD men were involved in a brawl at Kotbhai village in Gidderbaha Assembly segment on Friday. SAD activist Birbal Singh lodged a police complaint. tns
Archit Watts

Tribune News Service

Hakkuwala (Lambi), Feb 3

Congress candidate Capt Amarinder Singh and AAPs Jarnail Singh today sought action against SAD halqa chief Gurbakhshish Singh VickyMiddukhera and his son Gurlal Singh for allegedly distributing money at Hakkuwala village in Lambi constituency. Middukhera is also chairman of the Block Samiti, Lambi.

Accompanied by party workers, the two candidates reached the village and lodged a protest, alleging that Middukhera, when confronted, had fled, abandoning his Toyota Fortuner. Meanwhile, Amarinders son stood atop the vehicle which was later vandalised by some youths, who reportedly took away certain documents. The police merely looked on, said sources.

Malkit Singh, a local resident, claimed. Middukhera, his son and three others came to the village in their Fortuner vehicle (PJB 13) at 10.30 am, carrying a bag. When we confronted them, they used foul language. This angered some villagers, who gathered there. All of them fled, abandoning their vehicle. A surveillance team of the election authorities too visited the village.

Middukhera dismissed the allegation as baseless. I had gone to the village to condole a death. My political rivals are trying to tarnish my image. There was nothing objectionable in the vehicle, he claimed.

Objecting to the presence of PPCC chief Amarinder Singhs son in the constituency, he said they had raised the matter with the EC, seeking that Amarinders candidature be cancelled and his son Raninder be booked.

Amarinder justified the mob anger, saying, If they (Akalis) had indeed brought money for distribution and were stopped by locals, who then damaged their vehicle, then it is fine.

Congress activists at Kakhanwali village told Amarinder that Middukheras younger brother Tejinder too had been caught while distributing money, but was let off after he apologised publicly.

Gurlal lodged a complaint with the police, alleging Manjit Singh, Iqbal Singh, Sukhwinder Singh, Jagsir Singh, Jarnail Singh and 15-20 unidentified persons had tried to kill him with sharp-edged weapons. He also accused Raninder of instigating the mob and damaging the roof of his vehicle.

On the other hand, Congress activists Gurdeep Singh (who had hogged the headlines with an audio clip on Badal) and Gurjit Singh lodged a complaint against Middukhera, his son and three others for distributing money and using foul language. Sulakhan Singh Mann, DSP, Malout, said they had recorded the statements of both partie. The damaged vehicle was brought to the Lambi police station.

Voters determined to throw out vested interests: Amarinder

"For peace, amity and revival of industry, voters have made up their mind to throw out vested interests and shun communal and radical politics. They are determined to usher in a political dispensation that will ensure their welfare and protection. False promises and tall claims wont work. What will work is the candidates humility, ability and years in public life. People must be wary of those who are out to exploit the states rich heritage and resources, and must reject communal and radical politics. Punjab is at the crossroads and is looking to a transformational agenda. It will not succumb to enticements, of which there would have been aplenty in the past one month, and will bring back the Congress to power to ensure a sound future for their children. A stable and committed government alone will put the state back on the path to progress. "  As told to Aman Sood

Vote judiciously to keep peace, harmony intact, says Badal

"People will once again repose their faith in the SAD-BJP alliance that has kept communal harmony intact for the past 10 years.The Congress and AAP are out to destroy the hard-earned peace in the state.They are siding with the radical elements, which is very dangerous. Voting for the wrong party could be disastrous for the people of Punjab. We are far head of our rivals and are certain to win 75-80 seats. We are sure to form government for the third time in a row. Contrary to propaganda, our Panthic vote bank has not eroded. If the Congress or AAP comes to power, it will be a setback to the farmers and the poor sections as they may lose benefits such as Atta-Dal and free electricity. In such a scenario there will be protests across Punjab. Procurement will be hit with nobody bothering to lift the crops in mandis. People must, therefore, vote judiciously."  As told to Varinder Singh

Aam aadmi has now risen, we are sure to win, claims Kejriwal

"Punjab and Punjabis are yearning for change. Decades of misrule and corruption has robbed the state of its identity. Now the aam aadmi in the state has risen to reclaim the glory and pride that belongs to him. The small step which the Aam Aadmi Party had taken to bring about a decisive change in the state has now transformed into a peoples revolution. The people have already taken the reins of change into their hands. Voting day has become a festival of change. Everybody is eager to vote for the jhaaduwala and rid the state of Parkash Singh Badal and Capt Amarinder Singh who have cheated the people and plundered the state for decades. This is one big festival in which every citizen of the state must participate. I am certain AAP will form the next government with an overwhelming majority. And once we come to power, we assure you an honest government and an accountable administration, which will live up to its promises and usher in a new chapter in Punjabs history."  As told to vishav bharti
Sarbjit Dhaliwal

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 2

The high-pitched campaign for the February 4 Assembly elections in Punjab came to an end this evening with the three main contenders  SAD-BJP, Congress and AAP  holding impressive roadshows to give a final push to their campaigns. As loudspeakers went silent at 5 pm, party cadres were seen going door-to-door to persuade the voters. AAP is fighting the Assembly elections in Punjab for the first time.

Edit: No scope for violence

The campaigning, that was often shrill and at times nasty, was marred by the twin blasts at Maur Mandi in Bathinda on January 31 in which six persons were killed and several injured. But for the Bathinda incident, campaigning in the state was by and large peaceful.

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In the first round, the electioneering revolved around the issues of drugs, unemployment, agrarian crisis and incidents of sacrilege. It was reduced to mere rabble-rousing in the last phase, with leaders making wild allegations against one another. What stood out was the participation of the Punjab youth in a big way.

Polling for the 117 Assembly constituencies in Punjab on February 4 will decide the fate of 1,145 candidates in the fray. There is a stiff triangular contest among the SAD-BJP, Congress and AAP candidates in a majority of constituencies. Other parties, such as the BSP, are in the election arena too.

On the last day of campaigning, AICC vice-president Rahul Gandhi chose to focus on Malwa, including Lambi, where PPCC chief Capt Amarinder Singh is pitted against Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. Deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal held a roadshow in Lambi. The AAP convener, Arvind Kejriwal, held one in Ludhiana. Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal spent the day in Jalalabad, her husbands constituency.

AAP's Bhagwant Mann and Congress Navjot Singh Sidhu drew huge crowds during campaigning. Among the key campaigners were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BSP chief Mayawati, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh and a number of senior leaders from various parties.

The Prime Minister addressed two rallies in Jalandhar and Kotkapura where he sought votes on the stability plank, saying Pakistan was trying to disturb the states peace.

On the other hand, Rahul claimed Punjab, a front-ranking state, had fallen behind as the ruling Akalis had plundered it to serve their own interests. He promised tough laws to curb the drug menace.

New entrant AAP accused the SAD and the Congress of hobnobbing with each other and vowed to put the Badal family behind bars on the issue of drugs. All parties wooed the Dalits who constitute over 30 per cent of the electorate.
AT a conference of the members of the British and Dominion Parliaments held last summer in London a number of questions were discussed, of which one was about India and the Empire. A short account of the proceedings published in the Times shows that at the meeting Lord Islington supported the idea of including India in the Imperial Council. He is reported to have said:-"It is quite true that India does not possess self-government in the accepted sense, as recognised by the self-governing Dominions, but she does claim, by reason of her size, geographical position, volume of trade, intellectual and political development, military value, and last but not least, by her proved loyalty to the Crown, that her exceptional position should now be recognised, and that she should be admitted as an articulate member to discussions affecting the Empire as a whole."
After yesterday's drama, where Wadala ward 178 Shiv Sainiks locked their local Shakha to mark their protest against ticket distribution in the party, Shiv Sena today got another blow on last day of nomination filling for the BMC polls.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye: Troubles for Shiv Sena seem to have no end as two leaders rebelled against the party line and filed their nomination as independent candidates on Friday.

After yesterday's drama, where Wadala ward 178 Shiv Sainiks locked their local Shakha to mark their protest against ticket distribution in the party, Shiv Sena today got another blow on last day of nomination filling for the BMC polls.

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Rohita Thakur, a local woman leader of Shiv Sena from Shivaji Park was disappointed when she wasn't given a ticket by her party till today morning. Thus, she decided to contest as an independent from Shivaji Park against Shiv Sena's Vaishali Patankar.

"I took this decision after I was denied a ticket. Why should we accept outsiders who don't even know the problems of our ward? I am confident about my win as I have good support of people from my ward."

In a similar case, a former Shiv Sena Shakha head Mahesh Sawant filed his candidature from Ward No 194. He was expecting a ticket this time but local Shiv Sena MLA Sada Sarvankar's son and Yuva Sena core committee member Samadhan Sarvankar got a ticket. Thus, Sawant rebelled against the party and filed his nomination.

Mumbai's Mayor Snehal Amberkar also filed her nomination for the upcoming BMC election. In a draw this time, Mumbai mayor's seat has been declared as open. The mayor, however, refuted the reports that she was not happy after she was asked to contest from Ward no 198, rather than Ward no 195.

"I am confident of winning this election from Ward 198." said Amberkar. On the question of rebellions in Shiv Sena, Amberkar added, "Nothing has been lost yet. They can take still take back their nomination and work for the party."

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will start his campaign for the BMC election from its bastion South Mumbai and Girgaon.

SENA TO MAKE LAST APPEAL

All eyes will be on Thackeray's speech where he is expected to last effort to all party rebels to withdraw their forms and make a smooth way for all Sena candidates.Trouble for Shiv Sena seems to have no end as two leaders rebelled against the party line and filed their nominations as independent candidates on Friday.

After yesterday's drama where Wadala ward 178 Shiv Sainiks locked their local Shakha to mark their protest against ticket distribution in the party, Shiv Sena today got another blow on last day of nomination filling for the BMC polls.

advertisement

Rohit Thakur, a local woman leader of Shiv Sena from Shivaji Park was disappointed when she wasn't given a ticket by her party till today morning. Thus, she decided to contest as an independent from Shivaji Park against Shiv Sena's Vaishali Patankar.

"I took this decision after I was denied a ticket. Why should we accept outsiders who don't even know the problems of our ward? I am confident about my win as I have good support of people from my ward."

In a similar case, a former Shiv Sena Shakha head Mahesh Sawant filed his candidature from Ward No 194. He was expecting a ticket this time but local Shiv Sena MLA Sada Sarvankar's son and Yuva Sena core committee member Samadhan Sarvankar got a ticket. Thus, Sawant rebelled against the party and filed his nomination.

Mumbai's Mayor Snehal Amberkar also filed her nomination for the upcoming BMC election. In a draw this time, Mumbai mayor's seat has been declared as open. The mayor, however, refuted the reports that she was not happy after she was asked to contest from Ward no 198, rather than Ward no 195.

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"I am confident of winning this election from Ward 198." said Amberkar. On the question of rebellions in Shiv Sena, Amberkar added, "Nothing has been lost yet. They can take still take back their nomination and work for the party."

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray will start his campaign for the BMC election from its bastion South Mumbai and Girgaon.

All eyes will be on Thackeray's speech where he is expected to last effort to all party rebels to withdraw their forms and make a smooth way for all Sena candidates.

Also read: Mumbai: Sena workers from Wadala ward protest against denial of BMC poll ticket to local leader

--- ENDS ---
Purnima Sharma

It was a news item in the morning newspaper  about a 60-year-old giving a classical dance performance that set Sunita Goel thinking. If she can do it, so can I, smiles the 54-year-old college lecturer who despite her apprehensions, walked into Delhis Triveni Kala Sangam to check if classical dance classes were available for people of an older age group. They were.

And that set Goel on to a new journey  one that was part of her childhood dream. But, other than the regular dance classes in school, I did not have much to do with this activity, she says. And coming from the generation of Baby Boomers whose focus was mainly on academics, dance was not to be looked at as anything other than a casual hobby. More than 30 years later, Goel decided to give it another dekko. And take it up as a serious hobby.

And when she met her dance guru, Jayalakshmi Eshwar, she knew her task would be made easier. The veteran Bharatanatyam dancer was more than willing to welcome non-dancing adults into her class. It is my duty to bring my dance form closer to as many people as possible  whatever be their age, she says. The idea of these classes is to meet them where they are at and start teaching them the basics of Bharatnatyam that are suited to their age and body, she says.

These students are professionals in their own fields  be it top executives, academicians, medicos  and yet come to me like students to learn a form that is totally new to them.

Its interesting to note that most of the classical dance forms that once were restricted to just the haloed environs of a gurukul, have over the years, moved out to not just schools but even to neighborhood apartments. And in the last few years, yet another discernible change has been observed  from the time when gurus gave lessons only to those who started at a very young age, now people  some even in their fifties  with no background in dance, are becoming keen shishyas.

Goel, who started with her Bharatnatyam training about a year ago, says, Going by the fact that classical dance must be learnt from a tender age only, many like me were a wee-bit apprehensive. But once you start, the realisation that  despite the late start  youre part of this age-long tradition is pretty overwhelming. It makes you not just happy but so much more responsible to continue with it seriously.

Dr Sangita Borse agrees. The 51-year-old practicing dentists grandparents were keen that she learn classical dance but her interest in academics put paid to all that. And all activities connected with culture took a backseat in my life, she says. It was only three years back  when she had finished off most of her major familial responsibilities that Bharatnatyam started occupying her mind. And I began wondering if, given my age, I could start learning it, says Borse.

And once she started with her training in Bharatnatyam, things werent that easy, she confesses. Like it happens with most of the older students, aches and pains become part of the course, especially in the first few months. My knees and arms really hurt because these were not used to movements of the form. But as I persisted, my body got used to all that, smiles Borse who, despite her busy schedule strives to be irregularly regular in her practice. She counts herself lucky to have a profession that lets her create time for it. In the flat that houses my clinic, I have a separate room complete with a big mirror dedicated to my dance practice, she adds.

Dedication is what takes an artiste forward, whatever the age, says Radha Reddy of the legendary Kuchipudi dance duo Raja Radha Reddy. The Reddys have many dance students from an older age group who come armed only with keenness and desire to learn Kuchipudi. They are clear that they want to become rasiks or connoisseurs, not professional performers, says the soft-spoken dancer. So, after a screening and a serious tete a tete in which most of them reveal how they couldnt learn dance in their childhood because their families frowned upon such activities or because there werent good dance schools close to where they lived as kids, the passionate ones are brought on board. Reddy smiles saying that nothing gives her more pleasure than seeing mothers (who are fulfilling their childhood dream) and daughters walking into her institutes both here and in Hyderabad (that is run by her dancer-daughter Yamini Reddy) to learn Kuchipudi as fellow students.

When Rohini Rajagopal, 34, enrolled herself for kathak, it was for a variety of reasons  not just because it was a beautiful dance form but also because it would pull me out of my comfort zone, says the marketing professional, who had been too preoccupied, first with studies, then with her work and travel to pursue it earlier. It was when she took a break to look after her two little children that she decided to keep a window open for a bit of me-time.

And Ive had no regrets because dance is not just a beautiful and artistic activity, its also a form of meditation that just revvs and freshens up your brain, adds the Mumbai-based Rajagopal, who takes the tough part of practicing and working on the taals and her hand and feet movements in her stride. And when you walk out after each class, theres a great sense of achievement, she adds.

Calling dance the perfect antidote for professionals in these tough times, Pratibha Jena Singh, Odissi guru, says, Its a good break for housewives  given their hectic schedules that revolve around their husbands and children. For them, classical dance is the answer. Many of them keep telling me how my dance classes are helping them fight depression and changing their perspective about life  making it look more cheerful and positive.

Whats more, she laughs, Other than being a great exercise that helps them save up on their gym membership, these classes also prove to be very therapeutic. Often, post the dance-sessions, I see many of them sitting back to discuss matters close to their heart, because they have formed a close bond through dance.

And this is something that kathak guru Aparna Mishra agrees with. This is something my students often tell me  how dance has helped them forge a close bond with fellow students.

The Mumbai-based teacher says that her classes for older students focus more on movements and expressions because bhav comes more easily to them  given their experience of life. And she has nothing but appreciation for the dedication and perseverance that they put into learning kathak.

Despite the fact that they have gruelling work schedules through the week, my sessions with over 40 of them have very few absentees, she smiles adding that her classes attract not just women, but a sizeable number of men too.

Their passion for kathak is often revealed to me by their wives  I sometimes get messages from them telling me not just how diligently they practice at home but also how sleeping-in late or going for family functions have become a no-no for Sundays. Thats because this day is reserved for kathak.

And while Mishra herself is close to many of these students in age, they look up to her as a guru and accept her strict disciplinarian stance without demur. When Ive turned some of them out of class for coming late  they come to me later not just to apologise but also say how they enjoyed being treated like errant schoolchildren once again.
Neena Sharma

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, February 2

At 77, life has come full circle for Lt Gen TPS Rawat (retd), Congress candidate from Lansdowne (Pauri), for the elections slated for February 15. After having flitted from one party to another, Lt Gen Rawat has finally anchored with the Congress with which he began his political career in 2002.

BJPs sitting MLA Daleep Singh Rawat (49) will take him on. Essentially, it is a rematch between veteran Army man TPS Rawat and Daleep Singh Rawat, who is a mahant of a local temple.

In 2012, TPS Rawat contested on the Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha ticket from Lansdowne and lost to Daleep Singh Rawat by 5,438 votes. A youth leader, Daleep Singh Rawat, made his electoral debut on the BJP ticket in 2012. Despite rumours that there was a possibility of him being shunted out or denied the ticket, Daleep managed to pull the strings in the party, paving the way for his renomination.

Daleep, a mahant at the Sidhbali Dham in Kotdwar, continues to remain accessible to people, travelling 15-20 kilometers a day to meet the people. As a sitting MLA, I managed to upgrade the degree college at Rikhnikhal and also a hospital, he says.

Both candidates belong to Pauri Garhwal. TPS Rawat hails from Parsoli village in Dhumakote while Daleep belongs to Badalpur Tall-Dhontiyal village in Lansdowne.

Constituency profile

Lansdowne underwent changes after the reorganisation and delimitation exercise in 2008. It contains Dhumakot tehsil as well as few areas of Rikhnikhal, Kaudiya, Talla Badalpur of Lansdowne and Lansdowne Cantt Board of Lansdowne tehsil.

Significantly, the reorganisation worked in favour of Daleep when he debuted in 2012. On the other hand, TPS Rawat could not capitalise on his experience of the 2002 Assembly poll when he fought from Dhumakote on the Congress ticket for the first time and emerged victorious. Some portions of Dhumakote have been aligned with the Lansdowne segment.

TPS Rawat fought the 2012 Assembly elections on the Uttarakhand Raksha Morcha ticket and divided votes of Congress candidate Jyoti Rautela. As a result, a three-cornered contest worked to the advantage of the BJP.

However, in 2014, TPS Rawat left the URM and joined the Congress. Earlier, he never seemed at ease in the BJP, which he joined in 2007. He elected MP when he was with the BJP but he could not stick to the party. He was inducted into the Congress in 2002 by former MP Satpal Maharaj to counter former Chief Minister BC Khanduri. However, TPS Rawat failed to live up to the expectations. To that end, TPS Rawats honeymoon with different parties continues to be a sore point with the voters. However, the presence of a large number of serving and retired defence personnel in the Lansdowne segment does put him in an advantageous position.

If I quit the party in the past, it was on principles. I was unhappy with the way the BJP was fooling armed forces personnel. Even now, the issue of one rank one pension has not been resolved properly, says TPS Rawat.

Young and energetic Daleep Singh Rawat travels to villages during campaigning while advancing age is a deterrent for TPS Rawat. For this reason, Congress workers are forced to organise meetings at roadside for him. There is sympathy for the veteran Army officer who perhaps is fighting his last Assembly elections but no one is sure if it will translate into votes.

TPS Rawat known for changing parties
BD Kasniyal

Pithoragarh, February 3

Congress rebel Ram Singh Kaira and BSP candidate Tara Dutt Pandey could make the elections tough for the BJP and Congress candidates in the Bhimtal Assembly constituency. Lack of roads in rural areas, poor telecom services and revival of shut down factories are the main issues that are likely to dictate the voting pattern in the constituency this elections.

BJP legislator Dan Singh Bhandari represented the Bhimtal seat before he resigned from the Assembly to join the Congress alleging that the party leadership has neglected him. Bhandari is the Congress candidate from the constituency this time while the BJP has given ticket to Govind Singh Bisht. Other candidates in the fray include Congress rebel Ram Singh Kaira, Tara Dutt Pandey of the BSP and Navin Mamgain of the UKD, besides six others.

The main contest is likely between the BJP and the Congress but Congress rebel Ram Singh Kaira and BSP candidate Tara Dutt Pandey cannot be ignored. Kaira has the ability to attract voters and workers of both Congress and BJP. This will benefit the BSP candidate, says Puran Paliwal, a journalist based in Bhimtal.

In the 2012 elections, the contest was between the BJP and the BSP. BJP candidate Dan Singh Bhandari secured 21,494 votes and won the seat. Mohan Lal of the BSP was runner-up with 15,051 votes while Congress candidate Ram Singh Kaira came third with 14,452 votes. The BSP cannot be ignored even this time as it is giving a tough triangular fight on the seat and is vying for Brahmin votes also, says Paliwal.

The Bhimtal constituency comprising Bhimtal town and surrounding villages of Okhalkanda, Khansyu and Ramgarh is one of the most backward segments in Nainital district. Villages in the most backward Okhalkanda subdivision have not yet been connected with roads. The communication services are also poor in the subdivision. Residents of Harital, Lwyal and Boga villages in Okhalkanda have to trek 14 km uphill for telecom connectivity, says Paliwal.

Dan Singh Bhandari says he has done a lot of work in the constituency. His achievements include a degree college at Patlot in Okhalkanda subdivision, subdivision status for the Ramgarh block, construction of roads in the most backward region of Salni from Simaliya, a polytechnic at Bhimtal and concretising all roads in Bhimtal, besides beautification of all religious places in surrounding villages. If elected, I will get four cold stores opened in the four blocks of Bhimtal, Dhari, Ramgarh and Okhalkanda of the constituency, he adds.

People in the constituency say the wild animal menace is the main problem in rural areas because of which farmers are leaving their traditional profession of agriculture and horticulture. The town is facing the problem of rising unemployment due to the closure of the industries that were established when ND Tiwari was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Factories of Acquaguard, Usha sewing machine and a match factory that were established in Bhimtal on the insistence of ND Tiwari when he was the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh have closed, rendering over 2,000 locals unemployed. Local youths want their representatives to get these factories revived, says Paliwal.

BJP candidate Govind Singh Bisht, who was Education Minister in the previous BJP government, says Dan Singh Bhandari was confused about his commitment to a political ideology. He cheated people and failed to deliver on development schemes.

Dan Singh Bhandari could not do any work matching the expectations of local youths, which is my priority this time, says Govind Bisht. His vision is to make Bhimtal a tourist destination and a producer of farm products for tourists, he adds.
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, February 3

The Election Commission of India today issued a notice to the Congress, hours after the party launched its Smart Employment Card. The party has said the smart card holders would get employment allowance once the Congress returns to power in the state. The Election Commission directed the party to stop distribution of cards and also sought an explaination.

Kumari Selja, member of the All India Congress Committee, along with Uttarakhand Congress president Kishore Upadhyay launched the employment card in Dehradun today. An infuriated BJP approached the Election Commission accusing the Congress of trying to lure voters in violation of the model code of conduct.

State Additional Chief Election Officer V Shanmugam issued a notice to the Congress seeking an explanation within 48 hours. He directed the Congress to stop the distribution of the employment cards.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has also sought an explanation on a publicity campaign of the Congress in which Chief Minister Harish Rawat has been shown as the cinematic character of Bahubali and senior Central BJP leaders in a bad light.

Earlier, the launch ceremony was organised at the state Congress office. The smart card can be activated by sending an SMS to 9235002222, pXarty leaders said. Selja said instead of waiting for the next government's formation, the Congress was in the process of preparing a roadmap so that the implementation of such initiatives could be done speedily. People have faith in Chief Minister Harish Rawat for whom this is a personal commitment, she added.

Upadhyay said people could make use of these cards at stalls set up at party offices, at markets, through individual workers who are conducting a door-to-door exercise across the state. Later, Selja inaugurated the election control room at the state party headquarters.
Tokyo, February 3

US Defence Secretary James Mattis said today that the United States stands 100 per cent with Japan on a visit meant to confirm the importance of the countries' security alliance. We stand firmly, 100 per cent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and (the) Japanese people, Mattis told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after arriving on his first visit since the inauguration of the US President.

I wanted to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defence treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago and it will be a year and 10 years from now, he added in remarks at the start of their meeting.

Article 5 of the security treaty commits each country to repel any attacks on each other in Japan or territories it administers.

Mattis arrived from South Korea and his visit marks the first overseas trip of any senior official from US President Donald Trump's administration, who suggested while campaigning that America's longstanding role in Northeast Asia could change.

On the campaign trail, Trump raised the possibility of Japan and South Korea arming themselves with nuclear weapons, and accused Seoul and Tokyo of not paying their fair share for US troops stationed in their countries. Some 47,000 US troops are stationed in Japan and another 28,500 in South Korea.  AFP
New York, February 3

Saying she was proud of "our country's history of giving shelter to the most vulnerable people", Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has said in an op-ed that Americans have "shed blood" for the cause of human rights -- a direct attack on President Donald Trump's controversial immigration ban.

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In an opinion piece to the New York Times on Thursday, the actress who is also a special envoy to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said: "Americans have shed blood to defend the idea that human rights transcend culture, geography, ethnicity and religion."

"The decision to suspend the resettlement of refugees to the US and deny entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries has been met with shock by our friends around the world precisely because of this record." Trump on January 27 temporarily banned citizens and refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen to enter the US for a period of 90 days resulting in widepread condemnation and protests across the world.

"As the mother of six children, I very much want our country to be safe for them, and all our nation's children. But I also want to know that refugee children who qualify for asylum will always have a chance to plead their case to a compassionate America," the 41-year-old Jolie wrote.

Jolie adopted three of her children -- Maddox Chivan , Pax Thien, Zahara Marley -- from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia, respectively.

"We can manage our security without writing off citizens of entire countries - even babies - as unsafe to visit our country by virtue of geography or religion," she wrote.

Jolie went on to say: "It is simply not true that our borders are overrun or that refugees are admitted to the United States without close scrutiny." "Refugees are in fact subject to the highest level of screening of any category of traveller to the United States." The actress also pointed out that only less than 1 per cent - of all refugees in the world are ever resettled in the US.

"There are more than 65 million refugees and displaced people worldwide. Nine out of 10 refugees live in poor and middle-income countries, not in rich Western nations. There are 2.8 million Syrian refugees in Turkey alone. Only about 18,000 Syrians have been resettled in America since 2011." According to Jolie, this is the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

"There are countries in Africa and the Middle East bursting at the seams with refugees."

"America is committed to the world because so much of the world is inside America,' in the words of (former US President) Ronald Reagan," Jolie wrote. "If we divide people beyond our borders, we divide ourselves."

"Shutting our door to refugees or discriminating among them is not our way, and does not make us safer. Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength," she added.

Jolie concluded by saying: "We all want to keep our country safe. So we must look to the sources of the terrorist threat...We have to make common cause with people of all faiths and backgrounds fighting the same threat and seeking the same security."

"This is where I would hope any president of our great nation would lead on behalf of all Americans." IANS
United Nations, February 3

Condemning Russia's aggressive actions in Ukraine, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley today used her inaugural speech at Security Council to warn Moscow against escalation of violence there and made it clear that sanctions on Moscow would remain in place until it withdraws from Crimea.

I consider it unfortunate that the occasion of my first appearance is one in which I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia, Indian-American Haley said.

It is unfortunate because it is a replay of too many instances over many years in which United States representatives have had to do that, she said.

During her Senate confirmation hearing last month, Haley also expressed support for continuing the sanctions and accused Russia of committing war crimes in the Syrian conflict. But her strong criticism of the government of President Vladimir Putin put her at odds with President Trump, who has expressed a desire for warmer relations with Russia.

Haley today said the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia but the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.

This escalation of violence must stop, Haley warned.

The United States stands with the people of Ukraine who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention, she said.

Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue.

Haley was speaking at an emergency UN meeting about a sudden upsurge in violence in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army. Despite Haley's strong criticism, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he detected a change in tone.  PTI
Washington, February 3

The US today slapped more than two dozen Iranian entities with sanctions, two days after the Islamic republic dismissed President Donald Trumps warnings over its latest missile test as baseless and provocative.

The announcement also comes a day after Trump put Iran on notice for its alleged destabilising behaviour and carrying out ballistic missile test in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls on Tehran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

The ballistic missile launch was the first by Iran since Trump became president. According to reports, Iran's missile test occurred at a well-known site outside Semnan, about 225 km east of Tehran. The Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding.

In a statement, the Treasury Department said the multiple entities and individuals slapped with sanctions were involved in procuring technology and materials to support Iran's ballistic missile programme, as well as for acting for or on behalf of, or providing support to, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).

This action reflects the United States' commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and destabilising activities in the region and is fully consistent with the United States commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Treasury said.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States, said John E Smith, Acting Director at the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Todays action is part of Treasury's ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA, he added.

The Treasury said OFAC designated several networks and supporters of Iran's ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his Iran  and China-based network, an Iranian procurement company and its Gulf-based network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an Iran-based procurement network connected to Mabrooka Trading, which was designated on January 17 last year.

It also designated a key IRGC-QF-run support network working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his associates Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat and Yahya al-Hajj, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon.

Iran has previously warned that new US sanctions could constitute a violation of the nuclear deal, setting up a scenario in which the agreement could unravel-something that hardliners in both countries would welcome.  PTI
New York, February 3

Despite US President Donald Trump being a prolific Twitter user, the employees of the micro-blogging site donated $1.59 million to an organisation to fight his travel ban, a media report said.

According to a report in TechCrunch on Thursday, nearly 1,000 employees donated the hefty amount to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to fight Trump's executive order on temporary travel ban.

CEO Jack Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani also contributed.

"Our work is far from done. In the coming months we'll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements," Vijaya Gadde, General Counsel, Twitter was quoted as saying.

"But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I am proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people," Gadde said.

Apart from Twitter's donations, ACLU has raised over $24 million within a few days, six-times more than it did in the entire 2016.

"In a further sign of support from Silicon Valley, the ACLU entered Y Combinator's accelerator programme earlier this week where it will receive mentorship and guidance around areas like hiring, the use of technology and more," the report noted.

IANS
Washington, February 3

The US on Friday slapped more than two dozen Iranian entities with sanctions, two days after the Islamic republic dismissed President Donald Trumps warnings over its latest missile test as baseless and provocative.

The announcement also comes a day after Trump put Iran on notice for its alleged destabilising behaviour and carrying out ballistic missile test in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls on Tehran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

The ballistic missile launch was the first by Iran since Trump became President.

According to reports, Irans missile test occurred at a well-known site outside Semnan, about 225 km east of Tehran.

The Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding.

In a statement, the Treasury Department said the multiple entities and individuals slapped with sanctions were involved in procuring technology and materials to support Irans ballistic missile programme, as well as for acting for or on behalf of, or providing support to, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).

This action reflects the United States commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and destabilising activities in the region and is fully consistent with the United States commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Treasury said.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States, said John E Smith, Acting Director at the Department of Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Todays action is part of Treasurys ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA, he added.

The Treasury said OFAC designated several networks and supporters of Irans ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his Iran - and China-based network, an Iranian procurement company and its Gulf-based network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an Iran-based procurement network connected to Mabrooka Trading, which was designated on January 17 last year.

It also designated a key IRGC-QF-run support network working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his associates Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat and Yahya al-Hajj, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon.

Iran has previously warned that new US sanctions could constitute a violation of the nuclear deal, setting up a scenario in which the agreement could unravelsomething that hardliners in both countries would welcome.

The row comes against a backdrop of already strained ties between Washington and Tehran over Trumps travel ban on citizens from Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries.  PTI
In Life of Pi, the Oscar-winning movie about a shipwrecked Indian's fantastic tale of survival with a ferocious tiger in a boat adrift on the Pacific, the insurance agents have a hard time believing him. So Pi spins an alternative chronicle that eliminates the tiger and brings in humans. And then asks: which story do you believe?

By unleashing the demonetisation tsunami, Prime Minister Narendra Modi created his own narrative. He donned the mantle of the great reformer and moderniser who was unafraid of taking risks and offending his core supporters if he believed an action would result in the greater good of the nation. He positioned himself as the new messiah of the poor and also appropriated the role of a crusader against corruption.

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Now past the half-way mark of his tenure, Modi was acutely aware that the Union budget could make or mar his chances of being re-elected as prime minister in 2019. He was also conscious that while there was broad-based support for his drastic moves to root out black money, he had to now provide some balm for all the pain the demonetisation had inflicted. On the horizon were the assembly elections, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where a defeat for the BJP could mar the remaining years of his tenure.

There were other equally critical considerations. Demonetisation had considerably slowed India's economic momentum and his government was forced to admit that GDP growth would be down from 7.5 per cent to 6.5 per cent. Private sector investment and expansion had almost ground to a halt, with key sectors reporting a drop in demand and profits. Banks, saddled with bad loans even before demonetisation, remained conservative and were cautious about lending to corporate despite now being flush with funds.

The prime minister was also deeply concerned with the job famine across the country, exacerbated by the shortage of cash, particularly in the informal sector. One indication was that there was higher offtake of employment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) in the current year-clearly a sign of distress.

Internationally, there was a worrying turn of events with both Brexit and Donald Trump's victory signalling the beginning of a possible deglobalisation process and a new era of protectionism. There was a global slowdown in demand and economic growth. There was concern that there would be higher outflows of foreign investment from emerging economies like India back to the US. The traditional export-led growth model India had banked on for two decades was beginning to falter.

Modi was faced with some tough choices. Everyone expected him to give the economy a booster shot to arrest the downward spiral and bring GDP growth back to 7 per cent levels. While formulating the budget, Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, however, resisted the temptation of indulging in fiscal adventurism or straightout populism. Instead, they homed in on four critical areas of concern: how to boost investment, how to generate demand, how to create more jobs and, however counter-intuitive it seemed, how to maintain fiscal prudence.

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For Modi personally, there were two more imperatives-he was clear the budget should underline his pro-garib image. Also, it was important that the budget showed that demonetisation was not a full stop but a comma in his battle against black money. So Modi and his team decided to risk it all and bet big on Bharat-that other India of the less privileged masses in rural and urban areas.

To boost investment, with big capital showing no appetite for expansion, they decided to increase spending on major public welfare undertakings and schemes. But instead of announcing a host of new schemes to win applause, as has been the habit, the team focused on augmenting spending in key sectors, particularly infrastructure, that were already showing good results. The most visible was in the road sector, where Jaitley claimed that the NDA government had built 140,000 km, or 160 km a day, since it came to power in 2014. His budget provided Rs 64,900 crore in 2017-18 for this sector-a 12 per cent hike. Since the construction sector is largely informal, any surge in investments will see the creation of more jobs, particularly for unskilled workers.

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T o boost demand and employment, Modi and his team then homed in on another demographic imperative in India: apart from roti (food), kapda (clothes), every Indian desires a makaan (shelter) that s/he can call home. The budget and the prime minister's New Year's eve sops contain a raft of measures and incentives designed to boost demand and investment for the housing sector, both in urban and rural areas. Among them was the decision to give affordable housing the infrastructure tag, which would help lower interest rates on bank loans, and also a proposal to build a staggering 10 million houses by 2019 under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. Then, instead of relying on big business to deliver on jobs, they decided that "small is more beautiful" by backing the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) sector. MSMEs account for the bulk of economic activities across the country-they are the largest employers. This was also the sector that faced the brunt of the ill-effects of demonetisation. Ironically, these businesses were paying an effective tax rate of 30.3 per cent while the rate for large industries was 25.9 per cent. So, in one shot, Jaitley reduced income tax to 25 per cent for smaller companies with annual turnovers of up to Rs 50 crore. advertisement Somewhat the same approach was taken to provide relief to small wage-earners with incomes of less than Rs 5 lakh and bring back the 'feel-good' factor. These constitute as much as 80 per cent of the total tax-paying public of 37 million. For them, Jaitley reduced the tax rate to almost negligible levels, claiming that this would widen the tax base in the future by encouraging more people to file returns. While the high networth taxpayers and the middle class may chafe, Modi was able to put money in the hands of the people who faced the most hardship during demonetisation. It also helped in reiterating that his government favoured the have-nots. Two others pieces completed this finely balanced budget. On curbing black money generated by political funding, Modi knew that he would have trouble modifying the Representation of the People Act to bring in more stringent controls, as his party lacked a majority in the Rajya Sabha. So he used the budget to turn into law measures that would bring down the volume of anonymous donations and also introduced a system of electoral bonds to keep track of funding. Finally, Modi resisted the strong push to throw fiscal prudence to the winds. Had he taken that path, it might have won him brownie points at home, but there was the danger of it leading to inflationary tendencies just when the government had boasted that it had managed to keep prices strictly under check. Also, after the demonetisation drive, which was strongly criticised by many foreign investors, Modi was keen to project to the world that his government believed in consistency, continuity and fiscal consolidation, and as an official put it, "drew a lakshman rekha for us that we would not be allowed to cross". He was also careful not to announce schemes that would make him fall afoul of the Election Commission. Jaitley exuded confidence that his fourth budget would be a gamechanger and in his speech said: "When my aim is right, when my goal is in sight, the winds favour me and I fly." (For an assessment of the budget, see accompanying report.) Minutes before Jaitley presented the budget to Parliament, the Union cabinet met to give its concurrence, as is the norm. At the meeting, Modi, in an unusually stern tone, instructed his colleagues: "Go through the budgetary provisions for your respective ministries with a magnifying glass and see that everything gets under way by April 1." Modi is acutely aware that he may falter in the over-reliance on government and its bureaucrats to deliver. The major criticism against the budget is that instead of reducing the government's involvement, it has only expanded Bharat sarkar's role in development. The other failing is that Jaitley did nothing to reduce the amount of subsidies on fertilisers and food, which have, in fact, grown in the new budget. Ashok Lavasa, finance secretary, pleaded helplessness in reducing the food subsidy as more and more states are covered under the National Food Security Act. He said the government had gone a long way in plugging loopholes and ensuring that subsidies reach the people through such measures as the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme. Modi's critics say that far from thinking of the next generation, the prime minister always has his eyes on the next election. That demonetisation was a disaster and the budget does nothing to pull the economy out of the self-inflicted hole. So, is Modi, the great helmsman, navigating India successfully through these stormy waters to prosperity and glory? Or is he an emperor without clothes who will soon be exposed? Which narrative do you believe?

--- ENDS ---
Washington, February 3

A watchdog agency at the US Department of Homeland Security said it is planning to review how President Donald Trump's immigration executive order to temporarily suspend travel from seven majority-Muslim nations was implemented.

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

The review of Friday's order was being planned "in response to congressional request and whistleblower and hotline complaints," the DHS's Office of Inspector General said in a statement late on Wednesday.

The watchdog agency would also look at "DHS' adherence to court orders and allegations of individual misconduct on the part of DHS personnel," the statement said. "If circumstances warrant, the OIG will consider, including other issues that may arise during the course of the review."

The order, which barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, triggered widespread protests and caused confusion for travelers around the world.

It also spurred several legal challenges, in particular over the initial detention or barring from flights of legal permanent residents who hold US green cards.

The department does not comment on investigations by the Office of the Inspector General.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said on Tuesday that no member of the Homeland Security team intentionally ignored a court order and that the department was in compliance with judicial orders on immigration.

The White House said on Wednesday it had issued updated guidance making clear green card holders would not need a waiver to enter the United States.

In California, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Trump's administration must allow immigrants with initial clearance for legal residency to enter the United States despite the ban. Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington state have also challenged the order.

Ali Vayeghan, an Iranian citizen and US visa holder who was forced out of the country last week, became on Thursday the first person allowed back into United States because of the California court action.

Vayeghan declined to comment on Trump or the order when speaking with reporters at Los Angeles International Airport but said through an interpreter, "This is what human rights look like."

The OIG statement said it would provide a final report to Kelly, the US Congress and the public after its review but didn't say how long the review would take.

DHS includes the Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies.

Democratic US Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin had sought the investigation.

"Though I'm encouraged by the DHS Inspector General's decision to investigate the chaotic implementation of this un-American and unconstitutional executive order, I will continue to fight for it to be revoked," Durbin said in a statement.

Reuters
Wang said he had strayed into India while carrying out land surveying duties for the Chinese army during the 1962 war, and picked up by the Indian Red Cross Society.

Wang now goes by his Indian name Raj Bahadur, and has three children.

By Ananth Krishnan: China's State media has urged India to take steps to enable a former Chinese soldier, who has been residing in Madhya Pradesh after being imprisoned shortly after the 1962 war, to return to China to visit his family.

The story of Wang Qi, who was a Chinese army surveyor who strayed into India in January 1963 and subsequently imprisoned until 1969, has garnered increasing attention in China after a report last week by the BBC describing his life in the village of Tirodi, in MP, and his desire to return to visit his family.

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On Friday, the Global Times, a widely-read Party run newspaper published by the People's Daily, strongly urged India to issue relevant documents to allow Wang, who reports said is now in his eighties, to return on humanitarian grounds. Wang was issued a passport by the Chinese Embassy in 2003 but denied permission to travel to see his ailing mother, who died in 2006.

The Global Times said: "Wang's story caused quite a stir on China's social media and appeals are rising that the man should be helped back home as soon as possible. There is also speculation that India is deliberately making it difficult for Wang, blocking him from returning to China," it claimed.

WANG DELIBERATELY WITHHELD?

The Ministry of External Affairs in Delhi said it was looking at "how best" the matter could be handled. "We are aware of the matter," said spokesperson Vikas Swarup. "We are in touch with the Ministry of Home Affairs to ascertain the details and how best it could be handled."

Also read: By testing missile with 10 nuclear warheads, is China preparing for a military showdown with US?

Also read: Russia, US, Brexit and China to re-shape world order. Read how

The Global Times said Wang "was issued a Chinese passport by the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi in 2013 and applied for permission to travel to China in 2014, but since then Wang's quest has been lost in 'official procedures' in New Delhi. It is high time for the Indian authorities to take the case seriously and process it efficiently. If Wang's hope for a reunion with his family in China is shattered in India's red tape, that will hurt the feelings of a massive number of Chinese netizens."

The paper cited the case of two veteran Chinese soldiers, captured in 1962, who were returned in 2003 in what was "conceived as a goodwill gesture that both countries hoped would lead them out of the shadow of the 1962 war."

"Although it's unclear whether Wang is a prisoner of war, it is inhumane to have isolated the elderly man from his family for such a long time," the Global Times said. "The Indian authorities should give their utmost attention to this case, actively communicating with the Chinese Embassy and improving administrative efficiency in processing this case, while the Chinese side should cooperate to provide the necessary documents pertaining to Wang that India requires."

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WANG ALIAS RAJ BAHADUR

The BBC reported that Wang said he had strayed into India while carrying out land surveying duties for the Chinese army, and picked up by the Indian Red Cross Society.

He was jailed and transferred around several Indian states before being released in 1969 and sent to the remote village of Tirodi, which is a five hour drive from Nagpur. Wang now goes by his Indian name Raj Bahadur, and has three children. He was married to a local girl and started a family.

Also read: China says it will not sit idle if India sells missiles to Vietnam

He has promised to return to India to his Indian family should be allowed to visit China. The BBC last week helped Wang speak through video chat to his brother Wang Zhiyuan, 82, in central Shaanxi province, for the first time in 50 years.

Also read: Also read: Rattled by Agni, China asks India to cool its missile fever

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The BBC said he has been denied official Indian documents or citizenship as well as permission by India to travel back home on his Chinese passport, which he had wanted to do in 2013 to visit his ailing mother. But it was not to be, and his mother died three years later.

--- ENDS ---
Grant Crawford Photo courtesy of Roadrunner Freight

We spoke with Grant Crawford, president of Roadrunner Freight, about the less-than-truckload operation's recent rebranding that focuses on offering reliable, non-expedited service at a lower cost. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.



HDT: Roadrunner Transportation Systems recently underwent a complete re-branding and changed its official name from Roadrunner LTL to Roadrunner Freight. What was the impetus for this?



Crawford: When I joined Roadrunner in this role, what really attracted me to it was the space where Roadrunner Freight now plays, being an economy provider. Its my belief that things have evolved quite rapidly over the last few years. Because of technology, customers and shippers are much more savvy and have the ability to plan their supply chains much more efficiently. I believe theres a growing demand for an economical solution in your supply chain [for freight that can] wait an extra day or two.

Were going to save you money if you use us. We want to be clear if you have time-sensitive needs, were not an expedited carrier, but when you can plan ahead, we can meet your needs from a reliability standpoint, from a quality standpoint, from an information standpoint with our enhanced technology, from a customer service standpoint. Were centralizing customer service. Were about 75% of the way through the consolidation process, where [customers make] one phone call to one location. All those factors coming tougher is what precipitated our name change as well.

Weve taken to my mind what was great about the company in the past and made it better.

HDT: We hear that e-commerce is pushing a trend toward demand for freight to be delivered faster. Youre essentially at the other end of that spectrum. Why?

E-commerce is a much different market than were playing in. What were sourcing is a large shipment from Long Beach at the port to the distribution warehouse in St. Louis. If you back up the supply chain far enough, it moved on the ocean 14 days. You can move it to St. Louis in two days with an expedited service, or in four days with ours and enjoy 20% savings.

There are pieces of the supply chain, especially that last move, theres no debating customers and consumers are conditioned to want it as soon as you order it. But you and I [as consumers] dont know how long it took that product to get from its source to that warehouse or distribution center [before it heads out on delivery.]

Our average length of haul is in that 1,400-1,500 mile range. Most of the traditional regional asset players its about a third of that. We do large shipments, long distances, from the manufacturer to a distribution center or the port to DC.

HDT: What role does intermodal play? We keep hearing that more of those long-haul loads that dont need to be expedited are a great fit for intermodal.

Roadrunner Transportation has a great intermodal offering. Its 100% exit port. The traffic we handle is coming into say a port, say Long Beach. Theres an intermodal move that precedes it getting into our trucks, [transporting containers from the port] into a container freight station where its broken down and tendered to us. The core difference being were moving LTL shipments and the intermodal guys are moving the full container.

With LTL priority and economy, you can have shipments at the same size, theres customers that will move commodities that can be very similar, but they may move one skid priority and one economy.

For example, a consumer brand virtually all of us use these days from a manufacturer in Shanghai, depending on whether its landing in Oakland or Long Beach, and depending on the newness of the model, some need to be at the DC in 48 hours, others may be a two-year-old model, so they move it at a slower pace.

HDT: The press release from November says, The Roadrunner Freight business model allows for expansion without traditional inefficiencies and costs. Can you explain that a little better?

Roadrunner Freight is made up of two segments  we have our segment of our product moves within our 19 service centers. But historically where Roadrunner LTL started was through an extensive agent and partner model complementing the core locations. We service all North America using agents. For example, we have a dedicated agent in New Jersey. We can grow and expand business in New Jersey without any cost of our own  it doesnt require added infrastructure. That's really the backbone of the model.

"One of the things we are working to change the perception in the market is today were still considered asset light."

Whats changed, one of the things we are working to change the perception in the market is today were still considered asset light. I think at one time that was viewed in a much different way. I would consider us asset right  we have the right number of assets to complement the facilities we own, but without having 300 facilities, were able to serve the United States through these partners and agents. In the past most of our shipments were outsourced, now more of them stay in-house. Were still given this asset-light label, but we have many more assets than the true asset-light products we compete with.

To me, its the best of both worlds. if you utilize us in the core 19 facilities were very much asset based company, if you utilize us outside of it were going to still give you great service and consistency. We try to be as transparent as the customer wants us to be. If someone sees Roadrunner Freight, theyre entrusting their shipment to us to handle it from start to finish. Its our belief they jut want their shipment moved timely and intact and if we outsource theyre OK with that; they just want to understand when they choose our product that is part of it. If you tender freight in Atlanta to go to Columbus, Ohio, and they want to know if an agent will be involved, we absolutely will share that with them. Well give them as much information as they want. Most customers just want to make sure their shipment is being taken care of and moved timely. Generally speaking, customers are very aware that we have sort of a hybrid model.

HDT: In early 2016, you announced you had improved the LTL freight network, including adding more capacity to its facilities and adding an optional premium service. Was that part of this rebranding effort?

That was the first step last February when we started the process. This is something that continues to evolve as we grow density and continue to speed our network up. As we set the reset button last year, the goal was to be transparent about out capabilities and increase reliability, even if that meant adding a day to standards. The belief being through meeting our commitments on service standards we would grow business and density and then that would allow us to speed lanes back up. And weve done that, we sped up 155 lanes, which makes up almost 20% of our shipments, by at least one day, the last week of November. That was a big step for us as well. As we provided the customer with product that exceeded their expectations. Our tag line is, less than truckload, more than expected.

HDT. What were some of the challenges involved?

I'd say the number one right now is no different than any other company when you change your product: The challenge is to re-educate the customer on what your capabilities are and what to expect from your product.

A larger piece of the transition has been centralizing our customer service, we started the process in the third quarter of 2016 and it will be complete mid first quarter. Its been a positive challenge, the end result, I couldnt be more excited about in terms of the ease of doing business, from 21 locations down to one.

HDT. Whats next?

For us to continue to make progress every single day, drive our consistency and reliability higher. We literally review our shipments in transit daily and weekly and evaluate our service standards. The round of changes we made in November was just the first. We want to be competitive from a speed standpoint but protect our cost structure that allows us to offer such a great value. The lions share of our changes are in place, allowing seeds to pollinate and fully grow.
After Tennessee truck driver Eric Ronald Scott was arrested in for two alcohol-related events, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ordered him to not operate a commercial motor vehicle in interstate commerce.

After receiving his commercial drivers license from the state of Tennessee in late October 2016, Scott was arrested in two separate alcohol-involved events spanning a four-day period.

On Dec. 31, 2016, the Berlin, Vt., Police Department responded to a call at a local hotel parking lot when Scott was found asleep in the cab of his tractor-trailer. Following a breath test that detected the presence of alcohol, Scott was arrested for domestic assault.

He was released from police custody on Jan. 2, and the following evening the Berlin Police Department responded to a multi-vehicle crash that involved Scott in his truck. Scott was on his way out of Burlington, Vt., en route to Memphis, Tenn., when he jackknifed his tractor-trailer, striking a stop sign and causing three passenger vehicles to be forced off the road. After another alcohol breath test detected the presence of alcohol, Scott was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol.

Scott was declared an imminent hazard to public safety. FMCSAs order stated that Scott's continued operation of a CMV in interstate commerce  substantially increases the likelihood of serious injury or death to you and/or the motoring public if not discontinued immediately.

Civil penalties of up to $3,100 may be assessed for each violation of operating a commercial motor vehicle in violation of the order. Knowing and/or willful violation of the order may also result in criminal penalties.

Scott also may be subject to a civil penalty enforcement proceeding brought by FMCSA for his violation of the agencys safety regulations.
Sen. Fischer

The first highway bill has emerged in the 115th Congress a two-pronged measure introduced on Feb. 1 by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE).

The proposal calls both for temporarily depositing certain Customs and Border Patrol revenues into the Highway Trust Fund and giving states greater control over how road projects are built if they forego some federal highway funding.

The Build USA Infrastructure Act would pour the first $21.4 billion of CBP revenue collected into the Highway Trust fund every year for five years, starting after the current FAST Act highway bill runs out in 2020.

As for the windfall of flexibility aimed at states, the bill would let them enter into agreements with the Federal Highway Administration. And in return for remitting 10% of their federal-aid highway dollars, states would receive control over federal approval of the design, environmental permitting and construction aspects of federal highway projects. The remitted funds would also land in the HTF.

Fischer, who chairs the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, said the Build USA Infrastructure Act is modeled after her legislative success developing innovative, sustainable transportation funding solutions in the Nebraska Unicameral, including the Build Nebraska Act and the Federal Funds Purchase Program. She said her state is initiating and completing projects at a faster pace because of these measures.

Funding challenges and the burdensome federal regulatory approval process have delayed infrastructure projects across America for decades, Fischer said in a statement.

The Build USA Infrastructure Act is a responsible, forward-looking proposal to strengthen roads, bridges, and highways for the benefit of the American families and workers who use them every day," she added.

Originally posted on Automotive Fleet
By Press Trust of India: From K J M Varma

Beijing, Feb 3 (PTI) Chinas tourism industry has raked in USD 61.7 billionin revenue during the on going Chinese New Year holidays with more affluent people becoming increasingly keen to travel.

The volume marked a year-on-year increase of 15.9 per cent, the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) said.

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During the seven-day holiday which ended yesterday, some 344 million visitor trips were made, up 13.8 per cent from the same period last year.

The CNTA previously expected that China would see 344 million visitor trips during the holiday. Overseas travel gains increasing popularity. Some 6.15 million Chinese people travelled abroad during the holiday, up 7 per cent year on year.

The travel peak fell on January 27, the first day of the seven-day holiday, which saw 50.5 million visitor trips, up 10.4 per cent year on year, state-run Xinhua news agency reported today.

During the Chinese New Year holiday, hundreds of millions of people go back to their hometowns to meet their relatives and old friends, and in recent years, family travels have become increasingly common that help to drive a tourism boom across the country.

Chinas domestic tourism industry earned about 3.9 trillion yuan in 2016, and the country plans to raise tourism revenue to 7 trillion yuan by 2020.

China will work to develop tourism into a major driver of economic transformation and upgrading. By 2020, investment in tourism is expected to grow to 2 trillion yuan, and the sector will contribute more than 12 per cent of GDP, according to a State Council five-year tourism plan (2016-2020).

The Chinese Lunar New Year, which this year is the Year of the Rooster, fell on January 28. PTI KJVKJ ASK KJ

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President Donald Trump said Thursday that he will work to ease IRS restrictions on political speech from the pulpit, which received a mixed response from several Tulsa-area pastors.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump reiterated he would make good on a campaign promise to destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.

The Johnson Amendment is a 1954 law pushed by then Sen. Lyndon Johnson that threatens the tax-exempt status of certain nonprofit organizations, including churches, if they campaign for political candidates.

U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a Baptist minister, this week introduced the Free Speech Fairness Act, which would change the Johnson Amendment to allow nonprofits and houses of worship to speak freely about government or electoral activity without fear of IRS retribution.

The federal government and the IRS should never have the ability to inhibit free speech, Lankford said in a news release.

Two local United Methodist pastors and two Southern Baptist pastors weighed in on the proposal Thursday, and they were evenly split.

The Rev. Chris Buskirk, Abiding Harvest Methodist Church in Broken Arrow, said he has felt pressure, because of IRS rules, to avoid certain topics he wanted to address.

Ministers function under a caution that if they speak the truth plainly about political issues and mention names or endorse a candidate, they are in jeopardy of causing their church harm by losing their tax-exempt status, he said.

It makes for a lack of clarity from our pulpits. Its almost a gag order for speaking plain truth, he said.

And I dont think its what our founding fathers wanted. I think they relied on the church to inform the populace of what was right and wrong biblically.

He said he favored Lankfords proposal, which would remove restrictions on what can be preached from the pulpit while retaining rules barring churches from donating to candidates.

I think thats a good balance. It allows the church to have the same freedom to speak that the citizens enjoy, but it also keeps the church out of world of politics when it comes to funding.

Buskirk said he felt very relieved at the change of direction he was seeing in the Trump administration.

His comments at the prayer breakfast this morning seemed to reinforce that protection of religious liberties, Buskirk said.

The Rev. Tom Harrison, pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church, one of Tulsas largest, said he does not think churches should address political issues from the pulpit, and he has never felt IRS pressure to steer away from subjects he thought needed to be addressed.

Should the Johnson Amendment be changed?

To me its not an issue, he said.

I dont like the whole deal (of political speech from the pulpit).

I dont think thats why people go to church. I think you compromise the gospel.

But I tell people, you need to be involved.

Harrison said United Methodist ministers are trained to follow IRS policy on political speech from the pulpit, and he agrees with the IRS policy.

In the United Methodist Church, I would be mainstream on the issue, he said.

He said he speaks his mind on moral issues without fear of IRS reprisal.

The Rev. Charlie Cruce, lead missionary with the Tulsa Metro Baptist Network, an association of Tulsa-area Baptist churches, said, I think there are pastors who would welcome some easing of the IRS restrictions.

He said pastors at times want to address issues from the pulpit that might have some political overtones, and are afraid to do so because they fear losing their IRS tax-exempt status.

When I was pastoring, there were times where I felt a little pressure to not address issues. Theres a fine line that a pastor has to walk, he said.

Cruce said Baptists have a strong heritage of freedom of religion, and separation of church and state, that goes back to the Colonial era.

The Rev. Deron Spoo, First Baptist Church in downtown Tulsa, said he has never felt pressured to avoid certain subjects because of IRS rules.

I encourage people to be informed on the issues, to have a biblical worldview and to vote their conscience, he said.

I dont want anyone telling me what to think about an issue, or how to vote.

If I believe that Jesus Christ and a relationship with him is the hope of the world, why would I want to talk about anything else?

Whatever the hot-button issues of the day are, I want to stick with that one message, he said.

Political confrontation always divides.

He said if the IRS rules are changed, it will cause more polarization in our churches, and youll see churches divided more by voting blocs than by the commonality of Christ.

Im not particularly in favor of a change of the law. I think it would do more harm than good.
OKLAHOMA CITY  Gov. Mary Fallin on Thursday said she will propose a major overhaul of the states tax system.

Fallin spoke to reporters during a legislative forum at the Capitol. She will deliver her state of the state address to lawmakers Monday and release her proposed budget.

With the downturn in the energy industry, the past few years have been challenging, she said.

Fallin said she hopes to end the use of one-time funding, a maneuver that has been utilized to shore up the budget.

We cant afford to keep doing the things weve been doing in this state, she said.

Fallin said she believed it was important to identify revenue streams so the state can invest in things that are important, such as education, public safety, infrastructure and health, Fallin said.

Lawmakers will reconsider adding $1.50 to the tax on cigarettes  currently taxed at $1.03 a pack  to fund health care. They will also look at ending some tax credits and incentives, and at taxing services.

Fallin said she was disappointed that budget shortfalls and local decisions have resulted in some school districts going to a four-day week. It gives a bad impression during efforts to recruit businesses to the state, she said.

Schools could save money by sharing payroll, data processing and purchasing costs, she said.

Fallin said she also will again propose a teacher pay raise. Such a proposal has support of both the House and Senate, but determining how to pay for it will be difficult.

Fallin said she will propose a bond issue and supplemental appropriations for certain agencies. The Department of Public Safety is among those requesting a supplemental to get it through the current fiscal year.

The agency has put a 100-mile limit per shift on Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers in an effort to save money and had considered furloughs.

Fallin said if lawmakers had acted on some of the revenue and budget proposals she made last year, the size of the shortfall this year would not be as large.

Lawmakers expect to have $868 million less to spend in crafting a fiscal year 2018 budget.

Senate Floor Leader Greg Treat, R-Oklahoma City, said any revenue-raising measures must start in the House, and noted that they require a super majority in both chambers.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Feb 3 (PTI) In a significant development, the Supreme Court today said it would hear afresh the aspect of awarding death penalty to four convicts in the sensational December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder case.

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra prima facie agreed with the contention of senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting it as the amicus curiae, that the provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), relating to sentencing of convicts, has not been followed in letter and spirit by the trial court in the case.

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It was submitted that section 235 of the CrPC provides that an accused, in the event of conviction, would be heard by on the question of sentencing individually before the trial judge passes the order awarding punishment.

The bench, also comprising justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, then mulled ways to rectify the apparent error and said there are two modes: either the case be remanded back to the trial court to pass a fresh order on sentence or the apex court itself hears this aspect of the matter afresh.

The bench then said, "We think the second mode is more appropriate. We would like to give opportunity to accused persons to file affidavits along with documents stating mitigating circumstances."

It then permitted M L Sharma and A P Singh, lawyers representing the convicts, to visit the condemned prisoners in Tihar jail here to apprise them about todays order so as to enable them to file affidavits detailing mitigating circumstances in their favour.

The court, which said the convicts are required to file affidavits by February 23, decided to keep hearing the appeals on the substantial issue of conviction in the matter.

It will decide the future date for hearing afresh the arguments on sentencing on February 6.

The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in south Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The trial court had awarded death penalty to convicts, Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh. While fifth and one of the key accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide inside jail during the trial. PTI SJK ABA MNL RKS ZMN

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Sharknados 5th instalment will film in Australia as part of a storyline that sees the world under attack from sharks falling from the sky.

Filming is underway in Bulgaria, with the UK also to serve as a location.

Ian Ziering and Tara Reid will reprise their roles as shark-fighting heroes Fin Shepard and April Wexler, whilst original cast member Cassie Scerbo returns as Nova, a bartender turned badass Sharknado fighter.

Anthony C. Ferrante, who directed the first four films, is back to helm this latest instalment, based on a script by Scotty Mullen.

Sharknado 5 (working title) sees much of North America lying in ruins, Fin Shepard and his family must put a stop to a looming disaster before Earth is completely obliterated.

Metaphors, anyone.?
The film is reportedly about two brothers (to be played by Shah Rukh Khan and Ranbir Kapoor) who fall in love with the same girl.

By India Today Web Desk: If anyone can pull off a casting coup, it's Karan Johar. Whether it is getting superstars to do cameos in Dharma films or guests on his Koffee With Karan couch, the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil director leaves no stone unturned to make sure he gets the best actors. Now, if a report in DNA is to be believed, KJo is planning to rope in either Katrina Kaif or Deepika Padukone for his next. What is so special about that, you ask? Well, the film in question is a love triangle with Ranbir Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan as the male leads.

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ALSO READ | Kareena on Deepika, Katrina's relationship with Ranbir: None of them was a good girlfriend

While Katrina Kaif is quite pally with her ex Salman Khan, the same cannot be said about her equation with former boyfriend Ranbir Kapoor. In fact, it was being reported that there was a lot of awkwardness between the two of them on the sets of Jagga Jasoos (which began filming in 2014, when the couple was still together). On the other hand, Deepika has continued to remain great friends with Ranbir after their break-up, and their chemistry was the talking point in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Tamasha.

Shah Rukh Khan has also had great success with films where he was paired with Deepika (Om Shanti Om, Chennai Express, Happy New Year). SRK was paired with Katrina in Jab Tak Hai Jaan, which also became a hit.

It remains to be seen who will be the leading lady in the film, which is a reportedly about two brothers who fall in love with the same girl.

ALSO WATCH: When Deepika wished Katrina a happy birthday

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The SOAS Refugee Scholarships are among a crop of similar initiatives that UK universities are beginning to extend in response to a global refugee crisis that rocked Europe in 2015.  UNHCR/Paul Wu

LONDON  Aaron looked up from the table and around the empty cafeteria of the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS.

I was kidnapped, he said, matter-of-factly. Thats how I got to Egypt.

Aarons is a remarkable story, one of lucky escapes and pure determination that has taken him from his home country of Eritrea through Sudan to Egypt before coming to the UK.

Today, the 30-year-old, who did not want his real name published, is one of seven students at SOAS benefitting from a newly established refugee scholarship that started for the 2016-17 academic year.

It is an opportunity he is almost at a loss to describe.

Its really important. It makes a big difference, a life-long difference.

University education is truly liberating  and holds out hope for a better future.

The SOAS Refugee Scholarships are among a crop of similar initiatives that UK universities are beginning to extend in response to a global refugee crisis that rocked Europe in 2015.

The tragedy of global forced displacement should lead all of us to think how we can make a difference, said Professor Richard Black, Pro-Director for Research and Enterprise at SOAS.

In the university sector, a concrete way we can help is by ensuring that a generation of young people does not miss out on higher education. University education is truly liberating  and holds out hope for a better future."

Ahmad is originally from Aleppo and is now a postgraduate student at SOAS in London, United Kingdom.  UNHCR/Paul Wu

UNHCR estimates that by the end of 2015, there were 65.3 million people worldwide  including 21.3 million refugees  who had been forced to flee their homes.

For the majority of refugees, dreams of higher education never materialise: only 1% of refugee youth around the world ever go to university. For those in the UK, access to scholarships and bursaries is often vital. Not everybody granted protection automatically qualifies for home student support and university costs can be prohibitively high.

Over 40 UK universities up and down the country now offer or are setting up scholarships for refugees and asylum seekers. These range from fee waivers, where all tuition costs are covered, to scholarships that include accommodation and living costs.

Over 40 UK universities up and down the country now offer or are setting up scholarships for refugees and asylum seekers

Five years after fleeing Eritrea, four years since he escaped a pickup-truck in Aswan in southern Egypt, where he found himself after being snatched by human traffickers in Sudan, and two years since arriving in the UK as part of the Gateway Resettlement Programme, Aaron is finally getting down to his Masters degree in Immigration and Diaspora Studies.

His choice of study was, he said with a smile, 100 percent because of my own situation.

But, he added, It is also because of the bigger picture of what refugees face. I have insight into that bigger picture.

Fellow refugee scholarship recipient, Ahmad, 26, was similarly motivated in choosing his MSc in Violence, Conflict and Development.

Ahmad, a Syrian Kurd, fled his hometown of Aleppo in 2013. He first went to the Kurdish areas of Iraq, believing his exile would be temporary. But by 2015 it was clear that a return to Aleppo was impossible and like thousands of others, Ahmad turned to Europe.

Over 40 UK universities up and down the country now offer or are setting up scholarships for refugees and asylum seekers  UNHCR/Paul Wu

Since arriving in the UK, Ahmad has volunteered with organisations working with refugees. Once he was granted refugee status, he was lucky enough to be hosted by an English family, allowing him time to apply to universities. Like Aaron, he was offered places at a number of different institutions, but chose SOAS because of its focus on the Middle East.

Also like Aaron, Ahmad had to find separate funding for living costs, help he eventually secured from the Said Foundation.

Ahmad also hopes he can use his studies to give something back.

These people will go back to help rebuild the country. This is what I hope to do.

Europe today has the pleasure and privilege of having Syrian scholars -- intelligent, smart people -- coming here, Ahmad said. They are an asset. Tomorrow, the conflict in Syria will come to an end, and these people will go back to help rebuild the country. This is what I hope to do and it is why I chose these particular subjects.

In the meantime, he said, he is grateful.

I feel so privileged because I have the opportunity to study at one of the most prestigious institutions when it comes to the Middle East and North Africa. Its a wonderful opportunity.

Universities across the UK are offering scholarships to people forced to flee their homes. Find out more here.

This story is part of a series exploring the ways people across the UK are showing refugees and asylum-seekers a #GreatBritishWelcome.
UNHCR is gravely concerned by the forced return of an Iranian refugee from Fiji to Papua New Guinea today.

The UN Refugee Agency had sought assurances from the Government of Fiji this week that he would have access to Fijis national asylum procedures, given his stated intention to seek asylum.

All asylum-seekers are entitled to have their claims for refugee status considered fairly and in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Fiji is signatory.

UNHCR deeply regrets that interventions to prevent the refugee's forced return were not successful, and is profoundly concerned for his welfare. Further information is being sought from the Governments of both Fiji and Papua New Guinea at this time.

UNHCR has long called for refugees and asylum-seekers currently in Papua New Guinea to be moved to humane conditions outside of the country. Equally, UNHCR has urged that no refugees or asylum-seekers should be returned there.

We urge the Government of Papua New Guinea to ensure that the refugee is treated in accordance with international human rights law and standards.
Iraqi families flee east Mosul through the recently liberated Mosul University complex.  UNHCR/Ivor Prickett

Agency steps up plans to respond, with partners, to expected spike in numbers fleeing

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, other agencies and partners are co-ordinating plans to respond to a potential significant new flight of displaced Iraqis escaping the latest phase in the military offensive in western Mosul.

As many as 250,000 Iraqis could be displaced from their homes with the anticipated escalation of conflict in densely-populated western Mosul. Some 161,178 people have been displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since October 17. The majority, some 83 percent, are in camps and emergency sites, while the remainder are living among host communities or at informal sites.

UNHCR has seven camps completed and two under construction. UNHCR is currently able to provide some 11,000 families (66,000 people) with shelter as part of the Mosul response, a figure which should expand to 20,000 families (120,000 individuals) in the near-term, once land is allocated. The Agency continues to seek additional land for new camps, reception and transit areas, to assist people closer to Mosul. By the end of March, it is anticipated that the Government of Iraq, working with UNHCR and its partners, could potentially host 41,155 families (246,930 people) in camps and emergency sites.

Since October, nearly 30,000 people from Mosul and surrounding areas have returned to their places of origin, including from Hasansham and Khazer camps, east of Mosul. Returnees are keen to resume their lives and told UNHCR that the re-opening of schools and government offices was a factor in their decision to return. In some areas, security and the lack of food and water remain a concern. Some returnees continue to rely on emergency relief items, including kerosene, which they received while in camps.

In recent days, UNHCR staff in Hasansham and Khazer camps reported that several families have in fact come back to the camps, after they had returned to their own neighbourhoods in eastern Mosul. Those families said they had decided to return because of lack of services and bad conditions in their place of origin. Some newly-accessible neighbourhoods of Mosul have been affected by shelling from armed groups in western Mosul, resulting in fresh displacement. UNHCR continues to advocate for returns to newly accessible areas to be voluntary, non-discriminatory and safe.

UNHCR is also assisting increasing numbers fleeing Hawiga, 130 km south east of Mosul, due deteriorating living conditions and the expected intensification of military operations. Inter-agency planning estimates predict that up to 114,000 individuals could be displaced from Hawiga. So far, 82,128 people have fled since August 2016. Until recently, people had been leaving Hawiga in smaller numbers but hundreds are now fleeing eastwards daily towards Salah al-Din and Kirkuk. Those leaving Hawiga face grave dangers including ambushes, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and unexploded ordnance, especially moving across the Hamreen Mountains. Most travel at night to evade checkpoints and armed groups, which adds to dangers. UNHCR has received reports of kidnappings, fatalities from IEDs and deaths of children along the way. Family separation, especially as a result of security screening, compounds the risk of sexual or gender-based violence. The humanitarian community continues to call on all parties to respect and uphold the principles of international humanitarian law and to ensure the protection of civilians.

In Kirkuk, most recent arrivals are from Hawiga and are in camps (6,421 families / 38,526 individuals). Additionally, some 35,814 internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Hawiga are in Salah al-Din governorate, with significant concentrations in Tikrit, Shirqat, Balad and Samarra. IDPs are also finding shelter in unfinished structures, public buildings or rented houses.

Protection, Funding

The needs of people lacking identification documents remains a major challenge. UNHCR protection monitoring teams have assessed over 52,000 individuals among the Mosul displaced and 46 percent were missing documents, including birth or marriage registration and civil ID cards. Unless their situation is regularised, these people cannot be sponsored by relatives, leave camps or seek work. UNHCR continues to advocate with the authorities and work through legal partners to facilitate issuing new documents.

UNHCRs 2016 Mosul emergency response appeal for US$196 million was 57 percent funded. For 2017, we are seeking US$578 million for our work with Iraqi IDPs and Iraqi refugees in the region.

UNHCR has distributed emergency items, including quilts and blankets, to more than 178,000 people, and provided nearly 53,000 people affected by the Mosul conflict with protection assistance.



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As per the ED, Gupta and Sinha of Axis Bank facilitated the transactions of Kushwaha and his associates in this laundering by:

By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a prosecution complaint against two bank officials of Axis Bank and others, in case of conversion of old denomination using the banking services of Kashmiri Gate branch.

The agency had began investigations on November 30, 2016 following filing of FIR registered by the Delhi Police Kashmiri Gate under section 420/120B of IPC.

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During the investigation, it is revealed that Rajeev Singh Kushwaha and others in active connivance with bank officials Vineet Gupta (Brach Head) and Shobhit Sinha (Operation Head) deposited huge amount of demonetised currency up to a tune of Rs 40 crore to the accounts of various firms/companies, run by him for a huge commission and converted it into monetised form (RTGS/gold).

It all started when the ED followed people with illegal money who converted their old currency notes into gold/legal tender.

"These bullion traders wanted payments in RTGS/transfer of money through banking channel for the sale of gold as old currency was not accepted," an official said.

That is when they contacted Kushwaha and his associates for this purpose. Kushwaha had various fictitious companies/firms namely Himalaya International, RD Trader and Beagle Marketing and Sunrise Trading. He contacted Gupta and Sinha to prepare special facilities for putting the old currency into the banking system through their fictitious/shell companies, having current accounts in Kashmiri Gate Branch.

Also read: Aircel-Maxis case: SC refuses to stay order discharging Maran for now

As per the ED investigation, Gupta and Sinha of Axis Bank facilitated the transactions of Kushwaha and his associates in this laundering by:

1. Depositing money after 6 pm i.e. banking hours.

2. Money deposited in these accounts were transferred into different accounts within minutes to different companies through RTGS.

3. STR was not filed by the bank official.

4. Deposits were made without authorisation and bypassing banking formalities.

Later, Kushwaha and his associates collected old currency charging huge commission from various people and infused that money into banking system by acting against the law.

Subsequently, the amount deposited in these companies account was transferred to various bullion traders for procurement of gold, which was given to the person who had given them their illegal money in old currency.

Gupta, Sinha and Kushwaha, who were arrested for their involvement in money laundering, are in judicial custody. Assets belonging to Gupta and others worth Rs 3.4 crores, involved in the offence of money laundering, are under attachment.

Also read: Will demonetisation get Parliament nod? Arun Jaitley tables note ban bill in Lok Sabha

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Mohammed-Jan, 51, and his son and daughter, stand outside their home in Pajhman. They recently returned from living in a refugee camp in Pakistan to the Afghan capital Kabul.  UNHCR/Sebastian Rich

2016 saw a surge in the return of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, which has been hosting large numbers of Afghan refugees for four decades. More than 370,000 registered Afghan refugees returned home from Pakistan in 2016  a 12-year high  compared to just over 58,000 the year before. Pakistan continues to host some 1.3 million registered refugees.

UNHCR has just completed an analysis of returnee monitoring data to better understand the background and current situation of refugee returnees in Afghanistan. The study was based on face-to-face interviews with 4,285 people at their point of arrival and telephone interviews with some 1,300 returnees. It was based on random sampling after people had been back for three months.

According to the data, refugees present multiple interlinked factors influencing their decision to return. These include economic hardship, harassment, fear of arrest and deportation in Pakistan  with marked differences between the first and second halves of 2016. In the first six months of 2016, 73 per cent of returning refugees cited economic hardship as a key reason for their return while only 41 per cent mentioned this in November. In the latter half of the year, factors relating to pressure by authorities, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, as well as fear of arrest and deportation figured more prominently in refugee decision-making to return home. For example, only 8 per cent cited fear of arrest and deportation as a factor in the first half of 2016, while 37 per cent mentioned it by November. Refugees also cited a perceived improvement in the security situation in some parts of Afghanistan, a reduced fear of persecution, the governments promises of land and shelter upon arrival, UNHCRs assistance package and a desire to reunite with their families as factors influencing their decisions.

The increase in returns began mid-year and peaked in October 2016, amidst a worsening environment for Afghans in Pakistan in the late summer. Several other factors were identified through our interviews with Afghans before they returned home, including:

the introduction of formal border management controls at Torkham  requiring Afghans and Pakistanis to have passports and visas to enter the other country for the first time  separating families, and affecting business between the two countries;

a heightened anxiety over Proof of Registration cards validity, its extension and registered Afghans future stay in Pakistan;

the enhanced implementation of Pakistans National Action Plan against terrorism affected both Pakistani and Afghan nationals. As the largest group of undocumented nationals in the country are Afghans these security operations did have a direct impact on many undocumented Afghans living in Pakistan;

the campaign of the Afghan government in Pakistan  Khpal Watan, Gul Watan (home sweet home) asking Afghans to return home.

Afghans have had to make tough decisions to return or stay according to the options available to them and refugees have been impacted by the shifting regional political and security dynamics. Throughout 2016 in Pakistan, UNHCR has informed Afghans of their rights, intervened in cases of unlawful arrest and detention and worked closely with authorities at all levels when reports of harassment were received. With our partners, we have intervened in 5,895 reported cases of arrest and detention of registered Afghans in Pakistan, securing the release of almost all. The number of known arrests declined from its peak of 1,691 in August to 216 in December 2016. UNHCR continues to advocate with the Pakistani authorities for the extension of the Proof of Registration (PoR) cards for Afghan refugees beyond 2017.

UNHCR does not promote refugee returns to Afghanistan given the enduring conflict in different parts of the country and its limited absorption capacity. However, it is our clear mandate to help those who decide to return. Our monitoring survey showed the cash grant of $400 typically lasted two to three months and supported people with their initial reintegration needs back in Afghanistan. The vast majority of refugees (75 per cent) spent the cash grant on meeting their immediate humanitarian needs  on food, shelter and transport. 15 per cent were able to make investments in businesses or sustainable livelihoods, 11 per cent said they could build a sustainable house.

Of those surveyed by telephone three months after their return to Afghanistan, 52 per cent said they were able to return to their province of origin. The remaining 48 per cent said they chose another province due to lack of shelter, land, livelihood opportunities or insecurity in their home areas. Despite the challenges, 93 per cent of respondents said they were warmly received by communities and 75 per cent said that three months after their repatriation they felt they had made the right decision to return.

UNHCR shares concerns that the pace of returns in 2016 far outstripped Afghanistans capacity to help people reintegrate after years  in most cases decades  of refuge in Pakistan. Many of refugees returned to uncertain futures in Afghanistan. Returning refugees have to rebuild their lives amidst increasing levels of internal displacement, insecurity and levels of violence not seen since the fall of the Taliban in 2002.

UNHCR calls on the Government of Afghanistan and the international community to redouble their efforts to create conditions for sustainable returns. We note that $15.2 billion was pledged by donors in Brussels in October last year for Afghanistan. Urgent progress is needed to turn these pledges into concrete, government-led programmes that benefit all Afghans, including returning refugees, undocumented returnees, and internally displaced people.



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UNHCR's #IBelong campaign highlights the fact that 10 million people worldwide have no nationality and cannot go to school, get married, get a job or even see a doctor.  UNHCR

UNHCR welcomes a recent amendment to the nationality law in Madagascar, which gives men and women equal rights to pass on nationality to children. The new law also helps spouses and children to retain their nationality, if a partner or a parent loses theirs.

The nationality reform is an encouraging and important step in preventing and reducing statelessness. UNHCR will continue our support to the Government of Madagascar, its Parliament and civil society actors to implement the law. In Madagascar, we are also advocating for accession to the 1954 and 1961 statelessness conventions as well as the implementation of these instruments through national law.

In 2014, UNHCR launched the ambitious global #IBelong Campaign to end statelessness by 2024. The #IBelong campaign advocates for the removal of gender discrimination from nationality laws which is a leading cause of statelessness.

Most situations of Statelessness are a direct consequence of discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or gender. The law reform in Madagascar helps strike out one country off the list of 27 where women are still denied the same right to pass on their nationality to their children on an equal basis as men, making it the first to do so since the Campaign was launched.

Since the launch of the #IBelong Campaign, we have seen significant progress with States becoming Parties to the UN Statelessness Conventions - treaties that contain measures to help prevent and reduce statelessness. In addition, many countries have made significant strides to reduce the number of stateless persons in their respective territories.

Globally, 89 countries are parties to the 1954 UN Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, while some 68 are parties to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

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Former US President Barack Obama had imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies in response to their alleged role in a hacking campaign targeting last year's American presidential election.

By Indo-Asian News Service: The US Treasury Department issued a notice easing sanctions imposed on a Russian intelligence agency during former President Barack Obama's tenure.

The sanctions were imposed towards the end of Obama's term, and were in response to Moscow's alleged hacking activities targeting last year's US presidential election, which was won by Donald Trump.

In a statement on Thursday, the Treasury Department authorised certain transactions with the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) that are needed to request approval for the importation, distribution, or use of certain information technology products in Russia.

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OBAMA SANCTIONED TWO RUSSIAN INTEL AGENCIES

Last December, Obama imposed sanctions on two major Russian intelligence services - the Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and the FSB, four individual officers of the GRU and three companies that allegedly provided material support for hacking operations aiming to interfere in the US presidential elections.

The US also ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats suspected of spying and closed two compounds belonging to the Russian Embassy in response to "Russia's interference in the US election and to a pattern of harassment of our diplomats overseas".

Also read: Obama admits underestimating impact of Russian hacking

TRUMP INDICATED HE MIGHT EASE SANCTIONS

US President Donald Trump has hinted that he could lift the sanctions against Russia if Moscow proved helpful in battling terrorists and reaching other goals important to the United States.

Trump's openly pro-Russia stance has been scrutinised recently amid US intelligence's conclusion that Russia helped him win the presidential election through hacking activities.

Russia has denied being behind the cyber-intrusions, which targeted the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the private emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign Chairman John Podesta. Trump has repeatedly said he doubts the veracity of US intelligence blaming Moscow for the hacks.

Also read: Trump calls for warmer relations with Russia amid criticism by security agencies

Also read: Trump says for first time: I think Russia hacked Democrats

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Studying in an international university can be a huge step. It does not only mean studying abroad, it also means getting access to culture and ideas from another place. The world is definitely a big place but with people connecting and getting connected by the second, getting that academic study has never been easier.

Which is why any university or college that wants to position themselves as the best school should emphasize their international connections. And that means having certain quality standards met.

In order to attract students and teachers around the world and develop that international reputation, an international university must have the proportions of international students, international staff, journal publications with at least one international co-author and its reputation based on a survey, as reported by Forbes.

The top international university spot goes to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The second spot goes to the ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, in Lausanne, Switzerland, and third place goes to The University of Hong Kong. These institutions have received high staff, student and co-author scores.

Students who are looking to enroll in an international university may might as well look at universities in Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Kingdom or Australia. These countries hold the highest ranking international universities. The Times Higher Education Rankings has ranked 150 of the most international universities of the world.

The least scored international universities come from South Korea, Japan, China, Brazil and Taiwan as reported by Times Higher Education. The Universityof Sao Paolo in Brazil takes 147th place, the National Taiwan University takes 148th place, Tohoku University in Japan and Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea takes the last two places in the 150 rank.

Watch the Pohang University of Science and Technology promotional video below to find out more:
Moon Express, the first spacecraft from the US to land on the moon after 1972, has just recently made it to the top five finalists of the $30 million Google Lunar Xprize competition. The Silicon Valley company will attempt to place a spacecraft on the moon that will be able to travel on its surface and transmit high definition images and videos, according to NPR.

The Google Lunar Xprize competition offers $20 million to the first ever company who will be able to do this successfully. Five private companies are now racing to create a working spacecraft that can land on the moon unmanned and they have until the end of the year to be able to do this.

Naveen Jain, the co-founder and chairman of Moon Express, said in a media interview that landing on the moon is only the beginning. Their team considers the moon as an eighth continent of the earth that is rich with natural resources that have been collected over the years with all the asteroids that have been hitting the moon.

He explained that their ultimate goal is to be able to create a multi planetary society because it is only going to be a matter of time before we get hit by an asteroid. This is why he said that the rocket is a commodity and there are now several companies that are building rockets.

The team was able to manage to implement state of the art technology to help them prepare for the moon mission with $7 million as a budget, but team has received a fresh funding with the amount of $20 million, News Nation reported.

Apart from the $20 million prize for the competition, Google Lunar Xprize will also be giving away $5 million dollars as a bonus to the team who will be able to complete additional tasks on the surface of the moon.
In a tripartite dialogue with rebel Naga group United Naga Council (UNC) and Manipur government in New Delhi on Friday, the Ministry of Home Affairs is close to brokering a truce to end the nearly three-month-old economic blockade of NH-2 in Manipur.

By Manogya Loiwal : The Centre is close to cracking a deal between Manipur government and the Nagas that is likely to end the economic blockade in the state soon. In a tripartite dialogue with rebel Naga group United Naga Council (UNC) and Manipur government brass in New Delhi on Friday, the Ministry of Home Affairs came close to reaching an agreement to help end the nearly three-month-old economic blockade of NH-2 in Manipur.

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The key National Highway number 2 (NH 2) has been blocked since November 1 by UNC cadres, leading to normal life being severely affected there. The Council is protesting against creation of seven new districts in the state.

The Home Ministry said "substantial progress" has been made on the issues raised in the talks that continued for over five hours, sources said.

WHO WERE PRESENT AT THE MEETING

The tripartite meeting was chaired by joint secretary (north-east) in the Home Ministry Satyendra Garg. The meeting heard UNC's grievances against the Manipur government's move and sought their resolution by the state government, with the Centre playing the role of a facilitator. The meeting was attended by UNC president Gaidon Kamei and the Council's information secretary Sangkhel Stephen, both of whom are lodged in Imphal Central Jail since January after Manipur police arrested them on November 25 last for leading the indefinite blockade.

"A meeting to formally sign the accord to end the crises has been called on Tuesday and it is hoped that the blockade would end soon after that," a source said.

Also read | Centre rushes 4,000 paramilitary personnel to Manipur after violence erupts due to economic blockade

Nagaland's Chief Minister TR Zeliang had written to the MHA, seeking intervention by paramilitary forces after violence broke out in Manipur on the Naga blockade. Zeliang cited his government's inability to provide security to the Naga communities in Manipur. The Home Ministry had earlier questioned the chief minister for his failure to control law and order in the state.

WHEN IS THE NEXT MEETING

"The next tripartite meeting is expected on 7th Feb, 2017 on the issues," it said.

The blockade, enforced by the UNC, hit the movement of trucks and cut off supply of essentials like petrol and diesel to Manipur, bringing normal life to a standstill.

Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in Manipur in March. The end to the economic blockade can prove to be the biggest agenda for the BJP if they crack it successfully. The blockade is expected to prove to be a bigger issue than demonetisation in Manipur.

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(WITH INPUTS FROM PTI)

WATCH VIDEO

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Another Bristol University student was found to have committed suicide by jumping off a gorge. This is the fourth student of the school to kill herself in the same academic year.

Bristol Post reported that the woman who was found dead in the Avon Gorge on Monday has been identified as Lara Nosiru. She is a final-year neuroscience student and is believed to be the fourth Bristol University student who has taken her life in the recent months.

Last November, three students from Bristol University have died just within two months since the start of term. The deaths are believed to be suicide. Three freshmen have died inside the premises of the school in unrelated incidents.

All three tragically died at residence halls in the university. One was found hanged in shared accommodation. The family of Miranda Williams, one of the deceased, said that the student took her own life just three weeks into her first term. The two other students who died were Kim Long, 18, and Daniel Green, 18.

The school has confirmed the deaths. It has also announced that support will be provided for students who are struggling.

On Monday, emergency services rushed to the Clifton Suspension Bridge and Avon Gorge at around 4 p.m. after it was reported that a woman had jumped. Lara Nosiru's body was recovered after a two-hour search of the gorge.

The 23-year-old student previously studied at Ockendon School in Essex. She was also a member of dancing groups in Bristol.

According to Mirror, university spokesperson has confirmed the student's death. Her next-of-kin have also been informed.

Bristol University urged students who are affected by the incident to seek support from University Services as well as their friends or family. The school has provided information on its homepage about where students can ask for help.

The spokesperson has also added that Bristol University has increased its student counseling provision. They are partnering with the Samaritans and other experts to provide support for the university community.
California's Rep. Barbara Lee has called out President Donald Trump for threatening to pull federal funding from the University of California - Berkeley. The threat came after Milo Yiannopoulos's event was cancelled due to protests and riots.

BuzzFeed News reported that the talk of Trump supporter and alt-right speaker Milo Yiannopoulos was cancelled after peaceful protests against the event turned violent. A masked group of protesters rioted and started fires, broke windows and refused to follow the police, which prompted university officials to cancel the speech.

President Donald Trump took to Twitter to issue a threat saying that UC Berkeley's federal funds may be cut off. This is because the school "does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view."

In a statement, Rep. Lee called out the "empty threat" as an "abuse of power." She also confirmed that she will "continue to stand up to President Trump's overreach and defend the rights of our students and faculty."

UC Berkeley also issued a statement on the actions of the violent protesters who were said to have invaded the campus. The school admitted that the opinions of Milo Yiannopoulos "were in marked opposition" to its basic values but that they respected his right to come to the campus and speak since he was invited by a legitimate student group.

The institution described the violence as "an attack on the fundamental values of the university." UC Berkeley confirmed that it will continue its commitment to free speech.

According to CNBC, Ed Wasserman, dean at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, said that President Trump's threat and tweets should not be taken seriously. He described the president's tweeting style as similar to "the way someone doodles on a scratchpad" during a meeting.

Wasserman added that Yiannopoulos's opinions are seen as hate speech by his critics but noted that, in this case, it's a murky line. He also expressed his concern over the political divisions in the country as a threat to freedom of speech.
For information only - not an official document

UNIS/MA/162

3 February 2017

MEDIA ADVISORY

Media representatives are invited to a

UNOOSA panel discussion on "Space for Women"

7 February 2017, 1.00pm - 2.00pm



Boardroom D, C Building, Vienna International Centre

VIENNA, 3 February (United Nations Information Service) - The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) will host a panel discussion on "Space for Women" on Tuesday, 7 February 2017 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. in the Vienna International Centre (VIC), C Building, Boardroom D.



As humanity makes significant scientific and technological advancements, women remain under-represented in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This panel discussion will consider how to improve the gender imbalance in these fields, with a special focus on the space sector. This event is being held in advance of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which is marked on 11 February.



Speakers include:

- Simonetta Di Pippo, Director, UNOOSA

- Laura Jamschon Mac Garry, Consul of Argentina in Vienna

- Sandy Magnus, former US astronaut and Executive Director, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

- Chiaki Mukai, former Japanese astronaut and Senior Advisor, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

- Minoo Rathnasabapathy, Executive Director, Space Generation Advisory Council

This event takes place on the sidelines of the annual session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which is convening in Vienna from 30 January to 10 February.

The discussion will be streamed at www.unoosa.org.



* *** *

Media representatives who wish to attend the event, and who are not accredited to the VIC, should write to press[at]unvienna.org.

Access to the C-building is via Gate One of the Vienna International Centre.

* *** *



For more information about UNOOSA, please contact:

Daria Brankin

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs

Telephone: (+43 1) 26060 8718

Email: daria.brankin[at]unoosa.org
The Union Budget 2017 brought in electoral bonds which aim at cutting down black money that floods Indian politics. Here's what you need to know about electoral bonds.

By Rahul Mishra: In order to structure the political funding better and to bring transparency, the Modi government made several provisions in the Union Budget of this fiscal year.

An unprecedented announcement was made introducing 'electoral bonds,' for which the government is gearing up to amend the rules of the Reserve Bank of India.

Under the Union Budget 2017, the government capped the political party funding per person to a maximum of Rs 2,000.

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Also Read ||15 facts about the Union Budget of India you should know ||

Any funding amount more than Rs 2,000 is required to be made through cheques or digital payments, where all political parties are also required to file income tax returns for the same.

After announcing the provision of electoral bonds, many were left scratching their heads.

WHAT IS A RESERVE BANK BOND?

The Reserve Bank handles circulation of currency and regulates credit system in the country. To reduce the debt burden of the Reserve Bank from time to time, Finance Ministry issues various bonds.These bonds are issued with a maturity period of five years. However, even before the maturity of the bonds, they can be sold to extract the invested money in the market.

Only Indian citizens and Non-Resident Indians are allowed to buy these bonds issued by RBI.

WHAT IS AN ELECTORAL BOND?

Making use of the limited information given by central government, it seems the proposed electoral bonds will be used for political funding and this step is aimed at making the structure of political funding more transparent and accountable.

3 MAJOR PLAYERS OF ELECTORAL BOND

First player is the donor who wants to donate funds to a political party. It can be a person, an organisation or even a company.

Second player is a national or regional political party in the country.

And the third player is the Reserve Bank of India.

A FEW THINGS ABOUT ELECTORAL BONDS The bonds will only be issued by a notified bank. This bond can only be bought using cheques or digital payments. The bonds which the donor has purchased will be given to a political party for a fixed period of time. A political party using their notified bank account, can convert these bonds into money. All political parties are required to notify their bank account to the Election Commission from where they can access this money. This bond will be like a bearer cheque which will facilitate donor's anonymity.

In its effort to bring down the ever escalating corruption, India will be the first country in the world to introduce the concept of an electoral bond.

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Introduction of these bonds specifically aims at killing the black money which mostly funds a political party in India.

Also Read ||From Jaitley to poet-ly: Finance Minister's Budget presentations are always so shayarana||

Watch Union Budget 2017: 10 keys areas of reform announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley

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Storytelling for Scientists Offered Feb. 16-18

In the world of multimedia and fast-paced news, it is imperative that scientists become stronger communicators and champions of their work. University of Wyoming faculty members and students have a unique opportunity to get their science out of the lab and offer their stories to the public.

A workshop, titled Using Video to Tell Your Story, Storytelling for Scientists, is offered Thursday, Feb. 16, through Saturday, Feb. 18. The workshop is offered by Wyoming EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research).

Participants will have three days to learn how to shoot, edit and make a one-minute film, says Emily Stewart Vercoe, project coordinator, senior, EPSCoR-IDEA.

Workshops will be held 8 a.m.-5 p.m. each day at various locations throughout campus, including the Engineering Building, the Classroom Building and Wyoming Public Media in Knight Hall. Stewart Vercoe says all 20 workshop slots have been filled by UW faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, and even a few staff members.

The video platform is a powerful way to reach a broad audience beyond the silos of science and discipline. Today, the technology to do just that is in ones pocket -- a smartphone or point-and-shoot camera.

Thats really our goal, to have a supplement for a thesis talk or something you can post on your website, Stewart Vercoe says.

Participants interested in using video to effectively communicate their research will spend three days learning the essential storytelling and technical skills, and then immediately apply those skills to produce short films. During the course, participants will find and develop a story; capture it using the technology tools held in their pockets; and edit it down to a one-minute film.

Objectives include providing participants concrete skills to communicate with a diverse audience through video; give students the opportunity to put skills into immediate practice; and to produce short science stories that can be used for outreach.

Morgan Heim and Jane Zelikova will serve as workshop facilitators. Heim is a producer at Days Edge Productions and a fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers. Zelikova is an ecologist interested in the impacts of environmental change on natural and managed ecosystems. Currently, she is a science and technology policy fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, on leave from her position as a research scientist at UW.

On the final evening, participants will show their films on the big screen in the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center, Stewart Vercoe says.

Attendees should bring their smartphones and any film equipment they would like to use. Footage will be edited using software on campus computers. However, if attendees want to use their own computers, they will need to download Adobe Premiere Pro.

For more information and to register, go to www.uwyo.edu/epscor or email Stewart Vercoe at evercoe@uwyo.edu.
Wyoming Business Tips for Feb. 12-18

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Brett Housholder, Wyoming Entrepreneur Procurement Technical Assistance Center program manager

Im interested in learning about government contracting and meeting government agencies to tell them about my business, but I cant always attend all the workshops and networking events you host throughout the year. How can I prioritize what to attend? Steve, Buffalo

We always encourage people to attend as many of our workshops and events as they can but understand that its not always possible to make it to each of them. However, once a year, we host our largest event, the GRO-Biz Conference and Idea Expo, which features all the best parts of the various events we host throughout the year. This years event will be held in Casper Feb. 22-23.

Heres why you should attend:

-- The event features three components: networking with government agencies to learn about opportunities to sell to them; attending workshops (11 separate topics throughout the event) to learn about specific business growth strategies or government contracting topics; and learning about other low- or no-cost business resources throughout Wyoming to help your business grow.

-- A vital part of selling to the government is getting to know the agencies in your area and the contracting staff who work for them. This conference provides you an opportunity to sit down and visit one on one with over two dozen contracting staff members from agencies such as F.E. Warren Air Force Base, the National Park Service, the Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the General Services Administration and others. Having all of these agencies represented in the same place is rare and a great opportunity to introduce your business.

-- Also, there are five breakout sessions focused on specific government contracting topics throughout the event. This year, well look at marketing to government agencies; preparing and submitting invoices; reviewing and preparing proposals for government jobs; finding opportunities with the state of Wyoming; and learning about recent updates to federal programs like the Woman-Owned Small Business Program through the Small Business Administration. The event also features six other breakout sessions, if selling to the government isnt your priority.

-- Finally, this is a chance to learn about all of the incredible resources available to Wyoming business owners. The WSBDC Network is one of several agencies throughout the state that offers specialized business assistance, usually at low or no cost to you. Again, this is a rare opportunity to learn about all of the specialized services available to help your business grow.

For details, visit www.wyomingsbdc.org and look under the scrolling Events and Classes section for a link to register. Plus, the registration website has a Conference Tips tab with ideas on how to prepare. We hope youll join us!

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at www.wyomingsbdc.org/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
The boat, sailing from Nankanas tehsil Said Wala to Okara, with more than 70 people aboard, capsized shortly after leaving Said Wala, prompting district administration and rescue teams to swing into action and save as many people as possible, Geo News reported.

By Press Trust of India: Dozens of people feared dead after a ferry carrying over 70 people capsized in River Ravi near Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab province, with rescue operation still ongoing, officials said.

The boat, sailing from Nankanas tehsil Said Wala to Okara, with more than 70 people aboard, capsized shortly after leaving Said Wala, prompting district administration and rescue teams to swing into action and save as many people as possible, Geo News reported.

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"The ferry was overloaded with passengers," Deputy Commissioner Saira Umar said, adding that majority of people swam to the bank on their own, while rescue teams saved eight others, who were shifted to hospital.

The rescue operation will continue until the recovery of all the people, she added.

An eye witness said that there were over 70 people and nearly 20 motorbikes aboard the ferry, the report said.

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The bill, introduced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, would replace the note ban Ordinance promulgated by the government in December last year.

By India Today Web Desk: The Narendra Modi government tabled the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Bill, 2017 in Lok Sabha, a move that seeks to formally make the banning of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes last year a law.

The bill, introduced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, would replace the note ban Ordinance promulgated by the government in December last year. Any Ordinance passed by a government must be replaced by a bill within 42 days of the commencement of a session or it will lapse.

Specified Bank Notes(Cessation of Liabilities) Bill '17 scheduled to be introduced in Lok Sabha today;FM Arun Jaitley to introduce the Bill. ANI (@ANI_news) February 3, 2017

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The Ordinance, approved by President Pranab Mukherjee on December 30, made it illegal to hold, transfer or receive the junked Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.

The Ordinance also extinguished the liability of the government and the Reserve Bank of India on the demonetised notes.

The issue of demonetisation, notably, had virtually washed out the Parliament's winter session and debates on the note ban decision are yet to be concluded in the two houses.

The BJP has asked all its MPs to be present in the Lok Sabha today.

Also read: Ordinance criminalising holding of Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes gets President's nod

Also watch: RBI's 10 big revelations to Parliament panel on demonetisation (With inputs from agencies)

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Leaders of main European parliamentary groups said potential US ambassador pick Ted Malloch has openly backed the dissolution of the 28-nation European Union much like the collapse of the Soviet Union. (AFP/THIERRY CHARLIER)

The leaders of the main parliamentary groups said Malloch, whom they called Trump's likely choice, has openly backed the dissolution of the 28-nation European Union much like the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The leaders of the conservative European People's Party, the largest group in the parliament, the Socialists and Democrats and the liberal ALDE group wrote to European Council President Donald Tusk urging him not to accept Malloch's credentials if he is appointed ambassador.

"The prospective nominee ... eloquently supported dissolution of the European Union and explicitly bet on the demise of the common currency within months," EPP chairman Manfred Weber and ALDE President Guy Verhofstadt wrote in their letter.

"These statements reveal outrageous malevolence regarding the values that define this European Union," they wrote.

They warned that if such remarks come from an official US representative, they could harm the transatlantic relationship that has preserved peace and prosperity for seven decades.

"We are strongly convinced that persons seeing as their mission to disrupt or dissolve the European Union, should not be accredited as official representatives to the EU," they added.

Socialists and Democrats leader Gianni Pittella warned that Malloch's appointment could "potentially contribute to the spread of populism and euroscepticism across Europe."

He added: "Malloch should not be accepted as an official representative to the EU and should be declared 'persona non grata'."

Malloch is a professor at the Henley Business School in the English city of Reading. The Henley website said he held an ambassadorial level position at the United Nations in Geneva from 1988-1991 and has served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum.

Earlier this month, the departing US ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, warned that the Trump administration would be committing "sheer folly" if it supports the bloc's breakup.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson speaks to employees at the State Department in Washington, DC. (AFP/MANDEL NGAN)

President Donald Trump's pick for US secretary of state arrived to take charge of a department already simmering with indignation at the new administration's policy departures.

In an unprecedented show of defiance, around 1,000 diplomats have signed a "dissent memo" denouncing Trump's suspension of refugee arrivals and a visa ban on seven Muslim countries.

And there is also deep disquiet about the aggressive stance that Trump, guided by his nationalist White House strategist Steve Bannon, has taken in the field of foreign relations.

Overnight, Trump unleashed another angry diplomatic barrage, warning that Iran is "on notice" after its latest missile test and denouncing a deal to accept Australian-housed refugees.

Into this maelstrom stepped Tillerson, the 64-year-old Texan oilman who left the chief executive's suite at ExxonMobil to come to Foggy Bottom and run Trump's foreign policy.

"Hi, I'm the new guy," he said, introducing himself in a speech to around 2,000 diplomats and civil servants gathered in the State Department's flag-lined main entrance hall.

The White House has reacted angrily to stirrings of revolt from the diplomatic corps, with spokesman Sean Spicer warning they "should either get with the programme or they can go."

But Tillerson sought to reassure his assembled employees that he respects their expertise and patriotism, receiving several rounds of warm but relieved applause during his speech.

"I know this was a hotly contested election and we do not all feel the same way about the outcome," he told them, two weeks after Trump took office and a day after his own confirmation.

"Each of us is entitled to the expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team," he urged the staff.

Admitting that, while the State Department's 75,000 employees have an average of 11 years experience each, he had only been in his new post for 25 minutes, he vowed to get to work.

His meetings were to get underway immediately, with Jordan's King Abdullah and Germany's Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel in town and eager to build ties with the new administration.

'NOT A BAD THING'

Earlier, Trump had hailed Tillerson at a national prayer breakfast, declaring that the oilman's friendship with foreign leaders like Russia's Vladimir Putin would prove an asset.

"Some people didn't like Rex because he actually got along with leaders of the world," Trump said, referring to concerns that Tillerson is too close to the Russian president.

"You have to understand that's a good thing, not a bad thing. He is respected all over the world and I think he will go down as one of our great, great secretaries."

If, as supporters of the veteran executive predict, Tillerson does prove to be a smooth hand on the tiller, not only US diplomats but America's friends abroad will be relieved.

Since coming to power Trump has issued a series of edicts and late-night tweet storms that have triggered dismay and anger around much of the world and rocked the international order.

In one of the latest exchanges Trump seems to have picked a fight with Australia, long one of Washington's closest and most useful allies, in a telephone rant at its prime minister.

Both Washington and Canberra have played down reports that last week's call turned fiery and that an exasperated Trump hung up on Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

But Turnbull admitted the exchange was "frank and forthright" - diplomatic language normally associated with a row.

And Trump was clearly annoyed to be asked to fulfill a deal made by his predecessor Barack Obama to accept 1,600 refugees held in Australia's notorious offshore detention centers.

"Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!" he tweeted.

Trump's critics in Washington were horrified by his tone.

Senator John McCain, a leading Republican foreign policy hawk, described Australia as one of America's "staunchest allies" and called its ambassador to apologise for Trump's behaviour.
The Bell Tower on the Phat Tich Mountain (source: VNA)

Nguyen Thi Hao, Vice Chairwoman of the Tien Du District Peoples Committee and head of the organising board, said the locality has taken measures to ensure safety for the festival goers while protecting the environment.

The Phat Tich Pagoda, a special national relic site located just 25 kilometres northeast of Hanoi, was built in 1057 on a mountain called Lan Kha during the reign of King Ly Thanh Tong (1054-72). It was reduced to ashes by French colonialists in 1948 and restored in 1987.

During the excavation of the pagoda from 1949-51, archaeologists found numerous old stone sculptures carved with flowers and dragons, bird goddess statues from the 17th century, and a piece engraved with the head of a fairy, all of which are now on display at the National History Museum.

A giant Buddha Amitabha statue, 27 metres tall and weighing 3,000 tonnes, was installed outside on the Lan Kha Mountain in 2010. It was adapted from a similar structure from the Ly Dynasty.

The Phat Tich Pagoda is associated with Tu Thucs meeting with a fairy. As the legend goes, there were endless peonies on Lan Kha Mountain and in the pagoda, leading a young woman to visit the pagoda one day to see the flowers. She carelessly broke a tree branch and was fined by the monks, but a local scholar, Tu Thuc, was also visiting the pagoda and offered his coat to compensate for the broken branch. They became friends and continued to meet at the pagoda. The woman ultimately invited Tu Thuc to visit her house, leading him to a peony forest and into a cave on the mountainside with an imperial palace with high walls and stone footsteps. She revealed that she was a fairy and they got married.

Every year, people visit the pagoda to take part in the peony festival, where they enjoy looking at the flowers, listening to quan ho (love duets) and poem recitations, and playing traditional games. The festival usually lasts two days.

The pagoda was recognised as a national relic site in 1962 and a special national relic site in 2014.
Nghiem Xuan Thanh, chairman of Vietcombank, claimed a consolidated after-tax profit of VND8.5 trillion ($375 million). Of all state-owned commercial banks, the number of staff in Vietcombank is the lowest (barely over 14,000) and the most efficient in turning profit: each individual make VND600 million ($26,514) on average in a year, which means VND50 million ($2,210) every month. This is also the reason why Vietcombank staff gets the most satisfying wages and benefit packages in the current banking sector.

With the profit of VND8.25 trillion ($365 million), VietinBank goes virtually head-to-head with Vietcombank, however, breaking it down amongst the 21,000 employees, Vietinbanks profit per employee averages VND474 million ($21,000) a year and nearly VND40 million ($1,700) a month, .

Ranking third is BIDV. Thanks to its 24,000 employees, the bank turned VND7.5 trillion ($331 million) in profit in 2016, which means a contribution of VND312 million ($14,000) per employee throughout the year, or VND26 million ($1,150) per month.

The last one is Agribank, whose profit is over VND4 trillion ($17 million) made by a staff of 40,000, meaning that each worker makes VND100 million ($4,400) in profit a year, or VND8.3 million ($366) a month.

In the joint-stock commercial banking sector, many banks have yet to announce their profit, but the few figures announced so far show uneven productivity.

Up to this point, the highest profit was made by Military Commercial Joint Stock Bank (MB). In 2016, the banks pre-tax profit was VND3.711 trillion ($164 million), which means each employee made VND510 million ($22,536), or nearly VND43 million ($1,900) per month. VIB employees made VND14.6 million ($645) and VPBank about VND15 million ($662) per month.

At some banks currently undergoing restructuring, each employee only made a profit of VND2-3 million ($88-$132) per month. Overall, there are more than a dozen banks whose profit per employee is below VND10 million ($441) a month.

Of course, this figure is not an accurate depiction of the productivity of each specific employee in each bank, because these numbers summarise a lot of factors, especially the allowances for bad debt expenses, risk provisions, operating costs, etc. Not to mention some of these profit figures are unreliable. Many banks report high profit figures, but indeed, interest accruals are included and bad debts in the off-balance sheet are not counted yet.

Looking at the bad debts and the banks profits, it is clear that the most transparent data in the current banking system is provided by Vietcombank. By the end of 2016, this bank has bought up itsbad debts from Vietnam Asset Management Company (VAMC), putting all bad debt items in one ledger, no longer having liabilities in or off the balance sheet like other banks. The banks provisions for credit losses are also very high, up to 121 per cent of the bad debt volume.

In almost all other banks, although bad debts are now lower than three per cent (slightly over one per cent at some), there still exist thousands of billions of dong in bad debts that have not been handled (being at VAMC). In the years to come, when bad debts will be required to be calculated correctly and fully, including the balance sheet and off-balance sheet liabilities, then trillions of VND of banks profits will be spent on risk provision for bad debts.

The good news is from 2017 the government will implement a range of practical solutions in order to facilitate dealing with bad debts. Together with the improving business environment, this will increase banks profits and make bank employees performance more effective and efficient.
After the audacious demonetisation, I was hoping the government was in the mood for some more audacity in the budget. Sadly, it was not to be. Not that it was a bad budget. It was a good one, but it didn't satisfy my own zeal for more radical change.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was like a good schoolboy who does a fine balancing act to keep the teachers happy and also be the most popular boy in school. The economists were ecstatic that he maintained fiscal prudence, even while increasing capital expenditure on infrastructure by 25 per cent.

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He pleased the masses with a combination of tax cuts and higher spending, particularly in transport and rural infrastructure, which should have a healthy multiplier effect and spur consumption.

The cut in personal income tax rate from 10 per cent to 5 per cent in the lowest tax slab will raise disposable incomes, while a record budget allocation to MNREGA (Rs 48,000 crore) will put more money in people's hands.

Higher investment in the transport sector and rural housing, where 10 million houses have been promised by 2019, with the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana allocation pegged at Rs 23,000 crore, indicates that the government has bet big on Bharat. One figure says it all: in this budget, agriculture and allied sectors get a whopping Rs 1.87 lakh crore, 24 per cent higher than last year (over budget estimates).

Among the many things this allocation does is address problems of farmers by putting in Rs 40,000 crore into irrigation and crop insurance. Finally, the government is focusing on labour-intensive industries instead of the much-touted Make in India campaign which has yielded precious few jobs.

The finance minister cleverly assuaged one of the BJP's major constituencies, the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), by reducing taxes.

He's relying on them to spur economic growth and jobs as they comprise 37 per cent of the GDP. But I liked that the government kept to the high moral ground by continuing the black money purge, putting limits on transactions, cash donations to charities and political parties, rationalising real estate capital gains measurement and ways to promote digital transactions.

Despite major state elections this year, the Centre has resisted the temptation to go in for populist schemes and freebie announcements, which is commendable. Our cover story analyses the budget in detail and includes an assessment from top experts, who echo many of these views.

All this is good economics and on predictable lines. But it does not tackle the structural problems of the economy. How many budgets have we seen packed with scheme after scheme for farmers, and yet still reliant on a good monsoon to bail out the economy?

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Every year, we see farmer suicides across the country. The reason, I believe, is that we don't bother to fix the rotten pipeline to deliver these goods and services to the people. In fact, we continue to make it bigger. There was no attempt to rationalise subsidies on food and fertiliser, which take away Rs 2.15 lakh crore and are prone to high leakages.

There is a faint-hearted approach to solving the problem of NPAs of PSU banks and similarly lackadaisical efforts at disinvesting in PSUs. If the fervour for radical reform stays with Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the remainder of his term, there is still a lot for him to do. I hope it does. The country desperately needs it.

--- ENDS ---
The decree will make sure less buyers get their fingers burnt

Among the big projects to be launched is An Khanh New City Developments sale of its first phase this quarter. The mega $2 billion project is developed by South Koreas Posco E&C and Vietnams Vinaconex, located in Hanois Hoai Duc district, along the Thang Long Boulevard.

Scheduled for completion in 2013, the city is expected to supply 6,440 apartments, equivalent to 392,319 square metres of accommodation, enough for 30,000 people.

Even though Hoa Phat Group, the investor in a more than 1,000 apartment Mandarin Garden in Cau Giay districts Tran Duy Hung road, refused to release its launching time, real estate experts predicted the project would be soon launched.

At the beginning of this month the CT7D, located in Le Van Luong street and invested by Nam Cuong Group and the FLC Landmark Tower of FLC Group will also be launched, with a total of 200 units and prices ranging from VND23 million ($1,200) to VND28 million ($1,470) per square metre.

In Gia Lam district, over the Red River, the second lot of Rung Co Residentials belonging to the Eco Park is also being launched, with around 1,500 apartment units.

In addition, Victoria Van Phu, Star City, Diamond Tower and Song Da City View will also add apartments to the mix.

Real estate consultant CBRE Vietnam expected that there would be 3,000 units in Hanoi launched this quarter, compared to 1,950 units in the third quarter. There were more than 4,600 units launched in the second quarter.

This decline, according to CBRE Vietnam, could be due to the Decree 71, effective on August 8, 2010 providing guidance on the Housing Law, which caps the proportion of units sold via capital contribution contracts at 20 per cent with the remaining 80 per cent sold on transaction floors.

This decree, CBRE Vietnam said, had put a pressure on developers with low financial capabilities and enhanced market transparency.

However, CBRE Vietnam executive director Richard Leech said new project launches would continue trending towards more affordable options.

With the opening and improvement of major infrastructure routes, the capitals western and southern districts are attracting new residents with easier access for commuting into the core urban districts, Leech said.

He said that the Decree 71 was expected to benefit the market by enhancing transparency, placing pressures on developers with low financial capabilities, lessening the threat of price bubbles and limiting speculative forces.

Tran Nhu Trung, Savills Vietnam associate director, said the Decree 71 had showed off its advantages to clearly regulate five types of mobilising capital investment. However, Trung said the procedures to implement Decree 71 were still complicated and wasted customers time and energy.

The more simple it [decree] regulates, the more it is practical in the real life, Trung said.
Samsungs smartphone factory in Viet Nam. Mobile and accessories were the countrys top export for 2016.-Photo xahoithongtin.com.vn

At the top of the list was mobile phones and phone accessories: Viet Nams biggest export was valued at $34.32 billion, up by 13.8 per cent compared to the same period last year. Major importers included the European Union with a turnover of nearly $11.24 billion, up by 11.1 per cent from 2015; the US with $4.3 billion, up by 55.5 per cent, the United Arab Emirates at $2.27 billion, up by 6.2 per cent.

Second on the list was textile products, with a total export value of over $23.84 billion for 2016, up by 4.6 per cent from 2015. The chief importer was the US with an import turnover of more than $11.45 billion, up by 4.6 per cent from 2015, followed by the EU at $3.56 billion, up by 2.7 per cent, and Japan at $2.9 billion, up by 4.2 per cent.

Third place belonged to computers, electronic devices and accessories, clocking in at $18.96 billion, up by 21.5 per cent from 2015. Main importers included China at $4.1 billion imported value, up by 47.2 per cent from 2015, followed by the EU at $3.73 billion, up by 16.5 per cent, the US at $2.89 billion, up by 2.05 per cent, and most significantly the Netherlands at $1.75 billion, up by 53.5 per cent compared to last year.

The fourth was footwear, with the annual value of $13 billion, up by 8.3 per cent from 2015. Major importers included the US, EU and China, all having increased their imported values compared to last year.

Other products on the list were machinery and tools, up by 24.3 per cent from 2015 at $10.14 billion in exported value; seafood at $7.05 billion, up by 7.4 per cent; wood and wooden products at nearly $6.97 billion, up by 1.1 per cent; agricultural products, including vegetables, pepper, coffee and rice, at a total of $12.45 billion, up by 16.2 per cent despite a drop in rices export; transport vehicles and accessories at $6.05 billion, slightly up by 3.7 per cent and in tenth was baggage and headgear at $3.16 billion, up by 10.2 per cent from 2015.

Overall major importers for Viet Nam were the US, China, the EU and Japan.

The ten products export value reached US$126.85 billion, in a context where many other Vietnamese exports had experienced sharp decline in exported value compared to the same period in 2015, with crude oil down by 36.5 per cent, cement down by 16 per cent, coal down by 23.8 per cent, ores and minerals down by 28.8 per cent or fertiliser down by 24.9 per cent.


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Here comes an orgasm injection to supersize that elusive key to female pleasure, the G-spot, and grant women a springtime of erotic renewal.

Clank.

The sound of metal on metal is oddly loud in the sanitised silence of the clinic. You are lying on your back, legs spread wide, ankles locked in stirrups. The surgeon hovers over you, holding a mean-looking speculum in one hand-similar to a can-opener but with flaring duckbill blades-and a gigantic syringe in the other.

As he pokes, prods and peeps at the most intimate part of your anatomy, you yo-yo between fear, embarrassment and pain, frantically trying to think of the wonderful future in store for you: a springtime of erotic renewal. "Congratulations." The surgeon finally takes off his gloves, smiling mischievously. "You're ready to rock and roll."

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Eight seconds.

What can you do in that time? Here's some science: it takes eight seconds for a morsel of food to travel from your mouth to your stomach. That's how long the brain takes to store a piece of information in your long-term memory.

That's the time needed for a man to fall in love at first sight. And now there's a new 'science' taking shape in clinics of cosmetic gynaecologists across the world, where it takes exactly that long to temporarily supersize the elusive key to female pleasure, the G-spot, with injectables that typically plump up drooping lips and sagging cheeks.

The G-shot (medically, G-spot amplification) promises to bring a woman to multiple climaxes during sexual intercourse in minutes. The procedure, given under local anaesthetic, has taken off in India - for about Rs 50,000 a shot, that lasts four months. And going by reports, demand is swelling from a trickle to a torrent.

WHERE IS IT EXACTLY?

- Where exactly is the G-spot?

- You mean, you don't know?

- I haven't checked myself that closely.

- You're not supposed to check, you're supposed to feel. Hasn't your husband??

- Oh, you know him?

- That's your problem. You don't demand anything. I just got myself fixed.

- Really? How?

- Shhh. Don't tell anyone.

- Don't tell what?

- I got myself a jab.

- A jab for what?

For the last 15 years, Dr Deepa Ganesh has zipped through downtown Chennai-Kilpauk, Vadapalani, MRC Nagar, Alwarpet-from one private hospital to another, operating on ovarian cysts, removing uterine polyps, rebuilding damaged Fallopian tubes.

But in the past few years, the thirtysomething gynaecologist with an easy smile and lively eyes has been coming across patients she could not really help: women facing problems in the bedroom. "Women with overstretched vaginas, perhaps due to childbirth, facing painful intercourse, discomfort and lack of pleasure due to physical or psychological reasons," recalls Ganesh.

Women have traditionally dealt with such problems in silence, she explains. "But now they are more conscious and have the courage to not just talk about it but to do something about how they look, feel and function as a woman, in every way."

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This story appears in the February 13 issue of the India Today Magazine. Subscribe here.

Responding to that, Ganesh started exploring an emerging field in medicine: cosmetic gynaecology. With celebrities, television shows, social media, internet and mobile devices creating an unprecedented level of awareness, the new millennium had ushered in new demands and new procedures in the multi-billion business of beauty: from 'mommy makeovers' to return women to their pre-pregnancy bodies in US to limb-lengthening in India, radical facial surgery in South Korea, 'improvements' to breasts, abdomens and buttocks in Brazil, nose jobs in Iran and 'designer vaginas' in the whole of the western world.

"With shaving or waxing pubic hair becoming as common as the removal of underarm hair in the US, decorations, tattoos, piercings and surgical modification of the area has kicked off," adds Ganesh.

She went to the US to train in vaginal rejuvenation under Dr David Matlock of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, a surgeon renowned for his innovative techniques on the vagina, apart from the 'Brazilian Butt Lift' he did for Kim Kardashian. In 2002, he developed a procedure for G-spot amplification that thickened and expanded the G-spot area-from 8.1 mm to 15-20 mm in diameter and 0.4 mmto 5-10 mm in length, as reported in his 2002 patent (pending)-leading to heightened sexual arousal and sensitivity.

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That year, he had given G-shots to 15 women and reported that while 50.7 per cent reached climax during intercourse earlier, it became 82.7 per cent after the shot. Ganesh finished her five-month training in November last year and started offering G-shots-the first such in India.

YES. NO. YES?- The front wall of the vagina has a distinct erotogenic zone

- No. The vaginal walls are quite insensitive to sensation

- Yes. Pressing a particular spot can lead to orgasm. Let's call it the G-spot

- No. Nothing in the vaginal wall would lead directly to that experience

- Yes. Ultrasounds show that some women have a G-spot, some don't

- No. G-spot is a figment of women's imagination

- Yes. The G-spot is a sac-like structure on the front wall of the vagina

- G-spot is just a sensitive area that's part of the larger pleasure complex

Does the G-spot exist? "That's like asking if god exists," says Dr Narayana Reddy, an expert in sexual medicine and a consultant with Apollo Hospital, Chennai, a Fellow of the American College of Sexologists. Purportedly, the G-spot is a spongy, pea-sized area one to two inches inside the wall of the vagina, and can be discerned by touch.

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DOES THE G-SPOT EXIST?

Believed to be an erogenous zone, which, when stimulated, may lead to strong sexual arousal, powerful orgasms and even ejaculation for some women. For others, it remains a life-long quest. "Despite all the miracles of modern science, the seemingly straightforward question-'does the G-spot exist?'-remains unanswered." Questions about it-where it is, what it does, if it exists at all-have supporters and critics locking horns.

It was psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who first suggested, in 1905, that there were two types of orgasms, calling a vaginal orgasm the "one true orgasm". The theory got a biological basis when, in 1950, German gynaecologist and inventor of the intrauterine device (IUD), Dr Ernst Grfenberg, reported a "distinct erotogenic zone" on the frontal wall of the vagina. He was ignored and even mocked.

In fact, in 1953, zoologist Alfred Kinsey, author of the famed Kinsey Reports, published his Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, calling the vaginal walls "insensitive to sensation". Forgotten for decades, it attained stardom in 1982, when it got a new name and new legitimacy in a book, The G Spot and Other Discoveries about Human Sexuality, that became an instant international bestseller.

Researchers John Perry, Beverly Whipple and Alice Kahn had noted swelling in response to stimulation in over 400 women. Yet researchers doubted there was anything to stimulate in the first place, calling it a "modern gynaecologic myth".

In 2008, the G-spot became a talking point again when researchers at the University of L'Aquila in Italy located it using ultrasound. But, they said, there was a catch: some women seemed to have a G-spot, while others didn't. The pendulum continued to swing, until in 2014 new research concluded that the G-spot was just a part of a larger female pleasure region.

In the final analysis, despite evidence that specific anatomical structures correspond to the area defined as the G-spot, its exact anatomical identity in all women, universally, remains inconclusive.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT

- After my G-shot I get sexually aroused performing yoga

- I had constant multiple orgasms which went on for hours

- That first time, the whole thing was so intense I was actually a bit scared

- I was riding in the car with my partner and we went on this cobblestone road and I became sexually aroused?guess what happened next?

- I have this smile on my face and people think that I am enjoying my workout but actually I am sexually aroused

The testimonials above are from some of the over 2,000 women who have received a G-shot from Matlock, with a 65 per cent return rate. When she was in the US, Ganesh says she came across women as young as 16, accompanied by their mothers, seeking consultation.

In India, it has not been easy to break into the world of conjugality. Despite plenty of inquiries, Ganesh has actually given the shot to about 15 women so far, the youngest being 30 and oldest 46. "Typically, they come on their own and many don't even tell their husbands."

Last year, Dr Bharti Magoo, a member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery, also launched a similar technique at her clinic in Sion, Mumbai-Golden Touch -where she practises along with a gynaecologist. "Most of my patients are in their 40s and 50s," she says.

Most of her patients are also long-time clients and trust her enough to talk about their sexual traumas. "For most, their sexual lives had plummeted, either due to reduced libido, less satisfaction or a sense of shortcoming, leading sometimes to insecurities in relationships," she says.

"For some, the G-spot was dead, due to abortions or surgical procedures." For others, the vaginal muscles had become loose, thanks to childbirth. With a more prominent G-spot, it has become possible for most to enjoy uterine orgasms, she says.

They are not the only ones. Cosmetic gynaecologists and plastic surgeons across the country seem to be focusing on the new demand. At the root of it is the new Indian woman, they say. "Women are asserting themselves," says Dr D.J.S. Tulla, plastic and cosmetic surgeon, aesthetic and reconstructive surgery at Primus Hospital, Delhi. "They are much more adventurous now. They want to enjoy powerful sensations. With greater sexual awakening, the demand for this procedure is expected to rise."

Doctors are also busy experimenting with the new soft-tissue augmentation 'fillers' that have emerged in the past few years: the human-derived collagen protein; hyaluronic acid (or Restylane), a type of polysaccharide; the brand new Radiesse, made from calcium hydroxide; and Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) taken from the patient's blood and then re-injected.

Dr Rahul Goyal, cosmetic and plastic surgeon in Mohali, Chandigarh, says permanent results can be achieved by using dermal fat grafts. "More expensive but a one-off procedure that results in permanent improvement, although you'll need to stay off sex for six weeks," he says.

THAT PILLOW TALK

- I have a headache...

- How can you have a headache every day?

- I'm sorry?

- What do you mean?

- It's just that? I'm not trying to make you feel bad?

- What?

Yes, we know: men are from Mars and women from Venus, especially when it comes to the moment of maximum pleasure. Simply because the male and female sexual systems are different. But, statistically, that translates into frightening numbers.

According to non-profit Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which provides reproductive health services globally, some 10 per cent women are incapable of orgasm-due to physical conditions, medication or illness; one in three women typically don't orgasm during sex, due to psychological blocks; and 80 per cent of women have difficulty with orgasms for a range of reasons.

That doesn't surprise Dr Firuza Parikh, Director of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics at Jaslok Hospital, Mumbai. The story she regularly hears from young urban couples is one where both have demanding jobs, come back home exhausted, order in from a fast-food outlet and fall asleep right after dinner, exhausted. "I see a lot of couples in sexless marriages, orgasm-less relationships or with less-than-inspiring sex lives," she says.

"Sex works best when we make time for it, turn off our computers and switch off our phones, because it is more complicated for women to orgasm than men."

Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is yet another story. The World Health Organization defines FSD as "the various ways in which a woman is unable to participate in a sexual relationship as she would wish".

Doctors at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, have called for a systematic approach to assessment of FSD, to ensure appropriate treatment.

"FSD is something we encounter routinely," says Dr J.B. Sharma, professor, AIIMS, "ranging from persistent and recurring loss of desire or arousal, difficulty or inability to achieve an orgasm, or painful intercourse." Studies say that 43-76 per cent of Indian women report some kind of sexual problem.

Culture plays a major role. "Conventional stereotypes about good girls-bad girls inhibit a lot of women," says Kolkata-based psychologist Dr Aniruddha Deb.

For many, having orgasms is something shameful, even with someone they trust. For others, it's just too difficult to say what they need. "There's the idea a lot of women grow up with, that you have to pander to the male ego," he says. "Many avoid sex, or fake an orgasm, rather than articulating their needs."

There's a caveat here: "How does one define wonderful time?" Emotional and physical closeness, warmth and caring can mean a 'wonderful time' even if each sexual encounter does not end in an orgasm, he explains. "The question is of unresolved issues in one's sex life," he says. "And counselling could help."

ONE THOUSAND QUESTIONS

- Will the G-shot really enhance every woman's orgasm?

- How long can one keep taking the shots?

- How safe are they?

- Can they lead to unforeseen side-effects?

- Will there be long-term effects of injecting a foreign material into the vagina?

There's something oddly choreographed about pleasure at the end of a needle. "I would call it all a gimmick," says Dr Shahin Nooreyezdan, chief of the Apollo Cosmetic Clinic at Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi.

He is unconvinced that the G-spot is a distinct anatomical entity. "Under a microscope, vaginal tissues have never shown a huge network of nerve endings." And even if it exists, he doesn't think the G-shot can help women who suffer from sexual dysfunction.

What is worrying is the lack of data about the efficacy of the procedure or its potential complications: from scarring of the vaginal tissue, painful intercourse, infection, altered sensation, decreased lubrication and the reduction of libido.

In fact, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has been questioning procedures such as 'vaginal rejuvenation' and 'G-spot amplification' since 2007 for not being 'medically indicated' and for lacking documentation on 'complication rates' and 'safety and effectiveness' (Obstetrics & Gynecology, September 2007).

The treatment is still based on patient feedback, with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval still pending. Injecting a foreign substance in the vagina is another cause for concern. 'Off-label use' of approved drugs (or using those for purposes beyond what they were approved for) is not uncommon in medicine, nor illegal. And sometimes they are necessary, especially when it comes to cancers-but the risk remains. "Many of the injectables for G-shots are off-label," points out Nooreyezdan.

The FDA's approval process for the safety of drugs and medical devices is considered the gold standard worldwide, and it has not approved any fillers for G-spot amplification, or for injection into the vaginal wall. Collagen, hyaluronic acid, Radiesse and PRP have all been approved for chronic wound healing, not as dermal fillers. But then, the FDA does not regulate medical practice, nor has it received any complaints against G-shots as yet.

As for the doctors who introduced the treatment to India, most consider it to be a 'low-risk procedure' that doesn't require peer-reviewed studies or clinical trials. Most of Magoo's patients worry about scarring, about eventual loss of sensation and about the risk of cancer. "Most of these worries aren't true," she says.

After so many years in the business, she trusts the ground reports: patient testimonials. "I am yet to come across anyone who is not happy," she says. Tulla thinks it's the dawn of a 'new beginning': of women's right to pleasure. For now, things may appear a bit odd, but soon, he predicts, G-shots will be as common as boob jobs.

WE WANT MORE

"May I feel, said he;

(I'll squeal, said she;

just once, said he)

It's fun, said she?"

If sex is a function of its time, what does it say about the sexual life of the nation's women? What explains their foray into an uncharted territory of pleasure? At its core, is it really about a bundle of poorly-defined tissues, that may or may not-at the end of a scary experience and a big price tag-bring on euphoria? Or is it all about power for women?

Juggling high-powered careers with picture-perfect homes, big money with big responsibilities, are they trying to be 'more like men' in that one sphere where biology is largely destiny? To be able to turn their arousal 'switch' on and off just like men, be as genitally-fixated, and enhance G-spots with jabs just as men brandish their erection-enhancer, Viagra?

But the road to Big O may turn out to be bumpy. Despite the debates, doctors agree on one thing: who is an ideal patient for a G-shot? The one who is already having the most fun between the sheets. Ouch.

--- ENDS ---
Donors to the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia have allocated more than $30 million in new funding to the court.

We appreciate the endorsement of the new budget, and strongly appeal to the donor community to continue their necessary financial contribution for the [court] to fulfill its mandate", Kranh Tony, said acting director of the Office of Administration, and its deputy director, Knut Rosandhaug, said in a joint statement.

The revised budget for the year 2017 totals $30.1 million, of which $23.7 million is for the international component and $6.3 million is for the national side.

The budget for 2016 was revised on the basis of estimated expenditures of $30.6 million, of which $24 million was estimated for the international side of the court and $6.6 million was estimated for the national component.

The revision increases the total budget for the period 2016-2017 by $1.9 million for both national and international components.

The tribunal has faced cash shortages due to alleged political interference and corruption.

The tribunal has spent almost $270 million since 2006 to try three senior leaders of the Democratic Kampuchea regime, commonly known as the Khmer Rouge, which oversaw the untimely deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979.
An annual report by the US-based Freedom House has said that 2016 marked the 11th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Cambodia was among those countries ranked not free by the group.

Of the 195 countries assessed, 87 were rated free, 59 were partly free, and 49 rated not free.

Among Asian countries joining Cambodia as not free were Laos and Vietnam.

In 2016, Cambodia scored 32 out of 100,with a one-point drop recorded in 2017.

Thida Khus, director of Silaka, an NGO that monitors public policy, said detaining human rights defenders and using the judicial system to silence opposition voices were reasons behind the lower score this year.

Lately, political tension is high, for example, filing a complaint among politicians over defamation cases makes people dare not to express their ideas.

In past years, Freedom House looked into the passing of a controversial NGO law by parliament, the detention of human rights defenders and senior opposition officials, and attacks on the media.

However, government spokesman Phay Siphan said the report had a hidden agenda and did not demonstrate the truth and reality in Cambodia.

Were not interested in such a report. Its just a so-called devastation report, he told VOA on Thursday.

There were setbacks in political rights, civil liberties, or both, in a number of countries rated free by the report, including Denmarks restriction on immigrant and refugee rights, and the United States uncertainty over President Donald Trumps administration.

Whereas, the Philippines drugs war, which killed thousand in 2016, was also one noted as another setbacks.
While poverty remains a barrier to many Cambodians in the countryside to get good education, two young Cambodian artists, Dina Sok and Sopha Nem, won scholarships to study at National Circus School of Montreal, the most prestigious circus school in the world. After five years of training and practice, Dina Sok recently became the first Cambodian to be selected as a regular with the esteemed Cirque du Soleil and Sopha Nem is heading back to Canada from Cambodia to work later in February.

Growing up in a family of six siblings in O-char commune, Battambang, the northwestern province of Cambodia, Dina Soks family depended on his fathers income from working as a moto-taxi driver.

Dina Sok has become the first Cambodian to work at the worlds biggest circus company, Cirque du Soleil. He told VOA Khmer recently by phone that he still could not believe he is working in the company he has always dreamed about joining.

Until now, I couldn't believe I am working with the company I am working with these days. I still can't believe it. Sometimes I walk along the street, I asked myself who am I working with? Which company? I asked and answered myself that I am working with the company I always wanted to work with, Cirque du Soleil. I usually talk to myself like that. I always smile when I think about that. Even now, I am still smiling.

Born in a big family of 12 siblings in which 7 of them are circus artists, Sopha Nem has a story quite similar to Dina. He said his father is a tuk-tuk driver, and because he saw his brothers lives get better after they became circus artists, he then joined Phare Ponleu Selpak, a non-government organization helping vulnerable children.

He put a lot of hard work into Phare and was determined to succeed.

Sopha told VOA he couldnt believe he graduated from National Circus School of Montreal, the biggest circus school in the world, and could get a job in Canada.

I am very happy that Phare selected me to study in Canada. It is the biggest circus school in the world... I am very happy. I couldn't believe I graduated from there. First, it is not easy to get admission to study there. Also, there are only two Cambodians who studied there.

Life in a foreign land was not easy for Dina and Sopha. They both encountered many difficulties. Dina was only 16 and Sopha was only 17 when they first arrived in Canada. Sopha told that he had to adjust to the weather and to learn a new language. But the most difficult thing was the food.

First, the language. We couldn't speak the language when we had just arrived. Second, the food. Third, the way of living. Fourth, the cold weather. And we were very afraid because we were far away from our families and at that time I was just 17 and my friend, Dina, was just 16. We were very young. But, we studied very hard and later on we knew each other well, we were scared no more. And we believed we have the ability. But the difficulties persisted. The most difficult thing was the food.

For Dina, studying abroad, traveling by plane and seeing snow fulfilled dreams. But at the same time he felt sad because he was away from home and from his mother.

Before I returned back to Canada, my mum cried... she cried, cried very hard before I got in the car.

Little did he know, it was the last time he would see her. About a year after Dina returned to Canada, his mother passed away.

Sopha and Dina first started at Phare Ponleu Selpak, a non-government organization, a home and a place of hope for thousands of vulnerable children who have social and financial problems in their families.

The pair had the chance to study and work at Phare as they grew up. They were talented and fast learners which led to them being admitted to study in Montreal, according to Dara Huot, chief executive officer at Phare Performing Social Enterprise.

Sopha and Dina were just 16 and 17 when they went to Canada. They have shown their admirable talents. They are fast learners. They worked hard and were willing to learn. Therefore, their teachers recognized their ability and talent and encouraged them to show their talent through videos. We then sent the videos to the National Circus School of Montreal in Canada.

Joel Gershon, who is directing a documentary about Sopha and Dina called Cirque du Cambodia: From Rice Fields to the Big Time, paid for the tickets for Dina to visit home in 2015 when he saw his mother for the last time.

He said he was so moved by them and also moved by how Phare helped young Cambodian children who come from broken homes and poverty. This led him to start working on a documentary about their journey.

Gershon said he has been following Dina and Sopha for more than five years to keep up with their progress.

I consider them to have superhero powers. They can flip in the air. They can balance on anything. Dina is an amazing wire walker.

In addition to their talent, they are incredible entertainers. Gershon continues.

They are just so friendly. They give us a warm energy, a positive energy. They really bring smiles to everyone's faces wherever they go. They go to different places. They start standing on their heads. They are doing crazy things. Then the people around will all start cheering and clapping and smiling. It's just great. It's just great to be around them.

Xavier Gobin, Phares former operations director, who worked closely with them before they started school in Montreal, told VOA Khmer that he was so proud to see how successful Dina and Sopha had become.

I am very honored because it was not easy for both of them. It's freezing in Canada and the culture is very different. I knew that they wanted to cry everyday, but they worked very hard. They recognized the opportunity Phare provided to them. And I knew they were really struggling, not just for a month or three but for 5 years. It was very impressive, and I know the ways people work in Montreal and Phare are really different.

For Dina, those problems would not stop him from moving forward. Instead he keeps his hopes alive. He encourages everyone to work hard and dream big like him.

I want to tell all my friends, everyone who are circus artists, that working hard is not useless, and we must dream big. We must dream big because it will make our lives better, and it brings progress to our lives.

Sopha hopes everyone especially people in Canada learn more about the talented circus artists at Phare, so they have the same chance to go study in Canada.

As for Dina, he told VOA that one day he will go back to Cambodia to share the experience with his fellow Cambodians.
Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday attacked the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, former U.S. President Barack Obamas signature trade deal.

President Donald Trump in late January scrapped the TPP by executive order, one of his first moves after taking his seat in the White House.

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Phnom Penh, Hun Sen said the deal would have divided the Asean region.

I say that I want this TPP to die because it has a character of splitting up the 10 Asean members. Asean consists of ten [countries] but only four [are included in the agreement]. I want it to die when they ask [me] about the future of the TPP under Donald Trump. he said.

He mocked the TPP agreement, using the alternative acronym PTT, which he said stood for Political Trade Trump.

The United States and 11 other nations signed the deal in October 2015, with Brunei, Malasia, Singapore and Vietnam becoming the only members in Asean.

Chheang Vannarith, president of the Cambodian Institute for Strategic Studies, said in an email that Trumps decision to scrap the accord was a strategic disaster for the United States.

The image and role of the US in the region will be adversely affected, he wrote.

China is expected to launch a new regional trade agreement, called the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which will include U.S. Allies such as Japan and South Korea, but not the United States.
Afghan forces claim to have repulsed a Taliban attack on a district in Helmand province. The attack on Garmsir district Thursday night lasted until early Friday morning.



Omar Zawak, the provincial governors spokesman, said 16 insurgents were killed and nine were wounded. Local district officials told VOA that 11 Afghan security forces personnel also were killed and 18 others, including 10 members of the Afghan National Army, were wounded.

Fighting continued in Sangin district, which had been under a coordinated Taliban offensive since Monday. The Taliban detonated explosives in a tunnel near a military compound that is surrounded by civilian houses. They overran dozens of security outposts and killed dozens of Afghan security personnel in the intense fighting that ensued.

In the last 72 hours, U.S. forces have conducted approximately 25 airstrikes in and around the Sangin District Center. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) has reinforced Sangin with additional troops and has recovered some of the checkpoints. The ANDSF continues to secure Sangin.

Regarding Garmsir, the ANDSF successfully defended the town with its own assets and retains control of the district center.

Helmand as hotspot

Helmand, the largest of 34 Afghan provinces, has seen the fiercest fighting during the last 15 years of war. Most of the province is under Taliban control, with the government only holding the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, and a few surrounding district centers.



According to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the Taliban control eight of Helmands 14 districts.



Helmand is Afghanistans largest poppy-growing province and provides the lifeblood for the Taliban insurgency. The Taliban earn $1.2 billion annually from taxing poppy farmers nationwide according to the French news agency AFP.



An AFP report from Helmand last year described how farmers, who used to grow one poppy harvest a year, now grow up to three in one year with genetically modified seeds from China.

The United States has announced it would deploy a new group of about 300 troops to Helmand to help Afghan forces beat back the Taliban during the upcoming spring fighting season.

Afghan security forces also repulsed another attack in the Kot district of Nangarhar province carried out by Islamic State fighters. Twelve IS fighters were reportedly killed but official sources say five security personnel also died.

In its most recent quarterly report to the U.S. Congress, SIGAR warned that the Afghan government is losing territory to the Taliban and now controls less than 60 percent of the country.
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said Friday that he will not seek re-election, signaling the end of his nearly four decades in power.

Dos Santos told a conference of the ruling MPLA party in Luanda that Defense Minister Joao Lourenco will stand as the party's number-one candidate in the next election, scheduled for August.

Dos Santos, 74, had previously indicated he would step down as head of Africa's second-largest oil producer. He has ruled Angola since September 1979, making him the continent's second-longest serving leader, behind Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

Under Dos Santos' rule, Angola reaped huge oil revenues and saw the end of a long, destructive civil war. But human rights groups have criticized him for secrecy, corruption and allowing most Angolans to live in deep poverty.

Last month, Forbes magazine listed the president's daughter, state oil company chief Isabel dos Santos, as Africa's richest woman with a fortune of $3.2 billion.

In contrast, ordinary Angolans suffer some of the highest child and maternal mortality rates in the world and an average life expectancy of only 51 years.

Opposition skeptical

In Angola, the person who heads each party's list of candidates for parliamentary elections also stands as the party's presidential nominee.

The MPLA tapped Lourenco last year as the likely candidate to succeed dos Santos. Lourenco told the state-run Angola Press agency that Friday's announcement is confirmation of something that party leaders have "taken for granted."

But dos Santos is not slipping into retirement. The longtime president is number three on the MPLA candidate list. His wife, Ana Paula Cristovao de Lemos dos Santos, is number 17.

For that reason, opposition parties are expressing doubt that dos Santos will truly give up power.

The parliamentary head of the main opposition party, UNITA, Adalberto da Costa Jr, told VOA's Portuguese to Africa service that the top leadership of MPLA has not changed and therefore its essence has not changed.

Lindo Bernardo Tito, vice president of the CASA-CE party, told VOA that the announced change is cosmetic."

The MPLA is the same, the people that they are submitting to the election are those that have always been at the top of the ruling party, he said.

These are the people who have also been named as corrupt, these are the ones who helped Jose Eduardo dos Santos and therefore there is no change, he added.

Lourenco himself said Friday that his main challenges will be the consolidation of democracy and strengthening the economy."

He said his main priority now is to win the elections.

I am prepared to face this challenge and will do everything to honor the trust that people have given me," he said.
Belarus said Thursday it suspected Russia was trying to restore a formal border zone between the two countries, a move it said flouted agreements on freedom of movement and trade and raised questions about Moscows real intent.

Belarus spoke out after the publication of three decrees signed by Alexander Bortnikov, the head of Russias Federal Security Service (FSB), that ordered border zones to be set up in three Russian regions adjacent to Belarus.

In the years after the 1991 Soviet collapse, border controls existed but were removed as the two countries, both former Soviet republics, grew closer again.

Zones scrapped in 1990s

The Russian side took a decision to set up border zones on the frontier with Belarus without advance warning, flying in the face of all existing agreements, Maria Vanshina, a spokeswoman for the Belarusian Foreign Ministry, said Thursday. Many people get the impression that these actions are designed to restore full control over the Belarusian-Russian border, something that was scrapped more than 20 years ago.

Russia and Belarus have long been part of a political and economic union that provides for open borders and allows citizens from both nations to work and settle in the other without going through immigration formalities.

But relations have soured since Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko criticized Moscows annexation of Ukraines Crimea in 2014.

Since then, the two have fallen out over gas pricing, with Russia cutting oil deliveries to Belarus, while Russian moves to try to expand its military presence in Belarus have come to nothing.

Lukashenko, who has often played Russia and the West off against each other to extract concessions from each, has responded by becoming friendlier with the West.

Belarus turns to West

Belarus said last month it would allow visa-free entry for the citizens of 80 countries, including the United States and the European Union, for visits of up to five days.

Soon afterward, Russias FSB border guards were ordered to mark up border zones in three Russian regions next to Belarus, to erect signs indicating their status, and to fix the exact place and time when people and vehicles could enter the areas.

The Russian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment Thursday.
In a rare public appearance, Cameroons president, Paul Biya, paid homage to four top military officers killed in a helicopter crash last month and urged the country to persevere in its fight against Boko Haram militants.

Cameroons top general in the war against Boko Haram, Jacob Kodji, was among the four officers killed when a helicopter went down on January 23. An investigation into the crash is underway.

At a memorial service for the officers Friday, Biya said that Boko Harams fire power has been greatly reduced but stressed that the war is far from over.

He said Cameroonians should be solidly united and remember all those who have died as a result of Boko Haram atrocities. He said their grief should reinforce their determination to continue the battle with the barbaric group. He said the blood of all soldiers who have died while defending Cameroon should prompt the entire nation to participate.

Cameroon's Ministry of Defense says close to 200 soldiers have lost their lives in the war. The president pledged to take care of the families of fallen soldiers but did not give details.

An estimated 2,000 civilians have been killed in Cameroon, and hundreds of thousands more displaced, since 2013 when Boko Haram expanded its insurgency from northeast Nigeria into Cameroon.

Cameroon's military partnered with Nigeria and other regional armies. In the past year, those forces have succeeded in pushing Boko Haram out of much of the territory it once occupied but suicide bombings have continued.
China saw a smaller than expected uptick in the number of births following its landmark decision to end the country's controversial one-child policy



In 2016, the number of births in China increased following its landmark decision to end the country's controversial one-child policy and allow all parents to have two children.



Officials were quick to claim success, arguing that the increase of around 1.4 million new births (compared with an average from 2010-2015) was a sign the new policy was working.



Nearly half of the 17.86 million births last year were second children, but the increase was much smaller than officials and experts expected.



For many families, it is not the statistics that are worrisome, but the financial demands parents face in raising a second child.





Not cheap



Liu, a government employee spending the day with his family at Houhai Lake in the central part of Beijing, said after the policy was rolled out a year ago, he and his wife considered having another. In the end however, they felt the burden was too much to bear.



"[I] wish we could have a second child. One child on his own, is too lonely," Liu said. "It would be better to have two children."



Many parents noted the extreme costs of living in China, in particular larger cities such as Beijing.



More than just food and clothing expenses, parents said they spend as much as $1,000 to $2,000 (some even more) each month on extracurricular classes for everything from art to dancing and skating lessons.



In many cases, parents said they are taking a wide range of courses to see where their children's interests are and to give them an edge in a highly competitive country.



Education and extracurricular activities are not the only expenses, added James King.



"Of course, there's also travel overseas, which is very expensive," King said. "We try to travel abroad at least once a year."

Shared burden



James and his wife Lucy, who have a second child, said that they feel the benefits outweigh the costs, but added each family's situation is different.



"In the future, [a] child must deal with four elderly parents, but having a brother or sister can make it easier to divide up those responsibilities."



What is clear is the two-child policy is really more a question that those with residence in China's major coastal cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, are struggling with. For those from other provinces, bigger families are more common, despite the restrictions.



But that doesn't mean their children see things differently.



Life's pressures



Bai, a young hotel management worker from neighboring Hebei province, said his family, like many others where he is from, ignored fines in the past, to have more children. Especially until a boy was born.



Although Bai has two older sisters and comes from a big family by China standards, he was cautious when asked about his eventual plans for having children.



"Life is very stressful, but if I was to have a child, one would be enough," Bai said. "Either a boy or girl would be fine."



Demographic juggernaut



Traditional Chinese culture puts more emphasis on giving birth to boys as they carry on the family name. And according to tradition, girls are expected to take care of the family they join through marriage.



The over-emphasis on boys has led to a massive gender gap in China, and for critics it is one of the tragedies of the one-child policy. And that's not the only demographic challenge China faces despite its massive population.



China's working population is shrinking as the number of pensioners increases rapidly.



Starting next year, there is likely to be a persistent decrease in the number of children being born, experts say, as the number of women eligible to have a second child will begin to shrink as more fill their quota.



Like many of its Asian neighbors, China has a low fertility rate and so far the government has offered little in the form of incentives to encourage more births aside from ending its one child policy. And because of that, some critics say, the policy shift may be too little too late.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said that Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping, who handles external security affairs and terrorism, will travel to Pakistan to discuss counterterrorism efforts.

By Ananth Krishnan: China announced today that a top diplomat in charge of counter terrorism affairs will travel shortly to Pakistan, days after Islamabad said it had put under "house arrest" Mumbai attacks mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed.

Vice Foreign Minister Cheng Guoping, who handles external security affairs and terrorism, will "shortly" travel to Pakistan to "discuss counterterrorism efforts", Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said today.

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Lu did not directly answer a question about speculation that Chinese pressure may have prompted Pakistan to detain Hafiz Saeed. Other reports have suggested the move may have been aimed at assuaging the new Donald Trump administration in the United States.

Also read: Mumbai terror attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed placed on Pak's Exit Control List

"I noticed relevant reports," Lu said when asked if China had been behind the move. While not outright denying China's role, he defended Pakistan's counter terrorism record, as China often does publicly despite its concerns on the security situation in the country.

"For a long time Pakistan made enormous efforts and sacrifice on counter terrorism," he said. "China supports independent strategies made by Pakistan in counter terrorism and supports the international community in conducting cooperation on that and reiterates it must be based on mutual respect."

China has been concerned about terror groups in Pakistan that Beijing says have links to the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). The newly appointed Director General of Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutanant General Naveed Mukhtar, is said to have paid a quiet visit to China last month shortly after taking over, in part to assuage Chinese fears about the safety of its personnel and projects in Pakistan amid increasing investments as part of the $46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) plan.

China is also concerned about recent attacks in Xinjiang, where six attackers were killed in two separate incidents in the past month in Hotan, not far from the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir border. In January, Xinjiang officials said they were tightening the China-PoK border to prevent terrorists from entering China.

Also read: Hafiz Saeed's house arrest may be hogwash to hoodwink Trump, Modi

Also read: Modi's insistence, Trump's instigation, Pakistan's compromise: Hafiz Saeed on house arrest

Watch: Hafiz Saeed detention: Why India does not believe Pakistan?

--- ENDS ---
The international reaction to temporary immigration restrictions put in place by U.S. President Donald Trump has been largely negative  with several major organizations publicly denouncing the directive  but a few foreign leaders have voiced support for the plan.

Diplomats from several European and Middle Eastern countries have shown support for Trump's order to indefinitely block the settlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S. and temporarily block entry to the U.S. for citizens of seven majority-Muslim nations the federal government has designated as posing an elevated risk of terrorism.

Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski defended the Trump executive order in an interview Sunday with Polsat News, saying Trump "was elected president, he has the right" to restrict entry.

Waszczykowski, a member of Poland's conservative government, added, "No state has the duty to accept immigrants."

Restriction on travel

The Trump executive order triggered protests at airports across the country in the days following its signing and received condemnation from leaders in both the European Union and the United Nations.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein on Monday called the travel ban "mean-spirited" and said it is a waste of counterterrorism resources.

EU Foreign Affairs Representative Federica Mogherini told the European Parliament on Wednesday she "certainly" disagrees with the order.

"As a good friend of the United States ... Europe has a duty to be respectful and clear whenever disagreement arises, especially when it relates to our fundamental values," Mogherini said. "And we certainly disagree with the executive order signed by the president of the United States."

While the international organizations condemned the action, diplomats from member states weren't as uniform in their opposition.

EU criticized

Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano criticized the EU for its own handling of the refugee crisis and said no one should be surprised by Trump's actions "since he had spoken about such things in the election campaign" and won based upon his promises.

"[Europe] is not in a good position to give opinions about the choices of others. Or is it that we want to forget that we, too, erect walls in Europe," Alfano said in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.

In an interview with VOA, Fatmir Mediu, chairman of the Republican Party of Albania and former defense minister, said he understands the reasoning behind the ban and that security should be the "primary interest" of any U.S. president.

"These days, the process of vetting is necessary," Mediu said. "This has been a long-established fact. The system must filter all those people who want to come in [to the U.S.] and at the same time ban those who have bad intentions and terrorist purposes."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Obran has also expressed support for Trump and has been invited by Trump to visit the White House.

In the Middle East, several leaders have voiced support for the travel restrictions, including the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, who called it a "sovereign decision" on the part of America and dismissed claims that it is targeted at Muslims.

"There are attempts to give the impression that this decision is directed against a particular religion, but what proves this talk to be incorrect first is what the U.S. administration itself says ... that this decision is not directed at a certain religion," Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan told reporters Wednesday.

The executive order targets seven majority-Muslim countries, leading some to criticize it as unjustly targeting Muslims.

Terrorism concerns

The Trump administration has refuted these claims, however, on the basis that the seven countries were identified by former President Barack Obama's administration as being of particular concern for exporting terrorism.

Dhahi Khalfan, head of security in Dubai, also voiced support for the ban, telling Trump, "What you're doing is right."

"America doesn't have to accept underdeveloped people, they've already taken in many before. Unproductive groups don't deserve to be in America  Iranians or Iraqis or Somalis," he said on Twitter.

Other Gulf Arab countries, which weren't named in the travel ban, have been mostly quiet in the debate over Trump's executive order, though Qatar's foreign minister did express light opposition to the ban while on a recent trip to Serbia.

"When it comes to be addressed in a Muslim framework, I think this is something we will stand against," Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said.
Rafael Diaz-Yoserev is no huge fan of Donald Trump.

The 69-year-old, who came to the United States from Cuba at age 13, may have voted for Trump but admits he often finds the president's demeanor offensive.

"I still don't like him," says Diaz-Yoserev, who works as a surgeon in Miami, Florida. "But I'm in agreement with everything he's done so far."

Diaz-Yoserev especially supports Trump's move to temporarily restrict immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries and suspend the refugee program.

The executive order, signed late last month, set off days of protests across the U.S.

Last Friday, a U.S. District Court judge temporarily blocked Trump's executive order. Then on Sunday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the Trump administration's demand to reinstate the travel ban.

The White House says the order is aimed at protecting the U.S. from foreigners who wish to do it harm. But opponents say it actually makes the country less safe because it is an unconstitutional and discriminatory policy that represents a first step toward fulfilling Trump's campaign pledge to ban Muslim immigration.

Diaz-Yoserev doesn't see it that way.

"I have nothing against immigration. I'm an immigrant myself," he says. "But if some foreigners are inconvenienced for the protection of the people of the United States, then it's obviously an acceptable trade-off."

He's not alone.

Polls suggest around half the country supports the ban, with opinion sharply divided along party lines.

Widespread support

The latest poll, released Friday by CBS News, found that 45 percent of U.S. citizens approve of the travel ban, compared to 51 percent who disapprove.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this week showed 49 percent agreed with the measure, compared to 41 percent who disagreed.

"I have absolutely no problem with the executive order," says Lisa May, a 52-year-old Trump supporter who runs an in-home day care in Kearney, Nebraska.

May doesn't think the travel ban targets a specific religion, but expressed concern when asked about the idea of Muslim immigration to the U.S.

"If you want to come to this country and immigrate here, then do it legally and become an American and live by the American philosophy," she says.

Some want the travel restrictions to go even further.

Fifty-three percent of U.S. voters support "requiring immigrants from Muslim countries to register with the federal government," according to a Quinnipiac University poll from last month.

During the campaign, Trump suggested he was open to a so-called Muslim registry, though his staff has since tried to distance the president from those comments.

Muslim ban?

Trump also called for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," and made the proposal a top campaign theme for months before eventually backing away from the plan.

At least several senior White House staff have also embraced anti-Islam views, including Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon, who suggested just over a year ago that the U.S. is the "wrong place" for observant Muslims, and National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, who tweeted last year: "Fear of Muslims is RATIONAL."

White House spokesman Sean Spicer this week said Trump doesn't share Bannon's views on Islam. And White House officials continue to insist that the travel ban isn't aimed at Muslims.

Diaz-Yoserev, along with many others, agree with him.

"This has nothing to do with religion," he says. "And if it means a minor inconvenience for some of the travelers to this country, then I'm sorry, but we have to protect our homeland."

But polls suggest the public is skeptical that the travel ban will actually protect them. Only one in three Americans thinks the move will make the country safer from terrorism, according to the CBS News poll.

There are also questions about the legality of the executive order.

Even if courts determine the move is legal and has widespread public support, that doesn't mean it's necessarily justified, warns Max Abrahms, who focuses on international security and public policy at Northeastern University.

"We need to be careful about what the framers call the tyranny of the majority," Abrahms says. "We live not just in a democracy, but a liberal democracy. So we need to make sure that our laws represent not only the will of the people, but that we also protect minorities."
Eritrea reserves some of its harshest criticism for Western nations and often has strained or hostile relationships with its neighbors. So it may come as a surprise that Eritrea is improving its ties with the European Union.

Evidence of this is in a program known as the 11th European Development Fund, which may allocate $229 million over the next six years for projects in Eritrea relating to renewable energy, energy efficiency and economic governance.

The allocation has not been finalized and the money has not been released, officials stress. But in recent years, the program has funded small-scale projects in Eritrea, including using solar panels to power irrigation in rural areas, and has supported community courts to improve the legal system.

Christian Manahl is the head of the European Union Delegation to Eritrea. Concerning the relations between the European Union and Eritrea, we have had difficult times, but in the last couple of years, the relations have improved considerably," he said. "We have a solid cooperation program which is ongoing now."

Although the EU has funded projects in Eritrea since independence in 1993, when the work focused mainly on post-conflict reconstruction, Eritrea suspended its cooperation with the EU in 2011, a year when it expelled nearly all foreign aid agencies working in the country.

Manahl says the Eritrean government has since reviewed its position. "I am convinced the government has come to the opinion that we can have a mutually beneficial relationship based on the cooperation program that we can agree upon on both sides," he said.

EU Wants to Investigate Alleged Abuses

The two sides do, however, continue to have disagreements. One of these is Eritreas continued refusal to allow U.N. representatives to investigate allegations of human rights abuses.

A U.N. Commission of Inquiry and Human Rights recently accused the government of extrajudicial killings, forced labor and stifling free speech and freedom of religion. Groups like Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch have documented similar abuses and harshly criticized the government for years.

Eritrea has long rejected the allegations, and criticized the commissions report for relying on politically-motivated testimony instead of independently conducted research.

Manahl says the EU delegation regrets that U.N. investigators have "not had the opportunity to visit the country." He said he and other EU officials believe that "anybody who visits the country is in a better position to give a more objective, a more complex picture of the reality here."

"We do have, of course, a dialogue with the government of Eritrea on human rights issues," he adds. "This is an important part of European foreign policy and it is in Eritrea as it is in any other country.

Stable Eritrea = Fewer Migrants

The EU has a vested interest in seeing Eritrea stabilize. Along with Syria and Afghanistan, the nation is one of the top refugee-producing countries in the world , and hundreds of thousands of migrants have ended up on European shores or died crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

A spokesperson for the EU said development assistance will be all the more important if Eritrea abolishes life-long military service and young people are able to join the job market. We must offer them an alternative to fleeing the country, with all the dangers it involves, she said.

Similarly, EU Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica of Croatia believes investing in Eritrea is money well-spent by the EU. "We need to assist people with concrete programs that address concrete needs of the people, Mimica said in an email to VOA.

Manahl stressed that economic progress in Eritrea will be a stabilizing factor for the region and European countries.

It is in our interest and it is in the interest of Eritrea that the young people have a perspective here for their future and that we create conditions that they stay here in their country," he said. "We have nothing against migration, but we would like to have migrants who leave in channels that do not expose young people -- actually thousands of young people -- to consider the risks on the journey to Europe."
European Union heads of state meet Friday in Malta for a summit that will focus on curbing migration from Libya. More than 180,000 people attempted to cross the Mediterranean in 2016, and more than 3,000 migrants drowned. As Henry Ridgwell reports, the European Union hopes to boost the capability of Libyan security forces, but faces huge challenges trying to stem the flow of migrants.
The European Parliament voted in a landslide Thursday to back visa-free travel for Georgian citizens to 30 European countries.

Voting 553-66, with 28 abstentions, lawmakers granted Georgia's long-sought privilege to travel to the European Union's Schengen zone without obtaining visas.

The visa-free regime was met with excitement and national festivities in the small Eastern European country that's striving for European Union membership while Russian troops occupy two breakaway regions.

Today is a day of historical significance for Georgia, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said in a statement issued before the plenary vote.

The country's long-awaited visa liberalization enables biometric passport holders to enter the Schengen area for 90 days within any 180-day period.

President Giorgi Margvelashvili congratulated with visa-free grant to Georgian citizens.

Abkhaz and Ossetian compatriots ... will benefit from this decision, he said, referring to the two Russian-occupied breakaway regions where the majority of citizens are forced to obtain Russian passports. In order to benefit from a visa-free regime, residents of the breakaway regions will need to obtain biometric passports of Georgia, which are inaccessible in occupied territories.

Geopolitical gain

EU support for Georgia's visa liberalization is viewed as a significant geopolitical achievement among officials and civil society activists who have been strong voices for European integration.

Pro-European pundit Ivane Chkhikvadze, head of Euro-integration program at Open Society Foundation  also known as Soros Foundation  called Thursday's vote a credibility test for European support, as Georgia has successfully met all the requirements of EU's 2011 Warsaw Summit Declaration, in which representatives of the European Union renewed their commitment to the objectives and continued implementation of the Eastern Partnership.

The Eastern Partnership is part of a broader EU initiative to shape relations and integration with post-Soviet states and eastern neighbors.

Georgia must apply to EU membership and must do it now, Chkhikvadze told VOA's Georgian Service, adding that it will take a strong political will on part of government officials to complete the application. It will take years of hard work, and the sooner we beginning the journey, the sooner we become the EU member.

Davit Bakradze, Georgia's current ambassador to the United States, called the vote an important step in approximating EU standards, which is key to another of long-term national aspiration: NATO membership.

Georgia has a long road ahead in terms of finalizing integration-focused reforms, he told VOA's Georgian Service.

Russia opposed

Eka Gigauri, executive director of Transparency International Georgia, assumed that Thursday's vote may compel Moscow to demonstrate that the former Soviet republic remains within its sphere of influence.

Georgia has reached one of the most important milestones of its foreign policy, she told VOA's Georgian Service. Euro integration will no longer be regarded as Georgia's one-way effort, and politicians in Europe should not be surprised when Georgia makes a call for membership.

Russia has openly expressed concern over Georgia's EU and NATO aspirations, describing the country as part of its backyard.

Georgia, which has been seeking European integration since becoming the 41st Member State of the Council of Europe in April 1999, has drafted EU-style legislation to abolish the death penalty, comply with European conventions and battle corruption and organized crime.

The latest public opinion poll by Caucasus Research and Resources Center showed that 56 percent of Georgians identify as European.

The visa liberalization, once fully ratified, will allow Georgians to travel freely through all EU member and non-member countries, along with Schengen candidate countries.

EU member nations include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

Non-member countries are Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Schengen candidates are Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia and Romania.

This report was produced in collaboration with VOA's Georgian Service.
Federal judges on opposite coasts Friday are to hear legal arguments defending President Donald Trumps travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The ban is sure to reverberate through the courts on a likely path to an appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Heres a look at how the legal issues may play out:

Q: What has happened in courts to challenge the presidents executive order?



A: The American Civil Liberties Union, several attorneys general and immigrant advocacy groups went to federal court to block Trumps action, which barred entry of refugees for four months and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries  Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen  for three months and Syrians indefinitely.

Federal judges in Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Virginia, issued temporary restraining orders blocking at least parts of the order.



The Brooklyn judge Thursday extended her order until February 21, and a Justice Department lawyer said the government would ask her to throw out the case.



Further hearings are scheduled around the country to determine if temporary orders should be upheld and extended.



Because the emergency petitions were made ex parte, meaning the federal government had little or no time to respond, hearings Friday in Boston and Seattle will give the government a better opportunity to defend the presidents order after the chaos that ensued last weekend when travelers were stranded at airports.

Q: What impact have the temporary court orders had?



A: Many of those detained at airports were released, some before court orders were issued and more afterward. In Boston, all the named plaintiffs detained at Logan International Airport were freed, said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.



In New York, two named plaintiffs from Iraq were released, though the judge anticipated the case could expand to a class action representing a broader array of people, including tourists, students and permanent legal residents with green cards.



In several cases, visitors with visas that were valid when issued arrived on U.S. soil to find the State Department had revoked those privileges. Some were turned around and, in some cases, deported.





The federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the U.S. government Tuesday not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S.



But the government has maintained that order and similar ones do not apply because the visas are no longer valid. The named plaintiffs in the L.A. case, a group of Yemenis still in Djibouti, were not allowed to board planes to the U.S.



Jayashri Srikantiah, a professor at Stanford Law School and director of the Immigrants Rights Clinic, said that while the court order appears to clear the way for entry, a more fundamental barrier exists.



The first step for them is whether they can obtain a valid boarding pass, Srikantiah said. They need to be permitted to board so there can be a discussion at the border about what happens next.



Q: What are the legal issues judges need to sort out?



A: The main issues before the courts are whether Trump had the authority to issue the executive order and whether it was constitutional. The constitutional questions include whether the travelers were entitled to some kind of hearing before being barred and whether their religion played any role in their treatment.



On the issue of due process, a legal permanent resident will have firmer standing in court than someone on a tourist visa, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.





The religion issue has played out publicly with advocates and protesters claiming Trumps action was intended to ban Muslims. The president tweeted that it was not a ban on Muslims and was not about religion.



However, several of the lawsuits point out Trumps campaign rhetoric about banning Muslims and statements about making exceptions for Christians from the seven countries.



The government cant single out one religion for harsher treatment than another, Vladeck said.



That issue presents the strongest argument for those who have the weakest legal standing in U.S. courts, such as a refugee whos never set foot in the country, Vladeck said.

Q: What will happen if courts rule inconsistently?



A: With different challenges filed in so many courts, there is likely to be confusion going forward, legal experts said.



You have the opportunity, frankly, for a dizzying array of judicial decisions trying to parse out how it applies to different groups of noncitizens, Vladeck said.



The Department of Justice is likely to take a case to a court of appeal to try to make sense of the many rulings, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.



Of course, those appellate courts could disagree, which has happened on many major issues including gay marriage and ultimately put the issue before the Supreme Court.



The high court would probably not hear the case until the fall. The orders, which could be extended, are due to expire long before that.



This order will not be the final word on it, Blackman said.
Israeli settlers on Friday downplayed White House criticism of settlement construction, instead looking forward to Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming meeting with Donald Trump, while Palestinians said the settlers' hardline stance - with the new U.S. administration's blessing - could spell the end to a two-state solution to the conflict.



President Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements, an issue at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that was a frequent source of friction between his predecessor, Barack Obama, and Netanyahu. Israeli nationalists now believe they have an ally in the White House, and have made no secret they will push for more settlements in the West Bank.



But on Thursday, the White House said that though the administration doesn't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

The unexpected warning came just hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades as soon as possible, promising to make up for a court-ordered demolition of an illegal settlement outpost.



Israeli security forces dismantled Amona earlier in the day amid clashes between police and dozens of hardline settlers who had barricaded themselves inside a synagogue.



Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers' council, said his group thanks the White House for asserting that our communities were never an impediment to peace. Using the biblical name for the West Bank he said nothing is more natural and morally just than Jews building in Judea.



We look forward to working closely with our friends in the new Trump administration to build a brighter future all, he added.



The settler movement is a potent political force in Israel, and Netanyahu's narrow nationalist coalition government is dominated by settlers and their supporters.



Obstacle to peace

The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem along with the Gaza Strip - areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war - for their state. The Palestinians and much of the international community consider all Israeli settlements illegal and view them as a hindrance to reaching a two-state solution to the conflict.



Husam Zomlot, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said this statement of the White House is in the right direction, but we need more than words to protect the two-state solution, otherwise we will find nothing to talk about when President Trump unveils his policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We need actions rather than words to strop the Israeli settlements expansion, which is violating the international law and killing the two-state solution, Zomlot added.



Israeli nationalists, including Netanyahu, defend the settlements on both security grounds and the historic religious ties to the territory. They say east Jerusalem, home to key holy sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is an eternal part of Israel's capital and not up for negotiation.



Today, there are some 400,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements, in addition to roughly 200,000 Israelis in east Jerusalem, also captured in 1967 from Jordan.



In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from Gaza. Two years later, the coastal strip was overrun by the Islamic militant group Hamas. Many Israelis are wary of relinquishing further territory, citing the Hamas takeover - the Palestinian group has launched rockets at Israeli cities and fought three wars with the Jewish state.



Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely issued a statement Friday, saying that if the White House concedes that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, then it must be concluded that expanding construction is not a problem.



Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home Party, has been pushing Netanyahu to abandon the internationally backed idea of a Palestinian state and to annex the Maaleh Adumim settlement near Jerusalem. The White House statement could help Netanyahu fend off hardline pressure to keep building and annex territory.



Flagrant violation

For decades, U.S. presidents have joined the international community in condemning the settlements as obstacles to peace. In December, the Obama administration allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the settlements as a flagrant violation of international law. In his farewell speech, the U.S. secretary of state John Kerry also harshly criticized the settlements.



Trump has said he wants to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, but has given no indication of how he plans to accomplish it. His campaign platform made no mention of a Palestinian state, the cornerstone of U.S. Mideast policy for decades, and he has surrounded himself with advisers with deep ties to the settlement movement.



A day before the evacuation of the Amona outpost, Netanyahu approved 3,000 homes in West Bank settlements in addition to earlier approvals of 2,500 homes in the West Bank and 560 in east Jerusalem.



Netanyahu's government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona. But Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.



The White House said on Thursday that the Trump administration hasn't taken an official position on settlements and the president looks forward to continued discussions on the issue, including when he meets with Netanyahu at the White House on February 15.



When asked by Israel Radio Friday morning if Trump was already changing his tune on settlements, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said I wouldn't describe this is a U-turn.



The statement is very clear ... it says: Wait for the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu ... and President Trump, and then we will determine the policy, Danon added.
The Supreme Court picked its newest member Thursday to take over the investigations of politicians implicated in Brazil's biggest-ever graft scandal, expected to shake the country's establishment and government because of important new testimony.

Court officials said Justice Edson Fachin was chosen by random electronic selection from among a group of five of the court's 10 members and will take over the corruption cases from Justice Teori Zavascki, who died in a plane crash two weeks ago.

Fachin's first task will be to act on explosive plea bargain testimony given to prosecutors by 77 executives of engineering conglomerate Odebrecht. It reportedly names dozens of politicians who took kickbacks, including members of President Michel Temer's government and leaders of his PMDB party.

Another judge needed

Fachin, 58, a law professor from Parana state, was appointed to the court by Temer's impeached leftist predecessor Dilma Rousseff but has established a record of independent rulings despite ties to her Workers Party.

Temer, who waited for the court to decide who would take on the graft cases to avoid accusations of political interference, must now choose a replacement for the late Zavascki.

He could do that in the next few days or even hours, his chief of staff Eliseu Padilha told reporters.

Praise for Fachin

Fachin received praise from Sergio Moro, the lower court judge at the center of the graft investigation. Moro has ordered the arrest of dozens of executives from engineering, construction and oil companies and various politicians and intermediaries since the scandal broke three years ago.

Justice Fachin is a jurist of the first order, who has shown himself to be an efficient and independent judge, Moro said in a statement.
Kazakhstan hosted January's Syrian peace talks that saw agreement on reinforcing a cease-fire. Hosting the talks is about more than just prestige for Kazakhstan, as the country looks to prevent the spreading influence of Islamist extremism at home.



Those talks did not include Islamist militant groups, and the truce excludes such extremists, which all parties say they are fighting against, including Kazakhstan in its own way.



Kazakh authorities estimate several hundred of the country's citizens joined Islamist militant groups in Syria and Iraq.



They say a series of rare terrorist attacks in Kazakhstan in 2016 that killed a number of police, troops and civilians were ordered from Syria. A gunman said to have Islamist links was blamed.



"Islam never calls to bloodshed, on the contrary it calls upon peace," says the imam of Astana's Khazret Sultan Mosque Serikbai Haji Oraz. "Several young people went to Syria. But there are those who came back home and they go through rehabilitation."



"If peace will be established in the territories of Syria and Iraq, it will sanitize the religious situation as a whole in Kazakhstan," says director of Kazakhstan's Akniet Rehabilitation Center Alim Shaumetov.

The Center works to reintegrate those extremists who return to the country and counsels others who want to leave.



"The radical ideology, that is spread via foreign international terrorist web-sites, influences mostly young people who fall under such propaganda easily," says Shaumetov.



One former al-Qaida adherent, who does not wish to be identified and gives the pseudonym "Zhanserik," wanted to go fight in Pakistan. He was prevented from travelling there, but says he's been ostracized by childhood friends who are extremists.



"As they are my friends, I worry about them. I like them. Actually, they are good people. If they find the right way in their lives, they will do many good things. I try not to destroy our relations as I can."



Astana's central mosque has its own media operation that includes a television station, Hikmet TV, and distributes a video condemning Islamist extremists and terrorists.



"Our aim is to de-radicalize our community," says Imam Serikbai Haji Oraz. "And to be able to do that, we should relentlessly pursue some activities in this direction."



At a recent Friday prayer, thousands of Kazakhs packed into Astana's Khazret Sultan Mosque. After prayers ended and worshippers filed out of the mosque, a group of men remained behind. They sat on the floor of the mosque's massive main hall in a semi-circle as a religious leader spoke about Islam.



While the threat to Kazakhstan is comparatively minimal, authorities there say educating youth about true Islam is key to preventing the spread of extremism.
Macedonia changed its asylum law on Thursday to let migrants entering the country illegally avoid jail if they leave within three days.

The move follows a series of fatal accidents involving migrants traveling through Macedonia on the way to more prosperous European countries, following dangerous routes to avoid police arrest.

Macedonia has become a major transit route for thousands of Middle Eastern and African refugees and migrants who cross over from Greece and then continue into Serbia. At least 25 have been killed by trains since January as they walked on railway tracks. Many others are robbed by criminal gangs.

The new law approved in parliament on Thursday will come into effect in eight days, and follows pressure from human rights groups. It allows migrants to apply for temporary asylum at the border or the nearest police station. That will allow them to travel legally through the country for three days.

Interior Minister Mitko Cavkov told lawmakers that the number of migrants has tripled since last year  with 2,000 to 3,000 people trying to enter every day  and criticized neighboring Greece for letting thousands flow clandestinely across the border. Greece is a major destination for refugees and migrants entering Europe, most of whom cross, in turn, from neighboring Turkey.

Macedonia's ombudsman recently criticized the government over its treatment of migrants, saying they are being held beyond a 30-day legal limit in "degrading and inhumane' conditions. Ixhet Memeti made the comments after visiting a detention center in the capital, Skopje, where more than 500 migrants, including 35 children, were living in squalid conditions, poorly fed, with many sleeping on the floor.

Human rights activist Suad Misini told The Associated Press that the new law didn't go far enough.

"The change in the law offers only a partial solution to the problem," he said, urging authorities to release migrants from the Skopje detention center.
Simbu, who turns 33 today, celebrated his birthday with Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangathavan team.

By India Today Web Desk: Having acted as a child artist in his father T Rajendar's films, Silambarasan aka Simbu rose to fame after the blockbuster success of his psychological thriller Manmadhan.

With back-to-back hits like Saravana, Vallavan and Silambattam, Simbu established a strong market for himself. However, it was Gautham Menon's Vinnaithandi Varuvaaya that gave a major breakthrough in the actor's career.

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Confirmed: Chiranjeevi, Pawan Kalyan to team up for Trivikram's next ALSO READ: Ajith's Vivegam look leaves Shah Rukh Khan awestruck

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Basking in the success of the romantic thriller Achcham Yenbadhu Madamaiyada, Simbu is presently shooting for Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangathavan aka AAA.

Simbu, who turns 33 today, celebrated his birthday with AAA director Adhik Ravichandran, music composer Anirudh Ravichander and actor VTV Ganesh.

Ramesh Bala, an industry source, took to Twitter and shared the picture.

Wishing the Multi-talented and a good human - @iam_str a Happy Birthday! Have a great year ahead Brother..?????? #HappyBirthdaySTR pic.twitter.com/ZmbnBriZ9l Ramesh Bala (@rameshlaus) February 3, 2017

Tipped to be a comedy film, the film also stars Tamannaah Bhatia and Shriya Saran in pivotal roles.

Anbanavan Asaradhavan Adangathavan will see Simbu playing triple roles for the first time in his career. In the film, Simby will sport an aged makeover.

Bankrolled by Michael Rayappan under Global Infotainment, the film is expected to release later this year.

--- ENDS ---
Israel's prime minister on Thursday vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades as soon as possible, promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost.

Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction. Late Thursday, President Donald Trump surprisingly suggested that Netanyahu should put new settlements on hold.

Netanyahu spoke just as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue earlier on Thursday to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside.

Netanyahu's pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona. But Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

'Great pain'

Speaking at a ceremony in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed great pain over the removal of Amona.

We all understand the depth of the pain and therefore we will establish a new settlement on state land, he said. Already yesterday I formed a team that will determine the settlement location and get everything ready. And we will act so that it happens as soon as possible.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some case subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

After years of clashes with the Obama administration, Netanyahu's nationalist coalition has welcomed Trump's election. With Trump perceived as being sympathetic to the settlements, Netanyahu has announced plans to build over 6,000 new settlement homes since the new U.S. president was sworn in two weeks ago.

Meeting set for Feb. 15

Netanyahu and Trump are expected to discuss settlement construction, among other things, when they meet at the White House on Feb. 15.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two state solution  with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign  much harder to achieve, said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

100 protesters inside synagogue

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation on Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Initially, police said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.



On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance, police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

24 officers injured

Slogans including Death to Zionists and a swastika comparing the Israeli police to Nazis were scrawled on the synagogue walls. The police later began dragging young protesters out of the building.

Speaking to Israel Radio from inside the synagogue, the rabbi of Amona said the protesters were peacefully resisting the uprooting of the outpost. He spoke above loud noises and shouting in the background. Earlier Thursday, police removed protesters holed up in a small home nearby.

Police said 24 officers were lightly injured throughout the evacuation, and 13 young protesters were arrested.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. It witnessed violent clashes 11 years ago when police demolished nine homes found to have been built on private Palestinian land.



The Supreme Court last year determined that the entire outpost was built illegally and ordered it demolished.

Vehicle rams police car

On Thursday evening, the Israeli military said a Palestinian woman intentionally rammed her vehicle into a police car at the entrance to a West Bank settlement near Jerusalem, lightly injuring three people.

Since 2015, Palestinian attackers have carried out numerous stabbings, shootings and assaults using cars, killing 41 Israelis and two visiting Americans. During the same time, Israeli forces have killed 235 Palestinians. Israel says most of the Palestinians killed were attackers while other died in clashes with Israeli forces.

Israel says the bloodshed is fueled by a Palestinian campaign of incitement, compounded by social media sites glorifying attackers and encouraging violence. Palestinians say it stems from frustration over decades of Israeli rule in territory they claim for a state.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says the country is not immediately considering increasing troops in the Middle East in response to what he called Irans misbehavior, but warned that Washington and the world cannot ignore Irans actions.

In comments made at a news conference during a visit to Japan Saturday, Mattis called Iran the biggest state sponsor of terrorism, and said much of the rest of the world is watching.

He said, however, that despite the capability for the U.S. to send more forces to the Middle East, right now, I dont think its necessary.

On Friday, the United States took its first steps in backing up tough talk about Iran, slapping new sanctions on 13 individuals and 12 entities linked to Tehrans ballistic missile program and its proxies across the Middle East.

The targets include Iranian support networks in China and the United Arab Emirates that have been working to help Tehran obtain technology and materials needed to advance its ballistic missile program.

The Treasury Department said sanctions were also levied on individuals and networks working with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force and the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

"These are just initial steps in response to Iranian provocative behavior," a senior administration official warned, calling Iran's recent behavior "not sustainable, not acceptable."

"Iran has a choice to make," the official added. "We will work positively with Iran when it abides by its international commitments while underscoring our commitment to aggressively counter Iran's destabilizing activities."

'Clear threat'

Friday's actions came as a result of what U.S. officials described as an ongoing process that included consultations with key U.S. agencies and also U.S. allies.

But officials said the trigger was Iran's January 29 test of a ballistic missile, which was "in defiance" of a U.N. resolution barring Iran from engaging in such tests.

A second senior administration official described Sunday's launch as "a clear threat to regional security."

The new sanctions are a culmination of the Trump administration's increasingly aggressive stance with Tehran, following a presidential campaign in which then-candidate Donald Trump said he was willing to rip up the nuclear deal former President Barack Obama and other world leaders negotiated with Iran.

Earlier this week, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn announced the U.S. was "officially putting Iran on notice."

Flynn was even more direct in a statement issued Friday. "The days of turning a blind eye to Iran's hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over," he warned.

'In check'

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer continued with the tough talk.

"President Trump is going to do everything he can to make sure Iran is stayed in check," Spicer said. "He is going to continue to be tough on Iran in a way that wasn't done in the past eight years."

Spicer also reiterated that the president was not taking any options off the table although "he understands the impact" of resorting to military action.

WATCH: Nothing 'Off the Table' Regarding Iran, Spicer Says

Earlier Friday, Trump took to Twitter to warn Iran directly.

"Iran is playing with fire  they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them, " Trump tweeted. "Not me!"

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted a response Friday.

"Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif tweeted. "We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense."

Late Friday, Iranian state television quoted a foreign ministry statement, which promised that Tehran would retaliate with sanctions of its own.

"Iran will impose legal restrictions on some American individuals and entities that were involved in helping and founding regional terrorist groups," the statement was quoted as saying.

The meaning or the impact of the promised Iranian sanctions was not immediately clear.

New U.S. sanctions

But senior administration officials in Washington said the new U.S. sanctions would have some bite.

Although all of the entities and individuals targeted are located overseas, all have "touch points" in the United States, one official said. Whether those involved the acquisition of U.S.-made, dual-use materials or interactions with the U.S. financial system, the Iranian efforts will be impacted, the official added.

U.S. officials also said the sanctions did not impact U.S. compliance with the Iran nuclear deal and that none of the individuals or entities had previously been sanctioned under the Obama administration.

Some analysts, however, are doubtful the sanctions will amount to anything more than messaging.

"The newest round of U.S. sanctions on Iran are unlikely to impact the IRGC Quds Forces and its proxy partner Lebanese Hezbollah heavily," Marie Donovan, an Iran analyst with the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project, told VOA by email. "The Islamic Republic will be able to rely on other networks."

And while much of the attention has focused on Iran's ballistic missile program, Trump administration officials have voiced significant concerns about Iran's use of proxy forces across the Middle East, and in Yemen in particular.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been engaged in a bloody civil war in Yemen, and earlier this week attacked a Saudi warship, killing two crew members.

"Iran has heavy influence, continues to arm and support the Houthis," a senior administration official said.

And while the official said Iran was not responsible "for every tactical decision, Iran in its relationships with proxies through the region bears responsibility for these groups that they are closely entwined with."

Harassment of ships

U.S. officials also cited concerns about a series of incidents in which Iranian vessels harassed American vessels, describing a January 2016 incident as an abduction of U.S. sailors.

Already, the U.S. appears to be backing up the concerns with action, sending the destroyer USS Cole to conduct patrols off the coast of Yemen with an eye on freedom of navigation in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

But whether with the ballistic missile tests or with operations in the waters off Yemen, it may take some time before Tehran is ready to change its overall approach.

"The Iranian government carried out the [missile] test at this time in order to test [the] waters, " former Iranian diplomat Mehrdad Khansari told VOA Persian's NewsHour.

"Naturally, the Iranians want to see if Trumps controversial rhetoric of recent months will translate into action," said Khansari, who served in Iran's pre-Islamist Revolution government.

Tony Shaffer, a retired intelligence officer now with the London Center for Policy Research, expects Iran will learn quickly that the Trump administration is unlikely to have nearly as much patience as its predecessor.

"If they fire at our ships, fire will be returned," Shaffer said. "If they do swarm operations, where they have these small boat operations doing dangerous things in close proximately to our ships, I think you can expect they will be fired on."

Also yet to be seen is what the new dynamic between Washington and Tehran will mean for Iran's proxies in both Iraq and Syria.

Analysts and others say, so far, the activity and rhetoric of the Iranian-backed militias has remained fairly consistent, with little change from the emboldened approach they began taking last year.

'Regional instability'

Much of that has involved Iranian propaganda talking up the militias' role in beating back the Islamic State terror group.

"Iran is using this threat of ISIS to promote this regional instability," cautioned Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior Iran analyst at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "You cannot let the Iranian PR [public relations] narrative go unchecked."

But Taleblu said that narrative may well begin to change as the Trump administration begins to focus more heavily on its primary foreign policy objective  destroying IS.

"There are opportunities to marginalize Iran's presence in Iraq while you target ISIS," he said, using an acronym for the militant group.

For now, the Trump administration's first actions against Iran are meeting with the approval of congressional Republicans, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, both of whom have had marked differences with the president on other foreign policy matters, such as Russia.

"I hope the measures announced today by the Trump administration will serve as a first step toward a comprehensive strategy," McCain said in a statement.

"A coordinated, multifaceted effort to push back against a range of illicit Iranian behavior is long overdue," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said in a statement. "The announcement makes clear that it is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations."
President Barack Obama will be the first U.S. president to visit Laos when he attends an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit in that country next year.

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told a think tank audience in Washington on Wednesday that ahead of the historic visit there is a sense of potential in the relationship between the U.S. and Laos for the first time in a long time.

Rhodes said an emerging partnership on development between the countries focuses on such areas as health, nutrition and basic education. The U.S. is increasingly a real partner to the Lao government, he said.

Just back from his own trip to Southeast Asia in part to lay the groundwork for the ASEAN meeting next year, Rhodes told the Center for Strategic and International Studies that the United States is looked at through a historical lens in the region, and in Laos, it is an ugly historical lens associated with the bombs that fell during the U.S. invasion of Laos as part of the Vietnam War in the 1970s.

But Rhodes said efforts like a U.S. young leaders program are changing that perception. He said the program, only recently extended to Southeast Asia, caught on there like catching lightning in a bottle.

He spoke of a young female participant who visited the U.S., where her favorite place was the western state of Montana. She is now back in Laos, working on issues of waste management and sewage, which the country sorely needs.

Myanmar elections

Rhodes also said that in Myanmar, where elections are scheduled Sunday, international monitors are getting the access they need to polling stations. He said he thought the rest of the world would have a credible set of facts to deal with after the vote.

The election will take place amid reports of sporadic violence, a backlash against Muslims and worries about the integrity of the voter rolls. Myanmar officials have pledged that the vote will be free and fair, but Rhodes noted that "if there are mass problems with the voter lists in certain districts and not others, then that begins to raise questions.

He also cautioned that Myanmar still has a culture in which a campaign speech can turn into incitement to violence. There is a lot of churn, a lot of complexity in the country right now. ... People dont know what is going to happen, he said.

Myanmar has a lot to gain from a peaceful, fair election. It still operates under sanctions that have had a chilling effect on investors, but Rhodes hinted that there could be sanctions relief after the vote. "There's a lot of potential benefits down the road," he said.

Sanctions were imposed after a crackdown on activists in the 1990s by the junta that ruled Myanmar then.
A spokesman for the Trump administration says Sunday's U.S. raid on al-Qaida militants in Yemen is hard to call a success, given the loss of more than a dozen lives, including Yemeni civilians and one American service member.

Sean Spicer told reporters Thursday that the raid was a well thought out effort that the president authorized by memo on January 26. Spicer said the process of scheduling the raid began on November 7, the day before the U.S. presidential election, while Barack Obama was still president.

This was a very, very well thought out and executed effort, Spicer stressed.

Also Thursday, U.S. Central Command said it is investigating the raid and confirmed that civilians, including some children, apparently were killed.

A Pentagon spokesman said the civilians may have been hit by U.S. aircraft fire.

Women among combatants

Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis confirmed Thursday that women were among the combatants during what he called a very fierce firefight that required U.S. forces to call in aerial gunfire support. Davis said the militants chose to return fire in an area that put civilians at risk.

Davis also said the military conducted the raid to get intelligence on potential operations by al-Qaida against the United States.

Davis said the original plan was to go in, conduct a raid, grab things and go.

The body of Navy SEAL Ryan Owens was returned Wednesday to Dover Air Force Base, where President Donald Trump made a previously unannounced visit to pay his respects.

Another three U.S. service members were injured when their aircraft made a so-called hard landing at a staging area for the mission.
U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to block entry to the U.S. for citizens of seven Muslim majority nations has sparked a huge popular backlash, but the policy that stands to affect even more people is his 120-day suspension of all refugee resettlement in the United States.



The presidential executive order, issued last week, calls for the suspension of visas and other immigration benefits to citizens of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. Those countries were named in a 2016 law concerning immigration visas as "countries of concern." It also suspends the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for 120 days, while officials reevaluate its procedures, and limits the number of refugees that may be admitted to the United States to 50,000 within the 2017 fiscal year, the 12-month period that ends on September 30.



One group that is particularly distressed by the suspension is the 14,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia. The United States was the biggest recipient of Indonesia's displaced peoples, the vast majority of whom are Muslims.



"In 2016 alone there were 790 people resettled to the United States," said Febi Yonesta, chairman of SUAKA, the Indonesian Civil Society Network for Refugee Rights Protection. "If Trump's policy continues, Indonesia's displaced population will get seriously backed up."



Aggravating that phenomenon is the Indonesian president's recent decree recognizing refugees and asylum seekers, which some feel will increase the flow of refugees and migrants to the island nation. Indonesia is not a signatory to the 1951 U.N. Convention on refugees, so it functions as a point of transit until they are resettled by the UNHCR in a third country, which can take up to ten years.



The American promise



"For decades, the United States has been a global leader in refugee protection, a tradition rooted in the tolerance and generosity of the American people," said Mitra Salima Suryono of UNHCR Indonesia. "We hope that this suspension is temporary and that the U.S. will continue its strong leadership role in protecting those who are fleeing conflict and persecution."



She said resettlement is a sign of "tangible solidarity" with major refugee-hosting countries like Indonesia, which shoulder the brunt of the displacement crisis despite having far less resources and GDP than developed countries.



"In Indonesia, refugees of various nationalities who are fleeing for their lives and in need of protection are affected by the suspension.some of their cases have been accepted while others are going through vetting and other clearances," said Suryono. "Many have been making plans to rebuild their lives in the U.S. after years of waiting in refugee camps or precarious urban situations." They are worried, shocked, and afraid, she said.



The top three countries of origin for refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia are Afghanistan, Myanmar, and Somalia, with Afghans accounting for roughly half. Nearly all of them are Muslim, and those from Myanmar tend to be Rohingya fleeing genocide in Myanmar, who have been described as the "most persecuted minority in the world."



U.S. Homeland Security chief John Kelly has downplayed the impact of the travel restrictions, insisting the move does not represent a travel ban, but a "temporary pause that allows us to review the existing refugee and vetting system."





Devastating one-two punch



For Mohamed Rasool Bagherian, an Iranian refugee who has been in Jakarta for six years, Trump's orders are a devastating one-two punch. Iran is one of seven Muslim countries from where travel has been restricted under the pretext of curbing terrorism. Ironically, he, his wife, and eight-year-old son are all Christian.



"Three years ago, Australia closed its doors on our family when they stopped accepting maritime refugees," Bagherian told VOA. "This year, America has done the same." Bagherian said that his family was on the UNHCR's list of people to be resettled in the United States as of last year.



"We left Iran when my son was just a baby; he was the only thing we could take with us," said Bagherian, speaking near his temporary home in North Jakarta. "He's not allowed to even attend school in Indonesia. We just want a better life for him."



The new U.S. policies make ostensible concessions for Christians like the Bagherians, but it is quite difficult to prove such affiliations. "Look, my name is Mohamed," he cracked. "It's an uphill battle."



Mixed messages from the government



Indonesia's official reaction to Trump's actions have focused more on terrorism and the travel ban than on refugees.



"We are not affected by the policy. Why fret?" said President Joko Widodo in a radio address on Monday, referring to the fact that Indonesia is not one of the seven countries targeted by the travel restrictions.



Indonesia's Foreign Ministry expressed concern about the ban, but focused on how it may hurt global efforts to fight terrorism.



Human rights experts were more concerned. "Word of mouth spreads pretty fast among these persecuted people," said Andreas Harsono, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Jakarta. Now that there is a "legal framework" for refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia, more refugees will try and come here, he said, and Trump's ban on resettlement has particularly bad timing.



Refugees in Indonesia retained hope that they would eventually make their way to the United States.



"In my country, girls can't even work, but in America you can do anything," said an Afghan Hazara teen who lives West Java. She didn't want to be identified for fear it could hurt the transit process for her family of five, which was on track for UNHCR resettlement to the United States this year. But now she says their status is unclear.



"I still think the American people are the best in the world," said Bagherian. "This is not the citizens' fault. It is the president. I hope he will realize his mistake and change this."
North Korea has dismissed its minister of state security, considered a key aide to the secretive state's young leader, Kim Jong Un, following a series of high-level purges, South Korea said Friday.

Kim Won Hong was removed from office as head of the top spy agency in mid-January, apparently on charges of corruption, abuse of power and human rights abuses, Jeong Joon-hee, South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman, said, confirming media reports.

Jeong said Kim was "first demoted from general to major-general after a party investigation, and then he was dismissed."

Purges not new

Kim Jong Un became leader in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, and his consolidation of power has included purges and executions of top officials, South Korean officials have said.

Park Hyung-joong, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told VOA on Friday, "Once again, [Kim Jong Un] has used Kim Won Hong to enhance the position of the nation's ministry of state security to a higher level and then attacked the ministry through another branch. This shouldn't be seen as a sign that Kim Jong Un's grip on power has become undermined or [the regime's] identity is being challenged, but as a typical way of managing power by an authoritarian regime."

Last year, North Korea's vice premier for education was executed for not keeping his posture upright at a public event, South Korea said.

North Korea rarely announces purges or executions, although state media confirmed the 2012 execution of Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, widely considered the country's second most powerful leader, for factionalism and crimes damaging to the economy.

A former defense minister, Hyun Yong Chol, is also believed to have been executed in 2015 for treason, according to the South's spy agency. It said he was killed with an anti-aircraft gun.

Reports difficult to verify

It is difficult to independently verify news about top officials in the North. Some previous reports of executions and purges have proved inaccurate.

Impoverished North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, the United States.
An animal rescue organization rushed to help save two remaining animals in the Mosul zoo after several dozen of them died of starvation and war amid intense fighting between Iraqi forces and Islamic State militants in recent weeks.

Officials from the Kurdistan Organization of Animal Rights Protection passed through at least five security checkpoints with needed food and water Thursday, escorted by Iraqi forces. They arrived to find a weak lion and a lethargic brown bear in cages at the Murur Park Zoo in eastern Mosul.

"We have provided 300 kilograms of meat for the lion and 100 kilograms of fruits and vegetables for the bear," Sulaiman Saeed, the president of the Kurdish group, told VOA. "The food will last them for two weeks and we will return again the next time with more food."

The zoo, a popular attaction in one of the greenest areas of the city, was once home to two lions, one bear and dozens of other animals.

Fundraising tool

Before IS occupied Mosul in June 2014, people traveled from the northern Iraq region to see the animals. After taking control of the city, IS used the zoo to raise money.

But as a U.S.-backed offensive to drive IS from the area intensified in recent weeks, the owner of the zoo fled and abandoned the animals, neighbors told VOA. Most of the animals died from starvation or were victims of war, neighbors said.

"A few animals were able to escape through a crumbling wall attached to their cages and were hit by a rocket," Omar Al-Hiyali, a neighbor of the zoo, told VOA. "But most of them died from thirst and hunger. Only a lion and a bear have survived."

In recent days, neighbors banded together to help feed the lion and bear.

"They had no food, no water," Najat Alshoka, another neighbor, told VOA. The neighbors, who suffered themselves from food shortages amid the fighting, scavenged to feed the animals.

"Someone who was selling pet birds had to sacrifice some of them to feed the lion," Al-Hiyali said. "Others offered their own bread or collected tree leaves for the bear."

Appeal for aid

Mosul Eye, a social media group on Facebook and Twitter run by activists who report on IS activity in Mosul, appealed to the world for help for the animals.

The activists contacted the Iraqi government and several international animal protection organizations. The Kurdish rescue organization said it received $800 from the Austrian-based Robin Hood Animal Welfare group, said Sulaiman, the group's leader.

After the lion and bear get stronger, Sulaiman said, they will be transferred to the regional capital in Irbil. But the journey will not be easy, he said.

"These are big wild animals that need special equipment and trucks for transportation," he said. "It's not that simple to move them out of Mosul. This is a city with no government and order. No corner is safe here."

For the time being, activists from Mosul Eye wrote in a Facebook post, "the lion and the bear are safe now. They eat and live in peace."
Mauricio Hora's family has lived in Rio de Janeiro's oldest favela for generations but despite his deep roots, the artist-activist has no interest in formally owning his home.

Contrary to the views of many economists, he doesn't believe residents of informal settlements like his native Morro de Providencia should hold official property deeds.

"When people have formal titles, they can sell their homes - it's a form of cleansing the favela," Hora told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Titles make it easier to remove people... there are no advantages to regularizing these titles."

More than 20 percent of Rio de Janeiro's population live in favelas but most lack formal property rights, a setup common in many big Brazilian cities. Instead, they rely on networks of family, friends and community organizations to buy or sell homes which are not recorded on government registries.

Many economists believe that formalizing property ownership will give poor residents more security and let them buy and sell their homes on the market, like anyone else. Activists say this informality protects favela residents from gentrification, as big investors aren't interested in properties lacking titles.

Hora wants people like him - the son of drug dealer - to pull together and win better social conditions in their gritty downtown neighborhood rather than sell out to the rich.

"My hope is that people with education stay in the community and make improvements in sanitation and infrastructure," Hora said as a police helicopter buzzes overhead.

"There is no point in people getting an education and some culture and then just leaving the favela - because that way the cycle just continues."

Global Problem

Debates on how to manage property rights in the world's informal settlements are becoming ever more pressing, as hundreds of millions of people move into cities from rural areas, with many ending up in fast-growing slums.

In a bid to boost economic growth in the recession-hit nation, Brazil's government has launched a program to make it easier for favela residents to secure formal ownership.

"Titles bring the possibility of putting millions of assets into the economy which can be used in the market to access credit," Bruno Araujo, the minister of cities, said in a statement last month announcing the initiative.

The idea that formal ownership for ramshackle homes in slums can improve the economy by unlocking assets was pioneered by the Peruvian economist and author, Hernando de Soto.

Formal property rights for the 5.3 billion people worldwide who currently lack deeds could unlock more than nine trillion dollars in assets, says de Soto, as slum dwellers could get loans to start businesses using their homes as collateral.

"There is no such thing as an investment without property rights," de Soto told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview last year.

'Right to the City'

However some academics and slum residents question these promised benefits, saying they have not materialized in slums where residents have won formal ownership.

"Many countries believed that titles would allow poor people to get finance," Patricia Cezario, a professor of urban planning at the University of Sao Paulo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"That didn't happen," she said, explaining that banks had little interest in administering small loans to the urban poor. "Favela residents are more concerned with their right to the city itself: access to jobs, health, transport and education."

Tens of millions of Brazilians lack formal property rights, but poor data mean the exact number is unknown, Cezario said.

Slum Gentrification

In some neighborhoods, formal ownership has led to gentrification, as residents sell hillside homes to wealthier people. The poor then end up living further out, facing grueling commutes to find work or access services.

Barbara Nascimento, a resident of the Vidigal favela near Rio de Janeiro's wealthy Ipanema neighborhood, has seen friends move away from the increasingly trendy neighborhood.

"There is a lot of demand for the land," Nascimento told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "I want residents to be conscious and stay here, instead of selling their houses to people who don't live here."

Small investors have bought houses informally, Nascimento said, with residents' association providing the licenses.

Without hard titles, big institutional investors have not bothered to buy up homes and land in the area, according to an official with a major U.S.-based real estate brokerage firm.
The U.S. Senate voted early Friday on a procedural move that will allow President Donald Trumps nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, to move on to a confirmation vote next week.

The Senate voted 52-48 to end the debate on DeVos at 6:30 a.m. EST Friday, an unusually early start time, and amid fierce opposition from Democrats.

Just before the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took the floor to say he thought DeVos to be one of the worst nominees that has ever been voted on by the Senate.

Schumer has said he will vote against all of Trumps nominees, and other Democrats have criticized DeVos for being an out-of-touch billionaire and a staunch advocate for charter schools.

Trump has called DeVos a brilliant and passionate education advocate and said she will reform the U.S. school system while breaking up the bureaucracy that is holding our children back.

The Senate is currently made up of 52 Republicans and 48 Democrats. Two Republican Senators, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, have said they will vote against DeVoss nomination, in which case the outcome would be a tie.

Vice President Mike Pence would step in at that point to break the tie in favor of DeVoss nomination.
The Republican-led U.S. Congress took one of its first steps toward fulfilling a promise to roll back Obama administration regulations.



In a 52-47 vote Friday, the Senate passed legislation to end a rule requiring oil and gas companies to disclose payments from the U.S. and foreign governments. Democratic opponents argued the rule furthered transparency and helped prevent corruption in foreign government's dealings with oil companies.

The rule was part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank legislation passed by the Obama administration following the 2008 financial crisis. Debate on the Senate floor Thursday night focused on the impact of the rule on the U.S. economy.

Issues handled under other laws



After the legislation was passed early Friday, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn told VOA, We're not saying there shouldn't be any regulation, but I believe the over-regulation and overreach by the Obama administration has strangled our economy and reduced economic growth and cut jobs.

Cornyn said the issues addressed by the rule will handled under other laws.

This bill is only about regulation and compliance costs and not about the underlying concern because it's already illegal, to my knowledge, he said.

In a statement of support earlier in the week on the White House website, the Trump administration said, The rule would impose unreasonable compliance costs on American energy companies that are not justified by quantifiable benefits. Moreover, American businesses could face a competitive disadvantage in cases where their foreign competitors are not subject to similar rules.

'Kleptocrat Relief Act'

Democrats took to the Senate floor to criticize their Republican colleagues for using the Congressional Review Act to roll back rules that had gone through years of review and study, arguing the bill was an effort to appease corporate allies.



The bill ought to be titled the Kleptocrat Relief Act. My Republican colleagues are trying to repeal a critical, bipartisan rule, said Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio.



It's one of the best anti-corruption tools that President Trump now has to keep his promise to  in his words  drain the swamp' in Washington and around the world, Brown continued.

OxFam concerned



Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat who ran as Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominee, tweeted late Thursday, Now Trump Admin paves way for a reversal that helps Big Oil & allows corruption in poor resource-cursed countries.

OxFam, a global organization working to end poverty, said the elimination of the rule encouraged secrecy that harms the poorest people in the world.



It is clear today that many elected officials have no backbone when it comes to standing up to big oil. Doing the oil lobby's bidding, they are undermining U.S. national security, stripping critical investor protections, and promoting corruption all to protect secret oil payments to governments like Russia, China and other resource-rich countries, Isabel Munilla, Oxfam America's senior policy adviser for extractive industries, wrote in a statement on their website Friday.



President Trump is expected to sign the legislation into law shortly.
By Press Trust of India: murder case

Kochi, Feb 2 (PTI) The Kerala High Court today rejected an appeal against a single bench order directing a CBI probe into a case related to the 2012 murder of an Indian Union Muslim League activist in Kannur district, in which CPI(M) leader P Jayarajan and party MLA T V Rajesh are among the accused.

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Rejecting the appeal filed by Jayarajan and Rajesh, a division bench asked CBI to continue all further proceedings in the Ariyil Shukoor murder case.

In its order, the single bench had directed Kerala Police to hand over the investigation to CBI.

Following this, CBI had registered an FIR.

Challenging the single bench order, the petitioners had argued that the case does not satisfy criteria adopted by the Supreme Court Constitution bench to hand over an investigation to CBI.

They had submitted that local police investigated and filed a charge sheet incorporating offences including Section 302 (punishment for murder)of IPC in the murder case.

They had also contended that the order of the single bench was against the spirit of the Supreme Court judgement.

The single bench had passed the order in February last year on a petition by Aathikka, mother of 22-year old Shukoor who was killed in Thaliparamba on February 20, 2012.

Jayarajan and Rajesh have been charged with not trying to prevent the killing of Shukoor despite getting information about the conspiracy.

According to the police charge sheet, Shukoor was murdered because he was involved in an attack on Jayarajan and Rajesh while they were travelling in a vehicle. PTI COR TGB RC ZMN

--- ENDS ---
Efforts to fix an unintended consequence of recent sanctions against Russia nearly set off a new controversy for the Trump administration, underscoring the high level of anxiety present in relations between Washington and Moscow.

The Treasury Department on Thursday issued a general order titled "Authorizing Certain Transactions with the Federal Security Service," which at first glance appeared to suggest officials were easing sanctions on one of the Russian intelligence agencies thought to be behind efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election.

Adding to the confusion was a series of reports in Russian media, including one from the Russian news agency TASS with the headline "US eases sanctions against Russian Federal Security Service."

"All transactions and activities" with participation of the Russian Federal Security Service  also known by the English initialism FSB  are now authorized, the article said.

Another TASS article quoted former FSB director Nikolai Kovalyov as saying the move "is the first step on the way leading to cooperation in the war on terror" between Russia and the U.S.

Long-planned move

In reality, the move had been in the works for weeks, according to a senior Treasury Department official, aimed at allowing U.S. companies to legally resume exports of cellphones, tablets and software with low-level encryption. Those exports were unintentionally banned when then-President Barack Obama sanctioned the FSB in December.

In addition to its role as an intelligence agency, the FSB also regulates the sale of certain software and hardware. But because of the sanctions, U.S. companies were prohibited from paying the necessary fees.

"These were goods that had already passed muster under this export control regime," said Eric Lorber, a senior associate at the Financial Integrity Network, a strategic advisory firm.

"The only reason that they're being held up in this case was the designation of the FSB," Lorber said, noting there were few other changes to the sanctions.

The order issued Thursday "does not allow U.S. persons to send those goods to the FSB, and generally speaking, it doesn't allow for many other transactions with the FSB, either," he added.

The Treasury Department order caps the amount of fees any one company can pay the FSB at $5,000 a year. But with President Donald Trump having said repeatedly that he would like U.S. relations with Russia to improve, questions remained.

'Not easing anything'

"We're not easing sanctions," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters during Thursday's briefing, defending the move as a "fairly common practice."

A short while later, Trump reiterated the message, telling a group of reporters he was "not easing anything" related to sanctions against Russia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia, and the FSB in particular, of hacking computers connected to the Democratic Party as part of a wide-ranging campaign.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate [former] Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability," according to a declassified report released last month.

Before taking office, Trump repeatedly questioned the intelligence community's findings. Those criticisms have since eased. Still, the president has continued to say publicly that he is open to better relations with Moscow.

Trump and Russian President Vladmir Putin spoke by phone Saturday in what the White House described as "a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair."

Still, many in the U.S. remain suspicious of Russia.

Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism announced Thursday that they were launching an investigation into Russia's efforts to interfere with the U.S. election, as well as elections in other democratic countries.

"To the fullest extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in a joint statement.

Allies watching

A number of U.S. allies also remain wary.

"We still give them some time to see what they will do with Russia," a Western diplomatic official told VOA on condition of anonymity, noting that how the U.S. handles the sanctions in place against Russia is of utmost concern.

"We remain vigilant," the official added. "The sanctions are actually the only leverage we have with Russia."

Some close to the Trump administration urge everyone to be patient and to tune out some of the views about closer ties between the U.S. and Russia that have been coming out of Moscow.

"I think the Russians are a bit overly optimistic," said Tony Shaffer, a retired intelligence officer who worked with Trump's national security adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.

"I'm not sure if the White House has had sufficient time to develop a cohesive strategy," he said, but he cautioned that U.S. military exercises and other operations were sending a strong signal that the Trump administration will be tough.

"You do actually see that there are a number of global operations ongoing that are designed to essentially send strategic messages to the Russians," he said.

VOA White House Correspondent Cindy Saine contributed to this report.
South Korean prosecutors attempted to search the presidential Blue House Friday in connection with the scandal surrounding impeached president Park Geun-hye, but they were stopped by security guards.

The prosecutors were armed with a court-issued search warrant for the presidential compound. The Blue House said, however, that while the president is willing to hand over documents and other materials, it is not legally possible for the lawyers to search the premises because of a law banning searches in areas where there are military and other official secrets.

We are thinking of making an official request to the acting president for cooperation that the Blue Houses denial of the search is inappropriate, said Lee Kyu-chul, a spokesman for the special prosecutor.

Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn became the acting president after Parks impeachment.

Park is accused of colluding with her longtime friend Choi Soon-sil to force or bribe Korean conglomerates to donate more than $65 million to two dubious foundations, while at the same time funneling some of the funds and lucrative side contracts to companies owned by herself and her friends. Both Park and Choi deny wrongdoing.

The Constitutional Court is reviewing the impeachment motion, a process that can take up to six months. If the court affirms the motion, a new presidential election will be scheduled within two months of the ruling.

In December, the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to impeach Park on charges of abuse of power, bribery and infringement of press freedom in connection with the alleged multimillion dollar influence peddling scandal.
Officials in northwestern Afghanistan say a suspected Taliban insurgent has killed at least eight police personnel just days after surrendering and joining the force.

The overnight massacre took place at a security outpost in the Almar district in the province of Faryab.

Insurgent took weapons

Area police spokesman Karim Yorosh told VOA Friday the gunman took all the weapons and ammunition before fleeing the post. The victims mostly belonged to the same family, he added.

The Taliban fighter reportedly had surrendered to the local police force 15 days ago and returned to the insurgent ranks after carrying out the attack.

District Governor Mohammad Saleh Saleh told TOLO TV the killer poisoned the security men before shooting them.

An insurgent who surrenders and promises to quit violence before a local tribal council, or jirga, is allowed to stay in his village or work for security forces. Kabuls official reconciliation policy also encourages insurgents to quit violence and become part of national politics and institutions.

Taliban active nearby

The Taliban is active in several districts of Faryab and recently launched a major assault on the provincial capital, Maimana, to try to capture it. But Afghan security forces defeated the attempt, forcing insurgents to retreat to their nearby sanctuaries.

Afghan security forces suffered a record number of casualties while battling the Taliban last year. They lost around 7,000 personnel while more than 11,000 were wounded, according to the U.S. military.


Wracked by civil war and Islamic State occupation, Syrians living in areas under Kurdish or rebel control are suffering from a major shortage of heating fuel in an unusually harsh winter.

People in the Kurdish region of northern Syria say they have been running low on heating supplies for more than a week.

Many households dont even have a drop of fuel anymore, said Marwan Khanke, 35, a father of three children who lives in the Kurdish city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria. The last time we had a running heater at home was 10 days ago.

The Syrian regime keeps a tight monopoly on oil transports, ensuring areas under government control receive adequate hearting supplies, experts say. A loose network of oil smuggling allows rebels and Kurds to get limited access to supplies, they say. And along smuggling routes, each side takes a cut of the profits, which drives up transport costs and prices to consumers.

There are many actors involved in the fighting, said Hosheng Ose, a Kurdish affairs analyst in the region. This affects the availability of many goods, including fuel.

Black market

The black market makes for some seemingly contradictory business alliances, experts say. Even as the regime battles IS in some areas, middlemen from both sides profit in an illicit oil trade.

Despite oil fields and facilities being bombed alternatively by Syrian allied forces on one side and by the US.-led coalition on another, IS continues to be successful in producing oil and selling it to other parties, including businessmen affiliated with the Syrian government, analysts said.

IS is not only fuel sufficient, it also has the ability to sell it to the [Syrian] regime, said Tammam Baroudi, an economist at the Syrian Economic Forum. IS has imposed high taxes on oil-laden trucks using routes under its control, analysts say.

Kurds in northern Syria are appalled as the fuel shortages exist even as they live near oil wells controlled by Kurdish authorities. But local reports said that much of the oil extracted from the Kurdish region is being transported to government-held areas, leaving local Kurds with a shortage of heating commodities.

Kurdish officials could not be reached for comment by VOA. They have not spoken to local media as protests erupted among residents against the shortages this week.

Kurdish officials have said in the past that oil sales have largely helped them fund their fight against IS. Backed by the U.S.-led coalition, Kurdish forces have been engaged in taking back territory from IS in northern Syria

Caught in the middle

But locals say the lack of fuel for local consumption undermines efforts to sustain self-sufficiency.

How could you sell oil to the Assad regime, if your own population is in desperate need for it? analyst Ose asked.

But the Kurdish region, administered largely by the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not entirely independent when it comes to economic dealings, according to some locals.

The Syrian regime can still force the local Kurdish administration to sell raw oil to dealers in government-held areas, said Barzan Sheikhmous, a local journalist based in the town of Amude.

He said the PYD is also sending fuel to areas recently liberated from [IS], such as Manbij and areas in western Raqqa because they can sell it [at] a much higher price there.

Residents in areas controlled by Turkish-backed rebels in parts of Aleppo province are voicing similar complaints about shortages of heating supplies and skyrocketing prices of fuel.

While we have bad-quality fuel at the market, prices are rising on a daily basis, said Isam, 31, a resident of the town of Marea, who asked that his last name not be used due to safety concerns.

We are at the mercy of fuel dealers who take advantage of our needs, he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump condemned what he called professional anarchists after two consecutive nights of violent protests on college campuses forced a pair of Trump supporters to cancel speaking engagements this week. Trump made the comment in a tweet posted Friday.

Things quickly turned violent Wednesday night when a group of about 150 masked agitators gathered on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley to protest a speech scheduled to be given by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, the university said in a statement.

That group of agitators proceeded to shoot commercial-grade fireworks at police, smash windows of campus buildings and use a Molotov cocktail to set a generator on fire, university police said.

Agitators also attacked some members of the crowd who were rescued by police. UCPD reported no major injuries and about a half-dozen minor injuries, the UC Berkeley public affairs office said in a statement.

A VOA request for comment regarding the incident was not immediately returned by NYUs public affairs department.

Numerous protests have been staged across the country since Trump was inaugurated on January 20, including a Womens March that attracted an estimated 500,000 people in Washington the following day. Most have been peaceful but a few have been marred by small groups of violent protesters, including self-declared anarchists dressed in black.

The California speaking event was organized by the Berkeley College Republicans group and approved by the university, but was canceled before it began because of the violent incidents.

Yiannopoulos is a vocal supporter of President Trump. He is also a self-proclaimed internet troll and was banned last year from Twitter after leading a harassment campaign against Ghostbusters movie actress Leslie Jones, who is African-American.

Since late 2015, he has been touring college campuses across the United States and has had several of his speeches shut down by protesters.

Speaking in an interview Thursday night with Fox News Network's Tucker Carlson, Yiannopoulos called the incident political violence aimed at discrediting his views, which he described as perfectly mainstream.

I dont have opinions that millions of Americans dont share, I just happen to say them in a slightly more provocative and interesting way and on a slightly larger platform, he said.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks condemned the violent agitators. He said the school brought in additional police officers to deal with the crowds of protesters, but they could not plan for the unprecedented.

The Berkeley campus was invaded by more than 100 armed individuals clad in Ninja-like uniforms who utilized paramilitary tactics to engage in violent destructive behavior designed to shut the event down, he said in a Thursday statement.

In response to the incident, Trump threatened to pull federal funding from the school if it continues to allow violent protesters to shut down speakers with divergent opinions.

Trumps threat received a quick response from Californias lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, who referred to Yiannopoulos as a white supremacist and said hatred has no home at California public universities.

That's why the President and his extremist acolytes like Yiannopoulos need to hear from the resistance, loudly and repeatedly. We must continue to step in and stand up to resist reckless rhetoric and actions in a peaceful and forceful manner, he said in a statement.

A similar event took place at New York University Thursday night when right wing internet personality Gavin McInnes attempted to hold a talk on the schools campus.

Police say 11 people were arrested after fighting with officers outside the building where McInnes was scheduled to speak. The disturbance was organized by the self-described NYU Anti-Fascists group, which, in a Facebook post, encouraged protesters to stand up against bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny on our campus.

Gavin McInnes has a long track record of using incendiary language to attract media attention and frenzy, the posting said.

McInness, a conservative comedian and co-founder of Vice Media, was invited to speak at NYU by the schools College Republican group, but was prevented from doing so by protesters who stormed the building and began shouting over him.

According to police, eight men and three women were arrested on charges including criminal mischief and drug possession after a skirmish with police outside NYUs Kimmel Center, where McInnes was attempting to speak.

Videos posted on social media show protesters cursing at and shoving McInness as he was escorted by police into the building.

In a statement following the event, the College Republicans group said it was disappointed about what happened, and called it a shame protesters couldnt be respectful of McInnes.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Tokyo Friday the U.S. stands "firmly, 100 percent, shoulder to shoulder" with Japan.

Mattis, on his first trip since becoming the Pentagon chief, made the comment during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

WATCH: Mattis remarks during Japan stop



Earlier Friday in South Korea, Mattis said any nuclear attack by North Korea on the U.S. or any of its allies would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response.

His trip to South Korea and Japan is to reassure the two Asian allies of Washington's enduring alliance with them.

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened during his campaign to withdraw American forces from South Korea and Japan if they did not pay more for the military support they received from the U.S. South Korea has 28,500 U.S. troops stationed there, while 47,000 U.S. troops are based in Japan.

Mattis also visited Seoul's National Cemetery Friday where he and his South Korean counterpart Han Minkoo participated in a wreath-laying ceremony to pay tribute to the soldiers who died in the Korean War.

On Thursday, Mattis said the Trump administration is committed to strengthening relations with South Korea in the face of what he called the "provocations" Seoul faces from North Korea.

"Right now we have to address the reality of the threat that your country and my country faces, and we intend to be shoulder-to-shoulder with you as we face this together," he said.

Mattis spoke alongside South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn at the start of Mattis' first overseas trip as Pentagon chief.

Hwang said he looks forward to further consultations on the U.S.-South Korea alliance and "responding to North Korea's nuclear issue."

Before landing in South Korea, Mattis told reporters traveling with him that one topic of conversation during his visit will be the THAAD missile defense system, which the U.S. and South Korea want to deploy this year over the objections of China.

"Were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea, we would have no need for THAAD out here," Mattis said. "There is no other nation that needs to be concerned about THAAD other than North Korea if they are engaged in something that is offensive."
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly mocked Hollywood actor and former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who succeeded him as the host of NBC's The Apprentice. At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Thursday, Trump noted again that the show's ratings have fallen and said he wanted to pray for the new host. The star of "The Terminator" movies posted a videotaped response on his Twitter Thursday. Zlatica Hoke reports.
Do you believe it? U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted late Wednesday.

The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? he raged, pledging to study this dumb deal!

What Canberra and Washington agreed late last year had nothing to do with illegal immigrants though. Instead, it was another domestically contentious issue in the U.S. The previous administration agreed to take an undisclosed number of asylum-seekers intercepted at sea while trying to get to Australia by boat.

In other words, the U.S. would take in refugees from a longtime ally to help the ally out.

By some media accounts, the deal sparked a testy phone exchange Saturday between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull  a day after Trump suspended the U.S. refugee resettlement program.

'Heart of the nation'

Depending on who you talk to, accepting refugees might be considered a burden or a responsibility. It is always a negotiation, domestically and internationally: which countries will take in refugees permanently, and when, and from where.

When the U.S. takes in refugees, it telegraphs not only that the country is welcoming to those fleeing persecution, or upholding certain values, but also that the U.S. is showing solidarity with allies far more taxed by displaced people.

The difference between 50 [thousand] and 100,000 in terms of ... impacting the pressure of refugees flows is negligible, says James Jay Carafano, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, who supports the Trump administration's decision to halt refugee arrivals temporarily and cut the ceiling by more than half this year. Accepting refugees is an administration's way of showing solidarity, not to strategically impact refugee flows.

People have refugee policies because it says something about the heart of the nation, says Carafano.

In the big picture of refugee resettlement, the U.S. has been a leader  yet it was never enough. The supply  the number of spaces allocated to the displaced Syrians, Burmese and Congolese who could not return home  was never enough to meet the demand.

UNHCR estimates there are more than 16 million refugees under its mandate.

Even at the most recent peak of American refugee resettlement in 2016, the U.S. took 0.4 percent of the total refugee population.

Yet, that's more than half of the population the U.N. recommended for resettlement  about 85,000 of roughly 150,000 refugees who were placed permanently in so-called third countries.

Citing national security interests, Trump stopped arrivals a week after his inauguration. The move rankled refugees and their supporters.

Eskinder Negash, former head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, says that decision is a failure of the guiding principles for refugee resettlement.

What we're seeing now is the whole program is framed from a national security perspective. From my view, that doesn't take into account foreign policy or humanitarian concerns, says Negash, himself a refugee from Eritrea who served at ORR under the Obama administration and is now with the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants.

When you take the whole executive order  in its totality, it doesn't seem to be a national security concern. It seems to be some kind of political decision, says Negash.

Australia resettles refugees through the U.N. system, but does not accept asylum claims of those arriving by sea. Those individuals are instead transferred to detention facilities on Manus Island and Nauru. So when the U.S. agreed to take in 1,250 refugees, it was a gesture of support to a longtime ally. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Thursday that Trump does not like the deal, but out of respect for [Turnbull], he's going to allow that process, continue to study it.

More than being nice

Beth Ferris, research professor at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration, believes the leadership role in resettlement has a wider impact. Pulling back on the program sets the tone for the countries sharing the largest numbers of refugees  like Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon  who may see it as a signal that they can also scale back on their support to refugees.

Unlike Carafano, she sees Trump's order as a blow to an imperfect but much-needed international system.

When the U.S. does something like that, the Lebanese are going to question, Why are we stuck holding the bag? says Ferris.

In a response from the Migration Policy Institute to the refugee program cuts, Kathleen Newland and T. Alexander Aleinikoff wrote that The United States' willingness to share the responsibility of providing solutions for refugees sends an important signal to allies and adversaries alike that U.S. policy stands firmly against persecution.

Critics of our humanitarian immigration policies will tell you that asylum is a gift, given to needy people because Americans are nice, asylum lawyer Jason Dzubow said at an event organized for refugees in January, days ahead of the Inauguration. And it's true that giving refuge to people fleeing persecution is the right thing to do ... But America did not create the asylum system to be nice.

Granting asylum to those who have stood with us, and who have risked their lives to advance the values that we cherish, sends a powerful message: When you work with us, when you work for the values we believe in, America has got your back," Dzubow told the crowd at the Refugee Ball.

You can't refugee [resettle] your way out of this problem, argues Carafano, who advocates instead for expanding solutions in the countries where those fleeing persecution and violence first arrive. The solution to refugees in the Middle East is not accepting refugees.

The decision to dramatically scale back the refugee program prompts questions from those who support and oppose the order, though: will U.S. aid to countries like Jordan and Lebanon grappling with high numbers of refugees be increased to compensate?

I would suspect that Jordan needs the influx of U.S. funds; they'll be reluctant to jeopardize that over this, says Ferris, adding the caveat: We talk about supporting host countries and host communities, but we're really not very good at it.
The new United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said the U.N. is working to avoid what he calls the "worst" for South Sudan.

Speaking to reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York upon his return from the just-concluded African Union summit in Ethiopia, Guterres said his office will work to see that the conflict in South Sudan is resolved through peaceful means. He said he knows from personal experience that the people of South Sudan deserve peace.

"When I became high commissioner for refugees, my first act was to go to Uganda to celebrate World Refugee Day with South Sudanese, and we helped 500,000 South Sudanese go back home when the country was created, and a lot of hope was inspiring them," Gutteres said.

The U.N. chief added that efforts to fully implement the 2015 peace agreement would depend on the progress of an all-inclusive national dialogue announced recently by President Salva Kiir and a major international effort that involves the U.N., the African Union, and the regional trade bloc called IGAD.

"One of my objectives is to try to establish a sound mechanism of cooperation between the sub-regional organizations, IGAD, the African Union and the U.N. in order to do everything possible to avoid the worst in South Sudan and to bring the South Sudanese situation into a better track for peace," Guterres said.

He said during the AU summit in Addis Ababa that he received assurances from Kiir that the government would cooperate with a U.N.-backed Regional Protection Force of 4,000 soldiers that is supposed to help stabilize peace in the capital Juba.

The protection force had been expected to arrive in late September after being authorized by the Security Council in August, but has yet to arrive. In mid-January, the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan confirmed that it was continuing talks with South Sudan's national government of transitional unity on the various modalities for the regional force, including where the troops will be deployed in Juba.

The confirmation came after media reports suggested that the government might have changed its position on the deployment of the force.

In July, a surge in fighting broke out in Juba between forces loyal to Kiir and SPLA-in-Opposition forces which support former First Vice President Riek Machar, leaving hundreds of people dead, including many civilians.
The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations took a firm stance Thursday against Russian military action in eastern Ukraine, condemning Moscow's "aggressive actions" and saying U.S. Crimea-related sanctions would remain in place.

"I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," Nikki Haley told the U.N. Security Council at her first public meeting since being confirmed last week as President Donald Trump's U.N. envoy.

"We do want better relations with Russia," Haley said. "However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions."

Haley said that U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula would remain in place until control of that territory was returned to Kyiv.

"The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," Haley said. "Crimea is a part of Ukraine."

During the months-long presidential campaign, Trump expressed admiration for Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and there are questions about whether Russia interfered in the U.S. election in order to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. These developments left many foreign policy observers wondering whether the Trump administration would take a hard line on Moscow. Haley's comments appeared to indicate the administration is not prepared to pursue improved relations with Moscow at any price.

Easing of some restrictions

Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was easing some restrictions on business transactions with the Russian FSB security service, despite cybersanctions put in place by former President Barack Obama.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the move did not mean the United States was easing sanctions on Russia.

Fighting has escalated in recent days in eastern Ukraine between Russian-backed separatist militias and the Ukrainian security forces. Thousands of civilians have been left without water, electricity and heat in subzero temperatures, worsening an already difficult humanitarian situation.

Stephen O'Brien, undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, told the council that the severe damage to critical infrastructure was putting thousands of civilian lives in great peril.

"For civilians living on both sides of the front line, this means they are not only traumatized, living in a precarious and dangerous existence, but damage to critical services is making survival an issue," he said.

Security Council members called Thursday for an immediate cease-fire, implementation of the Minsk agreement  a February 2015 accord aimed at ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine  and unhindered access in the area for monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Ukrainian Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchencko said his government was fully committed to entirely implementing the Minsk agreement, saying Ukrainian forces were under strict orders to open fire only in response to fire from the Russian-backed militias.

Yelchencko called for an enhanced international security presence on the ground in eastern Ukraine to prevent what he called Russian provocation.
By Press Trust of India: Guwahati, Feb 3 (PTI) A project to improve HIV testing services and enhancing access to treatment and care for people living in prison settings has been launched in Guwahati Central Jail here.

"Prison HIV intervention project has been launched as the state is geographically surrounded by three high HIV prevalence states, with high mobility of migrants and Guwahati being the gateway of North East (NE) India," Project Director of Assam State AIDS Control Society (ASACS) Manvendra Pratap Singh said.

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He also pointed out the importance of HIV prevention for everyone irrespective of position or location, an official release said here today.

"Scaling up comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment and care services to those living in prisons is paramount to accelerate the reversal of the HIV epidemic and integrate the response," Singh said at the launch of the project recently.

Assam Inspector General of Prisons Ranjan Sharma pointed out the need and importance of prison HIV intervention and hoped that the project would be soon started at the earliest in other five central jails of the state.

The IGP also assured that the Prison Department would extend its full cooperation to implementing agency and hoped the intervention will benefit the health of the inmates.

Prison Intervention Programme (PIP) has been launched with the initiative of National AIDS Control Organization (NACO), ASACS, Family Health International 360, Emmanuel Hospital Association (EMA) and Northeast Technical Support Unit (NETSU). PTI DG SUS DIP

--- ENDS ---
The U.S. Treasury Department has announced new sanctions on Iran in response to the country's recent missile test launch. Thirteen individuals and 12 entities were sanctioned. Some are based in China, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

The announcement follows a warning earlier Friday from U.S. President Donald Trump to Iran after the country's foreign minister dismissed U.S. threats in response to the test launch.

"Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!," Trump tweeted.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also took to Twitter Friday, saying Iran remains undeterred by U.S. threats. "Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif wrote.



The sanctions are the administration's first punitive action against Iran since it put the country "on notice" this week after it test-fired a ballistic missile. They reflect the Trump administration's desire to adopt a tougher position against Iran.



National Security



Before the president leaves the White House for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida Friday, he will have lunch with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn had a telephone call Friday with China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.



In a statement after the call, the foreign minister told Flynn China hopes to work with the U.S. to manage disputes and said the two countries have common interests.

Meeting with economic group



Trump met Friday with his economic advisory group. In addition to health care and taxes, the administration's ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries is expected to be among the topics of discussion.

WATCH: Trump arrives in Florida

A federal judge in the midwestern city of Detroit issued an order Friday that temporarily restrains the Trump administration from carrying out the travel ban. The order, issued on behalf of the Arab-American Civil Rights League, reaffirms the ban does not apply to legal permanent U.S. residents, including those with green cards.

The 90-day entry ban on citizens of the seven countries is supported by roughly one-half of all Americans, according to polls, and is consistent with repeated promises made by Trump during his election campaign. While unpopular overseas, U.S. Homeland Security chief John Kelly said that the ban is not aimed at Muslims, adding that his agencys mission is to safeguard the American people, our homeland, our values."

Executive orders



Trump will sign executive orders Friday to review a law designed to reform Wall Street after the Great Recession. The order is a step toward fulfilling Trump's campaign promise to dismantle the law, commonly referred to as Dodd-Frank. Trump will also sign an order to stop a Labor Department rule that aims to restrict potential conflicts among brokers who provide retirement advice.
She is Central Asias most famous party girl. She designed jewelry and staged fashion shows. She ran television stations. She recorded syrupy pop videos with French film star Gerard Depardieu. And she was once seen as heir apparent to the man who has ruled Uzbekistan with an iron fist for decades -- her father.

Now Gulnara Karimova is a publicly named suspect in a sweeping graft investigation brought by national prosecutors in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

The announcement of the probe Monday was the latest chapter in a head-spinning fall from power and prestige for Karimova.

With her fashion houses and media empires dismantled, and hundreds of millions of dollars in offshore banks frozen by European corruption investigators, she appears to have been shut out of the possibility of stepping into the shoes of her aging father, Islam Karimov.

It is astonishing to watch from this distance, said David Lewis, a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter and former Central Asia researcher for the International Crisis Group. Im surprised its gone so far, but its clearly a sign that the regime is having trouble dealing with this round of internal turmoil.

Under Karimov's iron fist

A former Soviet republic, Uzbekistan is home to Centrals Asia largest population, substantial oil and gas reserves, a cotton industry where child labor is rampant and a festering insurgency by Islamic radicals spilling over from Afghanistans turmoil.

It was also once an ally of the United States in the war on terror, until its relations with the West soured amid reports of human rights abuses and the massacre of hundreds of civilians by government forces in the city of Andijan in 2005.

According to the statement by the Prosecutor Generals office, the investigation stemmed from a probe into an organized crime group led by two men, including Rustam Madumarov, who is known as a close associate and boyfriend of Karimova. Madumarov and several others were sentenced in May for financial crimes including blackmail, extortion, embezzlement and bribery.

Prosecutors said investigators were also focusing on other alleged members of a criminal group, in particular G. Karimova as well as other members ...

Karimov has ruled the country since 1991 and, by accounts of Uzbek exiles, human rights groups and anti-corruption advocates, has allowed graft and nepotism to thrive.

'Poet, mezzo soprano, exotic beauty'

Gulnara, the eldest of his two daughters who calls herself "Googoosha," has flourished as an entrepreneur, hosting art exhibitions in Tashkent, buying exclusive nightclubs in the city and getting herself named a U.N. ambassador in Geneva. Until last fall, she was also a prolific poster to Twitter who called herself poet, mezzo soprano, designer and exotic Uzbekistan beauty.

Last year, Swedish journalists revealed some of the extent of Karimovas dealings, reporting allegations that she was personally involved in negotiating bribes paid by Scandinavian telecommunications giant TeliaSonera to gain access to the Uzbek cell phone market. Karimova has denied the allegations. Other investigations were reportedly ongoing in Switzerland and France.

In October, Uzbek bank accounts belonging to companies linked to Karimova were frozen, and her television and radio stations were taken off the air. A month later, she posted a series of messages to Twitter complaining about her business partners and allies being harassed or arrested by law enforcement agencies. She lost her ambassadorship in Switzerland.

By February, police had searched her Tashkent apartment and arrested Madumarov and other associates. In March, in a letter obtained by RFE/RLs Uzbek Service, Karimova complained about being under house arrest and being subjected to "severe psychological pressure."

That same month, Swiss prosecutors announced they were investigating Karimova for possible money laundering and "alleged illegal acts taking place in the telecommunications market in Uzbekistan." The statement said around $915 million in funds had been seized by Swiss authorities.

Money, not politics

Experts on Central Asian politics said it was plausible that the prosecution was moving forward not for political purposes, but in an effort to obtain the seized funds from European banks.

I feel they are playing political games with her, otherwise they could fine her and put her in jail. Instead now she is just on house arrest, because simply her father is a president, Safar Begjan, an exiled Uzbek dissident, told VOA.

You shouldnt rush to a judgment that shes in trouble with criminal justice in Uzbekistan, said Scott Horton, a New York lawyer and longtime observer of Uzbek politics. It could be tactical defensive maneuver by the Uzbek state.

Whether the investigation will result in a formal indictment of Karimova is an open question.

Regardless, the process has tarnished the Karimov family and its allies, analysts said, and injected an element of instability at a time when Karimov is aging: at 76, he is the oldest ruler in ex-Soviet Central Asia.

Given the danger posed by Islamic militants, past bloodletting between Uzbeks and other ethnic groups and substantial oil and gas wealth, instability of any sort is hugely problematic for the region.

Its not like political succession in many systems, Lewis said. In these post-Soviet authoritarian systems, if you lose political power, you lose material power and possibly much more: perhaps your family, your allies, your clan loses power as well. Theres no mechanism for this peaceful transition of power.

"And inevitably these people hold on for far longer than is sensible, he said.

A correspondent for VOA's Uzbek Service contributed to this report
On Monday, H. and his family learned their move from Bangkok to the United States as refugees from political persecution in Vietnam would be delayed because of President Donald Trump's sweeping executive order on immigration, signed January 27.

The order halted the entry of all refugees for 120 days for a review of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, barred all Syrian refugees indefinitely, and set a 90-day entry ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. The order also cut the number of refugees that the U.S. can accept in fiscal year 2017. President Barack Obama had set the level at 110,000 before he left office. Trump set the level at no more than 50,000 refugees.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, refugees receive "the highest degree of security screening and background checks for any category of traveler to the United States." The process can take years.

Trump's order, while highly unpopular overseas, is supported by roughly one-half of all Americans, according to polls, and is consistent with repeated promises he made during his election campaign. Homeland Security chief John Kelly maintained at a news conference this week that the ban is not aimed specifically at Muslims, adding that his agency's mission "is to safeguard the American people, our homeland, our values."

The final confirmation of the delay of the H. family's transfer for resettlement came via the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on the Monday following Trump's action. Family members had already surrendered the lease on their apartment, taken their children out of school and quit their jobs as they readied to leave Thailand.

"My wife and I were devastated by the news," H. said, asking VOA to identify him only by the first letter of his given name for safety reasons. "My wife is almost six months into her pregnancy. She took it really hard and almost fainted."

When asked about the H. family, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok said in an email to VOA that the embassy "was not able to comment on specific cases."

She added that the Refugee Admission Program would resume after a period of 120 days "for nationals of countries for which the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence determine that there are adequate procedures to ensure the security and welfare of the United States."

The Trump administration on Tuesday said nearly 900 refugees would be allowed into the U.S. this week despite the ban, saying they already were traveling, and that stopping them would cause "undue hardship."

H., once a Buddhist monk, is from the Khmer Krom ethnic group indigenous to Vietnam's Soc Trang province. In 2007, he participated in protests demanding religious freedom. Jailed for seven days, he said he was forced to return to secular life. In 2009, he fled to Cambodia, and then because "Vietnamese authorities were hunting for me," he fled to Thailand and applied to become a refugee.

With help from lawyers from Boat People SOS (BPSOS), a Virginia-based organization that resettles former political prisoners of Vietnam, H. and his family obtained refugee status from the UNHCR in 2014.

When contacted by IOM, the H. family was preparing to surrender to Thai authorities to enter the Immigration Detention Center (IDC) prior to a February 8 departure for Los Angeles.

People seeking refugee status in Thailand are often in violation of that nation's immigration laws. Some have overstayed their visas. Others have entered Thailand illegally. These offenses mean the refugees must be held in the IDC before leaving Thailand.

The H. family had anticipated paying a fine equivalent to $190 for violating Thailand's immigration laws and being held at the IDC for about a week. Now the family is subsisting on that money.

Jennifer Bose, reporting officer for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Thailand, said the U.N. would be providing assistance to those affected families as a matter of the agencys policy.

The UNHCR does not comment on individual cases, but Bose says there are "a couple of hundred" people that were preparing to depart Thailand as part of the resettlement program within the coming weeks. Their journeys are on hold.

The UNHCR is waiting to see "what will happen after the 120 days," Bose said. "Because we don't know more than you, we have been talking with authorities and with the U.S. Embassy in trying to just understand the situation. But  at the moment we don't know."

Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, said, "This blunderbuss type of approach to ban all refugee resettlement for 120 days is really putting people in a very difficult situation," adding that Trump's order is "causing a great deal of consternation, apprehension for no good reason, to be honest."

H. said he hopes Trump will rethink his order, but he admits uncertainty overshadows his family's future.

"My wife will probably have given birth after 120 days," he said. "I'm not so sure if we'll be allowed to resettle in the U.S. then."
The White House said late Thursday that new or expanded Jewish settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

But spokesman Sean Spicer said that while the Trump administration does not believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, it has not taken an official position on settlement activity.

Spicer said President Donald Trump looks forward to his talks with Benjamin Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister visits Washington later this month.

Palestinians say Jewish settlements on West Bank land that they want as part of a future state is the major roadblock to peace. Israel says Palestinian refusal to recognize the Jewish state is stopping the talks.

Settlers vow to build

Israel was furious when the United States, under former President Barack Obama, abstained instead of vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution in December, calling the settlements illegal and demanding Israel stop building them.

Jewish settlers, many of whom are transplanted Americans, told reporters before Thursdays White House comments they expect Trump will not stand in the way of a new wave of settlements.

After eight years of Obama, who didnt let us build, now well say, We will build and build, said Shilo Adler, who heads the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Now is history-making time, Adler told a reporter for The Washington Post. He said the settlers are seeking 100,000 new homes, which would at least double the Jewish population in the West Bank.

Clearing Amona, other settlements

Meanwhile, Israeli security forces Thursday continued to clear the last remaining people from an illegal West Bank settlement.

Most of those remaining in the Amona settlement were taking refuge inside a synagogue.

Police began clearing the settlement Wednesday. They were confronted by hundreds of residents and protesters who set up barricades and threw stones.

The protesters yelled at the police, Jews dont expel Jews. About 20 officers were hurt.

Palestinians applaud return of their land

Israels Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the Amona settlement was built on private Palestinian land and would have to be demolished. Ultra-conservative Israeli officials fought to reverse the ruling.

Netanyahu has approved 3,000 new homes for the evacuated settlers and others elsewhere in the West Bank.

As Amonas uprooted residents and their supporters bemoaned their fate, Arabs in a neighboring Palestinian village clapped and shook hands.

Ibrahim Yakoob, a Palestinian farmer who is part owner of the land that Amona occupied, told reporters: It feels great to see settlers being taken off my land and their caravans removed. The court has done a good thing, although it has taken a long time.

Amona is the largest of around 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without permission but generally tolerated by the Israeli government. Built in the 1990s, Amona stretches out over a rugged, grassy hilltop and looks out across a valley onto Palestinian villages.
Kyrgyzstan wants to sign a partnership agreement with the European Union, President Almazbek Atambayev told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday, a sign that Russia's ally seeks closer ties with the West.

The move followed a decision by Moscow late last year to cancel planned investments of billions of dollars in Kyrgyz hydroelectric power projects as Russia's economy took a hit from the plunge in oil prices.

Speaking alongside Merkel, who visited Bishkek on Thursday, Atambayev said Kyrgyzstan wanted a deal similar to one neighboring Kazakhstan signed with the EU this year to boost mutual trade and investment.

"I have a lot of hope," he said.

In another sign Kyrgyzstan may be trying to mend its ties with the West, especially the United States, it began a review this week of a criminal case against human rights activist Azimzhan Askarov, who had been given a life sentence on charges including incitement to ethnic hatred and calls to mass disorder.

The U.S. State Department last year gave its annual Human Rights Defenders Award to Askarov, sparking a row with Bishkek that led to the termination of a long-standing cooperation agreement between the two.

Draft NGO law rejected

The parliament of the former Soviet republic of 6 million also voted in May against a Russian-style draft law aimed at tightening state control over nongovernmental organizations financed from abroad.

Kyrgyzstan, which hosts a Russian military airbase, had moved closer into Russia's orbit under Atambayev, who became president in 2011.

But last December, Atambayev said Moscow would be unable to finance previously agreed upon plans for two Kyrgyz hydroelectric power projects with a combined value of more than $3 billion.

The volume of transfers from Kyrgyz migrant laborers in Russia fell by a third last year in dollar terms as the rouble weakened.

Merkel, speaking at the same briefing with Atambayev, warned that negotiating a comprehensive agreement with Brussels would be a complex task.

"But, in any case, I will support you in getting closer to the European Union," she said.
A pastor's judicial case in Zimbabwe has been referred to the High Court after a lower court ruled that a charge of trying to subvert President Robert Mugabe's government was a serious offense.

Magistrate Elisha Singano told Pastor Evan Mawarire that the charge of trying to topple a constitutionally elected government was a Third Schedule Offense and a bail application could be filed only at the High Court.

Court disagrees



Mawarire's attorney, Harrison Nkomo, of the nonprofit Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, argued in court Friday that his client had not committed any offense by calling on Mugabe to resign for failing to respect human rights and arrest an ailing economy.

What we were doing at magistrate [court] level was to argue that the facts on the state papers as they appear do not disclose an offense, and resultantly, the detention becomes unlawful and must be released, which the court disagreed with, Nkomo said.

Video sparks protest

Unless the High Court grants Mawarire bail, he will remain in jail and return to court on February 17, when he is expected to be given a trial date.

He was arrested Wednesday at Harare International Airport upon arrival in Zimbabwe after spending about six months in exile in the United States.

The pastor rose to prominence last April when he posted a Facebook video of himself wrapped in a Zimbabwean flag and criticizing the state of the country. The video sparked the #ThisFlag protest movement against the government.

Last July, Mawarire backed a general strike calling for the Mugabe government to respect human rights and to save the ailing economy.

Zimbabwe is home

On Friday, he appeared unsurprised by the ruling. After his arrest, he explained the reasons for returning home.

"Unfortunately, I have been arrested again, Mawarire said. We will get through this. But this is home for me, Zimbabwe is. I have committed no crime and I am allowed to come home.

Following the protests last year, Mawarire was arrested and charged with the same charge of trying to subvert Mugabe's government. Initially, the charge was inciting public violence, but a court ruled police had violated his rights and released him by changing the charge.

Mawarire fled the country soon afterward.
On his first official trip to South Korea and Japan this week, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis is expected to reassure allies made nervous by President Donald Trumps criticisms of free rider nations that do not pay their fair share of mutual defense costs.

I think that uncertainty is viewed as destabilizing or potentially destabilizing. I think a number of alliance partners in the region are raising questions about the credibility of the U.S. alliance commitments, said regional security analyst Daniel Pinkston with Troy University in Seoul.

North Korean Threat

The Pentagon says the defense secretarys decision to make East Asia his first overseas destination is meant to reinforce the longstanding U.S. commitment to defend its allies against North Koreas advancing nuclear and missile threat.

The U.S. defense secretary already spoke with South Korean Defense Minister Han Minkoo on Tuesday by telephone. Mattis reportedly reaffirmed the U.S. obligation to uphold the mutual defense treaty, that would include providing extended deterrence, the guarantee that American armed forces would help counter any North Korean attack on its allies with the vast U.S. arsenal of conventional weapons and even tactical nuclear weapons.

In addition, the two defense ministers agreed to deploy the U.S. THAAD missile defense shield this year as planned, over objections from China and despite mounting opposition in South Korea.

President Trump also spoke to South Korean Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn this week to say the U.S. would remain a strong military ally. And Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet with Trump at the White House on February 10.

Trump uncertainty

During the campaign Trump suggested he might withdrawal troops and allow allies to procure their own nuclear weapons to defend themselves, unless they agree to pay significantly more for American military protection. And in his inaugural address the president vowed to change U.S. policies that, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.

Leaders in Tokyo and Seoul have embraced the supportive statements coming from Trump and Mattis. But others expect the president to follow through on his campaign promise to use strong arm tactics to pressure Japan and South Korea to increase their defense contributions, just has he has done on other controversial issues like recently blocking visitors from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Watch video report from VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb:

Critics say the Trump administrations mixed messages to the region, and the increasing internal divisions and protests in the U.S., are leading allies to doubt whether they can continue to rely on American power.

I think it would be odd if Japan and South Korea do not rethink their positions given the changes in the United States. Otherwise you will be completely at the mercy of the whims, and really the unpredictable conduct and deeds, from the Trump administration, said Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Nakano says Trumps hardline approach will be as divisive in Asia as it is in the U.S., and will likely lead to an increase in anti-American sentiment and closer ties to China.

Converging interests

But Pinkston says the existential threat that a nuclear North Korea poses will keep the U.S. and its East Asian allies united, and that even contentious negotiations over defense costs will not ultimately dismantle longstanding security relationships in the region, especially the ties between Washington and Seoul.

The incentive to cooperate, particularly in areas of national security and economic cooperation between U.S. and South Korea, are so strong that I think it transcends any person or individual in the White House and also the Blue House, said Pinkston.

Mattiss visit to East Asia, he says, as well as the continuation of annual joint military drills, will send a strong signal to adversaries in North Korea and China that the U.S. will remain engaged in the region.

There are over 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan and more than 28,500 in South Korea to maintain regional security. Both countries maintain they are currently in compliance with current defense sharing agreements. Tokyo reportedly pays over $1.6 billion and Seoul over $866 million to Washington to support American troops, in addition to other base construction costs and support. The U.S. spent $5.5 billion in 2016 on its bases in Japan, according to the Pentagon.
These FAQs are based on the executive order, titled "Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attack into the United States" that was signed on Jan. 27, 2017. Some information comes from a voluntary traveler database.

Immigration

The president has suspended issuing visas for people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen for 90 days. During that time, screening procedures will be toughened and the secretary of Homeland Security, working with other Cabinet officials, will determine what information is needed from other countries to determine whether the individual seeking entry to the U.S. is not a security risk. Should countries be unable or refuse to comply, the order says they may end up on a future list.

What if I am a green card holder?

Green card holders are being admitted, but usually after some delay and negotiation. Reported delays range from one hour to six hours.

What if I have a visa?

Visa holders from the specified countries are most often being turned back at the port of entry before boarding. This is true of immigrant visas and non-immigrant visas. There are reports of visas being stamped "cancelled."

Visa holders who are allowed to board planes are meeting with mixed success in being admitted.

What if I have dual citizenship?

People who hold passports in the seven countries and countries that are not restricted appear to be gaining entry with the latter passports. Delays have been reported.

How about family members?

Family members of green card holders are being admitted.

What happens after the 90-day suspension?

A new list of countries will be drawn up based on the determination of information needed to ensure visitors are not a threat, and on which countries are providing that information.

What if I am a diplomat?

Exceptions are being made for diplomats, people with NATO visas or those traveling to work at the United Nations.

Refugees

If I have already undergone screening and am on the list for entry to the United States, can I still come?

All refugee admissions are suspended for 120 days. After that, you will have to undergo additional screening no matter where you are in the process.

However, the order says the United States will prioritize claims made on the basis of religious-based persecution provided "the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's home country." Exceptions along these lines can also be made during the 120-day moratorium.

If I am a Syrian, can I come to the U.S. on a refugee basis?

No. Syrian refugees will not be processed or admitted until the United States decides it is in the national interest. However, the secretaries of state and defense are directed to identify a plan for a safe zone in Syria.

President Barack Obama said the United States would take 110,000 refugees in FY 2017, is that still on track?

No. The executive order calls for 50,000 refugees this year. Roughly 32,000 refugees have already been admitted in FY 2017. About 5,000 are Syrians.
The Zimbabwe pastor who fled to the United States after launching the popular #ThisFlag protest movement faces up to 20 years in prison for organizing protests against President Robert Mugabe in New York.

Evan Mawarire was arrested at Harare International Airport on his return home Wednesday. He is yet to appear in court.

Mawarire has been charged with subverting a constitutionally elected government, which carries up to 20 years in prison.

Lawyer Harrison Nkomo said the charges arise partly from his role in organizing anti-Mugabe protests during the U.N. General Assembly in September last year.



Mawarire is accused of organizing Zimbabweans "to converge in New York to confront the president of Zimbabwe who was attending a United Nations seminar and order him to immediately resign from his position accusing him of destroying the country," according to a police statement seen by The Associated Press and confirmed by his lawyers Thursday.

Mawarire also is accused of using social media to incite "violent demonstrations" between August and last month. He rallied Zimbabweans to protest against the government of Mugabe, who turns 93 this month and is the world's oldest head of state.

On Thursday, he was given two more charges: inciting public violence and insulting the national flag.

Police spokeswoman Charity Charamba on Wednesday said Mawarire was picked up on an outstanding arrest warrant.

"He skipped the country, but as you know, going to America was never going to wash away his crimes. We were waiting for him to return," Charamba said.

It was not immediately clear why Mawarire had chosen to return home. Some in Zimbabwe had criticized him for leaving the country amid the protests. At the time, he said he feared for the security of his family.

Before he left Zimbabwe, Mawarire was detained and initially charged with inciting public violence before prosecutors changed the charges to attempting to overthrow a constitutionally elected government. A magistrate freed the pastor after ruling that it was unconstitutional for prosecutors to bring the fresh charges in court.

Amnesty International's deputy regional director for southern Africa, Muleya Mwananyanda, has called the latest charge against Mawarire "absolutely ridiculous and a total sham," saying it was meant to "punish him for speaking out about the declining human rights situation."

Mugabe has said Mawarire and others should leave Zimbabwe if they were unhappy with the country's situation. The economy of this once-prosperous southern African nation has crashed, and both unemployment and frustration are widespread.
Zimbabwe's central bank has embarked on a program to promote the use of credit and bank debit cards in the rural areas to ease the country's cash shortages that have rocked the southern Africa nation for more than a year.

Josephat Mutepfa, a deputy director at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe at Cheziya High School in Gokwe, about 300 kilometers southwest of Harare, is urging people in this mainly cotton-growing rural area to use credit and bank debit cards instead of cash all the time. As he later told VOA, promoting the use of such "plastic money" in Zimbabwe has not been easy.



I think the topical issue has been the issue of interest on bank accounts," said Mutepfa. "The other issue is: where do we get point of sale? The other issue is mainly, the issue of the unknown. People are not very confident in using new systems. And we also get a lot of questions from the people when we are out here which we take into account in terms of policy direction into the future.



He said the program was getting a buy-in from community leaders such as traditional chiefs and church pastors who would convince their subjects to use plastic money.



Attempt to alleviate cash crunch



Zimbabwe has been facing an acute shortage of cash, forcing some people to sleep in bank lines hoping for better fortunes the following day. An introduction of Zimbabwes own currency called bondnotes, which traded at par with the U.S. dollar in November last year, has not helped the situation.

Diana Mugari from Gokwe is among those who say Zimbabwe is not yet ready for the credit and debit cards the central bank is promoting. She insists on cash.

In our shops, those with plastic money face discrimination," said Mugari. "Retailers allocate just one teller for those who want to use plastic money and there will be long queues. At times we do not get cash back or they put unreasonable limits on cash backs. That presents a difficult position for some as they would have traveled long distances here in Gokwe to a shop with a point of sale to buy.

She urged President Robert Mugabes government to ensure that retailers with point of sale machines take care of those who need cash in rural areas for other transactions that cannot be done electronically.

Addressing citizens' concerns



Denford Mutashu, the president of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers, said his organization was taking note of the concerns being raised by citizens.



He said his organizations members had suffered from cash shortages and would want consumers' concerns addressed to adopt the use of plastic money. One of the concerns that came up was the issue of retailers charging a premium price for those using credit and debit cards.

It was one topical issue we even got here. We actually thought that rampant in urban areas (only)," said Mutashu. "But you notice that quite a number of consumers here complaining about that. What we do as the Confederation of Zimbabwe Retailers, the reason why we are here is to engage. If it is bad business practice, we also educate them. Where it requires the necessity to bring in authorities then we have to do that.

In Gokwe, Mutepfa said business people taking advantage of the cash problems would be fined as they were causing Zimbabwes financial instability.
The joint separatist leadership has called for protests against the death sentence of Muzaffar Ahmad, resident of south Kashmir's Kulgam district.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : Separatist parties have called for a shutdown today in Kashmir against the death penalty awarded to a Kashmiri by a West Bengal court.

The joint separatist leadership has called for protests against the death sentence of Muzaffar Ahmad, resident of south Kashmir's Kulgam district.

Authorities have placed Hurriyat(M) Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest to prevent him from rallying against the court's sentence.

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Muzaffar Ahmad is among the three militants who were arrested by BSF on April 1, 2007 from Petrapole border for trying to infiltrate the International Border (IB).

He along with three others have been given a death sentence under Section 121 of IPC for 'waging a war against the nation'.

Muzaffar's family in Kulgam allege unfair trail and said that they couldn't afford a lawyer to plead their case, hence rendering Muzzafar defenceless.

Protests over the matter were reported from many areas in south Kashmir.

Also read: Terror in the Valley: Video surfaces of armed militants roaming freely on Kashmir streets

Also read: Mehbooba Mufti orders time-bound probe into deaths of 2 Kashmir unrest victims

--- ENDS ---
Nothing is ever easy. The change of administration in Washington should lead to the eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood and all the jihadist groups it has formed. The new President waited no longer than a week before he published a Memorandum on the method of waging a genuine fight against Daesh. However, the allies of the United States have no wish to align themselves too easily with this 180 turn in a policy from which they have learned to benefit.

The United Kingdom is facing different options offered by Brexit  either to seek closer ties with the growing economic power, China, or to confirm the Anglo-Saxon alliance and form a world directorate with the United States. Problems  the Chinese have a very unpleasant memory of British colonisation, and are demonstrating in Hong Kong that they have no intention of pursuing the One country, two systems agreement, while the United States are hoping to replace their military imperialism with commercial influence.

Since Donald Trump has so far declined Londons invitation, Prime Minister Theresa May hurried across the Atlantic. During an astonishing speech given before the Republican representatives in Philadelphia, she spoke of the common History of the two states and the international influence of the Commonwealth  ending with the statement that she was ready to recreate with President Trump the Reagan-Thatcher couple which dominated the Western world during the 1980s.

Meeting President Trump, the Prime Minister was all smiles. She expressed her delight at the announcement by her host of a bilateral commercial agreement, the first of his mandate. However, this agreement will only come into effect once the United Kingdom has left the European Union, which is to say only after a year or two.

Not certain that she had been convincing enough, Mrs. May continued her tour with a visit to Turkey. During her meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, she obviously announced a development in bilateral commerce, but this was not the object of her visit. Most of their discussions centred around the way in which London and Ankara could profit together from the European Union, from the outside.

But before anything else, she began by congratulating the dictator for having so brilliantly defended democracy during the abominable coup detat of 15 July last year  which, in reality, was an attempted assasssination on President Erdogan organised by the CIA. At that time, already, the British ambassador had been the first to change sides and celebrate the victory of the rule of law.

The latest idea of the Foreign Office is to solve the problem of Cyprus by obtaining special economic rights for Turkey. In this way, Ankara would be able to enjoy the European common market without joining the Union - and it would also enable London to use this privilege to continue to trade with the Union after Brexit. Its a clever idea, but it does not seem to be based in good faith, and does not inspire the trust that the same Mrs. May demanded from Brussels for the Brexit negotiations.

Theresa May expressed her concern about the Russo-Turkish reconciliation, despite the secular antagonism between the two parties. Having understood that the Astana negotiations were not aimed at reconciling the Syrian points of view, but at allowing Turkey to make a first move towards Damascus, she sought to destabilise this growing alliance. In her eyes, the problem was not that Mr. Erdogan was preparing to salute President el-Assad after having fought him for so long, but that he should do so under the influence of the grand Russian rival.

Concerning Syria, London could help with fighting the Kurds if Ankara would leave it in control of the jihadists  a proposition which is in total contradiction with the one she made to the Americains. But no matter, it is a historical habit of perfidious Albion to vary their messages depending on whos listening, and to wait and see what works and what doesnt.
UK Prime Minister Awards Founder of Gibraltars Blood Cancer Charity

A principle founder of Gibraltars Leukaemia and Lymphoma charity has been named a Point of Light by Prime Minister Theresa May for supporting patients with the conditions and their families for over 20 years.

Beryl Zammitt is the founder of Gibraltars Leukaemia and Lymphoma charity and has dedicated the last 22 years to providing accessible and trusted support to Gibraltarians suffering from these life-changing conditions.

Her ambitious leadership has also supported family members to cope with, what can be, the overwhelming challenge of caring for loved ones throughout their illness. She is a tireless fundraiser, undertaking a myriad of imaginative initiatives that have raised thousands of pounds for the charity.

Beryl is the latest recipient of the Points of Light award, which recognises outstanding individual volunteers, people who are making a change in their community and inspiring others. Each day, someone, somewhere in the country is selected to receive the award to celebrate their remarkable achievements.

In a personal letter to Beryl, Prime Minister Theresa May said:

Your dedication to ensuring Gibraltarians living with leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma have access to the support they need is inspirational. Your fundraising is making an important contribution to the efforts to beat blood cancers.

Beryl said:

I am honoured to receive this award. I feel very humbled and delighted with the recognition given to me. I would like to share and dedicate this award, especially to my father and brother who were also involved in charity work.

Beryl was informed of her award by the Governor of Gibraltar, Lieutenant-General Edward Davis CB CBE.

His Excellency the Governor said:

I am delighted that Beryl has been duly recognised by the Prime Minister with a Point of Light Award. Her award is richly deserved. Beryl is a shining example of someone that puts the needs of others ahead of her own for the greater good. She is an inspiring example of what can be achieved through bold and passionate leadership. Simply, she is an example to us all. I congratulate a special person that has made a real difference to the well-being of those that suffer from Leukaemia and Lymphoma in Gibraltar. We are lucky to have her.

Beryl is the 674th winner of the Points of Light award, which has been developed in partnership with the hugely successful Points of Light programme in the USA and was first established by President George H. W. Bush. Over 5,000 US Points of Light have been awarded and both President George H. W. Bush and President Barack Obama have publicly supported the partnership with Points of Light UK, which honours shining examples of volunteering across the country.

Regardless of whether its a doctor restoring local monuments in her free time, a father teaching young people life skills, or a local musician giving a voice to lonely people, the Point of Light award honours shining examples of volunteering across the UK.
Black Lightning. Photo: DC Comics

When word came down last year that super-showrunner Greg Berlanti was developing a series about DC Comics superhero Black Lightning, industry-watchers were surprised to learn that he was pitching it to networks, not The CW, which is where he already lords over four series ripped from the DC mythos. But, having flirted with other lovers, Berlanti seems to have come back home  according to The Hollywood Reporter, Black Lightning has a pilot order at The CW. Wife-and-husband team Mara Brock Akil and Salim Akil will write and co-produce it.

Youre not crazy if you havent heard of Black Lightning (a.k.a. Jefferson Pierce), as hes definitely a minor figure in the DC canon. Created in 1977 as something of a belated riff on the then-cooling blaxploitation craze, the hero was notable for being a black lead during a period when such things were sadly still rare. Hes popped up now and again in the intervening years, but rarely in a marquee role. According to THR, the TV version of Jefferson is a retired superhero who, with a daughter hell-bent on justice and a star student being recruited by a local gang, is pulled back into the fight. No word on whether the show will occupy the same shared universe as its Berlanti brethren Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, and Legends of Tomorrow, but given that those shows posit a world where publicly known metahumans are a recent phenomenon, it seems unlikely.
Sometimes I feel like Im being tricked by How to Get Away With Murder. There are moments when I dont know if what Im watching is actually a good show, or if Im just mesmerized by Viola Davis and her eyes. I feel like we dont talk enough about her eyes. Her eyes, you guys.

Anyway, this was one of those episodes. I think it was good. It felt straightforward and focused, but Im not so sure. It begins with a blue-tinged flashback of Frank and Wes sitting in Franks car, parked in an alley. Wes tells Frank that the police are investigating Annalise, and that he might cooperate with them. Frank and Wes engage in some dick-measuring about Laurel and its all very exhausting. Wes taunts Frank because he knows Annalise would never let Frank hurt him  or would she? Frank is telling the police about the events of that day at the same time Annalise is being taken to the police station. Franks story is that he found out Laurel was pregnant with Wess child and he snapped. Sure, that could work.

The police start questioning Annalise about Frank, and she will not cooperate until they get her a lawyer. She also admits to murdering Elvis, which everyone just ignores. Annalise doesnt understand that theyre trying to get information about Frank and not accusing her of murdering him. Since they cant get any corroboration for Franks story, the police are going to let him go. Hes not happy about it, so he leads them to some footage of Wes getting into his car. Well, that changes things.

President LaGuerta is meeting with the Keating Gang to console them about the tragic death of their friend. Michaelas decided that all of this is just a show to make sure none of the gang sues the university. She also believes that Annalise is being framed. Meanwhile, Bonnie is trying to comfort Annalise, and shes working on dropping the charges. Annalise decides this is the perfect moment to list the ways Bonnie has (recently) failed her.

The prosecutors office is scrambling to find evidence to put SOMEONE in jail. Nate arrives and hes dispatched again to interview Laurel, who is coming down from her latest opium binge. Nate asks her one question and she kicks him out. Laurel, youre going to have to do way better than that. Meggy is pulling off her best Ellis Boyd impression and peeking around the corner, watching Frank leave. Meanwhile, Bonnie is meeting with the Keating gang to help dig up evidence about Frank. SOMEONE IS GOING TO JAIL, DAMMIT. The more we get down to it, Bonnie is a terrible lawyer. I would love a late reveal that Bonnie isnt actually a lawyer, but just three very sad blonde cats in her oversized blanket coat. Connor reveals to the gang that he told Oliver about Sams death because  love? Michaela decides that shes going to use this episode as her Scandal audition reel, because its her job to fix it.

The Keating Gang goes to see Oliver to ask him to hack into the DNC  er, the DAs office. Michaela sits him down, makes vague threats, and reminds Connor that theyre in this particular situation because of his big mouth. Oliver understands and hacks into the DAs office to find out exactly what theyve got on Annalise. We get flashes of whats happening to Annalise and Nate. The DA is at a loss, because if the press finds out they wrongfully indicted Annalise, theyre in for a world of pain. Annalise takes her first shower in prison, and the other inmates are hassling her because she killed one of her students. Annalise stands up to the bullies and Nate offers to go talk to Frank. Annalise gets some help from the other old lady cellmate who gives her the gift of a razor. Oooh  thank  you?

Back at Olivers house, he manages to hack into the e-mails, and once you look past all the references to print articles and wanting to order creme brulee, theres a whole giant file on Annalise. The DAs office is trying to connect Annalise to anyone who has ever gone missing in this small town. Remember Rebecca? If I have to watch a flashback with Rebecca and Wes, Im gonna flip.

Bonnie shows up to find out exactly what Oliver knows and takes the info to Annalise. Theyre not going to stop coming for her until shes behind bars for good. The only solution now is to lean into the whole Frank did it thing. Annalise doesnt want to lie. OH, NOW? NOW YOU DONT WANT TO LIE? OKAY, ANNALISE.

Bonnies bright idea is to offer a deal to the DAs office: Annalise will offer them information about Franks crimes in return for her freedom. Instead, the DA just baits Annalise into snapping about Wes. Well, there goes that bright idea. Bonnie tells Laurel that shes the only one who can fix this.

From there, were treated to another masterclass in wig-and-weave acting by Viola Davis, when she takes the prison razor blade to cut her pretty new weave out! Bless this woman and her face and hands and brain and heart.

Asher comforts Michaela for being such a sexy Olivia Pope-type all day to protect them. She finally relents and he puts on a German (I think) masseuse character to please her. Im not not here to yuck anyones yum, but it does seem fun and pretty healthy. Connor shows up to Olivers house and Connor apologizes for getting Oliver into this completely avoidable situation again. The two admit they need each other in a way that Im not exactly sure is so healthy.

The police go to talk to Laurel, and she tells them that Frank knew about her baby with Wes just a few days before he went to pick Wes up from the police station. She says she remembered things since shes stopped riding that sweet, sweet morphine dragon. She remembers that she saw someone in the basement. That someone was  FRANK. Duh.

Frank is arrested again. Bonnie visits Annalise in prison and tells her that, yes, Frank is being charged  but as Annalises co-conspirator. Oh, hell. Annalise says thats okay, because she deserves this, and Viola Davis gives us FACE as we go back into the flashback. Wes gets out of Franks car in the blue past and Frank calls someone to let them know theyve got a puppy problem. The person on the other end of the line? Bonnie. Shes the one giving Frank orders. OKAY, HERE WE GO AGAIN.
A gang of seven men, including six engineering students from a reputed colleges, allegedly lured victims via social media and raided brothel houses while posing as policemen.

By Ashish Pandey: Hyderabad's Cyberabad police on Friday busted a seven-member gang that was allegedly involved in an extortion racket. Those arrested included six engineering students from a reputed college. The gang, led by a cloth merchant, was allegedly targeting brothel houses to get easy money.

According to the police, the kingpin of the gang is 28-year-old B Ranga Raju, a cloth merchant. The other accused are all students and are from well-to-do families. Their names and ages are Y Sri Teja Reddy (19), M Venkata Vamshi Kiran(21), M Nagendra Babu (21), T Sai Kiran (21), K Saiteja (21), and D Saiteja (19).

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'TARGETED CLIENTS FREQUENTING BROTHELS'

DCP Madhapur K. Vishwa Prasad said the gang used to post messages on social media offering services of call girls. "Two of them would then call the client to meet up at a reputed mall (in) High Tech City. After getting the deal done with the client, accused would take the person to a brothel, and here the other gang members, posing as policemen, would 'raid' the brothel" the police official further claimed.

The accused would allegedly rob cash, cell phones, ATM cards and other valuables from the customers, mediators and call girls. They would also take photographs/videos of the 'customers' with the call girls and use it to blackmail the victims. Police started investigating the case following a complaint filed by a software engineer named Amit Kumar. During interrogation, the accused have confessed there crime and said that they committed similar offences in Punjagutta, Miyapur and SR Nagar police jurisdictions of Hyderabad.

Also read: Hyderabad: Harvard alumnus dupes businessmen, including Congress MLA's brother, of Rs 150 crore

--- ENDS ---
Friends look out for friends. Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

Before he ran for president, Donald Trump was a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show, where he happily discussed everything from his daughter Ivankas attractiveness to sneaking backstage during Miss Universe competitions. Now, as Trump has moved into the Oval Office office and started to issue widely unpopular executive orders, Stern worries that Trump is unprepared for the attention. I personally wish that he had never run, I told him that, because I actually think this is something that is gonna be very detrimental to his mental health too, because, he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved, Stern said on his radio show on Wednesday. He wants people to cheer for him.

I dont think its going to be a healthy experience. And by the way, hes now on this anti-Hollywood kick, Stern continued, noting Trumps continuing feud with everyone from Meryl Streep to the cast of Hamilton. He loves Hollywood. First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants to hobnob with them. All of this hatred and stuff directed towards him. Its not good for him. Its not good. Theres a reason every president who leaves the office has grey hair.

Before the election, Stern said that he would not dig up old, possibly damaging interviews with Trump, though he himself was a Hillary Clinton supporter. On his show, Stern said that he still doesnt know exactly what motivated Trump to run, especially since his political views seemed relatively more moderate beforehand. I think it started out as like a kinda cool, fun thing to do in order to get a couple more bucks out of NBC for The Apprentice, I actually do believe that, Stern said. Later, he expanded his theory: He just wanted a couple more bucks out of NBC, and that is why Donald is calling for voter fraud investigations. Hes pissed he won. He still wants Hillary Clinton to win. Hes so fucking pissed, hes hoping that he can find some voter fraud and hand it over to Hillary. Or, if Trump really is so obsessed with Apprentice ratings, he could always take up Arnolds offer for a fun little presidency switcheroo.
Golshifteh Farahani. Photo: Mike Windle/Getty Images

Golshifteh Farahani doesnt carry her Iranian passport anymore, but Donald Trumps travel ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries might still hamper the Paris-based actresss next Hollywood role. The Paterson star  whos set to appear in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales  said Trumps ban might make her lose out on a role as soon as this weekend. Im supposed to go to the U.S. this Saturday for a movie, but I might not be able to go, Farahani told The Hollywood Reporter. The embassy is so busy. Ive been trying to get an ESTA, but I cant even get onto the website. I think some crazy things are happening. Farahani declined to say what role she might miss out on, but said producers are already looking for a backup just in case. The Iranian-born actress is in a unique position: After she appeared in Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio, she was exiled from Iran for appearing in the movie and on the red carpet without a veil. We cant even go back there. We dont even have the opportunity of living in our own country, but still we are being punished, she said.
Big Brother is arriving from overseas. In an eerily resonant start to the 20172018 season, a stage adaptation of George Orwells chilling dystopian novel 1984 will travel from the London stage to Broadway this June  that is, from the land of Brexit to the land of Trump.

Created by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan, this new adaptation of 1984 was originally produced in the U.K. by the Headlong, Nottingham Playhouse, and Almeida Theatre. Under producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Rudin, it will arrive in New York with its London creative team intact, adding a new American cast of party members and proles. The limited engagement will open at the Hudson Theatre on Thursday, June 22.

In its four U.K. runs at a series of theaters, 1984 enjoyed warm reviews that praised its immersive sets and multimedia elements. In this dark and retro future, cameras are everywhere, as are Newspeak and propaganda. The Broadway production will also ride a wave of renewed interest in the 1949 novel, sales of which spiked on Amazon and elsewhere after Trump adviser Kellyanne Conways recent defense of alternative facts. (The star of the 1984 film adaptation of 1984, John Hurt, died just last week.) Critics have brought up Orwells dystopia as a way of understanding an increasingly nationalistic, populist, and repressive America, where the president wishes, and has started to demand, that the press act more like the Ministry of Truth (and perhaps provokes a war with Oceania). As the theater, too, has become a subject of the new presidents ire, its a neat irony that, with 1984, Broadway will be providing a different kind of propaganda, this time for resistance.
Is there anything more thrilling than an offscreen restraining order? That Nashville sure knows how to bring the drama! So yes, the stalkers name is Carl Hockney  not to be confused with British Pop artist David Hockney  and hes been issued a restraining order, the concept of which Rayna doesnt seem to fully understand.

So violating the terms means  what? she asks the security guy, screwing up her face in confusion.

Security guy, who comes highly recommended by someone named Dolly (heh), tells her not to worry. You see, hes been to Iraq and Afghanistan and has seen some shit and he laughs in the face of stupid Carl Hockney and his handwritten letters and stemmed roses and bold representative works on canvas (wait  scratch that last one).

After he leaves, Rayna and Deacon want to huddle with the girls to discuss security, but Maddie wants to instead talk to Clay. Rayna expresses some reservations about Clay  because hes 24!  and Maddie says, You guys clearly hate him because hes black! Yikes, that escalated quickly. (BTW, I so need a screenshot of Daphnes Ohnoyoudidnt face when Maddie said that.) Rayna replies by essentially saying, No, were enlightened children of the 70s who are colorblind and literally just concerned because hes older. Maddies not buying it.

Meanwhile, over at the rehab center, Juliette is yukking it up with her physical therapist, who is confirmed as a trans woman. Juliette is all, You go, girl! about the PT coming out to her disapproving father. God doesnt make mistakes, her father barked to her. God mustve known what he was doing when he made me trans, she sassily replied. (Nashville is such a curious experiment in blending red- and blue-state sensibilities, dont you think?)

Juliette, who is now walking on crutches, seems perfectly content and serene throughout this episode, and thats because her transformation into a churchgoing, God-fearing woman is nearly complete. Anyway, the show does this not-so-subtle thing where it blends scenes from Averys country-rock concert at the Barista Parlor with the ministers fiery sermon at Juliettes new church. We all gotta worship something, I guess.

Later, Juliette visits Hallie Jordan at her gig, which is in front of a small group of (musically sophisticated) first-graders. Hallie is ah-mazing and Juliette will not rest until she agrees to a record contract. Honestly, Hallie should just give up now.

Speaking of record contracts, while enjoying some delicious-looking waffles at the Barista Parlor, Avery is approached by this sleazy producer who wants to rep him. Avery seems to attract sleazy producers the way I attract mansplainers on Twitter. (Every once in a while I get a flashback to Wyclef Jean circa season one, and I chuckle to myself quietly.) Anyway, Avery is intrigued.

Maddie goes vintage-record-shopping with Clay, who should definitely adopt the Coco Chanel school of dressing and lose one (or 12) of his accessories. She asks him if he was the one who started the fight that landed him in the hospital. Naturally, he gets all insulted.

Youre scared of me! he says.

I am a little, she admits.

You think Im going to hit you, or something? he asks. (A really simple way to resolve this conversation would be to tell Maddie that a bunch of racist bros jumped him. But that would be too easy.) Look, I dont hurt people, Maddie, he continues. The only person I hurt is myself.

Meanwhile, Maddie finally tells Rayna about Clays bipolar disease and how he refuses to go on his meds. Raynas touching response: I fell in love with a messed-up alcoholic. Im not sitting in judgment of anybody. (Its awkward, because shes talking about Deacon.) Then she adds, I just hope you know you deserve to be happy.

Deacon and Maddie also have a heart-to-heart, while eating annoyingly dainty bowls of ice cream, and later, Clay breaks up with Maddie via voicemail message, which is only marginally better than doing it by Post-it. But by the end of the show, they seem to be back together again. These two really need to pick a lane.

Oh, and Ive yet to mention the most stunning development of them all: Daphne has a  gasp!  love interest! Honestly, Im not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I love me some Daphne. On the other, if Nashville thinks were clamoring for more adolescent romance, I think they got the wrong memo. Anyway, her little tween stud has the most excellent name of Flynn Burnett and he only wants to go out with Daphne if shes not weird. No weirder than you, she replies. Drag him, Daphne! A little bit later, Daphne is approached in the playground by none other than Carl Hockney, who has another letter for Rayna. Once again, Carl Hockney doesnt seem particularly intimidating, but Daphne is smart enough to run away and call for help. Looks like someone just violated his restraining order.

The absolute worst part of the episode is when Scarlett goes to visit Damien George in the studio and is utterly mesmerized by a snippet of the video. Shes watching a clip of herself watching herself in the mirror, so there is some serious Inception-level stuff going on here. She goes on to say that Damien captured her like no one ever has. How did you do that? she asks, in that tremulous Scarlett voice. I didnt do it; you did, Damien replies smugly. (Translation: I did it.) Lord give me strength.

Theres also a surprise cameo from Luke Wheeler in this episode, which is sure to please Luke Wheeler Nation. (Hey, Im sure it exists somewhere.) Turns out he just wants to sit on his farm and write music and scroll the trades for new primetime television gigs (oh  wait). Also, hes selling Wheeler Dealer Records. How conveeeenient. As Rayna and Luke have a surprisingly civil conversation, Zach Welles scampers off to snoop around backstage and makes his way to Wills dressing room, where they make sweet, sweet love. Well, not yet. But its coming. Oh, its coming. (By the way, what do we think of Zach Welles? I cant get a read on him yet. Do you trust him? Luke asks Rayna. So far, she replies, which is about as noncommittal an answer as you can give.) Anyway, Luke agrees to sell the company to Highway 65.

Rayna goes to tell Juliette about the deal and make sure shes okay with that. (Remember when Juliette and Rayna used to have scenes together? Good times.) Juliette says she has an idea for an album. It cant be a duet album about the trajectory of your relationship with Avery because that was my idea first, Rayna thinks, but doesnt say. Its a gospel album, Juliette says. Of course it is.
A piece of concept art for Pinocchio found in the Disney Vault. Photo: Disney Enterprises Inc

In 1944, Disney rereleased Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into theaters nationwide. The film had been a sensation during its original 1937 release  in addition to being a virtuoso technical achievement as the first feature-length animated film, it was also a critical darling and commercial smash. And while the move to rerelease the film was more of a marketing decision than a creative one (the studio had nearly been crippled, creatively and financially, by Americas involvement in World War II, and none of its subsequent features had captured the Zeitgeist like Snow White had), it set a precedent for the studio, which would soon standardize the practice of both releasing and then withholding its animated classics. The philosophy was to take each film out of circulation for about seven years, which studio honchos felt created a sense of urgency and excitement, and built additional mystique. When Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took over Disney in another tumultuous period for the company, the 1980s, they decided to release many of the most sought-after animated titles on VHS, a controversial move at the time. But the duo ended up following in the footsteps of those original theatrical exhibitions  the movies would appear on video for a limited time, then disappear from stores. Only this time they had a name for where the movies went when you could no longer get them: the Disney Vault.

For most, the Disney Vault seems like something intangible  a marketing gimmick and source for misplaced rage (there are a handful of YouTube videos railing against the Vault and all that it stands for). Disney, for its part, has done much to perpetuate the gauzy notion of the Disney Vault as something real but out of sight, existing, like so many Disney fantasy realms, in your imagination more so than in real life. But it does exist. And Ive been inside.

In an anonymous block of Glendale, California, sits a nondescript beige building free of signage or distinction. The only thing that would even alert you to the fact that this is the Disney equivalent of Fort Knox is the abundance of insane security procedures stationed around the building. Even for employees of the company, the building remains elusive and hard to gain entry to. (Full disclosure: I worked for the company for almost two years and never once got to go.) Unlike the main studio archives down the street, which are housed in an inviting glass building with ample signage  its this location that appears on-camera whenever the company makes documentaries about the Disney Vault  this place feels like a mirage.

When you get inside the lobby, youre alerted to the fact that this is the only place in the entire facility that you can take photos. A tall man named Tom says that if you do take photos, for the love of God do not geo-tag your location. For all intents and purposes, this building is off the grid. Its Disneys Area 51. Welcome to the Animation Research Library.

Looking around the lobby, you can already feel the history  on the ceiling are the lantern-like light fixtures that used to hang in the Walt Disney Animation Studio building in Burbank before the recent remodel; in the corner sits a piano that used to be in the Animation Studios so-called music room; against a wall is an animation desk used by Pres Romanillos, an animator who would etch his characters into the wood frame of the desk (Pres died in 2010 at the age of 47). The building itself is something of a lost Disney treasure. Its the place where movies like The Little Mermaid and Aladdin were produced, after the animation unit had been kicked off of the Disney lot and before the hat building had been constructed down the street in Burbank. When the Northridge earthquake struck during the production of The Lion King, some animators lived in this building. And we havent even gotten into the actual vault yet.

Before we go in, Tom tells us, we have to relinquish all pens. He points toward a small container of pencils that we can borrow, but I just made notes on my iPhone. Tom says to watch swinging bags or backpacks because original art will be on display. Again: No fucking photos.

A glimpse inside the Vault. Photo: Kayvon Esmaili

Just in terms of size, the vault is insane  there are 12 vaults, each organized by project. This includes everything from the original sketches for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to larger-scale items like all of the puppets from The Nightmare Before Christmas and Frankenweenie. Each room is climate controlled and meticulously catalogued, with state-of-the-art security and fire-suppression systems in place. By the librarys own estimates, there are something like 65 million pieces of art in the collection, which makes it the largest collection of animation artwork in the entire world. The vaults look like what youd think something like this might  the rows of stuff are located in cabinets which can be moved with a big spinning handle (like a vault), so you can easily get to them. As for the artwork, its filed in a way that it should be, with cells or production artwork stacked horizontally, while other, less sensitive items are filed vertically, in accordion-style folders. Oversize items like large background paintings are housed in separate flat files. The sensation of walking into one of the vaults is like stumbling into the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, except instead of sensitive government and historical secrets, there are a bunch of sketches of Mulan, and also some guy named Tom yelling at you to stay behind the yellow line.

I was there as part of a small group of journalists who had been brought to the building ostensibly to celebrate Pinocchio leaving the Disney Vault with a digital rerelease. While there, I got to chat with Fox Carney, the manager at the Animation Research Library, and he told me that the archives contained over a million pieces of artwork for Pinocchio alone.

Of course, the library is not exhaustive; there are gaps, like an untold amount of artwork that Walt Disney personally gifted to Ray Bradbury. When I asked Carney if there was something that he really wished he had in the collection, he mentioned Pinocchio. The making of the film was notoriously torturous (Carneys words), with whole sequences that were fully animated and then abandoned.

A lot of that art may not exist, Carney admitted. We were standing by a large area toward the back of the building called the Black Table, which is, true to form, a huge black table where pieces are examined, either for the prying eyes of visiting journalists or for official use, before being categorized, sorted, and catalogued. They may not have held onto that artwork. But if we were to make a fictional, Indiana Jonesstyle story, there would be a storage unit somewhere in North Hollywood thats been rented out since 1938 that has all of this artwork in it. But thats bordering on the realm of fantasy.

Besides storage, the main purpose of the Vault is curatorial. This is where art is assembled and distributed for things like traveling exhibitions, whether its a gallery of Disney artwork that recently opened in mainland China, or a walkthrough for D23 Expo, the biannual all-Disney version of Comic Con. The other function is educational. Carney says that most of his day is spent fielding requests from other parts of the larger Disney empire  Consumer Products, Imagineering  asking to take a look at items from the library for their own projects, whether it be a new theme-park attraction or piece of film-specific merchandise. For this Pinocchio rerelease, Carney told me a team of five archivists worked for almost a year compiling material.

The vault can also be helpful for those writing about these animated masterworks. I spoke to J.B. Kaufman, whose book Pinocchio: The Making of the Disney Epic, is the definitive account of the films production. A lot of what I look at is the exposure sheets, Kaufman told me. The exposure sheets will tell you a lot of information that just isnt available anywhere else. And when they did retake orders [an instruction to reanimate a given sequence], those are filed with the exposure sheets. I was researching the sequence where the Blue Fairy comes to Geppettos workshop, and theres a scene that serves as a Rosetta stone, where they were establishing how this character was animated. There were 11 retake orders for this one scene. Kaufman added: That, to me, was one of the great eye-openers  to see just how meticulous they were about getting that aspect exactly right.

Thats the thrill of going into the Disney Vault  you can literally stumble upon something that no one has seen in decades. Any given day, you can open a box and see art that people maybe havent looked at in 20, 30, 40 years, Carney told me.

Like most libraries, the Animation Research Library is creeping into the digital age. At one point during the tour, we stepped into a room where a small team of technicians was working on digitizing the massive amount of content. They say that the task is turning physical into digital, and that the payoff is incalculable. These are beyond high-resolution files, which can take up to two minutes to capture and download. Everything is captured, from cigarette burns and coffee stains, to off-the-cuff notes from the animators. For things like artwork from Sleeping Beauty, which was shot on 70mm and required animators to work on pieces of paper the size of bed sheets, they use a special process where a vacuum system sucks the artwork onto a table and then moves, like on a conveyor belt, so that it can be captured fully. Once the artwork is digitized, its moved onto a system called GEMS, which is accessible by employees of Walt Disney Animation Studio, Pixar, and Disney Toon Studio (makers of the Planes films). After the artwork is digitized, you can watch entire sequences play out in their rough form, and zoom in to see the detail background painters put into Geppettos workshop with alarming clarity.

The process is daunting. So far a little more than one million images have been captured, and theres still a long way to go. But on the back end, the benefits will be huge. This company is really investing a lot in this, Carney said. Its beyond the bottom line. Its bigger than anything.

And thats the biggest takeaway from visiting the Disney Vault  its a place where you can relive the past (sometimes literally, given that you can move through the years as you travel through the vaults), but one that will also inform the future, both in the way these pieces are discovered and discussed, and in the way theyll inspire future artists and animators for decades to come. Good luck getting inside, though.
Photo: John Sciulli/Getty Images for WIRED

Tom DeLonge, the Blink-182 founder and occasional UFO expert, is headed to the directors chair. Hes developing a movie that is squarely within his two areas of expertise: rebellious teens and bizarre fake science. The movie, called Strange Times, is based on his preexisting young-adult franchise that includes a website, graphic novel, and book trilogy. The story focuses on a group of disillusioned San Diego skateboarding teens who whip around town investigating paranormal activity. The story sounds oddly similar to DeLonges own origin story: [Its about] a tribe of broken youth and the restless spirit that inspired me to form Blink-182 and seek out adventure, DeLonge told The Hollywood Reporter. (The musicians latest adventures include trying to counsel Clinton adviser John Podesta on UFO research and serving as the subject of mind-control experiments.) Because his alien research is only a part-time gig, the maestros new band Angels & Airwaves will record original music for the production. Broken youth, rejoice! DeLonge has still got your back.
Photo: Meron Menghistab/Vulture

When I got here I was having all these feelings, Vincent Rodriguez III says as he steps out of Broadway Dance Center, where he dropped in for a beginners hip-hop dance class, where it was recommended you have three to five years of dance experience. Its a Friday afternoon, and Rodriguez is visiting his old haunts in Hells Kitchen, where he spent years pounding the pavement as a working actor. When he moved to New York in 2004, he lived in Astoria, but Hells Kitchen was the epicenter of his life: He could go to rehearsals and auditions over on Seventh Avenue, and then hang out on Ninth Avenue, doing the occasional survival job  restaurant host, barista, personal assistant, Ikea furniture builder  in between gigs. He even got a personal mailbox on Eighth Avenue so he could better centralize his life. New York reminds me of what my career was like when I lived here, so when I walk through the streets, I remember when I had ten bucks in my pocket and all I could eat is Chipotle, he says, as he guides us left on Ninth Avenue. Trying to thrive in this city trained me in my career, and in my life. Where are we going, I ask? Chipotle, of course.

Rodriguez left, as so many actors must, for Los Angeles during the summer of 2015, after booking his biggest role to date: Josh Chan, the object of Rebecca Bunchs manic affection in the CWs genre-expanding musical comedy, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. When he auditioned, Rodriguez was in the ensemble of Here Lies Love, a disco poperetta about the rise and fall of the Ferdinand Marcos administration at the Public Theater in New York. He was a partial swing member  that is, someone who would shift into a number of ensemble roles and also understudied other parts in case someone got sick. Its the type of role Rodriguez was used to: Hed spent his 20s as part of countless ensembles for regional productions, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Pippin, Xanadu, and Irving Berlins White Christmas.

I definitely have had my down times and also have had my times of being very, very unemployed, Rodriguez tells me in line at the Chipotle. The 34-year-old actor has a seemingly indefatigable well of positive energy to draw from, a quality he sees as crucial to surviving in the industry. And by that I mean Im just months without an audition or a callback and feeling like the business doesnt want me anymore. When its his turn, he orders his default: a burrito bowl with chicken and brown rice, some chips, and a bottle of apple juice  a splurge. Many times you have to sacrifice the paycheck for doing what you love, he adds.

Part of the struggle inevitably comes back to race. Rodriguezs agent would enthusiastically suggest him to casting directors for parts but get told, Oh, actually we want a white guy or Oh, we really wanted ethnic. We went with a black guy, Rodriguez, who is Filipino-American, says. He suggests that Asian-American actors are caught in the nether region between white and black. I felt like I wasnt considered for minority or Caucasian male lead roles. There arent really a lot of roles written for me, and I mean me and who I am in real life. In musical theater, there are very few Asian roles that are up-to-date. Flower Drum Song, Miss Saigon  these are period shows. None of them are contemporary.

Of course, Hamilton is the exception rather than the rule. (And yes, he loves Hamilton. So much so that he was wearing the T-shirt during dance class.) With new musicals these days you can play with nontraditional casting, but then it becomes up to the creative team and the casting directors in reenvisioning their show and seeing it as a more diversified cast, which is what my agent and I would push for, says Rodriguez. But as the trend goes in Hollywood, a lot of roles for people of color are in television, created by people like Rachel Bloom, Crazy Ex-Girlfriends star and co-creator. Bloom went to a high school where the reigning prom king and queen her year were both Asian-American, so for her, casting an Asian-American love interest was a reflection of reality. Is there any doubt that there are Asian bros out there? Rodriguez says. Of course there are. We just havent seen them depicted on television yet.

Josh Chan himself, particularly the nostalgia-drenched one of Rebeccas summer-camp memories, was based off a friend he grew up with back in Daly City, a stronghold for the Filipino-American community outside San Francisco. Hes a familiar type to anyone from that world: the laid-back, slightly stoner-ish Asian-American dude who has a reflexive chill emanating from his bones. He isnt very much like Rodriguez himself, who is more of a musical-theater ham, eager to break out in song and dance. And unlike Chan, he can actually assemble furniture.

Stepping into the lead role on a network show, of course, means more attention, and for Rodriguez thats meant how to answer questions about his personal life. Almost two years ago, preCrazy Ex-Girlfriend, he proposed to his husband, Gregory Wright, who he had known for over five years. Given the shows success, he was faced with the question of whether he should publicly come out. Rodriguez chose to do it quietly, acknowledging his relationship as a fact of his life, rather than something he had been hiding (which is true: Instagram stalkers can find the two together in posts before he became a known quantity). Last August, he came out in an Instagram post of himself with his partner on the California Screamin Ride at Disneyland where he proposed, writing, What better way to celebrate your one year wedding anniversary than going to Disneyland for the weekend?!

We had conversations about it, Rodriguez recalls. What it boils down to is: I have to live my life. I have to be a human being, and Im not just an actor. Im also a husband. I have a responsibility to be authentic to him as well. He adds, We need to live our lives and not be apologetic for being our authentic selves. Thats the message our show has, and thats the message Ive been trying to live my whole life.

For now, that means keeping up with Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, which has been picked up for a third season. I feel like a kid in a candy store right now because every time I go to work, Im always learning something new, he says. Rodriguez is most comfortable with musical-theater dance, but throughout his run on the show, hes had to do martial-arts send-ups and boy-band stylings. And Rodriguez is nothing if not determined. During the dance class earlier that day, he wanted to take a hip-hop class because it would throw him out of his comfort zone. For two hours, he learned a routine choreographed to Ludacriss verse in Snoop Doggs You Got What I Want. Rodriguez had a knack for picking up moves and throwing his body into the dance step with enough conviction that, even if he didnt quite know the move at the beginning, he got it in the end.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Feb 3 (PTI) India has held a range of talks on the sale of indigenously developed surface-to-air Akash missile and supersonic Bramhos missile to Vietnam, the government today said.

"India and Vietnam share a strategic partnership. Defence cooperation, including supply of defence equipment, is an important aspect of this partnership.

"Both countries have held discussions on range of issues in this regard," Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence said in a written reply in Lok Sabha on whether the government has any plans to sell Akash and Bramhos to the Southeast Asian nation.

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Responding to another question, Bhamre said a Committee of Experts was constituted by Ministry of Defence under the chairmanship of Lt Gen (retd) D B Shekatkar to recommend measures to enhance combat capability and rebalance defence expenditure of the armed forces.

"The Committee has submitted its final report in December 2016. An internal committee has been constituted within the Ministry to analyse the report, identify the recommendations to be accepted and to frame the key action points as well as a roadmap for their implementation," he said.

The Minister, in reply to another question, said trials on Pinaka rocket were successfully conducted at Integrated Test Range (ITR) Balasore in two phases on January 12 and 24 this year, with range of 65 km and 75 km, respectively.

The guided version of Pinaka rocket incorporates Inertial Navigation Systems (INS)/ Global Positioning System (GPS) for the mid-course guidance with accuracy of 60m to 80m at all ranges.

Pinaka has been designed and developed for induction into Army after successful user trials. Two regiments of Pinaka unguided version have already been inducted into the Army.

"Current trials have been conducted for demonstrating the feasibility of the development of guided version of Pinaka rocket using the same launcher and ammunition configuration. In the recent trials conducted, the desired accuracy has been achieved," Bhamre said.

To a question on whether the air force has sufficient number of fighter aircraft to maintain its combat edge, he said, it is "adequately equipped" to cater for the threat environment that exists.

He said procurement of state-of-art fighter aircraft is on and it includes 36 Rafale jets, Su-30 MKI aircraft while procurement of LCA Tejas has also been approved.

Bhamre also said Advance Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft will be inducted into the Indian Air Force after completion of design and development flight trials and systems evaluation.

"Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) has fitted into AEW&C various indigenously developed Systems/ Equipment. Complete software for all systems have also been developed indigenously, mostly within DRDO," he said.

To another question, the minister said, in the past two years, 50,000 bullet proof jackets (BPJ) have been procured for the Indian Army through an Indian manufacturer. Further, the case for procurement of BPJs of quantity 1,86,138 through Capital Route is under Buy (Indian) category. PTI PR SMJ

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By Press Trust of India: Washington, Feb 1 (PTI) A five-year-old Iranian-origin boy was reportedly detained for hours at an airport near here following President Donald Trumps immigration order with the White House saying he might have posed a "security risk".

Video footage taken on the weekend showed the emotional reunion between the boy, reportedly a US citizen, and his Iranian mother who waited for hours at Washington Dulles International Airport for her son to be released, WILX-TV reported.

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Democrats say the boy is a US citizen from Maryland and his mother is from Iran.

The boy travelled to Washington Dulles airport with another family member. His mother was waiting to pick him up when he arrived but the boy was detained for hours, the report said.

At a press conference, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, "The president recognises that it is his duty and obligation to keep this country safe."

"And by instituting a process by which we look at these countries over a 90-day period and the process by which the people can come in out of this country to ensure the safety of each and every one of us, I think, is something that makes a heck of a lot of sense," he said.

"When you look at the 329,000 people (who travelled to the US over the weekend), 109 were inconvenienced for the safety and security of us all," Spicer added.

"And to make sure that, if they are a 5-year-old, that maybe theyre with their parents and they dont pose a threat," he said, apparently referring to the incident.

He asserted that to assume that just because of someones age or gender or whatever that they do not pose a threat would be "misguided and wrong".

Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland blasted Trump over the boys detention for more than four hours saying it happened even though the senator had given authorities advance notice of the boys arrival. The detainment of the child also sparked outrage online.

Trumps executive order, signed Friday, temporarily bans travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. Syrian refugees are blocked indefinitely. PTI ASK AKJ ASK

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By Press Trust of India: New York, Feb 3 (PTI) Hollywood icon Angelina Jolie has slammed President Donald Trumps controversial immigration ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, saying that shutting the door on refugees or discriminating among them will not make America safer.

A special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees since 2012, Jolie, in an editorial in the New York Times, said refugee policy should be based on facts not fear as such people are "men, women and children caught in the fury of war" and are a victim of terrorism themselves.

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Without naming Trump, Jolie said the new decision has been met with shock by US friends around the world.

While accepting that there was a need to secure the borders considering the threat from terrorism, Jolie said it should not be done at the cost of vulnerable people.

"Every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear," said the actress.

Jolie, who raises three biological and three adopted children, said being a mother she wants her country to be safe for them but she also wants the refugee children who qualify for asylum to have a chance "to plead their case to a compassionate America."

Stating that refugees go through the highest level of screening of any category of traveler to the United States, Jolie said the world is going through the worst refugee crisis since World War II.

"If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire. We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against," she said.

"The lesson of the years we have spent fighting terrorism since Sept 11 is that every time we depart from our values we worsen the very problem we are trying to contain. We must never allow our values to become the collateral damage of a search for greater security."

Jolie said shutting the door on refugees or discriminating among them is not the American way or makes the country safer.

"Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength. This is where I would hope any president of our great nation would lead on behalf of all Americans," she said.

Trump last week signed the sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America. PTI BK ASK AKJ ASK

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A group that formed 25 years ago to fight the location of the Waco Regional Landfill alleges the city of Waco is violating an agreement not to expand the site by buying adjacent property with plans to use it as a landfill.

While city leaders have said plans call for a new landfill, not an expansion of the existing one, a group called Citizens to Save Lake Waco has filed a breach of contract lawsuit against the city and hopes a judge will block the city from using the new site as a landfill.

The lawsuit, filed this week in Wacos 414th State District Court, asks Judge Vicki Menard to grant a permanent injunction against the city.

Waco City Attorney Jennifer Richie said the city has not been served with the lawsuit and declined comment.

Waco attorney Billy Davis, who represents the citizens group, said the city is at risk of violating a 1992 settlement in the initial lawsuit the group filed over the landfills location and size.

The petitioners are saying there is an agreement in place that prevents the city from expanding the landfill out there on Highway 84, and that is what they are trying to do, Davis said. There is a map that appeared in your newspaper that shows the existing landfill and the one they are proposing are side by side, and the city does not believe that is an expansion. We dont want them to spend the money to proceed when there is an agreement in place.

City officials hope to get a state permit for a landfill at the 270-acre tract in the next few years. They expect to open it in eight to 10 years, when the existing 238-acre landfill just south of U.S. Highway 84 is expected to be full.

In August, the Waco City Council awarded a contract for $891,000 to an engineering firm for design and permitting work on the proposed landfill project. The council also approved $150,000 for related legal services. The city bought parcels for the proposed landfill site near Old Lorena Road between 2003 and 2010.

Were doing all we can to extend the life of our landfill, Deputy City Manager Wiley Stem said in August. But it would be shortsighted if we didnt have a plan to replace it.

The lawsuit details the initial fight in the early 1990s that the Citizens to Save Lake Waco group waged with the city. The landfill is near the South Bosque River, which flows into Lake Waco.

2005 meeting

After the city bought the land adjacent to the landfill, the city had a public meeting in June 2005 with area residents. A public notice of the meeting alerted residents that they could Learn about plans to expand our landfill and create two new parks, the lawsuit says.

The brochure prominently explains that our landfill on Old McGregor Road requires an expansion,  the lawsuit alleges. Throughout the brochure and the public meeting, defendant clearly states its need and intent to expand the 1992 landfill.

Those at the meeting asked why the city wants to expand the landfill instead of finding another location, according to the suit.

Sitting and permitting a new landfill is a challenging and expensive process, which has no guarantee of a success outcome, the lawsuit quotes an unidentified city official as saying at the meeting. The current location of the citys landfill is ideal in many respects for the operation of a landfill. The geology of the site is very suitable for a landfill. Also, this landfill is located with excellent access to transportation routes and is in an area of compatible land use.

A year later, in correspondence with Jean Thorn, a member of the opposition group, city officials said they decided not to pursue an expansion at this time, according to the suit.

During the interim years, upon information and belief, defendant devised a scheme to disregard its prior agreement and commitment to plaintiff and pursue and expansion of the 1992 landfill, repackaged as a new landfill under a new permit, the lawsuit states.

Input sought

City leaders met last summer with four Old Lorena Road residents to explain the project and seek their initial input.

Wanda Glaze, a leader of the citizens group who lives along Old Lorena Road, told the Tribune-Herald then that the city is planning to violate the 1992 agreement. That agreement, which also provided for additional buffering and reduction of the landfills height, allowed the city to get a state permit to expand the landfill from 40 acres to the 238 acres it covers now.

They said they would not go any bigger, wider or deeper, that they would not expand it in our community, Glaze said in August. Theyve gone back on that promise. . . . We just dont want it here. There are lots of other spots they could put it.

Stem has said the 1992 agreement is not relevant to the new plan.

Its not an expansion, he said. Its a brand-new landfill.
The University Mazda Kia dealership near Wacos traffic circle has a new owner who has broken ground on a fresh building for his Kia line.

It will be a state-of-the-art facility, 18,000 square feet in size, the newest of what Kia has to offer in dealership design, said Jon Weinzapfel, of Dallas.

Weinzapfel collaborated with a silent partner in mid-November to acquire the Mazda Kia store at 3000 S. Interstate 35, near LaSalle Avenue and the Texas Roadhouse restaurant.

Crews already are hauling in dirt to create a construction site on LaSalle Avenue, and Weinzapfel, 37, said he hopes for a grand opening of University Kia by September.

When completed, the Kia facility going up on 4 acres will have display parking space for 250 to 300 cars, which is about twice the capacity of the Kia portion of the existing facility. Weinzapfel said he made color changes to the Mazda portion of University Mazda Kia, but otherwise it will remain the same.

The existing Kia dealership probably will become our site for used cars, if not another franchise, Weinzapfel said.

He said his new facility will double the number of vehicles he can place in the showroom and will feature a climate-controlled shop and service center.

Kia is very particular about facilities. This is comparable to building a Mercedes-Benz store, with high-end finishes, Weinzapfel said.

He bought University Mazda Kia from Dallas-based RFJ Auto Partners, which had renamed the double-branded dealership known as Miller Mazda Kia after buying it in February 2015.

Owner Jerry Miller was previously a manager and sales representative at the dealership, which was founded in 1984 as Beasley Wilson Inc., a Mazda and Subaru dealership, according to a press release from the time Miller sold the dealership. Miller became a partner in 2002 and acquired full ownership shares in 2004 to become general manager and president. Miller also was president and owner of Miller Lincoln Mercury Chrysler Jeep in Temple before selling that dealership in 2008.

My business partner and I had become aware of the store, liked where Waco was going from a business and development standpoint, and struck a deal, Weinzapfel said. Im from Dallas, operated a Dodge dealership there for 13 years, and I grew tired of the traffic. I opened a Kia store in Lubbock for Group 1, the third-largest car dealer in the nation, which is based in Houston, and I now prefer smaller stores in smaller communities.

Weinzapfel said he and his partner once before considered a dealership in Waco, but this was a better opportunity.

He said he now employs 37 at his Kia dealership and will hire more staffers when the new University Mazda Kia home is up and running.

Weinzapfel said Waco seemingly has a lot going for it downtown, in South Waco and along the Interstate 35 corridor. He said he is aware that Chip and Joanna Gaines have bought the historic Elite Cafe on Wacos traffic circle near University Mazda Kia and have started work to convert it into a breakfast-centric diner.

At South Valley Mills Drive and Interstate 35, Dallas-based Leon Capital Group continues to develop a site anchored by a Gander Mountain store that sells outdoor equipment and apparel. It has attracted food establishments including Chilis, Zoes Kitchen, Bubbas 33, Potbelly Sandwich Shop and Starbucks.

The last available parcel on that site is being marketed by Ryan Griffin and Daniel Morales, both with Leon Capital. A sign recently posted there proclaims that a 15,000-square-foot center is being planned to accommodate more restaurants or other uses, Griffin said.
More than two months after opening in a food desert in North Waco, the nonprofit Jubilee Food Market has started accepting food stamps from the customers it was designed to serve.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture this week certified Mission Wacos grocery store at 1505 Colcord Ave. for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Mission Waco officials said the 6,500-square-foot store has had a slow start since it opened just before Thanksgiving. But they expect traffic to double or triple once word gets out about the new payment option.

Every day we have someone ask, Do you take food stamps yet?  store general manager Darrell Wickert said. We kept telling them, Its coming. 

Wickert said he has ordered a banner to inform people about the SNAP option. He also hopes the store gets lots of attention Saturday with a promotional event in which a local bank will hand out $10 vouchers to use at the store.

Starting at noon, First National Bank of Central Texas will give out a total of $1,000 in vouchers that can be used at the market or the Urban Edibles food truck outside.

Officials said the store has seen about 100 shoppers per day, but it needs 200 to 250 to break even. Mission Waco finance director Bruce Brown said SNAP is key to meeting those numbers.

Look at our location. Were in one of the highest-poverty areas in Waco, Brown said. Theres a high percentage in the neighborhood who have food stamps, and its the only thing they can use to buy groceries.

Wickert said foot traffic already accounts for about half of the stores business, suggesting transportation is a big issue for the neighborhood.

We had a customer this morning whose car broke down, Wickert said. She said, Im so glad youre here so we can at least get our groceries. 

Jeremy Everett, executive director of Waco-based Texas Hunger Initiative, said other communities in Texas are watching Jubilee Food Market as a potential model for providing healthy food to underserved areas.

Everyone has their fingers crossed, hoping it works, Everett said. I think being able to take SNAP benefits is the next step in the equation of making sure families in the neighborhood have access to food. Well really have a better idea how successful the market is in the next 24 to 36 months.

Mission Waco officials expected it would take a while to get certified for SNAP after they applied in October, but they were perplexed by the difficulty in getting information on the status of their application.

Every time youd call, youd get a different answer, Brown said.

Brown said one obstacle was that the application wasnt set up for a store with a nonprofit status.

That totally blew their minds, he said.

Mission Waco officials contacted Congressman Bill Flores a couple of weeks ago about the difficulty, and that same day, USDA staff got back with Mission Waco and appeared willing to expedite the application, Brown said.

Brown said a USDA employee told him one holdup was that USDA investigators had discovered a fraud case associated with the stores address from five years ago, when it was M&J Food Mart.

The owners of M&J, Jamal and Magdalena Akhter, pleaded guilty to federal charges in 2013 after investigators found that they were giving cash to SNAP card holders for fraudulent transactions.

Mission Waco bought the building two years later and remodeled it with the help of $500,000 in donations.

A USDA spokesperson could not confirm that the past fraud case slowed the SNAP certification.

Brown said the nonprofit venture is well-capitalized and is not in danger of failing because of low turnout in the first few months.

We knew we were going to have slim margins but were a nonprofit, he said. Weve been around this rodeo for a long time and we went in knowing it was going to be a hard go.

The store has started expanding its offerings to include items such as pork chops and ribs from Waco Custom Meats. Work is also underway on an adjacent solar-powered aquaponic greenhouse that will provide homegrown fruits, vegetables and tilapia fish to the market.

In addition, the store this year will start to issue OASIS cards to people in the neighborhood, giving them a discount on groceries.
Several years ago, as I was about to depart for an annual Girls Trip, my husband looked me in the eyes and said, Remember who you are and where you come from. This, of course, was said in jest as he knows me well and knows I need no reminder of who I am or where I come from. While my girlfriends and I had a good laugh about it, we liked this phrase and several of us occasionally used it on our children: Remember who you are and where you come from.

As I reflect on this now, it seems that many Americans have, indeed, forgotten who they are and from where they came. Lest youve forgotten, we are a nation of immigrants. Our ancestors fled intolerance and persecution. Having been born and raised in Savannah, Georgia, I remember well my Georgia history. Gen. James Oglethorpe, member of Parliament, philanthropist and humanitarian, created a charter to settle this new colony. At the time, British prisons were over-crowded by people in debt. Oglethorpe, who spent his time in England working with the poor, insisted that formation of the new colony would allow debt-ridden people a fresh start.

Thus, the colony of Georgia was founded in Savannah in 1733 as a safe refuge for the poor and for persecuted Protestants. Knowing that Im most likely the descendant of debtors who were given a chance to start anew in a free country makes me ever so grateful to General Oglethorpe, a privileged aristocrat who certainly didnt need to take compassion on the poor. Yes, I will always remember who I am and from where I came!

From 1892 to 1954, more than 12 million immigrants entered the United States through the portal of Ellis Island where these powerful words are inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Stories of immigrants entering our country abound. Had it not been for the kindness of Native Americans, the settlers of Plymouth, who were the first illegal immigrants, would have surely died.

Subsequent immigrants were not always met with that same kindness. There are countless stories throughout our 200-year history as a nation of hatred and resentment toward immigrants  Irish, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese . . . the list goes on and on. And I would be remiss not to mention the millions of Africans who were forced to come to this country against their will. Who are we to hate these people for they are us. We never seem to remember or learn from history.

We continue to face the issue of immigration in the 21st century. On the topic of undocumented immigration in last Sundays Tribune-Herald Q&A with supporters of President Trump, each gentleman stated in some form or fashion that sending millions of people out is not going to solve the problem: To send people out who have established jobs and are willing to raise families here and educate those families here, why would you want to send them home?

One went so far as to say, I thank God that theyre here. But enforce the laws.

Sounds like these men are advocating for amnesty or a pathway to citizenship, which is certainly NOT what President Trump has promised. However, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in May, a solid majority (72 percent) of Americans say undocumented immigrants living in the United States should be allowed to stay in this country legally if they meet certain requirements. If Mr. Trump would act on this, rather than building a wall that no one wants to pay for or sending millions of people back, it could be a step toward uniting our divided country. With regard to enforcing the laws, fact is from 2009 to 2014, more than 2.4 million removals were made  even President Trump acknowledged this in one of the presidential debates.

One gentleman in the Trib Q&A with Trump supporters stated, to say that Trump is going to just run people out of this country is ludicrous and ridiculous. I agree, it is ludicrous and ridiculous, but thats exactly the process Mr. Trump started last Friday with his executive order. Folks coming to our country to flee intolerance and persecution  a hallmark of our nation  are being turned away. Mr. Trump stated that this was done to keep terrorists out of our country even though there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 by people from any of the countries on Mr. Trumps travel ban. Pre-approved refugees, students and workers holding visas and residency green cards were barred from flights to the United States and/or detained at U.S. airports.

Lets be clear, no one wants terrorists to enter our country. Thats why refugees already face a rigorous vetting process which takes from 18 to 24 months. Mr. Trumps ill-conceived travel ban will not only do harm to these refugees, it will also harm our country.

Before Im labeled a bleeding-heart liberal, please understand that I agree wholeheartedly with one of the Trib Q&A interviewees who said that we need to use common sense when addressing immigration. It is an incredibly complicated issue with no simplistic remedy or one-size-fits-all solution. Building a wall, sending hardworking people back and enacting travel bans on refugees fleeing for their lives arent the answers.

What we, as Americans, can do is to show the same compassion and kindness to immigrants and refugees that Native Americans showed to the settlers of Plymouth. We can also reflect on and remember who WE are and where WE came from  we are a nation of immigrants and none of us would be here without doors having been opened, a hand reaching out and a chance given to be part of this great nation. Theres room at the table for all.

LaRaine DuPuy worked in marketing and development before becoming a fulltime volunteer. She chairs the Waco Plan Commission, is a member of the Board of Trustees of Presbyterian Childrens Home and Services and of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, is an elder serving on the Session of First Presbyterian Church Waco, as well as working with numerous other civic and charitable organizations.
The makers of Jolly LLB 2 had approached the Supreme Court against the Bombay High Court's order to appoint a three-member committee to review the film for objectionable content.

By Ahmad Azeem: The Supreme Court asked the makers of Akshay Kumar and Huma Qureshi-starrer Jolly LLB 2, Fox Studios India, to approach the Bombay High Court against its order to appoint a three-member panel for looking into the portrayal of the judicial system in the film.

ALSO READ | Akshay Kumar in Jolly LLB 2: Is this Arshad Warsi's revenge?

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The panel is scheduled to submit a report to the Bombay High Court on Monday, after watching the film, whether there is anything objectionable about the judiciary and the legal profession.

A petition was filed by Aurangabad-based advocate Ajay Kumar Waghmare in the Bombay High Court. He said in his petition that certain scenes of the film depict the judiciary and the legal profession in a bad light and requested the court to order the makers to drop the word LLB from the title of the film.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who is representing Fox Studios, told the Supreme Court that there is nothing against lawyers in the film, and the trailer shows the same.

The Supreme Court said that it will let the Bombay High Court decide first and hear the matter only if the need arises. The hearing will take place on February 7.

ALSO WATCH Jolly LLB 2 trailer review: Akshay Kumar's comedy exceptional, but nothing seems new

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Astronauts from the Apollo missions that put humans on the moon for the first time are expected to be at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2017, as the Worlds Greatest Aviation Celebration commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo program.The 65th annual Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in convention is July 24-30 at Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The reunion is expected to be the largest gathering of Apollo astronauts at Oshkosh since the memorable 1994 Salute to Apollo program that brought together 15 of the men who were the faces of the American effort to put men on the moon. Many of the activities will be centered on AirVentures Apollo Day on Friday, July 28, which is highlighted by a major evening program at Theater in the Woods.

A number of Apollo astronauts have already committed to the event, as have other people closely involved with Americas space program during that era, said Rick Larsen, EAAs vice president of communities and member benefits who coordinates AirVenture features and attractions. This will be a rare, unforgettable gathering of the people who met the challenge of flying to the moon and safely returning, representing hundreds of thousands of individuals who contributed to its success. You may never get another opportunity to see the people in person, up close, as you will at Oshkosh this summer.

It is expected that crew members representing many of the Apollo missions will attend. Those who have already confirmed their attendance include:

Frank Borman (Apollo 8)

Walt Cunningham (Apollo 7)

Fred Haise (Apollo 13)

Jim Lovell (Apollo 8 and Apollo 13)

Al Worden (Apollo 15)

Additional astronauts are expected to confirm their attendance in the coming weeks. Further details on events and schedules will be announced as they are finalized.

About EAA AirVenture Oshkosh

EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is the Worlds Greatest Aviation Celebration and EAAs yearly membership convention. Additional EAA AirVenture information, including advance ticket and camping purchase, is available online at www.eaa.org/airventure. EAA members receive lowest prices on admission rates. For more information on EAA and its programs, call 1-800-JOIN-EAA (1-800-564-6322) or visit www.eaa.org. Immediate news is available at www.twitter.com/EAA.
By Phil Buckley

Each September the Australian War Memorial in Canberra opens its Treloar storage annex at Mitchell, to the general public with the event being called Big Things in Store. The annex stores thousands of exhibits of two types  equipment withdrawn from operational military use or items captured. These items are stored in the annex due to lack of display space at the main display halls of the AWM in Canberra. The policy of the AWM is that they try to rotate items from storage into the main memorial every year or so to enable the general public to see the many different relics of war.

The Open Day events have been running since the 1990s and thousands of people flock to the annex for each opening. The general public is invited to view many of the military items in the condition as they were deactivated from service and given to the AWM. Aviation items takes up a significant part of the collection and includes bombs, aircraft fuselage sections right through to whole airframes. Significant aviation exhibits observed at the annex on this visit included the following:

RAAF Lockheed Hudson Mk.IVA A16-105 . Received by the RAAF in 1942, this bomber was used by various training and operational groups during WW2 in Australia and Papua New Guinea. Post war it went through several civil operators before being bought by Malcolm Long who sold it to the AWM in 2001. It has been undergoing an in-depth restoration since 2010 and in late 2016 was nearly complete.

RAAF DAP Beaufort Mk VIII, A9-557 . This is one of only 2 reasonably complete airframes on public display in Australia. A9-557 entered combat with 100 Sqn. in mid-1944, serving in combat in Papua New Guinea. During operations with 100 Sqn., it suffered combat damage as well as an accident, which ended its operational life. The airframe was left in Papua New Guinea at the end of WW2 and remained until recovered in the mid-1970s and exported to the USA. It was imported to Australia by a private buyer, who then traded it to the AWM in 1992. From 1997 to 2003, the aircraft was restored by the AWM with assistance from many private individuals and organizations who contributed parts to its restoration.

Tachikawa K-54 Hickory . Flown by the Japanese delegation to surrender their forces in south east Asia at Labuan in 1945. It passed through various hands within the RAAF at end of the war and made its way to Australia, where it ended up in the RAAF Fairbairn playground in the 1970s. It was then moved to storage at Point Cook by the early 1980s. Since then, the fuselage (one of 3 airframes known to exist) has been recovered by the AWM and stored at the annex.

Australian Army Boeing CH-47D Chinook helicopter A15  202 . Received by the Army in 2000, this helicopter served in the Middle East campaigns. During 16 years of service, it flew a significant number of combat hours in Afghanistan with 5 Aviation Regiment and was one of the first Australian aircraft deployed to Afghanistan and recorded as being damaged by enemy fire in 2009. With nickname of Centaur, it was withdrawn from use in April 2016 and transferred to the AWM collection.

RAAF Douglas C-47B Dakota A65-71, (ex USAAF s/n 43-49870) . Served with 37 Sqn with the code OM-N. In 1945 it was used to carry the body of Prime Minister John Curtin from Canberra to Perth for his funeral. Withdrawn from operational RAAF use in 1981, it was transferred to the AWM and flown by the RAAF up until 1997 when it was then placed into storage.

RAAF GAF Canberra bomber, A84-247 . This Australian built (GAF) Canberra B.20 first flew in 1958. During its service life, it is known to have served with 2 Sqn in Vietnam from 1967 to 1971. The bomber was approved for transfer to the AWM in 1982.

Australian Army Pilatus PC-6 Porter A14-690 . Built in 1968 and issued to the Australian Army in Vietnam from 1969 to 1972 with 161 Independent Reconnaissance Flight where it served in a variety of roles from liaison, command and control, photo missions, electronic surveillance, target marking, etc. It is known to have also flown under the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1992 just before it was withdrawn from service.

Australian Army Bell 47G-3B-1 Sioux A1-404 . This helicopter served with 161 Independent Reconnaissance Flight in the Vietnam War from 1966 to an undetermined date. It was given to the AWM during 1979 and was put on display in the Post-1945 Conflicts Gallery. It has now been rotated to the annex storage in 2016.

RAAF / Australian Army Bell UH-1H Huey A2-773 (ex s/n 67-17575). Acquired by the RAAF in 1968 and operated by 9 Sqn., this helicopter is of historic interest as it was the trial airframe for the heavy hitting RAAF Bushranger gunship modifications which turned the Huey into a heavy firepower machine using 2.75 rockets, Miniguns and M-60s. Transferred to the Army operations in 1986, it was withdrawn from use in early 2000s.

RAAF Gloster Meteor F.8 A77-368 . Originally built for the Royal Air Force as WA952, it was passed onto the Royal Australian Air Force in July 1951 and served with 77 Squadron in the Korean War until mid-1953. Post war, it served with 75 Sqn and 22 Sqn until being withdrawn from use in 1960 and transferred to the AWM. Restored in the early 1980s, it has since been dismantled, with the nose and cockpit section on display in the Post-1945 Conflicts Gallery at the AWM and the remainder of the aircraft located in the annex.

RAAF DeHavilland DHC-4 Caribou A4-140 . Delivered to RAAF 1964, it served in the Vietnam War with 35 Sqn from 1968 to 1971. Used in peacekeeping operations during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Retired from use by 38 Sqn in 2009 and transferred by road to the annex.

USAF North American OV-10 Bronco 67-14639 . This FAC aircraft was flown in Vietnam by RAAF aircrew assigned to USAF TASS. Following Vietnam, it was transferred stateside and then to Europe. It was removed from USAF operations and transferred to the Philippine Air Force (PAF) in the early 1990s. It was removed from use in 1993 and placed into storage. In 2002, the AWM approached the PAF to acquire the aircraft. By 2007 approval was given and it was moved to the annex.

RAAF CAC CA-27 Sabre A94-954 . Only the wings are in storage in USAF Korean War paint scheme. Built during 1957 by CAC, this jet served in Thailand with 79 Sqn from 1963 to 1968. Removed from service in 1971 and later transferred to a private buyer. It was exported to USA in 1989, brought back to Australia in the early 2000s, resold to a New Zealand owner who then resold the jet in 2010 to the AWM.

Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (Oscar) s/n 5465 . Wings and cockpit center section only. The airframe is preserved in unrestored condition and has been divided, with the nose and tail sections on display at the AWM

In addition to the main airframe exhibits above, an amazing variety of aviation components can also be found in the two storage buildings; German and Japanese aircraft engines, a WW2 P-51 Mustang paper mache fuel tank, Avro Lincoln rear gun turret, Luftwaffe bombs, a WW2 era B-34/B-37 bomber gun turret and much more. The next Big Things in Store Open Day at the Mitchell annex is planned for September 2017. For more information visit www.awm.gov.au
By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) Jordan is serving as a model of "tolerance and moderation" in the Middle East, US President Donald Trump said as he met Jordanian King Abdullah II here.

During a brief meeting with the Jordanian King on the sidelines of National Prayer Breakfast yesterday, Trump conveyed Americas "commitment to Jordans stability, security, and prosperity".

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The White House said Trump thanked the King for his leadership in promoting peace and stability in the region, adding that he highlighted Jordans critical contributions to defeating ISIS and discussed the possibility of establishing safe zones in Syria.

"President Trump underscored that the United States is committed to strengthening the security and economic partnership with Jordan. The President also emphasized Jordans essential role in serving as a model of tolerance and moderation in the region," the White House said.

The Jordanian King is the first leader from the Middle East to have met Trump and top officials of his administration.

"The two leaders discussed the King returning to Washington for an official visit in the near future," the White House said. PTI LKJ BSA

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A rare example of the great German multi-role combat aircraft of the Second World War, the Junkers Ju88, has been transported by road to its new home in the Midlands. This particular aircraft, a Ju88R-1 night-fighter version, traveled 130 miles from the Royal Air Force Museum London, to its sister site at Cosford, Shropshire where it will soon go on public display. The new arrival is the sixth aircraft to wing its way to Cosford in the last few months and completes the Museums new line-up in preparation for the RAF Centenary in 2018.

The aircraft was dismantled at the Museums London site and prepared for transportation by Museum Technicians and Apprentices, with assistance from GJD Services  specialist maintenance and aircraft salvage company based at Bruntingthorpe, Leicestershire. The fuselage and port wing have now been transported to Cosford, with the starboard wing due to arrive next week when work will commence on the re-build.This latest arrival is a huge coup for aviation fans in the Midlands, giving them access to one of the most versatile German combat aircraft of the Second World War and one of the Luftwaffes most important assets.

The Ju88 began life as a bomber, became a night fighter and intruder; undertook anti-shipping operations and flew long-range reconnaissance missions. They entered service in September 1939 and by the end of the month they were undertaking their first operational mission against British shipping in the Firth of Forth, Scotland. It was during the Battle of Britain, however, that the Ju88A played a major role in German operations. Ju88s took part in a number of daylight actions against British radar stations, airfields and ports in the opening phases of the Battle of Britain. It was reasonably manoeuvrable for its size and could take a great deal of punishment; however its lack of armoured protection and insufficient defensive armament meant that it was relatively easy prey for British fighters. At the time of the Battle of Britain the Ju88 was at the beginning of its service career and its remarkable adaptability, particularly as a night fighter, had still to be exploited by the Luftwaffe.

The museums example was constructed as a Ju88 A-1 bomber in 1942 and converted to the R-1 standard in early 1943 for the night fighter role. In May 1943 a three man crew were ordered to intercept and shoot down an unarmed BOAC Mosquito courier flight from Leuchars, Scotland to Stockholm, Sweden. Just two hours after take-off, the pro-British and anti-Nazi crew sent a bogus message to Night Fighter HQ reporting a starboard engine fire. The Ju88 descended to sea level, below German radar and dropped three life rafts to make the Germans think the plane and crew were lost at sea and then headed for Scotland.

The Ju88 was eventually intercepted by two Spitfire VBs from No.165 (Ceylon) Squadron RAF. Identified as a Ju88, when approached the German pilot dropped his undercarriage and waggled his wings and was then lead back to Dyce airfield where all three aircraft landed safely. The Spitfire pilots were later congratulated for not opening fire and bringing home valuable information for the technical branch. This was a significant coup for the British  the Ju 88 was fitted with the latest FuG 202 Liechtenstein BC A.I radar. It was the first of its type to fall into British hands and was quickly placed inside a hangar to hide it from Luftwaffe reconnaissance aircraft.

Shortly after, it was allocated the British serial number PJ876 and commenced a test programme with RAE Wireless and Electrical Flight, in conjunction with the RAFs Fighter Interception Unit, whose role was to evaluate captured enemy aircraft and demonstrate their characteristics to other Allied units. The aircraft was acquired by the RAF Museum in 1978 and has been displayed at its London site for almost four decades and will now go on display at Cosford for the first time in the Museums War in the Air hangar.

Ian Thirsk, Head of Collections at the RAF Museum said: We are delighted to add the Ju88R-1 to our collection of Axis aircraft types on public display at Cosford. The Junkers Ju88 was one of the most versatile military aircraft of all time and this particular example, the last surviving night fighter variant, has a truly fascinating story to tell. It will be displayed alongside other significant German aircraft of the period and will enhance the Museums ability to tell the wider story of RAF operations during the Second World War.

Within the last few months a total of six new aircraft have been transported by road from the museums sister site in London for display at Cosford. The first to arrive was the Messerschmitt BF109G-2 which is now displayed in the War in the Air hangar confronting its British equivalents, a Hurricane and Spitfire. Transported alongside the Bf109 was the de Havilliand Tiger Moth II which can now be viewed in Hangar 1 alongside the Scottish Aviation Bulldog T Mk 1, demonstrating the progression in RAF training aircraft. Click HERE for our reports.

Just a few short weeks later the Wolverhampton built Boulton Paul Defiant M1 made a homecoming journey along the M1 and M6 to the museums Cosford site, just a few miles from where it was built in the late 1930s. Accompanied en route by the Gloster Gladiator 1 and the Westland Lysander III, both the Defiant and Gladiator will be reassembled once the Ju88 is in position and go on display in the War in the Air hangar, whilst the Lysander will undergo some minor repair work to its fragile linen skin in the museums Conservation Centre.

The aircraft moves come as the museum prepares for the Royal Air Forces centenary celebrations in 2018 that will see the museum transform its London site with a series of new permanent exhibitions opening in the summer of 2018. The multi-million pound development programme will see investments in new exhibitions, improved education and volunteering opportunities, and landscaping that will emphasise the sites importance as a heritage airfield. It will improve the visitor experience, extend the Museums reach to new audiences and create a lasting legacy to mark the Centenary. The enhanced aircraft collection at Cosford will enable the RAFs story to be more comprehensively represented to museum audiences in the Midlands. In addition, plans for 2018 will include displays exploring the first 100 years of the RAF, the role it plays today and its future contributions. Making the RAF story available to a global audience there will be a huge investment in the Museums online offer.

Aviation fans can keep up to date with the centenary aircraft moves and on-going developments by signing up to the museums free e-Newsletter http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/contact-us/newsletters.aspx

Entrance to the museum is free of charge and the museum is open daily from 10am until 4pm. For further information, please visit the museums website www.rafmuseum.org/cosford .
TV star Karanvir Bohra knows how to slay it in ANY look. We have proof.

By India Today Web Desk: Naagin star Karanvir Bohra is a fashion icon alright, and he has proved this with his fashion choices, which are always quirky, and well, great.

The actor recently attended the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week dressed in black leather pants and a red check shirt. He even shared pictures from the show.

Have a look:

Come valentine's. ....RED is going to be the shade of every woman ? A photo posted by ?? ? (@karanvirbohra) on Feb 2, 2017 at 5:26am PST

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He looked his cool self as he posed for the camera. He wrote in the caption of one of the pictures, "Come Valentine's RED is going to be the shade of every woman."

Also read: SEE: Karanvir Bohra's emotional post on his 10th marriage anniversary

Where there is love, then Friendship only grows stronger with time ....with the 2 most beautiful soulful people I know. @nishaharlaley and @mugdahgodse A photo posted by ?? ? (@karanvirbohra) on Feb 2, 2017 at 4:22am PST

Did we mention that he also had a walking stick in hand?

Keep doing you, Karanvir.

The #bosscar #lamborghini #lfw A photo posted by ?? ? (@karanvirbohra) on Feb 2, 2017 at 4:39am PST

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Seven West Media has announced the findings of a review into misconduct allegations levelled against chief executive Tim Worner, saying it has cleared him of wrongdoing.

But Amber Harrison, a former executive assistant at Seven who made the allegations, called the company's statement a "whitewash" and said its investigation was "deliberately limited in scope and designed to achieve the predetermined outcome it has delivered".

"The lesson for women is don't work for Seven West Media and expect to be treated equally or with respect," Ms Harrison said in a statement on Friday morning.

Late last year, Seven asked law firm Allens Linklaters to review Ms Harrison's allegations of misconduct by Mr Worner, including claims of drug use, inappropriate staff relationships and unauthorised credit card expenditure.
It is rare to find much unanimity among economists, but one of the few things they agree on is that the trough in commodity prices of 2016 will not be repeated.

But after the huge upswing in prices since then  particularly for bulk commodities such as coal and iron ore  the question is how far will prices retreat, especially after the March quarter, which often marks a cyclical high.

Stronger economic growth in most major economies worldwide, coupled with efforts to lift growth in China and changes to regulations there, saw prices of both bulk commodities along with a number of base metals, surge in the latter part of last year. Oil, likewise, has benefited from the move by key OPEC producers to limit production to help take pressure off prices.
Liberal Party MPs who support same-sex marriage will push to abandon the government's plebiscite policy over the next fortnight in favour of a free vote on the floor of Parliament, in a move that could divide the Coalition and create a fresh political headache for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Fairfax Media understands Liberal MPs including Dean Smith, Warren Entsch, Tim Wilson, Trent Zimmerman, Trevor Evans and Melissa Price are among those leading discussions on how to advance the issue.

The push to allow a free vote is being driven by the backbench, though some cabinet ministers are aware the discussions are underway.

The majority of the Turnbull cabinet, including Mr Turnbull, personally support same-sex marriage, but the issue has been dormant since late last year.
The Prime Minister's Office has suspended an administrative staffer over an "inappropriate" three-month-old Facebook post about Donald Trump, amid a media storm prompted by a Sydney shock jock.

2GB radio reported the executive assistant to Malcolm Turnbull's chief-of-staff Drew Clarke had been suspended Friday afternoon after announcer Ben Fordham inquired about her online activities.

The junior staffer was accused of posting to Facebook a photo of a T-shirt emblazoned with the words "Tuck Frump", a play on the phrase "F--- Trump" and which also promotes an anti-Trump website.

According to 2GB the original post was made in November, but the staffer had the image permanently fixed on her page as recently as January.
After a protracted legal battle that began almost as soon as he was elected, Rod Culleton's election has been ruled ineligible by the High Court.

The unanimous full bench decision of the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, puts an end to the former One Nation senator's battle to stay in the upper house, regardless of the outcome of any of his other court battles, which include challenging a Federal Court bankruptcy ruling.

Mr Culleton was not in court for the judgment.

Parliament will not know who takes his place until after a recount. The Electoral Commission will now consider the ballots as if Mr Culleton's name had not existed on the ticket.
This is a case of alliance shock for Australia. Donald Trump's rough treatment of Malcolm Turnbull is about more than their personalities, more than the refugee deal, and more than relations between two leaders.

It's about the reliability of the US alliance. "It's not unprecedented for the leaders of the US and Australia to have a tough, difficult, robust conversation," says Sydney University's alliance historian, James Curran.

"But it is unprecedented for this sort of private conversation to be leaked." And it was a leak, according to Turnbull, that leaves him feeling "very disappointed".
While claims that up to 30 per cent of workers may be missing out on compulsory employer super contributions (currently 9.5 per cent of wages) may be far too high, there are undoubtedly deficiencies in the current arrangements. The problems stem from a lack of attention paid more than 30 years ago to details to ensure that employers meet their obligations and do not take advantage of any opportunities such as hiring contractors and black economy transactions to avoid their liabilities.

Assigning the task of ensuring compliance to the Tax Office without accompanying strict pay as you go requirements has inevitably resulted in lengthy delays and protracted investigations to recover unpaid money. The system places the onus on individual workers to ensure they receive their compulsory super and then initiate Tax Office recovery action.

Ensuring you are paid compulsory super can take a back seat to take-home pay and other entitlements. Credit:

For the individuals concerned, pursuing their claims with their employers particularly involving small and even middle-sized businesses with cash-flow problems can be a daunting prospect, possibly putting the employees' jobs at risk. Adding to the problems with compulsory super is the fact that, regrettably, many younger and even middle-aged workers pay little attention to their superannuation.

When compulsory super was introduced, workers could cash out their super at any age when they changed jobs. Since 1999, all new super contributions are untouchable until age 65 or retirement after a compulsory preservation age of 60 for most people. Obtaining compulsory super takes a back seat behind the essential needs of receiving take-home pay and retaining a job.
Aussies will soon be able to smile at their smartphones to confirm payments as credit card giant MasterCard prepares to bring its biometric authentication app to Australia.

There's no magic bullet when it comes to security, while people complain about needing to remember logins and passwords they often balk at the idea of using biometrics like fingerprints and facial recognition to prove their identity. MasterCard attempts to strike a balance with MasterCard Identity Check, dubbed "Selfie Pay", which uses biometrics to complement your passwords rather than replace them.

MasterCard Identity Check will let Australians shop with a smile.

MasterCard Identity Check has been available overseas for a while but it's coming to Australia in 2017  MasterCard unveiled the details at the Australian Open but wouldn't be drawn on an exact launch date. When it does arrive we'll see the release of a local MasterCard smartphone app, supporting both facial recognition and fingerprint readers, plus MasterCard will offer an API allowing financial institutions to build these features into their own apps.

The idea isn't to let you shop on your good looks alone, instead MasterCard Identity Check will act as a form of two-factor authentication to double-check that someone else hasn't broken into your account or stolen your card details. MasterCard holders won't be forced to use it, instead it will be a free opt-in additional service.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's business advisory group, he announced in a company email.

The CEO of the ride hailing service had been under mounting pressure from activists who oppose the administration's immigration policies, including Uber drivers, many of whom are immigrants themselves.

"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that," Kalanick, who had planned to attend a meeting of the group on Friday, said in the email.

He said he spoke briefly to Trump about the immigration order "and its issues for our community" and told the president he would not join the economic council.
Cameron Bartkowski is running in WA's South West. Credit:Facebook But it appears another candidate has slipped through the net. On Wednesday, One Nation said it was standing by its candidate for the seat of Pilbara, David Archibald, despite his offensive and bizarre comments towards single women labelling them too "lazy to attract and hold a mate". Writing an article for the prestigious literary online magazine Quadrant in 2015, Mr Archibald claimed there were a number of welfare programs that should be slashed because they support "lifestyle choices that could be defunded". "The first that springs to mind is single motherhood," he writes.

"These are women too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly three million years of evolutionary pressure." "This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly. We know what causes pregnancy these days, so everyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage is a volunteer." Mr Archibald didn't just have a pot shot at single mums in the Quadrant article, he also had a swipe at childcare funding, spending on Indigenous affairs and the disability pension. "Second, the 800,000 Australians on the disability pension. OK, not all of them. But a good proportion are able to drive cars, bash police and each other, go fishing and so on," he wrote. "Now comes federally funded childcare. This is a lifestyle choice. Looking after children is very labour-intensive."

Federal Shadow Minister for Transport Anthony Albanese, who was in Perth on Tuesday backing WA Labor's push to dump Roe 8, called on One Nation to dump Mr Archibald. "The idea that if you have a single mother you are somehow less of a human being, really belongs way back in the dark ages," Mr Albanese, who was raised by a single mother, told SBS. Despite the outlandish statements, Mr Archibald, who is running against the leader of the WA Nationals Brendon Grylls, told the ABC he stood by his comments. National Council for Single Mothers and their Children chief executive Terese Edwards said the One Nation candidate's comments were "disrespectful". "I just found it incredible that a man in 2017 would feel comfortable in being so disrespectful to women  women who are doing a wonderful job in raising children by themselves," she told the ABC.

Mr Archibald - a geologist and climate change skeptic - has written numerous articles for Quadrant, with one titled Evolution vs. Gay Marriage from August 2015, claiming a "successful culture" wouldn't allow homosexuality. "Homosexuality is part of the human condition," he writes in his premise. "But so is marriage, which is more than a mere societal construct, as those who are keen to change the long-established norms of mating and reproduction would have us believe. A successful culture wouldn't mix the two. A degenerate culture might." Even though One Nation is expected to be the wild card in the upcoming WA election with political pundits expecting the party to poll as high as 11 per cent, it has courted controversial with a number of its candidates. One Nation candidate for the seat of Dawesville, Lawrence Shave, had plans to open a "bikini baristas" drive-through coffee shop, where staff donned only scantily-clad swim wear. And party leader Pauline Hanson dumped Brian Brighton, who nominated for the seat of Joondalup because of his past criminal conviction.

Mr Brighton was fined $5000 back in 1993 for stealing departure tax stamps and selling them for $1000 while working as a customs officer. He later told WAtoday he was planning to run as an independent in the March election and wanted wants all drug addicts to be dumped on an island to fend for themselves. But One Nation isn't the only party whose candidates have got themselves in hot water in the past week - highlighting questionable practices in the vetting process for candidates. The Liberal candidate for Mandurah David Forbes quit after revelations he used Twitter to call Malcolm Turnbull a "laughing stock" and to suggest women were often "office Nazis". Loading
The sari was a staple on the runway, re-imagined and upcycled by many designers.

By Radhika Bhalla/Mail Today: Once the frou-frou of attention-hungry dressers is looked past, and the glitter and dust settle, a sense of calm takes over - even on runways. Evidence lay in simpler silhouettes with all the skill of technique and experimentation of experience at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week spring/summer 2017 show in Mumbai.

Urvashi Kaur brought simplicity to the runway. Photo: Mail Today

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Day 1 or 'Sustainable Fashion Day' was an ode to the ease that is true to an Indian summer, without losing the desire for flair. Delhi-designer Urvashi Kaur presented a collection of earthytoned separates that were confidently layered and draped. Sheer collared shirts, boxy dresses, coats and loose pants for men and women were welcome styles that featured details like hand tucking, micro pleating and rouching.

The ruffled pallu was the star at label Ka Sha's show. Photo: Mail Today

Another delightful collection was of Pune-based label 'Ka Sha' by Karishma Shahani Khan, with chic anti-fit skirts, dresses, coats and shirts in khadi, chanderi and mul. The ruffled pallu and lapels were the stars of the show, offering a playful relief to the holy nine-yard that has transformed greatly in the past decade. Indigo, red, soft yellow and cream kept the vibe summer-friendly with a distinct local feel.

Also read: Colours get an Indian voice on the first day of Lakme Fashion Week

A creation by sustainable label 'If I Were A Sari'. Photo: Mail Today

Meanwhile, maverick Amit Aggarwal surprised his loyal followers with an inspiring collection called 'Seamless' that upcycled torn patola saris, handwoven silk chanderi and ikat to create his trademark structural garments. The colour palette included metallic accents on wine, rust, teal, khaki, mustard and ink blue. This time around, the silhouettes were more feminine and 'wearable' in a day-to-day context. Actresses Tamannaah Bhatia, Sonakshi Sinhaand Kajal Aggarwal were spotted at the show, but the real showstoppers were the garments on the models.

Japanese shashiko embroidery by Pallavi Singh of ARCVSH. Photo: Mail Today

The ensembles by sustainable lifestyle brand 'If I Was A Sari' also showcased upcycled saris converted to smart western wear separates with jewel undertones. A special mention is due for Gen Next designers Ishanee Mukherjee and Anirudh Chawla of label 'Poochki' who presented a range of diaphanous shirts, jackets and trousers that were block printed with patterns like water waves, pandas and fish.

Jewellery by label Wandering Whites. Photo: Mail Today Jewellery by label Wandering Whites. Photo: Mail Today

Pallavi Singh of ARCVSH used the blue and white Japanese shashiko embroidery and block-prints on macca cotton, chanderi, georgette and bamber cotton. The tailored separates had an international appeal and were an interesting take on dressing the modern woman - a welcome continuation to what was started by Rahul Mishra last season in a similar colour palette.

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Jewellery designs got their place in the spotlight too, with minimalist accessories presented by Gaury Pathare under her label 'Wandering Whites', among others.

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"Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered (by the media)," Conway said.

However in doing so, she made a reference to two Iraqi refugees whom she described as the masterminds behind "the Bowling Green Massacre."

Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser to US President Donald Trump. Credit:Bloomberg

The Bowling Green Massacre didn't get covered because it didn't happen. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky, carried out by Iraqi refugees or anyone else.

Conway was likely referring to two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green who were arrested in 2011 and eventually sentenced to federal prison for attempting to send weapons and money to al-Qaeda in Iraq for the purpose of killing US soldiers, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31 to 40 years in federal prison, followed by a life term of supervised release. Both men pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges.
Patna Zoo Director Nand Kishore said that the two birds have not been gifted but released in the new capital region of Patna. The peacocks were released in Lalu Prasad Yadav residence.

By Amitabh Srivastava: The Peacock throne once symbolised the seat of power for the Mughal emperors. Now after several centuries while a throne is neither tangible nor feasible to have in this age of democracy, the peacocks perhaps still pass off as a symbol of authority for Bihar.

This may hold true for those who manage Patna Zoo officially known as Sanjay Gandhi Biological Park after they "released?? a pair of peacocks in the bungalow of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) boss Lalu Prasad Yadav.

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The Peacock pair, one male and one female, was released on Thursday. Incidentally, Lalu Prasad Yadav may not formally hold any seat of power in Bihar, but as leader of the single largest party in the ruling alliance, he does have an authority over the government. Of course, it also helps that both his sons are ministers in the government with his elder son Tej Pratap Yadav also manning the Environment and Forest Department portfolio, which incidentally controls the Patna Zoo.

Also read: Lalu Prasad Yadav gave some gyaan to Bernie Sanders and Twitterati can't digest it

Patna Zoo Director Nand Kishore told today that the two birds have not been gifted but released in the New Capital Region of Patna.?? He said the peacocks were released in the RJD chiefs residence we had to release them somewhere?? as part of a policy decision to set free the majestic birds in the new capital region of Patna to help them roam freely in a natural habitat. They immediately flew off from the residence,?? he said.

Besides being Indias national bird, the peacock is a protected bird under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. The Patna Zoo authorities have so far released seven peacocks, including the two released on Thursday in the citys new capital region, which is greener than the rest of the city.

The Zoo will release five more in times to come. But the decision to let Lalu Prasad be in the company of two peacocks, in the eyes of Bihar Forest Department officialdom, was minor, but it may give some more ammunition to the opposition leaders.

Also read: Bihar: Tej Pratap turns 'halwai' for Saraswati Puja, picture goes viral

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The first International Forum for National Trade Facilitation Committees was held from 23  27 January 2017, at the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland. The Forum was co-organized, amongst others, by WCO, UNCTAD, WTO, the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the World Bank. The Forum brought together over 300 participants from the Private Sector, Customs Administrations, Ministries of Trade, Regional Organizations and International Organizations. The participants were welcomed by the Secretary General of UNCTAD, Dr. Mukhisa Kituyi, who made opening remarks followed by the opening remarks of Director General of the WTO, Mr. Roberto Azevedo, and three other speakers including Ms. Ana Hinojosa, Director, Compliance and Facilitation Directorate, WCO.

In their introductory remarks, senior officials spoke of the importance of simplifying, harmonizing and standardizing border procedures in order to expedite the clearance and movement of goods and people as a key contributor to trade-led economic and social development. Ms Hinojosa reiterated the importance of effective coordination and cooperation amongst border agencies in the implementation of the TFA and the WCOs leadership in this regard.

The WTO TFA must be ratified by at least a 110 Member Countries before it enters into force; the number of ratifications is currently at 108. This forum was organized to discuss the road ahead for the National Committees on Trade Facilitation (NCTF) and its task to coordinate and facilitate the implementation of the TFA after it enters into force. The one week event had discussions and various trade facilitation topics, inter alia, technical assistance and support for trade facilitation reforms, the role of regional and international organizations in the implementation of the TFA, the coordination amongst these organizations, the engagement of the private sector and all border agencies in the work of the NCTF and the specific role of NCTFs in the evaluation and monitoring of trade facilitation reforms.

The Forum provided a venue for the presentation and discussion of the WCOs TFA Implementation Guidance and the key instruments and tools, such as the SAFE Framework of Standards, the Coordinated Border Management Compendium, the WCO Data Model, the Single Window Compendium, the NCTF Guidance and the Time Release Study. It also provided a platform to present the Mercator Programme through which the WCO supports Customs administrations and other border agencies in the effective implementation of the TFA. Through the generous contribution of her Majestys Revenue and Customs (HMRC) of the United Kingdom, the WCO was in a position to sponsor the participation of 13 national delegations, many of whom are active partners in the tailor-made track of the Mercator Programme. The WCO was honored to have collaborated with UNCTAD and other supporting organizations in delivering this landmark event on the eve of the coming-into-force of the TFA.
By Press Trust of India: Udaipur, Feb 3 (PTI) The Rajasthan State Consumer Dispute Redressal Commission has asked a doctor to pay compensation to a man for wrongly treating him for HIV without confirming the disease through advance diagnosis for three years.

The doctor and a medical insurance company have been asked to pay compensation to the man for medical negligence.

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Dhanraj Patel had visited M B Government Hospital in 2004 with fever, cough and cold. Dr D C Kumawat, the then associate professor of medicines, suspected him of being HIV patient and started treatment for HIV without confirming the disease through necessary tests.

Even as the treatment was continued, Patel visited a hospital in Mumbai where he was tested negative for HIV. He showed the test report to the doctor but he advised him to continue with the treatment for HIV.

The treatment continued for seven years during which Patels health deteriorated due to side effects of the treatment. His claims were also rejected by the insurance company.

The complainant approached the commission in 2013. The commission found the doctor guilty of medical negligence and passed an order last month directing the doctor and National Insurance Company to jointly pay Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the complainant. PTI CORR SDA SMN

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By Shalini Lobo: Around an hour away from Noida, as one enters into Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Mayawati's hometown Badalpur, lush green fields are replaced by the huge Mughlai structure with barbed fence and tall walls. Housing inside is a helipad, statues of BR Ambedkar and Gautam Buddha.

However, there is no human in sight.

And as you enter deep into the village the houses become smaller but with two cars parked in most courtyards, next to cows shed.

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Where did so much money come from?

Mayawati grew up in this village. She belonged to a family that had less than 30 bigas of land, and today she has more than 150 bigas. She ruined this village. She used the peoples land and governments money. She did compensate them but what will they do once this money runs out?" said Jagdesh Nambardar, who has been ostracised by the entire village for speaking ill about Mayawati.

She hasnt come here even once in the last 5 years. She says she is from this village but she doesnt care about us. A house, 2 parks, a helipad; what is this for??? he added.

But there are many who support Mayawati despite their lands being taken from them for constructing her lavish estate.

I will vote for Mayawati. She is from our village and has done a lot of work. Look at this house of mine. Look at all the big houses around us. This is possible only because of her,?? Surbir Singh said.

Surbir Singh was given a compensation for his land, using which he is constructing a four storey house--complete with three bedrooms, a hall and kitchen.

Villagers said that two rounds of compensation has been given and another round is expected soon.

When the first round of compensation was given out, people protested. Then behenji heard us out and gave us another round. She listened to us and kept us happy and this is why we will vote for her. She has done good work and we will keep supporting it," said Ravitha, an unemployed B.Ed graduate from Badalpur.

Rejoicing on this support for Mayawati is sitting MLA Satbir Singh Gurjar who is meeting the villagers to put forward his agenda.

People want behenji to be the chief minister again. There was development in her time. SP hasn't done anything. I won by 40 000 votes, people are confident that this time I'll win by over 1 lakh."

Party loyalists say Satbir has their vote while many others say that he represents the Gurjar. I will vote for a Gurjar and I know there are many other who think like me," said Pramod, a resident from Badalpur who is one of the people who maintain the park near Mayawatis house.

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Desolated parks, a lone helipad which no uses, swanky houses under construction and many others lying uninhabited makes one wonder what will happen to these villagers once they run out of liquid cash. They have given up their land and are splurging on buildings and vehicles.

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By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) Top American IT company Microsoft has requested the Trump administration to ease travel restrictions for its employees affected by the US Presidents executive order on immigration, visa and border security.

In a letter to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary Gen (rtd) John Kelly, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Bradford L Smith said 76 Microsoft employees along with 41 dependents have non-immigrant visas to live and work in the US and are impacted by the executive order.

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"After contacting these employees and their families, we have learned that some of them have particularly pressing needs. For example, we are concerned about families that have been separated as one or both parents were outside the US last Friday and therefore cannot re-enter the country and are stranded away from their homes," he wrote.

"We are also concerned about an impacted employee inside the US with a desperate need to visit a critically-ill parent abroad. These situations almost certainly are not unique to our employees and their families. Therefore, we request that you create an exception process to address these and other responsible applications for entry into the country," he said.

In another significant development signifying the unease in the corporate world over the immigration ban, Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick quit Trumps business advisory group, as a movement grew to dump the ride-sharing service because of his connection to the new administration.

In his letter seeking exception, Smith also said he believes such an exception under the existing framework of the order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the orders security-related objectives.

From the perspective of safety and security, a wide range of personal information is known about individuals holding non-immigrant work visas, including their occupation, place of work, place of residence, family members, state identification/drivers license information, and the existence of any criminal history, he wrote.

These are not people trying to avoid detection. Rather, these individuals are "known quantities" in their communities: their character, personalities, conduct, and behaviour is well recognised and understood by their employers, colleagues, friends, and neighbours, he added.

Smith said these individuals fill critical roles in the organisations that employ them, whether they are doctors, scientists, engineers, medical technicians, researchers, architects, software developers, or any number of other highly skilled professionals.

They are deeply valued contributors to the innovation, research, and business acumen of the US, and they serve critical roles in the successful operations of American companies, he said.

Smith said the individuals who would be eligible for the proposed exception have already been vetted on numerous levels by the US

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government for security risks in order to be approved for employment on a non-immigrant visa.

Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. PTI LKJ ANB UZM ASK ASK

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By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) IT giant Microsoft has appealed to the Trump administration to ease travel restrictions for its employees hit by the US Presidents controversial order on immigration, saying these individuals are not people trying to avoid detection.

In a letter to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary Gen (rtd) John Kelly, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Bradford L Smith said 76 Microsoft employees along with 41 dependents have non-immigrant visas to live and work in the US and are impacted by the executive order of President Donald Trump.

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"After contacting these employees and their families, we have learned that some of them have particularly pressing needs. For example, we are concerned about families that have been separated as one or both parents were outside the US last Friday and therefore cannot re-enter the country and are stranded away from their homes," he wrote.

"We are also concerned about an impacted employee inside the US with a desperate need to visit a critically-ill parent abroad. These situations almost certainly are not unique to our employees and their families. Therefore, we request that you create an exception process to address these and other responsible applications for entry into the country," he said.

In his letter seeking exception, Smith also said he believes such an exception under the existing framework of the order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the orders security-related objectives.

From the perspective of safety and security, a wide range of personal information is known about individuals holding non-immigrant work visas, including their occupation, place of work, place of residence, family members, state identification/drivers license information, and the existence of any criminal history, he wrote.

These are not people trying to avoid detection. Rather, these individuals are "known quantities" in their communities: their character, personalities, conduct, and behaviour is well recognised and understood by their employers, colleagues, friends, and neighbours, he added.

Smith said these individuals fill critical roles in the organisations that employ them, whether they are doctors, scientists, engineers, medical technicians, researchers, architects, software developers, or any number of other highly skilled professionals.

They are deeply valued contributors to the innovation, research, and business acumen of the US, and they serve critical roles in the successful operations of American companies, he said.

Smith said the individuals who would be eligible for the proposed exception have already been vetted on numerous levels by the US

government for security risks in order to be approved for employment on a non-immigrant visa.

Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. PTI LKJ ANB UZM ASK AKJ AKJ

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ALLETE, Inc. operates as an energy company. The company operates through Regulated Operations, ALLETE Clean Energy, and Corporate and Other segments. It generates electricity from coal-fired, biomass co-fired / natural gas, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. The company provides regulated utility electric services in northwestern Wisconsin to approximately 15,000 electric customers, 13,000 natural gas customers, and 10,000 water customers, as well as regulated utility electric services in northeastern Minnesota to approximately 145,000 retail customers and 15 non-affiliated municipal customers. It also owns and maintains electric transmission assets in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Illinois. In addition, the company focuses on developing, acquiring, and operating clean and renewable energy projects; and owns and operates approximately 1,000 megawatts of wind energy generation facility. Further, it is involved in the coal mining operations in North Dakota; and real estate investment activities in Florida. The company owns and operates 158 substations with a total capacity of 10,066 megavolt amperes. It serves taconite mining, paper, pulp and secondary wood products, pipeline, and other industries. The company was formerly known as Minnesota Power, Inc. and changed its name to ALLETE, Inc. in May 2001. ALLETE, Inc. was incorporated in 1906 and is headquartered in Duluth, Minnesota.
Maharashtra Forest Department filmed the beautiful reunion of a mother leopard with her three-week-old cubs who were caught by farmers.

By India Today Web Desk: The Wildlife SOS and the Maharashtra Forest Department filmed a beautiful reunion of a leopard family in a sugarcane field around Somatwadi village near Pune.

The video shows how a mother leopard was reunited with her two three-week-old cubs, and her caution while trying to claim them back again.

According to officials, the mother leopard did not rest until she finally found her cubs.

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Also Read ||Goes down in hissstory: Woman ends up with a snake in her ear piercing||

REUNION

Farmers found the cubs while they were harvesting sugarcane. They called the forest officials fearing the wrath of the mother leopard who was reportedly lurking nearby in search of her missing cubs.

Forest officials and people form Wildlife SOS laid a plan to unite the cubs with their mother.

Also Read ||Bird flew: Saudi prince buys flight tickets for his 80 hawks||

"We placed the cubs in a safe box and kept them at the same spot where they were found... After hours of waiting, the mother leopard came looking for them and took them away. The photos show how much she missed them," Ajay Deshmukh, Senior Veterinarian at the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre, told IANS.

"We learn from this documentation that rescuers must not give up by relocating or shifting the cubs in zoo. The primary aim should be to reunite," Deshmukh said.

Such incidents are nothing new in the area.

"It is not uncommon to spot leopards in this area...but this also gives rise to conflict situations when farmers harvest sugarcane [sic]," Sanjay Gaikwad, a forest department official said.

Also Read ||Tinder for orangutans: Female apes push button on screen after checking out photos||

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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.
This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men.

Special thanks to Cafe Hayek. This is excerpted from a speech Douglass gave in Boston in 1869 challenging the opposition of most people, including most blacks, to Chinese immigration. You can read the entire speech here.



Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman.
Sirs,

Please allow me space in your valuable pages to ask of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of State for Finance, why they are not being entirely truthful with the very long-suffering Bahamian people?

The Very Awful Tax, also known as value added tax is probably the single most complex and expensive tax for a country to lay on its populous and any one of the 100 plus nations presently utilizing it will tell you that, because of the sheer costs of installation and collection, there will be NO income from a VAT for up to 2 years from set-up!

Now, Messrs Christie and Halkitis would you like to try again and tell us what VAT has actually been spent on thus far?

Yours in horror,

Harry Strachan
BATON ROUGE -- Gov. John Bel Edwards on Thursday announced that his Chief of Staff, former State Senator Ben Nevers, would step down as Chief of Staff for the Office of the Governor.

Nevers resignation will be effective Feb. 28. Former Director of the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP), Mark Cooper, will assume the role of Chief of Staff.

Ben Nevers has been one of my closest friends in the legislature and a fierce advocate for the people of Louisiana for more than 30 years, said Gov. Edwards. Following my election as governor, I asked Ben to join this administration when he intended to retire to spend more time with this family. He accepted without hesitation and has done a tremendous job leading this team in our first year. Over the last year and during my time in the legislature, I turned to Ben for guidance, support and prayers, and he has delivered on each. I know I speak for a lot of folks at the state capitol when I say that we will miss seeing Ben around here every day, but we know he wont be going far. Donna and I want to wish him and his wife, Ann, a happy, relaxing and well-deserved retirement and thank him for his many years of service to our state.

It has been an incredible honor to serve the people of Louisiana, from my position on the school board, to the legislature and now for Gov. Edwards, said Nevers. There are some very real challenges facing the state of Louisiana, but I know this governor has the best interest of the people of our state at heart. After all these years, Im looking forward to spending more time with my wife, our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Ive been so blessed to serve the people of this state for so many years, and Im looking forward to seeing great things from this governor and his team in the future.

"Ben's ever calming, steady and caring voice will be missed at the state capitol, said Senate President John Alario. Throughout his years of service as a school board member, state legislator and then as the governor's chief of staff, Ben has earned the respect and friendship of his colleagues, staff and constituents. He has always been dedicated to giving Louisiana's hardworking families the tools they need to improve themselves, their communities and their state. His public service will be truly missed."

Nevers served in the Louisiana Legislature from 2000 to 2016, first as a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, then as a member of the Louisiana Senate until his retirement last year. Prior to his time in the legislature, Sen. Nevers served on the Bogalusa School Board. He is also the President and CEO of Nevers Electrical and Contracting Company, which he established in 1980. Sen. Nevers is married to Ann Williams Nevers, and together, they have three children  Ben Wayne Nevers, Jr., Julie Ann Nevers and James Andrew Nevers  six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Mark Cooper, originally from Bossier City, will assume the role of Chief of Staff for the Office of the Governor in the Spring. Currently employed as Senior Director of Global Emergency Management at Walmart in Bentonville, Ark., Mark served as the director of the GOHSEP for the State of Louisiana from 2008-2011.

I couldnt be happier to have Mark join our team, said Gov. Edwards. He brings a wealth of knowledge about our state to this role, and I know hell be an invaluable asset to our state. Marks managerial experience will be useful as we continue to lead Louisiana on a path to prosperity. I look forward to working with him, and I know the people of Louisiana will be well-served with Mark advocating on their behalf.

I am extremely honored to be chosen by the Governor to serve as his Chief of Staff and committed to work with the Legislature and Louisianas citizens on his behalf to find solutions to the major issues facing the State, said Cooper. Whether leading the Los Angeles County recovery team into New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, leading GOHSEP in response to two hurricanes and a major oil spill, or more recently supporting Louisianas recovery through Walmart from the historic flooding, I have always had a sincere interest in the well-being of the State and have called Louisiana home. I look forward to this next opportunity and supporting the Governor and his team.

In addition to his time at GOHSEP, Cooper has almost 20 years of experience with Los Angeles government including executive leadership in business operations for the Los Angeles County Fire Department, County Police, and the Department of Beaches and Harbors.

While with Walmart, he has led global emergency management and has become a leader in public/private partnerships including speaking and teaching opportunities at Harvard University, U.S. Naval Post Graduate Program in Monterey, CA, and the National Governors Association. In his current role, he also serves on the United Nations ARISE Executive Board for global resiliency and recently completed two terms on the FEMA National Advisory Council to the Administrator. Cooper is a graduate of the Executive Leadership Program at the U.S. Naval Post Graduate School/Center for Homeland Security and Defense in Monterey, California and holds a bachelors degree in Finance and a Masters in Public Administration, both from LSU.

In the interim, Matthew Block, Executive Counsel to Edwards, will serve as acting Chief of Staff.
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Air intelligence unit officers intercepted one passenger namely Mohammed Jalal Mullakoyathangal holding Indian passport who was to depart to Sharjah, United Arab Emirates by Air India flight.

By Virendrasingh Ghunawat: In last two days, the air intelligence unit (AIU) at Mumbai Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport, booked two cases of foreign currencies and two cases of gold smuggling, with overall valuation of about Rs 80 lakh.

On February 1, based on profiling, the AIU officers intercepted one passenger namely Mohammed Jalal Mullakoyathangal holding Indian passport who was to depart to Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Air India flight.

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Examination of his hand baggage resulted in recovery of 71 notes of Canadian Dollars of denomination 100 each and 88 notes of Pound sterling of denomination 50 each totally amounting to Rs 7,22,530. He had cleverly concealed the currency inside the layers of clothes in his hand baggage.

Also read: DRI seizes Rs 2.6 crore cash and 15 kg gold from Noida businessman

In the second case of currency, on February 2, the officers intercepted another passenger namely Nitin Kothari holding Indian passport who was to depart to Bangkok by Jet Airways flight. During examination he was found carrying 13600 US Dollars equivalent to Rs 9,16,640. Both cases have been booked.

Click here to Enlarge AIU intercepted 1 passenger at Mumbai Airport and recovered foreign currency worth Rs 7,22,530

In the cases of gold smuggling, on February 2, the officers intercepted a passenger namely Thayyil Majeed holding Indian passport arrived from Dubai by Indigo flight. The search of passenger's checked-in-baggage resulted in recovery of gold in ring shape weighing 1.235 kgs valued at Rs 32,77,591. He had concealed the gold in the periphery of the housing of one elekta vacuum cleaner kept in the said checked-in-baggage.

"During the recording of his statement, he had admitted that the seized gold belongs to one Mohammed Ali in Mumbai and he was just a carrier. He carried the seized gold into India for a monitory consideration of Rs 15,000. A case was booked and said passenger has been arrested", said one of the officials.

Click here to Enlarge Gold smuggling

Also read: Demonetisation: New notes worth Rs 70 crore, 100 kg gold seized in Chennai

In another case, on the same night, one lady passenger namely Nayeem Banu holding Indian passport was intercepted. She had arrived from Dubai by Emirates flight. During examination, she was found in possession of 16 pieces of white gold strips and 12 washers of white gold collectively weighing 1 Kg valued at Rs 30,00,000.

She had concealed the gold items in the handles and inner metal frame of the trolley bag. In her statement, she has admitted that she was getting paid to carry the seized gold which belonged to one Arif Ahmed who lives in Dubai. A case was booked and the lady passenger has been arrested.

Thayyil Majeed (accused) had concealed the gold in the periphery of the housing of one elekta vacuum cleaner kept in the said checked-in-baggage. Click here to Enlarge Thayyil Majeed (accused) had concealed the gold in the periphery of the housing of one elekta vacuum cleaner kept in the said checked-in-baggage.

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Also read: Black money crackdown: Rs 60 crore cash, 245 kg gold seized from 10 airports since demonetisation

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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Feb. 03, 2017 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Feb. 03, 2017 | 01:45 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Five people have been arrested after an investigation into several recent burglaries in McCracken County.



The McCracken County Sheriffs Department says it has been investigating a number of storage unit burglaries at 2600 Perkins Creek and 4335 A.T. Massa Drive over the past three weeks. A total of at least nine different units were discovered burglarized between these two locations. Items taken from the units ranged from furniture, appliances, tools, clothing, and collectibles.



Investigators identified a gray PT Cruiser as a suspicious vehicle, and used surveillance footage to identify the owner of the vehicle as 37-year-old Brandon York of Benton. Deputies say 24-year-old Darrel Dawson was captured on surveillance video at the Benton Walmart cashing a check that was stolen from one of the units.



Detectives later found Dawson and searched his vehicle, reportedly revealing a handgun concealed under the drivers seat, along with meth, syringes, and suspected stolen property.



Detectives executed a search warrant Thursday night at a home on Jefferson Street, and reportedly found a large amount of stolen property, meth, and drug paraphernalia. Several people at the home were arrested on various charges.



In all, five suspects were arrested. York was arrested on charges of 3rd degree burglary and receiving stolen Property Over $500.00. Dawson was arrested on charges of absconding probation and parole, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, possession of meth, possession of drug paraphernalia, burglary, receiving stolen property over $500.00, and receiving stolen property (firearm). 38-year-old Travis Fusion was arrested for possession of meth, possession of drug paraphernalia, and receiving stolen property over $500.00. 33-year-old Priscilla Miller is charged with possession of meth, possession of drug paraphernalia, and receiving stolen property over $500.00. 57-year-old Pamela Fusion was arrested on a bench warrant for Shoplifting.



The sheriff's department says they are trying to contact the rightful owners of the recovered stolen property, but it may take some time to do that.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Feb. 02, 2017 | ALMO, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Feb. 02, 2017 | 10:18 PM | ALMO, KY

An Almo man was arrested Thursday night after police say he fired a shot when they approached his house to investigate a domestic disturbance.



The Calloway County Sheriffs Office says a dispatcher got a call at around 7:30 pm about a disturbance on Van Cleve Road, north of Murray. According to the report, the wife of 43-year-old Brett Hall of Almo called 911 after she arrived home from work to find that he had been drinking all day with two children at the home, and was throwing things around the house.



Hall's wife and children had already gotten out of the house by the time responders arrived. As deputies approached the home, a shot was fired from inside. Additional units from the Murray Police Department and the Kentucky State Police then responded to the scene.



Hall surrendered to deputies a short time later and was taken to the Calloway County Detention Center. Deputies say charges are pending.



No one was injured in the incident.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Feb. 03, 2017 | 07:40 AM | OAK GROVE, KY

Authorities say two Fort Campbell soldiers have been killed and a juvenile injured following a domestic dispute near the Army post on the Kentucky-Tennessee line.

Kentucky State Police say in a statement that 35-year-old Jeremy James Demar of Clarksville, Tennessee, was in a domestic dispute with his estranged wife and found her at a home in Oak Grove, where he forced his way in and fatally shot a man and a woman.

Police say a teenager at the home received minor injuries in a confrontation with Demar, who fled with a young child.

The statement says Clarksville police later apprehended Demar and took him into custody. The child wasn't injured.

The victims have been identified as Demars estranged wife, 32-year-old Pricilla Ann East of Oak Grove, and 28-year-old Christopher Ryan Hoch, also of Oak Grove. Both were soldiers stationed at Ft. Campbell Army base. Autopsies were scheduled to be performed Friday at the State Medical Examiners Office in Louisville.



Demar has been charged with murder, murder - domestic violence, assault 4th Degree, and burglary 2nd degree. He is currently jailed in Clarksville, awaiting extradition to Kentucky.
By The Associated Press Feb. 03, 2017 | 04:34 AM | FRANKFORT, KY

Juvenile justice officials in Kentucky are encouraging local initiatives to keep low-level juvenile offenders out of the criminal justice system.

The Department of Juvenile Justice says it will start accepting applications on Feb. 15 for a program that supports those efforts.

The agency says about $300,000 will be available through the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It says individual grants of up to $100,000 may be awarded.

Those funds will be used to support community-based delinquency prevention efforts aimed at keeping at-risk youth and first-time, non-serious offenders from entering the juvenile justice system.

Officials say the funds have been earmarked for public and private non-profit groups and for city and county governments that provide direct service programs for youngsters who are 10 to 14 years old.
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By Richard Nelson, Commonwealth Policy Center

Feb. 02, 2017 | CADIZ, KY

By Richard Nelson, Commonwealth Policy Center Feb. 02, 2017 | 06:01 PM | CADIZ, KY

Louisville Courier Journal's Credibility Problem - by Richard Nelson



I was given a tip last week by a Frankfort insider that Attorney General Andy Beshear refused to defend the recently passed ultrasound law. This person told me to watch for a statement from the Governor's office. Within hours, Gov. Bevin went on Facebook Live and charged Beshear with failure to defend the recently enacted pro-life law. "It's dishonorable to run for a position as the attorney general, as the chief law enforcer for the state, and then not do your job," Bevin said in the five-minute long social media conference.



Beshear promptly retorted that the governor's "claims are false," that he is providing "his own 'alternative facts'" and that his office is taking "the most aggressive action possible, moving to have the entire case dismissed as to those agencies." So who's telling the truth?



Before weighing in, I went back to my source and asked for clarification. I was given one. I also had an opportunity to personally interview the governor later that day where I indeed learned that Beshear failed to fully defend the law in a recent court proceeding.



In the meantime, like a lion on a gazelle, the Louisville Courier-Journal (LCJ) was quick to pounce on Bevin calling his Facebook Live conference a "false attack." LCJ reporter Deborah Yetter said "Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear is defending the state against the challenge to the ultrasound law, though he has expressed doubts about its constitutionality, saying the court case comes with "risks and potential costs."



Gov. Bevin objected to Yetter's report and said she "disregard[ed] the truth," and "perpetuated a lie." Joel Christopher, the Courier-Journal's executive editor responded "It was wrong for the governor to try and score political points by attacking a reporter." Now, is it fair for media to poke a stick in the lion's eye so to speak and expect him not to growl?



Truth is, Beshear said in a court filing that he "takes no position" on the motion for a temporary injunction filed by the ACLU. It would appear that "taking no position" on a legal maneuver that would immediately stop the bill from going into effect is not taking "the most aggressive action possible."



Beshear filed a one-page legal brief in the law's defense. Bevin's team of lawyers filed a 25-page brief. Beshear also made a motion to remove his office from the lawsuit. All this adds up to at best is a half-hearted commitment from a guy who's on record refusing to defend the recently enacted late-term abortion ban. In light of the facts, it is not unreasonable to say that Beshear is not defending the law.



A 12-year legislative battle over the Ultrasound Bill (HB 2), made possible by an electoral landslide last November and finalized by Gov. Bevin's signature on Jan. 7, gave Kentucky's expecting mothers the right to see fetal sonograms of their unborn children before undergoing an abortion. The law immediately went into effect because lives and life-altering decisions are stake.



The media play an important role in informing the public. They should tell the truth and they should be fair to political leaders from both parties. This is what citizens expect and this is what's needed for a healthy body politic.



However, this may prove difficultat least for Kentucky's largest newspaper. Harsh editorials against pro-life laws in the past and hyper-critical reporting of our governor now compromise their objectivity. That's why Gov. Bevin circumvented traditional media outlets and used social media last week.



As of Monday, 87,000 people viewed his Facebook Live conference. Thousands have shared the post, so it's safe to say Kentuckians have gotten the news, not through an unreliable filter, but directly from the governor, legal proceedings and up and coming news outlets like Kentucky Today.



In the day of digital and social media, established media's once-tight grip of the news has loosened considerably. Their persistent political bias and unreliable reporting only undermines their mission and their most important commoditycredibility.



Richard Nelson is the executive director of the Commonwealth Policy Center, a nonprofit public policy organization. He resides in Cadiz with his wife and children.
By Press Trust of India: Kohima, Feb 2 (PTI) Nagaland Chief Minister T R Zeliang tonight rejected the demand for his governments resignation following the death of two persons in anti-ULB poll agitation in Dimapur and appealed to the people to stop violence and not fall prey to rumour mongers.

"Making unreasonable and unconstitutional demands such as asking the entire Cabinet to tender resignation when the Ministry has undisputed, unquestionable majority and support of the entire Assembly, is simply unacceptable and non-negotiable," the Chief Ministers Office said in a statement.

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Earlier in the day, the Nagaland Tribes Action Committee (NTAC), representing different tribal organisations, had served an ultimatum to Zeliang and his cabinet to resign by 4 PM.

In view of the violence, the Kohima District administration has promulgated prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC in certain areas including Raj Bhavan, Ministers Hill, and Jail Colony.

The curfew came into effect from 9:30 tonight and would continue till further order, a notification said.

"The Government is of the considered opinion that it has been lenient enough to give in to the demands of the agitators (withholding ULB polls) even though it was steadfastly abiding by the Constitution to which it had sworn its solemn allegiance," the CMO statement said.

Zeliang appealed to all not to indulge in vandalism and arson destroying public properties and spreading fear and panic in the minds of the peace-loving citizens of the state.

Resorting to violent activities to convey ones point of view is irrational and has no place in a civilised modern society, he said.

The Chief Minister also urged users of social media to desist from spreading rumours as untruths were being fed to innocent people by people with vested political interests.

The statement said MLA of Northern Angami Constituency Neiphrezo Keditsu was forced to tender his resignation as the Chairman of Nagaland State Mineral Development Corporation on moral ground as one of the two persons killed in Dimapur happens to be from his own village.

Apart from him, no other legislator has resigned and Chief Minister enjoys full support of not only the NPF and Independent MLAs but also of BJP legislators, it said. PTI NBS NN SMN

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ONE MILLION DOLLAR GOAL MET FOR PARDEE'S CANCER CENTER

Pardee Hospital Foundations Brian Robinson Challenge Reaches $1 Million Goal

Hendersonville, N.C.  Pardee Hospital Foundation announced today that Brian Robinsons $1 million fundraising challenge for the Foundations Capital Campaign has been met. Nearly 180 people donated to the campaign with individual gifts ranging from $25 to $50,000. Of those donors, 64 gave $1,000 or more to the campaign and 55 people made their first contribution to Pardee Hospital Foundation. The challenges three largest gifts were all from new donors who were inspired by Robinsons challenge to the community and decided to pledge their support to their new hometown as well.

Brian Robinson pledged $500,000 to the $6 million Capital Campaign for the new Pardee Cancer Center. In a surprise public announcement at the Pardee Hospital Foundations 19th Annual Women Helping Women luncheon on October 28, Robinson issued a challenge to the community to raise an additional $250,000, which he would match dollar for dollar to reach a total of $1 million. This is the largest gift to the campaign since it began in April 2015, pushing the total raised to date to $5 million from 515 donors.

The enthusiastic response to Brians challenge has been gratifying and heartwarming, said Kimerly Hinkelman, executive director of Pardee Hospital Foundation. With less than $1 million to go, we are reaching out to people to encourage them to help us finish this historic achievement and become a part of the future of health care in Henderson County. Not only will the Cancer Center treat and cure thousands of our friends, family members and neighbors over the next 25 years, but the Health Sciences Center will help to educate and produce a majority of health care providers who will take care of us for the next 50 years.

I am honored to match the communitys generous $250,000 contribution, bringing the total to $1 million for the new Cancer Center at Pardee, said Robinson. Our community is strongest when we work together and I am proud to call Henderson County my home.

Pardee Hospital opened its new Cancer Center in December 2016 through an innovative collaboration with Henderson County, the City of Hendersonville, Wingate University and Blue Ridge Community College. The new, state-of-the-art health sciences building also houses Pardee Surgical Associates as well as existing programs in allied health care, pharmacy, and physician assistant studies from Blue Ridge Community College and Wingate University.

Robinson is originally from east Tennessee and became affiliated with the region as an actor with the Flat Rock Playhouse many years ago. He only recently decided to put down roots in Henderson County to make it his permanent residence, buying a home in Flat Rock in 2015. When asked why this gift and why give to the Cancer Center at Pardee Hospital, Robinson notes that hes been blessed with good health his whole life and like so many others, took it for granted. It was on a recent two-week intensive health retreat in California that Robinson says he underwent a transformative experience that at the time wasnt apparent. It was only upon his return and a visit to the Cancer Center with his friend and capital campaign committee member Debbie Rouse that the true impact of his retreat surfaced. This behind the scenes tour was instrumental in Brians aha moment.

Pardee Memorial Hospital Foundation was approved as a nonprofit foundation in January 1996. The Foundation exists to educate and inspire the community to support Pardee Hospital. Since its inception, the Foundation has generated more than $30 million in pledges and cash gifts for Pardee services. For more information, visit www.pardeehospitalfoundation.org or call 828-233-2700.
Governor PB Acharya in his response to the demands of the Nagaland Tribes Action Committee stated he was deeply grieved at the unfortunate death of two youth and injury of two others in the firing incidents, and he assured that he will take action as per constitution to punish the guilty.

Naga tribals set ablaze the Kohima Municipal Council office and the office of the district collector during their violent protest, in Kohima on Friday. Photo: PTI

By Manogya Loiwal : The crisis in Nagaland is still continuing with the protesters not backing away and the state government not yielding any ground either.

Governor PB Acharya in his response to the demands of the Nagaland Tribes Action Committee stated he was deeply grieved at the unfortunate death of two youth and injury of two others in the firing incidents, and he assured that he will take action as per constitution to punish the guilty.

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He also appealed to the public to ensure peace and tranquility and not to indulge in violence. However Kohima and Dimapur continue to witness a self imposed bandh pending their demands being fulfilled by the state government.

In regard to the election issues of the urban local bodies, which saw the loss of two volunteers on January 31, 2017, late Bendangnungsung and late Kriesavizo, who both allegedly died in firing by the state police at Dimapur in Nagaland.

The Kohima Municipal Council office which was set ablaze by Naga tribals during their violent protest in Kohima on Friday. Photo: PTI

Various tribal representatives have now formed a committee as Nagaland Tribe Action Committee in Kohima and are demanding the three charter points to the governor of Nagaland.

1. The Chief Minister along with his Cabinet should resign.

2. The ULB or urban local body election process presently enforced must be declared null and void.

3. The erring police officer and personnel be immediately suspended.

The Committee further stated that without the reply of the demand by the state governor the bodies cannot be buried. So far the government has not yet responded to the demands.

On 33 per cent women reservation in Nagaland for ULB election: The series of events that have led to the present severe crisis in Nagaland due to the war like situation between the masses and the state government for 33 per cent women reservation in Nagaland under the leadership of TR Zeliang, the Chief Minister of Nagaland and Democratic Alliance of Nagaland chairman Dr. Shurhozelie is most alarming and disturbing for the entire Naga society. It is having serious repercussions on Nagaland's political situation. Almost all sections of the people led by the civil societies and tribal organisations like Naga Hoho, ENPO, NTC, NCD, APO, Ao Seden etc., are against the conduct of municipal elections for town councils and implementation of women's reservation and everyone. Only a few people in the Nagaland DAN government and the Cabinet, are of the view that implementation of municipal elections and women reservation would impinge upon Article 371(A) of the Constitution of India. Therefore all mass based organisations have appealed to the government to withhold the elections and not implement the women's reservations within the Naga inhabited areas. However, the DAN government has gone ahead with assembly resolution and issued notifications for elections and women's reservations despite the mass majority of the Nagas appealing to the government not to do so. This has created a war like situation. Democracy has been murdered and the so called people's government, DAN government fail to accept the reasonable demands of Nagas in Nagaland. The stand of the tribal Hohos and mass based organisations is quite clear. Any person who supports the elections or participates in the elections should be declared as anti-Naga. They are to be excommunicated by their respective tribes which would have gone against the wishes of the Naga people. (Law made by the tribals according to their customary law). The Article 371(A) of the Constitution of India which provides special protection and ensures privileges to the Naga people has been achieved and won with immense suffering and sacrifice by all Nagas. Anybody who does anything to impinge and negatively impact this provision is definitely anti-Naga which means Naga people will never forgive them or even their future generations for all times to come. Candidates who have filed nominations to ULB demand immediately withdraw their nominations before the last date of withdrawal. The case of municipal elections and women's reservations has been heard by the Supreme Court on 18 occasions and previous Advocate General and Additional AG of the State had advised the state and pleaded with the court that this will infringe upon Article 371(A).

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And now with the protests growing louder the fight seems to have gone one notch higher.

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Security personnel patrol as bandh supporters blocked the highway during a strike call given by Joint Coordination Committee in Dimapur, Nagaland on Friday. Photo: PTI

Nagaland erupts: Protesters angry over women's quota in local polls set fire to govt offices in Kohima

Nagaland tense over anti-women's quota stir, two killed in police firing

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Rajnath Singh has assured all possible help from the Centre and is said to be closely monitoring the situation.

Army has been deployed in parts of Dimapur and Kohima to ensure non-escalation of the protest.

By Manogya Loiwal : Home Minister Rajnath Singh today spoke to Nagaland Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang over the tensed scene in the capital city of Kohima.

Rajnath Singh has assured all possible help from the Centre and is said to be closely monitoring the situation.

The home secretary is also holding a series of meetings to advocate the issue that has caused a violent stir in Nagaland.

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A source in MHA said, "Distance from Delhi will not hamper the help that needs to be extended to Nagaland."

Zeliang has assured that the situation is under control with no more violent clash being reported since morning.

Also read: Nagaland: Protesters angry over women's quota in local polls set fire to government offices in Kohima

Also read: Nagaland tense over anti-women's qouta stir, two killed in police firing

Army has been deployed in parts of Dimapur and Kohima to ensure non-escalation of the protest.

Tribal groups in Nagaland have been opposing the state government's decision of granting 33 per cent reservation to women in the local bodies.

The protests turned tensed after the death of two protestors in police firing in Dimapur on Wednesday.

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By Press Trust of India: Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) Signalling a potential shift in its Israel policy, the Trump administration has said the construction of new settlements or expansion of existing ones by the Benjamin Netanyahu government "may not be helpful" in securing peace with Palestine.

"While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said.

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This is a departure from Trumps previous support for settlement building by the Jewish state. The US President had vowed to forge closer ties with Israel and move away from the Obama administrations policy towards the country.

The unexpected statement comes after Prime Minister Netanyahu announced plans for constructing Israels first new West bank settlement in more than 20 years, in addition to building thousands of new settler homes.

The White House also said it had not yet taken a position on settlement activity by Israel, and would raise the issue with Netanyahu during his visit later this month.

"The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits President Trump later this month," the statement said.

The Press Secretary said American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years.

"As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region," Spicer said.

Before taking office, Trump had lashed out at the Obama administrations decision to withhold a veto on a United Nations Security Council resolution criticising Israels settlements, an indication that he would be more supportive of the Jewish state. PTI LKJ BSA BSA

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The top court has accepted submissions made by amicus curiae in the case, Raju Ramachandran, that there has been a procedural error in sentencing of the men.

The trial court awarded death sentence to four accused in the case. (File Photo/PTI)

By Anusha Soni: In a dramatic twist in the December 2012 Nirbhaya gangrape case, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the sentencing of all four accused.

The top court today accepted submissions made by amicus curiae in the case, Raju Ramachandran, that there has been a procedural error in sentencing of the men.

The trial court's verdict awarding death sentence to four of the convicts- Akshay, Vinay Sharma, Pawan and Mukesh was upheld by the Delhi High Court.

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In the last hearing on November 7,2016, Ramachandran, had asked the apex court to set aside the death penalty awarded to the accused.

THE BACKGROUND:

Senior lawyer Raju Ramachandran, appointed by the apex court as an amicus curiae in the Nirbhaya gang rape case, submitted to the Supreme Court that the order on sentencing awarding death penalty to four convicts should be set aside for procedural violations. The order passed by the trial court in September 2013 was later upheld by the Delhi High Court. Ramachandran argued that the court did not consider the circumstances of each accused during the sentencing. He told the Supreme Court that the order giving death penalty should be put aside for for violating the fundamental norms of sentencing. Ramachandran recommended that the matter be referred back to the high court for sentencing. Ramachandran has further submitted that the trial court failed to put any of the accused to notice on the question of imposition of the death sentence without giving any time to reflect on the question of death penalty. Before sentencing none of the accused were heard in person. It has been further argued that the special circumstances of each of the accused were not taken into account which could have been the mitigating factors. No reasoning in the order was offered for each accused and a 'one-penalty-fits-all' order was passed, Ramchandran's plea said.

Six people, including a juvenile, had brutally assaulted a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in South Delhi on December 16, 2012.

Later, the accused threw out the victim and her male friend at an isolated spot after the savage attack. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012, triggering nation-wide protests that resulted in giving more teeth to laws related to rape and other forms of sexual harassment.

ALSO READ:

Delhi gangrape victim's friend relives the horrifying 84 minutes of December 16 night

2012 Delhi gangrape: All 4 convicted, victim's mother says hang them

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The government attorney could not say how many people with visas were sent back to their home countries from Dulles in response to the travel ban, Washington Post reported.

By Press Trust of India: Over 100,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, an attorney for the government said today.

The number came out during a hearing in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia in response to the president's executive order.

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The government attorney could not say how many people with visas were sent back to their home countries from Dulles in response to the travel ban, Washington Post reported.

An executive order signed by Trump over the weekend had halted the US refugee programme for 120 days and indefinitely banned all Syrian refugees.

A separate order also suspended all entry from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Syria on national security grounds.

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The moment John K. Samson and his band took the stage at the West End Cultural Centre for the first of two sold-out shows in November, the audiences rapt attention was focused on him. As Samson worked through songs from his latest album, Winter Wheat, gazes began to drift to the side of the stage, where two women were taking turns providing sign-language interpretation of Samsons music for deaf attendees.

The American Sign Language interpreters, Brittany Toews and Darla Stewart, used their hands, faces and bodies to translate the lyrics and melodies, as intrigued people on the floor pulled out their phones to capture their artistic movements.

While the interest from the crowd was ultimately positive, it was also telling  ASL interpretation is so uncommon at concerts that, in a room full of longtime members of Winnipegs music community, for many it was their first encounter with it.

Lack of understanding is the largest barrier stopping accessibility many in the deaf community desire when it comes to arts events, and in particular, live music. The assumption made by too many hearing people is that because a person is deaf, they dont enjoy music.

I think its a mistaken conception, that a lot of hearing people dont think deaf people enjoy or appreciate music, says Jamie Routledge, 25, a clinical case manager for New Directions. Hearing people, if they listen to headphones, they think, Wow what a musical experience that I get from the sound of this, and they wouldnt associate that to the way a deaf person is seeing things, but theres more to that.

Routledge is deaf and often goes to live-music events with her friends; she says access to interpretation makes a world of difference to her experience.

If I dont have an interpreter, Im usually just looking, I just feel the music, its more spending time with friends, she says via an interpreter. With an interpreter there, I feel more included. Theyre doing the music in my own language, and I can actually watch the music, and listen to it, so to speak. I can watch whats being said, and I know what the lyrics are.

  

The job of an interpreter is mentally and physically exhausting; the situations can often be stressful and pressure-packed. Think of any time in day-to-day life you are verbally given information; a deaf person needs an interpreter to help navigate that. That includes appointments with doctors or lawyers, exam sittings from high school all the way through PhD-level education, conferences and meetings and any number of other situations where an incorrect translation of information can have serious consequences.

Mike deal / Winnipeg Free Press Darla Stewart (left), and American Sign Language interpreter, with Jamie Routledge.

While artistic events such as concerts dont necessarily carry that same weight, they present their own challenges for interpreters. Firstly, the ASL interpretation is not word-for-word  ASL is, like any language, unique in its grammar, syntax, phrasing and vocabulary, and because of this, many interpreters look for greater themes and ideas in the music to make the most coherent translation possible.

(ASL is its own language, and not a variation of English. Just as an English-only speaker would not be able to understand a French-only speaker, an American Sign Language interpreter would not understand the sign language of a French interpreter. The language is not universal.)

Metaphors and non-literal phrases are often used in lyrics, as well as words that hold multiple or implied meanings, adding layer upon layer to the unpacking process interpreters must go through. In the best-case scenario, they are given the lyrics and set lists ahead of time, so they have time to understand the core message of the song and develop an interpretation that relays that information. But in some instances, they are forced to do all that work in the matter of seconds on stage.

If I dont have an interpreterI just feel the music, its more spending time with friends

In between English and ASL, the grammar is different, the structure is different, so when we interpret, we arent just putting something from English into sort of an English order, what were doing is were listening for the meaning, were understanding what is meant, where the person is going with it, where theyre coming from, and what the true, as much as we can access, meaning of that utterance is. And then were putting it in a cultural and linguistic way in terms of ASL and in terms of deaf culture, Stewart says.

Because the languages are different, the ways people express themselves culturally are different, we may have to express it in a way thats very different from the source, so the source being the English or whats sung, we may have to in some cases make choices around whether we interpret it one way or another, which may either add some meaning or lose some meaning, so we try to remain as accurate as we can, but its very complex in terms of the choices that we make moment to moment, she continues.

Neither Stewart nor Toews (nor any of the other hearing people interviewed for this piece) have any desire to speak on behalf of the deaf community, but both expressed their hope that accessibility will improve in the future.

Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press Jamie Routledge is a Clinical case manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services.

I would say that across the board theres such value that people dont recognize in providing increased access, says Stewart.

Adds Toews: Theres lots of venues in the city, and our hope is that at some point it becomes normal, that its not a fight to have inclusion. And then you could go anywhere and invite your deaf or hard-of-hearing friend and not have to fight for that accessibility  theres a big need for it.

Many large festivals in the United States, such as Lollapalooza and Bonnaroo, have made ASL interpretation a regular part of their accessibility planning, thanks in part to the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990 and, among other things, requires concert venues and production companies to provide interpretation on request.

There is no such legislation in Canada, though we are getting closer with the Accessibility for Manitobans Act, which applies to the removal of barriers in five main areas: customer service, employment, information and communication, transportation and the built environment, but does not stipulate that ASL must be offered at public events if requested.

However, the Winnipeg Folk Festival has long had a history of offering interpretation at their annual event in Birds Hill Provincial Park. A group of volunteer interpreters worked at the festival in the late 1970s and informally translated music at various stages.

Then, there was a cultural shift and it became incredibly politically incorrect to interpret music, explains Bonnie Heath, executive director of ECCOE  a company that offers professional interpreter and intervener services  and co-ordinator of the crew of interpreters who volunteer their services at the folk fest.

I think what happened is interpreters became afraid because interpreters are allies of the deaf community, and its so important that we follow the culturally appropriate things to do, says Heath, who was part of that initial group of volunteer interpreters in the 70s.

It wasnt until 2007 that Heath began to revisit the idea of interpreting music at the folk fest, and by 2013, a formal crew of volunteer interpreters had been put together. They focused on the family tent at first and have since branched out slightly to the other stages and workshops, and even onto the mainstage last year.

We started talking about moving the interpretation around the site for two reasons: so people can experience all the kinds of music we have, and each stage has its own flavour, so we wanted to make sure people have a chance to experience all the different kinds of music but also have a chance to explore the whole site, says Karla Ferguson, volunteer resources manager at Winnipeg Folk Festival.

MATT DUBOFF PHOTO ASL interpreter Brittany Toews at the John K. Samson concert at the West End Cultural Centre in November.

I think it really adds to the performances; it is an art form, its more than just interpreting the words, they infuse the music into what they do, and it becomes its very beautiful to watch, even for people who are hearing. And I think thats the other thing thats important for us to do as a festival is just more awareness to the hearing community that this is a need for people.

Folk fest has a Guest for a Day program, which gives different community groups the opportunity to check out the festival. The Deaf Centre of Manitoba and ECCOE have partnered with Guest for a Day, bringing a group of people from the deaf community to the festival for a day during which interpretation would be provided at multiple stages.

booking ASL interpreters If any musicians or bands are interested in booking ASL interpreters for an upcoming show, here are the best local resources to do so: ECCOE  Professional interpreter and intervenor services www.eccoe.ca or 204-926-3271 For specific interpreters: MAVLI  Manitoba Association of Visual Language Interpreters www.mavli.com

I think the access to the interpreting services there is wonderful, says Sheila Motney, executive director for the Deaf Centre of Manitoba.

Deaf people like to go to anything and everything, so folk fest is just one example. The vibe is so great there, the beats, you can feel it, youre not just relying on auditory side, you can actually feel it, youre a part of it, you can feel exactly whats going on. Just like anybody, deaf people of course love, love music. And its an ongoing thing that we try to encourage more people to be a part of this and to go to the folk festival.

Folk fest acknowledges the ASL interpretation they provide is limited to certain stages on certain days at certain times. While the ultimate goal is to have most of the stages be deaf-accessible on a consistent basis, there arent enough resources to support that.

In Manitoba, there are approximately 100 working interpreters (there is no way of knowing an exact number, however), and more are desperately needed. Right now, many interpreters in Manitoba are working more than full time due to high demand.

I think ideally wed like to see it offered at all the stages at some point during the weekend. I dont know that we have the resources at the moment to have an interpreter at each stage, Ferguson adds.You need two or three people at each stage and they trade off I actually think we dont have enough interpreters in town that can do it. So were kind of tapped right now with who is available to be at the festival.

  

In Winnipeg, there are a select few musicians who have taken it upon themselves to make their shows deaf-accessible, and one of them is Joey Landreth.

Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press Jamie Routledge and Darla Stewart of New Directions Deaf Support Services.

Landreth  who just released his first solo record after spending the last few years as part of roots-rock band the Bros. Landreth  regularly has interpreters at his local shows, a move that was inspired by his partner, Anna Salgado, whose parents and brother are deaf.

Its become something through my partner, because of her family and her passion for the deaf community, that has also become a passion of mine as somebody who loves people who are deaf and in the deaf community, I want to be an ally to them. The accessibility is what its all about, says Landreth, who has also starting learning ASL.

From an artists or venues perspective, the perceived cost and increased workload of hiring an interpreter could be a deterrent, but the process is easy and relatively inexpensive for musicians who can fill venues such as the West End Cultural Centre or the Park Theatre or larger, he says.

A typical rate for qualified ASL-English interpretation for concerts in Winnipeg is about $40 to $50 per hour, and Stewart says interpreters generally spend anywhere from four to 20 hours prepping for each show, but charge for just a small portion of that  sometimes as little as two hours.

The community of ASL-English interpreters in Winnipeg work at rates well below most qualified interpreters, due to high demand and a strong community desire for increased accessibility for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, Stewart says.

The whole purpose of their job is to make life easier, so prepping a show with an interpreter is like all you have to do is send the set list and the lyrics, they do their prep, dont ask for anything, they dont need space in the green room, they dont want bottles of water, Landreth says. So its kind of funny, I think a lot of people are reluctant to add a show expense, and theyre reluctant to add extra people in the green room but its so not like that.

Salgados mother, Crystal Miles, is deaf and attends many of Landreths shows. She grew up with music in her home as a child and has fond memories of her father playing the organ for her, but says seeing a concert without interpretation isnt worth the cost of the ticket.

I do enjoy the beats and everything, but thats about all I can get from it, she says. Especially depending on where Im sitting, if Im all the way in the back and theres no way to catch those vibrations or sound, theyre not as vibrant, so its not worth my money to spend money on concert tickets without an interpreter.

When bands do have ASL interpretation available, however, Miles says its really inspiring; a thought echoed by many in the deaf community who celebrate any step forward in terms of inclusion.

The fact they are thinking about accessibility, thinking about deaf people and having everyone welcome, that is definitely very moving, says Miles.

MATT DUBOFF PHOTO Interpreter Bonnie Heath and musician Dan Bern at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 2013.

Most of the time when we see any sort of advertisements posting to the deaf community, when it says ASL interpreting is provided, were there, we go, concurs Routledge. And I know most of the people who are in my deaf friend group who like music, we all go to live-music shows, and I know that if we went and we knew the event was for us and there was a space for us, it would be more fun.

The lack of ASL interpretation available at live-music events is just one example of limitations placed on those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing every day, Salgado says.

For all deaf individuals who use ASL and for whom ASL is their first language, they never get to interact with the outside world on a daily basis in their first language. I think thats something we all take for granted incredibly unless you know what thats like, she says from Toronto, where she is in school training to be an ASL-English interpreter.

Its not even a matter of being able to learn the language and adapt yourself to the environment that youre in, its that your environment chooses not to adapt to you. Youve taken all the measures that you can to adapt to the world you live in and still people are unwilling to meet you halfway. And its not even halfway, its like 10 per cent.

Landreth says he, like most hearing people, originally wasnt aware of how valuable accessibility is and how it is a regular theme in the hearing-deaf conflict.

The communication barrier is so big, and not necessarily from deaf people to hearing people but the other way around; deaf people are really, really good at communicating with hearing people, but hearing people are often too weird about it to try and figure out how to do it.

I have interpreters because I want you there if you want to be there, and you should be able to come if you can and if you want to. And thats really, at the end of the day, what its all about, he says. If deaf people dont like my music and dont want to come to my show, thats OK, but I just want them to be able to come if they want to.

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel

MATT DUBOFF PHOTO ASL interpreter Brittany Toews at the John K. Samson concert at the West End Cultural Centre. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (from left) ASL interpreter Darla Stewart, Singer/Songwriter Raine Hamilton, ASL interpreter Brittany Toews, Cellist Natanielle Felicitas and Upright Bassist Quintin Bart during a recording of a Winnipeg Free Press Exchange Sessions at Hut K. 170111 - Thursday, January 26, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (from left) Darla Stewart an American Sign Language - English Interpreter at New Directions Deaf Support Services and Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (from left) Darla Stewart an American Sign Language - English Interpreter at New Directions Deaf Support Services and Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (from left) Darla Stewart an American Sign Language - English Interpreter at New Directions Deaf Support Services and Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (from left) Darla Stewart an American Sign Language - English Interpreter at New Directions Deaf Support Services and Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017. Mike Deal / Winnipeg Free Press MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS (from left) Darla Stewart an American Sign Language - English Interpreter at New Directions Deaf Support Services and Jamie Routledge a Clinical Case Manager at New Directions Deaf Support Services. 170112 - Thursday, January 12, 2017.
In the last week, we've moved from 'post-truth' to 'alternative facts'. Had Padmini not existed, we would've had to invent her. And we have.

In Nandshankar Mehta's 1868 Gujarati novel, Karan Ghelo, Alauddin Khilji kidnaps the wife of Karan Baghela, a Hindu king of Gujarat, and marries her. Although this is a historical novel, Mehta fills it with legend, local lore and large dollops of self-conscious fiction. After all, an embroidered handkerchief is so much more attractive than a plain one, no matter how fine its fabric.

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But it's another one of Khilji's female conquests that occupies us this week as we are forced to consider the latest tussle in the constant struggle between fact and fiction in our beleaguered public discourse about culture.

A few days ago in Jaipur (which had just hosted an unusually calm, even dull, Jaipur Literature Festival), local goons, in the guise of a caste pride outfit, attacked Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film set, where he was shooting for his film Padmavati.

The film purports to tell some version of the legend of Alauddin Khilji and his love for the Rajput queen Padmini, a love which led him to attack the fort of Chittor. The Rajput Karni Sena was protesting (in advance) the horrific and caste-rending idea that Bhansali might depict a love scene between the Hindu Padmini and the Muslim emperor.

We've all grown up with the story of the siege of the fort, the brave Rajput warriors who laid down their lives to guard the honour of Padmini, their queen, and her companions. When the rampaging, lust-driven Muslim emperor entered the fort, instead of the beautiful queen he sought, he found the charred bodies of the Rajput women who had all thrown themselves into the fire in an act of mass self-immolation.

We were taught to call this jauhar and not sati-this was about public honour rather than about conjugal devotion.

This story places Padmini in a long line of mythological heroines who jump into the fire to prove themselves and preserve their husbands' honour - Sita comes most immediately to mind.

This is also a tale about Hindus and Muslims, a story of how the Muslim invaders who settled in to rule northern India were uniformly rapacious, wilful and covetous of Hindu women. In contrast, local Hindu rulers, Rajputs in particular, were noble and courageous, fighting to the last man to defend not just their women but the great land of Hindustan.

Amar Chitra Katha revels in this story, but I also remember it from my social science textbook - a strange amalgam of history, geography, anthropology, legend and patriotic inspirations.

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But it turns out that this romantic story to which we are all attached is a work of fiction, it comes from a poem by the 16th century Sufi Malik Muhammad Jayasi. In Padmavat, Jayasi takes at least one historical figure, Alauddin, and one historical incident, the siege of Chittor, and couples them with Padmini/Padmavati, a figure more likely to be from legend than history.

Padmini, the queen of Chittor, might never have existed. If she did, it's possible she was a princess from Ceylon and not a Rajput woman. The business of Alauddin's love and Padmini's heroic rejection of it was apparently invented by Jayasi, to be read as an allegory for the obstacles that stand in the way of the human soul's union with the divine.

In the 21st century, such facts are not important. In the last week, in world-speak, we have moved from 'post-truth' to 'alternative facts'. If Padmini did not exist, we would have had to invent her. And we have.

Whether or not she really lived, how ironic that the great celebration of her courageous life and death has come to us from a Muslim poet who turns his coreligionist, Alauddin, into the violator of her person, her gender, her caste, her people and her religion. Dear bhaktas, how wonderful that you find truth even in the confabulations of your enemies.

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The writer is an author and translator. She has recently published Uttara: The Book of Answers

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth said hell explain what his officers did and didnt do when they learned about allegations of criminal wrongdoing in the development of the new downtown police headquarters, but now is not the time.

Smyth told reporters Friday the actions of police officers might be an appropriate area to be examined if the province calls a public inquiry, but he wont talk about the issue while the RCMP investigation is ongoing.

A public inquiry may be something to be considered down the road, but I think the first order of business is the criminal investigation, Smyth said following Fridays Winnipeg Police Board meeting. Thats still ongoing. A file like this, I know without even knowing the details, is going to be very complicated and complex, so it may be premature to be talking about an inquiry.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / FREE PRESS FILES Danny Smyth wont talk about the issue while the RCMP investigation is ongoing.

Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman said last week hell ask council to ask the province to hold an inquiry following the disclosure of the latest allegations that former city CAO Phil Sheegl took a $200,000 kickback from the owner of Caspian Construction and then gave $100,000 to former mayor Sam Katz.

Smyth said the RCMP allegations contained in the affidavits against Sheegl and the links to Katz are alarming, but cautioned they arent evidence.

Those are pretty strong statements, he said. But, keep in mind, its an investigation. We are a long way away yet from formal charges and any kind of court proceedings. You cant just take what information is provided to support search warrants and think that is evidence.

Smyth was questioned over statements in RCMP affidavits filed in court that Winnipeg police were aware of allegations Caspian officials had altered sub-trade invoices and inflated billings on the police headquarters project. The affidavits suggest Winnipeg police did not initially co-operate with the RCMP investigation.

Smyth said he did not accept the characterization of the RCMP affidavits that raise questions about the degree of co-operation the Mounties got from the Winnipeg Police Service in the Caspian investigation.

The affidavits state a former Caspian bookkeeper gave a statement to WPS commercial crime investigators in early November 2013 that she believed Caspian officials were altering sub-trade invoices and inflating the billings on the HQ project  more than a year before the Mounties began their formal investigation. The former employee also told Winnipeg police a Caspian company had given funds to a council member.

A second witness told police they had information on how their firm had been instructed by Caspian to alter their invoices, but WPS never formally interviewed that individual.

Smyth  superintendent of the investigations branch from 2012 to 2015 and later promoted to deputy chief  said he didnt think it would have been appropriate for the WPS to investigate city officials involved in the HQ project.

While the RCMP said city police alerted them to Caspian financial documents found in a warehouse fire  which the Mounties believe support their allegations of fraudulent billing  they also said when they initially contacted WPS to get a copy of a statement from a witness who had gone to city police a year before the RCMP investigation began, they did not get a response.

Smyth would not say why Winnipeg police had not complied with the RCMP request or whether the witness statement was eventually provided.

What I will say is were co-operating with the RCMP, who are the lead on the investigation, he said.

Smyth promised a full explanation of WPS actions even if the province doesnt call an inquiry.

Winnipeg Police Association president Maurice Sabourin said while questions remain about the decisions taken by the WPS, he said its possible the force had initiated its own investigation.

It may have been a case of not stepping on anybodys toes at that point, Sabourin said, adding it would be inappropriate to reach conclusions before all the evidence has been brought out.

Sabourin said a public inquiry is a likely outcome at the conclusion of the criminal proceedings.

The former Winnipegger who told Manitoba Justice about several witnesses and how at least two of them had contacted Winnipeg police said Smyth needs to explain the reasons behind some of the decisions made by the WPS.

Colin Craig, the former Prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, had written to Manitoba Justice in July 2014, pointing out witnesses had approached city police but there was no indication of an investigation.

In hindsight, it should be pretty clear that (Winnipeg) police procedure needs to change in the future, said Craig, who now lives in Calgary.

The minute the allegations were brought to (WPS) attention I think at that point (WPS) should have contacted the RCMP to say, You guys need to handle this because we cant because were in a conflict.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justice officials are seeking up to a year in jail for a Winnipeg woman who didnt summon immediate medical help as her 10-month old daughter struggled to breathe and later died as a result of a morphine overdose.

The 34-year-old woman  who cant be named in order to protect the identity of five other children in care  appeared in court Friday to be sentenced on a charge of failing to provide the necessities of life stemming from the July 2012 death. She was acquitted of an additional charge of criminal negligence after provincial court Chief Judge Margaret Wiebe decided it wasnt clear how the drug got into the infants system.

She waited so very long to call 911, Crown attorney Melissa Hazelton said during her submission. This is not a case of a momentary lapse of attention.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Court testimony indicated emergency help was delayed in June 2012 because a woman delayed calling 911 as her baby was dying.

The accused is seeking a suspended sentence with probation. Her lawyer told court the woman is racked with guilt and doesnt need to be held in custody to understand what she did wrong.

Every day she lives with the consequences of her criminal behaviour, said Amanda Sansregret. Her client says crippling social anxiety, including a chronic phobia of doctors, prevented her from taking prompt action. She didnt realize the grave nature of her daughters condition, initially chalking it up to the babys history of bronchial issues that required the use of an inhaler.

Im so sorry to my kids. I understand I should have just called 911. I dont understand why I was so scared to call 911, the woman told court Friday in a written statement read aloud by her lawyer.

Wiebe reserved her decision until later this month.

During the trial, court was told the womans boyfriend urged her to call an ambulance after hearing his daughter struggling to breathe, during a pair of phone calls over the course of an hour from Headingley Correctional Centre, where he was an inmate.

Another friend and occasional roommate testified how he was in a bar at a downtown hotel when he got a text message from the mother shortly after she hung up the phone with her boyfriend.

Come home, somethings wrong with the baby, the woman wrote. He immediately phoned her.

Shes not breathing, the woman said. He told her to put a mirror up to the babys mouth and nose to see if she could be mistaken.

She was hysterical and really scared. I told her, As soon as you hang up the phone, call the ambulance, he told court.

The man rushed to the womans home, arriving about 15 minutes later. Paramedics hadnt arrived, but he believes the woman had called them by that point.

(The child) was motionless. She was purple a little bit, he said. The man attempted CPR on the baby as the distraught mother paced back and forth.

Doctors were unable to save the girl and the cause of death was initially a mystery. A Philadelphia laboratory later uncovered the truth, noting high levels of morphine in her system. However, police and justice officials have never been able to determine how she ingested the drug.

The mother took the position at trial that it was a tragic accident. But Wiebe found her guilty of inaction, noting testimony from the pathologist said there would have been noticeable signs the child was suffering, including laboured breathing and chest heaving. The doctor said getting immediate medical attention was crucial to the babys survival.

The mother has been free on bail since shortly after her arrest. She lost custody of her other five children, who range in age from three to 15, but has regular visitation with them.

(Child and Family Services) wants to reunify the family, but until the resolution of this matter theyre not in a position to do so, Sansregret told court Friday.

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 02/02/2017 (2102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new controversy is enveloping the Manitoba NDP as it begins the business of choosing its new leader.

The partys president and interim leader are being accused of circumventing the partys decision-making process by appealing directly to members to adopt a one-member, one-vote process in selecting a successor to Greg Selinger.

In an email to members Thursday, NDP president Ovide Mercredi and interim leader Flor Marcelino said employing a one-member, one-vote (OMOV) process would be more inclusive and more democratic.

JOHN WOODS / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Manitoba's interim NDP leader, Flor Marcelino.

OMOV proponents believe we can do what every other NDP provincial section (in Canada) and the federal NDP do and bring in a one-member, one-vote system, with an agreed upon modernized version of labour participation in our party, they wrote.

The four-page letter effectively dismisses the work of a party committee that canvassed the opinion of New Democrats across Manitoba last year. The committee recommended two possible ways of selecting a leader: a delegated convention or through a point system based on constituency votes.

Both options offered a significant role for labour in choosing a new leader. The process urged by Mercredi and Marcelino does not.

The committees report was adopted by the partys provincial council in December. A final decision on how to select a leader is to be made at a convention in March.

The new leader is to be chosen in mid-September.

Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, said the mailout by the two officials was inappropriate.

Theyre welcome to have that point of view and I welcome that debate. But going about it this way is wrong, said Rebeck, who co-chaired the committee that came up with the original options.

I think it disregards a lot of processes that are in place in our party for a good democratic dialogue. It skips that.

While there is a reference in the email to maintaining a role for labour within the party, its difficult to determine what that would be.

I have no clue what that means and I represent labour, said Rebeck, who has written to party executive members to express his displeasure with the email.

In an interview, Mercredi said about 10 party constituencies are already backing a one-member, one-vote resolution for debate at the March convention.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Kevin Rebeck, president of the Manitoba Federation of Labour, says it's unclear what an NDP email means when it references a role for labour within the party.

Our intention was to try to get that discussion going now so that we can try to find consensus before the convention, he said. Otherwise I think the convention will be dominated by this debate.

However, it appears the letter is causing more dissension in an already deeply divided party, which held its last leadership contest less than two years ago after Selinger, then the premier, fought off a cabinet revolt.

One NDP constituency president, who asked not to be named, said Mercredi and Marcelino are basically undermining the duly elected provincial council, which is the NDPs most powerful body between party conventions.

The rules lose and corrupt approaches win, the constituency head said.

Mercredi argued the provincial council merely agreed to forward the committees leadership selection report to the March convention. The latter meeting is where the real decisions are to be made, he said.

Asked if he agreed the letter he co-penned with Marcelino might be divisive, he chuckled.

I think right now all people who are part of the NDP need to take a deep breath and say Lets be honest and lets be kind to each other. And lets look at all the options without attacking one another, Mercredi said. Thats my view.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca

1Fellow+New+Democrats
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This article was published 02/02/2017 (2102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lawyers and 60s Scoop survivors are welcoming news that Ottawa wants to settle claims over the estimated 20,000 indigenous children taken from their homes in Canada and adopted in places as far away as Europe and the southern U.S.

In Ottawa Wednesday, Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett told the House of Commons the Trudeau government is offering to negotiate a countrywide settlement with 60s Scoop kids.

When Minister Bennett made this announcement, there ha(d) already been a fledgling beginning of discussions, said Tony Merchant, head of the Merchant Law Group, which represents thousands of 60s Scoop survivors across the country including Manitoba.

ADRIAN WYLD / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Indigenous Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett.

Im very proud to say that we are adversaries no more and that negotiation rather than litigation is our governments preferred route to settle these differences and right these historical wrongs, Bennett told the Commons.

Bennetts statement, which was short on details or time frames, comes after a last-minute cancellation of a hearing the judge in the Ontario case had requested for Thursday.

Federal lawyers appeared before a justice of the Ontario Supreme Court to say they had no evidence to offer, effectively calling a halt to seven years of proceedings in a $1.3-billion class-action suit with 16,000 claimants. It was about to wrap up, and the justice in the case indicated he will release a date for his ruling next week.

Bennetts office confirmed Friday she was referring to a national settlement, not just a settlement for the one in Ontario that had advanced the furthest in the courts. Merchant said his firm and the other lawyers knew from the beginning Ottawa was looking at something coast to coast.

Weve had a meeting in Toronto, and there was a plan  not sure whether it will materialize, but there was a plan for the next meeting to be in Regina March 2 or 3, said the Regina-based lawyer by phone Thursday.

Merchant Law Group represents groups of 60s Scoop clients in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and the North.

Merchant said federal lawyers approached four law firms that represent 60s Scoop clients in Canada, including his, to appeal to them to cease litigation in courts across Canada. That includes the Ontario case, one in Manitoba and another that reached the stage of going into court in British Columbia.

Merchant said whatever happens to the legal actions, Bennetts announcement was good news.

Whether we succeed in representing the people of Manitoba or not, there will still be negotiations that take place with the government.

And because Merchant Law represents people in so many other provinces, Merchant will be there at the table, he said.

Its a recognition by the federal government that they carry responsibility. Theyre not committing to apologize, as in to pay, but the very fact they say we want to meet with the plaintiffs and the groups of lawyers is an indication that theyre moving in the right direction, Merchant said.

What the federal government is seeking from Merchant law and a number of lawyers is a standstill. They want all the lawyers to say we wont do any more litigation of any kind, and they want us to ask the Manitoba Court of Appeal and the Ontario Court to not render their decisions, Merchant said.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Coleen Rajotte, a 60s Scoop survivor who has worked to raise awareness about the program, says she and others are awaiting government's proposed settlement.

Sixties Scoop survivors, even the ones with lawyers, said the announcement caught them off guard.

I was surprised because you know its been many years since we brought up this issue publicly, and we havent heard much from the federal government, said Coleen Rajotte.

Rajotte, a former broadcaster and a founder of an annual indigenous film festival, is considered a leading spokeswoman on the issue in Manitoba. She was taken from her mother in Winnipeg, raised by a Manitoba family, and later found her family roots in a Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan .

Rajotte co-chaired a roundtable in 2014 with then-deputy premier Eric Robinson, the first such forum to draw public attention to the era many have compared to residential schools in its impact. The following year, Manitoba became the first province to apologize publicly, describing the 60s Scoop as a historic injustice.

Accounts vary, but many suggest Manitoba played a leading role in the practice, removing anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 children.

Children who were taken from their homes lost their cultures and languages, and families and were frequently subjected to childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Some made it back after years of searching for their families, but they didnt all have happy endings  even if they made it home. Others ended up in prison or dead and many  but not all  suffered ongoing trauma.

In my opinion, if they want to come forward and talk to us and come up with some kind of settlement package, that would be fine, but we have to hear what theyre thinking and what theyre offering before we even comment on what their offer is, Rajotte said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 02/02/2017 (2102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The surge in asylum seekers crossing into Canada on foot from the U.S. has Karin Gordon worried about what some farmers might find in their fields this spring.

PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Maddie Pearlman expecting more than 30 law students to help out at Saturday's research-a-thon.

Im very concerned we will find the remains of bodies concealed under the snow, said Gordon, who has driven to Emerson, Man. many times to rescue refugee claimants. The rising tide of asylum seekers in Canada are fleeing anti-refugee rhetoric and orders issued by U.S. president Donald Trump. Theyre sneaking into Canada through frozen fields because if they show up at a port of entry, theyll be turned back under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement.

Refugee advocates and legal minds in Canada say its time to scrap the deal because the U.S. is no longer safe for refugees.

On Friday at noon and again at 6:30 p.m., the group No One Is Illegal is holding a rally in support of migrants and refugee claimants in Canada in front of 201 Portage Ave. Theyre calling on Mayor Brian Bowman to make Winnipeg a sanctuary city, echoing a move by some U.S. mayors whove said their cities wont report undocumented residents to federal immigration authorities.

On Saturday morning, University of Manitoba law students are joining counterparts across Canada for a research-a-thon to help with the legal arguments challenging the Safe Third Country Agreement. Trumps order to suspend the U.S. refugee program prompted Maddie Pearlman to organize the Winnipeg event.

I was particularly outraged. I was scared. I was confused, said Pearlman. Before law school, she got her masters degree in refugee studies and worked with newcomer kids at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization of Manitoba for two years.

I learned so much from these kids and their families  their past experiences, their lives. My time at IRCOM motivates me and inspires me to keep doing the work that Im doing. Whats happening in the U.S. is having an impact in Canada, she said. Its all related and all part of the bigger issue of discrimination and intolerance and power. Shes expecting more than 30 law students to help out at Saturdays research-a-thon.

Eight of their professors have already joined 200 academics across Canada calling on the Canadian government to pull out of the Safe Third Country Agreement. Theyve sent a letter to Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen saying that under Canadas immigration law, a countrys human rights record and its compliance with international refugee and torture conventions have to be taken into consideration before it is considered safe. Trumps words and actions disqualify it as a safe place for refugees, their letter said.

If Canada suspends the Safe Third Country deal, refugee claimants could safely enter Canada at a controlled border crossing  which would be better for everyone, said U of M law Prof. Shauna Labman.

We should be talking about the fact that with the agreement in place, people are not going to cross into Canada at the (ports of entry), said Labman. That should be our concern. Suspending the deal would allow claimants to get dropped off at a port of entry where they would be screened by the Canada Border Services Agency. That would keep Canadians safer, and allow for their claims to be processed in a more orderly fashion, she said.

And it would cut down on criminal exploitation and human trafficking, said Abdi Ahmed, a leader in Winnipegs Somali community.

The Safe Third Country Agreement breeds smuggling, said Ahmed, coordinator of the federally-funded Immigration Partnership Winnipeg. It opens up an opportunity for people who break the law and take advantage of refugees, he said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Karin Gordon (left) travels to Emerson to pick up refugees who have made it across the border with the United States.

The best thing would be to provide an opportunity for vulnerable people to come to Canada in an orderly, organized way, he said.

That would be more humane for the asylum seeker, too, who wouldnt have to risk life or limb going through frozen fields to avoid ports of entry, said Labman. Two refugee claimants from Ghana nearly froze to death Dec. 24 walking for hours from North Dakota into Canada.

Trumps words and actions will drive many more refugees into Canada from the U.S., said Gordon, resettlement director for Hospitality House Refugee Ministry, a charity that helps privately-sponsored refugees. They have put an embargo on receiving any and they seem to be closed completely to anybody who has a Muslim background, she said.

People may be dying as a result. Gordon, whos helped refugee claimants on her own time, is the Winnipegger border officials called to fetch a soaking wet asylum seeker who swam down the Red River into Canada two summers ago. Yahya Samatar, an aid worker who fled Al-Shabaab terrorists in Somalia, made international headlines and was granted refugee protection in Canada.

We only know about the ones who got here, said Gordon. We wont know about the ones who didnt make it until spring.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
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This article was published 02/02/2017 (2102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Pallister government is spending more money this year to protect school divisions from the education funding formula than its spending on improvements to public education.

Education Minister Ian Wishart announced $13.1 million in new money this week to increase the provinces share of funding the $2.33-billion public schools system.

But he also spent $20.5 million of scarce provincial dollars to save more than half the provinces school divisions from losing money that the complex funding formula says they dont deserve to have.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Education Minister Ian Wishart, right, visits students from Dalhousie School.

Wishart gave 20 of Manitobas 37 school divisions a guarantee they would receive 98 per cent of the provincial operating grants they received a year ago  even though declining enrolment and assessment growth triggered a loss of funding under the formula.

That cost $20.5 million.

Even so, those 20 school divisions combined will receive $6.75 million less in operating grants than they got last year  the difference between getting 100 per cent of last years money and 98 per cent.

Despite acknowledging they are constantly proclaiming they are the party of openness and transparency, the Tories said Thursday they will continue the NDP policy of not identifying those school divisions.

The minister has not yet said if that 98 per cent guarantee would be further eroded in coming years.

Those 20 school divisions could lose more funding in succeeding years, especially given there is an obvious pot of $20.5 million for a government anxious to reduce public spending.

For years, the NDP had a zero guarantee  divisions would receive not a penny less than the year before regardless what happened to enrolment and assessment.

That cost the province $26.1 million a year ago.

The $13.1-million increase, which was almost one per cent in additional grants, was the lowest increase since the 1990s and the first major signal of the Pallister governments austerity plan expected to dominate the provincial budget as early as next month.

There was confusion Wednesday when Wishart initially said he was retaining the zero guarantee until he can consult with school divisions about overhauling the funding formula.

The formula is still the same, but the formula guarantee has been amended, von Meyenfeldt said Thursday.

Seven Oaks School Division superintendent Brian OLeary said Thursday there definitely needs to be a new formula.

The former NDP government was too reliant on equalization payments to cover problems within the formula, according to OLeary.

He said it was a mistake for the NDP to offer a tax incentive grant over four years that gave extra cash to divisions that froze taxes for a year.

That cost $61.4 million, which stayed permanently within their funding, and did not prevent a division from jacking up its taxes the following year.

They went down a couple of roads they shouldnt have, the tax incentive grant and the guarantee, OLeary said. They were outside the formula.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
By Press Trust of India: From M Zulqernain

Lahore, Feb 3 (PTI) A Pakistani court today served notices to the federal government and the electronic media regulator for banning Indian content on television and sought reply from them by February 9.

The Lahore High Court issued the notices to Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) and Federal Information Ministry on a petition by Leo Communication.

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Pemra in its October 2016 order had banned Indian content on Pakistani private televisions being operated through cable network in the country. The petitioner said the order is in violation of Pemra rules and the Constitution.

Advocate Taffazul Rizvi, counsel for petitioner, said his client in 2010 had been granted a 15-year licence by Pemra to operate a cable channel - Filmazia - and under the licence it was allowed to broadcast 10 per cent of foreign content including Indian.

"The channel because of running foreign (Indian) content became very popular and received highest viewership ratings across the country," he said.

Pemra, he said, without citing any legal reason on October 19, 2016 issued a circular abruptly banning all Indian content on cable channels in Pakistan.

"The government is indulging in selective patriotism as Indian movies are allowed to be exhibited in cinemas all over the country showing its double standards," he argued.

After hearing the arguments, LHC Chief Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah observed that when Indian movies are being screened in cinemas in the country what justification the government/Pemra has to ban Indian content on TV.

The court adjourned the hearing till February 9. PTI MZ ABH AKJ ABH

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 02/02/2017 (2102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When a Winnipeg judge delivers his decision in the case of a mother accused of keeping dead babies in a storage locker, hell do it in front of a camera.

A livestreamed verdict from provincial court Judge Murray Thompson, which will be broadcast on www.winnipegfreepress.com, is coming Monday in the case of 42-year-old Andrea Giesbrecht, who is accused of storing the remains of six infants  five boys and a girl. During a lengthy trial that wrapped up in October, medical experts testified the babies were likely born alive. Their decomposed remains  some no more than bones  were found in garbage bags contained in plastic containers inside a McPhillips Street storage locker two years earlier in October 2014.

Global TV asked permission to bring one TV news camera into the courtroom to livestream the verdict as part of Manitoba Justices cameras in courtrooms program, which launched as a pilot project in 2014.

Winnipeg Free Press files This surveillance footage of Andrea Giesbrecht from the McPhillips Street U-Haul was supplied as evidence in the trial.

The first verdict to be broadcast in Manitoba happened April 16, 2014, when Cassandra Knott was acquitted of second-degree murder. Since then, a smattering of other court decisions have been filmed and livestreamed with permission from the presiding judge.

Cameras have been allowed inside courtrooms to broadcast civil and criminal decisions in several provinces, including Alberta, B.C. and Ontario, and at the Supreme Court of Canada level.

As Giesbrechts case comes to a close Monday, the video camera will be focused only on the judge and wont capture an overall view of the courtroom. Giesbrecht is charged with six counts of concealing a childs body.

On the final day of Giesbrechts trial last fall, her defence lawyer Greg Brodsky said his client did store the human remains but didnt have any criminal intent.

She could have got rid of them. She wanted to keep them, he said at the time.

Either way, Crown prosecutor Debbie Buors argued, you cant save human remains.

The offence of concealing a childs body carries a maximum two-year sentence. The law prohibits dispos(ing) of the dead body of a child, with intent to conceal the fact that its mother has been delivered of it, whether the child died before, during or after birth.

In the Crowns interpretation of the law, that would include stillborn babies, but the Crown had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the six infants could likely have been born alive. Giesbrecht would have been well aware of the gestational age of the fetuses, the Crown argued, pointing to Giesbrechts multiple pregnancies  two children, 10 abortions and a number of miscarriages.

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay
Opinion

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This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg is one of the coldest major cities in the world (Statistics Canada puts our average January low at -22.8 C). But this is worthy of celebration for economic reasons, a point Mayor Brian Bowman and I made earlier this week when we announced Winnipeg is now an accredited member city of the World Winter Cities Association for Mayors, a network of more than 20 northern cities worldwide dedicated to promoting winter technologies and experiences.

Winnipegs winter identity has experienced a welcome transformation of late. The Forks, Winnipegs No. 1 tourist spot, attracts more than four million visitors annually. Over the past five years, its winter weekend numbers have rivalled peak counts in July and August. Whether gliding along the Red River Mutual Trail, exploring the Arctic Glacier Winter Park or enjoying a meal at Raw: Almond, theres an abundance of activities for winter enthusiasts.

But The Forks is just one of many attractions capitalizing on Winnipegs cool climate. The Festival du Voyageur is set to usher in its 48th edition of Western Canadas largest winter festival from Feb. 17 to 26. Assiniboine Park Zoos award-winning Journey to Churchill immerses visitors in the worlds most comprehensive northern species exhibit. And FortWhyte Alives 640-acre urban nature reserve also attracts attention in the colder months, with its moonlight snowshoe treks and free ice-fishing weekends.

While Winnipegs winter-themed recreation options compare favourably to activities available during milder months, they comprise only a small part of the bigger cold-weather picture that has positively impacted the citys economic well-being in recent years.

A partnership between GE and StandardAero resulted in the opening of the $50-million GE Aviation Test Research and Development Centre in 2012. Its the only cold-weather engine-testing facility for GE, which performs icing-certification testing on a variety of its jet engines. So successful has the collaboration been that GE is set to begin a $26-million upgrade in 2017 that is expected to expand its capabilities from cold-weather certifications to a wider range of tests that can be performed year-round.

Other local companies, such as MTS and New Flyer Industries, also benefit from Winnipegs winter weather. The formers $50-million data centre on Waverley Street is a 64,000-square-foot facility with rows of servers that must be kept at a consistent temperature. Cooling these machines in a cold climate like Winnipegs reduces operating expenses even more in a city that is already ultra-competitive when it comes to energy costs.

New Flyer believes Winnipeg winters provide an ideal testing ground for its zero-emission electric buses. Our winters not only offer frigid temperatures for assessing such things as battery life and cabin integrity but also feature useful fluctuations in day-to-day conditions. A big temperature change from one day to the next means New Flyer technicians can monitor how the humidity created from such extremes affects electrical systems, for example.

While GE, MTS and New Flyer exemplify companies investing here because our cold weather directly benefits certain operational aspects, Winnipegs winter-city reality invites an equally innovative economic angle: how do we survive and thrive in a place where the temperature once dipped to a record low of -47.8 C in 1879? Perhaps the most obvious answer is our buildings  residential, commercial and industrial  must be built to withstand the ravages such extreme temperatures threaten. From insulation and HVAC issues to vapour barriers and weatherproofed windows, accommodating Winnipeg winters requires a level of expertise that gives local companies in the industry a competitive advantage.

Beyond construction advancements best evidenced in buildings such as the Platinum LEED-certified Manitoba Hydro Place, Winnipeg has fostered an array of creative solutions allowing it to function as efficiently as possible regardless of prevailing conditions. How the city builds and repairs roads, provides water and waste management, ensures reliable sources of energy and moves people from place to place all coalesce in ways that make living and working in Winnipeg more pleasant and prosperous.

So why does this matter? Because this kind of expertise is easily exportable and could garner big economic dividends. The products weve perfected and the best practices weve established make Winnipeg a winter-living leader. Whats commonplace for us is anything but for places not as accustomed to the effects of bone-chilling cold.

Winnipeg is poised to make inroads as a higher-profile winter city in the years ahead thanks to its World Winter Cities Association for Mayors membership. Conferences are held every two years, and host cities can also concurrently present a winter expo for business and industry as well as a winter forum for researchers and academics, which have significantly increased the scale and impact of the associations activities. Look for Winnipeg to host this conference in the coming years. Its time our city accesses this influential network.

We should step up our game by connecting local ingenuity with prospective external markets craving improved sub-zero strategies. Part of being a smart city is knowing how to monetize what we do best, then promoting this value to global audiences. The more we do that, the more well see Winnipeg appear on the potentially lucrative short list of intelligent cities that own winter like nowhere else in the world.

Dayna Spiring is the president and CEO of Economic Development Winnipeg Inc.
Opinion

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This article was published 02/02/2017 (2102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made crystal clear this week he has at least one thing in common with U.S. President Donald Trump.

The ability to lie to the people of his country.

When he stood in the House of Commons Wednesday and once again told Canadians the consultation process on electoral reform undertaken in the last year didnt show a clear consensus, his nose got a little bit longer.

SEAN KILPATRICK / THE CANADIAN PRESS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that, if elected, the Liberals would ensure the 2015 vote was the last in Canada under the first-past-the-post electoral system.

Trudeau hasnt acknowledged changing the electoral system is more complicated and will take longer than one election cycle to get right. He hasnt admitted he no longer thinks the existing system is all that bad because, well, it got him into power. No, Trudeau and the Liberals are continuing to push the farce that they tried their best but couldnt figure out what Canadians want, so now theyre going to drop the whole thing.

With respect, Mr. Prime Minister, that is a load of hooey.

In the fall, you acknowledged your desire to change the voting system lost steam after you realized the Conservatives could be defeated using it. In fact, thats how you won, and since then, everyone knew this day was going to come. Yet you pushed on, spending more than $1.8 million to mail postcards to almost 15 million Canadian homes pushing a survey that seems to have been designed to ensure you could say there was no consensus.

Nowhere in your survey did you flat-out ask, Do you want a new electoral system or do you want the status quo?

Instead, it meandered around asking if people wanted a government that consulted all the people before making a decision or asking in three different ways what kind of ballot people wanted. So when a majority of people say they want a ballot that is as simple as possible, and almost an equal number say they want to be able to express their preferences in great detail, bam, Liberals can say, See? There is no consensus.

What people are really saying is, Please give us a more straightforward survey.

Trudeau made it very clear during the election he would bring in legislation by the spring of 2017 to alter the electoral system in time for the 2019 election. Im guessing he didnt consult any electoral experts for the timeline, because calling that ambitious would be like calling the Kardashians attention-seekers.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe Trudeaus promise during the election was purposely vague because he did want to consult with Canadians, didnt want to push his own preference for a preferential ballot down peoples throats and felt he could get a mandate to change the system and then go about deciding what system to change to.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the conspiracy-theorist, tinfoil-hat view of politics, according to which Trudeau made the promise vaguely but always intended the change to be to a ranked ballot. He only wanted to change in the first place because the Liberals didnt think the Liberals could win a majority under first-past-the-post as long as the centre and left voters were divided between three or four parties.

The Liberals bungling the parliamentary committee process by trying to stack it with Liberals can be seen as proof they felt they could easily push their own agenda. When the opposition parties cried foul, the Liberals backed down, their own enthusiasm for change dwindling.

Whatever his motivation in making this promise, he has fallen down on the delivery in a disappointing way. New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen rightly says its not the lack of electoral change that is going to hurt Trudeau with Canadians. Its the sense that he was lying and scheming to get the kind of electoral system he wanted.

Proportional representation, not a ranked ballot, was the preference of fully 88 per cent of the people who cared enough about electoral reform to share their views with the all-party committee.

But there was, Trudeau says, no consensus reached by that committee.

Its just not true.

Eighteen months ago, Justin Trudeau rode a wave of hope and change into power. Better, he promised, is always possible.

Maybe so, Mr. Prime Minister. But better is clearly not probable in politics.

Mia Rabson is the Winnipeg Free Press parliamentary bureau chief.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @mrabson
Opinion

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This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

January hurtled to its close in an explosion of news. It flew so thick and so fast, many of us felt as if wed lost the map to how the world we know used to be. This, in a time of careening extremism, is the new normal, maybe.

In these weeks, two scenes became wayposts, for me  signposts, on the way out of the mists.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a Town Hall gathering in the Duckworth Centre at the University of Winnipeg in January.

The first happened here. Last week, Justin Trudeau breezed into the University of Winnipeg. It was, for a prime minister under pressure, the last stop on a series of cross-country listening sessions with the public.

It likely did not go the way the prime minister was hoping. At the Duckworth Centre, Trudeau was confronted by a vocal cadre of environmental advocates, who held up signs challenging his position on pipelines and heckled his answers.

The conflict grew testy. Trudeau, visibly frustrated, chided the protesters, saying they should leave the room if they would not let him finish a question. (Long Plain First Nation elder Ernie Daniels eventually calmed the situation.)

Those sparks became national news. National Post journalist David Akin, who was following Trudeaus town halls across the country, would later Tweet, Winnipeg wins for Most Raucous Town Hall among them all.

To be sure, there were folks in the room who agreed with the activists, but not their tactics. There were almost certainly folks in the room who disagreed with both. The specifics are not why this moment, for me, is a waypost.

No, it becomes a waypost because of this: it is a healthy sign a head of government can be so openly criticized, so publicly confronted in the spirit of honest grassroots opposition  particularly by youth and indigenous women.

Trudeau may not have liked it, but a healthy democratic debate does not go out of its way to assure comfort for its most prominent politicians. In the prime ministers frustration, we find a reminder of what it is to call power to account.

The second waypost gets darker, more painful. The second waypost hurts. It rises from the bloodstained wall of a Quebec city mosque, where on Sunday night a lone shooter walked in and slaughtered six people at prayer.

In the initial confusion that almost always surrounds the immediate aftermath of mass shootings, an innocent man  a member of the mosques prayer community  was arrested.

He had done nothing except stay at the scene and attempt to provide first aid to his friend, one of the victims. When he saw another man walk in with a gun, he panicked and tried to flee before his mind clicked that it was police.

That is an understandable instinct. To police in a tense and shocking situation, it also looked suspicious.

Police later stated the man was innocent. Unfortunately, that clarification came after his ethnicity was leaked to media as the profile of a second suspect, a potential accomplice to alleged shooter Alexandre Bissonnette.

Despite this clarification, some commentators persisted floating his name, even proposing a conspiracy theory more closely suited their agenda: that police or government were covering up a Muslim mans role in the attack.

That impulse, to smear an innocent man based on no established facts, is an ugly corollary to the hate that propelled these murders. And hate against Muslims has been on full display in the West as of late, theres no question.

But thats not why it becomes a waypost, for me. It becomes that because of the signs of hope that rose from horror.

All across Canada, folks of all faiths gathered to grieve with the Muslim community. As they did so, a number of politicians and prominent commentators reflected on how their words and actions can inflame public sentiment.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard issued multiple pleas to confront the demons of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

Parti Quebecois leader Jean-Francois Lisee reflected on how his party had pushed for legislation to limit religious accommodation, courting anti-Islamic sentiment; it wasnt a good idea to raise it in the public debate, he said.

We could turn down our language while still debating our values, Lisee said.

In the National Post, conservative columnist Lise Ravary issued a thoughtful essay of her own.

I always insist that my comments do not apply to Muslims as a people or to Islam as a faith, she wrote. I realized last Sunday that many readers dont see the difference media must take this into consideration.

One Quebec radio host  who operates in a radio scene known for extreme views  admitted he rants about Islam every week and described his own moment of clarity when he realized he didnt know any local Muslims.

Unfortunately, this came only one day after he broadcast politicized misinformation that suggested the shooter was the innocent Muslim man. Meanwhile, other extreme radio show hosts doubled down on their assumptions.

So the bigotry is still there; the hate still beckons. Yet all healing must begin somewhere. A mistake admitted offers a chance, where no chance previously existed. It can grow from there, if these words carry genuine commitment.

Why do these two scenes give me hope?

Two weeks into the Donald Trumps reign, it is reasonable to predict in four years, our neighbour to the south may not look so much like the one we have previously known: less stable, more belligerent, harder and more closed.

With care, though, and with caution, the Canada of four years from now can still hold its promise.

To do that, we must ensure we elevate no personalities to the status of cult. We must ensure all in power are challenged vigorously and often, and publicly called to account.

And we must continue to seek reflection and find solidarity with innocent people when horrors are wrought.

This is never the most clearly-marked path to walk. It requires pulling away from polarization and pushing back against any forces in society that kick out in knee-jerk reactions. But it can be done, and if it is, Canada will be better for it.

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For those worried about the RCMP allegations concerning Winnipegs former mayor and his right-hand man, looking east to Quebec might be wise. In the words of the prosecutor of the Charbonneau Commission into corruption in Quebecs construction industry, the culture of an organization is critically important. Sonia LeBel told a forum on local government and fraud and corruption in Vancouver in 2016 the organizational culture can be the driver of deviant behaviour. She pointed to the city of Montreal as an example, with stories she was told of corruption that was viewed as normal  how things got done.

In Winnipeg, its not clear the organizational culture has changed to any degree, despite independent audits that point to dubious practises regarding property transactions. As information came to light regarding the building of the police headquarters, council moved to have the issue referred to Manitoba Justice, which then handed its investigation over to the RCMP in December 2014. Last week, the RCMP alleged former mayor Sam Katz may have benefited from a secret payoff from Caspian Construction to his friend and former city CAO Phil Sheegl.

In the building of the paramedic-fire stations, it was determined, among other things, construction firm Shindico Realty benefited from contracts awarded on a non-competitive basis. The audit detailed how the city gave Shindico three pieces of city-owned land in exchange for property on Taylor Avenue, owned by Shindico, where a new fire hall has been built. The owner of Shindico is a former business partner of Mr. Katzs. Meanwhile, the city continues to lease properties from Shindico.

Former mayor Sam Katz

Earlier this week, the city was asked about future negotiations with Mr. Katz on the lease for the Goldeyes through Riverside Park Management, set to expire in 2023. Mr. Katz wanted an early indication from the city on whether it was amenable to renewing the lease. Obviously, there is still some kind of business relationship between Mr. Katz and the City of Winnipeg.

So far, Mayor Brian Bowman has pledged he will ask the province for a public inquiry, which the province has suggested would be premature while an RCMP investigation is ongoing.

This all misses the point. There have been three independent audits that outline problems and yet, to date, no one has been held accountable for keeping city council in the dark, while administrators got er done  a phrase affiliated with Mr. Sheegl.

The citys communications director, Felicia Wiltshire, said the city is being proactive. It has followed the recommendations of earlier audits and created a new position  the chief asset and project management officer  that will report directly to the chief administrative officer on future capital projects. But that doesnt go far enough.

In due course, Winnipeg may have its own Charbonneau-styled inquiry, and it should happen sooner rather than later. The inquiry should go beyond land dealings and examine an organizational culture of silence  for those who stood by and said nothing while Winnipeg got er done.
Winonas Winter Carnival is February 10, 11 and 12. There are a host of activities occurring and several benefit people and organizations in our community. Here is a breakdown of the most family-friendly options:

Saturday morning, February 11, a 5K or 1 Mile Fun Run benefit for the Women in Business Scholarship Program is offered at East Lake Park. Families can register at Lake Lodge at 8 a.m., race begins at 9 a.m. Consecutively, the Winona Farmers Market occurs on Saturday from 9 to noon and will feature an artisan market at the East End Recreation Center.

For those families who like to eat  the 23rd annual Chili Cookoff runs 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Winona Middle School which benefits Ready Set School. Its $10 for all-you-can-eat chili and they also offer $1 hotdog lunch option as well.

Saint Marys University (SMU) is hosting their annual Cardinal Plunge at Jul Gernes Pool at SMU to benefit a young boy battling cancer. Registration starts at 1 p.m. and the event starts at 1:30 p.m.

The Minnesota Conservatory for the Arts is offering art and dance workshops targeted for ages 3 years to 5th grade on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A family friendly puzzle competition is happening at Holzinger Lodge on Saturday afternoon at 1:30 p.m. And at the same time and same location, a family fun 3K Snowshoe Snowdown is being offered with a bonfire and raffle event right after. Registration for this event starts at 11:30 a.m. (race begins at 1:30 p.m.).

More events and details can be found here: http://www.cityofwinona.com/city-services/parks-recreation/special-events/winona-winter-carnival/

Enjoy this organized weekend!

Check out these family friendly activities January 22-January 29

February 6

1-3:15 p.m.: Classic Movie Monday at the Winona Public Library

February 7

10:30-11 a.m.: Storytime at the Winona Public Library, ages 2-5

10:3011:30 a.m.: Grace Place Morning Music Program, located downtown Winona, pre-school aged children, donation of $2/family

56 p.m.: Pizza & Pages at the Winona Public Library, grades 6grade 12, must attend all sessions in February

February 8

10:3011 a.m.: Early Explorers (Engineering Marvels) at the Winona Public Library, ages 2-5 and caregivers

February 9

45 p.m.: Stop Motion Animation Program at the Winona Public Library, ages 8+, sign up required

6-6:30 p.m.: Bilingual Storytime at the Winona Public Library, ages 2-5

February 10

5:457 p.m.: Laser Tag event at Winona Public Library, permission form required

February 11

9 a.m.Noon: Indoor Farmers Market at the East End Rec

10 a.m.Noon: Snowshoe Saturday at Whitewater State Park, free, call 507-932-3007

10:30Noon: Cooking Around the World class at Bluff Country Co-op, free

11 a.m.2 p.m. Chili Cook Off at the Winona Middle School, $10 all-you-can-eat

February 12

Noon4 p.m.: Winona County Historical Society Museum Open House, free
This fall, Houston Public Schools teacher and Winona State University alumna Greta Goetting gave her elementary students the opportunity to feel a little bit grown-up by participating in some serious science experiments on a college campus.

Goettings students participated in a science day at WSU, in which faculty and staff hosted physics, geoscience, chemistry and composite materials engineering stations to allow the young students to experience hands-on activities in STEM programs.

WSU students assisted by manning the stations, helping the elementary students learn more about static electricity, how water flows and its path direction, and even playing with a robot programmed by the WSU students.

I feel this visit was both effective and important for the students, Goetting said. It helped them to make real-life connections to what we will be studying.

According to Charla Miertschin, the dean of WSUs College of Science and Engineering, engaging young students in STEM education is important for future success.

Elementary students are learning about many new subjects, and they are generally excited to learn new things. What may not happen in the classroom is understanding how these subjects can apply to their future, Miertschin said. Whether they are interested in using computers and programming robots or designing and building new products, studying science and technology can open up many opportunities.

For Goetting, it was also a chance to show her students where she once went to school and partner with a local higher education institution to offer additional learning opportunities to area K-12 students.

I felt very welcome back at my alma mater, Goetting said. I was so impressed with the willingness of the staff to set up such an awesome visit for us. It exceeded our expectations.

WSUs College of Science and Engineering is committed to the education of advances in STEM professions and research by inspiring the next generation of innovators and teachers and promoting research and scholarship through STEM. Through the program, the college aims to instill basic skills, interdisciplinary actions and research-rich environments.

For more information, contact University Communications at 507-457-5024.
On Jan. 20, teams composed of 17 Winona Senior High School students participated in the regional contest of the Minnesota Music Listening Contest at Winona State University.

This regions contest had 14 teams competing, but across the state, nine more regions held the contest with 180 teams involved statewide.

Through a series of five rounds, teams of three identified music from the Middle Ages to present day. Some questions were listening examples, while others were multiple choice questions about the pieces selected this year.

Pippa Armstrong, Eden Simon DeBroux and Oscar Hedins team took first place, and the group advanced to the state competition on Feb. 3.

Other Winona Senior High School students who participated were Emma Bucknam, Lillian Li, Skye Schultz and Cosette Nelson.
Woodlawn Cemetery is arranging the removal of about 50 mature ash trees overrun by emerald ash borers, green jewel beetles known for their devastating effects on such trees.

On a tour of the grounds Thursday, cemetery officials identified the hardest-hit of the unfortunate bunch  trees that had been stripped of their bark and left bare from their trunks to their branches.

The trees just die, said Tom Slaggie, the cemeterys board president. You look, and you just see a hunk of wood. Its like something out of a scary movie.

Woodlawn, tucked beneath Garvin Heights on Lake Boulevard, has already removed 10 of the unhealthy trees, six of which stood around the cemetery office.

In the next few months, more and more trees will start to go down  although the rate of the removal will depend on how quickly Woodlawn raises the necessary funds. Some of the trees are estimated to be 100 years old, and will cost a few thousand dollars to cut down and haul away. Others will be taken down, at no cost, by cemetery staff.

Some people have a perception that the cemetery has all of this money, said Tim Leahy, the cemeterys superintendent. But we cant really take care of this ourselves. The reality is, our revenue comes from selling burial plots or doing burials. Those funds dry up pretty quickly.

Leahy said he is hoping the community will help Woodlawn offset the cost of a project that has been dragged out already. Hes been making plans to remove the trees ever since the emerald ash borers descended upon the cemetery two years ago, meaning business.

The metallic-green adults feed somewhat harmlessly on ash leaves, but its the wormy, white larvae that keep groundskeepers up at night. They feast on the inner bark of ash trees and disrupt their ability to disperse water and nutrients. This causes the trees to yellow, wilt and lose their leaves.

Trees that have been claimed by the insects typically die within a few years. In the past decade, thousands of ash trees have been ravaged across a swath of land stretching from Texas to New York, and from Georgia to Minnesota.

The ash borer has been found in Winona County and every surrounding county in both southeast Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

Emerald ash borer larvae kill ash trees by tunneling under the bark and feeding on the part of the tree that moves nutrients up and down the trunk. Minnesota is highly susceptible to the destruction caused by the ash borer. The state has approximately one billion ash trees, the most of any state in the nation.

We hate to see these large trees removed, but its what needs to be done, Leahy said. Once the trees are gone, he added, he would like to plant hardier pines in their place.

Woodlawn is one of the more elegant cemeteries in Minnesota, he said. We know that its more than a cemetery. People come here for exercise. Others come for the scenic beauty. If youre a history buff, theres plenty of history here.

This is a pretty place, he said. We want to be good stewards of the property, and to make it as appealing as possible.
By Press Trust of India: Islamabad, Feb 3 (PTI) A 27-year-old Pakistani man was fatally shot dead by a police officer after he reportedly failed to stop at a checkpoint here, leading to rioting by angry locals in the countrys capital city.

Taimur Riaz who was shot in Islamabads Sector I-10/1 received at least one bullet injury to the head after a police official belonging to the Eagle Squad opened fire on his vehicle, the Dawn reported.

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Taimur is reported to have died on the spot from the injury while the officer is said to have fled the scene after the incident.

Police said they have initiated a search for the police official.

They said the police official opened fire at Taimur after his refusal to stop.

According to reports, a female passenger in the same vehicle was reported to be in safe condition.

The incident led to rioting and protests in Islamabad, with the victims family dismissing the police statement and saying there had been no prior warning or order to stop before the officer opened fire.

Protesters even set a police camp on fire, the report said.

A case has been registered against the police officer by Taimurs brother.

In May 2015, two young men were shot dead by a police patrol in Karachi after the victims, along with four others on three bikes, refused to stop at a police checkpoint.

In June the same year, two young men were shod dead in Punjabs Sadiqabad by two members of the Muhafiz Squad. PTI SUA AKJ SUA

--- ENDS ---
Its been nearly a week since President Trump issued an executive order temporarily restricting travel from seven predominately Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. Plenty of confusion about it remains, but administration officials have tried to clarify some of the particulars. When Trump first issued the order last Friday some lawful permanent U.S. residents were detained at American airports, or blocked from boarding planes altogether.

Kamaal Mohamed of Minneapolis  a U.S. citizen  tried to travel with his family from Somalia this week. But in a Facebook video posted Tuesday, Mohamed said airline officials would not allow his wife  who was recently granted a green card  to get on the plane.

It looks like Im being denied to bring my family along with me and its very devastating, Mohamed said.

On Saturday, Fateme Farmad of Minnetonka, a permanent U.S. resident originally from Iran, was detained at the Los Angeles airport. She was traveling with her mother, brother, and 11-month-old son. They were on their way back from a wedding in Iran.

Immigration officials were polite, but provided her with few answers.

After five hours, an officer said to me that youre almost done, just wait for 10 minutes, Farmad said. One hour passed, two hours. It never happened. I dont know why he kept promising me youre almost done.

Farmad and her family were made to wait 13 hours before they could leave the airport. They were never told why.

Also seeking answers are many members of Congress, including U.S. Rep. Tim Walz. Walz says he has always had a good relationship with Customs and Border Protection officials at the Twin Cities airport. And theyve always answered his questions, whether about security procedures or screening lines.

But not this time.

They just had a prepared statement. And they were very clear that theyve been instructed not to answer any questions. And these are folks Ive known for a decade, Walz said.

Walz sent a long list of questions to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Tuesday. Among them: How many people, if any, have been detained at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport? Are dual citizens being screened for removal? Are CBP officials in the Twin Cities complying with the temporary restraining orders issued by four federal judges?

So far, Walz says he has no indication that anyone has been detained at MSP. But he says its illegal for the Trump administration to evade Congressional oversight.

Whether it becomes a constitutional crisis or not depends on how well theyre willing to fix this. But you as the executive branch do not get to say no to the oversight of the legislative branch.

At a news conference Wednesday, Homeland Security officials tried to clarify how Trumps executive order is being implemented. Secretary John Kelly says the agency is complying with all court orders. And acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in the first 72 hours of the order, around 500,000 foreign nationals were allowed in to the United States.

We denied boarding to 721 travelers who had visas from the affected countries. But we actually processed for waivers 1,060 lawful permanent residents of the United States as well as an additional 75 waivers granted to immigrant visa and non-immigrant visa holders.

McAleenan said visa holders from the seven affected countries, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Iran and Iraq, will be denied boarding at overseas airports. And travelers with dual citizenship will be vetted based on the passports they present. On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said green card holders no longer need a waiver.

Twin Cities immigration lawyer Chris Lee is urging his clients to be patient while opponents of Trumps order figure out their next moves in court.

Just give it time so that we can fight back. All the organizations are getting together, and hopefully we can push back, Lee said.

More legal challenges are already in the works. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson Wednesday joined a lawsuit by Washington State. It alleges Trumps action violates the Constitutions equal protection and due process clauses, as well as a 1965 immigration law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality.

They were very clear that theyve been instructed not to answer any questions. And these are folks Ive known for a decade. U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, on encounter with

Customs and Border Protection officials
Fallout involving the controversial departure of Sauk County governments top administrator continued Thursday morning with intense clashes of opinion.

A committee of the Sauk County Board considered proposed changes to an ordinance involving the powers and duties of the countys administrative coordinator.

The five-member Executive and Legislative Committee also discussed whether the full board may consider a proposal to hire an outside agency to review the countys hiring and firing practices. Considering the level of public interest in those topics and others on the agenda, several in attendance Thursday raised concern about the short notice given in advance of the meeting. The agenda was sent to the media less than an hour before the close of county business hours Tuesday.

This meeting was agendized barely beyond the required minimum for a legal meeting to be properly posted, said Supervisor Tom Kriegl of Baraboo, who doesnt serve on the committee but attended the meeting. It includes items on the agenda of great importance to a lot of other members of the county board and the public.

One agenda item involved discussion of a county board rule that has been vigorously debated by Kriegl and others at recent meetings. Kriegl joined that conversation late because the Executive and Legislative Committees meeting was scheduled simultaneously with that of a separate committee he chairs.

His apparent frustration boiled over into shouting criticism of Sauk County Board Chair Marty Krueger, who chairs the committee, and the countys attorney, Todd Liebman. That prompted several in attendance to ask that Kriegl maintain a civil tone.

At one point, Krueger threatened to have Kriegl removed from the meeting.

Powers and duties

Several members of the public in attendance Thursday encouraged the committee to reject proposed changes to an ordinance involving the powers and duties of the administrative coordinator.

Discussion about the ordinance was prompted by the recent departure of former Sauk County Administrative Coordinator Renae Fry, who signed a $135,000 buyout deal with the county in December.

Documents show there was dispute over whether Fry supervised the countys attorney, Liebman. A performance improvement plan approved by the Executive and Legislative Committee shortly before her departure demanded that she recognize Liebman as her peer.

Fry, an attorney, sent an email to the board shortly after she received that document. In it, she highlighted language in the ordinance that says every county officer is subordinate to the administrative coordinator, and that the administrative coordinator is expected to provide input during the county attorneys performance review.

Liebman has said a full reading of the ordinance indicates that he has professional independence from the administrative coordinator. Ordinance changes that he drafted for the committee would set that in stone.

Multiple members of the public in attendance criticized the proposed changes, saying Liebman should be subject to the administrative coordinators supervision.

Liebman said his proposed changes were intended to clarify past practice. He said he drafted the changes at the request of Board Vice Chair Joan Fordham of Baraboo, a committee member.

I think youve listened to a lot of nonsense that this was some grand conspiracy by my part to avoid the supervision of the county, and Im not, Liebman said, adding that he is supervised by the Executive and Legislative Committee.

Other proposed changes would clarify Liebmans own responsibilities, and declare that the administrative coordinator can be removed by a simple majority vote of the board.

That threshold for removal also was a matter of dispute prior to Frys departure, her attorney has said. A state law says appointed county officers only may be removed for cause by a two-thirds majority vote of the board. There is dispute about whether that applies to administrative coordinators.

During discussion of the ordinance changes, Krueger addressed criticism over his involvement in the hiring process for Frys replacement, Baraboo City Attorney Alene Kleczek Bolin, who previously worked in Liebmans office. He said Kleczek Bolin will not be expected to agree with him.

I havent gone out and found a sixth member of (the Executive and Legislative Committee) to walk blindly behind me and go Yup, great idea Marty, Krueger said. I found somebody who independently thinks, is firm, (and) fair.

The committee did not vote Thursday on the ordinance changes. Krueger said the new language will be sent to department heads for further input, and committee members did not object to that course of action.

January vote in dispute

A guest at Thursdays meeting offered guidance involving meeting procedures that have prompted recent disagreement among supervisors.

Wisconsin Counties Association Chief of Staff J. Michael Blaska offered his take on an unusual parliamentary maneuver one supervisor used at the January board meeting.

The move involved consideration of hiring an outside agency to review the countys hiring and firing practices. Supervisor Peter Vedro of Baraboo has tried unsuccessfully since December to have the Executive and Legislative Committee consider that proposal.

During the January board meeting, Vedro offered a motion to discharge the committee from the responsibility of considering his request. He said his intention was to bypass the committee and allow the full board to consider the matter.

Blaska and Liebman said Thursday that Vedro did not use the parliamentary maneuver properly. Liebman raised doubt about whether the matter may be included on this months board agenda.

Vedro disagreed, saying he had consulted with outside parliamentarians who agreed that he used the proper procedure. He said he will continue his effort to allow the full board to consider a third-party review of personnel matters.

It was not apparent that there would be discussion about Vedros motion at Thursdays meeting. Blaska appeared under an agenda item titled General Discussion of Recent Questions: Parliamentary Procedure.

Blaska also spoke about a board rule involving motions to close debate that has been controversial.
Patricia Norton

Patricia A. Norton, 90, of Portage passed away peacefully with family by her side on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, at Tivoli in Portage where she had resided the past eight months.

Patricia was born on July 19, 1926, in Portage to Ruth (Schwantz) and Clifford McDermott, one of four beautiful McDermott girls. She married Robert J. Hanger of Rio at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Church in Portage, and their marriage was blessed with five children whom they raised in the Baraboo area. Unfortunately, Robert tragically preceded her in death in 1981. In 1983, she married John Norton and together they traveled extensively, which she loved, but was always glad to get home to her family. They enjoyed their lives together until Johns death in May of 1990.

A few years later, as she was walking into K-Mart, a gentleman opened the door for her and thus began a relationship of many years with Joe Szabo. Patricia always said to keep an open mind and talk to people while waiting in line as you just never know when a chance encounter may change your life. Joe was adopted into her family and was loved by all until his passing in 2001.

Patricias focus in life was always faith, family and friends. Her faith in God was all-encompassing and never faltered, even with all the trials and tribulations she experienced in her life. She was truly a shining example to all who knew and loved her. She was a member of St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception Catholic Church and was always extremely proud of her Irish heritage. She was employed as a secretary at Badger Ordnance in Baraboo for many years but when was advised they were going to put in computers, she knew it was time to retire. She was always happiest when surrounded by her family and enjoyed the simple pleasures in life.

Patricia is survived by two children, Mary (Bill) Hendrickson of Oxford and Mark (Cindy) Hanger of Montgomery, Alabama. She is further survived by her grandchildren, Kara (Chris) Panayiotou of Chesapeake, Virginia, Kimberly Knoll of Beaver Dam, Lacey Hanger-Bennett, Chad Hanger, Chase Hanger, Valerie Ranum, Jaime Ranum, Lisa Tatzel-Conway and Julie Tatzel. Grandma Pat is also survived by her great-granddaughter, Victoria Hendrickson of Oxford, and her great-great-grandson, Tucker. Victoria was the light of her great-grandmas life and their relationship was truly special. Tucker completed five generations for her family and we are blessed.

She is further survived by her sister, Ruth Mary (Russell) Watling of Rothschild; 11 great-grandchildren, including Bryce Knoll of Portage. She is also survived by step-grandson Michael Skelton, step-great-granddaughter, Tessa Skelton; and many nieces, nephews and friends.

She was preceded in death by three children, Denise (Hanger) Tatzel, Robert Jr., and Patricia Ranum-Markley, and very special grandson Derek Ranum. She was able to survive these tragedies because of her faith in God and her knowledge that one day they would all be together again.

She was also preceded in death by her sisters, Donna McDermott-Wendt and Joan McDermott-Bandt.

Private graveside services will be held Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017, at St. Michael Cemetery in Baraboo. A gathering to celebrate her life will be held at a later date.

We would like to thank Tivoli and all involved with her care while she was there. Patricia and her family could not have asked for a better place during her last days. She felt your love, compassion and caring, as did her family. Also, many thanks to family and friends that visited with her and loved her. She was truly one of a kind and there will never be another.

We will miss you forever but know you are at peace and reunited with so many that were waiting for you. You lived a truly good life and taught us so much.

Pflanz Mantey Mendrala Funeral Home is assisting the family.
JUNEAU  Former Fox Lake Police Chief Patrick Lynch will head back to Dodge County Circuit Court in April for a motion hearing.

Lynch resigned from the Fox Lake Police Department in February 2009 after serving 14 years as chief. He is charged with three counts of first degree sexual assault of a child and three counts of stalking.

The victim alleges that the assaults occurred in 1989 in her family home when she was 7. One of the stalking charges pertains to the same victim.

The case appeared before now-retired circuit court judge Andrew Bissonette in 2010. Dodge County Circuit Court Judge Martin De Vries held a telephone scheduling conference Thursday where he scheduled a motion hearing for April 17.

Lynch last appeared in Dodge County Circuit Court in January 2013 for a motion hearing where they established areas he had to avoid, but removed a requirement for electronic monitoring.

The court of appeals for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in July upheld a circuit court decision in the case. In a pretrial motion the defense requested a review of the mental health treatment and counseling records of the victim. The circuit court found that Lynch demonstrated there is a reasonable likelihood the information enclosed in privileged records is necessary for a fair trial. That means the woman would have to release her mental health records prior to a trial for Lynch.

She refused to release her records until a decision was made by a higher court. The court of appeals upheld the decision made by the circuit court that her records would be necessary for a fair trial and the woman appealed again to the State Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decision resulted in the case being sent back to circuit court.

Lynchs motion hearing is scheduled for April 19.
JUNEAU  A 38-year-old Beaver Dam man is charged with his fifth offense of drunken driving after he was stopped for speeding on his motorcycle last November.

Jeffrey Westra could face up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine if convicted of fifth offense of operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated.

According to the criminal complaint, a Dodge County sheriffs deputy pulled over the motorcycle Westra was driving on the afternoon of Nov. 18 for traveling in excess of the posted speed limit on O Sixteen Road in the town of Lowell. The posted speed limit was 35 mph and Westras motorcycle was recorded going 49 or 48 mph.

The deputy pulled the motorcycle over on Beaver Dam Road and smelled alcohol on Westras breath. Westra told the officer that he had one beer at a bar in Lowell.

Westra submitted to a breathalyzer that resulted in a reading of .037, which was above the .02 required blood alcohol limit for someone convicted of a fourth OWI.

Westra was previously convicted for OWI in 1997, 2000, 2005 and 2008.

He will appear in court Monday for his initial appearance.
FOX LAKE  It never hurts to have a former sheriff living in your town.

Fox Lake Police Chief Jim Rohr shared his appreciation for former Dodge County Sheriff Todd Nehls after a traffic arrest went awry.

Rohr shared on the Fox Lake Police Department Facebook page Wednesday night that he responded to a traffic crash in downtown Fox Lake:

While investigating the crash, I was forced to take an individual into custody, Rohr wrote on Facebook. Normally, this is not a problem. Today, however, it became one as the arrest became physical with an adult male weighing over 300 pounds. I would like to publicly thank and commend Fox Lake resident Todd Nehls for recognizing that I was in trouble and coming to assist me in gaining control of this individual and helping to lessen injuries to all involved.

Nehls, who is the emergency police services coordinator at the Wisconsin Emergency Management Association, was driving back into Fox Lake, where he resides with his family.

Nehls served Dodge County for 36 years, with 10 of those years serving as the Dodge County Sheriff.

As he was driving, Nehls said he was listening to radio traffic and heard about the accident in Fox Lake.

Rather than turning in my driveway, I thought Id see how they were doing at the accident scene, Nehls said.

When he came upon the scene, Nehls noticed Rohr was in trouble and pulled over while activating his red lights before going over to assist the police chief.

I would hope any citizen would do what I did, Nehls said.

Todd is a fine example of many of the people in Fox Lake that I know would act in the same manner under these circumstances, Rohr said in his Facebook post.
Alexis Luedtke, Beaver Dam, attended the 58th U.S. presidential inauguration Jan. 20 in Washington, D.C., through Wisconsin 4-H Youth Development as part of a week-long educational experience aimed at developing civic understanding and engagement.

Thirty-one youths from Wisconsin 4-H represented the state in a group of approximately 500 young people, ages 14 to 18, from across the country. The Citizenship Washington Focus  Presidential Inauguration Program, which ran from Jan. 17 to 21, guided youths on a real-world tour of Americas democratic process as they developed valuable life skills like citizenship and leadership. Aside from participating in Inauguration Day activities, the youths visited the Lincoln, Jefferson and FDR memorials and the Newseum, an interactive museum focused on the history of the First Amendment. The entire Wisconsin delegation also visited the National Archives, where they saw the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

I could not believe the energy in the city, and the overall support for the president expressed by people in attendence for the inauguration. The atmosphere in Washington D.C. was unlike anything I had experienced ever before, Luedtke said. By participating in our mock election process held while at the National 4-H center I learned exactly how the campaigning and election process works. One specific detail that I took away from the experience was the way that a caucus is held, because as someone living in Wisconsin it is not something that I was familiar with.

Before attending the inauguration, participants held mock campaigns, elections and discussion groups on issues facing the country today. They also engaged in a day of community service, developing work skills while assisting individuals and organizations. The networking skills that young people gained during the week will help them address youth needs in their communities and state.

Wisconsin 4-H, part of UW-Extension, hosts three other summer Citizenship Washington Focus Program educational travel experiences to Washington D.C. annually. This is the first year that an inauguration-related program has been offered by the National 4-H Council.

For more information on Wisconsin 4-H Youth Development Citizenship Programs call 386-3790 and visit http://fyi.uwex.edu/wi4hcitizenship/.
Two days before the new presidents inauguration, the Society of Professional Journalists and dozens of other media and government transparency groups sent a letter asking Donald Trump for a meeting to discuss his administrations relationship with the press.

Among other things, the groups wanted Trump to affirm his commitment to the First Amendment, assure media access to his presidential activities, and allow expert government employees to talk to the media rather than muzzle them in favor of public relations officials.

Trump has yet to respond.

However, the new administration issued orders to employees of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Agriculture not to convey information to the media or public. Officials also imposed a news blackout at the Department of Transportation.

Meanwhile, Trump claimed with no evidence, that up to five million illegal voters participated in the election; his White House spokeswoman used the term alternative facts to explain false claims that Trumps inauguration audience was the largest ever; and chief strategist Steve Bannon called the news media an opposition party that should keep its mouth shut  views that Trump himself later endorsed.

All this happened within Trumps first two weeks in office.

Where does that leave us, as members of the press and guardians of your right to know what government is doing?

First, we must report on official efforts to withhold information from the public  which is, after all, footing the bill for government. On day one the new administration scrubbed references to climate change from the EPA website (echoing similar actions by Wisconsins Department of Natural Resources and Public Service Commission). Expect more of the same.

Second, we must continue to be vigilant in the face of Trumps tendency, first as a candidate and now as president, to engage in bombast and exaggeration. It is our duty to expose unprovable, and outright false, claims.

Third, we must guard against politicians unwillingness to subject their actions to media scrutiny. It is our job to disclose what the administration is doing, even in the face of efforts to bypass the traditional White House Press Corps.

As law professors RonNell Andersen Jones and Sonja R. West recently wrote in the New York Times, while the First Amendment prohibits government censorship and offers protection against lawsuits, journalists have few constitutional rights to government documents and sources, or from being maligned by people in power. Trump, they noted, appears set on blowing up the mutually dependent relationships the White House Press Corps has had with presidential administrations from both parties.

This is why we should be alarmed when Mr. Trump, defying tradition, vilifies media institutions, attacks reporters by name and refuses to take questions from those whose coverage he dislikes, they wrote.

Its not just about the media. Its about your right to know. To quote Jones and West, Like so much of our democracy, the freedom of the press is only as strong as we, the public, demand it to be.
It may have been a small gathering, but opposition to President Donald Trumps controversial immigration ban came to Mauston this week.

Stephen Weiser, Andrew Deppe, and Lisa Vieth, all members of the Juneau County Democrats, held signs protesting Trumps executive order and stood on the corner of Union and State streets on Tuesday afternoon. Trump ordered a 90-day suspension of Muslims from seven countries from entering the U.S., and a 120-day ban on the admission of all refugees trying to enter the country.

The stunning move caused ripples across the globe. Chaos and confusion at airports followed, along with protests in many major cities. Maustons protest was on a much smaller scale, but the county Democratic Party hopes others who oppose Trumps decision will follow their lead and speak their mind. Trump has also proposed building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to try to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing into American soil.

We have a lot of immigrant people who live and work in our county and we want to make sure they feel safe and welcome, Weiser, from Wonewoc, said.

Weiser clutched two small signs that carried the same message: No Human is Illegal. Deppe held a sign that read: No Hate Fear Refugees Welcome Here, while Vieths sign simply read, Resist.

We are very much against this law, Weiser said. It is unreasonable. We have a process already in place to vet people who are coming into this country.

Weiser said the Juneau County Democrats also held small protests on Saturday, Jan. 28 and during Trumps inauguration. The group plans to continue protesting every Tuesday afternoon and are planning a larger protest before its next club meeting on Feb. 21.

We really want to bring awareness that the Juneau County Democrats are part of the protest movement and we invite others to join us, Weiser said.

The group said it opposes the presidents rhetoric intended to stir up fear and hatred toward Muslims and other minorities. Weiser said Trumps selection of Steve Bannon as a senior level advisor and member of the National Security Council is frightening in light of the anti-Semitic positions he espouses.

Weiser shared the story of his mother, a Russian immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1923. In 1924, the U.S. passed an anti-immigration law (the Johnson-Reed Act) that limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the country through a national origins quota.

If that law would have been passed a year earlier, my mother would not have had the opportunity to come over here, Weiser said.

Weiser believes Trumps executive orders could stir up hate and fear mongering that may increase the potential for violence against the innocent.

During the election season, the Juneau County Democrats leased an office space on State Street in downtown Mauston and setup its headquarters. With the election season over and stunned by loses at both the national, state and local level, the county Democrats moved out of the building.

Even though we lost the election, we built a very good asset across the county, Weiser said. I think we were able to really energize our base and we feel good going forward.

The Juneau County Democrats next meeting is on Tuesday, Feb. 21 at 7 p.m. at Hatch Public Library in Mauston.
The notice said that the unethical approach from the RML hospital and the central government towards veteran parliamentarian E Ahamed and his family members during his last hours has created anguish and concern among the people in the country.

By Supriya Bhardwaj: The Budget session started on a stormy note on Friday, as Opposition parties raised the issue of late MP E Ahamed's death in Lok Sabha.

An adjournment motion notice was given by Congress MP KC Venugopal.

The notice said that the unethical approach from the RML hospital and the central government towards veteran parliamentarian E Ahamed and his family members during his last hours has created anguish and concern among the people in the country.

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'The same owes an explanation from the government and an impartial investigation,' it added.

The demand of discussion over the ill treatment of Ahamed raised by Venugopal was backed by all the MPs, hailing from Kerala irrespective of their parties.

The Kerala MPs were joined by the Congress and TMC MPs also which led to the disruption of Lok Sabha proceedings.

After the lower house was adjourned, Kerala MPs walked up to media stand to inform them about what happened in Lok Sabha. They demanded that Lok Sabha committee probes the ill treatment of the senior leader by the NDA government and RML.

Also read: Will demonetisation get Parliament nod? Arun Jaitley tables note ban bill in Lok Sabha

Ahamed had a heart attack during the Presidential address in the Central Hall of Parliament on January 31. He was rushed from there to RML hospital.

However, things got ugly when on the night of January 31, family members of Ahamed started contacting other party leaders and claimed that the hospital was not providing them any information about the ailing MP's health.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi also reached RML hospital along with party's vice-president Rahul Gandhi and other senior Congress leaders. They were also not allowed to meet the Congress leader.

Also read: Budget session LIVE: Lok Sabha adjourned till noon, TMC MPs walk out over MP's arrest

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Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker may be grabbing headlines with a call to lower tuition as part of a campaign to cut the cost of attending University of Wisconsin, but UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank has an ambitious proposal of her own.

Blank is proposing free tuition to transfer students who are the first in their families to attend college, provided state funding to the university in the 2017-2019 budget is adequate.

The proposal, dubbed Badger First-Generation Transfer Program, was unveiled to members of the UW System Board of Regents at their regular meeting in Madison Thursday.

The Badger Transfer Promise Program is an outgrowth of an updated transfer contract, effective this month, that guarantees students who complete an associate degree at any UW College can earn a bachelors degree at UW-Madison.

The promise program would provide grant and scholarship aid equal to two semesters of in-state tuition, currently $10,488, to all first-generation Wisconsin resident students transferring under the contract.

First-generation resident transfer students who are eligible for Pell Grants to low-income families will receive grant/scholarship aid equal to four semesters of instate tuition, currently $20,976.

The program would, in effect, cover tuition costs left after other aid has been applied to a students school expenses. It is estimated to cost UW-Madison $1.5 million a year, campus officials said.

Blank doesn't need approval for the program, but she won't be able to do it unless additional state funding to the UW System is adequate for UW-Madison's share to cover it, she said.

Initial response from legislators who have a say in funding for the Univeristy of Wisconsin were less than enthusiastic.

Mike Mikalson, aide to State Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, a frequent critic of UW who is vice-chair of the Commitee on Universities and Technical Colleges, sent this statement:

"Senator Nass top priority is providing higher education cost relief for the students of middle class families. Senator Nass supports the governors call for a tuition cut, but at a minimum he believes the next state budget should continue the tuition freeze for two more years. While Chancellor Blanks plan is worthy of discussion, it should not replace a broader effort to protect Wisconsins middle class families that have been hammered by the previous tuition-setting practices of the UW System."

State Rep. Dave Murphy, R-Greenville, chair of the Committee on Colleges and Universities, commented: Considering that this was not an item in the UW Systems budget request and other institutions have successfully implemented promise programs with private donations, I will evaluate Chancellor Blanks proposal in the context of the entire budget.

Blanks bold proposal comes at a time when the campus is stretched from years of cuts in state funding, and a six-year freeze on tuition for resident undergraduate students. With the loss of some star faculty to other universities, UW-Madison has also seen its national ranking for research spending slip from the top five nationally  to 6th  for the first time since 1972.

UW-Madison revenue overall has dropped 2 percent per year since 2013, Blank told regents.

With faculty compensation dropping from 74th nationally in 2008 to 118th, and spending per student from 47th in 2008 to 63rd, the overall ranking of the university suffered.

We averaged No. 33 in the nation from 20022007. Only 10 years later, from 2012-2017, we averaged No. 43 in the nation, Blank said.

Although Walker wants to cut UW tuition  after the freeze that campus officials say put the squeeze on operations  he has indicated that state funding will cover the cut.

Walker also has said that there may be additional funding to the UW in the upcoming budget, although it may be tied to performance measures not yet specified.

Blank said that she is very encouraged by the things the governor and legislators have been talking about in terms of reinvesting in the UW.

The governor and key legislators know about her proposal, Blank said after the regents meeting, but she would not say whether it would likely help secure a bigger investment in the university from state budget writers.

The school is prepared to do its part to put any reinvestment to best advantage, she said.

It is our job to be entrepreneurial and to build revenues in areas where we have leverage, Blank said. But we cant do this alone. For 169 years, UW-Madison has been a partnership with the state. We are doing everything we can to generate resources that we can use to reinvest. We need the state with us in this effort.

The Badger Transfer Promise is one area where Blank pledged to spend reinvestment by the state. But it is just one part of a three-pronged vision. The other areas are:

Faculty: Hiring more faculty in areas of high student demand like business, engineering and nursing where applicants now are turned away, and in areas where a couple of strategic hires can create a cluster of research strength.

Increasing compensation so UW-Madison is more competitive with other institutions is important, she said.

Educational quality: Continued investment in innovate educational technologies to serve students on campus and online, while ensuring a diverse and inclusive campus.

Collage affordability also includes keeping financial aid as high as possible by expanding its availability to both low and middle-income students, Blank said.

First-generation transfer students are a logical place to start, because all students in that class in 2015 had unmet financial need, she said.

We know that first generation students often need additional support  they dont have the family advising about college and their families often are not high income, Blank said. Such students are more likely to drop out that other students. They are a substantial part of the Wisconsin population who needs more skills.
Items are listed under the day of the event only, running as space permits prior to the event. To submit items, call 745-3511, email jcutsforth@capitalnewspapers.com or visit www.portagedailyregister.com. Include name and phone number.

TODAY

Art exhibit: Portage Center for the Arts Drury Gallery presents the exhibit The Flowers are Burning by Helen Klebesadel and Mary Kay Neumann, Portage Center for the Arts, 301 E. Cook St., Portage. Opening reception from 4 to 6 p.m. The gallery is open from 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. Call 742-5655 for more information.

Blood drive: Lodi Red Cross blood drive, 11:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Faith Lutheran Church, 120 Faith Drive, Lodi. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required.

Coffee with a Cop: 7 to 9 a.m. Friday at Dunkin Donuts (in Walmart) 2950 New Pinery Road, Portage. Join neighbors and police officers for coffee and conversation. There is no agenda or speeches, just a chance to ask questions and get to know your police officers. All are welcome.

Fish fry: 5 to 7:30 p.m. Knights of Columbus fish fry, Knights of Columbus Hall, 918 Silver Lake Drive, Portage. Cocktails at 4 p.m. Public invited. Cost is $10.75.

Hope House support group: 1 to 2 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Has domestic violence touched your life in some way? Find connections with supportive individuals who have similar life experiences as you at Hope Houses newest support group. All are welcome. Held on the first and third Friday of the month. For more information, contact Katie Fluger, outreach advocate, at 608-356-9123.

Seniors Bowling Social: 1 p.m. Fireball Lanes, 817 E. Wisconsin St., Portage. Cost is $6 and includes three games of bowling and shoe rental. Unique Singles: 5 p.m. Knight of Columbus Hall, Silver Lake Drive, Portage. All single men and women older than age 50 welcome. The group is strictly social with no dues or officers.

SATURDAY, FEB. 4

Annual Oyster Stew and Chili Supper: 4 to 8 p.m. Rosedale Presbyterian Church, Highway 33 between Cambria and Pardeeville. Menu includes oyster stew, chili, cheese, crackers, gelatin, cake, rolls and beverage. Cost for adults is $8, children ages 6 to 12 are $4 and children younger than age 6 are free.

Library event: 10 to 11 a.m. FamilyFunEvent, Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. This months family event is a Valentine Party for children of all ages and will include some traditional story time elements such as a story and song. Families will then work on projects that include a fabric heart-shaped wreath, heart-shaped bird feeders, pop-up cards, and more. Activities include a giant tic-tac-toe game and word search. To top off the morning participants will make a love potion to enjoy with other refreshments provided by the Friends of the Library. Registration is not required. For more information, call 742-4959, ext. 211.

University of Wisconsin Varsity Band Concert: 2 p.m. Portage High School, 301 E. Collins St., Portage. Michael Leckrone will be conducting the band in the high school gymnasium. Portage High School Alumni, Hyden Breene, trumpet, and Jaden Briggs, trombone, will perform with the band. They are both in their second year performing with the Varsity Band. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Portage High School Office or Bartels Middle School Office. Tickets for students and seniors are $5, adult bleacher seats are $10 and floor seating is $15.

Wisconsin Academy Handbell Ringers of Columbus free sacred concert: 3:30 p.m. Portage Seventh-day Church, Highway 33 East, Portage. For more information, call 608-742-3322. Everyone is welcome.

SUNDAY, FEB. 5

Bingo: 3 to 5 p.m. VFW Hall, 215 W. Collins St., Portage. Doors open at 2:30 p.m. Hard cards are $1 and chips are available. All are welcome. Runs the first and third Sunday of each month.

Zumba: 5:30 p.m. Rusch Elementary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

MONDAY, FEB. 6

Clinic: 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Westfield Municipal Building, 129 E Third St., Westfield. Bring childs immunization record. Parents must accompany all children under 18 years of age. If this is not possible, call the Marquette County Health Department at 608-297-3135 prior to the clinic.

Euchre card party: 6:30 p.m. Bethlehem Lutheran Church, W8267 Highway 33 East, Portage. Public welcome. Contact: Cloe, 429-2363.

Knights of Columbus: 7 p.m. meeting, Knights of Columbus Hall, Silver Lake Drive, Portage.

Zumba/Zumba Toning: 6 p.m. Harrisville. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

TUESDAY, FEB. 7

Blood drive: 12 to 4 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. Download the American Red Cross Blood Donor app, visit www.redcrossblood.org or call 800-733-2767 to make an appointment or for more information. All blood types are needed. A blood donor card or drivers license or two other forms of identification are required.

Photography Interest Group: 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Northwoods Inc., Highway 51 South, Portage. Meet with fellow photographers to share photos and tips, explore new ideas and inspire creativity for upcoming events. Call Fred Baewer with questions at 608-742-4691.

Zumba Toning: 4:30 p.m. Woodridge Primary School, Portage. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

WEDNESDAY, FEB. 8

Bingo: 5:30 p.m. 131 Restaurant, North Main Street, Pardeeville. Bingo will be played every Wednesday, except the first one of the month.

St. Vincent de Paul free medical clinic: 9 a.m. to noon. Wilz Drugs lower level, 140 E. Cook St., Portage. No appointments needed. Information needed is name, date of birth and a contact number. A chiropractor is available from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesdays. A foot clinic is available every week. The clinic can do exams and prescribe medications. Physical therapist available. Discounted medications are available at Wilz and Walmart. Call Bonny Oestreich, RN, at 608-234-0159 for information.

Womens Civic League: Luncheon meeting, Dinos Restaurant, New Pinery Road, Portage. The program From Bean to Barn, Farming Fine Chocolate will be presented by Lisa Nelson, chief chocolate officer of Roots Chocolates. Social hour begins at 11:30 a.m., lunch at noon, followed by the program. All women in the community are invited. Call to make or cancel reservations by Feb. 5 to Kathy Crawford at 742-5262.

Zumba/Zumba Toning: 5 p.m. Montello. $5 drop in fee. Contact Tami at 608-346-3971 or 4dreamers@frontier.com.

Zumba: 5:30 p.m. 1208 Northport Road (the former Freedom Carpeting building). This is a $5 drop-in class. For more information, contact Deb at DJMACK00001@yahoo.com or Rena at 697-6713.

THURSDAY, FEB. 9

Cookie sale: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. front lobby, Divine Savior Healthcare, 2817 New Pinery Road, Portage. On the second Thursday of each month, the Volunteer Partners of Divine Savior bake Smart Cookies. Cookies are 50 cents each or $5.50 per dozen. Cookie selection varies month to month, but chocolate chip is always available. All proceeds benefit scholarships for students educating in healthcare-related fields.

Ice Age Trail Alliance Lodi Valley Chapter full moon hike: Meet at the Robertson Trailhead on Lodi/Springfield Road at 7 p.m. The group will take a short walk in the light of the full moon. Watch for the yellow Ice Age Trail Event signs. For directions visit https://goo.gl/maps/RE2C5. For more information, call Bill at 843-3926. Wear appropriate clothing for the weather, sturdy shoes, and in case of slippery conditions, a walking stick. Well have some extra for you to use. Leashed, well behaved dogs are welcome.

Museum: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Portage World War II Museum, 119 E. Cook St., Portage. Free tours for veterans every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The tours take 2 1/2 hours. For information, call 608-697-3690.

Writing group: Writers at the Portage, 5:30 p.m. Portage Public Library, 253 W. Edgewater St., Portage. New writers and any genre welcome.
St. Johns Lutheran School in Portage has a new leader.

Luke Beck this week was officially declared the principal at the K-8 school of 101 students after he served as interim principal starting this school year. He replaces former Principal Doug Jacoby after he relocated to the Green Bay area, the school reported.

Beck for about eight years was a teacher at the school and had previously served as principal at St Pauls Lutheran School in Bay City, Michigan, and at St Peters Lutheran School in Reedsburg. All together hes spent about 20 years working in Lutheran schools in Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Lukes done amazing things, said the Rev. Greg Hovland, the churchs pastor. Correcting things hed noticed as a teacher, and hes just a visionary for where were going to go as a school in the future.

Hovland singled out Becks work this school year in staff development and in already being a visible presence in the hallways, greeting students and parents every morning. He loves kids and loves Lutheran education. Were really excited to have him.

Beck, originally from Flint, Michigan, said he looks forward to working with staff in revitalizing the entire curriculum and developing measurable outcomes for students.

Im excited, he said. Im thrilled to have the support of my congregation, to move forward and make St Johns a better school than it already is.

As interim principal Beck has learned a lot more about his colleagues than he did working as a peer, seeing in a different light the level of dedication they have for students.

Beck hopes to expand technology programs at the school, which currently include Chromebooks, iPads and a modest computer lab. Another objective, he said, will be working more closely with the Portage Community School District and St. Marys School.

We really want to make those connections, because we all have the same goal: making a better future (for students).

Primary objectives will remain ensuring all teachers have everything they need to implement curriculum and establishing among students a more meaningful relationship with Jesus Christ.

Becks status as principal was approved Tuesday night by voters in the congregation, which is made up of everyone involved in the church.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to table the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Bill, 2017 in Lok Sabha today.

By India Today Web Desk: Parliament commenced to a stormy start today with Opposition parties raising a hue and cry over issues ranging from the secrecy around recently deceased MP E Ahamed's death to the arrest of TMC MP S Bandyopadhyay in the Rose Valley chit fund scam. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is expected to table the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Bill, 2017 in Lok Sabha today. The bill would replace the note ban Ordinance promulgated by the government in December last year.

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Here are the latest updates:

TMC's Kalyan Banerjee said his party is protesting the vindictive activities of Modiji. They arrested our leader S Bandyopadhyay, but Modji can't stop us, he added.

Lok Sabha adjourned till 12 noon.

Commenting on the secrecy surrounding late MP E Ahamed's death, Congress's Mallikarjun Kharge said senior leaders shouldn't be insulted like this. Ahamed passed away on Wednesday.

Sharad Yadav gives adjournment notice on Uniform Civil Code in Rajya Sabha.

TMC stages protest against the government, in front of the Gandhi statue inside Parliament complex.

Also read: Will demonetisation get Parliament nod? Arun Jaitley to table note ban bill in Lok Sabha today

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Provincial bests at Wits

Wits has once again attracted some of the countrys top achievers.

Two top provincial achievers, Malamba Nemavhadwe and Ariel Mazabow are to study Actuarial Science at Wits.

Nemavhadwe was the top achiever in Limpopo in 2016 and the best learner in a quintile 2 school. She had a matric aggregate of over 96.5%, the highest of Wits incoming first years.

Mazabow was Gautengs top achiever in 2016 and obtained distinctions for all 11 of his subjects.

The two have a natural flair for Mathematics and both attained 99% for the subject in matric.

Nemavhadwe says Wits was the obvious choice for her, as the University not only offers her a world-class education, but also a wealth of opportunities for her future.

I chose to study at Wits University because it is the place where I can find the best lecturers who can impart those skills I will use in my career.

I can also learn to be a leader, and work with diverse people. Due to its geographical position, Wits also presents opportunities in the business world, since it is close to companies like KPMG and PWC, she says.

Nemavhadwe attended Tshivhase Secondary School, a non-paying school in Limpopo, which attained a matric pass rate of 92.3% in 2016.

Obtaining good grades was not her only focus in high school.

She was also involved in extra-mural activities as leader of a peer education group at her school.

The 17-year-old hails from Dzingahe village, just outside Thohoyandou in Limpopo, and is the youngest child of four (she has three older brothers).

Her secret to obtaining exceptional marks was consistent and constant consultation with her teachers and tutors, and most importantly, she says, her faith in God.

Nemavhadwe draws her inspiration from a fellow Witsie, second year student, Mphaphuli Phindulo. Phindulo also attended Tshivhase Secondary School and in 2015 took second place as top achiever in quintile 2 schools.

He mentored me through high school and always encouraged me to unleash what I am good at, she says.

Nemavhadwe is funded by the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation and hopes to use her degree to improve the economy of the country.

I chose Actuarial Science because there is not much development in the financial sector of our economy, so I want to fill that gap. Since I want to be an entrepreneur, Actuarial Science will enable me to solve problems in business using my mathematical ability.

Mazabow, who completed his matric at Yeshiva Maharsha Boys High School in Johannesburg, advises matriculants to work hard from day one.

My message to the matric students of the future is that it is essential that they take their matric year seriously and that they start working from day one so that they are well prepared when it comes to the final exams, he says.
By Press Trust of India: From M Zulqernain

Lahore, Feb 3 (PTI) A petition challenging the house arrest of Mumbai attack mastermindHafiz Saeed was filed today in a Pakistani court by a lawyer who claimed that the JuD chief was detained illegally for keeping the Kashmir issue alive.

Advocate Sarfraz Hussain filed the petition in the Lahore High Court (LHC). He said the JuD chief has been put under "illegal" detention by manoeuvring the anti-terrorism law.

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"The government has detained Mr Saeed citing a resolution of the United Nations Security Council as he made the Kashmir issue alive. But the UNSCs resolution for plebiscite in the Indian-held Kashmir has not yet been implemented. The government has detained him at the behest of the foreign masters," he said.

The petitioner prayed to the court to accept the petition instantly and "set Mr Saeed free in the larger interest of justice, equity and fair play to meet the ends of justice".

An official of Jamaat-Ud-Dawa (JuD) told PTI that Saeed would challenge his detention soon.

"The JuD has nothing to do with advocate Sarfraz Hussains petition as he has filed the petition on his own," he said.

However, a source in the LHC said Hussain has filed the petition at the behest of JuD.

The LHC will fix the date of hearing later.

The government on Monday placed Saeed and his four accomplices -- Abdullah Ubaid, Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Niaz -- under house arrest in Lahore.

The Interior Ministry also placed Saeed and 37 other JuD and Falah-e-Insanyat members on the Exit Control List (ECL), barring them from leaving the country. PTI MZ NSA AKJ NSA

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General Mills, Inc. manufactures and markets branded consumer foods worldwide. The company operates in five segments: North America Retail; Convenience Stores & Foodservice; Europe & Australia; Asia & Latin America; and Pet. It offers ready-to-eat cereals, refrigerated yogurt, soup, meal kits, refrigerated and frozen dough products, dessert and baking mixes, bakery flour, frozen pizza and pizza snacks, snack bars, fruit and salty snacks, ice cream, nutrition bars, wellness beverages, and savory and grain snacks, as well as various organic products, including frozen and shelf-stable vegetables. It also supplies branded and unbranded food products to the North American foodservice and commercial baking industries; and manufactures and markets pet food products, including dog and cat food. The company markets its products under the Annie's, Betty Crocker, Bisquick, Blue Buffalo, Blue Basics, Blue Freedom, Bugles, Cascadian Farm, Cheerios, Chex, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs, Cookie Crisp, EPIC, Fiber One, Food Should Taste Good, Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Gushers, Fruit Roll-Ups, Gardetto's, Go-Gurt, Gold Medal, Golden Grahams, Haagen-Dazs, Helpers, Jus-Rol, Kitano, Kix, Larabar, Latina, Liberte, Lucky Charms, Muir Glen, Nature Valley, Oatmeal Crisp, Old El Paso, Oui, Pillsbury, Progresso, Raisin Nut Bran, Total, Totino's, Trix, Wanchai Ferry, Wheaties, Wilderness, Yoki, and Yoplait trademarks. It sells its products directly, as well as through broker and distribution arrangements to grocery stores, mass merchandisers, membership stores, natural food chains, e-commerce retailers, commercial and noncommercial foodservice distributors and operators, restaurants, convenience stores, and pet specialty stores, as well as drug, dollar, and discount chains. The company operates 466 leased and 392 franchise ice cream parlors. General Mills, Inc. was founded in 1866 and is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Feb 3 (PTI) Drug firm Granules India today said re-inspection of its manufacturing facility at Gagillapur in Telangana has been successfully completed by Portugals health authority INFARMED.

Last month, Granules said it had received 11 observations from INFARMED for its Gagillapur facility. INFARMED had conducted a renewal inspection of the facility.

"After submission of the responses to the audit observation, re-inspection of the said facility was conducted by INFARMED from January 31 to February 2. We are pleased to inform that re-inspection was completed successfully," Granules India said in a regulatory filing.

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The plant manufactures pharmaceutical formulation intermediates (PFIs) and finished dosages.

Shares of Granules India were trading 7.10 per cent higher at Rs 124.50 apiece on the BSE. PTI SVK JM

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SUPERVALU INC., together with its subsidiaries, operates as a grocery wholesaler and retailer in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments, Wholesale and Retail. The Wholesale segment engages in the wholesale distribution of various food and non-food products to independent retail customers, such as single and multiple grocery store operators, regional chains, and the military. It also provides professional services, such as pass-through programs; and various services comprising retail store support, advertising, couponing, e-commerce, network and data hosting, training and certifications classes, and administrative back-office solutions. The Retail segment operates retail stores that provide groceries and various additional products that include general merchandise, home, health and beauty care, and pharmacy products. It provides its products under the Cub Foods, Shoppers Food & Pharmacy, and Hornbacher's names, as well as 1 Rainbow stores. The company's stores offer a range of branded and private-label products comprising perishable and nonperishable grocery products. As of February 24, 2018, it operated a network of 3,437 stores, including 3,323 wholesale primary stores; and 114 retail grocery stores. The company was founded in 1871 and is headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Prateek's wife Aparna Yadav is contesting from Lucknow Cantonment seat on Samajwadi Party ticket. While almost everyone in his family is into politics, Prateek has his own interests and plans.

By Balkrishna: He drives around Lucknow in a sparkling blue Rs 5.28 crore Lamborghini. He is a fitness freak who owns a chain of high-end gyms. Meet Prateek Yadav, the younger son of Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.

Prateek's wife Aparna Yadav is contesting from Lucknow Cantonment seat on Samajwadi Party ticket. While almost everyone in his family is into politics, Prateek has his own interests and plans.

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In an exclusive interview with India Today, the 29-year-old talked about his personal life and also politics.

'SAMAJWADI FAMILY WAR WAS NOT SCRIPTED'

While many termed the months long war within the Yadav family as a well-written script for political gains, Prateek rubbished all such notions. "Netaji (Mulayam Singh Yadav) is not that type of a person who would get perturbed easily. I remember him telling me - 'these things happen in politics', when I asked him about does he feel about what is happening in the party," Prateek said.

"Bhai sahab (Akhilesh) and Netaji are two different individuals, so differences in opinion is bound to happen. I believe having different views over an issue always give way to new ideas. The alliance between Samajwadi Party and Congress is a testimony to the fact. You'll see how the alliance emerges victorious," he said.

'OWNING A LAMBORGHINI WAS MY DREAM'

Recently, Prateek made headlines by flashing his blue Lamborghini on Lucknow roads giving an opportunity to the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) raise questions over the 'samajwadi' ideology. However, the young man is unnerved by the criticism.

Prateek stressed it was his long cherished dream to own a Lamborghini and that he has worked hard to buy his dream car.

"I was in college when I heard of the car and decided I will work hard to own it some day. Some made fun of me. People may have this notion that I am arrogant but when they find me very different," Prateek said.

"I don't care about criticisms. I believe that everyone should dream big and do whatever makes you happy. However, one should be careful not to hurt anyone while pursuing their own objectives in life," he added.

THE STORY BEHIND HIM TURNING A FITNESS FREAK

Prateek was an overweight kid. So, what prompted him to transform himself? Here's how it all happened. "During my childhood, I suffered from a bad case of pneumonia. My condition was so serious that doctors had to prescribe steroid injections which adversely affected my health. I weighed 100kg and Netaji always used to tell me to do something about it. It was then that I decided to hit the gym and soon it became a habit and now my hobby is also my profession," Prateek said.

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'NO PLANS OF JOINING POLITICS'

While his brother is leaving no stones unturned to secure a second term for himself as Uttar Pradesh CM, Prateek said he has no plans to join active politics as of now.

"Yes, they discussed with me about joining politics but I decided against it. In our family, there is full independence to decide for one's own profession. Be it Bhaisahab or my wife Aparna, there has been no pressure on them as far as joining politics is concerned," Prateek said.

RESPECT FOR PM MODI

His father, brother may be fighting a tough battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the upcoming Assembly election, Prateek has huge respect for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"He (Modi) is country's PM and should be respected. He is the face of our country. Netaji doesn't forget to mention the sacrifices Modi has made for what he is now. We should respect his hardwork," Prateek said.

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WATCH: Mulayam's heavyweight son, not Akhilesh, can lift 240 kg barbells

ALSO READ:

Rich kid problems: As Mulayam and Akhilesh fight for cycle, younger son spins a Lamborghini

WATCH: Akhilesh is a man with iron hands in velvet gloves, says Aparna Yadav

ALSO READ:

Rich kid problems: As Mulayam and Akhilesh fight for cycle, younger son spins a Lamborghini

WATCH: Akhilesh is a man with iron hands in velvet gloves, says Aparna Yadav

--- ENDS ---
However, the state witnessed two incidents of violence and 24 complaints of distributing money and liquor from various parts of the state.

By Manjeet Sehgal: The Chief Electorate Officer (CEO), Punjab on Friday said the arrangements to conduct the 2017 polls in 117 segments were complete and nearly two lakh government employees besides one lakh security personnel were deployed in 22,614 polling stations for the job.

However, the state witnessed two incidents of violence and 24 complaints of distributing money and liquor from various parts of the state. While an AAP activist was shot in Rampura Phul area, a person was attacked with a sharp edged weapon in Patti assembly constituency. Names of ruling Shiromani Akali Dal party workers figured in the FIRs.

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"We have registered cases and action is being taken. A 24 hour control room connected with all district control rooms has been set-up in Chandigarh which will monitor all the activities. We have received 24 complaints alleging distribution of money and liquor from various parts. Action has been taken on the complaints which were found genuine," CEO Punjab VK Singh said.

Out of a total 1.98 core voters nearly six lakh voters will cast the vote first time. The Election Commission has also decided to honour the first time voters they will be given a certificate. Out of 14,177 polling stations 5500 are vulnerable and 800 are critical.

Adequate security arrangements have been made in the state for the smooth conduct of polls. Nearly one lakh security personnel have been deployed in 117 constituencies. Major entry points have been barricaded in the state and every vehicle is being checked. Narcotics including heroin, gold, cash and opium worth a lot of money has been seized. Police claimed 95 per cent licensed weapons have been deposited and 416 illegal weapons have also been seized.

Interestingly, a sizeable chunk of Punjab voters live in rural areas. Out of a total 10,000 complaints pertaining to the code violations received by EC 6118 have been disposed off. EC has also made elaborate arrangements to enable the old and differently abled voters to visit the polling stations. Wheelchairs will be provided to such voters on request.

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A number of Congress leaders from Delhi are in Uttar Pradesh to help the party candidates while others have been told to pull up their socks for the coming Delhi municipal elections.

By India Today Web Desk: After campaigning for Punjab Assembly election ended on Friday, the Congress is now focusing on the UP Assembly and upcoming Delhi municipal polls.

A number of Congress leaders from Delhi are in Uttar Pradesh to help the party candidates while others have been told to pull up their socks for the coming Delhi municipal elections.

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"The job of the leaders from Delhi Congress is to keep a close eye on the campaigns and to ensure a cordial relation among the party workers," said Chatar Singh, district Congress vice president, Delhi .

While former chief spokesperson Mukesh Sharma has been deputed to Agra's south assembly constituency, former MLA Mateen Ahmad has been sent to Bijnor. Ex-MLA Ambrish Gautam is camping in Bulandshahr and Bhisham Sharma is looking after party's election campaign in Mathura.

Former MP Mahabal Mishra, former MLAs Veer Singh Dhingan and Kunwar Karan Singh have also been placed in parts of western UP.

Also read: Congress launches public outreach campaign Har Sangh Harda in Uttarakhand to woo voters

Assembly elections are scheduled from February 11 in UP.

DELHI MUNICIPAL POLLS

For Delhi municipal elections, the party has planned to organise a rally of Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi. A series of meetings with the district, block and booth level workers are being organised at the city Congress office.

On Friday, Delhi Congress president and former union minister Ajay Maken chaired back to back meetings with the party workers and discussed the action plan for MCD elections.

"The party had got five seats in the MCD by-elections held for 13 wards last year. We have already underlined our presence. It is our time to win majority of seats in the coming elections," Maken told the workers during the meeting on Friday.

The party has asked each of its worker go for a door-to-door campaign at least five times before the MCD elections to 'expose' the 'misrule' of the BJP and 'lies' of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

"Both the parties (BJP and AAP) have been exposed. Residents of Delhi are now recalling the rule of Congress and the development it had done. Our party workers will go door to door to expose both the parties," said Maken.

Also read: Punjab, Goa Assembly elections campaign ends: All you need to know in 10 points

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While Bijwasan MLA Col (Retd) Devender Sehrawat termed the Delhi government as mother of all scams, Matia Mahal MLA and former Civil Supplies Minister Asim Ahmed Khan said that Arvid Kejriwal had demanded Rs 5 crore from him as bribe to continue as minister.

By Manjeet Negi: Ahead of Punjab elections, two sitting New Delhi MLAs and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dissident leaders on Friday levelled serious allegations against the party in Chandigarh.

While Bijwasan MLA Col (Retd) Devender Sehrawat termed the Delhi government as mother of all scams, Matia Mahal MLA and former Civil Supplies Minister Asim Ahmed Khan said that Arvid Kejriwal had demanded Rs 5 crore from him as bribe to continue as minister.

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Arvind Kejriwal demanded Rs 5 crore

Launching a scathing attack against Kejriwal, Khan said he was compelled to appear before media in Chandigarh as the AAP chief was levelling false allegations against him in Punjab rallies.

"Kejriwal tells everyone that he removed a minister within minutes and sent him to jail when he heard that the minister was seeking bribe. That minister is me. I was never sent to jail nor expelled from the party. I was removed as I refused to pay him Rs 5 crore. He levelled false allegations against me by paying Rs 12 lakh to a person. I pay more than 85 lakh as income tax, why should I need a bribe of Rs 6 lakh," Khan said while releasing the audio clips of an MLA.

Khan said the Delhi government has stopped making new ration cards from the last two years and no old age pension has been added. He also added that Mohalla clinics and government schools were also an eyewash.

"Kejriwal is also claiming here that his Delhi schools have swimming pools. You go to government schools and you will find them pathetic. Parents hesitate to send their children to Delhi government schools," Khan said.

Also read: After I-T department finds AAP's donation records incorrect, Kejriwal calls move Modi's 'dirty trick'

Sehrawat, who was also addressing the media, accused Delhi's AAP government officials and ministers of amassing money in the name of bans and pollution.

"First they announced that Gutkha bill be banned in Delhi, then allowed the sale. The issue was settled by getting an amount between Rs 700 to 1000 crore from the Gutka association. They have opened more than 400 new liquor vends and three ministers are keeping an eye on them," Sehrawat said.

Commoners moving on CNG bombs

Accusing Delhi government of endangering the lives of common people by allowing the sale of spurious CNG kits, Sehrawat said besides the auto-rickshaw permit scam, the Delhi government is also involved in the CNG kit purchase scam.

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"Only 60 genuine kits were imported by the Delhi government. It later allowed more than 6000 kits from the back door which were procured from China which are spurious and can kill hundreds. This is how the Delhi government has given a licence to kill the people. Common people are moving on live bombs," Sehrawat added.

Hitting out at the AAP, the MLA said the Delhi government added more pollution in the city by allowing Ola and Uber. Private taxies added more pollution."

The dissident AAP leader said AAP government has also left 8 lakh rickshaw owners in lurch by reselling the permits. 40,000 Valmiki people have also been cheated in the name of votes.

Also read: Arvind Kejriwal's AAP set to win Punjab, hung Assembly in Goa: HuffPost-CVoter survey

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The entire lane in ward no 6 of Maur Mandi, with close to 50 families, has decided to boycott the polls scheduled for February 4.

By Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu: While election fever grips Punjab, ward no 6 of Maur Mandi in Bhatinda is filled with anger and gloom.

The lane opposite the DSP office of the ward is busy with people discussing Punjab elections.

People of the area told India Today that the entire lane with close to 50 families have decided to boycott the polls scheduled for February 4.

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The families decided to boycott the polls after at least six people of this area were killed in an IED explosion. The explosion took place in a Maruti car during the election rally of Congress leader Harminder Singh Bassi's, whose convoy was about to pass by when the bomb went off.

While there was a political blame game between parties soon after the incident. The Congress blamed both AAP and the SAD. But the people here felt that the loss of lives was lost in the political blame game.

Neelam Mangla, one of the locals commenting on the decision said, "This is shameful and that is why are boycotting elections. What if we would have lost our own child."

Also read: India Today Investigation: How parties lure voters in Punjab with liquor coupons

"Politicans should know why we did not come out to vote." she further adds.

"We want a fair investigation. We want a CBI enquiry. The family is gone but we want justice for them. I know the investigation has not happened properly," said another resident Yashpal.

Another young woman, Rishu Goel said, "There has not even been a sincere attempt to find out who could be behind the incident."

However, SHO Shiv Chand talking about the incident said, "We are ready for the polls. There is nothing to worry about."

The Assembly election in Punjab is going to be one of the most fierce battles of the state with the AAP and the Congress in a neck-to-neck fight, while the SAD-BJP alliance is vying for a hat trick.

1 crore 95 lakh voters will cast their vote in what is considered to be one of the most exciting elections.

Also read: Punjab Assembly elections: List of key candidates out

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JNFL, MHI agree terms for buying into NewCo

03 February 2017

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France's Areva has reached agreements with both Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) on the main terms of their respective acquisition of 5% stakes in its nuclear fuel cycle activities. The operations are being split from Areva's reactor business into a new entity, referred to as 'NewCo'.

French utility EDF agreed in July 2015 to take a stake of between 51% and 75% in Areva's reactor unit in a government-backed plan to revitalise France's nuclear power industry. Strategic investors will be able to take minority stakes in the business. The European Commission approved the restructuring of the Areva group in mid-January, ruling that the French government's plan to grant a capital injection of 4.5 billion ($4.8 billion) into Areva does not breech European Union state aid rules.

The reactor operations to be sold have been transferred to a subsidiary 100% owned by Areva NP, referred to as 'New NP'. Areva began the process of splitting off its nuclear fuel cycle activities into NewCo in August 2016, combining the Areva Mines, Areva NC, Areva Projects and Areva Business Support companies and their respective subsidiaries.

Under agreements announced today, both JNFL and MHI will each invest 250 million for a 5% stake in NewCo.

"The negotiations are continuing with these two strategic investors to finalize the documentation," Areva said. "The capital of NewCo remains open to other strategic investors for investment within the same framework as the agreements currently being finalized."

Areva says it has "enjoyed longstanding relations" with JNFL and MHI. The company has provided technical assistance to JNFL for the commissioning of the Rokkasho reprocessing plant and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel factory.

In 1991, Areva and MHI formed a joint venture in the nuclear fuel cycle business, and in 2006 they concluded an agreement on broader collaboration in the field of nuclear energy. That agreement led to the creation in 2007 of the Atmea 50-50 joint venture, set up to develop, market, license and sell the 1100 MWe Atmea-1 pressurized water reactor combining both companies' technologies.

In November 2015, France and Japan held discussions to pursue their "promising" cooperation in the development of the Atmea-1 reactor design, as well as cooperation in nuclear safety and research on decommissioning nuclear facilities.

MHI said today, "With acquisition of a stake in NewCo, going forward MHI will pursue deeper and expanded exchanges of human resources and technologies with the Areva Group." It added, "By building stronger relationships of cooperation in business and technology areas, MHI will play an important role in reinforcing ties between the Japanese and French governments and between their respective nuclear energy industries as confirmed by the two countries in 2015, thereby strengthening the global value chain in the nuclear power plant business."

Last June, EDF and MHI signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for collaboration in civil nuclear power, including MHI taking a stake in Areva NP and joint development of the Atmea reactor design. The MOU also covers a "potential broader range of collaborative ties leveraging the respective technologies and special expertise in the global market."

MHI said today that in addition to investing in NewCo, it has been in discussions "toward making a similar minority stake investment in Areva NP".

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

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Putin: Russia ready to fund entire Paks II project

03 February 2017

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Russia is prepared to provide all of the funding required for Hungary's Paks nuclear power plant expansion project, President Vladimir Putin told journalists in Budapest yesterday, following talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. A transcript of the press briefing was posted on the Russian presidential website.

Putin and Orban address the media (Image: Kremlin)

An inter-governmental agreement signed in early 2014 would see Russian enterprises and their international sub-contractors supply two new units at Paks - VVER-1200 reactors - as well as a Russian state loan of up to 10.0 billion ($11.2 billion) to finance 80% of the project.

"The project costs 12 billion, 80% of which was supposed to come from a Russian loan. I apprised the prime minister of other options. We are prepared to finance 100% of it, but then the terms and conditions of the agreement should be slightly different. We can do this as well," Putin said, according to the transcript.

The project will create 10,000 "new well-paid high-tech jobs", he said, adding it would improve Hungary's energy security and help grow its economy.

Russia places "great importance", he said, on the Paks II construction project, which is being managed by state nuclear corporation Rosatom.

Paks currently comprises four Russian-supplied VVER-440 pressurized water reactors, which started up between 1982 and 1987.

The existing Paks plant "has been operating for a long time in Hungary", he said, "and today produces close to 40% of all electricity produced in that country".

The launch of the two new units will "make it possible to double electricity production and satisfy the demand for electricity that is essential in order to develop new production facilities in Hungary", he added.

The European Commission cleared Hungary's award of a contract to Rosatom to build the two new units at Paks in November last year. It had been examining until recently two matters related to Paks II - procurement and whether funding of the project amounts to state aid. On 17 November, it closed the infringement procedure it had launched against Hungary over public procurement rules in connection with the project, but it is still investigating whether there is state aid.

Orban referred to the remaining EU approval required for the project.

"One issue remains open and we are waiting for an EU decision on it. We are convinced that our agreements are fully in compliance with EU requirements and we very much hope that this year we will be able to begin preparations and go ahead with construction in 2018," he said.

"We are waiting for the construction work to finally begin, because what kind of nuclear power station is it that everyone is talking about but no one has seen? They haven't even dug the first hole yet. We are waiting for work to start."

But Orban also said that a review of the 2014 intergovernmental agreement "is not currently on the agenda".

He added: "We want to go ahead with what President Putin and I signed previously."

Project company MVM Paks II received an environmental licence in late September and in October submitted a site licence application for the two new units.

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by World Nuclear News

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UK white paper confirms Euratom exit plan

03 February 2017

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The UK government has outlined its position regarding the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) in the white paper on Brexit it published yesterday. In the UK, a white paper is a report giving information or proposals on an issue.

The white paper follows the government's publication last week of a bill that would empower the prime minister to leave both the European Union and Euratom. The European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) bill received the approval of Members of Parliament on 1 February by 498 votes to 114 - a majority of 384. The bill is due to clear the House of Commons on 8 February and then be put before the House of Lords. Prime Minister Theresa May has said she plans to start the formal process of the UK leaving the EU by the end of March.

The United Kingdom's exit from and new partnership with the European Union White Paper says the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008 "makes clear" that, in UK law, references to the EU include Euratom. The Euratom Treaty "imports Article 50 into its provisions".

"As the Prime Minister has said, we want to collaborate with our EU partners on matters relating to science and research, and nuclear energy is a key part of this. So our precise relationship with Euratom, and the means by which we cooperate on nuclear matters, will be a matter for the negotiations - but it is an important priority for us - the nuclear industry remains of key strategic importance to the UK and leaving Euratom does not affect our clear aim of seeking to maintain close and effective arrangements for civil nuclear cooperation, safeguards, safety and trade with Europe and our international partners," the white paper says.

"Furthermore, the UK is a world leader in nuclear research and development and there is no intention to reduce our ambition in this important area. The UK fully recognises the importance of international collaboration in nuclear research and development and we will ensure this continues by seeking alternative arrangements," it adds.

The Euratom Treaty provides the legal framework for civil nuclear power generation and radioactive waste management for members of the Euratom Community, all of which are EU Member States, the white paper notes. This includes arrangements for nuclear safeguards, safety and the movement and trade of nuclear materials both between Euratom Members, such as France and the UK, as well as between Euratom Members and third countries such as the USA, it adds.

The UK has a "proud history" of leading and supporting cutting-edge research and innovation within the EU. It is an active participant in Horizon 2020, the EU's main funding instrument for collaboration on research and innovation. In addition, the UK has played a major part in developing the main EU space programs - Galileo and Copernicus - which have supported the rapid growth of the UK space sector and contributed directly to the country's prosperity and security, the white paper says.

The UK was a founding member of the European Space Agency, to which it recently committed 1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) in research and development over the next four years. The UK has also been a driving force behind European and international research on nuclear fusion, it says.

"As we exit the EU, we would welcome agreement to continue to collaborate with our European partners on major science, research and technology initiatives ... We will continue to be a leading actor, working with European and other international partners, in global efforts to tackle major challenges, including climate change."

The government said the white paper "provides Parliament and the country with a clear vision of what we are seeking to achieve in negotiating our exit from, and new partnership with, the European Union".

On 17 January, May set out the 12 principles which will guide the government on exiting the EU. The white paper sets out the basis for these priorities and the approach to forging a new strategic partnership between the UK and the EU.

The principles are: providing certainty and clarity; taking control of our own laws; strengthening the Union; protecting our strong historic ties with Ireland and maintaining the Common Travel Area; controlling immigration; securing rights for EU nationals in the UK and UK nationals in the EU; protecting workers' rights; ensuring free trade with European markets; securing new trade agreements with other countries; ensuring the UK remains the best place for science and innovation; cooperating in the fight against crime and terrorism; and delivering a smooth, orderly exit from the EU.

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by World Nuclear News

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Viewpoint: Nuclear energy and the new US administration

03 February 2017

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There has been much speculation in the press about the policies which will be enacted by the incoming Donald Trump administration - and as well, much speculation about which policies will be truncated or eliminated, writes Will Davis.

Since nuclear energy is a key component of America's clean energy generation, there is concern among proponents of nuclear energy that all the positive momentum that nuclear energy has achieved in the eight years of the previous administration might be lost. It's important then to examine what that momentum is, why it exists, and why it's still far too early to write off nuclear energy from a policy standpoint.

Momentum

Nuclear energy's major face to the public, and to those seriously interested in environmental issues, has been that of highly advanced concepts in the field. These concepts, loosely known as "Gen-IV" reactors, are touted as being more compact, more efficient, more versatile, and much safer than the existing LWR or Light Water Reactor technology widely in use. To this end, several of the previous administration's initiatives have been focused on this sector.

In November 2015, the White House held an almost unprecedented Nuclear Energy Summit, in which many stakeholders in advanced nuclear technologies were invited to participate.

This summit was held concurrently with a declaration by the White House that the FY2016 budget included "more than $900 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) to support the US civilian nuclear energy sector by leading federal research, development and demonstration efforts in nuclear energy technologies, ranging from power generation, safety, hybrid energy systems, and security technologies, among other things."

The administration also pointed out at that time that $12.5 billion in loan guarantees were still available for companies and entities engaged in developing advanced nuclear technologies.

However, the centrepiece of the announcement that November was even more ambitious: the DOE launched its Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN). This program provides a unified access point for "technical, regulatory and financial support necessary" to develop, commercialise, and license advanced nuclear technologies in the United States.

While the programs to network those developing advanced reactors (and to provide additional funding for them) have received the most coverage, there were also programs announced to both assist the existing LWR nuclear fleet and advance light water-cooled Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). It is fair to say that the GAIN initiative covered most of the bases in advancing nuclear energy, and some of the bases in keeping light water competitive.

Change of Course

It's not any sort of secret that serious concern for the environment (specifically, the reduction of greenhouse gases) has been the driver behind both the new interest in Gen-IV nuclear energy, and the outgoing administration's push for nuclear energy R&D (as part of the well-known "all of the above" clean energy strategy). However, the incoming administration is sending serious and clear signals that there is about to be a fundamental shift in leadership, which might lead to fundamental changes in policy.

To find such prospects of change, one needs to look no further than the nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Republican Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. Pruitt has been a vocal opponent of the EPA Clean Power Plan, suing the EPA over it more than once as Oklahoma AG. The nominee is also on record as opposing the EPA Clean Power Plan.

Opposition to the Clean Power Plan is not in itself a bad thing so far as nuclear energy is concerned. As was proven by some intrepid and deep diving members of the American Nuclear Society in 2014, under the Clean Power Plan as written, it's possible (and, in the case of 15 states, beneficial under the plan) to shut down nuclear plants and replace them with combined cycle, natural gas fired plants. This is a serious contradiction, in terms of the reduction of environmental impact intended by any plan calling itself "Clean Power".

What is needed is a complete rewriting of the plan to give nuclear energy not just credit as clean, but rather a dedicated place, by name, as a clean energy generator. It's not impossible to imagine that an incoming Republican administration would be far more favourable to nuclear energy if (more likely, when) it revisits, revises, and reissues the EPA Clean Power Plan.

Push instead of pull

There may be another factor put into play in the upcoming administration which would change the direction of nuclear energy in the United States. At present, nuclear energy could be thought of as being pulled from the front, by policy (which means Federal resources and funding) into a future of advanced reactors (as well as sustainability of the existing light water type). Even if this is reduced somewhat under the Trump administration, it's possible that a push from behind may yet occur: specifically, movement on the used nuclear fuel issue.

Until recently, Harry Reid (D) of Nevada had ensured that no movement could be made on restarting the licensing of the already-built Yucca Mountain used fuel repository. In fact, his hand-picked Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman, Gregory Jaczko, halted the licensing process unilaterally. Since November, however, there have been steady anonymous mentions to the press by Trump transition team insiders that serious consideration is being given to forcing the Yucca Mountain licensing process back into motion.

There may be some real support for this idea in the Senate: John Shimkus (R-Illinois) was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that there was bipartisan interest in getting the whole used fuel "monkey" off the back of the Federal government, which has been responsible since 1982 for taking possession of used fuel from commercial nuclear plants but has not moved one single cask to any sort of repository or interim facility.

In some states, like Kentucky, the primary legal objection to nuclear plants being built is specifically the used fuel issue. Should the Federal government finally be able to start in motion a process by which it would move used fuel to either interim or permanent storage, we might see a serious objection to nuclear energy overall be removed, and might even expect progress in pushing for new nuclear in states previously locked out by the used fuel issue.

States are moving

It seems likely that until advanced nuclear power is ready that conventional light water nuclear plants will have to stand in the breach to provide around the clock low carbon energy. The problem with that happening is simple economics - the flood of cheap shale gas has driven power prices down so far in many parts of the country that nuclear plants operating in unregulated, or merchant, markets cannot meet even their costs, much less make a profit. A number of grassroots efforts have been launched to save these plants, and notable success has occurred in Illinois and New York. Other actions are underway to try to save other nuclear plants in the country, even as in regulated markets in the South new nuclear plants are under construction.

None of these efforts to save existing plants has depended on the Federal government or the White House to succeed. Indeed, the plight of each nuclear plant in each market is different, and the tailored efforts required to save these units are not then by nature instruments of Federal policy, but rather state and local. There is no reason to expect that an incoming Trump administration will have any effect on these key battles won, lost, and developing around the country.

Net gain or loss?

Taking everything into account imparts a very mixed picture. The Trump administration seems likely, given all the reporting in the press, to attack policies that it views as wholly environmental, which it believes would damage private industry and business, and to some extent, the common citizen. Just how this influences nuclear energy specifically is unclear, but a rewrite of the EPA Clean Power Plan could potentially be advantageous for nuclear power, as compared to the rules as currently written.

There are just no signs at the moment which can reveal what might happen with the DOE and its GAIN program, although it's somewhat reassuring to note that the program has not itself been specifically called out even with the large amount of press that has been written about the "need" to overhaul that agency.

Moving the country forward on its legal obligation to take Federal control of the used nuclear fuel dispersed at over a hundred nuclear plant sites around the country might well be a shining light on the horizon. Whether Yucca Mountain is ultimately used is impossible to say, but the political wind seems, given the evidence of reporting, to be again blowing in the way of finally tackling the problem.

Even if the incoming administration begins cutting apart the EPA's policies, there is hope in the fact that the early signs show the presence of sufficient political will to definitively address the used fuel problem. Taking nothing else into account, that fact in itself is enough to create optimism.

Will Davis

Will Davis is the communications director for the N/S Savannah Association, where he also serves as historian, newsletter editor and member of the board of directors. Davis has recently been engaged by the Global America Business Institute as a consultant. He is also a consultant to, and writer for, the American Nuclear Society

*This article was originally written for the Global America Business Institute.

Related topics
Switzerland was established as a confederation in 1291 and was later re-established as a centralized federal government in 1874 through the 1848 constitution. The president of the Swiss Confederation is the chief of state and a member of the federal council. The president and vice-president are elected indirectly to a one-year term by the Federal Assembly. Elections are held on different dates for various government units as decided by the respective cantons. Switzerland is a direct democracy where the citizens are the highest political authority allowed to participate in all spheres of government activities.

Does Switzerland Have A President Or A Prime Minister?

The Federal Council

The Federal Council is a seven-member executive council responsible for Switzerlands federal administration since its establishment in 1848. The presidency of the council rotates around the seven members with the vice-president automatically becoming the next president. Johann Schneider-Amman, a businessman, and politician, is the current president whose term began in January 2016. Doris Leuthard, Johanns successor, is to take office on January 1, 2017. Leuthard is the fifth woman to be elected to the Federal Council and served as the president in 2010.

The Federal Chancellery

The Federal Chancellery is the Federal Councils staff organization headed by the Federal Chancellor, elected to a four-year term by the Federal Assembly. The Federal Chancellor acts as the secretary of the Federal Council with the responsibility of writing reports and publishing federal laws. Walter Thurnher is the current Federal Chancellor of Switzerland whose term began in January 2016. The physicist has previously worked in the chancellery as a chief of staff of the Federal departments of Economic Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and environment, transport, energy and communications.

The Federal Assembly

The Federal Assembly is the legislative unit of the federal government. The Federal Assembly is bicameral with the National Council and the Council of States. The two units sometimes merge into a United Federal Assembly for various reasons such as to arbitrate conflicts between federal executives, to elect federal executives, when listening to special instructions and to issue pardons.

The Council of States: The Council is the upper house of the Federal Assembly made up of 46 Councillors: 40 who represent the 20 cantons and six who represent the six-half- cantons. The Councillors are elected through a popular election for a four-year term. The cantons decide on the date to conduct the election. Ivo Bischofberger, a political scientist, is the current president of the Council of States since November 2016

The National Council: The Council is the lower house of the Federal Assembly with 200 National Councillors who are elected to a four-year term. Elections are held every four years, citizens choosing their representatives depending on the Cantons percentage population in the national population. The council has four three-week sessions every year.

The Federal Courts

The Federal Courts are the legal system of Switzerland composed of the Federal Supreme Court, Federal Criminal Court, and the Administrative Courts. The courts are responsible for maintaining justice. The Supreme Court handles matters such as organized crimes, terrorism and crimes against federal institutions. Each canton has its courts. Gilbert Kolly has been the President of the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland since 2012.
The country of Jordan is located in the Middle East. Jordan is bordered by Israel, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The country is most well known for its vast ancient monuments, nature reserves, desert covered land and its seaside resorts by the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.

The five highest mountains in Jordan

Khilal

The Khilal mountain is the fifth highest mountain in the country, standing at a height of 5,527 feet tall. The mountain is located in the Ma'an Governorate of Jordan.

Ghazal

The Ghazal mountain is the fourth highest mountain in the country, standing at a height of 5,555 feet tall. The mountain also is located in the Ma'an Governorate of Jordan. Outside of its height and location not much is known about this mountain or when it was first climbed.

Marajim

The Marajim mountain is the third highest mountain in the country, standing at a height of 5,623 feet tall. Mount Marajim, just like Mount Khilal and Mount Ghazal is located in the Ma'an Governorate of Jordan. Outside of its height and location not much is known about this mountain or when it was first climbed.

Ramm

The Ramm mountain is the second highest mountain in the country, standing at a height of 5,689 feet tall. The mountain is located in the Wadi Rum, also known as The Valley of the Moon, in the Aqaba Governorate. The Bedouin people have were the first to ascent Mount Ramm but the first known ascent of the mountain was by a group of surveyors in 1949 who were guided to the top by Bedouin guide guided by Sheik Hamdan. The first known European ascent was done in 1952 by Englishwomen Charmian Longstaff and Sylvia Branford, who were also guided by Hamdan.

Umm ad Dami

The Umm ad Dami mountain is the tallest mountain in all of Jordan, standing at a height of 6,083 feet tall. The mountain is also very close to the border with Saudi Arabia in the Wadi Rum, which is in the Aqaba Governorate. Since Umm ad Dami is the tallest location in the country it has been known to regularly receive snowfall.

The important but smaller mountains of Jordan:

The Abarim mountain range that goes from the Dead Sea to the desert in the south of Jordan houses several smaller but historically important mountains. The first of these is the 2,680 foot tall Mount Nebo, which is the place in the Hebrew Bible where Moses is said to have looked over the Promised Land. Another mountain that is located at Petra is Jebal Al-Medhbah, which stands at over 3,280 feet tall and is though to be the location of the Biblical Mount Sinai. There are also the mountains of Jebal Al-Qala, Jebal Amman and Jebal Baggir which all have known human activity going back to the Neolithic period.
Austria, or the Federal Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in central continental Europe and is bordered by eight countries: Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Slovakia. Austria has a population of more than 8.7 million people. The federal head of state of Austria is the president, who acts on the advice of the chancellor and the cabinet. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire started to collapse, it led to Austria being part of a monarchy and emperor as the Austrian head of state. On October 21, 1918 a Provisional National Assembly was formed by the Imperial Council parliamentarians that were representing the empires of ethnically German Provinces. Later that year the state assumed the functions of head of state due to a resolution in the nation assembly. The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces of Austria and appoints the federal chancellor as well as judges, military officers, federal civil servants, and the governors of Austria's federal states. The president also represents the state in international relations.

Presidents Of Austria Since 1945

Karl Renner (1945-1950)

Karl Renner was born on December 14, 1870 in Vienna, Austria. He was a politician of the Socialist Party and was also known as Father of the Republic since he headed the first German-Austrian government and the first Austrian Republic between 1918 and 1919. Renner was the first Chancellor of Austria after World War II from April to December of 1945.

Theodor Korner (1951-1957)

Theodor Korner was born on April 23, 1873 in Komarom, Hungary. Korner attended military school in Hranice, and in 1894 he was already a lieutenant. He served in Zagreb and Croatia as an officer and received a promotion as a major in 1904. During the second World War, he was a fighter and a commander of the Italian army and in 1924 he resigned from the military. He became a member of parliament in 1924 through the Social Democratic Party and served as the chairman of the Federal Council of Austria between 1933 and 1934. Korner was nominated as a candidate for the presidency, when President Karl Renner died, and won the election. Korner was profoundly knowledgeable in military sciences and even wrote about military theory. He was the fifth president of Austria and a street in Vienna is named after him a the Theodor Korner Prize, an Austrian award for science and art, is also named after him.

Kurt Waldheim (1986-1992)

Kurt Waldheim was born on the December 21, 1918, in Sankt Andra-Wordern near Vienna. He was a politician and a diplomat who became the 4th Secretary General of the UN between 1972 and 1981. From 1986 to 1992 he served as the 9th President of Austria. Before joining Politics, he served in the Austrian Army from 1936 to 1937 and joined the Vienna Consular Academy where he completed his studies in 1939. He was also awarded the highest Yugoslav Order by President Josip Broz Tito.

Alexander Van der Bellen (2017-Present)

Alexander Van der Bellen was born on January 18, 1944 in Vienna, Austria and is the newly elected president of Austria set to assume office on January 26, 2017. Bellen studied economics at the University of Innsbruck and received a doctorate degree in 1970. He was an economics professor at the University of Vienna before joining politics where he served as a member of the Austrian National Council representing the Austrian Green Party from 1994 to 2012. On December 13, 1997 he became their federal spokesperson, and in 1999 became chairman of the Greens Parliamentary Party in the National Council and was a leader of the parliamentary faction and also a leader of his party from 1997 to 2008. A week before he was to take office the results were annulled by the Constitutional Court of Austria, requiring the election to be re-done. During his 2016 presidential campaign, he argued that Europe should accept refugees who fled from war zones in Syria and elsewhere. In May 2004, he received the Grand Decoration of Honor in Gold with Star for services to the Austrian Republic.

Parliament of Austria

Austria is a parliamentary republic with a bicameral federal assembly or the Bundesversammlung, which is made up of the Federal Council or Bundesrat and the National Council or Nationalrat. The federal Council has 62 seats whose members are appointed by the state parliaments and serve between five and six years in office. The National Council has 183 seats, and the members are directly elected by a representative vote, whose members serve for a term of five years.
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Azerbaijan became an independent republic. In that time it has had four presidents. The first two were ousted through coups and dissensions, and the last two are father and son respectively.

Presidents of Azerbaijan Since 1991

Ayaz Mutallibov  1991-1992

Ayaz Mutallibov was the last leader of Soviet Azerbaijan and the first leader of independent Azerbaijan. Born on May 12th, 1938, Mutallibov was president of independent Azerbaijan from October 1991 but was overthrown on May 15, 1992, by the Azerbaijan Popular Front. Mutallibov was born in Baku on May 12th, 1938. On September 8th, 1991, he was elected president in single candidate national elections, and on October 18th, 1991 the Azerbaijan SSR Supreme Council declared the country independent from the Soviet Union. After being overthrown he exiled to Moscow in 1992.

Abulfaz Elchibey  1992-1993

Born on 7th June 1938, Abulfaz Elchibey was independent Azerbaijans first democratically elected president. His term lasted from 16th June 1992 to 15 June 1993, when he was overthrown by successor Heydar Aliyev. Elchibey grew up in the mountains of Nakhichevan, the autonomous Soviet Republic, and after early schooling there went to Baku to study Arabic at Azerbaijan State University. After working as a translator in Egypt, he returned to Baku and lectured at a University from 1969 to 1974. When national elections were held on June 7th, 1992, Elchibey defeated seven other candidates taking 54 percent of the votes. In his tenure, he managed to have the Soviets fully withdraw their army from Azerbaijan, the first of former Soviet republics to achieve that. Elchibeys government also established the national Caspian Navy and reached an agreement with Russia to receive a quarter of the Baku-based Soviet Caspian Navy. After his presidency, Elchibey went to exile to Nakhichevan until 1997 and became a critic of President Aliyevs autocracy. In the year 2000, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died on August 22 same year in Ankara, Turkey.

Heydar Aliyev  1993-2003

Heydar Aliyev was the third president of post-Soviet Azerbaijan from October 1993 to October 2003. He was born on May 10th, 1923 in Nakhchivan town. After graduating from Nakhchivan Pedagogical School in 1939, he studied architecture at the Industrial Institute of Azerbaijan. Aliyev also graduated from Azerbaijan State University in 1957, where he had studied history. By 1967 he had risen to be chairman of the State Committee of Security, and earned lieutenant general rank. In 1969 Aliyev was appointed by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan and became head of Azerbaijan Republic. By 1987 he had held influential posts within the communist party in Azerbaijan, even for five years being deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Aliyev resigned in October 1987 due to allegations of corruption made against him by Mikhael Gorbachev.

Ilham Aliyev 2003  Present

Ilham Aliyev, the fourth president of Azerbaijan, was born in Baku on December 24th, 1961. He succeeded his father Heydar Aliyev on 31st October 2003 as president. After high school studies in Baku, Ilham enrolled in 1977 at the Moscow State University of International Relations (MSUIR) and graduated in 1982. Ilham pursued his postgraduate studies at the same university. From 1997 he has also served as the President of the National Olympic Committee of Azerbaijan. In 1999, Ilham was elected deputy chairman of the New Azerbaijan Party, and first deputy chairman in 2001. On August 4th, 2003, Ilham became Azerbaijans Prime Minister by election through parliament.

Azerbaijan System of Governance

In Azerbaijan, the president though largely ceremonial is the head of state. But much of the country is run actively by the Prime Minister. Since 1991 all of the four presidents of Azerbaijan have been Muslims.
By India Today Web Desk: Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif may be doing a film together, but it media reports are to be believed, they aren't exactly the most friendly of exes. When Katrina was present at her Jagga Jasoos director Anurag Basu's Saraswati Puja and Ranbir wasn't, it set tongues wagging. Given that Ranbir has been a regular at the annual event for years, it was being suggested that he gave it a miss this time as he did not want to cross paths with her.

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ALSO READ: Exes Ranbir and Katrina were shooting together. Then Salman Khan arrived

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DNA quotes a source as saying, "It's a grand affair with Anurag and Pritam preparing the bhog (feast) themselves. RK's been a regular for some years at this event while his ex Katrina Kaif started attending it three years ago, when the couple was dating. With her solo appearance at Anurag's puja this year, it sparked off speculation whether Ranbir was deliberately avoiding his ex. However, the truth is, on this day, the actor was shooting for his Dutt biopic directed by Rajkumar Hirani."

Katrina Kaif with Anurag Basu at his Saraswati Puja this year. (Photo: Viral Bhayani)

Ranbir is busy getting into the skin of the character and apparently considers Sanjay Dutt the real rockstar. He told Filmfare, "Sanjay's lived his life. He owned up to his mistakes, he's paid the price for it. He's been through much? his mother (the late Nargis Dutt) passing away just before the premiere of his film, drug abuse, being labelled a terrorist, his failed marriages, the grind of punishment... We're not trying to project Sanjay Dutt in any way, it's not a propaganda film."

The Ae Dil Hai Mushkil actor added the biopic "will talk about human flaws, the emotional father-son story (between Sanjay and the late Sunil Dutt), his relationship with his best friend, with the women in his life. It's emotional, it's funny, it's sad, it's bittersweet."

ALSO WATCH: Ranbir-Katrina to Brangelina: 2016, the year of celebrity splits

--- ENDS ---
Bulgaria is a parliamentary democracy with the post of the prime minister being the most powerful. The countrys three political branches of government are made up of the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary. The president of Bulgaria is the head of state and also the Commander-in-Chief of the Bulgarian Armed Forces. The president can reject bills for further debates although a simple majority can override the veto.The president is assisted by the vice president who is first in the presidential succession followed by the chairman of the National Assembly.

Presidents Of Bulgaria Since 1990

Petar Mladenov

Petar Mladenov was the last Communist leader of Bulgaria and the first president of the democratic Bulgaria.He began his career in politics in 1963 when he joined the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) becoming the first secretary of the partys committee. He was appointed Foreign Minister in 1971, a position he held for 18 years. Following the decision by the Zhivkov to expel most of Bulgarian Ethnic Turks in 1989, Petar Mladenov together with few government officials plotted to overthrow him with Mladenov proposed as the new party leader. Zhivkov finally resigned on November 9, 1989, with Petar Mladenov taking over the duties of the prime minister and party leader. Mladenov led the country in ending Communist rule in December 1989. He brought about several changes in the management of party affairs and restoring its image. He was elected the first president on April 3, 1990, and resigned in July of the same year. He died in 2000.

Zhelyu Zhelev

Zhelyu Zhelev was the first non-communist president of Bulgaria who served from August 1, 1990, to January 22, 1997. He was expelled from BCP in 1965 for political reasons and remained unemployed for six years. Zhelyu Zhelev was elected Member of Parliament in June 1990. He was chosen by the assembly to replace Mladenov on August 1, 1990, becoming the first non-communist head of state. Zhelyu Zhelev won the election runoff of 1992 becoming the first freely elected president. In 1996 he lost the party nomination for the presidential race which effectively ended his presidency in 1997. However, Zhelyu Zhelev remained in active politics but on a small scale. He died in January 2015.

Petar Stoyanov

Petar Stoyanov was the second democratically elected president of the Republic of Bulgaria. He was elected in the 1996 presidential election and assumed office on January 22, 1997. He immediately called for an election and appointed a new prime minister with the aim of economic recovery. However, Stoyanovs popularity declined due to the increasing financial difficulties. He was defeated in the 2001 presidential election forcing him to retire from public life briefly. He returned to public politics in 2005 and was elected as a member of the National Assembly. He currently serves as the Honorary Co-chair for the World Justice Project.

The incumbent President

Rumen Radev is a Major General and the President of Bulgaria. He was a Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force who won the 2016 presidential election as an independent candidate supported by other parties including Bulgarian Socialist Party. He is a decorated major with several awards and honors. He is expected to improve the economy of Bulgaria and steer the country towards economic stability.
Laos is officially known as the Lao People's Democratic Republic and it is a landlocked country located in Southeast of Asia bordering Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Cambodia. Laos is a one-party state. The president of the Lao People's Democratic Republic is the head of state of Laos. History of the office of the president of Laos dates back to Prince Souphanouvong, who was Laos's first president and a member of the deposed royal family of the former Kingdom of Laos. The President of Laos is the Commander-in-Chief of the Lao People's Army, represents Laos in both international and local affairs, safeguards the independence and territorial integrity of Laos, and appoints the vice president, the prime minister, ministers, and other officials with the National Assembly's consent. These Presidents have been the Heads of State in Laos since the Kingdom of Laos was overthrown by the Laotian communist revolution.

Presidents Of Laos Since 1975

Souphanouvong (1975-1991)

Prince Souphanouvong was born on July 13th, 1909 in Liang Phrabang, Laos and was the first President of Laos from December 1975 to August 1991. Souphanouvong was one of Prince Bounkhong's sons whose mother was a commoner. Souphanouvong got his education in France and Vietnam before eventually becoming a supporter of Ho Chi Minh and joining the Indochinese Communist movement. Souphanouvong assembled the first Congress of the Lao Freedom Front commonly known as the Pathet Lao. He was also the leader of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party which steered him into the presidency.

Nouhak Phoumsavanh (1992-1998)

Nouhak Phoumsavanh was born on April 9th, 1910 in Mukdahan Province of Thailand and was the fourth president of Laos from 1992 to1998. In 1945 Phoumsavanh was the founding member of the Lao Revolutionary movement and became the Chairman of the Lao Resistance Committee and Minister of Finance in 1950 he also served as the Deputy Prime Minister. Phoumsavanh was elected as President of Laos following the death of former President Kaysone.

Choummaly Sayasone (2006-2016)

Choummaly Sayasone was born on March 6th 1936 in Attapeu, Laos and is a Laotian politician, the 6th President of Lao from 2006-2016 and former General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party. In 1991 Sayasone joined the party's political bureau serving as Defence Minister from 1991-2001 and was Vice President from 2001-2006. On March 21st, 2006 Sayasone was elected as the LPRP's General Secretary which saw him to victory as Laos President on June 8th, 2006.

Bounnhang Vorachith (2016-Present)

Bounnhang Vorachith was born on August 15th, 1938 in Savannakhet Province of Laos and is a Laotian politician and has also been the Secretary General of the LPRP and the seventh and incumbent President of Laos since January 22nd, 2016. Vorachith previously served as the deputy prime minister from 1996 to 2001, prime minister of Laos from 2001to 2006 and as Vice President of Laos from 2006 to 2016. Vorachith was elected as the General Secretary of the LPRP making him the supreme leader of Lao People's Democratic Republic. Vorachith was ranked first in the political bureau hierarchy of Laos.

Presidency of Lao People's Democratic Republic

The decline of the Kingdom of Laos by the Pathet Lao in 1975 and the end of the Laotian Civil War saw the beginning of a new era in Laos. Since 1975 Lao a Political Bureau hierarchy has had a total of six presidents and one acting president. The other two presidents in Laos include Kaysone Phomvihane who was president from 1991 to 1992 and Khamtai Siphandon who served as Laos president from 1998 to 2006. Phoumi Vongvichit was the acting president for Souphanouvong when he was forced to step down due to health reasons.
The Republic of Serbia is a parliamentary republic whose government is divided into legislative, judiciary, and executive branches. Serbia broke up from Yugoslavia in the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s and formed a government together with Montenegro. Since the break-up, Serbia has had several presidents holding office. The president in Serbia is elected on a five-year term renewable only once through elections. The presidents seat is housed in the Novi Dvor.

Presidents Of Serbia Since 1991

History of the position

The Serbian presidency began in 1991 after the dissolution of Yugoslavia. The position, though constitutional, has been marred by instances of corruption, embezzlement, and violations of human rights. Very few people turn out during election periods leading to the institution of acting presidents. The presidency has been in a constant rivalry with neighboring countries with few presidents making attempts to improve these relations.

Duties of the President

The Serbian president is the head of state and the commander in chief of the armed forces whose duties and responsibilities are listed in Article 112 of the Serbian constitution. They include representing the country both locally and internationally, proposing laws and individuals for the positions of the prime minister, the national assembly, and receive diplomatic letters of credit from foreign diplomatic agents. The president has the authority to dismiss and appoint ambassadors of Serbia with the proposal of the government, give amnesties and award honors.

Slobodan Milosevic (1991-1997)

Milosevic was the first Serbian president whose term lasted from January 1991 to July 1997. His rise to power began in 1984 when he was elected as president of the Communists City Committee. In 1987, he engaged in Serbian politics supporting the Serbs of Kosovo who were under oppression by the government. His term as the president of Serbia was characterized by periods of instability, demonstrations, and mass murders, which he was eventually charged for by various courts. He died in 2006 in his prison cell at The Hague.

Milan Milutinovic (1997-2002)

Milutinovic was the second president of Serbia. Milutinovic was elected as the president through the Socialist Party of Serbia with a 59.23% win. Milutinovic was instrumental in the negotiations of the Rambouillet Agreement on 1999 acting as Yugoslavians government leader. Unlike his predecessor, Milutinovic did not enjoy a lot of support and popularity as he was considered a puppet of Milosevics. He was ousted in 2000 but remained mandated to the presidency until his term ended in 2002.

Acting/ Interim presidential administration

Natas Micic- Natas served as the acting president of Serbia from 2002 to 2004 after two void elections during which no candidate attained a total of 50% of the total votes. She failed to call for an election within 60 days until she called for elections in 2003. The November 2003 elections were void thus her term was extended. She was succeeded by Dragan Marsican who served from February to March 2004. Vojislav Mihailovic acted as the president between 3rd and March 4th, 2004 and was succeeded by Predrag Markovic.

Boris Tadic

Tadic was the third president of Serbia who served from July 2004 to April 2012 for two terms. Tadic was a member of the Democratic Party since 1990 to 2014 and served as its president for ten years since 2004. He stepped down from the countrys leadership after losing the 2012 elections. During his term, he initiated friendly relations with neighboring nations and encouraged the protection of human rights and democracy.

Serbias current government

Serbia is currently under the leadership of Tomislav Nikolic who took office in May 2012 after several attempts at the presidency since 2000. He previously served in the Serbian Radical Party and founded the Serbian Progressive Party. The president has been the source of several controversies despite his declaration of being a president of all Serbians.
The President of the Republic of Finland is considered the Head of State and holds shared executive powers with the Council of the State. This office has existed since 1919, when it was created by the Constitution Act. Since 1994, the person in this position is elected by a direct popular vote and serves a 6-year term. The amount of time in this office is limited to two consecutive terms. Finland has had 12 presidents since the establishment of this position. This article takes a look at some of its presidents.

Presidents of the Republic of Finland

Kaarlo Juho Stahlberg

The first President of Finland was Kaarlo Juho Stahlberg from 1919 until 1925. Prior to serving as President, he was the Speaker of Parliament from 1914 to 1917 and he played a critical role in creating the countrys Constitution. He was elected by Parliament because at that time, the country was under martial law and shifting to constitutional law. Due to this newly evolving government and its turmoil, Stahlberg appointed 8 different governments during his 6-year tenure. He is remembered for his moderate stances on social and economic issues. While President, he enacted several laws, including: giving trade unions power to negotiate labor contracts, improving public care for those living in poverty, redistributing land ownership from the wealthy to the landless.

Martti Ahtisaari

Martti Ahtisaari was the 10th president of Finland and served between 1994 and 2000. He was the first president to be elected by the direct popular vote and came into office as a Social Democrat during an economic recession. He met some friction with the Centre Party-led government because of his stances on foreign policy and domestic unemployment. He is known for holding his campaign promise of visiting every province within the country. During his term, Finland joined the European Union (EU) and Ahtisaari helped negotiate an end to the war in Kosovo. He chose not to run for re-election in 2000 due to opposition within his party. After his presidency, the Finnish Constitution of 2000 restricted presidential powers.

Tarja Halonen

Finlands 11th President was Tarja Halonen. She served two terms between 2000 and 2012. In addition to being the first female president of the country, she is also known for her work in human rights issues. During her presidency, Halonen enjoyed a high popular approval rating despite some conflict with the government. She was openly opposed to the use of landmines and NATO membership. She supports the involvement of the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK) in politics. At the beginning of her second term, she declined the Council of States nomination for the Interior Ministry, going against 50 years of tradition. At the end of her second term, a chairperson of two of the largest banks in the country criticized both her presidency and economic policy.

Other Presidents of the Republic of Finland can be seen in the chart published below.

Duties and Powers of the President

Prior to 2000, presidential powers outweighed that of the Prime Minister. Amendments to the Constitution changed that, however, and today, the President shares equal executive authority with the Prime Minister. Some of the duties of the President include: appointing and discharging ministers, enacting international agreements that do not affect domestic legislation, signing or vetoing all acts passed by Parliament, and acting as Commander in Chief of the armed forces.
The Republic of Ireland is an island country in the North Atlantic. The island of Ireland consists of Northern Ireland, belonging to the UK, and the Republic of Ireland which accounts for five-sixths of the island. In 2011 Ireland had a population of about 6.4 million with 4.6 million living in the Republic of Ireland and more than 1.8 million living in Northern Ireland. Ireland has a parliamentary republic system of government. The head of state of Ireland is the president.

Currently, the president of Ireland is Micheal D. Higgins. The history of the position of president in Ireland dates back to 1937 when the office was established by the Irish constitution. The President of Ireland is responsible for appointing the government, appointing the judiciary, convening and dissolving the Dail, signing bills into law and representing Ireland in foreign affairs. The President of Ireland is also the Supreme Commander of the Defence Forces and also holds the power of pardon. The Irish President is the Head of State, guardian of the Constitution, and the Supreme Commander of the military in Ireland.

Presidents Of The Republic Of Ireland

Douglas Hyde (1938-1945)

Douglas Hyde was born on January 17th, 1860 in Castlerea, Roscommon, Ireland. He was not only an Irish academic but was also a scholar and linguist of the Irish language. Hyde was the first President of Ireland with one of the most influential cultural organizations in Ireland during that time. Hyde worked as an academic before becoming the president of Ireland between 1938 and 1945. As an academic, one of his students was Cearbhall O Dalaigh the future Attorney General and President of Ireland. Hyde helped establish the Gaelic League in 1893 whose aim was to encourage the preservation of the Irish culture.

Cearball O Dalaigh (1974-1976)

Cearball O Dalaigh was born on February 11th, 1911 in Bray, Wicklow, Ireland. He was the fifth president of Ireland who had an extraordinary career in law which saw him serve as Ireland's Chief Justice. In 1946 Dalaigh became the youngest Attorney General in Ireland serving until 1948 and was later re-appointed for the post in 1953. In 1972 Dalaigh was nominated as presidential candidate and was elected and served as president of Ireland from 1974 to1976 when he resigned due to conflicts and disagreement in government in order to protect the dignity and independence of the institution of the presidency of Ireland.

Mary Robinson (1990-1997)

Mary Robinson was born on May 21st, 1944 in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland. She was the first female president of Ireland, serving from 1990-1997. Robinson was also the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights between 1997 and 2002. Robinson was first noted as an academic, barrister, campaigner, and then member of the Senate in Ireland between 1969 and 1989. Robinson's term in office is widely remembered for her ability to revitalise and liberalise a political office that was previously highly conservative with low profile. Robinson is seen as Ireland's transformative figure. Two months before her term as President of Ireland came to an end, Robinson resigned from office to take up her post in the UN.

Micheal Higgins (2011-Present)

Micheal Higgins was born on April 18th, 1941 in Limerick City, Limerick, Ireland. He is the ninth and the incumbent President of Ireland. Higgins is not only a politician but also a sociologist, broadcaster, author, and poet. Higgins graduated from university with a Masters of Arts degree in sociology and was later a lecturer in the Political Science and Sociology Department at University College of Galway and was also a visiting professor at Southern Illinois University. However, Higgins resigned from his academic posts to fully focus on his political career. Higgins became President of Ireland from 201.

Other Presidents Of Ireland

The President of Ireland is directly elected by the people and holds office for seven years of which he or she can be elected to two terms only. So far Ireland has had nine presidents with two of them being women. Other Presidents of Ireland include Sean O'Kelly who served between 1945 and 1959, Eamon de Valera who served between 1959 and 1973, Erskine Childers who served between 1973 and 1974, Patrick Hillery who served between 1976 and 1990 and Mary McAleese who served between 1997 and 2011.
Since becoming an independent country in 1991, Turkmenistan has had only two Presidents who have been the heads of state and highest ranking politicians. From 1924, the country was part of the Soviet Republic, and the Presidential duties were undertaken by the First Secretaries of the Turkmen Communist Party.

Turkmenistan gained independence in 1991 and adopted a constitution in 1992. Today it has a presidential republic type of government. Over time, the powers, requirements, and duties of the President have been changed through amendments and most recently, a new constitution adopted on September 14, 2016. Turkmenistans President serves as the guarantor of the countrys independence, territorial integrity, neutrality as well as international agreements. The president represents the country internationally and appoints or dismisses ambassadors and diplomatic representatives.

Presidents Of Turkmenistan Since The Collapse Of The Soviet Union

Saparmurat Niyazov (1991-2006)

Saparmurat Niyazov was born in Gypjak, Turkmen USSR on February 19, 1940. He studied electrical engineering at the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute after which he left for further studies in Russia but was dismissed for academic failure. He then joined the Communist Party, rising through the ranks to become the First Secretary of the party by the age of 45. Niyazov promoted a hardline communist approach and assumed the office of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR. After an unsuccessful Soviet Coup in 1991, Niyazov declared his countrys independence and oversaw Presidential elections across the country. He garnered 99.9% of the votes and soon after he declared himself the father of all Turkmens, adopting the name "Turkmenbashy".

Niyazov adopted a neutrality policy in international affairs and provided the citizens with commodities such as electricity, salt, water, gas, and gasoline for free. He wrote a book titled Ruhnama which was part spiritual and part history and was to be treated as par with the Bible and the Quran. Niyazov built a cult of personality through erecting several statues and changing the names of the months and adopting those of his family members instead. He was criticized for his authoritarian regime which saw the censoring of media and the internet. He died on December 21, 2006, of a heart attack and was buried in Kipchak Mosque situated in Gypjak.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow (2006-Present)

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was born in the Geok-tepe district, Ashgabat Province in Turkmenistan on June 29, 1957. He studied dentistry at the Turkmen State Medical Institute and was appointed Minister of Health by President Niyazov in 1997. He became deputy prime minister in 2001 and assumed office as interim president after Niyazovs death in 2006. An election in 2007 confirmed him as the president with 89.23% of the votes while a subsequent election in 2012 saw him garner 97% of the total votes. He set about to reverse Niyazovs policies through actions such as restoring the names of the months and days, reinstating physical education and foreign languages in schools, approving pensions for 100,000 old citizens, and reopening the Turkmen Academy of Sciences. Berdimuhamedow has spearheaded education, health, and economic reforms but has been criticized for promoting his own personality cult and dictatorial policies.

Challenges Facing Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is facing economic uncertainty in the face of falling oil and gas prices in the global market has had the greatest negative effect. This situation has caused the devaluation of the countrys currency. While Turkmenistan has enjoyed political stability throughout the years, the current economic climate is a fertile ground for unrest and protest. The countrys isolation approach in international affairs has, in recent time, faced challenges in the context of increasing globalization.
Georgia is located in the Caucasus region south of Russia, sitting at the interchange between Europe and Asia. During the Red Army Invasion of Georgia (1921) the Soviet Union took control of the country and a year later Georgia was part of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (TSFSR) until 1936. That year the TSFSR was dissolved and Georgia became the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic until 1991 when the country achieved independence from the Soviets. In May of that year, Zviad Gamsakhurdia (1939-93) was elected as the first president of the country. Shortly after Gamsakhurdia's election, the country faced a coup d'etat and the resulting Georgian Civil War (1991-93). The country finally stabilized in 1995 with the election of a new president and the passing of the constitution of the country.

Select Presidents of Georgia

Eduard Shevardnadze

Eduard Shevardnadze was the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, helping to make many of the important decisions in foreign policy under Mikhail Gorbacev. He returned to Georgia in 1991 and following the coup d'etat, was made the Chairman of the State Council of Georgia after two months of rule by military council in March 1992. In November he named himself Chairman of Parliament, holding that position until 1995. After having been the de facto leader of Georgia for more then three years, Shevardnadze was officially elected as president in November 1995. However, his tenure as president would be marked by accusations of scandal, corruption and assassination attempts. There were three assassination attempts on his life in 1992, 1995 and 1998 from enemies he made during the country's civil war or from his time as the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party. This along with his close relationship with the United States, as well the strategic partnership he signed with NATO, greatly strained relations with Russia. In April 2000 he won a second term as president, but there were widespread accusations that the vote had been rigged. Shevardnadze was finally forced to resign in November 2003 after allegations of electoral fraud in that year's legislative election led to a series of public protests and outrage now known as the Rose Revolution.

Giorgi Margvelashvili

Giorgi Margvelashvili went to college to study to become a philosopher. He graduated in 1992 from Tbilisi State University and then went on to continue his post graduate education at the Central European University in Budapest and then at the Georgian Academy of Sciences. In 1998 he received his doctorate in philosophy from Tbilisi State University. During his time in college, Margvelashvili worked as a mountain guide and program consultant. After he graduated he became involved with the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs (GIPA) and became the rector of the group from 2000 to 2006 and later from 2010 to 2012. Between his time at rector he worked in the GIPA's research department, where he often commented on the society and politics of the country. By 2012 Margvelashvili had gained a reputation as a critic of president Mikheil Saakashvili's government and publicly supported the Georgian Dream party in that year's election. This was also the year that Margvelashvili truly entered politics as he was made the Minister of Education and Science in October, while in February 2013 he was made First Deputy Prime Minister. That year the Georgian Dream named him as their presidential candidate and he won the presidential election in October.

Duties of the President

The president of Georgia hold the highest office in the government, is the head of state and is also the supreme commander-in-chief. The president is elected to serve a five year term by popular vote and can only serve two consecutive terms. The president is also the person who represents the country in foreign relations and makes sure that state bodies function in accordance with the constitution.

Some of the other duties of the president are to nominate and appoint a prime minister, appointing a member of the High Council of Justice, appoint other government positions, declare martial law or a state of emergency, granting political asylum and more. In 2004 amendments were added to the constitution to strengthen the president's power to dismiss parliament and also created the position of prime minister. Some of this was undone with the 2010 amendments which vastly reduced the powers of the president in favor of giving the prime minister more power. These changes when into effect with the inauguration of president Giorgi Margvelashvili in 2013.
In Israel, the Prime Minister is the leader of government and the most powerful political person in the country. He is the leader of the party with the majority of seats in the governing coalition. The president, who is the head of state, wields ceremonial powers compared to the Prime Minister. The official residence is in Jerusalem. There have been twelve Prime Ministers and caretakers since the state of Israel was founded in 1948.

Prime Ministers Of Israel Since 1948

David Ben Gurion

He was the founder of the State of Israel and became the founding Prime Minister. He later also served as the third Prime Minister. His passion for Zionism led him to lead the World Zionist Organization in 1946. He led the formal declaration of the independence of the state of Israel. He is regarded as the founding father of the Jewish state. Upon the founding of the state, he led the country in the 1948 Israeli-Arab war helping to unite the Israeli guerilla forces into the formal defence forces. He resigned from his position in 1954. A year later, he took up the position of Defence Minister following the resignation of the office holder. When elections were held in 1955, he again became the Prime Minister and served until 1963 when he stepped down. In 1970, he retired from political life. He died in 1973, aged 87.

Levi Eshkol

Levi Eshkol was born in October 1895 and died in February 1969 while in office as the Prime Minister. He was the first PM to die in office. He financed various outposts and was also accused of funding the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt to fight the Egyptian government. Upon the founding of the state, he was appointed the Director General of the Ministry of Defense and served for one year from 1950 to 1951. Having been elected to the Knesset in 1951, he served as Minister of Agriculture and Finance before replacing Ben Gurion as the PM in 1963. He is credited with the establishment of diplomatic relations with several countries including West Germany and the Soviet Union. He died in office of a heart attack in 1969.

Yitzhak Rabin

Yitzhak Rabin was born in March 1922 and died in November 1995 by assassination. In school, he studied agriculture and was an excellent student. Before joining politics, he served as a soldier for 27 years. During the 1967 war, he was the Chief of General Staff for the IDF and oversaw their victory. He was appointed the Prime Minister in 1974 following the resignation of Gold Meir. He resigned in 1977 following a financial scandal in which he was involved. He was elected again in 1992 and signed several important treaties towards peace with Palestine eventually winning a Nobel Peace Prize. He was assassinated by an extremist who was against the Oslo Accords.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu was the PM from 1996-99 and again from 2009 to date. He served distinguished military career having joined the army shortly after the 1967 war. Upon being discharged, he studied and worked in the US and returned to Israel in 1978. He served in various government positions as a minister before his election as the PM in 1996. Upon his defeat to Ehud Barak in 1999, he joined the private sector for some time. He came back and successfully contested the position in 2009.

Role of the Prime Ministers of Israel

Considering the volatile peace situation in the Middle East, they have been very instrumental in articulating the relationship between the Zionist state and the other countries around them especially Palestine. The coalition governments have proven critical for stability in the leadership of several PMs.
Kyrgyzstan is a democratic unicameral republic with the executive branch of the government comprising of the Chancellor and Vice Chair. The parliament is unicameral while the judiciary is made up of a supreme court, the prosecutor, and the local courts. The president of Kyrgyzstan is the head of state and discharges several functions including appointing the prime minister and other government officials, nominates supreme court judge, directs foreign policy, signs law, and announces all election. The president is also the commander-in-chief of the Kyrgyzstani Armed Forces.

Presidents Of Kyrgyzstan Since 1991

Askar Akayev (1991-2005)

Askar Akayev was the president of Kyrgyzstan from October 27, 1990, until being overthrown on March 24, 2005. Akayev was a compromised candidate in the October 1991 elections after two presidential candidates were disqualified for not obtaining the majority vote in the first round of the presidential election. He was appointed the vice president of the Soviet Union by Mikhail Gorbachev, but he refused. He was reelected twice in 1995 and 2000 amidst claims of massive rigging. His leadership was marked by protests and outright rebellion against his leadership, especially after the 2000 election. He promised to resign at the end of his term in 2005 but later changed his mind throwing the country into further protest. On March 24, 2005, the opposition stormed the presidential compound and seized power leading to his resignation on April 11, 2005. He is currently a professor at Moscow State University.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev (2005-2010)

Kurmanbek Bakiyev was the second president of the Kyrgyzstan who served from 2005 until the government takeover in April 2010. Following the 2005 events that led to the overthrow of Akayev, Kurmanbek Bakiyev won the presidential election by 89% of the total cast votes. His term in office was characterized by the murder of several prominent politicians, economic crisis, riots, and the battle for control of the countrys lucrative businesses. However, he improved ties with Russia and China which led to the initiation of several projects including electricity generating projects. His government was overturned in April 2010 after a bloody riot. He exiled to Belarus with his family where they currently live.

Roza Otunbayeva (2010-2011)

Roza Otunbayevawas the third president of Kyrgyzstan who served from April 2010 until December 2011. She was sworn in as acting president following the April 2010 revolution which led to the overthrow of President Bakiyev. He was chosen by the opposition leader to head the interim government following the countrywide protest. She led the country to a referendum in 2010 which effectively locked her out from the 2011 presidential race. The referendum changed the country from presidential to a parliamentary republic. Her term ended on December 11, 2011.

The Incumbent President

Sooronbay Jeenbekov is the incumbent president of Kyrgyzstan. He was born in Biy-Myrza in what was then the Soviet Union in 1958. He is a teacher by trade.
Laos is a country located in Southeast Asia. The current government of Laos came to power following the Laotian Civil War (1953-1975), when the Communist Pathet Lao movement won the war and came to power with the abdication of King Sisavang Vatthana (1907-?). In August of 1991 a constitution was accepted for the country. This constitution, among other things, officially specifies the functions and powers of the various parts of government, including the prime minister.

Some of the prime ministers of Laos:

Kaysone Phomvihane

Kaysone Phomvihane (1920-1992) was the first Prime Minister of Laos under the rule of the Communist Pathet Lao. He is also the longest serving of all the prime ministers, having served before the five year term limit was implemented. He was the prime minister for 15 years and 250 days starting on December 8th, 1975 and ending on August 15th, 1991. Phomvihane served as the first general secretary from 1955 until 1992 and also briefly served as the second president of the country from 1991 to 1992. Kaysone Phomvihane went to law school at Hanoi University but dropped out with fellow future leader of the Pathet Lao Nouhak Phoumsavan (1910-2008) to fight the colonists, joining the Pathet Lao movement shortly after. During his fight against the French and later during the civil war he worked as minister of defense for the Neo Lao Issara political arm of the Pathet Lao. By 1955 he became the leader of the Pathet Lao after being critical to setting up their headquarters at Sam Neua. As the leader of the Pathet Lao, he eventually led the communist to victory in the civil war and subsequently became prime minister. Kaysone Phomvihane's biggest accomplishment as prime minister was cultivating deeper ties with neighboring communist Vietnam and helping to start the demarcation process between their borders that finally finished in 2007. Following his death the government constructed a museum in the capital of Vientiane in Kaysone's honor, which Vietnam helped to fund.

Thongloun Sisoulith (Incumbent)

Thongloun Sisoulith is the seventh and incumbent Prime Minister of Laos. He started his term as prime minister of the country on April 20th, 2016. Sisoulith studied at the Pedagogical College of Neo Lao Hak Sat in the city of Houaphan from 1962 to 1969. He then went on to study at Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia in Saint Petersburg from 1973 to 1978. Following that he worked as a professor at Vientiane University and then first went into politics as the Secretary to the Minister of Education and the Director of the External Relations Division in the Ministry of Education. He then went back to Russia to get his doctorate in the history of international relations from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow from 1981 to 1984. Following his graduation he then worked his way up the government as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Labour and Social Welfare and becoming a member of the National Assembly by 1998. In 2001 he was made Deputy Prime Minister, a post he would hold until becoming prime minister in 2016. During his time as the Deputy Prime Minister he also worked as the President of the State Planning Committee and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The election and duties of the prime minister of Laos:

The prime minister is elected by the National Assembly after being nominated by the president of Laos to serve a five year term. The prime minister of Laos is the head of government and holds the highest office within the country's Central Government. The prime minister is one of the nine members of the Politburo of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, which is one of the main groups that determines the government's policies. The prime minister is responsible to the National Assembly, must give them activity reports on the government, is supervised by the Standing Committee of the National Assembly and can be questioned by the deputies of the National Assembly.
By India Today Web Desk: Riteish Deshmukh and Genelia Deshmukh are known to be Bollywood's cutest couple. And the couple is living up to their tag as they celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary together.

Riteish took to Twitter to wish his lovely wife on their special day with an adorable message. The Banjo actor posted a picture from their wedding and wrote, "I look at you & find my self, a stronger self, a better self, a happy self, a blessed self. Happy Anniversary Baiko @geneliad #5Years."

I look at you & find my self, a stronger self, a better self, a happy self, a blessed self. Happy Anniversary Baiko @geneliad #5Years pic.twitter.com/JBz9v01Mb5 Riteish Deshmukh (@Riteishd) February 3, 2017

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Who wouldn't want to be looked in a way Riteish looks at Genelia.

ALSO READ: Genelia Deshmukh shares first picture of newborn Rahyl

ALSO READ: Riteish Deshmukh says Riaan dotes on Rahyl

Genelia, too, reciprocated the love with a sweet post on Instagram. She wrote, "I will always hold onto you so tight and that's because I know something so amazing doesn't happen twice..Happy Anniversary @riteishd .. thank you for changing the meaning of "Home" from a place to a person for me.. #mykindalove #wedidgoodhoney #tothebestandrestofourlives."

I will always hold onto you so tight and that's because I know something so amazing doesn't happen twice..Happy Anniversary @riteishd .. thank you for changing the meaning of "Home" from a place to a person for me.. #mykindalove #wedidgoodhoney #tothebestandrestofourlives A photo posted by Genelia Deshmukh (@geneliad) on Feb 2, 2017 at 2:51pm PST

Riteish and Genelia got married in 2012 after dating for a long time. They have two sons- Riaan and Rahyl.

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Tajikistan is a country in Central Asia. In 1929 the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic was created as a republic of the Soviet Union. Starting in the late 1980s Tajik nationalists were calling for increased rights from the Communist government and by 1990 disturbances took place in the republic. In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved, and Tajikistan declared its independence and renamed the country to the Republic of Tajikistan.

However, shortly after becoming independent Tajikistan fell into the Tajikistani Civil War (1992-97). This war ended with a June 1997 peace agreement, and the country has mostly been internally stable since. In November 1994 the new Constitution of Tajikistan was adopted, which along with 1999 and 2003 amendments, outlined the government.

Select Prime Ministers of Tajikistan

Abdumalik Abdullajanov

Abdumalik Abdullajanov was born on January 1st, 1949 in the country of Tajikistan. He was the third prime minister of the state and was the first, and so far the only, prime minister from the now banned Party of People's Unity. Abdullajanov was appointed as prime minister on September 21st, 1992 and served for 454 days until December 18, 1993.

Oqil Oqilov

Oqil Oqilov was born on February 2nd, 1944 in the city of Khujand in the northernmost area of Tajikistan. He was the first prime minister to be appointed that was a member of the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan.

Kokhir Rasulzoda (Incumbent)

Kokhir Rasulzoda was born on March 8th, 1961 in the city of Ghafurov in the Ghafurov District in the northern area of the country. He graduated from the Agricultural University of Tajikistan in the city of Dushanbe. He is the incumbent prime minister and the second consecutive to be a member of the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan. He took office as prime minister on November 23rd, 2012 and was previously the head of Sughd Province.

Duties of the Prime Minister

The prime minister's main duty is to be the leader of the government in the Supreme Assembly (Tajik parliament) and to coordinate the work of the Cabinet. The prime minister is appointed by the president, without the approval of the Supreme Assembly, and helps to assist and advise him with the execution of the various functions of the government. Since in Tajikistan the president is both the head of state and head of government, the position of prime minister is mostly a ceremonial position that helps to balance the geographical divide of the country. This is due to the fact that longtime President Emomali Rahmon is from the city of Kulob in the southern part of the country.
Somali wild dogs, Somali wild asses, and hirolas each face grave threats in Somalia. Somalia consists of arid and semi-arid regions, and it is home to more than 170 mammal species. These mammals range from shrews, rats, and hedgehogs to elephants and giraffes. Most of these animals are endangered in the country.

Somalia's Endangered Mammals

Somali Wild Ass (Equus Africanus somaliensis)

The Somali wild ass inhabits the northeastern region of Somalia, in arid and semi-arid grasslands, and bushlands. It is a subspecies of the African wild ass. The animal appears gray with a white belly. It is characterized by horizontal black and white stripes on its legs. The animals narrow and small hooves aid it to move quickly. Its tail is tufted and it is upright and thin.The Somali wild ass lives in small herds and uses kicks as protection from predators. The herds are not permanent due to inadequate food in the arid habitats. The animals feed on grasses as well as shrubs and desert plants and are most active at dawn and dusk. The gestation period goes for nearly a year, and the female is ready to breed at two years of age. The Somali wild ass's environmental status is critically endangered, and it is continuously threatened by hunting for medicine or food, competition with livestock, political unrest, and climate change. No designated reserve exists for the animal in Somalia.

Hirola (Beatragus hunteri)

The hirola is an antelope species roaming the border of Somalia and Kenya. It prefers open grassy plains, and feeds on grass, specializing on the newly sprouted vegetation. The animal migrates consistently in pursuit of new vegetation. The hirolas coat is sandy-colored with a long nose, ears, and legs and a short neck. Around the eyes are white eyebrows, and it has two long curved horns used for defense. The hirola is a large antelope, and moves in groups of between 5 and 40 individuals. Males are territorial and keep about 7 to 8 females in a herd. Breeding occurs between March and April and males mate after fending off other dominant males, mostly at 3 or 4 years of age. The hirola population has been severely declining as a result livestock competition, diseases, habitat loss, and predation.

Somali Wild Dog (Lycaon pictus somalicus)

The Somali wild dog is a subspecies of the larger African wild dog species. In Somalia, the animal inhabits semi-desert and stony deserts habitats. The animals coat is coarse, and it is smaller than the East African wild dog subspecies. The female give birth to one young one after 377-389 days. In the wild, the animal has a life expectation of 20 years. It is continuously threatened by other animals and human activities.

Challenges to Wildlife Conservation in Somalia

The civil war in Somalia has had an adverse impact on conservation. It has made implementation of conservation policies difficult as well as hampering the efforts of relevant institutions and agencies. The displacement of people has caused the settling of refugees in areas previously inhabited by wildlife. Activities carried out by these groups of people such as livestock grazing, and agriculture has led to habitat loss.
Freemasonry is a fraternal society of men that dates back to at least 1717 AD. Members of this organization are referred to as freemasons. It is rooted in the historic fraternal orders of stonemasonry, dating back to the late 14th century.

5. Organization and Objectives of Modern Masonic Lodges -

Freemasonry is a non-religious and non-political organization, and discussing religion and politics are prohibited at the Lodges. However, many lodges require that members believe in some form of a greater being or deity, which is referred to as the Great Architect of the Universe. The original objective of joining a Lodge was to have a sense of community, brother, and friendship outside of the constraints of the Catholic Church.

Freemasonry is organized at a local level around the Lodge. The local Lodge is managed at a regional level by the Grand Lodge (also known as the Grand Orient), which does not necessarily collaborate with other Grand Lodges around the world. If two or more Grand Lodges recognize each other officially, they are considered to have amity, meaning members may visit and interact with each other as Freemasons.

The largest membership in the world is at the United Grand Lodge of England, with around 250,000 members. Freemasons are divided into degrees of membership, including: Apprentice, Journeyman (also known as Fellow or Fellowcraft), and Master Mason.

4. Medieval Craft Guilds and the Birth of Freemasonry -

Some of the earliest known masonic written works date back to 1390 AD and reference the origin of the craft of masonry, tracing it back to the biblical era. These were the works of medieval craft guilds, which began as groups of united craftsmen gathered to protect their common interests. To become a guild member, the craftsmen had to swear an oath to support each other, to eliminate certain enemies, and to help one another during conflict or new business ventures. This oath was looked down upon by the Catholic Church. Members gathered and kept their tools in lodges and developed secret rituals and customs to identify themselves. These guilds grew to strongly influence the local economy by controlling production and prices.

Freemasonry evolved from these craft guilds to a fraternal organization of religious tolerance and intellectual debate. It got its official start with the foundation of the Premier Grand Lodge of England in 1717, when James Anderson was tasked with consolidating the historic masonic texts into a modern Constitution. Membership was rooted in the Age of Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution of the time. Additionally, the freemasons preserved ancient ritualistic traditions of the medieval craft guilds, including advancement through the previously named degrees.

3. Role of Freemasonry in European and North American History -

After its establishment in London, Freemasonry spread throughout Europe. The government and the Catholic Church continued to be critical of this fraternity, particularly of its secrecy and religious beliefs. The organization was banned by France, Portugal, and the Catholic Church.

Under such strict scrutiny, Freemasons looked to move their beliefs and establishment elsewhere. Colonists moved to North America and established Lodges in Boston and Philadelphia (while maintaining their relation with the Grand Master in England). Many historians suggest that Freemasons were the driving force behind the growing desire for independence from the English crown. Some people suggest that they are responsible for the Boston Tea Party and the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Both Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were Freemasons.

After independence, American Freemasons further separated from the Grand Master in England and established Grand Lodges in the new country. This movement is divided between those of the Scottish Rite and those of the York Rite.

2. Conspiracies, Criticisms, and Controversies -

Freemasonry has been criticized by several organizations and individuals, including governments, religious institutions, and conspiracy theorists. One of the most common conspiracies surrounding the Freemasons is that they are involved with a group known as the Illuminati. It is believed the the Illuminati are against governments and religions and that they want to establish a New World Order. Other critics believe that Freemasons worship Satan, that they want to control global financial institutes, and that they were involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It is because of their strict secrecy that these conspiracies, criticisms, and controversies have emerged.

1. Cultural and Geopolitical Significance and Legacy -

The Freemason brotherhood will always hold cultural significance as an organization that has helped shape history. Its legacy will continue through its rituals and practices of passing along information and sharing knowledge among members. Additionally, Freemasonry will always be remembered for some of its most famous members, including: Winston Churchill, Harry Houdini, Paul Revere, Henry Ford, John Glenn, and Charles Lindbergh.
Zarina in the hospital

By: Tanya Clark WorldWideWeirdNews.com

A girl showed off the injuries that she suffered at the hands of her much older and jealous husband.

The child bride had her ears cut off by her husband after he accused her of talking to other men.

Zarina of Afghanistan, who got married when she was just 13 years old, said that her husband fled and went into hiding after attacking her.

She said that one say, she and her husband were sleeping in their house in Balkh, when he woke up and suddenly attacked her. He tied her up so she cannot resist him and he cut off both of her ears.

Zarina said that she has no idea why her husband did this to her as she never spoke to other men.

Zarina said that her husband had tried to prevent her from visiting her parents because he thought that she used them as an excuse to go out to see other men.

However, the young teenager, refused to cut ties with her parents and she told her husband that if he insists on it, then she will divorce him.

Hospital spokesman Noor Mohammad Faiz said that when Zarina was brought to the hospital in Mazar-e-Sharif, she was in critical condition after having lost a lot of blood.
Jiansheng Chen

By: Tanya Clark WorldWideWeirdNews.com

(Scroll down for video) A grandfather was shot and killed while playing Pokemon Go in order to bond with his grandchildren, according to police in Virginia.

Chesapeake police said that a security shot and killed 60-year-old Jiansheng Chen, during an altercation.

The incident unfolded on Thursday night around 10:30 p.m.

Chen told his brother that he wanted to play Pokemon Go in order to bond with his grandchildren. He drove the clubhouse, which was designated as a Pokemon Go gym.

While parked outside the Riverwalk clubhouse, a security guard confronted Chen. Chen did not speak English. An altercation broke out and the security guard shot Chen between 5 and 10 times.

Chen was pronounced dead at the scene. The security guard worked for Citywide Protection Services. He told police that he shot Chen in self defense.

So far, no arrests have been made.
Migrants (illustration)

By: Tanya Clark WorldWideWeirdNews.com

Three teenagers from Afghanistan, who were looking to be granted asylum in Austria, raped a woman in a train station toilet, according to police.

According to the Vienna police, one of the three 16-year-old asylum seekers confessed to raping the 21-year-old college student at the Praterstern station.

All three teens were charged with one count of rape. They were booked into the Josefstadt prison, and they were denied bail.

According to the police investigation, the incident unfolded around 1:00 a.m. on Friday. The student was on her way home after a night out with her friend.

She stopped to use the public bathroom, but was followed inside by the three teenagers. They slammed her head against the toilet sink, and took chances raping her.

They covered her mouth to stop her from screaming. When the victimas friend went into the toilet to check on her, she was lying unconscious on the floor.

By the time police arrived, the three suspects were gone. The three teens were arrested a short time later. They were all identified during a line up.

At first, they denied the allegations, but one of them later admitted to the rape.

In court, two of the teens were sentenced to serve six years in prison while the third teens will serve just five years behind bars.
Precious Nyath and her baby

By: Precious Nyath and her baby WorldWideWeirdNews.com

People are demanding answers after a woman gave birth to a baby that looks more like a frog.

However, the hospital in Zimbabwe, said that they have no medical explanation as to how the woman gave birth to an unusual baby.

36-year-old Precious Nyathi from the village of Gokwe, was eight months pregnant when she went into labor.

She couldnt make it to the hospital and she gave birth at home. Her husband, Nomore, was shocked when she gave birth to a disfigured baby that looks more like a small frog.

After the birth, Nyathi and the unusual baby were taken to the Gokwe District Hospital, where the baby was treated. However, the baby did not survive.

Village chief Njelele said that hospital staff were unable to explain how this happened.

Village elders ordered the couple to burn their frog baby in a public ceremony. Many people gathered to see the strange baby before being burned.

Photos of the baby was uploaded to the Internet, where they went viral.

aI was expecting a child and this is what the heaven gave us. Its a hellish experience that will haunt me all my life,a said Nyathi.
By Press Trust of India: From Gurdip Singh

Singapore, Feb 3 (PTI) A Singapore court today sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to 26 months and one week in jail and four strokes of cane for twice molesting a young hotel intern and using criminal force on her.

Bander Yahya A Alzahran, a father of three, was on a holiday here with his family when the offences were committed at a hotel on the Sentosa resort island in August last year.

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The 39-year-old, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, The Straits Times reported.

Alzahran was found guilty on Wednesday after an eight-day trial of kissing the 20-year-old on her neck and hugging her while wrongfully restraining her inside the hotel room.

He was also found guilty of kissing the victims neck a second time, touching her improperly and forcing her to touch him in return.

District Judge Lee Poh Choo had found him "unusually convincing".

She rejected the defence assertion that the whole incident was a set-up and that the victim conspired with other staff to level false allegations against Alzahrani to extort money from him.

The victim had been reluctant to divulge anything as she was "confused" and did not know what to do. She had said to a colleague, who had noticed the victims distress and unusual behaviour, that the guest had told her this was a "top secret" between them.

Cajoled for hours by her colleagues, the victim eventually told and demonstrated her version of events to various persons, including the front office manager and a security executive, at different times that day.

The maximum penalty for aggravated molestation is between two and 10 years in addition to caning on each charge.

For using criminal force, the maximum penalty is three months jail and a Singapore dollar 1,500 fine. PTI GSMRJ AKJ MRJ

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By Press Trust of India: Lucknow, Feb 3 (PTI) Terming Congress-SP alliance as "opportunist and immoral", Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said the family drama of ruling Samajwadi Party is "heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy".

"The alliance between Congress and SP is opportunist and immoral. Akhilesh Yadav has made an alliance but did not give space to his father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) even on the carrier of the bicycle (SP symbol) and gave its handle to Congress.

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"The family drama of SP is heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy," the senior BJP leader said at a press conference here.

Asking voters to discard the alliance, Naidu said if they wanted to remove the tag of "BIMARU" state from Uttar Pradesh, they should shun it and elect BJP.

BIMARU is an acronym formed from the first letters of the names of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. It has a resemblance to a Hindi word "Bimar" which means sick and used to refer to the poor economic conditions in these states.

"We will work on Prime Minister Narendra Modis motto -- reform, perform and transform -- and change the face of UP," Naidu said appealing to people to repeat their 2014-like support to BJP in the assembly polls.

BJP and its ally Apna Dal had bagged 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014.

The Urban Development Minister alleged that Akhilesh Yadav government in the state did not send proposal for PM Awas Scheme even after several reminders sent by his ministry.

"We had got a survey done in UP that showed requirement of over 30 lakh houses. When UP was asked, it said requirement was of over 17 lakh houses only. But even after several reminders, we did not get a proposal from the state," he rued.

The BJP leader said Uttar Pradesh would progress only if it voted his party to power to enable the state to work in tandem with the BJP-led NDA at the Centre. PTI ABN SMI DIP

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Local Man Arrested on Suspicion of Gwersyllt Shop Robbery Bailed Pending Further Enquiries

This article is old - Published: Friday, Feb 3rd, 2017

A local male arrested on suspicion of robbery at the Premier Stores in Gwersyllt last night has been bailed pending further enquiries.

Original story: North Wales Police announced this afternoon, A local male arrested on suspicion of robbery at the Premier Stores in Gwersyllt last night and is in police custody in Wrexham.

You can read the initial appeal placed by police relating to the incident by clicking here.

Anyone who may have information about the incident should contact police on 101 quoting reference V015584.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, Feb 1 (PTI) Income Tax officers can now inspect and scrutinise the books of accounts of charitable institutions with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley proposing to expand the scope of Survey under I-T Act to include such entities.

Under the existing norms relating to survey, tax officials can enter any place, where business or profession is carried on, or at which any books of account or other documents or any part of cash or stock or other valuable article or thing relating to the business or profession are kept.

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"It is proposed to widen the scope of Section 133 by amending sub-section (1) to include any place, at which an activity for charitable purpose is carried on. This amendment will take effect from April 1, 2017," said the memorandum to Finance Bill 2017.

Under the survey action, tax sleuths can visit business premises of the trader/operator and make analysis of the available stock and record it, whereas under search operations, both residential and business premises are visited by the taxman. PTI JD CS JM

--- ENDS ---
President Donald Trump threatened to revoke federal funding to the University of California at Berkeley, one of the top public research institutions in the United States, following a protest Wednesday night by thousands of students against Milo Yiannopoulos, the extreme right-wing editor of Breitbart News. Yiannopoulos had been invited by the campus Republicans to speak at the university.

The protest was peaceful, but a small, well-organized group of anarchists assaulted Trump supporters and vandalized stores and other property. The university police canceled Yiannopouloss appearance and ordered a lockdown of the campus, with students told to shelter in place.

The gratuitous violence carried out by the black-hooded ANTIFA group was a gift to the Trump administration, which seized on its actions to smear the students who demonstrated to express opposition to the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant racism and general contempt for democratic rights pushed by Breitbart News and Yiannopoulos. The former head of Breitbart, a media platform for the fascistic alt-right, is Stephen Bannon, Trumps chief White House adviser.

All three early morning network news programs led Thursday with the violence in Berkeley in reports designed to discredit the protesters and promote Yiannopoulos and his supporters as defenders of free speech and academic freedom. The viciously anti-Muslim Breitbart editor is touring mostly liberal US campuses in a well-organized provocation aimed precisely at inciting violent incidents that can be used as a pretext for the suppression of democratic and left-wing views.

Several other stops on Yiannopouloss tour have been canceled. At his speech at the University of Washington, one of his supporters shot and seriously injured a protester.

His speech Tuesday night at California Polytechnic University was a diatribe against the right to abortion. Yiannopoulos presented the world as a battle between Christian Western civilization and Islam. In another speech last year he said, Islam, not radical Islam, is the problem. Muslim immigrants, he added, bring their delicacies with them: pork chops, yoghurt and gang-rape.

Writing at 2 am Eastern Standard Time on Thursday, Trump tweeted, If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of viewNO FEDERAL FUNDS?

Berkeley research relies on $370 million in annual funding from the federal government, a little more than half of its yearly research budget. The University of California system as a whole receives $1.6 billion in federal aid for students.

Protests on the campus began at around 5:30 pm on Wednesday, with some 2,000 students participating. Shortly after the protesters assembled, a section of anarchists began to shoot fireworks at police and event organizers and assault the few Trump supporters in the area. They attempted to break into the building where the event was scheduled by smashing the windows. The university police canceled the event and evacuated Yiannopoulos.

The police then fired tear gas, rubber bullets and noise grenades into the crowd. Some of the so-called black bloc protesters tore down a mobile floodlight and set its generator on fire.

After the event had been canceled, a smaller section of the protest took to the streets and marched around Berkeley. One teenager, not a student at UC Berkeley, was arrested. Two others were arrested earlier in the afternoon for allegedly assaulting a Trump supporter on campus.

Anarchist groups such as ANTIFA are politically reactionary. They represent demoralized sections of the middle class that are hostile to any struggle to politically educate and mobilize the working class and youth against the capitalist system. Their tactics, gratuitous violence and destruction of property, flow from and reflect their bankrupt politics.

Undercover police and paid provocateurs would act no differently at a mass demonstration than ANTIFA did Wednesday evening in Berkeley. In fact, such organizations are, by dint of their politics and the social forces they attract, magnets for police infiltration. There can be little doubt that significant numbers of the hooded anarchists who rioted in Berkeley were police agents or informants.
In what appears to have been a calculated leak from the highest echelons of the White House, US President Donald Trump reportedly blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a phone call last weekend and then abruptly cut off the call.

According to the details first published by the Washington Post yesterday, Trump fumed at Turnbull for asking him to honour an Obama administration refugee-swapping deal with Australia. In line with his demonisation of refugees, Trump labelled it the worst deal ever and accused Turnbull of trying to export the next Boston bombers to the US.

Trump went further, however, telling Turnbull that their conversation was the worst by far of the five phone calls he had that day with world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin. After 25 minutes, Trump suddenly ended the scheduled one-hour call making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, Francois Hollande of France or Putin, the newspaper reported.

The leaked content of the conversation exposed Turnbulls insistence that it ended cordially and the fraud of Foreign Minister Julie Bishops earlier claims that the call was very warm and very engaging. Turnbull yesterday said he was very disappointed that details of the call were leaked.

Clearly, however, this was not merely a personal slight to Turnbull. It was a deliberate warning shot to his government and the entire Australian political establishment about the future of its post-World War II military alliance with the US. Sitting in the Oval Office monitoring Trumps call was his chief strategist, the fascistic Stephen K. Bannon, Trumps militarist national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

Yesterday, Trump reiterated the wider bellicose America First message, to US allies and rivals alike. In a speech, he told a Washington audience that the world was in a mess, but he was going to straighten it out. He declared: When you hear about the tough phone calls Im having, dont worry about it We have to be tough. Its time we have to be a little tough, folks. We are taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. Its not going to happen anymore.

Earlier in the day, gangster-like, Trump said he loved Australia as a country but had a problem with the refugee deal. His spokesman Spicer reiterated that Trump was unbelievably disappointed about the horrible deal and refugees would be allowed in the US only if they passed extreme vetting.

In reality, this draconian screening was already central to the agreement stuck with the Obama administration last year, which was designed to reinforce the reactionary anti-refugee policies on both sides of the Pacific. Not one of the more than 2,000 refugees incarcerated indefinitely by Australia on Nauru and Papua New Guineas Manus Island is guaranteed entry into the US.

Trumps bullying treatment of Turnbull has thrown the Australian government and the media and political elite into turmoil because it makes brutally clear that the new administrations belligerence has ominous implications. This is not least because Washington is reportedly pressing for a far greater military commitment from Canberra, particularly in the Middle East and the South China Sea.

In return for US military and strategic protection, Australian governments have sent troops to kill and die in every major US-instigated war for the past six decadesfrom Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But much more is now being required as the Trump White House seeks to make America Great again against its rivals, including China and Germany.

Largely buried in the Australian media is what the White House has demanded of Turnbulls government, or is soon likely to, in return for the refugee-swap arrangement. In todays Australian, editor-at-large Paul Kelly noted: If the deal proceeds Trump, as a transactional president, will seek a quid pro quo at some point on some issue. And Turnbull, aware he has used up his political capital, will agree.

On Wednesday, citing unnamed senior US sources, the Australian reported that the Trump administration had agreed, after lobbying from Canberra, to amend its sweeping anti-immigrant executive order to allow for the pre-existing refugee-swap agreement.

But the White House was not happy and made no secret that Australia would ultimately be expected to reciprocate. One source said: The favour wont be called in straight away  but some sort of reciprocity will come eventually. And that is likely to come in the form of freedom-of-navigation exercises [in the South China Sea] or the deployment of special forces to Iraq.

Under Turnbulls ousted predecessor, Tony Abbott, the Liberal-National government sent war planes and other military forces to join the renewed US war in Iraq, under the guise of combatting the Islamic State. Dispatch of special forces to join US ground forces would signal a marked escalation of the ongoing US drive for hegemony over the resource-rich Middle East.

Until now, the Turnbull government, while carefully toeing Washingtons line, has not followed the US in sending warships or planes into the territorial zones around islets under Chinas control in the South China Sea, under the bogus pretext of defending freedom of navigation. The Obama administration conducted three such provocative operations, which heightened tensions with Beijing and intensified the danger of a war between the US and China, two nuclear powers.

Trump and his newly-confirmed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have threatened to block Chinas access to the islets, which would be an act of war. Such a conflict could have disastrous consequences for the Australian capitalist class, which relies heavily on China as its largest export market.

Trump is now taking to a new level pressure on Canberra that was initiated under Obama, as part of the US military and strategic pivot to Asia to combat and prepare for war against China. In mid-2010, when then Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed that the US make some accommodation to Chinas economic growth and rising influence, he was deposed in a backroom Labor Party coup orchestrated by elements close to the US embassy, including current Labor leader Bill Shorten.

Barack Obama himself sent blunt warnings to Turnbull, who was initially somewhat critical of the pivot when Obama announced it on the floor of the Australian parliament in 2011. Last September, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported that Turnbull, because of his past business interests in China, was not trusted by Australian intelligence agencies. Two months later, media leaks revealed that during a one-on-one meeting in Manila, Obama had rebuked Turnbull for failing to consult Washington before a Chinese corporation was awarded a 99-year lease to operate Darwins commercial port.

Today, the Australian media is full of alarm and foreboding about the implications of Trumps dressing down of Turnbull, including the impact it will have on the already falling public support for the US alliance.

AFR chief political correspondent Phillip Coorey wrote: If Trump continues treating Australia like dirt, public support for doing anything to help the Americans, including letting them keep their troops based in Darwin, let alone following them on any frolic in the South China Sea, will quickly wane.

Professor James Curran of the US Studies Centre at Sydney Universitya centre dedicated to overcoming public hostility to the US after the 2003 Iraq invasionvoiced concerns of what lies ahead. If you have this sort of tension this early in the life of the administration over relatively small beer, what will happen in the event of a major crisis?

Others within the media and political establishment, while not calling for a break from the US alliance, are casting doubt on its reliability. Fairfax Media political editor Peter Hartcher today declared it was time to wake up, Australia! The moment of alliance shock could jolt Australia into doing more for itself and the country might mature from a state of adolescent dependency on America into a more adult state.

Such statements are part of efforts in the ruling elite to divert public opposition to the Trump administration in a reactionary nationalist direction by advocating a more independent foreign policy to assert the interests of the Australian ruling class.
With assistance from the National Guard, police raided a protest camp in Cannon Ball, North Dakota near the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) site on February 1, evicting and arresting seventy-six protesters opposed to the completion of the pipeline.

At about 4 pm, a convoy of bulldozers, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, and Long Range Acoustic Device sound cannons descended upon the protests camp. The protesters were forcibly removed from the camp and arrested, and the camp was razed.

Morton County Sheriffs Department called the camp a rogue group of protesters in a statement on Thursday, saying that they had illegally set up camp on private property. The property, which is situated on the pipeline route, belongs to Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the company overseeing the construction of the pipeline.

The raid comes just a day after Republican Representative Kevin Cramer (Republican) announced that the Army Corps of Engineers had granted ETP the easement needed to tunnel under Lake Oahe, which supplies water to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

The tribe had breathed a cautious sigh of relief on December 4, when the Army Corps of Engineers under the direction of the Obama administration announced that it would halt construction of the pipeline pending environmental review. The review process can take up to two years.

However, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 24, directing the Army Corps to review and approve [the DAPL] in an expedited manner. Trump further demanded that the Corps withdraw the environmental impact requirement.

On January 31, Robert Speer, the Acting Secretary of the Army, reported that he had directed the Corps to grant the easement needed to complete the pipeline. US Army chief of public affairs, Major General Malcolm Frost, said that they were acting upon Trumps orders to review construction requests to construct and operate the Dakota Access pipeline in compliance with the law.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribes attorneys say that overriding the December 4 order by the Army Corps of Engineers is illegal. They have stated that they intend to continue to combat the pipelines construction in court.

The Last Child Camp was one of several protest camps in the area. The Sacred Stone Camp, set up across the Cannonball River, is still occupied, as is the larger Oceti Sakowin Camp, which was set up on federal land last year. Law enforcement doubled down on the protesters late last year as the brutal North Dakota winter took hold.

In November, police blockaded demonstrators on a bridge at Highway 1806; when the protesters were hemmed in, police unleashed tear gas and water cannons upon them in the freezing temperatures, aiming at their heads and legs. Seven people were hospitalized immediately after the attack with severe head injuries. Protester Sophia Wilanskys arm was so severely damaged in the attack that it nearly required amputation.

The Morton County Sheriffs Department defended the attack, contradicting eyewitness accounts by saying that protesters had become aggressive and that they had started fires. Demonstrators have said that the fires were actually caused by projectiles hurled into the group by police.

Demonstrators surged to the site in the aftermath of the November attack. About 15,000 demonstrators had set up camp in December, including 4000 military service veterans.

In recent weeks the numbers have declined, leaving only about 1100 activists. After discussions with law enforcement, Standing Rock Sioux Tribe leaders have encouraged protesters to disperse, citing the possibility of a flood. This has allowed the Morton County Sheriffs Department to put words into the Standing Rock Tribes mouths and claim that the Last Child Camp was, in fact, a rogue camp where protesters behavior had put the tribes cause at risk. Several news outlets have attributed the statement by Morton County Sheriffs Department to the tribe itself.

Trump, it was revealed in the summer of 2016, owned between $15,000 and $50,000 of ETP stock. While he claims to have sold his shares in the company, he has staunchly refused to produce records substantiating his claims. ETPs CEO donated $100,000 to Trumps election campaign.

Even with Trumps executive order the DAPLs fate remains unclear.

While Congressman Cramer crowed that the easement had been granted, posting on his website Wednesday night Approved: Dakota Access Pipeline Receives Easement, alongside a photo of a shovel and the hashtag #BuildIt, North Dakota Republican Senator John Hoeven, who chairs the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and supports the pipelines construction, stated that the easement had not yet been granted.

Senator Hoeven has demanded that protests against the DAPL be shut down. He has portrayed the protesters as violent and irresponsible troublemakers who have endangered the safety and the economic well-being of area residents. Under Trump, the US government seems poised to force the pipelines completion through no matter the human costs.

The protesters remaining in Cannon Ball have vowed to continue to seek to block the pipelines construction regardless of whether the Army Corps of Engineers grants ETP an easement. The risks to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribes drinking water are too dire, they say, to step down. Furthermore, they claim that the construction would be a violation of an 1851 treaty made between the US Government and the tribe.

Veterans Stand, a veterans group sympathetic to the protests, has raised $37,000 to send protesters to Standing Rock. That pipeline will not get completed, the groups spokesperson, Anthony Diggs, told CNBC. Not on our watch.
Over the past week, the actions of Donald Trumps administrationincluding the ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US, a halt to refugee processing and other sweeping immigration restrictionshave provoked widespread opposition from workers, students and young people, including in Australia.

The progressive sentiments animating those joining demonstrations around the world stand in sharp contrast to the statements of establishment politicians across Europe and Australia, criticising Trumps measures.

Political figures who are implicated in militarist policies that have created the worst refugee crisis since World War II, and the erosion of civil liberties under the rubric of border protection and the war on terror, have professed concern for democratic norms and international law. At the same time, amid a fracturing of the world economy and a rise of economic nationalism, others have responded to Trumps inauguration by advocating a more aggressive promotion of the national interests of their own ruling elite.

This week, Greens leader Richard Di Natale called on the Liberal-National government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to replicate the self-serving statements of German President Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and other European leaders. He said Turnbull should instruct the foreign minister to pick up the phone and express Australias opposition to what Donald Trump is doing right now.

Di Natale said Australia needed to junk the US alliance. A statement on the Greens web site, entitled reject Trump, declared that the US presidents time in office so far could easily be confused for that of a fascist dictator.

Labor leader Bill Shorten also made a Facebook post, insisting he was appalled by Trumps immigration ban.

The posture of moral outrage from both quarters can only be described as an exercise in staggering hypocrisy.

The attacks on refugees by successive Liberal-National and Labor governments have led to Australia becoming a model for draconian border protection policies around the world. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton responded to Trumps executive order by gloating: Really the rest of the world is catching up to Australia now. We are the envy of the world when it comes to strong border protection policies that protect the integrity of our immigration system.

Labor governments, supported by the Greens, have spearheaded the assault on asylum seekers. Between 2010 and 2013, the Greens were in a de facto coalition with Julia Gillards Labor government, which maintained the detention camps for refugees reopened by the previous Rudd Labor government on Manus Island and Nauru in the Pacific. It expanded the persecution of asylum seekers, including by repatriating refugees to Sri Lanka where they faced government repression, and forging a refugee people swap with the autocratic Malaysian government, which was blocked by the High Court on the grounds that it could contravene domestic and international law.

While they claimed to oppose aspects of the Gillard governments refugee agenda, the Greens made clear that the oppression of asylum seekers was not an obstacle to their alliance with the Labor government, and they would not move to threaten its budgetary supply.

Today, amid widespread shock and anger over the Trump administrations actions, Di Natale and the Greens are cynically trying to channel opposition into Australian nationalism, tinged with anti-Americanism. Di Natales agenda was underscored by remarks on Sky News. He declared that Australia could no longer be the lapdog of the US. In the Australian, he called for a new relationship with the US that advances our interests.

The Greens are articulating the fears of sections of the ruling elite that Trumps bellicose foreign policy and disregard for diplomatic norms poses a threat to the prosecution of Australian imperialisms own predatory interests. Di Natales call for Australia to renegotiate the terms of a new alliance, and even to junk the US alliance echoes statements by prominent establishment figures, including Bob Carr, a former New South Wales premier and federal foreign minister, and Paul Keating, a former Labor prime minister.

Di Natales criticisms of the US alliance are not motivated by opposition to the wars and intrigues of American imperialism. The Greens-backed Gillard Labor government aligned Australia with the US pivot to Asia, an aggressive military build-up in the Asia-Pacific region in preparation for war against China. After US President Barack Obama announced the new policy from the floor of the Australian parliament in 2011, then-Greens leader Bob Brown and prominent MP Adam Bandt were among the first to warmly greet him.

Since then, the Greens have maintained the conspiracy of silence of the entire political establishment and the corporate press surrounding Australias frontline role in plans for a catastrophic military conflict in the Asia-Pacific. The Greens have also lent support to the US-led regime-change operations in Libya and Syria, which have deepened the catastrophe in North Africa and the Middle East, and forced millions to flee their homes.

Throughout Obamas presidency, the Greens said virtually nothing about his administrations endless drone wars, extra-judicial killings and expansion of the powers of the military-intelligence apparatus. They continued to favourably cite his empty professions of concern over climate change.

The Greens fear that by backing the even more belligerent agenda of the Trump administration, Australian imperialism will become embroiled in new military adventures and wars that will divert it from advancing the ruling elites interests in Asia and the South Pacific. In 2003, the Greens advanced tactical criticisms of Australian involvement in the criminal US invasion of Iraq. Bob Brown declared that troops should instead be deployed to the South Pacific, in order to protect Australian imperialisms arc of stability and prevent other powers, such as China, from developing greater influence.

While Di Natale has thus far avoided spelling out the logic of his position, other proponents of an independent foreign policy have made clear it would inevitably entail a vast expansion of military spending and the armed forces.

At the same time, Di Natale and the Greens are seeking to divert hostility to Trump, reflected in protests being held across Australia, behind the official parliamentary set-up. They are fearful that widespread anger over the policies of the new US administration will intersect with the unprecedented disaffection among millions of workers and young people over the destruction of healthcare and education, mounting social inequality, the assault on democratic rights and the growth of militarism.

Tensions between rival groupings within the Greens have centred on how to prevent the party from being bypassed by a developing political radicalisation.

Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, and the partys new Left Renewal faction, have urged the party to make a populist appeal, with anti-capitalist rhetoric. They have invoked the model of Bernie Sanders, who won 13 million votes in the Democratic Party primaries by falsely claiming to be a socialist and an opponent of the billionaire class. Sanders then urged his supporters to back Hillary Clinton, the favoured candidate of big business and the military.

Sanderss record, which now includes statements that he would be delighted to work with Trump in implementing protectionist measures, shows that what the Greens are calling for is a political trap to prevent any independent movement of the working class against the existing political set-up.

Di Natale has sharply clashed with Left Renewal and Rhiannon. In denouncing Trump, however, he has criticised crony capitalism. Like Rhiannon, Di Natalewho campaigned in the last election for a Labor-Greens coalition government committed to implementing austerityis concerned by growing anti-capitalist views.

The progressive sentiments of those participating in the protests against Trumps immigration ban can go forward only on the basis of a genuine socialist perspective, in opposition to all the parties of the capitalist political establishment, including the Greens.

Trumps policies, which represent a qualitative escalation of the reactionary policies implemented by previous Democratic and Republican administrations, are the sharpest expression of a turn toward repression, war and social austerity by governments around the world, amid the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. The alternative is the fight for the unification of the international working class in defence of fundamental social rights, including for workers to live and work where they choose, with full citizenship rights.
Europe

Strike by French gas and electricity utility workers

A strike by French gas and electricity supply staff took place Monday to protest a wage freeze being imposed by the industries. It impacted electricity output from eight of the countrys 58 nuclear power plants as well as hydropower facilities.

France relies on nuclear power for around 75 percent of its output. French energy sector unions called the strike.

UK air cabin crew announce six days of walkouts

Cabin crew working for British Airways (BA) mixed fleet are due to begin a three-day strike on Sunday, followed by a further three-day strike beginning February 9. BA said it expects little impact from the walkout. Over 9,000 cabin crew from a different Unite branch voted to accept the deal.

The Unite union members, in dispute with BA over low pay and a two-tier wage system, have so far struck twice over five days. The latest strike follows workers throwing out, by a margin of 7-1, an offer made by the company after negotiations between Unite and management. The union now states that the company is refusing further negotiations.

UK atomic weapons staff hold further strike

Around 600 staff employed at the UK nuclear weapons plants at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire held a 48-hour strike beginning Monday.

It was the second round of industrial action by the Unite members. They are protesting changes to their pension scheme, which will result in inferior pension rights. They originally worked as government employees and were promised their pension rights would be protected when they were transferred to the private sector in the 1990s.

UK capital underground rail staff to walk out

Staff on Londons underground tube system are set to strike next week. A 16-hour strike is due to begin at 6pm on Sunday and a further 15-hour strike is set for February 7.

The members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) are in a long-running dispute over ticket office closures. The union representing clerical staffthe Transport Salaried Staffs Association (TSSA)has taken part in previous strikes but will not support next weeks. This week, the RMT has been involved in talks with London Undergroundbrokered by the government conciliation service ACASin an attempt to avert further strikes.

London Woolwich ferry workers hold second industrial action

Thirty-six employees of Briggs Marine Contractors Ltd, which runs the Woolwich ferry service across the river Thames in East London on behalf of London Transport, are due to hold the second of twelve 24-hour strikes today. The Unite members are protesting over health and safety issues and allege instances of bullying and sexual harassment.

The health and safety concerns were highlighted last Saturday when an engineer was overcome by fumes when working on the ferry. An ambulance was called and the worker recovered after treatment.

Unison union suspends West Yorkshire social workers protest

Staff working for childrens services in Kirklees in West Yorkshire who were set to strike on Friday January 27 had the action suspended at the last minute by their union, Unison.

The suspension of the strike was at the behest of Steve Torrance, Unison regional head of local government. At a January 24 meeting to discuss the upcoming strike, social work staff were informed of email correspondence between Torrance and Kirklees chief executive, Adrian Lythgo. In the correspondence, the council proposed the period of the ballot be extended until March 6 to allow for further discussion. The proposal was rejected by care workers at the meeting by a majority of 46 to one.

They had previously voted overwhelmingly for the strike in protest at the heavy caseloads they have to carry, bullying by management and chaotic state of the service. There is a high turnover of staff and around a quarter of the staff are agency workers.

A report by the Office for Standards in Education, Childrens Services and Skills, the official schools inspectorate, deemed the service inadequate.

Prior to the proposed strike date, Kirklees council, in which the Labour Party has the largest number of seats but with no overall majority, had threatened to seek a court injunction to prevent the strike going ahead but did not proceed with the threat. The Labour council had intended to use recently enacted anti-trade union legislation to outlaw the strike on the basis that the union had not informed them of the number of staff balloted and their workplaces.

Walkout of Hungarian auto employees

Around 1,500 employees at Audis plant in Gyor in northwestern Hungary walked out for two hours on January 26 demanding higher wages. The workers are members of the AFHSZ union.

The Hungarian automotive industry employs over 150,000 workers and nearly 90 percent of its production is for export.

Irish bus drivers protest pay cuts

Bus drivers and other staff at the partly state-owned Bus Eireann are set to strike over pay cuts due to be imposed on February 20.

The cuts will be made up of a 10 percent reduction in pay, plus an 80 percent cut in Sunday overtime rates, along with cuts in sick pay and overtime. Overall, it means an average 30 percent cut in pay. Bus Eireann proposes to bring in more part-time posts in an effort to cut costs further.

The company says it is imposing the cuts because it has debts of around 9 million.

The National Bus and Railworkers Union (NBRU) and the Services Industrial Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU) already have a mandate for strike action, while the Unite union is also threatening to strike.

Irish food processing workers walk out

Staff at the Kerry Group plant in Charleville in County Cork walked out on Monday. The company, which produces ingredients for the food and beverage industries, is seeking to worsen employees terms and conditions.

The SIPTU union agreed to talks with the Workplace Relations Commission but the company failed to attend, which sparked the staff walkout.

Strike threat by Norwegian airline ground crew

Norwegian ground crew working for Wideroe, SAS and Norwegian airlines are threatening to strike from Sunday over a new collective bargaining agreement relating to wages and conditions.

They are members of the Junit union, which has around 500 members, and are mainly employed by Wideroe Ground Handling. Other unions have new collective bargaining agreements. Junit, together with representatives from the three affected companies, are due to meet with the Officer for Mediation unit on Saturday, in attempt to stop the strike.

If it goes ahead, Junit says it will target one airport in each of the four geographical quarters of the country.

Call for general strike to defend education in Spain

Last week in Madrid, trade unions, students and parents issued a call for a general strike for March 9 to call for the repeal of the education law brought in by the right-wing Peoples Party government.

Speaking at a press conference, the president of CEAPAa student and parents pressure groupcalled on the government to revoke the Organic Law for Improvement of Educational Quality (LOMCE). CEAPA say LOMCE makes it harder for students to complete their education and gain entry to relevant degree courses. They are also opposing cuts in education budgets imposed by the European Union.

Middle East

Egyptian food processing workers acquitted

Twenty-seven employees of the Egypt Company for oils and food industries, which produces edible oils, were acquitted after a court hearing on Sunday.

Security forces arrested the 27 in mid-January when they dispersed a strike at the edible oil facility in the Suez area. They were charged with inciting the strike and damage to company property. While they were acquitted of these charges, they were not reinstated as employees.

Reports state that a lawyer will follow up their acquittal with an attempt to win back their jobs.

Jordanian airline staff seek wage arrears

The General Trade Union of Workers in Air Transportation and Tourism has called on the Ministry of Labour to intervene on behalf of the airline staff laid off by Royal Falcon Airlines, which operates between Jordan and three other Middle Eastern countries.

The airline, Royal Falcon Airlines, ceased operating in August last year following the suspension of its licence. It left around 120 staff with wages arrears going back five months. The ministry rebuffed the appeal made January 10, saying it was was up to the former employees to individually sue the company to win back wages due them.

Africa

South African delivery drivers strike over benefits and nepotism

Fifty car delivery drivers, representing a workforce of 120, demonstrated at the company premises of CAT-WWL logistics on January 26.

The workforce began the strike at the Uitenhage Company on January 24 over unfair treatment towards job applicants and the lack of travel expenses to and from work.

CAT-WWL, which provides delivery services to Volkswagen South Africa, responded to the workers grievances with a lockout. This was despite the fact that their union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union, had received a strike permit.

According to VW, their deliveries were continuing as normal with the transport company using scab drivers.

South African market workers action called off

Members of the National Union of Public Service and Allied Workers at Goseame Wholesaler downed tools last week in a dispute over wages and bonuses. They are employed at the South African Polokwane fruit and vegetable market.

Although the strike was sanctioned by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) after an agreement could not be reached, it was called off.

The wholesaler got an injunction against the strike, claiming they did not receive the compulsory 48 hours notice. At protests held outside the market on January 25 and 26before being sent back to workworkers complained they had not been paid their bonuses.

The wholesaler responded that they were prepared to discuss a pay increase, but it was not currently viable for the company to meet their demands.

Weeklong strike by South African bus workers ended by union

Strike action has been ended Wednesday at the University of South Africa (UNISA) despite that fact that a wage offer supported by the university workers union, the National Education and Health Workers Union (NEHAWU), was rejected by its members.

UNISA management praised the union leadership, with EWA online reporting them saying, It looks promising that the offer will be well-received. We can say the leadership has displayed excellent maturity and helped us to resolve the issues.

The union recommended acceptance of an eight percent and 6.5 percent increase to lower-paid and higher-paid workers respectively, but it was thrown out. NEHAWUs eight percent demand is six percent below the original claim of 14 percent.

The university has 300,000 students across Africa and internationally with its distant learning university facilities.

South African transport workers fight for wage and benefit increases

The South African Transport and Allied Workers Union has threatened to strike as negotiations between bus workers and employers open. The South African Road Passenger Bargaining Council is offering a four percent wage increase, which the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa has rejected.

Workers are demanding a 30 percent wage increase, increases in allowances of R1,500 ($110) for housing and R1,200 ($90) for sleeping out. They also want time and a half as an overtime rate and double time for working holidays. The present basic wage is R6,000 ($450) and the union is seeking a basic wage of R15,000 ($1115).

Kenyan doctors strike continues

The two-month Kenyan doctors strike continued this week. Doctors, members of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union, (KMPPDU) who were due to have gone to jail last weekhave twice had their sentences suspended.

A decision by the justices on further suspension or jail is due today. The union, through their lawyers, are pleading that they have attempted to get the doctors back to work but that they have refused to do so.

The doctors oppose ending the strike until there is a clear position on their 2013 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) demand.

The doctors claim the CBA covered not only their pay and conditions but promised an increase in funding of research and equipment, and the financing of training.

A settlement has been made more difficult as a senate health committee has declared the 2013 CBA illegal.

Zimbabwe teacher strike threat

Zimbabwean rural teachers are threatening to strike if the government does not pay outstanding bonuses.

The Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), which is already undertaking go-slow action, warned on January 30 that it would begin a strike in two weeks if the bonuses were not paid.

The 13th-month cheque (bonus) is relied on by the teachers as their monthly pay is below half the required income for a Zimbabwean family.

British-owned Zimbabwe mining company deprives workers of their pensions

Clarity Capital, a British-owned company operating in Zimbabwes Vhumbachikwe Mine, is being taken to court by the Associated Mine Workers Union of Zimbabwe. The union is taking legal action in an effort to get 50 miners reinstated after they were sacked following a strike last December.

They struck to demand the company repay their weekly 15 percent contribution from their wages into a pension fund. The pension contributions had not been remitted since 2013, amassing a debt of over $3 million.

Clarity Capital has a majority share holding in Duration Gold, under which Vhumbachikwe Mine operates. Miners became aware of the deficit when widows and retiring miners could not access their pensions.
Orders given last week by top officials at various federal agenciesincluding the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Parks Service, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Serviceshave caused confusion and concern among a number of the employees and scientists that work for these departments.

The Monday after Trumps inauguration, the new administration imposed a freeze on new contracts and grants given by the EPA, $4 billion which funds research, redevelopment of industrial sites, outreach, water and air quality, according to Reuters. A media gag order was simultaneously put in place, with employees being told to halt all forms of external communications, including press releases, social media, blogs, list servs, webinars, speaking engagements and updates to the EPA website.

One EPA employee, who spoke to the non-profit investigative publication ProPublica anonymously, said that the hiring freeze wasnt uncommon during a presidential transition, but that a freeze on grants and contracts seemed extraordinary. The employee also said that the freeze appeared to be nationwide.

Other agencies were given similar instructions. Employees at the Department of Health and Human Services were told not to send any correspondence to public officials, including members of Congress. A memo sent to employees at the Department of Agriculture stated that all communications with the media and social media posts had to be reviewed by the new administration. Officials at the Department of the Interior ordered the National Parks Service to halt posting on their social media accounts.

The next day, the Trump administration ordered the EPAs communication team to remove the agencys climate change web page. This includes information on the causes of global warming, an overview of greenhouse gases and projected trends of climate change. The site also includes a compilation of peer-reviewed climate research and a variety of detailed environmental data. This would be similar to what has already occurred on the White House web site, which had all references to climate change deleted minutes into the Trump presidency.

This immediately prompted climate scientists and computer experts outside the government to copy, archive and mirror all the data on the EPAs web site. The goal is to ensure that the data remains publicly available.

There was a backlash to these repressive measures among government employees and scientists. The departments initially hit by the media gags regularly discuss the impacts of climate change in their respective fields. The moves at the EPA in particular have sparked worry that the Trump administration is going to follow through with the pro-corporate policies that have been put forward by Trump EPA transition team leader Myron Ebell, who has stated he wants to cut 5,000 of the agencys employees and halve its budget.

Their fear is not unfounded. There have already been two executive orders which reduce the EPAs ability to provide environmental oversight on new infrastructure and manufacturing projects and another mandating that for every new government regulation, two old ones must be abolished. Moreover, Trumps pick for EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, filed numerous lawsuits against the agency while he was Oklahoma state attorney general, and has in the past fervently argued for the deregulation of greenhouse gases in order to aid the coal, oil and gas industries.

One of the few widely publicized employee reactions came from the Badlands National Park Twitter account, which posted three tweets on different aspects of climate change. While the tweets were soon deleted, other national parks, including Golden Gate National Park and Redwood National Park, soon followed suit, posting more of the science behind global warming.

Death Valley National Park tweeted a more political post, a photo of a Japanese-American interned during World War II as the news spread that Trump was going to sign executive orders withholding visas and blocking refugees from mostly Muslim countries.

This also prompted the creation of alternative or rogue government Twitter accounts, including for the National Parks Service, the EPA, the USDA, and the Department of Health and Human Services, each claiming to be the unofficial resistance accounts of employees opposed to the Trump administration. Over the course of the next few days, dozens of such accounts have appeared and have begun posting tweets in opposition to the new governments policies. At first, the accounts all claimed to be run by an employee of the given department, but now many have posted that government employees no longer run them, likely to prevent any violations of the Hatch Act (legislation which prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activity while working).

Alongside the growth of the rogue social media accounts, a March for Science, tentatively scheduled for April 22, has been called in opposition to the Trump administrations policies. It is loosely based on the various protests that occurred during and immediately after Trumps inauguration, in this a case a protest against the rejection of a variety of scientific facts by different members of the new administration.

In the meantime, some of the new administrations repressive measures have been relaxed. On January 25, the EPA suspended plans to remove climate change from its web site and the National Parks Service resumed posting on social media. A memo was sent to employees at the US Department of Agriculture stating that the previous email, telling employees to halt outside communications, should not have happened. Lastly, the freeze on EPA grants was lifted last Friday and there are no reported contract delays resulting from the temporary freeze.
By Press Trust of India: Chennai, Feb 3 (PTI) Raising the fishermens issue with the Centre once again, the Tamil Nadu government has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modis intervention in securing release of 25 fishermen and 119 fishing boats from Sri Lankan custody.

Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, while taking up the latest instance of arrest of five fishermen from Puthukottai on Wednesday, told Modi in a letter that Lankan authorities "continue to infringe upon the historical rights enjoyed by our fishermen to fish in their traditional waters of Palk Bay."

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The letter, dated February 2, 2017, was released by the state government today.

The Chief Minister said the Sri Lankan authorities have not released any of the fishing boats that had been apprehended by them since February 2015.

"With their sole means of livelihood taken away, the Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu are in a despondent state. Presently there are 119 boats in Sri Lankan custody, which are precariously berthed on the Sri Lankan shore," he said.

"Though the government of Sri Lanka committed to consider the release of the boats in the Ministerial-level meeting held in Colombo on January 2, 2017, no action has been taken as yet in this regard," he added.

Panneerselvam told the PM that India should take up the matter with the Lankan authorities and ensure the immediate release of the boats and restore them in refurbished condition to the fishermen for their immediate use.

He requested Modi to instruct the External Affairs Ministry to take up the issue "effectively" with Sri Lanka and to secure the release of 25 fishermen and 119 fishing boats, including the five fishermen and their mechanised fishing boat apprehended on February 2, without any delay.

The Chief Minister also recalled that his predecessor, the late J Jayalalithaa, had moved the Supreme Court against ceding of Katchatheevu islet to Sri Lanka by India by way of an agreement in 1974.

He also reminded the PM of the state governments demand for a deep-sea fishing package of Rs 1,650 crore. PTI SA APR KIS

--- ENDS ---
President Donald Trump held a White House luncheon Thursday with corporate executives and union officials from the Wisconsin-based motorcycle manufacturer Harley-Davidson. At a press conference after the meeting, Trump repeated his claim that trade war measures and relieving US corporations of virtually all safety, environmental and labor regulations would be a boon for American workers.

Trump had originally been scheduled to tour the companys Milwaukee-area factory and sign further executive orders. However, some workers at the factory, hostile to Trump and angered by the planned visit, contacted a local protest group, which threatened to hold a demonstration at the factory against Trumps anti-immigrant measures. The White House cancelled the event after company officials expressed concern about the protests.

With his billionaire commerce secretary nominee, Wilbur Ross, at his side, Trump said, Thank you Harley-Davidson for building things in America. We want to make it easier for businesses to create more jobs and more factories in the United States that means making America the best country on earth to do business  we are re-doing NAFTA and a lot of our trade deals, and were negotiating properly with countrieseven countries that are alliesa lot of people are taking advantage of us, a lot countries are terribly taking advantage of us.

These comments followed Trumps provocations against Mexico and accusations by his top trade adviser, Peter Navarro, that Germany was manipulating the value of the euro to exploit both its EU partners and the United States.

Trump denounced an agreement signed by the Obama administration to accept political refugees currently held in Australian detention camps, saying these were illegal immigrants, a problem steelworkers could understand. The new administration, he declared, will have allegiance to American workers and American companies.

The threats of trade war go hand in hand with slashing corporate tax rates and regulations.

Last week Trump told top executives from Ford, US Steel, Dow Chemical, Lockheed Martin and other corporations that he would eliminate 75 percent or more of the regulations they currently face, and to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15-20 percent. As he previously told the CEO of United Technologies, the parent company of Carrier, it could be better to produce in the US rather than Mexico because his pro-growth policies would allow US corporations to print money.

On Thursday, Trump added, Were going to make it really great for business.  We are going to be competitive with anybody in the world. Were going to be doing taxing policies very soon its going to be coming out. I know that health care is a big problem  because of the tremendous cost and thats one of the things that were working on hardestthat and tax policy, and tariffs and trade.

All of this will entail far greater exploitation of the working class. The trade unions at Harley-Davidsonthe United Steelworkers (USW) and the International Association of Machinists (IAM)have a record of imposing sweeping concessions on workers in the name of saving American jobs.

In 2010, the USW and IAM signed a seven-year deal at Harley-Davidsons plants in Menomonee Falls, near Milwaukee, and Tomahawk, Wisconsin, that included a seven-year wage freeze, sharp increases in workers contributions to their health care coverage, and the creation of a sub-tier of seasonal or casual workers who will receive no benefits whatsoever and earn starting pay of $16.80, about half what current workers make.

The lower tier or casual employees can be terminated without cause and have no job security or even a minimum number of work hours. They also have no right to either bonuses or wage increasesbut still must pay dues to the USW and IAM.

Nevertheless, the company is in the midst of laying off more than 200 workers because of slowing sales.

During the lunchtime meeting at the White House, Trump gave a special nod to the union officials, saying, I am especially honored to welcome the steelworkers and machinists to the White House.  You folks have been terrific to me. Sometimes your top people didn't support me but the steelworkers supported me, right? A lot of your top people are going to be losing their jobs pretty soon I guess but theyre all coming around, Trump said.

This was apparently a reference to USW President Leo Gerard, who had campaigned for Hillary Clinton, warning workers that a Trump victory would be catastrophic, only to join the pilgrimage of union executives, including AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, to Trump Tower and now the White House.

Even as US and international protests were growing against the hated new president, Gerard and other union officials applauded Trumps executive order pulling the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, with the USW president pledging to work with the new administration on the promised, pro-worker, pro-income-growth agenda that prioritizes revitalizing manufacturing. Gerard also sent a letter to the US Senate backing the confirmation of Ross as commerce secretary.

Trump is using the carrot-and-the-stick approach toward the trade union bureaucracy, courting specific sections like the building trade unions who visited the White House on January 23. At the same time, Vice President Mike Pence has met with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to discuss how the Trump administration could essentially end collective bargaining by federal employee unions. Such threats will only drive the union bureaucracy to more fervently demonstrate its usefulness as a labor police force and promoter of nationalist and militarist poison.

The propagation of the myth that America is a society in which class divisions are insignificant, where workers and employers are united in a struggle against foreign countries (and their workers) that are supposedly stealing jobs, has long been the stock-in-trade of the unions. Now Trump and his fascistic adviser Stephen Bannon have adopted this nationalist propaganda to divert social anger outward, away from the capitalist owners in the US that exploit the working class and monopolize the wealth the workers create.

In the coming months, the implementation of Trumps pro-corporate agenda, demands for ever-greater sacrifices from workers and efforts to criminalize dissent in the name of total allegiance to America, will drive the working class onto the road of struggle, exploding the lies that this government of billionaires is pro-worker.

In this regard, it is worth contrasting the foul collaboration of the unions with the response of rank-and-file workers at the Menomonee Falls plant. After hearing about Trumps planned visit, a second-shift worker at the powertrain plant felt sick to his stomach, according to the Washington Post, and wrote a private message to the Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump.

Hes against everything I stand for, the worker said, adding that he did not want the president at his workplace. The way he talks about people, about women and immigrants, is unacceptable, he told the Post. Another employee who builds engines, almost left the building. She thought Trump took credit for jobs he didnt save and named as an example Chrysler Fiat, where she said her son is employed, the Post reported, adding, Nobody knew why Trump was coming, she said.

Although the secret service had already screened the 92,000 square-foot plant and booked the Hilton City Center in Milwaukee for 100 agents, and a presidential flight had been planned from Washington to the Milwaukee area, after a wave of messages, emails and phone calls flooded into the offices of Harley-Davidsons CEO Matt Levatich by Tuesday night, CNN reported that an unnamed administration official said the trip had been canceled.
Republican Illinois governor Bruce Rauner, a multimillionaire, threatened last week to replace Illinois state workers with the National Guard if they go on strike. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 31, which covers 38,000 state workers, began a strike authorization vote on January 30.

The current labor contract between AFSCME and the state of Illinois expired on June 30, 2015. Rauner first stated in 2015 that he was pursuing all options, which included the use of the National Guard and retired workers as strikebreakers. The Rauner administration recently reiterated this threat, with Dennis Murashko, the governors general counsel, telling Illinois news media outlets, We will look at every service option available to us, confirming that the use of the Illinois National Guard as strikebreakers is one of the options.

Rauner has no doubt been emboldened by the coming to power of President Donald Trump and the anti-working-class government he has assembled. Trumps vice president, Mike Pence, has been in talks with Wisconsins Republican governor Scott Walker about imposing sweeping attacks on federal employees like Walker did to state workers in 2011.

During his campaign for governor in 2014, Rauner said, We may have to do what Ronald Reagan did with the air traffic controllers  sort of a do-over and shut things down for a while. The ominous threat was a reference to Reagans 1981 firing of 11,345 striking air traffic controllers, the jailing of union leaders and smashing of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO). Reagan banned the fired controllers from working in a federal agency for life, ending the careers of thousands of workers.

In November 2016, the Illinois Labor Relations Board (ILRB) declared that negotiations between the state and the union had reached an impasse after Rauner requested that ILRB intervene, allowing the governor to begin unilaterally implementing his draconian contract, which included a four-year wage freeze and a doubling of health insurance premiums. Last December, however, an Illinois circuit court judge agreed to a request by AFSCME to place a temporary stay on the implementation of Rauners contract.

In response, AFSCME proposed a new contract, with much of it aligning with Rauners proposed cuts, including a four-year wage freeze and an increase in the out-of-pocket costs for health insurance. Rauner rejected the offer, refusing to negotiate further, leading AFSCME to initiate the strike authorization vote, which will reportedly be complete in mid-February.

Roughly 30,000 state workers in AFSCME are strike eligible. Restricted from striking are public safety employees who work in adult and juvenile correctional facilities. It is uncertain if the judicial stay on the impasse declared by ILRB will be lifted or made permanent. There is a possibility it may take months before a conclusion is reached.

The Republican governor has already taken the measure of his supposed opposition. AFSCME has never called a strike and the unions are far more frightened of unleashing the anger of workers than working out a dirty deal with Rauner. As the AFSCME web site noted: Making clear that this framework did not represent the unions last, best and final offer on these issues, [Roberta] Lynch [executive director for AFSCME Council 31] stressed that the union stands ready to negotiate further on all other outstanding issues.

In fact, AFSCME officials, who are aligned with the state Democratic Party, no doubt welcome the strikebreaking threats to help wear down the resistance of rank-and-file to concessions. The ILRB has joined in these threats.

In an email to AFSCME state workers, John Terranova, the Deputy Director of Labor Relations for the State of Illinois, threateningly wrote, The State will vigorously pursue all lawful means at its disposal for challenging an unlawful strike. Even if a strike by AFSCME is determined to be legal, employees may be replaced. Unless an unfair labor practice caused the strike, striking employees may not automatically have the right to have their job back at the end of the strike. They would only have the right to vacancies IF they were qualified and IF one exists.

Terranova repeated this threat in another recent email, writing, Replacement workers can be hired to maintain services during a strike, and in some cases, those replacement workers may be permanent.

Commenting on capitolfax.com, one worker wrote, I think all of these emails are borderline harassing. Its important to note that in every one of these emails they put the not-so-veiled threat out there that if you strike you may be replaced. Either they want the union to strike and are hoping these harassing emails will make people vote to strike or they are completely incompetent and dont understand how these emails arent helpful.

It is possible, if not likely, that Rauner has sought to provoke a strike from the beginning. He is counting on the state unions to react no differently than the AFL-CIO did when Reagan fired the PATCO strikers: leaving the embattled workers isolated in the face of state repression until they were worn down and defeated.

The forces arrayed against workers are threatening. However, they have far more potential allies. Millions of workers in Illinois and around the countryfrom autoworkers, Caterpillar workers, railroad workers and truckers to teachers, firefighters, high school and college students and all those who rely on public servicesare being thrown into struggle against the Trump administration and the austerity measures imposed by Democrats and Republicans alike.

State workers must take the conduct of this struggle into their own hands by electing rank-and-file committees, independent of AFSCME, the AFL-CIO, and other unions. These committees should call on every section of the working class to defend state workers against Rauners attacks. Above all, the fight to defend the social rights of the working classfor secure and good-paying jobs, health care, a comfortable retirement and essential social servicesrequires an independent political struggle by the working class against the capitalist system, and the looting of societys resources by the corporate and financial aristocracy.

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It is just two weeks since President Donald Trump was sworn into office after delivering an inaugural address proclaiming his policy of America First and vowing to defend the United States against the ravages of other countries.

Any illusions that this policy spelled a turn away from the unending wars waged by the US over the past quarter of a century in favor of isolationism have been rapidly dispelled. Trump and his advisors have staged one bellicose provocation after another in a sharp escalation of the longstanding militarist policy of American imperialism.

This has taken its starkest form in the ultimatum delivered Wednesday by Trumps national security advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn. The former chief of military intelligence marched unannounced into a White House press briefing to declare that ... we are officially putting Iran on notice over its ballistic missile test last Saturday and an unsubstantiated charge that it was somehow responsible for an attack on a Saudi Arabian warship by Houthi rebels in Yemen three days later.

Both, Flynn declared, were examples of Irans destabilizing behavior across the entire Middle East, as well as the failure of the Obama administration to respond adequately to Tehrans malign actions.

After delivering his ultimatum, Flynn turned on his heels and left the briefing without taking a single question.

At Thursdays White House press briefing, only one reporter asked whether placing Iran on notice included the threat of military action. White House spokesman Sean Spicer responded by falsely charging that Irans missile test violated a UN resolution and citing Irans additional hostile actions that it took against our Navy vessel, apparently referring to the Houthi attack on a Saudi ship. These were actions, he said, that Washington would not sit by and take, and they would not be going un-responded to.

While the corporate media has criticized Trump on other issues, its response to the war threat against Iran is notably subdued. This is no accident. While it takes a more extreme form under Trump, the threat of war against Iran is hardly an innovation by the new president. Such threats date back to the 1979 overthrow of the Shahs US-backed dictatorship, through to George W. Bushs Axis of Evil and repeated US-Israeli threats of air strikes under Obama. Planning for such a war of aggression has a long bipartisan pedigree.

What is Iran to make of these latest extraordinary statements? Given Trumps repeated statements that there should be no talk about military action before it is initiated, Iran has every reason to believe that Tomahawk cruise missiles could be flying toward Tehran within days. Or that the Trump administration is attempting by means of provocation to tear up the nuclear treaty, goading Tehran into resuming its nuclear program and preparing the way for a US-Israeli attack.

The motives for such a war are clear, and they have nothing to do with ballistic missile tests or attacks on Saudi warships. Nearly a decade and a half after US imperialism launched its war of imperialist aggression against Iraq, followed by subsequent wars for regime-change initiated by the Obama administration in Libya and Syria, US policy throughout the region lies in shambles. In both Iraq and Syria, where Washington sought to bring to power a puppet regime in preparation for war against Iran, Tehran has substantially increased its influence and status as a regional power, posing an obstacle to the US drive for hegemony over the oil-rich region.

In one of his crude tweets Wednesday, Trump gave expression to the exasperation of the US ruling establishment over this course of events: Iran is rapidly taking over more and more of Iraq even after the US has squandered three trillion dollars there. Obvious long ago!

Last week, Trump spoke at CIA headquarters, repeating his thuggish assertion that the US should have taken Iraqs oil after the 2003 invasion, while casually adding, maybe youll have another chance. These remarks appear more and more to represent a direct threat of a far wider and bloodier war that could engulf the entire Middle East and beyond. The consequences of a war with Iran would be catastrophic not only in the region, but internationally and in the US itself.

In a worried article titled A new era in foreign policy, the Washington Post commented Thursday that President Trump is advancing a combative and iconoclastic foreign policy that appears to sideline traditional diplomacy and concentrate decision-making among a small group of aides who are quickly projecting their new America First approach to the world.

It would be a dangerous mistake, however, to believe that the actions of the Trump White House are the result of mere improvisation or impulse. Rather, they are part of a definite plan.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trumps aides refer to their policy as one of shock and awe, directed this time around not at smashing and subjugating just Iraq, but rather the entire planet, including the working class within the United States itself.

The shape of the foreign policy agenda being pursued by the Trump White House becomes clearer every day. It is focusing today on Iran while pursuing an increasingly confrontational policy toward China. Stephen Bannon, Trumps fascistic chief strategist, predicted in a radio broadcast in the run-up to the 2016 election that the US will be going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years.

To the extent that the Trump administration has adopted a conciliatory attitude toward Russiathe focus of bitter disputes within the ruling establishment that played out in the electionit is only a temporary and tactical postponement, meant to facilitate war elsewhere. Should Moscow fail to comply with US interests, its turn will come sooner rather than later.

The way the Trump White House conducts foreign policy, its threats and insults to nominal allies and adversaries alike, does not have a real precedent in the history of American governments. Rather, his treatment of foreign governments and heads of state recalls the thuggish bluster and intimidation of an Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini.

But Trump, like them, did not fall from the sky or rise out of hell. He is the personification of the criminality of the financial oligarchy that rules America. The policies he is pursuing may be unprecedented, but they have been prepared over decades.

Particularly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US capitalist class, acting through both Democratic and Republican administrations, has sought, for the most part unsuccessfully, to offset its crises and the erosion of its domination of world markets through the threat and use of military force.

With the advent of the Trump presidency, and in the aftermath of a series of disasters resulting from this protracted policy of global militarism, the policy has taken a more extreme and reckless form in the headlong rush toward world war.
Students and workers at San Diego State University (SDSU) and New York University (NYU) rallied Thursday afternoon to defend the rights of immigrants and refugees and to voice their opposition to the Wall on the Mexico border, the deportation of tens of thousands of undocumented workers, and the massive expansion of the border security force and internment camps.

The demonstrations were called by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE). About 200 to 300 students attended the rally in San Diego, with about 40 participating in the rally in New York.

IYSSE leaders who spoke at the rallies provided an international socialist perspective, emphasizing that Trumps attack on immigrants is part of an attack on the entire working class supported by both Democrats and Republicans. Speakers reviewed the danger of war, the terrible social conditions facing workers and youth and the need to break with the Democratic Party and build an independent party of the working class.

In San Diego, where there are many students who are immigrants or the children of immigrants, participants loudly applauded the call for the unity of workers of all races, ethnicities and nationalities.

Kevin Martinez, a member of the IYSSE and SEP addressed the crowd. As we speak, countless families are being torn apart by Donald Trumps vicious ban against immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. Our club has spoken to students whose livelihoods are threatened with deportation, and Im sure many here today on campus can share similar stories of heartbreak and tragedy.

Martinez warned that Trump was making good on his campaign promise to build a wall between the US and Mexico and was deporting immigrants and banning refugees, while preparing the country for war in the Middle East and confrontation with Russia and China, two nuclear-armed powers.

Martinez stressed the need to break with the two-party system and denounced the Democrats for approving Trumps cabinet of billionaires and ex-generals.

Trump attacked immigrants as criminals, rapists, and drug dealers but the real criminalsare to be found in the White House, Congress, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Border Patrol, ICE, Wall Street, and every major police department in this country. This part received the largest applause and approval from the audience.

Emanuele Saccarelli, who teaches political science at SDSU, blamed the capitalist system and the whole political establishment for the rise of Trump. Saccarelli said that Obama, who started out as the candidate of hope and change and won the Nobel Peace Prize, continued all of George W. Bushs wars and started new ones in the very countries Trump has now sought to ban from receiving refugees.

Saccarelli pointed out that Obama oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in US history. Of every dollar made in the recession, the Obama recovery, 94 cents went to the top 1 percent of society. Saccarelli livened up the discussion by asking metaphorically, How would aliens react if they landed on planet Earth, and we told them 8 people control more wealth than the bottom half of humanity?

Following Saccarellis contribution, SEP member Zac Corrigan stressed the need for young people to study the lessons of history and cited the experience of the Obama years. Obama, with the help of Hillary Clinton, completely discredited this party before the working class and paved the way for the hated Trump to take power. And then [Obama] had the audacity to tell us they were all on the same team all along!

After the IYSSE speakers, many youth and students at the rally took the opportunity to speak.

Manny, an immigrant rights activist, drove from Los Angeles to attend the meeting. He spoke to the international situation facing immigrants including the recent gasolinazo protests over the hike in fuel prices in Mexico. He agreed strongly with the call to unite Mexican and American workers across the border and implored the audience to follow what is happening only 20 minutes from this campus.

Another student at SDSU and a refugee from Syria spoke about the precarious situation she finds herself in after Trumps recent executive orders, which have jeopardized her ability to stay in the country and continue her education beyond this Spring term. She thanked the IYSSE for holding a rally in defense of immigrants and refugees. She said she feared that she would soon become a refugee herself.

Liana, who just recently joined the IYSSE at SDSU, spoke of the need to break with the Democrats and Republicans. I come from a working-class family. I know people who voted for Trump and voted for Clinton. But ask yourself, is life any better than it was eight years ago? No! The Democrats and Republicans dont represent us.

Nicole, a student at SDSU, said after the meeting that she was particularly happy to hear about the IYSSEs affiliation with the SEP, stating that the two-party system was a dead end. You know, we have never had a poor president, Nicole explained, adding, What do they know about the interests of the poor? Nicole told reporters that she believes the way forward is to build a political party that represents the interests of the working class.

Several dozen students remained after the rally to discuss politics, and many copies of Marxist and socialist literature were sold. Dozens more signed up to join the IYSSE email list and wanted to join the club on campus.
The coming to power in the US of an aggressively nationalist, protectionist and anti-European Union administration under Donald Trump is opening up significant divisions in the Spanish ruling class over how best to preserve and advance national interests.

In the aftermath of the fall of the fascist Franco regime in the mid-1970s, Spain was brought into both the European Economic Community and the US-led NATO military alliance. Because of US support for European integration, there was no apparent conflict between an economic orientation to Europe and the US acting as the main guarantor of Spains national interests. For its part, the US saw Spain, located at the entrance of the Mediterranean, as a vital geo-strategic asset in the Cold War and as a NATO member.

The new Trump administration, however, is repudiating its previous role as the overseer of European integration. Trump is openly forging ties with Europes neo-fascists who are hostile to the European Union (EU). He has described it as a German instrument and extolled the UKs decision to leave the EU as the model for other European countries.

The question posed for the ruling elite in Spain and elsewhere in Europe is how to defend their economic and military positions vis-a-vis actual and potential competitors in the new situation.

The official position of the Spanish Popular Party (PP) government was set out by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy who stated that Spain will maintain the best possible relations with the new US president, insisting both countries are strategic partners and solid allies.

Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis declared, We enjoy a relationship that, regardless of the White House tenant, is based on constant elements, including a shared history and language as well as Spains influence in Europe, South America, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He added there was also a very close cooperation in defense and security, which was deepened during the term of the previous administration.

Such a position is based on wishful thinking that relations will continue as before and a cautious wait and see attitude with respect to the reaction of other major European powers. This complacent position came under attack by El Pais, the voice of liberal Spanish imperialism. Traditionally a pro-US newspaper, it has dedicated more than a dozen editorial articles criticising Trump since his inauguration in Novembera sign of deep crisis in Spanish foreign policy and a shift to more pro-EU, pro-German positions.

In an editorial, Too prudent: Appeasement policies will not work with Donald Trump, El Pais warns that the Trump administration, isolationist in defense and very aggressive and protectionist in trade, can seriously damage the interests of Spain. The government had to face this circumstance and show the necessary firmness.

It called on EU leaders, particularly German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to defend the values and interests that are at odds with those held by Trump, and which have cemented the transatlantic alliance for decades.

In another piece, Trump against Europe, El Pais says Trump sympathizes with Europhobes, wants to encourage divisions and is ramping up tension across the Atlantic and therefore, Europe can no longer ignore the evidence or hope simply that all of this comes to nothing.

On January 21, A Sad Confirmation, the newspaper warns that Europe should clearly state the red lines they will not allow Trump to cross.

On January 27, In Defence of Mexico, El Pais exclaimed on the need to defend Spains interests in its former colony, stating, Mexico cannot defend itself alone from the aggressions...This is why a clear and a loud voice is necessary for Mexicos defence, both from Europe and, above all, from the Ibero-American countries.

Similar sentiments are expressed in the publications of the prestigious state-funded Elcano Royal Institute think tank. One example is the January 19 article, Welcome Mr. Marshall, by senior analyst Felix Artega, one of Spains foremost strategists who has close links to the countrys military and intelligence services and a history of support for US-led wars and Spains involvement in them. In it he warns that the views expressed by Donald Trump on NATO, the EU and Europeans, both during the campaign and on the eve of his inaugurationdo not allow hope that anything good can come from the new administration on the other side of the Atlantic.

Elsewhere, Arteaga has called for the EU to consider increasing its strategic autonomy and reinforcing its collective defence.

There is also a position in ruling circles, which states that the coming to power of the Trump administration should be viewed as an opportunity for Spanish imperialism. Carlos Malamud, another senior analyst at the Elcano Royal Institute, says it could open more doors for Spain in South America. Spain must strengthen its presence in Latin America...If the projections for an increase in protectionism in the US are met, there will not only be opportunities for China in Latin America, but also for Spain and the EU. In the increasingly uncertain world we live...Latin America should be important for Europeans.

For others, Spain should align its destiny even more firmly with the US. PP Deputy Secretary of Communication, Pablo Casado, states that Spain can replace the UK as the new priority partner of the US in the EU following Brexit, when the UK officially leaves. In other words, Madrid should play a pivotal role as a bridge between the US and Europe.

Even more explicit is Luis Simon, director of the Elcano Royal Institute. In his piece, Trump, Rajoy II and the future strategic relation between the US and Spain, Simon declares that the moment has come to turn the page on the pessimism over Trumps victory and to realize it opens up a series of opportunities to relaunch the bilateral relationship between Madrid and Washington.

Spain, Simon continues, should have a pro-active attitude meaning that the old conception of it merely being an operational base for the US army is transformed into one based on Spain as a strategic actor and privileged partner.

This would be achieved by first exploiting those geostrategic attributes of Spain identified as a priority by the US, including the missile defence, amphibious and special operations areas. And second, developing other dimensions of the Spain-US alliance that could be of specific interest to Spanish imperialism, such as the exploration of the extra-European potential (Atlantic and Indo-Pacific) of the alliance.

In other words, Spain becomes a massive US military platform from which Washington will launch its military operations in exchange for its support for Spains interests elsewhere.

Whatever happens, the author says, a massive increase in Spanish military expenditure is required and a greater effort made to promote Spains culture of defence.

The culture of defense, a truly Orwellian term for militarism, is a reference to the call which all geopolitical analysts make, irrespective of their position on the US, to overcome the Spanish populations traditional hostility towards the military. Beset by unemployment of 22 percent (53 percent among youth) and poverty levels affecting a quarter of the population, the political establishment has no progressive answer. Whichever faction prevails in the fight over Spains future political alignments, the response, as it is across the globe, to the collapse of the US-led post-war capitalist world order is militarism, austerity, and the suppression of social and political opposition at home.
Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse has urged his supporters to help him topple the government. Addressing a January 27 rally of tens of thousands in the Colombo suburb of Nugegoda, Rajapakse denounced the government as corrupt and declared he was ready to lead the force to bring it down.

Promoted as The beginning of the struggle, the event was part of intensifying efforts by Rajapakse, a group of sitting parliamentarians, known as the Joint Opposition (JO), and their supporters to return him to power.

The escalating conflict between the Rajapakse-led JO and the administration of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe is an expression of deepening political instability within the ruling elite. Colombo faces escalating balance of trade and foreign debt problems and growing struggles of workers and the poor against its social austerity measures.

Currently 45 members of parliament, including Rajapakse, back the former president, and sit on the opposition benches. The group includes a faction of Sirisenas Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the SLFP-led United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA). Sirisena has the support of just 50 MPs. Wickremesinghe heads the United National Party (UNP).

Rajapakse told last weeks rally his faction would oppose the governments fraudulent new constitution, which he claimed would break up the country. The motive of the new constitution, he declared, is to appease the Tamil minority in their quest for political independence.

Referring to the military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) under his government in 2009, Rajapakse said, we have to safeguard our victory and prevent Sri Lankas breakup. Fighting against the division of the country is a slogan used by Sinhala chauvinist groups and the ruling class parties, including the SLFP and the UNP, to divide Sinhala and Tamil workers and the poor along ethnic lines.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government, in fact, has not presented any new constitution.

The government previously indicated it was considering a new constitution for reconciliation with the Tamil parties. It would provide the provincial councils with limited capacities, mainly involving land and police powers, but they would still be under the dominance of the central government. The proposal was shelved in response to increasing agitation from the Rajapakse group and various Sinhala- and Buddhist-chauvinist organisations supporting him.

Rajapakse attempted to posture as an anti-imperialist at the rally, declaring, without specifically mentioning the US, that some countries wanted him removed from power because we were not kneeling before imperialism. These claims are utterly hypocritical.

Just after last years US presidential election results were announced, Rajapakse sent a message to president-elect Donald Trump praising his victory. He said Washington, under Republican President George W. Bush, had good relations with Rajapakses government and supported its war.

Rajapakse also appealed to Trump to not support war crime charges against Sri Lanka for abuses committed during the military offensive against the LTTE. When Trump was sworn in on January 20, Rajapakse tweeted, congratulating him and welcoming his non-interventionist foreign policy.

Sirisena and Wickremesinghe also sent congratulations to Trump, further indicating the subservience of every faction of the ruling elite to US imperialism.

Rajapakse denounced the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government for the high cost of living, burdening the country with huge debts and selling state properties to foreigners. He accused it of rampant corruption, as well as destroying the independence of the judiciary and jailing its political opponents.

Rajapakse appears to think the population is suffering from amnesia. The conditions he blames on the current government also existed under his rule. Rajapakse, for example, sacked the chief justice because she nullified a bill designed to take back some powers of the provincial councils.

Rajapakses speech to the rally cautiously avoided any criticism of the government for implementing the International Monetary Funds austerity measures. His regime slavishly imposed previous IMF demands.

Rajapakses opposition group has no sympathy for the democratic rights or living standards of workers and the poor. His government used its war against the separatist LTTE to suppress the basic rights of workers and unleashed ruthless attacks on their living standards and social conditions.

The former president is now attempting to exploit the growing popular anger by whipping up communalism. His real target, however, is not the government but the working class and the poor.

Sections of the mediathe Daily Mirror, Lankadeepa and Hiru TVthat supported Sirisena during the US-backed 201516 regime-change operation that installed him, are now providing propaganda support to Rajapakses campaign.

While Rajapakse declares that he wants to change the government, no presidential election is due until 2019, followed by a general election in 2020. Rajapakse and his group are directing their attacks against the UNP and putting pressure on Sirisenas supporters in the SLFP to break from the government.

Last week, provincial council chief ministers loyal to Sirisena met with Rajapakse, urging him to unite the SLFP and contest the local government elections, which are supposed to be held in the coming months. These elections were due a year ago, but Sirisena and Wickremesinghe keep postponing them, fearing electoral defeat. Sensing the governments weakness, Rajapakse refused the request and demanded that the SLFP defect from the government.

Rajapakse was ousted in the presidential election in January 2015 amid mass opposition to his government. Sirisena, who was a senior minster in Rajapakses regime, was installed via a US-backed operation orchestrated with the assistance of Wickremesinghe and former President Chandrika Kumaratunga.

Those backing Sirisena insisted that his administration would improve the living conditions of the masses, defend their democratic rights and end government corruption. A host of middle-class groupings, including the pseudo-left, promoted these bogus claims and worked to cover-up the fact that Rajapakse was removed because of his close political and economic relations with China, and in order to advance Washingtons geo-strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region.

Over the past two years, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe governments promises have been exposed as lies. Colombo is implementing all the IMFs demands, ruthlessly increasing taxes, slashing expenditure on health, education and vital subsidies to farmers, and privatising state-owned enterprises.

Further, it is handing out huge concessions to big business and foreign capital to attract investment. Government ministers have also been discredited by corruption allegations.

The explosive social conditions that existed before Rajapakses ouster have reemerged. Not a single day passes without reports of protests by workers, students or the rural poor. Telecom and electricity board temporary workers recently demonstrated and took strike action for several days until a court order banned their protests. Hundreds of students marched in Colombo early this weekthe third time in the past two weeksagainst the privatisation of education.

While the government is increasingly using the courts, police and military to suppress these actions, the capitalist elite is becoming nervous about the explosive situation. The crucial question is the development of an independent movement of the working class, hostile to all factions of the ruling elite and fighting on the basis of a socialist and internationalist program to end the capitalist profit system.
By Press Trust of India: From Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, Feb 3 (PTI) Nepal police has arrested a prominent Madhesi activist who has been advocating an independent Madhes, for allegedly committing "organised crime against the state".

CK Raut, who is active in the Terai demanding that the southern plains be separated from Nepal, was arrested yesterday at a time when the government was being criticised for doing nothing to those who have been openly talking about disintegrating the country.

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He has been launching massive campaign across the southern Terai region through the Alliance for Independent Madesh (AIM) demanding independent Madhes.

A senior police officer has confirmed his arrest. Inspector General of Nepal Police Upendra Kanta Aryal said a case of sedition will be filed against Raut.

"The police will investigate each and every case against him," he added.

Raut had staged protest rallies in Lahan, the district headquarters of Siraha, demanding the separation of Terai from Nepal.

"I was not served any legal notice for my arrest," Raut said on his arrest. He is still facing various treason cases in the courts in Nepal.

At a function organised on the premises of Pashupati Adarsha Higher Secondary School on January 18, Raut had spoken for about 11 minutes in which he had publicly stated that the Terai should seceded from Nepal.

Issuing a statement, Rauts supporters have also confirmed his arrest. "Nepali state has yet again shown its racist colour by arresting Dr Raut from Janakpur in an undemocratic manner," said a statement issued by Kailash Mahato.

A scientist by profession, Raut holds a PhD from Cambridge University and had worked in the US. PTI UZM/SBP AMS

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PINECREST, Fla. (AP) - Authorities say a Miami-area private school was evacuated, and all activities at the campus were canceled following a bomb threat.

The Miami Herald (https://goo.gl/pygnFJ ) reports that Gulliver Preparatory School received the threat around 11 a.m. Thursday, and head of schools Frank Steel announced the Pinecrest campus was safe by 3:30 p.m. Normal operations will resume Friday.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and Pinecrest police responded to the high school, while students were bused about 3 miles away to one of the school's other campuses. Officials say canine units from Florida International University police and the University of Miami police swept the school.

Authorities haven't identified the source of the threat or if any arrests were likely.

___

Information from: The Miami Herald, http://www.herald.com

(Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
PARIS (AP) - A French prosecutor says the man who attacked soldiers in front of the Louvre Museum is believed to be a 29-year-old Egyptian who was living in the United Arab Emirates, but his identity has not been formally confirmed yet.

Prosecutor Francois Molins says at a news conference Friday night that the French soldiers' quick reactions put an end to "a terror attack" Friday morning at one of Paris' most iconic tourist attractions. He says "everything shows that the assailant was very determined."

He says the attacker, who was shot by the soldiers, is in a life-threatening condition in a hospital.

Molins said the attacker had no identity papers but investigators used his cellphone to find out that he was a resident in the United Arab Emirates who came to Paris on a tourist visa on Jan. 26. Two days later he bought two military machetes at a gun store in Paris.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (The News Service of Florida) - Florida would have more state employees, and at least some of them would make more money, under a budget proposal unveiled this week by Gov. Rick Scott.

But whether to provide employees with their first across-the-board pay raises since 2013 will be decided in the upcoming legislative session, with one powerful senator gearing up to push the issue in his chamber's spending plan.

Scott's proposal would add a total of 596 positions, while cutting 266. The vast majority of the new jobs, 327, would be at the Department of Corrections, which is in the middle of a turnaround effort after revelations of prisoner mistreatment. Among the other new openings would be 90 for the state's mental-health system and 46 counterterrorism jobs at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

According to the governor's office, 86 percent of the jobs that would be cut are already vacant, with "many more" likely to be empty by the time the budget year begins July 1. A handful of state services, like the print shop at the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, would be outsourced to private companies.

A net increase in jobs would still be a rarity for Scott, who generally has pushed to shrink the number of state employees in earlier budgets.

And while Scott wouldn't provide an across-the-board pay increase, he would make state employees eligible for one-time performance bonuses of up to $1,500 in increments of $500. For example, employees would get $500 if agencies reach certain benchmarks, another $500 if employees are rated at least "satisfactory," and a third increment based on budget savings.

Scott has pushed for such an approach before, as he noted to reporters Tuesday after presenting his budget plan.

"I wish the Legislature would go through (with) that," he said. "We have great state workers. You really have to thank people for what they do. The people that work in state government are on a mission. They really try to do their job really well. So I think we've got to make sure we pay them well."

Some lawmakers are shooting for more as they prepare for the March 7 start of the annual legislative session.

Senate Appropriations Chairman Jack Latvala, R-Clearwater, has signaled that he will push hard for salary increases. The last boost came in 2013, when lawmakers approved a $1,400-a-year raise for workers making up to $40,000. Those making above that mark got a $1,000-a-year increase.

At the time, it was the first pay hike for all state employees in six years, as the state's budget was crimped by fallout of the financial downturn.

Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, told reporters at the Associated Press' annual legislative planning session Tuesday that Latvala's insistence means some sort of pay raise will likely be in his chamber's budget proposal.

"Senator Latvala has made it clear to me and to other senators that this is his No. 1 policy initiative," Negron said. "As we're preparing the blueprint for our budget ... I think my operating assumption is that based on Senator Latvala's commitment to that issue, I would expect to see a pay raise for state employees in the Senate budget."

But House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O' Lakes, sounded ambivalent about the possibility. Corcoran has called for cutting the budget to avoid projected shortfalls in future years. Still, the speaker didn't rule out either Scott's bonus program or raises.

"I think those are things that are on the table and are capable of happening," he said Tuesday. "What we have said in the House is that you're going to have to cut the budget."

Scott's plan would also make a series of tweaks to health insurance for state employees. An audit to re-examine dependents on the state health-care plan could help save $45 million a year, though it would cost $1.2 million to perform. A new way of managing drug prescriptions could save another $51.2 million.

And Scott has once again proposed having all state employees pay the same rates for their health insurance, something that would increase the premiums for a select number of higher-ranking state officials. It would save the state $21.8 million --- but seems as unlikely to pass this year as in each of Scott's previous budgets, which unsuccessfully included the same provision.
Tallahassee, Fla. (WTXL) - A University of Florida College of Nursing researcher and her team have received grant funding the study of dignity therapy.

Diana Wilkie, Ph.D., R.N., FAAN, the Prairieview Trust - Earl and Margo Powers endowed professor, leads a group of researchers who will evaluate the benefits of nurse-led and chaplain-led therapy.

"Todays health care system tends to focus on expertise surrounding the disease more than on listening to the person and their families and helping them express and achieve their goals, including those related to spirituality," said Wilkie.

Used in conjunction with transitional pain-reduction treatment, dignity therapy considers patients' spiritual well-being.

The purpose of the study is to determine who best to administer this specific type of care. Experts consider dignity therapy a central need for elderly cancer patients.

According to a 2010 study, dignity therapy improved the quality of life and extended life span compared to patients receiving only usual cancer care.

The 560 elderly patients participating in Wilke's research will benefit from more than $3 million dollars from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute for Nursing Research. The study spans five years and six states, countrywide.

Co-investigators in the study include Yingwei Yao, Ph.D., also on faculty at the UF College of Nursing, and the Rev. George Handzo from Health Care Chaplaincy in New York.
GADSDEN COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - Right now in Gadsden County, folks are meeting with the school board to go over the district's proposal to reconfigure schools.

We've been following this story for several weeks now as the community continues to search for clarity.

WTXL ABC 27's Stephen Jiwanmall is in Quincy for tonight's meeting.

Last week, parents, teachers and community members packed the school board meeting.

Most of them wanting to talk about the district's intentions to restructure schools.

Tonight is a special meeting set up by the board to address those concerns.

In fact, the board scheduled the meeting for this evening, so that more people could attend.

The conversation last week got pretty passionate as parents from different parts of the county pleading with the board to keep their local schools open.

Board members themselves were at odds, especially with the revelation that there are actually two proposals on the table: one from the superintendent and one from the chairman.

Both plans are quite different. For example, the superintendent calls for the merging of both high schools. The chairman says to keep them separate.

The superintendent calls for the demolition of carter-parramore academy, but the chairman suggests renovating and repairing it, due to its significant African-American history.

There's a lot more to both plans and the community isn't totally one way or the other.

In fact, one resident told me consolidation is the only option here, in order to keep gadsden county competitive and to improve education for all students.

A lot to work out still, but there has been no indication from the board on when they will vote on the proposal.
Tallahassee, Fla. (WTXL) - Attorney John Morgan, founder of "Morgan and Morgan" law firm and possible gubernatorial candidate, came to the Big Bend Thursday.

Morgan says he's undecided whether or not he'll run for governor of Florida in 2018, speaking to the Tallahassee Tiger Bay Club.

"We've got the greatest state in the whole country," said Morgan.

Keeping it light and funny, Morgan spoke for nearly an hour and spoke on several subjects including: raising the state's minimum wage, prison reforms and decriminalizing marijuana.

"The solution to the problem in the state of Florida and across the country is a fair living wage," says Morgan.

If Morgan decides not to run in 2018, he plans on backing a constitutional amendment to raise the wage.

Morgan chaired and funded the amendment 2 campaign, which earned 71 percent of the vote to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.

Morgan stressed that if he runs, he would not run "against" several of his friends in 2018, such as Gwen Graham and Adam Putnam, but rather focus on what he thinks would be great for the state.
THOMASVILLE, Ga. (WTXL) - The Thomasville Police Department is asking residents to avoid Smith Avenue due to a suspicious package found behind a business in the area.

Until further notice, they have asked that residents avoid Smith Avenue between Market Street and Susie Way (in front of the Police Department).

They said that the road is closed at this time.

TPD and GBI are currently investigating a suspicious package found behind a business on the 500 block of Smith Avenue.

Officers said that businesses in that block have been evacuated until further notice.

We will update this story as more details become available.
TMC MPs allege that the Centre is harassing their party because of Mamata Banerjee raising her voice against Narendra Modi's demonetisation policy.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Trinamool Congress MP today protested against the Narendra Modi government in the Parliament House complex on Friday, alleging that it was indulging in "vendetta politics" in a probe into a chit fund scam.

Half an hour before parliament was to meet for the day, the Trinamool Congress members gathered near the statue of Mahatama Gandhi shouting slogans against the Centre.

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They said the Centre was harassing Trinamool leaders because the Mamata Banerjee-led party raised its voice against Modi's demonetisation policy.

On Thursday also, the TMC members staged a walkout from Rajya Sabha levelling the same charges against the government.

They also alleged that the Central Bureau of Investigation was being misused by the government.

TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay was recently arrested in connection with an alleged chit fund scam of the Rose Valley company.

Also read: Rose valley chit fund probe: Investigating officer removed over alleged links with wife of prime accused

Also read: Rose Valley chit fund scam: TMC leaders' nexus with the investment firm

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By Press Trust of India: From Lalit K Jha

Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) President Donald Trump is "extremely upset" with the "poorly-crafted" refugee deal with Australia but will go ahead with the agreement by enforcing "extreme vetting" of each of the 1,250 refugees to ensure that they do not pose a threat to the US, the White House has said.

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White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer yesterday lashed out at the Obama-administration for the refugee agreement with Australia, saying the new president was "unbelievably disappointed" to have inherited the deal.

Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull had yesterday said that Trump had committed to the agreement to accept 1,250 refugees who are lodged in offshore detention centres on the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

The US President had abruptly ended his now-infamous phone call to Turnbull after their disagreement on the issue reportedly left him unhappy. True to character, he then took to Twitter to describe the agreement as a "dumb deal".

Trump told reporters that one must respect a step taken by the previous administration, but added in the same breath that it could also be questioned.

"A previous administration does something, you have to respect that but you could also say, why are we doing this? Thats why were in the jams that were in," he said.

"We had one instance in Australia, I have a lot of respect for Australia, I love Australia as a country but we had a problem where for whatever reason President Obama said that they were going to take probably well over 1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons and they were going to bring them and take them into this country and I just said why?," he said.

"Why are we doing this? Whats the purpose? So well see what happens," the US President said.

"We have some wonderful allies but were going to keep it that way but we have to be treated fairly also. We have to be treated fairly," Trump said. He also lamented that a "lot of countries" were "really terribly" taking advantage of the US.

At his press conference yesterday, Spicer said Trump "had a very cordial conversation" with the Australian Prime Minister Turnbull.

"The President is unbelievably disappointed in the previous administrations deal that was made and how poorly it was crafted and the threat it put on US national security," Spicer.

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"He (Trump) has tremendous respect for the Prime Minister and the Australian people and has agreed to continue to review that deal and to ensure that as part of the deal, was always part of it, that we would go through a very, very extreme vetting process to ensure that every single person that is being offered up is coming here with peaceful intentions and poses no threat to the United States," he said.

"So he has ensured that while he has respect for the Australian people and respect for PM Turnbull, that we do not pose a threat to the US, that the deal that he was cut by the last administration is something that he is extremely, extremely upset with. He does not like it," Spicer said. PTI LKJ BSA AKJ AKJ

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YAKIMA, Wash. -- An Outlook man who fatally shot another man on the mistaken belief that the victim had impregnated a teen girl was sentenced 
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The TV star is expecting her first child in May.

By India Today Web Desk: Indian television actress Deepali Pansare, who shot to fame with popular show Iss Pyaar Ko Kya Naam Doon, is expecting her first child.

Yes, you read that right.

Also read: Congratulations! TV couple Gouri and Yash Tonk welcome their second child

The talented actress, who has been a part of shows like Lajwanti and Agent Raghav-Crime Branch, is happy as can be.

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The stunning actress had tied the knot in Jammu with her longtime boyfriend Suveer Safaya (a banker) in 2014. The couple is expecting the child in May.

"Yes, it's happening and it's a superb feeling. I am loving this phase, where I am being pampered a lot," the actress told India Forums.

Congratulations, Deepali!

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Three months before the French presidential elections, in which the polls predict that Marine Le Pen is set to reach a glorious achievement by making it to the second and final round, Le Pen is setting the mark on the style of her administration.

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In an interview with CNN, Le Pen praised Donald Trump's immigration ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries that also completely prevents the entrance of Syrian refugees, and spoke out against the criticism Trump has been facing.

"I think that most of the reactions are in bad faith," said Le Pen to CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

Marine Le Pen (Photo: mct)

"It is a temporary measure. It targets six or seven countries, countries that of course are responsible for terrorist threats, so I think Donald Trump and his intelligence services wanted to set up criteria and conditions to avoid having potential terrorists enter the United States, where they might commit attacks, the same way that France was the victim of attacks," she said.

She also pointed out that these are states that do not recognize Israel, and which Israelis cannot access.

When asked whether such a similar ban would work in France, she said they would have to be "very vigilant" since "France no longer has any borders because of the EU."

With regard to the US-Mexico border, she said, "He (Trump) was elected and he said that he was going to do this. And now the world seems to be scandalized because he's implementing what he promised he would do during his campaign."
The CEO came under increasing pressure to leave the council after Trump issued an executive order temporarily barring people from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States.

By Reuters: Uber Technologies Inc Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick quit President Donald Trump's business advisory group on Thursday amid mounting pressure from activists and employees who oppose the administration's immigration policies.

Critics included Uber drivers, many of whom are immigrants themselves.

"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that," Kalanick, who had planned to attend a meeting of the group on Friday, said in an email to staff that was seen by Reuters.

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Uber spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler later confirmed that he had left the group.

SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS TARGETED UBER

Social media campaigns had targeted Uber, urging users to delete accounts and opt for rival Lyft Inc. Uber has been emailing users who deleted their accounts to say it shares their concerns and will compensate drivers affected by the ban.

Kalanick said he spoke briefly to Trump about the immigration order "and its issues for our community" and told the president he would not join the economic council.

The CEO came under increasing pressure to leave the council after Trump issued an executive order temporarily barring people from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States.

"There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that. The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America," he wrote in a note to employees. "Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there's a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants."

Also read: Trump's ban on immigration: Court allows entry to immigrant visa holders

The White House said in a statement Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger."

The move could put pressure on other CEOs expected to attend a meeting with Trump on Friday. General Motors Co said its chief executive would attend, while Walt Disney Co said earlier Thursday its chief executive would not attend because of a long-planned-board meeting.

Others expected to take part include the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Blackstone Group LP, IBM Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Others that are part of the council include Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and Boston Consulting Group CEO Rich Lesser.

DEPARTURE COULD SIGNAL RIFT

The departure could signal a growing rift between technology companies and Washington.

"There is a battle brewing between Trump and Silicon Valley," said Neeraj Agrawal, general partner at Battery Ventures. "They (the Trump administration) clearly don't value the economic activity generated by tech."

Musk said he would attend the meeting. "In tomorrow's meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy," he said in a tweet on Thursday.

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Microsoft Corp on Thursday said it proposed a modification of Trump's travel limits.

Also read: Barack Obama rejects Donald Trump's immigration ban, backs protests

Technology companies including Microsoft, Google owner Alphabet Inc, Apple Inc and Amazon.com Inc have opposed Trump's order, arguing that they rely on workers from around the world.

Amazon and Expedia Inc have filed court documents supporting a legal challenge to the order by the Washington state attorney general.

Also read: President Trump fires acting US Attorney General for refusing to enforce immigration order

Watch the video

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A gang of five thieves dubbed, the "ATM gang," were captured on security cameras as they were breaking into a Kibbutz grocery store and stealing the ATM, which contained thousands of shekels.

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As seen in the video, the gang members used cables and a jeep to rip out the store's doors and then followed by uprooting the ATM and loading it onto the jeep. They quickly fled the scene afterwards.

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It is suspected that this is the same gang who had broken into several towns in the north Negev over the last few days, stealing vaults and ATMs. Some of the places the gang members broke into include Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, Tkuma, and Kibbutz Ruhama. No suspects have been arrested.

ATM robbery

The towns' security coordinators were asked to stay alert in the upcoming days out of concern that the gang might strike again.
WASHINGTONPresident Donald Trump said on Thursday that "nothing is off the table" in dealing with Iran following its test launch of a ballistic missile, and his fellow Republicans in Congress said they would back him up with new sanctions.

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Trump comment was in response to a question about whether he would consider military options to respond to Tehran, a day after his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, put Iran "on notice."

It was not clear what Trump meant. Every recent U.S. president, including Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, has said that US military options were not off the table to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, said the United States should stop "appeasing" Tehran.

"I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran," Ryan told reporters at a weekly news conference. "I'd like to put as much toothpaste back in the tube as possible. I think the last administration appeased Iran far too much."

Trump in DC on Thursday (Photo: AP)

Like every Republican in Congress, Ryan opposed the nuclear agreement with Iran that went into effect early last year. But Republican lawmakers said they were working with the Trump administration to push back on Iran as much as possible without risking the international uncertainty that would come with tearing up the pact.

"Now we have a partner that's willing to deal with Iran in the way that Iran should be dealt with. ... And so we're in a real different ball game," Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Reuters.

Corker said his committee was "in the early stages" of working on legislation related to the nuclear issue.

Actions without Congress

Trump's administration has already begun looking at actions it could take without waiting for Congress, where Republicans would have to win some Democratic support to pass any new sanctions package, congressional aides said.

For example, Trump could impose sanctions already authorized by existing laws, but which were not put into effect by the Obama administration. The Democrat's White House opposed any actionincluding imposing sanctions passed by Congressthat could have undermined the nuclear agreement.

Corker said he had discussed Iran at the White House with Flynn on Wednesday, just before Trump's national security adviser issued a warning that Washington was putting Iran on notice for its "destabilizing activity."

A top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country would not yield to "useless" US threats from "an inexperienced person" over its ballistic missile program. The adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati did identify a specific US official in his comments.

Corker said the Trump administration would take a stronger stance against Iran, although he did not expect its actions would bring an end to the international nuclear deal.

"No. I think the intention is that they fully comply," he told Reuters.

Iran test-launches a ballistic missile in October

Corker said his intention would be to "radically enforce" the nuclear agreement, working with US allies and the United Nations Security Council to hold Iran's feet to the fire.

But he also envisioned "follow-on" action, for example, to curtail Iran's nuclear program in the long term, setting stiff limits on the extent to which it could ever enrich uranium and barring it from installing upgraded centrifuges after the end of the 15-year-long pact.

A section of UN Resolution 2231 calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

Iran said it had tested a new ballistic missile but said it did not breach the nuclear deal or the Security Council resolution.

Highlighting the Trump administration's more aggressive tone against Iran, Trump sent messages on Twitter on Wednesday and Thursday targeting the Islamic Republic and criticizing the nuclear pact.

Another senior Republican foreign policy voice, Senator Lindsey Graham, told CNN he thought Trump should go to Congress to request additional sanctions for a range of activities in the Middle East, including the ballistic missile test on Sunday, which he said were not in US interests.

"The world should not only condemn Iran but we should have multinational sanctions against the regime for their continued violation of the UN Security Council resolutions regarding their missile program," Graham said on CNN.
The Trump administration said on Thursday that Israel's building of new settlements or expansion of existing ones in the West Bank may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements.

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In a statement issued two weeks before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit US President Donald Trump, the White House said the administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity."

President Trump delivering his National Prayer Breakfast speech (Photo: AP)

Trump, a Republican, has signaled he could be more accommodating toward settlement projects than his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. The latest statement reflects slightly more nuanced language on how the new administration views settlement activity.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," the White House said in a statement.

The statement could disappoint Israel's far-right, which had hoped Trump would give an unqualified green light on rapid settlement construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalemareas Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with Netanyahu on Thursday, the State Department said. It did not say whether they discussed the White House statement.

Statement by Press Secretary

Obama routinely criticized settlement construction plans and his administration often described settlement activity as lacking legitimacy and impeding peace.

The White House statement came as Israel has ratcheted up settlement activity. On Wednesday, it said it would establish a new settlement, the first since the late 1990s. It also announced plans for the construction of 3,000 more homes in the West Bank, the third such declaration in less than two weeks since Trump took office.

An announcement a week ago by Israel that it would build some 2,500 more dwellings in the West Bank, drew rebukes from the Palestinians and the European Union.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations said on Friday it was too early to tell how the White House's latest statement on Israel's recent drive to build new homes in the West Bank would affect future building.

It was a first reaction by an Israeli official to the statement in Washington.

"It's still too early to tell ... I would not categorize this as a U-turn by the US administration but the issue is clearly on their agenda ... the issue will be discussed when the prime minister (Benjamin Netanyahu) meets the president in Washington," Israel's UN ambassador, Danny Danon told Israel Radio.

"We will not always agree on everything."

The group representing Israeli settlers brushed off the White House statement.

The Yesha council said Friday it looks forward to working with the Trump administration. Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha council, said his group "thanks the White House for asserting that our communities were never an impediment to peace," adding that "nothing is more natural and morally just than Jews building in Judea."

"We look forward to working closely with our friends in the new Trump administration to build a brighter future all," he added.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely issued a statement saying the "government was elected in order to realize the right of the people of Israel to build in all parts of the country" and that must be respected.

If the White House concedes that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, then "it must be concluded that that expanding construction is not a problem," she said.
Turkey's foreign ministry undersecretary will hold talks with representatives of the Syrian opposition in Ankara on Friday, ministry sources said, ahead of UN-sponsored peace talks on Syria scheduled for later this month.

The Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee, the main opposition umbrella group in Syria, along with other groups which took part in peace talks in Kazakhstan last month, will be among those attending, the foreign ministry sources said.
Dozens of angry Haredi men were captured on camera attacking two IDF soldiers on Thursday night in Jerusalems Ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim.

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The neighborhood is known for its fiercely anti-Zionist propensity with its inhabitants being staunch opponents to the mandatory conscription law which includes drafting members of the community into the IDF.

The images of Haredi soldiers becoming victims of this type of harassment from these radical strands have become increasingly commonplace with the implementation of the law.

Police rescue Haredi soldiers from mob ( :  )

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Uniformed Haredi soldiers enter alleyways only to find themselves victims of attack by local zealots. On this occasion, security forces were called to the scene to extricate the soldiers from inflamed crowds.

While the central stream of Haredim and their leaders do condemn such violent instances, they oppose the draft of Haredi Yeshiva student.

Moreover, the main Ultra-orthodox partiesShas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ)generally remain silent and refrain from issuing their own condemnations.

One of the main reasons that the parties fail to comment on these attacks stems from fear of being depicted by extremists as compromisers who encourage Haredi service in the IDF, which could adversely affect them in a power struggle within the sector.

Despite the concerning images however, the integration of Haredim in the IDF has shown no signs of stopping.

The attack that took place on Thursday night occurred just after another step had been taken symbolizing increased Haredi integration in the IDF, with the swearing-in ceremony at the Western Wall of the first Haredi unit in the prestigious Paratroopers Brigade.

Two weeks ago, the Knesset discussed the phenomenon of incitement against Haredi soldiers following a string of physical attacks and other recorded incidents of harassment and shaming campaigns against them.

A manpower subcommittee from the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee convened to hear evidence from uniformed and newly discharged soldiers and received a report from legal authorities about the struggle being waged to counter the trend.

Scene of incident (Photo: Haim Shapira)

On this occasion too, members of the Haredi leadership, which has remained silent for some time on the matter, was notably absent from the meeting. No rabbi nor political representative attended the discussions.

Committee Chairman MK Amir Ohana (Likud) voiced harsh criticism against the failure of Shas and UTJ members to show up and their failure to use their influence over the Haredi sector by supporting the soldiers and reining in the extremist elements among their constituents.

During the meeting, Yehiel Rotski, a Haredi soldier who extended his military service, described an incident in which he came under attack as he walked through a Haredi rally unconnected with the army.

Dressed in IDF uniform, he immediately became the target of attack and abuse, he told the committee.

I found myself in an incited crowd with blood in their eyes, he recounted. I managed to escape to a side street and I asked a policeman if he would let me get away in his vehicle. He told me that wasnt his job and that I should sort it out myself.

So extreme has the situation become, Rotski explained, that he is unable to even visit his parents since he has become a well-known face among the extremist circles in the area.

A large proportion of them from Jerusalem are dangerous to Haredi soldiers. You will receive insults and threats that I cant even repeat, he said.
Security forces arrested 7 Palestinians on suspicion of throwing rocks, Molotov Cocktails and improvised explosive devices at the holy site of Rachels Tomb.

The suspects, who are residents of the Aida Camp Refugee Camp north of Bethlehem, were arrested when forces raided their homes following the collection of evidence and intelligence. All seven linked themselves to the accusations made against them.
A computer engineer from Gaza was sentenced Wednesday to 9 years imprisonment as part of a plea deal for committing serious offences against national security.

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The 23-year-old Gaza resident Maagad Ben Juwad Oydeh, also a producer of the show Arab Idol (Gaza's equivalent of American Idol), was sentenced by the Be'er Sheva District Court after being indicted in 2012.

Maagad Oydeh

According to the indictment, until 2014 Oydeh hacked into video cameras belonging to the IDF, the police and the Road Safety Authority.

Oydeh also compromised IDF drones hovering over Gaza. This enabled Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) commanders in the strip to view their video feeds and study the location of civilians and IDF personnel in real-time as it was firing rockets into Israel from the enclave.

In 2013 Oydeh hacked into Israeli Cellcom and Orange cellphones and Palestinian Jawwal firm cellphones to help locate Israeli moles within Islamic Jihad. While he succeeded in penetrating Jawwal, he failed to penetrate Cellcoms and Oranges firewalls.

Later that year Oydeh hacked Ben-Gurion Airport information centers and video feeds to view the passenger lists on incoming and outgoing flights, the type of aircraft, its weight and landing and departure times which was then used to assist the PIJ organization in potentially striking airplanes with rockets.

Moving into other areas for the group, from 2014 until September 2015, Oydeh supplied loans to Islamic Jihad members using money provided by Tehran.



Later in 2015, he turned his gaze to Hamas, hacking into its Interior Ministrys records to help the PIJ to steal the Palestinian population registry in order to check who among them was cooperating with the Shin Bet and to learn details about potential recruits. Oydeh also sent a virus to their computers, successfully infecting most.

He was arrested in February 2016 while on his way to meet contenders for Arab Idol. In March 2016 an indictment was filed against him, stating that he has joined PIJ five years before, and has since worked with the terrorist group.

He was charged with endangering public safety, cyber crimes, spying, conspiracy, contact with enemy agents and membership in an illegal organization.

Even though Oydeh continued to repair and upgrade Islamic Jihads computers, video cameras and other technologies until his arrest, his attorney's urged the court to respect his plea deal. Acknowledging that he was an integral part of a terrorist organization, he ceased the majority of his criminal activity a year before he was arrested.

His lawyer, Mohammed Jabarin, cited the fact that his client had no criminal record and has expressed regret for his actions.

He began working for a program that aimed to help children of Gaza and even produced the show Arab Idol in an effort to change his ways. Quoting Oydeh, the lawyer said: "I was wrong, I'm learning from my mistakes." He also noted that his actions helped about 1,500 children in Gaza change their lives for the better.

In the verdict, the judges of the district court, headed by Revital Yaffe Katz, said that Oydeh's offences necessitate substantive and tangible punishment. However, the fact that his actions did not cause any actual physical harm could not be ignored, they judges said, and before adding that they would also take his young age into consideration.

In light of the circumstances, the court decided to accept his plea deal and sentenced him to 9 years in prison and a 12 month probation period.
US President Donald Trump tweeted early on Friday that "Iran is playing with fire" and "they don't appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me!"

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Trump plans to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities, seeking to ratchet up pressure on Tehran while crafting a broader strategy to counter what he sees as its destabilizing behavior, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

President Trump warning Iran he is not as 'kind' as Obama (Photo: AP)

Iran's decision to test-fire a ballistic missile on Sunday helped trigger Trump's decision, which could be announced as early as Friday, they said.

Iran annoucned that it had test-fired the missile on Wednesday, prompting a tough response from a senior adviser to President Trump.

Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said the United States was putting Iran on notice over its "destabilizing activity" after it fired the missile.

"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," Flynn said, without explaining exactly what that meant.

Iran has test-fired several ballistic missiles since the nuclear deal in 2015, but the latest test was the first since Trump entered the White House. Trump said during his election campaign that he would stop Iran's missile programme.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted back on Friday, saying that the Islamic Republic is unmoved by US threats following its missile test launch and Tehran will never initiate war.

"Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defence," Zarif tweeted.
German police say they have arrested a 21-year-old Romanian man at Frankfurt airport on suspicion he was preparing an attack motivated by Islamic extremism.

The man, who wasn't named, is suspected of engaging in online discussions with others about an attack in Germany.

Karlsruhe police said in a statement that the man was arrested Thursday morning as he allegedly planned to travel to Romania to prepare the attack, though there was no indication he had a concrete target.
The Gaza Division and the Southern Command held their largest annual training operation in which hundreds of soldiers, including reservists, participated in a five-day training exercise in which IDF forces simulated a massive infiltration of southern communities by the Hamas commando units.

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IDF forces rehearsed scenarios in which large numbers of Hamas commandos managed to infiltrate Israeli communities by parachute, subterranean attack tunnels and the sea.

Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

IDF Gaza Division and Southern Command drill

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As part of the exercises, the forces also practiced operations while absorbing incessant rocket and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip, which the IDF expects will happen during the course of the next war with Hamas. Border communities and cities such as Sderot and Ashkelon are expected to take the brunt of such attacks.

Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

IDF special forces units as well as regular infantry and armored brigades took part in the drills, along with the Navy, Airforce and Home Front Command.

Commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs, said, The Gaza Division exercise was an excellent opportunity to strengthen the preparedness of both active duty and reserve battalions.

Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

The IDF said the exercsie was planned ahead of time as part of 2017 training programs.
By Press Trust of India: Washington, Feb 3 (PTI) The US is reviewing its policy with Cuba, the White House said today without elaborating any further.

"We are in the midst of a full review of all US policies towards Cuba," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, told reporters at his daily news conference.

"The President is committed to an agenda of ensuring human rights for all citizens throughout the world. And as we review those policies in Cuba, that will be forefront in their policy discussions. But theres nothing that we have on that front at this point," Spicer said.

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During the election campaign, Trump had indicated that he would review the Cuba policy. His predecessor Barack Obama had reestablished diplomatic ties with Cuba, listed sanctions and resumed direct flights. PTI LKJ UZM

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The last of the Amona residents returned to the outpost which they were forced to vacate between Wednesday and Thursday, to finish gathering their belongings.

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This is difficult. It is a hard blow, but I am not broken, said Yaakov Rodik, one of the former residents who left the hilltop in accordance with an order issued by the High Court of Justice (HCJ).

Packing and removing belongings (Photo: Gil Nachushtan)

The feelings are hard. Within the space of 2 hours, you are supposed to pack your life up in boxes. It isnt easy. We just took off the mezuzahs nowmezuzahs, the guardians of the doors of Israel, he added in disbelief.

Ruth Binyamin came to help her daughter pack up the rest of her stuff before bidding farewell for the last time to her former home. Her son, Rabbi Yaakov Binyamin and his wife and their six children lived in a caravan on the outpost.

Photo: Gil Nachushtan

Photo: EPA

They evicted them two nights ago. It isnt over. We will return here, she promised. We feel a great sense of injustice. They throw the families to the dogs. I can hardly speak.

Residents returning to pack their belongings found that next to each home was a storage container and some contractors even left cardboard boxes and helped residents pack.

Meanwhile, commander of the Border Guard, Yaakov Shabtai, and Head of Human Resources, Gila Gaziel, visited officers wounded during the evacuation at Hadassah Hospital in Mount Scopus.

Photo: Israel Police

Photo: Israel Police

While wishing the wounded a speedy recovery, Shabtai told officers, I am proud of you and all the officers that were with you during the mission. You all accomlished it in an appropriate and dignified manner and demonstrated exceptional professionalism. On the one hand, you showed sensitivity to the citizens of Israel and on the other, you showed steadfastness and determination.
MOSCOW -- The Russian embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus was shelled on Thursday and Friday but no one was hurt, Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said one of the shells hit the space between an office and residential housing, and another exploded 20 metres away from the entrance. Russia will continue its "uncompromising fight with terrorists in Syria", the ministry said.
BEIRUT -- Air strikes killed at least 12 Islamist rebel fighters in Idlib province in northwestern Syria on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Unidentified warplanes struck positions of the hardline jihadist Jund al-Aqsa group southeast of Idlib city, near the village of Sarmin, the British-based war monitoring group said.

It was unclear if those killed were from Jund al-Aqsa or other Islamist factions, it said, and they could have been fighters belonging to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of Islamist groups based in Idlib.

A Hayat Tahrir al-Sham media unit said the U.S.-led coalition hit one of its positions near Sarmin, killing six fighters.
The coalition is forming a bill to amend and weaken the power of the High Court to discuss pubic issues, such the Amona evacuation

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Likud MK Mickey Zohar stands behind the bill, which promises to bring about a harsh political and legal storm. However, the bill has the support of all coalition MKs and Minister of Tourism Yariv Levin, who will promote the bill in a ministerial committee in the coming weeks. However, it is still unclear what the position of Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked is on the matter.

High Court (Photo: Gil Yohanan)

The legislation is actually an amendment to the Basic Laws of Israel as related to the judiciary. Locus standi (standing) is a basic condition demanded of a person or organization when they appeal to court and requires them to have direct interest in the issue or injustice against which they are petitioning.

In recent years, standing has been expanded to give almost every person the right to petition the High Court on any subject. For example, left-wing organizations petitioned against West Bank outposts built on private Palestinian land, even in cases where the specific landowners were not identified.

Minister Yariv Levin

The new legislation seeks to prevent the court from holding a hearing on an issue if the petitioner does not have personal connection defined as direct damage or concern for direct damage to ones private interests.

If the legislation is successfully passed, controversial court rulingssuch as the evacuation of Amonamay be avoided.

There is no damage to the High Court here, but we want to rectify this absurd situation and strengthen the existing separation of powers, said Likud youth chairman David Shayan.

According to MK Zohar, Our bill will make it difficult for left-wing organizations to petition the High Court regarding the evacuation of settlements and make it difficult for the court to rule against settlers.
ANKARA -- Iran denounced on Friday as illegal new sanctions imposed on it by the United States and said it would impose legal restrictions on American individuals and entities helping "regional terrorist groups", state TV quoted a Foreign Ministry statement as saying.

"The new sanctions ... are not compatible with America's commitments and resolution 2231 of the U.N. Security Council that endorsed the nuclear deal reached between Iran and six powers," the statement said.

"In retaliation for the U.S. sanctions, Iran will impose legal restrictions on some American individuals and entities that were involved in helping and founding regional terrorist groups," it said.
Nebraska lawmakers started this week with a floor debate that showed the importance of debating legislative proposals and thinking through the details.

Legislative Bill 45, for example, would make Nebraska military reservists eligible to receive military honor license plates. Its a worthy idea. Some state senators urged caution about one aspect of the bill, though.

The senators argued that the legislation, as written, would make it too easy for nonveterans to obtain the specialty plates. The measure advanced after senators adopted an amendment from the bills sponsor, Sen. Dan Watermeier, that struck a contentious provision.

Our point isnt about the particulars of the bill but, rather, to call attention to the Legislatures duty to proceed deliberately and carefully in refining legislation.

Nebraska lawmakers will hold hearings this session on some 667 bills and five proposed constitutional amendments. Some of those proposals will be relatively simple. Others will be quite complex.

Some  on tax policy, school funding and public power, for example  can have major, long-term effects on Nebraska. And crafting the state budget in the face of a revenue shortfall approaching $900 million will require detailed deliberation and a careful weighing of priorities.

Nebraska lawmakers are generally aware of all this, of course. But amid the whirlwind of handling more than 600 legislative proposals and the flurry of lobbying and maneuvering by interest groups and bill sponsors, the needed detail work can be a challenge.

Additional factors are term limits and the major changes this year in the Legislatures operating culture. Seventeen of the Legislatures 49 members are brand-new, and 18 others have only two years of experience.

Freshmen senators head two committees (Urban Affairs, and Business and Labor) that handle legislation. In addition, freshmen hold a majority of seats on two other committees: Natural Resources and Government, as well as Military and Veterans Affairs.

These freshmen in general come to the Legislature with records as capable professionals and, in some cases, public servants. But theres inherently a learning curve for anyone taking on a new job.

Bill introducers have an obligation to draft their legislation carefully, but the most important work on that score falls to the Legislatures committees. They have a responsibility to provide extensive filtering.

Committee members need to examine the specifics of legislative language and understand each bills real-world ramifications. Deliberations among committee members need to be focused and efficient.

When committees fulfill their obligation, the state is well served. Amid the frenzy of the legislative session, senators have no fewer than 667 good reasons to keep that duty in the forefront of their minds.
However, there are some undeniable facts about the prospect of property tax relief. Only a county along the Keystone XL that is lucky enough to have a pumping station would receive what most people consider property tax, that is, tax on land or real estate. Pumping stations would be on five to 10 acres of land that TransCanada would actually own -- the pipeline itself would be laid in ground that still belongs to the landowner who has been paid an easement. The landowner is paying the tax on the land, not TransCanada. The tax that would be paid on the pipe in the ground and other parts of the pipeline would be personal property tax, and thus is eligible for annual depreciation. The depreciation timeline for pipelines in Nebraska is 15 years. In a county that has no land owned by TransCanada, after 15 years there will be no taxes paid to the county by the pipeline owner. The promise of an annual windfall of tax revenue to counties along the pipeline route is plainly a deception. After 15 years there is no tax money and the pipeline is still in the ground generating income, but not for Nebraska.
Roy Theodore Brown, 77, of Haymarket, Va., passed away on Jan. 29.

By his side were his wife, Carolyn; daughter, Susan (Michael) Kelley of Maryland and son, Steven (Jennifer) Brown, who live nearby in Haymarket. Cherished grandchildren are Andrew Kelley, Laura Kelley, Alyssa Brown and Ethan Brown. The entire family of nine was fortunate to enjoy last good-byes throughout his final four days. Born in 1939 in York, he was the second child of Henry and Ethel Brown, with siblings Roger, Shirley, Joyce, Phyllis and Robert.

At age seven, he was granted special permission to serve the York Daily News as a paperboy though he had yet to reach the newspapers minimum age requirement. He took on the responsibility of delivering the York Daily News for many years. He also held other jobs in the community as he entered high school, working at Hartmans Rexall Drug, the Sun Theatre, and the egg plant. In his teen years, Roy was an Eagle Scout, belonged to the 4-H agricultural poultry club, and travelled to New York City to observe the United Nations after being selected by the York Masonic Lodge.

He graduated in 1957 from York High before graduating magna cum laude from Doane College with a double major in mathematics and physics in January 1961. His initial job after college was with Boeing in Seattle, Wash., but his 34- year career with T.R.W. spanned the continent, with the Brown family eventually taking residence in California, Washington D.C. and Virginia.

He met his wife Carolyn in September of 1959 on a Sunday at the York Methodist Church. They married in June, 1960. Roy and Carolyn ran seriously for exercise for 18 years. They also enjoyed Elderhostel trips in the United States, indulged in occasional international travel, and took frequent trips to Nebraska. Roy kept up with developments in science throughout his retirement as a topic of personal interest. He was loved and respected by all who knew him, and will remain in the hearts of his family forever.
YORK  York County Assessor Ann Charlton told the county commissioners this week to not plan on much valuation growth this year.

Her prediction was further explained as she said it looks like land values wont change this year. You have had a few houses in the county, but thats about it. So dont plant on a lot of growth.

The plateau of cost per acre for agricultural land has arrived after years of sharp increases . . . which then in turn drove the overall valuation of ag land in the county.

The sales (of ag land) look about the same as the year before, Charlton said.

She noted that there were large projects in the county that will eventually add to the overall valuation  but for this year, if those projects were only partially completed on Jan. 1, they will only be partially valued.

Commissioner Kurt Bulgrin noted the governors proposals for changes in the way ag land is valued in Nebraska  which would include the formula in which is calculated. He asked Charlton on her thoughts about these proposals.

I havent had time to really closely look at those or some of the other new legislation thats been proposed, as of now, Charlton said, declining to comment until she has had an opportunity to do so.

Bulgrin said the Nebraska Association of County Officials (NACO) is currently reviewing all the legislative bills that have been introduced and will soon be providing their positions on key issues to the counties.

When those opinions are available, I will bring those to the county board, Bulgrin said.
Addressing a rally in communally sensitive Muzaffarnagar on Friday, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav claimed that the state government was providing round-the-clock electricity and was also not stopping anybody from stealing it.

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: One of the most memorable photographs in the run up to Assembly elections in five states has been Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav ducking the live power cable hanging on the streets of Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow. These cables are called "katiya", used for power theft in states such as UP, Bihar and Rajasthan.

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The photograph went viral with people mocking the pathetic electricity situation in the poll-bound state. People active on social media took a dig at Rahul's terrified and Akhilesh's confident-looking expressions. They joked that the UP chief minister looked poise because he was sure that there would not be current in the cables.

The photograph inadvertently highlighted the issue of power theft in UP and the SP government's failure in checking the problem in five of its rule.

AKHILESH DEFENDS KATIYA PRACTICE

However, the worse was yet to come. Instead of admitting the brazen theft of power, Akhilesh not just defended the crime but also apparently promoted it.

Succumbing to vote bank politics, Akhilesh gave a nod to power theft. Addressing a rally in communally sensitive Muzaffarnagar on Friday, the UP chief minister claimed that the state government was providing round-the-clock electricity and was also not stopping anybody from stealing electricity. "The government has no objection if you use katiya for illegal power," Akhilesh Yadav was quoted as saying.

Earlier, Cabinet minister in Akhilesh's government Azam Khan had said that it was because of the SP's good governance in the state that nobody was even asking the people regarding the payment of taxes.

UP CM AGAINST POWER THEFTS

Akhilesh's remarks are in stark contrast to his own stand a couple of years ago. In January 2015, while talking to mediapersons in Deoria, he had expressed concern over power theft by way of katiyas. He had then said that power theft was adversely affecting the state's development.

He had also claimed that his government had launched a number of initiatives, including campaign, to check power theft by appealing to the people to forsake the practice.

UP'S POOR RECORD IN POWER MANAGEMENT

Akhilesh's volte face is also worrying because the country's most populous state has the dubious distinction of registering the highest aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) losses at 39 per cent in the first quarter of the current fiscal. Besides, its outstanding power-sector debt stood at over Rs 54,000 crore.

Releasing SP's election manifesto for UP's seven-phase Assembly elections commencing on February 11, Akhilesh made tall claims but omitted checking the katiya practice or power theft. He said all non-electrified villages would be electrified and 24-hour power supply would be ensured for domestic consumers in rural and urban areas.

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UNFULFILLED CLAIMS IN SP'S ELECTION MANIFESTO

However, the voters may take Akhilesh's claims with a pinch a salt because the promises made with regard to electricity in SP's 2012 Assembly elections manifesto have remained unfulfilled.

Then, SP had promised 20 hours a day power supply in rural areas and 22 hours a day in urban areas. However, the actual situation is far from the promises made five years ago.

Now, Akhilesh's go-ahead to the law-breakers to steal power by way of katiyas should be more disappointing.

Watch Video: Akhilesh Rahul conduct road show in Lucknow post alliance announcement Also Read:Assembly Elections 2017 LIVE: 'UP Boys' Akhilesh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi hold roadshow in Agra Mulayam will campaign for us, Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance to win UP: Akhilesh to India Today

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YORK  A felony case against McLean Christiansen, 23, of York, has been bound over to District Court, in which he is accused of possessing methamphetamine.

According to court documents, York Police officers went to Christiansens home on East Ninth Street to serve a warrant.

When they entered the house, they discovered that he was inside a locked room and they ordered him to unlock the door. When he didnt comply, they then ordered him to lie on the floor with his hands behind his back. After he complied, they entered the entered the room in order to take him into custody.

Court documents do not indicate the nature of the warrant.

However, officers allege that while they were gathering Christiansens clothes, in order for him to get dressed before transport, they found multiple clear capsules containing a crystal-like substance.

Investigators say, in court documents, that the substance tested positive for methamphetamine.

Christiansen has been charged with a Class 4 felony, which carries a possible maximum sentence of two years in prison and 12 months post-release supervision, upon conviction.

Arraignment proceedings are pending in York County District Court.
YORK  Michael Lloyd, a fire captain at Offutt Air Force Base, has been named the new fire chief for the city of York.

The city council has given full approval to his appointment.

He now fills the position that had long been held by Kevin Stuhr, who resigned several months ago. In the interim, York Fire Training/Safety Officer Tony Bestwick took care of the duties otherwise handled by the chief.

We had in excess of 10 applicants for this position, Mayor Orval Stahr told the council. We received the applications and from those it was determined who met the qualifications for the position. Then five applications went to the Civil Service Board and two applicants were interviewed twice. After reviewing their reports, Id like to recommend Michael Lloyd.

Chief Lloyd brings to the table years of experience, Mayor Stahr said.

He began his fire service career in 1980, serving with a variety of career and volunteer departments over the last 35 years. He is currently serving as a captain with Offutt Air Force Base Fire and Emergency Services, which is a full-service fire department providing structural and aircraft fire suppression in addition to emergency medical services, HAZMAT and technical rescue.

He has been a part-time instructor with the Nebraska State Fire Marshals Training Division since 1997, teaching HAZMAT, incident command, building construction and fire instructor courses.

He is currently serving as the vice-president for the Nebraska Society of Fire Service Instructors.

I am humbled and honored that the Civil Service Commission and the mayor feel I am the guy for the job, Lloyd told the council. I am here to bring a fresh set of eyes to your department. Im not an emotion-driven guy, Im about the facts. How I will approach this position is by using data and matching bench marks. I am very humbled and honored to be here.

Lloyd said his decision to make a professional change in his life was because he realized the opportunity for professional growth had reached its peak where he was, and now I look very forward to this new position.

Councilman Clarence Hoffman brought forward a question he had received from two York residents who worried that Lloyd is not an EMT. The mayor said that matter was clarified and the new chief is certified in that capacity.

The council voted unanimously to appoint Lloyd as chief.

So you are hired, said Mayor Stahr.

I look forward to knowing all of you, Lloyd said to the council, and building that relationship.
OMAHA  Rahimullah Rahimi, his wife and three young children wearily but excitedly started up the Eppley Airfield ramp Wednesday evening after their whirlwind trip from halfway around the globe.

The Afghan family immediately was engulfed by relatives who embraced them in long, sometimes tearful hugs. Also on hand in the greeting party was John Detisch, Hillary Nather-Detisch and their three children, holding aloft a Welcome to Omaha sign as the refugees sponsor family.

Its the kind of scene that has played out in Omaha in recent years on a weekly, if not daily, basis. But it will be some time before its repeated again. The Rahimi family became the last refugees to land in the city before President Donald Trumps executive order freezing all refugee resettlements took full effect.

This is officially our last, said Lacey Studnicka, who helps coordinate refugee resettlement for Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska. We had a lot scheduled in February, but then we got the cancellation notices in our office. This is real.

In addition to suspending all refugee resettlements for 120 days, the presidents order barred for 90 days any travel

into the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries, indefinitely barred refugees from Syria and slashed the number of refugees that will be accepted this year from 110,000 to 50,000.

The executive order is part of Trumps America First agenda, necessary, he said, to assure that radical Islamist terrorists do not enter the United States.

Exactly when refugee resettlements will resume is unclear. Trumps order does allow for exceptions. Included among those can be refugees from Iraq or Afghanistan receiving special immigrant visas after working as translators for the U.S. military.

Thats the same program the Rahimi family came in on, Rahimullah having worked at a U.S. base near Kabul. His brother in-law, Mohammad Mobin, also had worked as a translator before coming to Omaha under the program in 2014.

Mobin, who was part of Wednesdays greeting party, initially was concerned that the presidents order could keep the Rahimi family from reaching Omaha. He said hes glad those who risked their lives to help the Americans will continue to receive consideration under the order. Omaha tends to get a handful of such refugee cases per year.

For his own part, Rahimi said he was excited to land in Omaha, where hes hoping to find a good future for my kids, and me, too.

His son, 7-year-old Shabir, seemed to quickly take to his new home, grabbing a 4-year-old nephew hed last seen in Afghanistan more than two years ago and leading him to the escalator.

He wants to get to the United States and find American friends, Rahimi said of his son. He used a lot of English words on the airplane.
Col. Thomas K. Smith, Jr., 433rd Airlift Wing commander, arrived at the KLUP radio station early on Jan. 28 for a unique opportunity to speak to residents of the Alamo city. Smith was interviewed on The Military USA Radio show on 930 A.M. The Answer by hosts Mark Frye, former 433rd AW honorary commander, and retired Air Force Col. Kelley Crooks.

The show runs every Saturday from 8 to 9 a.m. and seeks to inform and educate listeners about the importance of the more than 200 military missions in the Alamo City.
Talking to India Today after this immensely successful road show UP Congress president and RS MP Raj Babbar said that the Congress has firmly gripped the handle of the 'Cycle' with both hands, which has made the opponents of the Congress lose their sleep throughout the country.

By Siraj Qureshi: Following the success of his Lucknow road show, UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav held another road show with Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, this time in Agra, in a bid to prove to his opponents that this coalition is not just for a limited display, but the two parties are standing together in this election towards their common goal of defeating the BJP.

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Talking to India Today after this immensely successful road show UP Congress president and RS MP Raj Babbar said that the Congress has firmly gripped the handle of the 'Cycle' with both hands, which has made the opponents of the Congress lose their sleep throughout the country.

Babbar said that the people of Braj region have accepted this friendship with open arms. This is the region which the BJP and BSP thought as their stronghold. The way the two leaders were greeted by the people of Agra made it clear that 'UP Ko Ye Sath Pasand Hai' and the SP and Congress candidates will reach the assembly victorious while the opponents will lose their deposits.

HEAVY SECURITY

The Rath carrying the two leaders started at Dayalbagh Educational Institute around 4:15 pm and the road show passed through the entire city, passing through Mahatma Gandhi Road, ending at Bijlighar crossing near Agra Fort where the duo held an impromptu public meeting in which they openly criticized PM Narendra Modi and the failed demonetisation bid.

The whole road was barricaded to ensure the security of both leaders and they remained under the cover of the Special Protection Group (SPG), National Security Guard (NSG) and Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) commandos. Both leaders reached the Kheria airport of Agra in separate helicopters and reached Dayalbagh in a special bus to start the roadshow.

Apart from the SPG, 3 Superintendents of Police, 6 ASPs, 12 Circle Officers, 20 SHOs, 100 Sub-Inspectors and 500 Constables were deployed in the security of the duo. The massive roadshow was significantly larger than the Lucknow event and the city remained at a standstill till late evening, as the city's heartline MG Road was blocked for the roadshow an hour in advance.

After the conclusion of the road show, SP Supremo and UP CM Akhilesh Yadav held a dialogue with the prominent citizens of Agra in a special convention 'Agra Citizens Connect 2017' at Hotel Mughal on the Fatehabad Road, where he unveiled a separate manifesto for Agra and expressed his dedication towards the development of Agra into an international destination and also ensured that the problems faced by this tourism city are fully resolved.

AGRA MANIFESTO

He said that he believes that PM Modi has nothing to show as his achievement in his entire tenure except the terrorising specter of demonetisation that threw the entire country into chaos. He said that it was clear Modi had grossly miscalculated the volume of black money in the country as almost the entire volume of currency in circulation has returned to the banks and yet the central government is unable to tell the people of the country exactly how much black money was recovered. He said that although people said a lot against him for voicing his views, but he still believes that money is neither black or white, it is only the transactions that are lawful and unlawful. In fact, he said, international economists have confirmed that unaccounted currency can sometimes save economies from collapsing during economic crises.

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Meeting the industry leaders of Agra, he assured them that as soon as his government is formed again in UP, he will hold a meeting with the city's top industrialists as he believes that if the government invests 1000 crores in a city's infrastructure, the city gives back four times to the government in the form of increased revenue. He said that the party's separate manifesto for Agra is the blueprint of this city's development in the next five years, if the Samajwadi Party regains power.

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Being the peak of tourist season, the road show was also witnessed by thousands of foreign tourists along its path and the tourists also captured the two in their cameras.

--- ENDS ---
The case was being heard in NGT since January 2013 for emitting soot and flyash.

By Baishali Adak: Residents of Sukhdev Vihar in southeast Delhi said they would move the Supreme Court against Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd's Okhla waste to energy (WTE) plant on Thursday.

This came after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) gave a judgement allowing it to function in their neighbourhood after paying an 'Environmental Compensation' (EC) of Rs25 lakh for "deficient operation," earlier in the day.

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The case was being heard in NGT since January 2013 for emitting "soot and flyash, detrimental to the health of patients in two hospitals nearby -- Escorts Heart Institute and Holy Family - and residents of localities like Sukhdev Vihar, Ishwar Nagar, Ghaffar Manzil etc."

A bench headed by NGT chairperson Swatanter Kumar, and comprising judicial members UD Salvi and RS Rathore, and expert members BS Sajwan and Ranjan Chaterjee, delivered a 142-page judgement on the issue on Thursday.

Also Read: Okhla waste-to-energy plant to remain operational: NGT

It said the Okhla plant should not be directed to "either shut down or be shifted to another site as there is definite evidence before it to arrive at a finding that the project proponent is compliant and nonpolluting."

The bench said the project proponent, M/s Jindal Urban Infrastructure Ltd, is however "liable to pay an EC of Rs25 lakh in terms of provisions of the NGT Act for pollution (as) its stack emissions were in excess of prescribed parameters up to the period of December 18, 2014."

"Inspections conducted thereafter found that, by and large, the plant was compliant. Variations, if any, were not very material and exceeding by a very marginal difference," it noted.

Ranjit Devraj, who has been heading the litigation against the plant since 2009, said, "We will move the Supreme Court. What is Rs25 lakh? It is a very small fine. If even one person gets cancer, he or she will end up spending much more than Rs25 lakh. Over 80 doctors have signed our petition to have this monstrous plant removed."

"NGT took this only as an environmental case. It did not consider my Right to Life as enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution," he added.

The PIL was first filed in Delhi HC in year 2009. It contended that as per the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2000, the plant was supposed to be near Tughlakabad landfill. However, it became the Timarpur-Okhla WTE plant bang in the middle of colonies like Maharani Bagh, New Friends Colony etc. Also, it abandoned safe technologies like segregation and bio-methanation, to openly burn the garbage, resulting in production of lethal dioxins and furans.

An officer at the Jindal WTE plant, who did not wish to be named, said, "We have passed all tests by government agencies so far. This is only propaganda against us by locals." Delhi Government's counsel, Tarunvir Khehar, said, "The court has pronounced a judgement as per its wisdom. Authorities will have to comply with it."

--- ENDS ---

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YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Avag Yepremyans Chorus disbanded book tops this weeks list of the exclusive project of ARMENPRESS news agency entitled Yerevan Bestseller. This is the authors 6th collection.

Stefan Zweigs Collected Stories is ranked 2nd in the list. Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world. The book was translated by Ara Arakelyan and Margarit Arakelyan.

Edgar Harutyunyans The Art of Devotion or Ode to the Rose is third in the bestseller list.

Oscar Wildes The Picture Of Dorian Gray is approaching the top three again, being listed 4th in the bestselling list of the week. Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist who is impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mode in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Spencer Johnsons Who Moved My Cheese this week is ranked 5th in the list. Published on September 8, 1998, Who Moved My Cheese is a motivational business fable. The text describes change in one's work and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by two mice and two "little people," during their hunt for cheese. A New York Times business bestseller upon release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers Weekly's hardcover nonfiction list. It has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains one of the best-selling business books.

The Fault in Our Stars is the sixth novel by author John Green, published in January 2012. The book has returned to the list and is ranked 6th. The title is inspired by Act 1, Scene 2 of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, in which the nobleman Cassius says to Brutus: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." The story is narrated by Hazel Grace Lancaster, a sixteen-year-old girl with cancer.

Milan Kunderas The Unbearable Lightness of Being is listed 7th this week. The Unbearable Lightness of Being takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society from the Prague Spring of 1968 to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union and three other Warsaw Pact countries and its aftermath. The main characters are: Tomas, an adulterous surgeon; his wife Tereza, a photographer anguished by her husband's infidelities; Tomass lover Sabina, a free-spirited artist; Franz, a Swiss university professor and lover of Sabina; and finally Simon, Tomass estranged son from an earlier marriage.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is ranked the 8th in the list. It is a 2006 Holocaust novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. Unlike the months of planning Boyne devoted to his other books, he said that he wrote the entire first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end.

"Animal Farm" by George Orwell is 9th on "Bestseller Books List. Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novel, published in Englandon 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to theRussian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Orwell, ademocratic socialist, was an outspoken critic of Joseph Stalin and, especially after experiences with the NKVD and the Spanish Civil War, he was actively opposed to the controversial ideology of Stalinism. The book is banned in China, North Korea, Burma and a number of Islamic countries.

The Alchemist by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho concludes this weeks list. The novel is about having a dream and the dedication to making it come true, coupled with love, kindness and the ability to recognize a new country.

The following bookstores took part in a survey for the bestseller project : Bookinist (53-74-13), Narek (51 91 36), Zangak (23 26 49), Antares (091 90 01 23) and the 7th Bookstore ( 077 24 54 81).

Yerevan Bestseller project presented by Angela Hambardzumyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. 91 servicemen will receive apartments in 2017 under the social program on servicemens housing, the defense ministry told ARMENPRESS in response to an inquiry.

At the same time, the ministry allocates financial compensation to servicemen who are renting apartments in locations of their service.

As of January 10, 2017, 3228 servicemen are registered in the defense ministrys system that need permanent apartments. During 2007-2016, the ministry provided apartments to an average of 266 servicemen each year, the statement reads.

The ministry also said 86 service-residential buildings were renovated or constructed under the ministrys programs. 15 buildings are planned to be commissioned in 2017-2018.

In 2014, several legislative documents have been initiated on regulated the social protection field for servicemen and their families.

The Social Development Strategy of the Armed Forces until 2025 document is currently being elaborated, which will define the main goal of the Armed Forces social development, the issues, expected results, principles of initiation, stages and priorities and supervision mechanisms.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The Ministry of Defense of Nagorno Karabakh told Armenpress the Azerbaijani forces made more than 30 ceasefire violations across the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.

The Ministry issued a statement which says: On February 2 and overnight February 3 the Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire regime more than 30 times by firing over 440 shots from various caliber weapons, as well as sniper rifles at the Armenian positions in the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact. The Azerbaijani forces also fired ISTIGLAL sniper rifles (25 shots) at the south-eastern direction of the line of contact.

The NKR Defense Army forces refrained from taking countermeasures and continued confidently fulfilling their military duties.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The Shativank Monastery complex, located in Vayots Dzor, is on the verge of collapse. Parts of the roof are dangerously deteriorated, while slabs of the cover have collapsed and moved. The monastery is considered a pilgrimage site.

Tigran Khudoyan, head of the Shatin community, told ARMENPRESS they have addressed state officials over the issue, but no one responded.

This historic monument, which is exclusive with its structure, is disintegrating and losing its essential part, he said.

Arev Samuelyan, deputy minister of culture, said a monitoring was conducted in the monastery in 2009, and the Shativank monastery is under the spotlight of responsible agencies.

The Culture Ministry carries out yearly monitoring activities at historic-cultural monument sites, and as a result a list of valuable and endangered monuments is formed. Financial resources are planned under the budget for elaborating a research-design document on the restoration of the monument, she said.

The deputy minister said budgetary allocations are scarce, and it is not possible to restore all monuments at once. It can be done only as result of long-term programs, although we will definitely deal with this one as soon as possible, she said.

Shativank is located 4km east from Shatin village. According to St. Orbelian, the monastery was built in 929 during the reign of Bagratuni Abas I.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. A bipartisan group of United States senators said on February 2 they support additional sanctions against Iran over its ballistic missile tests, amid reports that the Trump administration will roll out financial penalties, The Hill reports.

22 senators sent a letter to US President Donald Trump, arguing that Iran "must feel sufficient pressure."

"Full enforcement of existing sanctions and the imposition of additional sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program are necessary," the senators wrote in the letter to President Trump, as reported by the Hill.

Trump also tweeted early Thursday morning that "Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missiles."
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. German Chancellor Angela Merkel had a meeting with the delegation of pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party during her visit in Turkey on February 2, Demokrathaber.net reported.

The meeting was held in the German Embassy and lasted over an hour.

It is reported that Merkel personally demanded to hold this meeting.

Earlier the German Chancellor had meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. During the meetings Merkel talked about the necessity to respect the fundamental freedoms in the country.






YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Over 464 million drams have been returned in Tax Free refunds to foreign citizens visiting Armenia in 2016. The indicator has surpassed the 2015 number by over 123 million drams. Since the launch of the Tax Free system in Armenia, in 2014, around 1 billion AMD in tax refunds were returned to 10,000 people, the state revenue committee told ARMENPRESS.

According to the Governments decision, from January 1, 2017, the threshold of the acquired products price for the Tax Free system (including VAT) has been changed from 100,000 AMD to 50,000 AMD. The move aims to boost retail businesses and increase the refundable VAT sum.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The proposal on constitutional changes, adopted by Turkeys Parliament, has been submitted to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for approval, Anadolu reported.

The president has only 15 days to approve or return the proposal. In case of approval, the decision on referendum will be published in the Turkish official newspaper, and the referendum will be held on the first Sunday after the 60th day following the publication. The voting is expected to take place on April 9 or 16.

Under the constitutional changes, the country will be transformed to a presidential system. The number of MPs will become 600 from 550. MPs can be elected at the age of 18, rather than 25.

The elections of the parliament and the president will be held every 5 years on the same day. The countrys president can be a party member.

In case of committing a crime, investigation will be allowed to launch against the president by the proposal of the absolute majority of the MPs. The president can appoint and dismiss the Vice-Presidents and Ministers. The establishment of Ministries will be decided by the Presidents decrees.

A decision can be made to hold new elections by the 3/5 votes of the MPs. In this case again the elections of the parliament and the president must be held the same day.

The next election of Turkeys parliament and president is expected to be held on November 3, 2019. The number of members of the Constitutional Court will be decreased to 15 from 17.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The sanctions against Russia will remain in place until it withdraws from Crimea, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at the UN Security Council, CNN reported.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine, Nikki Haley saying as quoted by CNN.

We want to normalize relations with Russia, she said, at the same time blaming Moscow on aggression, occupation and military intervention. She said the situation in Ukraine requires condemnation of Russias actions. The escalation of violence must stop in Ukraine, she said, stating that Washington supports the Ukrainian people and the Minsk agreements.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Turkeys Prime Minister Binali Yildirimn announced he has sent a letter to his Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras, requesting the extradition of the 8 Turkish soldiers who have fled after the failed coup attempt, Anadolu reports.

Yildirimn said the Greek Courts ruling on blocking the extradition of the servicemen is disappointing.

Ive sent a letter to Tsipras on this matter. Ive stated our expectations in terms of reviewing the verdict and extraditing them, Yildirimn said.

The Turkish PM said Greece hasnt responded yet.

Turkey has reacted with anger after a Greek court ruled against extraditing eight Turkish soldiers accused of involvement in an attempted coup.

Turkey accused Greece of failing in the "fight against terrorism" and said the decision was "politically motivated".

The eight men fled in a helicopter to Greece after last July's coup attempt but say they were not involved.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. 12 people, who were previously arrested by Turkish law enforcement agencies for singing a Turkish folk song in Kurdish in Istanbuls Recep Tayyip Erdogan park might be sentenced to 15 years in prison, Sputnik reports.

The Prosecutions charge says the arrested are part of an organized criminal group and were carrying out propaganda. The court is currently processing the case.

The 12 arrested individuals, who were detained in August of 2016, deny charges.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Nearly 40% of US voters support President Donald Trumps impeachment, 48% were against it, with 12% abstentions, according to Public Policy Pollind poll, Sputnik News reported.

Less than 2 weeks into Donald Trump's tenure as President, 40% of voters already want to impeach him, Public Policy Polling said in a press release with the poll. That's up from 35% of voters who wanted to impeach him a week ago.

Impeachment can be declared in the US only for crimes committed by the President.

Over 52% of voters said they would prefer Barack Obama as President, while 43% supported Trumps presidency.

As for Trumps immigration executive order, 47% of voters supported it, whereas 49% were against.

The poll was conducted on January 30, 31, including 725 participants.

Photo by AP
GYUMRI, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Following the meeting with Armenias Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on January 26, a group of businessmen expressed a wish to make investments in Gyumri.

The businessmen, interested in carrying out investment program over the restoration of Shirakatsi and Rostaveli streets leading to Kumayri reserve, arrived in Gyumri on February 3. Together with the PM they will get acquainted with the upcoming works, President of the Union of Manufacturers and Businessmen (Employers) of Armenia Arsen Ghazaryan told Armenpress, who as a businessmen also expressed a wish to make investments in the city.

In this shot period of time we will try to launch the restoration program of Kumayri reserve with the restoration of these two streets. This in its turn will increase Gyumris attractiveness. By this we throw serious challenges to Gyumris developmet, Ghazaryan said.

In a meeting with the PM 22 businessmen expressed a wish to join the program and some of them have already made an investment. Since the citys development starts from the airport, the first visit of the businessmen will be the Shirak airport. First of all the airport must have conditions in accordance with international standards, not only for the so-called law-cost airlines, but also for other airlines, he said.

He said according to preliminary data, nearly 10 million USD investment will be implemented in the Shirak airport, and 200 million USD investment in Kumayri reserve. The reserves renovation will be in stages.

Armenuhi Mkhoyan
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The ARF Armenian Youth Federations With Our Soldiers campaign has distributed financial assistance to the families of the fallen soldiers of the Four Day War and the ceasefire violations since then, Asbarez reports.

Representatives of the Armenian Youth Federation visited 108 families of soldiers and volunteers who were killed during April 1  December 31, 2016, and allocated 126.5 thousand USD is aid, and a total of 3000 USD was sent to the families of Shavarsh Melikyan, Erik Abovyan and Edgar Narayan, the soldiers who repelled the Azerbaijani sabotage-incursion attempt on December 29 near Chinari village.

The AYF will also send one-time sums to the families of the three servicemen who were killed by Azerbaijani fire in January of 2017.

In addition to financial aid, the AYF carries out regular programs, one of which being the supply of non-military items to soldiers stationed in Talish and Tonashen, NKR.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The regular political consultations between the Foreign Ministries of Armenia and Japan were held in the Japanese MFA on February 3, press service of the Armenian MFA told Armenpress.

The consultations from the Armenian side were chaired by Deputy Foreign Minister Armen Papikyan, whereas from the Japanese side it was led by Japan MFAs Special Representative for Central Asia and Caucasus, Ambassador Toshihiro Aiki.

The sides discussed a wide range of issues related to bilateral ties. Importance was attached to the prospects on implementing bilateral high-ranking mutual visits, intensifying economic cooperation, expanding the legal framework, cooperating in international organizations. They exchanged views on the current situation in the Middle East, the Asian and Pacific regions, as well as their solutions.

The Armenian side presented in-detail the Governments steps aimed at boosting investments and the benefit to make investments in Armenia. In its turn the Japanese side promised to discuss the opportunities on making investments in Armenia. Agreement was reached to continue discussions both in bilateral format, as well as within the frames of international organizations.

The Armenian side also presented its stance over the settlement process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and expressed satisfaction over Japans balanced stance on this issue.

Issues related to expanding and promoting cultural and educational programs were also discussed.

Both sides highlighted the importance of the Armenian-Japanese inter-parliamentary productive cooperation and in this context highly appreciated the results of the visit of the Armenian parliamentary delegation led by Speaker Galust Sahakyan to Japan from January 29 to February 3.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. A number of airlines, in addition to Pobeda airline, are interested in Gyumris Shirak airport, however, the General Department of Civil Aviation has not yet received an official proposal, Sergey Avetisyan - Head of the General Department of Civil Aviation, told reporters in Gyumri on February 3, reports Armenpress.

He added that at the moment Gyumris Shirak airport is considered to be in accordance with international standards and serves international flights.

Sergey Avetisyan said a number of privileges are defined aimed at increasing the attractiveness of the airport. Currently the air navigation service is carried out at 50% discount rate.

Gyumris airport operates since 1961.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Georgia must strengthen relations both with the European Union (EU) and Russia, Sebastian Kurz - OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Austrias Foreign Minister, said at a joint press conference with Georgian Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze, reports Sputnik News.

There is no either, or. There cannot be relations either with the EU or Russia. Both the first one and the second one must be possible, and it would be possible. Georgias relations must be strengthened by the EU, on the one hand, and by Russia on the other hand, Kurz said.

The Georgian FM said in a meeting with his Austrian counterpart talked about the bilateral mutual ties. He thanked the Austrian side for the sustainable assistance provided to Georgias territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Sebastian Kurz arrived in Georgia on the night of February 2 on an official visit. He will have meetings with President Giorgi Margvelashvili and Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Representatives of the Ombudsman visited the Nubarashen correctional facility on February 1 and February 3, and met with inmate Nerses Poghosyan, who had previously announced starting a hunger strike.

The Ombudsmans representatives had a private conversation with the inmate and reviewed his incarceration conditions, the Ombudsmans Office told ARMENPRESS.

During the visit, the Ombudsmans representatives were notified that Poghosyan said he is ending the hunger strike on the same day. Poghosyan is incarcerated in solitary confinement in the medical unit of the prison.

Poghosyan said he ended the hunger strike because his health drastically deteriorated overnight.

Medical personnel examined the inmate and gave him post-hunger strike advices.

Poghosyan was sentenced for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. A 23 year old man has fallen down from the 4th floor of a residential building in downtown Yerevan. The man has been hospitalized and is currently in serious condition.

The Police HQ told ARMENPRESS the man was unable to speak and give any information on what happened.

Police were notified about the 23 year old from the hospital, doctors reported that a man has been admitted with multiple traumatic injuries.

According to the ambulance crew, the man fell from the 4th floor and is currently under intensive care.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Russia in the first half of March to discuss the bilateral relations with President Vladimir Putin, Turkey's ambassador to Russia Huseyin Dirioz said, Sputnik News reported.

The ambassador informed that the visa liberalization for Turkeys citizens is going to be the major issue of the discussion agenda. First of all, we will bring the issue of visa regime liberalization for businessmen and political figures to the agenda which is important in terms of developing the relations, the ambassador said.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. RPA faction MP Karen Bekaryan has no serious expectations from the negotiations on the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in near future, reports Armenpress.

In a meeting with reporters on February 3, the MP said the policy run by Azerbaijans political leadership shows that that country doesnt have a desire to implement the Vienna and St. Petersburg agreements.

In these circumstances we cannot have any serious expectations from the negotiations. The logic is simple: how can they sit and hold negotiations on peaceful settlement when the shots are not stopping, the MP said.

MP Bekaryan talked about the balanced stance of the Minsk Group Co-Chairs in case when Azerbaijan is vividly an obstacle to effectiveness of negotiations aimed at peacefully settling the conflict. Such balanced statements by the Minsk Group encourage Azerbaijan to continue its destructive policy, he said.

As for the possible meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents or Foreign Ministers, Bekaryan said one cannot have serious expectations from these meetings as long as Azerbaijan refuses to implement the agreements on maintenance of ceasefire and installation of investigative mechanisms in the line of contact.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. During the entire period of the Syrian conflict Armenias stance has been clear and right, Arpine Hovsepyan  Expert of "Insight" Analytical Center for Applied Policy and Research, told reporters on February 3, Armenpress reported.

During the entire period of the conflict Armenia maintained a balanced stance and continued political relations with Syria. At the same time, Armenia successfully carried out a mission on providing assistance to the Syrian-Armenians. The Armenian Consulate General in Aleppo was the only diplomatic structure that continued its activity, Arpine Hovsepyan said.

The expert recalled that Armenia, except maintaining warm political relations with Syria, also provided humanitarian aid to Armenians living in Syria, as well as people of Syria in general. She informed that during the conflict Armenia hosted 24.000 Syrian-Armenians, and it is the third country in Europe in terms of hosting refugees.

Hovsepyan stated that Armenia has not made sensational statements over the Syrian conflict, but expressed its stance through practical steps.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. A French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete and carrying two bags on Friday as he tried to enter the Paris Louvre museum, Reuters reports.

French law enforcement agencies say it appears to be a terrorist attack.

The unidentified man shouted Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) and attacked another soldier before being shot near the museum's shopping mall, police said, adding a second person had also been detained for suspicious behavior.

The attacker is seriously wounded; the head of Paris police Michel Cadot told reporters at the scene, adding the bags he had been carrying contained no explosives.

"The soldier fired five bullets," Cadot said, describing how the man hurried threateningly towards the soldiers.

"It was an attack by a person... who represented a direct threat and whose actions suggested a terrorist context, he added as quoted by Reuters.

An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement.

The identity and nationality of the attacker remains unknown for now, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The Nagorno Karabakh conflict is a direct threat first of all to the security, stability and further development of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing, reports Armenpress.

She refused to comment on newly appointed US Secretary of State Rex Tillersons statement which said the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is a threat to the regional stability and the US national security interests.

Zakharova said every country must assess itself the threats to its security. I think that the conflict is first of all a direct threat to the security, stability and further development of Armenia and Azerbaijan, she said.

She said Russia highly appreciates public diplomacy. But the most important mission of any initiative must be the understanding that there is no alternative to mutually acceptable, mutual concession and peaceful settlement. All steps must be directed towards the solution of this concrete issue, Zakharova said.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on February 3 held a meeting with Director-General for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations at the European Commission Christian Danielsson, press service of the Presidents Office told Armenpress.

President Sargsyan welcomed the guest and expressed hope during these two days in Armenia Mr. Danielsson had productive and useful meetings and discussions. Serzh Sargsyan said with satisfaction that the last two years were active in terms of Armenia-EU cooperation, the political dialogue has been significantly intensified, the cooperation in various sectors has been expanded. In this context the President attached importance to high-ranking mutual visits, recalling the recent visits of the President of the European Council Donald Tusk, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and other high-ranking officials to Armenia.

The sides stated that the talks on new framework agreement between Armenia and the EU are being actively continued and expressed hope the process will enter the final stage soon.

Christian Danielsson attached importance to President Sargsyans upcoming visit to Brussels which will give new impetus to the development of mutual partnership.

President Sargsyan said the adoption of decision on approving the negotiations mandate over common aviation zone with Armenia by the EU Council was an important achievement and assured that Armenia is ready to further promote the mutual cooperation with the EU in boosting reforms, mobility, good governance, democracy, human rights, economic cooperation and in a number of sectors of mutual interest. Serzh Sargsyan expressed gratitude the EU for the efforts and resources put on this process, as well as for the assistance provided ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections.

At the meeting both sides attached importance to the negotiation process over

Partnership priorities.

President Sargsyan and Mr. Danielsson also exchanged views on regional issues and threats during the meeting.












YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Armenias minister of foreign affairs Edward Nalbandian held a meeting on February 3 with the delegation of Christian Danielsson, Director General for Enlargement at the European Commission, the ministry told ARMENPRESS.

Nalbandian welcomed the guest and noted that the expansion of comprehensive relations with the European Union is an important part of the Armenian foreign policy agenda.

The parties thoroughly discussed the process of Armenia-EU negotiations on a new legal document. Nalbandian and Danielsson expressed hope that it will be possible to complete the negotiations soon.

The sides also discussed Armenias participation in various EU programs, and stated with satisfaction the deepening of cooperation in different areas.

The minister briefed Mr. Danielsson on the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing states on advancing the peaceful settlement process of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Pieter Omtzigt, a Dutch parliamentarian at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), is urging PACE leaders to launch a deep, thorough investigation by an independent panel that makes its findings public, on the recent violation and corruption allegations within the structure. The lawmakers proposal namely refers to discussions which emerged after a PACE voting about Azerbaijani political prisoners in 2013, The Guardian reports.

We see a lot of suspicious outcomes of votes and procedures on Azerbaijan, Omtzigt told the Guardian, calling for an urgent investigation and overhaul of the assemblys code of conduct.

Azerbaijan joined PACE in 2001, but observers have long raised questions about the parliamentary assemblys weak response to ballot-box stuffing and human rights violations in the oil-rich country.

Human rights groups have blamed caviar diplomacy, gifts of gold, silver, silk carpets and the regional fishy delicacy, which are showered on visiting dignitaries to the Azerbaijani capital, Baku.

When it became known that Italian parliamentarian Luca Volonte accepted bribes from Azerbaijan to carry out pro-Azerbaijani activities in PACE, many senior parliamentarians have warned that failure to carry out an independent investigation would erode the credibility of the human rights body. It is not credible if you tell other countries to be open and transparent if you do not investigate credible allegations of vote-rigging, Omtzigt said.

One fifth of Paces 324 parliamentarians have signed Omtzigts resolution, which states that recent, serious and credible allegations of grave misconduct risk undermining public confidence in the assembly. The signatories are a cross-party coalition, drawn from 25 countries, including the UK, France, Germany, the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries, Greece and Ukraine.

Gerald Knaus, the chairman of the European Stability Initiative, a thinktank specialising in south-eastern Europe and the Caucasus, said the Council of Europes parliamentary leaders had failed to ask questions about open and obvious suspicions of corruption, which had been circulating in the corridors of the Strasbourg assembly.

The rosy picture of Azerbaijans elections painted by monitors from Pace should have raised questions years ago, Knaus said.

We have had election observers [in Azerbaijan] from the Council of Europe in 2010, 2013 and again in 2015. Each time these elected parliamentarians came away saying the sun was shining, when everyone else said it was raining. Each time they say the elections were free and fair  and each time the long-term observer election experts from the OSCE and ODIHR, say there were major problems.

Knaus said the assemblys leaders had shown an astonishing amount of indifference. The Council of Europe is an institution we need more than ever given all the attacks on core human rights in Europe, he continued. If Europe fails to defend these principles what hope is there for anywhere else in the world.

The head of PACE, Spanish senator Pedro Agramunt, initially resisted the inquiry, blaming fellow parliamentarians for a campaign to discredit political opponents by means of slurs, intimidation and coercion.

But Agramunt made an abrupt U-turn in favour of an investigation on Friday, after strongly-worded complaints from a dozen countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, the Baltic and Nordic states.

Knaus said the key question now was the terms of reference of the investigation, which will be presented to Agramunt in early March.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Armenia has serious opportunity to attract investments from Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Arpine Hovsepyan, expert of the Hayatsk applied policy and research analytical center told reporters on February 3.

We see that Armenia is taking active steps recently for developing relations with Arab States of the Persian Gulf. There is really a chance to attract serious investments from that countries, because one of the priority components of their economic policies is export of capital, Hovsepyan said.

The expert says an important step in strengthening relations with Persian Gulf countries was the visit of President Sargsyan to the United Arab Emirates, where important agreements were made in terms of cooperation. She added that Armenias cooperation with Persian Gulf countries began back in 2009, when the President visited Kuwait.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Armenias Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on February 3 received the delegation led by Director-General for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations at the European Commission Christian Danielsson, press service of the Government told Armenpress.

The PM welcomed the guests and said Armenias European agenda is among the priorities of the countrys foreign policy. Our cooperation is based on common value system and is important for us. Armenia is ready to promote, deepen and strengthen the partnership with the European Union in the fields of mutual interest. In this context the talks on Armenia-EU new framework agreement are important, the PM said. He attached importance to Armenias participation in COSME and Horizon 2020 programs, as well as the launch of talks on joining the Common Aviation Zone agreement. The PM welcomed the active participation of the EU delegation to Armenia in fight against corruption, as well as thanked the EU for the assistance provided to ongoing reforms in Armenia.

Christian Danielsson also attached importance to the talks on Armenia-EU new framework agreement, stating that by this the bilateral relations enter a new stage. Promoting reforms will be important in terms of deepening and intensifying our cooperation, and we are together with you in the ambitious reforms, he said. Mr. Danielsson also talked about Armenia-EU partnership priorities, stating that the EU is interested in partnership on economic development, improvement of business environment, expansion of IT opportunities, infrastructure improvement and reforms of public administration system. He also welcomed the Armenian Governments steps aimed at fighting against corruption and said the EU is interested in expanding cooperation with Armenia in aviation sector.

Speaking about the Governments activity priorities, the PM said the reform of public administration system is a priority, and this will enable to record progress in other sectors as well. Karen Karapetyan informed that the Center for Strategic Initiatives has been established which will operate by the principle of public-private sector cooperation and will become the platform where reforms at various sectors, economic development programs will be discussed.

Christian Danielsson welcomed Armenias achievements in the IT sector, stating that Armenia is strong in this sector, and the Armenian scientific-technical and innovation achievements can serve as an example for many EU countries.

At the end of the meeting the PM said Armenia is open for development of mutual cooperation with the EU in all sectors.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Fighter pilots of the fourth generation Mig 29 fighter jets began exercises in the Erebuni military air base of Armenias Russian military base.

The Southern military district of Russia told ARMENPRESS Mig 29 pilots conduct aerial trainings of takeoff and landing in mountainous terrains, as well as weather reconnaissance flights.

In 2017, pilots of the Russian military base of Armenia will carry out more than 100 exercises, also in collaboration with the artillery, tank and motorized rifle divisions.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Selina Dogan, a Turkish Member of Parliament of Armenian descent, says banning lawmaker Garo Paylan from the Parliaments sessions is a blow to freedom of thought and speech, Agos reports.

Dogan, MP of Turkeys Republican People's Party, says it is everyones common responsibility to prevent hate speech and Paylans targeting.

There is immunity and freedom of expression at the tribune of Turkeys Parliament, which is of great importance to both lawmakers and citizens. Even if the issue is painful, it must be discussed in the Parliament of Turkey, not in Parliaments of other countries, she said.

Dogan announced every lawmaker of the Turkish parliament is valuable for her. Despite being from different parties, it is necessary to continue our political activity on main topics in an environment of solidarity, she said.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Christian Danielsson, European Union's Director-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations and Luc Devigne, Director for Russia, Eastern Partnership, Central Asia, Regional Cooperation, and OSCE (EEAS) concluded a two-day visit to Armenia, the EU Delegation to Armenia told Armenpress.

The EU high level officials visited Armenia on February 2-3. The two-day working visit to Armenia was a part of the official visit to South Caucasus region.

On February 3 the Director General Danielsson and Director Devigne met President Serzh Sargsyan, Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan and Government Ministers, representatives of civil society to discuss common priorities for further EU-Armenia cooperation.

They discussed the progress of the ongoing negotiations in the new EU-Armenia agreement, which will further deepen these relations. Both sides agreed to focus efforts to support a broad range of reforms in Armenia including public administration and justice sector, fight against corruption, and access to finance, education in order to enhance the country's economic growth and resilience. This will bring tangible results to citizens and will be important in view of the Brussels Summit in November 2017 and beyond.

As a part of the visit, on February 2, the Director General Christian Danielsson participated in the official plaque unveiling ceremony of the newly-constructed building of the Court of First Instance in the city of Ijevan, Tavush region financed by the European Union, together with the Minister of Justice of Armenia Arpine Hovhannisyan.

In the evening of the same day the Director General met the Armenian youth and held a public lecture and discussion with them in Matenadaran on the future of EU-Armenia relations.

At the end of the visit Christian Danielsson said: Armenia has many talented young people and a strong capacity for research and innovation. The EU will continue to invest in Armenia's future and support the country's drive for growth and ambitious reform plans to strengthen governance, fight corruption and ensure an independent, impartial and effective judiciary for the benefit of all Armenian citizens.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. The US Embassy and the Government of Armenia jointly implemented reforms in Open skies policy , thank to which western airlines have started to observe the Armenian market, US Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills told, answering the inquiry of the ANCA.

Due to that the number of passengers flying from or to Zvartnots airport has increased by 12% and speaking generally, the ticket prices have declined. Now the Armenian Government should try to set new routes and business proposals, Mills said.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 2, ARMENPRESS. Press secretary of the Foreign Ministry of Armenia Tigran Balayan has provided Armenpress news agency with information on the talks of visa liberalization agreement between Armenia and the United Arab Emirates.

- The January 19 Cabinet meeting discussed the issue of approving the agreement between the Republic of Armenia and the United Arab Emirates on visa abolition. When will the citizens of Armenia be able to visit the UAE without a visa?

- Generally, the Cabinet decision on approving the proposal of signing an international agreement is the first stage of the procedure of signing an international agreement. This means that its still early to speak about the agreements coming into force, since in this stage the Cabinet just takes a decision on starting bilateral talks on this agreement. The Cabinet decision will be followed by talks with the UAE and final domestic conciliation procedures, only after which it will be possible to prepare a draft for the signing by the two Governments. The signing will be followed by the relevant procedures in both countries aimed at bringing the agreement into force after which the MFA will release the text of the agreement and official information on the date its expiration.

Of course, we well understand this international agreement initiative is under the focus of the public and the mass media, but by Cabinets decision simply the stage of launching talks with the UAE has been launched.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 2, ARMENPRESS. Human Rights Defender of Artsakh Ruben Melikyan visited on February 3 citizen of Azerbaijan Elnur Huseynzade arrested on February 1 for sabotage attempt and trespassing the state border of NKR (Artsakh), Armenpress was informed from the press service of the Human Rights Defender of Armenia.

As a result of the visit, the Defender made sure that Husaynzade has been provided with public defender and translator and some judicial actions have already been taken with their participation. Huseynzade has presented no complaints on his health condition or ill-treatment.

The Defender expressed readiness to assist Husaynzade within the frames of his power in the implementation of his fundamental rights, including having a defender of his choice.
Home Security company Blink says it has been bought up online goliath Amazon

Amazon reported that profit leapt during the year-end holiday shopping season, but the tech giant saw shares sink as revenue fell shy of high expectations.

While revenue rose to $43.7 billion from $35.7 billion in a similar year-over-year comparison, Wall Street had expected Amazon to take in more cash during the key holiday shopping season.

"Amazon is usually a retailer that operates at full volume, the noise of its sales growth a clarion call in an often muted retail sector," said GlobalData Retail analyst Anthony Riva.

"However, this quarter that volume seems to have been turned down a couple of notches."

Amazon shares were down more than four percent to $805.40 in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings report.

Net income for the quarter was $749 million, compared with $482 in the same period a year earlier, according to earnings figures.

While Amazon is known for its huge online retail operations, it is also a major provider of cloud computing, and is a rival to Netflix in streaming video. It has been ramping up efforts in artificial intelligence with its Alexa-powered speakers and partnerships with makers of connected devices.

Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos said the company is looking for growth via its "Prime" subscription service, which gives customers access to video, music and other services and free two-day shipping.

Bezos said in a statement that Prime Video was now available in some 200 countries and territories.

Its retail operations took in $26 billion in North America and $14 billion in the rest of the world.

- 'Super Cloud' -

Amazon Web Services and rival Microsoft Azure will be the "only two super clouds" where businesses rent storage or computing power for online operations, but that value is already built into the share price, Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry said in a note to investors.

The earnings report said the cloud unit known as Amazon Web Services saw revenue jump 47 percent in the quarter to $3.5 billion.

Story continues

- Echo resounding -

Devices infused with Alexa artificial intelligence were top selling products at Amazon.com during the holiday season, according to the company.

Sales of Echo home virtual assistant devices, which are built with internal machine smarts, jumped nine times higher than during the same quarter a year earlier, Amazon said.

Alexa was one of the big winners at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, cropping up in TVs, cars, fridges -- you name it -- in what appeared to be a breakthrough moment for the smart technology.

- Out to deliver -

Amazon continues to invest in its core retail network. This week Amazon announced plans to strengthen its distribution muscle by building its first air freight hub -- an investment of nearly $1.5 billion.

A hub for the company's growing fleet of Prime Air cargo planes will be built at an airport in northern Kentucky, adding more than 2,000 US workers to the approximately 10,000 people it already employs at fulfillment centers in that state.

Low cost and fast delivery are a fundamental part of Amazon's appeal to consumers, but are also its "Achilles' heel" because speedy shipping can be most costly, said analyst Riva.

"As much as this quarter has been more subdued, Amazon remains firmly on the front foot in terms of innovation," Riva said.

"This alone will continue to make it a retail out-performer, at least in sales terms, over the next year and beyond."
Officials said Donald Trump was set to sign two executive actions asking the US Treasury and the Labor Department to study ways of reforming regulations

President Donald Trump took the first step Friday to undoing key reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, aiming to scale back toughened regulations on the banking industry.

The initiative aims to scrap parts of the so-called Dodd-Frank law, which backers say is aimed at curbing the actions of the finance sector that led to the "Great Recession," but which critics claim creates red tape that stifles the industry.

"We expect to cut a lot out of Dodd-Frank," Trump said at a White House meeting with business leaders.

"I have friends who can't start businesses because the banks wouldn't let them borrow because of rules and regulations and Dodd-Frank. So we'll be talking about that in terms of the banking industry."

Trump was set to sign two executive actions asking the Treasury and the Labor Department to study ways of reforming regulations that were designed to make markets safer and give consumers more protection.

One order will ask the Treasury Department to identify possible changes to the "Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act" or Dodd-Frank signed into law in 2010 by president Barack Obama.

Among other things, the legislation created the consumer financial protection bureau and required banks to keep more capital on hand to prevent over-leveraging.

The review will also target the so-called "Volcker Rule," which curbs some speculative investments.

"(We) believe that Dodd-Frank in many respects was a piece of massive government overreach," said a senior administration official.

"It imposed hundreds of new regulations on financial institutions, it established an enormous amount of work and effort for financial firms."

Republicans have made no secret of their dislike for the consumer financial protections bureau, which looks set to be targeted in the review.

Any substantial repeal of Dodd-Frank would require congressional action, but the Trump White House is keen to send a signal that it is ready to slash red tape.

Story continues

Another executive order to be signed takes aim at the so-called fiduciary rule, which legally obliges financial advisors to act in their clients' best interest.

- Deferring implementation -

The rule was scheduled to come into effect in April, but will be deferred, pending review.

"Americans are going to have better choices and better products because we're not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year," Trump advisor and head of the White House National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, told The Wall Street Journal.

"The banks are going to be able to price products more efficiently and more effectively to consumers," said Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive.

John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute welcomed the moves, saying they would "greatly benefit middle-class investors, entrepreneurs, and consumers."

In a blog post, Berlau said the fiduciary rule opens financial firms to arbitrary lawsuits and said Dodd-Frank "has been a huge burden on community banks, credit unions, and consumers."

But Bartlett Naylor of the consumer activist group Public Citizen called Trump's actions "a betrayal of his campaign promises" and a gift to big banks.

The undoing of the reforms "shows the Trump administration is on the wrong side. It's on Wall Street's side," Bartlett added.

Trump is signing the measures on the same day he meets with business leaders that include JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink.

Market analyst Jasper Lawler at the London Capital Group believes that "unwinding some of Dodd-Frank is a good thing because it will enable smaller community banks to compete, offering competition to consumers."

However, repealing too much of Dodd-Frank "puts the entire system at risk of a repeat of 2008," the analyst said.

Sweden's minister for financial stability Per Bolund, meanwhile, warned the moves could destabilize markets.

Bolund told Swedish news agency TT that these actions were "dangerous, harmful and extremely unfortunate," and called for efforts to oppose the Trump actions.
Officials said Donald Trump was set to sign two executive actions asking the US Treasury and the Labor Department to study ways of reforming regulations

President Donald Trump took the first step Friday to undoing key reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, aiming to scale back regulatory burdens on the banking industry.

The initiative aims to scrap parts of the so-called Dodd-Frank law, which backers say is aimed at curbing the actions of the finance sector that led to the "Great Recession," but which critics claim creates red tape that stifles the industry.

Officials said Trump was set to sign two executive actions asking the Treasury and the Labor Department to study ways of reforming regulations that were designed to make markets safer and give consumers more protection.

One order will ask the Treasury Department to identify possible changes to the "Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act" signed into law in 2010 by president Barack Obama.

Among other things, the legislation created the consumer financial protection bureau and required banks to keep more capital on hand to prevent over-leveraging.

The review will also target the so-called "Volcker Rule," which curbs some speculative investments.

"(We) believe that Dodd-Frank in many respects was a piece of massive government overreach," said a senior administration official.

"It imposed hundreds of new regulations on financial institutions, it established an enormous amount of work and effort for financial firms."

Republicans have made no secret of their dislike for the consumer financial protections bureau, which looks set to be targeted in the review.

Any substantial repeal of Dodd-Frank would require congressional action, but the Trump White House is keen to send a signal that it is ready to slash red tape.

"We want to have very deep, very vibrant, very open, very transparent markets without having an enormous burden of regulation," said the official.

Another executive order to be signed takes aim at the so-called fiduciary rule, which legally obliges financial advisors to act in their clients' best interest.

Story continues

"We think this was a complete miss on what they were trying to do," the official said, adding it had been expensive for investment firms.

- Deferring implementation -

The rule was scheduled to come into effect in April, but will be deferred, pending review.

"Americans are going to have better choices and better products because we're not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year," Trump advisor and head of the White House National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, told The Wall Street Journal.

"The banks are going to be able to price products more efficiently and more effectively to consumers," said Cohn, a former Goldman Sachs executive.

John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute welcomed the moves, saying they would "greatly benefit middle-class investors, entrepreneurs, and consumers."

In a blog post, Berlau said the fiduciary rule opens financial firms to arbitrary lawsuits and said Dodd-Frank "has been a huge burden on community banks, credit unions, and consumers."

Trump is signing the measures on the same day he meets with business leaders that include JP Morgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon and BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink.

Market analyst Jasper Lawler at the London Capital Group believes that "unwinding some of Dodd-Frank is a good thing because it will enable smaller community banks to compete, offering competition to consumers."

However, repealing too much of Dodd-Frank "puts the entire system at risk of a repeat of 2008," the analyst said.

Sweden's minister for financial stability Per Bolund meanwhile warned the moves could destabilize markets.

Bolund told Swedish news agency TT that these actions were "dangerous, harmful and extremely unfortunate," and called for efforts to oppose the Trump actions.
US President Donald Trump signs an executive order directing the Treasury Secretary to review the Dodd-Frank financial oversight law in the Oval Office of the White House on February 3, 2017

President Donald Trump ordered a review of key reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, in the first step towards scaling back toughened regulations on the banking industry.

The so-called Dodd-Frank law aimed to curb the actions of the finance sector that led to the "Great Recession," but critics claim it created red tape that stifles the industry.

"Today we are signing core principles for regulating the United States financial system," Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed two executive orders aimed at scrapping parts of the 2010 law.

"Doesn't get much bigger than that, right?" he said.

The president's move gives the upper hand to opponents of the landmark legislation who have long battled attempts to rein in Wall Street excesses.

Addressing a White House meeting with industry leaders earlier in the day, Trump said: "We expect to cut a lot out of Dodd-Frank."

"I have friends who can't start businesses because the banks wouldn't let them borrow because of rules and regulations and Dodd-Frank."

Trump's directives were quickly denounced by Senator Chuck Schumer, the leader of the minority Democrats in the upper house of Congress, who vowed to fight to prevent the law's undoing.

- Campaign promises kept? -

"President Trump promised to stand up to the big banks, now he's letting them write the rules of the road," Schumer said in a statement. Like Trump, the Democratic senator hails from New York state, home to the financial industry's largest global hub.

The mammoth Dodd-Frank legislation was adopted after a systemic crisis in the global financial system caused by the failure of widely traded but complex derivatives backed by poor-quality mortgages.

The resulting taxpayer bailout of failing banks and financial institutions deemed "too big to fail," or so large their collapse could cause widespread economic harm, provoked lasting public outrage.

"If we allow Wall Street to go unchecked again, it's only a matter of time before history repeats itself," Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said on Twitter.

Story continues

The Dodd-Frank rules required banks to demonstrate their solid financial grounding in annual "stress tests" as well as refrain from certain risky transactions, and significantly expanded the role securities regulators play in overseeing the investment industry.

Trump's twin decrees came on the heels of his meeting with business leaders including chiefs of the largest banks and investment firms, such as JP Morgan Chase, Blackstone and BlackRock, which may stand to gain from looser rules.

The directives will also delay a fiduciary rule adopted under the previous administration, which had yet to take effect but would have required investment advisors handling retirement funds to put their clients' interests before maximizing their own profits.

Among the many provisions of the 2,300-page legislation, Dodd-Frank also gave rise to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency meant to police how banks and others provide services to the public.

Republicans and industry lobbyists have made no secret of their criticism of the CFPB and other checks on industry imposed by Dodd-Frank, waging battles against it in court and on Capitol Hill.

The Federal Reserve, which plays a key role in banking regulation, had yet to react to Trump's move.

Any repeal of Dodd-Frank itself would require congressional action but the Trump White House is keen to send a signal that it is ready to slash red tape.

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president who now heads Trump's National Economic Council, told The Wall Street Journal ahead of the signing that freeing up the financial services sector again would be a boon to consumers.

- How far will changes go? -

"The banks are going to be able to price products more efficiently and more effectively to consumers," Cohn was quoted as saying.

John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute welcomed the moves, saying they would "greatly benefit middle-class investors, entrepreneurs, and consumers."

But Bartlett Naylor of the consumer activist group Public Citizen called Trump's actions "a betrayal of his campaign promises" and a gift to big banks.

Market analyst Jasper Lawler at the London Capital Group believes that "unwinding some of Dodd-Frank is a good thing because it will enable smaller community banks to compete, offering competition to consumers."

However, repealing too much of Dodd-Frank "puts the entire system at risk of a repeat of 2008," the analyst said.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis will wrap up talks in South Korea before traveling to Japan later on Friday, as he reminds both countries of Washington's support amid uncertainties over President Donald Trump's policies, a belligerent North Korea and China's territorial ambitions.

It is the first international trip among Trump's cabinet secretaries, according to Reuters, underscoring the importance Trump places on Seoul and Tokyo while he threatens a trade war against Beijing , experts said. The visit should also allay broad concerns about American leadership in Asia and fears over the future of South Korea and Japan's bilateral relationships with the U.S.

"The message of this trip is reassurance; reassurance that the Trump administration recognizes the importance of alliances with South Korea and Japan as well as the seriousness of the security situation there," explained Kathleen Stephens, American ambassador to South Korea from 2008-2011.

During his election campaign, Trump pledged to remove existing American troops from Asia if host nations did not pay 100 percent of the costsa troubling thought for Seoul and Tokyo, given that defense is a key priority in their respective relationships with Washington. Around 28,000 American soldiers are currently stationed in South Korea, while 54,000 U.S. military personnel are based in Japan.

North Korea top priority in Seoul

North Korea, a common thorn in the sides of Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo, featured prominently in Mattis' talks with top South Korean officials on Thursday. The retired Marine Corps general said that his country would stand "shoulder-to-shoulder" with Seoul to face the North Korean nuclear threat, Reuters reported.



Pyongyang has been increasingly hinting that it is ready to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), adding to rising fears it will act on threats of targeting enemies with a nuclear weapon. Choe Kang II, deputy director general for North American affairs at North Korea's foreign ministry told NBC News on Jan. 25 that Pyongyang was ready to test an ICBM "at any time, any place," That same day, Mattis' predecessor Ash Carter warned Washington would shoot down any missile aimed at it or an ally.

Story continues

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's nuclear program is a matter crucial to Trump's re-election so Mattis will likely look to discuss ways to disarm the rogue nation as well as deploying preventative measures against potential attacks, said Christopher Hill, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2004-2005.

In July, then South Korean President Park Geun-hye agreed to host a American defense technology system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), which is designed to shoot down ballistic missiles. But the current political turmoil in Seoul could endanger THAAD implementation .

In the aftermath of Park's resignation, the country is due to elect a new leader later this year and leftist opposition candidates are increasingly seen as the likely winners. It's not yet clear whether these leftist parties will support THAAD or give into Chinese pressure to ditch the system, remarked Hill.

China and Russia believe THAAD deployment on the Korean Peninsula will threaten the mainland's national security interests. "No other nation" should be concerned about THAAD," Mattis said on Thursday, according to Reuters. "Were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea, we would have no need for THAAD out here," he added.

Hill, who led a series of negotiations aimed at halting Pyongyang's nuclear program known as the Six Party Talks, believes Kim's regime is entirely capable of developing a weapon that can reach the U.S. within the next four years. Coinciding with Matthis' arrival in Seoul on Thursday, the White House will be launching a review of its North Korea policy, the Financial Times reported, citing unnamed sources.

Because Kim has expressed zero interest in denuclearization, Mattis has little chance of resuming multi-nation talks, Hill noted, adding that the best option for Trump is to slow the pariah state's nuclear program, which can't be done without Beijing's help. But that may prove to be tricky amid worsening U.S.-Chinese ties. In a tweet last month, Trump criticized China, a traditional ally of Pyongyang, for its lack of assistance on the nuclear issue.













For Tokyo, China tensions and trade are key

Japan's territorial dispute with China in the East China Sea could be key topic when Mattis meets Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada on Friday. A group of island known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China have been a source of conflict between the two Asian heavyweights for years, with Tokyo repeatedly urging Beijing to halt construction activity in the area .

"Mattis will supposedly reassure the Japanese that not only will the U.S. continue the security treaty, but that issues like the disputed Senkaku-Diaoyu islands will still fall under the treaty," said Rodger Baker, vice president of strategic intelligence at Stratfor.

Despite lingering uncertainties about Trump's policies, Japan has been especially keen to gain his favor. In fact, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the first foreign leader to meet the Republican when he was still president-elect and another summit is scheduled for Feb. 10.

"Mattis' visit is another opportunity for the Japanese to state their case why they are America's strongest ally economically, politically and security-wise in the region," Baker noted.

The South China Sea, a hotbed of geopolitical tensions between Southeast Asian governments and Beijing, could be another topic of discussion.



Last month, Trump's White House promised to defend American interests in the disputed region , marking a sharp turn from the previous caution exercised by U.S. leaders. Beijing then responded saying it possessed "irrefutable" sovereignty over the resource-rich area.



"The U.S. is interested in maintaining the rite of passage in that area. But China wants to establish a precedent over time where they control those waters," explained Bruce Bennett, senior defense analyst at RAND. "The U.S. needs to break that precedent now. That doesn't mean going to war but it means making it clear that international law should apply."

In July, Beijing rejected a ruling by The Hague's Permanent Court of Arbitration that said China's claim to the 1.4 million-square-mile body of water was not valid.

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Frank Moylett collapsed at Hammersmith Academy, west London, last Tuesday (SWNS)

A 16-year-old boy who had never had a sick day collapsed at school and died four days later in hospital.

Frank Moylett had been studying with friends at around 4.30pm on Tuesday last week when he suddenly collapsed.

The 16-year-old died in hospital on Saturday from what has been described as a sudden brain infection.

Frank, who was in Year 12 at Hammersmith Academy, west London, was described as full of life by headteacher Gary Kynaston, who said: He was absolutely fantastic.

He was very mature from a very young age and was very inquisitive and engaged with everyone around him both with adults and other students. He was very successful in his GCSEs and went on to study physics, biology, maths and drama.

He was full of life and quite unassuming and when you put him the stage, he was an absolute triumph, he played the lead in Oliver when he was in Year 8 aged 13.

He also did all our lighting and our sound for productions. Recently he had made a decision he wanted to be a doctor and was looking to do some work experience at Charing Cross Hospital.

MORE: Mums picture of special needs daughter sobbing over teachers strike goes viral

MORE: Boy dies after fall from staircase at school on the day after his 12th birthday

Frank spent the night before he died playing video games with brothers Rupert and Freddie.

Rupert said: It was a beautiful last moment that we can hold on to forever now, best/worst part was that he ended up winning.

Frank, Rupert and I got to spend one final night together playing video games and hanging out. Honestly couldnt have asked for anything better. I love you Frank.

Dad Patrick Moylett who posted a photo of Frank shortly after he died said: My beautiful son Frank who died today.

Family friend Tara Morris said: No words just absolutely heartbroken for you all Patrick. What a beautiful young man taken so soon in his prime, all the best ones go early.

Cousin Ruth Shanu said: Our gorgeous baby cousin  So so sorry to you Uncle Patrick , Lisa , Freddie and Rupert for the tragic loss of your beautiful baby.

Story continues

A spokesperson for Hammersmith Academy said: Hammersmith Academy is shocked and saddened by the sudden passing of one its founding students Frank Moylett, after a short illness.

Frank was an intelligent and delightful young man with a thirst for life. He had the ambition to become a doctor/anaesthetist.

His passions for all things theatre and media showed off his understated talents, not only academically but behind the scenes through our school productions and events.

We have lost a thoughtful and kind young man with a bright future ahead of him. His memory will live long in the heart of the academy and in those whose lives he touched. He will be sorely missed by his friends, colleagues and staff. Our thoughts are with his family at this tragic time.

Family friend Vesna Cramer added: Words cannot describe emotions cannot find the right feeling the reason is blank and all that is left is understanding how precious is each and everyones life no matter how long or not.

Happy memories is what we leave behind and happy memories is who you/we really are.
Howard Stern

If you want to get an unfiltered glimpse inside the real Donald Trump, there's no one better to turn to than Howard Stern.

The legendary shock jock has traveled in the same celebrity orbit as the business mogul turned reality-show star turned president for decades, and has had Trump on his show numerous times (Trump was even at Stern's wedding to Beth Ostrosky).

So in the last week, where polls show that Trump's approval rating is historically low, you have to wonder how he's taking it all. Stern has some thoughts, and it sounds like he thinks Trump cares quite a bit about his public perception.

"I know something about Donald Trump," Stern said on his radio show recently.

"He really does want to be loved, he does want people to really love him, that drives him a lot. I think he has a very sensitive ego. And when youre president of the United States people are going to be very, very critica,l and I think in his mind right now hes saying 'I want to protect the country' I think his motive is 'People will love me because Im going to keep terrorists out of the country.' I think hes genuinely shocked when people come back and say, 'Wait a second, theres more to this.'"

Stern went on to say that he and Trump talked a lot over the phone when Trump announced his presidency, and, along with Stern telling him he was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter, he tried to talk Trump out of running.

Donald Trump

"I said, why would you want to be the president of the United States  youre not going to be beloved," Stern said. "Its going to be a f---ing nightmare in your life."

Stern  who still considers Trump a friend, though Stern voted for Clinton  said he was surprised at the political views President Trump has taken.

"I don't believe that he's had some rethink on abortion  he's playing to his constituency, which is this religious right," Stern added.

And when it comes to the press and Hollywood being critical of Trump, Stern believes that's the deepest wound of all.

Weiterlesen

"He loves the press, he lives for it," said Stern. "He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants to hobnob with them."

Stern's theory is that Trump's whole run for presidency was just a negotiation maneuver to get more money out of NBC while he and the network were discussing a new season of "The Apprentice."

Now that Trump is president, Stern is concerned about the health of his friend.

"This is something thats going to be detrimental to his mental health because he wants to be liked, he wants to be loved, he wants people to cheer for him," he said.

"There are people who are better suited for this kind of thing," Stern said of the presidency, "and he didnt need this in his life."

Listen to Stern's thoughts on Trump as president below:

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jim mattis

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis threatened an "effective and overwhelming" response by the US and its allies if North Korea were to use nuclear weapons.

His remarks came on his first overseas trip as defense secretary, to South Korea, where he met with his counterpart in the Republic of Korea's Ministry of Defense and other government officials.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior," Mattis said. "Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming."

He also praised South Korea  where nearly 30,000 US troops are stationed  as a "lynchpin of peace and stability" in the Asia-Pacific region.

Mattis' stern warning to the North is likely to be taken seriously, since Pyongyang often responds to the slightest provocation. North Korea regularly threatens total war against its southern neighbor, for example, whenever American and South Korean forces train together during annual exercises, which are regularly scheduled and known well ahead of time.

The secretary's overseas trip was also another chance to push the South to continue with its deployment of the US's powerful Thaad missile-defense system, which would blanket the country with protection from conventional or nuclear-tipped missiles fired from the north.

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Ronald Ryan

Fifty years ago, Australia carried out its final execution amid a swirl of protest and political pressure. But as Jamie Duncan reports, capital punishment remains firmly in the nation's consciousness despite the abolition of the death penalty.





Ronald Joseph Ryan was a robber with a long criminal record.





On 3 February 1967, Ryan was hanged for the murder of prison warder George Hodson as he escaped Pentridge Jail, in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg.





As the guards took turns to attend a staff room Christmas party on 19 December 1965, Ryan and accomplice Peter John Walker scaled a 5m (16ft) wall, with blankets attached to a hook.





They overpowered a guard, stole guns and forced the guard to open a gate.





Mr Hodson was shot in the chest and died in the middle of a busy road outside the jail while trying to grab Walker.





Ryan and Walker escaped but were re-captured in Sydney on 6 January 1966.





Eleven witnesses said they saw Ryan fire the fatal shot, but a warder testified that the only shot he heard was his own. He said he was aiming for Ryan but fired over Ryan's head to avoid a woman who blundered into the way.





After 12 days of deliberation, a jury found Ryan guilty of Mr Hodson's murder and the judge, Justice John Starke, who was opposed to capital punishment, pronounced the mandatory death sentence for the crime.





Walker was found guilty of two counts of manslaughter - that of Mr Hodson and the shooting death of acquaintance Arthur Henderson while on the run.





At the time in the state of Victoria, the government's cabinet determined the fate of condemned prisoners.





The last executions in Victoria occurred in 1951, when Jean Lee - the last woman hanged in Australia - and her two male accomplices were executed for torturing and murdering a 73-year-old illegal bookmaker.





Between then and 1967, Liberal and Labor cabinets commuted all but one of 35 death sentences to life imprisonment.





The exception was Robert Tait, who murdered an 82-year-old woman. The government's refusal of clemency was overturned in the nation's High Court.





Members of Victorian Premier Sir Henry Bolte's cabinet were known to be opponents of capital punishment, but Sir Henry ensured his team refused to commute Ryan's sentence.





Years later, juror Tom Gildea said while the jury was convinced of Ryan's guilt, none believed he would hang, and seven later wrote to cabinet seeking clemency for Ryan.





The conservative-leaning Melbourne Herald campaigned for Ryan's life. In a January 1967 editorial, it said: "The state government's insistence on this final solution is causing the deepest revulsion. It is punishment in its most barbarous form. And experience has shown it gains nothing but dishonour for the community which inflicts it."





Mass protests in sizes never before seen in Melbourne had no effect on Sir Henry. Ryan, almost 42, was hanged at Pentridge at 08:00 with hundreds of protesters outside the jail.





Queensland was the first Australian state to outlaw the death penalty, in 1922. Victoria followed in 1975 and New South Wales (NSW) was last, in 1985.





But whenever egregious crimes have shocked Australians, the question of a return to capital punishment is raised.





It happened after Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania in 1996; the fire-bombing of Brisbane's Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub by James Finch and John Stuart in 1973, which killed 15; and the 2012 rape and strangulation of Jill Meagher, 29, by Adrian Ernest Bailey.





The death penalty was raised over the 2003 kidnapping and murder of Daniel Morcombe, 13, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, by Brett Peter Cowan; Julian Knight's 1987 Hoddle Street massacre in Melbourne; and Ivan Milat's "backpacker" murders in NSW in the 1980s and '90s.





Even this year, talk has resurfaced after a car was allegedly deliberately driven down a Melbourne pedestrian mall, killing six people and injuring dozens. Dimitrious "Jimmy" Gargasoulas, 26, faces murder and other charges.





Crusading commentator-turned-politician Derryn Hinch opposed capital punishment for decades before the horrific rape and murder of Sydney nurse, Anita Cobby, by five men, including three brothers, in 1986.





Hinch, a senator who heads his own Justice Party, says the death penalty should apply in cases such as Knight's, where no doubts exist.





"If Australia had the death penalty, a lot of young women could be alive today," Hinch wrote in 2012.

"Mersina Halvagis (fatally stabbed as she tended her grandmother's grave in Melbourne in 1997) would be alive today. Her killer, Peter Dupas, would have been executed after his first murders. If sex offenders served their full term behind bars, Jill Meagher could be alive today," he said.





"If our touchy-feely parole boards spent half as much time considering victims and their families as they do to rushing serial, violent criminals back on to the streets, this world would be a safer place. And if a federal government had the guts - or a state government had the independence and backbone - to hold a referendum on the return of capital punishment for some crimes, it would pass by a majority of about 75% to 25%."





Maybe not. Polls from Roy Morgan Research between 1947 and 2009 suggest capital punishment supporters may be a vocal minority.





Respondents were asked whether they favoured the death penalty or imprisonment in murder cases.





In 1947, 1953 and 1962, a sample of 1,000 voters aged 21 and over found they favoured capital punishment 67% to 24%, 68-24% and 53-37% respectively, with the remainder undecided.





There was no poll around Ryan's 1967 execution. From the next survey in 1975 until 2009, the sample of 1,000 included anyone aged 14-plus.





In 1975, support for capital punishment fell behind, at 40%, to 43% against, but by 1980 it was on top again at 43-40%.





The gap slowly widened. By February 1989, death penalty supporters had an absolute majority (52-34%) peaking at 54-36% in 1993.





But there was a dramatic swing in the decade between surveys in 1995 and 2005.





Andrew Chan (left) and Myuran Sukumaran in Bali's Kerobokan Prison

In 1995, there was still absolute majority support for the death penalty, with 53% in favour and 36% against.





But in November 2005 - seven months after the arrest in Indonesia of the Bali Nine heroin traffickers following an Australian Federal Police tip-off - only 27% supported it, with 66% opposed. A month later, support slipped further, to 25% v 69%. By August 2009, the last survey, it dropped yet again to 23-64%.





A 2014 text message poll of 1,307 people, asking whether anyone who commits a lethal act of terror in Australia should face the death penalty, showed narrow support for the proposition - 52.5%, with 47.5% against.





Dr Amy Maguire, lecturer in law at Australia's Newcastle University and capital punishment opponent, says the executions of Bali Nine drug smugglers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan may have changed Australian attitudes.





Prior to this, Ronald Ryan's execution was at best a dim memory.





"My sense is that the Chan and Sukumaran case enlightened some numbers of Australians who may previously been fairly unconcerned about the use of the death penalty overseas for people convicted of drug offences," she told the BBC.





"As well as having strong advocacy at government level, the families and friends of Sukumaran and Chan bravely conveyed their grief publicly and demonstrated that capital punishment is effectively torture not only for the person executed but also for their loved ones.





"The argument that Sukumaran and Chan had worked very hard to rehabilitate themselves and would be more fairly sentenced to life or many years in prison was, I think, fairly persuasive to many people."





While there remains a significant proportion of Australians who support capital punishment, Dr Maguire believes no Australian government will ever re-introduce it.





"No, I believe Australia is very firmly committed to the abolition of capital punishment, and in fact the Bali executions galvanised the government into building a firmer platform on which to advocate for abolition globally. Australian law is unequivocally against the death penalty," she said.





There are legal barriers, too. In 2010 the federal government passed laws banning the reintroduction of capital punishment, in line with a voluntary international treaty.





But 50 years on, Ronald Ryan's execution and tension over how best to deal with heinous acts that were once capital crimes, echoes through Australia's judicial system.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: BBC News , Feb. 2, 2017
Lawyers for death-row inmates said recent changes to Arizona's procedures for carrying out the death penalty didn't do enough to confront abuses in the state's power to decide the methods and amounts of drugs used in executions.





The state released the revisions to the procedures earlier this month as it battles an inmate lawsuit that challenges the way the state handles the death penalty.





Executions in Arizona remain on hold until the lawsuit is resolved.





Attorneys for the condemned inmates said in court papers filed Friday that the state's corrections director, under the revisions, still has complete freedom to deviate from the written procedures.





They say the revisions let the corrections director change timeframes for disclosing the types and amounts of drugs when he determines that there's an unexpected contingency. The lawyers for inmates said this particular revision is meaningless as an accountability check because it depends on the corrections director's subjective conclusion.





The state says the revisions take away the power of the corrections director to deviate from key aspects of the execution process, such as doses of drugs, but they do let him depart from the procedures in a limited way when addressing unforeseen contingencies.





The lawyers for the inmates said the revisions wouldn't have done anything to prevent the problems experienced during the July 2014 execution of Joseph Wood, who was given 15 doses of sedative midazolam and a painkiller and who took nearly 2 hours to die. His attorney said the execution was botched.





Executions in Arizona were put on hold after Wood's death.





The inmates' lawyers criticized a portion of the revised procedures that said the corrections director is free to change the quantities or types of drugs used in executions, even if he makes that decision on the day of the execution. They say this is unconstitutional because same-day notices deny prisoners a chance to challenge the methods of executions.





Attorneys for the state said in court papers that no court has ever found Arizona's execution procedures or how they are carried out to be unconstitutional.





About a month ago, the state agreed to settle part of the lawsuit that claimed the use of the midazolam doesn't ensure that inmates won't feel the pain caused by another drug in a 3-drug combination. The state eliminated its use of midazolam because its supply had expired and another supplier couldn't be found amid pressure from death penalty opponents.





Similar challenges to the death penalty are playing out in other parts of the country that seek more transparency about where states get their execution drugs.





States are struggling to obtain execution drugs because European pharmaceutical companies began blocking the use of their products for lethal injections.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: Associated Press, February 2, 2017
GENEVA (2 February 2017)  A group of United Nations human rights experts has appealed to the Islamic Republic of Iran to immediately halt the execution of juvenile offender Hamid Ahmadi, who is scheduled to be executed by hanging on Saturday, 4 February. This is the third time that Mr. Ahmadis execution is scheduled to take place. In the two previous instances, they were halted at the last minute.





Mr. Ahmadi was 17 years old when he was sentenced to death in 2009 for the fatal stabbing in 2008 of a young man during a fight between five boys. The court relied on confessions reportedly obtained under torture and ill-treatment at a police station, where Mr. Admadi was denied access to a lawyer and his family.





To our knowledge, in the case of Hamid Ahmadi, the most stringent guarantees of fair trial and due process contained in international human rights instruments have been disrespected and, the allegations of torture and confessions extracted under duress were not taken into consideration nor did the lead to any investigation, the human rights experts said.





Any death sentence undertaken in contravention of a Governments international obligations, and particularly when a conviction is based on confessions extracted under torture, is unlawful and tantamount to an arbitrary execution, they stressed.





Despite this, the Iranian Supreme Court, which in November 2009 had overturned the death sentence due to some doubts about the testimony of several key witnesses, ultimately upheld the verdict a year later. Following the adoption in 2013 of the new juvenile sentencing provisions of the Islamic Penal Code, Mr. Ahmadi was granted a retrial but was eventually re-sentenced to death by a Provincial Criminal Court in December 2015.





We strongly deplore that executions of juveniles continue to be scheduled and even conducted at an unprecedented rate in Iran since the beginning of the year, the experts said.





On 17 January, we already intervened to halt the execution of another juvenile, they noted. Since then, we have learned that two other juveniles have been hanged on 15 and 18 January. Arman Bahr Asemani and Hassan Hassanzadeh were both juveniles at the time they allegedly committed the offence for which they were sentenced to death.





The human rights experts underlined that international standards unequivocally forbid the imposition and execution of the death penalty on persons below 18 years of age. Iran must observe its international obligations by putting an end to the execution of juvenile offenders once and for all, they said.





The scheduled execution of Hamid Ahmadi must be immediately halted and his death sentence annulled. Moreover, a moratorium on juvenile executions must be adopted without any further delay, the UN human rights experts stated.





The Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Councils independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.





The Committee on the Rights of the Child is the body of 18 independent experts that monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child by its State parties. It also monitors the Optional Protocols to the Convention, on involvement of children in armed conflict and on sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography; as well as a third Optional Protocol which will allow individual children to submit complaints regarding specific violations of their rights.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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Source: NCRI, February 2, 2017
Hours after 2baba shared details for where his planned protests against the FG would take place, the Lagos state Police command has threatened to arrest him.

2baba recently announced the venue and time where his planned protest aginst the government would take place

According a report by the BBC, Lagos police commissioner Mr Fatai Owoseni warned 2baba that if he goes ahead with Monday's planned march in Lagos, he will be arrested. This is because 2baba has not officially asked the police for permission.

READ ALSO: The 2baba vs Blackface battle continues over planned protests

2baba is hoping the protests will make the government offer an explanation into the reckless economic downturn nationwide and offer solutions to the problems we are currently facing.

2baba Idibia

Meanwhile, a number of celebrities have indicated that they would support 2baba in his protest.

PAY ATTENTION! Never miss a single gist! Download Legit.ng news app for android

Meanwhile, the police has issued a statement saying they will not allow the protest to happen because they have to do their duty of ensuring public peace and that besides, the Nigerian constitution allows for restrictions to be placed on the so called peaceful protests.

See an excerpt from the commissioner's statement below:

"What the police in the command has done is to bring attention of the organizers of the protest to the provision of the constitution. The constitution does allow right to freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly and the same constitution in section 45 also puts what is called restriction to the fundamental rights.

After seeing all the controversies surrounding what they want to do, we also have a duty to protect the rights and freedom of other persons. Since its going to affect public safety and order, it is a mandate that where every other persons want to go to work, so we have advised them on the basis of what the constitution says and that is our position"

Officials of 2baba's foundation have also come out to say the police is yet to inform them that they would be stopping the protests.

"We have reached out to them. We are having conversations with them. I am not sure the news making the rounds about the protest is true. The feedback from the police authorities is quite different from that. I am not sure about the source of the police story and how true it is. The police has not told us they are banning the protest."

As soon as more details emerge on this impasse between the police and 2baba, be rest assured that Legit.ng will bring you details.

Source: Legit.ng
New research indicates that Baltic hunter-gatherers were not swamped by migrations of early agriculturalists from the Middle East, as was the case for the rest of central and western Europe. Instead, these people probably acquired knowledge of farming and ceramics by sharing cultures and ideas -- rather than genes -- with outside communities.

Scientists extracted ancient DNA from a number of archaeological remains discovered in Latvia and the Ukraine, which were between 5,000 and 8,000 years old. These samples spanned the Neolithic period, which was the dawn of agriculture in Europe, when people moved from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a settled way of life based on food production.

We know through previous research that large numbers of early farmers from the Levant (the Near East) - driven by the success of their technological innovations such as crops and pottery - had expanded to the peripheral parts of Europe by the end of the Neolithic and largely replaced hunter-gatherer populations.

However, the new study, published today in the journal Current Biology, shows that the Levantine farmers did not contribute to hunter-gatherers in the Baltic as they did in Central and Western Europe.

The research team, which includes scientists from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Cambridge, and University College Dublin, says their findings instead suggest that the Baltic hunter-gatherers learned these skills through communication and cultural exchange with outsiders.

The findings feed into debates around the 'Neolithic package,' -- the cluster of technologies such as domesticated livestock, cultivated cereals and ceramics, which revolutionised human existence across Europe during the late Stone Age.

Advances in ancient DNA work have revealed that this 'package' was spread through Central and Western Europe by migration and interbreeding: the Levant and later Anatolian farmers mixing with and essentially replacing the hunter-gatherers.

But the new work suggests migration was not a 'universal driver' across Europe for this way of life. In the Baltic region, archaeology shows that the technologies of the 'package' did develop -- albeit less rapidly - even though the analyses show that the genetics of these populations remained the same as those of the hunter-gatherers throughout the Neolithic.

Andrea Manica, one of the study's senior authors from the University of Cambridge, said: "Almost all ancient DNA research up to now has suggested that technologies such as agriculture spread through people migrating and settling in new areas."

"However, in the Baltic, we find a very different picture, as there are no genetic traces of the farmers from the Levant and Anatolia who transmitted agriculture across the rest of Europe."

"The findings suggest that indigenous hunter-gatherers adopted Neolithic ways of life through trade and contact, rather than being settled by external communities. Migrations are not the only model for technology acquisition in European prehistory."

While the sequenced genomes showed no trace of the Levant farmer influence, one of the Latvian samples did reveal genetic influence from a different external source -- one that the scientists say could be a migration from the Pontic Steppe in the east. The timing (5-7,000 years ago) fits with previous research estimating the earliest Slavic languages.

Researcher Eppie Jones, from Trinity College Dublin and the University of Cambridge, was the lead author of the study. She said: "There are two major theories on the spread of Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. One is that they came from the Anatolia with the agriculturalists; another that they developed in the Steppes and spread at the start of the Bronze Age."

"That we see no farmer-related genetic input, yet we do find this Steppe-related component, suggests that at least the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family originated in the Steppe grasslands of the East, which would bring later migrations of Bronze Age horse riders."

The researchers point out that the time scales seen in Baltic archaeology are also very distinct to the rest of Europe, with a much more drawn-out and piecemeal uptake of Neolithic technologies, rather than the complete 'package' that arrives with migrations to take most of Europe by storm.

Andrea Manica added: "Our evidence of genetic continuity in the Baltic, coupled with the archaeological record showing a prolonged adoption of Neolithic technologies, would suggest the existence of trade networks with farming communities largely independent of interbreeding."

"It seems the hunter-gatherers of the Baltic likely acquired bits of the Neolithic package slowly over time through a 'cultural diffusion' of communication and trade, as there is no sign of the migratory wave that brought farming to the rest of Europe during this time.

"The Baltic hunter-gatherer genome remains remarkably untouched until the great migrations of the Bronze Age sweep in from the East."

About the study

The researchers analysed eight ancient genomes - six from Latvia and two from Ukraine - that spanned a timeframe of three and a half thousand years (between 8,300 and 4,800 years ago). This enabled them to start plotting the genetic history of Baltic inhabitants during the Neolithic.

DNA was extracted from the petrous area of skulls that had been recovered by archaeologists from some of the region's richest Stone Age cemeteries. The petrous, at the base of the skull, is one of the densest bones in the body, and a prime location for DNA that has suffered the least contamination over millennia.

###
Double-digit export growth for Brazilian components

Brazil

Brazils component sector for the fashion industry, aimed at the production of footwear handbags and accessories, registered double-digit export growth in 2016.

According to figures released by Assintecal, the Brazilian Association of Companies of Components for Leather, Footwear and Manufactured Goods, exports grew 23% in 2016 compared with the previous year, reaching US$ 269.4 million. The positive performance is attributed to the By Brasil Components and Chemicals export project, a promotional initiative to encourage exports, led by Assintecal together with the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex-Brasil).

Brazilian companies participating in the project, which currently accounts for 41.3% of the countrys total exports in the components sector, shipped their products to over 78 different buying countries, with neighbouring Argentina as the top buyer followed by India, Germany and Mexico.

It is also worth noting that virtually all markets targeted by the project increased their imports of Brazilian goods, said Assintecal in a statement, with Germany, Argentina, Paraguay, and U.S. registering the biggest increase in demand in value terms.
English Finnish

Metsa Board Corporation Notice to General Meeting, 2 February 2017 at 12:15 EET

Notice is given to the shareholders of Metsa Board Corporation to the Annual General Meeting to be held on Wednesday 23 March 2017 at 3.00 p.m. at the Finlandia Hall, Congress Wing, Hall A, at Mannerheimintie 13e, Helsinki. The reception of persons who have registered for the meeting and the distribution of voting tickets will commence at 2.00 p.m.

A. Matters on the agenda of the General Meeting

At the General Meeting, the following matters will be considered:

1. Opening of the meeting

Review by the Chairman of the Board

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. Presentation of the annual accounts, the report of the Board of Directors and the auditors report for the year 2016

Review by the CEO

7. Adoption of the annual accounts

8. Consideration of the annual result and resolution on the payment of dividend

The Board of Directors proposes that a dividend of 0.19 euros per share be distributed for the financial year 2016. The dividend shall be paid to shareholders who on the record date for the dividend payment, 27 March 2017, are recorded in the shareholders register held by Euroclear Finland Ltd. The dividend shall be paid on 3 April 2017.

9. Resolution on the discharge of the members of the Board of Directors and the CEO

10. Resolution on the remuneration of the members of the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors' Nomination and Compensation Committee proposes to the Annual General Meeting that the annual remuneration for the members of the Board of Directors be increased by approximately 8 per cent such that the Chairman be paid EUR 95,000, the Vice Chairman EUR 80,000 and ordinary members EUR 62,500 per year. In addition, a fee of EUR 700 would be paid for each attended meeting of the Board of Directors and its Committees. The Committee additionally proposes that one half of the annual remuneration be paid in the companys B-class shares to be acquired from public trading. The Committee finally proposes that an additional monthly remuneration of EUR 800 be paid to the Audit Committee Chairman also going forward.

11. Resolution on the number of members of the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors' Nomination and Compensation Committee proposes that the number of members of the Board of Directors be nine (9) members.

12. Election of members of the Board of Directors

The Board of Directors' Nomination and Compensation Committee proposes that board members Martti Asunta, Kari Jordan, Kirsi Komi, Kai Korhonen, Liisa Leino, Juha Niemela, Veli Sundback and Erkki Varis be re-elected. The Committee further proposes that Jussi Linnaranta be elected as a new Board member. Mr Linnaranta holds a M.Sc. (Agriculture) degree and acts as an agriculture and energy entrepreneur. He has previously served in various positions at the information department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Further information on proposed members and their independence is available on the Companys website at www.metsaboard.com. The term of office of board members expires at the end of the next Annual General Meeting.

13. Resolution on the remuneration of the auditor

The Board of Directors proposes, based on the Audit Committees recommendation, that a fee in accordance with the auditor's reasonable invoice, as approved by the Company, be paid to the auditor.

14. Election of auditor

The Board of Directors proposes, based on the Audit Committees recommendation, that auditing company KPMG Oy Ab be elected as auditor with APA Raija-Leena Hankonen as responsible auditor. The auditors term of office shall expire at the end of the next Annual General Meeting.

15. Authorization of the Board of Directors to issue new shares and special rights entitling to shares

The Board of Directors proposes that the Board be authorized to decide on a share issue and the issue of special rights entitling to shares as defined in 1 of Chapter 10 of the Companies Act as follows. By virtue of the authorization the Board is entitled to issue up to 35,000,000 new B-series shares corresponding to approximately 10 per cent of all current shares. The Board would decide on all terms and conditions of share issues and the issues of special rights. The authorization covers both the issuance of new shares and the transfer of own shares. A share issue or the issue of special rights may be executed in deviation of the shareholders pre-emptive rights to subscribe for new shares (directed share issue). This authorization supersedes the Board authorization issued by the general meeting on 28 March 2012 to issue shares or special rights as defined in 1 of Chapter 10 of the Companies Act. This authorization shall be effective until 23 March 2022.

16. Closing of the meeting

B. Documents of the General Meeting

The proposals for the decisions on the agenda of the Annual General Meeting as well as this notice are available on the companys website at www.metsaboard.com. The annual report of Metsa Board Corporation, including the Companys annual accounts, the report of the Board of Directors and the audit report is available on the above website no later than on 1 March 2017. Said documents are also available at the meeting. Copies of such documents and of this notice will be sent to shareholders upon request. The minutes of the meeting will be available on the Companys website no later than on 6 April 2017.

C. Instructions to the participants of the General Meeting

1. Shareholders registered in the shareholders register

Each shareholder, who is on 13 March 2017 registered in the shareholders register of the Company held by Euroclear Finland Ltd., has the right to participate in the Annual 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 wants to participate in the Annual General Meeting, shall register for the meeting by 11.00 a.m. on 20 March 2017 at the latest by giving a prior notice of participation. Such notice can be given as of 2 February 2017:

a) on the Companys website at www.metsaboard.com;

b) by e-mail to metsaboard.AGM@metsagroup.com;

c) by mail to Metsa Board Corporation, Legal Services/Nenonen, P.O. Box 20, FI-02020 Metsa; or

d) by telephone as of 13 February on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. to +358104654102.

In connection with registration, a shareholder shall notify 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.

2. Holders of nominee registered shares

A holder of nominee registered shares has the right to participate in the general meeting by virtue of such shares, based on which he/she on 13 March 2017 would be entitled to be registered in the shareholders register of the company held by Euroclear Finland Ltd. The right to participate requires, in addition, that the shareholder on the basis of such shares has been registered in the temporary shareholders register held by Euroclear Finland Ltd. at the latest by 10 a.m. on 20 March 2017. As regards nominee registered shares this constitutes due registration for the general meeting.

A holder of nominee registered shares is advised to request from his/her custodian bank, without delay, necessary instructions regarding the registration in the shareholders register of the Company, the issuing of proxy documents and registration for the general meeting. The account management organisation of the custodian bank shall register a holder of nominee registered shares wishing to participate in the general meeting to be temporarily entered into the shareholders register of the Company by the above specified time at the latest.

3. Proxy representative and powers of attorney

A shareholder may participate in the general meeting and exercise his/her rights at the meeting 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 general meeting. Possible proxy documents shall be delivered in original to Metsa Board Corporation, Legal Services/Nenonen, P.O. Box 20, FI-02020 Metsa before the last day of registration.

4. Other instructions and information

Pursuant to chapter 5, paragraph 25 of the Companys Act, a shareholder who is present at a general meeting has the right to request information with respect to the matters to be considered at the meeting.

The personal data given to the company is used only in connection with the general meeting and the processing of related registrations.

On the date of this notice, the total number of shares in Metsa Board Corporation is 35,895,651 A-shares and 319,617,095 B-shares carrying an aggregate of 1,037,530,115 votes. According to the Articles of Association each A share carries twenty (20) votes while each B share carries one (1) vote.

In Espoo on 2 February 2017

METSA BOARD CORPORATION

BOARD OF DIRECTORS




EPS growth of 7% to  3.45 (2015:  3.23)

Net profit increases to  120.8m (2015:  103.8m)

Strong leasing performance; occupancy increases in all countries

Overall positive like-for-like rental growth of 1.0%

Dividend proposal of  3.08 (final distribution of  0.77)

Stable outlook 2017: EPS between  3.40 and  3.50

Summary

For the year 2016, Wereldhave posted a net profit of  120.8m, against  103.8m for 2015. The direct result increased by 13% to  151.0m. The direct result per share rose by 7% to  3.45 (FY 2015:  3.23). The full year indirect result stood at  30.2m negative (2015:  -29.9m), and improved significantly by  37.9m during the second half of the year. This was largely due to the use of a lower percentage of transfer tax for the valuations in Belgium and a positive revaluation in France.

Wereldhave delivered on the 2014 and 2015 acquisitions with a strong operational performance in 2016. Gross rental income for 2016 amounted to  230.2m, an increase of 11% compared to 2015. The increase is mainly due to the acquisition of nine shopping centres in the Netherlands in 2015, partly offset by the disposals of the French offices portfolio.

Overall occupancy of the shopping centres at the end of 2016 rose 170 bps to 95.5% (2015: 93.8%). Occupancy improved in all countries, with an overall positive like-for-like rental growth of 1.0%, which is 40 bps above indexation. Leasing activity was very high, with approximately 500 leases, rotations and renewals signed. In France, occupancy of the portfolio improved from 91% at acquisition to 94.4% YE 2016. In the Netherlands, occupancy of the portfolio improved during the year from 95.3% to 95.8% and footfall in our Dutch centres went up by 1.4%. The occupancy of the portfolio that was acquired in 2015 at 91.4% rose to 94.8% at year-end 2016, in spite of frequent bankruptcies in the retail sector in this 15 months timeframe.

In respect of the year 2016, a final dividend will be proposed of  0.77 per share. This implies a full year 2016 dividend of  3.08, an increase of 2% against 2015. The ex-dividend date is April 25, 2017. The dividend will be payable as from April 27, 2017.

The recurring direct result for the year 2017 is on a positive track, anticipated to grow slightly further. It will however be impacted by a one-off reorganisation costs in 2017 which will amount to approximately  1.5m. The 2017 outlook also takes into account intended disposals of at least  50m in H1 2017. Combining these two factors and development projects that will become yielding in the second half of the year will bring the direct result per share to between  3.40 and  3.50 per share. The impact from the cost efficiencies resulting from the reorganisation is expected to contribute to the direct result in 2018 and onwards. Dividend is to remain stable in 2017 at the current level of  3.08, payable in four interim dividends of  0.77 per quarter.

The AGM will be held on April 21, 2017 in the Hilton Hotel, Amsterdam. The nomination will be proposed of Mr A. Nuhn and Mr H. Brand as members of the Supervisory Board.

READ MORE: www.wereldhave.com

Information for the press:

Richard W. Beentjes

E richard.beentjes@wereldhave.com

T + 31 20 702 78 37
English Lithuanian

Energijos Skirstymo Operatorius AB (hereinafter  ESO or the Company), identification code 304151376, registered office placed at Aguonu str. 24, Vilnius, Republic of Lithuania. The total number of registered ordinary shares issued by company is 894 630 333; ISIN code LT0000130023.

On 3rd February, 2017 a public call for tenders for the installation of the LNG regasification station in Druskininkai was issued on Procurement Information System (CVPIS).

The contractor will have to execute engineering, procurement and construction works of the LNG regasification station, as well as to take care of the necessary infrastructure installation works.

According to the Minister of Energy of the Republic of Lithuania approved "Continuous supply of natural gas to consumers in Druskininkai municipality assurance 2016-2017 year action plan", the LNG regasification facility installation is necessary to ensure a safe and reliable supply of natural gas to consumers in Druskininkai municipality.

On 29 November, 2016 ESO acquired the natural gas distribution system of Druskininkai municipality, and since November 1, when the former gas supplier ceased operations, carries a guarantee gas supply activities.

Natural gas is supplied for 2.674 residential and 9 business clients in Druskininkai.
January 16, 2017

Tethys Petroleum Press Release

(TSX: TPL, LSE: TPL)

Corporate Update

GRAND CAYMAN, CAYMAN ISLANDS - Tethys Petroleum Limited ("Tethys" or the "Company") today announces a corporate update.

Georgia Work Programme Commitments

Tethys partner in Georgia, Georgia Oil and Gas Limited ("GOG"), has been notified by the Georgian State Agency of Oil and Gas that GOG and Tethys will not be required to complete the previously agreed work programme commitment to conduct 50 km of 2D seismic acquisition in Block XIN by June 30, 2017 which would have cost Tethys approximately US$700,000.

Had the minimum commitments previously agreed not been met then Tethys may have been subject to penalties of up to US$2 million.

Instead of the previously agreed commitment the agency will evaluate whether the partners should instead conduct 50 km of 2D seismic acquisition over an alternative prospective area. The deadline for any such work has not yet been determined.

Kazakhstan Change of Registered Address and Relocation of Office to Aktobe City

In December 2016 Tethys completed the transfer of the registered legal addresses of its three Kazakhstan subsidiaries, Tethys Aral Gas LLP, Kul-bas LLP and Tethys Services Kazakhstan LLP from Almaty to Aktobe City.

Tethys also plans to relocate its main administrative office from Almaty to Aktobe City during the first half of 2017 where it already has an office.

These changes are part of an ongoing process of corporate reorganisation and cost optimisation. Tethys field operations and exploration acreage are both in the Aktobe region which is the west of Kazakhstan and Aktobe City is the closest regional centre.

About Tethys

Tethys is focused on oil and gas exploration and production activities in Central Asia and the Caspian Region. This highly prolific oil and gas area is rapidly developing and Tethys believes that significant potential exists in both exploration and in discovered deposits.

Disclaimer

Some of the statements in this document are forward-looking. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the intent, belief and current expectations of the Company or its officers with respect to the potential that exists in both exploration and in discovered deposits in Central Asia and the Caspian Region, relocation of its Kazakhstan office to Aktobe City and the requirement for future seismic acquisition in Georgia. When used in this document, the words "expects," "believes," "anticipates," "plans," "may," "will," "should" and similar expressions, and the negatives thereof, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements are not promises or guarantees, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes to differ materially from those suggested by any such statements including risks and uncertainties with respect to the potential that exists in both exploration and in discovered deposits in Central Asia, relocation of its Kazakhstan office to Aktobe City and the requirement for future seismic acquisition in Georgia.

No part of this announcement constitutes, or shall be taken to constitute, an invitation or inducement to invest in the Company or any other entity, and shareholders of the Company are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements. Save as required by the Listing Rules and applicable law, the Company does not undertake to update or change any forward-looking statements to reflect events occurring after the date of this announcement.

Contact Information:

Tethys Petroleum

info@tethyspetroleum.com

www.tethyspetroleum.com
Jaykizll wrote:

I need advice guys. I've got 7 years in. Have 3 years left on this commission. Not sure if I should get out after 10 or just retire. How do these schools look at us as older applicants? I would be 42 if I did the extra 10 years. I plan on starting my own business once I get out but am hoping to do an in residence program to be able to network and because I learn better in person. Haven't taken the GMAT yet but scored 660 on the GMAC diagnostic. Didn't study beforehand, so I'm certain I can do better if I do study.

Not sure if I should get out after 10 or just retire

http://www.militarytobusiness.com/

Admissions Consulting for Veterans, by Veterans Admissions Consulting for Veterans, by Veterans Signature Read More

When I see "" that doesn't exactly scream that you have a burning passion to stay on active duty. So my advice would be to not waste another 10 years of your life doing something that you don't love (and that isn't in line with your long term goals) just because it's the "safe" choice.Getting admitted to a highly regarded full-time MBA program at 42 years old is a non-starter...it's just not going to happen. Even at 32 you'd be in the oldest ~5% of the student body at most top 20 full-time MBA programs but veterans tend to skew a few years older than the mean/median for schools, and if you're older largely because of your post-winging service obligation that won't be held against you during the application process._________________
The regime has a knack of manipulating and ensuring the other party does not realise until it is too late. This is the case with the regimes involvement in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and Iraq.

Iran and its allies continue to offend and provoke governments that oppose the regime. The Iranian regime has provoked the United States on many occasions during Obamas time in office, and it has now started to provoke President Trumps administration.

President Trump started his presidency with some loud signals and actions. It is probably to establish enough popularity to confront his many rivals in Congress and the media. His people have told him that they are greatly concerned about the number of foreigners entering the United States. Hence the wall between the US and Mexico. His people have also said that they are greatly concerned about terrorism. Hence the ban on citizens from seven Islamic countries where there are current incidences of terrorism from entering the country for three months. His people oppose the American companies that have factories outside the country. Hence the fines these companies will get for importing goods.

Some say that Trump cannot be labelled as anti-Muslim. He is building a wall to keep out Mexicans  most of whom are Christians. He also plans to deport illegal residents  most of whom are not Muslims. There are 57 Muslim countries and only seven of them are affected by the temporary travel ban. Furthermore, the reason for the selection of these seven countries is because of the weak central authorities they each have, which makes it difficult to deal with on a security level.

It must also be noted that terrorism exists much further afield than these seven countries  and not just in Muslim countries. Terrorism exists in France, Belgium, and many more Western countries. The difference is that their governments are cooperative and have the measures in place to deal with immigration.

The United States has become very successful through its history of immigrants. However, as in many countries, the poor and unemployed often reject foreigners who they see as taking opportunities and benefits away from them.

President Trump vowed to help these people during the election campaign.

Dealing with Iran, or more specifically not cooperating with Iran, is something Trump will need to do carefully because the regime has allies and puppets that will act against the US in the name of Islam.
Re: Kellogg 2 YR vs full ride at UNC? [ #permalink

5 Kudos

I'm an applying to programs this year as well, and have been admitted to KF with a 75% scholarship. While I have not yet been admitted to any of the higher ranked schools I applied to yet, I have thought over those "what if" scenarios regarding the more prestigious schools. When I think about these hard choices here is a couple things I keep in mind that may help you make your choice.



The first thing I did, which is very beneficial if you having yet done already, is to frame what "B-School Success" looks like for you. For some people, this may truly be MBB or bust. This may be especially true for individuals with very high paying jobs already or with very high aspirations. However, I suspect many people say "MBB or Bust" without analyzing if that is what they consider b-school success for them (note: I have no desire to go into consulting so am not as familiar with what all the options are outside of MBB and what they entail). However, what your B-School Success looks like may be very different -- it could be to have a more rewarding career, to switch roles, to move to the Untied States, to make over X dollars a year, or any mixture of these or other ideas.



Why is setting these goals important? Because I think people, especially in the MBA process, become victim of what I call "aspiration creep". Don't get me wrong, there is NOTHING wrong with setting high goals for oneself. However, one enters the process saying "I want to switch industries to consulting", which becomes quickly, "But only at these top level firms", to "Only at MBB", to "Only at the most highly sought after offices of MBB". Likewise with schools, people can quickly move from "I want to get into a Top 20 school" to "Only top 5 for me!" very quickly. This is why before you spend time thinking over your choice, you should take a half day to figure out what success looks like for you. The risk otherwise is, to put this in a real world scenario, to walk into a car dealership with the full intention of buying a family sedan for $25k with what you need, 4 seats, A/C, a radio, and a sunroof, and slowly but surely get talked into a BMW 7 Series with massaging seats and a champagne cooler for 100k+ (which they bought on a larger loan since they only budgeted for the 25k family sedan). By setting your goal now for B-School Success you can better determine the best choice for you. Because just like some need a family sedan, some might really need that BMW 7 Series if they are planning on going to Monte Carlo to gamble tonight!



In sum, define b-school success from the personal and professional side for you, look at all the opportunities, and define what will best get you there.



The second part is to really spend some time to think about what prestige means to you. As no matter what, even if you determined UNC and Kellogg can equally lead to your personal B-School Success, you will know you didn't go to the more prestigious school at the time and in some circles people may be aware of the prestige gap. However, the VAST majority of people will not know whether one school is more prestigious than another. Most people would be aware that UNC and Northwestern are very good schools and that you probably are a very smart lady. I think there is a value in prestige, but it is far lesser than what the average person attributes to it.



Those are the two things I'm am spending time thinking about now. I apologize for this long post. However, I have one more quick anecdote that might be beneficial. I made a friend moving into my new apartment building who is a resident physician in a highly, highly sought after field. We were discussing one day her life over drinks and she mentioned how she turned down med school at a very, very prestigious medical school and instead moved across the country to a flagship state university, which is far less prestigious. After a little prying she admitted she did it as the state university gave her a full ride. I asked her if she was happy with her choice, and she said absolutely. She discovered a new place, made great friends, and most importantly of all, she knew she wanted to be in this competitive medical field and was able to leverage all these extra opportunities to make her dream come true. She now is a doctor, with 0 debt, doing her dream job. She has 0 regrets. Nobody I know thinks she is any less intelligent, less impressive, or less accomplished for what she did. Whether you chose Kellogg or UNC, you will still be you. You will probably have great experiences either way. The average graduate of either of these schools is in the Top 5% of US Single Income Earners.



Best of luck and I hope you make it to the admitted students day at KF! I'll be there!
A Nigerian corp member who was posted in the East has recounted her experience in the service as an upsetting one.

Muslim corp member describes upsetting experience serving in the East

She expressed that she and her colleagues were taunted for being Muslims and not being from the East.

PAY ATTENTION: Get all the latest gossips on NAIJ Gossip App

Nigerians who had experienced a similar encounter also shared their stories.

Read below:

United we stand, Divided we fall! Everyone should remember that we are one and the same

Source: Legit.ng
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That resolution, number 2231, replaced an earlier resolution on the same topic and in so doing it softened the language so that Iran would now be called upon to avoid the testing of weapons design to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, as opposed to being categorically barred from carrying out work on weapons that are capable of carrying such a weapon, full stop. It was never made entirely clear whether this softening was intention, but it seems clear from Sundays test launch and its predecessors that Tehran and particularly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are taking full advantage of the legal loopholes that implies.

This has certainly not prevented the US from raising concerns over the Iranian regimes activities, even under the previous US presidential administration, which appeared to be committed to a more conciliatory policy on Iran. Around the time of the implementation of the JCPOA, President Obama even instituted new sanctions on individuals and organizations linked to the Iranian ballistic missile program, apparently in response to one test that had been carried out about three months earlier, after the nuclear agreement had been finalized but before it had been implemented.

But President Donald Trump, in campaigning for office, repeatedly referred to the JCPOA as one of the worst agreements ever negotiated, as well as otherwise questioning the strength and wisdom of Obama administration policy. Consequently, many foreign policy watchers are anticipating a more assertive policy by the Trump administration on the nuclear issue and other matters relevant to US-Iranian relations. And a number of news outlets including Capital Public Radio have presented Sundays arguably illicit ballistic missile launch as the first major challenge to the Trump administrations plans for enforcement of existing and prospective restrictions on the Islamic Republic.

The same outlet points out that sanctions on the sale or transfer of weapons to the Islamic Republic was one of the last issues to be resolved in the nuclear negotiations, and that its resolution essentially consisted of pushing the issue to the side and addressing the ballistic missile issue in a separate agreement that is technically unrelated to the nuclear deal. In light of this, the Iranians have had abundant opportunities to dismiss criticisms over such issues as having no bearing on the July 2015 agreement. At the same time, many of those officials have simultaneously expressed grievances over perceived violations of the spirit the agreement, as with the ongoing enforcement of sanctions that were not lifted under the JCPOA.

Furthermore, Irans apparent intransigence on the weapons issue underscores the fact that this issue is not resolved, and helps to justify familiar suspicions about Tehrans intensions. These suspicions and these unresolved tensions were made all the more obvious by the ballistic missile test and the subsequent response. The Washington Free Beacon, although acknowledging that it is not clear what the Trump administration will do or whether the launch was technically a violation of the UN resolution, indicates that the administration made little effort to mince words but declared that it was concerned over the missile test as an example of the larger series of provocations the Iranians have been engaged in.

CBS News reported that the US had followed up on these public statements by requesting an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. The same report also indicates that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had responded to the backlash by reiterating Irans position that the ballistic missile issue is separate from the nuclear deal and therefore not the legitimate concern of the US or the UN. Zarif would not, however, admit that the test-launch had taken place, although he did not deny it either.

Instead, the Foreign Ministry attempted simultaneously to deflect Western criticisms and to discourage punitive action by way of veiled threats. On one hand, Reuters quoted Foreign Minister Zarif as saying that Iran only intended its ballistic missiles for use with conventional warheads and that they would never be deployed in aggression but were instead part of a legitimate regional defensive strategy.

On the other hand, Agence France Presse reports that Iran had also made public statements warning the US of the possible consequences of creating new tensions over the ballistic missile issue. Additionally, Irans English-language propaganda network Press TV noted that the Foreign Ministry had accused the US of playing political games with the issue. The report also made a point of claiming that there was no significant difference between the current US presidential administration and its predecessor, despite the clear appearance of conflict between them over the appropriate level of assertiveness in Iran policy.

If this latter claim should be seen as dubious, so should the previous claim that Iranian ballistic missiles ought to be viewed solely as tools of legitimate self-defense. If nothing else, this is underscored by the repeated threats that Iran has made against the state of Israeli  a threat that is backed up by well-established and apparently growing relations between the Islamic Republic and a variety of anti-Israeli terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.

The existential threat that Iran poses to Israel is almost certainly a factor in the all-around hard line that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his fellow government officials maintain with regard to Iran. That perspective was clearly manifested in Netanyahus commentary on the nuclear agreement, and as a result Mr. Trumps inauguration as president less than two weeks ago was a probable sign that the special relationship between the two countries would be recovering after substantial discord between Netanyahu and Obama.

Because of this shift, there is a fair chance that Israeli input will have a stronger impression on the Trump White House than it did on the previous administration. And Tel Aviv has weighed in heavily on the ballistic missile issue, with the BBC quoting the Israelis as saying that Sundays test launch was a flagrant violation of the UN Security Council resolution and of international will more generally. The same report declared that Netanyahu is clearly pushing Trump to take action on Iran, and that this will be high on the agenda when the two leaders meet in mid-February.

Netanyahu himself said that he would urge the expansion of sanctions. But other groups, unrelated to both the Israeli and the US governments, are equally in favor of such measures. The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition of pro-democracy Iranian resistance organizations, has put out a number of statements and editorials suggesting that the Trump administration should ramp-up the enforcement that had grown lax under the Obama administration, and also that it should direct this enforcement in particular against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It is IRGC that has been consistently found to be responsible for the illicit ballistic missile sanctions, and there is little reason to think the most recent one will be any different. In addition, the IRGC is one of the main driving forces behind an ongoing domestic crackdown in Iran, which has targeted a number of Western nationals, including Americans.

Sundays ballistic missile test gives groups like the NCRI additional fuel in their campaign for the imposition of relevant sanctions; but it also provides that group and others with a new reason for confidence that their efforts may pay off. According to Fox News, Republican Senator Bob Corker, the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a written statement on the launch in which he seemed to specifically predict more punitive responses under the leadership of the newly inaugurated president.

No longer will Iran be given a pass for its repeated ballistic missile violations, continued support of terrorism, human rights abuses and other hostile activities that threaten international peace and security, the statement said.

Of course, it is easier to make such promises than to keep them, and a part of the reason why Iran has appeared to get a free pass so far is because it has generally had backing from two of the permanent members of the UN Security Council: Russia and China. And indeed, Russia has weighed in on the recent conflict in Irans favor, claiming that if Sundays test launch took place it would not be a violation of any agreement. The Russians also accused the US of trying to heat up the conflict by requesting urgent consultations among the Security Council members.

This is only one piece of evidence to suggest that relations between Iran and Russia are continuing to develop. A look at the world of business provides more such evidence. Reuters reported on Monday that the Russian energy company Lukoil was exploring new opportunities for development projects involving Iranian oil fields. And on Tuesday, Euronews reported that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was planning to visit Moscow in March.

But in the US, President Trump has repeatedly expressed interest in improving relations with Russia, perhaps while planning to rely on his past business relationships in interests for this purpose. If he successfully pursues this aspect of his prospective foreign policy, it could have knock-on effects on the Middle East by giving the US government new leverage to convince Russia to withdraw some of its support for Iran.
[February 03, 2017] Newly Launched Identity Strategy Partners, LLP Provides Policy and Technical Consultation on Complex Identity Issues to the Private and Public Sectors

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A new independent identity strategy consultancy firm announces its formation, Identity Strategy Partners, LLP (IdSP). Designed to fill a critical niche in technical and policy expertise in the complex identity market, founding partners Mark Crego and Janice Kephart together have nearly 35 combined years just in identity expertise that span federal governments, the 9/11 Commission, private industry, think tank and non-profit leadership. The Crego-Kephart combined expertise has a common theme born from a shared passion of bringing forth cutting-edge solutions based on sound policy. From the new Executive Order calling for implementation of the 20 year old requirement to establish a biometric immigration exit, to the overhaul of homeland security identity management, IdSP is being formed at this critical juncture to provide strategic vision to these complex issues. About the formation of IdSP, partner Mark Crego states: "Creating a partnership with Janice Kephart fills a vast need in the complex world of how we establish policies and architect solutions that establish, verify and store identity. The world will only become increasingly dependent on how we identify ourselves as individuals and as nations. We need to get identity right, and few people understand why and how to do that from a policy standpoint like Janice." Janice Kephart states: "Our success and security as a nation and world are heavily dependent upon getting identity right. I am so thrilled to be partnering with someone of Mark Crego's deep technical calibre. We both believe that what can be and what should be is the solution driver, not what is. We believe in making things really happen, not just talking about them. And when we talk policy, it is to effect positive change. Equally important, we believe in teamwork and ethical responsibility, and our goal is to exemplify that as IdSP grows." Founding partner Mark Crego recetly retired after 18 years at Accenture, where was Managing Director for Accenture's Global Practice. This included five years as the Department of Homeland Security's US VISIT Chief Architect. Known today as the Office of Biometric Identity Management (OBIM), it was the largest identity management system when designed and executed. In the process of being updated, OBIM continues to expand with over 190 million unique identities. After US VISIT, Mark was the Accenture program lead for Biometric Services in India's biometric-first national identity program, Aadhaar, now the largest identity management system in the world holding over 1 billion identities.



Mark was responsible for the private-public partnership that developed the standards for fingerprint collection at US borders, the world's first biometric border program. He also led the Unique Identity Services offerings in support of the European Union with over 70 million Schegen participants, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Educational Testing Service, and several other biometric programs around the world. Janice Kephart has 16 years working in identity as a policy driver with experience and leadership that includes: border counsel to the 9/11 Commission and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee twice, founder of the Secure Identity & Biometric Association and its Air Entry-Exit Working Group, Homeland Security Director at biometric leader MorphoTrak, and Americas Director for BORDERPOL. Her deep experience in strategic technical solutions, government programs, policy development and communications has resulted in 19 requests to testify before Congress and hundreds of media appearances and dozens of speaking engagements.

Janice's phraseologies "terrorist travel," "we must assure that people are who they say they are," and "for terrorists, travel documents are as important as weapons," are policy buzzwords that have resulted in worldwide enhancements to passport and driver license security, as well as the expansion of biometrics in the United States and internationally. IdSP's strategic outcomes and deliverables are identity-focused strategic, communications and enterprise architecture plans that span national and physical IDs and systems, biometric solutioning and deliverables, and commercial and access control systems with a security nexus. Practice areas include business development, strategic planning, enterprise architecture, communications, macro and micro policy development, education and public speaking. Visit us at https://www.identitystrategy.com

[email protected]

Tel (202) 750-4858

Contact: Janice Kephart

[email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/newly-launched-identity-strategy-partners-llp-provides-policy-and-technical-consultation-on-complex-identity-issues-to-the-private-and-public-sectors-300401869.html SOURCE Identity Strategy Partners, LLP (IdSP)

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[February 03, 2017] DATASHIELD Introduces Turnkey Cyber Security Appliance

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Datashield, LLC, a leader in MANAGED DETECTION AND RESPONSE SERVICES, headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, today announced the release of a new cyber security product called The Datashield Security Appliance. Built in partnership with DELL EMC, and leveraging RSA's NetWitness Suite, the product represents a significant shift in the economics of cyber security, allowing mid-market companies to capitalize on enterprise-level security at a fraction of the cost. The Datashield Security Appliance was built specifically to combat overwhelming resource and budget constraints that prevent companies from establishing suitable cyber security programs for their businesses. Founded in 209, Datashield is one of the fastest growing cyber security firms in North America. The company provides cyber security solutions in conjunction with managed detection and response services across all industries including: healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, energy, legal, and many more. Datashield is the leading provider of managed detection and response services to the mid-market. The company leverages technology coupled with human-based intelligence and internal processes to detect and combat advanced persistent threats in real-time. Datashield's proprietary technology and processes uniquely focus on quickly generating valuable insight into verified advanced security threats for analysis and response. This allows Datashield to detect threats in minutes, not months.



Michael Malone, Founder and CEO of Datashield, commented, "The launch of the Datashield Security Appliance significantly changes the economic model of advanced cyber security. We are removing the complexity and expense associated with purchasing cyber security tools and hiring experts in-house. The Datashield Appliance comes as a preloaded appliance and is placed directly into a customer's environment. It includes, the entire RSA NetWitness Suite for threat analysis (and endpoint detection) and Datashield's proprietary Shieldvision software for cyber threat intel. All of which is backed by our managed detection and response services in our SOC 24x7x365." The Datashield Security Appliance is sold in conjunction with Datashield's Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services. With a unique focus on advanced threat detection, threat analysis, active hunting, cyber threat intel and endpoint detection, the Datashield MDR team helps businesses effectively manage their entire security program.

About Datashield Datashield is a leading provider of managed detection and response for mid-market to enterprise-level organizations, combining cutting-edge technology with deep industry expertise. Since 2009, the company has evolved to meet the ever-changing demands of the advanced, persistent threat landscape, offering service and technology to companies in a wide range of industries.

Visit our website: http://datashieldprotect.com/datashield-appliance/

Media Contact: [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/datashield-introduces-turnkey-cyber-security-appliance-300401964.html SOURCE Datashield, LLC

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In a world that continues to get more connected and systems are more reliant on each other, multiple redundancy systems are essential in order to ensure the business continuity of any organization. At the upcoming ChannelVision Expo (CVx) at ITEXPO, which will be held in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. from Feb. 8-10, 2017, is where the launch of BrainBox will take place. A patent pending hardware designed to bring together solutions that are critically important in today's digital ecosystem in one intelligent device. WiredIQ, the maker of BrainBox, is going to be joined by its partner FracTEL, a company that specializes in business telecommunications solutions, for the launch.

In developing BrainBox, WiredIQ wanted to create a single intelligent edge appliance that connects the customer to the cloud using multiple broadband points and deliver essential services for any organization with a digital presence. BrainBox provides SD-WAN, Unified Communications, Network Security as a Service (NSaaS), IT managed services, video surveillance, alarm and building controls through the Internet of Things (IoT).

In order to ensure the continuity of the services BrainBox provides, WiredIQ designed it to support three different WAN connections, one of them being cellular. The connections can be public, private or split tunnel, and any WAN connection can be designated as a passive or active automatic failover for any other one connection. Having this type of multiple redundancy for the connection might seem like overkill, but organizations large and small rely on staying connected for everything from processing payments to running their day-to-day operations.

BrainBox also provides complete business continuity, which according to the company can back up your servers and PCs along with the processing with automatic failover. And in partnership with a backup specialist called Datto, a hybrid system has been put in place in which an appliance on the customer's premises performs local backups, which then performs a second backup in the cloud.

WiredIQ says it can perform this type of backup at any scale and any level, backing up servers and entire systems. In the event of a major disaster, even if a whole facility is lost, BrainBox can get your system up and running instantly, this according to the company.

Key features of BrainBox are: solid-state appliance with no moving parts and 99.999% SLA; manage firewall monitored in the cloud; MPLS-IQ private networks with redundant pathways with PCI and HIPAA compliance; redundant secure Internet access; PC desktop, provisioning, policy/license management, monitoring and antivirus; 24x7x365 NOC support; and business grade voice powered by Star2Star.

As part of its business communications solution, FracTEL will be offering BrainBox as a comprehensive suite of managed services.

When ITEXPO was launched 18 years ago, the goal was to bring telecom and IT professionals, C-levels and business owners, developers, and the channel to move the industry forward by introducing innovative products and services and educating everyone in the marketplace. It is an expo that allows the industry to meet with a diverse set of groups in one place and learn about what is available and what is to come.

As Steve Wozniak put it, "The event [ITEXPO] is very representative of modern day technology and the new state of the art. It's the people introducing the new things."

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Workers with two jobs  is this really a problem?
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On 3-5 October 2017 Kyiv is going to host the Space and Future Forum to network international experts and youth, many of whom will also participate at the first CosmoHack in the world. Joinfo provides media coverage of the Forum, and some of its topics were already discussed ...
Few Black New Yorkers receive care in New York City's elite private academic medical centers (AMCs), according to a study published today [Thursday, Feb. 2] in the International Journal of Health Services. Uninsured and Medicaid patients are also markedly underrepresented at the city's major academic hospitals. In contrast, patients in Boston's hospitals are much less segregated by race or health insurance status.

The study analyzed official data on all adults discharged from hospitals in New York City (NYC) in 2009 and 2014, and in Boston in 2009. It found that in NYC in 2014, Blacks accounted for only 18 percent of AMC patients, but nearly one-third of patients in the city's other hospitals. (Findings were similar in 2009). Similarly, only 22 percent of New York City's AMC patients had Medicaid and only 1 percent were uninsured, versus corresponding figures of 42 percent and 4 percent at city's non-AMC hospitals.

The study was carried out by researchers at City University of New York at Hunter College (CUNY), Boston Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School. Four of the authors are academic physicians who have cared for patients at multiple hospitals included in the study.

Other study findings include the following:

Even after controlling for their lower-quality insurance, Black New Yorkers were still only half as likely as whites to get their care in AMCs.

The Index of Dissimilarity (a measure of system-wide segregation) for Black patients was 0.52 for NYC hospitals, indicating moderately high segregation. That figure means that 52 percent of Black patients in NYC would have to switch to hospitals that now serve predominantly white patients to achieve the full integration of the system. In Boston's system, the Index of Dissimilarity figure was 0.33.

Compared to privately insured patients, Medicaid patients were three times less likely, and uninsured patients five times less likely, to be treated at New York City's major academic hospitals. While Medicaid and uninsured patients accounted for nearly half (46 percent) of all patients at non-AMC hospitals in NYC, they made up less than one-quarter of inpatients at NYC's AMCs overall, and less than 10 percent at one-third of the AMCs.

Conversely, privately insured New Yorkers were more than twice as likely to get care at AMCs compared to other NYC hospitals. In Boston, Medicaid enrollees and uninsured patients were just as likely to be treated at an AMC as at a non-AMC hospital (14 percent and 1 percent for both).

The authors state: "Academic medical centers play a unique role. ... They provide specialized expertise across a range of clinical services. Many AMCs are ranked among the top hospitals in the country, and patients treated at AMCs are more likely than other patients to receive treatments using the latest technologies and care adhering to current clinical guidelines."

They note that while good non-AMC hospitals can provide excellent care for many illnesses, the specialized care available at AMCs is especially important for patients with very complex and rare conditions.

The authors posit that "the extensive network of public hospitals in NYC relieves pressure on that city's AMCs to care for disadvantaged patients." But they note that the public hospitals face a financial crisis and are often under-resourced, while several of the AMCs regularly generate multimillion-dollar surpluses on their balance sheets.

All of the AMCs in Boston and NYC are nonprofit hospitals and enjoy tax exemptions worth tens of millions of dollars. In exchange, they are expected to provide community benefits, including caring for Medicaid and uninsured patients.

Roosa Tikkanen, lead author of the study who is currently a policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said: "All of New York's academic medical centers receive millions of dollars from the state's 'Indigent Care Pool,' but many of them provide little care to uninsured or Medicaid patients. Some of them are specialty hospitals that receive their patients mainly through referrals from private doctors, and these patients tend to be privately insured. This contributes to the low volume of Medicaid and uninsured patients at AMCs. However, even these specialty hospitals could do more to meet their community benefit expectation and earn their tax breaks, especially since they already have greater financial resources than the city's public hospitals do."

Study co-author Dr. David Himmelstein, an internist, distinguished professor at CUNY's Hunter College, and lecturer at Harvard Medical School who has practiced at public and AMC hospitals in New York and Boston, said: "Stark racial segregation persists to this day in New York's hospitals. Our most prestigious institutions find ways to avoid Black and poor patients. And they maintain separate and unequal clinic systems. Privately insured patients get business-class care; those with Medicaid are mostly treated by interns and residents in rundown facilities and face long waits for appointments; while the uninsured are usually turned away from the elite hospitals' clinics altogether."

Senior author Dr. Karen E. Lasser, an internist at Boston Medical Center and associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH), said, "This study highlights the issues that academic health centers need to address in order to provide the highest level of care to all patients, regardless of race, ethnicity, or health insurance coverage."

More information: Roosa Sofia Tikkanen et al, Hospital Payer and Racial/Ethnic Mix at Private Academic Medical Centers in Boston and New York City, International Journal of Health Services (2017). Roosa Sofia Tikkanen et al, Hospital Payer and Racial/Ethnic Mix at Private Academic Medical Centers in Boston and New York City,(2017). DOI: 10.1177/0020731416689549

Provided by Physicians for a National Health Program
(HealthDay)Women whose breasts are predominantly made up of more dense, glandular tissue face higher odds for breast cancer, a new study finds.

The researchers added that, based on their study of 200,000 women, breast density may be the most important gauge of breast cancer risk, eclipsing family history of the disease and other risk factors.

"The most significant finding in this study is the impact of breast density on development of breast cancer in the population," said study senior author Dr. Karla Kerlikowske. She is a researcher in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

Still, not everyone is convinced that breast tissue density is the preeminent risk factor for breast cancer.

Dr. Kristin Byrne is chief of breast imaging at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She believes that the numbers in the study attributed to risk based on tissue density seem "incredibly high, especially when other risk factors were not taken into consideration."

Byrne said, "Before these patients are placed on drugs such as tamoxifen, which have significant side effects and are intolerable for many people, more studies are necessary."

As the UCSF researchers explained, glandular tissue appears dense on a standard mammogram, while fatty tissue is less so. And many factors can influence the composition of breast tissue.

Overweight or obese women typically "have lower breast density, though age is a strong determinant of breast density as well," study first author Natalie Engmann, a Ph.D. candidate in UCSF's department of epidemiology and biostatistics, said in a university news release.

"Dense breasts are more common in younger women, and most women experience a sharp decline [in breast density] during menopause that continues in the postmenopausal period," she added. "However, postmenopausal estrogen and progestin [hormone] therapy can reverse the decline of breast density with age."

Denser breasts have been thought to be more prone to tumors because of cellular factors, and also because smaller tumors in dense tissue are tougher to pick up on mammograms. The new study sought to quantify the risk.

To do so, Kerlikowske's team tracked outcomes for about 200,000 U.S. women in the national Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium, a database aimed at assessing breast cancer screening. About 18,000 of the women had varying stages of breast cancer, while the remaining 184,000 did not.

The study participants had their breast densities recorded and were split into four categories: category A, breasts made up almost entirely of fat; category B, breasts scattered with dense tissue but mostly fat; category C, those with moderately dense tissue; and category D, breasts where dense tissue makes up at least 75 percent of the breast.

The research team then looked over a range of known breast cancer risk factorsa family history of disease, a woman's prior history of benign breast lesions, her breast density and having a first baby after the age of 30to determine the effect of each on cancer risk.

Overall, breast density was the most prevalent risk factor for breast cancer, the UCSF team reported.

Based on its calculations, Kerlikowske's team estimated that about 39 percent of breast cancers in younger, premenopausal women could have been prevented if those in the two higher tissue density categories had been shifted to a lower density category. About a 26 percent reduction in breast cancers for older, postmenopausal women was also estimated, using the same calculations.

Unfortunately, there's not much a woman can do about the density of her breast tissue, the researchers noted.

"Treatment with tamoxifen, an estrogen hormone blocker, is the only intervention currently known that substantially reduces breast density, and thus reduces breast cancer risk," Engmann explained.

"However, tamoxifen can have serious side effects and is generally only recommended for women at high risk of breast cancer, with guidance from their physician. Our study highlights the need for new interventions to reduce breast density for women at average risk," she added.

Simply gaining excess weighteven though it tends to add fatty tissue to breastswould not lower a woman's risk for breast cancer. That's because the UCSF study, along with prior research, found that obesity also raises breast cancer risk in older, postmenopausal women.

Other factors added less to overall breast cancer risk than many have previously supposed, the study found. For example, prior family history of the disease accounted for less than 10 percent of cases.

And a prior patient history of benign breast lesions accounted for only about 7 percent of cases in premenopausal women and less than 9 percent of cases for postmenopausal women, the researchers reported.

Finally, waiting to have a first child until after the age of 30 was linked with a nearly 9 percent added risk of breast cancer in premenopausal women and a 5 percent increased risk for postmenopausal women, the study team said.

The study was funded by the U.S. National Cancer Institute and is published in the Feb. 2 issue of the journal JAMA Oncology.

For her part, Byrne said women with dense breasts shouldn't panic at these results.

"It is not clear if reducing breast density will decrease breast cancer risk," she said. "Older age and gaining weight after menopause are both related to lower breast densitybut are also related to an increase in breast cancer risk," Byrne said.

The reasons behind the development of any one breast cancer remain complex, she added.

"There are other contributing risk factors such as alcohol use, sedentary lifestyle, use of birth control, postmenopausal hormonal therapy, menstrual history, radiation exposure, as well as family history of breast cancer," she said. "I think that assessing all of these risk factors is necessary to decide what a person's actual risk is."

Dr. Cynara Coomer is chief of breast surgery at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City. She agreed with Byrne that any attempt to alter breast density comes with its own hazards.

While gaining excess weight can lower tissue density, "obesity has been implicated in many diseases, including breast cancer, in postmenopausal women," Coomer said.

On the other hand, "tamoxifen is the only medication that can decrease breast density," she said, but, "like much of medicine, the risks must be weighed against the benefits."

Some of those risks include a higher chance of developing uterine cancer or deep vein thrombosis, which are blood clots in the legs, Coomer said.

More information: There's more on breast density at the Journal information: JAMA Oncology There's more on breast density at the American Cancer Society

Copyright  2017 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Neuron after laser projectionred squares indicate high calcium concentration. Credit: Hiroshima University

Researchers at Hiroshima University have developed a new laser activated technique for bridging missing links in memory flow.

The brainchild of Professor Manabu Abe of Hiroshima Universities Department of Chemistry, it aims to open up the mysterious world of neurotransmission - increasing our understanding of the mechanisms involved and potentially leading to treatments for memory loss conditions.

Gaps in our understanding

Memory involves the successful flow of neurotransmitters from neuron to neuron. When memory breaks down, we know there must be a gap in this flow but we currently don't know where to start in terms of bridging it!

In fact, our understanding of neurotransmission in general is filled with holes, limiting the development of treatments for memory loss.

While scientists are aware that stimulation of neurotransmitters such as glutamate is required for functioning memory, where and how these chemical messengers are produced remains a mystery.

What is known is that calcium has a critical role to play  its concentration increases prior to glutamates release, but again the mechanisms are poorly understood. This is due to calcium's elusiveness in neuron cells where it exists as a dissolved salt, making it difficult to control or detect.

Using Professor Abe's technique, it is hoped that the production sites of chemical messengers within neurons can be sourced, studied and even rebooted as required to reestablish flows between neurons and so boost memory.

Capture and Release

Calcium Carriers holding calcium in place and releasing it on exposure to near infrared light. Credit: Hiroshima University

HU's pioneering laser proposal for exploring the world of memory flow incorporates two distinct phases  capture and release.

The first phase involves "carrier molecules". When applied to the body via spray, these synthesized molecules diffuse independently into neuron cells - capturing and holding in place any calcium they encounter by bonding favorably with it.

However, calcium suspended in place, is of little use in memory experiments unless it can actually be detected. To solve this dilemma chromophores  essentially light sensitive antennae - were incorporated into the carriers giving them light absorbing properties.

When near-infrared light is projected at these modified carriers they break down via two-photon emission. This break down, using light capable of penetrating tissue without damaging it, makes it particularly useful for internal use in living organisms via external control using lasers!

In the lab near-infrared lasers were projected at neuron cells containing these light sensitive carriers to see if calcium was released. When the electrical charge at each laser-beam penetration point was recorded, an interesting pattern emerged - there was a wide in the charges detected, but what could this mean?

It seems that exposure to the electromagnetic wave broke down the light sensitive calcium-carrier molecules as planned - causing them to shed their electrically charged calcium cation. As calcium only exists at specific neurotransmitter production areas in neurons, a higher charge was detected in these points.

As this only happened in specific precise areas and at relatively high levels  it could also be deduced that the elusive sites of calcium concentration in neurons had finally been found.

Scientists can now focus on these precise points of neurotransmitter production to develop treatments for memory loss. Weather by observing how these areas respond to medication or by introducing outside sourced glutamate to neurons which are not functioning, a whole new world of possibilities has opened up for scientists wanting to keep the memories flowing.

More information: Satish Jakkampudi et al. Design and Synthesis of a 4-Nitrobromobenzene Derivative Bearing an Ethylene Glycol Tetraacetic Acid Unit for a New Generation of Caged Calcium Compounds with Two-Photon Absorption Properties in the Near-IR Region and Their Application in Vivo, ACS Omega (2016). Satish Jakkampudi et al. Design and Synthesis of a 4-Nitrobromobenzene Derivative Bearing an Ethylene Glycol Tetraacetic Acid Unit for a New Generation of Caged Calcium Compounds with Two-Photon Absorption Properties in the Near-IR Region and Their Application in Vivo,(2016). DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.6b00119
The Philippine education ministry has rejected a plan to distribute condoms in schools, authorities said Friday, blocking a move meant to stop one of Asia's fastest growing HIV epidemics.

The health department said in December it would give out contraceptives in schools as part of a strategy to prevent HIV infections, prompting criticism from some lawmakers and bishops in the mainly Catholic nation.

The Philippines has a rapidly growing HIV epidemic, with rights groups saying the government has failed to promote contraceptives and give sex education to gay or bisexual men.

However the education department said this week it would not allow condom distribution in primary and high schools because laws only mandated the agency to provide "sexuality education".

"We want to be sensitive to what the parents feel and we got the feedback that they don't agree with the idea," education assistant secretary Tonisito Umali told AFP.

"Parents think this will send a wrong signal to our students that it's OK to have premarital sex, to have sex while you're a minor so long as you are protected."

Access to contraceptives is a contentious issue in the Philippines, with the influential Catholic Church opposing laws and programmes seeking to distribute condoms to the poor.

President Rodrigo Duterte has challenged the Church, ordering government agencies last month to deliver free contraceptives to six million women to boost a family planning programme.

His health department has also launched a plan to curb the spread of HIV especially among Filipinos aged 15 to 24, which it said was the most vulnerable to infection.

Health department spokesman Eric Tayag said his agency would continue distributing condoms in clinics and outreach missions despite the decision of the education ministry.

"We're not disappointed because one big thing that happened was we mainstreamed the conversation about condom access, which was taboo before," Tayag told AFP.

Tayag added critics had confused HIV prevention with family planning.

"HIV in the Philippines mostly happens when you have unsafe sex: males having sex with males. Nobody gets pregnant among that vulnerable group," he said.

"For those who have already experienced sex, we are aiming for risk reduction and one (way) is condom access."

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines said giving students condoms was "a waste of public funds".

 2017 AFP
While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, his press secretary, Sean Spicer, said in a statement, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

The White House noted that the president has not taken an official position on settlement activity. It said he would discuss the issue with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel when they meet Feb. 15, in effect telling Mr. Netanyahu to wait until then. Emboldened by Mr. Trumps support, Israel has announced more than 5,000 new homes in the West Bank since his inauguration.

Mr. Trump shifted his policy after he met briefly with King Abdullah II of Jordan on the sidelines of the National Prayer Breakfast  an encounter that put the king, one of the most respected leaders of the Arab world, ahead of Mr. Netanyahu in seeing the new president. Jordan, with its large Palestinian population, has been steadfastly critical of settlements.

The administrations abrupt turnaround also coincided with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillersons first day at the State Department and the arrival of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in South Korea on his first official trip. Both men are viewed as potentially capable of exerting a moderating influence on the president and his cadre of White House advisers, though it was unclear how much they had to do with the shifts.

With Iran, Mr. Trump has indisputably taken a harder line than his predecessor. While the Obama administration often looked for ways to avoid confrontation with Iran in its last year, Mr. Trump seems equally eager to challenge what he has said is an Iranian expansion across the region, especially in Iraq and Yemen.

In an early morning Twitter post on Thursday, Mr. Trump was bombastic on Iran. Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile, he wrote. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them! In a second post, he said wrongly, Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.
TOKYO  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis assured Japans prime minister on Friday that the United States would stand by its mutual defense treaty with the country, despite statements by President Trump during last years campaign that suggested he might pull back from American security commitments in Asia.

I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, 100 percent, shoulder to shoulder with you and the Japanese people, Mr. Mattis said at the start of a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Mr. Trump, when he was running for president, had complained that the defense treaty was one-sided, even suggesting that the United States should threaten to withdraw from it unless Japan did more to compensate Washington for helping to defend its territory.

You always have to be prepared to walk, Mr. Trump said in August. I dont think its going to be necessary. It could be, though.
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Person accused of arson in Russia cafe confesses

Bayramov: Azerbaijan, Armenia leaders next meeting will take place in Brussels this month

Unity rally of participants start march in downtown Yerevan

North Korea launches 4 ballistic missiles

Council of Border Guard Troops commanders discusses situation at CIS external borders

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan joins rally in downtown Yerevan

Russia oil, natural gas companies plan to collaborate with Iraq

Armenia army intelligence troops 30th anniversary is solemnly celebrated (PHOTOS)

Rally of unity in support of Karabakh kicks off in downtown Yerevan

Pentagon announces sending 8 NASAMS air defense systems to Ukraine

Armenian Apostolic Church Supreme Spiritual Council meeting ends, Armenia and Artsakh security discussed

Tropical Storm Nalgae death toll climbs to 155 in Philippines

Artak Beglaryan is appointed advisor to Artsakh Minister of State (PHOTOS)

US House committee extends deadline for Trump to produce documents on Capitol attack

Over 200 elephants die in Kenya amid drought

13 dead in cafe fire in Russia

Armenia Security Council chief to head for Poland, Netherlands, Lithuania

Rishi Sunak: State cannot fix all problems

Newspaper: To what extent Armenia adheres to sanctions on Russia?

Biden accuses Twitter of spewing lies

Newspaper: There are active political processes in Karabakh

Qatar FM slams hypocrisy of calls to boycott World Cup

France, Singapore and Switzerland begin joint testing of experimental digital currencies

Oil war is Biden's biggest mistake

Japan considers possible deployment of hypersonic missiles by 2030

Germany to install better air defense system over Defense Ministry buildings

Erdogan and Stoltenberg discuss war in Ukraine

Armenian MOD: Azerbaijani Armed Forces open fire in direction of Armenian positions

True cost of Europe's rejection of Russian gas

White House tries to explain Biden's statement about freeing Iran

Former Pakistani Prime Minister: Either we will have a peaceful revolution or a bloody one

Aramyan: Why are police officers' salaries increasing, while defense officers' are not?

Pentagon and U.S. weapons manufacturers to discuss Russia, human resources and supply chain

Ankara says U.S. may approve sale of F-16s to Turkey within few months

IMF: Turkey should tighten monetary policy and give the Central Bank more independence

Pope urges religious leaders to keep the world from brink of abyss

Putin awards Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II with Order of Honor

U.S. says G7 countries realize need for coordinated response to China

Round-the-clock curfew is introduced in Kherson

Borrell says they can't put China and Russia on same level

Olaf Scholz calls on China to influence Russia

G7 foreign ministers express 'unwavering commitment' to protecting Ukraine, criticized PRC and IRI

Political technologist explains why Pashinyan was elected chairman of board of ruling party in Armenia

Erdogan signs up for TikTok

China's army is constantly preparing for war amid provocative U.S. actions

Kalin: Armenia is constructive about normalization of relations

Poland asks EU to suspend fines

Putin: Situation in Ukraine was deadly for Russia

Portugal to test a four-day workweek

US embassy in Armenia issues statement ahead of November 5 protests in Yerevan

Dollar, euro go up in Armenia

Baku authorities once again refuse to allow PFPA to hold protest rally

Iranians commemorate anniversary of US embassy seizure

Richard Kauzlarich: Azerbaijan, Armenia FMs meeting in Washington 'will send message to Putin'

Russia ratifies protocol on requirements for length of service of EEU bodies' employees for pensions

Armenia deputy defense minister in Russia, discusses military cooperation

Yerevan receives proposal to hold Russia-Armenia-Azerbaijan interparliamentary talks

Health minister: We will work with fallen Armenia detainees relatives one more time after which bodies will be buried

Putin allows mobilization of citizens with unexpunged criminal record for serious crimes

Arnika, NESEHNUTI NGOs of Czech Rep. issue joint statement on plan to expand gold mine in Armenias Karaberd

Putin urges to evacuate civilians living in Kherson from the war zone

Iran parliament speaker to visit Armenia

Ruling force MP: Canada is opening embassy in Armenia because we are one of worlds most democratic countries

Girl with Armenian roots ends up in Vladimir orphanage

Erdogan says he has agreed with Putin to supply grain to needy countries for free

Armenia President, UK envoy agree to continue cooperation, close contacts

Armenia FM receives EU Monitoring Capacity

Spanish MPs don't approve agreement with Baku as a sign of solidarity with Armenia

Japan says North Korea may go ahead with nuclear test

Armenia government to allocate about $5M to Karabakh refugees support program

Belarusian border service: Border guards intercepts Ukrainian training drone

President appoints Ruben Vardanyan as Karabakh Minister of State

US embassy expresses concern about human rights violation in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan continues muscle play on Iran border

Ibrahim Kalin says Turkey will become an important gas center one way or another

Biden: We're gonna free Iran

Reuters: G7 countries and Australia agrees on fixed price for Russian oil

World oil prices dropping

Wizz Air to launch new flights between Venice, Yerevan

EU assesses Armenia, Azerbaijan border commissions meeting in Brussels as constructive

Artsakh President convenes enlarged working consultation

Envoy: China supports Armenians

Azerbaijan MOD disseminates disinformation, Armenia army did not fire

Armenia ruling party recounts congress voting results

Quake jolts Turkey

Newspaper: Armenia PM once again manipulates topic of negotiations, Karabakh conflict

Newspaper: Studies underway on Armenia MPs business involvement

US wants to prevent Germany, other allies from working together with China

Protests turn violent in Iran's Alborz Province

Portugal is considering abandoning golden visa scheme

Biden and Erdogan to meet at G-20 summit

NATO supports normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and welcomes EU efforts

Bank of England raises interest rates by largest amount since 1989

Scholz says Berlin must change its attitude toward China

Cavusoglu and Stoltenberg disagree over Sweden's and Finland's fulfillment of commitments

Turkish Vice President to visit Azerbaijan and occupied Shushi

Britain buys 250 million pounds worth of oil from Azerbaijan from July 2021 to June 2022

Yair Lapid congratulates Benjamin Netanyahu on winning election

Armenian MOD: Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense spreads another disinformation

ENISA: War in Ukraine, geopolitics fuel cyberattacks
A group of Azerbaijanis in Washington organized a fundraising campaign in support of political prisoners in Azerbaijan.

As a result at the event which was attended by citizens of the United States and other countries, were collected $3,000, contact.az reported.

We want to show that the political prisoners are not an abstract concept, but real people. Looking at their photos, visitors can feel it.Participants of the action will sign these photos and together with money they will be sent to the families of political prisoners, said one of the organizers of Tamara Grigorieva.

Another organizer Aynur Jafar said that the majority of political prisoners in Azerbaijan are men. Therefore, their families are now deprived of financial security, and this action will be a kind of temporarily support for them.

Former US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Kozlarich stressed the importance of this campaign, urging to keep the issue of political prisoners in Azerbaijan in the spotlight. Former political prisoner Adnan Hajizade noted the importance of sending letters to the families of political prisoners. "This attention will please them very much, giving moral support. As for fundraising, it will allow at least to provide inmates normal food, for food in prisons is awful," he said.

Visitors and participants of the action have examined the photos by shot by the photographer Jahangir Yousif named Distance displaying the portraits of those who are currently under arrest in Azerbaijan for political motives.
YEREVAN.  The students of Armath engineering club-laboratory of Gyumri branch of the National Polytechnic University of Armenia have recently hosted the project representatives from Ucom and Union of the Information Technology Enterprises (UITE).

During the tour the students of Armath demonstrated everything they have learnt throughout an entire year. The children became skilled in creating games, doing animation, performing mathematical calculations with the help of Scratch and K-Turtle programs, also in object modelling and printing with the help of three-dimensional printer. Moreover, there they have an opportunity to design and develop different types of equipment and robot models.

We have taken part in almost all events and competitions organized in Armenia and mostly occupied the winning places. As an example I can mention the Minesweeper Robot competition, which enables many of us to contribute to the development of military industry and do our best so that robots seek mines instead of people,  says Sona Harutyunyan, a student at Arrmath engineering club-laboratory of the Gyumri branch of the National Polytechnic University of Armenia.

We always take pride in a variety of innovative solutions offered by foreign engineers with Armenian descent. I am convinced that tomorrow we shall be mentioning the names of many of the Armath laboratories just right here, in Armenia, which is open for all those solutions, said Hayk Yesayan, director general at Ucom.

According to the Memorandum of Cooperation signed between the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE) and Ucom, the latter invests to open around 70 more engineering club-laboratories named Armath in 9 regions of Armenia. The project aims to promote the technological education in all schools of the Armenian communities, to assist pupils in their early interest emergence in modern high technology, to promote the development of engineering mindset from early ages and to prepare competent students.

The project enables practical support for the integration of qualified IT-specialists into the Armenian and world markets, the exchange of the experience between them, and the attraction of large-scale investments into the IT-industry. It is noteworthy, that the software and assembly drawings of the labs-developed equipment are open to public. The computer programs and systems are armenianized to the extension possible, while during the project implementation for the acquisition of the equipment and software, the priority is given to the local producers, the bright example of which serve the high-quality three-dimensional (3D) printers, mini-computers, robotics kits and other devices produced in Armenia.
The Karabakh conflict is a direct threat to national security, stability and development of Armenia and Azerbaijan, representative of Russian foreign ministry Maria Zakharova sad commenting on the statement by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

During his confirmation hearing in the Senate, Mr. Tillerson said the Karabakh conflict is a threat to stability in the region and U.S. national security interests.

This is his assessment as a representative of the United States. I am not commenting on the position of the U.S. which has the right to assess their threats, but we note that the conflict is mainly a direct threat to national security, stability and development of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zakharova said during a breinfing on Friday.

Asked about the contacts with the American side on Karabakah settlement, Zakharova said the contacts will be held in the future, and it is senseless to comment on the contacts now.
Council of Europe has been accused of turning a blind eye to corruption, in particular vote-rigging in favor of Azerbaijans authoritarian regime.

Dutch MP Pieter Omtzigt is urging PACE leaders to launch a deep, thorough investigation by an independent panel that makes its findings public, The Guaridan reported.

We see a lot of suspicious outcomes of votes and procedures on Azerbaijan, Omtzigt told the Guardian.

According to The Guardian article, the observers have repeatedly raised questions concerning PACEs weak response to ballot-box stuffing and human rights violations in Azerbaijan, and all this resulted in a scandal over Italian politician Luca Volonte who is suspected of taking a 2.39 million euro in bribes from Baku.

Overall, 324 PACE parliamentarians have signed a written declaration saying recent, serious and credible allegations of grave misconduct by some ot its members risk undermining public confidence in the Parliamentary Assembly's integrity.

Gerald Knaus, the chairman of the European Stability Initiative, said the Council of Europes parliamentary leaders failed to ask questions about open and obvious suspicions of corruption, while rosy picture of Azerbaijans elections painted by monitors from PACE should have raised questions years ago.

The author of the Guardian article noted that Spanish delegate, head of PACE Pedro Agramunt initially resisted the inquiry, but later agreed to set up an investigation after strongly-worded complaints from a dozen countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, the Baltic and Nordic states.

According to the author or the article, Agramunt was not immediately available for comment. It is also mentioned that Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjrn Jagland stands for zero tolerance on corruption.
YEREVAN.  President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan received on Friday Director General of the European Commission for Neighbourhoodand Enlargement Negotiations Christian Danielsson.

President welcomed the guest and expressed hope that during his two-day stay in the country, Mr. Danielson had fruitful and useful meetings and discussions. Serzh Sargsyan noted with satisfaction that the last two years were very active in terms of cooperation between Armenia and the European Union.

In this context, the President stressed the importance of mutual high-level visits, referring to the recent visit to Armenia by EU Council Chairman Donald Tusk, the head of EU diplomacy Federica Mogherini and other senior officials.

Stressing that Armenia and the European Union are actively engaged in the negotiations on the new framework agreement, the parties mutually expressed hope that in the near future the process will enter its final stage. Christian Danielsson stressed the importance of the expected visit of the President to Brussels, which, he believes, will give new impetus to the development of cooperation.

Among the important achievements of the Armenia-EU cooperation, the President noted the adoption by the EU Council decision to approve the negotiating mandate around a common aviation area with Armenia and assured that our country will continue to promote cooperation with the European Union in the areas of reforms, democracy governance, human rights, economic cooperation and other fields of mutual interest. Serzh Sargsyan expressed gratitude for the efforts and resources that the European Union has invested in the process, including, for the assistance provided before the upcoming parliamentary elections in Armenia.

The sides also exchanged views on regional issues and challenges.
YEREVAN.  The final tranche from EU will be available to the Armenian government only after parliamentary elections, Head of EU Delegation to Armenia, Ambassador Piotr Switalski said in an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am. He noted the positive aspects of a new framework agreement between Yerevan and Brussels and reiterated EUs position on Karabakh issue.

Do you see progress in economic interaction between the European Union and Armenia during 2016?

We do not have the full data of 2016, but we have partial for the first part which shows visible increase of Armenian exports to the EU market. The European Union remains the biggest export market for Armenia. The European Union is the number one trade partner, number one foreign investor and number one donor of Armenia. Armenia benefits from the GSP+ scheme (privileged access to the European market). Thousands of Armenian items can enter freely the EU market. GSP+ is based on the conditionality related to Armenias participation in 27 international agreements, treaties and standard setting documents. This privilege access is not unconditional, it has to do with implementation by Armenia of these important conventions relating to human rights and labor standards.

Can we expect signing of a new framework agreement between Yerevan and Brussels this year? What will the new agreement change in bilateral relations from economic point of view?

The negotiations between Armenia and EU on new framework agreement enter the final phrase. Very intensive negotiations being conducted, this week as we speak new platforms of dialogue will be perused, and I believe there is strong determination to complete negotiations as soon as possible. We cannot speak about any concrete dates. Only a few remaining open issues have to be tackled. How long it will take this is another story, but with the political will this agreement can be concluded in quite short time.

The importance of agreement is obvious. The agreement will establish a solid legal basis in relations between Armenia and EU. The framework agreement with EU will be the most advanced agreement between the European Union and any member of the Eurasian Economic Union. The political part will be reserving the substance of association agreement canceled in 2013. The political part will contain a very strong commitment on both parties to deepen political dialogue, cooperation on foreign policy, security and defense matters. Most importantly the common values which are the basis of our relationship will be strengthened.

The economic and trade part, of course, will not be so ambitious as the deep and comprehensive free trade agreement for obvious reasons. The trade part will be very modest, but still we will have as the basis WTO regime.

Some other issues which are related to trade and investment part at this moment cannot be as ambitious as Armenia and EU might wish. Nevertheless, there will be elements which will introduce new quality to the trade and economic part.

I think that for foreign investors this agreement will serve as an encouragement to do business in Armenia, because even from political point of view the framework agreement will constitute a political assurance that Armenia is in good terms with EU, and it makes sense to consider business opportunities in Armenia.

On New Years Eve Azerbaijani armed forces launched a diversionary infiltration attempt at Armenias state border. Do you agree that such kind of aggressive steps should be strictly condemned and prevented? Dont you think that imposing sanctions might be necessary in case of destructive actions?

The position of the European Union is very clear: we condemn violence, we urge parties to show restraint and to avoid escalation of hostilities. We deplore loss of life. These young man killed in the battle, the exchange of fire are the future of Armenia, the future of Azerbaijan. So, our position is very clear and is very consistent: there is no military solution to the conflict. Hostilities should be prevented, confidence building mechanism and investigation mechanism as envisaged some months ago in Vienna in May should be put in place, and negotiation on comprehensive settlement of the conflict should be brought to a successful conclusion. The EU is not involved in the direct mediation, this is responsibility of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, but we support their efforts. We have a special representative coming very often to the region and meeting the leaders of the parties. The EU is very much interested in the settlement of the conflict. And hopefully we can have visible progress soon. From my contacts here, I believe that Armenian society is ready to engage in peace, is ready to support peace. Armenia is not interested in the bad developments meaning another war, another conflict and case of loss of life. This I can assure from my daily contacts.

The European Union welcomed consensus between the authorities and the opposition concerning the Electoral Code. There was essential financial assistance from the EU. Do you see real guarantees and prospects of free, just and democratic parliamentary elections in Armenia?

The implementation of electoral deal in September 2016 was very important, and I can note with satisfaction that all stakeholders were doing their best to ensure the proper implementation of technical arrangements related to the elections. From our contacts with the government and opposition parties, as well as other public institutions, such as Central Electoral Commission, everything is being done in order to make this deal a success. We appreciated the role of the UNDP who is responsible for the implementation of one part of the deal: installation of voter identification machine, together with other donors Germany, UK and U.S. we are grateful to UNDP and the government for making good progress.

Technical part of an agreement on installing cameras during Armenias elections cannot be implemented to the level of ambition as envisaged initially, but judged by last weeks contacts with the government officials and the opposition parties, the EU is optimistic that there is a political will to carry out this arrangement concerning video cameras to the best possible level.

I understand that contacts are now being undertaken with the willing company. The task is very difficult, because the time is short. I cannot recall any other country where such an ambitious technological approach was implemented within such a short period of time, But, I am optimistic because what I see is a very strong determination and political will to implement the deal.

The deal, of course, does not cover all aspects. There are areas where the government and the opposition could not come to a common position, for instance the question of the rating lists. The EU is interested that all the other aspects are implemented according to the international standards, taking into account the previous recommendations of the OSCE and the Council of Europe that Armenia as declared by the leadership of the country has the best elections ever, the best election in the region and even in the post-Soviet area, if you wish, I think it is possible and will open a new chapter for Armenia. This will make Armenia develop better and faster.

The level of EUs engagement is unprecedented. EU is allocating up to 7 million Euros in addition to the allocations of Germany, UK and US which makes 90 percent of the external foreign funding, and this is something we have never done in any other country. Why are we doing it this time? We believe that Armenia needs our support, and this support can be used for a good purpose, this support will not be wasted, it will bring to a clear result. So far we have allocated up to 4 million euros to procure equipment, 2 more million will be transferred in the coming days. More than one million will be available only after the elections, and we do not make it a secret. Allocation of the final tranche will depend on how the elements of the electoral deal will be implemented. We are paying close attention to what is happening. From our perspective the most important issue should be now to look into questions of fair campaign (prevention of misuse of administrative resources, prevention of corruption, fair access to media).

I have had several meetings with the officials of Armenia, including prosecutor general, and I can say the authorities are aware of the task and they want to do their best within the scope of the mandates in order to ensure the best conditions for campaign.

This is a very important time for Armenia. The challenges are big, but I am optimistic, I believe that Armenia will find its way out because even from the biggest challenges there is always a way out.
The family of Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan will make a $500,000 USD investment in the fund opened for the socio-economic development program of Armenias Shirak province.

The PM told the aforementioned to journalists on Friday during his visit to Gyumri, the second largest city of Armenia. He declined to answer where his family has got that amount from, noting that he has presented thorough information on his property in his declaration. My family will make a $500,000 USD investment by the means which I have presented in my declaration, he noted.

According to Karapetyan, the investment package for the socio-economic development of Shirak currently amounts to 10 million AMD.

We will establish a fund, whose investment package is currently 10 million AMD, which is collected from different sources. We will propose owners in Gyumri to also take part in the fund through their property and sale of their property. We will implement that program, he said.

Karapetyan got angry at the journalists question as to what are the guarantees that the Shirak development program will be implemented.

What must I say for you to consider it as a guarantee? You say guarantee, how do you imagine it? We have come to open jobs. You know that it is impossible to change everything in Gyumri at once. It is impossible to solve all the issues at once, he said.
Belarus sees no grounds for not extraditing Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Friday, RIA Novosti reports.

What grounds do we have for not handing him over to Azerbaijan? None, he said at a large press-conference in Minsk.

In his words, Lapshins arrest was carried out in accordance with the decision of Interpol. And according all the laws and procedures, we must hand him over to Azerbaijan. Of course, we can also set him free but this will be incorrect. We will be treated exactly the same way when we detain someone. Therefore, according to all the agreements, we must hand him over to Azerbaijan, Lukashenko added.

After his visits to Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) in 2011 and 2012, famous blogger Alexander Lapshin was blacklisted by Azerbaijan.

In June 2016, however, he paid a visit to Azerbaijan, but with a Ukrainian passport. Subsequently, he issued several articles criticizing the Azerbaijani authorities. Afterward, the Azerbaijani authorities issued an international search for this famous blogger.

On December 15, 2016, he was detained in the Belarus capital city of Minsk, and based on this international search.
The Russian Interior Ministry has drafted a bill according to which migrants from the Eurasian Economic Union member states who work without a contract will be deported from Russia. In addition to it, the bill sets a penalty. Exceptions make the citizens of Belarus, who are exempt from having "migrant cards", writes Izvestya.

Currently, migrant workers from EEC countries: Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Russia are exempt from the obligation to obtain a work permit in the member states of the Union. The employment terms are determined by the period fixed in the labor contract. At the same time, its absence will be examined based on the labor and not the immigration legislation.

The new law, according to its developers, is necessary to control the period of arrival of the EEC citizens to Russia. The bill also envisages a fine from a migrant in case of the absence of the labor contract, from 2 to 5 thousand rubles, as well as deportation from Russia. The penalty will be 25-50 thousand rubles for the officials, whereas 250-800 thousand rubles for legal entities.
YEREVAN. - The first 30 food safety specialists were trained by a U.S. program in Armenia.

All the graduates of the intensive short-term course received the certificates of the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Polytechnic University.

The organizer of the course was the International Center for Agribusiness Research and Education (ICARE) opened in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

The graduates received modern knowledge on production control standards of food safety.

Congratulating the graduates, the Armenian Minister of Agriculture Ignati Araqelyan underscored the importance of training specialists in the sphere of food quality and safety. Starting their work in companies, they will help make the Armenian production more competitive, he said.

The Minister also thanked for the support of project donors, specifically the USAID program on Innovation for Agricultural Training and Education (InnovATE).
On February 2 and 3 there took place attacks on the Russian embassy in Damascus. There were no injuries, but the embassy suffered a serious material damage, reads the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"On February 2 and 3 the Russian Embassy in Syria was twice attacked by mortar fire. The firing was launched from Cobar district, controlled by terrorists, "reads the commentary of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"One of the mines exploded in the territory of the embassy, between the office and residential buildings, the other 20 meters away from the main entrance. There are no casualties, but it caused a serious material damage. "

The purpose of firing of the Russian embassy in Damascus was to break the ceasefire of military operations in Syria.
FAA Reminds Public of No Drone Zone Surrounding Super Bowl Location

The FAA sent out a public service announcement saying no drones will be allowed anywhere near NRG Stadium in Houston.

The Federal Aviation Administration is bent on ensuring no drones are anywhere near Super Bowl LI, releasing a public service announcement reminding the public that the airspace around NRG Stadium in Houston is a No Drone Zone for the big game.

Temporary Flight Restrictions will not allow certain aircraft operations, including drones, within a 34.5-mile radius of NRG Stadium in Houston on game day. The restrictions will go into effect from 4 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 5. "Drones are becoming much more popular, but they also pose certain safety risks," said FAA Administrator Michael Huerta. "We're working closely with our safety and security partners to spread the No Drone Zone message as widely as possible."

Similarly, the city of Houston announced Super Bowl safety zones and street closures that have been in effect since Jan. 13 and will be in place through Feb. 8.

See the FAA drones video announcement here.
It's time for Dining Month, presented by Deer District and its spooky Halloween-themed alter ego, Fear District. Throughout the month of October, we'll be serving up fun and fascinating content about all things food. The signature dish, however, is our 2019 Best of Dining poll, who's winners we will dish out all month long. Get hungry, Milwaukee!

Though some restaurants have long lives  in Milwaukee one thinks of Mader's or Jack Pandl's, for example, many more seem to come and go, victims of poor economies or bad management or changing culinary tastes, or a host of other reasons.

Here are a few from the past that I miss ...

Joe Wong was well-known in Milwaukee's Chinese community, but thanks to his popular restaurants, he was a familiar face to non-Chinese here, too. Wong immigrated to the U.S. in 1916, landing in Madison and studying engineering at Wisconsin. Fortunately for Milwaukee, Wong came here, where his dad had opened a restaurant Downtown. Later, the Wongs added a place on Third and North.

In 1945, Joe Wong opened La Joy at 4720 W. Lisbon Ave. and for decades it was perhaps the best Chinese restaurant in town. Each time I visited it felt like a great treat and a splurge. I remember the food being delicious and the atmosphere being mysteriously dark.

Though La Joy (and its building) are gone, its owner's name lives on, immortalized in the name of Wong's Wok, founded by his grandsons Paul Wong and Edward Chin.

For about five years, I worked second shift Downtown at Milwaukee's daily morning newspaper, the defunct Milwaukee Sentinel. Thankfully, for some of those years there was a pizza by the slice restaurant at 228 W. Wisconsin Ave., just across the alley from the old Grand Theater, called New York Pizza Express (where it replaced the Milwaukee Dog hot doggery).

I ate a lot of pizza in the place, which had a long counter along the right side and a seating area a few steps up in back, just like a real NYC pizzeria. It opened in 1986 but only lasted a few years.

Soon after, I lived just off Downer Avenue and I spent a lot of time at The Chancery, especially on all you can eat shrimp night and all you can eat fried chicken night, which were a boon to a young 20-something on a tight budding journalist's salary. Now, even The Chancerys on 27th Street and in Tosa Village are closed.

A few doors south was Brewster's and later Webster's on Downer, where there is now a Starbucks. I passed countless hours  and gained countless pounds  noshing on cinnamon rolls, drinking coffee and doing The New York Times crossword puzzle there over the years. It's probably a good thing it (first moved then) closed, or I'd be morbidly obese.

Which dearly departed Milwaukee restaurants do you miss most?
At the beginning of the school year, Molly Schuld, a science teacher at Reagan College Preparatory High School, dreamed of taking students on a trip to the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador. Now it appears that her dream will come true.

"I care about three things: my students, science and traveling," Schuld said. "I never really thought before about how I could put those three things together. But when this idea came across to me via a flier in my mailbox, I just thought to myself, 'How could I say no to this?'"

Schuld received approval from Milwaukee Public Schools for the trip, and students have raised more than $22,000, including nearly $3,000 through GoFundMe. In addition, participating students have been making monthly payments toward the trip, using money from work, savings and donations from their families.

"We are all so incredibly appreciative of the support we have received from everyone in the community," Schuld said. "This trip is going to broaden the cultural knowledge of these students, and I couldnt be more thrilled with the amount of effort they have put into making this happen."

All Reagan students except graduating seniors were eligible to take part in the trip, which is expected to take place soon after the school year ends. Thirty-five students will be participating, and there is a waiting list.

"I think this is a great opportunity for the students to make an impact outside of the classroom and engage with other cultures," said Mike Roemer, principal of Reagan High School.

"I wanted to take the students to a Spanish-speaking country," Schuld said. "Im also very passionate about environmental science, and with the talk that the Galapagos may not be a tourist destination in the future due to environmental threats, I knew I had to capitalize on the opportunity."

The Galapagos Islands, which are a province of Ecuador, face threats from climate change, pollution, invasive species and other factors. They boast a wide variety of plant and animal species, many of which can be found nowhere else.

The per-student cost of the nine-day trip is $3,750. In September, students set fundraising goals with their parents ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars. They have sought donations from family and friends, and some have gotten jobs to help pay for the trip.

About $61,420 of the total $131,250 cost still needs to be contributed or raised. Schuld says that she is confident the trip will take place.

Kirstin Hackbarth, a junior, said that her experience volunteering at the Milwaukee County Zoo influenced her interest in the trip. "A couple of zoo keepers that I worked with went on the exact same trip about a year ago so when this opportunity came up I just said, 'Oh my God.'"

Adam Jaraba, a sophomore, said he is incredibly thankful for his familys support. "We have a lot of family helping us fund raise," he said. "My mom and cousins have all gone out selling chocolates, which has been a huge help to me."

Jaraba, Hackbarth and other students said they are passionate about engaging with a different culture. "To see a new culture will provide us insight to a different lifestyle and we are all excited to live that for nine days," Jaraba said.

Five teachers signed on to chaperone the trip. Said Misa Sato, International Baccalaureate coordinator at Reagan, "I love travelling and I love these kids; I think this trip will open up a lot of doors for them."
Phuket-Thailand, February 2017  Spread the love this Valentines Day at Angsana Laguna Phuket with three romantic Destination Dining experiences. Choose a quiet and intimate dinner at Bodega & Grill or Baan Talay, before proceeding to celebrate Valentines Night at a Bubble Valentines Party at XANA Beach Club, Phukets premier party venue overlooks Bangtao Bay on 14th February 2017.

Enjoy a five course menu of contemporary Italian cuisine pairing with wine at Bodega & Grill Restaurant with at THB 3,500++ per person for food and wine pairing and THB 2,900++ for food only. Or share a special meal with your loved one with a tantalizing four course set menu of traditional Thai cuisine under candlelight at Baan Talay Restaurant at only THB 1,900 per person.

For some fun and music to round off your night, XANA Beach Club is bringing nightlife back to its roots, with DJ Vadim Almazov and DJ ViKi Love. XANAs Bubble Valentines Party kicks off at 8pm and entry is THB 300, including a free bubbly drink for singles and a special bubbly bottle for couples.

Whether your Valentine is a close friend, family or your loved one, our Valentines dinner and party is the perfect time to share a great-tasting meal and a dash of spice and fun with someone special.

For more information, please contact 076-358500 Ext. Bodega & Grill, Baan Talay or XANA Beach Club.
Blanca Ochoa. Credit: University of the Basque Country

The study of Palaeolithic art is "one of the few tools we have to find out about the culture and society of prehistoric groups," says Blanca Ochoa, researcher in the UPV/EHU's department of Geography, Prehistory and Archaeology. Knowing who the representations were meant for "could indicate the intended use of cave art for prehistoric groupswhether it was something for the whole group, shared by all its members, or whether it was limited to small groups, or even to just one individual," she explains.

In her research, the aim was to specify whether there were any preferences in terms of choosing the spaces where the Palaeolithic representations were drawn or engraved. The study encompassed nine caves on the Cantabrian coast located in Asturias and Cantabria. "It is an aspect that has been analysed very little until now," says the researcher. Her team developed an in-house methodology to analyse the visibility of the figures depicted, which covers not only variables relating to the space where they are located (room size, accessibility, presence of natural light, etc.) but also characteristics relating to the depictions themselves.

"The size of the works, the height they are at, and, above all, the technique used to execute them (painting or engraving) largely determines visibility," says Ochoa. "The paintings are much more visible than the engravings, and even more so if the engraving is not very deep."

Differences in location, possible change of use

As Ochoa explains, among the most interesting results they extracted in the research were observed chronological differences. "Throughout the Upper Palaeolithic, the topographical distribution of the works gradually changed. During the early phases of the Upper Palaeolithic, there is a preference for executing medium-sized and large drawings in the main galleries of the caves. During the Magdalenian, between 20,000 and 12,000 years ago, there was an increase in the use of spaces located in places far from the main cave route, in small, sometimes concealed rooms; additionally, there was a preference for a smaller size when it came to creating the figures and an increase in the use of the engraving as a technique. Art may have been intended to be seen by the community during the Pre-Magdalenian. The use of smaller spaces during the Magdalenian, however, could indicate that art became something more restricted, or that it performed another kind of function."

Panel located in the cave at La Pasiego (Puente Viesgo, Cantabria). Credit: University of the Basque Country

As it is a new type of study and conducted in a limited geographical area, Ochoa stresses the preliminary nature of the results obtained. Nevertheless, she believes it will "help to establish the bases to find out who Palaeolithic art was intended for. We have confirmed that the methodology developed does, in fact, work, and that it can be applied in other areas of the Cantabrian region or outside it. I would like to continue with the research, because the results for this area have been very interesting, and I would like to see whether the conclusions we have drawn can be extended to other areas. Although there will probably be geographical differences as well, and the different groups may have had other uses of art."

More information: Marcos Garcia-Diez et al, Temps et reseaux de l'art paleolithique : la grotte de La Covaciella (Asturies, Espagne), L'Anthropologie (2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.anthro.2015.11.001
Credit: Shutterstock

Ever wondered why there have been so many urban myths and songs dedicated to LSD? Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations suggest that LSD's slow binding kinetics may be due to a 'lid' formed by extracellular loop 2 (EL2) at the entrance to the binding pocket. Put simply, the findings, published in Cell, have now showed that once the LSD compound catches, part of the serotonin receptor folds down over it, meaning that it is held tightly in place and thus allows the drug to perch in the brain for several hours, even up to 12 hours at times.

'It's basically trapped in the receptor and can't get out.' This is how Bryan Roth, senior co-author of the study and professor of pharmacology at the University of North Carolina described his observations.

The potent psychedelic drug LSD, which alters our cognition and perception, gained huge popularity throughout the world during the hippie or counterculture years in the 1960s and 70s as a permitted recreational drug. The drug was however quickly classified as a schedule I drug. Controlled substance schedule I drugs carry with them a high potential for abuse and severe psychological and/or physical dependency, explaining why the drug is categorised in the highest of groups based on the risk of abuse or harm.

In 1968, the possession of LSD was made illegal in the United States, although legally approved and regulated psychiatric use of LSD continued until 1993 in Switzerland. Ever since, scientists have been keen to study its complex pharmacology and more importantly its potential utility in studying aspects of human psychopathology and consciousness.

Two decades of gruelling trial and error later, scientists have finally managed to transform the LSD and receptor into a crystallised form to be able to decipher its exact physical structure. In using crystallography, a technique where x-rays are beamed into a material and the resultant diffraction pattern can be used to work out the exact spacing of the atoms, researchers found that brain cells eventually respond to the attached molecule by sucking the receptor inwards at which point the LSD is broken down.

'A lot of people who take the drug are not aware of just how long it lasts,' said Roth who's interest in the topic came following close and personal youthful encounters with party revellers at the infamous Grateful Dead concerts. Grateful Dead concerts were inextricably linked to LSD in the United States and provided the primary distribution network for LSD through the mid-1990s.

In the future, while molecular and crystal studies cannot fully explain the central nervous system (CNS), such studies provide informative insights into hallucinogen actions. Chemists could for example produce shorter-acting versions of the drug that may be more suited to clinical use for anxiety or post-traumatic stress disorders.

Provided by CORDIS
Denmark presented Friday a series of measures to curb "revenge porn", the sharing of nude pictures or videos of people online without their consent, including raising the penalty from six months to two years in prison.

"Nude photos of ex-lovers are being shared online to a shocking extent," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on his Facebook account.

"The victims get scars on their souls which they have to bear for the rest of their lives," he added.

The posting of nude or explicit pictures without that person's consent is dubbed "revenge porn".

In Denmark, 17 percent of men and 13 percent of women aged 15-25 have had nude photos of themselves shared or published online, according to government figures.

However, there's no data on how many of those have been published without their consent.

The Danish government's proposalspresented by the ministers for justice, gender equality and educationalso include informing victims of what to expect when they report their case to the police.

Traffickers earning money by selling naked images or exchanging them in chat rooms will also face harsher penalties.

The government also said it would launch a study on youth's perception of gender, body, sexuality and digital behaviour, as well as an education and awareness programme in schools.

 2017 AFP
A new study led by a team of scientists at UCD shows that a reaction betwen silicon dioxide that is found in quartz crystals and fluid hydrogen at high temperatures and pressure, found in the earth's upper mantle, can create water. Credit: flickr-jgsgeology

Earth's water may have originally been formed by chemical reactions deep within the planet's mantle, according to research led by University College Dublin.

The new theory offers an alternative explanation as to how the life-giving liquid may have originated on Earth. Previously, scientists have suggested that comets that collided with the planet could have deposited large amounts of ice on the Earth which later melted, forming water.

The investigators carried out computer simulations which found that reactions between high-pressure and high-temperature fluid hydrogen and silicon dioxide in quartz, found in Earth's upper mantle, can form liquid water under the right conditions.

The simulations were carried out by Dr Zdenek Futera, UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, under the direction of Profesor Niall English, UCD School of Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering, and the Materials, Energy and Water Simulations research group. The team at UCD also worked closely with co-author of the paper, Professor John Tse, University of Saskatchewan in Canada.

The exercise tested the reaction at different temperatures and pressures typically found in the upper mantle 40 to 400km below the surface of the Earth.

The simulations revealed that the silica and fluid hydrogen could form water when exposed to temperatures of just over 1400C and at pressure 20,000 times higher than Earth's atmospheric pressure.

Silica is found in abundance above and below the surface of the earth in the form of the mineral quartz  the Earth's crust is 59 per cent silica.

Details on discovery by scientists in 2014 that vast 'ocean-like' quantities of water are located 600 miles below surface of Earth. Credit: Beyond Science

The scientists had expected that the water would form on the surface of the silica, but instead, they were surprised to find that the water remained trapped inside the silica, leading to a massive build up of pressure.

They also believe the release of this pressure could be responsible for triggering earthquakes hundreds of kilometres below the Earth's surface.

The new findings support the experiments on the same reaction between silicon dioxide and liquid hydrogen carried out by Japanese scientists in 2014.

"We were initially surprised to see in-rock reactions, but we then realised that we had explained the puzzling mechanism at the base of earlier Japanese experimental work finding water formation," said Prof English.

"We concluded that these findings help to rationalise, in vivid detail, the in-mantle genesis of water. This is very exciting and in accord with very recent findings of an 'ocean's worth' of water in the Earth's mantle.

"We thank Science Foundation Ireland and our collaborators at the University of Saskatchewan, and the Ireland-Canada Foundation for 'seeding' this 20-paper collaboration with Professor John Tse ten years ago."

The findings were published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Various studies in recent years have also suggested that vast quantities of water are stored in rocks as far as 1000km below the surface of the Earth.

More information: Zdenek Futera et al. Formation and properties of water from quartz and hydrogen at high pressure and temperature, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2016.12.031 Journal information: Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Governments and politicians have attempted to exploit social media for their own ends. However, a study published in the International Journal of Electronic Governance reveals that governmental Twitter accounts across the European Union have almost totally failed. These accounts do not widely engage members of the public and have not created the "communities" their advocates desired in the quest to elicit public adoption of e-government.

Konstantinos Antoniadis and Kostas Zafiropoulos of the Department of International and European Studies at the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, and Vasiliki Vrana of the Technological Education Institute of Central Macedonia, in Serres, Greece, have explored mentions and replies on the well-known and popular microblogging platform Twitter. They found that mentions and replies to networks of 56 ministries with Twitter accounts in seventeen EU countries do not suggest that any of those accounts have built communities.

Twitter had at the last count well over 300 million monthly active users a mere fraction of those of another social media service, Facebook with its almost 2 billion active users. Nevertheless, these are significant numbers of people that might be engaged by any person or any organisation with the wont to engage them online. The growth of Twitter was eventually noticed by governments and their advisers and has been adopted by them as a tool with which they might disseminate government information, provide access to services, connect with the public and "listen to the voice of people".

The team suggests that the concept of e-government is yet to mature. There are signs that some "authority" users of social media, the members of the public with large, highly engaged followings themselves, may well represent a springboard for notices and responses from governments but this is yet to manifest as the desired Twitter communities the politicians seek.

More information: Kostas Zafiropoulos et al. Community characteristics of Twitter followers in EU-countries governmental accounts, International Journal of Electronic Governance (2016). DOI: 10.1504/IJEG.2016.10002284

Provided by Inderscience
Credit: Griffith University

The Griffith University study, conducted in collaboration with national and international experts in reef and chemical ecology, showed that if the world continues with 'business as usual' CO2 emissions important reef building corals will suffer significantly by 2050 and die off by 2100.

Associate Professor Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, of Griffith's School of Environment, says that is because algae will compete for space with corals in the reef, much like a weed, and eventually take over.

Researchers knew increased CO2 had an effect on seaweed behaviour but have now been able to demonstrate just how this happens. They discovered this is due to an increase in the potency of chemical compounds that poison corals.

"This is a major step forward in understanding how seaweeds can harm corals and has important implications for comprehending the consequences of increased carbon dioxide emissions on the health of the Great Barrier Reef," says Associate Professor Diaz-Pulido.

"For the algae to grow they need light and CO2, just like any other plant, and because algae in the future would be exposed to much more CO2 in seawater we wanted to know to what extent the CO2 would affect some of the things algae do, the physiology and the interaction with animals."

Professor Mark Hay, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, adds: "What we've discovered is that some algae produce more potent chemicals that suppress or kill corals more rapidly. This can occur rapidly, in a matter of only weeks.

"If the algae overtake the coral we have a problem which contributes to reef degradation, on top of what we already know with coral bleaching, crown of thorn starfish outbreaks, cyclones or any other disturbance."

The research was undertaken at Heron Island, a coral cay on the southern end of the reef using underwater reef experiments and outdoor lab studies.

Associate Professor Diaz-Pulido says the study has global impacts because one of the seaweeds studied that causes the most damage is a common brown alga species found in reefs worldwide.

"That's a problem because if these algae take advantage of elevated CO2 in seawater that's even more a matter of concern," he says.

"The scale of the problem is so big removing a bunch of seaweed from the reef isn't going to do much because it just regrows and regenerates, so I think the way to address this really is to reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere."

More information: Carlos Del Monaco et al, Effects of ocean acidification on the potency of macroalgal allelopathy to a common coral, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/srep41053 Journal information: Scientific Reports
A solid, non-working Colt 1911 static model by TaylarRoids is printed on a household printer; is this a digital blueprint? Credit: Richard Matthews

3-D printed guns are back in the news after Queensland set a legal precedent for giving Kyle Wirth a six-month suspended sentence for fabricating a number of gun parts.

As presiding Judge Katherine McGuinness acknowledged, Wirth didn't produce an entire gun  it took police to add a few key parts in order for the gun to successfully fire a bullet  but he was "trying to make a gun".

As such, she said "there is a real need to deter and protect the public from such offending".

But if it's illegal to build a gun via conventional means without a licence, what's the concern over making guns using 3-D printers in particular?

And for those who are either researching the capabilities of 3-D printers  a form of additive manufacturing  or using them at home or in their business, it's important to understand the legal boundaries under which they can be used.

3-D printed firearms in Australia

3-D printed guns currently occupy a grey area in terms of their legality in many jurisdictions around Australia. For example, the South Australian Police released a guide outlining which kinds of imitation firearms are considered legal.

The distinction between a "regulated imitation firearm" and a children's toy is significant, as a South Australian man discovered in 2015. He was charged with a firearms offence after police found a toy gun in a box along with a single shotgun shell.

Is a list of coordinates in three dimensional space a digital reproduction of a technical drawing?

The judge acquitted him because the gun was clearly a child's cap gun and could not be modified to fire the shell.

However, according to the South Australian Police's guide, the "gun" pictured at the top of this article, although non-functional, is technically neither a "moulded imitation firearm" nor is it an "imitation firearm carved from timber, plastic or other material". This means it's unclear how it would be regarded by police or the courts.

New South Wales takes a different approach on the issue. The Firearms and Weapons Prohibition Legislation Amendment Bill 2015 made it illegal to possess digital files that can be used to manufacture firearms on "3-D printers or electronic milling machines".

The act was amended "to create a new offence of possessing digital blueprints", although the definition of a "digital blueprint" is a little ambiguous. As defined, it captures "any type of digital (or electronic) reproduction of a technical drawing of the design of an object". As written, this could even mean a photograph of a technical drawing. But technical drawing files are not always needed for 3-D printing.

In 3-D printing, drawing files are used to create GCode, a computer control language used to guide the print head and the amount of plastic to extrude. Is GCode a digital reproduction? Even if it is, it does not stop someone 3-D printing gun parts in another jurisdiction in Australia or overseas where they're not illegal and then posting it back to NSW.

It was this fear that drove the Queensland Palmer United Party to introduce a bill in 2014 to make 3-D printing of firearms illegal. It was rejected by the parliamentary committee and never reintroduced.

When Labor took power in Queensland following the 2015 election, it defended the move and released a statement stating that "Queensland already has legislation dealing with the unlawful manufacture of weapons that carries with it some of the harshest penalties in Australia".

Hence Kyle Wirth was charged in 2015 with manufacturing offensive weapons, including a plastic knuckle duster. He was not charged under any legislation that prevented him from 3-D printing parts, as the PUP bill would have outlawed.

The parts Wirth printed and stored in bags. Credit: Queensland Police Service

Plastic or not, it is illegal under nationally unified gun laws to make a gun without a licence. If this is the case, why did NSW feel the need to ban digital blueprints? The answer could come from the future prospects of 3-D printing.

Towards the future

In the next 20 years we will be able to print drugs, metals and substances at an atomic level  possibly all at home.

Regulation of these things is currently predicated on the idea that producing them typically required expertise and specialised equipment. But that may no be the case for long.

This will mean we need a new unified approach to legislation that specifically speaks to the capabilities of 3-D printers, and the distribution of the files they use.

New South Wales is the only state that has started outlawing the digital blueprints needed for additive manufacturing of illegal objects. This is a step in the right direction.

However, we need a classification of digital blueprints. AustralianClassification is already responsible for passing judgement on a wide array of media. In the future we will likely see such an agency extended to cover digital blueprints available or for sale to the public.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Credit: David Senior

After the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project  which sequenced all 3 billion "letters," or base pairs, in the human genome  many thought that our DNA would become an open book. But a perplexing problem quickly emerged: although scientists could transcribe the book, they could only interpret a small percentage of it.

The mysterious majority  as much as 98 percent  of our DNA do not code for proteins. Much of this "dark matter genome" is thought to be nonfunctional evolutionary leftovers that are just along for the ride. However, hidden among this noncoding DNA are many crucial regulatory elements that control the activity of thousands of genes. What is more, these elements play a major role in diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and autism, and they could hold the key to possible cures.

As part of a major ongoing effort to fully map and annotate the functional sequences of the human genome, including this silent majority, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Feb. 2, 2017, announced new grant funding for a nationwide project to set up five "characterization centers," including two at UC San Francisco, to study how these regulatory elements influence gene expression and, consequently, cell behavior.

The project's aim is for scientists to use the latest technology, such as genome editing, to gain insights into human biology that could one day lead to treatments for complex genetic diseases.

Importance of Genomic Grammar

After the shortfalls of the Human Genome Project became clear, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project was launched in September 2003 by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The goal of ENCODE is to find all the functional regions of the human genome, whether they form genes or not.

"The Human Genome Project mapped the letters of the human genome, but it didn't tell us anything about the grammar: where the punctuation is, where the starts and ends are," said NIH Program Director Elise Feingold, PhD. "That's what ENCODE is trying to do."

Nadav Ahituv (right), PhD, is using new technology to test for enhancers among 100,000 regulatory sequences in DNA. Credit: Susan Merrell

The initiative revealed that millions of these noncoding letter sequences perform essential regulatory actions, like turning genes on or off in different types of cells. However, while scientists have established that these regulatory sequences have important functions, they do not know what function each sequence performs, nor do they know which gene each one affects. That is because the sequences are often located far from their target genes  in some cases millions of letters away. What's more, many of the sequences have different effects in different types of cells.

The new grants from NHGRI will allow the five new centers to work to define the functions and gene targets of these regulatory sequences. At UCSF, two of the centers will be based in the labs of Nadav Ahituv, PhD, and Yin Shen, PhD. The other three characterization centers will be housed at Stanford University, Cornell University, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Additional centers will continue to focus on mapping, computational analysis, data analysis and data coordination.

Cellular Barcodes Reveal Regulatory Function

New technology has made identifying the function and targets of regulatory sequences much easier. Scientists can now manipulate cells to obtain more information about their DNA, and, thanks to high-throughput screening, they can do so in large batches, testing thousands of sequences in one experiment instead of one by one.

"It used to be extremely difficult to test for function in the noncoding part of the genome," said Ahituv, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. "With a gene, it's easier to assess the effect because there is a change in the corresponding protein. But with regulatory sequences, you don't know what a change in DNA can lead to, so it's hard to predict the functional output."

Ahituv and Shen are both using innovative techniques to study enhancers, which play a fundamental role in gene expression. Every cell in the human body contains the same DNA. What determines whether a cell is a skin cell or a brain cell or a heart cell is which genes are turned on and off. Enhancers are the secret switches that turn on cell-type specific genes.

During a previous phase of ENCODE, Ahituv and collaborator Jay Shendure, PhD, at the University of Washington, developed a technique called lentivirus-based massive parallel reporter assay to identify enhancers. With the new grant, they will use this technology to test for enhancers among 100,000 regulatory sequences previously identified by ENCODE.

Yin Shen (left), PhD, will use CRISPR to to identify not only which noncoding sequences of DNA have regulatory functions, but also which genes they affect. Credit: Susan Merrell

Their approach pairs each regulatory sequence with a unique DNA barcode of 15 randomly generated letters. A reporter gene is stuck in between the sequence and the barcode, and the whole package is inserted into a cell. If the regulatory sequence is an enhancer, the reporter gene will turn on and activate the barcode. The DNA barcode will then code for RNA in the cell.

Once the researchers see that the reporter gene is turned on, they can easily sequence the RNA in the cell to see which barcode is activated. They then match the barcode back to its corresponding regulatory sequence, which the scientists now know is an enhancer.

"With previous enhancer assays, you had to test each sequence one by one," Ahituv explained. "With our approach, we can clone thousands of sequences along with thousands of barcodes and test them all at once."

Deleting Sequences to Understand Their Role

Shen, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and the Institute for Human Genetics, is taking a different approach to characterize the function of regulatory sequences. In collaboration with her former mentor at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and UC San Diego, Bing Ren, PhD, she developed a high-throughput CRISPR-Cas9 screening method to test the function of noncoding sequences. Now, Shen and Ren are using this approach to identify not only which sequences have regulatory functions, but also which genes they affect.

Shen will use CRISPR to edit tens of thousands of regulatory sequences in a large pool of cells and track the effects of the edits on a set of 60 pairs of genes that commonly co-express.

For this work, each cell will be programmed to reflect two fluorescent colors  one for each gene  when a pair of genes is turned on. If the light in a cell goes out, the scientists will know that its target gene has been affected by one of the CRISPR-based sequence edits. The final step is to sequence each cell's DNA to determine which regulatory sequence edit caused the change in gene expression.

The causes of common diseases such as diabetes, cancer and autism are not just a gene that is changed, but the regulatory sequence in human DNA that regulates that gene, studies have shown. Credit: University of California, San Francisco

By monitoring the colors of co-expressed genes, Shen will reveal the complex relationship between numerous functional sequences and multiple genes, which was beyond the scope of traditional sequencing techniques.

"Until the recent development of CRISPR, it was not possible to genetically manipulate non-coding sequences in a large scale," said Shen. "Now, CRISPR can be scaled up so that we can screen thousands of regulatory sequences in one experiment. This approach will tell us not only which sequences are functional in a cell, but also which gene they regulate."

Can Dark Matter DNA Treat Disease?

By cataloging the functions of thousands of regulatory sequences, Shen and Ahituv hope to develop rules about how to predict and interpret other sequences' functions. This would not only help illuminate the rest of the dark matter genome, it could also reveal new treatment targets for complex genetic diseases.

"A lot of human diseases have been found to be associated with regulatory sequences," Ahituv said. "For example, in genome-wide association studies for common diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and autism, 90 percent of the disease-associated DNA variants are in the noncoding DNA. So it's not a gene that's changed, but what regulates it."

As the price for sequencing a person's genome has dropped significantly, there is talk about using precision medicine to cure many serious diseases. However, the hurdle of how to interpret mutations in noncoding DNA remains.

"If we can characterize the function and identify the gene targets of these regulatory sequences, we can start to reveal how their mutations contribute to diseases," Shen said. "Eventually, we may even be able to treat complex diseases by correcting regulatory mutations."
Credit: University of Maine

It's a mystery that has puzzled University of Maine assistant professor of marine biology and aquaculture Heather Hamlin and the salmon farming industry in New England: the decline in egg survival.

The survival rate of fertilized salmon eggs had been as high as 80 percent. But beginning in 2000, salmon embryos began dying in large numbers and the average survival rate fell to around 50 percent.

Previous studies have shown that a range of factors can negatively impact egg quality and production, including nutrition, stress, temperature and the endocrine status of the female. Until recently, businesses such as New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture, which runs farming operations at several sites in Maine, knew little about why some of its eggs were dying and others were surviving, despite having come from same strain females, cultured under similar conditions.

Now a UMaine study has found that two hormones may play significant roles in achieving an 80 percent embryo survival rate. Hamlin and LeeAnne Thayer, a UMaine Ph.D. candidate in marine sciences, wrote about their findings in the journal Aquaculture Research.

For the past five years, Hamlin and Thayer have been taking tissue samples from Atlantic salmon ages 24 at three sites: the National Coldwater Marine Aquaculture Center run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at UMaine's Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research in Franklin; and two sites owned by Cooke Aquaculturea fresh-water breeding site in Bingham and a sea cage site in Eastport.

In their research, Hamlin and Thayer incubated fertilized eggs and monitored their development. What they watched for was the development of the embryos' eyes in the bright orange eggsa good indication that the egg will ultimately hatch.

For Hamlin and Thayer, a major focus of their research has been the endocrine system, which includes the hormones, the tissues that produce them and the genes that regulate them. Because hormones regulate much of reproduction and embryonic development and many other systems, the researchers wanted to determine if there was a difference in the hormone profiles of the females producing batches of eggs with high and low survival rates.

Hamlin and Thayer found that female Atlantic salmon with the highest levels of 11-ketotestosterone, an androgen, and 17-beta estradiol, an estrogen, were more likely to produce embryos with an 80 percent survival rate.

The project was a natural next step in Hamlin's research career focused on the intersection of endocrinology and reproductive health. The Hampden, Maine native received her bachelor's and master's degrees from UMaine. She was an assistant professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the Medical University of South Carolina before returning to her alma mater in 2011.

Credit: University of Maine

"How do I use what I've done in the past to address problems that are important to Maine?" says Hamlin. "It's a really important part of our scholarship and research. It has less utility, in my opinion, if it can't benefit the people of Maine."

Hamlin found the research project that would allow her to fulfill this goal a few months before beginning her job in Orono. That spring, she was invited to a salmon hatchery roundtable in Bangor. Commercial aquaculture producers, marine scientists and state and federal officials gather biannually to discuss challenges facing hatcheries in New England. At the meeting, Hamlin learned about declining embryo survival rates in farmed Atlantic salmon.

Hamlin's Ph.D. research at the University of Florida had examined how pesticides, nitrates and chemicals in plastics affected the reproductive health of alligators, sharks, chickens, Siberian sturgeon and turtles. Later, in South Carolina, the reproductive endocrinologist worked at the Hollings Marine Laboratory, where she did research on marine animals in an effort to learn more about problems impacting maternal fetal health.

In the declining survival rates of salmon embryos in New England, Hamlin saw an opportunity to use her expertise in endocrinology and reproduction to help solve a major problem facing an industry vital to Maine's economy.

Cooke Aquaculture operates salmon farming operations in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Chile, Scotland, Maine and Washington and sea bass and sea bream farming operations in Spain. The Cooke family of companies now includes wild salmon and groundfish processing, through Icicle Seafoods, Inc. in Alaska, as well as shrimp, oyster, scallop, king crab and other products through the Virginia-based Wanchese Fish Company and a hake fishery and processor, Cooke Uruguay (formerly Fripur).

Cooke representatives were among the industry officials at the salmon hatchery roundtable in Bangor. Hamlin introduced herself after hearing about the salmon embryo survival problem, and proposed working together to solve the issue.

The declining embryo survival rate creates unpredictability, which means the company must produce more eggs than needed to ensure a consistent supply of salmon for the marketplace.

Hamlin will now turn her attention to hormonal processes related to egg assembly, ovulation or post-ovulatory aging. In the next phase of her research, Hamlin plans to analyze arrays of mRNA transcripts, or transcriptomes, in the tissues of farmed Atlantic salmon to see which systems inside the fish are the most stressed.

"That could really help us sort of identify that needle in the haystack," says Hamlin. "We can start to identify very specific pathways that might be affected. Then we might be able to definitively identify causes. That's a relatively new area of research."
The Selden Map. Credit: University of Oxford

The origins and secrets of the 17th Century 'Selden Map of China'  the world's oldest surviving merchant map  have been revealed by scientists using state-of-the-art imaging techniques.

Research led by Nottingham Trent University, in collaboration with the Science Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has for the first time been able to identify everything from the materials and techniques used, to the mistakes and re-drawings made by the cartographer.

The scientists, writing in the journal Heritage Science, even propose a new location for the map's creation based on their evidence.

The 1.6 x 1m map  which depicts ancient maritime trade routes in Asia  is thought to have been made between 1607-1619 and is painted with watercolours and ink on Chinese paper. It is a unique example of Chinese merchant cartography, showing a network of shipping routes with compass directions starting from the port of Quanzhou, Fujian province, and reaching as far as Japan and India.

Very little is known about the origin of the Chinese-style map, which arrived at the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford in 1659  having been donated by prominent London lawyer John Selden  where it remained until its 'rediscovery' in 2008. In his will, Selden stated it was 'a map of China made there fairly' and that it had been taken by an English commander.

The map was examined in-situ and non-invasively using a remote 'multispectral' imaging system developed at Nottingham Trent University. The system enabled the scientists to view areas of the map using different wavelengths of light  revealing the composition and make-up of materials used, as well as hidden details not visible to the naked eye. A range of complementary analytical techniques were used to identify the materials.

The researchers found the binding medium used for the map was gum Arabic, a gum made from the sap of the acacia tree  typically used by European, south and west Asians  and not animal glue, which was almost always used in Chinese paintings at the time.

Examinations of the pigment used found a mixture of indigo with orpiment, a yellow mineral  rather than gamboge, a yellow dye  to make a green colour, which is also very unusual for a painting in China in this period.

And the detection of a basic copper chloride in the green areas suggests an influence from south and west Asia, where it was often used in manuscripts. This green pigment was not typically used in paper-based paintings from China.

The Selden Map. Credit: University of Oxford

The binders and pigments used are more consistent with those found in manuscripts from a Persian or Indo-Persian tradition and the Islamic world  than the European or Chinese, the researchers state.

Detailed examination even found instances where the cartographer made alterations  some stylistic, others unintentional, and some made as the cartographer's knowledge of a certain area developed. The scientists were able to identify that the trade routes were laid down before the land was drawn in.

They believe that the cartographer did not plan the full map from the beginning, which was why they had to redraw some of the routes many times  and why they ran out of space at the southern and western points of the map, forcing the trade routes to be off the compass directions. Two trade routes were drawn without their corresponding compass directions, suggesting the map was unfinished.

Based on the evidence, the researchers have proposed an alternative origin for the map: Aceh, at the northwest end of Sumatra where it opens out to the Indian Ocean. It is the most westerly port in south east Asia marked on the map and has the longest history of the presence of Islam in south east Asia, as well as a long history of Chinese contact.

It is also one of only six ports on the map marked with a red circle  possibly indicating the main trading network of the map's owner  and is the only port marked on the map to have a magnetic declination in the early 17th Century closest to that indicated by the tilt of the map's compass rose.

Any English ship going back to Europe from south east Asia would also have to pass by Aceh either from the east or west coast of Sumatra, and thus giving them the chance to obtain the map.

"This study illustrates the importance of not judging a book by its cover," said Professor Haida Liang, Head of the Imaging & Sensing for Archaeology, Art History & Conservation research group at Nottingham Trent University.

She added: "A seemingly Chinese map has turned out to be the material evidence of a fusion of cultures. It is stylistically a Chinese painting that follows some Chinese and non-Chinese cartographic elements, but the painting materials and their usage are more akin to those of Persian or Indo-Persian manuscripts.

"Because of its geographic location, Aceh was frequented by Indian, Arab, Chinese and European traders. We believe the map could have been made there by a Fujianese, possibly a Muslim in close contact with the Islamic world.

"This was globalisation in the early 17th Century. By focusing on the material evidence found using scientific analysis and art history, we have arrived at a new conclusion on where the map was made, following previous studies based on historical research. This work shows the immense importance of interdisciplinary research and the new insights it can bring."

More information: Sotiria Kogou et al. The origins of the Selden map of China: scientific analysis of the painting materials and techniques using a holistic approach, Heritage Science (2016). DOI: 10.1186/s40494-016-0098-x
California-based Snap Inc. was expected to be one of the biggest tech company market debuts in recent years with a valuation likely to top $20 billion

The parent of the fast-growing social network Snapchat filed public documents for a share offering Thursday, seeking to raise up to $3 billion in a keenly anticipated Wall Street debut.

California-based Snap Inc., which had earlier filed confidential documents for an initial public offering, was expected to be one of the biggest tech company IPOs in recent years with a valuation likely to top $20 billion.

In documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Snap said it took in $404 million in revenue last year but lost $515 million.

Snapchat, known for its disappearing messages, has become hugely popular with young smartphone users. But the company has recently been expanding its offerings to allow publishers to deliver content through the platform.

According to the filing, 158 million people use Snapchat daily, and over 2.5 billion Snaps are created every day.

Snapchat has partnerships with dozens of publishers and organizations, including one announced Thursday by the New York Times.

Snapchat said it expects to derive most of its revenue from advertising, where it will compete against rivals such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

The company noted that since its inception it has been losing money and "may not achieve or maintain profitability."

Social media fatigue

Snapchat reportedly spurned a multibillion-dollar offer from Facebook, preferring to remain independent.

Snap's offering on the New York Stock Exchange is the largest for a technology company in the US since Chinese-based Alibaba listed in 2014.

The documents did not provide share pricing and noted that the amount to be raised could be revised before the market debut, which is likely to take place in March.

While some analysts say Snap has the potential to challenge Facebook, others say it could end up like Twitter, which consistently lost money and whose existence as an independent firm is in peril.

Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry advised investors in a note to steer clear of the IPO, calling the value of Snap "hyper-inflated."

"We are at the tail end of social-media boom - novelty is giving way to fatigue," Chowdhry said in the note.

"Durability is absent in SnapChat - it's the next Groupon, the next Zynga, the next GoPro, the next FitBit."

All of those company's lost luster after public debuts accompanied by high expectations.

Snapchat will be competing with throngs of smartphone apps for advertising dollars, the analyst reasoned.

The Snap IPO will be structured with different share classes, allowing co-founders Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy to control 88.6 percent of the voting rights.

Snapchatter edition

Earlier Thursday, the New York Times said it would create a daily Edition for Snapchatters in the US, Canada and Australia based on its Morning Briefing, or summary of major news.

This will appear on Discover, the section of the Snapchat app where users can find content from media companies.

The Times cited data from Nielsen saying that Snapchat each day reaches 41 percent of all 18-to 34-year-olds in the United States, compared to just six percent for US network television.

The company last year hit the market with camera-equipped sunglasses called "Spectacles" and renamed itself "Snap" to show it was no longer limited to a single product.

The head of Sony's entertainment business stepped down Thursday to devote energy to Snap.

The free service launched in 2012.

Michael Lynton was leaving his job running the Japan-based company's pictures and music business as of February 2 to spend more time as chairman of the board of Snap Inc., Sony Corporation said in an earlier release.

An investor in Snap, Lynton has been on the board nearly four years.

He will stay on as "co-chief executive officer" of Sony Entertainment, working with Sony Corporation chief Kazuo Hirai to find a successor, according to the company.

 2017 AFP
The Flame of Peace at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Credit: Inefekt69 (Flickr Creative Commons)

World leaders must do more to limit risk of global catastrophes, according to a report by Oxford academics launched at the Finnish Embassy in London today.

The report was carried out by the Future of Humanity Institute (FHI), which is part of the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford University.

The FHI studies existential risk, which is defined by its director, Professor Nick Bostrom, as a risk "where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential".

Three of the most pressing possible existential risks for humanity are pandemics, extreme climate change, and nuclear war.

So for this report, researchers interviewed experts in these fields and others. Based on these interviews, they have laid out three steps that could reduce these existential risks.

First, the report highlights the importance of regional and global cooperation in planning for pandemics, and putting more effort into planning for extreme diseases.

'As the Ebola and Zika crises showed, managing pandemics is a global responsibility,' says lead author Sebastian Farquhar. 'But too much planning is still national, and little attention is paid to worst-case scenarios including risks from deliberately engineered pathogens.'

Piers Millett, a biosecurity expert at the Future of Humanity Institute, adds: 'A recent survey of the views of national technical experts on biological weapons highlighted a dire need for broader and more sustained international focus on identifying and managing the research most readily applied to causing deliberate harm.'

Secondly, the authors recommend increased attention to the governance of geoengineering research. Geoengineering, including the release of sulphates in the stratosphere to reduce the planet's temperature, is a potentially important tool for managing the impact of climate change. But it requires a fit-for-purpose governance framework to manage risks, which is currently missing.

Finally, the authors call on the international community to explicitly recognise the value of preserving humanity's future and reducing existential risks. A declaration of the responsibilities of current generations to manage risk for the future would help, as would concrete steps to build operational international teams to work on managing catastrophe risk or enshrining specific commitments into international law.

'International cooperation on global risks is more important than ever,' says Sebastian Farquhar. 'Disease, climate change, and nuclear winter don't respect national borders.'

More information: The full report, which was supported by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, can be viewed here: www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/up  Risks-2017-01-23.pdf
This March 9, 2016 photo shows a bison from Yellowstone National Park being held for shipment to slaughter near Gardiner, Mont. A deal disclosed Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, will allow the mass slaughter of hundreds of wild bison migrating from Yellowstone National Park, while sparing 25 animals that American Indian tribes want to start new herds. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

A deal disclosed Thursday will allow the mass slaughter of hundreds of wild bison migrating from Yellowstone National Park, while sparing 25 animals that American Indian tribes want to start new herds.

The Associated Press obtained details on the deal between Montana, the park and the U.S. Department of Agriculture prior to its public disclosure.

It resulted from two weeks of intensive negotiations and removes a political obstacle for the park after Montana Gov. Steve Bullock on Jan. 19 temporarily blocked Yellowstone's plan to kill up to 1,300 of Yellowstone's 5,500 bison this winter.

The terms are likely to dampen public outcry by averting slaughter for most of a small group of bison that had been earmarked for a conservation effort intended at establishing new herds elsewhere.

Bullock lifted the slaughter ban in a Thursday letter to Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk that outlined the agreement to spare the 25 bison.

"My intent in invoking the (ban) was to prevent the slaughter of these bison and preserve them for transport to Fort Peck (Indian Reservation)," Bullock wrote. "The parties have committed that these animals will be quarantined and safeguarded until they are ready for shipment."

Wildlife advocates fiercely oppose the periodic slaughters of Yellowstone's world-famous bison herds. Stephany Seay with the Buffalo Field Campaign said what's needed is to repeal a law that places wild bison under the authority of the Montana livestock department instead of its wildlife agency.

"Stop the slaughter, let them roam and manage them just like we do with elk, just like we do with deer, just like we do with other wildlife," Seay said.

Park officials say they have little choice under a 16-year-old program intended to curb the animals' annual migration into Montana to prevent transmitting the disease brucellosis to cattle.

Brucellosis can cause pregnant animals to abort their young. It was brought to North America by the infected livestock of early settlers and has since been eradicated nationwide except in Yellowstone-area wildlife, including bison and elk.

The 25 bull bison saved from slaughter will be kept for a year for disease monitoring at a federal quarantine facility just north of the park in Corwin Springs. They will later be relocated to Fort Peck Reservation, home of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.

Yellowstone spokeswoman Jody Lyle said the deal with the state and Agriculture Department marked a first step toward a long-term program to use some disease-free bison for conservation instead of sending them to slaughter.

This March 9, 2016 photo shows bison captured from Yellowstone National Park being held in a government research facility near Corwin Springs, Mont. A deal disclosed Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, will allow the mass slaughter of hundreds of wild bison migrating from Yellowstone National Park, while sparing 25 animals that American Indian tribes want to start new herds. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

Under public pressure, Yellowstone administrators last year proposed relocating about 40 animals captured during their migration to Fort Peck, which is already home to a small herd of park bison.

When Montana livestock officials objected to the transfer because of disease concerns, park officials said they would kill the animals, prompting Bullock to invoke the ban on slaughters.

The 40 bison had tested negative for brucellosis multiple times since they were captured last winter.

But because the animals potentially were exposed to diseased bison while being held in pens along the park boundary, the 15 females from the group will be slaughtered and only the males will be spared, Montana state veterinarian Marty Zaluski said.

The fate of about 20 bison already at the small town of Corwin Springs in Montana north of Yellowstone is uncertain. The animals were captured several years ago for use in animal birth control experiments.

State officials had said earlier they would be slaughtered to make way for the 25 spared bulls. But Bullock told Wenk that federal and state officials have agreed to further discussions on relocating the animals to Fort Peck.

So far this winter, hunters have shot more than 300 bison as they left the park seeking food at lower elevations in Montana, according to state wildlife officials.

Cold, snowy conditions are expected to prompt more bison to leave Yellowstone in coming days as foraging becomes more difficult.

About 400 migrating bison have been captured near the Yellowstone boundary and are being held for shipment to slaughter. Shipments will begin as soon as the park can make arrangements, Lyle said.

Meat from slaughtered animals is distributed to American Indian tribes across the region.

No transmissions of brucellosis from wild bison to livestock have been recorded, according to researchers and livestock officials. That's in part because more than 5,000 bison were killed or captured trying to leave the park since 1985.

A state-federal agreement signed in 2000 set a population goal of 3,000 bison in the park.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
TouchBistro Named Best POS System for Restaurants for Third Consecutive Year

Business News Daily once again recommends TouchBistro as the POS system of choice for all types of restaurants, bars, and other eateries

NEW YORK and TORONTO  February 2, 2017  For the third consecutive year, TouchBistro has been named the Best POS System for Restaurants by Business News Daily in its annual review of dozens of point-of-sale (POS) systems. According to the January 2017 publication, TouchBistro was selected because it has everything thats needed to run all types of food establishments, without all the fuss. Whether you run a fine-dining restaurant, casual eatery, cafe, food truck, pub or any other type of restaurant, TouchBistro is an affordable and easy-to-use POS system that focuses solely on your unique needs.

TouchBistros iPad point of sale system is designed specifically for restaurants. Topping the Apple App Store in more than 37 countries, TouchBistro helps restaurateurs increase sales, improve service, and make informed decisions on how to grow their businesses.

By making the point of sale mobile, TouchBistro has revolutionized restaurant operations. Waiters can enter orders into an iPad right at table-side and send them to the kitchen for preparation without running back and forth. Food pictures and allergen information are at the waiters fingertips. Secure, integrated EMV payments can also be taken at the table.

Ordering is done in TouchBistro with just a tap on the iPad. With TouchBistros patented design, even complex actions like bill splitting or combining orders from different seats take only a tap or swipe. Forced modifiers tell serving staff what to upsell and list food preparation variations, so there are no missed opportunities or guessing.

This is a tremendous recognition from Business News Daily for our long-term commitment to our customers success. While other POS solutions lose focus by trying to appeal to other verticals, like gaming or even gas stations, we believe our laser focus on Hospitality is what led to this award. We take to heart the feedback we received from the more than 7,000 TouchBistro restaurants we deployed, and ensure their insights, comments, and wish lists are the basis for our features and functionality, said Alex Barrotti, CEO and founder of TouchBistro. We have so many great stories that operators share with us about how TouchBistro has helped them increase efficiency and improve their bottom line. We will continue to invest in our rich feature set, and provide enhancements every six to eight weeks, to ensure they have the latest and best technologies at their fingertips.

TouchBistro uses readily available Apple hardware that can be purchased off the shelf to deliver a cost-effective, mobile solution, unlike the expensive proprietary hardware of a traditional point of sale system that is stuck in fixed positions.

TouchBistro supports multiple payment processors, has integrated with popular restaurant and business apps, and provides APIs for future integrations. Comprehensive security features and robust reporting make it easier for owners and managers to control, monitor, and measure operations. World-class training and installation teams with extensive restaurant experience are available 24/7. TouchBistro may be downloaded for a free 30-day trial from the Apple App Store.

For the full Business Daily News article, click here.

About TouchBistro

With offices in New York and Toronto, TouchBistro is an iPad point of sale (POS) for restaurants that helps increase sales, improve customer experience, and make better business decisions. TouchBistro is used and loved by thousands of restaurants world-wide and is perfect for all foodservice business types including restaurants, bars, cafes, breweries, food trucks, and quick service restaurants. The TouchBistro app has been ranked as the top-grossing food and beverage app in 37 countries on the Apple App Store. TouchBistro offers a 30-day free trial that can be converted to a no-contract subscription. Additional information is available at www.touchbistro.com.

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- The Senate and some officials of the Nigerian Customs are not happy with the appointment of Ali, a retired Army officer as head of the agency

- As a result, there are plans by the Senate to review the act creating the Nigerian Customs Service and reduce the powers of the president in the area of appointment

The Senate plans to whittle the power of the president to appoint the comptroller-general of the Nigerian Customs Service by ensuring that only officers who have grown through the ranks are picked for the top office.

Senator Hope Uzodinma with Deputy Senate President Ike Ekeremadu

With this, the president would no longer have any right to appoint an outsider to head the revenue-generating agency.

The current comptroller-general of the agency, Hammed Ibrahim Ali, is a retired Army colonel and his appointment had not gone well with the rank and file of the customs service according to reports.

READ ALSO: Customs boss Hammed Ali explains why he doesn't wear uniform

Daily Trust reports that the Senate has now commenced the process of amending the act setting up the Nigerian Customs Service with a view to stopping outsiders from taking critical positions.

The revelation was made by the chairman of the Senate committee on customs, excise and tariff, Hope Uzodinma during a meeting with five former comptroller-generals of customs on the amendment of NCS Act.

Uzodinma, member of the Peoples Democratic Party from Imo state, said a customs commission will be established to replace the board of the NCS and would be headed by a retired customs CG.

He said: The commission would monitor the NCS activities and replace the board of the NCS. The appointment of an outsider to head the NCS has derailed the countrys revenue generation.

Uzodinma argued that with proper monitoring, the revenue generated by customs would increase.

READ ALSO: Apologies to former President Goodluck Jonathan - Hon. Olulade

The five former CGs present at the meeting included Bello Haliru, Jacob Gyang Buba (Gbong Gwon Jos), Nwadialo Benard-Shaw, A Mustapha and A Kajoli.

Haliru said: The present boss of the NCS should be called Sole Administrator and not Comptroller-General. Critical changes needed to be done on the service to strengthen it.

Source: Legit.ng
Lauretta Onochie, a PA to President Muhammadu Buhari on Social Media who has been condemning the planned nationwide protest by music star 2face protested against ex-President Goodluck Jonathan in 2012.

Ms Lauretta Onochie circled

Photos which surfaced online today revealed that Ms Onochie participated in fuel subsidy protest of 2012 in Lagos.

She has also taken to her Twitter page to defend her principal of not creating Nigerias problem. She said the President is aware of the problems and working to solve them.

"President Buhari knows Nigerians are facing hardships. He does not just know it, he is working to alleviate those sufferings.

"It's callous, unfair and brutally irresponsible to label President Buhari as living in denial that Nigerians are going through hard times.

"Its known we are in recession. How can d President of a nation in recession live in denial that his people are going through hard times?

"When we lie about things that are verifiable, our integrity calls for questioning. We can make our points by presenting facts as they are," she wrote.

She claimed the President has no magic wand but said Mr Buhari promised the suffering will end by 2017.

Source: Legit.ng
President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States must "get smart" after a machete-wielding man attacked security forces at the Louvre museum in Paris while yelling "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest"). Trump said the attacker was a "radical Islamic terrorist," using a term he has used previously to describe such attackers. "A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.," Trump wrote on Twitter. In a briefing earlier this week, a senior US administration official defended the temporary US travel ban on refugees and other travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries by saying America was trying to avoid the security situation in France and other European countries. "The reality, though, is that the situation that exists today in parts of France, in parts of Germany, in Belgium, et cetera, is not a situation we want replicated inside the United States," the official said, warning against a "large and permanent domestic terror threat." "We don't want a situation where, 20 to 30 years from now, it's just like a given thing that on a fairly regular basis there is domestic terror strikes, stores are shut up or that airports have explosive devices planted, or people are mowed down in the street by cars and automobiles and things of that nature," the official added. Police held hundreds of tourists in secure areas of the renowned museum in central Paris after the assailant was shot five times around 10:00 am (0900 GMT) in a public area inside the Louvre complex. The attacker is in a serious condition, while one soldier received a "minor" head wound and has been taken to hospital, security forces said. Two backpacks carried by the assailant were checked by bomb disposal specialists at the scene and were found not to contain explosives. The incident sparked fresh jitters in a country still reeling from a string of terror attacks over the last two years and under a state of emergency since November 2015.
By Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister has squashed a move by pro-Iranian factions in his government who wanted to retaliate against President Donald Trump's travel ban. The struggle shows the difficult position the Iraqi leader finds himself in  pulled between his most powerful neighbour and the United States under Trump. For Haider al-Abadi, the situation had looked difficult on Sunday night. At a meeting of the most powerful Shi'ite leaders and their representatives, he faced calls to respond in kind to the ban affecting seven mainly Muslim nations, including Iraq. Trump's order had triggered angry reactions among Shi'ite politicians in Iraq. Those who are closest to Iran were insisting that Iraq should retaliate with a ban on U.S. nationals, just like Tehran did the day before. But matters were resolved smoothly in Abadi's favour. The prime minister warned the Shi'ite leaders that a ban on Americans would jeopardise U.S. support for the war on Islamic State. So they were prepared for the time being at least to reject the demands of the pro-Iranian lobby. While the Shi'ite leaders agreed that the U.S. order was unfair, it was understood that Iran's allies had no alternative plan on how to finish the battle in Mosul, the last major city under the control of IS militants, without U.S. help. Abadi said at a news conference on Tuesday that Iraq was best served by preserving the U.S. alliance. "We are ... in a battle and we don't want to harm the national interest." Iran's allies are, nevertheless, preparing to press their cause again should relations deteriorate further between Washington and Iran after the battle of Mosul, said Ahmed Younis, a professor of international relations at the University of Baghdad. SYMBOLIC VOTE One prominent Shi'ite member of parliament warned the situation could change if the ban was extended. "The Americans promised to review the ban in three months," said Hassan Khalati, a lawmaker close to Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim, a prominent Shi'ite cleric and politician who hosted Sunday's meeting. "If it is maintained, there will be (further) pressure" on the government to retaliate, he said. In a sign of lingering dissatisfaction a show of hands in parliament on Monday signalled that the majority of lawmakers would have preferred a retaliatory travel ban. The show of hands was symbolic because Shi'ite leaders had backed down at the meeting the day earlier. The new American president has indicated a cooling of relations with Iran, unlike the previous administration of Barack Obama which reached a deal providing for curbs on the Iranian nuclear programme in return for easing international sanctions. Washington on Friday ratcheted up pressure on Iran, putting sanctions on 13 individuals and 12 entities days after the White House put Tehran "on notice" over a ballistic missile test. Iran's dominant influence in Iraqi politics was eroded after IS routed the Iraqi army commanded then by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was a close ally of Tehran. This forced Maliki to seek U.S. help to fight the IS militants. But the U.S. travel curbs - which bar the admission of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen - fuelled the arguments of pro-Iranian political factions who seek to bolster Tehran's influence at the expense of Washington. Iranian officials state their support for Iraq in the war on Islamic State but make no public comments on U.S.-Iraqi affairs to avoid causing embarrassment for Baghdad. AT ARM'S LENGTH Unlike Maliki, Abadi has kept Iran at arm's length. Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, who oversaw the formation of the Popular Mobilisation units receded from public view mid-2015. But several policy-makers and analysts said the travel ban was changing the dynamic, in particular by empowering the pro-Iranian factions. "Why should we trust the new American administration?" asked Iskandar Witwit, a lawmaker from Maliki's bloc, the biggest in parliament. "We have the right to get closer to Iran as a secure ally in order to preserve our national interests." Trump's travel ban has "definitely muddied the waters" between the two nations, Witwit added. One veteran Iraqi politician, who declined to be named, also pointed out that Baghdad's relationship with Washington was not a direct reflection of the assistance that has poured into Iraq. "When you look at the level of military and financial support Iraq gets from Washington you would expect it to be as close an ally of the U.S. as Jordan or Morocco," he said. "And yet, Iraq appears like a reluctant ally of the U.S.; we rarely hear Iraqi officials praising the Americans when talking to an Iraqi audience," he said. RESISTING PRESSURE For now, however, Abadi has pushed back the pro-Iranian factions. At the meeting on Sunday, Abadi won the argument over those who wanted retaliation with the critical backing of Hakim, who chairs the National Alliance, an umbrella for the main Shi'ite groups. Hakim was unavailable for comment but one of his aides said the influential leader was convinced of the pressing need to defeat IS with American military might. In particular, Hakim's critical support allowed Abadi to resist pressure exerted by representatives of the most radical groups within Popular Mobilisation, paramilitary units trained mainly by Iran to fight IS, who wanted Iraq to follow Iran's lead in imposing a retaliatory ban on American travellers. "Iraq should not become a ground where Iran and the U.S settle scores," said MP Khalati, explaining the opinion of Hakim, the heir of one of a revered clerical dynasty whose members suffered under former dictator Saddam Hussein. "Iran is supporting Iraq and the U.S. is supporting Iraq, our interest is to get rid of terrorism," he said. After the meeting, Iraq's Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari asked the U.S. ambassador to Iraq to convey a request to reconsider the ban, arguing for the need to cooperate against IS and saying no Iraqi was involved in attacks on U.S. soil. (Editing by Peter Millership)
Computer screens display a video clip showing U.S. President Donald Trump's granddaughter Arabella Kushner singing a Chinese New Year greeting song that garnered almost 20 million views in Beijing, China, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. The brief video clip of Donald Trump's granddaughter singing in Chinese is circulating to strong approval on the internet in China, even while some criticized the U.S. president's failure to send greetings for the Lunar New Year.(AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

BEIJING (AP)  A brief video clip of Donald Trump's granddaughter singing in Chinese is circulating to strong approval on the internet in China, even while some criticized the U.S. president's failure to send greetings for the Lunar New Year.

The clip posted by Trump's daughter Ivanka shows 5-year-old Arabella Kushner singing best wishes for the holiday while playing with a traditional Chinese puppet.

On Wednesday, Ivanka and Arabella made a surprise visit to the Chinese Embassy in Washington to take part in the festivities, a photo of which landed on the front page of the official China Daily newspaper Friday. Arabella had already drawn considerable attention in China in November when a video clip of her reciting an ancient Chinese poem lit up the internet.

While the Trump women received praise, the lack of a greeting from the president "triggered heated discussion" among the Chinese public over the possible ramifications for bilateral relations, the official newspaper Global Times said Friday.

The paper noted that Trump's most recent predecessors Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama "all delivered Lunar New Year greetings to Asians who celebrate this festival.

"Some Chinese (internet) users felt Trump was being disrespectful by not sending a greeting," the paper said.

The Lunar New Year, which this year fell on last Saturday, is China's most important traditional holiday, a time for family gatherings, feasts and the exchange of greetings between relatives, friends and work colleagues. It is also celebrated in several other Asian countries and among Chinese communities worldwide.

Comments on the internet largely focused on what many Chinese view as a hawkish attitude by Trump and his administration toward China, with many saying the lack of a greeting should be seen as a deliberate snub.

Trump has accused Beijing of manipulating the value of its currency to gain an advantage in trade and threatened to impose a 45 percent tariff on imports from China. He's also criticized China's military buildup in the South China Sea and accused Beijing of doing too little to pressure neighbor North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

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China has rejected the accusations and has in fact been spending heavily from its pile of foreign currency reserves to prop up the value of its currency, which would make exports more, not less, expensive.

On the streets of China's financial hub of Shanghai, residents were full of praise for Ivanka and her daughter, while mixed on the significance of the lack of presidential greeting.

"A bridge of friendship is needed between China and the U.S.," said Chen Zhijun, 30, who works in gold sales. Not sending a New Year greeting, he added, "definitely is not helping. Maybe it is because he is new and has too much to deal with."

"I'm glad to see his daughter and little granddaughter being friendship messengers ... it is a sign of being nice," Chen said.

A 35-year-old bank worker who gave only her surname, Yu, said Chinese needed to shrug off any perceived slight and doubted whether the lack of a greeting would have any substantive impact.

"We should have the mentality of a major country and have the confidence not to be bothered about this," Yu said.

___

Associated Press researcher Fu Ting contributed to this story from Shanghai.
AFP News

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan was recovering in hospital Friday after a gunman shot him in the leg, with his supporters vowing the assassination attempt will not derail his "long march" bid to return to power. The attack on his convoy, apparently by a lone gunman, killed one man and wounded at least 10, significantly raising the stakes in a political crisis that has gripped the South Asian nation since Khan's ousting in April. Khan "was stable and he was doing fine" at Shaukat Khanum hospital in the eastern city of Lahore, his doctor Faisal Sultan told AFP Friday. Seemi Bokhari, a lawmaker with Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, said after visiting Khan the former premier was in high spirits. "The doctors are allowing him to move ... He is feeling perfectly well and he will soon be discharged," she told AFP. The 70-year-old former international cricket star had been leading a campaign convoy of thousands since last week from Lahore to the capital Islamabad when he was attacked. Khan suffered at least one bullet wound to his right leg when a gunmen sprayed pistol fire at his modified container truck as it drove slowly through a thick crowd in Wazirabad, around 170 kilometres (105 miles) east of Islamabad. "Everyone who was standing in the very front row got hit," former information minister Fawad Chaudhry, who was standing behind Khan, told AFP. Senior aide Raoof Hasan said it was "an attempt to kill him, to assassinate him". Chaudhry said party officials would meet later Friday to discuss the immediate fate of Khan's campaign march. "The real freedom long march will continue and the movement for people's rights will remain until an announcement on the general elections," he tweeted. - Threats - Party officials also called for supporters to stage rallies and marches across the country after Friday afternoon prayers, the most important of the week. Protesters lit fires and blocked roads in several cities late Thursday as news of Khan's shooting spread. His campaign truck has become a crime scene for now, cordoned off and guarded by commandos as forensic experts comb the area. Information Minister Marriyum Aurangzeb said Thursday the attacker had been taken into custody. Officials shared an apparent confession video that was circulating online. "I did it because (Khan) was misleading the public," says a dishevelled man in the leaked video, shown with his hands tied behind his back in what appears to be a police station. He says he was angry with the procession for making a racket during the call to prayer that summons Muslims to the mosque five times a day. Pervaiz Elahi, the chief minister of Punjab, said officers who leaked the video would be disciplined. Pakistan has been grappling with Islamist militancy for decades, with right-wing religious groups having huge sway over the population. It has been no stranger to assassination attempts during decades of political instability, and the powerful military has led the country several times. Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot dead at a rally in Rawalpindi in 1951. Another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was killed in 2007 when a huge bomb detonated near her vehicle as she greeted supporters in the city of Rawalpindi. - Kicked from power - Khan was booted from office in April by a no-confidence vote after defections by some of his coalition partners, but he retains huge support. He was voted into power in 2018 on an anti-corruption platform by an electorate tired of dynastic politics, but his mishandling of the economy -- and falling out with a military accused of helping his rise -- sealed his fate. Since then, he has railed against the establishment and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's government, which he says was imposed on Pakistan by a "conspiracy" involving the United States. Khan and Shehbaz have for months traded bitter accusations of corruption and incompetence, raising the political temperature in a nation that is frequently at boiling point. Khan has repeatedly told supporters he was prepared to die for the country, and aides have long warned of unspecified threats made on his life. The attack drew international condemnation including from the United States, which had uneasy relations with Khan when he was in power. "Violence has no place in politics, and we call on all parties to refrain from violence, harassment and intimidation," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. sjd/fox/ecl/pbt/dhc
AFP News

Zhang Yao recalls the moment he realised something had gone deeply wrong at the Chinese mega-factory where he and hundreds of thousands of other workers assembled iPhones and other high-end electronics. In early October, supervisors suddenly warned him that 3,000 colleagues had been taken into quarantine after someone tested positive for Covid-19 at the factory. "They told us not to take our masks off," Zhang, speaking under a pseudonym for fear of retaliation, told AFP by telephone. What followed was a weeks-long ordeal including food shortages and the ever-present fear of infection, before he finally escaped on Tuesday. Zhang's employer, Taiwanese tech giant Foxconn, has said it faces a "protracted battle" against infections and imposed a "closed loop" bubble around its sprawling campus in central China's Zhengzhou city. Local authorities locked down the area surrounding the major Apple supplier's factory on Wednesday, but not before reports emerged of employees fleeing on foot and a lack of adequate medical care at the plant. China is the last major economy committed to a zero-Covid strategy, persisting with snap lockdowns, mass testing and lengthy quarantines in a bid to stamp out emerging outbreaks. But new variants have tested officials' ability to snuff out flare-ups and dragged down economic activity with the threat of sudden disruptions. - Desperation - Multiple workers have recounted scenes of chaos and increasing disorganisation at Foxconn's complex of workshops and dormitories, which form a city-within-a-city near Zhengzhou's airport. Zhang told AFP that "positive tests and double lines (on antigen tests) had become a common sight" in his workshop before he left. "Of course we were scared, it was so close to us." "People with fevers are not guaranteed to receive medicine," another Foxconn worker, a 30-year-old man who also asked to remain anonymous, told AFP. "We are drowning," he said. Those who decided to stop working were not offered meals at their dormitories, Zhang said, adding that some were able to survive on personal stockpiles of instant noodles. Kai, a worker at in the complex who gave an interview to state-owned Sanlian Lifeweek, told the magazine Foxconn's "closed loop" involved cordoning off paths between dormitory compounds and the factory, and complained he was left to his own devices after being thrown in quarantine. TikTok videos geolocated by AFP showed mounds of uncollected rubbish outside buildings in late October, while employees in N95 masks squeezed onto packed shuttle buses taking them from dormitories to their work stations. A 27-year-old woman working at Foxconn, who asked not to be named, told AFP a roommate who tested positive for Covid was sent back to her dormitory on Thursday morning, crying, after she decided to hand in her notice while in quarantine. "Now the three of us are living in the same room: one a confirmed case and two of us testing positive on the rapid test, still waiting for our nucleic acid test results," the worker told AFP. Many became so desperate by the end of last month that they attempted to walk back to their hometowns to get around Covid transport curbs. As videos of people dragging their suitcases down motorways and struggling up hills spread on Chinese social media, the authorities rushed in to do damage control. The Zhengzhou city government on Sunday said it had arranged for special buses to take employees back to their hometowns. Surrounding Henan province has officially reported a spike of more than 600 Covid cases since the start of this week. - Distrust - When Zhang finally attempted to leave the Foxconn campus on Tuesday, he found the company had set up obstacle after obstacle. "There were people with loudspeakers advertising the latest Foxconn policy, saying that each day there would be a 400 yuan ($55) bonus," Zhang told AFP. A crowd of employees gathered at a pick-up point in front of empty buses but were not let on. People in hazmat suits, known colloquially as "big whites" in China, claimed they had been sent by the city government. "They tried to persuade people to stay in Zhengzhou... and avoid going home," Zhang said. "But when we asked to see their work ID, they had nothing to show us, so we suspected they were actually from Foxconn." Foxconn pointed to the local government's lockdown orders from Wednesday when asked by AFP if it attempted to stop employees from leaving, without giving any further response. The company had on Sunday said it was "providing employees with complimentary three meals a day" and cooperating with the government to provide transport home. Eventually, the crowd of unhappy workers who had gathered decided to take matters into their own hands and walked over seven kilometres on foot to the nearest highway entry ramp. There, more people claiming to be government officials pleaded with the employees to wait for the bus. The crowd had no choice as the road was blocked. Buses eventually arrived at five in the afternoon -- nearly nine hours after Zhang had begun his attempt to secure transport. "They were trying to grind us down," he said. Back in his hometown, Zhang is now waiting out the home quarantine period required by the local government. "All I feel is, I've finally left Zhengzhou," he told AFP. bur-tjx/oho/je/mca/cwl
A Message to Trump from Climate Scientists

Posted on 3 February 2017 by CollinMaessen

Before the AGU meeting I read John Abraham's article 'Trump begins filling environmental posts with clowns' in which he made the following point:

Or Trump could attend the worlds largest geophysics meeting, which occurs in just a few weeks (American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting). He could walk around with a TV camera and a clipboard. Ask any random 10 scientists any question on climate change. Lets see how their answers compare to the information he is going to get from his handpicked insiders.

Trump most likely would never do this. Nor can I possibly know what kind of questions he would ask if he did visit the AGU Fall Meeting. But I can ask scientists what their message to Trump would be if they had a chance to speak to him. That one paragraph from Abraham's article inspired me to do just that. During the Fall Meeting I asked several scientists what their message would be and compiled their responses into this video.
HUNDREDS of people will get a commemorative coin, a scarf and a tie at the events organised during Slovakias presidency over the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2016.

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The gifts will be designed by the winner of the first competition the government has announced in connection with the EU presidency. The second should decide on the logo, the Sme daily reported.

During the presidency there will be about 200 negotiations attended by some 20,000 people held in Bratislava, as well as other summits which will take place in Brussels. The costs should not exceed 70 million, according to Sme.

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Ethics watchdog Transparency International Slovensko (TIS) is, however, concerned about potential corruption, especially regarding the public procurement where the Foreign Affairs Ministry, as an organiser of the presidency, will have some exceptions. This is the first bad signal, TIS head Gabriel Sipos told Sme.

We regard the whole action as an increased corruption risk and thus plan to focus on orders and also recruitment of people, he added.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry defends its plans with experiences of other countries. The exception will be used only for orders concerning the goods and services which are not usually available and whose price does not exceed 134,000 without VAT.

More expensive [orders] will follow European directives, ministry spokesperson Peter Stano told Sme.

The exception will concern 19 of 50 planned purchases. The ministry plans to use it in five purchases which should represent Slovakia and allow involving only Slovak artists in the competitions. They will also use it to buy typical Slovak cheeses or other specialties, Sme wrote.

The sponsors are expected to supply wine, beer, water and other refreshments, as well as cars, transport and telecommunication services. The ministry was also asking for exception for sponsors as the current valid legislation has not allowed having them. Without the exception the country would have to find them via public tenders. Those who would join would first have to disclose bank statements, confirmation of payments to an insurer and other similar documents, Stano told Sme.
SLOVAKIA will mount a thorough legal defence against a Polish firm's complaint about the ban since 2014 in the Slovak Constitution on water exports other than in consumer packaging and for humanitarian ends, Environment Minister Peter Ziga said after the cabinet session on February 3.

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The RTVS public TV and radio channels reported that the European Commission has initiated legal proceedings against the Slovak Republic in this respect over creating obstacles to the free movement of goods. Its a standard process that the Commission starts against any country concerning infringement. We will defend ourselves with all means, said Ziga as quoted by the TASR newswire, adding that he was not concerned about potential fines.

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The minister pointed out that Legnave, the Polish company behind the lawsuit, has wanted to draw water from Slovakia to its homeland via a pipeline and package it in plastic bottles since 2011.

We're not standing in their way, Ziga said. They could do the same thing on the Slovak side: create wealth, pay taxes and employ people. In this we would even support it... But to have someone drill on Slovak soil, export water through the pipeline abroad and there do with it whatever they please, thats not happening.

Minister believes that in the future other European countries will adopt similar legislation. Itll be a serious problem not only in Europe but across the world. Since we have some reserves and theyre not evenly distributed across Slovakia, we need to protect them for future generations, Ziga opined.

Water does not count as common goods, it is a strategic raw material which deserves to be protected in the Constitution, minister summed up, as cited by the SITA newswire.
Slovakia took part in a total of 14 international crisis management (ICM) missions under the auspices of the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), NATO and the UN in 2015.

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This stems from the Report on Slovakias Involvement in ICM Activities acknowledged by the cabinet on March 2. The largest number of soldiers  159  took part in the UN peacekeeping mission in Cyprus (UNFICYP).

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Slovaks also participated in the EUFOR ALTHEA military operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Kosovo, and in an OSCE mission in Macedonia, as well as in missions in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, Afghanistan. They were also part of a UN observer mission in the Middle East (UNTSO). In the past year, Slovakia also participated for the first time in the UN stabilisation mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), to which it deployed six police officers. Active since 2004, the missions purpose is to aid and stabilise local public administration and reform police operations, the TASR newswire wrote.

Slovakia spent more than 18 million to secure its participation in these individual operations  with most of the money earmarked from the Defence Ministrys budget.

This year, Slovakia will continue to take part in all of the missions apart from two: EUPOL in Afghanistan and EUPOL COPPS in the Palestinian territories  both under the auspices of the EU. It also plans to extend its involvement in new missions, particularly those in Ukraine but also in other parts of the world. The top priority for 2016 is the EUs civilian mission in Ukraine (EUAM).
EU members representatives could discuss the Brexit, security, migration and global issues in Bratislava in mid-September.

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Ministry State Secretary and Government Proxy for the Slovak Council of the EU Presidency, Ivan Korcok passed a hearing by members of the European Parliaments Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) on Monday, September 5. After the hearing, he informed the media about the issues MEPs questioned him on, mainly the informal EU summit in Bratislava to be held in mid-September and one of its probable topics, the Brexit.

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I have a good feeling because I see that it has caught the attention of everyone who works in European politics, and it is a tremendous honour and responsibility for us, said Korcok, as quoted by the TASR newswire.

However, the EU is only at the beginning of the debate about what actually happened in the UK and what it means for the future of the entire block, Korcok said.

We do not forget that the British referendum will have a huge impact and in Bratislava we are going to talk openly about our future answers, said Korcok.

Korcok opined that though the opening of such a critical discussion at the Bratislava summit is surely a great success, there is no need to expect quick and easy solutions and miraculous plans. Moreover, representatives of EU members will discuss openly the question of why people have lost confidence in the EU.

Bratislava will surely be remembered as the moment when the EU poured pure wine, Korcok said.

Read also:

Read also: EU in Bratislava expresses support for Turkey Read more

Besides Brexit, the Bratislava summit would contain dialogue about basic topics such as security and migration, and also economic topics. Korcok also awaits talks about the issues of global trade and global trade agreements which have become subject to residents criticism, especially the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the USA.

In contrast, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said after the meeting with the President of the European Council Donald Tusk on September 2 that TTIP should not be a central topic of the Bratislava Summit, TASR reported.
Measures to support senior employees are under preparation.

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No further protests by employees of Bratislava-based carmaker Volkswagen Slovakia, are likely to take place in the near future, as the firms management and trade union are heading towards an agreement. The companys trade union boss Zoroslav Smolinsky informed the TASR newswire about the latest development.

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I think weve made headway, as the management has accepted some of our points, said Smolinsky. It considered the current situation in the factory, and were jointly preparing measures to support senior employees. All the points concern social welfare and improving relations between the management and workers.

Hundreds of members of the staff at Volkswagen Slovakia joined a protest in front of the factory in Bratislava on September 13 over what they call discrimination against longer-term employees by the management.

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Read also: VW SK employees strike Read more

Some employees are uneasy over the fact that the management is giving out extraordinary perks in order to attract new employees. As opposed to existing staff, new employees are entitled to free transport for six months and a one-off bonus of 500. The union calls this discrimination.

Despite the progress in negotiations, the management has not admitted engaging in discrimination, said Smolinsky. The union wanted to prove this and so appealed to institutions and authorities that deal with such problems to assess the current situation.

In no way do we want to take benefits away from new workers, he said, adding that quite the opposite is true, we want senior staff to feel that their employer needs them as well.

The next meeting between the trade union and management is set to be held next week.
Tips for performances and other events in the capital between November 18 and 27, including festivals, classical music, theatre, ballet premiere, cinema, poetry, fashion bazaar and more.

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Theatre & Classical Music

MUSIC FESTIVAL: Opening concert of the Bratislava Music Festival; Starts: Nov 18, 19:00

THEATRE: Arcadia; Starts: Nov 19, 18:00

THEATRE: Performance Innocence with english subtitles; Starts: Nov 23, 19:00

BALLET: Premiere of Giselle; Starts: Nov 25, 26, 19:00 (both days)

Events

DANCE FESTIVAL: Nu Dance Fest; Starts: Festival has already begun and lasts until Nov 21

FESTIVAL: Ars Poetika; Starts: Festival has already begun and lasts until Nov 21

SHOW: Body Art Show; Starts: Nov 18, 19:00

TOUR: Climbing to the Pilis; Starts: Nov 19, 6:00

FESTIVAL: Theatre Festival; Starts: Nov 19

FESTIVAL: International festival of poetry; Starts: Nov 20, 15:00

FESTIVAL: Central European Festival of Italian Film; Starts: Nov 22  27

RECITATION: Poetry Slam; Starts: Nov 24

BAZAAR: Fashion bazaar; Starts: Nov 26, 10:00

SCREENING: Premiere of the film A Living Space; Starts: Nov 28, 19:00

Exhibitions

EXHIBITION: Lucia Nimcova & Sholto Dobie - Khroniky; Open: Wed  Sat 14.00  18.00 until Jan 14 2017

Training

TRAINING: Zumba in English Every Tuesday; Starts: Every other Tuesday, 17:50

TRAINING: Yoga in English on Wednesdays; Starts: Every Wednesday, 20:15

TRAINING: Pilates in English on Mondays; Starts: Every other Monday, 20:10

TRAINING: Belly Dance in English Mondays; Starts: Every Monday, 18:00

Highlights of the year

FIGURE-SKATING SHOW: Kings on Ice  Plushenko, Joubert, Sabovcik; Starts: Nov 29, 19:00

CONCERT: Jose Carreras and his final world tour; Starts: December 8, 19:30

BALLET: Romeo and Julliet by Royal Russian Ballet; Starts: Dec 18, 19:00

COMEDY SHOW: Michael Winslow; Starts:Nov 10, 20:00

BALLET: Swan Lake; Starts: Jan 12, 2017, 19:30

SHOW: Ceasar Millan; Starts: Mar 25, 2017, 19:30

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Innocence in SND with english subtitles (Source: Brano Konecny)

Theatre & Classical Music

MUSIC FESTIVAL: Opening concert of the Bratislava Music Festival - The 52nd BMF will be opened by the piece Symphonic Minutes Op. 36, written by Bratislava native Erno von Dohnanyi, composer, pianist, conductor and music life organiser. The concert will be led by James Judd and first violinist is Vadim Repin. The BMF is a presentation of classical music and its performers and it will be held from Nov 18 until Dec 12. Starts: Nov 18, 19:00; Concert hall of SP, Square Eugena Suchona 1. Admission: from 22. More info: www.filharmonia.sk.

THEATRE: Arcadia - performance with English subtitles - Arcadia is an extremely funny play about the impossibility of knowing the truth, combining elements of conversational comedy with mystification. Its main charm is displayed in the erratic nature of love. Starts: Nov 19, 18:00; Hall of Drama, the new building of SND, Pribinova 17. Admission: 5 - 17. More info: www.snd.sk.

Arcadia (Source: Robert Tappert)

THEATRE: Performance Nevina/ Innocence with english subtitles - The monumentality of this modern tragedy that  in its specific message  sparks the illuminating mundane-ness of our life stories. Tragicomic characters, characters and heroes who metaphorically shake off the reflection of our European presence and shared experiences. Known play written by Dea Loher. Starts: Nov 23, 19:00; Drama Hall of the SND New building, Pribinova 17. Admission: 5. More info: www.snd.sk.

BALLET: Premiere of Giselle  The ballet by French composer Adolphe Charles Adam named Giselle belongs to the period of high romanticism and it is also one of the most played ballet performances in the world. Giselle is choreographed and directed by Rafael Avnikjan, music is rehearsed by Dusan Stefanek. Starts: Nov 25, 26, 19:00 (both days); SND Historical building, Hviezdoslavovo Square 20. Admission: from 10 to 20. More info: www.snd.sk.

Premiere of Giselle in SND (Source: Peter Brenkus)

Events

DANCE FESTIVAL: Nu Dance Fest - This is the eleventh year of the international festival of contemporary and motion dance, which was established in 2006 and primarily focused on the creations of Slovak choreographers. The aim of the festival is to convey the latest global trends and also to show multigenre performances. It will last for seven days and the program also includes discussions, workshops, and party. Starts: Festival has already begun and lasts until Nov 21; A4, Studio 12 and Studio SND in Pribinova 17. Admission: Depends on the performance. More info: www.nudancefest.sk.

New Dance Fest (Source: Courtesy of NDF)

FESTIVAL: Ars Poetika - The 14th year of the International Festival of Poetry Ars Poetica 2016. Its program includes, for example, the Evening of European poetry, creative workshops, parties, concerts, parties or movies in various genres. Starts: Festival has already begun and lasts until Nov 21; SNG, Cafe Berlinka, Square. L. Stura 4, V-klub, Bratislava Flagship Restaurant, Square SNP 8, Cafe Berlinka, Square L. Stura 4, Kino Lumiere, Cinema hall no 4, Spitalska 4. Admission: free. More info: www.arspoetica.sk.

SHOW: Body Art Show - A large presentation of bodypainting in Slovakia will show bodypainters with an international cast. Tickets for the show includes an entry to the after party with food and meeting with the performers. Starts: Nov 18, 19:00; Grand Hotel Pressburg Bratislava, Antolska 2. Admission: 20. More info: www.ticketportal.sk.

Body Art Show (Source: Courtesy of Ticketportal)

TOUR: Climbing to the Pilis  The tourist Club of Surany is preparing a trip to the Hungarian Plis mountains. The tour will start above the village of Mlynky in the Sedlo dva buky/ Saddle of two beeches and it will last six hours. Buses leave from the Bus station in Surany at 6:00. Starts: Nov 19, 6:00; Bus station Surany. More info: www.rtvs.sk.

FESTIVAL: Noc divadiel/ Theatre Festival  This is the seventh year of the event, which is full of various genres of theatre for all generations. It will be performed during one evening and night in many countries in Europe. Starts: Nov 19; Various places. Admission: Depends on the performance. More info: www.nocdivadiel.sk.

Theatre Night from previous years (Source: Jan Kroslak)

FESTIVAL: International festival of poetry - Ars Poetica 2016 presents the world's best-known poets and is a celebration of domestic and foreign poetry. A workshop named Bring your own Poem is a creative time dedicated to everyone. Starts: Nov 20, 15:00; Malewill Cafe, Ursulinska 9. Admission: free. More info: www.arspoetica.sk.

FESTIVAL: Central European Festival of Italian Film  Movie lovers can look forward to nine evening films, which present a diversity of Italian cinematography, which will be projected within the festival of Italian films named Mittel Cinema Fest. Starts: Nov 22  27; Kino Mladost, Hviezdoslavovo Square 19. Admission: Depends on the performance. More info: www.kinomladost.sk.

RECITATION: Poetry Slam  This is the first , open, english Poetry Slam in Bratislava, which is organised by a student of the LEAF Academy and creator of Fountain Poetry, it is a literary competition in which Poets compete against each other. Poetry Slams are renowned and popular in English- & German-speaking countries. Starts: Nov 24; LEAF Academy, Sasinkova 13. More info: www.leafacademy.eu.

BAZAAR: Fashion bazaar  This is the first fashion bazaar in the space of the Satori Stage, which offers an opportunity to sell unnecessary things or to buy new clothes and supplement a wardrobe. Starts: Nov 26, 10:00; Satori Stage, Mickiewiczova 2246/9. Admission: free. More info: www.citylife.sk.

SCREENING: Premiere of the film A Living Space  Visitors can see the screeinng of a film by multitalented theatre director and artist Robert Wilson, which is named A Living Space. This document maps the process of an art creation in the Watermill Centre in New York, whose founder is Robert Wilson. Starts: Nov 28, 19:00; SND Historical building, Hviezdoslavovo Square 20. More info: www.alivingspacemovie.com.

Exhibitions

EXHIBITION: Lucia Nimcova & Sholto Dobie - Khroniky - Slovak artist Lucia Nimcova together with Scottish artist Sholto Dobie have returned every year since 2014 to western Ukraine, to the Karpaty area, where a Ruthenian minority lives. Their audiovisual project named Khroniky chronicles the everyday life of inhabitants through songs, stories, music, performances and others. Open: Wed  Sat 14.00  18.00 until 14.1.2017; Krokus Gallery, May 1 Square 3. More info: www.krokusgaleria.sk.

Lucia Nimcova & Sholto Dobie - Khroniky (Source: Courtesy of Krokus Gallery)

Training

TRAINING: Zumba in English Every Tuesday  Not a dance lesson, but rather a party which the organisers call the Zumba dance. Organised by Internationals Bratislava, a non-profit organisation that brings people together from all around the world living or visiting Bratislava, regardless of their cultural origin. Starts: Every other Tuesday, 17:50; Grosslingova 48, (Primary School of M.R. Stefanik)  second gate on the left. Admission: one-time charge  4.5. More info: www.internationals.sk.

TRAINING: Yoga in English on Wednesdays - Hatha Yoga sessions every Wednesday, beginner's level. Reservations and own mats are not necessary. Fruit and water are free. Starts: Every Wednesday, 20:15. Fitness Fanatix, Dunajska 23. Admission: 6. More info: www.internationals.sk.

Training, illustrative stock photo. (Source: Gabriel Kuchta)

TRAINING: Pilates in English on Mondays - Lesson is guided in English and spots are limited so it is necessary to make a reservation in advance via info@internationals.sk. Bringing mats is not necessary. Showers, fruit, tea, water are free. Starts: Every other Monday, 20:10. Fitness Fanatix, Dunajska 23. Admission: 6,5. Motre info: www.internationals.sk.

TRAINING: Belly Dance in English Mondays - A beginer&intermediate level of belly dancing, the oldest form of dance, according to many experts, having roots in all ancient cultures from the orient to India to the middle east. Starts: Every Monday, 18:00. Dom kultury Nivy/ Culture House Nivy. Admission: 6,5. More info: www.internationals.sk.

Highlights of the year

FIGURE-SKATING SHOW: Kings on Ice  Russian figure skater and Olympic winner Evgeni Plushenko returns with his show also featuring skaters such as Brian Joubert and Slovak Jozef Sabovcik. Starts: Nov 29, 19:00. Ice Stadium Ondreja Nepelu, Odbojarov 9. Admission: 15-59. More info: www.evgeni-plushenko.com.

CONCERT: A Life in Music Tour  Legendary tenor Jose Carreras stops also in Slovakia during his final world tour. Starts: December 8, 19:30. Ondrej Nepela Ice Stadium, (Slovnaft Arena), Odbojarov 9. Admission: 139-99. More info: www.ticketportal.sk.

BALLET: Romeo and Julliet - A romantic story composed by Sergey Prokofiev, inspired by the famous theatre play by Williama Shakespeare will be performed by the world renowned Royal Russian Ballet. The topic of forbidden love has been performed many times as a drama or the ballet, but a musical concept by Prokofiev belongs to the highlights of the ballet creation. This time it is accompanied by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Starts: Dec 18, 19:00; Incheba Expo Arena, Viedenska street 3-7. Admission: from 23. More info: www.ticketportal.sk.

COMEDY SHOW: Michael Winslow  the Popular US comedian (Police Academy, Space Balls, Gremlins) will perform in Bratislava, bringing his show full of sound imitations, music, storytelling, and even a special version of the final battle scene from Star Wars. The show takes place in English, without interpretation. Starts: Jan 4, 20:00. Admission: 24-44. More info: www.ticketportal.sk.

BALLET: Swan Lake - the ballet choreographed by the world-famous St. Petersburg Festival Ballet will visit three European cities including Bratislava, where they will come for the first time. The big performance of the 70 member ballet company dances to the music of classical music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Starts: Jan 12, 2017, 19:30; Incheba - Expo Arena, hall C. Admission: from 20. More info: www.ticketportal.sk.

Swan Lake (Source: Courtesy of Ticketportal)

SHOW: Ceasar Millan - Kynolog and dog trainer Ceasar Millan will visit Bratislava within his European tour called the Ceasar Millan Live Tour 2017. He and his four-legged companions will visit 15 chosen cities in 10 countries. Starts: Mar 25, 2017, 19:30; Winter Stadium of Ondrej Nepela, Odbojarov 9. Admission: from 45. More info: www.ticketportal.sk.
Experts from law firms in Slovakia answer the most frequent questions of their clients concerning business in Slovakia.

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This set of most frequently asked questions regarding inquiries by clients of law firms is regularly updated. Last update: February 3, 2017.

Q: When does a company have to be registered with the so-called Public Partners Registry and what are its most important duties under the Slovak Anti-Letterbox Companies Act?

Q: Why is it important to gain access to the e-box of the company and to check it regularly?

Q: What are the pros and cons of having a business licence and founding a company? What form of company should I choose?

Q: What does the criminal liability of companies mean?

Q: What does a company in crisis mean in practice?

Q: Is there a chance to recover a debt claim? How long will the process take?

Q: How do I terminate employment?

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Q: When does a company have to be registered with the so-called Public Partners Registry and what are its most important duties under the Slovak Anti-Letterbox Companies Act?

A: Only those who publicly disclose their beneficial owners (being natural persons) can do business with the public sector. Local or foreign companies are entitled to receive substantial rights, goods or services or financial payments (value of a contract higher than 100,000) from the public sector only in cases where they register their beneficial owners with the respective public online register. The mandatory verification of the beneficial owners shall be exercised prior to the registration and regularly at defined verification occasions throughout the year by so-called professionals.

The main duty of the management of the private company interested in doing business with the public sector is to contract a professional  attorney, notary, bank, auditor, etc. and to provide him/her with the cooperation necessary for the identification or verification of the beneficial owners of the company.

Sanctions for infringement include the withdrawal of the public entity from the contract, suspension of consideration, fines, liability of professionals, removal of the economic profit, cancellation of the registration in the respective register, and blacklisting into the register of disqualified persons.

Andrej Leontiev, partner at Taylor Wessing

Q: Why is it important to gain access to the e-box of the company and to check it regularly?

A: As of July 1, the use of government e-boxes is mandatory for any company registered with the Slovak Commercial Register. For such entities, an e-box was automatically activated and the state authorities are obliged and will communicate with such entities electronically. Therefore it is necessary that the e-box is checked regularly as the state authorities may deliver into it crucial decisions. These will be deemed as delivered by their delivery into the e-box after the lapse of the stated period irrespective of the fact of whether the company has access to the e-box or not. In case the e-box is ignored, a decision may be final, without any possibility to file appeal, and imposing a duty to pay, deliver or perform something, and the company may not even know about it. Ignoring the e-box may cause irreversible damage to the company.

Michal Simunic, attorney at CECHOVA & PARTNERS

Q: What are the pros and cons of having a business licence and founding a company? What form of company should I choose?

A: The decision concerning the right type of vehicle for a particular project or business depends on various aspects related to that particular business. For example, for an individual running a local business, like a craftsperson, who is directly performing the work and does not have any intentions of expanding the business, it could make sense to keep on running the business in the form of a one-man business. In certain cases, the tax advantages or family status of the entrepreneur might be relevant as well.

In case there are more persons involved in the business and there is potential for further growth, then it would be more suitable for such a business to be carried out through a stand-alone vehicle. In most of the cases the preferred type of vehicle would be either a private limited liability company or a joint stock company. The advantages of establishing the separate vehicle include limitation of liability of the members (shareholders), ability to transfer or to increase/expand the membership (shares) in the vehicle and thus to provide the business with additional funds. The establishment of the vehicle could also be more advantageous from the tax law and accounting point of view. As it is considerably more expensive and administratively burdensome to establish and maintain a joint stock company and since there are practically no differences in the operation possibilities, most investors and entrepreneurs prefer a private limited liability company, unless the law stipulates a particular type of business.

As of January 2017, the simplified joint stock company (new legal form) enables the accommodation of the different interests of different shareholder groups and offers effective ways to agree on special option rights, including employee option schemes.

Radovan Pala, partner at Taylor Wessing

Q: What does the criminal liability of companies mean?

A: Could companies end up behind bars in Slovakia? No, they cant  even if the new Corporate Criminal Liability Act in effect since July 2016 introduced a different approach to corporate crime. A company may be punished with one of nine possible sentences, including dissolution, ban on participation in public tenders, or a monetary penalty up to 1.6 mil. A company may be accused of over 50 possible offences, such as corruption, aggrieving the customer, unfair business practices, offences against the environment or tax and insurance evasion. All of which were chosen to be considered as corporate offences. It may be convicted directly, without the need to prove the fault of, or identify the offending individual. Even acts of ordinary employees may result in criminal liability of a company. Of additional importance is that a company may be held liable for the sins of another company it has acquired or merged with, since the liability for criminal offences is assumed by legal successors.

Dominika Bajzathova, lawyer at Kinstellar

Q: What does a company in crisis mean in practice?

A: A company in crisis is defined in the Commercial Code as a company which is bankrupt (i.e. if it is indebted or insolvent) or which is facing impending bankruptcy (if the ratio of its equity to its liabilities is lower than 8:100 / the ratio for 2016 is set to be 4:100 and the ratio for 2017 is set to be 6:100/). In effect, this means that the company in crisis will be prohibited, during the period of crisis, from paying out the so-called external funding, which replaces the companys own resources, from providing company funds to its associates without appropriate consideration, etc. The statutory body of the company in crisis is obliged to take all necessary measures in order for the company to overcome the crisis. The aim is the protection of creditors as well as the prevention against exploitation of companies. Nevertheless, only a limited liability company, joint-stock company or limited partnership (if its general partner is not an individual) may become a company in crisis.

Galina Vlckova, junior associate at SOUKENIK  STRPKA

Q: Is there a chance to recover a debt claim? How long will the process take?

A: The chance to recover a debt claim depends not only on the courts decision, but particularly on the existence of the debtors assets. Yet the effective court proceeding does not guarantee the recovery of debt claims. The chance is created by choosing contractual partners in foresight, learning about their solvency from public registers, preparing quality contractual materials or securing claims in an adequate way. The average length of a civil court proceeding was 14-16 months last year, according to the Justice Ministrys statistics, but the time involved is actually longer. The more difficult the dispute is, the higher the risk of court procrastination, ineffective court actions and obstructions of the litigation parties. The new procedural rules offer some space to accelerate the proceedings as they move the duty to submit evidence to the litigants and limit the possibilities of courts to substitute this duty.

Katarina Kovacova, partner at Ruzicka Csekes

Q: How do I terminate employment?

A: The safest way to terminate employment is by a properly drafted mutual agreement, covering all outstanding rights and duties, in particular financial entitlements. This limits the threat of potential claim of the employee for invalidity of termination. If the employment is to be terminated unilaterally by the employer, a favoured option is to terminate the employment based on a decision on so-called organisational changes causing redundancy. If the employee becomes redundant due to the cancellation of their job position, such position cannot be reopened by the employer for two months following the termination of the previous employment. Of course business and life also bring situations where unilateral termination for breach of discipline or bad performance is also needed. As this is a much more challenging exercise, the golden rule in such a case should be to act diligently, have proper grounds and evidence available and to have the stamina for a potential court challenge.

Michal Simunic, attorney at CECHOVA & PARTNERS
Crotchet swimwear by Anna Kosturova worn by American and Canadian celebrities, and a furry bag from the workroom of Nikoleta Rajnakova owned by the CEO of Instagram are but two examples of Slovak handmade products that have made it big. But the map of Slovak handmade products consists of much more than that.

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When a historical fencing group needed costumes from the Viking era, Anna Markova was the one to help out. From then on, she started earning her living by sewing historical costumes.

I started sewing for my friends, then for friends of friends, and suddenly, when I finished my studies of art history, I was earning enough by sewing costumes and did not need to find another job, she described her beginnings for The Slovak Spectator.

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Today, Markova runs her own label: valgred, and sells about 80 costumes a year. She also has employees for sewing. Costumes and embroideries are handmade, only some stitches are made by a sewing machine, if the customer prefers.

Half of her customers are from the USA, many are in Europe, but there are also some from Australia. Only about 5 percent of all her customers are Slovaks, Markova estimates.

In Slovakia, we have many skilful people who know how to sew mainly because of their parents, in the previous regime it was more of a necessity than a hobby, Markova explains why she believes her business is so popular abroad, adding that in western Europe, tailoring is rare.

Her story is only one of many stories of skilful Slovaks who have had their hobby suddenly turn into a profitable business.

Welcome to the handmade universe

The Slovak version of the worldwide Etsy.com and Czech Fler.cz is SAShE, the biggest online platform uniting Slovak craftsmen, designers, or simply crafty people with creative hobbies who want to sell their handmade products online.

As of October 2016, when the portal celebrated seven years of existence, there were 6,000 vendors registered on SAShE, almost 23 million clicks on the website, and 5.8 million products sold since October 2009, when the platform officially launched. The websites statistics reveal that Christmas decorations and wedding gifts are what Slovaks have sought most from the offer of handmade products. In 2016, the biggest trend was modern folk, based on the most searched keywords on SAShE.

From among thousands of vendors on SAShE, several have built up their businesses based on their handmade products.

There are some family brands on SAShE that literally grew before our eyes, they began to thrive and the creator was subsequently able to employ family members and set up a company, said Sasa Miklasova, who founded SAShE.sk with her husband, for The Slovak Spectator.

Bags sold around the world

Dajana Rodriguez is a young student of fine arts from Partizanske.

She is one of the craftspeople who started out on the handmade portal. She sewed her first bag with her mum five years ago.

It took several days, however, it was a simple bag, Rodriguez reflected on those days, as quoted by the Sme daily.

Rodriguez is Slovak, but as her name suggests, she has Caribbean roots. Her Cuban father, Raul Rodriguez Romelo, had made his living for years by making leather jackets.

Dajana Rodriguez and her mum werent interested in founding a big business, she admitted for Sme. But after some time, there were more and more people demanding her bags.

We have the technology  workroom and machine  thanks to my father, so we have conditions to start larger production, explained Dajana Rodriguez for Sme.

Nowadays, Rodriguez no longer sews and she sees her future in designing bags. Her company produces 150 bags a month, and creates 95 percent of her income.

Customers appreciate the work of small entrepreneurs, they are interested in the production process and they like to know the origin of the product, Rodriguez explained the success of her business for the Dobrenoviny.sk website.

Her bags are in demand in Slovakia and beyond, and she now admits that she is ready to expand more in the future.

Meanwhile, David Hlusko, a young Slovak living in Vietnam, teaching English at Hanoi University, started his business also dedicated to bags  mens bags.

It is said  start a business with something you miss on the market, he told The Slovak Spectator. I wanted to buy a mens bag, but the one I can take to gym as well as to work. I found some, but either I dont like design or the price was excessive. So, I designed a bag for myself.

Now he is working on more designs and launching an online shop to be able to sell his products worldwide.

Not only online

Online is, however, not the only way to sell original Slovak designs. In Bratislavas Old Town, a shop with clothes, Kompot, sells its own brand as well as products of several Slovak brands.

SlovakiaGift features T-shirts, bags, pillows and postcards with folk motifs; Lemur is specific because of its T-shirts with faunal motifs that glow in the dark; original Slovak socks are well known under the name Fusakle; the brand Puojd which is behind the folk design of socks for Slovak Olympians in Rio 2016, and many others.

Meanwhile, SAShE keeps the number of its sellers artificially within borders, but there could be many more than the current 6,000, Sasa Miklasova said for the HNonline.sk website. Also, customers interest is increasing, based on SAShE statistics.

Every month we find a new talent, the Slovak market is really strong in producing handmade products, Miklasova told HNonline.sk.
Ornithologists counted less water birds in January compared to the last few years.

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More than 200 ornithologists counted birds on more than 2,000 kilometres of rivers and water areas. Preliminary results showed that the lower number of birds overwintering in Slovakia will be because of unusual long-standing below-freezing temperatures.

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However, the number of resistant bird species is bigger.

Such a winter as we had when counting the birds hadnt happened in January for a long time. Some of the areas, where birds stayed in the last number of years, were totally frozen  parts of the rivers Vah, Hron, the bay of the Danube and the majority of water areas, said Jozef Ridzon, manager of SOS/BirdLife Slovakia, for the TASR newswire.

As a result, the number of tufted ducks dropped several fold. In previous years, the place where they overwinter on the Danube belongs to the most significant in central Europe, Ridzon explained for TASR.

This winter is brutal for birds, according to the ornithologists. Several species the water birds flew away from Slovakia.

Read also:

Read also: Records for weather broken in both extremes Read more

At the last several areas that are still not frozen over are crowds of big flocks of water birds. They are sharing the last food sources, and we noted the natural mortality at the some of them, said the spokesman of SOS/BirdLife Slovakia Jan Gugh for TASR.

Swans, for example, are susceptible to illness in hard conditions, and ornithologists reported every suspicious discovery to the Veterinary Administration.

The higher number of species was found at these areas with open water are birds which waiting to see if their overwintering place will freeze at the very last moment.

When there is a hard winter, the number of goosanders grows. The rivers in Poland where they overwinter froze and goosanders fly over the Karpaty to Slovakias unfrozen water areas at Liptov and Orava, stated the coordinator of the counting event, Michal Balaz, for TASR.

People could feel that the number of birds grew, but in fact, it is just a bigger concentration of birds on the last unfrozen areas, summed up Balaz for TASR.
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DUBAI, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Iraq's Rumaila oilfield currently producing around 1.5 million barrels per day after the end of a planned field maintenance, industry sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

** Rumaila had field maintenance in January, the sources said.

** Rumaila's oil output went down to around 1.38 million bpd by mid January from 1.47 million bpd earlier in the month, the sources said.

** Rumaila is Iraq's biggest oilfield. It is being developed by a joint venture between BP, PetroChina (HKSE: 0857-OL.HK - news) and Iraq's state-run South Oil Company.

** Iraq cut output by 200,000 bpd in January in line with a supply cut deal by OPEC, according to shipping data and industry sources.

** Iraq pumped 4.51 million bpd in January according to a Reuters survey. (Reporting by Rania El Gamal. Editing by Jane Merriman)
scales of justice

Dan Kitwood/Getty

LONDON  A former HBOS banker and five others were sentenced to a combined 48 years in prison on Thursday for a scam that cost the lender 245 million ($286 million) and ruined the finances of small business clients.

Lyndon Scourfield, who ran the HBOS impaired assets division and who had pleaded guilty to six counts including corruption, received an 11 year sentence.

David Mills, a consultant who ran Quayside Corporate Services, was jailed for 15 years.

Four others  Quayside consultant Michael Bancroft, accountants Tony Cartwright and HBOS manager Mark Dobson  were sentenced to between three and half years and 10 years in prison. Another defendant, Jonathan Cohen, was acquitted.*

Judge Martin Beddoe, called Mills the "devil" to whom Scourfield had sold his soul "for sex, for luxury trips with and without your wife, for bling and for swag, according to a report in the Guardian.

Prosecutors alleged that, between 2003 and 2007, the six were involved in a scam which saw the HBOS managers and a firm of consultants profit from driving small businesses into financial distress with loans.

Scourfield's loans went "well past the point when it would have been obvious to any honest banker that the bank debt could and would never be repaid," the prosecuting lawyer, Brian O'Neill QC, told Southwark Crown Court, according to a report by the BBC when the case opened last year.

He then referred the troubled businesses to Quayside Corporate Services in return for cash and gifts, while the consultants made large sums in fees from the struggling companies. The total losses to the bank from the soured loans amounts to around 245 million.

Detective Superintendent Nick John, the senior investigating officer said: "This has been the longest and most complex case in Thames Valley Polices history."

The sentencing reflects the severity of the crimes and the misery they inflicted on their victims. Their victims were people who were trying to contribute to the economy, creating jobs and offering goods and services. They were normal people running small to medium sized businesses who needed support and instead had their livelihoods, and in many cases, their lives destroyed by the greed of these parasites."

Story continues

Scourfield took gifts of cash, luxury holidays and "high class escorts." One sex worker's diary was entered into evidence in the trial. Prosecutors claimed that one sex worker recorded this note in her diary: "met guys, me, Amber and Suzie. Chinese meal. Then drinks at flat and quick shag. Easy 1500."

HBOS, which owned the Halifax and Bank of Scotland brands, suffered heavy losses in the 2008 financial crisis and neared collapse as its funding was cut off by the credit crunch.

It had to be rescued by a combination of a public bailout and a merger with Lloyds TSB, costing the taxpayer around 20 billion in the early part of 2009.

So far, only one person  former HBOS wholesale banking chief Peter Cummings  has been fined and banned from working in the City by regulators investigating the collapse.

*Correction: An earlier version of this story wrongly said that Jonathan Cohen was convicted. He was not. In fact, he was acquitted. Business Insider apologises to Mr. Cohen for this error.

NOW WATCH: The incredible life of Roger Federer, the highest-paid tennis player on Earth

See Also:

SEE ALSO: Tory MP: Investigate the accountants over the collapse of HBOS
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Activity in South Africa's private sector remained in growth territory in January but dipped from December as demand for exports sank, a survey showed on Friday. The Standard Bank Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), compiled by Markit edged down to 51.3 from 51.6, remaining above the 50 mark dividing expansion from contraction for a fifth consecutive month. "January's expansion in economic activity extended December's trend, further supporting the idea that domestic growth may have troughed," said economist at Standard Bank Kuvasha Naidoo. Companies surveyed reported a marginal increase in new business and output in January, but that was countered by a decrease in exports, with some firms citing the loss of major international contracts. "Exports continued to suffer, recording an accelerated pace of contraction... This was while overall demand continued to expand, albeit at a slower pace," Naidoo said. Trade data published by the revenue service on Tuesday showed exports down 6.1 percent month-on-month in January, while subdued consumer and business confidence dampened imports as low activity continued to strangle growth in Africa's most industrialised economy. The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) last week lowered its economic growth estimates to 1.1 percent for 2017 and 1.6 percent for 2018.
The Moorside site, near Sellafield, above, is part of the governments strategy to build new nuclear plants to fill the energy gap. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA

Plans for a new nuclear power station in Cumbria are likely to be scrapped after a key backer pulled out, creating a major hole in the governments nuclear strategy.

Two industry sources close to the process said Toshiba had privately decided to quit the consortium behind the planned Moorside plant, echoing sources who told Reuters and the Wall Street Journal that the Japanese company was withdrawing from new nuclear projects in the UK.

Toshiba said last month it was reviewing all its nuclear business abroad after suffering a multibillion-dollar writedown on its US business. It has promised to provide more details about its intentions when it publishes results on 14 February.

The French energy firm Engie, which is Toshibas partner in the NuGen consortium, has long been seen as wanting to get out of the project. Its chief executive said last year the future did not lie in nuclear power.

The company said that, along with Toshiba, it was seeking new investors to finance the Moorside plant, which are reported to include Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco).

Senior figures in the industry urged the government to start discussions with the South Koreans immediately to safeguard the power station if Toshiba left NuGen.

Any potential investor in that project is going to need to have very direct reassurance from the government; even if they are just starting an exploratory period, they are welcomed, said Tim Yeo, the chairman of the pro-nuclear group New Nuclear Watch Europe.

The former Conservative MP said ministers should even consider taking a direct stake in the Moorside plant. Such an interventionist approach would have been anathema in recent years but appears more credible after recent leaks revealed the government was considering taking a stake in another new nuclear plant, at Wylfa in Wales.

Unions also called for the government to step in with funding to save the plant if Toshiba pulled out. It looks increasingly like bad business investments may have busted Toshibas role in a new nuclear facility at Moorside in Cumbria, said Justin Bowden, the GMBs national secretary for energy.

Story continues

Moorside, near Sellafield, is a key part of the governments hopes for a new fleet of power stations to fill the UKs energy gap in the next decade as coal plants and ageing atomic plants close.

The only one to be approved so far is EDFs 18bn Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset, which was made financially possible through subsidies to be levied on household bills. The government hopes new plants will be built at Wylffa, Sizewell, Bradwell and Oldbury.

Of Moorsides three mooted reactors, Paul Dorfman, from the Energy Institute at University College London said: These are really big pieces of kit. If and when plans for Moorside fail, this leaves an existential gap in UK energy policy.

Toshibas chief executive, Satoshi Tsunakawa, signalled last week that new nuclear projects would be reviewed in response to the anticipated multibillion-dollar writedown related to the purchase of a nuclear construction and services business by its US subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric.

No official decision has been made on NuGen.

At this moment, we can only say that we are reviewing the future of our nuclear power business outside Japan, but nothing has been decided at this time, the company told the Guardian.

A spokesman for Engie said the company continues to evaluate the site and design of the NuGen Moorside facility.

Theresa May told parliament earlier this week that the government was committed to new nuclear plants. A spokesman for the government said it was working closely with a number of developers.
President Donald Trump looks on following a swearing-in ceremony for Defense Secretary James Mattis at the Pentagon in Washington, January 27, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By Emily Stephenson and David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chief executives of major U.S. companies huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday and some of them expressed concern about a travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries travelling to the United States.

Business leaders said afterward that the group, which included Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc (PEP.N), discussed bank rules, tax reform, and objections to Trump's week-old ban.

Some companies are worried that the travel restrictions will impact their employees or create uncertainty that could rattle markets. Tech companies also have broader concerns about Trump's immigration policies because of the number of foreign workers they employ in the United States.

The U.S. business community has been divided in their approach on taxes and immigration, and some leaders are wary of working with a president who uses his platform to attack companies that vex him, such as threatening penalties for manufacturing outside the United States.

Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly delivered an update to the corporate leaders on the travel restrictions, which caused chaos at major U.S. airports and are now facing court challenges.

"There was obviously concern by different people and explanations and that issue had to be covered and was covered," Blackstone Group Chief Executive Stephen Schwarzman, who leads the advisory group, said on Fox Business.

Participants including Elon Musk of Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) had said before the meeting that they would raise concerns with Trump about the travel crackdown.

The meeting, which also included Mary Barra of General Motors Co (GM.N) and Jim McNerney, formerly of Boeing Co (BA.N), convened a business advisory panel that Trump announced in December.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit the group under pressure from activists over the order. Musk defended his own decision to participate on Friday, saying that going to the meeting did not mean he agreed with Trump's actions.

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The White House said in a statement on Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger."

Executives from Ford Motor Co (F.N) also criticized the ban, but others, including General Motors and JPMorgan Chase have not taken a position.

SPLIT ON TAX REFORM

Trump has also met with executives from the U.S. pharmaceutical and auto industries as part of a push to step up U.S. job creation.

Division in the corporate world is also developing over taxes. Boeing Co and General Electric Co (GE.N) on Thursday joined a group in support of a congressional plan to tax all imports. But that plan, which does not have universal support among Republicans, is opposed by many U.S. retailers, which say it could raise prices for consumers.

"If you're a big U.S. manufacturer and exporter, you love it. And if you're a retailer bringing a lot of your stuff in, it has ramifications for you," Jack Welch, the former GE chief executive, said on Fox Business after the meeting. "It's not a simple issue."

Republican leaders say tax reform is a top priority, but they have acknowledged it could take until the end of 2017 or longer to finish legislation.

"If I were a company, I'd be worried about tax reform," said Bernie Williams, chief investment officer at USAA Investment Solutions, in San Antonio.

The White House meeting with the group is also set to cover trade, regulatory relief and infrastructure.

(Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington,; Jennifer Ablan in New York and Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alistair Bell)
Kiersten Miles pictured with baby Talia after their operations: Facebook

A babysitter donated a part of her liver to save the life of a baby girl she had known for just three weeks.

Kiersten Miles first met the Rosko family last June after a mutual friend recommended her to look after their 16-month-old daughter Talia.

They told her the baby was suffering with Bilary Atresia - a life threatening condition which causes the liver's ducts to become backed up with bile, destroying cells and the liver itself.

As a result the little girl required a liver transplant and the 22-year-old college student immediately volunteered to see if her organ matched.

It's such a small sacrifice when you compare it to saving a life," the college student from New Jersey told the US broadcaster WTXF. "Some of her doctors said she possibly wouldnt have made it past two-years-old."

She added: "All I had to do was be in the hospital for a week and a 5-inch scar. I dont know, it just seemed like such a small sacrifice to me."

Kiersten Miles pictured with baby Talia before their operations (Facebook)

After discovering she was a match, Ms Miles immediately volunteered to donate a part of her liver, undergoing a major surgery that would last for five hours.

But Talia's parents, George and Farra initially questioned her decision.

Ms Rosko said: "I'm like: 'Kiersten, this is a serious surgery. You have to talk to your parents. It's not like donating blood."

Ms Miles told her that she had already discussed the donation with her mother and they had agreed it was the right thing, she added.

After six-months of tests, Ms Miles was operated on at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

Part of her liver was removed and then transported to Talia who was operated on at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Both operations were successful and both Talia and Ms Miles are said to be recovering well.

She will never be able to donate again, even if she decides to have children of her own in the future and they require a similar organ donation.

I can never donate again, so they had to tell me in the future so if I have a child in a similar situation or a different one and they need a liver even if Im a 100 per cent match I cant donate. You can only donate once,"she told Fox News.

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She added that she had no regrets about her decision.

Talia "was 9 months old when I started watching her," she said. "Shes so helpless. She cant tell anyone whats wrong with her. She cant spread the word and ask for help."
As a precaution, Brazils health ministry has expanded production of vaccines and administered 3.3m doses in Minas Gerais, where the outbreak is concentrated. Photograph: Douglas Magno/AFP/Getty Images

Brazil has ramped up an emergency yellow fever vaccination campaign as the worst outbreak in decades spreads towards major population centres, killing dozens of people and decimating wild monkey populations.



The uptick comes exactly a year after the Zika virus  another mosquito-borne disease  was declared a global health emergency, and as during the previous epidemic Brazilian authorities are struggling to calibrate an appropriate response.

Because there is a vaccine, yellow fever should, in theory, not cause as much of a panic but global vaccine stocks are dwindling, and the disease is far more deadly than Zika.

Of the 107 confirmed cases in the state of Minas Gerais, 40 ended in death. Three patients have also died in Sao Paulo state and one in Espirito Santo.

Although the disease has a more than 200-year history in Brazil, concern has picked up steadily in recent months as it moved to areas of the south-east, such as Espirito Santo, where it is not normally found.

Doctors have so far reported 568 suspected cases in 51 counties, far more than during the last major outbreak in 2007.

As a precaution, the health ministry has expanded production of vaccines and administered 3.3m doses in Minas Gerais, where the outbreak is concentrated.

So far, it has been spread by Haemagogus and Sabethes mosquitoes in rural areas.

Monkeys have also suffered. More than 400 were found dead in Espirito Santo after farmers reported an unusual silence in the forest. Biologists warn that endangered species, such as the muriqui, could be wiped out as the vaccination only works on humans.

Pedro Tauil, an epidemiologist at the University of Brasilia, said the latest spread of yellow fever was different from the past both in terms of the number of cases and the range.

Seeing cases in Espirito Santo is new. The reasons for this expansion are still largely unknown, he said. The risk we now face is that urban mosquitoes such as the Aedes aegypti could become carriers and then the disease will be transmitted into the cities.

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In a letter to the health ministry, doctors, researchers and academics described the possibility of an urban epidemic as frightening and warned that it may already be under way. They urged the authorities to expand the vaccination campaign, improve sanitation and enhance monitoring systems.

But views are mixed. The health ministry insists there is no need for people in the cities to rush to clinics and hospitals for a shot.

Such reassurances have failed to placate the public. Throughout the country, people are queueing up at vaccination centres even in regions that are unaffected.

What we have is an epidemic of disinformation about yellow fever  People are panicking. There is no reason for this, said Jose Alexandre Romano, director of the National Federation of Doctors. He said the ministry needed to provide clear guidelines and updates.



The outbreak highlights the scant resources of epidemiological control authorities in Brazil.

The government is losing the battle against mosquitoes. The levels of basic sanitation are extremely low, and with this, the tendency is not just an outbreak of yellow fever, but other diseases too, Romano warned.

This response is in a sharp contrast to that last year for Zika, which was then a new and relatively unknown health threat that was spreading rapidly, associated with birth deformities and for which there was no vaccination.

After Zika was declared a health emergency, the government mobilised more than 100,000 troops and medical personnel to destroy mosquito breeding centres. Worldwide, hundreds of millions of dollars were committed to the search for a vaccine.

However, the worst fears have not been realised, and despite predictions of a second wave of Zika this year, the health ministry said the disease is ebbing.

Last year it killed six people, compared with 629 deaths attributed to dengue and 159 for chikungunya. In November, the World Health Organisation dropped the emergency alert for Zika.
(Reuters) - U.N. human rights experts warned that asylum seekers could face torture if not given safe harbor and the Vatican called for openness to other cultures on Wednesday, adding to a drumbeat of international criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump's travel curbs. Trump's executive order last Friday put a 120-day halt on the U.S. refugee program, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The move, which his administration says is aimed at protecting the United States from terrorist attacks, has been condemned by many countries and has sparked protests and court challenges in the United States. A panel of U.N. human rights experts urged the Trump administration on Wednesday to protect people fleeing war and persecution, and said the measure contravened international humanitarian and human rights laws. It "risks people being returned, without proper individual assessments and asylum procedures, to places in which they risk being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," the experts said in a statement. The experts, including the U.N. special rapporteurs on migrants, racism, human rights and counter-terrorism, torture, and freedom of religion, also said the measure could lead to "increased stigmatization of Muslim communities." The Vatican, in its first comment on the order, said it was concerned. "Certainly there is worry because we are messengers of another culture, that of openness," the Vatican's deputy secretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, told an Italian Catholic television station. "Pope Francis, in fact, insists on the ability to integrate those who arrive in our societies and cultures," he said, also commenting on Trump's plan to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. IRAN AND LIBYA In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani stepped up his criticism of Trump's immigration policies, including the travel ban, dismissing the U.S. businessman-turned-president as a political novice. Tehran has already vowed to respond with legal, political and reciprocal measures. "It will take him a long time and will cost the United States a lot, until he learns what is happening in the world," Rouhani said in an address on state television. Libya's U.N.-backed government also criticised Trump's ban on its nationals. The order has put in question participation of Libyans invited to a conference on Libya planned in Washington this month. The measure was one of a flurry of executive orders signed by Trump, a Republican, since he took office on Jan. 20. "Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!" Trump said on Twitter early Wednesday. Reaction to the travel curbs from some Muslim majority countries not on the list of seven designated countries has been more muted. The United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, said on Wednesday the ban was an internal affair not directed at any faith, and noted that most Muslims and Muslim countries were not included. The UAE, a major oil exporter, is a close ally of the United States and a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamist militants in Syria. In the United States, four U.S. states - Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington - have sued to overturn the order on the grounds it flouts constitutional guarantees of religious freedom. (Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley in Washington, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Philip Pullella in Vatican City, Bozorgmehr Sharafedin in Dubai, Aidan Lewis in Tripoli; Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Frances Kerry)
One of the roles of the Chamber of Commerce is to help keep members informed of legislative issues that pertain to their business operations.

Some of these issues also apply to the general public. We thought we would review some of this information. The Mattoon Chamber has received many inquiries from our member businesses regarding the new tax laws that will be implemented soon. There are two recent changes to taxes that relate to local businesses.

The first of these has an impact on retail businesses and consumers as well. The second tax involves increases to real estate taxes on commercial properties in all of Coles County.

The Chamber has received the most questions from members regarding the timing of the 1 percent sales tax increase. Effective July 1, 2017 the new 1 percent sales tax on general merchandise will increase from 6.75 percent to 7.75 percent for all of Coles County other than tax districts including the Cross County Mall area which will increase from 7.75 percent to 8.75 percent.

As a reminder, this increase was voted on by the citizens of the county and passed during the November elections. The locally imposed tax is similar to all other general merchandise taxes. Items that are excluded from the tax include most qualifying food items, drugs and medical appliances, along with other items specified in the referendum.

All retail and business establishments impacted by the 1 percent sales tax increase should receive an informational brochure from the State of Illinois Department of Revenue in May of 2017 summarizing the sales tax rate change. Businesses can verify their new specific rates as of July 1, 2017 by going to the tax rate database at tax.illinois.gov and select rates for July 2017.

The Mattoon Chamber of Commerce has also received many inquiries regarding the change in assessed values and its impact on local businesses. In 2016 a county wide reassessment of commercial, industrial, and multi-unit dwellings was initiated. No formal commercial property reassessment has occurred in more than 15 years.

Based on a resolution passed by the County Board in 2015, Mattoon Township was the first in a four-year reassessment cycle. The local businesses in Mattoon Township had to file appeals by Dec. 28 of last year to challenge the increase. According to the Coles County Assessor's Office approximately 20 percent of the affected businesses filed appeals.

Charleston and Lafayette Townships will be reassessed this year similar to Mattoon Township. The notices of increases will go out and the new rates will be published in November of this year and by statute businesses will have 30 days to appeal.

Homeowners in Mattoon will need to wait until they receive their tax bills this summer to determine how they are affected by the commercial reassessments.
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's government said on Friday it remained united on the need to stabilise the Greek economy despite indications of divergent views between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their Social Democratic coalition partners. Spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer declined to comment on a newspaper report that Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had criticised the government's handling of Greece in a letter to Merkel last month and had suggested easing a surplus requirement. Greece needs a new tranche of financial aid under its 86 billion euro bailout by the third quarter of the year or it faces the risk of defaulting on its debts. Germany's views on the deal are particularly closely watched as it contributes the most to the bailout. Demmer said Berlin's views remained unchanged. "The goal is to conclude the second programme review," she told a government news conference. But comments on Friday from Gabriel, a Social Democrat, and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, suggested tensions remained. Schaeuble signalled growing impatience with the process and said Greece must meet its commitments, or end up in an impossible position. "If Greece again and again does not do what it has committed to, eventually that will not work," Schaeuble told a business meeting in Saarbruecken in western Germany. Asked about possible difference within the ruling coalition, Gabriel told reporters in New York that Germany should work to keep the euro zone together. "I expect the finance minister to do that, and I am certain he will deliver," he said. Demmer declined to comment on a report in the Handelsblatt newspaper that Gabriel had suggested easing a requirement for Athens to keep a 3.5 percent budget surplus in the medium-term. Reports of a rift within the German government come as the country gears up for a national election in September, with polls showing growing support for the Social Democrats, who have vowed to regain the leading role in the government. Gabriel told Merkel that the different perspectives of Schaeuble's ministry and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appeared to make reaching an agreement on another rescue plan impossible, the newspaper reported. Germany, Europe's largest economy, wants the IMF to have a stake in Greece's bailout to give the rescue plan greater credibility, but opposes granting Athens the significant debt relief that the IMF is demanding. Berlin has opposed large-scale debt relief unless Greece completes wide-ranging reforms and keeps running budget surpluses of 3.5 percent for the medium-term after the end of the bailout programme in 2018. Gabriel, who swapped into the foreign ministry from the economics ministry last week, had proposed that Greece only be required to keep a 3.5 percent budget surplus for three years, according to the newspaper. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Paul Carrel in Berlin, and Sabine Siebold in New York; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
France 24 Videos

As world powers prepare to begin crucial climate talks at the COP27 summit in Egypt, we speak to Chiara Martinelli, director of the Climate Action Network Europe, which describes itself as Europe's leading NGO coalition fighting dangerous climate change. Martinelli says the EU should, in Sharm-el-Sheikh, agree to upgrade its previous commitment to cut carbon emissions by 55 percent and now target a 65 percent reduction in emissions. "This would send an important signal to the other negotiating parties that Europe is doing its fair share globally, and that it is committed to containing the global temperature rise within 1.5 C," she tells Armen Georgian. Martinelli also addressed the thorny issue of climate finance, saying. "At the heart of climate finance is the concept of climate justice. The biggest emitters need to support poor countries both for mitigation and adaptation as well as for loss and damage. And climate financing, in the form of grants, should go hand in hand with plans to ensure an energy transition in those [poor] countries. We can't afford [for] those countries to make the same mistakes that developed countries made by locking in a fossil fuels economy."Finally, asked about renewable energy strategy, she said: "The war in Ukraine led to an increase in energy prices, and so now Europe has an opportunity to showcase the fact that renewables are not only greener but also cheaper at this moment in time. So this is the best moment we have to speed up the rollout of renewables both in Europe and in the investments we make on other continents. Europe has talked the talk; it should walk the walk."Read more on FRANCE 24 EnglishRead also:COP27: North-South, a growing divideNile River under threat: A closer look at Egypt's water crisisGreta Thunberg will not attend COP27 in Egypt, says summit is 'greenwashing'
Vladimir Putin received a warm welcome in Budapest, one of the European capitals that maintains good ties with Moscow. The Hungarian Prime Minister said the country strove for open and transparent relations with Russia, as the pair spoke trade, energy projects and sanctions. Hungary maintains its stance that non-economic problems cannot be handled with economic means  we very much hope that soon we will see good Russian-European co-operation, Orban told reporters at the joint news conference. Budapest argues that sanctions have cost them $6.5bn in exports. Hungary along with Cyprus, Greece and Italy have all expressed concern over sanctions but have little to prevent their renewal. EU sanctions were extended in December until the end of July 2017 It is the Russian presidents first visit to Europe since Donald Trump took office. The Hungarian leader has previously hailed Trumps win. During the press conference he referred to the recent change in the geopolitical sphere saying it could bring better EU-Russia relations. Orban: We all feel, that recent changes in the world could bring better EU-Russia relations.  pic.twitter.com/c5PKDqnIO0 Sandor Zsiros (@EuroSandor) February 2, 2017 The pair also discussed Russias gas shipments after the current deal expires in 2021, and Hungary said it had agreed to start negotiating the next deal.
By Ulf Laessing LAGOS (Reuters) - German carrier Lufthansa will not fly to the replacement air hub for the Nigerian capital of Abuja while the main airport is closed for repairs from next month, a company spokesman said on Thursday. The Nigerian government has said airlines will use the little-known city of Kaduna's airport, about 100 miles north of the capital, while the main airport is undergoing repairs, scheduled to take six weeks from March 8. "We won't fly from Kaduna during the closure of Abuja airport for six weeks," the Lufthansa spokesman said by phone. He did not give a reason. The runway at the main airport had deteriorated to such an extent that some major international carriers refused to fly there, and some aircraft reported damage to their undercarriage. While it is closed Abuja-bound passengers will have to fly to Kaduna and travel by bus to the capital, guarded by security, on a road where kidnappings have taken place in the past few years. The plans for Kaduna to handle Abjua flights have been met with scepticism. The airport handled just 12 flights in December 2015, the last month for which Nigeria's airports authority has figures, compared with 812 that used Abuja. A new terminal is being built but when Reuters visited it last month it was still under construction with cables hanging from ceilings. Contingency plans are in place for the existing terminal to be used. The temporary closure of Abuja's airport has been criticised by aviation labour unions, business leaders and diplomats. British Airways, Air France, Turkish Airlines, EgyptAir and Ethiopian Airlines also fly to Abuja. In October, Dubai-based Emirates stopped flying to Abuja, blaming the state of the runway among other factors, according to the ministry. (Reporting by Ulf Laessing; Writing by Paul Carsten; Editing by Susan Fenton)
Budapest is getting a buffeting from a wind from the east. At least that is how some in Hungary greet the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the courtship ritual he and their leader Viktor Orban appear wrapped up in. Orban has been going out of his way to butter the Russian leader up. Viktor Orban began his career by ordering the Soviet Red troops out of Hungary. Now the government of this same man is unveiling a statue to these same troops, said one disgruntled Budapest resident Orban knows this is not his first contradiction rodeo. He got elected on the slogan Russians Out when he was still an opposition politician, when he considered anyone negotiating with Moscow was a traitor. Today the new enemy appears to be the West. We must save Brussels from Sovietisation, from people who want to tell us who we should live with in our countries, he says. Orbans position has enraged half the population. But he has not obtained what he wanted from Brussels. The EU has rejected his economic plans, which went easy on Hungarys public debt. So Orban turned to Moscow to get a better deal, whose strongman certainly shares some of his views, above all his nationalism. Hungary signed a big contract with Rosatom, and in exchange Putin promised a big financial aid package. Russia will lend Hungary more than 10 billion euros to pay 80% of the costs of the expansion of its Paks nuclear reactor, the only one in the country, which provides 40% of the nations electricity. The deal dates from January 2014, when it threw a cat among Brussels pidgeons and was highly controversial. For Putin it was much more than just a contract. It was yet another economic pawn placed on the European chessboard and an extension of Russias sphere of influence. Today Hungary is Russias strongest ally in Europe. Hungarys position on the sanctions is that theyre useless and have proven to be unsuccessful and we are not lobbying for lifting the sanctions because of Russia, we are lobbying, or we are speaking in favour of lifting the sanctions because of Hungary, says Hungarys Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto. Orban heard one phrase in Donald Trumps inauguration he would have completely identified with. Every nation has the right to pursue its own interests first of all. Orban may hope Trumps election and his cultivation of better relations with Moscow may help a new order emerge in which he is able to throw off the shackles of Brussels.
BELGRADE, Serbia (AP)  Serbia blamed Kosovo on Friday for the collapse of European Union-mediated talks as tensions escalated in the Balkans amid reports of troop movements and war rhetoric.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic claimed the Kosovo leaders' "only goal is to storm" into northern Kosovo, an area populated by Serbs. He rejected calls by unidentified Western ambassadors to pull back Serb police forces from the border with its former province.

"Serbia is a sovereign country," Vucic said. "They can give such orders to whom they can, but they cannot give such orders in Serbia."

Vucic said Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders don't want an agreement with Serbia, and he blamed the EU for "tolerating" such behavior.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia has not recognized it as a separate country. Serbia, backed by Russia, has sought to maintain influence in Kosovo's north, where most of the country's Serb minority lives.

Vucic's comments followed a Brussels meeting Wednesday between the Serbian and Kosovo presidents and prime ministers that was convened by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The latest in a series of meetings, crucial for accession of both countries into the 28-nation EU, it finished abruptly and no further session has been planned.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci urged the EU and NATO on Thursday to warn Serbia against inciting a new conflict in Kosovo and the Balkans.

Tensions have been building since December when Kosovo Serbs erected a wall at a bridge in the divided town of Mitrovica, seen as a provocation by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Last month, a nationalist Serbian train with signs reading "Kosovo is Serbia" in 20 languages was turned back from the border with Kosovo.

Thousands of NATO-led troops continue to control Kosovo's territory since a three-month air war in 1999 to stop a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists.

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On his visit to Kosovo on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged Kosovo and Serbia to normalize their relations.

"We are committed to continue to stay here with a significant force," Stoltenberg said. "This is a very clear signal of our commitment to make sure that Kosovo is a safe and secure place."

___

Llazar Semini contributed to this report from Tirana, Albania.
ROME (Reuters) - Protesters chanted outside the U.S. embassy in Rome on Thursday against President Donald Trump's order to restrict entry into the United States for refugees and citizens of seven Muslim countries. Last week's executive order blocked citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and placed an indefinite hold on Syrian refugees. "I fear the worst is yet to come," said Fouad Roueiha, 37, who was born in Syria and raised in Italy. He brought his son and daughter with him "to teach them about civic duty", and said the order prevented them from visiting family in Florida. The order sparked large protests across the United States and in other countries. In Rome, a few dozen protesters waved signs reading "No Ban, No Walls" and "Trump, ban torture not Muslims" in English. A candlelit protest was due to be held later in front of the embassy by a group of Americans who live in Italy. "If discriminatory policies take hold, it's a danger for everyone everywhere," said Michael Stiefel, 50, a lawyer and a U.S. citizen. Antonella Napolitano, 35, who works for an Italian rights group that helped organise the protest, said: "One hundred years ago Italian immigrants in America were treated badly. There can be change. History does not have to repeat." (Reporting by Steve Scherer; editing by Andrew Roche)
Feared impact: London Underground has produced this map in which the stations and lines greyed out will have very little or no service or severe disruption from Sunday evening until Wednesday

Tube chiefs today issued a dramatic warning of lines and stations closed across central London from 6pm Sunday until Wednesday lunchtime because of a planned strike by more than 3,000 RMT staff.

In an unprecedented move London Underground (LU) published an emergency version of the traditional Tube map showing which lines will be closed and where.

In the image above, officials are warning there will be very little or no service, or severe disruption on the lines and stations 'greyed out' from the traditional map.

They made the warning now to prepare passengers of the disruption they face in case peaces talks today at Acas, the conciliation service, to try and settle the dispute fail.

Most lines and stations within an area bordered by the Circle line  Zone 1  will be closed for various lengths of time, including peak periods, throughout parts of the strike.

Some lines and stations outside the central area will also be closed at various times; including the Victoria line to Victoria, the Bakerloo line to Elephant & Castle and the Piccadilly line from Barons Court to Arnos Grove.

These are coloured grey on the map  other lines shown in colours will run, but with a reduced service.

LU also released an at a glance graphic showing when and at what time the strike will be most severe.

Passengers were advised to use the Tube to get as close as possible to their chosen destination and then walk the rest of the way.

Buses and roads will be busier than normal with journeys taking significantly longer. LU said it would keep updating information but advised passengers to check before they travel.

A graphic detailing the expected closures during the strike

Talks between the RMT and LU to try and settle the bitter dispute, over up to 900 jobs cuts and the closure of all ticket offices, could continue tomorrow  leaving the four million a day users not knowing until the last moment if they will have a service for half of next week.

The walkout has been deliberately timed for maximum disruption; staff will walkout from 6 pm on Sunday until 10 am on the Monday, 6 February.

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They then walkout again from 10 am on Tuesday, 7 February until 1 am on Wednesday, 8 February.

Stations will start closing  including Victoria, Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus - from 8 pm Sunday evening.

From 5.30 until 7 am on Monday, 6 February, there will be no service throughout most of Zone 1 with sections of the Victoria, Central, Piccadilly, Northern and Bakerloo lines closed.

From 7 am there will only be a very limited service  effectively ruining the morning peak for millions of people; this will last for most of the day with stations reopening from 4 pm but again meaning huge disruption for journeys home.

On Tuesday, 7 February from 12 Noon there will gain be a very limited service; from 8 pm lines and stations will close.

On Wednesday, 8 February, there will be no service, with Zone 1 lines and stations closed, until 7 am. From then services will be very limited with again morning peak time travel ruined.

An LU spokesman said: If the strikes go ahead there will be a significant impact on Tube journeys.

We will open as many stations as possible. But, for safety reasons, many stations, especially those in Zone 1, will not open at all or close at short notice.

The TSSA union, representing hundreds of ticket staff, is also taking part in the Acas talks although its members are not involved in the walkout.

Leader Manuel Cortes said talks concerning the return to staffing and adequate safety levels to the Tube will continue tomorrow and Friday.

The unions are furious with Mayor Sadiq Kahn for not reopening at least some of the central London ticket offices closed by Boris Johnson when Mayor to save cash.
Travis Kalanick

Reuters/Staff

TAIPEI, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc said it will suspend its service in Taiwan from Feb. 10, firing the latest salvo in the ride-hailing service company's long-running dispute with the island's authorities.

Uber's move comes after Taiwan recently raised fines against unlicensed ride-sharing services, targeted at Uber, which the company said were the highest in the world. Taiwan has maintained Uber's business is illegal, and at one point last year even considered ordering it to leave the domestic market.

The U.S. company has protested fines against it and defended its model, and in November issued an open letter to Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to intervene, appealing to her push to turn Taiwan into a Silicon Valley in Asia.

But the increase in the fines appears to have driven matters to a head.

"We will pause our operations until the president and her government find a solution," Damian Kassabgi, director of Uber's public policy in the Asia-Pacific region, said in an emailed statement.

Uber said there was no timeline for how long the suspension would last. The suspension would not affect UberEATS, the meal takeaway service that relies primarily on scooters for deliveries and was launched in November last year on the island.

Taiwan's Ministry of Transportation and Communications was not immediately available to comment.

In a statement on its website, Uber said it hoped its service suspension would "reset the conversation and inspire President Tsai to take action." The statement did not specify what action Uber wanted the president to take.

Uber operates in Taiwan as an internet-based technology platform rather than as a transportation company, which its opponents and Taiwanese authorities have said is a misrepresentation of its service.

The company has argued that it provides a technology service and has said there are over 10,000 driver-partners, mainly local citizens, registered on its platform in Taiwan who use the opportunity afforded by Uber to earn income.

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Uber has been facing similar legal scrutiny in markets across Asia. It entered the Taiwan market in 2013, and its growing popularity has triggered anger among domestic taxi drivers, who staged a massive protest against Uber last year.

The company has been consulting with the government on a new cross-border e-commerce bill and offered specific suggestions on ride-sharing regulations, according to its statement on Thursday. It has also secured local insurance and has reached out to collaborate with the local taxi industry, the statement said. ($1 = 31.1030 Taiwan dollars) (Reporting by J.R. Wu; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

See Also:
The round robot can follow behind with your shopping (Piaggio Fast Forward)

A helpful new spherical robot could make struggling home with the weekly shop a thing of the past.

Created by Vespa scooter maker Piaggio, Gita  Italian for short journey  can carry up to 40lb of goods.

This means the user can keep their hands free while they walk, run pedal or skate around, leaving the carbo robot to do the heavy lifting, learning and remembering new routes as it goes along.

Gitas cargo bay can be opened using a fingerprint scan along with a passcode (Piaggio Fast Forward)

Made by Piaggio Fast Forward (PFF)  a startup within the main company  the 26-inch tall robo-ball is designed to run continuously for eight hours.

According to its maker, it can travel at speeds of up to 22 miles per hour.

The contraption is designed to match the full range of human mobility, with speeds that extend from a crawl to a sprint and a zero turning radius, according to PFF.

Gita links up to sensors on a belt worn by its human master, enabling it to follow them around, mapping and remembering new routes along the way.

It is equipped with various scanners and cameras with an ultrasonic range-finding system enabling it to avoid obstacles.

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The built-in cargo bay requires a fingerprint scan and a security code to open it.

Gita will be tested in a series of trials in U.S. towns and college campuses over the next six months.

The round robot could eventually be used to help carry luggage or to assist workers with carrying around heavy tools and other industrial equipment.
Five of the Most Historic Poker Hands

February 03 2017 Matthew Pitt Editor

There are often interesting or down right bizarre hands played out at poker tables around the world, both online and live. From horrific bad beats to perfectly timed bluffs, poker has it all.

Not all hands are equal, however, some deserve a place in their own Hall of Fame, which is why PokerNews has looked through the history books and come up with a list of five poker hands that will always have a place in our hearts.

Doyle Brunsons WSOP Main Event Winning Hands

The World Series of Poker was only in its seventh year in 1976, yet it featured one of the most memorable hands of all time. While heads-up in the Main Event against Jesse Alto, Doyle Texas Dolly Brunson called a raise with ten-deuce of spades; Alto held an unsuited ace-jack.

On an ace-jack-ten flop, Alto bet the size of the pot and Brunson moved all in. Alto called and was a huge favorite to double his stack. A deuce on the turn improved Brunson to a still second best two pair, but another ten on the river gifted Brunson a full house, the title of champion and $220,000 in prize money.

The following year, Brunson found himself heads-up in the WSOP Main Event against Bones Berland. Both players went to a ten-eight-five flop in a limped pot and checked. The turn was a deuce, Brunson bet, Berland raised all in and Brunson called.

It was eight-five for Berland against ten-deuce for Brunson. The river was a ten, improving Brunson to a full house and winning him $340,000 and back-to-back WSOP Main Event titles.

Amazingly, Brunson almost made it three WSOP bracelets won with ten-deuce but he was one pip out in 2005 when he won his 10th bracelet with ten-three.

Image courtesy of the UNLV Center for Gaming Research.

Chris Moneymakers Bluff Against Sammy Farha

All eyes were on an accountant named Chris Moneymaker when the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event was heads up. Moneymaker had won his seat to the $10,000 event via a $38 satellite on PokerStars and was now vying for a $2.5 million prize with seasoned pro Sammy Farha.

Moneymaker went on to beat Farha to show that anyone can beat the best at poker if Lady Luck is on their side, but it could have been a very different story had the following bluff not worked.

On a flop, Farha held for top pair and Moneymaker, , for nothing but king-high and a backdoor flush draw. Farha checked and Moneymaker checked behind. The turn made things interesting because it gave Moneymaker an open-ended straight draw and a king-high flush draw.

Farha led for 300,000 only to see Moneymaker raise to 800,000. Farha called and the dealer put the onto the river. Farha checked and Moneymaker moved all in, covering Farhas stack.

You must have missed your flush draw, huh? quizzed Farha.

Despite correctly guessing Moneymakers hand, Farha eventually mucked, Moneymaker raked in the huge pot and the ball was firmly in his court.

Daniel Negreanu Versus Gus Hansen

High Stakes Poker may no longer grace our television screens, but while it did, it was one of the best and most exciting poker shows as it allowed us mere mortals to get an insight into the world of high-stakes cash games.

One hand in particular stands out from the crowd, one involving a cooler of a hand when Gus Hansen and Daniel Negreanu clashed at a $300/$600/$100a holdem game.

Hansen raised to $2,100 with , Negreanu raised to $5,000 with and Hansen called. An action-inducing flop of saw Hansen check, Negreanu bet $8,000 and Hansen check-raise to $26,000. Negreanu called.

The turn was the , giving Hansen quads. Hansen bet $24,000 into the $63,700 pot and Negreanu called. The completed the board and Hansen checked his quads. Negreanu bet $65,000.

Im all in, announced Hansen.

Huh? was a puzzled Neagreanus response.

The pot was now $408,700 and Negreanu eventually called, gifting a massive $575,700 pot to Hansen.

A Pot of More Than $1.1 Million

The biggest cash game pot on television was contested by Tom Dwan and Phil Ivey and went the way of the former. Dwan, Ivey and Patrik Antonius were playing three-handed in the Full Tilt Million Dollar Cash Game and Dwan opened on the button with , Ivey three-bet to $23,000 from the small blind with and only Dwan called.

A flop saw Ivey lead for $35,000 into the $49,500 pot; Dwan called. The turn was the which gave both players a straight, but Dwan the nuts. Ivey fired a bet of $90,000, Dwan made it $232,600. Ivey moved all in and Dawn instantly called.

Wow, said a dejected looking Ivey as he saw Dwans hand. A meaningless on the river won Dwan the hand and he got busy stacking $1,108,500 worth of poker chips.

Patrik Antonius Versus Viktor Blom

On Nov. 21, 2009, Antonius and Viktor Isildur1" Blom played for what is still the largest cash game pot in online poker history.

It was a $500/$1,000 heads-up pot-limit Omaha game that started with a raise to $3,000 by Blom, a three-bet to $9,000 by Antonius, a four-bet to $27,000 by Blom, a five-bet to $81,000 by Antonius and a call from his Swedish opponent.

A rather innocuous flop reading saw Blom check, Antonius bet $91,000 only for Blom to make it $435,000 to continue. Antonius responded with an $870,000 raise and Blom called off his last $162,473.50 stack. The turn was followed by the river and Antonius claimed the $1,447,947 pot, courtesy of his which trumped Bloms .

What is the most memorable hand that you remember? Let us know in the comments box below.
Asa Butterfields latest film, The Space Between Us, can be described as being in various genres.

Its science fiction. A little fantasy. A love story. An adventure film.

Yet the 19-year-old describes it this way.

Its a coming-of-age story, he says during a recent interview. Its about my characters journey to be human.

The Space Between Us opens nationwide today. It follows Gardner Elliot, played by Butterfield, who is born to an unexpectedly pregnant female astronaut on Mars.

He is on a journey to Earth to meet his pen pal, Tulsa, played by Britt Robertson. It also stars Gary Oldman and Carla Gugino.

Production took place in Albuquerque, Belen, Santa Fe and Truth or Consequences in fall 2015.

There are a few scenes showing hot-air balloons from the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.

But Butterfield says he isnt tempted to ride in a balloon.

I dont think I would take that chance, Butterfield says. Its rather scary to me.

According to the New Mexico Film Office, the production employed at least 100 New Mexico crew members and about 30 New Mexico principal actors and an estimated 1,000 local background talent workers.

Principal photography locations included Spaceport America, the first purpose-built, commercial spaceport in the world, east of Truth or Consequences.

Through the seven-week shoot, though, Butterfield didnt have any scenes at the Spaceport.

It looked amazing, he says. I didnt get the chance to film out there. We were pretty busy for the 35-day shoot. It was long days and nights.

Over the course of Butterfields career, hes had opportunities to play different characters.

But Gardner was different.

He was the character in my mind who was kind of odd, he says. He was alienlike. He was still a kid. He still doesnt know how to properly behave. I thought taking this role on, I would have so much fun and creativity.

What draws Butterfield to a character is simple.

I want my character to develop throughout the course of a movie and have an arc to it, he says. It gives them more depth and gives a conclusion. I also want to have a character that is original and I can make memorable. If I can do that, then Ive done my job.

The production wrapped in 2015 and was pushed back twice to its current opening date. Butterfield says he cant wait for audiences to see it.

He says the best part is how the cast bonded during its time filming in New Mexico.

Gary and Carla are legends in this industry, he says. They are lovely and generous with their energy. We all wanted to make the best movie we could. We all have passion, and you can see it translate in the film.
Planning for the final assault on Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic States caliphate, had been grinding on for more than seven months. There had been dozens of meetings of President Barack Obamas top national security team, scores of draft battle plans and hundreds of hours of anguished, late-night debates.

There were no good options, but Obamas top foreign policy advisers were convinced that they had finally settled on an approach that could work  arming Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, current and former U.S. officials said. There was just one problem: The Obama team had deliberated for so long that there was no time left to pull the trigger. Donald Trumps advisers had also sent word that they wanted to make the decision.

So on January 17, just three days before the transfer of power, Obama directed his national security adviser to hand over to the Trump team a paper detailing the plan to arm the Kurds, including talking points that President Donald Trump could use to explain the move to Turkeys president, who officials knew would be furious. The Turks viewed the Kurdish fighters as terrorists and their No. 1 enemy.

Obama hoped that his last-minute preparations would clear the way for Trump to authorize a swift assault on the Islamic States most important stronghold, where U.S. intelligence officials say militants are plotting attacks outside Syria.

Instead of running with the plan, Trumps national security team deemed it wholly insufficient and swiftly tossed it.

To the incoming Trump administration, Obamas approach was so incremental and risk averse that it was almost certain to fail. They provided the information, but we found huge gaps in it, said a senior Trump administration official who reviewed the document. It was poor staff work.

The Obama White House viewed its Syria plans as the product of years of experience in a region where every move carries unintended and potentially catastrophic consequences. Those who steered the Obama administrations Syria policy insisted that the new White House did not understand the complexity of the issue, but soon would.

The troubled handoff of one of the United States most vexing national security problems shows how far the pendulum has swung between two presidents who in many ways are complete opposites. Obama sweated the smallest details of U.S. military and intelligence operations, often to the point of inaction.

Trump has made it clear that he prefers to go with his gut and has promised a swift and brutal campaign that will utterly destroy the Islamic State. In meetings with his national security team, he has signaled his desire to give Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, whom he regularly refers to as Mad Dog, a free hand in doing whatever it takes to fight terrorism.

It is up to Mattis and the rest of Trumps national security team to translate the presidents campaign trail pronouncements into policy. Trumps more aggressive approach could speed the destruction of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, but also could lead to an increase in civilian deaths, fueling anger toward the United States.

Trump and his top advisers also could decide to increase coordination with Russia and even Syrian President Bashar Assad to seize Raqqa. Or he could ultimately conclude, as Obama did, that arming the Kurds represents the best of several bad options.

The policy dilemmas that Obama and his team spent more than seven months deliberating will be decided over the course of the next 30 days in a review led by Mattis and the Pentagon. Trump has directed his defense secretary to bring him multiple options and to ignore the restrictions on troop numbers and civilian casualties that were put in place by Obama.

The message to the Pentagon was to widen the aperture, said the senior administration official, who like other current and former officials asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive planning. Give us all of your options.



Target: Raqqa

The policy dilemma facing Trump began with a decision made by the Obama administration in a moment of desperation in 2014.

Islamic State fighters had just seized huge swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria. Obama decided to intervene militarily, but ruled out the use of American ground forces on the front lines.

The Pentagon needed to find local partners in a hurry, and the Syrian Kurds stepped forward. Americas budding battlefield alliance with them carried big strategic risks. The Kurdish fighters who volunteered to help the Americans had ties to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which the Turkish and U.S. governments considered a terrorist group.

In contrast to Obama, Turkeys president Recep Tayyip Erdogan didnt see the Islamic State as his countrys No. 1threat. In private meetings with senior U.S. officials in 2014, Erdogan said the Kurds were his top concern and that removing Assad ranked second, according to U.S. and Turkish officials.

By the fall of 2016, after two years of tension between Obama and Erdogan because of different priorities, a U.S.-backed offensive using Kurdish forces to recapture Raqqa was finally within sight, and Gen. Joseph Votel, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, asked for authorization to arm them for a push into the city.

The proposal divided the Obama White House. Then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter backed the plan, but others worried that it would deepen the rift with Ankara.

Among the biggest skeptics was Susan Rice, Obamas national security adviser. When she asked Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whether an immediate decision was needed, the general said he was still evaluating whether the Turks were serious about their offer to provide Turkish forces to take Raqqa instead of the Kurds.

For two years inside the Pentagon, Turkeys promises of sending rebels and later its own troops were viewed with deep skepticism and derisively dubbed Erdogans ghosts or the unicorn army, according to current and former defense officials. Carter and other defense officials worried that Dunfords response gave the White House another reason to delay a decision.

By late 2016, Dunford had concluded that the Turks wouldnt produce the forces to retake Raqqa. With less than three weeks left in the Obama administration, Dunford and Carter submitted a formal request to arm the Kurds for the assault with armored vehicles, antitank weapons, Russian-made machine guns and mine-clearing equipment.

The Pentagon pushed for an immediate decision, warning that if the Kurds did not receive the equipment by mid-February their offensive on Raqqa would stall. A decision not to arm the Kurds could delay the Raqqa operation by up to a year, U.S. officials warned.

The Pentagon also was alarmed by increasingly dire warnings from senior counterterrorism officials about terrorist attacks being planned inside the city.

On Jan. 10, just 10 days before Trumps inauguration, Obamas top advisers huddled in the Situation Room to weigh the Kurdish proposal, which would be the last major national security decision of the outgoing administration.

Carter argued that the Kurds understood that they would have to turn Raqqa over to local Arab forces as soon as the Islamic State was defeated.

Samantha Power, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and the U.S. ambassador in Ankara, among others, warned that moving forward with the plan would further damage relations with Turkey. It also would put the United States in the unacceptable position of supporting allies of a terrorist group that was carrying out mass-casualty attacks on a NATO member, they said.

Everyone in the Situation Room that day agreed on the need to consult with the Trump team. There was no point taking such a consequential step if the new president might reverse it.

At the end of the meeting, Rice thanked everyone for their hard work and led a champagne toast.

Shortly afterward, Rice spoke to retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, her counterpart in the incoming administration, about the proposal.

Dont approve it, Flynn responded, according to two former officials briefed on the exchange. Well make the decision.

On January 17, Obama chaired his final National Security Council meeting and directed his team to leave the decision on arming the Kurds to the Trump administration. In one of his last acts as commander in chief, he approved the deployment of two or three Apache attack helicopters to Syria and authorized the Pentagon to provide more support to Turkish forces fighting for the Syrian town of al-Bab.

Rice prepared briefing papers for Flynn, emphasizing the importance of moving quickly to arm the Kurds.

Obama told a small group of aides that he would personally discuss the importance of the matter with Trump on the morning of the inauguration, possibly in the limousine on the way to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony.

Welcome to the NBA, Obama said he planned to tell his successor, according to officials present.



A new plan

The recommendation was dead on arrival at the Trump White House.

The Obama plan required U.S. forces to train the Kurds how to use the new equipment and fight in a densely packed city, but it lacked details about how many U.S. troops would be required and where the training would take place, the Trump administration official said. Trump officials said they were dismayed that there was no provision for coordinating operations with Russia and no clear political strategy for mollifying the Turks.

Nor were there contingency plans if the Kurdish attack stalled, the senior Trump administration official said.

What bothered us most of all was that there was no Plan B,  the Trump official said.

To the Trump team, it seemed as though the Obama administration had delayed authorizing the plan because they knew it was inadequate and did not want to be held responsible, the official said.

A senior Obama administration official said the criticism was unfounded and a sign of the new White Houses intelligence insecurity. In addition to the short memo that Rice gave Flynn, the outgoing administration left a thick package of supplemental material, the Obama official said.

Most of the shortcomings outlined by the Trump team were obvious to Obamas advisers, he added. In fact, the senior Obama administration official said, arming the Kurds was Obamas Plan B, after it became clear that Plan A  using Turkish forces to take Raqqa  would not be feasible.

It is up Mattis and Dunford to sort through Syrias many complexities and come up with a new plan. At the end of Obamas term, Dunford emerged as one of the most passionate supporters of arming the Kurds, the senior Obama administration official said. Aides declined to describe Mattiss thinking on the option. Trump has promised to give Dunford and Mattis a free hand, which could lead them right back to some variation of the Obama plan.

Hes a businessman, the senior Trump official said of the new president. His attitude is that I am hiring really good people to make these decisions.
President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to totally destroy a law passed more than 60 years ago that bans tax-exempt churches from supporting political candidates, a nod to the religious right that helped sweep him into office.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Trump said he would seek to overturn the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt nonprofits  including churches and other houses of worship  from directly or indirectly participating in a political candidates campaign.

Repeal of the amendment  which is part of the tax code and would require action by Congress  has been sought primarily by conservative Christian leaders, who argue that it is used selectively to keep them for speaking out freely.

But several experts said Thursday that the effect of a repeal could be far broader, allowing churches of any political leaning to pour their financial resources into campaigns of like-minded candidates.

Its less about a minister speaking out from the pulpit, and more about deep church coffers, said Beth Gazley, a professor of public affairs at Indiana University.

David Herzig, a Valparaiso University tax law professor, said repeal of the amendment has the potential to turn houses of worship into super PACs.

While prospects for congressional action remain uncertain, legislation consistent with Trumps aims has already been introduced in both chambers of Congress.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) suggested Thursday that he is open to repeal. Ive long believed that, Ryan said when asked at a news conference about Trumps call. Yeah, Ive always supported that.

The amendment is named for Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced it in the Senate in 1954, nine years before he became president.

During his remarks Thursday, Trump cast the issue as one of free speech and free exercise of religion.

I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution, Trump said. I will do that, remember.

The renewed promise, which Trump first made as a candidate, was applauded by evangelical Christian leaders who endorsed his Republican presidential bid, including Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University.

Its a law that restricts free speech, and it never should have been passed in the first place, Falwell said.

In reality, the Internal Revenue Service very rarely punishes churches for political statements. For several years, more than 2,000 pastors have joined what they call Pulpit Freedom Sunday to test the ban by speaking their political views in their sermons. The IRS only investigated once and did not punish in that case, according to the conservative organization that organizes the annual effort.

Falwell argued, however, that the law remains a threat and that its enforced selectively by the IRS.

Exit polls showed Trump defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton 80 percent to 16 percent among white evangelical Christians.

A repeal of the Johnson Amendment, however, would affect not only conservative churches aligned more closely with Republicans but also open new avenues of support for liberal African American churches and others more in sync with Democrats.

Houses of worship also make up just a fraction of the universe of so-called 501(c)(3) organizations in the United States, all of which are restricted by the Johnson Amendment. A range of other educational and charitable organizations also bear the same designation, including both the Clinton Foundation and the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

Under current law, churches are free to engage in political activity; the restrictions under the Johnson Amendment are triggered by their receipt of tax-exempt status.

Several legal experts, including Herzig, noted a potential downside to allowing churches to operate like political action committees: Because churches are not required to make the same disclosures as PACs, campaign funding funneled through churches could be less transparent.

The repeal of the Johnson Amendment would unleash a new wave of dark money into the political system, said Larry T. Decker, president of the Secular Coalition for America, in a statement.

Trump made no mention Thursday of when he might ask Congress to overturn the law or what restrictions would remain under such a proposal.

A spokesman for Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority whip and sponsor of the House version of the bill, said Trumps support provides a boost for repeal efforts. Spokesman Chris Bond said Scalise will work with GOP lawmakers and the White House to move the ball forward and protect free speech.

Even short of congressional action, however, Trump has tremendous power to keep the IRS from enforcing the Johnson Amendment, Herzig said.

Lifeway, a Christian polling firm, found in 2015 that 79 percent of Americans thought clergy should not endorse candidates during worship services. Evangelicals were more likely to say pastors should be able to do so  25 percent compared to 16 percent  but support for clergy endorsements was low across the board.

Trumps broadside against the Johnson Amendment has found eager supporters, though, including Falwell and other evangelicals who supported his campaign.

On the other hand, many religious groups say they like their nonpolitical status just fine the way it is. After Trump spoke Thursday morning, for example, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty quickly issued a statement saying repealing the Johnson Amendment would not further the religious liberty that they stand for.

Politicizing churches does them no favors, the organization said. The promised repeal is an attack on the integrity of both our charitable organizations and campaign finance system.

Trump voiced his opposition to the Johnson Amendment during a speech in June to a group of hundreds of conservative Christian faith leaders who met with him in New York.

He also noted his opposition during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where the party also made the repeal part of its platform.

During his speech, Trump also spoke about the importance of evangelicals, saying: They have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits.

On the Sunday before the election, Trumps running mate, Mike Pence, was featured in a video played in evangelical churches, citing two reasons to support his ticket: the appointment of pro-life Supreme Court justices and the promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment.

Mary Anne March, a Democratic consultant, said Trumps reiteration of the latter pledge on Thursday was emblematic of the course hes charted since taking office.

Its clear Trump has spent the first two weeks appealing to his base, she said. Hes doubled down on that rather than appealing to all Americans.
When police caught up with one of New Mexicos most wanted fugitives Thursday, he was sitting in an Edgewood McDonalds with his face in his hands.

Santa Fe County deputies and Edgewood police officers had been called to the McDonalds inside the Wal-Mart and immediately recognized 24-year-old Paul Garcia, who had been on the run for two weeks after allegedly crashing a stolen van into a family, killing a 14-year-old girl and her mother.

They were walking toward the subject to confront him, and the subject stood up and faced them, said Juan Rios, the spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriffs Office.

Garcia apparently knew his time on the run was over.

He put his hands behind his back, and thats when he was taken into custody, Rios said.

Police say Garcia and Elexus Groves, 21, were in a stolen van that crashed into a car on Jan. 18, killing 14-year-old Shaylee Boling and her mother, Shaunna Arredondo-Boling, 39. Arredondo-Bolings 3-year-old son, who was also in the car, suffered a broken leg.

Groves was arrested in Albuquerque two days after the crash, but Garcia had remained at large, eluding police despite a reward that had grown to $8,000.

Both suspects are charged with two counts of murder and numerous other charges, said officer Fred Duran, a spokesman for the Albuquerque Police Department.

Diane Boling, Arredondo-Bolings mother, said she was thankful to hear that both suspects are now behind bars. The arrest came just two days after her daughter died of her injuries.

It doesnt change anything; it wont bring my girls back, Boling said. But I want to see justice done.

Rios said that around noon Thursday, a woman called 911 to report she saw the guy from the news in the Wal-Mart just north of Interstate 40. Edgewood police officers and Santa Fe County deputies responded to the call and recognized Garcia, who was wearing a baseball cap and trying to hide his face.

Albuquerque police had announced Garcia was a suspect a week and a half ago, and Crime Stoppers offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Mayor Richard Berry offered a $5,000 reward, and the U.S. Marshals Service offered $2,000.

Marshals Service officials released a statement saying they believe the tipsters information led to the arrest, and they are reviewing the details to determine whether she will receive the money. Duran didnt respond when asked whether the woman was going to receive the other rewards as well.

Rios said Garcia refused to answer deputies questions except to say that he had arrived at the Wal-Mart on foot. The deputies handed him over to APD.

Garcia also didnt answer questions from reporters as he was escorted to the Prisoner Transport Center in Downtown Albuquerque. He was booked into the county jail Thursday night.

Duran said detectives arent sure yet whether he was staying with someone in or near Edgewood or how he got to the town about 30 miles east of Albuquerque.

We dont have proof that he was harbored, Duran said. He just wasnt where we were looking for him.

Boling said she and her family are still reeling from the death of her daughter and granddaughter, and are now planning a second funeral.

She said she hopes Garcia and Groves get the maximum penalty possible.

I hope that every day of their life  for the rest of their lives  they have a tremendous amount of guilt for what they did to my family, Boling said.
Editors note: This is the fourth and final in a series of stories on the candidates running for the Central New Mexico Community College Governing Board.

A former Central New Mexico Community College president and a retired Air Force officer, flight instructor and professor are running for an open seat on the community colleges board.

Michael Glennon, 68, has worked at CNM for nearly 26 years, and served as its president from 1998 to 2007. He is currently retired.

Harold Murphree, 66, served as an officer in the Air Force from 1974 to 2002, and currently volunteers as a warm-water pool exercise instructor.

Theyre running for the District 7 seat to be vacated by sitting board member and current chair Michael DeWitte. That district includes some of the East Mountains and the Joseph M. Montoya Campus. Both candidates acknowledged the schools budget would be a challenge.

The state appropriation for CNM was cut from $56 million to roughly $53.2 million or about a five percent cut, according to CNM spokesman Brad Moore. The schools current budget is $226.9 million. In fall 2016, CNM served 24,781 students across several campuses in the Albuquerque metro area.

Glennon said he has a background in higher education finance and administration. In addition to serving as the schools president, he was its vice president for administration and previously served on the New Mexico Commission of Higher Education, which used to be the New Mexico Higher Education Department.

Glennon earned a bachelors and masters degree in business administration from the University of New Mexico. He said balancing the budget will be the biggest issue and that program cuts are possible.

There are going to be real difficult decisions, Glennon said.

Glennon said this race is his first run for political office and it was prompted by his desire to be a small part of (CNMs) continuing success.

Murphree served both as a pilot and an instructor in the Air Force. He has earned two degrees in political science, a bachelors from U.S. Air Force Academy and a masters from the University of Pittsburgh.

He said the school should be sure to offer courses at multiple campuses as to not slow a students academic progress.

And he said he wanted to support the School of Adult and General Education, a remedial program, for students who arent quite ready for school. Failing to offer remedial classes is a disservice, he said.

One summer or a few weeks of the SAGE program reaps big benefits. Theyre not failures, Murphree said.

On the schools budget concerns, Murphree said he wasnt in favor of raising tuition or taxes and suggested instead tapping into the Land Grant Permanent Fund temporarily.

Candidate Bios

Michael J. Glennon

District: 7

Age: 68

Education: Master of Business Administration, University of New Mexico, 1974; Bachelor of Business Administration, UNM, 1971.

Occupation: Retired; Central New Mexico Community College, president, 1998-2007; CNM (then TVI), vice president for administration, 1989-1998; New Mexico Commission on Higher Education, deputy director for finance, 19831989; UNM, assistant budget director and assistant comptroller, 1974-1983.

Family: Karen A. Glennon, wife; two children.

Political/government experience: This is my first run for political office. I was one of several staff members representing the Commission on Higher Education before the Legislature, the governor, the news media and others. I was a lobbyist (registered once that was required) representing CNM while vice president for administration and president.

Major professional accomplishment: My major and proudest professional accomplishment was serving as president of Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute/Central New Mexico Community College for 10 years.

Major personal accomplishment: A successful career and a healthy, happy family.

Harold Murphree

District: 7

Place of residence: Sandia Park

Age: 66

Education: Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 1975; Bachelor of Science, U.S. Air Force Academy, 1974.

Occupation: Retired; volunteer warm-water pool exercise instructor for arthritis patients, 2010-present; career officer, U.S. Air Force, 1974-2002.

Family: JoAnn K. Murphree, wife; no children.

Political/government experience: Unsuccessful candidate for state Senate District 19 in 2016; campaign volunteer for the 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014 elections.

Major professional accomplishment: Instructor of the Year for 1986 in the U.S. Air Force Academy Department of Political Science.

Major personal accomplishment: Being a caregiver for my wife, who is disabled.

CNM District 7 Candidate Questionnaire

1. Why do you want to be a member of the governing board?

Glennon: I have a professional and personal attachment to CNM. I want to return to being a small part of its continuing success.

Murphree: I want to expand my involvement in public education. My teaching experience at the university level and current experience as the facilitator of a scholarship at East Mountain High School give me fresh perspective.

2. What is CNMs role in the state of New Mexico?

Glennon: CNMs role is to help students succeed in whatever educational or workforce-training endeavor they might be seeking. Fulfilling that role, CNM prepares trained students to meet the needs of employers of the CNM district and the state, thus providing employers access to well-trained and educated employees.

Murphree: CNM is crucial for the workforce transition and community contribution of New Mexico residents. In addition, a workforce trained and educated here in New Mexico can attract business and entrepreneurs to our state.

3. How would you address diminishing state funding for higher education institutions?

Glennon: I do not know what has been done to address the decline in general fund appropriations or what might still be done should that decline continue. My role would be to help the administration find solutions that minimize disruption to students, faculty, staff and programs.

Murphree: Raising tuition is not fruitful. We must encourage higher education for those who cannot otherwise afford it, resulting in an educated citizenry eager to work. Lets tap the land grant to achieve this.

4. Have you or your business, if you are a business owner, ever been the subject of any state or federal tax liens?

Glennon: No

Murphree: No

5. Have you ever been involved in a personal or business bankruptcy proceeding?

Glennon: No

Murphree: No

6. Have you ever been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of drunken driving, any misdemeanor or any felony in New Mexico or any other state?

Glennon: No

Murphree: No
PHOENIX  The Phoenix City Council will consider a petition from a resident to join other major cities across the country in adopting sanctuary policies that shield immigrants and have come under fire from President Trump.

However, Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton said Thursday that no city in Arizona can legally offer sanctuary after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld portions of SB1070, a state law that aimed to crack down on illegal immigration.

He said the surviving sections of the law prevent local government agencies from restricting the enforcement of federal immigration law.

Still, Stanton pledged to fight the federal governments attempt to turn the Phoenix Police Department into a mass deportation force and said the city about 180 miles from the Mexico border would remain a welcoming and diverse city.

The petition was submitted Wednesday by Phoenix resident Rick Robinson and invokes a City Charter provision requiring the council to act on it within 15 days.

Phoenix officials say the City Council will consider the petition on Feb. 15.

The term sanctuary city is loosely defined but generally means municipalities dont cooperate with federal authorities on immigration matters such as requests that local jails hold a suspect while authorities investigate their immigration status.

Proponents of sanctuary policies say they help foster trust between immigrants and local police as they investigate crimes.

Trump has threatened to withdraw federal funding from sanctuary cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago.

The issue has set off wide debate around the country as big city mayors say they will defy the president.

California is pushing to offer sanctuary throughout the state while Texas, another border state, seeks to withhold funding from cities with the policies.

Robinson declined to say whether he wants Phoenix to declare itself a sanctuary city. He told KPHO-KTVK-TV (https://goo.gl/PbXJU2) that he filed the petition because he felt that the city needed to get out in front of this.

Under SB1070, state and local authorities cant prohibit or restrict the sharing of information on peoples immigration status with federal agencies for determining eligibility of a public benefit, verifying a claim of residence and determining whether an immigrant has complied with federal registration laws.

Also under the law, any Arizonan can file a lawsuit to challenge agencies that have a policy of restricting the enforcement of federal immigration law.

Stanton previously denounced Trumps recent executive orders to withhold federal funding from communities with sanctuary policies and calling for a border wall, characterizing them as a divisive attack on Latinos in Phoenix and around the country.

Immigrant rights groups have put pressure on Stanton in the past few weeks, staging protests outside City Hall to persuade city officials to adopt sanctuary policies.

Municipalities across the country  including Birmingham, Seattle, and Chicago  have decided to stand on the right side of history and fight back against hate, said Lucia Sandoval, a spokeswoman for the activist group Puente Arizona. Phoenix must take bold action to protect our immigrant, Muslim, and LGBTQ communities,

A Stanton critic, Councilman Sal DiCiccio, said the council should vote on the petition but noted that he opposes making Phoenix a sanctuary city.

I believe such a move would be illegal and would put our officers in the unethical position of having to ignore their oath to uphold state and federal laws, he said.
SIGEL -- St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Sigel hosted the January Prayer Vigil for Life.

According to a press release, the Rev. Sunder Ery celebrated the 6:30 p.m. Mass, assisted by lector Betty Zumbahlen and sacristan Marilyn More. Prior to Mass, Judy Repking led all present in praying the Most Holy Rosary for an end to abortion.

At the business meeting it was reported that 1,052 meals were served at the annual Right to Life Breakfast. Proceeds from the breakfast are used for educational purposes, literature donations for local crisis pregnancy centers and the sponsorship of students who attend the March for Life in Washington, D.C. There will be over 100 local Catholics and Lutherans traveling to D.C. for the annual march from this area.

The group sent boycott letters to Arthur Murray, Intuit, Alphabet and Nike, asking them to cease corporate funding of Planned Parenthood. Letters were sent to Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth asking them to support the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and to vote in favor of S.J. Res. 4 to nullify the District of Columbia assisted suicide law.

There will be Defund Planned Parenthood rallies across the nation on Saturday, Feb. 11, it was reported. Anyone interested in participating can contact Judy at 217-690-7285 for carpool information.
SANTA FE  One state executive described it as a double thumbs-up moment.

A year ago, Gov. Susana Martinez and a bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers agreed to a compromise law creating a two-tiered licensing system for New Mexico drivers  one ID card that meets federal requirements, the other available to people with less documentation or living in the country illegally.

But no one was offering a thumbs-up Thursday.

New Mexico senators, in fact, grew increasingly frustrated in a two-hour hearing as they shared the horror stories theyve heard from constituents trying to obtain IDs under the new state law.

They sternly questioned the acting secretary for taxation and revenue and top executives in the Motor Vehicle Division about people having to show up over and over at MVD offices, only to be told they didnt bring the right paperwork to get the ID they wanted.

We really making it very complicated for people in our state, said Sen. Liz Stefanics, D-Cerrillos. I think were really hurting some people.

Many of the complaints that emerged Thursday involved people living in rural areas, the elderly, homeless people and immigrants without proof of legal status.

John Monforte, acting secretary of the Taxation and Revenue Department, which includes the Motor Vehicle Division, said state employees are doing the best they can to apply a complex law. But helping 1.6 million people obtain new IDs over the next few years is a monumental task, he said.

Its a heavy lift, he said.

The Senate Public Affairs Committee didnt take action on the issue. But Monforte agreed to try to address concerns about how the new law is being carried out.
LOS ANGELES  Federal judges on opposite coasts are due Friday to hear legal arguments defending President Donald Trumps travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The ban is sure to reverberate through the courts on a likely path to an appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Heres a look at how the legal issues may play out:

___

Q: WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN COURTS TO CHALLENGE THE PRESIDENTS EXECUTIVE ORDER?

A: The American Civil Liberties Union, several attorneys general and immigrant advocacy groups went to federal court to block Trumps action, which barred entry of refugees for four months and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries  Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen for three months and Syrians indefinitely.

Federal judges in Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Virginia, issued temporary restraining orders blocking at least parts of the order.

The Brooklyn judge on Thursday extended her order until Feb. 21, and a Justice Department lawyer said the government would ask her to throw out the case.

Further hearings are scheduled around the country to determine if temporary orders should be upheld and extended.

Because the emergency petitions were made ex parte, meaning the federal government had little or no time to respond, hearings Friday in Boston and Seattle will give the government a better opportunity to defend the presidents order after the chaos that ensued last weekend when travelers were stranded at airports.

___

Q: WHAT IMPACT HAVE THE TEMPORARY COURT ORDERS HAD?

A: Many of those detained at airports were released, some before court orders were issued and more afterward. In Boston, all the named plaintiffs detained at Logan International Airport were freed, said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

In New York, two named plaintiffs from Iraq were released, though the judge anticipated the case could expand to a class action representing a broader array of people, including tourists, students and permanent legal residents with green cards.

In several cases, visitors with visas that were valid when issued arrived on U.S. soil to find the State Department had revoked those privileges. Some were turned around and, in some cases, deported.

The federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the U.S. government Tuesday not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S.

But the government has maintained that order and similar ones do not apply because the visas are no longer valid. The named plaintiffs in the L.A. case, a group of Yemenis still in Djibouti, were not allowed to board planes to the U.S.

Jayashri Srikantiah, a professor at Stanford Law School and director of the Immigrants Rights Clinic, said that while the court order appears to clear the way for entry, a more fundamental barrier exists.

The first step is for them is whether they can obtain a valid boarding pass, Srikantiah said. They need to be permitted to board so there can be a discussion at the border about what happens next.

___

Q: WHAT ARE THE LEGAL ISSUES JUDGES NEED TO SORT OUT?

A: The main issues before the courts are whether Trump had the authority to issue the executive order and whether it was constitutional. The constitutional questions include whether the travelers were entitled to some kind of hearing before being barred and whether their religion played any role in their treatment.

On the issue of due process, a legal permanent resident will have firmer standing in court than someone on a tourist visa, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

The religion issue has played out publicly with advocates and protesters claiming Trumps action was intended to ban Muslims. The president tweeted that it was not a ban on Muslims and was not about religion.

However, several of the lawsuits point out Trumps campaign rhetoric about banning Muslims and statements about making exceptions for Christians from the seven countries.

The government cant single out one religion for harsher treatment than another, Vladeck said.

That issue presents the strongest argument for those who have the weakest legal standing in U.S. courts, such as a refugee whos never set foot in the country, Vladeck said.

___

Q: WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF COURTS RULE INCONSISTENTLY?

A: With different challenges filed in so many courts, there is likely to be confusion going forward, legal experts said.

You have the opportunity, frankly, for a dizzying array of judicial decisions trying to parse out how it applies to different groups of noncitizens, Vladeck said.

The Department of Justice is likely to take a case to a court of appeal to try to make sense of the many rulings, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.

Of course, those appellate courts could disagree, which has happened on many major issues including gay marriage and ultimately put the issue before the Supreme Court.

The high court would probably not hear the case until the fall. The orders, which could be extended, are due to expire long before that.

This order will not be the final word on it, Blackman said.
PHOENIX  Legislation backed by a Republican state lawmaker would tighten requirements for paid workers when theyre collecting voter signatures to qualify an initiative or referendum for the ballot, a move critics say will make it more difficult for backers of voter initiatives to get them on the ballot.

House Bill 2404 by Rep. Vince Leach of Tucson contains a host of other provisions, including requiring a bond from signature gathering companies, requiring payments for circulators to register and setting up a new fund to enforce violations.

The proposal also makes a company that hires signature circulators liable for their actions and subject to a $10,000 fine for each violation.

The effort comes after backers of three initiatives opposed by Republicans and the business community collected enough signatures to get them on the November 2016 ballot.

All three were challenged in court, and one was eventually withdrawn. But a marijuana legalization initiative and one raising the minimum wage went before voters. Only the minimum wage passed.

Leach said Thursday hes trying to protect the voters, while a lawyer who defended the minimum wage suit says its attacking voter rights.

Leach said hes trying to represent voters who were shocked that the marijuana and wage measures made the ballot.

Leach said he needed to act when you have voters saying, Where are these people coming from, what are they doing, how did these things get on the ballot at the last minute.'

The measure, however, doesnt apply to lawmakers, who also can use paid circulators to gather signatures. Leach, who initially said he had never used paid signature collectors, later said he had erred and acknowledged using them to qualify for the 2016 ballot.

Attorney Jim Barton said the Legislature is pushing the limits of what it can legally do.

I honestly think at some point they cross the threshold, that they put so many restrictions on the peoples right to initiative that it becomes unconstitutional. And I think theyre approaching that point, he said.

The proposed legislation is the latest in a string of voting law proposals backed by majority Republicans that Democrats contend are designed to stifle voters rights or make campaign funding less transparent.

Just last year, a law criminalizing ballot collection by get-out-the-vote groups passed, as did a huge overhaul of campaign finance rules.
JUNEAU, Alaska  Marijuana regulators in Alaska narrowly rejected a proposal Thursday that would have made the state the first in the nation to allow marijuana consumers to use the pot they buy at the retail stores selling it.

In a 3-2 vote, the Alaska Marijuana Control board decided not to allow it, frustrating industry officials and business owners who vowed to continue to press for some sort of allowable marijuana use at retail shops.

The proposed new rules would have let people buy marijuana products in authorized stores and go into separate store areas to partake.

Board member Mark Springer, who was among those who voted to reject the measure, suggested moving slowly on the issue, citing uncertainty with how President Donald Trumps administration might view marijuana.

Pot remains illegal at the federal level but recreational marijuana has been legalized in eight states and the District of Columbia.

We dont want to be waving a red flag in front of federal law enforcement, at least not now, Springer said.

Another board member, Loren Jones, said the panel received many public comments opposed to onsite use. He has been concerned about how the rule would jibe with community ordinances calling for smoke-free workplaces.

The board had been mulling the idea of onsite use since late 2015.

James Barrett, who owns a retail marijuana shop in Juneau with his brother, called the vote a fear-based reaction. He said the decision wont affect their business plan but they saw the onsite use proposal as a way to allow people to use cannabis safely and responsibly.

Cary Carrigan, executive director of the Alaska Marijuana Industry Association, said his group would work toward finding a way to allow marijuana consumers to use cannabis at authorized stores. That accommodation will have to happen at some point, he said.

Carrigan said there could be pandemonium during Alaskas upcoming summer tourism season, the first when legal pot shops will be open in the state.

One of the driving forces behind the proposal was providing a place for tourists, especially cruise ship passengers, to have a legal place to use marijuana after buying it, since public consumption is banned. Marijuana is off-limits on cruise ships.

What are they going to do? Carrigan said. Theres going to be 500 people standing on the docks, smoking a joint.

Thats what cannabis entrepreneurs Sean Purvis and Ben Wilcox worry about, too. The campaign to legalize pot was based on the premise that it would be regulated like alcohol, they said.

Purvis has held off on applying for a license, while Wilcox held off on securing retail space in Juneaus pricey real estate market until he knew what the board would do on onsite use. He didnt want to unnecessarily pay for a bigger place.

Wilcox said he already has product manufacturing and cultivation licenses and said hed likely submit his application for a retail license within days, now that we know that were going for the small place.

More than 2 million tourists visited Alaska last year, and just over half arrived on cruise ships. A study conducted for the state estimated tourists from the 2014-15 season spent $1.9 billion in Alaska, mostly during the summer months.

Critics have said tourists will not come to Alaska only for its legal marijuana because other states have also legalized recreational pot.

The boards rejection of the measure came after Sara Chambers, acting director of Alaskas Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, told board members the public notice for the onsite consumption proposal was improperly done.

The board then had several options, including re-advertising the measure for another 30 days or deciding not to advance it. They went with the latter option.

___

Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first punitive action since the White House put Iran on notice after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, expected as early as Friday, said the officials and others with knowledge of the decision. The individuals werent authorized to discuss the unannounced sanctions publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of President Donald Trumps term, reflect his administrations desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The White House and the State Department declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanctions authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

This is fully consistent with the Obama administrations commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions, said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline U.S. position on Iran.

The impending sanctions come the same week that Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Iran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemens internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice, said Trumps national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have encouraged Trump not to let the missile test go unpunished. On Thursday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined more than a dozen other lawmakers to urge Trump to act.

Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities, the lawmakers wrote.

Iran has reacted angrily to the threats of retaliation. Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, predicted this week that the U.S. will be the final loser.

It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran, Velayati said, according to Irans state-run IRNA news agency.

Though Trump has long derided the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, recently he has avoided repeating his campaign pledge to renegotiate it. Iran has insisted the deal wont be re-opened, and the other world powers that negotiated it with the U.S. have little appetite for revising it.

The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has stated that Irans ballistic missile testing doesnt violate the nuclear deal itself. But as part of the final negotiations for that deal, Iran agreed to an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile development.

The U.N. Security Council later endorsed the agreement, calling on Iran not to carry out such tests. But Iran has flouted the prohibition regularly in the past year-and-a-half, drawing sanctions from the U.S. but also diplomatic cover from Russia.

___

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
K. Flay is pretty much open to any live experience, though she does have a limit.

The up-and-coming hip-hop artist was featured on the Vans Warped Tour a few summers ago. While the conditions werent exactly what she wanted, she did learn from the experience.

The Warped scene wasnt my typical environment, she says. Its not where I came up, though that summer taught me a lot about performing. It broke down my performance for me. The atmosphere changed daily, and it was like 22 days straight of touring in hot weather. It toughened me up in a lot of ways.  There were times I was drinking beer at 10 in the morning because I couldnt find water. This is not good at all, but I learned a lot.

And K. Flay says she would probably do a few dates on Warped again.

But she is now on a headlining tour across the country in support of her latest EP, Crush Me.

She will perform at Sunshine Theater on Monday, Feb. 6.

To read more

The Supernationals Car Show returns to Albuquerque for the 26th year. The event is making a change for this year and featuring some of the best car builders in the country. More than 200 vehicles will be on display.

To read more 

The New Mexico film industry continues to put out movies in the theater. The latest is The Space Between Us, which opens nationwide today. I got a chance to talk with Asa Butterfield about the film and his time in New Mexico.

To read more 

Valentines Day is quickly coming up. Staff writer Rozanna M. Martinez has the latest on a jewelry-making class being offered.

To read more 

Delve further to read more on music, dining and the upcoming comedy show with Brian Posehn.
SANTA FE  A Senate committee on Thursday unanimously rejected a proposal to keep secret the names of applicants for public jobs in New Mexico.

Opponents of the legislation said transparency in government hiring practices helps build public trust and shine a light on cronyism.

Its really hard to go against the need for disclosure, said Sen. Bill ONeill, D-Albuquerque. Im sorry that people have to put their name out there, but it goes with the territory.

The Senate Public Affairs Committee voted 5-0 in favor of tabling the bill. It can still be revived, but tabling a bill is usually a significant setback.

The measure, Senate Bill 93, was sponsored by Sen. George Munoz, D-Gallup. He and other supporters of the legislation said disclosing the names of job applicants would keep some people from applying and that New Mexico agencies deserve the best applicant pool.

Nick Estes, a former attorney for the University of New Mexico, told the committee that it made sense to shield names from disclosure out of a sense of decency. The press, he said, wants to see the names of applicants so they can second-guess the hiring decisions.

Cronyism is not a problem, really, Estes said.

Representatives of New Mexico State University also spoke in favor of the bill. Opponents included the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and the Albuquerque Journal.

The bill proposed to exempt from disclosure any records revealing the identity of applicants for public employment in New Mexico, except for the name and resume of the finalist for a job to head a public agency, institution or local government.

The people of New Mexico deserve more than that, said Brian Fantl, chief operating officer and senior vice president of the company that publishes the Albuquerque Journal.
The Pantry has been serving Santa Fe customers for nearly four generations now, and continues to be wildly popular for its down-home New Mexican and old-fashioned American dishes.

Breakfast is the pre-eminent meal here but, if you hanker after blue-plate specials like meat loaf or chicken-fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, try The Pantry for dinner.

A late Sunday breakfast was our choice. Not unexpectedly, we ran into a big crowd at the door with the same idea. To their credit, the Pantry staff managed to seat the dozen-and-a-half people ahead of us within the 20 minutes the receptionist said we could expect to wait. The same brisk competence of the waitstaff managed to get food on the tables of a completely packed house in an equally timely fashion.

One of my guests chose one of the New Mexico classics, two eggs with carne adovada ($8.99). A plateful of red chile-soaked, shredded pork arrived with home-fried potatoes alongside and a topping of over-medium eggs. It was everything youd expect: flavorful chile with some kick, perfectly cooked eggs and enough on the plate to fuel a whole day of physical labor. (Alas, we were only headed to the movies.)

The other two of us eschewed chile, opting for the standard American breakfast of two eggs, two link sausages and toast ($5.99) and a Pantry specialty, two eggs atop house-made corned beef hash ($10.75).

The standard American was good, although my guest, I think, expected sausage patties rather than straight-from-the-package links. Southern girl that she is, she had ordered grits instead of potatoes on the side and seemed satisfied with those.

But the corned beef is one reason I return to The Pantry. I confess a since-childhood liking for the canned variety of hash, topped with poached eggs, a proclivity that really has more to do with memories of our family camping trips than with the actual dish itself.

The Pantry has now pretty much obliterated that craving, mainly because its version starts with a very chunky dice of real corned beef with more of those even chunkier home fries. (True hash, in other words.) Topped with a couple of over-easy eggs to break and stir, its another breakfast that will hold you over most of a days work.

I chose biscuits rather than toast or tortillas for my breakfast bread. I love biscuits, but rarely make them because I can only eat two at a time and day-old biscuits are worse than no biscuits at all. These were fresh, fluffy and arrived with a side of cream gravy laced with bits of sausage meat.

It should be said that The Pantry has adjusted its menu to reflect modern health concerns. So, for breakfast, it offers a couple of variations on granola and fruit, as well as oatmeal. There are several salads on offer at lunch, with or without the addition of grilled chicken, as well a bowl of chile or one of soup, which the menu notes is always homemade. At dinner, try a grilled steak with fresh veggies or an order of fish tacos.

The Pantry is not a fancy place, but its big, rambling and cheerful, with vigas above and a selection by several local artists always on the walls. If youve lived in Santa Fe for a while, you are likely to see people you know  I took a native Santa Fean to breakfast once and marveled at the number of familiar faces she greeted.

THE PANTRY

LOCATION: 1820 Cerrillos Road, 505-986-0022/pantrysantafe.com

HOURS: Open Mon.-Sat. 6:30 a.m.-8:30 p.m.; Sun. 7 a.m.-8:30 p.m.

FOOD: New Mexican and American classics

ATMOSPHERE: Hometown hangout

SERVICE: Excellent

Beer and wine

3.5 stars
Five years ago, I hiked to the toe of the East Fork Glacier in Alaskas Denali National Park. I was on my way to climb a small peak in the Alaska Range and had tracked down a photo taken in the 1920s by one of the parks first geologists. Lining up the mountain skyline with the photo, I scrambled around until I found the exact spot where Stephen Capps stood to take the picture some 90 years earlier. The glacier had retreated nearly a mile since then.

I am an environmental philosopher, and have also worked as a glacial researcher, backcountry guide and naturalist. Seeing the dramatic disappearance of the East Fork Glacier was one of many intimate experiences I have had with a warming world.

So how do I reconcile the overwhelming evidence that the worlds atmosphere is being disrupted with the perception of the 30 percent of Americans who do not believe in climate change?

Heres a thought experiment: If I say that there are 10 M&Ms in a bowl and then I count the 10 M&Ms right before your eyes, you would have to believe me, right?

Many scientists aim to persuade climate skeptics by counting M&Ms  graphs of CO2 concentration, temperature records and other scientifically observable measurements.

So lets count: The United States Geological Survey has been measuring Alaskas Gulkana and Wolverine glaciers for 50 years  the longest continuous glacier research program in North America. Both show the kind of retreat emblematic of significant regional climate change. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that Alaska is losing roughly 75 billion tons of ice annually. Thats a lot of M&Ms.

If the current preponderance of evidence fails to convince skeptics of climate change, then the issue we face is not about facts or evidence, but rather about values  about our call to heal the world.

Nearly 300 years ago, the philosopher David Hume warned in his influential work, A Treatise on Human Nature, against making claims about how the world should be strictly from statements about how the world is. If, for example, I say, Extensive deforestation has decimated the truffula tree population, I am not actually saying anything about whether or not the world ought to have truffula trees or why we should change our behavior in order to protect those truffula trees. The connection between facts and values  what Hume calls a new relation or affirmation  needs to get us from the description of deforestation to any prescription for preservation. I could, for instance, defend the intrinsic value of the tree or argue that perpetuating extinction is wrong. Philosophers call this the is-ought problem.

Reactions to climate change like alarmism or blame dont necessarily follow from climate science. Even if predictions are worrisome  floods, drought, extreme weather  they merely describe the world. Climate activists can commit the is-ought sin by demanding massive behavioral changes, like cutting fossil fuels, without equally discussing fairness or wrongdoing. By introducing value-laden rhetoric into the discussion of facts, we open up the facts for debate. So when a climate skeptic doesnt want to believe that people can influence the climate, he or she might respond by constructing a different description of the world: If there shouldnt be 10 M&Ms, then there cannot be 10 M&Ms  and, consequently, the climate skeptic insists that the count must be off.

If Donald Trump makes good on his campaign rhetoric, he will take the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate action, roll back renewable energy subsidies, incentivize coal mining and possibly open up more public lands to drilling. Trump once tweeted, The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.

At the same time, we see melting glaciers, record wildfire seasons, disappearing habitat and many other significant changes reshaping the American West. According to the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the average global temperature has risen by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880. Thermometers dont lie  the climate is changing  but temperature records and other evidence will continue to fail to change many skeptics minds because the description of climate change is not what we actually disagree about. We disagree about the role of government, fossil fuels and other essential components to our way of life.

We cant throw more facts at a problem that is not about facts. I value biodiversity; I think we should take care of vulnerable populations; I like glaciers. Lets talk more about what sort of world we want to live in, what options we have going forward and the moral commitments we have in a changing world.

These values shape the real threat we face  even though its a fact that there are still 10 M&Ms in the bowl.

Alexander Lee is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). He is an environmental philosopher and lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Espanola widow Stella Vigil went to her local credit union in the winter of 2012 to withdraw from her life savings, left to her by her husband, to pay for propane to heat her double-wide mobile home.

Minutes later, Vigil, now 65, left in a daze and empty-handed after being told without explanation that her account, of about $100,000, was frozen and cleaned out, with just $25 left for her, say her attorneys. In December, they won a jury trial verdict on Vigils behalf awarding her more than a half-million dollars. The lawyers now want a judge to triple that amount.

Santa Fe attorneys Ben Allison and Justin Miller of the Bardacke Allison law firm prevailed in a five-year fight when a jury returned a verdict in Vigils favor on all nine counts of a lawsuit filed against Zia Credit Union, which operates in Santa Fe, Rio Arriba, Los Alamos and Taos counties. Those counts included unjust enrichment, conversion, intentional infliction of emotional distress and violation of the Unfair Practices Act.

Allison characterized what happened to Vigil, who had a joint account with her debt-ridden daughter at the credit union. They (Zia) say, Im sorry your account has been frozen, we cant tell you anything more, and she stumbled out in the cold, Allison said.

I have never seen such cold-hearted stuff, he said.

Zia President and CEO David Woodruff disagreed in a brief telephone interview. We were operating following the terms of our membership agreement and state law, said Woodruff. We are looking out for our membership as a whole and individually.

At issue in the case was whether Zia could go after the money in the joint mother-daughter account to cover debts incurred by the daughter. The daughter worked for Zia Credit Union and was heavily in debt to Zia with a mortgage and other loans when she was dismissed from her job, court documents state.

Allison says financial problems had forced Vigils daughter to file for bankruptcy, but the daughter never deposited or withdrew any funds in the joint account and that her name was on the account solely in case Vigil died. The funds were from two certificates of deposit of $30,000 and $79,000 she inherited when her husband died in 2009.

According to the lawsuit, Zia said in a letter that it had no option other than to seize Vigils money to secure her daughters debts and professed to recognize that the loss of her savings is a difficult set of circumstances for Ms. Vigil  and stated that it regrets having to enforce the provisions of this agreement. 

Allison maintains, The bank can only take what the debtor contributed to a joint account. In this case, it was all Stellas money. The daughter never put a penny in.

But the credit union has argued post-verdict that it had done nothing abnormal.

It was undisputed at trial that it is entirely normal for a mother and daughter to be in a joint account relationship and Zia was not taking some novel position on the law or a novel interpretation of its account agreements, says a filing by the credit union.

Zias Woodruff said appeal options were being considered. We were disappointed in the jury decision on this, he said. Its unfortunate that the outcome was as it was.

Asked in a subsequent email query to refute specifics assertions by Vigils attorneys, Woodruff declined.

Willful violation

Vigil was awarded a judgment of $580,000 in punitive and compensatory damages. But because the jury found a willful violation of the New Mexico Fair Practices Act, said Allison, the judge will be asked to put aside the $150,000 punitive part of that award and triple the $430,000 compensatory amount.

The judge has the power under the statute to take the compensatory damage verdict and multiply it by three, attorney Miller said.

A motion filed last month by Zias attorneys argues against the triple damages and asserts that the law doesnt even allow the increased award.

Zia also again defended its actions in emptying the joint account. The account agreement which Plaintiff (Vigil) acknowledges applies to the CDs at issue expressly states that no notice was required before exercising a setoff, a Zia motion says. A setoff is a reduction of a debt.

Zia was acting under the advice of legal counsel to observe legal obligations to Plaintiff (Vigil) and to exercise the remedies it reasonably believed were legally available to it, Zia argued.

Vigils suit said she was unaware of her daughters $142,000 debt to Zia when she got the CDs.

In court documents, a financial services expert supporting her suit said Zia had failed to inform Stella Vigil of the risks she assumed when she opened her accounts or when events occurred that further jeopardized her accounts.

The suit maintains that Zia also did not inform Vigil about, or explain the terms and conditions of, the boilerplate membership account agreement governing her CDs.

The suit alleged that the contract Vigil signed in order to open her account does not comply with the requirements for such contracts of deposit, in that it does not contain the statutorily required language stating that Parties own account in proportion to net contributions, unless there is clear and convincing evidence of a different intent.'

Vigil, through her attorneys, declined to be interviewed for this article, but attorney Miller characterized her as being devastated when her account was frozen.

Vigil suffered when she could not access her funds, said Allison. She turns the thermostat from 57 to 55 degrees. She cant make ends meet on $8.50 an hour (as a health care worker) and goes to predatory lenders, Allison said.
CHARLESTON -- K-12 schools across Illinois are feeling the tightening of the vise in face of state funding woes, and local school districts are no different, officials say.

The Charleston school district has regularly dipped into its "rainy day" fund to make sure it can pay for buses to get students to school, for example.

The state hasn't provided the district with any transportation reimbursement funds since the start of the fiscal year in July, district financial consultant Dean Keller said.

The district budgeted for $1.4 million from the state for transportation costs for the year, and should have been issued about half of that by now, Keller said.

On a fairly regular basis, the Charleston school board has authorized inter-fund loans from the district budget's working cash fund to the transportation fund. Keller called working cash a "rainy day" fund that's actually supposed to be used for emergency expenses.

He said the same holds true with the district's special education fund, as the state has also yet to provide any reimbursements, which should be about $400,000 by now.

Also, Keller said general state aid reductions left the district about $850,000 short of what it should have received from the state during the 2014-15 school year and about $531,000 short for 2015-16.

State aid reductions led the board to approve about $1.4 million in budget cuts last spring.

In Mattoon, the school district is owed almost $1.3 million from the state since the start of the fiscal year July 1, 2016, according to state board of education records.

"They can say that they are fully funding education, but they are not," said Tom Sherman, Mattoon assistant superintendent for business.

While the state has been fully funding the general state aid to the district, the deficit lies in the other amounts the school district is owed by the state for transportation, special education and early childhood services. The state is supposed to send four payments a year, in September, December, March and June, and so far the two expected payments have not come in.

Two more are scheduled for the year, and Sherman is hopeful, but not confident, they will get this money.

"We're supposed to get two more," Sherman said. "There should be another one coming in March. There should be another coming in June, but they haven't even paid us for (September)."

With the state not paying, the school district has to absorb those costs for now. Sherman said the district has had to closely watch funds as they continue through the fiscal year without state support. Should the money continue to not flow in, Sherman said the district will have to reassess and potentially adjust its budget to make up for not collecting that money.

That $1.3 million figure is expected to only grow as more time passes.

"We may be having this same conversation two months from now and saying add $600,000 to that figure, because I am not sure they are going to pay us between now and March," Sherman said.

Other districts in same situation

The state of Illinois owes the Decatur school district $1.5 million from fiscal year 2016, and $2 million, so far, for 2017.

As with Charleston and Mattoon, most of that money was targeted for reimbursements for special education, transportation and early childhood programs.

They're pretty good about paying the general state aid on time, said Todd Covault, chief operational officer for Decatur schools. But it's all of the other required programs, like transportation, that they're slow about.

The list of vouchers owed to Decatur, on the state comptroller's desk but as yet unpaid, is three pages long. And that's just one district out of 859 in the state.

Covault's concern is that if the legislators ever get a budget pulled together, the state can't afford to fund education at the promised levels. In April, when the state is due to settle up, he said, he's afraid officials will scale back the amounts, after districts have already spent the funds.

It's an indication of a bigger problem that just hasn't burst yet, Covault said.

Decatur schools began the fiscal year with surplus of $2 million, Covault said, which kept the district from having to consider budget cuts for the first time in 10 years. If state funds come through as promised, that money would replenish the reserve fund.

Currently, it behooves school districts to build up cash reserves when feasible in order to have a rainy day fund, he said. Unfortunately, it seems to rain a lot in Illinois. During the bleak years, districts tend to spend down these cash reserves.

Funding of public education in Illinois is inherently inequitable, said Sen. Andy Manar on Wednesday, during a conference call about the governor's school funding reform commission. The commission just concluded its work and is issuing a report on its findings. Among those, Manar said, is that the current school funding formula doesn't account for different needs in different districts.

"The commission recommended that we have to account for the unique needs of every district, and account for the fact that it takes more to educate a child living in poverty to get the same outcome as a child that doesn't live in poverty," Manar said. "That change alone, if we can accomplish it, will take a tremendous bite out of the inequities."

The commission's report must now be turned into a bill and passed, Manar said, and the hope is that it will be passed this spring, in time to affect funding for education in the 2017-18 school year.

Because of the way schools are funded in Illinois, districts with higher property values, or equalized assessed valuation, depend less on state money. If the state doesn't come through as promised, or if funding is cut, a property-tax-rich district doesn't feel the pinch and services to students aren't affected. Districts such as Bloomington, with its $832 million in equalized assessed valuation, are better situated to weather a shortfall than poorer districts such as Decatur, with its $704 million in equalized assessed valuation as of 2014.

The Illinois State Board of Education says the minimum amount required to educate each child in the state is $6,119 per year, an amount known as the foundation level. Illinois law requires the state to provide school districts with the difference between that amount and the district's own wealth as calculated by an equalization formula. The state also provides a Supplemental Low-Income Grant, or poverty grant, that is based on the district's population of low-income students.

Bloomington's poverty grant was $4.1 million for the 2016-17 school year, while Decatur's was $21.1 million. Small districts like Mattoon struggle even more. Mattoon's equalized assessed valuation for the 2016-17 school year was calculated at $310 million, with $1.4 million subtracted for enterprise zones, and the district's poverty grant was $2.7 million.

However, for 11 of the last 15 years, the state has not fully funded schools, sending districts as much as 10 percent less than the full amount. In a wealthy district with little poverty, that could be a fraction of the overall revenue, yet it might cut significantly into a less wealthy district's budget.

At Central A&M, for example, the $704,000 payments for special education and transportation that have yet to be paid amount to 10 percent of the district budget, said Superintendent DeAnn Heck.

The less wealthy districts that rely more on state funding are the ones more at risk, Covault said. If a wealthy district, come March (doesn't get the money), they can say, 'Well, I wasn't expecting $3.5 million anyway. I was expecting a minimal amount.' It's not as dramatic to a wealthy district.

The Education Funding Advisory Board has submitted recommendations to the General Assembly and governor to increase the foundation level to $9,204, beginning with fiscal year 2018 on July 1. This recommended increase would require $4.6 billion in additional funds for education for fiscal year 2018, almost double the current appropriation. The last time the state adopted the Education Funding Advisory Board's recommendation was 2002. The current foundation level of $6,119 has remained the same since 2010.

Increasing funding for basic education in Illinois will be a challenge, but it is a challenge we ask every policymaker and citizen to embrace, said the board's chairwoman, Sylvia Puente. The children of Illinois deserve no less. We ask our policymakers to note that in each of the years that the state has failed to meet its obligations, school districts must continue to meet all of the statutory requirements imposed upon them. This situation should not be allowed to continue.
The defendants in a novelistic federal lawsuit filed last year that alleged the presence of a Cosa-Nostra-like criminal enterprise spread throughout Santa Fes criminal justice system  said to include 11 judges, the sheriff, the New Mexico attorney general and others  are dwindling.

Plaintiffs Andrew Ross and Susan Gerard voluntarily have dismissed from the case many of those they maintained were part of the alleged massive conspiracy, including judges sitting in the magistrate and state district courts in Santa Fe.

Also, federal Circuit Judge Paul Kelly Jr. has granted motions to drop a couple of additional big-name defendants, Attorney General Hector Balderas and Santa Fe County Sheriff Robert Garcia, from the litigation.

The 89-page suit, first reported by the

Journal in October, grew out of a landlord-tenant dispute in which the plaintiffs maintain their rights were trampled.

This week, three Santa Fe police officers were the latest defendants to be dismissed, also on Kellys order, leaving only four remaining out of 30 initially named as part of the conspiracy in Ross and Gerards suit.

Left standing as defendants, as of Thursday, were:

 Three sheriffs deputies, including one accused in the suit of taking bribes and altering records whom the plaintiffs tried to drop from the case. The deputy refused to accept the voluntary dismissal, saying he wants a judges ruling to clear his name and to serve as grounds for seeking attorneys fees.

 A private lawyer, Robert Richards, who also refused to accept a voluntary dismissal from the plaintiffs. It would have been without prejudice, allowing the case against him to be refiled. Richards is seeking attorneys fees and sanctions against the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs also have filed for sanctions against Richards.

The suit described Balderas as acting consigliere of a criminal organization known as Nuestra Familia and accused him of running a protection racket and making sure all public officials named in this matter are silent about everyone elses activities, in accord with the Code of Omerta. 

Sheriff Garcia, the suit alleged, acts as the spiritual head of the criminal Nuestra Familia that operates in Santa Fe.

Dismissed from the case voluntarily by Ross and Gerard were several of the original defendants alleged to be members of what the suit calls the Lesbian Sisterhood, a group whose intent is to ensure that any lesbian rights are held above all others and whose most prominent members consist of judicial officers, attorneys, court employees, and others.

The suit was filed on behalf of Ross and Gerard by Albuquerque attorney Arash Asher Kashanian.

He said this week that the plaintiffs decided to voluntarily dismiss most of the defendants for several reasons. We didnt see it as being all that successful, given the situation, said Kashanian.

He said hes been attacked by the Disciplinary Board of the New Mexico Supreme Court, which takes up complaints about lawyers, for even daring to make the accusations. He noted that one of the suits former defendants works for the Disciplinary Board.

It was gross impropriety that the Disciplinary Board attacked me, Kashanian said. He says in a court filing that the message was he should stop litigating the suit or face attack, and that his Disciplinary Board case was moved to an independent special counsel only as Kashanian was dismissing the board employee and other state judicial figures from the Ross-Gerard case.

Kashanian said it was obvious from how he worded the suit that he wasnt saying there was a real Cosa Nostra or anything actually going by the name Lesbian Sisterhood in Santa Fe. He was making analogies to known or fictional criminal organizations and the sisterhood label was his own branding of what I see going on in the power structure, Kashanian said.

In a filing, he also says that the plaintiffs demand for $1.776 billion in damages  termed unreasonable by the AGs Office  was only symbolic, which should be obvious to any competent reader of the complaint, symbolizing the year 1776 when the United States achieved independence  and thus freedom  from Britain.

Kashanians own complaints to the Disciplinary Board about Richards, who represented Ross and Gerards landlady, have been brushed aside, he said. Its disparate treatment, he said. Richards did not return a phone call seeking comment. The boards proceedings are confidential.

Plumbing leak

The suit resulted from legal disputes that started with complaints about a plumbing leak, and an effort to evict Ross and Gerard from their rented home on Camino Piedra Lumbre on Santa Fes south side. The suit says Ross, age 69 when the suit was filed, worked as an attorney in Massachusetts and New York, and that Gerard, 70, is a prominent local mental health therapist.

The couple claim they have been discriminated against and that their many attempts to battle the eviction through the judicial system and other areas have been ignored due to collusion in the judicial system. The conspiracy involves almost the entirety of the Santa Fe First Judicial Court, the Santa Fe Magistrate Court, the Santa Fe Sheriffs Department and at the helm of the Criminal Enterprise, the Attorney General of the State of New Mexico, Hector Balderas, said an introduction to their initial complaint.

The suit outlined numerous court actions and other developments since last March. The couples landlady undertook an extensive crusade of harassment against Gerard and Ross, the suit maintains.

The ensuing legal matters included an eviction order, accusations of fraud, temporary restraining orders, appeals, dueling complaints to the Judicial Standards Commission and the state Counseling and Therapy Board, officers coming to the couples home, civil suits filed by Gerard, a criminal case against Ross for alleged threats, and a criminal complaint against the couple filed by a deputy, according to the lawsuit.

Bloated and waterlogged

In the successful motion to dismiss Balderas from the case, Assistant Attorney General Ari Biernoff almost matched the florid tone of the lawsuit itself, calling the suit bloated and waterlogged, and mocking its description of menacing and ill-defined conspiracies.

In a more recent motion seeking attorneys fees or court sanctions against the plaintiffs, Biernoff challenges the lawsuits identification of plaintiff Ross as a retired, seasoned civil rights attorney. This is a description of extravagant euphemism, Biernoff wrote, because Ross in fact was forcibly retired by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which disbarred him in 1988 upon his conviction on multiple felony charges.

Ross admitted stealing more than $75,000, the motion states, and pleaded guilty to nine counts of larceny, 15 counts of forgery and 15 counts related counts, the motion says.

Although practicing attorneys benefit from diverse professional experiences, serving hard time is not the kind of seasoning that most counsel typically would seek out, Biernoff added.

The AGs Office motion says Ross was sentenced to at least 10 years in prison in 1988. Massachusetts records filed with the motion indicate an Andrew B. Ross did plead guilty and was incarcerated, but dont make the sentence length precisely clear. A July 1988 Boston Globe online article says Ross was sentenced to five years and would be eligible for parole in six months.

Kashanian said in a court response he didnt know Ross had been disbarred when he filed the Ross-Gerard case and that, in any case, the disbarment isnt relevant to what happened in Santa Fe.

Biernoffs motion for the AGs Office also states, For all their frenetic references to the imagined misdeeds of others, a reasonable conclusion from observing Plaintiffs behavior is that they filed this action for improper purposes  to impose embarrassment and cost upon, and to retaliate against, perceived adversaries or anyone else who failed to pledge allegiance to Plaintiffs in their landlord-tenant feud.

Kashanian said he now plans to redo the suit, which alleged a racketeering conspiracy, to a run-of-the-mill civil rights case against officers who the plaintiffs maintain harassed, threatened and falsely charged Ross and Gerard. That seems acceptable, he said.

Were backing off the power institutions in Santa Fe, Kashanian said. I think, as little people, my clients feel powerless and demoralized.
Hundreds of faculty, staff and students signed a letter decrying the universitys decision to allow a controversial speaker on the University of New Mexico campus.

The letter addressed to acting President Chaouki Abdallah states the decision to allow Milo Yiannopoulos, a British controversial right-wing speaker, undermines the universitys goal of creating a safe environment for students to learn.

The group specifically criticized an administrative decision that allowed the UNM College Republicans, the group hosting the speaker, to avoid a $3,400 security fee. The university could still collect that fee following a legal review of a policy covering student events and security charges.

Why should one invited media pundit be given so much university attention and allocation of resources so that he can have his rights to preach hate? they asked in the letter.

Yiannopoulos, who is gay, visited campus as part of his Dangerous Faggot Tour. In his speech at UNM, he said Muslims shouldnt be allowed to enter the country and that the audience should report undocumented immigrants to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Yiannopoulos event at UNM drew protests both from those who thought the fee was an attempt to prevent the firebrand from speaking and those who believe his comments to be hate speech. Those who signed the letter fall into the latter category.

That group also wrote that the university should reinstate the security fee policy and charge what the event cost the university. They also want forums to discuss free speech vs. fighting words, those meant to incite violence, and the role of police on campus.

The event in late January  which drew about 500 in the audience  attracted roughly 250 protesters, and officers in riot gear broke up the crowd outside. Lt. Tim Stump, the spokesman for the UNM police department, said police arrested six people at the event, five on charges of battery on police and one on an assault on police. He said there were no reports of injuries or property damage. In contrast, protests of Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley earlier this week turned violent and law enforcement canceled the event.

Amy Wohlert, the presidents chief of staff, confirmed Wednesday that Abdallah received the letter and said that he couldnt respond to every message individually.

He has and will continue to communicate through messages to the campus community, expressing his thoughts and position on important matters of safety, security, free speech and other critical issues, such as federal policy changes affecting international and undocumented students, Wohlert said in a statement.
The former Nob Hill magic shop owner found guilty last fall of child sex crimes was sentenced Thursday in state district court to 15 years in prison.

Neil Stammer will serve the time concurrently with a 54-year sentence imposed in a separate case involving a second child.

Prosecutor John Litchford asked Judge Benjamin Chavez to hand down the maximum 15-year sentence and to run the sentences consecutive to one another. The victim in the case submitted a letter, which Litchford read aloud, calling Stammer a danger to children who needs all the jail time he can get.

Stammers defense attorney Scott Wisniewski asked for a three-year sentence, noting that Stammer is already serving essentially a life sentence.

Addressing the court at the hearing Thursday, Stammer maintained his innocence. Stammer spent around 20 minutes outlining problems with his conviction. He alleged that his attorney was ineffective and pointed out numerous discrepancies in trial testimony. Stammer said the crimes the jury found him guilty of never happened, absolutely not.

Before announcing that he would impose the maximum sentence, Chavez said Wisniewski showed every indication of effectiveness.

Stammer was convicted of four counts of criminal sexual contact of a minor and one count of bribery of a witness, connected to incidents that took place in the late 1990s. Stammer spent more than a decade in Nepal before being apprehended by the FBI in 2014.
Bernalillo County Commissioner Steven Michael Quezada has asked the district court to dismiss a case contesting his November election win, the continuation of a heated dispute between the Democratic Breaking Bad actor and the Republican candidate he defeated.

Patricia Paiz, a former police officer and Quezadas opponent in the election, filed a lawsuit in December claiming Quezada had violated campaign laws with improperly signed election materials. Last week, New Mexico State Police announced they had closed their criminal investigation into the matter  an investigation prompted by a complaint from a citizen the police did not identify  and had found the allegations to be unfounded.

Quezadas motion, filed Tuesday, described Paizs complaint as an attempt at defying the will of the public using a twisted legal theory.

The public trust is undermined by the frivolous, malicious complaint filed by a disgruntled loser, the motion stated.

Paizs attorney A. Blair Dunn filed a response the next day, stating that contestee Quezada likely misses the mark both intellectually, legally, and honestly in his rush to cast aspersions through what he must think are clever words aimed at contestant Paiz.

Quezada won 62 percent of the vote in November.

Paiz claimed Quezadas wife filled out his election documents, and that Quezada did not sign a document known as the Declaration of Candidacy. Quezada has said that though his wife helped him fill out election forms, he provided all the required signatures himself. Quezadas most recent court filing states that the Declaration of Candidacy does not legally require a signature and that the case cannot move forward because Bernalillo County is not a party in the action.

The case law we cited is very strong, and I am highly confident we will get a dismissal, said Quezadas attorney Robert Avila. It is overwhelming that someone would go to these lengths to try to overturn the publics decision. What is the purpose?

Paiz and Dunns response argues it is not necessary for the county to be a party in the case. Dunn said the State Police missed the mark in their investigation and called Quezadas votes ill-gotten.

Avila said the court could make a decision in the case as early as the beginning of March, or much later depending on whether or not the case proceeds to a hearing.

The lawsuit is far from the only controversy that has plagued the District 2 county commissioner race. In October, two Albuquerque attorneys accused Paiz of violating campaign finance laws. Shortly after the election, Quezada filed a defamation lawsuit against a political action committee that he said falsely accused him of beating women and affiliating with a West Side gang.

Quezada was sworn into office Jan. 1 and has served on the commission since that time.
SYDNEY  Amid the drama over a refugee resettlement deal between Australia and the United States, the White House has issued a series of conflicting statements on whether the agreement is still on, how many refugees it involves, and who, exactly, are the refugees. A look at whats at stake:

AUSTRALIA DOESNT WANT BOAT REFUGEES

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. agreed to resettle a group of refugees who are being held at detention camps on the impoverished Pacific island nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The Australian government pays both countries to house the refugees, because it refuses to settle any of them in Australia. That has resulted in many of them languishing inside the detention facilities for years. The conditions at the camps are grim and reports of detainees suffering abuse and attempting suicide are frequent.

___

UNCLEAR HOW MANY ARE GENUINE REFUGEES

President Donald Trump has repeatedly described the refugees as illegal immigrants and said in a tweet that there are thousands of them. The refugees are, in fact, among around 1,250 asylum seekers who were transferred to the island detention centers after being intercepted while trying to reach Australia by boat. Another 370 who came to Australia for medical treatment and then refused to return to the islands are also eligible for resettlement to the United States. Australia will not say how many of the asylum seekers have been deemed genuine refugees, and thus its unclear exactly how many refugees the U.S. agreed to ultimately accept. Most of the asylum seekers come from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Australias previous center-left government called them irregular maritime arrivals, because a refugee can legally seek asylum in a country such as Australia that is a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention  which calls on nations to take in people fleeing war. The current conservative government changed the terminology to illegal maritime arrivals, presumably because people smuggling is illegal and most pay people smugglers to ferry them to Australia.

___

THEIR PREFERED DESTINATION IS AUSTRALIA

Asylum seekers who attempt to reach Australia by boat generally travel to Indonesia, where people smugglers jam them into overcrowded, barely seaworthy vessels that then head south to Australia. In 2013, Australia imposed tough policies toward asylum seekers in a bid to discourage the dangerous and often deadly journeys. Under the strict rules, any asylum seeker who tries to reach Australia by boat can never be settled in Australia, and is instead sent to the detention camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea where their refugee claims are assessed. Prior to the U.S. deal, the only option given to those deemed genuine refugees was for them to resettle in Papua New Guinea or Cambodia. Few refugees have accepted those offers, opting instead to remain in detention in the hopes that Australia will eventually take them in.

___

CONTRADICTING STATEMENTS

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Trump had a tense telephone call in which they discussed the agreement. On Monday, Turnbull told Australians that Trump had vowed during the call to honor the deal. But a report from The Washington Post that subsequently emerged suggested the agreement might be in doubt. The newspaper reported that during the call, Trump ranted to Turnbull that it was the worst deal ever. Shortly after that report was published, Trump took to Twitter to slam the agreement as dumb and said he would review it. Meanwhile, the State Department offered reassurance that the agreement would, in fact, stand  out of respect for close ties to our Australian ally and friend. White House spokesman Sean Spicer also confirmed that Trump had agreed to honor the deal, though he said all the refugees would be subjected to extreme vetting. Later, Trump told reporters that he has to respect actions of the previous administration, yet quickly added: But you can also say, Why are we doing this?' Spicer then gave another press conference in which he said that Trump was unbelievably disappointed in the agreement and had agreed to continue to review that deal. On Thursday, a Trump administration official described the president as very strong in the phone call with Turnbull and said it had ended early, after about 30 minutes. But on Friday, Trump tweeted, Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!
SMYRNA, Del.  The killing of a guard during an inmate uprising at Delawares largest prison this week was entirely preventable, according to a correctional officers union leader who blamed state officials for ignoring chronic staffing shortages that put prison workers at greater risk.

Sgt. Steven Floyd, 47, was found dead early Thursday after a nearly 20-hour hostage standoff at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna. Late Friday, the Delaware Division of Forensic Science completed an autopsy and said Floyds death was homicide by trauma.

On Friday, Floyd was posthumously awarded a promotion to lieutenant and the Medal of Valor, the departments highest honor.

Floyd was one of four staff members, including a female counselor, taken hostage Wednesday after inmates in a unit holding about 120 inmates ambushed him and forced him into a closet.

Inmates released two hostages before a tactical team used a backhoe to breach the building and rescue the woman.

If there had been a correct amount of staffing for a maximum-security building, the inmates would not have been able to overpower the officers, take control of the building and murder Sergeant Floyd, said Geoff Klopp, president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware.

Bottom line is, you cannot run daily operations of that building with three corrections officers safely, he said.

The problem is not unique to Delaware, observers say.

For years, many states have struggled to attract and retain correctional officers, largely because they are woefully underpaid, said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions National Prison Project.

The correction officers are really the backbone of every prison  if you dont have enough officers, really every aspect of prison operations breaks down, he said.

In some states, prisons are competing for workers with Wal-Mart and McDonalds, Fathi said. In Nebraska, the state prison has trouble keeping correctional officers because its county jails will pay them much more, he said.

Klopp who has worked for the Delaware Department of Correction for 29 years, says he makes about $49,000 annually. A rookie cop in the central Delaware town of Milford starts at $48,000, he said.

Authorities have said there are about 90 correctional officer vacancies within Delawares prison system on any given day. Thats almost double the 55 correctional officer vacancies reported in fiscal 2010, but less than half of the 260 vacancies in fiscal 2006, according to a Department of Correction annual report.

A department spokeswoman said Commissioner Perry Phelps would not comment on staffing until the investigation into this weeks uprising is finished. But the department acknowledged in its most recent annual report that workforce availability and eminent risk are intimately linked, and that current staffing levels reflect budgetary restrictions, not adherence to National Institute of Corrections recommended standards.

When correctional officer jobs remain vacant, prisons are short staffed for extended periods, the report notes. It adds, Covering security posts with officers who are unfamiliar with the tasks or post location elevates security risk.

Klopp said one of the two guards taken hostage along with Floyd this week was a rookie, and the other was working overtime and not normally assigned to the building where the uprising occurred.

Officers frequently are forced to work overtime to make up for staff shortages. Klopp said overtime pay amounted to about $22 million over the past year. Correctional officers often dont find out until the end of their shifts that they are being frozen to work an additional shift.

They are still forcing people to work overtime to make the facilities run at minimum staffing. They tell you you cant go home, Klopp said.

Not having enough staff, not having enough senior staff, and the amount of overtime that we work leads to fatigue and complacency, because we have to work so much to make the facility run, he added.

According to a 2015 annual report, the DOC had 1,710 filled correctional officer positions in fiscal 2015, up from 1,664 the prior year but well short of the 1,796 approved positions.

More than a decade ago, a state task force said staff and management were complacent about security at the Smyrna prison. The panel was established in 2004 after a female counselor was held hostage and raped. The inmate who held her was shot to death.

Klopp said that, to his knowledge, none of the recommendations made by the task force in 2005 has been implemented.

Klopp and state Sen. Bruce Ennis of Smyrna, chairman of the Senate Corrections and Public Safety Committee, said turnover among prison guards averages about a dozen a month.

They cant train them fast enough, Ennis said. When you lose 13 guards a month, its kind of hard to keep up.

_____

Associated Press write Alanna Durkin Richer in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.  The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center is hosting a conference on abuse and other childhood adversities as the state recovers from a string of high-profile cases that spurred public outcry.

Tuesdays event will include experts in prevention.

Organizer and medical school professor Elaine Bearer says officials want to raise the consciousness and understanding about the issues of childhood adversity and how it can be collectively addressed in New Mexico.

Last year, Children, Youth and Families Department Secretary Monique Jacobson announced the Pull Together campaign to help parents and to change the way state officials tackle child well-being.

The advocacy group New Mexico Voices for Children says New Mexico ranks 49th in the country for child well-being.
LAS CRUCES  The odds were stacked against Skylar, Olive and Frankie.

But with a little help from a group of prisoners in southern New Mexico, the one-time shelter dogs each now have places they call home.

Skylar, a 3-year-old Shepherd mix, has found steady work at a drug treatment center for youth in Albuquerque. Olive, a 3-year-old Boxer mix, enjoys being spoiled by her owners. And Frankie, a 3-year-old Shepherd-Lab mix, has met the governor.

Two years ago, however, they were young strays living at the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley. Each had spent about six to 12 months at the animal shelter before beginning new chapters of their lives at the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility in 2015.

There, Skylar, Olive and Frankie were paired with prisoners in a program called Southern New Mexico PAWS, or Prisoners and Animals Working Toward Success.

The prisoners in the program assume roles as temporary guardians for the rescue dogs. While living at the prison, the dogs are trained by the prisoners on a daily basis for several weeks in basic obedience until they are deemed ready for adoption.

Skylar, Olive and Frankie are among programs many success stories.

The PAWS program is really valuable for dogs, especially dogs like Skylar, who have been found on the streets and maybe put down at a shelter, said Jennifer Weiss-Burke, executive director of Serenity Mesa Youth Recovery Center in Albuquerque.

Weiss-Burke adopted Skylar in September 2015. This program probably saved her life, she said.

Amy Orlando, the former Dona Ana County district attorney, adopted Frankie in October 2016.

Hes is the perfect dog, he has the best personality and hes such a lover, she said. Hes so well-mannered, she added, they clearly treated him well. I think its an amazing program. I wish that we could save more dogs this way. And ultimately, it benefits the prisoners as well.

Working toward success

The program has been heralded a success by its founder, Renee Waskiewicz, the manager of the Adult Probation and Parole Office in Las Cruces, and officials who facilitate the program from inside the prison.

To date, the program has resulted in the adoptions of 44 dogs  including three last week  who have successfully completed training.

Officials said prisoners involved in the program are less prone to misconduct. The prisoners must apply for admission into the program, and once admitted, they must stay on their best behavior. Any slip-up  drugs, fights or the like  would result in immediate expulsion from the program.

The program also is the first of its kind in New Mexico, Waskiewicz said.

She received approval for the program in 2013 after two decades of advocating for a prison-dog program.

Several years ago, I just happened to be at the right place, at the right time. I was sitting next to the right person, at the right lunch, and I asked: What about a dog program? And they said, Lets try it,' she said.

It was eventually cleared through her supervisor and the director of adult prisons, she said.

Resistance to the dog program seemed to dissipate, Waskiewicz said, when prison administrators sought to give prisoners more opportunities to attain additional life skills.

We cant just house these guys without teaching them anything, she said. They get out on the street, they have no skills and they come back here again.

She added, We have to give them something to give them pride in themselves, to teach them some kind of a skill. Even if they dont go out and train dogs, all of these men now have a feeling of compassion, sympathy and empathy.

By January 2015, the program was up and running, with Waskiewicz overseeing logistics from outside the prison. She was assisted by Nina Salcido-Marquez, the prison unit manager in charge of what has become known as the dog pod; lead trainer Doug Baker, who makes weekly trips to the prison to teach obedience lessons; and Sgt. Martin Espinoza, who oversees security for the pod.

Last month, the program partnered with ACTion Programs for Animals, which rescues a majority of its dogs from the Animal Service Center of the Mesilla Valley. APA then provides the program with rescue dogs.

There are currently 18 prisoners involved in the program, Salcido-Marquez said. Half are considered main handlers, who are the primary caregivers for the dogs; the other half are alternates, who fill-in for main handlers whenever needed. One dog is paired with one main handler, and the two share a cell in the dog pod, where all the prisoners in the program are housed. (The dogs each have kennels that are kept in the prisoners cells.)

You go into that pod and you see tails wagging and smiles as the inmates play with their dogs, said Salcido-Marquez, who admitted that she was somewhat apprehensive about initiating a dog program. But, weve come a long way in two years, and I see it has helped a lot of inmates and it has helped a lot of dogs.

Specifically, Salcido-Marquez has seen drastic improvements in conduct over the past two years, she said.

In that pod  knock on wood  I dont have any fights or any issues, she said. The prisoners, she added, are working together and they all get along.

On average, the dogs live and train with the prisoners over a period of about eight weeks, or as long as it takes for the dog to pass a temperament test.

The goal is to train calm, friendly, relatively obedient family pets, Baker said.

Prison life

Prisoner Chris Williams has been involved in the program since the beginning.

Williams, 41, who is from Arizona, had been training Leyna, a 4-year-old Shepherd mix, for about a month when he spoke to the Sun-News in January.

She coming along pretty good, he said. She actually goes up to people and likes to be petted. She also enjoys playing catch with a ball, he said.

But that wasnt the case, he said, when she arrived at the prison in December 2016.

Abandoned by her owners, Leyna came into the program timid. She was scared to meet new people, but shes warming up to everyone, he said. And shes quickly mastering basic commands.

Leyna is the 12th dog that Williams has trained in the program, he said. Hes even trained a Chihuahua-weenie mix that his mother adopted. Another dog he trained, he said, ended up at service-dog school in California.

When Williams learned the prison was going to start a dog program, he said he applied immediately and even wrote a letter, he said. In the letter, he wrote that he grew up with dogs and that he connects better with dogs and animals than people, he said.

Through the program, Williams said he has learned to become more calm and has gained a sense of responsibility, he said. But more notably, he said, Im doing something good for these dogs.

Two-year-old Sage, a brindle-colored mix, lived most her life at the shelter before she arrived at the prison in August 2016. Her handler is Fabian Lopez, 38, who has been in the program for about six months.

Lopez, an Albuquerque native, said the job of a handler involves constant work.

Training sessions are an hour a day, he said, but Im with her all day. Im constantly playing with her all day and teaching her how to do things.

Last month, Lopez said he was ready to see Sage find a permanent home. Shes really gentle and ready for it, he said.

Great joy

All the adopters who spoke to the Sun-News remarked on how well the dogs were trained.

Lonnie and Sharon Cunningham, who adopted Olive in March 2016, said their dog could respond to several commands. The couple highly recommends adopting through the program.

Because, Lonnie Cunningham said, the dog has been vaccinated, chipped and trained to heel. Also, the program allows you to meet several different dogs and pick the one you feel is best for your family.

Sharon Cunningham said Olive has brought great joy to their lives. All in all, she told the Sun-News, we have found it to be an extremely rewarding and humbling experience. We do love our silly dog.

For information on how to adopt through the program, contact Waskiewicz at Renee.Waskiewicz@state.nm.us or the ACTion Programs for Animals at mail@apalascruces.org.

Carlos Andres Lopez can be reached 575-541-5453, carlopez@lcsun-news.com or @carlopez_los on Twitter.



2017 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.)

Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at www.lcsun-news.com

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Eddy County pecan producers, both residential and commercial, are being urged to check their trees for pecan weevils following a quarantine put in place by the state Department of Agriculture.

The 60-day quarantine was issued last week for Artesia, Hobbs, Roswell and Clovis after reports said the insect was found on residential pecan trees in those cities.

Its not the first time. But its in more residential than weve seen in the past, said Brad Lewis, assistant division director of Entomology and Nursery Industries at New Mexico Department of Agriculture.

Lewis said the pest may have arrived in the area as a result of un-treated pecans transported into the state.

Theyre brought in the state infested typically because people are unaware they are infested or unaware of the laws, he said.

New Mexico requires in-shell pecans to be treated in cold storage before being brought into the state, however, exceptions do exist.

Transportation of potentially infected pecans during a quarantine is generally exempted in Arizona, California and El Paso, Culberson and Hudspeth counties in Texas.

Typically any product found to be infested may be destroyed at the producers expense.

The current quarantine restricts transportation of potentially infected pecans in the four southeast New Mexico cities. However, even this quarantine has exceptions, including an inspection of a sample which shows no infestation or if the Department of Agriculture doesnt believe the product is at risk of having been infected.

The quarantine is part of an eradication program, which has three stages: containment, control and cleaning. No state-line inspections are being done, however, to detect the transport of potentially infected trees or pecans.

Pecan weevils will typically leave a hole in the shell about the size of a No. 2 pencil. Its this indicator that Woods Houghton of the Eddy County Extension Office said local producers should keep an eye out for and report immediately.

Houghton said Artesia has about 25 residences with Pecan trees, and currently no Carlsbad infestations have been reported.

Houghton said despite the issue, trees do not have to be cut down and pecans are safe to eat.

DeJanay Booth can be reached at 575-628-5546, dbooth@currentargus.com and @DeJanayBooth on Twitter.



2017 the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.)

Visit the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.) at www.currentargus.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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SANTA FE  A proposal that would grant New Mexico school districts the flexibility in financial emergencies to shorten the school day or school year below state-mandated requirements cleared its first Senate committee on Friday.

The measure was amended to make it clear that the new flexibility couldnt be used to impair the terms of a union contract covering teachers or other employees.

It comes as school districts absorb a 3.5 percent cut in state funding  after they set their budgets for the year  and consider reducing teachers pay by forcing them to take unpaid time off.

The proposal, Senate Bill 290, now heads to the Senate Finance Committee, potentially its last stop before reaching the Senate floor. It would also need approval of the House and Gov. Susana Martinez.

The Martinez administration opposed the proposal. Paul Aguilar, deputy secretary of public education, said districts already have the flexibility they need, though in some cases they must get state approval.

He also disputed that school districts need to force teachers and other employees to take unpaid days off.

To cut the amount of teaching time down for students is not good, Aguilar said. Our analysis doesnt indicate those (reductions) will be necessary.

The districts are supposed to tap into cash balances  reserves  to offset the state funding cuts.

But Albuquerque Public Schools and other districts say they need the cash to cover costs in some cases when theyre awaiting reimbursement by the federal government or another source.

Teacher furloughs are anticipated in some of these school districts, said Sen. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque and a retired teacher.

Sen. William Soules, D-Las Cruces and sponsor of the bill, said empowering districts is necessary to help them get to the end of the year when we have a crisis situation.

The bill has an emergency clause that would allow it to go into effect immediately upon final approval.

The new flexibility to shorten school days or end the school year early would kick in only when the state reduces education appropriations by 2 percent after the districts have already set their budgets.

The Senate Education Committee voted 4-2 to recommend passage of the bill. It was a party-line vote, with Democrats in favor.

The governor and Legislature have been making budget cuts aimed at ensuring New Mexico can pay its bills through the end of the fiscal year, amid faltering revenue from oil and gas.
SANTA FE, N.M.  Leaders of New Mexicos 23 Native American nations and pueblos expressing solidarity with opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline project in a letter to President Donald Trump.

Tribal governors signed the letter Friday in the central rotunda of the state Capitol in a ceremony attended by Standing Rock Sioux tribal council member Robert Taken Alive.

Members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe fear that an oil leak could contaminate its drinking water if plans move forward to lay a pipeline under a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota. Trump has arranged a review of an earlier federal decision to block the project.

Acoma Pueblo Gov. Kurt Riley says Trump is new to governing and still needs to assess the federal governments relationship with Native Americans.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump on Friday launched a broad effort to ease regulations on Wall Street, setting up what is likely to be a protracted battle over how to unwind rules put in place after the last financial crisis.

In an executive order, Trump ordered a review of the laws and regulations that govern the U.S. financial system in an opening bid to upend 2010s financial overhaul law, known as Dodd-Frank. The complicated legislation, which took months to negotiate, touches nearly every aspect of the way banks operate and includes hundreds of rules, some of which have yet to be implemented

We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, Trump said during a meeting with business leaders Friday morning. Because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, that had nice businesses, they just cant borrow money . . . because the banks just wont let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd- Frank.

The prospect of another drawn-out battle over a Wall Street overhaul is being met tepidly by some financial executives, who are wary of reawakening populist passions. After being the target of so many attacks in the years after the financial crisis, many have begun to see their profits grow and stock prices surge again, and they have urged the administration to proceed cautiously. Adjusting to a new regulatory environment would be too costly, they say.

Trump has so far been vague about what he would do to the complex law: The language of his executive order did not even include the phrase Dodd-Frank. Instead, he instructed the treasury secretary to report back in 120 days on what rules promote or inhibit the administrations priorities.

Dodd-Frank has had a profound effect on the financial industry, forcing banks to submit to yearly stress tests to prove they could withstand economic turbulence and draw up living wills that lay out how the banks could be dismantled without harming the rest of the financial system. One controversial component, called the Volcker rule, bars banks from trading in high-risk securities using their own capital, a practice that contributed to the last crisis. The rule also limited the ability of banks to hide exotic risky securities off the banks balance sheets, concealing the extent of the banks debts.

With Dodd-Frank still not fully implemented, critics have argued that Wall Street requires more oversight, not less. But Trump, who often attacked Wall Street during the campaign (and whose chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, has ripped into the big banks in the past), has adopted a different tone since taking office, offering to help the financial industry as part of a deregulatory agenda to boost the economy.

During the meeting with more than a dozen chief executives, Trump noted that there were several bankers in the room, including Larry Fink, chief executive of the massive investment firm BlackRock. Larrys got a lot of my money, and I have to tell you, he got me great returns, Trump said to laughs in the room.

Later he noted that Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the world, was also there. There is nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, Trump said, motioning to Dimon across the table.

Trump is not just consulting with Wall Street. He has tapped about six alumni of Goldman Sachs for key positions in his administration, including Gary Cohn, the banks former president and the current head of the powerful National Economic Council. Steve Mnuchin, who is awaiting confirmation as treasury secretary, spent 17 years at Goldman.

To unwind Dodd-Frank, some changes could be accomplished through appointing new leadership for the financial regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. They could soften the impact of regulations through the rulemaking process or simply slow implementation.

On Friday, for instance, Trump also signed a memorandum that could delay a Labor Department rule that would require financial professionals advising on retirement rules to put their clients interests ahead of their own. The fiduciary rule, scheduled to go into effect in April, has long been a target of Republicans, including close Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital. Critics say the legislation is burdensome and would prompt financial advisers to offer only the most ordinary advice to clients for fear they could run afoul of the rules.

To make more significant changes, Trump will need the cooperation of Congress. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is preparing to unveil legislation that would revise Dodd Frank. The executive order marks the beginning of the end of the Dodd-Frank mistake, Hensarling said.

One of the authors of Dodd-Frank, former representative Barney Frank, D-Mass., was critical of new attacks on the law, taking note of how Trump is relying on people such as former Goldman Sachs leader Cohn, who come from the industry they would deregulate.

This is a betrayal of his pledge to help the ordinary citizen against the big guys, against Wall Street. He is giving Wall Street what it couldnt get through the political process, Frank said.

Big banks, which have spent millions complying with the law, have called for a tweaking of the rules, rather than a complete overall. But smaller banks are expected to push for more aggressive reform. They say they are too small to pose a threat to the financial system but still face extreme regulatory burdens.

The current one-size-fits-all style of regulation does not work for Main Street  local credit unions, small banks, and the consumers and small businesses they serve, said Jim Nussle, president of the Credit Union National Association. Were hopeful that the core principles spelled out today will help ensure community financial institutions and the millions of Americans that rely on them are able to operate in a more favorable environment.

The industry has been uniformly critical of the Volcker rule. Critics have said the rule, aimed at investments banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, unnecessarily limits some safe activities. The industry also has complained about rules intended to change the way Wall Street executives are paid, making it harder for them to earn big bonuses by waging risky financial bets.

The administrations efforts could also hit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created by Dodd-Frank. Republicans have been pushing for an overhaul of the way the agency is run, including calling for its director, Richard Cordray, to be fired. But Democrats say the independent agency has played an important role in cracking down on big banks and corporations accused of misleading consumers.

One of the surprising things to me is that they [appear] willing to go after a consumer agency that has already demonstrated how effective it is, said Michael Barr, a University of Michigan Law School professor and a key architect of Dodd-Frank while serving in the Treasury Department in 2009 and 2010.

Jim Millstein, founder of Millstein & Co. and chief restructuring officer at the Treasury Department from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, said undoing the law would be difficult. The Volcker rule represents just a few sentences of the law but hundreds of pages of regulations.

They should tread carefully. Only eight years ago we had the biggest financial crisis of our time, and they clearly dont want to be responsible for the next one, Millstein said.

Lawrence Summers, a former treasury secretary and head of Obamas National Economic Council, said some changes to Dodd-Frank are warranted, such as looking at ways to ease the burden on smaller banks and removing some excessive bureaucracy.

Is an indiscriminate attack spearheaded by former big bankers the right approach? Very unlikely. The systemic risks remain real, and we cant afford complacency, Summers said.

Asked about Trumps complaint that his friends had trouble getting loans, Summers said, In any world if a real estate developers good friends could get all the credit they wanted, there would be much to worry about in terms of financial stability.



Jonnelle Marte contributed to this report.



Trump signs executive orders on financial regulations:

http://wapo.st/2jLTKJW
Its no secret that many progressive Americans fetishize Canada as a northern utopia: It has universal health care, it legalized same-sex marriage a decade before the United States did, and it has a cute, lefty prime minister (complete with a tattoo and a literature degree). After President Trump restricted refugees, immigrants and travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries, Prime Justin Minister Trudeau tweeted: To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada. Cue collective liberal swoon.

The problem is that Canadas immigrant policy isnt quite as dreamy as Americans might imagine. It includes a virtual ban on disabled immigrants that goes back decades: Under Canadas Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, foreigners can be turned away if they might reasonably be expected to cause excessive demands on health or social services. What this means is families rejected for having deaf children and spouses denied because they use a wheelchair, a practice too harsh for even the United States difficult immigration system.

The number of disabled immigrants rejected by Canada is not known. Most of those turned away do not have the financial means to appeal, and few cases get media coverage. But the cases that are brought to the publics attention are eye-opening.

In 2000, multimillionaire David Hilewitz and his son, Gavin, were denied immigration from South Africa to Canada because Gavin has a mild developmental disability. Angela Chesters, a German woman who married a Canadian man abroad, was denied permanent residency after the couple moved to Canada because she has multiple sclerosis. The Chapman family was stopped at a Canadian airport when attempting to emigrate from Britain in 2008 because their daughter has a genetic abnormality . The Dutch DeJong family was turned down for immigration because one of their daughters has a mild intellectual disability. Felipe Montoya, recruited from Costa Rica to teach at a Toronto university, and his family couldnt get residency because his son has Down syndrome. In 2015, Canada denied Maria Victoria Venancio health care and attempted to deport her after she became a paraplegic.

According to Roy Hanes, a Canadian social-work scholar and disability advocate, even though Canadian law does not explicitly state that disabled people are banned, the notion of excessive demands still guides the immigration process. Potential immigrants must undergo physical and mental health exams to prove that their bodies and minds will not be a burden on Canadas socioeconomic structure. The policy, Hanes wrote in a history of Canadian immigration law, makes it extremely difficult for people with disabilities to become citizens.

Hanes explains that this exclusionary policy arose from the outdated concept that people with disabilities are not useful members of an economy because they supposedly use too many resources. The long-held concern of social dependence remained as a major obstacle for people with disabilities and it appears that people with disabilities were continuously evaluated for what they might not be able to do and not what they could do, he wrote. In this regard, immigration legislation was based on economic utilitarianism and people with disabilities ranked very low when considering their abilities in terms of economic productivity.

According to some scholars, this anti-disability immigration policy might violate Canadas constitution, not to mention the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. Despite the possibility of future reform  a piece of federal accessibility legislation that could have implications for immigration is in the works  Canadas discriminatory policies are entrenched, according to Global Disability Watch, and show no signs of abatement. The group added that Canadas practices show how to build a disability-free country.

Underlying this policy is the assumption, borne straight from the Wests nasty marriage of eugenics and capitalism, that a person ceases to matter if they cannot be a productive member of society. Worth is determined by contribution to a profit, by independence and by the ability to pull ones own weight. Of course the idea that anyone is ever truly independent, or that we could possibly survive without one another, is a complete myth. But its one of the central pillars of the Western capitalist story  and one that Canada has embraced when it comes to immigration.

In the United States, would-be immigrants must undergo physical and mental examinations, mostly to prove that they will not cause harm to others or commit crimes. The American system deserves plenty of criticism, but disability advocates on both sides of the border tend to see Canadas policy as considerably more strict in this regard. Yes, Trump is attempting new restrictions on immigration, while Canada advertises its openness. But how many immigrants being rerouted from the United States will be turned away because of disability in Canada, a supposed sanctuary? Lets not idealize a country that adheres to the ableist idea, rooted in eugenics, that any human being poses excessive demands.

  

Zaikowski is the author of In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse and A Child Is Being Killed.
A federal judge in Washington state declared Friday that he would temporarily block enforcement of President Donald Trumps controversial ban on entry to the United States, and government authorities immediately began taking steps that would allow those previously affected to travel, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The ruling from Judge James Robart was broader than similar ones before it, and it prompted officials to immediately communicate with airlines. At the same time, though, the White House said in a statement the Justice Department would at the earliest possible time file for an emergency stay of the outrageous ruling from the judge. Minutes later, it issued a similar statement removing the word outrageous.

The presidents order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people, the White House said.

The judges ruling set up a high-stakes legal confrontation between the new president and the judicial branch over his temporary ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries. In his opinion, Robert wrote that fundamental to the courts work was a vigilant recognition that it is but one of three equal branches of our federal government.

The court concludes that the circumstances brought before it today are such that it must intervene to fulfill its constitutional role in our tripart government, he wrote.

Robart granted a request from lawyers for the state of Washington who had asked him to stop the government from acting on the critical sections of Trumps order. Justice and State department officials had revealed earlier Friday that about 60,000  and possibly as many as 100,000  visas already have been provisionally revoked as a result of Trumps order. A U.S. official said, because of the court case, officials would examine the revoking of those visas so that people would be allowed to travel.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson hailed the case as the first of its kind and declared that it shuts down the executive order immediately. Robart, a judge appointed by George W. Bush, said in written order that U.S. officials should stop enforcing the key aspects of the ban: the halting of entry by refugees and citizens from certain countries. He did not specifically address the matter of those whose visas already had been revoked.

The Justice Department said in a statement that it was reviewing the courts order and will determine next steps. A State Department official said the agency was working closely with the Department of Homeland Security and our legal teams to determine how this affects our operations.

We will announce any changes affecting travelers to the United States as soon as that information is available, the official said.

Immigration lawyers said Friday night they were still assessing the Washington case, though they were heartened by it.

The order makes it clear that all of the main provisions of the executive order cannot be enforced at this time, said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Immigrants Rights Project. That means that a lot will have to change immediately, and the government will have to make clear how they intend to follow the order with respect to all of the ways in which immigrants here and abroad are being affected at the moment.

Since it was first rolled out a week ago, Trumps travel ban has been evolving  both because of legal challenges and as a result of decisions by the administration to walk back aspects of it. Green-card holders from the affected countries, for example, no longer need waivers to get into the United States, as they did when the order took effect. And the Department of Homeland Security asserted Friday that the order does not apply to dual citizens with passports from countries other than the seven listed.

The numbers of visas revoked, too, demonstrated the far-reaching impact of the order. Families have been split, students unable to pursue their education, and those in the United States unable to leave for fear of not being able to return  and not by the handful, but by the tens of thousands.

During a hearing in a lawsuit by two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport last Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia because of the new restrictions, a Justice Department lawyer said 100,000 visas had been revoked.

The figure, though, was immediately disputed by the State Department, which said the number of visas revoked was roughly 60,000. A spokeswoman said earlier Friday the revocations have no impact on the legal status of people already in the United States, but if those people leave the United States, their visas would no longer be valid.

About the same time, in Boston, a group of four students enrolled in area colleges, a researcher and the spouse of a permanent resident  all of whom came from countries affected by the ban  flew into the United States.

The group that entered was aboard the same flight from Frankfurt operated by the German airline Lufthansa, which a day earlier had noted on its website a court decision that it claimed had suspended Trumps decree on flights to Boston. Lawyers hailed the development as good news.

Weve got six more today than we had yesterday, said Susan Church, an attorney for the American Immigration Lawyers Association of New England.

Among those who made their way back to the United States were two undergraduate Massachusetts Institute of Technology students who had been visiting their families for winter break; as well as 27-year-old Behnam Partopour, a PhD student from Iran studying chemical engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who had been working on a project in Germany; and Samira Asgari, an Iranian scientist who was headed to Boston to conduct research at Brigham and Womens Hospital.

Colleen Wamback of Worcester Polytechnic Institute said Partopour had a student visa which was issued before the executive order but was delayed in getting to him. Asgari, on the other hand, had tried twice to board flights to the United States but was turned away because of the ban. She had filed a lawsuit over the matter.

Though federal judges in other parts of the country already had restrained enforcement of the ban, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughss decision in Boston went somewhat further  blocking U.S. officials from detaining or removing those who, absent the executive order, would be legally authorized to enter the United States. Burroughs also ordered that her ruling be communicated to airlines.

On Thursday, the airline Lufthansa had posted on its website night a vague notice that Trumps executive order was suspended on flights to Boston, citing the courts decision there. Officials with the ACLU hailed the posting, declaring on Twitter that Lufthansa was now boarding travelers from the seven banned countries in accordance with the order of the federal court in Massachusetts.

The airline, though, said that only those with valid travel documents would be eligible to board. On Jan. 27, the State Department had provisionally revoked all valid nonimmigrant and immigrant visas of nationals of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In a letter, Edward Ramotowski, State Department deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Consular Affairs, said that the revocation would not apply to any visa exempted on the basis of a determination made by the secretaries of State and Homeland Security and that those exemptions would be determined on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest.

Lufthansa later removed the language about the executive order being suspended. Then, on Friday, another federal judge ruled that his colleagues order should be allowed to expire, as it had been set to do, on Sunday. U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton declared that those suing had not demonstrated that they are likely to succeed on the merits of any of their claims.

Christina Semmel, a spokeswoman for Lufthansa, declined to comment on when the airline began allowing travel to Boston. She said Lufthansa was simply following guidance it and other carriers had received from U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

Church, with the American Immigration Lawyers Association of New England, said she knew of no official exemption for the passengers who made it to Boston.

Were telling everyone to try to get to Frankfurt or Munich, because they are letting them on the planes there, she said, before a judge ruled the court order there would expire.

U.S. Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., who had been in touch with lawyers and U.S. officials and was at the airport to greet those arriving, said he did not know if others might be able to get in through Boston.

Look, this is an awful executive order to begin with, but what made it even worse, was no one even knew what the hell it did, McGovern said. I feel ashamed that good people had to go through this awful process. Its just shameful. Im embarrassed by it all.

Federal judges in New York, California, Massachusetts and Virginia had already issued rulings temporarily blocking aspects of the Trump order  though the orders all seemed to be limited to people who had made their way to U.S. airports, or, in Virginias case, to certain people.

The New York and Massachusetts rulings both blocked the government from detaining or deporting anyone from the seven affected countries who could legally enter the U.S., and the Massachusetts ruling added the critical phrase absent the executive order. In California, a judge declared that U.S. officials were also prevented from blocking people from entering who had a valid visa.

Washington and Minnesota had filed a broad legal challenge to the order, alleging it was separating families, harming thousands of the States residents, damaging the States economies, hurting State-based companies, and undermining both States sovereign interest in remaining a welcoming place for immigrants and refugees. Jeffrey Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post and a Washington state resident, has spoken out against the ban.

With its suit ongoing, Washington state asked a federal judge there to block the order immediately, on a temporary basis. The Justice Department responded that the president had broad power to set immigration authority and that the states were unlikely to succeed in their challenge.

  

Doug Struck, Lori Aratani, Rachel Weiner, Abigail Hauslohner and Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.



What Trumps immigration ban misses about terrorist attacks in the U.S.

http://wapo.st/2jR8BGC
If anyone can explain why Betsy DeVos has become the most embattled nominee ever for education secretary, its Anna Caudill, Tennessee mother of two.

Caudill has a son with disabilities. Her public school district did such a poor job educating him, she says, that she is suing in federal court. She cant afford a private school, so she is home-schooling him. Shes exactly the kind of parent who would seem aligned with DeVos, who believes in using public funds to help parents pay for private education.

But Caudill strongly opposes DeVos.

Vouchers dont come with any oversight of the schools in which theyre spent, Caudill said. They put the parent in the position of trading a childs civil rights for money.

This 44-year-old is part of the small army of parents, teachers and others around the country who have risen up against DeVos as President Trumps nominee heads toward a breathtakingly close confirmation vote. They come from places as diverse as rural Alaska, inner-city Detroit and  like Caudill  suburban Nashville.

They have held protests and clogged Senate phone lines with calls to send a message: They dont want an education secretary who preaches escape from public schools. They want one who understands public schools and will work to improve them.

On Friday, the Republican-led Senate advanced the nomination toward final action, likely next week, that could result in a 50-50 split. That would force Vice President Pence to cast a rare tiebreaking vote.

Republicans say opposition to DeVos is the work of teachers unions and their toadies in the Democratic Party.

Organized labor is pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to resist accountability and deny equal educational opportunity to poor families, minorities and underrepresented communities, said Ed Patru, the spokesman for a group called Friends of Betsy DeVos.

It is true that unions have mobilized against DeVos, spreading the message that she is an enemy of public schools. But many others have joined the opposition.

There is plenty that can be done to fix our public schools, but her approach is wrong, said Katy Pape, 30, of Washington, D.C., who works for a company that advises businesses. Pape showed up to protest DeVos on Capitol Hill one chilly recent Sunday, but she isnt a teacher and she doesnt have children. She just attended public schools, like the vast majority of Americans  and she believes in them.

DeVos, a Michigan billionaire and major Republican donor, has for three decades used her wealth and political clout to advocate giving parents taxpayer-funded avenues to get out of public schools that arent serving them well. Many on the right have embraced her approach, calling her an outsider who has been willing to take on the education establishment and make radical changes.

But her nomination has revealed what Terry Moe, a Stanford political science professor and school voucher supporter, calls the nations public school ideology: Many Americans have a deep allegiance to public schools, flawed as they may be. And many dont appreciate threats to what they consider a fundamental civic institution.

For decades surveys have found that while the public holds a dim view of U.S. education writ broadly, people are generally pleased with their own local public schools. Polling by PDK International, an association of education professionals, shows that Americans believe the number one challenge facing public schools is lack of adequate funding.

Trumps pledge to expand funding for vouchers and charter schools and his nomination of DeVos have captured the attention of these public school backers, said Joshua Starr, PDKs chief executive, who is a former Montgomery County schools superintendent in Maryland. Theyre like, Wait. How is this going to work? Theyre going to take money from us.'

DeVos said during her confirmation hearing that, as education secretary, she would be a strong advocate for public schools. But she also left open the possibility that she would cut education funding and seek to privatize public schools.

That unsettled many senators, particularly those from rural states that voted for Trump where there are few alternatives to public schools. Republicans from Alaska and Maine have broken party lines to oppose DeVos. Moderate Democrats also said they could not support her.

I cant go home and explain it, cant go home and sell it, said Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va. Our funding mechanism is so fragile in a rural state like West Virginia, you take any monies away from that and divert it somewhere else, then some of the systems will collapse.

DeVos was not widely known before her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing, but video clips of her stumbles that evening went viral, turning her into a meme overnight.

She argued that schools should not be subject to a federal ban on guns because they may need to guard against potential grizzlies. And she had trouble answering basic policy questions, feeding the charge that  given her lack of personal and professional experience with public schools  she is unqualified to serve.

Many Republican senators defend DeVos as a conservative who would scale back the federal role in schools, returning the Education Department  which exercised unprecedented power under President Barack Obama  to its rightful place. She also has support among Republican governors and Democrats such as former D.C. mayor Anthony Williams, a voucher proponent.

Shell be an excellent education secretary, in my judgment, and an important one for this country, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said Friday.

Opponents view DeVos as not just another wealthy Trump nominee without government experience. They say she is seeking a job in which her decisions will affect thousands of schools serving millions of kids.

Laura Beck of Austin, Texas, is a 45-year-old mother of two who said shed never been politically active until two weeks ago, when she learned about DeVos. This one affects our children, she said. You might say, you should care about things that affect global warming, or national security. But when it affects children  its heartstring, mama-bear protectionism that youre seeing.

DeVos took heat for her suggestion during the hearing that states should decide whether to enforce a landmark 1975 federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, that protects students with disabilities. Later, she said she had been confused about the law, raising red flags for civil rights advocates and parents of children with special needs from both political parties.

About 6.5 million children from ages 3 to 21 receive special-education services under IDEA, or 13 percent of public school students. For schools that receive federal funding, ignoring the law is not an option.

DeVoss stumbles on IDEA were among the reasons Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, gave for opposing the nominee. But Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., whose wife is a special-education teacher, said he received assurances from DeVos that she would enforce the federal law. He plans to vote for her.

Im going to work as hard as I can to make sure where she is short in knowledge as secretary, Im going to stand by her side to give her that knowledge, Isakson said.

Shortly after her confirmation hearing, she clarified that she would enforce federal laws related to special education. She said she also believed in expanding parents choices, pointing to an Ohio program that requires students with disabilities to give up their federal IDEA rights to qualify for a voucher.

Tera Myers, the mother of a student with Down syndrome who has participated in that Ohio program, praised DeVos as a compassionate advocate for children with disabilities.

Myers wrote in the Hill newspaper that IDEA often fails to live up to its promise, and that DeVoss advocacy for private-school vouchers had helped children like her son find a better school. I know that Betsy DeVos has a big heart and deep concern for all students in America, especially the most vulnerable children, Myers wrote.

But Caudill, the Tennessee mother of two, sees vouchers far differently. She has done the math, and it doesnt work for her family.

Her son, Fu, whom she adopted from China, has a joint disorder that makes it difficult for him to walk or write quickly. He also has a language impairment.

Through a Tennessee program for students with disabilities, she could receive about $6,300 a year for private-school tuition, tutoring or other education services. But she would have to waive Fus rights under IDEA to a free and appropriate public education.

Even then, she woldnt be able to afford a private school. Her family of four lives on income of $60,000 a year and has annual medical expenses of roughly $13,000. Tuition at many faith-based schools hovers around $10,000, Caudill said, while a specialized school that could provide the services Fu needs would cost $40,000.

Rather than expanding a program useless to her, Caudill said, she wants the federal government to give public schools more money to help students with disabilities. Congress has for decades promised to give states 40 percent of the cost of providing special education, but it has never come close to paying that much.

On average, I think public schools are far better armed to do what IDEA expects of them, Caudill said. It needs to be a situation where the feds put their money where their mouth is.



Alejandra Matos and Ed OKeefe contributed to this story.
President Donald Trumps executive order last Friday making major changes to Americas immigration policies was met with silence by many evangelical leaders, but it also propelled others to speak out on behalf of refugees, including popular evangelical author Ann Voskamp. She traveled from her familys pig farm in Canada to join about 200 other people Thursday who prayed for refugees outside the Washington hotel where Trump was attending the National Prayer Breakfast.

By Gods grace, Ive done nothing to be born in the West, Voskamp said. How can I extend that grace to those who are in dire need?

Voskamp, who has a huge following of conservative evangelicals in the United States and whose book One Thousand Gifts sold 1 million copies, is well aware that she has waded into hot political territory. An Instagram photo on Thursday drew backlash from some of her fans, including one who said, I love you dearly and love your books . . . but I respectfully dont think you should enter into this fray.

In atweet, Voskamp wrote:

. . . this morning in DC, the Church quietly & beautifully sang in prayerful solidarity for a compassionate response to the worst global refugee crisis since WWII Not to protest any government, but to humbly & prayerfully join the quiet, public witness of the Church showing compassion to those fleeing the horrors of war. When we truly see the image of God in everyone we can truly begin to reflect the image of Christ to the world (PS to hear my whole heart please read the last several day posts on the blog: yesterdays post on the blog and Tuesdays  my heart is deeply for reconciliation and unity and love finding a way forward for all of us. I love you all  more than you know. Thank you for hearing my broken, falling short heart) 

While Voskamp stood outside the Washington Hilton holding a sign that read We Welcome Refugees, Trump stood inside the hotel, joking about Arnold Schwarzeneggers ratings as host of The Apprentice and telling the audience, We need security.

There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle, Trump told the audience. Not right. We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation.

Although Catholic leaders have issued forceful criticism of Trumps executive order, most evangelical megachurch pastors and leaders have been relatively silent on the action. Those who did speak out tried to balance the call for a secure nation while extending a hand to refugees fleeing for their lives.

Historically, Catholics, Mormons and evangelicals have long hosted ministries in the United States to help refugees and held religious liberty for all in high esteem. But in the name of national security, some have begun to see refugees as a potential threat. When asked what she thought of Trumps executive order, Voskamp grew quiet, knowing she was entering dicey territory. She said she understands and appreciates national security concerns.

I dont think security negates compassion, Voskamp said. We have to be motivated by compassion, not by fear.

Voskamp didnt want to use Trumps name, saying that it polarizes the issue. As soon as we bring someones name into the conversation, it can become a fence-dividing conversation, she said. I want to engage issues, big ideas and not anyones name.

Voskamp said she is especially troubled by the indefinite ban of Syrian refugees in light of what weve witnessed as a modern-day Holocaust.

The question of whether to welcome refugees to the United States did not become a hot-button issue for conservative religious voters until the past few years. When Matthew Soerens and Jenny Yang of the evangelical ministry World Relief released a book about immigration in 2009 called Welcoming the Stranger, Soerens said they barely touched on refugees because that policy was not seen as controversial. He points to the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, as moments when misinformation began to spread.

Soerens said he and Yang have worked with more than 1,000 churches in the past two years and have not had one church back out of their ministry to refugees. However, he said, I have been called on much more frequently to help a missions pastor respond to questions from an individual or two in the congregation who did not believe the church should be involved in importing terrorism. 

He believes that many Americans, including many evangelicals, do not understand the resettlement process in America. Some point to Europe, where hundreds of thousands of people have arrived to seek asylum without being vetted first. In contrast, the United States has received less than 20,000 Syrian refugees, and more than 70 percent of them are women or children 13 years old or younger.

Our theology is best expressed by our hospitality, by how well we open our doors and hearts in lives, especially to those who are fleeing our worst nightmares, Voskamp said. Refugees already go through an extreme vetting process, she said, despite Trumps call for even more scrutiny.

Eight in 10 white evangelicals voted for Trump, according to exit polls, many of whom said they wanted a president who would appoint a Supreme Court justice who opposed abortion rights and wanted someone who would advocate for religious freedom. And of religious groups who were polled by the Pew Research Center in October, evangelicals were the most likely to say the United States is not responsible for accepting Syrian refugees.

Ronnie Floyd, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, attended the prayer breakfast Thursday, and his Arkansas megachurch has a ministry to refugees. He said in an interview, however, that he supports Trumps executive order suspending refugee admissions, citing national security concerns.

We do not advise the government regarding issues of national security, and they do not advise us on who and how we serve, Floyd said.

The tension between church and state and ministry and security has flared over the issue of refugees, especially for evangelicals. In light of the U.S. election and attitudes toward refugees, Voskamp said she has struggled with the label evangelical in recent months, even though she calls herself one.

What does it mean to be evangelical in this particular climate? At certain times, its hard to think, wait, if thats what evangelical means, is that what I am? she said. That doesnt mean comfortable Christianity.

Voskamp knows that her activism could cost her fans. She released a book last fall called The Broken Way, and she chose not to wade into the 2016 election, saying that it was a family discussion for Americans to work out.

I think it was a time to pause, to listen well, to listen to peoples perspectives and to try to understand well, she said. Beyond the walls of its church, the world is looking at our witness. Does the church care about the oppressed and the broken? Or is the church only concerned about holding the keys? Are we willing to lay down our lives?

After photos of 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who drowned as his family tried to flee Syria, went viral in 2015, Voskamp co-founded an organization called We Welcome Refugees in partnership with World Relief and her friend Vickie Reddy, who runs the Justice Conference, which attracts evangelicals interested in social justice issues. On Thursday, Voskamp joined Reddy and other evangelical influencers like Michael Wear and Bob Goff, as well as people from other religious traditions.

In November, Voskamps family began sponsoring a Muslim Syrian family, helping to make sure they adjust to Canadas educational system, employment, medical care, English lessons and other needs. She said the family attends church with her family. You dont have to do that, she said she tells them, but they insist on coming out of respect for her family.

They talk about their cousins who are starving, who are eating grass, who have gone days without eating, Voskamp said. She said her family brought the refugee family to the airport to welcome other Syrian refugee families to the United States.

Voskamp also said she is heartened that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has opened Canadian borders to more refugees.

This particular issue on refugees isnt so much about pro- or anti- a particular politician or political party; this is about for the church, she said. It would be very easy for the church to grow more divisive on this issue. There has to be a way forward to hold on to this issue regardless of our own political leanings.
WASHINGTON  Democrats didnt wait to assemble the facts before they accused President Donald Trump of rewarding thugs in the Russian intelligence service by lifting certain sanctions. The facts dont support them.

The Trump administration on Thursday revised sanctions on the Russian intelligence service, FSB, to correct an unintended consequence of broader penalties placed on Russia by President Barack Obama. That prompted a hair-trigger response from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, and others.

PELOSI: Less than two weeks after walking into the White House, President Trump lifts sanctions on the Russian Security Service. Vladimir Putins thugs meddle with an American election, and President Trump gives them a thank you present. 

REP. ERIC SWALWELL, D-Calif: Russia attacked our democracy. It should be punished. Instead, President Trump is easing sanctions against its team of hackers, the FSB. He added

TRUMP: I havent eased anything.

SEAN SPICER, Trump press secretary: Regular course of action.

THE FACTS: They support Trump and his spokesman.

The Dec. 29 sanctions imposed by the Obama administration were not intended to ban the U.S. sale of cellphones, tablets and other consumer electronics to Russia. But they had that effect, by barring U.S. firms from getting the permits needed from the FSB to sell in Russia. The FSB has regulatory as well as intelligence responsibilities.

Trumps change does not materially benefit the FSB, except in a minuscule way. It allows U.S. firms to pay the FSB a required fee of up to $5,000 per year to export encryption-capable consumer electronics to that country. Its of more benefit to the U.S. sellers and Russian buyers of those devices. Its not unusual to fine-tune sanctions to permit certain transactions.

Now, the Treasury Department will allow certain transactions with the FSB that are necessary and ordinarily incident to requesting certain licenses and authorizations for the importation, distribution, or use of certain information technology products in the Russian Federation.

Democrats in particular are incensed at alleged Russian hacking of their partys communications in the campaign. And lawmakers from both parties have been watching for a sign that Trump will try to ease Obamas Russian sanctions in a consequential way, given his cozy rhetoric about Putin during and after the campaign. This isnt it.

Republican Sen. John McCain, hawkish on Russian sanctions, shrugged off the revision as an apparent technical fix. The same thought was voiced by Democrat Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, who said in a televised interview that former Obama administration officials viewed the Trump move as a technical correction.

EDITORS NOTE  A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
The Treasury Department on Friday placed new sanctions on Iran, which in turn vowed to retaliate, as the Trump administration threatened more punitive measures in response to ballistic missile tests and what it called other provocations.

The United States targeted 13 people and a dozen businesses said to be involved in helping develop Irans ballistic missile program or in assisting the elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in supporting groups that the United States considers terrorists, such as Lebanons Hezbollah.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States, said John Smith, acting director of Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control. Todays action is part of Treasurys ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad.

In response, the Iranian Foreign Ministry declared that it would impose legal restrictions on Americans involved in helping and founding regional terrorist groups. It did not provide names or further details.

The United States considers any test of a missile it believes can carry a nuclear payload a violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, but Iran insists that its missiles are for conventional defense and are permissible.

Iran says further U.S. sanctions are a violation of the nuclear accord that Tehran reached with the United States and five world powers in 2015. The agreement placed restrictions on Irans nuclear program to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions.

Shortly before the latest round of sanctions was announced, Ahmed Khatami, a senior Iranian cleric, said that if the White House expanded sanctions, it would be a clear violation of the nuclear deal.

We are living in a world full of wolves, like the United States, and in such a world we need arms to defend ourselves, Khatami said, according to Irans official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Neither side, for now, seems willing to revoke the agreement itself, but the Trump administration says it is determined to harden the U.S. approach to Tehran.

President Donald Trump tweeted Friday morning that Iran was playing with fire and said, They dont appreciate how kind President [Barack] Obama was to them. Not me.

Asked Thursday by reporters whether his administrations new posture could mean military action, Trump answered, Nothings off the table.

Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted in response Friday that Iran is unmoved by threats.

The U.S. sanctions are the first concrete evidence of the Trump administrations intention to take a more aggressive and confrontational approach toward Iran. The move was triggered by the Jan. 29 test of a medium-range ballistic missile, in what was widely considered to be Tehrans probing of how far the new administration is prepared to go.

The sanctions were already in the pipeline before Trump took office, White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters. The Obama administration had imposed sanctions against Iran for non-nuclear issues but held back some potential targets for future use.

The White House made clear that stronger steps may be coming.

National security adviser Michael Flynn issued a statement accusing Irans leaders of threatening the United States and its allies. He cited the brief capture of 10 U.S. sailors and their boats in January 2016; Iranian ships veering close to U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf; and repeated missile tests.

The international community has been too tolerant of Irans bad behavior, Flynn said. The ritual of convening a United Nations Security Council in an emergency meeting and issuing a strong statement is not enough. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Irans provocations that threaten our interests.

The days of turning a blind eye to Irans hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.

During last years presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly slammed the nuclear agreement. He said the Obama administration tolerated Tehrans continued ballistic missile tests and destabilizing activities in the region so as not to derail an agreement that was an important part of Obamas legacy.

A senior Trump administration official, speaking to reporters on the condition of anonymity under its ground rules, said Fridays sanctions are an initial step in an ongoing effort to force the government in Tehran to act differently.

Iran has to determine its response to our actions, the official said. Iran has a choice to make. We are going to continue to respond to their behavior in an ongoing way, at an appropriate level, to continue to pressure them to change their behavior.

The sanctions target businesses and individuals based in Iran, China and the Persian Gulf countries and identified three networks set up to circumvent sanctions. The Treasury Department also sanctioned several individuals allegedly involved in laundering money for Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The administrations moves won immediate praise from Republican leaders, many of whom were opponents or skeptics of the nuclear agreement.

Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed the administrations action.

This announcement makes clear that it is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Irans destabilizing behavior, he said. A coordinated, multifaceted effort to push back against a range of illicit Iranian behavior is long overdue.

But the National Iranian American Council, which describes itself as promoting understanding between Americans and Iranians, urged the administration and Congress to hold their fire.

The Trump administration is following a dangerous escalatory path with Iran without any diplomatic approach or exit strategy, it said in a statement. Its far easier to provoke crises in Twitter than to de-escalate them.



Erin Cunningham in Istanbul contributed to this report.

  

Video: Trump administration imposes new sanctions against Iran

In response to a ballistic missile test last week, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on several Iranian officials and entities involved in procurement of material for the missile testing. (The Washington Post)

Short URL: http://wapo.st/2jH5W3R

Embed code:
Officers have reopened Presbyterian Hospital following a suspicious package report there around midday Friday.

Police spokesman Fred Duran said Presbyterian employees noticed someone leave a bag or package and thought it was suspicious, so the bomb squad was called in. Police shut down Eastbound Central at I-25 while they investigated.

The roads were reopened and people were allowed back in the building about an hour later, when nothing suspicious was found.
SANTA FE  State prosecutors say they have a mountain of evidence that proves that Ricardo Martinez shot and killed teenagers Venancio Cisneros and AnaMarie Ojeda from the backseat of Cisneros car. But Martinezs attorney says Martinez and Cisneros were good friends, and that he was not angry with Cisneros when the shootings took place.

After almost three weeks of testimony, Santa Fe District Judge T. Glenn Ellington charged a jury with deciding whether Martinez, now 22, executed Cisneros 18, and Ojeda, 13, on the afternoon of Oct. 24, 2014, in the Valle Vista subdivision south of Santa Fe.

Investigators say Ojeda was shot first in the back of the head and killed instantly before Martinez turned the gun on her boyfriend and shot him three times, also in the back of the head. The case was turned over to the jury around 2 p.m. Thursday.

Prosecutor Peter Valencia said in closing arguments that Martinez had planned to kill the couple that day because Cisneros owed him money for cocaine.

He said Cisneros and Ojeda drove up to Martinezs house on Calle Inez on the southwest side of town and waited for half an hour before Martinez came out for a ride. Valencia said it was during the wait that Martinez thought about carrying out the murders.

Cisneros then drove the three to what became the crime scene, and he and Ojeda were killed minutes later, prosecutors say. Cocaine, marijuana and cash were found in Cisneros car, which Valencia said was proof that it was a planned execution and not a botched armed robbery.

He had 30 minutes to decide what he wanted to do that day, Valencia said. He got into the car with an evil, evil purpose to kill those kids. The plan the whole time was to kill them. You dont rob someone and forget to take the drugs and money.

But Mark Earnest, Martinezs lawyer, said Martinez and Cisneros were good friends.

But Cisneros was a thief who stole from drug dealers, leaving him with enemies who may have wanted to hurt him, Earnest added. He also discredited witness Emilio Benitez, who said he saw Martinez leaving the crime scene shortly after he heard gunshots, because Benitez has a medical condition that hinders his eyesight.

Joseph Montoya, an inmate who was previously housed in the same pod as Martinez in the Santa Fe County jail, testified during the trial that Martinez confessed to killing the couple because Cisneros owed him money for drugs.

Earnest said Montoya was an opportunist because he went to detectives with the information only after he picked up new charges in Albuquerque and wanted to strike a plea deal. The defense lawyer cited testimony of Denise Montoya, Joseph Montoyas ex-girlfriend. She told you under oath that hes a compulsive liar, Earnest said.

Earnest said the state is relying on flimsy evidence from Benitez and Montoya, and told jurors that they should not convict Martinez based on that. Hes not guilty, Earnest said. The state hasnt done its job.
Picture use

Unless otherwise stated all photos on this site are copyrighted  Jim Budd. They should not be used without authorisation and due credit. Please contact me on budmac@btinternet.com for all use. There will usually be a charge for use in commercial publications  papers, magazines, websites etc. and for other commercial uses. Photos that are used for commercial use without permission will be charged double  the fee for the use of photo and for breach of copyright. Commercial organisations asking to use photos for no payment may not always receive a polite response.
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on March 28 in the case of a transgender teenager from Virginia who sued his school board for the right to use the boys bathroom, a case that could shape how public schools across the country accommodate transgender students.

Gavin Grimm, now a senior at Gloucester High School, sued in 2015 after the board barred him from the boys bathroom. His lawyers argue that the policy, which requires students to use bathrooms aligned with their biological sex, violates a federal law against sex discrimination in public schools.

The court will also consider guidance the Obama administration issued in May that required public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choosing. If the Trump administration rescinds the guidance, some legal observers have said the high court could send the Grimm case back to a lower court.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond sided with Grimm in April, deferring to the Obama administrations position that federal law protected his right to use the boys bathroom. A U.S. district judge later granted Grimm a preliminary injunction that would have allowed him to use the boys bathroom. The Gloucester County school board appealed the case all the way to the high court. Justices issued a stay on the case, meaning Grimm remains barred from the boys bathroom during his senior year.
PARIS  A French soldier shot and seriously wounded a knife-wielding man Friday who attempted to attack security forces outside the Louvre museum. Frances prime minister called the assault terrorist in nature.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at a news briefing that the attacker is a 29-year-old Egyptian national and that he was unknown to intelligence services. French media reported that he shouted Allahu akbar, or God is great in Arabic, as he charged the soldier. Molins said that for now it is unknown whether the attacker acted on instruction from abroad or alone and spontaneously.

The incident  whose terrorist nature, said French President Francois Hollande, was hardly in doubt  immediately stoked fears across Paris after a wave of terrorist bloodshed in the French capital and across France in the past two years. That included the November 2015 rampage through the city that claimed 130 lives and last Julys truck ramming in Nice that left 86 people dead.

In Washington, President Donald Trump, a week after imposing a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority nations and before any official information about the attacker had emerged, tweeted: A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right, populist National Front party and an increasingly popular contender for the French presidency, issued a similar message almost immediately. This event confirms that the poison of Islamist terrorism is far from having been eradicated and that the gravity of the problem has not yet been taken into account by public officials, she said in a statement in French.

By contrast, most other major French politicians  including the other candidates in the upcoming elections, slated for April and May  responded by praising the bravery of the soldiers involved.

Most polls show that the openly Islamophobic Le Pen is almost certain to qualify for the second and final round of the vote. And as her principal opponent, the centrist conservative Francois Fillon, struggles to fend off an embarrassing nepotism scandal, Le Pens appeal could strengthen in the absence of a traditionally strong center-right candidate.

For months, analysts have speculated that another major terrorist aggression on the scale of the Paris or Nice attacks  and perpetrated by Islamic State militants  could boost the National Fronts slim chances of a win, lending the party a credible excuse to accuse the political establishment of mismanaging the migrant crisis in France as well as its national security.

In any case, the Louvre incident was far from a major terrorist attack. According to police information, the soldier assaulted Friday belonged to Operation Sentinel, an elite security patrol that critics often have considered a costly and ineffective means of fighting terrorism. With support for soldiers trending on social media, Fridays attack could represent a victory of sorts for the oft-maligned French security services.

Molins said the attacker was armed with two machetes, one in each hand, and was carrying two backpacks as he attempted to enter the museums shopping center. When he was refused entry to the Carrousel du Louvre, a shopping mall beneath the museum, he pulled out a knife and attacked the soldier, who then fired five rounds into the attackers stomach, Frances Interior Ministry tweeted.

Bernard Cazeneuve, Frances prime minister, described the knife attack as clearly terrorist in nature. No explosives were found in the mans bags, the Interior Ministry tweeted.

The soldier was slightly wounded in the scalp, and the attacker is in critical condition. The Interior Ministry also said a second person was arrested in connection with the attack.

Authorities evacuated the area. Officials at the Louvre, one of the worlds major tourist attractions and the historic home of the Mona Lisa, said the museum was closed and that visitors already inside were being kept there, according to the Interior Ministry.

The museum announced that it would reopen Saturday.

  

Schmidt reported from Washington.
The day after Donald Trump was elected president, the Rev. Susan Springer wrote to her congregation that they should strive to behave as Godly people who spread hope even though the world is clasping its head in its hands and crying out in fear.

That Sunday, one of the ushers at Springers church was Neil Gorsuch  soon to become President Trumps nominee for the open spot on the Supreme Court.

Gorsuch has staked his own conservative positions on numerous issues, including topics of religious concern: In cases involving the art supply chain Hobby Lobby and the Catholic order Little Sisters of the Poor, both of which eventually reached the Supreme Court, Gorsuch ruled in favor of religious conservatives who said the Affordable Care Act infringed on their religious freedom to not pay for contraception.

But at church, he often hears a more liberal point of view.

He belongs to St. Johns Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado, the Episcopal diocese of Colorado confirmed on Wednesday. Church bulletins show that the judge has been an usher three times in recent months. His wife Louise frequently leads the intercessory prayer and reads the weekly Scripture at Sunday services, and his daughters assist in ceremonial duties during church services as acolytes.

If he joins the Supreme Court, Gorsuch as an Episcopalian would be the first Protestant member since 2010. Five current members are Catholic and three are Jewish, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia was Catholic as well.

The last time a Protestant was appointed was in 1990, when President George H. W. Bush picked David Souter  also an Episcopalian. The shift in the Courts religious makeup over the past quarter-century has been widely noted; for most of the countrys history, it was an entirely or predominantly Protestant body, just like the presidency and the U.S. Congress.

Religious groups of varying political persuasions expressed their opinions of Gorsuchs nomination on Tuesday and Wednesday. Liberal faith groups and nontheistic groups including the Union for Reform Judaism, the Secular Coalition for America and the Freedom from Religion Foundation voiced strong concerns. Many evangelical Christians  who spoke frequently when they voted for Trump of their hopes for a conservative justice who would overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion  met the news of Gorsuchs nomination with glee.

And some started reading the tea leaves to see what they could glean about Gorsuchs own faith. The Episcopal Church has embraced more liberal positions on a variety of issues, including performing same-sex commitment ceremonies since the 1980s and eventually same-sex marriages. Many parishes have broken away, joining different Anglican denominations instead, over the issue of homosexuality.

But this large mainline Protestant denomination includes great political diversity among its 2 million members, and the level of political activism varies widely from one parish to the next.

Mike Orr, a spokesman for the Episcopal Church in Colorado, described Gorsuchs church, St. Johns, as a congregation that does a lot of social justice and advocacy. He said, Its a healthy and vibrant congregation. Its very diverse in its congregants as well as its ministry.

The first word that St. Johns uses to describe itself on its website and Facebook page is inclusive, and the church is led by a female rector. On its website, the church encourages members to write letters to Congress asking for actions addressing climate change.

On gun control, Gorsuch is expected to favor the rights of gun owners; the National Rifle Association released a statement Tuesday praising his nomination.

His church, meanwhile, decided after 49 people were fatally shot in a gay nightclub in Orlando that it would ring its bells 49 times each Wednesday from July 6 to the presidential election, as a way of asking members of Congress to pass stricter gun restrictions. Some of us are pro-gun and some of us are anti-gun. Even so, as people of faith we share in common an aversion to gun violence, the church said in a Facebook post. We hope the ringing . . . compels our elected lawmakers to hear and remember their solemn duty to both the dead and the living: to stop political posturing and to work together to pass legislation that fosters greater safety.

Staff at St. Johns declined to speak about Gorsuch. One member, who has ushered at services with Gorsuch, said she didnt even know he was a judge.

George Conger, a conservative Episcopal priest in Florida, said that he wouldnt read too much about Gorsuchs own politics into the church he attends. It is the social parish in Boulder, Conger wrote in an email. There is not really a strong tie between the beliefs of a rector in a social parish and the beliefs of its members . . . this parish has people from across the theological spectrum.

A 2004 article in the journal Anglican and Episcopal History examined the two Episcopal churches in Boulder. At the time, the writer described St. Johns as the older and more traditional church building, but the more theologically and politically liberal of the two. The churches diverged on the subject of homosexuality, the article said: the other church, St. Aidans, underlined the word traditional on its website while St. Johns added the words AIDS-aware to indicate its welcome to LGBT people.

St. Johns, the article noted, was also the parish of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, the beauty pageant contestant whose 1996 murder became a subject of national interest.

Gorsuch and his family did not move to Colorado until 10 years later, when George W. Bush appointed him to be a judge there.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey contributed to this report.
Media Konnect, a global media and entertainment platform, successfully wrapped up its maiden short film competition with more than 450 entries received from across the country. The competition short-listed 6 entries to be exclusively screened by an eminent jury panel of prominent industry names such as Viveck Vaswani, Ananth Mahadevan, and Milap Zaveri. Being judged on original content, creativity and technique, Time in a Box and Inertia were adjudged the winners of the competition; Time In A Box was, surprisingly, made on a meager budget of less than Rs. 200.

Time in a Box was made by Christine Jose Sales, a first year communications student from the Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communications (SIMC), Pune, while the other winning film, Inertia was directed by Nikhil Sudersanan and produced by Meena Sudersanan. Time in a Box, inspired by the works of Christopher Nolan, was an instant hit with the jury, who took a keen note of its small production budget. Inertia was a film based on a portrayal of self-contradictions in a persons decision-making process. The winning filmmakers will get a chance to shoot their next film at the Ramoji Krian Virtual Reality Floor in Hyderabad as well as a mentorship from industry experts.

Ranjit Thakur, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Media Konnect, praised the superior content on display during the short film competition, and further added that the entire intention of this endeavor is to provide a platform for young filmmakers to showcase their talent and open up opportunities to collaborate with industry experts.

National Award Winning screenwriter and jury at the Media Konnect short film competition, Ananth Mahadevan, said,  To see content these young filmmakers have created is truly inspirational, and it was great to see the variety of technique, creativity and content on display. To think that a film could be made in Rs. 180 and win a competition, it is definitely something our entire industry can learn from. Its the collaboration, content and technique that makes great cinema, not just heavy budgets, and this competition provided further evidence to this. It was a great experience for me to part of the jury for this competition, and I wish all the participants all the best. We, surely, have a great future of filmmakers to come.

Post the success of the short film competition; Media Konnect looks to launch a Film Club, which will also allow budding filmmakers to screen their creations at their proprietary set up. Media Konnect invites professionals to connect, collaborate and create from across the world on their digital global exchange platform. The brand looks to create more such opportunities for young filmmakers to showcase their talent, receive feedback, and open up opportunities of success.
DB Corp Limited (DBCL), Indias largest print media company and home to flagship newspapers DainikBhaskar, Divya Bhaskar, Divya Marathi and Saurashtra Samachar, said today that the publication commemorated its 20th anniversary of its glorious presence in Rajasthan, in December 2016.

Commenting on the occasion, Kaacon Sethi, Chief Corporate Marketing Officer, DB Corp said, Dainik Bhaskars glorious 20 years in Rajasthan has been the most wonderful experience since it holds great historic significance for the Group. It has been the most exciting 2 decades that witnessed both the States growth as well as ours. As the state developed significantly in terms of infrastructure, economy, affluence, education, IT sector, jobs Dainik Bhaskar has also come a long way strengthening presence in Rajasthan and today it is an indispensable part of our readers lives. We take the opportunity to thank our readers and all business associates who have played an integral role in our success and growth in Rajasthan. We remain committed to work even harder to fulfil our responsibility as the leading news provider in the state as well as active enablers of socio-economic change in the region.

The 20th Anniversary celebrations with the theme Dainik Bhaskar Utsav 2016 were conducted over 9 days in Jaipur that included a medley of exciting and interactive events with leading personalities across a wide segment of themes. Readers and audiences enjoyed special sessions with Baba Ramdev along with daily interactions with eminent personalities such as Piyush Pandey, Super chef Sanjeev Kapoor,

Aamir Khan and Arnab Goswami among others. Bollywood personalities entertained and enthralled audiences with Tiger Shroffs dance performance, Sunidhi Chauhans high voltage concert and a melodious evening of music with Kailash Kher along with several audience activation initiatives. The 9 day event saw our readers participating in huge numbers throughout the festivity. To mark the event a new ad campaign has been designed by Ogilvy&Mather for national markets, as a tribute to the state and a testimony to the progress and development witnessed by Dainik Bhaskar over the last 2 decades in Rajasthan. The campaign which will be published in print and online media, will be supported by exciting activation efforts like the Rajasthani Pagdi-tying competition, mailers and giveaways. A special marble inlay plate has also been designed for the occasion as a giveaway for guests and participants.
The Indian Coast Guard has launched a campaign that encourages challenging candidates to be a part of the Coast Guard family. Conceptualised and executed by Grey Group India for the Indian Coast Guard, A Different Challenge Everyday talks to the aspirations of todays youth. It showcases the varied opportunities that this multi-mission organisation has to offer to the youth, who are in search of a job that isnt mundane.

From assisting fisherman and saving human lives, to guarding our countrymen and preserving marine biodiversity. The campaign aims to invite individuals who are ready to take up a new challenge at work, every day of the year, said Varun Goswami, Executive Creative Director, Grey Group India.

Ketan Desai, President - North, Grey Group India, elaborated, On our visit to the Indian Coast Guard organisation, we met the officers and men of the Coast Guard team who are the ultimate heroes fighting sea challenges in the right spirit every single day. Capturing this notion in mind, we intended to create this campaign that beautifully captures the significance of the Indian Coast Guard services to the nation and exhibiting its prowess in maritime affairs.

Shot in multiple locations, over a 15-day schedule, the campaign includes a 5-minute short film and 30-second TVC. While the former is aimed at showcasing the strength and capabilities of the Indian Coast Guard to other similar forces around the world, the television commercial is part of the recruitment drive.

Campaign credits:

Creative Team: Arjun Bhimwal, Zishan Mohammed, Gautam Bhasin, Varun Goswami

Account Management: Ketan Desai, Pulak Bhattacharya

Grey Works - Agency Producer: Samir Chadha

Production House: Asylum Films

Director: Aiman Ali

Producer: Bhavna Singh, Vidya Muraleedharan
Priya Mukherjee has joined the top management team of Republic TV, Arnab Goswamis new TV and digital media tech venture, as Head of Distribution. Mukherjee moves from Bloomberg Quint, where she was the TV Distribution Head. As the much-awaited news channel prepares to make its debut, she will look after the entire distribution portfolio as Republic TV will be available across India and international markets.

Goswami has recruited Vikas Khanchandani as CEO of Republic TV and is in the process of announcing more names for his top level management to be a part of his editorial and digital team, who would make his new venture a comprehensive set-up for the new media landscape. Republic TV will be an independent platform for journalists and content professionals. The venture aspires to create a movement that will put the power of journalism into the hands of the citizens, and will be Indias first footprint into global journalism.

Commenting on Mukherjee's appointment, Arnab Goswami, Founder of Republic TV, said, We are very excited to get Priya on board our growing Republic TV team. Shes an exceptional professional with an outstanding track record. She is an emerging young leader in the television business. Priya will work closely with our CEO Vikas Khanchandani to take us into every home in the country.

On her new role, Mukherjee said, I am excited to be part of Republic TV, which I believe will play a significant role to revolutionise the news and current affairs genre cutting across segments of viewers and the public. This is going to be a wonderful journey.

Mukherjee brings with her a wide experience of 17 years in the media industry with achievements in broadcasting and distribution operations. She has established an impressive track record of being part of launch teams of television channels across India, while successfully helping them make inroads in their genres. She has earlier worked with organisations such as Discovery Channel, One Alliance, Network18 and Den Network.
We can help you make sense of the agribusiness industry, extending from chemicals and fertilizers used as inputs into agriculture, to the commodities, food and by-products that are an output to farming, with policy and regulation applied at every step of the value chain.
Joe Flatman explores half a century of reports from the past.

The CA articles mentioned by Joe Flatman in this months column below can be accessed for free for one month via Exact Editions, starting 1 February. Use the links within the text to jump to the individual issues, or click on the covers below. Print subscribers can add digital access to their account for just 12 a year  this includes everything from the last 50 years, right back to Issue 1! Call our dedicated subscriptions team on 020 8819 5580, quoting DIGI324, to add digital access to your account, or click here for more information.

With a surname like Selkirk, it is perhaps unsurprising that CAs founders Andrew and Wendy made regular forays to Scotland to report on its archaeology from the earliest days of the magazine. The wealth of archaeology across Scotland, the often stunning locations of sites, and the long history of antiquarian and archaeological endeavour in the country all make it an especially appealing and rewarding place to study and appreciate the past. This latest column excavating the CA archive as part of the magazines 50th anniversary celebrations is thus devoted to all things Scottish featured over the years.

EARLY STARTS

Scotland gets a flying mention in CA 1, but the first proper site report comes in CA 2 (May 1967) about Dun Ardtreck. As CA describes it, Dun Ardtreck is situated on the west coast of the Isle of Skye, opposite Bracadale. The fort is on the top of an isolated rocky knoll, one edge of which is a cliff which falls precipitously 75ft into the sea. In the summer of 1966, the Selkirks visited the research excavations then under way: Euan MacKie was investigating the relationship and development of duns and brochs in the Western Isles. MacKie, for anyone unfamiliar with his work, is a distinguished Scottish archaeologist with a long history of work at the Hunterian Museum of the University of Glasgow, where in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s he was in charge of prehistoric collections.

CA 3 (July 1967) gave CAs readers the chance to distract themselves from lurid newspaper stories chronicling the Summer of Love with a special report on early Christianity in Britain. This included a detailed article by the archaeologist Charles Thomas (best known for his work in Cornwall) on How Christianity Came to Northern Britain that mentions a number of major Scottish Christian sites, alongside others in Cumberland (now Cumbria) and Northumberland. It was only in CA 34 (September 1972), however, that a whole issue was devoted to Scotland. CA 34s backcover map demonstrates the number of locations visited (and related mileage driven) by the Selkirks the previous year. Intriguingly, rather than exploring sites of different periods, CA 34 focused solely on Neolithic chambered tombs, reflecting the intensity of research in Scotland on these structures in the 1960s and early 1970s. CA 90 (January 1984) includes two stunning Scottish case-studies. The first of these is a bittersweet review of the Mesolithic archaeology of the island of Jura, one of the Inner Hebrides. The report acts as a memorial to the archaeologist John Mercer, who died unexpectedly in July 1982, robbing Scottish prehistory of one of its most dedicated workers. The article, written not by the Selkirks but by Mercers colleague Susan Seawright, is a wonderful overview of the complex prehistory of the island. More happily, CA 90 also has a detailed account of one of the most comprehensive excavations of a distinctive Scottish site-type: Oakbank Iron Age crannog on Loch Tay, where excavations led by Nicholas Dixon investigated the site both above and below water in the early 1980s.

SPECIAL ISSUES

The contents of CA 127 (December 1991) came courtesy of a special invitation to boost the magazines Scottish coverage. As the editorial explains: When David Breeze became Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Scotland he soon approached us with a request: Current Archaeology had not been devoting enough space to Scotland, so how about a special Scottish issue? He therefore invited me up to Edinburgh, where I spent a delightful week staying with his family, and then went on to visit Glasgow, Aberdeen, and as far north as Lairg. The result was an embarrassment of riches. Little wonder, then, that ever since, Scottish special editions have been a regular feature, with numerous follow-ups, as well as single-site reports over the years.

A wide range of places are explored in CA 127, and the Selkirks also managed to fit in one of their periodic interviews, appropriately with the man who encouraged them northwards, David Breeze. The 1991 special edition is also particularly pleasing as it includes some colour photographs, which by this period in CAs history were coming into regular use as printing technologies advanced. Most notable is a fine cover photograph of Suenos Stone, a standing stone of the 9th-10th century AD. This lies on the north-easterly edge of Forres, and the cover photograph shows the largest Pictish stone of its type in Scotland in all its glory. Its most recent appearance in the media has been for more depressing reasons, after vandals caused 10,000-worth of damage to the glass panels protecting the monument in December 2016. Mercifully, the stone itself does not seem to have been damaged.

Later Scottish special editions include CA 131 (October 1992), with another wonderful cover and related story, this time of a whalebone plaque from the 6th-7th century AD Viking boat burial at Scar, Orkney. The Selkirks were back again in CA 147 (April 1996). This issue focused especially on Hebridean archaeology from all ages, including the extraordinarily long-lived multiperiod (Neolithic to modern) settlement of Udal on North Uist, the prehistoric standing stones of Druim Dubh on the island of Lewis & Harris, and the Callanish Project and Valtos Peninsula, also on Lewis, a Neolithic and Bronze Age ritual site. More recently, CA 228 (March 2009) features a celebration of 100 years of the Scottish and Welsh Royal Commissions, which is particularly worth mentioning for the range of sites  from prehistory to present  that it discusses. It also contains an article on the dramatic Viking Age settlement on the Brough of Deerness, a sea-stack on the east coast of Mainland Orkney.

OVER IN ORKNEY

Indeed, Orkney has done particularly well over the more recent years of CA, with further appearances in CA 253 (April 2011, which also includes a report on the archaeology of Stirling Castle), CA 268 (July 2012), and the Orkney special in CA 275 (February 2013). This special edition offers focused site reports on the Links of Noltland (a Neolithic and later Bronze Age settlement in north Westray) and South Howe (part of the larger Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site), and a series of interlinked site reports on the Orcadian island of Rousay.

More sites from across Scotland have been reported on over the years than I have room to mention here. It truly is, as Andrew Selkirk wrote, an embarrassment of riches. Do write in with suggestions for other places that I have not mentioned, or begin your own excavations into the CA archive, as well as into your own records  memories or photos of sites CA has visited over the years are always welcome.

Discover old issues

Read the articles discussed by Joe for free online via Exact Editions  you can find the links to the individual articles in the text above, or click here to see all issues of Current Archaeology. The articles mentioned in this column will be available for one month, from 1 February. Print subscribers can add digital access to the entire back catalogue of CA for just 12 a year  simply call us on 020 8819 5580 and quote DIGI324.
SUV

Head honcho Sergio Marchionne let it slip that the next-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee is a candidate for the Giorgio platform back in January, but now the sweater-wearing chief exec is back with an even bigger statement.Heres what Sergio told Automotive News : The investment in Alfa Romeo and certainly the technical investment in the architecture was something that was designed to benefit more than Alfa. Im happy that we have finally found clarity of thought in the extension of these architectures well beyond Alfa." Marchionne also told the cited publication, the whole Maserati development beyond 2018 will be underpinned by the backbone of the Alfa Romeo brand.So thats Jeep and Maserati confirmed by Marchionne until this point of the story. More or less official reports from not that long ago also hint that the next-gen Dodge Charger, Challenger, and Barracuda will also take advantage of the Italian company's miracle platform. How adaptable can a vehicle architecture get, I wonder. If the peeps over at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will really pull off this mammoth undertaking, then my hat is off to them.The Alfa Romeo Giorgio platform is often dubbed as a technical gem because it makes use of Ferrari know-how. Having experienced it in the Giulia Quadrifoglio and its Ferrari-derived V6, Im pretty sure the Alfa Romeo fanboys were right. Ferraris current head of research and development, Philipe Krief, is the man who made the Giorgio vehicle architecture so good, all thanks to his management and a cracking team of engineers.At the present moment, only the Giulia compact executive sedan and Stelvio compact luxurymake use of the Giorgio platform.
Zpad? i ce dac? #GiuliaDePolitie e Veloce, adic rapid i cu traciune integral! A photo posted by Alfa Romeo Romania (@alfaromeoro) on Feb 2, 2017 at 9:50am PST

Cel mai nou recrut al Poliiei Rutiere Ilfov: Giulia Veloce 2.0 turbo 280 CP. De astzi, pe DN1, Autostrada A3 i oseaua de Centur. #GiuliaDePolitie A photo posted by Alfa Romeo Romania (@alfaromeoro) on Feb 1, 2017 at 9:31am PST

After Italy, Romania is the second country in the world to welcome the Giulia into its police force. Auto Italia, which is the local Alfa Romeo importer, gave the Romanian traffic police a Giulia Veloce as part of a 12-month partnership. As for the role it will undertake, the Italian sedan will be put to good use on the Bucharest Motorway Ring Road, the A3 Motorway, on National Road 1, the northern area of Bucharest, and a handful of towns in Ilfov County.The pictured Alfa, as expected from a vehicle used by the police, prides itself on trademark law enforcement graphics, a blue-and-red light bar, the whole nine yards basically. Under the hood, this example of the breed is animated by Fiat Chryslers 2.0-liter GME turbocharged four-cylinder engine , which is mated to a ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic and Q4 all-wheel-drive.With 280 PS (276 hp) and 400 Nm (295 lb-ft) available from 2,250 rpm, the Giulia Veloce also happens to be extremely proficient at holding its own when the situation calls for pedal-to-the-metal action. The sprint to 100 km/h (62 mph) takes just 5.2 seconds, whereas top speed is 240 km/h (149 mph).Other than this partnership with the Alfa Romeo brand's importer in Romania, the local police also makes use of two Toyota Auris Hybrid hatchbacks in the force's quest to establish law and order on the public roads. The police's main fleet, however, isn't as impressive. More to the point, Im referring to the Dacia Logan sedan and MCV, plus the VW Polo with the 1.2 TSI 90 PS engine.On that note, heres a question for you: strictly speaking from an aesthetic standpoint, what would you like to see most in your rearview mirror? A Dacia, a Volkswagen, or an Alfa Romeo? Don't forget to choose wisely, chiefly because the 2017 Alfa Romeo Giulia Veloce is the fastest of the three.
You see, the 911 R was born as a response to all those voices complaining about the GT3 and GT3 RS coming in PDK-only form. The German automaker rolled its sleeve, started searching through its delightful parts bin, and came up with what is now the second most expensive model in the 911 line-up (after the Turbo S Cabriolet).Given Porsche's demonstration, we can now open a whole new chapter when it comes to dreaming about the kind of machines the company could offer. And here we are, talking about a potential special edition that would unleash the 987 Boxster's full potential. The rendering above, which comes from Hansen Art , shows a potential Boxster GT4.Porsche's engineering genius can only limit the dynamic drawbacks of the Boxster's open top form up to a point. This is why the company has always bet on the Cayman when willing to prove a mid-engined go-fast point, while the Boxster special editions were not 100 percent focused on going fast.This is also true for the pre-revamp Boxster and Cayman, with the first's Spyder incarnation also playing the styling card, while the Cayman GT4, with its 911 GT3 suspension, is an all-out dynamic effort.However, we're here to show you what could happen if Porsche ever reached the conclusion that it needs to make the most out of the 718 Boxster platform.This digitally manipulated image shows a 718 Boxster wearing 911 GT3 RS-inspired elements, such as the louvres on the front wings or the rear wing.While the 718 Boxster will obviously get its swansong when the time is right, don't expect Porsche to come up with a model such as the one we see here, as the Boxster-Cayman split mentioned above still stands. But a tuner such as Ruf could come up with such a proposal.
Friday, February 03, 2017 Friday Clippings From Our Newsroom Floor Sen. Baca He doesn't look like a giant killer but GOP state Senator



It was a whirlwind campaign for Baca who was handled by the Governor's political machine which had worked for years to oust Sanchez, the Governor's longtime arch-enemy.



When Sanchez lost it was noted by this corner and others that the new majority leader would be even more liberal than Sanchez and the Governor might have cut off her nose to spite her face. Far from it. The new leader has shown himself to be much less of a thorn in the Martinez side.



When it comes to putting Greg Baca in place and putting Michael Sanchez in his place, the word from the Fourth Floor is "no regrets."



BUILDING SOMETHING



Ye gads! We're



Construction of the new McKinnon Center for Management at the University of New Mexicos Robert O. Anderson School of Management officially got underway. The school is constructing a new 61,000-square-foot building for 21st Century classrooms, community spaces and career planning and placement services. The $25 million building is scheduled to open in mid-2018. The project was made possible, in part, by a $5 million donation from the McKinnon family. . . Ian McKinnon, and his wife, Sonnet, an alumna of UNM Anderson, are long-time supporters of the school.



Ian McKinnon is a graduate of the ABQ Academy and made a ton of money in the investment business back east where he and his wife live. Maybe he should run for governor here and campaign on a pledge to keep building up the state even if we stay broke.



DEFENDING DAVIS



Our email has contained a number of swipes at Dem ABQ City Councilor Pat Davis who is eyeing a bid for the ABQ congressional seat. A Dem ward chair said that Davis has failed to take on Republican Mayor Berry as expected and that his support of the controversial ART project on Central Avenue makes his hopes of landing the Dem nomination for the congressional seat "delusional." A member of the Davis political team responds:



The Dem ward chair comments about Davis are off the mark. When Berry proposed privatizing law enforcement, Davis refused to let the bill go forward. And on ART, the mayor and council had already approved ART spending before Davis was elected. Until he showed up, Nob Hill businesses weren't being heard. He forced the mayor to add a new stop in the International District for working people. Also, when the mayor announced plans to ask the legislature to pre-empt local minimum wage laws, Davis launched a campaign to oppose it causing the Mayor to back off. It says a lot that insider Dems are already taking pot shots at Pat. They know he'll be a strong candidate.



THE BOTTOM LINES



In a first draft Thursday we said Deb Haaland is the "former chair" of the state Dem Party. That won't officially happen until the new chair is elected at the end of April. And we omitted the first name of Dem BernCo Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins. Both women are likely candidates for the Dem US House seat being vacated by Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham who is seeking the Dem Guv nod in '18.



Thanks for stopping by this week.



This is the home of New Mexico politics.







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( c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2017 He doesn't look like a giant killer but GOP state Senator Greg Baca can rightfully claim that title. Here he is being sworn in after defeating a true legislative giant--state Senate Majority Leader Michael Sanchez of Belen.It was a whirlwind campaign for Baca who was handled by the Governor's political machine which had worked for years to oust Sanchez, the Governor's longtime arch-enemy.When Sanchez lost it was noted by this corner and others that the new majority leader would be even more liberal than Sanchez and the Governor might have cut off her nose to spite her face. Far from it. The new leader has shown himself to be much less of a thorn in the Martinez side.When it comes to putting Greg Baca in place and putting Michael Sanchez in his place, the word from the Fourth Floor is "no regrets."Ye gads! We're building something for the future in New Mexico:Ian McKinnon is a graduate of the ABQ Academy and made a ton of money in the investment business back east where he and his wife live. Maybe he should run for governor here and campaign on a pledge to keep building up the state even if we stay broke.Our email has contained a number of swipes at Dem ABQ City Councilor Pat Davis who is eyeing a bid for the ABQ congressional seat. A Dem ward chair said that Davis has failed to take on Republican Mayor Berry as expected and that his support of the controversial ART project on Central Avenue makes his hopes of landing the Dem nomination for the congressional seat "delusional." A member of the Davis political team responds:In a first draft Thursday we said Deb Haaland is the "former chair" of the state Dem Party. That won't officially happen until the new chair is elected at the end of April. And we omitted the first name of Dem BernCo Commissioner Maggie Hart Stebbins. Both women are likely candidates for the Dem US House seat being vacated by Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham who is seeking the Dem Guv nod in '18.Thanks for stopping by this week.This is the home of New Mexico politics. E-mail your news and comments. (jmonahan@ix.netcom.com)




First up, Joe Biden is thinking about dropping tariffs against China. But theres a spy in prison this morning that helps us understand why he shouldnt. Ill explain.





Your second brief, If youre looking for a good paying job, you might consider being a CEO for a health insurance company. One executive made $142M dollars last year. Let's talk about that.





And as always, Im keeping an eye out for developing stories. Put this one on your radar. Mexican cartels are grooming American kids online and paying them cash to traffic illegals or run drugs across the border. Ill share details.





If you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief, remember to subscribe and listen daily at podfollow.com/pdb.

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HOPE Inside Opens at Historic Site of Dr. Kings Final Speech: Mason Temple, Memphis

Last Thursday, January 26th, 2017, I was honored to stand with my friends Bryan Jordan, Chairman & CEO of First Tennessee Bank, Presiding Bishop Charles E. Blake, Bishop Edwin Bass and the Church of God in Christ family for the announcement of our HOPE Inside @ Mason Temple, Memphis.

Mason Temple was the location where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr gave his final Ive Been to the Mountaintop speech before his assassination on April 4th, 1968. Dr. King was in Memphis, TN. to support the striking garbage workers, as part of his Poor Peoples Campaign.

COGIC has fully restored this regal building and headquarters for the Church of God in Christ, recently completely a museum and office complex. The church owns the land surrounding the building, and is now planning on developing low to moderate income housing in the surrounding community.

My personal history with Presiding Bishop Blake dates back to the days following the 1992 Rodney King Riots in Los Angeles, when I first founded Operation HOPE. Bishop Blake was one of the few important leaders back then who backed (and protected) me completely, as I went about my work of building Operation HOPE in the early years of HOPEs development. It was Presiding Bishop Blake and Dr. Cecil Chip Murray who made sure that I was protected. For this, I will never forget Bishop Blake, and forever be grateful.

Here is a little history that most people do not know: Bishop Blake was part of the civil rights movement, walking side by side with civil rights legends  including Dr. King.

Presiding Bishop Blake was, at the age of 22, one of the young leaders who huddled in the home of my personal hero, Ambassador Andrew Young  then the chief lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the movement. Later on, Bishop Blake provided counsel and support to me  age 26. And Ambassador Young connects us both.

I am honored to see Operation HOPE today as a national partner with COGIC Urban Initiatives for financial literacy. And last week, to increase our level of engagement and commitment with our first HOPE Inside location  at historic Mason Temple.

To date, Operation HOPE has opened a HOPE Inside location at Dr. Kings home church, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and now we have opened a HOPE Inside location at the place of his final speech, Mason Temple.

HOPE is on the move.

Lets go

John Hope Bryant
Workshops:

Check out the links below for our workshops!
She had only one nipple. A long-term breast cancer survivor of nearly 7 years, my grandmother was now suffering with end-stage metastatic disease. After enduring what seemed like endless rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, she had undergone a modified radical mastectomy. Shortly after the procedure, she was offered breast reconstructive surgery. But when the surgeon explained that grafting for the areola would take place from tissue of her own labia minora, my grandmother unwaveringly refused. Her response was, When you get to be 72 years old, nipples are no longer considered necessities. They're luxuries. You just don't need them anymore.

I knew my Memaw had elected to donate her body to science long before we received word of her terminal prognosis. As an aspiring healthcare professional, I admired her decision, but now, as she grew sicker and the start of PA school drew nearer, I was gripped by sadness and anxiety. Being the unperturbed spitfire that she was, Memaw would often joke about becoming the cadaver of my future peers, who would soon be tickled and perplexed by all of her anatomical variants and peculiarities. And then it happened. The night before my first day of PA school to be precise. I had just finished unloading the last few boxes into my new apartment when I received the phone call. Amanda, your grandmother doesn't have much longer. This is it.

I was rightfully pulled over for speeding that nightabout 33 mph above the posted legal limit. But thanks to a very empathetic and forgiving law enforcement officer, I was finally able to arrive home safely just in time to be with Memaw before she passed. Our entire family was present; the room was solemn, yet peaceful. I sat down to hold her cold, wrinkled hand, with nails newly manicured in a rather vibrant fuchsia-pink color with sparkles. Of course. Today was Sunday, and every other Saturday was mani-pedi dayone of my favorite traditions growing up with her. When Memaw became too ill to participate in her usual outings, one of the hospice nurses was kind enough to come to the house every other weekend to ensure a fresh polish change, and sometimes provide a foot massage. Despite her poor health, her spirit was far from bedridden. Even on her weakest days, Memaw didn't hesitate to tell the nurse that the polish wasn't quite parallel to the edge of her cuticle where she wanted it to be.

Holding her hand, I found myself preoccupied with why I wasn't more disturbed by the very imminent approach of my grandmother's death. Working in the ED as a scribe for years, I had encountered death on multiple occasions, and through various means. Although we usually don't like to think about death unless compelled by tragedy or circumstance, avoiding such thoughts, or the reality of death, is not possible for those working in medicine. Thus, healthcare practitioners must find a balance between being too disconnected and too emotionally engaged. If there is too much emotion, the provider runs the risk of burnout. If there is too much disconnection, the quality of patient care is jeopardized. While we do our best to cope in a way that upholds professionalism, at the end of the day, death is universally heartbreaking. We can put on the white coat, write the scripts, and call the codes, but regardless of how it happens or how often we see it, death is one of those inevitable things that pull at the heart, no matter how far from home it hits.

Behind my stoicism, all I could think about was our last day spent together. I was studying for a medical terminology test. Always a faithful supporter of my studies, Memaw would give her best effort at quizzing me on definitions, as I would try to make sense of her butchered pronunciations while exercising my short-term memory skills. Cheyne-Stokes respirations. I responded. It's actually pronounced Chain-Stokes respirations: an abnormal pattern of breathing, usually seen during the end of life, characterized by fluctuations in the depth of respiration; first deep, then shallow, finally resulting in apnea.

As I began to watch her lips purse for air, I knew this was the end. It did not take long for the hospice team to arrive along with the hearse that would escort her to the nearest affiliated medical institution. And that was it. Before I knew it, my sweet Memaw, with all of her joy and sass, was off to improve the world of medical education through her generous gift of self.

Twelve weeks later, I found myself on my first day of human anatomy lab staring helplessly at the top of a formalin-stained metal tank labeled #14. I remember anxiously reading the syllabus at least three times the night before. Rule #1 of anatomy lab: No food or drink allowed. Self-explanatory. Rule #2: No cadaver parts can be taken from the labthis is grave robbery and a misdemeanor. But perhaps the rule I struggled with the most was Rule #3: Respect should be shown to the cadaver at all times. Now, in my opinion, demonstrating respect to patients who are alive is simple. A preceptor once laid it out for me quite nicely. First, always wash your hands. Second, commit-to-sit, because nobody likes being talked down to. Third, don't pass judgment. And finally, a smile goes a long way. Piece of cake. In contrast, showing respect to my cadaver proved to be a difficult task for me, simply because I did not know how. How does one display reverence for another as layers of fat and necrotic tissue are being reflected in order to expose an underlying abdominal rectus muscle? How does one express admiration when just a single nick of the scalpel completely mutilates the delicate brachial plexus? How do I truly appreciate this experience as the dissection manual instructs me to crack open the thoracic cavity and place my hands on the heart so that I may better appreciate the coronary arteries and their companion veins?

He had only one testicle, my cadaver at tank #14. He soon became my first patientand likely my most compliant one at that, always so gracious and forgiving of my plentiful mistakes. But more importantly, he also became my first teacher. Silently, he bestowed a body of knowledge that would transcend far beyond the subject of human anatomy. These lessons were nonpalpable, not discernable in textbooks. Knowing that this man's final act of service was to give completely of himself, entrusting a total stranger with his most prized mortal possession so that she could learn, arouses a sense of humility I can hardly begin to describe. This example of sacrifice is the very one that will direct my own model of selflessness exhibited toward patients as a future physician assistant.

Losing my grandmother was undoubtedly one of the most difficult things I have ever endured. As my clinical year in PA school draws to a close, it's hard not to think about all the memorable moments she missed out on. But in a more poignant way than I could have ever imagined, she was a part of it, and will continue to be, because somewhere there is a peer or colleague of mine who, when listening to the heart of a patient, will recall holding hers. Like the man in tank #14 and many of those who have gone before, Memaw so generously bestowed an intangible gift that will go on to convey healing for generations to come. For that, I am deeply indebted.
More than 120 people turned out at Shannon Airport this evening to show their opposition to US President Donald Trump's controversial travel ban.

The protest was organised after President Trump signed an executive order last week which effectively banned citizens of seven named Muslim-majority countries from travelling to the United States.

Similar protests have been taking place in Dublin and Cork.

Despite the rain, a huge crowd protest against Trump ban at the US embassy in Dublin. Well done everyone #trumpban #irelnad #dublin. pic.twitter.com/awa4kHDYhi  Razan Ibraheem () (@RazanIRL) February 2, 2017

Hundreds turn out at US Embassy for anti-Trump protest pic.twitter.com/g3aOjGQfcS  Cormac Fitzgerald (@Cormfitz) February 2, 2017

Peace and anti-racism groups claim that the implementation of the ban by US immigration pre-clearance at Shannon Airport is currently is in breach of Irish and EU anti-discrimination laws, Mr Lannon added.

At Shannon Airport tonight, protestor carried posters, flags and banners including one that said Trump Out and another saying Refugees Welcome.

Security was stepped up ahead of the protest with Gardai taking up posts at the entrance to the airport from as early as 4.30pm.

Airport Police officers also erected security lighting close to where the protest was held while also patrolling the airport perimeter.

A second cordon with barriers was set up another 100 metres along the airport road to ensure no protestors attempted to reach the terminal building.

Organisers had hoped to be allowed up to the terminal and hand a letter into airport management however no agreement could be reached on this.

They were, however, allowed march as far as the second cordon and hand in a letter of protest to airport management.
Businesses remain more optimistic than consumers about Nebraska's economy, according to two monthly surveys from the Bureau of Business Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The monthly Survey of Nebraska Business indicated that Nebraskas business confidence index rose to 107.8 in January from a value of 105.7 in December 2016. Both values are well above the neutral level of 100, and indicate that business confidence is strong.

Eric Thompson, an economist who serves as bureau director, said businesses expressed more confidence about both sales and employment prospects in January.

Consumer confidence, however, continues to lag.

The monthly Survey of Nebraska Households showed that Nebraskas consumer confidence index rose to 89.2 in January from a value of 88.2 in December. While the index improved, it remained well below the neutral level of 100, indicating that Nebraska consumer confidence remains weak.

Poor wage growth for working- and middle-class households may be the reason that consumers continue to feel less confident than businesses, said Thompson.

The surveys are sent each month to 500 randomly selected Nebraska businesses and households. During December, 139 businesses responded to the Survey of Nebraska Business, for a response rate of 28 percent. There were 127 respondents to the Survey of Nebraska Households, for a response rate of 25 percent.

For more information, the full survey report is available on the Bureau of Business Research website, www.bbr.unl.edu.
Natural Born Feeder author and model Roz Purcell and her sister Rachel are the latest celebs to give their verdict of First Dates Ireland.

After the dating show airs tonight, the sisters will give their reaction to this weeks star date on RTE Player. Oh and Roz reveals that she may have a crush on the restaurants handsome Maitre D, Mateo.
Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail, by Jonathan Chait (Custom House, 272 pp., $27)

Modern liberalism was born without a navel. Progressive forerunners of todays liberals, such as Woodrow Wilson and the historian Charles Beard, tried to undercut the influence of the Founding Fathers and remake America as an expression of expert knowledge. Long before the Founders were denounced as slavers, Beard tried to show that they were fat cats who used constitutional parchment to advance their own greedy interests.

The appeal to expertise was undercut by the poverty of the Great Societys attempts to rebuild the inner cities. Left adrift, liberals took to arguing that, as they had long insisted in constitutional matters, America was best guided by its underlying values. But it wasnt until the mid-1980s that arguments pioneered by Justice William O. Douglas were translated into politics.

In 1980, Ted Kennedy challenged fellow Democrat and incumbent president Jimmy Carter for his partys nomination. When CBS journalist Roger Mudd asked Kennedy why he wanted to run, however, the Massachusetts senator was left stammering. JFKs little brother hemmed and hawed his way out of the nomination. A few years later, the eloquent (if less than effectual) governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, reframed liberalism in terms of its underlying values.

Cuomo and New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan were Catholics, politicians, and intellectuals. But while Moynihan merely wrote about family breakdown, Cuomo sought to bandage the wounds, blurring the lines between public and private. He spoke of the family of New York, as if the intimacy and obligations of private life could be widely extended. If the state embraced the right values, Cuomo asserted, it could repair the devastating wounds inflicted by fatherless families. Feigning naivete, Cuomo insisted that government with a soul had an obligation to assist those who, for whatever inscrutable reason, have been left out by fate.

In his 1984 keynote address to the Democratic National Convention, Cuomo electrified the crowd with his eloquence and argument by analogy. He presented the story of his Italian immigrant parents as a way to refine liberalism. The basis of his familys success was entirely scrutable: they were dedicated to each other, and to hard work. The Cuomos ascendance over time was, as Mario saw it, a model for society. When the family came to America, they were briefly on welfare. Of course, as Cuomo told the DNC, we should have only the government we need, but we must insist on all the government we need.

After a dozen years in the governors mansion, it was hard to discern Cuomos accomplishments. The two most commonly cited were the construction of new prisons in the Empire States impoverished far northeast and the construction of new restrooms on the New York Thruway. In 2004, 20 years after Cuomos famous speech, the young Illinois state senator Barack Obama, who also had no significant accomplishments, employed Cuomo-like rhetorical skills to put himself on the political map with his own keynote convention speech. The Democrats got an earful of one of Obamas two virtuesspeechifying and campaigning. But unlike the Hamlet of the Hudson, Obama made a dash for the White House.

Jonathan Chaits argument-cum-hagiography is contained in his books title, Audacity: How Barack Obama Defied his Critics and Created a Legacy that Will Prevail. The logic and substance of the book demonstrate that Chait, a New York political columnist and Obama cheerleader, wrote in expectation of a Hillary Clinton presidency that would carry Obamas accomplishments forward. The books most pointed sections are directed at the leftists who didnt succumb to Obamas postmodernist pirouetting. Chait aims his fire at such liberal heavyweights as Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and Keith Olbermann, who occasionally forgot to join the echo chamber. But as a candidate, Clinton had a hard time specifying Obamas achievements while campaigning in effect for his third term.

Chait attributes Obamas failures to Republicans, who, he says, produced a paralyzing polarization. When he cant lay blame on the GOP, he attributes Obamas failures to structural trends beyond any presidents repair. The honorable path for Chait would have been to rethink his argument in light of Clintons defeat. After all, Donald Trumps victory was a repudiation of the Obama legacy of slow economic growth, heightened racial tensions, and global instability. Had Chait taken the time to recast his thesis in light of Clintons electoral embarrassment, he might have noticed that Obamas farewell addressthe lengthiest in historywas short on deeds but long on references to himself. A fitting valedictory, the speech contained 79 references to I or to me.

Chaits rush to publish has the virtue of demonstrating the journalistic audacity that allowed failure to be repackaged as success. Obamas great achievement was that, like Cuomo, he was able to make hard-edged, partisan politics seem moderate. Few will bother to read Chaits book. Those who do will get a good look at the collapse of American journalism and how it enabled the Obama presidency, even as it undermined the nation.

Photo by Darren Hauck/Getty Images
Unity Bands sold for World Cancer Day 2017

The aim of Cancer Research UKs World Cancer Day campaign on the 4 February each year is to emulate other flag days, such as the Royal British Legions Poppy Day. Massengagement events such as these can have a significant impact on raising funds and awareness to help vital work by charities.

Unlike the Poppy Appeal, however, we dont have a 100 years of history and an established icon to help us mirror its huge fundraising achievements, not yet anyway. What we do have is an important purpose  to beat cancer sooner  and a disease that impacts and unites us all.
A staff member at World Vision who has been accused of diverting aid funding away from the charity to militant group Hamas has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Mohammad El Halabi, who was manager of operations in Gaza, was arrested in June 2016 for his links to the fundamentalist political organisation in Palestine. Reports at the time said he was accused of funnelling approximately 5.3m a year of World Vision funds to Hamas  including some 60,000 worth of British donations.

In a statement World Vision said he had not seen any credible evidence supporting the charges and that the charity supports the ongoing presumption of his innocence.

It said that none of the allegations against Mohammad El Halabi have been tested in an open court, but that World Vision condemns any diversion of aid funding and strongly condemns any act of terrorism or support for those activities.

The statement said: World Vision has not seen any credible evidence supporting the charges. Access to any such evidence would help us address any potential gaps in our systems. We remain committed to understand the truth behind the allegations made against Mohammad El Halabi and determine what, if any, changes we need to make.

El Halabi appeared in court in Israel where he pleaded not guilty to all charges made against him.

Conducting a review of operations in Gaza

World Vision said that for several months its humanitarian work in Gaza has been suspended as the charity conducts a throrough and wide-ranging review of its operations.

The charity said: This includes a forensic audit currently underway by a leading global accounting firm. This action is part of World Visions commitment to act in a fully transparent and open manner. The review to date has not generated any concerns about diversion of World Vision resources.

We remain deeply concerned with this situation, and are saddened by the impact on Gazas children and their families. Aid from the international community remains a lifeline for 1.1 million people in Gaza, and one in four children in Gaza are in need of psychosocial support.
The story of Donald Trumps political rise is incomplete without mention of a balkanized information environment. But the flurry of news emanating from the White House over the past week reveals a particularly clear view of two parallel media universes: mainstream and right-wing. A side-by-side comparison of their relative portrayals of the Trump administration illustrates the gaping divide between these divergent narrativesand the difficulty ahead for news organizations to regain broad-based public trust. The problem is not one of just alternative facts, it turns out, but alternative realities.

The view from the Fox News-Breitbart axisan admittedly vague and not necessarily conservative ecosystem that includes blogs, Facebook pages, and conspiracy sitesis rosy. From that lens, Trump is fulfilling his campaign promises to shore up our borders and target radical Islamic terrorism. Violent leftists, backed by a George Soros-funded conspiracy, are responding with a crusade for political correctness. The crooked, drive-by media is the opposition. Questions of implementation, process, and communication are sideshows. For now, Trump is winning again, Breitbarts Matthew Boyle wrote in a Monday analysis casting Trump as a Reaganesque figure. And hes in charge.

Contrast that with prevailing mainstream narratives of executive incompetence, administrative chaos, and public outrage, all framed within nods to creeping authoritarianism and philosophical questions about American ideals. Nearly every new president has a learning curve, The New York Times wrote in its own analysis of the transition. But the curve seems especially steep for Mr. Trump. The mainstream view of the world exhibits far more reporting and critical thinking, and the presidents low approval ratings suggests this aggressive journalism is having an impact.

At the same time, mainstream journalists are actively diminishing their own credibility by hyperventilating about every unconfirmed Trump rumor that pops on Twitter. He photoshopped his hands! Hes allowing companies to do business with Russian security agencies! Hes on an unannounced helicopter flight! The group freakout only confuses audiences and alienates Trump-wary Republicans to the point that legitimate stories dont get traction.

The extent to which many otherwise smart Trump defenders won't believe ANYTHING from mainstream press is remarkable. Poisonous to democracy.  Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) February 2, 2017

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How to bridge that gap is perhaps the central question facing the press in our era of alternative realities. Snapshots from a head-spinning week in national politics provide glimpses of the challenge ahead:

Muslim ban

Mainstream media framed Trumps refugee order in the context of religion from the outset. After all, candidate Trump did propose a Muslim ban on the campaign trail. He added in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network last week that Christians would get priority in his vetting process. Still, despite many protesters reading between those lines, journalists largely described the action as targeting Muslim-majority countries or the like.

Conservative media has pushed back ferociously on the idea that religion is part of the equation, from the august National Review to far-less-august Daily Caller. Breitbart has run multiple pieces arguing the same, describing the list of countries as eminently sensible.

Fox Newss lead Trump acolyte, Sean Hannity, lobbed a characteristic softball question to Vice President Mike Pence with the following windup on Thursday: Its been misreported as a Muslim ban. Yet the news media continues to say its a Muslim ban. Is that fake news? Hannity reports; you decide.

The spirit of protest

The Sunday morning talk shows led with the chaos and outrage that came in the wake of Trumps hastily implemented order. CNN and MSNBC covered the ensuing protests copiously on cable and online. And Monday morning newspapers across the countrybig and smallled with the fallout. They were filled with tales of travelers in limbo, families separated, and peaceful demonstrations:

Right-wing outlets gave shorter shrift to both the human stories of stranded travelers and the protests that followed. Breitbart reported on how the demonstrations snarled traffic, seething on Facebook, People who actually work for a living are growing frustrated with the protestors showcasing their selective outrage that was nowhere to be found when Obama banned refugees.

Hugely popular radio host Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, drove home the conspiratorial Soros theme when discussing lawsuits filed on behalf of those affected: The protests at the airports bought and paid for by George Soros, prearranged. People have been sitting and waiting for the moment to be cued to action.They have been poised and waiting for marching orders, and the executive order was issued and the marching orders went out. The protests are typical of the way the media does things.

Who is bankrolling the protests taking place at airports across the country? More with @newtgingrich right after the break #Hannity  Sean Hannity (@seanhannity) January 31, 2017

Selective outrage

When an unrelated and comparatively small protest of right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos shut down the University of California, Berkeley campus, The New York Times devoted just a short news item to it online. Mainstream media had largely moved on to a bungled special forces raid in Yemen, second-day analysis of Trumps Supreme Court pick, and Americas increasingly tenuous relationship with its allies, among other news.

Right-wing media, on the other hand, portrayed Berkeley as the frontline of the culture war. Gateway Pundit, a popular blog veering toward conspiracy theory, ran seven pieces on the news between Wednesday and Thursday. Breitbart similarly went hard on the storyline, particularly after Trumpthat is, Sheriff Trumpfloated the idea of withdrawing federal funds from the university. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson interviewed Yiannopoulous in a widely shared conversation about political correctness run amok.

Milo Yiannopoulos on @UCBerkeley riot: "That is the price you pay for being a libertarian or conservative on American college campuses." pic.twitter.com/XiSSjSj1KH  Fox News (@FoxNews) February 3, 2017

Crushing dissent

Mainstream journalists immediately reverted to Nixonian analogies when Trump fired his acting attorney general, Sally Yates, for refusing to enforce his refugee order. The Times and Post both plastered the news on their front pages dueling six-column headlines. Much attention was also given to the text of Trumps announcement, which said that Yates betrayed the Department of Justice.

Right-wing media focused on Trumps right to fire Yates for insubordination, rather than what read like an unhinged response to dissent. The narratives diverged even further when news broke soon after that a dissent cable had been widely circulated throughout the State Department. Fox & Friends transmitted the message with Trumps signature catchphrase, Youre fired. Breitbart Senior Editor Joel B. Pollak took the hardline stance in his analysis of the administrative pushback, arguing that the bureaucracy must surrender.

There is a place for criticizing the president  namely, outside of the government. There are places for challenging Trumps authority  namely, the opposition benches, the courts, and ultimately the ballot box. Those who abuse the power of the bureaucracy to defy the electorate, and the Constitution, may think themselves heroes, but they are destroying the foundations of liberal democracy. They must go.

American symbols

There was even disagreement over the metaphorical power conveyed by the Statue of Liberty. On Monday, Lester Holt hosted NBC Nightly News, the highest-rated evening news program, with Lady Liberty standing over his shoulder. Behind me, he opened the show, the Statue of Liberty, which for nearly 130 years has symbolized the welcome arms of a country of immigrants. But tonight she also stands as a symbolic flashpoint in a country in the midst of soul searching over the limits of its generosity in an age of international terrorism.

It was a fairly down-the-middle, seemingly uncontroversial report. But Limbaugh fired back on his radio show the following day, alerting listeners that Emma Lazaruss famous poem on the statues base was added years after it was erected. The Statue of Liberty does not say, You want in? This is the way! Limbaugh said. Now, I imagine some of you are saying, Rush, did you get a little overboard on this? No, folks. It may sound like Im going a little overboard, but Im a stickler for truth and fact here, and this is all being used to work up what is already deranged lunacy on the left.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

David Uberti is a writer in New York. He was previously a media reporter for Gizmodo Media Group and a staff writer for CJR. Follow him on Twitter @DavidUberti.
Volkswagen has agreed to pay at least $1.2 billion in buybacks and compensation to settle claims from U.S. owners of cars with larger diesel engines that the company rigged to cheat on emissions tests.

And the German automaker could pay even more  as much as $4 billion  if it cant repair many of the cars in a way that satisfies regulators.

The proposed settlement filed late Tuesday before Judge Charles R. Breyer in U.S. District Court in San Francisco covers owners of some 78,000 Audi, Volkswagen and Porsche cars with 3.0-liter diesel engines.

Volkswagen has already agreed on a $15 billion settlement with owners of some 500,000 smaller, 2.0-liter diesel engines.

Volkswagen has now settled most U.S. consumer claims as it tries to repair a tarnished reputation. All of our customers with affected vehicles in the United States will have a resolution available to them, Hinrich J. Woebcken, head of Volkswagen Group of America, said in a statement.

The company still faces lawsuits from fewer than 5,000 owners of 2.0-liter diesels who opted out of the settlement, as well as some shareholder suits and numerous lawsuits filed by states for violating pollution laws.

VW also has settled a U.S. criminal investigation by agreeing to pay $4.3 billion, but a probe of employee behavior continues with seven people charged in the U.S. In all, VW will pay more than $20 billion to settle civil and criminal claims in the U.S. alone.

Also pending is whether VW can adequately fix some older 2.0-liter engines. If it cant, VW will have to buy back all vehicles with the smaller diesel engines. A March 3 deadline is approaching.

Legal issues also remain in Europe. Former CEO Martin Winterkorn and 36 others are under criminal investigation in Germany, where investors also are suing the company. Volkswagen shares plunged after the scandal broke in September of 2015.

Under Tuesdays proposed settlement, owners of 20,000 older 3.0-liter models dating back to 2009-2012, which cannot be fixed to meet pollution standards, will be offered buybacks or trade-ins. In addition, they will receive compensation ranging from $7,755 to $13,880, according to a statement from owners attorneys.

People who bought 58,000 newer cars from model years 2013-16, which can be fixed, will get compensation of $7,039 to $16,114. Volkswagen says those cars can be made to comply with pollution limits. If VW cant fix the newer cars to regulators satisfaction, then the owners attorneys will go back to court to seek buybacks.

VWs proposed repair must win approval from U.S. environmental authorities by an agreed deadline. If not, buybacks could push the cost as high as the $4.04 billion laid out in court documents.

The deal must still get court approval to take effect. Volkswagen said final approval would take at least until May.

Also Tuesday, parts supplier Robert Bosch GmbH agreed to pay $327.5 million to settle claims from consumers and dealers regarding 2.0-liter and 3.0-liter engines, while not accepting it was at fault. Typical 2.0-liter owners will get $350 in addition to what they get from VW, while 3.0-liter owners will get about $1,500, said Elizabeth Cabraser, lead attorney for the owners. Bosch made the so-called defeat device that enabled the cheating.

Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner said the company settled so it could focus on its business.

Cabraser said shes confident that the VW settlements will be completed even if President Donald Trump cuts personnel at the EPA, which has to review all of the engine repairs, noting that Breyer and the California Air Resources Board are still involved. The former head of Trumps transition team at the agency has said he expects significant budget and staff cuts.

Wolfsburg-based Volkswagen has admitted it equipped diesel engines with software that detected when the vehicle was being tested and turned the emissions controls off during every day driving. The result was cars that emitted some 40 times the U.S. limits of nitrogen oxides, a pollutant that can harm peoples health. Some 11 million cars worldwide have the deceptive software.

Auto Writer Tom Krisher contributed from Detroit.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The Mission to Seafarers has announced that Tom Boardley, executive vice president of Lloyds Register (LR) has been appointed as the new Chairman of the global maritime welfare charity. Tom will formally take on the role from the incumbent Chairman Robert Woods CBE on the April 1 2017.

Woods commented: I am pleased to be handing over the chairmanship of The Mission to Seafarers to Tom Boardley. Tom has a great reputation within the industry, and I have no doubt is the right person to steer the Mission through the next stage of the charitys evolution. I wish him all the very best in his new role.

Boardley, who has been with LR since 2009, has 30 years experience in the maritime sector, and has worked in senior positions at some of the worlds largest shipping concerns. He is currently the president of RINA (Royal Institution of Naval Architects) and before that, president of the UK Chamber of Shipping (2015/2016) and was appointed to the UK Maritime Growth Study Advisory Committee in January 2015.

Founded in 1856, and entirely funded by voluntary donations, todays Mission to Seafarers is a registered charity that offers emergency assistance, practical support, and a friendly welcome to crews visiting over 200 ports around the world in 50 countries.
Royal Caribbean International today confirmed more sailings to Cuba on the Empress of the Seas.

The company has expanded its Caribbean itineraries sailing from Tampa, to include new 4- and 5-night cruises with day and overnight visits to Havana, along with stops in Key West, FL. and Cozumel, Mexico.

The new sailings are available through Nov. 4, 2017, and all sailings are now open for sale.






While there is abundant data in other areas of credit unions critical functions, such as loans, strategy, marketing, and regulation, accounting is a grey mist on the horizon.

We have found there is little to no industry data compiled in this area, and many credit unions are left wondering if their accounting team is staffed appropriately as well as whether they should outsource various functions, such as ATM balancing.

Debra Templin, CFO of CU Service Network, manages the companys Outsourced Accounting Service, which assists many credit unions across the country. The most frequent question we are asked is are we overstaffed? That is a difficult question to answer without knowing the type of positions and activities that are performed within the accounting department.

The accounting function mystery is so difficult to crack because it is three-fold. Not only do credit unions need data on how many employees are staffed in credit unions accounting departments, but secondly, they need more data on what accounting functions are being managed. And thirdly, are their resources appropriately aligned in their asset class. Without these three pieces of information available concurrently, the individual data is basically irrelevant.
Michael Murgio, who participated in a scheme to control a New Jersey Credit Union to conceal an illegal Bitcoin operation, was sentenced to one year probation last week in U.S. District Court in New York City.

U.S. District Court Judge Alison J. Nathan also ordered the 66-year-old Florida man, who has a net worth of more than $2 million, to pay a $12,000 fine and serve 200 hours of community service, according to court documents.

Prosecutors recommended that Murgio receive a sentence of 10 months to 16 months because of the nature and seriousness of the offense, the need to promote respect the law, provide just punishment and afford adequate deterrence.

Murgios attorneys, Stuart N. Kaplan and Joseph G. Sconzo of Palm Beach, Fla., argued for probation because of their clients age, his lack of any criminal history and his lifetime devotion to community service and the education of children.
Members of the Dal community gathered Thursday to usher in African Heritage Month together.

And though there were many significant individuals in the crowd  from former Lieutenant Governor Mayann Francis to Dal Professor and Canadian Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard  some of the biggest names were spoken of in absentia.



They included James Robinson Johnston, Henry Sylvester-Wiliams, Marcus Garvey, Viola Desmond and Burnley "Rocky" Jones historic figures whose efforts and achievements in the service of others speak to a legacy linking past and present.



"You can see a trajectory . . . leading up to this day," said Afua Cooper, the James R. Johnston Chair in Black Canadian Studies. " I think the ancestors are proud, they are pleased, they are happy. And we will continue to do the work that is necessary to make diversity and inclusiveness a reality at Dalhousie."

A community celebration



Thursday's event, organized in partnership with Dalhousies Black Faculty and Staff Caucus and held in the Macdonald Buildings University Hall, included speeches by Dr. Cooper and other Dal and community leaders, as well as the raising of the Pan-African Flag on the Studley Quad.



Dr. Cooper called it an "historic occasion," noting this year marks the first time the tri-colour flag has been officially raised on Dal's campus and, perhaps, on any Canadian campus.



The flag, originally created in 1920 as a symbol uniting those of African descent living around the world, will travel around Dal's three Halifax campuses during the coming month. (The Pan-African Flag was also raised Wednesday on Dal's Agricultural Campus in Truro, and will fly there through months end.)





Dal President Richard Florizone, who served as event MC, began his remarks by holding a moment of silence to honour the victims of Sunday's mosque shooting in Quebec City  all men of African descent.



Following that, Dr. Florizone spoke of some of the many efforts over the years of individuals and groups at Dalhousie supporting African Nova Scotians and individuals of African descent, including the Imhoteps Legacy Academy, the Black Student Advising Centre, the Black and African Diaspora Studies minor, the Black and Indigenous Mikmaq Initiative in Law  to mention just a few.



"Diversity is in our DNA at Dalhousie, he said. It enriches our classrooms, it broadens our contributions to the community, it increases our awareness and our worldviews. It makes for a stronger and more vibrant institution and city and province and world.



But he also spoke of the need to come together as allies to do more in the future.



"I'm personally committed to making more progress on our campus and I look forward to making this journey together with all of you."

Inspiration and action





Other speakers at Thursday's event included Norma Williams, Dal's executive director of diversity and inclusiveness, who shared historical context behind the Pan-African Flag; Kathleen Reid, president of the Dal Student Union (DSU), who discussed the importance of allyship; Elder in Residence Geri Musqua-Leblanc, who opened proceedings with a prayer; and Dr. Katherine Harman, vice-chair of the Dal Senate, who delivered inspiring remarks on behalf of Kevin Hewitt, Senate chair, who was unable to attend.

Fountain School of Performing Arts student Nathan Simmons also performed a rendition of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" at the launch event, accompanied by fellow Fountain student Maia Bruce on cello.

The Honourable Tony Ince, Nova Scotias minister of communities, culture and heritage, as well as African Nova Scotian Affairs, delivered one of the afternoon's most passionate speeches, focused on the provincial theme of this years African Heritage Month: Passing the Torch. He spoke of the men and women whose fights for justice and equality have lit the way for future generations.





"The truth about carrying torches is they get very heavy after a long journey and our journey has been very long. We still have a long way to go," he said.



"Today we have a torch that is burning brightly because of the hard work of the many people who came before us," he added  emphasizing that today's leaders and the leaders of tomorrow have a responsibility to keep that torch lit.



African Heritage Month activities continue through the month on campus, including a student-run speaker series, film screenings, open lectures with faculty, professional and social development workshops and a local history field trip to Africville. For more information, visit dal.ca/AfricanHeritage
Delays in Access and Unjustifiable Cancer Medicine Prices Disadvantage Patients

Published: 2017-02-03

Author: ECCO - European Cancer Organisation | Contact: ecco-org.eu

Peer-Reviewed Publication: N/A

Jump to: Main Digest | Publications

Synopsis: Access to cancer drugs that help extend life and improve quality of life, and fair prices for those drugs are essential. Cancer patients are living longer and in many cases the disease is becoming chronic rather than acute. Access to drugs that help extend life and improve quality of life, and fair prices for those drugs are therefore essential for more and more people. But patients are badly served in this respect, with delays in the availability of new treatments and incomprehensible price rises for well-established therapies, including generics, researchers will tell the European Cancer Congress.

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Main Digest

Cancer patients are living longer and in many cases the disease is becoming chronic rather than acute. Access to drugs that help extend life and improve quality of life, and fair prices for those drugs are therefore essential for more and more people. But patients are badly served in this respect, with delays in the availability of new treatments and incomprehensible price rises for well-established therapies, including generics, researchers will tell the European Cancer Congress.

There is no value for patients if new cancer drugs are developed and approved but they are unable to benefit from them, says Markus Hartmann PhD, Principal Consultant of European Consulting and Contracting in Oncology, a regulatory affairs consultancy based in Trier, Germany.

Approval decisions for cancer drugs are currently granted centrally by the European Commission, in order to ensure that risk/benefit judgments are applied on the same basis across the European Union. But decisions on reimbursement and pricing, and therefore on access to new medicines, are taken at individual EU Member State level, and this results in major differences in the overall availability as well as the time taken before patients are able to obtain new medicines, adds co-author Daniel Droschel, Market Access Consultant at MArS Market Access & Pricing Strategy GmbH, Weil am Rhein (Germany).

The researchers studied approval processes for the 48 new cancer drugs that were evaluated between 2011-15 by the European Medicines Agency for use in the European Union. In 17 cases, approvals were based on a principal trial using overall survival [2] as the primary endpoint; in 19 cases on trials using progression-free survival [3]; and in 12 cases on trials - most often single-arm trials - using overall response rate [4] as primary endpoints.

"These new drugs all show clinical benefit," says Dr Hartmann. "Our data indicate in the overall survival group a median survival gain of 3.0 months, while in the progression-free survival group the median gain was 3.8 months. However, the trial design, trial endpoint and magnitude of effect is evaluated quite differently by the health technology assessment (HTA) authorities in the UK, France and Germany, even though they reviewed the same, or very similar, clinical data."

These disparities in national HTA outcomes depend on a number of factors. Additionally, HTAs use different methodologies in their assessments: France, as well as the UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) and the Scottish Medical Council, apply health economics that have an impact on the final reimbursement decision, whereas Germany relies purely on a benefit assessment followed by price negotiations.

"In our study, in France and Germany around 80% of decisions were positive, whereas for UK's NICE, every third assessment ended with a negative outcome," Dr Hartmann will say. Patients' access to new cancer drugs in England and Wales is also hampered by later decision-making compared with Scotland, France and Germany, he adds.

In a second presentation, Dr Andrew Hill, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, University of Liverpool, UK, will tell the congress that UK prices for cancer drugs, including generics, have recently shown a sharp rise. Between 2011 and 2016, prices for some common drugs increased by more than 1000%. At a time when the UK Cancer Drugs Fund is being re-examined because of the pressure caused by high prices, this is particularly worrying, says Dr Hill.

"We were surprised to find several companies consistently raising the prices of cancer treatment. Twenty treatments have shown rises of over 100% in the last five years, and in two - busulfan (used to treat leukaemia) and tamoxifen (breast cancer) - prices have increased by over 1000%. We have found that some companies take over the supply of some generic cancer medicines and then raise the price progressively," Dr Hill will say.

In the UK, the Department of Health is aware of this issue and has introduced the Health Services Medical Supplies (Costs) Bill in order to be able to regulate prices in the future, he says. Companies found to be raising prices with no clear justification will be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority, and could face fines.

Paying these high prices puts undue strain on health systems, and the long-term result could be negative consequences for disease progression and survival. The researchers say that they are finding similar cases in other European countries. In Spain and Italy, failure to accept the high prices demanded for some generic treatments has led to warnings from companies that they could stop their supply.

"We hope that, by explaining what we have found in the UK, other European countries will take note and protect themselves against these kinds of price rises," says Dr Hill. "At a time when cancer patients are living longer and better lives due to effective treatments, this situation is particularly worrying."

Ms Melissa Barber, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, will describe to the congress the results of her analysis of the manufacturing costs of all the medicines used to treat cancer included in the World Health Organisation's (WHO's) Essential Medicines List.

The results show that several key cancer treatments could be manufactured for less than one percent of the prices charged in the US and UK. "For example, tamoxifen, used to treat breast cancer, can be manufactured for less than two US dollars per month of treatment, and imatinib, used in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukaemia, can be produced for $54 per month," Ms Barber will say.

Costs this low could form the initial step in setting up programmes in low and middle income countries for the mass treatment of certain cancers, following the successful precedent of mass treatment for HIV and AIDS. The researchers would like to see the expansion of pilot studies for such treatments; such pilots exist already for cancer treatment in Rwanda and Haiti.

"Showing that certain cancers could be treated for very low prices could transform the future of people with these cancers in very low-income countries where there are usually few or no treatment options," Ms Barber will conclude.

Professor Ian Banks, ECCO Board Member and chair of the Patient Advisory Committee, who was not involved with the research, commented: "Research presented at the ECCO Congress covers the whole of the cancer field, including important policy issues like those raised in these abstracts. The availability and pricing of treatments are of great interest and concern to cancer patients, and we consider it important to encourage the widest possible debate on them, as well as on other issues that affect patients' quality of life."

Abstract nos: 970 (Hartmann) and 966 (Hill), Health Economics of Cancer proffered paper session, Saturday 15.00 hrs (CET), Room Blackburn; 1032 (Barber), Health Economics of Cancer poster session, Sunday, 09.00 hrs (CET), Hall 1.

[1] The European Cancer Congress is the only truly multidisciplinary oncology congress in the world. It is organised by the European CanCer Organisation (ECCO), a not-for-profit federation of 25 member societies, representing over 80,000 professionals working in cancer.

[2] Overall survival is the time measured until the occurrence of death from any cause.

[3] Progression-free survival is the time during which the disease does not worsen or progress, or at which death from any cause occurs.

[4] Overall response rate is a measure of the proportion of patients in which a defined reduction in tumour burden is observed after a certain time.

[5] Dr Hill's research was partly funded by the Open Society Foundation. Ms Barber's research was funded by the World Health Organisation.

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Some 470 million years ago, during the middle part of the geological period known as the Ordovician, an asteroid collision took place somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. The collision caused an explosion that sent a cascade of meteorites towards Earth. The heavy bombardment of Earth continued for millions of years, and even today some 20% of all meteorites that reach Earth originate from this asteroid break-up. At the same time the Earth witnessed the greatest rise in marine biodiversity since the origin of multicellular life. So, the question is: was there a connection between these two fundamental events in Earth history, as has been proposed? A new study now demonstrates that the rise in biodiversity commenced long before the asteroid collision.

The link between these two fundamental events -- the so-called Ordovician radiation and the sustained meteorite bombardment -- has, for many years, presented a paradox in science. We are used to hearing the story of meteorite impacts that leads to the loss of species richness, such as when the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. But could the opposite scenario be a possibility as well? asks Assistant Professor Christian M. . Rasmussen from the Natural History Museum of Denmark rhetorically. He is co-authoring the study in which an incidental finding of the rare mineral zircon within the meteorite-bearing rock layers led to an answer to the paradox.

Plus, minus 6 million years

Researchers have long known that the fossil meteorites are lying in rock layers that also witness the great increase in biodiversity, but could only date the asteroid break-up to occur within a time frame of 12 million years. This interval exactly overlaps the initiation of the great biodiversity increase. But, with the lucky finding of zircons in rock layers also containing fossil meteorites, the researchers suddenly had the opportunity to precisely determine when the asteroid collision took place, and thus, whether there was a link to the radiation event, or not.

-Zircons are special as they can be used to date rocks. They come from magma chambers in the crust but are extruded onto the Earth's surface through volcanic eruptions. Thus, if you find zircons in the rock record you can date these zircons and thus get an age for when this eruption took place. In this case, this date would also define a precise age for the fossil meteorites, explains Anders Lindskog from the Geological Department, Lund University, who is the lead-author on the study. He was the one who recovered the zircons when studying the rock layers containing the fossil meteorites and subsequently sent them to the Natural History Museum of Denmark, which has the facilities and experience to conduct high-precision dating of rocks.

Calculating the age of the zircons

In Copenhagen, the zircons were handed over to postdoc Mafalda Costa from Centre for Star and planet Formation (StarPlan) at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, who processed and analyzed the minerals in the radiogenic isotope laboratory at the Geological Museum.

Mafalda Costa explains:

Zircons occur in a wide variety of rocks, including in ash layers associated with volcanic eruptions. The determination of the age of these crystals is based on the natural radioactivity of uranium, which is incorporated in the mineral upon crystallization, and that from that moment until today, at a known rate, has been spontaneously decaying to lead. We measure the amount of uranium and lead present in the zircons and from that it is possible to calculate an age that pinpoints the time when they erupted on the surface. In this case, on the same surface that also contained meteorites originating from the asteroid break-up. In this way, we could precisely define the age of the fossil meteorites, explains Mafalda Costa, and adds:

From other isotope analyses of minerals found in the fossil meteorites it had been previously estimated how much time the meteorites spent in space before reaching Earth. Hitherto it was not precisely known when this happened. With our new zircon age, we can determine that the rise in biodiversity occurred ~2.5 million years prior to the asteroid break-up took place.

This new study, which has just been published in the renowned journal Nature Communications, therefore demonstrates that there is no link between the Ordovician rise in biodiversity and the asteroid break-up -- thus, some other driver must have facilitated the Ordovician radiation.

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Contact

Christian Mac rum Rasmussen

Adjunkt vStatens Naturhistoriske Museum

Kbenhavns Universitet

Mail: christian@snm.ku.dk

Mobil: 21-74-16-70

Maria Mafalda Canas Portela Costa

Postdoc

Center for Stjerne- og Planetdannelse

Statens Naturhistoriske Museum

Kbenhavns Universitet

Mail: mafalda.costa@snm.ku.dk

Mobil: 52-71-66-98

Anders Lindskog

Lunds Universitet

Department of Geology

Mail: anders.lindskog@geol.lu.se

Telefon: +46-46-222-08-89
The difference between men and women with respect to their age preferences, when it comes to sexual partners, is smaller than earlier believed. A recent study shows that also men become interested in older and older women as they themselves age.

While earlier research has indicated that even older men prefer young women, a recent study by Jan Antfolk at Abo Akademi University suggests that this is only partly true. It is true that men, more than women, tend to maintain a sexual interest in younger partners. Contrary to what has been reported from earlier studies, most men and women are also sexually interested in partners their own age throughout life. Most sexual activity occurs between partners of approximately the same age.

Homosexual and bisexual men and women differ very little from their heterosexual counterparts. The only exception from this is that homosexual men are somewhat more likely than bisexual and heterosexual men to have sex with partners younger than themselves.

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The study was conducted in Finland and included 878 adult men and 1789 adult women. The study was recently published in Evolutionary Psychology.

Link to the on-line publication: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1474704917690401

The study is a part of the research project Intra-Genomic Conflicts and Social Decision-Making in Humans. The project is financed by the Academy of Finland (project number 298513).

For more information:

Postdoctoral Researcher in Psychology at Abo Akademi University

Jan Antfolk

E-mail: jan.antfolk@abo.fi

Mobile: +358 44 255 7682
The sticky residue left behind by tobacco smoke can do worse damage than stinking up furniture and discoloring walls. Exposure to thirdhand smoke leads to biological effects on weight and cell development that could be damaging to one's health, according to new research led by scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The researchers found that newborn mice housed with smoke-treated cloths for three weeks weighed significantly less than mice in a control group. Moreover, newborn and adult mice exposed to thirdhand smoke led to persistent changes in blood cell counts associated with the immune system for both newborn and adult mice. The blood cell count changes are associated with inflammatory and allergic reactions upon exposure to thirdhand smoke, the researchers said.

Berkeley Lab researchers from the Biological Systems and Engineering Division and the Energy Technologies Area (ETA) teamed up with scientists at UC San Francisco and Nanjing Medical University for the study. The findings, to be reported in a Feb. 3 paper in Scientific Reports, suggest that the dangers associated with smoking continue long after the cigarette is snuffed out.

Babies at greater risk

"We suspected that the young are most vulnerable because of their immature immune systems, but we didn't have a lot of hard evidence to show that before," said study lead author Bo Hang, a Berkeley Lab staff scientist who previously found that thirdhand smoke could lead to genetic mutations in human cells. "In this case, we found that thirdhand smoke appeared to inhibit weight gain in neonatal mice, but not in the young adults."

Notably, the weight effect was temporary. Weeks after smoke exposure stopped, the mice began catching up with their non-exposed peers in weight.

The researchers noted that human babies and toddlers are at greater risk because they come into contact with contaminated surfaces while crawling or teething during a critical window of immune system development.

While the harmful effects of active and secondhand smoking have been well-established by decades of extensive studies, research into thirdhand smoke is still in its nascent stages. But evidence is mounting that the residue lingering on indoor surfaces could be just as harmful - if not more - than secondhand smoke.

Some of the key studies in this area have come from Berkeley Lab with support from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program (TRDRP) through the California Consortium on Thirdhand Smoke. The program is funded by state cigarette taxes and managed by the University of California.

Growing evidence of harm

Red flags were raised in 2010 when Berkeley Lab research led by Hugo Destaillats, Mohamad Sleiman, and Lara Gundel in ETA's Indoor Environment Group found that nicotine can react with ozone and nitrous acid in the air to create ultrafine organic aerosols and cancer-causing compounds. Subsequent studies led by Hang, Jian-Hua Mao, and Altaf Sarker at Berkeley Lab found that thirdhand smoke led to genetic instability in human and mouse cell lines and in mouse models.

Destaillats, Gundel, Hang and Mao are all co-authors on this new study, which goes further by characterizing the biological effects of exposure to thirdhand smoke, an environment created by placing 5-square-centimeter pieces of smoke-contaminated cotton cloth in the cages with the mice. The researchers focused on changes to body weight and the hematopoietic system after three weeks of exposure for two age groups of mice: birth to 3 weeks (neonatal) and 12-15 weeks (young adult). They were compared to a control group of mice that were not exposed to smoke.

While the effects on weight were only seen in the neonatal mice, changes in blood cell populations were evident in both age groups. In general, there were lower levels of platelets and specific types of white blood cells in the smoke-exposed mice. For example, neonatal mice exposed to thirdhand smoke had higher levels of eosinophils, female adults had higher levels of neutrophils, male adults had higher levels of basophils, and all mice had higher levels of B cells.

"Those are all types of white blood cells associated with inflammation and allergic reactions," said Mao, the current study's corresponding author. "And the effects on blood cell count persisted even after exposure ended. Changes remained at least 14 weeks after exposure ended for the neonatal group, and two weeks after it ended for the adults."

More studies to come

The researchers pointed out that they did not study whether the observed biological changes led to specific diseases or other health outcomes, but that other studies suggest links to adverse health effects.

"Thirdhand smoke is an underappreciated risk factor in health," said study co-author Antoine Snijders. "It's clear that more and bigger studies are needed, particularly in humans, so we can support policy decisions on thirdhand smoke."

Berkeley Lab research on DNA damage by thirdhand smoke was among the evidence cited by California legislators when they passed a bill in 2014 banning smoking in private homes used as day care centers.

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Last year, TRDRP awarded Berkeley Lab scientists additional funding to further their research on the health effects of thirdhand smoke. The grant will support research that further characterizes the compounds in thirdhand smoke and that investigates potential links to cancer.

Other co-authors on this study are Yurong Huang at Berkeley Lab; Suzaynn Schick, Christopher Havel, Peyton Jacob III, and Neal Benowitz at UC San Francisco; and Pin Wang and Yankai Xia at Nanjing Medical University.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world's most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab's scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. For more, visit http://www.lbl.gov.

DOE's Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
The Griffith University study, conducted in collaboration with national and international experts in reef and chemical ecology, showed that if the world continues with 'business as usual' CO2 emissions important reef building corals will suffer significantly by 2050 and die off by 2100.

Associate Professor Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, of Griffith's School of Environment, says that is because algae will compete for space with corals in the reef, much like a weed, and eventually take over.

Researchers knew increased CO2 had an effect on seaweed behaviour but have now been able to demonstrate just how this happens. They discovered this is due to an increase in the potency of chemical compounds that poison corals.

"This is a major step forward in understanding how seaweeds can harm corals and has important implications for comprehending the consequences of increased carbon dioxide emissions on the health of the Great Barrier Reef," says Associate Professor Diaz-Pulido.

"For the algae to grow they need light and CO2, just like any other plant, and because algae in the future would be exposed to much more CO2 in seawater we wanted to know to what extent the CO2 would affect some of the things algae do, the physiology and the interaction with animals."

Professor Mark Hay, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, adds: "What we've discovered is that some algae produce more potent chemicals that suppress or kill corals more rapidly. This can occur rapidly, in a matter of only weeks.

"If the algae overtake the coral we have a problem which contributes to reef degradation, on top of what we already know with coral bleaching, crown of thorn starfish outbreaks, cyclones or any other disturbance."

The research was undertaken at Heron Island, a coral cay on the southern end of the reef using underwater reef experiments and outdoor lab studies.

Associate Professor Diaz-Pulido says the study has global impacts because one of the seaweeds studied that causes the most damage is a common brown alga species found in reefs worldwide.

"That's a problem because if these algae take advantage of elevated CO2 in seawater that's even more a matter of concern," he says.

"The scale of the problem is so big removing a bunch of seaweed from the reef isn't going to do much because it just regrows and regenerates, so I think the way to address this really is to reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere."

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The research is published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, supported by the Australian Research Council, and was conducted in collaboration with Professor Peter Mumby from The University of Queensland.
According to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 35% of black carbon in the Russian Arctic originates from residential heating sources, 38% comes from transport, while open fires, power plants, and gas flaring are responsible for only 12%, 9%, and 6% respectively. These estimates confirm previous work for some areas of the European Arctic, but for Siberia, the findings differ from previous research, which had suggested that contribution from gas flaring were much higher.

Black carbon, or soot, increases snow and ice melt by dulling the reflective surface and increasing the absorption of sunlight. Researchers say this is one reason that Arctic regions have warmed faster than any other area on the planet, with average temperatures there today over 4C higher than the 1968-1996 average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). Black carbon may also be contributing to the steep decline in summer Arctic sea ice coverage in recent decades.

"Reducing black carbon pollution holds some potential for climate change mitigation, especially in the Arctic, but in order to take effective action, we have to know where it is coming from. This study provides better data, but also shows that we need more information about source structure and spatial distribution of pollution in the Arctic," explains IIASA researcher Zbigniew Klimont, who worked on the study.

The location of black carbon emissions matters, explains Klimont, because black carbon emitted from the sources closer to the Arctic leads to greater warming (per unit of emitted black carbon) compared to sources further from the region. "High-latitude sources are especially important. Even though China, for example, releases much more black carbon than Arctic regions, reductions there have less impact per kilogram than reductions in the Arctic."

This research drew on IIASA research that was part of a European-Union funded project, Evaluating the Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Short-lived Pollutants (ECLIPSE). Researchers used the ECLIPSE emissions and an atmospheric transport model and compared the predictions with measurements and carbon isotope analysis of samples at Arctic research stations. While the study found good agreement between model estimates of black carbon concentrations and measurements for the European Arctic site, they found a mismatch between the modeled and measured results for the Russian Arctic site. The researchers developed a better method to attribute pollution to its sources by incorporating new data from Tiksi, a research station in the far eastern region of Siberia into the model. This improved attribution highlights the more important role of residential heating and transport sources while lesser relevance of gas flaring at this far-East Siberian site.

"There is widespread gas flaring in the Russian Arctic. Yet, the magnitude of gas flaring related black carbon and other combustion related emissions and the specific carbon-isotopic fingerprint are not very well understood. In order to better assess the role of black carbon pollution in the Arctic and to target its sources for mitigation, we need to measure the isotopic fingerprint of the gas flaring sources," says Patrik Winiger, a researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden who led the study.

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Reference

Winiger P, Andersson A, Stohl A, Semiletov IP, Dudarev OV, Charkin A, Shakhova N, Klimont Z, Heyes C, Gustafsson O (2017). Siberian Arctic black carbon sources constrained by model and observation PNAS. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613401114
Summary:

Many recent advances in artificial intelligence and aging biomarkers that transpired since 2013 are converging

Gachon University and Gil Medical Center are at the forefront of aging research in Korea

Aging research is gaining credibility in the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare in general

Insilico Medicine and Gachon University and Gil Medical Center have partnered to collaboratively develop biomarkers and interventions

Friday, 3rd of February, 2017, Baltimore, MD - Insilico Medicine today announced that it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and started the first collaborative research project with one of the largest research and medical networks, Gachon University and Gil Medical Center. The intent of the long-term collaboration is to develop artificially intelligent multimodal biomarkers of aging and health status as well as interventions intended to slow down or even reverse the processes leading to the age-related loss of function.

"We are happy to collaborate with Insilico Medicine, one of the leaders in AI with a specific focus on practical aging research in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The field of artificial intelligence is rapidly evolving and in addition to our own cutting-edge research programs, we collaborate with other leaders to expedite progress and ensure that we can save and extend human life sooner", said Dr. Lee Uhn, Director of AI-based Precision Medicine at Gachon University, Gil Medical Center.

The first MOU between the companies was signed on November 18th, but the first project launched and data exchange transpired in January 2017.

"When we first visited the Gachon University and Gil Medical Center we saw the future of medicine in the making. The centers are at the forefront in many areas of medicine with ultra-high resolution best in class neuroimaging equipment, diagnostic and treatment facilities. It is a great honor for us to have a chance to collaborate with the leading research and medical network in Korea", said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., CEO of Insilico Medicine.

Insilico Medicine is testing a range of nutraceutical products developed using deep learning techniques with Life Extension to be launched in 2017. The effects of these nutraceuticals will be measured using a range of companion biomarkers. Earlier this year the pharmaceutical artificial intelligence division of Insilico Medicine published several seminal proof of concept papers demonstrating the applications of deep learning to drug discovery, biomarker development, and aging research. Recently the authors published a tool in Nature Communications, which is used for dimensionality reduction in transcriptomic data for training deep neural networks (DNNs). The paper published in Molecular Pharmaceutics demonstrating the applications of deep neural networks for predicting the therapeutic class of the molecule using the transcriptional response data received the American Chemical Society Editors' Choice Award. Another paper demonstrating the ability to predict the chronological age of the patient using a simple blood test, published in Aging, became the second most popular paper in the journal's history.

Insilico Medicine was the first company to apply deep generative adversarial networks (GANs) to generating anti-cancer drugs with given parameters and published a seminal paper in Oncotarget.

"AI, longevity and new distributed ledger technologies like BlockChain are among the highest priority areas of focus and investment in Korea. Close collaboration with country's leading futurists working on the government level allowed Korea to lead in the 3rd industrial revolution and will ensure Korean leadership into the 4th industrial and post-industrial revolution. I am happy of inviting the #1 company in AI and aging research to Korea and establish partnerships with the leading companies in Korea", said professor Younsook Park, country's leading futurist and official representative of Insilico Medicine in Korea.

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About Gachon University and Gil Medical Center

Founded by Dr. Gil Ya Lee, Gachon University Gil Medical Center started off as a small Obstetrics and Gynecology clinic in 1958. After half a century, it has become one of the leading medical centers in Korea. Gil Medical Center employs approximately 2900 heath care providers in 30 departments. In 2010, the hospital was awarded the JCI authentication. The following year in 2011, Gachon University was established along with the opening of Gachon Medical Gil Hospital Cancer Center. With state-of-the-art technology, the hospital system accommodates several thousand beds. As a tertiary general hospital with 1,400 number of beds, Gil Medical Center offers world-class medical services through more than 30 medical departments and specialized centers, such as Heart Center, Women's Center, Eye & ENT Center, Cancer Center, Brain Health Center, and Emergency Center, Trauma Center just to name a few. Moreover, we are operating Neuroscience Research Institute and Lee Gil Ya Cancer and Diabetes Institute, which enabled us to be chosen as the representative research-centered hospital of Korea by the government.

About Professor Youngsook Park

Professor Youngsook Park is the leading futurist in Korea, who serves as Chair of Millennium Project Korea. She also represents several global futures research organizations such as TechCastGlobal, and Davinci Institute. She has been Information Officer of the British Embassy Seoul (1982-2000) and Director of Public Diplomacy of the Australian Embassy Seoul (2000-2010) where she was trained as a futurist by attending World Future Society conferences, and other futurists meetings. She now teaches Futures Studies at Ewha Woman's University Graduate School for Design (2013-present) and lectures Futures Studies at Yonsei University (2006-present). Park is known for bringing global futurists to Korea for the last 30 years, and is a co-organizer of Korea Future Forum along with News1, a Korean news agency, inviting famous futurists to Seoul to speak on futures. She founded the Korea Foster Care Association after learning from the futures studies that Korean population declines drastically and needs to stop exporting Korean orphans to overseas. Professor Park is the official representative of Insilico Medicine, Inc in Korea.

About Insilico Medicine, Inc

Insilico Medicine, Inc. is a bioinformatics company located at the Emerging Technology Centers at the Johns Hopkins University Eastern campus in Baltimore with R&D resources in Belgium, Russia, and Poland hiring talent through hackathons and competitions. It utilizes advances in genomics, big data analysis and deep learning for in silico drug discovery and drug repurposing for aging and age-related diseases. The company pursues internal drug discovery programs in cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, sarcopenia and geroprotector discovery. Through its Pharma.AI division, the company provides advanced machine learning services to biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and skin care companies.Through a network of management and strategy consultants, it provides technology and strategy guidance in the areas of AI, aging research and blockchain integration to some of the most advanced executives and board member of the large biopharmaceutical companies.

Brief company video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l62jlwgL3v8
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) has awarded a grant totaling $6,727,904 over four years to Jackson Laboratory (JAX) Professor Yijun Ruan to launch a center for the three-dimensional (3-D) mapping of the human and mouse genomes.

The funding is part of a major initiative to expand the NHGRI's Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project, a fundamental genomics resource used by many scientists to study human health and disease.

ENCODE was launched in 2003, shortly after the sequencing of the human genome. "The biggest challenge at that time was how to read the genome, how to understand the language of the book of life. The initial goal of ENCODE was to annotate every single nucleotide in the human genome, but linear annotation is not enough to understand how the genome is organized and how it functions," says Ruan. "This new ENCODE mapping center will focus on uncovering the mystery of the 3-D organization and function of the human and mouse genome."

Ruan is the pioneer of an advanced genome technology known as ChIA-PET (for chromatin interaction analysis by paired-end tag) sequencing, to understand the 3-D structure of the genome and how that structure affects gene expression. ChIA-PET has revealed novel 3-D genomic insights into how predispositions in genome variation may lead to human disease.

Ruan, who holds the titles of Florine Deschenes Roux Chair and director of genome sciences at JAX, has published several landmark papers on the 3-D genome. He showed that protein factors are responsible for organizing chromosomes inside the nucleus in three dimensions, and that a non-coding single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associated with asthma and autoimmune disease disrupted the normal 3-D structure of the genome and protein expression, implicating genomic 3-D structure as a potential driving factor in human health. Ruan's lab is a member of the 4DN consortium funded by NIH to develop new technologies for 3-D genome characterization.

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The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, a facility in Sacramento, Calif., and a genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Conn. It employs 1,800 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.
The microscopic size of phytoplankton, the plant-like organisms that live in the sunlit upper ocean, belies their importance in the global environment. They provide the food source for the zooplankton that ultimately feed larger animals ranging from small fish to whales. And like plants on land, phytoplankton use carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow and thrive through photosynthesis, which ultimately releases oxygen into the ocean and atmosphere.

Phytoplankton also play a large role in reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere: A recent study found that phytoplankton take in about 24 percent of this greenhouse gas. When they die and sink to great depths in the ocean, phytoplankton also move carbon dioxide out of contact with atmosphere. Among the most pressing questions scientists are investigating is how much of that carbon is being stored in the ocean over the long term. Another question is how rising carbon dioxide levels and associated changes in the ocean environment are affecting phytoplankton communities.

To tackle those questions, on Jan. 26 scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, along with researchers from across the country embarked on 27-day seaborne campaign from Hawaii to Portland, Oregon, to categorize and observe phytoplankton populations and their environment. The team is working aboard the R/V Falkor, a research vessel owned and operated by the non-profit Schmidt Ocean Institute, which grants scientists use of the ship to advance oceanographic research.

Where carbon dioxide, once taken up, ends up in the global carbon cycle depends on the species of phytoplankton, said Goddard/USRA oceanographer Ivona Cetinic, the campaign's chief scientist. "Their size as well as their shape and color determine the role that they play," she said. "By knowing who's there, you can predict what's going to happen to that carbon."

For instance, the interactions between smaller phytoplankton and the organisms that eat them are mostly confined to the ocean's surface layer. The carbon they take up remains at the surface or eventually escapes back into the atmosphere. But organisms that eat larger types of phytoplankton, along with their waste, are more likely to sink deeper into the ocean. Uneaten, dead phytoplankton may also sink as they decompose.

"When phytoplankton pass below the surface layer and reach the deepest portions of the ocean, they sink out," Cetinic said. "That's key, because the carbon they have sequestered is removed from contact with the atmosphere."

Physical processes also play a role in phytoplankton diversity and carbon transport. A complex interplay of different water masses, often visible in ocean color imagery, allow for the formation of pockets of highly specific ecosystems. Furthermore, processes such as subduction, or mixing, present another pathway for carbon deposition into the deep ocean.

Ocean color is also an important indicator of phytoplankton health and activity, and so from above the water an instrument is collecting hyperspectral measurements (ocean reflectance greater than 100 colors), from the ultraviolet to the shortwave infrared bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. The data collected will inform NASA's current and planned ocean color satellite instruments, including the Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission scheduled for launch in 2022.

Fourteen researchers are deploying a range of instruments to track phytoplankton communities as the R/V Falkor traverses the northern Pacific Ocean. They are continuously measuring phytoplankton diversity through either microscopic imagery, pigments analysis or analysis of their genomic material. For the first time, they are testing new NASA-funded technology that will allow them to collect measurements of particle size.

Similar measurements will be taken from deeper portions of the ocean using an apparatus called a rosette, which comprises a cluster of bottles that captures water at different depths and instruments to measure salinity, temperature, and oxygen. Such physical measurements give clues about environmental conditions that support specific phytoplankton types. These types will be additionally recognized using images collected by a holographic camera, which will then be reconstructed in virtual reality space.

An autonomous platform called a wirewalker will help to assess the physical environment as well as the flux of particles into the deep ocean. The wirewalker allows for a package of instruments to travel along a wire to as far down as 100 meters measuring temperature, salinity, oxygen, as well as phytoplankton biomarkers such as chlorophyll. An autonomous float will hover at the 100-meter depth and collect settling particles as they sink from the upper ocean.

Ocean color satellites afford a global view of phytoplankton, but PACE will be the agency's first hyperspectral (high spectral resolution) satellite and an improvement over its predecessors in that it will be able to distinguish between different kinds. All of the research on this seaborne campaign will enable improved satellite data product validation and development of unprecedented data products.

PACE project scientist Jeremy Werdell, who is co-investigator on the proposal for ship time on the R/V Falkor, said, "The goal of the cruise is to collect data that will help us better understand the imagery collected by ocean color satellites. Studying ocean color can tell us a lot about the ocean."

NASA uses the vantage point of space, air, land and sea to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

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https://www.nasa.gov/earth
While many of us may find the sounds of chewing or breathing off-putting, for some they're unbearable - and new research has shown their brains are going into overdrive.

The team led from Newcastle University, report new findings of the physical basis for people suffering from a condition called misophonia, a disorder where they have a hatred of sounds such as eating, chewing or repeated pen clicking. Called "trigger sounds" by the misophonia community, the response can be an immediate and intense fight or flight feeling.

Publishing today in Current Biology, the researchers report the first evidence of clear changes in the structure of the brain's frontal lobe in sufferers of misophonia and also report changes in the brain activity.

Brain imaging revealed that people with the condition have an abnormality in the emotional control mechanism which causes their brains to go into overdrive on hearing trigger sounds.

Researchers also found brain activity originated from a different connectivity pattern to the frontal lobe. This is normally responsible for suppressing the abnormal reaction to sounds. The researchers also found that trigger sounds evoked a heightened physiological response with increased heart rate and sweating in people with misophonia.

Dr Sukhbinder Kumar from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University and the Wellcome Centre for NeuroImaging at University College London (UCL) led the research which was supported by Wellcome. He said: "For many people with misophonia, this will come as welcome news as for the first time we have demonstrated a difference in brain structure and function in sufferers.

"Patients with misophonia had strikingly similar clinical features and yet the syndrome is not recognised in any of the current clinical diagnostic schemes. This study demonstrates the critical brain changes as further evidence to convince a sceptical medical community that this is a genuine disorder."

Physical differences

Using brain scans carried out with Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) the team revealed a physical difference in the frontal lobe between the cerebral hemispheres of people with misophonia - with higher myelination in the grey matter of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).

The study also used functional MRI to measure the brain activity of people with and without misophonia while they were listening to a range of sounds such as;

Rain, busy cafe, a kettle boiling - neutral sounds

Baby crying, a person screaming - unpleasant sounds

The sounds of breathing, eating - trigger sounds

This showed abnormal connections between this frontal-lobe area and an area called the anterior insular cortex (AIC). This area is in the grey matter of the brain but buried in a deep fold at the side of the brain and is known to be involved in processing emotions and integrating signals both from the body and outside world.

When presented with trigger sounds activity goes up in both areas in misophonic subjects, whilst in normal subjects the activity goes up in the AIC but down in the frontal area. The team think that this reflects an abnormality of a control mechanism between the frontal lobe and AIC.

Tim Griffiths, Professor of Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University and UCL adds: "I hope this will reassure sufferers. I was part of the sceptical community myself until we saw patients in the clinic and understood how strikingly similar the features are.

"We now have evidence to establish the basis for the disorder through the differences in brain control mechanism in misophonia. This will suggest therapeutic manipulations and encourage a search for similar mechanisms in other conditions associated with abnormal emotional reactions."

And for Dr Kumar this research opens up future possibilities for therapy: "My hope is to identify the brain signature of the trigger sounds - those signatures can be used for treatment such as for neuro-feedback for example, where people can self-regulate their reactions by looking at what kind of brain activity is being produced."

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Reference: Kumar, S., Hancock, OT., Sedley,, W., Winston, JS., Callaghan, MF., Allen M., Cope, TE., Gander, PE., Bamiou, DE., Griffiths, TD (2017). The brain basis for misophonia. Current Biology (in Press) DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.048

Case study: Olana's story

Olana Tansley-Hancock, 29, from Ashford in Kent was just 8 when family meals became unbearable for her as she explains:

"The noise of my family eating forced me to retreat to my own bedroom for meals. I can only describe it as a feeling of wanting to punch people in the face when I heard the noise of them eating - and anyone who knows me will say that doesn't sound like me.

"My family were supportive and it was only at University that I found it becoming more of an issue. I found it spread to my housemates and to other noises and it all came to a head on a train journey when I had changed carriages 7 times as the noise of people eating or rustling papers was unbearable.

"When I saw my GP at the time, he laughed at me. Then I tried a counsellor but in my case, that made it worse as it made me even more sensitive to sound.

"It was only after I searched on the internet for 'hearing people eat makes me want to punch them' that I heard of misophonia - and through the misophonia UK website got involved with the research.

"Now, I'm a lot better probably through a combination of better bodily awareness and changes I've made to my lifestyle. I mediate and have reduced my caffeine and alcohol intake and I am always prepared - so take earplugs on a journey so I can watch a film and ask for headphones at the cinema so block out the sound of people rustling and eating. These steps have helped me manage and understand my condition better.

"This research is a huge relief as it shows there is a physical basis for misophonia which should help others understand the condition. It also opens up the opportunity for better management."

Misophonia

The term was coined by US scientists Pawel and Margaret Jastreboff in 2001.

Onset age tends to be pre-teens.

Trigger sounds are most commonly focused on eating, breathing and hand noises (typing/pen clicking).

The reaction starts with the sound and often develops to include actions associated with the sound and even anticipation of those actions.

Responses can include irritation, upset, disgust and extreme rage.

There is no known cure. Misophonia UK recommends seeing your GP in the first instance and asking to be referred to a consultant familiar with the condition. Ideally an audiological physician or a neurologist.

Courtesy of Misophonia UK
Few Black New Yorkers receive care in New York City's elite private academic medical centers (AMCs), according to a study published today [Thursday, Feb. 2] in the International Journal of Health Services. Uninsured and Medicaid patients are also markedly underrepresented at the city's major academic hospitals. In contrast, patients in Boston's hospitals are much less segregated by race or health insurance status.

The study analyzed official data on all adults discharged from hospitals in New York City (NYC) in 2009 and 2014, and in Boston in 2009. It found that in NYC in 2014, Blacks accounted for only 18 percent of AMC patients, but nearly one-third of patients in the city's other hospitals. (Findings were similar in 2009). Similarly, only 22 percent of New York City's AMC patients had Medicaid and only 1 percent were uninsured, versus corresponding figures of 42 percent and 4 percent at city's non-AMC hospitals.

The study was carried out by researchers at City University of New York at Hunter College (CUNY), Boston Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School. Four of the authors are academic physicians who have cared for patients at multiple hospitals included in the study.

Other study findings include the following:

Even after controlling for their lower-quality insurance, Black New Yorkers were still only half as likely as whites to get their care in AMCs.

The Index of Dissimilarity (a measure of system-wide segregation) for Black patients was 0.52 for NYC hospitals, indicating moderately high segregation. That figure means that 52 percent of Black patients in NYC would have to switch to hospitals that now serve predominantly white patients to achieve the full integration of the system. In Boston's system, the Index of Dissimilarity figure was 0.33.

Compared to privately insured patients, Medicaid patients were three times less likely, and uninsured patients five times less likely, to be treated at New York City's major academic hospitals. While Medicaid and uninsured patients accounted for nearly half (46 percent) of all patients at non-AMC hospitals in NYC, they made up less than one-quarter of inpatients at NYC's AMCs overall, and less than 10 percent at one-third of the AMCs.

Conversely, privately insured New Yorkers were more than twice as likely to get care at AMCs compared to other NYC hospitals. In Boston, Medicaid enrollees and uninsured patients were just as likely to be treated at an AMC as at a non-AMC hospital (14 percent and 1 percent for both).

The authors state: "Academic medical centers play a unique role. ... They provide specialized expertise across a range of clinical services. Many AMCs are ranked among the top hospitals in the country, and patients treated at AMCs are more likely than other patients to receive treatments using the latest technologies and care adhering to current clinical guidelines."

They note that while good non-AMC hospitals can provide excellent care for many illnesses, the specialized care available at AMCs is especially important for patients with very complex and rare conditions.

The authors posit that "the extensive network of public hospitals in NYC relieves pressure on that city's AMCs to care for disadvantaged patients." But they note that the public hospitals face a financial crisis and are often under-resourced, while several of the AMCs regularly generate multimillion-dollar surpluses on their balance sheets.

All of the AMCs in Boston and NYC are nonprofit hospitals and enjoy tax exemptions worth tens of millions of dollars. In exchange, they are expected to provide community benefits, including caring for Medicaid and uninsured patients.

Roosa Tikkanen, lead author of the study who is currently a policy analyst at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, said: "All of New York's academic medical centers receive millions of dollars from the state's 'Indigent Care Pool,' but many of them provide little care to uninsured or Medicaid patients. Some of them are specialty hospitals that receive their patients mainly through referrals from private doctors, and these patients tend to be privately insured. This contributes to the low volume of Medicaid and uninsured patients at AMCs. However, even these specialty hospitals could do more to meet their community benefit expectation and earn their tax breaks, especially since they already have greater financial resources than the city's public hospitals do."

Study co-author Dr. David Himmelstein, an internist, distinguished professor at CUNY's Hunter College, and lecturer at Harvard Medical School who has practiced at public and AMC hospitals in New York and Boston, said: "Stark racial segregation persists to this day in New York's hospitals. Our most prestigious institutions find ways to avoid Black and poor patients. And they maintain separate and unequal clinic systems. Privately insured patients get business-class care; those with Medicaid are mostly treated by interns and residents in rundown facilities and face long waits for appointments; while the uninsured are usually turned away from the elite hospitals' clinics altogether."

Senior author Dr. Karen E. Lasser, an internist at Boston Medical Center and associate professor of medicine and public health at Boston University Schools of Medicine (BUSM) and Public Health (BUSPH), said, "This study highlights the issues that academic health centers need to address in order to provide the highest level of care to all patients, regardless of race, ethnicity, or health insurance coverage."

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"Hospital payer and racial/ethnic mix at private academic medical centers in Boston and New York City," Roosa Sofia Tikkanen, M.P.H., M.Res., Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H., David U. Himmelstein, M.D., Nancy R. Kressin, Ph.D., Amresh Hanchate, Ph.D., Meng-Yun Lin, M.P.H., Danny McCormick, M.D., M.P.H., Karen E. Lasser, M.D., M.P.H. International Journal of Health Services, published Online First, Feb. 2, 2017, at 11:30 p.m. EST. doi: 10.1177/0020731416689549.

An advance copy of the article is available to media professionals upon request from Mark Almberg at mark@pnhp.org or (312) 622-0996.

Disclosures: This research project was supported in part by grants from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; the Rx Foundation; National Institutes of Health/National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (U01HL105432); and the Margaret Mahoney Fellowship at the New York Academy of Medicine. The study does not necessarily reflect the views of those grantors, nor of Harvard Medical School, nor Boston Medical Center, which provided administrative support. Two of the authors, Himmelstein and Woolhandler, co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program , a nonprofit physicians organization that supports a single-payer national health plan. PNHP had no role in funding or otherwise supporting the study.
PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Feb. 3, 2016 -- Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have identified a genomic mutation that causes physical abnormalities and developmental delays in children.

Upon analyzing the genome of a six-year-old boy, the scientists identified a novel mutation that affects a protein known as CASK, which is key to brain development and the signals transmitted by brain cells, or neurons. Their findings appear this week in the American Journal of Medical Genetics.

"Identifying this new CASK mutation helps build our understanding of how these multifaceted disorders occur, and provides insight into how they might be treated in the future," said Dr. Isabelle Schrauwen, Assistant Professor in TGen's Neurogenomics Division and the paper's senior author.

The child involved in this study was seen at TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders, which helps families identify the genetic source of their children's medical symptoms.

According to the authors, the child's "constellation of symptoms" included: developmental delay; feeding disorders, including severe gastro-intestinal and gastro-esophageal complications; and involuntary eye movement, a condition known as nystagmus, which can reduce or limit vision. Although his IQ and language skills were normal, he had impaired motor development, behavior and memory. These clinical features are markers of a rare developmental syndrome known as FGS4.

He is sensitive to loud noises, has a need to touch and examine objects intensely, exhibits impaired visual and motion abilities, and impaired memory.

The boy's parents and older sister are unaffected.

"Children such as this young boy so desperately need answers, and by tracking down the genetic and genomic causes of these mutations, we hope to continue building a body of knowledge that will lead to improvements, for this patient and many others with rare medical disorders," said Dr. Vinodh Narayanan, Medical Director of TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders, and a co-author of the study.

TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders has sequenced the genomes of more than 440 children with rare conditions. This has resulted in a nearly 40 percent diagnosis rate, nearly three times the general rate of diagnosis among this patient population.

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Barrow Neurological Institute and the University of Utah also contributed to this study: A De Novo Splice Site mutation in CASK Causes FG Syndrome-4 and Congenital Nystagmus.

About TGen

Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) is a Phoenix, Arizona-based non-profit organization dedicated to conducting groundbreaking research with life changing results. TGen is focused on helping patients with neurological disorders, cancer, and diabetes, through cutting edge translational research (the process of rapidly moving research towards patient benefit). TGen physicians and scientists work to unravel the genetic components of both common and rare complex diseases in adults and children. Working with collaborators in the scientific and medical communities literally worldwide, TGen makes a substantial contribution to help our patients through efficiency and effectiveness of the translational process. TGen is allied with City of Hope, a world-renowned independent research and cancer and diabetes treatment center. This precision medicine alliance enables both institutes to complement each other in research and patient care, with City of Hope providing a significant clinical setting to advance scientific discoveries made by TGen. For more information, visit: http://www.tgen.org. Follow TGen on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @TGen.

Media Contact:

Steve Yozwiak

TGen Senior Science Writer

602-343-8704

syozwiak@tgen.org
Irvine, Calif., Feb. 3, 2017 -- The University of California, Irvine has received $2.2 million from the state that will be administered through UCI Applied Innovation to help speed research and innovations to commercialization.

The funding will underwrite the Bridging Innovation Gaps Initiative at UCI and provide additional support for:

* The BioENGINE program, which promotes biomedical engineering entrepreneurship by helping graduate students design medical devices and take them to market * Proof of product grants, which range from $25,000 to $125,000 and are awarded to projects with great potential in the early stages of development and provide gap funding to translate research and intellectual property into commercially viable products and services * Grant applications, specifically for federal Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer funding

"Exciting new discoveries and technologies are consistently developed at UCI," said Richard Sudek, executive director of Applied Innovation, which fosters collaboration between campus-based researchers and Orange County's vibrant business community. "However, we have a need for programs that help innovators get past critical pivot points to commercialization. This funding validates the track Chancellor Howard Gillman set for us in establishing Applied Innovation two years ago and will serve to accelerate programs that are already showing great promise."

The state investment, which UCI will pair with matching funds from industry and entrepreneurs, comes via Assembly bill 2664, written by Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin, D-Thousand Oaks, to expand innovation and entrepreneurship and signed last fall by Gov. Jerry Brown.

"The UC system is the gold standard for research and innovation," Irwin said. "That's why I'm proud to have authored AB 2664."

Assemblyman Matthew Harper, R-Huntington Beach, whose district encompasses UCI, said that the junction of research, innovation and entrepreneurship is the nucleus of economic development.

"The infusion of state funding through AB 2664 at UCI Applied Innovation is having a positive impact on our community, region and state," he added. "I'm pleased to see the continued development this enables and look forward to the economic growth that is generated."

Tim Wilson, a partner in Artiman Ventures - a Silicon Valley fund that invests in entrepreneurs building companies with the potential to disrupt multibillion-dollar markets - said: "Close ties with academic partners is something Artiman values very highly. Orange County, and UCI in particular, represents a growing innovation hub we are keeping a close eye on. With more support early in the product development life cycle, we anticipate even more research-based startups coming out of UCI."

The university enjoyed a record-breaking $395 million in research grants and contracts during fiscal 2015-16.

"UCI's growing, world-class research enterprise will continue to make a greater impact both nationally and globally," said Pramod Khargonekar, the campus's vice chancellor for research. "And by leveraging private-sector partnerships, we'll be able to move this research more quickly to the places where it can improve people's lives."

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About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 30,000 students and offers 192 degree programs. It's located in one of the world's safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County's second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit http://www.uci.edu.

Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus ISDN line to interview UCI faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UCI news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at communications.uci.edu/for-journalists.
After the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project - which sequenced all 3 billion "letters," or base pairs, in the human genome - many thought that our DNA would become an open book. But a perplexing problem quickly emerged: although scientists could transcribe the book, they could only interpret a small percentage of it.

The mysterious majority - as much as 98 percent - of our DNA do not code for proteins. Much of this "dark matter genome" is thought to be nonfunctional evolutionary leftovers that are just along for the ride. However, hidden among this noncoding DNA are many crucial regulatory elements that control the activity of thousands of genes. What is more, these elements play a major role in diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and autism, and they could hold the key to possible cures.

As part of a major ongoing effort to fully map and annotate the functional sequences of the human genome, including this silent majority, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Feb. 2, 2017, announced new grant funding for a nationwide project to set up five "characterization centers," including two at UC San Francisco, to study how these regulatory elements influence gene expression and, consequently, cell behavior.

The project's aim is for scientists to use the latest technology, such as genome editing, to gain insights into human biology that could one day lead to treatments for complex genetic diseases.

Importance of Genomic Grammar

After the shortfalls of the Human Genome Project became clear, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project was launched in September 2003 by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). The goal of ENCODE is to find all the functional regions of the human genome, whether they form genes or not.

"The Human Genome Project mapped the letters of the human genome, but it didn't tell us anything about the grammar: where the punctuation is, where the starts and ends are," said NIH Program Director Elise Feingold, PhD. "That's what ENCODE is trying to do."

The initiative revealed that millions of these noncoding letter sequences perform essential regulatory actions, like turning genes on or off in different types of cells. However, while scientists have established that these regulatory sequences have important functions, they do not know what function each sequence performs, nor do they know which gene each one affects. That is because the sequences are often located far from their target genes - in some cases millions of letters away. What's more, many of the sequences have different effects in different types of cells.

The new grants from NHGRI will allow the five new centers to work to define the functions and gene targets of these regulatory sequences. At UCSF, two of the centers will be based in the labs of Nadav Ahituv, PhD, and Yin Shen, PhD. The other three characterization centers will be housed at Stanford University, Cornell University, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Additional centers will continue to focus on mapping, computational analysis, data analysis and data coordination.

Cellular Barcodes Reveal Regulatory Function

New technology has made identifying the function and targets of regulatory sequences much easier. Scientists can now manipulate cells to obtain more information about their DNA, and, thanks to high-throughput screening, they can do so in large batches, testing thousands of sequences in one experiment instead of one by one.

"It used to be extremely difficult to test for function in the noncoding part of the genome," said Ahituv, a professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. "With a gene, it's easier to assess the effect because there is a change in the corresponding protein. But with regulatory sequences, you don't know what a change in DNA can lead to, so it's hard to predict the functional output."

Ahituv and Shen are both using innovative techniques to study enhancers, which play a fundamental role in gene expression. Every cell in the human body contains the same DNA. What determines whether a cell is a skin cell or a brain cell or a heart cell is which genes are turned on and off. Enhancers are the secret switches that turn on cell-type specific genes.

During a previous phase of ENCODE, Ahituv and collaborator Jay Shendure, PhD, at the University of Washington, developed a technique called lentivirus-based massive parallel reporter assay to identify enhancers. With the new grant, they will use this technology to test for enhancers among 100,000 regulatory sequences previously identified by ENCODE.

Their approach pairs each regulatory sequence with a unique DNA barcode of 15 randomly generated letters. A reporter gene is stuck in between the sequence and the barcode, and the whole package is inserted into a cell. If the regulatory sequence is an enhancer, the reporter gene will turn on and activate the barcode. The DNA barcode will then code for RNA in the cell.

Once the researchers see that the reporter gene is turned on, they can easily sequence the RNA in the cell to see which barcode is activated. They then match the barcode back to its corresponding regulatory sequence, which the scientists now know is an enhancer.

"With previous enhancer assays, you had to test each sequence one by one," Ahituv explained. "With our approach, we can clone thousands of sequences along with thousands of barcodes and test them all at once."

Deleting Sequences to Understand Their Role

Shen, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology and the Institute for Human Genetics, is taking a different approach to characterize the function of regulatory sequences. In collaboration with her former mentor at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and UC San Diego, Bing Ren, PhD, she developed a high-throughput CRISPR-Cas9 screening method to test the function of noncoding sequences. Now, Shen and Ren are using this approach to identify not only which sequences have regulatory functions, but also which genes they affect.

Shen will use CRISPR to edit tens of thousands of regulatory sequences in a large pool of cells and track the effects of the edits on a set of 60 pairs of genes that commonly co-express.

For this work, each cell will be programmed to reflect two fluorescent colors - one for each gene - when a pair of genes is turned on. If the light in a cell goes out, the scientists will know that its target gene has been affected by one of the CRISPR-based sequence edits. The final step is to sequence each cell's DNA to determine which regulatory sequence edit caused the change in gene expression.

By monitoring the colors of co-expressed genes, Shen will reveal the complex relationship between numerous functional sequences and multiple genes, which was beyond the scope of traditional sequencing techniques.

"Until the recent development of CRISPR, it was not possible to genetically manipulate non-coding sequences in a large scale," said Shen. "Now, CRISPR can be scaled up so that we can screen thousands of regulatory sequences in one experiment. This approach will tell us not only which sequences are functional in a cell, but also which gene they regulate."

Can Dark Matter DNA Treat Disease?

By cataloging the functions of thousands of regulatory sequences, Shen and Ahituv hope to develop rules about how to predict and interpret other sequences' functions. This would not only help illuminate the rest of the dark matter genome, it could also reveal new treatment targets for complex genetic diseases.

"A lot of human diseases have been found to be associated with regulatory sequences," Ahituv said. "For example, in genome-wide association studies for common diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and autism, 90 percent of the disease-associated DNA variants are in the noncoding DNA. So it's not a gene that's changed, but what regulates it."

As the price for sequencing a person's genome has dropped significantly, there is talk about using precision medicine to cure many serious diseases. However, the hurdle of how to interpret mutations in noncoding DNA remains.

"If we can characterize the function and identify the gene targets of these regulatory sequences, we can start to reveal how their mutations contribute to diseases," Shen said. "Eventually, we may even be able to treat complex diseases by correcting regulatory mutations."

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About UCSF: UC San Francisco (UCSF) is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. It includes top-ranked graduate schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy; a graduate division with nationally renowned programs in basic, biomedical, translational and population sciences; and a preeminent biomedical research enterprise. It also includes UCSF Health, which comprises three top-ranked hospitals, UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland, and other partner and affiliated hospitals and healthcare providers throughout the Bay Area. Please visit http://www.ucsf.edu/news.

http://profiles.ucsf.edu/nadav.ahituv

http://profiles.ucsf.edu/yin.shen
New York, NY, February 3, 2017 -- The Vilcek Foundation is proud to announce that the 2017 Vilcek Prize for Biomedical Science will be will be awarded jointly to Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan. The Vilcek Prizes recognize outstanding immigrant contributions to the arts and sciences, and include a $100,000 cash award. Drs. Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan, both researchers and professors of molecular physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, were selected for their many important discoveries made in the field of neuroscience over the course of a collaborative career spanning four decades. The Jans were born in China and raised in Taiwan.

"Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan are trailblazers in many ways," said Jan Vilcek, CEO and chairman of the Vilcek Foundation. "They arrived to the U.S. at a time when few of their compatriots were active in science here, and America has benefited greatly. The Jans' research has uncovered fundamental insights on the development and function of the nervous system, with far-reaching clinical implications for diseases such as epilepsy, autism, schizophrenia, and hypertension."

Among those insights are the Jans' discoveries on how neurons arise from their progenitors, acquire distinct identities and shapes, and establish baroque circuits in the brain and peripheral nervous system. Using fruit flies as their favored experimental model, the Jans' research demonstrated the steps, guided by a succession of genes, that influences the onset and course of neural development and wiring. For example, they found that the genes cut and numb, among others, influence the identity and type of neurons made by their progenitors, and that the fruit fly gene atonal is implicated in vision and hearing. Many of the genes and developmental programs, it turns out, are conserved in mammals, including humans. To wit, years after the Jans' report on atonal, the role of the gene's mammalian versions in human sight and hearing came to light. The Jans also uncovered the principles and the genes that control the process by which dendrites, the slender branches of neurons, grow into densely interlacing forests.

In another important research endeavor, the Jans turned their focus to efforts to isolate the genes for proteins that shuttle potassium ions in and out of cells. Known as potassium channels, these proteins, which control the flow of signals in the nervous system, are implicated in a breathtaking array of functions, such as heart rate maintenance, hormone release, and muscle movement.

For these and many other accomplishments, the Jans have been honored with membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences, as well as with Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator awards. Yuh-Nung Jan is the Jack and DeLoris Lange Professor of Molecular Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, while Lily Jan is the Jack and DeLoris Lange Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, also at UCSF.

The Vilcek Foundation is also honoring three outstanding immigrant scientists--38 years of age or younger--who have demonstrated evidence of creative promise with their scientific work in the United States. Each winner of the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science will receive a $50,000 cash award.

Michaela Gack has uncovered potential molecular targets for the design of antiviral drugs and vaccines for a range of infectious diseases. Early in her career, Gack identified the molecular mechanism by which a protein called RIG-I tips off the human immune system to lurking viruses and triggers a defensive response. The mechanism turns on an enzyme called TRIM25, which activates RIG-I by tagging it with proteins called ubiquitins. Following Gack's discovery, it was found that ubiquitin-tagging by TRIM enzymes is a common immune defense strategy. Because flu viruses block TRIM25 to sidestep the resulting immune response, her findings have yielded a potential target for designing antiviral drugs and vaccines. More recently, Gack has focused on mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue and West Nile virus, and her work could pave the way toward the rational design of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases. Gack, now an associate professor at the University of Chicago, was born in Bavaria, Germany.

Michael Halassa has illuminated how the brain filters sensory noise and sustains attention. By making mice a viable model for cognitive neuroscience, Halassa has probed aspects of attention and perception that have long eluded mechanistic study. His work revealed how the thalamus, a brain region primarily thought to be a sensory relay station, plays a broader role, contributing to cognition. Specifically, he found that thalamic circuits involved in sensory processing operate as tunable filters, enabling the brain to suppress sensory noise during selective attention. He also identified a form of autism in which this filtering process is deficient, paving a potential path to treatment. More recently, he has shown that the thalamus amplifies functional connectivity in the brain's cortex, sustaining attention and perception. His findings could help understand how the brain generates the mind. Halassa, an assistant professor at New York University, was born in Amman, Jordan.

Ahmet Yildiz has used his expertise in visualizing molecules found in living cells to uncover the precise mode of action of molecular motors, which are proteins that ferry cargo along the cellular backbone to support vital functions like neuronal development and cell division. Visualizing the stepwise movement of these motors--kinesins, myosins, and dyneins--along cellular scaffolding had long remained technically challenging. Yildiz developed a technique to localize fluorescent dyes within cells at 1 nanometer resolution, surmounting the challenge and imaging the march of molecular motors on cellular tracks. In related work, Yildiz used super-resolution microscopy techniques to suggest how a protein complex called shelterin protects the ends of chromosomes from the deleterious action of DNA repair enzymes. Because damage to chromosome ends has been tied to premature aging and cancer, Yildiz's findings may yield clinically relevant targets for the treatment of such diseases in the future. Yildiz, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was born near Istanbul, Turkey.

The prizewinners were selected by panels of experts in the field of biomedical science. All prizewinners will be honored at a ceremony in New York City in April 2017. In addition to prizes in biomedical science, the Vilcek Foundation also recognized immigrants in the arts with the 2017 Vilcek Prizes in Fine Arts. For more information about the prizes, please visit Vilcek.org.

###

The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation, to honor the contributions of immigrants to the United States and to foster appreciation of the arts and sciences, was inspired by the couple's respective careers in biomedical science and art history, as well as their personal experiences and appreciation for the opportunities they received as newcomers to this country. The foundation awards annual prizes to prominent immigrant biomedical scientists and artists, and manages the Vilcek Foundation Art Collections, a promised gift from its founders.

To learn more about the Vilcek Foundation, please visit Vilcek.org.
Thursday, February 2, 2017

Gail Rubin, CT, is the kickoff keynote speaker at the 6th Annual Conference of Living With & Beyond Cancer. Her talk is titled A Good Goodbye: Funeral Planning for Those Who Dont Plan to Die. Rubin is a breast cancer survivor who uses humor and funny films to teach about preparing for end-of-life issues, whether youve had cancer or not.

The conference takes place on Saturday, March 18th, 2017, from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Central United Methodist Church, 201 University Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM. Rubins one-hour speech starts at 9:15 a.m.

Visit www.CancerSupportNow.org to register. Conference registration includes: Continental Breakfast & Lunch, All Materials, Keynote Speaker, Lunch Speaker, and 2 breakout sessions.

Conference registration is FREE. A donation to Cancer Support Now in the amount of $25 or any other amount you are able to contribute is suggested to help sustain its free support services.

Gail Rubins keynote speech at the conference is sponsored by Morris Hall, PLLC, a premier estate planning law firm. To ask questions and get more information about estate planning issues, contact attorney Jim Plitz at 505-889-0100 or visit www.MorrisTrust.com.

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Defra secretary Andrea Leadsom has met with local NFU members on a farm near Cardiff to discuss issues facing the Welsh agricultural industry.

Ms Leadsom was joined by Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns MP, for the visit to Abi Readers Goldsland Farm followed by meetings in Cardiff Bay.

The first, led by Alun Cairns MP and the Welsh Office, was attended by NFU Cymru officeholders and staff, while the second round table meeting, organised by Welsh Government and headed by Lesley Griffiths AM, Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs, was attended by NFU Cymru President Stephen James.

NFU Cymru President Stephen James said: "The visit and subsequent meetings, which were extremely positive and constructive, gave us the opportunity to impress upon Ms Leadsom the importance of trade and export markets, particularly as 90% of our food and drink exports and over a third of our lamb crop is exported to the EU.

"Losing access to those markets, even if it was for a short period, or being hindered by tariffs or non-tariff barriers would be extremely damaging to Wales.

"We also spoke about future support and the need for parity with our counterparts across the UK and the EU.

'370 million per year'

The CAP is worth around 370 million per year to Wales, but NFU Cymru have suggested this should represent 'exceptional value' for money.

Mr James continued: "When you think about the contribution agriculture makes to the wider Welsh economy, the environment and tourism industry.

"Another key part of the discussion was over the subject of labour and access to a reliable workforce. Wales farms do utilise EU labour and the processing sector in Wales is heavily reliant on workers from across Europe.

"We made it clear that we expect the Prime Minister to deliver on the acknowledgement in her January statement of the vital role a reliable workforce plays for a variety of sectors.

"As the process of leaving the European Union moves forwards it is clear that all parties will have to communicate with one another to ensure the best outcome for the UK, and indeed the Welsh, agricultural industry, so its vital that NFU Cymru is able to continue to liaise with those in a position of influence in Cardiff Bay, Westminster and Brussels at this pivotal time."
The EU has published a consultation as the first step towards modernising the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Farmers, organisations, or anyone interested in the future of food and farming in Europe, now have three months to share their experiences and ideas to help shape future EU policy.

EU Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Phil Hogan said it must be refined, simplifying and revitalised for this century.

He said: "The Common Agricultural Policy is already delivering major benefits for every European citizen, in terms of food security, the vitality of rural areas, the rural environment and the contribution to the climate change challenge.

"By designing a roadmap for the future, I am confident it can deliver even more. But we must refine it, and revitalise it, and  of course  we must adequately fund it."

'Cannot keep changing'

But Pekka Personen, secretary general of EU farmers group Copa said: "We are still getting to grips with the latest CAP reform, which has only been in place for two years. We cannot keep changing it every couple of years."

The CAP has already undergone several waves of reforms, the latest of which was carried out in 2013 and implemented in 2015.

However, the context in which that reform was forged has shifted significantly which means the key challenges agriculture and rural areas are facing today, in terms of social, political, environmental and economic challenges, need to be addressed.

The results of the public consultation will be published online and presented by Commissioner Hogan at a conference in Brussels in July 2017.

Responses will also help the Commission prepare a draft Communication by the end of 2017.

This will include conclusions on the current performance of the Common Agricultural Policy, as well as potential policy options for the future.
Although the UK's rural sector has emerged from the political and economic unrest of 2016 relatively unscathed, there is a need to be prepared for the 'period of change which lies ahead', according to property consultants Carter Jonas.

With sentiment largely positive, demand for rural property has remained strong throughout the past twelve months.

Although a new demographic of investor is now looking at rural property as an option to diversify their portfolios, local buyers still have a dominant presence in the market.

Carter Jonas also recorded an increase in the number of enquiries from lifestyle buyers in the North West and Western regions over the course of the year.

Figures show that arable land values modestly declined by 5.2% in 2016, reflecting a natural cooling of the market rather than a specific reaction to the results of the Brexit vote.

Even against the backdrop of a market correction, regional hotspots were seen within Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Yorkshire, outperforming the national position.

'Need to be prepared'

Settling at a UK average of 10,500/acre by the year-end, European buyers of arable land have benefited from the Brexit-induced currency devaluation of sterling, making such assets especially appealing.

Output commodity prices are also benefiting from the weakened pound, having significantly increased during the last quarter of 2016.

Feed wheat, valued at 142/tonne at the end of the year, recorded positive annual growth for the first time since 2012, while the price of milk increased by nearly 20% in the last quarter.

Input commodity prices saw a marked increase in December, having fallen throughout the first three quarters of the year, rebounding back to levels last recorded in mid-2015. Fertiliser (ammonium nitrate) values, in particular, reached 237.5/tonne, up 35.3% on the last quarter.

'Defined and vital role'

Tim Jones, Head of Rural, Carter Jonas, said: "As we progress into 2017, it is clear that the rural sector has a defined and vital role to play in the security and growth of the UKs economy.

"We need to be prepared for the period of change which lies ahead and adapt our business models accordingly."

Andrew Fallows, Head of Rural Agency, Carter Jonas, said: "After a promising summer and autumn, with sales in hotspots achieving 5% above guide price, we are confident that rural assets still represent a solid investment for any portfolio.

"While land owners might be adopting a wait and see approach to business, purchaser demand  utilising rollover relief following development land sales - has remained high. After a turbulent year, we should be encouraged that the sector has successfully weathered the storm of 2016."
A group of farmers are running a new field lab to test the viability of growing combinable organic proteins, in particular Lupins, for animal feed.

With the current difficulties in maintaining a regular supply of imported organic protein for animal feed manufacture, Lupins may offer a solution, providing a valuable cash crop and also improving soil fertility

Lupins offer a good protein level as a combinable crop and can be used in feed mills without additional processing.

Nigel Mapstone of Mole Valley Farmers, who is co-ordinating the field lab with agricultural network Innovative Farmers, said: Lupins are high in protein and good to grow in our temperate climate. This can help to reduce feed miles and, perhaps more importantly, offer greater self-sufficiency and food security for the UK.

'Many benefits'

Lupins provide many benefits, such as being a good source for pollinators. They are also a nitrogen fixing legume, so can be included in an arable rotation to reduce the need for fertiliser and improve crop yields.

Mr Mapstone said modern varieties of blue and white Lupin give better yields and mature earlier than previous commercial varieties, although consideration will still need to be given to soil type.

He continued: At Mole Valley Farmers we identified possible further concern with the supply of organic animal feed, but also a rise in demand from the USA.

The UK has a great climate for growing these kinds of crops and we are hoping that the more tolerant Lupin, which also requires less processing, could offer British farmers an answer. At present due to unreliable yields there are very little combinable organic proteins grown in the UK.

Some of the farms involved in the trial have a higher soil pH and so may look at growing soya instead of Lupin. Soya may do better on chalk down-land where some of the group farm.
Scientists from the University of Birmingham are calling on British cooling businesses to join them in India as part of a research initiative to help double farmers incomes, whilst reducing their impact on the environment.

The Birmingham Energy Institute, supported by the UKs Science and Innovation team, Department for International Trade, and Indias National Centre for Cold Chain Development, is hosting a four-day workshop and study tour.

The event brings together government, industry, technology and academic experts from India and the UK to look at how clean-cold technology can help farmers get more food to market whilst minimising their carbon footprint.

The Indian government has identified investment in cold chain logistics as a vital component in its farm income strategy. It has also set ambitious targets to make agriculture and the food supply more sustainable.

Doubling farmers' income

Professor Toby Peters, from Birmingham Energy Institute, said: Prime Minister Modi has set India the target of doubling farmers income by 2022. With over 40% of some crops lost between farm gate and market, a seamless cold chain is needed to move food swiftly from farm to consumer.

Any new cold chain infrastructure must be clean. Doubling farmers income by expanding the use of conventional, highly- polluting cold chain technologies would simply mitigate one problem by significantly worsening another.

The key is to translate global science into local solutions  identifying and accelerating deployment of cooling technologies that are sustainable, scalable, and economically viable for India.

With this workshop, we aim to enable innovative British clean cooling businesses and Indian organisations to define approaches that will work in India, as well as creating a roadmap for rapid deployment and forging new international partnerships for technology trial and demonstration.

'Clean cold'

Experts will gather in India to develop policy recommendations to overcome barriers, accelerate technology deployment and mitigate areas of risk, as well as galvanising funding for field trials of new innovative clean cold technologies for the cold chain in India.

The event is a key part of a major research project to investigate how clean cold could help to achieve almost all of the United Nations (UN) global Sustainable Development Goals.

These 17 Global Goals commit the international community to put the world to rights by 2030 - abolishing poverty and hunger; providing good healthcare and education; raising peoples quality of life; and cleaning up the environment, whilst promoting economic growth.

Roadmaps produced by the project could provide a global template to help meet the UN targets, as demand for cooling booms in fast growing economies - largely driven by urbanisation and emergence of an Asian Pacific middle class  predicted to rise to 3 billion by 2030  with lifestyles built on cooling.

The projects launch report highlights that, as the worlds population heads to 9 billion by mid-century - increasing projected food demand by 60% - we will need far more cooling to conserve food, water and other resources; tackle poverty, hunger, health and climate change; and underpin growth and development.
Supermarkets across the UK are rationing customers to three iceberg lettuces per visit due to poor growing conditions in Europe with are affecting most vegetable sales.

One notice read: "Due to continued weather problems in Spain there is a shortage of iceberg lettuce.

"To protect the availability to all our customers, we are limiting bulk purchases to three per person. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Tesco has rationed customers to three iceberg lettuces per visit and Morrisons have also limited shoppers to three heads of broccoli and three iceberg lettuces.

Meanwhile, Sainsbury's told the Daily Mail it was working with suppliers 'to maintain supply for our customers.'

Bad weather in Spain

The vast majority of the UK's vegetables come from the city of Murcia in southeastern Spain during the winter months.

But severe flooding and freezing conditions have damaged farms across the region, causing millions of euros worth of damage.

Twitter

British shoppers have already been warned that shortages of courgettes, aubergines, salad and celery will continue until the spring  and they can expect to pay substantially higher prices for the stock that is available.

A Morrisons spokesman said the retailer had introduced a cap to stop local businesses and restaurateurs buying up all of its stock.

"As a result of the fact that the Spanish harvest has been very difficult this year, we have just about enough coming in to supply our customers," he said.

Consumers can now expect shortages of iceberg lettuce, baby spinach, mixed leaves, rocket, lollo rossa, cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, lemons, and oranges.

"Due to bad weather conditions in Spain, we are experiencing some availability issues, but are working with our suppliers to resolve them as quickly as possible," said a Tesco spokesman.

"To make sure customers dont miss out, we are asking them to limit the number of iceberg lettuces they buy to three," he said.

Experts have warned that if the weather does not improve in the coming weeks the problem may continue until April, with customers hit by price rises.

'Lettuce crisis'

The problem has become so serious that British wholesalers have taken the step of importing produce from California, despite the high cost of transporting it.

Last month, fruit and vegetable wholesaler Nick Padley told the BBC: "There's a gap of about six weeks on iceberg lettuce, nothing is coming from Spain for six to eight weeks.

"Our supplier is now going to be bringing in iceberg from America which is obviously costing more. It's a tough time."

Concerned healthy eaters in Britain have been sharing pictures of bare supermarket shelves with the hashtags #lettucecrisis and #courgettecrisis, while complaining that prices have nearly tripled in recent weeks.

London retail analyst Rob Gregory said: "My local Tesco also affected by the lettuce and salad rationing. Not much there to ration though!"

The Spanish association of fruit and vegetable producers, FEPEX, said it expected the shortage of leafy vegetables grown outdoors, including lettuce and spinach, to continue until early April.

It said EU-wide production was down by about 40% and warned that increased availability would depend on the climate in southern Europe in February and March.
Welsh rural affairs secretary Lesley Griffiths has raised the issue of 'cheaper imports' which could enter the market in post-Brexit trade deals in a Cardiff meeting with UK environment minister Andrea Leadsom.

Ms Griffiths said Welsh lamb exports to the EU were worth 122m a year - 93% of its business overseas.

Until now, 40% of all the Welsh lamb produced has been exported to customers within the EU.

She raised concerns that the industry here could lose out in talks and be 'flooded with much cheaper imports from New Zealand' in a future free trade deal.

"It's up to the UK government to fight in those negotiations for all four countries," she told BBC Wales.

"I'm visiting other countries to get trade agreements and the first minister is over in America next month and we want them to start taking our lamb again, but that has been seven years in progressing that," she said.

During the meeting in Cardiff, Mrs Leadsom said she was 'very aware' of the concerns of farmers and the UK government would seek the best possible deal, working closely with the Welsh Government.

No capacity

But last year, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies said Wales does not have the capacity to form its agriculture policy after the UK leaves the EU.

"There is a real issue around capacity in Welsh Government to reach for the challenge ahead and actually look at the opportunities that are opening up before us," he said.

"At the moment I don't think that capacity exists and I don't think there was any pre-planning for the outcome of the referendum.

"We've heard on the show field today the lacklustre response to Bovine TB. As we can all look at the headlines about Brexit, there are the day to day challenges that the rural economy and agriculture faces.

"I see no impetus coming from government at the moment to address those day to day issues, leave alone the big headline issue of Brexit.

"I think it's deeply concerning that we had a priorities for government statement five days before the Royal Welsh and not one mention of agriculture or the rural economy."

'Catastrophic effect'

The NSA said the UK needed to be keen to see an outcome to Brexit whereby tighter controls on New Zealand lamb were put in place.

They said a situation allowing new Australian products to be imported into UK retailers would make matters worse.

"Recent figures from Meat and Livestock Australia show the country produced 516,366 tonnes of lamb and 196,040 tonnes of mutton in 2015/16, exporting 56% of total lamb production (worth $1.78 billion) and 91% of mutton production ($700 million). The main destinations were the Middle East, USA and China.

"The UK is currently an importer and exporter of lamb, which helps balance supply and demand through the year and exploits ideal sheep producing conditions in the UK.

"We currently export around 36% of UK lamb, with France and the rest of the EU taking the majority of this. A priority for our sector is negotiating a trade deal with the EU post-Brexit.

"A free trade deal with Australia or New Zealand may be beneficial for some UK industries but could have a catastrophic effect on UK sheep farmers and we cannot sit back and be sacrificed for the benefit of others."
Marts to donate Scotch Lamb for St Andrew's Day campaign
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State senators spent nearly eight hours over the past three days trying to advance the first of three budget bills that would adjust this year's spending downward.

They are expected to get the job done Friday morning.

While there are a number of senators who don't like aspects of the cuts to this year's budget, proposed by Gov. Pete Ricketts and modified by the Legislature's Appropriations Committee, other issues have piled on to the reasons for the extended debate.

The state has a projected revenue shortfall of about $900 million with which the governor and the Legislature must deal with to balance the state's $8.9 billion budget over the next two years.

But first, Ricketts wanted to reduce the amount of spending that will be done in the remainder of this fiscal year that ends June 30 to set a foundation for the next budget and discussions of tax cuts.

That meant across-the-board reductions and specific cuts affected some agencies, the courts, the University of Nebraska and state colleges. The governor also proposed to take back some unspent money agencies and programs were saving.

As the debate continued Thursday, one of the themes centered on why Ricketts or the Legislature's Tax Rate Review Committee had not called a special session to deal with the shortfall over the interim. And why Ricketts had acted unilaterally to scale back spending and reduce the distribution of appropriations to agencies.

"The way we found out that cuts (to agencies) were being made was from a memo. That's not the way it should be done," said Omaha Sen. Burke Harr. "There should be collaboration. There should be discussion."

Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus said a special session over the interim would have allowed more-seasoned senators who would still have been in office to play a role in debate and action related to the coming shortfall.

Schumacher even questioned the revenue projections that showed the $900 million shortfall.

"How good are those revenue projections?" he said. "This may be a bit of heresy, but I'll toss it out there for thought. What if the revenue projections are wrong and things are not as bad as they might seem? Do we have an obligation to examine the underlying assumptions?"

The same scenario has played out in several other states, he said.

"The oddity is, we're not the only state where this is suddenly happening. And there seems to be a common theme of Republican governors," he said.

Underlying all this, he said, are corporate tax shortages tied to incentive programs.

"And where all of this seems to be leading is to a frenzy for tax cuts in an environment where we're supposedly a billion dollars short on cash," he said. "Either that's sheer madness, or there's more to the story than we've figured out yet."

Over the three days of debate, Omaha Sen. Bob Krist objected to the state taking back money, which totals about $3.8 million, saved by the legislative council. He filed an amendment that would strike those cuts from the proposed budget adjustments.

The Legislature needs those savings, he said, to deal with the installation of a new heating and air-conditioning system that will displace offices over the next seven years, and for new office telephones with security features that have been in the planning stages for a while.

Appropriations Committee members said coming decisions in crafting the 2017-19 budget will be hard.

"All of these things are real challenges that are really in front of the Appropriations Committee in the biennium budget," said Lincoln Sen. Kate Bolz. "And so taking this action now makes sure that we can free up some room in a way that is less difficult."

Sen. John Stinner said senators need to set aside their differences and come together.

"This means a lot to the state of Nebraska," he said.
A new type of milk is making its way towards UK supermarket shelves, dividing opinion among producers and consumers in the process.

Its champions trumpet it as the middle-ground between retailers conventional, own-label offerings and organic milk.

Critics say its very nature divides the dairy industry at a time when it should be more unified than ever.

Free-range milk has been bandied as the answer to many of the inherent problems of the dairy industry; returning a fair price to farmers, guaranteeing happy, healthy cows and giving consumers more choice.

See also: Jamie Oliver and Jimmy Doherty fuel free-range milk debate

And there is certainly strong demand for increased options in the supermarket milk aisle, with a recent Twitter poll by television chef, Jamie Oliver, indicating 73% of the 6,471 people surveyed want a free-range milk offering.

Milk from pasture-fed cows commands a premium price  about 1.25 for four pints compared with 1 for four pints for most own-label milk  and provides a customer promise that cows are not housed all year.

Furthermore, a set proportion of the retail price is returned to the farmer.

What it means

However, the exact definition of free-range does differ between the two main offerings:

Neil Darwents Free Range Dairy guarantees herds whose milk carries his pasture promise have been outside for a minimum of 180 days a year.

Nick Hiscoxs Enjoy Milk brand proclaims cows will be outside wherever possible.

The aim of the pair of dairy entrepreneurs is simple: they want to add-value to a product that can fluctuate by more than four times in value from peak to trough.

This is dependent on what sort of contract the producer is on, and which market the milk is sold in to.

Between them, the pair have signed up hundreds of farmers, and both admit interest from other processors has increased since the subject of free-range milk was aired on Channel 4s Jamie & Jimmys Friday Night Feast starring Jamie Oliver and Jimmy Doherty two weeks ago.

Weve had non-stop phone calls and emails from people wanting to find out where their nearest free-range supplier is, says Mr Darwent.

Its time the public got the product they want, that also allows farmers to run a business and not chase a volume.

Consumer support

Mr Hiscox also believes consumers have shown a clear desire to support British farmers and return some fairness to the supply chain, point to the success of the Morrisons Milk For Farmers scheme as proof of this.

The initiative asked consumers if they were willing to pay another 23p/litre for their milk and the answer was a resounding yes.

The scheme has raised more than 5.8m for Arlas 12,700 farmer-owners since it was launched in October 2015, overtaking organic sales over the 14-month period.

But Mr Hiscox has criticised the scheme for not sending all of the returns to UK producers, as has been promised by the two free-range initiatives  the proceeds under Arla have to be shared among all its European farmers.

The concern I have is when we take advantage of the support consumers have shown us and abuse it by misleading them. We run the risk of a PR disaster, he suggests.

Fact or fiction

However, misnomers and misleading facts have been all too common in a heated debate that has engulfed factions of the dairy industry since the Channel 4 segment on free-range milk was aired a fortnight ago.

The show pitted free-range, pasture-based herds against fully housed systems, with the shows hosts making a number of claims as to free-range milks superiority (see Jamie & Jimmys Friday Night Feast false-facts debunked below).

Viewers of the episode could have been forgiven for leaving with the perception that herds that spend 365 days in doors were no different to battery chickens, with many members of the public expressing as much on social media.

[The] current situation is appalling, said Clare Taylor (@_mssct) on Twitter while Drew Macdonald (@drewmjmacdonald) said: I had no idea that UK milk was that bad. I thought it was just USA that farmed milk like that.

An article in The Times a few days earlier had also accused the two free-range milk offerings of further confusing an already complex dairy industry.

Even The Times showed a worrying lack of understanding of the realities of dairy farming, asking why free-range cows were not kept outside 365 days a year.

Of course, weather and grass growth would make this virtually impossible for the majority of regions across the UK. However, if a relatively well-informed national newspaper is confused, it is unlikely the consumer fully understands all of the nuances of the debate either.

Disappointment

Both free-range entrepreneurs have expressed their disappointment at The Times article, describing it as poorly researched and divisive.

We arent two rival brands, nor are we in the business of creating horror stories about other systems, says Mr Darwent.

We want to differentiate and not discriminate in order to compete on a more positive footing.

Mr Hiscox adds: When someone [like The Times] makes silly comments, its always the producer who pays the price.

Theres plenty of room for lots of different brands on the shelf, but the way to do it is through positive marketing and absolutely not bashing other systems.

But, despite their common ground in many areas, the two remain resolute that their labels will go it alone, with no cumulative offering in the pipeline.

Good prospects in a tough marketplace Fluctuating supply has led to extreme market volatility since milk quotas were abolished in March 2015. EU production soared in countries such as the Netherland and Ireland, driving the UK farmgate prices through the floor. The average price UK dairy farmers were paid for their milk dropped 20% to 19.95p/litre between March 2015 and the peak of the dairy crisis in July 2016. While things are now improving, difficult market conditions have seen UK dairy producer numbers shrink by two-thirds in the past 20 years, to 13,355 in 2015. That was 3.33% down on the year before, according to AHDB Dairy. But the omens for free-range milk seem positive; free-range egg sales have doubled in the past 10 years, accounting for about half total UK sales, while demand for cage eggs has largely flatlined. Proponents of free-range milk believe a similar development is possible in the milk aisle. But the infighting and risks of negative press need to stop, says NFU chief dairy adviser, Sian Davies. We all want to see successful products on sale, but what we dont want is the knocking of other systems in order to get there. The industry is far stronger united and working together, fighting against the non-dairy alternative, highlighting everything that is great about milk. Ms Davies adds: Dairy is facing a number of challenges in the next few years and the last thing we want is to create a level of confusion that exposes producers and retailers to negative publicity. That wont help anyone.




Haiti - France : Two Haitians receive the Order of Agricultural Merit





Tuesday at the residence of France, the Ambassador of France in Haiti, Elisabeth Beton Delegue, presented the decorations of Officers in the Order of Agricultural Merit to Michel Chancy and Jocelyn Louissaint during a ceremony in the presence of their families and their relatives.



With a long tradition of support for the agricultural sector in Haiti, particularly in the fields of water resources management and the strengthening of food security, France, by distinguishing Messrs. Chancy and Louissaint, paid tribute to their brilliant route as well as their unwavering commitment to the development of Haiti.



Created in 1883 to reward "people who have rendered outstanding service to agriculture", the Order of Agricultural Merit distinguishes French and foreign personalities who have distinguished themselves in the various agro-food sectors. This decoration is awarded by decree of the Minister of Agriculture, Agri-Food and Forestry.



Learn more about Michel Chancy :

Michel Chancy holds a degree in veterinary medicine from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and has taught at the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine at the State University of Haiti and at the Quisqueya University. He is one of the founders of the Haitian health and animal production NGO, Veterimed, and has served as Secretary of State for Animal Production in the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development from September 2008 to March 2016.



Learn more about Jocelyn Louissaint :

A graduate of the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine of the State University of Haiti, where he studied engineering and agronomy, Jocelyn Louissaint holds a master's degree in soil sciences from the University State of Louisiana. Currently Dean of the Faculty of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine of the State University of Haiti, he has been a consultant, coordinator and project manager of numerous initiatives to address the environmental problems in Haiti.



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - IMPORTANT NOTICE : National Carnival of Les Cayes





Following the announcement by President-elect Jovenel Moise of the holding this year of the National Carnival in the city of Les Cayes on the 26th, 27th and 28th of February https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19883-haiti-culture-the-2017-national-carnival-will-take-place-in-the-city-of-les-cayes.html the municipal administration of the city, is active on all fronts, notably to find enough rooms to accommodate all national and international tourists. A recurring problem in Haiti for all cities that organize a major cultural event.



The Mayor of the Cayes, Gabriel Fortune said that all standards combined, there are hotel rooms in 16 of the 18 municipalities of the department but that he was looking for 2,000 additional rooms among the inhabitants to welcome all visitors. On this subject and in support of the efforts of the Mayor, the Ministry of Tourism and Creative Industries launched a NOTICE :



Important Notice :

"In order to increase the accommodating capacity of the national carnival which will take place in Les Cayes , from 26th to 28th February 2017, under the theme 'N'ap Danse, N'ap Konstwi', the Ministry of Tourism asks all those who would have a comfortable room to rent during the carnival period, go to the carnival office which is located on the 2nd main street (near the Place d'armes of Les Cayes) , or they can call the following numbers to register : 3933 9091 and 4170 6464. An inspector will accompany you to make a visit."



Concerning the budget of the Carnival National 2017, Mayor Fortune said that this was the responsibility of the Organizing Committee, while evoking an estimated amount of 85 million Gourdes, waiting for details by the president of the Committee Sergo Chery.



TB/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Environment : The European Union welcomes the ratification by Haiti of the Paris Agreement





The European Union and its Member States in Haiti (Germany, Spain, France and the United Kingdom) welcome the ratification in Haiti of the Paris agreement on climate change by the two Chambers meeting in the National Assembly https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19986-haiti-news-zapping-politics.html



Haiti's ratification of the Paris agreement, signed at the COP21 in December 2015 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16066-haiti-cop21-the-fruits-have-finally-found-the-promise-of-flowers-dixit-dominique-pierre.html , illustrates the determination of the Haitian State to make every effort to remain one of the least emitting countries of greenhouse gases in the world. This ratification will enable the Haitian State to respect the commitments made in Marrakech at COP 22 (November 2016), to strengthen its status as a member of the agreement and thus to have access to the Green Fund, whose overall budget is expected to reach $ 100 billion by 2020.



The Paris agreement signed at the COP21 in December 2015 has now been ratified by nearly 130 states. The time is now for implementation.



Let's recall that the European Union is financing with an envelope of more than 354 million gourdes ( 6 million Euros) the program of Support to the taking into account of climate change in the national development of Haiti (Program AP3C). Part of this funding allows the Haitian government to strengthen climate governance by supporting the Ministry of the Environment, in particular the Climate Change Directorate and the National Environmental Assessment Bureau, in the development of the National Policy on Climate Change and in monitoring the work of the National Council on Climate Change.



Download the Haiti proposal : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/CPDN_Republique-d-Haiti.pdf



Download the study on the estimated costs of climate change impacts in Haiti :

https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/UNDP-HT-ProEnv-EtuEconoCC.pdf



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-17231-haiti-environment-dieuseul-desras-to-the-signing-ceremony-of-the-paris-agreement-cop21.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16066-haiti-cop21-the-fruits-have-finally-found-the-promise-of-flowers-dixit-dominique-pierre.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Yeksan civil code thopa gaya to mulk mein takrao ke halaat paida ho jayen gein  if the uniform civil code is imposed, situations of confrontation will emerge in the country. This is a banner headline of a five-column report carried on January 22 by Roznama Inquilab, a mass-circulated Urdu daily edited by a Muslim editor and owned by non-Muslims. The headline is a warning against any attempt by the Indian government to introduce the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), a code of desired rights for Indians irrespective of their religion, gender, caste or any other creed. The Indian state is directed by the Article 44 of the Constitution to draft and introduce the UCC.

If you are thinking that the warning was issued by an Islamic cleric, you are in for a rude shock. As per the report, it came from Waman Meshram, the chief of BAMCEF  short for the All India Backward (SC, ST, OBC) and Minority Communities Employees Federation. He made the statement at a mass rally organised by the Bahujan Kranti Morcha in Mumbai on January 21. As per Roznama Inquilab, Meshram stated: The uniform civil code is not an issue of Muslims alone, but of other religions too. If it is imposed, situations of confrontation will emerge in the country. It is indeed the case that the UCC, if and when implemented, will uphold individual rights of Indian citizens, removing discriminatory nature of personal laws of different religious communities.

Notwithstanding Meshrams statement against the UCC, at present the only opposition to the UCC comes not from non-Muslim communities, but from Indian Muslims whose leaders, like every other person, do not know what specifics will likely constitute the UCC. The Indian government has launched public consultation to draft the UCC. Elsewhere, this writer has drafted and released a 12-clause UCC for wider consultation. Since, religious communities other than Muslims are not opposed to the UCC, not as yet, it becomes relevant to understand why Meshram issued the warning in an address to predominantly a Muslim audience. Several non-Muslim leaders who spoke on the occasion included Jeevan Bhalerao, Tansen Manore and Ashok Chauhan.

In recent years, as well as before, the Islamist leaders of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and other religious organisations in India have diligently sought to court Dalit leaders to advance their own Islamist agenda. So, it is not surprising that the rally was addressed by Islamic scholar Maulana Khalilur Rahman Sajjad Nomani, a member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which opposes the UCC and has been at the forefront to defend the anti-women practice of unilateral instant triple talaq (divorce). As per Roznama Inquilab, the Mumbai rally was attended by Muslims in large numbers, among the audiences being Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, Lingayats, Buddhists, Christian, Banjara and other backward castes. The report does not make it clear, if the lower caste Muslims attended the rally or not.

Addressing the rally, Maulana Sajjad Nomani said: The countrys history has been that there has never been a Hindu-Muslim or Sikh-Muslim or Christian-Muslim issue in this country; rather, for two-and-a-half to three thousands of years it has been an issue between the tyrant and the victims. Whenever real issues emerge before the people, their attention is diverted in other direction. He told the audience: Muslims! Understand the circumstances and do not respond to the manoeuvres of this game of chess by anger Several Islamic leaders who addressed the rally included Maulana Shahid Moeen Qasmi, Maulana Mahmood Khan Daryabadi, Dr. Azimuddin and others.

According to another report in Roznama Urdu Times of January 22, Maulana Sajjad Nomani also launched an attack on upper castes Hindus, stating: Ever since the country became independent, the Manuwadis (i.e. upper caste Brahmins) started creating a rift between Hindus and Muslims. He added: I do not consider Mahatma Gandhi a mahatma (i.e. great). As per another report in the newspaper Mumbai Urdu News, Maulana Sajjad Nomani told the rally: Communalism has become so widespread in the country that everyone is engaged in sowing the seeds of hate. In such a situation, this alliance of Dalits and Muslims has been established to carry along the brothers of the nation including the Dalit brothers.

Although Maulana Sajjad Nomani camouflages his agenda in the language of harmony, his precise purpose is also divisive  i.e. to divide Hindus so that the Islamist agenda of the All Indian Muslim Personal Law Board either against the UCC or in favour of retaining the anti-women practice of instant triple talaq can be sustained. Maulana Sajjad Nomani and other Islamists of his type know that public opinion in India is changing fast in favour Muslim womens rights, especially the right to equality and non-discrimination based on gender as guaranteed by the Constitution. And this Islamist agenda of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board is being supported by some Dalit leaders, much like Mahatma Gandhi supported the Khilafat Movement launched by the Indian Islamists.

Source : IndiaFacts
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today rebuked German Chancellor Angela Merkel for using the expression Islamist terrorism, saying the phrase saddened Muslims.

After the meeting in Ankara Mrs Merkel spoke of the need for Turkey and Germany to work even more closely together to fight against terror, where it is ISIS-inspired terrorism or violence from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is fighting for a homeland for the Kurds in south-east Turkey.

She said: We spoke in detail aboutthe questions of the fight against Islamist terrorism, against every form of terrorism, also the terrorism of the PKK.

We agree we want to cooperate, we are all affected by this. We agreed to have closer cooperation in the future, she said.

Mr Erdogan, sitting next to Mrs Merkel, was stony-faced as she used the phrase Islamist terrorism.

Mr Erdogan, glancing sternly at the German chancellor, pointedly remarked: This expression Islamist terror seriously saddens us Muslims.

Such an expression is not correct because Islam and terror cannot be associated. The meaning of Islam is peace.

Many Muslims resent any mention of Islam in association with terrorism, arguing those who commit crimes purportedly in the name of Islam have nothing to do with a religion that espouses peace.

Mr Erdogan said it would be saddening if the term was used because of the crimes of ISIS, which has been blamed for a string of attacks in Turkey over the last year.

Please lets not use it. As long as it is used we need to stand against it. As a Muslim president personally I cannot accept that, he said.

The awkward moment between the pair came after they had tackled a series of hugely sensitive issues at a time of rising tensions between Ankara and Berlin.

His response delighted the Turkish press, with the Yeni Safak daily headlining on its website: President Erdogans warning to Merkel.

The phrase is controversial and previous US president Barack Obama refused to use the phrase Islamic terrorism, saying such crimes distorted and perverted Islam.

But new President Donald Trump has not shied away from using the term, speaking of radical Islamic terror during the election campaign and condemning his predecessor for not using the term.

Erdogans AKP party was elected on an Islamic platform and has done its best to roll back the secular culture which has been adopted by Turkey since the founder of the modern state, Kemal Ataturk, came to power in the 1920s.

Ataturk remains a revered figure in Turkey and his image remains ever present in the country but he would not have seen eye to eye with Erdogan on many issues.

Source : Dailymail UK
Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar has dismissed claims Ireland must cut a deal with Britain because the EU does not listen to this country, writes Fiachra O Cionnaith, Political Correspondent.

Minister Varadkar did admit however that the Government must start building support with smaller EU allies to help make our views known.

Minister Varadkar made the comments as Labour jobs spokesperson Alan Kelly said Ireland needs to consider holding a referendum on any finalised Brexit deal between Britain and the EU due to the impact it will have on this country.

Speaking in London where he met Irish communities as part of ongoing talks between Ireland and Britain over the likely fallout from Brexit, Mr Varadkar rejected claims from the DUP's Ian Paisley Jnr that no one in the EU listens to Ireland.

The Social Protection Minister said regardless of concerns Ireland is being ignored by the EU and seen as a side issue in the wider negotiations with Britain, this country wants to remain at the "heart" of Europe.

During Wednesday's crucial House of Commons debate on Brexit, Mr Paisley asked Britain's Brexit secretary David Davis if he was familiar with former Irish diplomat Ray Bassett's view that the EU "don't really listen to Ireland", adding if Ireland wants to be relevant it should focus on talking to Britain.

However, responding to the controversial claim, Mr Varadkar said: "Irelands place is at the heart of Europe. Its a Europe that we helped to build and we intend to stay at the heart of it.

"Of course, in the new Europe we have to build new relationships with other European countries particularly small countries and countries that have similar economic views as us for example the Benelux countries and others.

"At the same time we will have to strengthen relations with the UK, and particularly do all that we can to minimise disruption on the economy and trade, and preserve the rights that Irish and UK citizens enjoy in each others countries."

Mr Varadkar said he welcomed Britain's decision to publish a detailed white paper on its Brexit plans earlier this week, noting it includes a "specific chapter" on relations with Ireland.

However, despite saying this shows "the language is good" between both nations over crucial border, trade and common travel area questions, he admitted "the reality is going to be somewhat trickier".

The Social Protection Minister's comments came as Labour jobs spokesperson Alan Kelly said Ireland must consider a referendum on any Brexit deal between Britain and the EU due to the impact it will have on this country.

Warning "no one can predict how this will pan out", Mr Kelly said the EU needs to realise "these negotiations are critical to the future of this island".

He said demanding a referendum - which some legal experts have said is allowed under both the Irish and EU constitutions - which could potentially block any deal "would certainly concentrate the mind of [EU chief negotiator Michel] Barnier and his negotiating team" while elevating "our unique status and issues on their priority list".
Law enforcement officers on Friday urged a Nebraska legislative committee to support a proposal that would partially shield their home addresses from public disclosure to help protect them from retaliation.

A third-generation Lincoln Police officer, who is a gang unit investigator, told members of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee that he has been targeted at home and on the internet.

In one case, following the arrest of two brothers, dozens of dead animals began showing up on his property, he said, some of them beheaded and most badly mangled.

The officer, who asked that his name not be used, said comments were posted on the internet including threats to sexually assault family members and post video recordings of the assaults online.

Lincoln City Councilman Roy Christensen said police officers "deal with the dark underside of our culture," and legislative action is needed "so darkness will not follow them home."

Christensen said 25 percent of Lincoln's police officers do not live in the city and he is told that is because "families don't feel safe living in Lincoln (when) bad actors can find their home address."

The proposed legislation (LB624), introduced by Lincoln Sen. Anna Wishart, would provide a means to withhold residential addresses of law enforcement officers from the public -- online or by phone.

The address could be requested in writing from the county assessor where it is a public record. That requirement "takes away the anonymity" of the person seeking the address, Wishart said.

Law enforcement officers "come face-to-face with danger every day," Wishart said, and her bill would provide "an added barrier of protection for officers and their families."

The committee was told that officers are increasingly targeted nationally. In Nebraska, they sometimes are stalked, and their families have been threatened. In one case, a bullet was fired into an officer's home and penetrated his 18-month-old son's bedroom.

Under the proposed legislation, officers can request that the assessors and registrars of deeds withhold their addresses, except upon written request. The bill provides that requesting officers would pay a $25 fee.
Led by Miriam OKeeffe, programmes director of the Women in Global Organisations group at American Chamber, the programmes will look at the challenges being faced by the increasing numbers of Irish-based employees in US multinationals who hold roles with responsibilities spanning Europe, the Middle East, Asia and in South America.

Often these roles require them to manage virtual teams, to travel extensively, to work across time zones.

However, it doesnt come without its challenges. Managing a team that spans several time zones takes organization. Along with language barriers, cultural differences; what motivates one region, may not work for another; varying time differences: When youre on fighting form at the start of the working day, your colleague across the Atlantic is winding down and preparing to leave the office.

The Women in Global Organisations pilot programmes are open to Chamber members and are currently open to female participants but in future, Miriam OKeeffe confirms will be open to both men and women.

This is the first cross sector mentor programme which aims to support women who have recently commenced a role with international or regional responsibilities. Our range of mentors, both male or female, will have extensive current or recent relevant international experience, she said.

Complementing the mentor programme, a cross sector peer learning circle will help participants develop the skills to add value to their role in their company, and learn how best to communicate Ireland as pivotal in the overall global corporate development of their organisations.

Areas of focus for the learning circle include: How is one proactive in developing the company here; How do you challenge status quo; How do you push the boundaries; How to leverage your own internal capabilities and resources; How do you develop skills in the politics of global enterprises.

For more: [urlhttp://www.amcham.ie/membership/membership-programmes/women-in-fdi.aspx]http://www.amcham.ie/membership/membership-programmes/women-in-fdi.aspx[/url]

Building on success

Meanwhile, exciting initiative aimed at supporting the growing community of start-up and emerging US companies in Ireland has been launched by American Chamber of Commerce Ireland.

Ireland has established itself as the leading location in Europe for these start-up multinationals when taking their first steps onto global markets and the new Emerging US Company Support Program is aimed at sustaining and building on that success.

Introducing the new initiative at Squarespaces impressive new HQ on Dublins Ship Street in December, American Chamber Director of Special Projects Katie Keogh explained that the Chambers new Emerging FDI Working Group, supported by the IDA Emerging Business Team, will draw on the expertise of existing working groups in areas such as HR, tax, data, general counsel, and leadership and development to support new start-up companies during their first three years in Ireland.

The program and its potential were discussed by an expert panel comprising Squarespace EMEA operations director Raphael Fontes; Emergenetics director of regional operations Chelsea Dillon; IDA Irelands Emerging Business Division head Barry ODowd; and former Chamber President Bob Savage of Dell EMC.
In a written Dail reply to Anti-Austerity Alliance TD Ruth Coppinger, Mr Noonan said 5,601 acres have been sold on either through debtor sales or the disposal of loan portfolios secured by Nama in the country.

In the Cork region, more than 1,500 acres have been sold since Nama was set up.

Mr Noonan said the second highest amount of sales was is Dublin, where residential-zoned land sold by Nama totals 1,099 acres.

Referring to the sales across the country, Mr Noonan said: Not all of this sold land was commercially viable to develop for residential or commercial use at the point of sale.

He said Nama advised that some of the lands were not zoned, some had been dezoned by local authorities and many had a mixture of zonings including amenity, commercial, retail, community, educational, and green space.

He said: In some cases, development of the sold lands remains unviable for commercial, planning and infrastructural reasons.

The county ranked third in terms of the disposals of Nama residential-zoned land was Meath where 931 acres have been disposed of.

Kildare had 370 acres of land disposed of, with the agency disposing of 353 acres in Wicklow. The figures show Waterford was ranked in sixth place, with 333 acres sold on.

Mr Noonan said that in Galway city and county, 192 acres of residential-zoned land have been disposed of, while 266 acres have been disposed of in Limerick City and County.

The lowest amount of Nama residential-zoned lands sold were in Sligo, Leitrim, Clare, and Kerry.

Mr Noonan said Nama had secured the sale of 3,383 residential units last year through assets sales by debtors or receivers.

In addition, some 1,772 residential units were sold through loan portfolio sales by the agency.

In 2014, Mr Noonan said that Nama completed the sale of 4,734 residential units through asset sales by debtors and receivers.

During the same year, Nama completed the sale of 1,772 residential homes through the sale of loan portfolios.

Mr Noonan confirmed that since Namas establishment it has sold 14,246 residential units through asset sales by debtors and receivers, and an additional 6,195 in residential units through the sale of loan portfolios.

Mr Noonan said: Nama advise that properties which were sold as part of these portfolios were typically already tenanted and vacant possession was not sought prior to the sales. Such portfolios are typically acquired by investors seeking long-term rental streams and, therefore, existing tenancy arrangements tend not to be affected by such sales.
The feelgood factor is back in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, after the recent announcement that the Suir Pharma plant is set to re-open, thanks to a major investment by IQ Pharmatek.

With immediate plans to employ 100 people, and another 100 positions in the pipeline later this year, the plant will be manufacturing again as early as March.

Clonmel site

The companys Clonmel site will be operated under the new name AlbyPharma, featuring a distinctive logo inspired by the ancient Celtic Triskele.

Its an acknowledgement of the warmth received from the local community, an affectionate nod to local heritage  but also serves to symbolise forward motion  a core value of the company.

Innovation is critical for this business, says IQ Pharmateks managing director and CEO Dr Azzam Hussein.

For the past 40 years here, they were only doing contract manufacturing, they never had any products of their own for a potential niche market.

So sometime after June or July this year, were going to introduce machinery and equipment to produce a new product of our own.

Along with technology transfer support and bulk product sales to third-party customers, the company plans to expand its operation in year two to include a new injectables business.

Year three should see the company introducing new products for its UK and US-based customers, with plans to produce a modified drug-delivery platform technology the following year.

By 2020, IQ Pharmatek is hoping to begin work on its own biosimilar line of pharmaceuticals  a huge leap for the companys future, says Dr Hussein.

Biosimilar describes generic versions of drugs where the active ingredient is made only by an engineered organism, and as such are harder to reproduce.

Dr Hussein says: The potential of biosimilars is tremendously high and carries a very high risk  it requires a lot of careful planning as well as expertise from other countries and regions.

The company intends to be one of the best contract manufacturing companies in Ireland by 2022.

The pharma and biotech sectors have been real success stories for the Irish economy in recent years  but Dr Hussein is adamant that the country has the potential to go much further: Ireland is still a virgin country within EU  its business potential has not been tapped fully.

There is so much scope for growth in biotechnology sector in Ireland.

Our highly-skilled workforce, tailor-made university courses, location and eco-political stability are all factors he credits for Irelands success  but Dr Hussein says that more Government investment is needed if the sector to reach its true potential. If you look at a typical example, like in the US and Canada, the governments have pulled total support to those innovation labs, he says.

In areas where it succeeds, the government goes step by step with them.

Enterprise Ireland does this, but we want to encourage them to do it much more.

Despite uncertainty in other sectors, Dr Hussein is convinced that his industry is effectively Brexit-proof.

The pharma business will not be impacted at all, he confidently asserts.

When you develop something internally within Ireland, whether you transfer it to Clonmel, the UK, or China, its the same process, the same regulations, the same requirements.

Brexit will not impact us  in fact, maybe it could increase the possibility of more research in Ireland!

Right now, his focus is on getting operations up and running in Clonmel, where the company has been welcomed with open arms.

We have received CVs from all over Ireland, he says, including many from past employees of the plant.

Whoevers CV matches the requirements, well take them. There is huge, huge potential for all of these employees.
We created just under 19,000 jobs on the ground across Ireland and across a range of sectors. Every region saw net job gain, says IDA executive director, Mary Buckley.

There was unprecedented geo-political change over 2016, yet it was our best year for foreign direct investment in IDA-client companies. It was the best in the history of the IDA for FDI job creation, she says, adding that employment in IDA client-companies is now at a record 200,000 jobs.

It is the highest on record. It is a new level for us. We have never had that before, she declares, adding however, that 2015 was a very good year also, so the excellent figures for the end of 2016 came on the foot of two years of extremely good growth.

FDI, of course, has always been and continues to be, extremely important to Ireland  and about 70% of the IDAs client portfolio is from the United States, and increasingly, firms are locating outside the capital. In 2016, for example, 52% of all jobs (gross) created by IDA clients were based outside of Dublin.

Key developments include the announcement by Oracle in Dublin of 450 new hires and state-of-the-art offices in Dublin to help drive cloud momentum across EMEA; the decision by First Data in Tipperary that it is to establish a Research & Development Hub in Ireland housing up to 300 highly skilled people to centralise work on a number of the companys leading technology platforms.

In Waterford, OPKO Healthcare plans to create 200 highly skilled jobs, while for Galway came the news of an expanded European Operation Centre creating 160 jobs in the region. In Cork, GE has announced plans to invest 150 million in biopharmaceutical manufacturing campus in Cork, and creating up to 500 jobs while Cylance , the artificial intelligence-based endpoint security software developer will offer 150 jobs over the next three years in Cork.

Crucially, IDA estimates that for every 10 jobs generated by Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) directly, another seven are generated in the wider economy.

This translates into 339,790 jobs that are supported by FDI at the end of 2016. Secondary economic benefits are significant  they impacts positively on the construction industry, the retail sector and the hospitality industry.

Overseas companies continue to be significant exporters from Ireland, with IDA clients exporting, based on preliminary estimates, approximately 149bn in 2015, almost 64% of all national exports.

In addition, IDA client companies spend 18.7bn in the Irish economy annual; 10bn on payroll and 8.7bn on Irish sourced materials and services.

IDA is working closely with its sister agency Enterprise Ireland on ensuring that links between overseas companies and indigenous firms are further enhanced, in order to deliver an overall macroeconomic benefit for Ireland.

In this context  and in the context of intensifying global competition for Foreign Director Investment, what is Ireland getting right?

Because were certainly doing some things right  this country according to the IDA, wins a much larger market share of European FDI than might be expected with 4.3% of all FDI projects coming into the EU in 2015. This is significant in light of the fact that Ireland constitutes just 1.7% of EU GDP i.e. Ireland is winning approximately 2.5 times the amount of investment that might be expected given its relative size.

From our perspective, a number of things are driving this success, Ms Buckley explains.

First is the availability of talent. This is crucial she says.

We have people with the right skills in the right place.

Secondly, Ireland has an excellent track record as a location for foreign direct investment with a large, existing base of such companies in Ireland.

We have a great base of companies across all sectors from pharma to bio-tech to technology and energy companies, she points out.

Many of these companies have been in Ireland over many years.

On top of that, she explains, although they may have come in to perform one particular activity, many have subsequently moved up the value chain to carry out other industrial activities in Ireland.

Many such companies have also re-invested in their operations in Ireland and, significantly, have added new activities to their existing portfolio of enterprises. Also  and very importantly, as a country Ireland boasts very good pro-enterprise policies.

Companies like stability and consistency in enterprise policies, she explains, adding that Irelands approach to enterprise policy is a critical factor in attracting foreign direct investment here. And then, of course, geographically, we boast excellent proximity to EU markets; and of course, last but not least, we have an attractive tax regime.

Weve had a good two years, says Buckley, and, while the first quarter of 2017 is already looking positive, this is not a time for complacency.

There will be a lot of change in the year ahead, she observes. Competitiveness is key to Irelands continued success, she warns.

For businesses, competitiveness is key. We are competing with other countries to win investment and the competition is more intense and there is more of it.

We must be competitive in all areas, but particularly around the issue of costs, she emphasises.

As part of improving our overall competitiveness levels in the context of intensifying international competition, is the need to continue to ensure a relevant talent pool is available, in terms of education and skills policies, both now and into the future, to meet the needs of a rapidly changing business.

The need to continue to provide firms with the necessary infrastructure is critical, she adds.

In this context we need to have a functioning sustainable residential and commercial properly market  it has to be there all the time and that is important from our perspective.

Right across the economy, says Mary Buckley, Ireland must be consistently innovating to drive productivity.

These are the things we need to be very concerned about in the future!

In 2016 we had our lowest job losses within IDA client companies since 1997, says Ms Buckley who extends a cautious welcome to 2017, adding that despite the current global uncertainty, quarter one already promises a strong pipeline of investment.

With the impact of factors such as Brexit for example this trend may not continue so strongly from an IDA perspective.

So, although performance has been nothing short of terrific over the last two years, she warns, we cannot afford complacency.

www.ida.ie

Interview: Ailin Quinlan
Commentators here and elsewhere are going berserk, but they and the rest of us are currently powerless in the face of a president who is intent on flexing his muscles. After all, at the end of the day, as leader of the country, he should be entitled to stop most anybody he wants to from entering the US.

In fact many of those who voted for him, voted for this exactly. We may not like it, but that is the reality we have to live with for the moment.

The usual suspects were jumping up and down in the Dail and the media, arguing that Enda Kenny should not go to the White House on St Patricks Day. I heard one radio presenter express outrage at the notion that he would put Irelands economic interests ahead of human rights, as he understands them.

The very same presenter is constantly harping on about inequality, homelessness, and the depleted health service we have to endure. Surely he should recognise that if Enda does anything which results in Irelands economic interests being undermined, there will be even less money available to fund those vital services.

The fact is that economic activity generates the resources that funds social expenditure, healthcare, education, law and order, and public housing.

If Enda decided to snub Trump on St Patricks Day, I doubt the president would lose any sleep and it would spare him having to dispose of the bowl of shamrock. However, it might not help Irelands longer-term cause.

The opportunity to visit the centre of power in the largest economy in the world  and one that is vital to Irelands economic interests and prosperity  should not be spurned. To do so would be plain stupid. Mind you, I am cringing at the notion of our Taoiseach scolding Trump in public in order to placate the political opportunists at home.

However, while Trump is entitled to do everything that he is doing and to sign the executive orders that he is signing, he does need to be very careful on a number of fronts.

If he does start to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta), which was signed in 1993 by Bill Clinton and which created free trade between the US, Mexico, and Canada, he will damage growth and cost jobs in all three countries. It would also result in higher prices for many consumer goods in the US, which is not something US consumers would appreciate.

However, the bigger issue is that, of the three parties to Nafta, Mexico is by far the must vulnerable economically and politically. Nafta has been good for Mexico and has helped create a more prosperous economy.

The danger is that if the fragile Mexican economy was to be thrown into the mire due to Trumps trade policies, he could end up with a seriously unstable social and political entity south of his border. No wall could protect the US from such an eventuality.

The other significant potential problem for Trump is that his policies to date have seriously upset many of his Congressional colleagues in the Republican Party, particularly in the Senate.

This could have the implication that he might, or most probably, will find it difficult to push through other much more important parts of his agenda, particularly corporate tax reform, infrastructure investment, and fiscal stimulus in general.

On the other side of the Irish Sea, it was quite pathetic to see the British prime minister Theresa May cosy up to a man that has policies that are so diametrically opposed to the views she presented in her seminal January 17 speech on Brexit.

It just goes to show how desperate the UK political leadership is in relation to Brexit. Heres hoping that Enda does not hold the hand of President Trump.
Photo credit: The first Dell EMC VEX Robotics tournament of the 2016/17 season, held at the Bishopstown GAA Club and hosted by Colaiste an Spioraid Naoimh. Some 130 secondary school pupils from 13 schools in Cork, Limerick and Waterford took part. The the national finals in Cork see students compete with their self-built robots completing a number of challenging tasks. The Dell EMC VEX Robotics initiative promotes STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) learning. Picture: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision

Only a decade ago, mobile internet was a novelty and mostly impractical; now, sites like Facebook report that 90% of its one billion daily active users access the site from a mobile device. In 2006, broadband penetration in Ireland was just over 8%; in 2016, that figure was more than 83%, and thats excluding mobile networks capable of similar speeds.

New advancements in hardware and internet connectivity are fast-tracking what some call the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Previously analogue objects  everyday items that we never considered would or ever needed to go online  like kitchen appliances, machines, vehicles and even clothes, are connecting to the internet en masse, creating virtual tons of useful information.

This so-called Internet of Things, or Internet of Everything, is a rapidly accelerating expansion of the internet on an unprecedented scale and has serious significance for businesses and households across the world, said Mr Savage.

The Internet of Things is already making its way into our homes.

The Google Home  an internet-connected smart remote  connects to your other smart devices, allowing you to adjust your thermostat, control your lights and order a taxi from the comfort of your living room sofa using only your voice. Samsungs Family Hub, a smart fridge with a wi-fi enabled touch-screen, connects to the internet and can automatically order food, suggest recipes and notify you of your groceries expiry dates before you head home, he explains.

For industry, the Internet of Things opens up vast new frontiers of business intelligence, increased efficiency, productivity and globally competitive costs.

Consider the opportunities for Irelands agrifood sector. Internet-connected sensors on farm machinery and Wi-Fi tags on livestock can collect useful data, meaning more efficient use of land, water, feed, fuel and other resources. Data analysis is also helping farmers to more accurately forecast the weather, measure soil conditions and protect against disease. As the planets appetite grows, food production, and many other industries, will depend on the precision of data-driven predictions and insight.

In Ireland, at sites in Dublin, Cork and Limerick, Dell EMC works closely with a number of businesses and organisations developing the next generation of IoT products and services.

One of the most interesting  and importantis Bluelight, a system that allows hospitals to track their ambulances and paramedics with sensors, plan their routes in advance, and monitor patients conditions en route so doctors are prepared for their arrival.

This is just one advancement that will have radical positive effects on essential, life-saving infrastructure. Every industry, every service and every process can be transformed in this way, and they will be in the years ahead.

As more people and businesses connect to the internet using more devices, and more objects connect to the internet for the first time, the size of the internet will grow exponentially, he explains.

In 2006, there were two billion internet-enabled devices on Earth. Our digital footprint that year, the amount of digital data generated globally, was 161 exabytes, almost 172 billion gigabytes. By 2020, 25 billion devices will be connected to the internet, generating more than 44 zettabytes or 44 trillion gigabytes  of information. Businesses, economies and governments will struggle not to be overwhelmed. Its important that Irelands are as resilient as possible, and to do that, we must strive to create a flexible, knowledgeable workforce ready to tackle a fast-changing world of technology driven by the Internet of Things.

Ireland has an excellent track record of attracting large tech multinationals, and to continue that, we must prioritise their supply of skilled graduates. The importance of investment in STEM education cannot be overstated, and we plan on working closely with the Government to help enact its Action Plan for Education, which seeks to make Ireland the best place in Europe for education and skills training by 2026. The plans new computer science course will be especially valuable; like the tech industry, it must be readily adaptable and changed regularly so it meets contemporary demands.

Our technological infrastructure must also grow apace, he concludes. While our broadband coverage is improving, there remain many parts of the country with antiquated internet connections. This will harm long-term business development, especially in rural areas, and will make it difficult to adopt more efficient Internet of Things technology, slowing growth. The tectonic plates of established politics and economics are shifting fast.

Earthquakes like Brexit, combined with exciting advances in technology, present Ireland with an historic opportunity to play a leading role in the industries changing the face of the world, he said. Our infrastructure, our businesses and our education system must be prepared for this digital transformation.

Interview: John Daly
Get out of the city and just experience the wilderness, says Skuli Mogensen.

You are in the middle of nowhere  no artificial light, no artificial sounds, just you and nature  thats what, in my mind, makes Iceland absolutely unique.

With one-way air fares to Reykjavik starting at 59.99 each way, hes sure to have many takers by the time the inaugural flight departs Cork on May 19. The airline will also provide access to Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, New York City, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington DC, with fares starting at 149 each way.

Commitment to low fares

Sceptics may question how long an airline can offer transatlantic travel for around the same price as some European cities, but Mogensen is confident that innovation can maintain low air fares.

In fact, if the former tech entrepreneur has his way, we could all soon be happily tweeting our way to free air travel.

Our mission is to enable everybody to fly and we do that by lowering prices to a point where actually anybody can afford it, he says.

In the long run it will depend, first and foremost, on how successful we are in becoming your total travel partner, so to speak.

We can use modern technologies so that when you travel with WOW, and you document your journey, which most people do, you take pictures and share them on social media. When you hashtag #WowAir, you essentially become our ambassador, if you like  you become our distribution channel.

By using new technologies in an innovative manner we can incentivise our passengers and hopefully, one day, bring the total fare down to zero.

Four weekly flights

With the airline operating four flights every week during the summer 2017 season, as well as three per week in winter, the addition of these 66,000 seats for Cork Airport has provided a much-needed boost in optimism among the regions business community.

Cork Airport

Mogensen has seen first-hand the degree to which the introduction of extra routes can stimulate local economies.

It depends, but I would say very significantly has been the usual response, he says. What we have seen everywhere we have come in with our very low fares is an opening up of the market both for people to travel abroad, like now for people who live in the Cork region, and vice versa.

So we are stimulating the markets in both directions, which I am very pleased with.

The airline has ambitious targets for its service in Cork, which it regards as a significant business and leisure hub.

The performance of its Dublin routes convinced the carrier to take the next step in Ireland.

We started flying to Dublin not that long ago and that has exceeded our expectations, says Mogensen.

Were very happy with the results there, so were very excited about the Irish market at large and Cork is the logical next step.

The feedback to-date has been very promising.

When it comes to service, Mogensen says that todays air passengers are under no illusions as to what to expect from a low-cost airline  but he likes to have plenty of cheerful to go with the cheap.

I often say it doesnt cost anything to smile, he says. I think we offer overall a great service and a good product. Now, we are a low-cost carrier so you will pay for luggage and meals on board  and I think its very important to be upfront about that  but I dont think thats really an issue anymore.

Passengers today are very familiar with that and are not surprised at all.

Stopover package

While the prospect of affordable travel to the bright lights of New York and Boston will understandably be the main draw for Munster passengers, the airlines stopover package is sure to tempt many to sample lights of the more celestial variety on the way.

Times Square, New York City

In the winter time to see the Northern Lights, for example, it gives you flexibility to break up your travel or use your business travel to do a one- or two-day leisure experience as well, says Mogensen. You just have such close proximity with nature, the powerful forces, be it the Atlantic Ocean or the volcanoes, the geysers, the waterfalls  that, to me, is Iceland.

And what better way of winding down from a return transatlantic flight than a dip in the famous geothermal baths of the Blue Lagoon  a mere 20 minutes from Reykjaviks Keflavik International Airport?

Wow indeed.

www.wowair.ie
And there are now fears the industrial unrest could spread to other public sector workers including Iarnrod Eireann and Dublin Bus.

Bus unions have agreed to take indefinite industrial action from February 20, if management impose planned cuts to allowances, overtime, and premium rates.

After meeting yesterday, bus unions said the company had been given ample opportunity to respond to requests to withdraw a series of proposed cuts to allow talks between both sides begin.

Transport Minister Shane Ross expressed disappointment at the plans for strike action and said it would be very damaging to the travelling public, the workforce, rural communities, and the company itself.

He once again renewed his call for both the company and the trade unions to engage in negotiations without any pre-conditions.

Mr Ross has come under attack this week for refusing to intervene in the Bus Eireann crisis after repeatedly arguing it was an industrial dispute and does not fall under his control.

Fianna Fails transport spokesman Robert Troy again hit out at the minister last night stating: Any attempt by Minister Ross to simply wash his hands of responsibility for finding solutions to the crisis is simply not credible.

Responding to the planned action, Bus Eireann acting CEO, Ray Hernan, said he is more than willing to hear any alternative proposals they have for achieving savings of 30m.

Bus Eireann is suffering massive losses on its commercial Expressway services and lost around 9m overall last year.

The company, which currently only has 7m in reserves, says it will go bankrupt, with the loss of 2,600 jobs, before the end of the year, if significant cuts cannot be made.

However, staff representatives have claimed that a series of proposed cuts, due to be implemented from February 20, amount to preconditions for talks and have demanded they be withdrawn before negotiations begin.

Mr Hernan said he would be willing to meet with unions today or over the weekend but added that the necessary efficiencies must be found within the company because it is a long-term solution and not a short-term fix which is required.

Dermot OLeary of the National Bus and Rail Union said: There is an opportunity here of two weeks for the company to come to their senses and step back from the brink, at this stage the onus is on that company and the CEO of that company to set those preconditions aside.

If he does that we are quite willing to go in as a group to meet him and his colleagues.

In a combined statement after their meeting, the bus unions said they decided to go ahead with the strikes, which will coincide with the roll-out of pay cuts, in response to this appalling and unprecedented attack.

It was clearly felt that Bus Eireann, by setting out on a course for major confrontation with workers, have also decided to ignore the wishes of the majority of those democratically elected to Dail Eireann, not to unilaterally impose changes without the agreement of from its own staff, their statement read.
VANCOUVER, Feb. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - Rusoro Mining Ltd. (the "Company" or "Rusoro") announces that it has raised an aggregate of U.S. $5,500,000 (the "Subscription Amount") through the issuance of non-interest bearing promissory notes. The notes will become due and payable as to three times the Subscription Amount on the date that is ninety (90) days from the date that Rusoro receives its first payment from the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in respect of the award (the "Award") issued on August 22, 2016 by the Arbitration Tribunal operating under the Additional Facility Rules of the World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes in the arbitration brought by Rusoro against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The Award, plus accrued interest, is in excess of U.S. $1.2 billion. Rusoro continues to explore all opportunities to enforce and collect this Award. Proceeds from the note financing have been used to settle existing debt of approximately U.S. $3,660,000 and the balance of approximately U.S. $1,840,000 will be used for working capital.

Rusoro also announces that its existing secured debt of U.S. $30,000,000 plus accrued interest has been transferred from the existing debt holders to a new group of investors. Rusoro bought U.S. $250,000 of this debt and it has been retired. The remaining U.S. $29,750,000 is in default, however the new investors have become parties to a Creditors and Shareholders Agreement dated June 14, 2012 pursuant to which they have agreed not to take any steps or actions to exercise their rights and remedies against the Company until the expiration of a standstill period, which is expected to end when the Company receives payment of the Award. Rusoro received a net amount of approximately U.S. $865,000 from the proceeds of this transfer. These funds will be used for working capital and enforcement of the Award.

Rusoro has received notice that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ("Venezuela") had brought an application before the Paris Court of Appeal on October 19, 2016 to set aside ("recours en annulation") the Award. Venezuela shall file a submission in support of its application by March 20, 2017. Rusoro has instructed Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to represent it in these proceedings, with the support of a special correspondent.

Rusoro is pleased to announce the appointment of Jessica Van Den Akker as Chief Financial Officer of the Company. Ms. Van Den Akker is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CA) with over 11 years' experience in the resource sector. She gained extensive experience through a Canadian audit firm providing reporting and accounting assurance services to publicly traded companies, primarily in natural resources. Ms. Van Den Akker is a graduate of Simon Fraser University where she received a Bachelor of Business Administration. The Board has accepted the resignation of Harpreet Dhaliwal and would like to thank her for her contributions to the Company as CFO and wish her well in her future endeavours.

The Company has also granted options to insiders, employees and consultants to purchase an aggregate of 14,825,000 common shares at a price of $0.17 per share on or before February 3, 2027, subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval.
Travel back in time on the Antarctic Time Machine at the annual Dinosaurs and Disasters event from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at Morrill Hall, 14th and Vine streets.

Activities are included with regular museum admission: $6 for adults; $3 for children; and free for ages 4 and under, members and University of Nebraska-Lincoln faculty, staff and students.

Also happening

* Dinosaurs also are front and center for Februarys First Friday Family Night at the Lincoln Childrens Museum, 1420 P St. The museum stays open until 7:30 p.m., and free parking is available in the University Square parking garage, 101 N. 14th St. Regular admission applies: $9.50 for ages 2-61; $9 for seniors 62 and older; $6.50 for 1-year-olds and free for children under age 1. Info: lincolnchildrensmuseum.org or call 402-477-4000.

* Barnes and Noble Booksellers, SouthPointe Pavilions, hosts Disney Reads Day at 11 a.m. Saturday. Free.

* How many paczkis can you eat in two minutes? Russs Market, 33rd and Highway 2, hosts its annual Polish pastry challenge for adults and kids from 2 to 3 p.m. Saturday. Free. Prizes include gift cards and free paczkis.

* Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra presents Fairy Tale Fantasy with the Madcap Puppets at 2 p.m. Sunday at Nebraska Wesleyan University O'Donnell Auditorium, 50th Street and Huntington Avenue. Come an hour early to take part in family activities including face-painting and an instrument petting zoo. Tickets for the performance are $10 for adults, $5 for youth 17 and under. Admission is free to refugee families. Info: lincolnsymphony.org/ or call 402-476-2211.

Coming up

* Morrill Hall stays open late every Thursday in February and offers free admission from 4:30 to 8 p.m. Regular admission to Mueller Planetarium fulldome shows will apply.

* Lincoln Public Schools annual Oral Spelling Bee will be held from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. Feb. 11 at Culler Middle School, 5201 Vine St. Students in fifth- through eighth-grades will compete.

* The Mighty Magic Pants hosts a super heroes album release party and concert from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Feb. 11 at The Space, 5900 S. 58th St. Admission is free. Prizes will be awarded to the best-dressed superheroes. For information email Michelle@MightyMagicPants.com or call 402-304-0537.

More family activities for the week of Feb. 3-9:

Friday

Disney Enchanted Tales Film Series -- "Frozen," 10 a.m., 12:30, 3, 5:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday, Lincoln Grand Theatre. Tickets: $5.

First Friday Family Night -- 5-7:30 p.m., Lincoln Children's Museum. Regular museum admission. Free parking in University Square Parking garage, 101 N. 14th St. (access to garage off P Street, just before 14th Street).

Behlen Observatory public night -- 7-10 p.m., near Mead. Information and directions at observatory.unl.edu/behlen. Free.

Saturday



Dinosaurs & Disasters -- 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., University of Nebraska State Museum, Morrill Hall. Bring your rocks and fossils to be identified. For all ages. Free event with regular museum admission.

Bilingual English-Spanish story time -- 10-11 a.m., Indigo Bridge Books, 701 P St.

"Three Billy Goats Gruff" -- with the Madcap Puppets, 10:30 a.m., Walt Branch Library; 11:30 a.m., Gere Branch Library.

Disney Reads Day -- activities, reading and giveaways, 11 a.m., Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 5150 O St. and SouthPointe Pavilions locations. Free.

Take Your Child to the Library Day -- 2-4 p.m., South Branch Library. Crafts, treats and stickers. Free.

Movie night -- "Despicable Me," 4 p.m., Joyo Theater, 6102 Havelock Ave. $5/person. Bring your own snacks.

Spaghetti feed -- fundraiser for Diaper Depot provided by Havelock and New Hope United Methodist Churches, 5-6:30 p.m., New Hope United Methodist Church, 1205 N. 45th St. Spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread, salad, dessert and drink. $8/person, $4/ages 10 and younger.

Sunday

Family storytime -- 1:30-2 p.m., Eiseley Branch Library; 4-4:30 p.m., Bennett Martin Public Library. Stories and crafts.

"Fairy Tale Fantasy" -- with Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra and the Madcap Puppets, 2 p.m., Nebraska Wesleyan University, O'Donnell Auditorium, Rogers Fine Arts Center, 50th Street and Huntington Avenue. Family activities prior to the concert, including face painting and an instrument petting zoo. 402-476-2211.

Tuesday

Library storytimes -- Toddler: 10 a.m. and 10:35 a.m., Gere; 10:30 a.m., Bethany, Walt; 6:30 p.m., Gere. Preschool: 10:30 a.m., Anderson, Gere; 7 p.m., Eiseley.

Morning children's story time -- 10-11 a.m., Indigo Bridge Books, 701 P St.

Creative Play for Toddlers and Pre-Schoolers -- ages 18 months-5 years and their caregivers, 11 a.m.-noon, Walt Branch Library.

"St. George & The Dragon" -- Paul Mesner Puppet Theater, 7-8 p.m., College of Saint Mary, Our Lady of Mercy Chapel, 7000 Mercy Road, Omaha. Free.

Wednesday

Library storytimes -- Toddler: 10:30 a.m., Walt; 10:35 a.m. Eiseley and Gere. Preschool: 10:30 a.m., Eiseley. Baby: 10 a.m., Gere.

Creative Play for Toddlers and Pre-Schoolers -- ages 18 months-5 years and their caregivers, 11 a.m.-noon, Walt Branch Library.

Thursday

Library storytimes -- Toddler: 10 a.m., Gere; 10:35 a.m., Eiseley and Gere. Preschool: 10:30 a.m., Eiseley, Bethany, Gere. Baby: 10:30 a.m., Walt; 6:30 a.m., Gere.

Morrill Hall free Thursday nights -- 4:30-8 p.m. Thursday nights in February, Nebraska State University Museum, 14th and Vine streets. Free for all ages.

Head Start School Night -- 5:30-7 p.m., Bennett Martin Public Library. Head Start families enjoy a light dinner and explore what the library has to offer. Free.

Shows and exhibits



Planetarium astronomy shows -- "A Starry Tale," 11 a.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays. "Super Volcanoes," noon Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Shows through Feb. 26. Children must be age 4 or older. University of Nebraska State Museum of Natural History, Mueller Planetarium, Morrill Hall, south of 14th and Vine streets. 402-472-2641.

Hyde Observatory shows -- 7-10 p.m. Saturdays, Hyde Observatory, Holmes Lake. Free. Reservations available for Monday-Thursday nights. 402-441-7094.

"The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" -- 7 p.m. Feb. 10; 2, 5 p.m. Feb. 4, 11; 2 p.m. Feb. 12, The Rose Theater, 2001 Farnam St., Omaha. 402-345-4849.

"Thumbelina" -- 9:30-11 a.m., Feb. 4-5, The Rose Theater, 2001 Farnam St., Omaha. 402-345-4849.

Coming up

IndiExplore -- 10-11 a.m. Feb. 10, Indigo Bridge Books, 701 P St. Expert on children's topics, hands-on activities and books. Free.

Disney Enchanted Tales Film Series -- "Dumbo," 10 a.m., 12:30, 3, 5:30 p.m. Feb. 10-12, Lincoln Grand Theatre. Tickets: $5.

Valentine's Day storytime -- 11 a.m. Feb. 11, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 5150 O St. and SouthPointe Pavilions locations. "The Secret Life of Squirrels: A Love Story" and "Valentine's Day Is Cool." Free.

Mighty Magic Pants album release concert -- 6:30-8 p.m. Feb. 11, The Space, 5900 S. 58th St. Come dress as your favorite superhero. Prizes awarded for individuals and families for best costume. Free for entire family.

Free family fun day -- "Be My Valentine," 2-4 p.m. Feb. 14, Nebraska History Museum, 131 Centennial Mall North. Make and take Valentine's card, join in a 'lovely' Scavenger hunt. Free drop-in event for entire family.

Register

Owl Prowl -- 4-5 p.m. Saturday, Arbor Day Farm Tree Adventure, Nebraska City. Indoors: interactive owl presentation, owl pellet dissection and owl craft. Outdoors: Hike trails to listen for owls. $11/per child, $13/per adult. Register at 402-873-8717 or arbordayfarm.org.

"Mr. Popper's Penguins" auditions -- 5-8 p.m. Feb. 5-6, callbacks 5-8 p.m. Feb. 8, Lincoln Community Playhouse, 2500 S. 56th St. Roles available for adults and students (must be at least 8 years old by Feb. 13). Information and registration at lincolnplayhouse.com.

Cabin Fever -- 5:30 p.m. Feb. 11 to 1 p.m. Feb. 12, YMCA Camp Kitaki, Ashland. For ages 7-14. Clue-themed campout, includes crafts, dance party, finger printing, Spyball and meet real life crime scene investigator. $60/child. Register at ymcacampkitaki.org/programs.

Camp Sonshine Valentine's Kids Night -- 3:30-9:30 p.m. Feb. 12, Camp Solaris, 2349 State Highway 34b Spur, Firth. Kids-only Valentine's Day event, dinner provided. For ages 4 through sixth grade and past leader in training students (seventh-10th grade). $15/child before Feb. 7; $20/child after Feb. 8. Register: CampSonshineMemories.org. Information: info@campsonshinememories.org or 402-423-8746.

Little Ladies Date Night -- 6-8 p.m. Feb. 24 or 25, Lincoln Children's Museum. Dads, grandpas, uncles, big brothers or any guys who have a special little lady to treat for a night. Members: $20/couple, $5/extra little lady. Non-members: $30/couple, $10/extra little lady. Space limited so register early. 402-477-4000 or lincolnchildrensmuseum.org.
Investigators fixing date to question President



By Jung Min-ho







Special investigators investigating a massive influence-peddling scandal involving President Park Geun-hye and her confidant Choi Soon-sil will search Cheong Wa Dae as early as Friday, sources said Wednesday.



Questioning the President is expected to ensue. Investigators are already in talks with the presidential office to fix the date to do so.



According to legal sources, the investigation team led by independent counsel Park Young-soo plans to carry out a search of Cheong Wa Dae, which many see as the root of the scandal-related crimes.



Speaking to reporters, Wednesday, Lee Kyu-chul, spokesman for the special prosecutor, said a search of Cheong Wa Dae was necessary, but he noted how to do so is still under discussion.



While investigators want to search Cheong Wa Dae at their discretion, the presidential office says it won't allow it "because of national security reasons."



When prosecutors tried to search Cheong Wa Dae last year before passing the baton to the independent counsel, Cheong Wa Dae rejected their request for the same reason, which successfully warded off the prosecutors' attempt.



Lee believes that investigators still can gain much from a search, while some question the effectiveness of the belated effort.



When asked about the possible destruction of evidence within Cheong Wa Dae, Lee said it would be hard to remove all evidence due to requirements to protect presidential records.



"If they indeed destroyed evidence, we can find that out," he noted.



If Cheong Wa Dae continues to refuse to cooperate, investigators may request a search and seizure warrant for specific places, which do not have to be protected for national security reasons.



However, if the two sides fail to agree on law interpretation, a search may be delayed until judges decide on the matter. Given that special investigators must wrap up their work by Feb. 28, according to the special law, concerns have been raised.



Soon after searching the presidential office in one way or another, investigators will question Park, who faces allegations of bribery, abuse of power and mishandling of state information among others.



This too will be challenging, if the President continues to resist behind the walls of Cheong Wa Dae.



Given the Constitution that states "a sitting President cannot be indicted," it may still prove difficult to question Park or even obtain an arrest warrant for her.



Park is accused of colluding with her friend Choi and other top-ranking government officials in committing many crimes, including creating an "artist blacklist" to discriminate against them and receiving bribes from conglomerates in return for business favors.



Among other allegations include letting Choi meddle in state affairs and neglecting her presidential duties on the day the ferry Sewol sank in 2014 killing more than 300 people.



Park has so far rejected most of the allegations, suggesting that she will fight tooth and nail to prove her innocence.








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The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has added four more tour stops for its top leaders to meet with Nebraskans next week on the heels of an 11-stop trip around the state in January.

Chancellor Ronnie Green, Executive Vice Chancellor Donde Plowman and Vice Chancellor of the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources Mike Boehm will hold talks around the state to discuss the university's achievements and future plans.

The meetings are free and open to the public. Register at go.unl.edu/unlfeb2017.

MONDAY

Grand Island: 6 p.m. dinner, Raising Nebraska, Nebraska State Fair Park.

TUESDAY

Hastings: 7:30 a.m. breakfast, The Lark, 809 W. Second St.

Kearney: noon lunch, Buffalo County Extension, 1400 E. 34th St.

York: 6 p.m. dinner, Holthus Convention Center, 3130 Holen Ave.
Were excited to announce that metalbulletin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Prudential Financial: 210-220 E. 22nd Street SSGA Owner LLC, AIG Edison, AIG Star, AREF Cayman Co Ltd., AREF GP II Pte. Ltd., AREF GP Ltd., ASPF II - Feeder Fund GmbH, ASPF II - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, ASPF II Management GmbH, ASPF III Scots L.P., ASSURANCE, AST Investment Services Inc., Adlerwerke CB Investment LLC, Administradora de Fondos de Pensiones Habitat S.A., Administradora de Inversiones Previsionales SpA, Aoba Life Insurance Company, Aoba Life Insurance Company Ltd., Asia Property Fund III GP S.a.r.l., Assurance IQ LLC, Assurance Intelligence LLC, BSC CP LP, Braeloch Holdings Inc., Braeloch Successor Corporation, Brazilian Capital Fund GP Limited, Broad Street Global Advisors LLC, Broome Street Holdings LLC, CB German Retail LLC, CLIS Co. Ltd., COLICO INC., Capital Agricultural Property Services Inc., Chadwick Boulevard Investment Holdings Co. LLC, Cibecue LLC, Coconino LLC, Colico II Inc., Columbus Drive Partners L.P., Commerce Street Holdings LLC, Commerce Street Investments LLC, Coolidge LLC, Coral Reef GP, Coral Reef L.P., Coral Reef Unit Trust, Cottage Street Investments LLC, Cottage Street Orbit Acquisition LLC, DICKENS AVENUE HOLDINGS VI LLC, DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI Ireland L.P., DICKENS AVENUE PARTNERS VI US L.P., Dale/P Minerals Limited Partnership, Don Cesar Investor LLC, Dryden Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Dryden Finance II LLC, EVP II GP S.a r.l., EVP II Horizon GP S.a r.l., EVP II Sprint GP S.a r.l., Edison Place Senior Note LLC, Essex LLC, EuroCore GP S.a r.l., European Value Partners GP S.a.r.l., Everbright PGIM Fund Management Co. Ltd., Flagstaff LLC, GA 1600 Commons LLC, GA 333 Hennepin Investor LLC, GA BV LLC, GA Bay Area GP LLC, GA Bay Area Investor LLC, GA Belden LLC, GA CLARENDON LLC, GA Cal Crossings LLC, GA Collins LLC, GA E. 22nd Street Apartments Holdings LLC, GA East 86 Street LLC, GA JHCII LLC, GA MENLO PARK INVESTOR LLC, GA Manor at Harbour Island LLC, GA Metro LLC, GA TRITON INVESTOR LLC, GA W Paces LLC, GA/MDI 333 Hennepin Associates LLC, GIBRALTAR BSN HOLDINGS SDN BHD, GIBRALTAR INDIA SOLUTIONS LLP, Gateway Holdings II LLC, Gateway Holdings LLC, German Retail Income CP LP, Gibraltar BSN Life Berhad, Gibraltar International Insurance Services Company Inc., Gibraltar International Service LLC, Gibraltar Reinsurance Company Ltd., Gibraltar Universal Life Reinsurance Company, Glenealy International Limited, Global Portfolio Strategies Inc., Gold GP Limited, Gold II L.P., Gold L.P., Graham Resources Inc., Graham Royalty Ltd., Green Harvest Asset Management LLC, Green Tree GP, Green Tree L.P., Greenlee LLC, Halsey Street Investments LLC, Hirakata LLC, IVP Fund GP LLC, Impact Investments Bridges UK S.a.r.l, Inter-Atlantic G Fund L.P., Inversiones Previsionales Chile SpA, Inversiones Previsionales Dos SpA, Ironbound Fund LLC, Jennison Associates LLC, Kyarra S.a r.l., Kyoei Annuity Home Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Kyouei Nenkin Home, LINEUP LLC, Lake Street Partners IV L.P., Lotus Reinsurance Company Ltd., MC GA COLLINS HOLDINGS LLC, MC GA COLLINS REALTY LLC, MC Insurance Agency Services LLC, Manor at Harbour Island LLC, Marble Canyon LLC, Maricopa LLC, Market Street Holdings IV LLC, Montana Capital Partners, Morenci LLC, Mulberry Street Holdings LLC, Mulberry Street Investment L.P., Mulberry Street Partners LLC, Mullin TBG Insurance Agency Services LLC, MullinTBG Insurance Agency Services, National Family Assurance Group LLC, New Savanna, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund A LP, Northbound Emerging Manager Fund II - A LP, Orchard Street Acres Inc., PAI Bay Farm LLC, PAI Bayrock Groves LLC, PAI Belvidere Farms LLC, PAI Big Cypress Farm LLC, PAI Corcoran 640 Ranch LLC, PAI DeKalb Farm LLC, PAI Delano 1500 Ranches LLC, PAI Desert Falcon Farms Manager LLC, PAI Flicker Orchard LLC, PAI Good Hope Farm LLC, PAI Hawk Creek Ranch LLC, PAI Hills Valley Ranches LLC, PAI Holly Hill Groves LLC, PAI Hunt Farm LLC, PAI Jackson Bayou Farm LLC, PAI Lake Placid Groves LLC, PAI River Bend Ranches LLC, PAI Wallula Gap Vineyard LLC, PCP V Cayman AIV GP L.P., PEREF II Co-Invest 1 GP S.a r.l., PEREF II GP S.a r.l., PFI EM-Tech Fund I LLC, PG Business Service Co. Ltd, PG Collection Service Co. Ltd., PG Friendly Partners Co. Ltd., PGA Asian Retail Limited, PGA European Limited, PGI Co. Ltd, PGIM AC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM AVP IV GP S.a r.l., PGIM Advisory Shanghai Co. Ltd., PGIM Agricultural Investments GP LLC, PGIM Australia Pty Ltd, PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Fund L.P., PGIM Broad Market High Yield Bond Partners LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Feeder VI LLC, PGIM Capital Partners Management Fund VI L.P., PGIM Custom Harvest LLC, PGIM DC Co-Invest GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC JV GP Pte. Ltd., PGIM DC Solutions LLC, PGIM European Financing Limited, PGIM European Services Limited, PGIM Financial Limited, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund II L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives Fund L.P., PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives GP LLC, PGIM Fixed Income Alternatives II GP LLC, PGIM Foreign Investments Inc., PGIM Holding Company LLC, PGIM Holdings Limited, PGIM Hong Kong Ltd., PGIM INDIA ASSET MANAGEMENT PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM INDIA TRUSTEES PRIVATE LIMITED, PGIM IRELAND LIMITED, PGIM Inc., PGIM International Financing Inc., PGIM Investments Ireland Limited, PGIM Investments LLC, PGIM Japan Co. Ltd., PGIM Korea Inc., PGIM LTIF Berlin GP S.a r.l., PGIM LTIF Berlin MLP S.ar.l., PGIM LTIF GP S.a.r.l., PGIM Limited, PGIM Loan Originator Manager Limited, PGIM M Campus GP S.a r.l., PGIM Management Partner Limited, PGIM MetaProp Investor LP LLC, PGIM Netherlands B.V., PGIM Overseas Investment Fund Management Shanghai Company Ltd, PGIM Private Capital Ireland Limited, PGIM Private Capital Limited, PGIM Private Placement Investors Inc., PGIM Private Placement Investors L.P., PGIM QUANTITATIVE SOLUTIONS LLC, PGIM REF EUROPE SCSp, PGIM REF Europe GP S.a r.l., PGIM REF Europe Member LLC, PGIM REF Intermediary Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate CD S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Capital VII GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest L.P., PGIM Real Estate Carry & Co-Invest SCSp, PGIM Real Estate Co-Invest Holdings LLC, PGIM Real Estate Debt GmbH, PGIM Real Estate Finance Holding Company, PGIM Real Estate Finance LLC, PGIM Real Estate France SAS, PGIM Real Estate Germany AG, PGIM Real Estate Global Debt GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate Global Master Fund GP S.a r.l., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles II S de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Inmuebles S. de R.L. de C.V, PGIM Real Estate Italy S.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Japan Ltd., PGIM Real Estate Loan Services Inc., PGIM Real Estate Luxembourg S.A., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Administradora V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles IV S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate MVP Inmuebles V S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate Management Luxembourg S.a.r.l., PGIM Real Estate Mexico S.C., PGIM Real Estate S. de R.L. de C.V., PGIM Real Estate U.S. CORE Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate U.S. Debt Fund GP LLC, PGIM Real Estate UK Limited, PGIM Scots Limited, PGIM Securities Investment Trust Enterprise, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management (Feeder) I LLC, PGIM Senior Loan Opportunities Management Fund I L.P., PGIM Shanghai Company Ltd., PGIM Singapore Pte. Ltd., PGIM Strategic Financing LLC, PGIM Strategic Investments Inc., PGIM Taronga Investor GP LLC, PGIM U.S. Agriculture Fund LP, PGIM USPF VI Manager LLC, PGIM Wadhwani LLP, PGIM Warehouse Inc., PGLH of Delaware Inc., PIFM Holdco LLC, PIIC Limited, PIISC Holdings UK Limited, PIM KF Blocker V Holdings LLC, PIM USPF V Manager LLC, PLA Administradora Industrial SRL, PLA Administradora LLC, PLA Administradora S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional II S. de R.L. de C.V., PLA Asesoria Profesional S.de R.L. de C.V., PLA Co-Investor LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager I LLC, PLA Mexico Industrial Manager II LLC, PLA Retail Fund I Blue LP, PLA Retail Fund I Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II Aggregating Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LLC, PLA Retail Fund II LP, PLA Retail Fund II Manager LLC, PLA Retail Fund II U.S. Carry/Co-Invest LP, PLA Services Manager Mexico LLC, PLAI Limited, PMCF Holdings LLC, PMCF Properties LLC, PPPF General Partner LLP, PR GA SCP Apartments LLC, PRAMERICA LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY LIMITED, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP LLP, PRAMERICA PRECAP VI GP SCOTS FEEDER LLP, PRECO Account IV LLC, PRECO Account Partnership IV LP, PRECO III GP LLP, PREFG Hanwha Manager LLC, PREI Acquisition I Inc., PREI Acquisition II Inc., PREI Acquisition LLC, PREI HYDG LLC, PREI International Inc., PRIAC Property Acquisitions LLC, PRICOA Management Partner Limited, PRISA Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Fund Manager LLC, PRISA II Pooled Manager LLC, PRISA III Fund GP LLC, PRISA III Fund PIM LLC, PRREF Debt Fund Manager LLC, PRREF II Fund Manager LLC, PRU 3XSquare LLC, PRUCO LLC, PRUDENTIAL CAPITAL ENERGY PARTNERS MANAGEMENT (FEEDER) LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP MEMBER LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP REIT LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE 2 LLC, PRUDENTIAL MORTGAGE SKP VENTURE LLC, PT PFI Mega Life Insurance, Passaic Fund LLC, Pine Tree GP, Pine Tree L.P., Platinum GP Limited, Platinum II L.P., Platinum L.P., Pramerica Business Consulting Shanghai Company Limited, Pramerica EVP CP LP, Pramerica Financial Asia Headquarters Pte. Ltd., Pramerica Financial Asia Limited, Pramerica Fixed Income Funds Management Limited, Pramerica Fosun Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Pramerica Holdings Ltd, Pramerica Hong Kong Holdings Limited, Pramerica Insurance Agency China Company Ltd., Pramerica Luxembourg CP GP S.a.r.l., Pramerica PRECAP I GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP II GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP III GP LLP, Pramerica PRECAP IV GP LLP, Pramerica Pan European Real Estate Scots LP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital I Scotland Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital II Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital III Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Limited, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV GP Scots Feeder LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital IV Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Netherlands GP LLP, Pramerica Real Estate Capital V Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Real Estate Capital VI Scots Limited Partnership, Pramerica Scots CP GP LLP, Preco III Scotland Limited Partnership, Pru 101 Wood LLC, Pru Alpha Partners I LLC, Pru Fixed Income Emerging Markets Partners I LLC, PruVen Capital Partners Fund I L.P., Pruco Assignment Corporation, Pruco Life Insurance Company, Pruco Life Insurance Company of New Jersey, Pruco Securities LLC, Prudential 900 Aviation Boulevard LLC, Prudential Affordable Mortgage Company LLC, Prudential Agricultural Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Annuities Distributors Inc., Prudential Annuities Holding Company Inc., Prudential Annuities Inc., Prudential Annuities Information Services & Technology Corporation, Prudential Annuities Life Assurance Corporation, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Captive Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Term Company, Prudential Arizona Reinsurance Universal Company, Prudential Bank & Trust FSB, Prudential Capital Energy Opportunity Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners L.P., Prudential Capital Energy Partners Management Fund L.P., Prudential Capital Partners Management Fund IV L.P., Prudential Capital and Investment Services LLC, Prudential Chile II SpA, Prudential Chile SpA, Prudential Commercial Property Holding Company LLC, Prudential Equity Group LLC, Prudential Financial Inc., Prudential Fixed Income Global Liquidity Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Fixed Income U.S. Relative Value Partners LLC, Prudential Funding LLC, Prudential General Services of Japan Y.K., Prudential Gibraltar Agency Co. Ltd. Prudential Gibraltar Agency Kabushiki Kaisha, Prudential Global Funding LLC, Prudential Holdings of Japan Inc., Prudential Huntoon Paige Associates LLC, Prudential IBH Holdco Inc., Prudential Impact Investments Mortgage Loans LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Debt LLC, Prudential Impact Investments Private Equity LLC, Prudential Insurance Agency LLC, Prudential International Insurance Holdings Ltd., Prudential International Insurance Service Company L.L.C., Prudential International Investments Advisers LLC, Prudential International Investments Company LLC, Prudential International Investments LLC, Prudential Investment Management Services LLC, Prudential Japan Holdings LLC, Prudential Legacy Insurance Company of New Jersey, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 1 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Asset Holdings 2 Japan Investment Business Limited Partnership, Prudential Mortgage Capital Asset Holding Company LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Funding LLC, Prudential Mortgage Capital Holdings LLC, Prudential Multifamily Mortgage LLC, Prudential Mutual Fund Services LLC, Prudential Newark Realty LLC, Prudential QOZ Investment Fund 1 LLC, Prudential Realty Securities Inc., Prudential Retirement Financial Services Holding LLC, Prudential Retirement Holdings LLC, Prudential Retirement Insurance and Annuity Company, Prudential Securities Secured Financing Corporation, Prudential Seguros Mexico S.A. de C.V., Prudential Seguros S.A., Prudential Select Strategies LLC, Prudential Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Prudential Structured Settlement Company, Prudential Systems Japan Limited, Prudential Tax Services LLC, Prudential Term Reinsurance Company, Prudential Trust Co. Ltd., Prudential Trust Company, Prudential Universal Reinsurance Company, Prudential Workplace Solutions Group Services LLC, Prudential do Brasil Seguros de Vida S.A., Prudential do Brasil Vida em Grupo S.A., Prudential/TMW Real Estate Group LLC, Pruservicos Participacoes Ltda., QMA JP EM All Cap Equity Partners LLC, Quartzsite LLC, Residential Services Corporation of America LLC, Rio CP LP, Rock European Real Estate Holdings S.ar.l., Rock Global Real Estate LLC, Rock Kensington Limited, Rock Marty GP S.a r.l., Rock Oxford S.a r.l., Rock UK Real Estate II S.a.r.l., Rockstone Co. Ltd., Rosado Grande LLC, Ross Avenue Energy Fund Holdings LLC, Ross Avenue Minerals 2012 LLC, SCP Apartments LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERS VI GP LLC, SENIOR HOUSING PARTNERSHIP FUND VI GP LLC, SHP IV Carried Interest LP, SHP V Carried Interest L.P., SMP Holdings Inc., SVIIT Holdings Inc., Sanei Collection Service Co. Ltd. Kabushiki Kaisha Sanei Shuuno Service, Senior Housing Partners V LLC, Senior Housing Partnership Fund V LLC, Sterling Private Placement Management LLP, Stetson Street Partners L.P., Strand Investments Limited, TBG Insurance Services Corporation, TENSATOR HOLDINGS LTD, TF Proveedora S.C., TMW ASPF I Verwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, TMW ASPF Management GmbH, TMW Management LLC, TMW Real Estate Group LLC, TMW Realty Advisors LLC, TMW USPF Verwaltungs GmbH, TRGOAG Company Inc., The Gibraltar Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Keynes Dynamic Beta Strategy US Fund GP LLC, The Prudential Assigned Settlement Services Corp., The Prudential Brazilian Capital Fund LP, The Prudential Gibraltar Financial Life Insurance Co. Ltd., The Prudential Home Mortgage Company Inc., The Prudential Insurance Company of America, The Prudential Life Insurance Company Ltd., The Prudential Real Estate Financial Services of America Inc., The WMF Group, Thurloe Commercial Guernsey Limited, USPF V - Verwaltungs - GmbH & Co. KG, USPF V Carry LLC, USPF V Co-Invest LLC, USPF V Investment LP, United States Property Fund VI GP S.a r.l., VIP Australia Holding Company LLC, VIP Australia Trustee Pty Ltd, Vailsburg Fund LLC, Vantage Casualty Insurance Company, Wabash Avenue Holdings V LLC, Wabash Avenue Partners V L.P., Wadhwani Capital Limited, Waveland Avenue Holdings I LLC, Waveland Avenue Partners I Ireland L.P., Waveland Avenue Partners I US L.P., Wellness Services Ecossistema De Bem Estar Ltda., Wellness Services SRL, Yamato Life, and Yavapai LLC.

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Versum Materials, Inc. develops, manufactures, transports, and handles specialty materials for the semiconductor and display industries in the United States, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Europe, and rest of Asia. The company operates through two segments, Materials, and Delivery Systems and Services (DS&S). The Materials segment provides specialty chemicals and materials used in semiconductors, as well as specialty gases used in the semiconductor manufacturing process, including high purity process materials for deposition, metallization, chamber cleaning, and etching; chemicals mechanical planarization slurries; organosilanes; organometallics and liquid dopants for thin film deposition; and formulated chemical products for post-etch cleaning primarily for the manufacture of silicon and compound semiconductors, and thin film transistor liquid crystal displays. The DS&S segment develops, designs, manufactures, and sells bulk gas, specialty gas, and specialty chemical cabinets and systems, which are used to manage the delivery of key materials into the semiconductor manufacturing process; and flow and temperature control systems and analytical systems to capture data. It is also involved in the project management for installation and startup of the gas and chemical delivery systems, and inventory management; and provision of spare parts, equipment upgrades, equipment maintenance, and training services. In addition, this segment offers on-site services to assist customers in managing the inventory of gases and chemicals comprising ordering, product changes and monitoring, quality assurance, operation of delivery systems, and managing the bulk gas and specialty gas operations. Versum Materials, Inc. was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Tempe, Arizona.
The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen France SAS, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Suzhou Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel Ireland Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Brooks Instrument Shanghai Co. Ltd, Buell Industries Inc., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS Australia Pty Limited, CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures Australasia S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Coeur Shanghai Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Denison Mayes Group Limited, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., E2M Production B.V.., E2M Technologies B.V.., E2M Technologies Inc.., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO Holding AG, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, Exhibit 21, FEG Investments L.L.C., Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Filtertek SAS, GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech Taicang Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Belgium B.V., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart International Singapore Pte. Ltd., Hobart Japan K.K., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components Chongqing Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components Langfang Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium B.V., ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS UK Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW China Investment Company Limited, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Construction Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Services Manila Inc., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Contamination Control Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Deutschland GmbH, ITW Diagraph GmbH, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW EU Holdings Ltd., ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.L., ITW European Finance Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Thailand Ltd., ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France Luxembourg S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW Materials Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Ningbo Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology China Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion Shenzhen Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Illinois Tool Works Chile Limitada, Illinois Tool Works ITW Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Inc., Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, Instron Shanghai Ltd., Instron Thailand Limited, International Leasing Company LLC, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., Itw Spraytec, KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems Canada Inc., Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MTS 2 LLC., MTS 3 LLC., MTS China Holdings LLC, MTS Europe Holdings LLC, MTS Holdings France S.a.r.l., MTS Japan Ltd.., MTS Korea Inc.., MTS Systems China Co. Ltd., MTS Systems Corporation, MTS Systems Danmark ApS., MTS Systems Europe B.V., MTS Systems Finance C.V.., MTS Systems Germany GmbH, MTS Systems Holding B.V.., MTS Systems Hong Kong Incorporated, MTS Systems Limited, MTS Systems Norden Aktiebolag, MTS Systems S.r.l, MTS Systems., MTS Systems.., MTS Sytems Do Brazil, MTS Testing Solutions India Private Limited., MTS Testing Systems Canada Ltd., Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited Enping, Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners Shanghai Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., R&D Engineering A/S., R&D Prague s.r.o., R&D Steel ApS., R&D Test Systems A/S., R&D Tools and Structures A/S., RDGDK Engineering Private Limited, Ramset Fasteners Hong Kong Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco Japan Inc., Simco Nederland B.V., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes B.V., Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Hong Kong Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Shanghai Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stokvis Tapes Taiwan Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Tianjin Co. Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V..

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National Retail Properties is a REIT focused on retail-oriented properties across the United States. The company invests in high-quality retail properties subject to long-term leases that generate stable, consistent, predictable income. The company laid claim to 3,305 properties enclosing 33.8 million square feet of space in 48 states leased to 380 tenants engaged in 37 trades as of October 2022.

National Retail Properties was formed in 1984 as Golden Corral Realty Corporation. The company was intended as a means for employees to invest in Golden Corral but it soon took on a life of its own. The company split from its parent in 1993 and then became a REIT in 1998. Since then a number of mergers and acquisitions resulted in the company that is traded today.

National Retail Properties seeks to generate returns for shareholders through capital appreciation and dividends and is one of the most stable dividend payers in the REIT universe. The company made its 33rd consecutive distribution increase in 2022 ranking it 3rd on the list of REITs with sustained annual dividend increases. In regard to all publicly listed companies, there are less than 90 which have increased their payout for as many years or more as National Retail Properties. The compound annual growth rate runs in the range of 4% to 5%.

National Retail Properties is not limited in scope to the type of business it will lease to. The top four sectors occupying its space, however, are convenience stores, automotive-related, full-service, and limited-service restaurants which command a lions share of retail dollars. These segments made up nearly 49% of the portfolio in 2022 with no tenant making up more than 5% of the total income.

The top three tenants at the time are 7-11, Mister Car Wash, and Camping World followed by L.A. Fitness, GPM Investments (convenience), and Dave & Busters. The firm's average lease runs in the range of 10.6 years and occupancy runs high and above 99%. Properties are all single-occupier and leased on a net basis. Most properties are leased on a triple-net basis which means National Retail Properties is insulated from taxes, maintenance, and insurance costs. Other notable tenants include Yum! Brands and Wendys.

National Retail Properties uses leverage to enhance its returns. The companys debt ratio is low however and its debt carries an investment-grade rating from Standard & Poors and Moodys.
John McCain has long prided himself on his reputation as a maverick, a Republican willing to buck his partys leaders. Now he faces what may be the biggest maverick moment of his career  and he sounds like a man whos ready for a fight.

The conservative senator from Arizona has warned President Trump against cozying up to Russias Vladimir Putin (a thug). Hes criticized Trumps order banning U.S. entry to people from seven mostly-Muslim countries (harmful). Hes denounced Trumps decision to withdraw from a trade deal with Asia (a serious mistake) and his proposal to tax imports from Mexico (insane).

Thats not all. Asked about Trumps suggestion that the U.S. resume using torture on suspected terrorists, he said: I dont give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do. We will not torture.  The law is the law.

Other Republicans have objected to some of Trumps actions. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has echoed McCain on Russia. Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was one of half a dozen who criticized last weeks immigration order.

But  will Republicans in Congress act as a serious check against Trump? Despite McCains outlier dissents, it still looks unlikely.

But none have taken on the White House on so many issues as the 80-year-old McCain. If there is to be any kind of loyal Republican opposition on Capitol Hill, hes already its de facto leader.

I feel, frankly, a greater burden of responsibility, he told the Wall Street Journal recently. The worlds on fire. We have more challenges than any time in the last 70 years.  Whatever influence I have, I need to exercise it.

The differences between McCain and Trump are substantive. McCain is a Ronald Reagan conservative, a product of his partys history. Trump ran against the GOP establishment and has abandoned large parts of the Reagan legacy.

The starkest contrasts are on foreign policy. McCain views Putins Russia as a major threat to the United States and its allies; Trump hopes to make Putin a strategic partner, and has dismissed criticism of Russias invasion of Ukraine.

But theres personal history here too.

Early in his presidential campaign, Trump belittled McCains six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Hes not a war hero, candidate Trump said. I like people that werent captured, OK?

After Trump won the presidential nomination, McCain endorsed him  barely. (The senator said he supported the nominee of my party, without uttering his name.)

But after a tape surfaced of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women, McCain withdrew his support  drawing an angry response. The very foul-mouthed Sen. John McCain begged for my support during his primary (I gave, he won), then dropped me over locker room remarks! Trump tweeted.

In November, McCain won Arizona by a bigger margin than Trump. Now, with a six-year term ahead, he is free to go his own way. After 34 years in Congress and two presidential campaigns of his own, hes a hard man to intimidate.

But this is getting ahead of the larger story. Will Republicans in Congress act as a serious check against Trump?

Despite McCains outlier dissents, it still looks unlikely.

Trumps refugee ban drew more criticism than anything else he has done, but most of it was pragmatic, aimed at the chaotic rollout of the policy as much as any substantive demerits.

GOP senators, moreover, want to enact the big tax cuts the president has promised plus repeal and replace Obamas health care law.

One more problem: Some Republican senators worry that if they appear disloyal, theyll face a primary challenge from Trump supporters. So far, the president remains hugely popular among Republican voters.

If the Republican establishment decides to push back, it probably wont take the form of open rebellion. It will look more like guerrilla warfare, with lawmakers doing tax reform and Obamacare their way, not Trumps, and slow-walking proposals they dislike (a costly infrastructure plan, for example).

The battle for the soul of the Republican Party has long been underway. Trumps arrival in the White House didnt end it; it merely sent it spinning in new directions.
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Not even a month into the current legislative session in Lincoln and already policymakers have lost focus on what Nebraskans are asking them to do.

Across the state, the number one issue that people are clamoring for is a solution to the astronomical property taxes burdening Nebraska property owners. And they probably just went up again; some reports of recent valuation changes have been as high as 800 percent.

While our already high property taxes continue to escalate, policymakers and some special interest lobbyists want you to believe that what you are really concerned about is income tax relief. According to a poll conducted by Reform for Nebraskas Future, only 14 percent of Nebraskans agree with this.

The same poll showed that 77 percent of Nebraskans believe that we need property tax reform; 62 percent singled out property tax reform as the top priority for the current legislative session.

Why then are policymakers in Lincoln increasing the rhetoric around cuts to income taxes? The answer to this important question is very simple: Income tax reform is the top priority of the special interests.

In fairness, some in Lincoln are pushing for relief for property taxpayers, but these proposals fall far short of what is needed. Relief efforts in the past have failed to produce meaningful long-term solutions to the unsustainable rate increases felt by Nebraska property owners.

Nebraska has the seventh highest property taxes in the country, higher than all neighboring states and traditional high-tax states like New York, Massachusetts and California. Over the past decade, rates have increased 60 percent for all property owners, and some data shows that rates have increased by 35 percent for residential property owners, 49 percent for commercial and 176 percent on agricultural land.

Just in the past two weeks, many Nebraska property owners are receiving property tax bills and being met with quite a bit of shock. Rates appear to have increased at outrageous levels across the state.

Such high increases confirm that true property tax reform is needed.

Reform for Nebraskas Future was recently formed, and we have already received incredible support from Nebraskans in all 93 counties who believe that property tax reform is needed.

While relief has been proposed by some, now is the time to pass meaningful property tax reform that balances the states sources for revenue and alleviates the crushing burden placed on property owners to fund the states priorities.

Under current policy, property taxes make up nearly half of all revenues collected by government in Nebraska compared to 33 percent for revenue from income taxes and 19 percent from sales tax. We rely too heavily on property owners to fund Nebraska priorities.

Nebraska needs meaningful property tax reform that balances the states sources of revenue, is done in a revenue-neutral way, and ensures stable funding for state priorities like education, well into the future. This is a comprehensive, long-term solution that is much more equitable.

Thats not what the special interests want. But thats what Nebraskans want. It is time for Nebraskas policymakers to heed the call of Nebraska taxpayers and enact meaningful, revenue-neutral property tax reform.
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(U.K.), Newage Machine Tools Ltd., OOO Cummins, Petbow Limited, Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) B.V., Power Group International (Overseas Holdings) Ltd., Power Group International Ltd., Quickstart Energy Projects SpA, Shanghai Cummins Trade Co. Ltd., TOO Cummins, Taiwan Cummins Sales & Services Co. Ltd., Worldwide Partner CV Member LLC, Wuxi Cummins Turbo Technologies Co. Ltd., Wuxi New Energy Automotive Technologies Co. Ltd., and ZED Connect Inc..

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Travis Perkins plc distributes building materials to the building, construction, and home improvement markets in the United Kingdom. It operates through, Merchanting, and Toolstation segments. The Merchanting segment distributes interior building products, which include drywalls, ceilings, external envelopes, fire protection products, flooring and partitioning products, and tools and accessories to professionals within the construction industry; civil, drainage, and heavy building materials to specialist contractors and trade professionals; and pipeline and heating solutions. This segment also distributes building materials, plumbing and heating products, landscaping materials, timber and sheet materials, painting and decorating products, dry lining and insulation products, doors and joinery, and hand and power tools to trade professionals and self-builders. The Toolstation segment supplies products to the trade, home improvers, and self-builders industry through approximately 500 branches, as well as online, call centers, and a mobile website. It also offers kitchens and joinery products to specialist joiners, kitchen fitters, house builders, local authorities, and national house builders. The company was formerly known as Sandell Perkins Public Limited Company and changed its name to Travis Perkins plc in October 1988. Travis Perkins plc was founded in 1797 and is headquartered in Northampton, the United Kingdom.
School choice comes at a cost. The proposed vouchers for private schools, tax credits and the like drain money from the public school system.

Thats something to keep in mind as advocates for school choice make a big push this legislative session.

Their cause has never found much traction in Nebraska, but things may be changing.

School choice supporters have an ally in the governors mansion and new, supportive senators in the legislative chambers. They also have a nominee for U.S. Education Secretary who has devoted much of her life to the charter school movement.

In Nebraska, lawmakers including Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, Sen. Tyson Larson of O'Neill and Sen. Jim Smith of Papillion are submitted a host of proposals.

Around the country, the charter school movement found fertile ground in areas where public schools were in dire straits. In Nebraska, however, public schools are doing a great job, with a few, isolated exceptions.

For example, Nebraska has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the country at 89 percent. It also ranks among the top 12 states in all categories of the National Assessment of Education Progress.

Interestingly, Nebraska also has a long tradition of school choice  just not the kind that private school advocates are pushing. In Lincoln, for example, hundreds of students go to public high schools outside of their attendance areas.

In fact, 22,148 Nebraska students use their option enrollment to attend public schools in other districts, Ralston Public Schools Superintendent Mark Adler wrote in a Local View column.

There is absolutely no doubt parents should have the right to send their children to private schools that emphasize religious values.

But should other taxpayers be forced to subsidize that choice? Many Nebraskans send tax dollars to public schools districts even though they have no school-age children. Should that money be diverted so some parents can send their children to schools with daily prayer and church services?

Although charter school proponents make it sound like private schools invariably do a better job than public schools, the reality is that around the country some charter schools have failed miserably. In Ohio, state auditors have found more than $27 million spent improperly.

Another reality is that providing tax breaks for parents who send their kids to private schools often means that most of the benefit flows to the wealthy. In Wisconsin, tax filers making more than $100,000 a year claimed two-thirds of a private school tuition tax cut, the Madison State Journal reported this month.

In Nebraska, the push to give tax breaks for private schools seems like a solution in search of a problem. State senators should do the same thing they have done every time similar proposals have been offered: Vote them down.
UK-based Ghanaian music duo Reggie N Bollie, runners-up of 2015 X-Factor UK show, have severed record label ties with Syco, owned by music mogul Simon Cowell.

According to them, they have begun another musical journey with a new record label.

The group made up of Reggie Zippy and Bollie took to their social media page to write, WE'RE FINALLY INDEPENDENT N IT FEELS F#CKING RIGHT. #WeCallOurOwnShots#HappyNewMonth2Uall.

The new record label, F.R.O.D (Fearlessly Ruling Our Destiny), will be headed by themselves alongside a solid team.

Head of Communications at F.R.O.D and manager of the African side of the team, Mark Darlington told Daybreak Hitz programme on Hitz FM with KMJ that, They did quite well but they thought it was time to actually take charge of their own affairs and theyve built a legitimate recording label with a big team around them.

The label, he explained, has African, UK and European sides which will be under different managements, as well as a publishing team, a legal team, and bloggers.

The aim of the label, in the future will be signing artistes from Ghana and Africa and to give them the kind of exposure that Reggie N Bollie currently has, he explained.

After being probed on the kinds of artistes the label may be eyeing in future, Mr Darlington mentioned that the likes of Afriyie, Worlasi and Kweku Nikkles were talented yet underrated musicians in Ghana who are most likely to receive some push from the team.

Reggie N Bollie; the New Girl hit stars will in the coming weeks be shooting the video to their official new single off the label which will most likely be launched in March, all things being equal.

The team may also take advantage of the launch to embark on some charity events as well as hold presentations and workshops to educate the upcoming musicians and even those we call established because there are lots of things we are not doing right within our music industry.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Daniella Adu Asare
Ghana's rap doctor Okyeame Kwame is set to release a new track in 3 weeks. The song features his two children, with the boy rapping and the girl doing the chorus.

The track, which is titled 'Saucing' has the two youngsters showing up their talent in most part of the song.

The young man slays with his lines, with one that says, I'm almost smarter than my teacher.

Okyeame Kwame said this when he and his wife, Anicca, made an appearance on Citi FM's Traffic Avenue. He is currently promoting his latest track 'Adonko' and the upcoming event 'Flaunt Your Lover.'

Flaunt Your Lover

Okyeame Kwame will organise 'Flaunt your Lover' at the Silverbird Cinema, Accra Mall.

The event will be held on February 18, 2016. It will provide patrons with the opportunity to show their partners they love that they deserve and to discuss the things that make the relationships tick.



By: Jeffrey Owuraku Sarpong/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Luanda (AFP) - Veteran Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos announced Friday he will not run in August elections, ending 37 years in power and naming his defence minister as candidate to succeed him.

The autocratic 74-year-old has been the oil-rich country's president since September 1979, making him Africa's second-longest serving leader -- one month short of Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

His rule has seen the end of civil war and an investment boom, but has also been criticised as secretive and corrupt, with Angola's citizens suffering dire poverty as his family became hugely wealthy.

Dos Santos told a meeting of the ruling MPLA party in Luanda that "the party approved the name of the candidate heading the list in the August elections as (Defence Minister) Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco".

Lourenco, a former general, emerged as the probable next president late last year at another meeting of the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola).

Earlier in the year, Dos Santos had said he would step down in 2018.

The party -- which faces no real political opposition -- recently issued a statement denying reports that Dos Santos was seriously ill.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos confirmed that he would step down ahead of elections due in August, signalling the end to his 37-year long reign

After constitutional changes in 2010, Angola does not directly elect a president, but the leader of the winning party automatically becomes head of state.

Change awaits?

Despite Lourenco being a party loyalist, the end of Dos Santos's regime could open a new chapter for a country largely closed off to the outside world.

The president has been a dominating presence in daily life longer than most Angolans can remember, exercising personal authority over government, politics, media and business.

When Dos Santos became president in 1979 -- following the sudden death from cancer of Angola's liberation president Agostinho Neto -- civil war was already raging between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels, four years after independence from Portugal.

Peace came only after 2002, and the country is still deeply scarred by a conflict that was a vicious proxy battleground in the Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union.

After fighting ceased, a frenetic oil boom saw skyscrapers sprout up in the centre of the capital Luanda and paid for nationwide infrastructure improvements.

But it left millions of ordinary Angolans living in slums, and the collapse in oil prices has triggered a full-scale national economic crisis since 2013.

"In some ways he is the father figure of the nation, widely seen -- rightly or wrongly -- as the man who ended the war," Soren Kirk Jensen, an Angola specialist at the London-based Chatham House think tank, told AFP recently.


President Akufo-Addo has narrated how he helped to secure victory for former Secretary to President John Dramani Mahama in the recent election for African Union (AU) top job during the just-ended 28th Summit of the AU.

Diplomat and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, Thomas Kwesi Quartey, contested and won the position of Deputy Chairman of the AU Commission (AUC).

But that did not come on a silver platter as he himself has admitted and has since been thanking President Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) government for the support offered him.

Quartey, who contested the election with five others, was not certain of victory without the backing of the new administration.

Revelations

At a meeting with the Ghanaian community in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa Tuesday evening, the president narrated how he defied even the counsel of his own party faithful to throw his weight behind Mr Kwesi Quartey.

Present at the meeting was Ghana's Ambassador to Ethiopia, Albert Yankey and members of the mission; Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey; Secretary to the President, Nana Asante Bediatuo; Deputy Chief of Staff, Francis Asenso-Boakye; Minister-designate for Aviation, Cecilia Dapaah and Minister-designate for Information, Mustapha Hamid.

The rest included former Foreign Minister, James Victor Gbeho; former National Security Coordinator, Lt Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey and former anti-corruption crusader whose subtle defence of corruption under President Mahama government made people to doubt his credibility, Daniel Batidam.

Nana Akufo-Addo recalled that immediately after the 2016 general election which saw him becoming president, his predecessor, President Mahama, informed him about the candidature of Mr Kwesi Quartey, who was contesting as Deputy Chair of the AU Commission.

Details

I think he was a little bit hesitant; thinking that his association with Quartey will put me off, Nana observed.

But when he [Mahama] told him and asked of his view, President Akufo-Addo recalled telling then President Mahama, That's a very good idea; I know the man and I know his competence and I know he is capable of the job and that he will fly the flag of Ghana very high so I have no hesitation in my mind the idea of supporting his candidature.

The president said when he told a few of his colleagues [obviously referring to his party men], their responses were a little bit different; the idea being that he has been deputy minister in an NDC government; he has been Secretary to the President.

According to President Akufo-Addo, he could not but stand his ground and supported the man, claiming, I said no; he is a Ghanaian and he has the ability and we have to mobilise all the talents; so I have no hesitation, I'm going to tell the Foreign Minister-designate at that time to make sure that our service here and around the world is mobilized to support his candidature.

Principle

That, he said, was due to the fact that I've never believed in uniformity of ideasI don't believe that I'm president and everybody should agree with me. No! I don't think that's correct.

Instead, he indicated, I think we should have our differences in opinion; what we need to do is to as much as possible find a way of building consensus so that the various opinions can harmonise.

He could not but thank Ambassador Victor Gbeho, who went from country to country campaigning for Kwesi Quartey, saying, At least your work was not in vain; it has been crowned with resounding success. We are all grateful to you.

From Charles Takyi-Boadu, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
An eight-year-old has been forced to stay indoors all his life because he terrifies other children and suffers from horrific pain if he touches anything due to a rare condition.

Mehendi Hassan, a Bangladeshi boy, has been shunned by the society because of the acute skin disease that is effectively turning him to stone.

While his face looks normal, the rest of his body is covered in thick, scaly skin making it difficult to walk or touch anything.

His community, and even his grandmother, detest him according to Mehendi's mother, who is calling on the government to diagnose and cure the condition that has robbed her son of his childhood.

The eight-year-old struggles to wear clothes as even slightest of friction to his skin is excruciating and stays at home all day because his appearance terrifies other children in the village.

His mother Jahanara Begum said: 'Other children detest him.

'People find him filthy because of his condition.

'He has been home for eight years because whenever he goes out, villagers get scared and say bad things to him.

'Everyone hates him, no one likes to see him or eat in front of him.

'Not even my mother-in-law. I beg government to help my child.

'It upsets him so I keep him at home.



Mehendi Hassan with his mother and father Jahanara and Abul Kalam Azad, who are calling on the government to step in to help their son

'He always cries out in pain. It is devastating to see him suffering.'

Mehendi is Jahanara's third child and was born a healthy seven pounds in the village of Dona Raninagar in Naogaon district of north Bangladesh.

When he was 12 days old his mother - a brick kiln labourer - and father Abul Kalam Azad, a van driver, noticed minor rashes in his body.

They ignored it thinking it was mosquito bites, but soon the rash spread from his heel to abdomen and within three months and his fingers, chest and back began to get covered in thick, scaly skin.

The concerned parents consulted various local doctors, trying all forms of medicines to heal their son, but nothing could control the outbreak.

Frustrated and broke, they eventually stopped his treatment.

Abul Kalam Azad said: 'No doctor could diagnose the disease.

'They all say he suffers from a rare skin disease but no one has been able to cure him. I have no money left.

'Whatever little I could earn from driving a van, I spent it on his treatment.

'Whenever I could save a little, say 10, I would take him to doctors.

'Eventually, all my savings and earnings were exhausted on his treatment but there was no cure.

'Frustrated, I stopped taking him to doctors.

'For last year he has not seen any doctor.'

Physicians believe Mehendi's case is severe, but are still clueless as what the condition is, what caused it and if it can be cured.

Pediatrician Dr Mohammad Emdadul Haque said: 'He was brought to us for treatment. The patient is suffering from a rare kind of skin disease.

'We do not receive such cases normally.

'It is hard to say what he is suffering from. We have referred him to advanced skin specialists. '

With no treatment and growing bizarre condition, Hassan is forced to live as a pariah in his village as no one likes to even 'glance at him'.

He does not play or study at schools because teachers turned him away as his appearance terrified pupils.

Jahanara said: 'I had enrolled him to a school but there he was beaten up by other children.

'One day he came home crying and saying he was assaulted in school.

'I requested his teachers to please pay attention to him and see no one beats him up but the teachers said they were unable to discipline other kids and that his presence was affecting studies of other children.

'Even at Madrasa, the teachers would talk to him from a distance and never let him eat with other children saying he stinks.

'He has no friends and he does not go out.

'To see him live alone is devastating.

'He cries and says why he is suffering.

'I always tell him Allah has made him different and with his will, he will also be able to study and live a normal, healthy life.'

The mother is now pleading government to help her son find a doctor who can treat him and free him from the pain.

'I beg government to please come forward and help me with his treatment so that he too can live as a normal human,' she said.

'I have been struggling a lot raising him up.

'Seeing him in pain is unbearable.'
Cotonou (AFP) - Traders and hawkers armed with brooms and bags sweep pavements and scoop up rubble in Benin's economic capital Cotonou, where the authorities have ordered a vast city cleanup.

From informal street markets to bars and food stalls illegally built on public land, nothing has been spared, as squads of workers move in to clear the chaos and make the bustling city beautiful again.

But the cleanup has made daily life hard for many in Benin, where the vast majority work in the informal sector.

Like other fast-growing west African urban hubs, Cotonou has vendors selling everything from clothing to fast food by the roadside, and restaurants that spring up all over with their plastic chairs and tables.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," deputy mayor Florentin Tchaou told AFP. "People will take advantage of any empty space to expand their businesses and increase their visibility so as to improve sales."

Eviction notice

But in July, freshly elected President Patrice Talon decided it was time to give the country a facelift and gave major cities a six-month deadline to clear their chaotic crowded roads.

Large red crosses were spray painted on building walls due for demolition and posters added warnings that eviction day was near.

Ageline Bocovo, who has been selling clothes in Cotonou for five years, didn't believe it would happen, but was wrong.

Informal street markets, bars and food stalls illegally built on public land have been cleared from Cotonou in Benin in an attemtp to beautify the city

"We couldn't fight the police with our bare hands, we had no choice," she said, when, on January 5, she was forced to leave.

Bocovo personally smashed her stall into smithereens, keeping some of the bricks to build a new stall on a smaller street.

"The rest of the rubble will be sold. But it won't bring in much cash," she said.

Armelle Choplin, an urban planner at Cotonou's Research Institute for Development, said the "measure affects the little people, who aren't necessarily organised into associations or unions, as is the case in Anglophone countries like Ghana."

'Haussmann in the tropics'

Clearing operations such as this are not uncommon on the continent, where many cities have grown at a rapid rate without much thought about planning.

"Most people welcome it," Choplin said. "It's Haussmann in the tropics," she added, referring to the 19th-century French urban planner best known for transforming Paris into a city of sweeping boulevards.

President Patrice Talon ordered a cleanup of Benin's bustling streets after his election in July, 2016

A United Nations report predicts the world's population will soar from 7.3 billion in 2015 to 9.7 billion by 2050, with Africa expected to account for half of that growth

That means unchecked activity on public space isn't going to disappear anytime soon.

But the relatively peaceful departure of the squatters in Benin contrasts with neighbouring Nigeria, where clashes with police enforcing eviction notices can lead to violence and even death.

Nevertheless, Cotonou's poor will suffer most by being forced to move stalls to less busy streets at a time when Benin's economy is being hit by recession in Nigeria.

In Ghana's Accra, for example, alternative marketplaces were set up for those evicted. But in Cotonou there is no such relocation or compensation.

Nightmare scenario

So for some, the beautification of Cotonou is a nightmare.

"Where do you want me to go?" asked Eugenie Yovogan, whose small street restaurant stood in front of a government building providing lunch for civil servants.

The clearance robbed her of a prime location and customers. "I lost my clientele forever," she said.

Cotonou's authorities maintain they will support people like Yovogan -- even if it's unclear if they have the funds to do so.

"Our citizens have demonstrated a very high social maturity, respecting the laws," said Tchaou.

"Now we must be able to relocate them so that their turnover does not fall. But this requires the means, and sweeping, garbage collection, this is already expensive."
The entire Breman Jamra Township was thrown into a state of mourning on Thursday as they laid to rest the remains of the six pupils who died when their dilapidated classroom collapsed on them at the Jamra Methodist KG building.

Students, teachers and bereaved parents could hold back their tears as they bid farewell to the kids who met their untimely deaths on Tuesday morning.

Teaching and learning in the Jamra Methodist basic school has since been halted following the deaths.

The burial service was delayed by the youth who were contemplating over where to bury the children for fear of exhuming the bodies for ritual purposes by some unscrupulous people.

This was settled as the burial took off upon the intervention of the MP and the Asikuma District Police Commander.

The bereaved were consoled by, the MP for Asikuma Odoben Brakwa, Anthony Effa, delegations from the Central Regional Education Directorate, the Methodist Church of Ghana and the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa District Assembly.

Clad in black and red, the Chief of Jamra Nana Kwaw Fosu III, in an interview with Citi News, appealed to the government to expedite work on the new KG block.

The Asikuma Odoben-Abrakwa District Police Command is currently investigating the death of the six pupils.



By: Akwesi Koranteng/citifmonline.com/Ghana
I just have a suggestion for some Nebraska senators and our governor joining the nominated Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to push for vouchers and charter schools ("Tax credit draws support, questions," Jan. 27). Put in a mandate that charter schools have to accept 10 percent of special ed, disciplinary problems, English as a second language and mentally handicapped students. After all, since these schools claim to excel with handpicked socially homogeneous, upper income students, imagine what they could do with really disadvantaged ones.
A group calling itself The Union of the Voice of the People (TUVOP) in the Brong Ahafo Region has called on the Sunyani Traditional Council to cooperate with the Brong AHAFO Regional Minister Designate, Mr. Kwaku Asomah Cheremeh.

Vice President for The Union of the Voice of the People (TUVOP), Mr. Martin Matib said it is time for both parties to bury their differences.

He stated that it does not augur well for the Sunyani Traditional Council to come out with a statement to denounce Mr. Asomah Cheremeh.

According to him the President of Ghana, H.E Akufo Addo knows how competent Mr. Asomah Cheremeh is before nominating.

Mr. Martin Matib further stated that the cooperation of the Sunyani Traditional Council will facilitate the development of the Brong Ahafo Region.
Call it prayer, caution or awareness creation, Ghanas Real Estate Developer, Kofi Anokye of Koans Estate Fame has posted a heart-warming prayer for Ghanas President Nana Akufo Addo on his Facebook Page: @kanokyegh

The Real Estate Developer who was honoured by the World Business Assembly in the Golden European Award in 2015 has over the years carved a niche for himself as an innovationist and out of the box thinker who always seeks to provide solutions to major problems that has eluded state actors and technocrat alike. He is credited with many ground breaking innovations in the Real Estate Sphere

In a prayer posted on his Facebook Page @kanokyegh, he appeared sincerely concern for President Akufo Addo and the decisions he will make now that he has the power. He limited his prayer to three main points. He prayed that God should grant the President the wisdom to recognise competence over ingratiation in his assignment of roles; that he doesnt over rely on foreigners in the execution of his promises and finally, he asked for divine wisdom and courage for our new leader.

Is the post informed by the failings of the previous government? Is it a smart warning to the new government or just a prayer from a concerned Ghanaian?

However one looks at it, the new government has no choice than pay attention to the issues he raise because they are central to his success or failure

Perhaps, this should be every Ghanaians prayer for our new president who will definitely shout Amen should he get to read it

Read it for yourself.

My solemn prayer for His Excellency Nana Akufo-Addo , the president of Ghana- Kofi Anokye

I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ whom I serve that God grants our new president the following qualities to lead us successfully and make Ghana better for all and sundry.

This is my prayer:

1. That he doesnt sacrifice competence for ingratiation.

It is only true that promises made during the campaign were enormous in view of the time frame and the resources currently at our disposal as a nation. Hence I pray that Nana should be led to go for competency rather than ingratiation to bring the much needed success. Personally in my own small way, I have had experience with some of these politicians who are praising the President in anticipation of appointment. Such people, more than the opposition remain the number one hurdle the President will need to overcome if he is to succeed and take us to the promise-land that inspired countless Ghanaians to vote for him. I can say on authority that many are wolves in the sheep cloth. They are more desperate and hungry to grab any position that will give them the opportunity to steal, cheat and destroy than anything one can think of. I therefore pray that God grant the president an eagle eye and insight to see beyond the praise and not just settle for those hailing him Nana ooo, Nana ooo all in search of an opportunity to steal rather than to give; to destroy rather than to build; to be served rather to serve. To lead with humility instead of becoming lords over us and above all, deliver in place of giving excuses.

2. That he doesnt over rely on foreigners in the execution of his promises:

Oh God I pray that you will grant our president the courage and wisdom to look mostly within the people you have given to lead to achieve most of his campaign promises so that in the end Ghanaians will be the ultimate beneficiaries of his stewardship and not foreigners.. It is only true however that certain projects will definitely require importation of expertise from elsewhere, it only our prayer that those that can be done by Ghanaians should not be shipped to foreigners.

Given the platform, the Ghanaian is a good as any group of people in this world. I pray that God should grant our leader the confidence in the people he has been appointed to lead and make us active participant in developing this nation

3. That God, grant him Wisdom and the courage to lead us.

My final oh God is that you should grant Nana the WISDOM and the COURAGE to lead to a successful end.

It is quite obvious that most of the promises that he made during the campaign will require him to overlook and turn down some pressure from highly influencial people of this land and abroad if they can be realised. I know from my experience that it has never been easy trying to balance these pressure against public interest and that is where I pray you oh God to give him such wisdom backed by boldness to take the right decision. The case of the ex-president's request for the house he stayed inn was a typical example of what I mean.

Setting up an independent prosecutor to deal with corrupt practices of the past government is easier said than done and will end up being a mirage without godly wisdom and boldness. It takes the Grace of God to succeed in the battle against any form of social injustice and succeed.

This is why this prayer means so much to me. That people who served this nation diligently should escape unjust sentences and those who stole a dime of the poor mans TAX should pay for it in accordance with the law.

Ghana as a country to me is like a group of families leaving in one big compound house. Everybody knows someone on the compound yard and therefore can easily approach the other for intervention on his or her behalf when the need be. This is the reason for my prayer for boldness and wisdom from God almighty in times like this. This is the time to make corruption unattractive and it will require wisdom. Corruption of the past, present and future remain a threat to our stability as a nation.

If it is not fought now, Ghanaians will begin to lose trust in politics and I cannot imagine the worse if that happens. This is why I pray that God should grant Nana the wisdom to fight this cancer

The rule of law should be the guiding principle of the government and nothing more

Thank you oh Lord, you are our prayer answering God and that you have answered us long before we conceived the idea of praying. I am thankful that you have heard me in the name of My Lord Jesus Christ.

AMEN
The creation of the Ministry for Inner City & Zongo Development by the NPP administration is among the best ideas ever to be introduced in Ghanaian politics. It presents a solution to the current nightmare faced by most African nations: how to tap the benefits of its demographic transition to spur economic growth and avoid the economic distress demographic transition presents.

Additionally, it proves that the new administration is not merely paying lip service to the underprivileged communities and it sends a strong message that President Akuffo-Addo is determined to extend his agenda of social mobility and economic prosperity to all Ghanaians.

A critical look at the 2010 population data indicates that the nations working-age population (WAP) is around 65 percent in 2017 and will increase by 5 million to 84 percent in the next ten years. In short, the countrys WAP is growing rapidly, and without a long-term systemic solution that provides opportunities, idle energy and the lack of employment are likely to create social tension and direct the youth to engage in criminal activities and other social vices. It is Nolbeds fervent hope that the work of the new Ministry will address such concerns.

Lastly,President Akufo-Ados appointment of Hon. Abubakar Saddique Boniface to lead the ministry is another great step in the right direction, as he is someone who is not only from the Zongo but has a proven record of representing and working on behalf of the community.
03.02.2017 LISTEN

The signals are getting clear, the undiluted faith has started getting diluted, the unflinching unity to snatch power has begun to develop cracks. Now it's NPP "wise men" against the NPP die hard supporters, the said youth that according to honorable Kennedy Ohene Agyapong NPP cannot afford to disappoint are on the other side against the so called "redeeming hands" the ministers that the youth were hoping to come and redeem Ghana from the NDC corruptible hands and rule.

Same time some eight years ago, newspapers, radio discussion, Facebook walls, twitters and other social media were "NDC snatched, grabbed, retrieved, arrested cars belonging to the state from the opposition NPP. Now tables have turned and NPP are on the same trail taken from NDC.

But the interesting thing is that, the NDC leadership at the time never whispered a word against its supporters over such act believing that they were in support. But today NPP's minister have taken siege in playing "MR Right" "MR Know laws" "MR Do Things Right" against their own gallant youth who were inflecting curses on whosever intend to compromise the victory of NPP. Has this got anything to do with the allegations that "some of the big wigs in Ghanaian politics are on the payroll of government be it in opposition or in government?".

The wise families have divided themselves into two, one fashion belongs to NPP and other belongs to NPP, so whichever political party in power doesn't affect their booty in government. We want to ask; why must our politicians take us for fools? Why should they always make it feel that they're the only people with wisdom?

The president decided to maintained his residence meant for the state, increased his salary and allowances so that he can live good even in opposition, the minister is stealing to survive in opposition and party executives are grabbing from left to right, yet they preach change in every year.

What in the name of God did hon security minister based his decision to ask for the return of the said state cars? The youth of Ghana in our opinion has been used for this mickey mouse change. We were made to believe that corruption is going to be a thing of the past, but these signals are not what we anticipated for. How can we fight corruption when the perpetrators are roaming on the streets, enjoying what they've stolen from the state?

Scratch my back when in power then I'll scratch yours when you're in opposition. So why should we die for these people who are only but interested in their selfish interests? The earlier the so called NPP's Mr. Do Things Right begin to know eyes are watching and that they should stop serving their stomachs and serve according to their promise the best.

...Signed.

Nana Kwabena Adom

(Guangzhou-China)

Nana Moses II.

(Qingdao-China)
The Group Chief Executive Officer of Ethiopian Airlines Tewolde GebreMariam has expressed the group's readiness to partner with Ghana to help rebuild national airlines.

According to him, the plan is part of the group's agenda to expand its reach in West Africa by owning a substantial part of sub-region's aviation industry.

Speaking to Citi Business News the Mr. GebreMariam stated that it is time for Africa to increase its stake of 3 percent control in the aviation industry.

Recounting the good days of the defunct Ghana Airways, Mr. GebreMariam said that Ghana used to lead in the sub region with its national carrier flying to Europe and America.

Ghana Airways used to be a very successful airline . in my time I joined Ethiopian Airlines some 32 years ago so I knew Ghana Airways was doing a good job, flying to New York and to London and so on. Unfortunately, towards the end it was having problems and so was closed. This is really a very serious concern to Africans because we want to see African countries having their national carriers, he said.

He stated that with the commercial value of the aviation industry, it is important for West African countries to participate in the industry to increase africa's share of about 3 percent.

Countries like Ghana, Nigeria should have very strong national carriers. Ethiopian Airlines is really trying to help in that endeavor. I am sure you know that some seven years ago in 2010, I came and we established an airline in Togo called Asky Airlines, Asky means African Sky. It is meant to serve the sub regional community here, the ECOWAS community and Central Africa.

He maintained that Ethiopian Airlines has always demonstrated its readiness to invest in West African aviation industry.



By:Lawrence Segbefia/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
03.02.2017 LISTEN

Biafra, dominated by the great Igbo race, enjoyed sovereignty before Great Britain commenced exploitive colonial rule over Nigeria under the racist banner of Rudyard Kiplings the White Man burden. Britain asserted authority over Biafra based on the tyrannical doctrine that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

The Berlin West Africa Conference, 1884-85, and the Berlin General Act symbolized colonial lawlessness by treating Africa as a carcass to be divided up among European vultures.

Restoration of Biafras sovereignty is justified under international law and practiceespecially with the ongoing ethnic-inspired killings and persecutions of Biafans by Nigerias elected military dictator from the North touting sharia law, President Muhammdu Buhari.

Biafras sovereignty journey will require deft international diplomacy and the marshalling of widespread popular support from Biafrans and their resources. Power is never voluntarily surrendered. Rights ultimately are what you are willing to fight and die for.

Prior to British colonization in 1906, the great Igbo people to the East of Niger, numbering some 3 million, and their cognate tribes enjoyed decentralized self-government. They were not living in a state of nature. Their self-rule came by force of armsnot voluntarily.

In 1900, the British government assumed responsibility for the Royal Niger Companys territories, and formed the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, the Niger Coast Protectorate and the Lagos Colony Protectorate territories. 1913 witnessed the amalgamation of Nigeria into three administrative areas: the crown colony of Lagos and the Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria.

In 1960, Britain ended its colonization of Nigeria without reference to the Igbo or any other peoples of Nigeria entitled to self-determination. The Nigeria Independence Act established Nigerian territorial boundaries not by popular referendum or other reliable manifestations of self-determination of peoples, but according to the Nigerias Orders in Council, 1954 to 1960. They reflected British selfish maneuvers to dominate Nigeria economically.

Britains failure to offer Biafrans the right to self-determination violated the United Nations General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples adopted on 14 December 1960. Paragraph 5 of the Declaration required that immediate steps be taken by the colonial power to transfer all powers to the peoples of those [colonized] territoriesin accordance with their freely expressed will and desirein order to enable them to enjoy complete independence and freedom. The 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations emphasized that, By virtue of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, all peoples have the right freely to determine without external interference their political status.

The people of Biafrarecognized as distinct by British colonial authoritieswere never provided an opportunity to vote for complete independence and freedom from the rest of Nigeria according to their freely expressed will and desire. They were never consulted on the subject when Nigeria became independent in 1960. Further, the 1960 Constitution of Nigeria was never approved by the people of Biafra in a referendum or otherwise. And neither has any subsequent Nigerian Constitution, including the current version decreed by a military dictator in 1999.

In sum, the British decolonized Nigeria in violation of international law by failing to transfer power to the peoples of Biafra in accordance with their freely expressed will.

That violation was not a technicality, but an affront to a fundamental human right. All governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent is required to legitimate authority and to forestall external subjugation, oppression, persecution, or even genocide fueled by tribal, sectarian, ethnic, or megalomaniacal ambitions or hatreds.

After independence from Britain, Nigeria soon became a charnel house for Biafrans. Deprived of their right to self-determination, they were left to the tender mercies of the Hausa-Fulani of the North and the Yoruba of the South in a unitary state unsuited for its diverse tribal, ethnic, and religious landscape. The gruesome 1967-1970 Biafran War was emblematic. Ethnic-based massacres of Biafrans and countless starving children who died as little more than skeletons was its grim face. The horrors suffered by Biafrans gave birth to the first modern international relief effort to lessen unspeakable misery.

At the wars conclusion, Nigerias General Yakuba Gowons sloganeered, No victor, no vanquished. The words proved a cruel hoax. The Igbo were marginalized, persecuted as traitors, and subjected to a Northern political yolk. Under incumbent Nigerian elected military dictator Buhari, the repression of the Igbo have reached new heights featuring indiscriminate killings, torture, and detentions without trial.

Last March, for instance, 13 Biafrans were murdered and their corpses burnt to ashes and dumped in a burrow pit located in the area of Aba-Port Harcourt Road in Abia State by suspected Buhari agents. Last February, a team of Buharis Army, Navy, and Police and gunned down 22 Biafrans protesting Buharis detention of Biafran leader Prince Nnamdi Kanu.

A complete chronicle of Buharis horrors only would numb by repetition.

The point is that there is no political remedy for Biafras sufferinglike an abused wife in a forced marriageshort of self-determination to regain its sovereignty that was illegally extinguished by the British and never surrendered after decolonization.

States born from longstanding repression of peoples by ruling authorities are part of the woof and warp of international law or custom. Think of Bangladesh, Namibia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, East Timor, Eritrea, and Kosovo.

The case for Biafran sovereignty is as strong or stronger as these precedents.

But to succeed, Biafrans will need to organize, unify, and make their case to the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the African Union, the European Union, and the United States.

If they do not all hang together, they might all come to hang separately.

Bruce Fein is an American constitutional lawyer and author. He tweets from @brucefeinesq.
Guwahati: Journalists Forum Assam {JFA} urges the management of ABP group {the mother organization of The Telegraph, Ananda Bazar Patrika etc} to withdraw its policy to cut jobs including those of journalists. It is understood that the Kolkata based management recently asked almost half of its employees to resign and get the benefit of six months basic pay.

The northeast India based media rights body observes that as the heat of implementation of Majithia Wage Boards recommendations increases, many established newspaper houses start preparing to close down their branches to reduce their employees. Few have taken the practice of asking the media persons to resign with some benefits.

First, we appeal the targeted employees, including the scribes, not to resign under the pressure of the management. Secondly, we would like to advise them to adopt the judicial process as the apex court of the country had endorsed the latest wage board for newspaper & news agency employees across the country, said a statement issued by JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria.

It also added that if at all the employees want to leave the media house, they should claim all the outstanding amount of money under the provisions of Majithia Wage Board since November 2011 and here the journalists {who used to be the whistle-blower against injustice in thesociety} should take the lead.
The Board of Directors of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), has praised the ECOWAS for its commendable efforts in ensuring the peaceful transfer of power from ex-President Yahya Jammeh to President Adama Barrow.

In a 10-point resolution issued at the end of a two-day meeting of the Board in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, the Board indicated that ECOWAS action on the Gambian situation was one that will help strengthen and consolidate democratic governance across West Africa.

It congratulated the new Gambian President and urged him to undertake urgent reforms that will help ensure good governance, and respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of the Gambian people.

As a commitment to the human rights reform agenda, the Board further calls on President Barrow to take urgent steps to unconditionally release all political prisoners and detainees under the Yahya Jammeh regime. A similar gesture should be extended to journalists who were arbitrary detained or imprisoned under the regime, the resolution stated.

Below is the full 10-point resolution issued by the Board

Board Resolution

By the Board of Directors of Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) at its Meeting held in Dakar, Senegal, on January 25 & 26, 2017.

On January 25 and 26, 2017, the Board of Directors of the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) Chaired by Mr. Edetaen Ojo, met in Dakar, Senegal, to discuss and approve the organisations work plan and budget for 2017.

On the second day of the meeting, the Board held discussions with Gambian media experts, editors and the leadership of The Gambia Press Union (GPU) on the recent political challenges in The Gambia. The meeting discussed the prevailing context of press freedom and freedom of expression in The Gambia as well as the challenges and prospects for improving the media and freedom of expression landscape in the post-Jemmeh era.

At the end of the two-day meeting, the Board unanimously adopted and issued this 10-point resolution:

1. The Board highly commends the ECOWAS for its resilient efforts that ensured the resolution of the Gambian political crisis and the peaceful transfer of power to H.E. President Adama Barrow who won the December 1, 2016 presidential elections. This, the Board notes, is a commendable effort on the part of ECOWAS that will ensure democratic development and consolidation not only in the Gambia but the West Africa region as a whole.

2.It congratulates President Barrow on his victory and ascension to the high office. It also calls on the President to urgently undertake the necessary reforms to ensure good governance, and respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of the Gambian people.

3. The Board further commends the people of The Gambia for their resort to peace and dialogue during the transitional process and for remaining resolute in their quest for democratic consolidation and respect for human rights.

4. Mindful for the very repressive press situation and freedom of expression conditions in The Gambia under the 22-year rule of President Yahya Jammeh, the Board calls on President Barrow to undertake urgent reforms that will promote, protect and defend the rights of the Gambian people to freely express themselves and to guarantee press freedom in the country. Such reforms will include the repeal of laws that criminalise speech offences and the passage of a Right to Information (RTI) legislation.

5.As a commitment to the human rights reform agenda, the Board further calls on President Barrow to take urgent steps to unconditionally release all political prisoners and detainees under the Yahya Jammeh regime. A similar gesture should be extended to journalists who were arbitrarily detained or imprisoned under the Jammeh regime.

5. In view of the crucial role of the media in the democratic transition and consolidation processes, the Board urges the new administration to support media sector reform measures such as building the capacity of journalists, improving journalism training institutions, strengthening and reforming the Gambian Television and Radio Service (GRTS), and other initiations that will ensure a vibrant, pluralistic and professional media landscape that will support participatory and accountable governance.

6. On the regional front, the Board reiterates its deep concern about the slow pace of digital migration among countries in West Africa, including the low level of public awareness of the digital migration process and its potentially massive implications for access to information and the right to freedom of expression.

7. Mindful of the fact that digital migration will require policy, legal and regulatory reforms, the Board calls on governments to adopt a multi-stakeholder and consultative approach in all policy, legal and regulatory reform processes associated with digital migration so that all critical stakeholders can be effectively engaged.

8. The Board welcomes the generally noticeable decline in the most egregious forms of attacks on journalists and the media in the region. The Board, therefore, commends the management and staff of the MFWA and its national partners in the region for their significant contributions towards achieving the current generally improved conditions of freedom of expression in West Africa. It urges the secretariat to continue to work closely with it partners to further improve the situation and strengthen the medias capacity to support transparent and accountable governance in the region.

9. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the MFWA, which is this year - 2017, the Board expresses gratitude to the organisations past and present funders and partners for their commitment and support for the organisation and its work over the years. To formally mark the occasion, the Board announces a two-day anniversary celebration in the form of a regional conference and awards to be held on October 27 and 28, 2017 in Accra.

Adopted in Dakar, Senegal, this Thursday, the 26th day of January, 2017
The Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia on Thursday reiterated government's commitment to providing the needed resources towards fighting corruption and the full implementation of the beneficial ownership regime.

He said government would ensure transparency in the procurement process, awarding of contracts, as well as transparency in the commodity market and prevent any facilitation of corruption in the country as promised by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo during the electioneering period.

Dr Bawumia was speaking at the opening of a two-day workshop on Supporting New Beneficial Ownership Transparency Champions in Accra, organised by the Transparency International in collaboration with its local representative, the Ghana Integrity Initiative.

The meeting brought together key stakeholders from Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana with representatives from civil society organisations, government officials, investigative journalists and law enforcement agencies to increase their understanding and knowledge on beneficial ownership in order to collaborate and plan how to collect, share and use beneficial ownership information to tackle corruption in their various countries.

Beneficial ownership is a term used to describe the natural person who directly and ultimately owns, controls or benefits from a company or trust fund and the income it generates.

The term is often used to contrast with the nominee company owners, who might be registered as legal owners of the asset without any benefits.

Nominees obscure the real company structure and owners. Professional nominees are paid a fee for their services but otherwise have no interest in the transactions. Nominees can also be family members or friends.

The event was organised as a follow-up of the 2016 Anti-corruption Summit held in London, United Kingdom, in May 2016 to support the realisation of the commitments made by the three countries in establishing public beneficial ownership registers.

The Vice President noted that the Anti-corruption Summit in London was also aimed at moving forward the anti-corruption agenda as contained in the International Anti-corruption Action Plan and Ghana Shared Growth and Development Agenda, as well as the United Nations Convention against Corruption.

He added that government was committed to meeting a number of international obligations regarding the implementation of the beneficial ownership and expressed optimism that government's partnership with the Financial Intelligence Centre, the Ghana Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (GEITI) and the EITI standards and Financial Action Taskforce would help in meeting the various beneficial ownership requirements deadlines.

He said the country had made tremendous progress after last year's summit in London compared to its compatriots, saying, ''we have since organised a consultative workshop on beneficial ownership for state and non-state actors while the Companies Act, (Act 920) had also been amended to make provision for beneficial ownership regime a reality.

According to him, Ghana's EITI in collaboration with other civil society organisations, relevant government agencies and other partners developed beneficial ownership roadmap which had been submitted to the international EITI Secretariat in December 2016 as part of the deadline for all EITI implementing countries including Ghana.

He said the government recognised the huge financial implication to this roadmap and would make the needed resources available so that the country would put in place efficient beneficial ownership regime, he stated.

In this regard, he said, the detailed information of the identities of politically-exposed persons and their families would be made accessible to the public, but would not compromise their security.


An Accra circuit court yesterday sentenced two persons to a total of 27 years imprisonment with hard labour for their involvement in two separate robbery incidents in Accra.

The convicts, Bright Arma, driver and Awal Iddirisu aka Half Dollar, unemployed, are reported to have robbed their respective victims of their mobile phones and various sums of money.

In the case of Bright, the prosecutor, Superintendent K. Bempah, said on January 28, this year, he robbed one Sandrick Mensah of her Galaxy S5 phones worth GH1,000, a Nokia phone valued at GH80 and GH300 cash.

Regarding Half Dollar's role, the prosecutor, DSP Patience Mario, indicated that he robbed one Daniel Mensah, a trader, of his Infinix Note 4 phone worth GH370 and GH220 cash.

Before trial judge Aboagye Tandoh, the two variously admitted the charges and were convicted on their own guilty pleas.

Sentencing the duo in separate judgements, the judge decried the seeming upsurge of robbery in the country and its negative impact of scaring investors away from the country.

He said the behaviour of the two was one which ought to be discouraged by the society and as a result, jailed Bright for 17 years and Half Dollar for 10 years, to serve as deterrent to others.

Prosecuting, Supt. Bempah said Bright is a driver and that at 1am on the said day, the Charlie Swat 8 patrol team arrested and brought him to the police station with the explanation that whilst the team was on its usual patrols at Weija in Accra, they spotted the complainant running and screaming for help.

He said the team rushed to the scene and rescued the complainant from Bright.

Supt. Bempah stated that investigation disclosed that Sandrick chartered the accused person's Kia Rio taxi with registration number GS 5927-13 to Tuba, also a suburb of Accra.

He said on reaching Ayigbe Town junction near the toll booth, Bright stopped and parked the car at the side of the road, adding that he then pulled out a Fanta lemon bottle containing powdered pepper mixed with water and sprayed it into the eyes of Sandrick.

The senior police officer further stated that Bright then attacked the complainant, pulled her out of the car and bolted with the afore-stated items.

Sandrick chased him until the police team heard her screaming and rushed to rescue her. In his caution statement, the accused admitted the offence and led the police to the crime scene.

DSP Mario, narrating the series of events leading to the arrest of Half Dollar, said the convict and his accomplices had been on the radar of the police for coming to Nungua, near Abrefi Spot, to rob residents of their valuables.

The court heard that on January 21 at 10pm, Half Dollar and three others, wielding short cutlasses, attacked Daniel Mensah and robbed him of the said items.

Daniel spotted Half Dollar at the same spot and alerted his friends who assisted him to arrest him and sent him to the police station where he, in his caution statement, admitted the offence.

By Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

[email protected]
How would one find out where Sen. Deb Fischer stands on the confirmation of Betsy Devos for Secretary of Education? I have placed several calls throughout the last three weeks inquiring her stance on the nominee, only to receive an less than candid, "the senator has no position on that at this time."

Considering how close we are to her confirmation vote, it is troubling to think that Sen. Fischer hasn't formed an opinion yet. If she has formed an opinion but isn't sharing it, that is even more concerning.

I would think the senator would be more responsive to her constituents' inquiries. Perhaps it's time to start searching for a senator who will communicate with their constituents instead of continually ignoring them.

Matthew Schueller, Lincoln
Ebenezer Ofori, father of the 17-year-old junior high school student of Kwabenya MA Cluster of Schools, Accra, who was killed a week ago at their single room apartment at Point One, has revealed that the killer had sex with his daughter before killing her.

According to the aggrieved father, autopsy report from the Police Hospital revealed that the assassin(s) after sleeping with the girl, also inserted a knife into the victim's vagina to inflict wounds there, possibly to destroy the evidence which could lead to his arrest.

Not satisfied, the killer also used the knife to cut the girl's throat.

The body of Priscilla Oparebea was discovered at their home on Friday, January 20, 2017, at about 8:45 pm by her father.

Mr Ofori said no part of the body of the deceased was taken away as per the autopsy report.

Earlier, when the body was discovered with cuts in the genitals, we suspected that the assassin might have cut part of my daughter's genitals for ritual purposes, but the report proved otherwise.

No arrest has so far been made by the police in connection with the murder.

The body of Priscilla Oparebea was interred at the Agbogba cemetery in Accra yesterday.

The deceased had lived with her father, a private commercial bus (trotro) driver in their single room apartment at Point One.

In the morning of that fateful day, Mr Ebenezer Ofori left for work leaving his daughter in the house together with other tenants.

Priscilla Oparebea reportedly went to school that morning but according to her friends, she complained of headache and so she asked permission from her class teacher and returned to the house to seek medical attention at about 1:00 pm.

The father was said to have returned from work around 8pm and discovered that the door was locked and the keys dropped in front of it.

He reportedly picked the keys and opened the door only to discover that his daughter was lying in a pool of blood dead.

Mr Ofori called for assistance and later reported the matter to the police.

A close examination on the body by the police revealed a deep cut in the throat and the genital area.

By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey

([email protected])


03.02.2017 LISTEN

Music is his desire  a desire that convinces him that the answer to the question of his identity lies in the expression of indigenous African music  who am I, who is Walter Komla Blege? Identity is one of the questions that define his music. How does the African do it? This influences and still does to the lyrics of Mr. Komla Bleges music (he prefers Komla)

Mr. Komla Blege grew up in a Christian and music loving background  his father was a staunch Evangelical Presbyterian and a chorister, and his maternal grandfather was a staunch Catholic  a man he spent his formative life with. In his maternal home, there was a choir and it was there that the love for music started and grew.

As a boy, Mr. Komla Blege yearned to know who he is and what really defined him. He found the answer in the expression of indigenous music  most of which was described as profane and he was forbidden from listening or participating in these dance music  dzolevu, gabada, gbolo, totoeme, agbadza, gavu and borborbor.

He narrates how on one occasion he was stretched for leading a few friends of his to sing and dance to one of the forbidden dance music. I was stretched, do you know what it means to be stretched? he asked, I was explaining when he cut in: my legs and arms were held and I took twelve lashes, Ill never forget that, he adds.

All this influenced him and he became the first Ghanaian to have written a two-hour opera on the advent of Christianity into Africa by Europeans using the example of the Bremen Missionary in Peki. It was a melange of gabada, gavu, gbolo, and borborbor.

Mr. Komla Bleges self identity played a role in his life as a politician, an educationist, a historian, and a music director. In our conversation he narrates to me how his resolve to uphold his self identity brought him into conflict with some people along the line.

For instance, as a student in the University of Ghana, he corrected his History lecturer who had continued to mispronounce his surname. This provoked the lecturer, yet Mr. Komla Blege was pleased that he had made a point on how his surname was to be pronounced. As a Deputy Minister of Education in the early 1990s, he had a misunderstanding with officials of the World Bank  the bone of contention: that there were conditions tied to the loan facility which was detrimental to the development of the nation.

He recounts his greatest, but saddest moments as Headmaster of Mawuli Senior High School  academic, social and spiritual development of students had been great  Mawuli Senior High became famous for school farming during the Operation Feed Yourself Programme of the Supreme Military Council (SMC) regime led by Colonel I.K. Acheampong. The school was awarded with tractors and other farm implements. On the contrary, the then leadership of the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) and some other politicians felt that he was making the Acheampong regime popular and he was using the students as farm hands instead of promoting their academic development.

The then leadership of NUGS wrote a letter to all Senior Prefects of second cycle schools nationwide to organise their fellow students for a demonstration against him  it was a tensed moment when he read the letter which he had found on the bed of the Senior Prefect during his rounds in the dormitory.

He alerted the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI), the Regional Director of the Ghana Education Service and then he called a meeting of the Board of the School. In the meeting with the Board, he narrated to them what he had seen and said to them that his work as Headmaster had come to an end.

He added: nothing hurt me so much, when I noticed that a former student of mine was part of this plot to discredit the good work I had done at Mawuli Senior High School.

Mr. Komla Blege is a product of Mawuli Senior High School, Achimota College, the University of Ghana and the University of Toronto, Canada. Last December, Mr. Komla Blege celebrated his 86th birthday  the occasion brought together all his children and grandchildren to celebrate the moment.

Mr. Komla Blege believes that self identity is crucial to the true and total development of every individual and nation.

The writer is a freelance journalist.

[email protected]/[email protected]
Accra, February 3, 2017. The Ministrys attention has been drawn to press reportage on the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC). The reportage sought to create some confusion in the minds of well meaning Ghanaians particularly as the issues raised are not factual and therefore misleading.

The Ministry therefore wishes to set the records straight by responding to the issues raised as follows:

BACKGROUND OF THE ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT CENTRE (EDC)

A Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of an Enterprise Development Centre between the Ministry, Jubilee Partners and Ministry of Trade and Industry was signed in 2013 to train SMEs in the Oil and Gas Industry to take advantage of opportunities in the oil and Gas sector. This is in line with the Petroleum (Local Content and Local Participation) Regulations, 2013 (LI 2204). The purpose of the said Regulations which among others is to promote maximisation of value-addition and job creation through the use of local expertise, goods and services, businesses and financing in the petroleum industry value chain and their retention in the country.

The purpose of the Centre is to train and develop the capacity of SMEs to partake in tenders and access contracts in the Oil and Gas industry. The Centre is hosted in a rented building in Takoradi.

The Centre has a Project Steering Committee made up of representatives from the Ministry, Jubilee Partners, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Association of Ghana Industries, Petroleum Commission and Ghana Oil and Gas Providers Association.

From 2013, Enablis Ghana was in charge of managing, running training programmes and capacity development initiatives for SMEs at the Centre.

The Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) later took over the management of the centre for an interim period of six months which also came to an end in July 2016.

The Jubilee Partners funding for the centre ended in July 2016 and because of the importance of the project, the Ministry directed GNPC to take over. In the interim the Ministry maintained skeleton staffs to ensure the Centre was not left to deteriorate.

GNPC NOT CAPTURING EDC IN THEIR HANDING OVER NOTES:

The Enterprise Development Centre was captured boldly in the Ministry of Petroleums Handing over Notes to the Transition Team under the heading Management of the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC). GNPC did not capture it in their handing over notes because they had not commenced management of the centre. It was therefore the Ministrys mandate to report on the project.

TENANCY AGREEMENT

The tenancy agreement between the landlord Mr John Donkor and the Jubilee Partners ended on 31st January 2017. Prior to July 2016 the Jubilee Partners had paid the rent up to December 2016. Because the Ministry now had to take up the operational expenditure of the Centre, management decided to look at two options due to lack of funding. These include:

Negotiating the rent downwards from the initial $6,000 paid by the Jubilee Partners to the landlord, and Moving the assets out of the building to a safe location while an affordable alternative is sought to house the Centre. This is because Tullow Ghana indicated to the Ministry that they require a month, to refurbish the building and hand it over to the landlord by 31st January 2017.

It is in this regard that, in December 2016, the owner of the rented building housing the EDC, Mr John Donkor was invited by Tullow Ghana to meet the Ministry to renegotiate the rental fee downwards from $6,000 per month to enable the Ministry pay for the rent. The Ministry offered to pay the landlord, Mr John Donkor $3,000 per month as rent but Mr John Donkor rejected the offer. Another meeting was scheduled to enable further discussions but prior to that meeting, Mr John Donkor communicated to the Ministry that his initial agreement was with Tullow Ghana hence he will not deal with the Ministry.

MOVING OUT OF THE RENTED BUILDING

Since the initial option was unsuccessful due to the refusal by the landlord to accept a lower rental fee, the Ministry had no choice but to go in for the second option: move out of the building by 31st December 2016 to enable Tullow Ghana refurbish the building and hand it over to the landlord, Mr John Donkor by 31st January 2017.

The Head of Local Content at the Ministry, Mrs Afua Amissah engaged GNPC after that and presented GNPC with three options:

GNPC should consider if they could pay the landlords rental fee of $6,000 so EDC would continue to use the building, Move the assets to GNPCs warehouse while a more affordable building is being considered or, Move the assets in the interim to Rigworlds warehouse by 31st December 2016 to allow Tullow Ghana refurbish the building in January 2017 for handing over to the landlord, Mr John Donkor.

The landlord, Mr John Donkor was informed by Tullow Ghana about the Ministrys decision to move out and handover his building to him because of his refusal to reduce the rental fee. Tullow Ghana indicated to Mr Donkor that he was required to be present during that exercise but Mr Donkor informed Tullow Ghana that he would not be available in December 2016 to witness the moving out exercise but rather would be available from 14th January, 2017.

Finally, it is surprising that the landlord, Mr John Donkor is misleading the good people of Ghana by indicating that he suspects some non-patriots from the Ministry and GNPC are attempting to create loot and share at the expense of the people of Takoradi.

In conclusion, the assets of the EDC were being moved out because the tenancy agreement between Tullow Ghana and the landlord would expire in January 2017 and also because the Ministry decided not to pay $6,000 per month as rent to the landlord but would seek for a more affordable alternative.

On this note, the Ministry therefore wishes to reassure Ghanaians that the Enterprise Development Centre remains an important project established to train SMEs in the Oil and Gas Industry hence the Ministrys keen interest in ensuring that the Centre continues to deliver on its mandate.

KING A. WELLINGTON

COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER
Luanda (AFP) - Veteran Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos announced Friday he will not run in August elections, signalling the end to 37 years in power and naming his defence minister as the candidate to succeed him.

The autocratic 74-year-old has been the oil-rich country's president since September 1979, making him Africa's second-longest serving leader -- one month short of Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

His rule has seen the end of civil war and an investment boom, but has also been criticised as secretive and corrupt, with Angola's citizens suffering dire poverty as his family became hugely wealthy.

Dos Santos told a meeting of the ruling MPLA party in Luanda that "the party approved the name of the candidate heading the list in the August elections as (Defence Minister) Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco".

Lourenco, a former general, emerged as the probable next president late last year at another meeting of the MPLA (People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola).

Earlier in the year, Dos Santos had said he would step down in 2018.

The party -- which faces no real political opposition -- recently issued a statement denying reports that Dos Santos was seriously ill.

After constitutional changes in 2010, Angola does not directly elect a president, but the leader of the winning party automatically becomes head of state.

'Watershed moment'

Despite Lourenco being a party loyalist, the end of Dos Santos's regime could open a new chapter for a country largely closed off to the outside world.

The president has been a dominating presence for decades, rarely seen in public but exercising personal authority over government, politics, media and business.

"The transition process has now been formalised. This clarity is good for Angola," Alex Vines, director of the Africa Programme at the London-based Chatham House think tank, told AFP.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos confirmed that he would step down ahead of elections due in August, signalling the end to his 37-year long reign

"Angola has not experienced a change of president since 1979 and so for many Angolans this will be the first time they have witnessed presidential change -- a watershed moment in Angola's modern history."

When Dos Santos became president in 1979 -- following the sudden death from cancer of Angola's liberation president Agostinho Neto -- civil war was already raging between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels, four years after independence from Portugal.

Ending decades of bloodshed, peace came only in 2002, and the country is still deeply scarred by a conflict that was a vicious proxy battleground in the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

When fighting ceased, a frenetic oil boom saw skyscrapers sprout up in the centre of the capital Luanda and paid for nationwide infrastructure improvements.

But it left millions of ordinary Angolans living in slums, and the collapse of oil prices has seen the country battling a full-scale national economic crisis since 2013.

Dos Santos's picture often appears on the front page of newspapers, as well as on countless billboards and framed photographs in every office. He has been accused of brutally repressing dissent.

"Looking back, he has been an extraordinary, substantial figure who was involved in ruthless oppression of opponents, including within his own party," Martin Plaut, African analyst and fellow of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, told AFP recently.

"In some ways, he did bring stability to his country and he is viewed as an 'eminence grise' by some other African leaders. But he ruled with an iron rod."
Today, Microsoft and GrowthAfrica announced their partnership to launch the #Insiders4Good East Africa Fellowship, which seeks to support emerging entrepreneurs as they turn their business ideas into reality and scale.

This initiative is a new partnership between Microsoft and GrowthAfrica, designed to empower East African entrepreneurs with mentorship and technology, and amplify their voice through the Windows Insider Program, a global community of millions of Windows users using tech to make a lasting impact upon the world.

The #Insiders4Good East Africa Fellowship will be awarded to 25 entrepreneurs from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda who have innovative social business ideas with the potential to improve their communities, the East African region, and the world.

#Insiders4Good Fellows will receive a suite of Microsoft hardware and software, plus six months of tailored technical and strategic mentorship from local and international leaders.

Thousands in East Africa are creating extraordinary solutions that change the way communities and businesses solve problems and improve people's lives, said Microsoft Director of Software Engineering Bambo Sofola.

Innovation is in the DNA of all Windows Insiders. We see East Africa as a key region where exciting new ideas are growing. We've been impressed and heartened by the progress made already by the first 25 #Insiders4Good Fellows in Nigeria, and we're thrilled to expand the #Insiders4Good Fellowship into East Africa. The region is well known as a hotbed of innovation. We look forward to deepening our relationships with these exceptional entrepreneurs across East Africa and to supporting their goals with this Fellowship.

Patricia Jumi, Managing Director and Co-Founder of GrowthAfrica, noted that access to technology and a community of likeminded individuals have been key success factors for many of the start-ups supported by GrowthAfrica's acceleration programme.

Bolstered by technological resources, expert advice, and out-of-the-box thinking, I'm excited to see East African entrepreneurs continue to create solutions that can provide benefits globally, as well as locally, Jumi said.

According to Sofola, the #Insiders4Good Fellowship aims to recognize visionary entrepreneurs, enable them with technology and expert support, and unlock opportunities for them through the global network of Windows Insiders, the world's largest community of people using technology to solve problems.

The Fellowship aims to accelerate their journeys toward achieving their goals.

The deadline to apply for the #Insiders4Good Fellowship is March 31, 2017, 23:59 p.m. East Africa Time.

However, applicants are encouraged to apply well in advance of the deadline. Applicants can visit http://insiderfellows.com for full information and the application form.



By: citifmonline.com/Ghana
It was a sad day for Ghana on Tuesday, 31st January, 2017 when reports came in that a school building has collapsed at Breman Gyambra killing six kindergatten children. The school is the Breman Gyambra Methodist KG School. This community is in the Asikuma Odoben-Brakwa District of the Central Region. According to reports, four of the children died on the spot and the other two died later at the Breman Asikumah Our Lady of Grace Government Hospital. Several children were also injured in this tragedy. According to eyewitnesses, there were visible cracks on the building before it collapsed. I just dont understand why these children should die as a result of someone not doing his job. What were the authorities doing to fix this dilapidated structure. I heard the P.T.A. had levied the children so as to use the money to fix the building, but this tragedy could have been avoided if pragmatic steps had been taken the moment the cracks were seen on the building.

That same day in the evening, a terrible rainstorm ripped off the roof of Ghanas Parliament causing the roof to leak. Instantly, the next day it became a major news item with several people in higher authority including the Vice President visited Parliament to assess the damage caused to the building. It was promptly being fixed that very day. But no politician visited the Breman Gyambra community to console the bereaved families. What sort of country do we live in? In the run up to the 2016 general elections, politicians from all the parties were going to every nook and cranny soliciting for the votes of the people. They could be found at every funeral, every naming ceremony, in fact they made sure that they were present at every social function so that the false impression of they caring about the welfare of the people will be seen. But now that the election season is over, our politicians forget to care for the same people who voted for them. Who crys for these six children who have lost their lives through no fault of theirs? The media also decided to give little attention to this tragedy and as usual nothing will be heard about it again. Also some armchair journalists will just sit in Accra and make up stories about the tragedy. Now they are all focusing their attention on Parliament and what happened during the rainstorm. Such a biased media landscape we have in this country. Or is it because this tragedy did not happen in Accra so no attention is being given to it? If it were to be a western country, the school authorities would be forced to resign due to their negligence and irresponsible nature. Its time we put an end to that attitude where we identify problems but wait for them to get out of hand before we try to fix them. It seems we have failed the children of Ghana, we should bow our heads in shame for the death of these innocent children. We could have gotten future Medical Doctors, Teachers, Lawyers, Lecturers, Scientists, Fashion Designers, Engineers etc etc out of these children.

Once again, Mother Ghana is grieving the loss of her six children and sadness has gripped the people of Breman Gyambra. My heartfelt condolences goes out to all the affected families. May God grant these children a resting place in His bosom. I can just imagine what these families are going through right now. Imagine taking your child to school only to be informed in the afternoon that your child is dead. God save Mother Ghana, God save and protect all children.
Samuel Boakye-Appiah has been appointed by President Akufo-Addo to act as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

The appointment letter, signed by the Energy Minister Boakye Agyarko, urged him to act as CEO until a substantive CEO is appointed.

As a caretaker CEO, you will not take decisions that have policy implications until a substantive governing board is in place.

Engineer Boakye-Appiah joined the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) on 4th January, 1990.

He had earlier served as a National Service Personnel at VRA for two (2) years, and later worked as an Assistant Electrical Engineer and Electrical Engineer at Bonsa Tyre Company Limited (1987-1988) and Afridec Limited (1988-1989).

He has worked in the company's Engineering, Network Projects, Materials and Transport Directorates and the Office of the Managing Director in his over 25 years at the company.

He served in the Engineering Directorate and was attached to the Fifth Power Project (Power Five) from 1990 1994.
Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia has outlined plans aimed at fighting corruption in the country in the first year of the Nana Akufo-Addo administration.

Dr. Bawumia said, Our government has already declared that we will be passing the Right To Information Act, we will make sure that a Special Prosecutor's Office is set up to prosecute corrupt persons and we will amend the criminal code to move corruption from a misdemeanor to a felony, these are some of the actions we intend to implement this year.

The Vice President disclosed this while speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day Regional Anti-corruption workshop themed, 'Supporting New Beneficial Ownership Transparency Champions, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria.'

The workshop organized by Transparency International (TI) Secretariat and the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) in Accra brought together key stakeholders from civil society, government, business and law enforcement to collaborate and formulate plans to collect, share and use information to tackle corruption.

Dr. Bawumia, who gave the keynote address, said corruption is very central to the world's problems costing countries millions of dollars.

The World Bank shows that some $1.25 trillion are paid in bribes annually, 5% of global annual GDP which is about $2.5 trillion are lost through corruption. Oxfam also indicates that poor countries lose up to $170 billion yearly to tax evasion and that a fraction of this amount could fund health services that could save lives of almost 150 million children, he disclosed.

He said beneficial ownership is one of the surest ways of dealing with the canker, which erodes public trust in government and deepens economic and political woes.

He reiterated government's commitment to providing resources with the support of development partners.

Government recognizes the huge financial implication to this commitment considering constraint fiscal space. However, we are resolved to make the needed resources available for Ghana to put in place an effective and efficient beneficial ownership regime, he added.

By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri


Residents of Miremano, a village near Drobo in the Jaman South District of the Brong Ahafo Region, are living in fear after they discovered some dead bodies have been exhumed from the village's cemetery.

Two dead bodies were discovered to have been stolen from their graves in the cemetery last week, with two other tombs tampered with.

Speaking on behalf of the traditional authorities in the area, the Nkosouhene of Miremano, Nana Kwadwo Takyi, said they had received reports of the incident, but could not believe it until some messengers were sent there and reported same.

We had a report that some graves had been tempered with at the cemetery so nananom sent some emissaries to go and verify, but unfortunately the information turned out to be true. Four graves were tempered with, but two had the bodies taken away.

He added that even though an official report is yet to be made to the police, they are seriously undertaking their own investigations to identify persons behind the act.

He noted that they have performed the necessary rituals in line with their customs, and called for the intervention of the gods to help apprehend the perpetrators.

The Assembly Member for the Miremano Electoral Area, Mr. Benneh Yaw Enoch, told Citi News he believes the obscure nature of the crematory area aided the perpetrators to carry out the act without being noticed.

He indicated that, he has ordered for the clearance of the cemetery area to forestall any such incident in the future.

Meanwhile, some residents who are unclear about the motives of the actors in the development, are calling on their local authorities to act swiftly to arrest persons behind it.



By: Aboagye Addo Frank/citifmonline.com/Ghana
Valletta (AFP) - Rights groups Friday blasted EU plans to help Libya stem migrant departures as a recipe for children being sent back to squalid detention centres in the north African country.

At a summit in Malta, leaders of the bloc approved a new strategy to "break the business model" of traffickers who have helped more than half a million mainly African migrants enter the European Union via Libya and Italy in the last three years.

But non-governmental organisations have warned it could result in women and children being returned to inhumane conditions and left vulnerable to rape, beatings and forced labour as well as forcible repatriation to uncertain fates in their home countries.

"Sending children back to a country many have described as a living hell is not a solution," said Ester Asin of British charity Save the Children, ahead of the approval of the widely-trailed new EU strategy.

The cornerstone of the plan involves funding and training the Libyan coastguard to make it better able to intercept migrant boats before they reach international waters patrolled by an Italian-led search-and-rescue operation.

'Outsourcing responsibility'

The EU leaders also welcomed a deal announced Thursday under which Italy will help Libya's UN-backed government of National Accord to stem the migrant flow.

That bilateral accord includes controversial proposals to set up temporary camps to house illegal immigrants arriving in the north African state, pending their deportation or voluntary return to their home countries.

The camps would be Libyan-run but EU-funded with Italy providing medical support.

With Libya in a chaotic, conflict-scarred state and the UN-backed administration only in control of sections of the country's vast coastline, the prospect of turning boats back and establishing so-called "welcome centres" in the trouble country is causing deep concern in the humanitarian community.

Human Rights Watch said the EU would be flouting its international obligations by "outsourcing responsibility" for the migrants to one party to a conflict in a fundamentally unstable state.

As the EU leaders boarded a boat to cross Malta's historic harbour to their lunch venue, rescue ships off Libya were engaged in multiple frantic operations to save hundreds of people including babies from a fresh wave of rickety boats.

"It's an absolute nightmare in the Med right now," the Doctors with Borders (MSF) charity said.

'Shoot us like dogs'

Aboard The Aquarius, a humanitarian ship chartered by SOS Mediterranee and MSF, would-be refugees described the fear they have of being sent back to Libya and falling again into the arms of traffickers.

"The Libyans shoot us like dogs," Boubacar, a 17-year-old Guinean was quoted as saying by an SOS Mediterranee spokeswoman.

Emmanuel, from Cameroon, said a friend of his had twice experienced the terror of being returned to Libya at gunpoint after boarding a smuggler's boat for Italy.

"They take you to a prison, give you a phone and make you phone your family to get them to pay to get you out," he said.

The EU's attempts to get Libya to effectively blockade its own coastline follows a record year for arrivals in Italy (181,000 in 2016) and the deadliest winter yet in the Mediterranean, with migrants perishing at sea at a rate of 15 per day over the last three months, according to UN refugee agency (UNHCR) figures.

Rescuers say the death toll has risen because traffickers are sending more and more overcrowded, unseaworthy vessels to sea in tough winter conditions in order to maximise profits while they can.

Critics of EU efforts to resolve the crisis say the search-and-rescue operation in the international waters off Libya encourage traffickers because they know they only have to get their human cargo a few miles offshore and they will be picked up and taken to Italy.

But Rome maintains it has a moral duty to save lives.

The UN's children agency UNICEF said an unprecedented 1,354 migrants, including 190 children, had died in the Mediterranean in the past three months, most of them on the Libya-Italy route.
Sen. Deb Fischer announced Thursday she will vote for Donald Trump's pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.

"While I do not agree with Mrs. DeVos on every issue, I do believe she has the ability and commitment to lead the department," the Nebraska senator said.

"Moreover, I have received assurances from her in writing that the Department of Education will not impose new federal mandates related to vouchers on our schools," she said.

DeVos also has "made a commitment to me in writing that she will work to protect all students, especially those with disabilities," Fischer said.

There was interest in Fischer's decision after two Republican senators vowed Wednesday to vote against DeVos, leaving Democrats one vote shy of the number needed to doom her nomination.

Thursday, Fischer's office was reportedly inundated with calls.

At one point she tweeted: "Its all hands on deck in my offices answering phones. If you are a Nebraskan who cant get through, try my website."

After Fischer announced her decision, opponents started a petition at Change.org calling for her resignation. And a group called Indivisible Omaha announced a protest rally at 4:30 p.m. Friday at Fischer's Omaha office.

Wednesday, Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine signaled they do not plan to support DeVos.

Both senators cited uncertainty about whether DeVos, an avid supporter of charter schools and school vouchers, is sufficiently committed to helping public schools.
Prof Kwawukume and Ambassador Reeta Auguste (l) and others engaged in a discourse

The Family Health Medical School (FHMS), a premier private medical institution in Ghana, has been upgraded to a fully-fledged university status by the National Accreditation Board (NAB), Prof E.Y Kwawukume, its president, has revealed.

Addressing journalists on Tuesday, Prof Kwawukume disclosed that management has installed a number of ultra-modern medical facilities, including a huge anatomy hall in place, as part of measures in readiness for the new status and beyond.

Speaking on quality of staff to manage the FHMUC, he stated that the personnel who have been employed are the best any credible institution like FHMUC and anywhere in the world would like to employ.

I am happy to also announce that the FMHUC in accordance with its new status and mandate has introduced two programmes which are four years graduate and six years undergraduate medical programmes which run parallel to its existing nursing and midwifery courses, among others, he mentioned.

The FHMUC is seeking, among other things, to be the country's leading provider of medical services which is expected to collaborate with government to train doctors rather than fly them abroad for training.

According to the FHMUC Ambassador, Reeta Auguste, the college is linked to other medical universities across the world through a special programme referred to as telemedicine practice.

She explained that telemedicine practice enables the medical students to receive lectures from seasoned lecturers in America, Europe and Asia via telephone.

Mrs Auguste further mentioned that the college has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with University of Michigan Medical School for exchange programmes intended to enrich students' experience.

By Solomon Ofori


Odimegwu Onwumere writes that if not for the nonstop campaign by the United Nations to put the health of Nigerian children on the global focus especially children in the North-east ravaged by Boko Haram, much might not be known of measles and polio taking tolls on children

At a time when reports showed that many children were malnourished, susceptible to different diseases and have died in their numbers in the North-east ravaged by Boko Haram which resulted to spent healthcare services, the United Nations (UN) on January 13, 2017, took up a massive campaign to protect as many as 4.7 million children from measles in the area.

In September 2016, the National Immunisation Financing Task Team (NIFT) promotion commission had called on the federal government to guarantee that Nigerias dedication of $181 million immunisation funding requisite for 2017 and 2018 was rallied in order to diminish the catastrophic evidence of under-five demises in the country. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in the same month to 18 December 2016 drew the attention of authorities that children under five were affected by measles.

An estimated 1, 500 infected children were suspected in Borno State that led to about 77 per cent of them vaccinated. This was even apart from 177,000 infants below age five that experts said lost their lives annually then, due to pitiable running of pneumonia vaccines. According to experts report, WHO estimates that over 800,000 children under age five die from pneumococcal diseases each year with those less than two years of age most affected, especially in developing countries.

Given its readiness to combat measles, the WHO founded Early Warning, Alert and Response System (EWARS) last year. Children that numbered 83,000 who were aged six months to 15 years old camped as internally displaced people (IDPs), received vaccination from the Borno State authorities in partnership with the WHO. Dr. Wondimagegnehu Alemu, Country Representative of the UN World Health Organisation showed concern that the bodys interventionist approach to campaign against measles this year, could not be avoided owing to dangerous and transmittable diseases that the children faced.

Apart from measles, on August 12, 2016, Doune Porter, the UNICEF Chief of Communication said in Abuja that the WHO and UNICEF supported the Federal Ministry of Health as partners in the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in the latters fight against polio in the approachable parts of Borno State. In October, the same year, the UNICEF commenced an urgent-situation vaccination in 18 states in northern Nigeria with 39,000 health workers set-out across the Lake Chad basin that included Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Central African Republic.

More than 41 million children were hoped to be immunised. The WHO hoped that the battle against polio could be won in 12 months. The UNICEF believed that 400,000 would be affected by malnutrition in the areas prone-to Boko Haram, hence the UN body geared up to screen under five children of malnutrition last year.

Porter said at the time, We cannot deny the connection between conflict and the continued threat of polio. The two new cases mean children across the Lake Chad region are now at particular risk. With our partners, we will not stop until we reach every child with polio vaccination.

A report by the WHO stated that all wild polio cases worldwide originated from Nigeria. And it was believed early 2000 that many Muslims in the North where polio was said to be predominant than the South, felt that polio vaccine was a mechanism to poison their children, especially cause HIV/AIDS. On August 11, 2016, the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole gave hope that the government would as a matter of urgency to the outbreak, take on up to five million children for immunisation, in four states.

According to Adewole, Our overriding priority right now is to rapidly boost immunity in the affected areas to ensure that no more children are affected by this terrible disease.

Local health officials with the support of partners including WHO and UNICEF are conducting detailed risk analysis to clearly ascertain the extent of circulation of the virus, and to assess overall levels of population immunity in order to guide the response.

As an immediate response, about one million children are to be immunised in four local government areas in Borno State. Children in adjoining states of Yobe, Adamawa and Gombe will also be immunised bringing the number to about five million in the four states.

The initiative started due to two new cases of polio virus in the state in 2016, after the WHO certified Nigeria polio free on September 25 2015, as Nigeria did not report a case of wild poliovirus from 24 July 2014 to the year she was certified polio free. A statement by the President, Nigerian Academy of Science, NAS, Prof. Oyewale Tomori, said, After attaining non-polio endemic status in September 2015, commitment waned and complacency set in. This was particularly evident at the levels of the National Assembly, governors and local government area chairpersons.

Prof. Tomori continued, This complacency meant that polio eradication activities were no longer backed by adequate and timely counterpart funding at the state and local government area levels. This was despite a public and often vocal commitment to polio eradication from Nigerias President Muhammadu Buhari.

As a result, gaps remained in the quality of immunisation and surveillance activities. These were especially prominent in the countrys security compromised areas.

Media reports accounted that the Project Director, the Community Health and Research Initiative, CHR, Dr. Aminu Magashi Garba, linked the fresh outbreak to non-release of the N12.8 billion approved for routine immunisation five months after President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the 2016 budget.

Magashi-Garba expressed worry that the continued delay may put the lives of over 7.2 million Nigerian children in danger or even cause more outbreaks of polio and other vaccine-related childhood diseases.

The WHO said that one in 200 polio infections would end in permanent paralysis. Polio, also known as poliomyelitis, is a highly contagious disease caused by a virus that attacks the nervous system. Children younger than five years old are more likely to contract the virus than any other group.

Specified that more than 134,000 deaths were recorded from measles in 2015, the WHO took up the campaign aimed at children aged from six months to 10 years old slated to last for two weeks this year. But the deaths in measles would have been more than, if not that the WHO waded in as at when due, and saved a predictable 20.3 million deaths between 2000-2015. This effort was adjudged one of the best in public health.

Today, children in the North-east, especially in states like Borno, Yobe and Adamawa where the international body felt it could access due to the act of terrorists, were in to gain from the WHOs measles vaccination. Checks revealed that the WHO supported the primary healthcare development agencies by providing proficiency in areas including logistics, data management, training, social mobilization, monitoring and evaluation, supportive supervision and waste management.

How to save children in Nigeria from the vaccine-related diseases was a cause of concern to specialists. Quoting Dr. Garba, the media said, For Nigeria to return on track of winning the war against polio and deliver the African continent from the clutches of wild polio, immunisation is the way to go.

To save the lives of our children and save the country the scarce resources by reducing cost of healthcare as well as give the future leaders the opportunity to live their potential, government at all levels must ensure 100 per cent coverage of immunisation.

If we as a nation cannot provide healthcare to our children, what message are we sending to the world?

For Tomori, Nigeria must focus on attaining polio free status over the next three years and concentrate less on prematurely celebrating victory.

Odimegwu Onwumere writes from Rivers State via: [email protected]
We do understand that being in the news for the wrong reasons is embarrassing enough, but to attempt bribing journalists to cover ones nakedness is so indicting of a criminal known for extreme corruption as the CEO of the lands commission. In current mathematical relevance, the corruption of Dr. Wilfred K. Anim-Odame can be described as Opuni3 (Opuni cubed).

The shameless nerve some people have, really! We have initiated an anticorruption drive, especially against the land commissioner mentioned above. This man had used his office during the term of the disgraced NDC to give ownership of almost all of Accras prime locations to Ibrahim Mahama, his pseudogenes, and other NDC looters.

Why is he still in office? Why has this man been returned to the lands commission that he raped, stole, and committed grave crime at? Why is he not being investigated yet? Why is Hackman Owusu protecting him? Does he share in the loot? Why is Elisabeth Ohene also protecting the Lands Commissioner, Wilfred K. Anim-Odame? How many parcels of land has he given her, at what prime locations, and in whose name(s)? Ah! Such betrayal is treasonable, I tell you! This man, the lands commissioner, must go now now now! He must be made to face the music of investigations and go to jail for selling government lands for pittance.

In fact, it is a well-known fact that Wilfred K. Anim-Odame is a subordinate of Ibrahim Mahama. It is not news at all, but what is is the fact that this man sold government lands for millions. For example, where government land was priced at $150,000 (one hundred and fifty thousand US Dollars) per plot in a prime location, he connived with Ibrahim Mahama to sell same for $2,000,000 (two million US Dollars). The official amount was paid to government and the balance absorbed in the bellies of these beasts.

We are ordering Wilfred K. Anim-Odame to vacate the Lands Commission seat asap. Failure to do that would force us to publish documents to expose him. We pray that he does not bluff this threat, otherwise hell will start burning his robust rear.

We, also, admonish him not to try bribing or compromising journalists. Not all people are traitors and national plunderers as he is. Not every journalist can be bought! Not every journalist is hungry for money. There are those who have integrity and there are devils who worship money. Fortunately for Ghana, the journalist that was contacted yesterday by the lands Commissioners agent asking for a secret meeting to do him fine fine, is of clean and incorruptible material.

Let me iterate that we are giving the Lands Commissioner exactly 72 hours to vacate his post otherwise the blasphemous skeletons that will be pulled out of his wardrobe will cause Ghanaians to call for his head and those of Hackman Owusu, Elisabeth Ohene, et al. No matter how phlegmatic he appears to be or loquacious he might decide to be to raise dust, we will not be deceived by this charlatan or any other for that matter. Dr. Wilfred K. Anim-Odame, vacate your post now, or face the music!
03.02.2017 LISTEN

Embarking on public education to enlist the support of the public to provide information on human trafficking along with prosecuting perpetrators of human trafficking are important to combating human trafficking in Ghana, sources at the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) have disclosed.

AHTU sources indicated that The Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694) which was amended in 2009 to align its definition of human trafficking with the 2000 UN TIP Protocol makes provision for Duty to inform under section 6 of the Act. This provision was made to enable anyone with information about human trafficking to inform the police, which is mandatory.

In addition to providing information to the police, a person with such information may also inform the Commission of Human Rights and Administrative Justice, Department of Social Welfare, the Legal Aid Board, or a reputable Civil Society Organisation.

The duty to inform also prescribes a penalty for failing to report information on human trafficking. A person who fails to inform the police commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than two hundred and fifty penalty units or a term of imprisonment not less than twelve months or both, according to subsection 6 of the Human Trafficking Act.

This focus on enlisting the support of the public to provide information on human trafficking and public education comes as Ghana continues to take steps to avoid being downgraded further by the United States. The 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report by the US Department of State noted that despite the effort the government is showing in combating human trafficking, it failed to demonstrate its willingness in fighting it. The government did not demonstrate overall increasing anti-trafficking efforts compared to the previous reporting period; therefore, Ghana is placed on Tier 2 Watch List, the report stated.

A further downgrade from a Tier 2 Watch List to a Tier 3 Watch List will not only cast a slur on efforts by Ghana to combat human trafficking, it will also have financial and economic consequences as some International Agencies and donors, including the US could withdraw grants and support and services, with severe consequences for Ghanas developmental agenda.

Indeed, the potential loss of funds and the issue of combating human trafficking in Ghana became front and centre when the Minister-designate for the Interior, Hon. Ambrose Dery disclosed that Ghana risks losing $650m following a US department of State report that rated Ghana to a Tier 2 category watch list for the second time running over human trafficking.

He revealed this when he took his turn at the on-going ministerial vetting at the Parliament Conference Room in Accra recently, noting that the ministry would respond to the US State Department report as soon as he begins work.

The duty to inform requires an informed citizenry that participates in keeping an eye on human trafficking issues and knows whom to report information about human trafficking occurrences. To this end, a partnership with the police service and all reliable agencies in fighting human trafficking is needed. Such partnership could be vertical and horizontal and would include citizens reporting not only to the police and the listed institutions, but also to other bodies and persons including teachers, nurses, chiefs, and opinion leaders in the villages and communities, it was learnt.

Investigations conducted by this reporter showed, for instance, that in villages where there are no police posts, no officers of the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) or the legal aid board, persons with information on trafficking have to report human trafficking information to teachers or any person who is capable of forwarding the case to the district for prompt action to be taken.

However, people in 10 villages visited in the Volta Region had no information about reporting human trafficking information to nurses, teachers, opinion leaders, chiefs, among others. This challenge is also an opportunity for the AHTU and other agencies with the mandate to combat human trafficking to embark on public education to enlist the support of the public and provide information to citizen in the rural and peri-urban areas about whom to report trafficking information to.

In addition to public education, prosecution of perpetrators of human trafficking is key to combating trafficking in persons and it was an area that the US Department of State 2016 Trafficking in Persons Report highlighted, noting governments inability to prosecute offenders of human trafficking. The report stated that while the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) of the Ghana Police Service (GPS) reported 238 investigations and referred 21 individuals for prosecution for trafficking-related crimes, the government reported no convictions in 2015. However, information gathered from the AHTU has it that some persons were convicted, with AHTU sources emphasizing that just as in any criminal case where the prosecution must establish beyond every reasonable doubt that an offence was committed for an accused person to be convicted, the court may determine otherwise depending on not just the facts, but more important the position of the law.

Independent investigations also established that there could be various challenges inhibiting prosecution of persons in this regard. As an example, there are at times when a victims parent is induced with money from the accused and other times the families involved write to the law court stating their intent to discontinue the case among other reasons.

AHTU sources noted that there must be a balance in the criticism of work being done on anti-human trafficking, adding that the criticism must take into account successful rescues undertaken to liberate and reintegrate hundreds of children from various forms of human trafficking. At the end of the day, smiles have been put onto the faces of victims and their families, a source familiar with the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked children noted.

The source urged the US Department of State not only to focus their attention on the prosecution aspect, but also focus on the rescuing effort. It again urged the State Department to also consider various efforts that Non-Governmental Organizations, including Challenging Heights, are playing to combat child trafficking.

A successful anti-human trafficking campaign also requires the availability and provision of funds. Reports gathered from the Department of Social Welfare and the Anti Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service indicate that governments funding of the major activities in supporting the department and unit respectively in combating human trafficking has been woefully inadequate. The Department of Social Welfare states that it received only second and third quarter funding in 2016 and it was very difficult in managing their activities.

A source who didnt want to be identified because of fear of being victimized by government said that The government has been supporting us with fuel, personnel and several others, but support for victims has been inadequate. We are supposed to be supported by the Gender Ministry, but government has done less in supporting the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit in combating the crime. Fighting against trafficking deals with money; if there is no money, it slows down our activities.

The funding difficulties supports the claim by the US Department of State Report of 2016 Trafficking in Persons where it stated that the failure to provide adequate and timely operating funds for law enforcement and protection agencies continued to hamper the governments anti-trafficking efforts. As a result, the government did not increase prosecution efforts or assistance to victims.

Notwithstanding this, the department of Social Welfare expressed its disappointment in some section of the report. The report stated that the shelter in Osu is the only government-run shelter where child victims of trafficking or other abuses may be placed; it provides short-term care and has a maximum capacity of 30 children. This shelter is co-located with a juvenile correctional facility with no structural barrier protecting the victims from criminal offenders, is in serious disrepair, and lacks security.

The source at the department explained that some of the people in the shelter are not criminals, but are juvenile offenders whereas some are also missing and found children. A visit to the facility does not depict the shelter being in serious disrepair, and lacks security, although the shelter could be facing some challenges. It was also gathered that victims of human trafficking were no longer kept at the facility as the US Report stated, but are now being sheltered at the Don Bosco Home in Tema.

In assisting the AHTU to combat human trafficking, education cannot be overemphasised. The US report states that Ghana is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Ghana has proven to be a fertile ground due to its strategic location on the Sub-Saharan Region. There is the need to do more in terms of education, adequate mechanism needs to be put in place, and the public must be sensitized to know their responsibilities in combating human trafficking.

In addition to the publics duty to inform authorities about human trafficking activities, members of the public also have power of arrest as the Human Trafficking Act makes provision for a private person to arrest traffic offenders without warrant. Section 13 of the Act states that: (1) A private person may arrest a person without warrant if the person commits an act of trafficking in the presence of the private person.

(2) A private person may arrest a person without warrant where the private person has reasonable suspicion that the person has committed an offence of trafficking

(3) A private person who effects an arrest shall immediately handover the person to the police.

However, if anyone dreams of making fortunes from human trafficking just by reporting such cases to the police or the institutions and agencies involved, that dream would not be a reality. The law does not make provision for persons with information on trafficking to be rewarded. AHTU sources explained that this provision was not considered because some people could report just to retaliate; some also just want money, among other things.

This article was brought to you by the Africa Centre for International Law and Accountability (ACILA) and Panos Institute West Africa, two non-profit and nonpartisan organisations in Ghana and Senegal respectively, with support from the European Union.
Kofi Adams makes me want to puke when I hear him talk as though he owns the entire country and has unlimited right to do as he wants when he wants. He is back again on the airwaves bragging as soon as his temporarily-seized cars were returned to him on strict instructions accompanied with heartfelt apology from the Minister for National Security, Hon. Ken Dapaah.

He is now shouting on top of his voice asserting that nobody has the right to question him about how he came to own the three Land Cruisers and the two pickup trucks recently removed from his compound by some personnel from the armed forces and the National Security. Whether he bought them, or they were given to him, nobody has the right to know, he says.

Additionally, he is claiming to have suffered some discomfort during the few days that he was deprived of the use of his cars. He had had to resort to hiring taxis to drop off and pick up his children from school.

Let me not spend much of my precious time on Kofi Adams, a once Mr Nobody, a ragged person of course, but who for his affiliation to NDC party and government, under the most corrupt President (Mr John Dramani Mahama) in the history of Ghana, is now swimming in an ocean of material wealth. I have rather to give him a lesson and advice, emanating from experience by my status as a grey-haired man.

Generally speaking, grey hair is not a repository of wisdom but as there is exception to every rule, I can claim mine is hence the underlying advice to Kofi Adams.

Let it be known to him that as long as he held a public office as the National Organiser within NDC, the ruling party and government, he was a public servant. Again, as long as the party and government were noted for, and were clearly orchestrating, perpetrating and perpetuating institutional corruption, the level of which had never been seen in the history of Ghana, Ghanaians have the right to question him about the source of his sudden or newfound wealth.

He must be a joke to believe that Ghanaians cannot have the right to know when and how he came to acquire those five cars and his many houses acquired barely after becoming a dubious politician as a member, and especially, the National Organiser, of, the NDC.

He should not think the return of his cars to him is the end of the miseries to come upon him. Until the source(s) of his material wealth has deeply been probed into, with him declared innocent of any irregularities or corruption, he is still not in the clear. His bragging, pomposity and loud-mouthing will only be for a short while. Like the morning dew that dissipates with the rising Sun, so shall his new joy and bragging be.

Whether he likes it or not, not only him but all the NDC members and Government Ministers with the government appointees suspected of robbing the nation to enrich themselves illegally will be investigated and if found guilty, prosecuted and jailed with their assets so acquired confiscated to the State. Should this not be done, then we can never curtail or uproot official corruption from Ghana. It will have become a precedent for every Ghanaian politician to steal from the public coffers and go scot free.

His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo will have failed should he not endeavour to retrieve the public money and wealth so stolen by the NDC government and their agents and assigns of whom I suspect Kofi Adams to be one.

How many Ghanaians can hire taxis to take, and collect, their children, to and from school everyday on weekdays or on school days? Not many! Therefore, if Kofi Adams could afford that, he should count himself fortunate, but not a misery person as he said to have become during the entire duration that his cars were impounded.

There is time for everything. There is coming a time that he will smell real pepper, smoked out of his dubious acquisition of his many cars and other related material wealth.

Ghanaians, be patient. Please, bear with His Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo for a while; he will surely sooner prove to Ghanaians that he is really the incorruptible man we all know of, or have heard about, by dealing mercilessly with all those public servants and Government Ministers and appointees that have robbed the nation and stripped her naked of her wealth in broad daylight.

Once again, I say, Kofi Adams aint seen nothing yet!

Rockson Adofo

(Written on Friday, 3 February 2017)
Dear Honorable Minister, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh:

1. We wish to congratulate you on your appointment as the Minister of Education for the Republic of Ghana. We hope your appointment infuses new perspectives and strategies into the administration of education in Ghana, especially in higher education.

2. As you may be aware of, the above reference was a report submitted to the Ghana Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday July 27, 2016, for onward transmission to the outgone Minister of Education, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang. The report and its accompaniments were duly received and acknowledge by the Minister.

3. The report generated a wide-ranging public debate with regard to institutional accreditation, conferment and award of higher education degrees, particularly doctoral degrees, and the credibility of the research endeavor as part of the tenure requirement for lecturers and professors in Ghanaian universities.

4. As part of that ongoing debate, we took the time to expatiate on the academic publishing process and also exposed what has become known as predatory journals in the academy. We provided examples of what other countries are doing to curtail the pervasive intrusion of predatory journals in knowledge production and consumption. Of particular interest is the steps taken by the South African Government, through its Department of Higher Education and Training, to give approval or accreditation to journals they consider worthy to be considered as producing credible, valid, and reliable knowledge (Please follow the link here to approved journals http://www0.sun.ac.za/research/assets/files/DHET%20Local%20journals%202016(1).pdf).

5. The said report placed the searchlight squarely on some unaccredited institutions, including one by name the Swiss Management Center (SMC), which is in the business of awarding questionable double doctoral academic degrees to Ghanaians who, then, obtain academic positions with these questionable qualifications in Ghanaian universities to the detriment of students. Two important points of interest here. First, the so-called SMC had threatened legal action against us for exposing its questionable practices but has failed to do so since August 1, 2016, when the report went public. Second, the SMC has failed to meet the accreditation requirements of its home government through the Swiss Accreditation Council (SAC) until now.

6. The debate has also exposed many questionable academic practices at the University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA). First is the curious question of how professors at UPSA are promoted from one rank to another. The peculiar case of (Prof.) Abednego Feehi Okoe Amartey has been extensively discussed and written about (Please follow the link to this article http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/On-the-Appointment-of-Prof-Amartey-to-the-position-of-Vice-Chancellor-of-UPSA-467720). In spite of the overwhelming evidence produced to help the UPSA Governing Council and its outgone Vice Chancellor Joshua Alabi, the Ghana National Accreditation Board (NAB), and the Minister of Education, to make decisions in the interest of Ghanaian students and the nation, we are very much aware of the political undertones that made it impossible for the aforementioned individuals and institutions to act decisively to cleanup UPSA and other institutions that are harboring some of these individuals. Instead of cooperation from these individuals and institutions, we were met with attempts at each stage of the debate to malign and undercut our credibility. An example was during the 2016 matriculation ceremony of UPSA. At that ceremony, Joshua Alabi lampooned issues in question, especially the question regarding the credibility of research publications engaged in by his faculty. According to Alabi, in apparent reference to us, so we hear people talk about UPSA lecturers and research. Research, yes! There is an element of research in what we do, but that is not what we are into, ours is a purely technical university (Please follow the link http://therepublicnewsonline.com/2016/10/24/upsa-vice-chancellor-replies-critics/). The diversionary strategy should be noted here. Ours was not a question of whether UPSA is mainly a research institution, technical institution, or a teaching university. Our concern was about the credibility of journals in which UPSA professors publish their work. We provided substantial evidence to educate both the general public, the UPSA and its Governing Council, and the Ministry of Education on the modus operandi of predatory journals and provided a specific case in UPSA, where 70 percent of the total publication of a fulltime professor was churned out in predatory journals manned by uneducated crooks in corner shops in India and other parts of the world (Please follow the link to the article https://www.ghanabusinessnews.com/2016/10/10/162700/). Instead of responding to the substantive issue, Alabi diverted the attention of his unsuspecting audience as though the question was about whether the UPSA was a teaching or research institution. Alabi forgets that the claim that the UPSA is not a research institution, only triggers the question of whether his faculty receives research allowances from the Ghana Government. If UPSA faculty does, then what do they use such allowances for? To pay some crooks in some corner shops in India to churn out chaff?

Other examples are: NABs attack on us in the Daily Graphic in October 2016. Also, a response from a so-called legal officer of NAB to a lead we provided to NAB to investigate Nana (Dr.) Appiagyei Dankawoso who claims to be a doctor and is on boards of some public institutions. In that response, the so-called legal officer pointed out that the board does not take directives from individuals but its mother ministry and persons or bodies with appropriate authority. In addition, the Board would have appreciated it, if you had attached your findings (Please follow the link to the lead provided to the NAB http://www.juabenruralbank.com/board/64-nana-dr-appiagyei-dankawoso-i). With regard to the NAB, the question is whether its so-called legal officer appreciates the role of whistleblowers in the political discourse of democratic nations, including Ghana.

7. Further, during a recent induction service organized for Amartey at UPSA, the claim to double doctoral degrees has been altered. In a news report announcing the appointment of Abednego Feehi Okoe Amartey by the Daily Graphic on August 30, 2016, the Daily Graphic in paragraph six of that reportage announced Amartey holds a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Business Administration from Universidad Central de Nicaragua and a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) from the Swiss Management Center (Please follow the link here http://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/prof-okoe-amartey-appointed-upsa-v-c.html). Contrary to the claim to the double doctoral degree, during his questionable induction, the claim was dropped. In this latest report, especially, after realizing the ridiculous claims have only created a laughing stock out of the individuals in question, the message is now he holds a PhD in Business Administration from the SMC University of Switzerland (Please follow the link here http://www.ghananewsagency.org/education/professor-amartey-inducted-as-second-vice-chancellor-of-upsa-111778).

8. One important aspect of policy formulation and implementation is the consistency of policy. If the policy is that one can acquire academic awards from unaccredited institutions, go on to churn out publications in journals operated by crooks in corner shops in India and then progress rapidly to become a professor and a Vice Chancellor, we think the policy must be made clear to all Ghanaians, so that those who choose the academic path can find these easy ways to move to the top as quickly as possible.

9. We are also aware that Ghanaian universities, of which UPSA is a part, as a result of its accreditation status, require doctoral degrees from their professors. While there are many Ghanaians with a PhD who wants to work with UPSA, Alabi retains unqualified individuals including those with questionable qualifications in UPSA and ran the institution as if it was his bona fide property.

10. We believe that the high offices of the Vice Chancellor is an office that carries a lot of weight within the academy and beyond. For that reason, both the office and its occupier must radiate with the level of credibility that such an office requires within the academy and beyond. We are of the view that academic practices under Alabi had undermined the credibility of the institution and its high office of Vice Chancellor. To this end, we are urging you, the Minister of Education, to take immediate steps to address the UPSA issue in particular and the issues we raised in our report generally.

11. We would also appeal to your office to review and implement the recommendations contained in the report. We will make ourselves, our expertise and services available to you and your ministry as needed. We believe strongly that you have the capacity to reform higher education in Ghana by providing structures for the evaluation of awards and publications in higher education in Ghana. It is an urgent need that cannot be delayed any further.

12. Thanks for your attention in anticipation of your consideration and action.

Sincerely,

Prosper Yao Tsikata, PhD

Assistant Professor of Communication

A. Kobla Dotse, PhD.

Director, Chemical Research & Development
Harare (AFP) - Zimbabwean protest leader Evan Mawarire was remanded in custody by a court in Harare on Friday after police arrested him on charges of subverting the government and inciting public violence.

Mawarire, an evangelical pastor, started the popular "This Flag" protest movement last year, becoming a figurehead of opposition to veteran President Robert Mugabe's regime.

He was detained at Harare airport as he returned to the country on Wednesday after fleeing in July in fear for his life when Mugabe publicly denounced him.

Magistrate Elisha Singano remanded Mawarire in custody until February 17 and said he could apply for bail at the high court.

Zimbabwe security forces cracked down last year after internet activism by the "This Flag" movement led to a series of anti-government protests and work strikes.

"He (Mawarire) urged all Zimbabweans not to go to work and revolt against the government," Edmore Nyazamba, the public prosecutor, told the court after reading out the charges.

"There were violent demonstrations in the country where several properties were damaged."

Nyazamba said Mawarire had also asked overseas Zimbabweans to converge in New York to confront Mugabe during the UN General Assembly.

The prosecutor asked the court for Mawarire to be held in custody as the police finalise investigations.

"The totality of the accusations do not in any way establish a crime," Harrison Nkomo, Mawarire's lawyer said.

Mawarire, who appeared in court in hand-cuffs and carrying a Bible, is expected to apply for bail on Monday.

The national flag became a symbol of anti-government protests after Mawarire, a little-known pastor, posted a Facebook video in which he had the flag wound around his neck as he deplored the country's worsening economic crisis.

Zimbabwean Pastor Evan Mawarire led protests in 2016 against President Robert Mugabe's government and was arrested at Harare airport on February 1, 2017, as he returned home after months abroad

"We will not allow the government of this country to keep on oppressing us, intimidating us and incarcerating us for speaking out," Linda Masarira, a rights activist, told reporters outside the court.

"They have to release Pastor Evan."
Member of Parliament for Wa Central Constituency, Rashid Pelpuo, says Otiko Djaba, the Minister-nominee for the Gender, Women and Social Protection Ministry, would have to apologize for her comments against former President John Mahama, before she is considered for approval.

Ms. Djaba is on record to have directed at Mr. Mahama words considered insults by some members of the Minority in Parliament, and Mr. Pelpuo believes such conduct is not befitting of someone looking to head the Gender Ministry.

Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Friday before Ms. Djabas approval was put on hold , the MP said he was amazed by her posture during her vetting, which he said depicted a lack of humility and compassion.

My surprise is that, she is coming to occupy a ministry that demands a lot of compassion. She is going to occupy a ministry that demands a lot of humility, but she did not show any of these things when she was confronted with the question of insulting a former President. In our tradition, you don't look in the face of the elderly and say; you are stupid, your head is big and you are evil; Nobody does that in our tradition.

Mr. Pelpuo explained that, Ms. Djaba would be expected to relate with the vulnerable sections of society and for these areas the person occupying them would have to show that she can forgive.

She should also show that she can draw people together and can also demonstrate that they can show humility but she did not show an inkling of humility, respect for elders and a demonstration that she can bring people together.

Otiko must withdraw everything

Mr. Pelpuo further suggested that, Ms. Djaba should withdraw her comments in the media, and use the same medium to apologize to Mr. Mahama and the people of Ghana.

If she has the opportunity, she should withdraw everything she said because the whole of the county was watching her, the psyche of the young people who were watching her was pricked negatively and I think that it has to be repaired.

Mr. Speaker, because she did not reflect the kind of person who should occupy that position, I want to reflect that we suspend her approval and bring it up at a later time she should go to the same media she went to insult the president and tell the people of Ghana that the position she is occupying does not merit the utterances she made, an adamant Mr. Pelpuo stated.

I dont owe Mahama an apology



The Gender Minister Nominee has already refused to withdraw her comments made against Mr. Mahama.

Speaking during her vetting Ms. Djaba said she owes the former President no apology for her comments.

Queried by some of the Minority members on the panel for describing the former president as wicked, evil and someone with a heart of the devil, Ms. Djaba said she spoke out of conviction and would not apologize or withdraw her comments.

Parliament approves Dan Botwe, 4 others; Otiko put on hold

Meanwhile Parliament today [Friday], approved the nomination of five additional ministerial nominees to serve in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.

The House, after about 2 hours of debate on the third report of the Appointments Committee for the approval on the nominees, passed five out of the six nominees to serve in their respective ministerial portfolios.

The nominees are John Peter Amewu (Lands and Natural resources), Ignatius Baffuor Awuah (Employment and Labour relations), Samuel Atta Akyea (Works and Housing), and Dan Botwe (Regional reorganization and Development), and Anthony Akoto Osei (Monitoring and Evaluation).

The approval of the minister nominee for Gender, Women and Social protection, Otiko Afisa Djaba, was however put on hold over challenges raised by the minority side of the vetting committee.

Aside the issues of her temperament and attitude raised by the minority, they are also rejecting her nomination on grounds that she did not undertake the mandatory national service, something she confessed to during her vetting.

The Speaker of Parliament has set Tuesday February 7, 2017, for the House to vote on Otiko Djabas approval, since the House is unable to reach a consensus following the minoritys rejection.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
RigWorld Services Limited, a reputable oil and gas company offering support services in the upstream sector in Ghana wishes to dissociate itself from a false publication circulating in various platforms concerning the movement of goods from Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) to our warehouse at Takoradi.

A story carrying the headline GNPC, EDC SAGA  MINISTRY OFFICIAL INSTRUCTED ITEMS BE MOVED TO RIGWORLD by a reporter named Samuel Dowuona was published on February 2 on AdomOnline.com, Ghanabusinessnews.com and other media outlets.

We wish to state in unequivocal terms that Rigworld has NO arrangement with the Ministry of Energy under the previous government, Tullow Oil or Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) for the movement of any items to Rigworld warehouse at Takoradi.

There is no truth to the publication and can only be described as a figment of the imagination of the media outlets to tarnish the hard won reputation of RigWorld.

We hereby call on the media houses to retract the publication and issue an unqualified apology to Rigworld for inconvenience caused and other negative repercussions of the said publication.

..Signed..

Roger A. Agana

RigWorld Services Limited PR

0244244807
The Canadian High Commission has pledged to assist the Ghana Police Service to support the development of the Police.

This was after the Service and the Commission held a meeting to discuss matters of bilateral co-operation between them.

On an official visit to the Police Headquarters, the Canadian High Commissioner, Heather Cameron encouraged the Police Service to just reach out to us if you have any needs.

Tracing the relationship between Ghana and Canada to some 100 years back, Cameron underscored the need for a strengthened relationship between the two Commonwealth nations, stressing they have each others interest to cater for.

She revealed that the Canadian government has made a renewed commitment to peacekeeping in Africa, emphasising that we will be happy to work with the Ghana Police."

The Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), David Asante-Apeatu, on his part expressed his gratitude to the High Commission for its support to the Service over the years and assuring the officials of Police co-operation.

He solicited the support of the Canadian government in the area of capacity building for the personnel to enable the Service build a world class police institution capable of delivering a first class service.

Mr Asante-Apeatu also offered to put the services of the Police at the disposal of the High Commissions in the fight against trans-national crimes.

In attendance at the meeting were the members of the Police Management Board.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim
The Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art has extended its deadline for artist submissions for the exhibition titled 150 Artists, 150 Artworks, 150 Years of Nebraska in Miniature.

Applications will be accepted until Feb. 25 at bonecreek.org.

Organizers hope to display 150 pieces of agrarian artwork -- artwork that relates to the land -- by 150 different artists in all mediums and skill levels, with a special section for high school and college artists.

The original deadline was Feb. 1, but the museum had not yet reached its goal.

The Nebraska Sesquicentennial Commission has endorsed this project as a signature event of the 2017 Sesquicentennial.

The exhibition will run at Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art in David City May 3-July 30. All of the artwork will be for sale, and a portion of the proceeds will support the work of the museum in the local community. An online version of the exhibition will be made available to reach the museums national audience.
In todays Money Morningwhy the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar comes with an obligationa fundamental misunderstanding of the global economyand more

I have three words for Donald Trump: Quid. Pro. Quo.

Which is Latin for this for that. Youll see what I mean in a moment.

Forget the little spat between Trump and Malcolm Turnbull. Thats nothing. I was actually thankful for the news that Trump gave Turnbull an earful on a recent phone call.

It reminded me that we have a Prime Ministerwhere has he been since the election?

The much more worrying comment from Trump came overnight. From todays Financial Review:

Overnight Trump told a group of religious and political leaders that its time for the US to get tough. The world is in trouble  but were going to straighten it out, OK? Thats what I do, he said at the National Prayer Breakfast. Were gonna straighten it out. Trump also added: Were taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. Its not gonna happen anymore.

Whoa!

This is a really big statement from Trump. If its a genuine representation of his beliefs, the post-Second World War economic order is about to undergo a profound shift.

Longer term, thats not such a bad thing for the world as a whole. But, unwittingly for Trump, it will probably have the biggest impact on the US. And it wont be a good one.

End of the US Dollar as the Worlds Reserve Currency?

Remember yesterday I wrote about how Harry Dexter White secured for the US the advantage of having their dollar as the worlds reserve currency?

It was a massive win for the US. It effectively gave them the golden goose. They could take as many golden eggs as they pleased.

As this win become apparent, French President Charles De Gaulle expressed his displeasure with the monetary arrangement by calling it an exorbitant privilege.

Indeed it was. And the US is still taking advantage of it. In 2016, the US current account deficit is expected to come in around US$470 billion. This represents excess US consumption over production.

It is able to borrow so much largely because of the status of the US dollar. As I explained yesterday, other countries are happy to receive dollars in return for goods and services, or interest on loans, because those dollars (debt) are an asset in their hands.

Its a system that massive favours the US. Theyre getting something for nothing.

In return for this sweet deal, the US has had a sort of a pact with the rest of the world that it will act as global cop, and manage the system. This of course costs a lot of money, but its money the US gets easily via demand for dollars from foreign central banks.

Quid pro quo

This is the quid pro quo that the global system operates under.

The US gets goods and services, in exchange for a paper promise to repay at some distant future date. And the rest of the world gets to employ their workers to keep them from rioting, while the elites enjoy the perks of the system. If theyre lucky, they get an invite to Davos each year.

But this system evolved in ways that no one could have predicted. It turned out that foreign central banks were happy to buy unlimited amounts of US dollars, because it increased their reserves and kept their own currencies weak. They wanted their export dependent economies to have a trade advantage.

As this trend continued, US manufacturers couldnt compete. So they took their manufacturing operations to the countries with cheap labour and cheap currencies to set up shop.

This keeps prices low and consumption high. Win win!

But Trump, like a deal making megalomaniac, doesnt see the current situation as an outgrowth of a flawed international monetary system. He only sees one side of the bargain, and he thinks hes not getting a good enough deal.

While his rhetoric sounds tough and will certainly keep his supporter base happy, it lacks a deep understanding of how the global economy works, and the US place in it.

Trump to straighten it out?

Ironically, Trumps comment about the world being in trouble is also an outgrowth of the financial system. Presumably hes referring to the rise of terrorism around the world.

How is he going to straighten it out, though?

Taking the US out of others affairs might help, but it will also create a vacuum for other powers to get involved. Which could lead to even more destabilisation.

If we ignore the fact that the Rashidun Caliphate took Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 637, and thus sparked an ongoing tussle for the city and region that continues to this day, you could argue that the rise of the US as global cop gave rise to modern day terrorism.

Dont get me wrong. Im not blaming US imperialism like some left wing ignoramus. Im pointing out that the US (and British) involvement in the Middle East to secure oil supplies created major tensions in Middle Eastern societies.

Its no surprise that Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi national. The autocratic Saudi royal family became massively rich by allying with the US, and this put a lot of noses out of joint in Saudi Arabia. Including Bin Ladens.

And the war in Syria, the latest Middle Eastern debacle, is a direct result of the West trying to interfere in the region. Its very messy, but Saudi Arabia, the US and Britain supported rebels trying to overthrow the ruling Syrian regime.

It turns out these rebels consisted of people we now collectively refer to as ISIS.

So if Trump wants to straighten out the mess he better have a decent plan. No one has been able to do it for about 2000 years!

Trump is trying to run the country like he runs his businesses. That is, bombastically and with a can do attitude. To be honest, I find it refreshing. Its about time we had a non-politician in politics.

But his ego will get the better of him. All leaders have an ego. But really great leaders have the humility to know that they cant know or do everything. Trump is nowhere near this point.

I humbly suggest that he needs an adviser on international economics. I nominate my colleague Jim Rickards. There is no one who knows more about the subject  and its interaction with financial markets  than Jim.

Ive just been told that were running low on stocks of Jims latest book. If you want a piece of his knowledge, you need to hurry to get the best deal out there.

Regards,

Greg Canavan
The joy of three prisoners on Thursday, February 02, 2017 grew and their hope rose when Ovie Success Ossai, an aide of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa settled their prison bills and set them free. The three inmates were serving various jail terms at the Medium Security Prison in Ogwashi-Uku, Aniocha south local government area of Delta state.

The inmates, Messrs. Dominic Igwe, 53, Idu Endurance, 23, and John Odalonu, 17, were respectively jailed for tricycle theft, breaking and entry and phone theft in different parts of the state. But they could not upset a fine option of N30,000 each to avoid going to jail.

Ossai (in white) and the freed prisoners, two at the right and one at the left heading out of prison

The journey to prison service

The three freed inmates, who were extremely happy after their release, recounted their separate rough paths to the high walls of the Ogwashi-Uku prisons which is, at the moment, housing hundreds of inmates, many of who are awaiting trial.

53 years old Dominic Igwe, who is a father three, said he was ingloriously hauled into prison by his former boss, whom he identified as Mr. Kelechi Onyedefu following the mysterious disappearance of his tricycle popularly called Keke, from the stadium complex, along the popular Nnebisi road in Asaba, the Delta state capital.

READ ALSO: Meet the youngest political appointee in Nigeria at age 24

According to Igwe, who spoke amidst tears, the tricycle was handed over to him on the understanding that he would pay a whooping sum of N860,000 through an installment arrangement, but he had barely raked in N115,000 for his estranged boss when the misfortune set in.

I explained to him all that happened, but he never believed me. I was invited to the A Division police station in Asaba from where I was arrested and charged to court. I could not finance the prosecution of the case and after the legal process, on December 2, 2016, I was sentenced to prison for three years, but to serve two years having remained under detention for one year and six months," Igwe said.

One of the freed inmates explaining what landed him in prison

On how he felt at the point of receiving the court sentence, Igwe, an indigene of Ebonyi state, but lives in Asaba, said he was totally disheartened and had no hope of regaining his freedom since he had no one to help pay the N30,000 option of fine that was slammed on him as alternative to the jail term.

He expressed gratitude to God that fortune had smiled on him after exactly two months of eating less than a handful of garri, poorly prepared beans and breathing the unnatural air domiciled within the dungeon.

READ ALSO: Ibori now to decide when to return home - Kinsmen

For 23 year old Idu Endurance who was not ashamed to confess to breaking into a supermarket at Ejeme-Aniogor, a rural community in Aniocha south local government area of the state, said a group of local vigilante apprehended him on his return from what could have been a success mission.

Caught on January 4, 2017, he narrated that he was detained at the B Division police station from where he was arraigned before a magistrate court at Okwe, a community that shares boundary with Asaba.

Three freed prisoners

He said from the day he was sentenced to prison on one year jail year jail term with an option of N30,000 fine, not even one person had walked into the prison to visit him, noting that the experience has shown me a lesson that whatever crime I commit, I am on my own.

But what could have also brought 17-year-old John Odalonu to the gathering of hardened criminals, notorious kidnappers and drug addicts found in prisons? Well, it was simply the desire to quench an hunger that drove the lad into stealing a Tecno T407 handset, an act that unfortunately landed him into the thicker side of live.

Odalonu, who lives with his octogenarian grandmother, since he is yet to meet his biological mother who dumped his father for sketchy reasons, the worst day of his life will certainly remain the day he went to a barbing saloon to charge the same handset he had stolen, awaiting a potential buyer.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Iboris first photos after release from UK jail emerge

After the actual owner of the said handset walked into him, he said the local vigilante in the area swooped on him with sticks and whips that have erased much of his memories on the event that occurred on January 19, 2017.

Ossai handing some cash to the freed inmates

Odalonu, a Senior Secondary School dropout was immediately whisked to the Ogwashi-uku police station from where he was arraigned before a magistrate who dealt the final blow of a six month sentence on him with a similar N30,000 option of fine.

Unlike others, the young ex-convict was not as unfortunate as some of his colleagues as he claimed that he enjoyed preferential treatment in the eyes of the older inmates who offered him food and some over used clothes to give him more comfort in the cells.

The announcement of freedom

While their despondencies may have persisted beyond measures, little did they know that fortune was hurriedly running down their ways. Mr. Ovie Success Ossai, the Personal Assistant to Governor Ifeanyi Okowa on Special Duties (Media) was set to celebrate his 25th birthday anniversary, a ceremony he chose to share with prisoners. And that was it.

The inmates who had obviously lost hopes in the dream of enjoying the liberty of building a world of their own were surprisingly set free on Thursday, January 2, 2017 after Ossai extended benevolence to the three of them whose bills were wholly cleared and subsequently let go.

Ossai in a group photograph with the freed inmates and a prison official

From the dark dungeon where they have been made to sleep and reminisce on their offences, the alarm of freedom sounded and, in few minutes, Igwe, Endurance and Odalonu were up on their feet walking out of the prisons with their sack bags and uncontrollable wide smiles that ran through their enlivened faces.

The governors aide, Ossai, who is the youngest serving political appointee in the Okowas government, expressed satisfaction that he was able to put smiles on the faces of the inmates who may have lost hopes of regaining freedom until the end of their jail term.

On why he chose to celebrate with the inmates, Ossai explained that the action was in line with his undying desire to see people liberated from whatever avoidable restriction they may find themselves, noting that it gratifies more for him to engage in the act rather than indulge in luxurious hosting of a birthday party.

The governors aide who took to treat the freed inmates to choice delicacies at the Asaba Shopping Mall, enjoined the beneficiaries of his gesture to shun vices and direct their energy and vibrancy towards productive ends, assuring that he would make further efforts to fast track their rehabilitation.

The trio offered words of prayers to God to bless Ossai and support whatever ventures he embarks on, promising that they would never go back to their ungodly conducts that landed them in jail

Source: Legit.ng
The United Nations has granted 7 slots to the Officers of the Nigerian Peace Corps (NPC), to enable it participate in all United Nations meetings and conferences, including that of the General Assembly, for the year 2017.

This was even as the Corps has successfully concluded its annual accreditation for the membership of the UN regular committee on Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) for the current year.

Addressing newsmen at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on Wednesday, the National Commandant of Nigerian Peace Corps, Amb. (Dr.) Dickson Akoh, said he led the NPC delegation to the 2017 regular session of the UN, to discuss issues of growth and development, as they relate to Nigerian Youths.

"At the committee on Non Governmental Organisations level, emphasis this year, was focused on global partnership, synergy and cooperation involving civil society organisations, in pursuant to the attainment of the 2030 development agenda", Akoh said.

According to the National Commandant, the knowledge acquired by the Officers of the Corps shall be used as focal point for the orientation of all members of the NPC and Nigerian youths in general.

Akoh also revealed that the Nigerian Peace Corps has been enjoying a consultative status with the United Nations over the years, and that the Corps is currently a member of the Social and Economic unit of the UN.

READ ALSO: OPINION: At last, good tidings from North-East Nigeria

On the controversies over the Bill passed recently by the National Assembly, Akoh described as "unfortunate", the misinformation in the public domain, "orchestrated by the National Unity and Peace Corps (NUPEC)", saying some people were playing sentiment with national issues.

"While we were away, through the social media, we read a lot of controversies on the Bill passed. The controversies are unnecessary. You don't force yourself into a marriage with a lady or a lady forcing herself into marriage with a man.

"The Bill passed is very clear. The Senate passed the National Unity and Peace Corps Bill (SB.183) in merger with that of the Nigerian Peace Corps Bill (SB.173); but the National Assembly finally passed only one Bill which is Nigerian Peace Corps Bill.

"In section 37(g), there is a clause which allows any organisation, body or group that demonstrates interest in being members of the Corps, to approach the Peace Corps of Nigeria.

"The more worrisome was the report published on Leadership Newspaper. It is very wrong to bring ethnicity into a national issue. I am not selfish about the activities of the Nigerian Peace Corps and I also know that the President is at liberty to appoint anybody, to head the Corps, but the truth must be told".

Amb. Dickson Akoh also debunked the report published on a banner headline of leadership newspaper of Friday, 27th January 2017, that the Corps was forcing "desperate" job seekers to pay N48, 000 before they are recruited.

According to him, "the whole write up was a mess and it questions the integrity and professionalism of the media house that claims to be reporting our issues.

"All through this year, the National Unity and Peace Corps, which is headed by the kinsman of the writer of the story on leadership newspaper, has been the one recruiting at random and there is no limitations to the amount of money people are paying.

"Over the years, since 2007, people have been paying N40, 000 for accommodation for one month, complete training materials, complete set of uniform and medical care for one month. You are aware of the exchange rate and cost of things now, and you would tell what N40,000 can buy right now. We are open to any kind of investigation"

The National Commandant also condemned the calculated attempt to rubbish his name through the media but advised that those behind it should not bring down the seed which many Nigerian youths are anxiously waiting to benefit from.

He also advised those lobbying for the position of National Commandant to do so with their "eyes widely open", so as not to "lobby blindly".

Akoh said "We must not be notorious to attain power! Power comes naturally from God. So, if you are out to destroy Dickson Akoh, don't destroy the road that hundreds of thousands of Nigerian youths would benefit from.

READ ALSO: Okorocha challenges Obiano to list his achievements

"Some people are already lobbying to become the National Commandant, but you don't lobby blindly. The Bill is very specific, that, both the leadership and everybody in the Peace Corps of Nigeria, including the assets, liabilities, personnel, positions, and others; that status quo should be maintained, at the commencement of the Bill. So if you want to lobby, lobby with your eyes widely open, not blindly".

He assured the members of the public that "notoriety and insecurity" would be issues of the past, when the Nigerian Peace Corps is eventually established.

Source: Legit.ng
- It appears that President Muhammadu Buhari has now changed his mind on a major issue

- The president has now resolved to appoint Justice Walter Onnoghen as the substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN)

- There have been loud calls from various quarters for the president to make the move

A report by Leadership indicates that President Muhammadu Buhari has resolved to appoint Justice Walter Onnoghen as the substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).

Is the storm over for Justice Walter Onnoghen?

There has been concerns over whether Onnoghen would become substantive CJN since the president was yet to forward his name to the Senate barely a week to the end of the three months that he can hold the post on acting capacity.

But the report quoted a source in the presidency saying the issue has been resolved, adding that the presidency and the attorney-general of the federation had a meeting with Justice Onnoghen at 2am last night.

Justice Onnoghen's stay as acting CJN is meant to expire on Teusday, February 7.

READ ALSO: How retired Chief Justices of Nigeria collected, bribed judges

The source said: They presented to Onnoghen the dossier the security agencies have on him to go through, showing why they delayed to confirm him. He would have to guard against some of these things when he takes full charge of the judiciary.

With this development, Acting President Yemi Osibanjo is expected to forward a letter on behalf of President Buhari to the Senate for Justice Onnoghens confirmation anytime soon.

The National Judicial Council (NJC) headed by the immediate past CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, had on October 12, 2016 recommended and forwarded Onnoghens name to the president for appointment as the next CJN in line with Section 231 (1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).

Consequently, President Buhari swore in Justice Onnoghen who was the most senior justice of the Supreme Court as the acting CJN in line with Section 231 (4) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.

However, the delay by President Buhari to forward Onnoghens name to the Senate for confirmation and subsequently to appoint him as the substantive CJN began to generate heat in the polity and drew reactions from some individuals and groups in the country.

READ ALSO: Buhari is slow in handling affairs  Femi Falana

Federal lawmakers from Cross River State had on Tuesday, January 31 raised concerns about the delay, saying it was due to ethnic considerations.

Former president of the Nigeria Bar Association, Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) also added his vocie to the debate, warning that the Buhari government was setting a dangerous precedent by causing Onnoghen to linger on the post of acting CJN since November 10 last year.

On his part, Lagos-based lawyer and human rights activist, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa dragged the president, the vice-president, the Senate, the National Judicial Council (NJC) and the Attorney-General of the Federation to court on the issue compelling the court to make sure that Onnoghen emerges the next CJN.

Source: Legit.ng
On Thursday, February 2, Nollywood filmmaker, Seun Egbegbe was arrested for trying to swindle an unsuspecting bureau de change operator off N10 million.

Seun Egbegbe

Seun as reported went with his entourage to change money while pretending as a medical doctor of the Gbagada General Hospital and he tried to swindle the bureau de change mallams who raised alarm. He was thoroughly beaten by onlookers before he was whisked away by the police.

READ ALSO: BREAKING! Seun Egbegbe arrested again

Seun Egbegbe and his accomplice

Following this development, the Lagos state police command has revealed a statement on Seun Egbegbe's arrest saying the case is currently under investigation.

"Arrest Of Notorious Fraudsters"

Today at about 1300hrs one Seun Karim aka Egbegbe and one Ayo Oyekan disguise as the MD of Gbagada general hospital and the other as a patient. They lured one Alhaji Isa Adamu and Abdullahi Haruna both bureau de change members , from different location that they needed 9000dollars and 3000pounds. The unsuspecting victims brought same to the suspects at the hospital where they collected the said amount and attempted to escape with the money.

The victims raised alarm and subsequently the suspect were arrested by the policemen attached to the hospital.

Further to the arrest of the fraudsters many members of bureau de change are trooping to the office with similar complaint against the suspects .

Case is under investigation."

Don't want miss to the latest, hottest gist? Download Legit.ng news app on your android phone

Egbegbe was arrested on Tuesday, November 22, 2016 at the Computer village, Ikeja for allegedly stealing 9 iPhones.

Source: Legit.ng
Do you know anything about the love story of two outstanding people like Pastor Nick and his wife? We do, and we promise that it is the most beautiful one ever. Read on to hear it!

Pastor Nick and family: What is his love story?

A Christian evangelist who was born without his arms and legs is now a famous preacher. He spends months travelling throughout the world preaching about Gods love and sharing the Gospel that changed his own life.

However, as a man without limbs, he confessed that he never hoped to meet someone who would spend the life with him. However, God was really good to Pastor Nick, as He gave him a beautiful, graceful and a kindhearted woman who later became his wife. So, are you ready to hear their story? It will definitely inspire you!

Pastor Nick and family: What is his love story?

The love story of Pastor Nick and his wife, Kanae Miyahara

So, how did Pastor Nick meet his wife? Lets hear his side of the story.

His story

Pastor Nick has recently published a book called Unstoppable. In it, he describes what he believes in, what plans God has for all people. Besides, he mentions where to seek help in the moments of personal crises, and problems in relationships with different people including co-workers, family members and friends.

Pastor Nick, being born without limbs knows for sure what it means to be intolerated, persecuted, and bullied. However, he found peace after he got his relationship with God. He says in the book that it is thanks to Him that he everything he needs and even so much more.

READ ALSO: This boy with no arms and legs does not give up

When he first became a Christian, he had a big heart to preach the Gospel among the nations. He did not think about starting a family, as he never thought anyone would like to be with him. However, he had a dream deep in his heart.

Pastor Nick was involved in the ministry a lot. He was travelling across the country and abroad telling people that no matter what difficulties they have in life, with Gods help they are all bearable.

One day, he mentions in the third chapter of his book, he was at the Bell Tower in McKinney which is in Texas. He was about to preach in front of a small group when he saw her  a beautiful and modest girl.

Pastor Nick and family: What is his love story?

He said that his friend brought her there. Kanae and her sister worked for a couple where they babysat the children of a busy Christian family who were also serving Jesus at the time being. So, when they decided to come and listen to what Pastor Nick was about to preach, they thought of taking the girls with them as well. As it later turned out, Kanae liked the way he preached, so the family just wanted him to meet her and maybe take a move.

As their eyes met, Nick said he was enchanted by her beauty, both outside and inside. She looked very confident and kind. He remembers that he kept forgetting his words and was quite confused and blushing a lot.

At the end of his speech, the family took the girls to meet him. They exchanged a couple of kind words, and when they wanted to leave to let other people come and talk to him, he asked them to stay and wait until he is done so that he could get to know them better.

READ ALSO: There Is A Drop Of Greatness In Every Man

At the end of the evening, the man was so in love that he even suggested giving Kanae his email address so that they could stay in touch. However, the girl seemed to be confused, so she answered that if she needed it, she would get it from their mutual friends.

Despite a strong desire of Nick to give her the email, he decided not to put too much pressure on her. On top of that, his father always taught to look cool in the situation like this, so, he played it cool and agreed that she could get his email from their friends.

Later in his book, he also mentioned that on that same night, friends who brought the girls to the meeting called him to ask what he thought about Kanae. He remembered being deeply in love with her at first sight given her kind heart, modest manners, and grace she spread around. She was beaming, and he loved it.

They were both praying later about each other. Kanae was raying that God gave Nick love for her, and Nick did the same. He told his readers in a book that it was probably wrong back then: it is always better to wait until God organises everything and not to beg Him to change His will. But as we see everything turned out to be great.

Pastor Nick and family: What is his love story?

Her story

People often ask Kanae how she decided to marry a man without limbs. There are so many things even around the house which he could not help her with. But as she explains, she has had enough of relationship with physically perfect men who had nothing inside of them to give her back.

In Nick, she found everything she wanted in a husband: a good heart, love for Jesus, sense of humour and a big heart for all nations. He was a minister, full of compassion, love, and desire to serve people in need. He would encourage those people often left behind. He gives away everything he had and be generous.

She said that she was first impressed by his heart, and only later started thinking of him as of a boyfriend material. When they were going out, she felt like he is the best man to be with, so she was happy beyond words when he proposed to her.

You might wonder how he did that, given that he could not stand on one knee and give her a ring. However, she managed to make it a surprise still.

Pastor Nicks wife recalls that one day as they were strolling around, he asked if he could kiss her hand. He was always quite a gentleman. So she was not surprised. She gave him her hand, and a few seconds later she felt as if he was biting her fingers. When she took a look at her hand, she realised that there was a ring on her finger. Then she said how much he loved her and how much he wanted her to become his wife. She said yes and cried for a long time. She was on cloud nine when this happened.

Pastor Nick and family: What is his love story?

Their story

As they got married, they still keep writing a beautiful love story. Unlike the common belief, love does not end after you get married, it only gets stronger. So, the couple moved to South California where they have their own household.

As the famous Christian speaker says, he was unbelievably blessed with the love his wife has for him. They had different issues in their family life, but they are very happy, and nothing seems to be strong enough to break their love.

He is still giving speeches around the world and encouraging Christians and those who do not know Christ yet to see God and be amazed by Him and His character. He is also participating in various films production which also serves the idea of sharing the Gospel with the nations. He is a founder of an organisation called Life without Limbs.

Pastor Nick and family: What is his love story?

Meanwhile, his wife is taking care of their home and helps him raise two beautiful, healthy children they have. It is a pure joy to see how happy this couple looks.

All in all, this is the information about Pastor Nick and his family that inspired thousands of people from all over the world. You can learn more about his story from his book called Unstoppable.

Source: Legit.ng
- Former ambassador to Zambia and Malawi, Folake Marcus-Bello has advised Senator Buruji Kashamu to voluntarily visit the United States to defend himself

- Kashamu is currently being accused of being a Drug trafficker in the 90's by the United States

- A United States Court of Appeal has ruled that Kashamu can be extradited from Nigeria to face justice

- Folake says it is shameful that Kashamu is willing to result to violence to avoid getting extradited

Former Nigerian Ambassador to Zambia and Malawi, Ambassador Folake Marcus-Bello has called on Senator Buruji Kashamu to voluntarily go to the US to defend himself against drug trafficking allegations.

A United States Appeal court on January 27, ruled that Senator Buruji Kashamu can be arrested in collaboration with Nigerian authorities to face drug related charges in the US.

Kashamu representing Ogun east constituency was alleged to have been the ring-leader of a 90s drug cartel in Chicago, US.

Former Nigerian ambassador advises Kashamu to go to US to defend himself over drug trafficking allegation

Mrs Marcus-Bello while on a live radio programme on Sweet FM in Abeokuta advised Kashamu to go to the US and get justice. The former ambassador said no one can say if Kashamu is truly guilty of the crime or innocent unless he goes to the US to face judgement.

READ ALSO: 3 lawyers defend Buruji Kashamu against planned extradition

She said Mr. Kashamus lawyers should have advised him also to go and defend himself. She said: Crime does not go away, it does not expire. It will continue to rear its head, nobody can claim he is guilty or innocent until he goes to clear this mess.

For the sake of himself, his family, his constituency of hardworking, honest Ijebus, he should travel to get justice. It is simple, if they are looking for you, buy a ticket and go defend yourself.

It is like they say they are looking for Folake Marcus Bello for children trafficking. I would buy a ticket and go to the embassy and say here I am please give me a visa let me go"

Marcus-Bello said it is shameful that Kashamu is ready to result to violence to avoid being extradited.

She said: It is shameful that somebody at that level, a senator of the Republic of Nigeria representing my constituents in Ogun State would say he would rather die, call up the private army of OPC to fight rather than being taken abroad. Why?

Look let me tell you, I am a lawyer. Crime never goes away. This is mistake a lot of people make and it is also part of our problem in this country; we dont know the law, we dont know our rights, we dont read, we dont learn. It is a simple matter.

Crime does not go away. If you have committed a crime and you have not served the punishment for that crime, let us assume you committed a crime at age 21, you can go on till you are 90, the day you are caught you will be tried and you will serve the punishment.

He is my Senator, some of us from his constituency will escort him to ensure he gets justice. We know he will get justice, it is an organised society. Let him clear this for the sake of Ogun State, for the sake of Ijebus for the sake of Nigeria. It is just a question of taking a flight to defend himself.

READ ALSO: Senator Kashamu denies threatening to kill anyone over his extradition order

Meanwhile, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) has proclaimed his decision to push for the arrest of Senator Buruji Kashamu.

The agency said it has become embolden and strengthened by the latest ruling of a United States court that the senator should be extradited to the United States to face drug related charges.

Source: Legit.ng
- The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has recognized a European Union Parliament member as its trusted advocate

- The group said Julie Ward has made remarkable efforts to speak against injustice and dehumanization against the group, its leadership and members

- IPOB also called on its members worldwide to appreciate Ward and his assistant on social media platform, twitter

The Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has recognized a European Union Parliament member as its trusted advocate.

The IPOB said Julie Ward has made remarkable efforts to speak against injustice and dehumanization against the group, its leadership and members.

A statement signed by IPOBs spokesperson Powerful Emma, the group called on all its members worldwide to show appreciation to the EU parliament member.

READ ALSO: Father Mbaka is 'hungry' and 'poorly educated' - IPOB

We salute the courage of Julie Ward [MEP] for her stance and the defence of human rights of Biafrans as she remains our trusted advocate at the European Parliament as the EU once again answers an urgent question on the continued human rights abuses meted out on our leader Nnamdi Kanu and all our brothers being incarcerated with him and in the different secret cells in the contraption called Nigeria, Emma said.

Emma added: Biafrans, please go to the twitter platform and show appreciation to MP Julie Ward [MEP] @julie4nw and able assistant, Eleanor Quinn for their resilience and kindness.

On behalf of the IPOB, Emma commended Ward, her assistant and other members of the parliament for their resilience in seeking answers from the European Union on the detention of Nnamdi Kanu and other members of the group.

Below are the questions asked by Ward and the response from the EU vice president and high representative Federica Mogherini:

READ ALSO: Biafra is not from Igboland, IPOB clarifies

Question for written answer P-009557/2016 to the Commission (Vice-President / High Representative)

Rule 130

Julie Ward (S&D)

Subject: VP/HR - Unlawful detention of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), and continued violence against Biafran supporters by the Nigerian Government

Since 14 October 2015, Nnamdi Kanu has been illegally held in prison by the Nigerian Government, despite being acquitted of all charges.

In addition, the Nigerian Government is reportedly violating the human rights of Biafran activists. Amnesty International has documented cases of arrest, enforced disappearance, torture and killing of supporters.

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1. Will the VP/HR advocate for the immediate and unconditional release of Nnamdi Kanu and co-defendants Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi, and challenge the actions of the Nigerian Government?

2. Will the VP/HR denounce the violence carried out against Biafran supporters by Nigerian security forces and call for an impartial investigation into the arrest, enforced disappearance, torture and killing of supporters and members of pro-Biafran groups?

READ ALSO: We will pay hospital bills for victims of pro-Trump rally - IPOB

3. Will the VP/HR push the Nigerian Government to safeguard human rights by calling for guarantees on the freedom of expression of all Nigerian citizens, including their right to protest without harm, and the termination of violence against Biafrans?

EN P-009557/2016

Answer given by vice president Mogherini on behalf of the Commission

(2.2.2017)

The European Union (EU) is concerned about the violence that has erupted in relation to the Biafra movement.

The EU follows closely the fate of Nwannekaenyi Nnamdi Kenny Okwu Kanu, Benjamin Madubugwu and David Nwawuisi since their arrest in October 2015 and, more broadly, pays close attention to the treatment of the pro-Biafra movement by Nigerian authorities.

READ ALSO: IPOB spits fire, cautions DSS over Apostle Suleman's invitation

The EU supports individuals' right to protest and express them freely, as long as this right is exercised in a peaceful manner. Potential prosecutions should also be carried out in a manner compatible with the rule of law.

The EU raises human rights issues at every opportunity with the Nigerian authorities, to encourage them to respect human rights, and to improve the rule of law. This issue will be on the agenda of the next EU  Nigeria Ministerial Dialogue due to take place in Abuja this spring.

In the implementation of the European Development Fund, the Commission is also engaged in building capacities to enable Nigeria to fulfil its human rights commitments, as rule of law, governance and democracy is one of the three sectors of concentration of the National Indicative Programme for Nigeria.

Source: Legit.ng
- South south chapters of CAN and PFN describe the silence of President Muhammadu Buhari on the killings of Christians in Northern Nigeria as worrisome

- The national vice president of PFN (South-South), Bishop Simeon Okah, says Christian leaders will longer fold their hands and watch while Christians are killed

- The religious bodies affirm their support for Apostle Johnson Suleiman, over his recent alleged inflammatory statement which pitted him against DSS

South south chapters of CAN and PFN are calling for the resignation of President Buhari o ver his failure to lead the country.

The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria have demanded for President Muhammadu Buhari to resign for being unfit to lead the country.

READ ALSO: Police arrest 17 alleged killer herdsmen with assorted firearms

South south chapters of CAN and PFN, called for the resignation of the president at a joint meeting in Warri, Delta state on Thursday, February 2.

According to the religious bodies, the presidents silence on the killings of Christians in Northern Nigeria has become worrisome to the point where self help becomes the compelling option for Christians to protect themselves.

The national vice president PFN (South-South), Bishop Simeon Okah, who briefed newsmen following a closed door meeting said Christian leaders will no longer fold hands and watch while Christians are being killed.

Bishop Simeon Okah described the claim by some northern governors that those behind the killings were not from the North as an insult.

He said: Today our children are now being deported from America and here we have people from outside our country killing people and rap*ng our daughters, mother and wives. Our farmers no longer have farmlands to farm. I think its high time we started defending ourselves if the government cannot help us."

READ ALSO: Spate of attacks in southern Kaduna creates tension

The economy is dying. When Jonathan handed over to Buhari, the exchange rate was between N170 to N190 to a dollar. Today, it is N550 to a dollar. Imagine how things had gone bad? While the church will pray, if he (Buhari) cannot save the country, let him resign for the country to move to where God wants it to be.

The religious bodies also affirmed support for Apostle Johnson Suleiman over his recent alleged inflammatory statement which pitted him against Directorate of State Security, (DSS) stressing that Suleman spoke the minds of Christians over the said comments.

In related news, the Kaduna State chapters of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), and the Jamaatu Nasrul Islam (JNI), have said that the region will not know peace, until justice is served.

On Thursday, February 2, the religious bodies urged the statement government to punish those behind killings in Southern part of the states.

Daily Post reports that the two groups spoke during a peace advocacy visit to their offices in Kaduna by officials of the state government.

Rev Sunday Ibrahim, the state Secretary of CAN, said the state and Federal Governments should prosecute whoever is involved in the crisis, and urged Christians to ignore those pushing them to carry out reprisal attacks.

The CAN scribe called on all well-meaning Nigerians to push for the restoration of peace in the area.

Source: Legit.ng
- The Presidency has announced that the police have the right to prevent Innocent Idibia (2baba) from protesting if they feel it will cause a breach of security

- Adesina said those who intend to protest lacks genuine concern for the country

The Presidency is not interested in stopping the Nigerian police from preventing a nationwide protest planned for February 6.

Femi Adesina, the special adviser to president on media and publicity, has said Nigerians have right to protest but the police also have the right to deny them the permit so as to avoid crises.

Veteran music artist, Innocent Idibai popularly called 2baba called for a nationwide protest march to protest against the economic situation of the country but the Nigerian police vowed to stop the protest which was slated for February 6.

2babas massive protest: Police can stop the protesters to avoid crises  Femi Adesina

READ ALSO: Ex-militants express support for 2baba planned protest

Adesina said those planning the protest are those who will complain even if an angel comes down to rule the country.

According to Daily Post, Adesina reportedly made this statement during a magazine programme titled BECOS AM 120, said those who believe in free money and had been infected by corruption will be the one presented during the protest.

Adesina said: In a democracy, protests are legitimate, also the security agencies have the right to ensure that they do not degenerate.

The president is not home now, in Nigeria today you have a large number of people who seem not to forget that the 2015 elections have gone and have been won. The other group is the group that will always complain, even if angels come to rule Nigeria, they will always complain, they will complain.

Then you have people who believe in free money, there is no more free money, those people will also join the protest.

Genuine concern people have ways to protest, there are millions of people who are with the president, and I believed that the people who are with the president are more than those who are not with the president.

If the concerns were genuine, once those who speak with the president once they said all is well, they should have to go and rest.

READ ALSO: The 2baba vs Blackface battle continues over planned protests

Meanwhile, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have declared their support for Nigeria's music legend, 2baba as he leads a nationwide protest this weekend.

According to the spokespersons of the two major political parties, the planned protests are within the confines of the law and should not be disrupted by the Nigerian Police.

The national publicity of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi said there was nothing wrong in people holding peaceful protest under a democracy.

Source: Legit.ng
Reports say a senior member of the Boko Haram terrorist group who took part in the December 2016 bombing of a market in Madagali, Adamawa state, has been arrested.

The Nigerian Army and other security agencies have been successful in efforts to route out terrorism from Nigeria

Simply identified as Ibrahim, the suspect who was arrested on January 20, is said to have confessed to playing a role in the attack on the market on Friday, December 9, 2016, killing over 30 persons.

Daily Times reports that the suspect was arrested by the police in conjunction with troops of the Nigerian Army in a stop-and-search operation on January 20, 2017.

READ ALSO: NAF launches operation Forest Storm against Boko Haram

The arrest was reportedly made after a tip-off.

Major-General Lucky Irabor, the theatre commander of the Operation Lafiya Dole, reportedly confirmed the arrest and said the suspect was helping with useful information to security agencies.

Meanwhile, the report added that another suspect, a Malian citizen identified only as Ayuba, was arrested as an accomplice.

On January 20, the troops, in collaboration with the police in Gombe state conducted a cordon and search operation, based on some credible information.

A Boko Haram suspect, named Ibrahim, was arrested. While he was being interrogated, he confessed to have participated in the attack on Madagali.

He also said he had gone to attack Chibok area of Borno State. He is currently in our custody undergoing interrogation.

READ ALSO: Boko Haram terrorists, their wives & suppliers arrested (photos)

There is also one Ayuba, who claimed to be a Malian citizen, and said he could speak to us in only French. So, we got our interpreters. He is also being investigated as a Boko Haram member, Irabor said.

Source: Legit.ng
The social media has gone agog following the activities of some fresh Nigerian graduate who decided to appreciate God for seeing her through school.

The unidentified graduate posted some pictures of herself and friends with some description attached to them. While many youths find it hard getting over the euphoria of graduating from school and moving on with their lives, this girl made a wrong choice going about it.

Nigerian student boasts about being a 'BSc'.

READ ALSO: Kuwait bans issuance of visas to 5 Muslim countries

Her post would make you wonder if she truly deserves to be a graduate as she stands a chance of damaging the integrity of the educational system in the country.

The post here will make you curious about the institution that produced her and what the future holds if we have thousands of graduates like her in the society.

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It is also possible for one to question her performance in school if she cannot express herself in simple tenses. Do you think she should have been allowed to graduate in the first place?

Source: Legit.ng
Top Nigerian comedian, Seyi Law has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to stand for his people or step aside.

If Buhari is too old, let him step aside - Seyi Law spits fire

Comedian Seyi Law visited Legit.ng on Friday where he joined us for a Facebook Live chat. The father of one, while speaking on 2baba's planned nationwide protest on February 6, called on President Buhari to either stand for his people or step aside.

READ ALSO: Here are the celebrities who will be protesting alongside 2baba Idibia

The protest is aimed at demanding answers from the government over different issues in the country including the overwhelming economic recession.

Join us now...

Source: Legit.ng
Who is Pastor Chris Oyakhilome? He is a Nigerian pastor, television host, author, and the President of Believers LoveWorld Incorporated, also known as Christ Embassy International. If you would like to know more about the pastor, keep reading!

Pastor Oyakhilome preaching. Photo: pastorchris.oyakhilome

Source: Instagram

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome messages have helped thousands of Nigerians to find their way to God. But who is he apart from being a pastor? Find out by reading Pastor Chris Oyakhilome biography .

Profile summary

Date of birth: 7th December 1963

7th December 1963 Birthplace: Edo, Nigeria

Edo, Nigeria Chris Oyakhilome age: 57 years old (as of 2020)

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome family

The Pastor was born on December 7, 1963 to Tim and Angelina, as the first son of the family. His father, Elder T.E Oyakhilome, was one of the pioneers of the Assemblies of God Church in Benin City.

His parents had two other children. Pastor Chris brother, Ken, is a Reverend and Pastor of Christ Embassys Houston, Texas branch. He is also a member of Christ Embassy Central Executive Council.

His sister, Katty Worghiren, is the director of the LoveWorld Music & Arts Ministry (LMAM). She started out as a member of the choir and is also a songwriter.

Education

After his primary and secondary education, he attended Ambrose Alli University (AAU), Ekpoma, Edo State, Nigeria where he obtained a Bachelor of Science in Architecture degree.

AAU also awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science award. He also has an honorary doctorate in divinity from the Benson Idahosa University.

Pastor Oyakhilome preaching. Photo: pastorchris.oyakhilome

Source: Twitter

His ministry

Chris got into ministry when he was still a student at Ambrose Alli University, AAU. At the time, the Believers LoveWorld Fellowship (now Believers LoveWorld Incorporated) was known as Youths For Christ (YFC).

YFC grew and later became the largest fellowship on campus. In 1989, Chris established Believers LoveWorld Incorporated (BLW), alongside Christ Embassy. The church's headquarters were in Lagos.

Today, Believers LoveWorld is a global ministry with millions of followers and associates all around the world.

BLW soon became the most prominent Christian ministry on television across Africa, through its Atmosphere For Miracles programme in 2002. They stopped airing the programme in May 2004, when President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that churches should stop airing miracles on television.

Wife and daughters

He was previously married to Anita Obhodaghe.

Anita and Chris are are blessed with two children. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome daughters are Carissa Sharon and Charlene.

Sharon is a rising gospel star. She was inspired by her fathers teachings and has written the award-winning song Holy Spirit as a testament to her deeply felt Christian devotion. She is also an inspiring leader of the Global Youth Leaders Forum and presents many shows on its online channels.

In 2018, Sharon got married to Phillip Frimpong, a Ghanaian man. Pastor Chris Oyakhilome daughter wedding was a beautiful ceremony. Charlene served as Sharon's chief bridesmaid during the ceremony, but their mother was absent from the ceremony.

Chris and Anita are currently divorced. Anita filed for divorce on 9 April 2014 at Central Family Court, High Holborn, London, UK. They finally got divorced in February 2016 after 25 years of marriage on the basis of "Unreasonable Behavior."

There are no details about Pastor Chris Oyakhilome new wife.

Pastor Oyakhilome preaching. Photo: pastorchris.oyakhilome

Source: UGC

Pastor Chris Oyakhilome house

He owns a 4-storey house in Oregun, Lagos State worth over 150 million. The mansion comes with a garage and sports facility.

That is all we had for you about Pastor Chris Oyakhilome. Fore more details about your favourite celebrities, keep reading Legit.ng.

READ ALSO: Fireboy DML biography: Age, real name, girlfriend, Apollo album

Legit.ng recently covered the story of Fireboy DML, one of the fastest-rising Afro-Life singers from Nigeria. The musician became popular following the success of his single titled Jealous.

You will be surprised to find out that the celebrity is only 24 years old, but he has made significant achievements in his career. The musician recently released his sophomore album, Apollo. Apollo was released on August 20, 2020, under the YBNL Nation record label. The 17-track album comes after the success of his debut album Laughter, Tears & Goosebumps, which was released on November 29, 2019.

Source: Legit.ng
- Acting President Yemi Osinbajo and presidential Task Force on the rising cost of food have met at the Aguda House

- The Task Force has the responsibility of exploring options to promote availability and affordability of food items to Nigerians

Osinbajo has met with members of the food Task Force in Abuja.

Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has held a meeting with members of the presidential Task Force on the rising cost of food items in Nigeria.

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The Tribune reports that the meeting took place on Friday, February 3, at Aguda House, the official residence of the acting president, and was attended by all members of the group.

The Task Force was set approved by the Federal Executive Council (FEC) on Wednesday, February 1, as part of efforts to enhance affordable food prices across country.

The body has the responsibility of exploring options to promote availability and affordability of food items to Nigerians.

READ ALSO: Naira steadies against dollar, crashes against Pound

The group, expected to submit its interim reports on Feb. 8, has the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh; Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun and Minister of Industry, Trade and Development, Dr Okey Enelamah, as members.

Other members of the team are the Minister of Transportation, Mr Rotimi Amaechi; Minister of Water Resources, Alhaji Suleiman Adamu, and the Minister of Labour & Employment, Dr Chris Ngige.

In related news, the minister of finance, Kemi Adeosun, has said Nigeria is looking at increasing the Value Added Tax (VAT) on some goods,

The goods that will be affected by the new tax policy as proposed by the Ministry of Finance are luxury goods. Basic items will not be affected.

Nigerians currently pay 5% VAT. This was one introduced in 1994 by the military government and is one of the lowest in the world.

However, the increase is subject to the approval of the National Assembly.

Source: Legit.ng
Following outrage over its attack on famous Roman Catholic priest, the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) has listed reasons why the group lashed out on the Father Mbaka.

The group said it is still in shock at the misguided statements made by Father Mbaka against the IPOB and its agitation for Biafra.

The IPOB has likened the Roman Catholic priest to the biblical Prophet of Baal

Spokespersons for the group, Emma Nmezu and Clifford Iroanya said the priest is no different from the biblical prophet of Baal.

Nmezu said the group doubt if the Roman Catholic priest worship God Almighty.

Below are the six reasons IPOB gave for verbally attacking Father Mbaka:

1. Canonical calling

This young priest from Amata Ituku in Awgu area of Enugu state and who was ordained on July 29, 1995, is no different from the biblical prophet of Baal because he appears to be worshiping anything but Chukwu Okike Abiama (God Almighty the Creator).

Worse still, he seemed to have abandoned his canonical calling and delved into business. But instead of relaxing to enjoy the loot he makes from business and the bribes he received from Muhammadu Buhari and colleagues, he has now identified himself infamously with the killers of Biafrans.

READ ALSO: These are the MAJOR people fueling violence in Nigeria - Expert

Reverend Father Mbaka, the prophet of Baal, made misguided statements concerning the efforts by Biafrans to restore their God-given nation of Biafra.

This prophet of Baal asserted that unless Billionaires from the Igbo-speaking areas of Biafraland come out to the street, the case for the restoration of Biafra should be closed. He reeled out names of known anti-Biafra individuals such as Ken Nnamani, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, Willie Obiano, Emmanuel Iwuanyanwu, and so on.

According to this prophet of Baal, it is only when the Igbo Billionaires come out that Biafra restoration will be achieved.

He even lied to his congregation by telling them that Biafrans were sent to the street and instructed to engage in a fight with the Nigerian police.

READ ALSO: ALL Nigerians must support Buhari to deliver us from 'sharks' - Analyst

2. Biafra does not belong to Igbos alone

In the first place, we want to inform this prophet of Baal that Biafra nation does not belong to the Igbos alone. As an example, the second-in-command to General Odimegwu Ojukwu was General Phillip Effiong who was not from the Igbo-speaking area of Biafra.

This prophet of Baal must understand that the same people he mentioned in his misguided statements are the ones responsible for the sorry state of affairs in Biafraland today.

He must know that these so-called Igbo Billionaires are the same people sabotaging the efforts by dedicated and hardcore Biafrans to restore the nation of Biafra.

3. Spirituality

By identifying with these sell-outs, Father Ejike Mbaka, the prophet of Baal, has confirmed the rumours over the years that he was not spiritually called to serve as a priest but rather using priesthood as a means to an end.

READ ALSO: Biafra is not from Igboland, IPOB clarifies

It is absurd that this prophet of Baal mocked our dead heroes who were mowed down in their prime by the gun-toting Buharis murderous agents. The prophet of Baal even made jests of Biafrans by calling them poor people and insinuated that it is only the super-rich that should fight for and live in the new Biafra.

4. Father Mbaka should emulate other clerics and condemned killing by herdsmen, especially in Enugu state

In contrast, we would like Father Mbaka, the prophet of Baal, to emulate other clerics such as Reverend Dr. Chris Okafor, Archbishop Emmanuel Chukwuma, Apostle Johnson Suleiman, Pastor David Oyedepo, and even Bishop Matthew Hasan Kukah.

These are clerics who have come out to speak against the menace of Fulani herdsmen and the killing of unarmed and peaceful Biafrans.

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Even some Islamic clerics have spoken out against the killing of Biafrans by Fulani herdsmen.

It is on record that Father Ejike Mbaka, the prophet of Baal, has not made any public condemnation of the several killings carried out by Fulani herdsmen in his home state of Enugu. But he has the time to go to Aso Rock to felicitate with a man who assassinated Major-General J. T. U. Aguiyi-Ironsi and who also participated in the murder of over two million Biafrans at Owerri in 1968.

5. Stay away from Biafra matters

We advise Revd. Father Ejike Camillus Anthony Ebenezer Mbaka, the prophet of Baal, to stay away from Biafra restoration matters and concentrate on his business empire. He can fraternize with his so-called Igbo creamand leave those he mocked as poor people to get on with the task of restoring their nation of Biafra.

We warn this prophet of Baal that further misguided statements from him shall have undesirous consequences from Chukwu Okike Abiama, the God of the Biafrans. We further warn this prophet of Baal to stop giving the impression that Biafra is for the Igbos alone. Although this prophet of Baal is a very young man, he must apply wisdom and tact in his speeches.

6. Do not make misguided statements about Biafra, IPOB and Nnamdi Kanu

Making misguided and outlandish statements is not expected from someone wearing the cassock unless such a person is truly a prophet of Baal.

Finally, we direct Revd. Father Ejike Camillus Anthony Ebenezer Mbaka, the prophet of Baal, to the book of Malachi chapter 2 from verse 1 to 9. A word is enough for the wise and for the righteous.

Source: Legit.ng
- Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir described those wishing Buhari dead as those afraid of him

- He urged Muslims to enroll their children in Islamic schools

- The cleric also condemned Apostle Suleman's statement about Fulani herdsmen

The Jama'atu Izalatil Bid'a Wa'Ikamatis Sunnah has reacted to the rumour about the death of President Muhammadu Buhari describing it as un-Islamic.

Since President Buhari went on vacation, there have been rumours about his death although they have been refuted by his media aides.

READ ALSO: EU parliament member our trusted advocate  IPOB

Daily Trust reports that Sheikh Sani Yahaya Jingir who is the national chairman of ulama council of the group said those wishing Buhari dead were those afraid of their wrongdoings and were looking for a way out.

He noted that the president will die at his own time as he was human just like every other Nigerian who will eventually die too.

The religious leader said the federal government should urgently buy farm produce from farmers and sell at a subsidized rate to Nigerians to tackle the current hunger in the land.

Jingir said the statements credited to Apostle Johnson Suleman about Fulani herdsmen could cause hatred.

He said: "Any leader irrespective of his religious affiliation making such inciting comment lacks leadership qualities; therefore all religious leaders should be watchful of their statements and should preach peaceful coexistence among Nigerians.

READ ALSO: Religious extremism will destroy Nigeria - Goodluck Jonathan

The cleric also spoke about the Almajiri system of schooling urging Muslim parents to enroll their children in Islamic schools and no the Almajiri own.

He said travelling with teenagers to unknown places by some people in the name of Almajiranci was not the best because many at times those teenagers became victims of child trafficking.

Source: Legit.ng
President Muhammadu Buhari has again been confirmed as being very much alive by the minister of communications Adebayo Shittu.

The President needs prayers for good health

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that Mr Shittu dismissed speculations that the president is dead.

READ ALSO: Over 1,500 defect from APC to PDP in Katsina

Shittu made this revelation at the formal opening of the 31st National Quranic Recitation Competition in Ilorin, Kwara state, where he represented President Buhari.

He said emphatically: President Buhari is not dead then advised Nigerians to continue to continue to pray for him.

Communications minister Adebayo Shittu dismissed the alleged death rumours of President Buhari.

There is need to pray fervently for economic recovery. President Muhammadu Buhari is not dead, he deserves prayers for sound health as well as for the entire growth of the nation, Shittu said.

PAY ATTENTION: Get the latest news on Legit.ng News App

Former president Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has reacted to the rumour that President Muhammadu Buhari has died and he described those peddling the rumours as wicked.

Since President Buharis vacation to the UK, there has been rumour that the president was dead or seriously ill.

Source: Legit.ng
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February 3, 2017 Phil Lupsiewicz , 978-275-1705 Lowell, Massachusetts. LOWELL, MA  Lowell National Historical Park and Lowell Heritage Partnership are seeking nominations from the community to acknowledge the contributions of organizations or individuals in the areas of historic preservation and cultural heritage. Superintendent Celeste Bernardo stated that, These awards give voice to community members and organizations who want to honor those who help preserve and interpret Lowells diverse history and heritage. The award recipients will be announced at the eighth annual Lowell Preservation and Cultural Heritage Awards Reception as part of Doors Open Lowell in May.



These two award categories represent the important nature of the Parks dual mission to  preserve and interpret the nationally significant historical and cultural sites in Lowell. In each area, awards may be presented to nominees in two categories: one from a student enrolled in middle school through college and one from the broader community. "These awards recognizing excellence in preservation and heritage mark a high point in the year for the community," said Paul Marion, president of the Lowell Heritage Partnership. "This is part of our stewardship of the unique asset that is Lowell's history."



Nominees should represent an individual or organization that has demonstrated significant contributions of time and effort to project participation and leadership and activities should be voluntary and non-sectarian.



Nominations, via the attached forms, will be accepted through Friday, March 10, 2017. A summary description with the application should not exceed two pages and include:



FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION: Exemplar projects and activities that have led to the preservation and/or rehabilitation of buildings and landscapes within the City of Lowell that have contributed to enhancing the preservation of Lowells historic character.

A brief summary of the preservation project activities and outcomes.

Documentation of the final product, in terms of resources preserved and their significance, and what they offer in their new role in the citys economic development and quality of life. Materials in addition to written descriptions should be limited to two support items.

A sampling of past award recipients accomplishments in this category include: preservation of cemeteries, numerous mill redevelopment projects, preservation skills training, Hamilton Canal District vision planning, and preservation rehabilitation with LEED certification. FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE: Programs or projects and activities illustrating accomplishments in capturing, conveying, and expressing Lowells unique cultural history and heritage. This may include interpretation and education ventures, festivals, cultural activities, documentation, and more.

A brief summary of the project activities and outcomes including the audiences served and influence these activities have had toward increased understanding and appreciation of Lowell as a city representing a significant national story and its continuing evolution today. Materials in addition to written descriptions should be limited to two support items.

A sampling of past award recipients accomplishments in this category include: documenting and sharing immigrant and refugee experiences, cultural performance with the Angkor Dance Troupe, organization and presentation of ethnic food sales at the Lowell Folk Festival, Kerouac walking tours, historical documentation of the canal system, historical tours of Lowell Cemetery, and preserving and sharing the history of Lowells Irish community. Nominations and any photographs and or supporting materials you may wish to include with a nomination are due at the address below by close of business on Friday, March 10, 2017.



Send nominations to Phil Lupsiewicz by Friday, March 10, 2017. By US Mail at: Lowell National Historical Park, 67 Kirk Street, Lowell, MA, 01852

Or by email to phil_lupsiewicz@nps.gov Nominations and any photographs and or supporting materials you may wish to include with a nomination are due at the address below by close of business on Friday, March 10, 2017.Send nominations to Phil Lupsiewicz by




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February 3, 2017 Tawnya Schoewe , 218-283-6670 Eric Grunwald , 218-286-5258 INTERNATIONAL FALLS, MN  Join Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MN DNR) researcher, Glenn DelGiudice Ph.D., for a presentation on the dramatic 10-year decline of Minnesotas moose population. Dr. DelGuidice will also talk about some of the technology that researchers utilize to study moose ecology.



This program is recommended for participants aged 12 and over. Sunday, February 12, 2:00 to 4:00 pm at the Rainy Lake Visitor Center. For more information contact the Rainy Lake Visitor Center at (218) 286-5258. This presentation is part of the Winter at Voyageurs Event Series which is sponsored, in part, by Voyageurs National Park Association.



Voyageurs National Park Association (VNPA) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization serving as the friends group of Voyageurs National Park. VNPA's mission is to connect people to Voyageurs National Park, enhance the visitor experience, and protect the park for present and future generations. Since the park's establishment, VNPA has served as a partner with the National Park Service in empowering park stewards, implementing special projects with financial and volunteer support, and working to preserve the visitor experience and wild nature of the park for future generations. Learn more at voyageurs.org.



www.nps.gov



About the National Park Service: More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for Americas 417 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov.








SAN SALVADOR  WHEN Hondurass new president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, took office a little more than a month ago, he promised to apply mano dura  the iron fist  against criminals. His plans include granting police officers more freedom to arrest suspects and greater use of the army for public safety. This strategy is a continuation of the hard-line policies of the last few years, which have done nothing to change the fact that Honduras still has the worlds highest homicide rate.

The countrys police forces, plagued by corruption, continue to act as if public safety can be manhandled with a combination of bravado and religion. This is a country whose Public Safety Office website says: All people shall obey the governing authorities, because there is no authority other than God, and those in place have been established by God.

That brand of pious machismo was personified in the former police chief, Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, better known as El Tigre. In December, he was dismissed, probably less because of persistent rumors that he had participated in extrajudicial killings than because of pressure from the United States as a result of those rumors. Casual observers might think that Hondurass leaders had realized that the police needed a fresh start. But those people dont know Honduras.

In July 2011, while reporting a story about organized crime on the Honduran border, I found myself in a pickup truck with El Tigre, on the trail of a band of tractor thieves. This was before he was named chief of the national police. He was the regional police chief in charge of the three western districts on the borders of Guatemala and El Salvador, and therefore on some of the principal routes that cocaine travels in its voyage northward.
CARACAS, Venezuela  The State Department said on Wednesday that it was imposing travel restrictions on Venezuelan officials whom it considered to be responsible for human rights abuses during recent antigovernment protests.

The move followed an embarrassing episode for Washington in which it tried and failed to get custody of a former Venezuelan general who is wanted in the United States on narcotics charges. The episode produced a propaganda victory for President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, a leftist who often accuses Washington of plotting against him.

The former general, Hugo Carvajal, was arrested last week in Aruba at the request of the United States. Venezuela had designated Mr. Carvajal as its consul general to Aruba, but Aruban officials said he did not have diplomatic immunity because they had not accepted his appointment to the post.

However, the Netherlands, which handles some affairs for Aruba, its former colony, ruled that Mr. Carvajal had immunity and ordered him released. The unexpected development caught American diplomats flat-footed.
CARACAS, Venezuela  President Obama plans to sign into law a bill that would impose sanctions on Venezuelan government officials responsible for human rights violations or violence against protesters who took part in antigovernment demonstrations here this year, a White House spokesman said in Washington on Thursday.

Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the United States, but the two countries have had rocky relations during the governments of two leftist presidents, Nicolas Maduro and his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, who died last year.

Mr. Maduro has condemned the proposed sanctions and hinted at possible reprisals.

The gringos now say that they are going to impose sanctions on Venezuela, he said on Wednesday. No one imposes sanctions on Venezuela, because our people decided to be free.

The bill, which passed the Senate and the House this week, directs the president to impose sanctions on Venezuelan officials and others who were involved in human rights violations aimed at protesters or who ordered the arrest or prosecution of someone for exercising freedom of expression or assembly.
The Chinese Embassy expressed shock on Sunday over a riot involving local workers at a Chinese-run sugar plant and criticized Madagascars government for failing to protect Chinese interests. On Wednesday, about 500 workers clashed with government security forces and looted the sugar plant in Morondava. At least two people were killed, according to local accounts. The police said some workers had guns and machetes. The labor protest started when the plants seasonal workers demanded better pay and better conditions, according to local reports. The Chinese Embassy said that the requests were unreasonable.
So she rebranded her campaign. Instead of describing it as a project on the secret U.S. bombing in Laos, she called its mission history, healing, hope.

She brought over a young amputee from Laos who was born after the war and who delivered a message of humanitarian need free from politics.

She targeted members of Congress with large Laotian populations in their districts. In 2010, she testified before Congress, urging more funding for bomb clearance and assistance for victims.

And the attitudes of Lao-Americans have changed in recent years as more have returned to Laos, Ms. Channapha said. As their own personal relationship with the country was evolving and changing, so did their opinion about what we were doing, she said. They were starting to understand that it wasnt about taking sides.

Mr. Kingphet, the ordnance clearance manager, praises Ms. Channaphas efforts, but he said the United States should do more. Many Americans are still unaware of the war in Laos, he said.

Some Americans come here and they are shocked at how many bombs were dropped, he said.

The United States provided roughly 30 percent of the $40 million that charities and governments  including those of Australia, Ireland, Japan, Norway and Switzerland  are contributing to clearance efforts this year. But even with a surge of money, it will be decades before all the unexploded bombs are removed from the Laotian countryside. In the meantime, officials are traveling to remote corners of the impoverished country and urging caution.

Houmphanh Chanthavong, a government official who was among the group visiting Houaykhay village, told residents of the painstaking process to remove ordnance from the ground, the metal detectors and the clearance experts who delicately dig for them.

We keep on digging, he said, and we keep on finding more.
Torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, forced labor and sexual violence are widespread and systematic, the panel said in a report that it will present to the United Nations Human Rights Council this month.

Image President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea at the United Nations General Assembly in 2011. Credit... Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse  Getty Images

Those responsible include the 69-year old Mr. Afwerki, who has governed Eritrea since it gained independence in 1993, and the security services working for him, the commission concluded after a yearlong investigation.

The brutal tactics employed by the government were the tragic product of an initial desire to protect and ensure the survival of the young state that very quickly degenerated into the use of totalitarian practices, the panel said in its report.

Ms. Keetharuth said: It is not surprising to us that these days a large proportion of those crossing the Mediterranean and using other irregular routes to reach Europe are Eritrean.

They are fleeing a country ruled not by law but by fear, she added.

Although Eritrean authorities had imposed draconian measures to stop people from leaving the country, including a shoot-to-kill policy operated for many years in border areas, thousands continue to flee each month.
Mr. Morales, a fierce critic of American corporate influence, wore a white shirt and a dark jacket bearing a picture of the Communist revolutionary Che Guevara on the left breast.

For the first time, I feel like I have a pope: Pope Francis, Mr. Morales said.

Francis has filled four consecutive days with appearances, but other than an environmental critique offered in Ecuador, the pope had hewed mostly to theological topics or broad themes like family, service and mission.

His appearance on Thursday night was at the Second World Meeting of Popular Movements, a congress of global activists working to mobilize and help the poor. Some people wore Che Guevara T-shirts while some indigenous women wore traditional black bowlers.

Francis drew cheers when he called on the activists and others to change the social order: I would even say that the future of humanity is in great measure in your own hands, through your ability to organize and carry out creative alternatives, through your daily efforts to ensure the three Ls  labor, lodging, land.

Francis repeated his condemnation of an economic system rooted in pursuit of money and profits, but in an aside he criticized certain free-trade treaties and austerity, which always tightens the belt of workers and the poor  a likely reference to Greece.
SKOPJE, Macedonia  Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of Macedonia, reeling from a long-running scandal over the wiretapping of thousands of people, has agreed to step down by Jan. 15 to pave the way for new elections in the spring.

The deal was announced early Wednesday after 13 hours of final negotiations between Mr. Gruevski and leaders of the opposition. Johannes Hahn, a European Union commissioner, mediated the talks.

The agreement calls for the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia, the main opposition party, which had walked out of Parliament in a dispute with the governing party, to return to the legislature. After the prime minister resigns, a new government will take control and ease the way for elections on April 24.

The political crisis is over, said Mr. Gruevski, who will be eligible to run again for prime minister in the spring. I am happy with the agreement reached.
He was careful to say that there was no evidence of official Rwandan state support for the rebels, but there were many indications, he said, that Rwanda was being unhelpful.

Rwandan officials categorically deny that the coup leaders are in their country and said Burundis problems were of the governments own making. When you have a deep crisis, looking for a scapegoat is normal, a senior Rwandan official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity about diplomatic matters.

Rwanda has concerns about how the crisis next door could embolden another group of rebels who pose a threat to its own government. The remnants of the losing side in its long civil war, a Hutu militia force known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or F.D.L.R., fled to the forests in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. For a while, Burundi cooperated with Rwanda in hunting the rebels, but according to the Rwandan government official, that cooperation stopped suddenly last year.

We know that some leaders of the F.D.L.R. met with officials in Burundi, the official said. The F.D.L.R. is a cancer because it espouses an ideology of genocide.

Mr. Nyamitwe denied that Burundi was assisting the group and said there was not a single F.D.L.R. soldier in Burundi.

Against a backdrop of deepening distrust, the assassination of General Adolphe, as he was widely known, sent tremors throughout the region. President Nkurunziza went on state radio to urge calm, calling on every Burundian, in the hills and the capital, to stay united. And the State Department issued a statement calling on all sides to renounce violence and to redouble their efforts to engage in a transparent, inclusive and comprehensive political dialogue.
MOUNT PLEASANT  Employees at Promotions Unlimited didnt just lose their jobs last week when the company abruptly closed  some may have also lost their last paychecks in a widespread attempt to pull the money out of their bank accounts.

On Jan. 27, Promotions Unlimited, 7601 Durand Ave., discharged its last 48 employees after laying off about 30 others in the preceding several weeks. Employees say the company, a local distributor to independent pharmacies and in business for decades, did not pay them for their last week of work.

But the damage may have been even worse than that for some of the ex-workers.

An undated letter from company owner Lorraine Greenberg to the former employees, addressed to Dear ex-employee, informs the former employees of the permanent closing by Roosevelt Capital LLC, doing business as Promotions Unlimited.

Greenberg states that 77 employees lost their jobs and adds, No severance will be provided in connection with the eliminations.

Greenberg also writes that Paylocity, the payroll company Promotions was using, is reversing direct deposits of ex-employee paychecks.

Debra Krehbiel, who was the accounts payable supervisor at Promotions/Roosevelt, said Paylocity normally did payroll for Roosevelt on Wednesday, then got the money from the company on Thursday. She said she assumes Paylocity learned, on that Friday, that the money was not available from Roosevelt to cover the Jan. 27 paycheck deposits.

During the past couple of days, former Promotions employees have been working with their financial institutions to prevent those deposit reversals. For any reversal that may have succeeded, and if people worked until the last day, they would have no pay for their last three weeks at Promotions.

Krehbiel said she split her paychecks between two financial institutions. She was able to stop payment from her Chase Bank account and closed the other account.

Paylocity could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Shameless

Michelle Humburg, one of those discharged on Jan. 27, was the sales and customer service lead at Promotions Unlimited and had worked there 14 years. She said she got Greenbergs letter Wednesday and immediately contacted Educators Credit Union.

Humburg was able to move her money from checking to savings, thereby thwarting the deposit reversal. But she had to leave her checking account open because of a small pending charge with Redbox, and worried that there could be a reversal attempt that would put her into negative figures.

Humburg said so many fearful ex-Promotions employees contacted ECU about the attempted withdrawals that the credit union decided not to allow them.

I think its shameless, Humburg said about the treatment of employees by Roosevelt/Promotions. Its very shady and its shameful.

They (had) some very dedicated and honest people that stood by them till the end, she added. And we knew it was a sinking ship.

Humburg said employees were, by company policy, owed pay for vacation they had earned, in the case of termination. She lost three weeks of earned vacation, with no compensation, and a friend there lost four weeks.

Humburg also said money was withdrawn from the Jan. 13 and 27 paychecks for their 401(k) retirement contributions and medical and dental insurance  but that it had not gone to those places.

Deborah Mazzie, the company tracing specialist who worked there for 26 years until being laid off Jan. 13, said she learned Thursday morning that Roosevelt Capital or Paylocity was attempting to take a total of $954.72 from her and her partner Terry Yorks combined checking and savings accounts.

Because the withdrawals were still pending, Mazzie and York were able to prevent them  at the cost of $60 in fees, Mazzie said. But she said she knows of at least two other ex-employees who did see their paycheck deposits taken back.

State Sen. Van Wanggaards office is looking into whether the move constitutes wage theft, Wanggaards chief of staff Scott Kelly said Thursday.

Kelly said workers can file a labor standards complaint with the state Department of Workforce Development as a first step to collect money lost.

Owners letter

In her letter, Greenberg blames the companys former lender, Franklin Capital, for bringing down Promotions Unlimited, saying the closing was due to a sudden and unexpected refusal by the companys lender, Franklin Capital, to provide the company with access to necessary financing to continue operations.

What a joke. Thats baloney, Humburg commented about the attempt to blame the lender.

Greenberg also attempts to paint Roosevelt as blameless by writing that the circumstances prompting these actions were sudden, unexpected, profound, and beyond the companys control.

Greenberg could not be reached for comment on Thursday.

Employees did not view the end as unexpected. Like Humburg, Mazzie also said employees widely expected Promotions Unlimited to close within the next few months because vendors were not getting paid, except for the larger ones who required payment in advance.

And because some vendors had stopped supplying merchandise, toward the end Promotions Unlimited was only able to partially fill some orders from pharmacies, Mazzie said.

Wisconsin Circuit Court online records also suggest a company with financial troubles. Those records show one court action filed against Promotions Unlimited in January, six last year, none for 2014 or 2015 but about 70 court actions involving the company from 1996-2013.

At one time, Promotions Unlimited had as many as 339 employees, Mazzie said.

On Thursday, those laid off at the end, who had not already found other jobs, attended a rapid response session with Workforce Development Center personnel at the SC Johnson iMET Center, 2320 Renaissance Blvd., Sturtevant.

Participating in that meeting was Wes Gable, their union representative for Teamsters Local 200 which represented the warehouse workers. Greenbergs letter to the ex-employees mentioned Gable as their representative but provided the wrong phone number for him.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia  Cambodian politics is in the midst of an ugly crisis. Prime Minister Hun Sen, after officially winning the 2013 election by just a narrow margin and facing months of massive anti-government protests, seemed to have regained control. Yet in recent weeks the authorities have cracked down on the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, C.N.R.P.

For a prime minister who has mastered a form of kleptocratic electoral authoritarianism during three decades in power, the resort to violence, intimidation and judicial harassment betrays Hun Sens great anxiety about the prospects of his party in the next general election in 2018.

On Oct. 26, two C.N.R.P. parliamentarians were pulled out of their cars outside the National Assembly and badly beaten by thugs while the police looked on. The same day a mob descended on the house of the C.N.R.P.s deputy leader, Kem Sokha, pelting it with rocks while his wife cowered indoors. A few days later, Kem Sokha was unseated as first vice-president of the National Assembly.

On Nov. 13, an arrest warrant was issued against the C.N.R.P.s leader, Sam Rainsy, who was traveling out of the country, in connection with a 2008 defamation case brought by the foreign minister. Sam Rainsy was soon stripped of his position as National Assembly representative, and of parliamentary immunity. Several more dubious charges have been brought against him since then; he now faces at least 17 years in prison. He has not returned to Cambodia.
He has a black jacket, but he has not been in the group long enough to earn the Odin insignia on the back. I dont think that the police have enough resources, he said.

The 1,200 new asylum seekers seem to be well aware that they are the subject of considerable controversy and fear. Some of them are afraid of us, said Ahmed Ramzi al-Bayati, 22, an asylum seeker from Iraq. When they see us, they step aside.

But he said he has nonetheless been made to feel welcome by volunteers and instances of local hospitality.

I think they are afraid for their country, he said of the Finns. They dont want anyone to demolish it after what they did to build it. No one wants that. But if they see the good side of us ..., he trailed off and smiled.

Mayor Anna-Kaisa Ikonen said most people in Tampere view the influx of migrants with a moderate mix of generosity and pragmatism that belies the extremism on both sides of the issues. I hope we wont see this polarization going any further, she said.

Vigilante patrols definitely are not the tradition, she said, stressing that she has always felt safe in her city, but that on the other hand, taking to the streets dressed in a clown suit was probably not my way of doing things.

Taina Kopra, the ringmaster of the local Sorin Circus and an experienced clown teacher, reviewed videos of the clowns at a demonstration in Tampere and found their performance wanting because they were inconsistent in sticking to their characters.

It may not be good clowning, she said, but it certainly seems they got their message across.
BEIRUT, Lebanon  Saudi Arabia said Friday that it was stopping payment on $4 billion worth of military aid and other support for the army and security services of Lebanon because the country did not condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

The decision was a new step in the proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, who are on opposing sides in the wars in Yemen and Syria and competing for influence elsewhere across the Middle East.

Lebanon, with its diverse sectarian composition, has long been a battleground for the two regional powers, with Shiite Iran bankrolling Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, and Sunni Saudi Arabia supporting opposing political parties and figures.

But Saudi influence has waned in recent years as its preferred politicians have lost influence in Lebanon, and Hezbollah has emerged as the countrys most powerful military force.
A person I now consider my hero was searching for people to help and he found us, Mr. Zambrano recalled. He opened a hole and went to find help to get us out. Mr. Zambrano managed to escape with only scrapes on his arms, face and legs.

I am 21 years old, but beginning today Im counting from 1 because I was reborn, he said, tears in his eyes. Believe me, I was reborn.

Not everyone in the building was so fortunate. Four other occupants died in the collapse, including another pharmacy employee, Vicky Chavez, 31. Her father, Carlos Chavez, and a group of neighbors were still removing the rubble, piece by piece, on Monday morning to free her body. By early afternoon, they had taken her corpse away.

The other three victims were a couple and their young son who had stopped by the pharmacy to buy some medicine, witnesses said. Rescuers who dug out their bodies from under the debris found the child and mother still holding each other.

The office of President Rafael Correa reported that rescue crews were flying in from around Latin America as well as from Europe. Hundreds of aid workers from abroad were already in the disaster zone by Monday morning, with the largest contingents so far including 120 from Mexico, 80 from Spain and 49 from Chile, officials said.

In some of the worst-hit areas, like sections of Portoviejo, the Ecuadorean military set up cordons to restrict traffic and to allow rescue personnel to work more easily. The authorities were also concerned about further collapses in the event of aftershocks. Indeed, at 1:30 p.m. local time Monday, a 4.6-magnitude tremor registered here, sowing panic, including among the rescue workers, who feared that the vibrations might topple structures that had already been compromised by Saturdays earthquake.
DAKAR, Senegal  President Ali Bongo Ondimba of Gabon has been narrowly re-elected, according to results released by election officials on Wednesday.

Mr. Bongo won last weekends election, receiving 49.8 percent of the vote and edging out his opponent, Jean Ping, by less than two percentage points, according to the results released by the Interior Ministry. A constitutional court must certify the vote for it to become official.

Supporters of Mr. Ping, a former chairman of the African Union, who received 48.2 percent of the vote, declared the results fraudulent and demanded a recount. Gabons capital, Libreville, was bracing for violence as election observers pleaded for peace.
The New Years Day concert in the Golden Hall at the Musikverein in Vienna is as much a part of the holiday season as those rambunctious family gatherings and the kiss that follows the screaming countdown to the new year.

The concert by the Vienna Philharmonic, broadcast in almost 100 countries, is held each New Years Day with a different guest conductor. It is a celebration of music that is often heavy on waltzes by the Strauss dynasty and launchings of confetti, a real treat for those lucky enough to secure one of only 2,000 tickets available through a lottery system.

It is the hardest ticket in the world to get regarding classical music, said Bogdan Roscic, the president of Sony Music Masterworks, which each year since 2012 has released a recording of the concert shortly after the performance. It has an incredibly uplifting atmosphere. And it sends a message  and I marvel every year how well it captures a moment  that despite all the madness going on, you simply want to believe an optimistic message that there is something great ahead of you.

The 2017 concert has the potential to be something even more: The orchestra will be celebrating not only the 175th anniversary of the Vienna Philharmonic, but also the 300th anniversary of the birth of Empress Maria Theresa and the 150th anniversary of the first performance of Johann Strauss IIs Blue Danube waltz, performed every year at the concert. (All the Strauss references below refer to him.)
The executive in charge of Goldman Sachss restructuring business, Roopesh Shah, has left the firm to join a rival, Evercore Partners.

He will become a senior managing director at Evercore and is expected to start around May.

The move to Evercore comes during a prolonged slump in the restructuring advisory business, in which bankers help companies reorganize their debts, including through Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings. Along with PJT Partners, Lazard and Houlihan Lokey, Evercore runs one of the more prominent restructuring practices on Wall Street.

Mr. Shah had assumed control of Goldmans business in 2015 when his predecessor, Bruce H. Mendelsohn, left to join Perella Weinberg Partners.

Mr. Shah is the latest Goldman banker to leave for Evercore. Two years ago, the independent investment bank hired away William Anderson, Goldmans longtime specialist in defending companies against activist shareholders.
Ivanka Trump stilettos will soon be harder to find at Nordstrom.

The department store chain said on Thursday that it had decided to put the brakes on its relationship with Ms. Trump and removed her brand from a list on its site. Weve said all along we make buying decisions based on performance, Nordstrom said in a statement. In this case, based on the brands performance, weve decided not to buy it for this season, referring to the spring.

A spokesman for the brand disputed Nordstroms assertion that it had not bought clothes for the coming season.

The move comes amid an effort by what is called the #GrabYourWallet campaign to encourage shoppers to boycott products with ties to President Trump, his family and his donors.

In November, Nordstrom defended its decision to sell Ms. Trumps products. We hope that offering a vendors products isnt misunderstood as us taking a political position, the company wrote on Twitter on Nov. 2. Were not.
When Stefan Larsson joined Ralph Lauren as its chief executive less than two years ago, to work beside the fashion houses founder, he had big ideas for transforming the stagnant brands offerings into must-have clothing for the 21st century.

But as it turned out, all of Mr. Larssons ideas did not work for Mr. Lauren.

Citing creative differences between them, the company said on Thursday that Mr. Larsson would leave May 1, an abrupt shake-up for one of the countrys most recognizable brands.

Stefan and I share a love and respect for the DNA of this great brand, and we both recognize the need to evolve, Mr. Lauren said in a statement. However, we have found that we have different views on how to evolve the creative and consumer-facing parts of this business.

The shake-up adds uncertainty about the future of Ralph Lauren. Like many other brands that helped put American fashion on the global map, Ralph Lauren has recently struggled to reinvent itself. That struggle has been exacerbated by global slowdowns in high-end fashion, resulting from currency fluctuations and consumer unease, that have increased pressure to upset the status quo.
Dark Night, written and directed by Tim Sutton, is a movie about a massacre at a movie theater. It was inspired by, and explicitly refers to, the fatal shootings committed by James Holmes at an Aurora, Colo., showing of the film The Dark Knight Rises. The wordplay of the title is sufficiently egregious that a potential viewer is apt to think, Well, if it got a distributor, it has to be better than that. It is not.

The movie takes place in Florida, in the aftermath of the Aurora shooting, and follows a small group of characters who converge in another movie theater, at which another shooting occurs.

Until its climax, which clearly seeks to be congratulated on its restraint, Dark Night is not much more than an arty bore, its visual approach drawing from thematically related (and much better) films, such as Gus Van Sants Elephant and Steven Soderberghs Bubble. Despite filming in a style some might describe as clear and plain, Mr. Sutton cannot contain his patronizing attitude toward his mostly young Middle American characters. One, a seemingly appearance-obsessed woman, is introduced in a screen-filling shot of her rear end clad in psychedelic-colored tights.

Mr. Sutton is also not above some whos gonna do it? manipulation. One character is an alienated teenager with a crew cut. I wonder how the system has failed him. And whoa, whats this? An Iraq war veteran cleaning guns? Watch out for that guy! Or maybe not.
Because the documentary Oklahoma City is an episode of American Experience, opening theatrically before airing on PBS on Tuesday, and because it documents events that were widely broadcast on television, much of the movie plays like a tightly edited rundown of familiar material.

But by situating the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the decades-spanning context of the growth of antigovernment militias in the United States, the movie emphasizes a chilling (if not altogether new) point: that Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for the bombing, did not emerge from a vacuum.

Image Timothy McVeigh Credit... The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum/American Experience Films

The documentary never loses sight of the 168 who died in the bombing. The director, Barak Goodman, includes interviews with an impressive array of witnesses and first-responders: a surgeon, the police, employees at the Murrah buildings Social Security Administration and Housing and Urban Development offices. A mother remembers envisioning digging for her son in the rubble.
The streets of Upper Manhattan were quiet, but a police officer saw two men standing in front of a blue mailbox at Broadway and Academy Street.

It was around 1:30 a.m., Jan. 17.

One of the men was holding a plastic bottle, which was tied to a string. While his partner stood lookout, the other man lowered the bottle into the mailbox, as if he were feeding a line off a pier, played the string a bit, then pulled it out.

Four pieces of mail were stuck to the bottle.

When the police officer stepped forward, the two men took off, leaving behind the plastic bottle. They were quickly caught. The mail was stuck on the bottle with glue.

Such devices are commonly used to obtain mail from inside of mailboxes, Officer Vito Guagenti said in a criminal complaint.
BERKELEY, Calif.  What do you do as a reporter when a protest begins? You cover it.

But what about when the man being protested is known for rhetoric that makes you nauseated? Or when you see a student get beaten up because he looked like a Nazi?

How do you remain objective?

Those were the questions that faced me when, as a reporter for the student newspaper at the University of California, Berkeley, I covered the protest on Wednesday night at the college that turned violent, drawing national attention. I didnt know what to think about it all, and truthfully, I still dont.

The protesters were demonstrating against a scheduled speech on campus by Milo Yiannopoulos, a Breitbart editor and right-wing provocateur, who had been invited by the Berkeley College Republicans.

This was always going to be a controversial event. Mr. Yiannopoulos has been giving inflammatory speeches on a college tour meant to push back against what he sees as the stifling politically correct left. But his language has veered decidedly toward hate speech. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, for example, he singled out a transgender student for ridicule by name.
Lets imagine for a moment Rex Tillerson, the newly installed secretary of state, awakening to this tweet from President Trump about an important American ally:

Do you believe it? The Obama administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!

First, the illegal immigrants are in fact desperate people fleeing conflict whose status as refugees has in most cases been officially recognized. Second, as refugees, they have the right, under the Geneva Conventions, of which the United States is a signatory, to be treated without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin. Third, the thousands are in fact about 1,250 of the 2,500 men, women and children who, for more than three years now, have been marooned on two remote South Pacific islands, Manus and Nauru, in appalling conditions that have seen suicide, deaths through negligence, a killing, and relentless mental abuse. Fourth, this dumb deal reflects the pressing Australian interest in finding a way out of its predicament with the refugees and the American interest in strengthening its Australian alliance at a time when United States Marines are rotating through Darwin and China is flexing its muscles in the South China Sea. Fifth, diplomacy is about identifying shared interests; it stands no chance when the tweeted tantrums of a tempestuous president constitute Washingtons highest-level communications with a world held in America-first contempt.

The notion must cross Tillersons mind that Trumps inaccurate tweet is needless provocation of a friend; that simultaneously infuriating Asian and European allies may not be smart; and that his task will be a thankless one as Trumps White House coterie hatches seat-of-the-pants policy and leaves his already restive State Department to deal with weighty issues in Luxembourg and the Solomon Islands.

Lets further imagine that all this passes through Tillersons head before he grabs the Washington Post and discovers that Trump has taken his Australia bashing further. He has hung up on Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after telling him its his worst call by far with world leaders (behind Vladimir Putin, of course), and accused Turnbull of preparing to send the next Boston bombers Americas way.
This country needs a few good Republicans  one more would do  to rescue it from Betsy DeVos, one of President Trumps worst cabinet choices and his pick to run the Department of Education.

The vote to confirm Ms. DeVos is expected as soon as Monday, and the Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine now say theyll vote against her, citing hundreds of calls theyve received from furious voters. The result would be a tie that Vice President Mike Pence would break in Ms. DeVoss favor. The extra Republican vote could come from one of several independent-minded senators; one candidate is Lamar Alexander, an expert on public schools who actually owes the country a good turn because of his failure as chairman of the committee vetting Ms. DeVos to question her closely and to give more time to her critics.

There are few more telling examples of Mr. Trumps disdain for the federal governments critical role in lifting up Americas schoolchildren than his choice of Ms. DeVos. She has spent years funneling her inherited fortune into a campaign to replace the nations traditional public schools with federally funded charter schools, regardless of the latters performance, and supporting vouchers, which help families send children to private or parochial schools and drain funds from public schools that need more, not less, support.

Mr. Alexander didnt give senators much time to question Ms. DeVos, but it was sufficient to reveal her near-total unfamiliarity with public education law, standards and even problems. A conservative ideologue, she fell back on most policy questions to an assertion that states should make their own rules, even on settled matters of federal law, like access for handicapped children.
Why will it prove so difficult to back up Mr. Flynns words with significant action?

First, contrary to a widespread perception in the region and among Mr. Obamas domestic critics that his administration had tilted toward Iran and failed to respond to its destabilizing behavior, under Mr. Obama, the United States made significant efforts to contain Iran. Indeed, while the United States rightly provides vast military, political and intelligence support to its partners in the region, even since the nuclear deal it still does not trade with or invest in Iran. It also continues to maintain a wide array of sanctions related to terrorism, human rights and ballistic missiles, and deploy tens of thousands of military personnel on a network of nearby bases. Short of abandoning the nuclear deal, which would isolate the United States and let Iran resume its nuclear weapons program  creating a far greater set of problems than ballistic missile tests  there is simply not a lot of space for significantly reconfiguring our regional alignment against Iran.

Second, as Mr. Trump looks for ways to punish Iran for the tests, he is unlikely to find much international support, which would be essential to make any further sanctions effective. Indeed, as officials in his administration have acknowledged, ballistic missile tests are not part of the nuclear agreement, and even United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231, which Mr. Flynn cited as the basis for punishing Iran, only calls upon Iran to refrain from certain missile activities. Why? Because when Mr. Obama sought to include a prohibition on ballistic missiles in the Iran deal, or at least extend a previous Security Council resolution banning them, not just Russia and China but even our European allies in the nuclear negotiations refused. They argued that the ballistic missile ban was put in place in 2010 only to pressure Iran to reach a nuclear deal, and they refused to extend it once that deal had been concluded.

Third and most important, as President Trump contemplates his options, he will also have to consider Irans likely response. If all the administration has in mind is an expansion of existing sanctions, Iran may not react, but that hardly seems to be what Mr. Flynn meant by officially putting Iran on notice. If it were, Iran would likely just carry on with its missile tests and maintain its rather inexpensive military support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen, effectively taunting Mr. Flynn and making his threat empty.

If, on the other hand, President Trump plans to back up his advisers words with military action  like carrying out a threat he made last fall that if Irans boats circled American warships and made gestures at their crews they will be shot out of the water  he will need to be prepared to manage the consequences.

With Irans presidential elections scheduled for the spring, and its own hard-line constituencies opposed to the nuclear deal and eager to cast America as their implacable enemy, Iran is unlikely to back down in the face of mere warnings, or even symbolic military strikes. It has its own range of response options, including terrorist attacks against Americans, attacks by Shiite militias against the thousands of American troops in Iraq, or pressure on the Iraqi government to deny the United States access to the bases where it trains Iraqi security forces. Any of these responses might prompt an escalation by the United States, including direct use of force against Iran, especially in the wake of all the administrations tough talk. I hope that President Trump met with his military advisers and thought this all through before sending Mr. Flynn out to make his remarks.
INTERNATIONAL

An article on Jan. 6 about Japans new wave of genderless young men, who are developing a public identity and a career out of a new androgynous style, gave an outdated professional affiliation for Junko Mitsuhashi, who suggested that the young men are using fashion to challenge the social order, and misstated her former title. She is an adjunct lecturer in gender studies at Meiji University; she is no longer affiliated with Chuo University. At Chuo, she was a visiting researcher and lecturer, not a professor of gender studies.



An article on Jan. 24 about a new round of Syrian peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan, misstated the timing of the construction of the Palace of Nations in Geneva, where previous rounds of talks have been held. It was built before World War II, not after.

BUSINESS DAY

An article on the Automobiles page on Jan. 20 about a large collection of vehicle marketing brochures, many of which were being sold at an auction, misstated part of the name of the company in Berlin, Conn., where the auction is scheduled to take place on April 1. It is Nest Egg Auctions, not Nest Egg Gallery.

MENS STYLE

An article on Page D4 today about the San Francisco home of the designer Ken Fulk omits part of the title of his book. It is Mr. Ken Fulks Magical World, not Ken Fulks Magical World.
Kevin Geer, a prodigious character actor best known for his work in theater, including roles on Broadway in the 2004 revival of Twelve Angry Men and Warren Leights family drama Side Man, died on Jan. 25 at his home in Manhattan. He was 64.

The actor Michael Mastro, a friend who appeared with Mr. Geer in both those plays, said that the cause appeared to be a sudden heart attack.

A lanky actor with sharp features, Mr. Geer was an Off Broadway fixture who could command a stage. Mr. Geer rages, goes to pieces and exudes roguish charm, Alvin Klein wrote in The New York Times in reviewing his performance in a revival of Eugene ONeills Anna Christie in 1990 at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven.

The playwright and director Kenneth Lonergan, a longtime friend who directed Mr. Geer in his 2012 comedy Medieval Play and his 2011 film Margaret, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that its hard to imagine New York theater without him, adding that Mr. Geer was more forceful on the stage than on the screen.
Ms. Shalala, in an interview on Thursday, acknowledged the difficulties. Last year was a tough year, she said, because people were beating on us with nonsense, a reference to bruising political attacks claiming that donors were using the foundation to curry favor with the Clintons.

Image Last year was a tough year, said Donna E. Shalala, president of the Clinton Foundation, whose tenure is in question. Credit... Rodrigo Varela/Getty Images

Revenues were down for 2016, Ms. Shalala acknowledged, in part because of voluntary restrictions and the fact that the charitys major fund-raisers  the former president and his daughter, Chelsea  were campaigning for Mrs. Clinton. Revenues dropped during the economic downturn, too, Ms. Shalala said.

Still, both Mr. Clinton and Ms. Shalala, who also cited concerns in keeping talent, expressed optimism. At the end of the day, she said, I think this is going to be as it always was: a creative, dynamic foundation that helps to improve the lives of millions.

As the foundation looks within, many experts said it was right to assess its future, including whether a great enough need still existed for its most prominent asset: the ability to bring the private sector together with charities to help underserved causes.

Its certainly a different landscape than it was when the foundations work began, said Carolyn Miles, president and chief executive of Save the Children, one of the foundations early partners. I would say you have to come back as something slightly different.
The reversal, explained in a memo from the countrys chief immigration judge, MaryBeth Keller, to judges nationwide, said the change would let the courts focus more on immigrants in detention centers who are awaiting deportation hearings, a costly population and a higher priority for the government. Families and children applying for asylum are usually not detained while their cases are being considered.

Lauren Alder, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the arm of the Justice Department that oversees the immigration courts, said the new policy reflected the present state of the immigration system, adding that changes in court practices should not be interpreted as long-term solutions to fix the broken system, but are short-term solutions to manage the growing caseload.

While they applauded the change in policy, some immigration advocates also interpreted it as a bid to clear the dockets for an anticipated increase in deportations under President Trump, who has promised a more restrictive approach to immigration. Since taking office on Jan. 20, he has signed orders that threatened to punish cities that do not collaborate with federal efforts to identify undocumented immigrants, paused refugee resettlement and temporarily suspended immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

The Obama administrations rocket docket approach was an attempt to deal with a flood of border crossings, many of them unaccompanied minors arriving without parents. Under the policy, those seeking asylum and other forms of relief would have their cases decided within months, rather than years.

The policy was widely criticized by advocates who felt it unrealistic to expect children and parents fleeing violence to prepare asylum cases  which are among the most complex immigration cases  within months. Immigration courts, unlike criminal courts, do not confer the right to legal representation. Those who go before immigration judges must pay for their own lawyers or seek help from a limited number of pro bono representatives.
RACINE  A 37-year-old Racine man with a long list of convictions  many of them for obstructing or resisting police  is facing more felony charges after he allegedly led a Racine police officer on a high-speed chase through Downtown last month.

Walter J. Wilson, of the 2700 block of Washington Avenue, was charged Thursday with attempting to flee or elude a traffic officer and first-degree recklessly endangering safety.

According to the criminal complaint:

A Racine police officer was in his squad car just before 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 13, when he spotted a silver Ford Focus with an illegal window tint in the 600 block of Park Avenue. A few minutes later, the officer pulled over the vehicle, which he recognized as belonging to the mother of Wilsons child. But as the officer approached the car on foot, the driver reportedly sped off.

The vehicle continued west down Sixth Street towards Marquette Street, swerving around another vehicle, reaching speeds of 70 mph in a 25 mph zone and allegedly failing to stop at a stop sign at Sixth Street and South Memorial Drive.

The car later reportedly sped through the parking lot and pharmacy drive-thru at Walgreens, 819 N Memorial Drive, fleeing east onto State Street where it reportedly ran a red light at State Street and Douglas Avenue. It was then that the officer terminated the pursuit for safety reasons, the complaint states.

In an effort to confirm that Wilson was indeed the suspect driver, the officer contacted the owner of the vehicle who reportedly confirmed that she had given her car to Wilson to use that day. The woman was then notified that her car was at the Gaslight parking structure near the Downtown Double Tree Hotel, 223 Gaslight Circle.

The officer later obtained video surveillance footage from the hotel showing Wilson entering the lobby of the hotel at 3:15 p.m., less than two minutes after the pursuit ended and wearing the same clothes.

Probable cause was found to pursue the charges against Wilson on Thursday during an initial appearance in Racine County Circuit Court.

As of Thursday night, Wilson remained in the Racine County Jail on a $10,000 bond, according to online jail records. He has been assigned a preliminary hearing for Feb. 8 at the county Law Enforcement Center, 717 Wisconsin Ave.
Updated March 13, 2018: President Trump announced that he had ousted Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and intended to replace him with Mike Pompeo, now the C.I.A. director.

Mr. Trump also named Gina Haspel as his choice to become the next C.I.A. director.

WASHINGTON  As a clandestine officer at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, Gina Haspel oversaw the torture of a terrorism suspect and later took part in an order to destroy videotapes documenting the brutal interrogations at a secret prison in Thailand.

On Thursday, Ms. Haspel was named the deputy director of the C.I.A.

The elevation of Ms. Haspel, a veteran widely respected among her colleagues, to the No. 2 job at the C.I.A. was a rare public signal of how, under the Trump administration, the agency is being led by officials who appear to take a far kinder view of one of its darker chapters than their immediate predecessors.

Over the past eight years, C.I.A. leaders defended dozens of agency personnel who had taken part in the now-banned torture program, even as they vowed never to resume the same harsh interrogation methods. But President Trump has said repeatedly that he thinks torture works. And the new C.I.A. chief, Mike Pompeo, has said that waterboarding and other techniques do not even constitute torture, and praised as patriots those who used such methods in the early days of the fight against Al Qaeda.
WASHINGTON  When President Trump traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware this week to pay respects to a fallen member of the Navy SEALs, it was his daughter Ivanka  not his wife, Melania  who accompanied him.

Mrs. Trumps conspicuous absence at the solemn ceremony only underscored the fact that she vanished from public view days after her husbands swearing-in two weeks ago. And it raised new questions about what role, if any, she plans to play as first lady.

Mrs. Trump broke with decades of tradition when she decided last year that she would not move into the White House when her husband took office, and would remain instead in the familys Manhattan penthouse so the couples 10-year-old son, Barron, could finish the school year. That decision has made for an unusually slow transition into what has traditionally been a hectic, demanding and heavily scrutinized role.

It was not until Wednesday that she named Lindsay Reynolds, who worked in the White House under President George W. Bush, as her chief of staff, a position that most first ladies fill before Inauguration Day. Mrs. Trump has still not filled other crucial positions, including social secretary and communications director.
WASHINGTON  After a Kansas man was convicted of possessing and sending child pornography, he appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. The case came before a three-judge panel that included Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, who is now President Trumps Supreme Court nominee.

The Kansas man had been caught because an AOL system that scans outgoing emails for known images of child pornography detected such a file attached to a message he had sent. The AOL system forwarded the email to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which opened it without a warrant and alerted law enforcement officials.

Citing the Fourth Amendment, Judge Gorsuchs panel overturned his conviction last August.

Writing for the panel, the judge expressed confidence that in the future, the centers law enforcement partners will struggle not at all to obtain warrants to open emails when the facts in hand suggest, as they surely did here, that a crime against a child has taken place. (He also left open the possibility of reinstating the evidence against the Kansas man after further proceedings.)
WASHINGTON  President Trump, at loggerheads with congressional Republicans over the best way to overhaul the tax code, may have come toward Capitol Hill on a key sticking point, the way imports should be taxed, after a meeting at the White House on Thursday, said Representative Kevin Brady, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Congressional Republicans are trying to nudge Mr. Trump away from one of his big campaign promises: a 35 percent tariff on any product made by an American company at an overseas factory, then imported into the United States market. Success in getting the president off that applause line will be critical to getting tax legislation passed in 2017 and fulfilling a central promise that Republicans have been making to voters for years.

At the same time, both sides want to end what they see as a penalty on American exporters, who compete with overseas factories that can game the system for lower tax rates. Like us, theyre just not satisfied with a tax code today that favors foreign products over U.S. products, and I think they are looking carefully at ending that made in America export tax so that we can compete around the world, Mr. Brady, Republican of Texas, said of the Trump administration.

At the White House meeting, Mr. Brady was joined by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, chairman of the Finance Committee, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat, and Representative Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on Ways and Means. The conversation with Mr. Trump also focused on trade and renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.
BERKELEY, Calif.  Fires burned in the cradle of free speech. Furious at a lecture organized on campus, demonstrators wearing ninja-like outfits smashed windows, threw rocks at the police and stormed a building. The speech? The university called it off.

Protest has been synonymous with the University of California, Berkeley, from the earliest days of the free speech movement, when students fought to expand political expression on campus beginning in 1964. Those protests would set off student activism movements that roiled campuses across the country throughout the 1960s. Since then, countless demonstrators have flocked to Sproul Plaza each day to have their voices heard on issues from civil rights and apartheid to Israel, tuition costs and more.

But now the university is under siege for canceling a speech by the incendiary right-wing writer Milo Yiannopoulos and words like intolerance, long used by the left, are being used by critics to condemn the protests on Wednesday night that ultimately prevented Mr. Yiannopoulos from speaking.

Naweed Tahmas, a junior who is a member of the Berkeley College Republicans, the group that invited Mr. Yiannopoulos to campus, said the cancellation had made him more determined to fight for freedom of speech on campus.
ANKARA, Turkey  Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany emphasized the importance of freedom of opinion in talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Thursday, during a visit meant to help improve frayed ties between the two NATO allies.

In her first trip to Ankara since a failed military coup in Turkey in July, Ms. Merkel said she had agreed with Mr. Erdogan on the need for closer cooperation in the fight against terrorism, including by the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K.

Germany and Turkey have been at odds over Ankaras crackdown on dissidents since the abortive July 15 coup, as well as Turkish allegations, rejected by Berlin, that Germany is harboring Kurdish and far-left militants.

In such a time of profound political upheaval, everything must be done to continue to protect the separation of powers and, above all, freedom of opinion and the diversity of society, Ms. Merkel said at a news conference when asked about concerns over proposed constitutional changes that would strengthen Mr. Erdogans powers. She added that she had also raised the issue of press freedom.
UNITED NATIONS  Nikki R. Haley, the new American ambassador to the United Nations, condemned Russia on Thursday for its recent aggressive actions in eastern Ukraine.

We do want to better our relations with Russia, Ms. Haley said during her first remarks to an open briefing of the United Nations Security Council. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.

She made it clear that American sanctions imposed after Russias annexation of Crimea would remain in place.

During her Senate confirmation hearing last month, Ms. Haley also expressed support for continuing the sanctions and accused Russia of committing war crimes in the Syrian conflict. But her strong criticism of the government of President Vladimir V. Putin put her at odds with President Trump, who has expressed a desire for warmer relations with the Kremlin.
International lawyers have filed a criminal complaint against nine Syrian security and intelligence officials in a Spanish court, accusing them of torture and other human rights violations. It is the first case specifically citing members of Syrias government to be heard in a Western court.

The names of the officials have not been made public, because prosecutors hope this will improve their chances of apprehending the officials outside Syria if arrest warrants are issued. The lawyers who filed the complaint on Wednesday said the defendants included senior officers who ran a torture center in Damascus, Syrias capital, in 2013 and leaders of the Syrian intelligence and security services, who are part of President Bashar al-Assads inner circle.

The court, Spains National Court, has previously taken up international human rights cases in Latin America, most notably when it ordered the arrest of the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, while he was visiting London. Mr. Pinochet was kept under house arrest in Britain for 18 months until he was released because of poor health.

In the Syrian case, the court has received 3,600 pages of evidence, including signed orders, detailing acts of brutality that the lawyers say will link senior Syrian officials to atrocities, torture and executions in government prisons and military-run hospitals.
WASHINGTON  The White House on Thursday defended the planning and execution of a Special Operations raid in Yemen on Sunday  the first approved by President Trump since taking office  that left one American commando dead and three others injured, and most likely killed several civilians, including children.

Sean M. Spicer, President Trumps press secretary, offered an unusually detailed chronology of the mission involving members of the Navys SEAL Team 6 against the home of a senior Qaeda collaborator. He said it started with a plan submitted by the militarys Central Command in November under the Obama administration and ended with Mr. Trump receiving updates in the White House on Saturday night as the mission unfolded eight time zones away.

This was a very, very well-thought-out and executed effort, Mr. Spicer said.

Mr. Trump has justified the risky attack on the heavily guarded house, saying the commandos recovered valuable information, including laptops and cellphones, that could help thwart future terrorist attacks. Military officials said on Thursday that while that could prove to be true, analysts were only just beginning to delve into the materials.

Almost everything on the mission that could go wrong did. A Yemeni tribal sheikh said the Qaeda fighters were somehow tipped off to the troops stealthy advance toward the village  perhaps by the whine of American drones that the tribal leader said were flying lower and louder than usual.
Lucinda Childs, who has been a pioneering force in modern dance since 1963, is this years recipient of the American Dance Festivals award for lifetime achievement.

The Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, which comes with a $50,000 prize, will be given to Ms. Childs, 76, during the festival in July. In a statement, the festivals director, Jodee Nimerichter, said, For more than 50 years, her breathtaking work and groundbreaking collaborations have thrilled audiences and helped shape the field of modern dance.

Ms. Childss works are known for their elegant minimalism, as well as their enchanting, repetitive moves. Below is a clip one of one of her masterpieces, Einstein on the Beach (1976), created with Philip Glass and Robert Wilson:
The fact that the planet is warming and that human activities in particular the burning of fossil fuels  contribute to that warming is no longer up for debate in the scientific community. Globally, the last three years have been the three warmest on record. In 2016, 11 of 12 months set new high-temperature records. Governor Walkers response was to fire half of the scientists at the Department of Natural Resources and have all references to climate change scrubbed from the website. Meanwhile, State Senator Tom Tiffany is attacking University of Wisconsin scientists for speaking out to correct the misinformation about climate science on the DNRs website.

Our elected officials should be working to combat climate change. Instead, theyre working with corporate polluters to undermine the science while putting our future at risk. One wonders what would motivate politicians to actively work against the welfare of their own constituents? They cant claim ignorance. After all, the data is out there and these are the same politicians whose skillful use of data allowed them to gerrymander the Republican party into complete control of the legislature.

Looking at the amount of Koch brothers and other special interest money that has poured into this state over the last decade, Id have to say Im with Upton Sinclair on this one: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Or, to steal a quote from the head science denier of the Republican Party: Sad.

Peter O'Keefe

Racine
MONTCLAIR, N.J.  Sometimes dance fills the eyes with tears, changes our breathing or makes us laugh  but why? The dancers arent depicting emotion, yet we find ourselves powerfully moved. On Thursday night at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, the dancers of the Richard Alston Dance Company, the London troupe that revisits the New York area about once every two years, caused a gamut of emotion, just by taking us to the heart of dance itself.

The Alston style is rich, pliant, full-bodied. Footwork, often fast, brings elan, wit, brio. Jumps greet chords like bells chiming. Torsos bend eloquently, sometimes effortlessly down to the floor, sometimes gently swaying like a breath. Sometimes a recurrent step makes us hear pattern in the music, as when a quick lift of the foot to the opposite knee matches a suspenseful phrase-ending in the score. Complex sculptural lines register like harmony; rapidly traveling hops make those lines sing.

Mr. Alston, who is British, studied for two years at the Merce Cunningham Dance Studio in the 1970s and has worked more recently with New York Theater Ballet and Miami City Ballet. (In March, the students of Juilliard Dance perform his Sheer Bravado, from 2006.) But his work is best seen with his own dancers. Most of the current group members have been with him several seasons now. They all register as mature people who know who they are; Vidya Patel, Liam Riddick and Ihsaan de Banya are among the most individually striking.
Dore Ashton, an art historian and critic who wrote some of the earliest and most insightful histories of Abstract Expressionism and the leading painters of the New York School, died on Monday in the Bronx. She was 88.

Her death was confirmed by her daughter Paris Marina Devereaux.

Ms. Ashton was closely involved in the small world of artists who were discovering a new pictorial language in the years after World War II, both as a friend of Philip Guston, Mark Rothko and others and as a reviewer for numerous publications, including Art International, The Art Bulletin and The New York Times.

She recorded the scene, and she inhabited it. She made a point of visiting artists in their studios, drinking with them at their favorite haunts and talking philosophy and aesthetics into the wee hours in downtown cafes.

In a clear, pithy style, Ms. Ashton wrote both sweeping histories and intimate studies devoted to individual artists. Her books The Unknown Shore: A View of Contemporary Art (1962) and The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning (1973) made the case for Abstract Expressionism as the pre-eminent postwar art movement and placed its disparate members into a coherent philosophical frame.
DAYS WITHOUT END

By Sebastian Barry

259 pp. Viking. $26.

Thomas McNulty is an orphan, a refugee from Irelands Great Famine, a crack shot, a cross-dresser and a halfhearted soldier, but mostly hes in love with a young man who, on their harrowing and tender adventures across the breadth of mid-19th-century America, becomes so starved you coulda used John Cole for a pencil if you coulda threaded some lead through him.

Days Without End  the Irish writer Sebastian Barrys seventh novel, and the fourth to feature a member of the McNulty clan  is a haunting archaeology of youth, when time was not something then we thought of as an item that possessed an ending. To the fatalism and carnage of classic westerns, Barry introduces a narrator who speaks with an intoxicating blend of wit and wide-eyed awe, his unsettlingly lovely prose unspooling with an immigrants peculiar lilt and a proud boys humor. But in this countrys adolescence he also finds our essential human paradox, our heartbreak: that love and fear are equally ineradicable.

Thomas first stumbles across John Cole beneath a hedge in Missouri, sometime around 1849, when the teenagers are just two wood-shavings of humanity in a rough world. Their first employment as dolled-up saloon dancers gives Thomas a taste for ladies accouterments, but war, with its disregard for finery or flesh, keeps intervening. The friends join a platoon charged with clearing the West for whites and encounter Caught-His-Horse-First, a chief of the Oglala Sioux who clasps the United States Army in the two-step of generosity and vengeance that will bloody the plains for generations, its tremendous grasses folding, unfolding, showing their dark underbellies, hiding them, showing. In an interlude of peace, Thomas and John Cole hie to the Midwest with the chiefs niece, Winona, a placid child and ward of the Army, and Thomas once more dons the stays and the corset and the bosom holder and the padded arse and the cotton packages for breasts for nightly performances on behalf of the enraptured local miners. The Civil War interrupts this idyll, and the seesaw of petticoated peace and trousered violence continues its rhythmic tilting.

The makeshift family develops sweetly, while the scenes of battle sear. Thomas claims there is a seam in men called justice that nothing burns off complete  moments before an Army sharpshooter kills the daughter of a retreating Sioux. Justice is a troubled concept here: Women and children are never spared, Irish-born Yankees bayonet Irish-born Rebels, and friendship is no defense against murder. Nor does our guide through this gory fantasia have clean hands. If Thomass adoption of Winona, another chess piece in the prairie wars, is an attempt to shore up human decency, we learn too little about her own cultural cleavage. That two strange white men can so neatly become her parents belies the trauma of Indian dislocation. Barry draws parallels between the Irish and the American Indians  pushed out, despised, dispossessed  but he leaves Winona untethered from her identity as a Sioux. A few days after being taken from her people a second time, we find her loosening too, and laughing now.
Erwin soon develops a refrain of his own as he encounters a series of fellow refugees who resemble relatives or close family friends from his past. These fleeting moments of mistaken identity build toward the recognition that he is part of a tribe, related to this damaged band of drifting souls whose holocaust is not only of mass death but of failing memory, erased identity. As he drifts in and out of his new reality, often preferring to retreat to dreams of his prewar childhood, he is moved like a pawn by the power shifts of nation-building until he finds himself on a kibbutz, armed and shooting at an enemy who is never explicitly identified. The novel oscillates between admiration for and unsparing criticism of the ideologues in charge of the nation-building effort. The robust new Jews of Palestine sneer at the older refugees and seek to remake the youth in their own image, banishing mother tongues and given names. Erwin  required now to use the Hebrew name Aharon  laments the loss of the gift his parents bestowed on him: I liked names in which you hear the parents love.

Barely trained for combat, he is gravely injured in an unsuccessful raid and plunged once again into unconsciousness, anesthetized by the painkillers required by the many bouts of surgery necessary to restore his ability to walk.

All of Appelfelds books draw in some way on his own extraordinary youth. Because he mines the painful bedrock of his life, it is worth knowing some of its most harrowing incidents, the ore from which he extracts the allusive, metaphorical poetry of his fiction. He was born Erwin Appelfeld in 1932 to a prosperous, assimilated German-speaking Jewish family in Bukovina, a territory of shifting borders between Romania and Ukraine. He was 9 years old when the Romanian Army retook the region from its Soviet occupiers in 1941, murdering his mother as he lay upstairs in bed, ill with mumps. He jumped out the window and escaped that attack, only to be rounded up and deported to a Nazi concentration camp. There he escaped again, rolling out under a fence and hiding in the forest before joining the Soviet Army as a cook. At the end of the war, he spent time in a displaced persons camp in Italy, then was recruited as a pioneer and brought to British Mandate Palestine.

Appelfeld was 14 years old when he began to learn Hebrew, the language in which he would become a writer. The Man Who Never Stopped Sleeping is much preoccupied with this process of binding oneself into a new language, with what is lost and what is gained in such a process. At a convalescent home, the wounded Aharon tries to fuse himself to Hebrew by copying passages from a Bible a rabbi had pressed into his hands when he lay, semiconscious, in the hospital. I was glad that I understood most of the words. The Binding of Isaac: the story was dreadful but was told with restraint, in a few words, perhaps so that we could hear the silence between them. I felt a closeness to those measured sentences, and it didnt seem to be a story with a moral, because what was the moral? Rather, it was intended to seep into ones cells.

Its not often a novelist turns over as many cards as Appelfeld does in this paragraph, describing his own process so aptly. Later in the chapter, the convalescent returns to the story of Abrahams test: Where was the morality of obedience to an inhuman command? What could Abraham say to himself? Ive succeeded. Ive obeyed the command of God. I stifled the compassion within me. I have served as an example to future generations.
Manhattan in the 1950s was an extraordinary place, particularly in the ecosystem where Bosworth found herself, roiled with changing social mores and artistic experimentation. A lifelong diarist, it appears that Bosworth can pluck verbatim exchanges from her journals, which makes her story deliciously vivid, if not exactly precisely crafted. After a Reno divorce and upon graduation, Bosworth is accepted into the Actors Studio, home of the Method (and also known as the Zoo, in the words of one of its founders, Elia Kazan), which gives her a front-row seat into all sorts of shenanigans and brushes with fame. Steve McQueen takes her on a motorcycle ride to Central Park, after which he asks her, quite nicely, to stop mooning after him. Geraldine Page dressed like a bag lady, but was incandescent onstage. Jane Fonda was known for vomiting in the bathroom. Bosworth shares a cab with a dreamy Marilyn Monroe and Harry Belafonte, and is locked in a closet by Arthur Penn. Irritated by Bosworths prim refusal to swear, he shuts her in until she can properly shout the F-word, in preparation for a raw emotional scene in which she plays a young woman at an abortionists office. As Bosworth leaves the one and only orgy she attends (she did not participate), she runs into a man dressed in priests robes that another attendee tells her was George Plimpton.

Bosworth had grown up in a star-studded household, where her fathers left-wing buddies, as her mother called them, were regular fixtures. Lillian Hellman, feisty, homely and wearing Balmain, might drop by to talk politics with the director Herman Shumlin. Montgomery Clift was a frequent visitor, too; he liked to stretch out on the living room floor and chain-smoke (a smitten, preteenage Bosworth would salvage one of his cigarette butts as a souvenir). At the 21 Club, her fathers favorite lunch spot, she would join him at his regular table, right next to that of Mrs. Douglas MacArthur, and amid the scrum of lobbyists, columnists and television personalities and executives, all of whom would greet Bosworths father with affection. He would rail against Joe McCarthy, and drink steadily until his words slurred  his daughter watching, as always, wary and anxious.

So it was a fraught and frightening household from which Bosworth endeavored to extricate herself. Hence her early marriage, though the conflation of sex with true love was also a factor. Bosworth was a virgin, and a Catholic, when the opportunistic Mr. Bean scooped her up in a local bar. She thought she had committed a mortal sin in sleeping with him. After all, it was 1951 (the following decade, when the Pill was approved by the F.D.A. for contraceptive use, it was still illegal in eight states). Bosworths mothers idea of sex education had been to hand her daughter the novels of Colette.

Bosworths coming-of-age tale is emblematic of the times, when women were poised to take control of their own bodies, yet still confined by restrictive cultural norms and legal hurdles. (As her first husband slaps her around in the back of a taxicab, Bosworth begs the driver to stop. Hes the boss, lady, he tells her.) It was a time, as she writes, when women bargained with sex for love and money, or they were too repressed and ignorant beyond belief.

It is also the tale of a young woman trying to shake off an emotional numbness that will dog her for years. You can see how investigating the lives of Montgomery Clift (a gay actor in a punitive time, who turned to alcohol and drugs after a car accident destroyed his face), Diane Arbus (a suicide), Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda (a suicide survivor with daddy issues) would be appealing, even necessary, to a suicide survivor and child of an alcoholic, as Bosworth is. You never get over it, J. Anthony Lukas, the author and another suicide survivor, tells her. You just get used to it.
THE WEAPON WIZARDS

How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower

By Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot

Illustrated. 288 pp. St. Martins Press. $27.99.

Seventy years ago, the state of Israel was still just a gleam in Zionists eyes, and the future states military was hardly more than a ragtag group of irregulars, forced to manufacture bullets in a secret facility built underneath a kibbutz. Today, Israels military is widely viewed as one of the most effective in the world. Once compelled to arm itself with surplus equipment purchased from more powerful states (and sometimes obtained by stealth), Israel is now one of the worlds six largest arms exporters, earning billions each year through the sale of military equipment to buyers from China and India to Colombia and Russia.

The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower tells the story of this transformation. Written by the Israeli journalists Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot, The Weapon Wizards offers a lively account of Israels evolving military prowess, from the early days of Jewish paramilitaries operating within the British Mandate to Israels recent emergence as exporter of 60 percent of the worlds drones. From satellites and missile defense systems to adaptive armor and cyber weapons, Israel has consistently found ways to circumvent or leapfrog financial and technological barriers.

But Katz and Bohbot aspire to do more than just offer a journalistic history of the Israeli militarys technological advances: They aim to explain just how the tiny Jewish state managed to become such a military innovator. How did Israel do it? Katz and Bohbot ask. What was the secret to Israels success? Their answer: brains, pluck and the bracing prospect of imminent annihilation.
In addition, Macys faces increasingly fierce competition online from sites like Amazon and elsewhere. Macys troubles have drawn the attention of a prominent activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, which has urged the company to generate cash by selling the real estate beneath its stores.

Starboard, which held just under 1 percent of Macys shares as of Sept. 30, had previously estimated the value of that land at about $21 billion. On Friday, analysts at Citigroup estimated that Macys real-estate holdings could be worth at least $18 billion. Macys market value, by comparison, was just under $11 billion as of Friday morning.

Macys has taken some steps to sell or redevelop stores, and last year, it added an expert on real estate transactions to its board. But the company has largely resisted more ambitious efforts to divest its real estate, including so-called sale-leaseback deals, in which a company sells the underlying land beneath its stores and then rents it back.

The companys suitor, Hudsons Bay Company, is far smaller  its market value was about 1.9 billion Canadian dollars, or $1.5 billion  but is known for its bold steps. Hudsons Bay Company has assembled a growing empire that includes the Hudsons Bay department store chain, Lord & Taylor and its crown jewel, Saks.

And the governor and executive chairman of the Hudsons Bay Company, Richard Baker, has shown little fear of using debt: In November 2014, the company borrowed nearly $4 billion against the Saks flagship in Midtown Manhattan. He has spoken often of retailers need to highlight the value of their real estate.

Financing a bid for Macys may be trickier, however, because the it carries about $6.5 billion in long-term debt. That may mean that the Hudsons Bay Company will have to bring in a partner or borrow against more of its real estate holdings.

A spokesman for the Hudsons Bay Company declined to comment on the talks, which were reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. We do not comment on rumors and speculation, a representative for Macys said.
This award will be paid out in equal quarterly installments over three years beginning in the third full quarter after the offering. After this, Mr. Spiegel will have total control over Snap and Mr. Murphy will simply be a close second.

The fact that the 26-year-old Mr. Spiegel is getting total control of a new company with uncertain prospects but real growth is perhaps cause for alarm, and I wrote as much last week. Who knows what will happen years from now?

Snap, which looks a lot like Twitter did at its I.P.O. stage, could also experience bumps in the road as Twitter did. In its prospectus, Snap calls itself a camera company, but it really has just one product, Snapchat, which is beloved by the younger crowd for its disappearing photos and texts.

Facebook, Google and Microsoft as well as Amazon have survived because of the ability to provide multiple successful offerings. Twitter has struggled with just one product  the platform on which people the world over, including the American president, send 140-character messages called tweets.

Whether Mr. Spiegel can expand beyond Snaps disappearing photos and texts is unknown, though the media machine will certainly turn up the hype to 11 trumpeting claims that he is the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg. Indeed, a recent New York Times article on Mr. Spiegel described him being mature, a listener and someone Eric Schmidt at Google was talking up as a visionary. This may or may not be pablum, but one has to wonder why it justifies this type of stock given the risks.

If things are going well, no one is going to question Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphys control. But if things are bad, then shareholder complaints may be valid, a spur to action. Indeed, control makes sense only if shareholders and the two executives disagree about whether things are going well. But that assumes that shareholders will be irrational or wrong or not know as much as the two men at the helm. The last point may have some validity  but is it worth complete disenfranchisement, again given that Snap is a very early-stage company and Mr. Spiegel is so young?

I suppose it all might be palatable for most diversified investors in exchange for the huge potential upside, except for the last two parts of this scheme. First, in October Snap issued a dividend of one Class A share for each Class C share the two men owned. The result was to allow Mr. Spiegel and Mr. Murphy to sell half their shares without worry of losing control. The company could reload this at any point, issuing out another dividend of Class A shares if the two need more money.
President Trump on Friday moved to chisel away at the Obama administrations legacy on financial regulation, announcing steps to revisit the rules enacted after the 2008 financial crisis and to back away from a measure intended to protect consumers from bad investment advice.

After a White House meeting with executives from Wall Street, Mr. Trump signed a directive aimed at the Dodd-Frank Act, crafted by the Obama administration and passed by Congress in response to the 2008 meltdown. He also signed a memorandum that paves the way for reversing a policy, known as the fiduciary rule, that requires brokers to act in a clients best interest, rather than seek the highest profits for themselves, when providing retirement advice.

The executive order affecting Dodd-Frank is vague in its wording and expansive in its reach. It never mentions the law by name, instead laying out core principles for regulations that include empowering American investors and enhancing the competitiveness of American companies. Even so, it gives the Treasury the authority to restructure major provisions of Dodd-Frank, and it directs the Treasury secretary to make sure existing laws align with administration goals.

Mr. Trumps action on the fiduciary rule, which Democrats and consumer groups immediately denounced as a gift to Wall Street, could have a more concrete impact. His memorandum directs the Labor Department to review whether the rule may adversely affect investors ability to access financial advice  and if it does, it authorizes the agency to rescind and revise the rule.
Its tricky enough pinning down business leaders to work with your administration. Thats especially true when their business concerns get in the way.

Travis Kalanick, Ubers chief executive, stepped down from President Trumps economic advisory council on Thursday. The company had already been attacked  unfairly, many staff members believed  for giving rides to airport customers in New York during protests against Mr. Trumps immigration order. Employees were also disturbed by Mr. Kalanicks willingness to advise the president.

His experience also illustrates how it is difficult for corporate chieftains to strike a balance between staying in the administrations good graces and thinking about their workers, many of whom might be immigrants themselves.

Even as Mr. Kalanick leaves, though, Stephen A. Feinberg, the founder of Cerberus Capital Management, is in discussions to join the Trump administration in a senior role, according to a letter to Cerberus investors.
If the surprisingly strong job gains in January revealed the economys resilience, they also exposed some of its stubborn weaknesses.

Yes, the governments report on Friday showed that employers fattened their payrolls by 227,000 workers last month, an unexpectedly large increase. And yes, public optimism about economic prospects has persuaded a few hundred thousand Americans who had dropped out of the work force to return.

But the very fact that so many sidelined workers could be lured back despite meager wage growth is evidence that the labor pool is not as shallow as some have argued.

To the labor market bulls, consistently low official jobless rates have suggested that the economy is nearing capacity and that inflation lurks. Initial estimates released last month gave the impression that wages had taken a big step forward at the end of last year, lifting hopes that the momentum would continue, especially with a surge of local minimum-wage increases taking effect across the country.
Algebra is clearly a stumbling block for many incoming college students. Nearly 60 percent of community college students end up in remedial math  thats more than double the number in remedial English. Four-year public colleges are not far behind. According to government studies, 40 percent of their incoming students take at least one remedial class; 33 percent are in math.

One explanation is obvious: limited academic preparation. Another is that much of the community college population is older, and rusty at factoring quadratics and finding inverse functions. Less obvious is that students end up in remediation who dont need to be there.

Theres evidence for this, most recently in an analysis published in September by the National Center for Education Statistics. To determine if students are ready for college-level work, colleges often rely on one thing: the score on a test, be it the ACT, SAT or Accuplacer, the most common of the placement tools.
When he first showed his designs in New York eight years ago, Bumsuk Choi and his label, General Idea, were already well known in his native Seoul, South Korea, admired by many and frequently worn by actors and K-pop stars.

New York was a stark change.

I didnt know anyone, Mr. Choi said. At my first show, there werent a lot of people. It made me sad.

The tepid reception didnt stop Mr. Choi from returning again and again, slowly building up an audience over time. This season at New York Fashion Week: Mens, his packed show had attendees crowding into the standing sections, and guests like Milandou Badila, a.k.a. Young Paris, a musician who recently signed with Jay Z, and Jack Griffo, a Nickelodeon star, sitting in the front row.

Mr. Choi, 39, is no stranger to setbacks. Growing up the son of a street vendor (his mom sold rice cakes, his dad never worked, he said), he had little exposure to fashion besides his own personal interest in clothes. At 16, he dropped out of high school  a big no-no in South Korea  and went to work at a clothes factory. Everyone was saying, Youre not going in the right direction, he said.
Every awards season, fashion seems to fall head over ears in love with a star. Last year, it was Alicia Vikander with her balletic grace; this year, it is Ruth Negga with her from-another-era appeal.

Far from mermaid gowns and plunging necklines  a common red carpet playbook for ingenues  Ms. Neggas style has been unconventional and inspiring. Certainly the Irish-Ethiopian actress, who is nominated for the Bafta EE Rising Star Award and for an Oscar as best actress for her role in Loving, has won over her stylist, Karla Welch, who has worked with her since the Cannes Film Festival in May, with her intrepid taste.

Its so interesting when you meet a true collaborator, Ms. Welch said, noting that unlike many actresses who do their best on the red carpet in a pretty gown, Ms. Negga possesses authentic style. She grew up loving clothes and flipping through magazines. We have very little disagreement over things. Its not 100 tries to get something. She inherently knows what she feels good in.

Ms. Negga, 35, tends to favor higher necklines, fitted waists and shoulder details, like the Hawaiian-print belted Rosie Assoulin gown with little puffed sleeves she wore to the Loving premiere in Washington, D.C. For fashion fans, though, Ms. Negga is particular catnip. She not only chooses stunning designer pieces, but also does her best to showcase the cut. Maybe its her theater background, Ms. Welch said. She knows how to work it like a pro.
Mr. Polonsky told me that his client, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, had seen his wife and children make it through, but the officers stopped him, separating the family. He said that Mr. Darweesh had worked with the United States for a decade, including by fighting alongside the 101st Airborne while acting as an interpreter. I read, in his file, glowing letters of recommendation from soldiers and diplomats that described his hard work on behalf of the United States, and I knew there was a story.

Meanwhile, using the address I received from the lawyers, Mr. Fernandez found the wife of the first detainee, Mr. Alshawi, whose relatives had worked with the United States government in Iraq. She told him how their son was asleep in the house; the boy neither knew that his father had made it to the United States nor that he might be sent back without ever leaving the airport.

As we waited I asked Mr. Doss what they were doing on their computers and he said, Were reviewing the facts of a habeas petition. I had to dig back into my memory a little to civics class in high school: a writ of habeas corpus, literally You may have the body in Latin, a petition to free someone who had been unlawfully detained. This will be the first legal challenge to the executive order, he added.

Can I see that when you file it? I asked him. You can feel like a pest at moments like that, but the fear that you could miss out on a story outweighs a moment of embarrassment.

Its a public document at that point, he answered with a shrug.

Behind the scenes, lawyers from the National Immigration Law Center, the Yale Law Schools Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as IRAP and Kilpatrick Townsend had been writing a series of petitions on behalf of Mr. Darweesh, Mr. Alshawi and all the unknown detainees in custody, or as it would come to be known Darweesh v. Trump.

The little pieces began to coalesce: an officer telling Mr. Doss to Call Mr. Trump; the separated families; Mr. Darweeshs work with the 101st Airborne; and the emotional scene in Houston. It never feels like you have anything, and then the little fragments come together and form a picture clearer than you had ever expected.

By 8:17 a.m., the legal challenges had been filed, the airport had begun to fill up, there were Boston cream donuts for sale and, after seven hours of reporting, we had a story. I hadnt pulled an all-nighter since a suicidal pilot had crashed a Germanwings passenger jet into the French Alps nearly two years ago, but the adrenaline of the story had me wide awake.
3. Why would more Chinese parents be sending their students to American schools at a younger age?

4. Describe what has happened with the partnership of the two schools since the video above was made. How has the partnership grown, and what resistance and obstacles has it faced? Consider the social, economic and legal aspects in your answer.

5. What do you think of Superintendent William Skillings vision to create a win-win for his district and students in both the United States and China? Do you agree that he is a visionary, as he says? Why or why not?

6. After two years in Michigan, what are Korbins feelings and thoughts about his American education, both social and academic? How does he feel now about being Chinese? Do you think his lack of American friends is unique among Chinese students in America? Why or why not?

What Do You Think?

According to the article, what are the positive and negative outcomes of Chinese students attending American high schools in preparation for attending American colleges and universities?

What is your own opinion? Should more public school districts encourage Chinese students to live and study, and then graduate, from their schools? Why or why not?
Ms. Gillibrand has been alone among Senate Democrats in voting against all but one of the presidents cabinet picks and posts requiring Senate confirmation (she voted in favor of Nikki R. Haleys appointment as United States ambassador to the United Nations). Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, to the disappointment of many of her admirers, advanced Ben Carson as housing secretary. Young progressive women in New York who have suddenly been making activism as much a part of their daily habits as chia seed pudding have become infatuated with Ms. Gillibrand, who has long drawn the adoration of the Sheryl Sandbergs of the world  members of the celebrity-feminist corporate class that we now know women seeking the presidency cannot rely on solely.

A few weeks ago, at a convening of hundreds of Brooklynites organizing to counter the Trump administration, I met a 30-year-old public school science teacher named Liat Olenick who lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant and, though never having been particularly political, was now going to three or four protests a week, and spending what time remained calling elected officials every day. Early on she cold-called Ms. Gillibrands Manhattan office to set up a meeting with staff members to talk about the fight against the cabinet choices. She was shocked to have her phone call returned the next day, and to get a meeting shortly thereafter. She said it took a month and a half of back and forth to elicit the same response from Senator Chuck Schumers office.

My initial impression of Gillibrand was that she was a moderate voice in the Senate, Ms. Olenick told me. When I thought about the firebrands who could lead the opposition, she wasnt one of them. But I think people are feeling really surprised and hopeful about her. She has a remarkable composure and thoughtfulness and she definitely has the appearance of sincerity.

It is precisely that impression  that she isnt scheming, that she isnt tacking left simply for political utility, even if, in fact, she might be  that could put her ahead of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a mentor, in a race for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Both have been talked about as prospective candidates. Liberals like the governor more than they used to, and he has seemingly become more progressive, standing up for a $15-an-hour minimum wage and behaving as a champion of the marginalized, a warrior against future and present Trump-based indignities. On Saturday night, when people flocked to Kennedy International Airport to protest the executive order on immigration, the governor ordered the Port Authority to reverse its decision to allow only those holding plane tickets to board the AirTrain, proclaiming that the voices of New Yorkers would be heard. Still, he has never shaken the impression that expedience is his first calling.

Ms. Gillibrand is honest about what she did and didnt know at the beginning of her tenure in the Senate. She is willing to admit her mistakes and the gaps in her knowledge. Swelling support for her comes at a time when her closest colleague, Mr. Schumer, a fellow Democrat who is the Senate minority leader, has been the target of repeated protests from constituents who are either aggrieved over his approval of some of Mr. Trumps cabinet nominees or who simply want to let him know they expect him to lead the resistance without wavering.
The model Andreja Pejic had become a name in the fashion industry while she was still male and named Andrej. In 2014, after a career of gender-fluid appearances on the catwalk for Marc Jacobs and Jean-Paul Gaultier, she underwent gender-reassignment surgery, which made her star burn only brighter: Ms. Pejic became the first transgender model to be profiled in Vogue and to land a campaign with a major cosmetics company, Make Up for Ever. As she prepares for New York Fashion Week, Feb. 9 to 16, Ms. Pejic, 25, who lives in the East Village, spends her Sundays drinking tea, going to yoga class and eating a brunch with the works. NEESHA ARTER



TEA PARTY I usually wake up around 9, and the first thing I do is make myself a cup of tea. I drink a lot of tea  green tea, white tea and all kinds of herbal teas. An antioxidant boost is a great way to kick-start the day. My social media followers very well know about my old ladylike tea obsession. I buy the stuff in bulk from Amazon. I also slap on a little concealer on the under eye circles, especially if I had an eventful Saturday night. It calms me down.
Q. A hundred years before the Womens March on Washington, another womens uprising took place, in which Marie Ganz, known as Sweet Marie, played a leading role. Who was she and where did she get her nickname?

A. Newspapers of the day said Ms. Ganz, who was arrested in the food riots of 1917, was incendiary and cursed like a sailor. So naturally, cynical reporters called her Sweet Marie, according to Thai Jones, the curator for American history in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University. In 1925, however, another reporter said that she had received the name because of an intriguing smile and an engaging personality.

In 1914, Sweet Marie carried a pistol into the Standard Oil Building in New York and threatened to shoot John D. Rockefeller Jr. Fortunately, Mr. Rockefeller, whom Sweet Marie blamed for brutalizing striking miners in Colorado, was not in.

She spent 60 days in jail for it, and it was the main thing on her political resume, if you can call it that, Dr. Jones said, adding, She was kind of a street-corner speaker and definitely a rabble-rouser.
Dr. Abushamma, the papers said, was held for more than six hours at the airport, as arguments were being held in Judge Donnellys courtroom. And although her immigration lawyer tried to explain to customs agents that the judge was about to rule, the lawyer was ignored, the papers said. She was escorted onto a plane headed back to Saudi Arabia by two customs officials.

One stood in front of her and the other stood behind her, according to the papers. Dr. Abushamma felt like they were trying to make sure that she did not escape, as though she was a criminal in custody.

In court, lawyers for the immigrants said it remained unclear if people were removed from the country in violation of Judge Donnellys ruling, as Dr. Abushamma contends she was, and how many of them there might be. Though lawyers say they have repeatedly asked the government for a detailed list of those who were both detained and deported since the ruling went into effect, federal officials have not yet provided one. The government has said that no immigrants are currently in custody, but lawyers say that could be because some of them have already been improperly sent back to their homelands.

It is unlikely we have found the entire universe of people who have been removed, said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, who argued for the immigrants at the hearing. Mr. Gelernt said that he would give the government another chance to furnish him with a list of detainees and those who were deported, but he added that if federal officials did not provide the list within a short time  perhaps as early as Friday  he would consider filing a contempt of court complaint against the administration.

The case may emerge as the first of its kind to decide whether the Trump administration disobeyed Judge Donnellys ruling to keep legal visa holders in the country.

Samuel Go, a lawyer for the Justice Department, said at the hearing that the government planned to file a motion to dismiss the entire case challenging Mr. Trumps executive order, which, so far, has not been subject to a ruling on broad constitutional grounds.

While Mr. Gelernt and his colleagues have opposed the order, saying that it violates due process rights and discriminates against Muslims in contravention of the 14th Amendments equal protection clause, they have not yet had the opportunity to make those arguments in court.
University of Wisconsin System President Ray Cross is calling for a collaborative discussion on the possible use of criminal histories in student admissions.

Any consideration of criminal history during our admissions process requires the delicate balancing of three of our core principles: to ensure student, faculty, and staff safety, to promote the healthy and free exchange of ideas, even contentious ones, and to provide the broadest possible access to public education, Cross wrote in an email sent to UW System chancellors Thursday.

UW-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank raised the issue after it became known last week that a student trying to start a branch of the white nationalist American Freedom Party on campus had served time in federal prison for the arson of two churches with predominantly African-American congregations.

UW campuses do not now use criminal background information on prospective students as part of deciding who will be offered admission.

Blank reiterated to reporters, following a meeting Thursday of the Board of Regents, that she believes parents want campus officials to know if there is a convicted felon on campus and be able to respond to that, perhaps by housing someone outside the dormitories, for example.

Blank also said that she does not believe a felony conviction should necessarily be a bar to admission.

Her suggestion on using criminal background drew the wrath of some student leaders, as well as such unexpected sources as the League of Women Voters Wisconsin.

Safe campuses are a top concern, Cross said in his message to chancellors. Past conversations with our students and their families have indicated that providing a safe environment for learning is their primary concern, he said.

Cross then outlined what he called a collaborative approach to dialogue on the issue.

First will be research on the policies and practices at other Midwest, Big Ten and national colleges and universities.

The practice is common among other Big Ten universities, the Daily Cardinal reported Thursday.

We must also study the background and impact of such policies within those institutions. Additionally, we will conduct due diligence to assess all possible legal ramifications for any viable courses of action, he said.

The issue will then be discussed by provosts and chancellors of UW campuses, before recommendations are delivered to the Board of Regents. The goal is complete work on the issue in time for the 2018-2019 admissions cycle, he said.
A diversity committee in Westport, Conn., a wealthy coastal town that was 93 percent white as of 2010, asked high school students earlier this year to reflect on the role of white privilege in their lives.

The students were largely fine with the question, which was posed in an annual essay contest.

As it turns out, adults had much more to say.

Some residents in the town of 26,000, which has a median household income north of $150,000 and voted by a margin of 2 to 1 for Hillary Clinton over Donald J. Trump, chafed at the idea that race was a factor in their success. And after the story attracted media attention recently, many outsiders weighed in by calling local officials and storming the townships Facebook pages.

The essay contest, which has run for four years and typically attracts 10 to 30 entries, offers prizes of $1,000, $750 and $500 to the top three winners. Its run by a volunteer committee that is not associated with the school district, and the prizes are funded by private donations.
The murder of U Ko Ni, a prominent Muslim lawyer and a key member of Myanmars governing National League for Democracy party, on Sunday is a serious blow to the countrys fragile democracy. The brutal, public killing  he was shot at point-blank range outside Yangon International Airport after returning from a government-sponsored trip to Indonesia to discuss democracy and conflict resolution  has the hallmark of a political assassination.

Mr. Ko Nis murder deprives Myanmars civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the governing party of a talented and trusted adviser, notably on reforming Myanmars military-drafted Constitution. We lost a hero, U Win Htein, a spokesman for the party lamented, adding, It is a bad situation here.

Police in Myanmar announced on Wednesday that they have now arrested four men. One, U Kyi Lin, accused of being the gunman, reportedly shouted, You cant act like that, before opening fire. What this statement means is unclear. U Thein Than Oo, a prominent lawyer and a colleague of Mr. Ko Ni, offered possible motivations, firstly the N.L.D. leadership, secondly political and civic leaders who want to amend the military-drafted Constitution, and thirdly the peace process, referring to talks initiated by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi between ethnic armed groups and the military.

The office of Myanmars president issued a statement saying, The motivation of the incident is to undermine the countrys stability. That would, of course, provide a perfect pretext for Myanmars military to reassert its power and further hobble the civilian government.
Trumps executive order barring people from seven Muslim-majority countries goes against the bedrock constitutional idea that prohibits government from favoring one religion over another. His order is a Muslim ban, as Rudolph Giuliani helpfully explained, recalling a Trump conversation. Trump himself said that Christians would be given priority over other refugees.

Now, lets assume the Supreme Court blocks this action, following judges from lower courts, citing both equal protection and the religious establishment clause of the document Trump has sworn to uphold.

What follows could be a titanic test: Would Trump actually defy the Supreme Court? The way he has handled the fallout from the executive order shows that Trump, like any political bully, is willing to go as far as well let him.

Jackson set the pattern. In 1830, he pressed Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act, displacing thousands of people and ultimately leading to the Trail of Tears. About 4,000 Cherokee died in that long march, stumbling westward in rags after their homes were looted. Two years after the act, the Supreme Court laid a foundation for Indian sovereignty in a case out of Georgia, writing that the tribes were distinct, independent political communities retaining their original natural rights.

The ruling infuriated Jackson. To him, Indians were a few savage hunters who should yield their land to white Christians. The Supreme Court decision, he wrote, was stillborn, because they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate. In other words: How many troops does the Supreme Court have? The court order was never enforced. And not long after Jacksons second term ended, most Indians had been removed from their ancient tribal homelands in the American South.

This history is haunting. Among the many things that keep people awake at night is a vision of a tyrannical Trump openly defying the Constitution. Because he has yet to fully untangle himself from his many personal holdings, he is already being sued for violation of the emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from receiving money or gifts from foreign governments.

But thats a trifle compared to what an enraged Trump could do if the courts try to stop him on the Muslim ban. Dont count on Republicans, who waved their pocket copies of the Constitution at the most inconsequential executive orders of President Obama, to come to the rescue. Their patriotism is entirely situational.

The fate of the republic may hinge on how much Trump decides to emulate the slaveholding, Indian-hating, Constitution-violating man staring at him from that portrait in the Oval Office. Jackson is too close for comfort.
DHAKA, Bangladesh  Every year on the first day of school, students across Bangladesh wait eagerly for their new textbooks. Many have few extravagances in their lives, and for them that day is as thrilling as Christmas morning in other countries. Distributing over 360 million textbooks for free, on time, to more than 42 million children is no small feat, and it was a signature achievement for the ruling Awami League this year.

But public appreciation was quickly overtaken by outrage over the quiet revisions that appeared in books for classes ranging from primary grades to high school.

The Bengali letter o used to stand for ol, a yam; now it stands for orna, a scarf worn by women for modesty. Texts by non-Muslim writers  including some revered as part of Bengali heritage, like the classical poet Gyandas or the contemporary novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay  have been removed. Also gone are a small excerpt from the Ramayana, a Hindu classic that Islamists reject as foreign to the Muslim canon, and songs of the Sufi icon Lalon Shah, whose syncretic faith is anathema to Muslim conservatives.

This is exactly what Islamists have long wished for, particularly Hefazat-e-Islam, a network of madrasa leaders who hope to introduce Shariah in Bangladesh. But why these changes now, and from a nominally secular government that seems to have tried, if unevenly, to clamp down on Islamists in other ways?
Can Democrats, who are more philosophically invested in showing that government can function, really bring themselves to replicate Mr. McConnells obstructionist methods? Would they really be willing to withhold cooperation even in areas where they and President Trump might find agreement, such as a major infrastructure package?

These questions are especially pressing for Senate Democrats because of the landscape they face next year, when 25 of their seats (including those of the two independents who caucus with them) are up for re-election, as opposed to only eight Republican ones. Those 25 include five in states that Mr. Trump won handily: West Virginia, Missouri, Indiana, Montana and North Dakota. Doesnt unified opposition to the president mean risking those seats and further diminishing their minority status?

A closer look at Mr. McConnells opposition during the Obama years suggests that the choices confronting Mr. Schumer and the Democrats may not be as stark as they seem. For one thing, the McConnell approach does not preclude going through the motions of working with the president of the opposite party. Recall that in the summer of 2009 Mr. McConnell allowed three Republicans, led by Chuck Grassley of Iowa, to spend months meeting with three Democratic counterparts on health care reform. The negotiations came to naught, allowing Mr. McConnell to claim that his partys eventual monolithic vote against the Affordable Care Act came only after the Democrats refusal to move off their far left proposal.

The meetings also dragged out debate around the bill, helping sour the public on the legislation. As Robert F. Bennett, then a Utah senator and close McConnell ally, who died last year, told me of Mr. McConnell in early 2014: He said, Our strategy is to delay this sucker as long as we possibly can, and the longer we delay it the worse the president looks: Why cant he get it done?  He remembered the party leaders promise to delay it, delay it, delay it as long as we can. The main lesson: Every time something would come up, he would find a way to delay it. Another lesson for Mr. Schumer and the Democrats might be that they could enter into negotiations over an infrastructure package, but insist on doing it mostly on their terms.

The record of Republican intransigence in the Obama years also suggests that voters pay far less attention to the legislative process than Washington insiders would like to believe. What Mr. McConnell recognized was that a presidents party is rewarded in midterm elections if hes popular and getting things done, and punished if hes not. Mr. Grassley, for instance, mightve been tempted to help President Obama create a bipartisan health care bill since he hailed from a state, Iowa, that had embraced Mr. Obama in 2008. Instead, by withholding support, and even endorsing the death panel rhetoric around the bill, Mr. Grassley fueled the resistance to the overreaching president in 2010 and easily won re-election that year.
White House sources are now claiming that this threat  remember, the U.S. has in fact invaded Mexico in the past, and the Mexicans have not forgotten  was a lighthearted joke. If you believe that, I have a Mexico-paid-for border wall to sell you.

The blowups with Mexico and Australia have overshadowed a more conventional war of words with Iran, which tested a missile on Sunday. This was definitely a provocation. But the White House warning that it was putting Iran on notice raises the question, notice of what? Given the way the administration has been alienating our allies, tighter sanctions arent going to happen. Are we ready for a war?

There was also a curious contrast between the response to Iran and the response to another, more serious provocation: Russias escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine. Senator John McCain called on the president to help Ukraine. Strangely, however, the White House said nothing at all about Russias actions until Nikki Haley, the United Nations ambassador, issued a condemnation late Thursday night to the Security Council. This is getting a bit obvious, isnt it?

Oh, and one more thing: Peter Navarro, head of Mr. Trumps new National Trade Council, accused Germany of exploiting the United States with an undervalued currency. Theres an interesting economics discussion to be had here, but government officials arent supposed to make that sort of accusation unless theyre prepared to fight a trade war. Are they?

I doubt it. In fact, this administration doesnt seem prepared on any front. Mr. Trumps confrontational phone calls, in particular, dont sound like the working out of an economic or even political strategy  cunning schemers dont waste time boasting about their election victories and whining about media reports on crowd sizes.

No, what were hearing sounds like a man who is out of his depth and out of control, who cant even pretend to master his feelings of personal insecurity. His first two weeks in office have been utter chaos, and things just keep getting worse  perhaps because he responds to each debacle with a desperate attempt to change the subject that only leads to a fresh debacle.

America and the world cant take much more of this. Think about it: If you had an employee behaving this way, youd immediately remove him from any position of responsibility and strongly suggest that he seek counseling. And this guy is commander in chief of the worlds most powerful military.

Thanks, Comey.

This column has been updated to reflect news developments.
To the Editor:

Re President Pledges to Let Politics Return to Pulpits (front page, Feb. 3):

The repeal of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates, would be a devastating blow to American religion, which flourishes because state governments ended colonial norms of religious establishment.

Religious freedom is hurt, not helped, by more direct entanglement of religious leaders in the political process. America is much more religious than Europe because political and religious power was fused there for so long. When people tired of monarchs, and demanded new governments, they tired of religious leaders, and lost faith.

The desire for repeal comes from white evangelicals who after Roe v. Wade shifted from avoiding politics because it was corrupt to building themselves into a powerful political force. They now want their religious organizations to conduct political advocacy. This freedom already exists. They just need to revoke their religiously based tax-exempt status so society doesnt subsidize this advocacy through tax breaks.

Like most things, this is about power and money, not principle. President Trump is perhaps the least religious president in American history. He doesnt understand how greed will destroy religious vitality, the very thing his supporters hold dear.
WASHINGTON  Senate Republicans are in the middle of pulling off one of the great political heists in American history: the theft of a seat on the United States Supreme Court. And this theft, if successful, will have an enormous impact on the integrity of the Supreme Court and major issues from reproductive and labor rights to consumer and environmental protection.

This crime against our Constitution began when Justice Antonin Scalia died nearly a year ago. Senate Republicans decided that day, before President Barack Obama even nominated a candidate to fill the seat, that they would reject their constitutional duty to provide advice and consent on any nominee he put forward.

After President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland, they refused to hold committee hearings on his nomination or a committee vote. They were determined that his nomination would never reach the Senate floor, where they believed that he would stand an excellent chance of being confirmed.

It is important to understand the motivation for this crime. The thing the Republican leadership feared most was that an Obama nominee would rule against the huge influx of dark money into political campaigns that is corrupting our system of government. They feared this outcome more than any other because it is that dark money, a vast amount of which came from the Koch brothers and their organization, that has played a huge role in putting the Republicans in the Senate majority.
This editorial has been updated to reflect news developments.

It didnt take long for tensions to flare between Iran and President Trump, and both sides have to share the blame.

Iran was dangerously provocative in conducting a ballistic missile test this week, especially given the confusion and incompetence that has characterized Mr. Trumps first days in office. Officials in Tehran must have known that the launch of the medium-range Shahab missile would alarm America and other countries in the unstable region and would be red meat for the impulsive new president. However, the Iranians seemed determined to test not just the missile, but also whether Mr. Trump would seize any excuse to blow up the 2015 nuclear deal.

Although Mr. Trump campaigned against the deal, under which Iran curbed its nuclear program in return for the lifting of international sanctions, he didnt immediately jettison it after the missile launch, as many had feared. Instead, he threw down a challenge that was itself provocative and displayed an eagerness to confront Iran, a risky path that could lead to a military conflict. As of today we are officially putting Iran on notice, his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, told reporters Wednesday, arguing that the missile was the latest in a series of actions that had destabilized the region.
The National Security Council doesnt just advise the president; by coordinating among the State Department, the Pentagon and other agencies, it is supposed to maintain that balance. Doing so requires collegial open-mindedness and the input of a generous range of viewpoints and perspectives. The job of a national security adviser is to set and coordinate the foreign policy agenda in consultation with the president, eliciting the input of key agencies through layered interagency deliberations, and giving those agencies the job of carrying out the policy so formulated. It is highly improbable that either Mr. Bannon or Mr. Flynn will foster that kind of probing outreach.

Both apprehend the world through the lens of Islamophobia, brook no dissent and have recruited correspondingly obsequious minions as staffers. Their tendency will be to make policy according to jingoistic shibboleths and to turn the council into a kind of ideological echo chamber, issuing decrees and leaving them to be carried out by operational actors  mainly the State Department, service branches and law enforcement agencies  insufficiently consulted about the advisability of a given course of action.

This bent was in evidence when the executive order barring Muslims, based on a vain and reckless campaign promise, became effective without having been vetted by the State, Defense or Homeland Security Departments.

Other major mistakes that would be harder to reverse could be on the horizon. Mr. Trump has requested Saudi and Emirati assistance in establishing safe zones in Syria. But the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs have long opposed such measures as impractical and unstable  they likely require expensive no-fly zones, which would call for effective acts of war like the destruction of Syrian antiaircraft defenses, necessitate the deployment of 15,000 to 30,000 troops, and involve the exposure of American aircraft to adversaries, including Russia. Would Mr. Bannon and Mr. Flynn include Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in those plans, knowing he would likely argue against them?

There is still some hope that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis will act as a counterweight. He has been critical of several ideas embraced by Mr. Trump and his inner circle, having persuaded the president not to reinstate torture and apparently gaining traction in forging a tougher administration stance toward Russia on Ukraine, support for a two-state solution on Israel-Palestine and a measured approach to Iran.

And while Mr. Bannon and perhaps Mr. Flynn have the presidents ear, Mr. Mattis has offsetting assets. As defense secretary, he is the chief custodian and proximate controller of the nations military resources, which affords him considerable clout in the interagency process, and he has strong ties in Congress. As a former four-star Marine Corps general and Central Command commander, his military assessments are apt to be more compatible with those of General Dunford, creating a strong alliance in the administration.

Mr. Mattis could well win the looming struggle. In meetings, the national security adviser has to marshal some degree of consensus on security council action items. Mr. Bannon and Mr. Flynn can spout ideology, Flynn facts and fake news; Mr. Mattis can speak authoritatively to capabilities, threat assessments, global and regional trade-offs and operational outcomes.
IN the fall, I began to research an article that I gave the working title The Last Days of Chlorpyrifos. A widely used pesticide, chlorpyrifos affects humans as well as the bugs it kills. Back in the halcyon days before the election, the optimism of the title seemed warranted. After years of study, the Environmental Protection Agency had announced in October 2015 that it could no longer vouch for the safety of chlorpyrifos on food.

The agency had acknowledged for decades that chlorpyrifos can cause acute poisoning and in the early 2000s it had prohibited its use in most home products and reduced the amounts that could be used on some crops. But the 2015 announcement stemmed from the agencys recognition of mounting evidence that prenatal exposure to chlorpyrifos could have lasting effects on childrens brains.

Though the process of re-evaluating the safety of the pesticide had stretched on for years, at long last, chlorpyrifos seemed to be going down. Another report was expected to provide all the ammunition necessary to stop its use on fruits and vegetables, and I was eager to document its demise. For a reporter who covers the environment, this was going to be the rare happy story.

The election of President Trump has thrown that outcome  indeed, the fate of many of the E.P.A.s public health protections  into question. On Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order requiring federal agencies to scrap two regulations for every one they institute on small businesses. In its first week, his administration suspended 30 environmental regulations issued under President Barack Obama. And Myron Ebell, who oversaw the agencys transition team, suggested recently that the E.P.A.s staff may soon be reduced by as much as two-thirds.
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When my colleague David Brooks  no fan of Donald Trump  was choosing his Sidney Award winners for last years best essays, he included a pro-Trump entry to give the winning side its due. Brooks chose The Flight 93 Election, an anonymously published piece arguing that the election of Hillary Clinton would be the equivalent of a catastrophic plane crash for both conservatism and America.

Clinton would crush conservatives, the author wrote, through vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent. And rising immigration would doom the country in the long term: the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.

These racially tinged apocalyptical fears led the author to argue for Trump as the man who could potentially halt the decline. Trumps willingness to tear down the status quo was the one hope for my party, my country and my people, the author wrote.
To the Editor:

It is regrettable that The New York Timess reporting on the cancellation of the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopouloss appearance on the University of California, Berkeley, campus did not make clear that my administration reluctantly took that step only after determining that both the speakers and the publics safety was highly endangered.

Berkeley continues its iconic commitment to free speech, and we went to extraordinary lengths to facilitate planning and preparation for this event, working in close concert with the Berkeley College Republicans. Dozens of police officers were brought in from U.C. campuses across the state.

Numerous crowd-control measures were put in place. But we could not plan for the unexpected. On Wednesday night, the Berkeley campus was invaded by more than 100 armed people in masks and dark uniforms who used paramilitary tactics to engage in violent destructive behavior intended to shut the event down.

At that point the University of California Police Department concluded that the speaker had to be evacuated from campus for his own safety, bringing the event to an end.
To the Editor:

Re A Scientists March on Washington Is a Bad Idea (Op-Ed, nytimes.com, Jan. 31):

Robert S. Young is misguided to say a scientists march is a terrible idea. The march would not politicize science. The politicians have already done that. Most politicians who deny climate change do so because, in Al Gores words, its an inconvenient truth, not because they dont believe the facts.

Mr. Young is naive to think that scientists would be believed if they just had more face time with the public and politicians. Science prevails on the merits, not because scientists have winning personalities.

Moreover, the threat is not just to climate science. The Trump administration has threatened to require that the work of federal scientists be reviewed to conform with administration policy, and agency interaction with the media and the public is being restricted.

The scientific community and concerned citizens must speak out forcefully against such assaults on constitutional rights.
WASHINGTON  Our nation recognized early in its history that public education is a necessary foundation for a democracy. Its critical that we continue to support a strong public education system that prepares our young people, all of them, to participate in our democracy and compete on a fair footing in the work force.

For this reason, our public officials should share a reverence for the importance of public education to our countrys success, both now and in the future. And they must show a commitment to enforcing our laws so that all students have the opportunity to succeed.

That is why I oppose President Trumps nominee for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. Throughout her confirmation process, Ms. DeVos has demonstrated a complete lack of experience in, knowledge of and support for public education. Instead, it is clear that she would pursue policies that would undermine public schools, in my home state of New Hampshire and across our nation.

At her nomination hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last month, I questioned Ms. DeVos on whether she would enforce the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the law that ensures that all students receive a free and full education in our schools. Not only did Ms. DeVos decline to assure senators that she would enforce the law to protect students with disabilities, but she also demonstrated her confusion about whether the I.D.E.A. is a federal law.
The TV personality, who was relocating from Los Angeles, bought the four-story brick house in December 2015 for $8.8 million  just months before joining NBCs Today. He put the home back on the market last October, with an $8.99 million price tag, after his suspension and subsequent departure from the morning show. His forced exit stemmed from a 2005 video that had surfaced in which he and Donald J. Trump were heard engaging in a lewd and misogynistic conversation about women.

Image Mr. Bush left Today after the release of a video in which he and Donald J. Trump had a lewd and misogynistic conversation. Credit... Cindy Ord/Getty Images for AHA

Mr. Bush twice dropped the price of the five-bedroom, 3,540-square-foot townhouse  most recently to $8.25 million. He conducted all of his property transactions using the JLM Trust. The buyer was Thomas Anthony Holdings LLC.

MR. SODERBERGH, the prolific director who won an Academy Award for the 2000 film Traffic, also left the neighborhood.

His prewar loft on the second floor of the co-op building at 147 West 22nd Street sold for $4.85 million. Property records, though, show that Mr. Soderbergh actually entered into a sales contract with the buyer, the Brygo Trust, in July 2015. The 4,000-square-foot apartment  configured with three bedrooms, two baths and a media room  was first listed in June 2014 for $5 million.

IN OTHER BOLDFACE transactions, Mr. Eriksen, and his wife, Hege Christin Fossum, sold unit No. 32CD at 80 Riverside Boulevard for $8.4 million. Mr. Eriksen is a founder of Stargate, a Norwegian music producer and songwriting team that won a Grammy in 2011 for best dance recording for Rihannas Only Girl (In the World); they also produced and co-wrote Beyonces hit single Irreplaceable.

The estate of Judge Kaye, who died last year at age 77, sold unit 5A at 101 Central Park West for $4.25 million.
Andrew Bares and Kelly Lavorgna had put their Catskills vacation home on the market twice in the last four years, and no one had bought it. This time around, they are taking a more novel approach: They are holding an essay contest.

For 200 words and $149, someone could walk away owning 391 Woodstone Trail, a two-bedroom cabin on five and a half acres in Bethel, N.Y., about two hours north of New York City. The winner will be the person who best answers the question: How would owning the lakefront dream home change your life?

The reality is, somebody is going to win this house for $149, said Mr. Bares, 42, and married to Ms. Lavorgna, 57. Since few good things in life are this close to free, whoever wins the home will have to pay property taxes  about $11,000 a year  as well as income taxes, because the prize would be treated as income. The tax could be substantial, depending on the appraised value of the home and the winners personal income.

Also, if the contest does not attract 5,500 applicants, bringing in a sum of $819,500 for the house, it will be canceled, and participants will receive a $100 refund. The remaining $49 becomes a nonrefundable administrative fee.
H. Boyd Woodruff, a farmers son whose groundbreaking research enabled fellow scientists to harvest an arsenal of lifesaving antibiotics from ordinary dirt, died on Jan. 19 at his home in Watchung, N.J. He was 99.

His death was confirmed by his son Hugh.

Dr. Woodruff was instrumental in isolating two microbes that, while effective against tuberculosis and other infections, proved toxic to humans. But his findings in the early 1940s inspired the rapid development of streptomycin, the miracle cure used to treat tuberculosis, typhoid, plague and other diseases that did not respond to penicillin and other drugs.

This was the eureka moment in all antibiotic discovery, Dr. Douglas E. Eveleigh, a professor emeritus of biochemistry and microbiology at Rutgers University, said of Dr. Woodruffs research in an email on Thursday.

The pharmaceutical industry caught on very rapidly, and there followed an avalanche of antibiotics, Dr. Eveleigh said. This was all dependent on the Woodruff proof of concept in screening for antibiotic production.
The technology industry is not exactly known for following the rules. Move fast. Break things. Apologize later. The industrys cliches dont project compliance.

But there does appear to be an unwritten rule for tech execs: Dont get too cozy with President Trump. On Thursday, Travis Kalanick, Ubers chief executive, told his employees in an email that he is backing out of an advisory panel to the president, Mike Isaac writes in The New York Times.

Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that, Mr. Kalanick told his employees.

Image

Heres a quick recap: Mr. Kalanick, along with other tech executives like Elon Musk and Virginia M. Rometty of IBM, agreed to join Mr. Trumps advisory council. In normal times, being among the small handful of tech executives on such a panel would be considered a coup.
Josh Miller, who was a member of the White House Office of Digital Strategy under President Barack Obama, has joined Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm run by the investor Joshua Kushner.

At the firm, Mr. Miller, who begins work there on Monday, will focus on technology that serves the needs of underprivileged Americans. Mr. Miller said he hoped that tech investors and founders would help people who did not have internet access or the digital literacy to navigate job websites and who had to use predatory payday lenders.

With the appointment of Mr. Miller, who joined Mr. Obamas administration in 2015, Mr. Kushner continues to surround himself with Democrats. Many of the founders of his portfolio companies supported Hillary Clinton, as did his girlfriend, the model Karlie Kloss, according to social media.
The jury did not buy it. Mr. Puzders boss, Morris A. Shenker, was hit with a $34 million judgment and filed for bankruptcy.

More than three decades later, the lawyers who represented the Labor Department in the case recall Mr. Puzder as bright and capable, but they still marvel that he blamed government regulators.

I personally find there is some irony in him being nominated to be the secretary of labor, said Daly D. E. Temchine, the lead lawyer in the case for the Department of Labor. Back then, he represented a guy who thought it was O.K. to screw his employees.

As it turned out, Mr. Puzders arguments in the case foreshadowed positions he would take after leaving the practice of law to become chief executive of a fast-food company. He has repeatedly argued that labor regulations stifle economic growth. He has indicated his preference for machines over people because they do not take time off or file lawsuits. And a recording recently surfaced of him referring to his employees as the best of the worst.

Because he was a lawyer representing a client, the positions that Mr. Puzder took in the case do not necessarily represent his personal views. But Mr. Shenker was more than just a client: He was also Mr. Puzders first boss, one he chose to work for, an associate said, specifically because it gave him the chance to litigate this case and a second similar one.
Kellyanne Conway, the adviser to President Trump who coined the phrase alternative facts, is facing another round of criticism and fact-checking after she falsely spoke of a Bowling Green massacre by Iraqi refugees. She acknowledged and corrected her statement Friday morning on Twitter.

Ms. Conway made the comment during an appearance on MSNBCs Hardball on Thursday night as she discussed with the host, Chris Matthews, the executive order by Mr. Trump that suspended immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre, she said. Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered.
WASHINGTON  New sanctions that the Trump administration imposed on Friday to punish Tehrans latest ballistic missile test marked the beginning of what officials called the end of an era in which the United States was too tolerant of Irans bad behavior.

In what was described as the first in a series of efforts to confront Iran around the globe, the ban on banking transfers was levied against 25 Iranians and companies that officials said assisted in Tehrans ballistic missile program and support of terrorist groups.

The immediate trigger for the sanctions, which drew from a list of targets drawn up last year by the Obama administration, was Irans missile test last Sunday. The exact details of the test remain shrouded in considerable mystery. But the way the two countries jabbed at each other  with the White House saying it would no longer tolerate Irans provocations that threaten our interests, and Iranian state news media vowing retaliation  had distinct echoes of the darkest days before the July 2015 nuclear accord was reached.

In striking that deal 19 months ago, the Obama administration was gambling that, over time, Washington and Tehran would learn how to manage their differences and cooperate on one or two discrete projects, starting with eliminating the Islamic State. But that era never arrived. And with the announcements on Friday, it became clearer than ever that leaders in both countries now see an advantage in taking a hard line  each betting that the other does not have the stomach for a risky, expensive confrontation.
 President Trump responded to the failed attack in Paris with his trademark understatement. Europe is not amused.

 The Bowling Green massacre that Kellyanne Conway lamented never happened, but it has triggered another Trump-Clinton battle.

 The presidents phone manners apparently have not changed. This time he used them on Ubers chief executive.
Since Mr. Trump signed his order on Jan. 27, there has been widespread confusion over the policy and disagreement over how it was being carried out, flummoxing immigration lawyers, government officials and travelers. Shortly before the Seattle ruling, a different federal judge, Nathaniel M. Gorton in Boston, ruled in favor of the government by declining to extend a temporary halt to the order in that jurisdiction.

Judge Gorton, who was appointed to the bench by the first President George Bush, said that while the nations immigration history was a source of great pride and that the plaintiffs in that case  Iranian nationals who are academics  had compelling stories, the public interest in safety and security in this ever more dangerous world is strong as well.

But that ruling was soon rendered moot, at least for now, by the Seattle ruling.

The administration has been criticized for issuing its order without any warning to refugees and visa holders who were on their way to the United States. Some arrived at airports for flights and were turned away.

The presidents order allowed for exceptions in the national interest, but lawyers for some travelers had described getting one as a Kafkaesque exercise, with the State Departments website warning that no emergency applications would be heard, and Customs and Border Protection agents at United States airports all but unreachable because their clients were not being allowed to board planes.
While fixing my 4-year-old daughters bookshelf, I noticed something missing on the glossy covers of her picture books: girls of color. There were talking cars, imaginary creatures and stories about white men, women and children. I started counting and discovered that only 4 percent of our books featured minorities as main characters, and only one was a black girl like my daughter.

I needed to do more than fix the bookshelf; I needed to remedy the contents.

It wasnt that my daughter never heard stories featuring characters that look like her. Im a kindergarten teacher, and I often borrow books with diverse characters from both the school and local libraries. But once I noticed the imbalance in our personal collection, I felt the books we actually owned should reflect her. The lack of representation should have been obvious much sooner, but I realized that as a white mother, white privilege afforded me a certain level of oblivion to the racial makeup of our book characters. Part of adopting transracially is learning what to pay attention to. As soon as I was aware of what was missing, I committed myself to filling our bookshelves with stories about smart, talented, strong black females.

In the mid 1960s, the childrens book editor Nancy Larrick found that the publishing houses putting out the most childrens books containing black characters still featured them less than 5 percent of the time (and not necessarily main characters or positive images). Ms. Larrick was among the first in childrens publishing to say that it was a problem for black children to learn about their world through books that do not represent them.

The diversity gap in childrens publishing persists today. Of childrens books published from 1994 to 2014, an average of 10 percent featured multicultural content, though that may be slowly increasing: The 2014 rate reached 14 percent. The campaign We Need Diverse Books was established in 2014 to advocate for more diverse representation in childrens literature. And in 2015, at age 11, Marley Dias started the Twitter hashtag #1000blackgirlbooks. Frustrated by the homogeneity of stories she read in class, Marley collected books featuring black girls to benefit underprivileged students.
NEW DELHI  Thousands of volunteers and Indian Coast Guard personnel were working on Friday to clean sludge from shores near the southern city of Chennai nearly a week after an oil spill that activists said could have dire repercussions for wildlife and fishery.

Officials disagreed about who was to blame for the failure to contain the spill. Commandant Rahul Dev Sharma, a local spokesman for the Coast Guard, said on Friday that at least 20 tons of oil had leaked into the Bay of Bengal.

The spill occurred before dawn last Saturday after two tankers, one empty and the other carrying petroleum, collided near Chennai, Commandant Sharma said.

Port officials noticed oil on the waters surface that evening, but thought it was a minor leak from one of the ships, said Atulya Mishra, environment secretary for the state of Tamil Nadu, which includes Chennai. But by Sunday, oil was billowing toward the coast, most of it collecting at a fishing village, Radhakrishna Nagar, Mr. Mishra said. About 25 miles of coastline were affected, he said.
SEOUL, South Korea  The chief of North Koreas powerful secret police, long considered the right-hand man for the top leader, Kim Jong-un, has been dismissed on charges of corruption and abuse of power, the South Korean government said on Friday.

The firing of the chief, Gen. Kim Won-hong, as minister of state security highlights the turmoil that has engulfed the upper reaches of Mr. Kims government. The general is the latest in a series of high-ranking party and military officials Mr. Kim has fired, demoted or executed as he tried to consolidate his totalitarian power through what South Korean officials and North Korean defectors have called a reign of terror.

General Kim was fired in mid-January after he was demoted to a one-star general from a four-star one, said Jeong Joon-hee, a spokesman for the Souths Unification Ministry.

The generals surprise downfall was the latest indication that even top lieutenants are at risk as Mr. Kim has rival agencies monitor one another to detect and punish any sign of disrespect or disloyalty. Until his dismissal, General Kim had been Mr. Kims chief henchman in purging potential enemies.
SEOUL, South Korea  The office of President Park Geun-hye of South Korea blocked investigators from searching its compound on Friday, creating a standoff between Ms. Park, who argues that she is the victim of a political witch hunt, and a special prosecutor who has accused her of bribery.

The team of investigators, led by Park Young-soo, the special prosecutor, arrived at the Blue House, the mountainside presidential compound, in the morning. Ms. Park, whose powers have been suspended, has been holed up there since the National Assembly voted to impeach her in December on charges of corruption and abuse of power.

The investigators presented Ms. Parks office with a court-issued search warrant that identified her as a suspect accused of bribery and other crimes. They said they needed to search the offices of staff members to collect evidence.

But Ms. Parks office stopped them at the gate, citing laws banning investigators from searching the compound without presidential consent. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is the acting president and is a steadfast ally of Ms. Parks, has not given such consent.
GENEVA  Members of Myanmars Army and the police have slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children, gang-raped women and girls, and forced as many as 90,000 Rohingya Muslims from their homes, according to a United Nations report released on Friday.

The report, the world bodys first official account of a four-month government crackdown on ethnic Rohingya in Myanmar, said the actions of members of the army and the police very likely were crimes against humanity.

The gravity and scale of these allegations begs the robust reaction of the international community, said Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, whose office released the 50-page report.

Mr. al-Hussein demanded that the government halt the security forces counterinsurgency operations in Rakhine, a state on the western coast, which began in October, and he said he delivered that message to Myanmars leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, by telephone on Friday.
BAGHDAD  Capt. Ahmed Adnan al-Musawe had survived another day battling Islamic State fighters in Mosul last weekend when he heard startling news: The new American president had temporarily barred Iraqis from entering the United States and wanted tougher vetting.

Captain Musawe, who commands an infantry unit of the Iraqi Armys elite counterterrorism force, considers himself already fully vetted: He has been trained by American officers in Iraq and in Jordan. And backed by American advisers, he has fought the Islamic State in three Iraqi cities, including three months of brutal street combat in Mosul.

If America doesnt want Iraqis because we are all terrorists, then America should send its sons back to Iraq to fight the terrorists themselves, Captain Musawe told a New York Times reporter who was with him this week at his barricaded position inside Mosul.

President Trumps Jan. 27 executive order has driven a wedge between many Iraqi soldiers and their American allies. Officers and enlisted men interviewed on the front lines in Mosul said they interpreted the order as an affront  not only to them but also to fellow soldiers who have died in the battle for Mosul.
And for further help, he pulled in Andrew Leslie, a Liberal member of Parliament and a retired lieutenant general who received the United States Legion of Merit for his work with the American military.

All the while, Mr. Trudeau has been under pressure at home to be the worlds voice against a president who has already insulted or belittled an array of nations. Those Canadians are likely to be disappointed.

Mr. Trudeau may feel he has little choice. Canada is too closely entwined with its immense neighbor  economically, militarily, diplomatically and in countless other ways  to risk the development of serious friction.

So while Mr. Trudeau continues to promote his political values to Canadians, he and his cabinet ministers have been careful not to criticize Mr. Trump directly. It is a situation that faces the leaders of other American allies, but none have nearly as much to lose as Canada does  and none may have a leader as completely opposite to Mr. Trump in manner and belief.

I am really proud that today Canada is standing for the open society and that were open to immigration, were open to refugees, whatever their faith; those are not necessarily popular national values in the world, Ms. Freeland said in her corner office in Canadas neo-Gothic Parliament buildings. She added, I dont think we would ever want to be sanctimonious, or behave as if we have everything figured out and were in a position to lecture other people on how to behave.
They stopped short of taking more severe actions  like declaring Libya a safe third country, which would obviate the legal obligation to consider asylum claims from people who have reached Europe through Libya, or screening migrants and processing their asylum claims in centers based in North Africa.

Can refugees only come to us if they entrust their fate to smugglers, to traffickers? I must say no to that, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said at a news conference. She said the bloc should consider supporting countries like Ethiopia to set up humane possibilities for giving people shelter, so that those fleeing countries like Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan did not make their way farther north, or onward to Europe.

Nonetheless, immigrant rights groups expressed concern on Friday that the latest plan would result in the warehousing of migrants in decrepit centers.

We believe that, given the current context, it is not appropriate to consider Libya a safe third country, nor to establish extraterritorial processing of asylum seekers in North Africa, the International Organization for Migration said in a statement. We urge a move away from migration management based on the automatic detention of refugees and migrants in inhumane conditions in Libya towards the creation of proper reception services.

Arjan Hehenkamp, a Doctors Without Borders official who returned to Amsterdam on Thursday after visiting migrants held in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, said in a statement that the European Union was delusional about just how dangerous the situation in Libya really is.

He added: The declaration does not refer to any alternatives for people who are unable to stay in Libya and would be at risk if they were returned home. The suggested ways of improving the situation in Libya for refugees and other migrants are dangerously lacking in detail.
PARIS  The president of the National Assembly does it. The president of the Senate defends it. Dozens of rank-and-file parliamentarians do it, too. Hiring your spouse, son or sister in Frances Parliament is perfectly legal.

So, with Francois Fillon, until recently Frances leading presidential candidate, in deep trouble for payments of nearly $1 million from the public payroll to his wife and children, many French politicians are asking: Whats the big deal?

The answer has, belatedly, come roaring back from much of the countrys press and public: They just dont get it.

Penelopegate, a scandal named for Mr. Fillons wife, now threatens to sink the ambitions of a man who little more than a week ago seemed all but certain to become Frances next president.
OSLO  During his two stints as prime minister of Norway, a steadfast ally of the United States and a member of NATO, Kjell Magne Bondevik met with Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

A Lutheran minister, Mr. Bondevik travels frequently for his job at the Oslo Center, which promotes peace, democracy and human rights, and he went to Washington this week for meetings associated with the National Prayer Breakfast, at which President Trump spoke.

So Mr. Bondevik was startled on Tuesday when federal agents pulled him aside at Dulles International Airport and questioned him over a visit he paid to Iran. Photographs of his visa, which allowed him to enter Iran from December 2014 to January 2015, were widely circulated online.

I was asked why I had stamps from Iran and what was the purpose of my visit to the United States, Mr. Bondevik said in a phone interview late Friday, after returning to Oslo. I explained to the officer who I was and that I had been to Iran for a conference on extremism.
PARIS  A man armed with two large knives and shouting God is great in Arabic lunged at a military patrol near an entrance to the Louvre on Friday, causing little harm, but rattling a city already on edge over terrorist attacks and casting another shadow over its international image.

A soldier opened fire, hitting the attacker several times, but not before he slashed at one of the other soldiers, causing minor injuries.

The Paris prosecutor, Francois Molins, said the attacker, who was 29 years old, was believed to be an Egyptian who arrived in France on Jan. 26 from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, on a visa he obtained last November.

The intervention by soldiers from the 1er Regiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes, an airborne unit based in Pamiers, in southwestern France, ended a terrorist attack and enabled the arrest of its perpetrator, who by all indications was very determined, Mr. Molins said.
The embers of a smoldering conflict reignited this week as a series of border skirmishes in eastern Ukraine escalated to nearly continuous fighting along a front line, with deaths mounting on both sides.

The Ukrainian military said 19 soldiers had been killed and 66 wounded since Sunday. The main Russian-backed rebel group, the Donetsk Peoples Republic, said 18 of its soldiers had been killed and dozens more wounded.

The fiercest fighting centered on the industrial town of Avdiivka on the outskirts of Donetsk, the rebel capital, where tanks took up positions in the snowy streets. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe reported more than 1,000 artillery strikes in and around the town, including one that killed a woman as she was walking to a grocery store.
The Trump administration condemns actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout the Middle East and place American lives at risk, Mr. Flynn said on Wednesday.

Later that day, Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Iran is rapidly taking over Iraq, its neighbor, even after the U.S. squandered three trillion dollars there. Obvious long ago.

During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump spoke favorably of unpredictability in foreign policy, pointing to the Reagan presidency as an example of the benefits of keeping opponents off balance. Since taking office, he has been good to his word, and Iranians have noticed.

Trump is not predictable for Americans, not for Europeans and not for us, said Nader Karimi Joni, an analyst close to the government of President Hassan Rouhani. He and his team are not trustworthy. They will not honor any agreement. Nothing good is coming from this.

Certainly not for Mr. Rouhani, a moderate who came to power promising to ratchet down tensions with the West, cinch a nuclear deal and get Irans economy moving again. Now, all those goals are in jeopardy, and Mr. Rouhanis re-election this spring is far from assured.

On Thursday, an aide to Irans supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Mr. Trumps remarks hollow rants and said that they would bring losses for his countrys national interest. And a former foreign minister, Ali Akbar Velayati, said that Iran would continue to test missiles.

Mr. Rouhani has called Mr. Trump a political novice. But there is little doubt that the clerics have been thrown off balance. One analyst with access to government deliberations said that hard-liners in Iran were confused and did not know how to deal with the situation. Some in the establishment are opting for the same rhetoric and tactics they used under Mr. Obama, but in reality, this is uncharted territory, he said.
While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the White House stated, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

While the White House said it had not yet taken an official position on settlement activity, its statement hinted at the kind of understandings that Israel had with President George W. Bush.

In a 2004 letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, Mr. Bush articulated a policy that allowed for continued Israeli building in major settlement blocs that Israel intended to keep under any permanent deal with the Palestinians, possibly by compensating the Palestinians with land swaps.

Mr. Bush cited new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, and said they should be taken into consideration in redrawing the borders between Israel and the West Bank.

For now, though, with the Israeli-Palestinian peace process long at an impasse, the Palestinians and most of the world consider all settlement building as a violation of international law.
On Friday, President Trump signed an executive order seeking a review of an Obama-era rule that would have forced financial professionals to act in customers best interest when giving them advice about their retirement accounts.

The so-called fiduciary rule has been the subject of years of intense debate and industry lobbying and was set to take effect in April. But the rule is likely to disappear, given that Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who is now the director of the National Economic Council, told The Wall Street Journal that he wanted it gone.

Wait, what? My investment professional doesnt have to act in my best interests already?

Not necessarily. The technical terminology gets confusing, but a financial planner or investment adviser in a stand-alone firm may be required to act in your best interest or may pledge to in all instances. But some stockbrokers and many people who sell life insurance, annuities and other more esoteric investment products merely have to follow whats known as the suitability standard.

That leaves lots of room for shenanigans.

What was the Trump administrations problem with the rule?

Apparently, freedom of choice was paramount, including the ability to invest your life savings in a way that is indisputably risky or even harmful. This is like putting only health food on the menu, because unhealthy food tastes good. But you still shouldnt eat it because you might die younger, Mr. Cohn told The Journal.
I have to be willing for the money to go down the drain completely, he said.

It has happened once, with an investment in a food technology company. It was a good idea, basically trying to create a more automated supply chain for small farms and organic farms, Mr. Baltzell said. That did not work out.

His investments now include Five Acre Farms, an organic farm based in New York that is trying to be a lower-cost version of Horizon Organic, the dairy; and Helios, a British company that aims to reduce carbon emissions by modernizing the lighting systems in buildings.

However difficult investing with a pure vision may be, it also comes at the risk of hypocrisy. Mr. Doman has clients passionate about avoiding investments in fossil fuels who have duly refused to put money into oil and gas companies. But one of those clients was comfortable owning stocks in airlines, which, of course, need fossil fuels to fly.

We talked it through and they said: Aviation and air travel are an essential part of the economy, and its something I use  its a necessity. I guess I cant go that far, Mr. Doman said of the client. They didnt want to own BP, Royal Dutch Shell or Mobil, but theyd own American Airlines or Delta. Thats why I say its a very subjective assessment.

Some investors have put parameters in place to stay focused on their passions but not to go broke.

A strategy that loses money for years, like Mr. Holehouses focus on renewables, is not one any professional investor could sustain and still be in business. But he said he and his wife did not need their investments to live. And being tied to the jewelry business, he said, has allowed them to invest in gems and rare metals that regular investors cannot access.

Kashmir sapphires have gone up 500 percent in the last decade, he said. Thankfully, it gives us more room to let our conscience drive things.

Similarly, Mr. Baltzells approach in choosing his angel investments is, by his own admission, one of convenience: He looks at deals that come to him and meet his criteria of reducing waste. (Professional angel investors most likely look at 10 or 20 deals before investing in one or none.)
THE REASON Why boycott? Outrage tends to fall into two general categories, according to Daniel Diermeier, who is the provost at the University of Chicago and wrote about the topic for Harvard Business Review back when he was a business school professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

First, there are the one-sided issues. No one, he said in an interview this week, is on the side of child labor, for instance. These kinds of boycotts tend to draw more supporters and have a greater chance of success.

But if youre organizing a boycott around a more polarizing issue  say, who deserves to come to a country, for how long and for what reasons  you can expect that for any consumer action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. The #DeleteUber campaign prompted #BoycottLyft after that company announced a $1 million donation to the American Civil Liberties Union. At the same time, Starbucks fans who support the companys outreach to refugees gleefully tweeted about supersizing their Frappuccinos to start this week.

VICTORY After Mr. Trump won the election in November, Bill Penzey, the chief executive of Penzeys Spices in Wauwatosa, Wis., wrote a message on Facebook informing Trump voters that they had just committed the biggest act of racism in American history in more than 50 years.

Boycotts ensued  but good luck to you if your goal is to change the mind of a guy like that. And if youre going to try, dont send him letters telling him that youre not going to buy his tea anymore. (He doesnt sell it.) And dont give him a reason to disparage your intellect by misspelling chef as chief.

Dan Savage, the columnist, podcaster and co-founder of It Gets Better, a project that supports lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths, helped organize a boycott of Stolichnaya in 2013, to protest Russias treatment of gays and lesbians. He knew he could not change the companys identification with Russia. But by picking on a company strongly associated with a particular type of country, the boycotters could send a message to other nations that their prejudice would not go unnoticed.
On Thursday, many Americans woke up to a possible diplomatic rift with Australia, after the news that President Trump and the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, exchanged harsh words over a refugee agreement. It was all the more remarkable because a new survey  taken in the days before their conversation was revealed  shows that Australia is the nation that Republicans say is Americas strongest ally.

Rated as... An ally Not sure An enemy Places Americans say are allies Among... Democrats Republicans Independents Places Americans say are enemies Among... Democrats Republicans Independents Rated as... An ally Not sure An enemy

The episode was not the first international clash of Mr. Trumps presidency. He belittled Mexico throughout his campaign and has annoyed many Mexicans with his aggressive talk on trade and immigration, insisting that they will pay for a border wall. He has also angered several European nations, including Germany, Britain and Italy, over his administrations executive order restricting refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

What Australia, Germany, Britain and Italy have in common: Americans of both parties rank them near the top of their list of allies. The survey, conducted from January 28 to February 1, asked respondents to rate whether a country was an ally or enemy of the United States on a five-point scale: ally, friendly, not sure, unfriendly or enemy. The differences at the top of the list  between Australia, Canada and Britain  were small.

Mexico landed further down the list, but was still viewed relatively favorably, especially by Democrats. It ranked 42nd of the 144 places respondents were asked to rate, similar to the Philippines, Romania and Madagascar. The predominantly Muslim countries whose citizens were recently denied entry are near the bottom of the list. (A full list of the average results for all the places respondents were asked can be found at the bottom of this article.)

Of course, Americans are not monolithic in their beliefs. For some countries, respondents opinions varied greatly depending on their political party.

Rated as... An ally Not sure An enemy Places Democrats viewed much more favorably Among... Democrats Republicans Independents Places Republicans viewed much more favorably Among... Democrats Republicans Independents Rated as... An ally Not sure An enemy

Russia is one notable example. Democrats emphatically identified Russia as an enemy; only North Korea ranked lower. Republicans still had negative views about Russia, but not as negative. Elsewhere, Democrats had relatively more favorable views of Cuba, Iran and Syria; Republicans had more favorable views of Israel.

One reason for some differences, particularly with regard to countries in Africa and Latin America, may be the different racial compositions of the parties (Democrats are significantly more diverse).

Doug Rivers, the chief scientist at YouGov, said: Americans tend to think that countries populated by people of their own race are allies of the United States. For example, African-Americans rate Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone as allies, while white Americans consider these countries to be somewhat unfriendly. Similarly, Latinos, but not whites, considered El Salvador to be an ally. European countries are rated more friendly by whites than by either African-Americans or Latinos.

Comparing the new survey with a nearly identical YouGov survey conducted about three years ago, the scatterplot below shows the shifting in Democratic and Republican views. In the previous survey, for example, Democratic and Republican views on Russia were roughly the same.

Republicans are more likely to see countries as enemies than Democrats. On average, a Republicans rating of the bottom 10 countries was about a quarter-point lower on the five-point scale than an average Democrats, Mr. Rivers said.

As the animation shows, there has been some movement in Americans attitudes toward other countries over the past three years  but not much meaningful change. Respondents viewed Cuba more favorably than they did in the past, perhaps a result of the restoration of full relations with Cuba starting in December 2014. And Americans viewed the Philippines much less favorably than they did three years ago, maybe a consequence of the brutal antidrug campaign of its president, Rodrigo Duterte, and strained diplomatic relations after Mr. Duterte referred to President Obama with an expletive. Russia, too, has moved relatively significantly, particularly for Republicans, who see it as less of an enemy now than they did three years ago.

Below, the survey responses for all places respondents were asked to rate.

In 2017 In 2014 Everyone Democrats Republicans Everyone Democrats Republicans
Just hours after being sworn into the White House, President Donald Trumps transition team made their energy objectives clear. Coals coming back like its 1888.

The Trump newly minted Trump administration wasted no time redirecting the course of former President Obamas policies, which advocated solar power, wind power and various other sustainable energy sources. Trump, in a new White House webpage called An America First Energy Policy Plan, asserts the elimination of climate regulations and to boost oil and gas production; moreover, The Trump Administration is committed to clean coal technology and to reviving Americas coal industry, which has been hurting for too long.

Trump seems to think this is a good deal for the country? But is it really?

Point: Reviving coal guarantees jobs to millions of out-of-work miners, ensures lower energy costs, maximizes the use of American resources, and leads to energy security.

The single most important benefit of coal is that its an easy solution to the energy problem. What we mean by that is coals cheap to produce, simple to extract, ship and burn. The technologys already in placeand has been in place for decades. The miners, for the most part, are already trained. There are also an array of dependable sellers like Peabody Energy and Arch Coal. Plus, as of right now, 33 percent of American energy comes from coal, and, of coal producing countries, America has the largest reserve with about 26 percent of the worlds coal.

As if the stability of a fully invested coal werent enough, America has a fuck-ton of the stuff. Last year, the country mined about 900 million tonsalmost all of it used to provide electricity for American householdsand thats only a minuscule fraction of the 257 billion tons in recoverable reserves.

Needless to say, in the minds of Trump and many Republicans, if we have it, why shouldnt we use it?

In President Trumps case, he hopes to use this energy to redevelop the countrys infrastructure. This not only has Republicans excited, but coal executivesparticularly makers of metallurgical coal, a variety used by steel makers instead of powerplantswho see this investment as a potential renaissance for the struggling field.

Corsa Coal Corp, a metallurgical-coal producer in Pennsylvania, for instance, cant wait for Trumps policies to begin. The thing that has got me the most excited is the potential for infrastructure spending, said George Dethlefsen, Corsas chief executive. All those things are very energy- and steel-intensive, and thats good for our business.

The company plans to boost its metallurgical-coal production by 70 percent this year to around 1.2 million short tons.

Similarly, miners in West Virginia have a similar hopesomething miners in the region havent had in over a decade. This is the best news that Appalachia as a whole has had in about 10 years, said Jason Bostic, a vice president at the West Virginia Coal Association, in an interview with Reuters.

Miners arent the only ones excited. President Trump seems to think this environmental deregulation and return to coal can create millions of jobs. Considering the industry currently employs around 80 thousand Americans, thatd be nothing short of miraculous. And maybe, if the Trump administration plays their cardsand coalcorrectly, a minor miracle could be in the works.

Counterpoint: Coal is dead, and has been dying for decades, and any attempt to revive it is futile.

Trump says coal miners have been hurting far too long, but, based on a history of scrip payments, child laborers and probably the most depressing soundtrack of any profession, it seems coal miners have always hurt, and Trumps promise to bring mining back is more than likely a big, fat lie.

Coal aint coming back, and its not because of environmental regulations or Obamas War on Coal, as many Republicans call it, or any excuse the administration may give. Coals not coming back largely because of market forcesyes, the same market forces Republicans so often praise. Its no coincidence the ascendance of shale oil has occurred simultaneously with the decline of coal. The fracking boom has depressed natural gas prices, making natural gas-fired power plants the cheaper option in many formerly mining communities. Furthermore, frackings the cleaner, more available solution to coal, emitting half the CO2 as coal, far fewer dangerous pollutants, and workers arent subjected to deathly conditions like black lung. And furthermore, furthermore, in recent years, renewable energy sources like wind and solar have overtaken the role of coal in many places throughout the country.

Coals also not coming back because weve slowly stopped mining it. Heres the big picture: Last years 900 million tons was the lowest amount since 1986 and nearly 25 percent less than the coal mined in ten years ago, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Back in 2008, coal supplied 50 percent of the countrys power. By 2015, that number had fallen to 33 percent. Since the country has become less reliant on coal, miners have been losing their jobs at record rates. A study out of the journal Energy Policy revealed that, from 2008 to 2012, 50,000 coal-related jobs closed. Thats out of an industry with only has 80,000 miners left. Oh, and lets also add in another issue, the issue of states like California, New York and Oregon proactively turning away from coal and investing only in clean, renewable energy.

So how the Hell does Trump plan on revitalizing an industry thats not only nearly flatlining but also competing with other energy initiativesfracking and nuclearthat he greatly supports? Well, by eliminating regulations. Of course, eliminating regulations now doesnt factor in the costs it would take to clean up the environment after coal continues destroying. To curb global warming, scientists say 90 percent of U.S. coal should stay buried. If it is burned, thatll just be future costs not only in lives but also in whatever additional damage global warming wreaks across the country.

Eliminating regulations does nothing to solve the problem that coals been in decline since the end of the 20th century, and, experts agree that investing in renewables is actually the way of the future. Since 2009, solar prices are down 62 percent, and, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, solar may be cheaper than coal by 2025.

So for how much longer will coal even be relevant? And should we bother investing in irrelevancy?

Image: Jan Truter CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Tom Burson is a travel writer, part-time hitchhiker, and hes currently trying to imitate Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? but with more sunscreen and jorts.
About ten miles west of Tom Bradley International Terminal  where thousands of demonstrators gathered this weekend to protest President Donald Trumps executive order banning scores of refugees, along with visitors and legal immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries, including Iran  artists of the Iranian diaspora were being celebrated at the opening of Focus Iran 2 at The Craft & Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) on Wilshires Miracle Mile.

Presented by the museum, in partnership with Farhang Foundation  a non-religious, non-political, not-for-profit organization dedicated to sharing Iranian art and culture with mainstream audiences Focus Iran 2 is the much-anticipated second biennial exhibition of contemporary photography and video representing the culture and heritage of Iran.

The nearly 40 jury selected works chosen for the museums exhibition from throughout the United States and abroad were introduced in an unsettling new American order, that brought with it an unintended solidarity with LAX protestors wielding rudimentary drawn signs bearing urgent messages: I Am An Immigrant, and Build a Wall Well Tear it Down, their own commentary on social and cultural issues of times; of love and loss; struggle and rebellion.

In Elham Masoudis dual-sectioned photograph titled, Protest Dance, the resident of Atlanta, Georgia, explores similar themes of resistance in the color-filled movement of feet in dance; on top, monochromatic heads and hands in protest. The piece was inspired by a student demonstration over the junk food supply at her school in Tehran.

The students banged spoons on table, she noted in her artistic statement. I believe the behavior of Iranian youth has changed from being introverted to extroverted. They are yelling and asking for their rights. They want to move from black to colors. I think no one can hide or censor the real image of people because they no longer want to be silenced.

Giving voice to those who feel quieted is also thrust behind False Roots by Sanaz Khosravi. A striking digital black and white piece, that has become the promotional centerpiece for the exhibition, showcases the cultural taboos for women revealing their uncovered tresses in public in the Islamic state.

Sometimes the voice weve been searching for in the outside world, can only be heard in the confines of our own being, noted Khosravi, a Tehran native living in Berkeley, Calif., in a statement. After the Revolution in Iran, compulsory hijab tied the knots that entangled the daily lives of many Iranian women in a cultural struggle where the female hair braided the chains that held her captive to the headscarf.

One of the first thoughts in an Americans mind about women from the Middle East is the hijab, said Tehran-born artist Labkhand Olfatmanesh. As she reflects on the modest Islamic styles of dress, her piece, Fly, moves as effortlessly as the waves on the beach in the background, mimicking its ease as the hijab sweep across the womans face in stark contrast with her stern, dutifully clothed body.

After leaving Iran in 2003, I was judged and felt a constant need to explain myself, said Olfatmanesh, who now lives and works in Studio City, Calif. Even now with no obligation of covering, I still carry the shadow of it.

The politics of womens bodies  an issue which took center stage in the global Womens March on January 21 following the U.S. presidential inauguration  is also captured in the video installation by Seattle-born Emelie Mahdavian. An experimental film, using motion capture composited with video to create the films three layers, explores the boundaries of Iranian womens dance performance and what constitutes a womans body in the digital age.

Given that women dancing in public is illegal in Iran today  and even animated movies are censored  the film sets to find the lines of constitutes a body and what constitutes an Iranian woman, according to Mahdavian, who now works in San Francisco.

Then theres the breathtaking beauty of Wind Dancer, from Tehran-born, Atlanta resident Mohammadjavad Jahangir who catches 21-year-old Ahmad in mid-flight as he jumps over a cavernous space between Avicenna Mausoleum in Hamadan, Iran as he runs to get cigarettes.

Also on display are other sights of every day Iran from artists currently living in Tehran including Armin Amirian Iranian carpet, honoring the rustic rug weavers who use their fingers to create one of the most legendary forms of Iranian art; Rural Woman a quiet scene from Madjid Mohammadi featuring a traditional rural woman taking lunch from home to her husband who works on an adjacent farm; and Ahmad Belbasis Mourn as he follows the pilgrimage of Turkmen heading to the shrines of pre-Islamic prophet Khalid Nabi and his son-in law, Ata Chofun in the mountains of Turkmen Sahra, Golestan Province.

From their collection of staged photography, Silent Symphony, artists Ameneh Larijani,

Hamed Touri Karami, Mahmood Saki and Mahsa Solfaghari, of the ensemble Machine Studio in Tehran, unveil lesser known aspects of Iranian folklore. On display is their rendering of the story of the devil, Aal, portrayed as a scrawny red woman, who would abscond with a woman and hurt her newborn infant if she was left alone. Prayer was used to ward off Aal as well as drawing lines with sharp metals all the way around the pregnant woman, or placing an onion above her head. The group studied classical western paintings in order to achieve the pictorial form in combination with contemporary forms of photography.

Another relevant piece, titled Path, part of a series of prints by Parna Baharali, in which the traveler is faced with two roads from which to choose, is inspired by the poet Jalaluddin Rumi. With this piece, said Baharali in a statement, I am seeking to show the world my unrevealed emotions in life, the thoughts, the fear of making choices, and all the doubts and pain that burdened my heart all along, but were at no time revealed.

From Mashad, Iran, Omid Sariri Ajilis Love is a cheery, colorful poetic mediation on the rare places one can love  something that can be felt, he said in a statement. I always seek for this kind of love. One day, I found it in an obsolete place and captured it with my camera to make it live forever in that frame.

A reminder there is still that same hope for those still willing to look for it.

All photos are courtesy of Farhang Foundation. Focus Iran 2: Contemporary Photography and Video is now in exhibition at The Craft & Folk Art Museum through May 7, 2017; at the University of California, Irvines Viewpoint Gallery from September 16 to October 13, 2017. This photo story features the following Iranian contemporary artists and scholars: Elham Masoudi, Sanaz Khosravi, Emelie Madhavian, Mohammaddhacar Jahangir, Ahmad Belbasi, Ameneh Larijani, Hamed Touri Karami, Mahmood Saki, Mahsa Solfaghari, Parna Baharali and Omid Sariri Ajili. The exhibit also features works about Iranian life and culture by Mehrdad Afsari, Sobia Ahmad, Ooldouz Alaei Novin, Saskia Boelsums, Parisa Ghaderi, Gazelle Samizay, and Javid Tafazoli.



Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn is Senior Editor of Women, Media and Culture for Los Angeles Review of Books, an author and filmmaker. Her independent feature, Lovers in Their Right Mind, a romantic drama about an African American woman and an Iranian immigrant, is in development. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
Apologies if this evaluation of our situation becomes obsolete 20 minutes after its published. We are in a constitutional crisis, and things are happening quickly. The initial week of the Trump administration produced so much heat, so much rage, and so much genuine life-of-our-democracy concern that the fury blasting out of the Lefts firehose hit several surprising targets, including but not limited to Uber and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Warren and several other Democrats came under fire for voting to confirm several Trump cabinet nominees, including Ben Carson for HUD Secretary. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has been vilified, and words like spineless, accommodationist, and Vichy have been bandied about concerning the whole party as it attempts to navigate this frightening new era.

Though its difficult given the gravity of the situation, its also important that as people call their representatives, protest, march, and tweet, some semblance of a plan takes shape and holds firm. My fear is the Left, from centrists to radicals, is way better at hyper-ventilating about each fresh outrage than it is about being tactically shrewd or actually effecting the legislative outcomes of all these various issues. For instance, Im deeply skeptical about New Yorks other senator, Kirsten Gillibrands plan to vote No on almost every Trump nominee (she voted to confirm Nikki Haley to the UN even though Haley is just as inexperienced with diplomatic relations as Ben Carson is with housing). The Huffington Post crowd might venerate Gillibrand, and you can definitely see the campaign ads for the 2020 Democratic primary, but will this be effective strategically? If all 48 Democratic senators do as the base wishes and votes No on every Trump nominee, and they simply pass with Republican votes, do you honestly think anyone in the tyrannical Trump regime or the Republican Party or their base will give more than zero fucks?

Obviously not. Congressional Republicans already proved with everything from the debt ceiling showdown to Obamas nomination of Merrick Garland that they are ready to shred every norm and standard to get what they want. Symbols do not matter to them.

So what is tactically shrewd then?

Writing in The Washington Post, Adam Jentleson, Harry Reids former deputy chief of staff, suggests Democrats can throw an enormous amount of sand into the gears simply by using procedural methods to slow down the vote of each and every nominee. Already, Senate Democrats are utilizing a grind-the-gears strategy. Trumps cabinet confirmations are moving forward in drips infuriating to his cheerleaders

Compared with Obamas cabinet, this slow-walk is already unprecedented, which is important not just to hold up these extremely unqualified, ethically dubious nominees but because in a sense we are all stalling for time. Every day the Senate spends putting off the confirmation of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, is another day Obamacare lives on, deficit-exploding tax cuts for the wealthy remain out of reach, further degradations of voting rights are kept at bay, and a thousand mile wall across the Mexican border remains unfunded. In other words, obstruction is about buying as much time as possible while the rest of us prepare to do the impossible (and this will be the all-time electoral equivalent of a shot from half court) and flip the Senate and the House in 2018 to create real checks on the Trump administration and real investigations into the horror show of his presidency.

Yet theres another angle to why it does not matter if Warren votes for Carson or if some of Trumps nominees are confirmed. In any Republican administrationlets say we had President Rubio right nowmost of these nominees would be objectionable. Youd have an anti-labor Labor Secretary, an anti-environment Interior Secretary, an anti-public education Education Secretary. This goes beyond Trump. Thats the nature of what the GOP has become. They are resistant to science, economics, empirical evidence, and certainly the public interest. While Chuck Schumer may be Wall Streets pet monkey, the GOP is essentially a cult of neoliberal Storm Troopers shotgun-married to a white supremacist carnival barker.

However, this also means the GOP has exploitable divisions. Senate Democrats only need a handful of Republican votes to bring down a nominee. They should focus their efforts on peeling off these votes for the most egregious candidates.

Given whats happened the past week, it would be nice if a few Republicans claiming to care about these issues stepped up, revealed a conscience, a glimmer of courage, and refused to vote on any of Trumps nominees until he reverses his illegal, immoral, and dangerous executive order. I spent my weekend writing and calling a few of these people and you should too (McCain, Graham, Sasse, Paul, Collins, among others). But again, this would require actual political courage on their parts, and I dont think the rest of us can bank on that.

The next best thing would be to torpedo the worst of the worst. In no particular order, these probably include:

 Rex Tillerson at State - Hes an unqualified plutocrat with whose ties to Russia are yet to be investigated. For what its worth, his former company, ExxonMobil, was hurt by Americas sanctions against Putin. His entire career was spent emitting as much CO2 as possible while the planet burns. He appears to have been recruited solely for the purpose of making the world safe for the continued plunder of fossil fuel companies, particularly his own.

 Rick Perry at Energy - Its not just that he would be heading the department he vowed to destroy as a candidate, only to forget its name like something straight out of an Onion headline. Its that Energy controls the U.S. nuclear arsenal and typically is the domain of Nobel Prize winning scientists for the because one needs a deep reservoir of technical and scientific training to even understand the issues at stake. Im fairly certain there are eighth graders who have a better understanding of genomics (for which Energy directs and oversees research) than Perry.

 Betsy DeVos at Education - Besides her laughably awful confirmation hearing in which it was clear she does not understand anything about education policy except how to privatize it, DeVos is another plutocrat, whos brother Erik Prince runs the mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater. Given Trumps penchant for using private security instead of the Secret Service, this connection is especially troubling in a tinfoil-hat kind of way. Rather abruptly, it turns out we should all readying the tinfoil.

 Scott Pruitt at EPA - Its simply insane you can nominate a climate denier who sued the very institution he is now supposed to be in charge of, but thats where we are. One would think John McCain, who knows the reality of climate change, would not be able to even look at a grandchild after voting for this man, but were really about to find out how politicians can compartmentalize their consciences in fascinating ways.

 Jeff Sessions at Justice - This is the Big Kahuna, the nomination Democrats must do everything in their power to bring down. Sessions is a true fascist waiting to happen. He will make Alberto Gonzalez and John Ashcroft look like paragons of virtue and impartiality. With the firing of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, Trumps team is clearly trying to assert political dominance over the Justice Department. Under his leadership Justice will be turned into a political tool to damage, harass, and arrest religious minorities, people of color, political activists, journalists, and Trumps personal enemies. Former Sessions aide Stephen Miller is part of the two-person team along with Bannon who wrote the college-intern-level document now known as the Muslim Ban. Sessions was chosen because he will rubber stamp every unconstitutional detention and torture policy alongside every voter discrimination law. One cannot overstate the danger of having a brainless lackey with clear white supremacist inclinations running what is supposed to be the independent law enforcement arm of the government. Justice will operate as a retributive arm of the executive.

Sure, there are others I could add: Andy Pudzer at Labor and Steve Mnuchin at Treasury and Ryan Zinke at Interior  these men are all unqualified or outright hostile to the departments theyre tasked with operating, but the fact is whoever rose to take their places would likely be just as awful. Thats one of the glories of Trumps cabinetthis is such a horrific collection of rabid, soulless, reactionary animals that its difficult to choose a target on which to train political fire. That is surely intentional.

Yet there are enough murmurs a handful of Senate Republicans are deeply concerned with several of these nomineesenough that revolt is not unthinkable. The Senate is the only place in the entire government where Democrats can exercise enough power and influence to stop at least some of whats coming. Pet Monkey or not, Schumer et al is what weve got. The goal should be to stick as many wedges into a Republican coalition unified only at the surface and for the moment. Trump may help with horrific Executive Orders and the insane elevation of men like Steve Bannon to national security posts, but to really stop this, Democrats need allies of conscience from the other side.

On the ground, people must organize, but in the halls of power, Democrats must create the sense for their colleagues that Trump is a unique threat to the country, and one that must be confronted as he goes too far and promises to go even farther.
2017 News Archive

This page includes links to all the news articles published on pokernews.com during 2017. For your convenience, the articles are segmented by month.
The Railbird Report: Bill 'GASTRADER' Perkins Drives the Action

February 03, 2017 Frank Op de Woerd

Bill Perkins is arguably the coolest guy in poker right now.

He's the most generous for sure; giving his followers on Twitch and Twitter free money.

He sent 20 lucky followers to the PokerStars Championship Bahamas (among them Bruno Malavazzi) and now he hosts freerolls online.

But giving away free money alone doesn't make him the coolest guy; it's his presence at the table that helps him establish that feat. If Perkins is around, you'll know it because everyone is all smiles.

The constant prop betting makes events he plays more lively and players enjoy their stay more. Just a couple of weeks ago, Perkins participated in the $100,000 Super High Roller at the Bahamas. While Igor Kurganov had just been knocked out - essentially losing $100,000 - he hung around for quite some time and grinned from ear to ear. The reason? Playing Lodden Thinks with Perkins!

The Last Three Weeks' Biggest Pots Online

Perkins has been playing online a good amount in the last couple of weeks. Playing online as "GASTRADER," Perkins has been battling the biggest names in poker on the highest stakes that run. He was involved in all three of the biggest pots of the last two weeks.

1) Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins Wins a $111,531 Pot (279 Big Blinds) Versus LLinusLLove

($200/$400 NLHM 6-Handed)

Click for replay

"LLinusLLove" opened under the gun for $848 and action folded to "1nvoker" in the small blind who called. Big blind Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins over called from the big blind to create a $2,544 pot, while the re-player makes mention of $1,944.

The flop came and both blinds checked. LLinusLLove bet $1,763 and 1nvoker called before Perkins squeezed to $7,284. LLinusLLove called; 1nvoker folded.

With now $20,000 or so in the middle, the hit the turn and Perkins bet $13,559.96. LLinusLLove called. He also called the $33,086 bet that followed on the river as well.

Perkins showed for the flopped two-pair-turned-full-house and collected the $111,530.80 pot as LLinusLLove mucked.

2) Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins Wins a $110,636 Pot (277 Big Blinds) Versus LLinusLLove

($200/$400 NLHM 6-Handed)

Click for replay

Under the gun plus one/hijack Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins raised to $1,000 and "CooL1992" three-bet to $4,600 from the button. Both blinds folded and Perkins four-bet to $14,400. CooL1992 called to create a pot of $29,400 going to the flop.

Perkins bet $13,815.65 on and CooL1992 called, followed by the two of them checking the on the turn.

With $57,031 in the middle, the virtual dealer placed the on the river to complete the board. Perkins bet just under half pot ($26,802) and "CooL1992" called.

Perkins showed and CooL1992 mucked.

3) "1nvoker" Wins a $110,636 Pot (277 Big Blinds) Versus Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins

($200/$400 NLHM 6-Handed)

Click for replay

Seated under the gun, "prot0" raised to $800. 1nvoker (cutoff), Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins (button) and "MMAsherdog" (big blind) called.

With $3,400 in the pot, both MMAsherdog and initial raiser prot0 checked on . 1nvoker bet $1,600, followed by a raise to $6,348 from Perkins. This forced out MMAsherdog and prot0 but 1nvoker called to create a $16,097 pot.

1nvoker check-called a bet of $11,586 on the turn before he bet out $32,600 into $39,269 on the river that paired the board. Perkins called but mucked in the $104,469 pot as 1nvoker showed for the rivered full house.

Online High-Stakes Action the Last 2 Weeks

(user)name hands profit/loss last week profit/loss 2016 profit/loss all time Winning Players 1 LLinusLLove 900 +$220,291 +$221,523 +$201,139 2 donthnrmepls 672 +$181,338 +$191,298 +$221,958 3 Chun Lei "Samrostan" Zhou 3,266 +$158,690 +$18,473 +$463,958 4 Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov 5,027 +$153,423 +$468,806 +$2,359,572 5 1nvoker 1,902 +$101,740 +$142,384 +$55,147 6 BERRI SWEET 848 +$91,243 +$71,080 +$631,999 7 Christoph "26071985" Vogelsang 186 +$75,457 +$75,457 +$591,161 8 Alexander "Joiso" Kostritsyn 3,710 +$71,003 -$117,164 +$4,302,435 9 Perumov 1,940 +$64,756 +$58,421 +$52,078 10 Yoghii 8,098 +$59,113 +$118,523 +$626,913 Losing Players 1 Viktor "Isildur1" Blom 6,909 -$174,952 +$120,436 +$1,631,607 2 MMAsherdog 1,164 -$173,270 -$169,647 +$19,783 3 Sergey "St1ckman" Vasiliev 6,649 -$172,962 -$171,838 +$676,825 4 Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins 1,232 -$143,323 -$320,477 -$653,810 5 spaise411 919 -$115,548 -$168,710 -$1,058,274 6 8superpoker 6,289 -$109,023 -$132,006 -$2,143,060 7 CooL1992 1,399 -$99,215 -$99,547 -$246,077 8 JayP-AA 2,757 -$95,274 -$95,274 +$1,879,920 9 Dani "supernova9" Stern 848 -$93,190 -$153,640 -$816,047 10 Laszlo "omaha4rollz" Bujtas 755 -$88,097 -$95,754 +$167,860

The 2017 Leaderboard

(user)name hands 2017 profit/loss 2017 profit/loss per hand 2017 profit/loss all time / most played game 2017 Winning players 1 Timofey "Trueteller" Kuznetsov 16,367 +$473,301 +$28.91 +$2,364,067  NLHM 2 RaulGonzalez 7,405 +$247,351 +$33.40 +$989,801  Draw 3 LLinusLLove 1,159 +$224,163 +$8.93 +$203,779  NLHM Losing players 1 Dan "w00ki3z." Cates 8,603 -$492,256 -$57.21 +$853,716  8-Game 2 Bill "GASTRADER" Perkins 2,018 -$320,477 -$158.80 -$653,810  NLHM 3 Sergey "St1ckman" Vasiliev 9,912 -$235,692 -$23.77 +$612,972  PLO

The above top winners and losers in online poker for 2017 only consist of PokerStars accounts. All public data courtesy of HighStakesDB.com. If you want to opt out of being listed in this update on high-stakes action, send an email with your username to [email protected]
Local authors will be available to sign copies of their books at the Baton Rouge Books-A-Million

End

--The Baton Rouge Books-A-Million will be hosting a Local Author Book Signing on Saturday, February 11th from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Matt Isch, author of, and Lori Latrice Martin & Raymond A. Jetson, authors of, will be at Books-A-Million to sign copies of their local history books. Stop by to get your copies signed!The land north of downtown Baton Rouge between the Mississippi River and Interstate 10 encompasses the first high ground north of the mouth of the Mississippi. As the oldest neighborhood in the city, Spanish Town is widely considered to be the heart and soul of Baton Rouge. France, England, and Spain disputed the land for over 100 years, and in 1779 the English fought the Spanish and their American allies to secure it. Over the past 200 years, the area has been the home of an Army garrison, the campus of Louisiana State University, and Louisiana's magnificent state capitol building and surrounding Capitol Park. Today, Spanish Town's residents are notably diverse, and the neighborhood claims to host the largest Mardi Gras celebration in Baton Rouge.Founded in 1699, Baton Rouge was the site of countless historic events and the home to many people, including those of African ancestry. South Baton Rouge is an African American community located in Baton Rouge. It was one of the first places African Americans could receive a high school education in the state. The three-mile community around historic McKinley High School was the site of the nation's first successful bus boycott. When laws restricted where African Americans could live, work, learn, and play, South Baton Rouge was a refuge. African American restaurants, theaters, gas stations, and other businesses populated the community, and change-makers, including African American lawyers, judges, clergy, educators, and nurses, helped to sustain the community and other portions of the southern half of Louisiana's capital through the end of legal segregation and beyond.Books-A-Million2380 Towne Center Blvd.Baton Rouge, LA 70806Saturday, February 11th, 2017; 1:00 p.m.  3:00 p.m.Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at (888)-313-2665 or online.Arcadia Publishing & The History Press creates the largest and most comprehensive publisher of local and regional content in the USA. By empowering local history and culture enthusiasts to write local stories for local audiences, we create exceptional books that are relevant on a local and personal level, enrich lives, and bring readers closer to their community, their neighbors, and their past. Have we done a book on your town? www.arcadiapublishing.com
By: Luxe Bloom

Beauty and the Beast teaser

End

-- Hollywood movie musicals are once again front and center, and Chicago-based Luxe Bloom is about to make the forthcoming live-action adaptation from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, "Beauty and the Beast," a luxuriously magical one. Luxe Bloom is the "official flower" for "Beauty and the Beast" and will supply the film's official Roses. These specially produced roses, which keep their vibrant beauty for at least two months without the need for water or refrigeration, will make an auspicious appearance at the film's Hollywood premiere and play a role in Disney's social media promotion of the film.Premiering in March, "Beauty and the Beast" is a live-action adaptation starring Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw with Ian McKellen and Emma Thompson."We contacted Luxe Bloom to provide the roses because they offer a unique product that was a perfect fit for the filmhighest quality preserved roses that are unparalleled for their beauty and luxuryand like magic, they last for months without water or maintenance. The Roses will be adored by fans young and old," said Jan Coleman, Director Global Marketing Partnerships, "and be a very stunning enhancement to the film's marketing campaign."Luxe Bloom will be selling beautiful rose arrangements online in celebration of "Beauty and the Beast" at www.luxebloom.com and at amazon.com. They will offer three products; a 4.5" Glass Cloche containing one crimson rose is priced at $55; a 6"x 6" crimson Rose Box of 9 roses is priced at $149 and an 8"x8" crimson Rose Box of 16 roses is priced at $399.At the film's premiere, the stars of the film and other celebrities will be photographed in front of a breathtaking Rose Wall produced by Luxe Bloom."We are changing the way people buy flowers," said Shelley Rosen, Luxe Bloom's founder and CEO. "We are excited beyond words that Walt Disney Studios sought us out to be part of a great love story retold."Luxe Bloom's roses are real roses from Ecuador, the producer of the world's finest roses. They are preserved using an ancient all-natural method and are available in a wide range of colors.A growing number of luxury operators and hotels have become loyal ongoing customers of Luxe Bloom, including the St. Regis Washington, DC; St. Regis New York; Langham Hotel Chicago; Langham Place New York; Red Door Salons and Spas Nationwide and Saks Fifth Avenue.Luxe Bloom's visibility and reputation have been growing steadily. They were named a Finalist for the Best Innovative Products Editor's Choice Awards at the 2012 International Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Show. They have been featured on NBC's The Today Show and on QVC. In December 2016, the Langham Place New York's Christmas tree, created with 3,500 red, cream and dusty pink roses from Luxe Bloom, was named one of the top 12 hotel Christmas trees by Conde Nast Traveler magazine. The Better Business Bureau magazine featured Luxe Bloom in its January 2017 issue on how to build a trusted brand. Luxe Bloom also has been featured in several hospitality industry publications.The public can purchase beautiful arrangements of Luxe Bloom roses, in a variety of sizes, styles and colors, online at luxebloom.com.The story and characters audiences know and love come to spectacular life in the live-action adaptation of Disney's animated classic "Beauty and the Beast," a stunning, cinematic event celebrating one of the most beloved tales ever told. "Beauty and the Beast" is the fantastic journey of Belle, a bright, beautiful and independent young woman who is taken prisoner by a Beast in his castle. Despite her fears, she befriends the castle's enchanted staff and learns to look beyond the Beast's hideous exterior and realize the kind heart of the true Prince within. The film stars: Emma Watson as Belle; Dan Stevens as the Beast; Luke Evans as Gaston, the handsome, but shallow villager who woos Belle; Kevin Kline as Maurice, Belle's father; Josh Gad as LeFou, Gaston's long-suffering aide-de-camp;Ewan McGregor as Lumiere, the candelabra; Stanley Tucci as Maestro Cadenza, the harpsichord;Audra McDonald as Madame de Garderobe, the wardrobe; Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Plumette, the feather duster; Hattie Morahan as the enchantress;and Nathan Mack as Chip, the teacup; with Ian McKellen as Cogsworth, the mantel clock; and Emma Thompson as the teapot, Mrs. Potts.Directed by Bill Condon based on the 1991 animated film, "Beauty and the Beast," the screenplay is written by Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos and produced by Mandeville Films' David Hoberman, p.g.a. and Todd Lieberman, p.g.a. with Jeffrey Silver, Thomas Schumacher and Don Hahn serving as executive producers. Alan Menken, who won two Academy Awards (Best Original Score and Best Song) for the animated film, provides the score, which includes new recordings of the original songs written by Menken and Howard Ashman, as well as three new songs written by Menken and Tim Rice. "Beauty and the Beast" will be released in U.S. theaters on March 17, 2017.Based in Chicago, Illinois, Luxe Bloom, LLC was founded in early 2013 by former Fortune 50 executive Shelley Rosen. Luxe Bloom offers real, long-lasting rose arrangements to luxury business operators and consumers on a monthly recurring basis. Luxe Bloom roses are 100% ethically sourced from Ecuador, producer of the world's finest roses.View the whole collection at http://www.luxebloom.com . Follow Luxe Bloom news at http://www.newsline360.com/ luxebloom , Like Luxe Bloom on Facebook, Follow us on Twitter at @Luxebloomroses and on Instagram at luxebloomroses. @PROECUADORCHICAGO
By: High Five Idaho

Contact

Travis Franklin

travis@reynoldsandmyers.com

***@reynoldsandmyers.com Travis Franklintravis@reynoldsandmyers.com

End

-- Dozens of Idaho state legislators are stepping up to bring awareness to children's health as part of High Five Children's Health Collaborative's Steps for Schools Challenge, which rallies legislators to increase  and count  their steps throughout February.The Challenge, now in its third year, invites lawmakers to wear a FitBit fitness measurement device as they walk between meetings and hearings, as well as after hours. Those who mark an average of 10,000 steps a day during the month of February will earn funding for physical activity equipment or walking programs at schools in their legislative district. Legislators with the highest step counts will earn $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000 respectively. The funding comes from High Five, an initiative of the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health created to promote and encourage better health for all Idahoans through wellness and prevention programs."Legislators have really stepped up to be a positive influence in their communities,"said Kendra Witt-Doyle, Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health Executive Director. "The simple act of increasing their activity and sharing their story with their constituents will inspire thousands of people to get more active and improve their health. It's a powerful way to give back and promote healthy habits in our children."Though designed as a friendly competition, Steps for Schools has led to significant results. Last year's Steps for Schools top finishers, Rep. Steve Harris (R - Meridian), Sen. Roy Lacey (D - Pocatello), and Rep. Mat Erpelding (D - Boise), combined to walk more than 2.5 million steps in just 28 days and thousands of dollars donated to local schools.This year, in addition to their daily walking activity, legislators will join children from local schools on February 22 at 12:15pm to walk around the Capitol."Idaho has some of the highest childhood obesity rates in the country," Witt-Doyle said. "Steps for Schools provides a fun, engaging way to get them and our leaders moving, ultimately making a positive impact on their health and the health of our state."High Five Children's Health Collaborative is an initiative of the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health. High Five is a statewide effort that engages Idahoans to reduce childhood obesity. High Five Idaho is working with partners and grant-winning cities to promote healthy communities around the state, as well as with legislators through the Steps for Schools Challenge.More information is available at www.highfiveidaho.org The Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health, Inc., is a nonprofit charitable foundation established in 2001 by Blue Cross of Idaho. The creation of the Foundation stemmed from our desire to improve the health of all Idahoans through wellness and prevention programs.To promote a healthier Idaho, the Foundation engages in collaborative partnerships, health programs and community giving. We are committed to addressing Idaho's health needs. A 501(c)(3) organization that serves Idaho, the Blue Cross of Idaho Foundation for Health is an independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.More information is available at www.bcidahofoundation.org
Contact

Lee Wilson

***@hpmhawaii.com Lee Wilson

End

-- Applications for the Barney S. Fujimoto Memorial Scholarship are now available online for Hawai`i Island, O`ahu and Kaua`i high school seniors who are planning on attending any University of Hawai`i institution.For over 30 years the annual Barney S. Fujimoto Memorial Scholarship has promoted academic achievement and excellence to high school students. Barney Fujimoto, a past officer of HPM, strongly valued the importance of higher education. Today, HPM continues to express these same values through this scholarship.Last year HPM awarded scholarships to five high school seniors: Theodore Uekawa (Waiakea High School), Ann Alconis (Waipahu High School), Sydney Millerd (Waipahu High School, Lorelei Taylor (Assets School), and Eliot Sichter (Assets School).Scholarships will be awarded to students who are able to show a history of strong community service and a GPA of 3.0 or higher.Applications are being accepted online via the University of Hawai`i Common Scholarship Application. Deadline to apply is March 1, 2017. Visit, hpmhawaii.com/about/scholarship ( http://www.hpmhawaii.com/ about/scholarship ) for more details.Since starting out 95 years ago as a small family-owned lumber mill, HPM Building Supply  now 100-percent employee owned  has grown to include full-service building supply centers and four lumberyards of the Island of Hawai`i, O`ahu and Kaua`i, with the ability to supply projects statewide. The company manufactures pre-engineered trusses and wall panels, metal roofing and pre-hung doors, and treats its own lumber.
Indiana, USA power equipment manufacturer now offers heavy-duty tillers, brush mowers, and wood splitters factory direct.

By: Kuhns Power Equipment

Contact

Leroy Kuhns

***@powerdogequipment.com Leroy Kuhns

End

-- USA made power equipment manufacturer Kuhns Power Equipment's Power Dog brand of heavy-duty tillers, mowers and log splitters can now be purchased factory direct. Utilizing Honda and Subaru engines, Power Dog Equipment is designed with one of a kind features for ease of use and longevity. Built to meet the rigid requirements of rental yards and commercial use, Power Dog is made to last and now can be purchased for direct shipment across the US and Canada.Power Dog's claim to fame lies not only in their legendary quality but the unique features like hydo drive controlled by a rolling hand grip on their tillers and mowers. Spring suspension on their log splitters allowing for easy road transit, and many more thoughtful work saving ideas that assure Power Dog owners that they made the right decision every time they use their tool.With over ten years of experience manufacturing and distributing power equipment Kuhns aim is to better serve the growing demand for ranchers and home owners alike. Learning more about the unique Power Dog line is as simple as visiting their website PowerDogEquipment.com and for instant service and sales support visit http://powerdogequipment.com/ contact-us/buy- direct/
Video startup Huddly Inc. receives highly competitive funding from the Norwegian Research Council to develop next-generation intelligent cameras for video collaboration.

1 2 3 Huddly GO intelligent camera made in Norway Huddly GO Huddly GO camera elevates communication

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-- Research Council of Norway (Forskningsradet) has awarded 900 million NOK (about 108 million USD) for innovation in business to 118 business projects, with Huddly Inc . being one of only a few companies who made it to the final round. Acceptance rate is low: Research Council rejects 7 out of 10 applicants.Huddly develops an intelligent software platform that powers the company's first hardware product on the market  the Huddly GO camera. The Huddly GO is a software upgradable intelligent camera, with a unique small form factor, suitable for use from the desktop to the meeting room."Deep learning technology brings us new solutions to previously hard problems," says Stein Ove Eriksen, CPO and Co-Founder of Huddly . "Huddly's research collaboration with the Research Council of Norway and Sintef, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia, strengthens our effort in utilizing Deep Learning technology to improve the user experience of our products."The Research Council got 400 applications to compete for funding for innovation projects in business. They sought support for a total of just over 3 billion NOK. The projects are to be funded over a period of two to four years."Norwegian companies are fighting for a place on the global business arena.It's about having the best solutions. The government is strongly committed to research and innovation, and through that commitment, we empower businesses to meet the global competition,"says Minister of Trade and Industry Monica Mland in the press-release of the Research Council.Visit website www.huddly.com With offices in Norway, USA, India, and UK, Huddly was created to elevate communication with compelling and intelligent vision products for everybody. Huddly is the intelligent video camera platform that powers the company's first hardware product on the market  the Huddly GO camera. The Huddly GO is a software upgradable intelligent camera, with a unique small form factor, suitable for use from the desktop to the meeting room. Due to cutting-edge software technology, Huddly processes high-resolution video instantly and adapts to any lighting condition. As a result, Huddly elevates communication. The things we take for granted when meeting face-to-face (facial expressions, gestures, emotions) are no longer lost in transmission. We provide a hassle-free, breathtaking video experience.Link to the listing by the Research Council of Norway: http://www.forskningsradet.no/ no/Nyheter/Forskningsradet_ har_delt_ut_ 900_millioner_ til_innovasjon_ i_neringslivet/ 1254024689778/ p1174467583739


New Historical Novel Tackles Racism and Immigration in Colorado Greenwood Riven and President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066 By: V.L. Purvis-Smith Greenwood Riven: Immigration and Racial Tension DENVER - Feb. 3, 2017 - PRLog -- V.L. Purvis-Smith, author, pastor, and English teacher originally from rural Colorado, announces the publication of Greenwood Riven, her first historical novel. Greenwood Riven depicts the racial hostility, political incivility, and economic inequality that defined relationships between indigenous, Mexican, Anglo, and Japanese communities on Colorado's High Plains at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. A celebration of the book's launch was held in Denver on January 30, 2017. Visit



Set in Colorado's Southeastern swath of counties called "Greenwood" when the Colorado Territory was established, the book portrays life in a farming community during World War II. Central to the story are Spanish Americans (a term used at the time) and the construction of Camp Amache, a "relocation center" for people of Japanese ancestry forcibly relocated from the West Coast. President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, signed February 19, 1942, set the process in motion. A Day of Remembrance is held annually, and this year's 75th anniversary will be held at the History Colorado Center.



"Communities on the High Plains of the 1940s were a mix of multiple races and ethnicities whose co-existence was tested under the pressures of war," said Purvis-Smith. "The story captures the fears and realities of ethnic tensions during times of crisis that parallel today's perceived threats by contemporary immigrant groups."



To populate Greenwood Riven with characters, and events, typical of the era, Purvis-Smith immersed herself in community newspapers. She interviewed people representing Southern Colorado's diverse racial and cultural groups and West Coast Japanese Americans forced to leave their homes for the camps. She visited various museums including the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles), the Trinidad History Museum (Colorado), and the Pioneer Historical Society of Bent County (Colorado).



Patrick McWilliams, retired English teacher and librarian, writes: "I am engrossed by Purvis-Smith's skillful use of minor and mega-details without bogging down the reader I have been hoping to read someone who could capture the feel of the plains in Colorado as novelist Kent Haruf evoked them."



About V.L. Purvis-Smith



grew up on a Colorado farm replete with coal stove, outhouse, and milk cows. Ginny earned a Ph.D. in English and Education from the University of Michigan and a Master of Divinity degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. Ginny served churches in the Midwest and on the East Coast, worked as a chaplain, directed an English language program in Senegal, West Africa, and taught in Michigan and The Bahamas. Ginny lives in Westminster with her husband and has begun work on a biography of one of the people who served as a resource for Greenwood Riven.



Contact

Ginny Purvis-Smith

***@mac.com



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https://www.prlog.org/ 12617664/1 Ginny Purvis-Smith End -- V.L. Purvis-Smith, author, pastor, and English teacher originally from rural Colorado, announces the publication of, her first historical novel.depicts the racial hostility, political incivility, and economic inequality that defined relationships between indigenous, Mexican, Anglo, and Japanese communities on Colorado's High Plains at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. A celebration of the book's launch was held in Denver on January 30, 2017. Visit www.greenwoodriven.com to learn more or to purchase the novel.Set in Colorado's Southeastern swath of counties called "Greenwood" when the Colorado Territory was establishedthe book portrays life in a farming community during World War II. Central to the story are Spanish Americans (a term used at the time) and the construction of Camp Amache, a "relocation center" for people of Japanese ancestry forcibly relocated from the West Coast. President Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, signed February 19, 1942, set the process in motion. A Day of Remembrance is held annually, and this year's 75th anniversary will be held at the History Colorado Center."Communities on the High Plains of the 1940s were a mix of multiple races and ethnicities whose co-existence was tested under the pressures of war," said Purvis-Smith. "The story captures the fears and realities of ethnic tensions during times of crisis that parallel today's perceived threats by contemporary immigrant groups."To populatewith characters, and events, typical of the era, Purvis-Smith immersed herself in community newspapers. She interviewed people representing Southern Colorado's diverse racial and cultural groups and West Coast Japanese Americans forced to leave their homes for the camps. She visited various museums including the Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles), the Trinidad History Museum (Colorado), and the Pioneer Historical Society of Bent County (Colorado).Patrick McWilliams, retired English teacher and librarian, writes: "I am engrossed by Purvis-Smith's skillful use of minor and mega-details without bogging down the reader I have been hoping to read someone who could capture the feel of the plains in Colorado as novelist Kent Haruf evoked them." V.L. ("Ginny") Purvis-Smith grew up on a Colorado farm replete with coal stove, outhouse, and milk cows. Ginny earned a Ph.D. in English and Education from the University of Michigan and a Master of Divinity degree from McCormick Theological Seminary. Ginny served churches in the Midwest and on the East Coast, worked as a chaplain, directed an English language program in Senegal, West Africa, and taught in Michigan and The Bahamas. Ginny lives in Westminster with her husband and has begun work on a biography of one of the people who served as a resource for Email : ***@mac.com Tags : Immigration , Executive Order , Discrimination , Japanese Internment , Hispanic , World War Ii , Historical Novel , Purvis-Smith Industry : Books , Literature , Publishing Location : Denver - Colorado - United States Account Phone Number Disclaimer Report Abuse Account Email AddressAccount Phone Number


Hudsons Bay Company has finalized leases for three new store locations, in addition to the 13 locations previously announced , . In aggregate, the announced lease agreements total approximately 208.760 m (2.247.093 sq. ft.) and include 14 Hudsons Bay stores and 2 Saks OFF 5TH stores. HBC intends

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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound? Not only does the tree make a sound, so do the creatures inhabiting the forest -- or in this case -- the rainforest deep in the heart of Africa. Using remote sensing cameras and sound recorders, researchers from Florida Atlantic University are the first to capture rare video footage of a newly discovered population of critically endangered monkeys in one of the most remote regions in the world.

Spanning nearly 2.2 million acres, about 50 times larger than Washington, D.C., and almost the size of Yellowstone National Park, the Lomami National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in Central Africa is now home to a new population of the Dryas monkey. Originally believed to inhabit only one site on the planet in the Congo basin, this colorful and beguiling animal is about the size of a house cat.

Field teams from the Lukuru Foundation TL2 Project discovered it near the border of the Lomami National Park when they noticed a dead monkey with a local hunter. They later confirmed it to be a Dryas monkey, known locally as Inoko. First discovered in 1932 and believed to be nearing extinction due to its small population size and unregulated hunting, this species has perplexed scientists for decades because of its elusive nature.

"The Dryas monkey is extremely cryptic and we had to think of a creative strategy to observe them in the wild," said Kate Detwiler, Ph.D., a primatologist and an assistant professor of anthropology in FAU's Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters, who has been collaborating with scientists at the Lukuru Foundation for more than eight years. She also helped to discover a new species, the Lesula monkey, in that same park in 2012. "Dryas monkeys are drawn to dense thickets and flooded areas. When threatened, they quickly disappear into a tangle of vines and foliage, mastering the art of hiding."

Detwiler jumped at the opportunity to bring the dryas project to her lab when her collaborator John Hart, Ph.D., scientific director of the Lukuru Foundation, revealed the discovery. For years, the Lukuru Foundation's TL2 Project team members have been surveying the rainforests for the presence of DRC's endemic and endangered species, and discovering diverse fauna including the Dryas monkey. Their efforts were the impetus for the DRC to officially establish the Lomami National Park within the Tshuapa-Lomami-Lualaba (TL2) conservation landscape last July, and is the country's first national park in more than two decades. FAU is the first university in the United States to conduct primate field research in the Lomami National Park and greater TL2 Landscape.

Trying to capture the monkeys by video in the middle of the rainforest was no easy feat and required unusual tactics. Detwiler reached out to then 24-year-old Daniel Alempijevic, now a master's degree candidate in FAU's Environmental Sciences Program, to help accomplish the task. To get the job done, Alempijevic had to learn how to climb trees -- really tall trees -- and received a tree-climbing certificate from the Institute of Tropical Ecology and Conservation in Bocas del Toro, Panama. He is the first person to conduct an arboreal camera trap survey in the TL2 Landscape, and spent a semester there climbing very remote rainforest trees to set up the cameras. The cameras are placed in strategic locations on the ground, mid-range and in the canopy to determine what level of the forest the Dryas monkeys prefer.

"This was an opportunity of a lifetime," said Alempijevic. "It was an incredible experience to work in the canopy of such a remote site, and to get the first camera-trap videos of an extremely rare and elusive species."

Video footage from these camera traps are providing vital information about this critically endangered species as well as an array of other charismatic animals such as the bonobo, African palm civet, and potto who also inhabit the Lomami National Park.

"The Congo Basin rainforest is the second-largest rainforest in the world, and contains some of the least known species on the planet, many of which are threatened from hunting pressure and deforestation," said Detwiler. "Our goal is to document where new Dryas populations live and develop effective methods to monitor population size over time to ensure their protection. Understanding where they reside is important, because the animals living inside the Lomami National Park are protected, as it is illegal to hunt."

In addition to much needed conservation efforts, Detwiler and her team also are working to solve the evolutionary puzzle of the Dryas monkey using genomic research to test the hypothesis that this species is a close relative of the Vervet monkey. Since 2014, the Detwiler laboratory has been studying a free-living population of Vervet monkeys that have remarkably survived for decades in a narrow strip of dense mangrove swamp next to the airport in Fort Lauderdale. Alempijevic used this population to practice his camera trap methods and hone in his observation skills before leaving for the Dryas field study in the Congo forests.
New research indicates that Baltic hunter-gatherers were not swamped by migrations of early agriculturalists from the Middle East, as was the case for the rest of central and western Europe. Instead, these people probably acquired knowledge of farming and ceramics by sharing cultures and ideas -- rather than genes -- with outside communities.

Scientists extracted ancient DNA from a number of archaeological remains discovered in Latvia and the Ukraine, which were between 5,000 and 8,000 years old. These samples spanned the Neolithic period, which was the dawn of agriculture in Europe, when people moved from a mobile hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a settled way of life based on food production.

We know through previous research that large numbers of early farmers from the Levant (the Near East) -- driven by the success of their technological innovations such as crops and pottery -- had expanded to the peripheral parts of Europe by the end of the Neolithic and largely replaced hunter-gatherer populations.

However, the new study, published in the journal Current Biology, shows that the Levantine farmers did not contribute to hunter-gatherers in the Baltic as they did in Central and Western Europe.

The research team, which includes scientists from Trinity College Dublin, the University of Cambridge, and University College Dublin, says their findings instead suggest that the Baltic hunter-gatherers learned these skills through communication and cultural exchange with outsiders.

The findings feed into debates around the 'Neolithic package,' -- the cluster of technologies such as domesticated livestock, cultivated cereals and ceramics, which revolutionised human existence across Europe during the late Stone Age.

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Advances in ancient DNA work have revealed that this 'package' was spread through Central and Western Europe by migration and interbreeding: the Levant and later Anatolian farmers mixing with and essentially replacing the hunter-gatherers.

But the new work suggests migration was not a 'universal driver' across Europe for this way of life. In the Baltic region, archaeology shows that the technologies of the 'package' did develop -- albeit less rapidly -- even though the analyses show that the genetics of these populations remained the same as those of the hunter-gatherers throughout the Neolithic.

Andrea Manica, one of the study's senior authors from the University of Cambridge, said: "Almost all ancient DNA research up to now has suggested that technologies such as agriculture spread through people migrating and settling in new areas."

"However, in the Baltic, we find a very different picture, as there are no genetic traces of the farmers from the Levant and Anatolia who transmitted agriculture across the rest of Europe."

"The findings suggest that indigenous hunter-gatherers adopted Neolithic ways of life through trade and contact, rather than being settled by external communities. Migrations are not the only model for technology acquisition in European prehistory."

While the sequenced genomes showed no trace of the Levant farmer influence, one of the Latvian samples did reveal genetic influence from a different external source -- one that the scientists say could be a migration from the Pontic Steppe in the east. The timing (5-7,000 years ago) fits with previous research estimating the earliest Slavic languages.

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Researcher Eppie Jones, from Trinity College Dublin and the University of Cambridge, was the lead author of the study. She said: "There are two major theories on the spread of Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. One is that they came from the Anatolia with the agriculturalists; another that they developed in the Steppes and spread at the start of the Bronze Age."

"That we see no farmer-related genetic input, yet we do find this Steppe-related component, suggests that at least the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family originated in the Steppe grasslands of the East, which would bring later migrations of Bronze Age horse riders."

The researchers point out that the time scales seen in Baltic archaeology are also very distinct to the rest of Europe, with a much more drawn-out and piecemeal uptake of Neolithic technologies, rather than the complete 'package' that arrives with migrations to take most of Europe by storm.

Andrea Manica added: "Our evidence of genetic continuity in the Baltic, coupled with the archaeological record showing a prolonged adoption of Neolithic technologies, would suggest the existence of trade networks with farming communities largely independent of interbreeding."

"It seems the hunter-gatherers of the Baltic likely acquired bits of the Neolithic package slowly over time through a 'cultural diffusion' of communication and trade, as there is no sign of the migratory wave that brought farming to the rest of Europe during this time.

"The Baltic hunter-gatherer genome remains remarkably untouched until the great migrations of the Bronze Age sweep in from the East."

About the study

The researchers analysed eight ancient genomes -- six from Latvia and two from Ukraine -- that spanned a timeframe of three and a half thousand years (between 8,300 and 4,800 years ago). This enabled them to start plotting the genetic history of Baltic inhabitants during the Neolithic.

DNA was extracted from the petrous area of skulls that had been recovered by archaeologists from some of the region's richest Stone Age cemeteries. The petrous, at the base of the skull, is one of the densest bones in the body, and a prime location for DNA that has suffered the least contamination over millennia.
Online patient video journals or blogs -- called vlogs -- chronicling the good, the bad and the ugly of a specific medical condition can help both physicians and their patients, says Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research investigator Joy L. Lee, PhD, corresponding author of "Seeing is Engaging: Vlogs as a Tool for Patient Engagement," a commentary published online ahead of print in the peer-reviewed journal The Patient.

Accessible to viewers when and where they wish to watch, online videos are a popular platform for conveying knowledge and advice in numerous areas including current events, home improvement, cooking, travel and increasingly -- through vlogs -- health.

"It is not always easy for physicians to engage patients in their own care," said Dr. Lee. "Vlogs may be uniquely suited to overcome barriers to patient engagement for individuals with chronic illnesses, especially those under 50 who increasingly reach out to the internet in so many aspects of their lives. Given the potential impact of online information, physicians and other clinicians should consider familiarizing themselves with key vloggers who can provide a window into a disease."

According to a 2015 Nielsen study, YouTube reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds in America than any U.S. broadcast or cable network, with two-thirds of YouTube viewers using mobile devices. The Pew Center reports that three quarters of Americans who go online view videos.

The commentary authors, including online video journalists -- vloggers -- Mary Frey, BA, and Peter Frey, MTh, MDiv, note that, similarly to other sources of medical information, some vlogs are more reliable than others, and recommend that health care providers curate lists of vlogs to highlight those that could be valuable to patients and providers.

The Freys, a wife and husband, produce the popular The Frey Life that chronicles their experiences in managing Ms. Frey's cystic fibrosis. Their daily posts, which first appeared in 2012, attract approximately 15,000 viewers. Frey Life posts have included "Cystic Fibrosis Airport Precautions," "Unexpected Trip to Urgent Care" and "Why Can't Mary Eat." In some posts, Ms. Frey answers questions that viewers have submitted.

Vlogs like Frey Life provides a platform for patients with chronic illnesses and their families to connect with others in similar circumstances, notes the commentary. Vlogs can reach those who are too ill or isolated to participate in support groups. These videos enable and encourage patients to communicate and learn from each other.

CF is a chronic, often debilitating disease that requires complex daily care. Individuals with CF and other chronic diseases often have too little time or energy to interact with the health care system or with support groups. For these individuals, vlogs such as the Frey Life, can be an important resource. In the commentary, Ms. Frey notes that she views her blog as being supportive of others who are struggling with the disease. "We want to highlight the fact that [even though] a patient isn't beating the odds and breaking statistics, they are still special and they are not a lesser patient."

"YouTubers like the Freys are becoming influential figures in the lives of many Americans, " said Albert Wu, MD, MPH, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, senior author of the paper. "Physicians should acknowledge that often they [vloggers] do a better job of engaging some patients, especially younger ones, and should we willing to add vlogs to their therapeutic toolkit."

"Physicians should consider vlogs as one more tool that they can provide their patients and help them navigate this important resource," said Dr. Lee, who is a health services researcher focused on patient-physician communication. "And patients should consider vlogs as dynamic sources of information that can help them cope with their disease experience and ask better questions of their medical team."
Changes leading to the hyperactivation of the protein kinase Akt are observed in almost 50% of all human tumors. Understanding Akt's regulatory mechanisms is therefore essential for developing and improving cancer therapies. Researchers from the Max F. Perutz Laboratories, a joint venture of the University of Vienna and Medical University of Vienna, propose a completely new model of Akt regulation, limiting its activity to discrete locations within the cell -- cellular membranes. The results are published in the journal Molecular Cell.

Human cancers can arise due to many different factors, both from outside the organism or inside the cell itself. One protein that is oftentimes found to be affected by these factors and involved in the majority of cancers, is called Akt/Protein Kinase B.

Akt plays a central role in cellular processes involving growth, survival, and proliferation in response to external stimuli.

The overactivation -- or hyperactivation -- of Akt is one of the most frequent changes in human cancer, and is observed in about 50% of tumors, helping cells to grow and divide uncontrollably. Its pivotal role in contributing to the delicate balance between the normal cellular functions and tumor formation makes Akt a primary subject of in-depth studies, as the understanding of how its activity is regulated can help lay the first brick in the development and improvement of cancer therapies.

Once activated, Akt in turn activates its targets inside the cell via the addition of a phosphate -- a process called phosphorylation. To avoid hyperactivation, as observed in many cancer cells, the activity of Akt inside the cell needs to be tightly controlled and remain proportional to the external signals -- similar to a car's gas pedal. Here, the outcome (speed) has to be proportional to the external input (the foot applying pressure on the pedal).

The teams of Thomas Leonard and Ivan Yudushkin investigated the mechanisms ensuring that Akt does not go into overdrive.

"In our study, we have discovered that Akt is only active while bound to a small molecule on cell membranes called PIP3. Engagement of PIP3 allows Akt to bind and phosphorylate its targets and also protects Akt from being deactivated by other proteins in the cell, called phosphatases," co-first author Iva Lucic explains. "Conversely, when Akt is not bound to PIP3, it remains inactive."

The levels of PIP3 therefore act as a gatekeeper to Akt's activity, being the pressure on the gas pedal in the aforementioned analogy.

In addition to its proportional activation, Akt activity must also be locally confined, as an activated Akt phosphorylating targets indiscriminately would be detrimental to the cell's health -- just as a car speeding off without the driver behind the wheel is likely to cause an accident.

The researchers were able to demonstrate, for the first time, that active Akt is confined to cellular membranes. When "floating" freely inside the cell, Akt is inactivated and unable to phosphorylate any targets. Co-first author Michael Ebner further explains: "When looking in cells, we found that active Akt is essentially a membrane-bound molecule. This means that while it is not bound to PIP3, Akt is shut off in two ways: firstly, when it falls off the membrane, it adopts a structure that prevents it from binding its targets. Secondly, Akt is inactivated by phosphatases, acting as efficient brakes on Akt activity. Strikingly, both mechanisms are compromised by a cancer mutation, which puts Akt into overdrive and makes it active throughout the cell independent of PIP3. Such unrestricted activity of Akt uncouples survival, growth and division of cells from growth factor signals, which can ultimately result in tumor formation"

These results were corroborated by experiments both in test tubes and inside live cells.

As a next step, the researchers intend to dig deeper and answer more questions about Akt's activation on an atomic level. Additionally, they will address the question of how this newly discovered activation mechanism allows Akt to select its specific targets inside a cell.
A study has demonstrated 'unacceptably high' rates of hospital-acquired infections among children in the UK and Europe.

The report, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases last month, found that one in six children in paediatric intensive care units, and one in ten babies in neonatal intensive care units had developed hospital infections while being treated.

The study found that the pattern of hospital-acquired infections is different in babies and children compared to adults, with more serious infections such as blood poisoning/bloodstream infections being commonly seen (45%) followed by respiratory tract infections/pneumonia (22%).

Many of these hospital-related infections are also multi-drug resistant, making their treatment more complicated.

The study was led by the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC).

The authors, from St George's University of London and Imperial College London, are calling for continued action to prevent and reduce infection rates in children in hospital with a focus on neonatal and paediatric intensive care units.

Mike Sharland, Professor of Paediatric Infections at St George's, University of London, commented:

"These rates of hospital acquired infections are unacceptably high both in the UK and Europe, with worrying implications for babies, children and their families."

Alison Holmes, Professor of Infectious Diseases at Imperial College London added:

"We urgently need focus and investment on reducing the risk of bloodstream infections in babies and children in intensive care units across Europe."

Public Health England, the Department of Health and NHS England have now launched a national Infection in Critical Care Quality Improvement Programme (ICCQIP) working with Adult, Paediatric and Neonatal Intensive Care societies and providers.

This programme has the capacity to reduce these potentially avoidable infections, where hospitals collect data, develop and implement evidence-based interventions.
Veterans could better transition to civilian life by volunteering with civic service programs in their communities, Saint Louis University research suggests.

"When veterans compete their military service, they go through a transition like all of us, when we change jobs, move to a new town or retire. It is a transition that takes focus, deep reflection and new information to discover the next challenge they will pursue along their journey in life," said Monica Matthieu, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and assistant professor of social work at Saint Louis University.

"This study tells us that formal volunteering in a civic service program that engages the veterans in community service in their hometown is one option to aid in that transition. Some may call this a gap year, I call it a fulfillment year."

The research is the first peer-reviewed and published national study of civic service among U.S. military veterans. It examined how volunteering affected the health and social life of U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and/or Afghanistan, then participated in a formal civic service program.

Civic service has accountability requirements, clearly defined goals and a stipend, making it more like a job than less structured forms of volunteering, such as helping out with child care or setting up for a church function.

Researchers evaluated the impact of The Mission Continues, a national nonprofit that deploys veterans on six-month volunteer service missions with community agencies. The organization was founded in St. Louis in 2007 by Eric Greitens, who stepped down as CEO in 2014 and now is Missouri's governor.

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Researchers studied 346 veterans who completed the program in 2011-2014, volunteering 20 hours a week on specific projects for six months. Before deployment on civic service missions, more than 50 percent said they had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and nearly a fifth reported symptoms of depression. Nearly half had reported receiving treatment for a mental health condition.

At the end of their civic service, more volunteers reported they had good or excellent health than before they volunteered. Their emotional health improved; more reported it was easier to perform everyday activities than before volunteering. Their PTSD symptoms significantly decreased, and the number of veterans who had probable PTSD dropped from 50 percent prior to civic service to 43 percent after.

The number of veterans who had symptoms of depression also decreased -- from 23.5 percent before civic service to 15 percent after. They said they felt less isolated and lonely, and realized help is available.

"All veterans in the civic service program experienced improvements in health, mental health and social functioning," Matthieu said.

"Importantly, even after controlling for current treatment, veterans with positive depression screens when entering the program benefited the most with significant improvements in purpose in life, enhanced social support and decreased feelings of loneliness. Those screening positive for probable PTSD, again, after controlling for current treatment, showed significant improvements at the end of the program."

She said the actual mechanism of why volunteering improves mental health remains a question.

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"One of our theories has to do with behavioral activation and the purpose surrounding the activity. So in other words, when we get up and move and that movement is geared toward a purpose of helping others, it is like stepping outside our own lives to focus on the needs of others, that so many positive things come together," said Matthieu, who directs SLU's graduate-level social work education specializing in veteran's services.

Veterans are eager to find opportunities to serve at home as they rejoin civilian life, she said. Matthieu speculated that for veterans, volunteering allowed them to find meaning and purpose again in life, which prepared them for the transition back to the civilian world.

"This area of science around health promotion programs that make a difference in veterans' lives is really just starting," Matthieu said, adding that more research will follow.

Authors of "The Impact of a Civic Service Program on Biopsychosocial Outcomes of Post 9/11 U.S. Military Veterans" are Monica M. Matthieu, Karen A. Lawrence and Emma Robertson-Blackmore. The paper is published in the February 2017 issue of Psychiatry Research.
A nationwide cancer registry of almost one million patients treated for hormone-sensitive breast cancer shows that one out of six women who should have received post-surgical treatment known as adjuvant endocrine therapy (AET) did not get this recommended component of care.

Adjuvant endocrine therapy -- hormone-blocking drugs such as tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors that can lower the odds of cancer coming back -- is associated with a 29-percent reduction in the risk of death for women with hormone-receptor-positive breast cancer. The study authors estimate that 14,630 women who did not get hormone treatment died unnecessarily between 2004 and 2013 from recurrence of their cancers.

Adherence to the guidelines for AET after surgery slowly improved over the period studied. By the end of the study, however, 18 percent of women who could have benefited were still not getting potentially life-saving care. The researchers also found that about three percent of women who lacked hormone receptors were inappropriately treated with AET.

"The use of adjuvant endocrine therapy slowly gained popularity over this time," said study senior author Dezheng Huo, MD, PhD, associate professor of public health sciences at the University of Chicago. "It improved after 2004, rising from 70 percent in 2004 to almost 84 percent in 2011. Then it declined slightly to 82 percent in 2013, when the study ended."

"Our results suggest that it is still underused," Huo said, "and in some cases, misused, offered to patients who lack hormone receptors."

The study, published Feb. 2, 2017, in JAMA Oncology, used data from the National Cancer Data Base (NCDB), which is supported by the American College of Surgeons and the American Cancer Society. The NCDB collects information about cancer patients, treatments and outcomes from more than 1,500 accredited healthcare facilities.

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The authors found data from more than 2 million patients who were diagnosed with breast cancer between 2004 and 2013. They narrowed that down to women at least 18 years old who had stage-1, 2 or 3 breast cancer, treated with lumpectomy or mastectomy, usually followed by radiation and, less often, chemotherapy. The women had to express estrogen or progesterone receptors. They wound up with records from 818,435 patients, who met the criteria and were likely to benefit.

AET slows or stops the growth of tumors that feed on these hormones. Drugs such as tamoxifen, for example, attach to the estrogen receptor in a cancer cell and shut down the hormone's cancer-causing effects. Patients are encouraged to take the pills, one a day, for 10 years or longer.

Compliance with AET guidelines in this study varied from hospital to hospital. The researchers selected 80-percent compliance with the guidelines as a reasonable goal for individual hospitals. They found that in 2004, only 40 percent of hospitals met that standard. By 2013, almost 70 percent of hospitals were reaching the 80 percent standard.

"Still, 30 percent of hospitals were falling short," Huo said.

Several factors influence compliance. Hormone therapy does have side effects, such as hot flashes or nausea. Patients taking tamoxifen have an increased risk of stroke. Those taking aromatase inhibitors have an increased risk of osteoporosis.

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Since there is no immediately detectable benefit from AET, some breast cancer patients choose not to take hormone therapy. Others begin therapy but lapse over time. Smaller studies found that 30 to 70 percent of patients discontinue AET within five years.

Patients treated with surgery followed by radiation or chemotherapy were more likely to stick with AET. Women treated at larger hospitals, with 400 beds or more, were more compliant.

There were also racial disparities. Black and Hispanic women are less likely than non-Hispanic whites to receive AET. Asian women are more likely to receive AET.

Hospitals in certain geographic regions had better success. Those in New England and the upper Midwest achieved compliance rates seven to 12 percent higher than those in the South and West.

The authors stress that their data has limitations. Previous studies suggest that adjuvant endocrine therapy may be under-reported, in some cases by as much as 10 percent.

On the whole, however, the researchers note that although AET use has been steadily increasing. optimal usage, according to Huo, "has not been achieved." Because of these gaps, "certain women are being deprived of this life-saving therapy."
People think of corrosion as rust on cars or oxidation that blackens silver, but it also harms critical electronics and connections in solar panels, lowering the amount of electricity produced.

"It's challenging to predict and even more challenging to design ways to reduce it because it's highly dependent on material and environmental conditions," said Eric Schindelholz, a Sandia National Laboratories materials reliability researcher who studies corrosion and how it affects photovoltaic (PV) system performance.

Sandia researchers from different departments collaborate to accelerate corrosion under controlled conditions and use what they learn to help industry develop longer-lasting PV panels and increase reliability. For example, work by Olga Lavrova of Sandia's Photovoltaic and Distributed Systems Integration department demonstrated, for the first time, a link between corrosion and the risk of arc faults in PV systems' electrical connections. Research by Erik Spoerke of Sandia's Electronic, Optical and Nano Materials department focuses on developing new nanocomposite films that could dramatically increase reliability.

"One of our primary goals is to predict how fast corrosion will occur and what damage it does, given certain environments and materials," Schindelholz said. "This, in turn, gives us information to select the right materials for design or to develop materials for corrosion-resistance for a particular environment. It also allows us to assess the health and operational risk of systems as they age. This is especially important for solar energy systems, which are susceptible to corrosion but are expected to last for decades."

Corrosion is no small problem. A 2002 study by the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, backed by the Federal Highway Administration, estimated corroding metals in various industries, infrastructure and manufacturing cost $276 billion annually.

Reproducing environmental conditions to study corrosion Researchers simplify complex environmental conditions in labs to study how materials corrode. It's not easy deciding which environmental conditions to reproduce. "Along the coast of Florida, it's humidity and sea salt in the air. In Albuquerque, we have high ultraviolet (UV) radiation, so UV might be one of the important parameters here. The parameters driving corrosion shift with location and materials," Schindelholz said. "The challenge lies in identifying the important parameters -- and then tuning the knobs in the lab to get something that replicates what we see in an outdoor environment."

Sandia belongs to a new consortium aimed at speeding up development of new materials for photovoltaic modules, increasing reliability and lowering the cost of solar power-generated electricity. The Durable Module Materials National Lab Consortium (DuraMat) wants to build bridges between the national laboratories and industry so research at the labs can benefit the PV community. DuraMat's importance is underscored by the fact materials account for about 40 percent of total PV module costs. DuraMat, led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in partnership with Sandia, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will receive about $30 million over five years from the Department of Energy's (DOE) SunShot Initiative. The consortium is part of the Energy Materials Network, created by the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

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Using accelerated aging, forensics to see what's happening Lavrova leads projects on the reliability of PV systems, studying how aging affects solar cells and components and how everything performs together. Her team works with Schindelholz on two projects under the SunShot Initiative, a national effort to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity by decade's end. She also contributes to the module durability effort under DuraMat. One project, in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute, studies PV modules from different manufacturers to give the makers information on what kind of degradation they might expect over 30 years to help identify ways to slow it down. Sandia applies accelerated aging principles to speed up studies of slowly developing effects, including corrosion.

The second project, with Case Western Reserve University, studies corrosion and other degradation from a forensic angle -- looking back to see what's already occurred. Lavrova's team takes a big data analysis approach to study and analyze information from existing installations worldwide. "Is it 1 percent degradation a year or is it 2 percent? Maybe we'll see some that are a half percent, maybe we'll see some that are 10 percent. Was it a bad original product or was it installed in Costa Rica where the humidity is 80 percent every day?" she said.

Spoerke's team wants to block corrosion altogether. Collaborating with Texas A&M professor Jaime Grunlan, the team is developing nanocomposite films made from inexpensive materials as barriers against water vapor and corrosive gases. The team hopes such composite materials, some 100 times thinner than a human hair, will improve ways to protect solar cells from corrosion.

Inorganic components and organic polymers that make up thin films must be designed and mixed carefully. "It's about assembling those structures in the right way so that you can use inexpensive materials and still get the benefits you want," Spoerke said. "If you build a house, it's not just piling together the drywall and two-by-fours and shingles. You've got to use the two-by-fours to make the frame, set the drywall on the two-by-fours, and assemble the shingles on the roof."

Thin films aren't the sole answer, but "I can envision that a technology like the one that we're developing could be part of a collaborative materials system to help replace glass in next-generation PV applications," he said.

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Systems containing metal subject to corrosion Sandia has studied corrosion for decades, analyzing the problem in all kinds of systems because anything containing metal is susceptible. Solar cells' electrical components are protected from corrosion by encapsulating polymers, sealants and glass, but water vapor and corrosive gases can permeate as materials and packaging degrade. Materials, for example, typically corrode faster in the higher temperatures and humidity of tropical coastal regions than in coastal Antarctica.

Researchers accelerate these real-world conditions in environmental chambers to examine corrosion of electronics and other PV system components. Accelerated tests artificially speed up the corrosion effects of temperature, humidity, pollutants and salt water. For example, salt on icy winter roads or near oceans corrodes cars over time. Since automotive manufacturers can't wait decades to see how their products resist that, accelerated laboratory tests might spray salt continuously on a surface to qualify coatings and body materials to ensure they'll be safe and reliable over a product's lifetime.

Engineers use corrosion chambers to study different materials in systems that must meet particular corrosion requirements, or to expose an electronic component to the environment to see what happens over time.

"Instead of waiting for 30 years of operation outside under the sun, we bring our PV panels inside to expose them to much higher concentrations of light or put them in thermal chambers to simulate the equivalent of years of temperature cycles," Lavrova said. Accelerated lifetime experiments show in six months what could happen over decades, she said.

Sandia also studies mechanisms underlying corrosion. "That's a greater challenge," Schindelholz said. "In atmospheric corrosion we have the chemistry of the atmosphere, the particles landing on surfaces, relative humidity, temperature and so on. We have to understand the interplay of these factors and their interaction with the metal surface."
High-concentration peroxide, sometimes promoted in alternative medicine circles for cleanses or as a so-called "natural cure," can lead to numerous life-threatening ailments and death itself, according to a paper published online in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Outcomes Following High Concentration Peroxide Ingestions").

"Ingesting high-concentration peroxide can cause embolisms affecting the cardiac, respiratory and neurological systems, leading to permanent disability or death," said lead study author Benjamin Hatten, MD, MPH, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora, Colo. "Though touted by the alternative and complementary medicine communities as 'super water,' peroxide should not be ingested for any reason. Because there are also industrial uses, some ingestions have been accidental because of its resemblance to water."

Dr. Hatten examined 10 years of poison control records for high-concentration peroxide ingestion (concentration strength of 10 percent or greater). Almost 14 percent (13.9 percent) of reported cases had embolic events and 6.8 percent of cases either died or exhibited continued disability. Life-threatening ailments associated with high-concentration peroxide ingestion include seizure, altered mental status, respiratory distress, stroke, pulmonary embolism and heart attack. Patients treated early with hyperbaric oxygen had improved outcomes. Caustic injuries were rare and routine endoscopy was not beneficial.

"This product is meant to be used by the dropper and then diluted, yet we encountered many cases where it was stored at full strength in a clear vessel in the refrigerator," said Dr. Hatten. "This is a caustic liquid, and as with many poison prevention efforts, we recommend keeping this product in its original container and adding both child-resistant capping and a colorizing agent to reduce the possibility of accidental ingestion."
According to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 35% of black carbon in the Russian Arctic originates from residential heating sources, 38% comes from transport, while open fires, power plants, and gas flaring are responsible for only 12%, 9%, and 6% respectively. These estimates confirm previous work for some areas of the European Arctic, but for Siberia, the findings differ from previous research, which had suggested that contribution from gas flaring were much higher.

Black carbon, or soot, increases snow and ice melt by dulling the reflective surface and increasing the absorption of sunlight. Researchers say this is one reason that Arctic regions have warmed faster than any other area on the planet, with average temperatures there today over 4C higher than the 1968-1996 average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). Black carbon may also be contributing to the steep decline in summer Arctic sea ice coverage in recent decades.

"Reducing black carbon pollution holds some potential for climate change mitigation, especially in the Arctic, but in order to take effective action, we have to know where it is coming from. This study provides better data, but also shows that we need more information about source structure and spatial distribution of pollution in the Arctic," explains IIASA researcher Zbigniew Klimont, who worked on the study.

The location of black carbon emissions matters, explains Klimont, because black carbon emitted from the sources closer to the Arctic leads to greater warming (per unit of emitted black carbon) compared to sources further from the region. "High-latitude sources are especially important. Even though China, for example, releases much more black carbon than Arctic regions, reductions there have less impact per kilogram than reductions in the Arctic."

This research drew on IIASA research that was part of a European-Union funded project, Evaluating the Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Short-lived Pollutants (ECLIPSE). Researchers used the ECLIPSE emissions and an atmospheric transport model and compared the predictions with measurements and carbon isotope analysis of samples at Arctic research stations. While the study found good agreement between model estimates of black carbon concentrations and measurements for the European Arctic site, they found a mismatch between the modeled and measured results for the Russian Arctic site. The researchers developed a better method to attribute pollution to its sources by incorporating new data from Tiksi, a research station in the far eastern region of Siberia into the model. This improved attribution highlights the more important role of residential heating and transport sources while lesser relevance of gas flaring at this far-East Siberian site.

"There is widespread gas flaring in the Russian Arctic. Yet, the magnitude of gas flaring related black carbon and other combustion related emissions and the specific carbon-isotopic fingerprint are not very well understood. In order to better assess the role of black carbon pollution in the Arctic and to target its sources for mitigation, we need to measure the isotopic fingerprint of the gas flaring sources," says Patrik Winiger, a researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden who led the study.
Barely wider than a strand of human DNA, magnetic nanoparticles -- such as those made from iron and platinum atoms -- are promising materials for next-generation recording and storage devices like hard drives. Building these devices from nanoparticles should increase storage capacity and density, but understanding how magnetism works at the level of individual atoms is critical to getting the best performance.

However, magnetism at the atomic scale is extremely difficult to observe experimentally, even with the best microscopes and imaging technologies.

That's why researchers working with magnetic nanoparticles at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) approached computational scientists at DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to help solve a unique problem: to model magnetism at the atomic level using experimental data from a real nanoparticle.

"These types of calculations have been done for ideal particles with ideal crystal structures but not for real particles," said Markus Eisenbach, a computational scientist at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at ORNL.

Eisenbach develops quantum mechanical electronic structure simulations that predict magnetic properties in materials. Working with Paul Kent, a computational materials scientist at ORNL's Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, the team collaborated with researchers at UCLA and Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry to combine world-class experimental data with world-class computing to do something new -- simulate magnetism atom by atom in a real nanoparticle.

Using the new data from the research teams on the West Coast, Eisenbach and Kent were able to precisely model the measured atomic structure, including defects, from a unique iron-platinum (FePt) nanoparticle and simulate its magnetic properties on the 27-petaflop Titan supercomputer at the OLCF.

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Electronic structure codes take atomic and chemical structure and solve for the corresponding magnetic properties. However, these structures are typically derived from many 2-D electron microscopy or x-ray crystallography images averaged together, resulting in a representative, but not true, 3-D structure.

"In this case, researchers were able to get the precise 3-D structure for a real particle," Eisenbach said. "The UCLA group has developed a new experimental technique where they can tell where the atoms are -- the coordinates -- and the chemical resolution, or what they are -- iron or platinum."

The results were published on February 2 in Nature.

New and Improved Data

Using a state-of-the-art electron microscope at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry, the Berkley Lab and UCLA teams measured multiple 2-D images from a single FePt nanoparticle at different orientations. UCLA researchers then used GENFIRE, a reconstruction algorithm they developed, to align 2-D images and reconstruct the 3-D atomic positions with cutting-edge precision. The nanoparticle they imaged was synthesized at the University of Buffalo.

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"Our technique is called atomic electron tomography (AET) and enables the reconstruction of 3D atomic structure in materials with 22-picometer precision," said Jianwei (John) Miao of UCLA. A picometer is one-trillionth of a meter. "Like a CT scan, you take multiple images from samples and reconstruct them into a 3-D image."

However, a CT scan is on the order of millimeters for medical diagnoses, whereas the UCLA team's AET technique is measuring atom locations on the order of hundreds of picometers, or the space between atoms.

The UCLA team also developed algorithms to trace the positions of about 6,500 iron and 16,500 platinum atoms, revealing 3-D chemical disorder and other defects at the atomic level.

"We find that the atomic structure is much more complicated than people thought," Miao said. "There were a lot of defects and imperfections in this iron-platinum nanoparticle."

One of the defining characteristics of the FePt nanoparticle is the grouping of iron and platinum atoms into regions or "grains" divided by boundaries. Researchers wanted to understand how magnetism would differ across boundaries given that the ratio and order of iron and platinum atoms changes from grain to grain. Ultimately, magnetism from grain to grain could influence the performance of a magnetic storage device.

"The computational challenge was to demonstrate how magnetism is ordered in the real particle and understand how it changes between boundaries of differently ordered grains," Eisenbach said.

A Supercomputing Milestone

For the first time, researchers have simulated local magnetic anisotropy at the atomic level in a magnetic material based on experimental data. This figure shows changes in magnetic energy across individual iron and platinum atoms from an FePt nanoparticle. Image courtesy of Markus Eisenbach and Nature.

Magnetism at the atomic level is driven by quantum mechanics -- a fact that has shaken up classical physics calculations and called for increasingly complex, first-principle calculations, or calculations working forward from fundamental physics equations rather than relying on assumptions that reduce computational workload.

For magnetic recording and storage devices, researchers are particularly interested in magnetic anisotropy, or what direction magnetism favors in an atom.

"If the anisotropy is too weak, a bit written to the nanoparticle might flip at room temperature," Kent said.

To solve for magnetic anisotropy, Eisenbach and Kent used two computational codes to compare and validate results.

To simulate a supercell of about 1,300 atoms from strongly magnetic regions of the 23,000-atom nanoparticle, they used the Linear Scaling Multiple Scattering (LSMS) code, a first-principles density functional theory code developed at ORNL.

"The LSMS code was developed for large magnetic systems and can tackle lots of atoms," Kent said.

As principal investigator on 2017, 2016, and previous INCITE program awards, Eisenbach has scaled the LSMS code to Titan for a range of magnetic materials projects, and the in-house code has been optimized for Titan's accelerated architecture, speeding up calculations more than 8 times on the machine's GPUs. Exceptionally capable of crunching large magnetic systems quickly, the LSMS code received an Association for Computing Machinery Gordon Bell Prize in high-performance computing achievement in 1998 and 2009, and developments continue to enhance the code for new architectures.

Working with Renat Sabirianov at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the team also ran VASP, a simulation package that is better suited for smaller atom counts, to simulate regions of about 32 atoms.

"With both approaches, we were able to confirm that the local VASP results were consistent with the LSMS results, so we have a high confidence in the simulations," Eisenbach said.

Computer simulations revealed that grain boundaries have a strong effect on magnetism. "We found that the magnetic anisotropy energy suddenly transitions at the grain boundaries. These magnetic properties are very important," Miao said.

In the future, researchers hope that advances in computing and simulation will make a full-particle simulation possible -- as first-principles calculations are currently too intensive to solve small-scale magnetism for regions larger than a few thousand atoms.

Also, future simulations like these could show how different fabrication processes, such as the temperature at which nanoparticles are formed, influence magnetism and performance.

"There's a hope going forward that one would be able to use these techniques to look at nanoparticle growth and understand how to optimize growth for performance," Kent said.
If you're depending on a room filled with 90-year-olds to repopulate and save the human race, you may be setting your hopes a little too high.

That's an analogy Utah State University researcher Paul Rogers uses to explain the challenges before Pando, a massive aspen clone in south central Utah thought to be the largest living organism on Earth.

"Pando is an iconic example of an aspen community undergoing rapid decline due to overstory mortality and chronic recruitment failure," says Rogers, director of the USU-based Western Aspen Alliance and adjunct associate professor in the Department of Wildland Resources and USU Ecology Center.

Yet, restoration treatments by the USU scientist and colleagues may be working. Rogers and Jody Gale of USU Extension Sevier County publish findings indicating evidence of Pando's recovery in the Jan. 19, 2017 issue of 'Ecosphere.'

The USU scientists' research was supported by the U.S. Forest Service, the Secure Rural Schools program, the Utah Forest Restoration Working Group, USU Extension and WAA's Pando Fund.

"Quaking aspen across the American West are stressed by a combination of sources, including drought, hungry herbivores, fire suppression, development and past management practices," Rogers says. "As part of a larger project to restore Pando, we fenced, treated and monitored a portion of this famous grove with the intent of documenting regeneration responses and using such practices at larger scales."

He and his team placed 27 randomly stratified monitoring plots across the 43-ha aspen community to monitor herbivory and regeneration responses to distinct treatment categories. Treatments included plots left unprotected and protected by fencing, passive (fenced only) treatment and active treatments such as burning, shrub removal and selective overstory cutting.

"At each site, we made extensive measurements of treatment responses," Rogers says. "Our results confirmed a positive regeneration response to limiting access to munching deer and other herbivores with fences, whereas non-fenced areas showed no improvement."

He notes both active and passive treatments produced regeneration levels sufficient to protect young aspen suckers, until they grow beyond the reach of ravenous browsers.

"Our results support a growing body of research, which suggests if managers invest in continuous protection from herbivory, they'll give Pando, as well as other western aspen communities, a fighting chance," Rogers says.
We cover many Google algorithm updates here but not all the international ones. A big one hit Google Japan this morning, specifically aimed at targeting low quality web sites and lowering their rankings in the Google Japanese search results.

The translated version said:

As a part of this, we made improvements to the quality evaluation method of the website this week. This update will lower the ranking of lower quality sites that focus on having your page displayed above the search results rather than providing useful and reliable information to users. As a result, high-quality sites with original and useful content will be displayed higher.

I do not know if this was a Google Panda tweak for the Japanese language or something completely different.

Kazushi Nagayama from the Google team involved in this release did say on Twitter that this release ONLY impacts the Google Japanese results, not anything else.

So for all you folks in Japan who read here, hope you did well with this update.

Forum discussion at Twitter.
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16 passengers injured as bus overturns in Urlabari

A passenger bus overturned in Urlabari of Morang district leaving 16 passengers injured on Friday. Although there has been no fatality, three passengers are reported critical.
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The also-ran Israeli APS (Active Protection System), Iron Fist, has become a contender because the manufacturer (IMI), despite losing out in 2010 to the competing Trophy system (from Rafael), continued development without government funding. As a result Iron Fist developed into an APS that is lighter, more compact, easier to install and, on paper at least, has more features. Iron Fist contains heat sensing as well as radar to detect threats and that includes rifle and machine-gun fire. These weapons cannot damage armored vehicles but it is useful for the crew to know where the fire is coming from. A full size Iron Fist can also jam guidance systems on some missiles and has a lower false-alarm rate. There is also a lightweight version with fewer of the extras but that can be put on much lighter vehicles like trucks. While Iron Fist has not been proven in combat like Trophy the manufacturer says it has worked well in tests and that was enough to encourage the American and Dutch armies to evaluate it on some of their armored vehicles. The Israeli army also selected Iron Fist for its Nemer heavy IFV (Infantry Fighting Vehicle).

Until now Trophy was the only APS most people heard about. In 2010 the first battalion of Merkavas was so equipped. Then in 2011 Trophy defeated incoming missiles and rockets in combat for the first time. This included ATGMs (Anti-Tank Guided Missile), possibly a modern Russian system like the Kornet E. This is a laser guided missile with a range of 5,000 meters. The launcher has a thermal sight for use at night or in fog. The missile's warhead can penetrate enough modern tank armor to render the side armor of the Israeli Merkava tank vulnerable. The Kornet E missile weighs 8.2 kg (18 pounds) and the launcher 19 kg (42 pounds). A few weeks before the ATGM intercept Trophy defeated an RPG warhead (an unguided rocket propelled grenade fired from a metal tube balanced on the shoulder). As it was designed to do, Trophy operated automatically and the crew didn't realize the incoming RPG warhead or missile had been stopped until after it was over. That is how APS is supposed to work and Trophy has proved to be the most reliable and effective APS out there. By 2012 Israel was convinced sufficiently to equip all the Merkava tanks in an armor brigade with the Trophy APS.

This first combat use is a big deal because APS has been around for nearly three decades but demand and sales have been slow. The main purpose of APS is to stop ATGMs but on less heavily armored vehicles, stopping RPG type warheads is important as well. The Israeli Trophy APS uses better, more reliable, and more expensive technology than the original Russian Drozd (or its successors, like Arena) APS. This includes an electronic jammer that will defeat some types of ATGMs. For about $300,000 per system, Trophy will protect a vehicle from ATGMs as well as RPGs (which are much more common in combat zones). Israel is the first Western nation to have a lot of their tanks shot up by modern ATGMs and apparently fears the situation will only get worse. Trophy protected several Israeli tanks from ATGM and RPG attacks during the 50 Day War with Hamas in mid-2014.

In 2015 a lightweight (200 kg/440 pound) version of its Trophy APS called Trophy LV was introduced. This is intended for MRAPs (heavily armored trucks), IFVs (Infantry Fighting Vehicles) and other heavy vehicles that are lighter than tanks. The regular Trophy weighs about a ton and is one of several APS models on the market but it is also the one with the most impressive combat record. The Israeli manufacturer of Trophy also partners with American firms to manufacture Trophy and Trophy LV for the U.S. market.

Israel first encountered ATGMs, on a large scale, in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. But these were the clumsy, first generation missiles that turned out to be more smoke than fire. More recent ATGM designs have proved more reliable and effective but no nation, except Israel, has yet made a major commitment to APS. That may now change, simply because effective APS like Trophy are available and RPG and ATGM losses are growing.

Most APS consist of a radar to detect incoming missiles and small rockets to rush out and disable the incoming threat. A complete system weighs about a ton. There is also a Trophy Light (weighing half a ton) for lighter, often unarmored, vehicles and now the even lighter Trophy LV for vehicles as small as a hummer.

Russia pioneered the development of these anti-missile systems. The first one, the Drozd, entered active service in 1983, mainly for defense against American ATGMs. These the Russians feared a great deal, as American troops had a lot of them, and the Russians knew these missiles (like TOW) worked. Russia went on to improve their anti-missile systems but was never able to export many of them. This was largely because these systems were expensive (over $100,000 per vehicle), no one trusted Russian hi-tech that much and new tanks, like the American M-1, were seen as a bigger threat than ATGMs.
Since 2001 Western armies have created a new, larger, better trained and armed army of snipers. This is partly due to the many new weapons, bullets and accessories have driven this sniper renaissance and new records keep getting set. Some of these new records were more a matter of chance than intent. The most recent (November 2016) example of that was a 1,800 meter shot by a British SAS (commando) sniper in northern Iraq. An SAS team was conducting a reconnaissance and surveillance mission for Iraqi troops, to obtain an accurate view of what the Iraqis would be advancing into as they made their way towards Mosul. The SAS spotter saw a group of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) gunmen in a village some 1,800 meters away and noted that the ISIL men seemed to be shouting at a group of women and children. It will never be known what exactly was going on out there but it was probably ISIL rounding up civilians to be human shields against air attack. The civilians had learned to avoid this sort of thing, especially since if the target was deemed important enough, air strikes would ignore human shields and bomb anyway. The ISIL men were not only shouting at the fleeing civilians but had raised their assault rifles and were apparently preparing to kill the women and children. The SAS sniper quickly sorted this all out and decided that it was, literally, worth a shot. The SAS man was using a L115A rifle and the new (since 2003) favorite among snipers, the 8.6mm (.338) Lapua Magnum round. The Lapua had already proved it could do very accurate shots at very long distances, but 1,800 meters was a few hundred meters beyond what the rifle was certain to hit. But this was a case where it was take a shot or watch the women and kids get slaughtered. So the SAS man took the shot which not only hit the target (the guy who seemed to be in charge) but the bullet passed through that man, hit another ISIL gunmen then ricocheted off a wall and hit a third gunman. A later investigation ascertained that all three ISIL men died, at least one of them lingered a while. The remaining ISIL gunmen scattered and the civilians got away safely.

Normally details of commando operations are kept secret for a long time, usually to protect tactics and methods. But exceptional incidents like this, especially incidents that are demoralizing to the enemy. Before details of this incident were released various distorted descriptions of what happened were circulating among ISIL members and local civilians few people knew who actually did it and how. It has been found useful to publicize who carried out a particular mission because it sets the record straight and turns out to scare the enemy more than the distorted gossipy version, There have been a growing number of these spectacular sniper shots, and publicizing the details has caused the enemy, even homicidal Islamic terrorists, to adjust their tactics and to operate more slowly and with less confidence. Fear is an effective weapon and skilled snipers bring a lot of it to the battlefield.

Then there is the anger factor, as during an incident earlier in 2016 when another SAS sniper used a new Israeli 8.6mm sniper rifle to kill an ISIL instructor who was about to demonstrate to his students how to behead prisoners by using a live victim. The British sniper was 1,200 meters away and managed to hit the ISIL instructor in the head at that range. The head shot caused the skull to sort of explode, which apparently made an impression on the ISIL recruits, especially after it was revealed that the SAS sniper was using a new Israeli designed rifle equipped with a suppressor. This is not a silencer but it does greatly reduce the flash and sound of the rifle. For long range shots this means those on the receiving end have a very difficult time telling where the shooter is and that often causes panic. The SAS sniper in Iraq also used a suppressor and for the same reason. If a sniper shot kills someone near y0u and there is never any apparent sound of firing, the incident is scarier still. For Islamic terrorists in general and ISIL in particular, letting it be known that some new Israeli tech was involved and the enemy becomes particularly agitated, enraged and dismayed.

The Israel rifle involved during the Syria incident was the Dan .338, which was introduced in 2014 and was designed by an Israeli firm for the Israeli military. The manufacturer expected to sell many to foreign police and military organizations and the British, who have been using .338 rifles for nearly a decade, were apparently giving the Dan .338 some field testing. The Dan .338 is a 6.9 kg (15.2 pound) weapon that, with scope and loaded ten round magazine weighs about nine kilos (20 pounds). This is a bolt action, adjustable stock, weapon with a 737mm (29 inch) barrel. The design is very well thought out, showing the influence of the many Israeli snipers who contributed ideas and opinions to the designers.

The British were already fans of the 8.6mm cartridge. Starting in 2007 the British Army began replacing most of its 3,000 7.62mm L96A1 sniper rifles with one modified to use the 8.6mm Lapua Magnum round. Snipers in Iraq, and especially Afghanistan had been calling for a smaller long range round because they found the 12.7mm rifles too heavy. The Lapua Magnum round has an effective range (about 1,500 meters) about 50 percent greater than the 7.62mm standard NATO round. Like most long range rounds, if the weather (clear) and winds (calm) are right, you can hit targets farther away.

The 8.6mm round entered use in the early 1990s, and became increasingly popular with police and military snipers. Dutch snipers have also used this round in Afghanistan with much success, and had over a decade of experience with these larger caliber rifles at that point. Recognizing the popularity of the 8.6mm round, Barrett, the pioneer in 12.7mm sniper rifles, came out with a 7 kg (15.5 pound) version of its rifle, chambered for the 8.6mm.

The 8.6mm also began setting records. Between 2009 and 2015 the distance record for sniper kills was held by a .338 rifle. In 2015 that record was broken by two Australian snipers in Afghanistan using M82A1 12.7mm (.50 caliber) rifles. In a coordinated shot at a Taliban leader 2,800 meters away the two snipers fired simultaneously and six seconds later the Taliban chieftain fell dead. It will never be known which of the two shots got him. The victim would not have heard the shot, the rifles were so far away and the bullet was travelling faster than the speed of sound. About two seconds later anyone with the dead Taliban man would have heard the two shots, but faintly as the shooters were so far (nearly three kilometers/two miles) away.

The previous record shot was made in November 2009 by a British sniper (corporal Craig Harrison) who killed two Taliban in Afghanistan, at a range of 2,620 meters (8,596 feet). He did this with a L115A3 rifle firing the 8.6mm Lapua Magnum round. Before that the record was held by a Canadian soldier, corporal Rob Furlong, who dropped an al Qaeda gunman at 2,573 meters (7,972 feet) in 2002, also in Afghanistan with a 12.7mm rifle. These weapons are good at 2,000 meters or more, but weigh twice as much as the 6.8 kg (15 pound) 8.6mm rifles.
In South Sudan fighting in the northeast, around Malakal city and the nearby oil fields continues. The violence began a week ago with skirmishes between government and rebel forces and kept escalating until it became full scale battles three days ago. Each side blames the other for starting and sustaining the violence.

Foreign aid groups, who work with the government personnel on a regular basis, report extensive corruption in South Sudant. This results in much of the foreign aid being stolen and not getting to the people it was intended for. This is not surprising. South Sudan was recently rated the second most cprrupt (175 out of 176 countries) nation in the world for 2016. Sudan ranked 170 out of 176. Not surprisingly nearby Somalia was rated the most corrupt nations in the world and has held that dubious distinction for a decade. This is surely a record, but not one any nation cares to brag about. Corruption in the Transparency International Corruption Perception Index is measured on a 1 (most corrupt) to 100 (not corrupt) scale. The most corrupt nations (usually North Korea, Somalia or, since 2011, South Sudan) have a rating of under fifteen while of the least corrupt (usually Denmark) is often 90 or higher. The current South Sudan score is 11 compared to 14 for Sudan, 12 for North Korea, 40 for China, 29 for Russia, 72 for Japan and 74 for the United States. A lower corruption score is common with nations in economic trouble. African nations are the most corrupt, followed by Middle Eastern ones. What is happening in South Sudan is happening throughout Africa and for the same reasons. Fixing an existing culture of corruption has proved a most difficult challenge.

February 1, 2017: In Sudan the government ordered the destruction of 25 Christian churches in the capital. Most of the 41 million Sudanese are Moslem but three percent are not. Instead half of this minority are Christian and half practice ancient tribal religions. South Sudan was created in 2011 after decades of fighting over religious persecution of the Christian majority there. After the 2011 partition Sudan said that the northerners would create an Islamic state and that means little tolerance for kaffirs (non-Moslems). Most (60 percent) of the 11 million South Sudanese are Christians and they, along with the smaller number of Christians in the north have been increasingly (especially since the 1970s) victimized by northern attempts to Islamize the entire region. In South Sudan only about six percent of the population are Moslem and about 30 percent adhering to tribal religions.

The UN is seeking to obtain another 4,000 peacekeepers from African nations and is having some success. These would be sent to South Sudan but it may take until the end of the year to obtain and deploy the entire force.

January 31, 2017: Sudan will end all food and fuel subsidies by 2019. The end of consumption subsidies has stirred political opposition throughout the country, including members of the ruling party. The state finance ministry says the country can no longer subsidize energy and food prices like it could before 2011. When South Sudan became independent, Sudan lost about 70 percent of its daily oil production and that was followed by the prices for exported oil falling by more than half. The government now has a lot less to spend. Reports that the U.S. will end its late 1990s trade embargo of Sudan offer the country a measure of hope. The U.S. government said that it appreciates Sudans participation in the fight against ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant). Sudan is also involved in operations against Shia rebels in Yemen. Sudan must still meet to other U.S. requirements before the embargo is lifted. For example Sudan must treat its own people better and eliminate the government sponsorship of tribal militias that fight rebels and other tribes the pro-government trines have long feuded with. The government tolerates criminal activity (rape, murder, robbery, slaving) by its supporters and thid is what got the president-for-life of Sudan indicted for war crimes. Eliminating this criminal behavior will take a lot of doing. It must also take genuine steps to ending its various military conflicts. Darfur is the one receiving the most prominent mention. Ending the embargo would make it easier for Sudan to receive hard currency remittances from Sudanese working overseas. It will also make it easier for foreigners to invest in Sudan. The lifting of U.S. sanctions was announced January 13.

January 30, 2017: South Sudan rebels (SPLM-IO) claim to have repulsed an attack by soldiers in Upper Nile state. The rebels claim that the soldiers were aided by figthers from two Sudan rebel groups (JEM and SPLM-N). The attackers retreated back to their bases in nearby towns (Khor and Gabat) after having suffered dozens of casualties and losing three armored vehicles, including a T-72 tank.

January 29, 2017: Ethnic and inter-communal violence continues to erupt throughout South Sudan. The violence routinely disrupts food distribution and government efforts to control the violence are at best haphazard. UN and AU (African Union) officials demanded that the South Sudan government and rebels immediately cease hostilities. The fear is that the current violence will evolve into mass atrocities -- in other words, genocidal violence. The demand has been made before and the fighting didnt stop. The UN, AU and IGAD (East African Intergovernmental Authority on Development) are considering imposing harsh targeted individual economic and political sanctions against leaders of both the government and rebel factions. AU and IGAD diplomats take the position that the August 2015 compromise peace agreement can still work. Interestingly enough, the South Sudan president attended the conference where this was discussed and agreements to try sanctions arrived at.

Meanwhile, Kenya has agreed to continue to participate in peacekeeping operations in South Sudan. In November 2016 Kenya threatened to withdraw its thousand peacekeepers.

January 24, 2017: Indonesia announced that it is investigating weapons smuggling accusations made against Indonesian police officers serving with the UN Darfur peacekeeping force.

January 23, 2017: Ugandas Bidi Bidi refugee camp is being billed as an instant city. Bidi Bidi is about 40 kilometers south of the South Sudan border. As of mid-January 2017, the camp has between 250,000 and 260,000 South Sudanese refugees. Bidi Bidi opened the first week of August 2016 and was designed to hold 40,000 refugees. The fighting between government troops and rebels that broke out in Juba in mid-July quickly spread through the country. That led to a new flood of refugees.

Sudan said that it signed a peace deal with the Darfur SLM-SR rebels.

January 20, 2017: In North Darfur state Sudanese police officers arrested several Indonesian soldiers serving with the UN Darfur peacekeeping force on charges of smuggling weapons. The Indonesians had just completed their UN tour of duty and were at the airport in EL Fasher, preparing to fly back to Indonesia. The men arrested had weapons and a large amount of ammunition in their possession. The weapons included 29 Kalashnikov assault rifles, 61 pistols, six G3 rifles and four other firearms. The UN sait it alerted Sudanese authorities. The soldiers were later identified as members of the Indonesian Formed Police Unit (FPU), so technically they may have been serving as policemen.

January 18, 2017: South Sudan banned several foreign aid groups from operating in the rebel-held Panyijiar county area (Southern Liech State). There are conflicting reports about the ban. It may be a tit for tat action because rebels detained a government-chartered aircraft in Panyijiar in December 2016. One aid group official said it is trying to work out a new operating agreement with the government.

January 16, 2017: The Sudanese parliament passed legislation that puts the RSF (National Intelligence and Security Services Rapid Support Forces) under the control of the Sudanese military. The 30,000 man RSF was formed in 2013 from members of Janjaweed (pro-government tribal militias) that participated in some of the more notorious operations in the Darfur region.

January 13, 2017: In South Sudan aid groups are asking for help in investigating allegations that 30-60 Sudanese refugees were killed in fighting that erupted December 25, 2016 in a refugee camp near Doro (Eastern Nile state). The violence continued until December 28. Local leaders now say 32 people were killed but that conflicts with other witness reports. One aid group reports 58 people are still missing. Eastern Nile is part of what was once Upper Nile state. The rebels and many international agencies still call it Upper Nile state.

January 11, 2017: Funding shortages have forced the Sudan government to close 11 health facilities and another 49 could be closed. Despite help from the UN and aid organizations, Sudan says it cannot continue to operate the facilities because of shrinking oil income. Many of the facilities considered for closure, however, are in areas where Sudan is fighting rebels: South Kordofan state, Blue Nile state and the Darfur region.

January 8, 2017: Since 2011 people in Sudan have been fleeing fighting in Blue Nile and South Kordofan states. Many of them ended up in South Sudan. In early 2014, as the civil war expanded, some refugees fled north. Now refugee camps in Sudan are seeing even more refugees from the south. Aid organizations report that Sudans White Nile state now hosts around 85,000 South Sudanese. The al Kashafa camp has over 17,000 refugees. There are five other large camps in White Nile state.

January 4, 2017: The Sudan government said that the JEM and SLA-MM Darfur rebel groups have agreed to a new round of informal peace talks.

January 3, 2017: Sudan denied Darfur rebel allegations that its forces had killed 11 civilians and wounded 60 in the Nertiti refugee camp (Jebel Marra area, Darfur). The government accused SLM-AW rebels of committing the crimes. A spokesman for another Darfur rebel group, SLA-MM, said that government-backed militias were involved in the attack. Darfur rebels contend that is openly violating its December 31, 2016 promise to extend the unilateral ceasefire in the Darfur region and in Blue Nile and South Kordofan states.

January 1, 2017: The UN and several aid groups are reporting that South Sudan is once again the verge of a severe hunger crisis. 70 percent of the country is risk of extreme levels of food insecurity (malnutrition and starvation) between now and July 2017.
A snowball effect

With climate and environment policies of the new US administration becoming clear, how other major emitters respond will be crucial
CACI International Inc, together with its subsidiaries, provides expertise and technology to enterprise and mission customers in support of national security missions and government modernization/transformation in the intelligence, defense, and federal civilian sectors. It operates in two segments, Domestic Operations and International Operations. The Domestic Operations segment offers information solutions and services to the U.S. federal government agencies and commercial enterprises in the areas, such as digital solutions, C4ISR, cyber and space, engineering services, enterprise IT, and mission support. The International Operations segment provides a range of IT services, proprietary data, and software products to the commercial and government customers in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and internationally. The company designs, implements, protects, and manages secure enterprise IT solutions. It also offers software-defined, full-spectrum cyber, electronic warfare, and counter-unmanned aircraft system solutions; and platform integration and modernization and sustainment, as well as system engineering, naval architecture, training and simulation, and logistics engineering. In addition, the company provides enterprise cloud solutions for classified and unclassified networks; and intelligence support that ensures continuous advances in collection, analysis, and dissemination to optimize decision-making. CACI International Inc was founded in 1962 and is headquartered in Reston, Virginia.
The following companies are subsidiares of Vodafone Group Public: 360 Connect S.A., 3@ Telecom, A-ccelerator B.V., A-ccelerator Holding B.V, AAA (Euro) Limited, AAA (MCR) Limited, AAA (UK) Limited, Acorn Communications Limited, Africonnect (Zambia) Limited, Ag Mercantile Company Private Limited, Al-Amin Investments Limited, Amsterdamse Beheer- en Consultingmaatschappij B.V., Apollo Submarine Cable System Limited, Array Holdings Limited, Asian Telecommunication Investments (Mauritius) Limited, Aspective Limited, Astec Communications Limited, Autoconnex Limited, Aztec Limited, BelCompany BV, Bluefish Apac Communications Pte. Ltd, Bluefish Communications, Bluefish Communications Limited, Business Serve Limited, C&W Worldwide Nigeria Limited, C.S.P. Solutions Limited, CCII (Mauritius) Inc., CGP India Investments Ltd., CGP Investments (Holdings) Limited, COOP Mobil s.r.o, CT Networks Limited, CWGNL S.A., CWW Operations Limited, Cable & Wireless Access Limited, Cable & Wireless Americas Systems Inc., Cable & Wireless Aspac Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Services Limited, Cable & Wireless CIS Svyaz LLC, Cable & Wireless Capital Limited , Cable & Wireless Communications Data Network Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Starclass Limited, Cable & Wireless Communications Technical Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd (Beijing Branch), Cable & Wireless Europe Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless GN Limited, Cable & Wireless Global (India) Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Business Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Holding Limited, Cable & Wireless Global Telecommunication Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Holdco Limited, Cable & Wireless Networks India Private Limited, Cable & Wireless Trade Mark Management Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless UK Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Waterside Holdings Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Pension Trustee Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Services Limited, Cable & Wireless Worldwide Voice Messaging Limited, Cable & Wireless a-Services Inc, Cable & Wireless a-Services Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited, Cable and Wireless (India) Limited Indian Branch Office, Cable and Wireless Nominee Limited, Cable and Wireless Worldwide South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Cavalry Holdings Ltd, Celfocus  Solucoes Informaticas Para Telecomunicacoes S.A, Cellops Limited, Cellular Operations Limited, Central Communications Group Limited, Central Telecom (Northern) Limited, Centurion GSM Limited, Chelys Limited, City Cable (Holdings) Limited, Cobra do Brasil Servicos de Telematica ltda., Commnet Cellular Inc., Complete Network Technology, Connect (India) Mobile Technologies Private Limited, Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure Limited, Dataroam Limited , Device Insight, Digital Island (UK) Ltd, Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, East Africa Investment (Mauritius) Limited, Emtel Europe Limited, Energis (Ireland) Limited, Energis Communications Limited, Energis Holdings Limited, Energis Local Access Limited, Energis Management Limited, Energis Squared Limited, Erudite Systems Limited, Esprit Telecom B.V., Eudokia Limited, Euro Pacific Securities Ltd., Eurocall Holdings Limited, Europolitan Holdings AB (now Europolitan Vodafone AB), FB Holdings Limited, FM Associates (UK) Limited, FinCo Partner 1 B.V., FireFly Networks Limited, Flexphone Limited, GS Telecom (Pty) Limited, Gateway Communications Africa (UK) Limited, Gateway Communications Tanzania Limited, General Mobile Corporation, Generation Telecom Limited, Ghana Telecommunications, Ghana Telecommunications Company Limited, Global Cellular Rental Limited, Globe Limited, GrandCentrix GmbH, Grupo Corporativo ONO S.A.U., H3ga Properties (No 3) Pty Limited, HBO Nederland Cooperatief U.A., HBO Netherlands Channels sro, HBO Netherlands Distribution B.V., Hellas Online, How2 Telecom Limited, Hutchison Essar Ltd, Indus Towers Limited, Intercell Communications Limited, Internet Network Services Limited, Invitation Digital Limited, Ipergy Communications NV, Isis Telecommunications Management Limited, Jaguar Communications Limited, Jaykay Finholding (India) Private Limited, Jupicol (Proprietary) Limited, KABELCOM Braunschweig Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, KABELCOM Wolfsburg Gesellschaft Fur BreitbandkabelKommunikation Mit Beschrankter Haftung, Kabel Deutschland, Kabel Deutschland Holding, Kabel Deutschland Holding Erste Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Holding Zweite Beteilgungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Neunte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabel Deutschland Siebte Beteiligungs GmbH, Kabelfernsehen Munchen Servicenter GmbH & Co. KG, LG Financing Partnership, LGE HoldCo V B.V., LGE HoldCo VI B.V., LGE HoldCo VIII B.V., LGE Holdco VII B.V., LLC Vodafone Enterprise Ukraine, Le Bunt Holdings Limited, Legend Communications Limited, Liberty Global, Liberty Global Content Netherlands B.V., London Hydraulic Power Company, M-PESA Foundation, M-PESA Holding Co. Limited, ML Integration Group Limited, ML Integration Limited, ML Integration Services Limited, MV Healthcare Services Private Limited, Mannesmann AG, MetroHoldings Limited, Mezzanine Ware Proprietary Limited (RF), Mirambo Limited, Misrfone Trading Company LLC, MobiFon S.A., Mobile Commerce Solutions Limited, Mobile Phone Centre Limited, Mobile Wallet VM1, Mobile Wallet VM2, Mobile by Sainsburys Limited, Mobiles 4 Business.com Limited, Mobileworld Communications Pty Limited, Mobileworld Operating Pty Ltd, Mobilvest, Motifpros 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Multi Risk Indemnity Company Limited, Multi Risk Limited, ND Callus Info Services Private Limited, Nadal Trading Company Private Limited, Nat Comm Air Limited, National Communications Backbone Company Limited, Navtrak Ltd, Netforce Group Limited, Netgrid Telecom SRL, Number Portability Company (Proprietary) Limited, ONO, Omega Telecom Holdings Private Limited, Oni Way  Infocomunicacoes S.A, Oskar Mobil S.R.O., Oxygen Solutions Limited, P.C.P. (North West) Limited, PPL Pty Limited, PT Network Services Limited, PTI Telecom Limited, Peoples Phone Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Group Limited, Pinnacle Cellular Limited, Plex Limited, Plustech Mercantile Company Private Limited, Prime Metals Ltd., Project Telecom Holdings Limited, Quickcomm Software Solutions, Radio Opt GmbH, Rian Mobile Limited, SBC SMART CITY 1517 B.V., SMMS Investments Pvt Limited, Safaricom Limited, Safenet N.P A., Sarmady Communications, Scarlet Ibis Investments 23 (Pty) Limited, Scorpios Beverages Pvt. Ltd, Silver Stream Investments Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Limited, Singlepoint (4U) Ltd., Singlepoint Payment Services Limited, Siro Limited, Spar Aerospace (Nigeria) Limited, Sport TV Portugal S.A, Starnet, Stentor Communications Limited, Stentor Limited, Storage Technology Services (Pty) Limited, T.W. Telecom Limited, T3 Telecommunications Limited, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern Beteiligungs GmbH, TKS Telepost Kabel-Service Kaiserslautern GmbH & Co. KG, TNAS Limited, TSM NZ Limited, Talkland Airtime Services Limited, Talkland Australia Pty Limited, Talkland Communications Limited, Talkland International Limited, Talkland Midlands Limited, Talkmobile Limited, Tele2 Italia SPA, Tele2 Spain, Telecom Investments India Private Limited, Telecommunications Europe Limited, Ternhill Communications Limited, The Cobra Group, The Eastern Leasing Company Limited, The Old Telecom Sales Co. Limited, Thus Group Holdings Limited, Thus Group Limited, Thus Limited, Thus Profit Sharing Trustees Limited, TnT Expense Management LLC, Tomorrow Street GP S.a r.l., Tomorrow Street SCA, Torenspits II B.V., Townley Communications Limited, Trans Crystal Ltd., UMT Investments Limited, UPC Nederland Holding I B.V., UPC Nederland Holding II B.V., UPC Nederland Holding III B.V., Unified Communications, Uniqueair Limited, Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH & Co.KG, Usha Martin Telematics Limited, VAPL No. 2 Pty Limited, VBA (Mauritius) Limited, VBA Holdings Limited, VBA International (SL) Limited, VBA International Limited, VEI S.r.l., VM SA, VND S.p.A, VSSB Vodafone Shared Services Budapest Private Limited Company, Verwaltung Urbana Teleunion Rostock GmbH, Victus Networks S.A., Vizzavi Finance Limited, Vizzavi Limited, Voda Limited, Vodacall Limited, Vodacash s.p.r.l., Vodacom (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business (Angola) Limitada, Vodacom Business (Ghana) Limited, Vodacom Business (Kenya) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Business Africa Group Services Limited, Vodacom Business Cameroon SA, Vodacom Business Cote Divoire S.A.R.L., Vodacom Congo (RDC) SA, Vodacom Financial Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Group Limited, Vodacom Insurance Administration Company (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Insurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom International Holdings (Pty) Limited, Vodacom International Limited, Vodacom Lesotho (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Life Assurance Company (RF) Limited, Vodacom Payment Services (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No 1 (Proprietary) Limited, Vodacom Properties No.2 (Pty) Limited, Vodacom Tanzania Limited Zanzibar, Vodacom Tanzania Public Limited Company, Vodacom UK Limited, Vodafone (NI) Limited, Vodafone (New Zealand) Hedging Limited, Vodafone (Scotland) Limited, Vodafone 2, Vodafone 4 UK, Vodafone 5 Limited, Vodafone 5 UK, Vodafone 6 UK, Vodafone Albania Sh.A, Vodafone Alternatif Telekom Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Americas 4, Vodafone Americas Virginia Inc., Vodafone And Qatar Foundation L.L.C, Vodafone Asset Management Services S.a r.l., Vodafone Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Automotive Deutschland GmbH, Vodafone Automotive Electronic Systems S.r.L, Vodafone Automotive France S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Iberia S.L, Vodafone Automotive Italia S.p.A, Vodafone Automotive Japan K.K, Vodafone Automotive Korea Limited, Vodafone Automotive SpA, Vodafone Automotive Technologies (Beijing) Co Ltd, Vodafone Automotive Telematics Development S.A.S, Vodafone Automotive Telematics S.A, Vodafone Automotive UK Limited, Vodafone Belgium SA/NV, Vodafone Benelux Limited, Vodafone Bilgi Ve Iletisim Hizmetleri AS, Vodafone Business Services Limited, Vodafone Business Solutions Limited, Vodafone Canada Inc, Vodafone Cellular Limited, Vodafone Central Services Limited, Vodafone China Limited (China), Vodafone China Limited (Hong Kong), Vodafone Connect 2 Limited, Vodafone Connect Limited, Vodafone Consolidated Holdings Limited, Vodafone Corporate Limited, Vodafone Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Czech Republic A.S., Vodafone DC Pension Trustee Company Limited, Vodafone Dagitim Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Data, Vodafone Distribution Holdings Limited, Vodafone Egypt Telecommunications S.A.E., Vodafone Elektronik Para Ve Odeme Hizmetleri A.S., Vodafone Empresa Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda, Vodafone Empresa Mexico S.de R.L. de C.V., Vodafone Enabler Espana S.L., Vodafone Enterprise Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Austria GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Bahrain W.L.L., Vodafone Enterprise Bulgaria EOOD, Vodafone Enterprise Chile SA, Vodafone Enterprise Communications Technical Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Corporate Secretaries Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Denmark A/S, Vodafone Enterprise Equipment Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited  Czech Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Europe (UK) Limited  DubaiI Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Finland OY, Vodafone Enterprise France SAS, Vodafone Enterprise Germany GmbH, Vodafone Enterprise Global Businesses S.a r.l., Vodafone Enterprise Global Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network HK Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Global Network Pte. Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Hong Kong Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Italy S.r.L, Vodafone Enterprise Korea Limited, Vodafone Enterprise Luxembourg S.A., Vodafone Enterprise Netherlands BV, Vodafone Enterprise Norway AS, Vodafone Enterprise Regional Business Singapore Pte.Ltd., Vodafone Enterprise Singapore Pte.Ltd, Vodafone Enterprise Spain S.L.U.  Portugal Branch, Vodafone Enterprise Spain SLU, Vodafone Enterprise Sweden AB, Vodafone Enterprise Switzerland AG, Vodafone Erste Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Vodafone Espana S.A.U., Vodafone Euro Hedging Limited, Vodafone Euro Hedging Two, Vodafone Europe B.V., Vodafone Europe UK, Vodafone European Investments, Vodafone European Portal Limited, Vodafone Finance Limited, Vodafone Finance Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Finance Sweden, Vodafone Finance UK Limited, Vodafone Financial Operations, Vodafone Financial Services B.V., Vodafone Fixed Ltd, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone Foundation Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Gestioni S.p.A, Vodafone Ghana Mobile Financial Services Limited, Vodafone Global Content Services Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Hong Kong) Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise (Italy) S.R.L., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Japan) K.K., Vodafone Global Enterprise (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Vodafone Global Enterprise Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Russia LLC, Vodafone Global Enterprise Taiwan Limited, Vodafone Global Enterprise Telecommunications (Hellas) A.E., Vodafone Global Network Limited, Vodafone Global Network Limited  Slovakia Branch, Vodafone Global Services Private Limited, Vodafone GmbH, Vodafone Group (Directors) Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Pension Trustee Limited, Vodafone Group Services GmbH, Vodafone Group Services Ireland Limited, Vodafone Group Services Limited, Vodafone Group Services No.2 Limited, Vodafone Group Share Trustee Limited, Vodafone Hire Limited, Vodafone Holding A.S., Vodafone Holdings (Jersey) Limited, Vodafone Holdings (SA) Proprietary Limited, Vodafone Holdings Europe S.L.U., Vodafone Holdings Luxembourg Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Australia Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Finance Pty Limited, Vodafone Hutchison Receivables Pty Limited, Vodafone IP Licensing Limited, Vodafone India Digital Limited, Vodafone India Limited, Vodafone India Services Private Limited, Vodafone India Ventures Limited, Vodafone Institut fur Gesellschaft und Kommunikation GmbH, Vodafone Intermediate Enterprises Limited, Vodafone International 1 S.a.r.l. 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Bad medicine

Free medicine scheme of govt vital to improving the health of the population
Earlier this week, a police officer in Novo Horizonte, Brazil, was leaving home to run an errand when he saw something quite commonplace: a neighbor's dog, rummaging through a pile of garbage bags amassed on the street for collection. As it turns out, however, the pup wasn't driven by an empty stomach - but rather by a full heart. When the officer returned home a short time later, he saw the same dog there. Only this time, she had something in her mouth.

Facebook/Marco Antonio Rodrigues

As the officer moved closer for a better look, he thought at first that the dog had found a dead kitten, as Diario da Regiao reports. But the truth ended up being quite uplifting.

Dodo Shows Adopt Me! Scared Little Dog Is So Full Of Joy Now  And Looking For A Family

Facebook/Marco Antonio Rodrigues

The dog had actually rescued a puppy who, aside from reeking of the trash where he'd apparently been left to die, was still very much alive.

Facebook/Marco Antonio Rodrigues

The puppy's canine rescuer clearly had the best intentions. She started whining when the puppy was taken, so she was allowed to watch over him as the officer contacted a local animal rescuer, Marco Antonio Rodrigues, for help. "She played the most important role by saving the puppy," Rodrigues wrote online about the heroic dog. But soon, another bighearted pup would be needed to help.

Facebook/Marco Antonio Rodrigues

Since the dog who had found the puppy wasn't producing milk, Rodrigues made an appeal on Facebook asking if anyone had a dog who was already nursing. And that's when the abandoned puppy met her new foster parent.

Facebook/Marco Antonio Rodrigues

While it's possible that the person responsible for cruelly abandoning the puppy will never be brought to justice, there's little doubt about whose love it was that saved his life. "One dog found the puppy in the trash and another is being his mom," Rodrigues wrote. "What a beautiful thing!"
This is 11-year-old Hamdu Sena Bilgin. She lives in a small village outside the city of Rize, in Turkey.

Hamdu Sena Bilgin

Hamdu Sena and her family operate a small farm, where they raise goats for their milk. She serves as goatherd, the animals' protector and guide. Her dog, Tomi, is always by her side to help, even during the cold winter months.

Dodo Shows Faith = Restored Couple Meets A Beach Dog In Mexico Who Changes Their Life

Hamdu Sena Bilgin

Recently, while Hamdu Sena and her loyal pup were tending to goats grazing on a snowy hillside far from home, one of them suddenly went into labor. Fearing that the goat, and her soon-to-be-arriving baby, would be too weak to make it back on their own, the young goatherd sprang into action. "After the goat gave birth, I led the rest of the herd back to their shelter," Hamdu Sena told The Dodo. "Then I grabbed two backpacks from the house and went back to the goat and her baby with Tomi." Although the backpacks are normally filled with books and school supplies, on this day, their cargo would be far more precious indeed.

Hamdu Sena Bilgin

Once back at the spot, Hamdu Sena loaded the mother goat into her backpack, and put the fragile baby into the other. Tomi carried her. "He's a good dog," Hamdu Sena said. "Very smart." Together, they slogged through the steep, wintery terrain to bring the new family to safety.

Hamdu Sena Bilgin

"The snow was so thick, I was exhausted," said Hamdu Sena. "But it was worth it." She was joined near the end of the trek by her brother, who captured photos of the rescue in action.

Hamdu Sena Bilgin

Thanks to Hamdu Sena and Tomi's dedication to the animals they tend, the mother goat and her baby are now both safe and sound. But while the heroic 11-year-old might consider it her duty to the herd to protect them all from harm, she's receiving an outpouring of appreciation online, where her story has gone viral. The resounding sentiment is that Hamdu Sena embodies what it means to love animals ...

Hamdu Sena Bilgin

... and we need only look to Tomi and her herd to know that animals love her, too.

Hamdu Sena Bilgin
For the first time since Ronald Reagan assailed the Soviet Union in 1980, an American presidential candidate actively campaigned against another countrys national interests. Jorge G. Castaneda, Mexican foreign minister 2000-2003, in a New York Times essay shortly after Donald Trumps election as U.S. president on an anti-Mexico platform.

Mexico faces a moment of truth: will it appease Donald Trumps anti-Mexico agenda or fight it?

The new U.S. president won the White House by scapegoating Mexico, a purported thief of U.S. jobs and exporter of rapists. Trump vows to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Canada, Mexico and the U.S. unless it is renegotiated as an America First treaty.

There is a widespread assumption in Canada and the U.S. that Mexico has been the biggest winner from NAFTA.

Thats not true.

True, billions of dollars of foreign investment have poured into Mexico each year since NAFTA went into effect in 1994. Mexico has an impressive middle class as a result. And educational and other social standards have improved somewhat.

But NAFTA has failed to deliver the higher and sustained prosperity its Mexican champions promised.

Mexicos GDP growth has been anemic under NAFTA, just 2.5 per cent a year on average. Thats not remotely close to whats required to lift most Mexicans from the subsistence employment and income that most endure.

In economic growth, Mexico under NAFTA has actually lagged behind other Latin American economies, notably Brazil and Chile.

After 22 years of NAFTA, more than half of Mexicans still live below the poverty line. That compares with about 16 per cent of Americans.

For more than a decade, the Mexican wage growth has stagnated.

Mexicos exports have grown, but so have its imports.

In 2016, Mexico exported $33 billion (U.S.) in goods to the U.S. (All figures in U.S. dollars.) But it imported $33.2 billion in goods, mostly from the U.S.

Mexicos agricultural sector has lost an estimated two million jobs under NAFTA. The treaty opened the Mexican market to heavily subsidized U.S. corn and other crops.

And the advanced technology that absentee owners have installed in Mexican factories has triggered the same job loss endured by Trump supporters in Americas industrial heartland. In both jurisdictions, automation and robotics are the culprits in loss of low-income, low-skill jobs, not a NAFTA that Trump has labelled the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere.

After two decades of NAFTA, the deals U.S. and Canadian partners rank 3rd and 15th, respectively, among the worlds most competitive economies, according to the World Economic Forum.

Mexico ranks 51st.

On ease of doing business, calculated annually by the World Bank, Mexico ranks 47th to Americas 8th and Canadas 22nd. And on Transparency Internationals corruption perception index, the rankings are Canada, 9th; U.S., 18th and Mexico, 123rd.

Finally, the per capita income for the U.S. last year was $55,805; for Canada, $43,332 and for Mexico, $9,009. Mexicos gap between rich and poor was already wide in 1994. Under NAFTA, income inequality has grown even worse.

Trump has cast Mexico as the great thief of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Yet among those U.S. jobs that have been lost to offshoring, more have gone to China and the Pacific Rim, South Asia and the low-wage U.S. South than to Mexico.

But offshoring is not the culprit in job loss, accounting for just 13 per cent of U.S. manufacturing job losses, according to a 2015 report by Indianas Ball State University.

The real villains in job loss are U.S. and Canadian captains of industry, replacing humans with computer-based advanced manufacturing systems in their ceaseless pursuit of higher productivity and profits.

As Trump has done since his November victory, predecessor Barack Obama relentlessly implored American CEOs to keep and create jobs in the U.S.

And in the blue-collar workforce, Obama failed, as Trump will.

Its NAFTA-related foreign investment that mostly accounts for Mexicos impressive pace of job creation. Mexico can boast a jobless rate of just 3.4 per cent, lowest among the NAFTA partners.

But the Mexican jobs are, in main, not good ones. A huge portion of Mexicos workforce of 53 million people work at menial, low-paying jobs that lack job security and benefits.

The worry now is that  the low quality of jobs aside  the end of NAFTA would dry up the foreign investment that has driven job growth.

Almost tragically, successive Mexican governments regarded NAFTA as a silver bullet that alone would transform Mexicos economy into one of sustained prosperity.

They neglected to exploit NAFTAs benefits by diversifying the economy away from low-skilled work, creating centres of excellence, educating Mexicans in skills required by the 21st-century economy and investing sufficiently in research and development. (Government spending on R&D is at a seven-year low.)

Actually, the biggest winner from NAFTA is likely the United States. In the seven years after NAFTA went into effect, the U.S. created a record 23 million new jobs. Mexican imports from the U.S. have grown as the Mexican middle class has expanded.

And Mexico has helped keep U.S. manufacturers globally competitive. Under NAFTA, Mexico provides the same low-cost platform for which non-U.S. multinationals turn to low-cost Eastern Europe and Brazil.

Jorge G. Castaneda, the former Mexican foreign minister, now a professor at New York University, is not alone among Mexicans in believing that Donald Trump is at war with his Mexican homeland. And because of the similarities in Canadas and Mexicos experiences with the U.S., Castanedas recommended hardball approach to the U.S. is of more than passing interest to Canada.

Castaneda would play hardball with the U.S., simply refusing to renegotiate NAFTA, and letting Trump take the blame for the chaos in U.S. business in busting up North Americas elaborate supply-chain networks.

His Mexico would also balk at the massive deportations Trump vows, accepting only deportees the U.S. can prove are actually Mexican. (About half of Americas estimated 11 million illegals are from elsewhere than Mexico.) That lengthy and costly process would likely be a humanitarian catastrophe, earning global condemnation of the U.S., with parents separated from children and others left in limbo.

Castanedas Mexico would also fight Trumps hostile act of building a wall on the Mexican border. A wall would create a field day for smuggling by organized crime syndicates. And it would divide sister cities like El Paso-Ciudad Juarez. Mexico would also abandon its costly and dangerous war on drugs, now that jurisdictions like California are about to legalize recreational marijuana.

If the description of Mexico above seems vaguely familiar, it mirrors the story of Canada. Canada also lacks a sufficiently diversified economy, is overly reliant on trade with the U.S., is a near-wasteland in R&D spending and has to stand up to a much larger neighbour.

We need to become allies of our Mexican friends  the oft-forgotten of the three amigos  in asserting our just claims to a shared North American prosperity.

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WASHINGTONPresident Donald Trump is taking his first steps aimed at scaling back financial services regulations, and the Republican-run Congress cast a vote early Friday signalling that its eager to help.

The president signed an executive order that will direct the Treasury secretary to review a 2010 financial oversight law, which reshaped financial regulation after the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Trump also signed a presidential memorandum that instructs the Labor Department to delay implementing an Obama-era rule that requires financial professionals who charge commissions to put their clients best interests first when giving advice on retirement investments.

Read the latest news on U.S. President Donald Trump

While the financial oversight order wont have any immediate impact, the administrations intent is clear.

The Dodd-Frank Act is a disastrous policy thats hindering our markets, reducing the availability of credit and crippling our economys ability to grow and create jobs, said Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

Earlier Friday, the Senate used an unusual pre-dawn vote to approve legislation, 52-47, killing a regulation that has required oil and gas companies to disclose payments to the U.S. or foreign governments for commercial development. The House approved the measure this week, and Trump is expected to sign it.

Republicans said the rejected regulation gives foreign competitors valuable information about U.S. firms and would hurt the economy. Democrats said erasing the requirement means big companies will be able to hide questionable dealings with foreign governments like Russia.

Trump pledged during his campaign to repeal and replace the Dodd-Frank law, which also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A senior White House official outlined his executive order in a background briefing with reporters Thursday.

Dodd-Frank is a disaster, Trump said earlier this week during a meeting with small business owners. Were going to be doing a big number on Dodd-Frank. The shorthand name for the law refers to its Democratic sponsors, former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and former Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts.

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Heres how Trump has handled 6 phone calls with major world leaders

Trump declares religious freedom under threat but defends immigration order

Trumps bad hombres remark to Mexico was lighthearted, White House says

The president said hed be discussing the topic with top CEOs and banking executives at a meeting Friday morning at the White House, where attendees included Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase.

Theres nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, so youre going to tell me about it, Trump said.

He told the group that he expects his administration to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because frankly I have so many people, friends of mine that have nice businesses that cant borrow money. They just cant get any money because the banks just wont let em borrow because of the rules and regulations of Dodd-Frank.

Trumps order wont have any immediate impact. But it directs the Treasury secretary to consult with members of different regulatory agencies and the Financial Stability Oversight Council and report back on potential changes.

That likely includes a review of the CFPB, which vastly expanded regulators ability to police consumer products  from mortgages to credit cards to student loans.

Trump administration officials, like other critics, argue Dodd-Frank did not achieve what it set out to do and portray it as an example of massive government overreach.

Banks are forced to hoard money because theyre forced to hoard capital and they cant take any risk. We need to get banks back in the lending business, said White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn in an interview with Fox Business Network. Thats our number one objective.

Trump also signed a presidential memorandum Friday that instructs the Labor Department to delay implementing the fiduciary rule, which was aimed at blocking financial advisers from steering clients toward investments with higher commissions and fees that can eat away at retirement savings.

The rule, which was set to take effect in April, will be delayed for 90 days while its reviewed.

Critics argue the rule limits retirees investment choices by forcing asset managers to steer them to the lowest-risk options.

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Rings

Starring Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent DOnofrio and Bonnie Morgan. Directed by F. Javier Gutierrez. Opens Friday at major theatres. 102 minutes. 14A

Tip No. 1 for a manual on how to revive a dead horror-movie franchise would have to be this: Stay true to your original idea.

The advice would have aided Rings, the long-delayed third chapter of the killer-video spook story. Its messily derived from a simple and scream-worthy concept that began in the 1990s with a superior Japanese novel and films, followed in the early 2000s by Hollywood adaptations.

Rings and its all-new cast follow a dozen years or so from The Ring 2 (2005), the unsatisfying first sequel to The Ring (2002) which found terror in a surreal VHS tape containing the vengeful ghost of an abuse victim named Samara. She looks like Cousin Itt from The Addams Family with her seriously shaggy hair.

Watch the tape, and seven days later Samara will climb out of the screen to murder you. But at least she thoughtfully telephones ahead.

Rings director F. Javier Gutierrez and his cabal of screenwriters might have made something out of how the outmoded VHS premise would adapt to the smartphone and social-media world that didnt exist a generation ago.

They take a stab at it, so to speak, but far too much effort is expended on larding in ridiculous elements and characters that send the story in all directions, none of them involving brain cells or any real sense of dread.

Theres now a movie within the movie of the Samara tape, something that seems to have escaped the scrutiny of the secret society of college geeks who have been avidly studying it, under the tutelage of a shifty professor named Gabriel (Johnny Galecki of TVs The Big Bang Theory).

Theyre apparently able to dodge the death curse by passing it on to a tail  a sucker, in other words  much like the transit of the supernatural STD in It Follows. The rules of engagement arent terribly clear but the death is predictably gruesome for anyone who fails to heed them.

Enter brave Julia (Matilda Lutz), girlfriend of dim college freshman Holt (Alex Roe). He has naively fallen into the Samara cult and is marked for victimhood. Julia takes it upon herself to confront the menace, and apparently possesses clairvoyant abilities that allow her see that movie within a movie and to figure out what all the random spooky images mean. (Shed be great at deciphering Luis Bunuels Un Chien Andalou.)

Julia gumshoes a trail that unravels Samaras tragic past  although The Ring and The Ring 2 basically covered that off  as the movie suddenly turns into a knock-off of Dont Breathe, the summer 2016 haunted-house hit.

Notice how Rings takes plot cues from recent horror hits? Gutierrez and his team obviously dont believe in the currency of their own chills, further attempting to paper over gaps with jump-scares, sludgy cinematography, choppy editing and an obstreperous score.

And they have the gall to hint at further sequels. Thats really scary.

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In January, Arianna Huffington, who for years has described herself as a sleep evangelist, turned her evangelism on the soon-to-be-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump. Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, Huffington called Trump the poster child of sleep deprivation and argued that he should be separated from his phone at night, get a full nights sleep and stop tweeting in the middle of the night.

Trump sleeps about two to four hours nightly, the Post reported in November. In that regard, the president has something in common with many Americans. They are so delinquent about getting consistent sleep, according to a 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that a third of the population snoozes for fewer than seven recommended hours of sleep a night.

Perhaps Huffington should become a camping advocate, too. As the weekend warrior knows, falling asleep may come a little easier when it happens beneath the stars. A new report from the University of Colorado, Boulder, backs up that woodsy wisdom with evidence taken from a small group of campers. A weekend trip was enough to make a difference in the rise and fall of the hormone melatonin, which regulates our biological clock. And a week spent outside in winter  thanks to the exposure to 9 hours of sunlight daily, rather than the artificial stuff  shifted sleep times earlier and reset the bodys circadian clock.

Living in our modern environments can significantly delay our circadian timing and late circadian timing is associated with many health consequences, said Kenneth P. Wright, a sleep researcher and author of the new study published in the journal Cell, in a news release. But as little as a weekend camping trip can reset it.

Wrights previous research suggested a week of summer camping was enough to shift sleepers to be more in sync with the rise and fall of the sun. Lights have a powerful effect beyond vision, Wright told Popular Mechanics in 2013, when the summer study was published. When we go abating that internal biological time, there are consequences.

In the first part of the 2017 follow-up study, Wright and his colleagues wanted to know if less time spent outdoors would have a similar effect. They compared nine campers, who spent two summer days and nights outdoors in Colorado, against five people who stayed indoors for a weekend. They were exposed to a fourfold increase in natural light. Saliva swabs of the weekend campers revealed their melatonin levels rose 1.4 hours sooner each evening.

Although they did not go to sleep earlier than they had during the week, the campers did not stay up any later, either. For those who stayed at home, weekends meant staying up later at night and sleeping in later in the morning. A weekend phase delay, as the scientists described it in the study, contributes to social jet lag on Monday morning.

The effect was not quite as profound as spending a week outside, but it was still a significant change. Weekend exposure to natural light was sufficient to achieve 69 per cent of the shift in circadian timing we previously reported after a weeks exposure to natural light, Wright said in the statement.

The second approach asked a different question  would there be a seasonal difference between a week spent outdoors in the winter versus the summer? Winter campers, as you would expect, were exposed to fewer total hours of sunlight than summer campers. But the light winter campers received was 13 times stronger than if they had spent a winter week indoors; the scientists attribute this difference to the fact that, during winter, a larger proportion of our light is artificial. The Rocky Mountain campers fell asleep about 2.5 hours earlier, and slept for longer amounts.

In summary, concluded the researchers, our findings demonstrate that the human melatonin rhythm adapts to short summer and long winter nights when living in a natural light-dark cycle  something that has been assumed but never demonstrated with respect to the natural light-dark cycle.

But camping should not be viewed as a panacea for the sleep-deprived, as Wright made clear in an interview with the BBC. Were not saying camping is the answer here, but we can introduce more natural light to modern life, he said. Unless an effort is made to keep up with a natural cycle, such as early morning outdoor walks and weaning ourselves from screens in the evening, we are likely to return to our indoor habits.

Sleep experts have long cautioned that disrupted circadian rhythms have lasting impacts. We are the supremely arrogant species; we feel we can abandon four billion years of evolution and ignore the fact that we have evolved under a light-dark cycle, University of Oxford circadian neurobiologist Russell Foster told the BBC in 2014. What we do as a species, perhaps uniquely, is override the clock. And long-term acting against the clock can lead to serious health problems. Late circadian timing, Wright and his colleagues noted in the new paper, has been associated with poor school performance, obesity and mood disorders.

The authors of the study argued that, even when we cannot get away into a campground for the weekend, lessons from the outdoors can be applied to our indoor lives. Architects could consider funneling more natural light into a building, for instance, Wright said in the news release. He encouraged lighting companies to incorporate tunable lighting that could change across the day and night.

And, yes, good sleep hygiene also means letting go of phones and logging off Twitter as you prepare to hit the hay.

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If you think all Argentinean Malbecs are big, bold fruit-bombs with about as much restraint as Donald Trump on Twitter, think again. That hot South American country is totally stepping up its game with exhilarating bottles that teem with elegance, finesse and complexity. Taste these five outstanding value 90+ers to see what I mean.

2015 Trivento Special Selection Fair Trade Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina (LCBO 160994 $12.20 in stores and online)

This killer red is not only dirt cheap, it trumped many more expensive Malbecs tasted for this piece. It glides across the palate luminously, with vibrant berry fruit edged with shy dried herbs  wild sage, bay leaf and lavender. Then, the flavours taper to a smooth, refined finish. Love the balance of succulence and delicacy here. Very stylish drop. Whats more, its certified fair trade, which ensures dignified wages and fair working conditions for the men and women behind this wine.

Score: 92

2016 Trapiche Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina (LCBO 501551 $10.45 in stores and online)

What this gorgeous red lacks in complexity, it more than makes up for with delicious purity of fruit. It tastes exactly like Grandmas best ever raspberry jam from berries she picked by hand and bottled lovingly. The jam you pull out mid-winter and presto its summer again. Its like that  but dry and light-tasting with a moderate 12.5 per cent alcohol. Fresh and wild tasting with impeccable balance. In short, this 10-buck red is seriously fun to drink.

Score: 91+

2012 Finca La Escuela El Limo Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina (Vintages 479600 $22.95 in stores only)

Hitting shelves Feb. 4, this stunner is well worth snapping up. Its an alluring Malbec with all the full-fruited depth and power of old school Malbec as well as the delicacy, finesse and characterful complexity of a more modern expression. The sweet perfume of menthol and sweet tobacco, wild cherry and cassis leads to fleshy-but-electric attack of red and black fruit. Then, that ripe core quickly unspools with dried herbs, cigar box, violet and a whisper of eucalyptus before leaving a compellingly chalky texture on the finish.

Score: 92+

2015 La Posta Pizzella Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina (Vintages 166298 $15.95 in stores)

Though this bottle was released in Vintages in August, theres lots left on shelves. Its well worth recommending because its drinking beautifully right now. The gorgeous floral-berry nose leads to expansive, high-toned flavours of raspberry and red plum that give way to hints of creamy dark chocolate, coffee, spice cake, cardamom and citrus peel. Its juicy and opulent with great freshness, lift and charm. And the finish is smooth, polished and long. Snazzy label too. Cant go wrong with a bottle of this juice on hand.

Score: 91

2015 Alamos Malbec, Mendoza, Argentina (LCBO 295139, $15.45 in stores and online)

This labels depiction of mountains pays homage to the fact growing grapes at higher altitudes can preserve freshness and elegance in a wine  without compromising flavour. Made from grapes grown 900 to 1500 metres above sea level, this rich-but-refreshing Malbec is chock-full of blueberry and blackberry liqueur flavours edged with graphite, all of which is lifted with spiralling bright cherry-almond delicacy. Excellent wine for the money.

Score: 90+

Carolyn Evans Hammond is a Toronto-based wine writer. She is also a London-trained sommelier and two-time bestselling wine book author. Reach her at carolyn@carolynevanshammond.com .

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Kiersten Miles had been nannying for only three weeks when she made the decision.

The baby girl whom Miles had started caring for had a rare, life-threatening liver disease in which her livers central bile duct had been inexplicably destroyed and bile was building up into her liver, the babys mother said.

The whites of her eyes were grey.

Her skin was yellow.

And some doctors predicted that the child might not live past her second birthday.

But 22-year-old Miles had a solution: She would give the girl a piece of her own liver.

Especially for a baby who cant really ask for help, it didnt seem like that much of a sacrifice, she told the Washington Post, because Id be saving a life.

Earlier this month, Miles donated a portion of her liver to Talia Rosko  a priceless gift that the childs family says saved the 16-month-olds life.

George and Farra Rosko, of Jackson, N.J., hired Miles in summer 2016 to take care of Talia, as well as Talias two older siblings.

Just weeks after Miles took the job, she said, she started thinking about Talias condition and how she might be able to help. She said she started researching living organ donation because I was just curious, I guess, and she thought she might be a good candidate because she knew her blood type was O, which is compatible with all other blood types, according to the American Red Cross.

Almost immediately, Miles said, she knew she wanted to see if she could do it.

She said she talked to her own mother, and then prepared to sit down with Talias parents.

I was nervous for some reason  Im not sure why, Miles said about the conversation with Farra Rosko. I just told her I had done some research and I wanted to fill out the paperwork to see if I was a match.

The first thing Rosko asked her was whether she had spoken to her own parents about it.

This is a serious thing, Rosko said she told Miles. This is not like donating blood.

I was very taken aback, Rosko said. I didnt know that she was this selfless  Ive come to find out that this is who she is. She really is an angel on earth; I know that sounds silly, but she really is.

Over the next several months, Miles, of Wall, N.J., underwent rounds of testing to determine whether she was eligible to be Talias donor. When she discovered she was, she made a surreal sacrifice, Rosko said.

When Talia was 9 weeks old, Rosko said, her pediatrician noticed that her eyes were off and sent her to a specialist for further testing and a liver biopsy. It was determined that the infant had biliary atresia, a life-threatening condition in infants in which the bile ducts inside or outside the liver do not have normal openings, according to National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

It states: With biliary atresia, bile becomes trapped, builds up and damages the liver. The damage leads to scarring, loss of liver tissue and cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is a chronic, or long lasting, liver condition caused by scar tissue and cell damage that makes it hard for the liver to remove toxins from the blood. These toxins build up in the blood and the liver slowly deteriorates and malfunctions. Without treatment, the liver eventually fails and the infant needs a liver transplant to stay alive.

Rosko said that Talias central bile duct was obliterated and that she was eventually put on a transplant list, though Rosko explained that it can take much more time to find a liver for a small child.

The Roskos met Miles about the same time their daughter was placed on the list.

On Jan. 11, medical teams removed a portion of Miles liver at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and rushed it next door to the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, where they implanted it in Talia.

Once they had taken (the piece of) the liver out, they told us, Rosko said. Thats a pretty powerful moment. When it was happening, it was surreal.

It was a moment that Rosko said she never really expected to come.

We didnt even know her, Rosko said of Miles. I thought it was wonderful that she offered, but I didnt really think it would go through. Its not something that people do every day.

But it did  and when Talia woke up, she first asked for her mom.

She looked up and said, Mama,  Rosko said. It was miraculous.

Not far away, Miles was also recovering from her liver donation.

She said the most emotional moment for her was shortly after she woke up from surgery. She said she had been concerned that something would go wrong with her liver and it wouldnt work inside Talias small body.

I dont know if it was all the emotions building up over time, but I asked one of the surgeons if I could see Talia, Miles said. He told me that I could definitely see her in the next couple of days. He said she was doing great. And when he left, I just started bawling.

I think I was just really happy and really relieved at the same time.

Later on, when they reunited, Rosko said, It was a magical moment.

When I saw Kiersten come in, my heart skipped a beat, she said.

It was like a movie star coming in, she said of Miles. Even the doctors and the nurses were saying, Is this your live donor? Oh, my God, tell me the story. Everybody was just so taken aback by her generosity.

Miles said when she saw Talia, It just reminded me why I did it all.

- - -

Talias mother said the baby girl will be able to taper off medications over the next year, though she will likely have to take anti-rejection drugs the rest of her life.

Miles, a college student studying special education, said she has a five-inch scar and can never again donate part of her liver, even if its a perfect match for one of her own family members in the future.

But she said she doesnt mind.

After their surgeries, she said, Talia smiled at her, and it just made everything worth it.

She said she has been overwhelmed with the response she has gotten, even from strangers.

Im overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support Ive received over the past few weeks and continue to receive, Miles wrote on Facebook on Saturday. So many people, many whom I dont even know, have shared the story of my donation to Talia. Ive tried to at least like every post Ive seen but I just wanted to say THANK YOU! Thank you so, so much. Every share spreads more awareness about living liver donation and organ donation in general. Once again, I really appreciate all of the shares and messages. They mean so much to me. You all are the absolute best!

Rosko said that she doesnt know what would have happened to her daughter if Miles hadnt come into their lives when she did.

I think people need to know that prayer does work, angels do exist and miracles happen every day, she said. I dont know where we would be without Kiersten.

Correction  February 3, 2017: This article was edited from a previous version that included an incorrect photo caption that said the nanny donated part of her kidney.

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Rugged mountains, boreal forests, rolling prairie, desert badlands, hundreds of lakes and rivers, a wealth of wildlife, natural resources and cultural diversity make Alberta a great place to visit. Here are just 10 of the many things to see and do in the Wild Rose province.

Get Triassic: Unleash your inner paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, with one of the worlds largest displays of dinosaurs and a slew of hands-on activities that bring the prehistoric past to life in Albertas badlands.

Ice is nice: A three-hour drive from Edmonton or Calgary will bring you to the Columbia Icefield, the biggest glacier in the Canadian Rockies that straddles Jasper and Banff national parks. Stroll the glass-bottom skywalk over a canyon, ride the hulking Ice Explorer and hike along the ancient ice.

Gopher it: A visit to Alberta wouldnt be complete without seeing the Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, an hours drive north of Calgary, where stuffed and mounted burrowing rodents pose in a series of kooky but cute exhibits.

Best folk fest in the west: The 38th annual Calgary Folk Music Festival (July 27-30) features 70 musical artists (to be announced in April) from across Canada and around the world. They will perform on several stages at the citys Princes Island Park.

Epic vistas:Waterton Lakes National Park is part of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, a World Heritage Site. The area is home to elk, deer, black bears, bighorn sheep, mountain goats and the deepest lakes in the Canadian Rockies.

Big beaver: This towering tribute, the Giant Beaver Sculpture, to Canadas industrious buck-toothed mascot in Beaverlodge, between Grande Prairie and the B.C. border, will entice you to take a break, snap some pictures and grab a bite enroute to or from the Alaska Highway.

Winter wonderland:LED light-embedded and icicle-lined waterfalls, as well as caves, slides, mazes and tunnels at Ice Castles fascinate and thrill kids and adults by day and night from December to March, and during Edmontons Silver Skate Festival (Feb. 10-20) in Hawrelak Park.

Biggest is best:Canadas largest national park, where the Peace and Athabasca rivers converge, covers 4.5 million hectares of Alberta and Northwest Territories prairie, wetland and forest. Wood Buffalo National Park is home to a mighty population of wild bison and a major nesting destination for whooping cranes.

Pow-wow-erful:The Blackfoot Canadian Cultural Societys International Peace Pow-Wow & FestivalInternational Peace Pow-Wow & Festival draws visitors from both sides of the border and beyond to the ENMAX Centre in Lethbridge for two days (Feb. 25-26 this year) of arts, crafts, food, music, friendship, tribal dance and Miss Blackfoot Canada specials.

Boldly go:A prairie town like no other in the galaxy, Vulcans huge replica of the Starship Enterprise, a cafe with Star Trek-inspired fare, a space-themed tourism/Trek centre, Spocks Bar and an annual Vul-Con fest (July 22-23), attracts Trekkies from all over.

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OTTAWAAirports and airlines are pushing back against Ottawa's quiet deliberations to sell off Canadian airports, saying such a move would drive up passenger fees and make the air industry less competitive.

The National Airlines Council of Canada, representing airlines such as Air Canada and Westjet, says that airport privatization would fail the most elementary test of stewardship of the public interest.

And three major airports  Vancouver, Ottawa and Calgary  have banded together to launch a public information campaign to argue against selling off airport assets to the highest bidder.

Were not just to accept a policy decision that has a tremendous impact on airports in Canada without saying a word, said Mark Laroche, president and chief executive officer of the Ottawa International Airport Authority.

We want to make sure that if there are policy decisions in that way, that everyone knows what the consequences are, he said in an interview Thursday.

For months now, the federal government has been looking at whether major airports should be sold off to private investors as a way to raise tens of billions of dollars.

Canadas major airports, including Torontos Pearson International Airport, are currently operated by not-for-profit airport authorities.

But officials in the transport and finance departments  guided by analysis done by Credit Suisse  have been weighing the potential windfall to the federal coffers if these airports were sold off to for-profit investors, such as pension funds.

Annie Donolo, a spokesperson for Finance Minister Bill Morneau, confirmed Thursday that the issue remains under consideration. She said the department is following up on the review of the Canada Transportation Act tabled earlier this year that recommended privatizing the countrys large airports, including the option of letting them be run by for-profit entities.

The government is currently conducting preliminary analytical work concerning the recommendations on airport governance and has taken no decision, she said in an email.

She said that Credit Suisse is providing financial advice on the issue of airport ownership to the Canada Development Investment Corporation, a federal Crown corporation under Morneaus responsibility, to inform the governments consideration of these recommendations.

With the possibility of privatization looming, parts of Canadas aviation sector have been organizing to oppose any such move.

In a letter to Morneau and Transport Minister Marc Garneau, the airlines council suggests that achieving the best possible air transport system is at best a secondary objective of the government.

Exacerbating the situation, this review appears to be conducted in isolation of any formal consideration of the cascading impact of government policies . . . on the cost and operating environment of Canadian carriers and by extension on the pocketbook of Canadian air travelers, the Dec. 21 letter states.

With no meaningful consultations, clearly articulated policy objectives or comprehensive assessment of the impact, airport privatization would fail the most elementary test of stewardship of the public interest, the letter states.

In an interview, Massimo Bergamini, president and chief executive officer of the airlines council, said that for too long successive federal governments have viewed the air transportation sector as an easy source of revenue, a situation he says will worsen under privatization.

Whoever invests in these newly privatized institutions will want to get the best possible return on the investment . . . which means the potential for increases in fees is tremendous, Bergamini said.

In their own campaign, which includes a website  noairportselloff.ca  launched this week, the three airports make the case for the existing airport authority model.

We are recognized for having the best aviation infrastructure and most efficiently run airports in the world. And we do it without receiving any government funding, the website states.

Every penny we earn is re-invested in the airport, helping to ensure we continue to have some of the best airports in the world, it says. BUT...all of this could be at risk.

Laroche said the Canadian aviation sector already faces a huge cost gap with U.S. carriers because of higher fees and taxes north of the border.

This is just going to increase that gap, he said of privatization.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority says its watching to see how decisions around ownership impact its own efforts to make Pearson International Airport a top tier airport in the world. But it did urge caution.

Changing the ownership structure is a complex matter that requires careful consideration by a number of different stakeholders, spokesperson Hillary Marshall said in an email Thursday.

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Bhutanese refugees accept WFP food

Bhutanese refugees have started to receive rice provided by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Beldangi camp, Jhapa.
NEW YORKHundreds of ethnic Yemeni business owners who operate New York City corner bodegas and neighbourhood delis closed shop Thursday in protest of President Donald Trumps travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The shops were locked at noon and were to remain shuttered until 8 p.m., according to organizers of a late afternoon rally in downtown Brooklyn. At least 1,000 Yemeni-run small businesses are a part of many New Yorkers daily lives, said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who planned to attend the rally.

Haron Zokari closed his Manhattan deli at noon, as well. He said his wife and baby are stuck in Yemen after almost completing a four-year, green-card process.

We are trying to stay strong, he said. Theres people there who are refugees and who are starving and running for their lives, so thank God we dont have it as bad as they do.

Trumps executive order barred people from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Under the order, travellers have been detained, sent back from the United States or stranded in other countries.

Zaid Nagi, who owns three delis in the Bronx, said the ban disrupted plans to bring his mother to the United States, where he has lived for more than 20 years. The 36-year-old married father of four said the point of the protest was to say, We are part of this community. We are not who this order is trying to say we are.

He said most of his customers had expressed solidarity with the shutdown.

They know who we are. They know we are human beings just like them, he said. I believe in the good people of America.

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In December Michael Lollesgaard, a Danish army major general, went home after a year and a half as Force Commander of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, or MINUSMA. The post has been vacant since. The UN has been holding it in case a Canadian comes along.

In December Canadas plan was to decide over the holidays whether to lead a peacekeeping mission (the word is approximate, the missions casualty count high), in Mali or elsewhere. Parliament would be asked to debate it  well, now-ish. But now thats on pause while Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan waits for a meeting with Jim Mattis, his U.S. counterpart.

Canadas allies understand the delay. The UNs patience will not be infinite. At some point a new commander for a crucial mission against Islamists and chaos will have to be selected. If it isnt a Canadian, it will be someone else.

Frankly, on the list of decisions Justin Trudeau needs to make about Canadas relationship with the United States and the rest of the world, Mali ranks maybe somewhere near the middle.

The world is waiting on Trudeau, and Trudeau is waiting on Donald Trump. No, not quite. The world is waiting on Trump, and some are watching Trudeau for cues. At one point, early meetings between Trump and two leaders seemed carved in stone: Mexican president Enrique Pena-Nieto and Trudeau. Then Pena-Nieto cancelled. Now Trudeaus meeting seems to float in time and space.

What happened in the meantime was that British Prime Minister Theresa May jumped the queue to see Trump. It went very badly. New questions present themselves: Is it really better to meet the president in person or to stay on the phone? If the latter, it had better be a morning call, not later. Just ask Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about that.

If Trudeau does meet with Trump, expect it to come together on short notice and to take place in Washington, not Ottawa. Nobody will protest against a Canadian in Washington. Meanwhile Trudeau is firming up other travel plans.

One possibility, which the PMO would not confirm on Friday, is that Trudeau would travel to Germany later this month: a stop in Berlin and another at the Munich Security Conference, Feb. 17-19, with Sajjan and foreign minister Chrystia Freeland joining him.

Munich is the biggest annual North Atlantic war-and-peace confab. The size of the Canadian delegation has varied over the years from imposing to nonexistent. Peter MacKay went in 2009; he got in trouble with a taxpayer group for the size of his hotel bill. This year the U.S. delegation will include Vice President Mike Pence, Mattis and Homeland Security director John Kelly.

A German trip would mark a relatively rare decision by Trudeau to leave the country for something besides an obligatory-participation summit meeting like the G-7 or G-20. It helps that CETA, the Canada-EU trade deal, could be on the verge of a vote in the European Parliament at Strasbourg. Maybe Trudeau could add that to his itinerary too.

The prime minister has three big global priorities: the United States, China and Europe. The first is a bit weird right now. The second will take some time to rise. The Europeans, especially the ones who disagree with Trump that the EU should collapse, could use some reassurance from a North American.

Theyre not sure Stephane Dion is that North American. The former foreign minister is widely respected. But he is not thought capable of being in two places at once, with two different attitudes. So nobody knows how Dions dual appointment as ambassador to Germany and to the European Union can work.

The EU appointment needs the approval of all 28 member states and the European Council. No G7 country has ever asked the EU to take half an ambassador. Dions appointment comes just as the Europeans are worried that Trump will send them Ted Malloch, a businessman who would openly prefer the dissolution of the EU. Nobody would accuse Dion of agreeing, but half a Canadian against this guy Malloch seems stingy. And will Greece ratify the appointment of a Canadian ambassador whod spend half his time in Berlin?

There is no obvious right answer to a lot of these questions for Trudeau. One reason other countries are watching him for cues: Since his inauguration on Jan. 20, no tweet from Trump has received more than 84,000 retweets. Trudeaus tweet from Jan. 28  To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength  has been retweeted 427,000 times. A lot of people wont care. But its Trump whos got the world watching Twitter and counting crowds. Will he respect or resent a leader whose online clout rivals his? Guess well find out.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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Maybe the Liberals humiliating retreat on electoral reform wasnt the only important news in Karina Goulds portfolio this week.

Gould is the new Minister of Democratic Institutions, a Burlington MP who was brought in to clean up the mess her government had already made on electoral reform.

Its pretty obvious the retreat came because Canadians were headed in a direction Justin Trudeau didnt want to go  toward proportional-representation models that could force the Liberals to share power with other parties, or watch other parties team up against them.

And so, eight weeks after Trudeau told this newspapers editorial board that Canadians elect governments to do hard things and dont expect us to throw up our hands when things are a little difficult, Trudeau threw up his hands. The prime minister richly deserves the blame hes getting.

Its fair for people to wonder what Gould, the rookie minister, will do with her time, now that she has no major reform project to pilot. But the answer may be a lot.

Trudeaus mandate letter to Gould was released on Wednesday. The first item in the letter is a big one. In collaboration with the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness  thats Harjit Sajjan and Ralph Goodale  Gould is to lead the Government of Canadas efforts to defend the Canadian electoral process from cyber threats.

Trudeaus instructions to Gould seem to confirm that  whatever Donald Trump thinks about how he won last Novembers presidential election  Trudeau shares the conclusion of Barack Obama and armies of intelligence analysts that Vladimir Putins Russian government was a key player in the outcome.

Thats the conclusion three U.S. intelligence agencies  the FBI, the CIA and the National Security Agency  reached in a January report. While they properly refrained from guessing whether Putins influence determined the outcome, the agencies think he tried: Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help president-elect Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary (Hillary) Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavourably to him.

And the agencies also had this warning for governments outside the U.S.: Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.

Americas European allies are not treating this threat as hypothetical. France and Germany have national elections this year. Jean-Yves Le Drian, Frances defence minister, told a newspaper in January that the country is under near-constant cyberattack and that he anticipated attempts to influence the countrys elections. The risk which weighs upon our democratic life is real, he said.

In Germany, Thomas Oppermann, caucus chair for the Social Democratic Party, said Targeted propaganda and hacker attacks from abroad will be a major challenge for the German election campaign.

If Clinton were a hacking target, and Angela Merkel is assumed to be one, its not that surprising that Canadas Liberals might think they could be, too. Trudeau is sometimes mentioned with Merkel as a lonely standard-bearer for the free-trading, open-to-immigrants policies that assorted nationalist and populist movements across the West are threatening. Trudeaus new foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, is such a thorn in Moscows side that she is currently banned from visiting Russia.

But its not clear which opposing force Putin would seek to reinforce with attacks against the Trudeau Liberals. Under Stephen Harper the Conservatives were even more critical of Putin than the Liberals have been. Helping the NDP in a future election would be a bit of a stretch, and perhaps not even helpful to Russia if it worked: as Harper said in a recent speech in New Delhi, Canadas political parties are essentially unanimous in backing Ukraines pro-Western government against Putin. At any rate, Trudeaus letter to Gould makes it clear that any defence against hacking should be made available to all political parties.

In a telephone interview, Scott Jones, deputy chief of information-technology security at the Canadian Security Establishment, said his aim is to bulk up the security of Canadas electoral system against any threat. I dont think were looking at any state or any entity specifically. Were in a new world, Jones said. How do we work to make sure we have a secure, open and transparent electoral process?

Goulds mandate letter tells her to get a report on threats and remedies from the CSE and to make that report public. Jones said he wants the report to be comprehensive and that he wants to figure out the size of the task before him before he even begins talking about delivery dates. This effort, spread across three government departments and a major security agency, looks like a lot more than window dressing. Were in a whole new world, Jones said.

Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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For eight long and often desperate years, Saeed Malekpour has been locked in the dungeonlike cells of Irans Evin Prison, condemned for crimes he did not commit.

The 41-year-old Canadian resident has seen others come and go. Some have been granted furloughs from prison to rejoin relatives and seek medical attention. Other prisoners have been pardoned or had their sentences cut.

But all of Malekpours pleas have been rejected under the direction of Irans powerful Revolutionary Guards, the enforcers of the clerical regime.

They are in charge of an expanding campaign to clamp down on use of the Internet and social media. The arrest of Malekpour  an engineer and web designer  aimed to make an example of him through accusations that he worked for foreign powers to undermine the clerical regime by masterminding an online pornography network: charges that even the Iranian courts could not substantiate.

Saeed and his lawyer requested a furlough but the prosecutor would not agree, said his sister Maryam Malekpour, who will speak out for him at an event at the University of Toronto on Feb. 3. Now both the prosecutor and the prison warden have agreed, but the Revolutionary Guards are opposed, she said.

She will join a group of high-profile advocates who are launching a campaign to ramp up pressure to free Malekpour  and urge the Canadian government to use its leverage to demand his release.

It is a crucial year for Irans international relations, including an upcoming presidential election, a struggle over the nuclear deal that eased crippling sanctions, and negotiations to restore diplomatic ties with Ottawa.

Speakers will include former political prisoners Homa Hoodfar and Malekpours former cellmate Mostafa Azizi, who have spoken little about their ordeals until now.

Mohamed Fahmy, a journalist and former political prisoner in Egypt, will join them, along with former Iranian prisoner Hamid Ghassemi-Shall, MP and human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, members of all political parties and Amnesty International Secretary General Alex Neve.

Saeed was a victim of the system and he should be released now, said Azizi, a Toronto-based filmmaker who was arrested in January 2015 on charges that included insulting the countrys supreme leader. He was freed in an amnesty after 15 months in prison  six of them spent in the cellblock where Malekpour is now held.

Saeed has breathing problems, he has been through torture but he is trying to keep up his spirits, Azizi said. He is hopeful that he will come out soon. But that wont happen unless he gets support from the government, and from people outside and inside Iran.

Both men are Canadian permanent residents, a category Ottawa says makes it difficult for the government to intervene. Canadas severed diplomatic relations with Iran have added to the problems.

But with Ottawa attempting to restore relations, advocates say, it is the best time for the Trudeau government to press for Malekpours release as part of the negotiations.

Its a re-engagement from which the Revolutionary Guards will benefit the most, said human rights advocate Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, founder of the Persian2English site.

For the past eight years Saeed has had no access to a lawyer, she said. His basic rights have been repeatedly violated and he has never received a fair trial. This is not the profile of a guilty man, but of a political hostage. Hostage-takers do not release their victims without an incentive. Among other things, Iranians would benefit from easing of difficulties in obtaining visas if relations were restored.

Homa Hoodfar, a Canadian citizen and professor emeritus at Concordia University, who was arrested during a visit to Iran last year, believes she was a pawn in an ongoing power struggle between factions of the murky regime.

Charged with dabbling in feminism and security matters, she was released in October after 112 days of imprisonment and constant threats from interrogators. The detention was all the more alarming because another Iranian-born Canadian, photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, died after torture in the same prison in 2003.

Since then, hardliners suspicions of expat Iranians have increased, and a number have been arrested and imprisoned on widely-decried espionage and subversion charges. They have also been used to play out rivalries between factions who want to see more openness to the world, and those who fear a loss of power if they loosen their grip.

In my case, I knew initially that they disliked the vice-president for womens affairs, said Hoodfar. They wanted to show I had been guiding her in running a campaign for women in the parliamentary election. I met her once, by chance, and if I saw her in the street I wouldnt recognize her.

Hoodfar said that her captors kept talking (aggressively) about dual nationals, making it clear that they opposed entry of people that they believed were allied with reformers.

She was released in October on humanitarian grounds after Ottawa called on Iranian ally Oman for help.

No such efforts have so far been made for Malekpour.

Both Hoodfar and Azizi say that much more must be done to obtain his release  both by the Trudeau government and the public. Under the Harper government, an all-party vote to save Malekpour from a death sentence was followed by its reduction to life in prison.

I believe I was released because of lobbying both inside and outside Iran, said Azizi. I was very well known as a TV producer and screen writer. I was connected to the arts and cinema community. Saeed was never well known, hes just an accidental victim. Without pressure, he has no one on his side.

Malekpours imprisonment has served its purpose for his jailers, Azizi added. They are done with him. But he needs pressure from the international community to be released. The time is right.

Malekpour has already suffered too much, he said. Now held in a grimy cell with up to 30 others, and given food so bad it would often end up in the garbage, he is struggling to survive from day to day. In the years when he was tortured and under an execution order, the pressure was unbearable. In that situation, every day you think youll die.

Campaign to Free Saeed Malekpour will feature a panel of speakers from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 3, at the University of Toronto Earth Sciences Centre, 5 Bancroft Ave., room 1050.

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Nick Kouvalis, the controversial manager of Kellie Leitchs run for the Conservative leadership, has resigned, calling himself a distraction to the campaign.

Sources say Kouvalis has also stepped away from the re-election campaigns of Toronto Mayor John Tory and British Columbia Liberal Premier Christy Clark.

When a member of a campaign team becomes the focus of media coverage, the time comes to resign, Kouvalis said in a statement posted to Facebook.

Kouvalis is a veteran political operative who helped steer John Tory and Rob Ford to political victories.

He recently made national headlines for calling a political science professor a cuck, the short form for cuckold and accused him of treason in a Twitter post.

This language echoes that of the white supremacist alt-right in the United States against their opponents in last years presidential race and was immediately met with criticism on social media.

Kouvalis has since apologized for those comments.

Its the second time Kouvalis has left the helm of Leitchs campaign. Last year he quit after being charged with impaired driving. The Star reported last May that he had pleaded guilty and was fined $1,690.

Tory has twice refused to distance himself from Kouvalis, who is seen as the architect of Leitchs pitch to vet immigrants, refugees and visitors for anti-Canadian values, a pitch that has been criticized for perpetuating fear and hatred while borrowing from the views and tactics of President Donald Trump.

Speaking at a press conference about maintaining Toronto and Canada as inclusive places, Torontos mayor said those who dont share my values would not be welcome on his future campaign.

But he did not say Kouvalis, the former campaign strategist for his 2014 election win, would be an unwelcome member of his team.

A spokesperson for the mayors office would say only that Tory would address the issue Friday. He is scheduled to speak to reporters at an unrelated press conference in the morning. His office refused to say Thursday evening if Kouvalis would still be part of his 2018 campaign.

In his statement resigning from Leitchs campaign, Kouvalis said that pressures that come with a stressful campaign leadership role could affect his personal well being.

In a statement, Leitch said she had accepted Kouvalis decision to quit, but praised his effect on her campaign.

I understand and respect Nicks decision to focus on his family and well-being, Leitch said.

Leitch said her national co-chairs, Senator Con Di Nino, Dany Renauld and Sander Grieve, would manage the day-to-day operations on an interim basis.

We have a strong campaign and team, thanks to Nicks efforts, she said.

Leitchs positions have drawn public criticism and private grumbling from other Conservative MPs who worried that her divisive campaign to win the leadership would turn off the broad base of Canadians the party needs to win the election.

In the wake of the deadly shooting at a Quebec City mosque, Conservative MP and leadership contender Michael Chong took to Twitter to speak out against what he called demagogues and wannabe demagogues playing to fears and prejudices.

While he didnt cite Leitch by name, he condemned politicians who seek to play up division.

Politicians talking division, not unity, help normalize hate. Not acceptable, Enough is enough. Stop! Chong said.

Kouvalis said last month that he posted false information about the governing Liberals in an effort to draw out left-leaning voters.

Last year, Kouvalis tweeted a list of billions of dollars Justin Trudeaus Liberal government had supposedly given to international aid organizations in the previous year, including $351 million for the designated terrorist group Hamas.

He later said the information was false, telling Macleans magazine that he posted it to make the left go nuts.

With files from Robert Benzie and The Canadian Press

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Two members Toronto companies are stepping up to challenge discrimination and help its victims.

Abdullah Snobar, executive director of Ryersons Digital Media Zone, is offering start-up space for people affected by Donald Trumps temporary ban on immigration to the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

The tech incubator is making its in-house legal counsel available to help people and businesses navigate challenges the ban creates.

Its the right thing to do, said Snobar, a Jordanian immigrant.

What were seeing right now is completely against the values of who we are at the DMZ, and, more importantly, who we are as Canadians.

The ban will hamper innovation in the tech sector, said Snobar, because it makes it harder for top talent to move around, meet with investors and expand businesses in new markets.

Some smaller businesses see supporting refugees as the least they can do and something customers appreciate.

Amine Rahal, CEO of Torontos Little Dragon Media, recently launched a program offering free web design and marketing services to refugees.

Its aimed at helping skilled people such as electricians and plumbers develop websites to promote themselves.

We would have launched the program regardless, but seeing all these negative things makes me want to do something positive even more, Rahal said.

Some of the rhetoric surrounding the travel ban makes it seem as though refugees dont have anything to contribute, when, in reality, the opposite is true, Rahal added.

They could be a tremendous workforce for us here in Canada if we give them the chance.

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For, though we are grieving and many in our communities are afraid and feeling victimized, the Prophet (peace be upon him) did not come to teach us to be paralyzed by our fears or to wallow in self-pity, or to be mouthpieces for grievances. He came to teach us how to heal and how to be healers, how to respond to ugliness with beauty, how to be fully human in times of ease and in hardship.

 Imam Abdul Aziz Suraqah, Imdadul Islamic Centre, North York

No chanting, no speeches, no political signs.

As the imam comforted his congregation, an extraordinary gesture of solidarity was unfolding outside his mosque and across the Greater Toronto Area on Friday.

Followers of multi-faith groups led by the oldest Jewish congregation in Toronto formed protective circles around at least half-a-dozen mosques from Oakville to Scarborough, while Muslims were at prayer on the holiest day of their week. It was their first Jumah since Sundays bloody carnage at a Quebec City mosque killed six worshippers.

Rabbi Yael Splansky of Holy Blossom Temple set the wheels in motion, inspired by the Ring of Peace created by about 1,000 Muslims around an Oslo synagogue in 2015, following a string of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe by Muslim gunmen, including the killing of 17 people at a kosher grocery store.

Love begets love.

Hate?

As someone who comes from a culture with centuries-old feuds between Hindus and Muslims, I can assure you identity-based phobias resolve nothing. Hostilities can smolder endlessly, ready to be poked into flames by exploitative politicians and power-hungry leaders.

These are unsettling times for Canada, the latest pallbearer of the victims of division. As the stench of U.S. President Donald Trumps dark ideologies drift north, mingling with the festering Islamophobia here, Canadians will be hard-pressed to keep our identity intact.

We should seize the opportunity to hold a mirror to ourselves, and first recognize and acknowledge the limits of our virtuous self-image.

After the mosque attack, even as non-Muslim Canadians reached out to one another to ask, How can we help? crimes against Muslims rose, revealing a split personality in Canadas behaviour.

The 24 hate crimes reported in Montreal in three days after the attack are part of a rising pattern of crimes that are largely ignored, until along comes a disaster of a scale that makes it impossible to look the other way.

Now that Canadians are forced to look, its time to remove scales from our eyes.

Muslims have nothing to gain from the terrorism that is unleashed in their name. It wraps them in a loneliness that is three-fold. The fear of recrimination means every report of violence in the West makes them desperately hope the perpetrator is not Muslim. Then, isolated and burdened with accusations of guilt, they also have to bury their own; invariably, terrorist attacks in the West also kill Muslims. The same terrorists also slaughter Muslims in Asia and Africa.

This is why it did not matter if the Quebec mosque killer was Muslim or not. Either way, Muslims are victimized.

While it was heartening to see the turnout of non-Muslims at the funerals for the victims, we all know the outpouring of grief would have been at global scale had it been a Muslim man who had killed six white Canadians (praying or otherwise).

Different labels applied for similar crimes appear to be driven by whether the attacker invokes Allah, and have come to represent the gap between us and them, the exception and the norm, a bad apple and a rotten bunch.

Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau: terrorist, the norm. Far-right ideologue and RCMP murderer Justin Bourque: a depressed lone wolf, the exception.

Quebec shooting accused Alexandre Bissonnette, the 27-year-old, French-Canadian? No charges of terrorism or even a hate crime yet, although his social media accounts showed his affinity to far right, Islamophobic views.

Fridays alleged machete-wielding Louvre attacker in Paris, who reportedly said Allahu Akbar: radical Islamic terrorist, according to Trump, who didnt bother to comment personally on the Quebec attacks.

Yet, the Toronto imam told the worshippers, We cannot allow for the hatred directed towards us to fill us with hate.

Around them, for the moment, at least, was an uplifting example of the possibilities that kind of thinking could herald.

Their loved ones are in a better place, of this we are sure and in this we find comfort. They are with the One Who loves them more than the most loving mother loves her child. They ended their lives in a state of prayer. This life is a fading shadow, and without doubt the best way to leave this world is while in prayer.

Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar

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Talks are underway for the development of the landmark Bank of Toronto building, which has been sitting vacant for 15 years across from the Eaton Centre.

Just dont expect its Irish owner to talk about them.

Cant discuss it, said Tommy Farrell, a car dealer from Waterford, Ireland, in a long-distance phone call about the 112-year-old building at 205 Yonge St.

Not prepared to discuss it with anybody.

The buildings interior and exterior are both designated heritage sites.

CBC Toronto reported Friday that negotiations took place this week that could see the building reopen as a museum and boutique hotel.

Toronto architect Ava Janikowski, who is not part of the ongoing talks, said she did a study for Farrell several years ago that would have seen the bank building transformed into a boutique hotel and museum for the works of the late Yousuf Karsh, the renowned portrait photographer from Ottawa.

Janikowskis design for Farrell included mounting a hotel on stilts over the banks dome.

I just wish somebody could do something for this building, Janikowski said. Its one of the most beautiful bank buildings in Toronto.

Farrell first saw the four-storey buildings Corinthian columns, limestone facade and distinctive domed roof in September 2006 while attending a car dealers event at the nearby King Edward Hotel.

I got up on a Sunday morning with nothing to do, Farrell told the Star in 2009.

He decided to take a walk up Yonge St.

I saw this building and said, Gee, that looks interesting. 

Soon, Farrell was on the phone, working out a deal to buy it for $3.65 million from a numbered Nova Scotia company.

The Bank of Toronto building was designed by E. J. Lennox, the Toronto architect behind Old City Hall, Casa Loma and the King Edward Hotel where Farrell was staying.

Lennoxs other works include the Stewart Building on University Ave., mansions on Jarvis St., storefronts on Colborne Ave. and houses throughout the Annex.

He is said to have done more than any other individual in the building up of Toronto, the Star wrote in his 1933 obituary.

There was a public protest in the mid-1960s after a developer suggested it be knocked down to make room for a shopping mall.

Completed in 1905, this mini-Pantheon harkens back to an age of enormous optimism and confidence, the Stars Christopher Hume wrote in 1993.

This bank was, after all, built to serve Timothy Eaton and his employees who worked just across the street. It offered the security of a vault, and the sensitivity of a Greek temple.

The building is next to the site of the former Colonial Tavern, a jazz and blues hotspot in the 1950s and 1960s where the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Muddy Waters, Charles Mingus, Benny Goodman, B.B. King, Thelonious Monk and Big Mama Thornton once performed.

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Ontario is flinging open its operating-room doors to provide health care for foreign children whose life-saving surgeries stateside have been cancelled due to U.S. President Donald Trumps travel ban.

In the wake of Trumps temporary immigration ban against citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries, which has affected thousands of families, Health Minister Eric Hoskins offered a prescription to help.

This is a particular subset of children who require life-saving surgery, so, absent that surgery, they will certainly die, Hoskins told reporters Friday afternoon at Queens Park.

I felt, particularly in light of the occurrences in the past week  in Quebec, that Canadians and Ontarians would feel comfortable and confident in expressing our openness, our willingness, our generosity, he said, referring to Sundays attack on a mosque that left six men dead.

What were saying is that Canada is a country that has always looked to ways that it could reach out and support vulnerable people around the world.

Hoskins, a former aid worker in the Middle East and Africa and co-founder of War Child Canada, a non-governmental organization that helps kids from war zones, said Torontos world-renowned Hospital for Sick Children is on the case.

SickKids has been approached by a number of hospitals in the United States with regard to a number of cases, he said, noting most are for highly specialized cardiac care for infants as young as 4 months old.

These are youngsters whose surgeries had been scheduled in American pediatric hospitals, but they are now being turned away.

Were talking about a small number of children that find themselves  and their families  in these circumstances, regrettably, said Hoskins, a physician himself.

These children are being turned away solely because of where they were born. As Ontarians, we have an obligation to respond when we know that we have the ability to help.

The minister said his departments officials are also working with their counterparts in Ottawa to assist the affected children because time is of the essence.

Its multi-layered. We have approached the federal government because if a child and their family are able to come here, for example, to the Hospital for Sick Children, there will be a role to play for the federal government as well in . . . expediting visas, said Hoskins.

We have capacity in Ontario to provide highly specialized care that is not widely available in the world, he said, noting the Herbie Fund already helps dozens of children from abroad get life-saving treatment at SickKids annually.

This falls within that realm. There may be a cost associated  pending on the nature of the condition and the surgery thats required  but . . . this is very early, the minister said.

These are children who will die, absent that life-saving surgery.

Hoskins said he was not aware of any other jurisdiction in the world that is doing what Ontario is doing in offering health services to children from the seven nations affected by the immigration ban.

Its not yet known when the first children will arrive at Sick Kids for their procedures.

Last week, Trump said refugees would be banned from entering the U.S. for 120 days as part of an extreme vetting aimed at supposed terrorists.

At the same time, immigration from seven countries  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  has been prohibited for three months.

The new presidents edict has sparked chaos around the globe and an estimated 60,000 people have had their visas revoked.

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The Canadian Ambassador to Mexico has reassured Mexico that Canada remains committed to NAFTA after reports saying Canada officials are prepared to go it alone on trade negotiations with the U.S. sparked anger south of the Rio Grande late last month.

Pierre Alarie said Canada values Mexico and the tripartite trade pact, which comprises 470 million people and a $25-trillion regional market.

NAFTA can be modernized but not eliminated, Alarie told the Spanish-language Mexican newspaper Reforma on Wednesday. The Americans want to say, We are going to reopen NAFTA, and we are going to make changes, that is a victory in itself. But the truth is that the negotiations cannot be rushed.

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Alaires comments come after a recent Reuters report quoting anonymous Canadian officials provoked fears that Canada would abandon its trade partner in negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Our national interests come first and friendship comes second, Reuters quoted one unnamed Canadian official in the Jan. 23 report.

Mexico is in a terrible, terrible position. We are not, another official said.

Read more: Trump calls NAFTA a catastrophe, suggests negotiating extra F for fair

Trump campaigned for president on a pledge to overturn NAFTA, which he has blamed it for a decline in the U.S.s manufacturing sector and called one of the worst deals ever.

His aggressive language on the trade deal and other provocative issues has led to a striking decline in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Trump passed an executive order authorizing construction of his long-promised wall along the Mexican border on Jan. 25. The White House then suggested  and quickly walked back  the idea of imposing a 20-per-cent tariff on all Mexican imports to pay for the wall, enraging Mexicans of all political parties and prompting Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to cancel a planned trip to Washington.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke about NAFTA in a phone call with Pena Nieto on Tuesday. Details of that conversation and of Canadian official expectations for trade negotiations with the Trump administration remain unclear.

Alarie told Reforma the idea of a 20-per-cent tariff is unworkable. The automotive sector is so closely integrated between the three countries that parts can cross the border four times before they become a finished product, he said.

Are you going to charge a tariff four times? It cannot be done. You have to sit at the table, talk and explain it.

In 2015, trade between the three countries totalled $1.2 trillion. In Mexico, 116 plants manufacture auto parts destined for Canada.

The first weeks of the U.S. administration have been tumultuous, and Alarie called for calm. Changing a trilateral trade agreement involves legislative branches of three countries and is extremely complex, he said.

We are in a moment when we dont know exactly what the U.S. administration wants, Alarie told Reforma. It is important to preserve calm, keep a level head and wait to see where we go with all of this.

Alarie conceded that the trade deal should be modernized, noting that in 1994, when it took effect, e-commerce didnt even exist.

In a recent op-ed also published in Reforma, Alarie celebrated Canada and Mexicos 70-year relationship.

We must not underestimate . . . Canada-Mexico relations, he said. Canada and Mexico are partners in NAFTA, we are neighbours, and we are friends.

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Advertising plays a vital role in business promotion in the present world. The Nepal AOTS Alumni Society, in association with the Kantipur Media Group and Advertising Agents Association of Nepal (AAN),
SAN BERNARDINO, CALIF.Abraham Amanios younger brother Isaac was killed in 2015 when a husband and wife stormed into the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino and opened fire.

The terrorist attack, which left 14 people dead, was cited by U.S. President Donald Trump as one reason for his controversial travel restriction policy that temporarily bars refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations.

Amanios, 74, wants to prevent terrorism, but he also identifies with many of the people barred under the new policy. He came to the U.S. from Sudan in 1980, after having fled violence and political persecution in northern Ethiopia during the fight for secession by the modern-day nation of Eritrea. His brother Isaac, who had fought for Eritrean independence, sought asylum in the U.S. with his family in 2000. Isaac had worked in Sudan as an interpreter at a United States resettlement camp for refugees.

The main reason that we even came here to this country, Eritreans, is because of the unstable Middle East, Abraham Amanios said, adding that he saw the Trump policy as misguided.

None of the people involved in terrorism or other things came from these countries, Amanios said of those included in the ban. None of them.

The victims of the San Bernardino terror attack represented a cross-section of America.

They were Christian, Muslim and Jewish, both immigrants and people born in the United States. One woman who was killed came to the U.S. after fleeing religious persecution in Iran. Another had fled Vietnam as a child.

Their tragedy became fuel for Trumps executive order, which has roiled airports around the nation over the last week.

Now, some of the attacks victims and their families are asking themselves whether the ban is the right way to keep others from suffering, as they have, the devastation of a terrorist attack.

Rep. Pete Aguilar, a Democrat whose congressional district includes San Bernardino, has strongly denounced the ban and Trumps repeated mention of the terrorist attack as a motivation for it.

The presidents consistent exploitation of San Bernardino is both incorrect and shameful, Aguilar said. To use a tragedy in my community, a tragedy were still reeling from, as a political talking point is just despicable.

Hal Houser, who witnessed the attack and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, said he voted for Trump and supports the order but was critical of how it was implemented.

He said he did not agree with green card holders being banned from the country.

Since the order was announced, there have been mixed signals about whether it would apply to green card holders, or lawful permanent residents. On Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said he deemed the entry of lawful permanent residents to be in the national interest.

Houser also said he was angered that Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, where the San Bernardino attackers had ties, were not on the list of countries affected by the travel ban.

I dont know why he has rushed so quickly to implement this policy when it needed so much careful consideration, he said.

But Houser, 55, said it was unfair to call Trumps executive order a Muslim ban.

One of my Muslim co-workers got shot . . . I dont want to have a Muslim ban, absolutely not, he said. My office was staffed by Muslims who love America  and Syed. This punctuates how Muslims cant be broad-brushed, he said, referring to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers.

Five days after the Dec. 2, 2015, attack, Trump initially proposed a total and complete ban on Muslims entering the country.

In recent days, his administration has repeatedly referred to San Bernardino, along with other recent terror attacks, as a motivation for the order approved last week, though the policy would not have affected its perpetrators.

Farook was born in the U.S. His wife, Tashfeen Malik, immigrated to the country from Pakistan on a K-1 fiancee visa and had lived in Saudi Arabia for a time.

The executive order issued last Friday suspends new refugee entries into the United States for 120 days and restricts for 90 days immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries: Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. It also bars indefinitely the admission of Syrian refugees.

Bennetta Betbadal, who was killed in the San Bernardino attack, fled to America from Iran to escape religious persecution of Christians, her family has said.

In a written statement provided to the Los Angeles Times by family friend Mark Russell, her husband, Arlen Verdehyou, said the family is in full support of what is needed to make (and) keep America safe.

Verdehyou said the president should be mindful of Christians, like his wife, looking to come to the U.S. from majority-Muslim countries. Trump has said he intends to prioritize Christian refugees over others seeking to enter the United States.

We hope America (and) President Trump can do this without violating our core values; however, we also recognize that this is no small task, Verdehyou said.

John Ramos, who was injured in the attack, said hes still working to mentally recover from what happened that day at the Inland Regional Center.

Last Friday, Ramos saw online that Trump had signed the immigration ban and he felt a complete betrayal, he said.

Trump is wrong for assuming a ban will prevent violence, he said. While those seeking to enter the country should be vetted and screened, Ramos doesnt see a need for more extreme vetting.

The person who carried out (the Dec. 2) attack was born in the U.S. and only went overseas to get a wife, Ramos, 58, said. Its ill-conceived.

The way he sees it, Trump has used San Bernardino as fodder for a policy rooted in religious discrimination.

I dont think he cares about any terror victims. Theres so much confusion I dont think they know what theyre doing, he said.

Basically, this is a religious test, Ramos said. And its wrong.

Milka Amanios, the 20-year-old daughter of the late Isaac Amanios, has been following the news closely since the executive order was announced and has been angered by each mention of the attack that killed her father.

Its been egregious; its been ridiculous, she said. I dont think people realize my family are refugees to begin with, so its disheartening to see the rhetoric thats used. They love to use the San Bernardino attack as an example, but it was done by a U.S. citizen who killed a refugee.

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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREAIn an explicit warning to North Korea, U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday said any use of nuclear weapons by the North on the United States or its allies would be met with what he called an effective and overwhelming response.

U.S. defence secretaries have long offered assurances to South Korea and Japan that its nuclear umbrella will protect them, but Mattiss statement was perhaps more pointed than most. He made the remarks during an appearance with his South Korean counterpart, Defence Minister Han Min Koo.

North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour, Mattis said with Han standing at his side and U.S. and South Korean flags at their backs.

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We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region, he added. Americas commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.

Mattiss statement showed why he chose South Korea for his first visit overseas since becoming defence secretary Jan. 20. He sought to reassure South Koreans of the long-standing U.S. commitment to a defence treaty that President Donald Trump suggested during the campaign was a bad deal for America.

Mattis also was discussing with the South Koreans a timetable for deploying an advanced U.S. missile defence system, the Theater High-Altitude Area Defence, or THAAAD, that is meant to improve protection of South Korea and Japan  as well as U.S. troops stationed in both countries  against a North Korean missile attack.

The current caretaker South Korean government has said it supports THAAAD deployment, but the decision is in doubt because of approaching national elections.

In his remarks Friday, Han echoed Mattiss concern about North Koreas nuclear and missile programs. He said they blatantly threaten the international community and have created a severe security situation on the Korean peninsula. He described Mattiss visit so early in his tenure as a warning to North Korea.

After a series of meetings in Seoul, Mattis was scheduled to fly to Tokyo on Friday for further consultations. The U.S. has 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan.

Speaking to reporters as he travelled to South Korea, Mattis said he would consult with South Korean and Japanese officials about whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs was adequate. North Korea has said it was nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

Were it not for the provocative behaviour of North Korea, we would have no need for Thaad out here, Mattis said in his breif remarks to reporters.

Alluding to Chinas objections to having Thaad deployed in South Korea, Mattis said, Thaad should be a worry to no nation other than North Korea.

In Washington this week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its first policy hearing since Trump took office to discuss North Korea. There were more questions than answers.

Last month, Trump fueled speculation of possible U.S. military action to pre-empt North Koreas weapons development. In response to Kims threat, Trump tweeted, It wont happen! But he didnt elaborate how he could be so sure.

Does that mean we have drawn a red line? Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked at Tuesdays Senate hearing.

During the campaign, Trump complained that defence treaties disadvantaged the U.S. and that he would not rule out abandoning signatories if they refuse to pay more for their defence. He also suggested that South Korea and Japan, which are already within the range of North Korean missiles, might acquire their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on U.S. deterrence.

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When President Vladimir Putin of Russia last paid a visit to Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban was under siege for his autocratic style, Russia was isolated for its seizure of Crimea, and both men were called xenophobes for their hard-line stance on immigration.

Two years later, as Putin landed Thursday for his first foray into Europe in the Trump era, it was a different story. Both men feel vindicated. There is talk of lifting the economic sanctions placed on Russia for its land grab in Ukraine. Their brand of nationalism has moved from the fringe to the mainstream.

There was a note of triumphalism, even a bit of swagger, in the air.

We all sense, its in the air, that the world is in the process of a substantial realignment, Orban said in a news conference after Thursdays meeting. We believe this will create favourable conditions for stronger Russian-Hungarian relations.

Even so, beneath the triumph lies a strain of uneasiness. The visit is expected to be fairly low-key, an indication of the uncertainty surrounding the new Trump administration, analysts say. U.S. President Donald Trumps intentions remain unclear, and the prospects of a grand bargain between Washington and the Kremlin are highly uncertain.

In the meantime, leaders across Europe have been forced to recalculate the best way to balance pressures in the East and West. Nowhere is that challenge felt more keenly than in Central and Eastern Europe, historically torn between Russia and the West.

That means European and global leaders are closely scrutinizing the visit. They are looking for hints of how aggressive Putin and populist leaders like Orban will be in capitalizing on this new international climate and on Trumps stated desire for better relations with Moscow.

If Thursdays post-meeting news conference is any indication, any hints of aggression are well buried. Both leaders focused on economic issues, such as Russian energy deals, and emphasized the need for international co-operation.

I provided information in great detail on our assessment of what is happening in eastern Ukraine and what, in our opinion, is happening in Syria, Putin said  which, he added, underlines the need for more global co-operation to fight terrorism.

Many here, skeptical that the Americans and Russians will actually bridge the chasm of interests dividing them, are injecting a note of caution about the balancing act ahead for leaders like Orban and his ruling right-wing party, Fidesz.

Andras Racz, a Russia expert and associate professor at Pazmany Peter Catholic University in Budapest, predicted that the reset in relations between the United States and Russia would result in a brief honeymoon, but nothing else, soon overwritten by conflicting interests.

As for Hungary, there is no trust on the Russian side towards Orban, Racz said. The Hungarian leader has been seen mostly as a useful tool for weakening European Union unity, he said.

And the feeling is mutual, said Balazs Orban, director of research for the Szazadveg Foundation, a think tank that advises the Fidesz party.

Fidesz doesnt feel chemistry with the Russians, he said. They dont think they are friends of Hungary, necessarily.

The warmer relations of recent years, he said, had more to do with economic necessity and Hungarys dependence on Russian energy.

Indeed, Zoltan Kovacs, Viktor Orbans spokesperson, said in an interview that both nations would treat Putins visit as business as usual, with energy policy and a Russian deal to build a nuclear power plant in Hungary at the top of the agenda.

It was not clear how significant a role, if any, the thorniest issue between Russia and the West  the sanctions imposed by the EU and the United States after the seizure of Crimea  would play in the meeting. But Putin is clearly eager to have the sanctions lifted, and to sow divisions in the EU on that policy and others.

Hungary may be among the nations most susceptible to Putins manoeuvring to remove the sanctions. Orban has voted with other European nations to support them, as a show of solidarity.

When Hungarys foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, visited Moscow last week to prepare for Putins visit, he described the sanctions as counterproductive and harmful: an indicator, some thought, of weakening Hungarian resolve.

But since then, Trump has said that it is too early to revisit the issue, but that he remains open to easing sanctions down the road. In separate phone conversations he had last weekend with Putin and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who strongly supports the sanctions, the subject did not even come up.

And that pattern held Thursday, when neither leader mentioned the word sanctions in their public statements.

Orban, though, did allude to the sanctions by talking about some nations in the western side of the Continent have shown very anti-Russian policies, which have harmed the Hungarian economy for reasons which are beyond us.

Orbans hosting of Putin is only the first part of a busy year of global outreach. Efforts are underway to arrange a meeting with Trump  the timing and location are still under discussion  and Orban is also planning a visit to Beijing and a meeting with Turkeys increasingly autocratic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Orban has collected some credits in the international sphere, said Balazs Orban, the researcher, who is not related to the prime minister. He forecast everything correctly, like immigration.

Now, seeing a potential ally in Washington to balance the one in Moscow, the prime minister intends to cash those credits.

He understands geopolitics is changing, Balazs Orban said. The notion that all nations need to embrace globalism and the liberal world order is no longer automatically accepted.

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Just five days after taking office, over dinner with his newly installed secretary of defence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. President Donald Trump was presented with the first of what will be many life-or-death decisions: whether to approve a commando raid that risked the lives of U.S. Special Operations Forces and foreign civilians alike.

Former president Barack Obamas national security aides had reviewed the plans for a risky attack on a small, heavily guarded brick home of a senior Al Qaeda collaborator in a mountainous village in a remote part of central Yemen. But Obama did not act because the Pentagon wanted to launch the attack on a moonless night and the next one would come after his term had ended.

With two of his closest advisers, Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, joining the dinner at the White House along with Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., Trump approved sending in the U.S. navys SEAL Team 6, hoping the raid early last Sunday would scoop up cellphones and laptop computers that could yield valuable clues about one of the worlds most dangerous terrorist groups. Vice-President Mike Pence and Michael T. Flynn, the national security adviser, also attended the dinner.

As it turned out, almost everything that could go wrong did. And Wednesday, Trump flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to be present as the body of the American commando killed in the raid was returned home, the first military death on the new commander-in-chiefs watch.

The death of Chief Petty Officer William Ryan Owens came after a chain of mishaps and misjudgments that plunged the elite commandos into a ferocious 50-minute firefight that also left three troops wounded and a $75-million aircraft deliberately destroyed. There are allegations  which the Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday night are most likely correct  that the mission also killed several civilians, including some children. The dead include, by the account of Daeshs branch in Yemen, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born Al Qaeda leader who was killed in a targeted drone strike in 2011.

Trump on Sunday hailed his first counterterrorism operation as a success, claiming the commandos captured important intelligence that will assist the U.S. in preventing terrorism against its citizens and people around the world. A statement by the U.S. militarys Central Command on Wednesday night that acknowledged the likelihood of civilian casualties also said the captured materials had provided some initial information helpful to counterterrorism analysts. The statement did not provide details.

On Thursday, the White House stood by Trumps positive view of the mission.

It's hard to ever call something a complete success, when you have the loss of life or people injured, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.

But I think when you look at the totality of what was gained to prevent the future loss of life . . . it is a successful operation by all standards.

Amid new reports raising questions about the operation, Spicer offered an unusually detailed public accounting of the decision-making process, emphasizing that planning for the operation began during the Obama administration.

The missions casualties raise doubts about the months of detailed planning and whether the right questions were raised before its approval. Typically, the presidents advisers lay out the risks, but Pentagon officials declined to characterize any discussions with Trump.

A senior administration official said Wednesday night that the Defense Department had conducted a legal review of the operation that Trump approved and that a Pentagon lawyer had signed off on it.

The indication at that time was to go ahead, Spicer said. This was a very, very well-thought-out and executed effort.

Trumps new national security team  led by Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired general with experience in counterterrorism raids  has said that it wants to speed the decision-making when it comes to such strikes, delegating more power to lower-level officials so that the military may respond more quickly.

Indeed, the Pentagon is drafting such plans to accelerate activities against the Al Qaeda branch in Yemen. But doing that also raises the possibility of error.

You can mitigate risk in missions like this, but you cant mitigate risk down to zero, said William Wechsler, a former top counterterrorism official at the Pentagon.

In this case, the assault force of several dozen commandos, which also included elite troops from the United Arab Emirates, was jinxed from the start. Al Qaeda fighters were somehow tipped off to the troops stealthy advance toward the village  perhaps by the whine of U.S. drones that local tribal leaders said were flying lower and louder than usual.

Through a communications intercept, the commandos knew that the mission had been somehow compromised, but pressed on toward their target roughly 8 kilometres from where they had been flown into the area.

They kind of knew they were screwed from the beginning, one former SEAL Team 6 official said.

With the crucial element of surprise lost, the Americans and Emiratis found themselves in a gun battle with Al Qaeda fighters who took up positions in other houses, a clinic, a school and a mosque, often using women and children as cover, U.S. military officials said in interviews this week.

The commandos were taken aback when some of the women grabbed weapons and started firing, multiplying the militant firepower beyond what the troops had expected. The Americans called in airstrikes from helicopter gunships and fighter aircraft that helped kill some 14 Al Qaeda fighters, but not before an MV-22 Osprey aircraft involved in the operation experienced a hard landing, injuring three more U.S. personnel on board. The Osprey, which the Marine Corps said cost $75 million, was badly damaged and had to be destroyed.

The raid, some details of which were first reported by the Washington Post, also destroyed much of the village of Yakla, and left senior Yemeni government officials seething. Yemens foreign minister, Abdul Malik Al-Mekhlafi, condemned the raid Monday in a post on his official Twitter account as extrajudicial killings.

With files from Tribune News Service

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VALLETTA, MALTAEuropean Union leaders on Friday vowed to remain united and defiant in the face of an onslaught of criticism from the new American president that has started to undermine the once-unshakeable trans-Atlantic relationship.

And they hit back in an increasing battle of words, underscoring how they fear that Donald Trumps campaign rhetoric will be turned into policy and further tear apart their troubled bloc.

EU chief Donald Tusk earlier this week moved the U.S. into a threat category for the EU, following several negative comments about the 28-nation bloc.

Maybe the best evidence that we are together in this context was the fact that some of my colleagues have used a new nickname for me, spontaneously, which is our Donald, Tusk said Friday at an EU summit in Malta, highlighting the new divisions in the century-old alliance with the U.S.

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French President Francois Hollande said it cannot be acceptable that Trump could put pressure on the EU through his declarations on Twitter. And he warned that Trump should not send any envoy to the EU that has criticized the bloc, which one potential candidate has done.

To appoint an ambassador, better for him to believe in the institution with which he would have to work. It is as simple as that, Hollande said.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite pointed out that it was almost impossible to build a bridge with Trump because today were communicating with the United States mainly on Twitter.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said that Trump must be judged by his actions and not by his rhetoric and his election campaign. But now he has delivered enough actions that are worrying. He said the United States was partly responsible for the strong refugee flows toward Europe because of its Mideast policies.

What has happened in the last few days are really not the values Im fighting for, Kerns Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel, said, referring to Trumps ban on refugees.

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Trump has questioned the NATO alliance linking North America and Europe, calling it obsolete. In addition, hopes for a major EU-U.S. trade deal have already taken a deep dive amid worries of new U.S. protectionism under the Trump slogan America first.

And adding insult to injury, Trump called the British decision to leave the EU  the most cathartic event in the blocs 60-year history  a tremendous asset and not a tremendous liability.

For France and Germany, there is only one solution to facing an unpredictable partner.

Many countries have to realize that their future is first in the European Union, rather than who knows what bilateral relation with the United States, said Hollande.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the more strongly we are clear about how we define our role in the world, the better we can tend our trans-Atlantic relations.

Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni saw a great opportunity for the EU if the Trump administration turns out to be largely domestic-focused, leaving the way open for Europe to be what he called the No. 1 trade superpower in the world.

The question the EU must pose itself is  can it play a more relevant role than what its has played up till now internationally? Gentiloni said, adding that included being more engaged in defence.

He said an EU summit in Rome next month could be the occasion to rise to the challenge.

Even though Trump has spoken on the phone with Merkel, Hollande, Tusk and hosted British Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington, Europe keeps searching for how to understand the new American leader.

Who knows what the president of the United States really wants (on NATO)? Hollande said of the military alliance uniting most EU member nations with the U.S.

While leaders and diplomats say the cornerstones of the EU-U.S. relationship remain intact, the bad vibes are seeping out in EU member nations.

On Friday, the Portuguese parliament voted to condemn Trumps U.S. travel ban on Muslims and highlighted the United States important role in promoting tolerance and human rights around the world.

In Sweden, a photo said it all. Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin posted on Facebook a photo of her signing the countrys new climate change law while surrounded by seven female staff members. Swedish media noted it resembled photos of Trump in the Oval Office signing decrees surrounded by only male advisers.

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MIAMIA judge says Florida airport shooting suspect Esteban Santiago will not take medication for an undisclosed mental condition.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom said at a scheduling hearing Friday that Santiago, of Anchorage, Alaska, is unwilling to take psychotropic drugs at a Miami detention centre. Santiago is being held on a 22-count federal indictment charging him with killing five people and wounding six at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Jan. 6.

The nature of Santiagos mental condition was not disclosed. Earlier, the FBI said Santiago complained of hearing voices and government mind control in interviews with agents. Santiago also claimed inspiration for the shooting came from Islamic State extremists.

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Bloom set an Aug. 4 status hearing for the case, which could result in a death sentence for the 26-year-old Santiago.

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WASHINGTONRepublicans are increasingly talking about repairing President Barack Obamas health care overhaul, a softer tone that comes as their march to fulfil a keystone campaign promise encounters disunity, drooping momentum and uneasy voters.

GOP lawmakers insist they havent abandoned their goal of repeal, though they face lingering disputes about whether that should come before, after or simultaneously with a replacement effort.

Republicans triumphantly shoved a budget through Congress three weeks ago that gave committees until Jan. 27 to write bills dismantling the law and substituting a Republican plan. Everyone knew that deadline meant little, but now leaders are talking about moving initial legislation by early spring.

And as the party struggles to translate its long-time political mantra into legislation that can pass Congress, some Republicans are using gentler language.

Its repairing the damage Obamacare has caused. Its more accurate than repeal and replace, said Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., who chairs the Senate health committee. He noted that President Donald Trump and many Republicans like popular provisions like requiring family policies to cover children up to age 26 and said, Were not repealing all of Obamacare.

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Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Republicans are laying the foundation to rebuild Americas health care markets as we dismantle Obamacare.

The refined phraseology is endorsed by Frank Luntz, the longtime GOP rhetoric guru. He credited Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., with the idea, saying by email, He was right. Americans want the ACA repealed and repaired, using the Affordable Care Acts acronym.

The shifting language comes with battles raging over Trumps Supreme Court and Cabinet nominees. That and controversies surrounding his temporary refugee ban have sapped energy from the health care drive.

It also comes with polls spotlighting GOP risks. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found 53 per cent want to keep Obamas law in some form, and 56 per cent concerned that repeal means many will lose insurance.

Vice-President Mike Pence stood by the tougher sounding repeal and replace language on FOX News Channels Hannity Thursday, saying We are absolutely committed to doing both simultaneously.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., says Republicans want to rescue the health system and Thursday embraced all of the competing phraseology.

The best way to repair a health care system is to repeal and replace Obamacare, he said.

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Talk of repair dismays other Republicans, including hard-line conservatives. They say the GOP pledge since Democrats enacted the 2010 law was to repeal it, later amended to repeal and replace.

Youve got to repeal the law thats the problem. Thats what we told the voters we were going to do, said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a leader of the conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Jordan cites problems that have accompanied the statute, including rising premiums and deductibles and diminished choices in some individual insurance markets. He says health care would improve if Obamas law vanishes.

If you start from that premise, repair shouldnt be your mindset, Jordan said.

Democrats say the GOPs evolving language signals retreat. They say Republicans will threaten health cares availability and raise rates, angering the 20 million people who gained insurance under the law and tens of millions of others who benefit from the statutes coverage requirements.

It puts the burden on them to come up with the so-called repairs, said No. 2 Senate Democratic leader Richard Durbin of Illinois. What a departure from repeal it, walk away from it and America will be a better place.

Republicans continue shaping proposals to void Obamas statute. Potential targets include the laws requirement that people without coverage from work buy policies, the subsidies many of them receive and the tax increases on higher-income people and the health industry.

Some Republicans want to reshape and cut Medicaid, which provides health coverage to lower-earning people, but others represent states that expanded it under Obamas statute. Most want language blocking federal payments to Planned Parenthood but some dont, and some would let states choose to keep Obamas law intact.

There are also disputes over how to provide money so people dont abruptly lose coverage and to entice insurance companies fearing losses to keep selling policies.

With insurers crafting their 2018 rates over the coming two months, the industrys leading trade group expressed its jitters to Congress this week. Marilyn Tavenner, president of Americas Health Insurance Plans, told Alexanders committee that insurers must know soon whether lawmakers will continue federal payments that let companies reduce out-of-pocket costs for many lower-earning customers.

Losing those subsidies would further deteriorate an already unstable market and hurt the millions of consumers who depend on these programs, she warned.

At a hearing Thursday before a House health subcommittee, Republicans revealed four drafts of potential bills. One would let insurers charge older customers higher rates. Another would replace the laws unpopular individual mandate with a requirement that people maintain continuous coverage if they want to avoid more expensive policies.

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NEW YORKMunther Alaskry and his family were just hours away from their dream as they boarded the final leg of a flight to the United States after waiting seven years for visas. But minutes after sitting down, they were yanked from the plane because President Donald Trumps immigration order banned Iraqis from entering America.

Alaskrys wife started to shake. Their son cried, and his 7-year-old daughter asked through tears: Why the Americans dont want us? The Iraqi engineer who bonded with Marines over a shared love of Metallica and cleared away roadside bombs for U.S. troops did not respond. He didnt know the answer.

That moment our whole world broke down into pieces, Alaskry said. It was devastating for us. We felt like we lost everything. We lost our dreams.

On Friday, Alaskry and his family arrived at New Yorks Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered.

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The family did paperwork for more than five hours after landing in New York, but Alaskry said they were treated well.

Im very blessed to be here, he said.

Alaskry is among nearly a dozen Iraqi interpreters who told The Associated Press they were taken off planes or were told their flights were cancelled after Trumps Jan. 27 order, which banned refugees from Syria and suspended travel into the U.S. from Iraq and six other Muslim-majority countries.

Initially included in the order were Iraqis who had received special immigrant visas because they worked for the U.S. government during the war. Among them were Alaskry and a 26-year-old man who had worked for the State Department vetting Iraqi contractors. After combat veterans, including members of Congress, criticized the decision, U.S. officials announced the former interpreters would be exempt from the ban.

We cant accomplish our war effort without these people, which is why we need to protect them, said former Army Capt. Matthew Zeller, of the non-profit No One Left Behind, an organization helping Alaskry and other interpreters resettle in the U.S.

Up to 60,000 foreigners from seven majority-Muslim countries had their visas cancelled after U.S. President Donald Trumps executive order blocked them from travelling to the U.S., the State Department said Friday.

That figure contradicts a Justice Department lawyers statement Friday during a court hearing in Virginia about the ban. The lawyer in that case said that about 100,000 visas had been revoked.

The State Department clarified that the higher figure includes diplomatic and other visas that were actually exempted from the travel ban, as well as expired visas.

Alaskry first started working for the U.S. military in 2003 after meeting Marines in the streets of Baghdad. He later translated for the Army and National Guard and then cleared away bombs. In 2005, he fled to Jordan after a threatening letter was left hanging from his car door.

He returned to Iraq and got a job with an Iraqi company that supported K-9 teams for the U.S. mission and later worked for a U.S. government-funded project that provided information on health care and trauma to Iraqis displaced by the fighting.

All the while, he waited for his visa to the U.S., hoping to raise his children in a safe place. He applied when his daughter was a year old, and was still waiting four years later when his son was born.

Meanwhile, he and his family limited their outings, afraid of the violence and crime.

After hundreds of emails, multiple interviews and medical exams, he got the call in December. The visas were ready. Alaskry promised his daughter that she would finally see Disneyland.

The 37-year-old engineer quit his job, sold his car and belongings and bought their plane tickets, spending $5,060.

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They had a two-hour layover in Turkey on Jan. 28 before boarding a connecting flight to Houston. They were on the plane 15 minutes, with his children watching cartoons, when the Turkish authorities arrived and told them to get off.

My daughter kept asking me, Why the Americans dont want us in America? You promised me you will take me to Disneyland. Why cant you take me to Disneyland? he said.

The family was sent to a special security area at the airport in Istanbul for people who have no visa to enter Turkey and are denied entry to their destination country.

Alaskry got online and bought four more tickets back to Baghdad, spending $460. The family spent 13 hours at the airport, sleeping in seats. They flew back to Baghdad the next morning, sitting in silence in a taxi as they went to his in-laws home.

I felt so alone, Alaskry said.

Then he turned on the TV and saw the protests at U.S. airports.

Every time I see those people protesting on the news, I cry, Alaskry said. Its touching to me. These people dont know me. They dont know my story, though there are hundreds like me who supported the American troops.

Alaskry said he was happy when Trump was elected because he believed he would help Iraq get rid of the Islamic State group.

I just want to tell Mr. Trump, President Trump: We are your allies, he said. Please let us be your friends. We want to be your friends. Dont let the Iraqi people down. We look to America like it is our big brother.

Alaskry got a call Wednesday from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad that he could now travel to the U.S. The person did not say if a mistake had been made or offer apologies. He bought four more tickets, spending a total of $8,000 on all the airfare.

He feels sad for his fellow Iraqis who are barred but is happy to get his family out.

As he walked out of the New York airport Friday afternoon, he said the Statue of Liberty topped his list of attractions he wanted to visit. His wife, wearing a head scarf, trailed behind, holding their two childrens hands. His daughter clutched a colourful paper Welcome Munther and family sign covered in hearts that was given to her by a woman from a local synagogue who met them to give them a ride to a hotel.

Im excited to come to the States, he said. I know American values. I work with brave American soldiers. I ride with them in Humvees. The American people are great people. I love them no matter what.

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NEW YORKHes locked up 23 hours a day. His wife cant visit him. He cant call anyone, except his lawyers. He even was denied water, his lawyers say.

The strict jail conditions for notorious Mexican drug lord and escape artist Joaquin El Chapo Guzman were outlined on Friday by defence attorneys in a failed bid to get a judge to loosen them.

Guzman smiled at his common-law wife, Emma Coronel, as he was led into the Brooklyn courtroom under heavy guard by deputy U.S. marshals at his second court appearance since being brought to the United States on Jan. 19.

This was so far the only way she has been able to see him, defence attorney Michelle Gelernt said afterward with a silent Coronel at her side.

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Guzman, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges of running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings. Hes being held at a high-security federal jail in Manhattan, with U.S. officials mindful of how he twice escaped from prison in Mexico, the second time via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.

Defence lawyers complained to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan on Friday that the restrictions make it difficult for him to make decisions with them about how to fight the charges. They claimed his jailers are so zealous, they denied him water during a recent meeting with the defence team.

I dont think theres any thought that if I have the guards give him a glass of water during a three-hour meeting that somehow thats going to effectuate his escape, Gelernt told reporters outside court.

But Cogan, after alluding to having secret correspondence with the government about the risks of guarding Guzman, told the defence he wouldnt weigh in on the jail conditions.

Based on what I know about this case, there are grounds for extra security measures, the judge said, with Guzman listening through a Spanish interpreter.

Guzman is due back in court on May 5.

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AVDIIVKA, UKRAINEInternational monitors on Friday strongly urged the warring sides in eastern Ukraine to silence their guns as heavy artillery and rocket barrages continued to pummel residential areas.

At least 33 people including civilians have been killed and several dozen injured in fighting this week in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed separatist rebels  the worst violence in the region since 2015.

The death toll in the fighting that began in April 2014 has now exceeded 9,800, according to U.N. figures and a tally of recent fighting.

Unacceptable! ... Sides have to stop fighting! the monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation In Europe said on its Facebook page.

While the warring sides have regularly exchanged gunfire despite a February 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany, this week has seen a sharp spike in hostilities. Fighting has raged around the government-controlled industrial town of Avdiivka, just north of the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk, catching residential areas in the crossfire.

We have seen on both sides an incredible amount of ceasefire violations, said Alexander Hug, deputy head of the OSCEs monitoring mission.

Each side blamed the other for the upsurge of violence, but the Ukrainian military says its troops have gained some ground.

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Associated Press reporters saw heavy weapons on both sides of the front line, in clear violation of the 2015 peace deal that envisaged their pullback.

We have seen the whole range of heavy weapons in the area here, starting from the smaller calibre mortars to larger calibre artillery to multiple launch rocket systems in the areas where they shouldnt be, Hug told reporters in Avdiivka. We have seen them inside Avdiivka. We have seen them in Yasynovata. We have seen them in Donetsk city.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has cast the outburst of fighting as an argument for continuing Western sanctions imposed on Moscow for its actions in Ukraine. New U.S. President Donald Trumps repeated promises to improve relations with Russia have fuelled concern in Ukraine that Washington would back off some of the sanctions.

The upsurge of hostilities around Avdiivka coincided with last weekends phone conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, their first since Trump took office. Putin on Thursday accused the Ukrainian leadership of ordering the attack in the east to pose as a victim to secure U.S. and EU support and prevent a thaw in Russia-West ties.

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, on Thursday condemned Russias aggressive actions in eastern Ukraine and warned Moscow that U.S. sanctions imposed after its 2014 annexation of Crimea will remain until the peninsula is returned to Ukraine. But speaking for the first time at the Security Council, she tempered the criticism, saying we do want to better our relations with Russia.

Ukrainian U.N. Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko described Haleys remarks as extremely positive and extremely encouraging, telling reporters that the U.S. is very solidly behind Ukraine.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, a strong critic of Russia, called on Trump to authorize sending lethal weapons to Ukrainian government forces.

The timing of the increased fighting is an indication that Vladimir Putin is moving quickly to test you as commander in chief, McCain said in a letter to Trump.

Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, also voiced concern about the escalation in fighting.

We call on Russia to use its considerable influence over the separatists to make sure that they respect the Minsk agreement and the ceasefire, he said.

The Kremlin, in turn, has urged the West to persuade Ukraine to abide by the peace deal.

In the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, two civilians were killed late Thursday in a neighbourhood that has been under intense fire in recent days, the rebels Donetsk News Agency said. Eight houses and two high schools were damaged in shelling Thursday night.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova lashed out at the Ukrainian government, saying the shelling of Donetsk trampled on all moral norms.

OSCE monitors on Friday visited a water filtration plant near the front line that has been damaged in recent shelling. The plant is crucial for the clean water supply on both sides of the conflict.

Hug warned that damage to the water plant in Yanysuvata, which has cut the water supply to Avdiivka, can lead to a potential humanitarian and ecological disaster.

A British photographer was wounded by shards of glass in Avdiivka in shelling Thursday night, according to the Facebook page of Ukraines anti-rebel military operation.

In Avdiivka, an industrial town whose pre-war population was about 35,000, residents were frightened and suffering through the loss of electricity and water amid a sharp winter cold snap.

Of course, Im really scared, said Tamara Tokmanova, who said her father had died in World War II. My dad died, for such a bad life for me!

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Buddha plans double daily flights to Janakpur

Buddha Air has said it will add an additional flight on the Janakpur route once the ongoing airport expansion works are completed.
WASHINGTONThe Trump administration ordered sanctions against more than two dozen people and companies from the Persian Gulf to China Friday in retaliation for Irans recent ballistic missile test, increasing pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with the country.

Those targeted by the Treasury Department include Iranian, Lebanese, Emirati and Chinese individuals and firms involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. They are now prohibited from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens. The overall impact is likely to be minimal on Irans economy, though some of the people and companies have relationships with Irans hard-line Revolutionary Guard military forces.

The days of turning a blind eye to Irans hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over, Michael Flynn, President Donald Trumps national security adviser, said in a statement.

Although White House spokesman Sean Spicer acknowledged that much of the legwork had occurred under former president Barack Obama, he told reporters the Trump administration acted swiftly and decisively after Irans recent missile test and Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen firing on a Saudi naval vessel.

It is Trumps first package of penalties against Iran, reflecting his insistence on a tougher stance toward Tehran. Throughout his election campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran, and he vowed to crack down if elected.

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Iran has acknowledged that it conducted a missile test. But it insists the test didnt violate the 2015 nuclear accord it reached with the United States and five other world powers, or a subsequent UN Security Council resolution extending an eight-year ban on ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Washington, under Obama and Trump, and its Western allies agree the matter is separate from the nuclear pact, but maintain that the missile tests violate the UN ban.

Iran already has a formidable arsenal of thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and other U.S. allies in the Middle East, as well as American bases, and has undertaken a series of tests in the year-and-a-half since the nuclear agreement. The U.S. said the latest launch was of a medium-range missile, and an American defence official described it as failing re-entry into the Earths atmosphere.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump tweeted, Iran is playing with fire  they dont appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me.

Despite the tough talk, the new sanctions represent a continuation of the Obama administrations limited punishment for Irans ballistic missile activity and avoid a direct showdown with Tehran over the nuclear deal itself. The sanction targets were drawn up before Obama left office and dont affect Iran Air, a big Iranian bank or any major government entity, making it unclear how effective theyll prove as deterrents.

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None of the new penalties reversed Obamas suspension of sanctions under the nuclear pact. Obama himself promised after the deal to continue going after Iran with non-nuclear penalties in response to missile launches, terror support or human rights abuses, and did so in January and March of last year.

This is part of a much broader strategy and merely a sign of coming attractions, said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, who advises the administration and Congress on Iran-related issues. The focus is clearly on missile procurement networks and represents a first step in the administrations escalation against Irans missile program support for terrorism and other malign activities.

Iran said it would be undeterred.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Friday that his country was unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Well never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defence.

Our missile drills are a show of our might, added Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. We are living in a world of wolves  wolves such as the arrogant government of America. In this world of wolves, should we remain unarmed and they do whatever damn things they want? No way! This will never happen!

At times, Tehrans leaders have argued that any new U.S. sanctions would violate the nuclear deal.

The agreement compelled Iran to curtail its enrichment of uranium, a material that can be used in atomic bombs, and other nuclear-related activity. In exchange, Iran received broad relief from U.S. and international sanctions that were crippling its economy. Trump has ridiculed the arrangement as a terrible deal, but Americas closest allies in Europe as well as Russia and China are committed to it.

In the final days of the nuclear negotiations, Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work. That understanding was codified in a UN Security Council resolution passed in parallel, but separately, to the nuclear accord.

In Washington, lawmakers who have sought a sterner policy toward Iran applauded Trumps decision.

It is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations, Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Senate Foreign Relations Committees Republican chairman.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said the swift and decisive response proves that our new administration is serious about holding the Iranian regime accountable for its illicit behaviour.

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Critics of President Donald Trumps orders to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border have called the plan immoral or question the normalcy of building a barrier against a longtime ally with which the U.S. is at peace.

It turns out that Trumps move is not so unusual. Geographers and experts on borderlands say Trumps wall is part of a growing trend of nations fencing off their neighbours  even those they call friends.

Barriers for military defence are anomalies now, said Elisabeth Vallet, an adjunct professor of geography at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal and an expert on international border barriers. Most of them are between countries at peace. Its fencing ourselves in rather than keeping an enemy state out.

There were very few barriers between nations at the end of the Second World War and just 15 in 1990, said Reece Jones, an associate professor of geography at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and author of Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move, which explores how borders are formed and policed. But in the last five years, 25 new walls and fences have gone up between nations, he said.

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An uptick in barrier-building occurred after the so-called Arab Spring, the series of anti-government protests and rebellions that spread across the Middle East in early 2011, according to Vallets research. At least 70 border barriers separated nations from their neighbours as of last October, Vallet said.

Some of the latest construction includes Hungarys erection of a barrier on its border with Serbia and Croatia in 2015. Bulgaria also built a fence along the Turkish border that year and expanded it in 2016  ironic because after the fall of communism in Bulgaria in 1989, authorities took pains to tear down a wall designed to keep people in.

Construction on a British-financed 13-foot-high barrier in the French port city of Calais, aimed at preventing refugees and migrants from entering Britain, began in September. Norway started building a steel fence  660 feet long and 11 feet high  at its arctic border with Russia.

And just this month, Lithuania, Turkey and Myanmar announced plans to construct barriers on their borders.

All of this construction raises walls  and some fundamental questions: Whats driving all this construction?

Though most barriers  concrete walls, barbed-wire fences and sand berms  were constructed to deter trafficking and terrorists, newer barriers aim to stop migrants.

Its more of an effort to control migration than for peacekeeping, Vallet said. Democracies are picking up on the idea of keeping people out.

Typically, the goal is to prevent people from poorer nations of the global South from entering the more wealthy and industrialized nations of the North, experts said.

What would be unusual would be to have a wall between countries that are equivalent economically, said Kenneth Madsen, an associate professor in geography at Ohio State University at Newark. Today, the walls are really between countries that have economic discrepancies.

Barriers also are being used to send a message, not only to outsiders but to a national audience, border experts said.

During his election campaign, Trump said the U.S.-Mexico wall would be built to keep out Mexicans he described as criminals, drug dealers, rapists.

What politicians want is to communicate to the electorate that something is being done, Madsen said. Its not about stopping people; its about communicating.

Jones, the academic from Hawaii, noted that a wall symbolizes action. Its a powerful symbol of action to counter the things that people are afraid of.

Vallet said Trump was using the theory of the clash of civilizations  that in the post-Cold War world, the main course of conflict will be over cultural and religious identity.

Its the fear of the other, Vallet said. The other being somebody you dont know, somebody you fear . . . the fence being the solution.

But do barriers actually work?

What scholars have found is that walls and barriers seem to have very little impact, Jones said.

Countries are investing a lot of money on something you can go over, under or around, Vallet said.

Migrants are often forced to find alternative means of crossing a border, and the new routes are often more dangerous, even deadly, Jones said.

For example, in the 2000s, more than 2,000 migrants a year died trying to cross into the U.S. from Mexico, Jones said. In other parts of the world, thousands of migrants have perished trekking through deserts or on shoddy boats trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.

What are the arguments for building barriers?

Countries facing tension from or in conflict with neighbours say their efforts to physically insulate themselves are justified.

Israel, for example, has built barriers in the West Bank and along its boundaries with Egypt, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Saudi Arabia has fenced itself off from Yemen and the United Arab Emirates and is working on a giant wall and ditch along its border with Iraq.

India hopes to complete a 4,000-kilometre barbed-wire barrier along its border with Bangladesh this year. Last year, fearing Moscows possible move toward expansionism, the Baltic state of Estonia approved the building of a fence on its border with Russia.

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Toronto Councillor Christin Carmichael Greb voted to support Mayor John Tory's motion on Jan. 31 to affirm Toronto's status as a "sanctuary city." A Feb. 1 article about the motion said that Carmichael Greb abstained from a vote to introduce the motion, but the article did not make clear that she was later in the chamber for the actual vote.

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The rich, as we well know, are different from you and me. Theyve got more money  plus a vast army of bankers, lawyers and tax experts to make sure they keep as much of it as possible out of the clutches of governments.

The Panama Papers, a massive leak of documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, gave a detailed look at tax avoidance and evasion around the world. It showed how the global elite stash vast wealth away in tax havens, manipulating laws to avoid paying hundreds of billions of dollars in tax each year.

When the Panama Papers were revealed last year as part of a project coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, including the Star, the focus was on tax-friendly jurisdictions like Switzerland, Luxembourg and various sunny isles in the Caribbean.

Now it turns out we dont need to look nearly so far. In a series of articles based on more documents from the 11.5 million in the Panama Papers trove, the Stars Robert Cribb and Marco Chown Oved have shown that Canada, of all places, is quietly emerging as a popular tax haven for the global elite.

Those in the know apparently call it snow washing  taking advantage of Canadas stellar reputation to make dodgy financial transactions look legitimate. Central to this practice is the fact that the way companies are registered in Canada involves a degree of secrecy more commonly associated with tax havens like Panama and the Bahamas.

Simply put, the true owners of companies registered in Canada dont have to be identified in corporate registries. They can pay a lawyer or other stand-in a fee to appear on public filings.

Further, report Cribb and Oved, foreign investors are most interested in Canadian corporate structures known as limited partnerships, or LPs. An LP itself doesnt have to file tax returns. Only the partners do, unless they arent resident in Canada. If thats the case, no taxes have to be filed in Canada. In principle, partners must pay tax in their home country  but they may well be officially resident in a tax haven with a zero tax rate.

Mark Morris, a consultant who specializes in international tax agreements, told the Star that the system makes Canada like the ultimate tax haven entity in the world.

And in a 2010 internal memo unearthed as part of the Panama Papers, officials at Mossack Fonseca wrote: Canada is a good place to create tax planning structures to minimize taxes like interest, dividends, capital gains, retirement income and rental income.

The potential for abuse is enormous. For one thing, allowing movement of assets under a cloak of anonymity opens the door to outright illegality like money laundering.

Short of that, it facilitates the workings of the global tax avoidance industry. The London-based Tax Justice Network has estimated that an astonishing $31 trillion may be hidden away around the world, depriving governments of as much as $280 billion in tax revenue.

The bottom line is that those wealthy enough and crafty enough to take advantage of the system arent paying their fair share for basic government services. And that leaves the rest of us carrying a heavier burden. Its flat-out wrong.

Canada has taken steps towards cracking down on tax dodgers who park assets offshore and evade what they should be paying. The Harper government started it in 2013 when it gave the Canada Revenue Agency new funding and directed it to step up compliance on overseas assets. The Trudeau government followed up by boosting the CRAs funding by $444 million over five years to hire more auditors.

Those efforts have recovered significant concealed tax revenue, but Canada still lags behind other countries when it comes to stemming the flow of hidden money. Experts say Britain is setting the example; last June it required corporate registrations to include the names of real company owners (so-called persons with significant control) rather than just front men or women.

The records are listed in an online database that can be viewed by anyone, bringing much more transparency to the system. At least 16 other countries have pledged to set up similar registries, and its high time for Canada to follow suit and make snow washing a lot more difficult.

One complication is that registration of companies here is divided between Ottawa and the provinces and there is no central registry. But thats no excuse to tolerate wrong-doing. The Trudeau government should move more aggressively to make sure Canada doesnt become a favoured spot for offshore money to avoid paying its proper share.

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For many in Toronto the first joyful sign of spring isnt the sighting of a robin or a crocus, but the first day its warm enough to enjoy a drink or a meal in an outdoor cafe.

Restaurant patios are a vital part of city life. They attract tourists, give cooped-up city dwellers a place to meet friends and neighbours, provide employment and street animation, and boost retail occupancy.

So the city should do what it can to encourage restaurateurs to open sidewalk cafes, right?

Instead, city staff presented concepts for proposed fee increases this week that could hike the cost of operating a patio by more than 1,000 per cent, in some cases. As city councillor Mike Layton tweeted: A fee increase of this magnitude is bonkers.

No kidding. The proposed fee hikes presented to angry stakeholders this week would put Toronto restaurant owners at a disadvantage compared to those in cities like Victoria, San Francisco and Vancouver. In fact, fees for downtown Toronto operators would verge on those in Manhattan.

Thats why licensing department staff are recommending they be phased in over five years for existing permit holders.

Thats not good enough. Out-of-the-gate high fees for new restaurants might deter owners from opening up a patio in the first place, and increasing fees for existing permit holders might force them to eventually close their sidewalk cafes.

City staff should go back to the drawing board before making their final recommendations to the Licensing and Standards Committee when it meets on April 18.

And the committee should give any huge hikes a thumbs down; instead it should raise a toast to encouraging street life in Toronto.

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If President Donald J. Trump builds a wall along the southern U.S. border and slaps a 20% tariff on imports from Mexico, that country's currency -- the peso -- will tumble.

Says who?

A lot of the experts are arguing just the opposite.

The peso fell 17% in the past nine months as Trump campaigned on promises to build a wall and renegotiate the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement. With that rapid depreciation, the news is already priced into the market, according to investment banks Morgan Stanley (MS) and UBS (UBS) . In other words, many investors already assume that the president will follow through on his pledges.

So with the peso at a record-low valuation relative to its trading history, the coming months may actually bring a rally in Mexico's currency.

"The peso has already priced in all sorts of very negative scenarios," said Simon Nocera, chief investment officer of Lumen Advisors in San Francisco, which counsels a $1 billion private foundation. "And if you look at it from a pure value point of view, the exchange rate with Mexico is now one of the most competitive in the world."

The public spat between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto played out last week in the press and on Twitter, as the leaders planned a meeting in Washington, then canceled it, then spoke by phone to patch things up.

The peso rallied at the prospect of the meeting, plunged on the cancellation and recovered ground on news of the reconciliation. Year to date, the peso is down 0.5%, even as most emerging-market currencies have gained. Mexico is the second-biggest exporter to the U.S. after China.

The rumpus between the two countries began when Trump ordered construction of a border wall with Mexico, seen by many people in that country as an offensive symbol of anti-Mexican sentiment. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that a 20% border tax might be imposed on imports from Mexico -- a radical departure from the two-decade-old North American Free Trade Agreement.

Proponents of such a plan, a version of which has been mooted by Republican lawmakers, believe that the peso would fall in response to tariffs, according to Bank of America (BAC) . Such a market move would reduce the cost of Mexican goods and offset any possibility that higher prices might be passed along to U.S. consumers.

But the peso's drop has already taken place, according to analysts with Morgan Stanley.

The tariff level of 20% "can be seen as a starting point for negotiations," the analysts wrote in a report on Wednesday. In other words, that's more or less the worst-case scenario. By one valuation measure, the peso is now more than three standard deviations below its historical average -- something that only happens 0.3% of the time.

The resumption of dialogue between the two presidents reduces the risk of a "much harsher outcome," such as if Trump were to simply withdraw from Nafta, according to the Morgan Stanley analysts.

"This option is not off the table, but the fact that both sides agreed to keep dialogue channels open makes it less likely," they wrote. "We believe that the odds are increasingly in favor of a steady to stronger Mexican peso."

UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, calculated in a Jan. 24 report that the peso's current level reflects a 70% chance that a 20% tariff gets imposed.

Of course, there remains the risk that the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico breaks down further and a steeper tariff is imposed. And Mexico's fiscal health could deteriorate, since the peso's lower level has made it more expensive for the government and the national oil company Pemex to make payments on dollar-denominated debt.

Mexico could become embroiled in domestic political turmoil -- or a turn to leftist leaders -- as the country's 2018 presidential election approaches, according to David Hendler, an analyst at Viola Risk Advisors in Montebello, N.Y.

There's also the chance that companies from the U.S. and elsewhere could scale back investment in Mexico, and that investors would decide to avoid the risks of its local markets. Under pressure from Trump, Ford (F) and other manufacturers already have curtailed plans for new factories in the country, to appease the new president as he presses for job creation at home.

"We would urge investors to trim their exposure to Mexico until there is further clarity in U.S.-Mexico relations, which with Trump in the White House may be a tall order," Hendler wrote.

But there is likely to be pushback against Trump's border-tax plan from U.S. companies such as WalMart (WMT) that rely on imports from Mexico. According to Bank of America, retailers would see their earnings per share drop by 55% if a 20% tariff is imposed on imports from all countries, even after an expected cut in corporate tax rates.

Jorge Mariscal, chief investment officer for emerging markets at UBS Global Wealth Management, forecasts an exchange rate of 20 pesos per dollar in six months -- slightly stronger than the current rate of about 21 per dollar.

Ironically, one catalyst could be Mexican pride and a newfound determination to address such domestic problems as corruption, inefficiency and lawlessness. Trump has managed to galvanize public opinion in Mexico against the country's historical economic dependence on its behemoth neighbor to the north.

"The degree of unity that I'm witnessing now from Mexicans across the political spectrum is remarkable," Mariscal said. "They're not going to go without a fight."
Honda Motor (HMC) lifted its full-year profit guidance Friday as cost cuts at Japan's third-biggest automaker, coupled with a weaker yen, continue to boost sales.

Honda sees full-year profits of around 785 billion ($6.9 billion) for the fiscal year ending in March, a 27% increase from last year and well ahead of the 753 billion tally forecast by analysts. The make of the CRV sport utility vehicle expects to shift just over 5 million cars globally in it fiscal year, up from a prior estimate of 4.98 million, thanks in part to accelerating sales in China and the broader Asia region.

The upgrade, however, comes at a sensitive time for Japanese automakers, which have found themselves, along the government, at the sharp end of criticism from President Donald Trump for erecting trade barriers in their domestic markets and using low-cost manufacturing bases to import cars into the United States.

Those concerns are likely to form the framework around talks between Trump and Japan's Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, when the two meet next week in Washington to discuss economics and security. In fact, reports had suggested that Abe was preparing to meet with the President of Toyota Motor Co. TM, the world's second-largest carmaker, ahead of the Washington summit in order to form a coherent strategy to combat any moves by Trump to withdraw from or alter the trade conditions within the North American Free Trade Agreement.

However, those reports have been denied by the government's official spokesman.

In any event, Honda might not be the best example for Trump's "Buy American, Hire American" trade policy, given that the company makes around 80% of the cars it sells in the United States at its seven American manufacturing plants that employ around 25,000 people.

Earlier this week, Toyota Motor lost its position as the top global carmaker as sales rose 0.2% to 10.175 million but trailed the 10.31 million units sold by Germany's Volkswagen (VLKAY) .

The yen has fallen more than 20% against the U.S. dollar since the Bank of Japan ramped-up its quantitative easing program in 2013 following the launch of so-called Abenomics that defined his early administration, but half of that decline has come since the November election and the U.S. dollar rally amid the global "Trump Trade."

Abe defended that policy in his country's parliament Wednesday, arguing that "bold monetary easing is a necessary policy to accelerate economic growth and the United States is doing the same thing. If Japan's economy improves, that's not a bad thing for the United States."

Trump may not find that argument persuasive, but there are figures Abe could cite to back up his case.

Toyota Motor (TM) has added between 1,500 and 2,000 staff to its North American business for each of the last five years and Securities and Exchange Commission filings show it had 45,475 on its payroll in the year ended March 2016, 34,000 of which are in the U.S. That figure rises to around 200,000 if dealers and suppliers are included.

Trump has threatened the world's second-largest automaker with a 'a big border tax' if it goes ahead with plans to build a new Corolla manufacturing plant in Mexico, but its has made that model in Mississippi for the past six years and opened a Lexus production facility in Kentucky plant in 2015.

A Japanese government factsheet, issued last week in the wake of Trump's criticism and a phone call with Prime Minister Abe, argues the country as created 839,000 jobs in the U.S., second only to the United Kingdom in terms of non-American employment creation.
If there is one thing we know from iconic billionaire and investor Warren E. Buffett, it is that getting on the right side of a big trend can be very profitable.

In the late 1980s, he thought that the soft-drink industry was about to be the next big thing.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, he invested 25% of the assets of his investment firm, Berkshire Hathaway -- about $600 million at the time -- into Coca-Cola shares. Since then, the value of that stake has turned into $16.4 billion.

Buffett's strategy shows that anticipating big global trends can lead to big profits for investors.

In an interview with Forbes magazine, he said that Coca-Cola shares at the time didn't reflect the potential for huge growth that was set to occur in the company's international business over the coming decades.

Buffett's strategy of holding a small number of very profitable ideas in his portfolio goes against the common investment principle of diversification, but when applied correctly, it can generate huge returns.

World-renowned investor Jim Rogers said in an interview that he also likes to put all his eggs in one basket.

Those who had purchased $20,000 worth of Coca-Cola stock in January 1989 and held the shares would have an investment including dividends worth more than $510,000. That is a return of 2,566%, as shown in the chart below.

Investors often follow short- and medium-term moves in stocks and bonds for a quick win, but as Buffett's investment strategy shows, success comes over time, not overnight. Anticipating long-term trends, the kinds of changes that take place over many years, is the secret to bigger investment gains.

Buffett has built a career and fortune on this simple but difficult-to-execute idea.

First, he identifies great businesses with a strong likelihood of profiting from long-running trends. Then he focuses on those businesses and rides the wave for as long as possible.

Buffett predicted a powerful, long-running source of demand, in this case, that a mega-trend of accelerating soft-drink consumption was unfolding around the world. There were huge, untapped markets in Africa, China and the Soviet Union.

Hundreds of millions of people in these emerging markets had never tasted a sweet carbonated beverage before. Looking forward, it was easy to envision Coca-Cola -- the premier soft-drink brand -- experiencing long-term growth in these areas.

So the questions are: What is the modern equivalent of Coca-Cola in 1989, and which companies and industries will grow with the mega-trends of the future?

One clear difference between now and the 1980s is that the global center of capital is shifting.

In the 1980s, the U.S. was the center of the investment universe. Now, the axis of global growth is moving east.

By 2025, Asia's economies will be larger than those of Europe and the U.S. combined.

Here are three China mega-trends that will offer huge opportunities for investors.

1. Urbanization and rising middle class. China's transformation from a rural society to the world's second-largest economy has happened in less than a generation, and the process is far from complete.

Rapid economic growth has led to a huge increase in rural to urban migration.

About 56% of China's population lives in cities, up from 26% in 1990. But China is still some distance behind the U.S., where that figure is about 80%.

China's urbanization level is close to where the U.S. was in 1920, as the chart below shows.

This cocktail of development, economic growth and urbanization has created a huge middle class in China. And middle class people are spending their rising incomes on goods and services both in China and overseas.

China's bulging middle class will drive the growth of many industries, including insurance, technology and travel.

The country's population of 1.38 billion is more than four times greater than that of the U.S. As China evolves into a developed economy, the absolute size of its consumer markets will be much larger than that of the U.S.

2. Pollution and China's investment in clean energy. For decades, China has pursued rapid economic growth at the cost of environmental degradation. Problems such as contaminated water, smog and soil have reached crisis levels.

To address environmental concerns, the Chinese government is embracing alternative energy.

On Jan. 5, Chinese energy agency officials said that they plan to invest $360 billion in renewable power sources such as solar and wind energy.

China has seen the second-largest growth in solar-energy capacity in the world and the largest growth in wind energy generation capacity, as shown below.

Investors stand to profit as the Chinese government pours money into companies offering pollution mitigation, renewable energy and waste solutions.

3. China's aging population. As a country's economy matures and urbanization continues, the number of seniors usually rises, and China is no exception. It is expected that the number of older people in China will increase to more than 355 million in 2045 from 131 million.

That is more senior citizens than the combined total populations of Germany, France, Japan and the U.K. As a population ages, spending increases on all aspects of health care including hospitals, medicines and nursing homes.

Just 8% of China's consumption is related to products and services for older people. By 2050, that proportion is expected rise to about 33%.

The boom in senior-related China investments is just beginning. The shares of many companies related to senior housing, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology and other medical services in China will trade much higher in the medium- and long-term.

---

Finding the next big investment is about insight, not luck. Via our premium service Truewealth Publishing, we've conducted extensive research on specific investments to capitalize on these and other megatrends in China. Click here for more information.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, he owned none of the stocks mentioned.

Kim Iskyan is the founder of Truewealth Publishing, an independent investment research company based in Singapore. Click here to sign up to receive the Truewealth Asian Investment Daily in your inbox every day, for free.
Committee formed to prepare report on shift of vulnerable settlements

Twenty-two months after the devastating earthquake, a committee has been constituted to prepare a report on the shift of thee settlements put at risk by the disaster to safer places.
Global oil prices extended gains Friday after President Donald Trump and his administration imposed sanctions on Iran following a ballistic missile test earlier this week.

WTI future for March delivery were quoted at $54.10 per barrel at 10:20 a.m. EST, taking the daily gain to around 1% from Thursday's New York close. Brent crude contracts for the same month, the global benchmark, were marked 1.1% higher at $57.20 per barrel.

The U.S. Treasury department announced sanctions against 13 individuals and 12 entities. The move comes just hours after President Trump had warned Iran, OPEC's third largest producer, that it was "playing with fire."

Iran was "put on notice" by Trump and his team earlier this week for test-firing its 'Sumar' missile, which is capable of travelling as far as 3,000 kilometres and can carry nuclear warheads, last Sunday.

Friday's gains mark reversal in global prices, which fell Thursday as traders weigh the renaissance of U.S. shale production against OPEC's production cuts.

Domestic oil and gas producers have been ramping up production ever since OPEC and non-OPEC producers, including Russia, promised to curb output for the first half of 2017 in order to rebalance the global market.

In January alone, domestic producers brought more than 50 rigs online, most of them in the prolific, oil-rich west Texas' Permian Basin. U.S. crude inventories have also been climbing. For the last four weeks, stockpiles grew by more than 14 million barrels.

All the while, OPEC member nations and the group of non-OPEC producers appear to be committed to its promised production cuts.

A recent Reuters survey revealed that the cartel achieved 82% compliance, which was well above most market forecasts.
Both Etihad Airways CEO James Hogan and Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said the expansion by the three subsidized Middle East airlines, including rapid growth in the U.S., is slowing.

The two executives appeared earlier this week at a press conference in Abu Dhabi, where they announced new details in their partnership, which was first announced in December.

Spohr told reporters that he sees signs the Gulf carriers are reaching the end of their growth spurt.

"I'll leave that to the airlines in this region but I think this industry needs to see a healthier relationship between (supply) and demand," Spohr said, according to Reuters. "And I am optimistic we will see this in the years to come," Spohr said.

Lufthansa has been a strong opponent of the Middle East three's rapid expansion, which has hurt European carriers more than it has hurt the U.S. carriers. But its tone is changing.

Additionally, Hogan told Bloomberg Television, "We are not flying into any further points in the U.S.A. We are very comfortable with our American network."

But opponents said Hogan's pledge to halt the carrier's rapid U.S. expansion is "meaningless" because it comes after the three airlines already have built their U.S. networks.

The Partnership for Open and Fair Skies, which represents American, Delta and United (UAL) and most of their labor unions, said the Middle East three carriers -- Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways -- already have "flooded the United States with a 47% expansion in their routes here.

"Hogan appears to think that the United States should be willing to accept the status quo and just move on," said Jill Zuckman, spokeswoman for the partnership, in a prepared statement.

"He's wrong," she said. "The United States should not tolerate this rule-breaking, bad behavior by the UAE and Qatar that hurts US airlines and costs American jobs."

Notably, Emirates said last month it would begin Athens-Newark flights in March. The flight would join Milan-New York as its second flight from Europe to the U.S.

United flies between Newark and Athens in the summer, but despite operating the best East Coast hub in Newark cannot gather enough passengers to operate profitably between the U.S. and Athens during the rest of the year.

Emirates' fifth freedom flights, between foreign countries, have been a particular concern to American, Delta and United.

The CEOs of the three carriers reached out to Rex Tillerson late Wednesday, soon after he was confirmed as secretary of state, seeking his help in their campaign to slow the U.S. growth of the Middle East airlines.

The U.S. has 120 Open Skies agreements with countries around the world, and 118 of them "are working as U.S. Open Skies policy intends, creating significant benefits for U.S. travelers, workers and the economy, wrote the CEOS -- Ed Bastian of Delta, Oscar Munoz of United and Doug Parker of American.

But two countries, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar "are abusing the agreements, and our government has done nothing to stop them," the letter said.

The Etihad-Lufthansa codeshare, which took effect Wednesday, initially applies on Etihad flights from Abu Dhabi to Frankfurt and Munich and on Lufthansa flights from Frankfurt to Rio de Janeiro and Bogota, pending government approvals.

"The codeshare agreement will grow both carriers' global networks, giving Lufthansa increased access to important feeder markets throughout the Indian subcontinent via Abu Dhabi, while Etihad will gain access into South America through Germany," Etihad said in a prepared statement.

Additionally, two Lufthansa Group carriers, Eurowings and Austrian Airlines, said they would lease aircraft from Air Berlin, which is 29% owned by Lufthansa.

Lufthansa and United have long been close partners. The two are the principal pillars of the Star Alliance, which they formed jointly, and are key partners in a trans-Atlantic joint venture, where they share revenue.

Etihad, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, currently serves six U.S. destinations -- Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Washington --- from its Abu Dhabi hub.

Combined, Emirates, Etihad and Qatar fly about two dozen daily flights to the U.S., while U.S. airlines do not fly a single flight to Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi.

This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned.
Updated at 2:56 p.m. from original 12:47 version.

Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) increased its Cuba itineraries for 2017 to 13 from four, allowing 11,214 more U.S. travelers to take advantage of improved relations with a country that was largely isolated from trading with the U.S. for more than 50 years.

On Friday, Royal Caribbean received approval to open up additional itineraries on its 1,602-passenger Empress of the Seas ship to Cuba from Tampa, Fla., and from Miami, up from its one trip from Miami and three from Tampa originally announced on Jan. 26, John Kavulich, President of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said in an email to TheStreet.

The added trips allow Royal Caribbean to carry 17,622 passengers to Cuba from the original potential of 6,408. The company estimated that it will generate $22.1 million from its Cuba sailings now, compared to the $8 million expected with only four trips, according to Kavulich.

Royal Caribbean's Cuba sailings, now totaling 42, commence in April and are so far scheduled to continue through November.

After President Barack Obama announced in December 2014 that he would lift the longstanding U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, cruise companies including Carnival (CCL) , Norwegian Cruise Line (NCLH) and Royal Caribbean took advantage of the business opportunities the revived relations opened up.

Two months ago, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian received approval from the Cuban government to add sailings to the island.

Shares of Royal Caribbean rose slightly to $94.70 midday on Friday.
(This column originally appeared on Real Money Pro, our premium site for active traders and Wall Street professionals. Click here to get great columns like this from Jim Cramer and other writers even earlier in the trading day.)

My call on Monday to buy Seagate Technology (STX) is working out great so far, with shares gaining more than 2% in just four days. Further, my recommended combo trade of buying shares and simultaneously selling puts is ahead by better than 3%.

As I wrote on Monday, Seagate "has been able to successfully cut costs, while keeping its eye on the ball as far as hard drives designed for businesses are concerned. Enterprise drives for business clients are a far more profitable business than selling hard drives for the personal-computing crowd. These are all solid reasons to own the stock of any [company]. It's that dividend, though, that catches this guy's eye. An annual dividend of $2.52 per share paid in quarterly installments of $0.63. ... Not bad at all."

Well, Seagate is trading at $46.24 as I write this, up 2.75% from where I bought it on Monday. I purchased the stock as a dividend play rather than a "fast-money" trade, but it ended up being a fast-money trade anyway.

I tend to think it's overbought now, but as long as you want some insurance against the market falling, I'd still characterize Seagate as a good dividend stock with some ability for capital appreciation. Anyone who owns the stock as of March 22 is going to get a 63-cent quarterly dividend, which works out to $2.52 a year -- a 5.6% yield at current prices. That's pretty juicy for a stock that only costs about $46 a share.

The trade I recommended on Monday was to buy Seagate at $45 and sell a like amount of $44.50 Feb. 3 puts for 46 cents. Even though the stock has risen since then, I think you can still buy Seagate at around $46 and hold it for the dividends. And as for a companion trade, you could sell an equal amount of $45.50 Feb. 10 puts for about 44 cents.

At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long STX, although positions may change at any time.
Embossed number plates likely this FY

The long-planned embossed vehicle number plate project is likely to be implemented this fiscal year as preparations have been going on smoothly, the Department of Transport Management (DoTM) said.
Tidewater Inc., together with its subsidiaries, provides offshore marine support and transportation services to the offshore energy industry through the operation of a fleet of marine service vessels worldwide. It provides services in support of offshore oil and natural gas exploration, field development, and production, as well as windfarm development and maintenance, including towing of and anchor handling for mobile offshore drilling units; transporting supplies and personnel necessary to sustain drilling, workover, and production activities; offshore construction, and seismic and subsea support; geotechnical survey support for windfarm construction; and various specialized services, such as pipe and cable laying. The company operates and charters deepwater vessels, including platform supply and horsepower anchor handling tug supply vessels for use in transporting supplies and equipment from shore bases to deepwater and intermediate water depth offshore drilling rigs and production platforms; towing-supply vessels for use in intermediate and shallow waters; and crew boats, utility vessels, and offshore tugs to transport personnel and supplies from shore bases to offshore drilling rigs, platforms, and other installations. It also operates offshore tugs for use in tow floating drilling rigs and barges; and assisting in the docking of tankers, as well as in pipe and cable laying, and construction barges. The company serves oil and natural gas exploration, field development, and production companies; mid-sized and smaller independent exploration and production companies; foreign government-owned or government-controlled organizations, and other related companies; drilling contractors; and other companies, such as offshore construction, windfarm development, diving, and well stimulation companies. As of December 31, 2021, it owned 135 vessels. Tidewater Inc. was incorporated in 1956 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.
Credit Suisse Group AG, together with its subsidiaries, provides various financial services in Switzerland, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and Asia Pacific. The company offers wealth management solutions, including investment advice and discretionary asset management services; risk management solutions, such as managed investment products; and wealth planning, succession planning, and trust services. It also provides financing and lending solutions, including consumer credit and real estate mortgage lending, real asset lending relating to ship, and aviation financing for UHNWI; standard and structured hedging, and lombard lending solutions, as well as collateral trading services; and investment banking solutions, such as global securities sales, trading and execution, capital raising, and advisory services. In addition, the company offers banking solutions, such as payments, accounts, debit and credit cards, and product bundles; asset management products; equity and debt underwriting, and advisory services; cash equities, equity derivatives, and convertibles, as well as prime services; and fixed income products, such as credit, securitized, macro, emerging markets, financing, structured credit, and other products. Further, it provides HOLT, a framework for assessing the performance of approximately 20,000 companies; and equity and fixed income research services. The company serves private and institutional clients; ultra-high-net-worth individuals, high-net-worth individuals, and affluent and retail clients; corporate clients, small and medium-sized enterprises, external asset managers, financial institutions, and commodity traders; and pension funds, hedge funds, governments, foundations and endowments, corporations, entrepreneurs, private individuals, financial sponsors, and sovereign clients. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through a network of 311 offices and branches. The company was founded in 1856 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland.
From yam to bridge

Chinas One Belt One Road initiative presents great opportunities for Nepal due its strategic location
Over 500 representatives of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) work in the east of Ukraine.

OSCE SMM Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug stated this during a skype conference on Friday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

At present the OSCE SMM numbers 724 monitors, of whom 578 work in the east. Besides, there are 332 local and 93 other international staff that work with OSCE SMM in Ukraine, he said.

Earlier, Alexander Hug stated that escalation of the situation in Avdiivka could lead to a humanitarian and environmental disaster

iy
02/03/2017

Media contacts: Christine Gillette, 978-934-2209 or Christine_Gillette@uml.edu and Nancy Cicco, 978-934-4944 or Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu



LOWELL, Mass.  UMass Lowell is hosting teachers from around the world for an intensive six-week program that includes field experience in local schools and two events for the campus and community.



The Teaching Excellence and Achievement Program (TEA) provides international teachers with opportunities to develop expertise in their subject areas, enhance their teaching skills and increase knowledge about the United States.



Twenty-one high school teachers are participating in the program. They hail from Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Costa Rica, Estonia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Latvia, Mongolia, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The teachers arrived on campus Jan. 27 and depart on March 13.



A.J. Angulo, a professor in UMass Lowells Graduate School of Education, received a $205,508 grant from the U.S. State Department to fund the program.



This exciting global-education program brings a tremendous amount of diversity to our campus and local education community, and provides authentic, transformative and experiential learning, he said.



While the benefits to the university and local school community are immediate during the six-week program Angulo's long-term goal is to build lasting, meaningful relationships around the world  one teacher at a time.



The global challenges before us recognize no borders and require international solutions. Whether it is a crisis in public health like Ebola, in the environment or in international politics, isolation is not an option, said Angulo. Education is one of our best hopes for organizing the world community to effectively respond to these kinds of challenges.



Philosopher William James once said that we need a moral equivalent to war, that we need to focus our energies on building constructive relationships to prevent war. International education programs like TEA provide a means to build such relationships, Angulo added, noting that the program provides opportunities to increase awareness of opportunities and needs that exist in other parts of the world. We learn from them about their way of life and they learn from us about ours.



The teachers selected for the TEA program represent some of the very best from their home countries, said Angulo. The U.S. Department of State and its partner IREX, which administers the program, vetted all of the participants, who participated in a rigorous yearlong application process before being selected. That process included interviews at U.S. embassies, along with providing evidence of exemplary educational leadership, lesson plans and letters of recommendation. More than 1,100 educators from around the world competed for only 160 TEA Fellow openings in the U.S. this year, including the 21 at UMass Lowell.



"We are all very excited to welcome the TEA Fellows, said Anita Greenwood, dean of the Graduate School of Education. Education faculty and K-12 teachers recognize the enormous value of learning from colleagues from other countries and gaining broader cultural understandings."



The teachers will take professional development workshops taught by UMass Lowell faculty, participate in field experience in Andover and Chelmsford school districts, and take cultural excursions in the New England area.



They will also share information about their cultures during two events at UMass Lowell that are open to the public:

Education Around the World on Tuesday, Feb. 14, 10:30 a.m. to noon at OLeary Library Learning Commons mezzanine, located at 61 Wilder St. on UMass Lowells South Campus. At this event, the international teachers will each have a table displaying items from their home country and will discuss the educational system there.

Global Perspectives on Gender and Education on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 6 to 7:30 p.m. at OLeary Library Learning Commons, Room 222. At this program, the international teachers will discuss how issues of gender and equity are addressed in classrooms in their nations.

Through the field experience, each international teacher will be paired with a local schoolteacher in order to collaborate and exchange best teaching practices. When not in classes at UMass Lowell or in local schools, the international teachers will participate in additional cultural exchange activities.



The field experience component of the TEA program is designed to establish lasting professional relationships between our local teachers and their counterparts from around the world through sharing best practices in education and building cultural understanding by learning from each other, according to Angulo. This provides our local partner teachers with an opportunity to participate in the international education community without leaving home and makes them eligible to apply for State Department programs through which they can also go abroad.



UMass Lowell is a national research university located on a high-energy campus in the heart of a global community. The university offers its more than 17,750 students bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees in business, education, engineering, fine arts, health, humanities, sciences and social sciences. UMass Lowell delivers high-quality educational programs, vigorous hands-on learning and personal attention from leading faculty and staff, all of which prepare graduates to be ready for work, for life and for all the world offers. www.uml.edu


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The Ford F-150 pickup truck is introduced at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit on Jan. 9. Three U.S. automakers will begin selling trucks in China this year. (Tannen Maury/European Pressphoto Agency)

Americas best-selling vehicle for more than 35 years, Fords thundering F-150, is officially hitting the streets of China. And drivers in the worlds largest car market arent quite sure what to think.

He Zongyuan, the manager of Chinese car club Being Rich AAA Auto Beauty Center, says the bulging pickups are masculine, even macho. But trucks here are regarded as country vehicles for country people  a lifestyle hundreds of millions want to leave behind.

The Detroit automaker is nevertheless betting that the allure of gas-guzzling Americana will outweigh Chinas many roadblocks  choked highways, soaring taxes and social stigmas, not to mention pickup bans on city streets.

And Ford is doing it in an intriguing way: Shipping the made-in-America trucks around the world from a country where imports and exports have quickly become a political battleground.

Fords Chinese expansion highlights an awkward reality for President Trumps America First agenda. As his administration pushes to retrench behind the walls of protectionist policy, it is likely to clash with corporate Americas lucrative embrace of global trade.

After 100-plus years of the auto industry, the U.S. is just not the big dog anymore. It certainly doesnt have the growth potential that China does, said Karl Brauer, the executive publisher of Kelley Blue Book.

For the auto industry, Brauer added, the sentiment is we have to be a global participant in the economy and in commerce, or well suffer.

Many U.S. automakers have refocused from traditional domestic sales to the potential gold mine of China  the worlds most populous country, with fast-growing wealth and a burgeoning middle class.

The country is a ripe market for Ford, which last month saw its U.S. sales of new cars slump even as sales of F-series trucks climbed. Volkswagen, although battered in the United States by its emissions-cheating scandal, has nevertheless become the worlds largest automaker, partly due to its roaring Chinese success.

Ford does offer a smattering of compact and luxury cars to Chinese buyers, built in Chinese factories. But it has no such Chinese production lines capable of building its big pickups, meaning the first Ford trucks to officially land in the nominally socialist superpower will be American-made.

Fords first made-for-China batch, announced last spring, was built in the automakers plant in Dearborn, Mich., and shipped from Portland, Ore. The first trucks left U.S. shores last weekend, headed for a port near Beijing.

It will be an odd fit. Fords F-150 is, in the auto world, about as American as apple pie. Decades ago, the blue-collar workhorse was first sold in three editions: Contractor, Heavy Duty and Farm & Ranch.

The model Ford will offer in China, the F-150 Raptor, is the truck at its most supersized: A burly, high-performance pickup designed more for desert racetracks than the crowded streets of Beijing.

The F-150 already has carved out a niche in some Chinese dealerships, imported unofficially (and sometimes illegally) through gray-market trading routes. Mo Fei, a salesperson at a trading company in Tianjin, said her company sells the truck for between 450,000 and 580,000 yuan, or about $65,000 to $84,000, shipped from Canada. The most popular colors are red and blue, she said.

Truck sellers often have met stiff resistance in the Chinese market. Pickups cannot enter Chinese cities without a special license, which can be tough to get, and state regulators have offered tax benefits to encourage the sale of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.

The question for Ford is whether enough Chinese drivers will think the hassle is worth it to buy the beastly American ride. Zhao Yan, who sells F-150s at a car dealership in Dalian, a city in northeast China, said the car probably would not appeal to most Chinese urbanites.

The problem with selling this car in China is that F-150 does not show status, he said. It does not make you look rich, so it may not be popular among business people.

Then there is the question of parking. Zhao recalled one woman who thought the F-150 was cool but decided against it because it did not seem practical to park on her way to work each day.

Those who try Ford vehicles tend to become fans, Zhao said. When they like the car, they really like it and they come back to order more, because this car is very good quality.

He, the car club manager, said the F-150 could have niche appeal among the growing number of city slickers with an interest in road trips. It could be popular with people interested in driving through towns with muddy roads, through mountains and on country roads in China, he said. But not highways.

At present, he said, that is not a large group. The interest here is just starting, but there will definitely be appreciation for this car, there is no doubt.

Ford will have competition, including from U.S. automakers General Motors and Chrysler, which are planning to start selling trucks across China this year. Chevrolet, which will soon offer its Silverado and Colorado in the Middle Kingdom, said in a statement that the classic American trucks . . . embody the charm of freedom while providing an off-road capability.

U.S. imports into China also are hit with steep fees and taxes, including a 25 percent tariff on all cars and light trucks, meaning the F-150s probably will hit Chinese car lots bearing luxury price tags. The truck, which sells at a premium over other full-size models, starts at about $50,000 in the United States.

Ford also could face a rocky road back home. The F-150, as exported to China, would not be directly covered under an import tax supported by the Trump White House. But the auto industry as a whole depends heavily on a complex global web of parts and components whose costs could rise.

Lingering questions over Trumps trade policy have left some industry leaders on edge regarding the possibility of new U.S. tariffs  or trade retaliation from other countries  that could send costly shock waves through the supply chain.

Industry groups, including the American International Automobile Dealers Association, have pushed members to call their lawmakers and oppose any import taxes. The Japanese automaker Toyota has urged its U.S. dealers to tell elected officials that an import tax would jack up prices and potentially threaten American jobs.

This is very much a global industry, and the supply base is very global, said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at Autotrader. This market is not just the easy, Here, take this car  we built it all in Ohio anymore.

Harwell reported from Washington. Congcong Zhang in Beijing contributed to this report.
The tech industrys opposition to President Trump escalated Thursday as corporate leaders drafted a letter warning of the economic risks of his immigration policies, Ubers chief executive quit an administration advisory board and Lyft pulled its ads from Breitbart News, the site formerly led by the White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

The developments followed remarks this week from Apple, Amazon and other companies, which said they were exploring legal action against Trumps executive order that temporarily barred travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries. Amazon and Expedia also joined a lawsuit brought by the state of Washington against the immigration ban.

The actions underscored rising alarm along the West Coasts tech archipelago from Silicon Valley to Seattle that Trumps policies threaten a sector that has long been a driver of new wealth and innovation in an otherwise tepid economy. After attempting to reach out to Trump by attending a meeting at his hotel in New York, tech companies are preparing themselves for a high-stakes confrontation with the president.

Trumps quest to tighten immigration has struck particularly hard at left-leaning Silicon Valley, which relies on a flow of high-level talent from India, east Asia and elsewhere and sees diversity as core to its identity as an innovation hub.

People shout slogans at the protest. (Kate Munsch/Reuters)

People come to Silicon Valley so they can build the American Dream, and this is one of the last places where the American Dream still kind of works, said Jonathan Nelson, chief executive of Hackers/Founders, a 300,000-person global network of entrepreneurs and engineers. If this happens, youre going to completely kill the next 10 years of tech companies.

Some tech companies are now considering whether to move jobs out of the United States to places with more relaxed immigration policies, such as Vancouver, B.C., and Dublin, which have made clear they would welcome an influx of U.S.-based immigrant technology workers.

One of the sad ironies of this is that an administration that purports to understand business is threatening one of the core pillars of what has made Silicon Valley so successful and an engine of economic growth, said Matt Mahan, chief executive of the social networking start-up Brigade.

Tensions have been building since Friday night, when tech executives, including Apples Tim Cook and Googles Sundar Pichai, began publicly denouncing the immigration ban. Protesters flooded U.S. airports and held rallies outside Googles offices. In a flurry of emails and late-night phone calls among top executives, the industry began preparing a range of responses.

A little more than half of U.S. start-ups that are estimated to be worth more than $1 billion were founded by immigrants, according to the National Foundation for American Policy, an Arlington think tank. And Silicon Valley is littered with immigrant success stories: Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, is an immigrant from India; Google co-founder Sergey Brin is a refugee from the former Soviet Union; and Omid Kordestani, Twitters executive chairman, was born in Iran.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian immigrant, leading Cook to say, in a letter denouncing Trumps travel ban, that the company wouldnt exist if such a ban had been in place.

Sam Altman, the president of Silicon Valleys Y Combinator, called the reaction to the immigration ban a watershed moment in which the tech industry  rivals and all  made the unusual move of coming together and drawing a line in the sand against a sitting president.

(Jhaan Elker,Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)

The steps taken by tech companies become more urgent after a draft of what appeared to be a Trump administration executive order limiting workers on H-1B visas circulated widely in Silicon Valley this week.

The leaked order indicated the administration could cancel the annual lottery through which technology companies sponsor tens of thousands of engineers, as well as a special visa for start-up founders who want to move to the United States.

A spokesman for the White House declined to comment on the leaked order or confirm its veracity. But White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters this week that the administration expects to scrutinize work visa programs closely as part of its immigration agenda.

Theres an overall need to look at all of these programs, said Spicer. And youll see both through executive action and through comprehensive measures a way to address immigration as a whole and the visa program.

As tensions built throughout the week, Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick and Teslas Elon Musk, who serve on Trumps economic council, faced intense pressure to disavow their work with the administration, according to people familiar with the situation. Both have insisted, until now, that being at the table, and having the opportunity to influence the direction of the country, was better than not being at it.

But on Thursday, Kalanick said that he had spoken with Trump and told him that he would step down. Musk declined requests for comment.

Kalanicks calculus changed after the company faced a huge outcry from the public for not joining Saturdays protests at airports.

In his letter, Kalanick said he made his decision after hearing the stories of Uber employees and drivers, in particular those of Emil Michael, a refugee from Egypt, and Thuan Pham, a refugee from Vietnam.

Kalanick wrote that the executive order was hurting people across America and hurting Ubers ability to make positive change in the country. The implicit assumption that Uber (or I) was somehow endorsing the Administrations agenda has created a perception-reality gap between who people think we are, and who we actually are, he wrote. There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that.

In separate letter, more than 115 Silicon Valley start-up founders and venture capitalists pleaded with the administration to cancel the immigration ban.

Silicon Valley flourishes because of our free and open culture of entrepreneurship and excellence, they wrote. The Presidents actions yesterday not only negatively affect Techs competitiveness, they hurt the U.S. economy overall.

Another letter from executives at Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple and others is also being drafted, according to a person familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private matter.

In interviews, technology company officials said they were looking into relocating people to overseas offices in Ireland and other places in Europe. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deliberations were still underway.

Tech companies are telling me they would rather set up subsidiaries or set up their companies in countries that are more welcoming and have friendlier immigration laws, said Priya Alagiri, an immigration lawyer based in San Francisco who represents start-ups and tech firms. They go to great lengths [to keep immigrant workers] because the workers are so highly talented and highly skilled.

Meanwhile, Lyft, Ubers ride-hailing rival, said Thursday that it was pulling ads from Breitbart News, following the actions of hundreds of other companies, including Lenovo, HP and T-Mobile. Many of the firms criticized the site as being an anti-immigrant and racist platform.

One of Lyfts core values is to uplift and support one another in all that we do, said Adrian Durbin, Lyfts director of communications. We strive to ensure that our advertisements appear only on sites that share this value.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Stephen K. Bannon was the founder of Breitbart News. Bannon was a founding member of the board.

Timberg and Fung reported from Washington.
President Trump on Friday launched a broad effort to ease regulations on Wall Street, setting up what is likely to be a protracted battle over how to unwind rules put in place after the last financial crisis.

In an executive order, Trump ordered a review of the laws and regulations that govern the U.S. financial system in an opening bid to upend 2010s financial overhaul law, known as Dodd-Frank. The complicated legislation, which took months to negotiate, touches nearly every aspect of the way banks operate and includes hundreds of rules, some of which have yet to be implemented.

We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, Trump said during a meeting with business leaders Friday morning. Because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, that had nice businesses, they just cant borrow money . . . because the banks just wont let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd- Frank.

The prospect of another drawn-out battle over a Wall Street overhaul is being met tepidly by some financial executives, who are wary of reawakening populist passions. After being the target of so many attacks in the years after the financial crisis, many have begun to see their profits grow and stock prices surge again, and they have urged the administration to proceed cautiously. Adjusting to a new regulatory environment would be too costly, they say.

Trump has so far been vague about what he would do to the complex law: The language of his executive order did not even include the phrase Dodd-Frank. Instead, he instructed the treasury secretary to report back in 120 days on what rules promote or inhibit the administrations priorities.

(Priya Mathew/The Washington Post)

Dodd-Frank has had a profound effect on the financial industry, forcing banks to submit to yearly stress tests to prove they could withstand economic turbulence and draw up living wills that lay out how the banks could be dismantled without harming the rest of the financial system. One controversial component, called the Volcker rule, bars banks from trading in high-risk securities using their own capital, a practice that contributed to the last crisis. The rule also limited the ability of banks to hide exotic risky securities off the banks balance sheets, concealing the extent of the banks debts.

With Dodd-Frank still not fully implemented, critics have argued that Wall Street requires more oversight, not less. But Trump, who often attacked Wall Street during the campaign (and whose chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has ripped into the big banks in the past), has adopted a different tone since taking office, offering to help the financial industry as part of a deregulatory agenda to boost the economy.

During the meeting with more than a dozen chief executives, Trump noted that there were several bankers in the room, including Larry Fink, chief executive of the huge investment firm BlackRock. Larrys got a lot of my money, and I have to tell you, he got me great returns, Trump said to laughs in the room.

Later he noted that Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the world, was also there. There is nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, Trump said, motioning to Dimon across the table.

Trump is not just consulting with Wall Street. He has tapped about six alumni of Goldman Sachs for key positions in his administration, including Gary Cohn, the banks former president and the current head of the powerful National Economic Council. Steve Mnuchin, who is awaiting confirmation as treasury secretary, spent 17 years at Goldman.

To unwind Dodd-Frank, some changes could be accomplished through appointing new leadership for the financial regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. They could soften the impact of regulations through the rulemaking process or simply slow implementation.

On Friday, for instance, Trump also signed a memorandum that could delay a Labor Department rule that would require financial professionals advising on retirement rules to put their clients interests ahead of their own. The fiduciary rule, scheduled to go into effect in April, has long been a target of Republicans, including close Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital. Critics say the legislation is burdensome and would prompt financial advisers to offer only the most ordinary advice to clients for fear they could run afoul of the rules.

To make more significant changes, Trump will need the cooperation of Congress. Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.), chair of the House Financial Services Committee, is preparing to unveil legislation that would revise Dodd Frank. The executive order marks the beginning of the end of the Dodd-Frank mistake, Hensarling said.

One of the authors of Dodd-Frank, former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), was critical of new attacks on the law, taking note of how Trump is relying on people such as former Goldman Sachs leader Cohn, who come from the industry they would deregulate.

This is a betrayal of his pledge to help the ordinary citizen against the big guys, against Wall Street. He is giving Wall Street what it couldnt get through the political process, Frank said.

Big banks, which have spent millions complying with the law, have called for a tweaking of the rules, rather than a complete overhaul. But smaller banks are expected to push for more aggressive changes. They say they are too small to pose a threat to the financial system but still face extreme regulatory burdens.

The current one-size-fits-all style of regulation does not work for Main Street  local credit unions, small banks, and the consumers and small businesses they serve, said Jim Nussle, president of the Credit Union National Association. Were hopeful that the core principles spelled out today will help ensure community financial institutions and the millions of Americans that rely on them are able to operate in a more favorable environment.

The industry has been uniformly critical of the Volcker rule. Critics have said the rule, aimed at investments banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, unnecessarily limits some safe activities. The industry also has complained about rules intended to change the way Wall Street executives are paid, making it harder for them to earn big bonuses by waging risky financial bets.

The administrations efforts could also hit the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created by Dodd-Frank. Republicans have been pushing for an overhaul of the way the agency is run, including calling for its director, Richard Cordray, to be fired. But Democrats say the independent agency has played an important role in cracking down on big banks and corporations accused of misleading consumers.

One of the surprising things to me is that they [appear] willing to go after a consumer agency that has already demonstrated how effective it is, said Michael Barr, a University of Michigan Law School professor and a key architect of Dodd-Frank while serving in the Treasury Department in 2009 and 2010.

Jim Millstein, founder of Millstein & Co. and chief restructuring officer at the Treasury Department from 2009 to 2011 under President Barack Obama, said undoing the law would be difficult. The Volcker rule represents just a few sentences of the law but hundreds of pages of regulations.

They should tread carefully. Only eight years ago we had the biggest financial crisis of our time, and they clearly dont want to be responsible for the next one, Millstein said.

Lawrence Summers, a former treasury secretary and head of Obamas National Economic Council, said some changes to Dodd-Frank are warranted, such as looking at ways to ease the burden on smaller banks and removing some excessive bureaucracy.

Is an indiscriminate attack spearheaded by former big bankers the right approach? Very unlikely. The systemic risks remain real, and we cant afford complacency, Summers said.

Asked about Trumps complaint that his friends had trouble getting loans, Summers said, In any world, if a real estate developers good friends could get all the credit they wanted, there would be much to worry about in terms of financial stability.

Jonnelle Marte contributed to this report.
Mexican bakery magnate Lorenzo Servitje, in an undated photo, launched Grupo Bimbo in 1945. (Bimbo /via European Pressphoto Agency)

Lorenzo Servitje, the Mexican bakery magnate who helped build his Grupo Bimbo into an international snack and baked-goods empire that acquired brands including Entenmanns, Thomas, Freihofers and Stroehmann, died Feb. 3 in Mexico City. He was 98.

Grupo Bimbo announced the death but did not provide the cause.

Mr. Servitje launched Grupo Bimbo in 1945 with other partners, starting with 38 employees and 10 delivery vehicles.

According to Eric Zolovs book Iconic Mexico: An Encyclopedia from Acapulco to Zocalo, Bimbos name was a fusion of bingo, the American version of the Mexican game of chance called loteria, and Bambi, the fawn in the 1942 Disney movie of the same name. The combination, Zolov wrote, suggested both wholesome playfulness and industrial might.

The company now operates in 22 countries with 100 brands, and it recorded more than $10.7 billion in sales in 2015. Mr. Servitje made frequent appearances on Forbes magazines billionaires list.

Lorenzo Servitje in 2005. He made frequent appearances on Forbes magazines billionaires list. (Marco Ugarte/AP)

Starting with bread, the company branched into snacks, tortillas and other bakery products. The company is known for its mascot, a small, white bear.

Bimbo established a near-monopoly on baked goods in Mexico, winning the rights to distribute Wonder Bread in the country.

The company also expanded strongly into the United States, purchasing Mrs. Bairds Bakeries in Texas in 1998. Bimbo Bakeries USA acquired the western U.S. baking businesses of George Weston, adding brands such as Oroweat, Entenmanns, Thomas and Boboli.

In 2009, Grupo Bimbo purchased the remaining baked-goods businesses of George Weston, acquiring brands such as Arnold, Brownberry, Freihofers and Stroehmann.

Lorenzo Servitje Sendra was born in Mexico on Nov. 20, 1918, the son of a Spanish immigrant who started a bakery. He left his accounting studies at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in the late 1930s to take charge of his fathers business after his death.

Mr. Servitje was preceded in death by his wife, Carmen Montull. The couple had eight children, 24 grandchildren and 48 great-grandchildren.

Mr. Servitje, who pulled back from daily operations by the early 1990s, continued to stay involved with the bread business. Ive got oats in my veins, he quipped.
Alexander Chancellor, an editor who reshaped the fading Spectator magazine into one of the most vibrant British weeklies of the 1970s and 1980s, turning a dreary, ideologically conservative journal into what he later called a literary cocktail party, died Jan. 28 in London. He was 77.

The Spectator reported the death but did not disclose the cause.

Mr. Chancellor was a self-described gentleman hack who said he became interested in journalism because it was the ideal profession for the lazy person  an observation he made after growing up as the son of a top executive of the Reuters news service. He worked for most of Britains top newspapers, including the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent, and in the 1990s, he had a brief, ill-fitting stint as an editor at the New Yorker magazine.

He combined editing and writing; his final column for the Spectator appeared on the day he died. He was a genial presence in newsrooms, often found with a glass of wine in hand, and often inspired fierce loyalty among colleagues.

In 1975, when Mr. Chancellor was named editor of the moribund Spectator, he said it was because he was the only journalist known to the magazines new millionaire owner, Henry Keswick. They had been chums at Eton, the upper-class boys school.

Alexander Chancellor. (Fabio De Paola/The Guardian)

In short order, Mr. Chancellor hired a cast of lively writers and cartoonists and gave them a free hand. The magazine retained an element of its old Tory starchiness, but it wore its political allegiance lightly.

The Spectator is more of a cocktail party than a political party, Mr. Chancellor once said.

Neither a newsweekly nor a humor magazine, the Spectator combined political analysis, in-depth reporting, personal essays, cultural criticism, cartoons and contests for readers  often involving elaborate word games or limericks.

Under Mr. Chancellors leadership, the Spectator nearly doubled its 12,000 circulation, and its cheekiness was emulated by publications on both sides of the Atlantic. He hired such writers as Auberon Waugh, Christopher Hitchens and Ferdinand Mount, asking only that they write with vigor, elegance and a strong, independent voice.

Some of the magazines contributors were unknown, and others were celebrated figures such as the novelist Graham Greene, who seldom wrote for magazines.

Graham Greene said he was the best editor hed ever worked with, James Pembroke, publisher of The Oldie, which Mr. Chancellor was editing at the time of his death, told the Sunday Telegraph newspaper.

After noticing the acerbic wit of Jennifer Paterson, Mr. Chancellor invited her to write about food for the Spectator. She later became a star of the British cooking show Two Fat Ladies.

He asked Taki Theodoracopulos, a playboy and Greek shipping heir, to write about life among the jet set in a column called High Life. Then Mr. Chancellor hired a witty alcoholic, Jeffrey Bernard, to write about his misadventures at the racetrack, London pubs and hospitals in a column dubbed Low Life. (Whenever Bernard missed a deadline, a headine read Jeffrey Bernard is unwell  which became the title of a long-running stage play about Bernards life.)

For all his skills at inspiring writers and reshaping a magazine, Mr. Chancellor was less adept at managing money. He was dismissed in 1984 after a new owner had purchased the Spectator. But he continued working at other publications, including as the Washington editor of the newly created Independent newspaper from 1986 to 1988.

He then spent four years as the editor of the Independents stylish weekly magazine before returning to the United States in 1992, when his fellow Briton Tina Brown was named editor of the New Yorker.

Mr. Chancellor edited the magazines Talk of the Town section of short, sometimes whimsical articles about life in New York. In a 1999 memoir, Some Time in America, he admitted that it was a poor fit.

Chancellor wouldnt know 57th Street if you pointed it out to him, noted the New York Observer.

He often clashed with Browns vision of journalism, which emphasized the new and hot. A few years later, Mr. Chancellor launched a new magazine for the Sunday Telegraph and pointedly told contributors to follow their interests and dare to be dull.

Alexander Surtees Chancellor was born Jan. 4, 1940, near Ware in rural Hertfordshire, England. His paternal grandfather was a British colonial officer who once served as the high commissioner for the British mandate of Palestine. His father became an executive with Reuters and ultimately its worldwide chairman.

At Eton, Mr. Chancellor was a skilled pianist and contemplated a career in music before studying languages at the University of Cambridge. After graduation, he began working for Reuters, eventually becoming its Rome correspondent.

A noted bon vivant, Mr. Chancellor was an opera lover, and enjoyed cooking for guests at his homes in Italy and the English countryside and playing show tunes on the piano.

Survivors include his wife of 52 years, the former Susanna Debenham; their two daughters; a daughter from another relationship; two sisters; and four grandchildren.

Since 1996, Mr. Chancellor wrote a weekly column for the Spectator called Long Life, reflecting on his times and advancing age. In 2014, he became the editor of The Oldie, an only-in-England magazine for older readers. Mr. Chancellor called the publication a haven for all who are fearful and uncomprehending of the all-pervasive yoof culture of today.
A Verlaine Songbook Carolyn Sampson Joseph Middleton, pianist BIS

Carolyn Sampson is known for her radiant performances of baroque music, having recorded widely with the worlds leading early-music ensembles. The British sopranos voice combines limpid clarity with laser-focused precision, but with any possible harsh edges softened in a smooth finish. It is also beautifully suited to the corrupt delicacies of late Romantic French melodie, as demonstrated in Sampsons recent song recital recording on the BIS label, with the accomplished pianist Joseph Middleton.

All of the songs here are settings of poetry by Paul Verlaine. Some of the early works were inspired by Verlaines love for Mathilde Maute, the young girl with the Carolingian name, as he put it in his collection La Bonne Chanson, set as a cycle by Gabriel Faure. Verlaine married Mathilde, but not long after she had borne him a son, he ran off with a young poet named Arthur Rimbaud. Their scandalous love affair provided much of the material for his collection Romances sans paroles, including the poems set by Debussy in a set called Ariettes oubliees. After time in prison, Verlaine ran off again with Lucien Letinois, a 17-year-old student at the Jesuit school where Verlaine taught.

Multiple composers have composed songs on the same Verlaine poems, which makes for interesting comparison of musical settings. Sampson pairs Debussy's Fetes galantes with songs on poems from the same collection by Poldowski, the nom de plume of Belgian-born pianist Regine Wieniawski. Individual songs by other composers, including Ravel, Saint-Saens, Charles Bordes and Reynaldo Hahn, round out a most attractive program. Songs such as Deodat de Severac's Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit and Josef Szulc's Clair de Lune are major discoveries.

Throughout, Sampson produces an elegant ribbon of sound, couched in refined French pronunciation, that can hang in the air  for instance, a long, exquisitely soft high G at the end of Chausson's Apaisement. The only minor setback is that when pushed to louder dynamics, Sampsons voice loses some of its satiny quality, turning strident, but this is rare in the songs here.

 Charles T. Downey

MOZART Great Mass in C Minor/Exsultate, jubilate Bach Collegium Japan, Carolyn Sampson BIS

When Masaaki Suzuki reached the end of his epic traversal of Bachs sacred cantatas with Bach Collegium Japan, he turned to Mozart. The Japanese conductor's authoritative recording of Mozart's Requiem was one of my favorite discs of 2015, and opened up a new line of specialization for his ensemble beyond the music of its namesake. Shortly after its release, Suzuki conducted another Mozart Mass, the Great C minor, with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in an astounding performance. Now, his recording of this work, with Bach Collegium Japan, is out on the BIS label.

It was hoped that Suzukis Requiem was the start of a recorded reexamination of Mozarts music for the Catholic church. Mozart left the Great C minor Mass, like his Requiem, unfinished; he began it in Vienna as a complete setting of the Latin Ordinary but performed only parts of it on a honeymoon visit to Salzburg, Austria, with his wife, Constanze, in 1783. Suzuki has used the musicologist Franz Beyers careful reconstruction of the score, and the relevant historical details are laid out in a superlative booklet essay by Christoph Wolff.

Suzuki takes the opening Kyrie at a most satisfying, slow, grand tempo, like a dignified, crisply organized funeral march. The Qui tollis section of the Gloria has an equally cathedral-filling sound from both chorus and orchestra.

Mezzo-soprano Olivia Vermeulen, tenor Makoto Sakurada and bass Christian Imler ably take their parts in the quartet of vocal soloists. The star of this score, though, is the first soprano, a part written for and premiered by Mozarts wife. It seems tailor-made for Carolyn Sampson. In the extended showpiece Et incarnatus est in the Credo, she interweaves her immaculate soprano with the intricate woodwind lines, sweet and tender.

Rounding out the recording is Mozarts famous cantata Exsultate, jubilate, from a decade earlier, although here Sampsons fast runs are not quite pristine. As a lagniappe, Suzuki has added Mozarts slightly revised version of the first movement  more a curiosity than an absolute necessity.

 Charles T. Downey
Local bodies' number, boundary won't alter: LBRC Chair Poudel

Local Body Restructuring Commission (LBRC) Chairperson Balananda Poudel has said the number and boundary of the local bodies recommended by the Commission would not subject to change.
Gavin Grimm, 17, is photographed at his Gloucester, Va. home in August. The transgender teen sued the Gloucester County School Board after it barred him from the boys' bathroom. The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in the case March 28. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post)

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on March 28 in the case of a transgender teenager from Virginia who sued his school board for the right to use the boys bathroom, a case that could shape how public schools across the country accommodate transgender students.

Gavin Grimm, now a senior at Gloucester High School, sued in 2015 after the board barred him from the boys bathroom. His lawyers argue that the policy, which requires students to use bathrooms aligned with their biological sex, violates a federal law against sex discrimination in public schools.

[Gavin Grimm just wanted to use the bathroom. He didnt think the nation would debate it.]

The court will also consider guidance the Obama administration issued in May that required public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choosing. If the Trump administration rescinds the guidance, some legal observers have said the high court could send the Grimm case back to a lower court.

[Trump could reverse Obamas actions on college sex assault, transgender rights]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond sided with Grimm in April, deferring to the Obama administrations position that federal law protected his right to use the boys bathroom. A U.S. district judge later granted Grimm a preliminary injunction that would have allowed him to use the boys bathroom. The Gloucester County school board appealed the case all the way to the high court. Justices issued a stay on the case, meaning Grimm remains barred from the boys bathroom during his senior year.
People listen to speakers during a rally in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 27. Several hundred people gathered with Oregon congressional leaders in protest against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. (Don Ryan/AP)

If anyone can explain why Betsy DeVos has become the most embattled nominee ever for education secretary, its Anna Caudill, Tennessee mother of two.

Caudill has a son with disabilities. Her public school district did such a poor job educating him, she says, that she is suing in federal court. She cant afford a private school, so she is home schooling him. Shes exactly the kind of parent who would seem aligned with DeVos, who believes in using public funds to help parents pay for private education.

But Caudill strongly opposes DeVos.

Vouchers dont come with any oversight of the schools in which theyre spent, Caudill said. They put the parent in the position of trading a childs civil rights for money.

This 44-year-old is part of the small army of parents, teachers and others around the country who have risen up against DeVos as President Trumps nominee heads toward a breathtakingly close confirmation vote. They come from places as diverse as rural Alaska, inner-city Detroit and  like Caudill  suburban Nashville.

(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

They have held protests and clogged Senate phone lines with calls to send a message: They dont want an education secretary who preaches escape from public schools. They want one who understands public schools and will work to improve them.

On Friday, the Republican-led Senate advanced the nomination toward final action, likely this week, that could result in a 50-50 split. That would force Vice President Pence to cast a rare tiebreaking vote.

Republicans say opposition to DeVos is the work of teachers unions and their toadies in the Democratic Party.

Organized labor is pulling out all the stops in a last-ditch effort to resist accountability and deny equal educational opportunity to poor families, minorities and underrepresented communities, said Ed Patru, spokesman for a group called Friends of Betsy DeVos.

It is true that unions have mobilized against DeVos, spreading the message that she is an enemy of public schools. But many others have joined the opposition.

There is plenty that can be done to fix our public schools, but her approach is wrong, said Katy Pape, 30, of the District, who works for a company that advises businesses. Pape showed up to protest DeVos on Capitol Hill one chilly recent Sunday, but she isnt a teacher and she doesnt have children. She just attended public schools, like the vast majority of Americans  and she believes in them.

[Two Republicans say they will vote against DeVos]

(Reuters)

DeVos, a Michigan billionaire and major Republican donor, has for three decades used her wealth and political clout to advocate giving parents taxpayer-funded avenues to get out of public schools that arent serving them well. Many on the right have embraced her approach, calling her an outsider who has been willing to take on the education establishment and make radical changes.

But her nomination has revealed what Terry Moe, a Stanford political science professor and school voucher supporter, calls the nations public school ideology: Many Americans have a deep allegiance to public schools, flawed as they may be. And many dont appreciate threats to what they consider a fundamental civic institution.

For decades surveys have found that while the public holds a dim view of U.S. education writ broadly, people are generally pleased with their own local public schools. Polling by PDK International, an association of education professionals, shows that Americans believe the No. 1 challenge facing public schools is lack of adequate funding.

Trumps pledge to expand funding for vouchers and charter schools and his nomination of DeVos have captured the attention of these public school backers, said Joshua Starr, PDKs chief executive, who is a former Montgomery County schools superintendent. Theyre like, Wait. How is this going to work? Theyre going to take money from us. 

DeVos said during her confirmation hearing that, as education secretary, she would be a strong advocate for public schools. But she also left open the possibility that she would cut education funding and seek to privatize public schools.

That unsettled many senators, particularly those from rural states that voted for Trump where there are few alternatives to public schools. Republicans from Alaska and Maine have broken party lines to oppose DeVos. Moderate Democrats also said they could not support her.

I cant go home and explain it, cant go home and sell it, said Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). Our funding mechanism is so fragile in a rural state like West Virginia, you take any moneys away from that and divert it somewhere else, then some of the systems will collapse.

DeVos was not widely known before her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing, but video clips of her stumbles that evening went viral, turning her into a meme overnight.

She argued that schools should not be subject to a federal ban on guns because they may need to guard against potential grizzlies. And she had trouble answering basic policy questions, feeding the charge that  given her lack of personal and professional experience with public schools  she is unqualified to serve.

[Michael Moore calls for mass opposition against DeVos as pushback grows]

Many Republican senators defend DeVos as a conservative who would scale back the federal role in schools, returning the Education Department  which exercised unprecedented power under President Barack Obama  to its rightful place. She also has support among Republican governors and Democrats such as former D.C. mayor Anthony Williams, a voucher proponent.

Shell be an excellent education secretary, in my judgment, and an important one for this country, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said Friday.

Opponents view DeVos as not just another wealthy Trump nominee without government experience. They say she is seeking a job in which her decisions will affect thousands of schools serving millions of kids.

Laura Beck of Austin is a 45-year-old mother of two who said she had never been politically active until two weeks ago, when she learned about DeVos. This one affects our children, she said. You might say you should care about things that affect global warming, or national security. But when it affects children . . . its heart-string, mama-bear protectionism that youre seeing.

DeVos took heat for her suggestion during the hearing that states should decide whether to enforce a landmark 1975 federal law, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, that protects students with disabilities. Later, she said she had been confused about the law, raising red flags for civil rights advocates and parents of children with special needs from both political parties.

About 6.5 million children from ages 3 to 21 receive special-education services under IDEA, or 13 percent of public school students. For schools that receive federal funding, ignoring the law is not an option.

DeVoss stumbles on IDEA were among the reasons Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) gave for opposing the nominee. But Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), whose wife is a special-education teacher, said he received assurances from DeVos that she would enforce the federal law. He plans to vote for her.

Im going to work as hard as I can to make sure where she is short in knowledge as secretary, Im going to stand by her side to give her that knowledge, Isakson said.

Shortly after her confirmation hearing, she clarified that she would enforce federal laws related to special education. She said she also believed in expanding parents choices, pointing to an Ohio program that requires students with disabilities to give up their federal IDEA rights to qualify for a voucher.

Tera Myers, the mother of a student with Down syndrome who has participated in that Ohio program, praised DeVos as a compassionate advocate for children with disabilities.

Myers wrote in the Hill newspaper that IDEA often fails to live up to its promise, and that DeVoss advocacy for private-school vouchers had helped children such as her son find a better school. I know that Betsy DeVos has a big heart and deep concern for all students in America, especially the most vulnerable children, Myers wrote.

[Eli Broad, billionaire backer of charter schools, urges senators to oppose DeVos]

But Caudill, the Tennessee mother of two, sees vouchers far differently. She has done the math, and it doesnt work for her family.

Her son, Fu, whom she adopted from China, has a joint disorder that makes it difficult for him to walk or write quickly. He also has a language impairment.

Through a Tennessee program for students with disabilities, she could receive about $6,300 a year for private-school tuition, tutoring or other education services. But she would have to waive Fus rights under IDEA to a free and appropriate public education.

Even then, she wouldnt be able to afford a private school. Her family of four lives on income of $60,000 a year and has annual medical expenses of roughly $13,000. Tuition at many faith-based schools hovers around $10,000, Caudill said, while a specialized school that could provide the services Fu needs would cost $40,000.

Rather than expanding a program useless to her, Caudill said, she wants the federal government to give public schools more money to help students with disabilities. Congress has for decades promised to give states 40 percent of the cost of providing special education, but it has never come close to paying that much.

On average, I think public schools are far better armed to do what IDEA expects of them, Caudill said. It needs to be a situation where the feds put their money where their mouth is.

Alejandra Matos and Ed OKeefe contributed to this story.
President Trump picked a fight with Californias flagship public university Thursday, threatening to pull funding from a school that has long symbolized the fight for free speech, on the day after violent protests shut down a controversial speaker.

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view  NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Trump tweeted.

University of California police canceled an event by Milo Yiannopoulos and put the Berkeley campus on lockdown Wednesday after about 150 people wearing masks swarmed into a group of about 1,500 students who had been peacefully protesting the speech, and began setting fires, smashing windows, and throwing rocks and firecrackers at police.

The fight was emblematic of the tensions over academic freedom and cultural issues that have been simmering on campuses across the country  and it exploded on a campus where students fought for free speech decades before.

Yiannopoulos, a provocative and polarizing figure, writes for the Breitbart website, which until recently was led by Stephen K. Bannon, Trumps chief strategist.

Yiannopoulos has a large following as a self-proclaimed free-speech fundamentalist crusading against political correctness. His detractors call him a hatemonger. He was banned from Twitter last summer after sending tweets targeting actress Leslie Jones, who is black.

His campus speeches usually spark intense protests. In January, a man was shot and seriously wounded as fights broke out during one of those events at the University of Washington.

When the events are canceled, some call it censorship. Others counter that universities arent required to pay security and other expenses for speakers invited by student groups.

After his Berkeley event was canceled, the 32-year-old Yiannopoulos posted on Facebook: One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

When Trump raised the possibility of cutting funds, California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) tweeted in response: As a UC Regent Im appalled at your willingness to deprive over 38,000 students access to an education because of the actions of a few.

Student loans and grants make up the vast majority of federal funding to colleges and universities, along with research grants from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. Whether or how Trump could target Berkeley for funding cuts is unclear.

Free speech is an exceptionally volatile issue now, with debate over code words, safe spaces, implicit bias and microaggressions on campuses across the country.

That debate has particular resonance at Berkeley, where the Free Speech Movement began with student protests in 1964.

Some members of that original movement wrote an op-ed about Yiannopoulos last month in the student newspaper, the Daily Californian. They described him as a bigot who baits students in the hopes of sparking a speaking ban or physical altercation so he can pose as a free speech martyr. His campus events are one long publicity stunt designed to present himself as a kind of hip, far right, youth folk hero  sort of Hitler Youth with cool sunglasses. They argued that banning him would just play into his hands.

On Wednesday night, the Daily Californian reported that protesters were chanting, No Milo, no Trump, no fascist USA, setting off fireworks, throwing rocks and bricks, and pounding on windows, and that university police tried to disperse the crowd by firing rubber bullets and tear gas. UC police canceled the speech that night.

Berkeleys administration said it went to extraordinary lengths to plan for the event, working with the Berkeley College Republicans and adding dozens of additional police officers.

Security officials said that 150 people disrupted a peaceful demonstration, setting fires, throwing molotov cocktails and rocks, and attacking some people in the crowd.

Such black bloc masked protesters, difficult for police to recognize at first sight, have frequently been seen elsewhere, including in Washington on the day of Trumps inauguration.

Campus officials said in a statement that they regret that the threats and unlawful actions of a few have interfered with the exercise of First Amendment rights on a campus that is proud of its history and legacy as the home of the Free Speech Movement.

Some at Berkeley had worried that Yiannopoulos would single out individual students as examples of illegal immigration, because a Breitbart story Tuesday said he would kick-start a campaign at Berkeley to take on sanctuary campuses and call to withdraw federal grants to such schools.

In advance of the event, more than 100 faculty members signed letters urging Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks to cancel the speech. They argued that Yiannopouloss views could change from protected speech to incitement, harassment and defamation once they publicly target individuals in his audience or on campus.

Nils Gilman, an associate chancellor, responded that our Constitution does not permit the university to engage in prior restraint of a speaker out of fear that he might engage in even hateful verbal attacks.

The Berkeley College Republicans, who sponsored the sold-out event, wrote on social media after the protests, The Free Speech Movement is dead.

Today, the Berkeley College Republicans constitutional right to free speech was silenced by criminals and thugs seeking to cancel Milo Yiannopoulos tour. . . . It is tragic that the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement is also its final resting place.

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One of the signs memorializing Wilbert Anderson outside the Northwest Washington home of John Hornick and Sarah Alexander, who took him in when he was homeless. He died Jan. 7. (DeNeen Brown/The Washington Post)

The signs announcing his death appeared two weeks ago, tied to a black wrought-iron fence in front of a commanding brick house on 13th Street in Northwest Washington. Remembering Wilbert E. Anderson, the two signs proclaim, who loved this neighborhood and visiting with everyone who walked by. 1940-2017.

Some people placed flowers underneath, mourning the man known in Logan Circle as The Mayor of 13th Street. Anderson, once homeless, was a fixture on the steps beside the fence, greeting passersby in his deep, rich voice. He sounded like an actor as he dispensed street wisdom.

There aint no romance without finance, he would advise about relationships.

We have a hard way to go and a short time to get there, he would say about lifes challenges.

He seemed to always be there, wearing his signature hat, smoking cigarettes, calling out to lady friends and chatting with neighbors. People could hear his laugh a block away.

Anderson was known as The Mayor of 13th Street. He was a Logan Circle fixture for many years. (Courtesy of John Hornick and Sarah Alexander)

He was a constant in the rhythm of Logan Circle life.

For years, I wondered if he was my guardian angel. In some ways, he was, and I trusted him with my life, said John Hornick, who met Anderson 24 years ago when Anderson was living in an alley near 14th and Q streets NW.

Hornick, a lawyer, paid Anderson to do odd jobs outside. They debated politics, talked about World War II. They laughed together and became friends.

In 1998, Hornick offered to let Anderson live in his back yard when he had nowhere else to go. He lived on a lounge chair under a tarp.

He used my power for heat and his television, Hornick recalled. I invited him in, but he would never come in.

Anderson was a District native who had enlisted in the Army before he was 18. When the Army found out he had lied about his age, he was discharged. He married, had three children and worked in a series of jobs to support his family, including 27 years as a trash collector (he ran behind the truck, which kept him in excellent shape). Then his mother died and things fell apart, Hornick said.

I dont know what happened, but he became estranged from his wife, and he started to live outside, Hornick said. Several things happened that led to him being homeless when he was 52.

Reached at her home in Northeast D.C., Marion Anderson called her father a really good man. He worked hard every day of his life. Hes in heaven now. But she said she was in mourning and did not want to talk more about his life.

Hornick and his future wife, Sarah Alexander, became Andersons second family. He spent every Thanksgiving with them.

The moment he found out I was Johns girlfriend, he would look out for me, recalled Alexander, a photographer who is a student in a graduate gemologist program. It didnt matter where I was, he had an uncanny ability to know when I was coming home. He would walk me through the alley and around to the front door. He would wait until I got through the gate and in the house.

[I wasnt crazy: A homeless womans long war to prove the feds owe her $100,000]

When they rebuilt a carriage house behind their old home on 14th Street, they added an attic and invited Anderson to sleep there.

In 2000, when Hornick and Alexander got married, Anderson was there to celebrate in a tuxedo they rented for him.

As long as my husband and I have been married, Alexander said, there has always been Wilbert.

A few months after they wed, they bought the house at the corner of 13th and Riggs streets.

When we told him we were moving, he was panicked, Alexander recalled. We said: Dont worry. We will make a room for you. We couldnt leave him.

They built a bedroom and private bath for Anderson in the basement of their new house.

He could come and go. He had his own access, Hornick said.

A friend of ours who has known him for a long time nicknamed him The Mayor of 13th Street,  Alexander said. The nickname evolved because he would hold court on the front steps talking to everyone as they went by.

When Hornick and Alexander cooked dinner, they would make enough for Anderson.

I would feed him something, and he would say, John, black people dont eat that stuff,  Hornick recalled. Id say, Wilbert, do you want it or not? He would say, Yeah. He would eat it and say, This is pretty good. 



Wilbert Anderson wore a rented tuxedo to attend John Hornick and Sarah Alexander's wedding in 2000. (Courtesy of John Hornick and Sarah Alexander)

Anderson loved soul music, Motown and doo-wop  the Dells, the Four Tops, the Five Satins and Barry White. He was a fan of Matlock and Murder, She Wrote. When Angela Lansbury came to town in 2015 to star in Blithe Spirit at the National Theatre, Hornick and Alexander bought him tickets and arranged for Anderson to meet Lansbury backstage.

He started talking to her about Samson and Delilah and the 1962 movie The Manchurian Candidate,  Hornick said. He knew all her old movies.

Over the past few years, though, Andersons health began to decline. He was a heavy smoker who loved fried foods.

John Fanning, a longtime Logan Circle resident who chairs its Advisory Neighborhood Commission, said he noticed when Anderson hurt his leg. I said, You are not walking as much. He pulled up his pants, and his leg was all swollen. I said, Did you go to the doctor? 

Hornick knew he needed care. I got him set up with Whitman-Walker Clinic on 14th Street, he said. But Anderson didnt like to sit around in the waiting room and would often leave his appointments. Two years ago, he had a heart attack. Last year, he had a series of minor strokes. And he had been complaining about his stomach.

In November, he told Hornick that the pain was really bad. We called an ambulance, Hornick said. Anderson went to MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where he had surgery for a perforated ulcer, Hornick said. But when the bleeding started again, he refused care. He died Jan. 7 at a hospice.

There was no memorial service for the 76-year-old. He didnt want one, Hornick said. We arranged to have him cremated and gave his ashes to his daughter.

The neighborhood seems altered now, without him.

Even in cold weather . . . he would sit on the front steps or in the back yard in the chairs out there, Hornick said. We spent a lot of time in the kitchen. He would rap on the back window to let him in. I keep expecting him to rap on the back window. 
THE DISTRICT

Ollie seems fine

back at zoo, sweet zoo

Ollie is okay, except for the two stitches in her left paw.

The National Zoo said Thursday that a veterinarian examined the 25-pound bobcat who escaped Monday and was recaptured Wednesday.

Aside from a stitched-up cut on the paw, she seemed fine.

Ollie was anesthetized Thursday, and zoo veterinarian James Steeil conducted a physical. She also got feline booster vaccines, including a rabies booster, the zoo said. She will stay under observation at the zoos hospital for a few days to make sure she doesnt have any respiratory illness.

 Michael E. Ruane

Man arrested hours

after fatal shooting

D.C. police arrested a suspect Wednesday hours after a man was fatally shot and a woman wounded in a double shooting in Northeast Washington.

Myshawn D. Allen, 23, of Greenbelt, Md., was charged with first-degree murder while armed and assault with intent to kill.

The slain man was identified as Tyronn J. Hodges, 25, of Landover, Md. A woman who was with Hodges and who also was shot was not identified. Police said her wounds were not life-threatening.

The shooting occurred at about 7 p.m. in the 900 block of Eastern Avenue NE.

Judge chosen to

lead appeals court

A 22-year judge in the District of Columbia was selected Thursday as the head of the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Judge Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, 55, was named chief of the nine-member D.C. Court of Appeals after the current chief, Eric T. Washington, announced he would not seek a fourth consecutive term as its head.

The Court of Appeals is one of the most powerful courts in the District, overseeing D.C. Superior Court cases on appeal. The court also oversees the D.C. Bar, which incudes the admission of attorneys to the bar, as well as the discipline of its members.

In 1995, Blackburne-Rigsby was appointed a magistrate judge in D.C. Superior Court. In 2000, she was appointed an associate judge by then-President Bill Clinton. In 2006, then-President George W. Bush appointed her to the Court of Appeals.

MARYLAND

Teenager is charged

with killing man

A Maryland teenager has been charged with killing a man at a Prince Georges County gas station, police said Thursday.

About 4:40 p.m. Monday, officers responded to the gas station in the 3200 block of Walters Lane for the report of a shooting, Prince Georges police said in a statement. They found 20-year-old Carrington Daye Jr. suffering from a gunshot wound inside, and he was pronounced dead at the scene, the statement said.

On Thursday, police said that they arrested 18-year-old Stephon Robinson of District Heights in connection with the crime, and that the shooting was related to an ongoing dispute between the suspect and the victim.

Robinson was charged with first- and second-degree murder, among other charges, police said.

 Justin Wm. Moyer
A Maryland judge dismissed first lady Melania Trumps defamation claims against an online tabloid, ruling that Trump should not have filed the matter in the Washington suburb of Montgomery County, according to court records filed Thursday.

The ruling wont necessarily end the litigation against the online Daily Mail. Trumps attorneys said late Thursday they will refile the claims in New York City.

Their claims relate to an article in August about unsubstantiated rumors that Trump once worked as an escort. The article was later retracted.

The ruling also does not appear to affect proceedings against Webster Tarpley, a blogger in Maryland who published a similar article around the same time. Trump also has sued Tarpley, and her attorneys said Thursday that they intend to move ahead on the claims against him.

[Melania Trump says blogger held reckless disregard for the truth.]

One result of the judges ruling, as it relates to Montgomery County, is that it raises the possibility of a trial in Rockville  about 20 miles north of the White House  involving the first lady and a 71-year-old blogger who works out of his townhouse in Gaithersburg.

Attorneys for Tarpley could not immediately be reached for comment on the ruling.

[Melania Trump comes to court in Rockville]

Trump appeared at a hearing in the case after her defamation litigation was filed Sept. 1 in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

The legal venue meant Tarpley was being sued in the county where he lives.

Bringing the online Daily Mail into the same legal venue was more of a reach given the complicated web of corporations and publishing networks in the creation and publication of the online Daily Mail article.

Trumps legal team argued that while the article was put together by the Daily Mail tabloid operation in London, it was published on the Daily Mail website, which according to Trumps attorneys in court filings, is based in New York.

They argued that because the online site has many readers in Maryland, the online Daily Mail transacts business in the state.

Given all of those factors, Trumps attorneys said, it made sense to sue both Tarpley and the online Daily Mail in Maryland in a single proceeding that also would save courtroom time by consolidating the complaints.

In her 14-page opinion this week, Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell said no to that argument. It would be unreasonable as a matter of constitutional due process for this court to exert jurisdiction over the online Daily Mail, Burrell wrote.

The judge described how the Daily Mail article was put together, and that it had nothing to do with Maryland: In the case at hand, the article was written about a New York resident by a newspaper in the United Kingdom, and also published on a general news website that cannot be described as having a Maryland focus. . . . No reporter or editor traveled to Maryland in the course of reporting, editing or publishing the article.

Burrell also said the claims could not be refiled elsewhere in Maryland, court records show.
A payroll specialist for a global consulting firm in the District pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to embezzling a quarter-million dollars by diverting salaries from fictitious employees to his personal bank accounts, according to the U.S. attorneys office.

KaShaun Perkins, 43, of Upper Marlboro, Md., is to be sentenced in April. He faces up to 21 months to 27 months in prison and prosecutors said he has agreed to reimburse his company nearly $250,000. He pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

Neither a press statement nor documents filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia identify the company for which Perkins worked. The documents refer to it as FGG in the 1300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW.

Perkins worked for the company from December 2014 through July 2015 and managed external payroll records, court files show. He had access to employee salaries, bank accounts and Social Security numbers among other details.

According to his plea agreement filed in court, Perkins admitted that between January and July of 2015, he created ghost employees by altering files of terminated workers. That triggered automatic salary payments that Perkins admitted to depositing into two of his bank accounts, the agreement states.

Prosecutors said Perkins embezzled $249,076 but the company actually lost $275,188 because it also paid federal taxes on the fictitious workers.

Perkinss attorney, Mark Rollins, did not respond to a request for comment.
Minister Karki stresses on development of Ayurvedic medicine

Minister for Information and Communications Surendra Kumar Karki has stressed on the need for commercial development and promotion of Ayurvedic medicine.
A woman was struck and killed while crossing a road Thursday evening in Fairfax County, police said.

About 8 p.m., officers responded to Little River Turnpike and Braddock Road in Franconia for a reported accident involving a pedestrian, Fairfax County police said in a statement.

An investigation showed that Waneta M. Achaj, 58, of Alexandria was crossing Little River Turnpike from north to south outside the crosswalk when she was struck by a 2002 Ford F150 truck driven by a 59-year-old man, the statement said. Police said she was wearing a dark jacket and no reflective clothing.

The driver of the truck, who had a green light when he turned right onto eastbound Little River Turnpike from Braddock Road before striking Achaj, remained at the scene, according to the statement. Achaj was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead, authorities said.

Police said speed and alcohol were not factors and asked anyone with information about the incident to contact them at 703-280-0543.
Virginia lawmakers gave a critical boost to creation of a new Metro safety oversight body Thursday, but they added a condition requiring that the state open talks with its partners on reforming the transit agencys governing structure, labor relations and financing.

The action by the House Transportation Committee led both Republicans and Democrats in Richmond to express confidence that the current General Assembly session would approve a bill creating the long-delayed Metro Safety Commission as required by the federal government.

Even though Virginia, Maryland and the District are certain to miss a deadline next week for creating the oversight body, they hope that theyve made enough progress to forestall the Federal Transit Administration from following through on a threat to punish them by withholding millions of dollars of transit aid.

[Virginia GOP lawmakers threaten to derail Metro safety body  but maybe only temporarily ]

The D.C. Council has already approved legislation to create the commission, and the Maryland General Assembly is expected to do so in the current session.

A twist in Richmond was the committees bipartisan approval of compromise language, drafted by Republican delegates and the administration of Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), that could lead to far-reaching changes at Metro.

The new language requires the states transportation secretary to open discussions with the District, Maryland and the federal government on rewriting the Metro compact, which dictates how the agency is governed and financed. The talks would seek a list of unspecified reforms of Metros board, labor costs, pension deficit, safety operations and overall efficiency.

[Following concession, Md. and Va. lawmakers expected to approve Metro safety body]

The initiative reflects growing interest in Virginia, in Congress and from the regions business community in seeking fundamental changes at Metro to address its problems with safety, reliability and finances.

Its time to put pencil to paper and get this done, said Del. James M. LeMunyon (R-Fairfax), the bills sponsor. Get a new compact revised so it can be approved by the three jurisdictions and the federal government.

LeMunyon said Metro needs to be repaired in a number of different ways so we have financial stability for the long term, and we have a governing body thats functional.

Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne, who negotiated the compromise with LeMunyon and Del. J. Randall Minchew (R-Loudoun), echoed the sentiment.

We want to send a clear signal that Virginia is serious about doing this, Layne said.

Layne and the Democrats won a significant concession by softening a Republican-backed provision that would have blocked forming the safety commission until the Metro compact was changed. It would have required a compact with weaker union protections and a fix to Metros pension deficit of nearly $3 billion.

That provision, now dropped, would have effectively killed prospects of setting up the safety commission this year. Thats because it would take months or even years to win agreement among Virginia, the District, Maryland and the federal government on changing the compact.

Md. and Va. wont meet deadline for new Metro safety body. What happens now?]

The three jurisdictions have admitted they wont set up the safety commission by Feb. 9 as demanded by former transportation secretary Anthony Foxx. It isnt clear whether his successor, Elaine Chao, whose nomination was confirmed Tuesday by the U.S. Senate, will follow through with Foxxs threat.

The commission, with six voting members, is to assume oversight control from the FTA. Foxx took the unprecedented step of handing the FTA responsibility over a year ago, after federal officials determined that the former body responsible, the Tri-State Oversight Committee, was inadequate.

The commission will be empowered to adopt and enforce Metro safety rules, conduct inspections, order corrective action plans, impose fines for noncompliance, issue subpoenas and compel the agency to spend more money on safety-critical issues.

[2 U.S. lawmakers want to fix Metro by rewriting its governing charter]

Virginias push to revise the compact comes as two U.S. House members, Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) and Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.), are preparing separate legislation designed to force changes in the document.

The compact, approved in 1966, created Metros complicated governing structure and funding formulas.

Although an increasing number of elected officials, business leaders and others are calling for changes in the compact, there are major disagreements over what those changes should be.

In particular, while Republicans and some Democrats favor weakening union protections by eliminating binding arbitration of labor disputes, many Democrats view such a proposal as a nonstarter.

Critics say binding arbitration has led to inflated labor costs. Without binding arbitration, however, Metros unions would be free to stage strikes that would cripple a system that hundreds of thousands depend on daily.

In addition, many Democrats want any changes in the compact to add a dedicated funding source for Metro. But Republicans, including Comstock, say no funding measures can be added until Metros governance is reformed.

The compromise language in the Virginia bill says both issues should be addressed, but doesnt take a position on either.

It calls for reforms in the compact necessary to ensure the near term and long term viability of Metro.

Regarding the union, it says only that the reforms should be related to labor costs and labor relations.

It doesnt say anything specific about funding, but calls for financial and operational improvements necessary to ensure that [Metros] performance is at least as efficient as its closest comparable transit systems in the United States.

The bill requires the Virginia transportation secretary to deliver quarterly reports to the legislature on progress on reforming the compact.

Neither the District nor Maryland would comment on the prospect of the talks with Virginia. A spokeswoman for Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said his office would look at the bill after final passage. A spokesman for the District Department of Transportation said, It would be premature for us to comment on any future conversations with our partners.

The District spokesman added that the committee vote in Richmond bodes well for the three jurisdictions that have worked so closely to move the MSC compact forward.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) speaks to Muslims after attending a Muslim community leader roundtable and prayer service at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque on Friday. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

Ashburn resident Amr Said came to the All Dulles Area Muslim Society mosque in Sterling to pray on Friday, seeking to restore his spirit a week after the unveiling of a Trump administration ban on travel that is keeping hundreds of fellow Muslims from entering the United States.

As he walked up the center stairs amid scores of other immigrants, Said, 35, saw a crowd of about 100 people holding signs that read We are here for you and You belong.

Inside, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark R. Herring delivered essentially the same message. Herring had come from the federal courthouse in Alexandria, where a judge agreed earlier Friday to move forward with a lawsuit seeking an injunction against the executive order that put the travel ban in place.

We are here to send a message to President Trump that we will not stand by and allow his unlawful, unconstitutional and morally repugnant executive order, McAuliffe, like Herring a Democrat, bellowed to the cheering worshipers after they had finished the midday prayers.

His remarks, and the demonstration outside, filled Said with hope. It makes a lot of difference, a lot of difference, said Said, a software engineer who is originally from Egypt and who shook hands with several of the sign holders while exiting the mosque. I feel that [the ban] is not going to continue if everyone speaks up.

Supporters of the Muslim community stand outside with signs as people arrive for Friday prayers. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)

[Who is affected by Trump travel ban]

In an area of Northern Virginia where the Muslim population has been increasing for more than two decades, the public reaction to Trumps executive order so far has been mostly one of outrage.

Many residents have come to know their Muslim neighbors through the 34-year-old Adams Center, one of the largest mosques in the country.

Sitting near a bustling Sterling shopping center, the Adams Center hosts 450 Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, about a dozen of whom joined Fridays protest wearing their uniforms.

The mosque partners with churches and synagogues to feed the poor, raises money to support U.S. military families and is a regular stopping point for local politicians seeking to win votes.

We believe in engagement, totally, at every level, said Rizwan Jaka, chair of the centers board of trustees. At the same time, we will advocate for our rights.

On Friday, Jaka and other local leaders urged those who came to the mosque to work to defeat the Trump executive order, which halts refugee visas and entry of citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries until stricter security vetting can be put in place.

McAuliffe, Herring and Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who is running for governor in November, showed up to express support.

While their visit was carefully orchestrated, the demonstration outside the mosque was mostly spontaneous.

It started with a half-satirical social-media post written by Rasha Saad, 32, of Ashburn, after she watched television news reports this week showing distressed families waiting for their loved ones to appear at airports across the country.

Im taking bets on how long you think I will be put in a camp, Saad, who is Muslim, wrote to a Facebook group of Loudoun County women to which she belongs and whose members discuss politics. One month? Six months?

The post prompted scores of sympathetic messages. Then someone suggested that the group demonstrate its concern for all Muslims in the area by appearing with encouraging signs at the Adams Center during Friday prayers.

The women, most of them white, stood outside the mosque with their signs while the faithful prayed and the politicians preached. One placard showed an angry Statue of Liberty embracing a woman wearing a hijab. Another said, We support our Muslim neighbors.

I lived in Bahrain for a while, said Brynn Quick, 32, who was among those who coordinated the demonstration. Im picturing the faces of my friends, and some of them were from those seven countries. Im picturing them, and not some nebulous other. 

McAuliffe and the other elected officials heard about the impact of the ban when they sat with local leaders inside the Adams Center.

Anab Ali, a registered nurse who is originally from Somalia, said both a nephew and a sister-in-law were kept from returning to the United States this week. Both are currently in the United Arab Emirates.

Ever since, our family is really, really hurting, Ali, who lives in Ashburn, told McAuliffe.

The governor expressed his sympathy. Then, he encouraged everyone in the room to channel their frustration politically.

Weve got to get people to run for office who stand for the beliefs that we stand for, McAuliffe said, expressing frustration over people who chose not to vote in Novembers presidential election. Now, I run into them and they say: I wish Id voted. Boy, you bet.
Fairfax City residents will vote Tuesday in a municipal election that will help close the door on a dark, embarrassing chapter for their small Northern Virginia community.

The three City Council members running for mayor  Eleanor D. Schmidt, Michael J. DeMarco and David L. Meyer  believe that their home town must rebuild its image after last summers arrest of then-Mayor R. Scott Silverthorne in a sordid meth-for-sex scheme.

As theyve campaigned through the community of strip malls and Colonial-style homes, each has vowed to be a steady leader who will work to restore the citys integrity while guiding its 24,000 residents through problems with traffic and aging commercial corridors.

Getting some stability back in the mayors office is going to be really important, said DeMarco, 56. Weve been focusing our attention on activities that we really shouldnt have to focus on, as opposed to the issues at hand, which are economic growth, affordable housing and so forth.

Silverthorne, 51, is scheduled to appear before a Fairfax County judge the day after the election to face a felony charge of distribution of methamphetamine and a misdemeanor charge of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Prosecutors said the longtime mayor agreed to give an undercover officer two grams of crystal methamphetamine in exchange for an orgy with other men at a Tysons Corner hotel.

Television comedians are making fun of Fairfax coast to coast, Fairfax resident Matt Baird, 50, told the City Council during a public meeting in late December. Friends of mine in Los Angeles are calling me up saying, Hey  whats going on in Fairfax City? I think you need to do a positive P.R. move.

During the six months since Silverthornes arrest made international headlines, city leaders have quietly worked to patch up the damage done inside City Hall. The council appointed an interim mayor, Steven C. Stombres, to help push through projects that needed city approvals and assure leaders in surrounding jurisdictions that Fairfax City was in good hands.

What the job called for was a no-nonsense approach to just get the job done and provide stability in a time of transition, said Stombres, who had been a chief of staff to former House majority leader Eric Cantor (R) and who now works at a Washington lobbying firm.

Stombres, who served on the City Council between 2008 and 2014, will step down once a new mayor is sworn in.

The nonpartisan mayoral race has focused mostly on economic development and traffic congestion in Fairfax, which sits just off Interstate 66 nearly 20 miles west of Washington, D.C.

DeMarco, a former senior executive for the ExxonMobil oil company, has campaigned on a smart-growth platform, urging voters to embrace the idea of more mixed-use developments where residents can walk to restaurants and stores and drive less frequently. He has been vocal about creating strategies for long-term growth, arguing that Fairfax needs to do more to attract young professionals as older residents reach retirement age.

The neighboring jurisdictions are in competition with us, DeMarco said, referring to the luxury apartments, restaurants and boutique stores that have revived Arlington Countys Ballston neighborhood and the Mosaic District in Fairfax County. If we dont provide the same types of places for people to live and enjoy, I think were going to die on the vine.

Schmidt, who works as an executive vice president at Cardinal Bank, argues for more measured growth, noting that rush-hour traffic is already miserable in some sections of the city. With 1,000 new apartments and townhouses slated to be built over the next four years, it could get a lot worse.

We dont know how that is going to impact traffic yet. We dont know how that will impact schools, said Schmidt, 56. Looking at future approvals, we need to be very cautious and balanced.

Meyer, a former senior executive at the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is focused on redeveloping some long-idle parcels  in particular, the vacant Fairfax Circle strip mall, a community eyesore frequented by homeless men and women.

Plans for a new shopping center stalled several years ago.

Its a terrible sight to see when you first enter the city, said Meyer, 65. The absolute first order of business of our new council will be to jump-start that project.

Meyer also argues for more affordable housing for elderly residents who are at risk of being priced out of the city where they have lived for decades. They would like to stay in Fairfax, Meyer said. I believe that the city should get serious about having some high-quality senior housing.

With Silverthornes legal problems as a backdrop, the level of interest in this election seems higher than previous mayoral elections.

A recent candidates forum had a standing-room-only crowd, and the audience inside the Old Town Hall listened intently as candidates debated development and whether it makes sense to re-brand their community as Fairfax City instead of The City of Fairfax.

Silverthorne, who has not returned calls from reporters or posted on social media since his arrest, has not weighed in on the election or endorsed any of the candidates.

The city has not yet scheduled a special election to replace whichever council member wins the mayors seat.

[A beloved mayor. An alleged meth-for-sex scheme. And a secret life exposed]
Daniel Glaser has not seen La La Land. But he knows that the Oscar-nominated film has singing in it. Thats interesting to him  from a neuroscience point of view.

He promises to share that perspective each week in his new podcast, A Neuroscientist Explains, which is based on Glasers regular column of the same name in the Guardians Observer magazine. His 200-word space is too tight to explain much of anything, so on the podcast Glaser delves deeper into topics he can only flick at in print. And he does it in a particularly British way  for example, by invoking imagery of pub bathrooms and words such as knackered.

In the debut episode, Glaser turns his attention to the popularity of the Emma Stone-Ryan Gosling musical. (Hes pretty sure those are the two stars, anyway.) His theory? The tunes provide audiences with a way to escape in these troubled times.

Music as therapy is a growing area of research, and what particularly fascinates Glaser is that the biology of words that are sung seems to be different from the biology of words that are spoken.

Specific bits of the brain are in charge of certain tasks, explains Glaser, who suggests that if you want to know more, just run an Internet search on speech area brain. Anyway, thats why someone who has sustained damage to the brain and lost the ability to speak might nonetheless be able to burst into song.

To learn more about the topic, Glaser calls on his pal Lauren Stewart, a psychologist from Goldsmiths University of London and the co-director of the Center for Music in the Brain at Aarhus University in Denmark.

The relationships we form with songs are incredible, she says, citing her own recent experience rocking out to a Madonna album. It was the first tape she acquired for her Walkman, and although she hadnt heard most of it in 30 years, she remembered every tune and lyric. For Alzheimers patients, theres a lot of potential in that kind of recall.

Theres also promising work being done with melodic intonation therapy, which can help patients with aphasia learn to say specific phrases, Stewart explains. And linking movement to music can lead to remarkable rehabilitation results.

But Stewart isnt onboard with Glasers notion that La La Land is popular because music offers a way to disengage from the world. Its the opposite, she says: Music brings people together, and it gives them another way to protest. Also, shes actually seen the movie.
NC directs NSU to agree to age bar

The Nepali Congress leadership has instructed the leaders of its sister wing Nepal Student Union to take part in the Free Student Union elections, agreeing to the Tribhuvan Universitys decision to impose an age bar of 28 years for the candidates.
A dead humpback whale, found floating in the Cheaspeake Bay on Thursday, was towed to Craney Island in Portsmouth, Va. Jennifer Keen, left, a volunteer, Kristy Phillips, a necropsy manager, and Alex Costidis, coordinator with the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center's Stranding Response team, examined the juvenile marine mammal Friday. (The' N. Pham/Virginian-Pilot via AP)

NEW YORK

Strict prison security to remain for El Chapo

Lawyers for Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman complained on Friday that he was being subjected to excessive conditions of confinement in a federal jail and that his wife was not being allowed to visit him.

The arguments came in federal court in Brooklyn at a hearing for Guzman, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he ran the worlds largest drug-trafficking organization during a decades-long career. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Guzmans wife, Emma Coronel, flew from Mexico to attend the hearing, his second appearance in a U.S. court. His lawyers said the hearing was the first time Coronel had seen Guzman since his surprise extradition two weeks ago.

Guzman, 59, who has escaped two maximum-security jails in Mexico, is on 23-hour lockdown in a special unit in the federal jail in Manhattan, his lawyers said, and he has been prevented from seeing Coronel and his Mexican attorney.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said he would defer to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to determine what conditions were set and who Guzman could see, saying the history of the defendant is somewhat unusual.

Based on what I know of this case, there are grounds for taking additional security measures, Cogan said.

Guzmans cartel allegedly smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States while waging war with other cartels, carrying out thousands of murders and kidnappings and bribing officials.

Prosecutors have said that after Guzman was extradited to face indictments in California and Texas, the Mexican government approved a U.S. request to prosecute him in New York.

 Reuters

COLORADO

Man faces murder charges over shooting

A man accused of walking up behind a Denver transit guard and shooting him on a street corner was charged with first-degree murder on Friday as authorities said they continued to investigate the slaying.

Joshua Cummings, 37, was advised of the charge filed against him in the death of Scott Von Lanken during a brief court appearance. He wore a red jail jumpsuit and had his arms and legs shackled as he faced District Judge Martin Egelhoff.

Before he was led away, Cummings, a Texas-born convert to Islam, asked his lawyer for help getting a Koran, saying jail officials had been dragging their feet.

Denver District Attorney Beth McCann declined to comment on concerns raised by members of mosques that Cummings attended in Texas and Colorado about hard-line comments.

A leader at a Denver-area mosque emailed the Department of Homeland Security to say a man identifying himself only as a Muslim convert named Joshua, from Pampa, Tex., made worrisome statements during a Dec. 24 lunch and at an earlier event, according to a copy of the email released Thursday by Qusair Mohamedbhai, an attorney for the mosque. At an open house earlier in December, Joshua publicly rebuked a speaker as being soft on Sharia law, the email said.

 Associated Press

Explosion destroys home, kills one in Ga.: A powerful explosion destroyed a home in Georgia on Friday, killing one person inside and shattering windows of neighboring houses. White County Sheriff Neal Walden said the explosion Friday killed one person inside the home in Cleveland, Ga., but said there were no other injuries. Investigators have not yet determined what triggered the blast, which occurred in the mountainous northeast corner of the state, about 90 miles from Atlanta and about 30 miles from the Tennessee state line. Woods surrounding the home were set ablaze, but firefighters were able to contain the flames.

 Associated Press
YEMEN

Ships shell suspected al-Qaeda strongholds

Warships shelled suspected al-Qaeda strongholds in southern Yemen on Thursday, government officials said.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they believed U.S. forces carried out the operation, although a Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, quickly denied any U.S. involvement.

The strikes come less than a week after a covert U.S. Navy SEAL raid, also in Yemens south, the first mission ordered by Donald Trump as president.

The naval attacks appear to be part of an intensifying campaign against one of the most active branches of the Islamist militant network. Ships fired several missiles towards the al-Maraqisha mountains, where

al-Qaeda elements are based, said one official. We have received no information on the outcome of the shelling.

Al-Qaeda militants took refuge in those mountains last year after Yemeni government forces, backed by Arab coalition aircraft, drove them from the cities of Zinjibar and Jaar.

 Reuters

UKRAINE

Artillery fire shakes the east for a 5th day

Salvos of artillery shook eastern Ukraine on Thursday, the fifth day of escalated fighting between government troops and Russian-backed separatist rebels.

Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 10 others wounded, the government said, while rebels said one of their fighters was killed. At least 15 people have been reported killed since the fighting around Avdiivka surged over the weekend. More than 9,700 have been killed since the war with separatist rebels began in 2014.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused Ukraine of starting the latest escalation to rally support from the new U.S. administration.

Ukraine is concerned that President Trump could roll back some sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine and that European Union members could follow suit.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a letter to Trump that Russia is testing him and that the United States should give Ukraine the lethal aid it needs to defend against the attacks.

 Associated Press

Brazil picks new judge for corruption cases: Brazils Supreme Court picked its newest member, Justice Edson Fachin, to take over corruption cases from Justice Teori Zavascki, who died in a plane crash two weeks ago. Fachins first task will be to act on explosive plea bargain testimony to prosecutors by 77 executives of engineering conglomerate Odebrecht. It reportedly names dozens of politicians who took kickbacks, including members of President Michel Temers government and leaders of his PMDB party.

Merkel urges Turkish people to uphold democracy: German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged Turkey to uphold democracy as the country heads toward a critical referendum on boosting the powers of the presidency. I pointed out that in such a phase of deep political change, everything must be done to preserve the separation of powers, and above all freedom of opinion and the plurality of society, Merkel told reporters during a joint news conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Merkel was in Ankara for talks aimed at soothing relations that have been strained by, among other things, Turkish accusations that Germany does not support it in its fight against terror groups.

Italy vows to help Libya seal its borders: Italy pledged money, training and equipment to help the U.N.-backed Libyan government curb the flow of migrants to Europe and called on European Union leaders to do the same when they meet Friday in Malta. The agreement aims mainly at providing training and equipment needed to better control Libyas vast desert borders and bolster its limited coast guard fleet. Italy will use

a 200-million-euro fund it launched this week to help Libya, without saying how much it would receive.

Trudeau addresses funeral for 3 victims of mosque shooting: The massacre Sunday at a Quebec City mosque left Canada in shock but has also unified the country in solidarity with the Muslim community, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a funeral for three of the six men killed in the attack. Trudeau greeted the thousands gathered at Quebecs Maurice Richard Arena in Arabic, saying, As-salaam-alaikum, or Peace be unto you, drawing rounds of applause. Six people were killed and 19 wounded when a gunman entered the mosque and opened fire during evening prayers.

Frances Fillon probe expands to son, daughter: Conservative Francois Fillon, once the front-runner in Frances presidential race, faces a political storm after the national prosecutors office expanded its investigation into his wife, Penelope, to include a son and a daughter. Prosecutors are investigating Penelope Fillons work as a parliamentary worker in her husbands office, seeking to determine whether there are grounds to suspect embezzlement of public funds. Now daughter Marie and son Charles are also reportedly under investigation.

 From news services
BURMA

Suu Kyi promises Rohingya abuse probe

The top United Nations human rights official said Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi promised Friday to investigate allegations of atrocities against Rohingya Muslims.

Security forces and police have committed mass killings and gang rapes, and burned villages in northern Rakhine state, a new U.N. investigation found.

I did speak to Aung San Suu Kyi about an hour and a half ago. I called upon her to use every means available to exert pressure on the military and the security services to end this operation, said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al-Hussein.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is a mostly Buddhist country. Previously it has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses against Muslims in northern Rakhine and has said a lawful counterinsurgency campaign is underway. Since that campaign began Oct. 9, about 69,000 Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh. The U.N. report was based on accounts gathered in January from 220 of those individuals.

 Reuters

FRANCE

Scandal-hit Fillon clings to candidacy

Francois Fillon clung to his role as Frances conservative presidential candidate amid worsening opinion poll ratings and speculation about his ability to carry on after accusations that his wife received public money for work she did not do.

Police carried out searches at the Senate in connection with the fake-job allegations Friday, looking in particular for information concerning payments to Charles and Marie, two of Fillons children, the public prosecutor said.

A poll that evening showed that Fillon, once the comfortable front-runner in the race for the presidency, would not make it into the runoff. The Ifop-Fiducial poll showed him in third place behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

Senate President Gerard Larcher, named by some politicians as a desirable substitute if Fillon bows out, took to Twitter to deny a report in news publication LObs that he was about to withdraw his support for Fillon.

 Reuters

Norway says Russians hacked civil servants email: Nine personal email accounts belonging to civil servants in Norway have been targeted by hackers in spear-phishing attacks believed to be associated with Russian intelligence, the Norwegian security service said. No classified information was taken, it said. Spokesman Martin Berntsen of the PST security service said the attacks had a signature indicating that those behind the hacking can be identified as APT29. APT29 was an another name for Cozy Bear, the hackers that last year broke into U.S. Democratic National Committee computers and earlier infiltrated unclassified networks at the White House, State Department and Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Zimbabwe court denies bail to protest-leading pastor: A Zimbabwean pastor at the heart of a movement against President Robert Mugabe was denied bail, leaving him facing at least two weeks in jail before his next hearing on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. The Rev. Evan Mawarire  whose #ThisFlag movement last year led to the biggest antigovernment rallies in a decade  also is charged with inciting violence and insulting the national flag. He was arrested Wednesday on his return from self-imposed exile in the United States.

Homicides in Mexico rise by 22 percent: Homicides in Mexico rose by 22 percent in 2016, the government reported, the steepest rate of increase since the height of the drug war. Official statistics released by the Interior Department show that Mexico had 20,789 homicides in 2016, compared with 17,034 in 2015. Some states saw murders rise by dizzying levels. Homicides in the Pacific Coast state of Colima more than tripled, and in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz, they more than doubled. Murders also rose by 42 percent in the border state of Baja California, 30 percent in the border state of Chihuahua and 65 percent in the western state of Michoacan.

Whale found with plastic in its stomach: Norwegian zoologists have found about 30 plastic bags and other plastic waste in the stomach of a whale that had beached on a coast in the countrys southwest. The visibly sick, two-ton goose-beaked whale was euthanized, said Terje Lislevand of Bergen University. The United Nations estimates that 8 million tons of plastic trash are dumped into the worlds oceans each year, he said.

 From news services
NC General Secy Koirala accuses Maoist of delaying election

Nepali Congress (NC) General Secretary Shashank Koirala has accused his partys ruling partner CPN (Maoist Centre) of delaying the elections in the country.
Senate Democrats should use any and all means, including the filibuster, to block confirmation of President Trumps Supreme Court nominee. They will almost surely fail. But sometimes you have to lose a battle to win a war.

This is purely about politics. Republicans hold the presidency, majorities in the House and Senate, 33 governorships and control of the legislatures in 32 states. If the Democratic Party is going to become relevant again outside of its coastal redoubts, it has to start winning some elections  and turning the other cheek on this court fight is not the way to begin.

Trumps pick, Judge Neil Gorsuch , has the resume required of a Supreme Court justice. But so did Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamas last nominee, to whom Senate Republicans would not even extend the courtesy of a hearing, let alone a vote. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) left the late Antonin Scalias seat open for nearly a year to keep Obama from filling it. That, too, was purely about politics.

Im not counseling eye-for-an-eye revenge. Im advising Democrats to consider what course of action is most likely to improve their chances of making gains in 2018, at both the state and national levels.

The partys progressive base is angry and mobilized. Many Democrats are convinced that FBI Director James B. Comey and Russian President Vladimir Putin decided the election. The very idea of a Trump presidency sparked vast, unprecedented demonstrations in Washington and other cities the day after the inauguration.

(Bastien Inzaurralde,Alice Li/The Washington Post)

In the two weeks since, Trump has only piled outrage upon outrage, as far as progressives are concerned. He took the first steps toward building his ridiculous wall along the southern border, but with U.S. taxpayers dollars, not Mexicos. He squelched government experts who work on climate change. He weakened the Affordable Care Act in the hope that it would begin to collapse, which would make it easier for Congress to kill it. He displayed comic ignorance of our history. (Somebody please tell him that Frederick Douglass has been dead since 1895.) He signed executive orders banning entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world, an action so appalling that enormous numbers of people gathered at major airports in protest.

And Trump is just getting started. Democrats cannot even limit the damage, let alone reverse it, without more power than they have now.

That is the political context into which the Gorsuch nomination arrives. From my reading of the progressive crowds that have recently taken to the streets, the Democratic base is in no mood to hear about the clubby traditions and courtesies of the Senate. The base is itching for a fight.

The way McConnell, et al. treated the Garland nomination was indeed unforgivable. Senators who fail to remember that will get an earful from their constituents  and, potentially, a challenge in the next primary. More importantly, those senators will be passing up a rare political opportunity.

With just 48 votes, all Senate Democrats can do is filibuster, denying McConnell the 60 votes he needs for a final vote on the nomination. In response, McConnell could employ the nuclear option  changing the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations. In the end, Gorsuch would be approved anyway.

But I believe Democrats should wage, and lose, this fight. The 60-vote standard looks more and more like an anachronistic holdover from the time when senators prided themselves on putting the nation ahead of ideology. These days, so many votes hew strictly to party lines that it is difficult to get anything done. The Senate is supposed to be deliberative, not paralyzed.

And I cant help thinking back to 2009. Republicans made an all-out effort to stop the Affordable Care Act. Their motives were purely political; some GOP senators railed against policies they had favored in the past. Ultimately, they failed. Obamacare became law.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

But this losing battle gave tremendous energy and passion to the tea party movement  which propelled Republicans to a sweeping victory in the 2010 midterm election. It is hard not to see an analogous situation on the Democratic side right now.

Democrats cannot stop Gorsuch from being confirmed. But they can hearten and animate the partys base by fighting this nomination tooth and nail, even if it means giving up some of the backslapping comity of the Senate cloakroom. They can inspire grass-roots activists to fight just as hard to win back state legislatures and governorships. They can help make 2018 a Democratic year.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Catherine Rampells Jan. 31 op-ed, When will the GOP say enough?, and a front-page article the same day, Furor over ban reveals White House, GOP rifts, captured the gutless response from Republicans in Congress to the clumsy actions coming from the White House with its immigration directive. My hope, until Congress finds the integrity to act, is with the federal judiciary.

While lifetime appointments of federal judges are sometimes criticized, it is exactly for the circumstances we are facing that federal judges are insulated from political pressure.

I feel a bit like Princess Leia asking Obi-Wan Kenobi for help, but the federal judiciary is our only hope against the ineffective and expensive and probably illegal actions President Trump is trying to take.

Sheila A. Albin, Bethesda

It was not a member of Congress who challenged Sen. Joseph McCarthy in 1954; it was the chief counsel for the U.S. Army, Joseph N. Welch, who said to McCarthy: Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Are congressional Republicans going to cede their moral authority again, or will they have the courage to challenge President Trumps excesses? Many of us are asking the GOP: Have you no sense of decency?

Barbara Miller, Annandale
For a phenomenon often dubbed the worlds oldest hatred, anti-Semitism is not well understood. From top Iranian officials who blame the Talmud for the international drug trade to British political activists who claim that the Mossad is stealing their shoes, anti-Jewish bigotry can be bewildering and bizarre. But given the prejudices longevity, virulence and recent resurgence in Europe and America  witness the waves of bomb threats against dozens of Jewish centers nationwide in the past month and the controversy over the Trump administrations repeated refusal to include Jews in its Holocaust memorial statement  its well worth debunking common misconceptions that impede our ability to fight it.

Myth No. 1

Anti-Semitism largely subsided after the Holocaust.

In my time reporting on anti-Semitism, Ive often encountered a certain well-meaning skepticism: Didnt the Holocaust, with its shocking horrors, finally compel society to stamp out anti-Jewish bigotry? Sophisticated people dont write this idea down, but its one I hear constantly in my reporting.

This is profoundly, depressingly wrong. According to the FBI, Jews in the United States are annually subject to the most hate crimes of any religious group, despite constituting only 2 percent of the American population. The picture is considerably darker in Europe, where Jews were the target of 51 percent of racist attacks in France in 2014, even as they made up less than 1 percent of that countrys population. In recent years, synagogues and Jewish schools and museums have been subject to terrorist attacks in France, Denmark and Belgium. A 2013 E.U. survey found that nearly 40 percent of European Jews fear to publicly identify as Jewish, including 60 percent of Swedish Jews. Non-Western examples abound as well. Populations of Jews in Arab lands, which once numbered nearly 1 million, have been reduced to only a few thousand, having been persecuted to the point of expulsion or flight in the past century.

These facts underscore a crucial point: Its wrong to subsume anti-Semitism under Nazism, its worst manifestation, when the centuries-old prejudice usually takes less extreme or exterminationist forms. The end of American slavery did not mean the end of American racism; likewise, the end of Nazism as a dominant political force did not silence anti-Semitism.

Myth No. 2

Anti-Semitism comes predominantly from the right.

This past election season, the ascendant alt-right, a band of reactionary white nationalists with a penchant for harassing Jewish journalists, filled Twitter with neo-Nazi memes, Photoshopped reporters into gas chambers and concentration camps, and chanted anti-Semitic slogans at political rallies. (My critical reporting on Trump made me the second-most-harassed Jewish journalist on Twitter, according to an Anti-Defamation League study.) One could be forgiven for assuming that such bigotry flows from one primary political source.

But anti-Semitic outbursts were taking place on the left at the same time. At liberal Oberlin College, a writing instructor named Joy Karega shared Facebook memes about Jewish control of the global economy and media, alongside posts asserting Israeli responsibility for the Islamic State and 9/11. Yet when school officials and others criticized her conduct, the student council dismissed it as a witch-hunt. In New York, despite a local outcry, the hip leftist hub Brooklyn Commons hosted Christopher Bollyn, a conspiracy theorist who argued that Zionist Jews were behind 9/11. During the Democratic primaries, Jewish candidate Bernie Sanders was confronted by a questioner who declared that the Zionist Jews . . . run the Federal Reserve, they run Wall Street, they run every campaign. Surveying this scene, TBS comedian Samantha Bee aired footage of an anti-Semite ranting at a Trump rally, then cracked, To find anti-Semitism that rabid, youd have to go to, well, any left-leaning American college campus.

This bipartisan bigotry shouldnt surprise. Anti-Semitism could never have attained its impressive influence without forging coalitions across ideological and religious lines. Hatred of Jews has long thrived on its ability to ensnare utterly opposite worldviews. Thus, the 2013 E.U. survey found that Italian and Swedish Jews perceived more anti-Semitic statements coming from the left, Hungarian Jews heard them overwhelmingly from Christians and the right, and French Jews reported abuse largely from Muslim extremists. Its tempting to cast anti-Semitism as the sin of other people, but thats usually a way to avoid confronting the problem within ones own community.

Myth No. 3

Criticism of Israel is generally anti-Semitic.

The state of Israel often confounds the anti-Semitism conversation. Some assume that an attack on Israel and its policies must necessarily be an attack on Jews; evangelical leader Franklin Graham, for instance, dubbed criticism of Israeli settlers an assault on Gods chosen people. Others justify their attacks on Jews around the world by pointing to Israel, claiming to be anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. Much of this confusion stems from the conflation of all Jews with the state of Israel, its government and its policies.

Criticism of Israel, however, is not necessarily anti-Semitic. In fact, it is a popular pastime in Israel and among Jews across the globe. Objections to settlements, for instance, or even calls to boycott them are debatable political positions, not bigoted slurs. Dovish proponents of such views are no more promulgating anti-Jewish prejudice than those security hawks and religious nationalists who have opposed Israels land concessions for peace. Israel is a democracy  and can be held to account for its actions, just like any other country.

Myth No. 4

Criticism of Israel cannot be anti-Semitic.

At the same time, criticism of the Jewish state can mask malice toward Jews. Some cases are obvious, such as when the organizers of a 2010 flotilla that aimed to breach Israels maritime blockade of Gaza subsequently denied the Holocaust and claimed that Israel was behind the Charlie Hebdo massacre. Similarly, those who accuse Israel of committing Palestinian genocide, when the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics records a four-fold population increase since Israels founding, are engaging in libel, not legitimate argument.

In other, less-blatant cases, Israel is subjected to criticism leveled at no non-Jewish country. Consider the United Nations, whose Human Rights Council has condemned Israel more often than all other countries combined, including Syria, North Korea, Iran and Russia. As President Barack Obamas U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, put it, As long as Israel has been a member of this institution, Israel has been treated differently from other nations at the United Nations. In October, one U.N. body even passed a resolution denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalems Temple Mount, Judaisms holiest site.

What these unfortunate approaches all share is that they treat the Jewish state in much the same way anti-Semites have historically treated Jews: singling them out for censure and implicating them in outlandish conspiracies.

Myth No. 5

Anti-Semitism mostly threatens Jews.

Most bigotries debilitate their targets while empowering their disseminators, much like slavery and redlining enriched Americas white majority at the expense of its African American minority. Many successful societies have been built atop prejudices.

Anti-Semitism, however, is a unique case  and uniquely corrosive to those societies that embrace it. Thats because it often takes the form of a conspiracy theory about how the world works. By blaming real problems on imagined Jewish culprits, anti-Semitism prevents societies from rationally solving them. In one of the most famous examples, Nazi scientists shunned Einsteins advances as Judische Physik, as opposed to Deutsche Physik, enfeebling their understanding.

As Bard Colleges Walter Russell Mead has put it: People who think the Jews dominate business through hidden structures cant build or long maintain a successful modern economy. People who think the Jews dominate politics lose their ability to interpret political events, to diagnose social evils and to organize effectively for positive change. People who think the Jews run the media and control the news lose the ability to grasp what is happening around them. For this reason, Mead has warned, Rabid anti-Semitism coupled with an addiction to implausible conspiracy theories is a very strong predictor of national doom. This is one case where the hatred ultimately destroys the hater.

Twitter: @Yair_Rosenberg

Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.
ONE DAY after President Trump and Vladimir Putin held their first phone call, Russian-backed forces mounted their largest offensive in months in eastern Ukraine. Now, days later, one of Russias most prominent opposition activists is in a coma in a Moscow hospital, where he was rushed after suddenly taking ill on Thursday morning. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a writer and civil- society activist with many supporters in Washington, is believed by his family to be the victim of a poisoning attack  the second they believe he has suffered since 2015.

His agony most likely holds a message from Mr. Putin to the new Trump administration. Since 2014, the Kremlin has endured sanctions from the United States and the European Union for its aggression in Ukraine and for human rights violations, such as the killings of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. With the new assault on Ukraine and the felling of Mr. Kara-Murza, the Kremlin hopes to establish that such crimes will be tolerated by the new U.S. president as part of a refounded relationship with Moscow.

So far, Mr. Putins gambit is succeeding: Mr. Trump, while sparring with close U.S. ally Australia, has had nothing to say about the events in Ukraine and Moscow.

Mr. Kara-Murza offered an ideal target for Mr. Putins challenge. The 35-year-old former journalist, a fluent English speaker, was a close associate of Mr. Nemtsov. His family lives outside Washington, and his support in Congress can be intuited from the statements that poured out Thursday from, among others, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

The Kremlin will claim it has nothing to do with Mr. Kara-Murzas sudden illness, just as it denies responsibility for the rockets raining down on Ukrainian army positions. But poisoning has become a well-established menace to Kremlin opponents in the Putin era. One case where near-certainty has been established is that of former KGB agent and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who according to an exhaustive official British investigation was poisoned by Kremlin agents in London in 2006. Half a dozen other poisoning cases are suspected, including of a former president of Ukraine.

Mr. Kara-Murza first suffered from an apparent poisoning attack in May 2015, shortly after he testified in Congress in favor of expanding human rights sanctions on Russia. Suddenly taken ill during a meeting, within hours he was in a Moscow hospitals intensive care unit, his organs failing. Doctors there saved his life but were unable to explain what had afflicted him; tests in France later detected an unusual level of metals in vital organs.

With stunning courage, Mr. Kara-Murza returned to Moscow and resumed his political activities after regaining just enough strength to walk with a cane. When asked if he were not an obvious target for a Kremlin hit, the dissident invariably replied that he believed he had no choice but to go on working for democracy and human rights in his country.

Mr. Kara-Murza is the sort of freedom fighter that the United States has always defended. He walks in the footsteps of Andrei Sakharov and Natan Sharansky, the Soviet-era dissidents whom President Ronald Reagan fought to save. If Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson now do nothing on his behalf, they will show that their administration is ready to appease Mr. Putin at the price of American values.
It is the gist of much Neil Gorsuch coverage that he is a brilliant jurist with one large weakness: being firmly anti-choice. Exhibit A is his book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, in which he scandalously defends the idea that all human beings are intrinsically valuable.

The intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong, he continues, along the same shocking lines.

Gorsuchs detractors see in such statements an existential threat to legal abortion in the United States  though nowhere in the book does the judge define human life to include developing life in the womb.

Gorsuchs allies will defend him by saying that the author of the book has no relationship to the judge who punches in at the text-parsing factory. The work of an originalist and textualist is never undone. It consists mainly of consulting the dictionary to find the plain meaning of words, not applying the principles of moral philosophy. It would not matter if Gorsuch were a utilitarian or a eugenicist; his only duty is to the obvious meaning of laws written by others.

The argument is both useful and absurd. Of course the most basic moral beliefs of a judge matter, in the sense that moral convictions (and upbringing and experience) determine a worldview that none of us can escape. All of us make ethical judgments on the purposes of law and morality that pervade our approach to both.

(Peter Stevenson,Gillian Brockell/The Washington Post)

The largest changes of our time  with massive legal consequences  have been in the realm of moral ideas. Legal liberals quote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy more like scripture than precedent: At the heart of liberty is the right to define ones own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

The liberalism of Eleanor Roosevelt  a commitment to universal human rights  has largely been replaced by Kennedys elevation of personal autonomy. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (which Roosevelt helped shape) honored the inherent dignity and . . . the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family. In the aftermath of World War II, her emphasis was on defending the vulnerable. Kennedys version of liberty is the right of competent adults  by definition, the strongest members of the human family  to define and pursue their own universal mystery.

Is there really no legal consequence in choosing between these two liberal visions of the good? Gorsuchs fine book is a sustained explanation of how and why our most basic conceptions of liberty matter so much. A legal theory that elevates personal choice, even in matters of life and death, is claiming a great deal  even more than many of its advocates wish to admit. If a suffering cancer patient can rightfully ask a doctor to end his or her life, why not a depressed 21-year-old? Or a widow in despair? If autonomy is the rule, there can be no limit, save individual will.

On the other hand, if only the hopelessly ill are allowed to receive a doctors help in killing themselves, a utilitarian social message is unavoidably sent. The general right to life, in this view, is overridden only in cases where people become burdens on themselves and others. How does this not become a social message to the ill and infirm they have a duty to depart? This role also transforms medical providers  making them the means by which a society disposes of life no longer worth living.

There are, as Gorsuch notes, unbelievably difficult choices in the shadow world between life and death. This requires both sensitivity and legal space. But the combination of a personal ethic of absolute autonomy and a social ethic of utilitarianism leads toward some scary territory. The right to die quickly becomes a social duty. And people who should be singled out for particular, loving care are encouraged to become instruments of their own death, with quick and convenient help. This is not a slippery slope but a logical consequence.

There should be one bright legal and social line here: that, as Gorsuch wrote, all human beings are intrinsically valuable, including those who have lost, or never gained, the ability to determine their own concept of existence.

I want a Supreme Court nominee for whom the promises of the Declaration of Independence are the moral and legal context for reading the Constitution. A nominee who believes  even when all human care fails  that Americas basic law still stands for the weak and vulnerable. There is no greater good.

Read more from Michael Gersons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook .
President Trump is finally following through on his promise to Make America Safe Again.

He has begun our long-overdue attack on Australia.

The president gave Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (who is a total failure!) a good chewing out this week, telling him a refugee agreement between the two countries was the worst deal ever, calling their conversation the worst call and abruptly ending the exchange 25 minutes into what was supposed to be an hour-long talk. It was clear from accounts of the talk that Trump thinks Turnbull is almost as much of a basket case as the Mexican guy Trump yelled at the week before.

[Trumps phone calls are worse than his tweets]

Failed presidential candidate John McCain fired off a contrary statement, saying that Australian soldiers have been fighting and dying with Americans for a century (including in Vietnam, where the loser McCain was shot down while Trump heroically battled heel spurs) and that the U.S.-Australia relationship is more important than ever.

But there are many times Australia did not put America First, including the summer Olympics in Rio, where the crooked Australian basketball team almost beat Team USA. Not good!

There are a lot of bad dudes Down Under, and for years, Australia has been sending them to America. They sent third-rate Air Supply, which has NO TALENT. Lost in Love? Pathetic. And Mel Gibson  a dope! Olivia Newton-John: highly overrated  and that Grease reunion shes planning will be a TOTAL EMBARRASSMENT. Crocodile Dundee is a true lowlife, and Nemo is a dumb clownfish. SAD!

Americans have been getting killed in trade with the Australians. The dual-flush toilet, which Australia invented, is doing a terrible job, particularly when you hit the button for No. 1. The selfie, an Australian coinage, was one of the worst ideas in history, along with the spork, which they also came up with. Big-league mess! Vegemite  no, its too disgusting. And they have the most horrible animals. Their snakes are VICIOUS killers , and they have a bird-eating tarantula. Nasty! The cassowaries are BRUTAL, and their kangaroos are attacking innocent dogs. Australian carnage!

[Sorry, President Trump. I agree with you.]

And then theres Outback Steakhouse  total dud! The Bloomin Onion with Aussie Cheese Fries has almost 2,400 calories. So what if the company is based in Florida? Its a big problem!

Its about time a strong American leader showed some antipathy toward the Antipodes.

The morning after Washington took out Canberra, I awoke to discover that while I slept Trump had taken more measures to Make America Safe Again.

He tweeted that Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE. He did not say what this notice means, likely because he was busy getting ready for the National Prayer Breakfast, which provided an obvious opportunity to launch two more attacks, on his old reality show The Apprentice (a total disaster) and its new host, Arnold Schwarzenegger (pray for Arnold).

I was momentarily puzzled: Why go from a fully justified attack on Australia to the ayatollahs and then to Arnold and The Apprentice? Then the brilliance of Trumps strategy came into focus: He is taking an alphabetical approach to Making America Safe Again. I know this as a fact because I used Trumps own method of logical deduction: I think it, ergo its true.

If I am correct, which I am, people in Belgium should be very nervous right now and consider fleeing to France, or, better yet, the Netherlands, which is alphabetically further along (but avoid Amsterdam).

Another B who should be worried is Harold Bornstein, Trumps physician, who this week casually disclosed that Trump takes the anti-baldness drug finasteride, or Propecia. Side effects of finasteride include impotence, weakness, dizziness and swelling of the hands. It cannot be known whether Trump has suffered these, though he has clearly not been afflicted with any enlargement of the hands. In addition, some claim there is a Post-Finasteride Syndrome, which can include severe memory/recall impairment, slowed thought processes and impaired problem solving, decreased comprehension. Thankfully, Trump has never exhibited any of these symptoms.

My alphabet theory, which is totally correct, does not explain other early happenings in the Trump administration, such as downgrading of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA director in national-security decisions, or the raid in Yemen, which led to the killing of a Navy SEAL and some civilians. Military officials told Reuters the operation was approved without sufficient intelligence, support or backup.

But all will be revealed in time  Yemen at the end, with the Ys.

On Friday morning, Trumps tweets were still As: anarchists, and more on Arnold, The Apprentice and the ayatollahs. But he backed off from his belligerence toward Oceania, claiming the talk with Turnbull was really very civil and the media lied.

No! Dont go wobbly, Donald. Remember the Vegemite!

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
The Jan. 31 editorial A pick for the Supreme Court said that Senate Democrats should not filibuster President Trumps Supreme Court pick because the presidents victory was legitimate.

I wonder what it would take to make a president illegitimate. In the election, we likely witnessed the effect of a raft of voting laws enacted by Republicans nationwide since the Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. These laws suppressed turnout in critical swing states by requiring state-issued identification, cutting back early voting and reducing the number of polling places. These laws corrode democracy by making it harder for poor people to vote. Russia interfered by hacking and dumping the internal emails of only one party at a critical time in the election. This interference by a hostile foreign government was encouraged by Mr. Trump. The head of the FBI, James B. Comey, who had refused to tell the Senate whether the FBI was investigating Mr. Trumps connections to Russia, told the nation shortly before Election Day that he was looking afresh at Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clintons emails.

Legitimizing Mr. Trumps electoral college victory validates and normalizes power gained by undermining democracy.

Tracy Zorpette, Washington
At this point, it looks as though every third decision made by the Trump administration will generate spontaneous protests. Chanting in the streets, accusations of fascism, profane grousing on Facebook and Twitter; the word resistance, mostly inactive since the 1960s and 1970s, has suddenly sprung to life.

Maybe we should be heartened, as former president Barack Obama says, by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country. But theres something unreflective about all this engagement, and thats true even if its as rooted in sound morality as the demonstrators believe. When youre demonstrating, youve already decided whats virtuous and whats evil. Most of President Trumps despisers have made their decision. He has earned their ire, and theyre going to give it to him.

The chief occasion for all this unrest, of course, is the presidents executive order on visas. The order places a 90-day ban on entry from countries named in a 2015 law that imposed stricter standards of entry on people coming from Iran and six other countries where Islamic radicals have a large and threatening presence, and it bars refugees from any country for 120 days. The response was instant and explosive  placard-waving protests at airports and other public venues, innumerable commentaries denouncing the Muslim ban, news reports clearly premised on the belief that the ban is immoral and probably illegal, suggestions on social media that Trump didnt target countries where his company has financial interests, and on and on. There were clear grounds for believing the order had been stupidly implemented  the lack of any warning, the fact that permanent residents were swept up into the ban  but the white-hot emotions animating the protests went far beyond arguments over process.

Amid all the bedlam, one quiet story in the New York Times caught my attention. In ban on migrants, the headline announced, Trump supporters see a promise kept. The presidents policy may be causing protests around the country and raising eyebrows abroad, the Times report says. But at home, a large portion of the electorate is behind the president.

Uh-oh. If thats true, one of two things is also true. Either we live in a nation of unbending xenophobes, or the presidents placard-waving detractors have missed something important about the nation in which they live  something far more important than any executive order or immigration policy.

The Times story went on to interview some of these Trump supporters. A gay hotel worker in Staten Island says hes happy about the ban. He references the 49 people killed at an Orlando nightclub. That one really got to me, he says. An owner of a home alarm company in Seattle doesnt think its wrong to wonder who were letting in. It is not irrational that people are worried. . . . I dont think its bad to re-examine what we are doing. An insurance salesman in Boston remembers the Tsarnaev brothers. People say, Never forget and Boston strong, and the only one that I see being Boston strong is President Trump.

Their fears, as the Times report suggests, may be groundless. Since 9/11, as has been pointed out many times over the past week, no American has been killed in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by an immigrant, or even the son or daughter of an immigrant, from any of the seven countries listed in the executive order. Thats true, but (a) its the sort of argument that implicitly concedes the propriety of some visa bans in some circumstances, and (b) its not by itself a reason to regard Trumps executive order as wrong or irrational. National security policies such as this one arent prompted by statistical analysis of past events  at least one hopes they arent  but by current realities and prognostications based on them. The fact that no Islamist Yemeni has set off a bomb in an American city is not by itself an argument for continuing to allow Yemeni asylum seekers into the United States.

Many Americans, though, are guided by a simpler and more cogent logic than what animates policy debates in Washington and New York. It goes something like this: Islamist-inspired terrorism has taken many lives around the globe, especially, though not exclusively, in the Middle East and North Africa. The federal government allows many people from the Middle East and North Africa to enter the United States. It stands to reason that, if our immigration policy continues unchecked, the violence racking Syria, Somalia, Libya, et al., will in some measure show up here, too.

I dont share that belief. But it is not an irrational one, and it is conceivable that I am wrong. Nor is support of the visa ban evidence of bigotry or coldhearted xenophobia. It is merely to value the safety of neighbors and countrymen whom one knows over the safety of foreigners whom one doesnt  not an obviously malign preference. And it has the merit of reassuring ordinary Americans that, even if federal policy gets it wrong or goes too far, their government is at least trying to perform its most basic function. Im not sure Trumps adversaries can achieve their aims by telling such people theyre idiots and bigots.

The resisters had better pause for long enough to ask why anybody would approve of what Trump is doing. If they cant or wont, theyll find themselves resisting for eight years and not just four.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) he delivers his third State of the State address in Annapolis on Wednesday. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post)

The Jan. 31 Metro article Hogan proposes 401(k)-style retirement savings plan for Md. state employees laid out Maryland Gov. Larry Hogans (R) proposed changes to pensions for some public employees. His proposal is the wrong choice for Maryland.

I have been a public employee for 40 years, working at the University of Maryland University College. It is a job Im proud to do. Each paycheck, I pay 7 percent of my salary toward my pension. And I know that after putting in service to the state, I wont retire into poverty, thanks to that pension. Most pension benefits in Maryland average about $14,000 per year. That is a modest but meaningful retirement benefit.

Pensions are the most cost-effective way for Maryland to provide retirement security to its nurses, teachers and other public employees. Mr. Hogans proposal will only deprive the pension fund of necessary money to survive, taking us backward. Whats more, we already have a 401(k) system without an employer match to supplement our modest pensions.

I urge the state legislature to reject Mr. Hogans plan to change our retirement system. These steps will hurt public employees and jeopardize our retirement security.

Sally Davies, Takoma Park
Much-dreaded sharia law, or something resembling it, may well be coming to the United States.

Just not in the form many Americans expected.

That is, the religiously motivated laws creeping into public policymaking arent based on the Koran, and they arent coming from mythical hard-line Islamists in, say, Dearborn, Mich. Theyre coming from the White House, which wants to make it easier for hard-line Christians to impose their beliefs and practices on the rest of us.

A few days after declaring his intention to impose a religious test upon refugees so that Christians would be given priority, President Trump gave a bizarre speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. In between a plug for The Apprentice and boasts about his disastrous calls with heads of allied states, he made some less-noticed policy news.

He vowed to help blur the line between church and state by repealing the Johnson Amendment.

(The Washington Post)

[Did you attend a protest? Tell us what you plan to do next.]

For those unfamiliar, this tax code provision bars tax-exempt entities such as churches and charitable organizations from participating in campaigns for or against political candidates. It dates to 1954, when it was signed by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was not terribly controversial at the time.

The provision basically says that if you want to be exempted from paying taxes  meaning you are effectively subsidized by other taxpayers, who pay for your access to emergency services, roads and other government functions  you cant be involved in partisan politics. You cant, among other things, take tax-deductible donations from your worshippers and turn around and spend them on political campaigns.

Thats just the trade-off you agree to make.

Certain religious organizations, in particular those from the evangelical Christian community, have opposed this law in recent years. And during the campaign, Trump indicated hed do his darnedest to get them what they really want: not the ability to endorse candidates from the pulpit  a practice that the IRS has already been ignoring  but the ability to funnel taxpayer-subsidized funds into the political process.

The president cant totally destroy the law unilaterally, despite Trumps pledge to do so; hell need action from Congress, but that may not be hard to secure these days. Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the most recent Republican platform included a commitment to repeal the Johnson Amendment.

Also this week, the Nations Sarah Posner published a leaked draft of an executive order that would require federal agencies to look the other way when private organizations discriminate based on religious beliefs. Coincidentally, these seem to primarily be religious beliefs held by conservative Christians.

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The effect of the order might be to create wholesale exemptions to anti-discrimination law for people, nonprofits and closely held for-profit corporations that claim religious objections to same-sex marriage, premarital sex, abortion and transgender identity. It would also curb womens access to contraception through the Affordable Care Act. (A White House official did not dispute the drafts authenticity.)

This is, of course, all in the name of preserving religious freedom. Except that it allows some people to practice religious freedom by denying jobs, services and potentially public accommodation to those with differing beliefs.

The order, if signed, would seem to exceed the executive branchs authority, Posner notes; moreover, given that the orders language appears to privilege some religious beliefs over others, it may violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

Trump has also chosen personnel who seem keen on muddying the distinction between church and state.

[Trump should look before he leaps on Iran]

For example, his embattled education secretary nominee, Betsy DeVos, has advocated that government dollars be channeled to religious schools through relatively expansive voucher programs. (During the campaign, Trump also said that public funds should follow students to the private school of their choice, explicitly including religious schools.)

During her confirmation hearings, DeVoss cryptic comments about supporting science education that encourages critical thinking have also been interpreted as well-established code for supporting the teaching of intelligent design, a sort of dressed-up creationism.

I wish I could say that only a tiny fringe believes Christian practices deserve pride of place in public life and policymaking. But thats not the case.

In a poll released this week by the Pew Research Center, Americans were asked what made someone truly American. A third of respondents overall, and 43 percent of Republicans, said you need to be Christian. That would exclude me, as well as about 30 percent of the population.

The far right has done a lot of fear-mongering about the undue influence that religious fanatics may soon exert on the body politic. Seems they better understood what they were talking about than most of us realized.
Nepal asks India to remove service tax on ocean freight

Nepal has made a formal request to India to scrap a 4.5 percent service tax on ocean freight costs which was imposed in accordance with a notice issued by the Revenue Department of India on January 12.
After his spat with Mexico, after the travel ban, this week President Trump did something that surprised me. He put in place a policy with which I agreed. He placed a smart check on ever-proliferating federal regulations. His executive action requires any department that wants to add a regulation to get rid of two existing ones. It might seem gimmicky, but the British government instituted just this one-in, two-out rule in 2013 and it has worked well. In fact, while I find much of Trumps worldview alarming, I generally agree with some important parts of his program  tax reform, infrastructure investment, deregulation, civil service reform. But the larger question I keep asking myself is: Does Trump want someone like me to agree with him?

The Trump White House has decided that the best way to deal with any institution or group that might stand in its way is to relentlessly try to delegitimize it. This has led to a ferocious strategy of attack on the media, which the president now says is the opposition party. His chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, urges the media to keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host who has become an unofficial spokesman for the White House, describes the media as a bunch of overpaid, out of touch, lazy millionaires that have nothing but contempt for the people that do make this country great.

[Trumps corporate bullying will only hurt Americans]

At this point, one could note that, if we are to listen to America, almost 3 million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton than for Trump (who received a share of the popular vote that was lower than Mitt Romneys, in fact lower than the share received by most of the losers of recent presidential elections). And as for which of these groups makes America great, Im not sure what criteria to use, but if it is generating wealth and contributing to gross domestic product, its not even close. According to the Brookings Institution, the 500 counties won by Clinton produced 64 percent of U.S. economic output, while the 2,600 counties won by Trump produced just 36 percent of GDP. Use any economic measure  employment, start-ups, innovation  and the areas that score highest voted heavily against Trump.

The much-maligned urban elites may be out of touch with the rest of the country, but they still pay its bills. A few years ago, the Economist compared how much each American state contributed to the federal coffers against the funds they received from Washington. The basic pattern is simple: It is blue states, which voted against Trump in 2016, that fund the red states that voted for him. From 1990 to 2009, Clinton states collectively paid $2.4 trillion more in federal taxes than they received in federal spending, while Trump states altogether received $1.3 trillion more than they paid.

But this is not the way I think we should look at America. Its one country, and different parts and people contribute in different ways. We are living through times in which economics and technology separate us  some people and places prosper while others languish. The goal should be to use politics as a mechanism to bring us together through both public policy and public discourse. The truth is, there are no real Americans and fake Americans (though there is real news and fake news).

[Sharia law may be coming to America. But its Christians who are bringing it.]

Most presidents begin their tenure by trying to reach out to their political opponents, signaling that they want to represent those who didnt vote for them as well as those who did, and generally trying to bring the country together. Trump has made almost no such effort, simply asserting that the country was divided before he was elected and thus absolving himself of any responsibility for unifying it. In office, he has mercilessly attacked anyone who dares to disagree with him, whether senators, prime ministers or student protesters. It might be a good way to play to his base, but its a terrible way to lead the country.

The challenge for the media must be to ensure that we dont mirror Trumps attitude of hostility. We cannot absorb and reflect that negativity. We are not the opposition. We are a civic institution, explicitly protected by the Constitution, that is meant to hold government accountable and provide real information to the citizenry. I hope to be able to do that. Along the way, when I have to, I will disagree vigorously with Donald Trump. But just as important, when warranted, whether he likes it or not, I will agree with him.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
I WANT us to be honest with one another, a new leader on the national stage said Thursday. Were on the same team. We share the same mission. Honesty will undergird our foreign policy, and well start by making it the basis of how we interact with each other. . . . Let us extend respect to each other, especially when we may disagree. The leader in question was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and his audience consisted of State Department employees assembled at Foggy Bottom to meet their new boss.

Wise as they were, Mr. Tillersons comments stood out for their rationality and evenhandedness only because they were uttered amid the rapid deterioration of such formerly commonplace standards of political culture. The president of the United States, in particular, continues to operate according to a different standard: insulting allies, intimidating civil servants, improperly threatening recipients of federal funds. Such behavior can only hurt the United States standing and undermine the peace abroad while damaging democratic norms at home.

Mr. Tillersons remarks may reassure States professionals, who were told by President Trumps spokesman to get with the program or quit after hundreds of them signed a letter of dissent over Mr. Trumps harsh executive order on immigration. Alas, cleaning up after Mr. Trump could be a full-time job for Mr. Tillerson; the presidents penchant for verbal excess apparently extends even to the prime minister of a close ally, Australia, with whom he had cross words on the phone the other day. He followed that gratuitous clash with a tweet berating a U.S. commitment, inherited from the Obama administration, to resettle up to 1,250 refugees at Australias request as a dumb deal. Closer to home, the University of California at Berkeley attempted in good faith to give right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos an opportunity to speak  and to give peaceful opponents an opportunity to protest  on its campus. When violent interlopers spoiled the peace with arson and vandalism, Mr. Trump bizarrely blamed the school and threateningly tweeted: If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view  NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Even if Berkeley were at fault, federal grants are not Mr. Trumps to award or withhold on a whim.

It is hard to keep up, but at last check Mr. Trump had treated the audience at the National Prayer Breakfast to musings about low ratings for The Apprentice  followed by a defense of his brusqueness toward the Australian prime minister and other world leaders. Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls Im having  dont worry about it, Mr. Trump said. Were going to be a little tough, folks. Were taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually.

This is wrong, spectacularly so. The United States occupies a privileged position atop the worlds power pyramid, and it benefits from well-designed mutual relationships such as the alliance with Australia  relationships that demand constant tending as China aims to expand its influence in the western Pacific region. As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in his first message to his department, Recognizing that no nation is secure without friends, we will work with the State Department to strengthen our alliances.

Like Mr. Tillerson, Mr. Mattis took the opportunity of his arrival to recognize a brightness in America that Mr. Trump too often misses. You represent an America committed to the common good, Mr. Mattis told the uniformed and civilian members of his department and their families, an America that is never complacent about defending its freedoms; and an America that remains a steady beacon of hope for all mankind. He was right, but that beacon remains steady only with constant vigilance and work.
By putting Iran on notice for its aggressive behavior, President Trump has taken aim at a country thats opposed by many U.S. allies. But he has begun this confrontation without much preparation or strategic planning, continuing the haphazard pattern of his first two weeks in office.

Iran is a convenient enemy for Trump. Israel and the Gulf Arab states share the administrations antipathy toward Iran, and the regimes hard-liners gave Trump a pretext with a ballistic-missile test last weekend that arguably violated a U.N. Security Council resolution.

Trumps challenge also comes at a moment when Russia, Irans only major ally, is seeking better relations with the new administration. That may be a useful point of leverage. Some American, Israeli and Arab officials hope Russia might be persuaded to accept limits on Iranian behavior as the price of rapprochement with the United States. But some senior intelligence officials are skeptical.

Confronting Iran carries significant dangers. The U.S. Central Command has thousands of troops in Iraq and the gulf who could be vulnerable to Iranian reprisals. The White House, however, didnt coordinate its actions with Centcom before national security adviser Michael Flynn announced Wednesday his nonspecific but menacing notice about Irans destabilizing behavior.

In a tweet Thursday, Trump echoed Flynns comment that Iran should be grateful for the 2015 nuclear agreement negotiated by President Barack Obama, which Trump termed a terrible deal, rather than continuing its aggressive actions. The administration appears to be considering new sanctions, but since taking office, Trump hasnt moved to revoke the deal itself.

Iranian officials launched rhetorical counter-volleys. A Foreign Ministry spokesman described Flynns warning as baseless, provocative and repetitive. But the Iranians, too, avoided any suggestion that the nuclear agreement was at risk.

Trumps goal of curbing aggressive Iranian behavior in the region has wide support, including among many countries that backed the nuclear deal. Arab nations argue that Iran has destabilized regimes across the Middle East, and that its proxies now control Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Saana, in Yemen. Flynns statement cited an attack last week by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on a Saudi vessel off the Yemen coast.

I dont think we are so much looking for a fight as responding to lethal provocations, argued one senior U.S. military official. He noted that in addition to attacking the Saudi ship, the Houthi rebels have been mining waters near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

But U.S. and foreign officials caution that any attempt to contain Iran needs to be carefully planned and implemented. Iran is a hardened adversary, despite its political isolation. Any confrontation has to take into account Irans strong position in Syria and Iraq, and its ability to thwart Trumps pledge to eradicate the Islamic State there.

The administration  wanted to send a message, but they have no idea what it means, says a top Republican former foreign policy official.

With just two weeks in office, the administration hasnt had time to fill some key national security posts, let alone plan a strategy. Take Syria: Administration officials dont like Obamas strategy, but they dont yet have an alternative.

The Trump team has explored partnering with Russia and even considered contacts with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Some Syrian opposition officials have urged the United States to work with Russia (and, implicitly, the Assad regime) in a partnership against the Islamic State. One opposition leader told me this week theres hope that Moscow will curtail the operations of the roughly 5,000 Iran-backed Syrian Shiite militiamen there.

But Iran holds some choke points. Its strongest leverage is in Iraq. With the victory over the Islamic State in Mosul probably six months away, the Iranians can mobilize thousands of Iraqi Shiite militiamen across Iraq. U.S. advisers are vulnerable to attack by these Iran-backed militias, as happened a decade ago in Iraq.

The complex order of battle in Syria was described Thursday by Ahmed al-Jarba , who leads an opposition group called the Syrian Elite Forces. He said in an interview that his roughly 3,000-man Sunni Arab group is now being trained inside Syria by U.S. Special Operations forces, alongside Syrian Kurdish fighters, in preparation for the coming assault on Raqqah. He said his group also had good and balanced relations with Russia, even though it opposes Assad and Iran, Russias partners. Thats a tangled web.

Moderating the Iranian threat in the Middle East has been an American aim since the 1979 revolution. Arabs and Israelis alike will cheer Trumps hard line. But Iran is among the toughest foreign policy challenges Trump will face, and he should be careful to avoid ill-planned early actions that would make it his Bay of Pigs.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
(Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

The flag fluttering above the U.S. Capitol is emblazoned with a crescent and star. Chants of Allahu Akbar rise from inside the building.

Thats the provocative opening scene of a documentary-style movie outlined 10 years ago by Stephen K. Bannon that envisioned radical Muslims taking over the country and remaking it into the Islamic States of America, according to a document describing the project obtained by The Washington Post.

The outline shows how Bannon  years before he became a strategist for President Trump and helped draft last weeks order restricting travel from seven mostly Muslim countries  sought to issue a warning about the threat posed by radical Muslims and their enablers among us. Although driven by the best intentions, the outline says, institutions such as the media, the Jewish community and government agencies were appeasing jihadists aiming to create an Islamic republic.

The eight-page draft, written in 2007 during Bannons stint as a Hollywood filmmaker, proposes a three-part movie that would trace the culture of intolerance behind sharia law, examine the Fifth Column made up of Islamic front groups and identify the American enablers paving the road to this unique hell on earth.



(Obtained by The Washington Post)

The outline, titled Destroying the Great Satan: The Rise of Islamic Facism [sic] in America, lists Bannon as the movies director, as well as its co-writer with his longtime writing partner Julia Jones. The title page includes the line A Film by Stephen K. Bannon in capital letters.

Jones, reached by The Post, declined to discuss the contents of the document in detail but confirmed its authenticity. She added that it was essentially Bannons product.

It was all his words, Jones said.

A White House spokeswoman declined to comment. Bannon did not respond to several requests for comment.

[Why even let em in? Understanding Bannons worldview and the policies that follow.]

The film proposal includes as possible on-air experts two analysts who went on to advise Trump, although their names are misspelled in the document: Walid Phares, a Lebanese-born Maronite Christian who has warned that jihadists are posing as civil rights advocates, and Heritage Foundation security expert James Jay Carafano, who has defended Trumps executive order.

Phares said he did not recall any discussions about the film. A Heritage spokesman said Carafano was not familiar with the project.

The outline offers an early glimpse of Bannons belief that the West and supremacist Islam are headed for a fundamental clash of civilizations, as the outline says. Bannon later expressed this view publicly as chief of Breitbart News, a site that often features articles about radical Islamists and has provided a platform for the alt-right, a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state.

We are in an outright war against jihadist Islamic fascism, he said in a 2014 talk via Skype to a group at the Vatican, according to a transcript first published by BuzzFeed. And this war is, I think, metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it.

I believe you should take a very, very, very aggressive stance against radical Islam, he added, citing ancient battles between Christian and Islamic forces.

Trump, who has known Bannon since 2011, has voiced similar views about the threats posed by jihadist Muslims. During the campaign, he called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what is going on and said that there is a great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.

At Thursdays National Prayer Breakfast, Trump showed sympathy for Muslim victims of terrorism, saying that peace-loving Muslims have been brutalized by the Islamic State.

One of Trumps first acts as president was to issue last weeks travel limits, which temporarily bar travelers from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Administration officials have said the order is not a Muslim ban but is instead targeted at countries whose citizens pose the greatest terrorism risk. However, none of those countries is the birthplace of terrorists who committed recent attacks in the United States connected to extremist Islamist ideology, unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan.

Some within the administration have also advocated designating the Muslim Brotherhood, a religious and social movement founded nearly 100 years ago in Egypt, as a foreign terrorist organization. Experts disagree on what this would accomplish, noting that the Brotherhood is not a single organization but a broad, transnational movement of Sunni Muslims whose individual factions vary widely in goals and activities in different nations.

[You can learn a lot about Steven Bannon from the films he made]

The 2007 film summary calls the Muslim Brotherhood the foundation of modern terrorism.

Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who reviewed the outline for The Post, called it propaganda that was designed to generate hate against not just Islamists, not just extremists, but Muslims writ large.

Theres no way you can look at this and Steve Bannons other comments and remarks and say Steve Bannon is a friend of American Muslims, said Hamid, the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World.

Its remarkable that someone involved with a film like this is at the center of power at the White House, he added.

Tim Watkins, a producer who participated in discussions with Bannon about the project, rejected the idea that the film was driven by anti-Muslim bias.

This is not because Bannon had a hate or dislike for Muslims, Watkins said. I believe that he believed that no society is without its radical fringes.

Watkins said he and Bannon met with Steven Emerson, author of the 2002 book American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us and founder of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, at an Italian restaurant in Washington and discussed the project. After hearing about Emersons research, Watkins said he came up with the idea for the opening sequence featuring the reconstituted American flag flying over the Capitol dome.

Based on what I heard, it seemed like a documentary in the making, Watkins said.

Emerson, whose book asserts that many Muslim institutions in the West have provided ideological support for militants, is listed as an executive producer in the proposal. A section of the film was to be drawn from his research archives, according to the document.

Steve Bannon and I definitely had some interaction at some point about a film, due to a mutual interest in the threat of radical Islamism, Emerson wrote in an email, describing himself as someone who deeply respects Islam. He added that he did not recall ever seeing the outline, which he said contained material that was not drawn from his work.

I believe there is a witch hunt and campaign of character assassination being waged against Steve Bannon for his comments against radical Islam like there has been waged against me for many years in order to silence critics of radical Islam, he said.

The outline uses stark language to spell out the dangers posed by Islamist jihadists.

The ideology is scary, and its ideologues will frighten small children as we bring to light an unbroken chain of thinkers who epitomize the culture of hate, the outline reads.

Part of the film would detail the rise of a global holy war  financed by the cash flow of oil  to attack and destroy western civilization, according to the outline.

The proposal names two dozen conservative writers and terrorism experts who could serve as potential on-screen guests, including Robert Spencer, director of the Jihad Watch website, who is labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim propagandist.

In an email, Spencer rejected that term as a smear, adding that he is no more anti-Muslim than critics of Nazism were anti-German.

Spencer, who has written for Breitbart and was interviewed by Bannon on Breitbarts daily radio show, said he did not recall any discussions about the 2007 film proposal. But he said that he found Bannon to be brilliant and extraordinarily well-informed about both the history and doctrines of Islam.

The outline warns about front groups and disingenuous Muslim Americans who preach reconciliation and dialogue in the open but, behind the scenes, advocate hatred and contempt for the West.

It names the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America as examples of such cultural jihadists. After The Posts revelation of the 2007 script, CAIR officials on Friday urged Republicans to call for Bannons dismissal, saying that he promoted virulently anti-Muslim conspiracy theories.

The proposal also lists other enablers, including The Post, the New York Times, NPR, Universities and the Left, the American Jewish Community, the ACLU, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the White House.

The road to the establishment of an Islamic Republic in the United States starts slowly and subtly with the loss of the will to win, the outline reads. The road to this unique hell on earth is paved with the best intentions from our major institutions. This political/accommodation/appeasement approach is not simply a function of any one individuals actions but lies at the heart of our most important cultural and political institutions.

Bannons work on the Great Satan project came after the release of his well-received 2004 Ronald Reagan biopic, In the Face of Evil. That film included a coda that warned about the threat of the beast during a montage that showed praying Muslims, terrorist camps and people falling to their deaths from the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Bannon then produced political documentaries including Border War: The Battle Over Illegal Immigration; Generation Zero, an examination of the global economic crisis; and Battle for America, which hammered an out-of-touch, arrogant, and ever-expanding central government.

Its unclear why Great Satan was never produced. Jones, a political liberal who was Bannons screenwriting partner for 16 years, said that after helping him type up the proposal, she did not work on it any further.

Karen DeYoung contributed to this story.
President Trump vowed Thursday to totally destroy a law passed more than 60 years ago that bans tax-exempt churches from supporting political candidates, a nod to the religious right that helped sweep him into office.

Speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, Trump said he would seek to overturn the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits tax-exempt nonprofits  including churches and other houses of worship  from directly or indirectly participating in a political candidates campaign.

Repeal of the amendment  which is part of the tax code and would require action by Congress  has been sought primarily by conservative Christian leaders, who argue that it is used selectively to keep them for speaking out freely.

But several experts said Thursday that the effect of a repeal could be far broader, allowing churches of any political leaning to pour their financial resources into campaigns of like-minded candidates.

Its less about a minister speaking out from the pulpit, and more about deep church coffers, said Beth Gazley, a professor of public affairs at Indiana University.

President Trump and Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), bow their heads in prayer during the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Thursday. (Win Mcnamee/Bloomberg News)

David Herzig, a Valparaiso University tax law professor, said repeal of the amendment has the potential to turn houses of worship into super PACs.

[What is the Johnson Amendment and why should people care?]

While prospects for congressional action remain uncertain, legislation consistent with Trumps aims has already been introduced in both chambers of Congress.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) suggested Thursday that he is open to repeal. Ive long believed that, Ryan said when asked at a news conference about Trumps call. Yeah, Ive always supported that.

The amendment is named for Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced it in the Senate in 1954, nine years before he became president.

During his remarks Thursday, Trump cast the issue as one of free speech and free exercise of religion.

I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution, Trump said. I will do that, remember.

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday he supports allowing tax-exempt churches to directly support political candidates, which is currently barred under federal law. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The renewed promise, which Trump first made as a candidate, was applauded by evangelical Christian leaders who endorsed his Republican presidential bid, including Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University.

Its a law that restricts free speech, and it never should have been passed in the first place, Falwell said.

In reality, the Internal Revenue Service rarely punishes churches for political statements. For several years, more than 2,000 pastors have joined what they call Pulpit Freedom Sunday to test the ban by speaking their political views in their sermons. The IRS only investigated once and did not punish in that case, according to the conservative organization that organizes the annual effort.

Falwell argued, however, that the law remains a threat and that its enforced selectively by the IRS.

[Donald Trump gave a doozy of a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast]

Exit polls showed Trump defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton 80 percent to 16 percent among white evangelical Christians.

A repeal of the Johnson Amendment, however, would affect not only conservative churches aligned more closely with Republicans but also open new avenues of support for liberal African American churches and others more in sync with Democrats.

Houses of worship make up just a fraction of the universe of so-called 501(c)(3) organizations in the United States, all of which are restricted by the Johnson Amendment. A range of other educational and charitable organizations also bear that designation, including the Clinton Foundation and the Donald J. Trump Foundation.

Under current law, churches are free to engage in political activity; the restrictions under the Johnson Amendment are triggered by their receipt of tax-exempt status.

Several legal experts, including Herzig, noted a potential downside to allowing churches to operate like political action committees: Because churches are not required to make the same disclosures as PACs, campaign funding funneled through churches could be less transparent.

The repeal of the Johnson Amendment would unleash a new wave of dark money into the political system, Larry T. Decker, president of the Secular Coalition for America, said in a statement.

Trump made no mention Thursday of when he might ask Congress to overturn the law or what restrictions would remain under such a proposal.

A spokesman for Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority whip and sponsor of the House version of the bill, said Trumps support provides a boost for repeal efforts. Spokesman Chris Bond said Scalise will work with GOP lawmakers and the White House to move the ball forward and protect free speech.

Even short of congressional action, however, Trump has tremendous power to keep the IRS from enforcing the Johnson Amendment, Herzig said.

Lifeway, a Christian polling firm, found in 2015 that 79 percent of Americans thought pastors should not endorse candidates during worship services. Evangelicals were more likely to say pastors should be able to do so  25 percent compared with 16 percent of all respondents  but support for clergy endorsements was low across the board.

Trumps broadside against the Johnson Amendment has found eager supporters, though, including Falwell and other evangelicals who supported his campaign.

[During the campaign: Why so many evangelicals had faith in Donald Trump]

On the other hand, many religious groups say they like their nonpolitical status just fine the way it is. After Trump spoke Thursday morning, for example, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty quickly issued a statement saying repealing the Johnson Amendment would not further the religious liberty that they stand for.

Politicizing churches does them no favors, the organization said. The promised repeal is an attack on the integrity of both our charitable organizations and campaign finance system.

Trump voiced his opposition to the Johnson Amendment during a speech in June to a group of hundreds of conservative Christian faith leaders who met with him in New York.

He also noted his opposition during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, where the party made the repeal part of its platform.

During his speech, Trump also spoke about the importance of evangelicals, saying: They have so much to contribute to our politics, yet our laws prevent you from speaking your minds from your own pulpits.

On the Sunday before the election, Trumps running mate, Mike Pence, was featured in a video played in evangelical churches, citing two reasons to support his ticket: the appointment of pro-life Supreme Court justices and the promise to repeal the Johnson Amendment.

Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic consultant, said Trumps reiteration of the latter pledge on Thursday was emblematic of the course hes charted since taking office.

Its clear Trump has spent the first two weeks appealing to his base, she said. Hes doubled down on that rather than appealing to all Americans.
In 2015 during an annual news conference with reporters, Putin said, He is a bright and talented person without any doubt. He added that Trump is an outstanding and talented personality.

Russian President Vladimir Putin In 2015 during an annual news conference with reporters, Putin said, He is a bright and talented person without any doubt. He added that Trump is an outstanding and talented personality. Pavel Golovkin/AP

Reactions to the new U.S. president have been mixed among top politicians around the world.

Reactions to the new U.S. president have been mixed among top politicians around the world.

Reactions to the new U.S. president have been mixed among top politicians around the world.

The White House on Thursday gently warned Israel that new or expanded settlements in the West Bank may not be helpful in achieving a Middle East peace, while insisting it has no official position on settlement activity.

A statement issued by press secretary Sean Spicer said that although the administration does not believe settlements are an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years, Spicers statement said, a reference to President Trumps insistence that a return to the Middle East negotiating table is a goal he hopes to achieve.

While the statement carefully parsed its words, it marked a step away from what some Trump officials  and the presidents designated new ambassador to Israel  have said in favor of settlements. Trumps first foreign call as president was to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he has been sharply critical of former president Barack Obama, whom he characterized as weak on Israel.

The apparent genesis of the statement was a story in Thursdays Jerusalem Post, which quoted an unnamed senior administration official telling Netanyahus government to stop a spree of housing construction approved since Trumps inauguration, lest it interfere with Trumps plans to work toward a peace plan. As the president has expressed many times, Spicers statement said, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region.

[Inside the contentious Israeli settlement that counts Trump as a donor]

The White House thought the rebuke, as reported, went too far and issued Spicers statement in an attempt to dial it back, while also giving itself breathing room as it develops a more comprehensive policy on the Middle East.

At the very least, the White House wants to wait until Netanyahus scheduled visit to Washington Feb. 15. Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke Thursday with Netanyahu, according to the State Department.

The administration has also pulled back somewhat on a pledge to quickly move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians also claim as their capital. Middle Eastern diplomats who have been in contact with the administration have said they believe it will not take that step immediately, perhaps waiting at least until June, when an Obama-issued waiver of a congressional mandate to make the move will expire.

Trumps frequent mention of Middle East peace suggests its a real goal for him, despite the failure of the last effort, in 2013 and 2014, and bleak signs since then that either side is ready to bargain.

Trump has surrounded himself with at least three close advisers for whom Israel and its security are a paramount concern  his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; his ambassador choice, David Friedman; and his chief of international negotiations, Jason D. Greenblatt. Trump recently said that if Kushner  who has no foreign policy background  cant bring peace to the region, nobody can.

Thursdays statement came as Netanyahus government has approved 5,500 new Israeli housing units in the West Bank over the past two weeks in the largest expansion since U.S.-led peace negotiations broke down in April 2014. Until now, Israel had every reason to believe it had a green light from the Trump administration.

The unusually large approvals were criticized as a land-grab implicitly backed by the United States. But the announced approvals appeared to come as an unwelcome surprise to the new U.S. administration.

[Israel plans West Bank settlement expansion amid policy shifts in Washington]

During the campaign and since his election, Trump has been unstinting in his support for Israel in general, and Netanyahus government in particular, a coalition under continuing pressure from the right to move away from a two-state solution that for the past quarter century has been seen by the world as the only way out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump sharply criticized the Obama administrations abstention in December that allowed passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Just before Trumps inauguration, diplomats from 70 countries, including the United States, met in Paris and criticized settlement building as a threat to a two-state solution.

David Halperin, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, which advocates a two-state solution, said the White House statement serves as a caution to Netanyahu and proponents of building more settlements and annexing the large settlement of Maale Adumim.

Its a warning sign to the Israeli right that their celebration [of the new administration] may be premature, Halperin said.

The White House statement came a few hours after Trump met with King Abdullah of Jordan, which borders Israel and is burdened with waves of Syrian refugees. The kingdom is concerned Trumps stated intention to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could cause tensions among its own citizens, more than half of whom are of Palestinian origin.

Jordan can ill afford unrest on its streets, Halperin said. The king undoubtedly warned President Trump against any provocative moves. If the Trump administration abandons hope for a two-state solution, Jordan fears the unrest will spill over the border.

Halperin predicted Trump will be unable to avoid backing two states as the ultimate goal of peace talks.

This may be an initial signal the Trump administration realizes that working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires working with Jordan, he said.

Anne Gearan and Carol Morello contributed to this report.


President Trump speaks on the phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Oval Office on Jan. 28. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In his first two weeks, President Trump has sought to project the image of a new leader moving quickly to enact his agenda.

He has surrounded himself in photo ops with his most trusted senior aides as he signs a flurry of executive orders, visits government agencies and calls world leaders from the Oval Office.

But if the images from the White House aim to show a man of action, they also have delivered another, unspoken message in the early days of the new administration: Most of the aides Trump relies on for counsel as he moves to dramatically reshape the country are men  and nearly all of them are white.

It is a sharp change from the past eight years of the barrier-breaking Obama administration, and one that has reinforced the feeling among Trumps critics that a narrow, anachronistic worldview is driving an agenda that they consider to be hostile to women and minorities.

Where are the women? Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) asked rhetorically on the House floor last week, holding up a photo of Trump flanked by Vice President Pence and six male advisers in the Oval Office a day after he signed an order restricting federal funds for abortion-related activities in foreign countries.



Trump signs executive actions in the Oval Office on Jan. 23, including one resurrecting a policy that prohibits foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive federal funding from performing or promoting abortion services through their work in other countries. (Ron Sachs/Pool photo via Bloomberg News)

I can tell you Barack Obama would not have for one minute signed an executive order that would make it harder for women across the globe to get health-care service with [only] men standing behind him, said Nancy-Ann DeParle, who served as Obamas deputy chief of staff for policy from 2011 to 2013.

During his inaugural address, Trump stood on the veranda of the U.S. Capitol and declared an oath of allegiance to all Americans.

Two days later, after millions of women had demonstrated against his administration in marches in Washington and across the country, Trump presided over a swearing-in ceremony for two dozen senior White House staffers. Among them were five women and one racial minority, former Apprentice star Omarosa Manigault, who is serving as a senior communications aide.



The White House senior staff is sworn in on Jan. 22. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Beyond the White House, Trumps choices to fill 21 Cabinet-level positions include 16 white men, four women (including two Asian Americans) and one African American man, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

For the first time since the Reagan administration, there are no Latinos, even as Trump moves to ramp up the deportations of undocumented immigrants.

White House aides discounted criticism over the lack of diversity.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the principal deputy press secretary, said that Trump regularly consults the opinions of a wide range of aides, regardless of their rank.

Hes not the type who talks to just 20 people, said Sanders, who emphasized that she did not think that the presidents policy initiatives have been anti-women.

Ive sat in multiple meetings where he turned and said, Sarah, what do you think about this?  Sanders said. He called the main line to the press office the other day. I sat and talked to him for 20 minutes.

Manigault, who has battled suggestions in the black community that she is being used as a racial token, said on The View on Jan. 27: No one uses me.

She accused the Obama administration of choosing not to aggressively do African American outreach.

They felt that if they helped all Americans, then the black community would be helped, Manigault said. That really isnt the approach that were taking. We have a very strategic plan of engaging this community.

(Victoria Walker,Danielle Kunitz,Dani Player/The Washington Post)

That could be challenging. Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Trump among black voters by 80 percentage points, and she won Latinos by 36 points and women by 12 points, according to the Pew Research Center.

Trump decisively won among white male voters.

For his base, they dont care who he hires, said a former high-ranking female aide in the George W. Bush White House.

Trumps supporters dont want to be told who to hire for their businesses  just the best people for the job, added the former Bush official, who was not authorized by her employer to speak on the record. If the left wants to hem and haw over the lack of diversity, fine. If he gets results, then it wont matter.

Still, Trump and his team appear to have noticed the criticism.

A day after he signed the abortion funding ban, the president invited reporters into the Oval Office for another round of executive orders. This time, the same men were arrayed behind him along with two women  senior political adviser Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, a senior communications aide.

They were positioned just over Trumps left shoulder, in the center of the frame for news photographers.



Trump, accompanied by Vice President Pence and staff, talks with reporters in the Oval Office on Jan. 24 before signing an executive order on the Dakota Access Pipeline. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Conway, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist, serves a prominent public role for Trump as an omnipresent face on cable and network news shows. She, Hicks and Manigault have attended the White House daily briefings as press secretary Sean Spicer answers questions from reporters. The press office is largely staffed by women.

But their positions underscore what seems to be a primary assignment for women in the Trump White House as public-relations liaisons to defend the president and, at times, soften his rough edges. Trumps daughter Ivanka accompanied him on a trip to an Air Force base in Dover, Del., on Wednesday to visit with the family of a U.S. service member killed in Yemen.



White House press secretary Sean Spicer answers questions during the daily news briefing at the White House on Jan. 30 as Trump aides look on. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Conway, who wrote a 2005 book about how women are reshaping politics and culture, has privately expressed a desire to take on more of a policy role, particularly around military veterans. But she is not known to have the same level of influence on policy as do other senior advisers: Stephen K. Bannon; Stephen Miller; and Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law; and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

Trump is not the first president to be accused of sidelining women. Female aides to Obama voiced frustration that they were not being heard, prompting Obama to hold a private dinner with them and encourage them to speak up.

An Oval Office photo of Obama meeting with 11 aides, 10 of whom were male, prompted renewed questions shortly before his second term. But Obama had the highest percentage of women in the West Wing  39 percent  in history, according to Jay Newton-Small, author of Broad Influence: How Women Are Changing the Way America Works.

Newton-Small said that women must reach a critical mass to exert real influence, which she defined as up to 30 percent. She noted that Clinton had pledged to make women half of her Cabinet.

That would have supercharged it, she said.

Trump allies said that Hicks, 28, who served as a campaign spokeswoman, is a ubiquitous presence at the presidents side, which could give her outsize influence.

The way that it works for Trump is, if youre in the room, hes going to ask you your opinion, said a former Trump aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation candidly.

The question is who is in the room. On Jan. 27, Trump and Pence traveled to the Pentagon, where they were joined by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis as Trump signed an executive order to bar refugees and suspend travel to the United States from seven majority-Muslim countries.



Trump signs and holds up an executive action at the Pentagon on Jan. 27. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

The entry ban set off major protests Jan. 28 across the country amid reports that federal agents had detained more than 100 foreign travelers, including some who had green cards allowing them legal permanent residence in the country.

That morning, White House aides allowed reporters to observe through the windows of the Oval Office as Trump spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Across the Resolute Desk were five white male aides.

It was not until four days later that Manigault and Carson got an invitation to join Trump at a photo op  this one a meeting with African American supporters in the Roosevelt Room to mark Black History Month.
Security for ousted CIAA boss cut down

After the Supreme Court disqualified Lokman Singh Karki as the chief of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority, the government downgraded the lifelong security cover provided to Karki, it has come to light.
Vice President Pence, second from right, Commerce Secretary-designate Wilbur Ross, second from right, and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, right, listen to President Trump during a meeting with House and Senate legislators in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Feb. 02, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

The Senate voted to overturn an Obama administration rule Thursday aimed at preventing coal-mining operations from dumping waste into nearby waterways, the first of nearly half-a-dozen rule reversals headed to President Trumps desk for his signature this month.

The 54-to-45 approval of the measure, which Trump has pledged to sign, undoes an Interior Department rule barring coal-mining companies from conducting any activities that could permanently pollute streams and other sources of drinking water.

The measure, earlier passed by the House, takes advantage of the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a rarely used piece of legislation that congressional Republicans have pledged to use to overturn a series of what they view as objectionable regulations issued in the final days of the Obama administration.

One targeted Obama-era regulation would restrict methane emissions from oil and gas operations on federal land, and another would require federal contractors to self-certify that they comply with U.S. labor laws.

The Senate also took up a resolution, which the House passed 231 to 191 on Wednesday, to reverse new Securities and Exchange Commission rules that oil, gas and mining companies divulge more information about business payments they make to foreign governments. The SEC requirement is part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill.

The CRA gives lawmakers 60 legislative days to nullify federal regulations by a majority vote if the president supports the move. Only one rule, an ergonomics regulation adopted under then-President Bill Clinton, has ever been overturned under the 1996 act.

The White House also endorsed overturning a rule allowing the Social Security Administration to provide certain records on those found mentally incapable of managing their financial affairs for inclusion in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, as well as rules on government methane emissions and contractor labor certifications. The Social Security Administration measure passed the House 235 to 180 Thursday afternoon.

The Administration strongly supports the actions taken by the House to begin to nullify unnecessary regulations imposed on Americas businesses, the White House said in a Statement of Administration Policy. The regulations that the House is voting to overturn under the Congressional Review Act have established burdensome compliance regulations that force jobs out of our communities and discourage doing business in the United States.

Speaking on the House floor Tuesday, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the votes targeting specific rules and stripping them from the books would help deliver on Republicans pledge to drain the swamp in Washington.

Every single one of these will be gone, McCarthy vowed after listing the five regulations. With a vote in the House, a vote in the Senate and the signature of President Trump, well get rid of every one of these job-killing and destructive regulations.

The stream protection rule, issued by the Interior Departments Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, has been a priority for repeal among GOP lawmakers since it was finalized in December.

It not only stops mining firms from polluting waterways, but it also requires them to restore streams outside permit areas that have been damaged by miningerations. Companies would have to establish a 100-foot-wide corridor of native species along stream banks. While environmentalists had praised the rule, Republicans said it amounted to an effort to undermine energy companies and kill off jobs.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Thursday in a statement that the regulation actually creates problems, costing jobs and completely reworking regulatory programs within the agency. Reversing it, he added, was part of the GOPs broader effort to end the War on Coal and undo eight years of burdensome regulations adopted during Obamas tenure.

But the move has drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists, who have accused its supporters of placing the interests of the fossil-fuel industry above the health and safety of affected communities.

This attempt to scrap the Stream Protection Rule is a clear case of putting polluters profits ahead of the basic well-being of vulnerable communities, and we must do everything we can to stop it, said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, in a statement. No matter who you are or where you live, you have a right to clean water  but this shameless attack puts families and communities at risk.

The four Democratic senators who voted to overturn the rule  Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.)  face reelection in conservative-leaning states next year.

[Why a federal disclosure rule is at the top of the oil industrys hit list]

Oil companies complained about the new SEC transparency rule, which advocates say would curb corruption. The companies said it puts them at a competitive disadvantage to foreign firms and would be unduly expensive.

Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, said in an interview that large oil and gas companies compete with state-owned companies that do not have disclosure requirements and that the SEC rule would allow those companies to win contracts after seeing what U.S. firms pay.

[In a race to the finish. Obama finalizes rules to cement progressive goals]

Republicans appeared to be targeting environmental regulations, but they also addressed the priorities of gun rights groups and the broader business community. While Obamas administration had authorized the sharing of information on those receiving federal disability payments in an effort to ensure those with mental illnesses were identified in gun sellers routine background checks, critics suggested it would prevent some Americans from lawfully obtaining firearms.

The House on Thursday also approved by a vote of 236 to 187 a resolution to overturn a requirement that firms seeking federal contracts of more than $500,000 to identify any labor laws they have violated in the past three years. In October, a federal judge blocked initial implementation of the regulation.

While the resolutions swift passage has pleased many industry officials, clean-energy groups said the actions have introduced uncertainty into the market.

From a regulatory perspective, it is terrifying because we dont know what the long-term implications of the passage of [Congressional Review Act] resolutions would be, given the lack of legal history and judicial history about interpretations of the resolutions, said Arvin Ganesan, former congressional liaison at the EPA and now vice president for federal policy at Advanced Energy Economy, a trade association.

One critical question is what the CRA means in a clause that says once a regulation is revoked, no new substantially similar regulation can be adopted.

Ganesan said there is no legal history, precedent or treatise to interpret that.

Its the lack of clarity on what the passage would mean from a regulatory perspective that is worrying so many environmentalists, Ganesan added.

Chelsea Harvey contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) speaks with the media after a meeting on the nomination of Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state. (Alex Brandon/Associated Press)

The icy relationship between President Trump and congressional Republicans showed signs of thawing on Thursday after the White House spent days trying to assuage GOP lawmakers distressed and surprised by controversial moves the administration made during its tumultuous first week.

At the start of the week, Republican senators were outwardly annoyed with the White House for failing to consult them before issuing a temporary ban on refugees and foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries. But by Thursday, some of the same Republicans were heartened after meetings and conversations with administration officials and the president, as well as his nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

Ive been feeling pretty good. I had a good day over there yesterday, said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

Corker, who was not happy with the lack of communication from the White House earlier in the week, said he met with national security adviser Michael Flynn about Iran and other topics and ended up wandering down the hallway to see President Trump. Flynn was on Capitol Hill on Thursday and told senators he planned to visit regularly.

Vice President Pence visited a closed-door lunch meeting of Republican senators on Tuesday to deliver a conciliatory message about the White Houses mistakes rolling out the executive order banning refugees. Well do better, Pence told them, according to senators in attendance. In addition, senior administration officials have stepped up their outreach to lawmakers.

The damage control underscored the increasingly tense dynamic driving a wedge between Congress and Trumps White House. But it was unclear to some Republican lawmakers whether the breakthrough heralded a new phase in the so-far rocky relationship or a short-lived detente. It remains to be seen how well the president and Republicans can work together on issues such as health care, tax restructuring and foreign policy as Trumps turbulent first fortnight as president neared its conclusion.

The tone and substance of Corkers comments in particular marked a stark turnabout from Monday, when he stood just outside the Senate chamber and told reporters he received no heads-up on Trumps executive order banning refugees and that it was not well done.

On Thursday, Corker warned that things could return to a more bitter state. Today, feeling pretty good  talk to me next week, he said.

In addition to the headaches the refugee ban caused Hill Republicans, Trump has complicated life for them in other ways. He has applied public pressure on Senate Republican leaders to go nuclear to confirm Gorsuch if Democrats do not cooperate. Trumps chief spokesman stirred confusion with remarks about how to finance the U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the presidents comments about quickly replacing the federal health-care law after repeal have upped the pressure on lawmakers to quickly deliver an alternative.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), an outspoken Trump critic, said his interactions with the administration have improved in recent days.

Ive talked to Mike Pence a couple of times, Ive had the legislative liaison, people have reached out on executive orders, so yeah, its good. Much more collaborative, Graham said. He added that the administration asked him for advice this week on a forthcoming cybersecurity executive order.

Pence and other administration officials have intensified their efforts to brief lawmakers and their staffs ahead of major decisions or actions by Trump, such as executive orders.

Two senior White House aides  deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and legislative affairs director Marc Short  have been reaching out personally to key GOP lawmakers to foster more trusting relationships on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Aside from behind-the-scenes outreach, Trumps nomination of Gorsuch also went a long way toward healing the early wounds, several Republicans said.

That was good, said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who was among the many Republicans critical of Trumps refugee ban.

Gorsuch was on Capitol Hill on Thursday for the second straight day, accompanied by former Republican senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who is spearheading the effort to win him confirmation.

Still, there remains skepticism among Republicans  both about what Trump is doing and how little Congress has been consulted, particularly on national security and foreign policy matters.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, placed a call to Australias ambassador to the United States on Thursday following a Washington Post report about Trumps tense phone call with the countrys prime minister.

Of course not, McCain responded when asked whether he was satisfied with the level of input the Trump administration has given Congress in major foreign-policy directives.

Democrats have been even more vocal in criticizing some of the decisions the Trump administration has made, including the refugee ban and the executive order calling for the construction of the border wall.

These are broad-ranging actions, some of which are of dubious legality and constitutionality that are being taken with little legal input and certainly little to no congressional input, said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

But so far, Republicans have shown little willingness to cross over and join forces with Democrats in using the levers of power to exert influence on the administration.

Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) is hoping to turn bipartisan frustration at top White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon joining the National Security Council into support for legislation to restrict the bodys membership. But Republicans seem skeptical about his approach.

We should be very cautious about ever trying to micromanage from here, said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), despite his assertion that trying to preclude political people from the National Security Council seems like pretty prudent structure to me.

Trumps open invitation to Bannon to attend all NSC meetings, and his addition of Bannon as a permanent member of the Principals Committee  where he was seemingly given a more integral role than even the director of national intelligence or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff  has struck many lawmakers as an inappropriate and unprecedented move.

Im hoping that my Republican colleagues wake up to the fact that the country is more important than the party. To let Trump put somebody whos completely unqualified and ideologically driven on the NSC  look, we can disagree on some things, but that is too far, said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn).

Warner and a group of Democrats introduced a bill Thursday that would designate the director of national intelligence and chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as permanent NSC members and require congressional consent for any administration official not already subject to Senate confirmation.

The national security adviser, homeland security adviser, certain assistants to the president and vice president and their deputies would be exempt from that requirement.

Last year, the Senate Armed Services Committees decided to shrink the size of the NSC from 400 to 200 members. The committees ranking Democrat, Jack Reed (R.I.), said that sets a precedent for the committee to get involved in dictating the NSCs members.

Its within the purview of the defense committee, said Reed, who is alarmed that Trumps changes effectively lose the military nonpartisan professionals, and youre gaining someone whos more of a political operative.

But so far, Republicans disagree.

Thats executive-branch business, said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.), when asked whether Congress should have a role in how the president organizes the NSC.

David Weigel and Ed OKeefe contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee  a panel with a crucial role in the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act  said he could stand either repealing or repairing the law. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Two top Republicans long expected to lead the Senates role in repealing the Affordable Care Act said publicly this week that they are open to repairing former president Barack Obamas landmark health-care law ahead of a wholesale repeal, which has been a GOP target for eight years.

Coming one week after a closed-door strategy session in which Republicans expressed frank concerns about the political ramifications of repealing the law and the practical difficulties of doing so, statements this week by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) brought into public view the political and policy challenges the GOP is facing.

Alexander, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said at a hearing Wednesday: I think of it as a collapsing bridge. . . . You send in a rescue team and you go to work to repair it so that nobody else is hurt by it and you start to build a new bridge, and only when that new bridge is complete, people can drive safely across it, do you close the old bridge. When its complete, we can close the old bridge, but in the meantime, we repair it. No one is talking about repealing anything until there is a concrete practical alternative to offer Americans in its place.

And Hatch, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee  another panel with a crucial role in the effort to repeal the ACA  said Thursday that he could stand either repealing or repairing the law. Im saying Im open to anything. Anything that will improve the system, Im for, he said.

The comments come one month after Republicans in Congress first set out to immediately repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. While an increasing number of them have expressed concern about how feasible it is, many others, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), remain committed to a wholesale repeal and replacement.

House Speaker Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has insisted on wholesale repeal of the Affordable Care Act. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

On Thursday, Ryan tried to right the partys message on health care by insisting that repair is the same thing as replace.

Theres a miscommunication going on, he said Thursday morning on Fox & Friends. If were going to repair the U.S. health-care system . . . you must repeal and replace Obamacare.

Although Alexander has advocated a go-slow approach for weeks, Hatch has aggressively pushed to repeal the ACA, including the tax provisions that help most people with health plans under the law afford their premiums.

His comments Thursday seemed to contradict a statement the day before, when he told an audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that he wanted to quickly repeal as much of the law as possible.

I believe that we need to repeal Obamacare immediately, and provide for a stable transition period, Hatch said. In my view, we need to advance replacement policies in tandem with the repeal process. And then we can keep working on the other parts of the system.

Yet Hatch has also consistently warned conservatives that there are limitations to what Congress can do to unwind the law. The Senate has chosen to use a special budget process to walk back as many provisions as possible, but they will be limited to tackling the parts of the ACA that deal with spending, taxes and the deficit.

Concerns over those limitations have created frustration and consternation within the GOP, as was clear on a recording obtained last week by The Washington Post and other news outlets.

(Obtained by The Washington Post)

[Behind closed doors, Republican lawmakers fret about how to repeal Obamacare]

On the recording, made last week at a GOP retreat in Philadelphia, a number of Republicans worried that they would be blamed if the health-care system implodes in the wake of their repeal plans.

Among those most concerned was Alexander, who said: The word repair is a lot better than the word repeal. . . . Saying were going to repair the damage is more accurate.

Other Republicans in the House and Senate besides Ryan have tried to regain control of the message in recent days by saying that repair is just another way to explain their replacement plans. Whats less clear is whether concrete plans are underway to dismantle the law.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), the No. 2 Republican leader, said Thursday that the procedural process in the Senate and the words used to describe it can be complicated but goal is still the same: getting rid as much of the Affordable Care Act as they can.

It gets a little confusing, Cornyn said. I dont think even if we wanted to repair Obamacare we could do it. Thats why I believe were going to do repeal and replace.

[18 million would lose insurance in first year of Obamacare repeal without replacement, CBO report says]

In the House, the messaging has been no less complicated. While the word repair has held appeal for moderates who are wary of repealing Obamacare root and branch, it has raised alarms among fervent conservatives who see in it a potential betrayal of their campaign promises.

If youre talking about repairing the Affordable Care Act, its unrepairable, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. We need to repeal it. We need to replace it. If you want to call that a repair, so be it, but I dont know that that makes it any more palatable to the folks back home.

Ryan later told reporters on Capitol Hill, Our job is to repair the American health-care system and rescue it from the collapse that its in. And the best way to repair a health-care system is to repeal and replace Obamacare. Its not an either/or.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and a key architect of GOP health-care plans, has favored yet another R-word in recent days: rebuild.

Working with the Trump administration, well take a multi-step, multi-pronged approach to deliver relief and rebuild our health care system so it works for patients, he wrote with fellow committee member Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.) in an op-ed published by Morning Consult on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is working on its initial changes in federal rules under an executive order the president signed his first night in office to ease the ACAs regulatory impact on consumers and segments of the health-care industry.

The possible rule changes, under review by the Office of Management and Budget, would be aimed at helping health insurers keep the laws marketplaces functioning while Congress and the White House try to design new health policies.

According to Edmund Haislmaier, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and member of the Trump transition team for the Department of Health and Human Services, the proposed rules being considered could further restrict Americans ability to sign up for ACA health plans outside of the annual open-enrollment season.

They also could require more extensive checks of applicants eligibility for marketplace coverage and prohibit consumers from enrolling in health plans for another year if they are behind on their premium payments.

Amy Goldstein contributed to this report.

Read more at PowerPost
President Trump is foolish and has ignited the flame of jihad with a raid in Yemen in which civilians were killed, al-Qaeda said Friday in its first official comments on the new U.S. administration.

That the raid came only days after Trumps vow to eradicate Islamist terrorism in his inauguration speech makes it clear for us that the threat was not directed to the Islamic militants only, but to all the Muslims, men, women and even children, al-Qaedas al-Nafeer bulletin said, accusing the Trump administration of intentionally killing women and children.

U.S. Central Command, or Centcom, has not specified how many civilians were killed in the raid last Saturday, in which a Navy SEAL also died. Among those reported dead was the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric with al-Qaedas affiliate in Yemen who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike.

[U.S. acknowledges civilian deaths in Trump-authorized Yemen raid]

Civilian casualties provide easy fodder for extremist propaganda, and Trumps comments indicating that he will heavily bomb Islamic State militants who have caused nervousness for some in the region. In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, where about 750,000 civilians remain in areas under Islamic State control, the United States has so far used strict rules of engagement.

But Trumps executive order

on defeating the Islamic State said a plan should recommended changes to U.S. rules of engagement and other policy restrictions that exceed the requirements of international law.

Analysts have also expressed fears that policies such as Trumps travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries could fan international extremism and stoke anti-American sentiment, causing more danger to the United States, rather than protecting it. On online forums and social media, Islamist militants have hailed the ban as proof that the United States is at war with Islam.

Aaso Ameen Shwan contributed to this report.

Read more:

White House says a deadly raid in Yemen was long planned

Trump travels to Dover Air Force Base to honor Navy SEAL

A lesson for Trumps national security team

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news


A Ukrainian tank heads away from the embattled eastern town of Avdiivka, Ukraine, on Feb. 3. (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

From the center of this beleaguered eastern Ukrainian town, air bursts from exploding shells could be seen just a few hundred yards away Friday, and the sound of intense outgoing and incoming rounds echoed from several directions.

This is the worst fighting weve seen in Ukraine since 2014 and early 2015, said a visibly upset Alexander Hug, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europes monitoring mission in Ukraine, who was standing near a makeshift humanitarian aid station where shrapnel had collapsed a tent overnight. The town has been bombarded relentlessly every night this week in the latest flare-up of hostilities between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces.

[Ukraine fighting could pose early challenge to Trump]

According to Hug, both sides are making use of heavy weapons such as the multiple-launch Grad missile system, and they are doing so in plain sight of OSCE observers. Grads, along with 152mm and 122mm artillery, were banned under the Minsk II agreement, which was signed two years ago after the catastrophic battle of Debaltseve.



A woman speaks on her cellphone amid the ruins of a building after shelling in Donetsk, near Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine, on Feb. 3. Heavy shelling hit both government- and rebel-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine as fighting continued, and international monitors issued a sharp call for the sides to still their guns. (Alexander Ermochenko/Associated Press)

In the town of Avdiivka, whose prewar population of 35,000 has been reduced to an estimated 15,000 to 20,000, residents who have elected to stay voiced utter dismay Friday.

I have to sleep in my bathroom. Theyre going to kill me in my bathroom, shouted 72-year-old Liliana Nikolaina, who had gathered with other women near another makeshift aid station, set up in a low-rise building next to a set of apartment blocks a few minutes walk from where Hug spoke. I cant believe its happening again.





This is the fourth year of war, said Vera, 56, who declined to give her last name. Were all Ukrainians, were for a united Ukraine, and we just want this war to finally stop. Tell Poroshenko to find a way to end this, she said  referring to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko  before bursting into tears.

While the fighting has been largely kept to the outskirts of Avdiivka during the day, the nighttime has been hellish for residents. Shells have landed indiscriminately throughout the town, and civilian casualties are racking up. Some residents are still without power or heat lost during the fighting, and most are relying on humanitarian aid boxes for food, bedding, candles and other supplies.



Ukrainian servicemen give free food to Avdiivka residents at a humanitarian aid center Friday. (Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press)



A woman enters a tent to charge her phone at a humanitarian aid center in Avdiivka. (Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press)

Residents charge their phones at the aid center. (Evgeniy Maloletka/Associated Press)

Outside the aid station where the women were gathered Friday, a shell had fallen just hours earlier. A 25-year-old rescue worker was killed in the blast when shrapnel riddled the ambulance he was sitting in. Hours later, blood and matter were still visible in the front seat of the vehicle.

Authorities reported that a woman was also killed overnight Thursday, and the Ukrainian military said that three of its soldiers were killed, as well.

An apartment block on the edge of town was shelled, and the fourth-floor apartment of 70-year-old Anatoliy Nikolaivich and his wife, Elena, took a direct hit from a 122mm shell.

Everything is destroyed, Nikolaivich said as he stood amid the remnants of his home. It was so beautiful, and now look at this, its all gone.

He and his wife had been sleeping in their daughters first-floor apartment when the shell landed.



A view of a damaged building in Avdiivka on Friday. (Markiian Lyseiko/European Pressphoto Agency)

The woman reported killed in the overnight shelling was several hundred feet away in another mid-rise apartment building. The top-floor apartment was destroyed, and the blast ripped through the one below it, where British photographer Christopher Nunn was interviewing her. She died in the blast, and he suffered shrapnel wounds to his face and eyes.

Tetiana Gruba, an adviser to the Dnipropetrovsk regional government on war-related matters, said doctors in the city of Dnipro, where Nunn was evacuated, had saved his eyesight but were unsure how well he will be able to see.

A Ukrainian commander, Yevhen Deydey, 25, said he expects the escalation of hostilities to continue.

He said his troops had received text messages as part of a psychological warfare effort mounted by the separatists. Among them were messages that read: Theyll find your body when the snow melts; Youre just meat to your commanders; and Youre like Germans at Stalingrad.

Although residents in town say theyre hopeful that a cease-fire can be negotiated, they are bracing for the worst. Most are once again spending their nights in basements.



Ira Kosova writes a message to her daughter Maria, 17, on the window of a bus in Avdiivka evacuating several dozen people Friday to the town of Sviatohirsk, away from the fighting. (Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

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British Prime Minister Theresa May talks with her Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel, at the European Union summit in Valletta, Malta, on Feb. 3. (Olivier Hoslet/European Pressphoto Agency)

European leaders gathered Friday to discuss a stunning about-face in the orientation of the United States, Europes bedrock ally, amid fears that President Trump is seeking a breakup of the European Union.

The summit, the first since Trumps inauguration, led to no concrete action plan to combat the U.S. presidents praise for Britains exit from the European Union, skepticism of old alliances and embrace of the Kremlin. But leaders appeared fearful that a bloc that has withstood a succession of crises in recent years would not be able to hold up against transatlantic blasts from the White House.

European countries sometimes complained that President Barack Obama neglected them in favor of a focus on Asia. But they never believed that he was actively campaigning for the destruction of a political and economic union that has enjoyed bipartisan U.S. support since it originated after World War II.

The leaders of the European Unions 28 nations convened in Valletta, the ancient fortress capital of Malta, to discuss how to slow migration and recommit themselves to their union after Britains decision to file for divorce. But the unpredictable Trump shoved his way onto the agenda after a series of broadsides against the E.U.

Who really knows what the U.S. president wants, said French President Francois Hollande, who took a sharp tone against a leader with whom he spoke by telephone last week. Hollande said that Europe needed to present a united front to Washington and that no European nation should be tempted into a bilateral dalliance with the White House.

In the call with Trump, Hollande hit back at the U.S. presidents travel ban targeting majority-Muslim countries, a European diplomat briefed on the conversation said.

[Trump opens new trade wrangle with Germany]

Trumps victory has energized a host of right-wing parties in Europe that are skeptical  or openly hostile  to the powers in Brussels. The U.S. leader called the NATO defense alliance obsolete and has predicted the breakup of the E.U.

European leaders are now watching the Trump administration with increasing alarm, fearful that the United States could be the biggest threat yet to a bloc already mired in discord.

The worries have spiked to the point where European Council President Donald Tusk listed the United States alongside terrorism, Russia and China as threats to the European Union this week.

Transatlantic cooperation remains an absolute priority because it has until now been a key pillar of the free world, Tusk told reporters during the meeting.

But many leaders are growing worried that the pillar could be crumbling.

We do not believe in walls and in bans, said E.U. foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who added that Europe would search for pragmatic ways to cooperate with the United States but that it would stick to its own principles.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Europes most powerful leader and the one who has been the most resolute in pushing back against Trump, said that her continent would simply need to stand on its own during his time in office.

Europe has its destiny in its own hands," she said.

Europes fears have been sharpened by an American anti-E.U. campaigner who has represented himself in interviews as Trumps likely pick as ambassador to the European Union. Ted Malloch, a businessman, has said he was interviewed by Trump for the post.

I had in a previous career a diplomatic post where I helped bring down the Soviet Union. So maybe theres another union that needs a little taming, Malloch told the BBC.

The concerns about Malloch culminated in an unprecedented pre-rejection of his candidacy by top parties in the European Parliament, which said that the E.U. should declare him persona non grata if he is nominated to the post.

The parliament has no formal role in accepting or rejecting ambassadors, but Trumps nominee would have to be accepted unanimously by the European Unions 28 nations along with the European Commission. A senior E.U. official said that leaders were formally studying the process by which an ambassador could be rejected.

We would have expected this from North Korea, not the United States, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive internal discussions. The moves were extremely unusual given that no formal nomination has been made.

European leaders fears are especially high right now because the Netherlands, France, Germany and possibly Italy all face elections this year with surging populist candidates. Trump allies have built bridges to anti-elite campaigners who want to break up the European Union, and his blistering style may also be making inroads with European voters.

[Europes threat list: Islamist militants, Russia  and Trump]

The far-right turmoil is not only a threat which is caused by Mr. Trump, Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said. Its something internally in Europe.

Some mainstream leaders could be very vulnerable, analysts say.

If the tectonic plates are shifting under their feet, then that will shake them, said Heather Grabbe, the head of the Brussels office of the Open Society Foundation.

The European Unions fears come even as NATOs worries have eased somewhat in recent days, after the confirmation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, a retired general who served for a time inside the defense alliances command structure. NATO officials increasingly believe that Trump is simply pushing for reforms, not the alliances breakup, two NATO diplomats said.

German leaders have been infuriated by criticism from one of Trumps top economic advisers, Peter Navarro, who said this week that Germany was exploiting a grossly undervalued euro to take advantage of its trading partners. Merkel quickly hit back that Germany has no control over European monetary policy, which lies in the hands of the independent European Central Bank.

The harsh words from Washington have puzzled conventional foreign policy analysts on both sides of the aisle.

If there were some strategy behind this, even if it werent shared widely, that would be one thing, but its not at all clear what the strategy is, said Anthony Gardner, Obamas final ambassador to the European Union. Theres no conceivable hypothesis under which encouraging the fragmentation of Europe somehow serves our interests.

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After the White House cautioned Israel on Thursday night that new settlement construction in the West Bank may not be helpful in achieving a Middle East peace, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his pro-settlement government appeared to be taken aback.

Was this a flashing yellow caution light?

Or was it a green light? A sign that after eight years of Obamas condemnations against settlements as illegitimate and obstacles to peace, the Trump White House would offer only mild resistance to the housing boom that Jewish settlers crave and that Netanyahu this week promised.

Israeli officialdom spent the day mulling whether the Trump phrase not helpful was better for the settlers and their supporters than being called an obstacle by Obama and his secretary of state.

[Trump warns Israel that new settlements may not help achieve Middle East peace]

There has been barely a response from the usually ebullient Netanyahu, who loves taking to his Facebook page to lecture Americans, in English, about Palestinians, Jerusalem, Iran and World War II.

Netanyahus spokesman said only that the prime minister looked forward to discussing the matter later this month, when the Israeli leader is scheduled to met Trump in the White House on Feb. 15.

The prime ministers top lieutenants were also surprisingly zipped-lip. There were none of the usual tweetstorms, no rants or praise.

Rather, there was head-scratching and instant punditry about what exactly Trump may be saying.

Thursday nights statement from White House spokesman Sean Spicer came out after 1 a.m. Friday in Jerusalem on the morning of the coming sabbath.

Spicer said that although the administration does not believe settlements are an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

Spicer continued: The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years, a reference to President Trumps insistence that a return to the Middle East negotiating table is a goal he hopes to achieve.

Asked at the White House briefing on Friday afternoon, Spicer said that settlements would obviously be a topic when President Trump meets with Netanyahu later this month. His statement, Spicer repeated, said that while new construction was not helpful, existing settlements were not an impediment to peace.

Spicer did not respond to a question about whether Trump was aiming at a two-state solution. The president is committed to peace. Thats his goal, he said. Thats as far as I want to go on that.

Trump has said that he plans to deploy his son-in-law, senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, to the role of Middle East peacemaker.

Israels semiofficial response came from its ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, who told Israel Radio, Its still too early to tell. I would not categorize this as a U-turn by the U.S. administration, but the issue is clearly on their agenda.

Danon added, We dont always agree on everything. The subject needs to be explored when Prime Minister Netanyahu meets with President Trump in Washington. That meeting is scheduled for Feb. 15.

Thursday nights White House statement came just a few hours after Israeli police forcibly evicted 40 families from the Jewish settlement of Amona, a messianic community of battered mobile homes on a windy hilltop built on land privately owned by Palestinians that even the Israeli supreme court branded as illegal.

[Israeli police begin forced removal of Amona settlers in the West Bank]

The eviction of the 600 settlers and their hundreds of supporters on Wednesday and Thursday required more than 3,000 police officers. The most committed youth hurled excrement, bleach and rocks at the police. Dozens were injured. The young activists, goaded by zealous rabbis from West Bank religious schools, chained themselves together in Amonas synagogue for a final standoff, which ended only a few hours before the White House statement.

As the Amona evictions began, Netanyahu and his defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who resides in a settlement, announced plans to build 5,500 more houses for Jews in the West Bank. Many Israelis consider the land promised to them by God; the Palestinians want the land for a future state.

A week ago, Netanyahu has assured his Likud party and his security cabinet that when he travels to Washington he will not yield to pressure to give the Palestinians a full state, but something he called a state-minus.

Still, the meaning of the White House statement on settlements left plenty of room for debate.

A former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, told The Washington Post that the White House statement suggested that Trump was still committed to seeking a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians and that it viewed settlement building as a negative.

It looks like the Trump administration is still saying that the basic U.S. policy toward Middle East peace hasnt changed, Shapiro said.

Everyone in the region who suspects that the U.S. doesnt care about this is not correct, he said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said, The White House itself holds that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace and they never have been. It must be concluded therefore that expansion of construction is not the problem.

Hotovely blamed the Palestinians for the stalled peace.

She also warned her silent coalition members, the current Israeli government was elected to act on the Jewish Peoples right to build in all parts of our land and we must respect the will of the people who elected us for this purpose.

In the Israeli left-wing newspaper Haaretz, the columnist Chemi Shalev wrote, The White House statement was a shot across the bow to Netanyahu that theres a limit to everything.

Gershom Gorenberg, columnist at the American Prospect, tweeted, Trump has not returned to historic U.S. policy on settlements. He has significantly softened it.

Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor who writes in support of the settlements, asserted the White House went far beyond mere softening. Its a total reversal, he tweeted.

The former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, said the Trump White House statement did not appear to be a green light for more construction in the West Bank.

In a tweet, Indyk characterized the phrase may not be helpful as pure Bill Clinton language.

Karen DeYoung in Washington and Ruth Eglash contributed to this report.

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Six accused in killing of forest guard remanded to custody

The District Court, Taplejung has ordered six people, including the main accused Sabin Limbu, involved in the killing of a forest guard into custody pending further investigation.
Armed police officers patrol the courtyard of the Louvre museum near where a soldier opened fire after he was attacked in Paris, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. (Christophe Ena/AP)

A French soldier shot and seriously wounded a knife-wielding man Friday who attempted to attack security forces outside the Louvre museum. Frances prime minister called the assault terrorist in nature.

Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said at a news briefing that the attacker is a 29-year-old Egyptian national and that he was unknown to intelligence services. French media reported that he shouted Allahu akbar, or God is great in Arabic, as he charged the soldier. Molins said that for now it is unknown whether the attacker acted on instruction from abroad or alone and spontaneously.

The incident  whose terrorist nature, said French President Francois Hollande, was hardly in doubt  immediately stoked fears across Paris after a wave of terrorist bloodshed in the French capital and across France in the past two years. That included the November 2015 rampage through the city that claimed 130 lives and last Julys truck ramming in Nice that left 86 people dead.

In Washington, President Trump, a week after imposing a travel ban on seven Muslim-

majority nations and before any official information about the attacker had emerged, tweeted: A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right, populist National Front party and an increasingly popular contender for the French presidency, issued a similar message almost immediately. This event confirms that the poison of Islamist terrorism is far from having been eradicated and that the gravity of the problem has not yet been taken into account by public officials, she said in a statement in French.

By contrast, most other major French politicians  including the other candidates in the upcoming elections, slated for April and May  responded by praising the bravery of the soldiers involved.

Most polls show that the openly Islamophobic Le Pen is almost certain to qualify for the second and final round of the vote. And as her principal opponent, the centrist conservative Francois Fillon, struggles to fend off an embarrassing nepotism scandal, Le Pens appeal could strengthen in the absence of a traditionally strong center-right candidate.

For months, analysts have speculated that another major terrorist aggression on the scale of the Paris or Nice attacks  and perpetrated by Islamic State militants  could boost the National Fronts slim chances of a win, lending the party a credible excuse to accuse the political establishment of mismanaging the migrant crisis in France as well as its national security.

In any case, the Louvre incident was far from a major terrorist attack. According to police information, the soldier assaulted Friday belonged to Operation Sentinel , an elite security patrol that critics often have considered a costly and ineffective means of fighting terrorism. With support for soldiers trending on social media, Fridays attack could represent a victory of sorts for the oft-maligned French security services.

Molins said the attacker was armed with two machetes, one in each hand, and was carrying two backpacks as he attempted to enter the museums shopping center. When he was refused entry to the Carrousel du Louvre, a shopping mall beneath the museum, he attacked the soldier, who then fired five rounds into the attackers stomach, Frances Interior Ministry tweeted.

Bernard Cazeneuve, Frances prime minister, described the knife attack as clearly terrorist in nature. No explosives were found in the mans bags, the Interior Ministry tweeted.

The soldier was slightly wounded in the scalp, and the attacker is in critical condition. The Interior Ministry also said a second person was arrested in connection with the attack.

Authorities evacuated the area. Officials at the Louvre, one of the worlds major tourist attractions and the historic home of the Mona Lisa, said the museum was closed and that visitors already inside were being kept there, according to the Interior Ministry.

The museum announced that it would reopen Saturday.

Schmidt reported from Washington.

Read more:

As Frances far-right National Front rises, memory of its past fades

A mosque is at the center of a raw debate in the South of France

Trumps first official calls to German, French leaders set to be awkward exchanges

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Harvard medical researcher Soumya Raychaudhuri pauses during an interview at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston on Tuesday. Raychaudhuri awaits the fate of a new hire, Samira Asgari, an Iranian national and researcher who was prevented from boarding a flight in Frankfurt. (Steven Senne/AP)

One by one, they were blocked from entering the United States: a scientist barred from a flight, two engineers detained in Boston, and a doctoral student put back on a plane at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

The travelers were all Iranian nationals holding permanent U.S. residency or valid work or student visas, and their lives were disrupted when President Trump signed an executive order last week temporarily banning nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

It was unclear how many people were affected by the ban, but hundreds of Iranians included under it reported facing difficulties at U.S. borders or airports around the globe, according to a crowdsourced database tracking the effects of the new order.

Some  including Nazanin Zinouri, a data scientist stopped by U.S. border agents in Dubai  had lived in the United States for years. Others  such as genomics researcher Samira Asgari, who was prevented from boarding a flight in Frankfurt  were about to start new jobs or other new opportunities.

[Denied Entry: Stories of refugees and immigrants barred from the U.S.]

In this undated photo provided by Nazanin Zinouri, she poses for a photo with her PhD degree from Clemson. Zinouri, who has a visa and has lived in the United States since August 2010, flew to Iran on Jan. 20, expecting to have three weeks of time with her family. Instead, she was barely in Tehran before she began trying to get home to South Carolina after President Trumps order barring entry to people from Iran and six other majority-Muslim countries. (Parastoo Amiri/AP)

A State Department cable sent by the U.S. consulate in Dubai said the interviews of more than 50 Iranian visa applicants were cancelled on Jan. 30 alone.

The cable, which was sent to The Washington Post by a U.S. diplomat in the region, said consulate staff witnessed significant frustration and confusion among the Iranians who had traveled for the appointments. The diplomat requested anonymity because the cable was internal and not meant for release.

But the circumstances of people such as Zinouri and Asgari, who filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on Wednesday in federal court, also shed light on the larger community of Iranian professionals living and working in the United States.

The flow of Iranian scientists and scholars to U.S. universities and research institutions has persisted for decades, despite fraught relations between the two countries. More than 12,000 Iranians were in the United States on student and scholar visas last November, according to the latest data from the Department of Homeland Security. Irans own cabinet is packed with U.S.-educated officials, including the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Trumps order has already deprived U.S. companies and universities of accomplished students and employees, and threatens to eliminate one of the few areas of cooperation that has survived decades of U.S.-Iranian tensions and harsh economic sanctions.

Asgari, the researcher, had won a postdoctoral fellowship at the Boston-area Brigham and Womens Hospital, where she would focus on tuberculosis. Zinouri had just started a job at Modjoul, a tech start-up in South Carolina, which called her a valued colleague after she was prevented from entering the United States.

Despite the past decade of sanctions [against Iran], and the lack of U.S. consular representation in Iran, Iranian students have still sought out U.S. education, said Steven Ditto, the author of a report on Iranian students in the United States for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Even as Congress was ramping up sanctions on Iran over terrorism concerns, the State Department under former president Barack Obama launched Persian-language websites to guide Iranian students through the university application process. Irans higher-education system generally has poor standards, Ditto said, prompting Iranian students to look to the United States for a more quality education.

Iranian students have been here for nearly a century . . . there are deep and abiding connections that reveal themselves when you look at the historical record, he said. They want to improve their lives . . . to seek a better future and fulfill their academic potential.

And many do successfully stay in the U.S., he said.

[Trumps immigration order will be tough to overturn, legal analysts say]

In many ways, the situation mirrors the dark days following the Iranian hostage crisis, when revolutionary students seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and detained American diplomats in 1979.

The U.S. government responded to that crisis by revoking the visas of all Iranian non-immigrants, and suspending visas for all Iranian citizens. More than 56,000 Iranian students reported to immigration officials, according to the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans, an Iranian-American advocacy group. A number of those students were deported, the group says.

Since the travel restrictions went into effect last Friday, more than 300 Iranians have reported difficulties when trying to enter the United States, according to the crowdsourced database, which was created by Hazhir Rahmandad, an Iranian American professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Then a ballistic missile test by Iran further outraged the White House. Such launches are not in violation of U.N. resolutions unless the missiles are designed for nuclear payloads  which Iran claims they are not.

Iran is playing with fire - they dont appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me! Trump tweeted early Friday.

I do not feel as safe as I did under the Obama administration, said Ali Abdi, an Iranian-born doctoral candidate at Yale University. Abdi, who came to the United States as a refugee and is a permanent, legal resident, was in Dubai when the ban went into effect. He is conducting field research in Afghanistan and is still unsure if he can return to the United States.

I dont know where to call home anymore, he said. Im now sitting at a hotel in Dubai.

Another Iranian doctoral student, Vahideh Rasekhi, was also in limbo last Saturday night, when U.S. border agents detained her for more than 16 hours on arrival at New Yorks JFK Airport. Rasekhi, who is completing her doctorate in linguistics at Stony Brook University, was at one point put on a plane headed to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. She was removed at the last minute, according to volunteer immigration lawyers and local media reports, after a federal judge issued an order halting deportations.

[Judge halts deportations as refugee ban causes worldwide furor]

Elsewhere, at Bostons Logan International Airport, immigration officials detained Mazdak Tootkaboni and Arghavan Louhghalam  both Iranian green-card holders and professors at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth  until another federal injunction came through.

This is not the country we promised to them when we invited them to study, teach, and conduct research here, the universitys president, Marty Meehan, said in a statement condemning the order.

Of the 12,400 Iranians on student or scholar visas in the United States, more than 11,000 are studying or conducting research at the postgraduate level.

In 2015, DHS reported 2,250 Iranians as having obtained legal, permanent residence for employment purposes. More than 13,000 Iranians obtained green cards in 2015, according to DHS.

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President Trump speaks while meeting with Harley Davidson executives and union representatives at the White House. At the end of the event, Trump said that nothing is off the table in relation to current disagreements between the United States and Iran. (Win Mcnamee/Getty Images)

The United States and Iran traded threats Thursday as both nations sought new footing in a power struggle that could jeopardize the landmark international nuclear accord that President Trump has called the worst deal ever negotiated.

The Trump administration was preparing additional economic penalties on Iran related to the countrys recent ballistic missile test, with an announcement expected as soon as Friday, according to a U.S. official.

When asked whether his administrations tough new posture could mean a military strike, Trump answered, Nothings off the table.

That followed the White House broadside Wednesday in which national security adviser Michael Flynn warned that Iran is on notice over the test launch. He also cited Irans support of rebels seeking to overthrow a U.S.-backed government in Yemen.

This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran, Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to Irans supreme leader, was quoted by Reuters as saying Thursday. Iran does not need permission from any country to defend itself.

Speaking to reporters, Velayati brushed off what he called Trumps baseless ranting and pledged that missile tests would continue as Iran sees fit.

The exchange surrounding the missile test is the most substantive between the two countries since Trump took office two weeks ago and suggests that each nation is willing to escalate tension at the outset.

The posturing on the U.S. side appears to be mostly an attempt to seize the upper hand in what Trump officials have said will be a far tougher, less forgiving relationship with Tehran. Flynn directly blamed Barack Obamas administration for emboldening Iranian aggression and regional ambitions, and Trump has ridiculed his predecessor for seeking more cordial, if wary, relations.

Trump is under political pressure to make good on campaign pledges to get tough on Iran, while Iran has a history of testing the resolve of new U.S. leaders. The Iranian leadership also faces domestic political pressures with a presidential election due this spring.

It will take him a long time and will cost the United States a lot, until he learns what is happening in the world, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a televised address Wednesday, in which he also accused Trump of discrimination and recklessness.

Rouhani, considered a cautious political reformer, presided over the partial warming of the three-decade freeze in U.S.-Iranian relations under Obama.

Rouhani said that Trump, in temporarily halting travel to the United States from Iran and six other Muslim-majority nations, is trampling on all international principles and commitments.

Iran had earlier vowed reciprocal measures for the ban, and the missile launch Sunday was widely seen as a test of the new U.S. administration.

It is not clear whether the launch violates a U.N. Security Council edict, but the Trump administration maintains that it does. The United States called an emergency Security Council review of what it called a provocative breach.

Clearly, we wanted to make sure that Iran understood that they are on notice this is not going unresponded to, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said.

White House officials have refused to clarify the on notice statement either on record or anonymously, but it could indicate additional economic sanctions, military repositioning or the first moves to undermine the nuclear accord that the Obama administration counted as a signature foreign policy accomplishment.

Iran experts in the United States have said the most likely initial sanctions would probably mirror those Obama applied last year to Iranian companies and individuals that Washington accused of involvement in the countrys ballistic missile program.

Most Republican senators assumed that sanctions are what Flynn had in mind from his comments Wednesday.

We should stop the crap. I think I know what he means. . . . More sanctions, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

The new sanctions were first reported by Reuters.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that he is in favor of new sanctions on Iran. Legislation is already in the works, but Republicans would need some Democratic support to reimpose penalties.

I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran, Ryan told reporters. Id like to put as much toothpaste back in the tube as possible. I think the last administration appeased Iran far too much.

Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the new administrations view of Iran is informed by much more than deep skepticism about the nuclear deal and fear over Irans potential threat to Israel.

For Trumps senior national security brain trust, including Flynn, [Defense Secretary Jim] Mattis and key NSC staff, the enmity toward Iran is very personal, Sadjadpour said. They hold Tehran directly responsible for hundreds of U.S. military deaths in Iraq.

As a Marine general, Mattis was a commander in Iraq and later head of the military region responsible for both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump reiterated on Twitter on Thursday that Iran is formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!

Perhaps for emphasis, Trump followed that with a tweet specifically about the nuclear deal.

Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion, he wrote.

Most experts place the amount Iran recouped in frozen assets closer to $100 billion.

There is little chance that Trump will immediately rip up the 2015 deal designed to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Trump has not set out any plan in detail, but he has spoken of strengthening enforcement of the deal and improving on it. The United States would need the agreement of the other signers, including Russia and China, to renegotiate it.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was critical of the deal during his confirmation hearing last month but said it could be improved.

A U.S. official who briefed reporters after Flynns announcement Wednesday said the new administration is keeping potential retaliatory actions strictly separate from the nuclear deal, although U.S. officials acknowledge that anything that affects the U.S.-Iran relationship has implications for the future of the pact.

Few congressional Republicans are demanding an outright rejection of the nuclear accord, either, and say they are working with the new administration to tighten enforcement and raise the stakes for Iran for any violations. U.S. allies including Saudi Arabia and Israel, which worked to thwart the deal, now have an interest in keeping it in place for fear of the instability that could result from abandoning it.

The 2015 deal lifted international trade and other restrictions on Iran related to its nuclear program in exchange for a halt in the most troublesome aspects of Iranian nuclear development. Iran claims it is not seeking a nuclear weapon.

The deal left in place separate U.S. sanctions that could now be expanded or tightened.

The risk analysis and policy organization Eurasia Group assesses a 60 percent probability that the deal survives but said in a memo Thursday that there is now initial downward pressure on that number.

Trump is unlikely to tear up the deal and shoulder the full wrath of the international community, the memo said. Trump will walk a fine line, and probably try to keep the deal intact.

Erin Cunningham in Istanbul and Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.
In this Jan. 28, 2017, photo, President Trump speaks on the phone with Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia. (Alex Brandon/AP)

In his phone calls with foreign leaders, President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he is less interested in tending Americas long-term relationships than he is in short-term deals.

It was this approach that shone through in Trumps contentious call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an agreement that would require the United States to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center.

Trump railed at Turnbull and accused Americas longtime ally of seeking to export the next Boston bomber.

On Thursday, Trump explained his position further.

Believe me, when you hear about the tough phone calls Im having, dont worry about it, Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast. Theyre tough. We have to be tough.

This major shift in approach to Americas allies is reverberating across the world and is forcing some of Americas closest friends to ask whether they need to recalibrate their relationships with Washington.

[This was the worst call by far: Trump badgered Australian leader]

Similarly, leaked details of a conversation last Friday between Trump and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto have inflamed public opinion in Mexico, where officials are steeling themselves for radical changes in relations with their northern neighbor.

In the immediate term, the impulse in most capitals will be to work with the new president and hope that his outlook changes as senior officials such as Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson settle into their positions.

The allies dont have many good alternatives, said Tom Wright, director of the Project on International Order at the Brookings Institution. They will try to limit the damage and fix it.

Over a longer stretch, foreign leaders may feel heavy domestic political pressure to stand up to Trump, who is deeply unpopular abroad, even if it damages their relationships with the United States.

Trumps transactional approach could make Americas European allies less willing to support Trumps priorities, specifically his efforts to increase pressure on Iran or renegotiate trade deals.

Trumps blowup with Turnbull shocked Australians, who have stood by Americas side in Iraq and Afghanistan and welcomed U.S. Marines as part of a broader effort to boost American influence in Asia and check China.

The call also made waves in Washington, where it was taken by some as more evidence of a sea change in the way the America under the Trump administration will engage the world. This is really uncharted territory, said Heather Conley, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Yikes!

Other analysts played down the calls significance, saying that it will have zero long-term impact. Mostly this was Turnbull being an idiot, said James Carafano, vice president for foreign and defense policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. He put the president of the United States on the spot in his first phone call.

Before former president Barack Obama left office, he reached out personally to Turnbull and British Prime Minister Theresa May and asked them to mentor Trump, who was brimming was confidence but inexperienced in world affairs and diplomacy, according to a former senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.

Obama believed that the two English-speaking, center-right allies could influence Trump and persuade him to take a more traditional approach to foreign policy, the official said.

In public, Turnbull on Thursday played down any lingering tension with Trump. Earlier in the day, Trump raised doubts about whether he would honor the refugee agreement, tweeting I will study this dumb deal!

Turnbull responded by essentially pretending the tweet did not exist.

For now, at least, it looks as if Turnbulls influence on Trump will be limited to nonexistent. Meanwhile, May seems to be paying a political price back home for her quick visit to the White House and efforts at smooth relations with the Trump administration. A petition calling on Britain to cancel Trumps state visit surged past 1.5 million signatures amid the furor over his executive order to temporarily prevent people from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States.

News of the Mexico call was plastered on the front pages of Mexican newspapers. Some Mexicans considered the phone call another blow for Pena Nieto, as it appeared he was enduring more bullying from Trump. Pena Nieto canceled a planned visit to Washington last week after a dispute over who would pay for a proposed border wall.

Trump told Pena Nieto that you have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with and added that we are willing to help with that big-league, according to a transcript published by CNN.

Some Mexican politicians demanded more details about the call, while others insisted that Pena Nieto should keep such sensitive discussions out of the public eye.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist leader and possible presidential candidate in the 2018 elections, described the call as a humiliation for Pena Nieto.

Trump is a president who doesnt seem to know the importance of diplomatic relations. Hes demonstrated that not just with Mexico, Mariana Gomez del Campo, president of the foreign relations commission for Latin America in the Senate and a member of the opposition National Action Party, said in an interview. It seems that he wants to break relations completely without caring about the consequences.

Mexicos National Congress has agreed to dedicate some $50 million to bolster the network of Mexican consulates in the United States to provide legal assistance to Mexican migrants in the United States against the mass deportations Trump has proposed. Lawmakers have vowed to put forth legislation that would prevent any Mexican money from going to pay for the border wall.

Our country is not powerless, Gomez del Campo said. We are going to do everything necessary to defend ourselves. We are united in the face of this threat from Donald Trump, which is a tremendous threat for Mexico.

Partlow reported from Mexico City.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (left) speaks with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo before their meeting in Seoul on Friday. (Kim Min-Hee/AFP/Getty Images)

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis pledged Friday that the United States would live up to its security commitments, signaling a strong partnership with Asian allies while vowing a forceful response against North Korean aggression.

Mattis met with South Korean and Japanese leaders during his first overseas trip since becoming President Trumps defense secretary last month.

Speaking in Seoul alongside South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo, Mattis promised that the U.S. policy of defending allies was ironclad.

The United States stands by its commitments, and we stand with our allies, the South Korean people, he said.

In Tokyo later in the day, Mattis likewise sought to assuage concerns about the direction of Trumps foreign policy, which has already broken with previous U.S. practice in important ways and rattled longtime allies.

During the presidential campaign, Trump called on Japan and South Korea to pay more for a U.S. military presence that has been a fundamental aspect of U.S. regional strategy for decades. There are almost 30,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan.

Mattis, a retired Marine general whose previous assignments include working closely with Middle Eastern allies and overseeing coalition operations in Afghanistan, has departed from Trumps apparent skepticism of traditional military alliances, giving a strong defense in his Senate confirmation hearing of the NATO organization and other partnerships.

[Mattis is sworn in as defense secretary, pledges to build alliances]

Speaking before talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Mattis said: I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington. We stand firmly, 100 percent shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people.

Mattis cited a mutual defense pact with Japan, which requires the United States to respond in the event that Japan is attacked.

That clause, Mattis said, is as real today as it was a year ago, five years ago, and as it will be in a year, 10 years from now.

Mattiss emphasis on the dangers emanating from Pyongyang appears to signal a re-examination of the U.S. approach to North Korea, as leader Kim Jong Un continues his program of missile and nuclear tests and threatens to debut an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States.

Mattis sent a message to North Korea, which he blamed for threatening rhetoric and behavior.

Any attack on the United States, or its allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming, he said in Seoul.

The White House is reviewing policy on North Korea and a range of other foreign policy issues, officials said.

Two weeks after taking office, the Trump administration is already showing signs of a tougher stance on an array of foreign policy issues, including Irans use of ballistic missiles and its disagreement with Mexico over trade and border security.

Officials said the Trump administration is committed to moving ahead with installing the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD), which is designed to protect against North Korean ballistic missiles, in South Korea.

South Koreas current government has supported hosting the defensive measure, which is strongly opposed by China. But elections are expected in coming months, and its unclear whether the countrys next government will accept the controversial system.

Read more:

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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Former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has added his voice to those demanding a massive rearmament of Germany and Europe in response to the nationalist policies of US President Donald Trump. The right response to Trump, the Green Party politician writes in a guest contribution for the Suddeutsche Zeitung, is for Europeans to grow up and reinforce their geopolitical power and position and for Germany to resolutely invest in the EU and NATO.

Fischer leaves no doubt that what he has in mind is a massive increase in military spending. Germanys strength is based on its financial and economic might, and it will now have to leverage that strength on the EUs and NATOs behalf, he writes.

Germanys strength lies in its financial and economic capacity and this strength will now have to be deployed to an extent unprecedented for the EU and NATO. Thrift is undoubtedly a virtue; but other considerations should take priority when ones house is on fire and about to collapse.

Like the new Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel (Social Democratic Party, SPD), Fischer regards Trumps presidency not merely as a risk and challenge. [T]he new US administration has furnished Europeans with a chance finally to close ranks, grow up, and reinforce their geopolitical power and position.

Trumps motto, America first, signals the renunciation, and possible destruction, of the US-led world order, he writes. The alliances, multilateral institutions, security guarantees, international agreements, and shared values underlying the current global order might soon be called into question, or rejected altogether. If that happens, the old Pax Americana will have been needlessly destroyed by America itself, he writes.

Americas two former enemies, Germany and Japan, will be among the biggest losers of this change. Both countries experienced total defeat in 1945, and ever since they have rejected all forms of the Machtstaat, or power state. With their security guaranteed by the US, they transformed themselves into trading countries. Now these two major economic powers will have a serious security problem on their hands.

Fischer wants to solve this serious security problem by means of the European Union. If Germany would go it alone, if it would re-nationalize its defense capacities, it would, in Fischers opinion, tear apart the continent. Lest we forget, the post-war global and regional orders purpose was to integrate the former enemy powers so that they posed no danger to one another.

For this reason, he is relying on the EU to revive Germanys great power politicsor, as he puts it, grow up and reinforce its geopolitical power. Owing to its geopolitical weight, Germanys perspective is now synonymous with that of the European Union, Fischer writes.

He stresses that the EUs outlook is not that of a hegemon; rather, it is concerned with the rule of law, integration, and peaceful reconciliation of member states interests. However, this is just window dressinggreat power politics and rearmament are incompatible with the peaceful reconciliation of interests. When one considers the enormous economic and social imbalances within Europe, the brutality with which austerity is imposed on weaker states, or the blunt way in which Berlin speaks about Germanys role as the task master of Europe, it is quite clear what Fischer really intends.

The German Empire (Kaiserreich) already tried to organize Europe, i.e., to unite the continent economically under its leadership. The result was the First World War. Hitlers attempt to forcibly achieve the same aim led to the Second World War. It was only under the conditions of the Cold War and US predominance that the ruling elites of Western Europe felt compelled to place their opposing interests on the back burner and work together.

This set of conditions disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago, the global financial crisis of 2008, and the transition of the US to a nationalist foreign policy. The notion of a united capitalist Europe is exposed once again as an illusion. The only way that Europe can be united on a capitalist basis is by the strongest country (or group of countries) imposing its will on the others.

Fischer is a pioneer of this policy. He had already set the course for the revival of German militarism as foreign minister in the Social Democratic-Green coalition government headed by Gerhard Schroder (SPD). In 1998 the Greens campaigned for the federal election on the basis of a pacifist program, but as soon as they were in power they sent the German army to its first ever post-war military engagement in Yugoslavia. Fischer now regards the crisis, triggered by Trumps aggressive policy towards Europe, as an opportunity to line up other states behind Germany and develop the EU into a military power capable of carrying out war against Russia and, if necessary, the US.
The meeting Where is America going? The election of Trump and the global struggle against militarism and war, on January 31 in Bochum, was an important step in the building of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE). Most of the close to 50 participants were students from Ruhr University Bochum, who despite the rapidly approaching examination period did not want to miss the lecture and discussion.

Trumps presidency was an historical turning point, said Philipp Frisch, the spokesperson for the IYSSE in North Rhine-Westphalia, at the beginning of the meeting. Already during the first week of his presidency Trump had adopted measures leading to war, dictatorship and major social attacks. Only a mass movement of the working class can stop this development, Frisch said. The preparation of a socialist and internationalist basis for such a movement was the most important task of the IYSSE, he added.

Johannes Stern, who gave the main speech, is a member of the IYSSE and the editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site. He first provided an overview of the right-wing decrees that Trump has issued in the first days of his presidency, including a travel ban on Muslims and refugees, the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, and the rebuilding of the US military to prepare for conflicts with near peer competitors like Russia and China.

The illusion that Trump would act in a less extreme manner than during the election campaign evaporated into thin air in the first week of his presidency. Trumps right-wing and militarist policies do not merely express the individual brutality of the president, but is the programme of the American oligarchy. Trumps cabinet is a collection of multibillionaires, millionaires, business leaders, top intelligence officials and leading military personnela government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, stated Stern.

Trumps slogan Make America great again meant in practice the abolition of all social achievements won by the American working class in the course of historic struggles. And behind the demand America first is the Trump administrations aim to impose the global interests of the US as ruthlessly as possible. Trump will escalate conflict with every country whose geopolitical and economic interests stand in the way of the US, Stern warned.

Germany would be one of the main targets of this and the ruling class was becoming increasingly conscious of this fact. Stern cited an article from the latest edition of Der Spiegel, which warned of an unprecedented break in transatlantic relations since the Second World War and even warned of a shift from friend to foe.

All of the fundamental historical questions and contradictions, which led to two world wars and the Russian Revolution in the last century, were back on the order of the day, according to Stern. The end of history proclaimed by the bourgeois ideologists in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union had been exposed as premature and now history was returning with a vengeance.

Stern said of the ongoing mass demonstrations in the US that there had never been a time in history when already on the first day in office of a US president, millions of people had taken to the streets to protest against them. These protests have made one thing clear: Trump did in no sense come to power because of a shift to the right among the white working class.

Stern supported this with statistics and dealt with those chiefly responsible for Trumps electoral victory: the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton attacked Trump from the right in the election campaign and assailed him as an agent of Putin. His predecessor Barack Obama had been supported eight years ago by many workers as the candidate of hope and change, but had then continued the war policies of George W. Bush and offloaded the burden of the 2008 financial crisis onto the working class, Stern said.

In addition, there was Bernie Sanders, the pseudo-left organisations and the trade unions, he said. In the primaries, Sanders won support above all because he portrayed himself as a socialist and called for a political revolution against the billionaire class. He subsequently called for a vote for Clinton, a representative of Wall Street and the political establishment, giving Trump the opportunity to exploit widespread anger and direct it in a nationalist direction.

Trumps rise could only be understood in connection with the political developments of the past 25 years. Stern referred, among other things, to the US-led wars of aggression in Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan, the fundamental breakdown of American democracy (the stolen election of 2000, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Obamas programme of drone murder) and the extreme social polarisation in the country, which has been accompanied by a vast strengthening of the state apparatus.

If Trump is now stepping up militarist policies and appoints a navy general to the post of head of Homeland Security, he is merely continuing the domestic and foreign policies of his predecessor, Stern stated.

The resistance to Trump could only be successful if it was directed against capitalism and all of its representatives and if it is based on the working class, the decisive revolutionary force in capitalist society. Therefore, the defence of democratic rightsincluding the rights of women, minorities, immigrants and gays [must] be connected with the struggle against inequality, unemployment, poverty, police violence, dictatorship and above all war, Stern said, citing a passage from a Socialist Equality Party statement titled The way forward in the struggle against Trump.

In the last section of his speech, Stern noted that the building of an anti-war movement on a socialist basis was also of great urgency in Europe. The German ruling elite was seizing upon Trumps confrontational approach as a chance to enforce its own great power plans and press ahead with the return of German militarism.

Stern explained how the latest personnel changes in the Social Democrats (SPD) were connected with the assumption of the US presidency by Trump. They were aimed at imposing the economic and geopolitical interests of German imperialism, in opposition to the US if necessary. New Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel called immediately after Trumps inaugural address for a hard definition of Germanys own interests and to pursue them throughout Europe and the world. The Left Party is in full agreement with this course and is offering the SPD its support in a potential red-red-green federal coalition government.

Stern ended his remarks by citing David Norths lecture at Gothe University in Frankfurt on October 22, which was recently published by the IYSSE as a pamphlet: We are living in revolutionary times. The contradictions that give rise to war also prepare the ground for social revolution. Contradicting the claims of the subjectivists and irrationalists, who proclaim the disappearance of the subjective agency of socialist revolution as conceived by Marx, the global development of capitalism during the past half-century has vastly expanded the ranks of the working class. This is the basic force to which Marxists turn. The great challenge that confronts Marxists is the political preparation of a vanguard of advanced workers that can direct the coming mass movement of the working class toward the conquest of political power.

A long and intense discussion followed the lecture. Issues dealt with included the deep crisis of the European Union, the issue of the defence of democratic rights and the struggle for socialist consciousness in the working class. One participant expressed the hope that the American justice system would impose limits on Trump. Stern described this as a dangerous illusion. In 1933, there were many who hoped that it would be possible at some point to restrain Hitler and bring him under control.

Long after the end of the meeting, discussions continued at the bookstand in the hallway. Two brothers, Kaspar and Niklas, who study sport and biology, said, That was a very interesting speech. It had pointed to many new aspects for them. Now was clearly a point in time where many young people were beginning to turn to politics.

The development with Trump has politicised many people, said Niklas. They are directing their gaze towards America, but they understand developments in Europe. What is taking place here in the right-wing scene? And what is happening in Europe with data or with refugees? What will become of the entire European construct?

One learned little about these concrete issues at university, Paulina, a student of English and religious studies, commented, But it is always important to discuss these things. Following Trumps election, only one professor at the university had spoken about the issue. That is really a deficit in the education sector. The things happening live are not made an issue. I therefore found this speech very, very important.

An Iranian couple, both students at Ruhr University, also followed the meeting with considerable interest. We are shocked about what is currently happening in the United States, said the young woman, who referred to the travel ban on Muslims, which meant that thousands of people were being turned away or even arrested at airports.

Trump is declaring Muslims to be second class citizens, she said. One only has to exchange the term Muslim for Jew, then we have a new Hitler. The latest events also show that capitalism is not working in the United States. Developments are driving more and more towards war. It affects us all. The speech made that very clear.
The Florida Keys are famous for many reasons. Key Largo is where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall battled mother nature and Edward G. Robinson in the 1948 gangster flick and James Bond literally broke into Ballast Key in License to Kill. Considered Americas Caribbean, the Keys are where...

The Florida Keys are famous for many reasons. Key Largo is where Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall battled mother nature and Edward G. Robinson in the 1948 gangster flick and James Bond literally broke into Ballast Key in License to Kill. Considered Americas Caribbean, the Keys are where Ernest Hemingway fled to find inspiration, Truman Capote rested and where Jimmy Buffett found paradise. Yes, it was in the form of a cheeseburger, but can you blame him? The food in the Florida Keys is some of the best in the state. Immediate access to super fresh seafood is a big reason why as is the infusion of Caribbean flavors and inspiring views.

Ready to set sail? Here are the best restaurants in the Florida Keys.

Key Largo

Snappers

139 Seaside Ave, Key Largo, FL 33037

Seafood is a must in Key Largo and Snappers has some of the best. The lively and laid-back locale serves up Caribbean-style seafood on a waterfront. Their menu is so fresh they print menu inserts every day based on whats coming to the docks. Keys faves like Yellowtail Snapper, of course, and Stone Crab Claws draw crowds as do their rum-based tropical cocktails, tiki bar and live music evenings.

Islamorada

Pierres

81600 Overseas Hwy, Islamorada, FL 33036

Fine dining doesnt get any finer than at Pierres. The two-story plantation house-turned-restaurants sits on a 20-acre estate lined with palm trees and tropical flowers. Executive chef Ish Toro focuses on local seafood land imported ingredients like Valhrona chocolate, Merguez lamb sausage and Australian lamb to execute a menu that marries French fusion and world influences.

Marathon

Lazy Days South

725 11th Street Ocean, Marathon, FL 33050

Here youll find a wide range of seafood favorites from Bahamian fried conch to tender fried alligator and sesame seared tuna. Theyre also a cook and catch favorite, preparing your fresh caught fish to order and serving it up on their outdoor deck or in a dining room decorated with local art.

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Big Pine Key & the Lower Keys

El Siboney

900 Catherine St, Key West, FL 33040

It might take you a minute or two to fine El Siboney (its hidden away on a quiet street in Old Town) but once you do, youll quickly agree with the crowds waiting for a table that it is well worth the wait. The Cuban menu is as authentic as it gets  roast pork, palomilla steak and ropa vieja. If you want to taste the house specialty  their Paella Valenciana  be sure to call at least an hour in advance to order and reserve.

Key West

Blue Heaven

729 Thomas St, Key West, FL 33040

This outdoor eatery encompasses everything that Key West is: funky, tropical, laid back and loud, without being obnoxious. The Caribbean inspired menu isnt afraid to mix it up. Think carrot curry soup, scallops provencale, Caribbean shrimp deglazed with Red Stripe beer and seasonal stone crabs. Almost everyone there will be eating their earth-sized Key lime pie for dessert and with good reason. Follow suit and taste why.
Trump in 'worst call' with Australia PM

A phone call between US President Donald Trump and Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull has called into question a refugee resettlement deal.
A Missouri Dairy Queen manager was arrested this week and charged with involuntary manslaughter, a felony, in the suicide of one of her former teenage employees, PEOPLE confirms.

Harley Branham is accused of repeatedly harassing and demeaning 17-year-old Kenneth Suttner at the fast food restaurant in Fayette, Missouri, the Columbia Daily Tribune reports.

After deliberating for several hours on Tuesday during an official inquest sought by Howard County Coroner Charles Flaspohler, a jury found Suttner died due to harassment both at Dairy Queen and at school, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE.

Former coworkers testified at the inquest that Branham forced Suttner to perform tasks others did not have to, including cleaning the floor by hand while lying on his stomach, theTribune reports.

Allison Bennett, who worked at Dairy Queen with Suttner, testified that Branham threw a cheeseburger at the boy because she claimed he made it incorrectly.

On Dec. 21, distraught over the bullying he faced at school and at work, Suttner killed himself with a gunshot to the head outside his familys home in Glasgow, Missouri, after calling friends and relatives, according to police.

On Tuesday, after the jurys verdict, the high school juniors former supervisor was indicted and charged with involuntary manslaughter in his death, according to court records.

Branham, 21, was the principal cause of his death, the coroners jury found.

Flaspohler told the Tribune he sought an inquest because he felt bullying is a public health issue. (A coroners inquest is investigative, not prosecutorial, and is a separate process from standard police proceedings. An inquest involves jurors and testimony, and its findings can affect a law enforcement investigation, but it does not have the same authority as a criminal trial.)

Following the jurys verdict, special prosecuting attorney April Wilson on Wednesday filed a felony complaint charging Branham with involuntary manslaughter, claiming she acted with criminal negligence by harassing  and causing his death.

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(Wilson was appointed to the case after the countys prosecuting attorney recused himself, according to the Tribune.)

Branham is scheduled to be arraigned on Feb. 14 and has been released on bond, according to records. Her attorney, Jeffrey Hilbrenner, tells PEOPLE, Its too premature to comment. But its a tragic situation, he says.

During her testimony at the inquest, Branham denied bullying Suttner or making him do anything to demean him, according to the Tribune. Any insults, she testified, were done in jest and he took it in stride.

Branham did admit that she called Suttner an ahole at least once but claimed it was intended to be playful, according to the Columbia Missourian.

While on the stand, she said, Theres a lot of people at Dairy Queen saying I was the reason he killed himself, but I dont understand why it would be that way, the Tribune reports.

 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.

The jury also found Dairy Queen negligent in training its employees and that the Glasgow School District was negligent in failing to prevent bullying: The school followed policies and procedures, but they were negligent in preventing bullying, all of which caused Kenneth Suttner to take his own life.

Suttner reportedly faced extensive harassment at school: A former classmate testified that she saw Suttner tormented hundreds of times, according to the Missourian.

Kenny spent his life trying to tolerate negative words and actions, said Mary Korte, the mother of one of Suttners friends, according to the paper.

Suttners family could not be immediately reached. The Glasgow School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment, though the district superintendent testified during the coroners inquest that school bullying was not widespread, according to the Tribune.

In a statement to PEOPLE, Dairy Queen said the Fayette location is independently owned and operated, so it did not employ or supervise Branham, but the franchisee said she no longer works there. (A message left with the franchise owner was not immediately returned.)

Our thoughts and prayers are with family, DQ said its statement. We are still in the process of gathering information.

According to the Tribune, in a statement read after the jurys verdict on Tuesday, Suttners family called it justice for Kenneth.




(Photo: Getty Images)

Mention the words Trump and Chinese and you may not imagine anything beyond strained relations and harsh diplomatic language across two nations. A recent video shared by Ivanka Trump, however, may help dissuade such negativity.

Following a visit Wednesday to celebrate the Chinese New Year at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., President Donald Trumps eldest daughter posted a video of her daughter Arabella Kushner singing a song in Mandarin in honor of Lunar Year celebrations.

Ivanka wrote, Arabella singing a song she learned for #ChineseNewYear. Wishing everyone an amazing year to come during these days of celebration. 

Views and reactions across Facebook and Instagram have been exploding all day, with the expected amount of social and political commentary. But the predominant mood appears to be adoration of the 5-year-olds voice and admiration of her apparent grasp of Mandarin.

This isnt the first time Arabella has charmed millions with her Chinese-language skills. Back in November 2016, her mother shared a similar video of the presidents granddaughter reciting a classic Mandarin poem. In this previous case, the young girl happened to impress Chinese media and the public.

Ivanka Trump with her father on Wednesday, Feb. 15. (Photo: Getty Images)

Beyond possibly applying some cute bandages on any hemorrhaging relations between the U.S. and China, Ivankas gracious sharing of her daughters skills in Chinese may also help promote and persuade fans and followers to embrace the benefits of early childhood foreign language development. In the past, parents and educators feared that learning a second language too early could pose some drawbacks, including delays in learning language skills overall, and general confusion in the young ones. Since then, studies have proven these concerns to be unwarranted.

Learning foreign languages in early years is believed now to be more than beneficial. The bilingual brain develops more densely, points out WebMD, giving it an advantage in various abilities and skills, according to new research.

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Researchers like Professor Barbara Lust of Cornell University  who has been studying the learning of language in childhood for over 30 years  have pinpointed that cognitive advantages follow from becoming bilingual. She says that these cognitive advantages can contribute to a childs future academic success.

Besides the cognitive and cultural benefits of picking up a foreign language, if your little one starts to learn Spanish, Arabic, or Mandarin at an early age, just think of all the likes and hearts you can get on social media with videos like Ivankas.





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Amber Valletta is speaking out against Scott Pruitt. (Photo: Getty Images)

Amber Valletta is the latest celebrity using her platform to speak out against President Trumps administration picks. The actress and activist has written a passionate op-ed opposing the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Valletta begins by expressing her concern, as someone who cares about the environment and as a mother.

Without the EPA and the national pollution safeguards it enforces, more children would have asthma, she says. Our water would be less safe. More chemicals would poison our bodies. And more people would die prematurely from respiratory disease and heart attacks. In its more than 50 years of existence, the EPA has saved millions of lives. Placing Scott Pruitt in charge of this critically important agency would put the environmental protections weve learned to take for granted at grave risk.

Related: Trump Supporter Fired After Twitter Exchange With Patton Oswalt

The 42-year-old Oklahoma native and Sierra Club ambassador explains shes dismayed by what fossil fuel has done to her home state. Citing a report from the American Lung Association, Valletta says every Oklahoma county for which data was available received a failing grade for ozone pollution.

The consequences for families in the state have been heartbreaking, she writes. One community that suffered was the small town of Bokoshe. For years, the residents fought to stop toxic coal ash from being dumped in their community. Scott Pruitt, who should have been fighting for those families, did nothing  allowing the people he was charged with protecting to keep getting sick.

Valletta continues, As troubling as Scott Pruitts record in Oklahoma is, though, what I find most scary about his nomination is what it says about how President Trump intends to treat the Environmental Protection Agency. Scott Pruitt has spent his entire time in office attacking the EPA. Hes sued the EPA 14 times in an effort to, among other things, block the safeguards that protect children and families from mercury poisoning and methane pollution. Hes also been leading the legal attacks upon the EPAs life-saving, job-creating, climate-protecting Clean Power Plan, which the agency has calculated would avoid 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths, as well as 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children per year by 2030.

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Related: Howard Stern Claims Donald Trump Wants Hillary Clinton to Be President

I may not have voted for Donald Trump, but I recognize that many mothers like me did, she says. I refuse to believe that any of those mothers did so in the hope of seeing more sick kids or needless deaths. If we allow the one federal agency responsible for protecting us from pollution to be demolished, we will be going back to the dark days before passage of landmark protections like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We would also lose what could be our last best chance to act on climate change, while also squandering our status as a global leader in developing the clean, renewable energy sources of the future. And our children, who have no choice but to place their trust in us to protect their future, would rightly feel betrayed.

Valletta concludes, At every juncture as Oklahomas attorney general, Scott Pruitt has consistently chosen to undermine and attack environmental safeguards  not to defend them. That makes him exactly the wrong person to put in charge of the agency whose mission is to protect all of us from pollution.

Learn more about the Sierra Club.




An 80-year-old man with a knife and a long criminal history allegedly tried to approach Elizabeth Smart on Monday while she was speaking at an Indiana State University event, police tell PEOPLE.

Claude Hudson is charged with battery for allegedly punching a school police officer who intercepted him as he moved toward Smart, according to ISU Police Chief Joseph Newport, who says he doesnt think the man meant any harm.

Authorities say there is no connection between Hudson and Smart, 29, who was appearing on the Terre Haute, Indiana, campus to speak about overcoming hardship. Chief Newport says that Hudson has a decades-long criminal history, including a 1991 conviction for attempted murder, according to the Tribune Star.

Hudson is on parole for burglary, Newport says.

He says an officer saw Hudson at Mondays event with a roughly three-inch knife before he put it away and allegedly began rapidly walking toward Smart, around the long line of other people waiting to meet her.

But Newport says neither he nor the officer believe Hudson intended to hurt her  though the man was allegedly acting strangely, he could have just been someone who was rude and impatient.

When the officer stepped in front of Hudson, he allegedly struck the officer twice before he was restrained, Newport says.

 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.

Newport says Hudson told police he didnt want to wait in the line of more than 100 people to approach Smart, and that he wanted to ask her questions about her family.

Hudson has pleaded not guilty to the battery charge and his bail was set at $25,000, according to the Associated Press. Newport says he remains in custody, and neither he nor his public defender reportedly returned requests for comment.

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PEOPLE could not immediately reach him or his attorney.

Hudson asked to represent himself and a judge ordered a mental health evaluation, according to Chief Newport, who says that Smart did not seem frightened by Mondays incident.

In a statement Thursday, she said she is grateful for law enforcement and Indiana State Universitys quick response and that the event and her work continued undeterred, according to the AP.

An abduction survivor and advocate, Smart speaks out about her experiences on behalf of others. She was 14 when she was taken from her Salt Lake City bedroom and held for nine months, before being rescued.

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For more celebrity videos visit Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.
This story originally appeared on Time.com.

A French soldier guarding the Louvre in central Paris opened fire on a man armed with a knife after he attempted to enter the museum, media reports say.

Michel Cadot, the head of the Paris police force, said a man carrying two backpacks shouted Allahu akbar as he launched himself at a French soldier in the Carrousel du Louvre area of the museum. A different soldier then shot at the unidentified attacker five times, leaving him seriously wounded. Two machetes were found at the scene.

We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident, Cadot said, Sky News reports. The police chief also said a second person has been detained after they were spotted behaving suspiciously near the scene.

The area has been evacuated, according to police. French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described the incident as an attempted attack of a terrorist nature during a visit to Bayeux in Normandy.

Frances interior ministry released a statement calling the event serious and asked locals to prioritize the intervention of security and rescue forces. For security reasons, the station Palais Royal Louvre Museum has been closed.

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A spokewoman for the Louvre told Reuters that the museum  which houses Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa  was closed for the moment but would not confirm reports it had been evacuated.

Reports say around 250 people are locked inside, waiting to be evacuated in small groups.

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France has become a major target for terrorists; attackers allied with ISIS have killed more than 230 people in the country over the past two years, according to Reuters.

Last July, 86 people were killed in the southern city of Nice when a man drove a truck into a crowd on the seafront, and last September, three women were arrested in connection to a vehicle containing gas canisters found near Paris Notre Dame cathedral.

Story continues

The country faces a presidential election this spring, and security fears and the threat of ISIS are major issues being discussed by candidates. The capital was planning to formally submit a bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) Friday.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated




Happy 39th birthday, Amal Clooney!

Its been a tremendous year for the international human-rights lawyer, who scored key legal victories on several high-profile cases shes been working on in addition to traveling around the world with her husband, George Clooney. The glamorous couple just celebrated her birthday together in Barcelona, Spain.

Take a look back at some of her most memorable moments in the last year.

January 2016

Amal started the year in Washington, D.C., where she met with top lawmakers like Sen. John McCain to discuss the plight of her client, former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed, who was charged with terrorism in 2005 and ultimately sentenced to 13 years in prison after a controversial trial. Amal and her legal team had argued that Nasheed had been wrongfully imprisoned and that his detention was in violation of international law.

In defense of her client, Amal also did her first-ever U.S. network television interview with NBC News anchor Cynthia McFadden, during which she opened up about navigating her newfound fame while still focusing on her work, and saying that giving up is not an option.

The London barrister celebrated a victory in late January when she was able to bring Nasheed to London in order to undergo spinal surgery. She later met then -U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron alongside Nasheed to continue the fight for his permanent release. In May, Nasheed was granted asylum in the U.K.

February 2016

The Clooneys kicked off the month by attending the premiere of Georges movie Hail, Caesar! in Los Angeles. The couple also celebrated Amals 38th birthday later that week, where they were joined by close friends Rande Gerber and Cindy Crawford  and kept Georges Casamigos tequila flowing.

Story continues

That month, they traveled to Germany to attend the Berlin premiere of the film and later met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis and lend their support the cause.

March 2016

Amal and George continued their efforts to advocate on behalf of Syrian refugees in March by sharing a video of a recent meeting they had with several refugees in Germany.

My own family is from Lebanon and they also ran away from a war, and were lucky enough to be accepted by a European country in 1982 while the violence there was really bad, the human-rights lawyer shared in the video.

Amal also spoke during the opening ceremony of the International Government Communications Forum in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in late March.

April 2016

Amal continued to partner up with her husband to support causes they believed in. The couple co-hosted a fundraising event at their Los Angeles home for Hillary Clinton in her bid to secure the Democratic nomination for president. The event provided one lucky contest winner a chance to attend the fundraiser and meet Clinton and the Clooneys.

The contest winner told PEOPLE that Amal is classiest person in the world, I think.

May 2016

It was a glamorous month for Amal as she traveled to the Cannes Film Festival to support her husbands movie Money Monster. The lawyer made a splash on the red carpet in a gorgeous yellow gown. The couple were also seen around town enjoying local restaurants and taking in the sights before setting off to meet Pope Francis in the Vatican, where they were honored for their charity work.

September 2016

Happy second anniversary, Mr. and Mrs. Clooney!

The lawyer was back at work in September to represent her new client Nadia Murad, an ISIS human trafficking survivor. Murad was named a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador at a ceremony in New York where Amal gave an impassioned and emotional speech denouncing ISIS.

Amal with Nadia Murad at the UN

Amal also revealed that she and George had discussed the dangers that come with taking on a case involving ISIS, telling NBCs Cynthia McFadden that this is something I discussed with my husband before I would take on something like this  and we are aware of some of the risks involved.

November 2016

The human-rights lawyer spoke in Austin at the Texas Conference for Women, where she revealed that her mom is the person she admires most. Amal also cited Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as one of her biggest inspirations.

January 2017

The couple attended a screening of Syrian refugee documentary The White Helmets in London and later traveled to Davos, Switzerland, where Amal was honored at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting for human-rights work. Former Vice President Joe Biden was also at the event, where he was photographed chatting with the couple.




Getty Images

Howard Stern has said some shocking things in his time, but perhaps nothing quite so shocking as this: The radio host recently claimed that Donald Trump secretly wants Hillary Clinton to be president. Seriously. On Wednesday, the former Americas Got Talent judge argued that Trump ran in the election not because he wanted to be the leader of the free world but because he wanted a couple more bucks out of NBC in his contract for The Apprentice. That is why Donald is calling for voter fraud investigations. Hes pissed he won. He still wants Hillary Clinton to win, Stern added (jokingly?). Hes so f***ing pissed, hes hoping that he can find some voter fraud and hand it over to Hillary.

While the idea that someone accidentally won the presidency when all he wanted was a fatter reality TV contract might sound like the script for a movie, Stern and Trump have been friendly for decades, which means the shock jock might have a more in-depth understanding of what motivates the new commander in chief than the rest of us. (ICYMI, Trump appeared on Sterns show many times.) So, according to Stern, what is Trumps main goal? Its pretty simple: Trump wants to be liked; he wants to be loved, Stern said. He wants people to cheer for him.

Howard Stern and Donald Trump. (Photo: The Life Picture Collection/Getty Images)

The 63-year-old star added that he was amazed when Trump first announced his candidacy back in 2015, because he remembered the billionaire businessman as being a staunch Clinton supporter. While the topic of discussion during Trumps visits to Sterns show had more to do with panties than politics, Stern did say that Trump had been pro-abortion. Of Trumps campaign, Stern added, The new Donald Trump kind of surprised me. Its safe to say he wasnt alone on that one.

Another area where Stern noted some serious flip-flopping? Trumps take on Hollywood. Hes now on this anti-Hollywood kick. He loves Hollywood! First of all, he loves the press. He lives for it! He loves people in Hollywood. He only wants to hobnob with them, Stern argued.

Story continues

Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Beth Ostrosky and Howard Stern. (Photo: James Devaney/WireImage)

In fact, he thinks the situation Trump is in now (namely, that hes the president of the United States) might be bad for his health. I dont think its going to be a healthy experience, Stern said. All of this hatred and stuff directed toward him, its not good for him. Its not good. Theres a reason every president who leaves the office has gray hair. Stern then added that he worried that being president might actually be detrimental to [Trumps] mental health.

Great meeting with Harley Davidson executives from Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the White House. A photo posted by Donald J. Trump (@realdonaldtrump) on Feb 2, 2017 at 9:57am PST

Meanwhile, the new POTUS was busy meeting with Harley-Davidson executives and swearing in Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Stern added that he had already told Trump, point blank, that he wished the real estate tycoon had never run at all Now it seems the only question is whether that makes two of them.




Its tough to imagine a heartthrob like Idris Elba needing any advice for Valentines Day, but the actor received some top-notch advice from a few precocious kids, one of whom seemed to be a dating expert. The video is raising awareness for Elbas Omaze campaign to raise funds for the organization W.E. Can Lead, which helps educate girls in Sierra Leone.

The school kids gave out sage advice on where the Luther star should take his date and, more important, what he should and shouldnt eat. Idris has had a knack for playing antiheroes on The Wire and Luther, and so he asked the kids how he should behave on a date. He also showed the kids his best dance moves, and the kids even gave the star a few unique tips on how to let a lady know hes interested. At least now we know the fastest way to Idriss heart

Check out this Beyonce- themed Twitter account that kind of predicts the future:

Tell us what you think! Share your comments with us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Julissa Bermudez, on Twitter.
The Obamas Are Back from Vacation and Settling into Their Rented D.C. Home

No more backwards hats for Barack Obama.

The former president and wife Michelle Obama returned home to their new $4.3 million home in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night after enjoying a post-presidency vacation in Palm Springs and the British Virgin Islands.

The former first couple, who spent the past 10 days on Virgin billionaire Richard Bransons private island, flew out from Tortuga island by helicopter on Thursday before boarding Bransons jet headed for Washington.

Later, their motorcade was seen pulling up to their nine-bedroom mansion in Washingtons Kalorama neighborhood, where a neighbor had posted a welcome home sign, according to the Daily Mail. The Obamas will now be living just two blocks away from Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushners new home.

The Obamas spent their first weekend after leaving office in Palm Springs, California, where they were joined by daughters Malia, 18, and Sasha, 15.

The former president and first lady then travelled on without the girls to Bransons Caribbean home, known as Necker Island, a 74-acre stretch of sand that includes a luxurious resort for up to 30 guests.

Obama's on vacation with the hat backwards. He's never coming back. pic.twitter.com/RUakcwwgtT  Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) February 1, 2017

A Twitter video from Wednesday showed the Obamas walking along the beach, with the former president sporting shorts and a backwards hat, and the former first lady wearing shorts, a fedora and braids.

By Thursday, the Obamas had traded in their vacation shorts for pants  but the former president did leave the top buttons of his shirt undone. Its not like hes going back to the White House, after all.




The 911 call came at about 11:30 pm on Saturday night, claiming that something violent was happening inside a home in Seabeck, Washington. When Kitsap County Sheriffs deputies arrived at the scene, they found the building on fire.

After the fire was put out, investigators found a grisly sight: the bodies of 37-year-old Christale Careaga and two 16-year-old boys, Johnathon Higgins and Hunter Schaap.

The house belonged to 43-year-old John Careaga, who was found dead the next day, his body burned in a torched pickup truck on a tree farm in a neighboring county.

Police soon determined that all four of the victims  including John Careaga  were victims of homicide. Citing an ongoing investigation, they have not released a cause of death.

While police have not named any suspects, they believe that this family was targeted. Based on the investigation and evidence so far, Detectives do not believe these four murders were a random act, the sheriffs department said on its Facebook page.

On Monday, the county fire marshal announced that the fires at the home and truck had both been deliberately set.

The sudden violence has rocked Seabeck, a picturesque waterfront town with a population of about 1,100 people.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

John and Christale Careaga were well known in the area. Married in 2009, they owned a restaurant, Juanitos Taco Shop. Hunter Schaap was Johns son from a previous relationship.

Police did not release how Johnathan Higgins was related to the others, but they say that all four victims were part of a blended family. They are all family, Sheriffs Detective Lt. Earl Smith told reporters, according to The Kitsap Sun.

Police continue to investigate the case as the community processes its shock.

This vicious crime of murdering a family, including two teenagers is difficult to comprehend for everyone, the Kitsap County Sheriffs Office said in a press release. Our thoughts go out to our entire community affected by this tragic loss.




Two-day science expo begins

Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun has called on the government to invest in the field of science and technology to achieve the development goal.
Green Lantern Corps will join the DC Cinematic Universe in 2020. It will feature two versions of the popular comic book character  Hal Jordan and John Stewart. John Stewart, not Jon Stewart.

This wont be the first time DC has attempted to showcase Green Lantern. Ryan Reynolds starred as Jordan in the 2011 flop, and director George Miller wanted to include John Stewart in his ill-fated Justice League movie.

Common is still interested in playing Green Lantern. (Photo: Getty Images)

As you might know, Miller even cast Common to play the part. Common told IGN that he still wants to play the part. He used his mind to do a lot of things, so I connected with him, the John Wick: Chapter 2 star said. I just love the character, but I dont know, I havent talked to DC about it, but, you know, hey! Yeah, I would love [to]. That would be an honor to play John Stewart.

Common isnt alone. This Is Us star Sterling K. Brown also wants in:

Dear powers that be, if you are looking for someone to play John Stewart, I humbly submit my name. Namaste???????? #GreenLanternCorps https://t.co/1DTshcKS5M  Sterling K Brown (@sterlingkb1) January 13, 2017

Fast and Furious star Tyrese Gibson has met with Warner Bros. about the part and shared some fan art on his Instagram account:

Rumor has it that. A photo posted by TYRESE (@tyrese) on Jan 23, 2015 at 3:04pm PST

House of Payne star Lance Gross set the Internet aflutter when he shared what seemed like news at the time:

In Brightest Day A photo posted by lancegross (@lancegross) on Aug 1, 2015 at 5:41pm PDT

Perhaps Idris Elba enjoys being rumored to be Daniel Craigs James Bond replacement, as he got his many fans clamoring when he shared fan art on his Twitter account:

Thank you baby love..i like this idea@HeyTaz: @idriselba you should set this up ???????????????????????? pic.twitter.com/htnwDK5OjD  Idris Elba (@idriselba) November 21, 2013

Should Captain America Be Used for Political Statements? His Creators Daughter Doesnt Mind:

Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below.
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

1. TRUMP WARNS ISRAEL ABOUT BUILDING NEW SETTLEMENTS

The White House statement is a shift toward a tougher line with Prime Minister Netanyahu's government.

2. ATTACKER SHOT OUTSIDE PARIS' LOUVRE MUSEUM

Police say a man, armed with a machete and shouting "God is great" in Arabic, launched himself at soldiers and police officers, and was shot several times.

3. WHO WARNS NORTH KOREA

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says that a nuclear attack from Pyongyang will be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response.

4. U.S. EMPLOYERS ADD 227,000 JOBS

Companies ramped up hiring last month and more Americans began looking for work, a sign that Trump has inherited a robust job market.

5. MEXICAN DRUG LORD TO APPEAR IN U.S. COURT

Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is charged with running a massive drug trafficking operation that oversaw murders and kidnappings.

6. DELAWARE PRISON GUARD'S LAST ACT SAVES FELLOW OFFICERS' LIVES

Forced into a closet by inmates during a hostage standoff, Sgt. Steven Floyd calls out to officers coming to his aid, warning them that inmates have set a trap.

7. HOW EUROPE'S POPULIST LEADERS VIEW TRUMP

They see in the U.S. president a decisive head of state  and their weapon with which to attack the European governments they accuse of being soft on immigration.

8. WHY GAY RIGHTS ACTIVISTS WELCOME DOWNFALL OF GAMBIAN LEADER

Yahya Jammeh had turned his tiny West African country into a hostile environment for sexual minorities, including threats to slit gay men's throats.

9. WHO IS RISING UP FOR SUPER BOWL-BOUND ATLANTA

The Falcons are known for having fickle fans who abandon the team when it struggles, but this season, the sidelines are overflowing with rappers, actors and athletes from other sports.

10. TRANSGENDER NEPALI MAKES IT FROM FARM CHILD TO INDIA'S FASHION CATWALK

Anjali Lama is the first transgender woman to model at one of the top events on India's fashion calendar, fulfilling a dream that seemed far beyond her reach.
ROGERSVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A 15-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to killing a retired teacher at her East Tennessee home.

Media outlets report a Hawkins County judge sentenced Kyle Robert Wolfe to 25 years in prison without parole after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in 79-year-old Margaret Sliger's May 2015 death. Wolfe was prosecuted as an adult.

Authorities say Wolfe was 14 when shot and stabbed Sliger. Her body was found in her yard.

The Kingsport Times News reports that Wolfe, who lived nearby, was suspected after investigators learned Sliger had confronted him for riding his four-wheeler in her pasture just before the slaying.

Sliger was a retired elementary school teacher and church organist. She raised chickens, cows and other animals on a family farm where she lived all her life.
Two men were arrested for engaging in what cops say was a lewd act in a Bed Bath & Beyond.

The men, both 28, were in a Clifton, New Jersey, location of the home interior chain when police said they were caught in a compromising sexual position by a store employee.

Watch: 1-Year-Old Girl Finds Bag of Meth in Walmart While Waiting to See Santa

Police arrived at about 5 p.m. Monday and arrested the men, one of whom was visiting from North Carolina while the other was a New Jersey resident.

According to NorthJersey.com, the New Jersey man was additionally charged with having an outstanding warrant for his arrest.

Both men were charged with lewdness, criminal mischief and possession of marijuana.

Cops report that arresting officers were exposed to the skin mite infestation scabies, which they say at least one of the men was suffering from at the time of the arrest.

The identities of the men are protected under HIPAA laws because of the health condition.

The arresting officers were treated and put on leave to prevent contaminating the booking station, which cops said was also fumigated following the arrest.

Read: Sign of Bad Taste: A Walmart's 9/11 Soda Display Removed After It Sparks Outrage

In a statement, a spokesperson for the retail chain said the store has taken every precaution to prevent the spread of scabies.

"Out of an abundance of caution, the incident-related merchandise and display was immediately pulled from the floor and discarded. We will continue to take steps to assure that our store and merchandise continues to be safe for our customers and associates.

"If any customer feels uncomfortable in our store for any reason, we will of course attempt to address such a situation in an appropriate manner," the statement said.

Watch: Lawyer Claims Justice Clarence Thomas Groped Her in 1999 'While I Was Setting the Table'

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ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports

The Packers ruled out linebacker De'Vondre Campbell (knee) after he missed practice all week. That leaves rookie Quay Walker to wear the communication helmet on defense against the Lions. The only game Campbell has missed the past six seasons was Week 18 last season when he was inactive to rest for the postseason, not for [more]
Geneva (AFP) - Up to a quarter of a million Iraqis could flee their homes as the city of Mosul braces for an escalation of the conflict in its densely-populated west, the UN warned Friday.

The UN refugee agency and other organisations are urgently preparing to respond "to a potential significant new flight of displaced Iraqis escaping the latest phase in the military offensive in western Mosul," UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters.

He said that as many as a quarter million more people could be displaced as fighting escalates in the west of the city, where an estimated 750,000 civilians are living.

"A significant population is trapped in western Mosul and we are of course extremely concerned about their welfare," he said.

That would be in addition to the more than 161,000 who have fled since the October 17 start of a massive offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group, although nearly 30,000 have returned home since soldiers recently won the east of the city.

The three months it took to reconquer Mosul's east saw some tough fighting, but even deadlier battles are expected on its west bank, home to the narrow streets of the Old City and some of IS's traditional redoubts.

Saltmarsh said most of those already displaced from Mosul, 83 percent, are living in camps and emergency sites.

The UNHCR currently has seven camps completed and two under construction, and is at the moment able to provide shelter to around 66,000 people.

Saltmarsh said the agency aimed to nearly double the accommodation available in the near term, but was waiting for land to be allocated.

By the end of March, the UNHCR hopes to be able to house 246,930 people in camps and emergency sites, he said.

The UNHCR also warned that a growing number of people were fleeing Hawija, southeast of Mosul, due to deteriorating living conditions and escalating fighting.

Saltmarsh said more than 82,000 people had fled the district since last August, moving eastwards towards Salah al-Din and Kirkuk, and cautioned that the number could rise to 114,000.

"Those who are leaving Hawija are facing grave dangers," he said, pointing to ambushes and improvised explosive devices, as well as reports of kidnappings along the way.
In the summer of 2012, a group of archaeologists turned over a broken block of limestone on the floor of a rock shelter in southwestern France and discovered what could be one of the oldest examples of art in Europe.

Scrawled with the image of an aurochs (an extinct species of cattle) and dozens of small dots, the slab was created by the Aurignacians, the first Homo sapiens to arrive in Europe. Radiocarbon tests showed that the engraving dates back to about 38,000 years ago, according to a Jan. 24 report in the journal Quaternary International.

New York University anthropologist Randall White, a co-author of the study who led recent excavations at the rock shelter, said that the discovery "sheds new light on regional patterning of art and ornamentation across Europe" at a time when humans were just starting to spread across the continent. [Gallery: Photos of Europe's Oldest Rock Art]

The slab comes from a partially collapsed rock shelter called Abri Blanchard, where groups of hunter-gatherers would have congregated during the winter.

This 65-foot-long (20 meters) shelter is located near the small town of Sergeac in France's Vezere Valley, a region famous for having some of Europe's oldest examples of cave art. Several other carved slabs were already discovered at Abri Blanchard a century ago, during excavations by amateur archaeologists Louis Didon and Marcel Castanet from 1910 to 1912.

Many of the early artistic representations from this region have been interpreted as vulvas, ever since a French abbot was presented with an image of a heart-like engraving from Abri Blanchard and declared in 1911 that it was a "pudendum muliebre" ("a woman's thing to be ashamed of"). But the artists at Abri Blanchard didn't just have an interest in the female form. They chose a diverse array of artistic subjects, from horses and cats to geometric designs such as rings, according to White and his colleagues.

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Didon's team had nearly emptied the rock shelter in the early 20th century. So when White's team returned to the site in 2011, they dug underneath the previous excavators' old dirt piles into heavily concreted, untouched prehistoric sediments. In addition to the aurochs carving, the researchers found hundreds of stone tools and stone tool fragments, as well as animal bones, mostly from reindeer. They also found decorative bone, including an ivory bead and a pierced fox tooth.

White and his colleagues speculate that the carved block was a freestanding slab when it was decorated, meaning that either an Aurignacian found it and brought it into the rock shelter for engraving or the block had fallen from the ceiling and was engraved later on.

Aurignacian images of aurochs have been found at other sites, such as Chauvet Cave, also in France. Aligned dots have also been seen before on Aurignacian objects such as mammoth-tooth plaques and ivory pendants, but the combination of this design with an animal figure is "exceptional," the researchers wrote.

The discovery of the slab fits into the patterns researchers usually see in the earliest European art: There are broad shared features, with some regional quirks that stand out, White said in a statement.

"This pattern fits well with social geography models that see art and personal ornamentation as markers of social identity at regional, group and individual levels," White said.

Original article on Live Science.

Editor's Recommendations
Middle East refugees are once again in the spotlight, following President Donald Trumps executive order placing an indefinite hold on Syrians seeking asylum in the U.S.

But the story of the worlds beleaguered goes far beyond those caught up in the latest political firestorm. According to the U.N., there were 65.3 million forcibly displaced in the world in 2015a record high. That number, of course, continues to grow.

Its not just Syria and other conflict zones better known in the West driving these numbers, however. These five countries form part of the broader story of the worlds ongoing refugee crisis:

Democratic Republic of Congo

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared its independence from Belgium in 1960. Blessedand cursedwith vast natural resources and mineral wealth, violence has been a hallmark of the republic for as long as it has existed; its first prime minister was assassinated in 1961. Under strongman Joseph Mobutu, who seized control of the country in 1965 and renamed it Zaire (a name that lasted till 1997), the country stabilized economically but stalled democratically.

By the 1990s, the genocide in neighboring Rwanda spilled over into the country and amid the chaosalong with the help of Rwandan and Ugandan forcesrebel leader Laurent-Desire Kabila launched the First Congo War (1996-97) and deposed Mobutu; Kabila was himself assassinated during the Second Congo War (1998-2003). All told, more than 5.4 million people have been killed over the past two decades; less than 10 percent of those are believed to be soldiers killed in direct combat. To date, more than 2 million Congolese have been displaced by fighting, and violence continues to flare in the eastern part of the country. According to the U.N, over half a million have sought refuge outside the country.

The decades of violence have taken a toll on both the politics of the country and its economics. Kabilas son Joseph, who assumed the presidency following his fathers death, has stayed on past his electoral mandate while a transition is being worked out. The death this week of the 84-year old opposition leader, Etienne Tshisekedi, threatens an already shaky transition deal and theres a real risk that it will lead to a resurgence of violence.

Story continues

Myanmar

The Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority of 1.1 million that live in the Western part of Myanmar, make up a large part of the countrys 450,000 refugees. Because of race politics and a resurgence of Buddhist nationalism (87.9 percent of the country is Buddhist), the Rohingya continue to be denied citizenship by Myanmars government. Many have fled to neighboring Asian countries like Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand. Persecution of Rohingyas range from violence perpetrated by civilians and/or security forces to restrictions on employment, travel, and worship, as well as a general lack of economic opportunity. The result? Radicalized Rohingya Muslims ransacked police barracks in the past six months, and just this past weekend a high-level government advisor, Ko Ni, was assassinated at the international airport. A champion of religious tolerance, his death signals more religious strife on the horizon.

Until mid-2015, Myanmar was letting the Rohingya illegally migrate to Malaysia/Southern Thailand by boat, but international pressure forced the government to shut off this escape route, as some have called it. It remains to be seen if that same international pressure will be able to get the Myanmar government to treat the Rohingya any better.

Central African Republic

Or the worst crisis most people have never heard of, in the words of former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. The landlocked Central African Republic (CAR) has seen five coups since declaring independence from France in 1960, and even that grim statistic understates the turmoil thats gripped the nation.

The most recent coup took place in March 2013, when rebel leader Djotodia led his Seleka forces to overthrow President Francois Bozize and install himself as the countrys first Muslim president (about 15 percent of Central Africans are Muslims, 50 percent Christian). Marching to power, his Seleka forces targeted Christians while sparing Muslims; Christian militias rose in response as the country descended into chaos. Djotodia managed to hold onto power for just nine months before being ousted himself, though the violence continues. Today, there remain over 470,000 Central Africans displaced of a total population of 5.5 million.

Eritrea

The displaced people of Eritrea are unusual in that the key driver of migration is not war or sectarian hatred, but compulsory military service. Originally, military service in Eritrea was supposed to be just 18 months, but it was extended indefinitely in 2002 as a way of providing free labor for government projects. According to the UN, Eritrean military service entails arbitrary detention, torture, sexual torture, forced labor, absence of leave, and the ludicrous pay an institution where slavery-like practices are routine. It is not unusual to find adults serving the army into their fifties; the result has been a monthly exodus of roughly 5,000 people a month. Over 400,000 Eritreans (9 percent of the population) have already fled the country; as of 2015, Eritreans comprised the second largest group of refugees in Europe, second only to Syrians.

Colombia

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for brokering a truce with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) late in 2016. He earned that awardthe decades of fighting between the guerilla group and the Colombian government have internally displaced 6.9 million people; as of 2015, the most in the world (edging out Syria by 300,000 people). Some 340,000 have fled beyond its borders.

A communist group that opposed the privatization of natural resources and the exploitation of the rural poor by the countrys economic elites, FARC rebels have been waging war on Bogota for nearly five decades; more than 200,000 people have been killed in those clashes. FARC was able to wage its war as long as it did thanks to financing created by Colombias booming drug trade; by 2013, it was estimated that 60 percent of Colombias drug trade was controlled by the FARC.

Obviously, the peace deal should have a positive impact on refugees and internally displaced over the long term. However, security troubles are far from over, given the presence of other groups like criminal bands (BACRIM) and the National Liberation Army (ELN) that are themselves engaged in drug trafficking and extortion. The ELN is about to begin peace discussions with the government; heres hoping that FARC set a good precedent.
The hostage standoff that left one corrections employee dead at a Delaware prison ended Thursday morning, hours after inmates used sharp instruments to assume control, the Associated Press reported. Police were ultimately able to breach the James T. Vaughn Correction Center in Smyrna, about 40 miles south of Wilmington.

An inmate told the News Journal in Wilmington and said their reasons "for doing what we're doing" included President "Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he's doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse."

The unidentified inmate, who reportedly was housed in Building C  the same area where the hostages were taken  indicated that he and his fellow prisoners did not have great access to education programs. Overcrowding has limited inmates' chances of transferring to medium-security building even with good behavior, the prisoner added. Inmates have also requested effective rehabilitation for all prisoners and information about how funding is distributed to prisons.

Below are some concerns of general prison conditions that possibly may have triggered the nearly 24-hour hostage:

1. Prison overcrowding

Prison overcrowding, something thats common throughout the U.S., has disabled prisons from functioning properly and could lead to more violence between the prisoners and the corrections officers. The cause of the penitentiary overcrowding varies. It can be due to limited room in prisons, high crime rates and changes to laws and improvements to law enforcement tactics. Still, a legal case in 1981 addressed overcrowding as potentially cruel and unusual punishment.

The latest data shows that 22 national prison systems hold more than double their capacity, with a further 27 countries operating at 150 percent to 200 percent.

2. Overuse of solitary confinement

The Department of Justice described solitary confinement as any type of detention that involves: (1) removal from the general inmate population, whether voluntary or involuntary; (2) placement in a locked room or cell, whether alone or with another inmate; and (3) inability to leave the room or cell for the vast majority of the day, typically 22 hours or more.

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In the U.S. it is estimated that 80,000 individuals are being held in some form of isolation.

3. HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis are much higher in prisons

UNAIDS estimated that prisoners were five times more likely to be living with HIV. Tuberculosis rates in many prisons were 10 to 100 times greater than anywhere else.

4. Sexual abuse

In 2014, a new study conducted by the Justice Department documented more than 8,763 allegations of prisoner sexual victimization between 2009 and 2011. That was an 11 percent increase over the number of allegations documented in a report covering 2007-08.

The study found 49 percent of the unwanted sexual misconduct or harassment ranging from verbal sexual harassment to nonconsensual sexual penetration.

In 2003, Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act, known as PREA. Its purpose was to lessen the rate of sexual abuse that goes on in prisons but based on these numbers; the law didn't do much.

5. Poor sanitary conditions

International Prison Conditions stated that a majority of the worlds prison systems do not function at the level of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners." In most cases, it was deliberate, the report said. Poor conditions vary from inadequate lighting to ventilation to extremes of temperature to insect and rodent infestation to insufficient or non-existent personal hygiene supplies, according to the Penal Reform International.

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Washington (AFP) - Fifty Democratic congressmen wrote US President Donald Trump on Friday demanding he explain his placement of controversial chief strategist Steve Bannon on the National Security Council despite lacking formal foreign policy experience.

The letter follows the introduction of two Democratic bills, one in the Senate and the other in the House of Representatives, on Wednesday aimed at keeping Bannon off the NSC's core Principals Committee and reinstating the permanent status of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence.

Trump caused an uproar last weekend when he issued a memorandum that reorganized the NSC to elevate Bannon onto the Principals Committee and to relegate the Joint Chiefs chairman and DNI to roles where they only attend when "issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise" are discussed.

"National security should never fall victim to partisan politics," said the House Democrats in their letter headed by congressmen Ted Deutch and Jerrold Nadler.

"We strongly encourage you to restore the DNI and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to their rightful status as regular members of the Principals Committee," they wrote.

They also asked the administration to provide Congress "a written explanation for your decision to inject politics" into the NSC by formally elevating Bannon to the Principals Committee.

"And the deeply troubling allegations that Mr Bannon supports or is tolerant of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim views take on added significance if he is to serve as a member."

The 63-year-old Bannon, former head of rightwing Breitbart News, is seen as a provocateur who rejects political convention and has an uncanny ability to steer Trump towards his own ideological agenda.

Trump's decision to give Bannon a place on the council has alarmed former officials from Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

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Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, a former national security specialist at the Pentagon, introduced her bill in order to restore the permanent roles of the DNI and Joint Chiefs chairman to the council.

But it would also deny a seat to Bannon or any other individual "whose primary responsibility is political in nature," she said.

Veteran Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the judiciary committee and co-author of the Senate bill, on Thursday blasted Trump's inclusion of Bannon as "a completely unacceptable infringement of politics into national security."
US warns North Korea of 'overwhelming' response to nuclear use

The US defence secretary James Mattis has said any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response.
Eight police officers, all members of the same family, were killed in northern Afghanistan on Friday after a colleague working with the Taliban drugged and shot them at a checkpoint, police and government officials said.

No group claimed responsibility for the deadly attack but a spokesman for Faryab provincial police told AFP the suspected assailant had "fled back to the Taliban".

The victims, four regular police and four auxiliary officers, "were drugged by their colleague who then opened fire on them at a police checkpoint in the Almar district" of Faryab province, provincial police spokesman Abul Karim Yoresh told AFP.

District governor Saleh Saleh confirmed that all eight of the police officers were members of the same family.

Local media reported that the suspected assailant police officer had joined the Taliban a year ago.

A similar incident happened in September when two Afghan soldiers opened fire on their sleeping colleagues in their barracks in the northern province of Kunduz.

On Wednesday the US government's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a report that the death rate among Afghan troops and police soared last year as the Kabul government's overall control of the country declined significantly.
By Benet Koleka TIRANA (Reuters) - Albania's Security Council called on law enforcement agencies on Friday to arrest a fugitive cannabis kingpin to quell doubts among NATO partners of the country's resolve to fight the drugs trade. President Bujar Nishani, chairing the meeting, said the failure to catch Klement Balili had stained Albania's image, as his drugs ring had spread to the territory of neighboring countries and NATO allies. "Our (NATO) partners and international law-enforcement agencies want this issue solved as soon as possible and have expressed their concerns several times," Nishani said, according to a statement from his office. "This illustrates the wider dimensions of this case as it damages our national security by spilling over our borders." Albanian police said in May they wanted to detain Balili in cooperation with Greek police and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration after he was accused of transporting 700 kilos of cannabis into Greece. Balili's Greek lawyer Alexios Kugas has said Greece had built a case against him out of thin air. Police have been effective in catching small players in the cannabis trade, but its bosses appear to go free. Balili, 46, until early last hear headed the road-building and transport department of the coastal town of Sarande, where he also owned a luxury hotel and had a stake in another. He had political ties with the Socialist Integration Movement (SIM) party, junior partner in the ruling coalition led by the Socialist Party. Published photos of Balili dancing late last year at the wedding of the man who replaced him at the road department suggested he had no fear of arrest. SIM's leader Ilir Meta, parliament speaker, called the Security Council meeting, saying the United States had made clear to him the importance of Albania fighting the drug trade and the image of the country was at stake. Authorities managed to eradicate the large-scale, open-air cultivation of cannabis in the southern village of Lazarat in 2014. But in the two years since, open cannabis-growing has spread to an area several times as large. Albania is believed to be the biggest open-air grower of the crop in Europe. (Editing by Andrew Roche)
A top aide to President Donald Trump said Friday she misspoke when she cited a 2011 "massacre" in Kentucky that never happened.

A day earlier, during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Kellyanne Conway defended Trump's temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations by saying that former President Barack Obama instituted a similar policy for Iraqi refugees in 2011.

"President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," Conway said. "Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

It didn't happen.

Conway tweeted Friday morning that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" during the interview.

Her description of the 2011 Obama administration policy as a ban was also a mischaracterization, which she didn't correct.

Obama never banned Iraqi refugees or other Iraqi travelers from coming to the United States. His administration did slow down the processing for Iraqis seeking Special Immigrant Visas, which are given to translators and interpreters who worked with the U.S. in that country.

The slowdown was prompted by the May 2011 arrest of two men in Kentucky charged with plotting to send weapons and money to al-Qaida operatives abroad. Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, were mistakenly admitted to the U.S. as Iraqi refugees in 2009 and resettled in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Alwan and Hammadi are in prison after pleading guilty. They were never accused of plotting to launch attacks inside the U.S.

According to State Department data, 9,388 Iraqi refugees were admitted to the United States during the 2011 budget year. The data also show that Iraqi refugees were admitted every month during the 2011 calendar year.

In addition, more than 7,800 Iraqis were allowed into the United States on nonimmigrant visas, including tourists, during the 2011 budget year, government data show.

EDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
WASHINGTON (AP)  Democrats didn't wait to assemble the facts before they accused President Donald Trump of rewarding "thugs" in the Russian intelligence service by lifting certain sanctions. The facts don't support them.

The Trump administration on Thursday revised sanctions on the Russian intelligence service, FSB, to correct an unintended consequence of broader penalties placed on Russia by President Barack Obama. That prompted a hair-trigger response from Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, and others.

PELOSI: "Less than two weeks after walking into the White House, President Trump lifts sanctions on the Russian Security Service. Vladimir Putin's thugs meddle with an American election, and President Trump gives them a thank you present. "

REP. ERIC SWALWELL, D-Calif: "Russia attacked our democracy. It should be punished. Instead, President Trump is easing sanctions against its team of hackers, the FSB." He added

TRUMP: "I haven't eased anything."

SEAN SPICER, Trump press secretary: "Regular course of action."

THE FACTS: They support Trump and his spokesman.

The Dec. 29 sanctions imposed by the Obama administration were not intended to ban the U.S. sale of cellphones, tablets and other consumer electronics to Russia. But they had that effect, by barring U.S. firms from getting the permits needed from the FSB to sell in Russia. The FSB has regulatory as well as intelligence responsibilities.

Trump's change does not materially benefit the FSB, except in a minuscule way. It allows U.S. firms to pay the FSB a required fee of up to $5,000 per year to export encryption-capable consumer electronics to that country. It's of more benefit to the U.S. sellers and Russian buyers of those devices. It's not unusual to fine-tune sanctions to permit certain transactions.

Now, the Treasury Department will allow "certain transactions" with the FSB "that are necessary and ordinarily incident to requesting certain licenses and authorizations for the importation, distribution, or use of certain information technology products in the Russian Federation."

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Democrats in particular are incensed at alleged Russian hacking of their party's communications in the campaign. And lawmakers from both parties have been watching for a sign that Trump will try to ease Obama's Russian sanctions in a consequential way, given his cozy rhetoric about Putin during and after the campaign. This isn't it.

Republican Sen. John McCain, hawkish on Russian sanctions, shrugged off the revision as an apparent "technical fix." The same thought was voiced by Democrat Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, who said in a televised interview that former Obama administration officials viewed the Trump move as "a technical correction."

EDITOR'S NOTE _ A look at the veracity of claims by political figures
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Trump administration is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first punitive action since the White House put Iran "on notice" after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, expected as early as Friday, said the officials and others with knowledge of the decision. The individuals weren't authorized to discuss the unannounced sanctions publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of President Donald Trump's term, reflect his administration's desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The White House and the State Department declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanctions authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

"This is fully consistent with the Obama administration's commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline U.S. position on Iran.

The impending sanctions come the same week that Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Iran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemen's internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

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"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," said Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have encouraged Trump not to let the missile test go unpunished. On Thursday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined more than a dozen other lawmakers to urge Trump to act.

"Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities," the lawmakers wrote.

Iran has reacted angrily to the threats of retaliation. Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, predicted this week that "the U.S. will be the final loser."

"It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran," Velayati said, according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency.

Though Trump has long derided the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, recently he has avoided repeating his campaign pledge to renegotiate it. Iran has insisted the deal won't be re-opened, and the other world powers that negotiated it with the U.S. have little appetite for revising it.

The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has stated that Iran's ballistic missile testing doesn't violate the nuclear deal itself. But as part of the final negotiations for that deal, Iran agreed to an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile development.

The U.N. Security Council later endorsed the agreement, calling on Iran not to carry out such tests. But Iran has flouted the prohibition regularly in the past year-and-a-half, drawing sanctions from the U.S. but also diplomatic cover from Russia.

___

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
London (AFP) - Arsenal will look to shrug off recurring doubts about their mental strength and the weight of recent history when they visit runaway Premier League leaders Chelsea on Saturday.

Chelsea dropped points for only the second time in 17 matches in Tuesday's 1-1 draw at Liverpool, but Arsenal could not take advantage as they crashed to a 2-1 home defeat by Watford.

It means the gap between the teams remains nine points and should Arsenal fall to defeat again at Stamford Bridge, it is likely to spell yet another premature end to a title challenge.

"When you accept competition and you want to be at the highest levels, you have to accept you will have defining moments and defining games," said Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger.

"If you don't want that pressure, it is better that you don't compete.

"Every day there are careless ups and downs, but we have accepted this job and the beauty of this job is that you can have highs, and that is what you want to focus on."

The defeat by Watford, who scored twice in the opening 13 minutes, was Arsenal's fourth of the campaign and curbed a resurgence that had seen them take 13 points from a possible 15.

Arsenal's season is slipping into familiar territory and if they are to avoid yet another campaign boiling down to the contest for Champions League qualification, beating Chelsea would be a good place to start.

They have already defeated Antonio Conte's men once this season, but it was to prove the catalyst for a surge to the top of the table for the vanquished, rather than the victorious.

It was in the 55th minute of Chelsea's 3-0 defeat at the Emirates Stadium on September 24 that Conte switched to the 3-4-3 system that revitalised his side's season.

The win left Arsenal third, five places above their London rivals, and came amid a run of six straight wins that would culminate in Wenger's men drawing level on points with leaders Manchester City.

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Four months on, Arsenal find themselves back in third, with Chelsea threatening to disappear over the horizon as they go in search of an 11th consecutive win in front of their own fans.

- Arsenal's midfield hole -

But despite the dramatic reversal of fortunes, Conte says he has kept the September defeat in mind.

"This defeat seems far (away), but it's important to remember the defeat against Arsenal," said the Chelsea manager.

"It was a bad defeat, 3-0 after the first half. And in my mind it's always present, this defeat.

"I hope also in the mind of my players. I think it's important to remember the first game against Arsenal."

Arsenal's supporters, many of whom took to social media to vent their frustrations after the loss to Watford, have learnt to approach trips to the Bridge with trepidation.

They have not seen their team win there since 2011, Arsenal having lost on each of their last four visits, including a humiliating 6-0 loss on the occasion of Wenger's 1,000th game in March 2014.

Wenger will be absent from the dug-out on Saturday as he serves the third match of a four-game touchline ban for manhandling fourth official Anthony Taylor during Arsenal's 2-1 win over Burnley.

Further complicating matters for the Frenchman is a raft of missing midfielders, Aaron Ramsey having joined the list of absentees after sustaining a calf strain against Watford.

Granit Xhaka is banned, Santi Cazorla remains injured, Mohamed Elneny is preparing for the Africa Cup of Nations final with Egypt in Gabon and Jack Wilshere is still on loan at Bournemouth.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is likely to partner Francis Coquelin in the holding roles if he passes a fitness test on a minor knee problem.

Chelsea are a man lighter after Branislav Ivanovic departed for Zenit Saint Petersburg on Wednesday, but Conte again has a fully fit squad to choose from.
Whether employers, classmates, faculty or alumni, connections are crucial in landing a job.

That's why, experts say, prospective online MBA students need to factor networking opportunities into their decision of where to enroll.

"The education is absolutely critical, but coming away with a strong network and some of the professional relationships that you develop in the MBA program is certainly very important as well," says 34-year-old Dustan Atkinson, an online student at the University of Florida Hough Graduate School of Business.

Before applying, the Atlanta resident asked Hough staff what types of opportunities were available, he says. He was impressed , he says, at how often students networked at in-person events and during classes.

[Explore networking tips for online MBA students.]

Business is a field where connections are an essential part of the job search, experts say. And online students cite career aspirations as their primary motivator for pursuing a degree, one 2016 survey found.

"In an online program, students are going to be forced to take an active role in their networking in a way that's a little bit different from sort of the more passive everyday networking that happens when you're physically connected and in class with other students," says John Gresley, assistant dean and director of UF's MBA program.

Students might research networking opportunities in potential online programs by contacting a career center, browsing websites or speaking with current and past students. In the process, here are five questions experts suggest they ask.

1. How often do students in the online program interact? Much of the networking in online MBA programs takes place in the virtual classroom, experts say, particularly during group projects. Students might communicate on discussion boards and through videoconferencing.

"Typically, people conceive of online programs in the learning community to rather be individually focused. But in order for it to be effective in enabling students to achieve their career objectives, it needs to be a community," says Charla Griffy-Brown, a professor of information systems and technology management at the Pepperdine University Graziadio School of Business, which has an online MBA program.

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Many of these programs also have in-person residency requirements where students engage face to face. That's the case at the Indiana University--Bloomington Kelley School of Business, where online students congregate on campus for two one-week periods throughout the program.

2. Who are the typical students in the program? To gauge the quality of a program's network, prospective online MBA students can also look into the types of students who enroll: their professional backgrounds and industries, for instance, and where they're based, says Joan Brett, associate dean of graduate programs at the Arizona State University W.P. Carey School of Business, which offers an online MBA.

"When you compare an online program to, let's say, an evening or weekend, you're going to have way more diversity," she says. "It's important because one of the things we tell students, and that students also find, is that one of the biggest networking opportunities are with students in their class."

[Discover what to expect from classmates in an online MBA program.]

3. Does the program also offer local networking events? Many online MBA students prefer to network in person rather than or along with virtually, experts say. Therefore, it's essential to determine whether programs host career fairs and other face-to-face events nationwide.

UF's Hough business school, for example, holds networking meetups for on-campus and online MBA students in major Florida cities each year, Gresley says -- and sometimes even across the country.

"If we can get critical mass where we've got students, we do our best to bring them together," he says.

4. Are there opportunities to connect with business leaders? Prospective students should understand whether there are opportunities to speak with alumni or employees in the field who can provide advice, says Griffy-Brown of Graziadio. Professors or career services might be a good way to start.

Ray Aflakian, an online MBA student at Graziadio, says a professor connected him with a founder and CEO of a startup that evolved into a larger company.

[Ask 10 questions to assess online program faculty.]

"He stayed on it and made sure to make it happen," says the 29-year-old, who's starting his own business. "That conversation was pivotal for me."

5. Does the program advise students on how to network? Because many online students plan to change careers or advance in their current company, they might want to determine whether their program teaches them how to effectively build connections.

At ASU's Carey business school, the career center holds webinars for students about how to manage the career process, Brett says. And at Kelley, online MBA students complete a required course that trains them to successfully network, says Terrill Cosgray, executive director of online programs at Kelley.

"Networking is actually in some ways more effective in an online program in that everyone is currently working," Cosgray says. "They understand the value and need for networking."

Trying to fund your online education? Get tips and more in the U.S. News Paying for Online Education center.

Jordan Friedman is an online education editor at U.S. News. You can follow him on Twitter or email him at jfriedman@usnews.com.


Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at the Sister Giant conference on Feb. 2. (Photo: Garance Franke-Ruta/Yahoo News)

ARLINGTON, Va.  Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, speaking at a conference on the Politics of Love Thursday evening, said he feared that President Trump would plunge the nation into war.

This is one of the things that scares me most: For a demagogue to succeed, they need to cultivate hatred. Now the hatred may be against immigrants  were all supposed to hate immigrants, and maybe its other minorities, African-Americans, Latinos, Sanders said. But also I worry that the hatred will spill over to foreign affairs, and that we are maybe entering into a situation where a Trump needs a war  and war and war  to rally public support.

Sanders spoke before a rapturous audience at the second Sister Giant conference, hosted by bestselling spirituality author Marianne Williamson, author of A Return to Love and The Age of Miracles. The conference was part of a movement Williamson has dubbed the Great Resistance of 2017 . Attendees were overwhelmingly female  fans and followers of Williamson, who is among the leading figures in the New Spirituality movement in America.

The gathering, billed as Creating a Politics of Love, illustrates how normally inward-looking communities, especially of women who had expected Hillary Clinton to win even if they were not all-in on her candidacy, have been galvanized into action by the polarizing 2016 election outcome.

While the Womens March on Washington and its sister marches around the country struck a chord with the crafting lifestyle community  so much so that the marches wound up being visually defined by their pink hand-knitted and crocheted pussy hats  Sister Giant is seeking to mobilize what Williamson calls the higher consciousness community to resist Trumps agenda and reach out to Americans who hold political views different from their own.

The conference, which drew 1,800 guests and an online audience of more than 3,000, opened with a video featuring a medley of words and phrases: Say Hell No to Tyranny, Rise Up, Resist and Dont Be Gaslighted. The stage was backed by a banner showing a woman in lotus position silhouetted against a stylized American flag; on either side stood tall shelves holding candles. The Washington Unity Choir sang My Country Tis of Thee and America the Beautiful. A handful of women in the audience held up Bernie signs, and when he walked out to take his seat in the speakers section, one shouted, 2020!

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Sanders, the conferences keynote speaker, told the audience that the enthusiasm for his message at the first-ever Sister Giant in 2015 in Los Angeles helped encourage him to run for president.

Not knowing precisely what to do next, but feeling called to action, was a common refrain Thursday. With whats happening today, I dont know exactly what to do, Williamson said.

We have more than a political problem. We have an emotional problem, in that this moment scares us. It scares us. We have a psychological problem in that we are all being bullied in this moment. We have a spiritual problem in that hate has been harnessed for political purposes, she said.

Sanders echoed her remarks. If you think that you dont have the answers, trust me, you are not alone, he said. What is imperative as never before is that we really think this thing through, because the stakes are so extraordinary for this country and for the world. And on behalf of my seven grandchildren, and the children all over this planet: We cannot fail.

I know that some of your friends say, Wow, this sucks, added Sanders. He acknowledged that some people are reacting to the moment by wanting to turn off the news, stop reading the papers and kind of sink slowly into despair.

And to those people who say this, I say, as loudly as I can  not only for your lives, but for the lives of future generations  despair is not an option.

Sanders assured the audience: On every important issue facing this country, the views of Donald Trump and his friends are a minority position  and dont ever forget that.

And yet, he said, being in the majority is not enough. Let me suggest to you, and some will disagree with me, thats OK too. Let me suggest to you that what happened on November 8th, Trumps victory, was not a victory for Trump or his ideology. It was a gross political failure of the Democratic Party.

This won Sanders a partial standing ovation.

Some people may disagree with me, but if you think that everybody who voted for Donald Trump is a racist or a sexist or a homophobe, you would be dead wrong, Sanders said. Instead, he said, what happened is that hardworking decent people had a lot of questions about their lives, about long hours and poor wages and their declining standard of living and school debt and Wall Street destroying the economy.

So Trump comes along, and Trump is, among many other qualities, a pathological liar. So bad that he practically has no ideology at all. Tomorrow he may come out for a single health care payer program, I dont know. He doesnt believe in anything. Its just what sounds right at the moment, Sanders said.

But what Trump did do, if you listen carefully to what he said, he said, I, Donald Trump, Im going to take on the establishment, Sanders said.

He won because there are people in this country who are hurting, and they are hurting terribly, Sanders said. And for years they looked to the Democratic Party, which at one time was the party of working people. And they looked and they looked and they looked and they got nothing in return, and out of desperation they turned to Mr. Trump.

All over this country there are people who are hurting, and our job is to communicate and talk to and stand up and fight with those people for a government that listens to them, he said.

It is always easy to come to beautiful conferences like this, where we look to our friends over here, friends over there, and were all in basic agreement, he counseled. It is a hell of a lot harder to start talking to people who have a worldview very different than yours. But that is exactly what we have to do.

Sanders said he planned to go to McDowell County in West Virginia with MSNBC to hold a town hall. McDowell County, which voted 74 percent for Trump , is the poorest county in West Virginia and also has one of the worst opium and prescription-drug abuse problems in the nation. The needs and problems in McDowell are so acute that West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and his wife have been for years now seeking to rally influential figures in Washington and around the country to give the place more attention.

Sanders, who is positioning himself as a leading voice of the opposition to Trump, also plans to debate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on CNN Feb. 7 in a 90-minute show devoted to the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans have vowed to repeal.

Sanders encouraged conference attendees to run for office, especially school boards, city councils and state legislatures. To people who dont have confidence to run for office  Im a member of the Senate. You should see some of the Senate. If you have any doubt about your ability to run for office, turn on C-SPAN, he joked.

The conference runs through the end of the day Saturday and features such other speakers as Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the first Indian-American woman in the House, and activist attorney Zephyr Teachout.

Read more from Yahoo News:
VIENNA (AP)  Guests at Austria's annual right-wing ball had particular reasons to celebrate this year  the White House victory of Donald Trump and the strength of like-minded populists elsewhere.

They again were outnumbered by some 3,000 protesters on the street Friday who marched through downtown Vienna, but the crowd was smaller and more peaceful than usual.

After decades of being marginalized, those attending the Akademikerball can argue this year that their views are now being supported by a large number of Austrians as well as a sizable number of voters elsewhere in Europe.

With tensions high in Vienna, police barriers were up and 2,700 officers were mobilized to ensure that attacks on taxis carrying ball-goers, the trashing of storefronts near the ball and similar past violence will not be repeated.

Past ball participants have included French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Belgium's Filip Dewinter, and Russia's Alexander Dugin. But while no prominent non-Austrian populist was known to be attending this year, guests preparing for the white-tie event at Vienna's ornate Hofburg palace were heartened.

Austrian Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer  one of those attending Friday  lost the December election for the Austrian presidency but his anti-Muslim immigration and Euroskeptic messages reverberated with a sizable segment of voters.

Nearly 50 percent of those who cast ballots supported him, and his party is riding high, consistently outpolling not only other opposition parties but also the mainstream government coalition as the country's most popular political force.

"We are totally normal patriots like the three million Austrians" who support the Freedom Party, said ball guest Alexander Markovics of the Generation Identity movement. Like the Freedom Party, which is organizing Friday's ball, movement members advocate a European "dominant culture" that they claim is threatened by Muslim immigration and favor strong nations instead of a centralistic European Union.

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For decades, these were considered minority views and those attending the Akademikerball portrayed themselves as victims, the targets of street mobs, hostile media and the political establishment.

But Europe's right is on a roll. Ahead of key elections this year in the Netherlands, France and Germany, prominent populists hailed Trump's victory as a sign of the times for their own coming triumphs that have been already bolstered by Britain's decision to leave the EU.

An upbeat Markovics described Trump's victory as important not only "because an American patriot has gained power but also because he is an American president who wants to pull back from the affairs of other countries."

"We support that, because Europe and European countries will gain more sovereignty and the freedom to act."
As the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka continues to see a fierce surge in violence, many here believe they are the victims of a geopolitical test of wills.

Rebel forces shelled the towns main humanitarian aid station late on Thursday, according to Pavlo Zhebrivskyi, the head of the civil and military administration of Donetsk province, killing two and injuring a third person. The total dead is now at least 15, according to reports, since hostilities between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces began ticking up on the frontline on the outskirts of town early on Sunday morning.

Fighting is now at the most intense level it has been in many months, and Avdiivka is caught in its orbit. Near a section of one-story wooden houses here, the shockwave of outgoing artillery and the strange whistle of mortars could be felt and heard from the street. Staff from the UN Refugee Agency slowly patrolled the dirt lane, inspecting damage from the day before when projectiles from a multiple rocket launcher hit the area, turning wooden roofs into kindling and leaving sharp dark holes in the ground  stark against the white snow.

In the bloodshed of the past few days, many here see the Kremlin testing its limits with newly-elected President Donald Trump. There is a direct link between the fighting in Avdiivka and the election of Trump. The separatists wanted to test the reaction of the new administration, volunteer soldier Leonid Martsun told TIME, outside of a command post on the edge of the town, as a scarred and dirty Ukrainian tank ground through the snow of the parking lot. Putin needed to know how strongly Trump would react, said Dmytro Linko, a parliamentary deputy who had come down from Kiev on Wednesday to observe the operations.

This thinking seems to run in parallel to leaders in Washington. That this surge of attacks began the day after he talked with you by phone is a clear indication that Vladimir Putin is moving quickly to test you as a commander in chief. Americas response will have lasting consequences, wrote U.S. Senator John McCain, in a letter to Trump on Thursday. Vladimir Putins violent campaign to destabilize and dismember the sovereign nation of Ukraine will not stop unless and until he meets a strong and determined response.

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Trump himself has so far said nothing about the violence, but his newly-appointed U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, sent a clear message in her maiden speech to the bodys security council. We do want to better our relations with Russia, she said. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.

Putin, on the other hand, accused Ukraine of provoking the surge in violence to win the support of the White House, while speaking to reporters during a visit to Hungary on Thursday.

The conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in the countrys east began after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014, and has killed at least 9,000 so far. Though a nominal ceasefire has been in place since Feb. 11, 2015, both sides have continued to shell and shoot across the buffer zone. This dramatic escalation, however, is creating a fresh humanitarian crisis.

On Thursday afternoon, the main aid station in central Avdiivka was thronged as hundreds of people came to collect warm clothing and blankets, a hot meal and hygiene supplies after recent fighting cut off the towns water, power and heat as residents faced freezing temperatures hovering in the low teens.

More than a hundred people stood in line to register for assistance from Caritas, an aid organization, their breath rising into the freezing air, frosting the fur on the front of the caps. Noisy arguments continuously broke out at the front of the line as armed soldiers let small groups of people through to sign up.

We are here because people dont have heat, water, or electricity, said Father Andrei Buvakh, of Caritas. Right now were providing food, warm clothing and hygienic boxes. This is very important because there is no water. The situation has been like this for a while now, but it gets worse when there is more shooting, he said of the war, which began in early 2014 and has left nearly 10,000 dead and millions displaced.

After struggling through the line, Nina Volkova sat down inside the heated tent and registered, but became frustrated after learning she could not register her husband for assistance and that he would have to come stand in line and sign up himself. More than that, however, it is the continued violence that makes her the angriest. Im a construction worker, said the 60-year-old. I spent my whole life building the buildings theyre destroying now. I laid the bricks, she said, as she left the tent. I dont know who ordered this, I just know it is bad.

Dumitru Lipcanu, the head of the regional UNHCR field office, described dire conditions in the town. Infrastructure has been severely damaged including water, heating and power. People now remain in their homes without the basic conditions of survival, he said. Local authorities are doing their best. If the power goes back on, the people will be better  but, more than they need assistance, the people want the ceasefire back.
A special care package sent to a baby hippo born premature from the NICU staff at an Ohio childrens hospital demonstrates love knows no bounds, nor species.

Read: Baby Hippo Born 6 Weeks Early at Cincinnati Zoo, Still Weighs 29 Pounds

Fiona, a baby hippo born six weeks premature last week, continues to fight for her life, but thanks to the Cincinnati Childrens Hospital NICU staff, she knows shes not alone.

The preemie hippo received superhero capes, a baby book, stuffed animals, and a touching note as a part of a care package the team put together.

In pictures posted to the children hospitals Facebook page, the hippo could be seen snuggling with some of her gifts.

We believe preemies are all superheroes, regardless of species, and we are all pulling for Fiona as shes learning to eat and working to gain strength, the hospital wrote.

According to the zoo, baby Fiona is getting stronger, despite having trouble nursing from her mother Bibi, a 17-year-old hippo.

Baby Fiona weighed only 26 pounds when she was born, which is 25 pounds lighter than the lowest recorded birth weight for the species, the zoo reported.

Read: Baby Beats the Odds to Survive, Despite Being Born With Feet the Size of Pennies

"She looks like a normal calf but is very, very small. Her heart and lungs sound good and she is pretty responsive to stimuli, but we arent sure how developed her muscles and brain are," the zoo's curator of mammals, Christina Gorsuch, said in a statement.

The baby Nile hippo  the first of the species to be born at the zoo in 75 years  continues to receive round-the-clock care as she continues to get stronger every day.

Watch: Triple Trouble: Three Colorful Squirrels Born Inside British Zoo

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A woman walks by banners of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump during an election watch event hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 9, 2016. (Photo: Lee Jin-man/AP)

Donald Trump is in the White House, and Yahoo News is taking a look at the top stories to watch in his first 100 days. From the unusual role family members will play as White House advisers to his promises to aggressively transform U.S. trade policy, and from investigations into Russian interference in the election to his relationship with Paul Ryan, well be rolling out 15 stories over five days  signposts for the road ahead.

_____

THE STAKES

President Trumps universally debunked claim that the 2016 popular-vote tally included 3 million to 5 million illegal ballots, all for Hillary Clinton, continues to shadow last years election results. But the real issue going forward is ballot access, especially for minorities, in states where the protections of the Voting Rights Act have been lifted. Expect intense legislative and legal battles over voter suppression activities in swing states, especially in the South and Midwest.

_____

THE STORY

Long after the results of the 2016 election were in, Donald Trump continued to publicly seethe over losing the popular vote to Clinton by the not insubstantial margin of nearly 3 million. At a meeting with Congressional leaders, and on Twitter, he claimed that as many as 5 million ballots were cast by noncitizens, unregistered voters, people voting more than once, or those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). He also claimed to know, somehow, that all of those votes went for Clinton.

When Democrats pointed out that Trump was alleging the most far-reaching criminal conspiracy in the history of American democracy, the White House said Trump would issue an executive order for a Justice Department investigation. The signing was announced for Jan. 26 but was canceled at the last minute, and as of a week later, had not been rescheduled.

Except for a handful of fringe conspiracy buffs, almost no one else believes anything like this occurred. It seems certain there are many, probably millions, of Americans still on the voting rolls after their deaths, or who are registered in two states after changing their residence  including, it turned out, at least five of Trumps top aides and family members. But the number who actually voted illegally is vanishingly small in an electorate numbering well over 100 million. The big investigation Trump promised  if it ever actually takes place  may be no more productive than that of the investigators he once claimed to have sent to Hawaii to prove that President Barack Obama wasnt born there.

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The real news about last years vote was the ongoing tug-of-war over voter-identification laws between mostly Republican governors and legislatures, on the one hand, and voting-rights activists on the other. Toughening the requirements to register or to vote  for example, by requiring a drivers license or equivalent form of photo identification  are described by one side as a necessary precaution against fraud, and by the other as a cynical maneuver to suppress turnout by minorities and the poor.

Notably, this was the first presidential election since the Supreme Court decision in 2013 that struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. The section required nine states with a history of racial discrimination, mostly in the South, to get preclearance from the Justice Department for any changes in their voting laws or legislative district boundaries. Texas and North Carolina were among the previously covered states that moved aggressively to tighten voting requirements, but other states outside the South, such as Wisconsin, also followed suit. It is not clear how big a difference these laws actually made in the results, but statisticians will be poring over voting rolls and records to come up with estimates. Judges struck down some of these laws, but others survived, and appeals and further legal challenges will be playing out for months or years.

_____

THE PLAYERS

The next attorney general will presumably run the administrations investigation into Trumps allegations of vote fraud, and, more important, will be in charge of voting rights enforcement. Jeff Sessions, Trumps nominee, has a record that many civil rights activists find troubling. One thing to watch for will be his key appointments, including his choice to run the Civil Rights Division.

The late Justice Antonin Scalia formed part of the 5-4 majority in the Voting Rights Act case. The Supreme Court is unlikely to revisit the issue anytime soon, but if other voting rights cases come before it, Scalias replacement could swing the court either way. Neil Gorsuch, Trumps nominee, is regarded as a conservative who will emulate Scalia on most issues.

The source for Trumps claim that more than 3 million illegal votes were cast appears to be a self-appointed watchdog named Gregg Phillips, who has been advocating for a crackdown on voting fraud for years. In an interview with Chris Cuomo of CNN, he said he would be able to prove his allegations, but that he needed another few months to prepare a report for the public.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Washington (AFP) - The US Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider which bathrooms transgender people are allowed to use at a hearing next month, amid raging debate on the politically charged issue.

The case, set to be heard March 28, involves 17-year-old Gavin Grimm, who was born a female but identifies as a male. He filed suit to be allowed to use the boys' bathroom at his high school in Gloucester County, Virginia.

One of the highest-profile cases this session, it is likely to be heard by the conservative Neil Gorsuch -- President Donald Trump's pick for a vacancy on the Supreme Court -- if he is confirmed.

Should the case be heard before Gorsuch or another ninth and final justice is installed, the matter could end in a tie because the court is currently divided between four conservative and four liberal-leaning justices.

The previous administration of president Barack Obama has said public schools should grant access to toilets and locker rooms based on the gender with which students identify, not the birth gender.

But more than a dozen Republican-controlled states, bitterly opposed to that approach, are challenging the federal government in court.

Some conservatives see the directive from Washington as improper interference in local school affairs and an abuse of executive power.

Many opponents of the Obama administration's position -- who point to both their religious values and questions of security and privacy -- rally behind the slogan "No men in women's bathrooms."
President Donald Trump will reportedly take aim at financial regulations today, ordering a review of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law that could lead to major changes and suspending a conflict of interest rule for retirement advisors before it goes into effect this spring. This is according to several media reports out this morning, which cite White House sources. President Trump is also set to meet with several Chief Executives today including the heads of General Motors , IBM, , and JP Morgan Chase . The Wall Street Journal says they will discuss issues including regulation, women in the workforce, tax and trade, and infrastructure. Despite a record holiday season, Amazon didn't meet investors expectations. It missed analysts projections on revenue. Amazon's cloud computing business is the most profitable division and is growing quickly. The first jobs report of 2017 will happen today. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg believe 175,000 jobs are expected to have been added and the jobless rate will hold steady at 4.7%.
You might not think much about homeowners insuranceat least not until something happens at your home. The 29 tornadoes that destroyed lives and property across the Deep South in January 2017, for instance, might have made you wonder whether you were properly covered.

To find out which homeowners insurance companies are best, we surveyed 7,418 of our subscribers who filed a claim in the previous 3.5 years. We wanted to know how quickly their carrier responded and paid for repairs, among other things.

Amica tops our latest homewners insurance ratings, with USAA, Erie, MetLife, and Auto-Owners also among the most highly rated providers.

Top Companies Go Above and Beyond

What separates a top insurer from the rest? Talk to Fred Wescoe, a tax preparer who insures his home with USAA.

After Wescoe's southeast Kentucky home burned down to its foundation in April 2016, it took USAA only eight days to deposit the insurance payment into Wescoe's bank account. The replacement value of the structure and the contents of his home, as well as the cost of debris removal, were all covered. Wescoe was impressed when USAA also paid for nine months of temporary housing and living expenses.

Wescoe says USAA's "extraordinary" handling of the claim helped lessen the trauma. "They worked through the numbers and asked if it was satisfactory and if I had any questions," he says. "They told me I could challenge the amount they were paying."

Wescoe also says that phone messages he left were answered promptly and that he was kept advised of the status of his claim every day along the way, through calls, texts, and emails.

Our homeowners insurance ratings reflect that kind of service. USAA got top scores for ease of reaching an agent, simplicity of the process, prompt response and attentiveness, courtesy, damage estimates, and timely payment. (USAA serves only people with direct ties to the militarymembers of the U.S. military and their families, honorably discharged veterans, and descendants of USAA customers.)





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
Montevideo (AFP) - For years, Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht landed huge public works contracts by paying hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes.

Now, the company's dirty dealings have caught up with it -- and the fallout is spreading across Latin America, where the scandal has left a trail of abandoned mega-projects, high-profile probes and outraged citizens in its wake.

In December, Odebrecht agreed with the US Justice Department to pay a world record $3.5-billion fine after admitting it paid $788 million in bribes to win fat construction contracts in 12 countries.

The biggest payouts were for contracts with Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras -- the focus of a massive pay-to-play scandal that has upended Brazilian politics, landing a laundry list of powerful people in jail, including Odebrecht's boss, Marcelo Odebrecht.

But the company's reach spans far beyond Brazil -- and now, so does the scandal.

Odebrecht, the biggest construction firm in Latin America, paid bribes in nine other countries across the region -- Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic -- as well as Angola and Mozambique in Africa.

Most of those countries have now opened investigations of their own, asking Brazilian prosecutors to share information on dirty deals in their jurisdictions.

Billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure projects are meanwhile paralyzed.

After the scandal broke, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) -- which funded many of Odebrecht's international ventures -- froze $3.6 billion for 16 projects across Latin America.

In Venezuela, six mega-projects being built by Odebrecht have ground to a halt, including an expansion of the Caracas subway.

In the Dominican Republic, which received $2.5 billion from BNDES, unfinished roadworks and a thermoelectric power plant are now in doubt.

In Peru, where Odebrecht says it paid $29 million in bribes from 2005 to 2014, the government sacked the company from a $7-billion gas pipeline project that is less than one-third complete.

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That and other aborted Odebrecht projects will likely shave 0.5 to one percentage point off Peru's economic growth this year, the economy minister said last month.

- Heads to roll -

Investigators across Latin America now have some heavy-hitting politicians in their sights.

In Peru, a congressional commission has summoned President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to testify, along with former presidents Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala, plus Humala's powerful wife, Nadine Heredia.

In Panama, ex-president Ricardo Martinelli's son and brother are under investigation.

Likewise Argentina's intelligence chief, Gustavo Arribas, who is close to President Mauricio Macri.

In Colombia, a former deputy transport minister and ex-senator have been arrested.

The Venezuelan National Assembly, where leftist President Nicolas Maduro's opponents hold a majority, has launched a probe into the $98 million in bribes that Odebrecht admitted to paying there -- the biggest payoff outside Brazil.

And Mozambican prosecutors are investigating who received $900,000 in bribes to green-light an airport for the northern city of Nacala.

State news agency AIM condemned the project, completed in 2014, as an "embarrassing flop," an "international airport with no international flights."

More explosive revelations are likely on the way: Marcelo Odebrecht and 76 other current and former executives have signed tell-all plea deals with Brazilian prosecutors in exchange for lighter sentences.

- Mounting backlash -

Corruption-weary Latin Americans are meanwhile taking to the streets.

After two weeks of violent protests in Peru, authorities there scrapped plans for Odebrecht-operated toll roads.

In the Dominican Republic, tens of thousands of people protested last month to demand public officials be held to account for taking bribes.

Odebrecht, meanwhile, is still paying the price.

Several countries have banned it from bidding for projects or signing contracts.

And the $3.5 billion it has agreed to pay Brazil, the United States and Switzerland under the US Justice Department deal may be just the beginning.

It has also agreed to pay $59 million to Panama and $189 million to the Dominican Republic. And more fines could be on the way.

Odebrecht, which had $39.1 billion in revenue in 2015, is now in survival mode.

It has put 12 billion reals ($3.8 billion) in assets up for sale, and laid off 60,000 employees in the three years through 2015, according to Bloomberg News.

The company itself confirmed to AFP it had laid off 40,000 from late 2014 to late 2015.
Black Panther concept art (Photo: Marvel)

By Lee Hyo-won, The Hollywood Reporter

Marvel Studios will begin shooting key scenes for the upcoming Black Panther movie in Busan, South Korea in March.

Walt Disney Company Korea announced on Wednesday that the shoot is due to take place over roughly two weeks, from late March through early April, in the port city known for hosting the Busan International Film Festival, Asias largest film event. Locations include the scenic Gwangalli Beach, Gwangandaegyo Bridge and Jagalchi fish market as well as the Sajik-dong area.

These landmarks will be the backdrop for a large-scale car chase. Local production service company Mr. Romance Film recently distributed a notification to Busan residents about the shoot, using the films working title for its Korean shoot, Motherland.

The shoot will be a car chase scene between the protagonist and villain, and will involve some 150 cars and more than 700 people, reads the notification. The chase scene will also require the use of helicopters and guns (shot blanks). Traffic restrictions and noise are expected, and may inconvenience residents and visitors.

Busan Metropolitan Government posted the notice on its official Facebook page on Tuesday but deleted it shortly afterward, citing security reasons. The notice nevertheless spread through social media via Busan residents.

Marvel head Kevin Feige had told local press in October that shooting in Korea had been confirmed for one of the nine films that are underway through 2019. A Korean actor is also due to be cast for the title, Feige said in an interview with Chosun Ilbo. Marvel previously shot parts of Avengers: Age of Ultron in Seoul.

Black Panther is set for worldwide release in Feb. 16 2018.
Brasilia (AFP) - Brazil's Supreme Court named a new point man to oversee the giant Car Wash corruption probe, which is about to grow thanks to a flood of plea bargains.

At the top of Justice Edson Fachin's workload will be dealing with plea bargains by executives from Odebrecht, a construction giant at the heart of a pay-to-play scheme.

Although their testimony remains sealed, media leaks indicate it will be explosive -- not least by reportedly implicating President Michel Temer.

Here's what we know so far about Car Wash and the looming Odebrecht testimony:

- The scheme -

During much of the 2003-2010 presidency of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, corrupt executives at the national oil company Petrobras colluded with contractors like Odebrecht to hand out inflated contracts in return for bribes. The money lined the pockets of important political leaders and also poured into party slush funds.

Petrobras, one of the biggest companies in Latin America, was badly damaged. It has blamed losses of some $2 billion on the scandal.

The damage to public confidence in the political system was just as great. Among those charged with taking bribes is Lula himself. He denies wrongdoing.

Hard-charging prosecutors and judges on the case, meanwhile, have become folk heroes.

- Odebrecht's role -

Odebrecht is a massive Brazilian company involved in major infrastructure projects worldwide.

Led by its former CEO Marcelo Odebrecht, it became a central player in the corruption scheme, paying off so many politicians and Petrobras executives that it ran a special department to organize the graft.

Bribes were given not only to secure sweetheart deals but also to influence political parties and get favorable legislative action.

In a not too successful attempt to boost secrecy, politicians were given codenames such as Babel, Polo and Ferrari.

Odebrecht's former vice president for institutional relations, Claudio Melo Filho, told prosecutors in his plea bargain that some $4.2 million were funneled into the coffers of Temer's center-right party, PMDB, in 2014 alone, according to Brazilian media leaks.

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Marcelo Odebrecht was arrested in June 2015 and sentenced to more than 19 years behind bars.

- The plea bargains -

From the start, Car Wash prosecutors have made big use of plea bargains -- offering suspects a chance for lighter sentences if they spill the beans and testify for the government.

The motherlode of plea bargains comes from Odebrecht, not just Marcelo himself but a total of 77 executives.

Their testimony has been filed with the Supreme Court, which hears all cases involving sitting politicians. Fachin will manage those cases, including exercising authority over future evidence-gathering such as wiretaps -- another frequently used Car Wash tool.

Top Car Wash prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol told AFP last month that the number of suspects would double with the Odebrecht testimony.

"We are investigating thousands of multimillion-dollar crimes committed by hundreds of people," he said.

Until now, the highest-profile political players in the scheme have been from Lula's Workers' Party. However, leaks indicate that the Odebrecht testimony will also point the finger at Temer's PMDB -- and the president himself.

"The company's goal was to maintain a regular relationship of financial concessions and requests for help from these politicians... to favor the interests of the business but not necessarily those of the republic," Melo Filho reportedly told prosecutors.
London (AFP) - The passage of a Brexit bill through parliament is reopening deep divisions among lawmakers in Britain's opposition Labour party, as they struggle to reconcile their pro-European views with voter concerns over immigration.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ordered his MPs to support the first stage of a bill on Wednesday empowering the government to begin negotiations on leaving the EU, but 47 MPs rebelled -- and a dozen others were absent.

Further rebellions are likely when the legislation returns to the House of Commons next week, if -- as is expected -- Labour fails to push through amendments seeking to ease the terms of the divorce.

The disagreements raise further questions about Corbyn's leadership, which has seen the party's poll numbers sink to 24 percent -- 16 points behind Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservatives.

But the divisions reflect wider problems in the Labour party, which has for years been balancing its liberal, pro-European instincts with the concerns of many working-class voters about mass migration.

In the EU referendum, the vast majority of Labour MPs campaigned to remain in the 28-nation bloc, but two-thirds of their constituencies voted to leave.

"The party derives its support from two very different constituencies," said Simon Lee, senior politics lecturer at the University of Hull.

He added: "In the metropolitan, university constituencies, the clear majority of the electorate voted in the referendum to remain.

"But the majority of the seats that Labour needs either to hold or to win, are constituencies which voted to leave."

By backing the Brexit process, Corbyn clearly has an eye on the latter -- and an early sign of whether he is succeeding will come in a by-election later this month.

The anti-immigration, anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) has high hopes of taking the Brexit-supporting seat of Stoke-on-Trent from Labour.

- 'Colossal mistake' -

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Corbyn survived a failed bid to oust him last summer by a majority of his more centrist MPs, who accused the left-winger of not campaigning hard enough to keep Britain in the EU.

There has been an uneasy calm in recent months, but his determination that Labour respect the referendum result has angered some of his strongest supporters.

Ten members of his shadow cabinet and three whips -- MPs who are meant to enforce party discipline -- rebelled to vote against the legislation, while four other members of his team resigned ahead of the vote.

Diane Abbott, a key ally whose London constituency voted firmly against Brexit, missed the vote complaining of a severe migraine.

The New Statesman meanwhile reported that 7,000 party members have resigned since Corbyn announced his backing for the Brexit bill.

Even The Canary, a strongly pro-Corbyn news website, said it was a "colossal mistake" that "could sink his leadership".

- Driving 'Trump politics' -

Corbyn has so far refused to discipline those who rebelled, postponing any decisions until MPs debate amendments to the bill next week.

Labour has pledged to fight to maintain access to Europe's single market and protections on workers' rights, particularly after May warned she was willing to leave the EU without a new trade deal in place.

But many MPs believe they must uphold the referendum result, if only to avoid encouraging the anti-establishment feeling that helped drive the result, and which had echoes in Donald Trump's victory in the United States.

"I won't drive people towards Trump politics by ignoring them," said Labour's business spokesman Clive Lewis.

However, he threatened to rebel if Labour fails to amend the bill next week to prevent a "hard" Brexit.

"This is not an easy time to be a social democrat. We live in a time of surging nationalism and a growing instinct towards closed economies," added Labour MP Wes Streeting.

But he added: "I say to my party that if we want to be in government again and to create the world that we want to see, we must first engage with the world as it is."
LONDON (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to undermine the West by spreading lies and attacking critical infrastructure with hackers, Britain's defence minister said. British Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said on Thursday night that Kremlin chief Putin had chosen to become a strategic competitor of the West since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Fallon said the NATO military alliance should stand firm to deter Russia. "We see a country that in weaponising misinformation has created what we might now see as the post-truth age," Fallon said. "Russia is clearly testing NATO and the West. It is seeking to expand its sphere of influence, destabilise countries and weaken the alliance." "Part of our response is for NATO and the West to do more to tackle the false reality promoted through Soviet-style misinformation," he said. "Whatever else we do on deterrence and dialogue we must counter Putins Pravda with a faster truth." The CIA has said that Russia intervened in the U.S. 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House. But in a speech peppered with Russian words, Fallon also urged cooperation with Moscow and quoted Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov to express hope that the relationship with Moscow could be improved. "We hope that Russia changes tack," Fallon said. "Russia could again become the partner the West always wished for. We could dare to hope that, to quote Bulgakov again, 'everything will turn out right, the world is built like that'," he said. (Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  Brown University is urging President Donald Trump to rescind his executive order that has prevented a Syrian doctor from returning to his studies at the school.

University President Christina Paxson said Friday that banning travelers from seven Muslim majority countries runs counter to American traditions and values and restricts the ability of universities to fulfill their missions.

"It contradicts our unconditional rejection of every form of bigotry, discrimination, xenophobia and harassment," she said in a statement.

Khaled Almilaji received a scholarship to earn a master's degree in public health at Brown so he could learn how to rebuild his country's health system. The 35-year-old doctor went to Turkey for a brief trip after the fall semester but was blocked from returning. His pregnant wife is in the U.S.

The school is helping 19 students from the affected countries with accessing immigration and legal advice, housing during breaks and other resources. Fourteen students are from Iran. Four are from Syria and one is from Somalia.

Almilaji has spoken publicly about his plight. A university spokesman said he couldn't say whether anyone else besides Almilaji is stuck abroad because the school can't provide information on a person's immigration status.

Brown plans to hold spots for new students from the affected countries who are accepted, but need time to secure a visa. It's exploring the use of virtual teaching and learning platforms for those who are prevented from traveling to campus.

Paxson said she signed letters condemning the order on Brown's behalf from the Association of American Universities, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a group of peer university presidents.

The letters call on the Trump administration to rescind the order, affirm the valuable contributions of international students to research, innovation and economic vitality, and to shape immigration policies that honor the nation's founding principles, she added.
Paris (AFP) - Cancer is not an inescapable fate. But while prevention can save millions of lives much more cheaply than treatment, it remains an underfunded, much-neglected weapon in the anti-cancer arsenal, experts say.

Some 14 million new cancers are diagnosed each year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) -- a number expected to swell to 21 million by 2030.

As the global cost of treatment skyrockets, measures to prevent people getting cancer in the first place are an increasingly important focus in seeking to limit the expected explosion.

"The way things will evolve over, let's say the next 20 years, are very dramatic; many countries (will have) probably twice as many cancers," said Christopher Wild, director of the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

"That's particularly true for countries with limited resources, the low and middle-income countries," he told AFP.

With less access to diagnosis and treatment, these countries already bear two-thirds of the world's annual 8.8 million cancer deaths.

In 2015, governments and patients spent $107 billion (99 billion euros) on cancer drugs -- an increase of 11.5 percent from 2014, according to the Global Oncology Trend Report of the IMS Institute.

The figure was expected to grow to $150 billion by 2020, it said, a rise driven largely by the expense of newer, more specialised drugs to which just a minority of patients have access.

"Treating our way out of the cancer problem is not realistic," Wild told AFP on the eve of Saturday's World Cancer Day.

With prevention, on the other hand, as much as a third of cancers can be avoided today, according to the WHO.

Public enemy number one is tobacco, which "will kill a billion people in the world in the 21st century," said Thierry Philip, president of the Institut Curie cancer research centre in Paris.

- 'We know the causes' -

Of these, 100 million will be in China alone.

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Cervical cancer, in turn, can be avoided by vaccinating against the human papilloma virus (HPV). Regular screening can pick up pre-cancerous lesions, which can be treated before developing into full-blown disease.

Physical inactivity, obesity and heavy drinking are risks factors for all sorts of cancer, while eating too much red and preserved meat can lead to cancer of the colon, says the WHO.

Too much sun, easily avoided by wearing a hat or seeking out the shade, causes melanoma.

Vaccination prevents Hepatitis B infection, which can lead to cancer, and basic, good hygiene can thwart the bacterium Helicobacter Pylori, which boosts the risk of stomach cancer.

"We already know a lot about the causes of cancer," said Wild. We could probably prevent 40 to 50 percent of cancers if we could really convert our knowledge about risk factors into effective interventions."

But while investment in new treatments has exploded, prevention "has certainly been under-resourced," he added.

Part of the reason is commercial -- the pharma industry stands to make little money from research into preventing disease.

For prevention, "the return on investment only comes after 10, 20, 30 years, which is hard to defend in a tough economic environment," said Beatrice Fervers of the Centre Leon-Berard, a research clinic in Lyon, France.

According to the WHO, cancer care and labour productivity lost to illness and death cost the world about $1.16 trillion in 2010.

- Not too strict -

"One of the things we have to change is to stop thinking about cancer prevention only as an individual responsibility," said Wild.

"It's also government responsibility, it's about policies and legislation," he said -- citing tobacco taxes.

Other interventions should include vastly expanding HPV and Hepatitis vaccination, cleaning up polluted air and water, and regularly checking people with a genetic predisposition for certain cancers.

Furthermore, people should be better educated about lifestyle choices that put them at risk.

"We need to translate the science for the public, make it accessible and warn people of the real risk between cancer and behaviour," said Fervers.

"The risk, if there are too many recommendations, too many constraints, people will just throw it all overboard," she added -- like advising French people to steer clear of wine.

"We need to adapt the message to the context, to the culture," said Servers. "If we can get people to respect a limit of one or two units (of alcohol) per day, that would already be something."

On Friday, the WHO unveiled new global guidelines, seeking to place more emphasis on early cancer diagnosis and treatment.

"Too many cancers arrive too late in the health system," Etienne Krug, head of the UN health body's noncommunicable diseases division, said in Geneva, adding, "millions of lives could be saved."

The guidelines urge countries to improve awareness of cancer symptoms and encourage people to seek care.
N'Djamena (AFP) - Twenty-three people were killed and more than 100 wounded in twin suicide bombings targeting police in the Chadian capital Monday, with the government blaming Boko Haram militants for the bloodshed.

They were the first such attacks in the capital of the central African nation, which has been on the frontline of the regional fight against the Nigerian Islamist group.

"Boko Haram chose the wrong target. These lawless and faithless terrorists will be flushed out and neutralised wherever they are," the government said in a statement.

It said 23 people were killed and another 101 wounded in the simultaneous bombings outside the police headquarters and police academy in N'Djamena.

Four "terrorists" were also killed, it said without giving details.

Earlier, a police official had told AFP that two suicide bombers carried out the attacks, which came as police cadets were attending a training course at the academy.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but French President Francois Hollande also accused Boko Haram militants of being behind the "barbaric attack".

"There is no doubt that Boko Haram is responsible and will be brought to justice for this new humanitarian horror," Hollande said during a visit to Algiers, where the regional threat posed by jihadists was high on the agenda.

Chad, a former French colony, is a close ally of France in its counter-terrorism Operation Barkhane in the Sahel region. The French army has set up its headquarters for the campaign in N'Djamena.

- 'Crisis cell' -

The Chadian government said the situation was quickly brought under control Monday, but the rare assault on the capital prompted the creation of a "crisis cell" and vehicles with darkened windows were banned from N'Djamena.

Chadian security forces were also seen taking up positions on the streets.

President Idriss Deby was expected to return home during the day from an African Union summit in Johannesburg, an official said.

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In his absence, government ministers held a crisis meeting to discuss the bombings.

Chad is part of a four-nation coalition also including Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger that was created to tackle the Boko Haram insurgency after the group stepped up cross-border attacks.

Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has on several occasions threatened to attack Chad and other countries in the coalition.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in a statement, condemned Monday's twin attacks and praised Chad "for its courageous role in the fight against Boko Haram".

He also welcomed progress on sending an African Union-backed multinational force to tackle the rebels.

The UN Security Council also issued a statement condemning the attacks "in the strongest terms", and expressed its condolences to the families of the victims.

Last week, Abuja hosted a summit where Nigeria and fellow coalition members plus Benin rubber-stamped an 8,700-strong regional force to replace the current four-nation grouping.

The long-awaited Multi-National Joint Task Force, which had originally been due to become operational in November, has its headquarters in N'Djamena, under a senior Nigerian officer.

Boko Haram has been waging a six-year campaign of violence in northeastern Nigeria that has left at least 15,000 people dead and increasingly spilled across borders.

- 'International problem' -

Chad's involvement in the fight against Boko Haram began in January when Deby sent troops to assist neighbouring Cameroon, whose far northern region was coming under attack from the rebels.

More than 70 Chadian soldiers have died in operations against the Islamists, including attacks around Lake Chad where the borders of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Niger meet.

Nigeria's new President Muhammadu Buhari, who has vowed to make crushing Boko Haram a priority, visited Chad and Niger earlier this month to build up the regional coalition against the Islamists.

"Boko Haram declared that they are in alliance with ISIS (Islamic State), so terrorism has gone international. They are in Mali, they are in Nigeria, they are in Syria, they are in Iraq, they are in Yemen," he told AFP at the summit in South Africa on Monday.

"It's an international problem now," he said.

Boko Haram, whose name roughly translates as "Western education is forbidden", aims to create an Islamic caliphate in the territories it controls and in March declared allegiance to the Islamic State group.
N'Djamena (AFP) - Chad's president has appointed a new prime minister, Albert Pahimi Padacke, national radio reported, as he looks to extend his grip on power in the central African nation.

Observers say the appointment is most likely a reward after Pahimi Padacke announced his support Friday for President Idriss Deby Itno, who is running for a fifth term in April elections.

Outgoing prime minister Kalezeube Pahimi Debeu, in power since 2013 and a member of the ruling Patriotic Salvation Movement (MPS), resigned from the post.

The radio broadcast Saturday did not give any further details, but the new prime minister is leader of the National Rally of Chadian Democrats (RNDT), a political party aligned with the MPS, and came second in presidential elections in 2011.

President Deby, who has been in power for 26 years, modified the constitution in 2004, scrapping its two-term limit on presidential tenure, and won the following elections by a huge majority.

Deby had seized power in 1990 after toppling Hissene Habre, who is on trial at a special court in Senegal for crimes against humanity.

Habre, 73, was president of the oil rich but poverty-entrenched country from 1982-1990.

An investigating commission found that more than 40,000 people were killed during his rule, which was marked by fierce repression of his opponents and the targeting of rival ethnic groups.

A verdict is due in May and Habre could be sentenced to life imprisonment with forced labour.
N'Djamena (AFP) - Chad's veteran President Idriss Deby has announced a further postponement of parliamentary elections initially due in 2015, blaming a lack of funds as the oil-exporter struggles with a drop in oil prices.

"When I say that we can't hold legislative polls, it's because of a lack of means," Deby told journalists on Thursday on his return from an African Union summit.

"In the time of the lean cow, we can do nothing. Once we have the resources, we can organise the legislative elections," Deby said.

Deby also called for talks with the political opposition, which hotly disputed his first-round victory in a presidential poll in April with almost 60 percent of the votes.

"They should not be afraid to have a dialogue with me, I'm also Chadian like they are," Deby said. "The opposition must stop cultivating hatred that tears the country apart. Chad doesn't need that."

In power since 1990, Deby has seen Chad develop from a deeply poor Sahel nation in north central Africa into an oil-exporting regional power with a seasoned military.

As outgoing chairman of the AU, he saw his foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, elected head of the pan-African body's executive commission during the annual summit in Addis Ababa.

Chad currently faces severe difficulties because of the global drop in oil prices while it has troops active on several fronts in the regional struggle against the Nigerian jihadists of Boko Haram.

For resources, the country is falling back on the previous mainstays of its economy, agriculture and cattle-raising.
Its not as famous as some other anniversaries linked to the fall of communism, said Zdenek Beranek, the charge daffaires at the Czech Embassy in Washington, D.C. on Friday. He got emotional describing the signing of Charter 77, a watershed moment for dissent and human rights in the Soviet Bloc. But I believe this relative oblivion and obscurity is what makes it so significant.

The story of Charter 77 is the story of people who tried to protest their countrys rulers not because they thought it would change anything, but because they knew it was right thing to do. Its the story of people who along the way made history, and whose contributions are today both partly forgotten and yet alive and well.

The short version: In 1968, the government of Czechoslovakia flirted with reforms to create socialism with a human face. But the Soviet Union came to decide this was too great a threat to the Eastern Bloc. And so, in August 1968, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia marked the end of the socialist reforms and popular enthusiasm of Prague Spring. In their place came a sort of resigned cynicism on the part of Czechoslovakias citizens: The way things were  with the country under foreign, socialist, rule  was the way things would always be.

Then, at the very beginning of 1977, following the December 1976 arrest of the psychedelic rock band Plastic People of the Universe, 241 individuals signed Charter 77. It was a loose, informal association of 235 Czechs and six Slovaks, artists and writers and intellectuals and friends of discontented friends.

The Chartists intended to hold the government accountable not only to its own laws, but also to international agreements to which it was a signatory, including the Helsinki Accords. That document guarantees human rights and freedoms  and their government signed it in 1975.

We used to live under communism, surrounded by a strictly designed set of alternative facts to support the ideological vision of the government, Martin Palous, one of the Charters original signatories and the former Czech ambassador to the United States and the United Nations, told Foreign Policy. And so he and his fellow Chartists set about trying to resist falsification by demanding their basic human rights  including the right to live and speak honestly and with dignity.

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It was a watershed moment in human rights and dissidence in Czechoslovakia in particular and the Eastern Bloc more broadly. Newly organized and mobilized, many of the Chartists went on to play starring roles as dissidents in the 1980s and in the 1989 reclamation of Czechoslovak independence. Most notably, playwright and Chartist Vaclav Havel became the first president of independent Czechoslovakia  and then, after navigating that countrys peaceful dissolution, of the Czech Republic.

But the longer version of the story was neither linear nor neat for those actually living it.

I dont regret that I decided to participate, Palous said, but, it was a big adventure. Nobody knew how it would turn out, especially because it was made under a repressive regime.

Those who signed the Charter did so at their own personal peril. When the Charter was first published, there was a massive government campaign against its signatories, Harvard historian Jonathan Bolton, author of Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, The Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture under Communism, told FP. However, eventually the government realized that it would be more effective to isolate the Chartists and subject them to targeted repressions without turning them into a national cause celebre.

It is difficult today to understand what a departure Charter 77 was from everything around it precisely because the document helped create what came to surround it  a civil society composed not of ideological adherents but of individuals who try to respect human rights. But at the time, the Chartists were charting new territory.

Jakub Janda, deputy director of the Prague-based think tank European Values, told FP that this group wasnt initially launched as a political group with a comprehensive set of shared beliefs as much as it was a springboard to political life, assembled by a group of people who had in common a steadfast belief in human rights.

Charter 77 attracted international attention, and those interested and daring enough to do so could seek out the Chartists themselves. But to be a Chartist was to be repressed in and isolated from ones own society.

Forty years ago, the Chartists were not celebrated by the majority of their fellow countrymen. Monica Richters Czech emigre parents, who were in their twenties when the Charter was signed, have told her the group was all but invisible in state media. The regime didnt want to draw attention to an initiative that challenged its legitimacy and could spur protest, she told FP.

For years, Palous said, the Chartists were left alone with their ideas and their hopes. But moments in history come when hope plays a role in the practical world. So it was in the case of Charter 77.

Forty years on, Charter 77 is far from isolated in its countrys collective ideology. Its part of Czech history, in a good way, Janda said. If theres a question, Who were the dissidents?  the answer you would get in most high schools or textbooks  it would be Charter 77.

That doesnt mean that Czech masses are walking around celebrating Charter 77. I dont think that the generation born after 1989 is particularly familiar with the content and importance of the Charter 77, said Johana Sedlackova Vamberska, who lives and works with her husband in Prague. It has been perceived as some document that belongs to our communist past.

But it may subtly shape Czechs still today. I think  or at least hope  that it has left its legacy on Czech society today and our ability to challenge political power that tramples on human rights, said Jessie Hronesova, a Czech graduate student who lives in the United Kingdom.

Its also relevant again, in Prague and the wider world. Czech President Milos Zeman is openly pro-Russian and has been accused of being Islamophobic and xenophobic. In Slovakia, the prime minister calls critical journalists dirty prostitutes and rails against Muslims. Neighboring countries have built barriers of barbed wire. Countries further afield are building walls of their own.

I think it shows, Janda said, that a strong international legal document, which now some would say is a waste of paper  it was a strong symbol for these people. The idea of universal human rights, he stressed, means something very tangible to those who have nothing else.

That, perhaps, is the enduring legacy of Charter 77 and those who wrote it: The ability to make something  whether reclaiming individual dignity, or winning national independence  from nothing.

Those who drafted, signed, and promoted it did it with no glimpse of hope emerging on the horizon, Beranek said.

Until they brought it into view themselves.

Photo credit: LUBOMIR KOTEK-JOEL ROBINE/AFP/Getty Images
Chelsea Clinton (Photo: Chris Carlson/AP)

After decades in the spotlight supporting her parents political endeavors, Chelsea Clinton is speaking out on her own.

While her parents spend their time under the radar, hiking and seeing Broadway shows, Chelsea has trained her fire on President Trumps administration, using a method favored by the president himself: frequent, pointed tweets.

Shortly after the inauguration, Clinton defended 10-year-old Barron Trump against a sudden onslaught of attention  but not without taking a swipe at his father:

Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does-to be a kid. Standing up for every kid also means opposing @POTUS policies that hurt kids.  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) January 22, 2017

She made a sarcastic dig about the administrations reported intention to repurpose a program countering all ideological violent extremism to one specifically focusing on Islamic extremism:

Because white supremacists & non-Muslim lone wolves less of a threat now? What evidence do we have that? Certainly not recent tragic history https://t.co/fvMrDmb9Vc  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 2, 2017

When Jerry Falwell Jr., a prominent evangelical Christian leader, was selected to lead an education reform task force, Clinton called the pick horrifying:

This is horrifying. We need more protection against campus sexual assault, more accountability & more support for survivors  not less https://t.co/VdGDHLzaBA  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 2, 2017

After the president signed an executive order denying citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries entrance to the U.S., she retweeted a message from Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., calling the move utter villainy:

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Yes. Yet also, on any day this is utter villainy. https://t.co/K3U6vn5Zll  Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) January 28, 2017

And days later, during a New York rally against the immigration ban, she posted a picture of a sign addressing the president directly:

Yes. We will keep standing up for a country that matches our values and ideals for all. pic.twitter.com/yfVlX5sL3f  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) January 29, 2017

Jabs sometimes come in the form of incredulity, as was the case when she commented on Trumps remarks at a Black History Month event earlier this week. Trump had praised Frederick Douglass, a 19th-century abolitionist and statesman, as someone who has done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more:

On Friday, she took a swipe at Kellyanne Conway, who managed Trumps campaign against her mother and now serves as one of the presidents most visible advisers. In an MSNBC interview Thursday, Conway cited the nonexistent Bowling Green Massacre as a defense for the ban.

Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks.  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 3, 2017

Clintons uptick in tweeting may be nothing more than her shedding the polite politicians daughter role she has had practically since birth. But she is also rumored to be a potential political candidate down the road.
Santiago (AFP) - A Chilean judge on Friday rejected a request from France to arrest a man suspected of killing a Japanese student in the French city of Besancon.

The Chilean teaching assistant, Nicolas Zepeda Contreras, has been identified as the main suspect in the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend, Japanese student Narumi Kurosaki.

Kurosaki, 21, disappeared last December in Besancon, where she had been studying French since September.

Investigators believe she was killed, but have still not found her body.

Zepeda, 26, was in Besancon the day she disappeared, according to French authorities, who suspect he murdered her and then fled home to Chile.

France formally requested his arrest and extradition last month.

But Chilean Supreme Court Judge Jorge Dahm ruled France did not need Zepeda to be arrested in order to pursue his extradition, writing in his decision that "a less intense measure than preventive detention" was appropriate.

The judge barred Zepeda from leaving the country for two months.

He criticized French investigators for not supplying more evidence against Zepeda, complaining of "the scarce information related to the facts and the suspect's participation in them."

The judge did not rule on the extradition request itself.
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - China's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it hoped the government-funded Confucius Institute could continue to play a role in South Korea after the government there said it had stopped issuing visas for some Chinese teachers. The visa decision comes amid anger in China at the planned deployment of an advanced U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea, which it says is to defend against North Korea, but which China says threatens its security, as its radar could extend into China. China says its Confucius Institutes around the world are established by universities to promote Chinese-language learning and academic and cultural exchange. The South Korean government said it had stopped issuing visas for some Chinese teachers at Confucius Institutes and the justice ministry said the decision had nothing to do with THAAD, as the anti-missile system is known. South Korea's foreign ministry said on Thursday the measure to stop issuing or extending visas had been implemented since last June for practical reasons based on the immigration control law, playing down any political motive. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Confucius Institutes in South Korea were set up at the request of South Korean universities, and South Korea had an obligation to ensure the correct visa procedures were followed. The affected Confucius Institutes were in touch with the South Korean government to sort the matter out, Lu told a daily news briefing. "As a Chinese government department, we hope that both sides can work hard, and that the Confucius Institute can continue to help South Korea people learn Chinese, to play a positive role in increasing bilateral mutual trust and friendship." Relations between staunch U.S. ally South Korea and communist China were poor for decades but have improved in recent years as their economic ties have expanded. In some countries the Confucius Institutes have raised concerns that they threaten academic freedom, conduct surveillance of Chinese students abroad and promote the political aims of China's ruling Communist Party. China has dismissed such concerns as unwarranted. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in Seoul)
BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Friday it resolutely opposes deployment of a U.S. anti-missile defense system in South Korea after South Korea said its defense chiefs have agreed to deploy the system this year. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China's opposition to the U.S. system at a daily news briefing in Beijing. China has consistently opposed the decision to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, saying it threatens China's own security and will do nothing to ease tension on the Korean peninsula. South Korea and the United States say the system is only intended to defend against North Korean aggression. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Writing by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Cotonou (AFP) - Traders and hawkers armed with brooms and bags sweep pavements and scoop up rubble in Benin's economic capital Cotonou, where the authorities have ordered a vast city cleanup.

From informal street markets to bars and food stalls illegally built on public land, nothing has been spared, as squads of workers move in to clear the chaos and make the bustling city beautiful again.

But the cleanup has made daily life hard for many in Benin, where the vast majority work in the informal sector.

Like other fast-growing west African urban hubs, Cotonou has vendors selling everything from clothing to fast food by the roadside, and restaurants that spring up all over with their plastic chairs and tables.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," deputy mayor Florentin Tchaou told AFP. "People will take advantage of any empty space to expand their businesses and increase their visibility so as to improve sales."

- Eviction notice -

But in July, freshly elected President Patrice Talon decided it was time to give the country a facelift and gave major cities a six-month deadline to clear their chaotic crowded roads.

Large red crosses were spray painted on building walls due for demolition and posters added warnings that eviction day was near.

Ageline Bocovo, who has been selling clothes in Cotonou for five years, didn't believe it would happen, but was wrong.

"We couldn't fight the police with our bare hands, we had no choice," she said, when, on January 5, she was forced to leave.

Bocovo personally smashed her stall into smithereens, keeping some of the bricks to build a new stall on a smaller street.

"The rest of the rubble will be sold. But it won't bring in much cash," she said.

Armelle Choplin, an urban planner at Cotonou's Research Institute for Development, said the "measure affects the little people, who aren't necessarily organised into associations or unions, as is the case in Anglophone countries like Ghana."

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- 'Haussmann in the tropics' -

Clearing operations such as this are not uncommon on the continent, where many cities have grown at a rapid rate without much thought about planning.

"Most people welcome it," Choplin said. "It's Haussmann in the tropics," she added, referring to the 19th-century French urban planner best known for transforming Paris into a city of sweeping boulevards.

A United Nations report predicts the world's population will soar from 7.3 billion in 2015 to 9.7 billion by 2050, with Africa expected to account for half of that growth

That means unchecked activity on public space isn't going to disappear anytime soon.

But the relatively peaceful departure of the squatters in Benin contrasts with neighbouring Nigeria, where clashes with police enforcing eviction notices can lead to violence and even death.

Nevertheless, Cotonou's poor will suffer most by being forced to move stalls to less busy streets at a time when Benin's economy is being hit by recession in Nigeria.

In Ghana's Accra, for example, alternative marketplaces were set up for those evicted. But in Cotonou there is no such relocation or compensation.

- Nightmare scenario -

So for some, the beautification of Cotonou is a nightmare.

"Where do you want me to go?" asked Eugenie Yovogan, whose small street restaurant stood in front of a government building providing lunch for civil servants.

The clearance robbed her of a prime location and customers. "I lost my clientele forever," she said.

Cotonou's authorities maintain they will support people like Yovogan -- even if it's unclear if they have the funds to do so.

"Our citizens have demonstrated a very high social maturity, respecting the laws," said Tchaou.

"Now we must be able to relocate them so that their turnover does not fall. But this requires the means, and sweeping, garbage collection, this is already expensive."
America, born with the aspiration of becoming a city on a hill, faces the serious danger of becoming a fortress, deluded in the belief that walls and airport detention rooms will offer security and prosperity. Through hard work, entrepreneurship, and complete allegiance to their adopted country, generations of immigrants helped create the most prosperous, powerful, and open society in human history. Throughout American history, but especially in the last two decades, immigrants have risen to the forefront of the countrys business, technology, science, and culture. But now the United States runs the risk not only of gravely damaging its competitive edge but also undermining its security by shutting its doors to a broad group of people whose cooperation America needs, both for economic growth and to win the war on terror.

America is one of several countries witnessing a new wave of rightwing, nativist populism, which claims to have the solutions for fighting Islamist extremism. But the notion that one form of prejudice can defeat another is an illusion. In reality, prejudice and brutality beget more of the same, feeding a vicious cycle. In the Islamic world, radical extremists have long claimed that only they offer an alternative to what they perceive to be the challenges of globalization and American hegemony. President Trumps order last Friday, temporarily banning the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, is arguably the most potentially consequential of such fallacious thinking. The problem with the new administrations ill-advised policies and pronouncements is that they are not only heartless, cruel, and hostile to the spirit of what makes America great, but they are also clumsy, impulsive, and counterproductive.

The stated goal of presidents executive order is to defeat radical Islamists. In fact, the incompetent text of the order and the ethnocentric texture of the narrative that has accompanied it are bound to fail at achieving this objective for several reasons. The order undermines Americas ties to the very governments and individuals whose help is needed to defeat terrorist groups like ISIS. How will the United States defeat ISIS in Mosul without Iraqis at its side? How will it defeat ISIS in Raqqa without Syrians? The decreeand Trumps later denouncing of a deal Obama had struck to take in some refugees who had fled to Australiaalso has alienated Americas closest allies. Virtually every European ally of the U.S. distanced itself from the orderFrance, for example, not only criticized it, but defiantly doubled its quota of annual visas to Iranianswhile right-wing nationalists in France gleefully claimed that more policies like Trumps are needed. In other countries with majority or large minority Muslim populations, government and civil-society leaders have lamented Trumps draconian decision. Even Israel has had dual citizens from the countries named in the order.

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Recommended: How to Build an Autocracy

The ban not only weakens moderates in the Muslim world, but also gives a huge propaganda victory to radical Islamists, whether in ISIS or the Iranian regime, who can now more credibly claim that the United States is at war with Islam itself. In the wake of last Fridays announcement, friendly governments in several Muslim countries explicitly warned of this rising danger. A central tenet of radical Islamists has long been that the predominantly Christian West can never be a safe harbor for Muslims. In this view, only an Islamist regime governed by sharia law can offer succor and safety for Muslims. Democracy, too, they say, is a trick of Western Crusaders, used only if is beneficial to rich and powerful Christians. Eliminating these illusions about the West, Islamists say, is critical to the victory of Islamism in the world. It will certainly aid hardliners in Iran, where, over the last four months, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his allies have incessantly attacked pragmatists like President Hassan Rouhani for trusting the United States.

Only an America that welcomes immigrants and refugees will continue to innovate and prosper.

In fact, the list of countries whose predominantly innocent citizens are temporarily banned from coming to the United States is both politically and practically flawed, and unlikely to protect America. The countries listed in the ban have not produced a single terrorist attack on American soil. Saudis and Egyptians attacked America on September 11th, but these countries are not on the list. An American and his Pakistani-born wife carried out the San Bernardino terrorist attack, but Pakistan is not on the list. The Tsarnaev brothers who terrorized Boston were Chechensone was an American citizen, the other a Russian citizen. Russia also is not part of the ban. Moreover, the Iranian and Syrian regimes are U.S. government-designated state sponsors of terrorism, but most of their victims and hostages have been their own citizens. Punishing those citizens for the sins of their despotic regimes is immoral and counterproductive.

In addition to not helping the global fight with terrorism, Trumps decree also damaged American economic and scientific interests. Dozens of companies, including many high-tech firms, had their employees detained. Wont some of them be tempted to move to friendlier places, including Americas neighbor to the north? Likewise, students were handcuffed and held, while others remain in their home countries wondering when they can return to their universities, including to our own university, Stanford. How does discouraging the best and the brightest in the world to study at American universities serve the countrys national interest? The list of immigrants and refugees who came to the United States to escape repression and then thrive economically is too long to print. Remember just one: Sergey Brinrefugee, former Stanford student, co-founder of Googlewho made a point of protesting at the San Francisco airport to show solidarity for those just like him, trapped on the other side of the border.

Only an America that is open, free, and true to its values can summon the understanding, forge the alliances, and win the broad cooperation necessary to defeat radical Islamist extremism. Only an America that welcomes immigrants and refugees will continue to innovate and prosper.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway on Thursday defended the presidents controversial immigration ban, citing two Iraqi refugees who carried out the Bowling Green Massacre. Theres just one problem: theres no such thing as the Bowling Green Massacre.

I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. It didnt get covered, Conway told MSNBCs Chris Matthews.

(Sidenote: President Obama never, in fact, banned the Iraqi refugee program  it was temporarily slowed to respond to a specific threat but never halted).

Conway admitted the mistake on Twitter, saying honest mistakes abound. She also clarified the story she meant to cite  that two Iraqi men in Bowling Green, Kentucky were arrested in 2013 for conspiring with al Qaeda and attempting to plot a terror attack.

But the fact that the massacre never happened didnt stop some denizens of the Internet from rallying to help its victims. Overnight, BowlingGreenMassacreFund.com cropped up on the internet:

Screen Shot 2015-08-10 at 11.44.56 AM

The satirical website is full of vague remembrance platitudes like, We all still carry the vivid memories of what horrors occurred at Bowling Green, but some still relive those moments everyday as they work to rebuild a community torn apart.

It also has a Donate Now button to help the imaginary victims  that automatically redirects to the American Civil Liberties Union website. An ACLU spokesperson told Foreign Policy it had nothing to do with the website and had not been in touch with its creators. (Though its still unclear who created the website; the domain is registered anonymously.)

On Jan. 30, the ACLU announced it received six times its annual donations in one weekend alone  $24 million  after President Donald Trump signed a controversial executive order banning travelers from certain Middle Eastern countries from entering the United States, citing terrorism concerns.

Though the city of Bowling Green, Kentucky remains unharmed, the ACLU is still accepting donations.

Photo credit: JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images; Image Credit: BowlingGreenMassacreFund.com
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - A Bosnia-based international school said on Friday it would offer scholarships to refugees and students from seven nations affected by the immigration ban issued last week by U.S President's Donald Trump.

United World College (UWC) Mostar, one of 17 UWC schools worldwide that aim to bring together students from conflict zones, opened in 2005 with the goal of healing ethnic divisions after the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

"We offer scholarships to U.S students, as well as to refugees and students from majority Muslim countries banned by the U.S. Executive order to send a signal for peace," said Valentina Mindoljevic, head of the UWC Mostar.

Trump's order bars the admission of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen and places an indefinite hold on Syrian refugees.

The school in 2011 extended a scholarship to Kim Han-sol, the grandson of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, after Hong Kong refused him a visa to study there.

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Andrew Roche)
WALHALLA, S.C. (AP)  The Confederate battle flag is going back up at a monument in a northwestern South Carolina town.

Luther Lyle had maintained the memorial in Walhalla for years and had replaced the Confederate flag with a South Carolina flag in 2015, about the time the Confederate flag was taken down from the Statehouse following the Charleston church shootings.

Lyle said there was only one complaint then. The South Carolina Secessionist Party complained recently that the removal violated a state law that requires legislative approval to change monuments.

Lyle told the Anderson Independent Mail (http://bit.ly/2jGwYIF) the complaints by the Secessionist Party had nothing to do with putting the flag back up. Lyle said an agreement was reached last week for the Sons of Confederate Veterans to take over responsibility for the monument.
By Kristina Cooke and Dustin Volz SAN FRANCISCO/ WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Trump administration effort to exclude violent white supremacists from a government anti-terrorism program and focus efforts solely on Islamist extremism drew a sharp backlash Thursday, with New York state's top prosecutor denouncing the move and civil liberties advocates suggesting it is illegal. The proposed revamp, reported by Reuters on Wednesday, would rename the multi-agency "Countering Violent Extremism" (CVE) task force to "Countering Islamic Extremism" or "Countering Radical Islamic Extremism," and eliminate initiatives aimed at other violent hate groups in the United States. "Abandoning efforts to counter violent white supremacist ideology is profoundly misguided and will endanger Americans," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement, adding that he urged President Donald Trump to keep the focus on "all extremist threats." Hugh Handeyside, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said an explicit focus on American Muslims would violate "basic constitutional principles," suggesting the changes described would be met with legal challenges. The Anti-Defamation League also criticized the plan, citing internal research that found 74 percent of deaths caused by domestic extremists between 2007 and 2016 were caused by "right-wing extremists such as white supremacists, sovereign citizens and militia adherents." Postings on white supremacist websites welcomed the potential changes. Facebook Inc. , which like many internet platforms is often used by extremists, has financially supported at least one CVE initiative but had no comment Thursday on the prospective changes. Sharp rhetoric about the threat posed by "radical Islam" was a central part of Trump's 2016 election campaign. The Republican frequently ridiculed then President Barack Obama and Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for being politically correct in their approach to groups such as Islamic State. Contributors to Stormfront, a white supremacist web site, praised the administration. "Oh my goodness. Is this for real. Amazing my government no longer targets me as the enemy," wrote one prolific poster going by the username Magog. Another regular poster, Celtchar, wrote: "Wow. It just keeps getting better and better," adding that the anti-fascist movement's "days are numbered." The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declined to comment on the proposed changes. Last Friday, Trump signed an executive order temporarily blocking travel to the United States by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, prompting a global outcry and charges from his critics that he was advancing a white nationalist agenda. Trump has said he wants to put America first but has rejected characterizations of the order as a "Muslim ban." Trump's moves have already undermined participation in the CVE program, which is based on working with community groups to identify potential "lone wolf" attackers and recruits. Minnesota-based Ka Joog, a nonprofit which provides community based programs for Somali youth, late Wednesday became the second group to pull out of the program, citing concerns about the Trump administration's posture toward Muslims in turning down a $499,998 grant. "That's a lot of money, especially in the nonprofit world," said Mohamed Farah, the organization's director. "But at the end of the day it all comes down to principle. I am a refugee, I am a Muslim, I am an immigrant and this president is against everything I stand for." Last week, Leaders Advancing & Helping Communities, a Michigan-based group led by Lebanese-Americans and another grant recipient, declined a $500,000 provided by the DHS. (Reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Franciso and Dustin Volz in Washington; Additional reporting by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Jonathan Weber and Grant McCool)
By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - A Denver mosque warned the U.S. Department of Homeland Security a Muslim convert was radicalized more than a month before he was arrested in the shooting death of a security guard, officials said on Thursday.

Joshua Cummings, 37, was taken into custody in Denver on Tuesday on suspicion of fatally shooting Scott Von Lanken, a transportation agency security guard and former pastor, that night, police said.

Detectives are investigating whether Von Lanken was targeted because he wore a uniform similar to those worn by police officers, Denver Police Chief Robert White told reporters.

Leaders of the unnamed mosque said in a Dec. 24 email that they were concerned Cummings was espousing radical beliefs when he attended meetings for converts to Islam.

Qusair Mohamedbhai, a Denver attorney, released the email on behalf of the mosque to the media on Thursday.

In a statement accompanying the email, Mohamedbhai said the local Muslim community "will always oppose those who undermine our collective American values."

The author of the email, whose name is redacted, said Cummings espoused radical beliefs including using violence to establish Islamic law, and was not "listening to reason."

"He seems pretty advanced in his path of radicalization," the email said.

Homeland Security spokeswoman Gillian Christensen confirmed the department had received the missive.

"It was immediately referred to the appropriate law enforcement agencies for review, Christensen said, without identifying who was notified.

A Denver television station aired video of FBI agents searching the motel where Cummings had been living.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined comment on the case.

It was not immediately clear if Cummings has an attorney.

Von Lanken, 56, was speaking with two women outside Denver's Union Station transit depot when Cummings walked up to him saying, "Do what you were told" and shot him in the neck, according to an affidavit filed in court by Denver Police.

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When police apprehended Cummings a short time after the shooting, he was carrying a loaded 9mm handgun, the police affidavit said.

Von Lanken, an ex-police officer, died from a single gunshot wound, the Denver Office of the Medical Examiner said in a statement.

Cummings, who is held in jail without bond, is due in Denver District Court on Friday for a hearing but it is unclear when he will be formally charged.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Lisa Shumaker)
New York (AFP) - Several hundred people demonstrated in New York Friday for a second consecutive evening against President Donald Trump's ban on refugees and visa holders entering the country from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The diverse crowd of young and old, people of different ethnic backgrounds and observant Muslims protested in a predominantly Muslim community in Queens, the New York borough where the president was born. City politicians also attended the rally.

"Say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here!" "No hate, no fear," chanted the crowd in Astoria, one day after hundreds of Yemeni Americans gathered for sundown prayers and protests against the ban in Brooklyn.

They held up homemade placards with slogans such as "Don't Ban My Neighbors" and "No Ban, No Wall," in reference to the Republican president's plan to build a wall on the Mexican border as part of his tough immigration policies.

"I came to support my community. It's crazy. This guy (Trump) -- he has to control his mouth. He's going to make everything upside down," said Mustafa Aly, originally from Alexandria in Egypt but living in Queens for 16 years.

"The hate that runs with this election has to be countered," said Edward Kulzer, carrying his six-year-old daughter. "She witnessed a Trump supporter threatening me. This has to be destroyed," he added in reference to his child.

Trump signed the executive order last Friday, closing US borders to refugees for 120 days and visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.
President Donald Trump meets with Senate and House legislators, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC: Getty

The Trump administration on Thursday told Israel to stop constructing new settlements because it may not help bring peace with Palestinians.

In the past, President Trump has suggested that he would break away from Obama-era foreign policy to form better relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly surprised the White House by announcing the construction of 5,500 new housing units in the West Bank last week.

The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years, the White House statement reads. While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region, the statement adds. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.

In an interview with the CBS program 60 Minutes, former President Obama discussed his decision to abstain from the United Nations vote to condemn the construction of Israeli settlements.

"Because of our investment in the region, and because we care so deeply about Israel, I think [the US] has a legitimate interest in saying to a friend, 'This is a problem,'" he explained. "It would have long-term consequences for peace and security in the region, and the United States."
US President Donald Trump: Getty Images

Donald Trump's new White House administration reportedly blocked an official International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that mentioned Jewish victims of Nazi massacres.

The State Department's office of the special envoy on Holocaust issues had drafted a statement for the new President that commemorated the millions of Jews murdered by the Hitler regime.

But this was blocked by the Trump administration, according to the Politico website. Another statement was then released on behalf of the US leader.

The three-paragraphs made reference to "victims, survivors" and "those who died", but it made no mention of the Jewish victims.

This statement was heavily criticised for the omission. Some 6 million Jews, including one-and-a-half-million children, are estimated to have died in the genocide.

The President's statement also failed to mention Roma, gay people, the disabled or any specific group that was killed in the Holocaust.

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defmation League, called the speech "puzzling and troubling".

But a White House official told Politico that Mr Trump's representatives had not seen the State Department's draft before publishing its own and had advised it not to release the second statement late in the day.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended the statement released by Mr Trump. He said it had been written with the help of a Jewish person descended from Holocaust survivors.

Mr Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, also backed the speech.

"Everyone's suffering in the Holocaust, including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something that can never be forgotten," he told NBC's Meet the Press.

It is not the first such statement to omit explicit mention of Jews. The State Department's 2013 release on behalf of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also failed to include them.

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Mr Trump's statement in full:

"It is with a heavy heart and sombre mind that we remember and honour the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

"Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.

"In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world."
The United States lost a Navy SEAL this past week in a raid in Yemen that went wrong. In addition to the loss of the SEAL and a $75 million aircraft, it also appears that several innocent civilian lives were lostnever a good thing, and even worse when one of those innocent civilians appears to have been an 8-year-old girl.

Unnamed military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support, or adequate backup preparations.

I was born a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, but never in my own memory has the political opposition to the sitting president been this intense. No president in my lifetime has become so unpopular, so fast. Yes, there was a lot of domestic opposition to President Bush, which culminated in the 2006 midterms, and yes, Republicans in the Obama years used a wave of Tea Party resentment to obstruct the presidents agenda, but this really and truly is something different. I was catching up with a friend in Congress, a Democrat, earlier this week, and he described the anger of his base as something he had never seen before.

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So take a deep breath, because Im about to tell many of you something you do not want to hear: Blaming Trump for what happened is both inappropriate and counterproductive. There are some good reasons to disapprove of this president: He is a man of demonstrated low character whose first few weeks in office have weakened both the international alliances and American values that have preserved our preeminent place in the world for over a century. Keep your powder dry for those thingsbut not this.

This raid, according to The New York Times, was approved by and recommended to the president by his secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. For the recommendation to have gone forward to the president, the senior leadership of the Department of Defense would have signed off on this operation. And for that to have happened, special operations and regional U.S. commanders would have had to have blessed the planning that went into the operation itself.

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The left cannot on the one hand claim Donald Trump is ignorant of military and security affairs, and then on the other hand expect him to second-guess the professional recommendations of his uniformed and civilian military leadership.

Some Obama-era counterterrorism and NSC officials are pointing to what happened as evidence that the very deliberate interagency process the Obama administration used to approve these operations has been justified.

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I am inclined to disagree. My experience as a senior Department of Defense official in the last two years of the Obama administration leads me to the conclusion that the way we did thingswith the military required to provide a CONOPS, or concept of operations, to be picked over by deputy cabinet secretaries and usually the secretaries themselves prior to being forwarded to the president for approvalwas slow and ponderous in a way that created real opportunity costs and denied subordinate commanders the flexibility to exploit opportunities they saw on the battlefield. Yes, it eliminated a lot of physical and political risk, but in doing so it negated one of the primary advantages the U.S. military enjoys, which is a highly trained and capable officer corps in the field that can exercise independent judgment.

At one point toward the end of the Obama administration, cabinet secretariescabinet secretaries!were literally debating whether or not it made sense to move three helicopters within Iraq and Syria. That decision should have been left to the very capable, very experienced commander on the ground, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Steve Townsend.

America cannot punish its elected officials for allowing its military to take risks necessary to pursue its interests.

But this is a bi-partisan problem. To any Republicans feeling smug having just read those last two paragraphs, I have one word for you: Benghazi.

The way in which Republicans turned Benghazi into a cudgel they then used to beat Hillary Clinton had a chilling effect on anyone seeking to take any risk and personal initiative. The truth about Benghazi was that Americas very capable and intrepid ambassador on the ground, Chris Stephens, made an error in judgment for which he paid with his life. No one wanted to say that because no one wanted to be seen blaming the dead, but Stephens, in his capacity as the senior U.S. official on the ground, overruled his security officer and took risks that led to his death and the death of one other. Andand this will be difficult for some to readthats okay. Thats sometimes the price of doing business.

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That did not stop, however, Republicans from cynically holding the secretary of state responsible in asuccessful, it must be saideffort to weaken her presidential candidacy. Republicans spent millions of dollars on a baldly partisan investigation, one byproduct of which was to create a foreign-service officer corps that now feels it has to conduct its business behind concrete T-walls and cannot actually venture out into the peoples and societies that diplomats are supposed to build ties with.

America cannot punish its elected officials for allowing its military, diplomatic corps, and intelligence services to take risks necessary to pursue its interests. Its true the president is ultimately responsible for everything his or her administration does and fails to do, but its not helpful for the default reaction when something goes wrong to be immediately elevating the blame to the office of the president.

I know and in many cases was trained by many of the men and women who made the decision to carry out the raid in Yemen. I spent a short period of my life leading U.S. Army Rangers and thus have some experience planning and executing time sensitive special operations in both Iraq and Afghanistanoften for the men and women who still command in our military. (Steve Townsend, who I mentioned earlier and who very likely did not play a role in the Yemen raid, was my very first commander in the Army.) As a result of that experience, though, I know how good the men and women are who work at the tactical and operational levels of our military, our foreign service, and our intelligence services.

Americans have to allow those men and women to be aggressive, to take risks, and to, on occasion, fall short. And we cannot immediately blame the president if and when they do.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
For nearly a decade, former police officer Drew Peterson has steadfastly maintained his innocence in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy. In public statements and court records, he has alleged that the then-25-year-old woman left him for another man.

He insisted that Stacy Peterson was still alive even as he faced trial for killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, in 2004. He was sentenced in 2012 to 38 years in prison for Savios murder, but has never faced trial in Stacys disappearance.

But even his son doesnt believe in his innocence.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Petersons son, Stephen, said that his father probably killed both wives.

Over time, you hear enough , Stephen Peterson, 37, told the newspaper. They cant all be full of s. I dont want to come out and say he did it  but, Im sure he did it.

Stephen Peterson told the newspaper that he doesnt know the details of Stacys disappearance. He also adds that his father still insists that hes innocent.

A Sons Burden

The disastrous fallout from Drew Peterson murder trial of Savio has impacted Stephen.

In 2011, Stephen was fired from his job as a police officer after officials learned that he had stored his fathers guns and checks totaling more than $200,000 after Stacys disappearance. He has not worked since.

 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.

His marriage soon ended, and Stephen moved into his fathers home. He is the guardian of Drew and Stacy Petersons middle-school-aged sons.

He told the newspaper that his father kind of put us in a really bad situation I have to clean up now.

Drew Petersons situation keeps getting worse: Last year, he was convicted of hiring a hit man in an attempt to kill the prosecutor in his murder case. He was sentenced to 40 additional years in prison, to be served after the 38 years he is currently serving. Peterson is 63.

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Peterson has never been charged for Stacys disappearance, and police are still investigating the case. Peterson remains a suspect, although he has adamantly maintained his innocence.

In court last year, fellow inmate Antonio Smith testified that Peterson had called Stacy a dead woman while discussing the case.

PEOPLE reached out to Petersons attorneys, but did not immediately receive a response.

Speaking Out About His Father

The usually reticent Stephen Peterson refuses most interview requests, but he spoke with the Tribune to talk about his appearance on Monster in My Family, a documentary that aired on the Lifetime Network.

 Pick up PEOPLEs special edition True Crime Stories: Cases That Shocked America, on sale now, for the latest on Casey Anthony, JonBenet Ramsey and more.

The younger Peterson said that he had been supporting his family with his fathers pension. The day after the payments were cut off, he was offered $10,000 to appear on the Lifetime show  money he said he desperately needed.

The time was right, he told the Tribune.

He also said he told his father that he was going to appear on the show because he needed the money. Hes not sure if Drew Peterson watched the episode.

Im sure hell be upset, Stephen Peterson told the paper. Not like his opinion matters now.




By Carolyn Crist (Reuters Health)  Lifeguards who oversee open waters, such as oceans and lakes, may be able to deliver CPR effectively in a moving inflatable boat, according to a small study in Spain. Surf-lifeguards provided the best cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on land but also delivered good-quality CPR on a small rescue boat, supporting the idea of starting CPR as soon as possible in real-life scenarios, researchers say. In cases of off-shore drowning, lifeguards should start CPR immediately and continue along the time required to reach the shore, said study author Cristian Abelairas-Gomez of the University of Santiago de Compostela. More research is focusing on out-of-hospital CPR in recent years, particularly lifeguards performance, he told Reuters Health by email. The European Resuscitation Council Guidelines put emphasis on open-water resuscitation in 2015, and experts are now investigating how different rescue scenarios affect CPR, he said. The research team created an experimental simulation with 10 lifeguards on the Spanish island of Tenerife. The lifeguards were asked to perform two-minute CPR on training mannequins in four scenarios: onshore, on a floating boat, on a boat traveling at 5 knots and on a boat traveling at 10 knots. Each lifeguard had at least five years of experience, but none had on-boat CPR experience. In all scenarios, the quality of CPR was measured by the number and depth of compressions and the degree of chest rise when breaths were administered to the mannequin. In all cases, the lifeguards scores surpassed the CPR success threshold of 70 percent. However, the quality of CPR did decrease as boat speed increased. In particular, the boats movement affected chest compression depth during CPR. Until more research is conducted, there may be a trade-off between quality of resuscitation during transport versus rapidly getting a victim to dry land, said Stephen Langendorfer of Bowling Green State University in Ohio who wasnt involved in the study. Since even highly-skilled professional lifeguards performed worse as speed increased, one could expect less well-skilled lifeguards to perhaps perform below the (CPR success) threshold, he told Reuters Health by email. Worldwide, more than 370,000 deaths are due to drowning each year, representing 0.7 percent of all unintentional injury deaths, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, drowning is the leading cause of injury-related death among children ages 1 to 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Drowning is such a big problem and not publicized. The numbers are often underestimated, said David Szpilman, medical director of SOBRASA, a drowning prevention group in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who also wasnt involved in the study. There are so many variables in drowning scenarios that we dont have a recipe to say exactly what to do next, he told Reuters Health. This study shows that as soon as you can ventilate, the better. The variables posed the biggest limitation in the study, the authors write in the Emergency Medicine Journal. Sea conditions, such as waves, wind speed, water temperature and distance to shore could result in different rescue scenarios. During the tests in September 2015, conditions at Los Gigantes beach on the islands west coast, where the testing was done, were cloudy, with calm winds, calm waves and water temperatures in the high 60s. In real life, sea conditions may be harder and CPR quality could be affected, Abelairas-Gomez said. For one of the first studies of CPR on a boat, we thought it was necessary to begin with calm conditions. Future studies will focus on harsher sea conditions and chest compressions on a moving boat, he added. In the current study, compared to onshore quality, chest compression depth dropped 20 percent at 10 knots and CPR quality decreased by 13 percent. There was also a 7 percent drop from CPR quality on an adrift boat versus a boat traveling at 10 knots. Drowning can happen to anyone, including those who know how to swim and think they cant drown, Szpilman said. People underestimate the danger, especially when theyre used to calm swimming conditions in a pool. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2k1jwes Emergency Medicine Journal, online January 27, 2017.
The Hague (AFP) - Dutch officials unveiled Friday what they called "the largest Mondrian painting in the world" to celebrate The Netherlands' best-known abstract artist, who helped found an influential art movement a century ago.

The replica "painting" made from thin stick-on plastic sheets features Piet Mondrian's famous design of straight black lines and striking red, yellow and blue blocks and has been displayed on the sides of the city hall in The Hague.

"The Hague's city council decided to honour the world-renowned artist as part of a year of celebrating the theme 'Mondrian to Dutch Design'," city spokesman Herbert Brinkman told AFP.

This year marks the centenary of the founding of the Dutch art movement in 1917 called "De Stijl" (The Style) known for its bold horizontal and vertical lines encasing blocks of primary colours.

Mondrian and fellow Dutch painter and designer Theo van Doesburg were two of the best-known artists of De Stijl, which eventually dissolved in the early 1930s.

Mondrian, who shortened his name from "Mondriaan" in later years, is best known for his 1944 canvas "Victory Boogie Woogie" -- considered one of the most important works of 20th century art.

The painting returned to The Netherlands in 1998 after it was bought from a private American collection for $40 million at the time.

It now hangs in The Hague's Gemeentemuseum, which also houses some 300 other Mondrian works, the world's largest collection.

Brinkman told AFP the city planned to adorn other buildings with similar Mondrian-inspired works, including floating cubical pontoons on the Hofvijver, the small lake in front of the centuries-old Dutch parliament.

After his death, Mondrian continued to be a source of inspiration including for a famous 1965 cocktail dress designed by Yves Saint Laurent, which sold in 2011 for a whopping 30,000 pounds (35,000 euros, $37,000).

jhe/jkb/boc
By Nate Raymond

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Lawyers for Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman complained on Friday that he was being subjected to excessive conditions of confinement in a federal jail and that his wife was not being allowed to visit him.

The arguments came in federal court in Brooklyn at a hearing for Guzman, who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he ran the world's largest drug-trafficking organization during a decades-long career. He faces life in prison if convicted.

Guzman's wife, Emma Coronel, flew from Mexico to attend the hearing, his second appearance in a U.S. court. His lawyers said the hearing was first time Coronel had seen Guzman since his surprise extradition two weeks ago.

Guzman, 59, who has escaped two maximum-security jails in Mexico, is on 23-hour lockdown in a special unit in the federal jail in Manhattan, according to his lawyers, and has been prevented from seeing Coronel and his Mexican attorney.

"We understand the need for security but we think it has gone above and beyond," said Michelle Gelernt, one of Guzman's court-appointed lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan said he would defer to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to determine what conditions were set and who Guzman could see, saying the "history of the defendant is somewhat unusual."

"Based on what I know of this case, there are grounds for taking additional security measures," Cogan said.

Following the hearing, Coronel, 27, a former beauty queen, stood by Guzman's attorneys as they complained to reporters about jail restrictions.

Michael Schneider, another of his lawyers, said prosecutors have questioned Guzman's financial eligibility for court-appointed counsel, given what they said was his position as the billionaire leader of the Sinaloa cartel.

Schneider called that position "ridiculous" given that prosecutors were simultaneously supporting strict jail conditions that have blocked Guzman from talking to his family, who could help him retain counsel.

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Guzman's cartel allegedly smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines to the United States while waging war with other cartels, carrying out thousands of murders and kidnappings and bribing officials.

At the hearing, Guzman's lawyers also sought documents related to his extradition. Gelernt told reporters the defense is concerned about the legality of Guzman's extradition to face the Brooklyn case, which not the subject of the initial U.S. request to Mexico.

Prosecutors have said that after Guzman was extradited to face indictments in California and Texas, the Mexican government approved a U.S. request to prosecute him New York.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bill Trott)
New York (AFP) - Hip-hop superstar Eminem has returned with a fresh attack on US President Donald Trump, contributing an angry verse on the new album of Big Sean.

The lyrics mark the latest political intervention by Eminem, who re-emerged weeks before the November 8 election with a charged, eight-minute freestyle rap against the billionaire Republican.

On "No Favors," a track on Big Sean's album "I Decided." which came out Friday, Eminem and the fellow Detroit rapper both boast of rising from humble means as they question the world's direction.

Eminem declares himself an avowed opponent of Trump and his administration: "I'm anti / Can't no government handle a commando ... I'll make his whole brand go under."

The rapper denounces the racial dynamics behind the white tycoon's campaign and reserves his most heated verses for Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator known for her provocative statements.

Eminem -- in his trademark delivery of super-fast verses that crescendo in anger -- imagines acts of violence against Coulter including running her over with a car.

"Gotta make an example of her / That's for Sandra Bland... and Philando," he raps, in reference to two African Americans whose deaths following police traffic stops triggered protests.

Eminem similarly imagined vengeance in his October song "Campaign Speech," in which he spoke of attacking George Zimmerman, the volunteer neighborhood watchman in Florida who shot dead African American teenager Trayvon Martin as he walked home with iced tea and candy.

Eminem, the best-selling rapper of all time and by far the most prominent white artist in hip-hop, was rarely described as political as he built his career in the 1990s.

But in interviews he has long identified with the political left, even as his songs -- often rapped in character -- have generated controversy for derogatory lines about women and gays.

Eminem has said he is working on a new studio album, which would be his first since 2013.

"I Decided.," the fourth album by Big Sean, is a concept album about a man who is reborn and sees the same life with new eyes.
Hip-hop superstar Eminem has returned with a fresh attack on US President Donald Trump, contributing an angry verse on the new album of Big Sean.

The lyrics mark the latest political intervention by Eminem, who re-emerged weeks before the November 8 election with a charged, eight-minute freestyle rap against the billionaire Republican.

On "No Favors," a track on Big Sean's album "I Decided." which came out Friday, Eminem and the fellow Detroit rapper both boast of rising from humble means as they question the world's direction.

Eminem declares himself an avowed opponent of Trump and his administration: "I'm anti / Can't no government handle a commando ... I'll make his whole brand go under."

The rapper denounces the racial dynamics behind the white tycoon's campaign and reserves his most heated verses for Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator known for her provocative statements.

Eminem -- in his trademark delivery of super-fast verses that crescendo in anger -- imagines acts of violence against Coulter including running her over with a car.

"Gotta make an example of her / That's for Sandra Bland... and Philando," he raps, in reference to two African Americans whose deaths following police traffic stops triggered protests.

Eminem similarly imagined vengeance in his October song "Campaign Speech," in which he spoke of attacking George Zimmerman, the volunteer neighborhood watchman in Florida who shot dead African American teenager Trayvon Martin as he walked home with iced tea and candy.

Eminem, the best-selling rapper of all time and by far the most prominent white artist in hip-hop, was rarely described as political as he built his career in the 1990s.

But in interviews he has long identified with the political left, even as his songs -- often rapped in character -- have generated controversy for derogatory lines about women and gays.

Eminem has said he is working on a new studio album, which would be his first since 2013.

"I Decided.," the fourth album by Big Sean, is a concept album about a man who is reborn and sees the same life with new eyes.
Los Angeles (AFP) - An Emmy-winning producer was found guilty of stabbing his tenant in a fit of rage after the victim mocked his claims that he would one day win five Oscars.

Andre Bauth, the 38-year-old producer and star of an indie thriller about a landlord who kills his tenants, faces up to 13 years in prison at his sentencing on March 22 in a California court.

The Colombian-born Bauth, whose real name is Andre Salaman Bautista, stabbed Clayton Haymes on September 8 in the lung, after Haymes and several others laughed at his bravado.

The "El Landlord" producer and actor fled to Mexico after the attack and finally surrendered at the US embassy in Mexico City.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German utility EnBW on Friday said it would cooperate with car supplier Bosch [ROBG.UL] on the development of batteries for the energy market, highlighting the importance of storage technology across industries. In a first step, the companies will form a project company to build battery modules for EnBW's power plant in Heilbronn, Germany, aiming to stabilize the energy grid in times of demand swings, a major problem in times of increased supply from wind and solar. No financial details were disclosed. (Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Victoria Bryan)
Oscar and Emmy-winning producer Lili Fini Zanuck has signed on to direct the documentary feature "Eric Clapton: A Life in 12 Bars," with producer John Battsek also on board for the project.

Zanuck's credits include "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Bessie" -- both of which won Academy and Emmy awards respectively -- while Battsek's acheivements include Oscar-winners "One Day in September" and "Searching for Sugar Man."

The film will examine both Clapton's stellar career and personal life, with first footage to be unveiled to buyers at Berlin's European Film Market.

Altitude Film Sales is handling international sales, and Altitude Film Distribution has taken UK rights.

Chris King -- who won a BAFTA for "Senna" and whose other credits include "Amy" and "Exit Through the Gift Shop," both of which won American Cinema Editors' EDDIE awards -- is the editor on the project (via Variety).
By Alastair Macdonald and Gabriela Baczynska VALLETTA (Reuters) - European Union leaders meet on Malta on Friday to endorse plans they hope can forestall a new wave spring of migrants sailing for Italy from Africa, but aware that anarchy in Libya means any quick fix is a long shot. Theresa May will also attend, despite the prime minister's plan to start negotiations by next month to take the U.K. out of the EU -- a reminder that Britain, along with France, is one of the bloc's two main military powers and a key aid donor in Africa, and that Brussels will go on cooperating with London long after Brexit. May also has a chance to brief her 27 peers on her visit last week to new U.S. President Donald Trump, whose backing for Brexit, doubts on free trade, barring of refugees and warmth toward Russia all raise alarm in Europe. The British leader could feel a degree of frost over her rush to embrace Trump. A controversial agreement with Turkey last year halted an influx of refugees that had brought a million migrants into Germany via Greece. Now the EU has turned its attention to Italy, where a record 181,000 people arrived in 2016, most of them deemed to be seeking work and not in clear need of asylum from persecution. The risks that those people run in the seas around Malta after crossing the Sahara -- more than 4,500 drowned last year -- will be highlighted when leaders renew vows to help Africans live better without leaving home: "This is the only way to stop people dying in the desert and at sea," summit chair Donald Tusk said. "The only way to gain control over migration in Europe." Popular hostility to immigration has stoked nationalist, anti-EU movements, creating a powerful incentive for leaders facing re-election to appear to be control. That includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wants a fourth term in September. "NO BAZOOKA" EU leaders acknowledge they cannot replicate with Libya the deal they made with Turkey to take back asylum-seekers. As the U.N. refugee agency reminded them on Thursday, Libya since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 is simply not a safe place. "There will be no bazooka," a senior EU official said on Thursday, ruling out -- at this stage -- that the bloc could get more directly involved in handling asylum seekers inside Africa. That leaves the EU trying to bolster the shaky, U.N.-backed Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez Seraj, who was in Brussels and Rome on Thursday to hear pledges of cash and help to train and strengthen his coastal and border forces. As well as trying to disrupt smuggling gangs, the EU aims to deport more failed asylum seekers from Italy, using its cash to overcome resistance among African states to taking people back. Deportations may never occur on a grand scale, but EU officials argue that a more visible risk of being deported may dissuade would-be migrants from setting out in the first place. "But everyone understands that this is a long shot," one senior EU diplomat said. Other deterrence, including publicizing the unhappy fate of many migrants, may be having an effect. In Agadez in Niger, the numbers gathering to cross the Sahara have plunged lately -- though smugglers may just have altered routes. The European leaders will turn their attention after May leaves later in the day to how to shore up popular support for the EU. They will hash out ideas for a declaration on the bloc's future when they mark its 60th anniversary in Rome in March. (Writing by Alastair Macdonald)
VALLETTA, Malta (AP)  European Union leaders on Friday vowed to remain united and defiant in the face of an onslaught of criticism from the new American president that has started to undermine the once-unshakeable trans-Atlantic relationship.

And they hit back in an increasing battle of words, underscoring how they fear that Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric will be turned into policy and further tear apart their troubled bloc.

EU chief Donald Tusk earlier this week moved the U.S. into a "threat" category for the EU, following several negative comments about the 28-nation bloc.

"Maybe the best evidence that we are together in this context was the fact that some of my colleagues have used a new nickname for me, spontaneously, which is 'our Donald,'" Tusk said Friday at an EU summit in Malta, highlighting the new divisions in the century-old alliance with the U.S.

French President Francois Hollande said "it cannot be acceptable" that Trump could put pressure on the EU through his declarations on Twitter. And he warned that Trump should not send any envoy to the EU that has criticized the bloc, which one potential candidate has done.

"To appoint an ambassador, better for him to believe in the institution with which he would have to work. It is as simple as that," Hollande said.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite pointed out that it was almost impossible to build a bridge with Trump because "today we're communicating with the United States mainly on Twitter."

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said that "Trump must be judged by his actions and not by his rhetoric and his election campaign. But now he has delivered enough actions that are worrying." He said the United States was partly responsible for the strong refugee flows toward Europe because of its Mideast policies.

"What has happened in the last few days are really not the values I'm fighting for," Kern's Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel, said, referring to Trump's ban on refugees.

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Trump has questioned the NATO alliance linking North America and Europe, calling it "obsolete." In addition, hopes for a major EU-U.S. trade deal have already taken a deep dive amid worries of new U.S. protectionism under the Trump slogan "America first."

And adding insult to injury, Trump called the British decision to leave the EU  the most cathartic event in the bloc's 60-year history "a tremendous asset and not a tremendous liability."

For France and Germany, there is only one solution to facing an unpredictable partner.

"Many countries have to realize that their future is first in the European Union, rather than who knows what bilateral relation with the United States," said Hollande.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said "the more strongly we are clear about how we define our role in the world, the better we can tend our trans-Atlantic relations."

Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni saw a "great opportunity" for the EU if the Trump administration turns out to be largely domestic-focused, leaving the way open for Europe to be what he called the "No. 1 trade superpower in the world."

"The question the EU must pose itself is  can it play a more relevant role than what it's has played up till now internationally?" Gentiloni said, adding that included being more engaged in defense.

He said an EU summit in Rome next month could be the occasion to rise to the challenge.

Even though Trump has spoken on the phone with Merkel, Hollande, Tusk and hosted British Prime Minister Theresa May in Washington, Europe keeps searching for how to understand the new American leader.

"Who knows what the president of the United States really wants (on NATO)?" Hollande said of the military alliance uniting most EU member nations with the U.S.

While leaders and diplomats say the cornerstones of the EU-U.S. relationship remain intact, the bad vibes are seeping out in EU member nations.

On Friday, the Portuguese parliament voted to condemn Trump's U.S. travel ban on Muslims and highlighted the United States' important role in promoting tolerance and human rights around the world.

In Sweden, a photo said it all. Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin posted on Facebook a photo of her signing the country's new climate change law while surrounded by seven female staff members. Swedish media noted it resembled photos of Trump in the Oval Office signing decrees surrounded by only male advisers.

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Geir Moulson and Frank Jordans in Berlin and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed

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Follow Raf Casert on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rcasert
Zimbabwean pastor Evan Mawarire, who sparked a protest movement against the government of longtime dictator Robert Mugabe called #ThisFlag, was denied bail on Friday after being arrested on his sudden return from exile in the U.S.

The pastor is accused of subverting a constitutionally elected government, an offense that carries a 20-year sentence. He is also faces charges for incitement for public violence and criminalizing the Zimbabwean flag, Mawarires lawyer Harrison Knomo tells TIME.

Knomo says he will be applying for bail at the countrys High Court on Feb. 6. The first thing is to make sure that he is out on bail, then we can concentrate on the main charges, Knomo says, after leaving Harares Magistrates Court on Friday.

Mawarire, unexpectedly, inspired thousands when he posted a video with the hashtag, #ThisFlag, in April, 2016. The viral clip of him lamenting against the countrys moribund economy, corruption and human rights abuses, led to several anti-government protests and large-scale strike actions that paralyzed cities around the country. When I look at the flag its not a reminder of my pride and inspiration, it feels as if I just want to belong to another country he said in the video, with a Zimbabwean flag draped on his shoulders.

The protests were unprecedented in scale and frequency, leading some to refer to the events as Zimbabwes Arab Spring. Economic anger was (and still is) on the rise in the country, with the government struggling to pay civil servants salaries, and more than 4 million locals requiring food aid due to a 2016 drought that severely impacted agricultural production.

Mawarire was arrested later that year on charges of treason. But in the face of angry protests, with thousands massing outside a court in support of the pastor, Mawarires charges were thrown out by a magistrate. Fearing for his safety, Mawarire fled to South Africa before moving to the U.S. with his wife, Samantha, and children, days after his release from prison in July 2016.

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Mugabe, who has led the country with his ZANU PF party since its independence in 1980, ominously criticized Mawarires departure, accusing him of being sponsored by foreign countries. So beware these men of cloth, not all of them are true preachers of the Bible. I dont know whether they are serving God. They spell God in reverse, the longtime dictator said in public speech. The Mawarires, if they dont like to live with us, let them go to those who are sponsoring them, to the countries that are sponsoring them.

The 92-year-old Mugabes regime is notorious for its attacks on dissent: arresting journalists, suppressing voters with force, beating opposition figures and abducting known activists. In 2015, activist Itai Dzamara never returned after being taken by force into unmarked vehicle. His wife accuses the authorities for his disappearance. In the face of that, Mawarire departure lost him some support from veteran activists, angry that he fled while countless have remained and faced the fury of Mugabes forces, South Africas Daily Maverick reports.

Rights groups are calling the current charges against Mawarire trumped up, criticizing the government for attempting to subvert peaceful activism in the country, yet again. The Zimbabwean authorities are using the oldest tricks in the book by misusing the criminal justice system to target Pastor Evan Mawarire. He has committed no crime but to take a stand against human rights violations, Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty Internationals Deputy Director for Southern Africa, said in a statement.

While it is not clear why Mawarire decided to return now, he told South Africas Daily Maverick hours before he flew back to Harare that, maybe, his new-found international profile could protect him. In the Feb. 1 interview, Mawarire said he would try to unite opposition parties, while also suggesting a future role in politics. The more I think about the options, the steps going forward, I realize you can only shout about potholes for so long. You start to realize where change comes from it may be time to throw your hat in he told the Daily Maverick.
ROCHESTER, Minn. (AP)  A former suburban Milwaukee police officer pleaded guilty Friday to killing a woman in Minnesota and ditching her body in a suitcase along a rural Wisconsin highway.

After pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Steven Zelich was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2013 death of 37-year-old Laura Simonson, of Farmington, KTTC-TV reported. Zelich previously was sentenced to 35 years in prison in Wisconsin after pleading guilty to the 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Authorities say Zelich, 55, of West Allis, Wisconsin, met both women online, choked them at hotels during sexual encounters, hid their bodies in suitcases and dumped them along the same highway. Zelich told investigators the deaths of both women were accidental.

Judge Pamela King choked back tears as she addressed Zelich, the Post-Bulletin reported.

"Mr. Zelich, a human life is not something to be played with," King told the former police officer. "Laura Simonson was loved and valued by those who called her mom, sister, daughter and friend."

While the 25-year prison term will never bring Simonson back or replace her, the judge told Zelich "you're going to remain in prison long enough that no other woman will be harmed at your hands."

Some of Simonson's family members were unhappy that he did not receive the maximum of 40 years.

Daughter Sarah Simonson, 18, called Zelich "a monster."

"While he rots in a cell, maybe he'll realize what kind of pain and suffering he's brought to so many people," she said.

Public defender William Wright told the court that Zelich is "very deeply remorseful" and that he pleaded guilty to avoid further traumatizing Simonson's family.

"He takes responsibility and has cooperated throughout the process," Wright said.

Zelich declined comment to the judge, saying his attorney "has expressed my feelings."

He will serve the Minnesota sentence after completing his Wisconsin sentence.
By Alwyn Scott SEATTLE (Reuters) - Boeing Co has hired a small company to make about 600 3D-printed parts for its Starliner space taxis, meaning key components in the United States manned space program are being built with additive manufacturing. The company, privately held Oxford Performance Materials, will announce a $10 million strategic investment from advanced materials company Hexcel Corp as early as Friday, adding to $15 million Hexcel invested in May and lifting Hexcel's equity stake to 16.1 percent, Oxford and Hexcel said. Boeing's award of the parts for its flagship space program and Hexcel's funding are strategic bets that printed plastics can perform flawlessly even under the extreme stress of a rocket launch and sub-zero temperatures of space. They offer further evidence of a shift in 3D printing from making prototypes to commercial production of high-grade parts for space ships, aircraft engines and other critical equipment. Oxford's parts will help Boeing lower costs and save weight on each seven-seat capsule, compared with traditional metal and plastic manufacturing, Larry Varholak, president of Oxford's aerospace business, said in an interview. "What really makes it valuable to NASA and Boeing is this material is as strong as aluminum at significantly less weight," he said. Boeing said the weight savings on Oxford's parts is about 60 percent compared with traditional manufacturing. Boeing is building three Starliner capsules under a $4.2 billion NASA contract. Entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX is building a competing capsule under a $2.6 billion NASA contract. Oxford has already shipped parts for the Starliner. The plastic it uses, known as PEKK, also resists fire and radiation, according to Oxford. Boeing declined to say how much of the capsule Oxford's parts represent. "It's a significant fraction of the Starliner from the aspects of design, assembly and reliability of high integrity parts," said Leo Christodoulou, director of structures and materials engineering at Boeing. "Using Oxford's materials takes out a lot of cost." "SHOW ME THE DATA" Despite its promise and potential sales, customers and investors need to be convinced by repeatable results from printed plastics. "We're still in the show-me stage," Oxford Chief Executive Scott DeFelice said in an interview. "If you don't show me the data I'm not going to believe you." Oxford, based in South Windsor, Connecticut, started as a materials science company in 2000 and added 3D printing in 2006. It also makes aircraft parts and cranial and facial implants, as well as replacement human vertebrae. In 2012 it delved into aerospace and defense. Working with NASA, Northrop Grumman Corp and incubator America Makes, it demonstrated printed PEKK could handle temperatures from minus 300 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit among other qualities. "It's everything from brackets supporting the propulsion system to internal structures for the air revitalization system," Varholak said of the parts for Boeing's Starliner. Printing parts is often faster and less expensive than traditional forging, machining or molding. It requires minimal tooling and touch labor, and allows companies to keep a "digital inventory" of parts, printing as needed, said Terry Wohlers, chief executive of consulting firm Wohlers Associates, which has tracked additive manufacturing for more than 20 years. Use of 3D technology is surging. Sales reached $1 billion in 2007, jumped to nearly $5.2 billion in 2015 and are expected to hit $26.5 billion by 2021, according to the Wohlers Report, which analyzes the sector. Several relatively small listed companies such as Stratasys Ltd, 3D Systems Corp and ExOne Co offer investors exposure. Other firms have been snapped up. General Electric last year bought a controlling stake in Swedish 3D printing company Arcam AB and Germany's Concept Laser, and launched an additive manufacturing division. GE already prints metal parts for the new LEAP engine that powers Boeing and Airbus SA single-aisle jetliners. Aerospace already accounts for about 17 percent of 3D printing revenue, ranking second after industrial and business machines but ahead of automotive, consumer, electronics and medical products, according to Wohlers. Aerospace is a "near perfect fit" for 3D printing because it involves complex, expensive parts made in relatively low volumes, Wohlers said. The Starliner is due to blast off for the first time in June 2018 from Cape Canaveral, and carry its first crew in August 2018. It will be launched on an Atlas V rocket supplied by United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin Corp. (Reporting by Alwyn Scott; Editing by Andrew Hay)
The Tribeca Film Festival will open this year with a documentary and concert to celebrate Clive Davis, the legendary music executive who signed stars from Janis Joplin to Whitney Houston.

The New York festival, co-founded by Robert De Niro in 2001 in the wake of the September 11 attacks, will open on April 19 with the premiere of "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives."

The screening at Radio City Music Hall will be followed by a concert by artists signed by Davis including Aretha Franklin, Jennifer Hudson and Earth, Wind & Fire, the festival announced Thursday.

Davis, 84, was raised in a humble home in Brooklyn and worked his way to Harvard Law School and a legal career, through which he became the surprise president of Columbia Records at age 35.

He became famous for his skill at identifying artists who would go on to massive careers who also included Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Aerosmith.

Davis remains a music executive at Sony, which bought Columbia Records in 1988, and is host of an annual party of A-listers on the eve of the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.

The film will be based on his 2013 autobiography, "The Soundtrack of My Life," which also drew attention for Davis's coming out in it as bisexual.

The documentary is directed by relatively unknown Chris Perkel, who worked with Cameron Crowe on his 2011 film "Pearl Jam Twenty" on the grunge band.

His first feature as a director was "The Town That Was," a documentary about a 1962 fire that obliterated the mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania.
Quebec City (AFP) - Mourners gathered at the Quebec City convention center Friday for the funeral of the last three of six men shot dead while praying at a local mosque earlier this week.

The service began midday with traditional Friday prayers, followed by an Islamic funeral ritual.

Thousands packed into the center to pay their respects to Guinean-Canadians Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42, and Ibrahima Barry, 39, and Azzeddine Soufiane, 57, of Moroccan origin.

The commemoration followed another funeral for three other victims held Thursday at a Montreal arena, which was attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"Another sad day where we gather to reflect on the lives that have been torn from us," Trudeau said as he arrived for Friday's service.

Again, he called on Canadians to "unite in love, and reject division and hate."

The mosque shooting victims were a scholar, a butcher, a daycare operator, a food industry worker, a public servant and a computer programmer -- all connected by faith.

They had been attending evening prayers at their mosque in Quebec City when a 27-year-old student stormed in and unleashed a barrage of bullets from a pistol and a semi-automatic rifle.

The suspect later surrendered to police and was charged with six murders and five attempted murders. Police are still investigating and said terrorism charges may follow.

Four of the wounded in the attack, meanwhile, remain in hospital.

- 'Muslims most often victims of terrorism' -

At the Quebec City funeral, Trudeau reminded listeners that the attack had "shocked and horrified" the Muslim community in Quebec and all Canadians.

"Unfortunately, it reminded us of what the Muslim community has known for a long time, that around the world Muslims are the most often victims of terrorism," he said.

"We live side by side, but we don't know each other," said Imam Hussein Guillet, who emigrated from Lebanon 40 years ago, as he called for greater outreach between Canada's "multitude of solitudes."

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"As we chose this country, we ask this country to choose us," he said.

Mourner Abdelmalek Elganah agreed.

"We need to get to know each other better," he told AFP. "It's ignorance, not hate that leads to this kind of tragedy."

"We must work together to break this vicious cycle, this fear of others."

The bodies of several of the victims -- all dual nationals -- were to be sent to their birth countries for burial because there is no local Muslim cemetery and only one in the entire province, in a suburb of Montreal.

In the wake of the attack, Quebec City mayor Regis Labeaume said that would soon change.

Earlier, Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard spoke to reporters about the need to speak out against bigotry and for a crackdown on hate speech to prevent a repeat of last Sunday night's tragic events.

"Practically speaking we need to be more active around security, and all these social media and extremist statements are monitored by security forces," he said.

A Toronto rabbi, meanwhile, led an interfaith effort to form "rings of peace" or human chains around mosques across Canada during midday prayers.

The act of solidarity was prompted after many in the Muslim community said they have felt unsafe in Canada since the attack.

As three of the shooting victims were mourned on Thursday a Montreal mosque was vandalized. A man in a suburb of Montreal, meanwhile, was charged earlier this week with inciting hatred and uttering threats online.

The city's police hate crime unit has reported a spike in hate-related complaints since the Sunday night attack that has led to 52 investigations.
By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) - International flights in and out of the European Union could be exempted from emissions limits for at least another four years to give the United Nations time to implement a global system to curb pollution from planes. The EU proposed extending the exemption, which was set to end at the start of 2017, on Friday to avoid a repeat of tensions when it tried to include all flights in 2012. But it was immediately criticized by environmental campaigners who oppose an International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) deal struck in October on a global market-based measure for offsetting airline emissions. Airlines who back the ICAO deal, which will not be mandatory until 2027, welcomed the EU proposal as they want to avoid a patchwork of national and regional schemes. ICAO's deal was seen as not being ambitious enough by the European Parliament, which along with member states, will have to approve the EU exemption proposal. It will also be reviewed by the European Commission as details on the implementation of the UN scheme become clear. The fate of the emissions trading system (ETS) covering flights within Europe will also be assessed in the review, EU officials said, adding that all options were on the table, including dismantling it once the global system is in place to avoid double counting for flights within the bloc. "The European Union is now focused on getting the global scheme up and running. We are serious about achieving carbon neutral growth for aviation worldwide, and we will provide technical support to make it happen," Violeta Bulc, the EU's transport commissioner, said. The EU had ordered carriers to buy credits for foreign flights under its ETS in 2012 but backtracked when countries said it violated their sovereignty and China threatened to cancel plane orders from Airbus Group. Airlines for Europe (A4E) which represents Ryanair, easyJet, Lufthansa, Air France KLM and British Airways owner International Airlines Group, and others said it expected the ICAO scheme to be the only measure for tackling carbon emissions within the bloc as of 2021. "This proposal provides certainty for European operators enabling them to focus their efforts on the implementation of the global deal to effectively tackle climate change," Thomas Reynaert, A4Es Managing Director, said. Under the ETS emissions are capped, whereas the ICAO deal allows carriers to increase them without limit as long as they offset them with carbon credits from environmental projects. Aviation, which produces about 2 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, was excluded from the Paris accord to fight climate change, and environmental groups say the ICAO deal is not compatible with accord's aim to limit temperature increases. "The Commission has chosen to again suspend the only effective measure to regulate aviation emissions, all for a voluntary deal which is years from coming into operation and which may never actually reduce the climate impact of flying," Bill Hemmings, aviation director at Transport & Environment, said. (Editing by Alexander Smith)
Plenty of people got stuck in the middle of the new travel and immigration restrictions in the United States, and now even former world leaders are caught in the mix. On Thursday, former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was pulled aside and questioned for an hour at Washington Dulles airport. He doesnt hail from one of the seven proscribed countries, of course  but he had visited Iran once, in 2014.

Bondevik, returning home from the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, said the move wasnt a direct cause of Trumps recent controversial immigration restrictions. In fact, it stems from a 2015 law Barack Obama signed into law, restricting travel for visitors from 38 countries  including Norway  who have also visited Middle Eastern countries.

However, Bondevik said the current political climate surrounding refugees was what jarred him, after he was ushered into a packed airport screening room where people from the Middle East and North Africa faced additional questioning.

I understand the fear of terror, but one should not treat entire ethnic groups in such a way. I must admit that I fear the future, Bondevik told Norwegian press. There has been a lot of progress over the last ten years, but this gives great cause for concern, in line with the authoritarian leaders we see controlling other major countries, he added.

Not to mention the diplomatic dust-up it caused. It should be enough when they found that I have a diplomatic passport, [that Im a] former prime minister, he told Washingtons local ABC affiliate WJLA. It was particularly aggravating for him because hes traveled to the United States other times after attending that 2014 human rights conference in Iran without getting pulled aside. What will the reputation of the U.S. be if this happens not only to me, but also to other international leaders? he asked.

Bondevik, an ordained Lutheran Minister, now heads the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights, an organization that assists fragile states and vulnerable democracies in strengthening democratic political institutions. His to-do list seems to be growing.

Photo credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Oslo (AFP) - A former Norwegian prime minister said he was held at a Washington airport for one hour because of an Iranian visa in his passport, an incident he described as "provocative".

"There is no reason to be afraid of a former head of government who has been on official visits several times to this country, including in the White House," Kjell Magne Bondevik, 69, told Norwegian broadcaster TV2 on Thursday.

Bondevik, who served as prime minister twice between 1997 and 2005, said immigration authorities held him on Tuesday for an hour and questioned him over an Iranian visa in his diplomatic passport.

Iran is one of seven Muslim-majority countries whose nationals are temporarily banned from entering US territory in accordance with a controversial decree signed by Trump.

The head of human rights organisation Oslo Centre, Bondevik flew to the US on Tuesday to attend a yearly event in Washington DC called the "National Prayer Breakfast". US President Donald Trump also attended the event.

"It seems that if the name of this country or other countries appears, you stick out," Bondevik said, referring to Iran.

"It's a totally unjustified suspicion. I think it was pretty provocative," Bondevik added.

The former Christian Democrat leader returned to Norway on Friday.
Working out is tough, but doing time is tougher. Just ask the trainers of ConBody, a New York group workout studio, who have experience with both.

Read: Fine Dining Restaurant Gives Former Inmates a Second Chance: 'They Opened Their Arms and Accepted Me'

The Manhattan studio, run like a prison-style boot camp, offers personal training by day, and boutique group workouts  starting at $30 a session  by night.

The gym attracts hundreds of clients, and offers dozens of group classes per week. Just like in a prison, training focuses on using just body weight, including pull-ups, dips, and push-ups.

And, to add to the authenticity, nearly all the trainers at ConBody have once been imprisoned. The rest grew up with a similar lifestyle.

My mission is to hire as many formerly incarcerated people as possible to teach fitness classes, founder Coss Marte, 31, said. "I've seen the struggle of coming home."

Marte told InsideEdition.com he began ConBody inspired by the difficulties he faced when he was released from prison three years ago.

The first job I received was probably two months out, Marte said, for $8 an hour, scrubbing toilets at a hotel. Not even paying taxes  it was off the books.

Despite having once been heavily involved with a major drug delivery service in New Yorks Lower East Side, being in and out of prison since he was 13 years old, and being ultimately charged as a drug kingpin when he was 23, Marte said his time behind bars changed him for the better.

Unfortunately, he had a hard time proving it to employers.

I applied to hundreds of jobs, he explained The doors were closed in my face because I had three felonies. I wanted a second chance. I knew I was a changed person, and nobody was giving me that opportunity.

Read: Single Mom and 4 Kids Surprised With Fully Furnished Home After Years of Being Homeless

Having had experience training fellow inmates during his time behind bars, Marte said he started leading group boot camps in public parks, spreading the word using no resources except his own charisma.

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I would wake up in the morning, and work out in the park, he explained. I started telling people I knew around the neighborhood first, [then] I was going after all the girls wearing Lululemon and telling them Im doing this prison-style boot camp. I attracted people, and it started growing from there.

Marte said he discovered his passion in training when he was locked up at 19 years old. He was facing three years in prison, but ended up only doing one year when he agreed to join the Shock Incarceration Program, a correctional boot camp-style alternative sometimes offered to non-violent offenders.

Its run by ex-marines, he explained. You wake up at 5 in the morning, shower, brush your teeth, make your bed, and you have to be ready in 8 minutes  shaved, clothes on, everything. Then, you work out for about an hour and a half.

What he learned during the program would soon become part of the inspiration behind ConBody.

The second half, he explained, was inspired by inmates serving long sentences, who built up a tolerance to heavier weights and more intense work out routines over the years.

The way we work out in there is probably most extreme. It was just pushing yourself to the limit, he said. They lock you in the shack  it was like this cage in the prison yard  for two hours, and you had access to weights. People were bench pressing 400 pounds, squatting 600 pounds, and when you go to the gym today, you see people messing around with 30 pounds. Over there, they took it to the next level.

He left the Shock Incarceration Program his fittest self, but soon fell back into unhealthy habits, which developed into high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Read: Plus-Size Yoga Instructor Promoting Body Positivity, Acceptance: 'Big Bodies Can Do Great Things

When Marte landed himself in prison again in 2009, he lost 70 pounds by doing laps around the yard, and coming up with routines that could be performed in his 9-foot-by-6-foot cell, upon doctors recommendations.

Marte then went on to help other inmates get into shape as well, but credits his spiritual awakening in solitary confinement for his dedication to pursuing a new lifestyle in a legitimate industry.

I was still selling drugs in prison, still messing around with gangs and all this crazy stuff, Marte explained. I didnt think what I was doing was wrong  I just thought it was the lifestyle.

Marte said he was just weeks from being released when he was 26, but ended up getting thrown into solitary confinement and having another year added to his sentence due to a misunderstanding.

I was devastated," he said. "I thought I was coming home. My family was waiting for me. My son, who was just 6 years old at the time  I told him I was coming home."

He said he was alone with nothing but a bible, so he started reading.

"It really woke me up, Marte said. I started praying for the first time, and I asked God how I can get back to society."

He eventually thought to his passion for training, and came up with the idea for ConBody, which he planned to put into action when he was finally released.

With the help and a financial grant from Defy Ventures, a non-profit run along the motto that former criminal leaders have the skills to help them succeed as legal entrepreneurs, Marte was able to grow his influence, and eventually return to the Lower East Side, not as a felon, but as a businessman.

Read: Therapy Dogs Easing Anxieties of Child Victims as They Testify: 'It Makes That Child Feel Safer'

"I Didn't Want To Be A Gangster Anymore"

Sultan Malik, 36, ConBody's vice president, recalled the first time he met Coss Marte three years ago, months after his own release from prison.

Im not telling this guy anything [but] he looked at me, and he gave me that Coss signature look Ive come to know, Malik said, laughing.

Malik told InsideEdition.com he had already started training private clients within days after he was released from prison, but a successful meeting with Marte helped him channel his assertiveness, aggressiveness, and sureness of himself into a budding career in the legitimate sphere.

They always say theres a fine line that separates the street life from corporate life, he explained. Hostile takeover in the street  they mean weapons. In the corporate world, there are hostile takeovers, just done with pens."

Malik said he spent 14 years behind bars, seven of which in solitary confinement, after he was charged with attempted robbery and attempted assault.

Read: Man Who Refused to Leave Tree Now Allegedly Refuses to Leave Jail Cell

When I went in, I had a very cloudy, limited perspective on life, he said.

But his worldview grew as his eyes were opened to racial inequality.

I didnt want to be a gangster anymore," he explained. "It was played out. It was corny to me. I just wanted to stop, and break the cycle for me and my family, and perhaps do the same for others."

During his stint behind bars, Malik said he spent most of his time exercising, but it wasnt until a friend and inmate introduced him to the science behind working out that he really became interested in fitness.

When he was released in May 2014, Malik said he went right to work on making a name for himself, despite not knowing where to start.

Theres the old saying 'fake it till you make it, he said. They asked me, What do you do? You look like a trainer, and Im like, Yeah, thats what I do. Im a trainer.

Read: Bodybuilder With Cerebral Palsy Proves There's No Excuse for Missing a Day at the Gym

Today, Malik leads both high intensity group glasses as well as offers private training sessions as a senior trainer at ConBody, crediting his success in the unique energy he brings to the gym.

Im turned up. I get lit, and people enjoy it, he said. People enjoy the authenticity of it.

Watch: Woman With Down Syndrome Starts Own Cookie Business After Being Turned Down by Employers

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Paris (AFP) - Scandal-hit French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon came under heightened pressure to withdraw his candidacy on Friday, but vowed to carry on despite allegations that his wife and children were paid for fake jobs.

France's far-right National Front sharpened the attack on the conservative Fillon following damaging new television revelations.

"I wish Francois Fillon would take responsibility and withdraw from this presidential election... so we can get back to a debate about the real issues," deputy FN leader Florian Philippot told RTL radio on Friday.

On Thursday, the France 2 channel aired newly discovered footage of Fillon's wife Penelope, who was reportedly paid more than 800,000 euros ($860,000) as a parliamentary aide amid suspicions she never worked.

In the interview filmed in 2007, Penelope can be heard talking about how her children have only ever known her as a mother and saying "I've never been actually his (Fillon's) assistant."

Penelope Fillon's lawyer, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, insisted that her aired remarks had been "taken out of context".

In a video message on Friday, Francois Fillon fought back against the scandal, saying "I will stand up and face those in the shadows who attempt to damage me."

"I understand that these accusations are troubling some of you," he added.

Things got potentially worse for Fillon on Friday as the French Senate announced it would hand investigators documents related to jobs that he gave his children while he was an upper-house lawmaker.

The weekly Le Canard Enchaine newspaper has reported that Fillon obtained jobs as parliamentary aides for his children, as well as his Welsh-born wife Penelope.

Fillon hired Marie and Charles, two of the couple's five children, when he was a French senator from 2005 to 2007, and they earned a total 84,000 euros, the paper said.

Fillon has admitted to employing his family during his time in parliament, which is not illegal in France. He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

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- 'Bond of trust broken' -

The 62-year-old Fillon, candidate for the rightwing Republicans party and formerly the frontrunner ahead of April's first round of the presidential election, is determined to try to ride out the scandal which he has called a "plot" against French democracy.

Marine Le Pen, who leads the anti-establishment and anti-immigration FN, is seeking to benefit from the tarnishing of ex-prime minister Fillon, who previously had a sleaze-free reputation and who takes a hard line on immigration and Islam.

Le Pen would win the first round if it were held today, according to the latest polls, but would lose in the run-off on May 7.

"The bond of trust has been broken," she said on Wednesday. "It's up to him to draw the conclusions or his political family."

But Le Pen has her own expenses scandal after she refused this week to meet a deadline to repay nearly 300,000 euros which the European Parliament budget says was incorrectly used to pay a long-time aide. The anti-EU leader is an MEP.

The FN boss is convinced that Donald Trump's victory in the United States and Brexit in Britain mean the time has come for her own anti-elite, anti-immigration and nationalist leadership in France.

- Fillon clings on -

One of the beneficiaries of the Fillon scandal could be Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old independent centrist who was seen advancing to the second round to face Le Pen in a poll this week.

The surprise winner of the Socialist nomination, the leftwing Benoit Hamon, is also gaining the polls and is eyeing gains from Fillon's troubles.

Fillon's fate will depend on his ability to rally his party's lawmakers behind him amid signs of anxiety ahead of parliamentary elections in June which will follow the presidential vote.

A small minority of lawmakers have already broken ranks and criticised him publicly, but he appears to be retaining support -- for now -- partly because of the difficulty of drafting in a last-minute replacement.

"We give Francois Fillon our complete support because his commitment to France is vital," a group of senior Republicans figures wrote in the rightwing Le Figaro daily on Thursday.

Less than 80 days before voting, the most popular candidate among voters to replace Fillon would be Alain Juppe, a 71-year-old ex-prime minister who was resoundingly beaten by Fillon in a primary contest last November.

Juppe has so far ruled himself out.
Valletta (AFP) - French President Francois Hollande on Friday criticised "unacceptable" pressure on the European Union from his US counterpart Donald Trump, who has predicted a break-up of the bloc.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be," Hollande told reporters at an EU summit in Malta.

"Who really knows what the US president wants, particularly for the transatlantic alliance, and on the sharing of expenses that he calls a burden," Hollande added.

Asked what he thought about the apparent support for Trump coming from the leaders of Poland and Hungary, Hollande said "There can be no future with Trump if it is not defined together" by the EU, adding that "what is at stake is the destiny of the EU".

"A lot of countries should think that their future is first with the EU, rather than imagining who-knows-what bilateral relationship with the US."

Trump has alarmed many in Europe by backing Britain's decision to leave the EU, predicting that more countries will jump ship and calling the US-led NATO military alliance "obsolete".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile said the best way for the 28-nation bloc to deal with a US administration that seems ambivalent to Europe is to push forward with its own plans.

"I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands," Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.

"And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations," she added.

"That is why for me, talks about Europe are here in the foreground and not to deal with other parts of the world."

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern meanwhile criticised Trump's controversial migration curbs.

"The entry bans against seven Muslim countries are highly problematic," Kern said. "We should win them over in the fight against Islamism and not define them as adversaries.

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"There is no doubt that America shares responsiblity for the refugee flows by the way how it intervened militarily ... It is unacceptable for the international community that America wants to evade its responsiblity on this," he added.

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel meanwhile said Trump's policies were "really not the values I'm fighting for in politics".

In Malta, the EU leaders are to discuss relations with Trump during the second half of the summit, after major talks about cutting illegal migration across the Mediterranean from Libya.
By David Shepardson and Ginger Gibson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. companies including major exporters General Electric Co <GE.N> and Boeing Co <BA.N> launched a coalition on Thursday to back a House Republican plan to tax all imports, saying the proposal would "support American jobs and American-made products."

The group, comprised of more than 25 U.S. companies and dubbed the "American Made Coalition," also includes Dow Chemical Co <DOW.N>, Eli Lilly and Co <LLY.N>, Pfizer Inc <PFE.N>, and Oracle Corp, the companies confirmed.

The group's launch underscored a growing division in corporate America over the House Republican proposal that would cut corporate income tax to 20 percent from 35 percent, exclude export revenue from taxable income and impose the 20 percent tax on imports.

President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about border taxes and the House proposal could face difficulties in the U.S. Senate where some Republicans question whether it would unduly raise prices for U.S consumers and businesses.

Companies that rely heavily on imports, such as retailers Target Corp <TGT.N> and Best Buy Co Inc <BBY.N>, say a border tax would outweigh the benefit of a lower headline corporate tax. Net exporters like Boeing and companies that are purely domestic U.S. concerns say they would benefit.

"American workers and businesses are not competing today on a level playing field with foreign competitors because of an outdated and unfair tax system," said John Gentzel, a spokesman for the coalition. The current tax system unfairly subsidizes imports of foreign goods, the group said.

David Lewis, Lilly's vice president of finance and corporate tax, said in a statement the group supports the House Republican blueprint.

Many of the companies in the coalition  including Boeing and GE  successfully formed their own group in 2015 to save the Export-Import Bank, a government-backed loan program that helps foreign buyers purchase American exports.

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Meanwhile, the Retail Industry Leaders Association, which represents more than 120 trade associations and companies, launched a separate coalition on Wednesday to fight the House Republican proposal known as the "border adjustment" tax.

The border adjustable tax is harmful, untested, and would put American retail jobs at risk and force consumers to pay as much as 20 percent more for family essentials, said Sandy Kennedy, president of the group.

Retailers, oil refiners and foreign automakers including Toyota Motor Corp <7203.T> have been lobbying Congress, fearing that a big tax on imports would hurt their sales and profits and put them at a disadvantage to rivals more reliant on U.S.-made products.

Best Buy has circulated a flyer to lawmakers, which cites an analyst forecast that a 20 percent tax would wipe out the company's projected annual net income of $1 billion and turn it into a $2 billion loss, Reuters reported this week.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Ginger Gibson in Washington, Editing by Soyoung Kim and Andrew Hay)
HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A German tourist attraction that features miniature models of various parts of the world has put up a wall around the United States, in a dig at President Donald Trump's plan to build a full-sized one on the border with Mexico. The display at Miniature Wonderland, which Trip Advisor rates as the top destination in the city of Hamburg, is a hit with tourists, including some from the United States, who are usually drawn by its vast model railway. Visitors on Friday could be seen peering over a miniature concrete wall topped with razor wire to look at sites such as a tiny Mount Rushmore and a Las Vegas skyline. The slogan "Let the world be great again" was scribbled on the wall, a reference to Trump's election slogan "Make America Great Again". "I don't want to tell anyone what to think. Everybody should look at that wall, and then decide regardless of whether they are on the left, right or center," said Gerrit Braun, co-founder of Miniatur Wunderland. "The main thing is that the people think about it." Ryan Ott, a tourist from the United States, said: "I think it's a good use of humor, which is what the world needs, I think, right now to help cope with what's happening in our country." (Reporting by Oliver Ellrodt; Writing by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
A Georgia teen is speaking out after running away with a man more than twice her age, telling Dr. Phil McGraw that she made a mistake and said she should have just stayed home."

Calah Waskow, 15, was thought to have been kidnapped after she disappeared from her parents Evans home on December 4, authorities said.

But in an exclusive interview with Dr. Phil, Waskow said that she had voluntarily left with a friend's 37-year-old father, Jason Johnson.

Read: Man Acquitted of Child Molestation Sues Hotel, Claims Wrong Room Key Caused Him To Get in Bed with 9-Year-Old

The teen was found about 200 miles from home in Tennessee.

Though she claimed she went willingly, Waskow said the decision was a mistake, telling Dr. Phil: "Me being 15, I made the mistake of putting my life, and trying to be grown, into a man who is a 37-year-old adult  old enough to be my father  putting everything in his hands whenever Im supposed to be at home with my mother."

Read: Mom and 2 Children Vanish Following Alleged Blind Date and House Fire; Father Speaks Out

Though Waskow said the relationship was consensual, she said she wants to share her story to raise awareness.

I want people who are in or think they can be in an older relationship with somebody and get away with it.

"It's illegal and wrong, she added. "It's illegal for a reason.

Watch: Woman Kicked Off Plane for Allegedly Showing Too Much Cleavage Speaks Out

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Now that its clear they still dont have a coherent plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, some Republicans are rethinking their strategy.

Instead of vowing to repeal and replace Obamacare  a rallying cry that dates back to March 2010, shortly before President Obama signed his historic health care plan for uninsured Americans  many prominent Republicans are now promising to repair and fix a program that is growing in popularity and now covers more than 20 million Americans.

Related: Why Repeal and Delay of Obamacare Could Send Premiums Soaring Next Year

Shaken by increasingly dire forecasts from major insurers, hospital administrators, GOP governors and mayors and consumer advocates that the health care insurance market could be in shambles by the beginning of 2018, Republican leaders for the moment are taking refuge in a semantics game suggesting that surgical changes in the law might be preferable to wholesale dismantling.

While die-hard heavyweights including President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) continue to cling to the upbeat but misleading message that their party is on the verge of repealing and replacing the troubled health insurance program, second-tier Republicans stuck with the task of actually designing a replacement have begun ducking for cover.

Since returning from a three-day policy retreat in Philadelphia where many rank-and-file House and Senate members privately vented alarm that their party could end up being blamed by millions of voters for the loss of their insurance coverage, Republican lawmakers have been taking the repair and fix mantra out for a test run.

Our goal is to repair the damage caused by Obamacare where we find the damage, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee with jurisdiction over Obamacare, said at the start of a hearing Wednesday on the individual insurance market. . . . No one is talking about repealing anything until there is a concrete alternative in its place.

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Related: GOP Sets the Clock for Obamacare Repeal as Health Care Groups Hit the Panic Button

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), a moderate who has been promoting a Solomon-like compromise that would allow the states to choose whether to stick with the existing Obamacare law or opt for a different approach, said at the same hearing that Regardless of who was elected President, we were going to have to do major repairs on the Affordable Care Act.

Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who has major responsibility for shaping new health care policy, offered a similar message to reporters the previous day, according to The Hill. Were going to fix things; were going to repair things, he said.

But with Trump insisting that the Republican-controlled Congress simultaneously repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act to a radically different, more market-based approach, congressional Republicans are in no way off the hook. Conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation are pressing the GOP to make good on their campaign pledges to repeal Obamacare early this year, and some members of the House Freedom Caucus are behind that strategy.

Trump and GOP leaders have already acknowledged there are portions of the Obamacare law that they would like to preserve, most notably a ban on insurers discriminating against applicants who have pre-existing health problems and a provision allowing parents to keep their children on their health insurance plans until they turn 26.

Related: 8 Big Changes Under Tom Prices Obamacare Replacement

Shortly after he was sworn in Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order instructing the Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies with jurisdiction to do everything they can within the law to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or requirement of the Act that would impose a fiscal burden on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, healthcare providers, health insurers, patients, recipients of healthcare services, purchasers of health insurance, or makers of medical devices, products, or medications.

Trump appears to have no understanding of the complexity and perils of designing a replacement for a major federal health care program  especially one that has grown in popularity even as the new administration moves aggressively to eviscerate it. A recent Fox News poll found that 50 percent of voters feel favorable about Obamacare  a nine-point uptick from last summer.

Meanwhile, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released in early January found that 75 percent of Americans either are opposed to repealing the Affordable Care Act or want Congress to have an acceptable replacement in hand before they go ahead and repeal the current law.

Republican leadership is moving to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no plan to replace it, Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said today at a hearing. Thirty-two million people will lose health coverage, premiums will double, and we will return to the days when insurance companies decide who lives and who dies.

Related: Heres the Problem With Trumps Plan to Sell Health Insurance Across State Lines

In recent days, there have been reports across the country of Republican lawmakers ducking meeting with constituents who are worried about losing their health insurance coverage. The Aurora Beacon News reported that staffers of Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) canceled a scheduled meeting Wednesday with 16 constituents concerned about the repeal of Obamacare after Roskams staff members realized a reporter was present.

Meaghan Smith, a spokesperson for the Protect Our Care Coalition, said in a statement that People are scared about what will happen to their health care if Republicans blow up our health care system. And Republicans cant hide from the reality that they simply have no plan.

Congressional Republicans only have themselves to blame. After six years of denouncing Obamacare as a failed venture that has wasted billions of federal dollars and has fallen far short of Obamas promise to provide affordable health insurance, Republicans have yet to agree on a replacement plan that would stand a good chance of working  or passing muster with Republicans and Democrats alike.

Joseph Antos, a health care expert with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said today that the Republicans shift to a repair and fix theme marks their realization at long last that theyre going to have to get Democratic votes in the Senate.

So this moderation of language  thats a minimum first step, Antos said.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
Groundhog Club handler Ron Ploucha, left, holds Punxsutawney Phil - AP

Every year a small community in the US gathers to watch a small animal emerge from its home, an act made famous by the famous 1993 film Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray. But how did this curious event come about?

Its centuries-old history draws on Christmas traditions, a North American marmot, and the mysterious-sounding 'Inner Circle'. Here is everything you need to know about the day - and about its star, Punxsutawney Phil.

What is Groundhog Day?

It is a traditional holiday celebrated in the US and Canada. According to folklore, if the weather is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on February 2  Candlemas  then spring will come early.

If it is sunny, the groundhog (a North American marmot with a greyish brown coat, weighing up to 9lb  in case you weren't sure) will see its shadow and retreat back inside, and winter will continue for another six weeks. This year, Phil the groundhog predicted six more weeks of winter to a crowd of on-lookers.

Based on the German lore that badgers are a forecasting animal, the tradition began as a custom among the German community in the US state of Pennsylvania in 1887.

The German lore apparently dictacted 'Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmewoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche', ('If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas-week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole').

February 2 was traditionally marked by Germans as Candlemas, a Christian holy day which falls 40 days after Christmas Day. While for some Christians it was customary to take down Christmas decorations on January 6, for others it was normal to remove them on Candlemas.

A group of townspeople made a trip to Gobbler's Knob, a clearing a couple of miles away from Punxsutawney. There, they apparently consulted the groundhog on the coming weather  and people have gathered there to do the same every year since.

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Groundhog Day celebrations in 2003 Credit: Archie Carpenter

However the event was mentioned in the local newspaper, the Punxsutawney Spirit, the year before: "Up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow". Because of this, many credit the publication's editor at the time, Clymer Freas, with the day's conception.

In Pennsylvania German, the day is called Grund'sau dak, Grundsaudaag, Grundsow Dawg and Murmeltierta.

It is still celebrated today with many towns in the US and Canada kicking off festivities well before the winter sunrise, in time to watch a groundhog stepping out of a temporary burrow.

The world famous groundhog Phil is the chosen representative of the town of Punxsutawney where the largest celebration is held. Up to 40,000 people gather in Punxsutawney every year, which is almost eight-times the population of the town.

Punxsutawney Phil, the weather prognosticating groundhog

The state's hairiest meteorologist always gives his annual "forecast" on the top of the town's Gobbler's Knob, a tiny hill near the town which is about 104km northeast of Pittsburgh.

Those who hold the event pretend that the same groundhog makes the prediction every year, making Phil at least a supposed 132 years old this year.

Phil is cared for year-round by a tuxedo-wearing group called the Inner Circle. The group of local dignitaries, who are also responsible for planning the Groundhog Day prediction event, feed and take care of Phil.

Groundhog handler John Griffiths holds Punxsutawney Phil aloft after he makes his prediction in 2014 Credit: Getty Images

How accurate is Phil?

Alas, according to Stormfax Almanac's data, Phil is only accurate 39 per cent of the time. The numbers do vary: in 2001 the Farmer's Almanac reported Phil has 50 per cent accuracy, while the 2001 journal Punxsutawney's Phenomenal Phorecaster claimed the predictions were 70 per cent accurate.

Records going back to 1887 show Phil has now predicted winter 103 times while forecasting an early spring just 17 times. In 2017, Phil predicted that the town would see an extra six weeks of winter.

Unfortunately for Phil, Tim Roche, a meteorologist at Weather Underground told Live Science in 2017 that "You'll be better off flipping a coin than going by the groundhog's predictions."

So it's not a day celebrating repetition or deja vu?

Ah, you are thinking of Groundhog Day, the 1993 film starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. No.

The story follows Phil OConnor (played by Bill Murray), an arrogant TV weatherman who finds himself caught in an endlessly repeating day while covering the Groundhog Day celebrations in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

Whatever Phil does  be it a hedonistic one-night stand or throwing himself off a building  he wakes up in his hotel room at six oclock on morning of 2 February with I Got You Babe by Sonny & Cher playing on the radio.

As he accepts his predicament, he focuses on improving his life and priorities, using his experiences to save lives and learn new skills, and eventually... lets not spoil it in case there are still people out there yet to experience its unique and repetitive charms.

"Groundhog Day" has now become a reference to an unpleasant situation that seems to continually repeats itself.

The film has also consistently been voted among the top 10 spiritual  and best Buddhist  films of all time.

Screenwriter Danny Rubin denies any spiritual intention, insisting he wrote the film simply to tell Phils story, but from the start fans have celebrated its deeper message.

In 2006 the film was granted cult classic status by being added to the United States National Film Registry as being culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
Its a U.N. report U.N. officials themselves call revolting and unbearable. Myanmars security forces killed, gang-raped, and tortured hundreds of Rohingya Muslims in a wave of unprecedented violence, according to a new U.N. report released Friday. Victims included children and babies as young as eight months.

In recent months, Myanmar security forces stepped up their efforts to clear the ethnic group from the countrys borders  in a campaign of area clearance operations  to historic levels in terms of both scale and brutality.

The area clearance operations have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths and have led to an estimated 66,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh and 22,000 being internally displaced, the new U.N. report said.

A U.N. human rights research team wrote the report after interviewing hundreds of Rohingya who Myanmar security forces drove to neighboring Bangladesh.

The U.N. human rights office called the accounts revolting. Of the 101 women interviewed, over half told the U.N. team they had been sexually assaulted, raped, or gang-raped. One gang-rape victim was 11 years old. Another was nine months pregnant. The U.N. also received reports of Myanmar security forces killing children aged six and younger with knives.

The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said in a statement. What kind of clearance operation is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this? he added. In December, John McKissick, head of the UN High Commission for Refugees, labeled the operations, which first started in October, ethnic cleansing.

The Rohingya, numbering 1.1 million people in the countrys western Rakhine state, are loathed by the rest of the population and live in apartheid conditions. Theyve been called the most persecuted minority in the world.

Despite its brutality, the militarys campaign against the Rohingya is widely popular in Myanmar. The military claims it is fighting a Rohingya rebel insurgency, which restored the militarys popularity in the publics eye.

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One of Myanmars most prominent political figures, Aung San Suu Kyi, a recipient of the Nobel-Peace Prize, is facing increasing international criticism for staying quiet on the plight of Myanmars Muslim population  though its unclear how much clout she has with the military.

She refused U.N. requests to gain full access to its Rakhine state, where most of the violence reportedly took place. After the reports release on Friday, Suu Kyi vowed to launch an investigation into the crimes and take all necessary action against abusers.

On Sunday, one of the countrys top legal advisers and a prominent member of Myanmars minority Muslim community, Ko Ni, was shot dead after speaking out about atrocities against the Rohingya. At the time he was shot, Ko Ni was holding his grandson.

This article has been updated.

Photo credit: MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images
Being a member of the Presidents cabinet is an important job: in their roles as the leaders of key executive-branch agencies, the 15 department heads who work with the Vice President to advise the President can end up driving vital policies. So it makes sense that cabinet nominees must first go through tough questioning from the Senate, which ultimately decides whether or not they get the job.



President Trumps opponents got a hint of hope this week that the process may trip up some of his nominees, as two Republican Senators announced they would not support the candidacy of Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education.

But, despite the fact that hearings can often consist of hours of rapid-fire and intense questioning, the President usually gets his way when it comes to his cabinet appointeesand that will likely be the case for DeVos too. In fact, there have only been nine nominees in the history of the presidential cabinet who have been denied confirmation by the Senate, and only one of those rejections was in recent history.

In 1989, when U.S. Senator John Tower was denied the job of Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, that was the first time such a rejection had taken place in 30 years. And, nearly 30 years later, it still remains the most recent.

So what did Tower do to merit such a rare reaction?

Tower, a Texas Republicanthe first Republican to represent the state in the Senate after Reconstructionbegan his term in the Senate in 1961. During his nearly two decades in office, his notable moments included opposition to the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s, and later serving as chairman for Senate Armed Services Committee. Tower lent his support to conservatives from Barry Goldwater to Richard Nixon, whose Key Issues Committee he served on. He ended his Senate career in 1985. But, during his long career, he began to develop a reputation in Washington.

By the time George H.W. Bush officially nominated him for Secretary of Defense in 1988, the FBI had already begun investigating Tower, the LA Times reported in 1989. Specifically, the agency was looking into concerns regarding conflicts of interest Tower had within the department of defense, and allegations that he was an alcoholic and womanizer.

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These issues arose during Towers confirmation hearings, as fellow Republicans and Democrats alike raised concerns about their former colleagues drinking problem and accused him of having affairs. Predictably, Tower denied that he had a drinking problem, testifying, I am a man of some discipline. But two members of the Senate came forward with new allegations to the contrary, weakening Towers favorability.

The FBIs investigation looked into 69 allegations against Tower, but didnt go into any salacious details. However, based on information given by interviewees, the agency determined that Tower drank excessively in the 1970s, but that hed made efforts to reduce his alcohol consumption starting in 1983. The report didnt reveal any illegal activity, but investigators determined the investigation did confirm a prior pattern of alcohol abuse, as well as the Senators continuing sporadic use of alcohol, with indications that he had greatly reduced his consumption levels during 1983-1989.

As for claims that Tower was a womanizer, many media reports from the time indicate that Towers sex life was an open secret, but only conservative activist Paul Weyrich testified in Senate hearings about the claims. Weyrich told the Senate Armed Services Committee: Over the course of many years, I have encountered the nominee in a conditionlack of sobrietyas well as with women to whom he was not married.

But things would continue to worsen for Tower.

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The Senate Armed Services Committee chairman at the time, Sam Nunn, a Democrat from Georgia, delayed the vote on Towers confirmation twice, while the FBI continued its investigation. By this time, it was already early February of 1989, and the Bureau uncovered information that Tower had received financial support for his Senate campaign from the defense industry. Further, Tower had been paid over $1 million in two years from advising seven different defense contractors, calling his impartiality into question.

Nunnwho had initially stated at the start of the confirmation hearing that Tower was well qualified and likely to be confirmedwarned President Bush that he was worried about Tower as a nominee.

Ultimately, after five weeks of testimony, Tower lost the vote, which had been delayed all the way to February 21more than two months after Tower was nominated.

The final tally came to 53 votes against and 47 in favor of his confirmation. Soon after Tower was denied the position, Bush nominated Dick Cheney for the job, and the then-House Whip was swiftly voted in. Cheney would go on to serve as Vice President under George W. Bush.

Bush evidently still wanted Tower around, however, and gave him a position within the administration that did not require a confirmation vote from the Senate, as chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, where he served from July of 1990 to his death in an airplane crash in 1991.

Since Towers confirmation vote, the Senate has continued to take nominees to task during confirmation hearingsbut ultimately even controversial nominees have either withdrawn from the running or managed to secure the votes needed to achieve confirmation. Only the next few days will tell if Tower will remain the latest nominee to fall short of the Senates standards.
Today we celebrate a constitutional ratification twofer: the 15th Amendment (ratified February 3, 1870) and the 16th Amendment (ratified February 3, 1913). Heres what you need to know.

The 15th Amendment

What it does:



It prohibits the state or federal government from using race as a voting qualification.

Why it was added:



The 15th Amendment was one of the Reconstruction amendments, and was an important step in ensuring African Americans right to vote. Unfortunately, change didnt happen overnight, and it would take further measures, such as the 24th Amendment, which nixed the use of poll taxes, to foster true equality.

Word-For-Word:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The 16th Amendment

What it does:



It allows Congress to levy an income tax.

Why it was added:



An 1895 Supreme Court decision had ruled that an income tax law was unconstitutional because it violated the provisions in Article 1 of the Constitution requiring that direct taxes be apportioned according to state population. A constitutional amendment was the only way to make an income tax happen.

Interestingly, one of the arguments made for an income tax was quite similar to the todays rhetoric of income inequality. For example, in promoting a new national tax system consisting of an income tax and inheritance tax, Theodore Roosevelt stated this:

As a matter of personal conviction, and without pretending to discuss the details or formulate the system, I feel that we shall ultimately have to consider the adoption of some such scheme as that of a progressive tax on all fortunes, beyond a certain amount either given in life or devised or bequeathed upon death to any individual  a tax so framed as to put it out of the power of the owner of one of these enormous fortunes to hand on more than a certain amount to any one individual; the tax, of course, to be imposed by the National and not the State Government. Such taxation should, of course, be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.

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You can check out more of Roosevelts statements here.

Word-For-Word:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

For the full text of the Constitution, visit the Interactive Constitution here.

Recent Historical Stories on Constitution Daily

How we wound up with the income tax

Who were the first six Supreme Court justices?

The man who wrote the words We The People
TIME is currently following three babies born to Syrian refugees in Europe over their first year of life, for our Finding Home project. Many people have written in to ask how they can help Rahaf, Heln and Faraj as their families struggle through the process of seeking asylum. Here are some humanitarian organizations, many of which are directly involved in making their lives better:

Praxis: One of Greeces largest humanitarian organizations dedicated to the care and support of vulnerable social groups, Praxis helps manage refugee assistance and shelter in multiple hotels across the country. They assist with transportation, meals, medical care, psychosocial support and language classes for refugees. http://www.praksis.gr/en/

Rowing Together Non-profit organization founded in Spain, currently providing gynecological assistance to female refugees in Greece. http://rowingtogether.org

Syrian American Medical Society: A U.S. based non-profit, non-political, medical and humanitarian relief organization that is working on the front lines of crisis relief in Syria, as well as with Syrian refugees in Greece to alleviate suffering and save lives. https://www.sams-usa.net/

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies: the worlds largest humanitarian and development network, with programs in Greece specifically aimed at supporting refugees through food and clothing deliveries, health care, and educational programs, particularly in the camps, where 30,000 refugees are still living. https://media.ifrc.org/ifrc/support-us/donate/

CARE International: provides shelter and psychosocial support to refugee women and mothers in Athens, Greece, as part of their wider effort to help Syrians displaced within Syria, and Syrian refugees. https://my.care.org/site/Donation2?df_id=21026&mfc_pref=T&21026.donation=form1

Norwegian Refugee Council: Runs temporary refugee housing in hotels, as well as provides medical support, assistance, clothing, bedding, food items, medical items and baby items to refugees across Greece. https://www.nrc.no/

Doctors of the World/ Medecins du Monde: an international medical organization that provides primary and maternal healthcare in refugee camps and shelters across Greece. www.medecinsdumonde.org/en

International Rescue Committee: The IRC has been responding to the refugee crisis in Greece since July 2015 with a focus on environmental health, protection and emergency financial assistance. They are working to ensure that refugees have clean water, proper sanitation, psychosocial support, and emergency financial assistance. They also provide informal learning activities for children, women and girls to help them maximize their time in limbo. www.rescue.org.
London (AFP) - England's High Court on Friday blocked a legal challenge to force the government to seek parliamentary approval before pulling out of the European Economic Area as a part of Brexit.

"The current claims are premature and for that reason, permission to apply for judicial review is refused," the judges said in their ruling.

The case had been brought by campaigners who wanted a "soft Brexit" that would keep Britain in the European single market through membership of the EEA.

The government welcomed the ruling.

"We will not be a member of the single market and we will be seeking a broad new partnership with the EU," a spokeswoman said.

In a landmark decision last month, the Supreme Court ruled that parliament must give its approval before the government invokes Article 50 of the EU's Lisbon Treaty, the formal mechanism for pulling out.

In Friday's ruling, High Court judges rejected the attempt to do the same over the triggering of Article 127, which would pull Britain out of the EEA.

The EEA area contains the EU's 28 member states plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

The EEA Agreement provides for the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital within the single market.

EU leaders say the so-called four freedoms are indivisible and will thus not let Britain control EU immigration while remaining inside the single market.

Prime Minister Theresa May has said she therefore intends to pull Britain out of the EEA and seek a free trade agreement with the EU.

Immigration into Britain from the EU ran at 284,000 in the year to June 2016 and was a key issue in the referendum in which 52 percent voted for Brexit.

The campaigners who lost their case were led by Peter Wilding, chairman of the pro-EU pressure group British Influence, and Leave-voting Conservative lobbyist Adrian Yalland.

"I voted to leave the EU but parliament did not intend the referendum to cover the issue of membership of the EEA," Yalland said.

"Brexit gives us our country back but a hard Brexit risks breaking it up," he added, saying there was a risk of Scotland seeking independence.

The government's Department for Exiting the EU said the case was unarguable and contended: "Once the UK leaves the EU, the EEA Agreement will automatically cease to apply to the UK."
(Reuters) - Highlights of the day for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday: IRAN Trump is poised to impose new sanctions on multiple Iranian entities, seeking to ratchet up pressure on Tehran while crafting a broader strategy to counter what he sees as its destabilizing behavior, people familiar with the matter say. AUSTRALIA The White House says Trump is "extremely upset" with an agreement with Australia to accept refugees but will honor it. MORE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS The White House says Israel's building of new settlements or expansion of existing ones in occupied territories may not be helpful to achieving peace with Palestinians. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blames Russia for the recent surge of violence in eastern Ukraine and warns Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Moscow returns Crimea to Kiev. Trump's Treasury Department adjusts sanctions on the Russian intelligence agency FSB, making limited exceptions to measures put in place by the Obama administration over accusations Moscow meddled in the U.S. presidential election. RELIGION Trump vows to free churches and other tax-exempt institutions of a 1954 U.S. law banning political activity, drawing fire from critics who accuse him of rewarding his evangelical Christian supporters and turning houses of worship into political machines. TRAVEL CURBS AND IMMIGRATION Trump defends his order to temporarily bar entry to people from seven majority-Muslim nations, saying it is crucial to ensure religious freedom and tolerance in America; he discusses establishing safe zones in Syria with Jordan's King Abdullah. A Department of Homeland Security watchdog agency says it is planning to review how Trump's executive order to temporarily suspend travel from seven majority-Muslim nations was implemented. Nobel Peace Prize winners meeting in Colombia criticize Trump's immigration policies and accuse him of xenophobia and discrimination. TRADE Trump reiterates his concerns about the North American Free Trade Agreement and says he would like to speed up talks to either renegotiate or replace it. CABINET AND ADMINISTRATION A Senate committee suspends rules to approve Scott Pruitt, Trump's controversial choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, amid a boycott by Democratic panel members. Representative Mick Mulvaney is approved as budget director. BUSINESS LEADERS Cerberus Capital Management LP's chief executive, Stephen Feinberg, is in talks to join Trump's administration in a senior role. Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] CEO Travis Kalanick quit Trump's business advisory group after coming under criticism for taking part, the company says. (Compiled by Bill Trott, Peter Cooney and Jonathan Oatis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Toni Reinhold)
In the days since the White House announced restrictive new travel and refugee resettlement regulations, stories of the Executive Orders harm to individuals have poured in. However, the nations historical experience with restrictive immigration laws suggests that the adverse effects of this ban may well go deeper than that, as U.S. immigration policies are inextricably linked to American foreign relations.

American immigration policies have always resonated abroad in both predictable and unpredictable ways. When Congress instituted restrictive national origins quotas in 1921 and 1924 respectively, the diplomatic fallout reverberated around Europe and Asia. Enacted during a period of economic nationalism, nativism and diplomatic retreat, these laws inscribed a painful exclusionary addendum onto the Statue of Liberty. They also undermined American claims to moral leadership in the world and embittered a host of diplomatic relationships.

As a New York Times editorial observed following the introduction of quota restrictions in 1921, the dikes raised in this country against the alien flow are bound to have a world-wide effect, and they most certainly did.

As in the case of those migrants, refugees and permanent residents who were detainedand in some cases expelledfollowing Trumps Executive Order, quota restrictions first affected individuals. When President Warren G. Harding signed the Emergency Quota Act on May 19, 1921, he immediately cast the fate of thousands into question. Designed to temporarily limit immigration from places like Poland, Italy, Greece and Yugoslavia, that law formed the basis of permanent restrictions that endured with only minor modification until 1965.

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Influenced by concerns about the racial fitness of Southern and Eastern Europeans, this legislation was also inspired by fears that so-called aliens would import poverty and disease, as well as hostile foreign ideas like anarchism, Bolshevism and Catholicism. Migrants, consulates and border agents were immediately plunged into uncertainty as soon as Harding signed quota restrictions into law. Having complied with existing regulations, thousands found themselves thrust outside the legal and administrative boundaries of the American immigration system. Hundreds abruptly fell out of legal status as they crossed the Atlantic on steamers bound for New York and Boston. Others reached Ellis Island before being told they were no longer legally entitled to admission.

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In addition to distressing individual migrants, the introduction of quotas in 1921 affected American foreign relations in numerous unforeseen ways. The State Department received complaints from European governments about the discriminatory treatment of their nationals, and steamship companies from across Europe scrambled to find out whether they were liable for return trips and resettlement. American consulates expanded their reach at Mexican ports of entry in order to prevent fraud, and nativists in countries as far away as Australia began calling for increased restrictions of their own, to prevent Southern and Eastern Europeans from redirecting to those ports.

These scenes were repeated when President Calvin Coolidge signed the National Origins Act on May 24, 1924, which imposed permanent and even more severe quotas on people often referred to as undesirables. These tighter controls marooned thousands more at ports throughout Europe and Latin America, including some 10,000 Jewish refugees who languished in unfamiliar and often unfriendly countries for months despite being in possession of legally issued visas for entry to the United States. A new provision also stealthily banned immigration from Japan, adding that nation to the list of places in Asia from which immigration was already prohibited.

Having dramatically inflicted injury on individuals, the 1924 quota law then had calamitous consequences for American foreign relations more broadly.

For example, the Japanese government immediately protested the humiliating American proscription on immigration. Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes, the American ambassador in Tokyo (Cyrus Woods), the Japanese ambassador in Washington (Masanao Hanihara), and even President Coolidge opposed the enactment of Japanese exclusion, but public and congressional nativism triumphed over warnings about the possible diplomatic repercussions. When the Japanese exclusion clause went into effect it was followed by ambassadorial resignations, protests on the streets of Tokyo, boycotts of American goods and even suicides in Japan. This indignity is seen as a turning point in the growing estrangement of the U.S. and Japan, which culminated in the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

In defending the Executive Order, Trump administration officials may turn to claims of sovereignty, as senior policy adviser Stephen Miller did during an interview on Fox & Friends on Monday, insisting that the United States has an absolute sovereign right to control immigration. Yet, even if the U.S. does have such a right, such appeals will not change the fact that exercising that right without caution can materially damage American interests and relationships abroad, just as it did during the United States prior dalliances with restriction. Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham have warned of the threat the Executive Order poses to ongoing counterterrorism efforts, and an extraordinary number of active State Department personnel have now joined them in making known their view that the policy will hurt American interests abroad.

As President Theodore Roosevelt observed in 1908 following an earlier bruising dispute over immigration from Japan, the United States is a nation of immigrants, and as such American immigration policies affect international relations more than they might for other countries.

It is our undoubted right to say what people, what persons, shall come to this country to live, to work, to become citizens, he wrote. It is equally undoubtedly our duty that that right shall be exercised in a way that will be provocative of the least, and not of the most, friction with outsiders.

The Long View

Historians explain how the past informs the present

David C. Atkinson is assistant professor of history at Purdue University. He is the author of The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States, which explores the diplomatic tensions caused by immigration restriction in the early 20th century.
London (AFP) - British artist David Hockney has turned his digital hand to Friday's masthead of The Sun, telling the tabloid of his painting and smoking habits ahead of a retrospective in London.

Hockney touched up the logo of Britain's best-selling newspaper by adding black shadowing to its lettering and a white sun, using a painting app on his iPad.

"I was delighted to be asked. Once I thought about the idea it didnt take me long. The sun and The Sun -- I love it," he was quoted as telling the newspaper.

The 79-year-old's appearance on the front page comes ahead of a retrospective of the artist's work at the Tate Britain gallery in London, which opens on February 9.

"When I'm painting I feel 30 but when I stop I feel older. I'm a bit slower than I was but I stand up to paint every day," he told The Sun.

Hockney appears to have no wish to retire -- in November he was commissioned to design a stained glass window for London's Westminster Abbey, a month after unveiling a 500-page art book at the Frankfurt fair.

The limited-edition book is so large it comes with its own stand and weighs 35 kilograms (77 pounds).

Despite moving to California in 1963, Hockney has kept up with the latest politics across the Atlantic and said he was unsurprised by Britain's vote last June to leave the European Union.

"Brexit didn't surprise me totally because I'd been living in provincial Britain," said the artist, who was raised in a working class home in the northern English town of Bradford.

"The power has spread to the people because that's what the iPhone has done," he added, without going into greater detail of how he felt the smartphone swayed the referendum outcome.

Hockney's expansive career has seen him travel the globe painting portraits, while he has also been celebrated for his landscape paintings of the countryside near his hometown.

One of his most famous paintings is "A Bigger Splash", which captures the moment after someone has dived into a California swimming pool.

But despite his illustrious career, Hockney said he remains frustrated by the constraints his smoking habit has been put under by a ban on lighting up in pubs.

"Everywhere now has to be fit for Little Emily with asthma. It's all gone mad," he said.
Chicago (AFP) - More than a dozen Holocaust survivors joined together Thursday in Chicago, in a symbolic gesture of protest against US President Donald Trump's immigration order.

The survivors drew parallels to the difficulties Jews faced as they fled persecution before and during World War II, and said they felt compelled to speak out against policies that slam the door on refugees in the name of national security.

"We cannot exclude thousands and thousands of people because of what the terrorists have done," said Aaron Elster, a Holocaust survivor in his 80s.

"Will somebody be able to sneak through and do us harm? Yes, a very likely possibility. But, you can't take a brush, and brush all the people with this small, tiny minority that are looking to harm us," Elster said.

Trump's executive order barring immigration from seven majority Muslim countries and halting refugee arrivals for 120 days, has sparked at least a dozen lawsuits and protests around the world.

Fritzie Fritzshall is in her late 80s and a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where her mother and two brothers perished. She said halting all refugee entry for four months was "a very, very long time to wait."

"These people there, are hungry and thirsty, and cold," she said.

She recalled how in 1939, the US government barred entry to European Jews by warning they could be secretly working for Nazi Germany.

In June that year, president Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration turned away the St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying some 900 Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. They were forced to return to Europe, where more than a quarter eventually died in death camps.

"We were not allowed to come, because we were Jews and no country wanted us at that point, and we had no place to go. It is not the same situation today, but... there definitely is a parallel," said Fritzshall.

Justifying his immigration restrictions eighty years later, Trump has echoed the logic of the 1930s, warning of a risk that refugees could join sleeper cells supporting the Islamic State jihadist group.

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Together the Holocaust survivors warned against immigrants being kept out based on their religion or national origin.

The Holocaust survivors "feel viscerally for every individual who is persecuted and in mortal danger with nowhere to turn," said Susan Abrams, the CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which claims the biggest speakers' bureau of Holocaust survivors in the world.

Despite the protests it has triggered, Trump's travel ban also has significant public support. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted prior to the order found that 48 percent of Americans back suspending immigration from "'terror prone' regions, even if it means turning away refugees."
The nations attention will be focused on Houston this weekend as the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons face off in the Super Bowl. The Bayou City is the most diverse in the nation, where nearly one in four people in the metro area is foreign-born, and more than 145 languages are spoken.

Yahoo News spoke with many of the citys immigrants as part of its Cities Rising: Rebuilding America series.

You can find different languages, different types of people, different colors, different sizes, says Ammi Arevalo, a Houston resident and volunteer at the nonprofit Neighborhood Centers, an organization that assists the citys low-income, primarily immigrant population with education, job training and financial services. Arevalo picked up the required skills to open her own cafe.

Angela Blanchard, the president and CEO of Neighborhood Centers, adds, We exist to keep this region a place of opportunity for everyone.

Parisa Behzadi, a teacher at the center, says, When I look at my students, I really want to empower them as global leaders, so a lot of what we do is about their identity, making sure they are proud of where they come from.

Blanchard says the center really is putting all the elements together for the neighborhood to be a healthy, whole place for people to make their way to opportunity, and we really see the neighborhood as the launching pad.

The thing that draws people to Houston is this idea that if I work hard, it will pay off. Youre getting a seat at the table because youre working hard and contributing something.

Read more from Yahoo News:
By Tommy Wilkes NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian police have busted an internet scam in which around 650,000 people lost a combined 37 billion rupees ($549 million) after sending money to a company that promised they would earn cash by clicking on web links, police said on Friday. Police, who described the pyramid-style scheme as one of India's biggest ever, said they had arrested three ringleaders on the outskirts of New Delhi, the capital, and seized more than 5 billion rupees ($74 million) from bank accounts. "They learned that if you give some money back to members, the investments would go up exponentially," Amit Pathak, head of a police cyber crime unit in India's populous northern state of Uttar Pradesh, told Reuters. The men ran a series of websites that promised would-be subscribers a chance to earn five rupees ($0.07) each time they clicked or liked web links sent to their mobile phones, police said. The unsuspecting investors each paid thousands of rupees into the company's bank accounts to join the scheme, but the web links they received were fake. The company running the alleged scam had operated for years, but earned almost all the money over a few months from last August, after it began to distribute some of the proceeds, using the beneficiaries to draw in more investors. Police said the ringleaders had not yet appointed lawyers as the chargesheet was still being prepared. When police raided the company's head office in the city of Noida they found 250 passports of employees and members who had been rewarded with a holiday to Australia. The scammers planned to film the holiday and then post it online as promotional material to lure more subscribers. The alleged mastermind spent some of the proceeds on houses, cars and celebrity parties. Pathak said it would take time to trace most of the money, and several bank employees were believed to be involved. "It's a very big task for us. We have brought in the income-tax department, and other government agencies, to trace the money," Pathak said. Cyber crime in India, home to the world's second largest number of internet users, jumped 350 percent in the three years to 2014 as criminals exploited booming smartphone use, a study by auditing services firm PwC and industry lobby group Assocham showed last year. ($1=67.3100 Indian rupees) (Reporting by Tommy Wilkes)
When British Prime Minister Theresa May finally met U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House last week, she delivered a private message to him with a pointed sense of urgency: Beware of Vladimir Putin.

The Russian president, she confided, cant be trusted, and efforts to make him a principal partner in the war on terror will only end in despair, officials familiar with the conversation told Foreign Policy.

The exchange reflected growing concerns from a close American ally that Trump is placing his confidence in a man committed to driving a wedge between the Wests great powers and dismantling the most powerful military alliance in history. But it is also part of a concerted effort by Britains new leader to carve out a role as the new American presidents transatlantic consigliere, and breathe new life into a special relationship that has become increasingly vital to Britains future as it prepares its exit from the European Union.

With President Putin, my advice is to engage but beware, May told a gathering of Republican lawmakers on Jan. 26.

It remains unclear how much influence May has exercised over Trump, but the American leaders U.N. envoy, Nikki Haley, on Thursday delivered a searing denunciation of Russias aggressive occupation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea before the U.N. Security Council, and vowed to maintain sanctions on Moscow until it restores sovereignty to Ukraine.

But Mays embrace of Trump is spurring discontent among the British public, which is expressing mounting dismay over the prime ministers outreach to the brash American president. More than 1.8 million British citizens have signed a petition urging May to retract her invitation to Trump to make a state visit to Britain and meet with Queen Elizabeth II.

In an effort to mollify critics of Trumps visit in Parliament, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said the queen has met with more objectionable foreign leaders, including the late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and African strongman Robert Mugabe.

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And the closer relationship is ringing alarm bells among some of Britains European allies, who increasingly question Londons loyalties to the continent and see it as a reprise of old-fashioned British geopolitics.

I see it as a return to the classical Churchillian vision of the U.K.s place in the world, said Krzysztof Szczerski, the chief foreign policy advisor to the president of Poland, an increasingly potent EU member state.

Winston Churchill viewed membership in the European Union with considerable skepticism, and believed the Commonwealth and the United States should take precedence over continental relations. Never allow yourselves to be separated from the Americans, the late prime minister declared at his last cabinet meeting in 1955.

On Friday, May defended her embrace of Trump to a skeptical gathering of EU leaders in Malta. It was a tough crowd: Before the summit, European Council President Donald Tusk labeled the Trump administration a threat to the EU on par with a revanchist Russia, a rising China, and radical Islam.

May came to the summit offering to be a bridge to Donald Trump, and planned to carry his message that fellow NATO members spend more on defense. But EU leaders appeared to rebuff her offer when it was announced that German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande would be the ones to debrief other EU leaders about the new American president.

Britain has long tried to straddle both sides of the Atlantic, coordinating much of its foreign policy with its European partners while periodically joining the United States in foreign adventures opposed by its European brethren, like the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But with the prospect of a genuine departure from Europe on the horizon, Britain is feeling increasing pressure to strengthen its relationship with Washington, particularly on trade and security. That is creating all sorts of tensions, especially with respect to Israel.

In December, Britain joined forces with its European allies to approve a United Nations resolution denouncing Israel over its settlements; Britain was instrumental in drafting the final resolution, alongside the Palestinians U.N. delegation. The measure was adopted by a vote of 14 to 0, with President Barack Obamas U.N. envoy, Samantha Power, casting the lone abstention.

But the vote triggered a fierce reaction from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President-elect Donald Trump, and Republican lawmakers, who threatened to bankrupt the U.N. in retaliation.

Britain moved swiftly to contain any potential diplomatic damage. Days after the vote, May abruptly reversed course and appeared to move closer to the incoming Trump administration. She scolded former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for a speech he made in which he criticized Netanyahus government as the most right wing in Israeli history, and denounced its settlement policy as a threat to a two-state solution.

Since then, Britain has continued to infuriate its European partners, particularly France, by blocking efforts to pressure Israel to halt settlements and restart peace talks. A big conference in Paris, held Jan. 15, gathered officials from 70 countries, including Kerry, to put diplomatic pressure on Israel. Trump and Israel fiercely opposed the conference. Britain subsequently blocked the European Union from issuing statements endorsing the Paris communique, which condemned Israels settlements, denounced terrorism and incitement, and proclaimed the two-state solution the only path to a viable peace.

Initially, the EU ambassador to the U.N. was to deliver a speech at the monthly debate on the Middle East on Jan. 17. An early draft of the speech, obtained by Foreign Policy, endorsed the Paris conference, and reaffirmed Europes condemnation of Israels settlement policy and its call for a negotiated solution with two states as the only way to achieve enduring peace. Britain rejected the statement. And that killed the European consensus the envoy needed to have delivered the speech.

The move marked a sharp break among the Europeans, who have worked closely to align their Middle East policies. Some European powers have expressed concern that Britain is serving as a stalking horse for the new Trump administration.

For us, it was a clear signal that [the British] are either under pressure from the Trump administration, or they are trying to get as close as they can, said a European diplomat. The British stance, the diplomat said, was taken at the expense of standing up for the principles they share with other Europeans.

Britain maintains that it had no objection to the substance of the text, and that its opposition to Israeli settlements remains as steadfast as ever. They cited procedural reasons  like the fact that Britain was not a party to the Paris agreement  to justify their decision. While Britain sent an official as an observer, it did not sign the final accord.

We regret that during the last debate on the Middle East that the European Union could not speak, said one senior European diplomat. But the official added, I do not see that the British position has substantially shifted from where it was before.

Indeed, not everyone sees Britain as jumping ship. In her White House meeting with Trump, May did emphasize policies favored by European governments, saying that she secured a commitment from Trump to stand 100 percent behind NATO. She also pressed Trump to honor the landmark Iran nuclear deal.

On some issues, diplomats say, Britain is growing more pro-European than it was, despite the chumminess with Trump.

If anything, Britain has become even tougher in its support of Ukraine since voting to leave the European Union, Ukraines U.N. ambassador, Volodymr Yelchenko, told FP. Its like their hands have been untied, he said.

Trump himself has been harder to read. Hes talked up the prospect of closer ties with Putin, but also has been cozy with countries like Britain, which is leery of the Russian leader. And while hes been loath to criticize Russian actions, his administration at times has excoriated them.

Following his White House meeting with May, Trump mulled an uncertain future with his Russian counterpart  and left unresolved whether he will really listen to Mays urgent warnings.

I hope we have a fantastic relationship. Thats possible, and its also possible we wont, Trump said.

He then turned to the prime minister and explained that he had many good relations with people he didnt think hed like, and he ended up disliking people he thought hed like.

So, Theresa, we never know about those things, do we?

Photo credit: BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
By Timothy Mclaughlin

(Reuters) - The Republican-controlled Iowa state senate voted on Thursday to cut Medicaid funding for family planning services to abortion providers including Planned Parenthood.

State senators passed the bill 30-20, advancing it to the Republican-controlled House. The vote was along party lines, with one independent voting in favor of the measure.

Republican Governor Terry Branstad has said he supports the bill.

Planned Parenthood draws the ire of many Republicans because it provides abortions, and Republican President Donald Trump has pledged to defund the organization.

"This change will allow Iowa to restrict government funding to family planning services away from organizations that perform abortions that are not medically necessary," Republican Senator Amy Sinclair, one of the bill's sponsors, said on Thursday before the vote.

Planned Parenthood denounced the vote.

"The Republican lawmakers who continue to advance this bill should be ashamed of themselves. They are playing political games, with the lives of low-income Iowans at stake," Planned Parenthood of the Heartland said in a statement.

"This bill does nothing to advance their extremist agenda to limit access to abortion. Instead, it blocks access to crucial family planning services for thousands of Iowans  the very services that most effectively prevent abortion. Its a self-serving, misleading and dangerous political game."

The bill directs the Iowa Department of Human Services to discontinue the Medicaid family planning network waiver on July 1 and replace it with a state family planning services program.

Eligibility requirements for the new network would remain the same, but no funding would be provided to organizations that provide abortions or maintain facilities where abortions are carried out.

Planned Parenthood is Iowa's largest abortion provider with 12 clinics in the state, but no public money is used for abortions, according to the Des Moines Register.

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Branstad has proposed paying for the new state-run program by shifting $2.8 million in funds from services for vulnerable adults, families and children, the newspaper reported.

Planned Parenthood is also facing a funding cut in Texas, where a judge is considering the move, which the organization has challenged in court.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin in Chicago; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
ANKARA (Reuters) - Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Friday that the Islamic Republic was unmoved by U.S. threats following its missile test launch and that Tehran would never initiate war. "Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense," Zarif wrote. U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted early on Friday that "Iran is playing with fire" and "they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump said on Thursday that "nothing is off the table" in dealing with Iran following its launch of a ballistic missile. Fellow Republicans in Congress said they would back him up with new sanctions. Zarif said Iran had no intention to use its military might against any country, except in self-defense. "We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement," he tweeted. Iran said on Thursday it would not yield to "useless" U.S. threats from "an inexperienced person" over its missile program. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Andrew Roche)
Los Angeles (AFP) - An Iranian man denied entry into the United States following President Donald Trump's travel ban was back in Los Angeles on Thursday -- the first person allowed to return to the country under a judge's ruling.

Ali Vayeghan, who for 12 years had been waiting to immigrate to the US to join family, was met by his brother, his niece and a crowd of supporters at Los Angeles airport chanting "This Land is Your Land."

"This is what humanity looks like," the 61-year-old said in Farsi, as his niece translated.

"This is what human rights looks like. I am shocked, honored and awed."

He said he was not mad at anyone, adding: "This is the greatest country in the world."

The green card holder was forcibly carried on a plane back to Dubai after arriving in Los Angeles last Friday, shortly after Trump's temporary ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, came into effect.

Acting on an emergency motion by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and an immigration lawyer, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order calling on Vayeghan to be allowed into the country.

However, the order came too late and on Saturday Vayeghan was carried onto a plane by immigration officers and sent to the United Arab Emirates.

The judge subsequently amended her order, instructing US officials to facilitate Vayeghan's return to the United States.

Trump's executive order suspends entry of all refugees to the US for 120 days, bars Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocks citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entry into the US for 90 days.

The order, which caused mayhem worldwide and has been met with legal challenges, was later clarified to say that green card holders were not targeted by the ban.
By Parisa Hafezi ANKARA (Reuters) - Many Iranians who dreamt of quiet, comfortable lives after a nuclear deal with world powers in 2015 are starting to worry for the first time in decades they might be bombed in their own homes. Since taking office last month, U.S. President Donald Trump has pledged to get tough with Iran, warning the Islamic Republic after its ballistic missile test on Sunday that it was playing with fire and all U.S. options were on the table. Analysts say those options could range from diplomacy to military action and some scared Iranians are even preparing escape plans, just as they did in the eight-year war with Iraq when Saddam Hussein's jets pounded Iranian towns and cities. "I told my children to have their passports ready ... if attacked by Israel or America we can flee to Turkey by car because airports will be closed," said Ghorbanali Azhari, 65, a retired teacher in the Western city of Kermanshah. "We have had enough. An eight-year war, economic hardship, sanctions ... I cannot let my grandchildren live in fear. There will be bloodshed," Azhari said. Trump plans to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities following its missile test, while crafting a broader strategy to counter what he sees as Iran's destabilizing behavior, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Iran's most powerful authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has continued to denounce the United States, suggesting the antagonism between the two countries since the 1979 revolution will not abate because of the nuclear deal. "I thought Iran's political and economic isolation was over ... but now I am deeply concerned about a military strike," said private bank employee Homayoun Barkhordar. "I do not want war with any country. I love my country. We just want to live in peace," said the 38-year-old father of two. FEAR AND LOYALTY While experts say both sides would take care to avoid armed confrontation in the oil-rich Gulf, U.S. threats of reprisals for the missile test, coupled with Iran's defiant reaction, could ratchet up tensions dangerously. "I am thinking of moving to a small town," said Ali Gharveh in the central city of Isfahan, which was bombed by Iraq during the 1980-88 war. "Life is cheaper and is safer than big cities that might be the main targets if America wants to attack Iran." The United States and Iran have been at loggerheads since the revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah and Washington cut diplomatic ties when students stormed the U.S. embassy soon after and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. The United States and its regional allies accuse Iran of trying to tighten its grip on Arab states, from Iraq to Lebanon, to Syria to Yemen, and Trump has accused former U.S. President Barack Obama of being too kind to Tehran. Days after coming to power, Trump barred residents from seven mainly Muslim countries, including Iran, from traveling to the United States for 90 days. Officials in Iran said Tehran would limit issuing visas to Americans in response. "I always wanted my two children to study in America. But the new government is just spreading hatred towards Iranians," said Firuzeh Hengam, a computer engineer in the central city of Kashan. "They say no options are off the table. It means attacking Iran is among their options." But while many Iranians worry about an escalation with the United States, just as they worry about economic hardship at home, they are also loyal and defiant. "Iran is my home no matter who the rulers are. Look at Syrians who left their country because of the war. They are being humiliated ... I do not want to be like them," said hairdresser Samira Azamzadeh, 47, in the northern city of Rasht. "I don't have money to go abroad. I am a single mother of two teenage girls." ECONOMIC HARDSHIP Iran's economy has been hit hard by the double hammer blows of years of sanctions over its nuclear program and the plunge in oil prices since the middle of 2014. Iranians had pinned their hopes on economic progress following the nuclear deal, but a year after sanctions were lifted the economy is only recovering slowly and deals with Western investors are few and far between. They now worry that U.S. aggression and the curbs on travel will make wary Western investors even less likely to return to do business with Tehran. "The economic situation will even get worse because of the America's tough language. It will scare away foreign investors," said Omid Sadrzadeh, a factory owner in Karaj near the capital Tehran. One former senior Iranian official also said Trump's approach was playing into the hands of powerful hardliners such as Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The IRGC controls the country's missile program and its deputy said on Thursday it had many underground missile facilities hidden in the mountains. "Iran's hardliners want a war. It will strengthen their position in the establishment. They want Iran to be isolated," said the official, who asked not to be named. "They will do whatever they can to deepen tension between Iran and America, from launching missiles to giving fiery speeches." Analysts say Tehran could retaliate against any military strike with hit-and-run attacks in the Gulf and by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which some 40 percent of Gulf oil exports pass. Iranian authorities have warned arch-enemy Israel and the United States in the past that Tehran's response to a military strike would be tough, and some of Iran's guided missiles have the range to strike Israel. Arash Kiai, a teenager in the central city of Yazd is scared, and angry, both with Trump and Iranian officials. But he will fall in line behind them if it comes to war. "Whatever happens in the world they blame Iran. But why? We are peaceful people," he said. "I am not an Iran regime supporter but Trump has no right to humiliate Iranians. If attacked, I will fight for Iran." (Editing by David Clarke)
(NEW YORK)  Munther Alaskry and his family were just hours away from their dream as they boarded the final leg of a flight to the United States after waiting seven years for visas. But minutes after sitting down, they were yanked from the plane because President Donald Trumps immigration order banned Iraqis from entering America.

Alaskrys wife started to shake. Their son cried, and his 7-year-old daughter asked through tears: Why the Americans dont want us? The Iraqi engineer who bonded with Marines over a shared love of Metallica and cleared away roadside bombs for U.S. troops did not respond. He didnt know the answer.

That moment our whole world broke down into pieces, Alaskry said. It was devastating for us. We felt like we lost everything. We lost our dreams.

On Friday, Alaskry and his family arrived at New Yorks Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered.

The family did paperwork for more than five hours after landing in New York, but Alaskry said they were treated well.

Im very blessed to be here, he said.

Alaskry is among nearly a dozen Iraqi interpreters who told The Associated Press they were taken off planes or were told their flights were cancelled after Trumps Jan. 27 order, which banned refugees from Syria and suspended travel into the U.S. from Iraq and six other Muslim-majority countries.

Initially included in the order were Iraqis who had received special immigrant visas because they worked for the U.S. government during the war. Among them were Alaskry and a 26-year-old man who had worked for the State Department vetting Iraqi contractors. After combat veterans, including members of Congress, criticized the decision, U.S. officials announced the former interpreters would be exempt from the ban.

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We cant accomplish our war effort without these people, which is why we need to protect them, said former Army Capt. Matthew Zeller, of the nonprofit No One Left Behind, an organization helping Alaskry and other interpreters resettle in the U.S.

Alaskry first started working for the U.S. military in 2003 after meeting Marines in the streets of Baghdad. He later translated for the Army and National Guard and then cleared away bombs. In 2005, he fled to Jordan after a threatening letter was left hanging from his car door.

He returned to Iraq and got a job with an Iraqi company that supported K-9 teams for the U.S. mission and later worked for a U.S. government-funded project that provided information on health care and trauma to Iraqis displaced by the fighting.

All the while, he waited for his visa to the U.S., hoping to raise his children in a safe place. He applied when his daughter was a year old, and was still waiting four years later when his son was born.

Meanwhile, he and his family limited their outings, afraid of the violence and crime.

After hundreds of emails, multiple interviews and medical exams, he got the call in December. The visas were ready. Alaskry promised his daughter that she would finally see Disneyland.

The 37-year-old engineer quit his job, sold his car and belongings and bought their plane tickets, spending $5,060.

They had a two-hour layover in Turkey on Jan. 28 before boarding a connecting flight to Houston. They were on the plane 15 minutes, with his children watching cartoons, when the Turkish authorities arrived and told them to get off.

My daughter kept asking me, Why the Americans dont want us in America? You promised me you will take me to Disneyland. Why cant you take me to Disneyland? he said.

The family was sent to a special security area at the airport in Istanbul for people who have no visa to enter Turkey and are denied entry to their destination country.

Alaskry got online and bought four more tickets back to Baghdad, spending $460. The family spent 13 hours at the airport, sleeping in seats. They flew back to Baghdad the next morning, sitting in silence in a taxi as they went to his in-laws home.

I felt so alone, Alaskry said.

Then he turned on the TV and saw the protests at U.S. airports.

Every time I see those people protesting on the news, I cry, Alaskry said. Its touching to me. These people dont know me. They dont know my story, though there are hundreds like me who supported the American troops.

Alaskry said he was happy when Trump was elected because he believed he would help Iraq get rid of the Islamic State group.

I just want to tell Mr. Trump, President Trump: We are your allies,' he said. Please let us be your friends. We want to be your friends. Dont let the Iraqi people down. We look to America like it is our big brother.

Alaskry got a call Wednesday from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad that he could now travel to the U.S. The person did not say if a mistake had been made or offer apologies. He bought four more tickets, spending a total of $8,000 on all the airfare.

He feels sad for his fellow Iraqis who are barred but is happy to get his family out.

As he walked out of the New York airport Friday afternoon, he said the Statue of Liberty topped his list of attractions he wanted to visit. His wife, wearing a headscarf, trailed behind, holding their two childrens hands. His daughter clutched a colorful paper Welcome Munther and family sign covered in hearts that was given to her by a woman from a local synagogue who met them to give them a ride to a hotel.

Im excited to come to the States, he said. I know American values. I work with brave American soldiers. I ride with them in Humvees. The American people are great people. I love them no matter what.
By Luke Baker JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli officials welcomed on Friday what they took as U.S. consent to expand existing settlements, after the White House reversed a long-standing policy of condemning building on occupied land. In its first substantive announcement on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Trump administration said it did not see existing settlements hampering peace with the Palestinians, although it recognized that "expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal." At one level, that appeared to be an attempt to rein in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has announced wide-ranging settlement expansion plans since the Jan. 20 inauguration, including around 6,000 new homes. But on closer reading, the statement was a softening of policy from the Obama administration and even that of George W. Bush, because it does not view settlements as an obstacle to peace or rule out their expansion within existing blocs. "Netanyahu will be happy," a senior Israeli diplomat said in a text message. "Pretty much carte blanche to build as much as we want in existing settlements as long as we don't enlarge their physical acreage. No problem there." Israel's deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotovely from the right-wing of Netanyahu's Likud party, interpreted it in a similar way, saying construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want for their own state together with Gaza, would go on unhindered. "It is also the opinion of the White House that settlements are not an obstacle to peace and, indeed, they have never been an obstacle to peace," she said. "Therefore, the conclusion is that more building is not the problem." Israel seized the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. The 50th anniversary of the occupation, which Israel marks as a reunification of Jerusalem, is in June. There was no immediate comment from the Palestinians. DOUBLE BENEFITS Since taking office, President Trump has largely kept quiet on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, making no comment in response to Netanyahu's announcements for thousands more settler homes, a silence interpreted as endorsement. During the campaign, Trump said he would not interfere or push Israel to negotiate on a two-state solution to the conflict. He has nominated David Friedman as ambassador to Israel, a religious Jew who has raised money for the settlements and supports moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Trump supported that idea during the election campaign, but it has been put on the back-burner in recent weeks. Under Barack Obama, the White House maintained a firm anti-settlements line, calling them illegitimate and an obstacle to peace. Most of the world considers settlements illegal under international law, a position Israel rejects. The European Union and Britain issued statements this week criticizing Netanyahu's settlement plans, which they see as further breaking up the West Bank and undermining the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state ever emerging. Netanyahu, who will visit Trump in Washington on Feb. 15, may see the White House statement as doubly beneficial. As well as not ruling out building within existing blocs, which Israel hopes to retain in any final agreement with the Palestinians, it may allow him to silence far-right voices in his own coalition calling for much greater settlement growth and annexation of parts of the West Bank. Trump has effectively set a limit on how far-ranging settlement-building can be, so Netanyahu will be able to tell the far-right their ambitions are out of the question. At the same time, Netanyahu may have to curtail some of the plans he himself has announced in recent days. While most of the 6,000 settler homes he has promised are in existing blocs, many are not and may have to be scrapped if he wants to adhere to the White House line. He may also have to rethink a pledge this week to build the first new West Bank settlement since the 1990s. (Additional reporting by Ori Lewis; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Robin Pomeroy)
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israeli settlers on Friday shrugged off White House criticism of settlement construction, convinced they have the sympathies of President Donald Trump. The Palestinians, still wary of Trump, warned that the settlers' hard-line stance could spell the end to a two-state solution to the conflict.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements, an issue at the heart of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that was a frequent source of friction between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former President Barack Obama. Israeli nationalists believe they now have an ally in the White House and have made no secret they will push for more settlements in the West Bank.

The White House said Thursday that although the administration doesn't "believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The unexpected warning came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for a court-ordered demolition of an illegal settlement outpost.

Israeli security forces dismantled the West Bank outpost of Amona earlier in the day amid clashes between police and dozens of hard-line settlers who had barricaded themselves in a synagogue.

Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers' council, said his group "thanks the White House for asserting that our communities were never an impediment to peace." Using the biblical name for the West Bank, he said "nothing is more natural and morally just than Jews building in Judea."

"We look forward to working closely with our friends in the new Trump administration to build a brighter future all," he added.

The settler movement is a potent political force in Israel, and Netanyahu's narrow nationalist coalition government is dominated by settlers and their supporters.

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The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem along with the Gaza Strip  areas captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war  for their state. The Palestinians and much of the international community consider all Israeli settlements illegal and view them as a hindrance to reaching a two-state solution to the conflict.

Husam Zomlot, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said "this statement of the White House is in the right direction, but we need more than words to protect the two-state solution, otherwise we will find nothing to talk about when President Trump" unveils his policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We need actions rather than words to stop the Israeli settlements expansion, which is violating the international law and killing the two-state solution," Zomlot added.

Israeli nationalists, including Netanyahu, defend the settlements on both security grounds and the historic religious ties to the territory. They say east Jerusalem, home to key sites sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians, is an eternal part of Israel's capital and not up for negotiation.

Today, there are some 400,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements, in addition to roughly 200,000 Israelis in east Jerusalem, also captured in 1967 from Jordan.

In 2005, Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from Gaza. Two years later, the coastal strip was overrun by the Islamic militant group Hamas. Many Israelis are wary of relinquishing further territory, citing the Hamas takeover  the Palestinian group has launched rockets at Israeli cities and fought three wars with the Jewish state.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said Friday if the U.S. concedes that settlements are not an obstacle to peace, then "it must be concluded that expanding construction is not a problem."

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the pro-settlement Jewish Home Party, has been pushing Netanyahu to abandon the internationally backed idea of a Palestinian state and to annex the Maaleh Adumim settlement near Jerusalem. The White House statement could help Netanyahu fend off hard-line pressure to keep building and annex territory.

For decades, U.S. presidents have joined the international community in condemning the settlements. In December, the Obama administration allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning the settlements as a "flagrant violation" of international law. In his farewell speech, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also harshly criticized them.

Trump has said he wants to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians but has given no indication of how he plans to accomplish it. His campaign platform made no mention of a Palestinian state, for decades the cornerstone of U.S. Mideast policy, and he has surrounded himself with advisers with deep ties to the settlement movement.

A day before the evacuation of the Amona outpost, Netanyahu approved 3,000 homes in West Bank settlements in addition to earlier approvals of 2,500 homes in the West Bank and 560 in east Jerusalem.

His government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona. But Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

The White House said Thursday the administration hasn't taken an official position on settlements and Trump looks forward to continued discussions on the issue. He will meet with Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 15.

Netanyahu's office said Friday that he and Trump would discuss a range of issues, including the settlements.

Earlier, Israel's U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said when asked by Israel Radio whether Trump was changing his tune on settlements that he "wouldn't describe this is a U-turn."

"The statement is very clear .... It says: 'Wait for the meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu ... and President Trump, and then we will determine the policy,'" Danon added.
Japans Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was the first foreign leader to meet Donald Trump after his election as U.S. president in November. On Febuary 3, Secretary of Defense James Mattis will visit Japan on his first overseas trip as the new U.S. secretary of defense. This early engagement suggests that Tokyo can play a pivotal role in shaping the Trump administrations foreign and security policy. But Japanese officials must be smart in pitching alliance cooperation to capture Trumps imagination. Japan is in a unique position to do this, given the many ways it could help Trump achieve his more mutually beneficial goals, at home and abroad.

First, for an American president skeptical about the value of alliances, Japan can pitch itself as a model ally that is no freeloader, but in fact shares the burden of maintaining peace in the Pacific. Japan underwrites American forces stationed in Okinawa, making them cheaper to deploy there than they would be in California. Japan is increasing its defense budget and deploying sophisticated military capabilities not only to defend itself, but to help protect America, for instance by collaborating in missile defenses against North Korea. Japan is expanding its military ties with U.S. partners, including India, Southeast Asian nations, and NATO, which in turn reinforces their capacity to work with Americas armed forces. Japan supports Americas global posture, including support for missions in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Second, a stronger Japanese alliance can help make America great again, Trumps overarching aim, by magnifying U.S. power and influence as it increasingly comes under challenge, including from revisionist powers. China and Russia have few allies, and none of consequence  the differentiator between the United States and its peer competitors is that Washington has an alliance network that spans the globe. Greatness is in part a function of followership  and many countries, starting with Japan, want to partner with America. Japans continued support for the U.S. alliance will make it easier for Trump to achieve his goals in Asia  including preventing Chinese domination of the region. This makes the U.S. better off and is a key part of its comparative advantage against rivals.

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Third, Japanese leaders can help Washingtons new governing class understand that its country is not a trade threat but an essential economic partner. Japan is one of the top foreign investors in the United States. Three out of every four Japanese cars and trucks sold in the United States, nearly four million per year, are actually built in North America; Japanese car companies employ thousands of Americans in the kinds of well-paid manufacturing jobs Trump wants to protect.

Japan is not the export threat it was in the Rising Sun days of the 1980s. Chinese acquisitions of American companies, not Japanese, risk endangering U.S. national security. Japanese companies and capital can be part of the national rejuvenation that Trump has promised American voters, in part because so much U.S.-Japan economic activity comes from domestic production and investment rather than from traditional trade flows.

Fourth, Japan can support the domestic energy revolution that Trump seeks to unleash to increase American economic growth. Japan is almost entirely dependent on imported sources of energy. The first U.S. shipments of liquefied natural gas arrived in Japan in early January. Between traditional oil and gas extraction as well as the use of new technologies to tap shale and tight oil, North American energy production will exceed the capacity of the U.S. market to absorb it. Key to boosting domestic production will be exports to overseas markets. Japan, until now dependent on risky sources of supply in the Middle East, would benefit hugely from the stability of supply and relative lack of political risk associated with American energy exports. Energy cooperation is the kind of win-win proposition that could boost both countries economies and security.

Fifth, Japan will be central to Americas economic engagement in Asia in the wake of Trumps unfortunate withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. The heart of the TPP was the liberalization of trade and investment between the United States and Japan, including in areas of American advantage like services, agriculture, and the digital economy.

Trump has focused on promoting exports from Americas heavy manufacturers. In fact, more than 80 percent of American economic output is in services and other forms of software, rather than the kind of hardware which China and other less-developed economies produce at lower cost. The U.S. enjoys a $400 billion annual trade surplus in services. The Trump administration could carve out parts of the TPP that especially support American economic competitiveness and negotiate a new bilateral deal with Japan that fills the gap left by the TPP.

Sixth, Japan can be a key part of the equation in any reset of U.S.-Russia relations under Trump. Abe is pursuing his own reset with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in hopes of settling their World War II-era dispute over the Northern Territories. Like the United States, Japan has a compelling interest in precluding the formation of a China-Russia alliance that dominates Eurasia and threatens the free nations along its littoral. If Trump genuinely wants a rapprochement with Russia, in part to help form a sturdier balancing coalition against China in Asia, Japan could be a valuable partner in that endeavor.

Seventh, Trump clearly envisions a more competitive relationship with China  in which case an invigorated U.S.-Japan alliance gives Washington additional leverage, and complicates Beijings ability to directly confront the United States. Japan under Abe is positioning itself to challenge Chinas efforts to assert what it deems to be its natural hegemony over Asia. Japan, in this sense, is a frontline state that is standing up for the same goal as America, which has much to lose from any Chinese sphere of influence that restricts U. S. economic and military access to a dynamic region.

Japanese officials worry that Trump might make a deal with Beijing over their heads in ways that subordinate Japanese interests, including on the security of Taiwan. The Trump administration would be wiser to cooperate more closely with Japan in order to uphold Asias existing maritime order, subvert Chinas quest for suzerainty over the international waters of the South China Sea, and reinforce the military balance in Asia in favor of the democracies and China-wary nations like Vietnam.

Many traditional U.S. allies are despairing at the prospect of dealing with an American administration they feel does not value them. The smart play for a core ally like Japan is to make itself relevant to the Trump administrations foreign and economic policy priorities, underlining the added value to the United States of continuing close partnership.

A version of this essay appeared in the Nikkei Asian Review.

Photo credit: KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images
There are few people who have been in the wrestling business longer than Jim Ross. And those who have made it as long as he has (half a century to be exact) probably made enemies or burned bridges. But thats just not JR.

Known as the voice of the WWE, Slobberknocker is the story of Jim Rosss life?probably the most notable person connected to the sport who has never wrestled. He opens up about his life growing up on a farm in Oklahoma and his discovering of wrestling to somehow getting a foot in the door to the business that started a historic career, one where he held almost every job in the business?from putting up the ring to calling matches, to finding talent, to booking programs, to handling payroll. With all those responsibilities, hes also recognized as the man who built and nurtured a once-in-a-generation talent roster that took the WWE to new heights, including Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock to name a few. Readers will finally get the opportunity to hear never-before-told stories about the politics and personalities of all the biggest stars.

But this isnt just a wrestling story. Its a story about overcoming adversity and achieving your dreams. As someone who has suffered multiple bouts of Bells Palsy, Ross has never given up on a dream that is still going strong.

Currently the host of the podcast The Ross Report, any fan of wrestling?from the territory days to today?will be enthralled with stories from the road and behind the scenes. Slobberknocker is the first time Ross tells his story?and you dont want to miss it!
By Scott Malone and Dan Levine BOSTON/SEATTLE (Reuters) - A federal judge in Boston on Friday declined to extend a temporary restraining order that allowed some immigrants into the United States from certain countries despite being barred by U.S. President Donald Trump's recent executive order. The ruling was a victory for the Trump administration and a setback for state authorities and advocacy groups that are aiming to overturn last week's executive order, which temporarily bars nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The decision came on a day that attorneys from four states were in courts challenging the executive order. Trump's administration justified the action on national security grounds, but opponents labeled it an unconstitutional order targeting people based on religious beliefs. Earlier on Friday in Virginia, a federal judge ordered the White House to provide a list of all people stopped from entering the United States by the travel ban. The State Department said on Friday that fewer than 60,000 visas previously issued to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen had been invalidated as a result of the order. That disclosure followed media reports that government lawyers were citing a figure of 100,000. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia ordered the federal government to give the state a list by Thursday of "all persons who have been denied entry to or removed from the United States." At Boston's Logan International Airport, at least four college students from Iran and Iraq who had previously been blocked from entering the United States by the order, arrived with new visas on Friday, according to a Reuters witness. The new Republican president's order signed on Jan. 27 triggered chaos at U.S. airports last weekend. Some travelers abroad were turned back from flights into the United States, crowds of hundreds of people packed into arrival areas to protest and legal objections were filed across the country. The order also temporarily stopped the entry of all refugees into the country and indefinitely halted the settlement of Syrian refugees. The state of Hawaii on Friday joined the challenge to the order, with officials saying they were suing to block enforcement of the travel ban. Federal judges in Boston and Seattle also were weighing arguments. SKEPTICISM IN BOSTON In the Boston case, U.S. District Judge Nathan Gorton expressed skepticism during oral arguments about a civil rights group's claim that Trump's order represented religious discrimination. Civil-rights advocates called to extend a restraining order issued early on Sunday that for seven days blocks the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders, and legal permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries. The judge ultimately denied the request. "Where does it say Muslim countries?" Gorton asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU. Segal responded, "If your honor's question is, 'Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?,' my answer is that it doesn't. But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out." Gorton shot back, "Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?" Trump has told a Christian broadcaster that Syrian Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status. In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota were together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive. Should the Seattle judge rule that Washington state and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration. (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York, Brian Snyder in Boston and Lawrence Hurley, Lesley Wroughton and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Rigby)
By Scott Malone and Dan Levine BOSTON/SEATTLE (Reuters) - A federal judge in Boston on Friday declined to extend a temporary restraining order that allowed some immigrants into the United States from certain countries despite being barred by U.S. President Donald Trump's recent executive order. The ruling was a victory for the Trump administration and a setback for state authorities and advocacy groups that are aiming to overturn last week's executive order, which temporarily bars nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. The decision came on a day that attorneys from four states were in courts challenging the executive order. Trump's administration justified the action on national security grounds, but opponents labelled it an unconstitutional order targeting people based on religious beliefs. Earlier on Friday in Virginia, a federal judge ordered the White House to provide a list of all people stopped from entering the United States by the travel ban. The State Department said on Friday that fewer than 60,000 visas previously issued to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen had been invalidated as a result of the order. That disclosure followed media reports that government lawyers were citing a figure of 100,000. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia ordered the federal government to give the state a list by Thursday of "all persons who have been denied entry to or removed from the United States." At Boston's Logan International Airport, at least four college students from Iran and Iraq who had previously been blocked from entering the United States by the order, arrived with new visas on Friday, according to a Reuters witness. The new Republican president's order signed on Jan. 27 triggered chaos at U.S. airports last weekend. Some travellers abroad were turned back from flights into the United States, crowds of hundreds of people packed into arrival areas to protest and legal objections were filed across the country. The order also temporarily stopped the entry of all refugees into the country and indefinitely halted the settlement of Syrian refugees. The state of Hawaii on Friday joined the challenge to the order, with officials saying they were suing to block enforcement of the travel ban. Federal judges in Boston and Seattle also were weighing arguments. SCEPTICISM IN BOSTON In the Boston case, U.S. District Judge Nathan Gorton expressed scepticism during oral arguments about a civil rights group's claim that Trump's order represented religious discrimination. Civil-rights advocates called to extend a restraining order issued early on Sunday that for seven days blocks the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders, and legal permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries. The judge ultimately denied the request. "Where does it say Muslim countries?" Gorton asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU. Segal responded, "If your honour's question is, 'Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?,' my answer is that it doesn't. But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out." Gorton shot back, "Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?" Trump has told a Christian broadcaster that Syrian Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status. In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota were together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive. Should the Seattle judge rule that Washington state and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration. (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York, Brian Snyder in Boston and Lawrence Hurley, Lesley Wroughton and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Rigby)
Paris (AFP) - A French judge investigating the gunpoint robbery of Kim Kardashian has interviewed the US reality star for several hours in New York, judicial sources said Friday.

The 36-year-old has already given an account to French police of the hold-up at her luxury Paris residence in October, during which the robbers made off with jewellery worth nine million euros ($9.5 million).

Police have made arrests in Paris and the south of France and charged 10 suspects, including the alleged ringleaders.

In the account of the Paris robbery revealed by the Journal de Dimanche earlier this month, Kardashian, who is married to rap star Kanye West, described how she was bound and gagged and said one of the gang was wearing a jacket emblazoned with police insignia.

She also said the robbers seemed "inexperienced" judging by the way they tied her up -- she managed to free herself after they left and raise the alarm.

The gang took a box containing jewellery including two Cartier diamond bracelets, a diamond-studded necklace, a yellow gold Rolex watch and a diamond-encrusted cross.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday he hoped that pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine had enough ammunition to respond to what he called aggressive actions by the Ukrainian army. "The main thing is to persuade Kiev to drop such reckless actions which are capable of undermining the Minsk peace process," Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian separatists accused each other on Thursday of carrying out fresh artillery attacks on frontline residential areas in eastern Ukraine, resulting in civilian casualties on both sides. (Reporting and writing by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
Kuwait City (AFP) - Kuwait on Friday arrested a former opposition lawmaker for alleging Iran was pressuring the oil-rich emirate to change the crown prince, the government and relatives said.

The interior ministry said Waleed al-Tabtabai had been "arrested on the orders of the public prosecution for spreading false news about the internal situation and undermining the status of the crown prince on social media."

The former Islamist lawmaker, a long-time critic of the Islamic republic, would now be referred to prosecutors for questioning, it added.

In comments posted Thursday on Twitter, Tabtabai wrote that Iran had been putting pressure on Kuwait to replace Crown Prince Sheikh Nawaf al-Ahmad al-Sabah, 76, with a new heir who has strong relations with Tehran.

He said he hoped the attempts would fail.

Under the Kuwaiti constitution, the crown prince is proposed by the emir and approved by parliament. Sheikh Nawaf, half brother of Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, was appointed to the post in 2006.

Tabtabai's brother Anwar said the ex-lawmaker was arrested by secret service police.

Kuwaiti authorities have detained several online activists and former lawmakers for allegedly criticising countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and Iran.

Courts have also sentenced dozens of online activists and opposition members to years in jail for insulting the emir on social media.
The New Yorkers Feb. 13 and 20 issue will feature the image Libertys Flameout. (Photo: John W. Tomac/The New Yorker)

The New Yorkers upcoming issue will feature a troubling illustration of Lady Libertys light snuffed out.

According to the magazine, under a different political climate, the cover of the issue for Feb. 13 and 20  which marks the magazines 92nd anniversary  would have featured a variation on the iconic image of dandy Eustace Tilley, created by graphic artist Rea Irvin.

Instead, the New Yorker decided to comment on the incipient stages of the Trump administration. Just last week, the White House announced that citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries  Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  will not be allowed into the U.S. for at least 90 days. No refugees will be allowed to enter the country for at least 120 days.

Artist John W. Tomac created the new image, which was revealed Friday morning, as a comment on President Trumps highly controversial executive order on immigration.

It used to be that the Statue of Liberty, and her shining torch, was the vision that welcomed new immigrants. And, at the same time, it was the symbol of American values, Tomac told the magazine. Now it seems that we are turning off the light.

Liberty Enlightening the World, which is the full name of the giant copper statue in New York Harbor, is a recognized symbol of freedom and democracy throughout the world. It became a beacon of hope for immigrants escaping oppression or seeking a better life since it was dedicated in 1886. It was designated a national monument in 1924.

Americans critical of Trumps executive order on immigration widely shared on social media images of the statue and lines from The New Colossus, the sonnet thats inscribed on a bronze plaque inside its pedestal  particularly its final lines:

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she

With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Read more from Yahoo News:
Yangon (AFP) - With the laying of a wreath at a faraway grave, the last king of Myanmar finally won public recognition after more than a century hidden from view by the country's former colonial masters and military junta.

The sombre ceremony for King Thibaw in Ratnagiri, western India was a watershed moment for Myanmar as it forges a new sense of national identity under its first elected government in a generation.

For half a century its military rulers ran an Orwellian campaign to rewrite the past, casting themselves as the saviours of the nation. Today the country's understanding of its history is starting to change under the young government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which took power nearly a year ago.

"History at school was a kind of government propaganda," Pathein University lecturer Than Htike Aung told AFP.

"The textbooks don't give real historical accounts... You cannot read about how the junta seized power in 1962, the 1988 uprising and the 2007 Buddhist-led (Saffron) revolution."

Myanmar's former royal family was a primary target of the junta's historical whitewash.

A cloak of silence was thrown over the monarchy by successive military leaders who also seized on a campaign, started by the colonial British when they exiled King Thibaw in 1885, to cast the monarch as a drunken monster.

His brief reign was barely mentioned in text books.

But at the ceremony in India in December Myanmar's vice president and military chief stood side-by-side with his descendants -- the first time they have been allowed to publicly remember their ancestor at his resting place.

It followed an inaugural event at Mandalay's Golden Palace the previous month, where the surviving scions of King Thibaw's Konbaung dynasty marked his exile.

"I don't see how people can really have a creative view of the future... unless they have this more critical understanding of the past," said historian Thant Myint U.

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"It would be like trying to think about the future of Germany and not knowing anything about the First or Second World Wars."

- Fake history -

But the generals' rewriting of history has taken deep root in Myanmar's education system and wider society.

School pupils today still learn by rote from junta-era textbooks, taught to repeat a narrative centred around the dominant Bamar ethnic group.

History has been so debased as a discipline only the worst-performing students study it -- the more successful ones are funnelled into medicine and engineering.

This year not a single person applied to read history at the prestigious Yangon University.

"History has been so politicised and tampered with it has got to the point that people stopped caring," said Alex Bescoby, who has made a documentary about the royal family.

Skewed history is exacerbating Myanmar's ethnic conflicts, experts say.

Groups such as the Kachin and Karen have long complained the histories of their people taught at government schools are incomplete, oversimplified or plain incorrect.

For Myanmar's most hated minority, the Rohingya, the distortions now threaten their future under the new civilian government.

In December, the Ministry of Religion and Cultural Affairs announced plans to publish a "true" account of the Muslim group to prove they are illegal immigrants and write them out of the country's history.

Their treatment highlights the complexity of owning the national narrative in a country scored by conflict and division.

"When students believe simple stories about the past... they can more easily demonise other groups," said Rosalie Metro, adjunct professor of education at the University of Missouri.

- 'Critical skills' -

She has spent a decade creating a new textbook for school students that takes a more critical perspective using material considered too sensitive under military rule, including speeches by former ruler General Ne Win and colonial documents.

International bodies, including the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, are also working with the government to help reshape what is taught in school.

Lecturer Than Htike Aung said he now brings in his own materials to teach events outside the curriculum, something he would have been too scared to do under the junta.

Meanwhile the explosion of social media since 2011, when the military ceded power, has given Myanmar's youth new access to information and an avenue to challenge official accounts.

The government too has formed a historical committee to help re-evaluate accounts propagated under the junta -- though some fear this is also laden with dangers.

"Experts will put these true stories of Myanmar down as a record for future generations," said Aung Myint, of the department of historical research.

Still, experts warn it will take a long time for people to come to terms with the past.

"What's just as important as giving people material is giving people the critical skills to deal with it, and that's something that only comes over years and years," said Bescoby.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Friday world powers must work with Damascus to create safe zones in Syria so refugees can return to their country. It was the first time the Beirut government had lent its support to such a plan. At least a million people have fled the Syrian civil war since 2011 into Lebanon, which has an estimated total population of less than six million. Lebanon would not force unsafe return on any refugees, but the international community must make their return possible, Aoun's office quoted him as saying in a meeting on Friday with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. He said it was "important to achieve a political solution" to the conflict. Aoun is an ally of Lebanon's Hezbollah group which is fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. President Trump said last week he would "absolutely do safe zones in Syria" for refugees fleeing violence and that Europe had made a mistake by admitting millions of refugees.. According to a document seen by Reuters, Trump is expected to order the Pentagon and the State Department to craft such a plan, a move that could ratchet up U.S. military involvement in Syria. The Syrian government said on Monday that any attempt to create so-called safe zones for refugees without coordinating with Damascus would be "unsafe" and violate Syria's sovereignty. Rebel backers including Qatar have welcomed Trump's support for safe zones, and Turkey says it is waiting to see the outcome of the U.S. president's pledge. Almost six years of war has divided Syria into a patchwork of areas controlled by Assad's government, various rebel groups, Kurdish militia and Islamic State militants. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis. (Reporting by Ellen Francis; editing by Andrew Roche)
BEIRUT (AP)  Lebanon's president says the international community should facilitate the return of Syrian refugees to Syria by setting up "safe zones" in coordination with their government.

Michel Aoun made his comments Friday during a meeting with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

Lebanon is home to some 1.2 million Syrian refugees, equivalent to one fourth of its own population.

Aoun said in comments released by his office that Lebanon will not force any refugees to return to Syria amid insecure and unstable conditions. He expressed support for a political solution in Syria and combatting "terrorists".

Syria had expressed concern over such safe zones which U.S. President Donald Trump had previously expressed interest in creating, saying they would have to be set up in coordination with the Syrian government.
Italian label Salvatore Ferragamo has signed up the famous American model, particularly known for her work with Victoria's Secret, to front its spring/summer 2017 collection. She is joined by McKenna Hellam and Andres Velencoso in a campaign channeling themes of friendship, modernity and traditional Italian heritage.

The new Salvatore Ferragamo campaign is set against a backdrop of breathtaking Italian landscapes. The campaign was shot by the famous fashion photographer, Peter Lindbergh, on location in Taormina, a Sicilian village nestled in the hills and overlooking a stunning blue sea.

Entitled "Among Friends," the campaign stars three internationally renowned models: Lily Aldridge, McKenna Hellam and Andres Velencoso. The three stars step into role as three close friends, partners in crime, strolling along the Taormina coast or among its lush bougainvillea-lined roads. These moments of simplicity accentuate the chic and effortless elegance of the brand's men's and women's ready-to-wear and accessories collections.

Lily Aldridge can be seen wearing a fluted-hem dress and carrying the signature Soft Sofia bag, while McKenna Hellam wears a sporty-chic navy shirt with matching loose-cut pants, and Andres Velencoso strides on the rocks in a blue shirt with rolled-up sleeves and matching pants, carrying a stylish, contemporary backpack.

The previous Salvatore Ferragamo campaign, for fall/winter 2016-2017, was shot by Craig McDean, another big name of the photography world. Ine Neefs, James Rousseau, Ming Xi and Valery Kaufman fronted the collection.
In the spring of 2013, Buta Singh, a 34-year-old Sikh from India's Punjab state, fled his homeland out of fear of religious and political persecution, hoping for a new start in the United States.

It has been a bewilderingly long and brutal quest, spanning a traumatic 10-week journey, 11 months in detention and several years in legal limbo, with no immediate end in sight and new US President Donald Trump now looming large.

On a recent afternoon in a busy immigration courtroom in downtown Seattle, Singh's appeal for asylum was finally scheduled for trial -- on October 8, 2020.

"I can't do anything without patience," he said afterwards. "I just want a safe place -- my life in India is all done."

Trump has begun his term with hardline actions on immigration, temporarily barring the arrival of all refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, and beginning the process of building a wall along the country's southern border with Mexico.

Singh's tale illustrates the emerging and complex nature of the ever-evolving US immigration landscape.

Although small in number compared to the hundreds of thousands arriving annually from Mexico and its neighbors, migrants and refugees from beyond the region like Singh now make up a significant and steadily rising proportion of those reaching America's southern doorstep.

And they have stretched its sprawling immigration system, from border enforcement to asylum adjudication, with no signs of abating.

Last year, the US detained more than 32,000 individuals from countries beyond Mexico, Central America and Cuba either trying to cross illegally or deemed inadmissible at entry ports, according to a review of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

The largest number came from Haiti (6,503), followed by Brazil (4,665), India (3,622), Ecuador (2,996), China (2,595) and Romania (2,569).

- 'Tidal wave' -

"I'd always represented people smuggled through Latin America... what was a trickle many years ago is now a tidal wave," said John Lawit, a Texas attorney representing Singh and many other such asylum-seekers.

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The spike over recent years includes thousands of people from countries Trump has included in his visa ban -- such as Somalia, Syria and Iraq -- and other nations the US has long considered particularly vulnerable to terror-related activity and recruitment, like Pakistan.

The overwhelming majority presented themselves at official crossings where they could claim asylum -- rather than attempting to enter illegally. So far, no terror-related incidents on American soil have been linked to any such arrivals.

But an executive order issued last week by Trump, ordering authorities to start building a wall on Mexico's border, said: "Continued illegal immigration presents a clear and present danger to the interests of the United States."

It added: "Among those who illegally enter are those who seek to harm Americans through acts of terror or criminal conduct."

Congressman Ted Poe, a Texas Republican who serves as chairman of the House's subcommittee on terrorism and trade, noted that during a visit to his state's southern border, officials had detained three people from Ukraine.

"How did Ukrainians ever find Texas?" he said. "Word needs to get out that you're not getting into the United States across the southern border because we're going to have border security."

Experts say criminal networks and South American emigrants forged this increasingly well-trodden route over decades. They give various reasons for the recent surge, from word-of-mouth and recruitment by traffickers to recession in Brazil and natural disasters in Haiti.

- Roads, rivers and jungles -

Singh's journey highlights the perils of the path.

After his father sold land and paid smugglers in India about $40,000, he flew via Europe and South America to Nicaragua.

From there, he was hidden in suffocating bunks in truck cabins, traveled on rivers using ramshackle rafts and trekked through jungles.

A smuggler in Suriname stole his passport; Honduran military police demanded bribes, he said.

A vegetarian by faith, Singh found little he could eat, and often went long periods without water.

"I think nobody treats an animal like this," he recalled tearfully. "I thought, 'I may die'."

Singh finally reached the American border at El Paso, Texas, to claim asylum.

Under US law, arrivals without entry visas join those apprehended crossing illegally in expedited removal proceedings.

However, officials interview anyone expressing fear of persecution back in their home countries. If deemed credible, they can then appeal deportation in a lengthy asylum process.

Those who can prove their identity and ties to a community -- through a relative, sponsor or employer -- can also win relocation of their case and bonded parole.

Courts in southern border states saw a 21 percent rise in non-Central American cases last year, according to Justice Department data.

- 'Felt like a criminal' -

Singh, who has a sister living in Seattle, passed his asylum interview three weeks after arriving.

But an El Paso immigration judge repeatedly denied him parole, transfer, and appeals against deportation. So after 10 months, Singh joined a nine-day hunger strike with dozens of other Indian detainees.

"I felt like a criminal there," he said.

After a diplomat from the Indian consulate in Houston visited the group, Lawit got Singh's case reopened and transferred to Seattle.

Within a month, he was paroled on a $7,000 bond, living with his sister's family, and working first at a gas station and then as a driver for his brother-in-law's trucking company.

The transfer improved his asylum chances.

In El Paso, judges approved on average just three percent of asylum appeals between 2011 and 2016; in Seattle, it was nearly 40 percent over the same period, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University shows.

- 'Welcoming nation' -

Human rights groups complain that with a massive and growing caseload, the US has started impeding asylum access by turning people away at busier border crossings, like Tijuana and Nogales, Arizona.

They also say authorities are using harsh and arbitrary treatment in custody to deter others from making the journey.

"It's going to be tougher and tougher for anyone to get due process," said Kevin Appleby, of the Center for Migration Studies. "Whether that will decrease the numbers coming is unclear."

Customs and Border Protection officials said Trump's orders had led to no change in asylum policy on the southern border, and added that the US upholds all immigration laws and "continues to be a welcoming nation."

Singh's ongoing wait for trial is symptomatic of the overloaded system, with nearly 534,000 cases pending, according to TRAC, and just 292 judges.

Stuck in this backlog, under the specter of the Trump administration, Singh says he is scared.

"But I believe in the United States' laws," he added. "I believe the court will make a good decision."
Locked inside: Tourists wait to be let out following a major terror alert at the Louvre museum: @nonenoone3

Hundreds of tourists including Londoners were locked inside the Louvre in Paris today after a machete-wielding attacker was gunned down in a major terror alert at the historic museum.

French officials said 250 visitors were held in secure parts of the museum after the suspected Islamist terrorist shouted Allahu Akbar  God is great in Arabic  before being shot when he attacked soldiers.

Security guards had challenged the man to open his rucksack in one of the most secure buildings in the French capital, but he refused and pulled out a knife.

The four-man patrol of officers on duty tried to fight off the assailant before opening fire, military officials said.

A thousand tourists were inside the museum at the time of the attack, which happened soon after 11am at the top of an escalator that leads down into the Carrousel du Louvre shopping complex.

Tourists huddle on the floor inside the Louvre (Twitter via Wang Feng)

Many were swiftly evacuated from the museum but about 250 people were shepherded into safe rooms and lock inside.

They were allowed out in small groups following a tense wait of more than an hour.

French police secure the site near the Louvre Pyramid in Paris (REUTERS)

Connor Bakhuizen, 18, from Woking in Surrey, who was visiting the French museum as part of a college trip, said he was ushered into a safe room with fellow students.

The teenager told the Standard: We were waiting in the foyer for our teachers to organise us for a tour when we were suddenly rushed into another room in the museum.

The situation was calm for a while and then we were rushed upstairs really suddenly and have been kept in a safe room since about 10pm and now we are being let out safely.

I called my family but was told to turn off my phone and we sat in silence for about 10 minutes. That was the scariest part but soon the mood lightened up.

Hector Clark, a Londoner on a four-day trip to Paris, was also locked inside the Louvre with other tourists.

He told French news site the Local: It was intense and everyone was scared at first because the situation was unclear but people settled down after we heard from the head of security that it was safe.

Story continues

"We got evacuated to the top floor, everything was calm and well handled, we have been up here for an hour or so but we are being allowed to leave now.

Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum following a terror alert (AP)

Some witnesses who were waiting to leave the Louvre said they heard gunfire and could smell smoke.

Students Mei Xiayou and Ying Zhang said all the visitors were led to a safe area, which was packed with people.

"We were standing in the safety area and after half an hour, we smelled some smoke and then thought 'maybe this is true, there might be gunshots'," said Ying Zhang.

Visitors shared photos from inside the museum on social media as they waited to be let out.

we've all been locked inside the louvre there are hundreds of police vans outside pic.twitter.com/KQVPrFSPi3  maya (@mayaffff) February 3, 2017

Des touristes chinois bloques a l'interieur du Louvre #weibo pic.twitter.com/vPekSUrhls  BOUGON  (@Francois_Bougon) February 3, 2017

Friend sends pic from inside the #Louvre , tourists being evacuated into locked down halls pic.twitter.com/1UxMkBsmPJ  Wang Feng (@ulywang) February 3, 2017

The Louvre is the most popular museum in the world with more than 8.6 million visitors last year and houses works including Leonardo Da Vincis Mona Lisa

A second suspect who may have been involved in the Louvre attack was later arrested, said police.

The attacker was rushed to the Georges-Pompidou hospital, where his intensive care unit was under armed guard.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays spokesman said travel advice for the French capital had been amended due to the incident.

The spokesman said: The travel advice to Paris has been updated, basically exercising caution in the area affected. Our threat level remains where it is.

"The Foreign Office has been liaising with their counterparts in France. Obviously, we are ready to assist if required.
By Michel Rose PARIS (Reuters) - Visitors to the Louvre learned by loudspeaker announcement of Friday's attempted attack on the Paris museum and there was no panic, witnesses said, though some children cried as guards directed people to sit tight together and away from windows. A French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete and carrying two bags on his back as he tried to enter the world-renowned museum in what the government said appeared to have been a terrorist attack. The man, who police said had shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) as he rushed toward the museum, remains alive but seriously wounded. His bags contained no explosives. "(The announcement) came over the loudspeakers that are dotted around," said Paul Lecher, 68, a retired Parisian and frequent Louvre visitor. "Everything happened calmly," he told Reuters. "It was just a case of listening ... People quickly understood, even those who didn't understand a word of French, that something unusual was happening." The Louvre, home to Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa', ancient Egyptian artefacts and countless other treasures, is a major tourist attraction. Housed in a former royal palace on the banks of the Seine, it welcomed 7.3 million visitors last year. KEPT AWAY FROM WINDOWS On Friday about 1,250 visitors were kept inside for a time after the attempted attack, authorities said. "There were announcements, then the security guards started running all over the place and after a short period they started gathering everybody up and getting them to one side of the building," said Lance Manus, 73, from Albany, New York. "They pulled the shades, they didn't want anybody to sit by the windows," said Manus, in Paris with his wife Wendy to mark their 50th wedding anniversary. "I guess they were concerned that something would be coming from outside." People were calm, but some young children were crying, they said. "The very young children, the teachers kept them busy playing games," said Wendy Manus. "They were singing and trying to keep the children calm and quiet." After an hour, they were told to evacuate. The couple said they did not even have time to see the 'Mona Lisa'. Asked if they had been scared, Lance Manus said: "We come from the U.S., we have our scares just like you have." A couple of Czech tourists, Azra and Resip, praised the professionalism of the security guards. "They organized everything properly," Azra said. "Don't give those guys too much attention," her friend Resip said, referring to the attacker. France has been hit by a series of militant Islamist attacks over the past two years in which more than 230 people have been killed. The soldier who fired at the machete-wielding man was from one of the patrolling groups that have become a common sight around Paris since a state of emergency was declared across France in November 2015. It remains in force. A spokeswoman said the Louvre remained closed on Friday afternoon and could not say when it would reopen. (Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Gareth Jones)
If you know anything about Macklemore, its probably that hes responsible for the hit "Thrift Shop," and that hes a serious Seattle Seahawks fan. It also turns out hes something of an outdoorsman, and really digs exploring Mount Rainier.



"When you look out of the window after a year of touring and see Mount Rainier on the horizon, it means that you've made it home," says Macklemore in Columbia Sportswears newly released video (above). While summiting the 14,410-foot Rainier is possible without major mountaineering experience (a guide is highly recommended), Columbia couldn't verify whether hes climbed the peak himself. For now, his love of Rainier is on record for a promotion spot for the Portland, Oregonbased brand's Tested Tough campaign.



This is my home. This is my upbringing. This is what matters. This is #TestedTough.  @columbia1938 A video posted by Ben Haggerty (@macklemore) on Feb 1, 2017 at 10:00am PST

And although this is an advertisement, the short video is refreshingly earnest and fun to watch if, like us, you can't get enough of the national parks.



MORE: The 23 Best National Park Adventures

"I have been tested tough numerous times in my life," Macklemore says in the ad. "For me, it's being a good dad. Being a good partner. Doing the right thing. Staying sober. Battling addiction. And that's a test I'll never fully win. I just have to go day by day. Be present. Show up for my family. Be of service to others. These are all moments where I'm constantly tested."

In between shots of his Rainier hike  one of the riskier ones you can take  are clips of the rapper hanging out with his family, and recording and playing live shows. But it wraps up with Macklemore looking out on the National Park below and Rainier's volcanic peak towering behind him in the background. "If you want a dose of humility, if you want a dose of perspective, of what really matters, of impermanence," he says, "there's no better place to be than outside."
Antananarivo (AFP) - Madagascar's president appointed a serving air commodore as prime minister Wednesday, two days after the government of the Indian Ocean island nation resigned over criticism of its handling of recurring power outages.

"In accordance with article 54 of the Constitution, Air Commodore Jean Ravelonarivo is appointed prime minister," announced Pierre Roger Ralala, secretary-general in the presidency.

Former premier Roger Kolo -- a radiologist by trade -- and his cabinet resigned Monday following heavy criticism for their response to the repeated electricity failures.

Ravelonarivo is a former governor of the Rotary Club in Madagascar and is general manager of a state-owned real estate company. He was appointed to the position of air commodore last month.

With just 15 percent of Madagascar on the grid and water and electricity company Jirama struggling to pay oil suppliers on time, blackouts have become an increasingly common feature since President Hery Rajaonarimampianina came to power a year ago.

Two people have died in recent weeks when angry Madagascans took to the streets to protest the rolling blackouts.

Energy Minister Richard Fihenena was fired last October for his inability to solve the problem.

Rajaonarimampianina, who does not have a majority in parliament, appointed Kolo as premier in April 2014, five months after democratic elections brought to an end a political crisis sparked by a 2009 coup.
Man shot, wounded after attacking soldiers outside Louvre Police officers stand in front of the Louvre on February 3, 2017 in Paris, France. (Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)

A knife-wielding man shouting Allahu akbar attacked French soldiers on patrol near the Louvre Museum Friday in what officials described as a suspected terror attack. The soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker and then opened fire, shooting him five times.

The attack at an entrance to a shopping mall that extends beneath the museum sowed panic and again highlighted the threat French officials say hangs over the country, which was hit repeatedly by extremist attacks in 2015 and 2016.

A police union official said the attacker was carrying two backpacks and had two machetes. He said the man launched himself at the soldiers when they told him that he could not bring his bags into the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall underneath the world-famous museum where the Mona Lisa hangs. (AP)

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A Cheesecake Factory in California hopes to return to normal business hours after a man threw a homemade bomb into the restaurant Thursday.

Pasadena police told the Hollywood Reporter that shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday evening, a man reportedly opened the door and threw the lit device inside the restaurant before fleeing. Although the bomb exploded on an empty table, no one was hurt in the incident.

Officers immediately entered the restaurant and evacuated customers and employees and located a detonated homemade pyrotechnic device, Pasadena Police Detectives (PPD) said in a statement. The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department Bomb squad responded to the scene and rendered the device safe. No customers or employees were injured during the incident at the restaurant.

Pasadena PD say improvised explosive thrown into Cheesecake Factory, no injuries. If you saw anything tonight, please call (626) 744-4241 pic.twitter.com/OeI9qS0Bqx  LASD Altadena Sta. (@ALDLASD) February 3, 2017

The PPD are currently investigating the incident. The motive of the suspect, who police say is a male of Hispanic or Middle Eastern descent, 60, thin build, with a heavy beard and wearing all black clothing and a black beanie, according to witness descriptions, is currently unknown.

This evening an incendiary device exploded within our Pasadena restaurant, The Cheescake Factory said in a statement. Thankfully, none of our guests or staff was injured. Law enforcement is actively investigating the incident and we hope to reopen in Pasadena on Friday, as usual.
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's village of Casavieja observed its annual celebration of Saint Blaise on Friday, where masked 18-year-olds dress as "zarramaches", a reference to their outlandish costumes topped by a multicolored conical hat. Teenagers gather at the central Spanish village's town hall, dressed in white robes, straw mats and cowbells, before parading through the streets brandishing wooden sticks and oranges and chasing younger children. The origins behind the folk tradition that dates back centuries are unclear with some suggesting that the jangles of cowbells serve to purify the village. (Reporting by Amanda Calvo; Editing by Sonya Dowsett)
A White House adviser's commentary about a massacre in Kentucky that never happened has sparked seemingly endless snickering online, with jabs like "never remember" and "I survived the Bowling Green massacre."

Kellyanne Conway mentioned the fictional massacre in an MSNBC interview Thursday as the reason for a temporary travel ban for Iraqis in 2011, saying it also proved why the Trump administration's ban was necessary. It thrust this college town back into the national spotlight, nearly three years after a sinkhole that swallowed several classic Corvettes at a museum in Bowling Green garnered worldwide attention.

Even Big Red, the beloved, furry Western Kentucky University mascot, wasn't immune: One social media post shows him sprawled on the ground with the inscription "Never forget."

"The jokes are flying for sure," said Guy Jordan, who teaches at Western Kentucky. "My sense of things is that we are today a city of people walking around looking at their phones and giggling softly to ourselves."

Jordan quipped the only massacres in Bowling Green have been some of Western's football victories.

For Bowling Green radio personality Jelisa Chatman, Conway's remarks were like a gift from heaven as an on-the-air subject.

"You wake up in the morning and you think, 'What am I going to talk about today?'" she said. "And God is like, 'Here you go. You need something to talk about, how about this?"

At Home Cafe & Marketplace, the most popular pizza Friday was "the Bowling Green Massacre" pie. The specialty pizza with blackened chicken, mac' and cheese and jalapenos was on pace to set a one-day sales record at the Bowling Green restaurant, said owner Josh Poling.

"The minute I heard it last night, I was like, 'Oh gosh, that's too good of an opportunity to pass up,'" he said.

All proceeds from the specialty pizza's sales will go to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he said.

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Meanwhile, someone registered the domain name bowlinggreenmassacre.com, and people clicking on the site were automatically directed to the website of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Friday night, a group of people gathered at a Bowling Green park where they lit candles in remembrance of massacre victims.

Conway initially cited the Bowling Green "massacre" as a reason why the Trump administration's temporary ban on immigration from several Muslim-majority nations is necessary. She said President Barack Obama implemented a similar ban in 2011 after two men from Iraq were arrested in Kentucky on charges that they plotted to send money and weapons to al-Qaida. The men had been mistakenly admitted to the U.S. as refugees in 2009 but never were accused of plotting attacks inside the U.S.

Conway tweeted Friday that she meant to say "terrorists" instead, and not everyone in Bowling Green was piling on.

Mayor Bruce Wilkerson said he understands how someone can "misspeak" during an interview, and said he appreciated the "clarification."

Asked how people were responding, the mayor said: "People roll their eyes at trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill."

Bowling Green is the home of Republican U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. His spokeswoman said Friday the focus should be on immigration policy.

"Regardless of her words, our visa and refugee systems are severely broken, and the situation regarding the Bowling Green terrorists demonstrates that point," said Paul spokeswoman Kelsey Cooper.

Bowling Green has long had a reputation as a welcoming place for refugees, and the city is home to the International Center of Kentucky, a refugee resettlement agency. In the past 10 years, more than 2,000 refugees resettled in Bowling Green from more than a dozen countries, including some Muslim-majority countries, said the agency's executive director, Albert Mbanfu.

Even some of those poking fun at Conway's "massacre" comment, however, said it reflected more serious concerns.

"It's funny and we can laugh at it," said Barry Kaufkins, who teaches at Western Kentucky. "But I think a lot of the laughter is so we don't cry. A lot of people are really worried about some of the rhetoric, not to mention the behavior, from this administration."
Roy Tohme has high hopes for the presidency of Donald Trump. The Lebanese lawyer, 31, says Trump and his policies on the Middle East have been misrepresented and misunderstood.

We realized soon after Trump won that the rhetoric was like, Trump is against Arabs and Muslims, and Muslims and Arabs are against Trump, says Tohme, who lives in Beirut and spoke to TIME by phone. He says that is simply not true, and that Trumps agenda and policies are being welcomed by some people across the region. At first some people were afraid. Now that he won, everyones coming out.

In the week since President Trump issued his executive order targeting refugees and citizens of seven countries in the Middle East and Africa, more than 40,000 people have liked the Friends of Donald J. Trump in Lebanon Facebook page. Most of the members seem to be Lebanese but some are from Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. Many in the online community praise Trumps strongman talk of fighting terrorism and ask him to destroy the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), using the hashtag #MakeTheMiddleEastGreatAgain.

We love you mr president keep going, reads one comment. He has every right to protect his own people from any foreign threat, reads another. Others have more simple requests: Love u trump and my dream is to go to America.

Perhaps the support for Trump in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region shouldnt come as a huge surprise. The Obama administration has been criticized here for being too soft on Iran, prioritizing the nuclear deal over solving the Syrian conflict while looking the other way at Tehrans support of President Bashar Al-Assads regime. Allowing Iran to pursue an expansionist agenda has a big effect on its areas of influence across the region  especially in Lebanon, where Iran lends support to the powerful Shiite militant group Hezbollah. Lebanese feel they are under the domination of Iran, says Toufic Hindi, a veteran Lebanese politician and commentator.

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Trump, however, has taken a different tack. Hes put Iran on notice, says Hindi admiringly of national security advisor Michael Flynns comments on Wednesday after Iran reportedly carried out a missile test. Trumps promise to play hardball with Iran play into a regional dynamic where Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran compete for influence. Most of Trumps supporters here say they expected that if elected, Hilary Clinton would have had a similar regional approach to Obama.

Some have confidence in Trump due in part to Walid Phares, a Lebanese-American who acted as an advisor on the Middle East for the new president. Hindi was with Phares during his time as part of the political wing of the Lebanese Forces movement during Lebanons civil war. Its not like having an American advisor, says Hindi. He is from the region and he knows well the Arab world from experience.

There has been some regional backlash against Trumps ban on nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries and the halting of the U.S. refugee program. Both Iraq and Iran have signaled they may ban U.S. nationals, but there has been more outrage and protest in the U.S. than in the Middle East about these executive orders. Indeed, Kuwait has had similar visa prohibitions on citizens of certain Middle East countries, including Iraq and Syria, since 2011.

Those active on the Friends of Donald J. Trump in Lebanon board appear to be overwhelmingly Christian though Tohme says supporters are near equally divided between Christians and Muslims, roughly representing the countrys demographics. Trump has clear support from some Muslims too.

Ali Nehme was driving his taxi in Beirut when heard on the radio that Trump had won the election. I was so happy, says Nehme. He thinks Trump will be more effective in fighting ISIS than his predecessor Barack Obama. I would have voted for Trump.

ISIS still controls swathes of territory in the Middle East right up to the Lebanese border. Obamas policy in Syria was largely seen as weak and unresponsive, even by opposition groups Washington supported. I like someone who takes decision, and takes action, Nehme says.

Nehme shrugs off the ban on the seven majority-Muslim countries and says he doesnt see it as ban on Muslims, only on terrorists. Lebanon is not one of the countries affected by the ban and like many Lebanese Nehme doubts that ban could ever be extended to his country.

Many on the Facebook page cheered on the ban and Tohme says the U.S. has right to protect itself and temporarily ban nationals from some countries. Half of those countries dont have functioning governments, Tohme says.

What does Tohme hope Trump will accomplish in the next four years? First, we hope it will be eight years, says Tohme. And if America becomes great again, we are sure Lebanon will tag along.
Valletta (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said European leaders may commit to a union of "different speeds" when they make a major declaration on its future at a summit in Rome next month.

The European Union has long been riven by debate about whether all countries must commit to full integration including the single currency, or whether some can go at different paces.

The 27 leaders minus Britain are due to make a declaration at the summit in Rome in March marking the 60th anniversary of the EU, in which they will set out a post-Brexit roadmap.

"We certainly learned from the history of the last years, that there will be as well a European Union with different speeds, that not all will participate every time in all steps of integration" Merkel told reporters after a summit in Malta.

"I think this may be in the Rome declaration as well."

Merkel said the idea was to set out a plan for the next ten years of the EU, which has been buffeted by the eurozone crisis, Brexit, migration, the Ukraine conflict and now faces a new challenge in the form of US President Donald Trump.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, a group of the EU's founding members, also issued a statement on Friday backing a two-speed EU.
Valletta (AFP) - European Union leaders will try to rally together to revive the beleaguered bloc at a special summit in Malta Friday in the face of "threats" from migration, Brexit and Donald Trump.

It is the latest in a series of crisis meetings since Britain voted to leave the EU last June, but fears about the new US president have strengthened the sense that the bloc is now at a decisive moment in its history.

The first part of the meeting, which all 28 leaders will attend, will focus on the migration crisis amid warnings of a new surge in people making the dangerous sea crossing from Libya.

"Our main goal for the Malta summit is to stem the flow of irregular migration from Libya to Europe. This is the only way to stop people dying in the deserts and at sea," EU President Donald Tusk said in Valletta on Thursday.

British premier Theresa May will miss the second part when the other 27 discuss the way ahead after Brexit, including a flagship summit in Rome in March to mark the EU's 60th anniversary.

With doubts growing over the Trump administration's commitment to the transatlantic alliance with Europe, the leaders will also discuss "international issues" facing the union.

- 'Highly unpredictable' -

Tusk, who will chair the summit, warned this week that Trump was a "threat" to the EU along with Russian aggression, an increasingly assertive China and domestic populism.

In a letter to EU leaders, Tusk said those factors "as well as worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable."

But Tusk also echoed what many EU leaders have said -- that Trump is a chance for a Europe to finally unify after Brexit and the eurozone crisis, and perhaps even take Washington's place in global politics and trade.

Unity has, however, often eluded the EU on the migration crisis, which has seen more than one million people flee war, poverty and oppression in Syria, the Middle East and North Africa.

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The route from Libya to Italy has become the most pressing problem, after the EU cut sea crossings from Turkey to Greece by 98 percent thanks to a deal with Ankara.

Most of the 181,000 people who came via Libya in 2016 were illegal economic migrants, unlike the asylum seekers arriving in Greece from Syria, the EU says.

- 'More and more dying' -

The leaders will agree steps to stop migrants taking boats in the first place, including help for the Libyan coastguard and border forces, according to a copy of a summit declaration seen by AFP.

With rights groups warning about terrible conditions caused by people smugglers, other steps include helping Libyan communities to host migrants and working with the UN refugee agency and the International Organisation for Migration, it says.

But talk of a Turkey-style deal with Libya is impossible given the chaos following the 2011 toppling of Moamer Kadhafi, while plans for processing camps for migrants outside EU territory are not yet "mature", an EU official said.

"This is a very difficult, complicated route but there is no alternative to trying. More and more people are dying, so the status quo is not sustainable," the official said.

The IOM urged EU leaders to take "decisive action".

The EU leaders will discuss international issues over lunch, where May could be asked to "debrief" her colleagues about her meeting with Trump last week.

May will say she won a guarantee of support for NATO from Trump and urge other EU leaders to meet commitments to spend two percent of GDP on defence.

The new US president raised alarm in Europe when he condemned the transatlantic military alliance as "obsolete" and criticised some members for not paying their share.
Milo Yiannopoulos (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)



WASHINGTON  Milo Yiannopoulos, the conservative provocateur and Breitbart News columnist, claims he is going to attend the White House press briefing on Friday.

Ill be there, Yiannopoulos said in an email to Yahoo News.

Yiannopoulos said he didnt know whether he would get to ask White House press secretary Sean Spicer a question at the briefing. He previously attended a briefing last March. Yiannopoulos asked former White House press secretary Josh Earnest about his belief that Facebook and Twitter are punishing conservative and libertarian points of view.

The briefing comes at the end of a week when a speech Yiannopoulos planned to deliver at University of California, Berkeley was canceled amid violent protests. President Trump responded to the demonstrations with a tweet on Thursday morning that seemed to suggest he might pull federal funds from the university.

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view  NO FEDERAL FUNDS?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

Yiannopoulos has earned fans and sparked outrage by attacking feminism, Islam and political correctness. In his speeches and columns, Yiannopoulos has argued that there is no gender pay gap, that Muslim immigration would endanger the country and that rape culture is a myth. He was also a vocal supporter of Trump, whom he dubbed Daddy, during last years presidential campaign. Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter last July after encouraging his followers to attack actress Leslie Jones for her role in the reboot of Ghostbusters. The movie featured women on the titular team that was originally made famous by a male cast.

Yahoo News emailed Spicer to confirm Yiannopoulos would be attending the briefing on Friday and to ask if he would be allowed to ask a question. As of this writing, Spicer had not responded.

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UPDATE (February 3, 1:14 p.m.): Despite very clearly telling multiple media outlets he would be at the briefing on Friday, Yiannopoulos did not attend. In a note posted on his Facebook page, Yiannopoulos claimed he is instead focusing on television appearances in the wake of the protests at University of California, Berkeley.

I wont be headed to the White House today as some news reports are suggesting  en route to New York for cable news, Yiannopoulos wrote. Had fun at the press briefing last time but Im the biggest story in the country and Im focusing on TV! Ill drop Sean and Daddy a line about Berkeley privately.

Read more from Yahoo News:
A jury on Wednesday convicted a Minnesota man of shooting five Black Lives Matter protesters in 2015, the Associated Press reports.

Allen Scarsella, of Bloomington, was found guilty of all charges, which ranged from assault to rioting. The 24-year-old was accused of shooting and injuring five black men who were protesting against the death of Jamar Clark, another black man who was killed by a police officer in 2015, according to AP.

Prosecutors argued that Scarsellas shootings were racially motivated. He and three other men were arrested after the incident, according to WCCO, a local CBS affiliate.

A video from the night of the shootings showed Scarsella waiving a gun and making racially charged statements about the protesters, WCCO reported. Other evidence included text messages saying Scarsella wanted to shoot black people and a second video in which he said he was on a mission and locked and loaded.

His sentencing will take place March 10, and Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman told WCCO that Scarsella could face up to 19 years in prison.

Mr. Scarsellas conduct was truly outrageous, Freeman said. Racist language, his conduct is simply not acceptable.
From Naomi Campbell and Bella Hadid to Irina Shayk, Natasha Poly and photographer, Mert Alas, the freshly announced departure of Givenchy creative director, Riccardo Tisci, hasn't left the fashion world indifferent. In fact, in less than 24 hours, the Italian designer and his work at the house have been celebrated the world over on the internet. Here's a look at some of the tributes to the designer, who could soon take over as creative director of Versace.

Riccardo Tisci stood down from the helm of Givenchy to widespread acclaim from models, photographers, as well as editors of the biggest fashion magazines. As soon as the Italian designer's departure from Givenchy was officially announced, Thursday, February 2, major industry figures instigated an outpouring of tributes to his creativity, skill, and his work at the fashion house. His 12 years of loyal service were celebrated in a flood of pictures -- including magazine covers, campaigns and catwalk shows -- shared on the Instagram accounts of personalities with whom he worked.

Star models

Bella Hadid, who, like many stars, is close to the Italian designer, looked back at her two years working with the Givenchy head, saluting Riccardo Tisci's "genuine love for the art, design and fashion." In a long text posted on her Instagram account, the young model notably declared: "You are a genius of a generation," adding, "You are an inspiration to me and so many others."

Italian model Mariacarla Boscono took a similar tone, posting around 10 photos on Instagram capturing previous collaborations with the designer. The 36-year-old model, who says she is very moved by the announcement, captioned several of the shots "Dreams come true."

Naomi Campbell, Irina Shayk, Candice Swanepoel, Lineisy Montero, Camille Hurel, Greta Varlese, Natasha Poly, Imaan Hammam and Joan Smalls were just some of the models who posted messages of friendship and goodwill, thanking the Italian designer and wishing him all the best for the future.

Models aren't the only ones paying homage to Riccardo Tisci, who struck up friendships with some of the biggest names in fashion, such as Carine Roitfeld, to whom he is very close. The journalist/stylist notably posted a photo of the designer's first couture collection for Givenchy in 2005, as well as a 2013 shot from a Givenchy campaign featuring Roitfeld and her daughter Julia, with the message "Thanks Riccardo! We are a family."

The famous photographer, Mert Alas -- who forms one half of the Mert & Marcus duo with Marcus Piggot -- also paid homage to Riccardo Tisci's work for Givenchy, the photographers having worked with the designer on several occasions. Posting a photo of himself with Riccardo Tisci, Mert Alas said "Congratulations for your great achievement at the House of Givenchy and good luck for the next chapter."
Avdiivka (Ukraine) (AFP) - US President Donald Trump was to hold his first talks with Ukraine's leader on Saturday as a surge in fighting killed dozens and refocused global attention on bloodshed in the EU's backyard.

The phone conversation comes with the death toll at 35 following a week of clashes between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed insurgents in a level of violence unseen in the eastern Ukraine war zone since 2015.

The battles erupted as Trump seeks to build a friendship with Russia's Vladimir Putin. Some analysts linked the escalation of the violence to this potential thaw in relations while others attributed it to more local issues.

During the scheduled call Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko will seek to win assurances of Washington's continued diplomatic and non-lethal military support which came under former president Barack Obama's administration.

It also follows Trump's phone conversation with Putin on January 28 that both sides described as constructive.

The rebels along with Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday signed up to calls for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the flashpoint town of Avdiivka by Sunday.

But the demand for the shooting to stop has not halted the violence and so far there is little sign of the big guns being pulled back around the Kiev-held industrial town of 25,000 at the centre of the fighting.

- Power plant out -

Overnight and early Saturday in Avdiivka passed with relative calm compared with previous days.

But the Ukrainian army said one of its soldiers had been killed in the area.

Kiev military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said the separatists "had pulled their tanks up to" Avdiivka on Saturday afternoon in apparent preparation for another battle.

A rebel military commander was also killed in a car bombing in what appeared to have been an internal dispute over power and unrelated to the ongoing violence.

Most residents of this blue-collar town work in a major coke plant that has been heavily damaged by the shelling.

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- Broken peace deal -

Avdiivka remained without electricity on Saturday and with only sporadic power supplies to heat homes against freezing temperatures and limited supplies of water.

The giant plant provides electricity for much of the region and has been the target of previous deadly rebel attacks.

Plant spokesman Dmytro Murashko told AFP that work brigades were trying again to repair broken power lines after shelling halted their earlier efforts.

Friday was one of the bloodiest days with nine civilians killed -- two of them inside the town.

The call to withdraw heavy weapons was made under the coordination of mediators from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

It provides for the "withdrawal by 5 February 2017 into permanent storage sites of all weapons regulated by Minsk agreements to the distances defined in them and beyond the respective lines."

The Minsk deal was signed in February 2015 and defined a step-by-step solution to one of Europe's bloodiest conflicts since the 1990s Balkans wars.

It has since been repeatedly broken -- prompting Wednesday's meeting of negotiators to call for the warring sides to ensure "strict adherence to (a) full and comprehensive cessation of fire".

The 33-month conflict began shortly after Ukraine ousted its Russian-backed leader in February 2014.

Moscow responded by annexing Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in March 2014 before allegedly plotting the eastern insurgency to keep Ukraine under its thumb after Kiev tilted toward the West.

The Kremlin sees most of the former Soviet Union as part of its geopolitical sphere of influence.

That stance has been strongly disputed by Washington and European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Washington's UN ambassador Nikki Haley on Thursday condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine -- a surprising attack given Trump's supportive stance towards Putin.

Russia denies any responsibility for the conflict and blames the United States for igniting the protests that turned Ukraine toward the West.
By Shwe Yee Saw Myint and Simon Lewis YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's national police chief has taken personal charge of an investigation into the killing of a prominent lawyer and adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party, police sources said, after leaks and conflicting comments by officers about its progress. The killing of Muslim advocate Ko Ni, 63 - shot in the head on Sunday in front of onlookers while he held his grandson outside Yangon's international airport - has rocked the commercial capital, where acts of political violence are rare. It comes amid heightened religious and communal tensions in the Buddhist-majority country, with a report from the United Nations human rights office on Friday saying a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in the northwest in recent months "very likely" amounted to crimes against humanity. Tens of thousands turned out for Ko Ni's funeral, and the public is closely watching how authorities investigate a killing the civilian president's office has called an attempt to destabilize the state. Colleagues have told Reuters Ko Ni was working on amendments to Myanmar's military drafted constitution to help the National League for Democracy-led government rule effectively in a system that keeps soldiers in control of key ministries. Major General Zaw Win, chief of the Myanmar Police Force, arrived in Yangon from the capital, Naypyidaw, on Thursday to oversee the probe, which is being led by the police's criminal investigation department, two police officials told Reuters. The official, who like other police spoke about the investigation on condition of anonymity, said the military's domestic intelligence agency was also involved in the probe. A military intelligence agent told Reuters he was instructed to monitor Ko Ni in the months before the lawyer's death. The intelligence agency was primarily concerned with finding out how the suspect obtained a firearm, ownership of which is tightly controlled in Myanmar, the official said. CITIZEN INVESTIGATORS The suspected shooter - named by police as Kyi Linn, 53 - was arrested after a group of taxi drivers chased the him down. One of the drivers was himself shot and killed. Despite a ban on police talking publicly about the case, photographs showing parts of a report on Kyi Linn's interrogation have spread widely online. Officials believe the images were leaked after police used the messaging app Viber to share them with colleagues. The leak sparked a race on social media - use of which has rocketed in Myanmar since recent telecommunications reforms - to identify a man who, according to the document, Kyi Linn said enticed him to shoot Ko Ni. Facebook users posted photos of purported suspects, and analyzed CCTV footage from the airport to devise often far-fetched conspiracy theories. Many in Myanmar distrust the police, who are under the remit of the military. Police themselves have made contradictory statements on whether suspects are under arrest or not. The office of President Htin Kyaw said late on Friday that a 46-year-old named Aung Win Zaw had been detained in the early hours of Monday, just hours after Ko Ni's shooting, in the eastern state of Kayin, which borders Thailand. Aung Win Zaw is accused of conspiring with Kyi Linn to kill Ko Ni, the office said in a statement, adding that police were searching for more suspects. Police said Kyi Linn - who is charged with murder - has been jailed twice in the past for trafficking Buddhist artefacts, but was released in a 2014 amnesty granted by then-President Thein Sein. Another former cell mate told Reuters he thought Kyi Linn would do anything "for his business and money," adding: "I don't think he is related to any political and religious issues." In his home village of Sai Lyar, members of Kyi Linn's family were shocked by the news, carried by police and reporters who have visited their farming community in rural Sagaing Division since Sunday. "I am sure my brother would not kill someone on his own," Kyi Linn's younger sister, Win Kyi, told Reuters. "There must be someone behind him." (Additional reporting by Saw Nang in SAI LYAR VILLAGE; Editing by Alex Richardson)
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday sharply criticized Steve Bannon, President Donald Trumps chief strategist, calling him a white supremacist and saying his presence at high-level meetings threatens the country.

Whats making America less safe is to have a white supremacist named to the National Security Council as a permanent member, while the chairman of the joint chiefs and the director of national intelligence are told Dont call us, well call you, she said during her weekly press conference.

Pelosi added that she believes its a stunning thing that a white supremacist would be a permanent member of the National Security Council. Trump and his administration have seen intense backlash from Democrats and Republicans since announcing the NSC shakeup over the weekend.

Democrats like Pelosi were already worried about Bannons role in the White House, and the administrations actions in recent days have cemented those fears. In Trumps first two weeks in office, Bannon not only got himself a seat on the coveted NSC, but also helped write the presidents inaugural address and his executive order banning refugees.

But Pelosi went further on Thursday, also questioning Trumps ability to serve as president. After her comments about Bannon, she mentioned that House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz was considering legislation to require an independent medical assessment of the President, CNN reports.

If youre going to have your hands on the nuclear codes, you probably  we should probably know what mental state youre in, Pelosi said. I cant wait until he introduces that legislation, to be able to join him as cosponsor of that.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment
JACKSON, N.J. (AP)  A 16-month-old New Jersey girl's life has been saved by her nanny, a University of Pennsylvania student who donated a portion of her liver to aid the child.

Kiersten Miles had only known the Rosko family, of Jackson, for three weeks when she learned that baby Talia had a serious disease that could turn fatal if she didn't receive a liver transplant.

Wanting to help and knowing that her O blood type was compatible, 22-year-old Miles started researching living organ donation.

The family's medical team informed Miles of the ramifications the procedure could have not only on Talia but also herself.

"I can never donate again," she said, even if she is a perfect match.

Undeterred, Miles donated part of her liver at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in early January after she was determined to be a match with Talia.

"It's such a small sacrifice when you compare it to saving a life," Miles said. "Some of her doctors said she possibly wouldn't have made it past 2 years old. All I had to do was be in the hospital for a week and a 5-inch scar."

Doctors have said both Miles and Talia are recovering nicely.

"I didn't know that she was this selfless ) I've come to find out that this is who she is," Talia's mother Farra Rosko said of Miles. "She really is an angel on earth; I know that sounds silly, but she really is."
Pristina (AFP) - NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told Kosovo and Serbia to "calm down" on Friday, following a string of disputes that have sent bilateral tensions rising to their highest level in years.

On a visit to Kosovo, the ANATO secretary general urged all parties to "show restraint and participate in a constructive way" in European Union-brokered talks between the two sides, which were at war in the late 1990s.

"My main message to everyone is to calm down, not use the rhetoric that can increase tensions," he told reporters.

"It is vital that the agreements reached in this dialogue are implemented."

Serbia does not recognise the sovereignty of its former province Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008 a decade after its ethnic Albanian insurgents fought Serbian forces under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

The troops withdrew from the territory following a 11-week bombing campaign by NATO against Serbia.

In 2011 Kosovo and Serbia began the EU-led talks to improve their damaged ties, but relations deteriorated again in recent weeks.

Last month Belgrade sent a train towards Kosovo, painted in the Serbian national colours and covered with the statement "Kosovo is Serbia" in multiple languages.

The move was lambasted as a "deliberate provocation" by Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci, who suggested it was part of a plan to annexe the Serb-populated north of his country.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic eventually halted the train before it crossed the border, saying he took the decision to "avoid a conflict and save lives" based on fears the train would be attacked.

Kosovo was also angered by the arrest in France last month of its former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj on suspicion of war crimes, under an international arrest warrant issued by Serbia.

Leaders of the two Balkan countries have since met in Brussels and agreed to try and ease tensions.
By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA (Reuters) - The head of NATO urged the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia on Friday to ease the tension that has grown in recent weeks since Serbia sent a train painted with the slogan "Kosovo is Serbia" to the border and Kosovo police stopped it entering. Serbia's president has accused the authorities in Pristina of wanting to start a war, while his Kosovo counterpart has said Serbia could use the model of Russia in Crimea to annex the northern part of Kosovo. Tensions rose further this week when the Kosovo authorities said they would remove a wall in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica built by Serbs there. "Not more rhetoric but we need dialogue, we need to reduce tensions to avoid incidents...and move forward normalizing the process between Pristina and Belgrade," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after meeting Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa. The integration of the Western Balkan countries into the EU and NATO is seen by the two institutions as a way to guarantee peace in a region still scarred by the wars that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Kosovo, backed by the U.S. and major western European states, declared independence from Serbia in 2008. Belgrade considers it part of its territory and supports the Serb minority there. NATO still has around 4,500 troops stationed in Kosovo to keep the fragile peace. Kosovo Albanians make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's 1.8 million population. Northern Kosovo is home to a Serb minority of around 40,000 to 50,000 people who do not consider Pristina their capital. Normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia is a key condition for both countries to progress in their bids to join the European Union. (Reporting by Fatos Bytyci; Editing by Ivana Sekularac and Hugh Lawson)
Nepali model Anjali Lama hailed a "dream come true" on Friday after becoming the first transgender model to walk the runway at an Indian fashion show.

The 32-year-old, who was born a man in rural Nepal, has been strutting the catwalk at Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, India's premier fashion show, which started on Wednesday and runs until Sunday.

"Ever since I started modelling it's been my dream to appear in a fashion week. My dream has come true and I feel so happy and grateful," she told AFP.

Lama was born Nabin Waiba to a family of poor farmers in the remote Nuwakot region in mountainous Nepal.

But she always knew that she had been born in the wrong body and in 2005 took the decision to dress as a woman for the first time.

Lama, who has undergone partial sex reassignment was ostracised by members of her own family when she came out and said it had been a difficult journey to get to where she is today.

"The name I carved out as the first transgender model in India wasn't an easy process. I had to work hard, mentally handle stress and pressure. I struggled a lot," she said.

Lama added that she hoped transgenders across conservative South Asia would take heart from her success.

"Some transgenders may feel scared to come out. If they come out after being inspired by me ... (and) think 'I can be like her' and then believe in themselves, then I'll feel very proud of myself," she said.
YENAGOA, Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria will soon pay all overdue cash stipends to former militants who signed up for an amnesty in 2009 in the Niger Delta oil hub, the government said on Thursday. "We advise all to remain calm as all stipend arrears and other outstanding payments under the programme will soon be paid," the office of the government amnesty programme said in a statement. Militants have threatened to resume attacking oil facilities should the cash payments not be made. (Reporting by Tife Owolabi and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle; Editing by)
Bogota (AFP) - Nobel Peace Prize winners condemned US President Donald Trump at a gathering on Thursday at which their host accused him of "a discourse of hate" against immigrants.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, the prize's latest winner for progress towards ending his country's civil war, opened the four-day summit of peace prize winners in Bogota.

"Discrimination, the refugee crisis and the growing, absurd rejection of migrants under a discourse of hate and exclusion that wins over the hearts of frightened people. What can we say to humanity?" Santos said.

He did not name Trump but his comments were widely interpreted as an attack on the US leader's recent moves to restrict immigration from Latin America and seven Muslim-majority countries.

Other laureates such as Tawakkul Karman of Yemen, Costa Rica's former president Oscar Arias and US anti-landmine activist Jody Williams also spoke up to criticize Trump at the gathering.
New York (AFP) - A famed New York art museum has joined the throng of protests against President Donald Trump's travel ban by replacing Western art with pieces by Iranian, Iraqi and Sudanese artists.

The Museum of Modern Art said works by Sudanese painter Ibrahim el-Salahi, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid and five artists with Iranian backgrounds replaced seven Western works, including by Picasso and Matisse.

The Republican president's explosive executive order came into effect last Friday, closing US borders to refugees for 120 days and visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

Syrian refugees have been banned indefinitely.

The museum switched the artworks late Thursday in its fifth-floor galleries, which ordinarily are devoted to Western modernism before 1945. The changes were reported by The New York Times and confirmed by the museum.

The five artists with Iranian backgrounds include Marcos Grigorian, the Los Angeles based video artist Tala Madani, photographer Shirana Shahbazi, sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and painter Charles Hossein Zenderoudi.

The museum also placed a large sculpture of aluminum and steel by Siah Armajani, a US artist who was born in Iran, in a lobby courtyard.

The museum has scheduled screenings of films from people subject to the ban, including the Iraqi-born German director Kais al-Zubaidi and Oussama Mohammad, a Syrian filmmaker living in France.

Founded in 1929, the museum is one of the world's premier modern art museums.

A gateway for immigrants into America for centuries, New York has staged multiple protests since the travel ban came into effect last Friday.

Hollywood actor-turned-activist Shia LaBeouf has collaborated with two artists on a live-stream protest outside New York's Museum of the Moving Image, which he vows will continue for the duration of Trump's time in office.
By David Gaffen

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices rose on Friday after the United States imposed sanctions on some Iranian individuals and entities, days after the White House rebuked Tehran for a ballistic missile test.

The strong U.S. January jobs figure was also supportive, as it suggests ongoing strength in energy demand.

Front-month U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures settled up 29 cents, or 0.5 percent, to $53.83. The contract gained more than 1 percent for the week.

Brent crude futures settled 25 cents higher at $56.81 a barrel, giving it a 2 percent gain on the week, the first significant weekly rise this year.

Volume in U.S. crude futures on Friday was relatively low, with about 440,000 contracts changing hands by 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT), short of the 200-day moving average of 528,000 contracts a day.

"I think that the consensus is that Iran supported the market, but I think that its probably more on the stronger jobs report leading to higher demand in the near term," said Carl Larry, director at Frost & Sullivan.

U.S. job growth surged more than expected in January as construction firms and retailers ramped up hiring. Nonfarm payrolls were up by 227,000, with the unemployment rate edging up to 4.8 percent.

Under the sanctions, announced by the U.S. Treasury, 13 individuals and 12 entities cannot access the U.S. financial system or deal with U.S. companies. They are also subject to "secondary sanctions," which means foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them, or risk being blacklisted by the United States.

This is the first move by the administration of President Donald Trump against Iran. It follows his vows during the 2016 campaign to get tough on Tehran.

The news added to volatility in what had already been a day of choppy trading. Analysts said the market is torn between promised cuts from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and fears over rising U.S. shale oil production.

"While the market is taking these actions in stride so far as unlikely to result in a larger military conflict that would put Persian Gulf crude oil supplies at risk, the odds of that scenario are certainly higher than a week ago," wrote Timothy Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures in New York.

(Reporting by Libby George in London and David Gaffen in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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Among the millions of vibrant, emotional images of protest packing our timelines since Donald Trump's inauguration, one simple six-letter word has stood out:

Resist.

Variations of the word have dominated social media since the president took office in late January. In the three days following his de-facto Muslim ban, for example, #Resist and #TheResistance have appeared in over 2.5 million tweets, according to data provided by Twitter.

SEE ALSO: Twitter accounts form digital army in resistance against Trump

As the political turmoil brewed, critics of Trump created a range of hashtags  from #IResist to #ResistTrump  to post alongside actions in the fight against the policies of the new president.

These posts  and the IRL actions behind them, from marches to calls to congressional representatives  have all morphed into a new social movement. At the moment, it's a movement that appears to have no set name, no particular agenda and no single organizing force.

Unlike the #WomensMarch or #BlackLivesMatter, for instance, #TheResistance happened almost overnight and through a totally decentralized collection of people with no one person or group leading the way.

But it's made it way all the way to the White House, where a giant Greenpeace banner hanging from a crane seemed to spur its popularity even more.

This morning seven activists deployed a 70-ft by 35-ft banner that reads RESIST above the White House. This was call for YOU. #ResistOften pic.twitter.com/CVbr9VNZBu  Greenpeace USA (@greenpeaceusa) January 26, 2017

Although it has been embraced by a wide swath of Americans, #Resist has come to symbolize the fight for all those most vulnerable under Trump  immigrants, Muslims, people of color, women, members of the LGTBQ community and anyone else who feels they have been targeted by his policies.

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"They're worried they're going to lose what [rights] they have gained," said David Lyons, a legal philosopher at Boston University, noting that members of the LGBTQ community, for instance, only very recently secured the fundamental right of marriage equality.

"So they are resisting."

We're not going to shut up. We're going to resist. Stand with @SenateDems tonight at the Supreme Court. https://t.co/Ny57jNFcnt  Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 30, 2017

People are also latching onto the word through efforts like #ResistTrumpTuesdays, which feature sit-ins, street protests and visits to local representatives' offices to challenge the president's agenda.

What's happening right now is "very spontaneous" and unfolding through the ad-hoc efforts of everyday people, according to Lyons, who has studied political resistance for decades. These are people making their own signs, showing up to protest because of a string of tweets, and making donations out of their own pockets.

"There's no better term to describe it," Lyons said. "Resistance is the only term that describes the great variety of actions happening right now."

Chicago protestors show their disdain for Donald Trump's cabinet picks.

Image: scott olson/ Getty Images

Of course, political resistance is nothing new but it's that timeless energy of civic action that seems to be burning in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans right now. And all of it pooled together makes up a broader movement, one the New York Times describes as "hatched on social networks and ... dispatched by mobile phones."

"Unlike the Tea Party and the white-supremacist 'alt-right,' the new movement has no name," the Times' journalist Farhad Manjoo writes. "Call it the alt-left, or, if you want to really drive Mr. Trump up the wall, the alt-majority. Or call it nothing."

From right-to-work protests in middle America to #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations around the country, a wide array of groups are coming together to #Resist. Still, #TheResistance can be seen burning most brightly in the coastal liberal enclaves of the United States, as shown in a heat map by Affinio.

Image: affinio

It may have its geographic biases, but the resistance to Trump appears largely united, with solidarity being seen as the only way forward.

"They cant just care [only] about womens rights or gay rights or the rights of black people" or any other individual group being oppressed, said Clifford Lampe, a professor of information at the University of Michigan who studies online social movements. "You kind of have to support that whole thing as a package now."

Hashtags spring up in response to a variety of issues, from natural disasters to instances of police brutality, but outside of a few notable exceptions such as #BlackLivesMatter, they tend to burn out after a period of time. #Resist could be different, Lampe believes, because few movements have affected as many people simultaneously as Trump's agenda. "There are very few events where it touches so many different people's lives," he said.

This can be seen across social media, as celebrities, politicians, advocacy groups, activists, and countless ordinary Americans rally to fight back, enlisting the #Resist hashtag to represent any expression of opposition.

As Trump continues to govern with ferocity, the #Resist hashtag continues to grow. It appears, no matter what you want to call it, The Resistance has arrived.

A Timeline of #Resist

From the first hours of his presidency to the moment he issued a travel ban targeting Muslims, Americans have been saying they will #Resist.

November: Trump is elected, a hashtag is born

Nov. 8, 2016 is a day many Americans will never forget. Jaws dropped and tears ran down the faces of Trump detractors around the nation, but within days, some had already worked up a commitment to resistance. The hashtag began percolating.

We won't tolerate any normalization of the white supremacists currently attempting a government coup #TheResistance #Resist #NotMyPresident  Tara Obama Dublin (@taradublinrocks) November 19, 2016

I am with the First Lady, Michelle Obama. I am refusing to say his name. We should all refuse to say his name. #resist  Roberta Brooks (@Roberta823) November 11, 2016

December: #NoDAPL protesters earn a victory

The battle to halt construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172-mile oil pipeline that will run through four states, saw many using the hashtag to advocate the rights of indigenous people, environmental safety and water quality, and to call for more progressive civic action. On Dec. 5, construction on the pipeline was temporarily put on hold.

January: The Women's March overshadows the president's inauguration

The day after Trump was sworn into office, millions of Americans showed him exactly how they felt about his presidency. And the resistance was real. #Resist tied protests across to country to a single word.

This is what it looks like when 750,000 people #Resist pic.twitter.com/25JNIeQ9WV  Sam Underwood (@samunderwood) January 22, 2017

Flash protests break out after Trump announces Muslim ban

Massive flash protests at airports around the country showed just how quickly Americans will spring into action. Lawyers, translators, and activists rushed to defend those facing uncertainty under a travel ban placed on seven Muslim-majority counties. Of course, #Resist was there all the way.





Standing with hundreds at the MSP Airport today against the #MuslimBan.



Find a protest and #resist: https://t.co/p3DjDtc4Hy pic.twitter.com/qdjq3xWYDn  Keith for DNC (@EllisonCampaign) January 29, 2017

Activism becomes a regular, scheduled activity with #ResistTrumpTuesdays

Following the rise of the hashtag comes #ResistTrumpTuesdays, a collection of loosely organized efforts by groups such as the Working Families Party to appeal to local lawmakers and march on the streets.

"In 1934 in the Great Depression I was still able get a BA with no loansunion people fought for & WON free higher ed" #ResistTrumpTuesdays pic.twitter.com/9AVeq5gaBE  Resist Trump Chicago (@ResistTrumpTues) January 31, 2017

#ResistTrumpTuesdays protest in Chicago calling on @SenatorDurbin and @SenDuckworth to vote NO on DeVos & Sessions & all Trump appointees. pic.twitter.com/rDCu9eqTQF  Love+Struggle Photos (@sarahdashji) January 31, 2017

February: The hashtag continues

Celebrities, digital influencers, popular activists, advocacy groups and politicians have all flocked to the term. Their support sees the #resist hashtag find its home in the social media feeds of all Americans.

Blessed to live in a time where I have the freedom to wear what I want. Happy World Hijab Day  #resist pic.twitter.com/f23Cq5RHA0  Ibtihaj Muhammad (@IbtihajMuhammad) February 1, 2017

The GOP leadership has cravenly capitulated to Trump's immigration ban. We look to our brave federal judiciary to check his madness. #Resist  George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) January 29, 2017
Whether you are a film fanatic or just in it for the gowns, awards season is a no-brainer excuse for a theme party. Hollywood glitz and glamour offers the perfect opportunity to pull out your fancy Champagne flutes and costume jewelry for an affair to remember.

Maybe you're partial to a menu of bad film-food puns (Manchester by the Sea-Salt Caramels?), but if you prefer a more refined gathering, the best place to start is with the right cocktail.

This recipe for a Red Carpet Royal is a traditional champagne cocktail that's dressed for the biggest night in Hollywood, this year which falls on Feb. 26. We've added some gold leaf, which you should be able to find in most specialty stores, because we like the sparkle. If you prefer minimalism, you can leave the gold leaf out and have an equally delicious cocktail.

We call for a sugar cube placed at the bottom of each glass. Though you can use granulated sugar or simple syrup instead, the sugar cube creates an experience for you and your guests. As the sugar dissolves, it helps to create layers while it slowly sweetens the cocktail. Your first sip will be unlike your last, and all the while, the cube will be sending up bubbles for Academy Award-worthy drama.

In addition to the champagne, this cocktail is flavored with elderflower liqueur and lemon bitters. Elderflower liqueur is a spirit made with the small, white flower that blooms throughout Europe. It is a much-loved flavor worldwide, found in cocktails, cake, and even savory dishes, and it is gaining popularity in the United States.

Elderflower liqueur is typically sweet, though it varies by brand, and adds a bright, floral note to cocktails. If you have any left over from this recipe, you may enjoy it as an addition to classic cocktails, like a gin and tonic with lime, or even mixed into a cold glass of hard cider.

Bitters are the Best Supporting Actor of the cocktail world, balancing the sweetness and acidity of the main flavors. Made from extractions of herbs, spices, roots, and fruit rinds, bitters are highly concentrated and used in small doses. The Culinary Institute of America's Beverage Instructor Rory Brown explains, "The addition of lemon bitters balances the overt sweetness from the sugar cube and the brightness of the wine. Bitters fine-tune cocktails, just as salt and pepper are used to adjust the final flavors of food."

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Though the cocktail shouldn't be mixed ahead, you can prepare your lemon curl garnish earlier in the day. Make the Royals on demand to make every guest feel like a VIP, and you're sure to land a nod for best host.

RED CARPET ROYAL

Serving: One

Start to finish: 10 minutes

1 sugar cube

2 dashes lemon bitters

1 sheet of gold leaf

1 ounce elderflower liqueur

4.5 ounces sparkling wine

Lemon zest, as needed

Put the sugar cube in the bottom of a flute and add bitters.

Separate the sheet of gold leaf into quarters and place in the bottom of the glass. Add elderflower liqueur, then top with sparkling wine.

Using a channel knife, cut around the axis of the lemon to create a long spiral thread of zest. Place into glass.

Instructor's Note: If you are without a channel knife you can create the spiral using a peeler. Start at the top of the lemon and zest a long continuous spiral around the lemon. When you lay the lemon strip on a cutting board, it should resemble an "S." Using a sharp knife, cut the jagged edge off of one side of the peel. Return to the clean edge and cut another thin strip following the contour of the zest.

Nutrition information per serving: 195 calories; 0 calories from fat; 0 g fat (0 g saturated; 0 g trans fats); 0 mg cholesterol; 7 mg sodium; 16 g carbohydrate; 0 g fiber; 15 g sugar; 0 g protein.

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This article was provided to The Associated Press by The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
Assailant arrived in France at end of January

Louvre evacuated after soldier 'fires at attacker'

Man 'armed with machete shouted Allahu Akbar'

Attacker was carrying two bags, two machetes

Solider 'slightly wounded' in attack

PM says attack was clearly 'terrorist in nature'

Timeline: Terror attacks in France

French soldiers shot and critically wounded a man who shouted Allahu Akbar as he attacked them with a machete on Friday at the Louvre, the worlds most visited museum.

Police sources said the attacker was a 29-year-old with Egyptian identity papers who arrived in France last month.

A group of British students were among the hundreds of panicked visitors at the Louvre who were rushed to secure rooms inside the sprawling museum after the assault.

The attack, which President Francois Hollande said was clearly an act of terrorism, was the latest in a series of deadly assaults in France over the last two years, most of them claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

The man was carrying two backpacks when at around 10am local time he approached four soldiers patrolling at the entrance to the underground Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall, which lies beneath the museum.

They told him he could not bring his bags into the mall.

"That's when he got the knife out and that's when he tried to stab the soldier," said Yves Lefebvre, a police union official.

The soldiers first tried to beat off the attacker before opening fire, said Benoit Brulon, a spokesman for the 3,500-strong military force that patrols Paris and its major tourist attractions.

They fired five bullets at the man, wounding him in the stomach and the leg, and leaving him in a critical condition. Two of the soldiers suffered minor injuries in the encounter.

Police were on Friday night trying to establish whether he acted alone or under instructions, the Paris prosecutor said.

The prosecutor, Francois Molins, confirmed the 29-year-old Egyptian had arrived in Paris on January 26 after acquiring a one-month tourist visa in Dubai.

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Mr Molins hailed the intervention of soldiers, which had halted "a very determined assailant".

The attacker was last night said to be in a life-threatening condition.

The Louvre - one of the world's biggest tourist attractions which last year pulled in 7.3 million visitors - went into emergency lock-down after the attack.

Police sealed off the entrances to the mall, closed off the Rue de Rivoli which runs along the museum and the surrounding streets, and ordered nearby metro stations to be shut down.

A group of around 50 students from Godalming sixth form college in Surrey was among the 1,200 people inside the museum at the time who were taken to windowless rooms, where they had to wait for several hours before being allowed to leave when the all-clear was given.

A statement from the school said: "Godalming College can confirm that a group of students and staff, who are in Paris on a History of Art trip, were at the Louvre this morning at the time of the incident.

"We are pleased to report that all the students and staff are safe."

"There were announcements, then the security guards started running all over the place and after a short period they started gathering everybody up and getting them to one side of the building," said Lance Manus, 73, from Albany, New York.

"They pulled the shades, they didn't want anybody to sit by the windows," said Mr Manus, in Paris with his wife Wendy to mark their 50th wedding anniversary.

"I guess they were concerned that something would be coming from outside."

People were calm, but some young children were crying, they said.

"The very young children, the teachers kept them busy playing games," said Wendy Manus. "They were singing and trying to keep the children calm and quiet."

The museum in central Paris, which is home to the Mona Lisa and the worlds biggest collection of art, remained closed for the rest of Friday but was due to open again on Saturday.

Checks of the attacker's two backpacks found they contained paint spray cans but no explosives, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

A second person who was "acting suspiciously" was also arrested nearby but appeared not to be linked to the attack.

Where the attack took place

The attack's timing was poor for Paris, coming just hours before the city was unveiling its completed bid for the 2024 Olympics. Paris is competing against Budapest and Los Angeles for the games, which it has not hosted since 1924.

It has also thrust security and terrorism threat back into the limelight with just three months to go before presidential elections.

More than 230 people have been killed in terror attacks in France since January 2015, including 130 who died when gunmen and suicide bombers who claimed allegiance to Isil hit several targets in Paris in November 2015.

Fridays attack at the Louvre will likely make even more foreign and French tourists reconsider plans to visit the worlds most popular museum.

More than seven million people visited it last year, but that was down 15 per cent on the year before.

Officials said the sharp drop in numbers at the Louvre, and at the nearby Musee dOrsay, was in large part due to the terror attacks.

The Louvre incident on Friday was strikingly similar to an attack on 7 January 2016, when a Tunisian man brandishing a butchers knife and carrying a backpack assaulted officers on duty in front of a Paris police station.

Police shot him dead on the street outside the station, and later found a document among his belongings in which he had professed allegiance to Isil.

4:24PM

Injured man taken away from scene of Louvre attack

3:47PM

Police raid apartment building

Rory Mulholland, in Paris, reports that police have raided an apartment building about a mile and half from the Louvre, as part of their investigation into the attack.

3:23PM

Louvre to reopen on Saturday

The museum will reopen Saturday, the French culture minister has said.

3:15PM

Louvre whisked visitors to safety in special rooms

The Associated Press reports on the Louvre's secure rooms:

When a man tried to attack soldiers at the Louvre Museum, the historical landmark went into effective lockdown, with no one allowed to leave and hundreds of tourists whisked to safety in special rooms. A Louvre spokeswoman said the visitors were taken to rooms in the vast museum - a medieval former royal palace - that have no windows and are considered "more secure" than the main halls. For security reasons, she wouldn't say whether they are storerooms, or whether the rooms have any paintings in them.

2:50PM

Attacker still unnamed

Police have still not given the name of the attacker, more than five hours after he was shot and critically wounded by soldiers patrolling in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall underneath the museum.

French journalists are reporting that paint spray cans were found in the two bags he was carrying and that he had two machetes in his possession when shot by the soldiers.

2:44PM

Godalming College: All students and staff are safe

Godalming College has sent a statement to the Telegraph:

Godalming College can confirm that a group of students and staff, who are in Paris on a History of Art trip, were at the Louvre this morning at the time of the incident. We are pleased to report that all the students and staff are safe. The College are in constant communication with the Trip Organisers, who are following advice of the local authorities and the foreign office. We have provided updates to parents.

2:25PM

Identity of Louvre attacker unknown, interior ministry says

1:43PM

Witnesses at Louvre attack describe hearing gunshots

1:15PM

First images emerging of the attacker after he was shot

This photo was reportedly taken by a tourist guide:

C'est la guide d'un groupe de 34 touristes chinois qui a pris cette photo alors qu'ils descendaient vers le carrousel du #Louvre. pic.twitter.com/RKwi10b0DT  Stephane Kovacs (@KovacsSt) February 3, 2017

1:11PM

Louvre visitors learned of attack by loudspeaker

Reuters reports that visitors to the Louvre learned by loudspeaker announcement of the attempted attack:

There was no panic, witnesses said, though some children cried as guards directed people to sit tight together and away from windows. "(The announcement) came over the loudspeakers that are dotted around," said Paul Lecher, 68, a retired Parisian and frequent Louvre visitor. "Everything happened calmly," he told Reuters. "It was just a case of listening ... People quickly understood, even those who didn't understand a word of French, that something unusual was happening." The Louvre, home to Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa', ancient Egyptian artefacts and countless other treasures, is a major attraction for visitors to Paris. Housed in a former royal palace on the banks of the river Seine, the museum welcomed 7.3 million visitors last year, or over 23,000 people a day based on its six-day working week. Visitors were kept inside for a time after the attempted attack. "There were announcements, then the security guards started running all over the place and after a short period they started gathering everybody up and getting them to one side of the building," said Lance Manus, 71, from Albany, New York. Manus and his wife Wendy said security guards made people sit tightly together, away from the windows, and that some children were crying. "We sat there for over an hour waiting and finally they said we are going to evacuate... as we exited the police were searching and checking everybody." Asked by reporters if they had been scared, Manus said: "We come from the US, we have our scares just like you have." Around lunchtime in Paris, a notice on the Louvre's web site said it remained closed to visitors.

1:01PM

Trump: "Get smart US"

Donald Trump has weighed in, urging America to "get smart" after the Louvre attack.

He is presumably referring to his executive order barring citizens from seven Muslim nations from entering the US, which has been widely condemned:

A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

12:55PM

French PM: Louvre attack was "terrorist in nature"

12:27PM

Attack will hurt Paris tourism

Telegraph Paris correspondent Rory Mulholland reports:

The attack at the Louvre will likely make even more foreign and French tourists reconsider plans to visit the worlds most popular museum. More than seven million people visited it last year, but that was down 15 per cent on the year before. Officials said the sharp drop in numbers at the Louvre, and at the nearby Musee dOrsay, was in large part due to the spate of deadly terror attacks in France that began in early 2015. Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said about 1,000 people were inside the museum when the attack took place this morning at around 10am local time and were held inside in safe areas before the all-clear was given and they were allowed to move around as normal again.

12:25PM

College students from Surrey among those trapped inside

Despite Downing Street saying no Britons were caught up in the attack, there are reports Britons were trapped inside when the museum went into lockdown.

Godalming College students on a school trip from Surrey were among hundreds of tourists trapped inside.

Staff at the Surrey sixth-form college informed parents that all students were together and following the security advice being given out inside The Louvre as security forces dealt with the incident.

In a letter believed to have been sent to staff and parents wrote: "We wanted to let you know that we have been in contact with the Trip Leaders and that all the students and staff are together, safe, and are following advice from security services.

"They are being kept all together in an area of the museum at the moment.

"From what we are able to glean at this early stage it appears to be an isolated incident."

Conor Bakhuizen, 18, was among British students in the Louvre. In a Twitter exchange with AP, he said he "was in the foyer and suddenly rushed into another room in the museum".

He said the mood was "very tense at first but everyone was vigilant and now everyone is in a good mood".

Been evacuated from the Louvre being held in a safe room it's not lit  Conor  (@conor_bakhuizen) February 3, 2017

Situation at the Louvre right now, waiting to be let out pic.twitter.com/ZgdBPbPp7h  Conor  (@conor_bakhuizen) February 3, 2017

12:17PM

UK updates travel advice for Paris

No British citizens are believed to have been caught up in a shooting incident outside the Louvre in Paris, Downing Street has said.

Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said travel advice for the French capital had been amended due to the incident.

"There is no indication of any British nationals involved in this.

"The travel advice to Paris has been updated, basically exercising caution in the area affected. Our threat level remains where it is.

"The Foreign Office has been liaising with their counterparts in France. Obviously, we are ready to assist if required," he told a regular Westminster briefing.

Rue de Rivoli open to traffic but no pedestrian access, #Louvre still closes, lots of curious bystanders & tourists but less police pic.twitter.com/ZL2KNcNnRJ  Aurelien Breeden (@aurelienbrd) February 3, 2017

12:08PM

Hollande: I salute the courage of the soldiers

French President Francois Hollande said in a tweet that he salutes the courage and the determination shown by the soldiers in this mornings attack at the Louvre:

Je salue le courage et la determination dont ont fait preuve les militaires, ce matin, au Carrousel du Louvre  Francois Hollande (@fhollande) February 3, 2017

11:40AM

Roadblocks cleared and staff returning

The Associated Press reports that staff members are returning to the shopping mall beneath the Louvre and roadblocks have been cleared.

As the roadblocks were cleared, tourists began streaming out of the Louvre. Hundreds of tourists had remained inside the museum during the incident, and some were brought into special safe rooms, according to a witness.

The Louvre said on its website that due to a "serious incident this Friday morning in the Carrousel du Louvre shopping area," the museum would remain closed until further notice.

11:35AM

French Chief of Police on Louvre attack

11:14AM

Attack could affect French election

With France less than three months from a presidential election, a terrorist attack on one of the nation's most iconic institutions is sure to be politicised.

France has been living under a state of emergency since November 2015 after a series of devastating terror attacks and national security is top of the agenda.

Far-right Front National candidate Marine Le Pen has already tweeted following today's attack:

"Support our troops who are on the front line against the threat and Islamic barbarism #Louvre""

Soutien a nos militaires qui sont en premiere ligne face a la menace et a la barbarie islamistes. #Louvre MLP  Marine Le Pen (@MLP_officiel) February 3, 2017

11:03AM

Similarities to previous attack

Telegraph Paris correspondent Rory Mulholland reports:

The Louvre incident was strikingly similar to an attack on 7 January 2016, when a Tunisian man brandishing a butchers knife and carrying a backpack assaulted officers on duty in front of a Paris police station. Police shot him dead on the street outside the station, and later found a document among his belongings in which he had professed allegiance to the so-called Islamic State (Isil) terror group. That incident came a year to the day after an attack on the Paris headquarters of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in which Islamist gunmen burst in and shot dead 12 people. That attack was also claimed by Isil, as were the gun attacks on cafes, the national stadium , and a concert hall in Paris in November 2015 that left 130 people dead. The wave of attacks continued in July last year when a Tunisian drove his truck into crowds in the city of Nice, killing 84 people.

10:52AM

1,000 people were inside Louvre

About 1,000 people were inside the actual museum when the attack occurred and were held inside in safe areas.

One bystander, Olivier Majewski,was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people, 30 or 40, running and screaming "there's been a terror attack."

The 53-year-old said he hid for about 15 minutes before gingerly making his way upstairs.

He said people were clearly scared.

10:50AM

Police 'found two machetes on man'

Police say the man attacked the soldiers after they told him he couldn't enter an underground shopping mall underneath the Louvre with his bags.

"That's when he got the knife out and that's when he tried to stab the soldier," Yves Lefebvre, a police union official, said.

Mr Lefebvre said the man tried to stab one of the soldiers. He was then shot five times.

He said police found two machetes on the man and he was also carrying two bags.

10:27AM

PM says attack was clearly 'terrorist in nature'

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the attack at the Louvre was clearly terrorist in nature, while the Paris prosecutors office has opened an investigation into attempted murder... related to a terrorist enterprise.

France | Recent terror attacks 2012 - 2016

10:25AM

Pictures from the scene

10:18AM

Attacker 'took a bullet in the stomach and in the leg'

Telegraph Paris correspondent Rory Mulholland has more detail from the police:

One soldier in the patrol suffered a minor head injury, police said. The attacker took a bullet in the stomach and in the leg," Luc Poignant, a spokesman for police union SGP-FO, told France Info radio. He was carrying a backpack but no explosives were found in it. He said the attacker appeared to have acted alone. The area around the Louvre, the worlds most visited museum, is one of the most heavily secured parts of Paris. Police and army patrol the district that is visited by millions of foreign tourists every year.

9:57AM

Paris police chief: Louvre attacker wielded machete, shouted 'Allahu akhbar'

News agencies are reporting the Paris police chief has said that the Louvre attacker wielded a machete and shouted 'Allahu akhbar'.

No explosives were found in the attacker's bag and it is believed he was acting alone, but a second person has been detained after "suspicious behaviour".

The attacker's remarks led police to believe he wanted to carry out a terrorist attack, police said.

Where the attack took place

9:47AM

'Attacker assaulted the soldier'

Associated Press reports that a Paris police press office said police had no other details to report other than that a soldier opened fire.

A police union official, Luc Poignant, told BFM-TV that an attacker assaulted the soldier and that the area is now being secured.

9:45AM

Metro stop closed

Trains are now passing the metro stop for the Louvre without stopping:

10:22, Par mesure de securite, Palais Royal Musee du Louvre fermee au public sur la #Ligne7.Les trains passent sans marquer l'arret #RATP  Ligne 7 RATP (@Ligne7_RATP) February 3, 2017

9:40AM

'Thirty officers arrive arms drawn'

People on the streets surrounding the Louvre are describing a heavy security presence:
U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Thursday called on the FBI to step up an investigation into whether Russia is blackmailing President Donald Trump, accusing the administration of giving Vladimir Putins thugs  a thank you present for meddling in the U.S. election.

The Treasury Department said Thursday it would allow companies to conduct limited transactions with the security service, known as the FSB, so information technology products can be imported into Russia. Treasury officials told reporters the action does not signal a shift in policy but merely provides a technical fix in response to direct complaints from companies that were unable to import products without a permit from the FSB, which also regulates importation of software and hardware, even things that are broadly available commercially like cellphones and printers.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer denied the action amounted to easing sanctions on Russia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have thoroughly detailed the Russian security services brazen assault on American democracy in support of candidate Donald Trump. Less than two weeks after walking into the White House, President Trump lifts sanctions on the Russian Security Service, Pelosi said in a statement. Vladimir Putins thugs meddle with an American election, and President Trump gives them a thank you present.

Pelosi said she wants to know, What do the Russians have on President Trump?

She called on the FBI to accelerate their investigation into the financial, personal and political ties between Donald Trump and Russia. President Trumps reckless and dangerous agenda is jeopardizing Americas national security.

A dossier of unsubstantiated allegations about Trumps business dealings and sexual escapades in Russia surfaced earlier this month, raising questions of whether Trumps stated admiration of Putin was rooted in pressure from Moscow.

Mother Jones reported in October a former Western counterintelligence official turned over to the FBI information indicating connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The dossier was subsequently published by BuzzFeed.

Story continues

It was not immediately clear whether an FBI investigation actually is underway.

Other House and Senate Democrats also have called for a thorough investigation.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the second-ranking Democrat, said after a briefing Jan. 13 with intelligence chiefs the situation is even worse than he previously thought, the Washington Post reported.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russia tried to interfere with the election, hacking into the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta, then turning embarrassing emails over to WikiLeaks for publication (although WikiLeaks denies Russia was its source for the trove).

Hackers also tried to get into the voter databases of several states, but state election officials denied the intrusions had any impact on the election process.

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Manila (AFP) - The Philippine education ministry has rejected a plan to distribute condoms in schools, authorities said Friday, blocking a move meant to stop one of Asia's fastest growing HIV epidemics.

The health department said in December it would give out contraceptives in schools as part of a strategy to prevent HIV infections, prompting criticism from some lawmakers and bishops in the mainly Catholic nation.

The Philippines has a rapidly growing HIV epidemic, with rights groups saying the government has failed to promote contraceptives and give sex education to gay or bisexual men.

However the education department said this week it would not allow condom distribution in primary and high schools because laws only mandated the agency to provide "sexuality education".

"We want to be sensitive to what the parents feel and we got the feedback that they don't agree with the idea," education assistant secretary Tonisito Umali told AFP.

"Parents think this will send a wrong signal to our students that it's OK to have premarital sex, to have sex while you're a minor so long as you are protected."

Access to contraceptives is a contentious issue in the Philippines, with the influential Catholic Church opposing laws and programmes seeking to distribute condoms to the poor.

President Rodrigo Duterte has challenged the Church, ordering government agencies last month to deliver free contraceptives to six million women to boost a family planning programme.

His health department has also launched a plan to curb the spread of HIV especially among Filipinos aged 15 to 24, which it said was the most vulnerable to infection.

Health department spokesman Eric Tayag said his agency would continue distributing condoms in clinics and outreach missions despite the decision of the education ministry.

"We're not disappointed because one big thing that happened was we mainstreamed the conversation about condom access, which was taboo before," Tayag told AFP.

Story continues

Tayag added critics had confused HIV prevention with family planning.

"HIV in the Philippines mostly happens when you have unsafe sex: males having sex with males. Nobody gets pregnant among that vulnerable group," he said.

"For those who have already experienced sex, we are aiming for risk reduction and one (way) is condom access."

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines said giving students condoms was "a waste of public funds".
GENERAL TRIAS, Philippines (AP)  A fire at a Philippine factory complex that injured 126 workers was finally put out Friday after two days, and an official said all employees had been accounted for.

Gov. Jesus Crispin Remulla said firefighters and police investigators would wait until it's safe before entering the House Technology Industries complex, which occupies 6 hectares (15 acres) of land in General Trias town in Cavite province, south of Manila.

"Right now, everybody who is supposed to be in the building ... is accounted for," Remulla said, citing a company count of 3,189 employees who worked around the time the fire struck at nightfall Wednesday. He said unknown victims were possible only if someone rushed into the building to help without the company's knowledge.

The factory makes pre-fabricated house parts for export to Japan. Among the injured are two Japanese supervisors. Hospitals are treating 41 workers with severe burns, including two in intensive-care, Remulla said.

The fire apparently started when a machine malfunctioned and triggered small explosions in a section with combustible materials, he said. The factory employs about 15,000 workers and is the largest in Cavite province. The fire occurred during a shift change, accounting for the high number of workers on site.

In 2015, a fire that rapidly spread in a rubber slipper factory in a northern Manila suburb killed 72 people, prompting then-President Benigno Aquino III to order a thorough inspection of some 300,000 factories in metropolitan Manila alone. He ordered charges to be filed against the owners of the Kentex Manufacturing Corp. and local officials, who he said ignored the factory's failure to meet safety requirements.

The Kentex fire was one of the worst in the country after a 1996 disco blaze that killed 162 people in Manila.
By Martin Petty and Manuel Mogato MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippine government will withdraw from a ceasefire with communist rebels on Friday, President Rodrigo Duterte said, as he ordered soldiers to prepare to fight and declared there would be no peace with the insurgents for a generation. Duterte was angered by the deaths of six soldiers and the abduction of three since the New People's Army (NPA) halted its unilateral ceasefire on Wednesday.He complained that despite making multiple concessions to the communists, the NPA's demands were "just too huge". The conflict between the government and the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), has raged since 1968 and killed more than 40,000 people. "I have lost many soldiers in just 48 hours, I think to continue with the ceasefire does not, or will not, produce anything," Duterte said in a speech. "I am asking the soldiers: Go back to your camps, clean your rifles and be ready to fight." The ceasefires called by both sides were always fragile because they were unilaterally declared, with no rules to follow. Each side accused the other of violations. Within weeks of taking office in July last year, Duterte made a peace process a priority and a prerequisite for his ultimate goal of introducing a federal system in the Philippines. He offered leftists cabinet posts and promised - if peace talks succeeded - a portfolio for Jose Maria Sison, his former university professor and the CPP figurehead who lives in exile in the Netherlands. Sison is listed by the United States as a "person supporting terrorism" and the Philippine government last week tried to convince Washington to remove him from the list. 'LET'S RESUME WAR' "I'm really very sorry. I tried my best but like in the song, my best was not good enough," Duterte said. "There will be no peace in this land vis-a-vis the Communist Party. Let's resume the war." The NPA on Wednesday accused the military of occupying 500 barrios, or town districts, that are supposedly within their control and accused government troops of "hostile actions". The military responded by saying the NPA had done the same on many occasions. The NPA's ceasefire was due to expire on Feb. 10. Duterte's rhetoric was typically fierce, as was that of the military, which is normally measured in its statements. Armed forces chief General Eduardo Ano described the NPA's conduct since Tuesday as "disdainful and disturbing". Duterte said the rebels' demand for the release of hundreds of political prisoners was excessive, making a compromise impossible to work out. He felt he had shown his commitment by freeing top communist leaders. "I am sad to report to you that there will be no peace with the communists for the next generation", he said. Government peace negotiator Silvestre Bello said this week's breakdown highlighted the weaknesses of the truce, but he was confident both sides wanted to keep the peace process alive. "Trust is still there," Bello told television channel ANC. "The unilateral ceasefire was not working well because there were no definitions of terms, no parameters." (Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
MANILA, Philippines (AP)  Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday he has ended the government's six-month cease-fire with communist rebels and ordered troops to prepare for new fighting after the guerrillas lifted their own truce and killed six soldiers in fresh violence.

Duterte disclosed his decision in a speech two days after the Marxist guerrillas said they would abandon their own cease-fire because the government wouldn't release what they consider political detainees and the military was encroaching into their rural strongholds.

The hostile moves are a blow to ongoing talks brokered by Norway that have progressed steadily in recent months toward the goal of ending one of Asia's longest-running Marxist rebellions, which has left about 40,000 combatants and civilians dead.

Duterte said he freed rebel leaders last year to foster the peace talks but added that the guerrillas raised excessive demands, including the release of about 400 detainees, that would amount to a general amnesty and upset the military and the police.

"I'm sad to report to you that there will be no peace with the communists for the next generations," Duterte said, saying the conflict may last another half a century. "This will just be wiping out each other now, I can't do anything," Duterte said in his speech in southern North Cotabato province.

Military chief of staff Gen. Eduardo Ano welcomed Duterte's decision, citing the killings of six soldiers, including an officer, and the abductions of three other military personnel by New People's Army guerrillas in recent attacks.

"We welcome the pronouncement of the president because the Armed Forces of the Philippines has to do its mandate of protecting the people, securing the community and taking care of our own soldiers too," Ano said.

Troops will hunt down the rebels and prevent them from committing atrocities and crimes against the public, Ano said, adding the military will continue to support talks aimed at settling the rebellion peacefully.

Story continues

The rebels and the government declared separate cease-fires last year as they resumed peace talks. That allowed the government to withdraw troops from battlefields with the communists to focus on a monthslong offensive against the Abu Sayyaf and other Muslim extremist groups in three battlefronts in the south.

The prospect of new fighting with the Maoist rebels, estimated to number 3,700, comes after Duterte announced he would enlist the already overburdened military in his anti-drug crackdown after prohibiting the national police and the National Bureau of Investigation  the Philippine counterpart of America's FBI  from enforcing his controversial campaign due to corruption and an extortion scandal.

The Communist Party of the Philippines and its rebel wing announced Wednesday it would halt its cease-fire Feb. 10 after accusing the government of reneging on earlier pledges to free more left-wing detainees and raising concerns over Duterte's brutal anti-drug crackdown and his allowing the burial of long-dead dictator Ferdinand Marcos in a heroes' cemetery.

Founded in 1968, the rural-based guerrilla group has unsuccessfully tried to negotiate an end to its rebellion with six Philippine presidents, including Duterte.

Battle setbacks, surrenders and infighting have weakened the rebel group, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

___

Associated Press writer Teresa Cerojano contributed to this report.
The story of the soul-searching traveller is a well-worn trope, pedaled by musicians, writers and artists for centuries. But in a post-Donald Trump, post-truth era, a reflective journey across Americas great plains takes on a new meaning. Trumps victory  which shocked the public and pollsters alike  exposed the U.S. as a country of painful contradictions. And more than that, the disconnect and lack of understanding from both sides seemed unbridgeable. A month before the election, photographer Fernando Pereira Gomes travelled for three days on Amtraks Cardinal and Empire Builder trains from New York to Seattle, in search of the other America. By documenting the rural towns and broken dreams of those traveling west, Gomes pieced together a portrait of the forgotten majority.

Though Gomes didnt set out with a clear vision, hours into the journey he realized the story he wanted to tell was one of melancholy. Very quickly I sensed an atmosphere and feeling of despair, he explains. All the people on the train seemed downtrodden and a little bit hopeless at times. Especially on the ride between New York and Chicago. This searing collection of photographs is a visual representation of that melancholy. I purposely photographed in the darker light, trying to find the subtleties in the shadows and the metaphors of light within that, says Gomes. As well as graphic landscapes and dusky stations, Gomes paused at individual stories; the ex-con who needed to get away from his home city, an out-of-work New Yorker looking to make money from the marijuana crop and a 20-something single mother, fleeing the East Coast with her two kids to escape an abusive relationship.

At dinner one evening, he sat eye to eye with a construction worker who, despite feeling conflicted, was planning to vote Trump. It was a very honest and polite conversation, says Gomes. He almost wanted his mind changed but told me he had frequently seen instances where lower-wage workers  immigrant workers  took their jobs. Through in-depth conversations, snatches of chatter on station platforms or the glimpse of a mothers troubled face caught in the moonlight, Gomes was able to patch together a sense of life for the disenfranchised. It was very evident that there is a total disconnect between these people and those who live in eastern coastal cities, he explains. To really see these small broken towns in the middle of the night was very moving.

Story continues

Gomes is himself an outsider. Born in Brazil, his family moved to live in Europe when he was 11 and then relocated frequently over the next seven years. My upbringing definitely informed the way I think, he says. And the ease with which I, too, talk to people and listen to them and try to glean where theyre coming from. With that in mind, Gomes was conscious of giving an honest depiction of the people he met. I didnt want to beautify something or explore it simply for its difference or its otherness, he says. I really wanted to avoid that. I didnt want to fall into that trap.

He was also keen to avoid the typical road-trip framing and though he was aware of that classic travel imagery, Gomes conceptual art background informed this alternative approach. Rather than looking like a National Geographic piece about train travel, I more wanted to show the overall sentiment and the feeling of the trip itself, he explains. The photographs are deliberately overcast, reflecting the lives that are lived mostly in the shadows. Its an area that was completely ignored and the darkness of these photos aim to show that, he says. You wonder what might have been.

Fernando Pereira Gomes is a Brazilian photographer based in New York. You can view more of his photos here.

Danielle Amy Staif, who edited this photo essay, is a photo assistant at TIME. Follow her on Instagram.

Alexandra Genova is a writer and contributor for TIME LightBox. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram

Follow TIME LightBox on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
CENTERVILLE, Ohio (AP)  Police in Ohio say a 15-year-old boy wounded by officers after he refused repeated commands to put down his weapon had pointed a real-looking replica handgun at an officer.

Centerville Police Chief Bruce Robertson on Friday displayed a photo, saying "you can't tell that's a replica handgun." Two officers fired Thursday at the teenager, hitting him three times. Police say the wounds aren't life-threatening.

Robertson said police had earlier contact with the boy, who lives in Centerville some 20 miles south of Dayton.

He said surveillance video shows the boy was inside the police department before the encounter outside when an officer spotted him crouching behind a bush. Police say the youth drew the apparent weapon from his waistband and pointed it at the officer.

No one else was injured.
WHITESTOWN, Ind. (AP)  Officials say vandals have damaged police vehicles and the home of one officer in a central Indiana community.

Police say someone scrawled profanities on the garage door of an officer's home early Thursday in Whitestown, 20 miles northwest of Indianapolis, as well as on marked police vehicles from the Whitestown, Westfield, Lebanon and Speedway departments. Police vehicles were left with slashed tires and at least one vehicle window was broken.

No injuries have been reported.

Whitestown police Chief Dennis Anderson says the vandalism is an attack on the "central core of our community."

Town Manager Dax Norton said in a statement that officials are "very disturbed and angry." He says such vandalism won't be tolerated.

Police are seeking tips from the public in the investigation.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A Tennessee woman will face criminal charges in the death of a Metro Nashville police officer who slipped into a bitterly cold river while trying to save her, police said Friday.

Police spokesman Don Aaron told news media outlets that 40-year-old Juli Glisson will be charged with aggravated vehicular homicide once she is discharged from the hospital. An arrest warrant was issued Friday.

Aaron says an investigation found that Glisson put the car into gear as 44-year-old Eric Mumaw and another officer were trying to get her out of it and away from the water's edge. Aaron said the officers were responding to a call that said Glisson was threatening to kill herself. Police say she was legally drunk.

Glisson and Mumaw went into the Cumberland River with the car. Glisson swam to the shore and was taken to the hospital, where she was listed in stable condition. Mumaw's body was pulled from the water hours later.

Mumaw, an 18-year veteran of the department who had been recognized multiple times for going above and beyond the call of duty to help others, apparently drowned.

Police said Glisson is on probation for an April 2016 DUI conviction. Court records show she has served jail time on prior charges including DUI, vandalism and leaving the scene of an accident.
Porsche is clarifying the steps it's going to take to address emissions issues surrounding its Cayenne diesel models on sale in the US caught up in parent company VW's Dieselgate scandal while at the same time looking to make the same range of performance SUVs even more attractive to European buyers.

Thanks to sharing platforms and powertrain technology with VW, the Porsche Cayenne 3-liter V6 diesel on sale in the US has been found to have an emissions-cheating engine. Therefore, on Friday, now that legal proceedings have run their course, the company pledged to "Recall and repair, free of charge to the customer, all Cayenne Diesel vehicles to bring them into compliance with the emissions standards to which they were certified, if an appropriate Emissions Compliant Repair is approved by U.S. regulators."

In a statement, it also said it would: "Provide restitution payments to all eligible owners and lessees of Cayenne Diesel vehicles," and that it will begin "Implementing the 3.0L V6 diesel settlement program as soon as the Court grants final approval to the settlement agreements. At the earliest, approval will occur in May 2017."

As well as extending an olive branch to its growing US customer base, Porsche also this week extended its Platinum Edition line of cars in Europe with the addition of two new Cayenne models, including a diesel.

Like all Platinum Porsches, the Cayenne S and Cayenne S Diesel Platinum Editions get host of external and interior styling and accent features to help them stand out from the crowd. For instance, they sit on 21-inch platinum-colored alloy wheels, boast color-coded wheel arch extensions and a host of gloss black exterior trim pieces.

Inside, there are special door guards bearing the "Platinum Edition" legend while the seats get the same Alcantara finish and eight-way electronic adjustment that is otherwise only available on the range-topping GTS model.

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Other special touches include the Porsche Communication Management infotainment package and with it a Bose sound system, a mobile internet connection and live online maps for navigation.

Yet under their hoods, these cars come with exactly the same 420hp bi-turbo V6 gasoline or 385hp V8 diesel unit found in the standard S' models.

The Cayenne S Platinum Edition will cost 87,442, while the Cayenne S Diesel Platinum Edition with its larger engine will come in at 90,417.
Lisbon (AFP) - Portuguese authorities searched Friday for a woman swept out to the Atlantic, reportedly during a religious ceremony honouring a goddess of the sea in the middle of a storm.

The 34-year-old was one of four people who were swept away by a wave on the Costa Nova beach in central Portugal on Thursday night while the coast was lashed by strong winds and huge waves, local officials said.

Three people managed to make it back to land but the woman has not been seen since.

Portuguese media said the four were part of a group of ten people who ignored warnings to stay away from the coast because of the rough weather and held a ceremony in honour of Iemanja, an Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea.

Candles, fresh fruit, necklaces and a box with two pairs of shoes were found near spot where the group had gathered, daily newspaper Jornal de Noticias reported.

"We are determining what happened. What we know is that ten people were gathered and four were swept up by a wave. Despite all the warnings, this situation occurred," Carlos Jose Isabel, commander of the nearby port of Aveiro who is leading the search effort, told reporters.

Devotees celebrate Iemanja, the supreme deity in the Candomble religion, every February 2 by wearing white and sending flowers out into the ocean for good luck.

Portugal counts an estimated 1,000 followers of the faith, which came to the country via its former colony Brazil -- although officials say it is difficult to know exactly how many worshippers there are.

Most of Portugal's coast was on "red alert", the weather office's highest alert level, on Thursday because of large waves, heavy rain and strong winds.
As the president and former owner of beauty pageants, Donald Trump is known to be very critical of ones physical appearances, and he has taken that trait with him into the White House. In a new report released Thursday, Trump said male staffers are to wear ties and women must dress like women, unnamed sources told Axios.

If youre going to be a public person for him, whether its a lawyer or representing him in meetings, then you need to have a certain look. That look  at least for any male  you have to be sharply dressed, a source who was said to have worked with the president told the publication. You should have a good physical demeanor, good stature, hair well groomed.

The report stated that men are required to wear ties at all times.

"If it's not a Trump tie, you can get away with Brooks Brothers. But I'd suggest Armani, the source said.

The source even made a witty remark about Trumps policy adviser, Stephen Miller, based on the ties he wears.

"I've always been surprised about how Stephen Miller survives with those thin ties," the source said.

The former "Celebrity Apprentice" host also judges womens appearances, anonymous Trump campaign source said, adding that even if they wear jeans they need to look neat and orderly. In most cases, Trump wants women who work for him "to dress like women," the source said.

Female campaign field office staffers felt compelled to wear dresses, mainly to impress Trump, according to the report.

Last month, it was reported that Trumps White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer disappointed his boss with his attire during his first press briefing, according to the New York Times. Spicer wasnt dressing fancy enough, the source said. He had on a light gray pinstriped ensemble that appeared to be twice his size. The sleeves were reportedly sloppy, the collar didnt fit, the fabric looked inexpensive, and the tie was knotted poorly. Multiple media reported that Spicer was a tad ill-fitting.

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Spicer now wears crisp, dark suits with perfectly knotted ties, along with a white handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket.

However, one member of Trump's team was said to be exempt from Trumps reported obsession with looking glamorous: chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen Bannon.

Steve is Steve, a source told Axios. Hes cavalier almost about what he wears.

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President Donald Trump fired off a series of tweets Friday morning accusing professional anarchists of being behind recent protests, as well as lashing out at the media and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Trump tweeted before 7 a.m. ET Friday. He may have been referring to the recent protests that roiled the University of California at Berkeley, forcing the school to cancel an appearance by controversial Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos. Or he may have been referring to a separate incident that occurred Thursday at New York University, in which 11 people were arrested for protesting the appearance of a conservative comedian at the school.

Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

The president also accused journalists of misrepresenting his call over the weekend with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Washington Post reported it was a contentious conversation between two world leaders who should be close allies, as Trump reportedly threatened to walk away from a refugee agreement. Turnbull declined to divulge details of the conversation Thursday, but said, The alliance is absolutely rock solid.

Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about, Trump tweeted. Very nice!

Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the host of the newest version of The Apprentice, was also a target of the Presidents early-morning tweets. On Thursday, Trump continued a spat with the former California governor when he joked at the National Prayer Breakfast about praying for the shows ratings under Schwarzenegger. Schwarzenegger fired back on Twitter: You take over TV, because youre such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job, he said in a short video. Then people can finally sleep comfortably again.

Trump kept the fight going another day, tweeting, Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really bad job as Governor of California and even worse on the Apprenticebut at least he tried hard!
President Trump continued his fast pace in his second week in office, as these pictures show.

After signing an executive order suspending the refugee resettlement program and barring visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries on Friday, Trump saw protests at airports across the country as well as lawsuits, including ones from three states and another from San Francisco.

The conservative Koch brothers came out against the ban, as did the CEOs of Ford, Apple, Google and Facebook. Trump blamed some of the weekends chaos on a Delta Airlines computer outage and criticized Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for crying at a press conference over the travel ban.

The acting attorney general, a holdover from President Obama, refused to defend the order in court, leading Trump to fire her while his spokesman warned dissenting diplomats to get with the program.

His Administration, meantime, couldnt decide whether the travel ban was a ban or not, and defended omitting any reference to Jews from its official Holocaust Remembrance Day statement.

Trump held more phone calls with foreign leaders, including one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a testy one with Australias prime minister that ended abruptly and one with Mexicos President in which he said, reportedly lightheartedly, that he might send U.S. troops to deal with bad hombres.

On Tuesday, Trump announced his pick for the Supreme Court seat left vacant by Antonin Scalia and held open by Senate Republicans: Colorado federal judge Neil Gorsuch. The liberal grassroots urged Democrats to mount a rare filibuster, while Trump told Republican Senators to throw out the rulebook if they need to.

Trump also spoke at his first National Prayer Breakfast, suggesting that they should pray for Arnold Schwarzeneggers ratings on The Apprentice.
Week two of the Trump Administration was filled with so much drama that even the president was sick of it. After a tumultuous week set off by his immigration and refugee executive order, Trump took steps to right the ship. In an Oval Office meeting early this week, Trump told top aides that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus is in charge and that they must respect his efforts to apply a rigorous process to White House policy announcements. It came after the order was rushed through the White House by aides looking to make a splash, and without sufficient interagency coordination or even a communications plan. It remains to be seen how long the forces of order can hold off the desire to shake things up inside the West Wing.

The White House is on defense over last weekends raid in Yemen which killed a U.S. Navy SEAL and multiple civilians on the ground. Former Obama Administration officials maintain that the interagency process wasnt completed when the Trump Administration took over and quickly gave the order. The Trump Administration is arguing the opposite.

Ivanka Trump steps up her role in DC. New Iran Sanctions incoming. And the West Wing seating chart.

Here are your must reads:

Must Reads

White House Stalls Obama Administration Rule on Retirement Advisers

To order indefinite delay to fiduciary rule and review of Dodd-Frank regulations [TIME]

Q&A: Trump Adviser Roger Stone on the Media, Nixon and Russia

Few people in politics have known Donald Trump for as long as Roger Stone [TIME]

White House Defends Commando Raid on Qaeda Branch in Yemen

As Obama administration officials raise concerns about prep [New York Times]

Ivanka Trumps Dinner Party Diplomacy

The first daughter seeks ways to promote women in the workforce during D.C. soiree with business leaders [Politico]

Obamas White House Worked for Months on a Plan to Seize Raqqa

Trumps team took a brief look and decided not to pull the trigger. [Washington Post]

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Sound Off

This was a very very well-thought out and executed effort  White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on the decision-making process for the Yemen raid

Boy, would you like to see me fall off one of these.  President Trump to the press as he welcomed Harley Davidson executives to the White House

Bits and Bites

See Whose Offices Are Closest to President Trump [TIME]

The Trump Administration Is Readying New Sanctions After Iran Test-Fired a Missile [Associated Press]

Senators Still Turn in Their Campaign Donations on Paper. This One Wants to Change That [Center for Public Integrity]

Donald and Melania Trump will be at Red Cross Ball [Palm Beach Daily News]

The Anonymous Pro-Trump Decius Now Works Inside The White House [Weekly Standard]

White House nixed Holocaust statement naming Jews [Politico]

Soul-Searching at Clinton Foundation in Trump Era [New York Times]
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  The developer of the Dakota Access pipeline will have to present evidence at a hearing to prove the company didn't willfully violate North Dakota rules when it failed to provide details of how it planned to avoid disturbing Native American artifacts during construction, state regulators said.

Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners last October diverted construction of the $3.8 billion pipeline around artifacts without running the plan by the Public Service Commission, which oversees pipelines. Commission staffers say that warrants a fine of at least $15,000, even though the artifacts weren't disturbed.

ETP maintains it didn't intentionally violate state rules and that public comments in November by Public Service Commission Chairwoman Julie Fedorchak illustrate the minor nature of the incident. Fedorchak said she was "disappointed" with the developer's conduct but acknowledged it might have resulted from miscommunication within the company.

The three-member commission on Tuesday rejected the company's request to dismiss the complaint, saying whether there was a willful violation should be determined at a hearing. The commission's order also contends Fedorchak's comments aren't relevant.

"Commissioner Fedorchak has the ability to speak for herself, but only the Commission can speak for the Commission," the order states.

The Associated Press left a message for ETP spokeswoman Vicki Granado asking for comment Friday.

An administrative law judge will oversee the hearing, but the commission will make the final decision on a fine. The hearing wasn't immediately scheduled.

The four-state, 1,200-mile pipeline would transport North Dakota oil to Illinois. Work is stalled due to a dispute over whether Energy Transfer Partners has permission to lay pipe under Lake Oahe, a Missouri River reservoir in North Dakota that's the source of drinking water for the Standing Rock Sioux. The Army this week began reviewing an earlier decision not to grant permission until more study is done about the tribe's fears that a pipeline leak would contaminate its water.

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Protests against the pipeline have resulted in nearly 700 arrests in southern North Dakota since August. The most recent came Wednesday, when American Indian activist Chase Iron Eyes and 73 others were arrested after a group of protesters set up teepees on land that authorities say is owned by the pipeline developer. Protesters said they were peacefully assembling on land they believe rightfully belongs to American Indians.

Iron Eyes was charged Friday with inciting a riot, a felony that carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison. He also faces a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass. Iron Eyes, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress last fall, told The Associated Press that he feels he was unfairly targeted because he's a public figure and has been a vocal opponent of the pipeline. He said he will plead not guilty and fight the charges.

The Army Corps of Engineers said on Friday that it notified remaining protesters camped near Lake Oahe that the government-owned land will be closed beginning Feb. 22 because of a threat of injury or death from flooding. The Corps said there also is a danger of debris and waste from the camp polluting the Cannonball River and the lake.

___

Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NicholsonBlake
MOSCOW (AP)  The prosecutor in the retrial of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is asking for a five-year suspended sentence for the prominent foe of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny's initial conviction was overturned last year by the Supreme Court. Navalny has announced the start of his campaign to run against Putin in the 2018 elections, but would be barred from running if the conviction is reinstated.

The prosecutor at the trial in the city of Kirov said Friday that Navalny's guilt was fully proven. He is charged with embezzling timber worth about $500,000.

Navalny has repeatedly been arrested and sometimes jailed for participating in opposition gatherings. On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights said seven of those arrests were unlawful and ordered Russia to pay 63,000 euros ($67,600) in compensation.
Psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that causes red, raised, scaly patches on the skin. It cannot be cured, but treatments exist to relieve the symptoms. However, according to a new study from researchers in Sweden, these treatments are only effective for 20% of psoriasis patients.

A wide range of treatments is currently available for relieving the symptoms of psoriasis. This chronic condition usually arises in patients with a genetic predisposition and tends to come and go in flare-up episodes. It leads to an accelerated renewal of the skin, causing lesions in the form of red patches with white scales which can be itchy. It can also be a cause of social isolation.

Current treatment options are tailored to the disease's severity and can take the form of pills taken orally, injections or infusions. However, research from Sweden's Umea University and the Swedish Institute for Health Economics has found that these are only effective for one in five patients suffering from moderate to severe psoriasis.

The study, published in The Journal of Dermatological Treatment, is based on PsoReg, the Swedish quality register for systemic treatment of psoriasis. Some 2,646 patients receiving treatment for at least three months were included in the study. The disease's level of severity was assessed by doctors and/or patients, evaluating the impact of the disease on their quality of life.

Over the last decade, the treatment options for psoriasis have advanced and new treatments have become available for moderate to severe forms of the disease, often relying on biologic agents. These can improve the overall look of skin and are generally better tolerated, with fewer side effects.

The researchers found that 18% of patients undergoing systemic treatment continued to experience extensive psoriasis lesions or suffered impairment of their skin-related quality of life. Most of these patients were younger. They were also more often suffering from psoriasis arthritis and were more often smokers.

This result is "concerning," according to the study's authors. They suggest that patients with moderate to severe psoriasis using conventional systemic treatments should consider biologics. Patients already receiving biologics should envisage new therapeutic strategies. The scientists also recommend supporting patients in improving certain lifestyle factors.
On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump spoke on the phone, a hotly-anticipated, one hour call. Throughout the campaign and transition, Trump insisted he and Putin would get along well, and hinted at closer cooperation on a range of issues.

In the week following the phone call, fighting dramatically escalated in Eastern Ukraine, where Russia backs and supplies fighters. The violent escalation has left 25,000 citizens of Avdiivka are now living without electricity, heating, or water, according to the Center for Civilians in Conflict.

In that same week, anti-Kremlin activist Vladimir Kara-Murzas lawyer said he suspects his client was poisoned again; he believes his near-fatal 2015 illness was the result of poison. And Putins domestic critics do have a tendency to get themselves poisoned, sometimes in exotic fashion.

And a technical tweak to U.S. export limits on information technology Thursday briefly became Exhibit A in Trumps supposed rapprochement with Russia  before it wasnt.

All of which led many in Washington to wonder if Moscow was already testing to see just how far they could push the neophyte president.

Possible poisoning of Russian human rights leader Vladimir Kara-Murza needs investigating. Lets put #RussiaOnNotice, tweeted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) issued two separate statements. One warned Trump, In the first of what will be many tests for your new administration, Russia and its proxy forces launched attacks against Ukrainian forces this week. The other said, The United States must draw strength from Vladimir [Kara-Murza]s example and demand that those responsible are brought to justice.

In some fora, the new administration has taken a conventional line. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley denounced Russian actions in Ukraine on Thursday, and said U.S. sanctions would remain in place until Russia restored and respected Ukrainian sovereignty. But observers in Washington and in Europe wonder if backing Ukraine is really a priority for the administration.

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I definitely think events in Ukraine are testing how much stomach there is [in the United States] to support Ukraine, said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Conley noted that there have been low level ceasefire violations there for ages, but that the last six days have been the most serious. Russia is ramping up activity from the Arctic to the Eastern Mediterranean to see what, exactly, U.S. (and, for that matter, European) policy will be, she said.

The Kremlin has been emboldened by the election of Mr. Trump who vowed to seek good relations with Vladimir Putin and hinted at removing sanctions, concurred Dalibor Rohac of the American Enterprise Institute. An aggressive posture in Eastern Europe, he said, gives Russia a leg up in any future talks about counterterrorism cooperation, whether thats real or imaginary. Art of the Deal, indeed.

Some see not a test, but simply Putin taking advantage of a compliant new president. Anders Aslund of the Atlantic Council thinks the two leaders are in ideological sync, giving Putin a free hand.

What we are seeing is really that the Trump administration seems to be infatuated with Putin and his Russia, for whatever reason, he said.

Or the different episodes could be entirely unrelated to Putin, Trump, or any high-level gamesmanship between them. Its not always a well-oiled hierarchy, the Wilson Centers Matthew Rojansky said describing Russias political leadership. Neither Moscow nor Kiev has direct, constant control over the fighters on either side in Eastern Ukraine, who could be taking advantage of the current situation, he said. Kara-Murza may not have been poisoned again  it could be a recurrence of symptoms, he said.

Why, do politicians, press, and public alike tend to read more into what may have been only isolated incidents? Because somehow our relations with Moscow end up having this life and death, moralized quality to them, Rojansky said.

For all Trumps intentions to forge a more productive relationship with Moscow, the legacy of mutual mistrust might be his biggest obstacle. In U.S.-Russia relations, both sides naturally assume worst intentions in the other. And that remains true, it seems, independently of who sits in the Oval Office.

Photo credit: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images
President Donald Trumps executive order halting refugee resettlement from around the world and barring visitors from seven mostly Muslim countries is wrong on many levels. It is cruel, xenophobic, and arguably unconstitutional. And it wouldnt have prevented 9/11 or saved the lives of the 94 people killed on American soil by Islamist extremists since then, because none of the terrorists responsible for those atrocities were refugees or, indeed, from those seven countries. But in addition to being morally wrong, its economically harmful, because refugees make a big contribution to the United States, as do people originating from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Sudan, and Somalia.

Refugees are a tiny proportion of the U.S. population  some 3.3 million have been admitted since 1975  but they have had an outsized impact. Google co-founder Sergey Brin was a child refugee from the Soviet Union; Googles parent company, Alphabet, is now Americas second-most valuable firm, with a market capitalization of $553 billion. WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum and PayPal co-founder Max Levchin were refugees from Ukraine. The late Andy Grove, who helped start and was later CEO of Intel, fled from communist Hungary. So, too, did hedge-fund manager and philanthropist George Soros; Thomas Peterffy, the founder of Interactive Brokers Group; and Steven Udvar-Hazy, the founder of Air Lease Corp.

Yet nobody could have guessed when they arrived in the United States that those refugees would be so successful. Had they been denied entry, nobody would have realized the opportunity that America had missed. So just imagine what some of the brave Syrians fleeing the barbarism of the Islamic State, President Bashar al-Assads brutal regime, and the bombing raids ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin could go on to achieve in the United States. After all, the biological father of the late Steve Jobs, the co-founder and legendary CEO of Apple, Americas most valuable company, was a Syrian who fled his country for political reasons.

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People originating from the seven countries on Trumps blacklist already have contributed a lot to America. eBay was founded by an Iranian-American, Pierre Omidyar. Its market capitalization of $36.1 billion dwarfs the value of Trumps unlisted business holdings, while Omidyars self-made $8.2 billion fortune is more than twice as big as Trumps partly inherited one. Oracle Corp., a software giant worth $162.2 billion, was co-founded by the late Bob Miner, who was also Iranian-American. While the communities from the other countries are much smaller and generally more recent, one notable Somali-American is author and activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an outspoken critic of both Islamic extremism and Trumps anti-Muslim policies.

Of course, not all refugees and immigrants turn out to be exceptionally successful. But prejudice is a poor predictor of how they will fare. When Vietnamese boat people fled their country in the late 1970s and sought refuge elsewhere, they were seen as undesirable and often turned away. Eventually, many were allowed to settle in America. Most arrived speaking little or no English, with few assets or relevant job skills. Yet Vietnamese refugees in the United States are now more likely to be employed than people born in America and have higher average incomes. They have also played a key role in building trade and investment links with Vietnam. One notable entrepreneur is David Tran, who founded Huy Fong Foods. Its main product is Sriracha chili sauce, that big red bottle you see in every Vietnamese restaurant. Most of what he makes is exported to Asia, something that Trump ought to approve of, given his obsession with Americas trade balance.

Refugees contribute to the economy in many ways: as workers, entrepreneurs, innovators, taxpayers, consumers, and investors. Their efforts can help create jobs; raise the productivity and wages of American workers; increase capital returns; stimulate international trade and investment; and boost innovation, enterprise, and growth.

Some do low-skilled jobs that Americans spurn, such as working on farms, cleaning offices, and caring for the elderly. Contrary to fears that they steal jobs, studies show that refugees enable Americans to do better-paying jobs that they prefer.

Higher-skilled refugees  and their highly educated children  provide valuable talent and boost the productivity and wages of Americans with complementary skills. For instance, Syrian nurses can help American doctors provide better care to more patients. Some 28 percent of refugees have a bachelors or advanced degree, the same proportion as people born in the United States. Among the immigrants on Trumps banned list, those from Iran, Libya, Syria, and Sudan are more likely to have a degree than the U.S. average. Many work for leading U.S. businesses, notably in the technology sector, that are now up in arms about the travel ban.

Whatever their skill level, refugees tend to be highly motivated and work hard to rebuild their lives. At Chobani, the company that makes Americas leading brand of Greek yogurt, three in 10 employees are refugees. Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya doesnt just employ them to do good; it also turns out to be good for the bottom line. Starbucks CEO Howard Schultzs admirable announcement that the company plans to hire 10,000 refugees worldwide in the next five years is likely to be financially rewarding, too.

Enterprising refugees start businesses that create wealth, employ locals, boost growth, and stimulate trade and investment. Like migration itself, starting a business is a risky venture that takes hard work to make it pay off. For those who arrive in America without contacts or a conventional career, it is a natural way to get ahead. A study by the Kauffman Foundation found that in 2012, immigrants to the United States were almost twice as likely to start businesses as people born in America.

Last but not least, newcomers and their children can help spark new ideas and technologies that make all Americans better off. People uprooted from one culture and exposed to another tend to be more creative. Moreover, groups with diverse perspectives and experiences  such as refugees and people born in the United States sparking off each other  tend to outperform like-minded experts at problem solving, which is what most work these days consists of.

Overall, refugees have a higher employment rate than people born in America. While Iraqis and Somalis have lower employment rates, they are mostly recent arrivals, and employment rates tend to rise sharply over time. Refugees who have been in the United States for 20 or more years also have higher median household incomes than people born in America.

A study by Kalena Cortes of Texas A&M University found that among immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1975 and 1980, refugees integrated faster than economic migrants. Whereas refugees earned 6 percent less and worked 14 percent fewer hours than economic migrants in 1980, by 1990 they were earning 20 percent more and working 4 percent more hours, notably because in general they improved their English, skills, and education faster over that period.

Of course, welcoming refugees costs money upfront. But its a drop in the ocean: Out of the $3.3 trillion federal budget in fiscal year 2015, the budget for the refugee resettlement program was $609 million. That money tends to be spent on local goods and services, benefiting businesses and creating jobs. And like providing public education to American teenagers, its an investment that yields further dividends once refugees start working.

In fact, investing one dollar in helping refugees get started can yield nearly two dollars in economic benefits within five years. Thats the key finding of my recent study for OPEN, an international think tank focused on refugee and other openness issues that I founded, and the Tent Foundation, whose mission is to help forcibly displaced people.

A study of greater Cleveland found that while $4.8 million was spent on refugee services in 2012, spending by refugees, refugee-owned businesses, and refugee service organizations boosted the local economy by $48 million, creating 650 jobs and providing $2.7 million in tax revenues to local and state governments.

Refugees reliance on public assistance declines sharply over time, although it tends to remain higher than the general population. Even so, refugees tend to be net contributors to public finances over their lifetimes: Two-thirds of new arrivals are of working age (and thus schooled abroad), on average they are in their mid-20s (and thus have a full working life ahead of them), and their taxes help service the huge public debt incurred by the existing U.S. population.

The United States was founded by refugees: The Pilgrims who came over on the Mayflower in 1620 were fleeing persecution in England. Continuing to welcome refugees and immigrants of all faiths  and none  is not just morally right and in keeping with Americas long humanitarian tradition. It is vital for the future economic success of all Americans.

Photo credit: Carsten Koall/Getty Images
WASHINGTON  When it comes to Middle East politics, getting Israelis and Palestinians to agree on how to draw up a map seems nearly impossible. But getting the two sides to draw on a map of the Middle East? That took just one congressman  Illinois Republican Rep. Peter Roskam. And he did it twice.

One is a map that includes Israel and the Palestinian territories.

To Peter, in deepest appreciation for your steadfast support, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scrawled across the Mediterranean Sea, just off the Gaza City coastline, in August 2015. To Peter, with friendship and love from Jerusalem, wrote Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, who circled the entire city. Former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyads autograph stretched across the West Bank.

Another, from 2008, is a map of Jerusalem and the surrounding area. In Roskams telling, he took no chances in getting autographs from Fayyad and Israels prime minister at the time, Ehud Olmert.

The lawmaker got the Palestinian leaders signature without any difficulty at a breakfast with other American representatives.

Slideshow: Gadhafi, Netanyahu, the Dalai Lama  all signed this congressmans maps

And then the next day or a couple days later, we were with Prime Minister Olmert, and I thought, Ive got to go for this, so I folded the map up, and he signed it, Roskam said with a laugh during an interview with Yahoo News. So that may be the only map those two brothers ever signed.

But Roskams biggest coup may have come in March 2008 when there was about 15 minutes when the United States and Libya attempted to smooth over decades of rough relations and he and other lawmakers met with strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

There was a delegation that went over, and I had a map of Africa, and I said, Hey, colonel, would you sign my map? and he signed it, Roskam recalled. Laughed out loud when I asked him to sign the map.

A dozen framed maps with some of his best signatures adorn a long wall on his spacious, high-ceilinged office. These include a map of Tibet autographed by the Dalai Lama; one signed by both Burmas democracy champion, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the countrys previous military ruler; a map of India signed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi; and one of the Ukraine signed by Petro Poroshenko days before being elected president.

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Roskam traces his lifelong fascination to his parents decision to wallpaper his older brothers room with classic National Geographic maps. When you were in there, you just found yourself getting drawn in, looking, he explained.

Roskam doesnt remember where he went on his first co-del  as congressional delegations overseas are known  but recalls that he was annoyed with himself for forgetting to bring a map. The hunt for celebrity autographs began on his very next trip, a stop in Iraq. We had dinner. I had this National Geographic map of Iraq, and I said, General, would you mind signing my map? And he signed it, dated it, and I thought, Oh, Im on to something here.

The collection now holds a couple dozen signed maps, on display in his office in Washington and the one in his home state. Hes never lost his nerve when it came time to ask for an autograph, and no one has ever turned him down.

Roskam generally asks people to sign their names close to where they grew up or in a place that holds special meaning for them. One map of Kyrgyzstan is dotted with signatures, titles and dates from lawmakers.

They are proud to show where theyve grown up, where they went to school, and what the issues are, he said. The result is often a crash course on regional concerns about the economy or security that deepens his understanding of a place he visits.

At the end of his interview with Yahoo News, Roskam walked around his desk and rummaged in a folder, triumphantly pulling out a map of Sri Lanka  his next stop.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Frances President Francois Hollande has said there is no doubt that the attempted attack at the Louvre Friday morning was of a terrorist nature.

Hollande added that the situation at the museum  where a French soldier guarding the central Paris attraction opened fire on a man armed with a knife after he attempted to enter the site  is totally under control, but the terrorist threat to France remains.

Michel Cadot, the head of the Paris police force, said a man carrying two backpacks shouted Allahu akbar (meaning God is great) as he launched himself at a French soldier in the Carrousel du Louvre area of the museum at around 10 a.m. A different soldier then shot at the unidentified attacker five times, leaving him seriously wounded. Two machetes were found at the scene.

We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident, Cadot said, Sky News reports. The police chief also said a second person was detained after they were spotted behaving suspiciously near the scene.

The area has been evacuated, according to police. French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described the incident as an attempted attack of a terrorist nature during a visit to Bayeux in Normandy.

U.S. President Donald Trump responded to the attack on Twitter:

A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

Frances interior ministry released a statement calling the event serious and asked locals to prioritize the intervention of security and rescue forces. For security reasons, the station Palais Royal Louvre Museum was closed.

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Frances culture minister, Minister Audrey Azoulay, said the museum  which houses Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa  would stay closed for the rest of the day

Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux said French police and soldiers succeeded in ensuring that all 1,200 people at the museum at the time were safe and secure, the Associated Press reports. Louvre visitor Conor Bakhuizen, 18, who was in Paris on a school trip, said he was in the foyer and suddenly rushed into another room in the museum. He said the mood was very tense at first but everyone was vigilant.

Security staff guard doors after evacuating tourists into empty hall & locking down #Louvre pic.twitter.com/g5uJj1Iyjl  Wang Feng (@ulywang) February 3, 2017

France has become a major target for terrorists; attackers allied with ISIS have killed more than 230 people in the country over the past two years, according to Reuters.

Last July, 86 people were killed in the southern city of Nice when a man drove a truck into a crowd on the seafront, and last September, three women were arrested in connection to a vehicle containing gas canisters found near Paris Notre Dame cathedral.

The country faces a presidential election this spring, and security fears and the threat of ISIS are major issues being discussed by candidates. The capital was planning to formally submit a bid to host the 2024 Olympic Games to the International Olympics Committee (IOC) Friday.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated
Bucharest (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Romania on Friday over what they see as an alarming backsliding in the fight against corruption, amid a political crisis that shows no sign of easing.

Between 200,000-250,000 protested nationwide, according to media, in a fourth night of demonstrations against an emergency government decree decriminalising a string of graft offences.

A Wednesday march drew up to 300,000 people for the biggest protest since the fall of communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

"The government wants to legalise white collar crime, which is really insidious," complained Sergiu, a 43-year-old bank worker during the rally in the capital Bucharest.

He and his wife Ana-Maria insisted they would protest every night "until the (decree) text is repealed."

Daniela, a pharmacist aged 50, said it felt "like December 1989" as Romanians took to the streets just as they had a quarter of a century ago in forcing Ceausescu from power.

- 'Undermine rule of law' -

"We will no longer accept being treated like sheep by an abusive government," Daniela insisted.

Marchers cheered several youths who bore a coffin bearing the inscription "Romanian justice" while some protesters gave a rousing rendition of the national anthem.

Smaller marches brought together several tens of thousands of protesters in some 50 cities nationwide including Cluj, Sibiu and Timisoara, media reported.

Demonstrators have vowed to rally daily until February 10 when the contentious decree, issued by the left-wing government late Tuesday, is due to enter into force.

A major demonstration is scheduled for Saturday afternoon involving a march on parliament.

The new measure reduces sentences for abuse of power and makes them punishable by prison only if sums involved exceed 44,000 euros ($47,500).

A separate bill, to go before parliament, would free some 2,500 prisoners on short sentences.

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The left-wing government says it is bringing legislation into line with the constitution and wants to reduce overcrowding in prisons.

But critics say the main beneficiaries will be officials and politicians ensnared in an anti-corruption drive of recent years that has won Bucharest kudos abroad.

On Friday, the national ombudsman vowed to invoke the constitutional court, saying it was unclear why the abuse of power decree was urgent.

Between 2014 and 2016, 1,171 people were convicted of abuse of power and prosecutors are investigating more than 2,000 other cases.

In 2015, 27 officials, including then prime minister Victor Ponta, five ministers and 16 lawmakers went on trial.

Many of the officials caught up are from the ruling Social Democrats (PSD), which accuses the anti-corruption agency of conducting a witch hunt.

Washington added to the chorus of alarm Thursday, saying it was "deeply concerned" that the new measures "undermine rule of law and weaken accountability for financial and corruption-related crimes".

The US State Department urged Romania to reverse the legislation to retain international credibility.

Earlier this week, European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and his deputy Frans Timmermans warned against "backtracking" on graft -- only a week after an EU report praised the government's efforts.

- PM defiant -

But the government has remained defiant.

"We took a decision in the government and we are going to press ahead," Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu said Thursday.

PSD leader Liviu Dragnea, currently on trial for abuse of power involving a sum that falls below the new ceiling, hit out at a "campaign of lies and disinformation".

Dragnea, 54, is seen as the real power within the PSD. A previous conviction for voter fraud bars him from office.

Centre-right President Klaus Iohannis, who has been in an open battle with Dragnea, has welcomed the protests and sought a constitutional court block on the government's decrees.

Patriarch Daniel of Romania's Orthodox Christian Church, which remains one of the country's most respected institutions and which normally stays out of politics, also weighed in.

He regretted via Facebook that "people no longer open their souls to peace, which comes from God and which eases selfish passions like abuse of power and (the desire for) unlimited material goods."
By Radu-Sorin Marinas BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's ombudsman has challenged in the Constitutional Court a cabinet decree passed earlier in the week decriminalizing some graft offences, in an apparent watering down of an anti-corruption drive that sparked mass protests and international condemnation. The decree would decriminalize abuse-of-power offences in which the sums do not exceed 200,000 lei ($48,000), potentially scuttling an ongoing trial of the governing Social Democrat party chief and benefiting dozens of other public officials. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Bucharest and 70 other cities and towns across Romania on Friday in the fourth day of nationwide, peaceful protests in which people have demanded an immediate halt to the legislation. "Repeal it, repeal it," "Corruption kills," read banners carried by demonstrators in Bucharest's main square in front of the government building, many waving the national red, yellow and blue flag. About 120,000 gathered in Bucharest alone, according to riot police, and overall about 300,000 protested around the country and in several western European capitals. The government has firmly rejected calls to rescind the decree, though cracks in cabinet unity emerged on Thursday with the resignation of a minister and a call from a vice-president of the ruling party for the measure to be withdrawn. Ombudsman Victor Ciorbea's move echoed a plea from the Black Sea state's general prosecutor and added to a challenge by the CSM council of magistrates to the top court and by centre-right President Klaus Iohannis. General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar said on Friday he welcomed the Constitutional Court challenge and that his office had its own case before the Court of Appeals (CA). Experts say the CA itself could suspend enforcement of the decree as it can rule on the legality of such measures. The decree is due to take effect in a little over one week. The government adopted the measure in an emergency procedure late on Tuesday, saying this was needed to align ex-Communist Romania with a European Union legal directive to member states that aims "to consolidate some aspects of presumption of innocence and the right to be present at trials". It has cited a need to ease overcrowding in Romanian prisons as further grounds for the "proposed legislative measures", as the government refers to the decree. Ciorbea said there was no urgency to the decree as the EU's deadline for compliance with the measure is April next year. "There would have been plenty of time to discuss such things in a regular, parliamentary procedure, so no one can claim any urgency. The court will now decide whether the decree is constitutional or anti-constitutional," he said. The decree has triggered some of the biggest nationwide demonstrations since Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in an uprising that ended with his death and his wife by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989. Eight Western powers including Germany and the United States have said they are deeply concerned the decree could undermine Romania's partnerships in the EU and NATO. Romania belongs to both, and hosts a U.S. anti-missile system, but has struggled to combat endemic graft and remains among the poorest EU states. The Constitutional Court had given the government, parliament and the CSM until Feb. 7 to submit their opinion. - The government said their legislative changes were also meant to alleviate overcrowding in Romanian prisons. "As soon as we get all opinions and arguments, on Feb. 7 we will decide a timing for talks," court President Valer Dorneanu told reporters. "(The court magistrates) will respect the constitution, the laws, our internal rules and our own conscience." (Editing by Mark Heinrich)
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  Tens of thousands of protesters again took to the streets of Bucharest and other Romanian cities on Friday, blowing whistles, waving giant Romanian flags and booing at giant puppets of politicians they hold responsible for a decree to dilute the country's anti-corruption fight.

People of all ages, some carrying children, took part in protests around the country for the fourth consecutive evening. The atmosphere was one of anger against the government, but also of solidarity and hope for change. Some carried banners saying "I came for my future."

The demonstration came amid a deepening political crisis after two key government allies said Friday that the emergency government decree passed early Wednesday without input from parliament was not constitutional. Even the influential Romanian Orthodox Church criticized the measure, which critics say will allow corrupt politicians to escape punishment.

Ombudsman Victor Ciorbea, who previously backed the government's ordinance, reversed his position Friday, and said he would tell the Constitutional Court that the decree to decriminalize official misconduct under a certain dollar amount was "not justified." He said the measure risked "taking out of the reach of criminal law almost all the public administration."

A parliamentary party that formally supports the government, the Union of Democratic Hungarians, also criticized the government Friday, saying criminal law should not be modified through emergency decrees but through parliamentary debate.

In another setback for the government, the Orthodox Church, to which more than 85 percent of Romanians belong, said that the anti-corruption fight should continue and those found guilty should be sanctioned.

"Robbery and theft degrade society morally and materially," the church said.

Earlier, Justice Minister Florin Iordache said he stood by the law, defying strong criticism from home and abroad and days of massive protests.

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The ruling center-left Social Democratic Party has defended the decree, which has sparked some of the biggest protests since the 1989 fall of communism. Its leader, Liviu Dragnea, who has been blocked from becoming prime minister due to a vote-rigging conviction, is among those expected to benefit from the decree.

Romania's Constitutional Court will rule on the legality of the law on Tuesday, the last legal resort to stop it.

Speaking Friday at a European Union summit in Malta, President Klaus Iohannis said he trusted the protesters more than the government.

"We have hundreds of thousands of my Romanians out on the streets, and I trust them," Iohannis said. "I believe in Romania ... European values have to prevail and this is what I believe will happen. "

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. was "deeply concerned" about recent government decree that "that undermine rule of law and weaken accountability for financial and corruption-related crimes."

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
Los Angeles (AFP) - They could have called it "Cats," if someone hadn't got there first, for John Hurt's strangest movie by far is an obscure Shakespeare adaptation placing him opposite 108 feline co-stars.

The British knight of the realm played some of cinema's most iconic characters across 150 movies before his death in January, but even ardent film buffs are unlikely to have seen him in "Romeo.Juliet."

Hurt is the only human in Armondo Acosta's 1990 movie, playing a Venetian bag lady while the feuding Montagues and Capulets -- or should that be Cat-ulets? -- were strays voiced by leading lights of stage and screen.

A sought-after curio, it was never released on home video, but Acosta has made available on the Internet rare footage of Hurt's scenes, not viewed for a quarter of a century, in tribute to the actor.

"He adjusted to everything, he moved so sweetly," Acosta, 78, said of Hurt in a telephone interview from Manhattan's iconic Chelsea Hotel, where he has run a meditation workshop for the last 29 years.

"He had always a little bit of too much wine, but who didn't, who doesn't in that business? He was just beautiful. He really became a bag lady, he really got it."

Hurt, who turned 77 a few days before his death, is not the only cast member to play against gender; Juliet is portrayed by a white Turkish Angora who in real life was a neutered male called Maria.

Almost all of the cats -- they numbered 250 at one point -- were plucked from rescue organizations in Belgium, where Acosta was living and where he filmed much of the action.

"If you're directing an amateur, never rehearse them. If you rehearse an amateur, you're in trouble," Acosta told AFP.

"But if you get why you cast them as an amateur and let them do their thing, you've got a shot, you've got a chance. And cats are that way."

- 'Fascinating film' -

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The feline cast's reward for their work was homes for life with the crew or in Armondo's "Adopt A Movie Star" initiative -- except for Romeo, Juliet and four others taken on by the director.

Acosta has worked in various roles on some of the biggest films of all time -- including "El Cid," "Lawrence of Arabia," "The Birds" and "The Pink Panther" -- with auteurs like Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lean and Roger Corman.

He got the idea for a cat movie as an executive at Paramount in the mid-1960s, he told AFP, when he encountered a family of cats on the Hollywood backlot and was struck by their balletic movement.

The score is provided by the London Symphony Orchestra playing Sergei Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet Ballet," while Maggie Smith, Vanessa Redgrave, Ben Kingsley, Robert Powell and other big names voice the cats.

The movie opened at the 1990 Venice Film Festival and toured the world's capitals for two years as a "live film concert," backed by various orchestras.

Hurt saw it at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels in 1992 along with Oleg Prokofiev, the son of the composer, who reportedly described it as "not simply a film... (but) a poem."

"I'm sort of used to transformations, that's my living," Hurt told a documentary crew on the film set back in 1989.

"But I haven't very often gone this far... The whole idea is unique, as far as I know. I've never heard of such a thing and I thought it would indeed make a fascinating film."

Watch Hurt's scenes at
WILMINGTON, Mass. (AP) _ Rudolph Technologies Inc. (RTEC) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter earnings of $6.1 million.

The Wilmington, Massachusetts-based company said it had net income of 19 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, came to 21 cents per share.

The results matched Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of four analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was also for earnings of 21 cents per share.

The maker of equipment to help chip manufacturers test for defects posted revenue of $54.1 million in the period, falling short of Street forecasts. Four analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $54.2 million.

For the year, the company reported profit of $37 million, or $1.16 per share. Revenue was reported as $232.8 million.

For the current quarter ending in April, Rudolph Technologies expects its per-share earnings to range from 22 cents to 25 cents.

The company said it expects revenue in the range of $57 million to $60 million for the fiscal first quarter.

Rudolph Technologies shares have dropped 1 percent since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $23.10, a rise of 88 percent in the last 12 months.

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This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on RTEC at https://www.zacks.com/ap/RTEC

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Keywords: Rudolph Technologies, Earnings Report
Moscow (AFP) - The Russian embassy in Damascus came under shell fire on Thursday and Friday, the foreign ministry in Moscow said, blaming an attack by "terrorists."

One shell fell about 20 metres (yards) from the embassy's main entrance and the other hit the ground inside the compound, between offices and a residential building, it said in a statement.

The shells "did not cause casualties but inflicted material damage," it said.

The ministry said the attack came from a district held by "terrorists" who sought to wreck the truce in Syria and derail Russian-backed efforts for a "political process" leading to lasting peace.

"This crime will not go unpunished," it warned.

The embassy came under similar attack several times in late December, but also without suffering casualties.

Russia is a major player in the Syrian war, intervening militarily in favour of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 2011.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian prosecutors said on Friday they were seeking a suspended five-year sentence for Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is on trial for embezzlement, a punishment that would stop him from running for the presidency in 2018. Navalny, who denies wrongdoing and says the case is politically-motivated, has said he intends to challenge Vladimir Putin at next year's presidential election. Putin is expected to run, but has not yet said whether he will take part or not. Navalny's supporters want him to stand against Putin, though opinion polls show he has substantially less backing among voters than the president. Russian law bans anyone convicted of a serious crime of running in elections. Judges in Russian courts have a track record of handing out the same sentences as prosecutors ask for. Russia's Supreme Court struck down an earlier decision by a lower court to hand Navalny a suspended five year sentence in the same case last year -- a move that left him free to participate in the election. . The Supreme Court then sent the case back for retrial in Russia's Kirov region to the same court that found Navalny and an associate guilty of embezzling funds from a timber firm in 2013. The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that Navalny's right to a fair trial had been violated during the first trial. Prosecutors said on Friday they wanted the same suspended sentence for Navalny this time round too. "What prosecutors just said is a message for me that means: Alexei, you are not allowed to take part in the elections," Navalny said in court. "Thanks, but no. My election campaign will continue. We will get this sentence annulled well before the start of the campaign", Navalny, who is due to open his first campaign office in St.Petersburg on Saturday, told the court. The court is due to announce its verdict on Feb. 8. "Justice should triumph. Navalny and I will challenge the verdict (if it is guilty) at The European Court of Human Rights", Pyotr Ofitserov, Navalny's co-defendant, told Reuters. (Refiles to fix spelling of Navalny's co-defendant in last graph.) (Reporting by Denis Pinchuk and Sveta Reiter, Writing by Denis Pinchuk; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
A sea of red filled television screens Friday as top personalities wore red to raise awareness for female heart disease  the No. 1 killer of women.

Read: Family Ties: Will Caroline Kennedy Run for New York Senate?

From Good Morning America to the Today show to The Talk the hosts all rocked red in some aspect.

The Today show even added some red glitter to the set.

"There's a lot of go red going around, so we changed the entire set to red," Hoda Kotb said.

Even the guys joined in with red ties.

On Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade had red ties on to promote heart health.

Read: Following 'Today' Show Exit, Tamron Hall Cleans Out Lavish Closet to Give Clothes to Charity

The American Heart Association took to Twitter Friday and retweeted notable faces wearing red.

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As did the AHAs Go Red For Women handle.

Excited to wear my favorite color AND support women's heart health today! @GoRedForWomen #ArdenRed pic.twitter.com/sVKLnbL56d  Elizabeth Arden (@ElizabethArden) February 3, 2017

In honor of #GoRedWearRed, Spring Mills Primary is sporting the color of the day to raise awareness about heart disease. @GoRedForWomen pic.twitter.com/a4ktfm3DLB  Berkeley Co. Schools (@BerkCoSchoolsWV) February 3, 2017

Watch: Ferret Owner Spends $4,000 to Have Creature Outfitted With a Pacemaker

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Early Friday morning, the Senate set the stage for the final vote on Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos nomination to lead the Department of Education, voting 52 to 48 to cut off debate. Meanwhile, constituents strained congressional switchboards and overloaded senators inboxes to share their opinions on the controversial nominee.

Matt House, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the Senate had been flooded with an average of 1.5 million calls each day this week. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tweeted that the call volume broke all previous Senate records. A staffer for Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., told a reporter that he received 80,000 letters from constituents about DeVos confirmation alone. The senators total correspondence was up 900 percent compared to the year before, he said.

The last three days have been the BUSIEST IN CAPITOL SWITCHBOARD HISTORY. By almost double. This is working. Keep it up and please RT.  Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) February 2, 2017

Republican senators are likely under even more pressure, though they have been less eager than their Democratic colleagues to tout the numbers. Teachers unions and activists led the charge against DeVos, but the opposition quickly became grassroots. Many of DeVos detractors object to her support for vouchers for students to attend private schools, including religious institutions, which some education experts believe would drain resources from public schools. Others dislike that DeVos has neither worked in nor attended a public school, nor sent her children to public schools. The unusual flood of calls, emails and letters reflect the amount of emotion and anger surrounding President Trumps pick.

What we really see is that this has really touched a nerve in the hearts and minds of not just educators but parents, grandparents and community members, said Mary Kusler, the director of government relations for the National Education Association teachers union.

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Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, talks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The campaign has yielded results. Two Republican senators, Sens. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, defected from the caucus earlier this week, in a surprising repudiation of the White House. Murkowski said she had heard from thousands of Alaskans who opposed the nominee. She further told Yahoo News that she couldnt live in fear of the presidents Twitter attacks.

Activists then turned their sights on Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Dean Heller, R-Nev., who are both up for reelection in 2018 in states that trended more blue in 2016. Both men have said they will vote for DeVos, but constituents kept calling anyway. Heller tweeted Thursday that constituents were having trouble getting through to his office line.

We are experiencing heavy call volumes in all our offices. Staff is answering as many as possible. Please continue calling to get through.  Dean Heller (@SenDeanHeller) February 2, 2017

With those two Republican defections, DeVos confirmation vote is now split 50-50. That means that Vice President Mike Pence will have to come to the Senate floor to break the tie. (Sen. Jeff Sessions, who has been abstaining from nomination votes as hes under consideration for attorney general, will also have to come to the floor to vote.) If Pence is called in, it would be the first time in Senate history that a vice president has had to cast the tie-breaking vote for a presidents Cabinet nominee.

Even if Democrats and advocates are unable to peel off another Republican vote and DeVos is confirmed, they will have made their displeasure known enough to have to haul the vice president down to the Senate floor in order to push her through.

The besieged senators will vote early Friday morning on whether to proceed to a floor vote on DeVos nomination. This will likely pass, and then Democrats have 30 hours to debate on the floor until the full vote.

DeVos had a rough confirmation hearing last month, despite the efforts of the education committee chair, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., to keep her questioning to a minimum. DeVos appeared unfamiliar with a basic education policy debate over proficiency standards and suggested that the federal government shouldnt impose gun-free zones on schools because of the possibility of grizzly bears. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., implied that DeVos was only nominated because of her history of donating millions to Republican causes and candidates, drawing a later rebuke from Collins. DeVos said she had dedicated much of her adult life to pushing for education reform as an activist and philanthropist, and that she had mentored students in schools.

Updated: 12 p.m. ET with the Senate vote to cut off debate.

Read more from Yahoo News:
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump on Thursday warned Israel that constructing new settlements "may not be helpful" to Middle East peace efforts, shifting toward a tougher line with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Still, the White House made clear that the Trump administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity," departing from previous administrations that have considered the settlements illegitimate.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements. Shortly before taking office, he vigorously criticized the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

But in a statement Thursday, the White House said, "While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House said the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington later this month. The two leaders are scheduled to meet at the White House on Feb. 15.

The U.S. statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

Netanyahu repeatedly clashed with President Barack Obama during the Democrat's eight years in office, and Trump has vowed to be a better partner for Israel. Following the U.N. vote, Trump tweeted, "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"  referring to the date of his inauguration.

Trump has already appeared to slow his promises to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a promise often made by presidential candidates, but never carried out in office because of fears the move would inflame tensions in the region.

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Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone Thursday with Netanyahu.

The prime minister's vow to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside. Netanyahu's pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona, but Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

Speaking at a ceremony in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed "great pain" over the removal of Amona.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some cases subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

"This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two-state solution - with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign - much harder to achieve," said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Police initially said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.

On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

"The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance," police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

Slogans including "Death to Zionists" and a swastika comparing the Israeli police to Nazis were scrawled on the synagogue walls. The police later began dragging young protesters out of the building.

Speaking to Israel Radio from inside the synagogue, the rabbi of Amona said the protesters were peacefully resisting the uprooting of the outpost. He spoke above loud noises and shouting in the background. Earlier Thursday, police removed protesters holed up in a small home nearby.

Police said 24 officers were lightly injured throughout the evacuation, and 13 young protesters were arrested.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. It witnessed violent clashes 11 years ago when police demolished nine homes found to have been built on private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court last year determined that the entire outpost was built illegally and ordered it demolished.

_

Bernstein reported from Amona, West Bank.
I served on the U.S. National Security Council staff for two stints, for three presidents, for a total of 11 years. I have worked longer for the NSC than for any other organization. I therefore care deeply about the importance of a fair and orderly policy development process  the primary job of the NSC staff. Such a process diminishes the risk of mistakes and maximizes chances for effective implementation. The stakes can be life or death. This is the professional way to make national security policy, especially given Americas exceptional responsibilities as the indispensible nation.

In 2008, when one of my colleagues at the National Nuclear Security Administration was asked to join the National Security Council staff, I wrote the following points of advice. They were written to someone who I wanted to succeed. I now use them to teach students at Harvards Kennedy School of Government. Given recent controversy over the proper role of the NSC staff, they might now be of broader interest.

1) Protect the president. This does not mean shield him from political embarrassment or criticism. Rather, ensure: that he has all necessary information to make rational decisions; that the risks as well as advantages of options get analyzed thoroughly (no sandbagging); that, to the extent possible, he is not surprised by issues or threats; and that the credibility and authority of the office are maintained.

2) Think strategically. Pressures of time, the crush of events  the sheer volume of which can be confusing  and the need to execute staff responsibilities (talking points, fact sheets, press guidance, meeting memorandums, etc.) all distract from the need for a relentless focus on strategic goals and how to achieve them. Try to think years ahead, while most people in Washington are looking forward hours or days.

3) Be honest. If you dont know, say so, and find out. If you know, but the answer is bad news, say so. Always be straight with interagency counterparts. Their trust will make you and the president more effective. Characterize fairly and include all relevant views in the process, even ones with which you disagree.

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4) Communicate widely. Uniquely, the NSC staff talks to all levels of government routinely, from action officers and office directors to undersecretaries and cabinet officers. An effective NSC staff can be the mortar that holds together the bricks of the interagency process. The NSC has many disadvantages relative to departments and agencies  size, budget, physical capabilities, etc. Its three advantages are short lines of communication, propinquity to the president, and managing the policy agenda.

5) Run an orderly interagency process. It is your responsibility to set an agenda, task work, identify issues to be considered, attempt to resolve them, and, if necessary, raise them for decision. This must be done at a pace responding to the press of events and allowing sufficient time for rational deliberation. Papers must be distributed far enough in advance that others have time to read them. Departments and agencies must have  and feel that they have  a fair say in the decision-making process.

6) Decisions are not enough. Implementation is key. A decision by the president is not the end of the process. The NSC staff must oversee implementation, assess results, and, if necessary recommend adjustments to policy.

President Donald Trump signed three executive actions in the Oval Office on January 28. One of them outlined a reorganization of the National Security Council. Photo credit: PETE MAROVICH/Pool/Getty Images
By Isabel Coles RASHIDIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - His name was Ayman, but the couple who brought the boy home to their Iraqi village after buying him for $500 called him Ahmed. Islamic State militants had killed or enslaved Ayman's parents in their purge of the Yazidi religious minority to which he belongs, then sold the four-year-old to Umm and Abu Ahmed, who are Muslims. For the 18 months he lived with the couple, his relatives assumed he was dead, one of several thousand Yazidis who have been missing since the militants overran their homes in what the United Nations has called genocide. When Iraqi forces retook east Mosul and the surrounding area last week, they found Ayman and returned him to what is left of his family. While their reunion was full of joy, breaking the bond between Ayman and his adoptive parents brought new sorrow. Speaking to Reuters journalists brought by Iraqi forces to his home in Rashidiya, north of Mosul, Abu Ahmed swiped through photographs of the boy on his phone: "Thats him riding a bicycle here. Thats him standing in our hall. Thats an exercise machine he played on." The windows of the couple's one-story home on the eastern bank of the Tigris river have been shattered by a blast that destroyed their neighbor's house, evidence of the fierce fighting that will continue when the army attacks the western side, which is still controlled by Islamic State. Abu Ahmed emptied the contents of a box onto the bed Ayman used to share with them: toy cars and building blocks, and a childrens book for learning Arabic script. It was Umm Ahmeds idea to adopt a child. The couple had no children, and she heard Islamic State was selling orphans in the town of Tel Afar, some 40 km (25 miles) to the west. My objective was to win favor (with God), said Umm Ahmed, only her eyes showing in a gap in her black veil. To be honest, I wanted to teach him my religion, Islam." Her husband, a government employee, was against the idea but could not dissuade his wife, who went alone to get the boy from an orphanage run by the militants, paying for him with her earnings as a teacher. Although the boy cried and did not want to go with her, she coaxed him, saying: "Come, you will be my child. We will live together and I will buy you everything." REALLY SMART Gradually he grew accustomed to his adoptive parents, who taught him Arabic instead of the Kurdish dialect spoken by Yazidis. They told people he was a nephew they had taken in and enrolled him at the local school under the name Ahmed Shareef, but mostly he was kept indoors. "He was really smart. I taught him to pray and perform ablutions. Do you know how much of the Koran he memorized?" Umm Ahmed said. They did not want him to forget who he was and encouraged him to speak about life in his village of Hardan. But she said: "I always warned him not to tell anyone (he was Yazidi)." Islamic State imposed a radical version of Islam in Mosul after establishing the city as its de facto capital: banning cigarettes, televisions and radios, and forcing men to grow beards and women to cover from head to toe. They branded the Yazidis, whose beliefs combine elements of several ancient Middle Eastern religions, as devil-worshipers. Sometimes Ayman asked about the rest of his family but Umm and Abu Ahmed did not know what happened to them except for a sister in her mid-teens who was taken as a slave by a militant from Tel Afar. The militant brought the sister to visit several times but her current fate is unknown. The whereabouts of a half-brother who was sold at the orphanage before Ayman are also not known. As the U.S.-backed campaign to drive Islamic State out of Mosul gathered pace and the Iraqi army's ninth division reached Rashidiya, things began to unravel for Umm and Abu Ahmed. On entering the village, a commander received a tip that a Yazidi boy was being held there and dispatched soldiers to retrieve him. The couple had no choice but to give him up. A video clip of the moment they were parted shows Ayman clinging to Umm Ahmed and crying. In the clip, provided to Reuters by an aid group embedded with the army, she pleads with the soldiers who came to get the boy. "Leave him with me a bit," she says, then tries to comfort him in spite of her own distress: "You will go and see your mother now... and when you grow up you will come and see me". BACK FROM THE DEAD Ayman's parents and most other relatives are still missing, but his grandmother and uncle live on the edge of one of several camps to which the Yazidi community has been displaced en masse, about 50 km (30 miles) away from Rashidiya. Samir Rasho Khalaf thought his nephew had been killed until he saw a post on Facebook on Jan. 28 that a Yazidi child named Ayman Ameen Barakat had been found. I was stunned, said Khalaf. Its a miracle: he came back from the dead." That same night, they were reunited. In a video of the reunion shown to Reuters by the soldiers who handed Ayman over, his grandmother strikes herself on the head repeatedly when she sees the boy, picking him up and wailing in disbelief. "We all cried," Major Wathiq Amjad Naathar, the army official who oversaw the handover, told Reuters. That night, Ayman was beside himself and begged to be returned to Umm Ahmed, Khalaf said. But on a visit by a Reuters reporter and TV crew this week, he appeared happy and calm, if bashful about all the attention. Asked if he had been happy with his adoptive parents, he said yes, and asked if he was happy to be back with his real family, he said yes too. Khalaf said he was pleased that Umm and Abu Ahmed kept Ayman safe and healthy, and he was grateful that, unlike so many other Yazidi boys abducted by Islamic State, he was not forced to train with weapons or fight. But he was angry the couple did not try harder to find his family to say he was alive and well, and has refused to allow them to talk to Ayman, even though they called once. "We dont mention them (his adoptive parents) so he will forget them," he said. Umm Ahmed said he will never forget them, however, just as they will not forget him. "I expect he will return," she said. (Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
(WASHINGTON)  The Trump administration is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first punitive action since the White House put Iran on notice after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, expected as early as Friday, said the officials and others with knowledge of the decision. The individuals werent authorized to discuss the unannounced sanctions publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of President Donald Trumps term, reflect his administrations desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The White House and the State Department declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanctions authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

Read More: Irans Rouhani Left Exposed by Trumps Travel Ban

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

This is fully consistent with the Obama administrations commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions, said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline U.S. position on Iran.

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The impending sanctions come the same week that Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Iran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemens internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice, said Trumps national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have encouraged Trump not to let the missile test go unpunished. On Thursday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined more than a dozen other lawmakers to urge Trump to act.

Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities, the lawmakers wrote.

Iran has reacted angrily to the threats of retaliation. Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, predicted this week that the U.S. will be the final loser.

It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran, Velayati said, according to Irans state-run IRNA news agency.

Though Trump has long derided the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, recently he has avoided repeating his campaign pledge to renegotiate it. Iran has insisted the deal wont be re-opened, and the other world powers that negotiated it with the U.S. have little appetite for revising it.

The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has stated that Irans ballistic missile testing doesnt violate the nuclear deal itself. But as part of the final negotiations for that deal, Iran agreed to an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile development.

Read More: Jeb Bush and Dennis Ross: Donald Trump Should Isolate Iran Immediately

The U.N. Security Council later endorsed the agreement, calling on Iran not to carry out such tests. But Iran has flouted the prohibition regularly in the past year-and-a-half, drawing sanctions from the U.S. but also diplomatic cover from Russia.

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Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
By Ju-min Park and Christine Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korean special prosecutor officials withdrew from the presidential Blue House on Friday after it blocked them from searching offices there, in the latest twist in a corruption scandal that has gripped the country for months. Park was impeached by parliament on Dec. 9 on suspicion of colluding with a long-time friend, Choi Soon-sil, to pressure big business to donate to two foundations set up to back the president's policy initiatives. Park is also accused of allowing Choi to exert inappropriate influence over state affairs. Both of them have denied wrongdoing. The special prosecution office has not explained why it needs to search the Blue House, saying only that it would be done in connection with its investigation. A prosecution team trying to carry out a search on Friday was blocked at a gate into the compound, the office said. The prosecution said later it had asked acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn for cooperation in getting access to search the presidential offices. "We arrived at the conclusion we cannot force our search if the subject refuses," Lee Kyu-chul, the spokesman for the special prosecutor, told a media briefing. Lee said he believed the search could go ahead if the acting president gave his approval. The Blue House expressed regret and called the attempt to search the presidential office unconstitutional as the president can not be charged with a crime while in office. "It is a deep regret that their excessive investigation with a warrant naming the president as a suspect violates the constitution," the office said in a statement, referring to the prosecutor's warrant to raid the office. The law states that as long as Park remains president, she cannot be charged with any criminal offense except insurrection or treason. The Blue House said earlier the offices could not be searched for security reasons and it would instead provide documents as requested by prosecutors. OTHER SEARCHES Park was stripped of her powers after parliament voted to impeach her, but she remains in the Blue House compound. Her prime minister, Hwang, has been acting president since then, while she waits for the Constitutional court to either uphold or reject the parliamentary vote. Television broadcaster YTN had said the prosecutor's office wanted to search the offices of the Blue House chief of staff, as well as offices used by Park's bodyguard detail. No raid has ever been successfully carried out on the Blue House. Lee, the spokesman for the special prosecutor's team, said investigators would question the president in person, regardless of the outcome of their effort to search her office. Prosecutors were also searching the offices of the Korea Fair Trade Commission and the Financial Services Commission in their investigation of Samsung Group, whose leader, Jay Y. Lee, has been named a suspect in the scandal. He has denied wrongdoing. A Korea Fair Trade Commission spokesman confirmed that investigators were conducting a raid but did not comment on details. A spokeswoman for the FSC said prosecutors were making copies of documents and searching offices. The FSC spokeswoman said the raid was linked to prosecutors' suspicion that the Samsung Group had provided bribes to Park and Choi for favours regarding its businesses. If Park's impeachment is upheld by the Constitutional Court, she will become the first democratically elected leader in South Korea to be removed from office. (Additional reporting by Se Young Lee; Editing by Nick Macfie, Robert Birsel)
Stephen Colbert is putting Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prayers.

In his opening monologue, The Late Show host addressed Trumps speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, or what Colbert calls the most important prayer meal of the day.

As a professed believer, Colbert enjoys the solemnity of the prayer breakfast as a time for people of all faiths to come together and share what is most sacred to them. Trump used the opportunity to bemoan the ratings on his reality show The Apprentice. They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place, and we know how that turned out, Trump said from the pulpit of the prayer breakfast. I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings.

Former California Gov. Schwarzenegger quickly posted a response to the president, suggesting that he and Trump switch jobs, because Trump is such an expert at ratings while Schwarzenegger proposed he tackle the presidency so that people can finally sleep comfortably again.

Is this the War of 1812, because the White House just got burnt! laughed Colbert. Watch the full monologue below.
The White House Thursday warned Israel to end settlement construction announcements because they are undermining the Middle East peace effort, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The Post said a senior administration official confirmed President Donald Trump is committed to a comprehensive two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The position continues longstanding U.S. policy.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been on hold since mid-2014 when a deadline for establishing a broad outline for an agreement expired. Since then, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has been demanding an end to settlement construction before he will agree to new talks.

"The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years," White House spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement released Thursday evening. "While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

Israel has announced 5,500 new settlement housing units since Trump took office Jan. 20. Settlement construction was a major bone of contention between former President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As President Trump has made clear, he is very interested in reaching a deal that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is currently exploring the best means of making progress toward that goal, the official said.

"With that in mind, we urge all parties to refrain from taking unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress, including settlement announcements. The administration needs to have the chance to fully consult with all parties on the way forward.

The White House statement said, however, the administration has not taken an official statement on settlement activity.

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Israel has been looking for signals from the White House ever since references to the two-state solution were removed from the Republican platform last summer. Trumps choice for ambassador to Israel and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is acting as a senior adviser and is expected to spearhead a Middle East settlement, are known to support settlement activity.

Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House Feb. 15, and the peace process is expected to be a major discussion point.

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President-elect Donald Trump meets with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) at the U.S. Capitol for a meeting Nov. 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

Donald Trump is in the White House, and Yahoo News is taking a look at the top stories to watch in his first 100 days. From the unusual role family members will play as White House advisers, to his promises to aggressively transform U.S. trade policy, and from investigations into Russian interference in the election to his relationship with Paul Ryan, well be rolling out 15 stories over five days  signposts for the road ahead.

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THE STAKES



President-elect Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan are only a pair because of the powerful positions they hold, and because they are both Republicans. In every other way, they could not be more different. And while they have had a surprisingly pleasant honeymoon since Trumps election in November, it wont take long for them to clash. There are three ways in which they will do so: over style, issues, and the Constitution.

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THE STORY

At the most basic level, Trump and Ryans personal styles are alien to one another. Trump usually speaks negatively about issues, expressing and channeling anger and pointing out problems. Ryan approaches things with a more positive, constructive tone, and seeks to stress solutions. That rubs many Trump supporters  who see this as whistling past the graveyard  the wrong way. Trump campaigned as someone who would rip establishment Washington up by the roots and create a new reality in the capital, and much of his inaugural address continued this theme. Ryan prefers incremental change, and believes that reform can easily become destructive if not carried out soberly and deliberatively.

This, as much as anything, is what has caused Trump and many of his supporters to vilify the Wisconsin Republican. In fact, Trumps own senior adviser, Stephen Bannon, used to describe Ryan as the enemy and just over a year ago told reporters at Breitbart News  which Bannon used to run  that he hoped Ryan would be driven from the Speakership within a few months.

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On issues, Trump and Ryan are on different sides of some core issues: trade, entitlement spending, and immigration. Trump demonized free trade deals during the campaign. Ryan has been a big advocate for free trade. Trump has vowed not to change Medicare or Social Security. Ryan has long described those programs as driving the national debt, and wants to overhaul them.

Trump has disparaged immigrants, instituted travel restrictions from seven predominantly Muslim countries via an executive order last week, and slammed a federal judge last summer for bias because he was of Mexican heritage. Ryan rebuked Trump for the latter comment, saying it was the textbook definition of a racist comment. Ryan has tried to work toward a solution to the nations problem with illegal immigration, unlike Trump, who has merely denounced the government for not fixing the problem. As president, Trump will find that solving problems is far more difficult than complaining about them.

The two men also have a fundamental different approaches to the role of government and guidance of the U.S. Constitution. Ryan comes from a political and deeply conservative background, and so he believes in the Constitutions prescriptions for how the government should work. Among other things, the Constitution clearly limits the presidents authority and hems in the office. Trump comes from a nonpolitical background, is not known for reading much of anything, and its not clear whether hes ever actually read the Constitution. He made many statements throughout the presidential campaign that promised unconstitutional actions, and often issued vague threats to people who criticized him. If he were to continue this kind of behavior in office, it would be more fitting for a third world dictator than for a U.S. president, and at some point, Congress would need to step in. Ryan is the leader of one half of Congress. He believes in the American system. It is far from clear that the new president does.

While Ryan has been a more public foil for Trump over the last year, it may be that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky ends up becoming the president-elects more formidable adversary. McConnell will work with Trump plenty of the time, but if and when McConnell decides not to go along with Trump, he has far more procedural power to resist. The Senate is  by constitutional design  more independent from the publics emotions than the House, because its members are elected every six years instead of every two. And on most measures, McConnell will still need a few Democrats to side with Republicans to overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to pass controversial legislation. Republicans have a 52-to-48 majority in the Senate, far short of a 60-vote super-majority.

For the time being, Ryan and Trump have incentives to work together. Ryan sees Trump as a vehicle, imperfect as he might be, who can help him pass a tax reform package that he has been working on for years. And he hopes that with time he can bring Trump around to his point of view on reforming entitlements and immigration. Trump knows that Ryan is held in extremely high regard by the majority of Republicans in Congress. If Trump were to disrespect Ryan off the bat, he would enter the presidency with very little power to sway or work with Congress. However, once Trump has gotten his footing, after the first six months or so of his presidency, how he works with Ryan and Congress, or not, will determine much about the next four years.

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Stunning photos of the British seaside Black Church Rock  Devon (Photo: Alessio Putzu/Caters News)

Italian photographer Alessio Putzu spent two years touring the British coastline to capture stunning images of the seaside, from Cornwall to the Highlands, and Northumbria to the Mumbles, in Wales. (Caters News)

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Mostly likely, an eight-person Supreme Court will hear three closely watched cases during March, including a dispute about transgender bathroom use, as the Court released its latest hearing calendar on Friday.

The facade of the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.

It is not expected that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch would be available to join the Court for arguments in March if his nomination is approved by the Senate unless the Senate expedites the traditional nomination process.

Missing from the hearing schedule for March is Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Pauley, one of the last cases considered by the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The Court decided to hear arguments in the case on January 15, 2016, and it has been in scheduling limbo since. (The last brief in the Trinity Lutheran case was filed in August 2016.)

The Trinity Lutheran case centers on a dispute about a church being denied a public government grant for recycled rubber material to use for safety purposes at its playground, which it shares with its local community.

The transgender bathroom case is Gloucester County School Board v. G.G., which will be heard on March 28. The Justices will consider the appeal of a county school board in Virginia, challenging a federal appeals court ruling that gave a 17-year-old transgender boy a right to use the school restroom that conforms to his gender identity.

A second significant case is Murr v. Wisconsin, which will be held on March 20. The Murr family has owned two riverfront lots since the 1960s; one of the lots contained a vacation cottage; the other lot wasnt developed. A zoning law established in 1975 barred family members from selling the empty lot separate from the cottage. Two landmark Fifth Amendment takings cases will be in play here: Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Council (1992), the Penn Central v. New York City case (1978).

And in Microsoft v. Baker, a group of consumers in Washington State sued Microsoft, complaining that its Xbox 360 device had a defect. The group sued as a class, since their individual claims would have been for small amounts, and pursuing them individually wasnt feasible. The group then lost the lawsuit in a trial court but they also used a legal option called a voluntary dismissal of a claim with prejudice to keep the case alive. The court accepted the Microsoft appeal to clear up a conflict among lower courts on the legality of the dismiss-then-appeal question.

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Two other cases on the March calendar also will attract attention.

In Los Angeles County v. Mendez, the case to be heard on March 22 centers on a legal rule that one federal appeals court has adopted, but others refuse to follow. It takes away the legal immunity of police officers for the use of excessive force  here, the shooting two homeless people in the shed they occupied  if the officers actions provoked a violent response. The response at issue, in this case, was that one of the individuals who was shot and wounded raised a BB gun and pointed it at officers after they had broken into the shed without a search warrant.

And TC Heartland LLC v. Kraft Foods is a highly significant case on March 27 involving patent law, the Court agreed to decide where lawsuits claiming infringement of a patent can be filed. In recent years, so-called patent trolls, who buy patents just to try to turn them into money-makers by suing others for infringement damages, have been concentrating the filling of their cases in just a few federal courts where they believe their claim will get a friendly reception. The issue of the proper location for infringement lawsuits will be decided in this case.

Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center.
Beirut (AFP) - Water to the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion of Raqa has been cut after suspected coalition raids on the city's main pipeline, a monitor and activists told AFP on Friday.

"After coalition air strikes, the main water line was ruptured and water was cut to all of Raqa city," said Hamoud al-Mousa of the Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently activist collective.

His group said the overnight strikes hit several bridges in the north of Raqa, including one known as the Old Bridge.

Mousa said a pipeline running along the Old Bridge into Raqa -- the only way residents could get water -- had been destroyed.

"People were heading to the river at dawn today to get water," Mousa told AFP.

Raqa, 90 kilometres (less than 60 miles) south of the Turkish border, is IS's de facto capital in Syria and remains home to more than 300,000 people.

The city and surrounding province have been battered by air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition fighting IS and by Russia, a key ally of Syria's government.

The coalition raids are backing an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters who launched a major offensive against Raqa in November.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed water to Raqa had been cut after "probable" coalition raids.

"Air strikes on the city destroyed a huge water pipe. It's almost certain they were coalition raids," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.
STOCKHOLM (AP)  Sweden's Deputy Prime Minister has posted on Facebook an all-woman photo including herself signing a proposal for the country's new climate law  a photo many online commentators have taken as a direct swipe at Donald Trump.

Friday's picture shows Isabella Lovin seated in front of the document surrounded by seven female members of her staff.

Swedish media say it resembles photos of U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval office surrounded by his male advisors.

Lovin said the picture was to show "we are a feminist government," leaving it "to the observer to interpret the photo."

The Swedish government describes itself on its website as "feminist," putting "equality between women and men at the heart of national and international work."
Stockholm (AFP) - Sweden's deputy prime minister, Isabella Lovin, on Friday published a photograph of herself signing a climate bill surrounded by her closest female colleagues, mocking a photo of US President Donald Trump.

In the photo, Lovin, who also serves as environment and development aid minister, is seated at a desk as she signs the bill under the watchful eye of seven female colleagues, including one who is visibly pregnant.

Just signed referral of Swedish #climate law, binding all future governments to net zero emissions by 2045. For a safer and better future. pic.twitter.com/OqOO2y8BU6  Isabella Lovin (@IsabellaLovin) February 3, 2017

The shot parodies a photo taken of Donald Trump on January 23 in the White House, as he signs a decree barring US federal funding for foreign NGOs that support abortion, as his all-male colleagues look on.

Sweden, a pioneer in women's rights, is known for its high level of women in the workplace, including in parliament and government.

"We are a feminist government, which shows in this photo. Ultimately it is up to the observer to interpret the photo," the Swedish minister wrote in a comment to AFP.

The climate bill she is signing in the photo aims to make Sweden carbon neutral by 2045 and "marks a new era in Swedish climate politics," Lovin wrote.

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"There is a global demand for climate leadership. I want to show that Sweden is ready to take that leadership," she added.

The Trump photo elicited an avalanche of comments, many of them remarking that no woman was present for a decision concerning women.

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Photo: cgsmonitor.com

Bruce Riedel is a widely known expert on the Middle East who helped guide U.S. policy in the region as a member of President Bill Clintons National Security Council. So he was more than a little surprised recently when an obscure website ran an article about Saudi Arabia he had never seen before  with his byline.

Riedel wasnt upset just because he hadnt written the piece, which appeared under his name on the website of something called the Center for Global Strategic Monitoring, or CGS Monitor. The phony piece espoused views  about an alleged Saudi role in the 9/11 terror attacks  that he has publicly rejected.

It was very disturbing, said Riedel, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a prominent Washington think tank. The article was entirely fictitious. This attacks the whole basis upon which our press works.

In effect, Riedel said, the website had lifted his name and attached it to someone elses opinions. Its reverse plagiarism, he said.

It turns out Riedel wasnt alone. Yahoo News has documented multiple other examples of phony advocacy and analysis pieces on CGS Monitor, appearing under the names of other well-known scholars who had never written them or even seen them.

This is the first time Ive been aware of anything like this, said Paul Pillar, a former CIA national intelligence officer who now teaches at Georgetown Universitys Center for Security Studies. He confirmed that he had nothing to do with an article that appeared with his byline  Saudi Shadow on Orlando Tragedy  on the CGS website last June. I definitely did not write this. Obviously, its disturbing.

Similarly, Matthew Levitt, a former FBI counterterrorism analyst who is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, confirmed he was not the author of a piece that appeared with his (misspelled) byline last September about U.S. policy in Syria. Asked by a Yahoo News reporter for his thoughts on what you think is going on here, Levitt replied: No idea.

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But others do. The strange appearance of CGS Monitor appears to be a new phenomenon in media manipulation, aimed at subtly spreading propaganda to unsuspecting news consumers  as well as undermining the brands and reputations of prominent opinion makers, according to Brian Mefford, a Kiev-based scholar at the Atlantic Council, who has been studying the website.

The CGS Monitor  has taken fake news to new depths with its use of fake opinions, Mefford wrote in a posting this week on the Atlantic Councils website. How do we really know who said what? Academics, scholars, politicians, and writers must now vigilantly manage their brand as a core part of their work. Your opinion, it turns out, may no longer actually be yours.

Efforts by Yahoo News to contact CGS Monitor were unsuccessful. The website, like many, has a Contact us link. But emails to that address yielded no response. In the About us section of the website, CGS Monitor describes itself as a nonprofit and nonpartisan research and analysis institution dedicated to providing insights of the think tank community publications  a phrasing that suggests something less than total fluency in English. But there appears to be no public record of who CGS Monitor is affiliated with, who runs it or where it is located. It was anonymously registered in June 2015, using a URL that closely resembles that of the website of the Christian Science Monitor  a possible attempt to confuse readers, Mefford suggests.

While the origin of CGS Monitor is shrouded in secrecy, Mefford sees the fingerprints of the Russian government, a possible and  until now  unnoticed component of the Kremlin influence campaign that U.S. intelligence officials say was launched by Russian President Vladimir Putins government during the 2016 presidential election.

As evidence, Mefford notes that the website mixes apparently mainstream articles about world events from real experts (some of whom actually wrote them) with articles lifted from Russian state propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputnik. Other postings advance conspiracy theories that have popped up in Russian media, such as one last December suggesting a CIA connection to the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey. Another  lifted from the same conspiracy minded website  advanced the idea that there was a deep state plot by U.S. intelligence officials and Ukrainian nationalists to undermine the Trump administration.

Mefford also sees other clues. He believes that the article that falsely identified Riedel as its author was not written by a native English speaker: The improper placement of nouns and frequent lack of articles like a and the strongly suggests that it was translated into English by a native Russian speaker, he wrote in his posting. Anyone who has lived in the former Soviet Union recognizes that Russian speakers have difficulty knowing when and where to use English articles. Take these excerpts from the article, for example: It is a shameful matter to support a regime in which women are not allowed to drive, and criminals are being beheaded like Middle Ages. Or why the authorities are insisting on having relations with Saudis?

But Mefford acknowledges these clues are not definitive  and there may be other suspects as well. The articles falsely attributed to Riedel and Pillar have a decidedly anti-Saudi bent. While the Riedel article links the Saudis to 9/11, the piece attributed to Pillar plays up reports that Omar Mateen, the gunman who perpetrated last years massacre at an Orlando nightclub, had made two trips to Saudi Arabia, arguing that such reports, once again, introduce Saudi Arabia as the birthplace of terrorism. That could point to Iran, Riyadhs archenemy in the region, as the culprit  another suspect in what has become the latest media mystery story.

Read more from Yahoo News:
Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks after being nominated by President Trump for the Supreme Court on Jan 31. His wife, Louise, is at right. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Donald Trump is in the White House, and Yahoo News is taking a look at the top stories to watch in his first 100 days. From the unusual role family members will play as White House advisers to his promises to aggressively transform U.S. trade policy, and from investigations into Russian interference in the election to his relationship with Paul Ryan, well be rolling out 15 stories over five days  signposts for the road ahead.

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THE STAKES

The direction of the country for years to come could be at stake as the Senate begins consideration of President Trumps first Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch. Will Democrats, still angry over the treatment of Barack Obamas nominee Merrick Garland, band together to block him? Or will they hold their fire for Trumps second pick, which will likely come in the next four years?

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THE STORY

Trump unveiled his choice to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalias seat with typical showmanship, leaving the media in suspense between his rumored top picks Gorsuch and Judge Thomas Hardiman until the last possible minute  leading to comparisons to The Bachelor.

But despite the theatrics around the announcement, Gorsuch is an establishment pick who would have likely been on any Republican presidents shortlist for the Supreme Court. The Colorado federal appellate judge went to Harvard Law School and is respected by both liberal and conservative colleagues. President Barack Obamas former acting solicitor general penned an op-ed endorsing him after he was announced, calling him a man of fairness and decency. SCOTUSblog argues that Gorsuch is ideologically similar to the conservative Scalia, given his strict textualism, lively opinions and disapproval of attempts to clear public spaces of religious expression.

This presents a problem for Senate Democrats, who were eager to argue that Trump had picked a jurist well out of the mainstream so they could block consideration of the nominee. The lawmakers are still angry over Senate Republicans unanimous refusal to even consider Garland. Last month, Sen. Chuck Schumer argued that the seat was stolen and he might attempt to hold it open until 2020.

Story continues

A minority is able to block a Supreme Court nominee thanks to the filibuster, which takes 60 votes to overcome. Republicans currently have 52 seats  meaning they need a good chunk of Democrats to side with them to bring Gorsuchs nomination to a vote.

But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has already hinted in multiple interviews he would be willing to change Senate rules to end the filibuster. On Wednesday, Trump joined in this call, urging Senate Republicans to take the so-called nuclear option and change the rules. If we end up with that gridlock, I would say if you can, Mitch, go nuclear, Trump said.

This has put the Democrats in a difficult situation. On the one hand, they may want to let Gorsuch through the process, reserving the 60-vote filibuster standard for possible future Trump picks. But on the other hand, Democrats are defending more than 20 seats in 2018 while Republicans only have eight up for reelection, which means its possible they will become an even smaller minority in two years, giving them reason to want to stage the fight now. Democratic senators are also facing pressure from their base to oppose Trumps nominees, and will likely face blowback if they let Gorsuch through without a fight.

Democrats who want to block Gorsuch will paint him as out of the mainstream, pointing to his decision allowing religious employers not to provide health plans that cover contraception and saying he favors corporations rights over individuals. But at least one conservative group, the Judicial Crisis Network, has already launched a $10 million advertising campaign targeting Senate Democrats in red-leaning states, pressuring them to allow a vote on Gorsuch. We will ultimately force vulnerable senators to choose between obstructing and keeping their Senate seats, the groups chief counsel, Carrie Severino, said.

_____

THE PLAYERS

McConnell and Schumer call the shots for their respective parties in the Senate, although the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and the ranking Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, will play a role in implementing their leaders strategies.

Democrats will grill Gorsuch on his philosophy and try to pin him down on hot-button issues such as abortion, but unless something disqualifying turns up in his background, his fate depends more on larger political forces than on the answers he may give at his hearing.

The wild cards are the other eight justices, especially the two oldest, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, and Anthony Kennedy, 80. Any signs they might leave the court soon would change the calculus about Gorsuch in unpredictable ways.

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Why hasnt Theresa May tried harder to hold out the hand of friendship to the people of the EU?: Getty

They werent impressed by her offer to act as the bridge. Theresa May told the other European Union leaders at the summit in Malta that she had just seen the President at the White House and she had a message from him for them. He was totally supportive of Nato, but it would just clinch the deal if they could spend a bit more money on defence.

Yes, we saw that on TV, said Francois Hollande, under his breath. Who knows what President Trump wants on Nato? he said, out loud.

I think that there is no necessity of bridges, said Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian President. Today we are communicating with the US mainly on Twitter.

Tony Blair thought he could act as the bridge. We know how that worked out. He threw away the advantage of speaking French and of being, unlike his successors, genuinely keen on EU membership. He even wanted Britain to adopt the euro, and admired the EU so much he wanted to be its first president. But the Iraq war divided the Union between old and new, with Britain on the side of the new members who joined in 2004.

Gordon Brown didnt pretend. He turned up late at the Lisbon Treaty signing in 2007, made his impatience with Euro summits clear and devoted his efforts to the global G20 effort to deal with the financial crisis. In that effort, the European Central Banks struggle to prop up the euro was an important, but non-British, subplot.

Then came David Cameron, who thought of himself as a Eurosceptic, but didnt mean that kind of Eurosceptic  he just meant he had his doubts about some of the ways the EU did things. He thought he got on well with Barack Obama. He also thought he had a very good relationship with Angela Merkel, so he thought he could negotiate an emergency brake on immigration. That would win the referendum he had been forced to concede to people in his own party who really were Eurosceptics.

No one can remember what happened to him, but it probably didnt end well.

Now Theresa May thinks she can be a bridge. The simultaneous translation in the summit headphones might have been: I dont get on with Donald Trump as well as Nigel Farage does, but youd rather I was your go-between than him.

Story continues

It wasnt an offer they couldnt refuse. It was an offer they couldnt understand. Why would they need the British Prime Minister, who is already excluded from the meetings in which they really decide things, to act as a communication channel with a US President who is fantastically unpopular with their voters? Just as they couldnt understand Mays speech to Congressional Republicans in Pennsylvania. It was a generous speech about the US, honouring its history, its values and its global role and yet she still hasnt made any equivalent gesture to the peoples of Europe.

That is not the complaint of some lefty Remoaner, but of Tim Montgomerie, the Conservative commentator. Montgomerie was one of Mays early cheerleaders. I cannot remember who coined the term Mayniacs, but it referred to people such as him back in the olden days when George Osborne was the leading contender to succeed Cameron.

But today he has written a furious blast demanding to know why May has been so tactically inept as to rush to see Trump and further alienate fellow European leaders. After all, our negotiations with Europe are much more important to us, at least in the shortish term, than likely trade negotiations with Washington.

It is a good question. I can understand the pragmatic argument for holding Trumps hand. What is harder to grasp is why she hasnt tried harder to hold out the hand of friendship  not so much to Europes leaders, who are understandably bruised by the rejection of their Euro-idealism  but to the peoples of the EU. Our national interest outside the EU depends on their friendship.
Melbourne (AFP) - A focused Nick Kyrgios conceded just seven games in powering Australia to a 2-0 lead over the Czech Republic in the first day of their Davis Cup World Group tie on Friday.

The controversial world number 15 took just 95 minutes to reel off a 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 win over the 157th-ranked Jan Satral and tighten Australia's grip on the hardcourt tie at Kooyong in Melbourne.

Rookie Jordan Thompson upset Czech number one Jiri Vesely 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 in the opening singles match in two hours and six minutes.

Thompson, 22 and ranked 65, made surprisingly light work of the 54th-ranked Vesely to sink the Czech Republic's hopes of splitting the opening day singles.

Kyrgios, who was fined US$5,500 for swearing and throwing his racquet after a stormy second round exit to Andreas Seppi at last month's Australian Open, showed no such behaviour under the watchful eye of Australia captain Lleyton Hewitt.

He maintained his focus, kept his emotions in check and sent down 21 aces.

"That's my main weapon," Kyrgios said. "I'm always trying to develop that part of my game. That's what I'm aiming to do every match."

The big-hitting Kyrgios overwhelmed the hapless Satral although the Australian needed six match points to finally put away the Czech.

Kyrgios said it wasn't as easy to win against a rookie opponent as some expected.

"I had a week in Miami (after the Australian Open) and flew back so I didn't have that long to prepare -- about five days," he told reporters.

"There were some pre-match nerves. I haven't played that many matches in 2017.

"It's never easy playing a guy you don't know that well. He had nothing to lose."

Kyrgios improved his record to 5-3 in singles rubbers against Satral, who was making his Davis Cup debut.

- 'Tough for us' -

Australia can wrap up the tie with victory in Saturday's pivotal doubles through the pairing of John Peers and Sam Groth.

Story continues

Doubles specialist Peers is fresh off a Grand Slam title win at the Australian Open, while Groth reached the quarter-finals of the men's doubles in Melbourne.

Czech captain Jaroslav Navratil said former world number eight Radek Stepanek was in doubt for the doubles with an unspecified injury.

Stepanek, 38, has a history of back problems which almost ended his career in 2014.

"It's a difficult situation for us because Australia has a very good doubles team and Radek is not playing because yesterday (Thursday) he get injured a little bit so it's tough for us," Navratil said.

Thompson was handed his debut by captain Hewitt after the 27th-ranked Bernard Tomic made himself unavailable, citing scheduling issues, while Vesely took over as the top-ranked Czech player following the unavailability of world number 10 Tomas Berdych.

The young Australian began well with a break in the opening game and had few problems with the shaky Czech left-hander making five service breaks.

"It's the biggest moment in my career, the summer has been pretty good, but playing for your country is amazing and getting us off to a 1-0 lead is even better," Thompson said.

"There were some nerves at the start, but I was just glad the balls were coming off the racquet nicely."

It is the eighth meeting in the Davis Cup for the two nations, with Australia leading 7-1.

Australia won their last meeting 3-2 at the same stage two years ago in Ostrava.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Australia's Tigerair said on Friday it has permanently ended all flights to the popular resort island of Bali after Indonesian authorities required "an alternative regulatory solution" for its operations.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded in early January when Tigerair Australia suddenly canceled its Bali flights, citing what it called new administrative requirements from Indonesia. No other airlines were affected.

The budget airline, which is majority-owned by Virgin Australia, said it would take six months to meet the Indonesian requirements and they would compromise its ability to provide low-cost airfares.

"As a result of this development, Tigerair Australia has made the difficult decision to withdraw from flying between Australia and Bali permanently, effective today," it said in a statement.

The airline said its customers in Australia would be given full refunds and any travelers in Bali who had booked travel on the airline would be given accommodation and booked on Virgin Australia or other airlines.

It operated flights between the Australian cities of Perth, Adelaide and Melbourne to Denpasar in Bali, a resort island famous for its Hindu culture, white beaches and lush green interior.
By Lesley Wroughton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for unity and understanding on his first day at the State Department amid internal dissent over policies of President Donald Trump, which have also antagonized a range of allies. Within hours of starting the job, Tillerson reached out by phone to counterparts from Mexico and Canada, spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, department officials said. Hundreds of State Department officials greeted the former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive with applause as he entered the building. Louder cheers broke out when Tillerson thanked acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon for standing in after the departure of John Kerry. "Hi, I'm the new guy," said Tillerson, who was sworn in on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed him to his post despite concerns about his ties with Russia. Trump has called for closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In remarks that did not touch on foreign policy specifics, Tillerson addressed the dissent within the department that emerged this week in a memo signed by more than 900 officials in protest against Trump's decision to suspend the U.S. refugee program and restrict travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries. "One of the great challenges and thrills for the State Department staff is deciding how to confront changing conditions in every corner of the world," said Tillerson, "I encourage all of you to use your natural and well-developed skills to adapt to changes here at home as well. "I know this was a hotly contested election and we do not all feel the same way about the outcome," said Tillerson. "Each of us is entitled to expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team." He also signaled he would impose changes to improve the functioning of the department and said the security of diplomats was a priority. There was no readout after his meeting with Gabriel at the State Department, although discussions were likely focused on the NATO alliance, the future of the Iran nuclear agreement and trade. His separate phone calls with foreign ministers from Canada and Mexico coincided with Trump saying on Thursday he wanted early talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he wants to renegotiate or repeal. "I know him and we are very excited having the opportunity to work with him," Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said in an interview on CNN on Thursday evening, adding that he would meet Tillerson shortly. The two met a couple of times when Videgaray was finance minister and Tillerson at Exxon, he said. Tillerson also spoke by phone with Netanyahu, the State Department said in a statement. It did not say whether they discussed a White House statement that said Israeli settlements in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements. "In all of his conversations, Secretary Tillerson stressed America's steadfast commitment to its key allies and partners as it works to protect the interests and safety of the American people," acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. Tillerson inherits a messy globe, with war in Syria and Iraq, nuclear-armed North Korea threatening to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, and increased violence in eastern Ukraine. Over the past 48 hours, more foreign policy challenges piled up as tensions erupted between the United States and ally Australia over an existing refugee swap, which Trump called a "dumb deal." Strains with Iran also increased after the White House said it was putting Tehran on notice for test-firing a ballistic missile and the new administration moved to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Additional reporting by Christine Murray in Mexico City; Editing by Grant McCool, Peter Cooney and Nick Macfie)
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Authorities in Orlando are searching for a woman suspected of drugging and robbing Tennessee Titans offensive lineman Quinton Spain.

An Orange County Sheriff's Office report released Friday says Spain told deputies he was robbed of $113,000 in jewelry last week.

The report says Spain met the woman at an Orlando nightclub. They drove back to Spain's hotel room, where the woman made him a drink. Spain told deputies he doesn't remember anything after that until he woke up to find he was missing a $60,000 gold chain, a $40,000 Rolex watch and another gold chain worth $13,000.

Spain didn't return an email seeking comment.

Deputies say two other men reported being the victims of similar crimes by another woman around the same time. It wasn't known if Spain's robbery was connected to the other two.
kellyanne conway

One of President Donald Trump's top White House advisers admitted Friday that she erred in referring to a terror attack that never happened in an MSNBC interview.

The adviser, Kellyanne Conway, said a "Bowling Green Massacre" in Bowling Green, Kentucky, was one of the catalysts for Trump's executive order temporarily barring entry to the US by nationals from seven majority-Muslim countries.

There was no such attack in the US.

During her interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Conway described two Iraqi refugees coming to the US, becoming radicalized, and masterminding an attack. Conway offered no evidence to back up her claims and flatly suggested that "most people don't know ... because it didn't get covered."

Conway clarified Friday morning that she was referring to an incident involving two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky. In that case, the two Iraqi nationals were indicted on federal terrorism charges in part accusing them of providing material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

"On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say 'Bowling Green terrorists' as reported here," she said, linking to a story about the incident.

An FBI press release in 2011 said the two men, Waad Ramadan Alwan, who was 30 at the time, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, who was 23, were former residents of Iraq who lived in Bowling Green at the time of their arrests. Both were convicted. In 2013, Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, while Hammadi received a life term, the FBI said.

According to the FBI's statement on the matter, there was no plan for a terrorist attack in that city.

Watch the video below:



The Trump administration has used the threat of a terrorist attack in the US to justify banning travel to the US for 90 days by people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

The executive order introducing the travel ban, which also barred all refugees from entering the US for 120 days and indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the US, was widely criticized from Silicon Valley to the auto industry, major banks, the nation's top universities, leading GOP senators, and beyond.





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By his own admission, President Donald J. Trump is a brilliant businessman, a master negotiator, an exceptional deal maker, somebody who always wins. When it comes to China, he is prepared to do just that  win. Ive read hundreds of books about China over the decades, Trump wrote in his 1987 bestseller The Art of the Deal. I know the Chinese. Ive made a lot of money with the Chinese. I understand the Chinese mind. If thats the case, Trump should know that he is about to be seriously outsmarted by a country that has been spectacularly outmaneuvering American policymakers and businesses for at least a decade.

Dealing with President Trump will not be a novelty for Chinese leaders. The country is littered with eccentric and egotistical real estate billionaires. In fact, Trump has much in common with Chinas leaders. The Chinese leadership is also outwardly bold and confident but inwardly paranoid and insecure. Like Trump, they create and repeat alternative facts until they are considered truths. Like Trump, they allow no insult or slight to escape retribution. Unlike Trumps, Chinese retaliation is not a 6:00 a.m. Twitter tantrum but a well-studied and carefully targeted response that will deliver maximum punishment.

Trump will also discover that China is ahead in the great game. China has focused on Making China Great Again for the past four decades. While China concentrates on the industries needed for 2030 and beyond, Trumps China trade policies are better suited for the 1950s. China is concentrating on dominating advanced manufacturing, with its semiconductors and robotics, as well as aerospace, biopharma, new materials, advanced medical devices, and beyond. Trumps trade team is saddled with a back-to-the-future agenda that concentrates on preserving heavy industry through tariff barriers and currency complaints.

By killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) without an alternative plan or vision, Trump has left our Asian allies twisting in the wind, with little choice but to sign on to the Chinese value proposition of providing money, infrastructure, and market access in return for settling in under Chinas economic and security umbrella.

If Trump now plows ahead with trade remedies focused on yesterdays problems, as his threatened 45 percent tariffs on Chinese exports and focus on Chinese currency are, American business and their global supply chains and sales channels will be hammered.

Instead, Trump should focus on three things in resetting U.S.-China trade and business relations. First, all discussions and agreements should be based on true reciprocity. We cant do it there, you cant do it here. For example, nontariff barriers have squeezed foreign insurance companies into less than 6 percent of the Chinese market. So cash rich Chinese insurers such as the Anbang Insurance Group are using the enormous wealth earned in their protected market to try to acquire insurers across the globe including Des Moines-based Fidelity & Guaranty Life.

Second, revive Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 as well as other trade enforcement tools that allow the president to impose retaliatory tariffs and other penalties when the United States believes trading partners are pursuing unfair policies. WTO rules prevent the United States from using these tools against fellow WTO members. Third, and perhaps most important, resurrect, rejigger, and rebrand the TPP. A revitalized and expanded Trump Pacific Partnership would demonstrate Americas desire to be partners with our Asian allies in their economic success.

Trump will need to thoroughly think through his China trade policy as U.S. multinationals present a ripe target for Chinese redress. China is often the largest or fastest  or both  growing market for U.S. companies in industries ranging from aviation to telecommunications to silicon chips to automobiles to food and agriculture. Chinas creative retribution skills were on full display when the European Union imposed tariffs on Chinese solar panels a few years ago. China responded by going after Europes nearly $1 billion in wine exports to China. The solar panel dispute was quickly resolved.

More than 50 percent of Chinese exports are produced by foreign-funded factories. Foreign firms account for 70 percent of high-tech exports. And China was responsible for nearly 40 percent of global growth last year. So Trumps plan for 45 percent tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States could knee-cap leading American companies and roil the U.S. stock market.

Three days before Trump took the oath of office, Chinese President Xi Jinping was effusively welcomed as the new champion of global stability at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. In a world marked by great uncertainty and volatility, the international community is looking to China to continue its responsive and responsible leadership in providing all of us with confidence and stability, WEF founder Klaus Schwab said in introducing Xi.

In his keynote speech, Xi warned that no one will emerge as a winner in a trade war and that the worlds leaders must say no to protectionism. The day after Xis WEF keynote, the American Chamber of Commerce in China released its annual member survey with 80 percent of respondents stating they feel less welcome in China and some 60 percent  citing extensive and accelerating protectionism  saying they have little or no confidence China will further open its markets in the next three years.

The George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations were both focused on avoiding drama in their relations with China. Neither administration had a consistent, well-articulated China strategy. Instead, various agencies including The Departments of Commerce, State, Treasury, and Defense, the U.S. Trade Representative Office, and other agencies carried out individual agendas. This worked well for China, which specializes in playing the barbarians against each other and wearing them down through a mixture of feigned compliance to rules, distracting disinformation, belligerent defiance, and theatrical diplomacy. The United States is being massively outmaneuvered and the government doesnt even see it, a former senior U.S. trade official told me about interactions with China.

When it comes to U.S.-China business, trade policies, and practices, the Chinese system seems to be working better for China than the American system is working for America right now. That is something that the Trump team has right.

Chinese authoritarian capitalism: incompatible with existing systems

The Chinese Communist Party and the government it controls operate somewhat like the War Production Board the United States created during World War II. Through this organization, American industry and government managed the U.S. economy and society to win the war, coordinating the countrys manufacturing and allocating and managing resources. The United States became the worlds largest centrally planned economy overnight. By the end of the war, the country had more than doubled GNP, the board was disbanded, and the U.S. manufacturing powerhouse was turned into a consumer product and export machine.

Chinas system is not aimed at war but at making China rich and powerful. Whether it is hackers from the Peoples Liberation Army, industrial planners, commerce regulators, state-enterprise bosses, private companies, state banks, or scientific institutes, these entities are all part of the party-led machine aimed at Making China Great Again. This all adds up to a unique system of authoritarian capitalism that is a mismatch with the established global systems for governing trade and investment. A secretive party-led system that controls bureaucracies and businesses doesnt fit with the international trade and business frameworks of transparent rules and private enterprise. Neither the WTO nor the major U.S.-China bilateral dialogues are effective in dealing with China today.

The 2008 global financial crisis convinced many in the Chinese leadership that foreign businesses need China more than China needs foreign investors. Real muscle was put behind the idea that foreign market share in China must be contingent on what the foreigners were doing to help China move ahead. When he came into office in 2012, Xi characterized this as Chinas catch up and overtake stage.

In my dealings with American business, I have seen firsthand the effects of Chinas toolbox on foreign multinationals operating in China. This toolbox includes cyber theft and physical theft of technologies from leading U.S. multinationals and military contractors, an array of capital requirements, tailored technical and scientific standards, unpublished regulatory barriers and anti-trust rules aimed at promoting local companies, to name a few. Companies that complain are swiftly dealt with through dawn raids, anti-trust actions, tax audits, and other sticks.

Time for a reset built on the bedrock of reciprocity

As both an observer and participant in this narrative of interactions between the United States and China over the past 30 years, it has become clear to me that a smart reset in U.S.-China trade and investment relations is absolutely necessary.

The first step is to revamp the system that works so well for China. Our two major annual dialogues with China need to be reconstituted. The Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) and the Strategic and Economic Dialogue (S&ED), which involve almost all U.S. cabinet secretaries, Chinese ministers, and hundreds of officials below them, have become dialogues of the deaf.

China has caught on to our love of procedure. But China focuses on outcomes. These dialogues provide a convenient channel to keep America bogged down in process while Chinas most damaging industrial policies speed along with results. China uses this to control us, former U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said of the dialogues at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum I participated in last year.

Chinese and American leaders constantly proclaim that the U.S.-China relationship is the most important in the world. If so, why isnt there a purpose-built annual president-to-president meeting instead of a series of meetings on the side of various multinational forums.

My advice to the Trump administration is to suspend the JCCT and the S&ED. I was a participant in the S&EDs CEO dialogue last June, where Secretary of State John Kerry and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew seemed attentive and energized; the senior Chinese officials appeared to be just going through the motions.

Suspending these dialogues will catch Chinas attention. The dialogues can resume when China agrees to an annual two-day, president-to-president summit modeled on the Obama-Xi Sunnylands forum held in June 2013. This summit can alternate between each country and must be structured to produce solid agreements with enforceable outcomes. My guess is that China will be amenable to this as Chinese leaders have always preferred direct communications between the White House and Zhongnanhai for important discussions. Once this Sunnylands style forum is established, the JCCT and S&ED can then be reconstituted to work out details and ensure accountability.

Reciprocity should be the bedrock underlying trade and investment agreements between China and the United States. Our negotiations should be judged on achieving enforceable reciprocity, by which I mean China will have to be judged by its real actions not its promises. This will be complicated, and will pose difficulties for the lawyers, but its not impossible. For market access and cross-border investment, what is allowed in one country should be allowed in the other.

Increasingly, China watchers in the corporate world and Washington policy advisors who I talk to are increasingly suggesting including Americas economic security as a consideration when the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) reviews foreign investments and acquisitions. Normally, the committee only considers national security implications. Expanding this to cover economic security would take the United States too far down the road of protectionism.

Instead, the United States should focus on reciprocity. No Chinese-connected entity should be allowed to invest in or acquire U.S. assets unless American companies have equal market and acquisition access in China. This would require applying regulatory reciprocity that takes into account the real on-the-ground situation in China. Rather than accepting Chinas assertions of openness, the United States must carefully assess Chinas market-distorting policies that block foreign business. For example, by failing to implement its 2001 WTO commitment to open its payment sector to foreign companies, China facilitated the rise of China UnionPays monopoly and Alibabas online payment domination. In late January, Jack Mas Alibaba spinoff, Ant Financial, announced the acquisition of MoneyGram for $880 million. The Texas-based company has 347,000 agent offices in more than 200 countries.

The Trump Pacific Partnership could be huge

The pity is that the TPP, from which President Trump withdrew in his first week in office, is one of the most promising avenues to influencing Chinas behavior. Chinas sidelined reformers have, very quietly, been looking to TPP to spur domestic economic reforms. The TPP trade bloc includes 40 percent of global GDP, but China is not party to the accord. If the TPP passed, the Chinese leadership could be incentivized to enact long-promised economic reforms and remove market access barriers in order to compete as the TPP sparks increased trade and investment among member countries.

The TPPs larger purpose is to provide a template of modern trade agreement language that takes into account todays business world of global supply chains, cross-border investment, intellectual property protection, and unfair competition from protected state-enterprise. It is an open secret that Chinas portfolio of trade and investment transgressions were the inspiration for TPP once the United States joined in.

U.S. ratification is essential. The agreement only takes effect if 6 countries comprising 85 percent of the GDP of the bloc have signed. Twelve Pacific Rim countries are involved: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

In withdrawing, the United States has left China in the drivers seat on Asia trade agreements. China is now leading the push for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which excludes the United States but includes all the important Asian economies as well as Australia and New Zealand. In a memo written upon his departure as Obamas U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman warned that jettisoning the TPP will be our loss and Chinas gain as the 16-country RCEP would not protect labor and the environment, would not ensure Internet freedom, would not protect patents or trademarks or copyright from infringement, counterfeiting, and piracy, and would impose no disciplines on state-owned enterprises.

For the United States, the TPP is a distressed asset that needs to be resurrected. Given his business expertise in turnarounds, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross should be a natural at this. Trump can unleash his unsurpassed art of the deal negotiating tactics and his legendary marketing savvy to work out a few face-saving tweaks and revive the TPP. There is little doubt that this would sail through the GOP-dominated Congress. Our allies in Asia would be hard-pressed to wring their hands about the United States abandoning Asia when the president has pasted his own name across the region.

Now the real threat: Chinese techno-nationalism

Remember Deng Xiaopings reform and opening mantra? For the past decade, China has been increasingly pursuing a policy of reform and closing. Reforms are focused on promoting Chinese companies, especially SOEs, while gradually closing sector after sector to foreign companies.

The foreign business community was almost shocked at the extent of Chinas opening under the WTO. Then-Premier Zhu Rongji appeared to believe that if Chinese companies couldnt compete against foreign firms in their own market they would never be globally competitive. China lost confidence under the administration of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. They began turning the clock back with a 2006 directive requiring a couple of dozen core industrial and ICT sectors  including telecommunications, power generation, automobiles, aerospace, equipment manufacturing, chemicals, air freight, architecture, steel, and science and technology  to be completely owned or controlled by SOEs. They also wheeled out the Indigenous Innovation campaign aimed at transforming China into a technology powerhouse by 2020. Chinese national champion SOEs were directed to obtain technology from their multinational partners through co-innovation and re-innovation based on the assimilation of imported technologies.

Indigenous Innovation Telecommunications, Power Generation, Automobiles, Aerospace, Equipment Manufacturing, Chemicals, Air freight, Architecture, Steel, and Science and Technology Strategic Emerging Industries (SEIs) Clean Energy Technology, Next Generation IT, Biotechnology, High-end Equipment Manufacturing, Alternative Energy, New Materials, and Clean Energy Vehicles Made in China 2025 Advanced Infotech, Automated Machine Tools and Robots, Aerospace and Aeronautical Equipment, Maritime Equipment and High-Tech Shipping, Modern Rail Transport Equipment, New Energy Vehicles and Equipment, Power-Generating Equipment, Agricultural Equipment, New Materials, Biopharma, and Advanced Medical Devices and Equipment.

Table by James McGregor

This blueprint for massive technology theft caused an international outcry that resulted in a 2009 rejiggering of Indigenous Innovation into the Strategic Emerging Industries (SEIs). With the SEIs, party leaders sought to leap into the future and focus on next-generation technologies and products. As much as $2.2 trillion was earmarked for investment in the chosen seven industries.

Chinas quest to develop strong domestic technology and industry was heightened by Edward Snowdens paranoia-inducing 2013 revelations of secret U.S. government electronic surveillance. This has spurred China to unabashed techno-nationalism, with Made in China 2025 as the headline policy. Inspired by Germanys Industrie 4.0, the goal is to go from Made in China to Made by China via intelligent manufacturing. The plan calls for Chinese companies to produce 40 percent of core components and materials in Chinas manufacturing chain by 2020, and 70 percent by 2025. Chinese firms are directed to create their own tech standards and become strong participants in international standard-setting bodies.

Semiconductors are at the top of the list of Americas threatened industries. Chinese policymakers are extremely worried about the countrys reliance on foreign chips, as China consumes more than 50 percent of semiconductors globally but relies on imports for more than 80 percent of those chips. No Chinese companies are in the top 20 in global semiconductor sales.

After spending billions trying to develop domestically, China is now focusing on acquisitions. Between January 2014 and August 2016, out of 991 mergers and acquisitions in the global chip sector, almost one third involved China. Chinese state media has reported that as much as $160 billion will be aimed at funding Chinas domestic semiconductor industry in the next decade. Much of this money is coming from pools of state enterprise and government funds that are being parked in government-backed private equity funds.

Finding a comfortable place between suicide and self-destruction

Leading American multinationals are feeling squeezed between the pressure from China to contribute to building Chinas advanced technology capabilities in exchange for market access, while also maintaining a strong U.S. innovation and manufacturing base.

GE has suggested that considering itself stateless may be necessary in order to deal with the breakdown of globalization and the rise of protectionism. In a May 2016 speech, CEO Jeffrey Immelt said with 70 percent of the companys revenue outside the United States, future sustainable growth will require a local capability inside a global footprint. Immelt added, In the face of a protectionist global environment, companies must navigate the world on their own.

In other words, American multinationals could consider themselves to have allegiance only to their shareholders and therefore the flexibility to adapt to whatever requirements they face in the countries they operate in. If leading American multinationals adopt this stateless stance, it will be much easier for them to deal with Chinas techno-nationalism. Sharing and selling technology to China would then be mere commercial deals without consideration of where the technology was created and the effect on U.S. economic security. China would be quite happy with this outcome.

The truth is that for many multinationals their best days in China are behind them. Chinese companies are catching up quickly and multinationals are no longer considered valuable friends deserving of special status. Todays calculation is not complicated. To enjoy decent market share and profits in China, multinationals must help China reach its targets, even if the ultimate aim is to replace them in China and beat them globally. What can companies do? I tell tech and industrial multinationals that they need to find a comfortable place between suicide and self-destruction.

Foreign multinationals in China are committing suicide in China if they do not recognize that things have changed profoundly. Double digit growth and dominant market share are gone or going, depending on the capability of Chinese competitors. It is suicidal to power forward with expectations of eternal market leadership and a focus on quarterly returns. China has not hidden its plans to replace foreign technology.

Self-destruction is the other extreme. Companies in this category engage in preemptive capitulation, spooked by Chinas techno-nationalism. More than a few U.S. multinationals have handed control or significant portions of their business to Chinese competitors. Chinese officials have been known to forcefully instruct foreign executives to follow the example of IBM, CISCO, HP, and others who have worked out a variety of licensing agreements and equity sales deals with SOE competitors. Each of these companies has done so for their own internal and competitive reasons. Nonetheless, Chinese bureaucrats hope that intimidation and some name-dropping will inspire others to capitulate.

China needs a deal and so does the United States

Despite Americas infatuation with the notion that free markets always win, the truth is that a combination of mercantilism, protectionism, industrial planning, and markets have built every successful national economy. Americas current celebrated Broadway hero, our first U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, in 1791 laid out some basic rules that foreshadow Chinas policies of the last couple of decades. In his 1791 report to Congress, Hamilton proposed protective tariffs, import bans, subsidies for encouraged industries, export bans on key raw materials, prizes and patents for inventions, the regulation of product standards, and the development of infrastructure for finance and transportation. This basic blueprint lasted in the United States for about the next 150 years. Many others, including the Asian Tiger economies and Japan followed this path. China got its start in 1994 with the Outline for Industrial Policy that copied many of Japans protectionist policies and designated electronics, machinery, petrochemicals, automobiles, and construction as pillar industries.

So we have no reason to demonize China. Perhaps we should even congratulate China on its masterful performance. The country has gone down a well-worn path. But current Chinese policies are at the end of the road. Chinas market and its industrial machine are now so mighty that protectionism and mercantilism amount to a form of global economic warfare.

How do we make a U.S.-China deal? China needs outward investment to gain the technology and know-how to modernize and diversify the countrys industrial and financial assets. The United States needs to protect the countrys technology base and rebuild our industrial base. Both sides are focused on jobs.

Our economies are deeply intertwined. China is the U.S.s third largest trading partner and fastest growing export market after Canada and Mexico. American exports to China have almost doubled while Obama has been in office. China is also our most important counterpart in addressing global threats such as climate change, North Korea, and Middle East turmoil. America has to acknowledge and accept that China is on its way to building a global economic, political, and military footprint to rival the United States. But even there we have shared interests. Both countries value trade for its economic importance, global freedom of navigation, and protection of citizens and assets abroad.

The Communist Party is as vulnerable as it is formidable. Chinas authoritarian system will crush anybody who challenges the party or makes the system look bad. But the leadership also runs scared of its own population, which has incredibly high expectations after experiencing decades of exponential growth.

Control in China involves balancing repression and reward. So far, Xi has been focused on repression and instilling fear. But he needs to bolster his legitimacy through jobs and improving living standards.

U.S. military and trade tensions: the opposite of what Xi needs

When he became chairman of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012 and president of China the following March, Xi was confronted with a huge mess: declining GDP, a festival of systemic corruption, festering social tensions, environmental degradation, and a rapidly aging population. On top of this, Chinas economic formula of debt-fueled infrastructure and a reliance on exports was running out of gas. To keep growth going, Xi needs to transform the economy into one driven by consumption and boosted by innovation and entrepreneurship.

He also has to rebuild trust in the party and confidence in Chinas future. His predecessors led a decade of every-man-for-himself corruption. Leading party families busily stashed away billions. To start on his task, Xi grabbed the tools of Mao and cultivated a sense of crisis: The great rejuvenation of China was being impeded by hostile forces who wanted to keep China poor, the United States was encircling China militarily, and Japan was stealing Chinese islands while Southeast Asia wasnt admitting that China owned the South China Sea.

Though he sent his daughter to Harvard, Xi sees liberal Western values and Westernization as the death knell for China. He is not interested in integrating into the system built by the West. China joined global organizations while globalizing, but party leaders dont feel the need to follow the rules as they werent at the table when they were made. China must unswervingly walk a path of its own, Xi said.

Accordingly, Xi sees himself as the third transformative leader of post-dynastic China, behind Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. He is haunted by the Soviet collapse, as nobody was man enough to stand up and resist. Xi is focused on a sacred mission to save the arty for his fathers generation of revolutionaries. His overarching message has been the promise of the China Dream, the Chinese equivalent of Making China Great Again.

Smoking and drinking and still going strong

One year into his term, Xi unveiled an impressive portfolio of economic reforms. So far, they appear stillborn.

Independent Chinese economist Andy Xie likens the Chinese economy to a fast growing teenage boy  strong, energetic, and quick to take up bad habits. Even after many late nights of drinking and smoking, the teenager still feels invincible. For the Chinese economy, the vice is debt. Chinas bureaucrats know that continued credit binges are unhealthy and will eventually lead to catastrophe. But the debt debauchery is not causing immediate disaster, so why curtail the fun?

This is also an election year for China. In the fall, the party will inaugurate a new leadership lineup, with Xi continuing into his second five-year term. While Americas elections are loud shout-and-insult festivals open for the world to see, the Communist partys political contests are bare-knuckled backroom brawls involving families, factions, blood feuds, and ideological disputes.

Xi has made many enemies with his anti-corruption campaigns; suppression of internal party debate; crackdown on academics, lawyers, and journalists; resurrection of Marxism; and a return to strongman Leninist control centered on himself. We can be certain that Trumps agitations will only consolidate Xis power and help cement a circle of hard-liners. On the other hand, if Xi is able to cut a deal with Trump prior to the 19th Party Congress in October or November this year, a path back to peaceful coexistence may be possible.

Dont forget China is worried about losing access to the worlds most advanced technology and overseas export markets. Chinese officials are very clear that the populist fervor that fueled Trumps election is at odds with the globalization that has enabled and nourished Chinas rise. As Chinas lead WTO negotiator Long Yongtu said at a forum I attended last October: China does not want to see the reversing of globalization. If globalization is diminished, that will be the end for all of us.

The agitator, the litigator, and the deal-maker

It will be up to Trumps trade negotiators to figure a way forward with China. His Trade Trio consists of an agitator, a litigator, and a deal maker. It is unclear which of them will be in charge of the administrations China trade policy.

The agitator is Peter Navarro, a Harvard Ph.D. economist and University of California Irvine professor, who is heading the newly created White House National Trade Council. He shares with Trump a profound dislike for taxes, regulation, and free trade. He also shares Trumps slippery relationship with facts, at least when it comes to China. Navarro is to Chinese policy and economics what Breitbart is to news: He floats cubes of truths in a murky concoction of hyperbole, ignorance, and expedient simplicity.

Navarro is correct in his basic premise that China has been playing the United States and the global trading system though mercantilism, IPR theft, subsidized exports, and currency manipulation. But his three books and a documentary on China display extreme, shallow, dated, and distorted views. His 2012 documentary Death by China: How America Lost Its Manufacturing Base is the classic. As the Los Angeles Times described it: Theres an important political argument at the core of Peter Navarros agitprop documentary  but its drowned out by xenophobic hysteria and exaggerations so rampant it becomes impossible to tell light from heat.

The litigator is Robert Lighthizer, Trumps pick for U.S. Trade Representative, a highly respected Washington, D.C. trade attorney who has worked with a wide range of multinationals on market access, antidumping, countervailing duty, and other trade litigation involving China. He was a deputy USTR during the Reagan administration, and prior to that served as Chief of Staff for the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over trade.

Lighthizer explained his views on trade with China in his 2010 testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. In examining the first decade of Chinas membership in the WTO, Lighthizer concluded that, U.S. policymakers did not recognize the extent to which Chinas economic and political system is fundamentally incompatible with our conception of the WTO and U.S. policymakers significantly misjudged the incentives for Western businesses to shift their operations to China and serve the U.S. market from there and the U.S. government has been very passive in response to Chinese mercantilism.

The deal maker is Commerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor who has specialized in purchasing and turning around distressed businesses in a range of sectors including coal, steel, textiles, and banking. A close friend of Trumps for two decades, Ross will likely have Trumps ear. What he will say is uncertain.

Ross comments on China over the years have shifted depending upon the deals hes worked on. As detailed by Max Abelson in Bloomberg Business Week, when Bush administration tariffs on steel imports helped Ross transform his investment in three bankrupt U.S. steel companies into an eightfold profit, Ross was vocally against free trade. When he later invested in several bankrupt U.S. textile companies and set out to expand their overseas operations, Ross was vehemently against protectionism. After investing with Chinas sovereign wealth fund in a shipping company, Ross said the U.S.-China trade deficit was nothing to worry about. I think that its total political nonsense, all the China bashing, Ross said. The trade deficit we have with the rest of the world is almost equal to the trade deficit we have with China, so whats the big deal about China?

Leveling the playing field with the biggest trade cheater in the world

During the campaign, Ross co-authored a trade and economic policy document with Navarro that described China as the biggest trade cheater in the world. During his confirmation hearing, however, Ross was more subdued. China is the most protectionist country of very large countries, he said. They have both very high tariff barriers and very high nontariff trade barriers to commerce.

Here is the way forward for Trumps Trade Trio: Navarro, the agitator, has done his job. Keep him off of the China trade team. His real knowledge of China is as deep as a cookie pan. Have him employ his formidable talents in rabble rousing and hyperbole elsewhere. Perhaps Russia merits his attention.

As commerce secretary, Ross can employ his talent for turning around failed but promising assets by resurrecting the TPP. That is the single most effective thing the Trump administration can do to incentivize China to get back on the path of economic reform. Ross can shape the broad outlines of the reset in U.S.-China policy and be the leading evangelist for reciprocity.

The person to make it happen is Lighthizer. He takes over an agency that during the Obama years was focused on the TPP. U.S. Trade Representative professionals have the ability to shape revisions sufficiently for Trump to sell it and keep other signatories appeased. Most importantly, Lighthizer is an expert on trade law and the internal workings of the U.S. bureaucracy. This would give him a fighting chance at devising the complicated legal language and the enforcement systems necessary to shift to reciprocity with China.

He also clearly understands the political obstacles that lay ahead. In his 2010 testimony, Lighthizer was critical of the long prevailing U.S. government reluctance to anger China. He said U.S. politicians and bureaucrats have been misguided in their worries about confronting China on trade and commercial issues due to worries about discouraging China from helping with such geopolitical problems as North Korea or Iran.

But this claim is really an argument for allowing current trends to continue indefinitely; there will always be some type of crisis where we could use Chinas assistance, Lighthizer wrote. The key issue is not whether we want Chinas help, but whether any potential help we may receive is worth the harm caused by Chinas trade policies.

The splintered U.S. business lobby needs to form a united front

While dealing with China will not be easy for Trumps Trade Trio, handling the American business community could be equally difficult and complicated. When China was pursuing Deng Xiaopings agenda of reform and opening, the American business community was Chinas best friend in Washington. But as China has refocused to reform and closing over the past decade, the American business lobby has become split and squeamish.

After the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, a powerful and effective pro-China business lobby formed around an annual congressional debate on renewing Chinas Most Favored Nation trade status. This became a massive operation when the business community led the fight for U.S. approval of Chinas accession to the WTO. Once China joined the WTO in 2001, the United States was forced by WTO protocols to discard our most effective toolbox of trade remedies.

Chief among these was Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. This provision empowered the president to order unilateral trade sanctions against protectionist trading partners. Section 301 was used in the 1990s to push for increased market access and IPR protection in China. Currently, the president can only use Section 301 in cases where there are neither international rules nor international dispute settlement provisions. So China now sits under the protective umbrella of the WTOs dysfunction.

As China has geared up joint venture and technology transfer requirements alongside myriad market access barriers, many of Americas largest multinationals have bought into these distortions to protect their China market share. U.S. government officials now find themselves listening to companies screaming about Chinas transgressions while also calling for the United States to do nothing.

The U.S. government is also all too focused on the relationship and losing Chinas cooperation on geopolitical issues. One reason for this bias is that the White House National Security Council is overwhelmingly staffed by political staff and very few Commerce Department officers who understand the importance of trade and business to American economic security.

So lets learn from China. When China wants to get something done, the party forms a leading group of senior officials to tackle the problem. The Trump White House would do well to form its own leading group on China that includes a wide range of government agencies and the business community. The focus should be on protecting Americas future prosperity and economic security.

Xi and other party leaders have been relentlessly pushing for the United States to adopt a new model of great power relations with China. So lets do that. The United States and China can have great power relations based on reciprocity.

Lilian Rogers provided assistance with this article.

Sean Gallup/Getty Images
In this commentary, David W. Wise proposes some reforms that he believes could restore reasoned compromise to the national election process.

In his celebrated Farewell Address George Washington warned his fellow citizens of the, baneful effects of the spirit of party. Yet, today the American public and its political leaders are at the highest levels of polarization in generations. Achieving consensus through compromise  what Madison in Federalist 10 called the permanent and aggregate interests of the community  is the very essence of democracy and without which our nation and Constitution would not exist. Our political system, however, now views reasoned compromise as a vice.

Which party wins is now more important than whether our laws and policies fulfill the standard set out by the Constitution itself of building a more perfect Union. Is it any wonder that a people do not vote or that the approval rating for Congress is just 18%? Our political processes have become the primary threat to the success of the nation, just as Washington warned. This essay will propose some modest reforms that could be achieved without the arduous process of amending the Constitution.

One of the most negative features of modern politics is the state of the permanent campaign. This negative is compounded by the 24/7 TV news cycle and the drive for ratings which places a premium on sensationalism and controversy. The modern presidential campaign is way too long spanning almost half a presidential term. A cascade of early debates which force candidates to appeal to the more extreme voices who vote in primary elections has the effect of driving us further apart as a nation.

The presidential nomination process should be made more compact. Five primary dates, not caucuses, with roughly ten states each reflecting the diversity of the United States  regionally and politically  held every third week between mid-March and early June would be a major step forward. This timeframe is consistent with what existed before the well-intentioned McGovern-Fraser reforms after the violent 1968 Democratic National Convention spawned the current chaotic system.

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Instead of closed primaries all states should look at the open blanket primary system adopted by California in which all candidates regardless of party or independence compete with the top two candidates (or possibly all candidates achieving at least 25% in the primary) squaring off in the general election. Parties would still play a role in recruiting and promoting candidates, but this proposal reduces the drive toward extreme positions inherent in the current highly partisan system.

It is self-evident that in a democracy voters should select their representatives and not the other way around as is the case with the now widespread gerrymandering. Take the example of Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Last November in these states the Republican candidates who ran statewide for president and US Senator  a good proxy for party strength  received 51.3% of the popular vote. Yet, the Republicans hold 68.1% of the seats in these state legislatures which then draw up partisan Congressional districts resulting in their party winning 74.7 of the seats.

Elections should be won at the ballot box and not in the backrooms and a recent case by a US District Court gerrymandering in Wisconsin holds some hope on this front. Seven states have led the way by delegating the power to draw district lines to independent commissions with California utilizing independent citizens, somewhat analogous to juries, to exercise this power. Today the 4 Cs  citizen involvement, computer-assisted mapping, the principle of geographic compactness, and the principle of aggregating rather than dividing established communities should result in the creation of Congressional districts that are both sensible and more competitive.

Majority rule is the central tenet of democracy; yet the first past the post system which awards legislative seats or all Electoral votes to a candidate who receives a mere plurality of the vote is antithetical to this principle. As a result, a candidate in a multi-contestant race who is unacceptable to well over a majority of voters can, with the support of a significant minority, win an election. On the other hand, the fear of wasting a vote on an alternative candidate has the effect of quashing new ideas.

States should adopt a system called instant runoff voting which allows ranking preferences in general elections to enable an immediate determination of a candidate who is acceptable to a majority. Seven states now have runoffs to ensure that the winners achieve a majority, but runoffs take time and cost additional resources. The technology is there to enable an immediate runoff vote and it should be adopted all the way up to the candidates for President.

Two states have adopted a system of awarding Electoral Votes by Congressional District. This would be a very bad practice to adopt at the national level as it would only increase the incentives to gerrymander at a time when two of the last four elections have been won by the candidate who came in second in the popular vote.

A better system that would help move national elections from being regional to truly national contests would be an agreement by all of the states to award Electoral votes in proportion to the post-instant runoff popular vote in each state which combines both the degree of popular support with the fact that ours is a Federal system.

David W. Wise is a retired business executive who publishes frequent commentary on public policy and is writing a book on diplomatic history. He holds a graduate degree from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday scheduled oral arguments in a major dispute on transgender rights for March 28, when the U.S. Senate is set to be in the midst of a political fight over President Donald Trump's nominee to a vacant seat on the bench. By March, the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate is likely to be deliberating on whether to approve Neil Gorsuch, a conservative federal appeals court judge from Colorado, to the court. Where Gorsuch stands on social issues like transgender rights is likely to be a much-discussed question during the confirmation process. Republicans are hoping the Senate Judiciary Committee holds hearings and votes on the nomination by late March, paving the way for a vote in the full Senate the first week of April, before the chamber begins a two week spring recess, according to Senate aides. In the transgender case, in which the eight-justice court could be split 4-4 without a ninth vote, a Virginia public school district is fighting to prevent a female-born transgender high school student from using the boys' bathroom. The dispute involves a transgender student named Gavin Grimm, who identifies as male and sued in 2015 to win the right to use the school's boys' bathroom. At the heart of the case is the question of whether transgender people are covered by a ban on gender discrimination in education under federal law. The administration of former President Barack Obama said it was. The Trump administration has not yet weighed in. Until the Senate approves a nominee, the court remains one justice short following the February death of Antonin Scalia, which left it with four conservatives and four liberals. That raises the possibility of a 4-4 ruling that would leave in place the decision favoring Grimm by the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A 4-4 ruling would set no nationwide legal precedent. It is also possible that the court could rehear the case if Gorsuch is confirmed. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Tom Brown)
Restrictions on U.S. travel to Cuba have been eased recently, meaning it's a lot easier for Americans to visit the Caribbean country. But many people are under the impression that you can only visit by joining an organized tour. Not so -- you can join an organized group or cruise ship. But you can also plan a solo trip (and save a good chunk of money in doing so). Here are eight common questions about visiting Cuba without a tour group and tips for navigating Cuba on your own.

[Read: 9 Things to Know to Improve Your Safety When Traveling Oversees.]

What do I need to travel to Cuba without a group?

The bare essentials for Cuba travel from the U.S. include your passport, visa, medical insurance (usually included in your plane ticket) and cash (more on that later). You'll also need to show proof of a place to stay, and should do most of your research up front, as internet access isn't always easy to come by once you're on the ground.

How do I get a visa?

Under the new visa restrictions there are 12 official reasons American citizens can visit Cuba. These range from family visits to journalistic or educational activity (the full list is available here). While authorities may not appear to be closely monitoring your activity to match it to your visa during or after the trip, you should document your itinerary and activities that are related to your visa purpose. Now that many airlines have direct flights to Cuba, the visa process is built into the ticket purchasing process. Keep in mind, you will have to purchase a visa, and you may receive it by mail, so plan ahead. Airlines may partner with a visa provider (American Airlines works with Cuba Travel Services, for example), who will contact you about purchasing the visa.

How do I book an airline ticket to Cuba?

If you're flying on a major airline, the process is the same as booking a ticket to anywhere else (as long as you book directly with the website). You'll be asked about the visa requirements and will be prompted to confirm that you meet one of the approved visas. At this time, online travel agencies such as Expedia or Booking.com are not offering accommodations and flights to Cuba.

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Do I need anything special to clear customs when I return to the U.S.?

When departing from Cuba, you'll have to go through customs and hand over a form provided upon arrival, so keep it in your passport or somewhere else safe. It's recommended that you keep records of what you did and where you stayed. Once back in the U.S., the customs process is fairly standard, especially if you have a digital passport or Global Entry. Keep in mind you may have to go through security again after customs before any connecting flights; there have been cases of TSA officials not letting duty-free rum from the airport through customs.

What do I need to bring to Cuba?

First and foremost, bring cash. With the exception of U.S. credit cards issued by Stonegate Bank in Florida, you cannot use American credit cards or ATM cards in Cuba, so you need to bring all the money you'll need and then some for emergencies. There are two forms of local currency; tourists deal mostly in the Cuban convertible peso. You can exchange U.S. dollars to pesos at the airport or at exchange houses in most cities. Keep in mind there's a 10 percent fee to exchange U.S. dollars, but there's no fee to change Canadian dollars or euros.

Aside from cash, bring anything you might need day-to-day. You can't pop into a convenience store as easily as you can in the U.S., so pack all toiletries, medicines such as painkillers and anti-nausea pills, first-aid items, sunscreen and Kleenex or a small amount of toilet paper. Consider also bringing some extra clothes, makeup and bath products or pens, as American brands are not available in the country and these items make nice gifts for lodging hosts.

Where do I stay in Cuba?

There are plenty of hotels in Cuba. After all, the country has been a tourist destination for travelers from other countries for years. However, the quality and amenities, in many cases, are not on par with what many Americans are used to. A few American chains, including Starwood, have recently opened hotels in Havana.

If you're traveling on a budget or want a more locally driven experience, opt to stay in a casa particular. These bed-and-breakfast type accommodations put you in a home with a Cuban family. Many of these are now available on Airbnb, which can be a good way to book in advance and pay by credit card (otherwise you'll have to pay in cash). Casa particulars are plentiful, so if you prefer flexibility you can arrive and look for houses with a white sign and blue symbol. If the house doesn't have room, they'll likely be able to recommend other houses that do.

Do I need to speak Spanish?

A number of Cubans speak English, but a number speak none at all. If you're traveling on your own without an organizer, you'll need a basic understanding of conversational Spanish. This will let you communicate with casa particular owners, taxi drivers and others and is particularly helpful if your travel doesn't go according to plan.

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What's the deal with internet and cellphone service?

If you have a major U.S. cellphone carrier such as AT&T or Verizon, your phone may have service in larger cities and towns. Roaming services can get quite expensive, however, along with addition fees for text messages and and voice calls. As for internet, you'll be able to purchase prepaid timed Wi-Fi cards at some upscale hotels and Etecsa service shops. Happily, some public spaces are opening up Wi-Fi hotspots; if you purchase an Etesca card, you will be able to log on.
Government offices were set ablaze and two protesters killed by police in a remote part of Northeast India this week, as mobs of local tribesmen violently demanded that the government eliminate quotas ensuring womens representation in local government.

Hundreds of troops were reportedly deployed Thursday to calm the streets of Kohima, capital of the Indian state of Nagaland, according to Indian broadcaster NDTV. A senior paramilitary officer was quoted Friday as saying the situation is under control, the important locations have been taken care of.

Violence erupted in at least two cities on Tuesday, when local elections were set to take place. At the center of the unrest is a new quota system reserving 33% of municipal seats for women, a provision that some locals believe has been unlawfully imposed by the Indian government.

At least two municipal buildings in Kohima were reportedly set on fire during the first day of protests, as mobs ransacked the capital burning cars and other property. Police also reportedly fired into a crowd of protesters in Dimapur, the largest city in Nagaland, fatally shooting two young men. The Nagaland Post reports that the two are being honored as martyrs who died to protect Naga values.

Protests continued on Thursday as the bodies of the two young men were taken through the streets of the capital. The mob demanded the resignation of the states highest executive and his cabinet, NDTV reports. Several columns of the Indian army and Assam Rifles, a pro-government paramilitary force, were deployed, and the Indian Express reports that a 7 p.m. curfew was imposed.

Reports are slow to emerge from the remote and mountainous state in Indias Northeast  a rugged assemblage of territories populated by tribal minority groups and mired in insurgency. Mobile Internet service has been indefinitely cut off in parts of the state, NDTV reports, while an ongoing bandh, or road blockade, has reportedly been repurposed as leverage for new demands, according to the Nagaland Post.
One day after the Trump administration put Iran on notice following a ballistic missile test, the administration reportedly was poised Thursday to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Quoting a source, Reuters reported eight Iranian entities would be targeted for terrorism-related activities and 17 for activities related to ballistic missiles. The sanctions were said to have been in the works for some time, and Sundays missile test convinced President Donald Trump to trigger them.

The White House issued a statement Wednesday, saying Iran had been ungrateful for the agreements reached with the administration and apparently was embolden by the lack of action against some of its other moves.

As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice, the statement from national security adviser Michael Flynn said.

Iran tested a ballistic missile during the weekend and insisted this week such missile launches are not covered by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Iran claims its missile tests are for defensive purposes and not covered by either the nuclear deal or U.N. resolutions.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said he would support new sanctions on Iran and accused the Obama administration of having been far too accommodating.

"I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran," Ryan told his weekly press conference. Id like to put as much toothpaste back in the tube as possible. I think the last administration appeased Iran far too much.

Congressional aides told Reuters the administration is looking to take action without waiting for Congress since laws were passed but never implemented by the Obama administration.

President Donald Trump said Thursday nothing is off the table in dealing with Tehran in the wake of the missile launch and posted a pair of tweets indicating he would hold Iran to the letter of the deal signed between Tehran and the five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

"The administration, thankfully, is going to follow through on appropriately holding Iran accountable for the violations that are taking place," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said, adding his committee is in the early stages of legislation.

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Iran tested a ballistic missile Sunday capable of traveling 2,500 miles and carrying a nuclear warhead. The German newspaper Die Welt reported Thursday Iran also tested a homemade cruise missile with the same range and capability. The Times of Israel reported the missiles would be capable of reaching Israel and can be launched from ships.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the reimposition of sanctions against Iran and was expected to push that position at his scheduled meeting with Trump Feb. 15, the Jerusalem Post reported.

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By Yeganeh Torbati WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on Iran, which it said were just "initial steps" and said Washington would no longer turn a "blind eye" to Iran's hostile actions. The sanctions on 25 individuals and entities were the opening salvo by President Donald Trump who has vowed a more aggressive policy against Tehran and came two days after the administration had put Iran 'on notice' following a ballistic missile test. "The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Irans provocations that threaten our interests," National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said. "The days of turning a blind eye to Irans hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over," Flynn said in a White House statement. Suggesting that more concrete action could follow if Iran does not curb its ballistic missile program and continues support in regional proxy conflicts, a senior administration official said the latest sanctions were the initial steps in response to Iran's "provocative behavior". The administration was "undertaking a larger strategic review" of how it responds to Iran. Iran denounced the sanctions as illegal and said it would impose legal restrictions on American individuals and entities helping "regional terrorist groups", state TV quoted a Foreign Ministry statement as saying. Those affected under the sanctions cannot access the U.S. financial system or deal with U.S. companies and are subject to secondary sanctions, meaning foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them or risk being blacklisted by the United States. NUCLEAR DEAL The White House said that while the sanctions were a reaction to recent events, they had been under consideration before. It added that a landmark 2015 deal to curb Iran's nuclear program was not in the best interest of the United States. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the missile test did not violate the nuclear agreement. "It's not a direct violation ... I think there is no question that it violates the spirit of that," Spicer said in an interview with MSNBC. He said the nuclear agreement was a "sweetheart deal" for Iran. Citing a foreign ministry statement, Iran's semi-official Fars news agency said the missile program is "the undeniable and inalienable right of our nation under international law and the UN charter. Any foreign interference in this regard is a violation of international law." The new designations stuck to areas that remain under sanctions even with the 2015 nuclear deal sealed between Iran and world powers in place, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military body that is powerful in Iranian politics and the economy, and Iran's ballistic missile program. Zarif led Iran's delegation at the nuclear negotiations in 2015. Among those affected by the sanctions were what it said was a Lebanon-based network run by the Revolutionary Guards. "The list is actually so targeted and comparatively mild, it leads one to surmise that it may have been a set of targets devised by the Obama administration, and was ready to go when Trump came into office," said Adam Smith, former senior advisor to the Director of the U.S. Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control. "As such, the real test for which way the Trump team will go on Iran may well be not this list release but the next one, whenever that occurs," Smith said. The sanctions' impact will be more symbolic than practical, especially as they do not affect the lifting of broader U.S. and international sanctions that took place under the nuclear deal. Also, few of the Iranian entities being targeted are likely to have U.S. assets that can be frozen, and U.S. companies, with few exceptions, are barred from doing business with Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. moved a Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen to protect waterways from Houthi militia aligned with Iran. DESIGNATIONS German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Friday expressed understanding over the sanctions, but warned against conflating Sunday's test with the nuclear deal. Earlier on Friday, Trump tweeted: "Iran is playing with fire". U.S. Senator Mark Warner expressed support for the sanctions, adding: "I urge the Administration to bring clarity to their overall strategy towards Iran, and to refrain from ambiguous rhetoric  or provocative tweets  that will exacerbate efforts to confront those challenges. Some of the entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China. Among those affected were companies, individuals and brokers the U.S. Treasury said support a trade network run by Iranian businessman Abdollah Asgharzadeh. Treasury said he supported Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which the United States has said is a subsidiary of an Iranian entity that runs Iran's ballistic missile program. Hasan Dehghan Ebrahimi, a Beirut-based official with the Revolutionary Guard's Qods Force, which runs its operations abroad, was put under sanctions for acting on behalf of the Qods Force, Treasury said. Three Lebanese companies involved in waste collection, pharmaceuticals, and construction were also listed under the sanctions for being owned or controlled by Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat, one of Ebrahimi's employees. Treasury said he has facilitated millions of dollars in cash transfers to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Two of his employees and a company he manages were also sanctioned. Treasury said Ebrahimi and his employees used a Lebanon-based network to transfer funds, launder money, and conduct business. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by James Dalgleish)
By Gina Cherelus

(Reuters) - A Trump administration aide corrected herself on Friday after being widely criticized for referencing a 2011 "Bowling Green massacre" in Kentucky that never occurred to defend President Donald Trump's temporary ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Thursday that Trump's executive order was justified in part by the "Bowling Green massacre" of 2011. She added, "Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

During the interview Conway told how two Iraqis who came to the United States and were radicalized "were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre." No such event occurred.

Conway corrected herself on Friday in a post on Twitter, saying, "Honest mistakes abound."

The phrase "Bowling Green massacre" was the top trending topic on Twitter on Friday morning as thousands of social media users mocked Conway.

"Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack ... or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks," tweeted Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) on Friday.

In May 2011, two Iraqi men were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and charged with attempting to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq. They admitted to using improvised explosive devices against U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan pleaded guilty and were sentenced to life in prison and 40 years in prison, respectively. Prosecutors at the time said neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.

Conway said on Twitter that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists." She also slammed a network reporter for criticizing her. "NBC reporter texted me at 632am re:a diff story; never asked what I meant on @Hardball b4 slamming me on @TODAYshow Not cool, not journalism," Conway (@KellyannePolls) wrote.

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On Inauguration Day, Zeke Miller, a TIME Magazine reporter, incorrectly reported that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bust was removed from the oval office, causing an uproar on social media.

Miller (@ZekeJMiller), tweeted later that evening that the bust "was obscured by an agent and a door" and issued multiple apologies for his error.

In a similar reaction to Conway, Trump's administration responded by ripping the media for spreading fake news, with spokesman Sean Spicer describing his actions as deliberately false reporting during his first White House press briefing.

As "Bowling Green massacre" swept social media, a website called "The Bowling Green Massacre Fund" carrying a parody of Conway's comments surfaced on Friday.

It read, "We all still carry the vivid memories of what horrors occurred at Bowling Green, but some still relive those moments everyday as they work to rebuild a community torn apart."

Clicking on the "donate now" button on the website leads to a donation site of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The ACLU did not return calls seeking comment.

(Reporting by Gina Cherelus in New York; Editing by Toni Reinhold and James Dalgleish)
If youre a Trump supporter, you might be feeling pretty good about the new administrations first steps. You may have hailed the Muslim ban (and lets be honest, thats what it is) as a long-overdue step to protect Americans from dangerous foreigners. (Its not, of course, but never mind.) Perhaps you also think the chorus of criticism from lawyers, the media, academics, corporate leaders, foreign governments, and former government officials  including many prominent Republicans  is just welcome evidence that Trump is on the right track. You might well view his first two weeks as clear signs a new sheriff is in town and putting the whole world on notice. You may even see his end-runs around the interagency process, his decision to replace top defense and intelligence officials on the National Security Council with alt-right advisor Stephen Bannon as steps designed to protect the America First policies that you voted for in November and that he reaffirmed on Inauguration Day.

With all due respect, you would be wrong.

In fact, if you are a loyal Trump supporter, and especially someone who embraced him because you thought he would deliver a smarter, more self-interested, more restrained, and above all more successful foreign policy than his predecessors, you should be disappointed and deeply worried. Why? Because in just two weeks he has squandered a genuine opportunity to put American foreign policy on a more solid footing and has managed to unite and empower opposition at home and abroad in ways that would have been hard to imagine a few months ago.

When Trump was elected, he was in an excellent position to push for some significant positive shifts in U.S. foreign policy. Its true he lost the popular vote by more than 2.5 million people, but his broad assault on an out-of-touch and unaccountable elite  including most of the foreign-policy establishment  clearly resonated with lots of voters. Though far from a decisive mandate, there was substantial popular support for a different approach to international affairs, and the deference normally accorded the president on matters of foreign policy and national security would have given him considerable latitude to shift U.S. policy in sensible ways. Surveys consistently showed a sizable percentage of the American people wanted less military interventionism, less allied free-riding, and were skeptical of global economic arrangements whose benefits seemed to go to Wall Street more than Main Street. Had Trump proceeded smartly, the path to a more restrained and effective foreign policy was open.

In particular, Trump could have reaffirmed his opposition to military interventions and nation-building, and begun to wind down the far-flung and increasingly open-ended campaign of drone strikes and targeted killings that has done little to reduce what was already a very modest danger from terrorism. He could have concluded that staying in Afghanistan was a losing proposition and begun a carefully phased disengagement. As I described in last weeks column, he could have articulated the strategic logic behind his desire for better relations with Russia and reduced suspicions that he is Putins puppet. After his tough talk during the campaign, he was in an ideal position to get U.S. allies in Europe and Asia to bear a heavier burden for their own defense while still making it clear that the United States saw them as important partners. He could have enhanced the U.S. position vis-a-vis China by modifying his stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Yes, that would have required changing positions on a dime, but whos better at being two-faced than Trump?) And he could have returned the United States to a more hands-off, offshore balancing approach in the Middle East, in effect signaling that the United States was no longer going to play traffic cop or social worker there. No more failed Bush-style regional transformations, but also no more futile and failed efforts at Israeli-Palestinian peace. If our Israeli friends want one-state and permanent apartheid, let em deal with the consequences on their own.

Had he taken all (or at least most) of these steps, and in a calm and deliberate way, some members of the foreign-policy establishment would have been upset but others would have been encouraged and many would have taken a wait-and-see approach. Some of his supporters would have been disappointed, perhaps, but many of his other backers would have stuck with him provided he delivered on tax reform or deregulation and restored some working-class jobs with a decent domestic infrastructure program. This approach would have been mindful of the public desire for fewer global burdens, but also the publics continued belief that the United States should be a leading world power in partnership with others. Acting this way would have allowed Trump to demonstrate he could be a statesman, while still challenging some reigning foreign-policy orthodoxies. Most important of all, these changes would have preserved the valuable features of the present global order, which in fact is very much to our benefit. With a bit of luck, the country would have stayed on an even keel and he might have been well-positioned for reelection in 2020, despite his advanced age and other liabilities.

Trump (and political advisor Bannon) did none of these things. Instead, they started to pick several fights with China while undercutting the U.S. position in Asia. Yesterday he badgered Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in an acrimonious phone call  and here we are talking about the leader of the country that has fought at Americas side in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan  and he bragged (again) about his electoral win. They picked another pointless fight with Mexico, mostly because Trump cant admit what is obvious to all: If that stupid wall ever gets built, Americans will have to pay for it. The White House announced an unlawful ban on Muslim immigrants, and rolled the new policy out as ineptly as possible. I mean, seriously: They shut the door on hundreds of extensively vetted refugees on Holocaust Remembrance Day (thereby invoking memories of the countrys callous response to Nazi persecution in the 1930s), and then they doubled-down by deliberately excluding any mention of Jews from the official statement on the day itself. One guess about which of their supporters Trump and Bannon were trying to appeal to with that slick move.

Meanwhile, he is openly flirting with a trade war that would damage the entire world economy, including ours, yet with no apparent purpose or endgame in mind. After telling us that he knows much more than the generals, his secret plan for dealing with the Islamic State turns out to be ask the Defense Department to come up with one, as if nobody at the Pentagon had given any thought to the matter. Trumps rash and ill-considered Muslim ban was a blunder here as well, as it will make Iraqis even more reluctant to cooperate with us, and theyre the ones who are currently fighting and dying to drive the Islamic State from the cities it still controls. And his national security advisor, Michael Flynn, has started saber-rattling with Iran. Instead of getting us out of fruitless conflicts in the Middle East, Trump and Bannons obsession with Islam makes a true and costly clash of civilizations more likely.

Last but not least, Trump & Co. are continuing their misguided efforts to destabilize relations with our closest allies, based on the bizarre belief that this somehow strengthens Americas international position. Do you really believe Americans are better off when the head of the European Union, who happens to be the staunchly pro-American Polish politician Donald Tusk, is warning that the United States is itself a threat to EU stability? And all the while Trump and his surrogates continue to demonize anyone with the temerity to disagree with Fearless Leader or to question his infallibility, in a matter more reminiscent of Mussolini, Stalin, or the Kim family in North Korea than of Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, or any of Trumps other predecessors in the Oval office.

Meanwhile, what has been the impact of these brilliant strategic moves? For starters, foreign leaders who like the United States are learning that being nice to Trump can hurt them at home (and earns them no favors in Washington anyway). Our adversaries  from the Islamic State to Beijing to Iran  have been handed powerful new arguments with which to embarrass, delegitimize, and undermine Americas image and reputation. And perhaps most remarkable of all, a president elected by the smallest percentage of the popular vote in history has seen his approval ratings continue to fall, even as an unlikely opposing coalition of opponents begins to form against him. If youre still among his supporters, this cannot be an encouraging sign.

Or consider this. For the past 15 years or more, people like me have been consistently and at times powerfully critical of American neoconservatives. I still regard their views on U.S. grand strategy and U.S. Middle East policy as dangerous and wrong, and I believe they bear considerable responsibility for the continuing fiasco we are dealing with in the Middle East. If William Kristol, Eliot Cohen, or David Frum got close to wielding power again, Id worry that their advice might be taken seriously and Id do what I could to challenge their analysis and their prescriptions. But as of today were on the same side, because the threat that Trump, Bannon, and their incompetent cronies pose to our constitutional order and core political values overrides our continuing differences on other foreign-policy questions. The neocons may change their tune if Trump does decide to attack Iran  well see  but for now their concerns are justified and their warnings should be heeded.

It takes a danger of considerable magnitude to get realists and neoconservatives to agree on anything, but we agree on Trump. And you can add to that unlikely coalition the traditional left, the largely apolitical civil service, the heads of a growing number of major corporations, and many dedicated foreign-policy professionals Trump might have won over but didnt even bother to try.

Read more:

Trump Could Take Obamas Drone War Further Into the Shadows The new president has inherited his predecessors drone program but might ditch the rules that kept it in check.

Donald Trumps Far-Right Feedback Loop Is Shaking Europe to Its Core At risk are the very foundations of the international order.

3 Ways to Get Rid of President Trump Before 2020 Why you need to read the 25th Amendment now..

Which raises the obvious question: Why is he acting this way?

Some pundits believe it is mostly a product of his own defective personality: a toxic combination of brashness, narcissism, sensitivity to the smallest slight, and utter disregard for truth or consequences. Another possibility  and theyre not mutually exclusive  is that Trump and his inner circle really do have a grand strategy; its just at odds with reality, internally contradictory, and destined to fail bigly. And a third possibility  also not mutually exclusive  is that the Bannon-Trump approach to politics is in fact driven by a paranoid view of the modern world that sees the global economy in strictly zero-sum terms (thereby ignoring a couple of centuries of economic knowledge) and thinks the white, Judeo-Christian West is now under siege from an implacable and powerful tide of dark-skinned people, and especially Muslims. Instead of recognizing Americas remarkable strengths and security and many unique virtues, the Breitbart worldview that has infested the White House believes it has to destroy our current democracy in order to save it.

What these modern-day Jacobins dont realize, alas, is that destroying institutions is easier than building them. If their assault on our core political traditions and institutions is successful, the United States will at best end up weaker and poorer. At worst, it will cease to be a meaningful democracy. The fact that the generally conservative Economist Intelligence Unit recently downgraded America  thats right, the Land of the Free  from a full to a flawed democracy tells you just how serious this problem is. Based on the early evidence, Trump and Bannon want to accelerate that trend.

Some of Trumps supporters may have flocked to him because they were tired of the failed strategy of liberal hegemony and worried that Hillary Clinton and her team were going to repeat the same mistakes that Obama, Bush, or her husband made. If so, its increasingly clear they arent going to get the smart and more restrained approach to the world they were hoping for. By that standard, in short, Donald J. Trump is already a failure. Didnt take him long. I would say it was Sad! but its not. Its tragic.

Photo credit: WIN MCNAMEE/Getty Images

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(WASHINGTON)  Donald Trumps spats with U.S. allies as close as Mexico and as unlikely as Australia are leaving his new secretary of state and others in his Cabinet to clean up a lot of potential damage. Its a good-cop, bad-cop dynamic that could define Americas foreign policy for the next four years.

President Trumps first two weeks on the job have rattled foreign friends and foes alike  and even members of his own party  starting with his order to temporarily halt all refugee admissions as well as immigration from seven mainly-Muslim countries. Concern only escalated the past few days with his personal dust-ups with foreign leaders and declaration that Iran is now on notice for possible American action.

Its time were going to be a little tough, folks, Trump said at a National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, as unseemly details circulated about his private phone calls with the Mexican and Australian leaders. Were taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. Its not going to happen anymore.

Trumps blunt comments came a day after word emerged of a tense discussion with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull, in which the new U.S. president lambasted an Obama-era deal to resettle some 1,600 asylum-seekers.

Diplomatic dysfunction was clear. Minutes after the U.S. Embassy in Canberra said the deal was still on, Trump seemed to contradict that message, tweeting: I will study this dumb deal!

On the other side of the globe, new details emerged about strained ties between the U.S. and its southern neighbor. There was already irritation on both sides following Mexican President Enrique Pena Nietos cancellation of a trip to Washington after Trump made the visit contingent on Mexico agreeing to pay for a U.S. border wall.

In a follow-up phone call, Trump warned Pena Nieto that he was ready to send U.S. troops to stop bad hombres down there if Mexicos military cant control them, The Associated Press learned. The White House said the comments were made in a lighthearted manner. But administration officials described the calls with both leaders as contentious.

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Some top aides are underscoring Trumps emphasis on toughness and brawnier U.S. negotiations, dominant themes of his America First foreign policy.

At the United Nations, Trumps U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, said the U.S. would be taking names of countries that dont have our back. His national security adviser, Michael Flynn, made a surprising appearance at the White House daily briefing to officially put Iran on notice after its ballistic missile test. Trump topped Flynn Thursday by saying nothing is off the table when it comes to a potential American response.

But Trumps top diplomats are striking noticeably softer tones.

Rex Tillerson, in his first day as secretary of state, implicitly acknowledged in an address to staff that many U.S. diplomats oppose some of Trumps positions. Without criticizing that, he called for unity.

Honesty will undergird our foreign policy, and well start by making it the basis of how we interact with each other, Tillerson said. We are human beings first.

The former Exxon Mobil CEO offered an olive branch to hundreds of diplomats who signed a dissent cable challenging Trumps order on immigration and refugees, affirming that each of us is entitled to the expression of our political beliefs. While noting the nations hotly contested election campaign, Tillerson stressed that we cannot let out personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought to project the same sentiment internationally in South Korea on Thursday, in his first official trip abroad. He said the presidents message was about the priority that we place on this alliance between our two nations, seeking to reassure an ally that was unnerved by Trump the candidate when he said it should take on greater self-defense responsibility.

While Trump drives foreign policy from the White House, he appears to be tasking his top Cabinet officials with the responsibility of follow-up reassurance. Theyre also fielding questions from allies about his taboo-shattering language and trying to clarify the true U.S. positions behind the rhetoric.

Though Tillerson himself lacks experience as a diplomat, he portrayed himself in his Senate confirmation hearing as a levelheaded tactician with foreign policy views within the Republican mainstream. He spent his first day at work meeting with Jordans King Abdullah II and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel.

For many of Trumps supporters, each new antagonistic tweet, statement or executive order has been a fresh measure of proof that he intends to shake up a foreign policy establishment they reject and fulfill his promise to put America first. They argue he is reasserting American strength after the weakness of the Obama administration.

After winning the presidency, Trump quickly ruffled China, a chief American economic and political rival, with a call to the president of Taiwan, breaking longstanding U.S. policy.

Trumps first meeting with a foreign leader, last week with British Prime Minister Theresa May, had been a bright spot in his diplomatic debut. But his immigration order brought thousands of protesters to Londons streets labeling her Theresa the Appeaser. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson then called Trumps order divisive, discriminatory and wrong.

Trumps warnings to Iran prompted a more hostile response from Tehran on Thursday.

It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran, said Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader. According to Irans state-run IRNA news agency, Velayati said: The U.S. will be the final loser.

Meanwhile, it fell to Sen. John McCain, a hawkish Republican, to smooth relations with Australia. McCain said he phoned Australias ambassador to affirm unwavering support for the U.S.-Australia alliance.

___

Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
Like many of his predecessors, President Donald Trump promised to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as a candidate. While the new president is clearly motivated by showing that he does what others are unable or unwilling to do, it is too soon to know when or if he will act on this promise. Trump acted to defuse speculation that moving the embassy was imminent by saying in an interview last week: I dont want to talk about it yet. Its too early.

The White House has also yet to take an official position on settlement activity. Spokesman Sean Spicer said in a statement yesterday that while the White House does not believe settlements were an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or expansion of existing settlements may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

The Trump administration will no doubt discuss Israeli settlements, and the location of the U.S. embassy, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington in February. When the president meets with the prime minister privately, he would be wise to ask how important moving the embassy is to him and where it fits in his list of priorities.

To be sure, no Israeli prime minister could possibly be against moving the embassy to Jerusalem. It is Israels political and spiritual capital  and it goes to the very heart of Israels identity as the state of the Jewish people.

But Jerusalem has great emotional and political meaning for the Palestinians as well. As the site of the al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site for Sunni Islam, the city can also be easily used to arouse immense passions throughout Muslim majority countries.

Perhaps that is why previous Israeli governments have quietly urged the United States to properly lay the groundwork before moving the embassy. In 1995, shortly after we had concluded the Interim Agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians  an agreement in the Oslo process that extended the writ of the Palestinian Authority to all of the cities of the West Bank  Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, conveyed discreetly to the Clinton administration and to me personally that the pending congressional legislation to move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem could be destabilizing. He emphasized that he wanted the embassy to be in Jerusalem and that he would never oppose such a move  but we needed to be smart about this, recognizing that timing and context mattered. He was counting on us to avoid doing anything that could undermine his peace partners or empower Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood in the region.

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With that advice very much in mind, we negotiated legislation that permitted the president to waive the legal requirement to move the embassy for national security reasons. At the time, President Bill Clinton hoped we would succeed in negotiating a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians that would resolve the final status of Jerusalem and end the conflict, enabling us to move the embassy during his presidency. Until an agreement was reached, he decided that he would exercise the waiver every six months. Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, with no agreement in sight, have continued to exercise the waiver  and the timing of Obamas last waiver allows Trump not to have to do anything about the embassy until June.

Should Trump forgo his promise and follow the pattern of his predecessors? Not necessarily, provided he prepares the ground carefully, consults quietly with key Arab leaders in advance, and publicly describes the limits of what our action means to the status of Jerusalem. Precisely because Jerusalem is an emotional issue for all sides, it is important not to do anything that could be exploited by those  such as Iran, the Islamic State, or other radical Islamists  who want to threaten both Americas interests and its Arab friends in the region. Indeed, a move that is not properly prepared will almost certainly force the Egyptians, Emiratis, Jordanians, Moroccans, and Saudis to distance themselves from the United States, for fear that they will face demonstrations by their own publics accusing them of acquiescing in Americas sacrifice of Arab interests in Jerusalem.

At the very moment when the Trump administration will want to draw Arab states into playing a larger role in the fight against the Islamic State, the embassy move could work against that objective. That said, there are ways to potentially manage the issue. First, the more the Trump administration takes key Arab leaders into its confidence and lays out its approach to the region, including a serious plan to counter Iran and its use of Shiite militias  something the Obama administration never developed  it can increase their interest in preserving ties to Washington. In other words, if the United States is a more credible ally on the threats that matter most to our Arab partners, it will find it easier to manage an issue that otherwise will be difficult for them.

Second, the administration must explain in advance that the embassy move is an acknowledgment of the reality that West Jerusalem is a part of Israel, that it has been since 1948, and that it will always be a part of the Jewish state. Moving the embassy to West Jerusalem simply acknowledges these facts. The United States is not going to prejudge the final status of the city  only negotiations can resolve that. The administration should repeat this mantra well before it actually moves the embassy, to condition the environment and make it difficult later to misrepresent what it is doing.

Third, as part of its discussions with Arab leaders, it should solicit their views on how it might talk about the issue in public. In these conversations, it should also make clear that it will pursue diplomacy to break the stalemate between the Israelis and Palestinians  knowing that the administration will pursue a diplomatic solution and will make it easier for our Arab friends to put the move in proper context. Having said that he considers a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians the ultimate deal and that his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will work on this issue, Trump should not raise false expectations about reaching peace soon. That is simply not in the cards, given the wide psychological and substantive gaps separating the Israelis and Palestinians. Still, he should be clear that his administration will take a practical approach to trying to change the circumstances, so what is not now possible in terms of peacemaking will become possible over time.

Lastly, before anything is done on the embassy, the new administration should reach out to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is already out in public opposing the move. No doubt he hopes to dissuade the administration from moving the embassy, fearing that it will be portrayed as if he has lost Jerusalem. He almost certainly assumes that Hamas will encourage the Palestinian public to carry out violence against Israelis and possibly Americans  and that any such violence can get out of hand and be directed against him. Outreach to Abbas would be designed to explain what is being done and not done: If the embassy is being moved to West Jerusalem and is tied to statements that this does not alter the U.S. position that the permanent status of Jerusalem can be resolved only through negotiations between the parties, it allows Abbas to say he received assurances from the Americans that nothing final has been decided about the city. Any private outreach to him should convey the administrations readiness to engage in diplomacy with the Israelis and Palestinians  while making clear that should the administration decide to move the embassy, the future of its relationship with the PA will depend on its not calling for violence or fomenting demonstrations in response.

Ultimately, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem is not a simple issue. But with a careful approach to timing, outreach, and proper public framing, the Trump administration could manage it. If nothing else, it will be a test of the administrations diplomatic skill.

Photo credit: JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images
World

Trump pivots on Israel, cautions against new settlements

Just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades, President Trumps team cautioned in a statement that the move may not be helpful to Middle East peace efforts. Although the White House has not assumed an official position, the latest comments appear to show an increasing alignment with previous administrations that have considered the settlements illegitimate. The statement reflects a tougher line on Israels government than Trump, who promised to be a better partner for Israel during his presidential campaign, has shown previously.

While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. The White House, in a statement on Thursday

Netanyahus promise to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where soldiers forced their way into a synagogue to remove protesters who had barricaded themselves inside. Netanyahus pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation, but Israels Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land. Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C., later this month and will meet with President Trump at the White House on Feb. 15.
President Donald Trumps clear willingness  perhaps even desire  to offend and alienate some of Americas most critical allies in the global counterterrorism fight via the travel ban on refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries makes it arguably his most dangerous act among a litany of shockingly ill-advised policy moves since his inauguration a mere two weeks ago. By halting the admittance of individuals from these terror-prone nations, all but one of which (Iran) are host to some variety of U.S. counterterrorism activity  as well as pausing the refugee program for 120 days and blocking Syrian refugees indefinitely  Trump has in one executive order made it exponentially harder for the United States to achieve its most critical foreign-policy objective: the reduction of terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland.

There are, of course, myriad other serious problems with the travel ban, including its utter refutation of core American values and the ease with which the Islamic State and other extremist groups can exploit its propaganda value as proof that the United States is, in fact, at war with Islam. But the message the travel ban sends to governments across the Muslim world, including countries not on the list that are smart enough to see through the administrations absurd assertions that its not a Muslim ban (i.e., all of them), will make Americans significantly less safe in the immediate term. The United States badly needs Muslim partners to help it track down and neutralize those who pose a threat to America and its allies, not to mention on countless other programs that reduce the specter of extremism in the very places the ban rightly identifies at hotbeds of radicalism.

Telling these nations, from the closest of allies to those that only begrudging allow U.S. troops or special operators on their soil, that their citizens and those of other Muslim-majority nations are too dangerous to set foot in the United States will without a doubt make those nations more hesitant to work with U.S. forces and intelligence agencies. The fact that the immigrants in question may be fleeing those same governments repressive actions is unlikely to prevent those governments from taking offense. Backlash will occur both at the most senior diplomatic levels and, perhaps more critically, on the ground, where the most important aspects of the counterterrorism mission, including intelligence sharing, security cooperation, and military operations, take place every day. These governments will take this action seriously, and they will take it to heart. It is difficult to understate the damage this can and will cause.

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The United States has not fought a truly unilateral war in the last 200 years and has had allies and partners in every conflict in which it has participated since the founding of the republic. But in the years since 9/11  and particularly since the disastrous Iraq War in which U.S. boots on the ground exacerbated and by some accounts ignited a deadly insurgency  U.S. military strategy has revolved around the assistance of and close partnerships with foreign civilian, military, and irregular forces. Its an imperfect strategy, as Ive explored in these pages and which is apparent in the state of U.S. foreign policy today, but the Barack Obama administration assessed  rightly, in my opinion  that it was better than the alternative, namely large U.S. military interventions in foreign conflicts.

Trump has given no indication that he plans to veer from this approach. In fact, he has declared that such cooperation will be at the core of his counter-Islamic State strategy, stating, My administration will aggressively pursue joint and coalition military operations to crush and destroy ISIS, international cooperation to cut off their funding, expanded intelligence sharing, and cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable their propaganda and recruiting. There is, therefore, no reason to think these nations cooperation will become less important under his reign; if anything, they will be more so.

Given, then, that Trump means to continue working by, with, and through (to borrow a phrase of art) partner nations, his travel ban shows how fundamentally he misunderstands the forces underlying the relationships that U.S. soldiers, civilians, and intelligence officials have fought and died to maintain in the years since 9/11. They are far more complex than Trumps simplistic lets make a deal approach can address. In most cases, these relationships are built on years of painstaking trust-building and negotiation. From education programs to military training exercises, economic aid to capacity building, the United States has spent billions of dollars convincing these governments that it shares their interests and views them as valuable partners.

The case with which I have first-hand experience, Pakistan, is a textbook example of a country in which U.S. diplomats, intelligence, and military personnel have labored for decades to build ties that could even begin to support cooperation  despite a range of radically divergent interests. It has not always been successful; in fact, to call the relationship fraught is probably an understatement. But it has been enough to facilitate 15 years of moderately effective counterterrorism cooperation, the results of which have undoubtedly saved many lives, including those of Americans. It has been painful and hasnt always worked, but it has been the least bad option when it comes to protecting Americans.

During my own time supporting that partnership, the brief and mistaken detention of several Pakistani flag officers at the airport in Tampa, Florida, on their way to a training exercise caused us weeks of discord and delays in critical military training activities. One can only imagine then the impact of a travel ban like the one just issued, despite the fact that Pakistan is not on the list (yet). Again, its exclusion is unlikely to prevent backlash at home; any ban that appears to target Muslims by virtue of their religion will (understandably) stand as an affront to any Islamic government. There is, as the Tampa example suggests, huge sensitivity on this front. It does not take much to tip the scales.

A more relevant example today might be the teams executing strikes along the lines of last weeks raid in Yemen, in which a U.S. service member and an estimated 10 civilians were tragically killed. It is not clear from reporting whether Yemeni forces were present on this particular mission (or whether they should have been, given the reported outcomes), although the U.S. team was apparently working with Emirati special forces. However, these types of operations are almost always conducted with the assistance of host-nation forces, who not only provide critical support (intelligence, language, on-the-ground knowledge) but operate alongside U.S. forces in extremely dangerous situations. The trust built between U.S. forces and their foreign counterparts is critical to these operations success and can only be hampered by decisions such as implementing a travel ban. (Yemen, of course, is one of the terror-prone seven.) To put it another way, I would not want to have to go out on a dangerous counterterrorism mission with my Yemeni  or even Emirati  partners the day after news of the Muslim ban had broken.

The legal, moral, and humanitarian problems with Trumps order are huge, and its rejection is incumbent on all of us. But from a strictly security-driven perspective, the downsides are striking as well. The United States cannot keep its finger on the evolution of global threats alone. Poking its partners in the eye is not only wrong but shortsighted and dangerous. For all his talk about crushing the Islamic State, Donald Trump has just undone years of work in building the partnerships that bolster U.S. security  and undeniably made America less safe.

Photo credit: WIN MCNAMEE/Getty Images
Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump on Friday left Washington for his luxury home at Mar-a-Lago in Florida -- now called the "Winter White House" by his aides.

The Republican president, accompanied by senior aide Steve Bannon, boarded Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews outside the capital for the flight to Palm Beach.

"This weekend, the president will be shifting the operation of the White House down to the winter White House at Mar-a-Lago," said spokesman Sean Spicer.

Spicer said Trump would head Monday to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, the headquarters of US Central Command (Centcom), which supervises US forces in the Middle East, including the anti-Islamic State campaign in Iraq and Syria.

Trump is then expected to return to Washington late Monday.
Last fall, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine published a massive report that attempted to answer questions that have bedeviled the debate over immigration policy for years: Are immigrants living and working in the U.S. both legally and illegally a net plus or minus for the economy? And do they pose a serious drain on government services and welfare?

On the first question, the report found that illegal immigrants have had an overall positive impact on long-term economic growth, with little evidence that they have significantly depressed the wages of native-born workers with a high-school education or less. Overall, the economy benefitted from an expanding population and more jobs, and businesses frequently took advantage of a flood of cheap labor into the market.

Related: Mark Cuban: Trump's Immigration Ban Is Bad for Business

But on the second question, the researchers found that the United States is saddled with a $279 billion annual fiscal burden, or the difference between tax revenues collected from first-generation immigrants and their families and the value of the social services they used. The average per capita government outlay was $15,908, according to the report, compared with per capita tax receipts of only $10,887.

The report by 20 prominent social scientists and economists left little doubt that that the nations 55.5 million immigrants  both legal and illegal  werent paying nearly enough in taxes to cover their use of public services.

While millions of undocumented immigrants have paid billions of dollars in taxes into federal, state and local coffers -- as immigration advocacy groups frequently point out -- anti-immigrant forces on Capitol Hill and now in the White House have dismissed these immigrants as freeloaders who are excessively utilizing public schools, health care and food stamps while taking away jobs from native Americans. Although jobs may not be affected nearly as much as some may think, the federal budget does take a big hit.

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These and other findings are important grist in an immigration debate that has gone viral in the past week and a half, as newly ensconced President Donald Trump has delayed entry for refugees and travelers from seven mostly Muslim countries and is setting in motion a crackdown on illegal immigrants in this country that will likely lead to more deportations in the coming months.

Related: Trumps Immigration and Obamacare Policies Could Trigger a GOP Backlash

Trumps surprise executive order last week that touched off chaos and confusion in airports around the country and overseas apparently was just the first installment in a series of actions designed to make good on his campaign pledge to rid the U.S. of as many as 11 million illegal immigrants.

According to The Washington Post, the administration is also considering a plan to weed out would-be immigrants who are likely to require public assistance, as well as targeting illegal immigrants who are already living in the U.S. and making use of taxpayer-funded social and health care programs for deportation.

Many of those immigrants have little if any formal education and lack skills to obtain better-paying jobs, according to the National Academies of Science report. As a result, many of their children are on welfare and school lunch programs, placing a burden on state and local social services. Not surprisingly, the fiscal drain is felt most heavily by states with large populations of illegal immigrants.

California, for example, struggles with an $18.9 billion annual fiscal drain. Texas ranks second nationally with a $7.8 billion fiscal deficit because of excessive demands by immigrants on social services, medical facilities and schools.

Related: Obamas Action Gives Illegal Immigrants Billions in Tax Credits

The report indicated that over time, the fiscal burden will shrink to as little as $43.4 billion a year, as the second-generation immigrants who are better educated and trained than their parents pay more into the tax system to defray the cost of social services. But those projections are contingent on varying assumptions about the future education level of immigrants, government-spending levels and tax rates.

The Washington Post and VOX have both reported obtaining drafts of a second executive order that would target immigrants attempting to enter the country or are living here legally on the basis of their prospects for getting and holding a job and making minimal use of social services.

Our countrys immigration laws are designed to protect American taxpayers and promote immigrant self-sufficiency, stated the draft of the order obtained by The Post. Yet households headed by aliens are much more likely than those headed by citizens to use Federal means-tested public benefits.

A second order in draft stage calls for the elimination of the jobs magnet that is motivating illegal immigrants to come to the U.S., according to the newspaper. The proposed order would rescind any work visa provisions for foreign nationals that are found not to be in the national interest or deemed to be in violation of U.S. immigration law.

Related: Outraged Over $23 Billion in Wrongful Tax Credits? Blame Congress

The White House declined to comment on the proposed draft orders. For now, at least, there is no clear evidence the administration intends to move ahead with them. However, as The Post noted, longstanding federal law already makes it more difficult for non-citizens to obtain most forms of public assistance.

Still, a September 2015 analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies showed that 51 percent of immigrant-headed households used at least one federal welfare program  cash, food, housing, or medical care  compared to 30 percent of native households. A follow-up report showed that the average immigrant household consumes 33 percent more cash welfare, 57 percent more food assistance and 44 percent more Medicaid dollars than the average native household.

But economists and policy experts differ on the degree of immigrant dependence on government social and health care programs. And even some supporters of Trumps get-tough policies against illegal immigrants question whether the draft executive orders circulating in Washington would be practical or in keeping with American values.

Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates limits on immigration, said that the Trump administration appears to be addressing an important principle of immigrants excessive dependence on social services. However, he argued that there is no way that the government could accurately gauge the likelihood of immigrants allowed into the country being financially independent.

Related: Could Trumps Attack on Sanctuary Cities Trigger a Tax Revolt?

The problem here is, imagine a person comes to the United States and gets hurt, he said in an interview Wednesday. Are we not going to take care of them? We might deny them Medicaid, but are we going to keep them out of the hospitals or emergency rooms or long-term care?

Or somebody comes to the United States and they lose their job, Camarota added. They have a kid. Were not going to give them food stamps? Were just going to let the kid starve? Were not going to give the kid a free lunch? Really?

While there may be better ways to screen low-income applicants for visas to enter the country, Camarota said, he doesnt favor cutting off welfare to immigrants in need. And targeting for deportation immigrants legally residing in the United States for using too many government services doesnt appear to be doable  or legal.

The problem is that if you allow in a lot of poor people, youre going to get a lot of welfare use, he said. Its just very hard to imagine our society [cutting benefits] after the fact.

Top Reads from The Fiscal Times:
It was too good to last.

For weeks following President Donald Trumps surprise election triumph, advocates for the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank were hailing the dawn of a new age. Some bandied about proposals for annexation of portions of the West Bank. Others heralded the end of the era of the two-state solution.

Many asserted that the new administration would desist from criticizing Israeli settlement activity, as the Obama administration was wont to do. In the Knesset, Israels parliament, legislation advanced that would legalize dozens of outposts built illegally on private Palestinian property  a partial compensation for the court-ordered evacuation of one such outpost, Amona.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struggled to contain the enthusiasm of these voices. He urged them to tone down the celebrating, give the new administration time to establish its policies, and above all, allow him to travel to Washington for his first meeting with the new president without undercutting his ability to reach a common understanding. He felt certain that he and his new counterpart, given time and space, would reach arrangements that most settlement advocates would find satisfactory.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the inauguration. A Trump team that was willing to speak out, at times off-the-cuff and with outrageous results, on a wide range of foreign policy issues, went noticeably silent on issues surrounding Israelis and Palestinians. (One notable exception was the president-elects call for a veto of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 criticizing Israeli settlements, which the Obama administration abstained on, allowing it to pass.)

In Israel, more questions began to come up about the Trump administrations approach. Would Rex Tillerson, a secretary of state from the energy industry with deep ties to Arab governments and no record on Israel, sign on to a policy that put a two-state solution on ice? How about James Mattis, a secretary of defense who had served as commander of U.S. Central Command, and who had spoken publicly about the way the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict affects U.S. standing in the Arab world?

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Eyebrows rose as well when the president tapped his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, as a point person on working toward Middle East peace, or the ultimate deal, as Trump called it. Uncertainty became the only certainty, even as settler representatives decamped to Washington to take part in the inauguration festivities.

In the first two weeks of the Trump administration, White House spokespeople had little to say on Israeli-Palestinian matters. Despite two settlement announcements, totaling some 5,500 housing units, the administration delivered no condemnations, no calls for restraint, and only quiet references to future conversations between Trump and Netanyahu.

A reasonable supposition took hold  that Netanyahu, under pressure from settler leaders as the long-delayed evacuation of Amona finally took place  had authorized these announcements, which focused on building inside settlement blocs, after prior coordination with Trump. That could explain the administrations laconic response.

And then came Thursday: Boom! The Jerusalem Posts Michael Wilner reported that the White House wanted Israel to cease settlement announcements that are unilateral and undermining of Trumps effort to forge Middle East peace. A senior administration official told the Post that the White House was not consulted on the recent settlement announcements.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer went on to describe the unchanged U.S. desire for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. While the existence of settlements may not be an impediment to peace, he said, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

What does this one small episode, so early in the Trump administration, tell us? It does not tell us whether, or how hard, or how successfully, the administration will work to advance peace talks or a two-state solution, although it suggests that the White House cares. It does tell us, however, that the 50-year U.S. opposition to Israeli settlement expansion, as a negative factor in the search for peace, is a widely understood American interest that does not fluctuate wildly from one administration to the next.

But wait. In the hall of mirrors that is Middle East peacemaking, this seeming rebuke of Israel may, in fact, have been coordinated with Netanyahu after all. Time will tell, but there is strong reason to believe that Netanyahu, having lost the pressure from Obama as his excuse to restrain the most right-leaning members of his coalition, whose annexation dreams he knows will be harmful to Israels interests, actually needed the very same from Trump. Thursdays announcement may have been exactly what Netanyahu asked for.

The prospect of Israel ceasing to be both a Jewish and a democratic state, the risk of instability that could threaten Jordan if Palestinians despair of any chance at statehood (note that King Abdullah met with Trump on Thursday), the complications a shutdown in efforts to achieve a two-state solution would cause in U.S. relations with Arab states  these are only some of the reasons that the Trump administration, after only two weeks, has landed in roughly the same place as each of its predecessors on Israeli-Palestinian issues.

The goal of achieving a negotiated two-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the opposition to unilateral acts that could impede it, were not some hobbyhorses of the Obama administration. They are deeply rooted American interests that have shaped  and, it appears, will continue to shape  U.S. policy. In this case, maybe in close coordination with Israel.

President Trump, welcome to the Middle East peace funhouse.

Photo credit: THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images
As President Donald Trump wages a public and bellicose battle with the Mexican government, China may emerge as the victor.

The world's number-two economy is closely watching as Trump threatens to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and presses Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to finance construction of a border wall . The Mexican economy, already facing a slowdown, could deteriorate further under both scenarios. Either way, strategists widely agree Mexico will look to reduce dependence on its largest trading partner, and Beijing is likely to emerge as a contender to replace the void left by Washington.

"Like other countries worried about the uncertainties of a Trump administration, Mexico will look to deepen engagement with China," said Shawlin Chaw, senior analyst at Control Risks. "The mainland is a natural choice due to its economic power and in return, Beijing will able to increase the international market for Chinese exports and diversify its sources of raw materials."



Mexico has one of the highest number of bilateral trade agreements in the world and China was its third-largest trading partner in 2015with exports to the mainland tallying $4.9 billion, according to the World Bank. The two pledged to strengthen ties at a meeting in December, with business deals already underway. In fact, Anhui Jianghuai Automobile and Giant Motors, partially owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, announced Wednesday they would pump more than $212.46 million into SUV production in Hidalgo.

From investments in Africa to South America, Bejing has been carefully extending its sphere of influence in regions well outside its backyard as it looks to cement status as a global superpower. A number of U.S. allies have expressed concern over the apparently isolation-prone Trump administration, and China is looking to exploit that dynamic. Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized that point at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, saying his country was ready to take on a leadership role in international trade.

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"China will certainly fill up the American vacuum in Mexico," said Jonathan Bogais, adjunct associate professor, at the University of Sydney. Pena Nieto's other options include the European Union and Japan, but Bejing is the most obvious choice, he added.

Aside from the natural economic attraction, China and Mexico were also early targets of Trump during his election campaign, reflected by his promises of constructing a U.S.-Mexican border wall and labeling Beijing a currency manipulator .



Yet despite that connection, increasing economic engagement won't be easy, experts said. Both countries rely heavily on manufacturing, so new trade will require careful negotiation to avoid overlap.

"It is unlikely that Mexico would be able to integrate itself into Asian supply-chains," said Josef Jelinek, senior China analyst at Frontier Strategy Group. "Given the extent of Chinese protectionism and economic nationalism, Mexico would likely be seen as more of a competitor than as a complimentary partner by China. In addition, Mexico would be at a cost disadvantage with regards to transshipments, being cheaper and easier to ship within region."

One possible compromise could be Chinese investment into Mexico, particularly in infrastructure, in return for Mexican exports into China-controlled markets, suggested Bogais.

Also hindering further economic partnerships is the fact that Beijing is limiting outbound investment in order to control capital flight spurred by heavily leveraged state-owned enterprises and local governments, according to Chong Ja Ian, a political science professor at the National University of Singapore.

Moreover, Chinese investment overseas has a mixed track record, especially in countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela. Chong said that history could make Beijing more cautious about further investment in Latin America.

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.

Correction: This story was revised to reflect the value of exports from Mexico to China.
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States must "get smart" after a machete-wielding man attacked security forces at the Louvre museum in Paris while yelling "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest").

Trump said the attacker was a "radical Islamic terrorist," using a term he has used previously to describe such attackers.

"A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.," Trump wrote on Twitter.

In a briefing earlier this week, a senior US administration official defended the temporary US travel ban on refugees and other travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries by saying America was trying to avoid the security situation in France and other European countries.

"The reality, though, is that the situation that exists today in parts of France, in parts of Germany, in Belgium, et cetera, is not a situation we want replicated inside the United States," the official said, warning against a "large and permanent domestic terror threat."

"We don't want a situation where, 20 to 30 years from now, it's just like a given thing that on a fairly regular basis there is domestic terror strikes, stores are shut up or that airports have explosive devices planted, or people are mowed down in the street by cars and automobiles and things of that nature," the official added.

Police held hundreds of tourists in secure areas of the renowned museum in central Paris after the assailant was shot five times around 10:00 am (0900 GMT) in a public area inside the Louvre complex.

The attacker is in a serious condition, while one soldier received a "minor" head wound and has been taken to hospital, security forces said.

Two backpacks carried by the assailant were checked by bomb disposal specialists at the scene and were found not to contain explosives.

The incident sparked fresh jitters in a country still reeling from a string of terror attacks over the last two years and under a state of emergency since November 2015.
Washington (AFP) - The uproar over President Donald Trump's travel ban has thrown the plight of immigrants into stark relief, but it also has engulfed skilled foreign workers.

In dramatic scenes over the past week, outraged demonstrators flocked to airports to support refugees and migrants trapped there or unable to board flights to the United States.

Major US tech companies that are highly dependent on foreign talent said hundreds of their employees could be affected, and joined in the opposition to the immigration limits, which initially swept up legal residents as well.

But Trump and his team have long expressed goals that extend far beyond Silicon Valley, signalling they planned to establish a general preference for US workers over migrant job seekers in their "America First" economic policy.

Since taking office, Trump has announced the ambitious goals of creating 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years and pushing economic growth to a torrid four percent, double the current rate.

Economists, however, say those goals will be difficult if not impossible to achieve without either delaying retirement for many older workers, admitting significant numbers of immigrants into the United States, or both.

- 'Destroy our jobs' -

Some Trump advisors and associates have sought to frame the question of immigration as a fundamental contest over the nature of American society.

Chief White House advisor Stephen Bannon said in 2015 that the presence of Asians in Silicon Valley could undermine "civic society" -- views that have been hailed by the extreme right.

But Trump publicly has stuck to national security and economic arguments.

He pledged not only to prevent employers from outsourcing "cheap labor" by using the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, but also to "institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program."

And in his inaugural address, he declared the country should protect itself from foreign countries seeking to "destroy our jobs."

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But under current economic and demographic trends, Trump's goal of doubling economic growth and adding 25 million jobs by 2027 is incompatible with a clampdown on immigrants, economists say.

"The only way in which that statement really makes sense to an economist is if you increase the population," Jennifer Hunt, a former chief economist at the Labor Department, told AFP.

Hunt, now at Rutgers University, served on a National Academy of Sciences panel which found that over the longer term, immigration was a significant benefit to the US economy, with "little to no negative effects" on the employment levels or wages of native-born workers.

During the 1990s, immigrants resulted in a significant increase in per capita economic growth through innovation.

"In 2000, GDP per capita from 1990 was between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent higher than it would have been without the immigration since 1990," Hunt said.

Amid an overall surge in patent registrations between 1990 and 2000, immigrants accounted for one third of new patents, she said.

- 'Wildly implausible' -

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Trump's goals were "wildly implausible" given the current size of the US labor force.

"There's just not the labor supply there to do it," he said, noting that employers already are finding it increasingly hard to fill vacancies, especially if Trump goes ahead with a massive infrastructure plan.

Demographics also are playing a role through the aging of the US workforce.

Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute agreed that increasing immigration is one of the only ways of meeting Trump's job creation goal, since about one in four Americans is expected to be 65 or older in the next 10 years.

The US would still fall short of Trump's goal by about nine million jobs even if each of five broad age groups matched their record employment levels from the last 50 years, he said in a blog post.

The current foreign-born labor force coincidentally numbers about 25 million people. "That's a sizeable part our economy," he told AFP.

"Efforts to reduce that and change the trend in negative ways are almost certainly going to shrink the workforce."

Nevertheless, Trump has shown no sign of increasing immigration to meet the demand. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

On the contrary, with Trump in office barely two weeks, raucous protests have erupted over policies such as plans to erect a wall on the Mexican border, create a registry of crimes committed by immigrants, punish municipal governments that fail to enforce federal immigration laws, and ramp up certain deportations.
Berlin (AFP) - Ted Malloch, President Donald Trump's reported choice of US ambassador to the EU, predicts "seismic shifts" in transatlantic ties and the bloc's disintegration, in comments to a German news weekly published Friday.

After last year's Brexit vote for Britain to leave the EU, he told Der Spiegel that "you can almost put any two letters in front of the word exit", suggesting any of the other 27 member states could be next.

In early excerpts of an interview to be published in full Saturday, Malloch also predicted "seismic shifts" in US-European relations under Trump.

He said Trump preferred to deal bilaterally with European countries rather than the bloc as whole, adding that "frankly, this also gives us the upper hand".

He also reiterated his view that the European common currency was a mistake and that, if he were working for an investment bank, he would "bet against the euro".

French President Francois Hollande swiftly hit back at Malloch's statement.

"When appointing an ambassador, better if he believes in the institution he is supposed to be working with," Hollande told reporters after a summit in Malta.

European Parliament leaders on Thursday urged the EU to reject Malloch if he is named Trump's ambassador to Brussels, calling him hostile to the bloc.

The leaders of the main parliamentary groups said Malloch, whom they called Trump's likely choice, has openly backed the dissolution of the European Union much like the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"These statements reveal outrageous malevolence regarding the values that define this European Union," they wrote.

Trump himself called Brexit "a great thing" last month and predicted that other countries would follow Britain out of the bloc.
The parliamentary committee on infrastructure has government to re-negotiate the contract for the Construction contract of standard gauge railway with China Harbor Engineering Company Ltd to reduce on the costs to meet by Uganda.

In a report tabled before parliament by a committee that benchmarked in Ethiopia, it was discovered that the cost of constructing similar railway in Uganda is far way expensive.

According to the committee chairman Denis Sabiiti , Ethiopia spent 3.4 billion dollars to construct 669 km with 5 million dollar par track kilometer , yet Uganda is going to use 2.3 billion dollars to construct 273 kilometers at 8.4 million dollars per track kilometers.

He said that Uganda must re-consider this contract as soon as possible before losing these colossal sums of money.
Washington (AFP) - The US Senate voted Friday to advance the nomination of Donald Trump's embattled choice for education secretary, setting up what will be a nail-biter of a final confirmation vote early next week.

Betsy DeVos, a Republican mega-donor from Michigan who is married to a heir of the Amway fortune, cleared a procedural hurdle when lawmakers voted 52 to 48 along strict party lines to move her nomination forward.

"She'll be an excellent education secretary in my judgment," Senator Lamar Alexander, himself a former secretary of education, told the chamber.

The 6:45 am (1145 GMT) vote was extraordinarily early for the Senate. But Republicans have expressed frustration with Democrats' obstruction tactics and the early morning start helps leadership run time off the procedural clock.

Senate leadership has set up at least three more confirmation votes for next week: Steven Mnuchin to head the US Treasury, Tom Price as secretary of health and human services, and Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Democrats boycotted all committee votes to advance the three nominations, but Republicans changed panel rules in order to jam them through with out any participation from Democrats.

DeVos's nomination appears to be under the greatest threat, as two Republicans have announced they will ultimately oppose her.

Provided all Democrats stand in unison against her, as expected, that leaves a 50-50 tie, meaning Vice President Mike Pence will cast the deciding vote, the first time a vice president has ever broken a tie on a cabinet confirmation.

Should one more Republican oppose DeVos, her nomination will collapse.

DeVos has been active in promoting school choice, a movement that advocates the use of tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system.

Democrats are livid about Trump's pick, warning that recent advancements in education could be undone by an ideologically conservative billionaire who never attended public schools.

DeVos "has spent her career and her fortune rigging the system to privatize and defund public education," Democratic Senator Patty Murray said on the floor.
Just 10 days after taking office, President Donald Trump continued to check items off his campaign promise list as he signed his latest executive order on limiting regulation of small businesses.

The executive action, titled "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs" was signed Monday morning after President Trump met with small business owners. The four-page document outlined two key changes to current government operations. First, any new regulation an agency enacts must be met with two regulations that will be eliminated. And second, there will be a cap on the cost of new regulations for the federal government, which will be $0 for fiscal year 2017.

The action gives substantial power to the Director of the Office of Management & Budget, who has yet to be confirmed. Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-South Carolina) is currently up for that position and Senate hearings were held last week as part of his confirmation bid. The Director, under Monday's executive order, would determine the incremental costs allowed for each agency as well as how the costs of regulations would be measured.

Experts on governance echoed skepticism at how the executive action would actually be implemented.

William Gale, a fiscal policy expert at the Brookings Institution, told the Washington Post, "The number of regulations is not the key. It's how onerous regulations are. This seems like a totally nonsensical constraint to me."

What Does This Mean for Your Business?

Levi King, CEO and Co-Founder of Nav, is concerned about the implementation of the action, but the spirit behind it is a step forward for small businesses.

"If small businesses are focused on paperwork and licenses, if half their money's spent satisfying government regulations, they won't be in business long," King said. "I support smart regulation, but eliminating bureaucratic rulemaking that stifles innovation and discourages new jobs and growth would be a welcome development. On the other hand, as we saw with the airport chaos this weekend, major policy changes require a thoughtful, measured approach."

Story continues

While the executive action does a lot to limit the cost of additional regulation for the federal budget, the decreased cost to small business owners is yet to be seen. In the NSBA survey, nearly 40% of respondents said new regulations had a "very significant" impact on their plans to grow or expand their business.

Streamlining and simplifying government regulation of small businesses was a major topic of last week's Senate confirmation hearings for Linda McMahon, Trump's nominee to head the Small Business Administration, with Republicans and Democrats urging that there were necessary changes needed to make sure small business understand regulations and are also getting more access to government contracts. (You can read more about the hearing here.) So, it should come as no surprise that limiting regulations is a focus of the new administration.

President Trump was surrounded by small business owners as he signed the executive order Monday, but the law itself mostly pertained to limiting the cost of regulatory oversight on the federal government. A recent survey on small business regulations from the National Small Business Association found that small business owners reported spending an average of $12,000 a year on regulations and 58% of owners said federal regulations where the most burdensome source. The Internal Revenue Service, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Labor were cited as the federal agencies with the most burdensome regulations in the survey, with the IRS dominating the vote.

For many small business owners, $12,000 a year is the difference between profit and loss, especially if you're in your first few years of business. And when margins are tight, taking out business loans to finance a new hire to help you become compliant or to pay for legal expertise to help you navigate the regulations can get expensive fast, especially if your business credit isn't great.

More on Credit.com:
Washington (AFP) - Donald Trump's chief strategist is rarely heard in public but he has emerged as an ever-present force at the president's side, leaving America in little doubt that Steve Bannon is the new strongman in the West Wing.

The 63-year-old former head of the right-wing Breitbart News site cuts a low-key figure, his stubble-cheeked demeanor somewhere between laid-back and slouchy.

But a cartoon that went viral in the two weeks since the real estate magnate took power sums up what many suspect to be the true power dynamic in the White House.

In it, a tiny Trump sits in the lap of a giant Bannon, who guides his hand as he signs his first decrees and congratulates the "big boy" as a father would a child.

Bannon's creed has long been to blow up what he rejects as a corrupt political establishment, led by an even more corrupt elite in the federal capital Washington.

Advocating a radical break with politics-as-usual, Bannon is clearly revelling in his role as America's provocateur-in-chief.

"What we are witnessing now is the birth of a new political order," he told the Washington Post a few days back. "And the more frantic a handful of media elites become, the more powerful that new political order becomes itself."

US media are still taking stock of the outsized role apparently played by Trump's top adviser, who by all accounts has a peerless ability to steer the 70-year-old Republican towards his own ideological agenda.

A #StopPresidentBannon campaign is sweeping left-wing social media -- to the seeming delight of the White House chief strategist and self-styled nemesis of all things politically-correct.

- Bannon's voice -

His argument: the mainstream media are woefully out of touch with the forces that are transforming American society -- and much of the West -- and which fuelled Trump's maverick run for the presidency.

Leafing back through the annals of US political history, it is hard to find a precedent for an advisor playing such a pivotal role, so fast, at the very heart of power.

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Bannon's voice -- that of a self-proclaimed "economic nationalist" -- could be clearly heard in the dark and combative inauguration speech delivered by Trump two weeks ago.

"From this day forward, it's going to be only America first," the president vowed, laying down "two simple rules: buy American, and hire American."

One week later, Bannon's elevation to a permanent seat on Trump's National Security Council -- which operates like a parallel foreign ministry within the White House -- triggered a deluge of condemnation.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer defended Bannon's NSC appointment as that of "a former naval officer with a tremendous understanding of the world and the geopolitical landscape we have now."

But concerns run deep at the prospect of American foreign policy being shaped by a figure who back in 2010 declared: "Islam is not a religion of peace."

The former Goldman Sachs banker, who grew up in a working class, pro-trade union Democratic family, traces his divorce with the establishment to the day he realized that George W. Bush "had fucked up as badly as (Jimmy) Carter."

- 'Unabashed Iago' -

Bannon has cut a relatively discreet public figure since January 20, but the one time he spoke out was to assail -- in comments of a rare bluntness -- a media establishment he despises.

Arguing that the news media had been "humiliated" by the election outcome, he described it as the de-facto "opposition" -- and advised it to "keep its mouth shut."

"I want you to quote this," Bannon told the New York Times. "The media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country."

A few days later the argument was uttered again -- in the exact same words -- this time by the president himself.

"Bannon certainly knows how to manipulate the president and get what he wants," argued Frank Bruni in a New York Times column this week.

"He's Trump's unabashed Iago," Bruni wrote -- referring to the Machiavellian advisor to Shakespeare's "Othello" -- "whispering sweet fictions about the magnitude of the 'movement' that the president is leading."

Observers have been sifting through Bannon's past statements as they try to pin down his ideology and goals -- and second-guess how they might come to bear on Trump's decision-making.

What has emerged so far is a dark and conflictual vision of the world.

"We're going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years," Bannon said in March 2016. "There's no doubt about that."

Bannon has so far all but eclipsed Reince Priebus, the top Republican Party operative named at the same time as him to what in theory should be a more influential post -- that of White House chief of staff.

In announcing their appointments, Trump had promised both men -- however different their backgrounds -- would work together as "equal partners."

As the Trump presidency unfolds over the coming months, the world will be watching to see if there is a rebalancing between the two, or if the former Breitbart News chief remains the most powerful adviser in the United States.
Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump had a busy Thursday, stirring up diplomatic controversy with Iran and Australia before asking national religious leaders to pray for his reality TV successor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And that was just the beginning of his day.

Here are five takeaways from Thursday's events in Washington:

- Iran 'ON NOTICE' -

In typical fashion, Trump's latest toe-to-toe with a foreign power began with a pre-dawn tweet, this time over an Iranian ballistic missile test which Tehran denied was a breach of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

"Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!" Trump tweeted, echoing comments made by National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Wednesday.

Tensions simmered as Iran rejected the warning, calling Trump's comments "baseless, repetitive and provocative."

- Prayers for Arnold -

On his maiden visit to the marquee annual prayer breakfast of religious leaders, Trump took a joking swipe at his successor as host of "The Apprentice."

"They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place, and we know how that turned out: The ratings went right down the tubes. It's been a total disaster."

"I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can for those ratings, okay?" Trump said.

- Russia's 'aggressive actions' -

In her first public remarks at the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Nikki Haley condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine and pledged strong US support to Kiev.

In stark terms that seemed almost at odds with Trump's friendly stance towards Russian President Vladimir Putin, Haley asserted that US sanctions imposed on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea would remain in place until Moscow gave back the peninsula to Ukraine.

- Australia spat -

Ripping up the foreign policy rulebook became the day's theme, after The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Trump tore into his Australian counterpart during their phone call last week.

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Trump abruptly cut short a fiery conversation after criticizing an agreement to re-settle people kept in Pacific camps, sparking a war of words with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Thursday.

- Uber out -

Uber users who have been threatening to dump the ride-sharing service got their desired outcome Thursday when CEO Travis Kalanick quit his seat on Trump's business advisory group.

Kalanick said in an email that he spoke briefly with Trump about the president's recent executive order restricting immigration, and told him he would not be able to participate on his economic council.

The group was established last year and includes Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey's foreign ministry undersecretary will hold talks with representatives of the Syrian opposition in Ankara on Friday, ministry sources said, ahead of U.N.-sponsored peace talks on Syria scheduled for later this month. The Saudi-backed High Negotiations Committee, the main opposition umbrella group in Syria, along with other groups which took part in peace talks in Kazakhstan last month, will be among those attending, the foreign ministry sources said. The next round of U.N.-backed peace talks on Syria has been scheduled for Feb. 20, diplomats said on Tuesday, about two weeks later than originally planned. The January talks between the Syrian government and opposition in the Kazakh capital Astana ended with Russia, Turkey and Iran agreeing to monitor Syrian government and opposition compliance with a Dec. 30 truce. (Reporting by Tulay Karadeniz; Writing by Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blamed Russia on Thursday for the recent surge of violence in eastern Ukraine and warned Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Moscow returns Crimea to Kiev. "I consider it unfortunate on the occasion of my first appearance here I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," Haley said, making her first public remarks inside the Security Council since being sworn in as the United States' representative to the United Nations last month. "It shouldn't happen, or be that way. We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions." Her remarks came amid speculation over U.S. President Donald Trump's intentions towards Moscow. Trump has praised Russia's President Vladimir Putin and expressed a wish for improved relations between the two countries. Haley made clear that tensions over the Ukraine would not end soon, including the matter of sanctions slapped on Russia related to the annexation of Crimea three years ago. "Eastern Ukraine of course is not the only part of the country suffering because of Russias aggressive actions. The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," Haley said. "Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine." The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, disputed Haley's commentary on Crimea, but welcomed his American counterpart. "It was friendly enough, given the circumstances and given the subject we were discussing," the Russian ambassador told reporters. He noted the chance for a new start after ties between Russia and United States frayed in Obama's second term. "If there is an opportunity to have better relations with the United States, if there is an opportunity for us to work better with the United States... then we should take this opportunity." He faulted the Obama administration for not doing enough to end the conflict in Ukraine and called on the Trump government to bring its influence to bear. "Clearly they are the people who are listened to in Kiev." Ukraine and Russia had blamed each other for a surge in fighting in recent days around the government-held industrial town of Avdiivka that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line. At the Thursday Security Council session, Ukraine's U.N. ambassador, Volodymr Yelchenko, who holds the presidency of the Security Council for February, said the strife around Avdiivka started with artillery shelling by the Russian army and Russian-backed fighters from the two suburbs they control abutting the town. Churkin blamed Ukrainian security forces for starting the bloodshed. U.N. under-secretary-general for political affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, painted a grim picture of the situation on the ground. "Hundreds of thousand of civilians on both sides of the contact line are still at risk of losing all access to water, heating and electricity, bringing the specter of further displacements closer," Feltman said. "With every new day of fighting, the conflict becomes more entrenched and difficult to resolve. There is no military solution to this conflict." (Reporting By Ned Parker; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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By Phil Stewart and Kiyoshi Takenaka TOKYO (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's defense secretary reaffirmed America's commitment to its mutual defense treaty with Japan on Friday when he met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. Jim Mattis, on his first trip since taking over the Pentagon, appeared eager to reassure Japan of U.S. resolve, after a 2016 election campaign in which Trump suggested both South Korea and Japan were benefiting from a U.S. security umbrella without sharing enough of the costs. Abe is due to meet Trump for talks in the United States on Feb. 10. Mattis said provocations by North Korea, which is advancing its nuclear weapons and missile programs, left no room for doubt about U.S. commitment. It was similar to a message he delivered over the past two days in South Korea. "I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago - and as it will be a year, and 10 years, from now," said Mattis, a retired Marine general. Article 5 obliges the United States to defend territories under Japanese administrative control. Japan had been keen for assurances that Trump's administration will adhere to Washington's commitment to defend disputed East China Sea islands that are under Japanese control but claimed also by China. A Japanese government statement, issued after the meeting, said Mattis told Abe that Article 5 of the security treaty applied to the contested islands and that the United States would oppose any unilateral action aiming to hurt Japan's administration over the islets. Patrol ships and fighter jets from Japan and China routinely shadow each other near the islands, called the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese. A Pentagon statement said Trump's administration would not alter U.S. policy. China's Foreign Ministry said the islands were Chinese, calling the treaty a product of the Cold War. "We urge the U.S. side to take a responsible attitude, stop making wrong comments on the issue of the Diaoyu Islands sovereignty, and avoid further complicating the issue and bringing instability to the regional situation," it said. Abe said he was convinced that, with Trump and Mattis, the United States and Japan could demonstrate to the world their "unwavering alliance". He also told Mattis Japan intends to bolster its defense and to "expand the role it can play," according to the Japanese statement. Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida echoed that message to Mattis in a meeting later on Friday, saying it was important to further strengthen the alliance in the face of an "increasingly severe" security environment in the region. Japan's defense spending remains about 1 percent of gross domestic product, far less than that of China. Mattis is due to hold talks on Saturday with Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who has repeatedly said Japan is bearing its fair share of the costs for U.S. troops stationed there and has stressed that the alliance is good for both countries. Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has jolted the region by pulling the United States out of an Asia-Pacific trade deal that Japan had championed. Japan is putting together a package it says could generate 700,000 U.S. jobs and help create a $450-billion market, which will be presented to Trump, government sources familiar with the plans said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart and Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Clarence Fernandez, Robert Birsel and Howard Goller)
GENEVA (Reuters) - A renewed assault on Islamic State fighters in the Iraqi city of Mosul could force 250,000 civilians to flee, if they can find a way out, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday. Such an exodus would be on top of roughly 162,000 people already displaced by Iraqi government efforts to retake the city since October. Such numbers, although high, remain well below UNHCR's initial contingency plans, which anticipated a million people or more fleeing from the city. "As many as 250,000 Iraqis could be displaced from their homes with the anticipated escalation of conflict in densely-populated western Mosul," UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said. An expected intensification of fighting around Hawija, 130 km southeast of Mosul, could displace another 114,000, adding to the 82,000 who have fled since August, risking ambushes and death. In Iraq's biggest military operation since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, government forces have seized most of east Mosul. But they have yet to cross the Tigris river, leaving the western half in the hands of the jihadists, who declared a caliphate there two-and-a-half years ago. U.N. Special Representative for Iraq Jan Kubis told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that retaking western Mosul would be a massive challenge, with complex urban operations. "There is no question that civilians will be at extreme risk when the fighting starts in the western sections of Mosul," he said. "Humanitarian partners are bracing for a variety of possible scenarios in the western sections, including a possible mass exodus, prolonged siege-like conditions, or a sequenced and managed evacuation by the Iraqi Security Forces." He praised Iraqi forces, including the Popular Mobilisation Forces, for prioritizing the protection of civilians after learning from mistakes in previous battles to wrest control of cities from IS. "I however express my concern over disturbing reports of looting and destruction of civilian property, and looting of humanitarian aid by armed groups operating in support of the Iraqi Security Forces, in particular by some local resistance groups." Hundreds of civilians allegedly disappeared in a previous battle, for the city of Fallujah, and the Iraqi authorities have still not published heir findings into what happened there, he said. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Mike Pence met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Thursday and agreed on NATO's central role in ensuring security in Europe and North America, the White House said on Thursday. Pence and Gabriel also reaffirmed that NATO allies needed to contribute "their fair share to our collective security," the White House said in a statement. "They also underscored that NATO must adapt to confront threats to our countries such as violent extremism and terrorism," it said. (Reporting by Eric Beech)
By Ernest Scheyder and Nia Williams HOUSTON/CALGARY (Reuters) - A reversal of U.S. transparency requirements for the natural resources industry could give American oil companies an edge over Canadian and European rivals who face some of the toughest rules in the world, according to company executives, legal experts and trade groups. The U.S. Senate passed a resolution early on Friday to overturn the "resource extraction rule," an Obama administration regulation that required companies to disclose taxes and other payments to foreign governments. President Donald Trump is expected to soon sign the resolution killing the rule, which had been aimed at discouraging shady dealing in far-flung nations. The rule was among a handful of regulations ushered in during the final months of Barack Obama's presidency that the Republican-controlled Congress has targeted as overly burdensome for the U.S. economy. Overturning the regulation leaves Canadian and European natural resource companies with far more stringent reporting standards for payments to foreign governments than U.S. behemoths like Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp. Certain details of contract negotiations and terms of bids to access reserves must be divulged under the Canadian and European rules. That could provide American companies a glimpse of their rivals' negotiating tactics around the globe, without having to tip their hands in return. "It definitely could put Canada at a disadvantage because we are fairly stringent on our rules, both domestically and internationally, on how our companies operate," said Mark Salkeld, chief executive officer of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, an industry trade group. European oil company Royal Dutch Shell Plc , meanwhile, pointed out that a U.S. reversal of the transparency requirements would go against the broader global trend in the notoriously murky industry. "The trend that we have, with access to information, with bringing distant countries into our space all the time, we will have to live with that. I don't think any single political system can turn that around," Shell CEO Ben van Beurden told reporters when asked about the proposed U.S. regulation change. A European Commission spokeswoman, Vanessa Mock, told Reuters that Europe has no plans to weaken its own rules as a result of the U.S. reversal. 'BANG FOR THEIR BUCK' Required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's extraction rule was finalized last summer and was scheduled to take effect next year. Democratic proponents of the rule said it would help to curb corruption in foreign nations. Canadian and European regulations were modeled after the Dodd-Frank efforts. But the rule was quickly targeted by congressional Republicans after victories in the November election that brought President Donald Trump and his anti-regulation, pro-energy agenda into the White House. Trump has signaled a sweeping reduction in regulation to bolster the American drilling and mining industries, including undoing Obama's initiatives to combat climate change. Vivek Warrier, a partner at Calgary law firm Bennett Jones, said that could put Canadian companies at an even steeper disadvantage. "When a potential investor comes in, they will look at the additional regulatory compliance costs that will impact Canadian companies and probably conclude there's better bang for their buck south of the border," he said. Suncor Energy Inc, Canada's largest oil and gas producer, said reporting on payments to foreign governments is a minor administrative burden. "But generally speaking we support reporting payments to governments, as it contributes to greater transparency," said Sneh Seetal, a Suncor spokeswoman. Canadian Natural Resources Ltd and Cenovus Energy Inc, two Canadian oil producers, declined to comment. American oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, meanwhile, say the regulation had threatened to put them at a competitive disadvantage to huge state-controlled oil companies like Russia's Rosneft Ltd [TNKBP.UL] and China's CNOOC Ltd. "As publicly-traded companies, we have to compete globally with state-owned companies who hold a large majority of proved reserves and have no similar transparency or reporting obligations," Exxon spokesman William Holbrook said. Stephen Comstock, director of tax policy for the American Petroleum Institute, said revoking the U.S. extraction rule is "a necessary step by Congress to establish sensible regulations that balance increasing transparency without diminishing our industry's competitive advantage." Exxon and the API said they support an alternative scheme whereby a host country would report to its citizens at a regular interval how much money in total was generated from extractive industries, without breaking out company details. The U.S. oil industry also said the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act would still remain in effect, prohibiting bribery of foreign officials. (Reporting by Ernest Scheyder in Houston and Nia Williams in Calgary; Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert and Sarah Lynch in Washington, D.C., Ron Bousso in London and Alissa de Carbonnel in Brussels; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Paul Simao)
By Lisa Lambert and Timothy Gardner

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Republicans on Friday repealed a securities disclosure rule aimed at curbing corruption at energy and mining companies and voted to ax emissions limits on drilling operations, part of a push to remove Obama-era regulations on extractive industries.

In a 52-47 vote, the Republican-controlled Senate approved a resolution to eradicate a rule requiring companies such as Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) to publicly state taxes and other fees paid to foreign governments like Russia.

The House of Representatives already passed the measure. President Donald Trump is expected to sign it within days. On Thursday, the Senate repealed a rule that would have limited coal companies from dumping waste into streams.

After a number of legal battles, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2016 completed the regulation, which supporters said could help expose questionable financial ties U.S. companies may have with foreign governments.

Senate Democrats raised concerns that Exxon's chief executive during those legal fights was Rex Tillerson, who was recently confirmed as U.S. secretary of state and has worked extensively in Russia.

"It should be lost on no one that in less than 48 hours, the Republican-controlled Senate has confirmed the former head of ExxonMobil to serve as our secretary of state, and repealed a key anti-corruption rule that Exxon Mobil and the American Petroleum Institute have erroneously fought for years," Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland said, referring to the oil industry's trade group.

Exxon and other major energy corporations fought for years to block the rule, required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law.

Cardin, the senior Democrat on the foreign relations committee, wrote the Dodd-Frank section on the payments to foreign governments with Richard Lugar, a former Republican senator.

Critics of the rule said it duplicated existing regulations, was too costly and burdensome for companies to implement and that it put U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage with state-owned companies in other countries that do not have to divulge such information.

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The change could give American companies an edge over Canadian and European companies that face some of the toughest transparency rules in the world.

RARELY USED LAW PREVENTS OPPOSITION

Republicans have taken advantage of a seldom-used law known as the Congressional Review Act to overturn recently enacted rules with simple majorities in both chambers, denying senators the opportunity to filibuster and stall a vote.

Democrats said Republicans were using the review act to help companies not the public.

"When it comes to giving public resources to private interests and gutting our nation's health, environmental and financial standards, the Republicans cant seem to act fast enough," said Representative Raul Grijalva. "Whoever theyre doing this for, it isn't the American public."

The Congressional Review Act also bars agencies from revisiting overturned rules, which could pose a legal conundrum for the SEC, which is required by law to enact a payments regulation.

The Senate will next consider repealing a rule limiting venting and leaking of the powerful greenhouse gas methane by oil and gas drillers on federal and tribal lands, mostly in the U.S. West. The repeal was passed by the Republican-controlled House on Friday.

The Interior Department finalised the methane rule in November. The oil industry has argued that it would add to costs for new and existing wells. Environmentalists have said the rule would protect human health and return more than $800 million in royalties to taxpayers over 10 years.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Paul Simao, Toni Reinhold)
* Mattis says North Korea faces "effective, overwhelming" response

* Concern North Korea readying to test new ballistic missile

* South Korea, United States bolster defences

* Mattis heads to Japan on first trip as Trump's defence secretary (Updates with Chinese comment on anti-missile system)

By Phil Stewart

SEOUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's defence secretary warned North Korea on Friday of an "effective and overwhelming" response if it chose to use nuclear weapons, as he reassured South Korea of steadfast U.S. support.

"Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at South Korea's defence ministry, at the end of a two-day visit.

Mattis' remarks come amid concern that North Korea could be readying to test a new ballistic missile, in what could be an early challenge for Trump's administration.

North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and its main ally, the United States, conducted more than 20 missile tests last year, as well as two nuclear tests, in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions.

The North also appears to have also restarted operation of a reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear facility that produces plutonium that can be used for its nuclear weapons program, according to the U.S. think-tank 38 North.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour," Mattis said.

North Korea's actions have prompted the United States and South Korea to respond by bolstering defences, including the expected deployment of a U.S. missile defence system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in South Korea later this year.

The two sides reconfirmed that commitment on Friday.

China, however, has objected to THAAD, saying it would destabilise the regional security balance, leading to calls from some South Korean opposition leaders to delay or cancel it.

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Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China's opposition, which he said would never change.

"We do not believe this move will be conducive to resolving the Korean peninsula nuclear issue or to maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula," told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Mattis' visit to Seoul - his first trip abroad as defence secretary - sent a clear message of strong U.S. support.

"Faced with a current severe security situation, Secretary Mattis' visit to Korea ... also communicates the strongest warning to North Korea," Han said.

Once fully developed, a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) could threaten the continental United States, which is about 9,000 km (5,500 miles) from North Korea. ICBMs have a minimum range of about 5,500 km (3,400 miles), but some are designed to travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles) or more.

Former U.S. officials and other experts have said the United States essentially has two options when it comes to trying to curb North Korea's fast-expanding nuclear and missile programs - negotiate or take military action.

Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, U.S. allies in close proximity to North Korea.

Mattis is due in Japan later on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Nick Macfie, Robert Birsel)
By Gleb Garanich and Tom Miles AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine/GENEVA (Reuters) - International security and aid organizations appealed to Ukraine and Russian-backed separatists on Friday to withdraw from front lines where fighting has dramatically escalated or risk a humanitarian disaster. Since Jan. 29, shelling on both sides of the front line near the government-held town of Avdiyivka has been heavier than at any time since last summer. That has refocused global attention on a simmering conflict that strained relations between Russia and the West to the worst degree since the Cold War era. The February 2015 Minsk peace agreement only locked the two sides in a stalemate that has been broken periodically by sharp resurgences of fighting that Kiev and the Kremlin accuse each other of instigating. "We have had many flare-ups before and yet somehow the sides have pulled back, reverting to an uneasy, often violent static confrontational stance," said Alexander Hug, deputy head of the OSCE ceasefire monitoring mission in Ukraine. "Now however the stakes are even higher, there is a potential humanitarian and ecological disaster about to unfold," he said in a briefing via video link from eastern Ukraine. Monitors for the OSCE, Europe's leading security and human rights watchdog, had recorded an "unprecedented" 11,000 explosions on Tuesday. Civilians in both government- and separatist-held territory are especially at risk because damage to utilities infrastructure has left thousands with little or no access to electricity or water amidst subzero winter cold. Persistent fighting has hampered repair efforts. A regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross said the ICRC had recommended the creation of up to seven "safety zones" around key power and water infrastructure such as pumping stations close to the front line. "What is proposed is that both sides should agree that those areas should not be subjected to military activity especially artillery shelling, which means there has to be an agreement on all sides and there has to be some form of withdrawal of military forces," Patrick Vial told the briefing. The U.N. human rights office warned of environmental danger posed by possible acid leaks from a phenol plant near the village of Novhorodske where the two sides' combatants are only 400 meters apart. Previous OSCE-backed efforts to have forces disengage from front lines have had mixed or no success. Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the flare-up. Pro-Russian separatists said six civilians had been killed and 34 wounded on their territory since Sunday, while Ukraine has reported three civilians and 15 servicemen killed in government-held areas over the same period. A Reuters witness in Avdiyivka said the intermittent boom of artillery fire could be heard in the distance throughout the day on Friday, although shelling was significantly less intense than during the previous night and earlier in the week. In the separatist-held city of Donetsk, pensioner Nina Kirsanova said the atmosphere had changed markedly for the worse over the past week as a result of the shelling. "Schools aren't working, children are sitting at home. There are fewer people on the streets and everyone rushes to get things done, to get home faster," she told Reuters. (Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets and Lina Kushch in Kiev, Andrew Osborn in Moscow; Writing by Alessandra Prentice; Editing by Christian Lowe and Mark Heinrich)
Beirut (AFP) - The UN's refugee chief on Friday criticised a temporary US ban on resettlement of refugees, and urged countries to welcome those fleeing war, saying they were "not dangerous".

"These are people that flee from danger, they're not dangerous themselves," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

"They should be embraced, they should be received with solidarity and generosity, not identified as carriers of risk, of threat, they're not."

Grandi was speaking in Lebanon, which hosts about one million Syrian refugees, as well as 450,000 registered Palestinian refugees.

He warned that an order signed by US President Donald Trump, suspending all refugee arrivals for 120 days, with Syrian refugees barred indefinitely, could have "dangerous" knock-on effects.

"This is a very dangerous weakening of the international solidarity for refugees," he said, speaking after a trip to Syria.

"We need the rich countries... to support the countries like Lebanon, like Kenya, like Pakistan, countries with less resources that host millions of refugees," Grandi said.

"Otherwise they will start saying 'why should we do it?'"

"I hope that once they conduct their internal review they will resume this important programme," he added.

The UN refugee agency UNHCR estimates that some 20,000 people worldwide will be affected by the US order during the 120-day window.

Grandi said the UN was trying to advocate with the Trump administration, but its engagement was only at the "technical level" so far while the new president fills out his government and bureaucracy.

He said the UN also took "exception" to any bid to discriminate on the basis of religion or ethnicity, an apparent reference to the suggestion Washington might give preference to religious minorities when it resumes receiving refugees.

"All people that are vulnerable, irrespective of their ethnic or religious affiliation should be given a chance to benefit from this programme," he said.

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Grandi pushed back against suggestions that "safe zones" created in Syria could be a solution to the refugee crisis.

Nearly five million Syrians have fled their country since the conflict began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

Several countries have raised the prospect of creating safe zones to stem the flow, but Grandi said the conditions for such a solution to work did not exist in Syria.

"Let's not waste time in planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe enough for people to go back," he said.

"Let's concentrate on making peace so that everywhere in Syria becomes safe."

More than 310,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began, and successive rounds of peace talks have failed to produce a political resolution.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The head of the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that safe zones would not work inside Syria for people fleeing the country's nearly six-year-old war. U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he would "absolutely do safe zones in Syria" for refugees escaping violence and that Europe had made a mistake by admitting millions of refugees. "Frankly, I don't see in Syria the conditions" to create successful safe zones, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said at a news conference in Beirut. "With the fragmentation, the number of actors, the presence of terrorist groups, it's not the right place to think of that solution," he added. In a meeting with Grandi on Friday, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said earlier that world powers must work with the Damascus government to create safe zones in Syria so refugees can return to their country. At least a million Syrians have fled since 2011 into Lebanon, which has an estimated total population of less than six million. The war has divided Syria into a patchwork of areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad, various rebel groups fighting to unseat him, Kurdish militia and Islamic State militants. According to a document seen by Reuters, Trump is expected to order the Pentagon and the State Department to craft a plan for the safe zones, a move that could ratchet up U.S. military involvement in Syria. Trump has not provided details about the proposed zones, except to say he would have the Gulf states pay for them. Policing them could prove difficult in a war zone dotted with armed groups. The U.N. refugee chief, who had just completed a visit to Syria, said his agency had not been approached about the plans and there were no details on what would constitute a safe zone or how it would be enforced. "Let's not waste time planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe enough for people to go back," Grandi said. "Let's concentrate on making peace so that everything becomes safe. That should be the investment." The Syrian government said on Monday that any attempt to create so-called safe zones for refugees without coordinating with Damascus would be "unsafe" and violate Syria's sovereignty. Rebel backers including Qatar have welcomed Trump's support for safe zones, and Turkey says it is waiting to see the outcome of the U.S. president's pledge. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis. Trump also signed an executive order last week that halted refugee arrivals for four months, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and temporarily banned citizens from seven mainly Muslim countries, including Syria. The UNHCR estimates that around 20,000 refugees worldwide would be affected by the hold on the U.S. resettlement program, Grandi said. "We are taking exception to discrimination," he said. "All people that are vulnerable, irrespective of their ethnic or religious affiliations, should be given a chance to benefit from this program." (Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Tokyo (AFP) - US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Friday that the United States stands "100 percent" with Japan on a visit to reassure Asian allies rattled by President Donald Trump's isolationist rhetoric.

Mattis spoke in Tokyo on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official, as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

He arrived earlier in the day from Seoul, where he warned nuclear-armed North Korea that any attacks by their forces would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response.

Japan and the US have a decades long security alliance and US-South Korea military ties date back to the 1950-53 Korean War. But on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to defend it against the North, and 47,000 in Japan.

I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington," Mattis told Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, referring to the changeover to Trump from former president Barack Obama.

"We stand firmly, 100 percent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people."

He added: "I wanted to make certain that Article Five of our mutual defence treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago and it will be a year and 10 years from now."

Article five commits each country to repel attacks against the other in Japan or territories it administers. The US has said that includes the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea administered by Japan but also claimed by China.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters after his separate meeting with Mattis that the US defence chief also reconfirmed that commitment.

On the campaign trail, Trump also raised the possibility of Japan and South Korea arming themselves with nuclear weapons, particularly sensitive in Japan -- the only country to ever be attacked by atomic bombs -- but later drew back from the remarks.

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"I do have a hope, and also I am convinced, together with you and President Trump we will be able to demonstrate the unwavering alliance between Japan and the United State both to the public inside Japan as well as outside Japan," said Abe, who is set to hold a summit with Trump next week in the US.

- 'Effective and overwhelming' -

Abe has repeatedly argued that Japan bears an appropriate share of the costs of the alliance, which he stresses benefits the US, Japan and the broader region.

A senior South Korean defence ministry official told reporters that defence cost sharing did not come up at Mattis' meeting his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

A Japanese foreign ministry official also said that Mattis made no mention of base support costs in Tokyo.

Mattis' visit comes amid heightened fears over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, a major concern for both South Korea and Japan.

Before leaving Seoul, he sought to warn Pyongyang against violent adventurism.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with Han.

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-Un said in his closely watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: "It won't happen!"

On Thursday Mattis and South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in the South this year as planned.

Beijing fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities, weakening its nuclear deterrent. It has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilising regional security, and imposed measures seen as economic retaliation in South Korea.
Washington (AFP) - Two weeks after Republican Donald Trump took the oath of office, Senator John Cornyn deplored the "mindless obstruction, foot-dragging and delay" by Democrats over the US president's nominations for vital posts.

"I hope soon our Senate Democrats will start working with us and not against us," the Republican told Senate colleagues Thursday.

Good luck with that.

Trump has moved at a blistering pace to fulfill various campaign promises, issuing a stream of executive orders warmly cheered by the Republican base.

But he needs the Senate to confirm his cabinet picks, and Democrats furious over the controversial executive orders -- not to mention his propensity to provoke longstanding US allies -- have hit the brakes.

Of the 15 people nominated to Trump's all-important cabinet, only four have been confirmed.

At this point in Barack Obama's administration, 12 cabinet members were in place. By February 2, 2001, all of George W. Bush's lieutenants were on the job.

This year is different.

"These are not normal times, this is not a typical president," Senate Democrat Chris Coons told reporters.

"We're in a difficult place."

Anti-Trump demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court this week had a blunt message for Democrats: "resist."

- No 'tit for tat' -

Lawmakers appeared to be listening.

Deep gridlock has seized the chamber: boycotts of votes, procedural road blocks, heated confrontations.

Senate Democrats, with new leader Chuck Schumer, have slow-walked all nominations.

"I've never seen a cabinet this full of bankers and billionaires, folks with massive conflicts of interest and such little experience or expertise in the areas they will oversee," Schumer said Thursday.

Angry Democrats have boycotted three nominees whom they have described as ethically flawed, refusing to show up for committee votes.

Republicans took the extraordinary step of changing committee rules in order to advance Trump's nominees for US Treasury, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency, without participation by Democrats.

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The three are expected to get final Senate confirmation votes next week.

With partisan tensions soaring, Democrats were forced to contemplate another nomination, one that could have far-reaching impact on the nation: Trump's pick to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court.

The choice of Judge Neil Gorsuch has triggered a sense of urgency among Democrats. They still bristle over last year's refusal by Senate Republican leadership to consider Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy following the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

The seat has remained open for 11 months. Democrats are considering whether to fight tooth and nail to block Gorsuch's confirmation, as several progressive groups have urged.

Senator Richard Blumenthal remains "deeply" troubled by how Republicans treated Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, saying it led to the politicization of the high court.

"But I'm not playing tit for tat," Blumenthal stressed.

Indeed, his party must be wary of taking the same obstructionist tack as Republicans did in 2016. Waging war over a qualified nominee could alienate middle-of-the-road voters so crucial in 2018, when 10 Senate Democrats face re-election in states that Trump won.

- A crack in the armor -

What Democrats will do, Schumer has insisted, is demand a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member chamber, rather than a simple majority, for Gorsuch's confirmation.

Republicans hold 52 seats, meaning at least eight Democrats would hold the key to Gorsuch's confirmation.

A months-long battle is expected. If Republicans are unable to sway enough Democrats to confirm Gorsuch, they may employ the "nuclear option:" changing the rules to allow confirmation by a simple majority.

"They can slow it down, but they can't stop it," Cornyn said of confirmations, as he accused the opposition of seeking to "undermine this new president" at every turn.

As Democrats dug in, a crack appeared in the Trump armor Wednesday as two Senate Republicans announced they would oppose his education secretary nominee.

Betsy DeVos, married to a billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, has faced intense criticism for her lack of education experience, and advocating the use of tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system.

If all Democrats and two Republicans oppose DeVos, her nomination would be deadlocked at 50-50, meaning Vice President Mike Pence, president of the Senate, would break the tie.

"Is there not one more Republican senator who will stand with the American people against Betsy DeVos?" fiery Senator Bernie Sanders pleaded in a tweet.

That remained to be seen. A DeVos procedural vote occurs Friday, while her full confirmation vote is expected Monday.
Washington (AFP) - The United States slapped fresh sanctions on Iran Friday to punish Tehran for recent ballistic missile tests and its support for Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The first sanctions against Iran by the Trump administration targeted companies and individuals in Iran and China identified by the United States as supporting Tehran's ballistic missile program and the Revolutionary Guards military force.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States," said John Smith, acting director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The measures came after Iran on Sunday test-fired a medium range missile, which the White House contends violated a UN Security Council resolution proscribing missiles that could carry a nuclear device.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn declared he was "officially putting Iran on notice" over the launch.

The newest sanctions seek to lock those blacklisted out of global trade and finance by banning any American or US-based entities from doing business with them. They named three trading networks and individuals allegedly involved in supplying goods to Iran's missile program.

One against already-sanctioned Iranian businessman Abdollah Asgharzadeh involves several Chinese companies and suppliers, mainly the Cosailing Business Trading Company based in Qingdao.

Other groups named include the Rostanian network based in the Gulf region, and Lebanon-based Hasan Dehghan Ebrahimi, identified as a Revolutionary Guards official whose business the Treasury said launders money and goods for the Hezbollah militia group.
New York (AFP) - A US federal judge on Thursday extended until February 21 a stay on visa holders from seven Muslim majority countries and refugees being deported under President Donald Trump's travel ban.

Judge Carol Bagley Amon took the decision at a hearing in New York, saying that she did not want to leave the issue in limbo given that the stay -- ordered last Saturday -- was set to expire on February 11.

The travel restrictions ban all refugees from entering the United States for at least 120 days and visa holders from seven Muslim majority countries from arriving in the country for 90 days.

Lawyers for the US justice department told the federal court in Brooklyn Thursday that they planned to file a motion to dismiss the case and said no one was currently in detention.

Counsel representing rights groups said they were still waiting for final confirmation that no one was being detained, and said that some travelers had been deported despite the stay.

They called for a complete list of all those detained since the executive order came into effect last Friday so that they could ask everyone deported whether they wanted representation or to return.

New York's Democratic Party state attorney general Eric Schneiderman has intervened in the legislation, to which the justice department lawyers said they neither consented or opposed.

Saturday's temporary stay from Federal Judge Ann Donnelly ordered authorities to stop deporting refugees and other travelers stuck at US airports as a result of the temporary immigration ban.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the government after two Iraqis, one of whom worked as a translator for the US military, were detained in New York. Both have since been released.
Mexico City (AFP) - Mexico's foreign minister and the new US secretary of state agreed Thursday to meet soon, the Mexican government said amid a diplomatic row between the neighboring nations.

Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray spoke on the phone with Rex Tillerson to congratulate him on his confirmation as secretary of state by the US Senate on Wednesday, the Mexican foreign ministry said.

"They agreed to hold a meeting in the near future in order to move forward in the common challenges that Mexico and the United States face," the ministry said in a statement.

They discussed the "importance of the relationship" between the two countries and "stated their interest in working together, in a constructive and close manner, to strengthen bilateral relations to the benefit of both nations."

Videgaray traveled to New York on Thursday to meet with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and members of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas (AS/COA), a debate forum and regional business organization.

Relations between the strategic partners descended into the worst diplomatic crisis in decades last week as Trump insisted on making Mexico pay for a massive border wall to stem illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

Pena Nieto vowed to never pay for the barrier, demanded respect for his nation and canceled a meeting with Trump in Washington.

The two presidents, however, spoke on the phone last Friday and instructed their teams to continue talks.

The United States, Mexico and Canada are preparing to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), as demanded by Trump, who called the 23-year-old pact a "catastrophe" on Thursday.

Pena Nieto, meanwhile, vowed to defend Mexico's interests in the negotiations, which his economy minister said would start in May.

"In any agreement, in any pact with the United States or any other country in the world, the president will invariably act in the defense of Mexico's sovereignty and the interests of Mexicans," he said at a meeting of agricultural industry leaders.
Washington (AFP) - The US Navy has sent a destroyer to waters off Yemen in response to an attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on a Saudi frigate, a defense official said Friday.

The USS Cole, which had been conducting operations in the Gulf, is now stationed in the Bab al-Mandab Strait off southwestern Yemen, the official said.

"They were moved down to the region in response to what happened to the Saudi frigate," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Saudi officials say Yemeni rebel "suicide" boats recently attacked the Saudi warship that was on patrol in the Red Sea, killing two sailors.

The US Navy has not definitively said whether the attack was conducted by explosive-laden boats or a missile.

The USS Cole is well-known in naval circles as the target of an attack in October 2000 in the Yemeni port city of Aden that killed US military personnel. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The vessel's deployment comes amid rising tensions in the region after President Donald Trump put Iran "on notice" and slapped fresh sanctions on Tehran following recent ballistic missile tests.

Two amphibious warfare ships, the USS Comstock and the USS Makin Island, are also deployed in the same area as the Cole.

The Makin Island was involved in Sunday's US commando raid on an Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group compound in Yemen that led to the deaths of a Navy SEAL and multiple civilians.
Washington (AFP) - The United States revoked 60,000 travel visas after President Donald Trump ordered a ban on visitors from seven mainly-Muslim countries, the State Department said Friday.

"Fewer than 60,000 individuals' visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the Executive Order," said Will Cocks, spokesman for the department's bureau of consular affairs.

"We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the Executive Order," he said.

"To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015," he said, insisting national security remains "top priority."

A week ago, Trump issued an executive order halting arrivals for at least 90 days for the citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

All refugee arrivals from around the world were also halted, in this case for 120 days.

During the 90 day period, the US administration will review visa procedures with a view to introducing what Trump has called "extreme vetting" to weed out extremists.

US officials have denied the ban amounts to an anti-Muslim measure, despite the order saying "religious minorities" in the mainly-Muslim countries will get priority treatment.

Trump said the move is needed to tighten US security against foreign terror threats, citing the September 11, 2001 attacks despite the hijackers having no links to the named countries.

In the days after the move, dozens of visitors with valid visas and many with "Green Card" residency permits were detained on arrival at airports and many were sent back.

The White House has said 109 people were held for questioning upon arrival under Trump's executive order. US media have cited homeland security officials as saying many hundreds were denied boarding to the US as the ban was rolled out.
Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel discovered Friday that settlement construction may not be as simple as it thought under US President Donald Trump, implying it would tone down activity ahead of crucial Washington talks.

Palestinians, however, were worried by the Trump administration's first direct statements on the issue made since the January 20 inauguration.

The White House issued a statement seeming to tone down Trump's full-throated support of settlement construction after a series of Israeli announcements on thousands of new homes in settlements, as well as plans to build a new settlement for the first time since 1992.

But the remarks did not criticise the very existence of Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories as previous US administrations had consistently done.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had welcomed Trump's presidency as bearing "significant opportunities" after eight years of often strained relations with Barack Obama.

Netanyahu, who is due to meet with Trump in Washington on February 15, did not comment on the remarks, but lower ranking officials played down their significance and noted their upside.

The remarks did not amount to "a U-turn", Israel's ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said.

"The statement is very clear and essentially means: wait for the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is arriving in Washington in less than two weeks to meet President Trump, and then we'll determine our policy," he told Israeli public radio.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said the "White House itself holds that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace and they never have been".

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"It must be concluded therefore that expansion of construction is not the problem," she said in a statement.

Israel has now approved more than 6,000 homes for settlers since Trump took office, having signalled a softer stance on settlement construction than his predecessor Obama.

Earlier this week, Netanyahu pledged to build a new settlement for the first time in 25 years.

- Israel 'put on notice' -

According to Shmuel Rosner, an expert on US-Israel relations, Netanyahu waived his initial policy of waiting for the meeting with Trump before making policy decisions in favour of political considerations deriving from pressure in his rightwing coalition.

The court-ordered evacuation of a wildcat outpost this week was among the factors that pushed Netanyahu to issue "stronger statements" on settlements, compelling Trump to react, said Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.

The Trump administration "does not want to give Israel the impression it can do whatever it wants without having repercussions", he said.

"Clearly the statement was drafted in a way that is much more civil and in an understanding tone than previous statements by the Obama administration," said Rosner.

That notwithstanding, "Israel was 'put on notice' not to overplay its hand and not to overplay the good will of the Trump administration by assuming that there is no limit to its action," he said.

"Trump might be as serious on the issue of peace as he is serious on the issue of supporting Israel," said Rosner. "He does not want Israel to take preemptive actions that could weaken his hand."

The White House statement may have indeed convinced Israel to exercise more prudence, with Danon implying there might not be further settlement announcements before the February 15 meeting.

"We're a sovereign country, but you know, two weeks isn't a long time, the issue will come up in the conversation, I assume things will be clarified," he said.

The Palestinians, meanwhile, were concerned by the US statement, with senior official Hanan Ashrawi telling AFP that its "unacceptable and unclear" wording implied building inside settlements was permitted.

Another Palestinian official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the statement was "worrying".

"Even though some may consider this is an improvement, in fact this goes against 50 years of clear US policy on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem," the official said.

Settlements in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem are viewed as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians want for their own future state.
Washington (AFP) - US Vice President Mike Pence's first foreign visit will be to Brussels and a security conference in Munich later month, the White House said Thursday, a step designed to ease jitters about the health of the trans-Atlantic relationship.

After Pence met German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, the White House said the Vice President "plans to attend the Munich Security Conference and visit Brussels later this month."

"He will engage with European Allies and partners about how to deepen and strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance."

Trump's election has thrown a 75-year old alliance into deep crisis.

His apparent disdain for NATO and the European Union, and his apparent willingness to engage with Russia have caused something close to panic in European capitals.

For decades US military power has underpinned European security. Trump has indicated that the relationship has to be more of a two-way street.

European diplomats have expressed hope that the appointments of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and James Mattis as Secretary of Defense will moderate Trump's support for nationalists and populist movements on the continent.
London (AFP) - Sales of broccoli and iceberg lettuce were being rationed by British supermarket giants Tesco and Morrisons on Friday due to widespread shortages caused by bad weather in southern Europe.

Shoppers vented their frustration and the government said it was monitoring the situation after weeks of scarce supplies of broccoli, aubergines and salads that have angered healthy eaters nationwide.

"Sorry: Temporarily Out of Stock", read a sign on the lettuce shelf in a branch of Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket chain, near St Paul's Cathedral.

"Due to bad weather conditions in Spain, we are experiencing some availability issues, but are working with our suppliers to resolve them as quickly as possible," a Tesco spokesman told AFP.

"To make sure customers don't miss out, we are asking them to limit the number of iceberg lettuces they buy to three," he said.

Morrisons, the fourth largest food retailer, said it too was imposing limits of three heads of broccoli and two iceberg lettuces per shopper.

"We have seen some bulk buying in our stores," a spokesman said.

"We have therefore had a cap on sales of broccoli and iceberg lettuce to ensure we maintain good supplies for our regular customers," he said.

Dieter Lloyd, a spokesman for the Leafy Salads Growers Association, said the notion of rationing was surprising "but generally people don't buy three heads of iceberg or six packs of baby gem".

"The reason they are doing it (rationing) is because grocers, wholesalers, restaurants and hospitality outlets were going to the retailers and buying trays of produce," he said.

At a Morrisons outlet in south London, one frustrated morning shopper, who declined to give her name, said vegetables were already almost out of stock.

She said the few courgettes that were available were too expensive at A3.53 (4.1 euros, $4.4) per kilo.

"I ain't paying that price!" she said.

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Prices have risen sharply in recent weeks as supermarkets have resorted to bringing in vegetables from further afield, including the United States.

- #courgettecrisis -

Asked about the shortages at a daily briefing in Westminster, Prime Minister Theresa May's spokesman said: "Clearly supermarkets are working hard to rectify any sort of supply chain problems".

The agriculture ministry "is monitoring the situation," he said.

Asked if May was personally concerned, he quipped: "I've not actually spoken to the prime minister about her vegetable buying habits this morning".

Shoppers went online to vent their anger, using hashtags including #courgettecrisis and #lettucecrisis, while some younger consumers retorted that a vegetable shortage was no crisis at all.

An ad also appeared on Gumtree, a popular classified ads website, advertising a box of a dozen iceberg lettuce for A50 -- several times more than the normal price.

"There is a national shortage of these beauties so the price is a little higher due to supply and demand," the ad said.

But a Turkish Cypriot vendor in central London said he had no problem with his courgette supply as it came from Morocco.

The Times and Guardian newspapers quipped that the rationing was only "the tip of the iceberg".

The Daily Mash, a satirical blog, joked: "Curry houses face shortage of limp salad for you to ignore".

Southern Spain was hit by heavy rain in December and a particularly cold spell in January including snow, cutting fruit and vegetable production this year.

Spain is the biggest producer and exporter of fruit and vegetables in the European Union and Britain and France are its two biggest export markets.

There is concern that shortages could continue into April unless the weather improves.

"Contrary to popular belief it seems the rain in Spain doesn't fall mainly on the plain and a run of unusually bad weather has resulted in availability issues," said a spokesman for Asda, another large retailer.
Frankfurt am Main (AFP) - Volkswagen's former supervisory board chief has told German investigators that ex-CEO Martin Winterkorn knew about the "dieselgate" emissions cheating scam well before the scandal broke, news weekly Der Spiegel reported Friday.

"Ferdinand Piech has incriminated the group's former chief executive Martin Winterkorn with a detailed statement to prosecutors," the German magazine said, without citing its sources.

According to the report, Piech told prosecutors that he himself learned from an informant in February 2015 that the company had a "big problem" in the United States.

The source told Piech that US authorities were looking into its use of manipulating software to dupe pollution tests and had passed on their findings to Volkswagen.

Piech then asked Winterkorn about it, who assured him that no such document from US officials existed, according to Der Spiegel.

Volkswagen first admitted in September 2015 that it had installed so-called defeat devices in 11 million diesel engines worldwide to make the cars seem less polluting than they were.

Winterkorn resigned days after the admission but has always insisted he knew nothing of the scam before it became public knowledge.

Prosecutors in the German city of Brunswick however announced last week that they were investigating Winterkorn for fraud, saying they had "sufficient indications" he knew about the cheating earlier.

According to Der Spiegel, Piech gave his damning testimony when he was questioned by prosecutors last year.

The spokesman for the prosecutor's office in Brunswick could not immediately be reached for comment.

Felix Doerr, a lawyer for Winterkorn, said in a statement sent to AFP that his client was aware Piech had spoken to prosecutors but did not yet know "the details of this statement".

"Mr Winterkorn will respond to the allegations against him, and therefore also this statement, as soon as the documents from the Brunswick prosecutor's office are made available to him," he said.

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Piech and his one-time protege Winterkorn are embroiled in a long-running rivalry.

Piech unexpectedly resigned as head of the German auto giant's supervisory board in April 2015 following a bitter power struggle with Winterkorn after the pair apparently fell out over Volkswagen's difficulties in making inroads in the lucrative US market.

Piech, 79, is the grandson of the inventor of the iconic Beetle, the model on which VW's fortune was built, and was himself VW's chief executive between 1993 and 2002.

He is also one of the representatives of the Porsche family, whose holding company Porsche SE holds 52 percent of VW.
Alaska on Thursday rejected a proposal to make it the first state in the nation allowing consumption of marijuana in retail pot stores. Recreational marijuana is legal in another seven states and the District of Colombia.

Here is where each of those states stand with pot consumption at places where marijuana is sold:

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CALIFORNIA

California state law leaves the question of onsite consumption to local governments. Lori Ajax, the state's top marijuana regulator, said in an email that restrictions include that access to the area where cannabis use is allowed be limited to people only 21 and over, consumption cannot be visible to the general public and the sale or consumption of alcohol or tobacco is not allowed on the premises.

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COLORADO

Colorado does not allow onsite consumption at retail stores, though some private clubs operate around the state. The city of Denver has started discussing how to go about licensing marijuana social clubs after voters approved that in November. How it's allowed to be consumed  whether by smoking, vaping or via edibles  varies. Regulations prohibiting smoking in interior public spaces have greatly restricted smoking it. In general, customers aren't allowed to consume marijuana where they bought it.

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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

There are no retail marijuana stores in the District of Columbia. While possession of up to 2 ounces of pot is legal, the city was barred by Congress from taxing the drug or legalizing sales. Pot advocates argued that there was room in the city's initiative legalizing marijuana to allow consumption at private clubs. But Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser opposed the idea, and the D.C. Council narrowly voted to ban pot clubs last year.

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MAINE

Maine's law, approved by voters in November, includes a provision for the licensing retail marijuana social clubs. These businesses would sell marijuana to be consumed on the premises. It could not be taken away. Maine's state government is at the beginning of the long process of drafting rules that would govern the clubs, and other facets of retail marijuana. The state has about a year to implement rules. No clubs can open before rules are in place.

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MASSACHUSETTS

The voter-approved Massachusetts law permits onsite consumption of marijuana only if the city or town where the retail store is located votes, by referendum, to allow it. So absent an affirmative vote of the local community, onsite consumption at pot shops is prohibited. Retail pot shops are not expected to be licensed and open for business in Massachusetts until mid-2018.

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NEVADA

Pot could be allowed at Nevada casinos, clubs, outdoor events, massage parlors and other public places under legislation proposed this year by a Las Vegas Democrat. Nevada Sen. Tick Segerblom is challenging state laws banning marijuana from public places or in pot shops with a bill that would give local governments the discretion to license public use. That would be big business, Segerblom said. Nevada is one of the few remaining states where tobacco is allowed in most public places, including casinos and bars. "We're going to be advertising around the world 'Come to Nevada to use legal pot,'" Segerblom said. "We can't invite them to come here then tell them they can't use it."

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OREGON

Oregon state law prohibits the use of marijuana in retail stores. The law also bans the use of marijuana in public places. They are defined as any place with public access  including establishments with liquor licenses, apartment building lobbies, parks, playgrounds and public transportation stations.

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WASHINGTON STATE

Washington state bans pot consumption or even opening packages of marijuana at retail stores. Washington's law does not allow for cannabis lounges, but the state's most high-profile lobby for the industry, the Washington CannaBusiness Association, has made legalization of pot lounges a legislative priority this year. "Community norms when it comes to the use of cannabis differ across the state," the organization wrote on its website. "WACA will support legislation allowing local control of ordinances that would create rules regulating consumption lounges for adults over the age of 21."

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AP reporters Ben Nuckols in Washington, D.C.; Gene Johnson in Seattle; Bob Salsberg in Boston; Michael Blood in Los Angeles; Alison Noon in Carson City, Nevada; Joe Danborn in Denver; and Patrick Whittle in Portland, Maine, and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this report.
U.S. government officials on Thursday said a Special Forces raid in Yemen on Sunday, the first major military mission authorized by President Donald Trump, was successfuleven though it resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL commando and likely several civilians.

The New York Times reports that Trumps press secretary, Sean Spicer, and Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, briefed reporters with a detailed chronology of Sundays mission, during which Navy SEAL Team 6 came under attack as it neared the home of a suspected al-Qaeda collaborator.

Some reports suggest that the Trump administration moved rashly on the decision to carry out the mission, and that it may have been a risky one. However, This was a very, very well-thought-out and executed effort, the Times quoted Spicer as saying.

According to the Times, planning for the operation began last year under the administration of former President Barack Obama, and it was authorized by Trump last Thursday during a White House dinner with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, several other officials, the Presidents son-in-law Jared Kushner and his close aide Steve Bannon.

The timeline laid out by Spicer on Thursday suggested that the operation had already been vetted and approved by Obama.

The operation was laid out in great extent, Spicer reportedly said.

The Times also conceded that the missions casualties raise doubts about the months of detailed planning that went into the operation during the Obama administration.

Members of Obamas security team cited by the Times, however, dispute this narrative, claiming that Trump inherited notes that emphasized the potential risks. Colin Kahl, a national security adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, has tweeted his contention that Spicers account is inaccurate.

Obama made no decisions on this before leaving office, believing it represented escalation of U.S. involvement in Yemen, was one of a number of Kahls responses on social media. The Times reports that Kahls colleagues support his statements that the operation had not been given the greenlight by Obama.

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Meanwhile, multiple reports about the operation claim that it did not go smoothly; the convoy, a joint force of American commandos and troops from the United Arab Emirates, reportedly came under heavy fire as it approached the target, a heavily guarded home that it was hoped would yield valuable data.

Militants may have used women and children as human shields when the Special Ops unit fired back, and by some accounts women took up arms and began firing, as well. U.S. air reinforcement was then called in to support the team, according to a statement by the U.S Central Command.

The statement said that civilians were likely killed in the aerial firefight, and that those casualties could include children. Al-Qaedas branch in Yemen has reportedly claimed that an 8-year-old girl, the daughter of al-Qaeda member Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed by U.S. forces in 2011, was among those who died on Sunday.

Trump has defended the value of the operation, the Times reports, which he says gleaned intelligence that could help the U.S. and allies prevent future terror attacks.

[NYT]
Washington (AFP) - The White House said that building new Israeli settlements or expanding existing ones "may not be helpful" in securing Middle East peace.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful," said spokesman Sean Spicer.

The statement is a break from Trump's previously full-throated defense of Israeli settlement building.

Since Trump came to office Israel has approved a slew of new construction in existing settlements, the type of act that critics say risks making a two-state solution impossible.

Israel recently unveiled plans for 3,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, the fourth such announcement in the less than two weeks since Trump took office.

"The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month," Spicer said.

Trump is scheduled to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on February 15.

Settlements in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem are viewed as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians want for their own state.

While former president Barack Obama grew frustrated with Israeli settlement building and declined to veto a December 23 UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements, Trump had called for the resolution to be vetoed.

The Republican president has moved quickly to befriend Israel's prime minister, and the pair spoke by telephone on Sunday.

"As the president has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region," Spicer said.

Trump has previously stated that his son-in-law Jared Kushner would play a role in trying to negotiate peace.

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The idea of an Israeli and a Palestinian state coexisting has underpinned peace efforts for decades.

The president has also said he plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- a measure that the Palestinians have fiercely condemned.

If the US embassy is moved to Jerusalem, it would break decades of US policy and be at odds with the overwhelming majority of other nations, which believe the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiation.

Trump has also come under fire for failing to specifically mention in his Holocaust remembrance statement on Friday the six million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide.
For the past decade, the insurance industry and state regulators have been working on a new system for how life insurance companies determine whether they have enough money in reserve to pay out their claims. Known as principle-based reserving, the framework has been adopted by 46 states and was rolled out across the nation on Jan. 1, 2017. Insurance companies have three years to transition to the new system that uses simulation models to estimate the necessary reserves to cover future claims. Some experts in the industry expect life insurance premiums to drop as companies adjust to the new reserve requirements.

[Read: 10 Things You Didn't Know Life Insurance Could Do.]

The move to modernize life insurance reserves. The use of principle-based reserves represents a major shift for the industry, and one that reflects the changing face of life insurance policies. "If we go back 50 years, most of the life insurance products were very similar," says Nancy Bennett, senior life fellow with the American Academy of Actuaries. So it wasn't too problematic that state regulators required insurers to use a standard formula to determine how much cash to keep in their reserves for claim payments.

However, the market has changed significantly, and companies now offer a variety of term, whole and universal policies. As a result, the old rigid system of calculating reserves no longer worked. In some cases, companies had accumulated large reserves, "far larger than what you would think would be needed," Bennett says.

Since the formula didn't allow for variations, companies were unable to adjust the size of their reserves on their own. "We and other companies went to the NAIC [National Association of Insurance Commissioners] and said we want to work with you to right-size the reserves," says Shawn Loftus, senior vice president and chief actuary of USAA Life Insurance Company. The result of that work is the new principle-based reserving model, which offers companies more flexibility when determining how much capital to have on hand. The first wave of regulations affects two types of polices: term life and universal life with secondary guarantee.

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[Read: Should You Use Life Insurance to Fund Your Retirement?]

Some premiums may go down. Bennett says it's hard to tell whether premiums will be affected as a result of the new principle-based reserves, but those in the industry are optimistic consumers will see savings. "The big picture from our end is this rule is going to make life insurance premiums cheaper," says Justin Halverson, founding partner at Great Waters Financial in Minneapolis.

Term life insurance, in particular, could benefit from the change. According to a 2012 Impact Study from NAIC, companies are projected to reduce their reserves anywhere from 38 percent to 64 percent as a result of principle-based reserving. Loftus says USAA Life expects to drop premiums by up to 15 percent on some policies, with the average savings being 2.6 percent. Reduced premiums only apply to new policies and will not affect current customers.

The situation for universal life with secondary guarantee is a little more complex. Joseph E. Roseman Jr., managing partner for O'Dell, Winkfield, Roseman and Shipp in Charlotte, North Carolina, says the structure of permanent policies shifted from whole life to universal life in the late 1970s and early 1980s. During the next two decades, business for universal life boomed, but reserves didn't always keep up. "They were minimally funding policies," he says.

Now, the new regulations may result in some of those universal life policies needing to beef up their reserves. The 2012 Impact Study found some reserves may drop as much as 44 percent while others may need to boost their coffers by up to 63 percent. However, better reserves mean consumers can feel confident their plan will remain solvent. And life expectancy tables have been recalculated so premiums will be spread over a longer period, a change that should keep premium increases to a minimum.

Lower your life insurance premiums. Consumers shouldn't expect to see their existing premiums drop as a result of principle-based reserves. The lower prices will only be for new policies, but that should still be welcome news for those living on a tight budget. "About 35 percent of our members are living paycheck to paycheck, so price is a big deal for them," Loftus says. To find out if they can take advantage of lower premiums, the company is recommending all its members conduct an annual insurance review.

Part of that review includes getting quotes for a new policy or additional coverage to supplement an existing policy. Halverson cautions anyone getting quotes to be sure the company in question is actually using principle-based reserves. While some firms, such as USAA Life, are implementing the change immediately, insurers have until Dec. 31, 2019 to comply. And a handful of states have not yet adopted the new framework.

[Read: 10 Financial Perks of Getting Older.]

"[Another] big warning would be to not go dump your current coverage," Halverson says. Getting a quote at a lower cost doesn't mean the company will sell you a policy. The results of a health exam, for example, could result in an application being denied. "Make sure you've had a guaranteed offer," Halverson urges.

Principle-based reserving represents a major change for the insurance industry, and it could have benefits for your bottom line as well.
New York (AFP) - Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, accused of running one of the world's biggest drug empires, glimpsed his glamorous young wife in court Friday despite being denied marital visits behind bars.

The 59-year-old defendant, one of the world's most notorious criminals who escaped twice from prison in Mexico, has been held in solitary confinement in New York since being extradited to the United States on January 19.

Emma Coronel, a 27-year-old former beauty queen and mother of Guzman's twins, attended his second court hearing in Brooklyn on Friday, dressed in a black coat with a yellow scarf knotted around her neck.

Her husband, dressed in navy short-sleeved prison scrubs, sat calmly and expressionless throughout the 40-minute hearing, following along with the help of a Spanish language interpreter sitting next to him.

His physical presence was a victory for the defense after prosecutors wanted him to appear by video link to keep down costs and minimize the disruption of transporting him on the two-mile (three-kilometer) trip from his cell.

Guzman's lawyer used the hearing to complain about the draconian security conditions of his detention, request easier access to her client and to ask Judge Brian Cogan to grant Guzman visits from his wife.

"We sought permission for Mrs Guzman to visit him or make him a telephone call. She's present in court today. She's not permitted to visit," public defender Michelle Gelernt told the hearing.

"We are not permitted to give Mr Guzman a glass of water," she said.

But the federal judge declined to intervene on the matter of wifely visits, saying it was up to the jail. The Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan has already denied permission.

"I am going to defer to prison authorities who should be in or not," he said. "It's an unusual case," Cogan noted. "Obviously they are taking extra security measures. We know the reasons for that."

Guzman escaped from prisons in Mexico, once by fleeing in a laundry cart in 2001 and secondly by tunneling his way to freedom under his shower in 2015.

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- 'Horrid' security -

After he was recaptured, Mexico lost patience and agreed to his extradition. On January 20 he pleaded not guilty to a raft of firearms, drug trafficking and conspiracy charges at an initial hearing in New York.

Although a handful of inmates have in the past escaped from the MCC, American authorities are adamant that Guzman will have no chance of freedom.

His lawyers say he is locked in a cell 23 hours a day with only one hour of solitary exercise.

Friday's hearing was conducted under stringent security measures, with armed guards dressed in bullet-proof vests at the court door and attendees required to pass through two security checkpoints before entering the room.

Cogan allowed defense lawyers to access Guzman's public extradition documents in Mexico without their client having to sign for them after Gelernt complained that the Mexican government had otherwise denied access.

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Gelernt questioned the legality of his extradition to the United States, which one of his Mexican lawyers also branded illegal at the time, saying that another petition had been pending.

"He's very concerned as are we about the legality of his extradition to the US, to the eastern district of New York," the American public defender said.

Gelernt again complained about the "horrid," and "excessive" security precautions in which he is being held, saying that only four to five members of his legal team were admitted to the jail.

Coronel appeared alongside her husband's lawyer but did not speak.

The judge set the next hearing in May.

If he stands trial and is convicted, Guzman is likely to spend the rest of his life in a maximum security US prison. Prosecutors are also seeking to obtain a $14 billion criminal forfeiture order against him.
The Trump White House has begun stepping up action against Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen, part of a broader plan to counter Tehran by targeting its allies in the impoverished Gulf state.

On Thursday, the United States diverted a destroyer to the Yemeni coast to protect shipping from Iranian-backed rebels, and is weighing tougher steps including drone strikes and deploying military advisers to assist local forces, according to officials familiar with the discussions.

Theres a desire to look at a very aggressive pushback against Iran in Yemen within the administration, a source advising the Trump national security team said. Given the public rhetoric and private deliberations in the White House, the United States could become more directly involved in trying to fight the Houthis alongside Saudi and Emirati allies, said the source, who asked not to be named as he had not been authorized by the White House to comment.

President Donald Trumps aides see Yemen as an important battleground to signal U.S. resolve against Iran and to break with what they consider the previous administrations failure to confront Tehrans growing power in the region. But the tough approach carries the risk of triggering Iranian retaliation against the United States in Iraq and Syria, or even a full-blown war with Iran.

On Friday, national security advisor Michael Flynn released a statement accusing the international community of having been too tolerant of Irans bad behavior, adding the Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Irans provocations that threaten our interests.

In the first visible response to Mondays attack on a Saudi frigate by Houthi suicide boats, the USS Cole, a guided missile destroyer, was ordered away from a routine mission in the Persian Gulf late Thursday and sent to the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a Pentagon official told FP. The Cole is the same warship hit by a lethal Qaeda suicide bombing in 2000 in the Yemen port of Aden, which left 17 sailors dead.

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The U.S. destroyer will escort vessels passing the Yemeni coastline and into the Red Sea said the official, who asked for anonymity to speak about the movement of the ship. The area saw Houthi missile attacks on a U.S. destroyer in January that fell short, and a direct hit on a United Arab Emirates vessel in October.

Additionally, on Friday, the administration slapped a new round of sanctions on Iranian businesses, backing up a stream of threats and condemnations it issued in response to Irans recent ballistic missile test.

To counter Irans proxies in Yemen, the administration is considering ramping up drone strikes, deploying more military advisors and carrying out more commando raids, the administration advisor and Republican congressional staffers said. The review also includes possibly expediting approval for military strikes against militants in Yemen  which required high level deliberations under the Obama administration  and expanding efforts to block Iranian arms deliveries to the Houthi forces.

Having campaigned on a get-tough policy toward Iran, Trumps first test came over the weekend, when Iran conducted a ballistic missile test, followed by the Houthi boat attack. Those moves are reinforcing Flynns already-hawkish instincts toward Iran, the adviser said.

Flynn wants to very strongly counter Iranian efforts throughout the Middle East, but questions remain over the timing and the details of any stepped up U.S. role in Yemen or elsewhere, the advisor said.

The new round of sanctions target Iranian individuals and companies involved in Tehrans missile program, some of whom are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China. The sanctions handed down Friday would not violate the nuclear agreement between Iran and major powers, but were widely viewed as a first step in a series of measures by the Treasury Department designed to squeeze Iran and discourage foreign investment. The 2015 nuclear agreement imposed limits on Tehrans nuclear program in exchange for lifting international sanctions.

Washington has already played a role in the Yemeni civil war, supporting the Saudi-led bombing campaign against Houthi rebels for the past two years, providing hundreds of aerial refueling flights and drone surveillance missions to identify targets. The Pentagon curtailed some of its intelligence assistance last year, after Saudi Arabia drew international condemnation for the killing of scores of civilians during poorly planned airstrikes.

Former president Barack Obamas administration long played down the scale of Irans assistance to the rebels in Yemen and did not portray Tehrans activity as a major security threat. Instead, the previous administration placed a higher priority on targeting al Qaedas affiliate in Yemen, which intelligence agencies have long described as the most capable in the terror network.

In a series of stern warnings to Iran that continued through Friday, Trump and Flynn  with backing from congressional Republicans  vowed a tougher stance to counter Iranian missile programs and Tehrans continued support for the Houthis.

On Wednesday, Flynn strode into the White House briefing room to deliver the warning that the administration is officially putting Iran on notice, but refused to elaborate what might be under consideration.

After meeting with Flynn on Friday, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there needed to be a coordinated, multi-faceted effort to pushback against a range of illicit Iranian behavior in Yemen and the Middle East.

One worry inside the administration is that Iran will expand its support for the Houthi rebels if Yemens civil war continues to grind on without resolution, threatening neighboring Saudi Arabia and international shipping passing along the coast  one of the worlds key maritime choke points.

But deeper military involvement in Yemen is risky. An assault by U.S. Navy SEALs and Emirati commandos on Saturday in central Yemen  meant to attack al Qaeda terrorists unaffiliated with Tehran  was the first known U.S.-led ground operation in Yemen since December 2014, and it underscored the dangers of sending in American forces in the chaotic country. One Navy SEAL died, as did an unknown number of civilians.

The raid may signal a growing U.S. interest in getting more involved clandestinely in Yemen, though most likely in an advisory role, said Seth Jones, a former adviser to special operations forces and an expert on counter-terrorism. But the American

There will be limited boots on the ground for direct action or drone strikes, said Jones, a fellow at the RAND Corp. I expect that most of it will be working with local partner forces on the ground.

But ramping up pressure against the Houthis could backfire, pouring more fuel on the civil war and pushing the rebels even deeper into Tehrans orbit, said Katherine Zimmerman, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

The U.S. is siding with the government that is seen as illegitimate to a majority of the population in northern Yemen, Zimmerman said.

Photo credit: Department of Defense
Imagine a world without income tax; if you were an American citizen before 1913, with a few exceptions you didnt have to deal with an April deadline and the IRS. Today, no one really knows how big the tax code is.

February 3rd is the anniversary of the ratification of the 16th Amendment in 1913. Its champion was President William Howard Taft, and its ratification was an effort to make sure more higher-income people paid taxes, and that the government wasnt wholly dependent on tariffs and taxes on goods.

It wasnt the first national income tax that was enacted. In fact, it was the third. But this third attempt had the power of a constitutional amendment behind it, and its still in force today.

The Founding Fathers and the generation of leaders that followed them werent big on the idea of an income tax. Tariffs and sales taxes helped fund the federal government in the early days. But the financial needs of the Civil War led to the first national income tax.

The Civil War income tax instituted by the federal government was one of several financing tools it used against the Confederacy. The government also issued bonds and used excise taxes. The Confederacy also had its own version of an income tax, too, which wasnt as effective. The Unions income tax went away during the period of Reconstruction, with the idea of an income tax returning two decades later.

Author John Steele Gordon wrote a short history of the income tax in 2011 for The Wall Street Journal, beginning with the Civil War and concluding with the 14th Amendment and its immediate aftermath. Steele says the combination of a huge government surplus and a heavy tax burden on consumers led President Grover Clevelands administration to pass a second income tax law in 1894.

The new tax, however, was very different from the Civil War income tax, which had exempted only the poor. The new one hit only the rich, imposing a 2 percent tax on incomes above $4,000. Less than 1 percent of American households in 1894 met that income threshold, said Steele.

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The second income tax law was soon overturned by the Supreme Court in the 1895 decision of Pollack v. Farmers Loan & Trust. In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Cleveland income tax was a direct tax that violated a constitutional provision because it taxed interest, dividends, and rent. That act violated Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, which required such taxes to be imposed in proportion to states population.

By the time President Taft took office in 1909, the public outcry grew over a tax system that undertaxed the rich and overtaxed the poor. In June 1909, Taft sent a letter to Congress to lobby for the 16th Amendment. He explained that part of the Pollack decision allowed the federal government to levy a corporate income tax as an excise tax. The decision in the Pollock case left power in the National Government to levy an excise tax, which accomplishes the same purpose as a corporation income tax and is free from certain objections urged to the proposed income tax measure, he said.

The President then defined a basic two-tax system where income taxes were collected from citizens and businesses. He also understood that the amendment wouldnt allow the Supreme Court to overturn a personal income tax based on the Pollack decision.

I recommend, then, first, the adoption of a joint resolution by two-thirds of both Houses, proposing to the States an amendment to the Constitution granting to the Federal Government the right to levy and collect an income tax without apportionment among the several States according to population; and, second, the enactment, as part of the pending revenue measure, either as a substitute for, or in addition to, the inheritance tax, of an excise tax upon all corporations, measured by 2 percent of their net income, Taft said.

Congress passed its resolution about the 16th Amendment a month later, but the amendment wasnt ratified until early 1913, when Delaware became the 36th state to approve it. Incoming President Woodrow Wilson pushed for the Revenue Act of 1913, which included the income tax along with changes in tariffs.

The first 1040 form appeared in 1914. It was three pages long. The first income tax act after the 16th Amendment was 14 pages long, and the federal tax code was about 400 pages long. Today, one estimate puts the federal tax code at more than 70,000 pages. An IRS report from 2008 said that no one really knew how big the current tax code is, and it estimated the code at 3.7 million words.

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UTICA, N.Y. (AP)  It's not unusual around Utica to see tables full of Bosnians sipping strong coffee in cafes, Muslim women in hijabs shopping at grocery stores and Somalis raised in equatorial heat heading to work in the blowing snow.

An influx of thousands of refugees from around the world over the past few decades is credited with injecting new energy and optimism into this faded post-industrial city of 62,000. But now, Utica is beset with new anxiety in the age of Trump.

The president's order restricting refugees and travel from certain Muslim countries has immigrants in Utica feeling uncertain about their place here. Some also worry they will not be able to bring over family members fleeing war zones and refugee camps.

"There's one saying my mom used to tell me in camp in Iraq: A refugee will always be a refugee," said 18-year-old Manal Alawsaj, a Palestinian who just became a citizen. "It makes me terrified. I ran out of Iraq because of this. And now I'm here, and yet I'm feeling the same way. ... Maybe this is not home, maybe I should move, or this is not my country."

Thousands have settled in Utica, about 170 miles north of New York City, through the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, which grew out of efforts to bring over Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s. It has since shepherded in 16,000 people from around the world, about 400 refugees a year, including Somalis, Bosnians, Syrians, Sudanese and people from Myanmar.

By some estimates, refugees and other immigrants make up more than 20 percent of Utica's population.

Signs of the diversity abound, from the polyglot shop signs, to restaurants serving Asian and Bosnian dishes, to the teenagers from Myanmar and Somalia playing together at a community center.

A large mosque is visible from the City Hall office of Mayor Robert Palmieri, who calls the refugees the "next evolution" for a city that was once known for its textile mills and was built generations ago by immigrants from Italy, Germany and Poland.

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"We are Utica, said Hana Selimovic, a nursing student who was a Bosnian refugee, "the city that loves refugees."

It's not always a smooth transition. Somali Bantu refugees accustomed to camp life in Kenya can have a hard time getting used to upstate New York winters. Alawsaj recalls looking at all the trees on the ride to Utica and thinking, "Oh, my God, am I living in a forest?" The mayor's staff had to warn Somalis about the danger of using small grills in their living rooms.

The city poverty rate remains at 32 percent  in line with other upstate cities but above the national rate. The streets are dotted with empty storefronts and ramshackle homes. And the school system last year settled lawsuits that accused it of steering refugee students into inferior education programs.

Still, Selimovic considers Utica a cultural oasis where friends and family can go to a cafe and talk politics in Bosnian. Alawsaj, who wears a hajib, said the city has always made her feel welcome.

The mayor loves the cosmopolitan culture and how Bosnians have built up Utica's east side by rehabbing old homes.

"I would love to have the president come to Utica, New York, to see what it's all about and how beneficial it's been as a melting pot and blending them into the fiber of America," Palmieri said.

The refugees work in dozens of businesses, including nursing homes and local manufacturers. At least one major employer has taken notice of President Donald Trump's order.

Chobani yogurt founder Hamdi Ulukaya, who employs about 300 refugees among the 1,000 workers at a plant south of Utica, said the company will assist any affected employees and family members and "have their backs every day and every step of the way," according to an in-house letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Trump's order suspends the admission of nearly all refugees for 120 days and bars travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days.

The move prompted Mowlid Hussein, a Somali Bantu, to cancel travel plans to see his two children from a previous marriage in Kenya. He is upset the order will delay efforts to bring them here.

"Imagine your kid is away from you. You don't have enough sleep at night. ... And the order comes: They cannot come anymore until four months," he said. "What can we do? How did this happen?"
Harare (AFP) - Zimbabwean protest leader Evan Mawarire was remanded in custody by a court in Harare on Friday after police arrested him on charges of subverting the government and inciting public violence.

Mawarire, an evangelical pastor, started the popular "This Flag" protest movement last year, becoming a figurehead of opposition to veteran President Robert Mugabe's regime.

He was detained at Harare airport as he returned to the country on Wednesday after fleeing in July in fear for his life when Mugabe publicly denounced him.

Magistrate Elisha Singano remanded Mawarire in custody until February 17 and said he could apply for bail at the high court.

Zimbabwe security forces cracked down last year after internet activism by the "This Flag" movement led to a series of anti-government protests and work strikes.

"He (Mawarire) urged all Zimbabweans not to go to work and revolt against the government," Edmore Nyazamba, the public prosecutor, told the court after reading out the charges.

"There were violent demonstrations in the country where several properties were damaged."

Nyazamba said Mawarire had also asked overseas Zimbabweans to converge in New York to confront Mugabe during the UN General Assembly.

The prosecutor asked the court for Mawarire to be held in custody as the police finalise investigations.

"The totality of the accusations do not in any way establish a crime," Harrison Nkomo, Mawarire's lawyer said.

Mawarire, who appeared in court in hand-cuffs and carrying a Bible, is expected to apply for bail on Monday.

The national flag became a symbol of anti-government protests after Mawarire, a little-known pastor, posted a Facebook video in which he had the flag wound around his neck as he deplored the country's worsening economic crisis.

"We will not allow the government of this country to keep on oppressing us, intimidating us and incarcerating us for speaking out," Linda Masarira, a rights activist, told reporters outside the court.

"They have to release Pastor Evan."
(Photo: Getty images)

In response to a report that President Donald Trump likes his female employees to dress like women, the Internet is responding in kind by showing the politician just what women actually do wear to work.

Taking to social media, users shared that Trumps perception of workwear  the dresses-and-skirts only policy that female Trump employees told veteran political reporter Mike Allen that they felt pressured to wear while working for Trump on the campaign trail  is far from the reality.

I am a woman. I wear clothes. Ergo, I always #DressLikeAWoman.  Fabulous Redhead (@fabredhead) February 3, 2017

The collective social media clapback has reached a fever pitch with the hashtag #DressLikeAWoman to provide some visual aids to the new president as to what this term really means to so many women.

That's me on the left wearing my favorite outfit #DressLikeAWoman pic.twitter.com/M8UnQ2pBwE  Rebecca Alleyne, MD (@BeckyAlleyneMD) February 3, 2017

My late mother, Patricia Stephens Due, arrested during a civil rights demonstration in Florida in 1963. #DressLikeaWoman #Resist pic.twitter.com/K6tXpLvZUo  This Is Happening (@TananariveDue) February 3, 2017

A handy guide for @realDonaldTrump on how to #dresslikeawoman:

1. Identify as a woman.

2. Get dressed.

3. Do your job. #MyBodyMyRights pic.twitter.com/sGGS6uEfo0  Liliana Caraca (@LilianaCaraca) February 3, 2017

As a wildlife/nature photographer and conservationist, this is how I #DressLikeAWoman. pic.twitter.com/Ncd8um7B7j  Eilish Palmer (@eilishp) February 3, 2017

Put on that flight suit and #DressLikeAWoman ???? pic.twitter.com/s2D3uOL0ri  Emily Calandrelli (@TheSpaceGal) February 3, 2017

Me & my son; he's dressed like a man & I am dressed like a woman. In case you couldn't tell. #DressLikeAWoman pic.twitter.com/nVM2Emssj2  Tara Wildes (@TaraWildes) February 3, 2017

#DressLikeAWoman Marry a woman while ur both dressed like women! pic.twitter.com/YxucRXtfQH  Cameron Esposito (@cameronesposito) February 3, 2017

Do you also #DressLikeAWoman? Tweet us at @YahooStyle to share.

Story continues

Lets keep in touch. Follow Yahoo Style on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




The Duchess of Cambridge will be having an alternative Valentines Day this year [Photo: Getty]

If the Duchess of Cambridge had plans for a romantic Valentines Day, she had better think again.

Kensington Palace has confirmed that Kate and William will not be spending the romantic holiday together. Instead, the Duchess will be heading to Cambridgeshire outside of London, England, to meet air cadets at an air force base.

The mother-of-two will be introduced to a number of cadets who will be at the base for a week-long development camp. The week acts as an initial camp experience for cadets who are in their first six months of membership. Her Royal Highness will join the cadets as they view a Tutor aircraft, and participate in a personal development training session, a statement read.

Kate attends several RAF events throughout the year [Photo: Getty]

This will be Kates third visit since becoming Royal Patron and Honorary Air Commandant of the Air Cadet Organization. The Duchess earned the title after the Duke of Edinburgh stepped down from the role in December 2015.

Although she wont be spending time with William, Kate will get to experience her husbands job by using a flight simulator during her visit.

The couple will be making their next public appearance at the BAFTAs on Sunday, Feb. 12.

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.




Hundreds of new smartphones will debut all around the world in 2017. From low-end smartphones for developing markets that cost less than $100 a piece to ultra high-end flagship phones from all your favorite big-name smartphone companies, all the bases will be covered this year. No matter how many phones wash over the global market in 2017 however, there will still only be a handful of devices that tech fans truly get excited about en masse. Googles second-generation Pixel phones are certainly on that list, as is whatever Lenovo might be cooking up for this years Moto Z successor. But at the very top of this short list, there are always two smartphone lines that rise above the rest: Samsungs Galaxy S handsets and Apples iPhone lineup.

In 2017, Samsung will release two different Galaxy S8 phones during the first half of the year. Then, come September, Apple will unveil and release its new iPhone 8 alongside what are rumored to be refreshed iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus handsets. None of these devices are official yet, but we already know plenty of key details thanks to leaks and reports from solid sources. In this post, well take a look at five exciting features coming to Samsungs Galaxy S8 that will be missing from the iPhone 8 when it launches this fall.

Don't Miss: The one way Android will never, ever be able to compete with the iPhone

Iris scanner

More security is always a good thing, and Samsungs ill-fated Galaxy Note 7 introduced a very nifty new security feature. Using a special iris scanner, the Note 7 allowed users to unlock their phones and access a special secure folder with an eye scan. The iris scanner could soon be integrated with even more functions on Samsung phones, such as mobile payment authentication. And if recent reports are accurate, Samsungs upcoming new Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus will both feature iris scanners placed on the face of the phones above the displays.

Desktop mode

This new feature is a potential game-changer for Samsungs upcoming new Galaxy S8 phones. Word on the street is that the handsets will feature an exciting new desktop mode that will allow a user to connect his or her Galaxy S8 to a monitor and peripherals in order to power a full desktop computing experience. The solution is akin to what we saw in the HP Elite x3, but with one key difference: no one wants Windows on a smartphone. As people move more and more toward mobile for their primary computing experiences, however, Android can most certainly do the trick on a desktop or laptop for many users.

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Beast mode

Another new feature reportedly headed to Samsungs next-generation flagship smartphones is Beast Mode, which is something you definitely wont find on Apples upcoming new iPhones. If rumors are correct, this special new feature will basically kick the Galaxy S8 into high gear and provide users with the maximum amount of computing power possible. This feature will definitely be useful for gaming and other resource-heavy functions, and itll also thankfully come alongside new fast charging tech that will fill up the Galaxy S8 battery more quickly than ever before.

microSD card support

Apple makes so much money forcing people to buy higher-end iPhones to get more storage, theres no way the company will ever offer expandable memory on its iPhones. Last years new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus saw the available storage on each model doubled, and thats the best Apple fans will be able to do for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, Samsungs upcoming Galaxy S8 lineup will reportedly include a microSD card slot that will provide microSDXC support up to 2TB (256GB is the limit for now, but only because larger cards dont yet exist).

Want to use a microSD card with your iPhone 8? A special microSD to Lightning adapter for iPhones will still be your only option.

3.5mm audio jack

Yup.

Trending right now:

See the original version of this article on BGR.com
Bargain hunters, we have some good news and bad news. The good news is that the Logitech Harmony Smart Control just dropped back down to its lowest price ever on Amazon. The bad news is that so many people are taking advantage of this sweet sale, new orders wont ship for between 1 and 3 weeks. But believe us when we tell you that this remote is worth the wait at its normal price of $129.99, let alone the $69.99 sale price. Its nice and simple but it can control anything, and it also integrates with your iPhone or Android device. Plus, it works with Amazon Alexa so you can add voice control to any or all of your devices!

Some highlights from the product page:

Use your smartphone (available Harmony Smartphone app) or the included Harmony Remote to control your entertainment devices

Smartphone app includes Swipe and Tap control for one-touch control of your entertainment system, up to 50 favorite channel icons, volume, media playback, and more (Works with iPhone iOS 6.0 or later and Android 4.0 or later)

Included Harmony Hub lets you control devices hidden behind cabinet doors or walls, including game consoles such as PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360

Future-proof control of up to 8 devices: Works with over 270,000 devices including cable TV boxes, Apple TV, Roku, Sonos, Amazon Fire TV, Phillips Hue, Xbox One, PS3, and TV-connected PC or Mac

Logitech Harmony Smart Control with Smartphone App and Simple All In One Remote - Black: $69.99

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's government has taken too long to coordinate an "alphabet soup" of agencies tasked with protecting the country from an ever-increasing risk of cyber attack, a parliamentary report said on Friday. The Public Accounts Committee report said that as of last April there were at least 12 separate organizations in Britain responsible for protecting information, with "several lines of accountability with little coherence between them." Processes for recording breaches of personal data by government departments are inconsistent and chaotic, the report said, adding that the government is struggling to meet a skills gap in the security profession. The findings come in the wake of a spate of cyber attacks that have targeted banks, businesses and institutions, including Tesco Bank, Lloyd's Bank, Talk-Talk, and the National Health Service. "The threat of cyber-crime is ever-growing yet evidence shows Britain ranks below Brazil, South Africa and China in keeping phones and laptops secure," said committee chair Meg Hillier. "Leadership from the centre is inadequate and, while the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has the potential to address this, practical aspects of its role must be clarified quickly." The NCSC was established by the government last October as part of a 1.9 billion-pound ($2.37 billion) programme to tighten cyber security. An NCSC spokesman said in response to the report: "The government has been clear that the newly formed NCSC is the UK's definitive authority on cyber security." On Thursday night, British defence minister Michael Fallon said Russian president Vladimir Putin was trying to undermine the West by spreading lies and attacking critical infrastructure with hackers. The Kremlin called the accusation baseless. Britain launched a cyber security review in January after U.S. intelligence agencies said Putin ordered an effort to help President Donald Trump's electoral chances by discredting his rival Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. (Reporting by Ritvik Carvalho)
Apple has only a two-percent share of the Indian market, well behind rival Samsung on 23 percent, according to research firm Canalys (AFP Photo/SAM PANTHAKY) (AFP/File)

Apple is to start making iPhones in India this year, a local government official said Friday, as the company seeks to tap into a booming middle class while sales in China slow.

Karnataka's IT minister said Apple had agreed to assemble its hugely popular phones in the southern state, whose capital Bangalore is India's technology hub.

Apple, which has not commented on the minister's statement, remains a relatively small player in India, where sales of its smartphones lag those of rival Samsung.

But chief executive Tim Cook said this week it would "invest significantly" in the country of 1.25 billion people.

"We have an understanding with Apple and we expect them to start manufacturing in Karnataka by the end of April," state minister of information technology and biotechnology Priyank Kharge told AFP.

He said the new operation would likely assemble iPhones for the domestic market.

Apple has only a two percent share of the Indian market, well behind rival Samsung on 23 percent, according to research firm Canalys.

By pricing itself exclusively at the luxury end, Apple has distinguished its brand from Samsung which has both low-cost and high-end phones.

Last year Apple had 48 percent of the premium sector in which phones sell for $450 and above.

It applied to open Apple Stores in India last year, but was reportedly rebuffed because of a diktat that states foreign retailers must source 30 percent of their products locally.

New Delhi has since relaxed the rules, giving companies up to eight years to meet the sourcing requirements, as part of a push to attract foreign investment and create jobs.

It is not clear whether the Karnataka plans would help it clear that hurdle but experts said manufacturing locally would reduce the company's costs and enable it to lower prices.

"They're eager to be here because theyve identified India as a strategic focus market," said Jaideep Mehta of research firm IDC.

Story continues

"They had a fantastic 2016 in India and shipped more two million devices to India, and now they're looking to ultimately manufacture here as that gives them more flexibility to respond to market changes."

Apple currently sells through third-party retailers in India, which accounts for only around one percent of global iPhone sales.

Experts say India's giant population and low number of smartphone owners relative to its size mean it is a huge potential market.

Last year Cook visited India on a charm offensive and was pictured using Prime Minister Narendra Modi's gold iPhone to launch the premier's new app.

Analysts said that if confirmed the move would be a coup for India's government, which has been trying to persuade foreign companies to manufacture in the country.

Reports in Indian media said Wistron Corp, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, was lined up to assemble iPhones at a plant on the outskirts of tech hub Bangalore.

Apple outsources all its manufacturing globally.
The President of the United States has access to the most secure mobile technology and latest privacy protections on the planet, and for very obvious reasons. Donald Trump, serial Twitter spammer and social media maven, doesnt seem to care all that much, and its clear that he has no intention of actually giving up the Android handset hes used throughout his campaign and, presumably, for years before that. Thats a major issue.

Don't Miss: The one way Android will never, ever be able to compete with the iPhone

The problem, of course, is that the older smartphone technology is, the less likely it is to be properly maintained with security updates and patches. If the President is indeed using a Galaxy S3, as has been reported previously  with the New York Times confirming Trumps go-to device is an old, unsecured Android phone  the potential problems are almost too many to list.

If we assume for a moment that Trumps phone is a off-the-shelf, retail model of the Galaxy S3, the version of Android the phone is running would have been last updated as far back as 2012. The S3 is capable of running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean, with the latest manufacturer update for that OS being 4.3.1, released on October 3rd, 2013. Per Google, Android 4.3 is marked as unsupported and discontinued, meaning no more security updates or patches have been applied for quite some time.

As The Verge accurately points out, a foreign government like Russia, China, or pretty much anyone else, would be capable of breaking into such a device with very little effort. In fact, Android 4.3 was one of many Android devices to fall victim to the Stagefright vulnerability, meaning that it might not even take the skills of a state-sponsored hacker to break into Trumps handset.

Regardless of who might be targeting the presidents device, the fact that hes still using it is not only a risk to his personal privacy, but also potentially the security of the government as well.

Story continues

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By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. telecommunications regulator said on Friday it was closing inquiries into sponsored data programs and TV services offered by AT&T Inc, Verizon Communications Inc , Comcast Corp , T-Mobile USA Inc without taking any action. Under the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission had sent letters raising concerns about whether some data practices by AT&T and Verizon violated net neutrality rules. The FCC had also sent letters to Comcast about its "Stream TV" service and to T-Mobile about its "Binge On" service in 2015. Millions of mobile phone users benefit from free data video services but critics warn that the practice may prod users into avoiding competitors' services. Net neutrality rules imposed by the FCC in 2015 require broadband providers to treat all data equally and bar service providers from slowing consumer access to web content. Tom Wheeler, who was FCC chairman until Jan. 20, told Reuters last month that its investigation found some free data practices were abusive and anticompetitive. But in an about-face on Friday, the regulator now under Republican control said it was closing its investigation. "These free-data plans have proven to be popular among consumers, particularly low-income Americans, and have enhanced competition in the wireless marketplace," new FCC chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. Sponsored or zero-rated free data programs allow mobile phone users free data if they use certain video services. AT&T phone subscribers can watch DirecTV, which is owned by the company, on their phones without incurring data charges. Verizon also offers mobile phone subscribers some sponsored "go90" video content that does not count against data caps. In a Jan. 11 report, the FCC's wireless bureau said Binge On did not violate net neutrality rules, but it found concerns with AT&T and Verizon's data programs. Pai voted against the net neutrality rules and said last month he thought the regulation's "days are numbered." "It is clear that net neutrality is public enemy number one for Chairman Pai," Democratic U.S. Senator Edward Markey said on Friday. "He is starting his campaign by protecting harmful zero-rating plans." Verizon spokesman Rich Young said the company has always believed its free data programs benefit customers. Joan Marsh, an AT&T's senior vice president said the decision was a "win for the millions of consumers who are reaping the benefits of services made available through free data programs." Comcast declined to comment, but has said its "Stream TV" is an IP-based cable service that is not covered by net neutrality rules. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Tom Brown)
While swapping out a PS4 hard drive is pretty easy, its not as easy as simply connecting an external hard drive  something the Xbox One has let users do ever since its early days.

A new system update will finally add the feature to Sonys signature game box, along with a handful of other useful abilities, ranging from cosmetic upgrades to VR functionality.

Sony detailed the upcoming PS4 System Software Update 4.50 in a blog post, explaining that users who participate in software update betas will begin testing the feature today. The system update, also known as Sasuke, will likely be available to everyday users within the next few weeks.

MORE: PS4 vs. Xbox One: Which Console Is Right for You?

The biggest advancement Sasuke brings is the ability to plug in an external HDD to the PS4. There doesnt seem to be any special trick to it: Just plug in any USB-enabled hard drive, and the PS4 will treat it as an acceptable form of storage. Hard drives can go up to 8 TB in size, which could easily store more than 100 big-budget games.

Another exciting innovation is the ability to experience 3D Blu-rays on the PlayStation VR. The headset itself can display 3D images, so this could allow users without 3D TVs to experience the functionality without having to buy a whole new set. (Of course, you could get a 3D TV for less money than a PSVR, so your mileage may vary on this one.)

The other updates are mild, but still potentially useful. Users will be able to make custom wallpapers for their home screens, access more features from the Quick Menu, concatenate all of their notifications in a single menu and post more content to their PlayStation Network Activity Feeds. Check the blog post for full details on each one, but they probably wont radically change your PS4 experience.

While theres no hard release date on the 4.50 system software, Sony doesnt usually make its customers wait too long unless theres some kind of significant hitch during beta testing. If you intend to expand your PS4 storage with an external hard drive, you may want to start hunting for deals now.

Story continues

See also : Best PS4 Games 2017
When Apple needs to put together a TV ad for its iPhone 8 later this year, the company might want to give Thadeu Brandao a ring.

Brandao, a graphic designer, created a tantalizing concept video of the unreleased iPhone that rivals any commercial you'll see coming out of Cupertino.





Thadeu Brandao iPhone 8 Concept

From the looks of the video, which was spotted by BGR and created for ConceptsiPhone, Brandao drew upon many of the most popular iPhone 8 features that are rumored for Apple's next big release. Specifically, Brandao shows off an iPhone 8 with an edge-to-edge screen, which many rumor mongers think is a certainty for at least one model in this fall's release.

MORE: Get Ready for iPhone 8 Ferrari: New Model Leaked

Having the display stretch from one edge of the iPhone 8 to the other will require Apple to do something about the home button. Brandao has that covered by integrating the home button into the screen. It appears as a cutout in his concept video, but the display still washes over it.



This being a concept video, there's a few ideas in here that aren't part of the iPhone 8 rumor mill, but really just interesting flights of fancy. For starters, Brandao incorporates the touch bar feature Apple added to last year's MacBook Pro update into his iPhone concept. Icons appear alongside the home button that change depending on which app is running.

This edge-to-edge iPhone 8 concept has both front and rear screens. Credit: ConecptsiPhone

This edge-to-edge iPhone 8 concept has both front and rear screens. Credit: ConecptsiPhone



Brandao's video also features an iPhone that has both front and rear displays, something we've seen in the YotaPhone, but not anything likely to appear in the iPhone 8 this fall. (Update: A reader suggests that the phone in the concept video just shows off a singular screen, with the iPhone 8 flipping between apps, but it sure looks to us at one point in the video that the iPhone 8 is flipping around to reveal a screen on its other side, though that could just be neat video trick. Skip ahead to the 30-second mark of the video and judge for yourself.)



Still, we have to hand it to Brandao not just for dreaming big with his iPhone 8 concept video, but for making it looking as much like an Apple TV ad as possible, right down to the fonts.

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Our favorite touch? The "Hello Again" appearing at the end of the video, which long-time Apple fans will recognize as a play off the "Hello" message that greeted the world in the original iPhone commercial a decade ago.

See also : Most Anticipated Phones of 2017
ZURICH (Reuters) - A Swatch-backed car battery developed by research firm Belenos will take another two to three years to certify, Swatch Chief Executive Nick Hayek said in an interview with broadcaster SRF on Friday. "We're in the process of putting a prototype into operation in Itingen, Basel, where we'll test the first batteries with our Chinese partner Geely [GEELY.UL] for the mobility of their cars," Hayek said in a television interview released the day after the Swiss watchmaker's full-year results. "But it will take another two to three years until we receive the necessary certification." Hayek in recent years had announced he was taking Swatch in a new direction, launching a battery for electric vehicles with the goal of reaching sales of $10-15 billion by 2020. But investors have called the plan expensive and unrealistic. Hayek said the research firm, established by his late father in 2008 as Belenos Clean Power Holding, in which Swatch holds a 51 percent stake, was using the same technology to engineer batteries for small devices such as e-bikes, drones and watches. "It will proceed a lot faster there," he said. "We have partners, including ones in Switzerland, with whom we're already testing the (smaller device) batteries in some cases." On Thursday, Swatch cut its dividend after weak sales and high fixed costs at the world's biggest watchmaker drove annual profit sharply lower, although it held out the prospect of a return to "healthy growth" this year. Hayek in the interview said opportunities - including the possibility that more U.S. industrial jobs might lead to higher middle-class income - this year outweighed risks. The watchmaker hasn't cut jobs in its factories or moved production facilities abroad despite years of pressure on the Swiss watch industry, he said. "We're keeping our people," Hayek sad. "We accept a little bit less profit. But then we've got our people on board, and they're motivated. That's our philosophy." (Reporting by Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi; Editing by Mark Potter)
FILE PHOTO - Toyota Motor Corp's logo is pictured on a car in Tokyo, Japan, November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon/File Photo (Reuters)

(Reuters) - Japan's Toyota Motor Corp and Suzuki Motor Corp are nearing a partnership agreement to develop technology, including self-driving, the Nikkei business daily reported on Saturday.

The two Japanese automakers could announce a deal as soon as Monday, the Nikkei reported. (http://s.nikkei.com/2k4mRt1)

The partnership will also cover areas such as development and procurement, which includes applications for information technology and sharing sources for parts in Japan and abroad, the Nikkei said.

Suzuki and Toyota's unit Daihatsu Motor will continue to sell automobiles under their separate brands to avoid risks related to antitrust laws. The companies will collaborate in ways that steer clear of antitrust risk, the business daily reported.

Toyota and Suzuki said in October that they plan to explore a possible partnership, citing technological challenges and the need to keep up with consolidation in the global auto industry.

Suzuki and Toyota did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside regular business hours.

(Reporting by Arunima Banerjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta)
Today marks two full weeks since Donald Trump was sworn in as President of the United States, and so far, things have been interesting. Trumps supporters have continued applaud the presidents unorthodox approach and his controversial policies, while others have become even more vocal in their opposition. Millions of people in America and around the world have protested Trump in some capacity over the last two weeks, with the most notable protests thus far having been the recent womens marches on Washington, New York, Los Angeles and other major cities. In fact, Trump quickly became the fastest president ever to receive majority disapproval in a Gallup poll. George W. Bushs first majority disapproval came after 1,205 days in the White House, Obama took 936 days and Bill Clinton managed to enter the red in just 573 days. How long did it take for America to sour on Trumps presidency? Eight days.

Times are tumultuous right now indeed, but they say laughter is the best medicine. Well, if you want a laugh, youll definitely want to check out the Trump executive order generator.

Don't Miss: iOS 10.2 jailbreak brings all these hot tweaks to your iPhone

Over the course of the next four years, Donald Trump is going to be the butt of many jokes. Trump has a tendency to rub people the wrong way and, much to the presidents chagrin, people seem to enjoy laughing at him. Some presidents take criticism in stride and perhaps even come away with some ideas for how to better serve the people of America. Trump does not.

There have been plenty of people who have come up with creative ways to laugh at the presidents expense. For example, this Twitter account, which found a creative way to put words (and drawings) in the presidents mouth:

Speaking of putting words in the presidents mouth, software engineer and Google project manager Isaac Hepworth created a comical little tool that allows you to write your own executive order. Trumps various executive orders have been the subject of much commotion over the past two weeks, and now the people of America finally have a chance to make their voices heard.

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The site is quite simple. Just click on the EO in President Trumps hands, enter whatever text (or emojis) youd like, and then take a screenshot to share your masterpiece on Facebook, Twitter or anywhere else youd like. Can you craft a better executive order than our president? Head to the Trump executive order generator page and find out.

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Island vibes!

Barack Obama was spotted in full vacation mode on Tuesday, rocking his hat backwards while taking a stroll in the British Virgin Islands with his wife, Michelle Obama.

RELATED: President Obama's Post-White House Plan: A Trip to Palm Springs!

The 55-year-old former president went for an ultra-casual look, trading in his signature suit and tie for shorts and flip flops, as he and the former first lady waved at a nearby crowd.

Obama's on vacation with the hat backwards. He's never coming back. pic.twitter.com/RUakcwwgtT  Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) February 1, 2017

READ: President Barack Obama Shares Sweet Birthday Message to Michelle Obama

Obama's backwards hat was the talk of Twitter, with one tweet reading, "Obama got his hat to the back like it's 1990 and trump isn't president. GET YO A** BACK HERE... with respect, sir."

Obama got his hat to the back like it's 1990 and trump isn't president. GET YO ASS BACK HERE... with respect, sir. pic.twitter.com/wJKI4602Gx  Robin Thede (@robinthede) February 1, 2017

Other tweets focused on the joy of seeing the former POTUS happily enjoying his vacation after eight years in the White House.

"Seeing Obama on vacation in flip flops with his hat to the back just brought me so much joy," tweeted one user.

"Obama in a backwards hat is my favorite Obama," read another tweet.

Seeing Obama on vacation in flip flops with his hat to the back just brought me so much joy   mase (@mase_430) February 1, 2017

obama in a backwards hat is my favorite obama.  Ally Hills (@allyhills) February 1, 2017

Favourite headline of the day as I scroll through all the bad news.



"OBAMA IS VACATIONING WITH HIS HAT ON BACKWARDS"  Ryan Donnelly (@ryan_donnelly88) February 1, 2017

president obama with the backwards fitted!!! this man is culture pic.twitter.com/1P4EhrnQ5P  jordan (@yourgurljordan) February 1, 2017

WATCH: President Obama Thanks Americans in Parting Letter: 'You Have Made Me a Better Man'

While the ex-POTUS has been soaking up the sun since leaving Washington D.C. last month, he's still being praised for his work in the White House.

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Chicago native Chance the Rapper took to Twitter on Thursday to announce the launch of his Thank U Obama clothing line in honor of the 44th president.

I'm a model now. #ThankUObama droppin in like 15 minutes. ThankUObama.us pic.twitter.com/Y7jOHKzRam  Lil Chano From 79th (@chancetherapper) February 2, 2017

The site crashed but we back up #ThankUObama https://t.co/VwPC4cYgDi pic.twitter.com/GlDDQwQyQf  Lil Chano From 79th (@chancetherapper) February 2, 2017

MORE: Ellen DeGeneres Shares Touching Tribute Montage to the Obama Family

The Obamas jetted off on vacation after President Donald Trump's inauguration last month.

See the couple's final day in the White House below.

Related Articles
On Inside the Actor's Studio, Cuba Gooding, Jr. shared the odd and slightly scary story of filming the iconic "Show me the money" scene in Jerry Maguire. Due to Tom Cruises's scheduling conflicts with Eyes Wide Shut, the two had to shoot the scene on short notice, but Cuba Gooding, Jr. did not get that notice. At the last minute, Gooding had to jump into a car with his assistant driving and talk to Cruise on his cell phone while hurrying to the studio. After multiple takes, Gooding had arrived at the studio but that's when the problem started. He said, "The police showed up at the lot because there's this angry black man yelling in his Suburban outside a soundstage, threatening to kill people and he loves black people, or whatever he's saying." Luckily for everyone, things were sorted out we audiences got the iconic scene.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Windy with light rain developing this afternoon. High around 65F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 70%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies. Low 41F. Winds SW at 15 to 25 mph. Higher wind gusts possible.
Reasons suggested for such a change  allowing the resulting entities to "better focus" and "lightening their workload" (by also outsourcing that work to private entities)  sound anything but convincing. As Jake Simmons of Onalaska notes in a recent letter, The DNR is already under scrutiny due to inadequate enforcement of water quality (Jan. 1 Tribune). Its hard to avoid the impression that the real purpose for such changes would be to further cripple the DNRs capacity for enforcement.

For reasons that Simmons explains, this should not be a partisan issue of jobs or development versus the environment. This is a health issue, and a quality-of-life issue. As Paul A. Smith discusses, Legislators must be held accountable for any DNR changes (Jan. 4 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel). Whats needed is for all of us who care about the quality of life we enjoy here in Wisconsin  healthy air and clean water, not to mention healthy fish and wildlife populations and public lands for all to enjoy  to contact our elected representatives and let them know our future votes will hinge on whether they allow the DNR to maintain the regulatory authority needed to safeguard our state's assets long-term.
Dr. David L. Morris, 87, of Onalaska, passed away peacefully Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, at Gundersen Health System, following a long battle with Parkinsons Disease.

He was born June 4, 1929, in Waukesha, Wis,. to Leslie and Kathryn (Davies) Morris. At Carroll College, the cute, brilliant boy in the front row of freshman English caught the eye of Sacia Brewer of Menomonie, Wis. They married July 7, 1951, and he loved and cherished her every day for more than 65 years.

David graduated from the University of Wisconsin Medical School, where he served as class president all four years. Following medical school and completing an internship in Duluth, Minn., David proudly served in the U.S. Air Force as a flight surgeon, caring for airmen and their families. His service included time aboard the first Strategic Air Command B-47 based in Guam. In 1957, he joined a private practice in West Salem, where his long-standing interest in allergic disorders propelled a life-long quest to find better ways to treat patients suffering from a myriad of medical issues.

David was a natural born problem solver, researcher and advocate. His focus on finding the best options for his patients led him to international travel to learn from others who might offer insights into his own patients needs, and to pioneer treatments that impacted so many. He was ahead of his time with his use of ear tubes for chronic ear infection before they became standard treatment, and being one of the first U.S. doctors to use an external defibrillator outside of surgery. He is most widely known for his pioneering allergy treatment using sublingual immunotherapy, treating patients who traveled from around the country at the Allergy Associates of La Crosse practice he founded in 1970. He was most proud of getting to practice with his daughter and partner, Dr. Mary Morris, for 22 years. His legacy will continue through Marys dedication to their patients. He and his partners published the La Crosse Method Protocol that he shared freely and humbly with thousands of U.S. and international providers, and founded Allergychoices in 2000 as a means to help patients get the care they need closer to home through their local providers. To date, his methods have served over 195,000 patients around the country.

Aside from his professional accomplishments, David was a model of optimism and kindness. He loved his work and caring for his patients. He loved his family and modeled joy, taking his children along on house calls in the early days while singing loudly with the windows wide open. He inspired them to do the right thing, even if it wasnt the popular thing, understanding that criticism was okay as long as they were doing what was ethical and honorable. He strongly believed in giving back, resulting in the initiatives including the Morris Institute of Respiratory Research at UW-Madison, local behavioral health initiatives, and countless others that serve a variety of community needs.

David is survived by his wife, Sacia; his children, Tim (Lisa) Morris of Boca Raton, Fla., Mary (Jim Killoran) Morris of Onalaska, Kathryn (Greg) LeMond of Medina, Minn. and Greenback, Tenn., Lisa (Scott) Kee of Plymouth, Minn. and Galesville; 11 grandchildren, Andrew Morris, Spencer Morris, Preston Morris, Sacia Killoran, Moira Killoran, Emma Killoran, Geoffrey LeMond, Scott LeMond, Simone LeMond, Charlie Kee and Elisabeth Kee; and one great-granddaughter, Lennon LeMond; extended family; friends; colleagues; and patients with whom he shared a special bond.

He was preceded in death by his parents; and brother, John; and sister, Helen.

Memorial services will be held at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017, at First Presbyterian Church; 233 West Ave. South. The Rev. J. Taylor Haley will officiate. Private family burial will take place at a later date. Friends may call on the family from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the church. Online guestbook may be signed at www.schumacher-kish.com.
Students at Blessed Sacrament added some fun and kindness to their studies this week as they celebrated Catholic Schools Week.

Students on Thursday learned about German mathematician Carl Gauss and his work solving problems relating to number theory in the 1800s. And then they connected their work with one of the themes of the week  showing kindness.

In honor of the mathematician, students folded and glued together paper pyramids that contained kind messages, such as Happy Valentines Day. The finished pyramids will be given to those living at the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adorations Villa St. Joseph or handed out as a part of the Mobile Meals program.

I think kindness is really important, third-grade student Harry Griffith said. It is something really good to do for others.

All of the Aquinas schools celebrate Catholic Schools Week, which has promoted Catholic education for more than 40 years. Events included an all-schools Mass last week at Aquinas High School, as well as an elementary Bible Bowl competition and appreciation days on which parents, teachers and members of the clergy are provided special meals at lunchtime.

(The week) reaffirms for students, families and supporters in the community the value of a Catholic education, Aquinas President Ted Knutson said. We spend the week appreciating the opportunity we have to be a part of a Catholic school system.

Blessed Sacrament Principal Kay Berra said the weeks celebrations give kids a fun diversion from their studies during the bleak winter months. Catholic Schools Week also comes at a time when the faithful are celebrating some of the great saints of education, such as the school systems namesake Thomas Aquinas and John Bosco, a saint known for his love of stage magic and passion for teaching poor street youths.

Berra said the school celebrated heroes each day this week, starting with Monday, when students could dress up as their favorites. On Tuesday, the school honored Mother Teresa for her work with the poor and John Dalton on Wednesday for his scientific work in astronomy.

Students also participated in kindness stations and heard kindness quotes each day of the week, tied into that days theme. On Thursday, students made the pyramids as part of the focus on mathematics and were asked by their teachers to go home and show their parents kindness by hugging them and telling them they loved them.

Third-grade student Gwen Buck said she enjoyed all the activities this week, especially dressing up for comfy day on Thursday and the different kindness activities. She said she liked learning mathematics. Her teacher, Jackie Levendoski, made it fun with games such as rhyme time, when students made a short rhyme such as zero is always the hero to help them learn multiplication tables.

And, she said, Being kind helps you make friends. It is good to be a kind person.
TOMAH  Construction of Tomah Memorial Hospitals new campus, a scaled-back facility estimated to cost $66 million, could begin in August or September and be completed by the summer of 2019.

The hospitals board of directors instructed administrators during their recent annual meeting to continue planning on that schedule, CEO Phil Stuart said.

The next step in the decision process will come in July, when financial documents are expected to be finished to help the board make a final decision on whether to proceed, Stuart said.

Having the capacity to do a $66 million project is certainly very doable at this point, and we do not anticipate any problems going forward, he said.

The project, which Tomah Memorial announced last spring, originally was planned to include a 130,000-square-foot hospital, an 80,000-square-foot medical office building and a 50,000-square-foot community wellness facility on a 40-acre site adjacent to Interstate 90 along Gopher Avenue.

Officials have shrunk the schematics to a three-story, 140,000-square-foot hospital and proposed medical office building attached to the hospital, with the possibility of expansion later.

Stuart cited growing needs as the reason for the building initiative to replace the present hospital at 321 Butts Ave., which opened in 1952 and was expanded in 1964, 1994 and 2004.

We have many departments that provide services, but we have to limit the amount of services that they can provide because we simply do not have the space to do it, he said.

Without the expansion, the hospital would continue to limit itself, and patients would have to seek care elsewhere instead of having access near home, he said.

The hospital has experienced annual growth for 15 years, to the point that it will serve more than 16,000 people in the emergency room and urgent care this year, he said.

Acknowledging that the original plan may have been a bit grandiose, Stuart expressed satisfaction with the revised proposal.

Even though we may not get everything started at one time, we are still looking toward the future, and what we may be able to add on to our campus as we will have significant space for growth, he said.

TMH and Gundersen Health System are discussing the possibility of Gundersens occupying part of the office building, Stuart said. Gundersen now has a clinic along Superior Avenue on Tomahs north side.

Officials of Mayo Clinic Health System-Franciscan Healthcare, which has a clinic adjacent to Tomah Memorial, have opted not to move onto the new campus at this time, but there is still consideration to provide space for them at a future date, Stuart said.

Hospital officials also discussed with the La Crosse Area Family YMCA and an Iowa-based firm the possibility that those two might build and operate a wellness/community facility, including an indoor swimming pool.

The indoor pools expense sank that part of the plan, Stuart said, noting that TMH could not absorb the $8 million to $12 million for an aquatic center.

Unless we had some very significant benefactor come forward to help fund that, its probably not feasible, he said, although hospital officials still are seeking partnerships to take on that part of the project, as well as locating other health-related groups on campus.

Hospital staffers and administrators have been working on building designs with architects and designers from BWBR of St. Paul, Minn., and Market & Johnson of Eau Claire since early last year.

If ultimately approved, the new hospital would double the capacity of operating rooms, expand emergency and urgent care areas, increase obstetric services with additional delivery suites, expand outpatient infusion services and wound care, enlarge rehabilitation areas and patient rooms and make daily workflow more efficient, Stuart said.

The project will not boost patient costs beyond usual annual increases, he said.
Currently, Wisconsin has the third worst roads in the nation. This year alone, 20 percent of Wisconsin roads are downgraded from highway use to off-road use. Still another 30 percent of roads are rated Covered Wagon only.

While the roads are the worst, the potholes are world class. The Fosdick family from Milwaukee made the news when a giant pothole swallowed their Dodge Caravan. An intense manhunt ensued. All looked lost until the Fosdicks Caravan popped out of a pothole in Chicago. Miraculously, no one was hurt.

If betting on Wisconsin funding necessary road repairs versus a tooth fairy visit, bet on the tooth fairy. Politicians prefer tax cuts to fixing road ruts. Consequently, a billion-plus budget deficit leaves a highway repair fund barely big enough to repave .037 miles of bike trails in Ozaukee County.

Bad roads cost Milwaukee and Madison drivers $2,000 a year. A bill in the Legislature, sponsored by the Society for the Humane Treatment of Highways, will allow drivers to designate an auto mechanic as the beneficiary of their tax refund. Once their mechanics are paid, Wisconsin drivers can get their repaired cars out of hock. This is how tax cuts work to expand the economy.
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its Dred Scott decision, decided that African-Americans were not entitled to the protections afforded by the Constitution of the United States, because they were not considered persons and could therefore be held as slaves. This continued until the Civil War ended and the slaves were freed.

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that unborn babies were not persons and could be murdered for virtually any reason at anytime in its Roe v. Wade decision.

The babys heart begins to beat at about 18 days. Most surgical abortions are performed after that. What do you call a procedure that stops a beating heart?

Make no mistake about it; One of the major reasons that liberals are so upset by the election of President Donald Trump is that they fear he will appoint Supreme Court justices who will recognize unborn babies as persons and overturn Roe v. Wade, the worst Supreme Court decision since Dred Scott.

Militant radical feminists largely control the agenda of the Democrat Party. The official platform of their party endorses so-called abortion rights and several states now allow assisted suicide. Some liberals even defend or deny the reported sale of body parts of aborted babies by Planned Parenthood. Others want to use our hard-earned tax dollars to pay for abortions, and when they talk about womens health care they often really mean unrestricted abortion. The result has been the loss of election after election. This will not be reversed until they recognize the right to life for all.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said Thursday she will oppose confirming President Donald Trumps pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch.

The announcement drew Baldwin, D-Madison, into a testy Twitter exchange with Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who criticized Baldwin for not meeting with Gorsuch before deciding to oppose him.

The move is a sign Baldwin is joining the ranks of congressional Democrats who, at the urging of their political base, are ramping up efforts to push back on Trumps agenda just two weeks into his presidency.

Baldwin is a first-term Democratic senator whos expected to face a tough re-election fight in 2018. In a statement, Baldwin said that in Gorsuch, Trump has offered someone who will have a hard time earning bipartisan support. The last two Supreme Court justices who joined the court, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, were confirmed in the U.S. Senate on bipartisan votes, and with more than 60 votes  the procedural threshold to prevent a filibuster.

President Trump needs to earn 60 votes (for Gorsuch) in the Senate, but I am not one of them, Baldwin said, adding she has concerns about this nominees deeply troubling record on the bench. She cited rulings against disabled students, against workers, and against womens reproductive health care. Gorsuch is a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, based in Denver.

Wisconsin Republicans quickly hit back against Baldwin, with Walker leading the way on Twitter. Baldwin quickly responded, sparking a sharply worded exchange between two of Wisconsins top elected officials.

Congressman Sean Duffy, a Wausau Republican whos widely seen as a possible Baldwin challenger in 2018, also joined in with a statement hammering Baldwins stance as shameful.

Baldwins position does not diverge from her past remarks about Gorsuch, which were critical, or from the growing numbers of other Democrats who are lining up against Trumps picks for the high court as well as his Cabinet.

But some others facing tough re-election battles in 2018, such as Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., are taking a more cautious tack. McCaskill has said any Supreme Court nominee should have a full confirmation hearing and vote in the Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., also considered vulnerable in 2018, has said he is anxious to meet with Gorsuch and that Democrats should not immediately move to block him.

Still, Baldwin may wish to stay in step with her partys base, much of which is pushing Senate Democrats to use any means possible to stop Trump.

Many Democrats also remain angry about Senate Republicans refusal last year to hold hearings for former President Barack Obamas pick, Judge Merrick Garland, for the seat left vacant by the Feb. 13 death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Republicans nearly yearlong stalling tactic paid off, leaving the seat open through the presidential election and paving the way for Gorsuchs nomination.

Shortly after Obama nominated Garland last year, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Oshkosh, held what he described as a cordial meeting with Garland. Johnson, who was reelected in November, said the meeting did not affect his opposition to Garlands confirmation; he joined Senate Republican colleagues in opposing holding hearings or a vote on Garland.

This time, Johnson has made clear he enthusiastically supports Gorsuchs confirmation.

While 60 votes has been the traditional threshold for the Senate to confirm Supreme Court nominees, majority Republicans, who control 52 of 100 seats, could remove that barrier with a simply majority vote  what some have called the nuclear option.

Trump has urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to exercise that option if needed. McConnell, thus far, has been noncommittal.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Throughout the month of February, R.I.A. Federal Credit Union is collecting donations for Tomahs Neighbor for Neighbor Food Pantry.

R.I.A. Federal Credit Union encourages members to bring non-perishable food items or monetary donations to its Tomah branch located at 1024 N Superior Ave for the food drive. R.I.A. employees will donate food, money and pay to wear jeans throughout the month to provide more meals.

For every member who signs up for e-statements in February, R.I.A. Federal Credit Union will donate $2 to Neighbor for Neighbor Food Pantry, and those members will be entered into a drawing to win $500.

For more information about R.I.A. Federal Credit Unions food drive participation, visit riafcu.com/food-drive.
The Viroqua Police Department has issued a warning to all citizens of a phone scam in the area where people are told that they have won a large amount of money.

The people are actually speaking to a person in Jamaica who is claiming that they have won a lottery. The victims are then asked to send money to a different addresses around the country. The victims phone bills are showing the caller is from Jamaica, however.

According to the police department, a Viroqua resident was scammed out of a large amount of money, in excess of $100,000.

We urge all citizens to use extreme caution when sending money to people who have contacted you claiming that you have won money, Chief of Police Daron Jefson said. These are almost always a hoax.

Jefson said if residents have questions, or think something seems too good to true, they should contact the department at anytime at 608-637-2121, and officers will help decide if it is a hoax.
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Emmy-winning producer Andre Bautista was convicted Thursday of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, reports the L.A. Times.

What sparked him off? Apparently, the victim (who was Bautista's roommate at the time of the incident) had laughed at him when the actor/producer said he had hopes of winning five Oscars in the future. The roommate, who identified himself as 23-year-old Clayton Haymes, told CBS 2 that "when he said five Oscars, we all kind of laughed a little bit, and he got really upset. Bautista proceeded to grab a kitchen knife and stab his roommate in the chest, said authorities. He then fled their Hollywood Hills apartment.

Bautista, 38, also goes by the name Andre Bauth. In 2015, he won a daytime Emmy as a producer for the online series The Bay. He is scheduled to be sentenced on March 22, and faces up to a maximum of 13 years in a state prison.

According to KTLA, court records show that Bautista had once written and acted in an indie flick in which a landlord kills his tenants.
Dear reader, we're asking for your help to keep local reporting available for all today during our fall fundraiser. Your financial support keeps stories like this one free to read, instead of hidden behind paywalls. We believe when reliable local reporting is widely available, the entire community benefits. Thank you for investing in your neighborhood.

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Snap Inc., which owns the popular social media app Snapchat, has filed Thursday for an initial public offering, reports Variety.

The filing indicated that the company intends to sell stock valued at $3 billion, according to the L.A. Times, though it's not indicated how many shares it plans to sell. The IPO reportedly will value Snap at upwards of $25 billion. If all goes according to plan, it will be the biggest IPO ever offered for a L.A.-based company. As noted at the Times, only Facebook, UPS, Visa, and a handful of other U.S. companies have been valued higher. The company has applied to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange as SNAP. Snapchat's executives and early investors are expected to wield all of the voting power in the company.

So it sounds like the app is doing great business, right? Well, it's been turbulent. According to data pulled by CNBC, Snap Inc. had a net revenue of $404.48 million in 2016, a big uptick from the $58.66 million made in 2015. But it also turns out that running Snapchat is a costly business: $924 million spent on hosting costs, research and development, and other ho-hum housekeeping stuff has left the company with a $514.6-million loss this past year. Yeesh.

The company has an estimated 161 million daily active users, with about 60 million of them residing in North America. While the user pool is large, the company does acknowledge that there are potential limitations to its growth. As noted at the Times, Snap Inc. doesn't expect to maintain its rapid growth rate forever; once it plateaus, they'll have have to make the most of user engagement to keep their existing users active. Oh yeah, the company also notes that its main demographic, people who are 18 to 34 years old, isn't as brand-loyal as its older counterparts. And there's also the fact that, as users get older, they tend to use the app less; the company reports that users younger than 25 spend more than 30 minutes a day on average on the app. Users over 25, however, spend only (and we use the term lightly) 20 minutes a day on the app.

As noted at the New York Times, the app started in a setting that's familiar to all startups: the college dormroom. The app is founded by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy at Stanford, and was built as a tool to send messages and visuals that would self-erase after an allotted time. The app would expand to have filters and a "stories" option.

When we were just getting started, many people didnt understand what Snapchat was and said it was just for sexting, even when we knew it was being used for so much more, the company said in a prospectus.

The company has nearly about 1,900 employees. If all goes according to plan, the IPO will turn hundreds of their employees into millionaires. May we suggest donating some of that cash to a good cause?
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(4) Feb 06 (7) Feb 05 (7) Feb 04 (7) Feb 03 (9) Feb 02 (7) Feb 01 (9) Jan 31 (5) Jan 30 (6) Jan 29 (5) Jan 28 (6) Jan 27 (6) Jan 26 (5) Jan 25 (6) Jan 24 (5) Jan 23 (4) Jan 22 (6) Jan 21 (6) Jan 20 (8) Jan 19 (4) Jan 18 (9) Jan 17 (5) Jan 16 (5) Jan 15 (6) Jan 14 (7) Jan 13 (7) Jan 12 (5) Jan 11 (7) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (7) Jan 08 (8) Jan 07 (11) Jan 06 (9) Jan 05 (5) Jan 04 (7) Jan 03 (6) Jan 02 (8) Jan 01 (8) Dec 31 (6) Dec 30 (6) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (7) Dec 27 (4) Dec 26 (5) Dec 25 (5) Dec 24 (5) Dec 23 (7) Dec 22 (5) Dec 21 (5) Dec 20 (5) Dec 19 (4) Dec 18 (6) Dec 17 (6) Dec 16 (4) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (5) Dec 13 (4) Dec 12 (5) Dec 11 (4) Dec 10 (4) Dec 09 (5) Dec 08 (6) Dec 07 (5) Dec 06 (6) Dec 05 (5) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (6) Dec 02 (4) Dec 01 (5) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (6) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (4) Nov 26 (4) Nov 25 (4) Nov 24 (4) Nov 23 (5) Nov 22 (7) Nov 21 (5) Nov 20 (6) Nov 19 (4) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (5) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (4) Nov 14 (5) Nov 13 (6) Nov 12 (6) Nov 11 (6) Nov 10 (8) Nov 09 (8) Nov 08 (7) Nov 07 (5) Nov 06 (5) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (6) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (5) Oct 28 (5) Oct 27 (3) Oct 26 (6) Oct 25 (6) Oct 24 (2) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (5) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (6) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (2) Oct 14 (5) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (7) Oct 10 (3) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (2) Oct 07 (7) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (6) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (3) Oct 02 (8) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (6) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (6) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (4) Sep 24 (1) Sep 23 (5) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (5) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (3) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (4) Sep 12 (3) Sep 11 (3) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (4) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (5) Sep 04 (2) Sep 03 (4) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (2) Aug 28 (4) Aug 27 (4) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (4) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (4) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (5) Aug 11 (3) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (4) Aug 07 (3) Aug 06 (3) Aug 05 (3) Aug 04 (4) Aug 03 (4) Aug 02 (4) Aug 01 (3) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (3) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (4) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (3) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (3) Jul 21 (4) Jul 20 (5) Jul 19 (4) Jul 18 (4) Jul 17 (3) Jul 16 (4) Jul 15 (3) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (4) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (3) Jul 10 (3) Jul 09 (4) Jul 08 (4) Jul 07 (4) Jul 06 (3) Jul 05 (5) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (4) Jul 02 (4) Jul 01 (4) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (4) Jun 27 (3) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (4) Jun 24 (5) Jun 23 (5) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (3) Jun 18 (3) Jun 17 (4) Jun 16 (4) Jun 15 (4) Jun 14 (4) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (6) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (3) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (5) Jun 04 (5) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (5) Jun 01 (6) May 31 (3) May 30 (5) May 29 (3) May 28 (4) May 27 (5) May 26 (7) May 25 (4) May 24 (4) May 23 (4) May 22 (6) May 21 (4) May 20 (3) May 19 (5) May 18 (4) May 17 (4) May 16 (5) May 15 (4) May 14 (4) May 13 (5) May 12 (4) May 11 (5) May 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The deadline to sign up for this free community event that is open to all is Nov. 16.

Kennebunk Post

"We need to invest in our kids," said resident Brenda Robinson. "That's how we keep graffiti out of Waterhouse Center and mischief out of the downtown on Saturday night."
Argentina made a major change to its immigration law Monday. The change makes it easier to expel foreigners who do crimes or who are under investigation.

President Mauricio Macri ordered the change to the 2003 immigration law.

The presidential order notes a rise in organized crime by foreigners. It prevents entrance to immigrants who are serving sentences or have criminal records. It also speeds up expulsion for those who do crimes, including selling drugs and weapons or hiding illegal money.

The government said officials had faced administrative barriers in expelling foreigners who did such crimes.

The new law is designed to lower a sharp increase in crime. The issue is a top concern among Argentinians who will vote in congressional elections later this year.

Foreigners represent 4.5 percent of the 40 million people living in Argentina. Human rights activists said the changed law could cause Argentinians to wrongly judge that part of the population.

The group Amnesty International said it is a mistake to think of the migration crisis as just an issue of national security, and to link immigrants with criminals.

The human rights group said a country cannot violate its constitution and international human rights treaties to make new immigration policies.

Amnesty said the changes reduce guarantees of lawful processes and violate immigrant rights to fair protection.

Argentine Vice President Gabriela Michetti defended the new measure.

She told a local radio station that "Argentina is an open country that will always be in favor of diversity.'' She also rejected suggestions that the new law is like an immigration order signed last month by Donald Trump, the new president of the United States.

Argentine activist Adolfo Perez Esquivel said President Macri is criminalizing immigration through executive orders that change national laws and international commitments.

Esquivel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his defense of human rights during Argentina's "dirty war.

He said Argentine officials clearly violated human rights in the name of security when they made the law without involving lawmakers.

In his words, security problems can and should be solved respecting our constitution and increasing our rights, not reducing them.

Im Alice Bryant.

The Associated Press reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.

__________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

migration - n. to move from one country or place to live or work in another

diversity - n. the state of having people who are different races or who have different cultures

dirty war - n. a period (1976-1983) when Argentinas military-led government hunted down and killed opponents
Some areas hope for more foreign students and visitors because of the new United States restrictions on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The U.S. order includes a 120-day suspension of refugee admissions and a 90-day entry ban for individuals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Asias largest budget airline company, Air Asia, is based in Malaysia, one place hoping to profit from the restrictions.

The head of the company, Tony Fernandes, suggested the U.S. move could lead to more Muslims traveling to Southeast Asia.

With the world now getting more isolationist, its time for ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to start making it easier for tourists to come. Fernandes published the comment on the social media network Twitter.

Malaysia is a popular stop for tourists from the Middle East. Nearly 200,000 people arrived there in 2016 from countries including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Qatar, the Reuters news service reported.

Many people go to Malaysia for medical treatment. Because most Malaysians are Muslim, it is easy for visitors to find halal food products.

Other countries also hope to profit from the U.S. travel restrictions.

Ajay Mittal is director of International Placewell Consultants in New Delhi. His company places Indian students in colleges and universities overseas.

Mittal said Germany and Singapore had increased efforts to advertise their colleges and universities. He said some students are worried that, even if they go the United States for an education, they might not get a job there at the end of their studies. He noted that the new U.S. administration has announced plans to tighten work visa rules.

Mittal said some students are very worried.

Of particular concern are plans to review the Optional Practical Training, or OPT program, which gives foreign graduates in fields like science, technology, engineering or mathematics the right to find jobs in the U.S. for up to 36 months, he said.

Rod Jones is head of the education business Navitas, Ltd. He said the company has received fewer requests for its U.S.-based English language courses.

We have started to see students back off from the U.S. because of their concerns about potential issues they may face, said Jones.

Reuters reported that Jones said foreign students should also consider Canada and Australia.

The Canadian Prime Minister has come out and said if the U.S. doesnt want you, wed love to have you and I think it is the approach of Australia too, he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for stronger measures to limit immigrants and refugees from some countries for security reasons.

Critics say such measures, like the temporary ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, treat Muslims unfairly. They also say measures limiting immigration hurt Americas image as a place that welcomes people from other countries.

Im Mario Ritter.

The Reuters news service reported on this story. Mario Ritter adapted the report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

What do you think about the temporary restrictions on immigrants and refugees by the United States? Let us know in the comments section below.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

tourism  n. visiting another country for pleasure

isolationist  adj. relating to the belief that a country should not be involved in the matters of another country

halal  adj. able to be eaten for those observing Muslim law

graduate  n. someone who has successfully completed a study program
On Nov. 1, Linn Benton Food Shares warehouse in Tangent received two truckloads of food and household supplies arranged by the local branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
No one has officially declared their candidacy for Florida governor, but the potential field of competitors is getting crowded already.

The race to replace term-limited Gov. Rick Scott is wide open to both political parties.

State Sen. Latvala, Tampa Mayor Buckhorn weighing options

House Speaker Richard Corcoran also considers run

Gov. Rick Scott will leave office after this term



And the potential Republican field just grew by one. State Sen. Jack Latvala of Clearwater is considering running.

"I think the chances are good," he said of running. "It's something I've been thinking about for a while."

Latvala cites his long career in politics and his success in private business.

"I think we need someone with some business experience up there," he said of the governor's office. "Republican candidates that we have so far for the next cycle don't have business experience."

Those potential Republican candidates for governor are Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam and House Speaker Richard Corcoran. Latvala and Corcoran are already set to do battle over Corcoran's bill to do away with Enterprise Florida and Visit Florida.

"Now they want to do away with it and don't want to replace it with anything," Latvala said. "It would be like going naked into the world to try to compete with other states for businesses and other states for tourists. It's the dumbest bill that I've seen in my time in the Florida Senate."

On the Democratic side, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn may throw his hat in the ring for governor.

"I think in the next couple of months," Buckhorn said of the decision timeline. "That would give me 18 months to campaign if I chose to."

Attorney John Morgan also said he's strongly considering running.

The possibility of a Latvala versus Morgan matchup is intriguing. They are two men known for saying exactly what's on their mind and could make for a colorful governor's race.

Also on the Democrats' radar for governor: Former Congresswoman Gwen Graham, Tallahasee Mayor Andrew Gillum and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine.

There is also buzz in Tallahassee that Scott is trying to recruit a wealthy outsider like himself to run for governor in 2018. Scott is widely expected to run for U.S. Senate.

The field should take definite shape this summer.
Movenpick Hotels & Resorts is to rebrand and manage a resort in Hua Hin, Thailand. In operation since 2010, the existing Asara Villa and Suite Resort, comprising a 96-key resort is owned by Ocean Property, features 54 pool villas and 42 suites.

Scheduled to re-launch as the Movenpick Asara Resort & Spa Hua Hin in November 2017, the hotel will also feature numerous F&B options, a spa with eight treatment rooms, Kids' Club, a meeting room, library, multiple swimming pools and extensive lush tropical landscaping.

"Our Movenpick Resort in Hua Hin is the perfect destination for families, couples and exclusive meeting (MICE) groups seeking sanctuary from the hustle and noise of Bangkok," said Andrew Langdon, Movenpick Hotels & Resorts Global Chief Development Officer and Senior Vice President Asia. "By combining Movenpick's signature attention to detail with sublime Thai hospitality, world-class facilities and quaint beach town charm, Movenpick Asara Resort & Spa Hua Hin is set to add an exceptional new luxury accommodation choice for visitors. Local and international guests will enjoy memorable holidays, tailored to all ages and interests, with an added touch of private luxury and extraordinary service."

Centrally located in the famous Thai beachside town, which is an easy 3-hour drive from Bangkok, Movenpick Asara Resort & Spa Hua Hin is less than one kilometre from Hua Hin Airport and just a 5-minute drive from the town centre and its popular shopping and nightlife options.

"We're delighted to add another beachside property to our rapidly expanding portfolio" added Mr. Langdon, especially in such an established location and with such reputable owners. Movenpick Asara Resort & Spa Hua Hin will join our existing three, exceptional Movenpick resort properties in Thailand, which include Movenpick Siam Hotel Pattaya, the stylish Movenpick Resort Bangtao Beach Phuket and the popular Movenpick Resort & Spa Karon Beach Phuket."

About Movenpick Hotels & Resorts

Movenpick Hotels & Resorts, an international

upscale hotel management company with over 16"000 staff members, is represented in 24 countries with 83 hotels, resorts and Nile cruisers currently in operation. Around 20 properties are planned or under construction, including Chiang Mai (Thailand), Bali (Indonesia) and Nairobi (Kenia). Focusing on expansion in its core markets of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Movenpick Hotels & Resorts specialises in business and conference hotels, as well as holiday resorts, all reflecting a sense of place and respect for their local communities.

Of Swiss heritage and headquartered in central Switzerland (Baar), Movenpick Hotels & Resorts is

passionate about delivering premium service and culinary enjoyment  all with a personal touch. Committed to sustainable environments, Movenpick Hotels & Resorts has become the most Green Globe certified hotel company in the world. The hotel company is owned by the Movenpick Holding (66.7%) and the Kingdom Group (33.3%). For more information please visit www.movenpick.com
FARGO, N.D. AND MCLEAN, Va.  Visiting North Dakota, travelers can find themselves experiencing countless photo-worthy moments - from playing with the meerkats at Red River Zoo to exploring the badlands and Painted Canyon at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Today, in response to the region's tourism growth, DoubleTree by Hilton, one of Hilton's (NYSE: HLT) 14 market-leading brands, welcomes its newest property in West Fargo, N.D. The stylish hotel - DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo - features 103 spacious suites and pays tribute to the region's beauty and its local pride through art pieces, photographs and decor.

Locally-inspired and sourced elements within DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo include:

Locally photographed images of the upper Great Plains throughout the hotel

Wall art inspired by the iconic Fargo Theater sign within each of the spacious, 500+ square foot suites

Stunning barnwood lobby fireplace, utilizing wood sourced locally from northwest Minnesota

"We're excited to open our doors to visitors of West Fargo - whether they are in town to enjoy a concert at Fargodome or to visit patients at Sanford Medical Center," said Dianna Vaughan, senior vice president and global head, DoubleTree by Hilton. "Once inside, guests will experience the warm welcome that has made the brand famous, from the delicious signature DoubleTree Cookie upon arrival to the smiles of Team Members throughout their stay."

Just eight miles from Hector International Airport and only a short drive to Scheels Arena and Fargodome, DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo is conveniently located in the western Fargo, N.D./Moorhead, M.N. metro area. Complimentary shuttles are available for guests to enjoy to/from the airport.

For those looking for dining options, the Lobby Restaurant and Lounge offers an extensive food and bar menu, four-panel television and outdoor patio seating with a fire pit. Menu favorites include the Parmesan Encrusted Walleye, Gnocchi with garlic herb cream sauce and the DoubleTree Cookie Sundae, made with the brand's signature warm DoubleTree Cookie. Room service is also available during restaurant hours, or guests may pick up snacks, sandwiches, salads, beer and wine in the convenient onsite 24-hour Made Market Pantry.

The hotel is ready to host unforgettable weddings, receptions and other gatherings for up to 474 guests, thanks to nearly 6,000 square feet of meeting and banquet facilities - including the spacious Grand Ballroom, which can be divided into five smaller rooms. Event spaces benefit from the hotel's state-of-the-art sound system and AV equipment, and all guests can utilize the 24-hour business center.

In addition to the signature warm DoubleTree Cookie welcome, the hotel provides a full complement of services and DoubleTree by Hilton brand amenities, including the Wake Up DoubleTree Breakfast, an assortment of gourmet in-room tea and coffee offerings by The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Sweet Dreams by DoubleTree sleep system and a refreshing array of the Crabtree & Evelyn natural skin and body care line.

Other conveniences include a 24-hour fitness center, featuring Life Fitness equipment and an indoor heated pool with hot tub.

"Bringing the DoubleTree by Hilton name to Fargo will fill a need for upscale hotel rooms and fine meeting space in the market," said Christine Boprie, general manager, DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo. "Our staff recently completed comprehensive training and is ready to greet guests with the smiles and award-winning service that guests expect at any DoubleTree by Hilton property around the world."

DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo is part of Hilton Honors, the award-winning guest-loyalty program for Hilton's 14 distinct hotel brands. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels save time and money and gain instant access to the benefits they care about most, such as an exclusive member discount, free Wi-Fi and a flexible payment slider that allows members to choose nearly any combination of Points and money to book a stay. Members can also redeem their Points for free nights, to gain access to unique events through the Hilton Honors auction platform or to make purchases with Amazon Shop With Points.

To celebrate the hotel opening, Hilton Honors members staying a minimum of three nights will earn an additional 1,000 Points per night from now through May 11, 2017, when booking directly with Hilton. This is in addition to the global Hilton Honors promotion of 2,000 Bonus Points per night that is available at all properties through April 30, 2017. Gold and Diamond members will also enjoy free premium Wi-Fi and space-available upgrades to the hotel's exclusive Hilton Honors floor.

DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo is located at 825 E. Beaton Drive, West Fargo, North Dakota.

For more information, or to make a reservation, travelers may visit www.westfargo.doubletreebyhilton.com or call 701-551-0120. The property is owned and managed by Sioux Falls, SD-based KAJ Hospitality.

Media may access additional information on DoubleTree by Hilton West Fargo at news.doubletree.com/westfargo. For more news on DoubleTree by Hilton openings, visit news.doubletree.com.

About Hilton

Hilton (NYSE: HLT) is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 18 world-class brands comprising more than 6,800 properties and more than 1 million rooms, in 122 countries and territories. Dedicated to fulfilling its founding vision to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality, Hilton has welcomed more than 3 billion guests in its more than 100-year history, earned a top spot on the 2021 World's Best Workplaces list and been recognized as a global leader on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for five consecutive years. In 2021, in addition to opening more than one hotel a day, Hilton introduced several industry-leading technology enhancements to improve the guest experience, including Digital Key Share, automated complimentary room upgrades and the ability to book confirmed connecting rooms. Through the award-winning guest loyalty program Hilton Honors, the nearly 128 million members who book directly with Hilton can earn Points for hotel stays and experiences money can't buy. With the free Hilton Honors app, guests can book their stay, select their room, check in, unlock their door with a Digital Key and check out, all from their smartphone. Visit newsroom.hilton.com for more information, and connect with Hilton on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

Colleen Hart

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+1 703 883 6616

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Britain moved closer to leaving the European Union yesterday as lawmakers backed a bill authorizing divorce proceedings and kept alive the governments plan to trigger Brexit talks within weeks.

The House of Commons decisively backed the bill by 498 votes to 114, sending it on for committee scrutiny. The result was a victory for the Conservative government, which had fought in court to avert the vote out of fear Parliament would impede its Brexit plans.

Lawmakers also defeated a wrecking amendment proposed by the Scottish National Party that sought to delay Britains exit talks with the EU because the British government has not disclosed detailed plans for its negotiations.

During two days of debate in the House of Commons, many legislators  Euroskeptic and Europhile alike  said they would back the bill out of respect for voters June 23 decision to leave the EU.

But opposition parties will try to insert more amendments during the next stages of the parliamentary process. They are seeking to prevent an economy-shocking hard Brexit, in which Britain loses full access to the EUs single market and faces restrictions or tariffs on trade.

After committee consideration, the bill is due to return to the House of Commons for a final vote next week before moving on to Parliaments upper chamber, the House of Lords.

The government was forced to introduce the legislation after a Supreme Court ruling last week torpedoed Prime Minister Theresa Mays effort to start the process of leaving the 28-nation bloc without a parliamentary vote.

The government wants to have the bill approved by early March so it can meet a self-imposed March 31 deadline for triggering the EU divorce talks.

Scores of lawmakers spoke during more than 16 hours of debate over two days. Those who backed the winning leave side in the referendum said they would vote proudly to start the exit process.

Others, who voted to remain in the EU, said they would respect the will of the people despite their own reservations.

Former Treasury chief George Osborne, a pro-EU Conservative, said to vote against the majority verdict of the largest democratic exercise in British history would set Parliament against the people and provoke a deep constitutional crisis in our country.

The government says it will publish a White Paper outlining its strategy for withdrawal, but its unclear how many new details it will contain.

The U.K.s largest opposition party, Labour, told its lawmakers to back the bill, but said it plans to try to amend it later to avert the so-called hard Brexit.

However, 47 of the 229 Labour lawmakers defied party leader Jeremy Corbyn and voted against the bill.

I do not believe that the Brexit course we are now set on will make Britain a more prosperous, fairer, more equal, tolerant country, said Owen Smith, one of the Labour rebels. I believe, by contrast, that it will make our politics meaner, and it will make our country poorer. MDT/AP
Germanys foreign minister is heading for Washington to meet newly sworn-in U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and convey what he calls an offer of friendship and trust.

Sigmar Gabriels trip yesterday follows criticism by Chancellor Angela Merkel of President Donald Trumps restrictions on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. It also comes amid concern in Berlin about the new administrations intentions on trade.

Gabriel, who is also Germanys vice chancellor, is also expected to meet U.S. Vice President Mike Pence. He stressed the United States longstanding status as his countrys closest ally outside Europe.
Ivanka Trump is celebrating Chinese New Year at the Chinese Embassy in Washington.

President Donald Trumps daughter walked into a reception for the holiday holding hands with her daughter. She was accompanied by Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai.

They were instantly surrounded by a swarm of other guests who pulled out phones to take their photo.

Ivanka Trump stopped to watch a performance of traditional music by an all-female cast of Chinese musicians in green, blue and yellow gowns. She then watched a troupe of male dancers who juggled hats while standing on each other in pyramid formation.

Ivanka Trump traveled to Delaware with her father earlier to honor the returning remains of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed in a weekend raid in Yemen.
The Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, has had a frosty reception from politicians in South Africa after speaking frankly against the countrys system of apartheid.

In a speech to MPs in the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town, Mr Macmillan spoke of the wind of change blowing through the continent of Africa, as more and more majority black populations in the colonies claim the right to rule themselves.

Whether we like it or not, he said, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

The governments aim, he said, was to create a society which respects the rights of individuals  a society in which individual merit, and individual merit alone, is the criterion for a mans advancement, whether political or economic.

Nationalist Party politicians listened to him in silence, and a number refused to applaud when he had finished.

Dr Verwoerd, the South African Prime Minister and the architect of the apartheid system, thanked Mr Macmillan for his speech, but said he could not agree.

We are the people who brought civilisation to Africa, he said. To do justice in Africa means not only being just to the black man of Africa, but also to the white man of Africa.

Mr Macmillans speech is the first time a senior international figure has given voice to the growing protest against South Africas laws of strict racial segregation.

The speech was widely anticipated throughout the country, as Mr Macmillan had already said he would take the chance to say what he thought about the situation in South Africa.

Even so, the plain-speaking nature of the speech took many in Cape Town by surprise.

Mr Macmillan is in South Africa at the end of a month-long tour of the African continent, in which he has travelled about 17,000 miles.

His visit was always controversial, and many accused him of giving the Nationalist Party credibility by allowing himself to be a guest of the South African government.

His speech today is likely to lay those criticisms to rest.

Courtesy of BBC

In context

Harold Macmillans wind of change speech became a historical landmark. It was the first sign that the British government accepted that the days of Empire were over, and it dramatically speeded up the process of African independence.

It also marked the beginning of South Africas long spell out in the cold. Although Nationalist Party politicians reacted with outrage to the speech, and became even more entrenched, the speech brought international opposition to the apartheid system out into the open.

Only a month later, the Sharpeville Massacre was to add revulsion to the disapproval, and South Africa faced utter isolation, including international trade sanctions.

Even so, the country clung stubbornly to apartheid for another 30 years, until 1990 when President de Klerk began dismantling its laws and ANC leader, and future president, Nelson Mandela was released.

Harold Macmillan resigned from office in 1963 due to ill-health, after four decades in British politics. He died in 1986, at the age of 92.
The Malaysian state of Perak is creating promotional deals with Macau partners in order to boost tourism in the state, reported online Malaysian newspaper The Star.

According to the report, representatives of Perak Tourism, including its acting chief executive officer Zuraida Md Taib, met recently with Macau Media Group representatives in the Malaysian city of Ipoh to discuss the promotion of tourism in both Macau and Ipoh, with the aim of cementing a mutual friendship.

In pursuit of these interests, the Macau Media Group delegation spent four days in Perak during the Chinese New Year, collecting footage and pictures for the promotion of Ipoh in Macau and mainland China.

It was also reported that the Macau groups director Ke Jiangang met with state Tourism, Arts and Culture committee chairman Datuk Nolee Ashilin Mohd Radzi, in the same meeting, to discuss further collaboration between both cities.

The group is on a mission to promote tourism in cities included in Chinas belt-road and Ipoh is their first stop, especially since we have been chosen as Lonely Planets top 10 places to visit in Asia, said Ashilin, adding that the partnership would also attract investment from Macau.

We are also considering to recognize them [Macau] as our Chinese twin city, but this is still a work in progress [which is] dependant from the decision of Mentri Besar and stakeholders, she told reporters after the meeting in the state secretariat on Tuesday.

According to Ashilin, several business groups will come to Ipoh to look into the possibility of building five-star hotels and how to help the state government boost connectivity. She further remarked that if the partnership was smooth-sailing, the state would surely look forward to collaborating with more Chinese cities like Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.

She also addressed the possibility of direct flights between Macau and Ipoh.

Hopefully this will entice their [Malaysia Airlines Bhd] counterpart in Macau to bring in direct flights soon, she said.

Ipoh is the capital city of Perak state and is Malaysias third largest city, with a population of over 710,000 people. The city center is characterized by colonial era Chinese shop houses and several impressive historical buildings from the British Colonial era, such as the railway station. The city also has some modern attractions, such as the Lost World Of Tambun, which is the only theme park in Southeast Asia with natural hot springs coupled with an array of attractions and rides. RM
Lisa Lerer, Washington

Former Vice President Joe Biden is backing Tom Perez to head the Democratic National Committee, calling the former Obama administration labor secretary the best bet to help bring the party back.

Bidens endorsement  a sign of Perezs strong support among former Obama administration officials  drew a sharp response from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, escalating the relatively sleepy party chairman battle into a fight between the liberal wing that supported Sanders insurgent primary bid and backers of Hillary Clinton.

The question is simple: Do we stay with a failed status-quo approach or do we go forward with a fundamental restructuring of the Democratic Party? said Sanders, whos backing Keith Ellison, a Minnesota congressman. I say we go forward and create a grassroots party which speaks for working people.

Bidens support, his first political act since leaving office, is the highest-profile endorsement in the crowded  and still fluid  race to lead the Democratic Party, which has rekindled party divisions exposed in last years presidential primary campaign.

While former President Barack Obama has praised his former labor secretary as tireless, wicked smart, hes so far withheld a formal endorsement.

Biden cast Perez, a Dominican-American civil rights lawyer who grew up in the Rust Belt, as a tireless champion of working Americans, immigrants and the disabled.

He knows how to explain why our partys core beliefs matter to the immigrant family in Arizona and the coal miner in West Virginia. That matters, Biden said in a statement. Ive watched him work. I think I know his heart. Thats why I endorse him as the next chairman of the DNC.

Perez, who was quietly urged by the White House to jump into the race, faces his stiffest competition from Ellison.

Democratic strategists with knowledge of the chairman selection process say Perez has as much as a 66-member lead among the 447 members of the party who will vote on the next chairman at the party convention in late February. In total, 304 members have indicated who theyre backing.

The strategists spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the vote counting.

Perez aides say hes raised more than USD825,000 for his campaign, with 73 percent of the donors contributing $200 or less.

Ellison attributed the support to Bidens sense of loyalty to Perez, who spent much of the past eight years working in the Obama administration.

At the end of the day, I think we can all agree that the DNC chair must be the choice of the rank-and-file Democratic Party members across the nation, he said in a statement.

His aides disputes Perezs lead in the race and claim a hefty advantage, though they would not share their internal count. Ellison staffers say hes raised nearly $1 million for his campaign, with 98 percent of donors contributing $200 or less.

Along with Perez and Ellison, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, South Carolina Democratic Chairman Jaime Harrison, New Hampshire Democratic Chairman Raymond Buckley, Democratic strategist Jehmu Greene and the executive director of the Idaho Democratic Party, Sally Boynton Brown, are in the race.

While the contests mostly focus on the political logistics of rebuilding the struggling party, the candidates are also working to appeal to a party base furious with President Donald Trumps early actions and demanding nothing short of complete resistance from their leaders.

Even though Donald Trump is trying to administer body blows to Lady Liberty, the American people are speaking up loudly and clearly in places all over the country, Perez said in an interview earlier this week. We cant normalize falsehoods.

Ellison, who held a news conference with the leaders of the American Civil Liberties Union and Gold Star father Khizr Khan yesterday said Trumps early actions have made it impossible for Democrats to approach the new administration with anything but a wall of opposition.

Were well past the question of should we just automatically oppose Trump. Its based on a factual predicate and record, Ellison said. Democrats are being told by the people of this country to stand up and fight on their behalf. AP
Japans new proposal to allow a limited number of foreign domestic helpers to work in specified locations across the country could attract those currently working in less favorable conditions in Macau and Hong Kong, representatives from local domestic workers associations told the Times.

Under the new regulations, about 50 Filipino workers who are scheduled to arrive in Japan this month would be paid as much as their Japanese colleagues and must, by law, be provided with their own accommodation.

Yosa Waranti of the Indonesian Migrant Workers Union told the Times that there is a possibility that some local domestic workers might consider the opportunity to relocate to Japan if working conditions are more favorable.

Its a definite possibility that many who have moved [to Macau], especially the young, might [consider moving to Japan ] in pursuit of bigger salaries, she said.

Chairperson Emerlina de Lina of local domestic worker association, Migrante Macau, said that there might be scope for workers in Macau to look at opportunities in Japan in the future, particularly when their current contracts terminate.

The current eight-day rule creates problems for workers, said de Lina, referring to the maximum period in which a blue-card worker can remain in the territory without being employed, as that is not enough time to find a new employer.

When they finish their [current] contracts, they might look at Japan as a good opportunity, she added. Some have gone to China before, once they lost their job and couldnt find a replacement in Macau.

Under the new regulations in Japan, domestic workers must be employed full-time by agencies, rather than individuals, and will be paid as much as their Japanese-born co-workers. Moreover, rather than living in with a family as in Hong Kong, Japanese regulations will require foreign domestic workers to be provided with their own accommodation.

However, there are also restrictions. These workers will be required to speak basic Japanese, must have at least one year of experience in housekeeping services and must undergo training for a minimum of 200 hours. They will also be permitted to only stay in Japan for a maximum of three years.

The three-year limit could lead to many desperate workers overstaying, warned Waranti, adding that there may also be concerns over working conditions and the potential for abuse of domestic helpers.

Currently, the only areas permitted to accept foreign-born domestic workers are Kanagawa prefecture and Japans second-largest city by population, Osaka. There are also plans to roll out the program soon in the Japanese capital, Tokyo. DB
In his first public remarks abroad as U.S. defense secretary, Jim Mattis yesterday criticized North Korea for provocative acts and said he would consult with South Korean and Japanese officials about whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs is adequate.

Mattis spoke to reporters aboard his military plane en route to Osan air base from Washington. In the brief interview, he said he would be discussing the plan to install a new U.S. missile defense system, called Thaad, in South Korea as a means of deterring the Norths ballistic missile threats against South Korean and Japan.

North Korea also has said it is nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

Were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea, we would have no need for Thaad out here, Mattis said.

Alluding to Chinas objections to having Thaad deployed in South Korea, Mattis said, Thaad should be a worry to no nation other than North Korea.

Mattis held an introductory meeting with Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who said he looked forward to working with the Trump administration.

Mattis said he was delivering a message from Trump.

I talked to President Trump and he wanted to make a very clear statement about the priority that we place on this alliance between our two nations, the secretary said. Our new administration inherits a very strong, trusted relationship between our two countries and its our commitment to make it even stronger especially in the face of the provocations that you face from North Korea.

After a series of meetings in Seoul yesterday and today, Mattis was scheduled to fly to Tokyo for further consultations.

In Washington this week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its first policy hearing since Trump took office to discuss North Korea. There were more questions than answers.

Last month, Trump fueled speculation of possible U.S. military action to pre-empt North Koreas weapons development. In response to Kims threat, Trump tweeted, It wont happen! But he didnt elaborate how he could be so sure.

Does that mean we have drawn a red line? Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked at this weeks Senate hearing.

During the campaign, Trump complained that defense treaties disadvantaged the U.S. and that he would not rule out abandoning signatories if they refuse to pay more for their defense. He also suggested that South Korea and Japan, which are already within the range of North Korean missiles, might acquire their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on U.S. deterrence. Robert Burns, Seoul, AP
Some critics of President Donald Trump are so adamant in their opposition that they dont even want a fake version of him to speak.

An online petition was started last week, asking Walt Disney World to keep an animatronic Trump silent in its Hall of Presidents attraction.

The attraction has animatronic figures of all U.S. presidents. Recent incumbent presidents have recorded speeches for their animatronic doubles.

The Change.org petition says Trump ran a campaign filled with hateful speech and he doesnt deserve to have a voice at a place like Disney World in Florida.

A Disney spokeswoman didnt immediately respond to an email and call seeking comment.

The Hall of Presidents temporarily closed earlier this month so the new animatronic president could be installed.

It reopens in June.
The Public Security Police Force (PSP) recorded 231 taxi infractions during the Spring Festival holiday period from Thursday last week until Tuesday, according to a statement released by the PSP.

The infractions includes 164 cases of over-charging and 33 cases of taxi drivers refusing to accept passengers.

During the same period, the police also recorded 41 cases involving unauthorized taxis, 27 of which related to mobile taxi hailing services.

In addition to these taxi service infractions, the PSP also investigated 15 incidents concerning unregulated sales or lighting of fireworks.

During last years Spring Festival, the PSP issued 78 tickets to Macaus taxi drivers, including 35 for over-charging and 26 for refusing to accept passengers.

Compared to this year, last years inspection of illegal taxi services involved significantly fewer infractions, with only seven cars found providing taxi services without a legal license, and two cars involved with app-based taxi hailing services.

In September last year, the Transport Bureau (DSAT) released data regarding the publics complaints about Macaus taxi services.

According to DSAT, from January to August of last year, the department received more than 1,540 complaints related to taxis, 467 of which were associated with overcharging.
Elaine Wynn was handed a setback in her fight with her ex-husband, casino mogul Steve Wynn, to get out of an agreement that prevents her from selling her USD1-billion stake in Wynn Resorts Ltd. without his permission.

A Nevada state judge has barred her lawyers from participating in the lawsuit while considering whether to disqualify the attorneys altogether. Wynn Resorts alleges they failed to disclose to the judge and the companys lawyers that they possessed proprietary information about the casino operator that Elaine Wynn had downloaded on her computer.

The ruling came almost a year after Elaine Wynn, who had failed to keep her seat on the companys board in 2015, brought in a new team of lawyers from Los Angeles firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP to escalate the three-way legal brawl involving her, Steve Wynn and his former business partner, Japanese billionaire Kazuo Okada.

Her Quinn Emanuel team last year alleged that she had been ousted from the board in retaliation for challenging her ex-husbands management style. Among the allegations were claims that Steve Wynn had been forced into a multimillion-dollar settlement with a former employee over allegation of serious misconduct on company property. Elaine Wynn also last year claimed she was entitled to whistle-blower protection for disclosing possible securities law violations to Wynn Resorts external auditors.

At a Jan. 23 hearing, Nevada District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez issued an order that temporarily blocks the Quinn Emanuel lawyers from participating in the case other than to contest their disqualification. She also said the law firm cant use any confidential information from Wynn resorts in any way, shape, or form.

Ive had multiple stories every time Ive dealt with this information, Gonzalez said at the hearing. The fact that the story changes whenever some new information come up gives me a high level of concern, which is why I am trying to preclude Quinn Emanuel from affirmatively reaching out to anyone.

Representatives of Elaine Wynn and Quinn Emanuel didnt immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.

The fight started when Wynn Resorts forcibly redeemed Okadas 20 percent stake, saying he bribed gaming officials in the Philippines where he was building a casino. Elaine Wynn filed a separate claim in Wynns lawsuit against Okada to escape a shareholders agreement that was part of the couples divorce and that prevents her from selling her shares without her ex-husbands permission.

The five-year-old lawsuit has been stuck in court over numerous disputes related to the evidence and testimony each side can demand from the other, with numerous trips to the Nevada Supreme Court to try to reverse Gonzalezs rulings. Elaine Wynns stepped-up attack on her ex-husband has further stalled the case, which had been scheduled to go to trial this month.

For most of the history of this case, Ms. Wynns cross-claim against Mr. Wynn has played a minor role in these proceedings, Okadas lawyers said in a Jan. 11 filing with the Nevada Supreme Court. Recently, however, this collateral dispute between Ms. Wynn and her former husband has metastasized into a disruptive grudge match that threatens the district courts efforts to efficiently manage and dispose of this case. Edvard Pettersson, Bloomberg
Although the territorys Chinese New Year arrivals were up for this Golden Week, several tourists were discontented with their experience, citing overcrowding in tourist spots and some stores.

Yesterday, the Times visited several local stores and learnt that despite the increase in sales, numerous tourists have complained about store closures and overcrowding.

I came here for one restaurant and I found out that the restaurant is closed, said Chen Qiao Lin, a tourist from Zhuhai.

There are too many people, its too crowded. Most of the things that I want to buy are out of stock.

Xandy Ng, who only arrived in Macau yesterday from Hong Kong, echoed the same sentiments and said that the city is congested, which makes it difficult for tourists to take some photos.

When asked about their itinerary for their three-day stay in Macau, Ng said, We plan to eat a lot and maybe well go to casinos.

Although some tourists are pleased with their visit to the region, especially with the local food, some do not intend to visit again during the next Chinese New Year.

A German tourist, who currently lives in China and adores Macau cuisine, said that he currently has no plans to return.

I really like it here. If there were less people, it would be much nicer. We had authentic Macau food, said the tourist. We will see [if well come back], I dont know.

Meanwhile, several foreign tourists in the region opted for fine dining in the region to avoid the crowd in downtown.

Portuguese tourists Manuela and Cristina Silva, who are in Macau for a day, said that they spent the first few days of Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

The mother and daughter pair opted to lunch at a local hotel, saying, It was nice, it was much calmer at the Mandarin Oriental than out here.

Some visitors from London were also quite saddened that a restaurant they planned to go to was closed.

We were just looking for a seafood restaurant. We hope were going to find another one, well see, said Salim Elmazor.

The weather is great, its nice. We like it [though] its a bit crowded. It took us a long time to board the ferry. Maybe [well] avoid CNY in the future just because its too crowded, said another tourist, Daniela Militaru.

Tourist Elizabeth Yeung, who lives in Guangzhou, commended the regions ambiance, noting that it has a more traditional atmosphere than mainland.

Its nice, it has a more traditional feeling than [in] mainland since the buildings and lanterns are more traditional, said Yeung, who was only in the city for a day.

Weve had the pork chop bun. We still need to get our egg tarts, she added.

During the Chinese New Year, the immigration authorities recorded 457,296 entrances, which represents a 4.8 percent increase year on year. Julie Zhu, Lynzy Valles
Ride-hailing app Uber announced in a statement yesterday the suspension of services in Taiwan, starting from February 10, citing fines that amount to TWD1.1 billion (MOP283 million) within just one month after a new law banning unlicensed taxi services was introduced.

The island-state imposes the highest fines on unlicensed taxis in the world, according to Uber. The TWD1.1 billion is the recorded total of fines imposed only in the period after the legislation was introduced on January 6.

The company threatened to close down its operations in Macau last year, also on the basis of fines, in this case exceeding MOP10 million. However the decision was reversed just a few weeks later, due to an unprecedented amount of support which led the organization to instead continue lobbying for legislation in the MSAR.

In Taiwan, Uber has also said that the suspension has been enacted with the hope of restarting dialogue with the government to innovate the transport technology in the country, according to the Straits Times.

They also said that Taipeis decision last month to ban unlicensed taxi services represented a move away from embracing innovation and 21st century trends in transportation.

However, the organization behind the ride-hailing app has fared no better in its dialogue with the MSAR government.

The Macau divisions general manager Trasy Lou Walsh informed the press last month that there has been no concrete update in the companys attempt to have its service legalized.

Uber launched its service in Taiwan in 2013. Since then, some one million customers have downloaded the Uber app, served by 10,000 active drivers who have racked up around 15 million trips, the company claimed in the statement.

Although the service was launched in Macau only in late 2015, Uber Macau claims to have as many as 3,000 drivers in the city, 30 percent of the number in Taiwan even though the population of the MSAR is over 35 times smaller. DB
Casino revenue growth in Macau slowed down during January, falling short of analysts estimates, as the worlds largest gaming hub prepares for what may be another bumpy ride in its recovery from a two-year slump.

Every year during the Chinese New Year Festival, Macau welcomes crowds mainly from the tourism market of Mainland China. The road that leads to the Ruins of St. Paul was packed with visitors, as well as the shops alongside the slope up to one of the iconic tourism spots in Macau.

The Times interviewed a few shop owners who have their businesses in the vicinity of the Senado Square and the Ruins of St. Paul, and received a great variety of reactions regarding sales during the Chinese holiday.

Veng Io K, a book vendor in her 60s with a business located right next to the Igreja de Sao Domingos, spoke happily of her sales during the holidays. The business was really good, she said, adding that it was a lot better than in previous years.

Veng said that there were more people visiting her shop, as well passing by her premises. In the previous years, there were not this many people, she recalled. Her shop sells children toys and Chinese books, including Fengshui books and books about Chinas politics. Some of these cannot be found in Mainland China. All products were being sold, whether it was the Fengshui books, political books, or toys, said Veng, adding that business went up 30 percent.

The owner of another shop, which sells food including dried seafood and is also situated at the center of the aforementioned tourism area, said that business yesterday was similar to that of the previous Chinese New Year because, for the first time, it opened during the holiday.

A traditional shop nearby, which sells simple clothing items, saw a decrease in sales. The owner Lok Win Ma, who is about 50 years old, had his shop open during the whole holiday period, but his business decreased 10 percent year-on-year. However, Li explained that the reasons for the drop are not directly associated with the holiday itself but with other factors. Nowadays, people like to do shopping online, he said, further indicating that even when compared to non-holiday periods throughout the year, business during the Chinese New Year was still slower.

The restaurant Curry Veng, , where people can only buy take-away food, recorded a 30 percent growth in its revenue. Four restaurants owned by the same person, under the same brand name, can be found in the vicinity of Senado Square. The travel agency Chinoy Express Travel and Tours, which does business mainly with Filipinos, told the Times that, compared to regular days, there were more Filipinos applying for a Chinese visa during the Chinese New Year.

Owners at the Filipino eatery Sarimanok, located at Rua da Alfandega, said that their business during the holiday this year was extremely low when compared to last years, adding that the restaurant depends primarily on its Filipino market in town.

Vendor Chao Chi Veng, who sells chestnuts right next to Senado Square, said that his business was also worse compared to last year because it rained during the first three days of the Chinese New Year.

Chan Wai Chong, salesman at Loja Das Conservas, said that some customers visited the shops looking for specific products, which unfortunately were already sold out. Chan noted that the shop only opened yesterday, and that Chinese New Year business was similar to that of non-holiday days. JZ/LV

Fireworks vendors say business cooled down

Several fireworks sellers at the two legal fireworks trade spots in the city have reported a decrease in business revenues during the Chinese New Year, as assessed from the beginning of the Chinese New Year until midnight yesterday. The vendors have complained that few visitors have shown up. The weak sales might have possibly be due to rainy weather during the first days of the Chinese New Year. Several vendors reported that business this year did not meet their expectations, with the number of visitors being significantly less than the previous year. However, the vendors claim to be willing to continue operating in the fireworks market next year, even if this year was a disappointment.
President Donald Trump said yesterday his administration has put Iran on notice, echoing comments from his top national security adviser that the U.S. will act against Iran unless it stops testing ballistic missiles and supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Trump and his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, didnt elaborate on what retaliatory actions the U.S. could pursue.

Trump tweeted, Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: USD150 billion.

He also tweeted, Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!

Earlier, Flynn forcefully denounced Irans behavior in his first public remarks since Trump took office. He accused Iran of threatening U.S. allies and spreading instability throughout the Middle East while faulting the Obama administration for doing too little to stop the Islamic Republic.

As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice, Flynn said from the White House podium.

On notice for what, Flynn didnt say. Senior Trump administration officials said they were actively considering a range of options including economic measures and increased support for Irans regional adversaries. The officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, declined repeatedly to say whether military action is being considered.

The warning was an early manifestation of Trumps promise of a tougher American approach to Iran. Yet administration officials emphasized that their allegations were unrelated to Irans obligations under the Iran nuclear deal that President Barack Obama and world leaders negotiated. Though Flynn noted Trump has criticized that deal, officials declined to say whether Trump planned to follow through on his campaign pledge to renegotiate it.

The Obama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehrans malign actions  including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms, Flynn said.

The White House also faulted Iran for backing Houthi rebels in Yemen who on Tuesday claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemens internationally recognized government. The media arm of the Shiite rebels said the vessel was believed to belong to the Saudi Arabian navy.

Administration officials said Iran was providing key support by arming, training and financing the rebels, with a goal of leveraging its relationship with the Houthis to build a long-term presence in Yemen.

The White House said the goal in putting Iran on notice was to signal to Tehran that it needed to rethink its behavior. Flynn said Iran specifically violated the U.N.s ban on activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.

Irans Defense Minister Gen. Hossein Dehghan confirmed that Iran conducted a missile test, but did not say when the test was carried out or specify the type of missile. He insisted it wasnt a violation of U.N. resolutions.

Vivian Salama & Josh Lederman, Washington, AP
Mexico announced a 4.4 billion peso (USD212 million) deal to assemble Chinese cars in the central state of Hidalgo yesterday, amid calls for the country to diversify economic ties as tensions have risen with the U.S., its largest trade partner.

Hidalgo Gov. Omar Fayad announced the deal between Mexicos Giant Motors Latinoamerica and Chinese state-owned automaker JAC Motors at a news conference in the capital.

The plant in Ciudad Sahagun, about 40 miles northeast of metropolitan Mexico City, will produce two SUV models and the first cars are expected to roll off assembly lines in the second half of this year.

Fayad said the plant will begin with a capacity of 11,000 vehicles annually, with output ultimately rising to 40,000. The initial phase of the project is expected to create 1,000 direct and 4,500 indirect jobs.

The vehicles are initially aimed at the Mexican market, but there are hopes of distributing elsewhere in Latin America in the future.

This automobile will proudly carry a label that will say Made in Mexico, Fayad said, and that should be a cause for great pride for the people of Hidalgo.

The United States now buys about 80 percent of Mexicos exports, but recent weeks have seen tensions between the two nations amid President Donald Trumps promises to build a wall along their border and force a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

The U.S. administration also floated the possibility of a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports to force Mexico to pay for the wall, though officials later walked that back as simply one of multiple options.

Fayad called the deal announced a step down a road toward the diversification of exports alternative to the United States.

He said Mexico would do well to try to boost trade with Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, while also keeping its arms open to its northern neighbor.

We are expressly working to present a series of options that do not limit us to one single path. [] We see [this moment] as a new niche of opportunity, Fayad said. AP
A White House official is confirming that President Donald Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto that he might send U.S. troops to deal with bad hombres down there if the Mexican military doesnt.

The official says the remark was meant to be lighthearted and was a reference to cooperation between the countries in fighting drug cartels.

The Associated Press first reported yesterday that Trump made the comment in an hour-long conversation with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Jan. 27.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details publicly, said those comments, while lighthearted, were part of a discussion about how the United States and Mexico could work collaboratively to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements, and make the border more secure.

The official described the conversation as pleasant and constructive.

On another front of his anti-migrant crusade, an Iranian scientist heading to Boston to take a job at a Harvard Medical School lab has sued President Donald Trump after she was denied entry into the U.S.

Samira Asgari says in her lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that she was denied entry to the U.S. even though she had a valid visa and federal judges had issued a restraining order against the presidents ban on visitors from seven Muslim-majority nations, including Iran.

Asgari had most recently been living in Switzerland.

Last weekend, Asgari flew from Switzerland to Germany, but was blocked by U.S. and airline officials as she tried to board a plane to Boston.

In addition to Trump, the suit names Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection officials as defendants. MDT/AP
US-MALTA A decade-old program to resettle a fixed quota of refugees arriving in the small, southern EU nation of Malta to the United States is another casualty of Trumps executive order on immigration. U.S. Ambassador G. Kathleen Hill told Maltese media this week that the refugee resettlement program has been suspended for 120 days under the order.

KOREA In his first public remarks abroad as U.S. defense secretary, Jim Mattis criticizes North Korea for provocative acts and says he will consult with South Korean and Japanese officials about whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs is adequate.

JAPAN-US Angling to pre-empt complaints over Japans perennial trade surplus with the U.S., Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly plans to propose a sweeping economic cooperation initiative meant to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. when he meets with President Donald Trump later this month.

THAILAND Almost three tons of scales from endangered African pangolins, hidden in sacks, are seized at Bangkoks main airport. A wildlife anti-trafficking group says the haul is worth more than USD1 million on the illegal market and represents as many as 6,000 dead animals.

THAILAND Media organizations are protesting a bill that would require journalists to be licensed and would establish a council that can penalize news outlets for violating professional standards.

INDIA At least eight policemen were killed in a land mine blast suspected to have been carried out by Maoist rebels in their stronghold in eastern India, police said. Another five policemen were injured when their vehicle was blown up in Koraput region, nearly 550 km south of Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Orissa state.

ISRAELs prime minister has vowed to build a new West Bank settlement as soon as possible following the court-ordered demolition of an illegally built settler outpost. Benjamin Netanyahu spoke as Israeli forces were completing the evacuation of the Amona outpost yesterday. His government tried to block the evacuation but was overruled by the Supreme Court.

UKRAINE Two Ukrainian troops have been killed in the countrys industrial east as both government forces and rebels reported shelling on their positions overnight. Ten other troops were wounded as fighting in Ukraines industrial heartland entered its fifth day, the governments press office for the military operation in the east said.
Nine people were buried in the collapse of a group of homes in eastern China yesterday morning, a Chinese rescue official and state media reported.

Four homes tumbled in the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province, just south of the commercial hub of Shanghai, the Xinhua News Agency said.

Xinhua said crews were working carefully because the collapsed homes, each between four and five stories tall, were attached to buildings that had remained standing. Huang Guoku, a traffic control official in Wenzhous Baizhuangji township, confirmed the Xinhua report and said as many as 300 rescuers were on the scene.

No immediate cause was given for the collapse and Xinhua said there had been no reports of extreme weather in the area over recent days.

In October, 22 people were killed in Wenzhou when a cluster of decrepit homes collapsed, apparently because of poor construction and the building of additional levels on unstable foundations.

Meanwhile, a total of 13,796 fires occurred during Chinas week-long Spring Festival holiday, killing 39 people and forcing the evacuation of 10,523 others, the Ministry of Public Security said as quoted by Xinhua.

The fires resulted in direct economic losses of 44.63 million yuan (about USD6.49 million), marking a 54.1 percent drop compared with the same period last year, the ministry said in a statement.

The number of fires and fire casualties decreased by 11.8 percent and 26.4 percent respectively year-on-year, it said. No fire claimed more than five lives during the holiday.

According to Xinhua, fires are usually caused by setting off fireworks and firecrackers during the holiday as the Chinese believed the noise will drive away bad spirits and bring good luck.

However, sales of fireworks have dropped in recent years in cities amid pollution concerns and government restrictions. Nationwide, 444 cities have banned fireworks and 764 other cities imposed restrictions on setting off fireworks, according to the ministry. MDT/Agencies
Idaho U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador has introduced into Congress a bill to limit members of both the House and Senate to 12 years in each chamber.

This works out to two Senate terms or six in the House.

Terms that started before the date of the amendment's adoption would not be counted, meaning members who are already there would, after its passage, have to comply with the new limit but their time in Congress before then wouldn't count. If it were to be applied retroactively, both U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson and U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho would be term-limited out.

You can read the text of the proposed amendment here. Labrador introduced it on Tuesday. It has 12 co-sponsors, all Republicans. In a statement, Labrador said term limits would

"reinvigorate Congress by attracting candidates ready to serve and prepared to go home to live with the consequences of their actions.

The American people spoke clearly in November, he said. They demand a government that is their servant, not their master. To restore constitutional balance, we must bring the career politicians home and replace them with patriots ready to make the hard choices necessary for prudent governance."

Term limits are a perennially popular idea with voters  some polls over the past few years have shown about three-quarters of people back the idea  but they have never gotten far with the lawmakers who would be limiting their own careers by approving them. When the Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 part of the "Contract With America" many of them ran on was 12-year term limits, but the idea never went anywhere once they were in power. Some states tried to term-limit their members of Congress at the same time, but those efforts were voided in court.

At the state level, Idaho voters approved term limits for state lawmakers in 1994 and in a few election thereafter, but the state Legislature voted to repeal them in 2002 over then-Gov. Dirk Kempthorne's veto.

President Donald Trump has also called for a term limits constitutional amendment, something Labrador noted in his statement.

We must seize the moment and put a term limits amendment before the states for ratification," Labrador said.
TWIN FALLS  The first suspect in a burglary ring that targeted dozens of Magic Valley businesses last summer was sentenced to 10 years in prison this week, while his wife has also pleaded guilty and faces up to 20 years in prison.

James Howard Arthurs, 35, of Twin Falls pleaded guilty to three felony counts of burglary and a felony count of grand theft after originally facing 11 felony charges.

On Tuesday, District Judge Richard Bevan sentenced Arthurs to 10 years in prison for each of the four counts, with the terms to run concurrently. Arthurs will not be eligible for parole. Hell be released from prison in 2026.

Arthurs wife, 38-year-old Brezzy Ray Lemon, has also pleaded guilty to four felony charges: two counts of aiding and abetting burglary, one count of aiding and abetting grand theft and one count of possession of a controlled substance.

Prosecutors will recommend Lemon be sentenced to 20 years in prison with eligibility for parole after 10 years.

The couple, along with Lemons brother and his girlfriend, were charged with a string of burglaries across the Magic Valley in August and September of last year. The group was accused of stealing two ATMs and breaking into about a dozen businesses in Twin Falls County. Members of the group are also suspected of burglaries in Blaine County and other Magic Valley counties.

The other suspected members of the burglary ring  Spencer Willson Wells and Alishia Elaine Bullock, both 22  are set for hearings in the case Monday. Bullocks attorney previously said a plea deal was in the works, though Bullock has not officially pleaded guilty.

Lemon is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 21.
TWIN FALLS  A Twin Falls inmate who escaped from his cell in December and held another inmate hostage has pleaded guilty to several felonies he committed at the jail and to the robbery for which he was initially arrested.

Cody William James Meade, 26, pleaded guilty Monday to felony counts of robbery, propelling bodily fluids at officers, injury to jail and riot. Meade had faced 18 felony charges stemming from the robbery and at least eight violent incidents inside the jail between Nov. 16 and Dec. 20.

The worst of those incidents happened Dec. 5 when Meade allegedly broke out the window of his cell, climbed through it and used a broken mirror frame to take inmate Zane Murri hostage. Deputies were able to step in and rescue Murri, who was initially a conspirator in the plot, when Meade tried to adjust the frame.

In a guilty plea advisory, Meade wrote he was pleading cause I am guilty.

I spit at the guards and caused injury to the jail, Meade wrote. I also caused a riot that caused damage.

Meade also admitted fault in the May 26 robbery of an Oasis Stop N Go.

I take full responsibility of the robbery charge that is against me, he wrote. I held up the store with a handgun.

Meade was set for a Friday preliminary hearing on the 16 felony charges stemming from the jail incidents. Instead, his attorney, Brad Calbo, worked out a deal with prosecutors.

Attorneys from both sides will be able to argue for any sentence they deem appropriate.

In a letter to prosecutors, Calbo said he typically doesnt agree to open recommendations at sentencing.

It is in recognition of the gravity of Mr. Meades conduct while in custody that I do so in this case, Calbo wrote.

Prosecutors agreed to Calbos counteroffer in part to avoid a slew of trial. Calbo wrote that to preserve Mr. Meades rights to due process and fundamental fairness would likely require nine trials on each separate incident from the jail.

Meade is scheduled to be sentenced March 14. He faces up to life in prison for the robbery.
BOISE  Rep. Clark Kauffman has introduced another version of his bill to legalize small-dog racing at county fairs.

Kauffman, R-Filer, introduced another version of the bill last week. The new version, he said, limits the track length so only small dogs can race and the bill cant be used as a backdoor way to re-legalize greyhound racing, which has been banned in Idaho since 1996 and which Kauffman says he isnt trying to bring back.

This exclusion is just for exhibition-style live dog races where the maximum track length doesnt exceed 150 feet, he said.

Kauffman said he was asked to bring the bill by the manager of the Twin Falls County Fair, who said he cant book dog races because the ban on greyhound racing, which makes dog-racing a felony, covers those kind of exhibition-style races.

The bill only applies to county fairs and doesnt allow betting.

The House State Affairs Committee voted unanimously to print the bill, clearing the way for a full hearing.
Brooks Kraft/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway and Hillary Clintons daughter, Chelsea, got into a Twitter tiff Friday afternoon.

Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack ... or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks, Chelsea Clinton tweeted this morning, mocking Conways Thursday night mention of a Bowling Green massacre during an interview on MSNBC with Chris Matthews.

Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack ...or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks.  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 3, 2017

Conway had told Matthews, I bet it's brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."



But there was never any Bowling Green massacre, so Conway tweeted a correction this morning, linking to a story about two al-Qaeda-Iraq terrorists who were discovered in 2009 living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" as reported here: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-kentucky-us-dozens-terrorists-country-refugees/story?id=20931131 

Clintons advice to please don't make up attacks prompted Conway to take a swipe at her mom, Hillary, Trumps former political opponent.

Bosnia lie a great reminder. And 2 @ChelseaClinton & others, you can't "invent" quality candidates either. I misspoke; you lost the election.

Bosnia lie a Great reminder. And 2 @ChelseaClinton & others, you can't "invent" quality candidates either. I misspoke; you lost the election https://t.co/7TwnX2b5yA  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 3, 2017

Conway was referring to the tale Hillary Clinton told about a visit to Bosnia in 1996.



I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base, Clinton said during a speech at George Washington University in 2008.



But Clinton's account was fabricated, according to witnesses and reporters who followed the then-first ladys travels in Bosnia. She later retracted the story, telling reporters, "No, I went to 80 countries, you know. I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things -- millions of words a day -- so, if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."



Chelsea Clinton typically refrains from making waves on Twitter but her politically charged Tweets Friday suggest she is taking a more aggressive role online. She also tweeted criticism of the Trump administrations immigration executive order on Friday, and retweeted a New York Times article on the perceived rift between the Trump administration and Australia.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Donald Anderson

TWIN FALLS  Donald Anderson of Twin Falls, funeral services at 10 a.m. Friday, February 3 at Parkes Magic Valley Funeral Home, 2551 Kimberly Road, A visitation will be held from 5 until 7 p.m. Thursday, February 2 at the funeral home.

Erma Wall

JEROME  Erma Wall of Jerome, celebration of life at 11 a.m. Friday, February 3 at Life Church, 425 E Nez Perce, Jerome, with viewing one hour prior to the service.

Michael Tremblay

TWIN FALLS  Michael Tremblay of Twin Falls, memorial service at 1 p.m. Friday, February 3, at the First Church of the Nazarene. Arrangements are under the direction of Rosenau Funeral Home.

Sherry A. Gotchy

TWIN FALLS  Sherry A. Gotchy of Twin Falls, celebration of life at 2 p.m. Friday, February 3, 2017 at Serenity Funeral Chapel Life Celebration Center & Cremation Services of Idaho, 502 2nd Ave. North, Twin Falls. Parking is available at Magic Valley High School.

JT Bennett

RUPERT  JT Bennett of Rupert, funeral at 11 a.m. Friday, February 3, 2017 at the Rupert West LDS Stake Center, 26 S. 100 W., of Rupert. Visitation is from 10 until 10:45 a.m. preceding the service at the church. Arrangements are under the direction of Rasmussen Funeral Home of Burley.

LaVonne Kibbee

TWIN FALLS  LaVonne Kibbee of Twin Falls, celebration of life at 1 p.m. Friday, February 3 at Parkes Magic Valley Funeral Home, 2551 Kimberly Road, Twin Falls.

Shirley Sobotka

TWIN FALLS  Shirley Sobotka of Twin Falls, celebration of life at 2 p.m. Friday, February 3, at Reynolds Funeral Chapel, 2466 Addison Ave. East, Twin Falls. A viewing will take place on Friday from 1 p.m. until the time of the service.

Alfred Ilk

IDAHO FALLS  Alfred Ilk, funeral services at 2 p.m. Saturday, February 4 at Reynolds Funeral Chapel, 2466 Addison Ave. East, Twin Falls. A visitation will take place from 1:15 p.m. until the time of the service.

Richard Morris

RUPERT  Richard Morris, celebration of life at 2 p.m.Saturday, February 4 at Morrison Funeral Home, 188 S Hwy 24, Rupert.

Viva Jones

TWIN FALLS  Viva Jones, funeral at 11 a.m. Saturday, February 4, at Twin Falls LDS 9th Ward Church, 2680 Elizabeth Blvd., Twin Falls; viewing Friday from 6-8 pm at White Mortuary, Chapel by the Park, and one hour prior to the service from 10 to 10:45 am at the church.

Stephen Buck

BURLEY  Stephen Buck of Burley, funeral service at 11 a.m.Saturday, February 4, at the Burley LDS 2nd and 4th Ward, 515 E 16th. A visitation will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Friday, February 3 at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E 16th St and from 10 until 10:45 a.m. Saturday preceding the service at the church.

Luella Schmidt

BUHL  Luella Schmidt of Buhl, Funeral Mass at 11 a.m. Saturday, February 4 at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Buhl. Visitation will be at 10 a.m. followed by the Rosary at 10:30 a.m.

Dr. Tim Lavens

CALGARY, Alb.  Dr. Tim Lavens formerly of Twin Falls, celebration of life at 10 a.m. Saturday, February 4 at Eden Brook Funeral Home, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Margaret Wells

OAKLEY  Margaret Wells of Oakley, funeral at 1 p.m. Saturday, February 4, 2017, at the Oakley Stake Center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 355 N. Center Ave. A visitation will be held from 6 until 8 p.m. Friday, February 3, 2017, at Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E. 16th St., Burley, and from 12 Noon until 12:45 p.m. Saturday, at the church in Oakley.

Otto Florence Jr.

TWIN FALLS  Otto Florence Jr. of Twin Falls, Funeral Mass at 10:30 a.m. Monday, February 6, at St Edward the Confessor Catholic Church, 161 6th Ave East, Twin Falls. Arrangements are under the direction of Reynolds Funeral Chapel.

Lawrence Turner

DECLO  Lawrence Turner of Declo, funeral at 1 p.m. Monday, February 6, at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 East 16th Street in Burley, Idaho,. Visitation will occur prior to the funeral services from 12 noon until 12:45 p.m.

Julio Benavides

TWIN FALLS  Julio Benavides of Twin Falls, Celebration of Life at 1 p.m. Monday, February 6, 2017 at White Mortuary, Chapel by the Park.

Donna Andrew

PAUL  Donna Andrew of Paul, funeral at 11 a.m. Tuesday, February 7, at the Rasmussen Funeral Home, 1350 E 16th St. in Burley. A visitation will be held one hour prior to the service.

Lee Roy Crumbliss

TWIN FALLS  Lee Roy Crumbliss of Twin Falls, funeral service at 1 p.m. Tuesday, February 7, at Parkes Magic Valley Funeral Home, 2551 Kimberly Road, Twin Falls. A viewing will be held from 5 until 7 p.m. Monday, February 6 at the funeral home.
The following editorial appears on Bloomberg View:

On his first official foreign trip, Secretary of Defense James Mattis is going to the continent that presents the White House with one of its most immediate and one of its most long-term challenges. North Korea is racing to develop a working nuclear-tipped ICBM, while China is growing as a regional hegemon and global rival.

Both issues will require close cooperation with the U.S.s longstanding allies in Japan and South Korea, where Mattis will be visiting. President Donald Trumps main response, however, has been to vaguely threaten China and promise to invest additional billions to expand the U.S. military. Neither is an adequate response.

No matter how much Trump tweets, China isnt going to press sanctions that might fatally undermine the regime in Pyongyang and result in a unified, U.S.-allied Korea on its doorstep. Nor are Chinese leaders going to cave in to trade threats or negotiate over Taiwan. Meanwhile, itll take years to build all the new submarines and battleships Trump is promising. And in any case, while U.S. allies favor a stout American presence in the region, they have no appetite for military action.

The most effective way to strengthen the U.S. position in Asia is by doing exactly what Mattis is doing: cultivating and reassuring allies. Its encouraging that he reportedly doesnt plan to question the contributions that South Korea and Japan make to support U.S. troops in their countries, as Trump has done repeatedly. Collaboration among all three allies is key: Any effort to contain North Korea will be much more effective if they can coordinate their missile-defense networks and present a unified front to Pyongyang.

Mattiss trip should be only the first of many. It will be critical for diplomats, Cabinet members and Trump himself to reassure Asian allies and rally them to a coherent policy. The U.S. will need to work harder to encourage greater military cooperation in the region. And Trump can (somewhat) mitigate his ill-considered decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership by pressing bilateral trade deals, in particular with Japan.

Trump claims to have the same priorities abroad as he does at home: to make the U.S. stronger and safer. But he wont succeed  especially not in Asia  if America First means, as it once did, America alone.
The high-speed cycle of the first 24 hours after President Donald Trump's executive order banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries is giving way to the long, hard slog of legal reality. A State Department memo made public in court proceedings Wednesday reveals that the Trump administration revoked all visas from those countries on Friday, Jan. 27, the day of the order. That revocation, the essence of the immigration ban, remains in place. As a result, the federal judicial orders against the ban are ineffectual  because no one from the seven countries has been allowed to board a plane to the U.S. since the day the memo was issued.

The lesson for the next four years is brutally clear. Excited resistance was inspiring, and the symbolic image of the courts working after hours to freeze the immigration order will persist. But the actual fight over the effects of Trump's order, like the rest of his policies, is just getting started. And without slow, patient effort to work within the legal system, the fight cannot be won.

To understand what's new about the revealed State Department memo, you have to go back to the lawsuits brought in the hours after the Trump order was announced. The plaintiffs were people who were being held at airports New York's Kennedy and Boston's Logan. They had boarded flights and taken off before the executive order was issued on Friday afternoon, but arrived after the order went into effect.

The court in New York ordered the government not to "remove" any of those people, legalese for sending them back to where they had come from. That didn't apply to people who hadn't yet boarded flights.

The Boston court order went further. In addition to saying that the government couldn't detain or deport people who had arrived in the U.S. with valid visas, it also directed Customs and Border Protection to "notify airlines that have flights arriving at Logan Airport of  the fact that individuals on these flights will not be detained or returned based solely on the Executive Order."

That language was intended to let people with valid visas get on their flights to Logan. In essence, it made Logan a safe port of entry for people from the seven countries who were in possession of valid visas. It was aimed to repudiate the effects of Trump's order for as long as the order lasted  seven days to start. Smart immigration lawyers started telling clients stranded outside the U.S. to try to fly to Boston.

But no one arrived. And the State Department memo, which was not known to the plaintiffs' lawyers or the judges when the court order was issued, explains why. Airlines couldn't board passengers because their visas had been rendered invalid by the State Department on Friday.

As written, the memo is straightforward enough. Signed by a deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Consular Affairs, it cites the executive order and "provisionally" revokes all visas from the seven countries except those for diplomats. It also allows for subsequent case-by-case exceptions, as does the executive order.

A State Department representative clarified to Boston's WBUR that the revocation didn't affect people already in the U.S. Those people are anyway subject to the jurisdiction of customs, not the State Department.

On its face, the State memo does no more than give immediate effect to Trump's executive order. The twist is that the State Department didn't tell the public about it.

The result is that the Boston court order was in effect nullified even before it was issued. It was lawful to enter the U.S. in Boston if you had a valid visa, but you couldn't have a valid visa because the memo revoked the visas.

Was the State Department order also unlawful? That's what lawyers will now try to argue to the Boston district court. They would like the court to tell the State Department to make the visas valid again. A judge in Los Angeles has issued an order that seems to do just that, banning the cancellation of valid visas.

But the argument isn't automatic in Boston. The relevant State Department officials aren't there  so it's not totally clear that the court has jurisdiction over them.

Second, the lawyers need a plaintiff who is harmed by the memo. That should include someone who is in Boston on a student visa and can't leave lest the visa be revoked. But I can imagine the government saying that any harm done to that person is speculative because he or she might be allowed back in under a special exception allowed by the memo and the executive order. A Boston organization that has invited speakers whose visas have been revoked might possibly also be injured by the memo, although the connection is more tenuous.

And most important, the lawyers will have to convince the court that the order itself is unlawful as applied to their plaintiff. That means getting the judge to say the order is in effect a Muslim ban or a ban based on national origin and violates statutes and/or the Constitution.

These arguments can and must be made. But unlike the emergency court arguments of last weekend, they'll be made outside the headlines, and after the protests are over.

The same will be true of the struggle against Trump's policies more broadly. It's going to be a long, slow war. And it must be fought, or Trump's policies, like the immigration ban still in place, will prevail.
On a recent trip to Massachusetts, I saw this tag on car plates everywhere I went, and it made me want to learn more about the states history. Although I had an idea of what transpired in Americas early days, having taken up American History in high school, I was curious about what took place in Massachusetts that earned it this tag.

I joined a tour that brought me back to how it all started. I was right there in Plymouth Rock and entered The Mayflower, an actual-sized replica of the original ship, which was a merchant ship that sailed from Plymouth, England across the Atlantic to The New World, which we now know as the USA. The Mayflower voyage has become a symbol of early European migration across the seas, as it carried the Pilgrims, who were separatists, fleeing religious persecution from the Church of England and searching for a place to worship and establish their own Anglican and Puritan colonies.

The Mayflower started its journey in the second half of 1620, with approximately 130 passengers and crew, with enough supplies to last them the long journey across the Atlantic. They even had ammunition, which could equip a small army, to protect themselves against the possibility of a pirate attack at any point of their trip.

The actual-sized Mayflower replica, open to tourists at Plymouth Rock Harbor in Massachusetts. (Inset) What is left of the original Plymouth Rock is now protected and on display near the Mayflower

However, the harsh weather conditions of the Atlantic, especially during the winter, caused many delays, using up their supplies. Food eventually had to be rationed, to make it last the full length of the voyage. What made matters worse was the epidemic of diseases that prevailed among the passengers and crew. Scurvy, tuberculosis, dysentery and others caused the death of many.

Living conditions on the ship were also miserable. Passengers were cramped inside a fifty-feet-by-twenty-five-feet space on the gun deck, with a ceiling only five feet high, meaning, almost everybody had to bend down while inside their living quarters. It was also dangerous because the passengers were sleeping right next to the cannons and barrels of gunpowder. The water they had on board was contaminated, causing even more illnesses, so most passengers had to drink alcohol instead.

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When they finally landed in The New World, only half of the original passengers and crew had survived. They then established a colony where the ship docked, and called it Plymouth Rock, in deference to their place of origin in England and because there was a big boulder on the colonys boundary.

However, based on the testimony of a certain Elder Faunce, the Mayflower docked beside a boulder about 15 feet long and three feet wide extending towards the sea, which the ship used as a pier. But many expert mariners question this because they know it is very hard to dock a wooden ship beside a giant-sized rock in turbulent seas, especially during the winter.

Whichever it is, what is left of the original rock is now housed in and protected by a superstructure right on Plymouth Harbor, a few steps away from the Mayflower replica, for tourists to gawk at, and not to chip off parts of it, as has been happening in the past. The original rock was believed to have weighed approximately 20,000 pounds, but now, only one-third of it is left, and on display at the harbor, as the rest has been chipped off by unscrupulous persons and by some other government groups who revere it as a sign of respect for their countrys early settlers.

Left: A lady Pilgrim talks about her difficult life on the ship. Right: After taking a photo of this gentleman Pilgrim, he wouldnt let go of me unless I explained to him what was the tool I had in my hand

I found the Mayflower tour quite interesting because, on the ship, are men and women who are dressed up and play the role of Pilgrims. There is one assigned to every part of the ship. One lady, acting her part, was in the passengers quarters, knitting, while telling her story of how difficult her life has been, how scarce food was, and how she had to protect herself from diseases that were spreading around.

On the main deck, while I was taking a picture with my phone camera, a Pilgrim approached me and asked what the tool was for. I smiled at him because I thought it would be silly of me to explain to someone who obviously knew what it was. But, he wouldnt let go of me and explained that he hasnt seen anything like that in his lifetime. That was when I realized that he was also playing his role to the hilt. I had to oblige and while talking to him, I felt like I was teaching a kindergarten kid the functions of a phone and camera.

Understanding the travails of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower has made me admire even more everything that America stands for. Knowing what those Pilgrims had to go through just to flee religious persecution and be free to hold on to their beliefs, I now have a stronger grasp of the real Spirit of America. Thats why I now find it easy to chime in when Americans sing their national anthem and proclaim that theirs is the land of the free and the home of the brave.

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THE US Embassy in Manila on Friday assured Filipinos they are still welcome in the United States, and that there is no change in American immigration and visa policies toward the Philippines.

In a statement, Press Attache Molly Koscina said US President Donald Trumps executive order does not restrict travel by Filipino nationals.

Filipinos are still very much welcome to the United States, Koscina said.

Under Trumps executive order on Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals signed on Jan. 27, 2017, visa issuance to nationals of the countries of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen has been suspended.

US President Donald Trump. AFP

Koscina added that the executive order also does not restrict travel of dual nationals as long as they hold the passport of an unrestricted country and possess a valid US visa.

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Although the Philippines is not on Trumps executive order banning entry into the United States, he had said during the campaign that he would deport all illegal immigrants.

Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said the Philippine government is ready to assist the estimated 310,000 undocumented Filipinos in the United States who might be deported due to Trumps immigration crackdown.

Jose said the Philippine embassy and consulate in the US will continue to extend consular assistance to Filipino who will be affected by the US Presidents immigration policies.

The US Department of Homeland Security said out of 3.4-million Filipinos residing and working in the United States, 310,000 are illegal or undocumented.

President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday said he will not lift a finger to help undocumented Filipinos in the US.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim said Trumps order was not driven by racism but was meant to protect the American citizens.

This is not racism. This is not unfair prejudice, Kim said, although he admitted that there is confusion about the exact parameters of Trumps executive order.

How do you remain as open as possible, but at the same time, make sure that you do everything possible to make the environment safe for your citizens? And I think this was reflected in the executive order, Kim said.

Former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said Friday that Duterte is correct in being careful not to intervene in the internal affairs of the United States.

He also said the President should reconsider his decision not to send an ambassador to the United States.

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President Donald Trump has sent his first message to Israel after it announced plans to establish a new settlement of 2000 homes in the West Bank saying the plan is unhelpful.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that while we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

The White House statement came few hours after Prime Minister Netanyahu made the announcement following the eviction of Israelis from a settlement dubbed illegal by the states Supreme Court. Trump has been a strong supporter of Israel in its conflict with Palestine during his presidential campaign and in the run-up to his swearing-in.

Israels ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon said the White House statement should not be making shockwaves because it is still too early to tell if the president has made a U-turn while admitting that we will not always agree on everything.

He said Trump will discuss the issue with Netanyahu who is scheduled to visit Washington in a fortnight. Ahead of Netanyahus planned visit, the White House announced that it has not taken an official position on settlement activity.

Israels Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely slammed the statement from Washington stressing that the present government was elected on the basis of upholding the Jewish Peoples right to build in all parts of our land and that must be respected. She argued that settlements are not an obstacle to peace and they never have been before accusing the Palestinians of blocking for the past 25 years all paths towards any kind of solution to the conflict.

Israels settlements on occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under International Law but Tel Aviv continues to implement such policies as it is backed by its major ally, the U.S., although relations with the Obama administration over this issue were difficult.
A day before European leaders meet in Malta to discuss, among other issues, the illegal migration from Libya, the North African Country and Italy signed a memorandum of understanding meant to upgrade bilateral cooperation in many areas, including the fight against illegal migration and human trafficking.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and visiting Prime minister-designate of the UN-backed Government of National Accord Fayez Serraj initialed the MoU.

Paolo Gentiloni renewed Italys strong commitment to support Libya. He said the deal also points out the need for development, stability, reconstruction, and rebirth of unity in the North African country.

The conflict in Libya has turned its shores into a gateway to reach Europe with arrivals reported to be around 180,000 during last year.

Serraj said the agreement would help fight migrant trafficking while underlining that his government will not allow foreign vessels into the countrys territorial waters before the state navy is rebuilt. He claimed the financial support from Europe is a very humble and called for increasing the assistance amount.

Gentiloni described the agreement as just a piece of the major effort that will need financial support of the European Union.

Meanwhile, the continental organizations foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini thinks that Libyas waters had created a complicated situation on the ground as illegal migrants continue to arrive in Europe through Italy.

The Italian Prime Minister highlighted that there needs to be an economic commitment by the whole of the EU to fight the phenomenon if they want to give real strength and legs to managing migration flows.

Trafficking and smuggling of humans to Europe has proven to be a very lucrative business. The deal includes humanitarian repatriation of migrants.

European Council President Donald Tusk stated that Europe should and will stand by Italy in sharing responsibility as the goal to control over-migration in Europe is within our reach and clamping down on smugglers is the only way to stop people dying in the desert and at sea.

On Wednesday, Italy announced the setting up of a 200 million fund allocated for African countries to upgrade the fight against illegal migration.

Libya, along with Tunisia, and Niger will be the first beneficiaries of the fund, that will benefit at a later stage Egypt, Senegal, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

According to the Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, the fund will finance the purchase of equipment and the training of the security forces of the beneficiary countries to secure their external borders.

According to the International Organization for Migration, at least 5,083 people died in the Mediterranean Sea in 2016.
Visiting German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday held a meeting with President Erdogan in Ankara, in a bid, among others, to warm up bilateral relations affected by the failed July 2016 coup detat.

At the joint press conference that followed the meeting, there were signs that the two leaders had different opinions on the constitutional revision in Turkey and the denomination to use to describe extremist groups claiming to fight under the banner of Islam.

Commenting on the constitutional amendments, which would turn the office of the president from a ceremonial office to an executive presidency, if approved in a referendum, Chancellor Merkel noted that Turkey is going through a phase of deep political change. She stressed that everything must be done to preserve the separation of powers and above all, freedom of opinion and the plurality of society.

Her remarks were rebuked by Erdogan as he replied that theres not an ounce of truth to this because the country has legislative, executive and judicial organs.

Critics fear that the approved constitutional reforms would give too many powers to the president to trespass the competencies of other organs of the state.

Merkel also expressed hope that Ankara would allow election observers to monitor the elections.

The two leaders also spoke in detail about the questions of the fight against Islamist terrorism, against every form of terrorism, and also the terrorism of the PKK according to Merkel who said they have agreed to cooperate.

Erdogan however pointed out his dismay over the use of Islamist terrorism by the German Chancellor as he explained that such an expression is not correct because Islam and terror cannot be associated because Islam means peace. He added that its use is saddening to Muslims. Please lets not use it. As long as it is used we need to stand against it. As a Muslim president personally I cannot accept that, he said.

Merkel answered that Germany makes a linguistic distinction between Islam and Islamist.

Turkey accuses Germany of not being helpful in fighting terrorism after Berlin failed to its extradition request of 40 soldiers said to be involved in the July failed coup and not rejecting asylum requests of alleged FETO members said to be behind the plot.
Syrian deputy foreign minister has finger-pointed the Tunisian Troika, led by Mohamed Moncef Marzouki that ruled Tunisia between 2011 and 2014, for being responsible for the Tunisian jihadists joining terrorist groups in Syria.

They are responsible for the sending of young Tunisians in Syria to join terrorist groups, Faycal Mokded spilled the beans Tuesday as he spoke to visiting Tunisian journalists, tunisienumerique.com reports.

Ties between the two countries are retaking shape after they were cut off in 2012 by former Tunisia President Marzouki who led the Troika composed of Islamist Ennahda, Ettakatol, and his Congress for the Republic.

In 2012, Marzouki expulsed the Syrian ambassador to Tunis in protest against the Assad regimes crackdown on opposition and civilian populations.

The present diplomatic relations between Syria and Tunisia are just distorted and a disfigured version of the fraternal relations that have always united the two countries, Faycal Mokded added.

For the Syrian official, Damascus has been trying to thaw ties with Tunis but has been disappointed by Tunisian authorities, which limit ties to simple consulate representation in Syria.

How come some western countries can plan to reopen their embassies in Damascus at the time when Tunis ignores such question, he added.

President Caid Essebsi appointed a consul in Damascus in July 2015.
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.
EBRD supports Azerbaijan in rehab of key regional roads

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) considers the financing of a part of a road between Ganja and the Georgian border as part of the project for reconstruction and upgrading of roads in Azerbaijan, Ivana Duarte, head of the EBRD Baku office, told Trend."We are considering the financing of 130 km of road on the M2 highway between Ganja, the second largest city in Azerbaijan, and the Georgian border. This would be done within the previously signed framework loan agreement for regional roads," she said."The M2 Highway is part of the East-West corridor, which is expected to open up flow of goods via the Silk Road. We hope we will be able to commit to this important project in early 2017."Duarte added that EBRD continues to support the Azerbaijani governments priority of rehabilitation and reconstruction of its principal road corridors and key regional roads."The well-functioning infrastructure is crucial for trade, for regional cooperation with neighbors, and in general for economic development across the country," she said.
Judge explains her Strasbourg failure

By Messenger Staff

One of the three candidates for the position of judge from Georgia in the European Court of Human Rights, Eva Gotsiridze, has stated that an alleged reason of the failure of the three Georgian candidates was the negative role played by the United National Movement opposition party, Georgian NGOs and Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili.She dismissed speculations that her failure was because of any lower qualifications and stated that her misfortune could also be related to the on-going discussion of ex-Interior Minister Vano Merabsihvilis case in the European Court.Merabishvili, one of the key figures of the United National Movement party, is currently serving a prison sentence in Georgia.The incumbent Georgian Judges [Nona Tsotsoria] term was prolonged and Adeishvilis deputy [wanted ex-Justice Minister from the United National Movement team Zurab Adeishvili] is examining Merabishvilis case in Strasbourg, Gotsiridze stated.She said she was not informed whether any viewpoints were expressed concerning her qualification by the court committee members.Gotsiridze says that during her interview, one of the members asked her why she was not initially put on the list due to her impressive qualifications. It is noteworthy that none of the asked questions were of a legal character, she says.Interviews were held with candidates Eva Gotsiridze, Alexandre Baramidze and Giorgi Badashvili on September 29-30 2016 in Strasbourg, though voting was put off until January 2017.The ECtHR was tasked with selecting a single candidate for the position of European Court judge.Georgia will have to hold another competition and present new candidates for the position, as the nine-year term of Georgias representative to the ECtHR, Nona Tsotsoria, expires this month.In February last year, the Governmental commission selected five candidates for the role, namely current Deputy Minister of Justice Aleksandre Baramidze; Giorgi Badashvili, a Georgian lawyer at the ECtHR; the Presidents Parliamentary representative, Anna Dolidze; Georgias High Council of Justice member, Eva Gotsiridze; and Human Rights expert Nana Mchedlidze.Later, the Government selected three nominees, Baramidze, Gotsiridze and Badashvili and sent their nominations to the Court.However, the Court did not select even a single candidate for the position.What the real grounds for their failure might be has become a matter of controversial speculation. It is very important for the country to know about this, as if it was due to the level of their qualifications the Government must take responsibility avoid such internationally embarrassing incidents in the future.However, if their qualifications were not a problem, the true reason must be disclosed.
The News in Brief

Gali Residents Protest Crossing Point Closure



Residents of Abkhazias predominantly ethnic Georgian-populated Gali district organized a protest rally on January 25 against the planned closure of two crossing points along the Enguri River  at Nabakevi-Khurcha and MeoreOtobaia-Orsantia  between Gali and its adjoining Zugdidi district of the Samegrelo region.



The de-facto Abkhaz government decided to close two out of four crossing points along the administrative boundary line (ABL) by the end of January at its session on December 28.



Video footage broadcasted by Rustavi 2 TV on January 27 shows a group of approximately 200 residents of Nabakevi and surrounding villages - predomiantly women and children predominantly - rallying along the road and waving placards with messages against the crossing points closure.



We would like to tell the [Georgian] government that we are in Abkhazia and we would like to keep our houses for our children. We are being pressured. Georgia should pay attention to us, so that the road is not closed for these children, an unnamed local resident stated in Georgian.



Residents of Nabakevi and surrounding villages travel to the nearby villages in neighboringZugdidi district through Nabakevi-Khurcha crossing point for schooling, medical services and commercial activities. The alternative route, running through the main crossing point over the Enguri River, close to village Chuburkhinji, would lengthen the journey for locals by at least 30 kilometers.



Today, approximately 120 residents of Gali district of Abkhazia rallied against the closure of crossing points on the Abkhaz-Georgian border. Residents of the village of Nabakevi blocked the road leading to the main crossing point, TemurNadaraia, the head of the de facto administration of Gali district, said in his statement on January 26.



The administration noted that the chief of Gali District State Security Service TemurShengelia and local police officers went to the protest site and added that the demonstrators ended protest after explanatory conversation.



According to the same report, the head of the de-facto administration of Gali said that the residents of villages in southern parts of the district could reach the main crossing point without obstacles. He also added that there are certain forces, linked to illegal cross-border business, who are provoking protests.



The U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi expressed deep concern over the proposed closing following Ambassador Ian Kellys visit to the two ABL crossings on January 26.

(Civil.ge)







Bologna inclusion lifted quality of Georgias education system



Georgia has bolstered the quality of its higher education and research, thanks to its inclusion in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the authors of a new report argue.



By joining the EHEA, popularly referred to as the Bologna process,Georgia improved the legal framework and quality of its higher education system and brought in a three-level degree system with BAs, MAs and PhDs.



Since 2005, Georgia has developed a framework of qualifications for higher education, implemented quality assurance standards and a credit system. Another change is that Georgian students have been able to participate in exchange programs and get higher education abroad.



The process launched with the Bologna Declaration in 1999 is one of the main voluntary processes at a European level, and is currently implemented in 48 countries which make up the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).



Georgia joined the Bologna process in 2005. On the one hand, this was the core of the reforms in higher education; however, this was an expression of the western orientation of the country following the peaceful Rose Revolution in 2003.



Over the course of a decade of reforms, education has also been a contentious issue which has uncovered different views about how the reforms are implemented, most recently in a student protest at Tbilisi State University in the spring of 2016, when education reform was one of the main demands.



The report presented on Wednesday by the Social Science Centre and Open Society Foundation offers an overall optimistic assessment of how Georgias higher learning institutions have been improved the last decade.



The collapse of the Soviet Union led Georgia into two secessionist wars and a civil war in the early 1990s. Amid poor economic, political and social conditions in the country, the education system also collapsed. Joining the Bologna process may also be seen in light of this period of post-Soviet instability, as it addressed problems that had emerged during years of mismanagement.



The report concludes that despite significant achievements, the Georgian higher education system still has problems to deal with, such as a lack of qualified lecturers, as well as a poor studying environment and a lack of vocation education and access to high quality studying material.



The authors are now offering their recommendations based on the reports findings to the Ministry of Education and Science the, National Center for Quality Assurance, higher education institutions and other relevant agencies.

(DF watch)




The Florida House's proposed six-year ban on lobbying by legislators and high-level state officers would be the strictest ban of its kind in the country, and no other state even comes close, a state-by-state analysis shows.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has published an informative report of post-employment lobbying restrictions in all 50 states, which shows that at least 34 states have a form of a cooling-off period but none is more than two years, which is what's in current Florida law and the Constitution. The NCSL report is here.

Some states have no restrictions. A legislator can retire Friday and start lobbying the following Monday in Idaho, Illinois and Kansas, for example.

Passage of the six-year lobbying ban in Florida is a top priority of House Speaker Richard Corcoran, R-Land O'Lakes. The two bills, HB 7001 and 7003, passed the House Public Integrity & Ethics Committee on 18-0 votes -- making this is an excellent example of a legislative proposal that few if any lawmakers will be able to vote against.

There will likely be good debate about restricting anyone's legal right to seek employment, and approval by 60 percent of voters is needed to change the Constitution.

But to oppose Corcoran's measures is to antagonize the speaker while endorsing the existing "revolving door" culture, which is largely indefensible. Some former lawmakers return after two years to lobby their former colleagues, trading on personal relationships made in the House and in some cases calling in IOUs in return for past chairmanship appointments, votes or other favors.

It's the way every Legislature and Congress has operated, but as Corcoran promised on Nov. 22, the day he was sworn in as speaker, "It all ends." The House ban would apply only to legislators who held office after Nov. 8, 2016, or who held an appointed state office, such as a state agency head, after July 1, 2017.

The six-year ban has not been filed in the Senate, but as a Corcoran priority it will have to be considered at some point by Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart. Generally speaking, if no comparable Senate bill exists, the issue would be handled by the Senate committee chair in charge of ethics bills, and in this case it's freshman Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples.
MIAMI -- Florida's homeowners insurance landscape has been treated gently by Mother Nature in the last decade, but the industry sees demons approaching that are increasing the cost and reducing access to affordable property insurance, especially in South Florida.

The culprit, according to officials at the Florida Chamber of Commerce's Insurance Summit Thursday in downtown Miami, are claims abuses by water damage repair contractors and their attorneys.

State law allows policyholders who need repairs to their homes to assign their rights to seek reimbursement from the insurance companies to third-party contractors. Some contractors persuade homeowners whose pipes or appliances have ruptured to assign over the benefits (AOB) and, working with attorneys, file lawsuits against the insurer if the claims are denied or payments are reduced.

Since 2006, the number of AOB claims In Florida exploded from 405 to 28,000 in 2016, said Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, whose office oversees the Office of Insurance Regulation, at a noon address to the group.

"In these last couple of years, every pipe in every house has gone bad -- new and old construction -- or something else is amiss,'' he told the summit.

If the conclusion is that "someone is manipulating the process,'' only the Legislature can fix it, he said. Story here.

The issue is a top priority for the industry when the Legislature convenes in regular session on March 7, but runaway property insurance claims is only one of the top issues the insurers want lawmakers to address. They also want changes to the workers compensation market, which is seeing rate increases of 14.5 percent after a court decision that rejected caps on attorneys fees. Others in the industry want to jettison the personal injury protection requirements for auto insurance.

But most of the focus Thursday was on the prospect of higher costs and rising premiums because of the the AOB issues.

David Altmaier, director of the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, warned that if the trend continues, "insurance companies would require a 10 percent rate increase each year just to keep up with it" and that would not only squeeze homeowners but discourage companies from writing homeowners insurance in Florida.

Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run insurer of last resort which is the largest insurer in Florida, predicts that the cost of assignment of benefits or AOBs has soared from $367 per Citizens multi-peril homeowner policy in 2011 to a projected $2,083 in 2017.

"Until that's fixed, rates are going to go up across the state, insurers are going to get in trouble financially,'' and the efforts to shrink the size of Citizens, will "be reversed, "said Barry Gilway, CEO of Citizens.

Last year, the average water claim was $19,500, an amount that has doubled in 4.5 years, he said. Every month, Citizens gets 860 new lawsuits a month; 45 percent of all water claims last year went into litigation, and Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties have the bulk of the claims.

"It is absolutely astounding," Gilway said. "It's trying to put your finger in the dike."

But Atwater warned that turning the insurance debate into a battle between attorneys and lawyers would be a mistake.

He noted that insurers allege that the surge in AOB claims is a result of fraudulent vendors working with unethical lawyers but as claims surged the insurance industry didn't alert his fraud unit very often.

In the last year, the number of times insurance companies referred an allegation of fraud related to assignment of benefits went from 77 to 226.

"Rather than simply say in meetings it's fraud, provide me with a quality referral and see if we can't improve and separate the bad actors from the good actors,'' Atwater told reporters Thursday.

He urged the industry to stay focused on the data, not the anecdotes.

"Is it over-litigation or fraud?,'' he asked. "If you're expecting legislative change, you should expect the only way to get there is an honest conversation on the data not a parade of horribles."

Altmaier noted that since the Legislature reformed workers compensation in 2003 to restrain attorneys fees and other costs drivers, rates dropped 60 percent "because of the behavior changes."

But after the Florida Supreme Court overturned the cap on attorneys fees last summer, his office concluded that costs will rise for insurers and subsequently approved a 14.5 percent increase in workers compensation rates for this year. But, Altmaier warned, the rates could continue to climb.

"There's no reason the same trends could not take place in the other direction" and "reverse a lot of the rate activity that we've seen over the last 10 years,'' he said.

When it comes to reforming the auto insurance market Altmaier and Atwater were less optimistic.

"I don't believe PIP can be saved,'' Atwater told the group. All owners of motor vehicles must purchase PIP coverage to cover up to $10,000 of their medical injuries regardless of fault. The PIP no-fault program was designed to protect injured drivers as well limit the need to use the courts to dispute claims.

Atwater said that there are "embedded costs" that have been woven in the price of auto insurance "that are not for the benefit of the consumer" but he said he is "worried more" about what may replace PIP than the current system.

If the replacement creates a greater opportunity for mischief then maybe we should reconsider," he said.

Altmaier said his OIRs top legislative priority is to reform the AOB program while preserving the benefits for consumers, Altmaier said. He wants the legislation to clarify that the attorney fee provision is meant to be used by the policyholder, not a third party contractor.

"Weve identified this attorneys fees provision as an incentive to abuse the system, so we want to make sure we take that incentive off the table -- and doing it as surgically as we possibly can, so we leave the rest of the system intact, he said in an interview.

Consumers should be able to continue to "hold their insurance companies accountable" through litigation and should be able to use the contractors they choose, he said, but "right now, the playing field is not level. The insurance companies are at a disadvantage."

Legislation has been proposed in the past to reform the AOB system but it has been rejected amid instense opposition from lawyers groups, who oppose the attorneys fee change.

Altmaier said it is not clear how much the changes would affect rates, but he expects it would likely halt future rate increases. If nothing is done, he and others warn that more companies will stop writing homeowners insurance in the state.

"Consumers deserve products that are priced according to the risk that they pose andd that is being driven up by a small group of folks that are abusing the system in some places, he said. "Thats unfair to the consumers and we need to craft a solution that is reflective of the underlying risk."
@ByKristenMClark

More than 1,800 undocumented immigrants currently serving time in Florida prisons for felony offenses such as murder or armed burglary could have faced years or even decades more behind bars  at Florida taxpayers expense  had a proposal being vetted now by state lawmakers already been law.

Citing a desire to keep our citizens and constituents safe, Elkton Republican Sen. Travis Hutson  for the second year in a row  wants to impose stiffer penalties on undocumented immigrants than U.S. citizens or legal residents would otherwise face for the same violent crimes.

Last year, Hutsons proposal was never considered. But 2017 offers a different dynamic thats allowing his idea to get at least some consideration and put immigrant advocates on edge.

More conservative Republicans now hold influential positions in the Florida Senate, and the upcoming legislative session comes after a presidential campaign in which illegal immigration was a driving issue and as a Trump White House makes it a priority to crack down on undocumented immigrants  particularly those who commit crimes.

RELATED: On heels of Trump order, Florida lawmakers also want to penalize sanctuaries

Hutson and other Republican senators  including Senate President Joe Negron, of Stuart  argue enhanced criminal penalties are warranted because undocumented immigrants already flout the law by being in the country illegally.

Youve broken the rules to get here, and then you have the temerity to violate our laws and commit violent crimes against our citizens, so I do think that some enhanced penalties are appropriate in that circumstance, Negron said.

But even with that endorsement, Hutsons proposal (SB 120) isnt expected to earn enough support to clear both chambers of the Republican-led Legislature.

The House hasnt made it an early priority as the Senate has, and Hutsons plan has drawn swift rebuke from immigrant advocates and some religious groups, who argue the idea is unjust and discriminatory.

More here.

Photo credit: John Moore / Getty Images
@amysherman1

An organizer of a Saturday night protest at President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago estate canceled his event, but other organizers say that a similar protest will still occur.

The protest will coincide with Trumps weekend visit to his Palm Beach mansion  the first since he was inaugurated as president. The International Red Cross Ball is being held at his estate Saturday night.

Stephen Milo, an organizer of the March to Mar-A-Lago for Humanity, posted a notice on Facebook Thursday saying the event had been canceled because of the potential crowd size and impact on residents.

There was no way to self manage thousand of protestors and keep them on sidewalks, stated the Facebook page. He referred activists to an alternative march being organized by South Florida Activism.

Alex Newell Taylor, a West Palm Beach resident, said that South Florida Activism and Womens March Florida are still planning to hold a protest.

The protest is now being called March to Mar-a-Lago We Will Not Be Stopped. On Facebook, at least 544 people said they were planning to attend as of late Thursday afternoon  fewer than the 1,700 listed on the earlier Facebook page.
@joeflech

When Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine proposed creating a mandatory citywide minimum wage, he touted the proposal in radio ads that ran in California while Gov. Rick Scott was there recruiting companies to move to Florida.

It was a clear move by Levine, a Democrat, to distinguish himself from the Republican governor and an indication the mayor might be eyeing a run for higher office.

Now, Tallahassee is joining a lawsuit filed by business associations against Miami Beach over the city law. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a motion to intervene in the suit and defend the constitutionality of a state law that the Beach is challenging.

Attorneys at City Hall who drafted and championed the ordinance welcome the challenge. So does Levine, who is now seriously considering a run for governor in 2018, when Scott is term-limited out. The mayor looks to raise his profile during a tour of Florida this spring.

"So to the state, I say, see you in court," said Levine in a statement Thursday.

Read more here.
Madeline Mikolon's abstract paintings, carefully constructed from ribbon-like lines and broader, gestural strokes of pure tones, allude to landscapes without specifically rendering them.

"I've been in Montana about two years now, and I can see my work evolving and becoming more influenced by landscape," said Mikolon, a Southerner who studied art in New York City.

She sees some of her new paintings  gouache, watercolor and acrylic on wood panel  as sites she's witnessed, like replicas, recollections or "a memory of a brief space in time," she said.

Some of the titles hint at their inspirations: "Pop-up Hillside," or "Ravine," while only implying the physical world, often through a small focal point of lines, each of which drift and dissipate into their own directions.

Mikolon works on stark white backgrounds that accentuate the ribbon-like flow of her lines. The blank base accentuates the way "colors and lines trail off" and unfold organically, she said. The works she's showing at Bernice's Bakery this month are predominantly on wood panel instead of canvas. She prefers the harder surface and the immediacy, plus the sharper lines.

She titled her show, "Junction, Line and Form," after some of her methods. In her work, the lines are a meeting ground upon those white backgrounds, she said. "That meeting ground between two forces is an important junction" between negative and positive space.

The "way that a line unfolds or the natural movement" of her hand often guides the composition.

***

Mikolon came to Montana from New York City, where she lived for about six years during and after getting her degree from the Pratt Institute, a prestigious art school she attended on scholarship.

Before college, her talents earned her attendance to the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts and Humanities, a residential school where she spent her junior and senior year in the visual arts program, an experience she described as often feeling like attending college a few years early.

In college, she produced works with carnival-esque themes. The line-work and her carefully honed palette are visible already. She shifted into abstraction, often complementing geometric forms by pouring pigment and allowing it to pool into organic shapes.

Since moving to Montana two years ago, Mikolon has shown her work in group exhibitions, such as the annual Mini Benefit auction at Zootown Arts Community Center, and "The Changing Moment," a juried group exhibition at the Radius Gallery last summer. A residency at the Montana Natural History Center also grounds her work in the natural world: She taught classes for children and adults, led open drawing hours and could use specimens from the collection there for her own work, using bones for instance, as the basis for drawings and paintings that are still rooted partly in abstraction. She held a First Friday exhibition there last year, making Bernice's her second solo show in Missoula.

For her next series, she might focus on much larger works on panel, in which the scale might change the feeling: larger, gestural strokes alongside the minute lines.
The Poffenroths were the last to arrive.

The family waited until the last minute to enter the courtroom at Russell Smith Federal Courthouse on Thursday morning so their 2-year-old, Grace, could get the wiggles out before sitting through the naturalization ceremony.

Benji Poffenroth, a Canadian, is now a U.S. citizen after taking the oath alongside 20 others  from Belarus, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Thailand and Ukraine.

"Can I get a wave from everybody?" Poffenroth said before the ceremony began, standing up in the rows of soon-to-be-citizens for a selfie, capturing the crowd in the background.

Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch presided over the ceremony, apologizing because a criminal trial pushed the ceremony into a smaller courtroom.

"It gives us good togetherness, right?" he said.

The last-minute scheduling also meant there were no snacks and drinks, and no national anthem. Lynch tried to get the spokespeople for U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines to sing  a no-go.

***

Lynch recognized the significance of the ceremony's timing.

Last week, President Donald Trump's executive order banned nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for at least 90 days.

The order prompted protests and chaos at airports nationally and worldwide. Hundreds of protesters took to Missoula's streets Sunday to decry the travel ban, which also impacts refugees.

Montana's senators split on the issue, as Daines, a Republican, agreed with Trump's decision and saying that "anything less than 100 percent verification of these refugees backgrounds puts our national security at risk."

In a letter, Daines encouraged the new citizens to become engaged and informed.

"The strength of the United States always comes from our willingness to open our arms to people from all around the world," Daines wrote.

Tester, a Democrat, called the executive order harmful, saying "We must take strong steps to protect our nation from those who want to harm us, but we cannot sacrifice our religious freedom and our American values."

In Tester's letter read aloud Thursday, he pointed out that immigrants helped build this country, and "they make it great."

***

The final words of the Pledge of Allegiance, "liberty and justice for all," are inspiring and "a moving ideal," Lynch said Thursday.

He called on the words of George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy to drive his point home.

After MLK was assassinated, Kennedy said, "What we need in the United States is not hatred, what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another..."

"Reflecting on Kennedy's words today would do us all well," Lynch said.

In the last decade, 6.6 million people have been naturalized, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"Unfortunately, the beacon of America is burning a bit dimly today," Lynch said. "The billows of intolerance have persisted since our founding."

While the country has come a long way, Lynch said oppression and intolerance are too often ignored or not believed today. Politically or personally, some Americans, Lynch said, have "encouraged that growth."

"The greatest threat to our democracy does not come from enemies abroad or our economy, it's if we allow ourselves to become intolerant," he said. "We must all remember that our rights and liberties are only as secure as those of our neighbors, even those with whom we disagree."

The new citizens have earned the right to vote and to serve on a jury  two responsibilities, Lynch said, that "form the backbone of our democracy."

"Your work is just beginning," he said. "You must be thoughtful and informed citizens.

"That means informed voting. I emphasize today: informed voting."

***

Lynch's speech struck a chord with Laura Marcela Tirado Rios.

"It really made me excited about becoming a citizen," she said. "He encouraged us to become active and become part of democracy to make America more tolerant again, and accepting of diversity. That's what this country is based upon."

Rios came to America from Colombia several years ago to work. On the job at Showdown Ski Area, she met her future husband, Evan Haugan. In March, they'll celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary.

The path to citizenship is long, Rios said, but worth it.

It was a similar story for the Poffenroths.

This month marks 10 years since Benji Poffenroth came to the United States to volunteer at Youth With A Mission in the Flathead.

"I wasn't expecting to stay this long," he said, but then he met his wife Aubree, who's originally from Oregon.

Their son Roman is a month old. His birth meant they missed Poffenroth's original naturalization ceremony in Helena; Thursday's in Missoula was a shorter drive for the family, since they live in Lakeside.

"It was an incredible speech, and timely," Poffenroth said of Lynch. "We've got a ways to go.

"We're still a land of immigrants."
Three seats on the Missoula County Public Schools board will be on the ballot this spring, with two incumbent trustees planning to run again.

The K-12 seats held by Heidi Kendall and Jennifer Newbold are on the ballot, as well as the high school seat representing the Seeley Lake region currently held by Debbie Dupree.

As of Wednesday, no candidates had filed for the three seats.

Kendall and Newbold, both rounding out their first term, said they'll run again.

Dupree plans to step away after 15 years of service  and somewhere around 50,000 miles on her car.

***

Dupree's seat includes Seeley-Swan High, as well as the Clinton, Potomac, Sunset and Swan Valley districts.

"That's 120 miles round-trip. I don't want to jinx myself because I have a couple of months left and I've only been pulled over once, and so far I've never hit anything," Dupree said, laughing.

She hopes a Seeley Lake candidate steps up to the plate.

"I just feel that it's very important that Seeley Lake is represented," she said. "I know that the district covers clear to Clinton and Potomac, but those kids all end up going to Hellgate. They don't come here."

When Dupree first ran, she had kids in school. Today, they're adults and Dupree wants time to spend with her grandchildren. She also owns NAPA Auto Parts in Seeley Lake.

She's happy to see the improvements made to Seeley-Swan High over the years, from a new gym floor and remodeling the library when she first came on the board in 2002 to the recent auditorium addition thanks to the November 2015 bond passage.

"All our kids have expressed that they would like more electives, and that's super hard to do with our enrollment," Dupree said. "But they are still able to take their college credits. My daughter came out with 13 or 14 college credits.

"It's one of those things (where) you have to weigh the pros and cons of a big school versus small schools. Here, Dr. (Kathleen) Pecora knows every child very well. It's just the difference between an AA and a C school. It's a little more personal."

She said she's enjoyed most of her time on the board.

"For me, some days it's very rewarding and some days you feel very underappreciated," she said. "It's not like some boards where you're paid to be on it; this is all volunteer.

"It's time for someone else with a fresh perspective to take a turn."

***

Kendall hasn't filed yet, but said she will.

The former city council member hit a wall years ago when she reached out to board members about school start times.

"The response I got was pitiful," she said. "I thought, this isn't right.

"A huge part of (a council member's) job is listening to constituents' concerns and bringing those to people."

Kendall is one of the more vocal trustees  vocal in the sense that she asks a lot of questions. That's one of the key roles of a school board, she said: keeping an eye on the details.

With the $158 million in school bonds leading to construction projects at every school this year and in the coming years, she said being a watchdog is especially important.

Kendall and Newbold both said that with Superintendent Mark Thane at the helm, they've seen a positive change in the district. Dupree said all three superintendents that have served while she's been a trustee  Thane, Alex Apostle and Jim Clark  "served the district well."

A trusting relationship between the school board and the superintendent, in addition to strong leadership, is important now more than ever, Kendall said.

"We have to protect public education from outside sources, both in Helena and Washington, D.C.," she said. "There are some threats to public education we have to defend against. We have to make sure the people who pay for public education are getting a good return on their investment."

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension approved Betsy DeVos' nomination for education secretary on Tuesday, moving it to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote. The billionaire has faced intense criticism for her longstanding advocacy for school choice and vouchers.

Montana has its first Republican superintendent of public instruction in nearly 30 years in former legislator Elsie Arntzen. She has faced opposition from teachers unions, in particular MEA-MFT, which called her voting record "deplorable."

"We can't predict how it's going to go in the Legislature," Kendall said. "Money is always an issue. You can't do public education without money."

About 64 percent of school districts' general fund comes from the state, according to the Office of Public Instruction.

"We're at the mercy of the Legislature," Kendall said.

***

Newbold said she will likely run again, though she hasn't made "a firm decision" yet.

"I really love doing all of the work associated with it," she said. "People always laugh that it's a thankless job, but you're not in it for thanks, you're in it because it's fulfilling and you love to do it. I think I probably will run again because all of those things held true from the time I started until now."

Newbold, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has two kids in MCPS, and another who's not old enough for school yet.

"I just saw a need for that type of voice on the board," she said, as well as a passion to help teachers. That means professional development. MCPS implemented professional learning communities several years ago, time set aside for teachers to work together on issues in their classrooms.

"It's a really nice model for teacher collaboration and professional development opportunities, but I'm always on the lookout for ways we can help support them more meaningfully and more comprehensively," she said.

There's a steep learning curve on a school board; the education world is a complex one, particularly a district such as MCPS with a wide variety of programs, and budgeting in Montana's complicated funding system.

"You spend the first year getting your feet under you and you start hitting your stride in the third year," Newbold said. "It would be a shame to see all that go to waste."

Newbold is keyed in on three issues in the district's near future: fiscal responsibility in the bond projects, budgeting amid proposed state budget cuts, and parity of programs districtwide.

She would like to see students all have access to the same opportunities, similar in fashion to the Spark! arts program and Project Lead The Way's STEM efforts.

"We have some really excellent opportunities at some schools that aren't readily available at other schools," she said.

She referenced language opportunities and International Baccalaureate, which are available at some schools but not all.

"Those are not small undertakings, they're not without cost, I clearly recognize that. But what I've observed of the International Baccalaureate program at the elementary and high school level is it's a really remarkable approach to teaching and to learning," she said. "I know it's a process and it's not a short process for a school to go through to get to that point, but I think it would be good to offer that approach to all students."
Did you hear about the bill to stop requiring No Trespassing warnings on Montana fences?

How about the congressional legislation allowing sale of 3.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management property, including 94,520 acres in Montana?

No?

Perhaps thats because both issues disappeared almost before anyone not professionally involved could react. Montanas Legislature has a tendency to raise and dispose of unexpected issues fast, something often chalked up to well-meaning but inexperienced legislators bringing unstudied ideas to the table. The big-leaguers in Congress usually move with more deliberation.

Not anymore.

During Wednesday afternoons White House briefing, President Trumps spokesman Sean Spicer veered into logging and public lands disposal.

Does President Trump want to start returning the peoples lands to the people? Lars Larson, a talk-radio host from Portland, Ore., asked via Skype. And in the meantime  can he tell the Forest Service to start logging our forests aggressively again to provide jobs for Americans, wealth for the treasury and not spend $3.5 billion a year fighting forest fires?

As part of an overall comprehensive energy solution, weve got to use the resources we have  the forests, natural resources and minerals that exist above and below the ground, Spicer replied. Those matters would get consideration as Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke completes his transfer to become Secretary of Interior and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue is confirmed as Secretary of Agriculture, he added.

(They will) look at the natural resources we have, figure out how to best utilize them, to benefit not just our energy but economic growth opportunities we have, Spicer said.

But hours later, on Wednesday evening, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, pulled his H.R. 621 bill. That bill, introduced on Jan. 24, would have ordered the sale of 3.3 million acres of public land in Montana, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wyoming.

Chaffetz announced the withdrawal in an Instagram post Wednesday evening, stating that groups I support and care about fear it sends the wrong message. The bill was originally introduced several years ago. I look forward to working with you. I hear you and HR 621 dies tomorrow. #keepitpublic

I was stunned to see Chaffetz withdraw, said Rob Saldin, director of the University of Montana Project on American Democracy and Citizenship. It sounds like he just heard from enough people  both the usual suspect groups and individuals across the country that made him reconsider and he yanked it. The pace on all this stuff is dizzying. At the national level, it seems highly unusual.

Saldin said similar rallying cries send thousands of people to international airports on Saturday after a Trump executive order blocked some holders of green cards and visas from Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. And Republican senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine cited the overwhelming input against Trumps education secretary pick Betsy DeVos for their decisions to vote against her confirmation.

Chaffetz had introduced the measure twice before, but it earned little attention. This time, it came up just as public lands advocates in Montana and New Mexico were rallying against moves to divest federal open space.

Representative Chaffetz should never have introduced this ill-conceived bill, but the instant and overwhelming response by sportsmen and women forced him to listen and ultimately abandon H.R. 621, which would have seized millions of acres of public lands, Backcountry Hunters and Anglers President Land Tawney wrote in an email on Thursday. His fellow lawmakers should take note of the ire and rapid response by hunters and anglers. We arent going away.

Tawney was also part of the gathering in Helena on Monday that brought an estimated 1,000 people to the capitol building, including Gov. Steve Bullock. That may have helped focus ire at Rep. Peggy Webb's amendment to H.B. 231 that dropped the requirement for orange paint and no trespassing signs on private property fences.

The bipartisan Montana Sportsmen Alliance roused its membership on Monday to fight the Billings Republican's bill, noting that it unravels over 30 years of success with a fair and reasonable means of sharing the responsibilities for respecting and defining private property, thus taking a giant step backward in landowner-sportsman relations in Montana. The notice added the measure was added to an unrelated bill in executive session with no chance for public review or fiscal impact review.

Webb reportedly apologized to colleagues on Tuesday for the thousands of emails they received on the issue as she moved to strike the amendment.

I want to thank those of you that contributed to the thousands of emails, phone calls and personal contacts, quickly opposing the gutting of the trespassing laws on short notice, wildlife advocate Kathryn QannaYahu wrote in her statewide newsletter about Webbs change of direction. This was very much a quick, responsive team effort, that makes me smile because it shows how strong our concentrated actions can affect our legislators, even with short notice.
An open letter to U.S. Sen. Steve Daines:

My name is Erin M. Erickson, founder of Missoula Rises. Ive never been involved in politics or organizing, but after Nov. 8, the divide between the two parties clearly needed attention. I started this local movement to address how policies affect Missoulians, without regard to party affiliation. Since Nov. 9, 2016, we have grown to over 2,035 members representing Missoula, the Bitterroot Valley and the Flathead Indian Reservation. I made a firm commitment to making change through proper channels, respecting the democratic process in a responsible, thoughtful and intentional way. This is the tone of our work.

You know us; we sent you tweets and emails of gratitude when you stood up to the hate in Whitefish. We stood up for you publicly for your past support of the Violence Against Women Act. We believe that our members of Congress listen and represent all of Montana, because this is the nature of Montanans. We may not agree, but we care about each other and our state, and have an unspoken rule of respect.

I was deeply disappointed last week by your Missoula teams refusal to have a dialogue with constituents. We came to discuss Cabinet nominees and your thoughts. We came for constructive dialogue. I called your Missoula office a week before our meeting. I asked how many people the office could hold and informed your team that there were 20 attendees; we would provide questions in advance and agreed to stay on topic. We selected two people per topic. We hoped for a good conversation, because this is what you are elected by us to do  listen, talk, represent.

Hours before our meeting, your staff called to say only two to three people could attend. We found a larger space and were told, unequivocally, no. I was told your staff would only pass along information, not discuss. Senator Daines, frankly, I felt shut down and disrespected. We still attended the meeting. I asked if they wanted to listen to your constituents, who wanted to tell you how voting for Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Betsy DeVos and Tom Price would affect their everyday lives as Montanans. Your staff declined; instead they would consider transcripts.

It was important for our members to talk about their experiences. We stood outside your office in the 20-degree weather and delivered our remarks. We recorded them to send to you.

Abby Huseth, from Climate Smart Missoula, spoke passionately about Tillerson's ties to the oil industry and the devastating impacts that climate change will have on Montana.

Jane Cowley spoke expertly on Daines' past assistance to women of domestic violence and questioned his decision to part from that and vote for Jeff Sessions as attorney general, who has voted three times against that act.

Errin Koehler detailed the joy of being married to her best friend, and the fear and discrimination that accompanies being a lesbian, both in Montana and internationally. She wanted to talk to you about voting for Sessions, who fails to support our LGBTQ communities.

Dr. Kathy Mann Bartlett from the University of Montana spoke about the importance of federal legislation regarding providing education for students with disabilities and how Betsy DeVos would honor that.

Melanie Charlson, a 26-year public education veteran and vice president of MEA-MFT ,shared her concerns about DeVos qualifications.

Regarding Tom Price as head of Health and Human Services, and his intent to push Medicaid expansion cuts, we heard a powerful story from Beth Gherlein  a small-business owner - about the impact losing the Children's Health Insurance Program would have on her family. In the process of realizing their dreams, they must rely on CHIP for their daughter's health insurance. Her daughter's health and the economic survival of their family and business are at stake. Gherlein implored Daines to vote against Price, who wants to cut those programs.

Senator Daines, this is Montana. This is Missoula. We are your voters, and we need to be heard and respected by you. You are a public servant, we deserve your time and representation. I truly hope this will not be a pattern. I have higher expectations of you and I sincerely ask that you rise to those expectations and represent all Montanans.
This week Montana took several huckleberry-worthy strides toward the front lines of the national discussion on public lands policy. First, Congressman Ryan Zinkes nomination to become Interior secretary was approved after a week-long delay and sent to the full Senate for a final vote. Then, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines was appointed chairman of the Senate National Parks subcommittee, which dovetails neatly with his seat on the Public Lands, Forests and Mining subcommittee. And finally, Gov. Steve Bullock was named the Democratic co-chair of the Governors Sportsmens Caucus. Meanwhile, a new poll confirmed that, regardless of political party affiliation, a strong majority of Montanans support public lands conservation, improved public lands access and better infrastructure in national parks. With three prominent Montanans in national leadership positions, Montanans can bet that this perspective will be heard and will help shape any decisions regarding our shared outdoors.

Chokecherries to the travel ban for causing chaos at international airports and confusion among foreign nationals whose immigration status was suddenly thrown into question. At the University of Montana, 11 students and unknown numbers of staff and faculty were affected by President Trumps executive order suspending nationals from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Syria from international travel for at least 90 days, regardless of their current visa or green card status. In Missoula, which has welcomed 56 refugees in recent months, hundreds turned out to protest the prohibition, which was issued without review from the Justice Department and lacks enforcement guidelines that might bring some clarity to the screening process.

Huckleberries to every single one of the 100 members of Montanas House of Representatives who voted unanimously to revise the laws regarding sexual abuse of children. House Bill 247, which criminalizes some of the sick behaviors sexual predators use to groom their victims, such as making them view pornographic images, was introduced by Missoulas Rep. Kim Dudik, and received a rare 100 votes on its third reading. This perspicacious measure appears headed for well-deserved passage through the Legislature.

A flurry of chokecherries to sudden winter storms that reduce visibility and cause unsafe driving conditions. One such storm this past week resulted in the cancelation of a long-planned visit to Missoula from the Montana VA to discuss veterans benefits and health care. It also caused dozens of vehicle crashes in the Missoula area, including a rollover accident on Evaro Hill. Fortunately, none of the crashes resulted in serious injury.

Huckleberries to Sentinel High School for being the first in the state to offer the Advanced Placement Capstone Diploma program. The advanced diploma, developed by the not-for-profit College Board and implemented in 650 high schools around the world this year, will be awarded to Sentinel students who earn sufficiently high scores on six different AP exams. Sentinel is adding AP courses in Seminar and Research to complete the program designed to give graduates a head start in higher education.
This president is amazing, but the fourth estate, the free press, is baffling. Mainstream news are entranced by Trumps tweets, but dismissive of the Constitution. After being so wrong predicting the 2016 election, theres been no improvement in press coverage.

The Constitutions Section 8 gives to Congress the power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to define and punish piracies ... and offenses against the Law of Nations. Campaign promises offer a presidents expectations, but they do not diminish Congresss responsibility.

In the Missoulians (Jan. 27) article President poised... the readers would likely conclude that going to war in the Mideast is an executive option, that the Pentagon only informs the commander-in-chief about the options and technicalities of combat. If so, we would be forgetting that the Republican-controlled legislative branch refused to debate war powers for this conflict for the Obama administration, effectively limiting his ability to act (and then blaming him for a weak response to terrorism).

President Trump might have the votes of the peoples representatives, but until they debate and pass a law, the presidents intentions are beyond the law and Constitution. Sen. Steve Daines, as a member of the presidents party, is particularly well positioned to speak on this issue for Montanans, but he remains silent.

The press seems to think that their job is to cover what is posted on the internet, instead of investigating and reporting the facts. Opinion pieces should be treated as opinions, not blended into the news to be printed as facts. If this president wants a running war with the press, the people are capable of judging his righteousness, when they are adequately informed.

If this administrations pronouncements are the starting point for press articles, the American press will be unable to inform us citizens, because they ignore history.

George Hart,

Missoula
Jan. 1, 2016, was a particularly bloody day in Saudi Arabia, where 47 prisoners were executed by use of the kingdoms favorite method of meting out justice: public beheadings. One of those put to the sword was the Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, whose unjust death provoked a serious diplomatic row with Iran.

Although widely reported, news of these beheadings evidently eluded the attention of Donald Trump. Throughout the campaign and even as recently as past weeks, Trump has mischaracterized the practice in the Middle East of decapitating prisoners with a sword, contending that it is something that hasnt been done for centuries.

Now president and supposedly being briefed by intelligence experts, he remains blissfully ignorant regarding this gruesome form of execution. On Jan. 25, he told ABC News anchor David Muir that, When theyre chopping off the heads of our people, and other people... ISIS is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since medieval times

Trump remains oblivious to what a major ally of the U.S. in the region does on a routine basis for crimes as inconsequential as dissidence. Last year, an estimated 155 alleged criminals were beheaded in the kingdom.

Particularly troubling is Trumps view that it wouldnt be bad if Saudi Arabia had nuclear weapons. The thought of nukes in the hands of a theocratic dictatorship that is one of the worlds most prolific human rights abusers and home to 15 of the 19 terrorists who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, should send chills down the spine of any clear-thinking person.

Trumps ignorance is one thing; its to be expected. Perhaps more troubling is that in almost two years not one journalist has challenged his untrue statement that not since medieval times has beheading been used in that region of the world.

Mark Holston,

Kalispell
Donald Trumps efforts to gag the Environmental Protection Agency not only violate our right to know whats happening to the environment, but endanger it.

Global warming is a very bad thing for many reasons. It is created by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere, forming a kind of shell around the planet, trapping the heat in. The rapid rise in temperature is melting the poles, endangering the species that dwell there as the ice melts. All that melting sea ice also contributes to the rising oceans, causing flooding and abnormal conditions for ocean life. Global warming will also cause catastrophic events such as stronger hurricanes and more severe heat waves, putting our food supplies and public health at risk.

I am very upset about the EPAs blocked communication, since it puts our country in the dark about climate change. President Donald Trump and his appointees plan to deregulate the fossil fuels industry, and it may soon have more power to pollute than ever.

Banning the EPAs communication to the outside world also directly violates the Constitution. The First Amendment states that the government should not block the peoples freedom of speech or the freedom of the press, as Trumps act does.

I urge you to stand up against this ban, and call our United States representatives about it. Steve Daines: (406) 549-8198; Ryan Zinke: (406) 540-4370; John Tester: (406) 728-3003.

Braden Collard,

eighth-grader,

Washington Middle School,

Missoula
HELENA  Almost 100 people gathered in the Capitol rotunda Thursday to advocate for a "personhood'' amendment, which would effectively abolish abortion in Montana.

Buoyed by a new administration in Washington, D.C., the second biennial Personhood Rally brought awareness to a goal to make Montana the first state to stop murdering preborn babies. The idea behind personhood legislation is that other laws are only regulating abortion and dont actually prevent people from getting one.

The rally featured speakers who vowed to fight to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision upholding the right to legal abortion, and to add a personhood amendment to the Montana Constitution.

Several legislators attended the rally. Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, spoke after being introduced by his wife and the event's emcee, Ronalee Skees.

He applauded the revival of the Mexico City policy, which prevents foreign nongovernmental organizations from receiving assistance from the U.S. for family planning if they perform or promote abortions. NGOs become ineligible for U.S. assistance even if they didnt directly use U.S. funds for those services. It is often called the global gag rule by pro-choice advocates because counselors are prevented from mentioning abortion to remain eligible for funds.

Skees also applauded the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court and said he expects the court will see two additional judges while President Donald Trump is in office.

He said he plans to bring personhood before the Montana Legislature this session. The bill isnt listed on the Legislatures website. We will lead the fight nationwide and well overturn Roe v. Wade, Skees said.

The idea of personhood legislation divides abortion opponents. A version of federal personhood legislation has been introduced and rejected for more than 10 years. The National Right to Life, the largest pro-life organization in the country, doesnt support personhood legislation.

Voters in Colorado, Mississippi and North Dakota have rejected personhood amendments. In Oklahoma, the state supreme court ruled that defining a fertilized egg as a person was unconstitutional  a decision the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review in 2012.

On Jan. 17, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Georgia, and 25 other Republicans introduced federal personhood legislation. House Resolution 586, also called the Sanctity of Life Act, would give human rights to fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. Critics have said the legislation could be interpreted to ban some forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilization and stem cell research.

Chuck Baldwin, the pastor at Liberty Fellowship and keynote speaker of the rally, said people who truly want to end abortion will vote out any legislator who doesnt support personhood.

We need to get behind Derek Skees, he said. We need to let him know that we appreciate him.

Annie Bukacek, president of the Montana Pro-Life Coalition, discussed the different kinds of abortion legislation, including heartbeat bills, fetal homicide and forced ultrasound bills. She said the legislation hasnt been successful in saving a life.

Personhood legislation is the only way to abolish, not regulate abortion, she said.

Other speakers included Public Service Commissioner Roger Koopman, former Rep. Rick Jore and Debbie Otto, director of Hope Family Resource Center.
HELENA  About 50 Helena businesses have signed up for Open to All-Helena, an initiative aimed at increasing the visibility of LGBTQ patrons, employees and their supporters.

Kim Leighton, Pride Foundation regional development organizer, said the reaction to the project is encouraging. Leighton helped organize a rally Thursday evening at Hub Coffee to voice support for the LGBTQ community locally and nationwide.

"We're not going anywhere," Leighton told the crowd packed into the downtown eatery.

Identified by stickers featuring Helena's skyline in front of a rainbow flag, Open to All-Helena participants aim to provide a safe haven and develop policies and procedures that create a welcoming environment.

Leighton said two Helena businesses, The Painted Pot and Murry's, have updated to gender-neutral bathrooms recently.

The movement has extended to churches and other nonprofit organizations.

Thursday's gathering was spurred by news of a proposed executive order that critics say could lead to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender or gender identity if it is signed by President Donald Trump.

Anna Doran, owner of Big Dipper Ice Cream, said she heard about the anticipated order on Facebook.

"I said, 'oh hell no.' You're not going to do this to my friends," Doran said to those gathered.

Doran said she wanted to attend the rally to offer her support as a business owner and friend.

"I love all you guys," she added.

Shalon Hastings, who owns Hub Coffee and Taco Del Sol in Helena, said she finds it an honor to have workers who are comfortable being themselves.

"Look at this amazing crowd that is here to celebrate that as well," Hastings said.
BILLINGS  What can we do, Dad?

It was just before Christmas and the Jarecke family of Joliet was distraught about the safety of their extended family in Syria. Family members have been kidnapped and one was killed.

They posed the question to their father, Ken Jarecke, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist who has covered the Gulf War and 10 Olympic Games, in addition to photographing the people of Syria where his wife, Souad, was born.

Ken Jarecke said their fear has grown to the point that they don't mention Syrian family members by name, fearing for their safety.

Souad immigrated to the U.S. with her parents and siblings when she was 3. She is a naturalized citizen of the United States, but she has close relatives in Syria, where 250,000 have died and 7.6 million have been displaced since 2011.

Since the Jarecke children, ages 16 to 22, were raised so far away from their mother's homeland they wanted to send help. Jarecke's agent suggested a fundraiser featuring Jarecke's portraits of Syrians, many of which were taken on Jarecke's last trip there in 2006.

'I can smell the mist'

One stunning photo showing a man diving off an ancient water wheel into the Orontes River evokes strong memories of a beautiful place that may no longer exist.

I can smell the mist. The water wheels create a mist and I can smell that, Jarecke said.

Jarecke wrote this about the image: "Young men ride these ancient water wheels, known as norias, and either jump or dive off, depending on their level of skill. It's quite a show and many come to watch the spectacle as the sun goes down."

Jarecke got help selecting the 12 collectible prints he is offering for sale at a price much lower than his usual rate. They are available at jarecke.bigcartel.com. In just over a month, Jarecke has almost reached his goal of raising $25,000 for Syria. Individual archival prints signed and printed by Jarecke are $185 or you can purchase six for $810.

The Jareckes have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for their fundraising effort. Huffington Post recently wrote about it.

Its surprising in a delightful way. Its different than just getting likes on Facebook or Instagram  its people making an investment to bring these photos into their homes, Jarecke said.

One photograph of a young boy leading his camel in the ancient city of Palmyra had never been printed before Jarecke put it up for sale in December 2016. That photo is one of the most popular in the series.

Jarecke wrote this about the image: "I'm not sure what remains of this ancient city. To me, it was a true treasure. As a kid growing up in Omaha, Palmyra was what I imagined the exotic Arab world to be."

Showing empathy

Another photo shows a group of children sharing swings made out of wire, tied around a low-hanging tree branch.

Jarecke said he tries to convey his empathy for every subject.

"You need to capture the image so the viewer can recognize themselves in it. Without empathy, the images have a very short shelf life."

Jarecke is still offering the prints for sale, but he is not actively promoting the project because he's been both appreciative and overwhelmed with orders.

The money is being donated to International Orthodox Christian Charities, which is helping supply clean water, food and medical care in Syria.

Some people have mailed in donations without asking for a print, and a church in Chicago contacted Jarecke for assistance in sending a representative and money to Syria.

The Jareckes stay in touch with their Syrian relatives, mostly on Facebook. Jarecke said the relatives tell them things are getting better in Syria, but he suspects they are putting a positive spin on a dire situation.

He wants to return to Syria, but he fears it will be hard for Souad to get back into the country.

'Treasure of my life'

The Jareckes moved to Joliet in 1992, and the Jarecke children attend Laurel High School, Rocky Mountain College and Montana State University.

On Jarecke's first trip to Syria in 1993, he and Souad visited one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world, Our Lady of Saidnaya. A nun whispered to Souad that she was with child. Nine months later, their first child, Shadya, was born.

Now 22 and a student at Rocky Mountain College, Shadya has helped promote the Syrian prints.

"I am so proud of my dad. He's one of the most compassionate people I know," Shadya said.

Jarecke and Souad met in the 1980s when they attended the University of Nebraska in Omaha. In 1989, Jarecke moved to New York to work for Life and Time magazines. A friend suggested that Souad get in touch with Jarecke so he could show her around New York.

For their first real date, he left Beijing where he was on assignment to photograph the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, which led to the June 4, 1989, massacre.

I called her and said, Its my grandmas birthday. Maybe you can have dinner with us. Her sister said, Hes calling from China, you have to say yes. I left China to make this date and I didnt even tell my editors I left. I upset a lot of people, but I got the greatest treasure of my life  my wife.
POLSON  No bill regulating houseboats has yet been introduced in the Montana Legislature, but a draft of a potential one is undergoing legal review in Helena.

The tentative language of LC 2116 would prohibit a vessel from being moored, anchored, fastened to the shore or otherwise secured in state waters for more than five days within any 28-day period, unless it is moved at least five nautical miles from its previous location.

It would not affect boats kept at marinas and private docks.

Live-aboard houseboats have become an issue on Flathead Lake recently, with two taking up permanent, year-round residence in Somers Bay. The larger is more of a house barge, with 1,100 square feet of living space sitting atop its pontoons.

Concerns include potential sewage breaches into what is considered one of the cleanest large lakes on Earth, and the possibility that more people, priced out of the lakeshore market, could use the lack of regulations to anchor barges, houseboats, cabin cruisers and larger sailboats in public water for use as stationary floating lake cabins.

State Rep. Mark Noland, R-Bigfork, requested the Montana Legislative Services Division to draft a potential bill. Noland did not return a phone message Thursday.

He, or other legislators, would have to formally introduce the bill by March 1 for it to be considered in the 2017 legislative session.

***

Flathead Basin Commission members voted unanimously at their meeting at the Lake County Courthouse Thursday to support LC 2116. Twice.

The first time, they believed the draft bill  which is not yet available on state websites because it has not been introduced  would only call for a study of the issue.

Regulating houseboats is a super tricky matter, Executive Director Caryn Miske said. If you start to get a big houseboat parking lot on the lake, there are concerns about lines breaking and spills.

LC 2116, she said she had been told, would call for looking at the issue, impacts and potential solutions, including how other places regulate the vessels. The earliest the Legislature might act on regulations would be 2019.

After the vote, and during the lunch break, a reporter obtained a copy of the draft, which is public record, from the Legislative Services Division in Helena.

Alerted that there was no language pertaining to studying the issue, only to new regulations, the commission took the matter up again in the afternoon.

I think we have to support it, Miske said. It would be great to have regulations moving forward. Because its being done in speedy fashion there may be questions about whether its working as intended. If there are things on the edges that need to be fixed, they can be.

The commission does not meet again until April, too late to be able to support or oppose the potential bill in this session, making Thursday the one time the vote could be taken.

***

Houseboats presently skirt the authority of virtually every state agency.

Thompson Smith, chairman of the Flathead Basin Commission, explained it in a Nov. 9 letter to Gov. Steve Bullock.

The Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation can enforce regulations related to navigable waters and construction permits for permanent structures, Smith said, but has no authority to regulate houseboats with non-permanent anchors.

The Montana Department of Environmental Quality can enforce state water quality standards for discharges, but if the houseboats dispose of waste properly, DEQ has no recourse.

Flathead County has no authority because the lake is not zoned and the Lakeshore Protection Act pertains solely to the construction of permanent structures. And Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks regulates boating safety, not residential use.

If you look through the regulations, theres nothing specific to houseboats, FWP Warden Capt. Lee Anderson told the Missoulian last fall. Thats where it falls into that no-mans land.

***

The draft bill currently carries an onerous title: An Act Prohibiting Unlawful Mooring By Any Vessel; Providing Definition of a Fixed Vessel; Expanding the Authority of the Fish and Wildlife Commission; Requiring Registration, Registration Fees, Validation Decals, Identifying Numbers and Certain Equipment for Fixed Vessels; Clarifying Definitions; and Amending 

It goes on to list more than half-a-dozen parts of the Montana Code Annotated.

Its really just amending parts of existing law, Miske said after looking over the first couple of pages she was provided during the lunch break.

It adds a definition of a fixed vessel  a vessel not actually used for navigation that is moored, anchored, fastened to the shore or otherwise secured on the waters of the state  and inserts fixed vessel into several parts of laws that already apply to motorboats, sailboats and personal watercraft.

It also says the five-day limit within a 28-day period may be reached through either a number of separate moorings, or five days of continuous overnight occupation.

Lake County Commissioner Dave Stipe, a member of the Flathead Basin Commission, warned that there would need to be a way to exempt dock-builders and their barges on Flathead Lake.
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mjbs/iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Senior White House administration officials told ABC News Thursday that new sanctions on Iran are in the works and could come as soon as [Friday].



The sanctions are President Donald Trumps administration's response to Irans ballistic missile test on Sunday. Just Wednesday National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn said the White House was "officially putting Iran on notice.



The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity, and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place Americans lives at risk, Flynn said.



Flynn said some of Irans provocative behavior included the ballistic missile launch and an attack conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants on a Saudi naval vessel on Monday.



Sanctions banning non-U.S. companies from doing business in Iran were largely lifted beginning in January 2016 after it complied with an international agreement intended to ensure its nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful. Most sanctions that apply to U.S. entities remain in place.



Secondary sanctions on foreign firms over Iran's alleged support for terrorism, human rights abuses and its missile and advanced conventional weapons programs also remain in place.



Iran tested a medium-range ballistic missile on Sunday that exploded after traveling 550 miles within Iranian territory, Pentagon sources said. It is currently under dispute whether or not Iran violated a United Nations Security resolution meant to bar the country from developing a ballistic missile arsenal.



This is the first known Iranian ballistic missile test under the Trump presidency, but Iran conducted similar tests during the Obama administration.



Sen. Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, and an official who has been consulting with the White House confirmed a plan for further sanctions on Iran was in the works.



I think you are going to see a coordinated effort sanctions-wise and other in multiple ways against Iran, Corker said in a live interview on MSNBC Thursday morning. Its too early to talk about military options.



In a background briefing with reporters, senior White House administration officials also said they are considering a number of options but did not offer a direct reply on whether or not military action is off the table.



Were in a deliberative process, the White House official said. The important thing here is we are communicating that Iranian behavior needs to be rethought by Tehran, that we consider these actions to be inherently destabilizing and a threat to our friends and allies.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Economist John Kasperick of NorthWestern Energy shared the following southwest Montana and Silver Bow County 2016 Review and Outlook Population and Demographics at the 42nd annual Economic Outlook Seminar on Thursday in Butte:

 The 2015 Census estimate showed a total population of 71,546 people in the five southwest Montana counties. Growth in southwest Montana has been very slow since 2000. Between 2000 and 2015, the areas population increased by 1,092 people, or 1.5 percent, compared to an average statewide increase of 14.5 percent over this time. Silver Bow Countys population has remained flat since 2000.

 Southwest Montana has an older population base than the overall statewide average, which also contributes to fewer people per household. 19% of the population is 65 years and older compared to 17.2% statewide and a U.S. average of 14.9%.

 The median value home price in southwest Montana is 20% below the statewide average. A lower owner-occupied housing level in Silver Bow County is due in part to the college and renters.

 Per-capita income in southwest Montana exceeds the statewide average. Silver Bow Countys per-capita income ranks 16th highest of the 56 counties. However, southwest Montana has a higher poverty rate. A total of 11,400 people in southwest Montana fall below the poverty level, or 16.0% of the population, compared to 14.6% statewide and 13.5% U.S. average.

 As of November 2016, Southwest Montana had a total labor force 35,795 people with 34,446 employed and 1,349 unemployed. The unemployment rate stood at 3.8%, compared to a statewide average of 3.7%. Between November 2015 and November 2016, total employment in southwest Montana fell by 258 workers, or -0.7%, due to reductions in Silver Bow and Powell Counties. During this same time period, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.1% to 3.8% in southwest Montana, and the number of unemployed fell by 135 people. This drove the overall labor force to decline by 393 people between 2015 and 2016. Overall since the Great Recession started in 2007, employment in Silver Bow County has been relatively flat.

Industry Employment  Silver Bow County:

Silver Bow Countys total employment grew between 2000 and 2007. With the Great Recession, total employment fell nearly 1,000 workers between 2007 and 2010. Overall between 2000 and 2010, employment was relatively flat. Employment between 2010 and 2016 is up approximately 500 workers. With reductions at Golden Sunlight, the federal government, MSE, and engineering and the reduction of temporary construction workers after the NorthWestern Energy building completion, employment fell 176 workers between 2015 and 2016.

 Between 2010 and 2016, employment growth was driven by health care and social assistance. This is also the countys largest industry, due in part to the aging population in Silver Bow County.

Income and Earnings:

Employment growth in Silver Bow County has occurred in some of the below-average paying industries. This has contributed to a reduction in per-capita income in the county. Low commodity prices have also hurt our highest-paying industry.

Outlook  Silver Bow County:

 Goods-producing industries including mining, manufacturing, and construction have remained soft. The Highlands gold mine development could help the longer-term outlook. New basic industry jobs are needed to continue to help spur service-industry growth and reverse the aging-population trend.

 Service-producing industries have expanded with continued growth in the health and social services sector. This is the countys largest industry.

 Major employers (NorthWestern Energy, St. James Healthcare, and Montana Tech) continue to perform well. Commodity prices continue to impact base industry employers.

Going forward, without attraction of new employers to the area, Silver Bow County is anticipated to remain flat. Federal and state government funding levels and legislative outcomes impact our areas.

 Diversification over the years has led to a stable economy in Silver Bow County.

 Need to focus on attraction of new businesses going forward.
High-wage jobs, an affordable cost of living, and an amazing quality of life comprise the holy trinity that attracts new residents to an area, an economist with Butte roots said Thursday.

But theres a catch  economists know you cant have all three, said Bryce Ward, the heath care research director at the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana-Missoula.

Instead, he suggests civic leaders need to promote their communitys strongest assets that fall within the framework of population growth and migration.

The key questions to ask, he said, include: Do people want to live here and why or why not?

Speaking to about 80 business leaders at the annual state economic outlook seminar in the NorthWestern Energy building, Ward touched briefly upon a variety of topics dealing with Montana's job outlook.

He said people are attracted to Montana in general.

The state ranks 14th overall for migration rate, defined as a choice to move to improve ones standard of living by gaining a better-paying job.

A 2013 Gallup poll determined that 77 percent of Montanans reported that the state is the best place to live  tops in the nation. In 2015, only 13 percent of Montanans reported they would like to move to another state  again, lowest in the nation.

But wanting to live here and actually doing it dont always coincide.

When Ward asked the audience how many of them have adult children who live and work out of state, about two-thirds of them raised their hands.

An ongoing problem is that 65 percent of Montana natives live out of state.

We export college-educated people, he said.

One piece of the jobs puzzle remains elusive to the Bureau of Business and Economic Research. Stories abound about more Montana folks working from home today, but the census does not capture that type of data.

Veteran economist Paul Polzin said while the bureau searched for data on people working from home in the internet-accessible age in the last 10 years, nothing reliable came from the study.

However, Ward, 40 and a three-year Missoula resident, said he knows a lot of adults who work from home.

One couple works from home in Portland, Oregon, but Ward said they have another goal:

Some of our friends from Portland met in Butte. Shes from Whitehall, and hes from Tennessee. But their whole goal is to get back to Butte. They love Butte, Ward said.

Anecdotally, more Butte natives and retirees seem to be returning home after ending careers in other states.

Ward is upbeat about the potential to work from anywhere thanks to online accessibility.

There are jobs here in Butte for knowledge-workers, he said, pointing to managing, marketing, community relations, and finance experts plus Butte manufacturing firms with engineers and sales managers, for example.

He also doesnt want the public to discount little-known high-tech companies like Vim & Vigr compression legwear in Missoula that employs between 25 and 50 employees.

Ward mentioned in passing that his maternal great-great-grandfather David Adams lived in Butte in the 1880s for a time, coming out here from Iowa.

Flash-forward to the present and what still draws people here.

Thats the interesting thing to me  people who live here love Butte, added Ward. They like the bars, they like the festivals, they like Butte.
Police reports

STUCK ON TRACKS

Police recovered a vehicle stolen Tuesday on Front Street and returned it to its owner Wednesday but said the man then got the vehicle stuck on the train tracks near the 1400 block of East Second Street. Police said Joshua Robinson was reunited with his vehicle and proceeded to drive it down the train tracks for an unknown reason Thursday around 9:30 a.m. Robinson got the vehicle stuck on the tracks on BNSF property, blocking a train, and was cited by police for trespassing. Robinson was not arrested but will have to appear in court. His car was towed from the tracks.
Police reports

CRASH, THEN DUI ARREST

Police responded to Front and Utah at 5:15 p.m. Thursday on a report of a two-car collision. No injuries were reported, but police said one driver's breath smelled of alcohol. The woman failed sobriety tests at the scene and was taken to the jail for additional tests until police determined it would be unsafe for her to continue the tests given her condition. The woman, Dianne Den, 67, blew over twice the legal limit and was arrested for aggravated DUI, driving without insurance, and reckless driving.
Anaconda police arrested a man Monday that court documents allege was the drug supplier for a county dog catcher caught by a hidden camera on Jan. 23 smoking meth in a government truck.

Jeremy Rivers, 39, was booked into the Anaconda-Deer Lodge County jail for felony possession of drugs with intent to sell, two counts of misdemeanor drug possession, two counts of misdemeanor drug paraphernalia possession, and one felony count of using property subject to forfeit.

Rivers is identified by police in the charging document of Anaconda dog catcher Braden Blodnick as "Muddy Rivers," the man's meth supplier, according to a drug user who informed on Blodnick after getting caught with a meth pipe.

Blodnick was arrested on Jan. 23 and pleaded not guilty Wednesday to 16 charges that include drug possession, theft, and criminal endangerment of a child.

Hidden camera footage obtained by Anaconda police with a warrant showed Blodnick smoking meth in the county truck before picking up his girlfriend's child from school, and after arrest, Blodnick was caught trying to flush drugs down a jail toilet.

Rivers was sentenced in April 2016 in Anaconda-Deer Lodge County to a six-year suspended sentence for drug possession and intent to distribute related to a December 2014 arrest. He was still on probation when arrested Monday.

The charging document also states an Anaconda parent worried about their son's drug habit told police that Rivers obtained the meth he gave to Blodnick from a "big dealer" in Deer Lodge nicknamed "Trashy."

Powell County Sheriff Scott Howard said Thursday his department hasn't arrested anyone like that in Deer Lodge recently.
Days after a raid on an al Qaeda compound in Yemen led to the first US military combat death under Donald Trump, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released an audio message taunting the new American President.
The "alt right" (alternative right) scream about immigrants and refugees, even foreign students, tourists, and business travelers, as if all were the same, as if different words did not have different meanings.

But then, in some cases, different words dont have different meanings. The alt right is a pseudonym for white nationalists.

President Donald Trump is promoting white nationalism rather than representing the delightfully diverse population of this country. He has closed the borders to refugees, limited immigration, and created obstacles to international travelers, including tourists bound for Montana.

The founders of this nation adopted the U.S. Constitution and thereby established the United States as a nation of law, the Constitution being the supreme law of the land. Trump fired the acting Attorney General for upholding the law on immigration. That is so very, very wrong. He can fire people if he wants, but this firing was for all the wrong reasons.

Of course, in the right-wing rhetoric, a foreigner is a foreigner and a foreigner is a bad thing. But that is not so.

Most of us have ancestors who came from foreign lands. In fact, according to the Pew Research Center, 20 million American adults are the U.S.-born children of immigrants.

Anyone who moves to the United States becomes a neighbor of ours!

The movement of people into North America in general and into the United States in particular has historically stimulated the economy and helped keep taxes low by international standards.

Writing for Forbes, Katie Sola explained "why welcoming refugees is a sound economic investment as well as a moral imperative." In a special report for the New Scientist, Debora MacKenzie documented how "welcoming more refugees makes economic sense." Writing for ABC, Tim Dunlop stated that "accepting refugees makes the most economic sense." Even the head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, says that refugees stimulate the economy.

The flood of refugees is helping communities not only survive but thrive. That is the case abroad as well as domestically. Two examples are Riace, Italy, and Utica, New York. Refugees revived the dying town of Riace, and refugees turned around the economy of Utica.

Nonetheless, the United States ranks 68th of 93 nations offering asylum to refugees. The Refugee Project reported that, as of 2015, there are less than 250,000 refugees living in the United States.

Refugees are people who fled their homelands for safety, and they cannot safely return.

"No one chooses to become a refugee," explains Amnesty International.

But the United States continues to be number one in weapons sales on the global market. The U.S. sold $40 billion in weapons in 2015. That number dropped to $33 billion in 2016, but it is still a huge number. Those weapons  and American profits  contributed to the displacement of people from their homes, their communities, and even their countries of origin.

Rather than Muslim terrorists, as Trump and his alt-right, white nationalist followers would have us believe, the refugees who settled in the U.S. in 2015 were mostly from China, followed distantly by Haiti, and more distantly by El Salvador, South Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Syria ranks 12th among countries of origin, despite social media and even some news media focusing on Syrian "terrorists" coming into the country under the guise of refugee. And Mexico is 15th despite the Mexican border's role in American politics.

Accepting refugees is a humanitarian act that benefits refugee and host country alike.

Returning refugees to a place of danger is against the humanitarian principle of non-refoulement, non-return. The principle of not forcing refugees to places of danger is firmly established in international conventions and in customary practice dating back to ancient times.

I welcome refugees, and immigrants, foreign students, and international travelers on business or pleasure trips!

I welcome refugees!

 Anne Millbrooke is a historian who lives in Bozeman.
Butte Representative Jim Keane told a joint subcommittee on January 27, 2017, it should not just thank veterans for their service but it should do something. He wanted the members, and the Legislature, to pass an infrastructure bill that would fund, among other things, a veterans' home in southwest Montana.

There are approximately 100,000 veterans living in Montana. Thats approximately 10 percent of our citizens who have served our state and country with honor. I served nearly eight years in the U.S. Army as an enlisted soldier and had two combat tours in the Middle East. I am lucky enough not to need the Veterans Administration or any other services.

But others do and I strongly support anyone and any effort that supports those who need them. Not only will this assisted-living facility in Butte provide much-needed care and shelter to our veterans, it will provide approximately 100 jobs for those providing medical care and assistance to our veterans.

We cannot leave them behind, especially as the Trump administration puts veterans out in the cold. We must do something by investing in Build Montana and the Southwest Montana Veterans Home. That is the easiest way to show our thanks.

--Joshua Manning, Helena
BILLINGS  When a pair of rural Republicans announced Wednesday they would vote against Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos's confirmation, Democrats needed only one more defection to swing a 'no' vote. It sparked a flurry of speculation about other rural Republicans that could flip.

Don't expect it to be Montana Sen. Steve Daines.

Daines has been an ardent supporter of DeVos, a Detroit billionaire, and said that she endorses his education proposal that would make sweeping changes to federal funding and let schools opt out of federal accountability programs.

That hasn't stopped local education advocates from burning up the phones.

"As a 27-year educator, it was excruciatingly painful to listen to this woman, whos supposedly going to be the face of public education," said Missoula Education Association president Melanie Charlson.

The Missoula union has a postcard-writing campaign, board members wrote letters, and the group has taken to social media. In Billings, the local union hasn't launched a formal campaign, but president Rita Wells said that many members have been contacting Montana's senators.

"(DeVos) has absolutely no experience with public education," Wells said.

DeVos's confirmation hearing left many teachers and education groups miffed by her support for easing laws banning guns in schools and her apparent confusion about a federal law for students with disabilities.

DeVos's signature issue is the expansion of school choice she helped drive in Detroit. Many public-school advocates have argued that Detriot's system has a checkered record of success and poor accountability.

In rural states, experts have questioned whether programs supporting vouchers or charter schools would have a significant effect; having a small population across a far-flung area often means that there are few choices other than local public schools. Advocates argue that if small schools lose per-student money, it would have a disproportionate effect on the quality of education.

Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, one of the Republicans who defected Wednesday, specifically questioned DeVos's rural chops.

"I'm concerned that Mrs. DeVos's lack of experience with public schools will make it difficult for her to fully understand, identify and assist with those challenges, particularly for our rural schools in states like Maine," a statement from her office said.

No Senate Democrat has said they will vote for DeVos, including Montana's Jon Tester, who blasted her school choice advocacy.

A Daines spokeswoman said that his office has gotten calls urging both support and rejection of DeVos and that Daines's stance remains unchanged.

A Thursday search of Twitter posts citing Daines's account with DeVos's name showed many tweets urging "no" votes. A Tester spokesman said his office heard from more than 3,000 people on DeVos, 95 percent of whom urged a "no" vote.

Critics have also zeroed in on political donations to Republican senators from DeVos and her family; Daines received $5,200 from DeVos in his 2014 campaign and $41,600 from other members of her family. Daines and other senators, who have received almost $1 million in total from the DeVos family, have brushed off calls to recuse themselves from DeVos's confirmation vote.

DeVos's confirmation still appears likely, as no other Republicans have indicated they'll vote against her. A political analysis story from "Education Week" speculated that Republican leadership was unconcerned by the public defections of Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

"Those two senators can please voters in their home states who don't like DeVos, without ultimately sinking DeVos' nomination and facing political backlash from GOP leadership and (President Donald) Trump," it reads.

Democrats protested when Republican leaders limited questioning at DeVos's confirmation hearing; outside of DeVos's school choice advocacy, there's little known about her education policies.

Her apparent support for Daines's accountability opt-out is perhaps her most illuminating statement on the topic; during an exchange with Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine in her hearing, she responded to repeated questions about whether she would support applying the same accountability measures to any school that receives taxpayer money with the phrase "I support accountability" four times in a row, including when Kaine asked, "Do you not want to answer my question?"
MISSOULA  The Poffenroths were the last to arrive.

The family waited until the last minute to enter the courtroom at Russell Smith Federal Courthouse on Thursday morning so their 2-year-old, Grace, could get the wiggles out before sitting through the naturalization ceremony.

Benji Poffenroth, a Canadian, is now a U.S. citizen after taking the oath alongside 20 others  from Belarus, Canada, Colombia, Finland, Germany, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Thailand and Ukraine.

"Can I get a wave from everybody?" Poffenroth said before the ceremony began, standing up in the rows of soon-to-be-citizens for a selfie, capturing the crowd in the background.

Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch presided over the ceremony, apologizing because a criminal trial pushed the ceremony into a smaller courtroom.

"It gives us good togetherness, right?" he said.

The last-minute scheduling also meant there were no snacks and drinks, and no national anthem. Lynch tried to get the spokespeople for U.S. Sens. Jon Tester and Steve Daines to sing  a no-go.

***

Lynch recognized the significance of the ceremony's timing.

Last week, President Donald Trump's executive order banned nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for at least 90 days.

The order prompted protests and chaos at airports nationally and worldwide. Hundreds of protesters took to Missoula's streets Sunday to decry the travel ban, which also impacts refugees.

Montana's senators split on the issue, as Daines, a Republican, agreed with Trump's decision and saying that "anything less than 100 percent verification of these refugees backgrounds puts our national security at risk."

In a letter, Daines encouraged the new citizens to become engaged and informed.

"The strength of the United States always comes from our willingness to open our arms to people from all around the world," Daines wrote.

Tester, a Democrat, called the executive order harmful, saying "We must take strong steps to protect our nation from those who want to harm us, but we cannot sacrifice our religious freedom and our American values."

In Tester's letter read aloud Thursday, he pointed out that immigrants helped build this country, and "they make it great."

***

The final words of the Pledge of Allegiance, "liberty and justice for all," are inspiring and "a moving ideal," Lynch said Thursday.

He called on the words of George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy to drive his point home.

After MLK was assassinated, Kennedy said, "What we need in the United States is not hatred, what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another..."

"Reflecting on Kennedy's words today would do us all well," Lynch said.

In the last decade, 6.6 million people have been naturalized, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"Unfortunately, the beacon of America is burning a bit dimly today," Lynch said. "The billows of intolerance have persisted since our founding."

While the country has come a long way, Lynch said oppression and intolerance are too often ignored or not believed today. Politically or personally, some Americans, Lynch said, have "encouraged that growth."

"The greatest threat to our democracy does not come from enemies abroad or our economy, it's if we allow ourselves to become intolerant," he said. "We must all remember that our rights and liberties are only as secure as those of our neighbors, even those with whom we disagree."

The new citizens have earned the right to vote and to serve on a jury  two responsibilities, Lynch said, that "form the backbone of our democracy."

"Your work is just beginning," he said. "You must be thoughtful and informed citizens.

"That means informed voting. I emphasize today: informed voting."

***

Lynch's speech struck a chord with Laura Marcela Tirado Rios.

"It really made me excited about becoming a citizen," she said. "He encouraged us to become active and become part of democracy to make America more tolerant again, and accepting of diversity. That's what this country is based upon."

Rios came to America from Colombia several years ago to work. On the job at Showdown Ski Area, she met her future husband, Evan Haugan. In March, they'll celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary.

The path to citizenship is long, Rios said, but worth it.

It was a similar story for the Poffenroths.

This month marks 10 years since Benji Poffenroth came to the United States to volunteer at Youth With A Mission in the Flathead.

"I wasn't expecting to stay this long," he said, but then he met his wife Aubree, who's originally from Oregon.

Their son Roman is a month old. His birth meant they missed Poffenroth's original naturalization ceremony in Helena; Thursday's in Missoula was a shorter drive for the family, since they live in Lakeside.

"It was an incredible speech, and timely," Poffenroth said of Lynch. "We've got a ways to go.

"We're still a land of immigrants."
HELENA  The families of 21 soldiers from across Montana wished their loved ones well Thursday morning as the platoon set off to deploy to Asia.

Gov. Steve Bullock also was on hand at the Montana Army Aviation Support Facility in Helena to thank the soldiers for their service.

The group from the 1-189th General Support Aviation Battalion took part in a departure ceremony. The 21 soldiers will train at Ford Hood in Texas before heading to Southwest Asia to provide medical evacuation helicopter support.

"Montana's soldiers and airmen continue to deploy in harm's way as they serve our nation," said Maj. Gen. Matthew Quinn, the adjutant general for Montana. "I ask all Montanans to keep these soldiers in their thoughts and wish them and their families safety and success during this deployment."

The battalion will be conducting medical evacuation missions for the next several months, according to Col. James Wilkins, state aviation officer for the Montana National Guard. Officials could not give specifics about the mission.

The same unit returned from a previous deployment to Southwest Asia in 2012.
HELENA  With encouragement from a new conservative administration and a supreme court nominee, almost 100 people gathered in the Capitol rotunda Thursday to advocate for a personhood amendment, which would effectively abolish abortion.

The second biennial Personhood Rally brought awareness to a goal to make Montana the first state to stop murdering preborn babies. The idea behind personhood legislation is that other laws are only regulating abortion and dont actually prevent people from getting one. The rally featured speakers who vowed to fight to overturn Roe v. Wade and get a personhood amendment added to the Montana Constitution and said the state could lead the nation in anti-abortion policy.

Several legislators including Ed Buttrey, R-Great Falls, and Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, attended the rally. Rep. Derek Skees, R-Kalispell, spoke after being introduced by his wife and emcee, Ronalee Skees. He applauded the revival of the Mexico City policy, which prevents foreign nongovernmental organizations from receiving assistance from the U.S. for family planning if they perform or promote abortions. A country becomes ineligible for U.S. assistance even if they didnt directly use U.S. funds for those services. It is often called the global gag rule by pro-choice advocates, who are prevented from mentioning abortion during counseling to remain eligible for funds.

Skees also applauded the nomination of Neil Gorsuch and said he expects the U.S. Supreme Court will see two additional judges while President Donald Trump is in office. He said he plans to bring a personhood bill before the Montana Legislature this session. The bill isnt listed on the Legislatures website.

We will lead the fight nationwide, and well overturn Roe v. Wade, Skees said.

The idea of personhood legislation is divisive among conservative legislators and pro-life organizations. A version of federal personhood legislation has been introduced and eventually failed for more than 10 years. The National Right to Life, the self-proclaimed largest pro-life organization in the country, doesnt support personhood legislation.

Past proposals of personhood legislation have either been rejected by voters or found to be unconstitutional.

Voters in Colorado, Mississippi, and North Dakota have rejected personhood amendments. In Alabama, a personhood bill was killed after a filibuster by Democrats. Pro-choice groups in Oklahoma filed a lawsuit to block a citizen initiative to establish personhood, and the state supreme court ruled that defining a fertilized egg as a person is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal in 2012.

On Jan. 17, Rep. Jody Hice, R-Georgia, and 25 other Republicans introduced federal personhood legislation. House Resolution 586, also called the Sanctity of Life Act, would give human rights to fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses. Critics have said the legislation could be interpreted to ban some forms of contraception, in-vitro fertilization and stem cell research.

Chuck Baldwin, the pastor at Liberty Fellowship and keynote speaker of the rally, said people who truly want to end abortion will vote out any legislator who doesnt support personhood.

We need to get behind Derek Skees, he said. We need to let him know that we appreciate him.

Annie Bukacek, president of the Montana Pro-Life Coalition, discussed the different kinds of abortion legislation, including heartbeat bills, fetal homicide, and forced ultrasound bills. She said the legislation hasnt been successful in saving a life.

Personhood legislation is the only way to abolish, not regulate, abortion, she said.

Mary Leslie reminded people that abortions dont happen in the Capitol. She said 40 Days for Life, an event where people pray for 24 hours a day outside of clinics, brings prayer directly to where abortions happen. Leslie said they dont have the numbers to provide prayer 24 hours a day in Helena, so theyll be taking shifts from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. outside of Planned Parenthood.

Other speakers included Public Service Commissioner Roger Koopman, former Rep. Rick Jore and Debbie Otto, director of Hope Family Resource Center.
IN RE THE CUSTODY OF

J.M.,

MARK MILLER,

Petitioner,

and Concerning

MORTICIA JACOBS,

Respondent.

TO THE ABOVE-NAMED RESPONDENT:

You are notified that a Petition to Establish Paternity, Custody and other issues of the minor child, J.M.. born in 2009, was filed in the office of the Clerk of this Court on January 26, 2017, naming you as Respondent in this action. The attorney for the Petitioner is Esther J. Dean, whose address is 1102 Park Avenue, Muscatine, Iowa 52761. That attorney's telephone number is (563)264-5523 and the facsimile number is (563)264-8406. The attorney's e-mail address is deanlaw@machlink.com.

You are notified that there will be a hearing on the application for temporary issues before the Iowa District Court for Muscatine County, at the Courthouse in Muscatine, Iowa, at 8:30 a.m. on the 9th day of February, 2017.

You must serve a motion or answer within 20 days after service of this original notice upon you, and within a reasonable time thereafter, file your motion or answer with the Clerk of Court for Muscatine. at the County Courthouse, Muscatine, Iowa. If you do not, judgment by default may be rendered against you for the relief demanded in the petition.

This case has been filed in a county that uses electronic filing. If you are going to represent yourseIf, you must register to eFile through the Iowa Judicial Branch website at

https://www.iowacourts.state.is.us/Efile and obtain a log in and password for filing and viewing documents in your case and for receiving service and notices from the court.

For further information on electronic filing, refer to the Iowa Courts Rules Chapter 16, Pertaining to the Use of the Electronic Document Management System, available on the Iowa Judicial Branch website. If you are unable to proceed electronically, you must receive permission from the court to file in paper. Contact the Clerk of Court in the county where the petition was filed for more information on being excused from the electronic filing. If you electronically file your Answer or Motion, it will be served automatically on the Petitioner or on the Petitioner's Attorney(s). A Notice of Electronic Filing (NEF) will tell you if the Court has excused Petitioner from electronic filing. If the Court has excused Petitioner from electronic filing, you must mail a copy of your Answer or Motion to the Petitioner.

If you need assistance to participate in court due to a disability, contact the disability coordinator at 563-263-6511. Persons who are hearing or speech impaired may call Relay Iowa TTY(1-800-735-2942.). Disability coordinator cannot provide legal advice.

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO RESPONDENT: YOU ARE ADVISED TO SEEK LEGAL ADVICE AT ONCE TO PROTECT YOUR INTERESTS.

STATE OF IOWA JUDICIARY

Case No. DRCV023839

County Muscatine

Case Title MARK MILLER V. MORTICIA JACOBS

THIS CASE HAS BEEN FILED IN A COUNTY THAT USES ELECTRONIC FILING.

Therefore, unless the attached Petition and Original Notice contains a hearing date for your appearance, or unless you obtain an exemption from the court, you must file your Appearance and Answer electronically.

You must register through the Iowa Judicial Branch website at

http://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/Efile and obtain a log in and password for the purposes of filing and viewing documents on your case and of receiving service and notices from the court.

FOR GENERAL RULES AND INFORMATION ON ELECTRONIC FILING, REFER TO THE IOWA COURT RULES CHAPTER 16 PERTAINING TO THE USE OF THE ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: http://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/Efile

FOR COURT RULES ON PROTECTION OF PERSONAL PRIVACY IN COURT FILINGS, REFER TO DIVISION VI OF IOWA COURT RULES CHAPTER 16: http://www.iowacourts.state.ia.us/Efile

Scheduled Hearing:

If you require the assistance of auxiliary aids or services to participate in court because of a disability, immediately call your district ADA coordinator at (563) 328-4145. (If you are hearing impaired, call Relay Iowa TTY at 1-800-735-2942.)

Date Issued 01/30/2017 10:57:00 AM District Clerk of Muscatine County

/s/ Traci Harper
Civil #: 16-002703

Special Execution

The Money Source Inc.,

VS.

Jacob E. Brown; Parties In Possession; Unknown Spouse Of Jacob E. Brown; State Of Iowa; State Of Iowa, ET AL.

As a result of the judgment rendered in the above referenced court case, an execution was issued by the court to the Sheriff of this county. The execution ordered the sale of defendant(s) Real Estate Described Below. To satisfy the judgment. The property to be sold is

Lots 9 and 10, in Block 1, of Hershey's Addition to the City of Muscatine, in Muscatine County, Iowa, commonly known as 817 Fuller Street, Muscatine, IA 52761 (The Property").

Property Address: 817 Fuller St., Muscatine, IA 52761

The described property will be offered for sale at public auction for cash only as follows:

Sale Date: 03/07/2017

Sale Time: 9:30 am

Place of Sale: Muscatine County Jail Lobby, 400 Walnut Street, Muscatine, IA 52761

This sale not subject to redemption.

Property exemption: Certain money or property may be exempt. Contact your attorney promptly to review specific provisions of the law and file appropriate notice, if applicable.

Judgment Amount: $152,682.20

Costs: $5,393.67

Accruing Costs: Plus

Interest: $13,849.11

Sheriffs Fees: Pending

Date: 01/20/2017

Attorney:

Emily Bartekoske

1401 50th St., Ste. 100

West Des Moines, IA 50266

(515)223-7325

C.J. Ryan

Muscatine County Sheriff

Melissa Hurlbut

Civil Deputy
JOHNSTON, Iowa  Although she said legislation to rebalance Iowas collective bargaining laws is nearly ready for consideration, House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, R-Clear Lake, shared few details about what changes legislative majority Republicans have in mind.

Were very close to having a bill ready that we can look at, Upmeyer said Friday during taping of Iowa Public Televisions "Iowa Press." Speculation around the Capitol is that Republicans, who control the House, Senate and Governors Office, will unveil their plans as soon as Monday.

Its been 40 years since Republican Gov. Robert Ray and the Legislature wrote Chapter 20 of the Iowa Code that sets out the collective bargaining process for local and state governments and public employees.

Since then, Upmeyer said, the balance has tipped in favor of between public employees.

Over the years, every time weve created a new mandate, every time a contract is reviewed, it is one more finger on the scale, she said. So what wed like to do is rebalance this a little bit.

Specifically, Republicans want to look at the arbitration process. Although both the public sector and private sector compete for the best and brightest minds, arbitrators are limited in comparing public employee wages to private sector wages when settling contracts.

That, Upmeyer said, turns taxpayers into an ATM machine. Rebalancing that a little differently would create a little more fairness.

Following the Senates lead, Upmeyer expects the House to Approve Senate File 2 to earmark about $3 million in state money to fund womens health-care clinics that do not offer abortion  a change opponents claimed would result in more unplanned pregnancies and fewer services in a political move to target Planned Parenthood.

Thats not a new position for House Republicans, Upmeyer said.

Weve passed this legislation, very similar wording, in our budget bills through the House in the past, she said. There are some new members of the GOP caucus, but she expects all of them will support SF 2 because it exactly what our supporters, the people at home, have asked us to do and that is not add dollars to abortion providers.

Iowa Press can be seen at noon Sunday on IPTV, at 8:30 a.m. Saturday on IPTV World and at www.IPTV.org.
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MUSCATINE, Iowa  First graders at Saints Mary and Mathias Catholic School have been building a rain forest in their classroom for the past eight weeks.

They practiced their presentation for the first time Thursday, reading aloud facts about rain forest animals to students from other classes. And later in the week, they will present the information to family, friends and peers.

The students built the rain forest layer by layer, starting with the floor and working their way up to the canopy, said first-grade teacher Madonna Klimes.

Each layer has their own sets of animals and plants, she added.

Each layer had its own art projects, from painting butterflies that hang on the wall to a giant nylon and newspaper boa constrictor that hangs from the ceiling. The students also created large leaves, with the help of Klimes and volunteer Barb Reesink. They learned that some leaves in the rain forest are 13-feet wide.

We had to take the tape measure out because they couldnt comprehend how much 13 feet would be, Reesink said.

Over winter break, Klimes used the leaves to construct a giant tree in one corner of the classroom.

They were really excited come January when we put the tree together and they saw all their hard work (and) how it came together, she said.

Students, Klimes said, learned about animals and their habitats in the process.

A lot of rain forests are being cut down and they learn the importance of keeping the rain forest alive and thriving, she said.

Klimes, who has been creating rain forests with her classes for the last 18 years, said her past students have fond memories of the rain forest they created in first grade.

They come back and theyre like, you still do the rainforest? and little do they know, it just keeps growing and growing and growing every year, she said.

Their first reaction is that was my favorite thing to do in first grade, Klimes said.

With the presentations concluding soon, Reesink and Klimes will take down the rainforest next week. Though Reesink is sad to see the forest go, she knows the forest is the stuff of memories.

Those are memories and Im glad they get to do that, she said.
MUSCATINE, Iowa  A great cup of coffee takes time, the right beans, knowledge of the process and a touch of love, according to Muscatines newest barista, Maritza Jeanett Vazquez. The young entrepreneur this week opened a coffee shop, The Coffee Belt, at 210 E. Second St.

There is so much more to coffee than people think, said Vazquez, a certified barista trained professionally on the history, cultivation and techniques of making a perfect, fresh cup of joe.

While The Coffee Belt will serve traditional drip coffee, Vazquez is partial to Italian drinks, such as espresso and lattes.

The pressure, measurements and preparing the milk are very important, she said. "I can drink a shot of espresso and tell if it is over extracted or under extracted. There are so many little things that happen to make the drink perfect."

The name The Coffee Belt was a thoughtful nod to the parts of the world where the climate is just right to grow coffee. Also known as the bean belt, the section of Earth between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer is where almost all of the worlds coffee is grown, and the countries there are very dependent on the export of the product.

I will be supporting family business-style farms, some in Third-World countries. I will be very selective of my products, Vazquez said, adding that she will be able to tell her customers where the beans she serves were grown and how long they were roasted.

Vazquez moved to Chicago after high school to attend Moody Bible Institute where she received her bachelor's degree in 2015. She loved the coffee shops, because they made her feel safe and comfortable in the big city. She loved the beauty of the coffee shops and that she had a cozy place to hang out. She hopes The Coffee Belt will provide that experience for Muscatine.

I realized very soon that city life wasnt for me, she said. "It is great, and I appreciated four years there, but this is where my heart is."

Vazquez has deep roots in Muscatine and comes from a family of entrepreneurs. Her mother, Lupe Vazquez, owns the Mexican restaurant Guadalajara next door to the coffee shop. The family worked for months to close off part of the restaurant to make room for The Coffee Belt. They spent weeks constructing the space and bringing back the old woodwork of the floor and ceiling that give it character. Maritzas father, Ramiro Vazquez, owns and operates North Construction, and her fiance Mario Martinez has been working construction with Ramiro but will help Maritza at the coffee shop.

I have a lot of love for Muscatine and downtown, she said. I love the history, and I really have hope for downtown Muscatine and am so happy to be here.
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 []
*Remember remember the fifth of November* *Gunpowder, treason and plot.* *Guy Fawkes Night*, aka *Bonfire Night*, is an annual celebration, primarily in G...

49 minutes ago
Kazungu Humadi Kadenge, 74, on Wednesday reported at Ganze Boys Secondary School where he was enrolled in Form One.

Mr Kadenge from Kimbule village, Ganze Constituency in Kilifi County opted to go back to class to escape being branded a sorcerer and to liberate himself from being looked down upon for being illiterate, the Standard reports.

The father of seven scored 134 marks in last years Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) at Ganze Primary School. He is determined to combat the stigma of illiteracy in a community where illiterate and poor people who cannot read the Bible are often associated with witchcraft.

Having dropped out of school in Standard Four about 50 years ago, Kadenge joined Ganze Primary School last year in Standard Three with special permission from the national government.

He was allowed to register for KCPE exams after proving to his teachers that he possessed basic literacy skills.

Kadenge had earlier escaped death narrowly on suspicion of being a sorcerer. His elder brother, however, was not lucky and was lynched by area residents.

Mr Kadenge is now schoolmates with two of his sons  one in Form Four and another in Form Two  after he refused an offer to join a school in Taita County.

In the future, the Form Onestudent wants to be the chairperson of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission to fight corruption, which he said had plagued the country.

-Additional Reporting by Standard.
Deputy President William Ruto yesterday came out to shut down reports that he has not been taking care of a child he sired out of wedlock.

Through lawyer Gitobu Imanyara, Prisca Chemutai Bett, accuses Ruto of failing to provide basic needs for his child. A 20 page document filed by the lawyers reads that the DP last gave the woman Sh35, 000 in 2013.

After the defendant assumed the office of the Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya, he discontinued offering any form of monetary support to us, leaving us in abject poverty, the woman claims.

But the response from Ruto was swift and straight.

On Twitter, the DP acknowledged that he is indeed the father of the child, and has been providing for her needs, including enrolling her in a private boarding school.

My 11 year old child Abby is well catered for including her education in private boarding school. Politicians& Busybodies should keep off. he tweeted.

Ruto added that he went out of his way to get the lady a good job, and has been sending Sh40,000 monthly upkeep. He then accused her of going ahead to get 3 more kids. The Deputy President read this as blackmail to have him take care of other mens children. He stated categorically that it wont work.

According to court documents, Ruto pursued the then university student in 2005. He was then the Eldoret North MP.

The defendant pursued me with various propositions for a romantic relationship, and owing to my gullibility as a young and naive person, I acquiesced to the advances, she said.

Their relationship resulted in the birth of a girl on March 6, 2006.

I, together with the daughter I bore with the defendant, was forced to move out of the house the defendant was paying for and move into a smaller house in a cheaper estate, Prisca adds.

I could no longer afford to pay the salary and upkeep, as well as the house help. It was at this point that I was compelled, out of necessity, to seek the counsel of my advocates, and whom I instructed to issue a demand and notice of intention to sue for child maintenance.

As Ruto maintains that he sends Sh40,000 monthly, the woman claims it was a one time thing.

She is now seeking Sh149, 000 monthly to cater for the childs monthly needs.
A police officer based in Nairobi was on Tuesday morning found dead inside a lodging in Huruma estate.

The police said the cause of the officers death has not yet been established but investigations are ongoing.

The lodging management told the police that the cop was not in the company of a partner when he checked in.

Nairobi police boss Japheth Koome said the officer had checked himself into the facility on Monday night.

We have taken the officers body to a Nairobi mortuary for autopsy. We are yet to know what caused his death. He had no body in juries, said the police boss.
Days after thugs broke into the house of Homa Bay governor Cyprian Awiti, another politician has had her house broken into and valuable goods stolen.

On Wednesday, the house belonging to Kisumu Deputy Governor Ruth Odinga was raided by burglars who made away with electronics and other valuables.

Police have launched investigations into the robbery at her home in Nyahera, Kisumu West.

On Tuesday night, armed men posing as CID detectives raided Homa Bay Governor Cyprian Awitis home in Hardy estate and stole Sh500,000 and jewellery.

Another Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) politician, Amason Kingi, had his house broken into on Thursday, January 26, where gangsters stole electronics and documents while the entire family was fast asleep in their Nyali house.
After that whole debacle involving rapper Xzibit, Kenyan femcee Stella Mwangi has it going for her in Hollywood.

After the backlash she received from Kenyans after claiming that she had battled American rapper Xzibit when she was 13, Kenyans are now celebrating her feature in American television series Being Mary Jane.

Her single titled Set It Off features as a soundtrack in the third episode of Season 4 which aired on 24th January,2017 (for American audience).

The single is off STLs recent self titled EP Stella Mwangi.

Another single off the EP, Big Girl has also been leased to Donut Media, which is an American production that specializes in producing TV and YouTube content on the freshest car, motorsports, supercars, auto news and car and prank videos every week.

Watch that scene in Being Mary Jane below:
A 43-year-old Napa man may face life in prison after a jury found him guilty of murder in Napa County Superior Court last Thursday afternoon.

After only one day of deliberations, a jury found Oscar Tapia Felix  the man who killed 69-year-old Rosalina Abalos Punieg Perez while drunk driving in America Canyon back in 2015  guilty of murder, evading a peace officer causing death and gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated.

There was never any question whether or not Tapia Felix was responsible for Perezs death  his own defense attorney, Ji-Hyun Cho, said during closing arguments on Wednesday that he took responsibility for her death, just not her murder.

Deputy District Attorney Agnes Dziadur disagreed.

On Oct. 24, 2015, Tapia Felix, now 43, left Mi Zacatecas Family Restaurant in American Canyon around 11:24 p.m. after drinking at least 11 beers, got into his pickup truck and started to drive. Not only did Tapia Felix have a blood alcohol content of at least .20 percent  more than twice the legal limit of .08 percent  but he had been kicked out of the restaurant and told not to drive by both a friend and security at the bar, Dziadur said.

While leaving the parking lot, Tapia Felixs vehicle collided with two parked cars and he drove down a nearby embankment before entering into a high-speed chase with an American Canyon Police Officer, Dziadur said.

Tapia Felix was speeding, running stop signs and driving without his headlights on, she said. The jury could see his driving for themselves in a police video of the chase.

Over the course of just a few minutes, Tapia Felixs truck could also be seen driving over a center median, travelling up to 86 mph northbound on Highway 29 and, finally, running a red light, smashing almost head-on into a minivan turning onto Eucalyptus Drive from Highway 29 South at about 11:30 p.m.

Inside the vehicle was Perez  a San Jose woman who worked as a nurse at Napa State Hospital. Perez died on impact when her minivan was hit. Authorities reported that she was on her way home from work.

Cho argued that Tapia Felix was guilty of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated but not second degree murder which implied that he had malice.

Cho said that Tapia Felix didnt intend to hurt anyone and that he may not have fully understood the risk he was taking when choosing to drive drunk that night. He was too drunk to make good decisions, she said.

Mr. Tapia Felix was reckless that night, she said. His driving pattern shows that hes not all there.

Being too drunk isnt a defense for murder, Dziadur argued.

This wasnt his first rodeo, she said. Tapia Felix has had three DUI convictions  in 1999 and 2002 in Arizona and in 2007 in Napa County. During the last conviction, she said, Tapia Felix was told that if he continued to drive under the influence and killed someone that he may be charged with murder. He even took a six-month DUI class, she said.

The idea that he didnt understand the risk of drunk driving or didnt know it was dangerous to human life was laughable, Dziadur said.

How many times does it take? she asked. Somebody had to die for his wake-up call? His wake up call should have been in 1999.

Following Thursdays verdict, Tapia Felix remained in custody of the Napa County jail. His sentencing is scheduled for April 5.

The murder conviction alone carries a punishment of 15 years to life in state prison.
The American Canyon Police are seeking assistance with identifying a woman suspected of breaking into some lockers, stealing a set of car keys and stealing a vehicle from an American Canyon gym.

The woman, described only as a white, adult female, entered the In-Shape on American Canyon Road, broke into several lockers in the womens restroom and stole a vehicle from the parking lot on Jan. 26, police said. Police said that the woman was assisted by another person who drove a different vehicle away from the scene.
Congregation Beth Shalom is hosting a conversation with investigative journalist Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting," about "Journalism, Information & Communication in a Changing World."

Rosenthal, who leads the largest nonprofit investigative reporting organization in the country, was formerly editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The community is invited to this conversation between Rabbi Lee Bycel and Rosenthal on Saturday, Feb. 11, at 4 p.m. at Congregation Beth Shalom, 1455 Elm St.

Registration is required by going to: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2858439
On Feb. 8 at 6 p.m., there will be a community meeting at Harvest Middle School for all concerned citizens over the future of the County Health Department campus and proposed development plans. The County Board of Supervisors wants to sell the property to private development interests after predetermining what the development will be. Affordable housing is the goal.

A previous study commissioned by the supervisors a few years back determined that the three 1902 Spanish Revival buildings could potentially qualify for the National Historic Register. The current board has indicated it wants a new study, which won't be cheap, evidently because it does not like the conclusion about the buildings.

If what is to built there concerns you, you should attend the public meeting and make your voice heard. Affordable housing is an important issue in this community but the issue should not be mutually exclusive of the concern to protect this city's past architectural heritage. Both concerns should be incorporated.

Nearby neighbors in the Gordon Terrace district and others are also rightly concerned about the preservation of the lawn crescent fronting Old Sonoma Road. The city should take advantage of the attractive setback and possible greenbelt use which is not only pleasing to the eye, but will provide a buffer of sorts to a high density development.

I lived through the destruction of historic structures in the 1970s, which produced uninspiring, cookie-cutter replacement buildings, many of which have already been replaced or should be. The infamous Dwight Murray Plaza, which is slated to be replaced, is such an example. I would challenge the Board of Supervisors to be cognizant of our local history when making their ultimate decisions.

In my opinion, if those buildings come down, the current board should go down in history with the brilliant minds who wreaked so much destruction in the 1970s in the name of progress. If the leadership in the small cities of Europe thought that way, we wouldn't have the beauty and charm that is so evident over there. They have honored their local history for centuries.

We should begin to do the same. Please attend the meeting on the 8th of Feb. and support a mutually agreeable outcome to this issue.

Daniel Cutright

Napa
I am reading how Napa County plans to deal with rule breakers. In going through the exhaustive 30-page Code Compliance manual, I am baffled, but hardly surprised, once again on the county's priorities.

In page after page, the codification and justification for the new rules is to prevent "the threat to public or private health and safety" and the avoidance of "nuisances which keep the community safe and livable. In addition, such rules are not to be "limited to Building Code/Residential Code violations.

Considered as offenses - beyond those of health and safety - are such things as "junk, vehicle storage, overgrown vegetation, litter and visual clutter" which are deemed "offensive to the senses, obstructing the free use of property or interfere with another person's reasonable use and enjoyment of their property.

The manual, in addressing use permit violators will also compel them to comply with the provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Really?

Protecting us all from nuisances, keeping our communities livable, protecting our quality of life and the enjoyment of our property, are all welcome and noble objectives.

And when Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza says that we "all have an interest in certain buildings to be safe and that wineries obey county laws" he is singing music to our ears. But behind the rhetoric, what is telling is not what is in the manual but what is left out.

The reality is that this manual is nothing but a smoke screen designed to sell the impression that the county is a law-and-order place. In the process, the Supervisors are creating a new bureaucracy picking to police the activities of the occasional little guy out in the country whose litter and overgrown vegetation has limited impact if any and leaves out those violators who do the disproportionate damage to the environment and the general public.

We all know why; they have a huge lobbying apparatus and finance their campaigns to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

While we are to have new standards and rules by which the little guys must abide or they will be referred to the District Attorney, winery use-permit violators do not need to comply with them. They have negotiated a much better deal. All they are required to do is go to the Supervisors and ask them to change the rules to fit their crimes so by the stroke of a pen they once again become law-abiding citizens. Planning Director Mr. Morrison assures the public that all will be fair and just because in the future, wineries will be required to file self-reports assuring the county that they comply with their use-permits. And then what?

The little guy is not afforded the equivalent of changing the law to allow them to keep their junk or their vehicle stored in their yard. This, of course, would be the wrong way, but legalizing violating winery use- permit activities is many times worse.

Let us be fair: Winery use-permit violators engage in much more destructive activities than ones affecting mere neighbors or neighborhoods. First and foremost, they circumvent the CEQA process because as the courts have ruled, such activities, even when they are egregious are grandfathered never, ever to undergo the process designed to protect the environment and the public.

Recent so-called use-permit modifications have involved the fouling of streams, converting homes to tasting rooms, trucking topsoil to grow grapes in places where no vineyards should be allowed, trucking water for irrigation, drilling caves and disposing tailings on the hillsides without erosion controls, increasing traffic by accepting more visitors and holding events ten times above permit levels, engaging in nuisance parties, even weddings with the police when called, refusing to enforce the law.

These are the 20 percent of bad apples discrediting our iconic wine industry, which impact its very self and all of us from Calistoga to American Canyon, impact our collective sense of fairness and our very trust in our colluding local government in an increasingly corrosive environment.

Stored vehicles, tall grasses, visual clutter; all legitimate perhaps, but: Give me a break. Who are we kidding?

George Caloyannidis

Calistoga
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg reaffirmed NATOs commitment to the security and stability of Kosovo during a visit to Pristina on Friday (3 February 2017). Meeting with KFOR Commander, Major General Giovanni Fungo, the Secretary General underscored the importance of NATOs mission in Kosovo and the need for continued dialogue and normalisation between Belgrade and Pristina. He thanked KFOR troops from many Allied and partner countries for their service, describing KFOR as a success story.

At a joint press conference with Mr. Isa Mustafa, the Secretary General stressed that for the past eighteen years, KFOR has been helping to transform Kosovo into a safer place. He expressed NATOs full support for the EU-sponsored dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, noting that he remains in close contact with EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and had spoken to her earlier in the day to discuss the importance of further progress.

Mr. Stoltenberg stressed NATOs commitment to the security and stability of Kosovo, including through capacity building. The new NATO Advisory and Liaison Team will play a key role in these efforts, including on cyber defence, science for peace, building integrity and fighting corruption. The Secretary General and Mr. Mustafa also discussed the need for continued commitment from all sides to exercise restraint and defuse tensions.

Mr. Stoltenberg also met with Mr. Hashim Thaci, Mr. Enver Hoxhaj and Mr. Branimir Stojanovic. He strongly encouraged Kosovo to continue on the path of dialogue and reconciliation. The Secretary General held further talks with heads of international organisations in Kosovo, including the United Nations, European Union, EULEX and the OSCE.
(As delivered)

Thank you and its a great pleasure to visit Pristina again. I visited Pristina as one of my first visits after I became Secretary General for NATO. And I'm glad to be back and to meet with you.

The stability of the Western Balkans is of critical importance for NATO. And KFOR remains a priority for the Alliance.

Because security and stability in this region is important to the security and stability of the whole of Europe.

KFOR is our longest-running operation. Now, with around 4,500 troops on the ground.

For the past eighteen years, KFOR has been helping transform Kosovo into a safer place.

And today, NATOs footprint in Kosovo goes beyond our military presence. We are also committed to capacity building. Our new NATO Advisory and Liaison Team will play a key role in these efforts. Including with support to the Kosovo Security Force within its current mandate.

We have also agreed to step up our interaction with Kosovo, in many different areas including cyber defence,

science for peace, and building integrity and fighting corruption.

At the same time, the normalisation process between Pristina and Belgrade is continuing. NATO fully supports the EU-sponsored dialogue. The dialogue is now back on track, with two rounds in the last two weeks. And I welcome that.

I remain in close contact with EU High Representative Federica Mogherini. I spoke with her this morning and we discussed the importance of further progress. It is vital that the agreements reached in this dialogue continue to be implemented. I commend you for your efforts, but the challenges remain and there is still work to be done.

Today we discussed the need for continued commitment from all sides to exercise restraint and defuse tensions.

I strongly encourage you to continue on this path of dialogue and reconciliation.

Because this is the path towards a future of prosperity for Kosovo and for the entire region. And towards a future within the Euro-Atlantic community.

NATO will remain committed to the security and stability of Kosovo. And KFOR will continue its mission to preserve a safe and secure environment and to guarantee freedom of movement, for as long as necessary, in accordance with our United Nations mandate.

So once again let me thank you for your hospitality. Thank you for very constructive meetings here in Pristina today. And you can stay assured, NATO will continue to support you. The KFOR forces will continue to be here and we look forward to strengthening our cooperation by more interaction and more support also when it comes to capacity building. So once again, thank you so much.

Q: [Interpreted]: Mr. Stoltenberg you said that you will continue supporting KSF within its current mandate. Would there be anything beyond this support in terms of armament or defending borders because now this was presented as a necessity and even at the high officials of State Department it was told or we heard that with the reduction of KFOR, KFOR presence in parallel to have empowerment of KSF, this was a question for you? And a question to Prime Minister Mustafa, today there were discussions about meeting with Northern Serb structures about the wall. Is there anything concrete in this regard?

JENS STOLTENBERG (NATO Secretary General): The Kosovo security force is a professional and increasingly multi-ethnical force and we will continue to support the KSF within its existing mandate and I think also the development of the KSF, the Kosovo Security Force, is one example of successful capacity building from NATO working with the force here in Pristina and in Kosovo. And we will continue to help the development of the Kosovo security force within its existing mandate, it is the structure and the mandate for the Kosovo security force, it is not for NATO to decide; it is for the authorities in Kosovo to decide but should the KSF mandate evolve the North-Atlantic Council would have to re-examine the level of NATO engagement. But we are ready to continue to support it within its existing mandate.

ISA MUSTAFA (Prime Minister of Kosovo): [Interpreted]: With regards to the issue of the wall during the day we expect contacts between the Ministry of Environment and Spatial Planning and the Municipality of Mitrovica North in order to organize all the legal issues related and I expect the issue to be discussed based on the law and the legal frameworks of the local and the central governments. And I expect a good understanding of all the citizens in this regard and I use the opportunity to stress that there is no security issue of the citizens of the Northern part of Mitrovica because we will respect the law in all legal procedures and I see a goodwill to have this issue resolved in the best way.

Q: I have a question to the NATO Secretary General. Can NATO guarantee to fight back any foreign military intervention in Kosovo because we have received threats in the recent days from Serbia for deploying their military in Kosovo when only 17 years ago they committed massacres? And Mr. Prime Minister do you consider that the borders of Kosovo are volatile or fragile or not?

JENS STOLTENBERG: NATO is in Kosovo, NATO has the KFOR Force here to make sure that we are able to maintain stability, peace and security in this part of Europe and as I said we are committed to continue to stay here with a significant force of 4,500 troops around and this sends a very clear signal of our commitment to make sure that Kosovo is a safe and secure place. KFOR is the third responder. We have the Kosovo police, the Kosovo security forces and then we have ULEX and then we have KFOR. And I think that this is important that we have different forces filling different roles and we have seen over many, many years that the KFOR presence has contributed to stability and to security in Kosovo and as I said we are committed to continue as long as necessary. I think that what we need now is not more rhetoric but we need dialogue, we need to reduce tensions to avoid incidents and to support all efforts to move forward on the normalization process Pristina Belgrade. NATO is strongly supporting that and therefore we urge all parties to show restraints, restraint and to participate in a constructive way [audio stops] dialogue.

ISA MUSTAFA: [Interpreted]: As a Prime Minister I may tell you that I have no information from responsible security institutions of the country about any eventual breach of the territory of Kosovo. We are facing only endless statements, its a huge campaign however theres no argument indicating that our borders were being breached. We have to be safe, trust our institutions, continue working and to build bridges of cooperation.

Q: To the Secretary General is now an appropriate time for a referendum in the Ukraine and do you believe that Russia has the power to control the separatists in their actions there? And to the Prime Minister do you believe Russia is increasing its influence in this region and do you believe the Serbian train incident is an example of Russian interference? And should NATO do more to deter Russian involvement in this region?

JENS STOLTENBERG: The focus in Ukraine now is on reform. Its on how Ukraine can modernize its armed forces and NATO is helping Ukraine in doing so. We provide of course strong political support for Ukraine but NATO is also providing strong practical support for Ukraine in different ways with different trust funds and with different programs to help them to modernize their defense and security institutions to help to modernize their armed forces and then we also motivate NATO allies to also provide help and support on the bilateral level. So NATO and NATO allies provide practical support to Ukraine in different ways including to helping them with modernizing and reforming their armed forces and security institutions. The important thing is that the question of membership in NATO is something that is up to any applicant country and the members of NATO to decide. No one else has the right to intervene or to interfere with such a process. No other country has the right to veto such a process because it is a sovereign right of every nation in Europe to decide its own path including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be a part of and then for the NATO allies to decide whether an applicant country qualify to become a member. We are concerned about the situation in Eastern Ukraine. The ceasefire is not respected, we see many violations of the ceasefire, we see the use of heavy weapons and we also see a very dire humanitarian situation. So, we call on Russia to use its considerable influence over the separatists to make sure that they respect the Minsk Agreements and the ceasefire and that international monitors are allowed free access and are able to do the work theyre supposed to do to monitor the withdrawal of their weapons and the full implementation of the ceasefire.

ISA MUSTAFA: [Interpreted]: Whats visible is that the train inbound to Kosovo left Belgrade not Moscow. It departed from Belgrade with the blessing of officers from Belgrade. The fact is that it was a donation to Serbia and of course we have now statement from Russia that they did not plan to use this train to provoke Kosovo which instigated problems and concerns among Kosovo and also Serbian citizens. But it is an issue of these relations however we dont want to have bad relations with Russia or Serbia and the donation is given to Serbia we would not like to be to see them being used to provoke situation in Kosovo.

Q: Mr. Secretary General, Kosovo President said that Serbia has the plan to annex Northern part of Kosovo similar as Russia did in Crimea. Do you share the same concern, do you see that coming?

JENS STOLTENBERG: I will refer to what the Prime Minister just said about the situation in Northern Kosovo and I would also like to underline that NATO is here to contribute to peace, stability. KFOR presence in Kosovo is the foundation for peace and stability in Kosovo and thats the reason why we have decided to maintain our presence. But as I also said KFOR is the third responder. We have seen a more and more professional police force in Kosovo and we have seen the Kosovo security forces and we have the ULEX also being present in Kosovo. And again I think its only making the situation more difficult if we now start to speculate on all different kinds of possibilities. The main message to everyone is to calm down, is to not use rhetoric which can increase tensions and I have a, Im in regular contact with the European Union but Im also in regular contact with Belgrade, with Serbia and my main message is always that we should support the E.U. facilitated dialogue, the normalization process and you have actually achieved a lot through that normalization process, many agreements and now the question and the important thing is to implement what you have agreed. So I think the focus should be on implementation of the different agreements in the normalization process, not on speculating and using rhetoric which can only make the situation more difficult.

Q: The question is, Prime Minister is the wall being demolished tomorrow?

ISA MUSTAFA: [Interpreted]: Well when the moment the decision is rendered we will call you and let you know. Thank you.
The Norwegian Ministry of Defence has practised equal treatment of the suppliers and their nations. The same amount of time and effort has been spent towards France and Germany, and the activities towards both have been balanced. It has been clearly communicated on all levels that it is the totality of the offers that will be the determining factor. Both France and Germany offer excellent submarines that meet Norwegian needs, and both nations have been given good opportunities to come up with a total offer on new submarines and cooperation.



Norway will now enter into final negotiations with German authorities. When a government-to-government agreement is in place, a German-Norwegian negotiation towards the German submarine supplier thyssenkrupp Marine Systems (tkMS) will commence. tkMS is the largest producer of conventional submarines in Western Europe. The shipyard has long experience with building advanced submarines and a large production capability.



The plan is to sign a common contract for new submarines in 2019. This will enable delivery of new submarines from the mid-2020s to 2030. This timeline ensures a continuous Norwegian submarine capability as the Ula-class submarines reaches end of life and starts decommissioning.



 The submarines Norway and Germany will procure ensures a submarine service for the future. Norway has an evolutionary approach to new submarines, and will base the procurement on an existing submarine design. This way we avoid an extensive development project with the risks and costs this would involve. In addition, together with Germany, we will get a larger scale in the production, says the Minister of Defence.



Independent of this decision, the work to establish further cooperation with other nations continue in order to achieve even greater synergies and economies of scale. Norway has for several years worked closely towards the Netherlands and Poland to create a broad submarine cooperation. This work will continue.
19:11

Keen to rollout the Goods and Services Tax by July, the government plans to take the supporting legislations to Parliament next month, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said today.

While the all-powerful GST Council has already decided on a four-slab tax structure for the indirect tax regime, the levy for different goods and services will be decided by May or June.

Jaitley said he hopes to get Central GST and Integrated GST draft legislations approved at the next GST Council meeting on February 18 and bring them in the second half of ongoing Budget Session. It will reconvene on

March 9 after a month long break and continue till April 12.

"Now the main policy issues (with regard to CGST and IGST) over 9 meetings have been put to rest. Final drafts are now being prepared and once they are circulated with the legally vetted language, those drafts will have to then go to Parliament and state legislature (for SGST) for approval.

"We will meet on 18th of this month. Hopefully, my target currently is to finalise those drafts and take them in the second part of the budget session in Parliament," Jaitley said at a post-Budget meet with industry chambers.
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Indian Direct Selling Association's (IDSA) Secretary General, Amit Chadha lauded Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on the measures proposed in the Union Budget 2017-18 to boost the Direct Selling Industry. According to him, lowering of income tax for smaller firms and doubling the lending target under MUDRA Yojana will benefit existing and emerging player in Direct Selling Industry. "The Union Budget can be termed as growth oriented and has taken incremental measures to strengthen MSME sector. The decision to reduce tax rate for small firms with turnover up to Rs. 50crore from 30 percent to 25percent will boost the upcoming players," said Chadha. "Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget Speech, mentioned that government's focus will be on energising youth to reap benefits of growth and employment. Also, Jaitley informed about 36 percent increase in FDI flow with robust Foreign exchange reserve availability with the government. These are great signs for the growth of Indian economy and motivating factors for the development of the Direct Selling Industry," said IDSA Chairman, Jitendra Jagota. "In the recent past, the Industry witnessed a line of positive developments, including Model Guidelines on Direct Selling by Department of Consumer Affairs, which boosted the confidence of the Industry. Thus, many foreign companies are slated to foray into the Indian market. Not only that, the current MNCs operating in the country are also expected to increase investment in the country and looking forward to set up manufacturing units in India," added Jagota. Furthermore, Chadha appreciated the Government's thrust on skilling youth and enhancing their employability potential, as well as Jaitley's announcement to set-up 'Skill-Centres' across the country, giving further push to government's 'Skill India' campaign. "Direct Selling Industry welcomes and supports the move as Direct Selling being one such Industry which imparts skill to its work-force. Direct Selling Industry is playing a vital role in empowering millions in India by transforming unskilled people to skilled work-force and the entrepreneurs of tomorrow. Direct Selling contributes to the upliftment of millions of people associated with this Industry by imparting knowledge, skill and training", added Chadha. (ANI)
The petition was moved by Mistry's investment companies -- Cyrus Investment and Sterling Investment Corp. -- on Thursday, two days after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), Mumbai, did not restrain Tata Sons from holding the proposed EGM on February 6, 2017.

The holding company of the global industrial conglomerate has called a shareholders' meet to remove Mistry as a Director on the company's Board.

Tata Sons' Board ousted Mistry earlier on October 24, 2016, as its Chairman and appointed Ratan Tata as Interim Chairman.

However, Mistry still remains a Director on the Board of the holding arm of the $100 billion-plus group.

Tata Trusts hold 66 per cent stake in the holding company of the Tata Group, with Mistry's family holding over 18 per cent interest.

--IANS rv/vt

( 171 Words)

2017-02-03-17:58:06 (IANS)
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from Donald Trump's economic advisory council following intense criticism and an online boycott of the company over its ties to the new administration. Kalanick told Uber employees in a private memo that he spoke to the President Thursday and "let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council", the New York Post reported, saying it has access to the memo. "Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that." Kalanick has come under extreme criticism in the past few days for working with the Trump administration. The company faced a viral boycott campaign in the wake of Trump's executive order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries. Angry customers started the #deleteUber movement partially based on Kalanick working with Trump and also because the company continued to send cars during a taxi strike that was taking place at JFK Airport - where numerous refugees were being detained over the weekend - by failing to turn off its app to prevent dropoffs and pickups there. A group of Uber drivers started a petition earlier Thursday urging the CEO to step down. Uber has not revealed how many users deleted their accounts, but it was enough that the company implemented an automated process to handle the demand. Kalanick initially seemed hesitant to criticise the executive order. In an email to Uber staff that he shared on Facebook on January 28, the CEO wrote, "This ban will impact many innocent people - an issue that I will raise this coming Friday when I go to Washington for President Trump's first business advisory group meeting." The next day, as the #DeleteUber campaign took off, Kalanick strengthened his rhetoric, calling the executive order "the President's unjust immigration ban" and announcing the creation of a $3m "legal defense fund" to assist affected drivers. "I'm going to use my position on Pres economic council to stand up for what's right," he tweeted. However, later, Kalanick appeared to come to the conclusion that his position on Trump's advisory council was more trouble than it was worth. "There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that," he wrote in the staff email. --IANS soni/bg ( 413 Words) 2017-02-03-19:02:06 (IANS)
Scientists from the University of Southampton in a latest study have discovered an important way in which the immune system can learn to recognise and fight cancers. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, shows that 'Akt' is critical for survival of T cells when they turn into memory cells and for how these can then react to future threats. The team, led by Professor Aymen Al-Shamkhani, a Professor of Immunology at the University of Southampton, and funded by Cancer Research UK, has shown that a protein called Akt, is vital for the way the body remembers a cancer it has eradicated. The body's immune system includes cytotoxic T cells, which actively seek out and destroy infections or cancers. When they have dealt with the danger, the majority of T cells die, but the remaining ones turn into memory cells, which can recognise the threat if it comes back. However, how this actually works has previously not been clear. The Southampton team has found that a protein called Akt has a big effect on the number and type of memory T cells that a danger signal can generate. Professor Al-Shamkhani says that: "If we can harness Akt to boost the memory cells in numbers and ability we could offer more protection against cancer." He added: "Immunotherapy has shown great promise as a new type of treatment for cancer, but we need to find ways to improve the body's immune memory for cancer cells. If we can get the body's immune system to recognise cancers faster and better, that will be a big help in finding more effective treatments." Dr Justine Alford, senior science information officer at Cancer Research UK, says: "By revealing more about how the immune system learns to recognise and attack cancers, this laboratory study may have identified a way to make immunotherapy more effective and longer-lasting. The next step will be to see if this approach works, and is safe for patients." Over the past 40 years the University of Southampton has made a number of advances in cancer immunology and immunotherapy research, with a reputation for its 'bench to bedside' results. This year, the University will open The Centre for Cancer Immunology. It is the first of its kind in the UK and will bring world leading cancer scientists under one roof and enable interdisciplinary teams to expand clinical trials and develop lifesaving drugs.(ANI)
The film will feature Varun Dhawan playing two characters along with leading ladies Jacqueline Fernandez and Taapsee Pannu.

It is the best time for the film to start its shoot as 20 years ago on February 7, the original film was unveiled in the theatres.

David Dhawan says, "We wanted to start the journey again around the same time, it's the right time".

"For me, it feels like 'Judwaa' just happened recently as the film holds strongly in my memory. We are very excited to embark on this new journey. Working with David and Varun in the same film makes it even more special," says filmmaker Sajid Nadiadwala.

The 'Dishoom' actor, on the other hand, shares, "I'm a die-hard fan of the original movie so this day is special anyway. Now, I just want to put my head down and be a part of the vision Sajid sir and dad have for the sequel".

The flick will hit the theatres on September 29. (ANI)
Kriti's two-and-half month-long shoot for "Raabta" in Budapest was challenging for her due to cold weather conditions, especially when she was asked to wear clothes suitable for summer.

On the other hand, her one-and-half months' shoot for "Bareilly Ki Barfi" in Lucknow demanded her to don winter clothes in humid weather conditions.

"Both Raabta' and Bareilly Ki Barfi' are completely different worlds altogether. It was a lot of fun to shoot in Budapest and then going to Lucknow. Both the schedules were long so I got a lot of time to soak in their respective cultures, observe and learn," Kriti said in a statement.

"Raabta", a romantic-drama, also stars Sushant Singh Rajput and is scheduled to release on June 9.

"Bareilly Ki Barfi" will feature Kriti alongside Ayushmaan Khurana and Rajkummar Rao. The film will release on July 21.

--IANS sas/rb/vt

( 179 Words)

2017-02-03-18:20:08 (IANS)
The Nationalist Congress Party on Friday stood firm by the statement made by Congress leader P. Chidambaram where he commended Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for not making the Union Budget 'reckless' like demonetisation and added the Centre's move to ban the high-value of currency only resulted in the collapse of the nation's economy. "What Chidambaram said is absolutely correct. After demonetisation the economy of the country has almost collapsed by the way unemployment has increased, the way weaker section of the society has been affected by it. It will take time to bring the economy back to normalcy," said NCP leader Tariq Anwar to ANI. Anwar further declined the claims made by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA Government on the rise of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and said this cannot be true as even the economist from across the globe have accepted that demonetisation is not good for the economy of a country. Former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Thursday, while commending the budget for not being reckless, said that the Union Budget had done nothing to boost demand, something that would have been possible if indirect taxes had been slashed. "It is obvious that demonetisation and its inevitable consequences have demoralised the government. Government has retreated from reforms," he said in a press meet here. Moreover, he described the tax cut as tokenism and said 1.98 crore taxpayers have got a relief of Rs 5,000 per person. "It is small mercy for a person who stood in a queue for many hours for many weeks to withdraw small amounts of money from his or her account," he said. (ANI)
In consent with former union finance minister P. Chidambaram's recent views tearing into demonetisation, the Congress has stated that this scheme was a bogus move adding that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley could not do much for the public through it. "What Chidambaram has criticized is absolutely correct. After demonetisation the whole economy has been disrupted. Demonetisation was a bogus move and Arun Jaitley couldn't do much for the public. This government is a failure; they don't know what they have to do," Congress leader Hussain Dalwai told ANI. He further said that because of demonetisation all small sector industries are shutting down gradually, causing unemployment. The government said that it would provide employment to at least nine crore people but that didn't seem to happen. "Through this budget they are trying to overshadow the impact of demonetisation. I cannot see any advantage of this move. Though they said that those earning below Rs. 3 lakh annually won't have to pay the tax, but today value of 3 lakh is nothing. We thought it would extend up to 5 lakh annual income," he added. He also said that the incorporation of Railway Budget with the General Budget was a bad decision altogether, as there is no solution for the common man. Also, progress in infrastructure, is not visible. "Arun Jaitley is helpless because he does not know how to handle this situation. During the UPA government the growth was visible, but now it has come down. I don't think the government has provided anything which will improve the position of the industries," Dalwai said. Releasing a document titled 'Real State of the Economy 2015', two days ahead of Budget Session, Chidambaram said the document presents true assessment of the state of India's economy and is supported by hard research and data. "Yet if the government presents a rosy picture of the economy tomorrow, people of India are entitled to question that," he said. Pointing out that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was able to deliver 7 percent GDP during its 10-year tenure, Chidambaram said the current dispensation has failed to sustain the growth rate and has failed to create jobs for the people. (ANI)
Aditi Singh would be contesting from Raebareli, where the party has a stronghold.

On January 22, after announcing an alliance with the Samajwadi Party for the high stakes Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, the Congress released a list of 41 candidates for the first and second phase of polls.

Later on January 23, the Party released its second list of 25 candidates for third and fourth phase of elections.

The party's first list featured former union minister Jitin Prasad from Tilhar constituency, Imran Masood from Nakur and Pradeep Mathur who would be re-contesting from Mathura.

As part of the alliance, the Samajwadi Party will contest on 298 seats while the Congress will field its candidates in 105 seats.

The poll process in Uttar Pradesh begins on February 11. 73 constituencies in western Uttar Pradesh will go polls in this phase. The filing of nominations for these constituencies will end on January 24.

Uttar Pradesh is set to have a seven-phase polling between February 11 and March 8. (ANI)
According to ED official, these two properties were purchased in April 2013 when its cost was approximately Rs 63 crore.

This is the fifth attachment of assets made by the agency in the Saradha case. With this attachment, the total number of properties attached so far in this case reached seven whose market value exceeds Rs 700 crore, said an official.

The ED said the properties, located at 7B and C, Doctor's Lane at Gole Market, were attached provisionally under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The immovable assets belong to Mr Sinh and his estranged wife Manoranjana, both facing trial in a money laundering case before a special PMLA court in Kolkata.UNI MKS SV SB 0934

-- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-1134395.Xml
Launching a frontal attack on the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has urged the people of Punjab to come together and put an end to the drug menace ahead of the assembly polls. Gandhi in a Facebook post said, "I have learnt one thing in politics... truth can't be hidden. I had gone to a programme of Punjab University in 2012 and there I told the youth that 70 percent of Punjab's youth suffer from drug-related problems." The Congress vice-president slammed the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) Government in Punjab for making fun of him. "On returning back to Delhi, I was surprised that Akali Dal leaders are saying that Rahul Gandhi is lying, there is no problem of drugs and they made fun of me. It is sad that the truth which was supposed to be accepted four years back is being accepted now," he added. Gandhi also lauded Punjab for its inputs in various fields concerning national interest. "If we look at the national flag....Punjab is hidden in it. Punjab's voice can be heard in the border areas, industries and army. You have witnessed truth. Punjab's battle, fight against drugs is everyone's fight. We won't let Punjab fall. Come and fight together for Punjab. Let's eliminate drugs completely from Punjab," he said. Highlighting the menace of drugs in poll-bound Punjab, Congress chief ministerial candidate Captain Amarinder Singh earlier on January 29 said that this government would form a team of good police officers to fight this threat. Stating that the government must have the will to do so, Captain Amarinder assured that this process would be initiated in less than four weeks if the Congress forms the next government in Punjab. "Everybody knows who does it. Where it is kept, who makes it, who sells, who trades, who does everything we know. It's the question of the government having the will to do it," he told ANI in an exclusive interview. All 117 constituencies in Punjab will vote on February 4 and the results will be announced on March 11. (ANI)
Suspended Enforcement Directorate (ED) assistant director Monoj Kumar today deposed before a new set of ED officials at Salt Lake to face query on his alleged proximity with Subhra Kundu, wife of prime accused of scam tainted Rose Valley owner Gautam Kundu. The latest deposition of Monoj Kumar was his second time in barely 24 hoursafter the three ED officials headed by a joint director from New Delhiwere probing all aspects of Rose Valley chit fund scam, worth about Rs 17,000 crore and close proximity of him with the wife of jailed Gautam Kundu. Kolkata Police SIT team headed by Additional CP (V) Vishal Garg, who is probing Monoj Kumar's connection with Subhra Kundu, also summoned the suspended ED official at Lalbazar, the headquarters of the city police. Official sources said Monoj Kumar was supposed to report to Lalbazarby 1100 hours of the day but he phoned the city police informing that after hisdeposition at ED's Salt Lake office he will appear before the Kolkata police by 1500 hours. Monoj Kumar, who was heading the Rose Valley chit fund scam for the past two years, was seen at the city airport and in a hotel in New Delhi with Subhra Kundu, sources said adding Rs 15 crore of Rose Valley had been transferred to a foreign country by Hawala and the suspended ED official might help the wife of Gautam Kundu. The SIT team of Kolkata police had quizzed Subhra Kundu twice in the past 48 hours. The ED also may quiz her shortly, sources at the CGO Complex at SaltLake said today. Monoj Kumar has been stripped off all his custody at ED and hissuspension would remain enforced until he was cleared by the new set of ED officials, comprising a joint director, assistant director and a law officer, who flew into this city on Wednesday night. The CBI officials early last month have arrested two MPs SudipBanerjee and Tapas Paul in connection with Rose Valley scam.UNI PC SJC -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-1134573.Xml
Floral tributes were paid to former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C N Annadurai on his 48th death anniversary here today. Puducherry Chief minister V Narayanasamy, Welfare Minister M Kandasamy, legislators and senior officials of the territorial administration are among others who garlanded Anna statue. AIADMK and DMK functionaries took out separate processions and garlanded the statue on the occasion. Volunteers of different political parties including MDMK, DMDK and Dravidar Kazhagam also garlanded the statue of Anna.UNI PAB CS 1207 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0275-1134539.Xml
The deceased, N. Florence, had met Ishan, a B. Tech student and native of Himachal Pradesh, at MG Road and later took him to her house in Thimmegowda layout allegedly for sexual favours after he promised to pay her Rs. 5,000.

According to the police, Florence soon after reaching home had demanded Rs. 10,000 and threatened Ishan at knife point.

Heated arguments ensued and took an ugly turn when Ishan snatched the knife and stabbed her to death.

The investigation is currently underway. (ANI)
Holding placards which read "Our democratic fight against the undemocratic arrest of our Parliamentary leader" and "Political Vendetta", the TMC leaders raised slogans against the government during the protest near Mahatma Gandhi's statue in Parliament.

TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee accused the Centre of taking revenge with the arrest of his party leaders.

"They are doing everything out of a political vendetta...The Centre is taking revenge by arresting our leader, but they should know that in this way they cannot stop us," he said.

Echoing similar sentiments, TMC leader Kakoli Ghosh told ANI, "People are fed up of this demonetisation. We are raising our voice for the people. The BJP had arrested Sudip Banerjee for no reason. We are protesting against this corrupt politics." (ANI)
In a Demi-Official letter to Mr Modi, the Chief Minister requestedhim to instruct the External Affairs Ministry to take up the issue effectively with Sri Lanka and secure the release of fishermen and their boats.

He said five fishermen, who ventured in the sea in a mechanisedboat from Jegathapatinam in Pudukottai district, were arrestedby the Lankan Navy yesterday morning and were taken to Kankesanthurai and remanded.

Stating that the Sri Lankan authorities continue to infringe upon the historical rights enjoyed by the fishermen to fish in their traditionalwaters of Palk Bay, he said the Tamil Nadu government reiterates that the International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) itself was a matter which was sub-judice before the Supreme Court. MORE UNI GV CS 1450

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The Council also announced a new proposition 'Study UK: DiscoverYou'. The 198 Great scholarships is meant for students who aspire tostudy in subjects including Art and Design, Engineering, Law andManagement to study in the UK, according to a release here.

The British Council will be launching a mobile app (Study UKDiscover You Exhibition 2017) for the first time in India to helpstudents and parents to plan. The app contains all the necessaryinformation about UK education institutions.

Mei-kwei Barker, Director, British Council, South India, said,''I'm delighted that over 50 UK universities are visiting Bangalore,launching 198 scholarships with the British Council anddemonstrating the importance UK Universities put on attractingstudents from India. Indian students selected will join over400,000 international students from 200 countries.''UNI MSP RS RSS1400

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The deputation of teachers for election and other such duties was today raised in the Rajya Sabha with most of the members expressing concern that it was at the cost of teaching.Tabling the the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2015 (Amendment of Article 324) during Private Members' legislation, Mr Tiruchi Siva of the DMK blamed the administrative process for this state of affairs, saying that despite abundance of candidates, teaching staff were being put on non-teaching assignment, including election duty. He pointed out that there was alarming nine lakh vacancies of teachers in schools across the country, the maximum being in Uttar Pradesh which had about 1,25,000 vacancies. Deployment of teachers in poll duties resulting in their absence from schools was affecting students, he asserted and wanted that teachers be exempted from poll duty. ''Teaching has become a casualty of diversion of teachers into non-teaching work,'' he told the members. Despite the Human Resource Development Ministry taking cognisance of this and issuing guidelines to relieve teachers of these duties, these guidelines were being ignored resulting in lower grades of students and their unemployability in the long run. He suggested the example of US where volunteers over the age of 18 were roped in for the election process and that of Australia which engaged 80,000 employees on a short term basis for the duration of the polls. Deployment of other staff could also be considered, he added. Supporting Mr Siva, Ms Viplove Thakur of the Congress deplored the wastage of teaching time and wanted the government to change the existing system. She also wanted that other employees be used for poll-related work. However, though concurring that teachers not be put on poll duty, La Ganesan of the BJP warned that a viable alternative had not been suggested and that the remedy might prove more dangerous than the disease. He felt that postal staff who were acquainted with residents could be utilised to prepare voter lists and not burden teachers with this task.More UNI SD AE/RSA 1625 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0005-1135002.Xml
Adding more confusion to the seven-phase Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav was listed as the star campaigner for another political outfit Lok Dal.This would be the second party after the ruling Samajwadi Party where Mulayam has been listed as the star campaigner.Now, it has to be seen for which party Mulayam campaigns, though he had announced to campaign for some selected candidates. Mulayam is expected to campaign for his younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav and SP candidate from Jaswantnagar seat on February 9. He is also expected to go to Rampur in support of UP Minister Mohammad Azam Khan and his son Abdullah Azam on February 12. He will also campaign for his younger daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, who is entering politics from Lucknow (Cantonment) seat.Earlier, Mulayam had shown his annoyance over the SP-Congress alliance and even reportedly said the party workers should oppose the Congress candidates. Meanwhile, Lok Dal today announced its 14-member star campaigners for the UP polls, which included three Bollywood stars besides Mulayam. Lok Dal president Sunil Singh told UNI today that Mulayam was on the top of their star campaigners' list followed by himself. Three Bollywood stars Rajpal Yadav, Ehsan Khan and Markand Deshpande are in the list too. Rajpal has already been campaigning for his own political outfit -- Sarv Sambhav Party -- which is contesting the Assembly polls in alliance with the Lok Dal. "We have taken permission from Netaji to include his name in the star campaigners' list and he had told us that he would campaign for the party candidates," Mr Singh confirmed, adding that the campaigning by Mulayam would certainly give them an edge in certain pockets, including the Yadav borough of Etawah, Etah, Mainpuri and Sitapur.The Lok Dal has already offered the embattled Samajwadi Party patriarch its symbol and national president's post. Earlier, Mr Singh had stirred a controversy when he made charges against Chief Minister and Mulayam's son Akhilesh Yadav that Mulayam was in the house arrest in Lucknow and no one was allowed to meet him. Lok Dal, which has the old election symbol of 'farmer ploughing field (khet jotata kisan)', on which Charan Singh had become the Chief Minister of UP, was contesting Assembly polls and had already announced names of over 150 candidates so far.In the 2012 elections, Lok Dal had contested 76 of the 403 seats but none of its candidates had won from any seat.UNI MB SW SNU 1817 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0196-1135091.Xml
A team of senior officials from New Delhi assisted by IT officials from Rourkela, Bhubaneswar and Sambalpur have conduced the raid. Mr Das, is also elder brother of Congress MLA Naba Kishore Das from Jharsuguda constituency,

The IT officials are tight lipped about the raid .UNI XC DP BM

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Manipur blockade is likely to be lifted within 2-3 days, sources said here at the end of the tripartite talks between the Centre and Manipur government and the United Naga Council (UNC). The next round of meeting in this concern would be held on February 7, said the sources in Home Ministry.The meeting that lasted for more than six hours was attended by Ministers of Manipur, representatives of UNC and senior officials from Ministry of Home Affairs. During meeting, United Naga Council's grievances of seven new districts, giving reservation to women in local bodies as well as lifting of economic blockade were discussed. The sources in the Ministry said, ''Hopefully, the National Highway 2 will be cleared after the next round of meeting, which would be held on February 7''. UNI MKS RJ 2230 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0329-1135770.Xml
Manipur Congress official said that the candidates were selected by the Congress Central Election Committee for the ensuing.

Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh will contest from Thoubal, his son Surjakumar Okram from Khangabok, his nephew O Henry from Wangkhei. Congress President TN Haokip will contest from Saikot. The CM's son will be contesting in place of the Chief minister's wife Landhoni. Speaker Thokchom Lokeshwar Singh will contest from Khundrakpam. There were only five new faces.

The BJP has already announced seats for 31 seats.

All the sitting MLAs and those MLAs who joined the Congress party recently were given tickets.

Elections will be held in two phase on March 4 and 8.

Election will be held on Mar 4 in 38 Assembly constituencies covering 29 Assembly constituencies in valley areas and nine in hill areas. In the second phase election to be held on March 8 to be held in 22 constituencies, 11 will be from the valley areas and the rest from the hill areas.

There are 60 Assembly constituencies.

Counting of votes will be done on March 11. For the two phase elections the notifications for the elections will be issued on Feb 8 and 11, last date of making nominations will be February 15 and 18, scrutiny on Feb 16 and 20. Withdrawal of candidature will be February 18 and 22.UNI NS SHS RJ RK2214

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According to the Assistant Returning Officer Mahendra Harpalkar , 87 average per cent of polling were reported in peaceful manner in all eight districts of the region which was began under the titight security measures today morning at 0800 hrs.

There were total as 58,410 registered electorate including 47,081 males of them 87 percent casted their votes by a pen at 275 polling centers in the entire the eight district by two page ballot paper including NOTO option.

The election commission appointed 53 micro observers to conduct smooth polling in the region.

Fate of 20 candidates are were sealed in ballot boxes, where the main fight will be seen between sitting NCP sitting candidate Vikram Kale, BJP-RPI-RSP led Satish Patki and Shiv sena candidate Govind Kale, while the remaining candidates are fromsmaller parties or independents.

Counting of votes will be take place on February six, they added.UNI VKB NP SHS RJ RK2219

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The Syrian cease-fire monitoring group, made up of experts from Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United Nations, will meet next week in Astana, the Russian Defence Ministry said. Monday's gathering will be the first technical meeting between the UN and the three countries acting as guarantors for the cease-fire following peace talks in late January in the Kazakh capital between Syrian government and opposition representatives, Efe news reported. "The group meetings for Syria in Astana will be on a regular basis and will have representatives from the the Syrian government and the armed opposition," the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. The objective of the first meeting is to "develop measures for the control and prevention of cease-fire violations, increase trust between the Syrian authorities and the opposition, and the handling of humanitarian issues", the ministry said. According to the ministry, the meeting will also serve to address "the separation between the units belonging to the moderate opposition and the al-Nusra Front terrorist group, a step that the guarantor countries see as the most important objective". --IANS vgu/ ( 192 Words) 2017-02-03-05:52:06 (IANS)
According to CNN, Donald Trump pinatas have flooded the Mexican markets and are selling like hot cakes.

Papier mache dolls with his trademark shock of yellow hair and business suits have appeared alongside Batman and Disney princesses at stalls.

The only problem is they sell out fast!

"As soon as we get them, they're gone," said shop owner Genoveva de la Cruz, as she displayed the last Trump piata left at her stall.

Meanwhile, campaigns have been launched on social media, urging Mexicans to boycott McDonald's (MCD), Starbucks (SBUX), Coca-Cola (KO) and Walmart (WMT) after Trump signed an executive order for the construction of the wall.

The hashtags #AdiosStarbucks and #AdiosProductosGringos quickly started trending.

However, Starbucks defended itself, saying that its local division is a Mexico-owned franchise which provides jobs to around 7,000 Mexicans and features Mexican-grown coffees.

Tensions between the two countries rose after Trump insisted that Mexico pay for the wall and Mexican President Enrique Pea Nieto cancelled a meeting with Trump over the standoff.

The Trump's administration then floated the idea of charging a 20% import tax on goods coming from Mexico.

And on the other hand, six million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico. Taxing Mexican imports affects many U.S. companies that send parts south of the border to be assembled.

Analysts say Pea Nieto has a few cards up his sleeve. For instance, Mexico could stop cooperating on issues like security and drug trafficking. (ANI)
In a shocking fallout to the recent immigration order by the United States President, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has dropped out of Trump's business advisory council. Kalanick said he was not participating because of the president's immigration order in a memo to employees, reports the CNN. "Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community," Kalanick said in the memo obtained by CNN. "I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that." Kalanick was one of 16 business leaders on the council, which was scheduled to have its first meeting on Friday. Last Friday, Trump issued a sweeping executive order imposing a temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, following which many tech companies were outraged at the order, especially as many companies were founded by immigrants. "There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that," Kalanick said in the memo. "The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America. Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there's a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants." (ANI)
Citing sources familiar with the move, the CNN reports that the additional sanctions are in response to Iran's ballistic missile test Sunday.

They are similar to actions taken by former President Barack Obama after Iran's previous ballistic missile tests.

In a letter to Trump, a bipartisan group of senators said "Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities, from sponsoring terrorist groups to continued testing of ballistic missiles."

"Full enforcement of existing sanctions and the imposition of additional sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program are necessary," the letter said.

Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn condemned Wednesday Iran's recent ballistic missile test launch, calling it a "provocative" breach of a UN Security Council resolution. Iran denies that's it's violated any UN mandate.

However, Iranian adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, dismissed what he called the US leader's "baseless ranting" and said that even Americans were not satisfied with "Trump's extremism," according to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency.

Speaking to reporters Thursday in Tehran, Velayati blasted Trump as lacking sufficient experience, saying he should take lessons from his predecessor, Barack Obama and asserted that all test-fired missiles were defensive and that Iran did not need to seek permission to carry out such activities. (ANI)
US President Donald Trump discussed with Jordan's King Abdullah the possibility of establishing safe zones in Syria, the White House said.Trump met with King Abdullah briefly in Washington yesterday morning, the White House said in a statement. Trump said last week he would establish safe zones in Syria for refugees fleeing violence in the war-torn country. REUTERS RSD 0405 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-1134325.Xml
US President Donald Trump's chief of staff Reince Priebus and top strategist Steve Bannon had a "productive meeting" with Australia's US ambassador, an official said, after relations between the two countries became strained over a tense call between their leaders."Mr. Priebus and Mr. Bannon had a productive meeting with the Australian ambassador at the White House," the White House official said. "They conveyed the president's deep admiration for the Australian people."Washington's ties with its close ally became tense yesterday over an acrimonious phone call between President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm.REUTERS RSD 0539 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-1134333.Xml
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blamed Russia for the recent surge of violence in eastern Ukraine and warned Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Moscow returns Crimea to Kiev."I consider it unfortunate on the occasion of my first appearance here I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," Haley said yesterday, making her first public remarks inside the Security Council since being sworn in as the United States' representative to the United Nations last month."It shouldn't happen, or be that way. We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions."Her remarks came amid speculation over US President Donald Trump's intentions towards Moscow. Trump has praised Russia's President Vladimir Putin and expressed a wish for improved relations between the two countries.Haley made clear that tensions over the Ukraine would not end soon, including the matter of sanctions slapped on Russia related to the annexation of Crimea three years ago."Eastern Ukraine of course is not the only part of the country suffering because of Russia's aggressive actions. The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," Haley said."Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine."The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, disputed Haley's commentary on Crimea, but welcomed his American counterpart."It was friendly enough, given the circumstances and given the subject we were discussing," the Russian ambassador told reporters.He noted the chance for a new start after ties between Russia and United States frayed in Obama's second term."If there is an opportunity to have better relations with the United States, if there is an opportunity for us to work better with the United States... then we should take this opportunity."He faulted the Obama administration for not doing enough to end the conflict in Ukraine and called on the Trump government to bring its influence to bear."Clearly they are the people who are listened to in Kiev."Ukraine and Russia had blamed each other for a surge in fighting in recent days around the government-held industrial town of Avdiivka that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line.At the Thursday Security Council session, Ukraine's UN ambassador, Volodymr Yelchenko, who holds the presidency of the Security Council for February, said the strife around Avdiivka started with artillery shelling by the Russian army and Russian-backed fighters from the two suburbs they control abutting the town.Churkin blamed Ukrainian security forces for starting the bloodshed.UN under-secretary-general for political affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, painted a grim picture of the situation on the ground."Hundreds of thousand of civilians on both sides of the contact line are still at risk of losing all access to water, heating and electricity, bringing the spectre of further displacements closer," Feltman said."With every new day of fighting, the conflict becomes more entrenched and difficult to resolve. There is no military solution to this conflict." REUTERS RSD 0645 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0435-1134337.Xml
Authorities in Fiji today deported an Iranian refugee who had used false documents to flee his home in the Pacific Ocean nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG), blaming safety fears and homelessness, two sources said.The man is one of about 1,200 refugees potentially eligible for resettlement to the United States, although the pact showed signs of strain this week, after President Donald Trump called it a "dumb deal".Loghman Sawari, who travelled to Fiji last week, had opted to live freely in PNG in return for the opportunity to leave an Australian offshore detention centre where he had been sent four years ago, following an attempt to reach Australia by boat.Under Australia's tough border security policy, asylum seekers intercepted on such voyages are sent for processing to camps on PNG's Manus island and Nauru in the South Pacific. They are never eligible for resettlement in Australia.But today Sawari was arrested in Fiji and placed on a plane back to PNG, according to the sources, a friend of his in detention in PNG, and an aid worker who has worked with him. Both declined to be identified as the topic is a sensitive one.Sawari now faces a return to what he described this week as the scene of his "suffering" on PNG's Manus Island, where he spent a year in detention."I cannot go back to Iran, I cannot return to PNG, I want to stay in Fiji," Sawari told Reuters on Wednesday.Authorities in the South Pacific nation of Fiji could not immediately be reached for comment.Humanitarian groups urged PNG authorities to show compassion for Sawari, amid fears for his mental health."This is a young man who is clearly at risk in terms of his mental health, and he needs to be given all the care to ensure he doesn't harm himself," Graham Thom, a refugee coordinator at human rights group Amnesty International, told Reuters.About 90 per cent of the more than 800 men detained on Manus Island show signs of some form of psychological illness, the United Nations has said.REUTERS SDR GC1238 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0431-1134585.Xml
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull might receive a short-term boost after his infamous phone call with US President Donald Trump but is likely to be the long-term political loser, analysts and rights advocates said today.Languishing in opinion polls and vulnerable to attacks from within his own conservative party, Turnbull at least woke today to domestic media praise for his perceived statesmanship for refusing to go into details about the call, during which Trump berated him over a refugee resettlement deal."Donald Thump" and "You're Fried", blared front-page headlines in Australian media. "PM's approach vindicated by Trump's madness," the Sydney Morning Herald said in an analysis.Trump has since begrudgingly said he would stand by the plan, agreed on by Turnbull and former President Barack Obama in November, but has also described the deal as "dumb" and said the asylum seekers would be subjected to "extreme vetting".Under the deal, the United States will take in as many as 1,250 asylum seekers held in Australian processing centres on remote Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. In return, Australia will resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.The agreement is critical for Turnbull, whose centre-right coalition government came to power on its tough immigration policy that prevents asylum seekers who attempt to reach the country by boat from ever settling in Australia.Attempts in recent years to resettle some of the asylum seekers in Cambodia and Malaysia collapsed, leaving Turnbull to portray the deal with the United States as a solution for the asylum seekers that also sticks to those hard-line policies."He's hung that credibility on saying it's all going to come to an end in a happy way though this deal," Australian National University sociologist Rick Kuhn told Reuters by phone."If the refugee swap falls through then it's an absolute disaster for him," he said.EXTREME VETTINGEven more bad news for Turnbull is the growing fear among lawyers and refugee advocates that Trump's "extreme vetting" would effectively rule out most of the asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus island.In an executive order signed a week ago, Trump suspended the US refugee programme for 120 days and stopped visits by travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen - for 90 days.Many of the asylum seekers applying for the US deal are from countries on that list.US immigration officials have postponed interviews with asylum seekers on Nauru, asylum seekers and an official told Reuters, indicating Washington is already blocking progress on the deal."Extreme vetting at the moment is a statement of intent and not one for optimism," said Daniel Webb, director of advocacy at the Human Rights Law Centre. "The deal may be viable for some but it is going to leave many people behind."Turnbull, whose poll numbers have plummeted since he toppled former leader Tony Abbott in a party-room coup and then led his coalition to an unconvincing election win last year, has few other options.Deals with Cambodia and Malaysia were flops - only two refugees were resettled in Cambodia in an arrangement that cost Australia A$40 million (31 million dollars), and Australia's High Court quashed a swap plan with Malaysia - while reports of talks with Canada have so far come to nothing.Australia has also snubbed a longstanding offer from New Zealand to take 150 asylum seekers, fearing access to its neighbour would create a backdoor route to Australia.All that left Turnbull with little choice but to be conciliatory with Trump, who chastised him even though Turnbull was one of the few world leaders who declined to comment on his immigration executive order.REUTERS AKC VP1336 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1134680.Xml
The Russian Foreign Ministry said today it expected the head of the UN-backed Libyan government, Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, to visit Moscow this month.Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the ministry, told a news briefing that Russia was trying to help ensure Libya held together as a single country and wanted competing factions to resolve their differences through talks not violence. REUTERS AKC VP1420 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1134746.Xml
US President Donald Trump's defense secretary reaffirmed America's commitment to its mutual defense treaty with Japan during a meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today in Tokyo."Due to some of the provocations out of North Korea and other challenges that we jointly face, I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago, and as it will be a year, and 10 years, from now," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said. REUTERS AKC AN1459 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1134826.Xml
Turkey accused Greece today of breaching international law by carrying out a military exercise on an island in the Aegean Sea, in an escalating row between the two NATO allies.The Turkish foreign ministry said it was aware of Greek media reports that Greek special forces had parachuted onto Kos and said the exercise was a breach of a 1974 treaty that banned all such training on the island.A Greek defence ministry source confirmed there had been a scheduled exercise at the beginning of the week involving parachutists."The training schedule of the Greek armed forces is not going to stop," the source told Reuters.Turkey warned it could take action if necessary."We call on our neighbour Greece to refrain from unilateral actions that ... could trigger tensions and are against international law," foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said in a statement.Tensions between the two countries have been on the rise since a Greek court last week blocked the extradition of eight Turkish soldiers Ankara accuses of involvement in July's failed coup. Turkey has said relations with Greece would be reviewed.On Wednesday, Greece reported mass incursions by Turkish military aircraft over the central and southern Aegean, which Athens termed "cowboy antics".Kos is part of the Dodecanese chain of islands, placed under demilitarisation as part of a peace accord after World War Two, when Italy ceded them to Greece.Greece, which says Turkey was not party to that treaty because of its neutral stance in the war, started to militarize some islands after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup.Cyprus remains divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities living on either side of a UN-monitored ceasefire line. Reunification efforts have intensified in recent months, but a meeting in Geneva in mid-January involving guarantor powers Britain, Greece and Turkey was inconclusive.Turkey and Greece came to the brink of war in 1996 over the ownership of uninhabited Aegean islets known as Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish.The two countries play an important role in the handling of Europe's worst migration crisis in decades and the EU depends on Ankara to enforce a deal to stem mass migration to Europe. REUTERS AKC AS1527 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1134873.Xml
Italy will provide financing and training to the UN-backed Libyan government to help it fight people smuggling, the two countries' bilateral agreement showed, part of wider European Union efforts to stem African migration to its shores.The agreement, signed by Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni and Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Seraj yesterday and seen by Reuters on Friday, says Rome and the EU will provide funds for Libyan camps where refugees and migrants are held.But the UN refugee agency said running camps in Libya would mean keeping migrants in inhumane conditions and putting them further at risk.EU leaders are meeting in Malta today to discuss how the 28-member bloc can stop migrants before they board flimsy boats on the Libyan coast and set out across the Mediterranean for Europe. Some 4,500 are estimated to have perished attempting to cross from North Africa to Italy last year.The Italian-Libyan agreement, which will be endorsed by all EU leaders later today, says the camps where migrants would stay "until they are deported or they voluntary agree to return to their country of origin" would be managed by the Libyan Interior Ministry.Italy would provide training to camp personnel, medicine and medical supplies for the migrants, it said. Furthermore, Italy vows broad support to the Seraj government, including for Tripoli's "security and military institutions".The Seraj government is struggling to establish control amid the chaos that followed the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. People smugglers operate with impunity and the route across the Mediterranean is now the main gateway to Europe, with some 181,000 arrivals last year.But humanitarian groups reject efforts to stop migrants in Libya, where they are suffering consistent and widespread abuse, including arbitrary detention, forced labour, rape and torture, a United Nations report said in December."Running camps in Libya would mean keeping migrants in inhumane conditions and putting them further at risk," Carlotta Sami, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, told Reuters."The European Union and its Member States need a reality check. Libya is not a safe place - there is no way this can be considered a humane approach to migration management," said Arjan Hehenkamp of Doctors without Borders.Armed groups have taken effective control of official detention centres for migrants amid the political chaos, and they also run their own camps, competing and cooperating with criminal gangs and smugglers. REUTERS AKC AS1555 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1134948.Xml
The US ambassador to the UN made a strong condemnation of Russia at the UN Security Council, calling on Moscow to de-escalate violence in eastern Ukraine and saying that US sanctions against Moscow would remain in place until it withdraws from Crimea. "The US continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," said Nikki Haley, in her first appearance at the UN Security Council on Thursday. "Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine." Haley was speaking at an emergency UN Security Council meeting about a sudden upsurge in violence in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army. Her remarks were notable for the stark difference between her rhetoric and US President Donald Trump's, reported CNN on Friday. "I consider it unfortunate that the occasion of my first appearance here is one in which I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," she said. "We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions." "The sudden increase in fighting in eastern Ukraine has trapped thousands of civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure and the crisis is spreading, endangering many thousands more," Haley added. "This escalation of violence must stop." While Haley's remarks echoed many speeches delivered by the Obama administration's UN ambassador, Russia's Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin told reporters that he thinks "there is a change in tone" with the new US administration. He added that he wasn't surprised by Haley's speech. Fighting between Russian-backed rebels from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and the Ukrainian army exploded a day after Trump had his first phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday, according to the report. Russia accused Ukraine of starting the escalation. Churkin said that Ukraine was "desperately, frantically trying to achieve a military settlement to the conflict." He blamed Kiev for the recent escalation, saying it was meant to keep the issue "on the international agenda" and "at the same time suck in with their reckless confrontational policy newly elected heads of state". --IANS soni/vt ( 383 Words) 2017-02-03-15:18:07 (IANS)
Justice Department lawyers across the United States will today defend President Donald Trump's order temporarily banning citizens of seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the country, a directive some attorneys general say is unconstitutional.Trump last week signed the executive order, which affects people holding passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and also halts temporarily the entry of refugees into the country.The White House contends the moves are necessary for national security. Democratic attorneys general in several states have called them unconstitutional.Federal judges in Boston, Seattle and Virginia will weigh lawsuits filed by different states and advocacy groups challenging Trump's order. In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota are together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive.Should the judge rule that Washington and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration.In a filing late yesterday, Justice Department lawyers argued that Trump was well within his authority to issue the immigration restrictions.Massachusetts, anti-poverty group Oxfam and seven Iranian nationals will ask a Boston judge to extend an order issued on Sunday barring the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders and permanent US residents who entered from the seven countries."If an executive order looks like a Muslim ban, acts like a Muslim ban, and has been talked about as a Muslim ban, then it's probably a Muslim ban," the plaintiffs said in a court filing.During his campaign, Trump discussed the idea of banning Muslims from entering the country to protect against terrorist threats, and yesterday he defended the restrictions as necessary to protect religious liberty."There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle - not right," he told a Washington prayer breakfast.In addition to blocking people from the seven countries from entering the United States, Trump's executive order also barred resettlement of refugees for 120 days and indefinitely banned Syrian refugees. In an interview with a Christian broadcaster, Trump said an exception would be made for Christian refugees from Syria.A Virginia judge yesterday will consider whether to allow that state's attorney general to intervene in another court challenge there. REUTERS AKC AN1646 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1135056.Xml
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said today he hoped that pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine had enough ammunition to respond to what he called aggressive actions by the Ukrainian army."The main thing is to persuade Kiev to drop such reckless actions which are capable of undermining the Minsk peace process," Peskov told a conference call with reporters.Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian separatists accused each other yesterday of carrying out fresh artillery attacks on frontline residential areas in eastern Ukraine, resulting in civilian casualties on both sides. REUTERS AKC BD1750 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0432-1135214.Xml
Iranian students take part in a rally marking the 37th anniversary of taking over the U.S. embassy by a group of Iranian students in Tehran, capital of Iran, on Nov. 3, 2016.(Xinhua Photo)

TEHRAN, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Iranian Foreign Minister on Thursday dismissed a U.S. security official's remarks about Iran's recent missile test as "baseless," official IRNA news agency reported.

Michael Flynn, national security advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, said Wednesday that Iran's recent ballistic missile launch is in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

"Iran's missile test does not contradict the UN Security Council Resolution 2231," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying.

The remarks by Flynn are "baseless and provocative," Qasemi said, adding that "none of the Iranian missiles has been designed for delivering nuclear weapons."

Resolution 2231, adopted on July 20, 2015 to endorse a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.

"Iran's deterrent policy is by no means negotiable," Qasemi stressed.

On Thursday, Ali Akbar Velayati, the senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader, also downplayed Flynn's remarks, saying that the Islamic republic does not wait for permission from any foreign state to defend itself.

"The missile, which was put to test (recently) was defensive," Velayati said, adding that the Islamic republic will continue its missile work with full strength, according to Press TV.

"Iran does not seek permission from any country to defend itself," and will remain indifferent to Washington's threats, Velayati was quoted as saying.

Iran is the "foremost regional power," which enjoys extensive political and economic capacities, he added.

Iran's defense minister on Thursday called the recent Iranian ballistic missile test "successful."

The Iranian officials unanimously called the test "inalienable right" of the country to boost deterrent power.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a press conference after their meeting in Budapest, Hungary, on Feb. 2, 2017. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban agreed on the necessity of strengthening the cooperation in the fight against international terrorism, during their talks in Budapest on Thursday. (Xinhua/Attila Volgyi)

BUDAPEST, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban agreed on the necessity of strengthening the cooperation in the fight against international terrorism, during their talks in Budapest on Thursday.

"We agreed on the necessity of strengthening the fight against international terrorism, we agreed that we must join our efforts," Putin told journalist in a press conference with Viktor Orban in the building of the Hungarian Parliament.

He also said that he has briefed his host about the Russian standpoint regarding the situation in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, as well as the situation in the Middle East.

"I hope that the resolution of the problems of the Middle East will contribute to the easing of the migratory pressure on Europe," Putin said.

About the conflict in Ukraine, which is a country neighboring both Russia and Hungary, the Russian president pointed at the Ukrainian leadership for the escalation of the conflict.

"The Ukrainian leaders need money, and they want that money from Western countries, and it is better to do that if they act as the victims of a so-called aggression," said Putin.

The Russian president also said that it was not in the interest of the Ukrainian government to abide by the Minsk agreement, and that is what lead to the recent renewal of the conflict.

"I hope that the rational forces in Ukraine, and other countries in the world will not let this situation escalate and will force the Ukrainian leadership to execute the Minks agreement," Putin underlined.

"The execution of the Minsk agreement is also in the interest of Hungary," Orban said. "It is the only way that peace can be achieved in Ukraine," he added.

The Hungarian prime minister was optimistic about the recent changes in international events, which could lead to a stable relationship between Russia and the EU.

"The world is undergoing major changes. And it is in the air, that these changes around us will create conditions, which would develop the European-Russian, and within, the Hungarian-Russian relations and cooperation," he explained.

"The fundamental condition of European peace is a stable and balanced relationship between Russia and Europe," Orban stressed. He also mentioned that the interest of Hungary was a stable and successful Ukraine, not least because of the important Hungarian minority living there.

The issue of Ukraine being a transit country of Russian gas was a "non-political issue," according to Putin.

"We are ready to use every route, if we receive warranties, but we do not want to account for losses due to others unpredictable reactions," as he referred to the unborn Southern gas corridor's idea, which has been suspended buy the EU.

The last visit by Putin to Budapest was on Feb. 17, 2015, during a working visit.
LAGOS, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian troops operating in restive northeast region said Thursday it arrested 3,332 suspected Boko Haram terrorists between January to February 1 during a mop up operation following the dislodgement of the insurgents from Sambisa forest.

Army Commander in charge of the operation, Maj.-Gen. Lucky Irabor, said out of the suspects arrested 26 were foreigners comprising of 17 Chadians, while the remaining 9 are from the Republic of Niger.

The suspects are in custody undergoing interrogation, he added.

Irabor said troops also conducted ambush operations against the Boko Haram terrorists and recovered large quantity of weapons.

The military chief told reporters it arrested five persons believed to be high ranking Boko Haram terrorists, in its efforts to clear the remnants of the terrorist group.

Irabor said the arrest was made in collaboration with vigilantes called "Civilian troops".

The suspects were arrested after numerous operations in different parts of the northeast, he added.

The military chief also informed that the Jan. 16 airstrike on an Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camp was a mistake, which has been deeply regretted by the military.

He conformed that a total of 122 people lost their lives in the unfortunate airstrike.
Judge Neil Gorsuch (C) and his wife Marie Louise listen after U.S. President Donald Trump (L) nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, D.C., the United States, Jan. 31, 2017. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- The White House said Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump is "unbelievably disappointed" at the refugee deal that the Obama administration signed with Australia.

However, White House spokesman Sean Spicer suggested that Trump will allow the deal to move forward, while stressing that the refugees will go through "a very extreme vetting process."

"The president's goal is to make sure that every single one of those people, in accordance with the deal, and as discussed in the telephone conversation with the (Australian) Prime Minister (Malcolm Turnbull), is subject to extreme vetting," Spicer said.

The spokesman added that Trump has "tremendous respect" for Turnbull and for the Australian people.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that over a telephone conversation on Saturday, Trump blasted Turnbull over a refugee agreement.

"This is the worst deal ever," Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention center, according to the newspaper.

The Washington Post also reported that Trump abruptly ended the call, but Turnbull told Australian media that the report is not correct.

On Wednesday, Trump returned to the topic, tweeting: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"
BUCHAREST, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Romanian Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu declared on Thursday that he hasn't taken resignation into account, and the government will not revoke the emergency ordinance on amending Criminal Codes.

Grindeanu told media the position at the end of the National Executive Committee meeting of the ruling Social Democratic Party.

Being repeatedly asked if he has thought of resigning, as requested by hundreds of thousands of protesters, the prime minister stressed that the Social Democratic Party was voted by millions.

Referring to the emergency ordinance to change the Criminal Codes which was approved two days ago, Grindeanu said that "We are rightfully going ahead with it."

President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday said that the solutions to the current crisis must come from politicians, adding that next week he will invite people to discussions at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.

"Solutions cannot come from the street, solutions must come from politicians," the head of state stressed.

Meanwhile, anti-government protests continued for the third evening in the capital of Bucharest and major cities throughout the country.

The Romanian government on Tuesday adopted an emergency ordinance on amending Criminal Codes, redefining, and partially decriminalizing abuse of office offenses.

After the ordinance was adopted, Justice Minister Florin Iordache said that abuse of office was to be considered a crime only if the damages exceeded 200,000 lei (47,463 U.S. dollars).

However, the opposition complained that the changes to the criminal law would likely prevent some politicians charged with crimes from being punished.
Newly recruited Houthi fighters chant slogans during a gathering in the capital Sanaa to mobilize more fighters to battlefronts to fight pro-government forces in several Yemeni cities, on February 2, 2017. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- The UN is extremely concerned about an intensification of military operations, including airstrikes, in the Dhubab and Al Mokha districts of Yemen's Taizz Governorate, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters here Thursday.

"There has also been a sharp increase in airstrikes in Hudaydah and surrounding areas," Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

Displacement is increasing from Mokha, with at least a third of the population, approximately 30,000 people, forced to flee to other areas in Taizz governorate, as well as to Hudaydah and Lahj governorates, he said. "There are conflicting reports on the number of people that are still in the city."

"Assistance is being provided to the displaced in Hudaydah and a response is being mobilised in the governorate of Taizz," he said.

"We are also concerned about the impact of military operations on the movement of commercial and humanitarian vessels in the Red Sea near Yemen's ports, the gateway of 70 percent of imports for Yemen," he added.

The situation in Yemen has deteriorated economically and politically since March 2015, when war broke out between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullash Saleh, and the government backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.

Houthis and Saleh's forces hold most of Yemen's northern regions while government forces backed by Saudi-led military coalition share control of the rest of the country including seven southern provinces.

The civil war, ground battles and airstrikes have already killed more than 10,000 people, half of them civilians, injured more than 35,000 others and displaced over two millions, according to humanitarian agencies.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Thursday called on parties to the recurring conflict in eastern Ukraine to strictly abide by the cease-fire regime and remain committed to a political solution.

Chinese Ambassador to the UN Liu Jieyi told the Security Council that there must be a fundamental solution that will accommodate the legitimate rights and aspirations of all regions and ethnic groups and also address the reasonable concerns of all relevant parties in order to strike a balance among the interests of all sides.

The situation in eastern Ukraine has worsened over the weekend with reported cease-fire violations and wide-spread use of multiple-launch-rocket systems, which are prohibited under Minsk peace agreement.

The UN has reported that over 17,000 people, including 2,500 children, are facing freezing weather without any heating or electricity following intense fighting around the town of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

Liu said China is of the view that all parties should fully implement Security Council resolution, enforce cessation of hostilities and implement Minsk agreement.

He said all parties must remain committed to seeking a comprehensive, lasting and balanced solution to the Ukrainian issue for dialogue and consultations to help achieve peace, stability and development in Ukraine.

"The international community should continue to support all diplomatic efforts for political solution," he said. "Security Council discussions on this issue should contribute to the easing of tensions on the ground and seeking a proper solution to the Ukrainian question."
PARIS, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Huawei, Chinese telecoms giant and Orange, French telecommunication group on Thursday signed an agreement to bolster partnership on 5G services and cloudification, the Chinese firm said.

With the new accord, the two companied will cooperate on key technologies related to 5G to "encourage innovation in three areas of 5G services: infrastructure, operations and ecosystem development."

In this context, they will collaborate on mobile network cloudification with open service interfaces, network flow cut and sharing 4G and 5G power in the frequency bands.

In addition, Huawei and Orange will focus on specific use scenarios for 5G such as ultra large coverage in Africa and energy efficiency, the statement added.

"We are pleased to announce this new milestone in our long-term cooperation with the Orange group on mobile technologies and in particular in view of the imminent arrival of 5G," said Zou Zhilei, president of the Huawei Carrier Business Group.

"It also shows our commitment to our best customers to help them build a better connected world," he added.

Alain Maloberti, vice president of Orange Labs Networks, said the accord is a part of plan to face "technological challenges that will make possible the future uses of augmented and virtual reality and ...improve the performance of our mobile network... when it is needed, for our customers in Europe and Africa."
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chancellor Nicholas Dirks of the University of California, Berkeley, tried Thursday to distance the public university from violence during a protest the previous evening that turned a radical far-right political figure away from making a speech on campus.

Referring to the cancellation of an event scheduled for Wednesday evening for Milo Yiannopulos, an editor for the conservative website Breitbart in the wake of protest, Dirks stated that "UC Berkeley condemns in the strongest possible terms the actions of individuals who invaded the campus, infiltrated a crowd of peaceful students and used violent tactics to close down the event."

However, he noted that "Mr. Yiannopoulos was in marked opposition to the basic values of the university, we respected his right to come to campus and speak once he was invited to do so by a legitimate student group. "

The statement came after U.S. President Donald Trump posted a message Thursday morning on his Twitter social media account in response to the incident, threatening to defund the university. "If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" he wrote.

Invited by the Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) , Yiannopulos was scheduled to speak at 8:00 p.m. Wednesday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building next to Sproul Plaza on the campus.

Deeming Yiannopulos as part of, arguably a spokesperson for, the so-called "alt-right" movement that allegedly prompted Trump into the White House during the presidential election last November, some 1,500 student protesters chanted "No Milo, No Trump, No fascist USA!"

While the students tried to block the entrance to the building, a group of masked protesters, apparently from outside the university, turned violent trying to break down barricades and throw fireworks towards the venue. Windows were smashed at the building, fires set and fireworks thrown towards police officers.

By 6:15 p.m., UC Berkeley posted a message on its Twitter account that the "performance" was canceled. About 15 minutes later, UC Police, Berkeley, updated that "Milo (Yiannopoulos) has left campus."

Yiannopoulos, who was permanently banned by Twitter for abusive rhetoric, later posted on Facebook that he was evacuated from the campus after protesters breached the ground floor of the building. "My team and I are safe," he wrote.

While all UC Berkeley buildings were on lockdown, police issued repeated orders for immediate dispersal of the crowd.

After students left the campus after 8:00 p.m., a group of about 200 people continued march through Berkeley, a city northeast of San Francisco, in Northern California.

Known for his extreme views on feminism, Islam, social justice and political correctness, Yiannopulos, 32, a Briton born in Greece, has been criticized for being racist and misogynistic.

Labelled by mainstream media as a "political provocateur," Yiannopulos began touring U.S. universities last year. On January 20, the same day Trump was inaugurated, he spoke at the University of Washington and sparked large protests. A 34-year-old man was shot at the event by a 29-year-old supporter of Trump, Yiannopoulos and the National Rifle Association (NRA), suffering life-threatening injuries.

Steve Bannon, now chief strategist and senior adviser to Trump, is the former head of Breitbart. He has described the news site as the platform of the alt-right, or alternative right, a loose group of people with far-right ideology who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States. The term alt-right was coined by U.S. white nationalist Richard Spencer in 2010.
A vandalized Bank of America office is seen after a student protest turned violent at UC Berkeley during a demonstration over right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, who was forced to cancel his talk, in Berkeley, California, U.S., February 1, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Chancellor Nicholas Dirks of the University of California, Berkeley, tried Thursday to distance the public university from violence during a protest the previous evening that turned a radical far-right political figure away from making a speech on campus.

Referring to the cancellation of an event scheduled for Wednesday evening for Milo Yiannopulos, an editor for the conservative website Breitbart in the wake of protest, Dirks stated that "UC Berkeley condemns in the strongest possible terms the actions of individuals who invaded the campus, infiltrated a crowd of peaceful students and used violent tactics to close down the event."

However, he noted that "Mr. Yiannopoulos was in marked opposition to the basic values of the university, we respected his right to come to campus and speak once he was invited to do so by a legitimate student group. "

The statement came after U.S. President Donald Trump posted a message Thursday morning on his Twitter social media account in response to the incident, threatening to defund the university. "If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" he wrote.

Invited by the Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) , Yiannopulos was scheduled to speak at 8:00 p.m. Wednesday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union building next to Sproul Plaza on the campus.

Deeming Yiannopulos as part of, arguably a spokesperson for, the so-called "alt-right" movement that allegedly prompted Trump into the White House during the presidential election last November, some 1,500 student protesters chanted "No Milo, No Trump, No fascist USA!"

While the students tried to block the entrance to the building, a group of masked protesters, apparently from outside the university, turned violent trying to break down barricades and throw fireworks towards the venue. Windows were smashed at the building, fires set and fireworks thrown towards police officers.

By 6:15 p.m., UC Berkeley posted a message on its Twitter account that the "performance" was canceled. About 15 minutes later, UC Police, Berkeley, updated that "Milo (Yiannopoulos) has left campus."

Yiannopoulos, who was permanently banned by Twitter for abusive rhetoric, later posted on Facebook that he was evacuated from the campus after protesters breached the ground floor of the building. "My team and I are safe," he wrote.

While all UC Berkeley buildings were on lockdown, police issued repeated orders for immediate dispersal of the crowd.

Police officers prepare to deploy a skirmish line after a student protest turned violent at UC Berkeley during a demonstration over right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, who was forced to cancel his talk, in Berkeley, California, U.S., February 1, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

After students left the campus after 8:00 p.m., a group of about 200 people continued march through Berkeley, a city northeast of San Francisco, in Northern California.

Known for his extreme views on feminism, Islam, social justice and political correctness, Yiannopulos, 32, a Briton born in Greece, has been criticized for being racist and misogynistic.

Labelled by mainstream media as a "political provocateur," Yiannopulos began touring U.S. universities last year. On January 20, the same day Trump was inaugurated, he spoke at the University of Washington and sparked large protests. A 34-year-old man was shot at the event by a 29-year-old supporter of Trump, Yiannopoulos and the National Rifle Association (NRA), suffering life-threatening injuries.

Steve Bannon, now chief strategist and senior adviser to Trump, is the former head of Breitbart. He has described the news site as the platform of the alt-right, or alternative right, a loose group of people with far-right ideology who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States. The term alt-right was coined by U.S. white nationalist Richard Spencer in 2010.
SYDNEY, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- ASX listed Australian industrial giant, James Hardie Industries, has posted disappointing results on Friday, with profits down over the second half of 2016.

James Hardie posted a net profit of 194 million (U.S. dollars) over the past nine months, down 5 percent on the corresponding period last year.

The industrial giant's Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) was 277 million (U.S. dollars) over the same period, which also was down on the prior corresponding period by 4 percent.

The currently is currently sitting on a cash balance of 88.1 million (U.S. dollars), while their net debt position is 410.9 million (U.S. dollars), as of the end of the third quarter of the financial year.

It wasn't all bad news for the industry powerhouse, with earnings surging 10 percent over the nine months period, up to 1.427 billion (U.S. dollars).

James Hardie chief executive officer, Louis Gries, blamed the lower profits on startup and organisational costs, as well as increases made to the company's network capacity.

Gries surmised that the company has some room for improvement, but is in a strong position overall.

"Our group results for the nine months reflected strong top line growth and strong cash generation, yet weaker than anticipated bottom line growth when compared to the prior corresponding period." Gries said.

On the back of the results, the company has lowered its full-year guidance estimates, with net profit now expected to be in the range of 245 to 255 million (U.S. dollars), down from the previously expected 250 to 270 million (U.S. dollars).
By Matt Walsh

CANBERRA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says his phone conversation with US President Donald Trump this week was "cordial" but "very frank" as Trump reportedly expressed his anger over the proposed refugee deal between the two countries.

The deal was signed by Turnbull and the previous Obama administration late last year, and requires the United States to take in around 1,200 asylum seekers from Australia's offshore detention centers on Nauru and Manus Island.

Information leaked earlier in the week, and first published by the Washington Post, revealed the President described the 25-minute phone call with Turnbull as his "worst of the day", reportedly cutting it short by 35 minutes.

On Friday morning, Turnbull admitted the call was "forthright" and said the president was a larger-than-life character.

"He's clearly a big personality," Turnbull told radio journalist John Laws on Friday.

"I note that his official spokesman described the conversation as a cordial one this morning.

"I can say that it was very frank, it was forthright."

Trump made his feelings known about the refugee deal publicly on Thursday when he publicly Tweeted his displeasure: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"

Turnbull told the Australian media that the refugee deal would go ahead despite the President's strong words.

"As I've said, the President made a commitment to honor the deal which had been entered to by his predecessor. That's been confirmed now several times," Turnbull said on Friday.

"It's very important that it goes ahead because it will enable us to secure resettlement options for a number of the people on Nauru and Manus Island."

But the testing week for Australian-US relations was heightened further overnight, when the President's press secretary, Sean Spicer twice referred to Turnbull as "Prime Minister Trumbull", while the White House continues to backflip on whether or not the deal would proceed.

The President's attitude came as a shock to political experts across the world, as Australia has long been considered one of America's staunchest and oldest allies. Australia is also one of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance members along with Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The leaded reports of Trump's candid phone call to Turnbull were picked up by major news outlets around the world, including CNN and the BBC.

Despite the worldwide reaction to the Turnbull-Trump phone call, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he believes the bilateral relationship was "big enough, old enough and ugly enough" to cope with the minor "snafu".

"(The relationship) been around for the better part of 100 years - in fact it's 100 years this year since Australians and Americans first went into battle with each other on the Western Front," Rudd told CNN from Abu Dhabi overnight.

"I think this snafu will blow over and we'll get back to the fundamentals of the relationship. On that, both sides of politics in the US and in Australia remain deeply committed.

"The bottom line is neither of us, you or I, were party to the actual conversation itself, so we'll let the two principals place their accounts of the call on the record.

"The fundamentals of this alliance have survived 14 US presidents, 14 Australian prime ministers, both sides of politics, and will keep going in the future because we have mutual interests at stake."

However former Australian Ambassador to the United States, Kim Beazley, said he would be "surprised" if the United States approves all asylum seekers as part of the deal, considering the "extreme vetting" promised by the White House.

"I'd be most surprised if absolutely every one of the (asylum seekers) was seen as acceptable," Beazley said.
SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- South Korean prosecutors independently investigating the scandal involving impeached President Park Geun-hye on Friday raided the offices of an anti-trust body and a financial regulator to receive relevant materials.

The independent counsel team said that some offices of the Financial Services Commission (FSC) in Seoul and the offices of the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) in the administrative city of Sejong were stormed earlier in the morning.

The search and seizure was conducted to get necessary materials linked to its probe into allegations over bribery involving Samsung Group, South Korea's largest family-run conglomerate, and the official development assistance (ODA) projects involving President Park's longtime confidante Choi Soon-sil.

The confiscation warrants were issued for the procedural purpose as special prosecutors seek to get personal and financial information of the suspects from the government bodies.

The special prosecutors are reportedly investigating into whether the anti-trust body helped enact the law on the establishment of financial holding company, which would be significant in the transfer of management control for Samsung.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, who has led the conglomerate since his father Chairman Lee Kun-hee was hospitalized in May 2014, is seeking to inherit the managerial power of the country's largest chaebol.

The independent counsel team sought to detain Vice Chairman Lee for offering bribes to Choi Soon-sil, who has been identified as the one who shares assets with the impeached leader, but it was rejected on lack of evidence.

The bribes are estimated to have been given to the president's longtime friend in return for the national pension fund's vote in favor of the 2015 merger between Samsung affiliates, a pivot to create a de-facto holding company.

Meanwhile, Choi is also suspected of intervening in South Korea's ODA projects in Myanmar in order to gain her private interests.

South Korean ambassador to Myanmar recently confessed to the special prosecutors that he was nominated as the ambassador at the recommendation of Choi.
YANGON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's parliamentary House of Representative (Lower House) has warned against parcel bomb following the recent assassination of a prominent legal advisor of the ruling party U Ko Ni at the Yangon International Airport, the local Standard Times reported Friday.

The warning was put up at the wall notice board of the parliamentary building, Director of the House's Information and Public Relations U Ko Ko Naing was quoted as saying.

U Ko Ko Naing stressed more tightened measures for the security of the parliament members in wake of the current incident.

U Ko Ni, legal advisor of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party, was gunned down at the Yangon international Airport on Jan. 29 afternoon upon his arrival back from Indonesia.

U Ko Ni was shot in the head at a close distance at the airport's taxi stand near arrival terminal-1.

The gunman also killed a taxi driver who had tried to capture him before he was arrested by the police and bystanders.

The government is continuing to make urgent investigation into the incident for further exposure of those behind the scene and security measures are being heightened.

Myanmar Police Force has asked the public to provide information on anyone involved in Sunday's fatal shooting of U Ko Ni.

The police force claimed that they had arrested the gunman, U Kyi Lin, 52 and has charged him in accordance with the law.

The suspect is under interrogation. The President's Office said that the initial interrogation indicates the intention to destabilize the state, requesting the public not to be stricken by panic and to stay quietly and peacefully to be careful of religious and racial incitement.
BOGOTA, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said on Thursday that his government would soon begin peace talks with the National Liberation Army (ELN) after the rebel group released former congressman Odin Sanchez, a hostage held since last April.

"Next Tuesday, (Feb. 7) in Quito, the public phase of conversations will begin between the Colombian government and the ELN, the last guerrilla of Colombia and the continent, which will allow us to reach complete peace," Santos said in his opening address at the 16th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Bogota.

Sanchez was freed in the early hours of Thursday in exchange for two jailed ELN members who were also released on the same day.

The exchange paved the way for starting delayed peace talks between the government and the leftist rebel group, which were due to begin last October but collapsed when the rebels refused to release Sanchez.

The ELN, which took up arms in 1964, has around 1,500 fighters, according to government figures.

Last year, the government signed a peace accord with the country's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
MONTEVIDEO, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa confirmed Thursday that his country hopes to press ahead with negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with China and would ask the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) to consider it.

"We are absolutely convinced and committed" that "if China wants the treaty, we will do it and the parliament will approve it," the minister said after a meeting in the Senate, where results of President Tabare Vazquez's official visit to China in October 2016 were discussed.

A major roadblock to the FTA is that Uruguay is a member of Mercosur, which is seeking its group FTA with China. Furthermore, other Mercosur members are not keen to have Chinese goods imported through Uruguay, dodging tariffs or customs requirements.

According to Nin Novoa, the position of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay will be "key, depending on the time of the deal" reached with the Asian giant.

He also suggested that the negotiations between Uruguay and China could lead to a broader FTA with Mercosur.

"Until we have established the basis of the treaty and this has been accepted by China, we cannot ask the other Mercosur countries if they want to join us or not," said Nin Novoa.

Mercosur requires any member to get approval from others to sign an FTA outside the bloc.

During Vazquez's visit to Beijing in October, the governments of China and Uruguay announced that they would begin to study the feasibility of holding FTA negotiations.

China has been the main destination of Uruguayan exports since 2014.
HANGZHOU, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two survivors were rescued and six found dead after a residential building collapsed in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, local authorities said Friday.

Part of a five-storey residential building in Dahui village of Wencheng County collapsed at about 8 a.m. Thursday, burying nine people from two families.

A 63-year-old woman was pulled out from the debris at about 10:40 p.m. Thursday and another female survivor was rescued at about 7 a.m. Friday. Both have been rushed to hospital for medical treatment.

There was one still buried under the rubble.

With the help of eight cranes and excavators, more than 400 paramilitary officers, fire fighters, township officials and medical workers have been carrying out rescue operation.

"The scene is quite chaotic, as if the place was leveled by an earthquake," a rescuer told Xinhua. "We have to work very carefully because the wreckages of the ruined building are joined to homes still standing."

One of the adjacent homes, he said, was already damaged with a big hole in its outer wall.

A total of 58 people living nearby were evacuated to safe places.

Local authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the building collapse.
Rescuers pull out a survivor at the accident site in Wencheng County, Wenzhou of east China's Zhejiang Province, Feb. 3, 2017. Two survivors were rescued and seven found dead after a residential building collapsed in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, local authorities said Friday. (Xinhua)

HANGZHOU, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two survivors were rescued and seven found dead after a residential building collapsed in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, local authorities said Friday.

Part of a five-story residential building in Dahui village of Wencheng County collapsed at about 8 a.m. Thursday, burying nine people from two families.

A 63-year-old woman was pulled out from the debris at about 10:40 p.m. Thursday and another female survivor was rescued at about 7 a.m. Friday. Both have been rushed to hospital for medical treatment. The ninth victim buried was found dead at around 10:00 a.m. Friday.

With the help of eight cranes and excavators, more than 400 paramilitary officers, fire fighters, township officials and medical workers have carried out rescue operation.

"The scene is quite chaotic, as if the place was leveled by an earthquake," a rescuer told Xinhua. "We have to work very carefully because the wreckage of the ruined building are joined to homes still standing."

One of the adjacent homes, he said, was already damaged with a big hole in its outer wall.

A total of 58 people living nearby were evacuated to safe places.

Local authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the building collapse.
WELLINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand Economic Development Minister Simon Bridges on Friday welcomed the opening of a new regional Chinese e-commerce base as an opportunity for exporters.

Bridges said he would attend the opening of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group's Australia and New Zealand headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday.

"Alibaba Group is the world's largest online and mobile marketplace and presents an enormous opportunity for New Zealand exporters to sell their products into the huge China market," Bridges said in a statement.

"China is our second-biggest trading partner after Australia and we have all witnessed the rise of e-commerce platforms globally, but few countries have embraced e-commerce with the gusto shown by Chinese consumers," said Bridges.

"In the last year, China's e-commerce retail sales have grown 37 percent versus 11.3 percent in standard retail; mobile commerce sales have grown 123 percent; and 50 percent of the population are yet to access the Internet," he said.

"With a population size of 1.4 billion and growing recognition and demand for Western brands, it is clear that e-commerce presents significant opportunities for our exporters. Alibaba is a key gateway to taking advantage of this."

The opening of the headquarters followed last year's memorandum of understanding signed between the government's New Zealand Trade and Enterprise agency and Alibaba Group, which formalised discussions for strengthening trade between China and New Zealand.
SYDNEY, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A world-first Australian trial announced on Friday will provide hope of fast treatment for people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The trial, to be undertaken at the Phoenix Australia Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health at the University of Melbourne, will include current and former Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel with PTSD.

The trial will assess if delivering PTSD treatment over an intensive, two week period could provide equal or better mental health outcomes than current treatments which take three months.

David Forbes, Director of Phoenix Australia, said this would be the first trial of intensive prolonged exposure treatment.

"PTSD is the most prevalent mental health disorder among Defence personnel and within the broader community, more than one million Australians a year have PTSD," Forbes told reporters on Friday.

"Even the best treatments available are not a solution for everyone. We need to develop and test new and innovative approaches to help those not benefiting from current approaches.

"The outcomes of this trial will help not just the military and veteran community but also other Australians with PTSD as we improve PTSD treatments."

The trial, announced by Australia's Minister for Veteran Affairs and Defence Personnel Dan Tehan on Friday, will intake 200 current and former ADF members in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

Chris May, an ADF veteran, was diagnosed with PTSD after his second tour of Afghanistan.

"PTSD and associated anxiety and depression effects every person differently and is indiscriminate as to the time, setting and the way in which it will affect you," May said on Friday.

As many as one million Australians are suffering with PTSD.
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian politicians Thursday mourned the death of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's wife, Marisa Leticia Lula da Silva.

Marisa, 66, died Thursday morning after spending 10 days in the intensive care unit of the Sirio Libanes hospital in Sao Paulo following a stroke last week. Her family donated her organs.

Lula's successor Dilma Rousseff expressed her condolences, saying it was "a sad day for all."

"Today is a sad day for all of us who knew and admired Marisa Leticia. We knew of the love and strength she always gave President Lula. She was a strong, hardworking woman, who conquered her space and had an important political role," Rousseff said. "In the past few months, she and President Lula were victims of persecutions and great injustices."

President Michel Temer reportedly traveled from Brasilia to Sao Paulo on Thursday evening to visit Lula.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who preceded Lula in the Brazilian presidency, visited Lula in the afternoon at the hospital to express his solidarity.

Cardoso's wife, Ruth, died while Lula was president. At the time, Lula attended the funeral and declared three days of official mourning in the country.

Outside the hospital, the Workers' Party (PT) and trade union activists left flowers and prayed for the family.

Marisa came from a poor working-class family and was the granddaughter of an Italian immigrant. Like many Brazilian women, she worked in factories, schools and as a maid. As Lula's wife, she was involved in political and trade union militancy and was present at the founding of the Workers' Party.

She was married to Lula in 1974 and is survived by four sons.
BOGOTA, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos opened the 16th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates on Thursday by urging the world to unite as one people and one race to allow humanity to reach peace.

Santos called for "a radical change of paradigm: to go from fear, exclusion and separation to love, compassion and unity...We must work for truth, justice, and from the heart to defeat fear and make ... hope a reality."

The Colombian president won the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring peace to his country, marked by an important peace agreement with his country's largest rebel group -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Santos said the world is undergoing a difficult time and urged the ruling classes to promote values such as love and compassion.

"Faced with terrorism, war, racial or religious fights, discrimination, the refugee crisis and the growing rejection of migrants....faced with a discourse of hate and exclusion which conquer terrified hearts...what can we say to humanity?" he said.

Some of the laureates said Colombia deserved to host this summit as it has ended a long armed conflict, setting an example for the world.

Jose Ramos Horta, who received the 1996 Nobel Peace Price for his fight against Indonesia's invasion of Timor-Leste, said that the path to peace is long and difficult, but ends up bringing a better quality of life to all citizens.

Tawakkol Karman, a Yemeni journalist and the first Arab woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, praised the victims of the Colombian civil war and called them the true heroes of the peace process.

Oscar Arias, Costa Rica's former president who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for his participation in Central American peace processes, said the planet is facing both a rise in xenophobia and extremism and successful processes such as those in Colombia.

"I am certain all of us are waiting to see what will happen in ...the USA, a country where insensitivity, xenophobia and hate have grown in a startling way, a country where exclusion and trade protectionism have reached the heart of government," said Arias.

The major absentees from this summit are former U.S. President Barack Obama, who won in 2009, and former head of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, who won in 1990 and founded this international gathering.
HANOI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam expects to achieve 3 billion U.S. dollars in export value of vegetables and fruits in 2017, according to Vietnam Vegetable and Fruit Association on Friday.

In recent years, Vietnam's vegetables and fruits have entered new markets such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Chile, Huynh Quang Dau, deputy chairman of the association was quoted by local Vietnam News online newspaper as saying.

In addition, farms and enterprises have produced vegetable and fruit products meeting the quality and food safety standards in strict markets, said Dau, adding that would lay the foundation for promoting exports of the sector this year and in the coming years.

Last year, Vietnam's total export value of vegetables and fruits was 2.4 billion U.S. dollars, some 200 million U.S. dollars higher than the yearly target.
SYDNEY, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The chief scientist of Australia has come out in favor of taxpayer subsidies for capturing carbon and storage technology, but does not support doing the same when it comes to "ultra-super-critical"coal-fired power plants.

Alan Finkel, who is currently conducting an independent review into Australia's electricity market, was questioned as to whether he believes that high-efficiency, low emission, or HELE, coal plants, or "ultra-super-critical"plants, should be subsidized by the Australian government.

"I do believe that low emissions technologies... should be encouraged into the market, yes." Finkel said at a meeting to disscuss his electricity review on Thursday night.

But Finkel was quick to point out that Australia needs to be looking at other forward thinking options in relation to its power needs.

"What we need, if we are going to look at coal, is effectively, truly clean coal. So these modern technologies can be very effective not only in the interim, but in the long term." Finkel said.

Finkel said he has discussed the power issues Australia faces, at length, with industry investors, and they made it clear "they don't have any plans to invest in coal."

Finkel met with companies including Energex, Shell and KPMG in the Queensland city of Brisbane on Friday, to further consult with them about Australia's future in the electricity sector.

But Queensland Energy Minister Mark Bailey said Friday, any plan to subsidize the building of new "ultra-super-critical" power stations by the federal government, would just lead to extra costs for consumers.

"Energy experts like the Australian Industry Group and Bloomberg New Energy Finance have today revealed electricity prices could double if new coal-fired power stations are built." Bailey said.

"Compared to renewables, clean coal is not clean at all."
Myanmar's President U Htin Kyaw gestures at Phnom Penh International Airport in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Feb. 3, 2017. Myanmar's President U Htin Kyaw arrived in Cambodia on Friday for a four-day state visit at the invitation of Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's President U Htin Kyaw arrived in Cambodia on Friday for a four-day state visit at the invitation of Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni.

This is Kyaw's first visit to Cambodia since assuming office in March last year.

According to the official schedule, Kyaw will be received in a royal audience at the Royal Palace by Sihamoni on Friday afternoon and hold bilateral talks with Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen at the Peace Palace on Saturday morning.

He will wrap up his trip to Cambodia by visiting the Angkor archeological park, a world heritage site, in northwestern Siem Reap province.

Kyaw of the ruling National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, was elected as Myanmar's president in March 2016.
SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reaffirmed the controversial deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea despite strong opposition at home and abroad.

The Pentagon chief under Trump administration held talks in Seoul Friday with his South Korean counterpart, Defense Minister Han Min-koo, reaffirming the agreement that was abruptly announced in July last year to install one THAAD battery in southeast South Korea by the end of this year.

The contentious decision drew sharp criticism and strong objection from China and Russia as its X-band radar can peer deep into territories of the two countries, breaking strategic balance and bolstering arms race in the region.

It has also caused opposition from local residents as the radar emits super microwaves detrimental to environment and human body. Civic group activists and opposition lawmakers have objected to it for lack of public consensus.

While the defense ministers' talks were going on, residents and advocate group members gathered in front of the South Korean Defense Ministry's headquarters to protest against the THAAD deployment.

The opponents said no parliamentary and public consent were given to the U.S. missile shield deployment, calling for the reversal of the decision on THAAD that has no defense effectiveness and never helps bring peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Mattis said the THAAD in South Korea would be defensive in nature to protect U.S. troops stationed here and its ally South Korea from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear and missile threats, but nobody would naively believe such claim.

The THAAD is designed to shoot down incoming missiles at an altitude of 40-150 km, but most of DPRK missiles fly at an altitude of less than 40 km.

THAAD placed in southeast South Korea is incapable of intercepting missiles targeting Seoul and its surrounding metropolitan areas, which have around half of the country's total 50 million populations.

Major presidential contenders in the South Korean opposition bloc demanded the THAAD deployment decision be cancelled or delayed to the next government as President Park Geun-hye was impeached in December.

During the talks, Mattis reassured South Korea of the U.S. commitment to the defense of its Northeast Asian ally, saying any attack on his country and U.S. allies will be beaten off effectively and overwhelmingly.

He noted that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a "linchpin" to support peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, saying the U.S. will make efforts to let the region become peaceful, safe and liberal through cooperation with its allies and partners.

The Pentagon chief reiterated that his country places priority on the U.S.-South Korea alliance as he mentioned at a Thursday meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn who is serving as acting president.

In response, the South Korean defense minister said his talks with Mattis will act as an opportunity to reaffirm the firm alliance and further develop the comprehensive strategic alliance.

The retired four-star Marine general arrived here Thursday on his first overseas trip since he took office about two weeks earlier. He will then visit Japan for two days.

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The Pentagon chief said the Trump administration will deal with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear threats as top priority among security issues. Full story

Pentagon chief arrives in S.Korea on 1st official overseas trip

SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis arrived in South Korea on Thursday afternoon on his first overseas trip since he took office about two weeks earlier.
NEW DELHI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A fire broke out at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, in the national capital Friday, a senior fire official said.

However, there have been no reports of any casualty in the incident, he said.

"The fire started around 8.40 a.m. (local time) in the accounts office of Rashtrapati Bhavan. Six fire tenders were pressed into service and the blaze was doused within minutes," the official said.

He added: "Only a few tables and chairs were gutted in the inferno."

A probe has been ordered to ascertain the exact cause of the fire, the official said, adding that a short-circuit could be the reason.

The British-era Rashtrapati Bhavan, with over 300 rooms, used to be the official residence of the Viceroy in pre-independence India.
By Levi J Parsons

SYDNEY, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The sights, sounds and colours of the Chinese New Year will bring over 1.3 million visitors to the harbour city's 80 events, but for Sydney it's not just the culture and traditions worth celebrating -- the Spring Festival also brings great fortune!

"Chinese New Year is an absolute gold mine for Australia's tourism economy with an extra 81,000 Chinese visitors anticipated to be heading down under to celebrate their holiday," Tourism and Transport Australia chief executive officer, Margy Osmond said.

"Thousands more visitors from China means more spending and that will generate an additional $671 million (513 million U.S. dollars) in expenditure from just this one celebration event."

Chinese visitors are already the most lucrative market for the Australian tourism industry, bringing in an estimated nine billion Australian dollars (6.89 billion U.S. dollars) to the country in 2016.

However with more infrastructure to cater to the Chinese market planned in the next few years, some in the sector believe that number could easily climb much higher, estimating the figure to reach 13 billion Australian dollars (9.95 billion U.S. dollars) by 2020.

"There is absolutely no doubt that the Australian tourist industry could be earning more form Chinese tourists than they are today." Marketing consultancy firm, Cross Boarder Management Director, CT Jonson told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The Star Sydney Casino's chief executive officer, Matt Bekier, has echoed these thoughts, stating that he plans to triple the revenue brought by Chinese visitors.

"At The Star we are gearing up for the biggest Lunar New Year celebrations to date, with specially crafted Asian food experiences, a program of exciting cultural performances, participation in the lunar markets and spectacular decorative themed displays across the property to welcome the Year of Rooster," The Star told Xinhua.

"It is a very busy trading window for us and The Star is working very hard to deliver."

A study by Tourism Australia found the five most important factors for Chinese travelers choosing a destination was safety and security, world class nature, good food and wine, aquatic and coastal locations and value for money.

With Australia fairing very well in these areas, the opportunity for businesses to capitalize on the Chinese dollar has not been lost on many Sydney traders.

"Economically, Sydney retailers are certainly benefiting from the Spring Festival and we are seeing a lot more mandarin speakers working in stores and more retailers catering to the market with things like gifts and decorations," National Retail Association Chief executive officer Dominique Lamb told Xinhua.

"Retailers are embracing that this is a huge time of year for the Chinese community, but also for them too, this January has seen a record high on spending for the last seven years, so it's great peace of mind for businesses starting 2017 and a very good way to begin the year of Rooster."
BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Invitations have been sent out to journalists from China and abroad to cover two major Chinese political meetings next month.

The fifth annual session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature, will open on March 5 in Beijing.

The fifth session of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body, will open on March 3.

A media center for the two meetings will be open from Feb. 27, the general offices of the NPC Standing Committee and the CPPCC National Committee announced Friday.

Chinese and foreign journalists should submit applications for passes to the media center, while foreign reporters temporarily in China for the "two sessions" should apply to Chinese embassies or visa organizations authorized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Reporters from Hong Kong and Macao should apply at the central government's liaison offices in the two special administrative regions. Reporters from Taiwan should apply to the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office.

The deadline for applications is Feb. 25.

Information on the NPC session will be posted at www.npc.gov.cn/pc/12_5 and on the CPPCC session at www.cppcc.gov.cn.
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A police officer has been killed in the northern Kunduz province in Afghanistan, a local security official said Friday.

Unknown armed men sprayed bullets on Abdul Wadood, local police commander, outside provincial capital the Kunduz city Thursday night, killing him on the spot, said Abdul Khalil, the security official.

Zabihullah Majahid, a spokesperson for the Taliban outfit, claimed responsibility, saying Taliban fighters punished Wadood for his fighting against the group.

Afghan Taliban militants fighting the government to regain power are in control of parts of Kunduz province.
NEW DELHI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- India has said that it will soon set up smart fence along the 3,323-km-long border with Pakistan in order to prevent infiltration.

"The testing for the smart fencing is in the final stages. Pretty soon it will be done and it will be soon erected at the India-Pakistan border. We will have smart fencing at all our borders in phases but priority would be Indo-Pak frontier," junior Home Minister Kiren Rijiju told the media Friday.

The smart fence, comprising a multi-tier security ring, will raise an immediate alarm to security forces manning the border in case of an infiltration bid.

The India-Pakistan border runs from the Line of Control (LoC), which separates Indian-controlled Kashmir from Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, in the north, to Wagah, which partitioned the north Indian state of Punjab and Pakistan's Punjab Province in the east.

The Zero Point separates the western Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan to Sindh province of Pakistan in the south.

India aims at completely sealing the India-Pakistan border by December 2018.
MAIMANA, Afghanistan, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Insider attack on a police checkpoint claimed the lives of eight policemen in the northern Faryab province on Friday, spokesman for police in the province, Abdul Karim Yurash said.

"The gruesome and bloody incident occurred in a checkpoint in Pashtunkot district along the border with Almar district at 02:30 a.m. local time today," Yurash told Xinhua.

However, the official added that the person behind the deadly incident was a Taliban fighter who surrendered to local police commander Shir Alam Khan 15 days ago and after committing the carnage rejoined the Taliban insurgents.

Almost all the victims in the checkpoint were members of same family, the official added.
Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai (front M) and Ivanka Trump (L), daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, attend the Chinese Embassy's New Year reception in Washington, D.C., the United States, Feb. 1, 2017. (Xinhua/Liu Yang)

Hi, here's what you need to know about China:

WASHINGTON -- China and the United States should always cooperate in the face of challenges, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Wednesday.

"We have learned that we should always respond to difficulties and challenges by cooperation, instead of conflict or confrontation," Cui told a 500-member audience at the embassy's New Year reception.

"We should work together for win-win cooperation, instead of being misguided by zero-sum or cold war mentality," he noted.

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KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia -- Malaysian authorities has narrowed the search area for the six remained missing in the boat accident off its Sabah state, officials said Friday.

The search on the day would cover an area of 2,990 square nautical miles, comparing with 3,900 square nautical miles in the past two days, according to Adam Aziz, chief of Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital.

The search focus more on the south and west, based on the calculation of wind and current, in the seventh day into the operations.

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UNITED NATIONS -- A Chinese envoy on Thursday called on parties to the recurring conflict in eastern Ukraine to strictly abide by the cease-fire regime and remain committed to a political solution.

Chinese Ambassador to the UN Liu Jieyi told the Security Council that there must be a fundamental solution that will accommodate the legitimate rights and aspirations of all regions and ethnic groups and also address the reasonable concerns of all relevant parties in order to strike a balance among the interests of all sides.

The situation in eastern Ukraine has worsened over the weekend with reported cease-fire violations and wide-spread use of multiple-launch-rocket systems, which are prohibited under Minsk peace agreement.

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BEIJING -- China's tourism industry raked in 423.3 billion yuan (61.7 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue during the Lunar New Year holiday, as more affluent people become increasingly keen to travel.

The volume marked a year-on-year increase of 15.9 percent, according to calculations by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA).

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BEIJING -- A new round of air pollution may hit Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and neighbouring areas in the coming two days due to unfavorable weather conditions and the lighting of fireworks, the Ministry of Environmental Protection warned on Thursday.

A cold front is expected to help disperse the pollution on Sunday.

Setting off fireworks and firecrackers, a Lunar New Year custom in China, has led to a surge in the density of PM2.5, airborne particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter, during the week-long holiday, the ministry said.
by Yoo Seungki

SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The first Pentagon chief under Trump administration on Friday reaffirmed the agreement to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea during his talks in Seoul with his counterpart, Defense Minister Han Min-koo.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis arrived here Thursday, when he met with Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn who is serving as acting South Korean president following the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye as well as Kim Kwan-jin, top presidential security advisor.

During the meetings, Mattis said the Trump administration places a priority on the U.S.-South Korean alliance and that no other nation needs to be worried about THAAD except the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Meeting with Minister Han, the Pentagon chief defended the THAAD deployment which he described as defensive in nature because it only aims to protect South Korean people and U.S. forces stationed here from DPRK threats.

However, nobody would naively believe it as the THAAD installation implies South Korea becomes part of the U.S. missile defense networking in Northeast Asia involving the United States and its two allies, the other being Japan.

The MD networking will foster arms race given the relationship between ballistic missiles and anti-missile systems that can be likened to a fight between spears and shields.

Such fight would never come to an end, with more shields demanding more spears on the other side of the two. The U.S. missile shield could bring more nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles to the region.

The same logic resulted in the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty that was inked in 1972 between the Soviet Union and the U.S., which later repealed it unilaterally. Under the treaty, the two superpowers had agreed to prevent the development of missile defense systems for fear of a surge in nuclear missiles.

The Park Geun-hye administration did not explain to South Korean people about the offensive nature of THAAD in the region, only repeatedly impressing upon conservative voters the importance of the missile shield to protect against the DPRKs nuclear-capable missiles.

In front of the South Korean defense ministry headquarters where Mattis and Han held talks, elderly conservative South Koreans welcomed the Pentagon chiefs visit, waving the Stars and Stripes along with their national flag.

Some of local media read too much into Mattis trip to South Korea before Japan. It was the Pentagon chiefs first overseas tour and the first ever by any of secretaries of the new U.S. cabinet.

South Koreas excessive dependence on the U.S. for its own defense created a kind of mythology, especially in the conservative bloc, that the country cannot defend itself. The Park government refused to retrieve its own wartime operational control of South Korean troops from Washington amid lack of confidence in its own military.

Independent diplomatic and defense politics have passed away in South Korea. The impeached president said on Thursday that THAAD must be deployed as it is very important in the South Korea-U.S. alliance.

Following Mattis visit to South Korea, conservative politicians here are expected to exploit the fake mythology by stressing the importance of military alliance with the U.S. and demonizing the DPRK.

Pro-American and anti-DPRK propaganda tended to grant election victories to conservative politicians, who may desperately require it now that support for the conservative bloc fell with the presidential scandal.

Such propaganda would not work this time around, considering that major presidential hopefuls in the opposition camp sweep recent presidential surveys. They call for the cancellation or the delay of a final decision to the next government.

Progressive politicians here have demanded examining whether the U.S. missile shield would work in South Korea and collecting the public and parliamentary consensus through open discussions.

The THAAD is designed to shoot down incoming missiles at an altitude of 40-150 km, but most of DPRK missiles fly at an altitude of less than 40 km.

THAAD placed in southeast South Korea is incapable of intercepting missies targeting Seoul and its surrounding metropolitan areas, which have around half of the countrys total 50 million populations.

The contentious decision drew sharp criticism and strong objection from China and Russia as its X-band radar can peer deep into territories of the two countries, breaking strategic balance and bolstering arms race.

It has also caused opposition from residents as the radar emits super microwaves detrimental to environment and human body.

Related:

U.S. defense chief reaffirms controversial THAAD deployment in S.Korea despite opposition

SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reaffirmed the controversial deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea despite strong opposition at home and abroad. Full story

Pentagon chief appeases S. Korea with reassurance of defense commitment
BEIJING, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- After a tumultus year of 2016, the new year augurs not so well for people in the Middle East. From Syria to Iraq, from Palestine to Turkey, people are struggling for peace and stability.

SYRIA

"We can figure out ways to make power outages bearable, but living without water for over a month is an absolute nightmare!" Nadir Rushdy, a Syrian, said while looking at the empty water tanks in his house.

Since the beginning of 2017, a drinking water crisis has become the biggest problem facing the residents in Syria's capital city of Damascus.

The government said the city's water supply has dropped by 80 percent after extremist groups blew up water pumps of the city's major water sources in December. Millions of people are having water shortages.

The government and the Syrian Red Crescent have mobilized water tankers from other regions to Damascus, rationing water to residents.

Rushdy, in his 60s, had to carry buckets and fetch water with his neighbors every day. "The water is barely enough for our family of five to get by a day, so every drop of water needs to be saved," he said.

Latest news said the Syrian government has recovered the major water sources, and the Damascus water crisis is expected to ease. However, the water crisis has shown how volatile the situation is in Syria.

Sadly, the flames of war in Syria will keep on burning in 2017. As the Islamic State (IS) still takes control of large parts of the provinces of Rakka and Deir Ezzor, and the Jaish al-Fateh, or the Army of Conquest, is in control of much of Idlib, the battle between government troops and the extremist groups will keep going.

Meanwhile, the peace talks between the government and the opposition are also expected to continue. UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said that Syrian peace talks are expected to be resumed in February in Geneva.

IRAQ

Holding a sniper rifle, Iraqi soldier Saned was targeting a compound of the Islamic State that was less than 100 meters away.

Saned was on the second story of a hotel in the war-torn city of Mosul. Bullet holes and explosion marks on the walls of the hotel serve as a reminder of the miseries and pains the city has undergone.

On Oct. 31, 2016, Iraqi soldiers started a major offensive to retake Mosul, the country's second-largest city and IS militants' last major urban stronghold in the country.

The fighting was ferocious as the army limited the use of heavy weapons to minimize civilian casualties, while the militant insurgents fought back recklessly with car bombs, rocket attacks, and even used civilians as human shields.

After the liberation of its eastern side in January, retaking the western Mosul will certainly be the major task of the Iraqi government.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi political arena is by no means tranquil this year.

Deep sectarian conflicts among Sunni and Shi'ite groups, Kurds and other minority groups will lead to a coalition government of low efficiency.

Besides, international powers, including the United States and Gulf nations, will continue to influence the war-torn country for the sake of geopolitical interests.

The Iraqi government will probably face a reshuffle given the derailed situation nationwide and discontent among the Iraqi people.

TURKEY

"I have never expected 2016 to be so tough," Ferhat Sarp, boss of Azure Cave Suites, a hotel in the Turkish tourist destination of Cappadocia, told Xinhua.

"My hotel saw a plunge in the number of tourists, which was the worst in the last three years," Ferhat said. "All this was because of incessant terror attacks and political turmoil."

In 2016, a total of 31.3 million people visited Turkey, a drop of 25 percent over the previous year, according to latest figures.

A couple of years ago, to grasp the business opportunities brought by Turkey's booming tourism, Ferhat gave up his career in Istanbul and returned to his home province of Nevsehir to run the cave hotel.

Despite the sluggish business, Ferhat never regretted leaving Istanbul, a city now threatened by terror attacks. There, residents are afraid of going to nightclubs and large shopping malls while tourists hardly dare visit places of interest. People even feel nervous at the airport.

Over the past one and a half years, Turkey has been hit by around 30 bombing attacks, in which more than 400 people lost their lives.

In the future, Turkey will continue to face a severe security situation as the Islamic State, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party and the so-called Gulen Movement, now branded as a terror group by Ankara for its alleged role in directing a coup attempt in July 2016, are still threatening state security, according to Ferhat.

The only thing for certain might be a shift to a presidential system in Turkey. On Jan. 21, Turkish lawmakers approved a bill on constitutional changes. If the bill is approved in a national referendum, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will have dramatically expanded powers to deal with social and security problems.
SEOUL, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Defense chiefs of South Korea and the United States agreed Friday to hold larger-scale joint war games this spring to contain possible provocations from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Seoul's defense ministry said.

Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo held their first talks in Seoul since the Trump administration was launched last month.

A senior South Korean defense ministry official told reporters that the two defense ministers shared the need for stronger Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint war games this year to contain DPRK provocations, according to local media reports.

The Key Resolve command post exercise and the Foal Eagle field training exercise tend to be conducted between March and April every year. Pyongyang has denounced those as a rehearsal for northward invasion.

Seoul and Washington caution about possible DPRK provocations around the start of the springtime war games, the Seoul ministry official said.

During the joint military exercises, the United States can reportedly mobilize an aircraft carrier and other strategic assets such as nuclear-capable bombers.

Mattis arrived in South Korea on Thursday, meeting with senior officials including Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn who is serving as acting South Korean president as well as top presidential security advisor Kim Kwan-jin.

The first Pentagon chief under Trump administration flied to Japan for another two-day travel.
TBILISI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- When people in China were enjoying family reunion in the Spring Festival holiday, some Chinese staff in a remote hydropower plant in northeastern Georgia could hardly relax and rejoice.

In fact, the traditional auspicious couplets pasted on the gate only increased homesickness for them, including Liu Hong, chief engineer of the Khadori Hydropower Plant located in the Pankisi Gorge in the gigantic Caucasus Mountains.

"Colleagues and I miss our family members very much, particularly at moments of big festivals," said Liu, who has spent eight Spring Festivals with his colleagues in the station, some three-hour drive away from Tbilisi.

Gu Rui, a senior advisor of the plant, has spent five Spring Festivals there.

Liu said that they were willing to stand loneliness in the desolate snow-covered gorge in order to send light to hundreds of thousands of households in Georgia.

The Khadori Hydropower Plant, with an installed capacity of 24 megawatts, was built and operated by the overseas subsidiary of China's State Grid Corp.

Completed in 2006, it is the first foreign-funded power station in Georgia.

To conduct routine inspection, workers usually have to trek through knee-deep snow or jump into biting pools in winter and wade across torrents in summer, even risking avalanches and floods sometimes.

"We choose to brave all the hardships and loneliness because we have made a commitment to keep the station well working and provide electricity to power-short Georgia," said Liu.

Thanks to these efforts, the Khadori Hydropower Plant has been operating smoothly for more than 4,000 days.

The plant has improved local people's life, said Giorge Aha Gumashivili, chief of Jokolo Village at the foot of the mountain.

"The station not only brings us light but also creates precious job opportunities, which have helped lift many people out of poverty," said Gumashivili, who is working in the plant together with his son and other fellow villagers.

"We work and live with the Chinese staff. They treat us like family," Gumashivili told Xinhua, adding that he hopes the friendship can be passed on to next generations.
MANILA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Friday that he has decided to lift the ceasefire with the communist rebels, ordering the government troops "to go back to (military) camps, clean your rifles, and be ready to fight."

Duterte said that he has ordered Gen. Eduardo Ano, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, on Thursday night to terminate the ceasefire effective Friday night.

"(I made the decision) last night. I called Gen. Ano and decided to lift the ceasefire tonight. No more ceasefire." Duterte said in a speech in North Cotabato.

He said the government has lost "so many soldiers in 48 hours" rendering the truce useless anyway.

"To continue the ceasefire, we will not produce anything. Therefore I am asking the soldiers: Go back to your camps, clean your rifles, and be ready to fight," he said. "I am sorry but that is how it is."

"Sorry. I would like to express my sadness. I tried my best but my best wasn't good enough," he said, apologizing for his decision to scarp the truce. "I went out of my way, walked the extra mile, just to look for an opening where I can find peace for my country."

Duterte's statement came barely three days after the Communist Party of the Philippines announced that it is ending its unilateral truce with the government effective on Feb. 10, saying the Duterte administration failed to heed its demand to free some 400 political prisoners as part of the ongoing peace talks with the government.

The rebel group also accused the Philippine military of taking advantage of the truce situation to encroach on areas controlled by the rebels.

Duterte said he could not release all the prisoners.

It was not clear if the ongoing peace talk with communist rebels will continue at this point after announcing his decision to scrap the truce.

Like the previous governments, the Duterte administration also wants to seal a peace deal with all rebel groups in the Philippines, including the communist and Muslim rebels.

Since 1986, the governments have been trying to reach a peace deal with the communist rebels but failed to make any headway. The communist rebellion began in 1969 and reached its peak in 1987 when it boasted 26,000 armed guerrillas.

However, the movement has since dwindled due to differences in strategy and tactics and the arrests of many of its top leaders in the late 1980s. At present the military estimates the communist armed rebels at around 4,000.
NAIROBI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The following are news highlights in Kenyan media outlets on Friday:

-- International Court of Justice on Thursday dismissed Kenya's opposition to Somalia's case on maritime boundary. By a majority of 13 judges, the top UN court ruled that it had powers to hear the dispute between the two countries.

Kenya had put up the argument that Somalia had jumped the gun as the Memorandum of Understanding expressly provided for negotiations as a way of settling the impasse, but the court found that the treaty was not binding to one-method process. (The Standard)

-- The African Union (AU) wants its member states to pull out of the International Criminal Court, as it asked the West to stop harassing Africans. The decision was arrived at in a closed-session on the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. (Daily Nation)

-- Pastoralist invasion of ranches and conservancies owned by British nationals as drought bites has caused diplomatic friction between Kenya and Britian, which has demanded an immediate end to the turmoil. (Business Daily)

-- Kenya's economy is expected to grow at between 5 and 5.6 percent in 2017, supported by increased government spending and resilient performance in transport, trade and tourism. However, the Britam Asset Managers noted that unfavourable weather, subdued credit growth remain a risk to the country's growth. (The Star)

-- Several universities closed in Kenya as a nationwide strike that started last week bites, hitting learners hard. The tutors want a pay rise. (People Daily)
Adam Aziz(R), an official of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, speaks to media in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, Feb. 3, 2017. Two life jackets were found and a floating object was spotted as Malaysian authorities continued the search for the six remained missing in the boat accident off its Sabah state, officials said Friday. (Xinhua/Xue Fei)

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Two life jackets were found and a floating object was spotted as Malaysian authorities continued the search for the six remained missing in the boat accident off its Sabah state, officials said Friday.

The authorities have not yet known whether the two life jackets belong to the missing as there were no symbol or mark on them for identification, said Adam Aziz, chief of Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital.

The two life jackets were picked up from two separate locations more than 60 nautical miles from the last known position of the sunken boat and had been sent to the police for identification, said Adam.

"Both are orange-colored and of the same pattern," he said.

Search personnel onboard a Malaysia air force C-130 has reported a floating object in the search area, and a vessel was dispatched to the location but has no findings so far, he added.

The search on Friday narrowed to an area of 2,990 square nautical miles, comparing with 3,900 square nautical miles in the past two days. Some 350 personnel and 21 assets including ships and aircrafts combed the waters near Malaysia and the neighboring Brunei.

The weather was good in the morning before turning bad later, hampered the search effort with lower visibility, said Adam.

He said the search would continue with more focus on the south, after taking into account the wind and current.

The catamaran, carrying over two dozen Chinese tourists and three crew, went down in turbulent waters while heading for the popular island of Mengalum on Jan. 28. Twenty-two people have been rescued but three Chinese tourists have been confirmed dead. Another five Chinese tourists and a crew member are still missing.

The rescued tourists are receiving treatments and are in stable conditions, officials from China's Consulate General in Kota Kinabalu told Xinhua.
PHNOM PENH, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Kingdom's National Crime Agency (NCA) to combat transnational crimes, according to the Cambodia's National Police website on Friday.

The MoU was inked in London on Thursday between Cambodia's National Police chief Neth Savoeun and NCA's international operations chief Steve Reynolds, the website said.

Under the agreement, the two countries would cooperate with each other to fight cross-border crimes, including child sex exploitation, sexual trafficking and cybercrime, it said.

Both sides also agreed to increase cooperation on information exchange, training, and exchange of visits, it added.
VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump's controversial politics could be a catalyst for a stronger and more united Europe.

"Trump is a wake-up call for Europe, his politics could be a catalyst for us to reunite Europe," said Kern, who is in Valletta for an informal summit of the EU.

"We have many common issues to support this (unity)," he added.

The informal EU summit in Malta is the first meeting of the leaders of the 28-member bloc after Trump was sworn in. It is an occasion for EU leaders to discuss the bloc's future following the June 23 Brexit referendum.

The leaders will discuss the migration crisis amid warnings of more people trying to reach Europe through the dangerous Central Mediterranean route from Libya.
MOMBASA, Kenya, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's police on Friday arrested a suspected drug trafficker at Moi International Airport in the coastal City of Mombasa with heroin valued at more than 100,000 U.S. dollars.

The Kenyan man, identified as Mohamed Jibril Ali, 51, had concealed the drugs in his shoe soles when he was arrested on Thursday night.

Mombasa County Commander Peterson Maelo said Ali was traveling to Dubai and was about to board a Rwandese air plane when he was detected.

"We arrested the suspect at the airport's inspection section. He is under investigation to establish the source of the narcotics," Maelo said.

Maelo said anti narcotic detectives have taken over the case and handed over the drug sample to the government chemist for further analysis.

He said the suspect will be arraigned in court once the investigation is completed. The latest arrest comes after police officers at the airport arrested an Ivorian woman and seized similar drugs that had been concealed in her bags.

The 28-year-old woman was traveling to Ivory Coast with the drugs before she was intercepted by detectives. President Uhuru Kenyatta has declared war on drug putting drug baron on notice.

He spoke days after the extradition four drug barons from Kenya to the United States to face drug-trafficking charges.

The sons of slain drug baron Ibrahim Akasha and two others arrived in New York early this week after they were secretly extradited from Kenya to the United States.

Baktash and Ibrahim Akasha and foreigners Vijay Goswami (Indian) and Hussein Shabakash (Pakistani) have been charged with "participating in a massive global drug trafficking enterprise."

Prosecutors believe that the cartel may have been the biggest supplier of cocaine to the New York City area for a decade or longer.

The charges carry a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum sentence of life in prison.
by Peter Mertz

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. coal industry on Thursday hailed the first of President Donald Trump's three expected regulation rollbacks affecting the energy sector.

The U.S. Senate voted 54-45 on Thursday to repeal the "Stream Protection Rule," which was ordered by former President Barack Obama in December 2016 that coal industry officials said was simply excessive.

The Interior Department had said Obama's measure would protect 6,000 miles (9,600 km) of streams and 52,000 acres (20,800 hectares) of forests by keeping coal-mining debris away from nearby waters.

"It was midnight legislation, redundant and unnecessary," Chris Warren from the Institute for Energy Research, told Xinhua.

"Don't understate overreaching regulations -- they have hurt the coal industry significantly," Warren said, noting that coal supplies more than half of the electricity in the nation.

A number of coal-burning power plants were scheduled to close in 2017, due to the excessive regulation, said Warren, whose institute is a pro-energy think tank based in Washington, D.C.

"These overreaching regulations imposed by President Obama in his final months really hurt the coal industry," Wyoming Mining Association Director Travis Dita told Xinhua.

But industry outsiders disagreed.

"They (The jobs) were being phased out anyway," said David B. Richardson, a Seattle attorney and a Washington political insider.

"Natural gas is much cleaner and less damaging to the environment, plus renewable energy is taking an increasing share of the market."

Wyoming, the largest producer of coal in the United States since 1986, had 38,500 employed in the coal industry in 1982, but only 7,000 in 2011. A drop in natural gas prices lowered electricity use and slowed coal production.

Richardson warned that Trump is trying to revive a fading industry that employs few people and does irreparable damage to the Earth.

"This is just the beginning," Richardson said.

Indeed, the order reversed Thursday is just the first of three quick moves anticipated by America's new anti-regulation president.

Energy insiders in Washington, D.C. told Xinhua that the next two moves by Trump will be to relax carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and to lift a moratorium on leases for oil and gas exploration on federal land.

These two initiatives will save the industry billions of dollars in regulation costs and leasing expenses, oil industry executives said.

The three imminent reversals could take from months to years to be realized, mining officials told Xinhua.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declined to comment on this issue.

On Wednesday, the vote to approve Trump's new EPA chief was delayed.

Senate Democrats boycotted the nomination of Scott Pruitt, a pro-oil and gas conservative, who doubts the science of climate change.

Maryland Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat, said he could not support Pruitt for a public health position because he "denies the sum of empirical science and the urgency to act on climate change."

The Stream Protection Rule was the first regulation repealed in U.S. history, under the recently enacted Congressional Review Act which allows lawmakers to overturn regulations with a simple majority.
MOGADISHU, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Somali leaders have welcomed the ruling by International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning a dispute with Kenya on the maritime delimitation within the Indian Ocean.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said in separate statements issued on Thursday night that the Court's verdict was fair and just as it would protect the country's sovereignty and its natural resources.

"The government and the Somali people welcome the Court's fair and just decision and are proud to protect the sovereignty and sovereign rights of Somalia's maritime zones and the natural resources it holds," Mohamud said in the statement.

He said the government strongly believes in the strength of its legal case and looks forward to a fair and just final decision from the Court on the merits of its case.

He said the Somali and the Kenyan people share strong cultural and historical ties that cannot be severed or affected by any disagreements among them.

"Somali and the Kenyan people's destiny and future are indissolubly interconnected. Hence, the government is committed to continuing to work hard in close cooperation with its brothers and sisters in Kenya to address the pressing issues confronting both nations and the region," he added.

The ICJ, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, on Thursday issued a verdict, admitting an application submitted by Somalia, over the maritime delimitation between it and Kenya in the Indian Ocean.

In its final judgment and without appeal, the Court rejected objections raised by Kenya which referred to a Memorandum of Understanding and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and found that it has jurisdiction to entertain Somalia's application and that the application is admissible.

The Court ruled that the MOU did not constitute an agreement "to have recourse to some other method or methods of settlement" within the meaning of Kenya's reservation and consequently the case did not, by virtue of the memorandum of understanding, fall outside the scope of Kenya's consent to the Court's jurisdiction.

It further concluded that neither the Memorandum of Understanding nor the relevant part of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea fell within the scope of the reservation to Kenya's optional clause declaration and rejected Kenya's preliminary objection to the jurisdiction of the Court, also having previously found that the Memorandum of Understanding did not contain an agreement as stated by Kenya, the Court rejected that aspect of Kenya's second preliminary objection.

In his statement, Sharmarke said they were confident from the onset that Somalia would win this case.

"Today (Thursday) we celebrate the work of several transitional governments and the current government's efforts to defend our maritime boundary. This is a collective effort from all involved and a national sovereignty case," Sharmarke said.

He commended the excellent legal debates of Somalia lawyers on this important case and reminded all Somalis, particularly politicians, that they should sustain the unity of purpose.

"This court case is a dispute between two nations not between Somalis. The focus should be to win this case and defend our territorial waters. It should not be politicized for short-term political gains. I want to underscore how important that is for us at this historic moment for our nation," the PM said.

In August 2014, Somalia had approached the Court, requesting it to determine, on the basis of international law, the complete course of the single maritime boundary dividing all the maritime areas appertaining to Somalia and to Kenya in the Indian Ocean, including the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles (370.4 kilometres).

As basis for the Court's jurisdiction, Somalia invoked the declarations recognizing the Court's jurisdiction as compulsory made by the two States.
TOKYO, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's defense secretary Jim Mattis reiterated his country's mutual defense commitment to Japan in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Friday.

Remarks made recently by U.S. President Donald Trump had some Japanese officials on edge regarding the future of the special security alliance and the costs shouldered by Japan.

Mattis stressed that his country's resolve to adhere to its security obligations remained unwavering.

"I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, one-hundred percent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people," Mattis said at the beginning of his meeting with the Japanese leader.

Mattis also said that a clause written in Japan's Constitution was as relevant today, as it was when it was first written.

"I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago -- and as it will be a year, and 10 years, from now," Mattis said.

The clause in question calls for the United States to defend territories that are under the administrative control of Japan.

The U.S. defense chief also said that the treaty obliges the U.S. to protect Japan if it came under an armed attack.

Abe made it clear to Mattis that he hopes to show that the Japan-U.S. alliance is as strong as ever even under a new administration.

Certain remarks by Trump about Japanese currency valuations and the cost the U.S. incurs in posting its troops to Japan, had perplexed the government here.

Abe believes his upcoming summit meeting with Trump will be an opportunity for him to put forward Japan's opinions and better understand Trump's "America First" policy agendas.

In trade and economic terms, Abe has already said he will seek to inform Trump of how Japanese businesses can be of benefit to the U.S. in terms of increasing competition and creating new jobs in North American markets.

The Japanese leader has also intimated that he will speak to Trump if deemed necessary following his accusations that Japan was manipulating its currency to the disadvantage of the United States.

Abe thanked Mattis for choosing Japan to be one of the first stops on his first tour as the Pentagon's chief and said that he believed this shows the U.S. continues to hold Japan in high regard.

On Saturday, Mattis, a retired Marine general, is scheduled to hold talks with Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who is likely to maintain her position that Japan is paying its fair share in costs related to U.S. troops being stationed here.

Along with Japan's top government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Inada has said that the bilateral security alliance has been of mutual benefit to both the U.S. and Japan.
NAKURU, Kenya, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Keeping livestock in dry areas is one of the most effective ways to cushion households from extreme climate fluctuations, a senior official of Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has said.

Piers Simpkin, FAO's Senior Program Coordinator in Kenya said in an interview with Xinhua on Thursday that livestock keeping is an adaptation mechanism to climate variability.

"Keeping livestock in dry rangelands is considered one of the most effective livelihoods that is adapted to reduce the impact of drought through mobility. Mobile livestock systems by definition are low input and low output systems," he said.

Simpkin said FAO is supporting improvement of grazing management in Kenya by encouraging planned grazing mainly benefiting pastoralist communities.

Although it is imperative for farmers to adopt drought tolerant crops, uncertainties over prices of substitute crops complicate their transition to climate smart farming.

"It is difficult for farmers to change overnight from growing their own food and cash crops to becoming fully market dependent and feeling comfortable to give up growing their staple food crop for a crop whose production might be more reliable but whose market price is unknown and liable to global fluctuations," he said.

FAO has established Early Warning Early Action Fund (EWEA) from which county governments in Kenya would receive financial support to provide animal feeds for selected breeding animals for individual families, Simpkin said.

On preparing communities for weather extremes, FAO is executing an early warning system of which 100,000 people are targeted with early warning messages and response options, according to the official.

Simpkin said FAO is collaborating with National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) on a predictive livestock early warning system which is intended to assist the state agency tasked with assessing drought situation in the country in informing public, identifying possible responses and preparing adequately to avert crises associated with severe drought.

"Prevention is better than cure -- hence resilience building and preparing communities in advance to mitigate or avoid drought risk is vital. The increasing frequency and severity of drought is not purely climatic but due to a number of factors," he said.
DHAKA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A truck ploughed into a roadside crowd in Bangladesh's Khagrachari district, some 259 km southeast of capital Dhaka on Friday morning, killing seven people and injuring over a dozen others, police say.

Quoting witnesses, a local police official who did not like to be named said the driver of the goods-laden truck lost control over the steering and ran over a crowd gathered around a street seller.

He said some street vendors had set up small shops beside the road on Friday morning as hundreds of Buddhists gathered in the area to join the funeral of a Buddhist monk at around 10:30 a.m. local time.

"Seven people died on the spot while 15 others were rushed to a local hospital for treatment," he said.

The official said most of the accident victims are Buddhist. The driver was arrested at the accident site.
BANGKOK, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Thai official warned women from Thailand's southern border areas to never get illegally employed in Malaysia as they may be put in jail or forced into prostitution.

Department of Employment Director General Singhadej Chu-amnat said on Friday that an estimated 50 Thai females, being natives of the southern Thai border provinces, were recently arrested by the Malaysian authorities for being employed without work permits inside that country.

Another 21 females from the three southernmost border provinces earlier were also arrested after they were lured to work in Malaysia illegally, according to the official.

Most had been allegedly hired as old-fashioned masseuses in Malaysia, Singhadej said.

Most of the culprits, who had been allegedly lured by some job agents into entering Malaysia with the use of their tourist visa, came from Thailand's southern border provinces of Songkhla, Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat and Satun, according to the department head.

Those Thai masseuses might otherwise have been forced into prostitution inside Malaysia, he said. Such illegal workers are subject to a maximum of six months in prison or a maximum of 1,000 ringgit (about 225 U.S. dollars) in fine or both under the Malaysian law.

He called on any Malaysia-bound job seekers from southernmost Thailand to obtain official permission and avoid dealing with private job agents who might possibly be involved in human trafficking business.
GUANGZHOU, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- When Liu Zhaojun, a farmer-turned businessman, was told about a brick-maker in Uzbekistan looking for investors almost four years ago, he knew "absolutely nothing" about the country.

"I didn't know where it was or how far it was from China," said Liu. "I could not even pronounce its name properly."

In 2013, Liu was selling building materials in Pingxiang County, about 10 kilometers from his countryside hometown in Hebei Province. He did not know that the Belt and Road would involve farmers like him. But he decided to try his luck anyway.

Towards the end of 2013, he made his first visit to Uzbekistan along with some business partners and saw immense potential. He invested in Keramik, a 28-million-yuan (about 4 million U.S. dollars) brick-making plant covering 20 hectares in the suburbs of Tashkent the following year.

The plant, which began production in May 2016, turns out 100,000 bricks every day. Producing bricks locally has cut costs for Uzbek building companies and created more than 30 jobs.

Liu flies between his home province of Hebei and Tashkent four or five times a year, attending to businesses on both sides.

For three years, China has been Uzbekistan's second largest trade partner and the No. 1 investor. According to China's Ministry of Commerce, China's non-financial direct foreign investment in Uzbekistan totaled 510 million U.S. dollars by the end of April 2016.

"In recent years, freight train routes have linked different parts of China with central Asia and Europe," said Liu. These trains have cut transportation time and improved efficiency.

Until last summer, he had to arrange land transport to Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, where the freight was loaded onto trains that traveled through northwest China to Tashkent. "The trip took about 20 days. But before freight trains, shipping time was at least 40 days."

In July last year, a new freight route linked Tashkent with Xingtai, a city in Hebei Province, and cut the shipping time to eight days. "It's a direct link between my home and the brick plant in Tashkent and saves time and money."

Encouraged by the fast service, Liu and his partners plan to open a second production line at the brick plant and by the end of this year, daily brick output will triple to 300,000.

Four years after he tested the waters in Uzbekistan, Liu has benefited a great deal from the Belt and Road. "It's hard to imagine a poor man like me, who had trouble making ends meet 10 years ago, is now doing business overseas."
JUBA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- More than 4,000 people are believed to have fled from South Sudan's border town of Kajo Keji in Equatoria region, following renewed violence in mid-January between the warring factions, officials said on Friday.

A local Commissioner of Kajo Keji, Luka Nyombe David told Xinhua by phone that people fleeing for safety across the Ugandan border.

"Generally they are afraid of insecurity due to the presence of rebels (SPLA-in Opposition) in the area," he revealed in an interview. "The situation is really very calm, but they are continuing to go (to Uganda)," he added.

According to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesperson in Uganda Charlie Yaxley, over 4,000 South Sudanese arrive on daily basis fleeing violence by armed groups attacking villages, burning down homes, looting, rape of women and girls.

South Sudan has been shattered by civil war that broke out in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup. Machar denied the accusation but then mobilized a rebel force.

A peace deal signed in August 2015 led to the formation of a transitional unity government in April, but was again devastated by fresh violence in July, 2016.

Tens of thousands of South Sudanese have been killed, with over 2 million displaced and another 4.6 million left severely food insecure, since December 2013.
A police vehicle is seen near the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, on Feb. 3, 2017. A French soldier on duty opened fire on Friday at a man who tried to attack him with a knife at the entry of the Louvre Museum, according to local press and witnesses. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen)

PARIS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A French soldier on Friday shot and wounded a man armed with a machete after he tried to enter the Louvre Museum in central Paris, Paris prefect Michel Cadot said.

machete attacker carrying two backpacks attacked soldiers while trying to get into the museum underground shop before being shot and seriously wounded, Cadot said.

The "aggressive" man yelling Allahou Akbar (God the Greatest) menaced soldiers who were securing the capital's landmark museum in a context of high terrorist risk, he added.

The attacker whose identity remains unknown, slightly injured one serviceman before the other soldiers fired five bullets at him, according to Paris prefect.

"There was also a second individual who was behaving suspiciously, who has also been detained, but for now there does not appear to be a link between that individual and the attack," he said.

Cadot added that no explosives have been found in the man's bags with operation underway to ensure security in the area.

In a statement, the public prosecutor opened an anti-terrorism inquiry into the attack which Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said it "obviously of a terrorist nature."

Police cordoned off the area where circulation is suspended. Louvre official held 250 visitors in safe place and will be evacuated in small groups.

France has been the target of terrorist groups in response to its military operation in Syria, Iraq and Sahel region.

A recent attack, claimed by the Islamic State, claimed 86 victims when a man drove a truck into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day in the southern city of Nice last summer.
TEHRAN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- At least three people were killed in the swipe of avalanche in Damavand district in the northeast of capital Tehran on Friday, official IRNA news agency reported.

One of the victims was Mohammad-Ali Tolouie-Moqaddam, the head of Road Bureau of Pardis and Roudehen towns, who was in the area for relief aid, the report said.

Details of the other two victims were not revealed. Another two buried under the heavy snow were recovered alive, but they sustained injuries, deputy Governor General of Tehran, Hassan Karimi, told IRNA.

Karimi said the incident occurred early Friday morning and immediately relief and rescue operations were launched with the sniffer dogs dispatched to the area for rescue purposes.
HARARE - The Zimbabwean government has requested funding from the Chinese government to develop information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure in remote parts of the country.

Information Communication and Technology and Courier Services Minister Supa Mandiwanzira said this after meeting Chinese ambassador to Zimbabwe Huang Ping on Thursday.

State-run news agency New Ziana quoted the minister as saying that Zimbabwe would repay the money borrowed from China through revenue collected under the Universal Services Fund (USF).

"The discussion with His Excellency, the Chinese ambassador has therefore been how we can access resources which we guarantee repayment through the inflows to the Universal Service Fund," the minister was quoted as saying by New Ziana.

He said the Zimbabwe government was grateful for the support it had received from China Exim Bank to develop ICT infrastructure in the country.

He added that the government was looking forward to additional support to roll out Internet infrastructure throughout the country.

Licensed telecommunication companies in Zimbabwe contribute 1.5 percent of their gross annual turnover to the USF which is administered by the Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ).

The Fund's purpose is to provide financial resources for expansion of the country's telecommunications networks to reach marginalized communities in rural areas.

"One of the areas China and Zimbabwe need to strengthen is telecommunication. In China we have a saying that if you want to get rich, build the roads first. And I think telecommunications is the road connecting people, not only in this country but to the whole world," the ambassador said.

A few years ago, China Exim Bank gave Zimbabwe's fixed telephone network provider TelOne a $98 million concessionary loan to expand its infrastructure and another 218 million dollars to government-owned mobile phone company NetOne to upgrade its network.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies undertook both projects.
VALLETA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The European Union's (EU) way to deal with immigration is cooperation and partnership, not walls and bans, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told the press ahead of an informal summit on Friday.

Mogherini said EU leaders would show cooperation and partnership as a European approach to solve the migration issue, which is different from the American way.

"For sure, Europeans differ when it comes to a certain approach, for instance to migration, and I think today we will show our way is cooperation and partnership," she said.

"We do not believe in walls or bans," she added.

Mogherini said EU leaders would agree at the summit on a package of measures that would help the EU manage immigration flows better and save lives, in partnership with United Nations agencies in Libya.

The Malta summit is an occasion for the EU leaders to discuss the bloc's future following the June 23 Brexit referendum and the first gathering of the EU leaders after Trump became U.S. president.

In the morning session of the summit, the 28 leaders, including May, will address the migration crisis amid warnings of more people trying to reach Europe through the dangerous Central Mediterranean route from Libya.

The afternoon session will be an occasion for the leaders without May to prepare for the upcoming 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaties, which falls on March 25.
JOHANNESBURG, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- T20 Africa Conference, the meeting for the G20 think tanks and African countries, ended on Friday in Johannesburg with a commitment to accelerate cooperation between the G20 and Africa.

The three-day conference aimed to chart a course for the future cooperation between Africa and the G20.

The day ended with the formulation of the communique which will be given to the current G20 chair Germany. The communique will also be the reference for further discussion between Africa and T20. T20 comprises of the G20 think tanks.

Dr. Christine Hackenesch, researcher at the German Development Institute (DIE) said, "There was an agreement that there must be a continuous and sustained engagement between G20 and Africa because there is a strong dependence between the two. Africa's Agenda 2063 should be the initial and starting point to move forward."

The conference also recommended that G20 and Africa to start with broad-based concrete initiatives which are easy to agree on and move on. They also acknowledged that Africa have an important role to play in the international multilateral cooperation.

Hackenesch said, "African leadership and their Pan African organizations like the African Union (AU), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (NEPAD) should play a leading role in the engagement between G20 and the continent. They should be strong Africa perspectives and priorities in the G20 Africa engagement."

She also stated that African think tanks should play a key role as they have the necessary expertise.

Dr. Thomas Munthali from Africa Capacity Building Foundation said they have held the Africa think tank summit every year which could be used as a link to the G20.

He emphasized that the G20 Africa engagement should speak to the Agenda 2063 which clearly articulates the African dreams.

Cedrick Crowley, Director of G20 Desk, South Africa's Department of International Relations and cooperation, said it is in the best interest of the G20 to address including Africa in their agenda.

He said, "Many G20 presidents have spoken about inclusivity. Africa and less developed countries will benefit from inclusivity. Africa is ready to partner with G20 and work hard to ensure that the relationship reaches its fruition."

He said Africa have a huge potential with its youth and resources, which presents a great opportunity for global growth. He invited the G20 to use Africa as a catalyst for future growth and do economic fairness. He said they have to make sure that the G20 implements some of the decisions they make.

South Africa's B20 representative in the G20, Mthunzi Mdwaba said Africa and G20 should partner to have sustainability and policy coherence.

The meeting was organized by South African Institute of International Affairs, German Development Institute and Institute for the World Economy. Germany is the current chairman of G20 having taken over from China in December 2016.

The first T20 African conference was attended by diplomatic corps, think tanks from Africa and G20 countries, policy makers from South Africa, Germany, international and African regional organizations.
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The governor of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province Hayatullah Hayat has vowed to foil the designs of Taliban insurgents to overrun the troubled and poppy growing province.

"The malicious designs of enemies in Helmand province would be foiled and the enemies would face humiliating defeat here," governor Hayat told Xinhua.

He made the remarks amid ongoing heavy fighting between government forces and the Taliban militants for the control of the strategically important Sangin district over the past nearly a week.

In the latest crackdown against Taliban fighters in Sangin district, at least 18 armed insurgents, according to security officials, have been killed and several others injured over the past couple of days.

Taliban militants have exerted pressure in Sangin district since last week and so far dozens of people including militants, government forces personnel as well as civilians, according to locals, have been killed.

"Government forces would defend Sangin district at any cost to thwart Taliban vicious designs," governor Hayat said, adding reinforcement has been sent to Sangin district to beat the insurgents.

Meanwhile, local observers describe the beleaguered Sangin district as "strategically important" area and warned that the "fall of Sangin would further complicate the security challenges" in Helmand province.

"The fall of Sangin would add to the security problems in Helmand and adjoining areas," Abdul Majid Akhundzada, the deputy to Helmand Provincial Council said.

Sangin district, if falls to Taliban outfit would pave the way for the fall of Gereshk district and eventually would enable Taliban fighters to tighten the noose around provincial capital Lashkar Gah.

The poppy growing Helmand province with Lashkar Gah as its capital 555 km south of Kabul has been regarded as Taliban hotbed in the conflict-hit Afghanistan.

Qari Yusuf Ahmadi who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit, in contact with media has confirmed fighting in Sangin district and inflicting casualties on government forces stationed there.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks to media at a press conference during the EU informal summit in Valletta, Malta, Feb. 3, 2017. European leaders agreed Friday on an action plan to stem the migration flow into Europe along the central Mediterranean route during an informal summit in Malta. (Xinhua/Mark Zammit Cordina)

VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- European leaders agreed Friday on an action plan to stem the migration flow into Europe along the central Mediterranean route during an informal summit in Malta.

According to the plan, priorities will be given to training, equipment and support to the Libyan national coast guard, further efforts to disrupt smuggling business, supporting the development of local communities in Libya, adequate reception capacities and conditions in Libya for migrants and support to international organisations in stepping up assisted voluntary return activities.

"The European Union is strengthening the mainstreaming of migration within its Official Development Assistance for Africa, which amounts to 31 billion euros during this financial period. Some of the actions can be funded within projects already underway, notably projects funded by the EU Trust Fund for Africa as appropriate, which mobilizes 1.8 billion euros from the EU budget and 152 million euros from Member States' contributions," said EU leaders in the Malta Declaration adopted at the ongoing informal summit.

To cover the most urgent funding needs now and throughout 2017, the European Commission has decided to mobilize as a first step an additional 200 million euros for the North Africa window of the Fund and to give priority to migration-related projects concerning Libya.

The external dimension of migration is one of the top issues of the Malta summit.

The Mediterranean route is now the main gateway to Europe, with some 180,000 arrivals in Italy last year.

The number of persons dead or missing at sea has refreshed record each year since 2013, and hundreds have lost their lives in the beginning of 2017, said the Declaration.

"We are determined to take additional action to significantly reduce migratory flows along the Central Mediterranean route and break the business model of smugglers, while remaining vigilant about the Eastern Mediterranean as well as other routes. We will step up our work with Libya as the main country of departure as well as with its North African and sub-Saharan neighbours," it added.

The EU paid more attention to the central Mediterranean route after the figure of asylum seekers nosedived on the eastern Mediterranean route since a EU-Turkey deal took effect last year.

Under the deal signed last March to stem the influx into Europe, all people who are entering Greece illegally on boats from Turkish shores will be sent back, in the case that their asylum requests are turned down.

"We remain committed to the EU-Turkey statement and the full and non-discriminatory implementation of all its aspects, as well as to continued support for the countries along the Western Balkans route," said EU leaders in the Malta Declaration.

The EU also reaffirmed its support to efforts and initiatives from individual member states directly engaged with Libya.

It welcomed the Italy-Libya memorandum of understanding signed on Thursday to curb the flow of migrants to Europe.

Rome has pledged money, training and equipment to help the UN-backed Libyan government to manage its vast desert borders and boost its limited coast guard fleet.
PARIS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- French President Francois Hollande on Friday called the machete-wielding attack near the Louvre Museum a "savage attack," reiterating his determination to combat terrorism and ensure security at home.

In a statement issued by his office, Hollande "reaffirms the state's determination to act relentlessly to defend the security of our compatriots and fight terrorism."

The French president also "salutes the courage and determination" of the soldiers who succeeded in neutralizing the attacker.

Earlier on Friday, an "aggressive" man armed with a machete, yelling Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) menaced soldiers who were securing the capital's landmark museum.

The attacker, whose identity remains unknown, slightly injured one serviceman before the other soldiers fired five bullets at him, according to Paris prefect Michel Cadot.

In a statement, the public prosecutor opened an anti-terrorism inquiry into the attack which Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said was "obviously of a terrorist nature."

France has been the target of terrorist groups in response to its military operations in Syria, Iraq and the Sahel region.

A recent attack, claimed by the Islamic State, took the lives of 86 victims when a man drove a truck into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the southern French city of Nice last summer.
ISLAMABAD, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- At least three people were killed, scores went missing and over 100 were rescued when a boat carrying more than 150 people capsized in Pakistan's east Nankana Sahib district on Friday, local media and officials said.

Saira Umer, the deputy commissioner of the district said the boat, carrying almost double passengers than its capacity, capsized in river Ravi of the country's east Punjab province.

A survivor said the boat which was travelling from Syedwala to Jindraka village, overturned after hitting into a piece of broken bridge floating inside the river.

He said the overloaded boat was also carrying dozens of motorbikes, cattle and other cargo.

There was a large number of women and children on the boat whose search is underway by the rescue teams.

The rescue workers said they are facing hindrance in the search operation due to darkness of the night.

Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif expressed sorrow over the incident and directed the district management to speed up the rescue operation.
Leaders of EU and European countries pose for a family photo outside the presidential palace after the first round table discussion of the EU informal summit in Valletta, Malta, Feb. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Mark Zammit Cordina)

by Liu Fang, Norbert Cilia

VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Leaders from all 28 European Union (EU) member states gathered in the capital of Malta for an informal summit on Friday, with migration and concerns over Washington's standing high on their agenda.

The summit is expected to deliver "immediate and concrete measures" on how to stem the flow of migrants from the Libyan coast along the central Mediterranean route into Europe.

"We will show our way is cooperation and partnership. We do not believe in walls...and bans," stressed EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini upon arrival at the summit, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's policy temporarily banning refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.

Trump's name was raised several times by reporters awaiting EU leaders at arrivals. "Europe has its fate in its own hands. The more we are clear about how we define our role in the world, the better we can also take care of our transatlantic relations," answered German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

According to Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, "Today we have pretty mixed feelings, to be honest, because the tangible aspects of Mr. Trump's policy raise some concerns. It could be a catalyst for a stronger, more united Europe."

In Morgherini's opinion, "We are and we will remain friends with the Americans...on the basis of our own strong values, principles, interests...We believe things have to be managed together. This is the European way. The American way might become different today. This is not a European problem. This might be an American problem, but we are seeking cooperation and friendship as always with our American friends."

With Britain's Brexit, unity within the 28-member bloc stands out to be a pressing issue. "Europe stands united today," said Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission when stepping into the Grand Master's Palace. But he stayed away from voicing optimism over the outcome of this one-day summit. "There is one rule when it comes to European councils -- you never know what will really happen."

Meanwhile, Morgherini highlighted the responsibility and values that Europe stands for. " We have a big responsibility as Europeans to show unity and strength at a moment when the world and the Europeans need a strong European union, sticking to our values, being true to ourselves and becoming a strong point of reference for our partners," she said.

"The expectations are high for this important summit. The rule of law has to prevail and European values have to prevail," echoed Romanian President Klaus Werner Iohannis while arriving for the summit.

On the eve of the summit, President of the European Council Donald Tusk urged EU member states to stay united. "United we stand, divided we fall," he said in a letter to EU leaders.
YANGON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar authorities have arrested one more person suspected of being involved in plotting assassination of U Ko Ni, legal advisor of the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), said a press release of the President's Office Friday.

The 46-year-old suspect was blocked and captured on Thanlwin Bridge in Hpa-an, Kayin state on Jan. 30 when he ran away from Yangon to Hpa-an, the release said.

He was arrested 24 hours after U Ko Ni was shot dead by gunman U Kyi Lin at the Yangon International Airport on Jan. 29 afternoon.

U Kyi Lin was arrested on the spot.

The authorities will continue to expose associated culprits, the release added.

The release called on the public to be beware of religious and racial incitement, asking them to promptly report to the authorities if there is disruption of peace and stability.

U Ko Ni, who was also an advocate, was gunned down at the Yangon international Airport on Jan. 29 afternoon upon his arrival back from a senior leadership program in Indonesia's Jakarta.

He was shot in the head by a pistol at a close distance at the airport's taxi stand near arrival terminal-1.

The gunman also killed a taxi driver who had tried to capture him before he was arrested by the police and bystanders.

U Kyi Lin, 52, was further identified as an ex-prisoner from Mandalay prison who was sentenced to 27 years' jail term for stealing Buddha statue, but was once released in 2014 under amnesty order after serving for 11 years' term.
MANDERA, Kenya, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A boy who was injured when suspected Al-Shabaab terrorists attacked a police camp in Kenya's border region of Mandera early Thursday has succumbed to injuries.

Osman Abdi Abdille, 15, passed away at Mandera hospital on Thursday night, succumbing to head injuries inflicted by what area police said was a stray bullet.

A local civic leader, Abdullahi Abdirahman has confirmed the death on Friday, saying plans are underway to bury the deceased.

"We are making plans to have the boy buried now after we failed to secure a flight to refer him to a better hospital in Nairobi," said Abdirahman.

The police said on Thursday that security has been beefed up along the border with Somalia after Al-Shabaab militants raided a police camp escaped with a vehicle.

Police spokesman George Kinoti said several security officers are still combing the vast Mandera region to flush out more than 100 Al-Shabaab terrorists who attacked Arabia police camp early Thursday.

Meanwhile, the government has ruled out closing the police camp which came under attack on Thursday by the Somali militants.

The camp which is manned by 22 police officers was attacked by more than 100 Al Shabaab terrorists but no officer was injured or died as police withdrew after the militants launched heavy gun fire.

Mandera County Police Commander Bernard Nyakwaka termed the attack as usual challenges of work.

"We will not close the camp what we are doing is to reinforce it through deployment of more officers from the Rapid Deployment unit (RDU), regular and administration police units on patrol and inside the camp," said Nyakwaka.

He said during the attack officers manning the camp were few and could not withstand the militants who were determined to bring down the facility.

The country top police chief said life is back to normal and security operations have been undeterred after the attack.

"We have talked to community members to work with security agents in curbing crime and we remain optimistic that the cooperation will restore order in the area," he said.

Nyakwaka said they have put in place strategies to protect communication masts after militants have destroyed five in less than three months.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (R) meets with opposition leader in Parliament Raushan Ershad in Dhaka, capital of Bangladesh, Feb. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Dhaka)

DHAKA, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas arrived here Wednesday on his first-ever state visit to Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi President Abdul Hamid received him at the Hazarat Shahjalal International Airport shortly after a special flight carrying Abbas and his entourage landed here at about 5 p.m. local time.

The Palestinian leader was given a 21-gun salute followed by a guard of honor at the VVIP terminal.

In February last year, Abbas made a brief stopover in Dhaka on his way to Japan from Jordan.

According to diplomatic sources, the visit is aimed at further bolstering bilateral relations through more engagements in various fields, particularly in the field of trade and commerce.

Abbas is scheduled to meet President Hamid and opposition leader in Parliament Raushan Ershad.

He will also hold official talks with the country's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Diplomatic sources said both sides will discuss bilateral, regional and international issues. They are also expected to discuss relations on agriculture, energy and power, and on future intelligence cooperation.

According to sources, both sides are expected to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the formation of a joint commission at the foreign ministry level.
KIGALI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Rwanda has announced plans to start feeding more than a million most vulnerable people with fortified foods across the country, in a bid to eradicate malnutrition especially among children.

The campaign to produce foods with essential nutrients to fight malnutrition has been backed by the establishment of food fortification processing firm Africa Improved Foods (AIF) Rwanda, based at Kigali Special Economic Zone, in Gasabo district, Kigali City.

Fortification deals with the addition of micronutrients to improve nutritional quality of food supply that will assist human beings in enjoying optimal metabolism and normal growth.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Prosper Ndayiragije, the country director of AIF Rwanda said that the country is focusing on improving nutrition for all citizens through partnership with fortified food processing company.

"Our company produces fortified blended foods for the government of Rwanda and the World Food Program (WFP) to help address malnutrition and stunting in children. We are looking forward to improving the nutritional status of Rwandan population by manufacturing international quality fortified complementary foods for vulnerable groups," he said.

AIF factory in Rwanda is expected to produce 45,000 tonnes of fortified food annually, enough to help boost exports and prevent child malnutrition across country.

Latest statistics from the Rwanda ministry of Agriculture indicates that malnutrition rate in children dropped from 52 per cent in 2005 to 38 per cent in 2016.

Although there are many causes of anemia, inadequate intake of iron folate and vitamin A and B12 usually account for most causes of the disease.

In 2013, Rwanda launched the '1000 Days' national campaign to combat malnutrition with an aim of improving maternal and child health in the country.

According to Geraldine Mukeshimana, Rwanda minister of agriculture and animal resources, the country is keen to ensure that processed foods on the market are fortified with the right amount of micro-nutrients.

"Food fortification is considered to be one of the most cost-effective ways of addressing widespread deficiencies. Without the food and nutrients, malnutrition will remain a big burden to our country's population," she said.

Last year Rwanda announced plans to end malnutrition before global target of 2025.

The small central African nation has put more efforts in fighting hunger and malnutrition by setting up various initiatives like the 'One Cow Per Poor Family' program, One Cup of Milk per Child per day, school feeding program and the establishment of the national grain strategic reserve.

Food security and nutrition are considered key issues in the country's growth blueprint, the second Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS II).
ANKARA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Relations between Turkey and Greece soured again after a Greek court denied the extradition of eight Turkish soldiers as suspects of failed July 15 coup attempt.

After two decades, Kardak islet in Aegean Sea, the last serious crisis that almost brought Ankara and Athens on the brink of a war due to the disputed sovereignty of the island, has again become a scene of tension between two neighbors.

On the morning of the coup attempt, which the Turkish government claims to be masterminded by a U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, eight soldiers flew their helicopter from Turkey to Greece's Alexandroupolis and sought political asylum.

Accusing them of being suspected coup plotters, Turkey wanted the three majors, three captains and two sergeant majors to be extradited and stand trial, but the Supreme Court of Greece on Jan. 26 rejected the demand, saying that the men were unlikely to receive a fair trial in Turkey.

The soldiers are accused of playing a significant role in the attempted coup, allegedly trying to assassinate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the night of the putsch.

On Jan. 25, Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said the Greek court's ruling was not a judiciary but a political decision.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has sent a letter to his Greek counterpart Aleksis Tsipras and expressed Turkey's unease about the court ruling.

Yildirim also called on Athens to act "like a neighbor" as tension in the Aegean Sea has inflamed once again.

"Refusal of the extradition of coup plotters is a frustration for us. I have sent a letter to Mr. Tsipras about it. I have expressed our expectation of the extradition of these persons to us by reviewing this verdict within the boundaries of law," Daily Hurriyet quoted Yildirim as saying.

The case has revived a years-long dispute in sovereignty of some islands in Aegean Sea that was put aside in recent years in a bid to develop neighboring relations.

Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar and all force commanders made a show off to Kardak island, in Greece known as Imiain, on the 21st anniversary of the crisis that brought two neighbors to the brink over a war due to the disputed sovereignty of the islet.

In retaliation, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos visited the air space over the Kardak islets on Feb. 1 and left a wreath in the Aegean Sea in memory of three Greek soldiers that died in a helicopter accident during the 1996 crisis between the two countries over sovereignty of the islets that resulted in each side landing soldiers on one islet.

"We want peace. We are not looking for a fight or trouble in the Aegean. But there won't be any aircraft that will not be intercepted," Kammenos told Antenna Television after the visit. "I won't ask for anyone's permission."

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the Greek defense minister was "conducting provocative acts." Turkey was acting with "good sense" in order to prevent tension between the two neighbors and therefore Ankara had not even mentioned many of violations of Greece over Kardak islets, but Athens "should not abuse this attitude of good sense."

The Kardak islets are two small uninhabited rocks in the Aegean Sea between Greek island chain of the Dodecanese and the southwestern mainland coast of Turkey.

Ankara and Athens have been holding exploratory talks since early 2000s aimed at resolving the decades-long dispute over the official border between the two countries in the Aegean Sea.

Turkey argues that Greece was also violating international acts which forbid the Aegean country's arming on disputed islands.

On Feb. 3, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said that Greece was breaching international law by carrying out a military exercise on the island of Kos (Istankoy) in the Aegean Sea.

In a written statement, the ministry spokesperson Huseyin Muftuoglu referred Greek media reports that the Special Forces of Greece Army had recently parachuted onto the island and recalled that Paris Peace Treaties in 1947 banned all such training on the islands.

"We call on our neighbor Greece to refrain from unilateral actions that could trigger tensions," he said noting that Turkey would "not refrain from taking the necessary steps" that are in line with its political and legal statuses regarding the Aegean Sea.

A Greek Defense Ministry source confirmed that there had been a scheduled exercise at the beginning of the week involving parachutists.

"The training schedule of the Greek armed forces is not going to stop," the source said.

On Jan. 31, two Greek Coast Guard vessels passed the Kardak islets and entered Turkish territorial waters, after which Turkish Coast Guard vessels intervened and forced the Greek vessels to leave Turkish waters, Dogan News Agency reported.

One day later, Greece reported mass incursions by Turkish military aircraft over the central and southern Aegean, which Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos termed "cowboy antics."

Kos is part of the Dodecanese chain of islands, placed under demilitarization as part of the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947 after World War II, when Italy ceded them to Greece.
ATHENS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A 51-year-old Turkish seaman was arrested on Wednesday and charged with spying on the Salamina island naval base, the Greek shipping ministry announced on Friday.

The sailor, who was a crew member of the Turkish cargo ship "Makbule Ana," was spotted taking photos of the base by Greek Navy officers who alerted the Greek Coast Guard, according to a ministry press release.

The man was detained once the vessel docked at the nearby port of Elefsina, near Piraeus, and appeared before a misdemeanor court in Piraeus on Thursday.

The defendant was released pending his trial which was set for next week.

The incident occurred as bilateral ties have soured in recent weeks over territorial rights in the Aegean Sea and the Greek Supreme Court's ruling against Ankara's request for the extradition of eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece last July during a failed coup attempt.

Turkish authorities consider them traitors, but Greek judges decided against their extradition citing concern as to whether they would have a fair trial in Turkey.
DAMASCUS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- At least three children were killed and many others wounded on Friday, when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off in eastern Aleppo city in northern Syria, said state news agency SANA.

The IED is from the leftovers of the rebels in Maysaloun neighborhood, which was recaptured by the Syrian army in December of last year, when the rebels withdrew from eastern Aleppo under a deal with the government.

SANA said the IED exploded in a schoolyard in the neighborhood, when children were playing in that area.

Almost all of the former rebel-held areas in eastern Aleppo are in ruins, as a result of the military showdown in that part of the city.

Russian bomb squads have been sweeping the area since two months ago, succeeding to defuse hundreds of explosive materials.

The Syrian authorities in Aleppo have also cleaned much of the rubble-strewn streets in eastern Aleppo, to facilitate the return of civilians to check on their shattered homes.

After wresting control over all of Aleppo city, the Syrian army has started a broad military operation against the positions of the Islamic State (IS) group in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo.

The General-Command of the Syrian army said a day earlier that the military forces have taken control over 32 villages and farms estimated at 250 square kilometers in northeastern Aleppo.

It stressed resolve to continue in its campaign against terrorism.
NAIROBI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan Foreign Minister Amina Mohamed lost the African Union (AU) chairmanship to her Chadian counterpart Moussa Faki Mahamat due to lackluster support from neighboring countries and last minute decision by the Francophone bloc to support their own candidate, experts have said.

Despite months of shuttle diplomacy and aggressive lobbying, Mohamed lost the coveted post during elections held on the sidelines of the AU heads of state summit that took place in Addis Ababa early this week.

Compared to her four competitors, Mohamed had a sterling resume, intellectual acumen and connections that gave her commanding lead during the initial voting stages.

The 56-year-old trained lawyer lost the battle to secure AU commission chairmanship during the seventh round of voting after regional blocs that had earlier pledged support switched their loyalties.

Speaking to Kenyan media after the hotly contested elections, Mohamed blamed lukewarm support from some Kenyan neighbors alongside competing interests between Anglophone and Francophone states for her unexpected loss.

"It is fact regional blocs had publicly expressed support for my candidature but switched their loyalties or abstained altogether at the eleventh hour. nevertheless, we have learnt crucial lessons from the AU elections," Mohamed said on Wednesday.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto had aggressively campaigned for the Foreign Minister to succeed South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as the AU commission chairperson.

By mid January, Kenya had managed to reach out to 51 African countries to back its bid for AU commission chairmanship.

Local media reported the government had spent an estimated 350,000 dollars U.S. on shuttle diplomacy and intensive lobbying to secure the influential post at the AU headquarters.

Ruto and several cabinet members made forays to many African countries to lobby for their support for Mohamed's candidature.

As campaigns came to a close, Kenyan officials were convinced Mohamed stood a better chance of flooring her four rivals thanks to enthusiastic endorsement by the East African bloc and a large swathe of Anglophone region.

Kenyan diplomats who requested anonymity said the betrayal by some East African neighbors aborted Nairobi's quest to head the influential post at the AU.

"While other regions gravitated to their candidates, the public endorsement by some of our neighbors did not materialize. Others chose to abstain from voting hence dealing a blow to our candidature," said a Kenyan diplomat.

Kenya had to grapple with profound geopolitical challenges in its quest to occupy top echelon of AU leadership.

Local experts opined that political ideology alongside jostling for diplomatic and economic clout wrecked Kenya's chances of winning the chairmanship of the AU Commission.

"We have to admit that not everyone in this region appreciates Kenya's unrivaled position as a diplomatic, military and economic powerhouse. Voting against our candidate during the AU elections was a reflection of this revolt," said Vincent Kimosop, a Nairobi-based legal practitioner.

Kenya remained defiant after the loss of AU top job saying it will not affect the country's relationship with the rest of the continent.

During a luncheon hosted in her honor by women leaders on Wednesday, Mohamed reaffirmed Kenya's commitment to robust engagement with regional blocs to advance economic growth, peace and security.

"Kenya will continue to pursue friendly diplomatic engagement with the rest of the continent despite losing the AU chairmanship position. There are many things that unite us beyond elections," Mohamed told female entrepreneurs.

She added that losing a coveted seat at the apex of the continental body provided a chance for Kenya to re-evaluate its priorities in the diplomatic sphere.

Kenya's failure to clinch the position of AU commission Chairmanship sent ripples across the region.

As blame game persisted, some countries like Uganda came out strongly to refute claims they betrayed their neighbor's quest to head the continental body.

The Ugandan foreign ministry said in a strong worded statement on Wednesday evening that Kampala voted for Amina Mohamed to become the AU commission chair.

"We wish to state categorically that our support to the candidature of Amina before and during elections was unequivocal," the Ugandan foreign ministry said in the statement.
ANKARA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Turkey accused Greece on Friday of breaching international law by carrying out a military exercise on an island in the Aegean Sea.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the exercise was a breach of the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947 that banned all such training on the islands.

It added that Greek special forces had recently parachuted onto the island of Kos, known in Turkish as Istankoy.

"An exercise toward Istankoy is an open breach of international law," said Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Huseyin Muftuoglu in a statement.

"We call on our neighbor Greece to refrain from unilateral actions that could trigger tensions and that are against international law," he added.

He also said that Turkey will not avoid necessary steps in line with the country's political and legal statuses regarding the Aegean Sea.

Kos is part of the Dodecanese chain of islands, which was placed under demilitarization as part of the Paris Peace Treaties in 1947 after World War II, when Italy ceded them to Greece.

Tensions between Turkey and Greece have been on the rise since a Greek court last week blocked the extradition of eight Turkish soldiers that Ankara accuses of involvement in the failed coup attempt of July 15, 2016. Turkey said relations with Greece would be reviewed.

Following the Greece court order, relations continued to strain after Turkish Chief of Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar, accompanied by the commanders of Turkey's land, naval and air forces, paid a visit on Jan. 29 to the islets of Kardak, known as Imia in Greek, on which Turkey and Greece both lay claim, Turkish Hurriyet News added.

On Jan. 31, two Greek coast guard vessels passed the Kardak islets and entered Turkish territorial waters when Turkish coast guard vessels intervened and forced the Greek vessels to leave, Dogan News Agency reported.

Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos on Wednesday flew over the air space of the Kardak islets, about one nautical mile from Turkey's touristic resort district of Bodrum.

He flew to leave a wreath in the Aegean Sea in memory of three Greek soldiers who died in a helicopter accident during the 1996 crisis between the two countries over the sovereignty of the islets.
CAPE TOWN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- South African President Jacob Zuma has pledged that no tragedy would occur in the health sector following the deaths of dozens of mentally ill patients due to negligence.

Zuma was speaking on Thursday after receiving a report from the Health Ombudsman Malegapuru Makgoba on the investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of dozens of mentally ill patients in Gauteng Province last year.

The president thanked Makgoba for the investigation, which will help the government to ensure that such a tragedy does not recur in the health sector, presidential spokesperson Bongani Nqgulunga said.

The president will be apprised by the Minister of Health Aaron Motsoaledi on steps to be taken to ensure that utmost care, support, empathy and expertise are made available to patients requiring mental health care, according to Nqgulunga.

Zuma extended his deepest condolences to all the families of the deceased, Nqgulunga said.

Earlier, Motsoaledi said he would act sooner regarding the transfer of mentally ill patients from Life Healthcare Esidimeni hospitals in Gauteng.

On Wednesday, Makgoba released his report which found that former Gauteng health MEC (Member of the Executive Council) Qedani Mahlangu and other senior officials were negligent and reckless in their decision to transfer 94 patients to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that were operating illegally.

Barely three months after 1,300 patients were relocated to NGOs last year, at least 37 have died.

Mahlangu resigned just hours before the damning findings against her were made public.

United Nations human rights experts have expressed shock at the deaths of the psychiatric patients.

The experts said in a statement last December that following a badly planned relocation process of 2,300 persons from Life Healthcare Esidimeni hospitals, the Gauteng Department of Health has transferred more than half of them under the care of NGOs with inadequate capacity and resources to assist people requiring high-level, specialized and intensive non-stop care.

"South Africa must set up a policy framework to guide its deinstitutionalization process, inclusive of a plan of action with timelines and benchmarks, the redistribution of public funds from institutions to community services, and the development of adequate housing and community support for persons with disabilities, such as housing assistance, home and family support, and respite care," the experts said.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Friday announced sanctions on multiple entities and individuals involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and in providing support to the Revolutionary Gaurd military force in Iran.

The move came days after Iran launched a ballistic missile test, which drew a stern warning from Washington.

The action reflects the United States' commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and "destabilizing" activities in the region, and is fully consistent with the United States' commitments under the nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.
BEIRUT, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's President Michel Aoun stressed Friday that the Syrian refugees cannot remain in Lebanon "indefinitely," urging the international community to facilitate their return in coordination with the Syrian authorities by establishing safe zones.

According to a statement by the Presidential media office, Aoun made his remarks during a meeting with the United Nations Higher Commission for refugees chief (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi.

However, Aoun asserted that "Lebanon will not oblige refugees to return to their homeland in unstable security conditions."

According to the UNHCR, Lebanon is currently hosting 1.03 million Syrians who fled their war-torn country since the rebellion against the regime of President Bashar Assad was launched in March 2011.

However, the Lebanese government estimates their number might be closer to 1.5 million.

Aoun expressed appreciation for the efforts exerted by UNHCR to support Syrians in Lebanon, but he "warned of the negative repercussions of the presence of Syrians in Lebanon on the country's economy."

For his part, Grandi said that the agency was firm on its support for Lebanon, revealing that "the UNHCR, in cooperation with other UN agencies, was discussing with Syrian authorities the gradual return of refugees."

He added that the meeting with Aoun tackled the challenges posed by the presence of refugees in Lebanon and means to locate additional sources for addition aid to Lebanon's state institutions.

"We hope to reach a political solution as a start to restore stability in Syria and pave way for the return of refugees," Grandi added.

He expressed the agency's readiness to assist Syrians willing to return to their homeland.

Grandi later met with Speaker Nabih Berri to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri also held talks with Grandi in the presence of the State minister for Refugees' affairs Mouein Merehbi.

Grandi said that he agreed with the Prime Minister that the upcoming conference in Brussels, called for by the European Union and attended by many others, "will be a very good opportunity to reiterate the importance of supporting host countries and, in particular, Lebanon."
A Syrian refugee youth walks in an alley at an unofficial refugee camp refugee camp in the village of Deir Zannoun in Lebanon's Bekaa valley on January 31, 2017. (AFP PHOTO)

BEIRUT, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's President Michel Aoun stressed Friday that the Syrian refugees cannot remain in Lebanon "indefinitely," urging the international community to facilitate their return in coordination with the Syrian authorities by establishing safe zones.

According to a statement by the Presidential media office, Aoun made his remarks during a meeting with the United Nations Higher Commission for refugees chief (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi.

However, Aoun asserted that "Lebanon will not oblige refugees to return to their homeland in unstable security conditions."

According to the UNHCR, Lebanon is currently hosting 1.03 million Syrians who fled their war-torn country since the rebellion against the regime of President Bashar Assad was launched in March 2011.

However, the Lebanese government estimates their number might be closer to 1.5 million.

Aoun expressed appreciation for the efforts exerted by UNHCR to support Syrians in Lebanon, but he "warned of the negative repercussions of the presence of Syrians in Lebanon on the country's economy."

For his part, Grandi said that the agency was firm on its support for Lebanon, revealing that "the UNHCR, in cooperation with other UN agencies, was discussing with Syrian authorities the gradual return of refugees."

He added that the meeting with Aoun tackled the challenges posed by the presence of refugees in Lebanon and means to locate additional sources for addition aid to Lebanon's state institutions.

"We hope to reach a political solution as a start to restore stability in Syria and pave way for the return of refugees," Grandi added.

He expressed the agency's readiness to assist Syrians willing to return to their homeland.

Grandi later met with Speaker Nabih Berri to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri also held talks with Grandi in the presence of the State minister for Refugees' affairs Mouein Merehbi.

Grandi said that he agreed with the Prime Minister that the upcoming conference in Brussels, called for by the European Union and attended by many others, "will be a very good opportunity to reiterate the importance of supporting host countries and, in particular, Lebanon."
WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Friday announced sanctions on multiple entities and individuals involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and providing support to a military force in Iran.

The move came days after Iran launched a ballistic missile test, which drew a stern warning from Washington.

The action reflects the United States' commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and "destabilizing" activities in the region, and is fully consistent with the United States' commitments under the nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

The new move targets several networks and supporters of Iran's ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities.

It also slapped sanctions on a key support network run by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his two associates, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon.

In addition, it designates Ali Sharifi, an individual providing procurement and other services on behalf of IRGC-QF.

As a result of Friday's action, all property and interests of those designated subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States," said Treasury Department official John Smith.

"We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior," Smith said.

As the U.S. unveiled the fresh sanctions on Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump also issued a warning to the Islamic Republic.

"Iran is playing with fire -- they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump tweeted.

The United States on Wednesday officially put Iran "on notice" over Tehran's recent missile launch and an attack against a Saudi Arabian vessel by Iran-Supported Houthi militants in Yemen.

These actions "underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran's destabilizing behavior across the Middle East," Michael Flynn, national security advisor to President Trump, said in a statement.

In response, Iranian Foreign Ministry on Thursday dismissed Flynn's remarks about Iran's recent missile test as "baseless."

"Iran's missile test does not contradict the UN Security Council Resolution 2231," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said.

The remarks by Flynn are "baseless and provocative," Qasemi said, adding that "none of the Iranian missiles has been designed for delivering nuclear weapons."

Related:

Iran vows to counteract fresh U.S. sanctions

TEHRAN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran will counteract the fresh U.S. sanctions imposed against some Iranian and non-Iranian entities under the pretext of being linked with Iran's missile program, Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The fresh sanctions are "inconsistent with the U.S. commitments and in contradiction with the spirit of the UN Resolution 2231," the statement added. Full story

Iran "unmoved" by U.S. threats: FM
ADEN, Yemen, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch deployed on Friday scores of its well-armed fighters across three southern towns in the country's troubled war-torn province of Abyan, residents told said.

"Numerous checkpoints were set up by al-Qaida gunmen across the roads in Abyan's towns of Lawder, Ahwar and the coastal town of Shuqra," the local residents confirmed to Xinhua by phone.

"Armored cars of the al-Qaida group were deployed around the government facilities and in the key entrances of Lawder town," the local residents said.

Las week, the UAE-backed Yemeni security forces withdrew from Abyan's towns after receiving several ambushes and repeated armed attacks by al-Qaida gunmen.

The al-Qaida gunmen detonated on Thursday three security buildings and two positions used by the UAE-backed Yemeni forces.

However, tribal sources told Xinhua that hundreds of local citizens were mobilized to confront al-Qaida gunmen and prepare for launching a military campaign against the terrorist group there.

Yemen's internationally recognized government that has based itself in the port city of Aden, 45 km away from Abyan, gave orders to some military units to kick al-Qaida militants out of the southern regions urgently.

The province of Abyan is strategically important due to its proximity to the port city of Aden, which houses ministers of the Saudi-backed Yemeni government after the capital Sanaa was militarily occupied by the Shiite Houthi group in September 2014.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional Al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

The Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), also known locally as "Ansar al-Sharia," emerged in January 2009, claiming responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks against Yemen's army and governmental institutions.

The AQAP and the IS-linked terrorists took advantage of the security vacuum and ongoing civil war to expand their influence and seize more territories in southern Yemen.

Security in Yemen has deteriorated since March 2015, when war broke out between the Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and government forces backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.

Over 10,000 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes since then, many of them civilians.
HARARE, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A fall armyworm outbreak is causing considerable damage to crops particularly maize in southern African countries, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Friday.

"If the pest damage aggravates, it could dampen prospects for good crop harvests that is anticipated in the current farming season," FAO said in a statement.

Maize, a staple food in the region, has been the most affected, as well as other cereals including sorghum, millet and wheat, the UN agency said.

Southern Africa has already been reeling from the effects of two consecutive years of El Nino-induced drought that has affected over 40 million people, reduced food availability by 15 percent and caused a cereal deficit of 9 million tonnes.

FAO Subregional Coordinator for Southern Africa David Phiri said the situation was constantly evolving.

"The situation remains fluid. Preliminary reports indicate possible presence (of the pest) in Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has positively identified the presence of the pest while the rest are expected to release test results soon," he said.

The Zambian government has already spent 3 million U.S. dollars trying to control the pest that has affected approximately 130,000 hectares of crops.

The full extent of the damage in the country and other affected countries is yet to be established.

The pest, which primarily spreads through wind dispersal and host plant products, is reported to be still active.

The affected countries are also in different stages of assessing the damage to the crops as the outbreaks did not occur simultaneously.

Fall armyworm is a relatively new pest originating from the Americas, whose presence on the African continent was first reported in Sao Tome and Principe around January 2016.

The pest is known to cause extensive crop losses of up to 73 percent depending on existing conditions and is difficult to control with a single type of pesticide, especially when it has reached an advanced larval development stage.

FAO, in partnership with the Southern African Development Committee (SADC) and the International Red Locust Control Organization for Central and Southern Africa (IRLCO-CSA) will hold an emergency regional meeting of key stakeholders from Feb. 14 - 16 in Harare to shape coordinated action in response to threats posed by crop pests.

Phiri said the Harare meeting will discuss the strengthening of surveillance, preparedness and coordinated emergency responses to transboundary crop pests and livestock diseases, including the fall armyworm infestation.
By Christopher Guly

OTTAWA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The past week has been a challenging one for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He has had to deal with a new U.S. administration led by President Donald Trump, who twice surprised Canada by approving the controversial, cross-border Keystone XL pipeline and implementing a sweeping travel-and-immigration ban.

Trudeau, who supports the pipeline project, has had to explain how his support for pipeline projects fits within his Liberal government's climate-change strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He has also been forced into the delicate diplomatic position of declaring his country's doors are open to all, without directly attacking Trump's closed-door policy and putting at risk Canada's vital relationship with the United States.

But Trudeau's current challenges are coming from within rather than from the neighboring country when his government announced on Wednesday that it had abandoned a commitment to reform Canada's electoral system.

Opposition politicians accused the Prime Minister of betraying the voters by breaking a promise his Liberal Party made during the 2015 national election campaign to "make every vote count" and end the first-past-the-post voting system, in which candidates who win a majority of votes in a riding are automatically elected to the House of Commons.

There were hints Trudeau might reverse course, particularly when his government launched an online survey late last year to gauge public opinion on electoral change. The survey shows that most Canadians reportedly were satisfied with the status quo.

However, that was done after a special all-party House of Commons committee, which the Liberals promised to convene during the 2015 election campaign, held its own cross-country public consultation and found that most Canadians wanted a change.

Based on that feedback, the committee recommended that the government develop a new proportional electoral system, where House seats are allocated to political parties based on the percentage of the popular vote each receives in an election.

In 2015, the Liberals vowed that if they were to form government, they would introduce legislation to enact electoral reform within 18 months and before the next federal election in 2019. That plan is now off the table.

On Wednesday, the Prime Minister's Office released a mandate letter sent to Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould, a portfolio that previously held responsibility for electoral reform. Yet in the letter, Trudeau informed Gould that, "changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate."

"It has become evident," she said, referring to the results of the government's web-based survey, "that the broad support needed among Canadians for a change of this magnitude does not exist."

Opposition members of the House committee, who arrived at a contrary conclusion, were enraged.

Nathan Cullen, an MP who represents the left-of-center New Democratic Party, called Trudeau "a liar" and "the most cynical variety of politician, saying whatever it takes to get elected."

Cullen said "Trudeau will certainly pay a political price with those he lied to." But the next election is more than two years away, and other issues could emerge by then to eclipse the Prime Minister's abandoned pledge to change the way Canadians vote.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said she felt "more deeply shocked and betrayed by my government today than on any day of my adult life."

Trudeau has already changed the channel by giving Gould a new "top" responsibility to safeguard Canada against the type of situation that dogged last year's U.S. presidential campaign involving reports of Russian cyber-attacks against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Canada's Democratic Institutions Minister will shift her focus from electoral reform to collaborating with the defense and public safety ministers to protect the country's electoral process against cyber-threats.

"Obviously what has happened in the U.S. is [something] we are looking at," said National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan.
Iranian students take part in a rally marking the 37th anniversary of taking over the U.S. embassy by a group of Iranian students in Tehran, capital of Iran, on Nov. 3, 2016.(Xinhua Photo)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United States on Friday announced sanctions on multiple entities and individuals involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and providing support to a military force in Iran.

The move came days after Iran launched a ballistic missile test, which drew a stern warning from Washington.

The action reflects the United States' commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and "destabilizing" activities in the region, and is fully consistent with the United States' commitments under the nuclear deal with Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement.

The new move targets several networks and supporters of Iran's ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities.

It also slapped sanctions on a key support network run by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his two associates, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon.

In addition, it designates Ali Sharifi, an individual providing procurement and other services on behalf of IRGC-QF.

As a result of Friday's action, all property and interests of those designated subject to U.S. jurisdiction are blocked, and U.S. persons are generally prohibited from engaging in transactions with them.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States," said Treasury Department official John Smith.

"We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior," Smith said.

As the U.S. unveiled the fresh sanctions on Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump also issued a warning to the Islamic Republic.

"Iran is playing with fire -- they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump tweeted.

The United States on Wednesday officially put Iran "on notice" over Tehran's recent missile launch and an attack against a Saudi Arabian vessel by Iran-Supported Houthi militants in Yemen.

These actions "underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran's destabilizing behavior across the Middle East," Michael Flynn, national security advisor to President Trump, said in a statement.

In response, Iranian Foreign Ministry on Thursday dismissed Flynn's remarks about Iran's recent missile test as "baseless."

"Iran's missile test does not contradict the UN Security Council Resolution 2231," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi said.

The remarks by Flynn are "baseless and provocative," Qasemi said, adding that "none of the Iranian missiles has been designed for delivering nuclear weapons."
Leaders of EU and European countries pose for a family photo outside the presidential palace after the first round table discussion of the EU informal summit in Valletta, Malta, Feb. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Mark Zammit Cordina)

by Liu Fang, Shuai Rong

VALLETTE, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The European Union (EU) hailed the measures of more cooperation with Libya adopted Friday at its Malta informal summit as "sensible ways" to address migration.

In the meantime, EU leaders stayed cautious when commenting on the transatlantic relations, which was rattled by openly hostile pronouncements by the new U.S. administration.

"This is the first time all member states have managed to achieve important progress and unity," said Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat whose country hosts the current EU presidency.

"Management of migration is not about black and white, doing nothing or resorting to extreme measures, but sensible ways in which we can move ahead," he said.

After a work session on external dimension of migration, European leaders agreed on an action plan to stem the migration flow into Europe along the Central Mediterranean route.

Among the top priorities were training, equipment and support to the Libyan national coast guard, further efforts to disrupt smuggling business, and supporting the development of local communities in Libya.

To cover the most urgent funding needs now and throughout 2017, the European Commission has decided to mobilize as a first step an additional 200 million euros (216 million U.S. dollars) for the North Africa window of the Fund and to give priority to migration-related projects concerning Libya.

Apart from hailing the "immediate operational measures that should help reduce migrants and save lives", EU President Donald Tusk welcomed the memorandum of understanding signed Thursday between Italy with Libya.

In the memorandum Rome has pledged money, training and equipment to help the UN-backed Libyan government to manage its vast desert borders and boost its limited coast guard fleet.

"Libya is in a particular situation and the Libyan government faces challenges but that is not an excuse not to engage," said Muscat.

The agreement now provides for assistance to the Libyan government in the management of camps where potential refugees are held. They are now in a dire situation, not properly managed, he said.

On the Transatlantic ties, Tusk said the cooperation between the EU and the United States remains an "absolute priority" for the bloc because it has until now been "a key pillar of the free world".

During the Malta summit, EU leaders were prudent from voicing harsh comments. Instead, they stressed the importance that the EU must stay confident and stick to its principles whilst maintaining dialogue with Washington.

"We know that today we have no other option than to regain confidence in our own strength," Tusk told a press conference ahead of the second session which will focus on the future global role of the EU.

"The only real threat is not being enlightened enough towards challenges. If you are not united and positive enough, that could be a real threat," he added.

In his letter to EU 27 leaders, Tusk also pointed out as internal threats "the rise in anti-EU, nationalist, increasingly xenophobic sentiment in the EU itself".

"Europe has its fate in its own hands. The more we are clear about how we define our role in the world, the better we can also take care of our transatlantic relations," German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said: "Today we have pretty mixed feelings, to be honest, because the tangible aspects of Mr. Trump's policy raise some concerns. It could be a catalyst for a stronger, more united Europe."

Muscat said there were concerns among the EU's member states about some decisions taken and attitudes adopted by the Trump administration.

"However there was no sense of anti-Americanism," Muscat said.

"There was a sense we need to engage with the USA just the same, but we cannot stay silent where there are principles involved," he said.

"Now we are living in different historic times and we need to get our act together. Unity for unity's sake is not enough. We need a significant debate on the future of the EU," said the Maltese Prime Minister.

Related:

EU Malta summit adopts plan to stem migration along central Mediterranean route

VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- European leaders agreed Friday on an action plan to stem the migration flow into Europe along the central Mediterranean route during an informal summit in Malta. Full story

Interview: Malta Summit a moment of truth for EU27: expert

by Liu Fang, Maria Vasileiou
MAPUTO, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi announced Friday that the mission of the international observers for restoring a peace agreement had come to an end.

Speaking at the celebrations of Mozambique's Heroes Day, the president expressed thanks to the mediators.

Nyusi said the first phase of the dialogue process could be considered as concluded and the second phase of the process would be announced in the following week.

This moved has been confirmed by Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the main opposition party Renamo, who said that two groups would be announced starting next week to discuss issues including decentralization and military.

Dhlakama said for the time being negotiations will proceed without the presence of international or national observers.

Foreign observers was present in Mozambique to assist in the negotiations between the government and the main opposition.

Government authorities have defended that Mozambique was in conditions to see the problems solved internally but the main opposition insisted on having observers during the talks to ensure transparency.
Photo taken on Sept. 22, 2013 shows the Russian embassy to Syria in Damascus, capital of Syria. (Xinhua/Zhang NaiJie)

MOSCOW, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Embassy in Syria was attacked twice by mortars on Thursday and Friday, causing no casualty, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The mortars were fired from the Jobar district of Damascus, which is partially controlled by terrorists, according to the statement.

One of the mortars exploded between the office and residential buildings in the compound of the embassy, and the other landed 20 meters from the main entrance to the embassy, it said.

The terrorist attacks "obviously aimed to disrupt the cessation of hostilities and derail efforts to promote the political process in Syria," said the statement.

Russia will punish the shelling of its embassy, vowing to continue "a determined and uncompromising struggle" against the terrorists in Syria.

The country also called on the international community to join efforts to eliminate the Islamic State, the Nusra Front and their supporters in the Middle Eastern country and the whole region.
ADDIS ABABA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian government on Friday called for more international support to tackle the exiting drought that affected some parts of the country.

The Ethiopian government and humanitarian partners on Tuesday officially launched the Humanitarian Requirements Document (HRD) for 2017 looking for 948 million U.S. dollars to reach 5.6 million people with emergency food and non-food assistance.

Below average rains in the southern and eastern parts of the country, caused by the negative Indian Ocean Dipole and La Nina, have led to the emergence of the drought.

Communication Minister Negeri Lencho said the support from the international community is not satisfactory so far.

"Although the government disclosed the magnitude of the crisis to the international community, there is no significance response or support," he said.

Livestock deaths and water shortage have already been reported from the affected areas, Lencho said, adding no human life losses had been recorded.
TIRANA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Albanian Ministry of Energy and Power Distribution Operator (OSHEE) on Friday presented new regulation on procedures for purchasing electricity to cover losses in networks of distribution and transmission.

"The purpose of this regulation is to establish transparent, efficient and practical procedures for companies to purchase electricity from traders," Elton Sevrani, director of energy trading at OSHEE, told the media.

In a statement, the ministry said energy purchase tenders would only be made in an electronic format.

"The main criterion of this platform is to provide transparent and real-time information on all stages of energy purchase negotiations to achieve the lowest prices," he said.
TEHRAN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian ambassador to Kuwait denied recent media reports that the Persian Gulf state has imposed a visa ban on Iranians, Tasnim news agency reported on Friday.

Alireza Enayati said the report is "untrue" saying that the Kuwaiti government has suspended the issuance of visas for some nationals, including Iran, following U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order.

"Such a measure has not been taken" by the Kuwaiti government, Emirati told Tasnim.

Sputnik International has reported that Kuwait suspended the issuance of visas for nationals of Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Recent executive order issued by president Trump restricts immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran.
MINSK, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Belarus hopes to raise 700 million U.S. dollars in Chinese loans for its small and medium-sized business promotion program, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko told a press conference here on Friday.

"I think we will come to an agreement. Some money will be allocated for concrete projects" like family business etc, Lukashenko said.

Belarusian Finance Ministry earlier said Belarus had received a total of 446.9 million U.S. dollars from Chinese banks loans in 2016.
MINSK, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said here on Friday his country does not seek to join NATO, hoping to keep good ties with its neighboring Russia.

At a press conference, the president explained that Belarus always cherished sacred agreement with Russia on the defense of Belarusian space and land.

"We are not Ukraine. We are not anti-Russian, and we do not aspire to NATO", he said, stressing the Belarusians should not offend the Russians.

Speaking about difficult oil and gas relations with Russia, the Belarusian president expressed his wish that this conflict would be solved at the top level and would not affect the daily life of the people.

Belarus is at loggerheads with Russia over the unresolved dispute over oil and gas. Russian media reports said Moscow will reduce oil supplies to Belarus from 4.5 to 4 tons in the first quarter of 2017, hoping to press Minsk to pay 425 million U.S. dollar gas debt.

Lukashenko also said he would welcome anyone wishing to monitor military exercises Belarus and Russia had planned to hold this year.
by Denis Elamu

JUBA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Despite huge humanitarian suffering caused by over three years of conflict in South Sudan, experts say the war-torn nation is not yet at the level of warranting international takeover.

The proposal to put the oil-rich yet impoverished country under African Union (AU) technocrats for an interim period gained currency after the renewed clash between the warring factions in July 2016, which threatened to reverse the slim gains in the 2015 peace deal.

South Sudanese officials in the capital of Juba have vehemently dismissed any possibilities of foreigners taking charge of their sovereignty after the hard-earned independence from Sudan in 2011.

Remember Miamingi, a South Africa-based law expert, told Xinhua that the conditions in the country were not yet at the requisite level for International Transitional Administration (ITA) like in Kosovo and East Timor, but he instead supports a government of technocrats.

"Even though I believe that in some extreme cases of state failure ITA might be an appropriate remedy, I intend to argue here that South Sudan is not yet a very good case," he told Xinhua.

Miamingi said international trusteeship succeeded only in countries where warring parties had reached mutually hurting stalemates, and with significant domestic constituencies that were willing to consent to ITAs.

This would contrast with South Sudan where the post-independence war nostalgia was still high and hugely credited to the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) that dominated the transitional unity government formed last April.

"ITAs should more likely be considered only in the event that a territory contains a true vacuum of political authority; domestic political agents are fragmented to the extent that collective action via UN-facilitated power sharing is impossible; political actors are too violent or untrustworthy, or because they have violated foundational internal norms and covenants," he said.

Juba-based analyst with the Ebony Center for Strategic Studies James Alic Garang said letting the AU takeover of South Sudan will not happen as the AU member states will be moving in unchartered waters.

"Besides, there are many countries in Africa with similar political problems and none has been put under the AU sanctioned mandate. It's unacceptable in the present day and age where self-determination tops agenda at the international arena," he said.

"There is no compelling reason to believe that UN or AU administrators will be effective or efficient in transitioning South Sudan out of its current crisis. If local political actors have failed, why would anyone expect foreigners to singlehandedly deliver South Sudan from its modern abyss given a prevailing undulating political terrain?" he added.

Garang however said South Sudan still needs the AU to challenge all warring parties to stop fighting and implement the Agreement on Resolution of Conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS).

Meanwhile, former deputy defence minister Majak D' Agoot, told Xinhua there was urgent need for roundtable conference outside Juba to bring all warring factions to chart a new road map for the country.

"The first premise to restoring peace is to recognize that the peace agreement has been fractured and for peace to return a fresh break is needed," he said.

Jacob Chol, head of Juba University's political science department, said the proposed government by technocrats was not a bad thing.

He however added that the proposal would likely be resisted. "Nobody wants to be removed especially the illiterates who have been accommodated in government," he said.

"Most of the technocrats we have are not very well qualified since they are mostly political appointees," Chol added.

Miamingi noted that ITAs for South Sudan should be last resort for an extreme form of limited statehood.

"Other options should be tried first before frog jumping to the other extreme. One such alternative is a technocratic administration of South Sudanese with support where needed, from the international community," he said.

He added that such technocratic government could be responsible for overseeing the healing, reconciliation and accountability processes, ensuring political and security stability, and providing normative and institutional frameworks for successful transition.
ARUSHA, Tanzania, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- A herd of 150 elephants stormed into villages in northwest Tanzania, destroying 160 acres of food and cash crops, authorities confirmed Friday.

The elephants were strays from Serengeti National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site as big as Northern Ireland.

Local media reports said villages most affected by the jumbos' invasion were those in Itilima District, Simiyu Region.

According to the reports, for the past three days, the elephants were roaming around locals' farms destroying crops such as maize, sorghum and cotton.

"I had three acres of maize, which have been destroyed by the elephants. I am not sure of what I am going to feed my family this year," complained Nila Delefa, a farmer in the area.

"I have never seen such large group of elephants in my life. Our efforts to scare them away failed as the wild animals were charging to us. So, everyone in the village ran away," Derefa said.

He said that the first group of elephants landed into the area on Wednesday.

Another villager Shigilu Mlashi described the destruction as 'devastating', as the situation is likely to pose security concerns.

Ndulu Mtegwa, ward councilor in the area, said that six villagers have been affected by the elephants' invasion.

He described the situation as worrisome as people in the area have sleepless nights due to elephant invasion.

Benson Kilangi, Itilima District Commissioner, confirmed the incident. "We're aware of the new challenge and we've dispatched wildlife officers into the affected areas, to chase away the elephants to the national park," Kilangi said.
Leaders of EU and European countries pose for a family photo outside the presidential palace after the first round table discussion of the EU informal summit in Valletta, Malta, Feb. 3, 2017. (Xinhua/Mark Zammit Cordina)

VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- European leaders agreed Friday on an action plan to stem the migration flow into Europe along the central Mediterranean route during an informal summit in Malta.

According to the plan, priorities will be given to training, equipment and support to the Libyan national coast guard, further efforts to disrupt smuggling business, supporting the development of local communities in Libya, adequate reception capacities and conditions in Libya for migrants and support to international organisations in stepping up assisted voluntary return activities.

"The European Union is strengthening the mainstreaming of migration within its Official Development Assistance for Africa, which amounts to 31 billion euros during this financial period. Some of the actions can be funded within projects already underway, notably projects funded by the EU Trust Fund for Africa as appropriate, which mobilizes 1.8 billion euros from the EU budget and 152 million euros from Member States' contributions," said EU leaders in the Malta Declaration adopted at the ongoing informal summit.

To cover the most urgent funding needs now and throughout 2017, the European Commission has decided to mobilize as a first step an additional 200 million euros for the North Africa window of the Fund and to give priority to migration-related projects concerning Libya.

The external dimension of migration is one of the top issues of the Malta summit.

The Mediterranean route is now the main gateway to Europe, with some 180,000 arrivals in Italy last year.

The number of persons dead or missing at sea has refreshed record each year since 2013, and hundreds have lost their lives in the beginning of 2017, said the Declaration.

"We are determined to take additional action to significantly reduce migratory flows along the Central Mediterranean route and break the business model of smugglers, while remaining vigilant about the Eastern Mediterranean as well as other routes. We will step up our work with Libya as the main country of departure as well as with its North African and sub-Saharan neighbours," it added.

The EU paid more attention to the central Mediterranean route after the figure of asylum seekers nosedived on the eastern Mediterranean route since a EU-Turkey deal took effect last year.

Under the deal signed last March to stem the influx into Europe, all people who are entering Greece illegally on boats from Turkish shores will be sent back, in the case that their asylum requests are turned down.

"We remain committed to the EU-Turkey statement and the full and non-discriminatory implementation of all its aspects, as well as to continued support for the countries along the Western Balkans route," said EU leaders in the Malta Declaration.

The EU also reaffirmed its support to efforts and initiatives from individual member states directly engaged with Libya.

It welcomed the Italy-Libya memorandum of understanding signed on Thursday to curb the flow of migrants to Europe.

Rome has pledged money, training and equipment to help the UN-backed Libyan government to manage its vast desert borders and boost its limited coast guard fleet.
DUBAI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United Arab Emirate (UAE) Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in Abu Dhabi condemned on Friday "in the strongest possible terms the heinous terrorist crime" in which a French soldier was stabbed at the entrance of the Louvre Museum at downtown Paris, UAE state news agency WAM reported.

The soldier was injured during the attack. While strongly condemning this hideous crime, "the UAE affirms its full solidarity with the friendly French Republic in these circumstances and expresses its support for whatever measures France may take to preserve its security and safety of its citizens and residents," WAM quoted a statement issued by the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation on Friday.

"We confirm our religious values and our human stance which absolutely reject extremism, terrorism and crimes committed against innocent people," it added.

The ministry called on the international community to intensify joint efforts to counter the challenge of extremism and terrorism which poses a common threat which does not discriminate between a country and another. "Terrorism should be completely eradicated because it targets safety, security and stability of the world," it emphasized.

A French soldier on Friday shot and wounded a man armed with a machete after he tried to enter the Louvre Museum in central Paris.
Participants take part in a discussion during the first Global 5G Event in Beijing, capital of China, May 31, 2016. The theme of the two-day event is "building 5G technology ecosystem". (Xinhua/Li Xin)

PARIS, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Huawei, Chinese telecoms giant and Orange, French telecommunication group on Thursday signed an agreement to bolster partnership on 5G services and cloudification, the Chinese firm said.

With the new accord, the two companied will cooperate on key technologies related to 5G to "encourage innovation in three areas of 5G services: infrastructure, operations and ecosystem development."

In this context, they will collaborate on mobile network cloudification with open service interfaces, network flow cut and sharing 4G and 5G power in the frequency bands.

In addition, Huawei and Orange will focus on specific use scenarios for 5G such as ultra large coverage in Africa and energy efficiency, the statement added.

"We are pleased to announce this new milestone in our long-term cooperation with the Orange group on mobile technologies and in particular in view of the imminent arrival of 5G," said Zou Zhilei, president of the Huawei Carrier Business Group.

"It also shows our commitment to our best customers to help them build a better connected world," he added.

Alain Maloberti, vice president of Orange Labs Networks, said the accord is a part of plan to face "technological challenges that will make possible the future uses of augmented and virtual reality and ...improve the performance of our mobile network... when it is needed, for our customers in Europe and Africa."
TEHRAN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran will counteract the fresh U.S. sanctions imposed against some Iranian and non-Iranian entities under the pretext of being linked with Iran's missile program, Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The fresh sanctions are "inconsistent with the U.S. commitments and in contradiction with the spirit of the UN Resolution 2231," the statement said.

"The Islamic republic will counteract any measure which targets the national interests of the Iranians," it added.

The U.S. on Friday announced sanctions on multiple entities and individuals involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and providing support to a military force in Iran.

The move came days after Iran launched a ballistic missile test, which drew a stern warning from Washington.
People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest U.S. President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Over 100,000 visas have been revoked since U.S. President Donald Trump one week ago issued an executive order temporarily barring refugees and people from seven Middle Eastern and North African countries from entering the United States, a government attorney told the Washington Post on Friday.

But moments later, the U.S. State Department said that fewer than 60,000 visas had been canceled under Trump's order, contradicting the lawyer's figure, according to an AP report.

The attorney revealed the data during a hearing in a lawsuit filed on behalf of two Yemeni brothers who arrived last Saturday at Dulles International Airport, near Washington D.C., but were sent back to Ethiopia due to the controversial order issued, according to the Washington Post report.

"The number 100,000 sucked the air out of my lungs," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represents the brothers, identified as Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, in Alexandria federal court, Virginia.

For people like the Yemeni brothers, the U.S. administration appears to be attempting a case-by-case reprieve. They and other plaintiffs in lawsuits around the United State are being offered new visas and the opportunity to come to the United States in exchange for dropping their suits, said the report.

Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, when asked about the case during his daily briefing, said he had no information about it.

The White House has downplayed the order's effects on people in transit after chaos and protests erupted at airports around the country last Friday.

Under the executive order Trump signed on Jan. 27, refugees from all over the world will be suspended U.S. entry for 120 days while all immigration from so-called "countries with terrorism concerns" will be suspended for 90 days. Countries included in the ban are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Total population from these countries exceeds 130 million.

Last Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters rallied before the White House, at more than 30 U.S. airports, and in central downtown of big cities including Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago.
VIENNA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Austrian Muslims plan to take to the streets in the capital Vienna on Saturday to voice their opposition to a planned ban on headscarves in public, local media reported Friday.

Up to 1,000 participants are expected, according to organizers.

The ban on the headscarves was confirmed as part of integration laws decided upon by the Austrian government over the past weekend.

It stipulates fines of 150 euros (162 U.S. dollars) where prohibited garments such as the burqa and niqab are worn.

The laws are to be assessed next week, and are expected to be passed in parliament in late March.
WINDHOEK, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Namibia's First Lady Monica Geingos said Friday that young girls should be taught about sexual rights early in life as part of efforts to empower them.

Speaking at the close of the three-day consultation conference on HIV prevention, sexual reproductive health and rights for adolescent girls and young women in Windhoek, Geingos said schools must have curriculum that covers sexual health.

The three-day conference was hosted by Namibia's health ministry together with the World Health Organization and the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

According to Geingos, the fact that schools do not teach girls about their sexual rights allows for sexual abuse especially in high schools.

She said teaching girls about their sexual rights could be part of the process of preventing sexual abuse at schools and later in life.

"They have to learn to be independent, because one day we will pass on and they will not be able to solve their problems," Geingos said.

Parents and teachers, she said, should be free to discuss sexual matters with children so that they can find out whether the girls have been abused.
Photo taken on Feb. 3, 2017 shows a press conference held by the World Health Organization (WHO) to launch the Guide to Cancer Early Diagnosis in Geneva, Switzerland. WHO Friday launched a new guidance to better improve the chances of survival for people living with cancer by ensuring that health services focus on diagnosing and treating the disease earlier. (Xinhua/Xu Jinquan)

GENEVA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) Friday launched a new guidance to better improve the chances of survival for people living with cancer by ensuring that health services focus on diagnosing and treating the disease earlier.

The new guide came right before the World Cancer Day, which falls on Feb. 4.

WHO said new figures released this week indicate that 8.8 million people died from cancer each year, mostly in low and middle-income countries.

One problem is that many cancer cases are diagnosed too late. Even in countries with optimal health systems and services, many cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when they are harder to treat successfully.

"Today, almost one in six deaths globally are cancer or cancer related, more than 40 million people diagnosed with cancer every year," Etienne Krug, director of WHO's Department for the Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention, told a press conference.

He added that cancer registered as the second leading cause of death in the world, following cardiovascular diseases.

It is estimated that 1.6 trillion U.S. dollars are lost due to cancer.

According to WHO's new guide to cancer early diagnosis, all countries can take steps to improve early diagnosis of cancer.

Steps to early diagnosis include improving public awareness of different cancer symptoms, encouraging people to seek care and investing in strengthening and equipping health services.

WHO said challenges are clearly greater in low and middle-income countries, which have lower abilities to provide access to effective diagnostic services.

WHO encouraged these countries to prioritize basic, high-impact and low-cost cancer diagnosis and treatment services.

The organization also recommended reducing the need for people to pay for care out of their own pockets, which prevents many from seeking help in the first place.
TEHRAN, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iran will counteract the fresh U.S. sanctions imposed against some Iranian and non-Iranian entities under the pretext of being linked with Iran's missile program, Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The fresh sanctions are "inconsistent with the U.S. commitments and in contradiction with the spirit of the UN Resolution 2231," the statement added.

"Developing missile capabilities of the country, which is solely designed for defensive purposes and carrying the conventional weapons, is the international right of the Iranians based on the UN charter," it said.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry stated that any foreign intervention in this regard is a violation of the international law.

Iran's security is non-negotiable and "the Islamic republic will counteract any measure which targets the national interests of the Iranians," it said.

"Iran will also exercise legal restrictions on some U.S. individuals and companies who have the role in formation of and assistance to the extremist and terrorist groups in the region," it said, adding that the names of these entities will be announced shortly.

The U.S. on Friday announced sanctions on multiple entities and individuals involved in Iran's ballistic missile program and providing support to a military force in Iran.

The move came days after Iran launched a ballistic missile test, which drew a stern warning from Washington.

The U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement that the action reflects the U.S. commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and "destabilizing" activities in the region, and is fully consistent with the U.S. commitments under the nuclear deal with Iran.
People hold banners and candles protesting against President Donald Trump's executive orders on immigration in Los Angeles, the United States, Jan. 25, 2017. (Xinhua/Zhao Hanrong)

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Over 100,000 visas have been revoked since U.S. President Donald Trump one week ago issued an executive order temporarily barring refugees and people from seven Middle Eastern and North African countries from entering the United States, a government attorney told the Washington Post on Friday.

But moments later, the U.S. State Department said that fewer than 60,000 visas had been canceled under Trump's order, contradicting the lawyer's figure, according to an AP report.

The attorney revealed the data during a hearing in a lawsuit filed on behalf of two Yemeni brothers who arrived last Saturday at Dulles International Airport, near Washington D.C., but were sent back to Ethiopia due to the controversial order issued, according to the Washington Post report.

"The number 100,000 sucked the air out of my lungs," said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represents the brothers, identified as Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, in Alexandria federal court, Virginia.

People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest U.S. President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 in New York. (Xinhua/AFP PHOTO)

For people like the Yemeni brothers, the U.S. administration appears to be attempting a case-by-case reprieve. They and other plaintiffs in lawsuits around the United State are being offered new visas and the opportunity to come to the United States in exchange for dropping their suits, said the report.

Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, when asked about the case during his daily briefing, said he had no information about it.

The White House has downplayed the order's effects on people in transit after chaos and protests erupted at airports around the country last Friday.

Under the executive order Trump signed on Jan. 27, refugees from all over the world will be suspended U.S. entry for 120 days while all immigration from so-called "countries with terrorism concerns" will be suspended for 90 days. Countries included in the ban are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. Total population from these countries exceeds 130 million.

Last Sunday, tens of thousands of protesters rallied before the White House, at more than 30 U.S. airports, and in central downtown of big cities including Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago.
by Maria Vasileiou

VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the European Union to stay united and hailed the plan to stem illegal migration from Libya to Europe endorsed by the 28 EU leaders at their informal summit in the capital of Malta on Friday.

"The work on immigration is still ongoing," Merkel said.

"The EU is drawing lessons on migration from years 2015 and 2016. It is clear that people smuggling networks have to be tackled. You have to remember how many people perished in the Mediterranean Sea."

Over 181,000 migrants and refugees, most of whom use Libya as a springboard, arrived in EU nations in 2016 through the central Mediterranean route.

As the deadliest route for migrants last year, the central Mediterranean route claimed the lives of 4,576 people, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Referring to the EU-Turkey deal agreed in March last year, which sought a dramatic decline in the flaws of immigration along the Aegean route, Merkel said migrants to Europe cannot go through smugglers, but through agreements.

The best policy for immigrants would be to stay close to their countries, by creating "safe heavens" in areas near their country of origin, she insisted.

Merkel highlighted the gap between the European position and U.S. President Donald Trump's migration policies. Trump has faced criticism after issuing a ban on refugees and entry into the United States of citizens from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Asked about the new U.S. administration, Merkel said the EU must uphold its values in its foreign relations and defend its interests.

But she refrained from directly replying when asked to comment on Trump, who had labeled the EU as a "vehicle for Germany".

"There was a very broad agreement that we have a great interest in a good trans-Atlantic partnership wherever that is possible," she said.

In a letter sent to the 27 EU leaders earlier this week, European Council President Donald Tusk urged unity in dealing with challenges "more dangerous than ever before" in the history of the bloc.

Tusk also said "worrying declarations" by Trump were part of a set of external threats.

On the sidelines of the Malta summit, Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May had a "lengthy discussion."

The German chancellor told reporters that she was "pleased that May says that she wants a strong Europe".

"It's up to us, as the 27, to determine how strong and how good and how rigorous Europe is and how we solve our problems -- and Germany wants to do its part on that," said Merkel.

"Europe has its fate in its own hands," said Merkel. "The more we are clear about how we define our role in the world, the better we can also take care of our transatlantic relations."

In a later press conference, the German chancellor also warned Britain against a race to the bottom, as she said she sees "no reason" to compete with the United States and Britain on lowering corporation tax.

British Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has suggested that Britain could cut taxes to encourage companies to move to Britain if it were shut out from trading with the EU.
CAIRO, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Altogether eight Egyptians, mostly college students, were killed and 43 others were injured Friday when a tour bus overturned in the country's South Sinai province, state-run Ahram newspaper reported.

Security sources said that a bus turned over on Nuweiba international highway. The students on the bus from Alexandria University were heading to Nuweiba red sea tourist city, some 670 km northeast of Cairo, to spend mid-year vacation.

Initial investigations revealed that the bus driver was driving at high speed on a winding road surrounded by mountains and cliffs when he lost control of the bus.

The number of casualties might increase as some of the injured sustained critical wounds.

Road accidents are common in the most populous Arab country due to lack of highway monitoring systems, poor road maintenance and negligence of traffic rules.

According to a report from the World Health Organization, Egypt loses around 12,000 lives due to road traffic crashes every year. It has a road traffic fatality rate of 42 deaths per 100,000 population.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was "deeply concerned" about the on-going tensions and intensification of fighting in eastern Ukraine, the UN chief's spokesman Stephane Dujarric said here on Friday.

Dujarric said at the daily news briefing that Guterres appealed to all parties in the conflict to fully observe the ceasefire and allow for immediate humanitarian access.

The UN Human Rights Office on Friday also "expressed its serious concern" over the dire humanitarian and human right situation in the country's east, according to Dujarric.

According to the office, at least seven people were killed and 41 injured in shelling between January 29 and February 3.

UN Human Rights Office teams were visiting locations and verifying reports of civilian casualties in both Donetsk city and Avdiivka, which were reportedly hit by shelling during the evening of February 2, said Dujarric.
VALLETTA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- French President Francois Hollande called on European Union leaders to refuse any "pressure" from the U.S. administration and to reflect in a united way and in complete independence on its future, particularly on defence, trade and its relations with Russia.

Hollande did not rule out the possibility of a "multi-speed" Europe when addressing the press during the European Union informal summit here.

A plan was endorsed at the summit to stem illegal immigration along the central Mediterranean route and prepared for the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome to be celebrated on March 25.

"There may be different opinions within the 28, even judgments on the Trump administration can be nuanced among us, but there needs a unity of the European Union to take the full account of what is taking place," said the French president.

Hollande also warned against relying solely on the U.S.-dominated alliance for Europe's military defence. Europe must organize its own defence within the framework of the NATO alliance, he said. "We must ultimately have strategic autonomy."

The French president stressed that the EU should assert its interests especially when a country, the United States in this case, aims at changing the situation and adopts unilateral and protectionist measures.

"What matters is solidarity at the EU level. We must not have the illusion of some sort of external protection," he said.

"We in France have a defence policy. We fear nothing...We must have a European conception of our future. If not, there will be, in my opinion, no Europe and not necessarily any way for each of the countries to be able to exert an influence in the world," he added.

"Europe's destiny is not up to others to define," he said. Enditem
PARIS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov discussed on Friday the Syrian crisis and the situation in eastern Ukraine where a new wave of fighting escalated.

Over phone conversation, Ayrault and Lavrov "agreed that the cessation of hostilities agreement must be effectively respected in order to make political negotiations a success."

They added that the peace talks to end six-year-long civil war have to be under the auspices of the United Nation in order to achieve a political transition in line with the UN 2254 resolution that calls all rival parties in Syria to immediately stop hostilities and engage in peace negotiations.

As to the Ukrainian crisis, French top diplomat "expressed concern over the resumption of fighting in eastern Ukraine in recent days."

He called on Moscow "to do everything" to end fighting and facilitate civilian populations' access to humanitarian aid.

Russia called on Ukraine to "immediately stop armed provocations" in the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday.
HAVANA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. financial blockade on Cuba has been a "fiasco" which continues to damage the island's economy and its social development after 55 years, said an editorial published in state media on Friday.

"The blockade is an obsolete policy and widely rejected by the international community. It has been a resounding fiasco after several U.S. administrations in their essential purpose of destroying the Cuban Revolution," said the editorial published on the website of the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

This is the first official mention of the blockade by Havana since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump on Jan. 20.

"This measure continues to harm the Cuban people and hamper the economic and social development of Cuba," it stated.

On February 3, 1962, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, signed an executive order which put in place a trade and economic embargo on Cuba.

Over the years since, several laws were approved by the U.S. Congress to reinforce the blockade even affecting the island's commercial and financial ties with third nations.

The Cuban government has repeatedly stated the embargo is the main obstacle in its process of normalizing relations with Washington, after both countries decided to reestablish ties in 2015.

"Although new regulations have been issued in the last two years that have partially modified the blockade, the obstacles, restrictions and limitations to the Cuban economy are still in place," the editorial said.

The editorial also highlighted the "extraterritorial effects" of this policy which not only affects the island's trade with other nations but also slaps large fines on any business entities that establish economic ties with Cuba.

According to official Cuban figures, since December 2014, the U.S. Treasury Department has imposed fines worth over 2.8 billion dollars on banks and companies that have commercial links with Havana.

The editorial also highlights that no other topic in the world so unites the international community, as demonstrated year by year in overwhelming votes at the United Nations General Assembly. Only the U.S. and Israel have usually voted No to a resolution condemning the blockade, although the U.S. abstained for the first time in 2016.

"For over 25 years the international community has rejected this policy. In 2016, the U.S. even abstained and 191 countries voted against it," added the statement.

The article mentioned that former U.S. President Barack Obama saw the blockade as a "failure" in a Policy Directive signed in October.

"Although the total lifting of the blockade is an exclusive prerogative of the U.S. Congress, that nation's president has broad executive powers to continue modifying its application," said the editorial.

Havana estimates economic losses incurred during the last 55 years at over 125 billion U.S. dollars.
RIGA, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- Last year has been fairly successful for Latvian producers as the Baltic country's industrial output increased by 4.9 percent against 2015, according to the data released by the national statistics office on Friday.

Manufacturing picked up 5 percent and electric power and gas supply accelerated by 6.4 percent in 2016, while mining and quarrying slowed by 0.3 percent, the statistics showed.

Achieving its fastest growth since 2012, the Latvian manufacturing industry provided the most significant contribution to the economic growth last year, compensating a slump in construction, representatives of the Latvian Finance Ministry said, commenting the latest industrial output data.

The Finance Ministry also praised the 15.5 percent growth achieved by producers of computers, electronic and optical equipment, as their contribution to the manufacturing industry's overall output substantially increased in 2016.

Construction materials producers also reported a robust growth for 2016 as their output increased by 11.1 percent on year.

"Developments of recent months with steadily growing production in practically all manufacturing branches and reports of growing electricity generation volumes in January raise hopes for robust manufacturing growth also in the next coming months and the full 2017," said the ministry.

"Improving business and consumer confidence in Europe is signaling a situation conducive to the growth of Latvian exports,"the Finance Ministry added.
UNITED NATIONS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations is deeply concerned about the situation faced by civilians in and around Al Bab in Syria's Aleppo province, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

Dujarric told a daily briefing that an estimated 30,000 civilians had fled Al Bab city and its surroundings since late December, and the UN and its partners are providing assistance to those who are displaced.

Dujarric said that up to 10,000 civilians remained in Al Bab city, facing increasingly difficult conditions under the control of the extremist group Islamic State (IS), including severe movement restrictions.

Al-Bab is a strategic city for the IS, as its last bastion near the Turkish borders. Securing the southern rim of Al Bab will protect the southeastern rim of Aleppo city.

The Syrian army wrested its full control over the entire city of Aleppo since last December, poising for further military operations in the Aleppo province to drive out IS militants.

The Syrian army announced that it had captured the road connecting Aleppo with the Al-Bab as well as 32 towns during a current military campaign against the IS group in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo province.
VILNIUS, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- The Grand Chinese New Year Concert made its debut at the National Philharmonic Concert here on Friday night to celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Rooster.

With a tone of heroism, Chinese national orchestra piece General Mandate kicked off the concert and led the audience to experience the bravery and morale of the ancient warriors in fierce battles.

Passionate and vigorous horn, sonorous and powerful drum, this famous piece of Chinese music made the audience excited and overwhelmed.

"Just fantastic, I really like it, it is so different with ours, very Chinese, also very inspiring, this is the reason why I like it more than others at the concert," said Greta, a local girl who once studied sinology for four years in Vilnius University.

She told Xinhua that this is the first time she enjoyed the live performance of Chinese national music orchestra, and she was so moved by the performers' emotions and passions.

The concert hall with 650 seats was packed with more chairs installed in the aisle.

"Even the highest price at 35 euros (38 U.S. dollars), the tickets were sold out very quickly, " said Danas Skramtai, senior manager of Lithuanian Philharmonic Society, local organizer of this concert.

Titled "Fuchun Mountain Capriccio & Gateway to Silk Road Symphony", the concert features the typical characters of the famous Silk Road starting in Shaanxi province and beautiful Fuchun Mountain located in Zhejiang province.

Presented by Zhejiang Traditional Chinese Orchestra and Shaanxi Broadcasting Chinese Orchestra, the concert celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Grand Chinese New Year Concert (GCNYC) since its first in the Musikverein of Vienna in 1998.

"GCNYC is one of the largest presentation of Chinese music in Lithuania in terms of number of artists on stage at the same time. These two orchestras -- all together 80 artists -- will certainly help promote the better knowledge of the Chinese culture within our audience," Skramtai said.
The British government published an official policy document setting out its plans to bring the UK out of the European Union on Thursday.

An illustration shows the white paper setting out Britain's government statergy for departing the European Union, outside Parliament, in London, Britain February 2, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

The White Paper, which detailed 12 principles including immigration control and trade arrangements, is in line with Prime Minister Theresa Mays vision of "an independent, truly global UK and an ambitious future relationship with the EU".

Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union David Davis said the 12 principles amounted to one goal: "a new, positive and constructive partnership between Britain and the European Union that works in our mutual interest".

The 12 principles include an objective to "forge ambitious free trade agreements with other countries across the world".

Such potential free trade agreement is expected between China and the UK.

The UK has also vowed to ensure free trade with European markets, by "forging a new strategic partnership with the EU including a bold and ambitious free trade agreement and mutually beneficial new customs agreement", said Davis, in his speech at the House of Commons during the White Paper's publication.

The White Paper also outlined details covering immigration, legal system, the movement of population and use of public funds, among others.

On immigration, a new system to control EU migration will be introduced, and could be phased in to give businesses time to prepare. The new system will be designed to help fill skills shortages and welcome "genuine" students.

The UK government said it would seek to secure an agreement with European countries at the earliest opportunity on the rights of EU nationals in the UK and Britons living in Europe.

The UK will leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and seek to set up separate resolution mechanisms for trade disputes.

The UK is also aiming for "seamless and frictionless" borders with Northern Ireland and Ireland, while devolving more powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

On the issue of how taxpayers' money will be spent will be made in the UK after Brexit. As the UK is no longer a member of the European Single Market, it will not be required to make contributions to the EU budget.
Plipdeco grilled on security

Questions posed by PAEC members to Plipdeco officials came 24 hours after Santa Cruz businessman Ricky Ragoonanan told Newsday that he knew nothing about US$2 million which was found stashed among ply board in a container at the port last year.

Without referring to this specific matter during the PAEC public hearing at Tower D of the Port-of-Spain International Waterfront Centre, Labour Minister Jennifer Baptiste- Primus observed there have been media reports over time about, various types of contraband material coming through the Port of Point Lisas. She added, Drugs, money...the range. Looking at Plipdeco officials seated before the committee, Baptiste- Primus asked them, What systems have you all put in place to detect the will of those who are determined to break the law in this country? In response, Plipdeco president Ashley Taylor said, Based on the feedback from Customs and Excise, we anticipate that the implementation of the much awaited container scanners would be finalised by the first quarter of this year. Taylor said Plipdeco had the infrastructure for the scanners in place, for the last year and a half. However he added, We await on the feedback from Customs to be able to start the process. Taylor explained that while Plipdeco has a security team that works extensively with the Customs and Excise Division, we on our own cannot make the decision to take a container and put it aside. He reiterated,  It really has to come out of the directive of Customs and Excise. After saying Plipdeco and Customs work closely together to vet containers coming through the port, Taylor stated, We have put some other measures in place to ensure that documentation cannot be hacked, cannot be forged. He also said the port has a closed-circuit television (CCTV) system which is in the process of being upgraded.

PAEC chairman, Opposition Senator Wade Mark, expressed concern about bad debts being written off by Plipdeco. According to Mark, documents provided by Plipdeco to the committee indicated that bad debts rose from $22.1 million in 2014 to $28.7 million. He told Plipdeco officials that the countrys taxpayers have to bear the burden of any bad debts written off by any State company.

As he requested further clarification from Plipdeco on this issue, Mark warned, Somebody getting bad habit here. Mark, Baptiste-Primus and Independent Senator David Small questioned the existence of a casual retirement fund. Baptiste- Primus, a former Public Services Association (PSA) president, said this was the first time she heard about such a fund in her 40 years in the industrial relations arena. Small said it was not logical for any company to keep workers casual indefinitely.

Mark said he hoped this was not a case whereby a State controlled company was exploiting any category of workers in the country.
Simms autopsy inconclusive

Tissue samples have been sent for further tests which hopeful would shed light on how Simms died.

The autopsy was conducted by Pathologist Dr Eslyn Mc Donald-Burris at the Forensic Science Centre in St James.

Simms body was found in a shallow grave in Santa Flora on Wednesday, four days after she went missing.

Simms left her home to go to a job interview. She was last seen at a restaurant having lunch with a man who is now in police custody.

Yesterday, Simms relatives demanded justice. He should be hanged! He is a monster who should not be allowed to live, relatives of 25-year-old Simms said.

Simms aunt Jennifer Hamid said the family has not been functioning properly since the discovery of her body.

How can one function? Nadia did not deserve this. She was an innocent girl who had her entire future ahead of her and was robbed of life by this monster, Hamid said.

She believed this man would help her find a job. She was fooled by this man. We had hoped and prayed she was alive and would walk through that door back to us. It hurts so much...it is hard for us to come to terms that she is now gone forever, Hamid cried.

On Wednesday, four men hunting iguanas in the forests off St Clyne Road in Santa Flora came across the shallow grave with sections of Simms body protruding from the loose earth.

The suspect, a 31-year-old man remains in police custody
More guns wont solve crime

Al-Rawi indicated that this countrys taxpayers, are being called upon, have been called upon and very shortly be subject to further calls to pay millions of dollars in damages for false imprisonment and malicious prosecution, arising out of the State of Emergency (SoE) imposed by Persad-Bissessars former administration on August 21, 2011.

Addressing the post-Cabinet news conference at the Diplomatic Centre in St Anns, Dillon stated, I think that does not really fit with our reality at all in TT. He added, In addition, theres a whole body of evidence out there that suggests that arming citizens is not the answer to solve crime. Explaining that unlike the United States, the United Kingdom does not have the right to bear arms as part of its laws, Dillon said a comparison of crime rates between both countries showed that crime in the UK, is less than in the US. Al-Rawi interjected, How come in five years it was not done under her tenure? After saying the Government firmly condemned the murder of Nadia Simms and extending condolences to her family, Dillon said the number of murders last month was the highest for that period compared to previous years. Giving the assurance that law enforcement agencies will be undertaking a more intense offensive, going forward. Dillon said part of that offensive involves the launch of a revamped National Operations Centre (NOC) which will give the security forces, a better situation awareness of what happens in TT. He promised there would be more focused activities by the Police Service and TT Defence Force to disrupt illegal gun and drug activities at all levels.

Dillon urged the public to assist the police in reporting any instances of domestic violence as such incidents are difficult to predict. He also identified the enhancement of the operational arm of the Strategic Services Agency (SSA), activation of video conferencing facilities at the Remand Yard in three months and the assessment of proposal for electronic monitoring devices from the US, British and Canadian governments as some of the other anti-crime initiatives being implemented.

Al-Rawi disclosed that he is looking at the legalising of pepper spray but indicated the challenge arises where it is used by a criminal. After recalling the 2011 SoE did not reduce murders in the country, Al-Rawi said there was a link between last months murder of Kerlan Miceman George and the Oppositions refusal to extend the provisions of the Bail Amendment Act last year.

Reminding reporters that the Peoples National Movement (PNM) supported this legislation every time it came up for review under the Persad-Bissessar regime, Al-Rawi explained that its objective was to give law enforcement a fighting chance to curb crime in TT. To this day, they cannot explain their position for not supporting it, he observed.
Driver on $350,000 bail

Lewis, 28, of Fairview Drive, DAbadie appeared before Senior Magistrate Gillian David- Scotland in the First Court charged with causing the death of Carla Collins, Armani Collins, two, and Kamani Collins, eight months.

He was also charged with one count of unlawful use of the Priority Bus Route (PBR) and one count of breach of a traffic light.

Mother and sons were buried on Wednesday following a funeral service.

The accident occurred two Thursdays ago at the intersection of the PBR and Mausica Main Road.

On being granted $350,000 bail with a surety, Lewis was ordered to surrender his TT Passport and Drivers Permit.

Magistrate David- Scotland also told Lewis he could not hold a drivers permit for the duration of the case.

Prosecutor Sgt Joseph Jugmohan said blood samples were taken from Lewis immediately after the accident and investigators are presently awaiting results.

Sgt Jugmohan said depending on the results, Lewis could also face a charge of driving under the influence.

During a police tracing, it was discovered that Lewis had a previous conviction for drunk driving in 2015.

During proceedings yesterday, Lewis sported a bandage over his left eye as he sat quietly with his head bowed. Lewis was remanded into custody until his bail was secured. He was ordered to return to court on March 2.
Man shot during attempted robbery in Tobago

Prior to this, Acting Commissioner of Police, Tobago Division, Garfield Moore,- expressed grave concerns with regards to the increase of illegal firearms coming to the island, during a town meeting on Tuesday night. The following day, at about 9pm, a man only identified as Kersen was called out his Les Coteaux home by unknown men when he felt a burning sensation in the legs. Reports state the victim was shot twice and has since been hospitalised in a stable condition.

Eighteen hours later there was another report of a robbery with the use of a firearm.

Police reports indicate two men,one armed with a firearm, entered Kerrs Jewelers at, Brunette Hill, uptown Scarborough and announced a hold-up.

A struggle ensued between owner Denny Jones and the robbers leading to Jones jumping out the window of the two-storey building in an attempt to escape.

Police responded and locked down the area in search for the suspects who escaped on foot.

Police presence was increased from uptown Scarborough Market Square to the bottom of Burnette Hill, where the incident transpired.

Traffic also had to be temporarily diverted after the attempted robbery.

When Newsday Tobago visited the scene minutes after the incident occurred, Jones was seen groaning in pain. He injured his left knee and had minor cuts to the head and right foot sole. Two women, who seemed to be close relatives of Jones made attempts to calm him and dress the wounds as he waited for the ambulance to arrive.

A trail of blood believed to be from the suspects was seen in front of Courts Appliance and furniture store meters away from the scene. Also, a pair of black Nike slippers was also left behind.

Many passers-by were startled to learn about a robbery and possible shooting taking place in the capital of Tobago in broad daylight.

One elderly woman exclaimed, What going on in Tobago here, people dont care again! In his feature speech, at the first town meeting for the year in Whim, ACP Moore made reference to the islands second murder victim of Dale (Redman) Bousher of Plymouth, who was shot in the head and the recent shootings in Crown Point and Signal Hill, last month. He said the publics support is urgently needed to curb the steadily increasing crime situation on the island. We have developed a trend between 2014 to 2016 where crime in Tobago has been increasing; violent crimes in particular. In light of this, we went to all communities last year to make a call to help us get rid of firearms we had very little success. He admitted the Tobago Division is aware of the firearms issue.

In light of this, we went to all communities last year to make a call to help us get rid of firearms.We had very little success. In fact, I was embarrassed in Trinidad and out of all the divisions in the entire police service, we would have only recovered 12 guns last year.In Trinidad they recovered 60, 92,159 We know Tobago has plenty guns and we have been saying it but the police cannot do it alone. He added.

When contacted to verify information on the incidents, yesterday evening, ACP, Moore explained he and most of the senior officers from the Tobago Division, including Acting Senior Superintendent Joanne Archie were presently in Trinidad at the time, so he was unable to provide information from police report on what occurred
Father charged for attempted murder of son, 6

The incident happened in Cocoyea Village late Monday evening where the 41-year-old man was arrested at his home following the alleged attack on the wife and his two children.

Yesterday, Wayne Griffith stood before Senior Magistrate Nanette Forde-John charged that on Monday he attempted to murder his six-year-old son who was chopped across the forest with a meat cleaver.

The court heard that the victim remains warded at San Fernando General Hospital in a stable condition.

The accused was also charged with assaulting his common- law wife and his 14-yearold daughter. The attempted murder charge was laid by Cpl Shawn Mohammed while the two other charges were laid by PC Sheldon Gosine.

Court prosecutor Cleyon Seedan objected to bail on the ground that a tracing of the accused man was not yet done to provide the court with information on whether he has charges pending or convictions.

The prosecutor said that there is a fear for the safety of the virtual complainants since their only home is the one they shared with the accused.

All charges were laid indictably and the accused was not called on to enter a plea.

The accused man was remanded into custody and ordered to return to court on Monday when the issue of bail will be determined.
Women now objects

These men committing these ills against women have to stop looking at them as a means of taking out their frustration and anger. That is not the way we are called to live. We are called to live in the community of love with one another and I think the time has come for all our leaders to come together to find a solution to stop the threat not only to women but children as well, Rev Williams said.

Speaking yesterday at the Parish Schools Candlemas Service at the Cathedral off Queen Street in Portof- Spain, Williams called on Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon to come up with community- based self-defence courses tailor-made for women. He said there is a need to go back to the old time days and virtues of a person being their brothers keeper. He said until justice is served and seen to be served, crime will continue unabated. The police must work harder to find these people. Over the years you had people committing crime and not being caught.

Most remain free to this day and they need to be brought to justice.

Too many families are left heartbroken due to gruesome acts committed against loved ones. Williams said society is lacking spiritual values as todays children are not given rules and training to set them on the right path of life.

He said TT must find a way to bring spirituality back into the workplace, school and homes. Government is there because of the people and they (government) must find ways and means of assisting people where you have a lot of crime taking place in the country. It seems like there is no respect for women in our society. He went on to say, Religious Education is missing in schools and needs to be brought back into the school curriculum.

You must put God first. People do not things in moderation, spirituality must return if we are to have a generation of love, peace and benefits of people living in harmony with each other. There are a lot of crimes committed on children, recently a teenager was shot in the head, a one-yearold child was raped...

something is definitely wrong and the solutions to crime must be found now, he said.
San Juan business group calls for end to PH taxis

In a letter to the editor, SJBA president Vivek Charran said this should be in addition to Governments warning to women to be careful while accessing transport from any vehicle not registered as a bona fide taxi or maxi-taxi.

It was with great sadness, Charran said, that we hear of the death and probable murder of another young woman. This brings the terrible toll to three in just a few months. The SJBA was concerned, he said, not just about our mothers and wives, daughters and sisters but also the multitude of young women that in the current economic climate have taken the decision to be productive and ambitious and scour the high streets looking for work. Young women, employed at businesses where employees are truly valued and where a bond of respect and trust developed over a period of time, Charran said, we the employers are also considered as family. It would be terrible to think, he said, that these young women could fall victim to predators that have been encouraged by the deteriorating containment of crime.

There are some alarming similarities in the form of public transport that murdered women, such as the schoolchild who missed her transport and the young woman looking for a job.

It was the SJBAs opinion, he said, that an opportunity was missed to not include in the bio data finger prints of each applicants seeking drivers license.

Noting that the business sector was a stakeholder in national security, he said, it is becoming clearer that as people embark on their daily pilgrimage to work and home at the end of the day, they do not know what they will face.

While this might be so from a philosophical viewpoint, he said, the reality on the ground is the probability of loss of life due to an illegal firearm is very high at the moment. Charran said, It is no longer enough to increase the number of paid unarmed security guards or CCTV cameras or alarm systems which we already have. There must be a concerted collaborative effort towards an aggressive policy regarding our current crime situation.
Petrotrin: Hard times, but we will support pan

We are a national company supporting the national instrument, said Petrotrin President, Fitzroy Harewood on Tuesday evening to Newsday in Petrotrin Hatters panyard at Lady Hailes Avenue, San Fernando.

It is no secret that Petrotrin is going through a challenging period, but we count it a privilege and an honour to be part of this experience of giving communities a cultural outlet for expression. Harewood said he could not put an exact figure to Petrotrins financial contribution to Carnival 2017, but said it was more or less the same as last year. We have been contributing to a few sponsored bands, and we have been assisting a number of bands. Weve been trying to keep the assistance within some of four fence-line communities, like Siparia, Point Fortin, San Fernando, and even the ones other than the fence line. Following Januarys averted strike, Petrotrin was given a renewed mandate by Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to increase productivity while also cutting costs.

I dont think we are at a stage to announce anything as yet, but we are doing a lot of work in that respect, said Harewood.

That was a mandate we had even before that incident so basically that incident has accelerated our efforts and we continue to discuss that with the state and all the various stakeholders about how we are going to go forward.

We are always looking for ways to cut costs but we have maintained our contribution to the culture, to the community and to the steelband. Petrotrin Chairman, Andrew Jupiter, was also present to show the companys support for one of their many sponsored bands, Petrotrin Hatters, as they were judged in their panyard for the Medium Band category for Panorama.

Hatters performed the calypso Engine Room sung by Dalani Lani K Kojo with a band of 50 players, most of whom were young people from the neighbouring community, Embacadere.

The tune was arranged by Kevin Mcleod.
Stronger terrorism laws coming

Al-Rawi said this was all part of Governments thrust to combat terrorism inside and outside of this countrys borders.

He explained that the amendments which will be laid in the House of Representatives today, significantly strengthen the current Anti-Terrorism Act on several levels.

Al-Rawi said the legislation will extend the scope of the Act to cover terrorist acts committed outside of TT; extend specific offences for the provision of services for the commission of terrorist acts or the financing of terrorism and the collection of property, redefine terrorist acts and expand the definition of a terrorist, to include persons who contribute to the commission of a terrorist act. After explaining the latter included individuals or entities financing terrorist activities, the AG said, We are criminalising the joining of a terrorist organisation and attending or receiving training. Al-Rawi said this covers persons who go to other jurisdictions where they receive terrorist doctrine and training.

Noting the penalties in the Act are very serious but the former Peoples Partnership (PP) government did nothing to activate them, Al-Rawi said a person who knowingly attends terrorist training or receives that training through electronic means is liable on conviction to 20 years imprisonment. He added that persons who join a terrorist group are liable upon conviction to a fine of $5 million and 25 years imprisonment.

Al-Rawi also said Government is proposing to amend the law to criminalise the movement of children by FTFs. We are criminalising travel for the purpose of committing a terrorist act and deeming persons who commit such an act as FTFs, he stated. Al-Rawi said the power of law enforcement agencies, to gather information to cover documents, computers and electronic devices as part of their investigations into terrorist acts will be broadened.

He disclosed that for the first time, the National Security Minister will have the power, to designate a geographical area and say to travel to or remaining in that area would constitute a presumption that the travel was for a terrorist act. Explaining that this will only be part of a country, Al-Rawi said persons travelling to such areas will be required to give notice, both when you go and when you come back. Al-Rawi said when persons leave TT to such destinations, they are actively tracked by local law enforcement agencies in active cooperation with this countrys international partners.
Young: FATCA is still law

Young said FATCA remaining current US law was reinforced during a recent conference on FATCA held by the Bankers Association which is calling on Government and the Opposition to pass the bill.

Al-Rawi said the JSCs report will be laid in the House of Representatives today and, all will be revealed. On Persad-Bissessars letter to Trump, Young said, Thats best left up to her. Yesterday, the Opposition released a blog written by former US diplomat James George Jatras which supported Persad-Bissessars letter to Trump in which she asked about whether FATCA would be repealed.

Jatras,the editor of the website www.RepealFATCA.com, claimed Persad-Bissessars letter was gutsy while the Governments position on FATCA was, a sleazy scare campaign.
Padarath: Hold parents responsible for childrens indiscipline

This comes on the heels of an incident where a Mayaro school boy was hospitalised after allegedly being attacked by schoolmates.

He called on Attorney General Faris Al Rawi and Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley to consider bringing to the Parliament a Parental Responsibility Act which, he believes, would force changes in the society and reduce the number of young people turning to a life of crime.

Padarath also urged the Ministry of Education to implement anti-bullying measures in our nations schools.

He said he was deeply disturbed by the incident involving the nine-year-old Mayaro student who sustained a broken arm while in school.

Saying this incident is not an isolated one, amid reports of bullying in several of our nations schools, Padarath said the Ministry of Education must provide a safe environment at all schools.

They must establish anti- bullying policies now, he urged.

Padarath said this is also a long-term measure to deal with the escalating crime situation in terms of identifying and treating with deviant behaviour. To ignore it and allow it to grow in the school system without addressing the issue will have greater implications later on. Padarath said he believes incidents of bullying in schools are severely unreported and he is calling on the Ministry to provide support to the victims as well. He urged the Ministry to address the role of schools in preventing bullying, establish general rules for improving the overall school climate, including laying down the consequences of bullying behaviour and intervention at a school level, class level and personal intervention.
Man, screaming Allahu Akbar, attacks French soldiers with a machete at the Louvre in Paris

A man armed with a machete was shot five times in the stomach after attempting to storm the museum

Police source said the attacker was shouting Allahu Akbar before being gunned down

Streets around the Louvre have been evacuated and Frances interior ministry branded the incident serious

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has described the attack as terrorist in nature

A second person has been arrested, but it is not known if they were linked to the attack

The identity and nationality of the attacker are not yet known, the interior ministry has said

(Article by By Dave Burke For and Peter Allen from Dailymail.co.uk)

A terror probe has been launched in Paris after a machete-wielding man was shot after trying to attack four soldiers outside the Louvre.

The suspect was shot five times in the stomach and is in a critical condition.

He was shouting Allahu Akbar  Arabic for God is the greatest  according to the Paris prefect.

After being refused entry, he pulled out the weapon and was shot by a soldier, officials have confirmed. A soldier is believed to have suffered a head injury.

US President Donald Trump tweeted following the attack in the French capital: A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.

A second man was arrested after acting suspiciously close to the scene, but it is not known if he is linked to the attack.

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has described the attack as terrorist in nature.

Interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the the identity and nationality of the suspect are not yet known. Interior minister Bruno Le Roux has cut short a trip to the Dordogne and is set to visit the injured soldier this afternoon.

An estimated 1,250 people were inside the famous art gallery, home to the Mona Lisa, when the shooting happened. Pictures from inside the museum shows schoolchildren cowering during the emergency lockdown.

French President Francoise Hollande has praised security forces for their quick response.

Scroll down for video

A grainy picture claims to show the immediate aftermath of this mornings shooting after a machete-wielding man attacked four soldiers outside the Louvre in the centre of Paris

The suspect is in a serious condition after being shot five times in the stomach following an attack on four soldiers this morning

The area around the Louvre museum in Paris has been evacuated after a huge security operation was launched this morning

This mornings attack has been branded a serious security incident by the French Interior ministry





After being refused entry, a man pulled out the weapon and was shot by a soldier, according to sources at the scene. A solider is believed to have suffered a head injury

Young children were among those inside the Louvre when the serious security incident happened

US President Donald Trump described the attacker as a radical Islamic terrorist and said France was on edge again

Soldiers patrolling as part of Frances ongoing State of Emergency stopped the man getting into the building shortly after 9am.

He was carrying a suitcase and was refused access, said a police source at the scene. The man immediately withdrew a knife, and attacked.

It was at this moment that a soldier used his weapon to disable the men, who was wounded. The area has been evacuated.

A spokesman for the military force that patrols key sites in Paris said the four-man patrol of soldiers tried to fight off the assailant before they opened fire.

Benoit Brulon said a soldier who was slightly injured by the attacker was not the solider who opened fire.

The alleged attacker is in a serious condition, officials have said.

Michel Cadot, the Paris prefect, said at the scene: Emergency workers are currently trying to revive him.

He was shot five times in the stomach, but is still alive. A soldier was also injured.

Mr Cadot said the attack happened at the top of an escalator that leads down into the shopping complex.

He said the knifeman appeared to be acting alone, and that the words used pointed to extremist terrorism.

Mr Cadot said the soldier had to neutralise the attacker after the soldier was lightly injured by the assailant.

The suspects rucksack was searched, but there was no sign of any explosives.

Armed officers stand guard in the courtyard outside the Louvre following this mornings attack, which has been described as terrorist in nature by French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve

Large teams of police officers descended on the iconic Louvre museum following this mornings shooting

Soldiers patrolling as part of Frances ongoing State of Emergency stopped the man getting into the building shortly after 9 am

The drama unfolded next to the Carrousel du Louvre  a vast underground shopping centre built into the museum complex.

The huge former royal palace in the heart of the city is home to the Mona Lisa and other world-famous works of art but also a shopping complex and numerous exhibition spaces.

It is always packed with thousands of tourists from all over the world, all of whom have their bags inspected before entry. By 11am, the entire area was shut down, as hundreds of extra soldiers and police flooded into the area.

The Rue de Rivoli running alongside the museum was closed to traffic while trains were being pushed through the Palais Royal-Musee du Louvre metro station without stopping.

The emergency response was filmed on live video app Periscope this morning.

Police union official Yves Lefebvre said the man attacked soldiers when they told him he could not enter an underground shopping mall beneath the Louvre with his bags.

Mr Lefebvre says police found two machetes on the man.

The drama unfolded next to the Carrousel du Louvre  a vast underground shopping centre built into the museum complex

French police, soldiers and firefighters in front of the street entrance of the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris this morning after the attack





Among the visitors caught up in the terror were students and staff from Godalming College in Surrey.

A message sent by college chiefs to staff and parents, seen by Get Surrey, said while the drama was ongoing: We wanted to let you know that we have been in contact with the Trip Leaders and that all the students and staff are together, safe, and are following advice from security services.

They are being kept all together in an area of the museum at the moment. From what we are able to glean at this early stage it appears to be an isolated incident.

Prime Minister Theresa Mays spokesman said travel advice for the French capital had been amended due to the incident.

He told a Westminster briefing: The travel advice to Paris has been updated, basically exercising caution in the area affected. Our threat level remains where it is.

The Foreign Office has been liaising with their counterparts in France. Obviously, we are ready to assist if required.

Visitors were kept in safe areas inside the former royal palace for more than two hours before being evacuated

More than 1,000 people were inside the Louvre when the attack happened, and they were taken to safe areas

A large security operation was launched following the attack, and roads around the Louvre were closed

Weve been told to leave  its very frightening, said John OShea, a 52-year-old Canadian who was with his wife and young son.

Everybody is talking terrorism, but we really dont know whats going on. Apparently a number of shots were fired.

Restaurant worker Sanae Hadraoui, 32, was waiting for breakfast at the Louvres restaurant complex when she heard the first gunshot.

She said: I hear a shot. Then a second shot. Then maybe two more. I hear people screaming, Evacuate! Evacuate!

They told us to evacuate. I told my colleagues at the McDonalds. We went downstairs and then took the emergency exit.

Hadraoui, who has worked at the Louvre for seven years, said the evacuation was orderly. She was smoking a cigarette when her managers told her people were going back inside.

Paris is on a high state of terrorist alert following murderous attacks by Islamic State operatives in 2015.

On November 13 2015, 130 people were murdered in a single night of violence which included attacks on the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert venue and cafes and restaurants.

French President Francois Hollande tweeted to praise the courage of the soldiers who responded to the attack

The French interior ministry has branded this mornings incident serious in a post on Twitter

Hundreds of specially-trained officers descended on the streets around the Paris landmark following the attack this morning

A COUNTRY UNDER SIEGE: TERROR ATTACKS IN FRANCE OVER THE PAST TWO YEARS

July 14, 2016  Amid Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice, a large truck is driven into a festive crowd. Some 86 people from a wide variety of co untries are killed. The driver is shot dead. Islamic State extremists claim responsibility for the attack. The state of emergency in France is extended and extra protection, including robust barriers to prevent similar attacks, is put in place at major sites in France.

June 13, 2016  Two French police officers are murdered in their home in front of their 3-year-old son. Islamic State claims responsibility for the slaying, which was carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He is killed by police on the scene.

Nov. 13, 2015  Islamic State militants kill 130 people in Frances worst atrocity since World War II. A series of suicide bomb and shooting attacks are launched on crowded sites in central Paris, as well as the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. Most of those killed are in a crowded theater where hostages are taken. Islamic State extremists claim responsibility and say it was in retaliation for French participation in airstrikes on the militant groups positions in Syria and Iraq. It leads to the declaration of a state of emergency in France. Police powers are expanded.

Jan. 7, 2015  Two brothers kill 11 people inside the Paris building where the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is headquartered in what Islamic State extremists claim is retaliation for the publication of cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad. More are killed subsequently in attacks on a kosher market in eastern Paris and on police. There are 17 victims in all, including two police officers. The attackers are killed.

(Source: AP)

A shop worker who was in the shopping centre at the time of the attack said: We heard gunfire and reacted immediately  shutting down the grills in front of the shop, and retreating into the back. The 19-year-old man, who asked not to be named added: Once the all-clear was given by the police we got out as quickly as possible. Im on my way home. You always hear about the possibility of terrorism, especially in the area around the Louvre, but this was the real thing. Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist Mayor of Paris, soon arrived at the scene to praise the extreme efficiency of the soldiers who foiled what could have been a very serious attack.

Mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo (centre) praised the extreme efficiency of soldiers who foiled this mornings attack

Paul Lecher, 68, who was inside the Louvre when the attack happened, said: (The announcement) came over the loudspeakers that are dotted around. Everything happened calmly. It was just a case of listening  People quickly understood, even those who didnt understand a word of French, that something unusual was happening. Visitors were kept inside for a time after the attempted attack. There were announcements, then the security guards started running all over the place and after a short period they started gathering everybody up and getting them to one side of the building, said Lance Manus, 71, from Albany, New York. Manus and his wife Wendy said security guards made people sit tightly together, away from the windows, and that some children were crying. We sat there for over an hour waiting and finally they said we are going to evacuate as we exited the police were searching and checking everybody.

THE LOUVRE: A FORMER FORTRESS WHICH BECAME A PUBLIC MUSEUM DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The Louvre, now home to tens of thousands of artworks, including Leonardo Da Vincis Mona Lisa, was first built as a fortress in 1190. It is the worlds second most visited museum, behind the Palace Museum in China, and attracted 7.3 million visitors in 2016. This was down from 8.6 million the previous year. The building was reconstructed as a royal palace in the 16th century, and first used as a museum in 1793 during the French Revolution. Monarch Louis XVI had been imprisoned the previous year, and the royal collection inside the building became public property. The museum was renamed the Louvre Musee Napoleon during Napoleons reign. Large parts of the building were destroyed by socialist revolutionaries in 1871. Members of the Paris Commune started a fire which lasted for two days, but incredibly the museum survived. The distinctive pyramid and its underground lobby was completed in 1989, and The Inverted Pyramid beneath it was finished in 1993. Historic: The Musee du Louvre, pictured in 1949. became a public museum during the French Revolution after Louis XVI was imprisoned Read more at: Dailymail.co.uk

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The latest fake news story from the discredited mainstream media: Trumps SCOTUS pick is filling a stolen seat

When it comes to setting the national narrative for the perpetually angry Left, look no further than The New York Times. The latest outrage de jour is that Senate Republicans stole a Supreme Court seat from former President Barack Obama so that they could have it filled by President Donald J. Trump.

In a piece by the papers editorial board that is replete with constitutional ignorance, baseless insinuations and outright lies, The Times, like Senate Democrats in the last session, claims that the chamber has some inherent duty to do the bidding of the president  that is, as long as the president is a Democrat:

Its been almost a year since Senate Republicans took an empty Supreme Court seat hostage, discarding a constitutional duty that both parties have honored throughout American history and hobbling an entire branch of government for partisan gain.

First of all, a lesson in political science seems apropos. The editors are referring to Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution, the advice and consent clause. It states: [The President,] by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law  . (RELATED: Learn more about constitutional rights and liberty at Freedom.news)

There is absolutely no language mandating that the Senate give its advice or consent  merely that that is the process to be followed. The president submits a nominee, and Senate either confirms said nominee or it doesnt  or it doesnt take up the nominee at all. Obama did nominate Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, often called the second-most powerful court in the land after the Supreme Court because it hears all cases involving federal rules and regulations. And by the way, its a court that Obama and Democrats sought to pack with Left-wing jurists, without a peep from the self-righteous NYT editorial board.

But you know what The Times did report? That former Vice President Joe Biden, as a U.S. senator in the fall of 1992, with a presidential election looming, recommended the Democrat-held Senate do the same thing the GOP-controlled Senate did with the Garland pick: hold the seat open until after the November election.

Times editors then go on to make ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims about what actions the Supreme Court, with Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch, of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, would take:

For starters, that spells big trouble for public-sector labor unions, environmental regulations and womens access to contraception. If Trump gets the chance to name another justice, the consequences could be much more dire. [Emphasis added]

Just how SCOTUS will stop women from purchasing pharmaceuticals, destroy the environment and throw millions of federal workers out on the street is of course not explained. Normally, such occurrences would be legislative in nature, if they were to happen at all, not judicial. But hey, tis better to scare the sheep than to be honest about what the high court can and cannot do. (Find more news about deliberate media disinformation at Disinfo.news.)

The piece rambles on further about how these are not normal times, and complains mightily that Republicans are mean, evil obstructionists who had no right to thwart the great and mighty Obama. But perhaps the most dishonest part of the entire piece is this passage:

So what might a Justice Gorsuch mean for the court? Like Justice Scalia, he is an originalist, meaning he interprets the Constitutions language to mean what it was understood to mean when it was written  an approach that has led both men to consistently conservative results.

Isnt that what Americans should want in a federal judge  a strict adherence to the Constitution, the guiding law of the land? After all, its not a document of suggestions that should fit the times; its the core governing doctrine of our republic. (RELATED: Find out what the mainstream media is complaining about today at MediaFactWatch.com)

No matter what Trump has done or plans to do, neither he nor the Republican Party will ever get any support or relief from the angry Left-wing ideologues at The New York Times. Nor should they try; after all, they are the ones who keep winning elections. To me, that sounds like a mandate to govern, just like Obama claimed in 2009 when he took over with a Democrat-controlled Congress.

The vacant SCOTUS seat Trump is attempting to fill wasnt stolen from anyone, as The Times has ridiculously claimed. By leaving it vacant, the Senate has performed its constitutional duty in the very same way as if members had decided to vet Obamas pick.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

NYTimes.com

Politico.com

ACLJ.org

TruthWiki.org

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It's been quite a year. And I make no predictions about the one to come. I do know that it will -- at least where we are -- start ou...
Around 70 soldiers of the Libyan National Army (LNA) aligned with field Marshal Khalifa Haftar were flown this week to Russia for medical treatment, a spokesperson for the army told French AFP on Thursday.

LNA forces have been trying to weed out the Jihadists still controlling some districts of Benghazi, the second city of the North African country.

More soldiers could be flown eventually, spokesperson Mohamad Ghanim said, adding that Russia pledged to receive 500 others soldiers, even more if requested, as part of an agreement signed between Moscow and Haftar.

The Russian gesture underscores ties with Libyan rogue military strongman, aligned with the countrys internationally recognized parliament, House of Representatives (HoR) based in the eastern city of Tobruk, but opposed to the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) ruling from Tripoli.

Haftar refused to pledge allegiance to the GNA as per the Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) signed in Morocco in December 2015.

The marshal who was one time a US ally has bolstered ties with Moscow, which is trying to get a foothold in the North African country. He visited Moscow twice last year to seek military support.

On January 11, he visited the Russian warship Amiral Kouznetsov off Libyan coasts. Reports say he then received Russian pledge for arm shipment through Algeria.
The speech delivered by King Mohammed VI before the Heads of State attending the 28th African Union Summit rang the alarm bell as to the state of immobility affecting the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU.)

The situation of AMU actually stands in stark contrast to the dynamism characterizing other sub-regional groupings such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) or the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

More than 27 years after its creation in 1989, the north African regional grouping failed to achieve its main goals: a customs union which was due to be launched in 1995 and an economic market by 2000. The fact that the last summit of the five countries heads of states took place in 1994 is indicative of the stalemate in regional cooperation.

The mobilizing momentum of the Maghreb ideal, advocated by the pioneers in the 1950s, has been betrayed. Today, we regret to see that the Maghreb Union is the least integrated region in the African continent, if not in the whole world, deplored King Mohammed VI in his speech.

The state of trade between the five AMU countries, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania, does not exceed 3% of total Maghreb trade. It is one of the lowest in Africa if not in the whole world.

In comparison, intra-regional trade between ECOWAS countries reached 10% and 19% for SADC countries.

The lack of regional economic integration in the Maghreb costs 2.5 points of GDP growth for each of the five states, which deprives the region of 220,000 job opportunities annually.

He urged Maghreban leaders to look at the ECOWAS integration project as it moves forwards.

While West African Economic Community countries are moving forward in ambitious integration projects and ECOWAS is offering a reliable space for free movement of persons, goods and capital, economic cooperation between Maghreb countries is at a low level, he deplored.

If we do not act, by following the example of neighboring African sub- regions, the Maghreb Union will crumble in its chronic incapacity to live up to the ambitions of the Marrakesh Treaty, which gave birth to it 28 years ago, said the King.

He underscored that Morocco has always considered that its strength comes primarily from the integration of the Maghreb sub-region, however, he deplored, it is clear that the flame of the Arab Maghreb Union has faded, because faith in a common interest has vanished!
South Sudans president Salva Kiir Mayardit put the final nail in the coffin of the Algerian-backed SADR separatist entity by making it clear that there is no parallel between his countrys struggle for independence and the Sahara issue.

While considering that the issue of the Sahara is different in its genesis, legal and political background from that of South Sudan, HE President Salva Kiir Mayardit acknowledges the efforts of the United Nations to reach a political solution to the regional dispute over the Sahara. The President welcomes the serious and credible efforts of Morocco, said a joint statement issued following King Mohammed VIs two-day visit to South Sudan (February 1-2.)

In the same vein, the South Sudanese President congratulated King Mohammed VI for the reintegration of Morocco within the African Union and hailed the support of the overwhelming majority of African countries to Morocco.

President Salva Kiir Mayardit underlined Moroccos role and its effective contribution for the development, the unity and the stability of the continent.

The two Heads of State also commended the integration process initiated by these two sub-regional groupings. In this respect, President Salva Kiir Mayardit hailed Moroccos huge potential to contribute to the development and the stability of East Africa.

For his part, King Mohammed VI assured President Salva Kiir about  Moroccos readiness to share its experience with South Sudan in the areas of security, economic and social development with a view of contributing to the new nations stability and development.

The Moroccan Monarch also praised the recent call by President Salva Kiir Mayardit for a national dialogue, calling it a bold move for achieving African Union goal of silencing the gun by 2020 and creating a stable, developed and prosperous South Sudan.

During the Kings two-day visit, the two heads of state co-chaired the signing ceremony of bilateral agreements and memorandum of understanding (MoU) in the fields of Agriculture, Energy, Mining and Hydrocarbons, Industry, Investment, Tax Avoidance, Vocational Training and Economic Partnership between the two countries business communities.

On the same occasion, an agreement on urban development of South Sudans new capital was signed with Morocco contributing by $5.1 million to fund the technical and financial feasibility studies of this large-scale project, which offers huge business and job opportunities.

The sovereign, accompanied by President Salva Kiir Mayardit, visited the Moroccan field hospital deployed in Juba last January. The facility provides medical services in pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery, cardiology, traumatology, dentistry, ophthalmology, etc.

The King also visited Jubas teaching Hospital where he handed over medical equipment generously donated by the Mohammed VI Foundation for Sustainable Development.

The two Heads of State also visited the storage sites of the humanitarian assistance donated by Morocco. On this occasion, King Mohammed VI handed over items to a number of internally displaced persons.

All these humanitarian gestures are reflective of the Kings care to bring a helping hand to the South Sudanese people.
Do you remember where you were during the horrific Bowling Green Massacre? Probably not, because its just something Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway made up while trying to justify the travel ban on refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

During a Thursday night interview with Chris Matthews, the alternative facts proponent cited an underreported terror attack, while arguing that career civil servants shouldnt have spoken out against Trumps immigration order. Conway said:

I bet its brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green Massacre. Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered.

Essentially the only accurate part of that statement is that there were no media reports fitting that description. It appears Conway is misstating details about a 2009 incident in which two Iraqi refugees living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, were arrested for plotting to send money and weapons to insurgents back in Iraq. In response to the incident, the processing of Iraqi refugees was drastically slowed for six months in 2011, as the U.S. tightened up vetting procedures. As PolitiFact notes, hundreds of Iraqi refugees were still admitted to the U.S. during that time.

Later, Conway corrected herself on Twitter, saying she misspoke and intended to say terrorists instead of massacre:

She also implied the mix-up was an honest mistake:

1/2: Honest mistakes abound. Last night, prominent editor of liberal site apologized for almost running a story re: tweet from fake account  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 3, 2017

2/2: yet won't name him, attack him, get the base 2 descend upon him. Same with MLKJr bust fake story. It's called class, grace, deep breath  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 3, 2017

To be clear, the story is a troubling example of a failure of the U.S. refugee-vetting process. Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan were cleared to enter the U.S. in 2009, though they had been detained by local authorities during the Iraq War for insurgent activities. Alwans fingerprints had been found on an unexploded IED, but that didnt show up when he was vetted.

Following a tip, the FBI set up a sting in which an undercover operative offered Alwan an opportunity to ship money and weapons from Kentucky to mujaheddin in Iraq. Alwan got Hammadi involved in the project, and they were both arrested in 2012 on federal terrorism charges. Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in prison, and Hammadi was sentenced to life in prison.

After Alwan and Hammadi were arrested, it was discovered that they may have been involved in an IED attack that killed four soldiers in Iraq in 2005. ABC News reported at the time:

Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers who had served in Bayji in 2005 saw news reports about the two arrests, and Army Staff Sgt. Joshua Hedetniemi called the FBI to alert them to an Aug. 9, 2005, IED attack that killed four of their troopers in a humvee patrolling south of the town. The U.S. attorneys office in Louisville eventually placed the surviving soldiers in its victim notification system for the case, even though it couldnt be conclusively proven that Alwan and Hammadi had killed the Guardsmen.



The four Pennsylvania soldiers killed that day were Pfc. Nathaniel DeTample, 19, Spec. Gennaro Pellegrini, 31, Spec. Francis J. Straub Jr., 24, and Spec. John Kulick, 35.

As a result of the incident, fingerprint databases for Iraqi militants were integrated into the databases used to check refugees. President Obama ordered a new review of the 57,000 Iraqis who had recently been admitted into the U.S.

Those incidents received a fair amount of media coverage, but public interest was limited, since there was never a plot to massacre people in Kentucky. As is often the case, the fictionalized story is much more compelling.
Sad! Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Donald Trump and public-opinion polls have had a messy falling out. Early in the GOP primary, the mogul fell head over heels for such surveys  but by the general election, infatuation had given way to a tumultuous, love-hate affair. After November 8, polls turned against Trump. Now, they dont mean anything to him at all.

The same people who did the phony election polls, and were so wrong, are now doing approval rating polls. They are rigged just like before.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017

Its hard to blame Trump for feeling bitter. Over the past three months, barely a day has gone by without some poll reminding him that he is the least popular new president in recorded history. But earlier this week, a Reuters/Ipsos survey showed the commander-in-chief a rare bit of kindness: Americans approved of his temporary travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim countries by a margin of 49 to 41 percent.

This was excellent news for the president, who had spent the weekend listening to protesters, pundits, tech executives, terrorism experts  and even members of his own cabinet  criticize the order that was wreaking havoc at airports all across the country. The Reuters poll told Trump the same thing that so many other surveys had told him, back in the halcyon days of the primary: Dont listen to the experts and activists, the people are on your side.

But beneath the headline number, the polls message was more ambiguous. Only 31 percent of respondent said that Trumps order had made them feel more safe, while 56 percent opposed prioritizing the resettlement of Christian refugees, as Trump had proposed.

And on Thursday, new surveys from Gallup and Public Policy Polling suggest that support for Trumps crackdown on Muslim immigration  and his obsession with border control, more broadly  is shallower than the Reuters poll made it appear.

Public views of Trump executive orders now mostly negative. Including so-called Muslim ban. https://t.co/sWeU6w52xm pic.twitter.com/Nwkd5UxW02  Catherine Rampell (@crampell) February 2, 2017

Another indication of the publics discomfort with Trumps first round of executive action is the unusually high percentage of voters who think the new president is moving too fast.

Photo: Gallup

PPPs findings dont present as resounding a rebuke, at first blush. Overall, the pollster finds that 47 percent of voters support Trumps executive order on immigration, while 49 percent oppose. But when you ask Americans about the orders specific provisions, support plummets:

52% of voters think that the order was intended to be a Muslim ban, to only 41% who dont think that was the intent. And the idea of a Muslim ban is extremely unpopular with the American people  only 26% are in favor of it, to 65% who are against it. When it comes to barring people from certain countries from entering the United States, even when those people have already secured a Visa, just 39% of voters are supportive to 53% who are against it. And just 43% of voters support the United States indefinitely suspending accepting Syrian refugees, with 48% opposed to that.

Whats more, PPP finds that only 39 percent of voters thought the order was well executed, while 39 percent said the opposite.

So, it doesnt look like inflicting arbitrary cruelty on Muslim immigrants will turn Trump into a popular president: Fifty-two percent of Americans disapprove of the president, according to Gallup, while PPP finds that 40 percent of the country would like to see him impeached  including 3 percent of his own voters.
At least 11 people were arrested when New York University demonstrations turned violent Thursday night. Dozens gathered to protest the conservative actor, comedian, and Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, whom the NYU College Republicans had invited to speak on campus. McInnes, who left Vice in 2006, is also the founder of Proud Boys, which describes itself as a fraternal organization that wants to reinstate a spirit of Western chauvinism.

Chant right now is "Thank you, Berkeley!" NYPD tells protesters to stop blocking sidewalks. pic.twitter.com/1u4LovRudn  NYU Local (@NYULocal) February 3, 2017

Protesters, many of whom were dressed in all black, clashed with NYPD cops and attendees  some of them in Make America Great Again hats  outside the Kimmel Center, an NYU campus building where McInness talk was scheduled to take place. NYU denied entry to nonstudents who tried to get into the event, including some apparently affiliated with the Proud Boys, whose presence fueled tensions with the demonstrators, as the two sides cursed and insulted at each other, forcing cops to intervene.

Argument outside of GCASL https://t.co/MqKlbIadZN  NYU Local (@NYULocal) February 3, 2017

Trump supporter getting splashed in face by Antifa. pic.twitter.com/ODDNwOfWWn  NYU Local (@NYULocal) February 3, 2017

NYU Anti-Fascists organized the demonstrations, which NYC AntiFa  a nonstudent group  joined. According to NYU Local, an independent university blog, there were reports that an alt-right group, intent to agitate the crowd, also snuck in among the protesters.

Arrests outside of Kimmel right now. pic.twitter.com/Z3nl0hTIyi  NYU Local (@NYULocal) February 2, 2017

Protesters also managed to get inside the event, where they chanted and interrupted McInness speech, apparently forcing him to cut short the event. McInnes also claimed he was hit by pepper spray. Ive never gotten pepper sprayed before, he said to start the event. You get the sense of panic where youre like How do I know it isnt acid? And then youre like, Oh yeah, this isnt Islam.

Thanks for asking if I'm OK guys. I was sprayed with pepper spray but being called a Nazi burned way more.   Gavin McInnes (@Gavin_McInnes) February 3, 2017

NYU College Republicans statement on the events which occurred today during Gavin Mcinnes's talk. pic.twitter.com/JWlFJiVJ81  NYU Local (@NYULocal) February 3, 2017

The individuals arrested  eight men and three women  will face charges, including criminal mischief, drug possession, disorderly conduct, and obstructing government administration, reports the New York Daily News. The outrage on NYUs campus comes a day after aggressive protests broke out on the UC-Berkeley campus after alt-right figure and Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was invited by college Republicans to speak  though the talk was canceled after anti-fascists vandalized buildings and set fires. President Donald Trump, who criticized those demonstrations on Twitter, also appeared to call out the unrest at NYU:
Heckuva job, Steve. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier this week, Sean Spicer was asked to justify the chaos and heartbreak that the Trump administration had unleashed at airports all across the country.

The White House press secretary responded by asking America to cooly assess the costs and benefits of president Trumps discriminatory travel ban.

Three-hundred-and-twenty-five-thousand people flew into this country from airports, and 109 people were affected and slowed down in their travel, Spicer told MSNBC. I understand that is an inconvenience, but at the end of the day that is a small price to pay as opposed to somebody losing their life because a terrorist attack was admitted.

Framed like this, Trumps travel ban does sound like good public policy: Given a choice between slowing down the travel of 109 people  or allowing a fatal terrorist attack to be executed on U.S. soil  most American voters would happily take the former.

The trouble, of course, is that theres no evidence the ban actually averted a terrorist attack  and considerable reason to think it actually made Americans less safe.

Oh, and Spicer slightly underestimated the number of people inconvenienced by the White Houses gift to ISIS recruiters: Instead of slowing the travel of 109 people, it stripped legal access to the United States from between 60,000 and 100,000 people, depending on which government source you believe. Per the Washington Post:

Over 100,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Trumps ban on travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, an attorney for the government revealed in Alexandria federal court Friday.



The number came out during a hearing in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport last Saturday. They were coerced into giving up their legal resident visas, they argue, and quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia.

Hours later, the State Department contradicted the Justice Department lawyers claim.

BREAKING: State Department says fewer than 60,000 visas canceled under Trump's order, contradicting U.S. attorney's figure.  The Associated Press (@AP) February 3, 2017

Regardless, nearly 60,000 revoked visas is a lot of revoked visas. But the White Houses executive order requires such massive action: You cant ban all travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen without hurting a lot of people.

For those like the brothers at the center of the lawsuit in Alexandria  legal permanent residents who were turned away from American airports last weekend  the government seems to be instituting a case-by-case reprieve policy: If they drop their lawsuit, they will be provided with new visas.

The state of Virginia believes this piecemeal approach is inadequate, as it would allow many who were coerced into forfeiting their green cards to fall through the cracks.

Theres something very troubling about the way this is playing out, Virginia solicitor general Stuart Raphael told the Post. While I am pleased that they are willing to whisk people back if they come to our attention, they wont come to our attention if we dont know who they are.

Those already in the U.S. on revoked visas will be allowed to stay in the country until they expire, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday. However, if those individuals leave the country, they will not be able to return. Visa-holders who happened to be outside the U.S. at the time the order went into effect will not be able to gain entry, unless they are legal permanent residents.

In an interview with the Huffington Post, one State Department official emphasized that the visa revocations are provisional, meaning that they could be reinstated once the temporary ban established by the executive order expires on April 27.

Until then, many members of American communities will remain stranded overseas. On Friday in Alexandria, the state of Virginia sought to join the lawsuit brought by the two Yemeni brothers, so as to defend the interests of the many Virginia residents impacted by the travel ban  among them, a Libyan student at George Mason University who is stuck in Turkey. Judge Leonie M. Brinkema approved Virginias request.
The order Stephen Miller crafted could not be better, says Stephen Miller. Photo: Albin Lohr-Jones/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In the past week, President Trumps immigration executive order has sparked confusion worldwide, as well as large protests at airports across the U.S. and resistance from hundreds of government employees. Even some Republican lawmakers said that the order is too broad and was implemented poorly. However, Stephen Miller, the young adviser who reportedly crafted the order along with Steve Bannon, cant think of a thing he would have done differently.

Thursday on ABC News Powerhouse Politics podcast, Miller said that, considering the large bureaucracy involved, it is hard to envision a smoother rollout from an implementation standpoint.

Miller explained that the Trump administration believes the next Trojan horse is just waiting to come in, so quickly suspending the entrance of refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations was imperative to national security (though there are already elaborate vetting procedures in place, and thats not where the largest terror threat to the U.S. is coming from).

While the Washington Post put the number of those affected by the travel restriction at around 90,000, like others in the White House, Miller emphasized that only 109 people were detained for extra screenings at airports, not counting, obviously, people who were turned away overseas.

The reality is that, for virtually the entire country, the only disruption that occurred was the disruption created by protesters, Miller claimed.

A few hours of inconvenience prior to a lifetime of entry should not be viewed as an overly consequential event, Miller said of those detained, adding that there shouldnt be so much focus on immigrants anyway. Whats really broken is we dont ask ourselves the question enough about how  immigration policies are designed for the benefit of Americans, he said.

Yet new reports on Thursday highlighted that, for many foreigners and Americans, the travel restriction is more than a few hours of inconvenience. The State Department has provisionally canceled visas already issued to citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen. Waivers can be granted on a case-by-case basis, and the visas may be reinstated once the review period is over. As the New York Times explains:

But for now, the loss of their visas means that anyone from those countries who leaves the United States  even for funerals or family health emergencies  would be unable to return without getting a new visa, a lengthy process that cannot begin until the Trump administration has completed its review of the visa program.

The American Medical Association also warned this week that the restrictions could hurt seriously ill patients and international physicians, many of whom practice in underserved areas of the U.S.

The AMA is concerned that this executive order is negatively impacting patient access to care and creating unintended consequences for our nations health-care system, the letter said. It is vitally important that this process not impact patient access to timely medical treatment.

Among those already affected are a 4-month-old Iranian girl whose family is trying to get her to Oregon for emergency heart surgery, and an 18-month-old Syrian refugee girl who was born without an eye. Shes undergone several complex operations in Barcelona, and her family had cleared the security checks to settle in the U.S. before the order was implemented.

While the Trump administration insists the order isnt a ban on Muslims, at least 13 lawsuits filed across the country allege that the restrictions are unconstitutional. And even officials at the Department of Homeland Security dont share Millers confidence that the orders rollout couldnt have gone any better. The departments inspector general announced on Wednesday that the DHS will review the implementation process in response to whistleblower and hotline complaints, as well as a request from Illinois senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin to examine the rushed and poorly drafted executive order.
Donald Trump and Kellyanne Conway ask only that he be properly worshipped. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Donald Trump is not an autocrat yet, and he may never become one. But his administration continues to broadcast autocratic views on politics. It is worth highlighting some of these statements simply because a kind of discourse that once would have been considered shocking has quickly become routine.

This morning, Trump repeated one of his favorite authoritarian tropes by insisting that protesters against him have been secretly paid  Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters, he ranted on Twitter. Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, insists that protests are not democratic. Theres nothing peaceful and nothing democratic about folks who are out there just trying to re-litigate the election and protesting things they know nothing about, she tells Sean Hannity. The election result, in Conways view, settled all political questions, and any protest against Trumps policies is therefore undemocratic.

Trump likewise believes that he is entitled to a greater level of deference and respect because he controls the presidency. Conway (whose influence with Trump lies in her ability and willingness to articulate his beliefs in the media) made this complaint a few weeks ago: We got no forbearance, we got nothing, we got no respect. We  this man is president of the United States. Yesterday, in the same interview, Conway made the case that reporters should treat Trump more deferentially now than they did during the campaign:

I only care, Sean, if people are being disrespectful to the President of the United States. That is unacceptable. I was raised to respect the office of the president and its current occupant no matter who its been, and I just think you cant really show a difference in the coverage of Donald Trump among some of these outlets and some of these reporters and tweeters, between when he was running for president, when he became the nominee for the Republicans, when he was the president-elect, and now when hes president. The coverage never changed, it never progressed, it never matured. It never took on the aura of respect that it deserved, and if you are not showing the president and his main spokespeople respect, then youre not showing the office respect 

It is true that Trump gets worse coverage than the typical newly inaugurated president. But this is because he has persisted in his campaign practices of telling comically obvious untruths (33 of them so far by Trump alone, by one count) and shredding long-standing ethical standards. Conway believes that Trump is entitled to friendly, or at least friendlier, coverage as a matter of respect for the office that he holds. The Trump administration believes the proper time for public criticism and accountability ended with the campaign. The survival of American democracy will hinge upon whether it gets the chance to put its beliefs into practice.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and missile. Photo: Atta Kenara/AFP/Getty Images

Days after President Trump put Iran on notice for testing a ballistic missile last weekend, the U.S. has imposed new sanctions on 13 individuals and 12 entities involved in procuring technology and/or materials to support Irans ballistic missile program, the Treasury Department said in a statement Friday. The sanctions also target those connected to the Irans Quds Force, which the U.S. has designated a supporter of terrorism.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States, the Treasurys acting sanctions chief John E. Smith said in a statement.

By focusing on Irans missile program and terrorist-supporting military groups, the U.S. believes the sanctions are not a violation of the 2015 United Nations nuclear deal, which prevents new nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. Tehran contends that any new sanctions related to its missile test last weekend are a violation of the nuclear deal.

Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

In others sanctions news, new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley made her first appearance in front of the U.N. Security Council Thursday and said the U.S. will continue to take a hard line on Russia until it withdraws from Crimea.

The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea, Haley said. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine.

The remarks were notable for how different they sounded from Trumps comments on Russia. But according to CNN, the White House was aware of Haleys comments and the National Security Council signed off on them.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to Haley Friday, saying we have never indulged in excessive optimism on the issue of sanctions. Regarding Haleys accusation that Russia is escalating violence in eastern Ukraine and endangering the lives of thousands of civilians, Peskov said, No doubt, we do not agree with such a formulation.
The new First Lady is just moving at her own pace, okay? Photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images

Melania Trump has been virtually absent from the public eye since her husband was sworn in as president. The president took his eldest daughter Ivanka, and not the First Lady, with him when he went to pay his respects to a fallen Navy SEAL, and until Wednesday, she hadnt named a chief of staff. But in an interview with the New York Times, Melanias advisers assured the paper shell definitely be doing First Lady things  shes just moving at her own pace.

It has only been a short time since the inauguration, and the First Lady is going to go about her role in a pragmatic and thoughtful way that is unique and authentic to her, said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former Vogue staffer and her newly hired chief strategist. Lindsay Reynolds, her chief of staff, added that the First Ladys office is working to ensure that the White House Visitors Office is fully staffed and operational before dealing with the thousands of White Housetour requests that have reportedly piled up since Michelle Obamas departure. (The First Ladys office traditionally handles tours.)

Its pretty normal for first ladies to be staffed up and ready to dive in on day one. Myra Gutin, a professor at Rider University who specializes in first ladies, said Trump is far behind the curve compared to where modern first ladies have been by the time their husbands are inaugurated, in a quite unprecedented way. But according to the Times, shes hired an interior decorator  Tham Kannalikham  to overhaul the presidential living space, and shes set to announce the hiring of Natalie Jones as her social secretary. I am putting together a professional and highly experienced team, which will take time to do properly, Trump said in a statement.

Anita McBride, who was Laura Bushs chief of staff, said Melanias ostensible absence might just be her hallmark: Everybody has expectations of what they think it should be, but the reality is its really for the First Lady to determine how she can fulfill the role thats true to her. Oh, and according to Wolkoff, Melania is definitely moving to Washington.
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The Auburn University Board of Trustees agreed at its Feb. 3 meeting to move aviation programs currently in the Harbert College of Business to the University College, allowing students more flexibility in completing aviation-related coursework.

Constance Relihan, associate provost of undergraduate studies and director of University College, said the change will essentially end the current aviation management and professional flight management degree programs in the Harbert College and restart them under the University College.

Currently, students in either degree program in the Harbert College are required to take a number of business courses in order to graduate. By moving the degree programs under the University College, Relihan and Bill Hutto, director of the Auburn University Regional Airport and the Auburn Aviation Center, said the requirement will not exist, allowing students to spend more time on aviation-related coursework and/or flight time.

"Moving the degree programs will greatly benefit our aviation students," said Hutto. "Those seeking a degree in professional flight will be able to qualify for the Restricted-Airline Transport Pilot, or R-ATP, at 1,000 hours, and students in both degrees will graduate with an expanded aviation education as a result of the increased number of core aviation courses they will take."

The move will subsequently create a Department of Aviation within the University College.

The program realignment will be voted on at the Alabama Commission on Higher Education meeting in June.

Students currently enrolled in the Harbert College programs will have the option of completing their studies in the business school or moving to University College, Relihan added.

The board also granted final approval to build a two-story, 23,000-square-foot Airport Aviation Education Facility at the airport, adjacent to the south ramp. The building will house classrooms, a flight simulator lab, debriefing rooms and flight dispatch and departmental spaces. Construction on the $8.7 million project is slated to start this summer and finish in July 2018.

Hutto called the new facility a "game changer" for aviation at Auburn.

Also at the meeting:

Trustee Raymond J. Harbert, chair of the presidential search committee, said the search for Auburn's next president is under way and the committee is on target to have a new president in place this summer. The search began last fall after Jay Gogue asked the board to begin the process of finding his successor.

The board granted final approval for five additional building projects on campus: The 85,000-square-foot Performing Arts Center to be located near South College Street and Woodfield Drive, across from the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art. A significant portion of the $65 million cost was a gift from 1957 alumni John and Rosemary Brown. Construction is expected to start this summer and be completed in two years. The Browns' gift also supports the Brown-Kopel Engineering Student Achievement Center, a three-story, 142,000-square-foot facility. Construction is slated to start this May and be completed in April 2019. To read more about this project, click here. The ballroom areas in The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center, approximately 17,000 square feet of space, will be renovated. Plans call for expanding Ballroom A, as well as renovating and refinishing Ballroom B and the associated conference center corridors, gathering areas and storage rooms. The cost of an estimated $3.65 million will be paid with university general funds. Construction will begin in April and be completed in November. The basement of the Recreation and Wellness Center will be built out to provide space for powerlifting and Olympic-style weightlifting, personal and small group training and offices for personal training and marketing staff. The renovation includes approximately 13,700 square feet of unfinished basement space. Cost is an estimated $2.9 million, which will be paid with campus recreation funds. Construction will run from March to October 2017. A new 44,000-square-foot, multi-story facility will be added to the southwest corner of Jordan-Hare Stadium as a Gameday Support Facility. It will contain recruiting space for football and Olympic sports, new club space for fans and a new press box. Also, the existing home locker room, approximately 16,000 square feet, will be renovated. The $28 million cost will be paid with athletics department funds. Construction should start in May and be complete in July 2018.



In other matters, the board agreed to:
I have a theory that Kristen is a fuckboy

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She reminds me of Draco Malfoy.

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i get that vibe too lol

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lol i can see it

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Lol

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ia

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She tries so hard to seem like she doesn't try.

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the art of sprezzatura backwards

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oh yeah, she definitely is

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She and Stella were making out in McGee's pub last night (it's the local for the SNL crowd). Some tourists from Wisconsin saw them, it was the highlight of their day.

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Edited at 2017-02-03 01:11 am (UTC) Your comment reminds me of this lmao

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Lmao you ain't lyin 

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she is

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I reared digital moonlight

You read its clock, scrawled neon across that black

Kismetly  ubiquitously crest fallen

Thrown down to strafe your foothills

I'll suck the bones pretty.

Your nature perforated the abrasive organ pumps

Spray painted everything known to man,

Stream rushed through and all out into

Something Whilst the crackling stare down sun snuck

Through our windows boarded up

He hit your flint face and it sparked.



And I bellowed and you parked

We reached Marfa.

One honest day up on this freedom pole

Devils not done digging

He's speaking in tongues all along the pan handle

And this pining erosion is getting dust in

My eyes

And I'm drunk on your morsels

And so I look down the line

Your every twitch hand drum salute

Salutes mine 



/never forget because I just remembered

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lol

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What is this?

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They should make her read this.

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I hate me for finding her hot. She is such an insufferable idiot

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I'm bracing myself for January Jones level of awful for Kristen's episode.

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Nothing scandalous. She was just a terrible host and the skits were unfunny. She was stiff and awkward and forgot lines and was clearly reading straight from cue cards.

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is she gonna look at the ground every time she delivers a joke?

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and blink

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Edited at 2017-02-03 12:33 am (UTC)

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i feel like she is prob pretty funny when you're spending time w/ her alone or w/ friends but as soon as she's put out there she's just awkward. either way her hosting will be entertaining

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lol mte

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lmfao (as a los angeles native)

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Lol. Well to be fair to you waaaay back in the day that's kinda how it started. I mean it wasn't seasonal. But it was literally just a berry farm.

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They cleaned her up! Washed and brushed hair. No black eye. I'm impressed.

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so is alecia the forever side chick for kristen when her hookups don't work out

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I wonder if Trump will tweet about her again.

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LMAO Knotts is such a fucking ghost town, I always love going there when I literally have nothing better to do. like, lets ride that dumb mine ride 20x and eat our weight in funnel cake. sooooo many rides malfunction there, they are always on the socal news for riders getting stuck.



I kinda wanna go back now lmao.

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you should wait until they do the boysenberry fest again. holy shit everything looked/sounded so delicious. http://www.insidethemagic.net/2016/03/knotts-boysenberry-festival-2016-jams-two-weeks-worth-of-food-and-live-events-into-knotts-berry-farm/

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I don't really give a fuck tbh, I go to haunt every year lol 

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and yes KStew cleans up very nicely



"for the last time, we're not Keebler elves." lollll. I would dwarf those two, too.and yes KStew cleans up very nicely

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omg how perfect is the Dakota gif

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is that her clean? still looks dirty to me.

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i don't think i've seen more than 2 or 3 episodes of snl in my life, but i can't resist the urge to watch her stutter/twitch/sigh through the whole thing.

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no bb no

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you aren't the only one bb.... but i refuse to admit !!! lol

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Lol every lesbian and bisexual person in this comm is attracted to her. They are only pretending they have standards lol. I think she's trash but I have no problems saying she is hot af

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Frank Oceans father Calvin Cooksey is suing the singer for $14.5 million https://t.co/fpaP1sAboj  Pitchfork (@pitchfork) February 3, 2017

jfc.

on an unrelated note, Blonde is still everything to me. best album of 2016, imo. <3

- his father filed a lawsuit for defamation- he says that his son's claim that he used a gay slur cost him "financial opportunities"- this refers to a post Frank Ocean made on his tumblr after the Orlando nightclub shooting- he's suing for $14.5 million in damages
Ricky seems like he'd be so Exhausting to be around.

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MTE. I loved The Office and Extras, but he's so annoying IRL

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I agree. I was so annoyed how Ricky treated Carl on Idiot Abroad. Yeah, Carl was obnoxious but Ricky was a total douchebag.

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I just watched The Moaning of Life, and Carl is obviously so much happier without Ricky's constant interference. I mean, I know that was a part of the whole Idiot Abroad thing, but it's kind of interesting to see who he is without it. He's actually way more open minded and accepting than I would have thought.

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i'm tired of white atheist men flapping their gums

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I'm tired of religious people of every race or gender flapping theirs

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cool and all but there's a legitimate issue with white, straight cis male atheists who constantly and consistently prove that they're no better than anyone who's religious.

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Mte

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the comments you got made me sad because i've seen you state multiple times that you live in russia so your aversion to organized religion is very understandable to me.

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fr

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religious vs atheist... they're both so annoying. it's like that joke "how can you tell if someone is an athiest? don't worry, they'll let you now"

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So while white atheists may be annoying, there are very few of them, religious people are the ones in charge, and are the actually dangerous ones. Just today in AR they passed a law that make it possible for men to stop/sue a women having an abortion. Like her rapist could sue/stop a woman from her not wanting to have her rapist's child.



Trump is supposed to do an EO soon that will gut LGBT rights in the next few days. He will do so because it placates the religious base of Repubs. His Muslim ban is because they're of a different religion, and again, placates his religious base.



White atheists are REALLY low of people that bother me. They have no actual power. I don't see white atheists in charge of many countries. I actually can't think of one country they're the majority of/in charge of. On the other hand I see lots of religious people, of all religions and races, in charge of their particular countries, and doing really fucked up things in the name of their particular religions. By the way, I'm not singling out any religion for doing fucked up things, because they all do fucked up things.So while white atheists may be annoying, there are very few of them, religious people are the ones in charge, and are the actually dangerous ones. Just today in AR they passed a law that make it possible for men to stop/sue a women having an abortion. Like her rapist could sue/stop a woman from her not wanting to have her rapist's child. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/02/new-law-lets-dads-veto-abortions.html and they do this shit in the name of their religion.Trump is supposed to do an EO soon that will gut LGBT rights in the next few days. He will do so because it placates the religious base of Repubs. His Muslim ban is because they're of a different religion, and again, placates his religious base.White atheists are REALLY low of people that bother me. They have no actual power.

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not a lie detected imo

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Damn, Ricky couldn't put on some nice pants and a button-up to go on late night tv?

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i like the points ricky made, i havent heard it phrased that way before

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Same, I can't believe I've never heard that before.....it seems so obvious now

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my mom and i had a pretty serious talk about religion recently, and she kind of bummed me out by saying that it isn't god's fault. god gave us free will and we chose this :'(



if god really does exist, then i hope when republicans die they're read back all their hateful comments before being denied entry into heaven

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it isn't god's fault. god gave us free will and we chose this :'(



i don't believe in god but. damn. :/

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It's far more complex than just that. Yes god gave us free will but that's not the reason why the world is the way it is. In a sense.

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genuine question, what's the reason you think the world is the way it is if not for our own choice. my mom essentially said that bc she was commenting on people who ask why god has "punished" us like this or something like that idr

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ia. The same people who say we have free will to do wrong will then turn and say it's in God's plans, as in God decided the outcome, whenever good people that have no known "reason" for why terrible things should happen to them are harmed.

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ugh. why does religious people always orgasms at the thought of religious guilt?

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I agree with all of this.

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matthew 25:31

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God is really good at blaming others for his mistakes

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If you go by the stories of the bible, apparently humans as species were so awful God had to kill most of them and start over.

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god gave us free will and we chose this :'(



Schopenhauer would like a word with you ;)



Srsly though if you believe in an omnipotent God, everything's ultimately his fault because he either willed it so or doesn't intervene when it doesn't go according to his will. That's why I don't think a personified concept of God who's sitting somewhere like an architect making decisions with a brain~ works tbh.

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Yaaas night ONTD deliver me good ol atheism wank

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if I didn't believe in god I'd go absolutely insane. Love watching these debates though.



I also don't like the idea that you can't believe in science and god. That's absurd to me.



Edited at 2017-02-03 04:38 am (UTC)

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i'm gonna stay out of this post for the most part because the comments about this... hard pass.



however, just here to say that it's dumb that people NEED to separate science and religion, when there's so much evidence from one backing up the other with such ease.



it's so easy to correlate scientifically-proven facts with what's in religious texts that i truly think that those who do believe one can't exist without the other actually never sat down and learned a fucking thing about the inner workings of their faith. all of the big religions are more than just OMG MIRACLES!!!!

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I'll only say that the separation is annoying since religious institutions have worked hand in hand and funded scientific studies or many scientists have also been religious.

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The way I've looked at it for a long time: science is not a way of disproving God. It's merely our way of putting His inventions in our own words.

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So many of the events described in religious texts as an 'act of God' are just things people didn't really have the language to explain back then.



But IA and think it's silly when people try to separate the two or when deeply religious people start to see the logic in science and start to have a crisis of faith. Like, isn't it cooler to believe that God set the world into being via the Big Bang and created humans via evolution and all these other SUPER COMPLICATED and AWESOME forces of nature that he expertly crafted rather than just believing he snapped his fingers and the world just popped into existence? I don't understand people's reluctance to marry the two in such a way.

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im not remotely religious or spiritual and i've always thought that science is essentially god to religious ppl.

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my virology prof is a devout christian (like..doesn't do work on sundays, mentions god in the middle of his lectures and stuff) and it just makes me crack up bc i wonder about the sheer amount of people shitting themselves over it, both christian/religious in general and otherwise

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I never got this either

I'm agnostic now, but I was raised Catholic and went to a Catholic school my whole life up until about 11th grade. However, there was never an anti-science sentiment when I had science classes. We still learned about climate change and were taught that "God created evolution" lol. I literally can't wrap my head around why believe that God LITERALLY put Adam and Eve on Earth and made all the planets or w/e

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Because believing in both science and god requires cognitive dissonance. There is, literally, no proof that ANY god exists, regardless of what religion you're talking about. Science is based on proofs, so in order to believe in god (from a scientific perspective) you have to totally reject scientific principles with regard to religion. That's not to say that there aren't plenty of people who experience that cognitive dissonance, or that in any other area they can't be fantastic scientists, but believing in both requires a breakdown of basic scientific principles. So religious and irreligious people alike reject the idea of believing in both science and god because if science is real god is not, and that is either blasphemous or true depending on which group they belong to.

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mte! they don't have to be mutually exclusive!

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Umm, have you thought about getting that checked out?

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This explains everything lmao.... Bye

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if I didn't believe in god I'd go absolutely insane.



This is exactly why I feel like it's a luxury to not believe in anything. It's not in my nature to keep my mind shut and say THIS IS ABSOLUTELY WHAT I DO/DON'T BELIEVE, but I don't lead a life where I feel like I really need Jesus or God or anything like that, and that's why I can't always roll my eyes when someone noticeably embraces that belief



that's just me though

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I also don't like the idea that you can't believe in science and god.



There's nothing mutually exclusive about them. There's something mutually exclusive though about religious people claiming that their belief that the Earth is 6000 years old is just as valid as scientific findings that it's over 4 billion years old.



Relevant:





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its because the most basic tenant of science is that you have to have evidence of something in order for it to be true. and there is no evidence to support any of the major religions, thus it flies in the face of the very basis of what science is. yes you can 'believe' in both, but believing in god/religion does seem kind of counterintuitive.

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I'm the opposite. If i believed in god i'd go crazy thinking there was someone who could stop the maddens and is just choosing not to and that's we're all basically being forced to suffer for reasons~. id be afraid of living and dying.

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i'm agnostic but i hope that if there is a god, that it is kind and wants you to be the best person you can be

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Should they be ashamed? Are white people exclusive to atheism? Did you watch the video to know that the conversation was started by the christian man?

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lmao stop

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i'm insulted on behalf of the poop emoji and i don't even like the poop emoji.

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mte i'm a black female atheist but i've had better experiences dating a white guy with a lazy belief in religion than an atheist white guy. they can be condescending as fuck and the one i dated was weirdly triggered~ by radfems, worshiped dawkins and once said the most conservative christian was still more liberal than the most liberal muslim  i'm also 99% sure he was low-key down with evolutionary psychology.

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I had a white male atheist coworker at my old job and he'd constantly insult religious ppl and talk abt how he'd read the Bible a million times to pick fights with Christians and it sounded exhausting being him tbh.

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I LOVED the way he positioned that bit about religious texts and science texts, that was really well said.

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But is it a fair one? The Bible is essentially a book of stories of events that occurred that won't occur again bc it's history. There is some science in the Bible but not to the degree that exists now. I see what he's trying to say but it's not a balanced comparison, if I'm understanding him correctly.

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LMAOOOOOOO



There is some science in the Bible but not to the degree that exists now.LMAOOOOOOO

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I think it's pretty fair. the science you mention being in the bible, that would persist because that narrative would materialize in another way.



for ex, the way I took to understand what he was getting at was: there are a number of religious stories and myths around sunset and sunrise right? Helios driving the chariot across the sky in greek mythology, Ra the egyptian sun god, ten chinese sun gods, etc. so the fiction and the story around each of these differs but the science behind it remains the same the sun rises and sets at specific times, from east to west.

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That's the point of the comparison. Fairness is irrelevant. Every mythology, every story, every history will be forgotten or annihilated some day. They are temporary human musings, experiences, and imaginings.



But the scientific method to observe and learn, figuring out how the universe works, those things can occur again and again and again in different places, to different species, in different times, in different galaxies...



It's about whether you want to put personal stock in temporary human imaginings or on figuring out the big universal picture, which could be a project for any intelligent species as long as the universe sustains life.



That's the atheist perspective, of course. Someone who subscribes to the idea of an afterlife would see that as the eternal project probably. There's just no known evidence of such a thing.

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Have you ever taken Ancient Greek/Roman history, or researched it? The bible literally took their stories, and molded them to fit Christianity. Like every single one. Best example: Hercules. That never stopped me from believing in God btw.

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lmao yes, it is fair.

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his point about if you got rid of all religions we know today in 1,000 yrs nobody would believe in those religions again but if you got rid of all the science we know now in 1,000 yrs someone would eventually discover them again because facts are facts was the perfect answer to god vs science.

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Wow that's really well put.

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you just totally missed the point.

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in 1,000 yrs could there still be religion if we got rid of all traces of religions today? sure. Will it be identical to what we practice now if we got rid of todays religions? no.



that is the point you are missing.



religion is man made passed down through texts and words. that is how some have survived longer than others. so its always changing. we believe in the sun god long ago, today we believe in a man in the sky and if earth is still around in a 1,000 yrs it could be something new.



but science that we have proven wont change. it will still be there until someone figures it out again. and the result will be the same.

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he's saying organized religions as we know them would cease to exist, not deistic beliefs

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Yeah I liked that a lot

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ok now am gonna watch this, cuz that's a mic drop statement right there.

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as i've gotten older i definitely care more about respecting people's beliefs and finding beauty in them sometimes, but tbh in many ways i still cannot understand how an intelligent adult can actively believe some of these things and not feel foolish, and not only that... but pretend they *know* it to be true, when they obviously do not?



i do think a lot of it comes from childhood brainwashing.



still it's far more complicated than the self-righteous 'atheist' movement would have you believe.

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I don't mean for this to sound how it'll sound, but it's just having faith. It's not something you're born with. It's something you cultivate over time, and not everyone will have it. I mean there are so many things we don't see but know exist. I don't understand how God could be any different.

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i understand having faith, and tbh i would understand it a bit more if ppl would be like, 'yeah it might not be true but i do want to believe it, i think it's possible somehow, i have faith and that is what carries me', etc. but i have encountered so many religious ppl who are like "it IS true! i ~know it!" and they get this hysterical look in their eye while they recount their 'proof' which like... isn't proof?



there's a difference between not "seeing" something and knowing it exists, and just thinking something exists because of a story about it. and i don't mean that in a denigrating way at ALL, but like... my disbelief in god isn't because i'm like 'well i haven't seen him yet! someone show me a picture!' physically 'seeing' or not seeing isn't the issue.

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Ding. ding. ding. right in the point.



Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<img src"http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/105302_o.gif">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]



<em>i do think a lot of it comes from childhood brainwashing.</em>



Ding. ding. ding. right in the point.



<img src"http://stream1.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/105302_o.gif"> Irreparable invalid markup (' ') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] i do think a lot of it comes from childhood brainwashing.Ding. ding. ding. right in the point.

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I mean...I don't think it's really fair to assume that religion and intelligence are somehow mutually exclusive. Plenty of scientists, doctors, physicists are religious.



Faith is deeply personal. For my mother, faith helped her overcome her trauma after a bad accident. She said that knowing God was beside her helped her pull through, but she equally credits the doctors that saved her; "If it hadn't been for God and those doctors, I wouldn't be here today."



Praying can be cathartic and faith has driven a lot of people to do really good things for others. Of course, it has also driven others to kill and to persecute and to discriminate - there are two sides to this coin but it always come down to how people choose to interpret things and how the people who are meant to be guiding them choose to lead them.



You have heaps of priests, for example, who preach love and acceptance of EVERYONE because they understand that God's will is for all mankind to love one another and whose sermons focus more on the charitable and giving aspects because many priests (who can also be scholars) understand that the Bible is man-written and, therefore, fallible and full of stories and metaphors and pomp surrounding the circumstances of the author AND the circumstances of the people who put it together and edited it.



I've met lots of 'woke' religious people who say 'Why would God give up his only son for us to hate each other for things like who we love?'



Religion also inspires incredible art and culture. It also inspires violence but I think that's a human condition that's exacerbated by manipulators who wind up in power, unfortunately.



I don't think we gain anything by insulting people's faith - we should ALWAYS criticise the shortcomings of religion especially in our more 'enlightened era' and should hold people accountable when they use religion to hurt others. That's undeniable.



And when people are being persecuted because of their religion, I think it's unfair for us to then go 'idgi you've been brainwashed/you're not intelligent' etc. Religion is so closely tied to culture and cultural traditions now that to eradicate it completely would wipe a lot of that out and we'd just be left with...grey.



I'm not particularly religious but I think we need to be weary of how we talk about people's faith - unless they're using it as an excuse to hurt others and when it's that I'll be first in line to say FUCK OFF AND SHUT UP.

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I agree completely, I pretty strongly believe the only reason religion still exist is because how important religion considers it to basically ~get in early~ with children.





I will say though, the most I could ever say about religion is that *i guess* I could see how some people could look around and not be able believe everything happened by chance(I mean, I don't think that...at all but I guess I could get how other people could) but I really do not even remotely understand how you could look at any of the big modern religions and act like any of them make any type of sense to that ideal that someone/thing had to plan this. All the big religions take some level of cognitive dissonance, even the more brutal forms that still exist(like say westboro) have to go out well out of their way to ignore certain "rules" and ~practices~ and justify how they're acting. At the very least, when it comes to the abrahamic religions(I can't speak much on others...) there's simply no way you can accurately believe it in the modern world without intentionally blinding yourself to major aspects of it...they're all based around to much of a straight male power structure...and that's not even going into the weird random rules that everyone ignores now(like don't wear combination fabrics) abrahamic religions are really just ridiculous and 100% can not and do not function properly anymore.

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To be fair there are a lot things in life the are just as you descried, such as somebody's feelings towards another or gender identity. It's all very personal as people have different reasons to believe what they believe.

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That's where the whole "just have faith" thing comes from. They don't want people to think too hard about it because most of it doesn't make any damn sense lol.



Edited at 2017-02-03 02:37 pm (UTC)

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there are those of us who grow up with zero religion and then come to find spirituality/higher powers/faith. it's not always about organized religion and brain washing

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I've found a majority of religious people who found religion a little later in life compared to the people who grew up with it from an early age are more intolerable.

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Lol mte

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lol mte! it's why i rarely understand militant atheists - why even bother having these conversations with people who aren't forcing their religion upon you? just let people live, goddamn. i cannot stress how irrelevant religion is to my daily life. ~god~ is just not a concept i even bother thinking much about, let alone fight with others about.

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idk man. If you live in the US, Christian zealots do impact your life (and mine). Like that ridiculous Hobby-Lobby religious freedom, anti-birth control ruling. The republican platform is devoted to appeasing bible belt Evangelicals and they currently control the house and senate so....

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But religion does impact people, regardless of their beliefs or not because they are pushing policies that affect us all?

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This feeling is why I've taken to describing myself as "areligious" rather than atheist. I'm sure the nomenclature is completely wrong, but there are just too many atheists that seem to have substituted a belief in god with a lack of belief in god or a religious-esque belief in science that they have to proselytize about.



For me it's a complete non-starter. I don't think about a god or lack thereof, I'm not interested in debating or proving or thinking or talking about it.

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same. lol some atheists seem to have orgasms debating with religious people. as long as you leave me be, idc!

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lol yep

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I dislike the talk of religion itself, because, at the end of the day, I'm not here to prove something to someone. But I love to talk about religion in historical and social context. How a lot of religions are patriarchal to the core and that's wrong. How people get desriminated against for their believes or disbelieves. It's way too important topic in our world to ignore it.

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ita

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Yeah like...Religion affects many of our lives, from reproduction rights, to gender identity, to sexuality, etc.



It's not something many of us can ignore.

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i'm glad i'm a jew cuz i get all the nice cultural aspects of religion without anyone giving a shit that i don't believe in god LOL

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samesies

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lolol so true

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She is so, so beautiful <3



PERSIAN ROLL CALL

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half persian/half french (hope it counts!)

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not persian but grew up in a persian area and i have a few persian students i tutor

just want to say i love the tea that i always get served when i tutor and bless your hospitality customs because i always get fed snacks & tea <3!

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PERSIAN AND PROUD 

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Half Persian/half Irish!

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proud blersian!!!

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100% persian

hi babes

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It's going to be awhile before the impact is really felt, but I expect tourism to decline. There are tons of reports of brown people from everywhere including countries not on the ban list, being harassed by airport officials. No one wants to go through that. International businesses are going to be pulling their companies out of the U.S. next.



I remember reading an article years ago about how the executive of some German company got pulled over and jailed based on some stringent laws meant to catch illegal Mexican and Latin American immigrants and the company pulled their business out of the U.S. This is like that only so much worse.

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I'm a white girl from Scotland and even I don't want to visit America anymore. Not because of any of the bans affecting me, but because I don't want to condone what's happening.

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Big tech companies won't be able to get the staff they need in the US, and will just pull out.

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I have a visa and I'm not from those countries but I'm not going to the US again until this dude is over, maybe not even then, Trump should see some decline in tourism at least. Even if you are not doing as a protest, why go and risk being rejected? Fuck that

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I'm from Sydney and while it's on my bucket list to visit NYC, I ain't going over there until Drumpf is out.

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I have a feeling the price of gas will rise. We've pissed off enough people, Iran and Iraq are OPEC countries, that it could happen. Idk if Mexico will, gas trade is regulated through NAFTA (another reason not to get rid of it), but I would to spite that cheeto if I was Nieto. I hate the idea of gas shooting up to $3-5 a gallon, but I remember the anger on all sides when that happened during the bush years. That's the only financial impact that's easily recognizable to these dumbfucks. I doubt anyone will be cheering that, but who knows, you had the right trying to sell a bunch of crap about cheap gas prices were hurting businesses just last summer.



Edited at 2017-02-03 07:54 pm (UTC)

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fuck tromp and his nazi-sidekick. usa, why is your politics always such a mess? where is the opposition from the democrates?



(but is a new pirates movie really necessary?)



Edited at 2017-02-03 07:18 pm (UTC)

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Kjell Magne Bondevik, who served as prime minister of Norway from 1997-2000 and 2001-05, flew into the US from Europe on Tuesday afternoon to attend this weeks National Prayer Breakfast.



He was held for an hour after customs agents saw in his diplomatic passport that he had been to Iran in 2014. Bondevik said his passport also clearly indicated that he was the former PM of Norway.



Of course I fully understand the fear of letting terrorists come into this country, he told ABC7. It should be enough when they found that I have a diplomatic passport, [that Im a] former prime minister.



https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/former-norway-pm-bondevik-held-washington-dulles-airport-2014-visit-iran BTW the ban even affected the former prime minister of Norway. Get your shit together America.

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so even just having been to one of these countries once is going to prevent u from entering??? this is getting more insane by the minute tbh.

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He was able to enter, but they held him for hours.

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It's ridiculous that they make problems even if you just visited one of the countries. I read today that more than 100k visas have been revoked as a result of the ban.

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This makes me wonder... if you have two passports can they track what you do on the other? So long as you use the other to travel and another to enter the states.

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This just continues to be the most fucking absurd thing, I can't even believe this is reality anymore.



Speaking of total absurdity, anyone else hear about how Arkansas is now allowing husbands to block their wives' abortions? I AM DONE.

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disgusting, and from my personal experience pro-life men are way more obnoxious than pro-life women. i just feel like part of it is some sort of ego thing, like, how dare this woman stop this pregnancy which was the result of MY SPERM

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imo men should not have a say in the abortion debate. the ultimate decission should always be the womans. as soon as your sperm enters my body it's mine to do with as i please tbh.

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fucking monstrosities, really.

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the fuck? what's next? women not allowed to work without husbands approval? women not allowed to have own bankaccounts?

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jesus christ, how is that not seen as abuse?

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Wasn't she also banned from leaving Iran after Body of Lies? She has the worst luck with this kind of thing

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Yes she was banned because she did press tour in the US for Body of Lies.

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And back to what I was saying about Spicer trying to say it's a "minor inconvenience."



BREAKING: Government reveals more than 100K visas have been revoked as a result of Trump Admin's immigration order during hearing in Va.  justin jouvenal (@jjouvenal) February 3, 2017





lbr any of us who has paid attention to history understands it just won't stop here. Soon the ban will expand and the government will be knocking on even more doors. I can also almost guarantee that you will hear about even more problems around spring break and people who have planned vacations. The fact that people who are detained are being asked their political views and what they think of Trump is disturbing. Not surprised they want to search through your social media bc that's happened before. This is all so fucked up. History will look back on this disgust and people asking how this happened again. Notice Trump has said fuck all about the Quebec shooter but tweeted about France and taking funding away from Berkeley because of that useless fuck Milo. It's quite clear that Bannon is POTUS.



Gallup: Trump EOs all quite unpopular...

 55% oppose Muslim ban

 60% oppose border wall with Mexico

 58% oppose ending refugee program pic.twitter.com/phEORw7UDH  Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) February 2, 2017





Trump's rating is where Bush was after Katrina. There is no honeymoon stage he desperately wants. I found that stuff Howard Stern said yesterday to be pretty accurate - you can tell Trump is obsessed with being loved.



Edited at 2017-02-03 07:23 pm (UTC) What's also fucked up is we're going to have 4 years of the Trump admin and Spicer gaslighting us. It's all they've done so far - about the inauguration, women's march, protest sizes at airports, saying the ban is just a minor inconvenience. It's also quite clear he won't go after a lot of countries he has business ties with. Hmm if only we saw his fucking tax returns.And back to what I was saying about Spicer trying to say it's a "minor inconvenience."lbr any of us who has paid attention to history understands it just won't stop here. Soon the ban will expand and the government will be knocking on even more doors. I can also almost guarantee that you will hear about even more problems around spring break and people who have planned vacations. The fact that people who are detained are being asked their political views and what they think of Trump is disturbing. Not surprised they want to search through your social media bc that's happened before. This is all so fucked up. History will look back on this disgust and people asking how this happened again. Notice Trump has said fuck all about the Quebec shooter but tweeted about France and taking funding away from Berkeley because of that useless fuck Milo. It's quite clear that Bannon is POTUS.Trump's rating is where Bush was after Katrina. There is no honeymoon stage he desperately wants. I found that stuff Howard Stern said yesterday to be pretty accurate - you can tell Trump is obsessed with being loved.

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"silent majority" is so inaccurate when these cultists are actually the loud minority

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A lot of the media keeps pushing the narrative that Trump supporters are the majority and it drives me nuts tbh. Also - Maddow had a good segment the other night of where people are protesting and it's not just ~coastal elites~. It was everywhere from Nashville, Birmingham, Idaho to Arkansas. It was all over. He is still widely unpopular. I wish I could find it now (probably saved somewhere in my tabs I need to look) but even among his voters the wall was one of his least popular policies. Yet bc of the media and social media it's made to look like it's widely popular.

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the troll is also going to the WH for a briefing. I'm serious. :/

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I'm most angry at those No Opinion percentages. Those are all the uninformed, willfully ignorant morons who think politics are ~so boring~ and we should "give him a chance!1" Throw in the dumbfucks who didn't vote because "lesser of two evils!!"as well. i'm so over these assholes who can't take time out of their carefree lives to fuckin pay attention.

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oh my god the new cover of Der Spiegel pic.twitter.com/9SHruM8mrA  Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) February 3, 2017



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unfortunately incredibly accurate. i hope all this international bad press hurts his ego.

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they really don #t fuck around at Der Spiegel lol

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I like how open some of the German publications are about their dislike and concern about Trump.

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Some? Lol. Only the right wing niche shit isn't.

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It's weird how there's overwhelming international derision for Trump and yet he still has so many supporters.

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If you go to the website, the blood actually drips.

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She is STUNNING and great in Paterson. Ugh at this.

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There's that rumor going around he's going to expand the banned countries list - so Pakistan will be there too. Saudi will never be banned though = $$$.



Thankfully my whole family that lives in the US are citizens (my cousins and I are born here), but my sister didn't come to America until she was 2 from Pakistan, and so naturally my parents until they were in their 20s. So getting more apprehensive about what's to come. =/ My family has been here for over 30 years too.

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I'm just waiting for them to try stripping green cards/citizenship from immigrants from muslim majority and central/south american countries.

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I mean, I know I'm fantastic! :P I just think it's dumb for him to incite more chaos in a volatile area - but then he's already done with Iran. D:

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I assume he'll come for green card holders at some point and just start deporting people.



No one's safe, as he'll come for everyone eventually. Even white men are going to get hit once the economy starts tanking.

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They better not ban Pakistan and Afghanistan tbh. Give no fucks abut Saudi, they started this mess. And it's Pakistan and Afghanistan that are getting bombed out of existence anyhow.





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Omg I'm watching the other European clips in reply to the Dutch invite to the rump and yep, Germany went there with saying Hitler had great hair, a great suit and was loved by everyone and the press

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what clips?

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and now there's It started with this one: https://youtu.be/j-xxis7hDOE and now there's https://youtu.be/WcH9eWBs9fw and a website that gathers all of them (Belgium, Denmark and so on) http://www.everysecondcounts.eu/

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Why isnt he banning Saudi Arabia? What about Pakistan?



100% business deals.



Vacationers won't come to the states, therefore we'll lose money, and we all know the people in office love money, especially the one who has a shit ton of hotels, which means his hotels wouldn't get any business (not like they would to begin with, but you know) idk if my comment makes any sense at all, but it makes sense in my head.

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a colleague of mine was considering a trip to new york as an aniversary gift for his wife in the autumn, but is now saying since he can't be sure that there will be anything left of the states in a few months(lol) he's probably gonna buy a stay in london or rome. honestly, i can't blame him not wanting to visit your dumpster fire of a country. and i say that as someone who really loved my vacations there.

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I don't blame your colleague either. Fuck I'm white and a citizen but even I'm nervous about going to Mexico and coming back in March bc I've been blasting Trump's ass for a solid year on fb.

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Ugh. Does he want to adopt me? I still live in this dumpster fire of a country and I don't want to visit it. It's fucked everywhere, but I want to be anywhere but here right now.

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Pakistan is essentially run by the US. And they pretty much carpet bombed Baluchistan anyhow, they should keep us off that damn list.





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A 2014-style oil price meltdown could occur again. Only this time, instead of a sudden surge of supply, the culprit will be the fast adoption of electric vehicles, which will cut into oil demand enough to cause prices to fall.

That prediction comes from Carbon Tracker, a think tank that has repeatedly warned about the prospect of fossil fuel stranded assets, due to the rise of clean energy and increasingly restrictive climate policy. In its latest report, Carbon Tracker envisions a scenario in which 2 million barrels per day of oil demand are erased by 2025 because of the penetration of EVs in the transportation sector.

Reducing global oil demand by 2 mb/d may not seem like much, but it is equivalent to the supply overhang that triggered the 2014 oil price meltdown. It does not take a massive discrepancy between supply and demand to crash prices. The report also cites the 10 percent loss in market share for the U.S. coal industry over the past half-decade, causing an utter collapse in the finances of most U.S. coal producers.

At the heart of the forecasts are when EVs will be cost-competitive with the internal-combustion engine, and how quickly consumers will make the switch. Carbon Tracker says that EVs will reach that threshold by 2020. And by 2025, EVs will make up about one-fifth of the entire vehicle market.

There have been a growing number of dire predictions for oil prices because of the rise of EVs. Bloomberg New Energy Finance laid down one of the earliest and boldest markers last year, detailing a scenario in which EVs eliminate 13 mb/d of oil demand by 2040, enough to keep prices permanently low. Carbon Tracker goes further, arguing that oil demand could drop by a steeper 16 mb/d over that time period. Related: Oil Prices Stuck In Narrow Band, Capped By U.S. Shale Threat

The oil industry has more modest figures. BP says its possible that EVs kill off 1.2 mb/d of oil demand by 2035. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) is similarly unimpressed, expecting EVs to only displace 1.3 mb/d of oil demand, while still expecting overall demand to rise because of demand in other non-transportation sectors  freight, aviation and petrochemicals.

A Royal Dutch Shell official recently hinted that his company was more concerned, suggesting that oil demand might even peak within the next five years. However, aside from the companys substantial foray into natural gas, it is not backing away from oil in any significant way.

But Carbon Tracker thinks many of these analysts and companies are way off the mark. According to its forecast, total global oil demand could reach an absolute peak in 2020 and then plateau for the next decade.

While such a scenario is far from assured, it is something for which few companies and governments are preparing. Most energy forecasts have a business-as-usual assumption of steadily rising oil demand, stretching out for decades. Related: The Oil War Is Only Just Getting Started

Based on this assumption, hundreds of billions of dollars are funneled into assets that might not be profitable if the world is taken by surprise by innovation in EVs and other clean energy technologies.

If oil demand adheres closer to the Carbon Tracker forecast, it would almost certainly cause another downturn in prices, only this time it would be permanent. EVs would only continue to gain market share over time, forcing oil into permanent decline. The peak oil conversation is now decidedly about when the world will hit peak oil demand, rather than peak supply.

Again, EVs do not have to capture 100 percent of the market to cause a financial crisis in the oil industry. Carbon Tracker cites the 10 percent threshold as key. A 10% shift in market share can be crippling for incumbents, the report says. That threshold could very well be reached within a decade.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
By Eric Shierman

As the chaos of a half-baked visa ban swirls, further undermining Americas status in the world as a beacon of freedom, let alone stability, a similarly foolish policy choice in Oregon has been sponsored by Senator Brian Boquist. SB 479 would ban consideration of Sharia Law in Oregon courts.

I certainly dont want to live under a medieval legal system, but since the probability of this happening is zero, we dont need to sweat whether or not this bill will get a committee vote (it wont). We need to worry about how low-brow gestures like this help fuel the irrational fear of the fine people of Islamic faith that live among us.

Just as we dont see Dylann Roof as a proxy for American Christians, it would be unreasonable to let our bias-prone minds imagine the San Bernardino shooters were representative of American Muslims. Just as there are some obscure Christians out there who dream of America under a Christian theocracy no doubt there is an even more obscure Muslim somewhere in this state, dreaming of an Oregon Revised Statute that punishes theft with the severing of the convicts hand.

The truly representative Muslims among us are normal people like you and me: engineers at Intel, restaurant owners, and ordinary decent human beings. America cannot be great without them.

There are actually sensible ways in which Oregon Courts use Sharia Law in their decision making. Muslims sometimes enter into private legal contracts that specify Sharia to define terms. If such a contract went into litigation, SB 479 would invalidate the legitimate enforcement of a contract, the bedrock role of the state in facilitating a free market economy.

With the precedent of Burwell v Hobby Lobby, our religious conscious is now robustly protected as a matter of constitutional law. At times these cases have required scripture and even Canon Law as evidence. SB 479 would deny Oregon Muslims equal protection, barring them from using Sharia as evidence in any such future case they might find themselves in. Though the probability that this embarrassing piece of legislation would ever be passed is the same probability a reader of the Oregon Catalyst will ever find himself oppressed by a Sharia statute, if it were made into Oregon law, that articulate federal appeals court judge that decided in favor of Hobby Lobby when this case reached the 10th Circuit, Neil Gorsuch, would likely join a unanimous Supreme Court in striking it down.

Having nothing to do with a real threat, this quixotic impulse to ban Sharia Law is merely an attempt to undermine the Muslim communitys standing in Oregon, to publicly say that they will never be real Americans until they renounce their faith. We have some Christian bakers in this state that have seen that movie before. SB 479 is not just wrong; its strategically unwise, undermining a winning position Republicans have as defenders of religious liberty.

Eric Shierman lives in Salem and is the author of a Brief History of Political Cultural Change.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
The mathematical (and other) thoughts of a (now retired) math teacher,
A native of Chengdu, Sichuan province, has a lost phone to thank for not being on a boat that sank in rough seas off Malaysia last week, leaving three dead.

The man, surnamed Li, and his parents had been booked onto the catamaran by his wife. They arrived in Kota Kinabalu, capital of Sabah state, on January 27.

However, Li lost his phone during the journey, so could not confirm his reservation for the following day's boat ride to Manukan Island with the local travel agency.

By the time he was able to do so, having bought a new phone, it was already 10pm and the boat he was initially booked onto was full. Instead, the agency said he and his parents could take a second boat that departed half an hour later.

On Jan 28, the boat Li's wife had booked tickets for sank. A total of 20 Chinese tourists survived hours in the water before they were rescued, but three died and six are still missing.

"I feel like I dodged a bullet, I was so close to being on that boat," Li told Chengdu Economic Daily, after he had returned to China on Feb 1.

He said he did not know about the sinking until his wife sent him a message on Jan 29. Apparently, his name was still on the passenger manifest for the boat.
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...
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Late Thursday afternoon, Gov. Andrew Cuomos office responded to the Alliance for Quality Educations claim that the proposed budget abandons the commitment to Foundation Aid.

Senior Deputy Communications Director Richard Azzopardi said that the AQE is spreading misinformation about the states responsibility for additional school funding. Education advocates claim that schools are still owed $4.3 billion as part of the settlement of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case that said schools were underfunded.

These are the same myths these paid advocates have been spreading for years to justify their lobbying, he said in an email. The fact is the funding outlined in the CFE case has been satisfied many times over and there is no past or current court-ordered obligation for more spending. Despite that, education funding, per-pupil spending and state aid to high needs schools are at an all-time high under this governor.

Azzopardi also shared a Jan. 25 opinion piece in The Daily News from Paul Francis, former budget director under Gov. Eliot Spitzer, which outlines the states commitment to school aid.

Francis said that the CFE case ended before Spitzer took office and required a level of funding that the state has satisfied. The court codified the findings of a special commission, which said that school aid to New York City should be increased by $1.9 billion.

The decision led Spitzer to set aspirational targets to increase school aid. However, when the recession hit, Spitzer and later Gov. David Patterson walked away from those amounts.

Despite these clear facts, advocates continue to wrongly insist Spitzers goal was binding  even though the courts as recently as September unequivocally rejected that argument, Francis said.

Francis said the governors proposed budget would contain about $1 billion in school funding, which is $40 million over the current education formula. He said his approach has driven more money to high-needs districts and has been more effective than Spitzers original proposal.

New York spends more per pupil that any other state in the nation and roughly double the national average. At the same time, the share of local contributions to school funding has actually gone down in some districts. Over the past four years, state funding to New York City schools has increased at a rate 33 percent faster than the citys own contribution, Francis wrote.

This budget season, lets separate the faulty political arguments from honest debate. We need real discussion on real issues, such as how to increase student achievement, how to retain and reward good teachers and how to ensure local districts dont pay less just because state funding has increased, and not a meaningless debate about the symbolism of a long decided court case, Francis went on to say.
KINGSBURY  A Saratoga Springs man was seriously hurt Thursday afternoon when hit by a pickup truck as he walked along Route 196, the vehicle fleeing the scene but state troopers tracking down the driver later in the day, officials said.

The victim, Jonathan Roe, 49, was taken to Albany Medical Center via helicopter after the 1:09 p.m. accident just east of the Burgoyne Avenue intersection, State Police said. His injuries were not considered life-threatening, but his condition was not available Friday morning.

Roe was working for the state Department of Public Service, inspecting utilities in the area, when he was hit in the back of the head by the sideview mirror of a westbound Chevrolet pickup as it drove past him, knocking him down and ripping the mirror from the truck, State Police Sgt. Luke Splittgerber said.

The driver fled, but the collision was captured on the surveillance camera system of a nearby business, which allowed police to identify the vehicle, officials said. The truck was seen on surveillance cameras from a number of other businesses in the area just before the accident, police said.

The man State Police believe was driving, Austin J. Enos, 21, of South Glens Falls, was located later Thursday, and admitted he was driving and knew that he hit a person, police said.

He said he panicked and didnt know what to do, Splittgerber said.

Troopers had been checking later Thursday with local junkyards and auto parts dealers to see if anyone had been in to look for a replacement mirror for a Chevrolet Avalanche, and they learned that Enos had gone to Jerry Browns Auto Parts seeking one after the accident, authorities said.

Enos was charged with leaving the scene of a personal injury accident, a misdemeanor, and ticketed for failing to maintain his lane. He was released pending prosecution in Kingsbury Town Court.

Splittgerber and troopers Tiffany Bezio and Bob Van Anden investigated the case, assisted by the Washington County Sheriffs Office and Hudson Falls Police.
RUTLAND, Vermont  A resettlement initiative slated to boost Rutlands economy and rebuild the beleaguered Vermont city was halted just days after it began, following the presidents recent executive order banning refugees from entering the U.S.

The citys mayor, resettlements most fervent advocate, said he believes the first two Syrian families who arrived in Rutland in late January will be the last.

Unless there are some substantial changes to the presidents order, they were the last to come. The order goes beyond religion, he rolled back the total number of refugees to 50,000, Mayor Christopher Louras said on Tuesday, adding that 30,000 refugees have already entered the country. There are only 20,000 left to come and because Rutland is a brand new resettlement community, without the infrastructure, we will not be selected.

After visits to several resettlement cities and conversations with economic experts, Louras applied to the Department of State in hopes of getting the city approved for refugee resettlement status because he was convinced it would bolster his city, fill vacant housing and entry-level jobs.

But when Louras announced his plans last spring, a public outcry ensued.

Local leaders, who were not included in the mayors preliminary discussions, were not convinced that resettlement was going to be a boon to the citys economy. And those opposed to 100 Syrian and Iraqi refugees settling into this city of almost 16,000, said that the city had too many problems to welcome those in need of services.

At public meetings they asked how this would help the citys dwindling population, the hundreds of homeless families living on state vouchers in area hotels, the other homeless people, especially veterans, living in the woods, a lack of jobs for current residents, expensive and limited housing and a weakened local economy.

I am sympathetic to the refugees plight, but I believe it was going to be difficult for this program to succeed with the numbers involved, said Rutland Alderman Dave Allaire, who has challenged Louras mayoral seat and is currently a candidate for the post along with two other challengers. I am not sure the city could support that number and I am having a difficult time trying to figure out how it would help the economy.

Conversely, Louras and resettlement advocates believe that refugee resettlement would boost the local economy, pointing to successful refugee resettlement cities like Winooski, Vermont, Buffalo and Utica.

On Tuesday Louras talked about the two families who made it to his city. The one woman speaks fluent French, she published a childrens book, he said, explaining that they have so much to offer the city. We need to continue to support them and the goal of the community is to build circles of support for them.

To make sure the families succeed and thrive, they have been assigned family friends to help them maneuver their new home. Official family friends can tell them where to get groceries, how to use the bus, about the schools, said Hunter Berryhill a spokesman for Rutland Welcomes. They will be starting with English lessons.

But those assisting the Rutland refugee families in their transition said they were no longer granting press interviews with the families.

So much has changed since they first arrived, said Stacie Blake, a spokeswoman for The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, referring to the presidents ban.

In Utica, one-in-four residents joined the community as a refugee. Since 1979, the city has welcomed more than 15,000 refugees. A city once plagued with job losses, vacant homes and a dwindling population, was bolstered by the efforts and hard work of the refugees. Those who resettled into this upstate city scraped together enough cash to buy abandoned homes and rebuilt them, built shops in vacant storefronts and started now thriving businesses.

And today, just as Louras believed was possible for Rutland, Uticas population has grown by more than 1,000; blighted neighborhoods are thriving and the diversity has helped enhance the city.

Robert Palmieri, the citys mayor, told the Associated Press that he wishes the president would visit his city to see how refugees have boosted the economy.

Utica refugees are given $1,025 to get started on their new life. But they must repay the federal government for the airfare to the U.S.

In Rutland, each family member received $925 for initial costs. They too must repay the airfare.

According to UC Davis Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, J. Edward Taylor, in countries like Rwanda and Uganda, his studies show that giving cash payments to refugees versus in-kind gifts of food means the refugees will spend more in the local economy.

On Thursday, Taylor said in a phone interview while riding on a train, success depends on the economic opportunities the local economy has to offer. If you locate a refugee in the middle of the desert with no local economy for them to interact with, they cannot benefit, he said. On the other hand, if they can spend money close to home, it is new income in the local economy and it will help the economy. You can expect a high likelihood of success; you end up with this really nice symbiosis.

Nonetheless, there are some in Rutland who are not convinced.

I guess I have mixed feelings, I feel sorry for the families who have come and wont have other families from Syria to begin their new life here, Allaire said. But it was unfortunate the way it (resettlement) was presented, the way it was conducted by the mayor behind closed doors and no conversations with his colleagues caused a lot of divisiveness in the city.

So for now, the presidents Jan. 27 ban has all but stopped the resettlement issue for Rutland, leaving the city divided and disappointed.

For Board of Alderman President William Notte, the disappointment is obvious. He said on Tuesday that he believed resettlement would help the city move forward in its quest to reinvent itself.

Notte also said that the presidents ban has spurred an increased interest in local politics, pointing to the upcoming March election with 17 residents running for six open Board of Aldermen seats in Rutland. Six of the 17 signed up after the ban was announced, Notte said.

What the president did stirred people and really planted seeds of grassroots change for people looking for another answer. Trump lit the fuse, Notte said. There is also real dissatisfaction with the Board of Aldermans response to resettlement.

This is part two of a two-part series on the impact of President Donald Trumps refugee ban on the city of Rutland.




























In the past year, the persecution of Christians has not only increased, but it has also spread to more corners of the globe  with incidents occurring on every continent, according to a new report. The advocacy group Open Doors USA recently released the latest edition of its annual World Watch List, which ranks countries based on the treatment of their Christian populations. The group said the increase in incidents considered persecution was alarming and only getting worse. "It is appalling that Open Doors has to report that persecution has increased again in 2016 and we are still at the worst levels of persecution in modern times," David Curry, president and CEO of Open Doors USA, said to Fox News. "The spread of persecution has gotten worse, now hitting nearly every continent in the world. There were 23 Christians killed in Mexico specifically because of their faith.

The report comes on the heels of another study by the Center for Studies on New Religions that showed nearly 90,000 Christians were killed for their faith in 2016 and that as many as 600 million were prevented from practicing their faith through intimidation, forced conversions, bodily harm or even death.









These numbers underscore what we already know," Robert Nicholson of the Philos Project, an advocacy group for Christianity in the Middle East, told Fox News at the time of the reports release. "There are many places on Earth where being a Christian is the most dangerous thing you can be. Those who think of Christianity as a religion of the powerful need to see that in many places its a religion of the powerless. And the powerless deserve to be protected.





Open Doors said in its new report that some 215 million Christians around the globe are facing some degree of persecution. But that number, it noted, could actually be much higher.









Our report is conservative because it only calculates incidents that are reported and can be validated, Curry told Fox News. It is likely that there are thousands of incidents that are never reported and nobody knows because Christians are often fearful to tell anyone  even their own family members."









































During a recent interview with CBN , President Trump was asked if he thinks America should prioritize persecuted Christians as refugees. He responded:









Yes. Yes, theyve been horribly treated. If you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, or at least very, very tough, to get into the United States. If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair -- everybody was persecuted, in all fairness -- but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.





This is a far different response than that given by Barrack Hussein Obama back in November 2015 . Then, as president, he lashed out against the idea of giving preference to Christian refugees, describing it as shameful: Thats not American. Thats not who we are. We dont have religious tests to our compassion, Obama had added.









While Obama was making such lofty admonishments, his administration was quietly discriminating against Mideast Christians in a myriad of ways including, as Trump pointed out, by aggressively accepting Muslim refugees over Christian ones. Despite the U.S. governments own acknowledgement that ISIS was committing genocide against Christians in Syriaand not against fellow Sunni Muslimsthe Obama administration took in 5,435 Muslims, almost all of which were Sunni, but only 28 Christians. Considering that Christians are 10 percent of Syrias population, to be on an equal ratio with Muslims entering America, at least 500 Christians shouldve been granted asylum, not 28.

































Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told settlers evacuated from the illegal Amona outpost the move was unavoidable but the whole country shared their great pain.





Speaking as security forces wrapped up the West Bank evacuation of some 40 families, Netanyahu repeated his promise to build a new settlement and strengthen existing ones in the wake of the forced evacuation of Amona, which the High Court of Justice ruled in 2014 was built on privately owned Palestinian land.





We know [these are] difficult days, Netanyahu said during a visit to the West Bank settlement of Ariel. We made every effort to avoid getting to this point, but ultimately we abide by the demands of the law because we are a law-abiding nation. You and I all share in the great pain of the families that were forced to leave their homes, that actually had to abandon their lifes work.





We all understand the great pain and so we will set up a new settlement on state land, Netanyahu said.





























Israeli Left Fanning Flames of Arab Glee at Evacuation of Amona Jews The most striking response to the tragic expulsion of the Jews of Amona Wednesday belonged to Abd Rahman Abu-Saleh, the Mayor of the Arab town next-door to Amona, Silwad (birthplace of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal), one of the petitioners to the Supreme Court against the alternative-housing plan, who said, according to a Channel 2 News Gal Berger tweet: The only solution for the Amona evacuees is to return to Europe, where they cam from. Yes, that was revolting, but at least it wasnt a lie  thats how the gentleman really felt, which is, presumably, consistent with the way the majority of the Muslim Arabs living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea feel, deep down.

The more revolting response to the travesty of Amonas destruction by the court came from the flagship newspaper of Israels left, Haaretz, which ran an op-ed by an 83-year-old Arab woman named Maryam Hamed, also a resident of Silwad, with the headline:  Ive Already Prepared Wheat and Lentils for Sowing . She related her memories of her father who used to till the lands up there, before the settlers came and took away everything.





Aerial photographs of the Amona area from the 1940s  made by the British, and the 1960s and 1980s  made by the Israelis (no Jordanian photographs were ever made, apparently) show clearly that the bulk of the land was never utilized. Not because the local Arabs were lazy, but because the land is mostly rock, and to turn it into a profitable project took investments that were beyond the capacity of the local Arabs.





It stands to reason, despite whatever Mrs. Hamid recalls from the happy childhood assigned her by the PR folks at Yesh Din, that no self-respecting Arab farmer would shell out good money to purchase those almost barren lands.





Naturally, the farmers of Silwad never paid good money for the land  it was a gift from the king in Amman, to compensate them for their growing rage over their neglect by his government  for their lack of roads, power, water, medical clinics, schools  all the nice things the Israelis started bringing in after 1967. The myth of ancient ownership of the Judea and Samaria lands by the local Arabs must be busted, repeatedly, using historic facts and persistent messages, because the world is unaware of this Big Lie, and Israels Supreme Court does not care.























In a speech in the West Bank settlement of Ariel in memory of its founder and late mayor, Ron Nachman, Netanyahu said that he listened with appreciation to the remarks of General [Michael] Flynn on the need to counter Irans aggression, indicating that the issue was also discussed in his phone conversation with President Donald Trump following his inauguration last month.





The prime minister termed the Iranian drills a flagrant breach of UN Security Council resolutions.





On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Flynn declared that the United States was officially putting Iran on notice, over its launch on January 29 of a 4,000-kilometer (2,500-mile) range ballistic missile that drew immediate concern from the UN Security Council and outrage from Netanyahu, who demanded reimposed sanctions against Iran.





Trump on Thursday echoed Flynns statement in a tweet aimed at Iran, saying Tehran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the US made with them!





Netanyahu said he would discuss with Trump a reevaluation of the entire failed nuclear accord that the Obama administration and other world powers signed with Iran in 2015. Both Trump and Flynn have been harsh critics of Tehran and vocal opponents of the nuclear deal, which put curbs on Irans nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. Trump vowed to rip up the deal during last years presidential campaign. Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the US came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion, Trump said in a second pre-dawn tweet on Thursday. Netanyahu said his upcoming meeting with Trump, slated for February 15, is of great importance to our country, our land, our nation.





























US President Donald Trump said that nothing is off the table, when it came to a response to Irans controversial test this week of a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Trump was responding to a question about whether a military response to Iran was under consideration.





Nothing is off the table, he replied, borrowing a phrase Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has used for years vis-a-vis Tehrans nuclear program.





Trumps comment followed a string of remarks by Republican senators, including the House Speaker, backing additional sanctions on Iran in the wake of the missile test, which prompted an emergency UN Security Council session and a call by Netanyahu to reimpose punitive measures.





I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran, House Speaker Paul Ryan said at a weekly press conference on Thursday. We need to have a tough-on-Iran policy We should stop appeasing Iran.





I think the last administration appeased Iran far too much. I think they went too far with Iran and I think as a result Iran is far more activist than it otherwise would be, he said.




















































































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On May 12, Price introduced the Patient Access to Durable Medical Equipment Act, which in part stopped cuts of Medicare reimbursement for medical beds. McKesson, which produces medical beds, told investors that cuts in Medicare payments would be detrimental to its business in its annual report, filed a week before the bill was introduced, according to the report.

The bill did not pass, but parts of it made their way into the recently passed 21st Century Cures Act, which Price, an orthopedic surgeon, did not support.

This is the fourth investment that Democrats fighting his confirmation have raised questions about. The others are:

$1,001 and $15,000 in Zimmer Biomet

four investments between $1,001 and $15,000

small Australian biotech company

Price has maintained that all of these investments were ethical and did not influence his legislation.

While Price has maintained that no ethical standards were violated, Democrats have insisted that these trades that should prevent Price's confirmation in the top spot at HHS. They have called for an investigation into Price under the STOCK Act, which prevents members of Congress from using nonpublic information in making investments.

Price maintained throughout his confirmation hearing that he didn't know until after the trades that his broker was purchasing these stocks, but he acknowledged he directed his broker to purchase the Innate shares.

Republicans have said that these investments are legal and ethical and that Price is qualified to be confirmed.
There was no such attack in the US.

During her interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Conway described two Iraqi refugees coming to the US, becoming radicalized, and masterminding an attack. Conway offered no evidence to back up her claims and flatly suggested that "most people don't know ... because it didn't get covered."

Conway clarified Friday morning that she was referring to an incident involving two Iraqi refugees in Kentucky. In that case, the two Iraqi nationals were indicted on federal terrorism charges in part accusing them of providing material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

"On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say 'Bowling Green terrorists' as reported here," she said, linking to a story about the incident.

An FBI press release in 2011 said the two men, Waad Ramadan Alwan, who was 30 at the time, and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, who was 23, were former residents of Iraq who lived in Bowling Green at the time of their arrests. Both were convicted. In 2013, Alwan was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, while Hammadi received a life term, the FBI said.

According to the FBI's statement on the matter, there was no plan for a terrorist attack in that city.

Watch the video below:
And following Trump's nomination of 10th Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Cuban had a simple message for Democrats still trying to figure out how to handle the Trump presidency: You're "blowing it."

"The Democrats are blowing it," he told MSNBC early Wednesday. "I think ... look, I'm an independent, I'm not a Democrat. I don't have a vested interest in the Democratic Party at all. But, what I will say, at least from my perspective, everything that was wrong with Republicans during the Obama administration was built around obstructionism."

Cuban warned Democrats, some of whom are either seeking to fully oppose all of Trump's nominees, including Gorsuch, while others have already announced their opposition to Trump's nominee for the court, that when the strategy was employed by Republicans "it was bad for everybody, bad for the country."

"And the reality is, that's how we ended up with a President Trump, which, I think, in an honest moment with conservative leaders, they will tell you they didn't want a President Trump," he continued. "They wanted a real conservative."

He questioned why Democrats would want to "copy" the approach.

"It was everything that was wrong with the Republicans," he said, adding, "They need to take a different approach if they want to get different results."

The billionaire business mogul went on a lengthy tweetstorm in similar terms Tuesday night, following Trump's announcement. In it, he said "every reasonable person HATED" the GOP's obstructionist strategy in the Obama years, which came to a peak when Senate Republicans blocked Obama's nominee to fill Scalia's seat early in 2016, Judge Merrick Garland.

"Bannon is praying the dems take the same approach," he wrote. "They will use it to expand their base and demonize Dems. 'See, they hate you & progress.'"

As he mentioned in his MSNBC interview, Cuban said it would be wise to make a deal with Trump to give him "bragging rights."

"Deal makers love to make deals," he said. "Sales people love to sell. That's who he is. All dealmakers will give you something. Get something. ... Or dems can do business as usual. Obstruct every move. Treat him like a politician. How did that work out in the election?"

The owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks and star of ABC's "Shark Tank," who also served as a prominent supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton during the general election campaign, expanded upon this point in the MSNBC interview.

"Donald loves superlatives," Cuban said. "He loves being able to brag. And if you give him something that gives him bragging rights, [such as] 'we will make this the fastest Supreme Court nominee confirmation ever in the history of the United States. In exchange for that, we want to replace this cabinet pick or that cabinet pick or have you do this or have you do that.'

Cuban said it's "worth trying," adding that the voters Democrats need to worry about in the next election are not those who voted for Trump or Clinton, but those who voted for neither.

"Those are the people who are going to have the greatest impact in the next election," he said.

Taking a shot at Trump, Cuban said their was a low bar to get over for something Trump does to be considered successful, after being asked for his thoughts on the president's rollout of his Supreme Court nominee Tuesday night.

"It was a nice presentation," he said. "I mean, the bar is low. All he had to do was not go off on a tangent, which he didn't do. He popped in his typical Trump superlatives ... it was fine."

It's now a "question of what happens next," Cuban said, adding there is still "a whole lot more we need to learn."

"I don't think his management style is all of a sudden going to change because he decided to stick to the script for the most part in presenting the Supreme Court nominee," he said.

Cuban returned to publicly voicing his opinions about Trump  something he frequently did during the campaign  following the president's Friday executive order temporarily barring travel from seven Muslim-majority nations and all refugees from entering the US. The order  which targeted countries previously identified as terror hotspots by the Obama administration  was met with backlash by many business leaders and politicians, and it led to chaos at airports and protests nationwide.

Cuban spent days tweeting in opposition to the president, engaged with prominent Trump supporters such as Fox News host Sean Hannity, and began making the rounds on cable news, hitting CNBC, CNN, and MSNBC.

In the process, he became the de-facto face of opposition to Trump in the business and tech community, taking a more active stance against the president than any prominent executive.
The event was cancelled after demonstrators threw smoke bombs and flares at the building, the Associated Press and local media reported. Yiannopoulos posted to his Facebook page shortly after:

"I have been evacuated from the UC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protestors tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building," the post said.

Yiannopoulos accused the demonstrators of trying to squash free speech. UC Berkeley, notably, is considered the home of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s.

Heres a look from the scene:

Some critics have noted that Yiannopoulos, who is known for expressing right-leaning, politically incorrect views, was going to give his presentation inside UC Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, on the first day of Black History Month.
In the ads, Jack in the Box employees laugh when the word "Angus" is said and imply that that the "Angus" area of the cow is an improper part of its body.

Puzder was unamused by the campaign, as Carl's Jr. and Hardee's sold Angus beef (using a certain type of cattle), compared to Jack In the Box's sirloin burgers (which used a certain cut of meat).

"They're not being funny," Puzder told the Associated Press. "They need to stop misleading people about what Angus beef is."

So, CKE took the case to court, presenting the judge with a survey that revealed 36% of the 404 people surveyed believed Angus beef came from the cow's behind.

"Defendant's Sirloin burger commercials create the false impression that the meat used in plaintiff's 100% Angus Beef Hamburgers comes from the rear-end and/or anus of beef cattle by creating phonetic and aural confusion between the words 'Angus' and 'anus,'" CKE argued, reported CNN.

While attempts to get an injunction to have the ads removed from the air were initially denied, the fast-food companies eventually reached a settlement and the case was dismissed.

One decade later, Puzder is dealing with even weightier legal matters, with fast-food workers coming out to both support and protest against their boss.
Although that's tiny compared to Google's $80 billion in ad revenue, it shows Amazon has been quietly ramping up its online advertising offerings, and could one day be a major threat in the industry.

In fact, during Amazon's earnings call with investors on Thursday, UBS analyst Eric Sheridan pointed out this growth, asking where the company sees its advertising business going longer term.

Amazon's CFO Brian Olsavsky didn't share much, stressing it's "very early," but did agree its online advertising business is a "good strategy" for the company.

Overlooked part of the business

Although Amazon rarely talks about its sprawling advertising business, there's been some speculation that it could end up becoming a major part of the company's overall business.

UBS's Sheridan wrote in a recent note that Amazon is continuing to expand its marketing platform by offering more "sophisticated and targeted" advertising solutions, although its revenue is still small.

"We believe the long-term potential of Amazon's advertising business is still largely overlooked despite Amazon's large reach (over 300m active customers)," Sheridan wrote.

According to Bloomberg's Shira Ovide and Leila Abboud, Amazon's ad business is estimated to have generated roughly $1.2 billion in 2016. If you apply Facebook's operating margin, Amazon's ad business would have made $395 million in operating income last year, a solid 18% of Amazon's total operating income.

During the earnings call, Darin Manney, Amazon's head of IR, cautioned against making a big deal out of the jump in "other" revenue, stressing that it includes revenue from its co-branded credit card arrangements and other types of advertising deals.
There is a group that has approached us who want to do the waggons in Ghana and export it to Nigeria. We have to try and get the waggons done in Ghana. If they can do it. They want to do it in a location in my constituency, if they can do it, it will make me a very happy person quite apart from the fact that it is in my sector, he said.
READ ALSO: Celebrity Birthday

Below are birthday messages from some Ghanaian celebrities.

READ ALSO: Presidential Endorsement

Roselyn Ngissah, May God bless you immensely. Whatever your hand touches will be a success. May you possess everywhere your foot treads. May God's protection upon your life double and may your blessings increase in geometric expressions...oya chop kiss.. Come back quick so we do the #melodance#.. @johndumelo1 gbooooosaaaaaaaaa..........

READ ALSO: Men Are Cheaters

Sandra Ankobiah, John John!!! Blessings on blessings. Happy birthday!!.

Yvonne Nelson  It's his birthdaaaaaay. Never forget what I told you the other time.... you are a born leader HAPPY BIRTHDAY still and will always have massive LOVE for you. MR HONORABLE.

READ ALSO: Celebrity Couple

Beverly Afaglo, "HBD darling. One of the most patient and humble dude I know.Dont change Bro. We luv u jus the way u are @johndumelo1.

Federick Nuamah, Happy birthday my brother @johndumelo1 don't forget u only live once but if u do it right, once is enough. #happybirthday again mr 100,000 100,000 aka Rome wasn't' built in a day aka tell John is Ma.......! I love u my brother. Welcome to the age 32.... I was there long tym ago. That's why I'm the school not the hard master #nollywood #gollywood.
John shared this post on Instagram which reads,

"I'm a year older today. The past 365 days has been life changing...I've made mistakes...mistakes that have made me wiser. And I also have made good decisions....and it's made me wiser.

READ ALSO: Celebrity

Everything happens for a reason and that's how I see life. When you miss a flight, it's for a reason, when you fail an exam, it's for a reason, when my heart gets broken, it's for a reason. Donald got elected , Mohamed Ali is in heaven and Cameroon beat Ghana.

READ ALSO: Celebrity Birthday

Everything happens for a reason. I never question the reasons because God has an amazing way of doing things.

On the occasion of my birthday I just want to say if I've wronged anyone in anyway, please forgive me. I'm human, I'm not perfect. We learn daily and that is what makes us stronger.

READ ALSO: Brand Vision

We were all born to succeed and we were all born to be each other's keeper. The world would be a much better place if there wasn't so much hatred. One day we shall all answer to God. #Happybirthdaytome #Godblessyouall".

Most Ghanaian personalities including former President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, have sent birthday wishes to Dumelo on social media.
The trio had sustained severe injuries after a giant snake crossed the path directly in front of them as they were riding on a motorcycleresulting in an accident.

READ ALSO: Teacher arrested for beating wife to death in Northern Region

The bizarre accident occurred at around 7pm in Wa on Thursday February 2, when the students were rushing home from lectures. They were reportedly making a rushed attempt to catch the Black Stars' game against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon.
In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, DSP Ebenezer Kusi-Preprah, the crime officer at the Bimbilla District Police Station, said a whistle-blower informed the police command in Bimbilla that one Tia Musah David, age 57, a teacher at Kasimiah English Arabic primary school in Bimbilla had a quarrel with his wife Janet Kofi 39 in their home at Madina, a suburb of Bimbilla, that the suspect beat her up till she collapsed and died on arrival at the Bimbilla government hospital. The body was deposited at the hospital mortuary and family was trying to conceal the crime.
He made this known at a regional workshop on Beneficial Ownership Transparency Champions in Accra.

According to him, amendments to the Criminal Code to make corruption a felony, instead of a misdemeanour, will also be made by the end of the year.

These are, indeed, some of the actions we intend to implement this year, the Vice president told participants from Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana.

The programme was organised by Transparency International (TI) and its local chapter, the Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII), with the support of UKAid,

The purpose of the two-day seminar is to mobilise support for the sharing and use of information on beneficial ownership.

Beneficial ownership applies to the control, ownership and beneficiaries of the proceeds of a legal entity, such as a company.

Background

The move, according to Nana Addo was intended to separate politics from criminal investigations.

The Minority in Parliament has however threatened to challenge the decision by the government to create a special prosecutors office.

Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu said the move will be a breach of Ghanas constitution.
The interconnection between the countrys first and second operating oil and gas fields will enable evacuation and export of additional natural gas from the TEN fields through the 58-km offshore pipeline of the Ghana National Gas Company (Ghana Gas) to its onshore Atuabo Gas Processing Plant.

Executive Director of KITE Ishmael Agyekumhene speaking to Accra-based Starr FM said "If you listen to what the utilities and the power producers are telling us, they are making enough contingencies to ensure that the light is on for those next fifteen days.

"Knowing very well that we have known since last year that in February they are going to shut down the FPSO, I will be very surprised if it brings about Dumsor. Im sure they have made enough provision to deal with what we are going to go through. I dont expect that we go through any form of outages".

The shutdown will lead to immediate curtailment of production and export of natural gas from the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah to Atuabo and subsequent curtailment of lean gas from Atuabo to the Aboadze Thermal Enclave, which presently relies on gas from Ghana Gas to generate electricity.

Read more: Nana Addo to relocate GNPC headquarters to Western region
This is after the Appointments Committee have vetted the nominees individually.

The nominees expected to be approved include Gender minister Afisa Otiko Djaba, Joe Ghartey, the minister nominee for Railways Development; John Peter Amewu, the minister nominee for Lands and Forestry, Telecommunications minister nominee, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful and Dan Botwe, minister-designate for Regional Reorganization and Development.

READ ALSO: Amewu apologises to Rawlings

However the minority in Parliament have failed to endorse Otiko Afisa Djaba.

The Member of Parliament for Bodi constituency and a member of the Appointments Committee in Parliament, Sampson Ahi revealed this in an interview on Accra-based Kasapa FM.

There is a general consensus for us in the Minority not to support Otiko because of her posturing before the committee and her response to some questions that were asked her during vetting yesterday. Off-course her approval will be by the majority when it comes to the floor for consideration, Ahi told Accra-based Kasapa FM.

Mr Ahi said the Minority will soon register their position and give specifics as to why the nominee was rejected.

Gender Minister-designate Otiko Afisa Djaba who appeared before the Appointments Committee of parliament for vetting on Monday refused to apologise to the former president John Mahama for some unsavoury comments prior to the 2016 elections seems to have baffled some Ghanaians.

Ahead of the 2016 general election, Otiko Afisa Djaba is reported to have described the former president as "evil," "wicked" and "an embarrassment" to the people of northern extraction.
Debating in on the floor of Parliament the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu reiterated that Otiko Djaba does not have the support of his side in the house.

She does not have our support and she will not have our support until she behaves in a manner befitting a minister.

All of the MPs on the minority side of the Appointments Committee voted against her approval. They argued that her posture during the vetting did not befit a minister and also because she did not do National Service.

Djaba during her vetting refused to apologise for describing former President John Mahama as evil, wicked and an embarrassment to people of the regions up north.

READ ALSO: Otiko Djaba to sanitise media

Haruna Iddrisu said he was referring to Act 426 section 7 of the Constitution, adding: It is also a national obligation. She, in her answers, was forthright and was candid with the committee that I have not done national service. Therefore, can she work in the public service of Ghana and hold the high office of a minister of state? he asked

However, the Committee as a whole recommended Djaba and other nominees for approval by majority decision.

On Friday, 3 February, the Minority in Parliament pushed for the vote to be cast immediately but the Majority insisted the vote be deferred to Tuesday. Speaker of Parliament Prof Mike Oquaye ruled in favour of the Majority.
Some armed men dressed in military fatigues, suspected to be army officers on Wednesday, stormed the private residence of Mr Kofi Adams.

According to the former spokesperson of former President Rawlings, the men, numbering 15, seized all his vehicles in the company of four alleged National Security officers and personnel from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).

Mr Adams said the soldiers claimed they were acting upon orders from the Minister of National Security, Albert Kan-Dapaah and the Flagstaff House.

He told Accra-based Asempa FM that his Tema Gulf City home was ransacked with several properties also taken away, on the pretext that they belonged to the state.

But in an interview on Accra-based Radio Gold, Mr. Adams said the National Security Minister, Mr. Kan-Dapaah has since caused the return of the cars.

Mr Adams has since threatened legal action against the matter.

But speaking on Accra-based Asempa FM, Nana Obiri Boahen dared Kofi Adams to take any legal action.

Im telling you on authority that Kofi Adams's car is a Government of Ghana vehicle. It was stolen and sold, he said.

We are aggrieved and dissatisfied with how the National Security is handling the matter that is why I have come public he added.
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In 2016, I made the trek in a Ford Escape, a popular compact crossover SUV. Just to spread the love around the Detroit automakers, I went with the competition this year and asked Buick, a General Motors brand, if I could borrow an Envision, also a compact crossover, and slightly more luxurious than the Escape.

An added wrinkle: the Envision is made in China. And I would be driving it along the I-80 corridor, right through the heart of made-in-USA Trump country.

There are no actual Chinese-branded vehicles for sale in the US, but there are two Chinese-made vehicles that are imported: the Envision and the Volvo S60 Inscription, a sedan that we drove and liked. Thus far, the BI Transportation team has been impressed with the Chinese-built cars that we've driven.

But clearly, with the new administration in the White House, it remains to be seen whether more Chinese cars and trucks bearing US and European badges will make it into the country.

The Envision I tested was priced slightly higher than $45,000, which means that it wasn't a cheap choice. And because it was fully tricked out, it came packed with luxurious and high-tech features.

Here's how the trip went:

My chariot for this arduous jaunt was a 2017 Buick Envision, a compact crossover SUV manufactured in ... China! General Motors imported it from the Middle Kingdom to plug a glaring hole in the Buick lineup. It's one of just two Chinese-made vehicles on sale in the US. The other is the Volvo S60 Inscription.

You can read our review of the Volvo here.

The design of the Envision is nothing too snazzy. It gets the job done, but it doesn't stand out. Our tester was the Premier II trim level, with all-wheel-drive and plenty of techie features.

There's the familiar Buick "waterfall" grille and tri-shield badge.

You get LED daytime running lights and three ventiports per side.

The Envision is on par with the Ford Escape I drove to Detroit in 2016 (I made a stop on the way back at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland), but the the Envision gets a slight edge in the luxury department.

Read about last year's trip here.

In 2016, the Escape and I negotiated some very wintry weather.

In 2017, the snow hit before I left home. In fact, the weather got better as I drove to the Midwest.

As in 2016, my journey would cover over 600 miles each way. But unlike in 2016, I would be driving through a newly charged political landscape: Trump country. The I-80 corridor runs right through the heart of Pennsylvania and Ohio, manufacturing counties that Trump carried in the presidential election.

The cargo area and rear seats have the typical 60-40 split. With both rear seats down, capacity is a generous 57 cubic feet. The Envision swallowed up all my stuff with ease.

It was sunny when I departed, but not warm enough to have melted all the snow and ice on the Envision.

A quick stop for gas did give me the chance to rid the vehicle of some of the snow and slush, however.

Fuel economy is fair: 20 mpg city, 26 highway. Because almost all of my trip would be on the highway, I enjoyed the upper end of the range. Notice that there's no gas cap, by the way!

The rear seats would have provided plenty of room if I had passengers.

Adults and kids should be reasonably comfortable. The black leather seats are classic Buick, although they have been stiffened up a tad, in response to current tastes.

There was a decent amount of storage space in the front, with a pair of cupholders and the usual USB and AUX ports for devices. Note the old-school shifter, with its simple P-N-R-D configuration, a welcome throwback after too many vehicles with hard-to-use modern joystick shifters. The Envision's 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine serves up 252 turbocharged horses and pipes them through a very nice six-speed automatic transmission.

The infotainment is Buick's IntelliLink system  in my opinion, the best in the business, coupled with GM's fleet wide 4GLTE connectivity that provides reliable wifi, as well as OnStar, which provided me with navigation. Bluetooth pairing was a breeze.

I enjoyed a lot of Underground Garage on SiriusXM satellite radio ...

... lots and lots ...

... all of it emanating from the Envisions excellent Bose audio system. You need good quality audio on a long trip.

The center touchscreen is large, and the features are easy to use. A modest array of knobs and buttons provides backup.

Nothing too exotic here. I spent something like 24 hours staring at this steering wheel and instrument cluster. However, I didn't let me down. The Envision's steering isn't exactly sharp, but it isn't supposed to be. And the driver's seat was an exceptionally comfortable place to spend many, many hours on the open road.

For what it's worth, the Envision lacks paddle shifters for semi-manual action, which is fine by me. The Buick also has an automatic stop-start function to enhance fuel economy, a feature that will annoy some drivers because it can't be turned off. Once I got used to it, I barely noticed.

Along my route, I encountered some moderately nasty weather, but the AWD system was completely surefooted, and the turbo four-banger had ample pep for passing what seemed like an endless supply of semis. Interstate 80 is a major east-west trucking route. In conditions like this, passing power is critical.

I craved Taco Bell for the entire journey. Don't ask me why.

I haven't eaten this many Burrito Supremes since I was 17 years old. I washed it down with Dr. Pepper, of course.

But there were other dining options ...

... conveniently located at rest stops along my route.

At last, I arrived in Detroit. That's the Renaissance, GM's  and Buick's  world HQ.

The next two days would find me at Cobo Hall for the 2017 North American International Auto Show.

You can check out all the cool stuff I saw at the show here.

No Trump showing, but Vice-President Joe Biden did make an appearance to check out the Corvette Grand Sport, the greatest Corvette in human history.

Read the Grand Sport review here.

We had a great time. And to add insult to injury, I didn't just drive a Chinese-made Buick to Motown through Trump-held territory  I stayed in CANADA! Windsor, Ontario, to be exact, which sits directly across the river from Detroit. I guess you could say I escaped the US every night.

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In fact, when it was time to head back home, I took the famous Ambassador Bridge (I also used the tunnel that connects Canada and Detroit), connecting American and Canada since 1929. Don't forget your passport!

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Pulling over to refuel on I-80 means truck stops galore.

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Even in the age of GPS navigation, it's still nice to see paper road maps. They give you the big picture, where you've been ... where you're going.

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Honestly, after over 1,000 miles, the Envision looked better than when it began the trip.

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Back home, safe and sound. She was a good ship!

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So how did the Envision do?

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Buick desperately needed a compact crossover to slot in between the mid-size Enclave and the sub-compact Encore. The Envision fit the bill, and luckily the Chinese-made vehicle was there to be pressed into duty at the end of 2016.

The crossover market is hot in the US and while the Envision might not be for everybody, particularly drivers who want a sporty SUV or need hardcore off-road capability, the Buick is solid.

For me, a long road trip is the acid test for any car, and the Envision passed with flying colors. When you put the entire package together  comfort, power, cargo capacity, infotainment  the upshot is a road-trip mobile extraordinaire. Fuel economy could be better, and the Envision's looks could be bolder, but neither is a deal killer.

The suite of driver-assist features is superb: adaptive cruise control, automatic front braking, forward collision alert, lane-keep assist and lane-departure warning, and blind-spot alerts. I used the adaptive cruise control a lot, and it made the journey far more relaxing than it would have been without it.

But taking over and doing the actual driving myself was also delightful. The Envision has that Buick thing  it drives well without making a big deal out of it. This isn't a car that you ever fell compelled to push. And that's good because it makes you a safer driver. The available heated-and-cooled seats and the steering wheel heater are icing on the cake.

Crossovers saved Buick after the financial crisis when the brand was on the brink of extinction. Ironically, Buick made it through because GM needed a strong brand in China, where Buick has always been popular. With the Envision, China paid Buick back when Buick needed it most.

Buick now has a very competitive crossover lineup to see it through the next few years, with Envision right at the heart of it. The question obviously is whether President Trump's politics will complicate the US-China trading relationship and force and adjustment to where and how automakers build cars.
In a statement from the defense giant, Lockheed Martin acknowledged President Donald Trump's recent role in the F-35 program.

"President Trump's personal involvement in the F-35 program accelerated the negotiations and sharpened our focus on driving down the price," the statement said. "The agreement was reached in a matter of weeks and represents significant savings over previous contracts."

On Monday, Trump announced that the latest contract with Lockheed Martin for the F-35 would be reduced by $600 million.

And though it would appear that Trump, after publicly criticizing the crown jewel in the defense giant's portfolio, is the reason for the savings, the price reduction was in the works.

In a December 19 briefing, Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, head of the F-35 Joint Program Office, said the price in LRIP-10 would be reduced "significantly."

"I fully anticipate that when we do settle LRIP-10 you'll see all three variants  the A, the B, and the C  come down in price significantly," Bogdan said. By "significantly," Bogdan said he meant "somewhere on the order of 6 to 7 percent per airplane, per variant."

The finalized price for LRIP-9, which took 14 months of negotiations between the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin, for 57 F-35 jets was valued at $6.1 billion.

The unit price for an F-35A  including aircraft, engine, and fee  is $102.1 million. If you take the 6 to 7 percent reduction into account, the savings on LRIP-10 are ballpark to the price point laid out by the Joint Program Office in December.

Most notably in LRIP-10, the total price for an F-35A is below $100 million for the first time.

The LRIP-10 contract includes 55 jets for the US and 35 for seven international partners and foreign military sales clients.

The following is a breakdown of the unit price per variant in 2017 dollars, including aircraft, engine, and fee.

Here are the price tags for the latest batch of F-35s:

 F-35A model aircraft: $94.6 million a jet

 F-35B model aircraft: $122.8 million a jet

 F-35C model aircraft: $121.8 million a jet
In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize that the history of a people moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula." The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that at a given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," a cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a trial of fire.

This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and Bannon, like Strauss and Howe, believes we are in the midst of one right now.

According to the book, the last two Fourth Turnings that America experienced were the Civil War and the Reconstruction, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before that, it was the Revolutionary War.

All these were marked by periods of dread and decay in which the American people were forced to unite to rebuild a new future, but only after a massive conflict in which many lives were lost. It all starts with a catalyst event, then there's a period of regeneracy, after that there is a defining climax in which a war for the old order is fought, and then finally there is a resolution in which a new world order is stabilized.

This is where Bannon's obsession with this book should cause concern. He believes that, for the new world order to rise, there must be a massive reckoning. That we will soon reach our climax conflict. In the White House, he has shown that he is willing to advise Trump to enact policies that will disrupt our current order to bring about what he perceives as a necessary new one. He encourages breaking down political and economic alliances and turning away from traditional American principles to cause chaos.

In that way, Bannon seems to be trying to bring about the Fourth Turning.

The book in Bannon

Bannon has never been secretive about his desire to use Trump to bring about his vision of America. He told Vanity Fair last summer that Trump was a "blunt instrument for us ... I dont know whether he really gets it or not."

Perhaps not, but putting a Fourth Turning lens on Trump's policies certainly give them a great deal of context. Bannon believes that the catalyst for the Fourth Turning has already happened: the financial crisis.

So now we are in the regeneracy. Howe and Strauss describe this period as one of isolationism, one of infrastructure building and of strong, centralized government power, and a reimagination of the economy.

Of course it's important not to lose sight of the end here. Bannon believes in authoritarian politics as preparation for a massive conflict between East and West, whether East means the Middle East or China.

Over the years, Bannon has unsuccessfully tried to pressure historians such as David Kaiser, now at MIT, to say the same thing.

From Time:

"I remember him saying, 'Well, look, you have the American revolution, and then you have the Civil War, which was bigger than the revolution. And you have the Second World War, which was bigger than the Civil War,' Kaiser said. 'He even wanted me to say that on camera, and I was not willing.'

"Howe, too, was struck by what he calls Bannon's 'rather severe outlook on what our nation is going through.' Bannon noted repeatedly on his radio show that 'we're at war' with radical jihadis in places around the world. This is 'a global existential war' that likely will become 'a major shooting war in the Middle East again.' War with China may also be looming, he has said. This conviction is central to the Breitbart mission, he explained in November 2015: 'Our big belief, one of our central organizing principles at the site, is that we're at war.'"

The reality of repetition

Ultimately, the danger of writing about the past at the same time one writes about the future is that it can be hard for an author to separate the two. The steps and missteps of the past seem so easily repeatable that the future seems to march in lockstep. But this is not what history has shown us. The catastrophes of every era have always materialized in their own unique ways.

It is here where Strauss and Howe fail in their work, and here where Bannon gets caught in their failure. The authors mention in passing that the event that brings us into a crisis could be "as ominous as a financial crisis or as ordinary as a national election."

This makes sense. The Fourth Turning of the Civil War and Reconstruction played out differently than the Fourth Turning afterward, the Depression and World War II.

But Strauss and Howe fail to recognize that difference in their description of the Fourth Turning to come. They forget that no two Turnings are alike; instead, they get trapped thinking that the last catalyst  the Great Depression, a financial crisis  was the next one as well, and Bannon does too.

This is why he believes that the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 was the catalyst of our crisis, just as the Great Depression was the catalyst in the previous saeculum. But the two are not comparable. Unemployment in the US never reached 20%, as it did then; it hit 10% in October 2009. In 2008 the government acted fast to prevent a full global meltdown, and it did not allow the situation to deteriorate the way President Herbert Hoover and his administration did for two years.

Instead of all of America suffering as one, what the financial crisis brought on was an exacerbation of the inequality growing in the world for the 40 years before it.

So when President Franklin Roosevelt described a country laid waste by the Great Depression in his inaugural address in 1933, he was describing a picture that all Americans were seeing. On the other hand Trump, in his inaugural, described a dark "American carnage" that many did not recognize. That lack of recognition marked our deep division as a country.

Alignment

So perhaps there is a Fourth Turning to come, but Bannon is not an architect of its initiation. According to Howe and Strauss, unity is the defining feature of the regeneracy. It is what allows leaders during a crisis to become "authoritarian, severe, unyielding" in commanding resources in order to rebuild society.

This is what allowed FDR to command the full force of government to put people back to work. But unity is less apparent in American society than it has been in years. Quite the contrary, our society is showing division as never before.

The stars of the "Fourth Turning" are baby boomers and millennials. Boomers are the ideologues who lead our country into conflict through folly; millennials are cast as the young heroes that bring them out of it.

Once the catalyst event takes place, Strauss and Howe describe a situation in which America coalesces under one leader  a boomer "Gray Warrior"  who will "urgently resist the idea that a second consecutive generation might be denied the American Dream. No matter how shattered the economy ... "

If Bannon believes that he is working for this Gray Warrior, then he's missing a very important point: Millennials are the ones who lead the way forward out of crisis in this story, but considering the needs of the young has never had any place under Trumpism. Trump's words appealed most to older generations who felt like something had been taken away from them, not to younger generations who felt like they were never given a chance at the American Dream in the first place.

The majority of young people who voted in 2016 voted against President Trump, and even more millennials chose to stay home. That is, in part, because Trump never offered young people anything. I n July, at the Republican National Convention, the national head of the young Republicans, Alexandra Smith, warned her party about this.

"For too long Republicans haven't been making their case to millennials," Smith said, her saccharine tone smoothing over the severity of the situation. "There's just too much old and not enough grand in the way we express our party's value to the next generation of voters."

"The Fourth Turning" envisioned by Howe and Strauss requires a return to an agreed-upon set of values, but millennials and the GOP (or Bannon for that matter) couldn't be farther away from one another. For one, millennials are the most diverse group in US history (43% of them are nonwhite). Most do not share Bannon's vision for ethnic conflict.

"The Fourth Turning" is the story of our country unifying against internal struggles and an outside threat. The authors describe it as the natural course of history, as something that just falls into place. Instead, what we are seeing, with Trump's travel ban and his threats against Mexico and China, is the creation of enemies, enemies many Americans don't want to have.
February 2, 2017

US House lawmakers took turns Feb. 2 slamming the United Nations for its perceived bias against Israel as they made clear the world body will not survive President Donald Trump's presidency unscathed.

A joint hearing by two House Foreign Affairs panels revealed sharp disagreements on the best way forward, from minor reforms to complete defunding. But it also demonstrated a broad bipartisan conviction that Israel has been getting a raw deal for too long.

"There's a whole lot of things we're going to be doing," international organizations panel Chairman Chris Smith, R-N.J., told Al-Monitor. "This hearing is an opening salvo."

During the hearing, Smith denounced the United Nations as the "primary opponent" of long-standing US policy to encourage direct bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, he said, "The UN increasingly serves as a platform for efforts to circumvent negotiations, impose conditions and isolate Israel."

Smith reserved particular outrage for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which he has long accused of doing too little to stop the spread of anti-Semitism in refugee camps. He said he would hold a hearing on the agency shortly to consider a range of reforms, which have included calls to terminate the agency and transfer its authority to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

"There will be some appetite to say, we need a different institution," Smith told Al-Monitor. "But my feeling is we have to try one last time to get it right."

Middle East panel Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said she is working on a new UN bill and will also shortly be reintroducing a 2011 legislative proposal that aims to gradually shift UN funding from an assessed to a voluntary model, giving the United States more power to distribute money as it sees fit. That bill also would codify US defunding for any UN entity that recognizes Palestine absent a two-state agreement with Israel.

Democrats echoed the sentiment that the UN treats Israel unfairly. But they've proven far less eager to pull out of the UN system.

"US disengagement from the United Nations does nothing to help our friend and ally Israel. It does nothing to bring Israel and the Palestinians closer to negotiations. And disengagement at the United Nations will almost certainly lead to the passage of resolutions that are significantly harmful to Israel's interests," said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., the top Democrat on the Middle East and North Africa panel. Deutch pointed out that during America's absence from the UN Human Rights Council in 2006-2009, the panel held six special sessions on Israel; since then, there has been only one.

Hearing witnesses offered conflicting advice.

Brian Hook, a former senior adviser to America's UN ambassador during the George W. Bush administration, said the United States should put diplomatic pressure behind Israel's candidacy for a Security Council seat in 2018. He also urged the Trump administration to withdraw from the Human Rights Council "until it adopts the necessary reforms to be a body worthy of its name"  but only after consulting with the Israelis "who would face an even more hostile body without the US."

Former Florida Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler, now the president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, called the Barack Obama administration's abstention from the December UN Security Council slamming Israeli settlements "clumsy" but reminded lawmakers that every administration going back to 1967 has voted for or abstained from UN measures critical of Israel. He spoke against defunding UNRWA, since Israel and fellow US ally Jordan would have to pick up the burden.

Jonathan Schanzer, the senior vice president for research at the right-leaning Foundation for Defense of Democracies, offered four recommendations: Add Hamas and Hezbollah to the UN's terrorism sanctions list; phase out UNRWA and hand over its services to the Palestinian Authority; "eradicate" the "Orwellian" Human Rights Council; and conduct a review of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which was meant to prevent Hezbollah from rearming after the Lebanese civil war. But Schanzer raised more eyebrows when he implied that the Obama administration may have funneled money to the Palestinians to help them lobby against Israel at the UN.

"The US may have transferred funds to the PLO Embassy in Washington and the UN delegation in New York to help the Palestinians lobby other delegations to either protest or boycott Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu['s] speech" at the UN, he wrote in written testimony. "A congressional inquiry into possible State Department money transfers to the Palestinians in August or September might be logical now."

The statement caused a stir among lawmakers, especially since the United States is banned from giving money to the PLO under current law. Deutch told Schanzer, "It's a rather explosive charge you're making," and pressed him to back it up, as did others.

"We certainly have enough alternative facts," Ros-Lehtinen told Al-Monitor. "I'm not saying that [Schanzer's claims] are, but we want to make sure that when we go on the offensive we've got good ammunition."

Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., said he was eager to look into the allegations. Like his colleague Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., Zeldin spoke in favor of blocking funding for the UN until it repeals the December Security Council resolution.

Pressed on the allegation after the hearing, Schanzer defended his statement. He said he didn't mean to imply that the Obama administration had done anything illegal, but that Congress ought to investigate.

"I received two independent reports from Palestinian sources that there was an allocation made at some point before the UN [resolution vote]. Unclear if it was earmarked exactly for that, but ultimately some of those funds may have gone toward UN activities. I know nothing more than that," he told Al-Monitor. "I raised it not to accuse, but to raise a question."

The flare-up points to the partisan divisions in Congress, even on broadly popular issues such as supporting Israel at the UN. Republican staffers acknowledge that getting Democrats onboard any of the GOP attempts to reform the body may prove a tough sell, but they're encouraged that the new president seems to have similar ideas to those of many Republicans and could look to their efforts for guidance.

Last week, a draft executive order was leaked to the media that calls for ending funding for UN agencies seen as hostile to Israel. That draft, it turns out, shares some of the same language as past Ros-Lehtinen bills.
"The Donald Administration might be a neo-liberal nightmare, but stripping away some of his more controversial rhetoric on immigration, a lot of what he says on the economic front makes perfect sense to me," Edwards wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.

On the latter, Edwards said Germany was "one of the biggest currency manipulators in the world," echoing the sentiments of one of Trump's top trade advisers. That adviser, Peter Navarro told the Financial Times on Tuesday that Germany was using the "grossly undervalued" euro to gain an edge over the rest of the European Union and the US.

"This is not a new issue and it has bubbled to the surface a number of times in recent years," Edwards wrote. "But whereas both the US Treasury and the EU Commission have merely grumbled but then done absolutely nothing, the Trump Administration seems far more willing to act assertively."

The bigger focus for Edwards was regulation. The strategist said that while he considered himself "pretty liberal (socialist even)," he thought decreasing regulation was key for economic sustainability.

This does not preclude a government from having a large amount of public-sector spending, Edwards said, adding that more favorable regulation conditions in a country could have a bigger impact on successful economic growth and productivity growth than simple tax and spend.

"The US is a low tax and spend nation that has strangled its corporate sector," Edwards said. "That means the small company sector, which is traditionally the engine for jobs growth, has been struggling."

Edwards thinks Trump has the ability to strip away regulation and drive corporate and economic growth.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday mandating that for every regulation put in place by the executive branch, two must be rolled back. While this doesn't account for the size of regulations or their impact, it signaled that Trump was serious about campaign promises regarding deregulation to some degree.

Edwards noted that the US was a "respectable" eighth among countries in the World Bank's "Ease of Doing Business" ranking, but he said that was mostly because of its high marks on companies' ability to "get credit" and "resolving insolvency." Outside those two ranks, however, there is a significant amount of regulation.
He continued: "When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. They're tough. We have to be tough. It's time we're gonna be a little tough, folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not gonna happen anymore."

Trump's comments came a day after reports surfaced of two contentious phone call he had with world leaders.

The first was with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Friday, during which he reportedly disparaged Mexico and threatened to use military force against the drug trade. A US official later said the comments were "lighthearted."

The other, reports of which surfaced late Wednesday, was a call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, during which Trump reportedly called a refugee agreement with the nation the "worst deal ever."

Trump also tweeted on Thursday morning that "Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE" in response to its recent test of a ballistic missile.
The motive for the attack was not immediately clear, but the police said the aggressor screamed "Allahu akbar," or "God is great," during the attack. He was carrying a machete and two rucksacks, according to the police. No other information about the attacker has been released.

The attacked soldier suffered a small wound on his scalp. A second soldier shot at the attacker five times and seriously wounded him, according to the French interior ministry.

The police said the attacker, while conscious, was transferred to the Pompidou hospital.

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that it was "visibly" an "attack of terrorist nature" and that the antiterrorism prosecutor's office had opened an investigation.
Cyber attacks are cheap, ambiguous, hard to pin on any one actor, and almost completely without precedent when it comes to gauging a military response.

Cyber attacks allow Iran "to strike at adversaries globally, instantaneously, and on a sustained basis, and to potentially achieve strategic effects in ways it cannot in the physical domain," writes Eisenstadt.

Unlike the US, which wields nuclear weapons and the world's finest military, Iran relies on its ability to potentially wreak havoc in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's busiest oil shipping routes, its funding of terrorist organizations, and its arsenal of ballistic missiles to deter attacks, according to Eisenstadt.

However, Tehran cannot hold the Strait of Hormuz in an outright confrontation, its terrorist allies have become increasingly vulnerable and targetable by world powers, and if Iran ever used a ballistic missile, it would soon find itself on the receiving end of a blistering counter attack.

Therefore cyber attacks give Iran a fourth kind of deterrence, one which the US has repeatedly failed to punish. Indeed, cyber attacks are new territory, and the US still hasn't found an appropriate and consistent way to deal with cyber attacks, whether those attacks come in the form of Russian meddling in the US election, North Korea's hack of Sony, or China's stealing valuable defense data.
Conway expressed frustration on "Fox & Friends" with Democratic opposition to Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Neil Gorsuch, dubbing Senate Democrats "a bunch of crybabies who say that they're going to oppose Supreme Court nominees before they even know his name."

"This obstinance and obstruction is the modern Democratic Party," Conway said.

"I think it's going to cost them because they are hysterical about everything now," she continued. "There's no gradation of hysteria. Everything makes them cry and scream."

Some congressional Democrats fumed this week amid Trump's selection of Gorsuch, citing Republicans' nearly yearlong obstruction of former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.

Over the past month, Democrats, who are outnumbered by Republicans in both the House and the Senate, attempted to delay many of Trump's Cabinet nominees, hoping to further press them about their qualifications for their positions and to force them to answer questions about the president's controversial past statements and executive orders.
"American universities should be on notice," Yiannopoulos told Business Insider in a text message. "The president is watching. The days you could silence conservative and libertarian voices on campus and still expect to collect their tax money are coming to an end."

He continued: "I am the catalyst for this change. I'm confident Trump and his team are watching closely and will act decisively."

Trump tweeted Thursday morning: "If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view  NO FEDERAL FUNDS?"

Berkeley is the flagship campus of the public University of California system. It received $370 million in federal research funding in 2015-2016, according to the university's website.

The event with Yiannopoulos  whom many identify with the alt-right, a white nationalist movement he has sought to distance himself from  was canceled after demonstrators threw smoke bombs and flares.

"Amid violence, destruction of property and out of concern for public safety, the University of California Police Department determined that it was necessary to remove Milo Yiannopoulos from the campus and to cancel tonight's scheduled 8 p.m. performance," UC Berkeley said in a statement.

The university also condemned "in the strongest possible terms the violence and unlawful behavior that was on display."

Yiannopoulos has been permanently barred from Twitter for targeting "Ghostbusters" actor and "Saturday Night Live" cast member Leslie Jones. He was a prominent Trump supporter during the 2016 presidential election and held an event in support of Trump during the Republican National Convention.

Yiannopoulos' new book, "Dangerous," is set to be released in March.

Peter Jacobs contributed to this report.
According to Estevez, who cited "confidential information" obtained from sources on both sides of the call, Trump disparaged Mexico and Mexicans, threatened to levy taxes on Mexican imports, and went so far as to hint at sending US troops to confront drug traffickers who, Trump said, Mexico's military had been incapable of stopping.

The incendiary comments attracted instant attention, both for their vitriol and for their verisimilitude, as Trump frequently inveighed against Mexico throughout his campaign and has kept up his harsh rhetoric during the first days of his administration.

Estevez's report also characterized Pena Nieto's response as "stammering." Much of the Mexican public has been frustrated with Pena Nieto's response to Trump's attacks, and the Mexican president has seen his approval rating fall to 12% in recent weeks.

Estevez described Trump as threatening Mexico with a 35% tax "on those exports that hurt Mexico the most" and referred to White House spokesman Sean Spicer restating the 35% tax idea after the call.

However, while Trump has mentioned a 35% tariff on exports from US companies in Mexico, the most commonly floated number is a 20% tax on Mexican goods entering the US. The White House lists no press briefing by Spicer on January 27, the day of the call.

Hours after Estevez's report surfaced, a report from The Associated Press corroborated some of the content of the conversation, but downplayed the tone.

"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there," Trump told Pena Nieto, according to an excerpt seen by the AP. "You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

But, the AP said, the excerpt did not make clear who Trump was referring to as "bad hombres," nor did it make evident the tone or context of Trump's remark. Moreover, the excerpt did not include Pena Nieto's response.

The Mexican government also issued a statement around the same time totally rejecting Estevez's report.

"[It's] necessary to clarify that the publication is based in absolute falsities and with evident ill intention," Mexico's Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Twitter.

"During the call, President Pena Nieto was clear and emphatic in signaling the differences of position in respect to some statements made by President Trump in public and which he repeated during their dialogue," the ministry said, adding:

"You assert that you obtained information from confidential sources from 'both sides of the border.'"

"Only [Pena Nieto] and the foreign minister participated in that call and neither of them remember knowing you or having spoken with you ever. Whoever has been your confidential source on this side of the border, lied to you."

Eduardo Sanchez, Mexico's presidential office spokesman, said the conversation was respectful, not hostile or humiliating, as described by Estevez.

"It is absolutely false that President Trump has threatened to send troops to the border," he said during a Wednesday-night interview with Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola.

Later on Wednesday, the Mexican government issued a statement disputing the AP's initial report, saying the details of it "did not correspond to reality."

"The negative expressions to which [the AP report] makes reference, did not happen during said telephone call," the statement, posted on Twitter, said. "On the contrary, the tone was constructive ..."

The White House also disputed the account of a contentious call between Trump and Pena Nieto.

"The White House tells me POTUS did not threaten to invade Mexico," Andrew Beatty, the AFP's White House correspondent, tweeted a little before 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

Jim Acosta, CNN's senior White House correspondent, also tweeted a comment he attributed to a White House official: "Reports that the President threatened to invade Mexico are false. Even the Mexican government is disputing these reports."

A more in-depth report from CNN published Wednesday night cited a transcript of the call that differed from the text published by the AP:

"You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out."

A source told CNN that the AP's report was based on a readout of the conversation between Trump and Pena Nieto written by aides, not on a transcript.

In a further qualification, the White House characterized Trump's "bad hombres" remark as "lighthearted" to the AP in a story published on Thursday morning.

The White House said the comments were "part of a discussion about how the United States and Mexico could work collaboratively to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements, and make the border more secure."

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the AP the conversation was "pleasant and constructive."

While both sides has downplayed the content of the conversation and dismissed the reportedly hostile tone, the exact nature of the phone call is still unclear, and may remain so until a full transcript or audio (which the Mexican government traditionally does not record) is revealed.

In any case, Trump's dealings with foreign leaders during his first two weeks as president have been concerning for observers, both at home and abroad.

"(Trump's) interactions are naive in that he keeps suggesting we will have the best relationship ever with a broad departure of countries, but there is no substance to back it up," a government official with knowledge of Trump's interactions with foreign leaders told CNN.

"Source familiar with Trump foreign leader calls says the POTUS convos are turning faces 'white' inside the" White House, Acosta tweeted late on Wednesday.

"When he encounters a policy challenge, like with Turnbull, he responds with a tantrum," the official told CNN, referring to a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

During that call, Trump bragged about his election victory and said Australia was going to send the US "the next Boston bombers" as part of an Obama-approved deal to taken in refugees held by Australia, which he criticized.

Descriptions of Trump's calls are at odds with "sanitized" White House accounts, The Washington Post, which first reported the nature of the Turnbull call, said of Trump's discussions with foreign leaders, adding:

"The characterizations provide insight into Trumps temperament and approach to the diplomatic requirements of his job as the nations chief executive, a role in which he continues to employ both the uncompromising negotiating tactics he honed as a real estate developer and the bombastic style he exhibited as a reality television personality."

The contentious nature of the Trump's call with the Australian leader was especially troubling, in light of the longstanding and close-knit ties Washington and Canberra have developed over decades.

While the call with Mexico's president appears to be less sensational that initially reported, that correction will likely do little to sooth the nerves of Mexicans and people of Mexican descent in Mexico and in the US.

Trump has made not indication of backing off his pledge to construct a border wall  Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has said the wall could be completed in two years, and Kelly is already traveling to the border area to study plans for the wall's construction.

Moreover, Mexicans appear to have been caught up in the "extreme vetting" Trump has targeted at citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.

We have reports of Mexicans who have been held for more than 12 hours ... We have a case of a family who were held for more than 10 hours and were looking into that, Marcelino Miranda, consul for legal affairs at Mexico's consulate in Chicago, said on Tuesday,

Miranda said he believed stringent questioning faced by those Mexicans had nothing to do with the newly intensified vetting process, though others from the country likely see it as part of a broader hostility to the US's southern neighbor.

Trump "wants to make an example of Mexico to show how he will deal with countries around the world," Maria Eugenia Valdes, a political scientist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico, told journalist Ioan Grillo.

"This man is capable of anything," she added.

"When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it, just don't worry about it," Trump said during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning.
John Dumelo went to Christ the King School, Accra then attended Achimota School for his primary school education.

He obtained a degree in Civil Engineering from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.

John Dumelo who is an award winning actor has acted in several big Nollywood and Ghanaian movies.

Nigerian actress, journalist, television presenter, and cosmetologist, Taiwo Ajayi-Lycett is also a year older today!

Born on February 3, 1941 in Lagos, Taiwo Ajayi was educated at Mt Carmel Convent School, Lagos before proceeding to Methodist Girls' High School, Lagos.

She moved to London to study business and administration and took courses at Christine Shaw School of Beauty Science in London, where she received a certificate in cosmetology.

She also attended Hendon College of Technology, where she obtained a Higher National Diploma in Business Studies in 1969.

While studying, she worked as a waitress at Lyons Tea Shop, then moved to the Post Office and later advertising.

In the Post Office, she started as a personal secretary in 1962 and later worked as a senior secretary in the office of Lord Hall.

She moved to advertising and was in the personnel department of advertising firm, Young and Rubicam.

In 1975, Ajayi was invited to join the staff of Africa Magazine published by Ralph Uwechue.

Later, she became the pioneer editor of Africa Woman magazine, a women's magazine for Africans in the diaspora.
The event which will hold at LargeHouse Studios, located at 382, Ikorodu Road, Maryland, Lagos on 11th of February will open its doors at 2:00pm - till late.

LargeHouse has established itself as one of the true positive leaders in the Nigerian and African music and music video industry having shot music videos for the likes of Yemi Alade, Wande Coal, Olamide, Ice Prince, M.I. Abaga just to name a few.

At N2,000, tickets come with free food and drink, Weekend Love is all about the good vibes. There will be attractions such as silent disco, silent cinema, open mic, and dance competition to ensure those who attend are entertained and have a good time. After the fun and games are done, the drinks will flow and the party goes on into the night.

Weekend Love has partnered with Uber to offer discount codes to get you there and an Uber stand to get you home. For good vibes this is one not to miss.
2face's move has proven to be quite popular and controversial at the same time. Despite some people voicing their criticism of the protest, Nigerians have shown their support to 2face Idibia.

"We the people of this country not living under the privileges of government allowances and remuneration have now accepted to take the bull by the horn to come out and protest this obnoxious and baseless policies and excuses of the government of the day.

Theres need for Nigerians to rise against what is happening in this country having waited patiently for the legislatures that were elected to represent the people all to no avail" wrote 2face Idibia on his Instagram profile on January 25, 2017.

Despite the Nigerian Police Force trying to stop the protest it will still go on as planned. The venue for the protest is the National Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

Here are five things to expect at the protest

1) Large turnout

Anti-Federal Government sentiments are very high right now because of the high cost of living, the weakened Naira and economic recession. Many Nigerians who voted for the Buhari led government during the last general elections are beginning to wonder if this is the change they waited for. It won't be much of a surprise therefore if a lot of people than expected turn up at the protest to voice their frustrations.

2) Celebrities blasting the government

Some of Nigerian celebrities have announced that they are standing with 2face Idibia and come out to the protest. On the D-day they will be present and it is almost a certainty that they would be more than eager to talk about the state of the nation and the government.

3) Ayo Fayose anti-government speech

The ever controversial Governor of Ekiti state, Ayo Fayose has lent his support to the 2face led protest. Fayose who has been a vocal critic of the Federal Government might just show up and continue his narrative of hitting the government hard.

4) Heavy police presence

The Nigerian Police Force isn't too enthusiastic about the planned protest. It is more than likely that the men in black will be out in their numbers to oversee the proceedings.

5) The start of something bigger
Uzoamaka, 27, who was arraigned on Jan. 24, had pleaded guilty to a two-count charge of conspiracy and stealing.

The Magistrate, Mrs K.A. Ariyo, sentenced the accused after the prosecutor had reviewed the facts of the case.

Ariyo sentenced the convict to two months imprisonment on each of the counts and held that they should run concurrently.

The Prosecutor, Cpl. Hafsat Ajibode, had told the court that the accused conspired with some others still at large on Jan 21, at about 2.00 a.m., to commit the offence.

He said that the accused stole the battery of the BRT bus from where the vehicle was parked at Iponri Bus Stop, Lagos, but was apprehended by the security guard on duty.
This was the result of an order given by Idowu Ayenimo, the Chief Magistrate who presided over the arraignment of Usman.

The illegal activity of the accused and others who are currently at large led to destruction of the Iyemero Farm Settlement camp, police prosecutor, Bankole Olasunkanmi told the court.

Usman was accused of intentionally allowing his cattle to enter into the farm owned by Bunmi Akingba, the complainant in the case.

This contravened Section 2 (i) and punishable under Section 7 of Prohibition of Cattle and other Ruminants Grazing, Ekiti State Law 2016.

In addition, the prosecutor stated that the accused and his company were in possession of dangerous weapons which goes against Section 4(1) of the Prohibition of Cattle and other Ruminants Grazing of Ekiti and Punishable under Section 11 of Ekiti State Kidnap and Terrorism (Prohibition) Law 2015.
Onochie who has been at the receiving end for saying Afro Pop star, Innocent Idibia, also known as TuBaba, should go on national television to state his beef with Buhari following the proposed protest march spearheaded by the musician.

Many Nigerians see the remarks by Onochie on the death of Olayinkas mother as uncalled for and demeaning for a person who is working directly with the president.

They believe she should not have insulted the dead woman with her comments and the barrage of insults she got for the remark is quite embarrassing for her.

Read her comment here:

May her soul rest in peace. Now she's free from the shame of what her son who works full time for #CorruptionFightingBack did. Sad.
She made the comments in an opinion editorial for Reuters titled Primary healthcare and education are where impact can be felt in Africa.

Read the full article below:

This week saw the 28th African Union Summit take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Along with the diplomatic challenges facing the continent, the delegates also discussed the fate of health and education in Africa, not least how to boost service provision at the primary care level.

Over twenty-five years since the landmark 1978 Alma Ata Declaration asserted the critical importance of primary healthcare, many countries still lag well behind the standards needed to give every citizen even basic health protection.

Nigeria is a case in point. The country is in the midst of a national health crisis; one-third of children under the age of five are stunted due to poor nutrition; and more than 41,000 children become newly infected by HIV every year.

Yet the solution  unlike with so many development challenges  is within our grasp. Technology, has increased access to vulnerable communities and, crucially, new pioneering funding mechanisms mean that key areas of primary healthcare, from midwifery to general practice, could be rapidly improved.

The Nigerian National Health Act Basic Healthcare Provision Fund was developed in 2014 and was designed to improve Nigerias poor primary healthcare. But three years on, the Act remains only partially implemented. Primary healthcare, the cornerstone of a healthy population, has been left by the wayside. It must be prioritized.

Take reproductive, maternal, newborn, child and adolescent health and nutrition, a key facet of primary care. Nigerias new healthcare narrative includes the revival of the Midwives Service Scheme previously established in 2011, the creation of a national health management information system and a strengthened focus on maternal and newborn health.

The aim is to provide an easily accessible route to care, producing quick and visible impact that will altogether affect the lives of every Nigerian, especially the most vulnerable. This would be a revolutionary set of initiatives but they are yet to be funded, and yet to be delivered.

CHRONIC UNDERFUNDING

Overall, gains in PHC and efforts to implement long-overdue universal health coverage in Nigeria have been thwarted by chronic underfunding. The Abuja Declaration of 2001 saw members of the African Union pledge to spend at least 15% of the national budget on healthcare. Yet, Nigeria currently allocates a mere third of that pledged amount to public health services.

As chair of the Nigeria's Primary Healthcare Revitalization Support Group, I believe that primary healthcare investment, both from the private and public sector, is key to ensuring universal healthcare for all Nigerians.

From a social investment perspective it is also a huge opportunity to see a social return on money invested. The nature of primary healthcare  the ability to monitor and manage delivery of, for example, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa's Mamacare antenatal and postnatal health access through birth preparedness classes, or by the USAID-funded MPowering Healthworkers Program which engaged mobile-technologies in training midwives in Ondo State of Nigeria means that money invested in, can be quantified by results gained.

For innovative social impact investors, there is an opportunity here for collaboration between both the central and state level governments in Nigeria to fund real change.

In Mali, Nigerias West African neighbour, the Novartis Foundation implemented an initiative aimed at improving access to PHC, specifically for children and women in one region. The project targeted 200,000 inhabitants from rural areas and was funded by both regional and district partners.

The results were remarkable: between 2008 and 2010 the community health associations increased their average score by 10%, improving particularly in the areas of internal governance and support to healthcare personnel. During the same period the utilisation rates for prenatal consultations increased more than 30%.

PARTNERSHP WORKS

In Nigeria, the Primary Healthcare (PHC) Revitalization Support Group Program is working with the Nigerian state and development partners to take the kind of innovative financing mentioned above and use it to drive and deliver the kind of interventions the Government has already pledged to achieve. The government must also increase efforts to harmonize and streamline additional sources of funding to PHC, and reduce the barriers to access that restrict healthcare services to so many.

In opening up PHC to the private sector, social impact investors have the opportunity to co-fund tangible and visible improvements to healthcare. At the multi-state level my foundation, the Wellbeing Foundation Africa, has already seen the impact that public-private partnerships can bring to maternal health provision.

The breadth of public-private partnerships should not stop at healthcare: partnerships of this nature should also be applied to areas such as primary education. The Rajasthan Education Initiatives, for example, engages global and local private actors in supporting Rajasthans State Government in India, impacting over 6,000 schools through various interventions, and training 22,000 teachers in ICT training.

Such an initiative could be replicated in Nigeria and beyond; indeed, Nigeria has taken nascent steps through its recently piloted nPower program to drive nationwide graduate internships in the areas of agriculture, education and health.
The comment was made by Special Adviser to Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo on Media and Publicity, Laolu Akande.

This administration will not prevent Nigerians from expressing themselves in peaceful protests, it's a fundamental right of the people, Akande said via Twitter on Friday, February 3.

No government has ever laid out the kind of Social Investment Programme the Buhari govt is now running across the nation that will touch millions, he added.

Akande was reacting to the planned nationwide protest against the Buhari administration which is being championed by popular musician, 2Face Idibia.

Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, had earlier warned that 2Face would not be allowed to hold the protest in the state.

ALSO READ: 2Face to lead nationwide protest against Nigerian government
This was the resolution of the South-South chapter of CAN and PFN after a joint meeting in Warri, Delta state on Thursday, February 2, 2017.

According to Vanguard, the Christian bodies alleged that President Buhari was no longer fit to lead Nigeria.

"The number one issue is this Fulani herdsman in our bushes," said Bishop Simeon Okah, national vice president, PFN (South-South).

ALSO READ: Music star to lead nationwide protest against Nigerian government

He continued: "We are no longer going to fold our hands and watch while they kill our people. Some governors are saying they are not from the North. That claim is an insult to us.

Today our children are now being deported from America and here we have people from outside our country killing people and raping our daughters, mother and wives. Our farmers no longer have farmlands to farm. I think its high time we started defending ourselves if the government cannot help us.

"The economy is dying. When Jonathan handed over to Buhari, the exchange rate was between N170 to N190 to a dollar. Today, it is N550 to a dollar. Imagine how things had gone bad?

"While the church will pray, if he (Buhari) cannot save the country, let him resign for the country to move to where God wants it to be, the cleric noted.
In a democracy, protests are legitimate, also the security agencies have the right to ensure that they does not degenerate, Adesina said during a radio interview on BCOS AM 120 in Oyo state.

The president is not home now, in Nigeria today you have a large number of people who seem not to forget that the 2015 elections have gone and have been won. The other group is the group that will always complain, even if angels come to rule Nigeria, they will always complain, they will complain.

Then you have people who believes in free money, there is no more free money, those people will also join the protest. Genuine concern people have ways to protest, there are millions of people who are with the president, and I believed that the people who are with the president are more than those who are not with the president," he added.

ALSO READ: 2Face to lead nationwide protest against Nigerian government
The former President also said that the religious crisis will destroy Nigeria if it is not checked now.

He also suggested that a National Equity Commission be formed to handle issues arising from religious crisis.

The former President said I totally agree with the 2014 National Conference on the need to establish the Religious Equity Commission that will have powers to arrest and prosecute those who contravene the law.

According to Punch, he said If, as a nation, we do not kill religious persecution and extremism, then religious persecution and extremism will kill Nigeria.

The potential danger associated with the level of conflicts going on across the country is so glaring that no sane mind can ignore.

The former President also slammed security operatives in Nigeria for failing to arrest culprits of religious crisis.

He also cited the case of Souther Kaduna where only one culprit has been arrested since the crisis reportedly started since 1992.

Your invitation (of the sub-committee) letter profusely highlighted the issues of the killing of Christians in Nigeria, the last major incident being the recent killings in Southern Kaduna in Kaduna State, and I do not need to elaborate on that.

The challenge is how we stop that from recurring. How do we ensure that Christians and Muslims co-exist peacefully in Nigeria and practise their religions freely without discrimination, molestation and killings? he added.

GEJ said The point I want to emphasise by citing these incidents is that my administration had the political will to halt impunity in Nigeria and that is why killings, due to religious extremism, were localised in the North-East with occasional killings in other zones of the North.

The killings did not spread to the mainly Christian south and I believe that the fight against impunity by my administration was the main reason for this.

On the Niger Delta region, GEJ said The people in this region feel that though they suffer from the environmental hazards of the exploitation of the God given resources, they do not commensurately benefit from the exploitation of these resources.

The greatest stumbling block of these interventionist agencies was lack of continuity, resulting from an over politicisation of projects as each successive management awards new contracts rather than continue with those awarded by their predecessors and as such, the Niger Delta is littered with many abandoned projects with very few completed projects to show for the huge monies spent.

Those who knew Akwa Ibom State before the 13 per cent derivation became law will agree that the derivation fund has changed the face of that state, making it almost overnight one of the most developed states in Nigeria. The same is true with other oil producing states though with varying degrees of development, he added.

The former President also advised against the use of military force to solve the Niger Dela issue.

GEJ said The military crackdown in the Niger Delta will not end the agitation there.

It will have the opposite effect of provoking the youth, which will cause them to seek to acquire sophisticated weapons to defend themselves and their communities.

This may, in turn, lead to secessionist movements and the reincarnation of the Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro-led revolution and the Biafra Civil War. The Federal Government and the international community must work to avoid this.
Speaking at the event on Wednesday, February 1, 2017, Nigeria's ex-president, Jonathan spoke about the Southern Kaduna killings, Niger Delta crisis and relevance of the 2014 Confab report.

Here are five important things Nigeria's former President told the U.S lawmakers:

1. Religious crisis and Nigeria

Jonathan said: If, as a nation, we do not kill religious persecution and extremism, then religious persecution and extremism will kill Nigeria.

The potential danger associated with the level of conflicts going on across the country is so glaring that no sane mind can ignore.

2. Establishment of Religious Equity Commission

In view of the fact that religion plays a vital role in many aspects of our national life especially in the aspect of national security and national unity, it is highly imperative that it be singled out from other fundamental rights and given a special attention via the creation of an Equity Commission whose sole mandate will be to focus on religious rights and their promotion.

3. The Niger Delta

Ex-president Jonathan said: The people in this region feel that though they suffer from the environmental hazards of the exploitation of the God given resources, they do not commensurately benefit from the exploitation of these resources."

3. Contracts awarded to the region

He said: The greatest stumbling block of these interventionist agencies was lack of continuity, resulting from an over politicisation of projects as each successive management awards new contracts rather than continue with those awarded by their predecessors and as such, the Niger Delta is littered with many abandoned projects with very few completed projects to show for the huge monies spent.

4. Military intervention in the Niger Delta

He said: The military crackdown in the Niger Delta will not end the agitation there. It will have the opposite effect of provoking the youth, which will cause them to seek to acquire sophisticated weapons to defend themselves and their communities.

This may, in turn, lead to secessionist movements and the reincarnation of the Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro-led revolution and the Biafra civil war. The Federal Government and the international community must work to avoid this.

5. Trump Presidency and Nigeria
Read the full speech below:

Let me start by thanking Congressman, Christopher H. Smith, Chairman U.S. House Sub-Committee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations for inviting me to share my views on the crisis facing Christians in Nigeria today and the Niger Delta question.

The U.S. Congress is a powerful institution not just for good governance in the U.S. but also for global peace and development. Over the years, the U.S. Congress has shown consistent interest in African affairs and I thank you for this and for showing interest in Nigeria.

Congressman Smith has personally visited troubled spots in Nigeria and especially those geo-political zones that are considered the frontline of ethnic and religious conflicts. He has also visited the Niger Delta. I sincerely thank him for these efforts.

In your invitation letter, you highlighted a number of very sensitive issues you wanted me to touch on. I group all these issues under Challenges Facing Nigerian Christians and the Niger Delta Question. A full discussion on even one of these issues may take a minimum of two hours, but here, I am expected to be very brief. I will therefore present a birds eye view, but when next your committee visits Nigeria, even more detailed presentations will be made by other stake holders.

Nigeria and the World

I read a paper presented by Princeton N. Lyman, a former U.S. ambassador to Nigeria, suggesting that Nigeria is no longer strategic to U.S. interests in Africa and the world as it used to be. Ambassador Lyman may have had valid reasons for such a view point, but I make bold to say that the relationship between the U.S. and Nigeria has come a long way since Prime Minister Abubakar Tafawa Balewas State Visit to the U.S. in July of 1961 and that relationship should not only endure, but be built upon.

Nigeria, as a nation, is relevant to the U.S. in my opinion especially when you consider such parameters as:

Mineral Resources

Economy/Trade

Biotic Resources

Population/Human Resources, etc

Nations such as Nigeria can impact the globe positively when things are handled properly. They may also affect the world negatively if things go wrong. It is not in the best interest of the U.S. and indeed the international community to ignore Nigeria.

Killing of Christians in Nigeria

Your invitation letter profusely highlighted the issues of the killing of Christians in Nigeria, the last major incident being the recent killings in Southern Kaduna in Kaduna state, and I do not need to elaborate on that. The challenge is how do we stop that from recurring. How do we ensure that Christians and Muslims cohabit peacefully in Nigeria and practice their religions freely without discrimination, molestation and killings?

One school of thought believes that these killings reoccur because of impunity. Security and law enforcement bodies unfortunately have a history of failing to apprehend the culprits of previous killings and disturbances and punishing according to the law. Such impunity has emboldened and encouraged persons with such tendencies.

Indeed, though there have been over 10 major incidences of ethnic and religious conflagration in the frontline state of Kaduna since 1979, there has only ever been one incidence where the authorities took action, according to the law, to punish the culprits of the disturbances.

This was in 1992, after the Zangon Kataf riots in which the official death toll was 300. The military administration of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida constituted the Civil Disturbances Special Tribunal to try arrested persons and a total of 14 persons were sentenced to death, although the Babangida administration commuted the sentences to five years imprisonment.

Within the period I served as a Vice President and later as President, it became very clear to me that if the issue of religion is not handled properly, the unity of the country would be in great jeopardy. Religious and other ethnic issues were becoming a stumbling block towards societal cohesion and economic development. I therefore set up a National Conference with the mandate of looking into all the grey areas militating against the peace, progress and development of Nigeria. On the issue of religion, let me quote unedited the position of the 2014 National Conference. Nigeria has over 350 ethnic nationalities and that:

This multi-ethnicity has been compounded by pronounced religious differences, exploited usually for political considerations by avid political classes in contexts of extreme poverty and very low educational development among the mass of the populace. Whereas Nigeria is supposed to be a secular state, one nation bound in freedom, peace and unity, the prevalence of religiosity and its related nepotism at all levels, has effectively undermined the objectivity which secularity would have ordinarily imbued in national politics.

The Conference further stated that:

In view of the fact that religion plays a vital role in many aspects of our national life especially in the aspect of national security and national unity, it is highly imperative that it be singled out from other fundamental rights and given a special attention via the creation of an Equity Commission whose sole mandate will be to focus on religious rights and their promotion. This is in line with best global practices as many advanced democracies have special legal and institutional arrangements for some very sensitive aspects of their national life. Examples of such specialized agencies from other countries are presented below:

a) In the United Kingdom, despite the existence of the UK Equal Opportunities Commission (UK-EOC), a Commission for Racial Equality (created by the Race Relations Act, 1976) which existed alongside UK-EOC for many years. This was done because at the time, issues of racial discrimination were very sensitive and crucial that it was thought necessary to create a special commission for it.

b) In the United States, despite the existence of the US State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, it has other special human rights enforcement agencies created to promote specific rights. One of such agencies is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) which is a federal law enforcement agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination complaints based on an individuals race, color, national origin, religion, sex, age, disability, genetic information, and retaliation for reporting, participating in, and/or opposing a discriminatory practice.

c) Canada has a similar arrangement to that of the United States. The Canadian Human Rights Act has long prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender, PREMIUMTIMESNG.COM FINAL CONFERENCE REPORT PAGE 433 race, ethnicity, and certain other grounds. In 1986, the Canadian government passed the Employment Equity Act which was meant to protect certain restricted vulnerable categories of persons. The Canadian Human Rights Act continues to be in force alongside the Employment Equity Act.

d) In Australia, there are 3 different commissions addressing the issues of human rights, namely: Human Rights Commission, Anti-Discrimination Commission and Equal Opportunities Commission

I totally agreed with the 2014 National Conference on the need to establish the Religious Equity Commission that will have powers to arrest and prosecute those who contravene the law. If, as a nation, we do not kill religious persecution and extremism, then religious persecution and extremism will kill Nigeria. The potential danger associated with the level of conflicts going on across the country is so glaring that no sane mind can ignore.

Even before I set up the National Conference in 2014, my government took certain initiatives to end impunity and reorient the minds of Nigerians. First was education. I established twelve conventional Federal Universities and two specialized universities. Nine of the twelve Federal Universities were located in those states in Northern Nigeria that previously did not have any Federal University. The Specialized Police University was located in Kano state, also in the North, bringing the total number of universities I established in the North of Nigeria to ten. The Specialized Maritime University was located in the Niger Delta.

In addition to these, I also established 165 Almajiri elementary and high schools in each of the nineteen states of Northern Nigeria to combine Islamic education with Western education.

In the area of law enforcement, it was quite challenging, but we were determined. When the Boko Haram Islamic terrorists bombed St. Theresas Catholic Church, Madalla, in Niger state of Nigeria on Christmas Day of 2011, I physically visited the scene of the bombing at which 44 people died on Saturday the 31st of December 2011 and I promised Nigerians that those responsible for that heinous act would be brought to book.

That promise was fulfilled on the 20th of December 2013 when Kabiru Umar, aka Kabiru Sokoto, was sentenced to life imprisonment after my administration investigated that crime, identified him as the mastermind, arrested him and diligently prosecuted him and some of his associates.

Might I add that this was the first and only successful prosecution of a crime of deadly terrorism against a religious place of worship inspired by religious extremism since Nigerias return to civil rule in 1999.

Before then, my administration had also diligently carried out the first successful prosecution of terrorists of the Islamic extremist group, Boko Haram, for another terror attack, but this time not in a place of worship but on the offices of the Independent National Electoral Commission also in Madalla, Niger state, an act which led to the deaths of sixteen persons on April 8th, 2011.

We were in the process of prosecuting Aminu Ogwuche, the mastermind of the April 14, 2014 Nyanya bombing in Nasarawa state which killed 75 people but unfortunately that prosecution was ongoing as at the time I left office in 2015.

But the point I want to emphasize by citing these incidences is that my administration had the political will to halt impunity in Nigeria and that is why killings due to religious extremism was localized to the Northeast with occasional killings in other zones of the North.

And even in the Northeast, we had rolled back the Islamic terrorist sect, Boko Haram, by the end of the first quarter of 2015 after we were able to get weapons to arm our military.

The killings did not spread to the mainly Christian south and I believe that the fight back against impunity by my administration was the main reason for this. Of course, there were other reasons for this. For instance, through my personal reach out to the then President of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, I was able to persuade the Body of Christ in Nigeria not to engage in any retaliation or reprisal killings. My job was made easier in this regards when the Christian Association of Nigeria saw a genuine desire on my part to bring religious extremists to book.

Using the same approach with the head of the Muslim Ummah in Nigeria, His Eminence, the Sultan of Sokoto, I was able to get the mainstream of the Islamic faith to publicly condemn Islamic extremism in Nigeria. This was important to show that a clampdown on Islamic extremism was and is not a clampdown on Islam.

Going a step further, I worked through a body known as the Nigeria Inter-Religious Council (NIREC) to bring Christian and Muslim leaders together so they could talk to each other not at each other.

To summarize on the issue of ethnic and religious conflicts, I recommend the establishment of the Religious Equity Commission, enforcement of our laws without fear or favor and maximum cooperation by all Nigerians especially our revered religious leaders and clerics.

The Niger Delta Question

The issue of the Niger Delta is an issue of exploitation of natural resources, economy and development. The complaints and restiveness is not unique to the Niger Delta of Nigeria alone. In most African nations where resources are domiciled in minority regions and the control of such resources are in the hands of majority regions, such agitations are commonplace.

The people in these regions feel that though they suffer from the environmental hazards of the exploitation of the God given resources, they do not commensurately benefit from the exploitation of these resources.

In the Niger Delta, these agitations predate Nigerias existence in 1914. Oil palm produce (palm oil and kernel) were major raw materials that fed the growth of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, and they largely came from the Niger Delta. Various tribal kings and chiefs such as King Jaja of Opobo and Nana Olomu, resisted British exploitation of these resources and were both arrested, deposed and exiled to the West Indies (King Jaja) and the Gold Coast (Nana) by the British Imperial Government as punishment for their agitations. Let me add that the punitive measures against these kings did not end the agitations.

With the discovery of petroleum, in the Niger Delta, similar agitations surfaced. On February 23, 1966, these agitations culminated in the declaration of the first secessionist state in post independent Nigeria, the Niger Delta Republic, proclaimed by Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro. His twelve day revolution was crushed by the Federal Government. It is instructive to note that Isaac Boro declared the Republic of the Niger Delta a full year and three months before May, 1967 when then Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu declared the secession of the Eastern Region to form the Republic of Biafra leading to the thirty month civil war.

From the end of the civil war to date the Federal Government has come up with many interventionist initiatives to pacify the Niger Delta. I was a pioneer staff and worked as an Assistant Director of Environmental Protection at one of these early interventionist agencies called the Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC), set up by the military administration of General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida. With the advent of democracy in 1999, then President Olusegun Obasanjo established the present body, the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

The greatest stumbling block of these interventionist agencies was lack of continuity, resulting from an over politicization of projects as each successive management awarded new contracts rather than continue with those awarded by their predecessors and as such, the Niger Delta is littered with many abandoned projects with very few completed projects to show for the huge monies spent.

During the Obasanjo era, the Federal Government, in line with our constitution and revenue laws, set aside 13% of oil revenues to be paid as derivation funds to oil producing states and shared on the basis of proportion of oil they produce. As a person from the Niger Delta, I can say that the 13% derivation has benefitted Niger Delta states and their people more than the interventionist agencies.

For example, those who knew Akwa Ibom state before the 13% derivation become law will agree that the derivation fund has changed the face of that state making it almost overnight one of the most developed states in Nigeria. The same is true with other oil producing states though with varying degrees of development.

From the foregoing, the only option that will solve the agitation in the Niger Delta is true and Fiscal Federalism as practiced in the United States from whom we copied the Presidential model of government. States should be allowed to exploit their natural resources as they deem fit and pay adequate taxes to the Federal Government. This is also the position of the 2014 National Conference. The Conference strongly recommended the adoption of Fiscal Federalism as the only panacea to these agitations and other challenges.

The Role of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation

Resolving both the religious crises and the Niger Delta question requires a new legal framework, thus the Federal Government and the National Assembly have major roles to play. The Goodluck Jonathan Foundation working with Elder statesmen and Civil Society groups can, through dialogue and advocacy, encourage religious leaders, traditional rulers, youth groups and women groups to participate in the formulation of a new legal framework. They will also be impressed upon to abide by these laws when put in place.

Without a new legal framework, successes by any advocacy group will at best be transient, it will not endure. Also, the military crackdown in the Niger Delta will not end the agitation there. It will have the opposite effect of provoking the youths which will cause them to seek to acquire sophisticated weapons to defend themselves and their communities. This may in turn lead to secessionist movements and the reincarnation of the Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro led revolution and the Biafran Civil War. The Federal Government and the international community must work to avoid this.

Global Terror and Boko Haram in Nigeria

The Boko Haram Islamic terrorist sect has been classified as the most deadly terror group in the world by the Global Terrorism Index. Herdsmen operating in and around Nigeria are listed as the fourth most deadly terror group.

However, I do not intend to discuss global terror because it is a subject well known to all and the U.S. government has been working hard with various governments to address these issues. My belief is that the day the U.S. government and the Russian government decide to work together, that will surely mark the beginning of the end of global terror.

Conclusion

In my capacity as head of the Goodluck Jonathan Foundation, I visited former Nigerian leaders to call for unity of purpose to fend off some of these challenges I have listed above.

And finally today I am here, calling on this august body and the new American administration of President Donald J Trump, of whom we are very confident, to please work with the government and people of Nigeria by way of capacity building and intelligence gathering and sharing and indeed in any way possible to bring an end to religious extremism in Nigeria.
Kyari gave the warning to the 128 bidders of the 2017 Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) programme; a programme introduced in 2016 to replace crude-for-oil-products.

The issues about fraudsters in this industry, particularly in crude oil and gas transactions are so enormous.

Every day we receive some form of communication, people wanting to know if there is a group that wants to sell something to them.

All kinds of things that we come across. For the avoidance of doubt, NNPC does not allocate off-spec crude. It does not exist.

There is nothing like off-spec crude, which is what you see in many documents that are flying around, Kyari warned.

He further warned that the corporation does not have joint crude oil and gas allocation with any company.

Any company, no exception, NNPC does not do that. NNPC does not participate in spot allocation for now and it is also not involved in any cargo arrangements with anybody.

These are the kind of documents you see flying around in the system and the people are duped.

NNPC does not have any agent outside this building and indeed anywhere in the world. The only affiliate company we have, Duke Oil, is in London.

Those who know, know where to find it. It is on electronic platform anybody can see it, he said.

He lamented the gullibility of buyers, saying: If l have a cargo of crude oil, the whole world would know.

You dont hide it; it is not kola-nut. You dont do it at Transcorp Hotel. That is what is happening now, people selling crude oil in rooms in Hilton.

At the end of the day they end up collecting $50,000; $100, 000 from very gullible people as processing fee after which they vanish.

Kyari said the new NNPC was transparent and accountable, and has no room for corruption in its operations.

He said DSDP simply meant selling crude in exchange for products and would optimise revenue for the Federal Government in compliance with its anti-corruption drive.

l am happy to announce that in the last one year, the processes that we have put in place ensured that the products that we received were actually on the higher value than the value of the crude oil that we sold.

We are very proud of this. This company is committed to make sure that there is availability of supply in our country, he said.

Earlier, the Chief Operating Officer, Corporate Services, Mr Isa Inuwa, said the NNPC had set a trend of complying with the public procurement law of due process in the selection of bidders to execute any of its projects.

Inuwa said this during the Invitation to Tender for pre-qualification of contractors for procurement, installation and commissioning of 44.687MVA and 1x635KVA dual engine generators.

He said the corporation was in search of the best supplier, installer and the best price on the basis of a transparent selection process.

He assured bidders that they would all receive equal consideration based on the NNPC criteria and entries made.
According to The Guardian, the group also said El-Zakzaky has been granted bail by the Federal High court over a year ago.

The groups spokesman, Ibrahim Musa said he made the call following Osinbajo comment condemning security operatives for detaining suspects without trial.

Musa also claimed that El-Zakaky is still being detained, despite the fact that he met his bail condition as the stipulated time.

He said It is unfortunate that Osinbajo, who is a professor of law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), could serve in a regime that flouts court orders.He, therefore, urged Malami to demonstrate the countrys respect for the rule of law by commencing the process of their release.
Governor Nasir El-Rufaiof Kaduna state who made this known on Thursday, February 2, 2017, added that the suspects were arrested in Kafanchan and environs.

"The 17 Suspects are being paraded for culpable homicide and disturbance of public peace in Southern Kaduna," Governor El-Rufai said via Twitter.

Governor El-Rufai noted that the suspects include Fulani herdsmen and natives of Southern Kaduna.

The Police public relations officer, Jimoh Moshood stated that other suspects are currently under investigation and will be arraigned in Court.

Here are names the 17 suspects arrested paraded at the Police Headquarters in Abuja.

1) Magaji Shuaib

2.) Abdulkareem Abdul

3.) Goma Adamu

4.) Danlami Yakubu

5.) Danjuma Barde

6.) Idris Bello

7.)Samuel Joshua

8.) Haruna Iliyasu

9.) Hassan Idris

10.) Adamu Haruna

11.) Suleiman Saleh

12.) Adamu Umar

13.) Abubakar Muhammadu

14.) Muhammadu Jori

15.)Nelson Paul

16.) Bulus Jatau

17.) Danjuma Barde
The delay has been met with agitations from different interest groups in the country.

The hue and cry over the Presidents foot-dragging can be explained:

Onnoghen hails from Cross River State, South of Nigeria.

Should he be confirmed by the senate, Onnoghen will be the first Justice of the Supreme Court to be named Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) from Nigeria's South, in over three decades.

Should the President hold back on sending Onnoghens name to the legislature for confirmation, accusations that he is clannish and not favourably disposed to working with persons who arent from his part of the country, will return to dominate public discourse.

President Buhari hails from Nigeria's North.

Onnoghens tenure in an acting capacity elapses on February 10.

If he isnt confirmed by the Senate in a substantive capacity on or before that date, hell be disqualified unless his name is resubmitted to the Senate by the National Judicial Council (NJC).

The President has a dossier on Onnoghen that borders on sharp practices while he was on the bench of the Supreme Court, hence the delay, a top ranking Presidency official told Pulse on the basis of anonymity because he hadn't been authorised to comment on the subject.

In a recent interview with the New Telegraph, Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), alluded to the corruption in the judiciary as reason why the President hadnt sent Onnoghens name to the Senate for confirmation.

In Sagays words; The lack of due diligence on the part of the NJC allowed at least two Justices of the Supreme Court to slip through the net of judicial vetting to become the Chief Justices of Nigeria. And that became a permanent embarrassment to the judiciary and Nigeria as a whole.

Up till today, one of them calling himself Consultant regularly carries money to his former colleagues, still serving in the judiciary, to buy justice for his law chamber clients while the other one specialized in dollars and distributing it amongst vulnerable colleagues.

These are the types of Justices who have brought ruin to the Judiciary, making it necessary for close vetting of candidates for Chief Justice of Nigeria at the Presidential level.

Sagay added that; There has been extreme agitation and frenzy over the failure of the President to send Hon. Justice Onnoghens name for confirmation, literally within seconds of receiving the NJCs recommendation.

These agitations have exhibited either ignorance, bad faith or down-right primordial motives. The crossroads in which we find ourselves today is entirely of the making of the NJC and the legal profession as a whole.

There is need to inject fresh blood into our judicial system by appointing qualified lawyers from outside the bench straight to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.

I, therefore, appeal that our notoriously loquacious and unrestrained compatriots should desist from further hysteria to allow the acting Chief Justice of Nigeria to earn his position on his own merit rather than create a frenzy and furore which can result in the very opposite of what they are loudly agitating for.

On Thursday, Onnoghen himself appealed that no one should hand the President an ultimatum to make him substantive CJN.

Onnoghen asked Nigerians not to pile pressure on the President on his behalf.

ALSO READ: President swears in Onnoghen as new Chief Justice

The acting CJN asked Nigerians to allow Mr. President, Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, a free hand to perform his constitutional duties concerning the appointment of a substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria.

He added that the President does not need any threat or ultimatum to perform his constitutional duties".

He said he appreciates the interest of Nigerians towards the appointment of a substantive Chief Justice of Nigeria to oversee the affairs of the Judiciary as the third arm of government, but believes that issuing an ultimatum to Mr. President appears to be going too far and smacks of disrespect for the exalted office of the president.

The Acting Chief Justice therefore appeals for caution on the issue of the appointment of Chief Justice of Nigeria as Mr President goes about his constitutional duties, especially considering the fact that the given time for him to act as Chief Justice of Nigeria has not expired.

Presidency sources also told Pulse that Onnoghens name will be sent to the Senate for confirmation as substantive CJN as soon as Buhari returns from his 10-day vacation on February 6.

I can assure you that hed become substantive CJN, a top ranking Presidency official confided in Pulse.

Presidency officials disclose that Onnoghen has been told why theres been a delay in sending his name forward for confirmation by the President.

"The concerns from the Presidency were duly communicated to him", offered the Villa official.

He has explained himself and will get the job on a permanent basis soon enough, Pulse was told.

In October of 2016, the Department of State Security (DSS) arrested a couple of senior Judges for corruption.
Onnoghen has been serving in an acting capacity since November 12, 2016, and the delay in confirming him has attracted controversy and criticism from across the country.

However, according to a source in the presidency, Onnoghen might soon be confirmed following a meeting between him and the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami.

They presented to Onnoghen the dossier the security agencies have on him to go through, showing why they delayed to confirm him. He would have to guard against some of these things when he takes full charge of the judiciary, the source told Leadership.

The source added that Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo would soon forward a letter to the Senate requesting that Onnoghen be confirmed.

Osinbajo is currently the acting president as President Muhammadu Buharis is on medical vacation in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Onnoghen has urged Nigerians not to pressure the presidency into confirming his appointment.

ALSO READ:CJN tells Court of Appeal justices to shun corruption
The party made the comment in reaction to a nationwide protest championed by popular musician, 2Face Idibia to protest the policies of the Muhammadu Buhari administration.

For us, it is about the constitution of Nigeria, Tuface or any other citizen of the country has the right to stage a peaceful protest,that is the position of our constitution. We as a party will not be part of anything that will abridge or take away the right of citizens to protest, especially in a democracy, APC National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi told ThisDay.

We have as a party benefited greatly from citizens right to express their democratic rights and our being in government is not going to change that orientation to promote the liberties and right of citizen hold dissenting views, he added.

He also spoke on a threat made by the police to prevent the protest from holding as planned.

Well I dont know exactly what the police are saying about banning the protest. I think what the police will probably be saying is that they are concerned about the issue of safety and threat to lives and property in the course of the protest, he said.

There are always fears that hoodlums might hijack a peaceful protest and use the opportunity to perpetrate violence on innocent citizens. I suspect this might be the consideration of the police. But this should not be good enough reason to deny citizens the full enjoyment of their constitutional rights however they wish to express them.

We believe that protests are a form of feedback, although we may not agree with the grievances but at same time, it may be an opportunity for us to communicate more about what we are doing that the citizens may have had sufficient information on. It may an opportunity for us to give better clarification on what our government is doing.

But fundamentally, it will be a form of feedback for us to do more in citizens engagement and enlightenment and to focus more on our commitment to the promises we made to our people. I do not see it as anything that is antithetical to our democracy, he added.

ALSO READ: Music star to lead nationwide protest against Nigerian government
I met her while in secondary school while we were in JSS2 sometime in 2003/2004.

She's fair in complexion and very good to behold, that's all I [can] describe her as.

She got the eyes of many, including mine. But she no longer got my eyes, my heart was in too.

Secondary school went on, she repeated a class in that same session seeing me and others [become] her senior [by one year].

The distance began as I no longer [saw] her daily as I [used] to.

This distance grew till I [left] the school in 2008 without professing my love for her. She buckled up and also graduated a year after me.

I lost contact with her from the day I left School and couldn't reach her social media for years.

She has this Facebook account that I always stalked, dropped messages and eagerly awaited her response.

No one in my set or hers has a number she can be reached through, this was so fustrating.

One day in 2011 [when I was already in university] I suddenly recalled that she has an elder sister who was once our social prefect in the secondary school.

She's been a Facebook friend and her account seems to be operational. So I decided to send a private message to her requesting for my love's number.

Id often revisit her wall and attach a reminder to my message. This messages weren't read and hence no hope of reaching out to her.

In 2016 after my compulsory youth service in Kaduna, I decided to drop another message via her sister's Facebook account. To my greatest surprise, I got a response stating her contact details.

I got thrilled to be reconnected [with] her, rehearsed a couple of times on how I'd introduce myself to her and possibly ask for a date with her in Abuja.

Now, I've actually 'stopped loving' as it's over eight years since we [last] communicated. After lots of rehearsals and performances, I placed the golden call. She picked up and I lost my confidence as her voice ignited something in me that day.

She sounded happy to hear from an old time friend, I was so happy about her progress as she was then rounding up her service year too.

Friendship [began again], various calls and chats, exchange of pictures etc.

Weeks passed by and I suddenly realized that I never stopped loving her over the years. In our interactions, I was meant to realize that she's in a relationship.

I'm very confused as I don't know how to get her know how I feel about her._______________________

Hi reader,

Thanks for sending in this mail.

On consideration, I think what you need is time. The issue here isnt so much about what to say to her. It is more about when to say it to her.

I understand the frustration with loving someone and not being able to say it because she is with someone else.

And that is where I think the real difficulty is  the fact that she is in a relationship at the moment. No matter how serious your interest is, your hands seem tied especially if she is happy in that relationship.

I cant advise you to hope for her breakup, that will be unfair. The temptation to hope for the worst on that relationship will be there, of course, but you have to fight it off.

You stand to benefit from that breakup, but you cannot be the one to make it happen. That wont be a good foundation for whatever relationship you intend to start with her.

My point is, if she remains in that relationship, it doesnt make much sense to be thinking of what to say to her to make her fall in love with you.

Might not be what you want to hear at the moment, but its the truth. Your best chance is to wait and see what happens. Till then, youve just gotta hold your peace, and hope._______________________

Do you want to talk about your love life, marriage or family? Send a mail to relationships@pulse.ng

Don't be left out, stay updated on relationship tips and advice.
According to The Cable, the appeal was made by The Centre for Social Justice, Equity and Transparency (CESJET), a non-governmental organisation.

The group made the appeal in an open letter entitled: Hate sermons: Urgent need for prayers and understanding.

In this letter, they wrote, We consider it particularly very urgent to write you this open letter based on our understanding of your respectful status in Christendom in Nigeria. We have observed with bewilderment recent events in our dear country, Nigeria and after a thorough analysis, we have come to the painful conclusion that current happenings in Nigeria are quite unpleasant. And there is the imperative for collective actions to nip in the bud, any possibility of potential mass conflicts and crisis likely to sprout from it.

Nigeria is on the cliffhanger at the moment; burdened by agitations, mutual distrust and suspicions, viral criminality as well as crises of all dimensions, which in some cases, have mutated into violent conflicts. The federal government of Nigeria led by President has been strained and overstretched in its attempts to contain the crises in different parts of the country in the face of dwindling economic fortunes.

We are equally encouraged by our implied assumption that you are aware of certain supposed Men of God who have stoke the fire of discord and overheated the polity with bile sermons, utterances and discussions from the pulpit which have a strong potency to spark religious crisis of genocidal magnitude in Nigeria."

"Initially, this organization was not too worried with the divisions publicly manifest in the disorderliness, in-fighting and leadership tussles which have characterized the body of Christ in Nigeria in recent times. We had hoped the concerned leaders would devote time and energy to resolve these internal squabbles in the nearest future in the interest of Christianity. But we cannot pretend not to know that this negative trend has not only spiraled outside of the Body of Christ in Nigeria, but pulling the strings very hard in attempts to destroy Nigeria by pitching members of one faith against another.

We feel compelled to write you because of the respect, honour, integrity and acceptance you have earned amongst Christians and Muslims alike, within and outside Nigeria. We perceive in you, anointed men of God with the best credentials and wisdom to save the body of Christ at this crucial time on this sensitive, but potentially explosive religious incitement. We are further encouraged by your non- discriminatory roles as father to both the orphans, the vulnerable and the widows, much as banking on your vast knowledge of humanitarian complexities countries face when such religious matters are allowed to explode in violent clashes to promptly.

If you kindly devote attention to this cause, you would save Nigeria from a clearly masterminded plot to destroy our country by enemies waiting in the wings to fuel genocide in the country on the platform of religion. Acting thus, you shall also save the entire body of Christ from disintegrating and embarrassing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who laid down His life for us.

Coincidentally, this letter was released after Emir of Kano, Alhaji Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, made a similar appeal to Muslim clerics.

During a recent sermon, he said, "More than ever before, this is the time we need peace in the country and as such, Muslim clerics and indeed all Muslims should preach peace among the adherents and work to achieve this with members of other religions in the country."
According to Catholic Church leaders, over 800 Christians have been killed, 57 have been injured, while 16 churches have been destroyed.

The sad thing is that nothing has been done by the Federal Government, as these killings and violence are still happening.

ALSO READ: CAN declares day of mourning for victims of Kaduna killings

This negligence has forced the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) and Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria to demand the resignation of President Muhammadu Buhari, Vanguard reports.

Speaking after a joint meeting in Warri, Delta state on February 2, 2017, Bishop Simeon Okah, national vice president, PFN (South-South) advised the president to resign since he has been unable to stop the killings.

"The number one issue is this Fulani herdsman in our bushes. We are no longer going to fold our hands and watch while they kill our people. Some governors are saying they are not from the North. That claim is an insult to us.

Today our children are now being deported from America and here we have people from outside our country killing people and raping our daughters, mother and wives. Our farmers no longer have farmlands to farm. I think its high time we started defending ourselves if the government cannot help us.

The economy is dying. When handed over to the exchange rate was between N170 to N190 to a dollar. Today, it is N550 to a dollar. Imagine how things had gone bad?

"While the church will pray, if he () cannot save the country, let him resign for the country to move to where God wants it to be, the cleric noted.

It is important to note that the Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, had earlier announced plans to commence investigation into the killings.

"Once the senate resumes, this issue will be addressed to get a clearer picture of what the real situation is and find a lasting solution," Saraki reportedly said.

ALSO READ: FG urges religious leaders to stay out of crisis

The investigation was supposed to have started on January 10, 2017.
Valdemira Rodrigues de Oliveira and her 66-year-old boyfriend Aparecido Dias Jacob got engaged at a ceremony even though physicians warned them not to go ahead with the plan.

The love-struck oldies with a combined age of 172 have separate rooms at Nossa Senhora Fatima retirement home in Pirassununga, south east Brazil, and were determined to prove it's never too late to be with your soulmate. [Cue in Rihanna's 'We Found Love in a Hopeless Place' here]

Medics assessed their health and age and warned that the duo would not be able to cope with living on their own.

ALSO READ:David and Victoria Beckham renew their wedding vows

But the elderly romantics exchanged engagement rings in a betrothal ceremony specially put together for them by volunteers under an initiative called the Project of Dreams.

After the engagement ceremony, the lover girlsaid, I fell in love with him. I like him a lot. If he dies, I die too. [Cue in Westlifes Unbreakable here.]

One of the volunteers for the engagement ceremony, Fabiane Zaffalon, said: As they couldn't get married we came up with another way to make their dreams come true by holding an engagement ceremony at the retirement home.

The organizers said Valda and Jacob had both separately expressed their desire to get married and have a little house where they could live together but doctors were against the idea because of their advanced years and health issues.

Regardless of that, the couple have now become engaged, with the support of volunteers who wanted their dreams to come true.
In December, Odebrecht agreed with the US Justice Department to pay a world record $3.5-billion fine after admitting it paid $788 million in bribes to win fat construction contracts in 12 countries.

The biggest payouts were for contracts with Brazil's state oil company, Petrobras -- the focus of a massive pay-to-play scandal that has upended Brazilian politics, landing a laundry list of powerful people in jail, including Odebrecht's boss, Marcelo Odebrecht.

But the company's reach spans far beyond Brazil -- and now, so does the scandal.

Odebrecht, the biggest construction firm in Latin America, paid bribes in nine other countries across the region -- Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic -- as well as Angola and Mozambique in Africa.

Most of those countries have now opened investigations of their own, asking Brazilian prosecutors to share information on dirty deals in their jurisdictions.

Billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure projects are meanwhile paralyzed.

After the scandal broke, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) -- which funded many of Odebrecht's international ventures -- froze $3.6 billion for 16 projects across Latin America.

In Venezuela, six mega-projects being built by Odebrecht have ground to a halt, including an expansion of the Caracas subway.

In the Dominican Republic, which received $2.5 billion from BNDES, unfinished roadworks and a thermoelectric power plant are now in doubt.

In Peru, where Odebrecht says it paid $29 million in bribes from 2005 to 2014, the government sacked the company from a $7-billion gas pipeline project that is less than one-third complete.

That and other aborted Odebrecht projects will likely shave 0.5 to one percentage point off Peru's economic growth this year, the economy minister said last month.

Heads to roll

Investigators across Latin America now have some heavy-hitting politicians in their sights.

In Peru, a congressional commission has summoned President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski to testify, along with former presidents Alejandro Toledo and Ollanta Humala, plus Humala's powerful wife, Nadine Heredia.

In Panama, ex-president Ricardo Martinelli's son and brother are under investigation.

Likewise Argentina's intelligence chief, Gustavo Arribas, who is close to President Mauricio Macri.

In Colombia, a former deputy transport minister and ex-senator have been arrested.

The Venezuelan National Assembly, where leftist President Nicolas Maduro's opponents hold a majority, has launched a probe into the $98 million in bribes that Odebrecht admitted to paying there -- the biggest payoff outside Brazil.

And Mozambican prosecutors are investigating who received $900,000 in bribes to green-light an airport for the northern city of Nacala.

State news agency AIM condemned the project, completed in 2014, as an "embarrassing flop," an "international airport with no international flights."

More explosive revelations are likely on the way: Marcelo Odebrecht and 76 other current and former executives have signed tell-all plea deals with Brazilian prosecutors in exchange for lighter sentences.

Mounting backlash

Corruption-weary Latin Americans are meanwhile taking to the streets.

After two weeks of violent protests in Peru, authorities there scrapped plans for Odebrecht-operated toll roads.

In the Dominican Republic, tens of thousands of people protested last month to demand public officials be held to account for taking bribes.

Odebrecht, meanwhile, is still paying the price.

Several countries have banned it from bidding for projects or signing contracts.

And the $3.5 billion it has agreed to pay Brazil, the United States and Switzerland under the US Justice Department deal may be just the beginning.

It has also agreed to pay $59 million to Panama and $189 million to the Dominican Republic. And more fines could be on the way.

Odebrecht, which had $39.1 billion in revenue in 2015, is now in survival mode.

It has put 12 billion reals ($3.8 billion) in assets up for sale, and laid off 60,000 employees in the three years through 2015, according to Bloomberg News.
"Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community," he wrote in the email, "I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately, it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."

Kalanick faces a growing wave of criticism from Uber employees and customers for saying he would continue to engage with Trump after the executive order banning refugees and others from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The backlash illustrated the difficult path ahead for technology executives in working with Trump. Protests were scheduled to take place at Uber offices around the country on Thursday.

At an all-hands meeting last week, Kalanick told employees Uber was working with Trump to pursue its mission of improving transportation around the globe.

"We'll partner with anyone in the world as long they're about making transportation in cities better, creating job opportunities, making it easier to get around, getting pollution out of the air and traffic off the streets," Kalanick told his employees.
In her first public remarks at the Security Council, Haley asserted that US sanctions imposed on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea would remain in place until Moscow gave back the peninsula to Ukraine.

"We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions," she said.

A surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine has presented the new administration of President Donald Trump with a first test of its Russia policy and Haley's comments were closely watched for signs of any shift.

The US ambassador opened her remarks stating that it was "unfortunate" that her first appearance at the council required her to "condemn the aggressive actions of Russia", describing this as a "replay" of past US statements.

"The United States stands with the people of Ukraine who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention," she said.

"Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue."

The United States "continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," she added.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."

While the statements were in line with those of the previous US administration, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said he detected a change in tone.

"I detected quite a bit of change of tone," he told reporters after the meeting. "It's just the beginning of the road and hopefully the road will lead to something more constructive."

Ukraine, Russia trade accusations

The sharp escalation of fighting since Sunday in the town of Avdiivka has raised concerns of a humanitarian crisis, with some 20,000 people left without heat or water in freezing winter weather.

At least 23 people have been killed in mortar and rocket attacks.

"This escalation of violence must stop," Haley said, pledging US support for the Minsk agreements aimed at ending the conflict.

Ukraine and Russia traded accusations over who was responsible for the flare-up of fighting.

Ukrainian Ambassador Vlodymyr Yelchenko accused Russia of blocking repair work to restore electricity to Avdiivka.

"This is another clear evidence of the Kremlin's intention to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Avdiivka as it was done by the Russian army in Aleppo," he charged, referring to the city seized by Syrian government forces with Russia's military support.

Churkin accused Kiev of igniting fighting to attract international attention and draw support from the new US administration.

"Kiev is trying to use the clashes that they themselves started as a pretext to pull out of the Minsk agreements," said Churkin.

The Minsk agreements, backed by France and Germany, lay out a series of measures to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine -- but their implementation has been faltering.

"Kiev intends in this way to keep on the international agenda the crisis that they themselves started and suck in newly-elected heads of states," Churkin said.
Turning the ship before it hits the iceberg
A man charged with two counts of trafficking methamphetamine into Pahrump earlier this year was fined $20,000 and sentenced to maximum of 14-and-a-half years in prison this week in District Court.

A man charged with two counts of trafficking methamphetamine into Pahrump earlier this year was fined $20,000 and sentenced to maximum of 14-and-a-half years in prison this week in District Court.

Roque Lara-Aguilar, aka Jorge Garcia or Rocky, 34, appeared in District Court Thursday morning to be sentenced on two cases, each of which charged him with a single count of trafficking a schedule one controlled substance, mid level, 14 to 28 grams of methamphetamine.

Lara-Aguilar was charged in the two cases after police found more than 100 grams of methamphetamine in his possession during a traffic stop in January.

According to police, narcotics detectives had initially begun an investigation into Lara-Aguilar after they began to suspect he was supplying methamphetamine to several well-known meth dealers in Pahrump.

On Jan. 23, a confidential informant reportedly told police Lara-Aguilar was possibly on his way into Pahrump with a large amount of narcotics in his vehicle. Officers were subsequently able to set up a traffic stop with the suspect, at which time he was stopped and detained for questioning.

After police obtained a warrant to search Lara-Aguilars vehicle, a narcotics detective reportedly found 13 individually packaged bags of meth inside, ranging in size from 1 ounce, or 28 grams, to an 8-ball, or 3.5 grams. Altogether police reportedly discovered approximately 105 grams, or one-fourth of a pound, of methamphetamine inside the mans vehicle.

Police also reportedly found Lara-Aguilars cell phone during their search, which contained the numbers of many known Pahrump meth dealers such as Andrea.

Lara-Aguilar, who was in the country illegally, was arrested and remained in custody on $25,000 bail until his sentencing this week.

Judge Kimberly Wanker told the man despite his lack of prior criminal history and the fact he would be deported at the end of his incarceration no matter what sentence she gave him, she was going to hold him accountable for his actions in Nye County.

Let me tell you something, you brought enough drugs into Nye County to place a number of people at risk. So you even if you didnt commit immediate murder, it doesnt mean that those drugs you brought in couldnt have resulted in significant harm or damage to the folks who received those drugs. And you did it more than once, you did it repeatedly, the judge said. So let me tell you, you made a lifestyle choice and I will hold you accountable for it and I want you to understand that.

Wanker subsequently sentenced Lara-Aguilar in one case to a $10,000 fine and 36 to 90 months in prison, with credit for 211 days already served. She then sentenced him in the second case to 28 to 84 months in prison with an additional $10,000 set to run consecutively to the first case, meaning he will have to serve his time on the first charge before he can begin serving time on the second.

After he finishes serving his sentence in a Nevada State Prison, he will be deported back to Mexico.
If you needed to identify the trees in your backyard or neighborhood, could you?

It's one thing to call them out when their full of leaves in the spring, summer and early fall, but what about during the winter months when deciduous branches hang bare in the air?

There's at least one app for that, but why not master the tricks of the trade yourself?

More than 20 curious Quad-Citians packed a classroom Friday at Nahant Marsh Education Center in Davenport to do just that.

Tree expert Dr. Susan Romano, a biology professor at Western Illinois University, led the crash course, which required a bit of detective work.

"It's a challenge," said Romano, who specializes in forestry, ecology and botany. "But trees have architecture, so when you look at one, even from a distance, you'll know it's a cottonwood, for example, because of its branches, shape and height."

The class marked the second session in this year's Breakfast Nature Club program at Nahant Marsh. Scheduled for the first Friday of every month, the series will continue through December.

Opting to remain inside, participants examined twigs from sycamore, shagbark hickory, black walnut, red oak and swamp white oak trees that Romano collected earlier this week near her home in the Macomb, Illinois, area.

Referencing a twig key from the book, "Forest Trees of Illinois," they searched for identifying characteristics and indicators on each twig to help decipher the various species one at a time.

"I'm a beginner beginner, so none of this is easy for me," Eileen Smith of Rock Island said. "I'm relying on these experts here."

Up close, with the help of smartphone cameras, newbies examined twigs and their bark for markings, such as leaf scars; opposite or alternate branching; and bud shape, size, color and texture.

On his day off from work, Jerome Case, a nuclear engineer at the Exelon Quad-Cities Generating Station in Cordova, attended the class to further his knowledge on plant life.

The 30-something man is developing a sustainable food forest on his 22-acre farm in Fulton, Illinois.

"It's all about attention to detail," said Case, who shaved off a small section of bark with a pocket knife to get a closer look at the pith, or inner layer, of one twig. "In order to design a system that works with nature, it's important to understand how nature works."

During Romano's hands-on lecture, students also filled up on coffee and continental breakfast items as Canada geese and other birds flew above the 265-acre wetland.

"It's so beautiful out here even though it's cold," said Liz Schramm, a naturalist at Nahant Marsh. "We think it's important that people know what's in their own backyard."

Nahant's trees, Romano stressed, serve as habitats for a variety of birds, as well, including the struggling prothonotary warbler, a migratory songbird.

"If you're just walking through the woods, you're not going to notice what's around you," Romano said, hoping her class would spark people's interest in conservation. "It enhances your life to know more about what's around you, and sometimes, all it takes is that first step."

Her presentation evidently rubbed off on several attendees.

"We learned way too much," JoAnn Whitmore of Moline said, thanking the scientist for her time.

"Well, now you can go learn more," Romano responded.

After the class, Smith, the "beginner" from Rock Island, said she'll "never look at a tree again the same way."
Q. Do you have any information on the first female firefighter in Davenport?  A reader

A. According to a news story published on Feb. 1, 2001, in the Quad-City Times, Sharon Iossi Kieffert, was not only the first woman firefighter to join the Davenport Fire Department but also the first professional female firefighter in the state of Iowa. The former physical education teacher joined the Davenport Fire Department on April 5, 1977, according to a story published in the Quad-City Times on April 6, 1977.

The news account from 1977 described the 5-foot, 7-inch, 23-year-old as good-naturedly sliding down a fire pole, pulling on her gear and jumping onto a fire truck for the media in the absence of an actual fire. "We just want to get some action," a TV newsman said. Her badge was pinned on her uniform three times by Mayor Robert Duax, the story said. News photographers kept arriving after the brief ceremony began. The event was re-enacted each time. "More than once she had to tell reporters she was just one of the fellas now," the story said.

"Then Chief Howard Goettsch alerted firefighters in the station the fire alarm was about to go off. There was no fire, but a radio newsman wanted some authentic background sound to go with his broadcast."

She participated Sunday in a practice fire staged in Eldridge, the story said. After that experience, she said the job is just what she was looking for. "I like the excitement, the rescue. It's suited for me."

To read more about Sharon Iossi Kieffert and other early female firefighters in the Quad-Cities and surrounding areas, visit qctimes.com/askthetimes.

Q. Recently, the Putnam Museum held a photo shoot to help celebrate the museum's anniversary. I'm sure I read that the museum hired a photographer from Kansas City. With all the push to hire and to buy locally and with all the great professional photographers in the Q-C, why did the Putnam go outside the area and at what expense?  Dan

A. We contacted the Putnam Museum to find out. Kim Findlay, president and CEO, responded:

"In answer to your reader's question about the photographer from Kansas City.

"The concept for the One By One community photo shoot was created by Tom Styrkowicz, photographer from Kansas City. When the Putnam learned of the concept, we embraced it as the perfect way for the Putnam to kick off a year-long celebration of 150 years serving our community. As we would respect any artist's creativity, we did not want to 'steal' Mr. Strykowiczs original idea and implement it with other photographers. So, Mr. Styrkowicz is the principal photographer for the community shoots. (Due to the overwhelming response, he will be back the weekend of April 20). Meanwhile, local photographers will continue to be engaged in photo shoots at the Putnam monthly as we compile a photo book and calendar to celebrate the anniversary."
MAQUOKETA, Iowa  A long-term substitute teacher at a Maquoketa school faces discipline by the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners, Des Moines.

William Osmun worked at the Anna B. Lawther Academy, 115 S. Olive St., Maquoketa. He faces three charges and a hearing has been set for Feb. 27 in Des Moines.

Anna B. Lawther Academy is an alternative K-12 school and a part of Hillcrest Family Services, Dubuque.

Charges facing Osmun include: falsifying or deliberately misrepresenting or omitting material information that concerned student evaluations; converting public funds to personal use; and failure to use those funds in the way they were intended.

The case may be resolved by Osmun giving up his professional license, which is a "regional exchange" license with endorsements. These include American history, world history and social studies. This license is scheduled to expire Feb. 28.

According to the state board, it received a complaint about Osmun in May 2016 and found probable cause to set up a hearing in October.

The state's investigation showed Osmun did not complete special education probes as required, did not provide structured classroom instruction and "spent a great deal of time on personal internet use," according to the report.
Scott County Auditor Roxanna Moritz called Tuesdays special election to fill the vacancy in Davenports 89th House District the best election ever.

It was only 11 precincts, Moritz told the county Board of Supervisors at Thursdays special board meeting held to report on and approve the canvass of votes. But it was a smooth day and a great turnout for a special election.

Moritz reported 13.18 percent of 21,841 voters registered in the 89th House District cast 2,879 ballots. Democrat Monica Kurth was elected to fill the seat left vacant by Jim Lykam, who resigned after he won last months special election to the Iowa Senate. Kurth beat Michael Gonzales by a nearly three-to-one ratio, with the support of 72.46 percent of the voters, or 2,086 votes, to 27.23 percent, or 784 votes cast.

Moritz praised the quick turnaround reporting of 1,186 absentee ballots gathered a week before the Jan. 31 election.

 Teresa LaBella
MUSCATINE  A Chinese company signed a memorandum of understanding with Muscatine officials and Gov. Terry Branstad that will give Muscatine students a chance to study abroad during the summers of 2017 and 2018.

The Wanxiang Group will donate $300,000 to be used for Muscatine Community School District and Muscatine Community College students to study abroad in China, as part of the 100,000 Strong Initiative, company officials announced Wednesday, following a free concert performed by the Shaanxi Province Song and Dance Theater National Orchestra.

"This is a program that we feel is very beneficial to the long-term relations between U.S. and China," said Pin Ni, executive vice president of the Wanxiang Group.

Ni said Chinese multi-national company opened its American operations in Chicago in 1994, and now has more than 100,000 employees and 27 manufacturing plants in the Midwest. The company's focus is auto parts and renewable energy.

More than 1,000 students from the U.S. have been to China as part of the program, Ni said.

"Not only did we truly build a bridge between the U.S. and China, and also feel that this will help us to have more communication, not just more opinion; more compromising, not just more positioning, and more understanding, not just more statements," he said.

Students are asked what they learned after their experience, and Li said many were surprised by the clean energy efforts in China, the kindness of Chinese people, the differences in food in China versus Chinese restaurant food in the U.S., and the lack of fortune cookies, which are an American creation.

Branstad, President Donal Trump's pick for U.S. Ambassador to China, said he hopes the relationship Iowa and the U.S. has fostered with China will continue through cultural exchange.

"The exchanges of students is one way to build personal relationships and friendships, and that is critically important for both of our countries and the world," he said.

Muscatine Community School District Superintendent Jerry Riibe said the study abroad funding will be an important opportunity for students.

"We have so many kids that would not be able to make this kind of trip and have this kind of experience," he said. "The world is getting smaller, and for people that can learn how to work with other cultures, know how other parts of the world live, it's going to be an advantage."

About 1,200 people attended the concert at Calvary Church, held to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

"I can't think of a better place to (make the announcement) than here in Muscatine," Branstad said.

Branstad said Muscatine's efforts at building a relationship with China was one reason he had the opportunity to be chosen to be an ambassador. Although he may not remain in his home state, Branstad said he will always feel the connection.

"There is no question that I may be living in China but my heart's still here in Iowa," he said.

Branstad said he and others hope the curiosity about why China's President Xi Jinping likes Iowa will draw people from China to visit.

The Chinese president stayed in Muscatine during an agricultural research trip as a young man, and returned to visit in 2012, when he was vice president.

"We think Muscatine will be a magnet for Chinese tourists to visit," Branstad said.

Before the concert, Chinese Consul General in Chicago Hong Lei said he looks forward to Branstad serving as the ambassador and hopes the relationship between the countries will continue to grow.

"Muscatine and Iowa, those are very special places to the people of China," he said.

Branstad said he hopes to appear before the Foreign Relations Committee in late February or early March.

"And in the meantime I'm still the governor of Iowa and I've got a lot of responsibilities there," he said.
Before the advent of technology, imagine how passengers on the Underground Railroad avoided capture on their path to freedom during the Civil War.

Legend has it the network of escapees relied on strategically placed quilts to communicate. Coded messages, according to folklore, were incorporated into designs, which helped guide slaves to safety.

The tale, however, remains unproven.

But that did not stop one Rock Island man from piecing together a Civil War-era quilt of his own, which consists of several Underground Railroad-themed patterns.

Clayton Peterson, a retired U.S. Postal Service worker, began assembling the pieces in 2011 during a class at the former Quilt Basket in East Moline.

Every month for one year, Peterson and others in his group tackled a new set of instructions and fabric, eventually stitching together a finished product.

Fact or fiction?

Throughout the process, Peterson also used ideas from "Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting" magazine to produce his 20-block creation. He treated each assignment as a history lesson.

"These blocks would have given the slaves directions," he said, holding up his prized piece at his home in the Broadway Historic District.

The "flying geese" panel, he pointed to as an example, features arrows pointed in various directions, which would have commanded a group of traveling slaves to scatter.

"If they all pointed inward, it would mean that you're getting close to a safe haven," he added.

Peterson acknowledges the lack of facts that support the validity of the Underground Railroad's use of quilts. In part, he pursued the undertaking because he found the style of fabrics from the 19th century "fabulous."

The quilt code theory became popular in 1998 when historians Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard published their book, "Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad."

Tiling on the walls in the main building at the Interstate 80 rest area east of Iowa City near mile marker 270 highlight the Underground Railroad blocks, as well.

Since the story hit the shelves, several historians, most notably Barbara Brackman, have rebuked Tobin and Dobard's premise.

For now, Nancy Jacobsen, former president of the Mississippi River Quilters Guild, backs the nonbelievers, too, noting an absence of written proof.

But we might be proven wrong some day when someone digging through a trunk in an attic finds something that says otherwise, she said. Thats the neat thing about history.

Paying it forward

Following a 36-year career with the Postal Service, Peterson began sewing in 2010 to pay homage to his late mother, a lifelong quilter, who passed away in 1996.

A framed photograph of her rests near his cutting table, while several other photos of his ancestors hang on the walls that surround his living room-turned workshop.

The Underground Railroad quilt was number 25 for Peterson, who grew up on a farm near the border of Henry and Mercer counties about 30 miles south of the Quad-Cities. At 69 years old, the Vietnam War veteran has completed close to 115 quilts in all, many of which have been donated to Quad-City military veterans through the Quilts of Valor Foundation.

At the basic level, he hopes his quilts give people "comfort" and "warmth."

"It's all about the journey," he said, "and part of my journey are these quilts."

This winter, he has several projects in the works, and his home, which he shares with his partner, Steven Johnson, "is a mess because of it."

"I work on probably three at a time," said Peterson, who estimates each quilt requires about 8 yards of fabric that costs between $11-$14 each. "If I get bored with one, or if I don't like the way something is turning out, I set it aside and let it rest."

He recycles what he does not use, and he has heaps of multi-colored materials to prove it.

Johnson, meanwhile, tolerates the clutter.

"Every room has something to do with quilting," he said.

Jacobsen, who retired about five years ago as principal of Davenport West High School, praised Peterson's work.

Hes a constant source of inspiration who uses his own time, talents and energy to help other people, she said. "Clayton's an absolute treasure."

February marks Black History Month, and Peterson plans to present his Underground Railroad quilt to the public during an event on Tuesday, Feb. 21, at Second Baptist Church in Rock Island.

"I'm not a teacher, but I share what I know," he said.
WASHINGTON  The Republican-controlled Congress on Thursday scrapped Obama-era rules on the environment and guns, counting on a new ally in the White House to help reverse years of what the GOP calls excessive regulation.

The Senate gave final approval to a measure eliminating a rule to prevent coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby streams, while the House backed a separate resolution doing away with extended background checks for gun purchases by some Social Security recipients with mental disabilities.

The Senate's 54-45 vote sends the repeal of the stream protection rule to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it. The gun measure awaits Senate action.

Republicans and some Democrats say the coal-mining rule could eliminate thousands of coal-related jobs and ignores dozens of federal, state and local regulations already in place.

The Interior Department, which announced the rule in December, said that it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby waters.

The vote was the first in a series of actions Republicans are expected to take in coming weeks to reverse years of what they call excessive regulation during President Barack Obama's tenure. Rules on fracking, federal contracting and other issues also are in the cross-hairs as the GOP moves to void a host of regulations finalized during Obama's last months in office.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the stream rule "an attack against coal miners and their families" and said it would have threatened coal jobs and caused major damage to communities in Kentucky and other coal-producing states.

"The legislation we passed today will help stop this disastrous rule and bring relief to coal miners and their families," McConnell said.

Democrats called the vote an attack on clean water and a clear win for big coal-mining companies and other polluters.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said the stream rule had nothing to do with the decline of coal, which faces stiff competition from cheap natural gas.

"This rule was not in place" when coal production began declining in the past half-dozen years, Cantwell said.

In the House, the issue was an Obama rule extending background checks for disabled Social Security recipients mentally incapable of managing their own affairs. The House voted 235-180 to scuttle it.

Under the rule, the Social Security Administration had to provide information to the gun-buying background check system on recipients with a mental disorder so severe they cannot work and need someone to handle their benefits. The rule, also finalized in December, would have affected an estimated 75,000 beneficiaries.

"There is no evidence suggesting that those receiving disability benefits from the Social Security Administration are a threat to public safety," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

"Once an unelected bureaucrat unfairly adds these folks to the federal background check system, they are no longer able to exercise their Second Amendment right," he said.

After the 2012 school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, Obama directed the Justice Department to provide guidance to agencies regarding information they are obligated to report to the background check system.

In Newtown, 20 children and six educators were shot to death when a gunman entered the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012. The gunman had earlier killed his mother inside their home, and he used a gun and ammunition that she had purchased. His mental health problems have been extensively reported since the shooting.

Democrats said Republicans were doing the bidding of the National Rifle Association, which opposed the Social Security Administration's rule.

"These are not people just having a bad day," Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Calif., said. "These are not people simply suffering from depression or anxiety or agoraphobia. These are people with a severe mental illness who can't hold any kind of job or make any decisions about their affairs, so the law says very clearly they shouldn't have a firearm."

The NRA said overturning the regulation will protect a broad class of vulnerable citizens from government overreach. And the American Civil Liberties Union agreed, telling lawmakers that a disability should not constitute grounds for the automatic denial of any right or privilege, including gun ownership.

Republicans are employing a rarely used tool to roll back some of the rules issued in the final months of Obama's tenure. The Congressional Review Act provides a temporary window for a simple majority of both chambers to invalidate a rule. Trump would have to sign the disapproval measure for a regulation to be deemed invalid.

The law also prevents the executive branch from imposing substantially similar regulations in the future.

On the coal mining vote, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was the sole Republican to oppose the repeal measure, which was supported by four Democrats: Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. All four face re-election next year in states Trump won.
Senate Democrats have two choices: Become everything they have slammed or accept that Neil Gorsuch probably is exceedingly qualified for the U.S. Supreme Court and deserves an up-or-down vote.

The Democratic base is seething by what it perceives as a "stolen" Supreme Court seat. Iowa's Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, personally used the late Antonin Scalia's seat as a political weapon when he blocked President Barack Obama's pick and stoked fears of "activist judges" among conservatives.

Grassley, and too many congressional Republicans to count, acted in ways that undermined the system through partisan arational governance.

Senate Democrats, including Illinois' Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth, should reject that model, if the good of the country is the primary goal. Anything less would would promulgate a vicious cycle of tit-for-tat that undermines the system.

Justice Neil Gorsch is no Betsy DeVos. Opposing him at all cost would be a waste of the filibuster and could have ramifications far beyond one Supreme Court justice.

It's easy to argue that the GOP was successful in its years of intransigence aimed at the Obama administration. Disdain for the president was rampant. Trumped up investigations of Hillary Clinton hamstrung her presidential bid. Republicans now completely dominate half the country's statehouses.

And Donald Trump's troublesome, abnormal approach to government has, so far, stoked passions that could, come mid-terms, serve Democrats well.

But an all-out assault on every Trump appointment would be another foray into political tribalism. It's been a long time since the Senate actually acted as the world's premier "deliberative body." Nonstop warfare from the Democratic minority  a new party of "no"  would only extend that shameful history.

Voting "no" on Gorsuch's nomination is one thing. An outright refusal to bring the nomination to the floor for a vote is another. It would be just another direct partisan attack on the very parliamentary norms that stabilize Congress.

Gorsuch is very much a conservative jurist, says a reading of his decisions on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Gorsuch's backers on the right consider him the ideal replacement for Scalia, whose death cost the right one of its most pre-eminent legal minds. And yes, he's likely to defend prejudice against the LGBTQ community. He's likely to support First Amendment rights for corporations.

None of that should come as a surprise. Elections have consequences, however. Trump won.

At the very least, Gorsuch is exceedingly qualified. His resume is long and distinguished. His writing is clear and thoughtful.

One mustn't condone his politics to recognize his qualifications. The resume alone should propel Gorsuch's name to the floor for a full vote.

That can't be said of all of Trump's nominees. Would-be Education Secretary DeVos is up for the job only because she's sent millions to Republican causes. Her misunderstanding of basic educational policy displayed during her Senate testimony was laughable. At least two Republicans in the Senate have said they won't support DeVos, putting her candidacy in real jeopardy.

But then you have picks such as Gorsuch. This week, Democrats refused to attend of hearings for secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson and attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions. Neither man is without objection, yet not even showing up is the lowest form of minority protest.

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee will have their shot at Gorsuch. He should be grilled on his past positions. He should be held to account. But Trump already is pushing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to do away with the 60-vote threshold, a move called the "nuclear option." McConnell and Grassley don't want to talk about such a move. But it's a likely outcome should Democrats refuse to even give Gorsuch a vote.

And that result would render Senate Democrats completely out in the cold.
A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items for Thursday:

EXPLORE IOWA: Officials in Iowas Tourism Office are participating in a national effort to promote travel by encouraging Iowans to use their unused time off to explore their state.

Shawna Lode, manager of the Iowa Tourism Office, said estimates indicate that about half of Iowans did not use all of their vacation days in 2015, and nationally, the unused time off was calculated to be 658 million unused vacation days a year.

Today, were encouraging Iowans to commit to traveling their home state in 2017 to discover the places and people that make us unique, Lode said. Traveling and disconnecting from day-to-day responsibilities at home and work is proven to reduce stress and improve relationships.

Researchers at the U.S. Travel Association say Americans could have spent an additional $122 billion in domestic leisure travel had they used all their vacation days. Iowa officials say Iowa stood to gain $4.5 billion of this amount. Tourism in Iowa generates more than $8.06 billion in expenditures and $466 million in state taxes, plus it employs 67,400 people statewide, according to the Iowa Tourism Office, which is part of the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

CHILD HUNGER: The Iowa Department of Education is seeking sponsors for a USDA-funded program that provides nutritious meals or snacks to children in low-income areas during the summer months as a way to head off hunger in Iowa. State officials estimate that about 90 percent of the more than 200,000 Iowa students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches during the school year dont have school-sponsored meal programs to turn to when classes let out for summer break.

Typical sponsors include public and nonpublic schools, local government agencies and private nonprofit organizations with serving sites located in schools, churches, community centers, parks, libraries, housing complexes or camps. To qualify as a site, the facility must be either located in a low-income neighborhood where at least 50 percent of the children are eligible for free and reduced-price meals or must serve primarily low-income children.

In 2016, Iowa Summer Food Service Program sponsors served 1,234,046 meals and snacks to children across the state, feeding 23,000 children on a typical June day. If interested, organizations may contact stephanie.dross@iowa.gov.

MASTER MATRIX: The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports that 88 of 99 Iowa counties plan to evaluate construction permit applications and proposed locations for animal confinements by using a master matrix.

Davis, Decatur, Des Moines, Keokuk, Lee, Mahaska, Osceola, Plymouth, Wapello, Warren and Washington counties will not use the master matrix. Animal producers in these counties must meet higher standards than other confinement producers who also need a construction permit. They qualify by choosing a site and using practices that reduce impacts on air, water and the community.

The master matrix applies to producers who must get a construction permit to build, expand or modify a totally roofed facility. Generally, these are confinement feeding operations with more than 2,500 finishing hogs, 1,000 beef cattle or 715 mature dairy cows.

Counties that adopt the master matrix can provide more input to producers on site selection and proposed structures and facility management. Participating counties score each master matrix submitted in their county and can recommend to approve or deny the construction permit. They can also join in DNR visits to a proposed confinement site.

NATURAL GAS DOWN: Natural gas prices fell 25 cents this week, ending at $3 per MMBtu, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported.

Propane prices were up 4 cents from last weeks report, with a statewide average of $1.25 per gallon. Home heating prices dropped 2 cents from last week, ending with a statewide average of $2.04.

The price of global crude oil fell this week on the West Texas Intermediate by 5 cents per barrel over last week and is currently priced at $53.28. A year ago, WTI crude sold for $31.62.

As of Jan. 31, the price of regular unleaded gasoline averaged $2.31 across Iowa, according to AAA. Thats 3 cents lower than a week ago and 57 cents higher than a year ago. The national average on Tuesday was $2.28.

Retail diesel fuel prices in Iowa were down a penny to a statewide average of $2.47, but up from $1.89 a year ago. The Iowa average is 4 cents lower than the national average.

Wholesale ethanol prices were up 6 cents from last weeks price, closing at $1.50.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Were seeing an ever increasing amount of the use of electronic devices to solicit illegal sex acts with children. It is a rampant problem.  Muscatine County Attorney Alan Ostergren in advocating for legislation to expand the definition and toughen the criminal penalties for sexting by using an electronic device to entice a minor below the age of 16 with the intent of committing a sex act.

 Compiled by the Times Bureau
DES MOINES  The GOP-led Iowa Senate voted Thursday to earmark $3 million in state money to fund womens health-care clinics that do not offer abortion  a change opponents claimed would result in more unplanned pregnancies and fewer services in a political move to target Planned Parenthood.

Senate File 2, which passed 30-20, would discontinue a federal Medicaid waiver on July 1 that provides millions of dollars in funding to family planning providers across the state. The 29 co-sponsoring Republicans voted for the bill along with independent Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan; 20 Democrats opposed it.

Proponents of the bill that now goes to the Iowa House for likely passage and has Gov. Terry Branstads support would create a new state-funded program that would exclude facilities that provide abortions from receiving the funds. To cover the new program, the state would shift money from a federal block grant that pays for child and family services.

This bill will not eliminate family planning funding for services for needy Iowa women, said Sen. Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, the bills floor manager. "This bill does not change laws regarding abortion.

Its a measured attempt to balance the reproductive health-care needs of Iowas working poor with the objections of the taxpayers to tangibly subsidize that option through public support in shared facilities, she added, noting that some Medicaid and teen pregnancy/sex education programs would not be affected.

More than 12,000 Iowans received services through the federal waiver program, including Pap smears, birth control and cancer screenings. No state or federal dollars are used to fund abortions.

Minority Democrats charged the bill guts Iowas Family Planning Network, a program that they said has helped more than 80,000 Iowa women and men access family planning services since 2006.

Ive never seen such a horrible bill come before this chamber. This bill is taking us back to the Middle Ages, said Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines.

We know the Iowa Family Planning Waiver works. It has helped reduce abortions and Medicaid costs in Iowa, said Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines. This bill is bad for Iowa women and families. It will create more unintended pregnancies, more high-risk pregnancies and cost Iowa taxpayers more. Iowans dont support it. Doctors warn against it. We should listen to them and reject it.

During a sometimes rancorous debate that spanned nearly three hours, Democrats contended the legislation was a rushed political response to fulfill GOP campaign promises to defund Planned Parenthood of the Heartland at the expense of Iowa women without a clearly defined program and funding stream to replace it.

Republicans agreed that it was an anti-abortion priority but said Planned Parenthoods operations would not be affected because the organization would be free to continue operating their clinics in Iowa minus any taxpayer funding.

Our debate in this room affects real Iowans who are receiving real services today. Our focus needs to be on those Iowans and our responsibility to them," said Sen. Nate Boulton, D-Des Moines. What we are doing here is harming a working system based on old political battle lines, and Iowa women are going to receive less access to health care as a result.

Boultons comments that included references to the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court abortion ruling drew a pointed response from Sinclair, who told him, I dont know how old you are, but your mom could have chosen for you to not to be here.

Democrats immediately objected, and Sinclair retracted the statement and apologized to Boulton and his mother after a brief meeting of senators with Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, to cool things down in the Senate well.

Earlier during the debate, Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, took Democrats to task, telling his Senate colleagues, I am so ashamed of the tone of this debate  catty, accusatory and argumentative. Come on, we can do better than that.

Wearing a hospital gown, Gina Mostafa stood on the Capitol staircase outside the Senate chamber representing thousands of Iowans that could lose their access to family planning if Senate File 2 becomes law.

Despite the election outcome that favored lawmakers opposed to funding abortion providers, Mostafa, a sophomore from Bettendorf at the University of Iowa where she is co-president of Student Advocates for Planned Parenthood, said she and others will not give up their fight because the agencys services are vital for control over own lives and our own bodies.

At times in my life when I was ready to make choices about my own body and health care, I knew I could turn to Planned Parenthood for compassionate and non-judgmental health care, said Mostafa, who described herself as a past, current and future client of Planned Parenthood.

Rachel Lopez, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Midwest, issued a statement after the Senate vote saying the legislation would endanger the health of thousands of Iowans by limiting their access to vital services.

The Republican lawmakers who continue to advance this bill should be ashamed of themselves, Lopez said. "They are playing political games, with the lives of low-income Iowans at stake."

After the vote, Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader organization sent an email to his members urging them to thank the senators who endured very tough debate and helped pass the bill Thursday.

Also, please continue to pray for and contact your Iowa representative regarding supporting the God-given right to life of babies in the womb, he said.
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SIOUX FALLS | The number of cattle and calves in South Dakota is down slightly over the year.

The Agriculture Department says in its latest report that there were 3.85 million cattle and calves in the state on Jan. 1, down 1 percent from 2016.

There were 1.66 million beef cows, down slightly, and 116,000 milk cows, up 5 percent from the previous year.

Cattle in South Dakota feedlots on feed for slaughter totaled 380,000, down 13 percent.

The state's 2016 calf crop totaled 1.69 million head, up 2 percent from 2015.

Sheep and lambs in South Dakota on Jan. 1 totaled a record-low 250,000, down 15,000 from the previous year. The 2016 lamb crop was down slightly, as was wool production.
HARROLD | The $4.5 million South Dakota Pulse Processors plant is officially open for business.

The plant in Harrold began running for a few days last week but is expected to be in full swing from now on, the (Pierre) Capital Journal reported. The plant receives peas five days a week now and will be open four days a week for 10 hours a day.

The plant is set to process mostly yellow peas, but it will also process lentils two to three times a year.

Pulse Processors merchandiser, Wes Meyer, said the plant will process its first batch of lentils in the next month.

"There's a little bit of a learning curve with it. We want to make sure we're putting out a good product," Meyer said.

The plant is currently receiving 25 tons of peas per day, but it's expected to receive 100 tons per day by the end of next week.

He said the plant has about 20,000 bushels of yellow peas contracted, with 15,000 coming in the next couple of weeks. The next contract is anticipated to bring 30,000 bushels later this month.

The plant has been signing contracts with farmers for about a month.
If you're looking for a handy rule-of-thumb to make sense of the nascent presidency of Donald J. Trump, try this: If his lips are moving, there's at least a 50-50 chance that what's tumbling out isn't true.

Harsh? You decide.

One month after he won, he told Chris Wallace on Fox News, "We had a massive landslide victory, as you know, in the Electoral College." Fact: Trump's victory ranks a paltry 46th out of 58 Electoral College results.

After his inauguration, he said it looked like a million to a million-and-a-half people were on hand to witness the event in person. Fact: Independent estimates say the crowd was much smaller, perhaps only 250,000.

The other night he told congressional leaders at the White House that three million to five million "illegals" voted in the presidential election. Fact: There's no evidence to support his claim. None. Unless you count President Trump's source: a widely discredited right-winger who traffics in conspiracy theories.

Did some illegal immigrants vote? Probably. Good chance some dead people voted, too. But he employed the three to five million number in an effort to explain why he didn't also win the popular vote against Hillary Clinton. Simply winning the election, apparently, wasn't enough for Donald Trump.

But if millions of illegal immigrants really did vote, wouldn't that require an investigation by the new president? Yes, it would. And so President Trump announced he would launch a "major investigation."

But while Donald Trump is often wrong, he isn't necessarily lying. That implies knowledge that he knows what he's saying is wrong; that he's intentionally trying to mislead the American people. As I've suggested before, there may be another explanation for his many misstatements: President Donald Trump may simply be delusional.

Take his first full day in office when he visited the Central Intelligence. "I have a running war with the media," he told several hundred members of the intelligence agency. "They are among the most dishonest human beings on earth, and they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community."

"The reason you're the No. 1 stop is, it is exactly the opposite," President Trump added. "I love you, I respect you. There's nobody I respect more."

Fact: He's the one who belittled the CIA and other intelligence agencies saying they were "the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction." But he said nothing about that in his speech at the CIA.

He said nothing about how he accused the intelligence community of leaking an unsubstantiated report that Russia had damaging personal information about him, saying the leak was an attempt to take "one last shot at me" and then comparing the intelligence community to Nazi Germany.

He said nothing about how for months he refused to believe the intelligence community's determination that Russia had meddled in the presidential election. Or how, in a tweet, he put quotation marks around the word "intelligence" to further mock the community.

Yet he blames the media for starting the feud. This is revisionist history at best, and the aforementioned delusions of Donald J. Trump at worst.

None of this will matter, of course, to his most loyal supporters; such is the admiration they hold for their hero. What they care about is not what he says but what he does. And in that respect, it was quite a first week for the president, who signed a bunch of executive orders and directives, including several involving the Affordable Care Act, the wall along the Mexican border, and a temporary freeze on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries ostensibly to stop threats of terrorism.

That, and not his exaggerations or downright false statements, is what his loyal fans care most about.

Besides, it's possible that Donald Trump isn't wrong when he makes statements that are factually incorrect. Perhaps those false statements are just "alternate facts," to use a memorable phrase his advisor Kellyanne Conway coined to defend administration statements that were untrue.

By the way, sales of George Orwell's dark classic, "1984," soared after Conway's "alternate facts" observation. Orwell knew something about alternate facts and something he called "doublethink"  the art of government officials putting out two contradictory statements and calling both of them true.

And we've got at least four years to go.
In this era of tweets and texts, the White House of President Donald Trump, ever respectful of tradition, is bringing back the personal phone call.

For example, Steve Bannon, the president's chief strategist, by telephone told The New York Times' Michael Grynbaum that his paper and "the elite media got (the 2016 presidential election) dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong." After a full-throated condemnation of the "mainstream media," Bannon, designating Grynbaum as the representative of his profession, added: "You're the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. You're the opposition party. The media's the opposition party." Because it is journalism's responsibility to dare to speak truth to power and to correct the record when the powerful are wrong, let us also admit when the powerful  Bannon, in this case  are right.

The Democrats took a collective shellacking during the eight years of Barack Obama's presidency. There are today, compared with January 2009, 63 fewer Democrats in the U.S. House, nine fewer Democrats in the U.S. Senate, 12 fewer Democratic governors and 958 fewer Democrats holding state legislative seats. Before Election Day, Democrats controlled the governor's office and both chambers of the state legislature in just seven states, which was the lowest number since the Civil War. After Nov. 8, in only five states  California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Oregon and Rhode Island (no state in the 2,554 miles between Hartford and Sacramento)  were voters willing to give Democrats complete control. By contrast, 25 states  including the battleground states of Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio  have a GOP governor and a legislature controlled by the GOP.

Democrats on Capitol Hill are so weakened that the only thing they could possibly pass is the salt. Every one of the 214 House and Senate committees and subcommittees is chaired by a Republican. No Democrat wields a gavel. As of today, Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron, who led The Boston Globe's courageous and significant investigation of the official cover-up of serial sexual abuse of children by priests in the Archdiocese of Boston, is, as the Post's unflagging investigation has shown, a far more formidable adversary of the Trump White House than any elected Democrat. Toss in the leadership of The New York Times and fearless journalists everywhere and you have, sadly, the real "opposition."

It was Baron  a private man who was portrayed by Liev Schreiber in the Oscar-winning movie "Spotlight," the story of the shoe-leather reporting that broke the clerical abuse scandal in Boston  who made a rare public statement of his paper's mission, quoting its owner, Jeff Bezos: "We want a society where any of us  any individual in this country, any institution in this country  if they choose to, can scrutinize, examine and criticize an elected official, especially a candidate for the highest office in the most powerful country on earth."

Until Democrats, in or outside Washington, are capable of coming up with a better idea or more relevant message than "Make America Sick Again" (their mantra in support of the Affordable Care Act), Bannon is right: Any opposition is we the media.
Convicted opposition activist Dadins suit over prison transfer dismissed

MOSCOW, February 3 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova)  The Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by Russian activist Ildar Dadin sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for numerous violations of protest laws over his transfer to a prison in the Altai Territory, RAPSI reports from the courtroom.

Dadin claims that the Federal Penitentiary Services (FSIN) ruling on his transfer from the Republic of Karelia contravenes the Article 8 (right to respect for one's private and family life, his home and his correspondence) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Dadins wife Anastasia Zotova asked to transfer her husband to a prison under the authority of the Moscow Regions FSIN Directorate.

The activist was convicted and sentenced on December 7, 2015. Initially he received a 3-year prison term. The Moscow City Court later reduced the sentence to 2.5 years.

Zotova wrote on Facebook in early November that her husband had been beaten and received murder threats when transferred to a penal colony in Karelia. The Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) launched a probe into the allegations.Later, the FSIN announced that independent medical commission from a local hospital had not found injuries on Dadins body.

On November 24, members of the European Parliament (MEPs) during a plenary session expressed concern over the welfare of Dadin and called on Russia to immediately release him. MEPs insisted on a thorough and transparent independent investigation into the situation with Dadin who had complained on a number of occasions of prison conditions and torture.

In early January, Zotova wrote on Facebook that Dadin was transferred from a prison in Karelia to Altai.
MOSCOW, February 3 (RAPSI)  Prosecutors asked the Leninsky District Court of Kirov on Friday to give Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny a 5-year suspended sentence and a fine for embezzlement at the Kirovles timber company, Navalnys spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on her Twitter account.

Prosecutors also demanded a 4-year suspended sentence and a fine for another defendant in the case Pyotr Ofitserov.

On Wednesday, the court imposed travel restrictions on Navalny and his accomplice Ofitserov. According to the court order, they are prohibited from leaving Kirov until February 10.

In November, Russia's Supreme Court overturned sentences against Navalny and his accomplice Pyotr Ofitserov in Kirovles embezzlement case and sent it for retrial. The Supreme Court delivered the ruling taking into consideration the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

In February 2016, ECHR held that the applicants right to a fair trial had been violated and ordered Russian authorities to compensate Navalny with 48,000 of legal costs and Ofitserov with 22,000. Additionally, Russia was obliged by court to pay 8,000 euro each in damages.

Russias Justice Ministry filed a request seeking referral of the case to the Grand Chamber of the Strasbourg Court, but the request was dismissed.

Navalny was given a five-year suspended sentence for embezzlement at the Kirovles timber company in July 2013. In May, Moscow's Lyublinsky District Court increased a probation period for him to 5.5 years. Ofitserov received a four-year suspended sentence.

According to investigators, while serving on a voluntary basis as an adviser to the Kirov Region governor Navalny organized the theft of over 10,000 cubic meters of timber from Kirovles company between May and September 2009.

Investigators claimed that Pyotr Ofitserov, then Director of Vyatka Timber Company, and Kirovles CEO Vyacheslav Opalyov were involved in the scheme. Proceedings against Opalyov were treated as a separated criminal case after he had admitted his guilt.
can indeed have a perfectly proper descriptive semantic referent), has now provided us with an illustrious example of the Trump administrations appalling penchant for resort to such falsehoods: Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President and infamous for her recent alternative facts locution (a term, Robert Hockett reminds us, thatindeed have a perfectly proper descriptive semantic referent), has now provided us with an illustrious example of the Trump administrations appalling penchant for resort to such falsehoods:

Speaking to Chris Matthews on MSNBC on Thursday night, Conway said: I bet its brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered.

This is brand-new information alright, because its a complete fabrication: there never was such a massacre:

Conway  appears to be referring to an incident in 2011 when two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan believed they were sending money and weapons to al Qaeda in Iraq when in fact, they were caught in an FBI sting operation. While Hammadi and Alwan were convicted in 2013 of terrorism and are currently imprisoned, there was no massacre in Bowling Green nor were they accused of planning or attempting one.

There was also no ban on the refugee program. As Business Insider reported, the Obama administration delayed processing refugees as it expanded screening measures; refugees already in the country were re-screened. Iraqi refugees continued to enter the country, just at a slower pace.
For a century, Joyce Fuel & Feeds has been offering fuel and agriculture supplies to the folks in central Montana.Recently, the business has added a new location to its two convenient locations in Geraldine, and Fort Benton.Our new location is in Geyser. We already had some existing customers over there, and we saw a need for a feed and fuel agriculture store in Geyser, said Cody Joyce, who works with his father, Perry.Cody said the store in Geyser has been going over very well, and they have good support from the public.Joyce Fuel & Feeds is unusual in that it has been in the same family for 100 years.My great great uncle started the business in 1916 and then my grandfather, and later, Perry, my dad, took over. We are the third and fourth generation to run it, said Cody, who owns Joyce Fuel & Feeds with his father.In 1916, when the Joyce family bought the business, they named it Joyce Coal and Ice, which demonstrates what farmers, ranchers and the rural population needed back in those days. Perrys parents had 15 children, and he is the only one of his 14 siblings who decided to carry on the family business. Perry took over the business from his parents in 1986.Very few small businesses are still in business for that long of time, which translates to the fact that Joyce Fuel & Feeds has a great and long-standing tradition in the community.We have a nice history in our communities, and have evolved over the years with the changes in technologies in agriculture, Cody said.The business has grown significantly over the years, and now it is the main place to go for livestock equipment, bulk fuel, clothing, as well as ag supplies.Joyce Fuel & Feeds has been coming to the KMON Montana Agricultural and Industrial Expo, better known as the MAGIE, at the Four Seasons, Montana ExpoPark in Great Falls, MT, for many years.The MAGIE is a great place to showcase our business and all we have, Cody added.Over the years, the MAGIE has proven to be one of the largest farm and ranch trade shows in Montana.Joyce Fuel & Feeds has many items in the livestock line, including chutes, alleys, water tanks, Zane fiberglass, polytanks, tubs, floating tubs, posts, feeders, barbed wire, Santana Post Pounders and liquid and other feed supplements.We are now a dealer for Montana Post Driver, Cody said.Handling the Montana Post Driver came about because they listen carefully to what their customers want and keep up with the latest technologies in the agriculture field. Many asked about the pounder, so they decided to carry the line, and it has been becoming more and more popular.Floyd Yoder, who owns and operates Montana Post Drivers in Gold Creek, Mont., said the Montana Post Pounder was based on jackhammer technology that is a better, faster, way to drive posts into the ground, whether that ground was rough and compacted or it was soil on CRP land which hadnt been worked in years.Joyce Fuel & Feeds is also a dealer for Classic Equine.Many producers have horses or breed horses, and they need a local place to go to purchase equine equipment, Cody said. Classic Equine has ropes, tack, designer clothes, boots and many other horse enthusiast items. We always have good stock for horses.This time of year, special work or winter clothing is needed as producers work livestock and do other chores around the ranch  and Joyce Fuel & Feeds has all the clothing a producer might be looking for.We sell all kinds of clothing, Cody said. They carry the well-known long-lasting and well-fitting Carhartt brand and a wide range of work clothing, work boots, winter wear and western wear.They also have all the high-quality boots around, including: Muck boots which are 100 percent waterproof rubber boots that keep feet dry and comfortable; Justin boots, known as the powerhouse of western boots, and Ariat boots, famous for going from the rodeo to the barn and everything in between.The technologies that have evolved in agriculture that Joyce Fuel & Feeds carry include feed, fencing and chemicals, among others. They are a dealer for some herbicides and pesticides, but not in large bulk.Feed supplements are a major part of the store.We certainly have evolved with feed. There are so many options for producers, pellets, liquid feed, Nutra-Lix tubs, tubs with molasses and more, and we carry those lines, Cody said. Cows need nutritional increases this time of year, especially with the winter weather, and lick tubs and feed supplements can provide that.Cody added they will be bringing some of their livestock equipment, clothing, boots and some home decor with them to the MAGIE, so look for the Joyce Fuel & Feed booth there.
BILLINGS, MT  The state of Montanas agricultural sector is strong, according to speakers at the 2017 Agriculture Appreciation Banquet held Jan. 20 at MetraPark.The Chamber Ag Appreciation Banquet has taken place every winter since 1998 for the areas farmers, ranchers, consumers and agri-business people. This year, four speakers each gave a thumbnail synapsis of the industry from his or her perspective.Randall Jobman, vice president of agriculture, North Region for Western Sugar, serves on the board of the American Society of Sugar Beet Technologists. He said the 850 growers in a four-state region produced 3.7 million tons of sugarbeets this year.Although the harvest was awesome, Jobman said the producers will only just breakeven.Thats in part because of the bilateral sugar trade agreements with Mexico that suspended antidumping and countervailing duties on Mexican sugar exports to the United States, Jobman said. It also has to do with the fact that sugar from beets, the vast majority of which are genetically modified, or GMO, sells at as discount compared with cane sugar, which is non-GMO, Jobman said.All sugar from beets is GMO free, Jobman said. Its about changing the perception of GMO and educating consumers about how raising GMO beets means producers use fewer chemicals, less water and less energy.Jobman referenced Field to Market: The Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, an organization he said rightly encourages commodity crop producers to tell their stories to customers, end users and food processors with transparency and collaboration.Michelle Erickson-Jones is vice president of the Montana Grain Growers Association. She said 2017 is replete with struggles and opportunities alike. She said her organization is optimistic the next Farm Bill will have an adequate safety net for farmers. She also said under the new Trump Administration, her organization will be focusing on maintaining and improving trade agreements.We need to make sure we can export our products, she said.Locally, grain growers have been diversifying their wheat and barley rotations by adding in pulse crops for which theres been a commensurate  and welcome  expansion of specialty markets and elevators.Dave Reisig is the owner of Reisig Agency, a farm and ranch insurance agency in Hardin, MT, and head of Empire Angus. He said Montana cattle producers have the 11th largest cattle herd in the nation and that the cow/calf operators are hurting terribly from the down cattle market.The rancher just doesnt have the extra money to spend, he said.One bright spot: Montana cattle producers will most certainly benefit from Chinas decision to reopen its border to shipments of U.S. beef.Charles Boyer is the vice president and dean of agriculture at Montana State University. He touted the growth of MSU  30 percent in nine years  and that of MSUs College of Agriculture  60 percent over the same period. He also said that 30 percent of the $118 million MSU procured for research and development in 2016 went to ag, much of it specifically for locally-adapted research conducted by the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station.Montana's Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) has faculty and supporting staff conducting research on crop and animal production methods, markets, pest management and environmental quality. MAES has seven off-campus Research Centers and local campus farms that address production challenges across the state.Between Extension and the Research Centers and campuses, MSU is truly state wide, he said.
Billings, MTBruce MacIntyre remembers when Billings ended at 8th Street West, the Heights was a series of small farms, and Rocky Mountain College was Billings Polytechnic, an institution so far out of town it had its own post office.A lot has changed since those days in Billings, and a lot has changed in agriculture, the region's number one industry. MacIntyre, the Billings Chamber of Commerce 2017 Ag Excellence Award Recipient, has been involved in it all."In the car business I always knew if it was a good year for farmers and ranchers, because it was a good year for me," said MacIntyre, a former General Motors Pontiac and Cadillac dealer. "You never knew until the grain was in the bin or the cattle went to market."MacIntyre, senior public policy advisor with the Billings Chamber of Commerce, was recognized Jan. 20 at the Ag Appreciation Banquet. The annual winter banquet celebrates the area's farmers, ranchers, consumers and agri-business representatives.A third-generation Montanan and native of Billings, MacIntyre has been involved in the business community for most of his life, both as a business owner and as an employee. He's always had a passion for government that ignited with his involvement in a mock Democratic Convention as an undergraduate at Notre Dame with Tom Judge, who later became the governor of Montana.When MacIntyre married, his late wife, Linda, stipulated that he could do "his political thing" so long as he did not run for elected office. Instead, he indulged his political side by getting involved with the Billings Chamber on the Legislative and Civic Affairs Committees. He's been in his current position 11 years.As the Chamber's Agriculture Committee liaison, MacIntyre fosters Montana's top industry on the local and regional level, supporting ag and the people behind it with the appreciation, respect and understanding that was recognized with his recent award."My goal is to get them more involved in the political process," MacIntyre said.
This is despotism, this is tyranny, this is the annihilation of liberty. The ordinary American is thus reduced to the status of a robot. The president has not merely signed the death warrant of democracy but has ordained the mutilation of the Constitution, unless the friends of liberty, regardless of party, band themselves together to regain their lost freedom.

Ripped from todays headlines? Hardly. The words above came from a letter by Republican Sen. Henry D. Hatfield of West Virginia written in 1933, blasting the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Those were tough times with democracy hanging in the balance. There were even suggestions that a benevolent dictator was needed to pull America out of its economic morass. FDR was enacting policies that upset both the right and the left. Some even considered Roosevelt to be a communist.

It was during this tense time in our history that a conspiracy to overthrow FDR was hatched. Now known as the Wall Street Putsch, it was a scheme plotted by right-wing financiers. The conspirators had plenty of cash and a stockpile of weapons. The plotters were upset over Roosevelts New Deal policies, especially the National Recovery Administration, which set minimum wages and reduced the workweek.

In 1933, these individuals formed the American Liberty League whose members included, among others, the president of DuPont, 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith, undersecretary of the Treasury Dean Atchison, and Prescott Bush (grandfather of George W. Bush). After solidifying their schemes, A.L.L. reached out to retired General Darlington Butler to actively lead their revolt. However, Butler considered what the group had in mind as treasonous and reported the scheme to Congress.

When testifying in front of a Congressional committee, he stated that Wall Street bond salesman Gerald MacGuire had attempted to recruit him to lead a 500,000-strong American Legion militia to march on Washington, D.C. and take over the government. If the coup been successful, Butler said he would have held near-absolute power in the newly created position of Secretary of General Affairs, with Roosevelt merely serving as a figurehead.

However, his testimony fell on deaf ears. No one was charged. In fact, the press dismissed his claims, with the New York Times calling it a gigantic hoax. Those implicated in the plot by Butler denied any involvement. General Douglas MacArthur, the alleged back-up leader of the putsch if Butler had declined, referred to it as the best laugh story of the year.

However, in 1936, the U. S. ambassador to Germany wrote a letter to President Roosevelt in which he stated Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there. A prominent executive of one of the largest corporations, told me point blank that he would be ready to take definite action to bring fascism into America if President Roosevelt continued his progressive policies.

Later historians have taken a more dismissive view of the so-called putsch with one stating that while the accusations probably had some validity, its substance was overstated by General Butler. Whatever the validity of the plot against FDR, it serves as a reminder that citizens need to be ever vigilant in protecting democracy in times of crisis.
LOGAN, UT  Alfred Arsel Haws was born Dec. 13, 1917 in Jefferson, Oklahoma, to Grover and Esther Haws. Alfred had three brothers and four sisters. The family farmed in Olkahoma and Texas before moving to New Mexico where they again farmed. Alfred helped his dad and brothers farm before being drafted into the Army in 1940. Alfred enlisted with his brother Claude. They went to the Philipines and were there when the Japanese attacked. They went through the Bataan Death March, to a prison camp, where Claude passed away from starvation. Alfred spent the next 3  years as a POW in Japan, working in a steel mill for them. When our bombers hit the mill, he was hit with shrapnel losing his arm.

Alfred married Mary Loyce Moss in December of 1946 while living in Clovis, New Mexico. They had four children: Robbie Gayle, Ted, Susan, and DeLoyce.

In 1957 the family moved to Montana where Alfred began farming and ranching again. Alfred also worked for the forest service cleaning trails, planting trees and fighting forest fires.

They were very active in their church which they helped established and build in Hamilton.

They also owned and operated Bitterroot Christian Daycare, taking care of 100s of kids during their 13 years.

Alfred and Mary became Snowbirds and began commuting from Montana to New Mexico for several years. In 1997 they moved back to New Mexico permanently. Their next move was to Amarillo, TX where Mary went to be with the Lord and Alfred moved to Logan, UT to be close to his daughter.

Alfred lived in Autumn Blessings for six years until he too went home to be with the Lord, Friday, Jan. 13, 2017.

Surviving Alfred are his son Ted and wife Cindy, his daughter Susan and husband Ken, his youngest daughter DeLoyce and husband Tom, five grandchildren, many great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.

Preceding Alfred in death are his parents, his brothers and sisters, a grandson Thane and a great granddaughter Valerie.
HELENA  The chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes called on state leaders to seize on healthy disagreements as an opportunity to create the best policies for all Montana residents, tapping into historical shared values to guide them toward common sense.

Montana has always been a place where people have come together, Vernon Finley said Thursday during the annual Tribal Address to the Legislature and other statewide elected officials and leaders from reservations around the state.

The message of unity and respect shared by Finley echoed similar pleas made by legislators when the 2017 session started last month and by the governor in his State of the State speech last week.

Finley pleaded for state leaders to move in the opposite direction of national politics where tensions and uncertainty have grown during the transition of President Donald Trump into office. He acknowledged that the state has its own history of conflicts, but argued leaders have ultimately found a balance for the good of their constituents.

Weve been a place of opposites. You see those opposites. Theyre married. If you see one and dont see the other its because you arent looking, he said, contrasting religious cults and the Unabomber to accomplishments like the election of Jeannette Rankin as the first woman in Congress. The sides always come together to create a really good history for this state.

Finley suggested Americans, and Montanans in particular, might learn from the American Indian Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which at its core was about reconnecting tribal members to their cultural values and living by them. A large part of that was a recognition that decisions should be made in the context of the communitys whole history and with respect for all its diverse members.

You, as a human being, is the youngest of all creation and everything else that is there before you has to be respected, he said. He later added: The world view that came out of it was people who carried themselves on their Earth knowing youre never alone. Youre never alone in your thoughts. In where you are at. Theres always someone listening to your words, watching your actions, listening to your thoughts.

Finley highlighted several Montana achievements he attributed to state leaders being mindful of their heritage and common values they share with Native Americans who first made the state home: delegates writing a recognition of tribal governments into the Montana Constitution, Gov. Steve Bullock appointing a record number of Native Americans to boards and administrative positions, Attorney General Tim Fox conducting authentic tribal consultations on Justice Department policies, and commissioners who prioritized fair representation when redrawing legislative boundaries in 2012 to include six majority-minority districts to comply with the federal Voting Rights Act.

He also lauded Bullock, Fox and others for speaking out against racial and religious hate speech in Whitefish that had drawn national attention in recent months.

Legislators from both parties applauded as Finley named each achievement.

He said that kind of progress requires commitment and a watchful eye for ideas based on something other than the principles you hold dear, urging them to turn away proposals based on race, based on social economic status, based on gender or based on things that arent really about Montana.

My plea to you this afternoon is that you keep that in mind as you move forward and consider all of the legislation that is coming before you. What are all of these perspectives that are in our state? Are they respected with this? Is there some compromise that can be made? he said. There are opposites married within this chamber, but as long as you keep the focus on what is best for all of Montana in mind, well do fine.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Construction is likely to start soon for two notable buildings at the edges of the Cleveland Clinic's main campus, in the wake of approvals granted Friday by the Cleveland City Planning Commission.

The public body gave a thumbs-up to designs for an $11.1 million office building that will house a growing division of IBM Corp. and a dental clinic tied to a $515 million health-education collaboration between the Clinic and Case Western Reserve University.

The commission's actions pave the way for foundation work on both buildings. The projects will require another round of reviews before vertical construction can begin.

Renderings presented at Friday's meeting offered the first glimpse of the IBM building, at East 105th Street and Cedar Avenue, and the dental clinic, north of Chester Avenue between East 93rd and 97th streets. Both projects will occupy transitional sites where institutional uses run up against houses in the surrounding Fairfax and Hough neighborhoods.

The IBM building will sit at the northern end of Opportunity Corridor, a boulevard that's been pitched as an economic-development tool and a link between the highway system at East 55th Street and the employment hub of University Circle.

The 43,000-square-foot space will be a new home for the business that started out as Explorys, a homegrown healthcare data analytics company. IBM acquired Explorys in 2015 and has folded the company into the technology giant's Watson Health division.

Hemingway Development plans to erect the building, which IBM will lease, on a parking lot owned by the Clinic. The Clinic will continue to own the underlying land and has the right to buy the IBM building from Hemingway at the end of a 10-year lease.

IBM currently is leasing space for Explorys in downtown Cleveland, at the 1111 Superior office tower. The company's new building, a white-brick structure guided by the Clinic's austere design standards, will be complete in early 2018. Site work could start in 30 to 45 days.

Cleveland City Council approved a financial-incentive package for the project last year.

"The expectation is that there will be 300 jobs in this building," Brian Smith, the Clinic's director of strategic project development, told the planning commission.

Plans prepared by GLSD Architects show 191 parking spaces and pockets of greenery and seating areas meant to soften the edges of the site.

A few blocks away, the Clinic and CWRU aim to open their 134,000-square-foot dental clinic in spring 2019 - a timeline that dovetails with the planned completion of the partners' Health Education Campus to the south. The clinic will replace an existing facility on CWRU's campus, where dental students provide relatively low-cost care under professional supervision.

The new, three-story building will hold 200 chairs for dental care.

To make way for the project, the KinderCare Learning Center at University Circle moved into newly constructed space at the Innova apartments across East 97th Street. The childcare center's former building, on Clinic-owned land, will be razed. CWRU owns the rest of the site.

Architect Philip LiBassi, of the Westlake Reed Leskosky firm, said crosswalks at East 93rd and East 100th streets will be the main connections between the dental clinic and the rest of the Health Education Campus on the south side of Chester. He predicted as many as 1,000 crossings a day by students and faculty members on foot.

Planning commission members raised questions about traffic and safety on a busy main street. And the city's planning and community development departments encouraged the Clinic and CWRU to add outdoor seating and make other efforts to better integrate the building with its surroundings, including the existing Hough neighborhood and new housing and retail.

"I think we're moving this in the right direction," said Freddy Collier, the city's planning director.
Though touted as acceptance of political reintegration, the Nepali Maoist move to end the 1996-2006 overt hostilities was at the time tactical rather than strategic. The party had no intention of supporting a parliamentary version of democracy and thus, for most of the 2006-2016 periods, engaged in a covert effort to seize power. In this effort, it made ample use of terrorism. Ultimately, organizational, national, and regional circumstances caused the main Maoist movement to move decisively away from its covert approach. By that time, however, radical splinters had embraced the use of terrorism against rival political actors, creating a situation whereby local politics is yet a dangerous endeavor in circumstances and places.

In a recent South Asia Intelligence Review (SAIR) posting, Enduring Dilemmas, S. Binodkumar Singh observes:

The point of the title, as reflected in the content, is that while the Maoist quest for power has petered out (i.e., the insurgency), the roots of conflict not only remain but are driving a new round of challenges which place the very future of a unified Nepal at stake. Most salient of these is the issue of the tarai (also rendered as terai; the relatively narrow flatlands bordering India), the where the Madhesi movement claims to speak for a variety of cross-cutting cleavages involving everything from communal disadvantage to geographic discrimination to gerrymandered representation not reflecting present population.

This is quite accurate as far as it goes. But in using as its foundation a straw man of vanished insurgency, particularly one measured only in deaths (themselves a rather indeterminate category in data bases driven in large part by counts derived from English-language Kathmandu dailies), the article cedes the opportunity to discuss the continuing insurgent dreams of the Maoist splinters and the considerable violence they continue to interject at the local level in what otherwise could indeed be assessed as a much-improved post-peoples war situation.

It is this subject which I have addressed in several articles, most recently in Small Wars and Insurgencies, Terrorism as Method in Nepali Maoist Insurgency, 1996-2016.[2] Therein, as will be discussed below, I seek to grapple with the continued use of terrorism that falls short of lethal. Indeed, the emphasis upon body count above is misplaced, since in any insurgent situation, it is not deaths that dominate the statistics but assault upon the innocent for the purposes of terrorizing. Further, innocence extends not only to individuals but to property in most formulations of definition.

To stick with innocent persons for now, the point can be illustrated by using two quite typical assaults from the period of open conflict in Nepal, 1996-2006. As related in an article discussing an attack upon a village political activist:

That either case might easily have resulted in death for the victim should not obscure the thousands who were assaulted with the clear intention not of producing death but example.

Throughout the prosecution of their peoples war (an insurgency), the Nepali Maoists used a mix of violent and nonviolent actions (e.g., terrorism mixed with propaganda); of military and political actions; of local and international actions; and of direct mobilization into their political organization (through both proselytization and coercion) in coordination with more subtle co-optation of civil society. Maoist targeting took the form it did, because political mobilization by democratic government, through both direct recruitment and ensuring popular access to the mechanisms of governance, was (and remains) the greatest threat to the violent effort of the Maoists to seize power. Democratic empowerment as realized through political parties and institutions integral to citizenship and governance (e.g., the educational and social welfare systems), together with civil society (particularly social welfare and justice organizations), are the premier challengers in efforts to mobilize the populace. Therefore, they must be co-opted or destroyed by an insurgent group. Destruction, in the first instance, takes the form of terrorism, progressing later, as necessary, to higher forms of warfare.[5]

A voluminous body of work on this topic has accumulated since World War II. Certainly the premier treatment remains Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam,[6] which provides in considerable detail  citing insurgent documents and persons  the necessity that a new order accumulate strength by controlling the organizations and ideas through which the population goes about normal life. This allows all activity  from schooling to medical treatment to economic activity to administration of justice to festivals to clothing  to be channeled as necessary into support of revolutionary activity.

In Nepal, as has been well documented, terrorism to ensure obedience was widespread and ubiquitous. Body count was certainly important: The most iconic photo of the entire war is that of a teacher, Muktinath Adhikari, headmaster and 10th Grade instructor at Padmini Sanskrit Higher Secondary School in Lamjung District, who was murdered for a variety of reasons, to include refusing to pay the revolutionary tax demanded.[7] Teachers, in fact, comprised an important category of victims.

Nevertheless, the goal of such action, whether lethal or not, was local control upon which could be built a revolutionary counter-state to challenge the state. To claim this effort is no longer a factor in Nepal is to miss a development of ongoing concern. Overt warfare has again returned to covert warfare, with deaths the exception, but terror still present.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

For the sake of clarity, it is useful to begin with a conclusion of sorts: the (present) nature of the threat. Though Nepalis speak generically of the actions of Maoists, there is no longer a unified movement represented by that term but rather a fragmented spectrum that has seen until recently as many as ten parties  of which three were dominant  all claiming to be the true standard-bearers of the would-be revolution in Nepal. In May 2016, five of the major Maoist parties and a number of radicals who had drifted away from politics again reunited to form the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) or CPN (Maoist Centre), but this still leaves the movement divided. For reasons that will become clear below, this has caused the situation to remain dangerous in many areas for normal political activism in support of democratic process.

For much of the 2006-2016 period, the now-mainstream Maoists of the CPN (Maoist Centre) emphasized terrorism as had been a key component of their insurgent action during the 1996-2006 period. They did so in order to shape the political battlespace. Hence, their recent opportunistic move towards participation in the very parliamentary system they had tried so hard to destroy has produced bitter splinters determined to push back against this perceived betrayal in favor of continuing the revolution through the use of violence as dictated by strategic circumstances. Unable or unwilling to deal with the situation, the state allows local violence to continue, particularly in obscure areas removed from vehicular access.

In such an assertion, agency surfaces as a central concern. The danger in dealing with the situation in Nepal today is to engage in teleological strategic assessment which holds that where the mainstream Maoists are now  in power as a result of parliamentary maneuvering  is how they intended the process to work out. Nothing could be further from the case. Strategy called for continuing the peoples war through emphasis upon the united front line of effort enabled by terrorism. That events played themselves out in contingent fashion resulted from dynamic structural alignments that were as unique as Nepal itself. The present, then, was anything but calculated. All that was certain was that violence in the form of terrorism was to continue to be a weapon of choice in the Maoist quest to rule.

Insurgency is a violent state-building project; i.e., construction of a new world, or counter-state, to challenge the existing world, normally embodied in a state or states(s). Terrorism  the attack on the innocent by sub-state actors in pursuit of political objectives  is always one method in this project; but at times, when the violence directed at noncombatants swallows the project itself, can become a logic; i.e., terrorism as the term evolved, the revolutionary project of a (often primary) group structurally estranged from its purported mass or social base.[8] The distinction between terrorism as a logic and as a method has evolved symbiotically with historical context. An unfortunate trend in the post-9/11 academic world, though, has been to conflate the originally separate bodies of discourse and study, to the extent that terrorism as an act for the establishment of local power (a profoundly political method) has more often than not been seen in the same analytical light as deeds intended for larger audiences, often national or even international. This further causes to be obscured the operational calculation at work. Terrorism need not be lethal, merely effective.

Hence most terrorism in Nepal, whether that of 1996-2006 or 2006-2016, has not resulted in deaths but injury, surrender (in the form of joining the instigators), or flight. Flight (as realized in terrified victims) has been key to producing a source of data from which the parameters of 2006-2016 violence. [9]

This present grows organically from the past. The now-mainstream Maoists committed unspeakable crimes both during and after the 1996-2006 decade of overt effort to seize political power.[10] This created a situation whereby violence became the common currency of political action; that is, terrorism became all but institutionalized in Nepal. The Maoist mainstream has in the last several years sought to move beyond atrocity  in exchange for a slice of the power it was unable to seize or to gain through free elections in the very violent post-2006 context  but this has created an expected outbidding situation, whereby the principal Maoist splinters have refused to renounce violence in an effort to emerge as the legitimate standard-bearers of revolution.[11]

The epicenter of violent splinter activity has been the original Mid-Western Hills birthplace of the Maoist movement. To the minds of the Maoist splinters still operating there, advocacy of and use of terrorism as dictated by local circumstances is the only way to continue the struggle to revolutionize the country and to attract the radicalized elements who feel betrayed by the mainstream Maoist partys late embrace of democratic process. Thus the splinters engage in violence directed at the innocent, as required, both to neutralize their political activities and to force them to provide support through forced membership and revolutionary taxation (i.e., forced financial donations).

The original and still largest Maoist group is what for a majority of the period under consideration was named the Communist Party of Nepal or CPN(M), headed throughout by Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda (Fierce One gained currency in international media, though Renowned has recently been offered as a translation). It changed its name to the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M) after the end of overt hostilities (1996-2006) and the beginning of covert hostilities (post-2006). With the latest reunification, it has changed its name yet again, as noted above.

Within this larger party existed factions that were loyal to particular leaders outside the mainstream. One of these factions, headed by a dogmatic veteran of the movement, Mohan Baidya aka Kiran (Ray of Light), became increasingly alienated from the mainstream during the 2005-2006 period and by early 2011, minimally, was operating semi-autonomously and engaging in widespread acts of terrorism in Rukum. It finally broke away formally in late June 2012 under the original party name, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (using CPN-M as its acronym). It took with it many of the most violent actors relevant to the discussion herein, perhaps one-third of the entire party, and is termed here, the radical Maoists. In the media, it was frequently termed simply, Baidya Maoists. Following its separation, its local violence included instances serious enough to require hospitalization of the victims, all political activists of rival parties. There was no unique clothing or identifying regalia used to distinguish this or any other splinter group.

This becomes of still more moment, because an even more radical and violent splinter, led by firebrand Netra Bikram Chand aka Biplab (also rendered as Biplav; Rebel is often advanced as the most useful translation), broke away in November 2014 from the Baidya Maoists and designated itself as CPN(M), using the original acronym of the Maoist movement. It took with it initially perhaps one-third of the Baidya Maoists (thus one-ninth of the original Maoist movement) and may be termed the ultra-radicals.

Finally, as noted above, some half a dozen other violent Maoist splinters likewise coalesced from those dissatisfied with these major factions; they also use the Maoist name but need not be discussed in-depth here.

To understand the issues which led to the split, hence to the continued use of terrorism, albeit in an often less lethal but still brutal form and scope in post-2006 Nepal, a brief overview of Maoist strategy in the past two decades is necessary. In the first decade under consideration, February 1996 to November 2006, Nepal was buffeted by the overt effort of the original group discussed above, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or CPN(M), to overthrow the existing government and remake society according to the Partys understanding of Mao Tse-tungs concept of new democracy.[12]

Simplifying a complex argument, the need to struggle against a common foe  in this case, international capitalism, as realized in the likes of India and the U.S., with the Nepali state its allies and creatures  requires a united front of all except the most die-hard elements. The requirements of establishing socialism and finally communism (e.g., confiscation of property, especially land) can be delayed in this new democracy until the situation allows their implementation. In Maos China, this occurred some five years after the 1949 victory, most of the population having been mobilized not in the name of social revolution but of nationalism.[13] In contrast, the extreme Maoist agenda of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia implemented the national and social revolutions simultaneously, then with the 1975 victory over the Lon Nol government, declared the beginning of a radical new era: Year Zero.[14]

For much of the second decade under consideration, November 1996 to the present, the Maoists waged a covert struggle to achieve the same end, power. Though they ostensibly reintegrated into normal politics as a consequence of a ceasefire agreement in April 2006 and a comprehensive peace accord that went into effect in November 2006 (with numerous follow-on agreements also signed), they continued to state (publically and in their private sessions) that they were involved in an armed revolutionary struggle strategically and were only proceeding by a different path tactically (i.e., political struggle). The explicit position of the party was that: (a) Democratic process was illegitimate, and majority votes did not represent the will of the people; (b) Rather, such votes represented the existing structure of power; (c) Therefore, that power structure still had to be dealt with using violence; (d) The only question was what form violence should take (a consideration which included timing); and (e) Consequently, participation in Nepals democratic system was a tactical gambit to further violent revolutionary options.[15]

As noted above, the party majority maintained this position until relatively recently. Thus it continued many of its covert, illicit activities even as its main organs moved above-ground. It not only embraced all elements delimited, a through e, but moved aggressively to use covert violence  terrorism carried out against local political opponents as opposed to overt guerrilla warfare  to solidify its position and to win parliamentary votes. It used specially constituted forces, notably the Young Communist League (YCL), to carry out these attacks. The Maoists were effective to the point that they were able to control elections and twice held the prime ministership, which allowed the Party to neutralize still further remaining resistance within the demoralized security forces and to expand its influence and solidify its finances.

Gradually, however, the Maoists found themselves stymied by internal opposition which was buttressed by Nepals giant neighbor, India (which, for geostrategic reasons, had actually assisted the Maoists at times during the 1996-2006 conflict[16]). This led to an increasingly bitter intra-party debate as to the viability of continuing with opportunistic terrorism (as favored by the parent party) as opposed to a much more systematic use of terrorism combined with urban guerrilla warfare (as favored by the factions that ultimately splintered to form their own Maoist parties).

Outbidding occurred, in which the price of party unity was allowing the dissenting Baidya faction to adopt more aggressive use of terrorism and preparation for urban action as precursors for renewed open warfare, even as the main Dahal aka Prachanda faction had to acquiesce in violent local assaults by its own cadre lest it lose them to the more energetic opposition. It can be seen that this was a battle over d above, with the dissent demanding an explicit plan for ending e (participation in the democratic system); for there was no disagreement on a through c. Ultimately, these contending tendencies could not be held together, and the party split; the breakaway Baidya faction, as noted above, bolting in June 2012 from the parent Dahal aka Prachanda faction and declaring its intent to move rapidly and aggressively to assault the remnant of the state.

The practical result for politically active Nepalis was that they found themselves attacked throughout the country but particularly in areas of minimal (often ineffective in even the best of circumstances) or absent state presence. This reality intensified when similar constraints to those faced by the Dahal aka Prachanda faction also stymied the Baidya faction in its desire for outright resumption of armed hostilities.

The result was that its own radical wing, the Chand faction, as noted above, split in November 2014 and attempted once again to put in practice the desire for outright confrontation. Since this desire did not include being suicidal, its violence also focused upon covert terrorism in outlying areas, where it could achieve small victories and begin to rebuild the revolutionary organization it felt the other Maoist factions had foolishly let wither away.[17]

In recent fieldwork interviews, I found various terms used to express this ongoing strategy; e.g., unified rebellion and build peoples revolt on the foundation of peoples war. What these mean is what the Vietnamese called the war of interlocking or all forms of struggle; i.e., the radical and ultra-radical splinters seek to move beyond what in 1996-2006 they assess was an overwhelmingly rural-based, guerrilla mode of warfare (peoples war) to a mix of this with urban action (peoples revolt) to create unified rebellion.

In one sense, this is a misunderstanding by the splinters of the peoples war strategy that the unified Maoist movement waged. Urban action was an important part of the effort. In another sense, though, it does correctly grasp that this urban action was always tactical (e.g., assassinations) and did not support mass organizing in the cities that would support peoples revolt. As concerns potential targets, the distinction hardly matters; but in the longer-term, the peoples revolt would be far more violent. It was the goal of the Vietnamese communists in their now-legendary Tet of 68 offensive (January-February 1968) in South Vietnam.[18]

Thus, ironically, Maoist threats and physical assault continued as a central feature throughout the period of peace, which in reality was one of covert conflict by the Maoists. From beginning to present, peace has been marred by Maoist terrorism that the state has been either unable or unwilling to control. Statistics have not been officially tabulated by any source for reasons which speak to the profound poverty and inequity within the society, the corruption and ineffectiveness of the police, and the distracted nature of national politics. Numbers of victims, however, for the period of peace, 2006-2016, appear to be in the thousands, most assaulted as opposed to killed.

The cumulative reality of what has happened and continues to happen in particular areas at the hands of Maoist splinters has received some attention, overwhelmingly in Nepali media.[19] No individual details of cases are provided here except as have already been published (e.g., above). This stems from the reality (in addition to confidentiality) that anyone with even the most tenuous identifying details will be hunted down and subjected to terroristic violence that invariably includes torture and even death.

This is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the conflict during both its overt and covert phases. As mentioned at the offset, it successfully blurs not only war and peace but the legal and the illegal. For the state remains more invested in process than in matters of individual justice, thus pursues what effectively is none of the cases that comprise the basis for this discussion.

HALF A LOAF

Having considered an overview of the situation, we can discuss recent events. It is often forgotten the lengths to which the mainstream Maoists went to reduce the second constitutional assembly, or CA II, to chaos.[20] Though there is no way of knowing, the April 2015 earthquake (with severe aftershocks in May 2015), the most severe since 1934, appears to have served as an intervening variable. Massive damage and widespread deaths  at least 9,000 dead and more than 22,000 injured  occurred even as the Chand faction was aggressively using terrorism to seize land and to establish parallel governance structures in areas best designed to generate publicity.[21] Reports indicated that it was also collecting weapons. In such context, the mainstream Maoist faction found itself forced to alter its strategic approach.

Quite apart from the factionalism already discussed, the movement had throughout its history struggled to balance the personalities and designs of its two senior figures, Dahal (a former school teacher with an MA; born 1954) and Bhattarai (also a former teacher but with a PhD; also apparently born in 1954), both well known to all analysts dealing with Nepal. Both were active in CAII, because, though relegated to a distant minority position in the popular voting, their mainstream Maoist faction remained important, particularly as it maneuvered constantly to reunite the party factions.

The price demanded by the radicals and ultra-radicals for restored Party unity, as already noted, was a commitment by the mainstream to the aggressive use of violence to consolidate the revolution. Anxious to keep this from happening, CAII leaders from the traditional majority parties gave Dahal and Bhattarai gateway positions (i.e., committees through which constitutional drafts flowed) in the drafting process disproportionate to the actual Maoist mainstream party count of delegates. This facilitated the completion of the constitution-writing process and the promulgation of the new constitution on 18 September 2015 but also proved decisive in yet a further split within the mainstream.

Faced with the task of electing the first officials to govern under the new constitution, the legal Marxists of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), or simply UML  who were a slight second in CAII votes to the more centrist governing party, Nepali Congress  cut a deal with the Dahal faction and several other smaller parties to provide their crucial swing votes to create a UML majority. The price was a number of key Cabinet seats for the Dahal adherents to the exclusion of Dr. Bhattarai and his followers. As a result, Bhattarai resigned from the party to form a New Force.[22] This left the Dahal faction as the official Maoists.[23]

Their prizes from the UML included the all-important Home Affairs Ministry, which controls the police. The individual selected, Shakti Basnet, had been the personal secretary to Dahal during the latters term as prime minister. That term  and the violence-filled years leading up to it  as has been extensively discussed in media and literature  was filled with extensive use of terrorism, often of the most heinous sorts. Once in office, Dahal used his position to neutralize the already minimal police response to Maoist depredations. The system of justice functioned episodically. It is difficult to conceive of a situation where Basnet was ignorant of these crimes. The position of Home Minister, to be clear, was reserved for the Maoists (as were the others) as a party as the price for their support. Basnet was named by Dahal to be the partys nominee, thus was appointed.

Likewise, Ganesh Man Pun, the head of the YCL, which played such a prominent role in the post-November 2006 covert violence was named by the Maoists to head the Commerce and Supplies Ministry, an ideal position, it would seem, for raising of funds for the party. Altogether, eight ministries were allocated to the Maoists. The apex post, though, was the reward bestowed on the former head of the Maoist armed forces (the PLA), Nanda Bahadur Pun, who was elected Vice President. His first recorded act was to call on Mr. Dahal aka Prachanda to thank him for naming him as the partys candidate in the pre-arranged vote. The PLA, it goes without saying, also figures prominently in post-November 2006 terrorism, in particular through its actions staged from Shakti Khor camp.[24]

If this was the foreground, the background was violence at an altogether new post-war level. For the constitution was a series of imperfect compromises between traditional and radical positions, with the clear loser minority populations that had been mobilized by the Maoists with the promise that benefits would flow from seizure of power. Especially important, as well-discussed in the SAIR analysis noted above, were those populations clustered in Nepals traditional breadbasket, the tarai. The Maoist effort to exacerbate and then exploit the astonishing diversity of Nepali society had resulted in promises and commitments that could not possibly be honored. There was no intention to do so. The objective in making them was to gain power, then to deal as necessary with the backlash.[25]

In the event, as discussed above, the Maoists found themselves split by centrifugal tendencies and could not see through their strategy. Nepali society nonetheless bore the brunt of the energized divisive forces. The result was an explosion of violence led by important societal groups that had been mobilized by the Maoists through promises of a new distribution of power that ultimately could not be recognized in the constitution. In this violence, members of the radical and ultra-radical Maoist factions were identified and contributed to deaths among the police, as well as numerous lesser assaults upon security forces and normal members of society. Matters were made substantially worse due to an unofficial blockade of Nepal instituted by India pursuant to its own geostrategic concerns.

From this moment, issues of federalism moved to the fore in Nepali political deliberations. Put simply, how to deal with the destructive division unleashed by the Maoists even as violence had become institutionalized as a political methodology? Hence, enduring dilemmas.

By the time the blockade and the protests petered out in early 2016, the UML coalition was on such shaky ground that the mainstream Maoists saw an unparalleled opportunity to regain power through advocating a unity government  which they would head as the distant third party holding the balance between the Nepali Congress and UML. That the other parties would be willing to accept such an arrangement stemmed from a perfect storm of circumstances: (a) the willingness of the majority parties to let the Maoists try to sort out the disastrous situation they had created by strategic design; and (b) the need, at all costs, to neutralize looming transitional justice implementation. The result was that on 3 August 2016, Dahal began his second term as prime minister. Needless to say, he received no support from those who continued to call themselves the real Maoists and to demand that the revolution go forward.

That the main Maoist faction would settle for half a loaf, so to speak, stemmed  in the opinion of many, in which faction I find myself  from the imperative to avoid a meticulous examination of the crimes of the 1996-2006 period  which would open the door to what had been going on during the 2006-2016 period. There was little is could do to put the genie of societal division back in the bottle; but transitional justice was a potential mortal threat to the party.

Indiscipline by the security forces in 1996-2006 had been widespread, which meant there was bound to be a major public airing of state criminal behavior that had occurred in violation of procedures and laws. Prosecution would open up the possibility of reaching further up the state chain of command.

If this was the concern of majority state forces, the Maoists saw looming much worse. For their criminal acts were not violations of prevailing norms but pursuant to party policy. Even during the bitter fragmentation of the Party, therefore, the Maoist factions periodically came together at public sessions to denounce attempts by victims to pursue justice through the criminal law system. Such pursuit appeared increasingly likely as a series of Supreme Court decisions provided mechanisms to do so.[26] Gaining control of the government would place the Maoists in the position to deal definitively with the situation through perverted application of the law. This in fact proved to be the case. Transitional justice implementation has continued to be still-born.[27]

Nothing illustrated this better than the extraordinary letter sent by the Verdict Implementation Directorate (also translated as Judgement Execution Directorate) of the Nepali Supreme Court to the police and the Home Ministry asking, in effect, why a verdict calling for the arrest of mainstream Maoist figure and former lawmaker Balkrishna Dhungel, who had been convicted or murder, had not been implemented. In a straightforward case complicated by appeals and the political implementation of Bhattarai during his turn at prime minister, the Home Ministry claimed to be unable to locate the suspect, while a police source was quoted by Republica, a leading English-language, Kathmandu-published daily, as stating that the force was waiting for the right political time.[28] This, of course, speaks to the heart of the matter.

Once the mainstream Maoist faction again was in power, with the attendant ability to distribute positions and resources, many of the leading radicals (as noted previously) returned to the fold. Still, most ultra-radical leadership and much of the manpower of both radical and ultra-radical factions did not, and a burning question amongst Nepalis during my recent fieldwork was whether the violent splinters actually intended to move forward with their plans for renewed assault upon the system. Based upon my interviews with individuals at the leadership level who are presently underground, it is clear that they do.

It is the ultra-radical Chand faction which has assumed the lead in this effort. It has retained many of its weapons from the 1996-2006 period[29] and has also obtained supplies of explosives. It continues to drill personnel and to assault individuals as it deems necessary. Its strategy is to build peoples revolt on the foundation of peoples war.

This position has been widely disseminated within faction circles and even in interviews with Nepali media. I discussed it at length with several Chand faction leadership figures during my recent fieldwork, to include most notably with a Central Committee member (i.e., a member of the upper leadership). As the latter stated flatly: At this point in time, we need to focus our attention on the reality that we [the Party] did not say [in opting for peace] that the peoples war was unnecessary or wrong. Rather, we were opting [through the united front] for peoples revolt. If that failed, then we would continue with the peoples war.[30]

The point was that the mainstream had betrayed the strategy that had been agreed upon beginning with the September 2005 Chunwang Plenum and subsequently several more times in hard-fought meetings of the Partys central leadership. What this strategy meant on the ground for numerous activists of rival political parties has been discussed previously. Violence was to continue as the driver for the Maoist effort. As was the case during the overt 1996-2006 phase of hostilities, there is little comprehensive the state can do to counter it and provide security for ordinary citizens.[31]

CONTINUING STRUGGLE

In June 2016, for example, shortly before I arrived in Nepal for my latest fieldwork, the Chand group destroyed six cell-phone towers, citing alleged crimes against the people of Nepals major cellular firm, N-Cell. In September, shortly after I departed, a similar set of attacks by the same splinter targeted private schools within Kathmandu, again alleging crimes against the people.[32] On 6 December, four members of the same splinter were apprehended in moving a substantial lot of semiautomatic rifle ammunition and magazines.[33] Throughout this period, individuals were assaulted and threatened.

This should not surprise. As recently as 27 December of last year, Dahal aka Prachanda could not bring himself to condemn violence. Instead, at an event bringing together all communist parties on the birthday of Karl Marx, the once-again prime minister was reported as opining that the fundamentals of Marxism cannot be ignored including the armed conflict as a tool to capture the state power.[34]

In this confluence of circumstances is on display the heart of the matter: insurgency continues, albeit from a position of back to basics. A large portion of the Maoist manpower has over the past several decades taken its key leaders at their words and adopted violence as an integral form of political discourse  i.e., adopted terrorism as a routine option in dealing with others with whom they disagree. So ingrained was this methodology that when the mainstream Maoists sought to introduce a more subtle use of terrorism, the most radical one-third of the Maoist movement, as highlighted previously, split so as not to be bound by what it saw as the betrayal of revolutionary ideals.

When the same mainstream Maoists decided definitively to opt for participation in the long-denounced parliamentary system  yet continued to speak of (and even encourage) violence as an option  the estranged elements returned to first principles and began the process anew of making revolution. As is always the case in such a political project, terrorism is the foundational weapon, and the innocent are its victims. They need Qnot be murdered to suffer.

About the author:

*Dr. Thomas A. Marks, a member of the advisory board of Mantraya, is Distinguished Professor and Major General Edward Lansdale Chair of Irregular Warfighting Strategy at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) of the National Defense University (NDU), Washington, DC. The views expressed are strictly his own. This occasional paper is published under Mantrayas Mapping terror and Insurgent Networks project.)

Source: This article was published by Mantraya
KABUL, Afghanistan, Feb 3: An Afghan policeman turned his rifle on his colleagues in a northern province, killing eight, while a gunman in the country's east fatally shot a cleric and his wife, officials said on Friday.

The policemen were killed while they were sleeping in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to the provincial police spokesman, Abdul Karim Yuresh.

The attack happened on Thursday night and according to the spokesman, a policeman who was on duty opened fire and killed his colleagues, then collected all their firearms and fled the scene  presumably to join the Taliban.

The Taliban made no official statement or claim about the attack but Afghanistan has seen several such incidents over the past years. There has been a growing number of cases in which Afghan troops or policemen  or Taliban militants dressed in Afghan uniforms  have turning their guns on their colleagues or U.S.-led coalition partners.

Also on Thursday night, in the country's eastern Paktika province, a gunman killed a cleric and his wife, said Mohammad Alias Wahdat, the provincial governor.

Wahdat said the gunman entered the cleric's home in the Yusof Khail district and shot the cleric and his wife. Two of their children who were in the house survived.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the attack and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings.

In other violence, Gul Agha Roohani, the chief of police in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said Islamic State group militants stormed the security posts in the district of Kot early on Friday, killing at least one police officer.

Afghan security forces responded and killed 12 militants, he said.

Afghanistan has been facing major political and security challenges since the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014, leaving a smaller contingent of troops behind to focus on training and counterterrorism.

Also, President Ashraf Ghani has been dealing with a stepped-up insurgency by the Taliban seeking to topple the government as well as an affiliate of the Islamic State group, which emerged two years ago and has expanded its footprint, especially in the country's east and in Nangarhar province.
Guwahati : An army jawan was injured in hand grenade attack by suspected militants in the poll bound Manipur on Wednesday evening, police said on Thursday.

Police said that, suspected militants tossed a hand grenade from a speeding car, while a troop of Second JK Light Infantry was on foot patrolling near Nachou Lamkhai area in Bishnupur district.

Following the grenade attack, army personnel had opened fire on the vehicle, but the militants managed to escape.

The injured army personnel identified as MD Arshad immediately rushed to the Leimakhong based army hospital and doctor said that he is now out of danger.

The north eastern Indian state witnessed several militant attacks on security forces and the state facing problems following ongoing economic blockade imposed by the United Naga Council (UNC) since November 1 last.

Manipur is going to hold the assembly poll on March 4 and 8.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati : Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Thursday said that there is no difference between his work and a sweeper work, as both engaged in cleaning the society.

During the discussion on motion of thanks the Governor's address in the ongoing budget session of the Assam assembly, Sonowal said that, there is no difference between his work and a sweeper work and he is working for the state, society.

"My job to clean the society and to make a good governance," Sonowal said.

The Assam CM further said that, his government will do for the greater interest of the state and people.

"My aim to make Assam free from corruption, insurgency," Sonowal said.

The Assam CM said that, tax collection has grown by 17% during the seven months of his tenure against previous collection rate of 7%.

"The tax collection grown up because of the state government's strong stand against corruption," the Assam CM said.

On the other hand, the Assam CM said on the issue of eviction drive conducted by the state government that if his government were not conducted eviction drive, it would be encouraged the encroachers to encroach more government land in the state.

The opposition critised the state government over the eviction drive and alleged that the drive targeting a special religious minority people.

Reacting to the opposition's allegations, Sonowal said that, it is totally baseless.

"The Kaziranga verdict was delivered by the Gauhati High Court during the previous government tenure. Then why you (Congress) did not appeal against the verdict? Actually you were not concerned about it, but we will take care of the rehabilitation. We must follow the law and as per law we had

done," Sonowal said.

The Assam CM urged the opposition's not to doubt his government's work.

Criticising the previous Tarun Gogoi led government, Sonowal said that, the previous government could not give details of many central funds and they had not utilized it properly.

"There were a huge buden upon us, when our government took charge. But we are trying to impove it and to make it stable," Sonowal said.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Guwahati : Assam has lost 132 one horned rhinoceros since 2016 including 23 rhinos have been poached during the period.

In response to an unstarred question in the ongoing budget session of the Assam assembly, the Assam forest minister Pramila Rani Brahma on Thursday replied that, as many as 132 rhinos have died in the state since 2016.

Among the rhinos that have died, 123 in 2016 and nine in this year so far.

The Assam forest minister said that, a total of 23 rhinos killed by poachers during the period including 22 poached in 2016.

According to the state government data, 18 rhinos were poached alone in Kaziranga National Park in 2016, followed by two in Manas National Park, one in Orang National Park and one outside any reserve forest of the state.

The lone rhino that has killed by poacher in this year so far was in Manas National Park.

The state forest minister said that, as many as 92 poachers were arrested by the security forces from different parts of the state during the period.

'Forest guards and other security agencies had arrested 71 poachers alone from Kaziranga National Park and 12 from Orang National Park,'A the Assam minister said.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
February 2, 2017

Calls to create a committee of inquiry to investigate police conduct during the Jan. 18 eviction of the Bedouin residents of Umm al-Hiran in the south of Israel began even before the eviction of the settlers from the West Bank illegal outpost Amona on Feb. 1. The gentle handling of the settler evacuation further substantiated the need for such a committee. Bedouin leaders and Knesset members from the Joint List are demanding an investigation into two main aspects of the incident. The first is the violent eviction of the village, which was built without permits, under orders more befitting a military operation. The second is the case of Kiyan Abu al-Kiyan, who the police claim is guilty of a vehicular attack that led to the death of policeman Erez Levy.

There is no effective, official way to clear his name and remove the stigma of 'terrorist' with which the police have branded him, except through a committee of inquiry, Kiyans widow, Dr. Amal Abu al-Kiyan, told Al-Monitor in her first media interview. We dont understand how the police could determine immediately that he acted under the influence of the Islamic State and committed a terrorist attack without first investigating his background that of his family. We are convinced that he was not the kind of person who could even think of doing a thing like that.

She described her husband as an introverted educator, saying that he was quiet, calm and optimistic. There was nothing about his behavior to indicate that he intended to engage in an act of violence. He had just bought a new car and new clothes and was planning to build a house. He had his whole life ahead of him, she said.

Kiyan had returned home to pick up his car, computer, television and any cash he had in the house. According to Kiyans cousin Salim, he left home before the police arrived in an attempt to evacuate himself quietly, without violence. While the police say that the headlights of his car were off, citing it as evidence that he planned to run people over, a video published by Al Jazeera shows that the headlights were actually on.

Amal added that her husband came from an educated family with many advanced academic degrees. She herself is a medical doctor and holds another doctorate in science education. She heads a research program at Kaye College and studies interfamilial marriages and genetic diseases in Bedouin society.

Amal has three young daughters, and he also had four more children from a previous marriage. One of them is finishing his medical studies, another is an engineer and the two girls are studying education at Kaye College. Everyone in our family has at least a BA, she said. One of Kiyans brothers is an inspector for the Ministry of Education, while another brother is a school principal. All of his nephews and nieces are doctors, medical students, pharmacists or nurses.

Another family member told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity that the family's passion for education and integration into Israeli society are proof of the falsehoods in the disgraceful accusation that Kiyan was a despicable terrorist, as Police Chief Roni Alsheikh described him in a eulogy he delivered at the funeral of police officer Erez Levy.

Amal said, The students and faculty at the college were shocked. They told me, We know you. We cant understand how they can accuse you without investigating first. We received condolences from across the country, from the Golan to Eilat, and from Jews and Arabs alike. In our tradition, mourning lasts three days, but it has been two weeks since the incident and people continue to come visit us and console us. Everyone supports us, saying that the truth is just starting to come into focus, and that we must do everything we can to make sure that it all comes to light.

An autopsy found two bullets in Kiyans body, indicating that he had been shot before the vehicle crashed and apparently lost control of his car. In a conversation with Al-Monitor, Salim claimed, No autopsy was conducted on the body of the police officer who was killed, making it impossible to prove eyewitness accounts.  The police were firing indiscriminately."

Ayman Odeh, the chairman of the Joint List in the Knesset, claims that he was hit by two rubber bullets during the eviction: one in the forehead and another in his back. The Institute for Forensic Medicine determined that it would be impossible to verify his claims with any degree of certainty, but rejected the assumption of the police that Odeh was hit by stones thrown by Bedouin protesters. In an interview with Al-Monitor, he said that the governments refusal to create a committee of inquiry proves that it has something to hide.

First they accused Yacoub [Kiyan Abu al-Kiyan] of being a member of the Islamic State without even looking into his past or his family background. Minister of Internal Security Gilad Erdan echoed these claims, said Odeh. These events have left a stain on Yacoubs good name. He was buried as a terrorist. They have stigmatized his family. And they have left a blot on all of Bedouin society. As a result of the event, the Bedouin are seen as living in a violent and dangerous society, which must be contained so as to prevent the ideas of the Islamic State from penetrating it. All of this happened without even looking into the accusations. They were all based on the single fact that an Israeli newspaper [Israel Today, which had headlines about terror attacks] was found lying in his home.

Odeh added that there will be a mass demonstration in Rabin Square on Feb. 4 to call for the creation of a committee of inquiry. It is the only way we have to act and exert pressure, he explained, noting he and his colleagues are also considering an appeal to the Supreme Court. They hope to petition the court to instruct the government to investigate the incident and clear Yacoubs name after a highly admired educator beloved by all of his students was made out to be a terrorist.

During her interview, Kiyans widow watched footage of the eviction of settlers from Amona as they were aired on TV. The settlers were evicted by unarmed police officers wearing blue hats with an Israeli flag and blue windbreakers. Their clothes gave them the appearance of a less-threatening civilian force, rather than a military one. I suddenly realized how this country treats the Arabs living here. It was very painful for me, she said quietly. I have plenty of Jewish and Arab friends that I met during my long course of study. I feel that they are as close as family to me. I believe that these good friends will help me bring the truth to light.
Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav

Kathmandu, Nepal: Chief Election Commissioner Ayodhi Prasad Yadav has said that just sending letter urging perpetrations for the elections is not enough to make perpetrations for the elections.

The government decision to request the Election Commission to prepare for local polls was not enough, but need to announce the exact poll dates to begin the preparations, Yadav said in a face to face program organized by the Reporters Club in Kathmandu on Friday.

Chief elections commissioner Yadavs comment has come just a day after the government made a decision to send a formal letter requesting to the election commission to make necessary preparations for the elections. A cabinet meeting on Thursday made such a decision.

The decision of the government would not completely ensure the local polls on time, though it was positive in spirit, Yadav said adding that exact polls date should be announced to begin preparations.

During the function he also urged the government and political parties to finalize other laws related to the elections before announcing the date for the elections.
POKHARA: Body of a teenager who had gone missing was found in Phusre Khola near Powerhouse in Pokhara Sub-Metropolitan City-17 of Kaski district, on Friday.

Peshal Ghimire (16), a student of Valley Public School in Kathmandu, had gone missing while he was swimming in the river together with his friends, on Thursday, according to Ward Police office, Baidam.

He was on a tour to the Lake City.

Meanwhile, the body of the deceased has been sent to the Western Regional Hospital for postmortem, informed police.RSS
KATHMANDU: High-ranking leaders of Nepali Congress (NC) have asserted their readiness for all three levels of elections for which they stressed an effective implementation of the Constitution.

Addressing a two-day meeting of the NC-aligned Nepal Trade Union Congress national councils meeting here today, NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba instructed all cadres to gear up for the long overdue local elections.

The former Prime Minister Deuba added that the enforcement of the new Constitution promulgated during the NC-led government was a major responsibility of NC.

Deuba also expressed his confidence that the NC would yet again win the confidence of the public in the local election as in the second Constituent Assembly elections in November 2013.

He shared that the date for local elections would be announced anytime for the fact that the many developments were taking place towards this end, including the endorsement of the election-related bills in the Parliament and recommendation of three election commissioners in the Election Commission.

Meanwhile, senior leader Ram Chandra Paudel stated that demands raised by the labourers could be addressed through the amendment of the Labour Act.

Underscoring mutual coordination between the industry and labourer for establishment of labourers right, Paudel clarified that the new Constitution could not incorporate all demands raised by the labourers as he said that the new national statute was a document promulgated through the political consensus.

Likewise, NC General Secretary Shashanka Koirala reiterated the NCs commitment to hold three-tier elections by January 2018.

NC Treasurer Sita Devi Yadav also urged the cadres to be ready for the elections for she said that the internal preparations were being made to announce the date for local polls.

Unions President Khilanath Dahal said that the two-day event would discuss issues relating to the welfare of the labourers.RSS
Moroccos readmission to the African Union last Monday following the endorsement of an overwhelming majority of 39 out of the 54 AU member states indirectly questions the legitimacy of the presence of the pseudo Sahrawi republic RASD in the pan-African organization.

Following this feat of arms, King Mohammed VI delivered a landmark speech before his African peers in Addis Ababa, detailing all the actions undertaken over the past years by Morocco for the benefit of African States and peoples, at a time its opponents were busy sharpening their demagogic discourse.

The sovereign also welcomed the massive, outspoken support Morocco has received from brotherly and friendly countries, a support, he said, that is proof of the solid bonds that unite us.

Moreover, a simple subtraction operation shows that only the 14 AU members that continue to support the puppet republic were opposed to Moroccos return to the continental organization.

Today, the SADR, an entity created out of nothing during the Cold War era, by the Algerian regime of Houari Boumediene and the Libyan regime of Muammar Gaddafi, is recognized by less than thirty Countries, including the 14 in Africa.

Moreover, this entity has never been recognized as a State, neither by the United Nations nor by any other international, continental or regional organization, including the European Union.

This achievement was made possible thanks to the diplomatic campaign, spearheaded by King Mohammed VI and the royal approach will surely not be limited to the triumphant return of the Kingdom to the AU, but it will entail other withdrawals of the SADRs recognition and why not its expulsion from the AU.

So, the Polisario will realize shortly that there only remains Algeria, South Africa and a handful of other African countries to support its whimsical separatist claims.
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 "Will Gorsuch Be Another Scalia on Criminal Justice Issues? Not Likely" | Main | Oklahoma Governor's task force urging significant sentencing reform to deal with surging prison population 

February 3, 2017

Lamenting that Henry Montgomery (and many other juve LWOPers) may not much or any benefit from Montgomery

Jody Kent Lavy, who is executive director of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Children, has this notable new commentary headlined "Supreme Court's will on juvenile offenders thwarted." Here are excerpts:

A little more than a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Montgomery vs. Louisiana that Henry Montgomery  and anyone else who received mandatory life without parole for a crime committed when they were younger than 18  was serving an unconstitutional sentence and deserved relief. The sweeping opinion augmented three earlier decisions that had scaled back the ability to impose harsh adult penalties on youth, recognizing childrens unique characteristics made such penalties cruel and unusual. The Montgomery case made clear that the Eighth Amendment bars the imposition of life without parole on youth in virtually every instance. But, in violation of the decision, prosecutors are seeking to re-impose life without parole in hundreds of cases, and judges are imposing the sentence anew. Hundreds of people serving these unconstitutional sentences  primarily in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Michigan  are still awaiting their opportunities for resentencing. Henry Montgomery is among them. I recently met Montgomery, now 70, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, notorious as a place where most of its thousands of prisoners are destined to die. Montgomery, who is African-American, was convicted of killing a white police officer as a teenager. At the time, John F. Kennedy was president. Though his resentencing has yet to be scheduled, prosecutors say they plan to again seek life without parole. Given last years ruling from the nations highest court, it might seem surprising that Montgomery, remorseful for the crime he committed more than five decades ago, is still languishing in prison. This is indeed outrageous, and it highlights the failings of our justice system, especially as it pertains to juveniles.... Henry Montgomery is living on borrowed time. He is a frail, soft-spoken, generous man. When it was lunchtime at the prison, I noticed that he wasnt eating. When I asked why, he said he wasnt sure there was enough food to go around. On the anniversary of the ruling that was supposed to bring him a chance of release, we owe it to Montgomery, as well as the thousands of others sentenced as youth to die in prison, to seek mercy on his behalf. We cannot give up until the day comes when children are never sentenced to life  and death  in prison.

February 3, 2017 at 12:41 PM | Permalink

Comments

The states have every right to resist this joke of a decision.

Posted by: federalist | Feb 3, 2017 12:49:40 PM

I have long wondered the net value of some of these opinions. For instance, judges vs. juries deciding facts in various cases: important constitutional principle, perhaps, but how does it break down in actual benefits for defendants.

Anyway, something like this one is likely to be more prospective -- including given there are ways to delay full application -- though even a few years can matter to someone who otherwise might die in prison.

Posted by: Joe | Feb 3, 2017 1:08:48 PM

Sometimes I wonder what the hell in wrong with prosecutors in states like Louisiana. Why in the world would anyone object to releasing a 70-year-old who has been in prison for 50 years, committed his crime when he was under 18, is remorseful, and is pretty clearly not a threat to society. Is there any explanation other than racism -- or possibly sadism? Can someone explain this to this Northerner? Seems way out of a reasonable bounds of punishment philosophy.

Posted by: Mark | Feb 3, 2017 6:02:06 PM

"The Montgomery case made clear that the Eighth Amendment bars the imposition of life without parole on youth in virtually every instance."

I read the Eighth Amendment. I could not find any such bar. The bar came from the subjective feelings of the Justices.

Posted by: David Behar | Feb 3, 2017 6:13:45 PM

Post a comment
 Lamenting that Henry Montgomery (and many other juve LWOPers) may not much or any benefit from Montgomery | Main | "The Death Penalty as Torture From the Dark Ages to Abolition" 

As reported in this lengthy local article, "faced with a rapidly growing prison population in a state with the second-highest incarceration rate in the nation, a task force created by Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin issued a report Thursday calling for dramatic decreases in sentences for nonviolent drug dealers and manufacturers." Here is more:

Without reform, Oklahoma is on pace to add 7,218 inmates over the next 10 years, requiring three new prisons and costing the state an additional $1.9 billion in capital expenditures and operating costs, the report said. But task members said those costs can be averted and the prison population can be reduced 7 percent over the next decade through a combination of sentence reductions and other reforms, including increased funding for alternative mental health and substance abuse treatment programs.

Oklahoma currently has 61,385 individuals in its overcrowded prison system. That includes 26,581 incarcerated in state facilities and private prisons, 1,643 awaiting transfer from county jails and 33,161 on some form of probation, parole, community sentencing or GPS monitoring, said Terri Watkins, spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

Oklahoma's prison population, which is at 109 percent of capacity, has grown 9 percent in the past five years and is now 78 percent higher than the national average. Only Louisiana has a higher rate, the report said.

Oklahoma's female incarceration rate remains the highest in the nation, a distinction the state has held for 25 years, task members said. The state's female population grew 30 percent between 2011 and 2016 and Oklahoma now incarcerates women at a rate more than 2 1/2 times the national average.

In a 38-page report that contains 27 recommendations, the governor's task force on justice reform recommends a number of dramatic changes to stave off a looming state financial crisis, including sharply reducing sentences for nonviolent drug dealers and manufacturers. The report also calls for sweeping changes in the parole system, including allowing many inmates to become eligible for parole after serving a fourth of their sentences. Currently, inmates typically serve about a third of their sentences before becoming eligible for parole for most nonviolent crimes.

Many of the task force's recommendations would require legislative action. The task force is recommending that the penalty for possession of methamphetamine, heroin or crack cocaine with intent to distribute be lowered to zero to five years for nonviolent first-time felony drug offenders, said Jennifer Chance, the governor's general counsel and a member of the task force. It is recommending that the penalty for manufacturing be lowered to zero to eight years.

Possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute currently carries a sentence of two years to life in prison for a first-time felony drug conviction, while possession of crack cocaine with intent to distribute carries a term of five years to life and heroin seven years to life.

Oklahoma's criminal justice system has exacerbated the state's prison crowding crisis by repeatedly sentencing more nonviolent offenders  particularly drug offenders  to longer terms than neighboring states like Texas and Missouri, the report says. Many states have been far ahead of Oklahoma in reforming their justice systems, the task force found. "Since 2010, 31 states across the country have decreased imprisonment rates while reducing crime rates," the report states.

Reducing Oklahoma prison sentences for nonviolent drug crimes is critical to reversing those trends because nearly a third of all Oklahoma prison admissions are for drug crimes and those prison sentences are often lengthy, the task force said.

Chance said most of the 21 task force members were in agreement with the group's findings, but acknowledged that the two district attorneys on the panel, David Prater and Mike Fields, have strong disagreements with some of the report's recommendations. Prater is the chief prosecutor for Oklahoma County, while Fields is the chief prosecutor for Canadian, Garfield, Blaine, Grant and Kingfisher counties and president of the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association....

If the state cuts prison sentences for drug manufacturing, distributing and trafficking without dramatically increasing funding for drug addiction treatment programs, Prater predicted it will lead to more home and auto break-ins and other crimes. "This is such a dishonest report," Prater said. "It's going to make Oklahoma a much more dangerous place."

Prater said the report's backers like to point to Texas as a state that has simultaneously reduced its incarceration and crime rates through similar justice reforms, but he noted that Texas appropriated $241 million up front in 2007 to pay for a package of prison alternatives that included more intermediate sanctions and substance abuse treatment beds, drug courts and mental illness treatment slots. Unless Oklahoma dramatically increases upfront funding for substance abuse treatment and parole supervision programs, the state's experience is more likely to parallel that of Utah, Prater said.

That state drastically cut sentences without providing sufficient funding for community programs and police officers and judges there have complained about offenders repeatedly being released out on the street with little or no supervision, he said. Critics of Utah's reform efforts have cited the January 2016 slaying of Unified police officer Doug Barney as a reason for re-evaluating changes that were made. Barney's shooter, Corey Henderson, went through the revolving door of prison and many have argued he shouldn't have been out of jail when Barney was killed....

The Oklahoma Attorney General's Office was noncommittal about the report. The Attorney General's Office was invited to take part in the Oklahoma Justice Reform Task Force, and members of our team were in attendance," Lincoln Ferguson, spokesman for Atty. Gen. Scott Pruitt, said in a prepared statement. "The AG's office takes no position on the merits or demerits of the proposal.
Is this how the plague begins?

A Singapore Airlines flight attendant was found dead in her hotel room in San Francisco Tuesday, after she reportedly told coworkers on her arriving flight that she was not feeling well. The Straits Times broke the news about the airline's "leading stewardess," saying that fellow crew members went to find her after she failed to meet them in the hotel lobby to head to their departing flight to Singapore, scheduled for 1 a.m. Wednesday at SFO.

As the Chronicle reports, the deceased woman has been identified as 38-year-old Vanessa Yeap, and she had arrived with the Singapore flight, SQ2, on January 28.

The SFPD say they are aware of the incident, and the Medical Examiner's Office is investigating Yeap's death.

Yeap's brother was apparently en route to SF to claim her body. The airline issued a statement about Yeap, who had worked for them for 16 years, saying, "Our immediate priority is to provide the necessary assistance to the family of the crew member. As the case is under the investigation of the local authorities, we are unable to share any further details."
Pacemaker in place, California Senator Dianne Feinstein appears ready for a fight over Donald Trump's nomination of judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Antonin Scalia. The 24-year Senator is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will hold hearings on Gorsuch later in the year, but liberal pundits are encouraged by the signals she's shown so far, perhaps including her withering stare in the above photo.

That's the Chronicle's take, pointing out that Feinstein, after all, recommended federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland for the job, a centrist or moderate like Feinstein by most standards who was President Obama's choice for the court.

To see the way he was treated, with almost a year to consider his nomination, was just appalling, Feinstein said according to the Chronicle. The humiliation that he went through. Asking people just to meet with him and getting turned down. Asking just to have a hearing and getting turned down. Bringing volumes, literally box after box after box of records, putting it all together, walking these halls day and night, and getting the back of the Republican hand... Many of us havent recovered from that. So I think the appropriate thing is to take our time considering this nominee. The courts not going to fall apart. Its going to be just fine.

That's to say that Feinstein appears in no hurry to pick a ninth justice for the court after a long period with just eight of them. Although she thought it "was really going to be problematic with tie decisions... Ive looked at the tie decisions and in a way its prevented bad things from happening. In the event of a four-four tie on an eight member Supreme Court, the decision of the lower court is upheld.

Feinstein voted against George W. Bush's nominations to the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, and to Daniel Goldberg, the legal director at the Alliance for Justice, she's likely to do the same with Gorsuch. She has always been an incredibly thoughtful senator, a senator who cares deeply about the issues that come before the Supreme Court," Goldberg told the Sacramento Bee. "It's telling the type of leadership she showed on the Jeff Sessions nomination, Goldberg added, referring to her opposition to Trump's pick for Attorney General.

The Bee also points out that Feinstein has promised a "thorough review, observing also that Feinstein has meaningfully noted Gorsuch's anti-choice rulings. "Judge Gorsuch voted twice to deny contraceptive coverage to women, elevating a corporations religious beliefs over womens health care. A constitutional originalist like Scalia before him (though BuzzFeed points out that Garland has cited Scalia in rulings more often than Gorsuch has), Gorsuch, 49, is a conservative who seeks to interpret the constitution as it was intended at the time it was enacted, which is to say, when it took a minute to load a single shot into a rifle.

Related: Feinstein To Vote No On Sessions For Attorney General


It's been a year and a half since Oakland's Bay Wolf called it quits after 40 years on Piedmont Avenue, marking an end of an era for a beloved and influential East Bay fine dining institution. Owner Michael Wild, we soon learned, had a succession plan in mind, and it was to sell to a restaurateur couple he'd known for a number of years, Rich and Rebekah Wood, the owners of Wood Tavern and Southie in Rockridge. Now after a six-month renovation that included the opening up and modernization of the kitchen, the place is ready to reopen within weeks as The Wolf, as the Chronicle reports, paying homage to Wild's legacy while hoping to introduce a new generation of diners to this cozy and welcoming space.

A new, L-shaped bar has been added to the front of the house  which was, once upon a time, a Craftsman-style home with a front porch that is also now used for dining. "People are going to be pretty surprised, says Rich Wood of the remodel, which he also describes as "Bay Wolf on steroids."

The chef at The Wolf will be Yang Peng, who is also a partner in the new restaurant. Peng has been executive chef at Wood Tavern for several years, and she'll be replaced there by Esteban Escobar, formerly of SF's Town Hall. She tells the Chronicle she's planning to feature "updated, California-seasonal take on French classics like coq au vin, veal, escargot and, of course, duck, a signature dish at Bay Wolf." There are also some delicious looking pommes dauphine (fried potato puffs) topped with remoulade and trout roe, and Peng says she plans to do baguette sandwiches at lunch.

Also, longtime regulars will recognize general manager David Johnson, who'll be returning to his post, and the Woods have told Wild he's welcome to come back and work the front of the house whenever he likes, in his retirement.

I'll update you when the opening date is finalized, and reservations become available.

Previously: 40-Year-Old Oakland Restaurant Bay Wolf Closing In August
1 alarm fire in #SF Chinatown with lots of smoke billowing onto Stockton Street. Avoid area. @CBSSF @sffdpio pic.twitter.com/wgxDb1gi7T  Ryan Quintana (@Ryan_Quintana) February 3, 2017

San Francisco fire crews are battling a smoky two alarm blaze in Chinatown Friday morning, with one victim reportedly injured and an unknown number of subjects displaced.

The fire, the San Francisco Fire Department says, is burning at the Golden Plaza building, a two-story commercial structure 1199 Stockton Street, which is between Pacific Avenue and Jackson Street. According to the Chron, it's the site of the "Natural Tea Shop, San Francisco Poultry and a Verizon Wireless Infinitel Communications store."

The fire was first reported at around 8 a.m. Friday, the SFFD says. A male victim was pulled from the blaze, and was transported to the hospital with minor injuries.

The SFFD is urging area residents to "close your doors and windows to avoid smoke." According to KRON 4, "the smoke is so strong that people are able to smell it several blocks away from the site of the fire."

As of 9:15, the SFFD says that though the fire remained active, "we have a good handle on this." By 9:50 they were focused on "hot spots" as well as a "basement fire and water issues."

KRON 4 reports that the fire likely began in the basement, which is filled with "plywood and equipment" from the reported seven businesses in the structure.

Sgt. Francis Feliciano of the San Francisco Police Department told the Chron that firefighters "went in they couldnt find the source. They went up to look for it and they still couldnt find it...Then it turns out it was in the basement.

"We're attacking from both sides," a fire spokesperson says, "but when we knock it down in one place it pops up in another."

Pedestrians and drivers are urged to avoid the area, with Stockton closed in the blocks surrounding the site of the fire.

Translators are also on hand to help those displaced by the blaze, in addition to "HSA RedCross and other City services," the SFFD says. As of Friday morning, the cause of the fire remains unknown.

#020717WF1 UPDATE 1/2 crews working to ext hot spots and deal with basement fire and water issues. City TRANSLATORS are on site to assist - pic.twitter.com/nz89K74aJz  San Francisco Fire (@sffdpio) February 3, 2017
Friday marks two weeks that Republican Donald Trump has served as the 45th U.S. president. Trump's early days have been raptly watched to see how he would perform in transitioning into the White House, in moving to implement policies that advance his principles.

At the one-week mark, Trump temporarily blocked all citizens of seven Muslim countries and all refugees worldwide from entering the U.S. That created backlogs at airports and prompted demonstrations.

A few days later, Trump put forth his pick to fill a yearlong U.S. Supreme Court vacancy. Aditionally, he signed 18 executive orders and memos in the first 12 days through the end of January.

The executive orders kept coming, including one Friday morning, where Trump directed the Treasury Department secretary to review the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul. Trump said he expects "to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank," the regulations placed in response to the Great Recession.

Siouxland political party leaders weighed in on Trump's first two weeks. Sioux County Republican Party Chairman Mark Lundberg said Trump has performed very well as president. It was the most recent Trump action that most pleased Lundberg.

"My new best Trump result to date -- this morning bouncing Dodd-Frank to the trash can will be very helpful to releasing credit to many businesses and consumers," he said.

Lundberg said he also likes Trump's picks for cabinet positions and his tapping of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court.

"Starting the reversal of nearly all of the Obama administration executive orders, that were placed without the needed legislative approval, is also good to observe. Have Congress pass laws, instead of the president making his own," Lundberg said.

Lundberg said Trump is following through with campaign promises.

"I am impressed how quickly he has hit the ground running and it will be interesting to watch. Things will not slow up for some time. So much needs to be done to fix eight years of bad governance," Lundberg said.

Woodbury County Democratic Party Chairwoman Penny Rosfjord had a dim view of Trump's first two weeks.

"There has been nothing that I've liked. I've seen nothing positive so far out of this...This is really a reckless time," Rosfjord said.

Rosfjord took exception with Trump's use of executive orders to make changes.

"They are just practically flying off his desk," Rosfjord said.

She said Democratic former President Barack Obama took flak from Republicans for his use of executive orders, yet "everything (Trump) has done is an executive order." Rosfjord said that likely is happening because Trump has never served as a lawmaker and is avoiding the tough tasks of helping move bills into federal law.

Rosfjord also took exception with Trump's tenor in leading as president.

"This tone has been one of the things that I really don't like. The refugee ban is disrespectful to me. It is just wrong," Rosfjord said.

Lundberg said he would advise Trump to have better carried out the blocking of people from predominantly Muslim nations.

"His announcement of the delay in allowing immigration from unsecure countries could have been handled better, with making sure that accurate information could have been released, instead of issuing the order and watching the false reporting of what the order actually does," Lundberg said.
Student works in the categories of studio art, photography and graphic design will be judged by local artists from Siouxland. Awards in these three categories will be announced during a reception from 5-7 p.m. Feb. 15 in the art gallery.
Matthew McConaughey gets his Al Pacino on in Gold, a based-in-fact drama about a prospector who becomes embroiled in an international mining scandal.

Willing to look bad (he gained plenty of weight, shaved his head and dared to look ugly), chew the scenery and go through all sorts of physical hell, he might have nabbed an Oscar nomination had director Stephen Gaghan treated him better.

Pulling away the camera just when McConaughey hits his acting sweet spot, Gaghan robs him of those moments that could have made this one of his best films.

McConaugheys character  Kenny Wells  lives on the edge of life, hoping his get-rich schemes take root. When he latches on the idea of gold in Indonesia, he finds a geologist (Edgar Ramirez) who makes the operation fly. Together, they hit a lode of sorts and begin selling pieces of it to folks back home.

Going from scrapper to millionaire affects plenty of people around him and draws attention from Wall Street investors. They want to get in on the action, but dont know what it is Wells wants.

Sooner than you can call it, hes a victim of their machinations. He and his friend figure an out clause and appear to fool the experts.

Scam artist? Patsy? Entrepreneur? Its hard to determine what he is  even when McConaughey is left to his own devices. The actor puts so much into the performance its a shame it doesnt add up to more. Moments with Bryce Dallas Howard (as his girlfriend Kay) have potential; scenes with Ramirez suggest something Oscar Isaac might have done.

Corey Stoll and Craig T. Nelson help his cause, too, but Gold has a tarnished look, a hasty form of editing.

Even those warts-and-all moments have loose threads, calling attention to their shabbiness, not McConaugheys fearlessness.

When he faces down a tiger (as a way to show his determination), Gold should pop. Instead, it just looks like a scene designed to be shown on talk shows.

While this isnt the real story (there are plenty of fudged facts), it is part of a genre that has lured everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street) to Michael Douglas (Wall Street).

McConaughey belongs in the conversation. He just should have insisted on better partners.

Those behind the camera (and, as executive producer, hes one of them) should have treated the Oscar winner better. Hes up to the challenge. Its just too bad they werent.
Sorry, President Trump. Samantha Bee will be unavailable to host the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee announced that it would be hosting Not the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 29 in Washington, D.C., the same night as this years White House Correspondents Dinner is scheduled to take place.

Executives at TBS offered their full support of the gala by nodding politely and then muttering under their breath as we turned around, Bee quipped in a statement released earlier this week. The evening is sure to bring plenty of surprises, music, food, and laughter  and if youre not careful, you just might learn something. Specifically, youll learn how screwed wed be without a free press.

The correspondents dinner is traditionally attended by the president and vice president and often includes a roast of the commander in chief and his administration.

Given Trumps distrust of the media, which hes described as the opposition party, very dishonest people and fake news, its unclear how much roasting will take place.

Or, as the statement from Full Frontal put it: We suspect some members of the press may find themselves unexpectedly free that night, and we want to feed them and give them hugs.

The proceeds from the Not the White House Correspondents Dinner will go to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Were really doing this, said Bee. This is not a joke.
Screenings

Free blood pressure screenings, 9:30-11 a.m. Wednesdays at Countryside Senior Living, front lobby. No appointment necessary.

Programs/Self-Help Groups

Al-Anon Information Center, call 712-255-6724.

Al-Anon and Alateen, meetings locally. For times, dates and locations of area meetings, call 712-255-6724.

Alcoholics Anonymous, beginners information, call 712-252-1333.

Arc of Woodbury County, serving the mentally challenged, 5:15 p.m. meeting, second Monday of the month at Mid-Step Services, 4303 Stone Ave. For families and interested persons.

Child Care Resource and Referral, provides resources, education and advocacy for children, parents, and child care providers. Assists in child care needs. For more information, call 712-277-1180.

Co-Dependence Anonymous, 7 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays at First Lutheran Church, Fireside Room.

Co-Dependents Anonymous (CODA), 10 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.

Compassionate Friends, 7 p.m. fourth Wednesday of each month (third Thursday in November and second Sunday December) in Mercy Medical Center's Leiter Room. For families who have lost children. Contact Nancy Webb 712-212-4032 or Don Mulder 712-541-5512.

Clinics

Siouxland District Health immunization clinics, call for appointment, 712-279-6119 or 1-800-587-3005.

Information

Family and Addictive Illness series, for more information, call 234-2300.

Iowa Fathers, 6 to 8 p.m. fourth Tuesday of each month at Hope Lutheran Church, Education Building, 218 W. 18th St., South Sioux City, Neb. Support group to help single, divorcing and divorced parents residing in the state of Iowa.

Mercy Pathways Outpatient Program, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, on the third floor, Mercy's Central Medical Building, 801 Fifth St., Suite 360. Provides hope, help, opportunity to connect through group therapy for individuals experiencing personal, relationship, psychiatric issues. For more information, call 712-279-5991.

Narcotics Anonymous, meetings daily, various times, dates and locations. For more information, call 712-279-0733.

Overeaters Anonymous, 1 p.m. Tuesdays at Wesley United Methodist Church, 3700 Indian Hills Drive; 6 p.m. Tuesdays at St. John's Lutheran Church, 402 Lane Ave., Storm Lake; 7 p.m. Tuesdays at Church of the Nazarene, 226 N. Main St., Viborg, S.D.; 5:30 p.m. Thursdays and 9 a.m. Saturdays at Newman Center, 320 E. Cherry St., Vermillion, S.D.; 10:30 a.m. Saturdays at Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St. A 12-step recovery program for people who have problems with food and weight. No fees.

St. Lukes Outpatient Behavioral Health Program, 9 a.m. to noon Monday, Tuesday and Thursday on fifth floor of St. Luke's, located at 2720 Stone Park Blvd. Offers several levels of outpatient care including partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and group therapy. This program provides support and integrated treatment to individuals experiencing personal or relationship issues as a result of their mental illness. For more information and admission criteria, call 712-279-3906.

Sobriety By Faith, 8:30 a.m. Saturdays at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For more information, call James Mothershead at 712-577-9715.

The Link-Recovery and Freedom, 1603 Glen Ellen Road; 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. Saturday workshop, and Christian 12-step meeting 7 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. For all ages. Call Dee at 389-7432.

Women in Recovery, meets monthly at Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, 1421 Geneva St. For details, call 712-255-4623.

Tarahouse Meditation Center, 8 a.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 p.m. Fridays; 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays, all at 3112 Rebecca St. Three easy 10-minute sessions in small group; beginners welcome. For more information, call 490-6410.

Blood pressure and blood sugar screening, 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays in the lobby at Westwood Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. Free to public.

Support Groups

Food Addicts in Recovery Anonymous, 7-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at Hawkeye Club basement, 420 Jones St. For more information, call 277-5935.

Celebrate Recovery, Bible-based 12-step recovery group. Thursdays at 6 p.m. at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive. Childcare provided. 712-490-3343. All welcome.

PFLAG of Siouxland, (Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), 7 p.m., fourth Monday of January, March, May, July, September and November. St. Mark ELCA Church, 5200 Glenn Ave., in the upstairs meeting area. 712-258-3116.

Singles widowed and divorced, all ages, 4 p.m., Sundays. McDonald's at Sixth Street and Lewis Boulevard. 712-252-2675.

GriefShare, 6:30 -8:30 p.m. every Tuesday until Dec. 6 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

HIV/AIDS Support Group, meets weekly. For more information, call Darla or Teri at Siouxland Community Health Center, 712-252-2477 or 888-371-1965.

Hospice of Siouxland, seeking volunteers. For more information, call 712-233-4144 and ask for a volunteer coordinator.

La Leche League of Siouxland, breastfeeding support group meets every third Thursday at 11 a.m. at Morningside Lutheran Church. Children are welcome. For more information, call Mary at 712-546-7280 or Jacquie at 712-255-2998.

Living Each Day Cancer Support Group, 7-8 p.m. second Thursday of the month, Floyd Valley Hospital, Conference Center Room 2, Le Mars, Iowa. Open to all cancer patients, cancer survivors and family members. No charge. Pre-register by calling 712-546-3441 or 800-642-6074, ext. 441.

Mom and Baby Support Group, 10-11 a.m. last Monday of the month at the Orange City (Iowa) Hospital, lower level. For new moms and babies. 712-737-5260.

Tri-State Sober Project, 12-step meeting, 7:30-8:30 p.m., Tuesdays, Friendship Community Church, 305 Sergeant Square Drive, Sergeant Bluff. 6-7 p.m., Thursdays, Transitional Services of Iowa, 1221 Pierce St., Sioux City.

Doug's Donors Support Group, information for organ donors and recipients, 12:30-1:30 p.m. Fridays, 5:15-6:30 p.m. second Thursdays of the month at Mercy Cafeteria Woodbury Room. 712-277-1050.

Divorce Care, 6:30 -8:30 p.m. every Tuesday until Dec. 6 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

NAMI Siouxland, (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Support Group meets 6:30 p.m., second Tuesday of the month at Friendship House, 1101 Court St. For individuals and family members dealing with mental illness. 712-255-4209.

New Life Life Support Group, 3:30 p.m. every Saturday at 2929 W. Fourth St. Spiritual 12-step program. For more information, call Donald at 712-574-1744 or James at 712-255-7624.

Orphan Sunday, 3:30-5 p.m. Sunday at Sunnybrook Community Church loft, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive.

Post Polio Support Group, 11 a.m. first Thursday of the month at Perkins Restaurant by Menards. 712-490-8213.

Relationship Support Group, 7 p.m. Fridays at Marketplace Mall. For more information, call 239-3129.

Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, Individual and Support Groups. For more information, call CSADV in Sioux City at 712-258-7233; Plymouth County at 712-546-6764; Monona County at 712-423-3443. Advocacy and support available 24 hours a day at 1-800-982-7233. All services free of charge and confidential.

Sickle Cell Disease Support Group, 11 a.m. third Saturday of each month at St. Luke's Hospital, meeting room 1. For patients, their family and any concerned member. Call La'Keshia Rainey at 712-203-2019 for more information.

Single and Parenting, 6:30 -8:30 p.m. every Tuesday until Dec. 6 at Sunnybrook Community Church, 5601 Sunnybrook Drive, Sioux City. 712-276-5814.

Sioux City Association of the Deaf, 7 p.m. third Saturday of the month at Morningside Church of Christ, 5015 Garretson Ave. Regular meeting, September-May; no meeting, June, July, August and December.

Siouxland Autism Support Group, second Thursday of the month at Northwest Area Education Agency, 1520 Morningside Ave. For more information, call Julie Case at 712-490-8939.

Siouxland Epilepsy Support Group, 5 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at Prestwick Apartment Clubhouse, 4230 Hickory Lane. For anyone diagnosed with seizures or epilepsy and family or friends. For more information, call Steve at 274-6927.

Siouxland IC support group, meets quarterly in Sioux City. For patients struggling with interstital cystitis. For more information, call Jacque Dundas 316-641-9766.

Siouxland Informational Group for the Blind, 2-5 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at Northern Hills Retirement Community, 4002 Teton Trace. For more information, call 712-266-8926 or 258-8151.

Grief support group, 5:30-7:30 p.m., beginning Oct. 5 for 13 weeks (may join at any time), Crescent Park United Methodist Church, 2826 Myrtle St., Sioux City. Scott, 712-899-6315.

Siouxland Ostomy Association, 2 p.m. first Sunday of each month (except September, which will be second Sunday; and no meetings June, July, August), in Room 300 at Mercy Medical Center, 801 Fifth St. For more information, call Dick Lindblom at 251-2453.

Siouxland Parkinson Disease Support Group, 1 p.m. fourth Monday of the month at Siouxland Center for Active Generations, 313 Cook St. For more information, call Sally Reinert at 402-987-3516.

Sojourners, support group for families of persons with life-threatening illness, 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays at St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Room 416. For more information, call Marjorie Jarvill at 402-241-8637.

South Sioux City Weight Support Group, 8:30 a.m. Wednesdays at St. Paul United Methodist Church, South Sioux City. For more information, call 494-1401 or 494-2133.

Disabilities Resource Center of Siouxland, 520 Nebraska St., Suite 101: Women's Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Wednesday of the month; LGBT Support Group, 1:30 p.m. first Friday of the month; Adult ADHD, 6 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; Advocacy Group, 1:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month. For more information, call 712-255-1065.

Take Off Pounds Sensibly, group meetings various times, days and locations in Siouxland. For information on the chapter in your area, call 1-800-932-TOPS.

Voice Disorder Support Group, meets as needed at Mercy Medical Center, Buena Vista Room. 712-279-2686.

Women's Peer Support Group, in Wayne and South Sioux City, Neb., for those who have experienced domestic abuse. For more information, call the Wayne office at 402-375-4633 or 1-800-440-4633; in South Sioux City, call 402-494-7592. Help and support available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Services free and confidential.

Woodbury County D.M.D.A., noon-2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at Country Friendship Acres, 4501 West St.; 7-8 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at 515 Court St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. second Tuesday of the month at 441 W. Third St. in the Community Room; 7-8 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at 409 W. Third St. in the Community Room. Support group for people with disabilities and mental disorders.

Natural Mamas in Siouxland, 1 p.m., third Tuesday of each month in the Garretson room of the Morningside Public Library. All ages of children are welcome to come with moms. For sharing natural living tips, recipes, natural remedies and health, homemaking, mothering, etc. For more information, call 402-913-0038 or visit their Facebook page.

A Step Beyond support group, 3:30 p.m. second Tuesday of the month, except for August, November and December when it meets at 5:30 p.m. (no meeting in January) at the Christy-Smith Resource Center, 1819 Morningside Ave. For more information, call 712-276-7319.

Divorce care, 5 p.m., Sundays. Fireside room, Morningside Lutheran Church, 700 South Martha St.

Gamblers Anonymous meetings, 4 p.m. Thursdays at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 315 Hamilton Blvd.; 7 p.m. Wednesdays, Morningside Presbyterian Church, 4327 Morningside Ave.; 7 p.m. Tuesdays, St. John Lutheran Church; 7 p.m. Sundays, Hawkeye Club, 420 Jones St.. 712-277-2901.

Art therapy support group, 5:30 p.m. second Thursday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. Registration required, call 252-9387.

After Breast Cancer Support Group, 5:30 p.m. third Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call Brenda, 252-9370.

After Prostate Cancer Support Group, 5:15 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center. For more information, call 252-9426.

Alzheimer's Association, Big Sioux Chapter Support Group, 2 p.m. second Tuesday of the month; 4 p.m. third Tuesday of the month (under age 65) at 201 Pierce St., Suite 110 (Famous Dave's building); and 6 p.m. first Tuesday of the month at the Barnes and Noble Cafe. For more information, call Emily Lord at 712-279-5802.

Christy-Smith Funeral Homes of Sioux City, extensive grief library at the Morningside location. Open to the public during weekday hours. For more information, call 276-7319.

Chronic Pain/Chronic Illness Support Group, 7:30 p.m. fourth Wednesday of the month in the lower level of the Orange City Hospital. For more information, call 712-737-5260.

Connections Area Agency on Aging, and Mercy Medical Centers Older Adult Services Welcome to Medicare, 1:30-4 p.m., the first Friday of every month at Connections Area Agency on Aging, 2301 Pierce St. To pre-register, or for more information, contact Connections Area Agency on Aging at 712-279-6900.
Introduction to the Torah class

SIOUX CITY -- The subject "Obedience vs Grace" will be taught from 7-8:30 p.m. Monday in the Gleeson Room of the Sioux City Public Library, 529 Pierce St. All are welcome.

The program is sponsored by Siouxland International Messianic Fellowship. Call 712-251-6667 for additional information.

Jewish scholar to present lectures

SIOUX CENTER, Iowa -- Jewish scholar Jared Goldfarb will present two public lectures at Dordt College.

"The Disappearing Dead Sea: Politics, Theology and the Enviroment" will begin at 3 p.m. Monday in the Science and Technology Center classroom SB 1606, 498 Fourth Ave NE. An evening lecture, "Considering Israel/Palestine: The Bible, Geopolitics, Narratives and More," will begin at 8 p.m. Tuesday in classroom SB 1606.

Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Annual Praise Band Fest

LE MARS, Iowa -- Calvin Christian Reformed Church, 326 Seventh St. SE, will host its 13th annual Praise Band Fest at 7 p.m. Saturday. Three worship bands from Calvin Church, Le Mars Church and Rejoice Community Church will play.

For more information, contact Miriam Hector at 712-548-7512.

Calvary Episcopal elects officers

SIOUX CITY -- Calvary Episcopal Church has elected the following officers for 2017: Kelly Houts, senior warden; Robin Nissen, junior warden; Sue Berry, clerk and financial secretary; Sandy Shroll, treasurer.

Cheryl Crsndell, Karen Nissan and Bob Kistler were elected to the Bishops' Committee.

Healing service at St. Alban's

SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa | The Northwest Iowa Chapter of the Order of St. Luke will be offering special prayers of healing and thanksgiving following the 10 a.m. Holy Eucharist service Sunday at St. Alban's Episcopal Church, 2011 23rd St.

The Eucharist and special prayers will be led by the Rev. Robert Kem, a retired priest from St. Anne's Episcopal Church in Ankeny, Iowa.

Sunday service at First Unitarian

SIOUX CITY -- The congregation of First Unitarian Church will hear the Rev. Sarah Caine speak at 11 a.m. Sunday at First Unitarian Church, 2508 Jackson St.
SIOUX CITY -- A patient can receive a Pap smear, discuss her addiction and get treatment for depression all in one place at Jackson Recovery Centers' Family Health Care Clinic.

Rachel Wurth, an advanced registered nurse practitioner and assistant medical director, said Jackson Recovery Centers began offering outpatient medical services in 2012 through a partnership with Siouxland Community Health Center.

This past April, Jackson took the reins and established Jackson Family Health Care Clinic in existing space on the second floor of the drug treatment center's main office, 800 Fifth St.

As of December, Jackson's own providers had logged more than 1,147 medical visits at the clinic, which features two medical exam rooms, three provider offices, a detox room, nurses station, check-in area and small laboratory.

"Last week was our busiest week to date. We had 54 appointments where we saw patients," Wurth said.

Addiction is a chronic disease that affects a person's biological, psychological and social health. A report released by the U.S. Surgeon General in November warned that 1 in 7 people in the United States is expected to develop a substance use disorder at some point during their lifetime.

Wurth said the purpose of the clinic is to stabilize physical and psychological conditions, such as diabetes and depression, which can affect a patient's long-term recovery from addiction, and to meet new health care needs that arise as a result of addiction.

"This clinic isn't just for while they're in treatment, this is a lifelong primary care medical home," she said. "Even though they might be in recovery and they bridged out of our therapy services, they can still come and get their services here for the rest of their life."

Heidi Kammer-Hodge, vice president and chief operating officer for Jackson Recovery Centers, said integrating primary care services with addiction treatment services is a growing trend across the United States. But she said Jackson is ahead of the curve in providing these services locally and regionally.

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), back-and-forth referrals between behavioral health and primary care offices result in up to 80 percent of patients with a substance abuse disorder not receiving care. In contrast, clinical trials have shown that integrated care can reduce costs and improve health outcomes for patients with substance abuse problems.

"We know that we can help people to live longer and healthier lives if we're able to truly deliver addiction, psychiatric and medical care," Kammer-Hodge said.

Breaking down barriers

Many patients enrolled in a drug treatment program don't have a primary care provider.

Even if they do have one, Wurth said their needs may go unaddressed.

She said she recently saw a patient with a bad cold. If she had encountered the woman earlier on in her career at an urgent care, she would've just dealt with the woman's cold. Instead, she asked the woman how her recovery was going.

"She was in a full-blown relapse and needed some help. I don't think she would've sought out any of that on her own," she said.

Individuals with a substance abuse disorder may suffer from physical problems such as hepatitis, lung disease, cardiovascular disease and HIV/AIDS. Common mental health disorders include depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder.

Patients abusing drugs and alcohol are likely neglecting their systemic health and oral hygiene. Wurth said they may be malnourished and sleep deprived.

"Some of these people are so ill in their addictions that when they go to the doctor it has been for a specific purpose and that's to feed their addiction," Wurth said, referencing the prescription opioid epidemic. "They haven't been going and being honest about what's really going on with them."

SAMHSA says providing primary care to individuals with a substance abuse disorder enhances their chances of recovery. A 2005 study published in the medical journal Addiction found that two or more primary care visits in a six-month period improved abstinence by 50 percent.

Seven providers -- two medical doctors and five advanced registered nurse practitioners -- specializing in addiction offer primary medical services at Jackson Family Health Care Clinic to both patients and their family members. Patients are often introduced to the providers who staff the clinic after staying at one of Jackson's residential treatment centers.

Wurth said her patients include young children, whose health is compromised when their parents' addiction takes priority. These children fall behind on annual checkups and vaccinations.

Roughly 60 percent of Jackson's patients are covered by Medicaid or are Medicaid-eligible, while around 20 percent have commercial insurance coverage. A block grant from the Iowa Department of Public Health helps cover services for patients who don't have any form of coverage and can't afford to pay out of pocket.

Wurth said patients tell her they feel "safe" at the Family Health Care Clinic because they don't have to explain their addiction to a new doctor, who could unintentionally derail their long-term recovery.

Unaware of a patient's history of addiction, Wurth said a doctor could prescribe benzodiazepines, some of the most popular drugs prescribed for problems with sleep, stress and anxiety. Although these drugs have a calming effect, they are highly addictive.

"It isn't necessarily that the primary care provider is trying to purposely hurt them, they just aren't as educated on the disease of addiction, because it really has become a specialty field," she said.

Kammer-Hodge said the clinic is breaking down barriers surrounding both addiction and mental illness, which are often viewed by society as a choice or moral failing.

"It goes so far to reduce that stigma by really affirming what we've known for many, many years -- that addiction truly is a health care issue and it is an illness," she said.
SIOUX CITY | A vehicular homicide charge has been added, as the Crawford County Attorney has formalized all charges against a man who police said drove a vehicle into the Boyer River near Denison, leading to the death of 15-year-old Yoana Acosta.

Crawford County Attorney Roger Sailer on Thursday announced the totality of charges, some of which had previously filed against Ramon Hernandez, 25, of Denison.

Sailer in a release said the charges resulted from events of Jan. 19. Hernandez had initially been arrested on Jan. 23, on drug and reckless driving charges.

Hernandez has now been charged with one count of Homicide By Vehicle, three counts of Distributing A Controlled Substance to a Minor and one count of Distributing a Controlled Substance (not to a minor), all of which are felony charges.

After a thorough and thoughtful review of the case, we are confident that these are the appropriate charges to bring based upon the facts and evidence available to us, and we will now proceed with the prosecution of these charges," Sailer said.

Court proceedings will now follow in a case, with an arraignment for Hernandez slated for Feb. 13.

Acosta's body was found two miles downstream from the wreck site, submerged in 24-inch deep water, on Jan. 26.

Seven days before, the car she was in riding in with four other people left a county road and traveled more than a quarter of a mile, through a field, across railroad tracks and then through another field, before entering the Boyer River north of Denison, according to Crawford County Sheriff James Steinkuehler.

A 16-year-old male passenger was able to get out of the submerged vehicle and walk about a quarter of a mile in soaking-wet clothes to a residence on Beloit Boulevard to call for help.

Steinkuehler said deputies were notified of the incident at 3 a.m. Jan. 19. When they arrived, three people were in the water close to the banks, while Acosta was about 100 yards down river.

A deputy was able to pull three people onto shore with his emergency rope after calling for additional help from authorities.

"But when the deputy turned his back to pull in the rope, (Acosta) was gone," Steinkuehler said last week.

The teen boy, a 16-year-old female, Acostas 19-year-old sister, Valeria Acosta Rodriguez, and Hernandez escaped from the river.

Throughout the weeklong search for Acosta, more than 150 people from varying agencies helped with the effort. Crews attempted to work from dusk to dawn every day, but the search at times was hampered due to differing water depths, fog, ice and winter conditions.

Hernandez is also charged with four counts of Providing Alcohol to a Person Under Age, which is a serious misdemeanor.
SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City man with the street name "Trouble" is in legal trouble after allegedly stealing cars last month. And police believe he drove one of them in a high-speed chase where he fled to South Sioux City, parked the vehicle in a backyard and paid residents $300 "not to snitch."

According to officer affidavits, Christopher Brickey, 27, was arrested shortly after midnight Thursday in connection with the thefts. He was also charged with carrying a double-edged knife, a stun gun and a baggie with meth residue.

The documents said on Jan. 5, a Chevy Suburban and a Dodge Charger were stolen from two different Sioux City homes while the owners left them running unattended.

Three days later, the Charger was spotted by an off-duty cop in the parking lot of Sam's Mini Mart, 4218 Morningside Ave., but the vehicle was gone by the time officers arrived. Video from the store revealed the driver of the Charger was an individual known by police who is an acquaintance of Brickey.

On Jan. 10, the Suburban was involved in a high-speed pursuit with police before it escaped across the bridge into South Sioux City, the documents said.

Shortly thereafter, the man from the store video was brought into questioning and told police that Brickey goes by the name "Shawn Fogg" and has a street name of "Trouble," the documents said. He said Brickey had let him borrow the Charger and that he had knowledge of Brickey stealing vehicles. He also told police that he had just picked up Brickey after he parked the Suburban at a South Sioux City residence after the pursuit and brought him back to Sioux City.

Officers went to that location and found the stolen Suburban. Two females who live at the residence told police that Brickey parked the Suburban in their backyard after the pursuit and offered them $300 "not to snitch," the documents said.

On Jan. 11, the Charger was located in an alleyway near the 100 block of Bluff Street, near where Brickey was believed to live on Perry Street. The Charger had stolen plates and spray-painted rims, and the entire front end had been ripped off. The police affidavit said the vehicle had been involved in at least one pursuit with the SCPD. Brickey's fingerprints were found on the driver's door, and paperwork with his information was found inside.

A neighbor of Brickey's said they had seen a Charger, a Suburban, and a Dodge Caliber parked recently at Brickey's residence. All three vehicles had been stolen, police said, and all have since been recovered.

Early Thursday morning, Brickey was located as a passenger in a vehicle during a traffic stop, and was arrested.

Brickey is being held in the Woodbury County Jail for violating his parole, two counts of second-degree theft, carrying a concealed and dangerous weapon and possession of drug paraphernalia. His bond is set at $25,000 and he has a court date on Feb. 13.
SIOUX CITY | Power has been restored to about 1,000 customers in Sioux City, after an outage of about 30 minutes right before noon Friday.

MidAmerican Energy reported the outage online and via Twitter. MidAmerican initially reported crews had responded to an outage that impacted 1,064 customers.

A subsequent tweet said the situation had been shortly rectified: "Lights are back on for all customers in Sioux City. Crews found an issue with a piece of equipment and made repairs safely."
SIOUX CITY | It's not yet known where Elias Wanatee's retrial for first-degree murder will take place, but it's certain that it won't be in Sioux City.

District Judge Duane Hoffmeyer on Friday granted a defense request for change of venue, moving the trial from Woodbury County to ensure that an impartial jury can be seated and Wanatee receive a fair trial.

Hoffmeyer said he would choose by Monday from locations in the 4th Judicial District, which includes Council Bluffs, or the 5th District, which includes Des Moines.

The trial is scheduled for Feb. 28. Wanatee, 48, of Sioux City, has pleaded not guilty to the Feb. 17 stabbing death of Vernon Mace.

Wanatee's first trial ended Dec. 14 with a hung jury when jurors, after more than 11 hours of deliberations, informed Hoffmeyer that they would not be able to reach a verdict.

Public defender Jason Dunn had asked that the new trial be moved. He said Friday that the media's coverage of the first trial and frequent mentions of Wanatee's past murder conviction would make it even more difficult to seat a jury in Woodbury County. Jury selection took a full day in the first trial and was hampered, Dunn said, by potential jurors' knowledge of a 1991 conviction that had been continually mentioned in news stories leading up to the trial.

"It has been seeped into the culture of this community for the last year, year and a half," Dunn said.

Assistant Woodbury County Attorney Drew Bockenstedt resisted the motion, saying that juries have been chosen in Woodbury County for several past cases that received intense media coverage. He said few jurors during Wanatee's first trial had mentioned any knowledge of his previous first-degree murder conviction for the death of Kelton "Kelly" DeCora outside a Sioux City bar. Wanatee appealed the conviction and had the charge reduced to second-degree murder. He was released from prison in January 2015.

Bockenstedt said he was concerned that if the case were moved, media in that area would also report on Wanatee's past conviction and create the same concern the defense had raised about keeping the trial in Woodbury County.

Hoffmeyer said he, too, was concerned with the Sioux City media's frequent mentions of Wanatee's past conviction. In choosing to move the trial, he said the court didn't have "the benefit of the passage of time" that may have led to many Woodbury County residents forgetting about the first trial or details of the case they may have seen in the news.

Wanatee is accused of stabbing Mace in the street in the 1900 block of West First Street at about 2 a.m. after witnesses said they heard arguing outside.

Mace, 50, of Sioux City, died a short time later at Mercy Medical Center, and witnesses testified that he told them Wanatee had stabbed him.

Medical examiners testified that Mace was stabbed nine times, the fatal wound puncturing his diaphragm and slicing his liver, causing massive internal bleeding.

There were no eyewitnesses to the stabbing, and police never found a weapon. During police interviews, Wanatee denied killing Mace. Dunn had suggested at trial that Wanatee acted in self-defense because Mace had threatened Wanatee with a gun two weeks earlier.
SIOUX CITY | Valentine's Day is the second most commercialized holiday behind Christmas.

The National Retail Federation says total Valentine's Day spending for 2017 is expected to hit a record $19.7 billion as Americans celebrate with candy, flowers, jewelry and, of course, greeting cards.

Bruce Forbes, a Morningside College professor and chair of religious studies, said he is often asked after a lecture whether Valentine's Day was just a holiday dreamed up by Hallmark Cards to make money.

"They did take advantage of it and they advanced it, but they didn't start it," said Forbes, whose book "America's Favorite Holidays: Candid Histories" features a chapter on Valentine's Day.

The suspected origins of Valentine's Day date back much farther than 1913, when Hallmark Cards of Kansas City, Missouri, began producing its first printed valentines.

Forbes said some scholars link Valentine's Day with St. Valentine, a Roman priest who was imprisoned and executed on Feb. 14. St. Valentine defied an order from Emperor Claudius II, which banned all marriages and engagements in Rome to strengthen the army. St. Valentine continued to perform weddings and was beheaded for his misdeeds.

When the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ended, Forbes said some believe a pope replaced a Roman fertility festival with Valentine's Day sometime in the 400s, but he said this conventional history of Valentine's Day doesn't hold up.

"The problem is, for the next 1,000 years there's no indication of romantic couples doing something special on Feb. 14," he said. "If that's when it's supposed to have begun you would think something would have begun and it didn't."

Jump ahead to the late Middle Ages when Geoffrey Chaucer, the father of English Literature, was living in London. Forbes said Chaucer was a bit of a "love poet," who writes of love birds choosing their mates on Feb. 14.

"It's poetry in the Middle Ages that gets it started," he said.

Forbes said the first Valentine's Day letters and poems were handwritten and sent by the aristocracy in the 1400s. By the 1820s, he said sending printed Valentine's Day cards to each other became a "big fad" in Europe. About 20 years later, the trend reached the United States. In New York in 1843, Forbes said there were 15,000 Valentines Day cards exchanged. A year later, 21,000. A year after that: 30,000.

"Similar things were happening like that in Boston and Philadelphia," Forbes said. "Emily Dickinson, the famous poet, in 1849 says there's so many valentines going around that they're like snowflakes."

In fact, Americans were mailing Valentines Day cards before they were sending Christmas cards. Two years after Hallmark printed its first Valentine's Day cards, Forbes the company added Christmas cards.

"A lot of the early cards were imported from Europe, but with World War I that stopped. That left the opportunity for Hallmark to take over the market, which they did," he said.

Today, engagement rings account for the majority of total Valentine's Day spending. In 2013, Forbes said more than 40 percent of engagements for the year occurred on Valentine's Day.

Forbes said Valentine's Day puts pressure on consumers to spend money, but he said it also gives them a day to show other people how much they care for them.

"We are influenced by the merchants, but we also decide what's going to take off and what doesn't," he said. "What is (Valentine's Day) so popular in our culture? I think it's reflecting us, not just shaping us."
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Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Alfa Consulting, Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda , Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Avieco, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, BRIDGEi2i, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, ClearEdge Partners, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Ergo, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Founders Intelligence, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Headspring, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, King James Group, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision LLC, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Olympus Systems Corporation, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., SigInt Technologies LLC, Silveo, Silveo Consulting India Private Limited, Simian Pty Ltd, SinnerSchrader, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., Sirvart S.A., Sistemes Consulting S.L., Skylink SAS, Soltians Limited, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Somers Ventures Ireland Limited, Somers Ventures LLC, Spacelink SAS, Storm Digital, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Synership LLC, Systor AG, T.A. Cook, TXF LLC, Tambourine, TargetST8, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Ltd, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Tquila, Trivadis, Trivadis AG, Trivadis Austria GmbH, Trivadis Denmark AS, Trivadis Germany GmbH, Trivadis Holding AG, Trivadis Partner AG, Trivadis Services AG, Trivadis Services SRL, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Vector Acquisition Company LLC, Vector Topco LLC, Verax Solutions, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd, Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd, Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, WaveStrike LLC, White Cliffs Consulting LLC, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wise Partners SAS, Wolox, Wolox Colombia S.A.S, Wolox LLC, Wolox Mexico S.R.L de C.V., Wolox S.A., Wolox SpA, Workforce Insight, Workforce Insight LLC, Yesler, Yesler LLC, Yesler Limited, Yesler Singapore Pte Ltd, Zag, Zag Australia Pty Ltd, Zag Limited, Zag USA LLC, Zebra Worldwide Australia Pty Ltd, Zebra Worldwide Group Limited, Zebra Worldwide Media Pty Ltd, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines Inc, Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc, Zestgroup, Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, solid-serVision.com GmbH, and umlaut.

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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.
LUSBY, Md. (Feb. 02, 2017)Maryland State Troopers from the Criminal Enforcement Division, Central South Region arrested a suspect who was wanted for a shooting in St. Mary's County.



The suspect is identified as Kyle Shurtleff, 25, of Leonardtown. He is charged on an arrest warrant issued in St. Mary's County with attempted second degree murder, first degree assault, second degree assault, reckless endangerment and possession of a firearm with felony conviction.



Shurtleff was arrested without incident Thursday around 4:15 p.m. at a gas station in Calvert County. He was transported to the Leonardtown Barrack for processing.



The victim is not being identified at this time. She was uninjured during the incident.



Shortly before 9:00 p.m. on Monday, January 23, 2017, the St. Mary's County 911 Center received a call from the victim stating her ex-boyfriend was shooting at her while she was inside her vehicle. Troopers from the Leonardtown Barrack were immediately dispatched and responded to the scene in the 22,000 block of Budds Creek Road in Leonardtown.



Upon their arrival, the female victim was found, unharmed and inside her vehicle, a short distance from the suspect's home where the incident allegedly occurred. The car she was driving was inoperable with obvious bullet holes throughout the exterior of the vehicle.



The victim told police she had been in a previous relationship with Shurtleff and was on her way to his house. While she was in the driveway of his house, Shurtleff allegedly came out of the home and began firing shots at her vehicle. He then got into a nearby silver Nissan Xterra, and used the vehicle to block her in the driveway. He reportedly exited the car and stood in front of the victim's car and continued to fire multiple shots. After he finished shooting several rounds, he got into a red 1998 Toyota Forerunner and fled the scene.



There was an adult woman and her three children inside the home during the incident. Police believe she is the owner of the red Toyota Forerunner Shurtleff used to flee the scene.



Investigators from the Maryland State Police Criminal Enforcement Division, Central South Region developed information and evidence following the shooting that identified Shurtleff as the person responsible and an arrest warrant was issued.
ANNAPOLIS (Feb. 03, 2017)The state Senate voted Thursday morning to override Gov. Larry Hogan's 2016 veto of the Clean Energy Jobs bill, 32 to 13, after the House voted 85 to 51 Tuesday to override the measure.



This law, dubbed the "Sunshine Tax" by Hogan, will change the requirement for renewable-energy sources in Maryland's electricity supply from 20 percent by the year 2022 to 25 percent by the year 2020.



"This legislation is a tax increase that will be levied upon every single electricity ratepayer in Maryland and, for that reason alone, I cannot allow it to become law," Hogan said in a veto letter to Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller Jr. on May 27.



The governor wrote that the percentage increase is laudable, but increasing taxes is not the correct approach.



Multiple environmental groups in the region have supported the legislation, saying it would help the environment and the economy.



James McGarry, Maryland and Washington, D.C., policy director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said to call the bill a tax is a misnomer, saying it is rather a requirement that the state should uphold.



"With the override, Maryland will increase its commitment to clean energy," McGarry told the University of Maryland's Capital News Service. "It will not only stimulate energy, but also create jobs and have enormous health benefits."



"There is support across party lines, rural, suburban areas," McGarry said. "It's clear this isn't a partisan issue."



Delegate Kathy Szeliga, R-Harford and Baltimore counties, said in a press release this bill will cause Marylanders' electric bills to increase.



"Working families and retirees cannot afford to foot the bill for the lofty goals of the Democrats in Annapolis," Szeliga wrote in the release. "This is one more reason for grandma and grandpa to move to Florida and have more than enough savings to fly up to Maryland to visit the grandkids."



A Department of Legislative Services 2016 fiscal analysis of the bill, the state anticipates an "increase of between $0.08 (per megawatt-hour) to $0.32 (per megawatt-hour) in 2017," where the average residential customer uses about one megawatt-hour per month.



"Poll after poll, Marylanders are willing to invest in the future of clean energy," said Karla Raettig, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters. Raettig called the bill a job creator with benefits to the environment and the economy.



Sen. Brian Feldman, D-Montgomery, referenced a 2017 U.S. Energy and Employment Report that states there are 7,279 solar jobs in Maryland.



Maryland saw a 42 percent increase in solar jobs in the past year and could see about a thousand new solar jobs each year going forward, according to Feldman. He said the jobs created are high-paying jobs that don't require a college degree.



Sen. James Rosapepe, D-Prince George's and Anne Arundel, called the jobs produced from collecting renewable energy the "blue collar jobs of the 21st century." He compared oil in Texas and coal in West Virginia to renewable energy in Maryland.



Sen. Stephen Hershey, R-Caroline, Cecil, Kent and Queen Anne's, said placing the burden on ratepayers is not the right way to accomplish Maryland's renewable energy goal.



"It's just not the right program," Hershey said Thursday on the Senate floor. "It's not the right program for Marylanders and not a program that warrants increased compliance."



Miller said the override of the governor's veto shows that the environment is very important to Maryland and the legislation is moving the state in a progressive direction.



After both chambers' votes, the bill will become law in 30 days.



During Thursday's session, the Senate also voted against the override of Senate bill 910, a bill that would establish a Maryland Education Development Collaborative, 0 to 45. Sen. Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore, encouraged the Senate to vote against the override, saying he plans to write a new bill.



The Senate approved to move the readings of Senate bill 540, which would regulate Morgan State University housing, to Mar. 7 and Senate bill 907, which would require the state and the Maryland Transportation Authority to finance a replacement for the Harry W. Nice Memorial Potomac River Bridge, to the 87th day of session.
LA PLATA, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at so.md/expungeme.

(Feb. 03, 2017)The Charles County Sheriff's Office released the following incident and arrest reports.DRIVER CHARGED WITH MULTIPLE TRAFFIC VIOLATIONS: On January 26 at 2:10 a.m., Pfc. F. Davis was working a stationary radar assignment on Old Washington Road in the area of VFW Road in Waldorf, when he attempted to initiate a traffic stop on a Nissan Altima for speeding. The driver refused to pull over and instead fled. The driver made several U-turns on Crain Highway and began driving erratically. He fled to a nearby apartment complex where he struck Pfc. Davis' car and then jumped out of his car and fled on foot. Officers canvassed the area but the driver was not located. Through investigation, officers identified the suspect and arrested him on Feb. 1 at the Charles County Courthouse, where he was due for an unrelated case., was charged with multiple traffic citations.MAIL TAMPERING: On February 1 at 12:13 p.m., officers responded to the area of Cottongrass Street in Waldorf for the report of a suspicious vehicle. Witnesses said the operator of a black car was driving around the neighborhood opening mailboxes. It appeared the occupants pulled mail from at least two boxes. The items stolen included checks written by the homeowner to pay bills. It is common practice for thieves to take these checks and alter the checks to be made payable to them. Detectives are working on leads. Anyone who observes suspicious activity like this is urged to call police immediately and safely try to obtain a tag number and a good description of the car and occupants. Pfc. B. Moore is investigating.MAN CHARGED WITH RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT: On February 1 at 11:53 a.m., officers responded to a call for shots fired in the 5600 block of Gallant Green Road in Waldorf. The initial complainant stated, fired a shotgun at him multiple times. Officers arrived and established a perimeter around Hemming's residence. Sergeant D. Belfield made contact with Hemming via telephone and talked him into surrendering peacefully. Hemming was taken into custody without further incident. A shotgun and two spent shotgun shells were recovered on the scene. Cpl. J. Morales is investigating.BURGLARY: On January 31 at 10:22 p.m., unknown suspect(s) kicked in the basement door of a house in the 15100 block of Robbers Roost Court in Waldorf. Several items were reported stolen. Pfc. G. Cook is investigating.SUSPECT CHARGED IN BURGLARY: On January 30, detectives served a search warrant in the 1000 block of Floyd Avenue in Waldorf, where they recovered items that had been stolen in a burglary that occurred on January 9 in the 3000 block of Heathcoat Road in Waldorf. The suspect,, was charged with burglary and theft. Det. H. Burgess and Cpl. D. Baker investigated.
WASHINGTON

(Feb. 03, 2017)The U.S. Department of Defense recently announced the following contract awards that pertain to local Navy activities., is being awardedfor firm-fixed-price delivery order N0001917F0022 against a previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-16-D-0051) for 29 automatic radar periscope detection and discrimination standard retrofit p-kits in support of the MH-60R aircraft. Work will be performed at Farmingdale, New York (82.77 percent); Owego, New York (17.10 percent); Oldsmar, Florida (0.11 percent); and Syracuse, New York (0.02 percent), and is expected to be complete by September 2020. Fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $45,845,897 will be obligated at the time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awarded acost-plus-fixed-fee, cost reimbursable contract for services in support of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division's Special Communications Mission Solutions Division. These services will support implementation of telecommunication and related communications-electronics (C-E) systems to enable efficient information exchange of voice, video and data. Services to be provided include engineering, design, analysis, development, prototyping, modification, integration, verification, installation, training, testing, evaluation, logistics and hardware tracking support of telecommunication and related C-E systems, subsystems, and components. Work will be performed in Hollywood, Maryland (39 percent); St. Inigoes, Maryland (38 percent); San Diego, California (22 percent); and Boeblingen, Germany (1 percent), and is expected to be completed in January 2018. Fiscal 2017 working capital funds (Navy) in the amount of $1,497,040 will be obligated at the time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured pursuant to 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1). The, is the contracting activity (N00421-17-C-0001)., is being awarded afor modification P00014 to a previously awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-14-D-0012) for program management, logistics, and engineering services for the governments of Switzerland, Finland, Malaysia, Kuwait, Australia, Canada, and Spain in support of F/A-18 A-D aircraft. Work will be performed in St. Louis, Missouri, and is expected to be completed in January 2018. Foreign military sales funds in the amount of $7,587,814 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract combines purchases for governments of Switzerland ($3,036,964; 40.02 percent); Finland ($1,584,800; 20.89 percent); Malaysia ($912,153; 12.02 percent); Kuwait ($727,337; 9.59 percent); Australia ($540,111; 7.12 percent); Canada ($441,259; 5.81percent); and Spain ($345,190; 4.55 percent) under the Foreign Military Sales program. The, is the contracting activity.Andromeda Systems Inc., Virginia Beach, Virginia (N00421-17-D-0022);(N00421-17-D-0023);(N00421-17-D-0024); Aviation Management Analytical Consultants LLC, Chesapeake, Virginia (N00421-17-D-0025);(N00421-17-D-0026);(N00421-17-D-0027);(N00421-17-D-0028); Synectic Solutions Inc., Oxnard, California (N00421-17-D-0029); and VectorCSP LLC, Elizabeth City, North Carolina (N00421-17-D-0030), are each being awarded cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price, cost-type indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts to provide integrated logistics product support, program management, and logistics support services in acquisition and sustainment for the life cycle of specified weapons systems, system of systems, its sub-systems, and support equipment. These services are in support of the Naval Air Systems Command's Logistics Integration Department (AIR 6.6). The estimated aggregate ceiling for all contracts iswith the companies having an opportunity to compete for individual orders. Work will be performed in Patuxent River, Maryland (85 percent); and various awardee's facility sites (15 percent) in Virginia Beach, Virginia; Lexington Park, Maryland; Chesapeake, Virginia; California, Maryland; Oxnard, California; and Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and is expected to be completed in January 2022. No funds will be obligated at time of award; funds will be obligated on individual orders as they are issued. These contracts were competitively procured via an electronic request for proposals as a 100 percent small business set-aside; 11 offers were received. The, is the contracting activity., is being awardedfor modification P00006 to a previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-15-D-0001) to exercise an option for organizational, selected intermediate, and limited depot level maintenance and logistics services for F/A-18, EA-18G, MH-60S, F-16A/B and E-2C aircraft assigned to the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center, Fallon, Nevada. Work will be performed at the Naval Air Station, Fallon, Nevada, and is expected to be completed in January 2018. Fiscal 2017 operations and maintenance (Navy) funds in the amount of $9,840,482 will be obligated at time of award, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awardedfor delivery order 5310 against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (N00019-14-G-0004) for aircraft spares and support for the CH-53K system demonstration test article. Work will be performed in Stratford, Connecticut, and is expected to be completed in May 2019. Fiscal 2016 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $23,299,764 are being obligated on this award, all of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awardedfor modification POOO17 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, fixed-price-incentive-firm, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract (N00019-14-C-0026). This modification exercises an option for supplies and services to implement engineering changes to the Rolls Royce lift fan systems, 3Bearing Swivel Module Conditioning Flow System, and production thrust recovery in support of the F-35 Lightening II for the Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and international partners. Work will be performed in Indianapolis, Indiana (97 percent); and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (3 percent), and is expected to be complete in December 2018. Fiscal 2015 aircraft procurement (Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy); fiscal 2016 aircraft procurement (Navy) and international partner funds in the amount of $18,790,576 will be obligated at the time of award, $11,183,318 of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This modification combines purchases for the Marine Corps ($14,790,025; 78.7 percent); Air Force ($3,394,535; 18.08 percent); international partners ($344,756; 1.83 percent); and Navy ($261,260; 1.39 percent). The, is the contracting activity., is being awarded anfirm-fixed price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for development, product improvement and prototyping support. This requirement is for engineering, technical, administrative and programmatic management support for total life cycle management of the various aircrew escape systems managed under the Joint Program Office for Cartridge Actuated Device/Propellant Actuated Device Tri-Service Charter. Work will be performed in Chandler, Arizona, and is expected to be completed by October 2020. Fiscal 2017 working capital funds (Navy) in the amount of $500 will be obligated, as the minimum guarantee, on the first task order at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured via the Federal Business Opportunities website, with nine offers received. The, is the contracting activity (N00174-17-D-0016).
LEONARDTOWN, Md.

Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at so.md/expungeme.

(Feb. 03, 2017)The Leonardtown Barrack of the Maryland State Police (MSP) released the following incident and arrest reports.THEFT FROM MOTOR VEHICLES: On Tuesday, January 10, 2017, at 2:02 am, Tpr. Mulhearn responded to the area of Upper Kells Lane, Great Mills, for the report of breaking and entering to motor vehicles. Tpr. Mulhearn made contact with a witness, who advised they had seen two males searching inside numerous vehicles. Tpr. Mulhearn began patrolling the area on foot and located two suspects in the area. The suspects,and, were arrested. A search incident to arrest revealed property not belonging to the suspects. Both subjects were charged with seven counts of Rogue and Vagabond and one count of Theft and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. (17-MSP-001361)DRUG ARREST: On Wednesday, January 11, 2017 at 10:03 am, TFC C. Ditoto initiated a traffic stop on a passenger car on Route 235 at Chaffe Court, Hollywood. TFC Ditoto made contact with the driver,, and detected the strong odor of burnt marijuana emitting from the vehicle. A probable cause search was conducted, resulting in the recovery of drug paraphernalia and a pill bottle containing Oxycodone Hydrochloride and Acetaminophen. Mr. Wade was placed under arrest and charged with Possession of a Schedule II Controlled Dangerous Substance and Unlawfully Omitting a Label on a Prescription Drug. He was additionally issued a Civil Citation for Possession of Marijuana Less than 10 Grams. He was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-001563)FIRST DEGREE ASSAULT: On Thursday, January 12, 2017 at 4:53 am, Tpr. Rutkoski responded to a residence on the 26000 block of Dixon Way, Mechanicsville, for a reported assault. Investigation revealed that, had pointed a firearm at two subjects employed by a repossession company. One of the victims was able to disarm Mr. Phillips and secure the weapon prior to police arrival. Mr. Phillips was placed under arrest and transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. He was charged with two counts of First Degree Assault, two counts of Second Degree Assault, and one count of Use of Firearm to Commit a Felony. A background check by the Maryland Gun Center revealed Mr. Phillips was not allowed to possess any firearms due to past criminal convictions. He was held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-001674)ASSAULT: On Saturday, January 14, 2017 at 3:00 pm, Senior Tpr. Evans responded to a residence on the 21000 block of Ronald Drive, Lexington Park, for a reported disturbance. Upon arrival, Senior Tpr. Evans made contact with. During the investigation, Mr. Jenkins attempted to hit Senior Tpr. Evans in the face with a closed fist strike. He then grabbed Senior Tpr. Evans' leg in a takedown attempt. A very brief struggle ensued, and Mr. Jenkins was placed under arrest. He was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. Upon arrival, he continued to be combative as officers from the St. Mary's County Detention Center tried to take the handcuffs off of him. His actions caused the handcuff key to break off in the handcuff. The handcuffs were cut off of Mr. Jenkins and he was charged with Assault Second Degree and Malicious Destruction of Property. He was also served with an open warrant through the Charles County Sheriff's Office. Mr. Jenkins was held pending bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-002050)DRUG ARREST: On Monday, January 16, 2017 at 6:04 pm, Tpr. Coppedge initiated a traffic stop on a passenger car for a traffic violation. Tpr. Coppedge approached the driver and noticed CDS paraphernalia in plain view. A probable cause search was conducted, which revealed suspected cocaine, prescription medication, drug paraphernalia and a knife. One of the passengers,, was placed under arrest for Possession of CDS Not Marijuana and Possession of a Concealed Deadly Weapon. She was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-002324)SHOPLIFTING: On Friday, January 20, 2017 at 1:07 pm, TFC S. Ditoto and Tpr. Powis responded to Walmart, California, for a reported theft. A witness advised he had observed, and, place numerous items into a plastic shopping bag and approach the Customer Service counter in an attempt to return the merchandise. Both subjects were stopped by loss prevention. Mr. Buckler was charged with Theft Less than $1,000 and released on a Criminal Citation. Ms. Hopson had an open warrant through Prince George's County. Ms. Hopson was charged with Theft Less than $1,000, False Statement to Peace Officer for giving a fictitious name, and CDS - Not Marijuana that was located during a search incident to arrest. She was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center. (17-MSP-002861)ASSAULT, RESISTING ARREST: On Wednesday, January 25, 2017 at 2:30 am, TFC C. Ditoto initiated a traffic stop on Route 5 at Route 6, Mechanicsville, on a passenger car for a traffic violation. TFC Ditoto made contact with the driver,, and asked him to exit the vehicle to perform standardized field sobriety tests. Once Mr. Millett exited the vehicle, a brief struggle ensued. During the struggle, Mr. Millett ignored verbal commands and refused to stop resisting. Mr. Millett was placed under arrest and charged with Failure to Obey a Lawful Order, Assault 2nd Degree, and Resisting Arrest. He was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-003567)DRUG ARREST: On Friday, January 27, 2017 at 7:00 pm, TFC S. Ditoto and Tpr. Powis responded to the 21000 block of Great Mills Road, Lexington Park, for the report of a vehicle collision. A routine check revealed that an occupant of one of the vehicles involved,, had an outstanding warrant through the St. Mary's County Sheriff's Office. A search incident to arrest revealed two folded pieces of paper containing suspected heroin and a straw containing suspected heroin residue. Ms. Fowler was transported to the St. Mary's County Detention Center and charged with Possession of CDS (not marijuana) and Possession of Drug Paraphernalia. A St. Mary's County Deputy served the open warrant on Ms. Fowler and she was held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner. (17-MSP-003984)Charles Edwin Compton, 30, of California, on 1/8/2017 for Traffic ChargesMartie Dawkin Smith, 25, of Great Mills, on 1/10/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtJavon Marcel Bonds, 24, of Lexington Park, on 1/8/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtJean Paul Visele, 44, of Callaway, on 1/7/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtMatthew Guetschoff, 31, of Lexington Park, on 1/6/2017 for Traffic ChargesAnthony Levi Taylor, 28, of Great Mills, on 1/11/2017 for Assault First DegreeKiva Keemer, 36, of Lexington Park, on 1/10/2017 for Traffic ChargesDanyelle Tameka Reed, 32, of Lexington Park, on 1/11/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtGeorge Dewayne Mulloy II, 30, of Lexington Park, on 1/23/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtKerri Marie Hall, 34, of Avenue, on 1/22/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtSandra L. Cable, 53, of Mechanicsville, on 1/20/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtKenneth Floyd Dodson, 25, of Salisbury, on 1/17/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtBrian Keith Jordan, 42, of Great Mills, on 1/24/2017 for Second Degree AssaultChristine Elizabeth Bowling, 31, of Mechanicsville, on 1/28/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtLewis Sylevester Armstrong, 61, of Avenue, on 1/26/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtCarol Roxanne Pena, 28, of Lexington Park, on 1/27/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtDonald William McGrath, 47, of Leonardtown, on 1/27/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtMitchell Webster Willett, Jr., 48, of Bushwood, on 1/27/2017 for Firearms ViolationsTammy N. McGinnis, 48, of Lexington Park, on 1/28/2017 for Failure to Appear in CourtRandolph Eugene Payne, Jr., 36, of Hollywood, on 1/9/2017Mauricio Antonio Mejia Rivera, 29, of Lexington Park, on 1/10/2017Marilyn A Saar, 19, of Waldorf, on 1/14/2017Ashlynn M. Register, 22, of Hollywood, on 1/15/2017Joseph Cornell Young, 42, of Mechanicsville, on 1/17/2017Richard Corey Starr, 29, of St. Mary's City, on 1/20/2017Carey Thompson-Macpherson, 46, of Washington, DC, on 1/21/2017Michael Lewis Johnson, Sr., 54, of Mechanicsville, on 1/21/2017Craig E. Millett, 36, of Hughesville, on 1/25/2017Michael L Sebelist, 43, of Lexington Park, on 1/26/2017Mandy S Tourville, 42, of California, on 1/26/2017Ernesto J. Cruz, 22, of Wheatland, WY, on 1/26/2017Ian D. Bradford, 26, of Leonardtown, on 1/27/2017Joseph B. Hoffman, 20, of Mechanicsville, on 1/28/2017Ignacio Villarreal, 45, of Lexington Park, on 1/29/2017Steven W. Gonsalves, 28, of Beech Island, SC on 1/30/2017Patrick L. Plater, Jr., 26, of Mechanicsville, on 1/30/2017
Beautiful Evie (ID 569042) came from a meat farm in South Korea where she lived with 200 other dogs. The dogs would eventually have been slaughtered and served as food. She and nine other dogs traveled over 12,500 miles to find their forever homes with loving families in South Florida. The other dogs went to shelters across the country. Evie is approximately 2 years old and is a Jindo mix. She is a bit shy, but with lots of TLC she will be your best friend. Can Evie be part of your family?

Nine-month old Hero (ID 568978) wants you to be his hero and give him a forever home. This fellow is affectionate, sweet and cant wait to be showered with love. He will be the perfect addition to any feline-loving family. Can you make his wish come true?

When you adopt from the Humane Society of Broward County all pets are spayed or neutered before going home. In addition, they receive preliminary vaccinations, heartworm test for dogs over seven months, feline leukemia test for cats, a limited 10-day health care plan courtesy of VCA Animal Hospital, a bag of Purina ONE food, 30 days of Trupanion pet insurance and more. The adoption fee for dogs over six months is $100 and felines over six months are $30. For more information, call the shelter today at 954-989-3977 ext. 6. The Humane Society of Broward County is located at 2070 Griffin Road, just a block west of I-95 and opens daily at 10:30 a.m. To see who else needs a home visit www.humanebroward.com
Its been said that timing is everything. Raoul Pecks James Baldwin doc I Am Not Your Negro, opening in theaters in the wake of Representative and civil rights icon John Lewis public feud with President Trump, is proof positive of that. Owing as much to recent film such as Selma and Birth of a Nation as it does to Hidden Figures and 13th, I Am Not Your Negro is required viewing.

In 1979, gay author Baldwin had endeavored to tell his story of America through the lives of three murdered friends Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. He only got as far as writing 30 pages of notes for the unfinished book, to be titled Remember This House.

Peck combines phenomenal vintage footage of Baldwin, who died in 1987, with Samuel L. Jackson providing voiceover for letters from Baldwin to his agent and more. If only Baldwin knew how prescient his words, about everything from race to television, were when he spoke (and wrote) them between 40 and 50 years ago.

With the murders of Evers (1963), X (1965) and King (1968) as the backdrop, its fitting (and frustrating) that Peck was able to find parallels between the racial violence of the past, distant and recent, and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement spurred on by the events in Ferguson, Missouri.

Anyone familiar with Baldwins writing is sure to find inspiration from hearing him speak in the film. Among the most unforgettable films clips are Baldwins 1968 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, an interview on the 1963 Dr. Kenneth Clark TV program, The Negro and The American Promise(which also featured King and X), and speaking engagements, such as the one at Cambridge University (1965).

Baldwin, who says he was not a member of any particular black group because he was never in town to stay and that his function was to write the story as a witness and get out, without realizing it, became the great black hope of the great white father. He even earned himself an FBI file in 1966, in which he is described as dangerous, leading to his name being included in the security index. I Am Not Your Negro is not to be missed. A-
At Wednesday nights meeting, Oakland Park Commissioners approved a moratorium on medical marijuana through Dec. 31, 2017.

During a public hearing on the first reading of the ordinance, commissioners discussed medical marijuana, listened to residents concerns and asked for advice from legal counsel.

In last Novembers elections, Florida voters approved Amendment 2 allowing for the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. In Oakland Park, 80 percent of registered voters approved -- above the 76 percent of Broward County voters and far exceeding the 60 percent required to amend the states constitution.

The voters have spoken, that is clear, said Commissioner Sara Guevrekian. This is non-negotiable.

Other factors, however, are negotiable and dependent on the states lead, said Commissioner Michael Carn.

I would not feel comfortable giving permits without guidelines from the state, Carn said, adding he felt like the issue was letting a genie out of a bottle.

Resident Jack Doren addressed the commission, disclosing a personal story of how marijuana alleviated nausea from his HIV medications.

I found that one inhaling took away 95 percent of the nausea, within seconds, Doren said. Im not exaggerating. So I personally know how effective this medicine can be.

The Florida Department of Health is tasked with implementing regulations and committees will be working on just that when lawmakers return to Tallahassee for the start 2017 legislative session next month.

Oakland Park Mayor John Adornato III said the biggest problem is the seed to sell as any bank that is federally insured cannot process funds associated with marijuana. As far as dispensary zoning is concerned, Adornato said the city can claim home rule over the state.

Ultimately, commissioners approved the ordinance on a 3-2 vote, with Adornato and Vice Mayor Tim Lonergan dissenting. A 12-month moratorium is too long in Lonergans view.

How would you like being sick for one day when you know theres a way around it? Lonergan asked his fellow commissioners.
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.




alse color view of Jupiters polar haze NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt

NASAs Juno mission completed a close flyby of Jupiter on Thursday, Feb. 2, its latest science orbit of the mission.



All of Junos science instruments and the spacecrafts JunoCam were operating during the flyby to collect data that is now being returned to Earth. Juno is currently in a 53-day orbit, and its next close flyby of Jupiter will occur on March 27, 2017.

NASAs Juno spacecraft will make its fourth flyby over Jupiters mysterious cloud tops on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 4:57 a.m. PST (7:57 a.m. EST, 12:57 UTC).

At the time of closest approach (called perijove), Juno will be about 2,670 miles (4,300 kilometers) above the planets cloud tops and traveling at a speed of about 129,000 mph (57.8 kilometers per second) relative to the gas giant. All of Junos eight science instruments, including the Jovian Infrared Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) instrument, will be on and collecting data during the flyby.

Tomorrow may be Groundhog Day here on Earth, but its never Groundhog Day when you are flying past Jupiter, said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. With every close flyby we are finding something new.

The Juno science team continues to analyze returns from previous flybys. Revelations include that Jupiters magnetic fields and aurora are bigger and more powerful than originally thought and that the belts and zones that give the gas giants cloud top its distinctive look extend deep into the planets interior. Peer-reviewed papers with more in-depth science results from Junos first three flybys are expected to be published within the next few months. Also, JunoCam, the first interplanetary outreach camera, is now being guided with the assistance from the public  people can participate by voting for what features on Jupiter should be imaged during each flyby.

Information about JunoCam voting is available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6722

Juno is currently in a 53-day orbit period around Jupiter as the team evaluates options for performing a maneuver to get the spacecraft into a shorter orbit period. While the initial plan was for the mission was to have 14-day orbits during this time, Juno can reveal amazing details about Jupiter even if it stays in the longer orbits for the duration of the mission.

Juno launched on Aug. 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016. During its mission of exploration, Juno soars low over the planets cloud tops  as close as about 2,600 miles (4,100 kilometers). During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of Jupiter and studying its auroras to learn more about the planets origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Juno mission for the principal investigator, Scott Bolton, of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. The Juno mission is part of the New Frontiers Program managed by NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the Science Mission Directorate. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. JPL is a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

More information on the Juno mission is available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/juno

http://missionjuno.org

The public can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at:

http://www.facebook.com/NASAJuno

http://www.twitter.com/NASAJuno
This coming weekend more than 400 850 cafes across the United States are joining to help raise funds for the American Civil Liberties Union. We launched this effort on Tuesday morning in partnership with 26 brands, agreeing to sponsor the first $500 raised by each of themand since then another 175 (and counting!) brands have come on board to join this effort.

We want to try and get every brand involved with this effort a matching fundraiser partner, and so we reached out to a number of the companies in the coffee industry. Heres a list of companies who have agreed to match cafe brands around the country at the $500 per brand levelthank you all so much. We hope to add many more companies to this list over the coming days. If you want to get involved with a matching donation to the ACLU please click here.

Peets Coffee and Tea have agreed to match an incredible 50 companies this weekend, with a donation of $25,000 to the ACLU. We have a statement on the donation from Peets CEO Dave Burwick:

Given everything going on, we wanted to reaffirm to all Peetniks our values and beliefs as a company and allay any fears they may have about the future. Our Peets family is made up of a vibrant mix of individuals from many walks of life, beliefs and backgroundsincluding 25 countries from around the world where we source coffee and have established relationships based on trust and respect for different people and cultures. It is this diversity that makes us so special and brings all Peetniks great pride. Our doors are open to everyone and we will not stop being a beacon of equality and inclusion. We applaud Sprudge for its leadership in engaging the coffee community in support of the ACLU, and Peets Coffee will be making a contribution to further ACLUs important work across the country.  Dave Burwick, CEO, Peets Coffee

East Bay green coffee importers Royal Coffee have stepped up by generously agreeing to match 25 brands participating in this weekends cafe fundraiser. In addition, they will be participating in a variety of other fundraising ways, including donating a portion of sales from select green coffees hailing from The Congo and Yemen, countries with significant refugee populations. You can read about their wide-ranging and laudable ACLU fundraising efforts here.

In addition to participating in this weekends fundraiser at the cafe level, with nearly 30 cafes taking part in the United States and Japan, Blue Bottle CEO Bryan Meehan and Founder James Freeman have made significant personal contributions to the ACLU as part of this effort. Were not going to out the amount but it is eye-raising and well include it in the final tally of funds raised when we announce that next week. Freeman has penned a stirring statement on why participation in this fundraiser is so meaningful to him.

In addition to participating in this weekends fundraiser at the cafe level, with 25 cafes taking part across the United States, La Colombe leadership JP Iberti, Hamdi Ulukaya, and Todd Carmichael have made significant personal contributions to the ACLU as part of this effort. In an email sent to the companys 900+ employees, and shared with Sprudge, Carmichael states:

The events over the last few days strike a chord close to our home. As you may know, two of our three partners, and my brothers, Jean Philippe and Hamdi, are immigrants, as are my four children, Yemi, Yordi, Selah, and Bek. Many of our staff were born elsewhere, and have come to live and work with us: folks in Hospitality, our back office, our production floor, our cafes, and more.

As CEO, I personally condemn any ban that strips the rights of persons carrying green cards or visas. I also condemn vehemently any measure, from the left or the right, carving out one religion as passable, and another as inferior, dangerous or unworthy. I equally condemn any act of government that places one race over or under another. We are all equal.

InterAmerican Coffee, a green coffee importing company headquartered in Houston, Texas, and with offices in San Diego and Providence, RI have generously agreed to match 10 brands participating this weekend, in the form of a $5000 donation to the ACLU.

Counter Culture are stepping up to match sponsorship for 5 brands this weekend. With headquarters in Durham, North Carolina and Emeryville, California, several of Counter Cultures nationwide network of wholesale cafes are participating in this weekends fundraiser, including our launch partners at Everyman Espresso. Counter Culture is an industry leader in sustainable and ethical coffee buying practices at originlearn more back looking at their annual Transparency Report.

Seattle-based under counter espresso technology start-up Mavam Espresso will match two brands taking part this weekend. Enjoy delicious coffee made on a Mavam Espresso machine this weekend at Tartine Manufactory, one of our original launch partners for this nationwide effort.

Cafe Imports of Minneapolis, Minnesota will match two fundraising brands this weekend. Many of the roasters involved in this weekends cafe fundraiser are green coffee partners with Cafe Imports and La Bodega, their small-format boutique green coffee brand.

Trilogi Software

Trilogi Software, a San Francisco based company, have donated $1000 to the ACLU, thereby matching two of our participating brands this weekend. Brothers Larry and Ken Berger spearheaded this generous donations.

Raleigh, NC purveyors of some of the countrys best cold brew, Slingshot Coffee have agreed to match one fundraising brand this weekend. You can enjoy delicious Slingshot at fine grocery stores and markets across the United Statesit pairs great with amaro, even in the cold months.

Boutique coffee scale game disrupters Acaia Coffee have agreed to match one fundraising brand this weekend. Acaia is a two-time Sprudgie Award winner for Best New Product.

Newly launched boutique green coffee experts Genuine Origin have agreed to match one fundraising brand this weekend. We think their work on Medium is some of the best origin-focused coffee writing happening anywhere on the web right now!

One-stop coffee gear webshop Espresso Parts of Olympia, Washington have agreed to match one fundraising brand this weekend. Follow Espresso Parts on Instagram for glimpses of super dope coffee gear around the world.

Industry leaders in the field of coffee grinders, at home or in the cafe, Baratza have agreed to match one fundraising brand this weekend. Baratza are winners of the 2016 Sprudgie Award for Best New Product for their groundbreaking Baratza Sette 270W grinder.

For baristas, by baristas, the globetrotting Barista Nation event series has agreed to sponsor a match for one fundraising brand this weekend. Were thrilled to be participating in the upcoming Barista Nation NYC event, happening this May in Manhattan. More details soon!

Online coffee seller Beanstock Coffee Roasters have agreed to sponsor a match for one fundraising brand this weekend. Indeed, they will specifically be sponsoring the first $500 raised by Snowy Owl Cafe of Brewster, MA

Vertically integrated Latin American green coffee experts Caravela Coffee have stepped up to match one of this weekends participating brands. Caravelas expertise is focused on delicious green coffee from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.

Just Coffee Co-Op have agreed to match two of this weekends participating brands, in the form of an $1000 donation to the ACLU. Thank you Just Coffee!

Nomadic Ground, a wholesaler of organic and fair trade coffees to cafes, restaurants and markets in the SF Bay Area, have agreed to match one brand this weekend.

Marcus Boni & Anthony Truscello

Private citizens and coffee professionals Marcus Boni and Anthony Truscello will match one brand this weekend, in the form of a $500 donation to ACLU. Thank you so much Marcus & Tony!

Barista Magazine, a coffee publication based in the United States, has donated $500 to the ACLU as part of the wider cafe fundraising effort. They announced their donation on Instagram and Facebook.

Boot Coffee has agreed to match the first $500 raised by Dragonfly Roasters, a coffee bar and roasting company located in Boulder, Colorado.

Blossom Coffee, makers of the Blossom One Brewer, have agreed to match $500 over this weekend in a donation to the ACLU.

Coffee Traders, a coffee roasting company based in Whitefish, Montana, have agreed to match $500 over this weekend in a donation to the ACLU. Whitefish is located on the doorstep of Glacier National Park, truly one of the most beautiful places in the United States.

Visions Espresso, a Seattle-based espresso equipment retailer and parts supplier, have agreed to match one cafe in this weekends fundraiser.
Addis Ababa, January 31, 2017 (SPS) -The President of the Republic, SG of the Frente POLISARIO, Brahim Gali held on Monday bilateral meetings with Heads of State and Government of the AU on the sidelines of the work of the 28 Summit of the UA.

The excellent bilateral relations and joint cooperation were the center of the conversations of the meeting held by the President of the Republic with his SE. Mohamed Uld Abdelaziz, President of the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, where the meeting highlighted the various aspects of the excellent relations and prospects for future work between the SADR and the Republic of Mauritania, both bilateral and within the framework of the African Union.

While the current progress of the Sahrawi issue at the level of the United Nations and the African Union were the focus of the bilateral meetings which the President of the Republic, Mr. Brahim Gali, celebrated on the first day of the work of the XXVIII Summit Heads of State and Government of the African Union, with the presidents of Tanzania, Namibia, Zambia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal.

The Saharawi leader also met with the vice-president of Angola, with the vice-president of the Commission of the African Union and several heads of the delegations that took part in this cuurent African Summit.SPS

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Washington, February 01, 2017 (SPS) - Western Sahara has been classified as a "non-free" territory where the respect for political and civic rights has declined significantly in 2016, according to a report by the US NGO, Freedom House, issued Tuesday in Washington.

In 2016, the occupied Western Sahara experienced a marked degradation in the respect for democratic freedoms with a score of 4 points out of 100, the worlds worse score after Tibet, according to this report.

The Freedom House Foundation considered Western Sahara as occupied territories, whose final status remains to be determined.

The ranking is very much in line with the position of the US State Department which had maintained the occupied Sahrawi territories in the list of dependencies at the end of 2016, whose "sovereignty remains to be determined".

The report of the US NGO includes 14 occupied or disputed territories with no defined status and 195 independent countries. SPS

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Addis Ababa, February 02, 2017 (SPS) - Following its membership in the African Union (AU), Morocco is urged to efficiently contribute to the implementation of the UN-OAU (currently AU) Peace Plan for the decolonization of Western Sahara, and respect for the sovereignty of the Sahrawi Republic on its territory, President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) Brahim Gali stressed in Addis Ababa.

"Following its membership in the AU, Morocco is urged to actively the efforts made by both organizations (AU and UN) to seek a lasting, just and sustainable solution to the Western Sahara conflict, a solution that guarantees respect for the Sahrawi people's right to self-determination, Sahrawi press agency SPS reported Wednesday.

Sahrawi President stressed "the AU remains an important guarantor, by the side of the UN, for the implementation of the Peace Plan, delayed over the years by the hindrances put by Morocco, and the full settlement of the conflict between two members of the continental organization."

Following his talks with the new UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres in Addis Ababa, on the sidelines of the 28th AU Heads of State and Government Summit which kicked off Monday, the Sahrawi President said that MINURSO must be able to carry out its mission properly to enable the Sahrawi people to freely determine their future.

The Sahrawi President, also Secretary General of the Polisario Front, denounced the continuing Moroccan human rights violations in the occupied areas of Western Sahara, calling on UN to take an action in the face of this unacceptable situation. SPS

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The Meadowlands has issued a statement on Hall of Famer Sam McKee, who was recently hospitalized after suffering a stroke.

The statement from The Meadowlands is as follows.

As many of you have heard, the longtime Hall of Fame voice of the Meadowlands and director of television, Sam McKee, suffered a major stroke on Thursday. He is out of surgery, but still in critical condition at a New Jersey hospital.

There will be a challenging road ahead for his emotional and physical recovery. Sam will most likely require months of physical rehabilitation.

Many of us have had the privilege to work with Sam since he first came to the Meadowlands in 1998. His knowledge, devotion and love for harness racing is simply unmatched. Anytime he walks into a room, his energy and excitement is infectious. Sam is a tireless worker and gives all of himself to promote his beloved sport. There is no fan, horsemen, or even bettor that has not felt goose bumps while listening to one of Sams signature charging hard calls as the horses come storming down the Meadowlands stretch.

While Sam has touched and influenced countless people in the industry, his character and reputation stand above all else. He is the most kind, genuine person you could meet and is tremendously generous to all that know him.

The McKee Family would like to invite everyone to continue sharing their thoughts and prayers with Sam. A GoFund Me account has been established to help his family during the long road to recovery.

While the family continues to appreciate the outpouring of support from so many people, they ask that their privacy be respected during these challenging times. More updates will be provided as necessary.

Please join Standardbred Canada in wishing Sam McKee a full recovery.
Already, it had been a good night for Morgan Gallus and her companions who were sturgeon fishing on the Rainy River near Baudette, Minn. They had caught a 50-inch and a 51-inch sturgeon and two smaller ones.

Gallus, of Delano, Minn., was out with Duluth, Minn., native Grant Sorensen, now of Minneapolis, and two other friends. They were taping their sturgeon-fishing adventure for an upcoming episode of Sorensens Superior Angling show on WDIO-TV Channel 10 in Duluth. They already had plenty of content from the evening.

After starting to fish on the evening of Jan. 20, they were still fishing well after midnight on Jan. 21.

At 2 a.m., we decided to give it another 15 or 20 minutes, said Gallus, 27, who is Sorensens fiancee. Then I hooked this fish at 2:15 a.m., and we didnt land it until 4.

The fish turned out to be a 66-inch lake sturgeon with a 30-inch girth. For comparison, the Minnesota state-record sturgeon, taken on the Kettle River in 1994, was 70 inches long with a 26 1/2-inch girth. It weighed 94 pounds, 4 ounces. And that one was taken in open water.

Gallus fish likely would have weighed about 86 pounds, based on length and girth data, said Phil Talmage, area fisheries supervisor for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources at Baudette.

That is a big lake sturgeon for any time of the year, Talmage said. The largest weve caught in our nets was 75 inches, although weve had reports up to 84 inches in the past 10 years.

The 51-inch sturgeon that Gallus had caught when the night was young required just 15 minutes to land, she said.

I knew right away this one was a lot bigger, she said. I didnt realize how much bigger.

The anglers were well-prepared to land sturgeon in their pop-up fishing shelter. They had augered two 8-inch holes side by side, then used an ice saw to trim away the connecting ice. Gallus was using 10-pound braided Sufix line and a 3/4-ounce black jig tipped with three fathead chubs. She was fishing on the bottom in about 20 feet of water.

Fishing with Gallus and Sorensen were Eric Olson of International Falls and Mike Wilson of Fort Frances, Ontario.

After about an hour and 15 minutes or an hour and a half, we got a glimpse of the fish underneath my hole, Gallus said. My heart dropped.  I saw Mike and Erics expressions, and theyd fished sturgeon their whole life.

Then I got kind of scared. I said, We have to do our best to land this fish. Im not going to horse it. Let it get tired. 

Sorensen kept the video rolling. After another short eternity, Gallus and friends saw the fish again.

It was coming up nose-first, she said. It came into the hole. I said, Grab it! Grab it! Eric reached his whole arm through the hole, grabbed his gill plate and lifted.

He managed to lift the fish only 6 or 8 inches, Gallus said.

Mike helped, and as soon as we saw that thing, I was crying. I knew it was a sturgeon of a lifetime, she said.

Handling the bruiser gently, they got some quick video and photos and sent it back  but not without difficulty.

We couldnt get the right angle to release it, Sorensen said. We had to cut the hole bigger with the saw to release it.

They could not have legally kept the fish. A catch-and-release-only sturgeon season began Oct. 1 and continues through April 23. Not that they would have considered keeping such a fish even if it were legal.

Im super excited, Gallus said. There was so much emotion involved in that fight. I get goosebumps still, talking about it. It was one of those moments when everything right happens. Theres a lot more things that can go wrong.



2017 Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minn.)

Visit the Duluth News Tribune (Duluth, Minn.) at www.duluthnewstribune.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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From the winter of 2010-11 through 2013-14, Wisconsins white-tailed deer were studied as never before.

Over those four years, researchers and volunteers fitted 1,001 deer with radio collars.

The animals were then released and tracked until they died or the project ended.

More than a few are probably still living with a vestige of the study hanging around their necks. One, a trophy buck, was shot by a bowhunter last fall in northwestern Wisconsin.

Whether they lived a week or outlasted the project, all of them served the higher good of science.

So what did the research show? Since sharing the findings is a tenet of publicly funded research, and Wisconsinites are endlessly interested in the official state animal, you should know the results of the complete project.

Dan Storm, ungulate research ecologist with the Department of Natural Resources, supervised the last couple years of the study and provided me with a summary.

The 2010-14 research had two major projects  buck mortality and fawn recruitment  and was conducted in two study areas, the northern forest near Winter in Sawyer County and the eastern farmland near Shiocton in Outagamie County.

The fawn study, with a focus on survival rates, ran into 2013. The buck study, designed to improve deer population estimates and monitor causes of mortality, continued into 2014.

The research was funded with $2 million from the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration. Commonly known as Pittman-Robertson, the money is collected from excise taxes on firearms, ammunition and hunting supplies and distributed to states for wildlife projects.

The work was a partnership of the DNR and University of Wisconsin. Andrew Norton and Camille Warbington, UW graduate students, led the studies of adult deer and fawns, respectively.

More than 1,000 volunteers participated in the project.

Researchers placed radio collars on the whitetails to help determine the animals home ranges, habits and causes of death. If a collar gave a mortality signal researchers traveled to the site as quickly as possible in an effort to determine what killed the animal.

The work included 577 collared bucks and 139 collared fawns.

Trapping and collaring and tracking deer is hard work, but manageable for trained and dedicated staff.

Weather, on the other hand, is completely outside the control of researchers.

If a project manager could control weather conditions for such a four-year study, he would probably schedule at least one very severe winter and one mild winter.

As it turned out, thats what happened. The study included the harshest winter (2013-14) recorded in Wisconsin since 1960 and one of the five mildest (2011-12) according to the Winter Severity Index.

It was totally fortuitous, Storm said.

Overall, the results confirmed human hunting as the largest source of mortality among juvenile and adult deer in both study areas.

In the north, 48 percent of bucks (regardless of age) were killed during the hunting season. In the east, the mortality rate was 54 percent for yearlings and 67 percent for adult bucks.

Most of the harvest occurred in both study areas during the nine-day gun season, but some level of hunter-caused mortality was seen beginning in September at the start of bow seasons.

Outside of the hunting season, juvenile and adult deer were most likely to die in March or April, regardless of location.

If they were in the north, when averaged across the four years, the leading cause of mortality outside the hunting season was predation followed by starvation.

The rates for predation changed substantially from year to year. In 2012, for example, only 5 percent of the deer that died were killed by predators. In 2014, predators accounted for about 40 percent of mortality. Wolves were the leading cause of predation on juvenile and adult deer in the north. Bobcats, bears and coyotes also each took at least one adult or juvenile deer in the north.

Storm said in late winter its often difficult to determine if a predator such as a wolf or coyote killed a deer or scavenged it.

He said the work reinforced the belief that most predation is compensatory rather than additive.

Most predated deer exhibited poor body condition (red bone marrow) and were nutritionally stressed, Storm said. Such dramatic changes in predation rates from year to year could not be driven by variation in predator abundance.

In the east, predation of juvenile or adult deer was extremely rare to nonexistent. Even outside the hunting season humans were the leading cause of mortality in adult deer in the east, either through vehicle collisions or poaching.

For juveniles in the east, the leading cause of mortality from winter to fall depended on the year. In 2011 and 2012 it was human-caused; in 2013 and 2014 it was starvation.

Starvation in the highly agricultural Eastern Farmland region was an unexpected and notable finding, Storm said.

The fawn data showed how vulnerable wildlife is in the first weeks of life. The fawns were tracked until September, when their expandable collars often broke.

In the north, fawn survival across the years of the study ranged from a low of 25 percent to a high of 55 percent. In the east, 58 percent to 62 percent of fawns were still alive in September.

The leading cause of fawn mortality in the north was predators. Bears killed the most fawns, followed by bobcats, then canids. Over the course of the study, the researchers did not find a fawn definitively killed by a wolf.

In the east, most fawns died from starvation, followed by predators (mostly coyotes).

The high rate of fawn starvation in the east was a surprise to most associated with the project.

Youve got crop fields in the area and during the summer growing season deer have as much food as they can eat, Storm said. But during winter, if a doe doesnt get enough food and doesnt put on enough fat reserves it cant nourish the fawns properly in spring. This points to an overpopulation of deer and a lack of food through winter.

The data collected on adult deer were valuable to the DNR as it works to refine its methods for estimating deer populations. Storm said the study confirmed the values the agency was using for buck recovery rates in the Sex-Age-Kill model were adequate.

The work also helped launch the Integrated Population Model, the subject of Nortons doctoral thesis. The IPM is more flexible and allows more inputs, Storm said, and likely will become more widely used in the future.

Storm said the 2010-14 work not only produced important results but also will help improve the deer study commencing this year in southwestern Wisconsin. For example, the new project will collar predators and estimate predator abundance. And the best trapping and deer handling techniques learned in the earlier studies will be applied to the new work.

Research can break new ground, dispel hypotheses or substantiate theories. If its done well, its always valuable.
Driftboaters, kayakers, sailors and others running boats without motors may soon  for the first time  start paying toward their playing on Oregon's public waterways.

The Oregon State Marine Board will ask the Oregon Legislature to create and fund a new nonmotorized boating program that would help pay for upkeep of boat ramps, other facilities and marine patrol programs heretofore paid largely by fees charged to motorized boaters.

The program would also offer grants to public agencies to buy, build, expand or renovate facilities for nonmotorized boats as the Marine Board currently does through its facilities program. Money also would be available to put marine patrols on waterways heavily used by nonmotorized boats and fund removal of navigational hazards such as "strainer" trees dangerous to the summer flotilla on the upper Rogue River.

House Bill 2320 would authorize the program and establish fees for transferable permits boaters would have to carry when rowing or sailing their boats.

A one-week permit would cost $4, an annual permit would cost $12, and a two-year permit would cost $20.

This would be in addition to the $5 annual Invasive Species Program permit users of boats over 10 feet long must purchase to fund efforts to keep aquatic invasive species such as quagga and zebra mussels out of Oregon waterways and control those already here.

Under the proposal, anyone 14 or older would have to carry both permits when operating any nonmotorized boat. Companion bill HB 2321 seeks to remove the AIS exemption for nonmotorized boats less than 10 feet long.

The Marine Board said nonmotorized boat activity now equals or exceeds motorized activity, and nonmotorized boaters account for, on average, half of Oregon's annual boating fatalities, the agency said.

The Marine Board estimates there are about 110,000 unlicensed, nonmotorized boats in Oregon, along with 155,629 licensed boats.

Some owners of nonmotorized boats have told the Marine Board they would accept modest fees if they see results on the water from it, Marine Board spokeswoman Ashley Massey said.

"It's really about meeting the needs they told us they had," Massey said.

The 2015 Oregon Legislature told the Marine Board to come up with a program addressing nonmotorized boats. The agency formed a public advisory committee whose suggestions led to development of the proposal, Massey said.

"In our committee, they understand that in order to play, they have to pay, too," Massey said.

One of those on the committee was Eric Weiseth, managing partner of Orange Torpedo Trips, a rafting and outfitting company in Merlin.

Weiseth said he realizes that covering at least some of the costs of Marine Board programs makes sense.

"I use boat ramps all the time," Weiseth said. "Nobody's for having another thing to buy. But it does make sense to me to help pay for what we use."

The Marine Board estimates that the fees would generate about $2.17 million over the next two years.

The proposal calls for two full-time employees and one part-timer, and the program would have a biennial cost of $1.87 million. The excess money, Massey said, would be available as grants.

HB 2320 currently does not have a legislative sponsor, Massey said.

The bill would also, for the first time, define and regulate for safety those using inner tubes, floating mattresses and other pool toys when floating Oregon's rivers and streams.

The term "nonmotorized craft" would be used to describe items not defined as a boat and not propelled by equipment such as oars, yet still capable of supporting a person on the water, according to the Marine Board.

Anyone floating a river or stream on a nonmotorized craft would be required to wear a life jacket, according to the bill's draft.

However, that designation and requirement would not abolish those floaters' exemption from rules banning the operation of a boat while under the influence of intoxicants, Massey said.

Jackson County sheriff's Sgt. Shawn Richards said there is a contingent of people who use large floating islands while on the Rogue to sidestep BUII rules.

"They're thumbing their noses at us, because they don't fit the definition of a boat," Richards said. "We can't do anything about it."

Massey said the committee discussed expanding the BUII rules for nonmotorized crafts but opted against it.
House Democrats say they have raised a record amount in January and are using their momentum to target Republican seats in the 2018 midterm elections. Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutlers seat is one of them.

But it could prove a difficult race in Southwest Washington. Herrera Beutler, R-Camas, was elected House representative for the 3rd Congressional District in 2010 and has been re-elected three times. She won 61.8 percent of the votes in the November general election  the highest percentage yet during her time in Congress  against state Rep. Jim Moeller, D-Vancouver.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added 635,000 supporters and raised about $3.2 million from supporters in January alone, according to the press release. According to the DCCC, since 1900 there are only three incidents of the presidents party gaining seats in the first midterm election, a fact that may bode well for the Democrats in 2018.

But Herrera Beutler said she has served the interests of Southwest Washington and believes she will win the midterm election. David McDevitt, a Vancouver Democrat who challenged Herrera Beutler in the last primary election, has so far filed as a 2018 candidate.

Ive always believed that as long as I keep working hard and putting the people of Southwest Washington first, the elections will take care of themselves, Herrera Beutler wrote in an email. Last year I was re-elected by my largest vote margin ever, and I could not be more grateful to this region for putting its faith in me.

Dan Sena, DCCC executive director, said Republican incumbents across the country are damaged after the 2016 election and that the Trump administration is pushing a wildly unpopular agenda. According to a Gallup poll updated daily, a majority of Americans disapproved of President Donald Trump in a record-breaking eight days after he took office.

The DCCC included a list of about 60 Republican representatives as targets across the country, including Herrera Beutler and Congressman David Reichert of the Washingtons 8th District, which covers eastern Pierce and King County in the Puget Sound region.

The committee said it would first target 33 seats that House Republicans hold where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won or narrowly lost. A 3rd District vote count was not immediately available Thursday, but Clinton narrowly beat Trump in Clark County, which by far has the most voters in the 3rd District. Trump comfortably won Cowlitz County, the districts second-largest county. Though it once was reliably Democratic, the 3rd has swung to the right and now tends to vote Republican.

Herrera Beutler said House members are the most directly accountable to the people because they are up for re-election every two years.

I find colleagues on both sides of the aisle who are willing to put bickering aside and solve problems for people, she wrote.

But when asked if there are any issues Herrera Beutler would go against her Republican colleagues on, she said shes not an automatic yes for anyones agenda.

My focus is on Southwest Washington, and Im fighting to ensure Washingtonians and all Americans have access to quality, affordable health care regardless of party or position, she said.

A previous version of this article incorrectly omitted David McDevitt as a 2018 challenger.
People fall prey to phone scams every day, and just about every day Walmart employees try to talk them out of it.

On Monday, two Walmart employees convinced an elderly woman not to send $6,000 in gift cards to people pretending to be her grandson and a Los Angeles police officer.

Jeremy Farr, a manager at the Seventh Avenue Walmart in Longview, said an elderly woman from Oregon asked to load $1,000 onto each of six gift cards. Concerned it was a scam, he casually asked about why she was sending so much money.

Initially, she told Farr she couldnt give him a reason, saying it was a secret, she said.

Farr needed her help to fill out a form to report the transaction to Walmart headquarters as a possible scam. Eventually, the woman told Farr that if she didnt send the money to her grandson, hed be jailed by the Los Angeles police. She said her grandson cried to her on the phone  it sounded just like him, she told Farr. Her grandson was wealthy, she told Farr.

Im like, Maam, if hes well off, why is he needing money? Im trying to talk to her within reason, Farr recounted Thursday by phone.

He asked if she had called her grandsons parents, and she said her grandson told her not to. Farr and cashier Brittney Dozier continued to try and talk her out of the scam.

She was still heart-set on buying those gift cards. She had a bank envelope with $6,000 cash in her hands, Farr said. I said maybe you should go to the Rainier Police Department so they can run the badge number and see if hes really a police officer.

Finally, the woman acquiesced, left the store and reported it to Rainier police.

Still, Dozier said she worried the woman would simply get the gift cards at another Walmart.

I still didnt feel 100 percent sure when she walked out the door, Dozier said.

Farr said he sees people being taken advantage of by scams every day. He and other Walmart employees can talk the majority of them out of the scams.

But some cant be persuaded. On Wednesday, a woman lost $4,000 to a scam after Walmart employees couldnt talk her out of it, Farr said.

Dozier said phone scams she hears of mostly affect elderly people, and most of them involve the scammer claiming to be a family member.

Theyre already convinced by these people, for instance, when its her grandson. She heard him crying on the phone, Dozier said of the woman.
Anirudh Regidi

Sony has finally revealed prices for its new PlayStation 4 Pro (PS4 Pro) and PlayStation 4 Slim (PS4 Slim) consoles as well as that of the PlayStation VR (PSVR) headset.

The PlayStation VR bundle, which includes a tracking camera, will be available for Rs 41,990. The stand-alone PSVR headset will go for Rs 37,990. The PS4 Pro will be available for Rs 38,990 and the PS4 Slim for Rs 27,990, the company revealed in a statement.

The PS4 Slim is, as the name suggests, a slimmer, lighter PS4. Internally, its the same as the PS4 and supports HDR, Full HD gaming and the PSVR. All games built for the PS4 Pro will be compatible with the PS4 Slim.

The PS4 Pro is the grown up version of the PS4. It features hardware that is much more powerful, support for interpolated 4K gaming (upscaled 2K content) and support for HDR and the PSVR. Games that are developed for the PS4 Pro will run smoother, look better and will have more bells and whistles.

In fact, if youre going for a new console, Id strongly suggest you go for the PS4 Pro. Its the future as far as Sony is concerned. If youre a Microsoft fan, then itll be best to wait until Xbox Project Scorpio comes out. That said, the Xbox One is relatively cheap, especially in sales.

The PSVR headset brings virtual reality capabilities to Sonys console. We tried the headset out ourselves and were very impressed with its capabilities. The standard PS4 does struggle to support the resolution that the PSVR demands, but hey, at least it supports the device.

The PSVR even supports positional audio via a bundled box that must be hooked into the PS4. The tracking camera is needed for tracking the PSVR headset as well as the controllers. If you already bought the PS Camera, you wont need to but the PSVR bundle.

When it comes to controllers, your standard DualShock 4 controller is compatible with the PSVR. The older Move controllers are also compatible.

The consoles will be available this month. The PSVR headset will be available in March.

If youre confused about which console to pick up. Heres some buying advice:
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The Government of Karnataka has said it welcomes Apple Inc's proposal to commence initial manufacturing operations in the city. "Apple's intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru will foster cutting edge technology eco system and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally," an official release signed by Karnataka IT Minister Priyank Kharge said.

'It said Apple's representatives, led by Priya Balasubramaniam, VP iPhone operations, Ali Khanafer (Head, Government Affairs), Dheeraj Chugh (Director,iPhone operations) and Priyesh Povanna (Country Counsel) met Ministers and officials of the Karnataka Government and had positive discussions about the initiatives in manufacturing and possible collaborations with state Government in other areas.

The release did not detail about what the initial manufacturing operations would be. However, reports quoting highly placed government sources had earlier said that the iconic iPhones would be manufactured in Bengaluru by Wistron, a Taiwanese OEM maker for Apple.

"Wistron has plans for setting up iPhone manufacturing plant for domestic market in Peenya," they had said. Apple's decision on initial manufacturing in Bengaluru has further enhanced the city's reputation as the most preferred destination for foreign investment and further validation of State Government policies aimed at fostering manufacturing, innovation and investments in Karnataka, the release added.

Local manufacturing is expected to help Apple price its phones more competitively in India as it currently attracts 12.5% additional duty on imports. This would be Apple's second big project for Bengaluru. In May, Apple had announced setting up a design and development accelerator in the city to grow the iOS developer community. The announcement was made as part of the visit of Apple CEO Tim Cook to India.

PTI
Aditya Madanapalle

India has in orbit 39 operational satellites. There are 17 satellites for Earth observation, 13 for communication, 7 navigational satellites in the IRNSS constellation, and 2 space science satellites. 6 satellites made by students are not included in the list. The satellites together meet the demands of the government and private sector for managing natural resources, planning infrastructure projects, support for disaster management and forecasting weather. The satellites are also used to provide essential public services such as navigation and communication.

There will be a need to launch many more satellites as continuity missions to those already in orbit, to meet an increase in demand. The current capacity for satellite launches is a constraint, in terms of manufacture of the satellites and the launch vehicles. Isro is looking to the private sector and Indian industries to step up their participation in the production of integrated systems and sub-systems, including assembly and testing as per vendor design.

Isro is taking steps to nurturing the industries in the country to support the Indian space program, through transfer of technology and hand holding. There are focused efforts to step up the manufacturing of hardware necessary for the space program. The industry is being roped in to create engines, stages of rockets, propellant tanks, spacecraft, solar panels, thermal control systems and electronics packages required for satellites and launch vehicles.

Isro is currently in the process of developing a semicryogenic engine. This will require indigenous development of 35 materials and 22 coating processes. Indigenous bearings will have to be qualified for turbo pumps. A turbo pump feeds propellant from a fuel tank into a combustion chamber of a launch vehicle. There is a requirement for low pressure turbo pump and one high pressure turbo pump. Indian industries will help fabricate the hardware for three engine subsystems. It will be necessary to validate the design of the low pressure turbo trump with cold flow trials.

To deliver ten-tonne and heavier communication satellites, the launch vehicle will need a booster stage with clustered semicryogenic engines. After the successful operation of a semiryogenic engine, Isro is expected to initiate the development of a booster stage with clustered semicryogenic engines. Isro is also in the process of testing the cryogenic upper stage of the powerful GSLV Mark III launch vehicle.

The Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota has sufficient facilities for launching satellites. The launch complex has two operational launch pads, a control centre for filling propellant into fuel tanks, a mission control centre and a launch control centre for conducting and coordinating the launch operations during the take off, launch vehicle flight, and injections of satellites into orbit. Isro needs industry participation to build the satellites and the launch vehicles, but has sufficient capacity for conducting spaceflights.

Isro is taking steps to increase launch capacity per rocket launch, an effort to bring down costs, particularly with the launch of 104 satellites at one go in the PSLV-C37 mission tentatively scheduled for February 15. Four communication satellites, seven earth observation satellites, and one science satellite are expected to be launch over the course of the next two years. To communication satellites are to be launched by the Ariane 5 rocket This does not include satellites of other countries launched by India, spacecraft by private Indian companies such as Team Indus, or student satellites.

Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Development of North-Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space provided the information in a written letter that was a response to a question raised at the Rajya Sabha.

This story is a part of a series on the world record launch of 104 satellites on a single mission by Isro. The stories in the series are:
tech2 News Staff

Things are looking up for Apple as the government of Karnataka on Thursday said that it welcomed a proposal from Apple Inc to begin initial manufacturing operations in the state, in a sign the tech company is slowly moving forward with plans to assemble iPhones in the country.

"Apple's intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru will foster cutting edge technology eco system and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally," the government of the south Indian state said in a statement.

Apples representatives led by Ms. Priya Balasubramaniam, VP iPhone operations, Mr. Ali Khanafer (Head, Government Affairs), Mr.Dheeraj Chugh (Director, iphone operations) and Mr. Priyesh Povanna (Country Counsel) met with Ministers and officials of Government of Karnataka and had positive discussions about the initiatives in manufacturing and possible collaborations with state Government in other areas.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters, however, that no deal, or memorandum of understanding had so far been finalised with the Karnataka government.

The person, who asked not to be named, said if Apple did go ahead with plans to begin assembling the iPhone, it was likely to do so initially at a plant being set up by its Taiwanese manufacturing partner Wistron Corp at Peenya on the outskirts of the tech hub of Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Apple was not immediately reachable for comment.

Cupertino, California-based Apple, is keen to assemble its phones in India, one of the world's fastest growing smartphone markets.

Apple representatives met with federal and state government officials in India last week, as it is lobbying hard for a raft of tax and sourcing concessions from India, before it begins to assemble iPhones in the country.

Following the meetings, Apple said it appreciated the open and constructive dialogue it held with Indian officials, around the expansion of its local operations in the country.

Any final decision around manufacturing in India however, is likely to still be contingent on the government's willingness to concede ground on the concessions sought by the company.

Last month, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said India would consider Apple's request for incentives to invest in the country with an "open mind."

On its part, the government of Karnataka in the same statement also added that it was "committed to new initiatives in any sector for manufacturing and will provide a conducive environment for investment."

Apple Inc just last week indicated to the government that it is ready with a blueprint to begin manufacturing iPhones in India, but wants fiscal concessions, including customs duty waiver on import of components.

Apple executives made a detailed presentation on its road map for setting up a manufacturing unit in India to an inter-ministerial group headed by Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Secretary Ramesh Abhishek, officials privy to the development said.

The presentation was made by senior executives of the company, Priya Balasubramanian. It cited the countrys business friendly ecosystem for keenness to start local manufacturing. With sales tapering in the US and China, Apple is eyeing Indiathe fastest growing smartphone market in the worldand looking to set up a local manufacturing unit to cut costs. It, however, does not manufacture devices on its own and rather does it through contract manufacturers.

With inputs from Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Microsoft has called for setting up a process to grant exceptions to the suspension of entry to foreign nationals on a case-by-case basis. The request (PDF) is for people with pressing needs in three categories. Non-immigrant visa holders sponsored by US companies, students pursuing degrees in accredited US Universities, and relatives of these kinds of people.

Microsoft has pointed out that there are law abiding citizens in the US whose parents were out of the country when the order was passed, and who cannot enter any more. These parents are stranded and separated from their children. There are critically ill people in the US whose relatives want to help them, but cannot do so because of the order.

Section 3 (g) of the executive order has a provision for case-by-case exceptions. It says, "The Secretaries of State and Homeland Security may, on a case-by-case basis, and when in the national interest, issue visas or other immigration benefits to nationals of countries for which visas and benefits are otherwise blocked." Microsoft has called for cabinet officers to create an exception process for "Responsible Known Travelers with Pressing Needs." The purpose of the travel should be for family emergencies, company activities or studying.

The request is an immediate and necessary measure following the order, according to Microsoft, to help known members of communities and companies who are adversely and suddenly affected. Microsoft has called for ideas to improve upon the request, and says it will continue to engage in the broader discussions and deliberations around the order. Microsoft has said it will continue to participate in the public discussions and the democratic process. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft had explained his own experiences of going to the US from India, and the positive impact of immigration.
tech2 News Staff

Sony is now the latest in a long line of manufacturers rumoured to be delaying their respective flagship launches for lack of hardware. The upcoming Snapdragon 835-powered Sony Xperia Z5 Premium will apparently not debut at MWC 2017.

MWC or Mobile World Congress 2017 is an annual event held in Barcelona, Spain. Just about every smartphone company that's not Apple comes here to showcase their wares, discuss new technologies and more.

If you remember, we had published a report earlier that Samsung was hoarding all the Snapdragon 835 chips. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 SoC is Qualcomm's flagship chip for 2017. The chip is expected to make its way into every flagship smartphone of 2017.

However, Samsung partnered with Qualcomm in developing the chip, specifically the 10nm process on which it is built. This has apparently given Samsung dibs on the first batch of chips produced and the company is claimed to be hoarding these chips for the upcoming Galaxy S8.

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to launch in late April, which means that it's unlikely that any other Snapdragon 835-powered smartphone will launch before then.

The Xperia Z5 Premium successor was supposed to be powered by the Snapdragon 835 and backed by 4GB or 6GB of RAM. The phone was also rumoured to feature a 4K display and a brand new camera sensor in the form of the Sony IMX400.

With Samsung hoarding the chips for so long, it's likely that Sony's phone will only launch 5-6 months from now. Maybe that's why Sony doesn't want to announce the device just yet. The rumour, by Twitter user Ricciolo, suggests that the phone won't be announced, but that it will be present at MWC and will only be accessible to a select few. It was also Riccolio who had leaked the information that the S8 won't be debuting at MWC.

Of course, these are just rumours, so keep your fingers crossed and keep on hoping.

Read our complete coverage of the Mobile World Congress 2017
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Industry body Nasscom will take a delegation of senior executives to Washington DC later this month to reach out to the new US administration as well as senators on concerns around clampdown on visas and flow of skilled manpower between the two nations.

"Nasscom plans to visit Washington between February 22 and 24. We are looking at meeting representatives in the new Trump administration as well as engage with Senators and Congressmen," Nasscom President, R Chandrashekhar told . The delegation will highlight and share information with the new US administration on direct jobs being created by Indian IT companies in the US, and contribution of Indian IT firms in making the US economy competitive.

He added that the process of finalising meetings and details of members of the delegation are being worked on. The proposed overhaul of popular H-1B visa regime by American President Donald Trump has raised concerns among the Indian IT firms, as any changes in the visa regime may result in higher operational costs and shortage of skilled workers for the $110 billion Indian outsourcing industry.

Indian IT sector, which contributes 9.3% of the country's GDP, is one of the largest private sector employer at 3.7 million people. The US contributes nearly 62% of the exports, while EU is the second largest market for the Indian IT Services exporters contributing approximately 28 per cent.

Recently, a US legislation (Lofgren Bill) has been introduced that proposes doubling of the minimum wages of H-1B visa holders to $130,000. The current H-1B minimum wage of $60,000 was fixed in 1989 and has since remained unchanged. "With such large exposure to the US, proposed hike in minimum wages...will be negative for the Indian IT services. Indian IT services companies will need to adopt their business models owing to high dependence on export of low cost skilled manpower from countries such as India to developed economies," rating agency ICRA said.

Such protectionist stance by the US could also spell more trouble for IT firms that are already facing strong headwinds from currency fluctuation and cautious client spending. The Ministry of External Affairs has said India's interest and concerns on the issue have been conveyed both to the US administration and the US Congress at senior levels.

Analysts are of the opinion that Indian companies could easily witness around 60-70% rise in salaries of the H-1B visa dependent workforce, which could lead to a 5-10% hit on the margins, depending on the total base of employees currently on H-1B visas. Global tech titans like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, Apple's Tim Cook and others have already voiced their concerns on the issue.

PTI
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Asserting that no executive order has been passed by the Trump Administration for overhauling of H-1B visas so far, India today said it will not "prejudge" the outcome of the three private bills raised in this regard when they go through the full Congressional process. "No executive order has been signed so far... Three private bills have been introduced in the US House of Representatives. Such bills have been introduced in the past also and such bills have to go through the full Congressional process.

"Let's not prejudge the outcome because we have seen what has happened to the similar bills in the past also. If and when the executive order is passed, we will certainly give a reaction," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. He also said India remains in dialogue with the Trump Administration as well as US Congress at the senior levels over the issue.

"They are fully aware of our position in this particular matter i.e Indian software exports and Indian software technical professionals add to the competitiveness of the US industry," Swarup said. Earlier, MEA had said it has conveyed its "interests and concerns" to the US amid reports that an executive order has been drafted by the Trump Administration to overhaul H-1B which will severely impact Indian companies, specifically IT organisations.

H1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US firms to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialised fields. The technology companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year. Asked if the Trump Administration was aware of India's concerns over Pakistan, Swarup said the two sides have held wide ranging consultations at the highest possible levels i.e talks between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

During these discussions, entire gamut of the bilateral as well as regional, he said, adding "They (US) is very well aware of our position on cross-border terrorism and what Pakistan needs to do."

PTI
tech2 News Staff

The Karnataka Transport minister had ordered Uber and Ola to stop ride-sharing services in the state by 3 February. Starting today, these services are now illegal.

UberPool and OlaShare allow commuters to share a cab with someone else at reduced cost. Essentially, its a carpooling taxi service.

The benefits of the service are obvious. Regular commuters get to cut down on their cab fare, the number of trips a cab has to make comes down and overall, the service is far more efficient.

However, Karnatakas transportation laws do not permit taxi services to make multiple pick-ups and drops en-route. Taxis are only permitted point-to-point pickups.

In a statement issued to The Economic Times (ET), Karnatakas Commissioner for Transport and Road Safety, MK Aiyappa stated that ride-sharing taxi services are not allowed to charge customers. The transport ministry is not against carpooling by private car-owners.

He promised to take action against any driver charging for ride-sharing services from Friday. Aiyapa adds that cab aggregators did not submit any proposal for the modification of the law, says a report on GadgetsNow.

Uber has responded by starting a campaign asking for support for UberPool. "As we believe that UberPool is within the law, right now there is no push to stop the product, so there is definitely a discussion going on (with transport department) right now as we speak...also how we can address their concerns," Uber General Manager, Bengaluru, Christian Freese told reporters.

Freese adds that ride-sharing is very much welcome in Bengaluru and that they need to work things out with the government first and will sit down with officials.

PTI reports that Aiyappa has promised to crackdown if cab aggregators continue to operate pool services. At the same time, Uber claims that there is no official notice on the matter and that their services are legal.

Uber and Ola started ride-sharing services in Bengaluru in 2015.
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Indian IT sector leaders will meet both U.S. lawmakers and officials from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country's $150 billion industry.

R. Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of India's big IT companies would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of Feb. 20.

India's software services industry is concerned about a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress seeking to double the salary paid to H-1B visa holders which would dramatically increase the costs for the Indian companies employing them.

Indian IT service companies use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the U.S., their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace U.S. jobs.

Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a U.S. labour shortage in the tech sector.

Chandrashekhar told Reuters that the visit would also seek to emphasize the "the economic partnership that is being built between the two countries."

India's IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire U.S. firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.

"Immigration concerns were a risk item, always there, but they are more pronounced now," said a senior executive at L&T Technology Services, who declined to be named.

Speculation that Trump may issue an executive order curbing the H-1B programme sent shares in IT companies tumbling this week.

India's Ministry of External Affairs said it had expressed its concerns to the U.S. government.

"No executive order has been signed so far," Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for the ministry told reporters on Thursday. "Such bills have been introduced in the past too and such bills have to go through the full Congressional process. So let's not prejudge the outcome."

Reuters
tech2 News Staff

Samsung faced quite a loss due to the Galaxy Note 7 last year where a number of units started exploding due to faulty batteries. While the company did the right thing by axing the smartphone production, it did leave a bad reputation for its customers. The company has to be extra careful and should take every measure possible to make sure that upcoming flagships don't have the same fate as the Note 7.

Speaking of flagships, Samsung is expected to launch the new Galaxy S8 in a couple of months and according to a report it is switching its battery supplier to a new Japanese manufacturer for the upcoming handset.

Korean news site Han Kyung suggests that Murata Manufacturing Company could be the new supplier for Galaxy S8 batteries. This is the same manufacturer that acquired Sony's battery manufacturing subsidiary last year.

Samsung is rumoured to outsource between two to eight percent of the total number of batteries needed to power all the Galaxy S8 units. A large majority of batteries for the smartphone will be made by Samsung SDI (Samsung's batteries division).

Chinese manufacturer ATL (Amperex Technology Ltd) was apparently under pressure when it was asked to ramp up production of batteries during the first recall of the Galaxy Note 7. This is probably the reason why Samsung chose to switch of battery makers for the Galaxy S8.
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Snapchat owner Snap Inc shot the opening salvo in its $3 billion initial public offering on Thursday, outlining aggressive expansion plans but offering new investors no say on how the company is run and no promise of profits. Snap's publication on Thursday of its IPO registration document sets the stage for its upcoming marketing campaign to convince investors to look past its widening losses and the firm grip of its founders, and focus on its rapid growth of active users.

The number of Snap's daily active users grew to an average of 158 million at the end of December, up 48 percent year-on-year, Snap revealed. However, its net loss widened to $514.6 million in 2016 from $372.9 million the year before. While Snap will have time to polish its marketing pitch in the run-up to the IPO planned for March, some analysts were taken aback that the company was just beginning to reap cash from its product.

"What surprises me the most is that it is still very early days when it comes to Snap making money," said Rohit Kulkarni, managing director at private securities investment firm SharesPost. Snap had confidentially registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO late last year. It kept the filing under such tight wraps, even some of its IPO underwriters had not seen it prior to publication on Thursday, sources familiar with the matter previously told Reuters.

Snap said in the IPO registration document published on Thursday it would become the first U.S. company to go public with shares on offer not granting voting rights to stock market investors. Its founders, Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, will keep control of the company. Snap could be valued at between $20 billion to $25 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. That would give the company the richest valuation in a U.S. technology IPO since Facebook Inc.

Snap, which launched itself in 2012 with an app that sends disappearing messages, rebranded itself last year as a camera company and started selling $130 video camera glasses. It generates the majority of its revenue from advertising, seeking to challenge the dominance of internet giants such as Facebook and Alphabet Inc's Google.

"The industry has been crying out for new advertising units" says Ian Schafer, founder and chairman of ad agency Deep Focus, referring to the tight hold Facebook and Google have on the digital advertising marketplace. In its IPO registration document, Snap cited Apple Inc, Google, Twitter Inc, Facebook and its photo-sharing platform Instagram as its competitors.

Tight Control

Spiegel, the 26-year-old Snap co-founder, last year earned $503,205 in salary, with a $1 million bonus. Imran Khan, Snapchat's chief strategy officer whom it hired from investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG in 2014, earned $241,539 last year with a $5.2 million bonus. In 2015, Khan also received $145.3 million worth of Snap shares as a sign-up bonus.

Spiegel and Murphy will maintain tight control over Snap's stock through a unique three-share class structure. The structure will give Spiegel and Murphy the right of 10 votes for every share. Existing investors will have one vote for each of their shares, while new investors will have no voting rights.

Snap said it couldn't predict if the structure would "result in a lower trading price or greater fluctuations" in the stock. Keeping tight control is common in companies closely associated with their founders, who often prefer to grow their business without being questioned by a broad array of investors. Still, offering a class of stock with no votes in an IPO is unprecedented.

Though the structure has drawn some criticism for not giving stock market investors the opportunity to have input, some people close to the company have argued that investors can "vote with their feet" by not buying into the IPO if they are not comfortable with the arrangements.

"Investors have to decide, am I going to avail myself of the opportunity to buy the stock, and forget about the fact that somewhere down the road they are likely going to run into trouble?" said James McRitchie, an independent corporate governance activist who has pressed for more equal voting rights at companies including Facebook.

Paying Google

Snap had $404.5 million in sales in 2016, up from $58.7 million in 2015. However, it had adjusted losses before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization last year of $459 million, compared with $292.9 million in 2015. Snap's biggest losses stem from "hosting fees" which it pays to cloud computing companies such as Google to use their infrastructure for its data. It will pay Google $2 billion over the next five years to use its cloud computing services.

Because Snapchat users rely heavily on data-heavy pictures and video, the cost of these service is high. Still, the proportion of the company's costs to its revenue has been declining. Its strategy has been to bargain for better hosting rates as its growing number of users buoys its negotiating leverage.

"They are adding infrastructure ahead of growth, and that is why you have some front-loading of losses," said SharesPost's Kulkarni. Some companies such as Facebook have their own hosting platforms, though this model can be more costly. Facebook's Instagram, which recently introduced disappearing video content similar to Snapchat, had 600 million users as of late last year. Like Snapchat, Instagram sells advertising on its platform.

Snap's aggressive expansion is reflected in its staff numbers. By the end of last year, it had increased its number of employees to 1,859 from 600 in 2015. Snap said it would use the proceeds from its IPO for general purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures. Snap said it will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SNAP. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Deutsche Bank AG are leading the offering as underwriters.

Reuters
IESA supports the Agenda of this years Budget 2017-18  Transform, Energize & Clean TEC India presented by Finance minister Arun Jaitley.

Start-up focus: Reaction to Government of Indias relief on tax benefit to start ups for the next seven years

Benefits to the start-ups will fillip in promoting the start-up ecosystem in India. With the Governments announcement to promote women entrepreneurship, Dalits and all the sections of the society, there will be an increased boost in independent business and entrepreneurship in the country with more focus on the garment, textile and food processing. We will have an immense role to play along with MSMEs in making the Startup India Scheme initiative successful as 96% of the Indian companies will benefit from this. We are honoured with governments trust on associations like IESA and look forward to work in tandem to realise this socially important goal.

Defence budget increased by about 5.8% to Rs 2, 74,000 crore

An increase in the allocation of the defence budget will focus on the countrys Strategic Electronics ecosystem for greater self-reliance. The defence and aerospace sector in the country has seen considerable growth in recent years. The shift from buyer to manufacturer has to be made and this step will further boost the domestic ecosystem.

Furthermore, with Web-based pension distribution system for defence and a central defence travel system, more strength will be given to the soldiers to book travel tickets online. A comprehensive web based defence pension distribution system for defence pensioners has also been developed which we think will go a long way.

Skill development focus: Reaction on Governments Transform, Energise, Clean India (TEC India).

Governments focus towards Transform & Energise the youth through various programmes and incentives will give an impetus to entrepreneurial skills and move towards growing the ecosystem. The investments made by the Government in SWAYAM which will provide 350 online courses in IT and enable students to attend the courses virtually. This initiatives will give impetus to implementation of national programmes like Digital India, Make in India, Smart Cities as skilled workforce is at the core of the programs success, overall accelerating Indias economic development.

Amendment in Goods And Services Tax

With GST implementation and finalising its recommendations on almost all the issues, we hope that both the industry and the public will be benefited. Goods and Services Tax would help in creating a unified Indian market, improve tax compliance and governance and boost investment and growth. Moreover, it will also complement the demonetisation process.

@Technuter.com News Service
Concerns that not all of the unions will agree to ratify their labor agreements have caused rail shippers and other transportation industry stakeholders to push President Joe Biden to act.
Suspected coalition raids cut water to IS Syria bastion

An alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters launched a major offensive against the Islamic State group\'s Syrian bastion of Raqa

AFP, Beirut :

Water to the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion of Raqa has been cut after suspected coalition raids on the city's main pipeline, a monitor and activists told AFP on Friday.

"After coalition air strikes, the main water line was ruptured and water was cut to all of Raqa city," said Hamoud al-Mousa of the Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently activist collective.

His group said the overnight strikes hit several bridges in the north of Raqa, including one known as the Old Bridge.

Mousa said a pipeline running along the Old Bridge into Raqa-the only way residents could get water-had been destroyed.

"People were heading to the river at dawn today to get water," Mousa told AFP.

Raqa, 90 kilometres (less than 60 miles) south of the Turkish border, is IS's de facto capital in Syria and remains home to more than 300,000 people.

The city and surrounding province have been battered by air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition fighting IS and by Russia, a key ally of Syria's government.

The coalition raids are backing an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters who launched a major offensive against Raqa in November.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed water to Raqa had been cut after "probable" coalition raids.

"Air strikes on the city destroyed a huge water pipe. It's almost certain they were coalition raids," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria for its information, says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

Meanwhile, Yaser Harawi wasn't too happy when his father sent him to study in Serbia rather than the U.S. or Canada. Years later, the Syria-born doctor thinks it was a touch of fate.

The 51-year-old from Damascus, who's lived in Serbia for more than 30 years, has found meaning in helping Syrian and other migrants passing through the Balkan country in search of a better future in Western Europe.

Harawi spends hours every day with the migrants stranded in parks and squalid makeshift shelters in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. He works with aid groups or on his own to provide medical assistance, clothes and food.
Theresa May presses EU leaders on defence spending

Theresa May arrives in Malta with Sir Tim Barrow, UK ambassador to the EU.

BBC Online :

Theresa May is holding talks with EU Nato members as she attempts to build alliances ahead of Brexit.

The prime minister arrived in the Maltese capital Valletta with a message that Europe must increase its defence spending, following her talks about the future of Nato with Donald Trump.

The UK is one of the few alliance members to meet pledges to spend a minimum of 2% of GDP on defence.

Mrs May will also pledge UK help with the EU migrant crisis post Brexit.

She will argue that she wants a "new, positive and constructive" relationship with the EU after Brexit - and will use one-to-one talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy to promise the UK will remain a "reliable partner".

She is also expected to stress that a strong EU is in the interests of the UK.

Mrs May's visit comes two days after MPs voted to allow her to get Brexit negotiations under way.

She is expected to have an informal "brush by" with Malta's prime minister, Joseph Muscat, who told the BBC's World Service that while he wants a "fair deal" for the UK after Brexit, it must be "inferior" to full EU membership.

"No one wants the UK economy to suffer, I think this is a lose-lose situation," said Mr Muscat, whose country holds the rotating European Council presidency.

While he says he expects a transitional deal for Britain will be agreed quite easily, he stressed: "Now, in my book if you're not part of the single market, that is an inferior deal. But maybe for the British government if you're not part of the single market but get to control your borders that's a superior deal."

Britain's strategic ambition to act as a bridge between Europe and the United States long predates Brexit, but it has now become a central component of the government's hopes of keeping and building influence in the world.

Theresa May will tell EU leaders of her particular achievement - as Downing Street sees it - in drawing a promise of a 100% commitment to Nato from Donald Trump, following earlier indications that his commitment to the Western alliance was wavering.

But pressing for higher defence spending looks like a tough ask.

And her hopes of becoming a bridge - or honest broker - between the EU and the US won't be easily fulfilled either.

Mr Trump is no supporter of the EU - he favours nation-to-nation relationships.

He's also mentioned the German leader Angela Merkel in the same breath as Vladimir Putin in discussing future relations, and the French President Francois Hollande has urged EU leaders to stand up to him.

Like much of the prime minister's post-Brexit mission, this strategic ambition is more easily conceived than carried out.

Mrs May was the first foreign leader to visit the Trump White House and she will use the European Council summit to tell Nato members they need to increase their spending on defence.
PANCHAGARH: Adv Nurul Islam Sujan MP addressing the launching ceremony of community clinic at Boda Upazila in Panchagarh as Chief Guest on Thursday .
SYLHET: A rally was brought out in Sylhet city marking the 18th founding anniversary of the Bengali daily Jugantor yesterday.
Ride-hailing firm grab to invest $700 m in Indonesia

AFP, Jakarta :

Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab on Thursday unveiled a plan to invest $700 million in Indonesia over the next four years, as transport app competition in the country accelerates.

The company, whose main service in Indonesia is an app for hailing private cars and motorbike taxis, said a key part of the investment would be opening a research and development centre.

The move ups the ante between ride-hailing services in Southeast Asia's top economy, where the growing use of smartphones and need for motorbike taxis in traffic-choked cities has led to rising popularity of transport apps.

Singapore-headquartered Grab, considered the leading ride-hailing app in Southeast Asia, sees its main competitors in Indonesia as US firm Uber and homegrown outfit Go-Jek.
Islami Front meet in Ctg today

Chittagong Bureau :

Islami Front Bangladesh, Chittagong district unit will arrange a public meeting at Laldighi maidan in the city today(Saturday) to protest the terrorist attack on its Secretary general Principal Allama Jainul Abedin Jubair . This was disclosed at a press conference at its city office premises on Thursday .

Secretary of the preparatory committee of the meeting, M. Mohiul Alam Chowdhury read out the written statement before the journalists .

The press meet was told that IFB believes in healthy society based on Quran and Sunnah to face the militancy in the country. The press meet expressed concerned over the non-arrest of the attackers on Allama Jubair despite passing of 13 days .

Sources said Allama Jubair was injured by the attack of the terrorists on January 21 last while moving to Hathazari to join the 37th founding anniversary of the IBF where about 10 activists of the party were injured .

In this connection , a 10-day long action program announced by IFB to protest the heinous attack on Secretary General which includes the last day's public protest meeting in Lalldighi today. Central Joint Secretary General of IFB Alhaj M Sirajuddin Tayebi answered to the questions of the journos in the meet.

Among others, Presdient of North District Unit of IBF Prof. Syed Hafez Ahmed, General Secretary Moulana Joinal Abedin , Alhaj AM Moinuddin Chowdhury Halim of city unit, Md. Jahangir Alam of south district unit , Moulana Jane Alam Nizami, Chatra sena President Sultan Ahmed Ln.Kazi Aladuddin were present in the press meet, party release said.


Chances of absconsion or tempering evidence be considered before granting bail

(From previous issue) :

12. We also find that, the Appellate Division in Criminal Appeal Nos. 07-22 of 2011 as well as the provisions of law, viz sub-section (2) of Section 140 of the Negotiable Instrument Act, 1881, clearly make a proceeding maintainable even if the company, on whose account the dishonoured cheque was drawn, has not been impleaded as one of the co-accused in a case filed under Section 138(1) of the Act.

13. We have gone though the judgments reported in (2012) 5 SCC 661 and (2014) 10 SCC 373. Sub-section (2) of Section 140 has not at all been discussed in the aforesaid two judgments by the Supreme Court of India (SCI). We are unable to regard these two judgments having no persuasive value at all, while, as per provision of Article 111 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh, the judgment passed by the Appellate Division is binding on us.

14. Besides, in a case under SCI jurisdiction, reported in [1996] by Comp LJ 233 (SC) = [1997] 89 Camp Case 262 (SC),. Delhi Development Authority vs Shipper Construction Co. (P) Ltd, it has been held by the Supreme Court of India that, where it is found that a corporate character has been used for committing illegalities and for defrauding people, corporate veil can be lifted with a view to rendering full justice to affected parties (emphasis added)

15. As regards the decision reported 1 MLR (AD) 106 we find that this is a case' regarding Administrative Tribunal and has no manner of relevance to the instant case.

16. We have also taken into consideration the submission of the learned Advocate appearing for the accused-petitioners that, no specific averment has been made as to who of the accuseds was in charge of running or managing the affairs of the company. On this ground, our considered view is that, it need not be emphasized that a company cannot work without the board of directors. The accused-petitioners are, respectively,' the Managing Director, Chairman, and the Director. Their presence is necessary to form the quorum of the meetings of the board of directors as well as for adopting any resolution by the board of directors, for operating the accounts of the company, for entering into any deal with any other party as well as for running day to day business of the company, subject to their supervision. As such, apparently they are active party in managing the affairs of and operation the business of the company. Companies Act, Section 95, requires that the Board must sit at least 4(four) times in each year. This also proves the active participation of accuseds, as required by law, in running the affairs of the company. The board decides the date of and holds the AGM and EGM etc too. The accused persons being the MD, Chairman and Director their participation in running and managing the affairs of the company hardly needs any further proof, although the accused petitioners one entitled to adduce evidence at the time of hearing of the case, before the trial Court, on this issues.

17. As regards another submission of the petitioner, we should make it clear that, neither the NT Act, 1881 nor the CrPC. 1898. provides any particulars to be stated in a complaint petition or in an FIR (pleadings), as provided in Order 7 and 8 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908, as to what particulars a plaint or a written statement shall contain. Hence, we find the submission of the learned advocate for the accused-petitioner is devoid of any substance and suffer from serious misconception about the pleadings in criminal cases.

18. In view of the deliberation recorded above, we do not find any merit in this Rule. We find substance in the submission of the learned advocate of the complainant OP No: 2, that the petitioner has put the complainant OP No.2 to serious financial hardship, put their business to the verge of ruination and caused severe mental agony due to uncertainty about getting speedy trial and relief in the NI Act case, for which, he submits, exemplary cost should be imposed upon the petitioners, upon considering the face value of this dishonoured cheque as well as the delay and suffering caused by resorting to dilatory tactics by the accused-petitioners.

19. Before parting of, we should bring to the notice of Bangladesh Law Commission and or the Law Ministry that this type of cases are being filed in bunches on frivolous grounds' mainly because, so far we understand, that the term of imprisonment has been kept maximum I (one) year, whether the cheque is for Taka 5(five) lac or for Taka 5 (five) crore. Therefore the term of imprisonment is required to be reconsidered according to the amount of the cheque. On the other hand, the cheque involves money to be paid to the payee or beneficiary of the cheque. Therefore provision may be made, by inserting a new Section 138B, for substitution of parties, so that a case filed under Section 138 of the Negotiable Instrument Act, 1881, shall not abate even if either the complainant or the accused dies, though the heirs of a deceased accused shall not be subjected to corporal punishment to realize the fine that may be imposed, as we find in Section 34(2) of Artha Rin Adalat Ain, 2003, in respect of substituted heirs. In a case under N1 Act, 1881, where the amount due under the cheque is not secured by any mortgage or pledge then the drawer's moveable and immovable properties should be liable to attachment and the bank accounts to be freezed. Provisions may be made to that effect. Otherwise, the intent of the legislatures to secure beneficial interest of the payee or a 'holder in due course' as well as the entire proceeding is bound to become, in maximum cases, a mere futile exercise. Besides, as a Bench hearing criminal matters, we find that the trial Courts, almost in 100% cases, are granting bail mechanically, as if a routine, without considering the amount due under the cheque and the chance of jumping the bail. Besides, a lot of petitions under Section 561 A CrPC are moved without impleading the beneficiary of the cheque/the complaint as party to the proceeding. Appropriate provisions may be made to secure justice to the aggrieved and to stop indiscriminate granting of bail without it all considering the chance of absconsion, or tampering with the evidence.

20. In view of the deliberation recorded above, we do not find any merit in this Rule and the Rule is liable to be discharged with cost.

21. In a case under Section 138(1) of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881, the offence is not deemed to have been committed against the state. The proceeding is initiated by the 'payee', or a 'holder in due course', who has proprietary right and interest in the property of the dishonoured cheque. The state is not a necessary party, though it may be a property party in such a case. NI Act case is unlike a case filed under Penal Code etc. This distinction will be more clear from the fact that, for preferring appeal against the judgment and order of sentence passed under NI Act, not less than 50% of the amount due under dishonoured the cheque has to be deposited in the trial court, unlike in the case of preferring another appeal against conviction. In a case under NI Act, cost may be awarded to the aggrieved party for causing financial hardship, leading a person or a family to the verge of ruination, for harassment and inflicting mental agony on frivolous grounds or by resorting to dilatory tactics or on issues of law already settled by the Appellate Division, i.e. when the accused- petitioner does not come in clean hands for seeking justice, but with collateral purpose.

Order

In the result the Rule is discharged. The petitioner is directed to pay as cost Taka 2,50,000 to the complainant, within 30(thirty) days of drawing up of this judgment and order.

Let a copy of this judgment be sent to the trial Court and the trial Court is directed to proceed expeditiously for disposal of the case pending before it.

Let another copy of this judgment be sent to the Hon'ble Chairman, Bangladesh Law Commission, so that the Commission may take into notice the observation made in paragraph 18, herein above and may do the needful out of their wisdom.

(Concluded)
Islami Andolon Bangladesh brought out a procession in the city on Friday to meet its various demands including cancellation of the controversial education policy.
Thompson upsets Vesely to give Australia early lead

AFP, Melbourne :

Rookie Jordan Thompson upset Czech number one Jiri Vesely in straight sets to give Australia a winning start to their Davis Cup World Group tie in Melbourne on Friday.

Thompson, 22 and ranked 65, made surprisingly light work of the 54th-ranked Vesely, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 in two hours and six minutes on the Kooyong hardcourt.

Thompson was handed his debut by captain Lleyton Hewitt after the 27th-ranked Bernard Tomic made himself unavailable, citing scheduling issues, while Vesely took over as the top-ranked Czech player following the unavailability of world number ten Tomas Berdych.

The Australian began well with a break in the opening game and had few problems with the shaky Czech left-hander making five service breaks.

"It's the biggest moment in my career, the summer has been pretty good, but playing for your country is amazing and getting us off to a 1-0 lead is even better," Thompson said.

"There were some nerves at the start, but I was just glad the balls were coming off the racquet nicely."

Vesely said ahead of the clash: "It's something new for me, I've never started a tie before so it's definitely a new experience for me."
Crime gangs cloning SIMs must be defeated

SIM card cloning by criminal gangs and its growing use to extort money from private persons and public servants is threatening public safety. Cloning one's mobile SIM number and deceitfully pilfer money is causing alarm at all levels. Reports said that law enforcers from the city's Uttara have arrested nine members of a gang who spoofed at least 40 Deputy Commissioners' SIM numbers and were using the cloned numbers to swindle many including, local government representatives and government employees. As the deceitful acts are frightening for the ordinary people, intelligence agencies should be hyperactive to defend people from the high-tech deceptions.

With the transformation to Digital Bangladesh, the government has to extend its security as well to citizens' digital information and financial institutions from local and trans-boundary digital fraudsters. The government has brought all existing SIMs under bio-metric registration last year, but crime gangs are active to create duplicate SIMs by cloning their numbers. More needs to be done to stop it.

Law enforcers said that the gang in December last year took Tk 70,000 from a Union Parishad Chairman in Sherpur through mobile banking service, after making a call with a spoofed number belonging to the Upazila Nirbahi Officer. The Director General of the Department of Fisheries recently wrote to Rapid Action Battalion headquarters seeking legal steps; as some unscrupulous men have been demanding money and asking for favours from the Fisheries officials by making calls from cloned phone number. The fraudsters have not only extorted money they have also threatened people. Sometimes they even try to hamper the law and order situation sending misleading SMS. Such technique of swindling money in the name of high-ranking officials has stunned the victims and adding to concerns of security experts how to protect mass people from such traps.

The Digital Security Act 2016 has proposed to set up Cyber Security Agency to protect country's cyber space from extremist and anti-social elements but financial security in the country is still lagged far behind. Using mobile apps and other digital platform, the financial transaction is booming but neither the government nor Bangladesh Bank preparedness is seen adequate to defeat the skilled cyber criminals.

In our view the government must set up cyber intelligence unit to monitor the financial fraudulence using digital media. Unless security in digital space and platform has been made foolproof promoting digital public service will not bring much fruit while adding to greater danger to national security. We are living at a time when digital security could not be distinguished from national security. It needs special training and enforcement units within our Armed Forces and law enforcing agencies so that they can defeat such move.


Kuwait`s travel ban unfortunate

THE Kuwait government travel ban on nationals of five Muslim countries came at no worst time when President Donald Trump in an executive order has banned entry of nationals of seven Muslim majority nations to the USA from early last week. Trump's action has escalated serious violence in US cities and outside major airports as immigration officials started denying entry of the nationals of those countries from last Friday despite they are having valid passports and other resident visas including green card and study permit at different US universities.

In this background, the Kuwait government actions banning nationals of Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen and Syria, which overlaps four of the seven, except Pakistan has really come as a big shock to the Muslim world. The order says all travel visas to visitors for tour and trade will come under a 'blanket ban' and like President Trump the Kuwait government has also justified the ban on national security ground.

The timing of the Kuwait government action is open to question by skeptics as to whether or not it has been decreed to provide moral support to President Trump's unjustified action banning nationals of the seven Muslim countries. This is an unwise and un-Islamic action. It is unfortunate that only shows arrogance of oil rich wealthy rulers without pride and dignity in the Muslim world.

It is really sad Kuwait and all Muslim countries are keeping silent when Trump made no secret that he is at war with the Muslims. More so they are fighting or instigating violence on each others' land in most cases while their boneless leaders as detached from people are taking shelters of one or another big power - like the USA or Russia -- when both are committed to destroy Muslim nations to expand their control over their resources.
Journo hurt in AL infighting dies

UNB, Sirajganj :

A local journalist, who sustained bullet injuries during a clash between two associate bodies of Awami League on Thursday, died on the way to Dhaka on Friday afternoon.

Journalist Abdul Hakim Shimul, Shahjadpur upazila correspondent of vernacular daily Samakal, succumbed to his injuries around 1pm while he was being taken to Dhaka from Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College, Bogra for better treatment, Sirajganj Police Super Mirajuddin Ahmed told UNB.

Police said president of Shahjadpur Govt College unit Bangladesh Chhatra League Bijoy Mahmud, was assaulted allegedly by Pintu, brother of municipality mayor Halimul Haque Miru, and his men in Kalibari area on Thursday noon.

Later, AL and BCL men along with some residents of Kandarpar swooped on the house of Miru at Monirampur.

A clash ensued when the supporters of the mayor encountered them.

A chase and counter-chase took place during the melee amid gunshots that left 15 people, including Abdul Hakim Shimul, injured. With bullet wounds to the head and face, Shimul was first taken to a local hospital and later shifted to Bogra as his condition was deteriorating.
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28 female Jamaat activists put on remand

28 female Jamaat activists arrested from city\'s Mohammadpur area on Thursday were produced before the court on Friday. Later they were placed on 2-day remand.

UNB, Dhaka :

A court here on Friday placed 28 female activists of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, arrested from the city's Mohammadpur area on Thursday, on a two-day remand in a case filed under the Special Powers Act.

Metropolitan Magistrate Md Delwar Hossain passed the order after officer-in-charge (Investigation) of Mohammadpur Police Station

Md Shafiqul Islam, also investigation officer of the case, produced them before the court seeking a seven-day remand, said General Recording Officer of the court sub-inspector Nizam Uddin.

Based on a tip-off, a team of Mohammadur Police Station cordoned off a house at Tajmahal road in Mohammadpur on Thursday afternoon and arrested the 28 female Jamaat activists.

Various types of documents, including leaflets and religious books, were also recovered from their possession.

Later, a case was filed against them under the Special Powers Act.

Briefing reporters at the police station on Friday, Deputy Commissioner (DC) of Tejgaon Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Biplab Kumar Sarkar said the female Jamaat members gathered at the house to plan acts of sabotage to 'embarrass' the government. Several of the arrested women are family members of some convicted war criminals, he said. Biplab Kumar said some of them came from outside Dhaka and they had planned to carry our subversive activities under the cover of preaching religion through 'Tablig Jamaat'.
EU leaders to face Trump at Malta summit

Bid to block choice for US envoy

Valletta, Malta (CNN) :

EU leaders, led by French president Francois Hollande, have denounced recent attacks on Europe by Donald Trump as they met for a summit to debate the future of the union.

Hollande described Trump's statements as "unacceptable", and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on the EU to press ahead with its own plans whatever the US says.

EU leaders have been rattled by Trump's comments on Europe and the NATO transatlantic alliance. He has voiced his support for Britain's departure from the EU, criticized European refugee policies and called NATO "obsolete".

Hollande hit out at Trump as he arrived at the informal summit on the future of the EU in Malta. "There are threats, there are challenges. What is at stake is the very future of the European Union," he said.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a number of statements by the US President, pressure on what Europe should be or what it should no longer be."

Merkel called on fellow EU leaders to unite, as she arrived for the summit in Valletta, Malta's capital. "I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands. And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations," she said.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern criticized Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries as "highly problematic." He blamed some of the migration problems on US intervention in the Middle East. "There is no doubt that America shares responsibility for the refugee flows by the way how it intervened militarily," he said, according to AFP

Potential EU envoy 'hostile'

The criticism of Trump came after it was revealed that the European Parliament's main political party is attempting to block Trump's expected choice for US ambassador to

the European Union. A letter from the Group of the European People's Party, or EPP, urges the EU to reject US businessman Ted Malloch, calling him "hostile and malevolent" and accusing him of "denigrating the EU."

"In these statements, the prospective nominee expressed his ambitions 'to tame the bloc like he brought down the Soviet Union,' eloquently supported dissolution of the European Union and explicitly bet on the demise of the common currency within months," they say in the letter to the presidents of the European Council and European Commission.

"We are strongly convinced that persons seeing as their mission to disrupt or dissolve the EU, should not be accredited as official representatives to the EU."

Opinion: Europe must come to terms with Trump's hostility

The letter ends by urging EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker not to accept Malloch should he be Trump's pick. Envoys to the EU must be approved by the European Council, the European Commission and signed off by EU leaders.

Malloch told the BBC last week: "Mr. Trump has clearly said that any trade deals with anyone frankly in the future will be done on a bilateral basis."

Meanwhile, The European Union declared the Trump administration a "threat" on Tuesday, laying bare what many Europeans think privately and setting the stage for increased tension between the US and EU.

European Union President Donald Tusk's diplomatic bombshell listed the Trump administration as a threat alongside China, Russia, terrorism and radical Islam, adding that "worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable."

"The change in Washington puts the European Union in a difficult situation; with the new administration seeming to put into question the last 70 years of American foreign policy," Tusk said in a letter to EU members.

The astonishing break from diplomatic practice stems from reasons that range from the personal to the broadly geopolitical.

Tusk's stark description about a close ally of seven decades reflects deep unease about

President Donald Trump's take on European institutions. He's called NATO "obsolete," dismissed the 28-member EU as a "vehicle for Germany" and publicly said he's had "a very bad experience" with the EU as a businessman.

There is concern that Trump's comments will not only undermine the EU, but benefit Russia, which would prefer a weakened NATO and a strained Europe-US alliance.
BD, Russia working to expand ties

UNB, Dhaka :

Russian Ambassador to Bangladesh Alexander Ignatov has said Bangladesh and Russia are working on a package of documents, covering many issues, including economics, migration and energy to elevate the ties between the two countries to a new level.

"Our focus is bilateral trade. Its volume is growing. Last year, it hit a historical high of 1.6 billion USD - a 40 percent increase just in one year. Quite a jump! And we expect further growth this year," the Ambassador told UNB in an interview on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between Russia and Bangladesh.

Describing the current Dhaka-Moscow relations as booming and very smooth, Ignatov said, "We are quite satisfied with the way our relations are developing. After all, there are no major problems or unsettled issues. This is very positive and gives us a sense of assurance," he explained.

The Ambassador said the basis of cooperation between the two countries is very solid. "I can say this from my own experience as I came here in 1977 for the first time and can judge the relations at their initial stage. I saw a close rapport between the then Soviet Union leaders and Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman."

Russia in the Bay of Bengal

The Ambassador said Russia is ready to develop economic cooperation with Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal. "I discussed with Bangladeshi authorities the ways to strengthen the legal framework of cooperation and prospects of Russia's participation in priority development projects of Bangladesh, including Russia's involvement in construction and equipment of deep-sea ports," he said. The Ambassador said, Bangladeshi side is now reviewing Russia's proposal to sign an agreement on sea shipment cooperation. "In a broader perspective, we're interested in the balance of relations and balance of powers in the region."
If Trump succeeds no Muslim country will be spared however meek

Editorial Desk :

When countries ranging from central Europe to Canada and Australia take centre stage to protest Mr. Trump's highly disagreeable immigration policies with regard to the selected seven Muslim countries, most of the Muslim countries remained silent. Few of them appeared supportive.

From the sitting Saudi King Salman to the Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, all have so far made no comments about their respective phone conversations with Mr. Trump. Are they not realising the depth of offence that the new US President has so far delivered addressing a group of Muslim nations?

We know that the governments of oil rich Muslim countries have their stolen oil money kept in America to worry about. Few of them are so anti-people that they depend on America's military protection for their survival. Yet, in the face of attacking the honour and respectability of Muslims they could rise above slavishness to stand shoulder to shoulder

Earlier on Jan 26, ATN News cameraperson Abdul Alim was attacked while recording footage of some policemen beating up and dragging an anti-Rampal activist in front of Shahbagh Police Station. Then they pounced on the channel's reporter Kazi Ihsan bin Didar when he protested against the assault on his colleague.

After primary investigation, the authorities suspended Assistant Sub-Inspector Ershad Mondol and identified 14-15 others involved in the unprovoked attack. On the same day, police assaulted a Dhaka Tribune journalist at Mirpur when he approached them to confirm reports of a Traffic Sergeant ordering a bus to plough into the anti-Rampal protesters who were trying to bring out a procession.

Similarly, senior officials of RAB were involved in the seven murder case in Narayanganj. Earlier on January 23, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asked the members of police force to be more pro-people by changing the colonial attitude. A clear evidence of this exists as the SC wants proper enforcement of the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act, 2013 that prohibits both mental and physical torture in any situation and death in custody of law enforcement agencies. But police seeks cancellation of this Act as the force claims the law has curbed their "rights".

The police even claimed the law enforcers will lose their dedication to work if this law remains in force which might hamper security of the state and the people. To get the law scrapped, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's intervention was sought as she attended the Police Annual Parade at Rajarbagh Police Lines on January 23.

Even though, the law was enacted more than three years ago, alleged torture by law enforcement agencies and custodial deaths didn't stop. Records of Ain O Salish Kendra (ASK), a human rights body, show at least 147 people died in custody in the last two years. According to ASK, 78 people died in custody in only last one year. Of them, 32 were convicted and 46 were detainees.

In 2015, the number of custodial death was 69, and of them, 42 were facing trial, according to ASK's record prepared on the basis of newspaper reports. Moreover, a section of lower-tier police officers were accused of engaging in extortion by threatening people with cases. In last one year, more than a dozen such cases were reported in Dhaka Metropolitan Police area alone, according to a Local Newspaper report published on November 13, 2016.

Against this backdrop, the SC has directed judicial magistrates to take action against errant police officers whenever they find infringement of this law that was passed by the Parliament amid widespread allegations of police torture. President Abdul Hamid told them at a programme at Bangabhaban, marking Police Week 2017 on Wednesday: "Getting the security of their lives and property is the right of people, not the mercy of anyone (police). You (police) should remember that you get salaries and allowances from public money." This attitude from the colonial past must change for the police to become a more disciplined and democratic force which respects the rights of all citizens.


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.
Looking for the vulture assist with Neolithic burials

2 years ago
IND L!VE offers highlights of the many live music events taking place around Acadiana this weekend.

LA CROSSROADS: DYLAN LEBLANC

Friday, Feb. 3

Acadiana Center for the Arts

Doors: 7:30 p.m.

Dylan LeBlanc performs for the February entry of the Louisiana Crossroads music series at the AcA.

BLAKE MILLER & THE OLD FASHION ACES + FOREST HUVAL

Friday, Feb. 3

Artmosphere Bistro

Doors: 9 p.m.

Admission: $10

Artmosphere welcomes Cajun upstarts Blake Miller and Forest Huval this Friday, Feb. 3. Cover is $10.

DROOD + PAGODA MAMBO + MATTHEW LANE BREAUX + AEP

Friday, Feb. 3

POETS

Doors: 9 p.m.

Poets welcomes to its stage Drood, Pagoda Mambo, Mathew Lane Breaux and AEP this Friday night.

FOR THE 99 AND THE 2000S

Friday, Feb. 3

The District

Doors: 10 p.m.

Admission: $15

Diamond Life | ML1 Media | Ugly Hustle Presents: For The 99 And 2000s - The hottest throwback concert with live performances by afrobeat artist Meaku with special guests Ben J of 4x-platinum group New Boyz and Yung of 2x-platinum group Cali Swag District. Sounds by DJ ShaadSmooth + MC GoMcTripleD.

TERRY & THE ZYDECO BAD BOYS

Friday, Feb. 3

Blue Moon Saloon

Doors: 9 p.m.

Duson natives Terry & The Zydeco Bad Boys perform their traditional style of zydeco with a touch of funk this Friday at the Blue Moon Saloon.

CHUBBY CARRIER & BAYOU SWAMP BAND + LEROY THOMAS & THE ZYDECO ROADRUNNERS

Saturday, Feb. 4

Feed & Seed

Doors: 9 p.m.

Admission: $12

Chubby Carrier & The Bayou Swamp Band and Leroy Thomas & The Zydeco Roadrunners perform at the Feed & Seed this Saturday. Cover is $12. Doors open at 8 p.m. Show starts at 9 p.m.

GLOWRAGE PAINT PARTY

Saturday, Feb. 4

Grant Street Dancehall

Doors: 9 p.m.

GlowRage, the Ultimate Paint Party Experience, is bringing the Carnival of Color tour to Lafayette where it will transform Grant Street Dancehall from its normal appearance to a whimsical carnival theme for the night.

DAVE JORDAN & THE NIA

Saturday, Feb. 4

The Wurst Biergarten

Doors: 9 p.m.

The Wurst Biergarten welcomes Dave Jordan & The NIA to its newly minted bandstand this Saturday night.

GTO PARTY BAND

Saturday, Feb. 4

The Grouse Room

Doors: 10 p.m.

The Grouse Room welcomes the GTO Party Band to its stage this Saturday night.

JON HATCHETT BAND + SABRA & THE GET RIGHTS

Saturday, Feb. 4

Artmosphere Bistro

Doors: 9 p.m.

Artmosphere welcomes local favorites Jon Hatchett Band and Sabra & The Get Rights this Saturday.

MELTING POT SHOW

Saturday, Feb. 4

Blue Moon Saloon

Doors: 9 p.m.

The Blue Moon Saloon is hosting yet another one of its popular Melting Pot Shows where bands swap and perform each others songs this Saturday featuring performances from Oh! Kelly, Sour Sedans, Double Wide and Cory Landry.

SPYGLASS + WHISPERED LITTLE SOUNDS + SHRUGS

Saturday, Feb. 4

POETS

Doors: 9 p.m.

Poets presents a night of full local acts including Spyglass, Whispered Little Sounds and Shrugs this Saturday.

HOOK AND BOIL PRESENTS BOILING OVER

Saturday, Feb. 4

Parc Sans Souci

Doors: 12 - 4 p.m.

Admission: Free

Hook and Boil present Boiling Over in Parc Sans Souci on Saturday, Feb. 4. This community event gives everyone a chance to welcome Hook and Boil to Downtown Lafayette while benefiting Big Brothers Big Sisters of Acadiana. Come out to enjoy Three37 on stage, boiled crawfish, drinks, and fun jumps for the kids.
The Lafayette City Government page holds our fair city up to a mirror. Sometimes the reflection is disturbingly, depressingly accurate.

Yet the best determining factor of how comfortable we are with ourselves, is our ability to laugh at ourselves. a Wes Adamson

Yesterday, on Feb. 1, a satirical Facebook page dubbed Lafayette City Government offered a timely salutation: Happy first day of #BlackHistoryMonth, Lafayette! Or as many of our residents like to call it, National When is white history month?!?! Day! #Pride #Culture

An earlier post was weather related: #WeatherWarning! Scattered showers are expected across most of Lafayette tomorrow. So dont be a d**k, and try to keep your jacked-up F150 at or under the speed limit. Also your Salt Life vinyl sucks. Stay safe out there, yall! #LeauxcalWeather #StaySafeLafayette

Wait, what? Is that to say there are racists and over-compensating rednecks in Lafayette? In Lafayette? A parish that overwhelmingly elected President Coochie Clutcher last year? Perish the thought!

The Facebook pages about section is decidedly more caustic: Just the best party. Lafayette, Louisiana is your destination for self-loathing, unemployment and hipster Cajun culture. Not associated with Lafayette Consolidated Government, they cant even run a city right!

Ouch! Or, as we like to say here in Lafayette, Eye-yyie!

Were not sure who is behind Lafayette City Government, but theyve clearly struck a nerve. On Wednesday, LCG wiped away its tears and issued a press release indicating that local government is trying to get the fake local government page shut down. (At this writing, Lafayette City Government on Facebook is still a thing.):

LCG neither condones nor has any involvement with the activity associated with this page, including posts made on the page or comments made from the account on other Facebook pages. LCG representatives have sent reports to Facebook and will continue to take action to have the account removed. Those who find the content or comments from the imposter page are encouraged to report the page to Facebook, block the page and hide and/or delete comments from Facebook threads. Citizens who unknowingly liked the imposter page are encouraged to unlike the page. Facebook users are generally discouraged from engaging with or retaliating against imposter pages.

LCG also made sure  pettily, if you ask me  to note that the Lafayette City Government Facebook page has garnered less than 200 likes in approximately a three week period. Because everyone knows that in this age of social media, likes and shares are the true arbiters of worth.

Seriously, folks, we love to call ourselves a cool town and the happiest city in America, but we have our blemishes. Relative to other municipalities, local government IMO runs a relatively tight ship. But if it takes a satirical Facebook page to get us to confront our shortcomings, is that really a bad thing we should banish from the public square?

Hearteningly, reviews of the page have been generally positive: I wish Lafayette government was half as cool as this page, writes one. Adds another: This page has all the best Lafayette government news. All the greatest posts. Theyre comments are so good. This page is gonna be yuge!
Photo Illustration

What constitutes a budget cut? While the answer seemingly should be simple, like nearly anything else in the Louisiana Capitol, it depends on perspective.

As he readies for another round of budget slashing, Gov. John Bel Edwards said he and the Legislature already have made more than $850 million in reductions over his first year as governor. In January, the Democratic governor called them "painful government spending cuts."

That figure appears to exaggerate the impact of the situation, however.

While little argument exists that the TOPS college tuition program is offering less to students, other items on the Edwards administration list seem a bit murkier as to whether they should truly be classified as a cut.

Is delaying the opening of a new juvenile lockup facility in Bunkie  not paying for something the state hasn't paid for previously  really a cut? What about eliminating dollars agencies didn't spend on employees because of a hiring freeze? How about using federal financing to pay for things that state dollars once covered, without lessening services?

Those are included in the governor's tally. They might not seem like cuts to the public.

How much state government spends and how much it has cut amid nine years of budget shortfalls are particularly sensitive questions as lawmakers prepare to start a special session Feb. 13 to close the latest $304 million deficit.

Edwards is asking lawmakers to use $119 million from Louisiana's "rainy day" fund, rather than eliminating the whole gap through cuts. Even if lawmakers tap into the savings account, the governor warned "the cuts we will make this year will be deep, and they will be painful."

House Republican leaders say Louisiana government has grown too large. They question whether cuts will be as damaging as Edwards describes.

"There's a better start to the process than scaring folks to death with scenarios that are the worst-case possible when the math doesn't add up," Rep. Lance Harris, House GOP caucus leader, told Edwards at a recent budget hearing.

No question, agencies and programs have taken cuts since Edwards has been in office.

For example, K-12 public schools received $24 million less in the current 2016-17 budget than they got a year earlier. Colleges took a $12 million reduction earlier this year. The attorney general's office got less money this year than it did last year, as did the governor's office.

Awards from the TOPS college tuition program are only paying for 42 percent of tuition this semester because the program was $88 million short of what was needed to pay full tuition for all eligible students.

But the Edwards administration list of cuts also includes $184 million tied to the expansion of Louisiana's Medicaid program, which provides government-financed health insurance to the working poor.

It's hard to call that a cut when more people are getting services.

The state saved $184 million of its own tax dollars this year by tapping into enhanced federal financing rates for coverage it already provided to the poor and uninsured. In other words, the state's spending $184 million less of its own revenue  while adding billions in additional federal dollars to provide more health care.

Also on the Edwards administration list is $161 million in mid-year reductions made in December to help close an earlier deficit. That budget-rebalancing plan used savings from hiring and spending freezes and tapped into other pots of money to fill some of the gap.

House Appropriations Chairman Cameron Henry said true cuts tallied closer to $36 million.

"The net effect to some of these agencies was zero," said Henry, R-Metairie.

Edwards, department heads and some lawmakers say state agencies took so many budget hits during former Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration that new reductions will damage real programs and services, because they have no "fat" left to trim.

That debate will continue throughout the deficit-closing special session and in the upcoming regular session, when lawmakers consider whether to boost money for the state treasury as they rewrite Louisiana's tax laws.
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In truth one of the main reasons we were excited to come to Vietnam was for the canyoning, mentioned by almost everyone who has visited as some of the best in the world. We made a beeline on our bikes into the central Highlands of Vietnam and towards the beautiful mountain town of Dalat to give it a go! Having experienced some of the best and most thrilling examples of this extreme sport in Switzerland and Slovenia, Dalat had a lot to live up to, but here in this stunning and surprising region we came across a world class course and a day to remember: Dalat Canyoning!

Coming to Dalat after hearing rumours of this amazing adventure location: Dalat Canyoning

We knew nothing much of Da Lat other than canyoning before we headed over to Vietnam, in fact we only had a rather haphazard list of places scrawled down in haste on a piece of paper as to where we would actually visit over here. For such a large, or should I say long, country once we got our bikes we knew we would be making regular pit stops to experience the best it had to offer. But too tempted by the Dalat Canyoning rumours we stopped to check it out!







So no sooner had we got to grips with the bikes we headed up from the coast and into the beautiful mountainous central highlands region of Vietnam. This area totally blew our minds and shook to the core our visual impressions and expectations of what South East Asia looks and feels like! Up here you would be forgiven for thinking you are voyaging through an Alpine forest, covered in pine trees and ferns this is a far cry from the palm tree covered beaches we had come to expectbut we werent complaining, this change in altitude means only one thing for us: Adventure!

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Choosing the right company and tour!

One of the first things we discovered when we arrived in Dalat what the dizzying amount of companies all advertising amazing canyoning trips alongside other adventure tours. Of course, we knew we had to use a guide in order to stay safe, we have done canyoning many times before and know the importance of having the correct gear, a read on the weather and a knowledge of the route. But tour companies also often raise our suspicions, we avoid them at all costs and seeing how many were vying for our trade made us even more wary. Dalat Canyoning is on offer from a wide range of places but here we found the best!

We were keen for a REAL Dalat Canyoning experience rather than a gimmicky backpackers lads on tour trip surrounded by jocks who had no idea about this actual sport we are part of. So searching around we came across Dalat Adventure Tours. What stood out to us mostly was the fact that they take you to a a different canyon than every other company. Instead of queuing with hundreds of others on the same track, having an audience of raucous lads as you build up your courage and being rushed through we had the entire place to ourselves and came away with a much more authentic and adventure filled Dalat Canyoning experience as a result.







The most thorough safety briefing weve ever had!

Canyoning is inherently dangerous, it is an extreme sport made up of cliff jumping, abseiling, climbing, wild swimming and trekking. It takes you to the most remote, inaccessible and stunning areas of the world, but it is not to be taken lightly. Even with bags of experience ourselves you still often need a guide who knows the canyons well, which parts are too dangerous, where to set up the ropes, how to read the weather conditions and water level. All these require local knowledge and experience of the canyon itself in particular.

So when it comes to a safety briefing, no matter how many times we have abseiled ourselves we always make sure to pay attention. Each canyon is different and requires of you different skills and techniques, but this also makes it so much fun! Dalat Adventure Tours gave us one of the most in-depth inductions we could have hoped for, giving everyone practice with the ropes on some dirt banks and going through everything until even the most inexperienced was confidence. They also assess everyones level of ability and can tailor parts of the course, encouraging you to push yourself but at the same time recognising the limits of safety, making Dalat Canyoning something for everyone!

Diving straight in at the deep end: Abseiling 100ft into a torrent of a waterfall!

There was no messing about here with this Dalat Canyoning route, after a picturesque trek through the forest and after clambering up a steep rock bank clinging only to a rope we were thrown in at the deep end: Just how we like it! Instead of easing you in the guys here like to start with a heart racing 100ft abseil right into a powerful waterfall.

If you werent already awake then this would surely get your eyes wide open! Peering over the edge the angle is so sharp you cant even see the bottom of the canyon, the overhanging cliff allows you to jump, mission impossible style, into the torrent of water as it batters you!







Trekking through the jungle and across the amazing canyons of Dalat

Another thing we really loved about this Dalat Canyoning tour was the trekking too, after the adrenaline boost of the first large abseil we were all in need of the peaceful trek through the forest. This route takes you along the steep banks of thick jungle, leaping across the rocks of the canyon in its shallower parts, wading through the water above knee high and even swimming in the refreshing water. It is in these parts where you can really take a step back and appreciate the stunning scenery this amazing adventure is taking place in!

Practising our jumping abseil skill on the dry rappel!

Another abseil was on the cards and after we had all dried off walking through the forest we were happy to find out it wasnt down a waterfall this time! This gave even the most unconfident of the group to try out their jumping skills whilst abseiling, though Shorty was a bit over confident, jumped too high and slipped!! But of course, we were still safe and it was only his pride and maybe his elbow that was bruised!

Getting thrashed around in the washing machine

One of the most memorable and infamous sections of the Dalat Canyoning is the Washing Machine, named because of the waterfalls ferocious power that whips you up in the narrow canyon and spits you out at the other end. The 50ft abseil required more precision than the others, this time the space was much narrower and you had to squeeze through the tight but slippy wet rock.

Once inside the tiny opening the water roared off every surface, splashing with such power you were blinded and deafened at the same time! Eventually you had to let go of the rope around 10ft above the surface of the water, being dropped below the powerful cascade before fighting your way out of its powerful grasp! What an adventure Dalat Canyoning turned out to be!

Leap of faith, working up from 2m, 7m and finally 11m (36ft) into a narrow cavern!

Now came for my favourite parts of the Dalat Canyoning adventure: The jumps! We were able to build up and for those new to canyoning it really allowed everyone to experience this exciting element of the sport to the level they were comfortable with! We began with an entry level 2m / 6.ft jump into the chilly water to begin with, everyone taking their turn to make the jump.

Next up was a more tricky proposition, a 7m / 23ft leap out over a bulge in the rock from a specially built platform on the sloping cliff face. This required a little more power and push to make sure you clear the rock and make it into the turquoise lake below. Almost all of the group made this jump apart from 2 of the other girls!

Next up was the big one, the one I had been most excited for and also the most nervous, the 11m / 36ft leap into the narrow canyon opposite the washing machine abseil. As each of the group peered over the edge and thought better of the prospect I was psyching myself up. I knew I had to do it, that is why I had been so nervous in the days leading up to this trip. For me it was a case of do it or regret it for a long time, I know, I torture myself with these things but I know when I will regret not doing somethingand this was it.







So there I was, heart racing, staring down into the impossibly high canyon, the walls seeming to close in on me. I had to do it now or I would be stood up here forever and talk myself out of it. Everyone else was standing there watching and wondering if I would have the courage. So, with a deep breath, I went for it and leapt into the water, falling for what felt like an eternity! But I did it, coming up to the surface beaming ear to ear! This is what Dalat Canyoning is all about!

Flying down the zipline 3 ways over the pure waters of this amazing region

Now after I have conquered my highest leap yet it was time for some more relaxed fun and to tackle the zipline3 ways, each a little more extreme than the last! The first was a more casual affair, being attached at the front and running off the edge of the cliff before sliding into the water.

After this it was time for our superman impressions as the line was attached behind us, this required a little more balance and core strength or you might end up upside down like some of the group!!

The last one was only for the brave and maybe a little stupid amongst the group, which of course was just us two! It involved holding on tight to some handlebars and running off the edge once again. This time it was essential you kept hold until you were clear of the rock face, and then when you did let go, well, lets just say your forward momentum didnt stop until you hit the water face first at quite some speed!

Chilling out with a roadside picnic and a beer after a day of amazing adventure!

After all this excitement and adventure on the Dalat Canyoning trip we had built up quite an appetite! The guys at Dalat Adventure Tours set up an amazing picnic for us as we got dry and changed. Cracking open a celebratory beer we ate as much delicious cheese, bread, tofu, fresh mango, dragon fruit and pineapple as we could. Really one of the nicest meals we have had, sometimes, especially for us being vegetarian, the simplest things are the most satisfying!

Check out Dalat Adventure Tours here: How to do the Dalat Canyoning trip.

Cost of the tour is $30 each for the Extreme Dalat Canyoning, they also offer white water rafting, trekking, easy rider tours, mountain biking and a whole host of other adventure tours too! Thanks to Dragon and Cow for one of the most thrilling days ever!

www.adventuredalat.com

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Keep an eye out for a full video coming soon, heres a little taster!

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Travelling and especially backpacking is a wild adventure, but make sure you are covered just incase something goes wrong, which if youre living it up to the fullest its always a possibility!

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Disclaimer: This post was in partnership with Dalat Adventure Tours, As always, all opinions are our own!
The sextoy market is growing quite rapidly in India right now.

Although it is not a big trend, it is a hot topic on the internet as it is secretly expanding its market.

In this article, we will focus on sextoy and introduce recommended sextoy for Indian beginners of sextoy by gender.

India, the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, is very strict about sex.

Also, premarital sex is basically not allowed. Therefore, there are many people who are sexually restricted.

But what happens when you continue to be sexually restricted?

Frustration may build up and you may end up taking your sexual stress out on your partner.

If you are able to adopt sextoy in a timely manner, you can get rid of those problems.

I want to have more exciting sex than Im having now.

I want more variation in masturbation

I want to get even stronger pleasure than I do on my own.

If you have any of these problems, please stay with me until the end.

What is sex toys for Indian?

Sextoy, as the name implies, is a toy used during sex and masturbation.

It is a generic term for vibrators, Egg-vibrators, Electric massagers, dildo, handcuffs and condoms.

They are used to make regular sex more exciting or to make masturbation more pleasurable.

Because sextoy is very stimulating, it can help you to get rid of the problems and frustrations of being in a rut of sex with your partner for a long time, or if you are unhappy with the lack of pleasure in sex with your partner.

The ability to satisfy your desires with movement, texture, and size, which cannot be done by a normal human being, can help you to be satisfied with sex and, as a result, improve your relationship with your partner.

It is also said to help improve sexual dysfunction (inability to get an erection or ejaculate) and difficulty in feeling during sex (insensitivity), which is attracting more attention than in the past.

In recent years, the demand for sextoy has increased due to the spread of smartphones and the Internet and the increasing number of people using online shopping.

Even those who are concerned about the appearance of sextoy (and find it difficult to purchase) can now easily obtain it by using mail order.

In the case of online shopping, most of the stores have taken steps to ensure that the contents of the products delivered to you are not revealed, so you can purchase them without your family members knowing.

Until a while ago, you had to go to the store where the adult goods were sold to buy them, so it was quite a hurdle to overcome.

Also, many people may have an image that sextoy is somehow embarrassing to own.

But nowadays, some of them are so stylish and cute that you cant believe they are sextoy at a glance.

More and more people are using them for travel and outdoor use because they are not too bulky and are suitable for carrying around.

Sextoy situation in India

Before introducing the recommended sextoy for Indians, lets talk about one of the sextoy situations in India in recent years.

In India, due to the high concentration of population, the following six cities have particularly high sales of sextoy in India.

Mumbai

Kolkata

Bangalore

Delhi

Chennai

Hyderabad

These cities account for roughly 70 percent of sextoy sales in India.

In the future, the percentage of sextoy use will gradually increase in other cities in India as well.

If you never talk about sextoy publicly, that girl in your neighborhood might be a sextoy user too.

If you are interested in sextoy, you dont have to suppress your desire for it.

What are Sextoys for beginner?

Among all sextoys, sextoy for beginners are vibrators, dildo, masturbators, Sex Lubricants, and condoms.

Sex Lubricants and condoms, which are familiar to people who have had sex, are also a great beginners sextoy.

I will explain the details of each toy later, but there are many sextoy products that are painful to use and can only be used after some anal expansion.

I assume that the Indian readers of this article are people who have not had much experience with sextoy.

If such people use professional sextoy suddenly, they are at risk of injury or trauma.

Therefore, to introduce sextoy, you need to start with a beginners version and gradually become familiar with it.

Advantages of using sextoy for Indians

There are three advantages of using sextoy for Indians

You can masturbate in a wide variety of ways.

Can have stimulating sex

Can develop new sexual zones

If you try to masturbate with your own fingers or hands, it tends to be a pattern.

However, with sextoy, you can easily masturbate in a variety of ways.

You will definitely be fascinated by the attraction of new stimulation.

Also, your daily sex life will be more exciting than ever.

There are many things in sextoy that are visually stimulating and give you a strong and intense feeling of pleasure.

This allows you to see your partners promiscuity in a way that you wouldnt normally see it.

When you are in a relationship, sex with your partner may become a pattern, but it can also eliminate these problems.

It can also lead to the development of new sexual zones (which is the training of sexual stimulation to allow you to feel orgasms).

For more information on the development of new sexual zones, see the following articles

[Women's Erogenous Zone]How to find and develop, 7 hidden sexual zones !![In India] In this issue, we will dissect the female erogenous zone! ..." Many of you may be like that. Men, in particular, shou...

Thus, the use of sextoy can only be a good thing for the men and women of India.

Sextoy for beginner men in India

So, lets continue with the recommended goods for Indian sextoy beginners.

For ease of understanding, we will introduce them by gender. Lets start with the men!

The following five goods are recommended for novice Indian sextoy men

Masturbator

Cock rings

Love Doll

Sex Lubricants

Toys for the prostate

Lets check each one in detail.

Masturbator

The masturbator is a sextoy for men that elaborately reproduces a womans vagina, mouth, and anus, and is one of the most popular sextoy products.

It is used by men to masturbate, and it is popular because it provides stronger stimulation and pleasure more easily than using hands.

Most are made of good quality silicone, and their softness is something that cannot be achieved with ones own hands.

They can provide stronger pleasure than a real womans vagina, so be careful not to overuse them. (You wont be able to have an orgasm in a womans vagina anymore.)

Again Male masturbators are a wonderful toy. I do not need any favourite timing, bothersome bargaining. You do not have to worry too much.

Revolutionize your masturbation time! ! !

Made in Japan is a wonderful kinky toy.#sextoysindia #SexToyIndia #Japanhttps://t.co/4k70QGzoTP pic.twitter.com/tRVdxTKPpa   SEXToys India PR  (@SextoysIndia) November 12, 2018

Some of them are disposable, while others can be washed and used over and over again, so its fun to buy a few to use depending on your mood.

If you want to know more about masturbator, please click here

Really pleasant male masturbation and how to do it Are you in a rut with your daily masturbation routine? I'm going to show you five ways men masturbate that you might ...

[For Beginners] How to choose and use a male masturbator without fail Gentlemen.Have you ever used a masturbator? The person who sees this article is probably the one who has not experien...

Cock Ring

A cock ring is literally a ring-shaped sextoy that is worn on a mans penis.

It maintains an erection by binding the penis with a ring of rubber and blocking blood flow.

It is sometimes used as an accessory to be worn on the penis, and may be made of metal or plastic as well as rubber.

In some cases, cock rings have parts or vibrators attached to them that stimulate the vagina, so they kill two birds with one stone, giving a woman pleasure while maintaining an erection.

Cock rings are also sometimes used to treat erectile dysfunction.

It can help with erectile dysfunction, where the penis doesnt get hard when you get an erection or doesnt last long when you try to insert it.

Men who are prone to breakage or who are unsure of the hardness and size of their erections can use a cock ring to increase the size of their penis and maintain an erection for a longer period of time.

Cock rings vary in price from around RS700 to over RS2000 with a vibrator function.

Some of them do not fit your penis, so you should check the size of the cock ring before you buy.

You should know the size of your partners or your own penis when it is erect.

[Penis enlargement] What is a cock ring? Types and usage Cock rings can make your penis bigger and harder. It also makes sex with women more fulfilling and increases your sat...

Love Doll

Love dolls, also known as Dutchwives, are dolls with the appearance of a woman who can experience simulated sex.

There are dolls that look like a woman, but they have no face and only have their breasts and lower torso cut off, and some dolls are so realistic that they can actually be mistaken for real women.

Some expensive dolls can cost more than 1 million yen, and the quality of the doll is easily influenced by the price.

The higher the price, the higher the quality of the doll will be, the closer it will be to the real woman, and the cheaper the doll will be, the less elaborate it will be, making it look like a real doll! Something is wrong! That is also true.

You cant go wrong if you choose a balance between price and taste.

There are stores that allow you to make custom-made love dolls, so you can create a girl of your choice.

You can make a girl of your choice. You can start with inexpensive love dolls at first, and once you get used to it, you can try custom-made love dolls.

If you want to know more about Love doll, please click here

Thorough explanation of the charm of sex dolls! Have you ever heard of sex dolls that are used primarily for pseudo-sex purposes? It is a doll that is quite close to...

Sex lubricants

Sex lubricants are used as a substitute for lubricating fluid during sex or as a lubricant for men to use masturbator rules.

It is not uncommon for women to have difficulty getting wet, depending on their physical condition, or to have difficulty getting wet due to their constitution.

Forcing the penis into the vagina at such times can cause painful intercourse.

There are various types of Sex Lubricants, some with a warming effect, some with a cooling effect, and some with a scent.

Changing the Sex Lubricant used during play is recommended as a good sex accent.

If you want to learn more about Sex Lubricants, click here.

What is sex lubricant?Explain the difference and usage of each ingredient The word "sex toy" may seem like a hurdle to overcome, but lotion is actually one of the most familiar sex toys. Many...

Toys for the Prostate

Another sextoy for men is prostate toys.

The most famous prostate toys include Enemagra, which was originally a prostate massager developed by an American urologist to treat an enlarged prostate line.

Modern prostate toys are imitations of Enemagra that have spread as sextoy for men.

Many people think of prostate toys as being used by gay men, but in fact they are often used by straight men.

What is the prostate?

The prostate is an organ found only in men. It is a walnut-sized organ located deep in the pelvis, just below the bladder, and its primary role is to protect and nourish sperm.

You cannot touch the prostate gland from outside the body, but you can touch it by inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus.

By inserting a finger or sextoy through the anus and touching the prostate and developing it, you can feel intense orgasms.

Orgasms felt in the prostate are mainly dry orgasms, which are orgasms that do not involve ejaculation. (You can also feel orgasms with ejaculation through prostate stimulation.)

The prostate is called the male G-spot, and dry orgasms can be much more intense than ejaculation.

Therefore, men who are able to develop a prostate can become addicted to the pleasure.

sextoy for beinner women in India

The following are the recommended goods for Indian women who are new to sextoy.

The following three are recommended for use by women who are new to sextoy.

Vibrator.

Dildo

Electric Masserger

Lets check out what each one is in detail.

If you want to check out womens toys, click here.

[BEST25]Sex Toys for Women in IndiaThat Can Help You Have an Orgasm There are many women who pretend to feel orgasm during sex. But don't worry, you don't have to pretend to feel orgasm...

Vibrators

A vibrator is a sextoy that vibrates with an Egg-Vibrator to provide stimulation and is often referred to simply as a vibrator.

Some vibrate as well as rotate, and there are many variations of sextoy.

It is quite a popular sextoy, and is well recognized by people who do not know much about sextoy.

Its usage is similar to that of a massager, but it is more compact and easier to carry than a massager, and many of them look as cute as a lipstick or a macaroon, so they are popular among women.

For a while, a famous influencer on twitter said, This is good! You may have heard of the topic of this article by introducing the recommended vibrators.

Vibrators are great for women to use on their own, but they are also recommended for men who have difficulty satisfying women with sex.

Since it is powered by electricity, it is far less tiring than moving your hands by yourself.

This makes it easier to satisfy a woman with sex because you can caress her for longer than usual.

Vibrators are mainly used on the female side, but they can also be used on men.

When used on men, they are used to attack the nipples and glans, and in both cases it is recommended to wear a condom for hygiene reasons.

Introducing how to use the vibrator, its purpose, and how to choose it! Vibrator uses the vibrations caused by the rotation of the motor to provide stimulation. It is one or two of the most...

Dildo

A dildo is a model sextoy made to mimic a male penis.

It can be made of silicone, elastomer (think of it as a material similar to PVC), metal or glass.

A dildo can be used by a man for his female partner during sex, or by a woman for masturbation to get pleasure from it.

They are mainly inserted into women, but some can be used in the male anus as well.

It is sometimes used synonymously with vibrators, but the vibrator is not the same thing as a vibrating device.

A model of a penis that does not vibrate is a dildo.

Some of them have suction cups that can be attached to the floor or wall so that you can enjoy realistic masturbation without using your hands.

For fun, there is a dildo made in the shape of your partners penis.

This one is also popular as a gift, and if youve been together for a long time and are having trouble finding a gift for your partner, you might want to pick one.

To learn more about dildo, please click here.

What is Dildo: Orgasms with Dildos for Men and Women A dildo is a model of a male organ that is used by women for masturbation and by men to stimulate the prostate gland. Th...

Electric Masserger

A Electric Masserger is a hand-held electric massager, also known as a handheld massager, and can usually be purchased at electronics stores.

It was originally designed to relieve stiff shoulders and back pain, so the hurdle of buying one in a physical store is quite low.

Many people may have seen or used it in some form or another, as it is often installed in leisure hotels.

Such a massager is highly recommended for beginners because it is easy for women to get pleasure from it when they use it during masturbation.

It is larger than Egg-Vibrator and vibrations are stronger than those of Egg-Vibrators and vibrators, so even just hitting the clitoris can give you a great deal of pleasure.

For those women who have never had an orgasm during sex with their man, the massager may be a good way to get a feel for what it feels like to have an orgasm.

It looks and feels like an electric massager, so you wont have to feel awkward if your roommate finds out.

If you are in a rut of having sex with your partner, if you want to feel an orgasm through masturbation, or if you are thinking of using a sextoy, why dont you try it from a simple massager?

To learn more about Electric Masserger, click here.

What is a massager? Introducing types, selection methods, and usage Originally, the Magic-wand vibrator and the massage machine were sold as a home massage machine used for the back and th...

How to choose a sextoy for Indian

Now that weve covered the different types of sextoy, heres how to choose one.

Especially if you are trying sextoy for the first time, pay attention to the following three points:  Does the size fit you (the partner)?

Does the size fit you (your partner)?

Is the environment able to produce sound without problems?

Price range

First of all, the choice of size is quite important.

Most sextoy are used against or inserted into the genitals, but the genitals are very delicate organs for both men and women.

For this reason, using an inappropriate size may cause damage.

Secondly, the environment should be able to produce sound without problems.

Some sextoys not only wear, but also rotate and vibrate. Its easier to get pleasure from something that moves than something that doesnt, but the fact that it moves means that the internal rotors make some noise.

If you live in a house with thin walls or if you have roommates, you may not be able to concentrate because of the noise, so it is best to choose one that is silent or has a low noise level.

Especially in India, where many people live with their families, it is very important that you dont have to worry about sound when you use it.

Finally, there is the price range.

The price range of sextoy ranges widely, from around RS500 at the cheapest to RS10,000 or more at the highest.

Its good to consider how much money you can afford and how much you want to buy.

Do you want your family to not find out about sextoy?

I live with my family and want to use sextoy without them finding out! If you are a man, you should buy a camouflage sextoy that does not look like a sextoy at first glance.

For men, there are many masturbators that do not look like a sextoy, and for women, there are vibrators that only look like cosmetics.

If you choose such a type, youll be safe in case your family members find out.

How to buy sextoys in India

The best way to purchase sextoy is through online shopping.

For more information on how to purchase sextoy, please see the article below.

Sextoy is one of them.

Therefore, you can easily get sextoy in India by using online shopping.

SexToysINDIA is a long established and stable sextoy store and you can have sextoy delivered to any place in India.

They also offer cash on delivery, so those who are worried about shopping with a credit card do not have to worry.

Of course, the latest security is in place, so your information will not be taken out when you use your credit card.

To begin with, many people may be concerned about whether they are legally allowed to purchase sextoy.

ikmAs it turns out, its not illegal.

Right now, it is not open to the public because the Indian adult market is still in the development stage, but it will gradually spread from now on.

Take advantage of sextoy and open the door to new pleasures and culture.

Cautions for Indians using sextoy

When using sextoy, keep the following three things in mind

Keep sex toys clean

Watch out for electrical leakage

Beware of the heat generated by the body while using a sex toy

As I mentioned earlier, many sextoy products are used for the delicate zone.

Therefore, it is most important to keep the sextoy itself clean. It is very important to keep the sextoy itself clean, because if a slight scratch is created by friction, bacteria can enter and breed there.

It is safe to wear a condom when using the masturbator, just in case.

In addition, many sextoy devices are powered by a power source, so if they are not waterproof, there is a possibility of electric shock or malfunction due to wetness.

Some may even develop heat during continuous use. If the fever becomes too much, you may get burned, so be careful.

If you get a fever during use, stop driving the sextoy immediately and refrain from using it.

You will enjoy sex more if you keep it safe and use it correctly.

Summary

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WEST FRANKFORT  Neighborhoods in five Franklin and Williamson county communities are likely to be getting upgrades this year.

Jake Wach, Crosswalks housing specialist for the Housing Rehabilitation Program, sent his final signature a few weeks ago for grant funding from the Illinois Housing Development Authority to help homes in Orient, West Frankfort, Royalton, Zeigler and Carterville make health and safety improvements. He said he hopes the funds, totaling more than $1 million, will be released in the next 30 days. To qualify, he said homes must be owner-occupied and applicants have to meet household income and other guidelines.

Wach said he anticipates being able to help 42 properties with the funding.

Wach said these grants are a great way of putting money back into the community. The funding is distributed through Housing and Urban Development in Washington, D.C., and ultimately is paid to local contractors, which pumps back into the region money paid in federal taxes.

It can make a big impact not just on the homeowners, but on a neighborhood. Wach said by making these improvements, it can raise property values on surrounding homes and because none of the improvements factor into their local taxes, everyone comes out a winner.

Its all benefit, he said.

Crosswalk applies for this grant funding each year, and Wach said the most crucial part of the system is getting surveys filled out.

Thats the only thing that makes these possible, he said. Some confuse the two-page surveys as applications and do not fill them out, which Wach said can cost him points on his application. He plans to start this process for this years application in the coming months.

There can be a lot of heartache in Wachs job. He said having to make calls to applicants who did not make it on the priority list, even though they may be in considerable need, is always hard.

However, he tries to focus on those he does help.

I just know at the end of the day, I did something productive for not just myself in terms of mental health, but the entire community, he said.

Wach remembers an applicant last year. When he and the team arrived last January, it was 23 degrees outside and the woman they were visiting had no heat. It was colder in the house than outside, he remembered.

She is sitting, literally, under a thermal blanket, in her bed with one little space heater and that is all the heat that she had besides one small space heater in the bathroom, Wach said.

After all the repairs, he said, the house, which was potentially open to condemnation to start, would serve her for decades.

It fills his heart knowing he helps people stay where they call home.

When you have somewhere to call home, it doesnt matter whether its a cardboard box or the Ritz," Wach said, "to people home is home and you hate to give it up."

After he receives the go-ahead, he said Crosswalk will begin putting up flyers in their designated neighborhoods and taking applications. He said while they have two years to complete their work, he has never seen it take longer than one.
Molly Parker Reporter Molly Parker is general assignment and investigative projects reporter for The Southern Illinoisan. Follow Molly Parker Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

Welcome to the great state of Illinois, The Land of Lincoln  as its often referred to by its official state slogan.

At the states center of government, its a hopping place Under the Dome, where lawmakers have named popcorn as Illinois official state snack.

If decades of hokey pokey politics in Springfield have you blue, perhaps youll find solace in the Do-si-do. The square dance is designated as the official folk dance of Illinois.

Then, theres the Tully Monster to celebrate. The official state fossil is a soft bodied marine animal that lived 280 to 340 million years ago, just a few years before Chicago Rep. Mike Madigan was first elected speaker of the House.

And dont forget the official state soil, Drummer silty clay loam, in which many Illinoisans long ago buried their hopes of reasonable compromise coming out of Springfield.

And theres more state designations  lots more. One freshman state senator this week filed a bill to wipe nearly all of them off the books.

But what state is complete without an official reptile? So many former Illinois governors landing behind bars may bring to mind the image of political snakes. But this role belongs to the painted turtle.

And lest you think a crocodile swamp is somehow related to the official state amphibian, let us clear that up as well. It is, in fact, the Ambystoma tigrinum, commonly known as the Eastern Tiger Salamander.

Perhaps this snarky little piece is wearing thin, so let's turn to the states sweeter designations. Illinois has gone 583 days without a complete budget (as of Friday), but since Gov. Bruce Rauner assumed the states top spot in 2015, lawmakers have passed and hes signed into law measures to name sweet corn Illinois official state vegetable and crown pumpkin the official state pie.

In the latter category, apparently the chocolate Jell-O and whipped cream topped pie an SIU student threw in the face of then-Gov. George Ryan in May 2000, didn't quite make the cut.

All told, there are more than 20 official state designations, some of them selected by school children, others by voters, and all adopted by the General Assembly. Aside from the flag and seal, which fall into a related but different category, the first designations were adopted in 1908, the year after school children voted to name as Illinois' official tree the native oak and the state flower the violet.

Sixty-five years later, a special poll of 900,000 schoolchildren voted to change the state tree designation to the white oak. Children can be fickle, after all.

Illinois' designations also include the official insect (monarch butterfly); fish (bluegill); mineral (fluorite)  that one is a particular shout out to Rosiclare, where fluorspar mining began in 1842; animal (white-tailed deer); prairie grass (big bluestem); official language (English); and state tartan (The Illinois Saint Andrew Society Tartan), among others.

Because who ever said celebrating the things that make Illinois special was for the birds, or in Illinois' case, specifically the Cardinal.

But Republican Sen. Tom Rooney, R-Rolling Meadows, who filed the State Designation Repeal bill this week, said he's not trying to kill Illinois pride. Rather, he thinks this list has grown too long to mean anything to anyone.

His measure would do away with nearly all of the state designations, leaving standing only four government symbols of Illinois: its flag, seal, slogan and the official Illinois song, which is "Illinois," written by C. H. Chamberlain and composed by Archibald Johnston.

In response to an inquiry from The Southern Illinoisan, Rooney, the former mayor of Rolling Meadows, provided the following explanation as to the intent of Senate Bill 690.

I teach economics for a living in a high school, and I wanted my first set of bills to include items that are what I call "basic economics in action," said the West Leyden High School teacher, in Northlake. When I came to the concept of scarcity being something that gives things value, this idea was what came to mind.

Our list of official designations is long enough that it, in my opinion, has decreased the value of official state designations in general. I hope that paring it back provides more value to the ones that remain.

To put sum up his sentiment in layman's terms: less is more.

But on the other hand, his bill would wipe the official state artifact off the books. And the pirogue, which is a long narrow canoe carved out of a single tree trunk, could come in handy as the state finds itself up a creek without a budget. Perhaps if lawmakers decline to take up Rooney's bill, they could at least compromise by designating an official state paddle.

The bill has been assigned to the Senate's State Government Committee for consideration.
On Feb. 9, 1950, at a speech before the Ohio County Women's Republican Club in Wheeling, West Virginia, Sen. Joe McCarthy brandished a piece of paper. "I have here in my hand a list of 205 ... known to the secretary of state as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department." But McCarthy never released the names he supposedly had, and changed his story in the days and weeks that followed about exactly how many known communists there were in the State Department. McCarthy's irresponsible grandstanding eventually got him censured by the Senate and contributed tremendously to discrediting the whole cause of anti-communism.

Though most textbooks gloss over this part in a rush to condemn the "witch hunt" era of McCarthyism, the truth is that there were communists in the U.S. government, and they were a serious threat. McCarthy didn't have the names, but thanks in part to the Venona papers (the intercepted Soviet cables declassified after the collapse of the USSR), we do. There was Harry Dexter White, a top Treasury Department official; Laurence Duggan, head of the South American desk at the State Department; Theodore Alvin Hall, who worked on the Manhattan Project; Julius Rosenberg, an Army Signal Corps civilian employee; and Alger Hiss, a high-ranking State Department official, among many others.

The parallel in our times is the Islamist threat. President Donald Trump is right that we face a threat from Islamic extremists. He is right that careful vetting of immigrants, including refugees, is necessary in light of that danger. The worry is that his ham-fisted approach to a delicate problem may wind up discrediting the effort to vet immigrants, alienating our friends in the Muslim world and empowering the self-righteous left.

Among the criticisms of the president's action is the assertion that none of the recent terror attacks in the United States would have been prevented by this executive order. That's too pat.

The terrorists at Fort Hood, Ohio State, Chattanooga, Orlando, San Bernardino and Boston were all Muslims who had become radicalized. The Tsarnaev brothers were immigrants (albeit from Kyrgyzstan, not a nation on the list). The Chattanooga shooter was an immigrant from Kuwait (ditto). Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a Somali immigrant, drove his car into a crowd at Ohio State and then stabbed 11 people. No one died, but not for lack of effort on Artan's part. Another Somali immigrant carried out a stabbing attack at a Minnesota mall. Nine were injured, but not killed. So the left's refrain that "no life would have been saved" by the executive order is really just lawyerly misdirection. Moreover, American assessments must surely consider Europe's experience of threats from immigrants as well.

Muslim immigrants and refugees present special challenges because they  or as we saw in Orlando and Fort Hood, their children  are possibly open to Islamic radicalization.

This reality must be faced, and Daniel Pipes, who has studied radical Islam for decades (and has always stressed the distinction between the Muslim faith and Islamist extremism), has excellent recommendations for the kinds of questions aspiring immigrants and refugees should have to answer before coming to this country.

Alas, instead of stressing that our goal is to separate extremist Muslims from the majority of peaceable Muslims, President Trump's slapdash executive order showed complete indifference to the distinction. Even green card holders, who have already been vetted and granted the right to live in the United States, were to be stopped at the airport with no notice. Why the rush? Would 48-hours notice have been too much to ask? Translators and military leaders from Iraq and Afghanistan, who, at great risk to themselves, had worked with U.S. forces (and had been badly treated by the Obama administration), were originally offered no dispensation from the blanket order. That's dishonorable and unwise, as it alienates all Muslims who might be inclined to side with us in a future struggle.

Trump's order was not received in a vacuum. The international outrage was sparked at least in part by the context  that is, the president's history of wild accusations (e.g., that thousands of American Muslims celebrated in the streets after 9/11), gross insensitivity (his treatment of Gold Star parents Khizr and Ghazala Khan) and sordid suggestions regarding Middle East nations (such as that the United States should have "kept the oil" after the Iraq War).

The problem of Islamic extremism is serious. It requires clear-eyed assessment of the threat, wise diplomacy and the ability to distinguish friend from foe. So far, President Trump has demonstrated only the first. In that, he resembles "Tail Gunner Joe." Let's hope he acquires the latter skills as soon as possible.
As'ad's Bio

As'ad AbuKhalil, born March 16, 1960. From Tyre, Lebanon, grew up in Beirut. Received his BA and MA from American University of Beirut in pol sc. Came to US in 1983 and received his PhD in comparative government from Georgetown University. Taught at Tufts University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, Colorado College, and Randolph-Macon Woman's College. Served as a Scholar-in-Residence at Middle East Institute in Washington DC. He served as free-lance Middle East consultant for NBC News and ABC News, an experience that only served to increase his disdain for maintream US media. He is now professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. His favorite food is fried eggplants.
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Joel Osteen  Divorce Rumors, Net Worth & Family Members Joel Osteen is an American Televangelist, Senior Pastor of Lakewood Church based in Houston, Texas, a husband and a father of two. He is an author of many books, seven of which are New York Times Best Sellers and his televised sermons capture more than 7 million viewers per week and 20 million every month ...

Who Is Todd Chrisley? What To Know About His Children, Gay Rumors & Net Worth Premiered on the USA network in 2014, Chrisley Knows Best is one of the most watched family reality TV shows in the U.S. The series which is currently in its sixth season is centered around U.S real estate mogul Todd Chrisley and his family. The show reveals Todd the patriarch of the Chrisley family as a strict dad who rules ...

Who Is Shannon Bream Of Fox News? Her Husband, Children & Net Worth Shannon Bream who hosts the iconic primetime program started her journalism career in the late 1990s debuting as the evening and late-night news reporter for the CBS affiliate, WBTV. The beauty from America currently works for the Fox News Channel and she is best known for anchoring the primetime program. She also hosts Americas News ...

Is Troye Sivan Gay, Who Is His Boyfriend and What Is His Net Worth? Troye Sivan is an Australian singer and songwriter best known for songs like Happy Little Pill, Youth, Heaven (with Betty Who) and The Boyfriend Tag (with Tyler Oakley) which have all garnered him different awards and ranked on the Billboard Charts. Sivan, who was born in South Africa but now resides in the United States, is ...

Did iDubbbz Have Cancer, Is He Gay and Who Is His Girlfriend Now? iDubbbz is one YouTuber who has made a career out of courting controversy. Renowned for his absurdist channels and comedy video series, the Los Angeles based personality is the owner of two channels, iDubbzTV, and iDubbzTV2, as well as the brains behind comedy video series such as Content Cop, Kickstarter Crap, Gaming News Crap, and ...

Inside Greg Gutfelds Love Story With Wife Elena Moussa and Why Fans Thought He Was Gay Greg Gutfeld is a seasoned American television producer whose career in the media industry has spanned over a decade. He is a man of many talents who makes extra income through comedy, journalism, and editorial works. Gutfeld regularly appears on Fox News Channel as a panellist and co-host of the political talk show The Five ...

Works That Made Bo Burnham A Household Name and How Much He Is Worth Now One of YouTubes first viral stars and the worlds most exciting young comedian, Bo Burnham, has always amazed critics and comedy aficionados alike. Often regarded as the Justin Bieber of comedy, thanks to his fresh looks, floppy blond hair and hoodies, he has a multi-faceted career bigger than many comedians twice his age. It wouldnt ...

Is Louie Anderson Gay And What Is His Net Worth? Louie Anderson has one of the most abstract faces in the industry and equally knows how to use it to his advantage. He is not only a stand-up comedian but also an actor and television host who is known for his distinctive comic wits. Some of his notable projects include Family Feud, where he was ...

Is Don Lemon of CNN Gay, Who is His Partner and What Is His Salary? Don Lemon has risen to become one of the most recognizable faces on CNN over the past few years. The fiery journalist, who anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, is liked and somewhat disliked for his strong and candid opinions on a variety of matters that do not just include politics but also race, significantly, matters that ...

Is Rachel Maddow Gay, Who is the Wife and How Much Does She Earn in Salary? Rachel Maddow is an award-winning American journalist, political commentator, and television news anchor. She is best known for hosting the popular nightly TV show The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Prior to this, she hosted a talk radio program on Air America Radio from 2005 to 2010. As of now, the TV sensation co-anchors MSNBCs ...

Demystifying Pokimane  Her Real Name, Ethnicity & Boyfriend Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Pokimane Thicc is one of those stars who took advantage of the internet to make a name for herself. Given the unlimited potentials which the social media space offers, many people have been instantly propelled to fame just by posting creative online contents. Not only has ...

A Breakdown of Kris Jenners Net Worth, Sources Of Income and Relationships Over The Years Standing outside and looking in, Kris Jenner looks like the oil that greases the wheels of the entire Kardashian/Jenner machine. She has been dubbed a momager and rightfully so because she seems to have had a part to play in the trajectory of each and every one of her daughters individually and the Kardashian brand ...

Pursuits That Brought Liza Koshys Fame To its Zenith and Her Love Life Since David Dobrik Liza Koshy is an American actress who has leveraged YouTube as a platform to promote her comedy while also serving as a television host on occasions. She is talented and funny and has gathered a lot of fans from around the world. Koshy started on Vine in high school and was able to get millions of ...

Alex Aiono Biography  Inside The Life Of The American Singer Not everyone who started from the streets has attained the heights where Alex Aiono is currently. His story could be referred to as the perfect definition of rising from Grass to Grace. He came into the limelight after he started out as a YouTuber, singer, and producer. One fascinating thing about the young YouTuber is ...

Virginia Vallejo Biography And Her Love Story With Pablo Escobar Virginia Vallejo can be referred to as one of the oldest whistleblowers in history after her involvement with Pablo Escobar which made her famous. Over the years, many questions have been raised about her relationship with the drug lord and why she endangered her life to be with him despite his notorious acts. The death ...

Princess Love Bio  Ethnicity, Real Name & Parents For many people, Princess Love is simply Ray Js wife but there is so much more to this feisty lady than meets the eye. She is a star in her own right and has many feathers on her cap. Princess Love is a reality TV star, a model, video vixen, and fashion designer. She and her ...

Who is Papa Franku Also Known As Filthy Frank or Joji, Where is He Now? The social media as we all know today has given people the opportunity to be creative and innovative and at the same time, make something of themselves. YouTube is one of the known social platforms we have today that makes it possible for people to express their God-given talents and post videos they created to ...

Who Is Molly Qerim, How Did She Become a Famous Sports Anchor and Who Is Her Husband? Molly Qerim is an American sports anchor popularly known for moderating First Take, a highly rated sports talk show, on ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, Qerim hosted Fantasy Live and NFL AM on NFL Network. It is quite obvious that the widely acclaimed television personality is in a class of her own when it comes ...

Safiya Nygaard  Height, Parents & Net Worth Safiya Nygaard is an American YouTuber, writer, content producer, and director who is popular for posting makeup, beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. Her videos regularly top at least one million views, thanks to her lively character as well as her willingness to experiment with outrageous outfits and different beauty products. Here are the things to ...

The Rigors of Sunlen Serfatys Career Journey Until CNN and Fun Facts About Her Personal Life CNN correspondent, Sunlen Serfaty is an Emmy Award-winning journalist known for covering a broad range of breaking news stories, national news, and Washington politics. She has been able to garner widespread recognition for herself which even goes beyond the sphere of her work. Her profile also increased with the extensive work she did in covering ...

Demystifying Jazz Jennings Real Name, Boyfriend & Family Of One The Youngest Transgenders Jazz Jennings is an unusual personality who became famous as a transgender activist and was recorded as the youngest documented public figure to be seen as transgender. She is also a YouTube personality and spokesmodel for brands, her fans, and other transgenders. She fought for acceptance in her high school with her super supportive family for over ...

Inside Fred Armisens Life  Ethnicity, Romantic Relationships and Gay Rumors Fred Armisen is an award-winning American comedian, he is also a writer, an actor as well as a musician. He was a cast member of the legendary comedy show, Saturday Night Live for 13 years and also one of the brains behind the successful satirical show Portlandia. Find out more about this incredibly talented guy ...

Ed and Lorraine Warren Biography: Cases, Kids, and Family Life Have you ever woken up with fear you could not explain, or felt a strange presence that made the hair at your nape rise or even experienced strange occurrences around you? Well, these were some of the promptings that made the well-known paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren delve into trying to explain the ideas ...

Truth About Tony Romos Wife, Kids and Life Since His NFL Retirement Tony Romo grew from the field as a quarterback to the screens as an American Football Analyst. He was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the richest football league in the world (NFL) before retiring. As a junior, he was honored as an All-Ohio Conference Member, an Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and ...

Who is Brittany Venti, The Controversial Game Streamer and YouTuber? In recent times, many people live stream themselves playing video games. This has become a popular pastime on the internet and many highly skilled gamers have become internet celebrities through this means. However, some of them rather than becoming renowned for their gaming skills and great commentary, have become controversial and infamous. A good example ...

Rob Dyrdeks Family: His Kids And Relationship With Wife Bryiana Noelle Flores A multi-talented star and an elite pro skateboarder, Rob Dyrdeks success story began at a remarkably young age. Yet another proof that schooling doesnt always correlate with success, Rob has established himself not just as a phenomenal sportsman but also as a successful entrepreneur. Besides perfecting his skill as a natural talent on the board, ...

xChocobars  Biography and Everything You Should Know About Her Having distinguished herself and recorded massive successes in an industry notably dominated by men, it is very safe to say that Xchocobars deserves all the attention and cash she makes from her career. A household name on Twitch (a smart live streaming video platform), the online-gamer is popularly known for streaming classic games such as Stardew ...

Everything To Know About Mary Padian, Her Boyfriend and Net Worth Mary Padian is a famous American television reality personality best known for her involvements on the Reality show Storage Wars. She also has her own shop called Mary finds where she displays her antique collections. Since her childhood, Padian has been a creative learner. At the time, she used to create new items out of reusable ones and ...

Betsy Woodruffs Family Life: Is She Married or Related To Bob Woodruff? An old name in the world of journalism, Betsy Woodruff has warmed her way into the hearts of many with her impressive talents. Through hard work, Woodruff has carved a niche for herself in a very competitive field. Betsy has strong family and work values and is also an advocate for equal opportunities for everyone ...

Matpat (Matthew Patrick)  Wife, Height & Net Worth As far as internet business is concerned, Matpat remains one of the most dynamic and seasoned figures. He boasts a wealth of experience that has helped him in growing his business from one level of greatness to another. Like most successful people, MatPat started out small but today, he makes millions of dollars from his ...

Facts About Ricegum  His Girlfriend, Real Name & Net Worth Ricegum is an online gamer and YouTube sensation who ditched college; took advantage of the digital era, and made a name for himself on the internet. Though he began as a gaming YouTuber, Ricegum soon gained recognition as a controversial internet star following his many diss tracks. Here is everything you need to know about the youngster ...

Joy Taylor Once Married MLBs Richard Giannotti  Inside Look At Her Love Life and Family The erosion of the sexist idea that women have no business in sports broadcasting created a host of women celebrities who attained fame outside of modeling and acting. One of them, Joy Taylor, a radio personality and TV host for Fox Sports 1, has been in the industry since 2009, becoming one of the most ...

What To Know About Conan OBriens Wife, Kids & Family Today The name Conan OBrien is one that jumps right at you almost immediately you start talking about the most popular television hosts in the USA and this is no surprise because the man behind that name has risen to become one of the most admired men in the business. Known for hosting the late-night talk ...

David Letterman  Net Worth, Wife & Son In all of American, one man whose face has been seen frequently by late night TV talk show lovers is none but David Letterman. The comedian and TV show veteran has been hosting late night talk shows for more than three decades. His Late Night with David Letterman show began on February 1st, 1982 aired ...

Demystifying Sssniperwolfs Family Background And The Boyfriends Shes Had Since she launched her eponymously named channel in 2013, Sssniperwolf has been on the rise when it comes to video game influencers. She is one of the biggest names in the online gaming subgenre of YouTube videos. Real name Lia Shelesh, she started with Call of Duty: Black Ops II but has diversified with other ...

Lester Holt  Wife, Family & Net Worth Lester Holt is a multiple award-winning journalist, newscaster, reporter, and actor who has worked for notable media houses like WCBS TV, CBS, MSNBC and among others. His remarkable feat in journalism has endeared him to the hearts of many and earned him some awards and recognitions. Read on to get acquainted with his biography, ethnicity, ...

What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

Who is Gillian Turner of Fox News? Her Fiance or Husband and Net Worth Gillian Turner is well-known as a news correspondent for Fox News Channel but before she became a TV personality, she built an intimidating resume working for different institutions, including the American government. She served in different capacities at the White House National Security Council during the administration of former US Presidents  George W. Bush and Barack Obama. ...

Gloria Govan Bio  Age, Ethnicity & Height Even as Gloria Govan is famous as an American actress, author, a TV host, and reality television star, shes more popular as the wife of the former NBA player, Matt Barnes. She became known after appearing on the Florida version of the reality television series, Basketball Wives and later, Basketball Wives: LA  after Matt was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers. Sadly, ...

Michael Fishmans Interesting Start as an Actor and Why He Divorced His Wife of Many Years When one door closes, another one opens. As silly as that axiom may seem, it is the story of the resurgence of Michael Fishman, who plays D.J Conner on the popular show, Roseanne. Having played the character for several years as a child actor into his teenage years; when the show originally ended, Michael did ...

Who Is October Gonzalez  Tony Gonzalezs Wife? All You Need To Know October Gonzalez is a popular American TV host and media personality. Additionally, she is also a model. Gonzalez has hosted several TV shows such as Beat Shazam, Entertainment Tonight, and Rachel Ray. She has also featured in several reality TV shows. Gonzalezs fame is not just due to her profession but also because of her ...

Who Is Tony Berlin  Harris Faulkners Husband: His Children and Family Facts Tony Berlin is a popular American media guru. He has variously worked as a reporter, anchor, and producer for some of the biggest TV networks in America. They include CNN, CBS, NBC, and ABC (where he hosted the popular Good Morning America). Berlin has now diversified into public relations and owns his own PR firm. ...

The Progression of Gianna Tobonis Journalism Career and Details About Her Marriage to Kyle Buckley Gianna Toboni may not be your ideal newscaster but her unusual reporting is what made her a household name. The American journalist is renowned for her hard-hitting and authentic reportage. A motivator and activist for total press freedom, Gianna loves to explore pervasive cultural issues. Not only does this unique and ambitious journalist call for all ...

Dog The Bounty Hunters Family Including Details of His Late Wife and Kids Popularly known as Dog, a name which he got from the television series, Dog The Bounty Hunter, Duane Chapman, an American bounty hunter, and one-time bail bondsman, went from being convicted for a felony to being a reality TV star. He was brought to the limelight following the capture of the convicted criminal, Andrew Luster in 2003 and this eventually made ...

Vicky Karayiannis, Chris Cornells Wifes Bio, Children and Family The world of showbiz is made up of different people who serve different roles, and function in a variety of capacities, and one of the most important people are those in the background. Publicists are undoubtedly one of these background people yet they are vital to the life and fame of most of our favorite ...

Joe Rogan Has A Step-Daughter and 2 Other Kids With Wife Jessica Ditzel  Meet His Family Joe Rogan is a popular American stand-up comedian and TV host. His journey to stardom began in the late 80s and has seen him host several shows, the most popular is the game show titled Fear Factor. The exciting show dares contestants to face some of their greatest fears and embark on challenging stunts. The ...

Josh Gates and Wife Hallie Gnatovich Have 2 Kids But Who Has the Higher Net Worth? Best known for his explorations and adventures, Josh Gates, is a television presenter with a voracious appetite for seeing the world and the beauties in it. Some of that beauty, however, is in his home, in the form of two children he shares with his wife, Hallie Gnatovich. Not excluded is their marriage which has lasted ...

Holly Sonders Wiki, Plastic Surgery & Why She Divorced Her Husband  Erik Kuselias After trying everything within her capacity to have a low key wedding, Holly Sonders was drawn to the public because of her husbands controversy at his workplace. Well, the two are rumored to be divorced but the article below will give more light on how true these rumors are. Meanwhile, Holly Sonders is yet to ...

Nadeska Alexis Bio  Age, Boyfriend & Net Worth Journalism is one diverse profession that allows the practitioners to choose their area of specialty, build a career on it by reporting the truth and facts which in the long run will distinguish them as deserving commendation and recognition among their peers. Some choose to specialize in political journalism, while to others it is sports ...

Media Platforms Charlamagne Tha God Has Explored and All The Controversies He Has Courted Charlamagne Tha God is an American on-air personality, radio presenter, and more recently, author. He is popularly known as a co-host on New York radios nationally syndicated show, The Breakfast Club, a program he has been hosting alongside DJ Envy and Angela Yee since 2010. However, his early years had no connection to his current career ...

A Look At Jimmy Fallons Net Worth and Family Including His Wife & Kids Sometimes, a childs passion for something is a pointer to what he/she would become in the future. As a child, Jimmy Fallon was literally obsessed with watching the late-night comedy program, Saturday Night Live (SNL). Then, his parents would tape the clean parts for him to watch and later, he and his sister would re-enact sketches from the ...

Kay Adams Biography  Does The Sportscaster Have A Husband or Boyfriend? When you hear the phrase sports enthusiast, women are hardly the first group that comes to mind. Well, thats changing pretty fast. Especially with the rise of female sports analysts and broadcasters like Kay Adams who is famed for knowing more about sports than most men do. And why not, shes paid handsomely for it ...

Ben Shapiros Family  Meet His Wife, Kids and Sister Who is Popular for the Wrong Reasons A multi-talented man, Ben Shapiro is a man of controversial nature, an attribute that has made him an unusual public figure. An intellectual whose career path was clearly defined even before he became a man, the Jewish conservative commentator has always had his way with words. He became popular by sharing his critical and often ...

QVC Shawn Killinger Bio  Husband, Net Worth & Facts To Know Shawn Killinger is a prominent TV personality who has worked her way to the top. Though not initially a journalist by training, she defied the odds and today has established herself as a household name, as well as, worked alongside some industry legends. More than just being a reporter, newscaster, and anchor, heres all you ...

Liv Lo  Dissecting the Ethnicity, Parents and Personal Life of Henry Goldings Wife While many are aware that Liv Lo is the better half to Crazy Rich Asians star Henry Golding, only a few understand why his beautiful wife appears increasingly endearing to fans. A former model turned TV personality, and fitness star, Liv has an impressive resume which when combined with that of her statuesque spouse is considered a perfect ...

Stpeach Age, Husband and Other Facts About The Twitch Streamer Lisa Vannatta, famously known by her online alias, STPeach is a Canadian video game streamer cum vlogger who has garnered fame through her appearances on different video-sharing/social networking platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter. The beautiful lady got her career to a start in August 2015 when she joined the live streaming video platform, Twitch. She rose to ...

Insights into Seth Meyers Wife, Family and What His Net Worth Is Celebrities are mostly remembered and known for the work they do. For Seth Meyers, his career as a comedian, writer, actor, TV host, and producer is his biggest identifier. He was on Saturday Night Live SNL show as a head writer and cast member for more than ten years during which he built a reputation ...

Who Is Jessica Gadsden  Age, Net Worth & All About Charlamagne tha Gods Wife Jessica Gadsden is an American fitness coach as well as a personal trainer. She is better known as the spouse of popular American media personality, Charlamagne Tha God. Charlamange Tha God is a well-known TV and radio personality in the U.S. He has featured in several shows (both on the radio and TV) and is ...

Who Is Collins Tuohy  Michael Ohers sister ? Her Wedding, Husband & Net Worth Collins Tuohy is an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, blogger, and social media personality. She is also better known as the adoptive sister of NFL player, Michael Oher, whose life story inspired the Hollywood blockbuster The Blind Side. The Blind Side tells the true life story of Oher who grew up in an impoverished background consisting of a ...

Eye-Popping Facts About The Personal Life And Career Success Of Sportscaster Heidi Watney Heidi Watney is a media personality who has created a niche for herself as a sportscaster. Starting out as a radio presenter, the brilliant young lady has gone on to work for several prominent sports networks, and currently, she is with the MLB. The sportscaster is also known to have been an avid sports lady right ...

Marty Lagina Bio  Siblings (Martina and Rick Lagina), Net Worth and Wife Marty Lagina is an American engineer and businessman who has risen to fame as a reality TV star. This is thanks to his involvement in the adventure TV series, The Curse of Oak Island. The Curse of Oak Island is a long-running TV series which airs on the history channel. The show aims to solve ...

Is Jordan Schlansky Just A Character or a Real Life Person and What Does He Do? The world of late-night television is an interesting one. Shows during that time are geared towards giving viewers comedic relief from a long day at work through interviews and comedy sketches. The often charismatic host of this show requires the balancing talent of a producer whose primary job is to deliver great episodes. It is ...

Heres How Wealthy Jimmy Kimmel Is From All The Phases of His Career, Marriages and Sons Health Jimmy Kimmel is a renowned late-night talk show host known for his charm, wit, and the A-list guests he features on his show. As the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! On ABC, Jimmy has been serving comedy to television viewers for years which played a pivotal role in launching him into mainstream fame and enabled ...

Natasha Bertrand Biography  Is She Married? Who Is the Husband & What Is Her Age? Natasha Bertrand is not just a young prominent journalist but a first-rate investigative reporter. With her natural beauty and smile, Natashas sharp, insightful political commentary also makes her a thorough reporter. Her sound political perspective and coverage in the country have made her a force to be reckoned with in the profession. Renowned for her ...

What Happened to Shane Kilcher? His Injury Update, Net Worth and More Shane Kilcher is well-known thanks to the Discovery Channel series Alaska: The Last Frontier. It is a show that documents the daily lives of the extended Kilcher family, people who live without plumbing or modern heating. The episodes follow their routines as they rely on hunting and farming for their nutritional needs as well as ...

Is Stephanie Gosk Gay or Lesbian, Who is the Wife or Partner  Jenna Wolfe? In August 2013, NBCs Today viewers were greeted with two shocking news. Today weekend anchor, Jenna Wolfe, announced that she was as a lesbian, introducing her partner as NBC News correspondent Stephanie Gosk, and said the two are expecting their first child. A long time has passed since then and certainly, a lot of things ...

Nikki Mudarris  Bio and Net Worth: 5 Interesting Facts You Need to Know Nikki Mudarris, also known as Miss Nikki Baby, is a reality television star, model and fashionista. Shes best known for VH1s reality TV series Love & Hip-Hop: Hollywood. Her entrepreneurial skills enable her to create and run a successful lingerie line Nude by Nikki. Not only that, but Nikki has also successfully run the Las ...

5 Interesting Things You Need To Know About Kelly Nash Ever heard of the lady who gained national prominence for taking a selfie with a dangerous ball just a few inches away from hitting her? Its no other person than Kelly Nash, an American sports broadcaster currently working as host of The Rundown show which airs on MLB Network every weekday at 2 pm ET. ...

Understanding The Height of Fame John Oliver Achieved With The Daily Show and How He Met His Wife Without knowledge of who he is and his exemplary career, John Oliver cuts an unassuming figure of a regular man but he is one of the most influential personalities in America, especially on television. Since he began his career in 1998, he has been a loud and unapologetic agent of change, using his wit and ...

Why Did Big Chief Leave Street Outlaws, Where Is He Now And Why Did He Divorce His Wife? Justin Shearer, otherwise known by his professional name Big Chief is a famous street racer and television personality. He is famously known for being one of the main characters on the racing reality television series, Street Outlaws. Justin, who had been a significant part of the show since its premiere in 2013, appeared in a ...

Who is Josina Anderson of ESPN? Her Husband and Family Facts There has been a gradual paradigm shift in the world of sports which has today produced the likes of Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and other female athletes that are pulling great feats in different sporting fields. Their achievements have also been followed by the emergence of female sports journalists such as Jillian Mele, Eboni Williams, ...

Is Brittany Wagner Married, Who Is The Husband, How Old Is She? Brittany Wagner has been an inspiration to a lot of sports youngster. She has won the hearts of many athletic students with her role as a life coach and an academic counselor. She is well groomed in her career and has worked over a decade for The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and The National ...

Tati Westbrook Bio  Age, Husband & Net Worth With five videos dished out every week, alongside running her own brand, beauty guru, and YouTube superstar Tati Westbrook has proved to the world that theres utterly no impossibility or limit to whatever one is passionate about. Tati is best known for being the owner and manager of the worlds most-viewed beauty and lifestyle YouTube channel, ...

Cathy Areus Long Road to Becoming a Freelance Journalist and What to Know About Her Kids An American freelance journalist, news analyst, and author, Cathy Areu has built a lasting reputation for herself on cable television. Popular for her skillful and sassy presentation of professional views on varying topics including cultural and feminist issues, Cathy is an inspiration to many women across the globe. In addition to being a journalist, she ...

Tucker Carlsons Love Story With Wife Susan Andrews, their Children and Net Worth Today On the TV screens, Tucker Carlson is that fiery fellow who passionately dishes out his conservative and often controversial views on issues of national importance. Such brazenness has fetched him many enemies, especially on the left-wing, but it has also helped him cement a reputation as one of the foremost broadcast journalists in America. His ...

Paige Wyatts Net Worth, Boyfriend and Where She Is Now Paige Wyatt became popular after the Wyatt family began running the reality television show, American Guns. The Wyatt family comprises Rich Wyatt (father), Renee Wyatt (mother), Paige and Kurt Wyatt (children). Rich Wyatt originally ran a gun shop, the Gunsmoke Guns in Wheat Ridge, Colorado which is outside of Denver. The business which he ran together ...

The Progression of Howard Sterns Career As A Media Personality And Why He Divorced His First Wife Howard Stern is a legendary American radio host, who has also done some notable work as an actor, producer, author, as well as photographer. The radio personality achieved worldwide fame as a result of his self-titled radio program, The Howard Stern Show. As a professional radio personality, he has worked in different radio stations. Since 2006, ...

Lisa Joyners Biography  Ethnicity, Net Worth and Other Key Facts Lisa Joyner is an American Journalist, TV talk show host, and actress. Some of her well-known works are her correspondences for the Los Angeles based TV KCBS, inFANity show, Find My Family Show including her film and television appearances in Brimstone, American Sweetheart, The Bold and The Beautiful among others. Lisas passion for reconnecting people with their biological families ...

Amanda Balionis Rise Through the Ranks of Sportscasting and the Identity of Her Boyfriend Amanda Balionis is an American sportscaster currently working as a golf broadcaster for CBS Sports. Among so many of her works in the field of sports reporting, Amandas PGA Tour coverage seems to be the most popular so far. She covered the Super Bowl working with CBS Sports social media team in Atlanta, where she ...

Dissecting Charles Paynes Sexual Allegations, Its After Effects and More About His Wife Charles Payne had a respectable career as an analyst on Wall Street before he made the transition to television and became a contributor and later a host on Fox. In that time, his expertise has come under scrutiny, and he has been at the center of at least one major controversy. The major controversy in question ...

Erik Asla And Tryra Banks Split: Everything You Need To Know Tyra Banks and Erik Asla have called it quits! The couple, who began dating in 2013 and have a son named York Banks Asla, has decided to end what everybody taught was the perfect relationship. Neither person has come out to give a reason for the breakup, but what is obvious right now is that ...

What to Note About Dr Terry Dubrows Qualifications, TV Works and Marriage to Heather Kent In the realm of people that we expect to see regularly on our screens, medical doctors are closer to the bottom of the list. Aside from the fact that their work has little correlation with TV, they are presumably too busy to pursue life as TV personalities. Yet, a few of them have usurped this ...

Jessica Goch  Bio: 5 Things You Didnt Know About Ninjas Wife Jessica Goch is the Schofield-born American Social Media Influencer who has worked as a model but is now better known as a host and interviewer of prominent Electronic sports celebrities at popular gaming events/tournaments. The screen queen also serves as the manager of her famous husband Ninja aka Tyler Blevins whose exploits on Twitch and Fortnite has ...

CNNs Chris Cuomo Biography  Wife, Family & Net worth Chris Cuomo needs no elaborate introduction as he has starred graced many prominent Television cable networks and his voice has been heard through acknowledged radio shows. He is a television journalist and Lawyer who has previously worked for ABC News as Chief law and justice correspondent as well as a co-anchor on 20/20. If you still ...

Neil deGrasse Tyson  Family, Religion & Net Worth Neil deGrasse Tyson is a distinguished American astrophysicist and author who has been able to achieve so much after falling in love with astronomy at the age of 9. He has since attended and become an alumnus of prestigious universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, and also recorded numerous achievements in his field of ...

Is Simon Cowell Gay? Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend and Why is He Famous? Simon Cowell is a well-known talent show judge, TV producer, entrepreneur and one of the most popular TV personalities that Britain has ever produced. In conjunction with his company, Syco, Cowell is the brain behind hugely successful talent hunt shows such as The X-Factor UK, The X-Factor US, Britains Got Talent, Americas Got Talent and ...

Everything To Know About Joanna Gaines Life With Chip Gaines, Their Business Pursuits and Kids Joanna Gaines and her husband Chip Gaines became celebrities after their television show Fixer Upper began airing back in 2013. The show which was about home renovation and decoration ran for about 6 seasons with a total of 79 episodes before the couple bade farewell to it in April 2018. Apart from their appearances on ...

Who Is Larry The Cable Guy? What To Know About His Wife And Net Worth Larry the Cable Guy is a self-professed country kid renowned for his trademark Southern accent and sensational catchphrase Git-R-Done! The famous comedian who talks about anything under the sun has gone on to become one of the most memorable characters in comedy history. Join us in unearthing lesser-known facts about the former on-air-personality, standup comedy superstar, movie ...

Who Is Patrick Starr, What Is His Net Worth and Gender? The make-up industry over the years has grown to become a billion dollar industry not just because there are probably more women wearing make-up but because a whole lot of men, especially the young ones, have become bold enough to wear it unlike before. A few of these men, like Patrick Starr, have even gone ...

How Did Chris Jansing Become a Senior Correspondent at MSNBC and Who Is Her Husband? An award-winning American television news reporter and journalist, Chris Jansing has succeeded in carving a spectacular niche for herself in the field of TV journalism. Outstanding for not just her excellence in journalism, Chris is also cherished for her incredibly gorgeous looks post 60! For close to four decades, Jansing has continued to soar in her ...

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The world is counting on you, Haiti's former president, Michel Joseph Martelly, told an audience of Claflin University sophomores on Thursday.

Martelly and his wife, former first lady Sophia Martelly, visited Orangeburgs Mellichamp Elementary School and Claflin.

At Claflin, he explained that although the Caribbean island nation is known as a poor country, the good things have been kept quiet.

In 1804, we defeated the biggest army, the French army, and the slave became free. And this is something they dont say too often. We all know the story behind Nelson Mandela, behind Martin Luther King, but we forget about Haiti  in 1804, when we redefined the word liberty and allowed the black to be free.

He told the story of a boat full of slaves from another island who went to Haiti because it was the symbol of freedom.

The government of the slaves former island wanted to repossess their property. The leaders of Haiti told them they could take the boat, but the slaves were no longer their property.

Because once you stand on Haitian soil, you become free, Martelly said. Haiti has done a lot for us, for humanity.

During the time of slavery, Haitis wealth was taken from it by bigger countries, he said.

And we are still suffering from it.

Martelly was born in 1961 and finished high school in 1982. He came to America for college but never graduated, which he called his biggest regret.

He returned to Haiti where he embarked upon a musical career. He became the leader of a dance band and performed under the name Sweet Micky. Famed for his outlandish live performances, he earned acclaim as an innovator in the Haitian dance music known as compas.

I became the hottest thing in Haiti for a while, he said. A demanding performance schedule had him dragging back home at 5 in the morning, 6 in the morning.

And I saw young kids, as young as 3, 4 years old, (at) 6 in the morning, carrying buckets of water on their head, he said. And I was always wondering Why are they in the streets without their parents? Why arent they in school?

It sparked a deep interest in education. After Haitis devastating earthquake of January 2010, he and his wife worked with foundations to raise funds to help. Becoming disillusioned with how the money was used and distributed, he chose to run for his countrys top office.

I decided to run for the presidency, he said. And I immediately focused on education.

Transforming his countrys educational system was part of his work rebuilding Haiti. He first focused on relocating more than 1.4 million people who were living in tents into permanent housing, and rebuilding the capital of Port-au-Prince and government institutions.

At that time, about 85 percent of Haitis schools were private in a country where about 60 percent of the population is unemployed, he said.

Six months into his term, I was able to already create the means to have free education, he said.

With financing that came from telecommunications fees, he was able to eventually provide free primary schooling for more than 1.2 million children, Martelly said.

And we were able that first year to bring about 750,000 kids to school for free, he said. That was something major in the country.

Over the years, weve been able to bring more kids to school and to rebuild about 500 school (buildings) that were destroyed during the earthquake.

He said that he so strongly believes in the value of education because its the only way to create a society, a family, that can really change your world.

And that is what brings me here today, to talk to you (about) the future of the world, to tell you that you are in the right place and that you are doing the right thing.

What is the state without the people? Its an empty space, he said. Look at the difference between one person and the other. Things change overnight based on whos leading.

He called on the students to be leaders and to passionately pursue their chosen careers, to dream, to dare.

Because your future depends on you. Nobody else, he said.

Claflin student Cecillia Hackett was impressed by Martellys lecture. She is majoring in business administration and philosophy and religion.

It was very inspirational, very inspiring, especially to minorities, she said. This is an HBCU. A lot of times we feel hindered, we feel blocked, and even sometimes we feel like we cant move forward.

And so when we hear that people have overcome those obstacles, such as the former president of Haiti, it really inspires us and leaves us with more of an engraving on our heart to do more, change and bring forth what we want to see in the world.

Biochemistry major Jessica Tolbert was similarly affected by the speech.

It was wonderful. I enjoyed how he was basically talking about creativity and the necessity of being yourself and adding that flair to whatever you do, whether thats being a lawyer or a scientist or whatever, she said. It was really inspirational.
Repeal and replace are the new buzzwords, with no signs of being bumped from the headlines anytime soon.

Since the 2016 election, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been in the crosshairs of the Republican-controlled Congress and Donald Trump. The vow to repeal and replace the ACA was a keystone campaign promise that tapped into the frustration of many Americans hit with skyrocketing healthcare premiums and limited plan options.

While repeal will be fairly straightforward, what will replace actually entail? More importantly, in an effort to wrest control of health care from the federal government and return it to individual Americans, what should it entail?

The key to successful health care reform for millions of Americans impacted by Obamacare lies in individual empowerment and control over their own health care choices. These principles will provide the surest path to affordable, quality health care at competitive prices. Empowerment and control are exemplified in three broad ideas that Congress and the White House should employ as they work through the details of a new healthcare law.

First and foremost, the individual mandate of the ACA, that portion of the law which forced individuals to buy a one-size-fits-all health insurance plan or face financial penalty, should be eliminated. Without the mandate, individuals would be free to purchase health insurance that aligns to their own needs. This would mean a simple catastrophic coverage plan for a young adult or a more standard plan for a middle-aged adult or family. It would also mean that the voluntarily uninsured, a sub-set of the uninsured population who choose not to purchase health insurance, could remain so without facing a stiff financial penalty.

Closely tied to the ability of individuals to tailor their own coverage is opening the sale of health insurance to interstate commerce. This step toward empowerment and control would allow individuals to shop for health insurance across state lines, leveraging greater plan choice, lower costs, and increased competition among insurers. While a longer-term effort, this measure would signal insurers as to the type of coverages desired by individual Americans, allowing the industry to adapt to meet consumer demand at competitive prices.

A third step in driving greater individual empowerment and control lies in increasing health care price and quality transparency. No one would ever purchase a car without first comparing prices, quality ratings, user reviews and dealer services. Yet Americans routinely accept health care services without first understanding the comparative cost of the service or provider. While in many instances a longstanding doctor-patient relationship trumps cost, an individual should have the ability to determine if a more favorable cost or quality option is available for treatment, testing, or any other healthcare service. Existing technology and the increasing availability of health care data will be key drivers in taking the opacity out of health care pricing. Ultimately, price and quality transparency will help to increase the degree of individual control and choice while at the same time positively influencing the overall cost of healthcare through fair and open competition.

The U.S. health care system has been brought back from the rising costs and limited choices of the ACA. This year, 2017, represents an opportunity to make significant course corrections through repeal and replace efforts. In order to make those corrections of lasting benefit to the American people, Congress and the new administration should be focused on putting the individual at the center of health care choice  making repeal and replace all about empowerment and control.
"In most Muslim communities, even Muslim communities in America, the headscarf eventually leads to the full veil, because the headscarf leads to the belief that women easily become sexually out of control, or they become too tempting." -- Cheri Berens, author of "American Woman Living in Egypt" and researcher for the Egyptian Ministry of Culture.

During the Washington women's march the day after President Donald Trump's inauguration, a number of women attending did something perplexing in the context of women's rights. While media were invited to capture the scene for posterity, the women donned Islamic headscarves while protesting the new president. Though most Americans appreciate the exercise of free speech in protesting a president with whom they disagree, the contradictions involved in this protest demand rebuke. Let me explain.

First, it is important to understand the agenda of some of those organizing the march. According to WMD, one of the four main organizers was Linda Sarsour, an avid supporter of Sharia Law and associated with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). For those who are not aware, CAIR is an unindicted co-sponsor of the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case and pushes solely Islamic causes in America. She and others of similar motivations were presumably pushing the wearing of the Islamic headscarves in furtherance of Sharia Law. This act was seen in that meaning by many throughout the world.

According to Author Cheri Berens, when women in Cairo viewed protesters donning headscarves, Berens could hear them openly proclaim: "We have been fighting to remove the headscarf. Why are these the stupid women putting them on?

Berens has written extensively about women in the Islamic World and opined, In Muslim countries such as Egypt, women who do not wear a headscarf are often sexually harassed or attacked. They are beaten; they are raped; and sometimes, they are killed."

In writing of her experience in Egypt during the reign of the Muslim Brotherhood, Berens wrote: In 2012, when the Muslim Brotherhood took power, there were several attacks on Christian women on trains. They were grabbed, their hair chopped off, they were pushed off fast-moving trains. They were told they must wear headscarf  even though they are not Muslim.

Interestingly, though Sharia Law supporters like Sarsour helped organize the march, women's pro-life groups were not allowed to join in the organizing or sponsoring of the march. According to World Net Daily, the march sponsors, including Sarsour, heavily targeted LBGT groups for joining the march. Pro-choice and LBGT groups became a force of the march. In keeping with progressive radicalism inherent in groups invited, many of the women wore giant images of female genitalia on their face and head and pushed for a pro-abortion agenda.

In publicly donning headscarves, the women's march protesters were, perhaps unwittingly, furthering Sharia Law, which mandates that the legal testimony of a woman is only half that of a man. That women must be escorted by male relatives or a husband outside the home. That wives cannot divorce husbands, while husbands can have up to four wives and divorce at will (and even beat wives under certain circumstances). That women can be stoned to death or suffer "honor killing" for alleged sexual misbehavior. That women can be subjected to genital circumcision. The list goes on.

No reasonable person could believe President Donald Trump would recommend any of the above policies.

In fighting for women's rights, the first priority should be opposing the imposition of Sharia Law. In fact, protest in support of women suffering under Sharia Law would be refreshing. Certainly, any opposition to Trump over perceived bias against women should not involve furthering Sharia Law. Let's all agree our American future should be about freedom, and not woman donning headscarves while protesting the new president.
Minister of Culture, Stephen Lashley (centre), receives the baton at the close of CARIFESTA XII in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2015. (Credit: J. Weekes/BGIS)

CARIFESTA XIII, to be held in Barbados from August 17 to 27, 2017, will be like no other.





This is the boast made by that countrys Culture Minister  Stephen Lashley when he addressed members of the media, last week, on plans for the hosting of the largest single cross-cultural event in the CARICOM region.





Lashley told media personnel that CARIFESTA was "no longer a festival where artistes meet and just have a show or display a few cultural performances.





That being the case, the Minister assessed that it (CARIFESTA) must now connect with the vision of Caribbean governments, to use their cultural industries sectors to "propel us to new vistas of economic growth and development.





Barbados, he hinted, was ready to take the lead in this regard.

"Our hosting of CARIFESTA at this time is certainly key to our strategic platforming for economic growth, and using creativity is a key plank of that. We expect that CARIFESTA will attract a significant number of visitors; this will also translate into heightened economic activity. Barbados has a great opportunity in terms of the impact that CARIFESTA can have on the economy, he said.





The culture minister promised that an expanded Grand Market to include a Buyers Shopping Mall, will be added to the traditional CARIFESTA events such as the opening and closing ceremonies, signal events, super concerts and country nights.





Already, Lashley assured, that a number of international buyers have been invited to take advantage of the opportunity to visit an exhibition of cultural goods and services in a market place environment, which exclusively features Caribbean creative products.

It is expected that all CARICOM territories will be represented at CARIFESTA XIII, themed, : Asserting Our Culture, Celebrating Ourselves.





CARIFESTA XIII marks the second occasion on which Barbados is hosting the event. That country hosted the event in 1981. (Source: Jamal Weeks as carried on Caribbean news Now)




The families of three Vincentian female students of the Division of Technical and Vocational Education of the SVGCC, who perished in a vehicular accident in Barbados around 3am on Sunday, are trying to come to terms with their deaths, even as they make preparation to have their bodies returned to SVG.





Dead are 17-year-old Danee Deverey Horne of Questelles; 18-year-old Carianne Lee-New Padmore of New Prospect, and 19-year-old Aziza Awanna Dennie of Redemption Sharpes.

Andre Jabarry Gittens of River Land, St Philip, who was the driver of the vehicle in which the girls were travelling, also perished in the accident.





Two other male occupants of the vehicle - Vincentian students 18-year-old Darren Renaldo Daniel and 21-year-old Kemelius Boyea escaped death, and were said to be recovering well at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH) in Barbados.





The students were part of a seven-member group who were in Barbados since last December, on an internship programme at the Crane Resort in St. Philip.

The Barbados Nation newspaper of January 29 reported that the students were scheduled to return home that Sunday.





Other reports from Barbados said that the fatal accident occurred at the Graeme Hall section of the ABC Highway in Barbados, involving a white Mitsubishi Lancer and a champagne-coloured Toyota Noah taxi.

The parents and other family members of the deceased students, as well as those of the injured two, travelled to Barbados between Sunday and Tuesday to provide support and get some sort of closure. Vice Dean of the Division of Technical and Vocational Education of the SVGCC - Janel Allen also travelled to Barbados last Sunday.

The two other students of the group of seven, returned home on Sunday around 11:30 am. They were met at the ET Joshua airport by their relatives, a number of high ranking officials from the SVGCC, members of the clergy, and counsellors from the Ministry of Health, Wellness and the Environment.





Reactions to the tragedy





Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told the Barbados media on Sunday that the students death "is a period of real sadness. It is terrible when anyone dies in an accident, but it is absolutely devastating when it is a young person, he said.





He admitted that he had been personally "thrown off by the accident in which the son of one of his constituents was also involved.





Gonsalves said that a process had already been set in motion at a very senior level of his government, to ensure that all the necessary arrangements were put in place to facilitate the victims families at this difficult time.

Minister of Education St. Clair Jimmy Prince in a Facebook post wrote: "The Nation woke up this morning to the distressing news of a tragedy in Barbados that claimed the lives of three of our precious young people. These students of the SVGCC had just ended an internship at the Crane Hotel. Our thoughts and prayers are with their families, teachers and friends at this time. The Government, Ministry of Education and related institutions certainly mourn this loss, and pray for strength and guidance at this most difficult time.

Barbados Governor General Sir Elliott Belgrave expressed "sadness and regret over the deaths of four young people. Speaking to the media on Tuesday morning following a visit to centenarian Rosalie Bailey, the head of state said he was "deeply saddened by the accident.





"I would like to extend my condolences to the people of St Vincent and in Barbados, especially my friend Sir Frederick Ballantyne, Governor General of St Vincent, and Prime Minister (Ralph) Gonsalves. I am deeply saddened by the loss of life. Its always sad when someone loses their life, it distresses me. But when it affects young people who have not yet started, its very distressing, Sir Elliott said.

Members of parliament here also paid tributes to the victims.




Left:Anselm Clouden, prominent Grenada defence lawyer, has added his voice, not for the first time, voice to the call to have marijuana legalised for medicinal purposes. (Internet photo) Right:Tobias Clement, Member of Parliament for the ruling New National Party in Grenada, supports Cloudens call. (Internet photo)

While Caribbean leaders continue to twiddle their thumbs on the issue of the legalisation/ decriminalisation of marijuana, more and more legal luminaries are calling for this matter to be given serious and immediate attention.





The latest to make a public statement on the issue was noted Grenadian defence lawyer Anselm Clouden who, it is reported, made a renewed call for the legalization of marijuana.





Clouden, the Grenada Informer reported some three weeks or so ago, wants legislators to pass laws that would make the use of marijuana legal for medicinal purposes.





And Clouden, to demonstrate his seriousness, has made it clear that he intends to make this an election issue, during General Elections which are constitutionally due in Grenada by 2018.





Addressing members of the media during a press conference on Monday, January 9, Clouden, a former advisor to the Government of Grenada, said the time has come for the Grenadian authorities to act in the interest of social justice and follow the trend across the globe.





The outspoken lawyer noted that it is internationally accepted that marijuana has been used successfully in the fight against a number of ailments, including cancer, diabetes, hypertension, glaucoma and HIV/AIDS.

Given that many Grenadians and other Caribbean nationals suffer from these illnesses, Clouden said it is fair that persons so affected should have access to the treatment





He also noted that there is established scientific evidence, which speaks to the economic, social, and health benefits to be derived from the effective use of marijuana and for government it is imperative to get in touch with the scientific trends.





And in preparation for making marijuana an elections issue, Clouden has teamed up with a teamed up with what he described as a group of conscious, professional Grenadians, and that they have started a movement that would take the fight to the electorate.





The group is expected to canvas the constituencies to find persons who share similar views, and who are likely to benefit from the medical use of marijuana, and to mobilise the people of Grenada to see the wisdom in having those who put themselves forward as constituency representatives, declare their position with respect to the use of marijuana.





At least one Member of Parliament in Grenada, Tobias Clement of the Government side, has come out in support of Cloudens call.





Marijuana remains a banned drug in the law books of Grenada and the majority of Caribbean countries. Persons convicted for using, possession or trafficking can be sentenced to lengthy prison sentences and/or hefty fines. (Source: Grenada Informer)
The National Council of Women (NCW) is deeply saddened to learn of the tragic accident which claimed the lives of three (3) of our young loved ones.





To the parents, relatives, friends and the family of the Division of Technical and Vocational Education of the SVG Community College, we express our sincere condolences.





You did not even have an opportunity to say a final goodbye, and this must add to your pains.

We at the NCW extend our arms of comfort and friendship to you, and assure you that we will stand with you in your bereavement.





We share with you these words of comfort:





2 Cor. 1: 3-4: Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those with the comfort we ourselves received from God.





Matt 5: 4: Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

Let your prayer today be, "Lord, plant my feet on higher grounds.

We pray that the souls of the departed will rest in Gods eternal peace.
Roosevelt Skerrit, Prime Minister of Dominica, was reported to be under investigation in relation to the issuing of a Dominica passport to an Iranian charged with embezzlement of state funds. (Credit: alchetron.com)

The Dominica government, on Saturday 28th January, denied that Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit was under investigation by United States law enforcement authorities.





The government went further in its denial and blamed the main opposition United Workers Party (UWP) for engineering the report as part of its strategy "to seize political control of this country, according to news reports from that country.





"Let me reassure the people of Dominica that I spoke with the Prime Minister this morning; he is well, a little tired from all the discussions and meetings he has been having in the economic advancement of the people of Dominica; and these mischievous and malicious statement should be totally disregarded, said Acting Prime Minister Reginald Austrie.





Claims that Skerrit was under investigation was broken by Kenneth Rijocks Financial Crime Blog Fri 27th jan. 2017.





In his posting, Rijock stated that, "Reliable sources have confirmed that the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, is currently under investigation, being conducted by an agency of the United States, for his role in the sale of a Dominican diplomatic passport to Alireza Zabahalat Monfared, an Iranian national who was recently returned to Iran, where he faces criminal prosecution for the embezzlement of billions of dollars in state funds.





According to Rijock, the investigation is said to be into Skerrits actions, in facilitating the delivery of a diplomatic passport to a known international sanctions violator, Monfared, who was a part of a massive $400m Iran oil-for-gold sanctions evasion operation, involving his alleged partners, Babak Zanjani, and Reza Zarrab; Zarrab is awaiting trial in US District Court in New York.





But, in Saturdays statement aired on DBS radio, Austrie said that it is strange that the report surfaced one day after the UWP staged a public meeting in the capital and called "for the economic and social destruction of the country.





He said operatives of the UWP were also engaged in "negative and dishonest acts against the country and the controversial Citizenship by Investment Programme (CBI) through which foreign investors are granted citizenship for making a significant contribution to the socio-economic development of the island.

Dominica is one of several countries with a CBI programme. The others are Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts-Nevis, Grenada, and St. Lucia.





"Let me reassure the people of Dominica and the international community that the article is untrue and should be treated as part of the ongoing conspiracy by their opposition and their international  partners and associates to tarnish the beautiful name of our country and our beloved prime minister, said Austrie.

Prime Minister Skerrit, who was out of the state on official business when the news broke, was expected to return home during this week. (Source: Barbados Today)
January 29, 2017 will be forever etched in the memory of Rolisha Roberts. It was the day three of her colleagues died in a tragic vehicular accident in Barbados.





Roberts and six of her colleagues from her Division of Technical and Vocational Education of the SVG Community College were expected to return home from Barbados last Sunday, after completing attachments at the Crane Resort. That was not to be, as five of them were involved in a fatal vehicular accident in the wee hours of that Sunday morning, with three dying on the spot.





The young lady recalled that she and her six colleagues attended a staff party at the Crane Resort the night before the accident. Five of them left the party in the wee hours of Sunday morning, before the party was over. Roberts and her roommate - Jyan Cato decided they were staying back to take some photos with their co-workers from the Crane Resort. "I stayed back to take pictures with other co-workers as memories to keep, because I dont know if I will ever return to BIM (Barbados) again, said Roberts in an interview with THE VINCENTIAN.





Encountering the tragedy





"On my way home, we took that highway (the ABC Highway) as everyone did, but noticed that the traffic had developed so we wondered what caused that traffic. We saw people start getting out their vehicles, but we didnt, so we decide to pass them. On our way pass them, we saw the accident, so I looked out the vehicle window and I saw one of my friends body half way out of the vehicle. I said that is not Danee (Danee Deverey Horne) and the lady who was in the vehicle with me said no, but I said yes that is her, you need to stop the car, Roberts recalled.





The driver stopped the car and they all got out. It was indeed her friends in the car. "I started screaming and crying, Roberts said in reaction to what she saw.





She also observed that Aziza Dennie was still breathing. She was fighting for her life. It was then that she began calling for help, but no one came to her assistance. "So I ran to try to help her and people start pulling me back saying that she (Dennie)have to wait until doctor reach, the grieving college student told THE VINCENTIAN.





But by the time the doctor/s arrived on the scene, 19-year-old Dennie was already dead, along with 17-year-old Danee Deverey Horne and 18-year-old Carianne Lee-New Padmore.

The other Vincentian students - 18-year-old Darren Renaldo Daniel and 21-year-old Kemelius Boyea narrowly escaped death. They were transported by ambulance to the state-run Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).

"I didnt want another day to meet me in Barbados. I just wanted to get home because I knew no one can comfort me like my parents, especially my Mom. I am not recovered as yet, personally I dont believe that I will forget about it and I dont think that I will ever fully recover from it, but I am trying my best, she confessed.





Barbados and the aftermath





Roberts admitted that their time in Barbados was an enjoyable and informative one.

"Our six weeks were divided into two departments. My first three weeks were in the dining room, where I was dealing with hosting, serving food and setting up tables and other things. My last three weeks were spent in Housekeeping, which was divided into two sections, Laundry and Residence Managers. We all had a great time and from hearing my other team- mates speaking before the accident, they all love their job, said the Hospitality student.





Robert expressed her sympathies to all the families who were affected. "Well, to Danees family members, I know that she loved her parents a lot, and I want to say to them that I am here for them anytime. I also want to say the same to Azizs mom and especially her nephew Shackron. She really loved him and would always speak of him. I dont know much about Carii (Carianne Lee-New Padmore), but I know she was very respectful to everyone and I will always stay by her familys side, said Roberts.





Roberts also wanted to dispel rumors that she and her colleagues were drunk. "We didnt go to any random party, it was a staff party that we were invited to, and it was our last night there, so we went to enjoy ourselves. None of us was drunk, so I will love you all to stop saying those stuff and try your best to know the truth before spreading rumours, she pleaded.





For now, Roberts just wants to relax and find solace with her family, after a very heart-breaking experience.(KH)




As of September 30, 2016, this countrys total public debt amounted to EC$1,683,712,229, i.e. one billion, six hundred and eighty-three million, seven hundred and twelve thousand, two hundred and twenty-nine dollars.





This figure is 11.9 percent higher than the figure for the comparable period in 2015, Minister of Finance and Prime Minister, Dr Ralph Gonsalves told the House of Assembly last Monday.





According to Dr. Gonsalves, there was a decrease of 8.4 percent or EC$585.3 million in the domestic debt for the comparative period in 2015; but there was an increase of EC$231.9 million in the external debt, when compared to the corresponding period in 2015. The external debt now stood at EC$1.1 billion.

The change in the domestic debt was accounted for by the net disbursement of EC$24.4 million in government development bonds and treasury notes over the period, leading to an 8.3 percent increase in this category of domestic borrowing.





But, Gonsalves also noted that domestic loans recorded a decline of EC$74.4 million due to the reallocation of the EC$67.5 million PetroCaribe loan to the external loans, bank overdrafts experienced an EC$1.2 million decrease, and as a result of the reduction in governments account payables, other domestic debt fell by EC$10.3 million.

The external debt increase was due in part to the EC$185.2 million owed to PDVSA ( the Venezuelan state-owned oil and natural gas company), "which is now accounted for as part of the public debt, Dr. Gonsalves explained.

Other contributing factors included upward pressures on the external debt principally by other external loans; a new loan amounting to EC$40.5 million contracted from a UK based agency to finance the completion of the international airport; additional drawdowns amounting to EC$31.2 million from the Alba Bank.

Debt servicing in 2017 is estimated at EC$203.4 million, with interest payments amounting to EC$57.8 million, amortization EC$121.6 million, and sinking fund contributions EC$24 million. (Stories by DD)
St. Vincent and the Grenadines dropped slightly in the 2016 Corruption Perception Index rankings, moving from 29th in 2014 to 35th among the 176 countries assessed last year.





Neighboring St Lucia was also ranked 35th to be overall ranked 3rd among CARICOM member states.

According to the statistics which were published January 25, SVG amassed 60 points.

The Bahamas had the best ranking for the region, placing 24th with a score of 66 points, and Barbados was second ranking 31st with a score of 61.





Regarding the performance of the other countries in the region that were assessed last year: Dominica was ranked 38th, Grenada 46th, Cuba  60th; Suriname  64th; Jamaica  83rd; Trinidad and Tobago  101st, Guyana  108th and Haiti  159th.





The list is published by Transparency International, an international non-governmental organization which, since 1995, has ranked countries annually by their perceived levels of corruption, determined through expert assessments and surveys.





Countries are rated on a scale beginning at 100 for being very clean, to 0 which is an indication that the country is highly corrupt.





New Zealand and Denmark are both tied for 1st in the overall list with Somalia ranking last among the countries assessed in 2016. (DD)




Some diplomats are, clearly, more vocal. Others are taciturn, preferring to let their work reflect in their accomplishments .





I. Rhonda King, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ambassador to the United Nations, is, seemingly, the latter, with strong proclivity for not being in the limelight, despite her position.

In her first major, wide-ranging interview with THE VINCENTIAN, since presenting her credentials to former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on Sept. 13, 2013, King discussed, among other things, her role, accomplishments and challenges to date.





Since her arrival at the UN, the former Diamond Village resident said she has played a central role on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Caucus of Permanent Representatives in the Implementation of the International Decade for People of African Descent, which began on Jan. 1, 2015, and its accompanying Program of Activities, during which she was the lead negotiator for CARICOM.





"We successfully negotiated for the inclusion of language that allows for discussions on the issue of reparatory justice to take place during this decade, said King, who succeeded Camillo Gonsalves, now Minister of Government in the incumbent Unity Labor Party (ULP) administration.





King is currently the chair of the UNs Fifth Committee, which is tasked with overseeing the Administrative and Budgetary Affairs of the entire United Nations. She said St. Vincent and the Grenadines was the GRULAC- [Spanish synonym for the Group of Latin America and the Caribbean] endorsed candidate and elected to serve as chair for one year, beginning September 2016.

The UN envoy is also the only second woman ever elected to chair the Fifth Committee in the history of the United Nations.

King  who has lived and worked in several Caribbean countries, including Trinidad and Tobago  said she is "ably assisted on the Committee by Counsellor Marsena Ballantyne, of Sandy Bay, a former King aide at the St. Vincent and the Grenadines Mission in midtown Manhattan, "who has applied her supreme organizational skills to this task.





Additionally, King is the chair of Island Women Open Network (IWON), an initiative that promotes gender mainstreaming in the renewable energy sector of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), by building capacity at the community and grassroots level. King was appointed for a three-year term last September, during the Second SIDS Dock Assembly of State Parties.

SIDS DOCK is an initiative among AOSIS member-countries, providing SIDS with a collective institutional mechanism to assist them in transforming their national energy sectors. Its secretariat connects the energy sector in SIDS with global markets for finance, sustainable energy technologies.

Before her official appointment, she served as interim chair, for about two years, having been first nominated in Apia, Samoa in September 2014.





In this nexus, King said a number of projects for St. Vincent and the Grenadines are already in the pipeline, which she said will become operational this year.

In November 2016, King said she became the spokesperson for the largest and most diverse reform group of 42 member-states focused on United Nations Security Council Reform, L69.

"As a small nation, with no standing army, it is our duty to ensure that we have a properly functioning and fully representative Security Council, she said, noting that Camillo Gonsalves also held that position during his tenure.





King said St. Vincent and the Grenadines was elected unopposed last June to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) for 2017-2019, stating that the country was elected with the highest number of votes in GRULAC and the fourth highest number of votes among the 18 members elected during that period.

"This good showing was due in no small measure to the efforts of our election officer and Deputy Permanent Representative, Nedra Miguel, who headed the campaign and played the essential role in securing our place on ECOSOC, she said.





During the main session of the 71st General Assembly, Minister Counsellor Sehon Marshall, a former Deputy New York Consul General, was coordinator, on behalf of the Group of 77 (G77) and China, of the resolution, "Protection of the Global Climate for Present and Future Generations.

King said that illustrates that "We are fully engaged across our Mission, and proffered that, "As a Small Island Developing State, strong engagement in the United Nations is critical.

The diplomat said the nations small capacity has been and continues to be a challenge "that does mean we must work doubly hard.

One initiative King said she is excited about, and one that she anticipates will assist greatly in overcoming this challenge, is a training program for the staff of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that would enable selected staff members to work at the Mission to the UN for short periods "to give them a better understanding of the work of the UN and enable them to assist us even better.

King hopes that this initiative will begin later this year.





She said the Mission also tries to "seize capacity-building opportunities for Vincentians, such as the Climate Change Fellowship from the Alliance of Small Island States, under which the Mission had a fellow for the past year and has submitted another name for consideration this year.

During her tenure, King said the Mission has also continued to assist in establishing diplomatic ties with other nations, stating that it is responsible for strengthening existing bilateral relations between St. Vincent and the Grenadines and other countries, "which have been fruitful for our country through grants, partnerships on projects and other assistance in kind.

For example, she said the nations relationship with Italy at the United Nations has recently (November 2016) resulted in the approval of a grant toward the construction of a US$1.25m desalination project in Bequia.

"We are, of course, fully engaged in the ensuring that St. Vincent and the Grenadines receives the requisite assistance to facilitate the implementation of the [UNs] Sustainable Development Goals, she said.

Additionally, King said the Mission will table a resolution within the next year or two on "The Role of Creativity and Innovation in Shaping the Future We Want.





She said the goal of this resolution, which has already garnered wide support, aims at promoting awareness, inspiring ownership and mobilizing implementation of the sustainable development goals.

King, the author of three books, said it was important to note that the administrations Zero Hunger Initiative has already received "much commendation from the international community.

King  who holds a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and chemistry, is the immediate past chair of the Investment Promotions Agency of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (Invest SVG) and a former Honorary Consul for Portugal to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

She said she serves at the pleasure of the prime minister and his Cabinet, adding that she was "happy to do so for as long as they see fit.
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Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 10 times violated the ceasefire in various directions along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported Trend on February 3.

The Azerbaijani army positions located on the nameless heights of Azerbaijans Gazakh district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located on the nameless heights of the Noyemberyan district of Armenia.

Moreover, the Azerbaijani army positions were shelled from the Armenian positions located on the nameless heights of the Armenian-occupied Goranboy and Fuzuli districts of Azerbaijan.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
By Azernews





By Rashid Shirinov

Russia welcomes any public initiatives for peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the two parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Any existing initiative to find peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia may be useful, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova while commenting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace, initiated by Azerbaijan.

The Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace was established on December 6, 2016 in Baku, to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Platform for Peace is an initiative of the citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia, who wish to contribute to the peace process.

We highly appreciate the role of public diplomacy in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Zakharova said. Raising awareness within social circles about the need to peacefully seek mutually acceptable compromise solution to the conflict is the most important mission.

The spokesperson stressed that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a direct threat to the security and stability of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Recently, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that Moscow is trying to arrange a meeting of Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian foreign ministers and Baku has already given its consent to this meeting.

Russia is one of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries and in April 2016, the protracted conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has shown signs of becoming a hot war, while the ceasefire was restored after Moscows mediation.

Last year, the country was a very active mediator to move towards a fair settlement to the problem, while Moscow already vowed to do utmost for the conflict resolution in 2017.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.
The Ministry of Defense of Nagorno Karabakh told that the Azerbaijani forces made more than 30 ceasefire violations across the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact.

STEPANAKERT, FEBRUARY 3, ARTSAKHPRESS: The Ministry issued a statement which says: On February 2 and overnight February 3 the Azerbaijani side violated the ceasefire regime more than 30 times by firing over 440 shots from various caliber weapons, as well as sniper rifles at the Armenian positions in the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact. The Azerbaijani forces also fired ISTIGLAL sniper rifles (25 shots) at the south-eastern direction of the line of contact.
Dubai Land Department (DLD) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Dubai Economic Council (DEC), to collaboratively prepare a detailed annual report on the prospects for the real estate sector in Dubai.



The MoU for the report entitled The prospects for the Real Estate Sector in Dubai was signed by Sultan Bin Mejren, director general of DLD, and Hani Rashid Al Hamli, secretary general of DEC.



Bin Mejren said: "This project is a progression of our long-standing and ongoing strategic partnership with Dubai Economic Council, which has involved collaborating on several projects such as reports and studies on the real estate sector in Dubai, and launching joint initiatives that aim to strengthen the role of the sector in Dubai's economy.



We are pleased to be opening up new opportunities for cooperation with the Council, which will enhance transparency in the real estate sector and help investors to make right decisions based on accurate data. This will allow us to maintain the attractiveness of Dubai's real estate sector and remain leaders in the competitive global market, Bin Mejren added.



Al Hamli said: "DLD plays crucial role in enhancing the stability of the sector to reach the highest international standards, in addition to its efforts in encouraging new investments through proving attractive investment climate in the direction that consolidate the contribution of real estate sector to Dubai's economy.



"The government of Dubai has paid great attention to the real estate sector, due to its vital role in promoting social stability and its positive involvement with a number of other influential sectors, most notably tourism and retail."Today, the real estate sector's contribution to Dubai's GDP exceeds 13 per cent", Al Hamli added.



He noted that the accuracy of the report's data will be one if its key qualities. The data will be taken mainly from DLD's rigorous database, and used as a basis for further analyses related to the sustainability of the real estate market in Dubai and approaches to enhance its competitiveness in the regional and global arenas.



Al Hamli explained: "Despite the uncertainty surrounding the global economy and the perceived slow down in many regions; Dubai has experienced ongoing economic growth from 3.5 per cent in 2010, to 4.6 per cent in 2013, and then to 4.1 per cent in 2015. Economic growth reached 4 per cent at the end of 2016, which is higher than the global rate.



Al Hamli stressed that the increase in Dubai development projects, in line with Dubai Plan 2021 and preparations for Expo Dubai 2020, will be drivers for further growth in Dubai's real estate sector.  TradeArabia News Service


Learning company Pearson and innovation foundation Nesta have announced a research partnership in collaboration with Michael Osborne (Oxford Martin School) which is designed to provide businesses, governments and education experts with new insights and evidence about the skills and competencies which will be required in the future economy.



Through Employment in 2030: Skills, Competencies & the Implications for Learning, the research team will provide recommendations for how education, job training and other workforce development efforts can shift practice today in an attempt to better prepare the workforce of tomorrow.



Businesses, governments and schools are struggling to adapt to the pace of change required to prepare the workforce of tomorrow. This world-class research partnership provides an opportunity for us to learn now about the skills and competencies that will be needed tomorrow - and to prepare accordingly," said Michael Barber, chief education advisor to Pearson.



At the heart of the research are two cutting-edge methodologies that are rarely combined:



 Foresight exercises featuring sector experts who will examine the trends that will shape the jobs market in the future, how they will interact, and what that means for the demand for different types of jobs; and



 A machine learning algorithm deployed on O*NET data (a US Department of Labor occupational database that offers a wealth of insights into the skills and competencies required for nearly 1,000 occupations).



Through this novel methodology the research team will be able to predict the likely demand for different skills, and skill combinations, for the jobs economy of 2030.



This research will provide a substantial contribution to answering some of the most pressing questions that education faces. By extending beyond the effects of automation to examine the wider set of profound trends that will shape the demand for skills in 2030, and by coupling expert foresight exercises with machine learning, we will be able to surface novel insights that policy makers and practitioners can have the confidence to act on, said Hasan Bakhshi, senior director, Creative Economy and Data Analytics, Nesta.



The project builds on Carl Benedikt Frey and Osborne's seminal 2013 paper on The Future Of Employment, in which they found that up to 47 per cent of total US employment is at risk from computerisation. It also extends the existing collaboration between Bakhshi and Osborne , who worked with Carl Benedikt Frey (of the Oxford Martin School) to detail the power of creativity - read in a wide sense - to future-proof work.



"I am optimistic that there will still be plenty of good jobs available in fifteen years time, but it's clear that many of these will require mixes and depths of skills that are currently rare. To plan for this, we need greater insight into what these skill combinations will be. We also need learning - across ages and stages - to begin to prepare for these probable futures," Osborne said.



As a region investing heavily into workforce development and planning, the countries of the GCC will find the research, and its findings, particularly useful.



The GCC has a unique set of circumstances which make predicting the future of the workforce here very important. With a large percentage of the population under the age of 25, it is critical that we get workforce planning right. Economic diversification efforts of governments across the GCC mean that in all likelihood, the jobs required in 10 or 20 years time will be very different to those in demand right now. We therefore need to be concentrating on ensuring that we are getting education right. That is, giving young learners across our region the kind of skills and knowledge that will make them successful as they leave school and progress in their careers, said Karim Daoud, managing director, Pearson Middle East.



Pearson and Nesta will share the findings of this research publicly in order to facilitate dialogue with educators, policymakers and others who seek to understand the impact of technological advancements on the future jobs economy, and the implications for how education can best be organized to prepare learners today for the jobs of tomorrow. - TradeArabia News Service
Clubs

County pioneers meet Sunday

The Natrona County Pioneer Association will conduct its Winter Quarterly luncheon meeting at 12:30 p.m., on Sunday, Feb. 5, at the Senior Center, 1831 East 4th Street. The luncheon cost will be $5 for those 60 years old and older. The speaker will be author Don Merback. Anyone interested is invited to attend. Contact Vaughn Cronin at 315-4659 for more information.

Super Bowl at the Elks

Super Bowl Sunday at the Casper Elks Lodge. Bar opens at 2 p.m., beer and drinks specials, raffles and door prizes. This is going to be a potluck, so take a favorite snack to share with everyone. Members, significant other and guest accompanied by a member. For more information, call 234-4839.

Casper Charla begins

Would you like to practice conversational Spanish or help others learn? Come and join the Casper Charla! Te gustaria platicar en espanol? Ven y charla con nosotros! Todos son bienvenidos! Come and join us on the second Wednesday of each month this spring. We meet at a different restaurant each month and partake in food, drink and conversation. All levels of Spanish are welcome, from beginning to native-speakers. Nos reunimos los miercoles en varios restaurantes en Casper. Ven por una copa, un antojito o simplemente una charlita.

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 5-7 p.m.: El Toro; Wednesday, March 8, 5-7 p.m.: Guadalajara; Wednesday, April 12, 5-7 p.m.: La Costa; Wednesday, May 10, 5-7 p.m.: La Cocina.

Archaeologists hear coroner

The monthly meeting of the Casper Chapter of the Wyoming Archaeological Society will be held at 7 p.m., on Wednesday, Feb. 8, on the ground floor of the Oil & Gas Conservation Commission Building, 2211 King Blvd. Please use the entrance on the east side of the building.

Following a brief business meeting, Connie Jacobson, RN, the current Natrona County coroner, will talk about the coroner's role in "Death on the Prairie." Visitors and potential new members are welcome. Please contact Mavis Greer, chapter president, at mavis@greerservices.com if you have any questions.

Beekeepers meet

Natrona County Beekeepers Association will meet at 7 p.m., on Thursday, Feb. 9, in the basement of the College Heights Baptist Church, 600 West 21st Street. This group is for those thinking about becoming a beekeeper or those who already have hives. A group order to purchase bees is in the works.

Coin club meets

The Casper Coin Club will meet at 7 p.m., on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017, in the Crawford Room of the downtown library. There will be a talk on three-cent coins. Call Al Leske at 237-1156 for more information.

Freedom Fund lunch set

During the civil rights era of the 1950s and 60s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hosted Freedom Fund banquets to raise money for legal aid for folks who had been arrested while attempting to register to vote and fighting for their civil rights. Following that tradition, the Casper Branch of the NAACP is hosting its annual Freedom Fund luncheon from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., on Sat., Feb. 11, at the Parkway Plaza, 123 East E St. Lunch will be served at 11:30 a.m.

Henry Allen, past president of Colorado Springs Branch NAACP, and current president, Pikes Peak Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will address the topic, America 2017 through the Eyes of Martin Luther King, Jr. Allen served 24 years in the U.S. Army and worked as a sheriff until his retirement.

NAACP members and the general public are invited to attend the luncheon. Tickets cost $30 (checks made to Casper NAACP) with lunch choices: salmon, strip steak au jus, or vegetarian pasta. To make reservations, call Joanne Tanner at 234-6266 by Feb. 6.

Woman as president forum topic

Why its Harder for a Woman to Become a President than a Prime Minister is the subject Dr. Stephanie Anderson will address at the next Democratic Womens Forum on Saturday, Feb. 11. Her talk will follow the noon buffet luncheon at the Ramkota Hotel dining room.

An associate professor of political science at the University of Wyoming, Dr. Anderson has wide experience in international relations, having studied in various foreign countries, as well as focusing her research on the European Union (EU) as an international actor.

Democratic Forums are open to all persons interested regardless of gender. Luncheons are $15 per person, including tax and gratuity. Reservations are requested by calling Jerre at 234-8625 by Thursday (Feb. 9) prior to the meeting.

Elks Sweetheart Ball

Sweetheart Ball Dinner and Dance in the Casper Elks Lodge Ballroom on Saturday, Feb. 11. Dinner begins at 6:30 p.m. in the ballroom. Menu options are prime rib, $25; crab legs, $35, or $55 for both. Price includes a $5 drink ticket. We will have a theatre production with a pirate theme. This play is not age appropriate for children. Members, significant other and guest accompanied by a member. For more information, call 234-4839 or 237-2432.

Father Daughter at Elks

The annual Father Daughter Dinner and Dance at the Casper Elks Lodge is Feb. 25. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., dinner at 7 p.m. Music by Good Times Only. If you don't have a daughter, borrow one and come down for dinner, dancing and door prizes and get your picture taken. Ticket prices are fathers, $10; daughters ages 14 and up, $9; ages 8 to 13, $8, and ages 7 and under are free. For more information, call 234-4839.

NARFE has social

Casper Chapter #358 of the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association (NARFE) will have a no-host Social Meeting at noon on Feb. 28, in the meeting room at the Casper Senior Center at 1831 East 4th Street.

Mardi Gras Bingo

Mardi Gras Bingo, sponsored by Reveille Rotary of Casper, is 6 to 8 p.m., on Tuesday, Feb. 28, at the Casper Senior Center, 1831 E. 4th Street. Enjoy Bingo fun for the whole family. Tickets are $20 for two Bingo cards. There will be eight $25 games, nine $50 games, one $250 game and one $500 game. Concessions will be available (including homemade slices of pie). Proceeds benefit Wyoming Dementia Care. Tickets can be purchased from any Reveille Rotary member or at First Interstate Bank Downtown.

Scholarship notice

The Society of Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration -- Central Wyoming Section offers up to four $2,500 scholarships, the Coates, Wolff, Russell, and Swank Memorial scholarships. Applicant must have graduated from a Wyoming high school, must be enrolled full-time for the 2016-2017 academic year, upperclassmen -- current college sophomore, junior, senior or graduate student, enrolled in mining/mineral extraction-related discipline, and have a 3.0 GPA minimum. Application forms are available by email request to smecasper@gmail.com

Civil Air Patrol meets

Civil Air Patrol meets from 7 to 9 p.m. the first Tuesday of the month at Casper National Guard Armory, 5905 CY Ave. For more information, call 259-0855.

Stammtisch at Applebee's

The Casper German Stammtisch is meeting weekly on Thursdays at Applebee's from 6:30 to 8 p.m. New this year -- on the second Thursday of each month we will focus on speaking German! All ability levels are welcome, as long as they are eager to hear German.
A Casper couple charged in December with training a teenage girl to perform sexual acts face additional charges based on the testimony of a second victim.

Casper police arrested Lenard Smiley, 46, and his wife, Sonya Smiley, 50, in December on suspicion of grooming a teenage girl to perform sexual acts. The girl told police she was forced to give oral sex to Lenard Smiley and that the couple made her perform painful sexual acts on herself. The second victim, also a teenage girl, said the couple forced her to model swimsuits and underwear in front of them.

Prosecutors originally charged Lenard Smiley with five counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor but later changed the charges to seven felonies  four counts of second-degree sexual abuse of minor and three counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor  and one misdemeanor count of false imprisonment based on the second victims interview. He pleaded not guilty to all eight charges during his arraignment Thursday afternoon in Natrona County District Court.

Sonya Smiley was originally charged with three counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of accessory to second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Prosecutors later added two counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor.

Casper police began investigating the alleged crimes in November when the first victims parents reported that the Smileys, who were friends of the family, had been abusing their daughter.

The two families met through a Casper group that re-enacts life in Europe during the Middle Ages, court documents show. The girl told investigators that she knew Lenard Smiley was a registered sex offender, but the man told people that he had been framed by police and the conviction was based on lies.

Lenard Smiley registered as a sex offender in 2001 after he was convicted of second-degree abuse of a minor in Alaska, according to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation online database.

The girl, who was born in 2000, told investigators that the couple required her to perform sexual acts while she stayed with them intermittently between May 2015 and May 2016 in their home in the 900 block of East 13th Street. Some of the acts were unbearable and very painful, the girl said.

In the four-page affidavit, investigators outline a pattern of repeated forced sexual acts and methods meant to control the girl. After buying the girl presents over a period of several months, the couple told the girl she had to do something for them in return, the documents state.

These actions ... were all part of the grooming process, a detective wrote in court documents.

On at least two occasions, Lenard Smiley told the girl she had to give him oral sex, according to the documents. Sometimes the couple required her to wear a metal collar.

At one point, the pain the girl endured because of the Smileys abuse was so acute that the girl passed out and was taken to the hospital, the documents state. Sonya Smiley told the girl to lie to medical staff about what caused her to black out, according to the documents.

About two weeks after the first victims interview, investigators talked with another teenage girl who also said the Smileys forced her to model swimsuits and underwear they bought for her and made her wear a collar. The girl, who was born in 2001, said the Smileys once locked the doors to their house from the inside and refused to let her call her mom, according to the documents.

When the girl later returned home, she told her mom about what had happened. The mother then called police.

Police arrested the Smileys on Dec. 19 and took them to the Casper Police Department to be interviewed.

Lenard Smiley refused to speak without an attorney. But Sonya Smiley said she had witnessed her husband and the girl engage in sexual activity on at least four occasions, though the woman said the girl always begged for the attention and her husband complied reluctantly, court documents show.

At the end of the interview, Sonya Smiley said she knew what happened was wrong and that she shouldnt have allowed it.

Lenard Smiley faces a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment and a $10,000 fine for each of the four counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor, up to 15 years in prison and $10,000 in fines for each of the three counts of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor and up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge.

Sonya Smiley faces up to 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for the charge of accessory to second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and up to 15 years and $10,000 in fines for each of the five charges of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor.
CHEYENNE  The Wyoming Legislature is considering cutting the states two-year, $3 billion government operations budget, according to a spending bill announced Thursday morning.

The plan comes amid a decline in state revenue caused by the energy downturn thats already resulted in cuts.

The Legislature in March adopted a two-year budget that was lower than the previous budget cycle. Over the summer, Gov. Matt Mead and the judicial branch made over $250 million in reductions, and the legislative committee in charge of drafting the budget bill largely accepted those cuts.

A bill authored by the Joint Appropriations Committee would slice an additional $30 million from general state government operations, according to a news release from the Legislatures nonpartisan staff on Thursday.

The legislation would eliminate 135 full-time positions and 10 part-time positions. The Legislature is requiring Mead to identify an additional 75 positions to cut by June 30, 2018.

Mead doesnt think the reductions are necessary, his spokesman, David Bush, said in a statement on Thursday afternoon.

The Republican governor doesnt believe the state has fully felt the effects of the reductions, Bush said.

Reductions of this magnitude will have effects on many areas, from local governments to seniors and from suicide prevention to tribal relations, Bush said. The governor disagrees with these reductions. He appreciates the work of the Legislature and continues to work with them on these issues.

The budget bill is actually two identical bills  House Bill 1 and Senate File 1. Starting next week, members of the full House and Senate will propose amendments that could change the legislation.

Since the final bills adopted by the House and Senate must match, there will be a negotiation period in which members of the House and Senate will hammer out differences in their amended budget bills.

Wyoming is currently in the first year of the two-year budget. The second year of the budget cycle begins July 1.

HB1 and SF1 affect general government operations, the University of Wyoming and community colleges. Money for elementary and secondary education is tackled in separate legislation.

Lobbyists and state agency heads were studying the bill Thursday, attempting to grasp where cuts were made. Some cuts, however, were apparent in a number of programs.

Tribal liaisons

Mead in December asked the Legislature to pay $160,000 for separate liaisons for the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes.

The JAC cut that to $80,000.

The budget bill doesnt specify whether each liaison should become a part-time employee or if there should be one liaison representing both tribes, said Chesie Lee of the Wyoming Association of Churches, who works closely with the states American Indians.

At first there was discussion that it should be just one position, Lee said, echoing conversations that occurred in December.

Supporters of the program want two separate, full-time positions. The tribes both occupy the Wind River Reservation. They are in conflict and havent worked together in over two years.

Lawmakers have also suggested the positions be funded in part by the tribes. Sen. Cale Case thinks thats a bad idea.

The Lander Republican thinks the position should be under the control of the governors office and fully funded.

He said the state employees arrange communication between the state and tribal governments, although he acknowledged some of the tribal liaisons have done a poor job communing and bringing together the governments. He said he would like to see liaisons who are committed to the job.

Jason Baldes, executive director of the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, said a couple of weeks ago, when it appeared the JAC was going to cut the money in half, that the move was disappointing.

The tribal liaison program is important for government-to-government relations between the state and the tribes, he said. We are sovereign nations on the reservation.

Prison

Sen. Bruce Burns, chairman of the Joint Appropriations Committee, said the group did not recommend borrowing money by issuing bonds to build a new state prison or pay for repairs at the existing facility, as Mead recommended. The Wyoming State Penitentiary was built on an old lake bed and is suffering significant structural damage.

We havent decided what were doing with the prison yet, Burns said.

The issue of whether to build or repair the prison is far from settled. There are no bills before the 2017 Legislature that dictate how the state will deal with the facility.

Mead recommended the Legislature reserve from the states rainy day fund $19 million for the penitentiary in case the building collapses. The committee declined that request, but Burns said he will propose an amendment to provide the governor some money.

Local governments

Typically the state provides $33 million to the State Loan and Investment Board. The Legislature approved $33 million last year but gave only $28 million.

Mead requested the remaining $5 million, but the JAC did not include it in the budget bill, said Pete Obermueller, executive director of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association.

The money is necessary to help cities, towns and counties in an emergency, Obermueller said. For instance, the Weston County Courthouse suffered significant damage from a burst water main that made several rooms unusable. The county is currently applying for money for repairs.

Natrona County Commissioner Forrest Chadwick said he understands that many parts of state government are being slashed.

Ill put it this way: We know were all going to have to participate in the pain, and the cuts are inevitable, he said. Well make the cuts where we can and hope for the best, and try to make them as painless as possible.

Obermueller said funding has been cut from a pot of money that pays for public health nursing. That would affect counties, too, he said.

Involuntary commitments

The costs to commit someone who is a harm to themselves or others skyrocketed to $18 million in the past two-year budget cycle. But in recent years, the Legislature provided the Wyoming Department of Health with only $4.4 million for that purpose. The health department has had to find the difference in its budget.

Mead asked legislators to use up to $21 million from the $2.6 billion rainy day fund to pay for overages.

In the health departments reading of the budget bill, that money was not provided, said Kim Deti, the departments spokeswoman.

However, on Thursday, the House passed House Bill 151. If the Senate approves it, the department could receive $3 million for the program next year, Deti said.

Burns, the chairman of JAC, said the budget bill isnt final.

Thats part of another amendment Im bringing is to allow the governor to use the (rainy day fund,) the Sheridan Republican said. Were also giving (Health Department Director) Tom Forslund more flexibility to use more funds within the Department of Health.

Community colleges

In March, the Legislature granted a $244 million budget for the Wyoming Community College Commission, which distributes the money to the states seven schools according to a formula dictated in part by state law, said Jim Rose, the commissions executive director.

Then came last summers cuts. The new budget bill proposes another $600,000 in cuts. If the Legislature adopts the bill, the commissions budget will be $224 million, Rose said.

How each college will be affected remains to be seen, Rose said.

Next week, commission members are meeting in Cheyenne, where they will discuss tuition increases for the 2018-2019 academic year. Tuition across the system is uniform. Fees, however, vary, as they are adopted by each colleges board of trustees, Rose said.

Weve had some colleges that had to cut programs fairly significantly, Rose said. Many of them have been required to cut personnel.

For instance, Northwest College in Powell in May declined enrolling new students in Farrier Business Management, Journalism and Film/Radio/TV programs because it intends to end the degrees. Four staff positions were eliminated.

The JAC included in the budget bill Meads request for $2.5 million for an economic diversification program called ENDOW, or Economically Needed Diversity Options for Wyoming. The community colleges will benefit from that money, Rose said.

In the legislation, the community colleges are a significant component because of the training the colleges do in preparation for a workforce, he said. One of the drags on our economy in part has been industries that might have located here, and one of the reservations theyve indicated is a lack of a skilled workforce.

UW

The University of Wyomings two-year budget, which lawmakers adopted in March, was $398 million. However, Mead reduced the budget by $35 million.

UW Vice President Chris Boswell said that the current budget is $359 million, or $42 million less than during the previous two-year budget cycle.

The budget bill proposes $1.1 million less for the fiscal year beginning July 1, Boswell said.

Thats an impact to the university, and we will continue to deal with these ongoing reductions to our appropriations, he said. It does not make our task any easier to have these addition reductions.

The state university has enacted a number of cuts to keep pace with the reductions coming from Cheyenne. UW administrators have eliminated vacant positions. They have also offered one round of early retirements. A second round is on hold, since a bill in the Legislature may offer all eligible state employees early retirement, Boswell said.

With the reductions, UW has tried to shield student academics. But many of the cuts inevitably impact learning, he said.

Program funding is being reduced across campus from 2 to 8 percent. Administrators are reviewing undergraduate and graduate programs, Boswell said.

Wed like to think theyre all necessary, he said of academic programs. At some point, we have to at least consider whether we can continue offering programs in the same numbers that we had been offering. And, frankly, a number of programs are slated for possible elimination.

The JAC also denied a one-time request from Mead to give the university $475,000 to boost enrollment through tracking and recruitment software and consultants recommendations. However, in the budget bill, the committee retained the language that gives UW permission to begin the enrollment initiative by finding the funds internally.

Well endeavor to do that, Boswell said.
Syrias Ministry of Foreign Affairs has sent a letter to the UN Security Council and Secretary-General over the attacks carried out by Turkey against Syria, Sputnik News reported.

STEPANAKERT, FEBRUARY 3, ARTSAKHPRESS: Syrias Sana news agency published the content of the letter which says: Syrias Ministry of Foreign Affairs strictly condemns the crimes and attacks carried out by Turkey against the people and territorial integrity of Syria. The MFA calls on the UN Security Council to take measures in the frames of commitments on this issue.
CHEYENNE  A bill that would have protected gay people from discrimination at work failed in the Wyoming Senate late Thursday afternoon.

Senate File 153 would have created protected classes for everyone  gay, straight and bisexual  and said no one could be hired, fired, promoted or demoted based on their sexual orientation.

Sara Burlingame, the education and outreach coordinator for the LGBT organization Wyoming Equality, said the debate contained references to religion, including some by bill supporter Sen. Stephan Pappas. Pappas said his Greek Orthodox faith doesnt condone homosexuality. But in the business world  Pappas is an architect  he knows Wyoming can be perceived as not being inclusive, which could hurt the Equality State, said Burlingame, who watched the debate.

Opponents to the bill told fellow senators they wanted to watch what the courts would say on gays, Burlingame said.

While Wyomings LGBT community hasnt made any gains this legislative session, it hasnt lost ground, either.

Were deeply disappointed, Burlingame said. Although we knew this bill would be an uphill battle this year (when there are budget challenges before the Legislature). At the end of the day, were celebrating we defeated House Bill 135, which was the most draconian bill.

HB135 would have allowed people to not provide services, follow company policies or abide by laws that they found objectionable to their religious beliefs or moral convictions. Wyoming Equality termed it the most discriminatory of all religious rights bills before state legislatures across the nation.

Members of the gay community in and around Wyoming emailed legislators, expressing their opposition. The sponsors withdrew the bill, saying there wasnt the time to have a discussion on the matter.

Burlingame also noted that HB244 wasnt assigned a committee by Thursday, a key legislative deadline. The measure is dead.

The legislation would have expanded the definition of public indecency to include people who use public bathrooms or changing rooms that do not correspond to their sex at birth or their anatomy. Burlingame said the bill would have prohibited transgender people from using bathrooms of the gender with which they identify.
Lawmakers in the Wyoming House on Thursday advanced a bill to create a supercommittee to study solutions to the looming education funding crisis.

The measure, House Bill 225, would direct legislative leadership to create a group of 14 lawmakers by March 20. There would be two members each from the House and Senate education and revenue committees, plus a member from each appropriations committee. An additional two at-large members would also be taken from within the entirety of the House and Senate.

The lawmakers, with input from four advisory groups whose members would be appointed by the governor, would study and recommend solutions to the projected budget shortfall for funding education in Wyoming. That annual shortfall will likely be $400 million in the coming years and could reach $1.8 billion in by the end of the 2022 fiscal year.

On Thursday morning, senators considered two amendments to the bill. One would change who would be eligible to join the governors advisory groups. The original bill included teachers, taxpayers, parents of students and the general public. The amendment removed taxpayers and replaced it with businesses who have more than 100 employees and businesses that have less than 100 employees.

Lawmakers said the amendment was introduced because any changes to education funding determined by the committee would affect business, and so input from that sector was needed.

This is a friendly amendment, said Rep. David Northrup, R-Powell, one of the bills co-sponsors. His fellow lawmakers agreed and passed it unanimously.

The second proposed amendment wouldve expanded the supercommittees scope. In the bills language, the supercommittee would be directed to study four areas to address the education funding crisis:

Potential education cuts;

Options for existing funding;

Diverting existing revenue streams and investment income;

Options to increase revenue.

None of those options includes looking at using education savings accounts. Rep. Scott Clem, R-Gillette, said he wanted that option to be up for discussion by the supercommittee as it works in the interim. He pointed out that funding for school districts is heavily tied to each districts enrollment, and a sudden drop in enrollment can leave a deep dent in a districts pocket.

You remove those students from districts, you remove them from the model, you remove a lot of money, he said.

Rep. Chuck Gray, R-Casper, agreed that looking at savings should be part of the committees purview.

But Northrup said the House Education Committee had discussed putting a similar provision into other pieces of legislation but had decided against it. He said the Joint Education Interim Committee could study the issue in the coming months.

It might be an interim topic for the Joint Education Committee, said Rep. Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, but in this specific issue, I dont think this is the place or time for what can be a controversial subject.

Despite Clem expressing concern that the issue may not actually be studied in the interim, his amendment was voted down.

The measure will now go to a third reading before the House. The bill is similar to a provision in an education omnibus bill, which takes broad steps to address the crisis by using savings, making deep cuts and leaving the door open to increasing taxes. Lawmakers have said in the past that HB225 is meant as a backup plan.

Were going to run both of these side by side, just in case somehow the (omnibus) bill fails, House Speaker Steve Harshman said last month.
CHEYENNE  A House committee has advanced a bill that would require retailers and wholesalers to mark beef with its country of origin if the beef is from the United States or more than one country.

However, its unknown how the law would be enforced, if the law would violate federal regulations and if the beef industry would be able to comply.

Still, supporters of House Bill 198 said it would help consumers identify where their food comes from, and a majority of House Agriculture Committee members voted in favor of sending it to the full House of Representatives.

Until recently, stores had to list the country of origin for fresh beef and pork, just like other meats, fruits and vegetables, under the federal Country of Origin Labeling law, known as COOL.

However, Canada and Mexico challenged the U.S. before the World Trade Organization, saying that the law undermined the meat trade between the countries.

Ultimately, the World Trade Organization agreed, which led to Congress repealing labeling requirements for beef and pork.

The Wyoming law  along with similar proposals in other states  seeks to reinstate the provision for beef at the state level.

If Wyoming is not standing alone in this  theres less of an excuse for a Wal-Mart or whoever to balk at this, said Rep. Hans Hunt, R-Newcastle, the bills lead sponsor.

The bill also had support from the Wyoming Farm Bureau.

This is in line with our members policy, said Brett Moline of the Wyoming Farm Bureau. Research has shown consumers do want to know where their products come from.

But questions remain as to whether the law can actually be enforced or if it is compatible with existing laws.

We are afraid we simply cant enforce this statute, said Stacia Berry of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture.

Berry said while the department is neither in favor of nor against the bill, the department does have concerns about enforcement and whether the law could violate interstate commerce provisions in the U.S. Constitution.

Those in the beef industry also questioned how the law would work, with some citing how cattle are moved across state  or even international  lines, including to be killed and processed.

I agree we need to know where products come from, but the beef industry just isnt made that way, said rancher Rob Hendry.

Committee members, though, still liked the idea and decided to move the bill forward.

Reps. Stan Blake, D-Green River; Aaron Clausen, R-Douglas; Chuck Gray, R-Casper; Hunt; and Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle; voted in favor of the bill.

Reps. Bill Haley, R-Centennial; Bill Henderson, R-Cheyenne; Dan Laursen, R-Powell; and Robert McKim, R-Afton; voted against.
The owners of the historic Lodge on the Desert have reached a settlement with its main creditor to allow the troubled boutique hotel to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The agreement between Lodge Partners LLC and mortgage lender Palatine Tucson LLC, Lodges largest secured creditor, also calls for more than $1 million in improvements to the 103-room boutique hotel at 306 N. Alvernon Way.

The hacienda-style hotel has continued to operate, and all existing reservations for rooms, meetings and events will be honored, the hotel owners said.

In November, Lodge Partners filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time since 2013, saying it had new investors with the capital needed to shore up operations and make improvements.

But Palatine, which acquired about $12 million in Lodges debt from main secured creditor Wells Fargo Bank for an undisclosed sum last year, moved to dismiss the case.

The investor group contended the new filing was an improper attempt to amend the hotel owners 2013 Chapter 11 case after the hotel owners defaulted on that plan.

The bankruptcy filing halted a foreclosure sale of the hotel property, but a judge ruled in December that a receiver appointed as part of the state foreclosure process would remain in place as Palatines dismissal motion was resolved.

Under terms of a settlement filed this week, the foreclosure sale will be canceled and the receiver will turn the property over to the owners management.

John Rutherford, who led the investor group helping the hotel reorganize  Lodge in Tucson LLC, is now is the hotels main owner as manager of Lodge Partners LLC. Jim Kerrigan remains general manager of the hotel.

The successful reorganization of the Lodge enables us to strengthen our business, improve the property, honor our commitments to our customers and continue to grow, Rutherford said in a prepared statement.

The agreement recognizes that Palatine has a $12.7 million secured claim on the hotel property.

Palatine has agreed to recast its debt claim as a five-year, $6.75 million loan to Lodge Partners at 6 percent annual interest, for payments totaling just over $9 million. That plan ends with a $7.2 million balloon payment in 2022, according to a term sheet filed with the court.

Among other things, the hotel owners also agreed to pay about $239,000 in delinquent property taxes and $180,000 in state and city sales taxes, put money in escrow for future operations and taxes and repay a $288,000 loan advance from Palatine over five years.

When the property-tax payments and the initial loan payment are made, Palatine will allow $180,000 from a construction-defect insurance settlement to be used to pay for repairs including paint, stucco and roofing work.

The deal, if consummated, also would cancel a judgment against former Lodge Partners owner Dan Donahoe, who had acquired the hotel in 1997 when it had 39 guest rooms and invested $15 million in a renovation project completed in 2009.

In listing its assets in bankruptcy filings, Lodge said the hotel property was worth about $4.1 million, with another $830,000 in personal property like furnishings.

Lodge Partners must now file an amended Chapter 11 reorganization plan, reflecting the settlement, by Tuesday. Under Chapter 11, a debtor is protected from collections or other legal actions while they work out a plan to repay creditors.
Baring Witness: 36 Mormon Women Talk Candidly about Love, Sex, and Marriage

Edited by Holly Welker (University of Illinois Press, $19.95)

Confession: As a kid, this reviewer used to pore over her grandmothers ladies magazines to read the Can This Marriage Be Saved? columns. In a romanticized world of happily-ever-after, it was intriguing to peek behind the curtain to see what actually went on after the ceremony. This new collection of essays holds a similar appeal. Southern Arizona poet and essayist (and Mormon) Holly Welker compiled essays from three dozen women about their marital lives in relation to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for this collection.

The essays are diverse, but all are outgrowths of basic church teaching that a womans role is to be a good and obedient wife and mother to a devout Mormon man. For some of these women, this is satisfying; for others, issues arise.

Welker doesnt draw conclusions or weigh in on decisions of her writers; she lets their experiences speak for themselves (which they do with considerable grace). You could say, after this peek, that while some LDS marriages might seem arranged in heaven, some shouldnt be saved  sanctified or not.

Christine Wald-Hopkins

Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert: La vida no vale nada

Edited by Raquel Rubio-Goldsmith, Celestino Fernadez, Jesse K. Finch, Araceli Masterson-Algar (University of Arizona Press, $24.95)

A thoughtful repudiation of the subtitle of the bookLa vida no vale nada (life has no worth), this collection presents arguments attesting to the significance of the lives lost crossing the Arizona desert.

Based on a 2008 conference of the same name, the editors have gathered writers from varied fields academe, public health, activism, art. Here they bring their respective methodologies and expressions to examine and to explain the tragedy of Arizona desert migrant deaths. Including history, statistics, coroners reports of retrieved bodies, and meditations on the meanings and values of migrant lives, this a natural text for border studies.

Christine Wald-Hopkins

A Small Saving Grace

By G. Davies Jandrey (Fireship Press, $17.95 paperback; $6.95 eBook)

The new normal is anything but in this domestic thriller by retired Tucson educator G. (Gayle) Davies Jandrey. Raped and beaten in a Tucson parking garage, teacher Andy Richards has been left in a coma, and her family rallies to care for her and her children. But Andys family requires some reconstituting before it can effectively rally: Her husband has recently left her for another woman, her father has left her mother for another man, and her mother has left them all for the bottle. Add to the household mix Andys dads flamboyant boyfriend and her ex-husbands tacky girlfriend (plus Andy herself lying comatose in the living room), and you have a sense of why her pre-teen daughter hesitates to bring friends home.

The action is driven successfully by the threat of the perps returning to finish his job. A motif of diversity in spiritual expression is reflected in the books title, and lends an additional element to an appealing read.

Christine Wald-Hopkins

Lost Roundup

By Phyllis de la Garza (Silk Label Books, $17.99).

When Willcox rancher Jerome Brown collapses in front of the local saloon, his young widow Azalea looks to their ranch for support. What she doesnt expect is a dated will and her husbands estranged daughter Josefina, who claims her inheritance before the old man is in the ground. But Azalea is not about to let her cattle be driven to Mexico, and sets out to reclaim the herd before it reaches the border.

The West is a well-traveled trail for De la Garza  a Cochise County resident and author of 18 books  and the action gallops through the cactus and grasslands of Southern Arizona as Azalea battles the elements and Mexican banditos.

Vicki Ann Duraine

Writing What You Know: How to Turn Personal Experiences into Publishable Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry

By Meg Files, Allworth Press ($16.99)

For much of her adult life, Files has championed for the writer in us all. In this dense, approachable guide, she encapsulates her expertise, experiences, writing examples and exercises, antidotes, and literary techniques that succeed (or fail.) Chapters include Facing down the Monsters and Jumping into the Abyss and she ends with that necessary but dreaded subject  revision. An invaluable resource when facing the blank page.

During her tenure as an English instructor at Pima Community College, Files established the venerable Pima Writers Workshop. This is her fifth book.

Vicki Ann Duraine

Art for Poetrys Sake

By Ned Mackey Wheatmark ($18.26)

I admit to being a novice to ekphrasis (a response to a work of art) poetry, but Mackey grabbed me with the dedication and didnt let go. In turn, raucous, reflective, irreverent and sentimental, the poems are always clever and, more importantly, each verse delivers you back to really examine the artwork from which it was inspired.

Mackeys choice of artists is as eclectic as his poetry, ranging from Van Gogh to Tucsons own Guy Atchley. One of my favorites is Reginald Marshs lively carousal painting Wooden Horses. Mackey taught English in the Tucson Unified School District for 36 years, and I have become a student of both the style and the stylist.

Vicki Ann Duraine
We are following the blogger Alexander Lapshins case, and we are trying to contribute to the proper presentation of the problem to human rights community.

February 3, 2017, 17:00 It is an attempt to silence free speech on Artsakh: NKR Ombudsman on Lapshin's extradition

STEPANAKERT, FEBRUARY 3, ARTSAKHPRESS: NKR Ombudsman Ruben Melikyan said in an interview with "Artsakhpress" and noted that he works closely with the Ombudsman of the Republic of Armenia on this issue.

"We believe that the Lapshins case is an attempt to silence free speech on Artsakh, to frighten foreigners who intend to visit Artsakh. Recognition of this fact should become an additional incentive for those who are genuinely faithful to the very essence of human rights, especially it should stimulate journalists, human right defenders to visit Artsakh, to speak about Artsakh and pay more attention to Artsakh citizens. We are working in this direction," said Ruben Melikyan.

Belarus police arrested Lapshin on December 15, 2016 in Minsk. Lapshin resides in Moscow and writes for the famous Russian Travel Blog. He is wanted by Azerbaijan for visiting Nagorno Karabakh in 2011, 2012 and 2016, and criticizing Azerbaijans policy in his blog.
A yad or pointer is used to keep the place of the reader as they read a 200 year old Torah at the University of Arizona. Beth Nakhai, an associate professor in the Arizona Center for Judaic Studies, received the scroll in 2009. On Feb. 10 and 11, a rabbi will do restoration work on the document. Photo taken: Tuesday February 03, 2015.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some Feb. 3 papers in history. With a subscription to newspapers.com you can search the Arizona Daily Star and many other newspapers using keywords or dates, and download articles or pages.
Federal authorities arrested a Phoenix woman Tuesday at the Lukeville port of entry when they say she tried to smuggle $180,000 worth of marijuana in a boat.

The 31-year-old woman, who was driving a Chevrolet truck, was hauling a boat filled with nearly 360 pounds of marijuana, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release.

Drug-sniffing dogs alerted officers to the drugs, authorities said.

The drugs, truck and boat were seized and the woman was turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations.
A brazen attack on a drug ripoff crew in a Southern Arizona mountain range last year left one man shot in the knees and six men sentenced to prison terms.

Federal prosecutors said a hitman working for a Mexican drug cartel was hired to exact revenge on a rival group that stole a load of marijuana the day before, according to a sentencing memorandum filed in U.S. District Court in Tucson.

The May 2016 incidents resulted in the first prosecutions of a Southern Arizona rip crew shooting since at least 2011, said Francisco Burrola, deputy special agent in charge in Tucson for Homeland Security Investigations, the lead agency in the investigation.

Violence among criminals often goes unreported, but a shooting between a rip crew and hit men is not a common thing, Burrola said.

Border Patrol agents who responded May 2 to the remote area near Cyprus Mine in the Santa Rosa Mountains southwest of Casa Grande found Francisco Lizarraga Hernandez with gunshot wounds in his knees and Jose Hernandez Flores, who had called 911 asking for medical help.

The agents also found 500 pounds of marijuana, two AK-47 style rifles, ammunition magazines, a pistol, and a bullet-proof vest, according to a criminal complaint.

The incident led to the arrest of six men, two of whom were part of the rip crew that stole the marijuana and four involved in the shooting the next day. The final two defendants were sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Tucson.

Lizarraga Hernandez told agents he and Hernandez Flores, each armed with an AK-47, stole a marijuana load from a group of smugglers working for the Pariente drug-trafficking organization, court records show.

They were guided by a man in Mexico who knew where the drug load would be crossing the desert. When the group of backpackers arrived, Lizarraga Hernandez said he and Hernandez Flores ran toward them, shooting their firearms into the air.

After the robbery, the guide of the backpacking group, Severo Nieblas Diaz, called Pedro Ojeda Ramirez to recover the marijuana, federal prosecutor Serra Tsethlikai wrote in a sentencing memorandum, describing Ojeda Ramirez as a sicario, a hit man, an assassin.

The next day, Ojeda Ramirez, Vidal Quinones Gonzalez, and Ulises Saijas Zamorano, armed with an AK-47 style rifle, an M-1 style rifle, and a pistol, positioned themselves on a hill overlooking the stolen marijuana and started shooting at the two men guarding the load, Tsethlikai wrote.

Ojeda Ramirez was arrested about three miles from the site of the shooting. He told agents he was a scout for the Cusa drug-trafficking organization and volunteered to recover the load for an extra $2,000.

A few weeks after the shooting, then-Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu held a news conference and issued a warning to travelers for the Memorial Day weekend about rip crews stealing drug loads in shootouts.

Three days after the shooting, a Pinal County deputy stopped a white Ford F-150 on Sunland Gin Road south of Interstate 10 for a traffic violation. Inside, the deputy found 13 people who were in the country illegally.

One of the men inside the truck told authorities he and the other occupants of the truck were the backpackers shot at days earlier.

Another man in the truck was Saijas Zamorano, one of the shooters. He told agents he was a scout who had helped guide about 10 backpacking groups in the previous two weeks, including the group that was ambushed by the rip crew.

Ojeda Ramirez did not have a criminal history and was not identified as the shooter, defense lawyer Annamarie Valdivia said at the sentencing hearing. If he had not taken responsibility, he likely would have won at trial.

Youve already sentenced the people who were the real villains here, Valdivia said.

A witness to the incidents refused to testify after being threatened by co-defendant Nieblas, the guide of the backpacking group who called in Ojeda Ramirez, Tsethlikai said.

Valdivia said it was shocking that although Nieblas ordered the assault, he was offered a plea deal that resulted in a five-year sentence.

The men faced drug-trafficking and firearms charges. Ojeda and Lizarraga Hernandez were sentenced to about 12 years in prison; Hernandez Flores and Quinones Gonzalez, 10 years; Nieblas and Saijas Zamorano, 5 years.

NOTE: This story originally misstated the sentences for Francisco Lizarraga Hernandez and Jose Hernandez Flores. Their sentences have been corrected.
Whichever way U.S. Rep. Martha McSally turns, theres a trap.

If she supports President Trumps initiatives, that galvanizes the already-energized Democrats and potentially puts her seat at risk in 2018. If she rejects Trump, she turns off the 44 percent of the Congressional District 2 electorate who voted for Trump, the base of McSallys GOP.

Its a trap shes long tried to avoid in the southeast Arizona district that has gone to both Democratic and Republican candidates. On Aug. 31, the day candidate Trump visited the Mexican president and gave a dark anti-immigration speech in Phoenix, she declined to say whom she would vote for in the presidential election, saying My vote is between me and God and the ballot box.

But now she is emerging tentatively from her neutral stance, supporting Trump in two of his more controversial initiatives. Thats already bringing out critics and potential challengers.

McSallys first small step out of the neutral zone came on Jan. 26, when she deemed Trumps executive order on border control and the proposed wall strong steps in the right direction.

For years, Southern Arizonans have called for the federal government to step up and secure our border, and this order is a strong start in the right direction. They untie the hands of our Border Patrol agents and allow them to do their jobs. They also mandate the release of regular border effectiveness data, which is critical to fully understanding the problem.

When it comes to barriers, they are important where appropriate, but only part of the equation. What we need is a comprehensive strategy to grow situational awareness, build operational control, and dismantle the cartels and their networks.

So, in essence, she liked most of Trumps executive order that day, but thought there was too much emphasis on the border wall. A rather nuanced response to a president who is mostly garnering polarized reactions.

Trumps more controversial executive order took place on Jan. 27, and caused airport chaos, confusion and demonstrations over the weekend. McSally made no public statement until Monday afternoon. Then she again offered tentative support.

We are a nation of immigrants, but that must be balanced with the foremost priority of the federal government  protecting the American people. I served on a Congressional task force focused on combating ISIS that found very real and dangerous gaps in our vetting processes. Likewise, our own intelligence officials have expressed vulnerabilities with these processes, which is why taking a comprehensive look at them is prudent and should be expected of any new administration.

However, I have concerns about certain individuals being denied entry, such as green card holders, those who served alongside our military, and partner military service members who train here, such as Iraqi pilots in Tucson. Those issues must be addressed and remedied immediately.

Again, she quibbled with the details of the Trump policy, objecting only to the mistreatment of green-card holders and those who have assisted our military. She ignored the impacts on everyday travelers and U.S. residents with family in those seven countries from which travel is banned. Not a particularly strong response to a measure that demanded it, in my view.

Now opponents are sensing vulnerability. Protesters are gathering regularly at McSallys office, urging her to protect the Affordable Care Act and to oppose Trump. Democrats are already lining up support as possible challengers in 2018.

Among the Democrats at various stages of considering a run: Brian Bickel, a retired hospital executive who ran unsuccessfully for Pima County supervisor last year; Mo Goldman, a local immigration attorney and new candidate; Stephen Portell, a local civil attorney in private practice and also a new candidate; Victoria Steele, a former legislator who ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in CD2 in 2016; and former legislator Bruce Wheeler, who said he has been attracted to the race by McSallys reactions to Trump.

McSally is signing off on his behavior and serving as an enabler to him, Wheeler said.

As strong as McSally was in her first term  and I voted for her in the general election against Democratic challenger Matt Heinz, who is not considering a re-run now  she wont be able to ride the fence forever on Trumps policies. There are risks either direction, but she will have to take them.

With friends like these

The people at American Action Network apparently were trying to boost McSally when they placed an ad in Mondays paper that said, among other things, Congresswoman Martha McSally has a Plan to Deliver Quality, Affordable, Patient-Centered Health Care. The ad encouraged readers to call her office and thank her for Proposing Access to a Quality, Affordable Health Care Plan.

The use of capital letters was not the strangest thing about the ad. The strangest thing is that it is wrong: McSally does not have any such plan.

Its not that she necessarily should. Shes a member of the armed services and homeland security committees  not in prime position to be designing Obamacare replacements, work that other members of Congress are doing.

This was part of a cookie-cutter promotional campaign by the American Action Network, a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that promotes center-right policies, according to its website. By law, elected officials and their organizations cant coordinate with these groups. So, the 41 members of Congress whom these ads were intended to benefit are stuck with the ads that unintentionally seem to undercut them.

Gem show needs to dazzle open

I put out a question to the mayors office last week: Is there any opening celebration for the gem and mineral shows that began last weekend, one of Tucsons biggest events of the year? The answer: Essentially no.

So heres my crazy idea. New York has the ball drop, right? And Flagstaff has its pine-cone drop on New Years Eve. Tucson should have ... a Geode Drop that opens the gem show every year.

Imagine this: A big, fake geode slides down a pole and cracks in half when it hits the bottom, revealing crystals inside. Slogan: When the geode drops, the rockhound shops.

How about that?! My responsibility ends here.
PHOENIX  Unable to block the federal government from sending refugees to Arizona, six Republican lawmakers want to penalize the charities that help them resettle here.

Sen. Judy Burges of Sun City West is leading the effort. Her legislation, SB 1468, would specifically require the Arizona Department of Economic Security to suspend its participation in the federally funded refugee resettlement program.

But as other states that have taken similar steps found, that would not stop the refugees. The federal government would continue to send people to the state, but without cooperation and coordination with the state.

So, the potentially more far-reaching part of Burges legislation would impose a fine on charities of $1,000 a day for each refugee they help place in the state. And if a refugee is arrested, the charity would be financially liable for the cost of arrest, prosecution and incarceration.

Burges said shes using that approach because, realistically, its the only option available to her to stem the flow of refugees.

The measure concerns Ron Johnson, who lobbies for Catholic Charities, one of the groups involved in helping refugees resettle in the state.

Obviously were all concerned with proper vetting and national security, he said. But thats not something we do with Catholic Charities. Once theyre here, we help them find a job, find a place to live, learn the language, all kind of good things that help them be a part of society so theyre not dependent on the government.

Johnson said Burges and other sponsors of SB 1468 are focusing on the wrong end of the problem.

To punish the Good Samaritans that are trying to help them is a bit misplaced, he said. These people are already here.

Burges was unsympathetic.

Ive talked to Ron Johnson myself, she said. And I know that they get millions of dollars to administer these programs.

Shes probably talking nationally, Johnson responded, noting there are more than 80,000 refugees being resettled this year. I wont deny that helps keep these programs running.

But Johson said it would be wrong to say that Catholic Charities is somehow making money on the programs.

Theres also local donations to help make ends meet, he said.

Burges said she wasnt saying that groups that work with refugees are in it for the money.

As a charitable organization, they feel its their responsibility, she said.

But she said the state needs to have some say over who comes here.

Theyre being forced on us, Burges said.

The Department of Economic Security, which operates the state Refugee Resettlement Program that Burges legislation would shut down, reports that it settled 4,833 people in the state in the last federal fiscal year, Oct. 1, 2015, through Sept. 30, 2016.

There were 4,138 refugees resettled in Arizona the prior year and 3,882 the year before that.

The largest share of last years refugees, more than 1,100, came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But there also were 715 from Syria, 610 from Somalia and 462 from Iraq, all countries that are listed on President Trumps executive order suspending refugees.

Other sponsors of the legislation include Sen. Sonny Borrelli of Lake Havasu City and Reps. Mark Finchem of Oro Valley, Vince Leach of Tucson, Anthony Kern of Glendale and Don Shooter of Yuma.

Even if SB 1468 is adopted, it appears it would not alter how many refugees end up in Arizona.

That, however, could change.

Two Republican U.S. senators from Texas introduced legislation last month to let governors block the federal government from resettling refugees in their states.

As crafted by Ted Cruz and Ted Poe, the State Refugee Security Act would require the federal government to notify a state at least 21 days before a refugee is resettled there. A governor, at his or her sole discretion, could veto the move absent adequate assurance that the alien does not present a security risk to the state.

In 2015, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey asked the federal government to immediately halt placement of new refugees in Arizona. That came in the wake of reports that at least one of the people involved in a suicide bombing in Paris had slipped into Europe as a refugee.

The governor cited a provision of federal law that he said entitles him to immediate consultation by federal authorities of plans to resettle any refugees in the state. Duceys request, however, was not limited to Syrian refugees.

What Ducey got as a result was to be included in a conference call with other governors and federal officials detailing their screening efforts.
A judge ruled Thursday that Pima County broke the law in its $15 million deal with the space balloon company World View.

The conservative Goldwater Institute sued the county over the deal in April, and in October asked a county judge to declare (the lease) invalid for violating state law regarding appraisals, auctions and rental rates.

In her decision, Pima County Superior Court Judge Catherine Woods sided with Goldwater and voided the lease deal the county made with the space firm.

The ruling deals with just one of four counts in the lawsuit, another of which alleges the county violated the Arizona Constitutions gift clause in the World View deal. The other two counts deal with competitive bidding for construction of the facilities and county procurement requirements.

Jim Manley, Goldwaters lead attorney, described the ruling as a win for taxpayers and said the county is free to renegotiate the lease if they want to, but theyre going to have to comply with the law.

County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry said he intends to recommend that the Board of Supervisors appeal the decision, which he said will not have any immediate effect on World Views operations. With that appeal, the county would ask for a stay on the ruling.

Our view is that until a court of record rules, which is the appeals court, the issue is open, he said, adding that the county followed the law with the World View deal.

In early 2016, the Board of Supervisors agreed to build a launch pad and headquarters worth nearly $15 million on behalf of World View, and issue debt to pay for it.

Those facilities were recently completed and the company has moved in and begun operations near Tucson International Airport, according to Huckelberry.

Over the course of the 20-year lease, World View would pay back to the county the principal and interest, and a little more, according to memos on the deal from Huckelberry.

According to the lease terms, World View is required to employ 400 people by the 15th year of operation at an average salary of $60,000, Huckelberry has said. The facility is expected to generate $3.5 billion in economic activity over the 20 years, said a study commissioned by the county and Sun Corridor Inc.

When it comes to leasing county-owned property, Arizona law requires the property be appraised, that a competitive auction be held, and that any winning bid be at least 90 percent of the appraised value.

In its court filings, the county acknowledges those requirements and concedes that it did not follow them. However, it argued that a separate statute  one granting economic-development authority to counties, approved by the Legislature in 1994  gave it all the power it needed to pursue the arrangement with World View and supersedes the law regarding leasing of county property.

That law allows Arizona counties to appropriate and spend public monies to promote economic development, which includes leasing or conveyance of real or personal property ... that the board of supervisors has found and determined will assist in the creation or retention of jobs or otherwise improve economic welfare.

Because counties already have the power to lease land, the law would be superfluous if it didnt allow them to do so in a different manner, county court filings read.

There are various ways for a property lease or sale to promote economic development, but none of them are consistent with the leasing statute cited by Goldwater, county attorneys went on to say.

Huckelberry said if Woods ruling stands, it would render the economic-development law meaningless.

He previously told the Star if that law doesnt allow for deals like World View, why have it?

But in her ruling, Woods wrote that if the state intended to exempt counties from leasing requirements with the later economic-development law, it likely would have done so explicitly, as it has done many times for other worthy public purposes.

She also argues that the leasing requirements do not render the economic development law meaningless.

Economic development is not a magic phrase that vanishes taxpayer protections, Manley said in a release praising Woods decision. In fact, when the county conspires to subsidize a private company, that is exactly when you want the most robust protections in place.

With regard to the other three counts, Manley said, how we resolve the rest of the case really depends on what the countys reaction is here.

Huckelberry said the supervisors will be briefed on the ruling in an executive session Tuesday.
PHOENIX  The state House gave preliminary approval Thursday to legislation that would prevent some small towns from vetoing larger towns springing up on their borders.

HB 2088, in essence, says that if the proposed community is larger than the existing town, that town cant stop its incorporation.

The measure is specifically aimed at allowing incorporation of San Tan Valley in northeast Pinal County. Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, said the unincorporated area now has more than 100,000 people living there.

Under normal circumstances, thats more than enough to incorporate.

But Arizona gives existing cities of up to 5,000 a planning area three miles beyond their boundaries. Cities can veto any new incorporations in that area.

For larger cities, that planning area goes out six miles.

The plans for an incorporated San Tan Valley extend within six miles of Florence. And that town of 26,000 has refused to give the go-ahead for the incorporation.

HB 2088 spells out that if the would-be new town has at least 15,000 residents, an existing community with a smaller population would lose its veto rights.

Its very clear people want local control, said Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley. I think its unconscionable that 100,000-plus people can be controlled by 6,000 people, he said, referring to the portion of Florences population that is not in the state prison.

But Rep. Randall Friese, D-Tucson, pointed out that backers of the new town are free to draw proposed boundaries that do not come within six miles of Florence.

Farnsworth dismissed that option, saying a smaller area would be ineffective.

Thursdays 32-24 vote still requires a final roll-call House vote before the measure goes to the Senate.
Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild has invited Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto to visit the Old Pueblo.

The invitation, in a signed letter, came days after the Mexican president cancelled a planned visit to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Trump after Trump declared his intentions to expand the border wall and make Mexico pay for it.

Rothschild invited Pena Nieto to come at his convenience to meet with local and state leaders.

The invitation stresses the strong economic ties the city has with Mexico, while also reminding Pena Nieto the city has long fought against mass deportations as well as the implementation of the states controversial anti-immigration law, SB 1070.

We have touted our citys friendly relationship with Mexico as a selling point for businesses that may wish to locate here, and we welcome Mexican visitors. Building a wall or increasing tariffs sends the wrong message about the importance of the relationship between our two countries, which is based on, among other things, mutual cooperation and respect, the letter to Pena Nieto reads.

Rothschild said it is important that Mexico knows Tucson is opposed to steps taken by the Trump administration.

We want the leaders of Mexico to know that many in our country believe the recent actions are wrong, will lead to negative effects on our economy and that Mexican visitors are always welcome in our city. We remain one mega-region and one mega-economy, Rothschild said.

City Council members support the invitation.

The letter was first suggested by Councilman Steve Kozachik last week, shortly after the proposed in-person meeting between the two presidents was cancelled.

He thanked Rothschild for drafting the letter.

In this state were often alone, but always a leader in terms of recognizing the importance of our relationship with Mexico. Culturally and economically, theres nothing good that can come from building walls. Id have hoped an invitation like this would have come from the governors office, but good for Jonathan for taking the lead, Kozachik said.

Councilwoman Regina Romero said it was important for Tucson to tell Mexican officials what Tucson stands for. It is important to distinguish ourselves from the rest of the state and the Republican Congress, Romero said.

Councilwoman Karin Uhlich said she was pleased the mayor was taking the initiative to reach out to Pena Nieto.

Councilman Richard Fimbres said the current political climate has made some in the community concerned for their safety.

He echoed Uhlichs concerns about how the strained relationship between Mexico and new administration could affect the local economy. He noted former Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup went to several Mexican communities after the passage of SB 1070 to reassure Mexican businesses and tourists.

Councilwoman Shirley Scott said the letter benefits both communities in understanding Tucsons commitment as an immigrant-welcoming city.
About the Authors

Bob Logan is the assistant dean for External and Corporate Relations for UA Science and holds an MBA from the Eller College of Management. He has been at the University of Arizona for 28 years: first as a football coach under Larry Smith and for the past 25-plus years in development, first as associate director of athletics and more recently as the leader of UA Science Development. Under his leadership, UA Science development became one of the largest and most successful on the UA Campus. He is now responsible for corporate relations and technology transfer initiatives.

Paul Eynott is an embedded licensing manager within Tech Launch Arizona and the College of Science led by Executive Dean Joaquin Ruiz. Pauls role as a Licensing Manager within the College of Science is to pro-actively work with College of Science faculty and their inventions, ensuring greater cohesion among College of Science faculty, students, staff and Tech Launch Arizona. Specifically, he advises faculty on how to successfully commercialize IP.
And this is the problem and effects of integrating old, and often restrictive and damaging traditional beliefs and customs, into modern Papua New Guinean society.

Her theme is one that has been discussed, perhaps less eloquently, by many of the writers appearing in PNG Attitude or contributing entries to the Crocodile Prize.

And, like Martyn Namorongs winning essay in 2011, Emmas thoughts continue to resonate and are as relevant today as they were when the essay was written.

WHILE the author of the winning short story in the 2012 Crocodile Prize never again graced the competition, the author of the winning essay, Emma Wakpi, continued to offer some great reading, including a contribution to My Walk to Equality.

The dilemma of how to sort out and retain the good bits and discard the bad, dysfunctional bits that continue to haunt society.

Upon returning from overseas, as an intelligent woman Emma saw the way many of these traditional ways inhibit equality of the sexes and create fear among Papua New Guinean women, including herself.

Beyond that she also sees how these beliefs are holding back Papua New Guinea as a nation, and impeding its progress towards modernity and a better life for both men and women.

__________

The Haunting

EMMA WAKPI

I WAS once told that often beneath the veneer of great beauty and wealth of Papua New Guinea are hidden insatiable debaucheries that destroy. They are manifested in various forms that seem harmless at first but which eventually, if not checked and corrected, will overpower and devastate.

Its five a.m. and were landing in Port Moresby. I look out of the plane window and watch the wakening sun tinge the rising mist a soft gold. I am home after two weeks of workshops in Manila.

As I get up and collect my gear I remember the chivalrous gestures of strangers there; men who opened doors for me, who got up to offer me seats on public transport, male friends who grabbed shopping bags from my hands, carrying them for me - acts that seemed as natural as breathing to them but which made a world of difference to me, giving me a sense of worth and security.

Their courteous recognition gratified and prompted me to also want to treat others with respect. The pleasure which this memory evokes makes me smile and it gets broader at the feeling of belonging that is washing over me as I am surrounded by familiar imagery and faces. Going through Customs I grin at my wantoks, say a good morning and make my way outside. However once outside I lose the grin and file away the memories, for I must now contend with the dawn of my reality.

The light hearted, carefree feeling is slowly rising up out of me like the mist clearing on the tarmac and wariness sets in. My mind and body move into auto pilot.

Careful Emma, smile briefly at those guys, say a quick good morning - keep your eyes down, walk steadily, act like you know the place - its your territory, stride confidently but ooze humbleness - pretend youre brushing lint off your shoulder and steal a covert glance, to make sure no one is following, none look too threatening, okay breathe  walk  smile - youre fine, youve reached your destination  youre safe.

Until I have to detach myself from that secure zone and stealthily make my way to another. Welcome home, I whisper to myself, This is your life. I love my country, I love my people, but I am haunted; and I am wary oh so wary.

There is a menacing overbearing presence that haunts my being every time I step away from my safe zones of home, family, friends and work. Its clammy tentacles reach out and tunnel deep into my heart and mind and it tries its best to strangle any goodwill I might have toward the faceless populace surrounding my peripheries. Sometimes its very obscure, at other times it screams its presence - it wants to possess me, infiltrate my very core and define me by its standards.

It not only haunts me. The entire nation groans and is slowly suffocating beneath its smothering presence. This haunting seems to be rising from within the core of Papua New Guinea, surreptitiously extending its tentacles into every aspect of society and manifesting itself in various forms; whole mountains are being unceremoniously hacked to pieces, river systems defecated upon in the name of prosperity and local people elbowed aside and ridiculed as uncivilised, then officiously patronized through programs and projects and other various handouts to placate dissenting voices that might have echoes of truth.

It causes the country, pregnant with untapped intelligence and aptitude to prematurely abort its potentials and to term them failures haughtily condemning them to the fringes of society. Law and justice are also slowly being strangled by the grip of these clammy tentacles and the nation is slowly being brought to its knees.

There has to be a way to exorcise this haunting before it casts me forever into the abyss of despair and chokes the life out of this nation.

How can I fight an enemy I cant see and cant understand? I know it manifests itself in various forms and it that have me hacking away at them but where is its source and how can I clearly identify it in order to exorcise it? The only clue that I have is that it seems to be reverberating from within the core of this country - its people - including me.

As I step out of my safe zones, I fight the fear within me and rather than rushing past the faceless mass, I now force myself to take the time to look, listen and mingle. As I do this, I notice that amid the war cries, screams and moaning echoing around me a soft hypnotic chant weaves itself in and out of every society and ethnic group within this country. It is so glaringly obvious, it goes unnoticed - the haunting is me  it is you; us

Imprinted deep within my psyche are a set of beliefs that if allowed will ply me until I manifest its decrees with detrimental consequences to myself and the society at large. Throughout this vast country there are core beliefs that seem to be common to all, whether educated or not  from highlands to coast to islands, whether male or female, young or old.

The haunting chants out incessantly from within us. Men are of more value than women  true, true, true. Animistic beliefs are real  true, true, true. Might is right and Big Man mentality rules  true, true, true. Fatalism is a way of life that cannot be changed  true, true, true. Promiscuity and lies are a way of life  true, true, true.

And I listen, and you listen and we allow it to possess and hypnotise us, becoming slaves who stomp rhythmically to its chants until we are jarred awake by some incident that pricks at our conscience. Yet the wave of the chant carries us forward in a death grip marching us toward the precipice to throw us into an abyss of hopelessness that is the manifestation of these chants  AIDS, violence, drug abuse, political upheaval, tribal warfare, police brutality etc., etc.

I realise it is futile to hack away at the manifestations that the haunting produces if I dont address the root beliefs ingrained in me since birth. I must dig deep into the recesses of my heart and mind and pry away the grip of the cursed chant  I must uproot it in order to exorcise it. I cannot let a belief system that is destroying me and my country dictates my life. I have to think for myself and question whether what is pasin is really right.

I must sing a new song of hope and strength  my war cry, men and women are of equal value  true, true, true; science and education will enlighten  true, true, true; humility and integrity will achieve respect  true, true, true; where there is a will there is a way- life can get better  true, true, true; family stability and unconditional love can birth a fulfilling life  true, true, true!

Until I am sure that I have dealt with all these issues that haunt me, I cannot point fingers and lay the blame on others because how I live and interact within the greater society contributes to its overall wellbeing.

Jarred from my death march I fight to break free. Im struggling against the masses and at times almost trampled underfoot but continue to elbow through, and will do so until I die. I cannot accept this reality and march with the horde  life is too short and I dont want to live it out in fear and despair. I must fight.

As I resist and raise my war cry against the chant I hear faint echoes of it rising up from every direction. Struggling to catch a glimpse I find faces among the throng and as we sight each other, understanding dawns and strength is garnered anew and we turn back to resume our stance and to struggle on. I will continue to raise my voice against the chant and keep forging my way, I glimpse hope.

Beliefs beget behaviours resulting in the consequences for the society we live in today. I am told that my country is a beautiful and wealthy country, rich in culture and natural resources. What really lies beneath its surface?
A former 40 year Atheist analyzes Atheism, without resorting to theism, deism, or fantasy.

***

If You Don't Value Truth, Then What DO You Value?

***

If we say that the sane can be coaxed and persuaded to rationality, and we say that rationality presupposes logic, then what can we say of those who actively reject logic?

***

Atheists have an obligation to give reasons in the form of logic and evidence for rejecting Theist theories.
Overall state park attendance increased in 2016, but the total number of visitors at three Cayuga County parks dropped last year.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that state parks drew an estimated 69.3 million visitors last year, a 6 percent increase over 2015. The rise in attendance was attributed to several events at parks throughout the state and favorable weather conditions.

"New York parks are the heart of the tourism economy, and these numbers show that more and more people are discovering their unparalleled natural beauty and recreation opportunities that are available in every corner of the state," Cuomo said in a statement.

The state's three parks in Cayuga County  Fair Haven Beach, Fillmore Glen and Long Point  didn't fare quite as well.

At Fair Haven, attendance went from 297,945 in 2015 to 260,291 last year. Dan Keefe, a state parks spokesman, said the park had to shut off its drinking water system due to repairs, which affected attendance.

Keefe noted that Fair Haven's beachfront pavilion and bathhouses are being renovated. The $2.5 million project was first announced last spring.

Fillmore Glen's attendance decreased from 108,760 two years ago to 96,226 in 2016. Keefe said the park's attendance was hurt by a drought that impacted much of upstate New York. Due to drought, the park's swimming area was closed for most of the summer.

Like Fair Haven, Fillmore Glen received state funding for improvements. The park was awarded $1.2 million to renovate a picnic shelter and bathhouse.

Long Point State Park's attendance was 40,432 last year, down from 42,615 in 2015.
Q: Last summer, on my way to Kilimanjaro, my flight from Washington, D.C., to New York was canceled and rescheduled by JetBlue.

The rescheduled flight didnt work because I would have missed our international flight. I contacted my booking agent immediately, and since JetBlue didnt have any workable flights, I ended up taking a train to New York.

I have been waiting to hear about a refund for this portion of our travel for months. My travel agent has submitted a request for a refund but has not been able to give me any information beyond that hes waiting for a response.

I thought I was waiting on JetBlue, but I found out today that Im actually waiting for Qatar Airways, its partner airline.  Wendy Bell, Takoma Park, Maryland

A: Did you say last summer? Thats a long time to be waiting for a refund, even from an international airline.

I know youve probably heard this before, but it merits repeating: Refunds like yours should happen quickly. An airline is required to forward a credit to your card company within seven business days after receiving a complete refund application. It may take your card up to two billing cycles to credit you, but thats another story.

Your requests to JetBlue ended in disappointment and with conflicting information. The airline sent you a form letter, saying it allows 20 business days for processing and an additional seven-10 business days for delivery of a refund. However, since this was booked through a third party, your agency will need to process the refund according to their procedures and possibly the other airline on the ticket.

Being a partner allows Qatar to sell a ticket from your airport all the way through to your destination, as if its being operated by Qatar (even though your plane says JetBlue on it). The benefit of codesharing is that you can treat both airlines as if they are one  except when they dont feel like it. And in this particular case, maybe Qatar just didnt feel like it.

The money should have been sent to you quickly without anyone asking. You did the right thing by roping your travel agent into this. He should have known that Qatar had your money and asked for it as soon as possible. It looks like he finally figured out where to go for your refund at roughly the same time you contacted me.

Your refund request might have benefited from a little push by you. I list the executive contacts for both JetBlue and Qatar on my advocacy website (elliott.org/company-contacts/qatar-airways/ and elliott.org/company-contacts/jetblue).

Your agent was as frustrated as you were. His airline contact told him that it is Qatars policy to refund tickets within three months. If thats true, then its a violation of Transportation Department regulations.


Top Israeli military figures have slammed as empty and inappropriate the recent anti-Iran remarks made by the Israeli regimes army chief of staff lieutenant general Aviv Kochavi. In his remarks on Tuesday, Kochavi said the Israeli military was revising its attack plans against Iran amid fresh efforts by the new US administration to reverse Trumps Iran policy. He warned the Biden administration against rejoining the 2015 landmark Iran nuclear deal, which was abandoned by the Trump administration in May 2018, saying such a move would be bad and not the right thing to do.

I instructed the army to prepare a number of operational plans in addition to the existing ones, Kochavis said. We are taking care of these plans and will develop them during the coming year. Those who decide on carrying them out, of course, are the political leaders. But these plans have to be on the table, the Israeli general said.

Kochavis remarks were met with trenchant criticisms  even among the critics of the nuclear agreement, which was reached during former President Barack Obamas time in office.

Amos Gilad, a former head of Israeli Military Intelligence, said the threat of military action against Iran was an empty one and such a strike would never happen without the backing of the United States. You think you would carry out a strike without strategic cooperation with the United States? It will never, ever happen, Gilad said in an interview on the 103FM radio station on Wednesday. Understand that these are all just words. He warned that harsh remarks that contradict the position of the new American administration could be seen as defiance by the White House, adding, Thats not how you lead a policy. (PRESS TV)



BEIRUT, LEBANON (8:20 P.M.)  The spokesman for the Iranian armed forces, Major General Abu Fadl Shikaraji, threatened to destroy Tel Aviv in case Israel makes any mistake against Iran. Israels threats are part of psychological warfare, and if they are realistic, then they are illusions, Shkaraji said, adding that the Iranian army will destroy Tel Aviv and erase it if Israel commits any stupidity against our nuclear facilities.

The Israeli army lives in a state of terror and is too weak to carry out its threats on the ground, he said, adding that Israels threat to destroy our nuclear facilities is just illusions and pipe dreams. Shkharji stressed that the Iranian army will destroy the Israeli missile bases as soon as Iran is exposed to any attack, noting that the large part of Irans military capabilities have not been revealed. (AMN)



If the Zionists make a foolish move or any mistake, even the slightest one, against Iran, they will face a reaction that will destroy Tel Aviv and hasten the end of their regime, Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi told Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam news network. He also said the Iranian Armed Forces have been strengthening their defensive capabilities day by day, and that the country is capable of carrying out strategic operations to level the enemy to the ground. (PRESS TV)



These excerpts from Iranian Press TV and Al Masdar News articles capture the current state of play in the ongoing Israeli-Iranian confrontation. Israeli and Iranian verbal chest thumping is at an all time high. If blustery language were bombs, wed be deep into WW III. However, Gilad is correct. Without US strategic cooperation, there will not be a massive conventional air attack on Iran. And that strategic cooperation is unlikely to be forthcoming under Biden, even though there are still plenty of Borg clowns in this administration just itching for just such an attack.

Throughout the Obama and Trump administrations the most probable scenarios involved massive US air and missile strikes against Iran to obliterate Tehrans nuclear infrastructure and bring about regime change. These strikes would be in conjunction with Israeli strikes or reluctantly launched after an insufficient initial Israeli strike. The goal, Israels goal, was always to eliminate Iran as a threat to Israel. There was nothing in it for us other than pleasing Israel and risking WW III.

The goal of US administrations was to prevent this, usually by placating Israel in various ways. No one, not Bush, not Obama, nor Trump wanted the US involved in a war against Iran. However, they were all plagued by swarms of Israel Firsters praying, many literally praying, for war. Obamas approach was the JCPOA. Israel viewed the JCPOA as an existential threat to their goal. Trump had a different approach, trash the JCPOA and embark on a policy of maximum pressure to collapse the regime in Tehran. Like previous administrations, this maximum pressure policy did not envision a massive US air attack.

Israel decided she could work with this. This became apparent when we learned of another Trump Tower meeting in 2016. This one had nothing to do with Russia. It was all about Iran and how the US, Israel, the UAE and the Saudis would force regime change in Tehran. It included a proposal to create a UAE-Saudi anti-terrorist force that would supplant the need for the US to police the region. Not that bad a plan, really. Getting rid of JCPOA was easy. It was an Obama agreement. Of course Trump would scuttle that. The same for selling weapons and ordnance to the Saudis and UAE. Thats profitable business. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani may or may not have been a part of this maximum pressure policy.

An important part of this grand plan was a robust regional strategic realignment. Israels close military cooperation with the UAE began in the 1990s. It was low key, but extensive. Kushners grand Middle East bargain last year just made that official. The UAEs Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) appears to be the true power broker on the Arabian Peninsula rather than the Saudi Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). He was the driving force behind the Abraham Accords. MBZ is a Sandhurst graduate and has built the UAE military and intelligence into competent forces although they are largely foreign. He is measured, pragmatic and sits atop large oil reserves as well as a growing international financial hub. His hand is behind many of the events throughout the Arab world. He is definitely worth watching.

Now back to Israel and Iran. At one time the best Israel hoped for was the unhindered flight of the IAF across Saudi airspace enroute to Iranian targets. That limited hope has morphed into the possibility of the active involvement of UAE and even Saudi bases and forces in an attack on Iran. The addition of fifty F-35s to the UAE Air Force would greatly increase the strike capabilities of the current hundred or so F-16 and Mirage 2000 aircraft. Even though reaching full operational capability would be several years away, I think the IAF would be giddy with anticipation of this possibility in spite of their apprehensions about Arab F-35s. In the meantime, Israel and the UAE are building a joint intelligence base on Socotra. Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia are cooperating with Israel on missile defense, intelligence sharing, reconnaissance (both airborne and at sea) and cybersecurity. This Israeli-Emerati confidence building and integration will continue as long as MBZ sees it as advantageous.

The Saudi war on the Houthis has not helped Israel. Even though the UAE has pulled out of the conflict, Israels closeness to the UAE and growing cooperation with the Saudis have made Israel an active enemy of the Houthi. In response Iran has introduced the Shahed-131 and the more advanced Shahed-136 loitering munition UAVs to the northern Yemeni province of Al-Jawf. The Shahed -136 has an effective range of over 1,200 miles bring southern Israel and Gulf of Aqaba ship traffic within range. In response, Israel has had to station Patriot and Iron Dome AD systems at Eilat - the opening of an unwanted southern front in addition to the constant threat of Hezbollah to the north. This is also whatever missiles and drones Iran may have stationed in Iraq and Syria.

So, how will the Biden administration change Israeli calculations for a strike against Iran? Of primary interest to Israel is Bidens desire to reenter the JCPOA and improve relations with Tehran. As I alluded to earlier, this is anathema to Israel. Will this make Israel antsy enough to strike? I dont think so. Biden is also withdrawing support from the Saudi war in Yemen. He halted logistical and munitions support to the Saudis and paused the effort to provide F-35s to the UAE. The latter may even give MBZ pause for further open military cooperation with Israel. He wants those F-35s. Well never abandon Israel, but can we be relied on to provide logistical, intelligence and strike support to an Israeli initiated attack on Iran? In my opinion, it is no longer a sure thing.

And then there is Russia. The last thing she wants is an expanded war in the Middle East. Russia has recently signed several agreements to bolster Iranians defenses both air defenses and cyber defenses. Lavrov said that the construction of new units of the Bushehr nuclear power plant was discussed during his recent meeting with his Iranian counterpart. He also said "Russia hopes that the United States will return to the JCPOA and that this will be a condition for Iran to implement the JCPOA" and that "Moscow will continue its efforts to ensure that Iran and the United States fully comply with their obligations to the JCPOA in the near future." Russias demonstrated expertise in radio-electronic combat should make Israel think twice about a first strike. Not only would this expertise bolster Irans defenses, but Russia could hamper Israels strike capabilities from her bases in Syria and her ships in the Mediterranean. Russia would not sit this one out.

In my opinion, an Israeli strike on Iran is not imminent. Nor is it in the cards in at least the next several years. Israel has to be sure of a convincing victory. A draw would further damage Israels aura of invincibility. Without that, Israels best and brightest will fly away leaving nothing but Talmudic scholars and angry Palestinians to hash things out. There will be conflict as well as more big talk and selling of wolf tickets like I posted at the top of this article. The political maneuvering will continue. Military capabilities will continue to be developed. The intelligence conflict will continue. The cyber conflict will continue. All this will continue until something breaks one way or the other.

TTG

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2021/01/29/644100/Israeli-figures-slam-Kochavi-empty-rhetoric

https://www.almasdarnews.com/article/iranian-army-spokesman-threatens-to-destroy-tel-aviv-if-israel-attacks-irans-nuclear-facilities/

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2021/01/28/644011/Iran-Israel-threat-Dehqan-Shekarchi
Help India!

By Twocircles.net Staff Reporter

Hyderabad: Renowned economist Dr. Abusaleh Sharif has joined Maulana Azad National Urdu University (MANUU) in Hyderabad as the Professor Chair, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair.

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Prof. Sharif was the chief architect of Sachar Committee which presented a detailed report on the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in India.

As part of the follow-up to the recommendations of the Sachchar Committee report, the University Grants Commission established six chairs in name of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair. The Chair at MANUU started operating in 2011-12.

I am thankful for providing an opportunity to be associated with you as Professor Chair, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair, Prof Sharif said in his letter to Dr. Mohammad Aslam Parvaiz, Vice Chancellor.

In a conversation with Twocircles.net, Mir Ayoob Ali Khan, Media Consultant, MANUU said, The Chair has been established with a view to undertaking research and, if possible publish the same, in the areas in which Maulana Azad had taken an interest. He envisioned India as a leader in the promotion of composite culture. He worked for it all through his life, before independence and thereafter. He also took interest in the promotion of Urdu and Arabic languages. Broadly speaking, India, its history, culture and its future come under the purview of research and documentation of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Chair.

Khan said that this appointment is unlikely to come in the way of Professor Sharifs probable selection as the AMU VC. Those who are considered for such jobs include persons who are still in service of the government or private organisations, Khan added. Professor Sharif is on the short list of five candidates considered for the vice chancellor position at Aligarh Muslim University.

Prof Abusaleh Sharif, an economist, has held several prestigious positions including member-secretary to Sachchar Committee that was established by the prime minister. Since 2011 he is currently serving as Chief Scholar, US-India Policy Institute, Washington DC. Earlier he has served as the Chief Economist for the National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi. From 1994 to 2008 he was Chief Economist, National Council of Applied Economic Research, New Delhi.
Help India!

By Sharjeel Imam and Saquib Salim for Twocircles.net

Faiz has often been seen as a Communist poet by many progressive circles within the sub-continent. The Communist Parties of India have celebrated Faizs poetry, and have used his verses to forge new slogans to further their propaganda. The major left parties regularly use Faizs poetry according to their political needs. His religion i.e Islam is taken to be at best irrelevant, or at worst accidental for his revolutionary poetry. Faiz, for many progressive activists, is a relatable figure, whose revolutionary thought inspires his poetry on social justice. Some of his poems like Bol ke lab azaad hain tere, Hum dekhenge and Ye daagh daagh ujaala are often used to articulate the revolutionary ideas throughout the subcontinent.

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Let us analyse the iconic and popular poem hum dekhenge.

hum dekhenge

laazim hai ke hum bhi dekhenge

woh din ke jiska waada hai

jo lauh e azal mein likha hai

hum dekhnege

[We shall Witness

It is certain that we too, shall witness

the day that has been promised

of which has been written on the slate of eternity]

Anyone who is acquainted with the basics of Quranic discourse, knows the meaning of the term lauh e azal. It has been used in Quran to refer to the eternal slate on which the destiny of the whole universe from start to end has been recorded. Besides, the slate metaphor is used for the Quran to refer to itself, lauh e mahfooz or the protected slate. In this introductory phase, Faiz is declaring that we are to witness that day which has been promised in the eternal slate. One might ask: promised by whom, and promised where? Promised by God, and promised in Quran. This is made explicit by the following stanzas:

Jab zulm-o-sitam ke koh-e-garan

Rooi ki tarah urh jaenge

Hum mehkoomon ke paaon tale

Ye dharti dhar dhar dharkegi

Aur ahl-e-hakam ke sar oopar

Jab bijli kar kar karkegi

[When the enormous mountains of tyranny

blow away like cotton.

Under our feet- the feet of the oppressed-

when the earth will pulsate deafeningly

and on the heads of our rulers

when lightning will strike]

The mountains blow away like cotton, the earth shaking under the feet of humans, or lightning striking the heads: all three are prominent Quranic tropes while describing the inevitable doomsday, which precedes the judgment day.

For instance:

It is the Day when people will be like moths, dispersed; and the mountains will be like wool, fluffed up. [Quran 101:4-5]

When the earth is shaken with its earthquake, and the earth discharges its burdens, and man says, what is [wrong] with it? [Quran 99:1-3]

Jab arz-e-Khuda ke kaabe se

Sab but uthwae jaenge

Hum ahl-e-safa mardood-e-harm

Masnad pe bethae jaenge

Sab taaj uchale jaenge

Sab takht girae jaenge

[From the abode of God

When icons of falsehood will be taken out,

When we- the faithful- who have been barred out of sacred places

will be seated on high cushions

When the crowns will be tossed,

When the thrones will be brought down.]

In this paragraph, Faiz uses the image of a victorious Prophet Mohammad emptying Kaaba of hundreds of idols after the conquest of Makkah towards the end of his prophetic career. The term mardood e haram, i.e. barred out of sacred places, refers to Mohammad and his companion who were forced to leave Makkah 8 years earlier, because of the Islamic rejection of idolatry. The mardood e haram finally defeat the Meccan idolators, come back to the Haram [kaaba], and purify it from idols.

The connections are obvious between the basic Islamic slogan la ilaha illa alla [no deity but the deity] and Faizs imagination of an idol-less world, where those who have been most oppressed by the false deities such as crowns, thrones etc. will finally be vindicated. This idol metaphor has been used in similar ways throughout the revolutionary Urdu poetry, for instance Iqbal invites the Muslims to break the modern idols of Nationalism, Capitalism etc.

In taaza khudaon mein bada sabse watan hai

jo pairhan iska hai woh mazhab ka kafan hai

[of all these recent deities, the nation is the greatest,

and the cloth that makes its clothes is the shroud of religion]

Now lets come back to the last stanza of hum dekhenge:

Bas naam rahega Allah ka

Jo ghayab bhi hai hazir bhi

Jo manzar bhi hai nazir bhi

Utthega an-al-haq ka nara

Jo mai bhi hoon tum bhi ho

Aur raaj karegi Khalq-e-Khuda

Jo mai bhi hoon aur tum bhi ho

[Only The name will survive

Who cannot be seen but is also present

Who is the spectacle and the beholder, both

I am the Truth- the cry will rise,

Which is I, as well as you

And then Gods creation will rule

Which is I, as well as you]

Faiz comes back to the issue of finitude of humans and their societies, and reminds us that besides God, every other entity is going to perish. Following the traditional Islamic discourse, Faiz defines Allah through contradictions, [cannot be seen but is also present], or [who is both the spectacle and the beholder]. In the last two couplets of the poem, Faiz talks about the legendary mystical quote of Islamic history: anal haq i.e. I am the truth. As Quran explicitly rejects religious mediation through any class clerical or otherwise, individuals themselves become careers of religious knowledge and enlightenment in Faizs Islamic imagination.

The poets of Islam, if one goes through a long list across languages, have taken the basic Islamic slogan of tauheed [monotheism] as the central idea, and have praised Muhammad as the greatest revolutionary, and Hussain as the greatest martyr of human history. Belief in Tauheed entails rejection of deities and superstition, and hence it is incumbent on a believer to destroy the false deities like race, class and images. In other words, tauheed defines the ideal by negation. When confronted with the Marxist ideas in post-1917 world, these poets incorporate leftist ideas such as class struggle etc, into their thought and poetry.

Some like Iqbal, whom Faiz considers the last Islamic thinker of his age, engage on the level of ideas with Marxist thinkers and prepare the base for others who follow. Others like Faiz and Hasrat, one of the founders of Communist Party of India, cooperate with Marxists very closely, and were active members of Communist parties. When asked why he supported communist movements in Pakistan inspired by USSR or China, he explained it by pointing out that although Islamic systems are superior to Communism, no Muslim country currently follows a better implementation than the regimes in USSR and China. However, if the Islamic systems are implemented in its true revolutionary spirit, or its faulty implementation is reformed, then results better than the Communist regimes can be achieved.

Faiz was a self-declared Muslim poet. He was brought up in a Muslim family, and trained in Islamic discourses early on in his life. He started memorising Quran, but had to give it up because of health issues, something that he regretted throughout his life. His declared murshid, i.e. spiritual and philosophical guide, was the legendary Muslim scholar and poet Maulana Rum or Rumi. His poetry is imbued with Islamic themes, goals, allegories and metaphors.

The famous poet Qateel Shifai asked Faiz about it in an interview:

Qateel: Islami adab ki tehreek ke silsile mein kuchh farmaiye.

[please tell us something about the movements in Islamic literature]

Faiz: hamare khyaal mein muslim mamaalik mein musalmaan likhne walon ki adabi tehreek islam hi ka hissa hai.

[in my opinion, the literary movements of Muslim writers in Muslim countries is a part of Islam]

In Rudaad e Qafas, Major Ishaq, who was a companion of Faiz, mentions that when they were jailed together, Faiz famously taught Quran and Hadees to the prisoners in the Hyderabad jail. Faiz himself mentions that a colonel explicitly asked him, why he was teaching Quran when he was an atheist. When Faiz clarifies that he is a Muslim, the colonel starts appreciating his Quranic lessons.

His support for the Palestinian cause, which was expressed in Quranic terms [qad jaa al haq wa zahaq al baatil: the truth has arrived, and falsehood perished], his praise for the Iranian students who were bleeding for an Islamic revolution, and his ode to Prophet Muhammad which is his only Persian poem, his grand elegy for Hussain: all stand witness to the centrality of Islamic thought in Faizs poetry and his revolutionary spirit.

An illusion has been created over time, where Faiz is considered an atheist poet, who has no relation with Islam. This was done by the conservative Muslims, who wanted to dent his legitimacy among Muslims. The conservative and literalist Muslims were not afraid of non-Muslim revolutionary thinkers, they are always more afraid of revolutionary trends within Islam, and hence the declaration that Faiz is a kafir or a dahri (i.e. atheist). It is unfortunate that this orthodox Muslim propaganda has succeeded in convincing many Muslims as well as many progressive and liberal circles in the subcontinent that Faiz was indeed an atheist, or at least his revolutionary ideas had nothing to do with Islam. It is high time that this distortion should be rectified.



The authors are currently pursuing their M.Phil at the Centre for Historical Studies, JNU, Delhi.
Help India!

By Twocircles.net Staff Reporter

The first meeting of Indian Union Muslim League held in Malappuram after E Ahameds demise termed the ill treatment of its national president as an insult to the nation.

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Ahameds death was initially not announced due to alleged pressure from the Centre and his children were not allowed to visit him. Besides, the budget was not postponed even after repeated requests by various parties following the death of a former Union Minister.

While addressing media persons, party leader P K Kunhalikkutty said. Centre showed how uncivilised it is by insulting a leader like Ahamed, he said.

Mystery looms over the denial of his children to visit their father. In his final moments. Ahmed was denied his right, the partys national treasurer said.

The party functionaries also criticised the hospital authorities for their unprofessional behaviour and said they would decide whether or not to go ahead with the case against the hospital after discussions with the family of the deceased MP.

The further course of action will be decided at a working committee meeting to be held in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday.

Khader Moideen appointed interim president

IUML national general secretary Khader Moideen will temporarily hold the additional role of president following the passing of Ahamed. A meeting of the party national executive, which is to be held in Chennai later this month, will initiate the process of electing a new president.
Assemblyman Gary Finch thinks Gov. Andrew Cuomo is more worried about running for president in three years than helping New Yorkers.

Finch, R-Springport, issued a statement Thursday questioning Cuomo's priorities. The comments are in response to the agenda Cuomo released this year which includes tuition-free college for low- and middle-income students and a proposal that would require counties to develop plans for sharing services.

"As my colleagues and I review more details about the administration's spending plan, it is becoming clear to me that the governor is more interested in courting progressive voters across the country than in drafting a sustainable, balanced budget for New Yorkers," Finch said.

Cuomo unveiled his tuition-free college plan in January at an event in New York City. Joining him was U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2016 and darling of the progressive movement.

Instead of investing in free college  the program would cost $163 million annually, according to estimates released by the governor's office  Finch thinks the state should be supporting Auburn and other school districts in need of significant support.

"Free college plans may sound good to liberal primary voters in 2020, but what about our high needs public schools that are shortchanged and underfunded?" he said.

Finch added later, "Our Legislature cannot let taxpayers pick up the tab on the governor's presidential ambitions."

Cuomo has been discussed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. The Democratic nominee will likely face President Donald Trump, a Republican from New York.

So far, Cuomo hasn't said he's interested in running for president in three years. He has said in past interviews that he's flattered by such comments, but he's focused on the 2018 election.

Next year, Cuomo will seek a third term as New York's governor. He first took office in 2011.

UPDATED: Rich Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, released a statement responding to Assemblyman Gary Finch's criticisms.

Assembly Republican Gary Finch attacked the Governor's budget using the Republican talking points. It's a shame that after the Governor's bipartisan governing style resulting in six on-time budgets in a row, Assembly Republicans are adopting Washington-style gridlock politics. We understand he is personally upset because they didn't get a pay raise, which would have brought the assemblyman's salary for his part time position up to approximately $100,000. However, New Yorkers in every corner of the state were opposed to it by wide margins and now even members themselves publicly say they were against it!

The facts here are undeniable. Governor Cuomo has had lower spending increases than any Governor in modern history -- lower than the budgets by Republican Governor Pataki that Assemblyman Finch voted for.

He says public schools should get more money. How much more Assemblyman Finch? How much higher do you want to raise taxes. New York currently spends more per pupil than any state in the nation and twice the national average.

Yes, we support scholarships for middle and working class SUNY students to help them reduce costs. These kids, like many of the sons and daughters of Assemblyman Finch's constituents, come from families who make less than $125,000 a year.

College is now a necessity not a luxury. It is in all our best interest to have the most educated workforce -- especially upstate.

We need jobs and the place with the most educated workforce gets the jobs. We want to be New York.
Help India!

By Amit Kumar, Twocircles.net

For the past five and a half years, Yasin Pakitwala has been running a small business; one that he had little clue about. Till 2003, Pakitwala, as his name suggests, ran his family business of making wallets, purse, and carry-bags. All of it came down in 2003, when his brother, Hanif Pakitwala, was named as one of the 21 accused in the 2002 Ahmedabad tiffin blasts case. On May 2002, five bombs went off in the city, injuring 13 passengers. A year later, 21 were picked by the police and were produced in the POTA court.

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Since 2003, the Pakitwalas have watched and suffered along with the families of Habeeb Hawa, Anas Machiswala, and Kalim Ahmed, even as the remaining 17 were all acquitted over a period of eight years. It is difficult to express what our family has been through, said Yasin over the phone in a conversation with Twocircles.net. To be labelled as a terrorist. There is no greater shame for us and our brother, but we had faith in the Indian constitution, he added. During these 14 years, Yasin watched their mother pass away. A year later, Hanifs wife passed away, and their four kids were brought up in the joint family. They will be seeing their father after such a long time. If I can use that word, I am happy for them.

On Wednesday, the SC Bench of Justice Pinaki Ghose and R.F.Nariman acquitted Hanif Paklitwala and Habib Hava and reduced the sentence of Kalim Karimi and Anas Machiswala, directing their release as well.

Yasin added that he was thankful to the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and its president Arshad Madani for providing legal aid to many such Muslims languishing in jails across the country.

The case followed a trajectory that is now a visible trend across terror-related cases in India: arrest a number of Muslim men, and take it from thereon, said Mufti Mohammed Qayyum, another resident of Ahmedabad who was similarly framed in the Akshardham attacks. Muslims are picked up and asked to choose which case they wanted to be implicated in. They tried to do the same with me. They said: pick Godhra or Akshardham, Qayyum added.

Yasin says that the period following the verdict in 2006, when the POTA Court acquitted 12 and convicted five people: Hawa, Pakitwala, Kalim Ahmed, Machiswala and Maulvi Mansuri to 10 years imprisonment, were extremely difficult on the family. Our Ammi and Bhabhijaan died; the business that once employed 30 people lied in ruins. Who wants to do business with a family that has terrorism attached to their name? he asked. We knew that brother could never have done any such act. No one in my family had ever needed to go to the police station, and then this happened, he says.

The five challenged the POTA Court order in the High court. The Gujarat government, which was showing faith in people like DG Vanzara , also challenged the order before the HC seeking the punishment to be enhanced. In 2011, the Gujarat HC acquitted one person-Ahmed Hussain Mansuri-while increasing the punishment for the remaining four to life.

The judgment will reveal more facts about the case, but once again, this has raised a question about the role of judiciary, and how justice is compromised especially in the lower courts. It is quite telling that the HC bench of Justice Jayant Patel and Justice H B Antani found Hanif Pakitwala and Habeeb Hawa to be guilty enough for life imprisonment while the SC believes they did no wrong.

In October, Innocence Network, an all-India collective of individuals and organisations working for the rights of the people wrongfully prosecuted or convicted especially under charges of terrorism organised Peoples Tribunal on Acquitted Innocents. As many as 15 persons who have been acquitted from terror cases gave their testimony during the event. Twocircles interviewed some of the people who had been charged of being die-hard terrorists, and these interviews can be watched here, here and here. During the interaction with media, one the jury members Justice AP Shah, had said that Justice is very costly for minorities in India. The Pakitwalas agree. But as Yasin says, When my brother walks out finally, everyone will know that he had done nothing. He will be 50 years old. His kids have are doing well; and we thank Allah for this day. One never knows what can happen in jail.
New figures published today indicate that North America's legal Marijuana green rush is above the dot-com boom period of the early twenty first century in terms of industry growth. Last year, North America's legal marijuana industry posted a record $9.3 billion in revenue, a thirty per cent increase in revenue on 2015.

New research

The report, published by ArcView Market Research, a prominent cannabis researcher, predicted that the industry could publish sales topping $27.9 billion by 2021, assuming that both legalisation and annual growth continues.

Twenty one per cent of the total population in the USA now live in legal marijuana markets, the executive officer for ArcView Market Research stated. "Sales in Colorado, Washington and Oregon grew an astounding sixty two per cent between 2015 and 2016. As more and more states legalise marijuana, we are likely to see these type of figures across appearing nationwide."

A political issue?

Marijuana legalisation was an issue hotly debated in the recent presidential election, with president-elect Donald Trump suggesting that he may implement more stringent drug policies than his predecessor Barack Obama did. On election day, four states- California, Massachusetts, Nevada and Maine- all voted in favour of legalising marijuana.

Similarly, Alaska, Washington and Oregon voted in favour of recreational marijuana use in 2012.

Cannabis activists in North America have recently stated that they will be handing out thousands of free joints at Donald Trump's inauguration. Nikolas Schiller, co founder of DCMJ-a marijuana awareness group in Washington-said that protesters intend to demonstrate that cannabis reform is not a political issue.

"This is not a protest against Trump. It's an awareness building excercise. It doesn't matter what political persuasion you are."

Regardless of Trump's comments during the election campaign, legalised marijuana is evidently a burgeoning market that will continue to grow if other states follow suit. As the man that defined his campaign on the slogan "make America great again", the legal marijuana industry could, if handled correctly, provide thousands of new jobs across America. The president-elect faces a tough decision when it comes to marijuana: stand by an ideological statement made during his campaign or harness what is evidently a growing industry.
Actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie has criticised President Donald Trump's ban on citizens from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia from entering the United States for ninety days. In an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Jolie expressed anger and sadness at Trump's executive order.

An infringement on human rights

'Americans have shed blood on battlefields across the world to defend the notion that basic human rights transcend culture, geography, ethnicity and religion. Trump's executive order to suspend the resettlement of refugees in the United States has been met with shock and horror around the world,' Jolie stated.

A mother of six, Jolie expressed concern about their future.

'I want the United States to be a safe country for my children to grow up in. Further, I want the United States to be compassionate to other children that may not be so lucky,' Jolie said. Jolie continued: 'It is incumbent on governments around the world to balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. Our response to the threat of terrorism should be measured and should be based on facts, not fear mongering'.

Trump vs Hollywood

Angelina Jolie is the latest in a string of Hollywood actors to criticise Donald Trump's presidency. At the Screen Actors Guild award ceremony, Julia Louis-Dreyfus labelled Trump's executive order as 'un-American' and Seth Rogen suggested the executive order would result in the persecution of thousands of 'innocent refugees'.

Earlier in the year, Hollywood took aim at Donald Trump at the Golden Globe awards. Actress Meryl Streep branded Trump's stance on immigration as inhumane, stating that 'Hollywood is filled with immigrants and simply wouldn't exist without the hard work of immigrants'. At the same ceremony, Jimmy Fallon and Hugh Laurie criticised the President of the United States.

Back in January, Donald Trump fired back at Hollywood, labelling his critics as 'over-rated... Hillary Clinton supporters [that are] bitter she didn't win'. If the last several months have taught us anything, we should expect a response from Trump on Twitter in the next twenty-four hours.
After parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour to give Prime Minister Theresa May the power to trigger article 50, David Davies presented his white paper to the set out the main points of the government's Brexit proposal. Here are the key points arising from the paper which makes 77 pages out of May's Lancaster House speech last month.

Sovereignty and control over UK laws

The document states that although the British parliament has been sovereign throughout UK's EU membership, 'it has not always felt like it due to the pressure from the European Union'.

The paper confirms that the government intends to 'take control of the UK's laws'.

What does it mean for Ireland?

The paper states that the government wish to keep a seamless border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland whilst 'protecting the United Kingdom's immigration system'. The paper does not state how it intends to do this.

Immigration

The paper does not divulge any details on the details plans for EU nationals living in the UK and vice versa, outside of what the Prime Minister stated at Lancaster House. The paper reiterated how immigration is one of the most important factors in negotiations. No specifics are detailed on how the UK intends to control immigration. However, there is a suggestion that businesses and communities will be consulted on the matter.

EU trade and the single market

David Davies stated that he wishes the UK and the EU have 'frictionless trade agreement that is beneficial for all involved'. The government want to be outside the customs union but wishes to create a new customs agreement. There is little expansion beyond that.

Security and crime cooperation

As May stated previously, the UK and EU will, ideally, continue to work together to combat terrorism.

'We remain committed to EU security and wish to contribute to security policy,' the paper states.

Orderly exit

The document echoes the sentiment of recent Theresa May statements in the sense it urges the EU to deliver a 'smooth and beneficial exit from the European Union that will require a coordinated approach on both sides'. The document states that it is in no one's interest to be in limbo for years longer than necessary.
The Trump administration has warned Israel not to build new settlements. Throughout his campaign, President Donald Trump offered unflinching support to Israel and their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump has in the past suggested that he would help Netanyahu with the construction of more Israelite settlements than his predecessor Barack Obama.

A statement released by the White House claimed that the Trump administration does not think that the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, however, they do believe that expanding on current settlements or building entirely new ones may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

Trump will be meeting with Netanyahu on 15 February to discuss this

Trump tweeted that the treatment of Israel, which he describes as such total disdain and disrespect, needs to stop.

He added, that Israel used to have a great friend in the U.S., but....... He continued his sentence after this extended ellipsis in a second tweet that began: not anymore. He claimed that the beginning of the end of the United States friendly relationship with Israel was the horrible Iran deal. He also blamed recent development with the United Nations for the breakdown of the relationship.

Just before his inauguration, Trump tweeted, Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching! which gave right-wing Israelites hope that the new President would help them with settlement construction unconditionally. The new settlements are needed because the West Bank and the east of Jerusalem were occupied and captured by Israel during the 1967 war.

Netanyahu wants the first new settlement in the West Bank to begin construction as soon as possible. He has promised this to his people, and they have gotten hopeful in the wake of over twenty years without a new settlement. According to the State Department, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called up Netanyahu on Thursday, although it was not mentioned whether or not the statement from the White House or Trumps claims were discussed.

Its still too early to tell how White House statement will affect settlement construction

When asked about whether or not the statement from the White House would have a major impact on the future construction of settlements in Israel, Israels UN ambassador Danny Danon said, Its still too early to tell. He said that he would not label this as a U-turn, but said that the issue is clearly on their agenda, referring to the Trump administration.

He said in an interview with Israel Radio that the issue will be discussed when Netanyahu meets Trump in Washington.

Israel has plans to build 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank. These were the third such plans to be announced since Trump was inaugurated two weeks ago. Trump has being showing many signs of backing out of his promises to Israel, specifically his promise to move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, where it is currently in Tel Aviv. Presidential candidates seem to always promise this because it makes them look good, but they never actually do it once theyre in the Oval Office, because no one wants to flare up tensions in Israel.
The European parliament has urged the European Union to block Donald Trump's likely choice of ambassador to the EU. In an unprecedented move, the main political parties in the European parliament have described Ted Malloch, Trump's likely pick for the role as ambassador to the European Union, as hostile and malevolent. If Malloch is rejected by the EU, the move could precipitate a huge diplomatic row between the USA and the EU.

Malloch openly states he wants to bring down the EU

Ted Malloch, a successful businessman who vehemently supported Britain's departure from the European Union, has been interviewed by Donald Trump for the position and, given Trump's anti-EU sentiment, is likely to be appointed by the President of the United States.

When Malloch was questioned by the BBC on the subject of the European Union, he stated: 'I have had a previous career in a diplomatic position where I was part of the team that helped bring down the soviet union. I think that there is another union that needs taming'.

'A history of denigrating statements'

In the same interview, Malloch confirmed Trump, who also supported Britain's departure from the EU was not a supporter of the EU, stating the President perceives it as 'supranational and undemocratic'. Manfred Weber and Guy Verhofstadt stated that Malloch possessed a 'malevolence towards the values that the European Union holds dear'. Verhofstadt and Weber, in a letter seen by the Guardian, state that Malloch has a history of making 'denigrating statements' about the EU.

If Malloch is appointed, he could undermine crucial transatlantic relations.

Similarly, a letter from Gianni Pittella, the leader of the Socialist and Democrats group, branded Malloch's statements as 'outrageously shocking'. Pittella continued: 'Malloch openly stated that he wishes to see the fall of the European Union by comparing it to the Soviet Union. We believe that ignoring Malloch's stance on the European Union would undermine our relationship with the USA and could be a precursor to the spread of populism in Europe'.
Today saw the government introduce its Brexit White Paper, a 12-point plan to take us out of the EU. But what are the points and how will they affect us going forward. This afternoon Brexit minister, David Davis was taking questions in parliament about the plan, but there were many MPs who were disappointed with the lack of time given to have a proper debate.

They included many Labour MPs who voiced their disappointment over the release date of the detail that they have been calling for, since the leave vote last year.

The 12-point plan

1. Providing certainty and clarity - Proving clarity and certainty of what the government are doing for Britain within negotiations.

2. Taking control of our own laws  Bringing an end to the jurisdiction of the Courts of Justice of the EU within the UK.

3. Strengthening the Union  We will secure a deal that works for the entire UK  Making sure that Scotland, N. Ireland and Wales get the best deal, securing our relationship with the Union.

4. Protecting our strong and historic ties with Ireland and maintaining the Common Travel Area  Ensuring our historical ties with Ireland are maintained and practical solutions to maintenance of the Common Travel Area.

5. Controlling immigration  Ensuring that Britain has control over who crosses our borders.

6. Securing rights for EU nationals in the UK, and UK nationals in the EU  ensuring that the state of EU nationals is secured for those already living in the UK and securing the Britons who live within the EU.

7. Protecting workers rights  Workers rights to be protected and improved.

8. Ensuring free trade with European markets  Aiming to create new ambitious free trade agreements with the EU, and to create mutually beneficial custom arrangements.

9. Securing new trade agreements with other countries  Aiming to deliver the best and most ambitious free trade agreements globally.

10. Ensuring the UK remains the best place for science and innovation  Remaining top nation for science research and innovation is a priority.

11. Cooperating in the fight against crime and terrorism  The government will continue to work with the rest of Europe to preserve security and fight terrorism.

12.

Delivering a smooth, orderly exit from the EU - The government is seeking a phased process of implementation, where both the EU and the UK prepare for a new relationship."

Questions raised

David Daviss responses to the questions were general avoidance of the questions, he even mustered anger when it was pointed out that the plan doesnt mention EU nationals already living in the UK, when it does. The 77-page document released today, just before parliament left little time for ministers to read and analyse what the detail entails. But above is the overview of that document and more detail will slowly emerge.

For instance, it mentions that the Great Repeal Bill, announced in parliament on the 10th October 2016, will begin the process of removing the European Communities Act 1972.

This means that in the future, the government of the day could remove or add any rules pertaining to workers rights. In theory, it would allow the government to remove workers rights to paid holiday etc. The danger is that this government could use it to deregulate the markets and create a tax haven within Britain.

The other issue is why wasnt this published last year, when Labour, Lib Dems, SNP etc. plus many leave and remain supporters have been calling for it. Why the day after the article 50 vote? This was a political game played by the Tories and our nations future is at stake with a questionable plan at best, more details will follow.
The great, great wall along the southern border between the United States and Mexico was one of the first things that Donald Trump announced he would do as President. Now he wants to kick off construction as soon as possible, and hes still convinced the Mexican Government will pay for it, despite the fact the US is actually paying for it and the Mexican president is adamant he wont be reimbursing them. Now, the prime minister of Israel is getting involved in the debate over the controversy as Benjamin Netanyahu has released a statement about the wall.

Netanyahu unequivocally supports the wall

Netanyahu did not beat around the bush in announcing his support for the wall. He tweeted: President Trump is right. I built a wall along Israels southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea. Something tells me this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the US President and the Israeli Prime Minister.

Trump and Netanyahu have a meeting coming up to discuss the building of settlements across Israel, and Trump has made many promises to improve the tumultuous political situation in Israel and bring back a friendly relationship between the US and Israel, which he may or may not keep.
In a rousing speech to the House of Commons, Ken Clarke, MP for Rushcliffe, Nottingham, for over forty years, declared that he would be voting against Theresa May's Brexit bill on Wednesday evening. In the impassioned address, Clarke accused his party of becoming both anti-immigration and so Eurosceptic Enoch Powell would be surprised.

Baffling Brexit

Clarke, famously anti-referendums throughout the entirety of his political career, declared that MPs should follow their conscience rather than their constituents. Clarke, a former Chancellor, said: 'Brexit is baffling the United Kingdom's friends abroad.

Leaving the European Union would be a terrible move for our children and our grandchildren'.

Naturally, Clarke's speech was greeted with heckling and tutting, but Ken Clarke fired back. Sarcastically, Clarke fired shots directly at the Prime Minister: 'I fully admire my colleagues that have suddenly become enthusiastic Brexiteers due to the result of the vote on the 23rd June. Unfortunately, I have yet to see the light'.

'Vote with your conscience, not your constituents'

Last week, Jo Stevens, Labour MP, resigned due to her opposition to Brexit. Ken Clarke is the first Conservative MP to publically oppose the party whip issued by Theresa May. Furthermore, Clarke continued to attack the notion that anti-Brexit MPs should vote in agreement with their constituents.

'I have fought countless elections and I have always advocated voting for the Conservative Party. However, the British public have not always voted for the Conservative Party. Never have I been told that it was my democratic duty to support the policies of the Labour Party because it is my democratic obligation'.

Theresa May's Brexit bill will go in front of the House of Commons this evening after today's PMQs.

Despite Clarke's speech, the bill will likely pass through parliament unamended due to Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May both issuing party whips. The largest opposition to the bill will likely come from the Scotish National Party, who are expected to use a Brexit vote in parliament to leverage another Scotish independence referendum.
The NHS is deepening further into crisis with trusts having to drastically cut the costs of running up and down the country. But MPs have recently urged that health tourists should be charged up front, rather than the process of chasing the debt from them. Recently a Public Accounts Committee report stated the system used for recouping costs from overseas patients is chaotic.

The 2015/16 NHS budget was 116.4 billion and after a Spending Review itll increase to 133.1 billion by 2020/21, however, the increase will be mostly swallowed up by rising prices.

Health tourism

There are two categories that health tourism can be split into, normal use  when foreign visitors have ended up being treated. Deliberate use  Those travelling specifically for free treatment and use of the NHS is more difficult to quantify.

Deliberate health tourists who travel for expensive surgery thatll go straight to A&E is estimated to be around 60-80 million. There are those with access to more routine procedures who have been able to register with a GP and visit on a regular basis, estimates suggest 50  200 million, including British expats who may be chargeable but have an active GP registration. The report commissioned by the Department of Health (DH) makes it clear its impossible to estimate with confidence.

Overall estimates suggest 110  280 million per year.

Normal use health tourists consist of those who are here for a set period who have been treated by the NHS, costing 1.8 billion, but only hospitals are required to charge overseas visitors, meaning around 500 million is recoverable. Much of the costs of non-EEA visitors and migrants are attributed services such as A&E, GPs or others that dont charge, the same report estimates that around 300 million are related to irregular migrants who have no means to pay.

Worth the costly recovery?

Recent estimates by the DH cost the recovery at 18 million, but these estimates were being compared to what costs were being recovered at the time, 15-25 million. In July 2014, the government introduced new measures to recoup 500 million a year by 2017/18, including better identification of EEA patients and recharging home countries, a health sur-charge for non-EEA migrants who have a 6-month plus visa and better identification and recovery from non-EEA patients.

NHS trusts have an estimated 2.45 billion debt, 2015/16, an increase from 894 million in 2014/15, with NHS net deficit at 1.851 billion. The 500 million a year target is not going to offset the increase of costs and interest payments to the private debt owed by the NHS due to some services being sold to private contractors.

NHS ID scheme

With a group of MPs calling for urgent action to tackle health tourism and the chaotic system, the government have been advised to act with caution before they choose to extend the dubbed NHS ID scheme, that requires patients to provide two different forms of ID to prove eligibility for free care. The scheme could lead to eligible patients to not visit the hospital because of the hassle to seek treatment as It is difficult to prove eligibility.

The scheme was piloted in a hospital trust in Peterborough, an area with a high number of immigrants.

Patients were asked to provide their passports and a utility bill, but the committee stated these documents do not demonstrate entitlement to free NHS care. MPs also pointed out that some UK-based patients would struggle to provide the documents. The report recommends the extension of NHS numbers and electronic patient records use. It stated that it could help tackle the low levels of cost recovery and the problem that some people find it hard to show documents that indicate their entitlement.

The current government have set the annual budget increase for the NHS at approximately 1% annually but the real increase of costs is around 6% per year, health tourists are a source of blame for failures to properly fund the NHS and its services.
With a new area code taking effect next month, the state Public Service Commission is implementing mandatory 10-digit dialing in 18 counties, including all of Cayuga County, beginning Saturday, Feb. 11.

The 680 area code will be provided for new phone numbers in the existing area covered by the 315 area code. Because of the introduction of a new area code in March, all calls will require 10-digit dialing  the area code and the phone number.

For calls to other area codes, callers must dial 1, then the 10-digit number.

The state Public Service Commission voted in 2015 to establish a second area code for the central New York region. The additional area code was needed because, according to the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, there would be a short supply of central office codes  the first three digits in a phone number following the area code.

After the commission voted, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator announced that the second area code would be 680.

The area affected by the change covers a large swath of upstate New York, including Cayuga, Cortland, Onondaga, Oswego, Seneca and Wayne counties.

The state Public Service Commission advised residents in the 315 region that current telephone numbers won't change. Calls that are considered local now will remain local calls. The price of a call and other phone services won't change due to the new area code, the commission said.

The exception to the 10-digit dialing rule is 911 and other three-digit services.
The United States (US) Defence Secretary James Mattis has said that any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response, as reported on the BBC. But despite this, there are certain questions to ask. First of all, why is there such hostility between N. Korea and the US? Secondly, is it not hypercritical that some nations are allowed to possess nuclear weapons whilst others are not? And thirdly, will North Korea actually use its nuclear arsenal against others?

Why the hostility?

Before we proceed, let us examine the situation that we face.

The comments made by Mattis have come whilst he has been visiting South Korea. He expressed his concern at the "repeated" missile and nuclear tests carried out by N. Korea. It is a concern that may the region may be destabilised. So, in answering the first question, why is there such hostility between North Korea and the US? The real concern of the West dates back to last century after the United Nations (UN) split the Korean peninsula into two countries at the end of the World War II. At the time trusteeship was given to both the US and the USSR, according to the Foreign Policy Journal website. However, after the breakdown of relations between the two countries, it led to the emergence of the Cold War, with the USSR establishing a "permanent communist government" as a result in North Korea.

However, after Kim II-sung declared the north part of the country the 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' (which the USSR and China supported), with a fear of a "domino-effect of communism, war broke out between the two Koreas in 1950. Despite agreements in 1994 between the US and North Korea, over the years relations have remained strained.

It is as a result of such concern over the years that the US has sought good relations with South Korea and, as reported on the Huffington Post, they have become "true partners".

Is there not an element of hypocricy?

Let us now focus on the second question. Whilst is it alright for nations in Europe and the West to possess a nuclear arsenal and not countries such as Iran and N.

Korea? The problem it seems in countries such as the United States and Britain is what their nuclear weapons are used for. For the nations in the West, their nuclear capabilities are to ensure stability, peace and security in the region. They do not see that as being the case, for Iran or North Korea for example. The concern for an Iranian nuclear arsenal is the rhetoric that they have used. They have claimed on numerous occasions, as the Daily Mail stated, that they want to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth". Similarly on countless occasions North Korea has made threats against others. In June 2012, as reported on the BBC, the North Korean army warned that artillery was aimed at South Korea and threatened a "merciless sacred war".

Even before that, a decade earlier, after US President George W Bush named North Korea as part of the 'axis of evil', Pyongyang said that it would "mercilessly wipe out the aggressors". It is as a result of these comments that there is so much concern at North Korea possessing or testing nuclear weapon.

Will North Korea actually use what they possess?

To be honest I do not think that they will. Nobody wants World War III; it benefits nobody and will just cause carnage. But I suppose they enjoy being seen as a threat; it shows their power in the region.
A retail chain with stores in Cayuga County is planning to add locations and create 340 new jobs in New York this year.

Dollar General announced the new jobs as part of a nationwide store growth plan. The retailer is planning to add 1,000 stores across the U.S. and create approximately 10,000 new jobs.

The job growth will increase the company's total workforce by 9 percent and will be the largest one-year employee hike in the company's 78-year history, according to a news release.

"These new jobs reflect the organization's commitment to seize growth opportunities and further deliver Dollar General's value proposition of everyday low prices on quality merchandise to customers in 1,000 new locations in 2017," said Todd Vasos, Dollar General's CEO.

Vasos added that when he joined the company in 2008, it had approximately 72,000 employees. By the end of the 2017 fiscal year, Dollar General could have more than 130,000 employees.

"It really is an exciting time to be a Dollar General employee," he said.

The number of new stores in New York wasn't released. The company also didn't provide information about where the new stores will be located.

In Cayuga County, Dollar General operates locations in Auburn, Cato, Moravia and Weedsport.

Dollar General has stores in neighboring Onondaga County, including a location in Elbridge.

Those interested in jobs with Dollar General may visit the company's website at dollargeneral.com/careers.

"This year's continued growth presents numerous opportunities for candidates looking to begin and develop their careers at one of America's fastest growing retailers," said Bob Ravener, the company's executive vice president and chief people officer.
Viewers who tuned into Kellyanne Conway's Thursday night interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC were left scratching their heads after the senior counselor to President Trump attempted to justify the president's controversial executive order on immigration by citing the bowling green massacre.

If you don't recall that dark day in American history, don't feel bad-- nobody else does, either. That's because there is no such thing as the Bowling Green Massacre.

The massacre that wasn't

Conway stated to Matthews that most people would be surprised to learn that President Barack Obama enacted a six-month ban on Iraqi refugees after two radicalized Iraqis came to the U.S.

and were "the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre."

But the real face-palming moment occurred when Conway concluded her remark by saying, "Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

Naturally, it's difficult for the press to cover an incident that never actually took place, and Twitter immediately erupted into a feeding frenzy, with Bowling Green Massacre becoming one of the night's trending topics.

Alternative facts or innocent mistake?

While Conway's faux-pas drew jeers and insults on social media, in all probability she just mixed up her facts.

In 2011, two men from Iraq-- Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi-- were sentenced to prison for attempting to provide aid to a terrorist organization.

Although the two men were residing in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at the time of their arrest on charges of providing material support to al Qaeda, they never launched an attack on American soil. And they certainly never masterminded a massacre. The aforementioned event led Barack Obama to revise vetting procedures for Iraqi nationals.

Of course, far-left media outlets weren't as forgiving, and were quick to cry "fake news". Mother Jones, the ultra-liberal website, stated: "Honest to God, these people will say anything. Soon we're going to be hearing about the poisoning of the town reservoir in Terre Haute that killed thousands but was covered up by the Clinton Foundation."

Meanwhile, Vox.com covered the story by quipping, "It is, I suppose, possible that Conway was referring to the other Bowling Green Massacre, which is a local haunted house."

Conway has not yet clarified her remarks regarding the massacre that wasn't, and it remains to be seen what effect, if any, this faux-pas will have on Trump's executive order on immigration.

What also remains to be seen is whether the liberal pundits and journalists who jumped all over Kellyanne Conway Thusday night will be as quick to do the same the next time a Democrat gets his or her facts mixed up.
A man who was charged in December with committing a burglary in Locke was charged Wednesday in connection with a second burglary.

Scott M. Stockton, 29, was charged with second-degree burglary on Feb. 1, according to the New York State Police in Auburn. State police said a burglary in Locke was reported on Sept. 28.

State police said Stockton, who had already been charged for a different burglary in Locke that allegedly took place in September 2016, was brought to Locke Town Court Wednesday and remanded to Cayuga County Jail.

Back in December, the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office was looking for Stockton in connection to a different burglary in Locke that took place in September.

Detective Sgt. Fred Cornelius said the sheriff's office had received information saying Stockton was in South Carolina. They contacted authorities in South Carolina who put Stockton in custody on Dec. 12. He was extradited back to New York and was brought to Cayuga County Jail on Dec. 20, Cornelius said, on charges of second-degree burglary, menacing, endangering the welfare of a child and petit larceny.
Over the last two weeks that Donald Trump has been in the White House, the administration has been in a war of words with the media. After Presidential Counsel Kellyanne Conway used the term "Alternative Facts" to excuse the falsehoods coming out of the admissions, the rift between Trump and the press has only gotten worse.

Conway controversy

While Donald Trump has only been the President of the United States for two weeks, he's already making drastic changes and major moves in the White House. The most controversial has been his recently signed executive order that critics have labeled a "Muslim ban." The executive order in question restricts travel to and from seven countries in the Middle East, while blocking citizens of those areas from entering the United States.

Not long after the news broke of the executive order, protests sparked across the country, though the Trump administration refuses to back down. During an interview with MSNBC on Thursday, Kellyanne Conway appeared to get caught up with more "alternative facts," as reported by The New York Daily News on February 3.

Joining MSNBC host Chris Matthews for an exclusive interview, Kellyanne Conway was pressed on the aforementioned "Muslim ban." As part of her excuse and talking point to defend Donald Trump, the former campaign manager cited a nonexistent mass shooting terrorist attack. "I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," Conway said.

Continuing, Conway claimed "Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered." Despite her claims, the alleged "massacre" in Bowling Green, Kentucky never occurred.

Kellyanne Conway defends Trump's travel ban by referencing 'Bowling Green massacre'  which never happened https://t.co/8ka4bUGFBR pic.twitter.com/isy6oEkHbQ  New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 3, 2017

Conway clarification

As of press time, the White House has not responded to the false claims made by Kellyanne Conway, but it's possible that she was referring to an attack against United States troops in Iraq, which was carried out by Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan, who had previously lived in Bowling Green.

However, no terrorist attack was carried in the city by the two men, or anywhere else in the United States. In addition, the "ban" Conway noted in regards to former President Obama's action in 2011 was isolated to one country, Iraq, and was not as extreme as what Trump has signed off on.
After Mike Hager claimed earlier this week that his sick mother died as a result of President Trump's executive order on immigration, social media exploded with accusations that Trump was responsible -- albeit indirectly -- for the woman's demise. The same Michigan-based news outlet which originally published the story now reports that Hager's claim was a complete lie.

Man blames Trump for mother's death

Hager, an American citizen born in Iraq, told Detroit's FOX 2 on January 31 that while he and his family were waiting in line at the airport in Iraq, he was informed that he was allowed to board the plane but that his mother, a green card holder, was forced to stay behind.

According to Hager, he had to put his mother, Naimma, back on a wheelchair and call for an ambulance because she was so upset. Naimma later died and Hager claimed that if not for Trump's executive order, his mother would still be alive.

FOX 2 published Hager's claim on January 31 and, while the debunked original story still appears on the FOX 2 website, it now includes a retraction added on February 1, stating:

"The leader of a mosque in Dearborn has confirmed to FOX 2 that a man who claimed his mother died in Iraq after being barred from returning to the United States under a ban instituted by President Trump this weekend, lied to FOX 2 about when her death occurred."

She actually died five days before executive order went into effect

Hager's mother died five days before Trump's executive order was put into action, claims Imam Husham Al-Hussainy, who leads the Dearborn, Michigan, mosque Hager attended.

According to the Imam, Hager's mother suffered from a kidney disorder and had been receiving treatment in Michigan before she traveled to Iraq to visit relatives. She passed away on January 22.

FOX 2 attempted to contact Mike Hager after the revelations made by the Imam of the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center, but Hager has thus far declined to comment.

Under Trump's executive order, travelers from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen and Somalia are prohibited from traveling to the United States for 90 days.
Who are the three men who are being charged with treason?

Two of those charged, who have been identified as Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev, were former employees of Russia's FSB intelligence agency and had been employed as cyber-security experts. The third has been identified as Ruslan Stoyanov, who was an executive at the anti-virus software firm Kaspersky. The identities of the three men were released to the public by their lawyer, Ivan Pavlov, who is said to be working for one of the men.

All three have been accused and charged with working with interests to help United States intelligence.

While there has been some speculation that their involvement could have been connected to controversy concerning hacking during the U.S. election, the Kremlin has come out to deny this claim. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman of Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has also denied the allegations in a released statement, also denying Russian involvement with hacking entirely.

According to reports, there have been other recent arrests concerning similar charges, but involving different individuals. A former journalist and civilian, Vladimir Anikeev, has also been arrested.

Various claims are being made, with little revealed

Due to the legal proceedings involved with a treason case, much of the details concerning the charges have been concealed from public knowledge.

It is likely that the identities of the three men would be unknown to the media had it not been for the lawyer's statement. According to Russian reports, Mikhailov had been detained while wearing a bag over his head, likely to conceal his identity.

That said, various anonymous sources have made various claims over the arrests.

According to a released statement from the BBC, there is even speculation that the hackers may have even committed voting fraud within the United States. Some of the claims, however, suggest that the arrests concerned more domestic issues, and that the connection to the United States may have been taken out of context. In on example, one such anonymous claim linked the three men to the hacking group Shaltai Boltai, which refers to the fairy-tale character of Humpty Dumpty, that is known to publicly publish the e-mail archives of various Russian government officials. Anikeev was also believed to have been attached to the hacking group in the anonymous claims.
What a difference an administration makes. President Donald Trump does not suffer from the delusion that he can do for Iran what Nixon did for China, bring it back into the community of nations with quiet diplomacy. Thus when Iran violated United Nations resolutions by conducting ballistic missile tests, the trump administration was ready with targeted sanctions against certain individuals and organizations involved in the development of those weapons delivery systems. The White House is also taking a dim view of Tehrans continued support for terrorism and is acting accordingly.

Significantly Trump has not pulled the trigger on leaving the nuclear weapons deal. The strategy seems to be to build a case that Iran has violated the agreement and thus provide a reason for abrogating it. The onus would be on Tehran and not the United States.

What happens next largely depends on what Iran does. The Trump administration has not taken any option off of the table, including military action. The policy is a smart one, since the United States may have to launch a strike against Iranian nuclear sites if (when) the Islamic Republic is found to be cheating on the nuclear arms deal. One imperative of Middle East policy is that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons at any cost.

Nukes in the hands of the theocratic rulers would be like placing a machine gun in the hands of an ISIS terrorist and placing him in the middle of a crowded school yard.,

Trump will also likely start forming ties with Iranian opposition groups, providing them with support, with the long-term goal of undermining and, ultimately, overthrowing the regime.

Having an Iran run by a secular, democratic government would go a long way toward establishing stability and peace in the Middle East.

Israel and the Sunni Arab states are euphoric with this turn of events. They had lived in terror for the past eight years under Obamas policy of appeasement of Iran. Ironically, fear of Iran had brought Israel and her traditional enemies, even Saudi Arabia, together for mutual support. This development is something the Trump administration should build upon as well.
The Secretary of State is the most important and influential position of any Administration and is now even more so with a new President lacking direct knowledge of the workings of government and public Administration. In other countries the position in known as the Foreign Minister and has the responsibility to putting into action the countrys policies with both allies and adversaries. With the controversial start of Donald Trumps Presidency the position has become more important than it had been in decades.

From the Board room to the Oval Office

When President #Donald Trump nominated the C.E.O. of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State the decision was guaranteed to raise eyebrows not only in the United States, but also around the world, as the nomination was proof of the determination of the new President to bring big business practices into the Oval Office.

The confirmation hearings dealt with possible conflicts of interest due to his previous position and lack of direct diplomatic experience. While he has dealt with many of the worlds leaders in the past these have been business related encounters and now after the confirmation of his new position the future meetings with them will be vastly different in tone and language from those the previous encounters.

The State Department which he will lead is not fully prepared for its new Secretary after the resignations of a number of senior personnel at the direction of the White House. These positions have yet to be filled and currently many others are still held by former Obama staff in anticipation of the new nominations. This is a normal situation for changes of Administration, but another factor has marked the beginning of his Term and it signals potential problems for his tenure.

The memo of dissent signed by over 900 Diplomats addressing the consequences of the ban on Moslem immigrants from seven Middle East countries shows that the new Secretary of State will also have to build bridges within his Department. The memo is a clear sign of dissatisfaction from senior diplomats about policy developments which cannot be dismissed simply by a comment from White House Spokesman Sean Spicer that they can leave the Department.

The President and the Secretary

Naturally the other fundamental factor in Tillersons new position is the man he will be representing in his term of Office. President Donald Trumps behaviour is an unknown factor in high level Diplomacy and his lack of a detailed, directed political agenda, particularly in foreign affairs could cause difficulties in negotiations with other countries, whether they are allies or rivals.

The last few days have seen a public disagreement between the new President and the Prime Minister of staunch ally Australia regarding an agreement with the Obama Administration to swap refugees between the two countries. This clash, together with the public disagreements between President Trump and neighbor Mexico made headlines around the world as it was the cause of discomfort for other allies for future dealings with America.

Developments overnight have shown the changeable nature of President Trumps foreign policies. The first was the statement to Israel that new settlements will not be helpful to the peace process despite apparent signals that he would support such moves. The second was the statement by Sean Spicer that there is no intention of making significant changes to the sanctions against Russia at this stage.

Secretary of State Tillerson and President Trump will need to work closely over the next four years, but the deciding factor to the success of this rapport will not come from the lack of diplomatic experience, or the negotiating skills of the ex C.E.O. The factor that will determine the success of the partnership will be the capacity of the new Secretary of State in ensuring that the President maintains strict, clear policies. The first two weeks of the Administration has shown that this will not be easy.
Like any new American Secretary of State Rex W Tillerson finds himself dealing with a number of foreign allies that in the past supported the United States and formulated their own foreign policy according to the general directions set by Americas President. This situation has changed with the new Administration as President #Donald Trump has as yet to reveal a precise foreign policy direction for the next four or eight years. In addition, changes in national politics in a number of countries will lead to new directions for American and international foreign policy that the new Head of the State Department will have to navigate.

Europe

Europe will continue to be a major playing field for American diplomacy and the changes to the continents leadership must be taken into consideration to ensure close cooperation with the United States.

The result and consequences of last Junes Brexit vote in Britain and this years national elections in France, Germany and probably even in Italy will mean that the European Union will be reviewing its policies in the near future. These changes will be in reaction to the election results, but also in response to the continents immigration crisis and the subsequent rise of populist groups in a number of countries as a result of the arrival of new immigrants, particularly from Moslem countries.

In addition, the role of NATO will need to be reviewed in the light of President Trumps declarations on its effectiveness and naturally in relation to any changes of policies, both American and European, towards Russia. This job will now be more complicated for Secretary Tillerson as he will have to negotiate with the European Union and Great Britain separately.

Middle East, Asia and the Americas

Israel and Australia are long term allies of the United States. Although this is unlikely to change in the future, the recent strained phone call between Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and President Donald Trump, combined with yesterdays statement about limiting new Israeli settlements mean that secretary tillerson will need to act that to ensure that relations with the two countries remain friendly and cooperative.

Both countries are important pieces in Americas diplomatic chess games in the Middle East and Asia and thus the United States cannot afford to allow these relationships to become strained.

Secretary Tillerson will also need to work with the major Moslem allies such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan to resolve the problems with the refugees and to limit Russian influence in the Middle East. At the same time, Americas allies in Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan will look to the United States for leadership in the light of the Chinas military expansion and the constantly unstable behaviour of North Korea.

Finally America will need to take care of its own backyard and not only because of the currently strained relations with Mexico over the border wall which led to the cancellation of the White House visit by its President Enrique Pena Nieto.

Countries such as Brazil and Argentina can be valuable allies for the United States, but History has shown that they can easily become adversaries if the not treated correctly.

Allies are important to long term American strategies and therefore Secretary Tillerson must ensure that they are part of his own programmes and attention. The world is now in the midst of a particularly delicate and challenging phase of international tension and as the Leader of the Free World President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State must understand that their allies have attention even more than their adversaries.
The United States of America is the worlds superpower and new secretary of State Rex W Tillerson will be required to deal with countries that seek to oppose this position rather than in working with the new American Administration. In addition there are other forces that are much more open in their antagonism to America. Both groups will provide challenges to President Trump and his new head of the State Department.

The other big players

Since the end of the Second World War two countries have played a role in opposing the United States on the world stage.

The first of these is Russia which during the Cold War opposed the United States as the Soviet Union. The two superpowers never fought directly during this period but a number of conflicts were ersatz confrontations. The struggles in the Middle East between American backed Israel and the Soviet backed Arab countries were a public display of this antagonism. The Korean and Vietnam Wars were other conflicts that played a role in the international struggles for power between the two countries.

Despite the apparent intent of President #Donald Trump to establish better relations with Russian President Putin, these struggles have taken a whole new direction with the allegations of Russian Interference during the presidential election.

This will be a particular challenge for Tillerson as the results of the investigations into the allegations may well have consequences on both American and international politics.

China was an opponent in the Korean War and also in the world market place. The deep philosophical differences between the two countries were marked with periods of deep mistrust and others of apparent distention between them.

In recent times the relationship has been strained by clear signs of military expansion by China which has featured the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea which is causing distress amongst Americas allies in Asia. The competition between the two countries is also commercial and the huge rise of the Chinese economy over the last two decades is a direct challenge to Americas position in the world market place.

The battle fields, real and potential

Secretary Tillerson also faces major challenges in the Middle East and North Africa where the many conflicts have caused the refugee crisis troubling the world. These battlefields became more insidious with the Russian role in Syria and were made more delicate by the reactions to the ban of Moslem refugees from seven at risk countries that some have perceived as confirmation of an American war with Islam. The new Head of the State Department will have to work closely with the major players to both end the fighting by defeating the fanatics and working together with the Moslem countries to settle any real, or perceived confrontation between the United States and Moslems around the world.

North Korea has been a thorn in the side of world politics for decades and the situation has been made worse by Leader Kim Jong-uns determination to turn it into a nuclear power. This will be a particularly delicate problem to resolve as it will only be possible with the active collaboration of China.

Finally, the recent changes in the relationship between Cuba and the United States will need to be treated carefully, as well as the longstanding issues with other neighbours such as Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Although the new Secretary of State will also face other challenges over the next four years these will be the ones that will undoubtedly require his closest attention. They will put to the test both his negotiating skills and his ability to adapt to the specific requirements of each problem. Rex W Tellersons activities will be a major part of how the future will judge the Donald Trump Presidency.
George Clooney and wife Amal are currently facing a report of a possible pregnancy. Although the actor and his attorney/activist wife have not yet announced any such thing (nor have they commented at all on the rumor), a recent report suggested that the couple was about to become parents.

Over two years after George and Amal tied the knot in Italy, Lebanon's Daily Star has reported that a close friend of the couple has confirmed that the British brunette is allegedly pregnant with twins. The report also claimed that Amal was due to give birth in March.

While George has not yet commented on the rumor, he was reportedly forced to shut down allegations of a pregnancy around this time last year.

Amal hasn't been seen publicly since November

In recent months, George has been seen on the set of "Suburbicon," but when it comes to Amal, she's reportedly kept a suspiciously low profile since November and according to Brides, that may be a sign that she has something, possibly a pregnancy, to hide.

George and Amal Clooney got married in September 2014

Just one month after his longtime friend Brad Pitt married his now-estranged wife Angelina Jolie in France, George and Amal were joined by celebrity guests, including Bill Murray, Rande Gerber, Bono, Cindy Crawford, John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, and Matt Damon as they said their "I do's" in Italy.

As fans may recall, George, who has appeared to be completely against marriage in the past, shocked fans when he proposed to Amal with a seven-carat emerald-cut engagement ring, and when they tied the knot in Venice, Italy, Amal stunned in an lace Oscar de la Renta wedding dress.

George Clooney was married once before

Before taking Amal as his wife, George was married to Talia Balsam from 1989 to 1993, but thus far, he has not welcomed any children and has not expressed a desire to do so in recent years. That said, anything is possible, and until George or Amal speaks out against the new rumor regarding her possible pregnancy, speculation will remain.
From Syfy and The Asylum comes the announcement of the fifth installment of the ever popular Sharknado franchise. Actors Ian Ziering and Tara Reid will once again reprise their roles as the shark-fighting couple fin Shepard and April Wexler. In addition, original cast member Cassie Scerbo will also return as the character Nova; a bartender turned Sharknado fighter.

A brief history of 'Sharknado'

Spawning from the success of Sharknado in 2013, the original film introduces the cyclone containing the deadly man-eating sharks as they are unleashed onto the citizens of Los Angeles, and the series soon continued to take off with the dubbed Sharknado terrorizing other cities.

Due to its popularity, Sharknado had become a worldwide phenomenon and several more movies were created in its likeness.

In the second film, Sharknado 2: The Second One, the sharks terrorized New York City and in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No!, the mega Sharknado traveled along the coast from Washington D.C. to Florida. Just last year, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, was released and this time, the sharks ripped the rest of North America to pieces, leaving it lying in ruins and anticipating a global attack.

Sharknado lives on

Now in Sharknado 5 (working title), the world sees an increase of shark cyclones in different cities internationally and Fin Shephard and his family must stop these shark-related attacks before the rest of the world is wiped outfor good.

To correspond with that, this installment will be filmed in more than five countries, including the U.K. and Australia. In addition, principal photography for the work has already started in Bulgaria.

At this point, it is unknown if there will be any surprising cameos in Sharknado 5 or even if this is the last of the global franchise.

However, Anthony C. Ferrante, who directed the previous four films, will also be directing this latest film, so we know it will be just as wacky as the previous installments. Zoombies screenwriter Scotty Mullen also wrote the script. Lets see what will happen with Sharknado this time. #Sharknado
Heading into Election Day, reporters went into the archives of "The Howard Stern Show" and highlighted some controversial comments from previous interviews with Donald Trump. While the radio star still considers Trump a friend, he isn't too fond of his presidency, and warns against his time in office.

Stern on Trump

For decades, Howard Stern has been one of the most controversial names in radio, but also the most successful. Whether people like him or hate him, Stern, known as "The King of all Media," has created a brand that revolutionized the business.

Often known for his radio bits and interviews that involve a heavy sexual theme, Stern would have Donald Trump as a guest at times, while digging up dirt on the former host of "The Apprentice." With Trump completing his first two weeks in the White House, backlash has quickly followed, resulting in constant controversy. As reported by CNN on February 2, the radio host is speaking out about Trump and what it means for his mental health in the future.

"I personally wish that he had never run," Howard Stern said during his Wednesday radio broadcast on Sirus XM, admitting that he actually told that to Donald Trump during a recent conversation. "This is something that is gonna be detrimental to his mental health," Stern predicted, explaining that Trump "wants to be liked, he wants to be loved." Not stopping there, the radio legend doubled down, stating, "I don't think it's going to be a healthy experience."

Howard Stern says Donald Trump "wants to be loved," and the presidency will be "detrimental" to his mental health https://t.co/1jflqs9YMG pic.twitter.com/3hTHGR0dyk  CNN (@CNN) February 2, 2017

Continuing, Howard Stern called Donald Trump out for his apparent hypocrisy against Hollywood.

"By the way, he's now on this anti-Hollywood kick. He loves Hollywood," Stern pointed out, noting that the billionaire real estate mogul "loves the press." "He lives for it. He loves people in Hollywood," Stern said, also noting, "He only wants to hobnob with them."

Stern continues

Howard Stern said he was "shocked" that Donald Trump even ran for president in the first place, while noting that he was stunned that "people took it seriously." He also cited Trump's history of being "pro-abortion," saying that his new change in politics is just to pander to the far right.

In conclusion, the shock-jock went on to say that the new commander in chief doesn't even want to be president, and that he hopes he can still "hand it over to Hillary." "He's pissed he won. He still wants Hillary Clinton to win," Stern said, adding, "He's so f**king pissed." As of press time, neither the White House, nor Trump himself, have commented on Stern's remarks.
For decades, there have been few photographic images of Harriet Tubman depicting how the abolitionist and Civil War spy looked in her lifetime.

Now there's one more.

New York City auction house Swann Galleries has announced that it will auction a newly discovered photo of Tubman March 30. The photo shows her seated, wearing a black blouse with an overlapping white collar, and a white patterned skirt.

Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, author of the biography "Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero," estimated that Tubman was between 43 and 46 years old when the photo was taken, placing it shortly after the end of the Civil War. At the time, Tubman was living in Auburn, where she had purchased land in 1859 from then-Sen. William H. Seward  land that will soon become part of the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park.

Larson said that in her 20 years of researching Tubman, she's been sent dozens of photos of black women by people claiming to have discovered a new image of the soon-to-be face of the $20 bill. But not one has actually depicted Tubman, Larson said.

On the other hand, she continued, she knew it was Tubman in Swann Galleries' photo as soon as she saw it.

"There's no doubt in my mind about the provenance of the photo and that it is Tubman," she said. "I had never run across it."

The photo comes from an album owned by Tubman's friend and fellow abolitionist Emily Howland, of Sherwood, Larson said. The same album also contained the widely known picture of Tubman standing with her hands on a rollback chair in the early to mid-1870s.

Larson said the new photo communicates parts of Tubman's life that previous ones have not. She's clad in simple but beautiful clothing that accentuates how Tubman was actually petite and feminine, Larson said, whereas most of the previous photos showed a weary veteran of the Underground Railroad and Civil War.

"What's remarkable about this photograph is that she's so proud and dignified and beautiful. She looks so young," Larson said. "This is the vibrant young Tubman just coming off her work during the Civil War. She's building her life with her family in Auburn."

Larson continued, "It just surprised me, and I think it's going to surprise a lot of people."
Donald Trump did not take Irans firing of a ballistic missile lightly. He wanted Iran to stop such activities and, to emphasize his point, had put Iran formally on notice for firing the missile. Trump perceives it as a danger to the US with American lives at risk.

Trump wanted to put Iran in its place and said that the United States had given Iran a new lease of life when it was on the point of collapse. The lifeline was in the form of the $150-billion Iran Deal.

This did not go down well with Iran's leader ayatollah khamenei.

He conveyed via his advisor Ali Akbar Velayati that Iran outright rejected the threats of the United States and that his country will not bow to US pressure because he defended the missile test.

He sees the US threat as a mechanism to put a check on the defensive capabilities of Iran.

Ayatollah Khamenei labels Donald Trump as inexperienced

Ayatollah Khamenei did not mince his words when he said that the threat from an inexperienced person (meaning US President Donald Trump) does not worry Iran  it is capable of defending itself and does not have to wait for permission from any country.

It must have hurt Donald Trumps ego.

Retired US Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn has said that, by its actions, Iran had gone against the UN. Irans actions amounted to a "destabilizing behavior across the Middle East."

Donald Trump feels that the agreements between Iran and the Obama administration, and also with the United Nations, were not only weak but ineffective as well.

Trump criticized these agreements.

Iran should be thankful for the agreements but, instead of that, it is feeling emboldened.

Was Irans missile test successful?

Irans Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan informed a section of the media that the missile test was "successful" and that launching it was not the violation of any nuclear deal with world powers or of any UN resolution.

However, US officials have termed the launch as a failure. They have refuted the claim saying that the medium-range ballistic missile exploded early - after traveling 630 miles.
Tourists visit the Kuanzhai Lane Historic District in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Jan 28, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING - China's tourism industry raked in 423.3 billion yuan ($61.7 billion) in revenue during the Lunar New Year holiday, as more affluent people become increasingly keen to travel.

The volume marked a year-on-year increase of 15.9 percent, according to calculations by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA).

During the seven-day holiday, which ends on Thursday, some 344 million visitor trips were made, up 13.8 percent from the same period last year.

The CNTA previously expected that China would see 344 million visitor trips during the holiday.

Overseas travel gains increasing popularity. Some 6.15 million Chinese people travelled abroad during the holiday, up 7 percent year on year.

The travel peak fell on Jan 27, the first day of the seven-day holiday, which saw 50.5 million visitor trips, up 10.4 percent year on year.

During the New Year holiday, hundreds of millions of people go back to their hometowns to meet relatives and old friends, and in recent years, family travels have become increasingly common that help to drive a tourism boom across the country.

China's domestic tourism industry earned about 3.9 trillion yuan in 2016, and the country plans to raise tourism revenue to 7 trillion yuan by 2020.

The nation will work to develop tourism into a major driver of economic transformation and upgrading. By 2020, investment in tourism is expected to grow to 2 trillion yuan, and the sector will contribute more than 12 percent of GDP, according to a State Council five-year tourism plan (2016-2020).
New Transportation secretary Elaine Chao is sworn in by US Vice-President Mike Pence as her father, James S.C. Chao, holds a bible during the ceremony at the White House on Tuesday. Carlos Barria / Reuters

The family of James S.C. Chao is likely the most well-known Chinese immigrant family in the United States, and the shipping magnate says that raising"wonderful daughters"has been his greatest triumph, Larry Lee reports from New York.

The man for whom it probably could be said has everything doesn't have a membership of the Harvard Club on West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan near the international shipping, trade and finance company he founded in 1964.

Only alumni and faculty of Harvard University are pre-qualified to apply for membership. But James S.C. Chao's Harvard connection is a long and deep one.

"Four of my daughters and two sons-in-law are members," said Chao proudly of the four of his six daughters who graduated from Harvard Business School.

The Chao family has donated more than $40 million dollars to Harvard, where the executive education building was named after, in Harvard's words, the matriarch of "this most prominent and accomplished Chinese-American family", the late Ruth Mulan Chu Chao.

Waiters know him

Chao is a familiar presence to waiters at the Harvard Club. He has his designated table in a relatively quiet corner where he can talk with guests.

He was my guest for lunch there on Jan 13, one day after he returned to New York from attending the Senate confirmation hearing for his eldest daughter, Elaine L. Chao, as secretary of Transportation. With her swearing in on Tuesday, she became the first female Asian American to serve in two US presidents' cabinets, a feat few Americans, male or female, can match.

For her 90-year-old father, it was not easy to travel from the Big Apple to the nation's capital and sit in the hearing for almost four hours. "We have a family tradition: One for all, and all for one," said Chao.

Some 20 years ago, I was Chao's luncheon guest at the Harvard Club, the recipient of an invitation spurred by his learning about the story I had written about his eldest daughter Elaine when I was Washington bureau chief for a Hong Kong newspaper.

Then, Elaine Chao was a distinguished fellow at a Washington think tank. In the lengthy interview she gave me,she expressed her views about many issues, including some sensitive ones in the Asian community, such as affirmative action. She didn't hide her objection to affirmative action, pointing out that quotas and goals harm Asian Americans and America, saying that in the land of opportunity success should be based on merit.

That luncheon in 1998 was the first time I had met her father, and my first time at the club. We had a very pleasant conversation; he asked about my age, my experience as a journalist and my future writing plans.

All I knew about Chao then was that he was quite successful in the shipping industry, and that he had six very talented, well-educated daughters who were on outstanding career paths.

Biography published

But this time, the night before our lunch, I had stayed up to 3 am to read a copy of Fearless Against the Wind, the Chinese version of Chao's biography. I hope someone can translate this biography into English so that more people in the US can know about Chao's great family history.

Right after his biography was published in Taiwan in November 2016, I had the luck of obtaining a copy from Chiling Tong, a longtime friend of the Chao family, and the founding president of the International Leadership Foundation. She used to be the associate director of the Minority Business Development Agency in the US Commerce Department.

I had the honor of attending Tong's wedding in Taipei in 1996. Her husband, Joel Szabat, is deputy assistant-secretary of Transportation and executive director of the Maritime Administration.

John Tsu, the late chairman of the Asian Republican National Committee, introduced Tong to me more than 20 years ago.

Tsu was President George H. W. Bush's Chinese tutor and a close friend. He was a member of the White House transition team when Bush was elected the 41st US president in 1988. He had played an essential role in recommending qualified Asian-American candidates to the Bush administration.

Tsu had also encouraged many young and talented Asian Americans to enter politics. He was mentor for Tong and many others.

Publication of the 434-page book in Taiwan coincided with Elaine Chao's nomination as Transportation secretary and so the book had aroused a lot of attention among the Chinese community and Chinese media in the US.

At our lunch we talked about his biography,the cabinet nomination of his daughter, and what has been the formula, if there is one, for Chao to have such successful and devoted daughters and a successful career as an ocean shipping tycoon.

He is chairman of The Foremost Group, headquartered in New York and with branch offices all over the world. The company's bulk fleet totals approximately 4 million deadweight tons, with an average age of less than five years.

On his success, he spoke simply: "If you can't change your environment, change yourself."

And on the success of daughters, Elaine, May, Christine, Grace and Angela, (his second daughter, Jeanette, passed away in 2008), "Thank God I had such a good wife. Without her, nothing would have happened."

Chao clearly recalled details of what we had talked about in 1998.

"You wrote many editorials, right?" Doing so was a regular part of my job back then. And Chao recalled his early years: "As a student at Shanghai Jiaotong University in the 1940s, I was the publisher of a student newspaper, Youth. I was in the limelight at that time, dreaming to be a journalist in the future."

The bi-weekly newspaper with a circulation of more than 2,000 was distributed to eight public and three private universities in Shanghai. At the time, it was the final phase of China's civil war, and dangerous for a student newspaper to cover sensitive political issues. Youth ceased to publish after five issues. So ended Chao's dream of being a journalist.
Iran's President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a news conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 26, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The United States is expected to impose sanctions on multiple Iranian entities as early as Friday following Tehran's recent ballistic missile test, but in a way that will not violate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

One source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said about eight Iranian entities were to be sanctioned, or "designated" in US legal jargon, for terrorism-related activities and about 17 for ballistic missile-related activities under separate existing US executive orders. The source declined to name the entities.
The Chinese-funded electric car manufacturer Faraday Future, which had said it will build a 3-million-square-foot production plant in Nevada, will build a much smaller facility but still plans construction of the $1 billion plant, public and company officials said.

"I don't think they are downsizing but instead will construct the plant in phases," said Qiong Liu, city manager of North Las Vegas, in an interview on Thursday. "Faraday will build a 650,000-square-foot facility later this year."

Faraday, an affiliate of Beijing-based Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp and backed by LeEco founder Jia Yueting, said in a statement this week that it still plans to build the larger plant but gave no timetable.

Liu said Faraday is completing engineering work on the plant. "Their timeline is to have the shell of the building ready by the end of August and then have the rest of the building done by the end of October," she said.

Liu said Faraday expects to start testing a vehicle later this year and "start production in 2018", she added.

A cash crunch at LeEco and Faraday's missed payments to a contractor working on the factory last year spurred skepticism about the company. Last November, Nevada State Treasurer Dan Schwartz expressed concerns about Faraday's ability to complete the project.

In 2015 Nevada lawmakers approved an incentive package valued at about $215 million for the plant. Liu said the incentives are structured so they are paid out when the company meets certain requirements. "They (Faraday) haven't received a penny of the incentives yet," Liu said. "Faraday is determined to keep its commitment."

Faraday unveiled its first production vehicle called the FF91 at the Consumer Electronics Show last month in Las Vegas.

Eric Paul Dennis of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, said that Faraday is becoming more realistic about what it can accomplish.

"I think Faraday's initial ambitions were unrealistic. Their plans to build a mega-factory and introduce multiple models on a short time-table were very risky and probably impossible. It was ridiculous to think such a factory could be designed, built, and operational before 2018 - even with unlimited funding," he wrote in an email.

"Their recent restructuring actually makes me think they are beginning to mature as a company and think strategically. Starting small, focusing on quality and responding to the market receptivity of one or two models is a better approach, in my opinion, to establish a viable auto manufacturing operation," Dennis said.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick attends the summer World Economic Forum in Tianjin, China, June 26, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's business advisory group, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Kalanick's resignation comes after days of criticism about the executive's decision to work with the president. The move could put pressure on other CEOs expected to attend a meeting with Trump on Friday.

General Motors Co said its chief executive will attend, while Walt Disney Co said earlier Thursday its chief executive would not attend because of a long-planned-board meeting.
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Chief executives of major US companies huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday as the business community is increasingly split over how to respond to his policies, especially a travel ban announced last week.

Trump kicked off the meeting with CEOs including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase & Co and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc, saying the group would discuss peeling back banking rules and declaring that companies would bring new jobs to the United States.

Chief executives including Elon Musk of Tesla Inc have said they planned to raise objections at the talks to Trump's week-old executive order halting travel to the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Business leaders have been divided in their approach on taxes and immigration, and some are wary of working with a president who uses his platform to attack companies that vex him, such as threatening penalties for manufacturing outside the United States.

The leaders, which also included Mary Barra of General Motors Co and Jim McNerney, formerly of Boeing Co, are part of a business advisory panel Trump announced in December. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit the group under pressure from activists over the order. Musk defended his own decision to participate, saying that going to the meeting did not mean he agreed with Trump's actions.

Tech companies, which have broad concerns about Trump's immigration plans, raised the sharpest outcry among firms at the travel ban.

The White House said in a statement on Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger."

Executives from Ford Motor Co also criticized the ban, but others, including General Motors and JPMorgan Chase have not taken a position.

On Friday, former General Electric Co leader Jack Welch said on his way into the White House that he expected immigration would come up.
The US on Friday imposed fresh sanctions on Iran as President Donald Trump seeks to punish Tehran following its recent ballistic missile test.

In a statement on its website, the US Treasury listed the sanctioned individuals and entities, some of which are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.

The move is the first against Iran since Trump took office on Jan 20. The sanctions were similar to actions taken by the Obama administration targeting Iran's ballistic missile network.

The Trump administration has taken a hard line on Iran, banning its citizens from entering the US and accusing the nation of interfering in the affairs of US allies in the Middle East.

This week, US national security adviser Michael Flynn said the administration was putting Iran "on notice" for its medium-range missile test.

"Iran is playing with fire  they dont appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me!" Trump tweeted early Friday.

But Iran has said it will not yield to "useless" American threats from "an inexperienced person".

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted on Friday that the Islamic Republic was unmoved by US threats. "Will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense," Zarif wrote.

The new designations stuck to areas that remain under sanctions even with the 2015 nuclear deal in place, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (and Iran's ballistic missile program.

Under the nuclear agreement with Iran, the US and the other signatories  Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany  cannot re-impose nuclear-related sanctions, except if there is evidence Iran has resumed its nuclear program in violation of the accord. There has been no such evidence.

But missile sanctions, and sanctions for sponsorship of terrorism, do not violate the agreement, which was limited to nuclear activities.

Iran argues that a United Nations Security Council resolution, whose wording was negotiated in Vienna in 2015 at the same time the nuclear accord was reached, stops short of prohibiting missile tests. It urges Iran to refrain from such tests, if the missiles are designed to carry nuclear weapon.

Iranian officials have argued that since the country has no nuclear weapons, it has no missiles designed to carry them.

Among those sanctioned on Friday were companies, individuals, and brokers the US Treasury said support a trade network run by an Iranian businessman, Abdollah Asgharzadeh. Treasury said he supported Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which the US has said is a subsidiary of an Iranian entity that runs Iran's ballistic missile program.

Treasury also sanctioned what it said was a Lebanon-based network run by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military body that is also powerful in Iranian politics and the economy.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reportedly said on Friday that President Donald Trump's administration, like predecessor Barack Obama's, puts China's Diaoyu Islands under the United States security umbrella offered to Japan.

He made the remark during his first trip abroad after taking office in January, according to Japan's state broadcaster NHK. Mattis visited South Korea before arriving in Tokyo, and he talked to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday afternoon.

Mattis reassured Abe that the islands fall within the scope of Article 5 of the US-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, according to NHK, which quoted unnamed Japanese officials.

The article states that either country would act to meet the common danger in case of "an armed attack against either party in the territories under the administration of Japan".

According to Reuters, Mattis said the article "is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago, and it will be a year and 10 years from now".

As of press time, the US had not confirmed Mattis' remark about the islands.

During Abe's trip to Washington in April 2014, Obama became the first US president to clearly assure Japan that the islands are covered by the article.

Yang Bojiang, a senior researcher on Japan studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Tokyo's pursuit of US reassurance is not a wise choice, since Japan also says it seeks to improve its chilly ties with China.

Yang said that seeking to reaffirm security pledges is a tradition of Tokyo when power changes hands in Washington, and the reassurance this time is more like a "symbolic pledge", since the current status of China-Japan ties indicates that the chance of a major conflict breaking out around the islands is small.

Since Abe is scheduled to meet with Trump in the US later this month, the reaffirmation "is part of a 'give and take' game of the Trump administration to remind the ally to do something in return, particularly on economic and trade issues", Yang said.

Zhao Xiaozhuo, a researcher at the Center on China-US Defense Relations at the PLA Academy of Military Science, said the reassurance "signals that Washington's support for treaty allies will not shrink as Trump had pledged on the campaign trail" and will ease Japan's anxiety.

"For China, the latest pledge is more like a test," Zhao said. "Trump's Asia-Pacific policy is still taking shape, and his policy is likely to follow Obama's tune."
HIT: To a new venture aimed at downtown Auburn.

The Octane Social House, still in the planning stages, is a business conceived by Rob and Joni Otterstatter. The idea is to develop a place offering specialty coffees, sandwiches, baked goods  and maybe even a pint of craft beer. But it would be more than that. It would be a place for people to come together and talk, relax or listen to music. A place that helps make the community a community.

We like the idea, and we hope to see it become a reality.

MISS: To criminal charges piling up against an Auburn man.

Auburn man who crashed his truck on Friday facing child endangerment, weapons charge An Auburn man charged with leading police on a chase before crashing his truck on Friday is 

The man, who previously served prison time for injuring a police officer while resisting arrest, is accused of trying to persuade a girl to get into his vehicle last Friday and then fleeing police when his pickup truck was spotted later in the day. After crashing the truck and being arrested, he was further charged for an alleged crime in December in which a roommate said that a knife had been held to his throat.

All things considered, we're just glad that nobody got hurt in connection with these frightening incidents.

HIT: To community support in a time of need.

Community continues to rally behind Moravia teen recovering from crash MORAVIA  Since the Dec. 27 auto accident that left Moravia High School student Dustin Mondi

People in Moravia recently got together to raise money for the family of Dustin Mondics, a high-school student seriously injured in a December car accident. Dustin has been through several operations and is undergoing physical therapy to regain his strength.

The benefit was designed to help ease the family's financial burden so that they can concentrate on what matters most: helping Dustin through his recovery.
Twice this week The Citizen has published articles with very deceptive headlines. The first (Defiant Trump defends order, Jan. 31) made it sound as if President Trump was "defying" the protestors with his executive order on immigration. It's the other way around. The president of the United States is acting in accordance to the Constitution. It's the protestors that are defying him.

The second article (Trump to Senate: Scrap chamber rules to confirm Gorsuch, Feb. 1) makes it sound like he has ordered the Senate Republicans to ignore the law to get Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch confirmed. Again, he's acting in accordance with the law. He's requested that the Senate Republicans use the nuclear option if necessary. The nuclear option that was put in place by Harry Reid to get Obama's nominees confirmed. I'm sad to say that The Citizen has become a fake news outlet that is deliberately deceiving the public.
PHOENIX -- Unable to block the federal government from sending refugees to Arizona, six Republican lawmakers want to penalize the charities that help them resettle here.

Sen. Judy Burges of Sun City West, who is leading the effort, told Capitol Media Services she wants to "have a discussion'' about how refugees wind up in Arizona and what costs are incurred by the state. It specifically requires the Department of Economic Security to suspend its participation in the federally funded refugee resettlement program.

But as other states that have taken similar steps have found, approval of SB 1468 would not stop the refugees. All it would do is mean the federal government would continue to send people to the state, only without cooperation and coordination with the state.

And there is nothing that stops refugees from moving to Arizona once they're in the country legally.

The potentially more far-reaching part of her legislation would impose a fine on charities of $1,000 a day for each refugee it helps place in the state. And if a refugee is arrested, the charity would be financially liable for the cost of arrest, prosecution and incarceration of that person.

Burges conceded that she is using that approach because, realistically, it's the only option available to her to stem the flow of refugees.

"When you put a stay on the program, how do you keep them from continuing doing it? she said.

The measure concerns Ron Johnson who lobbies for Catholic Charities, one of the groups involved in helping refugees resettle in the state.

"Obviously we're all concerned with proper vetting and national security,'' he said.

"But that's not something we do with Catholic Charities,'' Johnson explained. "Once they're here, we help them: find a job, find a place to live, learn the language, all kind of good things that help them be a part of society so they're not dependent on the government.''

More to the point, he said Burges and other sponsors of SB 1468 are focusing on the wrong end of the problem.

"To punish the Good Samaritans that are trying to help them is a bit misplaced,'' Johnson said. "These people are already here.''

Burges was unsympathetic.

"I've talked to Ron Johnson myself,'' she said. "And I know that they get millions of dollars to administer these programs.''

"She's probably talking nationally,'' Johnson responded, noting there are more than 80,000 refugees being resettled this year.

"I won't deny that helps keep these program running,'' he continued. But Johson said it would be wrong to say that Catholic Charities is somehow making money on the programs.

"There's also local donations to help make ends meet,'' he said.

Burges said she wasn't saying that groups that work with refugees are in it for the money.

"As a charitable organization, they feel it's their responsibility,'' she said. But she said the state needs to have some say over who comes here.

"They're being forced on us,'' Burges said.

The Department of Economic Security, which operates the state Refugee Resettlement Program that Burges' legislation would shut down, reports that it settled 4,833 people in the state in the last federal fiscal year. That covers Oct. 1, 2015 through Sept. 30, 2016.

By comparison, there were 4,138 the prior year and 3,882 the year before that.

The largest share of last year's refugees, more than 1,100, came from Democratic Republic of the Congo. But there also were 715 from Syria, 610 from Somalia and 462 from Iraq, all countries that are listed on the president's executive order suspending refugees.

Other sponsors of the legislation include Sen. Sonny Borrelli of Lake Havasu City and Reps. Mark Finchem of Oro Valley, Vince Leach of Tucson, Anthony Kern of Glendale and Don Shooter of Yuma.

Even if SB 1468 were adopted, it appears it would not make any difference in how many refugees end up in Arizona.

That, however, could change.

Two Republican U.S. senators from Texas last month introduced legislation designed to let governors block the federal government from resettling refugees in their states.

As crafted by Ted Cruz and Ted Poe, the State Refugee Security Act would require the federal government to notify a state at least 21 days before a refugee is resettled there. A governor, at his or her "sole discretion,'' could veto the move absent "adequate assurance that the alien does not present a security risk to the state.''

Burges and her GOP colleagues are not alone in their call on Washington to halt the flow of refugees.

In 2015, Gov. Doug Ducey asked the federal government to immediately halt placement of new refugees in Arizona. That came in the wake of reports that at least one of the people involved in a suicide bombing in Paris had slipped into Europe as a refugee.

The governor cited a provision of federal law that he said entitles him to "immediate consultation by federal authorities'' of plans to resettle any refugees in the state. He also demanded the federal government "take into account the concerns and recommendations of the state of Arizona as they are required to under federal law in our efforts to keep our homeland safe.''

Ducey's request, however, was not limited to Syrian refugees, saying at the time it is his right to demand there be no new refugees here.

What Ducey got, however, was being included in a conference call with other governors and federal officials detailing their screening efforts. And none of that has stopped the flow.
Flagstaff City Council grilled representatives from APS and the Arizona Corporation Commission for about two and a half hours Tuesday before asking the ACC to hold a public meeting on APS rate case in Flagstaff in the near future.

APS filed a case to raise its rates with the ACC in June of last year. The ACC is expected to make a decision on the matter in April and the new rates, if approved, would go into effect in July. The total cost to the city for the increased rates would be about $166,000. Most of the increase is due to the cost to run the citys water and wastewater treatment plants.

However, Council appeared to be less concerned about what the increased rates would do to the citys budget and more concerned about what it might do to city residents' bills and future rooftop solar customers.

APS Director of State Regulation Greg Bernosky told Council that the company is asking for an average rate increase of 5.7 percent for all customers. However, each customer clas -- residential, commercial and industrial -- will have their own their own rate increase. Residential customers would see the greatest rate increase of 7.96 percent.

That means a residential customer with a $139.32 bill would see their bill increase to $150.41, Bernosky said.

APS is also proposing to charge more in the summer between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m., he said.

Currently, APS has a voluntary program that charges customers less before noon or after 7 p.m. but more between those hours. The idea is to encourage power use when there is less demand for power and reduce the load on the system. APS is asking the ACC to allow it to make that demand charge rate structure mandatory for residential customers.

APS proposal also includes decreases in how much it reimburses new rooftop solar users for the excess electricity they generate.

Bernosky said the rate increase for customers was necessary in order to recoup the investments that APS has put into increasing the amount of clean energy in its portfolio and improvements to its infrastructure to deliver power to customers. The companys last rate increase was about five years ago, when APS changed some of the fees it charges to deliver power to customers.

Councilmembers Eva Putzova, Celia Barotz and Jim McCarthy were particularly interested in getting a simple explanation of how much the rates would increase for each customer class and how much the reimbursement rate to rooftop solar users would decrease.

Mayor Coral Evans recused herself from the discussion because APS has been a sponsor of several events for the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association.

Barotz asked Bernosky several times if there was a chart that detailed how much each customer class rate would increase or if one could be created.

McCarthy asked for a simple definition of how the mandatory off-peak and on-peak demand charges would work.

Bernosky said APS would pick one hour during that 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. peak demand window and base a customer's on-peak demand price on their energy usage during that window. Customers would be charged less for energy usage that was during off-peak hours.

Putzova asked if a customer retained their current habits if they would see an increase or decrease in their bill.

Bernosky said some would see an increase, some a decrease and some bills would remain flat.

Maureen Scott, an ACC attorney assigned to APS' rate case, said there was a wealth of information on the ACC's website in its e-docket section on the case. ACC staff expected to deliver its recommendations on APS' rate design to the commission on Friday. She also said that the commission had reached out to City Manager Josh Copley's office to ask if the city wanted to host a public meeting of the ACC here to allow the public to comment in person on the case.

Council unanimously agreed that having a public hearing with the ACC in Flagstaff would be a good idea and directed staff to look into setting something up.
PHOENIX -- The state House gave preliminary approval Thursday to legislation designed to prevent some small towns from blocking larger ones springing up on their border.

HB 2088 would create an exception to existing laws that give cities and towns veto right over nearby incorporations. In essence, the bill says that if the proposed community is larger than the existing town, that town can't stop its incorporation.

The measure is specifically aimed at allowing for incorporation of San Tan Valley. Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, told colleagues that the unincorporated area in northeast Pinal County has exploded, with more than 100,000 people now living there.

Under normal circumstances, that's more than enough to incorporate.

But Arizona gives existing cities of up to 5,000 a "planning area'' three miles beyond their boundaries. More to the point, cities can veto any new incorporations in that area.

For larger cities, that planning area goes out six miles.

What's happened here is that the plans for San Tan Valley extend within six miles of Florence. And that town of 26,000, has refused to give the go-ahead for the new incorporation.

HB 2088 spells out that if the would-be new town has at least 15,000 residents, an existing community with a smaller population loses its veto rights.

"This really is a right to vote,'' Farnsworth said.

"It's very clear people want local control,'' added Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley. "I think it's unconscionable that 100,000-plus people can be controlled by 6,000 people,'' he said, referring to the portion of Florence's population that is not in the state prison.

But Rep. Randall Friese, D-Tucson, said no one is blocking San Tan Valley from incorporating.

He pointed out that backers of the new town are free to draw proposed boundaries that do not come within six miles of Florence, eliminating the ability of that town to block incorporation. Then, if the vote for incorporation is successful, San Tan Valley would have the same right as any other city or town to try to annex adjacent areas -- even right up to the Florence town limit if it could get the consent of the affected property owners.

Farnsworth dismissed that option, saying a smaller area would be "ineffective.''

"It makes no sense in maintaining the integrity of the community,'' he said. "And it makes no sense in the idea that they're going to have enough base of population that they can have revenues to pay for the infrastructure that they need.''

Rep. Vince Leach, R-Tucson, whose district includes the southern part of Pinal County, said he supports allowing incorporation. He said having such a large area unincorporated places a burden on the entire county which has to provide things like police services, something the town would have to finance from locally raised tax revenues if it incorporates.

But Rep. Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, said she believes the measure is flawed.

Under normal circumstances, any petition for incorporation would have to be approved by a majority of the people living in the area. But she said the legislation reads that if the area qualifies "the board of supervisors shall proceed with incorporation of the area'' without needing the approval of the adjacent town.

Townsend said that verbiage would seem to allow an incorporation without a vote. If nothing else, she said, it would likely lead to litigation.

Farnsworth dismissed her concerns, saying he does not read the language the same way.

Thursday's 32-24 vote still requires a final roll-call House vote before the measure goes to the Senate.
Coconino County Public Works crews have cleared a 7-mile stretch of Lake Mary Road about 35 miles southeast of Flagstaff, allowing the roadway to fully reopen on Thursday.

Lake Mary Road, also known as Forest Highway 3, was closed on Jan. 19 from the north entrance of Mormon Lake (near the scenic overlook) to the south entrance of Mormon Lake. The closure was implemented in the interest of public safety due to a trio of winter storms that dropped more than three feet of snow in the area and created hazardous driving conditions from blowing snow.

During the closure, traffic on Lake Mary Road was detoured along the West Side Mormon Lake Road which loops Mormon Lake and goes through Mormon Lake Village.

When this section of Lake Mary Road is reopened, motorists are asked to travel with caution as some icy areas may persist. The County thanks the traveling public for their patience during this closure.
PHOENIX  A Senate panel voted Thursday to give student newspapers new freedom from censorship by school administrators.

SB 1384 specifically declares that student editors  and not administrators  are responsible for determining the content of school-sponsored media. More to the point, the legislation would prevent administrators from censoring publications and preventing publication except under four narrow circumstances.

The unanimous approval by the Education Committee came after a parade of student editors and advisers told lawmakers of situations where administrators had stepped in to block stories or cartoons.

Peggy Gregory of Greenway High School who said she has taught journalism and advised student papers for 36 years, told lawmakers that student press freedom was the law of the land following a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring that it was protected by the First Amendment. But nearly 20 years later the same court partly reversed itself, declaring that student newspapers do not have the same constitutional rights as other publications.

After that second ruling, Gregory said, everything changed.

For example, she said students were working on a news story on what she said was a testing program the district liked. That article quoted a teacher who was critical of that testing.

Gregory said the school superintendent instructed the principal to tell her to kill the story or lose her job.

The result was censorship, she said. But Gregory said the harm done to student journalists from these kinds of situations is much greater.

If they're only allowed to publish puff pieces, how will they ever learn the power of the press to bring about change, to challenge ideas, to take the responsibility for their words, and to take up the mantle of the great journalists who have preceded them? she asked.

The shield against prior restraint in SB 1384 is not absolute. The legislation spells out that it does not authorize content that is libelous, an unwarranted invasion of privacy, violates federal or state law, or creates an imminent danger of inciting students to violate the law or district regulations or materially and substantially disrupts the orderly operation of the public school.

Sen. Steve Smith, R-Maricopa, questioned whether that goes far enough. He envisioned situations where students might use words or publish cartoons that are inappropriate or unfairly poke fun of someone.

But Sen. Kimberly Yee, R-Phoenix, the sponsor of the legislation, said she anticipates those kinds of issues can be handled by the teachers who advise the newspapers. Yee said, though, she might add some language about material being age appropriate when the measure goes to the full Senate.

Henry Gordon, a student at Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, said censorship sends a bad message.

What we're taught now in schools is we have to defer to government officials, to our school administrators, in the content we produce, he said. We are censoring ourselves and letting government officials manipulate the facts.

Yee knows something about this kind of censorship. In fact, this is actually the second time she has pushed the legislation.

The first time was in 1992 when she was a 17-year-old senior student at Greenway High School and was a reporter and cartoonist for the Demon Dispatch. She said there were numerous times when administrators refused to let items remain in the paper before it went to print, apparently because they believed they shed a bad light on the school.

So Yee convinced Stan Furman, who was the state senator from the district, to sponsor anti-censorship legislation.

And I came to the Capitol for the first time, she said, sharing her story and that of other students. In fact, Peggy Gregory also testified for the bill, as she was the newspaper's faculty adviser.

The result was not only approval by the Education Committee but a 21-8 vote by the full Senate.

Based on that, Yee assumed the problem was resolved. But Yee said she did not learn until last year, when asked about it, that the measure died after never getting a vote in the House Judiciary Committee.
Time magazine is reporting that a top Taliban commander is claiming that Obamas choice to release five of their top leaders in exchange for a reported Army deserter has inspired them to kidnap more Americans in order to get more of their comrades released from Gitmo.

When asked by Time if Obamas deal to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl last week would inspire them to kidnap others, a Taliban commander who is described as being close to the senior Taliban leadership replied, Definitely.

Its better to kidnap one person like Bergdahl than kidnapping hundreds of useless people. It has encouraged our people. Now everybody will work hard to capture such an important bird.

The confirmation by the Taliban commander confirms fears and concerns expressed by Republican lawmakers who have warned that by negotiating with terrorists over prisoner releases President Obama is motivating Islamic terrorists to capture more Americans in order to secure the release of captured terrorists.

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who is a possible GOP presidential candidate, said while he was glad to see any captured American come home, there were better ways to do it and the presidents move sets a dangerous precedent.

How many soldiers lost their lives to capture those five Taliban terrorists that we just released? Mr. Cruz said. What does this tell terrorists, that if you capture a U.S. soldier, you can trade that soldier for five terrorists weve gone after.

Cal Thomas, a columnist for the Washington Examiner agrees with Cruz, and says that the price could end up higher than just being the rescue of one man.

Freeing five dangerous men to secure the release of one soldier could very well put this country in increased danger. What should we have done? It depends upon the outcome one is seeking, Thomas said. If rescuing one man is paramount, then any price is worth it. But if that rescue leads to the deaths of others, as is likely, then the price is too high.

President Obama has been steadfast in defending his decision to release five of the most dangerous terrorists held at Gitmo, arguing that it is a long-standing American tradition to fight for the release of prisoners of war.

However, critics have pointed out that such negotiations typically take place after a war is officially over, and in the case of Afghanistan, there is no indication the Taliban is intending to cease hostilities.

Bergdahls fellow soldiers have come forward and accused him of desertion, which is subject to the death penalty when occurring in a combat environment.
In an exclusive interview last week with TheNew York Times Thomas L. Friedman, President Obama seemed to credit  or to blame  the grassroots conservative movement (read: Tea Party) with the fractious atmosphere in Congress that has stubbornly held the line against the Presidents agenda.

The President pointed to immigration as the most recent battleground where the extreme, maximalist positions of his opponents have blocked his plans thus far to grant amnesty to nearly six million more illegal immigrants.

In the days and hours ahead of Congress usual August recess, House Speaker John Boehner failed to pass an original supplemental appropriations package to deal with the border crisis. When the chips were down, Boehner and his leadership did not reach across the aisle to find common ground on the border crisis with Democrats. Instead, establishment Republicans turned to Tea Party conservatives in order to reach consensus. In the end, the House passed a bill that the Democrat heavy Senate and the President say they will not consider.

At the center of the fracas was Obamas executive decision, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA,) which grants executive amnesty for illegal immigrant minors. The newest proposals bar him from continuing the program or expanding it to more illegal immigrants should he follow through on the threats hes been making with regard to continuing and expanding this program.

During the interview Obama said this about congressional gridlock:

Ive been speaking in generalities, and trying not to be too political, but that ideological extremism and maximalist position is much more prominent right now in the Republican Party than the Democrats.

Democrats have problems, but overall if you look at the Democratic consensus, its a pretty commonsense, mainstream consensus. Its not a lot of wacky ideological nonsense, the way it is generally fact-based and reason based.

Were not denying science, were not denying climate change, were not pretending that somehow having a whole bunch of uninsured people is the American way. Were doing things that are pretty sensible. Im optimistic that these things go in cycles, and that the Republican Party will eventually free itself from the grip of this kind of extremist ideology. But its necessary to happen soon.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Tea Party darling and rumored 2016 Presidential hopeful, is proud that grassroots conservatives extreme and maximalist positions are proving to be a monkey-wrench in the cogs of Obamas machine. Cruz, at a separate speaking engagement in Iowa, told the crowd that Americans have reason for optimism.

All across this country, people are waking up, said Cruz, and theyre waking up to bring America back to the principles we have been founded on. There is a better way than the path we are on.

According to Cruz, the way back to those principles is to first regain the majority in Washington, to champion economic growth by pointing to Obamas failed economic policies, to protect constitutional liberties, and stand up boldly to more to foreign bullies such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

As an aside, Cruz suggested overweight Americans try the Obama diet. Just let Vladimir Putin to eat your lunch every day.
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HCM CITY  The Vietnamese beauty market saw stable growth last year, with a year-on-year increase of 4 per cent, and is expected to thrive in the years to come.

About 20 million women aged 15 to 39, or 40 per cent of the female population, are potential consumers, according to a recent Kantar Worldpanel report on the national cosmetics sector.

The report said that 80 per cent of consumers in affluent cities bought at least one product last year, with one-quarter of personal care revenue from the beauty sector.

Women from southern provinces had more purchase intentions than those from the North, with the bestselling items facial cleansing products, sunscreens and lip balms.

Consumers below 20 years old tend to buy cleansers on their first beauty shopping trip.

Vietnamese spend less than Thai consumers on beauty products, but the figure is expected to increase as people are becoming more educated about skincare.

Consumers no longer have to rely on traditional marketing channels, including TV and newspapers, to get information. They can keep abreast of the latest beauty trends via the internet, celebrities, beauty bloggers and others.

Im pleasantly surprised to see more people, even young girls and teenagers, get interested in beauty-related information provided in my videos. Some even texted me privately to ask for skincare advice, Chloe Nguyen, a beauty blogger, told Viet Nam News.

In addition, financially independent women are the biggest spenders, according to the report. The more successful they are, the more effort they put into perfecting their appearance.

Higher-income women buy more products. Hence, despite peoples tendency to buy cheap or discounted products, high-end makeup and skincare products continue to attract more consumers.

Fabrice Carrasco, director of Kantar Wordpanel in Viet Nam, Indonesia and the Philippines, said that beauty products accounted for half of the goods that consumers in four major cities in Viet Nam had purchased online.  VNS
HCM CITY Heavy rains in the southern region that began on Thursday are expected to continue in HCM City and neighbouring provinces over the next few days, according to the Southern Regional Hydro-meteorological Centre.

The torrential rains, occurring during the dry season, began around 4 pm on Thursday in HCM City, lasting until 10:30 pm.

The heaviest rainfall was estimated at 110 millimetres in District 8, followed by Binh Tan District with 78.5 millimetres and District 7 with 76 millimetres.

Around 20 areas in the city were flooded due to heavy rains, including Nguyen Huu Canh, Bach ang and Ngo Tat To streets in Binh Thanh District; An Duong Vuong Street and Cay Go Roundabout in District 6; and Huynh Tan Phat Street in District 7 and An Lac Roundabout in Binh Tan District.

Around 2 pm on Thursday, unseasonable rains hit provinces in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta such as Long An, Tien Giang, Kien Giang, Vinh Long and Soc Trang.

Le Thanh Hai, deputy general director of the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the rains were caused by a strong equatorial convergence zone.

Such a phenomenon occurs every five to seven years, he said.

The citys rainy season last from May to November. Experts say the weather in not only HCM City but across Viet Nam is becoming more and more difficult to predict.VNS
Students at St. Josephs Catholic School prayed what may have been the biggest rosary ever seen in Beatrice.

The balloon rosary, a part of St. Josephs Catholic Schools Week celebration, was made up of 59 balloon beads, each one held by students who led their classmates in prayer.

This years celebration included several themed days, including students dressing as what they want to be when they grow up, patriotism day and pajama day. There were also activities where students went out into the community. Some students wrote letters to firefighters and police, third grade went to Mosaic, fifth graders even got interviewed on the radio.

We got to get in our PJs on Tuesday, said kindergartener Eloise Maurstad. We watched a movie and we had three recesses.

We watched the Peabody and Sherman movie, added kindergartener DeLaina Weinmann. I loved when the past was coming to them.

Catholic Schools Week, said St. Josephs principal Andrew Haake, is about saying thanks to parents and students for being a part of the school.

Catholic schools week, the kids love it, Haake said. There are non-uniform days and we get to do a lot of activities that celebrate them and the familys choice to attend Catholic school.

On Thursday, students who donated a dollar to St. Gregory the Great Seminary were allowed to wear a hat before ending the day in the gym for a giant balloon rosary. The helium balloon rosary was intended to be released into the skythe balloons are biodegradablebut the weather got a little too rough.

Were going to say a rosary toward our seminarians and religious life, Haake said, so the thought was to have this released, but theres a little too much wind to get it above some of the bigger buildings.

Students were still able to get the rosary outside, even if they didnt get to watch it soar into the clouds.

Friday wraps up Catholic Schools Week and parents are invited to attend a special luncheon in the cafeteria.

Its our annual celebration where our parents come, Haake said. Our children do little skits and songs. Its a fun lunch for the families to come and enjoy. They made a special effort to send their children to Catholic School and we recognize them for the sacrifices they make for our school.
HA NOI  In its list of 17 best destinations for 2017, the UK edition of Esquire recommends going to Viet Nam for its optimism and street food.

Viet Nam continues to emerge as a new global travel destination. But unlike other travel lists which focus on just beautiful beaches and fancy hotels, this time Viet Nam is strongly recommended for its state of mind.

"Viet Nam is undergoing a period of peace, innovation, creativity and success  and the expressions of optimism are noticeable and a delight to witness," the magazine said.

Visitors are encouraged to take time and slow down to really appreciate the countrys stunning culture.

Highlighting popular destinations Ha Noi, HCM City, Da Nang and Hoi An, the magazine tells visitors to truly enjoy the Vietnamese experience by taking boat rides in the Mekong Delta and cooking and Vietnamese language classes and visiting hill tribe villages.

Esquires list also includes three other destinations in Asia  Indias Golden Triangle, Japan, and Sanya in China.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Thursday asked the State Bank of Viet Nam (SBV) to increase the preferential credit package for hi-tech agricultural firms from VN60 trillion (US$2.6 billion) to VN100 trillion ($4.34 billion).

Speaking at the launching ceremony of VinEco farm, an investment by the VinGroup in the northern province of Ha Nam, he said agriculture is a key pillar of the national economy and the central bank should direct commercial banks to establish more forms of support to raise the value of the package.

He said the countrys agriculture sector was still facing big challenges, including the adverse effects of climate change, underdeveloped cultivation methods, and unsafe and unhygienic agro-produce.

The agriculture sector needs the involvement of private enterprises and co-operatives to solve the problems that it is facing. Start-ups in agriculture should be further encouraged, the PM said.

He wanted more attention paid to developing human resources geared towards hi-tech agriculture, and to expanding markets, popularising trademarks and improving packaging, thus ensuring stable consumption.

The PM also emphasised the need to develop organic and safe agriculture as well as smart farming that is export-driven and meets the demand of markets and the people.

The Government will create favourable conditions for enterprises and co-operatives to engage in hi-tech farming, Phuc said.

I myself will, together with related sectors, directly introduce high-tech, high-quality and clean farm produce to the world.

At the ceremony, Phuc pressed the button to launch production at the VinEco farm.

One of 14 VinEco farms invested in by VinGroup, the VN300 billion ($13 million) project sprawls over 180ha, including a large-scale model field of about 130ha, and a 5ha greenhouse area using Israeli technology and manufacturing facilities.

The Greenhouse No 1, using Israeli drip technology, covers an area of 8,300sq.m and is capable of producing around 150 tonnes of leafy vegetables per year.

On the 130ha model field, VinEco Ha Nam will develop nearly 15 kinds of key produce with a daily capacity of 20-30 tonnes for domestic and foreign consumption.

Earlier in the morning, the PM visited Japans Sumi Viet Nam Wiring System Company in ong Van II Industrial Park in Duy Tien District and the Ha Nam High-tech Agriculture Investment and Development Company in Nhan Khang Commune, Ly Nhan District.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ministry of Finance will propose to the Government that the number of State-owned cars are cut by 30 to 50 per cent by 2020.

Minister of Finance inh Tien Dung was quoted in a Thanh Nien (Young People) newspapers report on Wednesday as saying that this year the ministry plans to provide a travel allowance to officials who were previously eligible to use State-owned cars at ministries and localities. The allowance would subsidise business trips within a city or town, the report said.

According to the law, only top leaders from the deputy ministerial rank and above were eligible to use State-owned cars. However, these were often used by local level department heads.

As of October last year, the ministry began curbing the use of State-owned cars in an effort to reduce State spending. The six deputy finance ministers and heads of departments began to get travel allowances (their taxi fares subsidised), depending on the distance from the officials house to the office. Alternatively, they could use their own cars and still receive the subsidy, but the use of State-owned cars was prohibited.

According to the latest statistics provided by the ministrys Public Asset Management Department, there are currently some 37,000 State cars in use, each of which costs an average of VN320 million (US$13,800) in maintenance each year.

If the travel allowance for a deputy minister is VN9 million ($400) per month, equivalent to VN108 million ($4,800) per year, up to VN230 million ($10,200) can be saved annually.

If the number of State-owned cars is cut by 30 per cent, (11,100 cars), the Government would save VN2.3 trillion ($102 million) each year; this would increase to more than VN4.2 trillion ($186.7 million) if the number was cut by 50 per cent.

Ha Noi is the first locality nationwide to implement the travel allowance scheme on a trial basis. Since the beginning of this year, the subsidy has been applied in eight administrative units, including four departments and four districts. Each official is given a travel allowance of VN9 million per month, and each unit is allowed to operate two State-owned cars for business travel.

Associate Professor Ngo Tri Long welcomed the new move, but added that it was necessary to review and reduce the number of unused State-owned cars and drivers once the subsidy takes effect.

Otherwise, we will waste money on car subsidies and wages for drivers while both the cars and drivers are not working, he said.

He felt that the new policy should become a law that all units have to follow.

The finance ministry should consult with the Government on deciding practical subsidy levels for leaders of local agencies, he said.  VNS
My Lang

HOA BINH  Around 10pm in the mist and cold of a winter night, Ngan Quoc Viet and Phung Ba Thanh - teachers at the Tan Dan secondary school in Hoa Binh Province - wore headlamps around their foreheads, wrapped themselves in coats and took cautious steps on a steep, slippery slope that led to the a River.

Breath came out of their mouths while beads of sweat ran down their foreheads. They collected fish in their net then put them in their baskets.

Located on a small, arid hill in Mai Chau District too far from local markets, Tan Dan secondary school can hardly provide its 60 boarding students with fresh food.

Coming from poor families and visiting home only on weekends, the one-week portion of food that these students bring to school often runs out by midweek.

Feeling a tug at their heartstrings watching their students get by with only rice, the schools teachers decided to purchase a fishing lift net to catch fish from the a River to improve student meals.

They often place the lift net in the river at 4-4:30am in the summer and 5am in the winter and collect the fish at 9-10pm of the same day.

On average we catch 5-7kg per night, 10-15kg if were lucky, teacher Thanh said.

Unlike professional fishermen, we can only catch small fish, like anchovies that are the size of two fingers, he added.

Residing near the school, Thanh has experienced the difficulty of getting fresh food and vegetables. Sometimes his wife has to cook the leaves of their papaya tree or wild green apple eggplants that grow in the nearby forests, he said.

Sometimes his students asked for the papaya leaves or noodle seasoning to mix with rice, Thanh added.

I bought them raw fish and fresh vegetables a few times from local markets, but my teaching salary couldnt keep up, he said.

Teachers concern

With over 108 students, many of whom come from financially challenged households of the Muong and Tay ethnic minorities, worries abound. The schools principal Ha Manh Quyet expressed concerns towards the students who do well in school but faced indigent family circumstances that put their education in jeopardy.

The most recent case was inh Van An, whose father passed away from cancer when he was little. He quit school after finishing the 9th grade to support his mother, even though he was doing well at all subjects and was on the schools advanced math team.

Parents of inh Van Nam, a 7th grader in the schools advanced English team, are both having kidney issues. His father has moved to a Nang City to find work, leaving Nam at home with his mother and grandmother.

Even though Nams house is only 6km away from school, the school still allows him to join the boarding students and stay at school so that he can focus on studying, principal Quyet said.

Teaching a diverse body of students is a challenge, especially when it comes to teaching students who were born out of consanguineous marriages, said teacher Ngan Quoc Viet.

We have several inbred students who tend to take longer to learn, Viet said. There are some 6th graders who are yet to read fluently, requiring extra teaching time and attention from teachers, he said.

Teachers of the school take care of their students at their best efforts, said principal Quyet. They taught extra classes at night without getting paid and asked their acquaintances to donate used clothes and old textbooks for their students, he said.

We want to create the best studying environment for our students, but I think we can only do so much, he added.  VNS
QUANG NINH  President Tran ai Quang has called on people to plant trees, calling it vital for every country to simultaneously ensure economic growth and environmental protection.

He made the appeal on Thursday at the launch of a tree planting festival in the environmental recovery area of the eo Nai Coal Joint Stock Company, an affiliate of the Vietnam National Coal-Mineral Industries Holding Corporation Ltd in Cam Pha City, the northern province of Quang Ninh.

In his speech, he mentioned the November 1959 Nhan dan (People) newspaper article entitled Tree planting festival written by then-President Ho Chi Minh. The article analysed the importance of planting trees to the country and people and called for peoples total engagement toward the work.

Since then, the tree planting festival has become a custom practiced whenever a new year comes. Tree planting and afforestation activities have been conducted in a widespread and effective manner and have greatly helped with environmental protection and socio-economic development in Viet Nam, President Quang said.

He described forest planting and protection as increasingly important amidst global climate change, adding that concrete and practical measures should be taken to prevent deforestation so as to fuel economic growth and improve peoples living standards.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, nearly 222,000ha of land nationwide is covered by forests, while US$7.3 billion worth of forest products were exported in 2016.

A number of mechanisms and policies combining forest protection with social welfare insurance were issued, thereby promoting forestry restructuring. Forestry was a big contributor to the expansion of the whole agricultural sector, the ministry reported.

Also on Thursday, President Quang visited a national relic site where late President Ho Chi Minh visited workers of the eo Nai coal mining site on March 30, 1959.

The same day, Quang visited officials and civil servants of Quang Ninh province on the occasion of the Lunar New Year.

He said as a province with a long borderline and coast, Quang Ninh must pay special attention to reinforcing defence-security in order to firmly safeguard the national independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity. It needs to grasp thoroughly the Party and States foreign policy to join neighbouring China in building a border of peace, friendship, co-operation and development.  VNS
HCM CITY  Many businesses in HCM City resumed operations on Thursday, the first day after a week-long Tet (Lunar New Year) holiday, though most companies at export processing zones and industrials parks remain closed this week.

Because the holiday ended on Wednesday, many employees used their annual leave to have a full week off and will return to the city on Sunday or early next week.

Le Quoc Hoe, a worker at the Organ Needle Viet Nam Co., Ltd located in Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone in District 7, is among those who arrived early on the first day after the holiday.

Hoe said he did not return to his hometown for Tet so he decided to work on the first day after the holiday as regulated by the company.

On the first day, we were excited as we received lucky money and wishes from the companys leaders, he said.

Nguyen Thi My Hoa, chairwoman of the trade union for Organ Needle Viet Nam Co., Ltd, said on the first day, around 90 per cent of workers went back to work, with the rest expected to return to work a few days later because their hometowns were far away.

Many workers at Binh Minh Plastic Joint-Stock Company in District 6 began work on Thursday after an informal meeting with company leaders.

Bong Hoa Viet, manager of the administrative department of the company, said more than 1,000 workers had returned to work on the first day after the holiday.

Pham Van Kien, a mechanic at the company, said workers received Tet bonuses worth VN2-3 million (US$115-130).

Meanwhile, few businesses in export processing zones and industrial parks in the city resumed operation on the first day after the holiday, according to the HCM City Export Processing Zone and Industrial Park Authority (HEPZA).

Nguyen Thanh o, chairman of the trade union at HEPZA, said that many businesses allowed their workers to take off until the end of this week.

Most businesses at export processing zones and industrial parks will not resume operation until next week (Feb 6), o said.

Cu Phat Nghiep, chairman of the trade union at the Taiwanese-owned Pouyen Viet Nam Co. Ltd, said that only several departments resumed operation on Friday, and other departments would resume operation next week.

According to the companys regulation, workers whose hometowns are far from the city will have one to four extra days of holiday off, so all of the workers will be back to work on February 10, Nghiep said.

HCM City will face only a 3 per cent shortage of labour after the holiday, with the rate of labour transfer 15 per cent, according to the citys Human Resources Forecast and Labour Market Information Centre.

The city is expected to offer 140,000 new jobs for labourers this year, a rise of nearly 8 per cent over last year, according to the centre.  VNS
HCM CITY  HCM City Party Secretary inh La Thang on Thursday asked investors and workers to speed up construction of two major traffic projects at My Thuy and HCM City National University intersections.

Speaking during a Tet (Lunar New Year) visit to workers at My Thuy intersection in District 2 and the main gateway intersection at HCM City National University in District 9, Thang said the two projects played an important role in ensuring traffic safety and socio-economic development.

He asked investors to employ more workers and use more machines to complete work at the My Thuy intersection by September, three months ahead of schedule.

But he noted that occupational safety, construction quality and environmental sanitation should also be ensured.

He said that investors should also organise daily briefings and send weekly reports to the citys Peoples Committee to promptly solve difficulties.

Construction near the National Universitys main gateway intersection began in April last year and is expected to be completed in October.

The project involves expansion of a section and construction of an open tunnel on National Highway No. 1. Also, two flyovers above the open tunnel and two pedestrian overpasses at the university intersection are being built.

The project is part of the Ha Noi Highway and National Highway No. 1 BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) expansion project.

In recent years, the two intersections have been frequently blocked because of a large number of trucks and container trucks entering Cat Lai Port in District 2 and the High-Tech Park in District 9.

Traffic congestion has affected ease of transport for local residents and businesses.  VNS
SEOUL  Any nuclear attack in Korea Peninsula would trigger an "effective and overwhelming" response, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Seoul on Friday as he sought to reassure Washingtons Asian allies following President Donald Trumps inauguration.

Mattis was in the South Korean capital before going on to Tokyo, on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

South Korea has enjoyed US security protection since the 1950-53 Korean War, but on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces from it and Japan if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea and 47,000 in Japan.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

He was in Seoul to "underscore Americas priority commitment to our bilateral alliance" and make clear the administrations "full commitment" to defending South Koreas democracy," he said.

Han added that the alliance "reaffirms its firm will and strength to remain unwavering against all challenges and adversaries".

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-un said in his closely-watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: "It wont happen!"

Top priority

On Thursday Mattis and South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South this year as planned.

Mattis visits to South Korea and Japan, he added, were "a message that the Trump administration is giving top priority to ensuring security on the Korean peninsula and the US is a reliable security partner in the region".

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe - who is scheduled to meet Trump next week in Washington - told lawmakers he intends to press Mattis about "the significance of the Japan-US alliance".

Mattis tour comes as relations between the US and other world powers such as Mexico and Australia get off to a rocky start.

The Washington Post reported late on Wednesday that Trump ripped into his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull during a call last week, with the US president apparently fuming at a refugee accord he called "dumb" and cutting the conversation short.

Australia is a close US ally, and one of the so-called "Five Eyes" countries with which the US routinely shares sensitive intelligence.

Trump has meanwhile angered Mexicans by ordering the construction of a massive border wall and vowing to make their country pay for it. AFP
BOGOTA  Colombias ELN guerrillas have freed a hostage and the government released two rebel prisoners in exchange, clearing the way for peace talks to begin next week.

The government hopes talks with the one remaining active rebel group in Colombia will seal a "complete peace" to end Latin Americas last major armed conflict.

Odin Sanchez, a former lawmaker held captive since April 2016, was handed over to the Red Cross in the remote jungle region of Choco in western Colombia.

He was later welcomed by relatives and supporters waving signs and playing music in Quibdo, the regional capital.

"We have to unite to make those devils... join in a dialogue, so we can talk about peace and so they will release anyone else they may be holding," he said.

The government in turn released the two jailed rebels, Nixon Cobos and Leivis Valero, in the mountains of Santander, in the northeast.

Described by their side as in poor health, they were met by ELN delegates on their release from prison.

"Welcome to freedom," the forces radio station ELN Ranpal said on Twitter, hailing the move as "a triumph for consensus between the sides."

Peace talks

The exchange clears the way for formal talks to open Tuesday in the Ecuadoran capital Quito.

The ELN, or National Liberation Army, is the last active rebel group in a country torn for more than half a century by a conflict that has killed more than 260,000 people and left 60,000 missing.

President Juan Manuel Santos is trying to end the fighting for good. He won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts.

His government is currently implementing a historic peace deal with the countrys largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Complete peace

The successful prisoner exchange left Santos beaming with optimism.

"This conflict is over," he said, as he opened a summit of Nobel Peace Prize winners in Bogota.

"We did it. What seemed impossible, we made possible," he said, vowing the ELN talks would lead to "complete peace".

Sanchez voluntarily went into ELN custody last year to take the place of his brother Patrocinio, a former governor who had fallen ill after three years in captivity.

Patrocinio grew emotional talking about his brothers sacrifice, in an interview with AFP ahead of his release.

"It was very brave," he said.

"I spent more than two years with my hands and feet chained, in an airtight room in total darkness."

The ELN accuses the powerful Sanchez family of backing right-wing paramilitary groups in the Choco region, their political stronghold.

Patrocinio denied that claim, saying the ELN really only wanted ransom money. He said multiple ransom payments had been made, but declined to say how much.

New hostage dispute

Despite the hostage release, the negotiations look set to be tricky.

They will mark the fifth attempt to make peace with the ELN.

Both the FARC and ELN formed in 1964, and have funded themselves with ransom kidnappings and drug trafficking.

Incidents involving ELN forces have kept tensions high in recent months.

On Tuesday the rebels announced a new hostage seizure, a Colombian soldier they captured last week. The government condemned the abduction.

Resistance to peace

The peace process also faces ongoing resistance from conservative opponents who accuse Santos of granting impunity to rebels guilty of war crimes.

Santos had to revise the FARC accord after voters narrowly rejected it in a referendum last October.

Colombias territorial and ideological conflict has drawn in dozens of guerrilla and paramilitary groups, drug gangs and state forces over the decades.

Rights groups say massacres, rapes and other atrocities have been committed on all sides.

A teachers union in western Venezuela alleged on Thursday that the ELN had been luring Venezuelan minors with gifts to try to recruit them to its ranks in an area around the two countries border.

Venezuelan authorities did not comment.  AFP
PARIS  Embattled French presidential hopeful Francois Fillon has warned of a plot to "steal" his voters as a scandal over payments to his wife rumbled on, fuelled by new footage from an interview.

Fillons campaign has been struggling since it emerged that his Welsh-born wife Penelope was paid 830,000 euros ($900,000) as a parliamentary assistant over more than a decade - despite almost no one recalling her on the job.

On Thursday, one of Frances main investigative news programmes, Envoye Special, aired previously unseen footage from a 2007 interview in which she said, referring to her husband: "Ive never been actually his assistant".

The candid remarks in the interview with Britains Sunday Telegraph were likely to compound suspicions that she was paid for a fake job.

The Canard Enchaine newspaper has unearthed payslips showing she earned thousands of euros a month from 1998 to 2007 and again in 2012, as an assistant to Fillon and his 2002-2007 replacement in parliament.

Her lawyer, Pierre Cornut-Gentille, insisted her remarks had been "taken out of context".

Fillon, a conservative who had been leading the race before "Penelopegate", has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

But an Elabe poll on Wednesday showed his campaign to be in deep trouble.

The survey showed he would crash out in the first round of the election in April behind far-right leader Marine Le Pen and fast-rising 39-year-old centrist Emmanuel Macron.

The poll showed Macron going on to easily defeat Le Pen in Mays runoff.

On Thursday, a combative Fillon ploughed on, using a rally in the northeastern town of Charleville-Mezieres to lash out at the left, which he accuses of being behind the revelations.

"They are not looking to see justice done but to take me down and, beyond me, take down the right and steal its vote," he accused.

But many conservatives are dismayed by the scandal, fearing it could cost them an election they expected to handily win after five years of troubled Socialist rule.

"Its scandalous that his wife received such huge sums of money," said Anne Serise-Dupuis, a 66-year-old Republicans voter in the southwestern city of Bordeaux. "He should withdraw. He has been disqualified".

A Harris Interactive poll showed a majority of Republicans supporters still having faith in Fillon, however.

Juppe as Plan B?

It is not illegal in France to hire family members as parliamentary assistants -- provided they have real jobs.

Fillon, 62, claims his wife, whom he previously portrayed mainly as a home-maker, looked after much of his constituency business in the central Sarthe region while he was in Paris.

This week it emerged that he also had two of his five children on the payroll.

Investigators this week raided his parliamentary office and interviewed the couple as part of a preliminary probe into possible misuse of public funds.

Penelopes lawyer said she had handed over "all the details proving the existence of a real job".

The allegations are all the more damaging given that Fillon, a devout Catholic, campaigned as a sleaze-free reformer who would slash public spending to stop France living beyond its means.

A group of leading Republicans said Thursday they would stand by their man.

"We give Francois Fillon our complete support because his commitment to France is vital," the group, which included former finance minister Francois Baroin, touted as a possible replacement for Fillon, wrote in the rightwing Le Figaro daily.

But some dissident voices have already emerged.

Republicans MP Philippe Gosselin said he and other party members would call on 71-year-old Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppe -- whom Fillon beat in a primary -- to step in if Fillon decided to stand aside.

Meanwhile, the surprise winner of the Socialist nomination, Benoit Hamon, met President Francois Hollande as he searches for support within his fractured party to mount a credible challenge to Le Pen, Macron and Fillon.

Hamon, a 49-year-old leftwinger with a radical proposal to pay a universal basic income in a world of dwindling work, will probably need to win over the votes of Communist-backed Jean-Luc Melenchon to stand any chance. AFP
SOUTH SIOUX CITY  Big Ox Energy will stop paying motel bills next week for South Sioux City residents displaced by sewer odor, a company spokesman said.

As many as two dozen residents were originally displaced by the rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide permeating several homes. As of last week, a dozen remained at motels or at the homes of friends and family. The company has been covering the bills since late October.

"We are now working with the residents who we've been in touch with to get them back into their homes," company spokesman Evan Zeppos told the Sioux City (Iowa) Journal. "We are working with them on individual remediation plans."

Big Ox's original agreement with the city set Jan. 31 as the payments deadline, but the company extended it a week. Zeppos said the agreement allows longer stays for people whose homes have reasonable remedial requirements that cannot be met by Feb. 7.

City Administrator Lance Hedquist said the city has no plans to use city funds for extending the motel stays.

The source of the hydrogen sulfide that caused the smell in the homes is still being investigated.

In late October city officials said the gas seemed to be emanating from sewer lines flowing from the Big Ox plant at the city's Roth Industrial Park. Last week Big Ox Energy released a report that pointed at plumbing issues in the majority of the homes instead of discharges from the Big Ox plant.

Test results have shown that hydrogen sulfide is now at safe levels in the homes, and the city is still testing for any smelly sulfur-related compounds that remain.
Every year Swiss business magazine Bilanz publishes a list of the richest people residing in Switzerland, categorised into the industries in which the fortunes were made. The latest list was published in January 2017, based on figures for the previous year. Watchmaking features prominently on the list, albeit in small numbers given the size of the business relative to other industries.

Here are the people and families whose fortunes are derived from watchmaking, extracted from the Bilanz ranking, with the estimated net worths in Swiss francs. At time of publication SFr1 is equivalent to US$1.

1. Johann Rupert  SFr4.75 billion (Richemont, tobacco)

Originally a merchant banker turned tobacco tycoon, the South African is the controlling shareholder of luxury conglomerate Richemont, owner of brands like Cartier and IWC. His fortune fell from SFr5.5 billion in 2015 as a consequence of the declining value of Richemont shares in the wake of poor results.

2. Hayek family  SFr4.25 billion (Swatch Group)

The family that controls the Swatch Group  led by Nick Hayek, his sister Nayla and her son Marc  saw its fortune decline from SFr5.5 billion a year before, thanks to a sharp fall in the value of Swatch Group shares. While the group only just posted a poor set of financials for 2016, Nick Hayek expects 2017 to be better.

3. Stern family  SFr3.25 billion (Patek Philippe)

Possessing of a vast fortune thanks to its ownership of Patek Philippe, the Stern family controls a luxury watchmaking with an estimated SFr1.3 billion in sales (at wholesale prices and not retail value). The immense profitability of privately-held Patek Philippe, led by Thierry and his father Philippe, can be inferred from the SFr500m expansion of its Geneva manufacturing facility, financed entirely by the companys coffers.

4. Bucherer family  SFr1.75 billion (Bucherer group, watch retail)

With estimated annual sales of SFr1.5 billion, Bucherer Group is Europes largest watch retailer, now led by third generation family member Jorg Bucherer. Still owned by the eponymous family, the group has 30 watch stores in Europe as well as over a dozen jewellery stores, in addition to assorted single brand boutiques.

5. Scheufele family  SFr1.75 billion (Chopard)

Originally jewellers from the German city of Pforzheim, the Scheufele family has owned Chopard since 1963. The Geneva based firm now sells some SFr570m worth of watches and jewellery a year, with family patriarch Karl still in charge, along with his children Karl-Friedrich and Caroline.

6. Borer family  SFr1.75 billion (Rolex)

Now led by the 89-year old Harry Borer, the Aegler-Borer family once owned Rolex Biel, the exclusive supplier to movements to Rolex Geneva, which controlled everything else to do with the luxury watch brand. In 2004 Rolex Geneva took over the Biel outfit, leaving the Borer family extremely wealthy.

7. Audemars and Piguet families  SFr950m (Audemars Piguet)

With estimated sales of SFr800m Audemars Piguet is one of the few luxury watchmakers still enjoying growth amidst the downturn, making the descendants of its founders wealthy indeed. With plans to control more of its distribution network, Audemars Piguet should become even more profitable in the coming years.

8. Schneider family  SFr750m (Breitling)

The family has owned Breitling since 1979 and while the watchmaker has grown slower than its rivals in recent years, it nonetheless has sales of some SFr370m a year. Recent news puts the company in play, but no suitor has emerged publicly yet.

9. Jean-Pierre Slavic  SFr325m (Waterproof watch crowns)

Slavics fortune comes from Boninchi SA, the main supplier of watch crowns to Rolex for most of the watchmakers history. He sold the company to Rolex in 2001 and is now best known for his car collection, which includes a Ferrari 250GTO.

10. Bernheim and Weil families  SFr275m (Raymond Weil)

Now run by a grandson of its eponymous founder, Raymond Weil turns over an estimated SFr210m annually, a figure thats remained stable for several years.

11. Vartan Sirmakes  SFr225m (Franck Muller)

The Armenian co-founder of Franck Muller Watchland now owns almost all of the company, having bought out Franck Muller himself, who spends most of his time in Monaco and Thailand. The firm sells some SFr285m of watches and jewellery every year, primarily under the Franck Muller brand.

12. Jean-Claude Biver  SFr175m (Blancpain, Hublot)

The energetic 67-year old made his first fortune turning around Blancpain and selling it to the Swatch Group, then doing the same with Hublot, which was acquired by LVMH. Biver now runs the French luxury conglomerates watch division, while being chief executive of two of its constituent brands, TAG Heuer and Zenith.

Source: Bilanz
GOP advances Trump EPA pick

WASHINGTON (AP)  Republicans suspended Senate committee rules Thursday to muscle President Donald Trumps pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency toward confirmation after Democrats boycotted a vote.

It was the latest sign of political hostilities on Capitol Hill as Senate Democrats used parliamentary procedure to delay votes on some of Trumps Cabinet nominees and Republicans used their slim Senate majority to advance and approve them.

Also Thursday, two Senate committees voted along party lines to send Trumps nominee to lead the White House budget office, South Carolina GOP Rep. Mick Mulvaney, to the full Senate for a vote.

Kids tell teachers: Dad killed our mom

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. (AP)  A Missouri man was charged with murder after two of his three children told teachers at school he had stabbed their mother to death.

According to court documents, authorities were alerted to the incident and found the womans body Monday morning after the children, 8- and 9-year-old boys and a 6-year-old girl, were taken to school by their father.

Vincente Roldan-Marron was charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of Yadira Gomez. Roldan-Marron told authorities he blacked out after drinking alcohol and taking pills and couldnt remember what happened.

Trump supporter beaten at Berkeley

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP)  A 21-year-old student who supports President Donald Trump was beaten up on the University of California, Berkeley campus a day after violent protests led authorities to cancel a controversial speech.

Jack Palkovic says he was wearing a Make America Great Again cap and on his way to class Thursday when a white SUV slammed to a stop and two young men ran toward him.

One of the men screamed an epithet, grabbed Palkovics hat and pummeled him before the two got back in the vehicle and tried to drive away. An Associated Press reporter witnessed the attack.

Police arrived, blocked their escape and arrested both men.

6 killed in latest Ukraine violence

AVDIIVKA, Ukraine (AP)  Salvos of artillery shook eastern Ukraine on Thursday, the fifth day of escalated fighting between government troops and Russia-backed separatist rebels. Two Ukrainian troops were killed overnight and 10 others wounded, the government said, while rebels said one of their fighters was killed.

Shelling appeared to intensify after nightfall and both sides reported civilian deaths  two in Avdiivka and one in Donetsk.

At least 15 people have been reported killed since the fighting around Avdiivka surged over the weekend. More than 9,700 people have been killed since the war with separatist rebels began in April 2014. A cease-fire exists, but skirmishes persist.

German researchers find Nazi submarine

BERLIN (AP)  German researchers say they have found a Nazi-era submarine that sunk in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II.

The Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation says the wreck of U-581 was found last September at a depth of about 2,950 feet near the Azores island of Pico.

The discovery was announced Thursday, exactly 75 years after the submarine was scuttled by its commander following a clash with the British destroyer HMS Westcott. All but four of its 46 crew survived.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man jumped out of his bedroom window Thursday following an explosion in the basement of his home in what authorities are calling a suspicious fire.

A cause of the fire at 1144 Glenny Ave. hasnt been determined, but Fire Chief Pat Treloar said the departments K-9 Radar was used in the investigation, and samples were taken to test for possible flammable substances.

Waterloo Fire Rescue was dispatched to the home just after 11 a.m. Thursday. Smoke could be seen billowing from the doors of the single-story home. Firefighters extinguished a fire in the basement of a residence just before noon Thursday.

Battalion Chief Mike Moore said the fire likely began near the basement stairs, and it was contained to that area, he said. He said the remainder of the house suffered extensive heat damage.

The resident told officials he jumped out of his first-floor bedroom window when he heard a boom, then ran to a neighbors house.

He said he heard a boom in the basement after turning up the furnace, Moore said. Thats the kind of stuff we have to look at.

The man was taken to Covenant for evaluation due to smoke inhalation and possible exposure. A dog in the house was not injured, according to Moore.

Neighbors Nicki and Todd Kimberly, who live three doors down, said they heard a boom. They said the occupant of the home was taken from the house by firefighters.

He came out in stocking feet and wrapped in a blanket, Nicki Kimberly said.

The one-story house is owned by Michael D. Morehouse, according to public records.

Second arrest

made in shooting

CEDAR FALLS  A second person has been arrested in connection with a shooting at a dance in a church building last month.

Police said Corion Jamal Pursley handed Darius Devon Nickelous a handgun inside Wesley Foundation Church on College Street around the time of a shooting Jan. 14.

During the incident a shot was fired inside the building and at least one more shot fired outside. No one was hurt.

Nickelous was found with the weapon, a .38-caliber Rossi revolver, after he left the building, and he was arrested for intimidation with a weapon, felon in possession of a firearm and interference.

On Wednesday, authorities arrested Pursley, 22, of Cedar Rapids, on a warrant charging him with felon in possession of a firearm for allegedly handling the revolver. He also was arrested on a bench warrant for allegedly fleeing during a court hearing on an unrelated burglary case, and his bond was set at $60,000.

Nickelous, 22, remains in the Black Hawk County Jail with bond set at $100,000.

Court records show police had briefly detained Pursley at the scene of the Jan. 14 shooting. Officers found a marijuana blunt in his pockets, and was arrested for misdemeanor possession and apparently released.

At the time of the shooting, Pursley was out on bond awaiting the outcome of a second-degree burglary charge where he and others were accused of breaking into a home on Covey Court while residents were inside sleeping in December 2015.

He was scheduled for a court appearance Jan. 19  five days after the shooting  and records show he arrived but fled during the proceeding and disappeared.

1 arrested for endangerment

WATERLOO  A January fire where a toddler was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation was likely caused by a propane torch used to light cigarettes, hash oil and marijuana, according to police.

Now the mother has been arrested for misdemeanor child endangerment in connection with the blaze.

Authorities arrested Brenna Ann Folkers, 29, of 3307 Kipling Road, on Monday. She was released from jail later that day.

Waterloo firefighters were called to the mobile home on Kipling Road around 6 a.m. Jan. 16 after residents noticed smoke and heat and fled. Damage was limited to a spot on the floor, and a 2-year-old boy was found covered in soot and taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation, according to court records.

The child had been in a bedroom in the front of the mobile home, not far from where the fire started, records state. Authorities allege marijuana and hash oil had been smoked while the child was present.

Fake fundraiser reported in C.F.

CEDAR FALLS  Police and firefighters here are warning residents about an apparent scam telephone fundraising solicitation.

Public Safety Director Jeff Olson, the citys police chief, said at least one resident has received a call from an individual claiming to represent Cedar Falls firefighters trying to raise funds to buy school supplies.

Olson and Jim Cook, president of the Cedar Falls Firefighters Association that represents unionized firefighters, said neither the city of Cedar Falls fire operations nor the firefighters union are engaged in any such fundraiser.

The public is advised to ignore such a solicitation, Olson said. Questions may be directed to police at 291-2515.

Man selling fake iPhones arrested

OSAGE  An Osage man accused of selling fake iPhones faces criminal charges.

Reed Barclay, 35, was charged with felony ongoing criminal conduct and misdemeanor fourth-degree theft.

A woman contacted Osage police in December claiming Barclay sold her a fake iPhone 6S Plus for $300 under the guise it was a new, legitimate product, according to court documents.

Barclay allegedly sold the woman the phone Dec. 18 at a gas station parking lot in Osage.

She went to police after an employee of a Waverly cell phone store told her they couldnt switch the phone over to her service because the serial number was linked to another account and didnt match the number on the box, according to court documents.

Police say another store worker told them the model number on the phone linked to a Youtube link to an iPhone 6s clone, the device ran slow, looked different than a real phone and an internet search of the serial number linked to Chinese websites.

Often built in China, iPhone clones are knockoffs meant to look like the real thing.

The victim told police Barclay wouldnt return her money.

Barclay also is accused of selling a woman a fake iPhone 6s Plus in Mason City on Dec. 12.

That phone was offered for sale for $350, police say.

Barclay, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in April, was out on appeal at the time he allegedly sold the bogus iPhones.

The charges were for selling methamphetamine.

Barclay claimed in the appeal the District Court discriminated against him because of a mental illness and asked the Iowa Court of Appeals to place him on probation instead of prison.

The appeal was denied Jan. 11.

Barclay remained jailed Thursday at the Mitchell County Jail in Osage.
WATERLOO -- The Community Southern Baptist Church will celebrate its 40th anniversary from Feb. 10-12.

Services will begin at 6 p.m. Feb. 10, with Johnnie Johnson from Deliverance Temple COGIC, the Rev. Michael Coleman from Antioch Baptist Church, the Rev. Lovie Caldwell from Pilgrim's Rest and their congregations.

Services will begin at 4 p.m. Feb. 11 with the Rev. Robert Night, president of the Southern Baptist Convention in Iowa, the Rev. Marvin Jenkins from Union Baptist Church, the Rev. Thomas Flint from Payne AME church and their congregations.

Both services will be followed by a fellowship meal.

The celebration will conclude with an 11 a.m. service Feb. 12 with the Rev. Ed Gregory from Des Moines. A field representative for the Churches of Eastern Iowa for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for the Baptist Convention of Iowa will speak.

Everyone is welcome.

WATERLOO -- Walnut Ridge Baptist Church, 1307 W. Ridgeway, will host a mens video/Bible study course starting Tuesday.

The seven-week study course will meet at 7 p.m. Tuesdays for "Act Like Men -- 40 days to Biblical Manhood," by James MacDonald.

Cost of a study book is $10.00.

Sign-up on line at ww.wrbc.net, or call 233-3545 for more information.

WATERLOO -- The Catholic Parishes in Waterloo will host a preparation program for adult Catholics who wish to celebrate confirmation.

The four-week preparation will begin Monday and meet from 6 to 8 p.m. Mondays at St. Edward School.

Candidates must be 19 years or older, baptized, catechized and actively participating in the church. For information, contact Dave Cushing at 233-0498 or email dbqwcaf@dbqarch.org.
WATERLOO  A man who was shot outside a private club last summer has been arrested on firearms charges.

A federal grand jury issued an indictment Jan. 25 charging Sadorieous Daquiel Linell Collins, 23, of Waterloo, with felon in possession of a firearm.

On Monday, a magistrate ruled Collins will remain in custody until trial, currently scheduled for March.

According to police, Collins and another man had been arguing at Club Vibe on Logan Avenue on July 30 and were told to leave by the clubs security staff. He told police he left the area and was shot while walking away.

Police found Collins in the area of East Mullan Avenue and Conger Street, and he was taken to UnityPoint-Allen Hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds to his forearm and abdomen.

Officers followed a blood trail and found a bloody cell phone and a bloody .32-caliber Keltec pistol nearby. Authorities tested blood on the phone and handgun for DNA and determined it was Collins blood, police said.

Collins is barred from handling firearms because of a 2012 Black Hawk County conviction for willful injury in connection with a fight at a house party and a 2013 U.S. District Court conviction for being a prohibited person in possession of a firearm in connection with a foot chase in Waterloo where he tossed a backpack containing a loaded revolver.

Court records show Collins had been sentenced to three years in prison for the 2013 firearm charge and was released from prison in September 2016.
WATERLOO  A month before an Iowa Division of Narcotics Enforcement agent fired at him during a methamphetamine sting in Waterloo, Paul Daniel Greseth led Minnesota officers on a high-speed chase following a traffic stop.

Discarded along the pursuit path, Minnesota authorities found a handgun, although they werent able to link the weapon to Greseth. And despite the December chase, Greseth had been working with Minnesota police, according to investigators.

Greseth, 32, of Wanamingo, was charged Monday with possession of meth with intent to deliver for bags of meth found when officers swarmed a car he was traveling in outside a Waterloo car wash Jan. 22.

On Thursday, a magistrate ordered Greseth remain in jail pending trial, in part because of his history of missing court dates and the fact he had more than 20 convictions in previous cases, many of which were offenses committed while on bond or probation.

This is not a hard decision, Magistrate C.J. Williams said Thursday as he ordered Greseths detention following a brief hearing in U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids.

Joshua Mulnix, another DNE agent involved in Greseths arrest in Waterloo, outlined events leading up to the car wash shooting, which resulted in no injuries.

Greseth had agreed to travel to Waterloo to deliver meth to a confidential source who, unbeknownst to him, was working with police.

Going into the Waterloo bust, Iowa officers knew about the 100-mph pursuit in Minnesota in December, and they knew a gun had possibly been involved, Mulnix said.

We had a heightened concern for him resisting and having a firearm, he said.

Greseth chose the car wash location on Logan Avenue. Mulnix said the plan was for uniformed officers to detain him until they could obtain a warrant to search the vehicle.

But when three marked Black Hawk County sheriffs vehicles pulled up behind him, Greseth allegedly began ripping open bags of meth, trying to suck up the evidence with a car wash vacuum, court records state.

Mulnix said he and the other DNE agent approached the vehicle from the sides, and Greseth, who was standing outside the passenger-side door, allegedly ignored officers commands to put his hands up and instead reached inside the vehicle. He said police were unable to see Greseths hands.

When Greseth continued to ignore the commands, the other DNE officer, who was standing by the drivers side, fired two shots toward Greseth, Mulnix said. He declined to talk further about the shooting because of an ongoing use-of-force review.

He said a struggle with Greseth then followed before he was detained. He said a man who had been traveling with Greseth, 24-year-old Dylan Vaughn Purdy, of Upper Minneapolis, Minn., froze immediately when he saw officers.

Investigators found about 440 grams  almost a pound  of ice meth scattered on the ground and underneath the vehicle.

That would be considered a large amount, for distribution, Mulnix said.

He said officers didnt find a weapon.

Before the car wash bust, Greseth had been working off charges with Minnesota officers, agreeing to cooperate in investigations after being arrested, Mulnix said. He said he wasnt sure of the details, but he said the Jan. 22 trip to Waterloo wasnt connected to Greseths law enforcement cooperation.
WATERLOO  A January fire where a toddler was taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation was likely caused by a propane torch used to light cigarettes, hash oil and marijuana, according to police.

Now the mother has been arrested for misdemeanor child endangerment in connection with the blaze.

Authorities arrested Brenna Ann Folkers, 29, of 3307 Kipling Road, on Monday. She was released from jail later that day.

Waterloo firefighters were called to the mobile home on Kipling Road around 6 a.m. on Jan. 16 after residents noticed smoke and heat and fled. Damage was limited to spot on the floor, and a 2-year-old boy was found covered in soot and taken to a hospital for smoke inhalation, according to court records.

The child had been in a bedroom in the front of the mobile home, not far from where the fire started, records state. Authorities allege marijuana and hash oil had been smoked while the child was present.
CEDAR FALLS  University of Northern Iowas Black Student Union will host a dozen events this month  and into the beginning of March  to recognize and celebrate Black History Month.

The events began with a kick-off Friday and will end March 3 with an acknowledgement of the positive changes in culture and on campus.

In between, they have planned everything from dinners to movie nights.

All events are open to the public and free for UNI students, faculty and staff.

Heres a few of the highlights the students plan to celebrate:

5 to 11 p.m. tonight at UNIs Wellness and Recreation Center: A disco-themed skate party (skates will be provided) will be held to showcase how music and roller rinks contributed to todays culture.

6 to 9 p.m. Feb. 22 at UNIs Lang Auditorium: The tunnel of oppression will walk people through classrooms where people will re-enact modern forms of oppression of minorities and discuss the types of oppression minorities face.

6:30 p.m. Feb. 23 at UNIs Center for Multicultural Education: Nationally-recognized speaker Rasheed Cromwell will talk about the diversity experience on campus and hold a lecture following that at UNIs Lang Hall.

6:30 p.m. Feb. 25 at Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center: The Fashion to Action fashion show will be held and includes workshops, seminars and music exhibits as well as a runway show.

11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Feb. 26 at Wesley Center Foundation: A church service will lead into a soul-food dinner that will include a discussion on where soul food originated and why it plays a major role in African-American culture.

7 p.m. March 3 at UNIs Commons Ballroom: The Toast for Change/Ebony Ball will acknowledge the positive changes in culture and on the UNI campus.

Students also will host a karaoke night and diversity party during the month.

Other events also are being organized on campus during February, including a Diversity Colloquium and the African-American Children and Family Conference.
DES MOINES -- Officials in Iowas Tourism Office are participating in a national effort to promote travel by encouraging Iowans to use their unused time off to explore their state.

Shawna Lode, manager of the Iowa Tourism Office, said estimates indicate about half of Iowans did not use all of their vacation days in 2015, and nationally the unused time off was calculated to be about 658 million unused vacation days a year.

Today, were encouraging Iowans to commit to traveling their home state in 2017 to discover the places and people that make us unique, Lode said. Traveling and disconnecting from day-to-day responsibilities at home and work is proven to reduce stress and improve relationships.

Researchers at the U.S. Travel Association say Americans could have spent an additional $122 billion in domestic leisure travel had they used all their vacation days spending. Iowa officials say Iowa stood to gain $4.5 billion of this amount. Tourism in Iowa generates more than $8.06 billion in expenditures and $466 million in state taxes, plus employs 67,400 people statewide, according to the Iowa Tourism Office -- which is part of the Iowa Economic Development Authority.

Master matrix

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports 88 of 99 Iowa counties plan to evaluate construction permit applications and proposed locations for animal confinements by using the master matrix.

Davis, Decatur, Des Moines, Keokuk, Lee, Mahaska, Osceola, Plymouth, Wapello, Warren and Washington counties will not use the master matrix. Animal producers in these counties must meet higher standards than other confinement producers who also need a construction permit. They qualify by choosing a site and using practices that reduce impacts on air, water and the community.

The master matrix applies to producers who must get a construction permit to build, expand or modify a totally roofed facility. Generally, these are confinement feeding operations with more than 2,500 finishing hogs, 1,000 beef cattle or 715 mature dairy cows.

Counties that adopt the master matrix can provide more input to producers on site selection, and proposed structures and facility management. Participating counties score each master matrix submitted in their county and can recommend to approve or deny the construction permit. They also can join in DNR visits to a proposed confinement site.

Natural gas

Natural Gas prices fell $.25 this week, ending at $3 per MMBtu, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources reported.

Propane prices were up $.04 from last weeks report, with a statewide average of $1.25 per gallon. Home heating prices dropped $.02 from last week, ending with a statewide average of $2.04

The price of global crude oil fell this week on the West Texas Intermediate by $.05 per barrel over last week and is currently priced at $53.28. A year ago, WTI crude sold for $31.62.

As of Jan. 31, the price of regular unleaded gasoline averaged $2.31 across Iowa, according to AAA. Thats $.03 lower than one week ago and $.57 higher than one year ago. The national average Tuesday was $2.28.

Retail diesel fuel prices in Iowa were down a penny to a statewide average of $2.47, but up from $1.89 a year ago. The Iowa average is $.04 lower than the national average.

Wholesale ethanol prices were up $.06 from last weeks price, closing at $1.50.

Child hunger

The Iowa Department of Education is seeking sponsors for a USDA-funded program that provides nutritious meals or snacks to children in low-income areas during the summer months as a way to head off hunger in Iowa. State officials estimate about 90 percent of the more than 200,000 Iowa students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunches during the school year dont have school-sponsored meal programs to turn to when classes let out for summer break.

Typical sponsors include public and nonpublic schools, local government agencies, and private nonprofit organizations with serving sites located in schools, churches, community centers, parks, libraries, housing complexes or camps. To qualify as a site, the facility must be either located in a low-income neighborhood where at least 50 percent of the children are eligible for free and reduced-price meals or serve primarily low-income children.

In 2016, Iowa Summer Food Service Program sponsors served 1,234,046 meals and snacks to children across the state, feeding about 23,000 children on a typical June day. If interested, organizations may email stephanie.dross@iowa.gov.
WATERLOO  Public employees have had a seat at the table to negotiate their union contracts for more than 40 years, and theyd like that dialogue to continue as lawmakers weigh changes to the states collective bargaining rights this year.

Were willing to talk. Lets see what doesnt work, and why it doesnt work. Thats (what) I dont understand ... what hasnt worked since the 70s? said Susie Baker, of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Iowa Council 61.

Baker was one of the speakers at a press conference Wednesday at the Waterloo Education Association office urging lawmakers to listen to public employees as they look at changes to the current law. She spoke to a packed house of more than 50 people, many of whom were union members.

From her view, Baker said the law seems to be working as is.

Its a good process. Its worked well, Baker said. I dont understand the need to revamp it. I dont understand the need to attack public service employees. The system has worked well since it was implemented.

Jeff Orvis, a member of the Iowa State Education Association and math teacher at Waverly-Shell Rock High School, explained worked well meant fairly for both sides.

Weve found that this law is actually working quite fairly, so when our legislators are saying, We want to make the law more fair, the only assumption I can make is that they want to make it more fair for the employer; in other words, skew it toward the employers side, and I think this could be doing long-term, irreparable damage to our state, Orvis said.

The public employees said they have little insight into what may or may not be proposed in the changes. Several people said theyd contacted lawmakers with little response as to the specifics.

Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican, has proposed changes particularly to reform the way health care is delivered to public employees, which he discussed during his condition of the state address.

But the lawmakers have not yet discussed what changes they might be proposing. Calls and emails to the chairmen of the House and Senate labor committees were not returned by press time.

Branstads spokesman Ben Hammes reiterated the governors proposal but said the executive recognizes the Legislature is its own co-equal and separate branch that may choose to propose their own ideas.

In the absence of specifics, the public employees worried about the worst-case scenario that the state would do away with collective bargaining entirely. They point no further than Wisconsin, where that transpired in 2011.

We have witnessed what has occurred in our surrounding states, in particular Wisconsin, and we are frightened, quite frankly, that those conditions could emerge here in Iowa, said Amy Petersen, a University of Northern Iowa professor and member of United Faculty.

One of those repercussions Petersen mentioned would be faculty leaving UNI, and she said shes already heard faculty discussing that possibility if they lose collective bargaining rights. Others said the state could lose public employees of all stripes  police officers, firefighters, teachers, among others  and those industries could suffer in providing quality services to Iowans.

Orvis, the math teacher, also stressed there could be economic impacts. He said if the 180,000 state employees lost even $100 per month as a result of changes, there would be $18 million fewer dollars each month being spent in Iowa communities.

I dont know of any public employees who have done this to get rich, Orvis said to laughter in the room. This is a service-oriented field of working-class people  (and) to insult us like this and say No, were overpaid and underworked. I have not met that public employee yet.
UNI Overseas Recruitment Fair

Time: Today through Sunday

Location: Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center, 200 W. Fourth St., Waterloo

Details: The UNI Overseas Placement Service is a nonprofit service based in the UNI Office of Career Services, within the UNI Division of Student Affairs. They have served the K-12 international education community for more than four decades. For more details. go to https://www.uni.edu/placement/overseas/fair

Ying Quartet

Time: 3 p.m. today

Location: Jesup Community School, Jesup

Details: Quartet of siblings will return to the community for a concert.

Admission: Free

Iowa Soccer Association Boys Indoor Championships

Time: Today through Sunday

Location: UNI-Dome, Cedar Falls

Puppet Show

Time: 4:30 p.m. today

Location: Cedar Falls Public Library, 524 Main St.

Pippin

Time: 7 p.m. today and 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Location: Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, Cedar Falls

Details: High-flying, death-defying hit Broadway musical, full of extraordinary acrobatics, wondrous magical feats and soaring songs.

Tickets: Prices start at $29; youth pricing available for this show; to order, call 273-4849 or go to www.unitix.uni.edu.

Waterloo Black Hawks vs. Tri-City Storm

Time: 7 p.m. today and Saturday

Location: Young Arena, 125 Commercial St., Waterloo

Tickets: Call 291-7680 or go to www.waterlooblackhawks.com.

Trombones de Costa Rica concert

Time: 7:30 p.m. today

Location: Bengtson Auditorium, Russell Hall, University of Northern Iowa campus, Cedar Falls

Details: The UNI School of Music will host the concert.

Admission: Free

Knights of Columbus spelling bee

Time: 9:10 a.m. Saturday

Location: St. Patrick School, Seventh and Washington streets, Cedar Falls

Details: Any student in grades four through seven may participate, whether public, private, parochial or home-schooled.

UNI mens basketball vs. Indiana State

Time: 1 p.m. Saturday

Location: McLeod Center, Cedar Falls

Tickets: Call 273-4849 or go to www.unitix.uni.edu.

14th annual Lighted Night Ski

Time: 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Saturday

Location: Heery Woods State Park, Clarksville

Details: Put on by the Butler County Conservation Board. Participants meet at the Heery Woods Park Lodge where they can ski along candle-lit trails on the south side of the woods.

Cost: One canned vegetable per person and free will donations will be accepted.

UNI wrestling vs. University of Oklahoma

Time: 2 p.m. Sunday

Location: West Gym, UNI campus, Cedar Falls

Tickets: Call 273-4849 or go to www.unitix.uni.edu.

Hearst Film Series

Time: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Location: Hearst Center for the Arts, 304 W. Seerley Blvd., Cedar Falls

Details: Film in February are unconventional love stories. The film this Tuesday is Harold and Maude (1971).

Admission: Free

UNI mens basketball vs. Southern Illinois

Time: 7 p.m. Wednesday

Location: McLeod Center, Cedar Falls

Details: Prizes for the first 200 students to arrive.

Tickets: Call 273-4849 or go to www.unitix.uni.edu

Downtown Delights

Time: 5 p.m. Thursday

Location: Downtown Cedar Falls

Details: It doesnt get much sweeter than chocolate and shopping. Shop downtown Cedar Falls while being treated to complimentary sample pairings of delicious wines and decadent chocolates at participating local businesses.
Last week, Senate File 158 was introduced in the Iowa Legislature. In short, its a proposal that would allow government entities to post public notices on government websites in lieu of posting them in newspapers.

Its an issue that has been introduced in previous sessions, and with lobbying from the Iowa League of Cities and the Iowa State Association of Counties, we expect the issue to keep returning.

However, approving such a proposal, we believe, would be a large step backward in government transparency.

Consider some of the following statistics.

A survey conducted in December 2015 by Newton Marketing and Research showed 85 percent of Iowans believe state and local government should be required to publish public notices in newspapers.

An overwhelming 91 percent of Iowans find their local newspaper trustworthy when publishing public notices, compared to only 67 percent who find government sponsored websites trustworthy.

Iowans rely on their local newspapers to stay informed, and 76 percent of Iowans read their local newspaper.

Those are the kind of numbers our state leaders should heavily consider since the accessibility to information about government dealings is an important premise upon which the principle of democracy is based.

Newspapers have the responsibility to publish public notices in a timely, complete and accurate manner. Nobody has ever hacked a newspaper, unlike internet sites where public notices have mysteriously disappeared.

Putting public notices from schools, cities and counties on hundreds of government websites is a good way to make sure they will not be noticed by a larger portion of the public.

Proponents of the change will point to cost savings for government entities.

Research by the Iowa Newspaper Association shows, on average, cities, schools and counties spend 1/20th of 1 percent of their budgets on public notices.

Do we really want to sacrifice government transparency for that?

Residents of Iowa communities for decades have been relying on notices being published in their local newspapers as a way of keeping tabs on their local governments. The easier we make keeping tabs on our government dealings the better.

Public notices have been available to the public via newspapers for 200 years. Newspapers are a respected third party  unlike a government agency posting public notices on the agencys own website.

Notices in newspapers also are a permanent record.

We expect our lawmakers to give these latest statistics and the important concept of government transparency the proper consideration.

Newspapers offer maximum opportunity for the public to be aware of the way our government agencies are conducting business and spending taxpayers money. Thats an important aspect of government transparency we need to maintain, not allow to erode.
Three secondary school students will each have the opportunity to be mentored by one of New Zealands best professional authors in order to develop their craft and hone their writing skills.



The NZSA Youth Mentorship Programme 2017 offers these aspiring young writers (aged 15-18) a mentorship, from May to November, giving them the opportunity to gain valuable skills and knowledge.



The intent of the mentor programme is to foster and develop emerging writing talent with the support of established authors.



Hannah Turnbull of Gisborne was partnered with award winning novelist Anna Mackenzie for her 2016 mentorship and she found the experience extremely positive: "I feel like I can go on from this with the skills needed to write a decent story. I still have a lot to learn, but that comes with the process, and I've been given the guidance I need from Anna to make that journey on my own".



The NZSA has run a highly successful mentoring programme for writers since 1999, thanks to support from Creative New Zealand.





Deadline: 31 March 2017




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.
United States Supreme Court in 2012: Above photo by Stan Deatherage

"Tonight, President Trump fulfilled one of his biggest campaign promises to the American people by selecting Neil Gorsuch, a mainstream conservative to serve on the United States Supreme Court. I am confident Gorsuch will faithfully uphold the Constitution, protect our individual rights, and preserve the idea of limited government."

President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated the youngest Supreme Court justice in a generation, 49-year-old Neil Gorsuch, who sits on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.Gorsuch is a Colorado native who was educated at Harvard and Oxford universities. He clerked for Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, worked in the Bush administration Justice Department before winning easy confirmation to the 10th Circuit in 2006, and is known for his clear, conversational writing style.Ramesh Ponnuru of the American Enterprise Institute called GorsuchUnlike Scalia, however, Gorsuch has expressed skepticism about agencies that have interpreted regulations more broadly than statutes would suggest. Emory University law professor Sasha Volokh also wrote that,Early support for Gorsuch came from N.C. Republican Party Chairman Robin Hayes, who said in a statement:North Carolina's U.S. senators, both Republicans, issued statements backing the Gorsuch pick.said Sen. Thom Tillis.said Sen. Richard Burr.Democrats, who control 48 of the 100 Senate seats, have vowed to give Gorsuch tough scrutiny and have threatened to filibuster any of Trump's nominations. If that happens to Gorsuch, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have to use the "nuclear option," allowing the confirmation to go forward with the approval of fewer than 60 senators.
In seventh grade world history, I learned two things about the country of Iceland. The first was that the name of the capital city was pronounced REJ-a-vik. This was incorrect. The second was that Iceland, despite its name, is a land full of fire. It utilizes natural heat from the earth to provide heating and electricity to its people.

This second part was true. My history teacher was half-right. But it took a trip to the island nation to fully understand the extent to which they are a true world leader in clean, renewable energy and just how creative Icelanders are in utilizing it.

Icelands abundant natural energy comes as a result of a dynamic interaction between its geology and its geography. You learn in science classes about how when our planet was new, it was a hot, violent, ever-changing place. Continents grew apart. Cracks in the surface spewed super-hot magma from the planets interior. Glaciers spread their fingers slowly away from the two poles, then just as slowly carved out fjords as they receded back to the other direction. In Iceland, you can see these processes happening all at once.

Where the Earth itself is roughly 4.5 billion years old, Iceland is a comparative newcomer. The island rose out of the sea about 60 million years ago from the valley of ingvellir. ingvellir sits on the border between two tectonic plates, the North American and the Eurasian. These two plates are still moving, rising out of the sea and pushing toward the west and east, respectively. As a result, Iceland grows just a tiny bit every year. It is young, volcanic, and ever-changing, demonstrating many of the dynamic characteristics of the early Earth.

In the space between the two plates, literally at the crossroads between two continents, molten lava wells up close to the surface. This and other seams in the Earths surface are the sources of the magma that brings the islands beautiful natural geography, the geysers and hot springs that dot the landscape, and the major volcanic eruptions such as the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, which shut down air traffic over Europe for six days. They are also the source of geothermal energy that lights and heats homes across the island. Much like the early Earth, Iceland is a land of both destruction and creation.

The nation also receives an abundant amount of rain. The average annual rainfall in the south is 50-80 inches. With all that fire, and all that fresh water, energy is just a few steps away, and Icelanders are leaders in harnessing the natural steam to bring clean energy into their homes and businesses.

It wasnt always that way. There was a time when Icelanders burned fossil fuels to heat their homes. Locals knew of the heat beneath their feet, but tended to utilize it only for recreational purposes. Soaking in naturally heated spring water is a favorite activity on the island. Every country has its thing, explained on of our tour guides. Finland has its saunas; America has its guns. We have our hot springs.

However, with the oil shortage of the 1970s, the country began to seriously explore their abundant natural wind, fire, and water in an effort to become energy independent. It invested heavily in the power plants and infrastructure necessary to utilize the nations natural gifts to provide cheap and clean energy to its citizens, and in doing so completely eliminated its need to use fossil fuels for light and heat.

In Iceland, said another tour guide, everything is expensive except water and electricity.

One example of how Icelanders have innovated their way into energy independence is the massive and beautiful Perlan structure. Translating to Pearl, Perlan is a beautiful domed building that dominates a hilltop overlooking Reykjavik. It houses a revolving restaurant and has a fantastic observation deck which provides gorgeous views of the capital city. But more importantly, it is also home to six giant water tanks, each able to hold four million liters of naturally heated water. Gravity driven, that water travels downhill to city residents, and everyone in the capital has easy access to green energy.

Another innovative use of natural resources is Icelands heavy emphasis on greenhouses. Given the islands far-north location, the proper climate to grow vegetables is hard to come by. Food is often imported and expensive. Icelanders are moving toward growing more of their own food by transferring their natural geothermal energy into light and heat for an expanding number of greenhouses to grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and a number of other vegetables. Standing out of the winter darkness with their ghostly yellow glow, Icelands greenhouses are on the forefront of transforming the country into a food-independent nation.

Perhaps the most innovative thing Iceland has done with its natural resources is inject an incredibly promising jump start into its economy. With only 336,000 citizens, Iceland has a small economy. For a long time its major industry was fishing. Lately, however, tourism has been booming, and with tourists comes cash.

Tourists come to see northern lights. They come to see the amazing natural beauty filled with waterfalls, geysers, black sand beaches, ice-capped mountains, bright blue glaciers, and majestic fjords, but the nations top tourist attraction is none of these. The nations top tourist attraction, visited by hundreds of travelers every day, is an accidental hot spring created by the bluish water running off from a power plant: the Blue Lagoon.

About a 45-minute ride from Reykjavik, situated in the middle of moon-like landscape of bumpy little barren hills, the Blue Lagoon is a man-made pool on a natural hot spring. It appears blue because of lights reflection off of its white silica mud. The minerals in the water are said to have health and skin care benefits, especially for psoriasis. It opened as a tourist attraction in 1976 and has been growing as an attraction ever since.

Today, the lagoon is home to modern facilities. It caters to tourists by providing its special mud for bathers as a facial application, and it serves them with a swim up bar and an algae facial mud that comes with an extra fee. Bathing in the Blue Lagoon is a surreal experience, especially in the winter as tourists soak in comfortably warm water as snowstorms push through the area. Business is booming, and the facilities are expanding. Tourists love it and spend their money happily as they navigate the comfortably warm water, GoPros in hand.

Smaller examples of Icelanders taking advantage of the lands natural heat for economic gain are all around. The Secret Lagoon is a more rustic experience. It is smaller and less manicured. Once a communitys naturally heated swimming pool, tourists are now bused in from Reykjavik to soak in its steamy waters, bringing a flow of income to the locals.

In Husafell, closer to the islands interior, there is another hot springs option. Situated next to a lava field and very close to both a natural lava cave and a walk-through glacier, Hotel Husafell provides a full experience for visitors. In addition to the fire and ice options, visitors can soak in the hotels naturally heated hot tub while gazing at the magnificent rural mountain scenery. Its location also tends to drive away clouds, making the northern lights more visible in the area. It is an up-and-coming place, but it is another example of Icelanders ingeniously working with their lands resources sustainably and profitably.

ingvellir is the place that started it all. In this valley, the two tectonic plates slowly push out to create this island. It is the site of Icelands original parliament, a place where Vikings would travel to annually to govern their tiny country. It is a place where people, continents, and ideas meet. It gave birth to the country, both as a land mass and as a nation, and its natural activities continue to bring life to its people.

Not every country has access to profound amounts of geothermal energy, but every country has resources that can be harnessed without the damaging obsession with imported fossil fuels. All countries have their version of ingvellir, a place where people and ideas can come together and solve problems while seeking a better, more independent future for everyone. The Vikings sensed something powerful in this valley. They were right. If other nations could come together in their own sacred crossroads and allow ideas to clash and create something new, much like what we see in the geology of Iceland, the world may well be a cleaner, greener, more peaceful place.

* * *

The views and opinions expressed by our diverse panel of columnists and guest writers represent the many diverging perspectives held within the global Pagan, Heathen and polytheist communities, but do not necessarily reflect the views of The Wild Hunt Inc. or its management.
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David Bier says refugees should face same sponsorship requirements as other immigrants.



Demonstrators protesting the Trump administration's immigration and refugees policies in Durham Jan. 27. (CJ photo by Dan Way)

A leading critic of President Donald Trump's controversial executive order limiting refugee resettlements into the United States says not only is the annual ceiling of 50,000 refugees too low, but also that the government should not set it.If the inflow of refugees were regulated by family members, individuals, organizations, and churches sponsoring refugees - the way most of the nation's immigration system works - the number would be capped naturally by marketplace demand, says David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute. To the extent a refugee crisis exists, sponsors would come forward to provide support for those whose lives are endangered by religious or ethnic persecution or live in war-torn regions, he said.said Bier, former senior policy advisor for Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, during an interview with Carolina Journal.Although Trump has set the cap at a level that's been fairly stable since the George W. Bush administration,Bier said.While Bier says Trump's order is "definitely legal" in terms of refugees, temporary visitors, students, or anybody on a temporary visa, the parts dealing with legal permanent residents (aka green-card holders) violate federal law. He penned a column for The New York Times over the weekend spelling out his concerns.Green-card holders are protected from discrimination based on national origin when they seek a visa for permanent residency, Bier told CJ. In this case, discrimination is used in a legal sense, rather than referring to some mean-spirited attitude.Bier said.In essence, Trump is saying,Bier said.Andrew McCarthy, a senior policy fellow at the National Review Institute and former Justice Department official who prosecuted terrorists, disagrees with Bier that Trump lacks authority.He contends the president has clear constitutional authority over international relations that supersedes Congress, except in those areas where the Constitution enumerates powers to Congress.McCarthy further argues that the 1965 Immigration Act was enacted to end racial and ethnic discrimination in the immigration process. Trump's executive order is not based on those factors, but for the purpose of protecting national security from a terrorist threat.Trump's executive order halted all refugee resettlements for 120 days to allow development of his "extreme vetting" policy. It placed a 90-day freeze on people entering the United States from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen, known hotspots for Islamist terrorism.Bier said such a sweeping ban might survive a court challenge if there were a temporary and specific situation warranting it. However, he said,While Congress and President Obama originally drafted the seven nations specified in Trump's executive order, Bier said, "It doesn't mean he can use that list in ways that Congress did not authorize for him to use that list." The president only can require interviews of anyone who's coming to the United States from those countries. He has no authority to ban them.While Trump supporters point out that Obama and former President Jimmy Carter also banned refugees from specific countries, Bier said the comparisons aren't valid. Obama's six-month ban on Iraqi refugees wasCarter also confined his 1980 order to one country, Iran,Bier said.Because Iranians had taken over the U.S. embassy in Iran, where the visa printing machine was located, Carter said there was uncertainty whether temporary travel visas were valid.Trump similarly contends that it is difficult to determine if visas from war-torn nations are forged, or if people in the refugee system are who they say they are. Bier dismisses that comparison.Bier said. Many people have been traveling to the United States for years on temporary visas, as students, or to visit families.He sees no reason to profile based on nationality. The system already has the proper checks by requiring people to present evidence they are who they say they are, came from where they said, and have the necessary connections in the United States to earn a visa. Anyone who cannot provide all that information does not receive a visa.Bier also laments the widespread claim by media outlets and activists that Trump's order imposes a religious test on immigrants.Bier said.He noted that more Iranian Christians than Iranian Muslims live in the United States.Bier said.
PROVIDENCE, RI, February 03, 2017 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Insight Pest Solutions Rhode Island has earned the home service industry's coveted Angie's List Super Service Award, reflecting an exemplary year of customer service to members of the local services marketplace and consumer review site in 2016.



This achievement is particularly significant as Angie's List experienced unprecedented member growth in 2016. More than 1.6 million consumers, many of whom were eager to quickly hire highly qualified service pros, joined Angie's List after the company added a new, free membership tier.



"Companies that can meet higher demands without missing a beat in their exemplary performance standards truly do stand apart from their peers," said Angie's List Founder Angie Hicks. "Only a fraction of the Pest Control companies in Rhode Island market were able to do it."



Angie's List Super Service Award 2016 winners have met strict eligibility requirements, which include an "A" rating in overall grade, recent grade, and review period grade. The SSA winners must also be in good standing with Angie's List, pass a background check and abide by Angie's List operational guidelines.



Tom Gonyea, manager of the Rhode Island branch of Insight Pest Solutions, issued the following statement:



"As a branch, we are humbled for this gracious honor. We want to thank our customers for the spectacular reviews as this would have not been accomplished without them. We will continue to provide superior quality pest control as well as superior customer service. We look forward to seeing you on your next service as well as meeting the new customers that come our way."



Service company ratings are updated daily on Angie's List as new, verified consumer reviews are submitted. Companies are graded on an A through F scale in areas ranging from price to professionalism to punctuality.



For more than 21 years, Angie's List restricted access to its verified reviews to consumers who paid membership fees. When the company removed that barrier, some companies worried that the new, non-paying members would not be as engaged as members of the past. Experience has shown, however, that these newly added members are just as engaged - across all age groups - as prior members. Also, because the company continues to adhere to its review verification process, there has been no degradation of review quality.



"The biggest change at Angie's List is that we are connecting even more consumers to high quality service professionals," Hicks said. "And that's good for everyone."



Angie's List helps facilitate happy transactions between more than 4.5 million consumers nationwide and its collection of highly rated service providers in more than 720 categories of service, ranging from home improvement to health care. Built on a foundation of more than 10 million verified reviews of local service, Angie's List connects consumers directly to its online marketplace of services from member-reviewed providers, and offers unique tools and support designed to improve the local service experience for both consumers and service professionals.



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With the Midterm Elections less than one week away: What do you consider the top issues that you will be voting on to be corrected by your better representation?

Education Crime Big Government getting Bigger Biden /Democrat controlled Spike in Energy Cost Inflation created by Legislation of Majority in Power Gender Reassignment Corrupted Bureaucratic /Service (DOJ, FBI, etc.) Institutions Abortion Discredited Legacy Media Ending the Corruption of Dishonest Politicians Corruptive Influence of Social Media Wide Open Southern Border
Feb 3, 2017 | By Julia

Carpenter Technology Corporation, a major developer, manufacturer, and distributor of metals and alloys, has just bought Puris, a leading titanium powder producer. The new deal, which is valued at $35 million USD, will see Carpenter execute a definitive asset purchase agreement for the purchase of all Puris assets and business. All of Puris titanium powder operations, additive manufacturing assets, patents, and related intellectual property will now be under the Carpenter umbrella.

The strategic move comes in the midst of a rapidly growing 3D printing powders market, which is expected to reach $639.9 million by 2020. Carpenter has now effectively secured itself a sizeable chunk of that market, although earlier than was initially planned.

This acquisition will provide Carpenter with immediate entry into the rapidly expanding titanium powder market and is consistent with our strategic focus on strengthening our leadership position in important growth areas, said Tony Thene, Carpenters President & CEO.

Puris brings industry leading technology and processes for the production of titanium powder, additive manufacturing part production capabilities, a talented team, attractive intellectual property, and established customer relationships, Thene said. The strengths of Puris, coupled with Carpenters reputation as an industry leading producer of premium alloys and our global commercial reach, will allow us to further deliver on the growing needs of our customers.

The Puris facility in West Virginia will become a functional unit of Carpenter Powder Products

While not unexpected, the business venture comes earlier than Carpenter had previously let on. As a result of its promptness, the Carpenter company will be reducing its planned fiscal year 2017 capital spending by about $20 million.

All operations are scheduled to continue at Puris existing site in Bruceton Mills, WV. The facility will move forward as a functional unit of Carpenter Powder Products, a significant expansion of Carpenters already broad portfolio.

According to a report published in late 2015 by independent market research firm MarketsandMarkets, the 3D printed powder market is expected to grow significantly in the next few years. In line with the Carpenter purchase, metal powders are reported to be the most dominant of 3D printed powders currently. Carpenter currently weighs in as one of the most powerful companies in the global 3D printing powder market, and certainly a leading company in the US. According to the report, North America is currently the most dominant region in the market and is expected to remain on top in the coming years.

The Carpenter-Puris transaction is currently undergoing customary closing conditions, and is expected to wrap up by the end of March 2017.

Posted in 3D Printing Materials

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Feb 3, 2017 | By Benedict

Madrid-based luxury fashion brand Loewe has unveiled a 3D printed bracelet in its new autumn/winter 2017/18 menswear campaign. The bracelet, made in collaboration with Berlin-based VOJD Studios, was 3D printed in one piece using a selective laser sintering (SLS) 3D printer.

Although 3D printed textiles and clothing are predicted to take off in a big way in the near future, 3D printed jewelry remains the most frequent area of additive fashion. Since jewelry tends to be solid, and doesnt always need to be flexible or breathable, designers have a lot more creative freedom when using a 3D printer to create it. The new 3D printed bracelet from Loewe and VOJD resembles a massively oversized piece of gold chain, and has been paired with vintage-inspired tartan and leather outfits in the collection.

Loewes new 3D printed bracelet is made from a VOJD ceramics compound, a durable and flexible powder-based material, and was printed using selective laser sintering. Despite being an interlocking chain, the clever design means it can be printed in one go, with no assembly required.

Loewe approached us with the idea of a bracelet they really wanted to work on but couldnt realize with other technologies because it would have been too heavy if made of metal, explained VOJD Studios co-founder and CEO Christian Hartung. We managed to realize it through 3D printing in our ceramics compoundonce metalized the final piece looks like metal.

In addition to making its own jewelry, Berlin-based VOJD Studios specializes in producing 3D printed items for luxury fashion labels, allowing high fashion houses and designers to co-develop 3D printed collections using technology and materials they may not yet be familiar with. Not only does this provide new fashion opportunities for labels, it also provides an ethical way of manufacturing, with VOJD promising to use zero-waste technology. Past clients include Alexander McQueen, Akris, and Carolina Herrera.

The designers at VOJD believe that additive manufacturing appeals to the fashion industry because it promises unique, one-off products. This allows labels to be more experimental with their designs, and also adds an element of rarity to each item. Probably one of the most talked-about features of the technology is its ability to build customized and personalized pieces, since each one is printed separately and there is no mold requiring the manufacturing of a large number of identical products, Hartung said.

But it isnt just the major fashion labels like Alexander McQueen and Loewe who are benefitting from 3D printing technology. Hartung says that VOJD is witnessing a growing democratization of fashion production, with the fashion consumer now having a bigger say in what they end up wearing: In the near future, [3D printing] can lead to an increased role of the consumer in the ideation and creation of the final product they desire.

Another important reason why fashion designers like Loewe are adopting 3D printing techniques is that the technology simply permits the creation of entirely new designs, exemplified by the one-piece interlocking chain in the new Loewe menswear collection. 3D printing enables design solutions and complexities impossible for other technologies, Hartung explained. This, combined with the introduction of new materials and material properties over the next years, can direct the aesthetics of the future and transform most creative industries.

The Loewe autumn/winter 2017/18 menswear campaign was shot by Steven Meisel.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Feb 3, 2017 | By Tess

Just before the new year, we reported that Cyprus-based 3D printer developer Ilios was regrettably closing its doors. The companys founder, Demetris Zavorotnitsienko, attributed the closure to a lack of funds and operational difficulties. In a surprising turn of events, however, Zavorotnitsienko has just announced he is determined to keep his company going and is hoping to change his luck with the development of the new Ilios Photon 2 UV DLP 3D printer.

Undeniably determined, the Ilios founder is taking a slightly different business approach with his new 3D printer. As he explains, he is primarily developing the Ilios Photon 2 3D printer for himself, to be used as a workhorse with an easy-to-use setup and minimal maintenance. On a commercial level, Zavorotnitsienko wants his new 3D printer to be a reliable, good quality UV DLP 3D printer that dedicated users can depend on.

That is, rather than try to compete with the fastest or cheapest DLP 3D printers, the Ilios founder is working on building a good quality machine, driven by a you get what you pay for ethos. As he says, The price of the 3D printer reflects its features and quality. I won't try to lower it as you do get what you pay for and all parts as well as their sum are definitely worth the cost. The cost of the DLP 3D printer, if youre wondering, is 3,265.

According to the developer, the new Ilios Photo2 UV DLP 3D printer incorporates many features that were requested via customer feedback. These include an RF-ID Door Lock (requested by educational institutions, he says), UV protective surroundings, removable VAT, and variable resolution (a suggestion made by jewellers and dentists).

In addition to these features, Zavorotnitsienko also mentions that he has a very good supplier for UV-based DLP projectors, which do not require lamp replacements, do not overheat, and are compact enough for UV DLP tech. To enable variable resolution, the projector is controlled by an automatically motorized system, which essentially moves the UV DLP projector up and down to change resolution.

The Ilios Photon 2 3D printer will also incorporate some features from previous Ilios products, most notably its Linux OS operating system, which runs in tandem with the user interface and, with its HTML server, allows users to operate and control the 3D printer remotely, from virtually anywhere in the world. Although there wasn't any funding for advertisement or fancy video presentations, this is a set of features which almost no manufacturer provides to this extent and it definitely is a plus when 3D printing, he says.

Ultimately, Zavorotnitsienko is hoping to offer a reliable, easy-to-use UV DLP 3D printer in the Ilios Photon 2, one that can be pre-assembled and shipped in a single box, and that has both technical and aesthetic qualities. The way things are looking, the developers confidence surrounding his new 3D printer seems justified. DLP is the best solution to achieve the reliability and speed and the fact that the projector is UV based is a big bonus, he commented.

For the moment, the Cyprus-based developer is putting all his efforts towards improving and perfecting the Ilios Photon 2 (which marks the 5th generation of Ilios 3D printer). This means that while Ilios may not be putting out any other new products besides it, those looking to invest in an Ilios Photon 2 will be provided with plenty of support and updates.

Those who do purchase the new Ilios Photon 2 UV DLP 3D printer can expect their order to be shipped within 30 days. As the maker explains, while most of the printers parts are already in his workshop, he has to wait for the UV DLP projectors and Spindle assemblies for the lift to be delivered.

Posted in 3D Printer Company

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Toni Morrison in The Nation:

Black slavery, Toni Morrison wrote in her classic work of criticism, Playing in the Dark, enriched Americas creative possibilities, resulting in a playground for the imagination. Nothing better illustrates this observation than Herman Melvilles haunting Benito Cereno, a tale about a slave ship where nothing was as it seemed. Over the years, Morrison has noted how the deception that Melville masterfully depicted in his story replays itself again and again in the racial spectacles that regularly grip the nation, including Clarence Thomass Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the O.J. Simpson murder trial. I asked Morrison about the first time she read Benito Cereno and if she realized what Melville was up to. Below is her answer. Greg Grandin

Since my earliest readings of Moby-Dick, I always sensed Melvilles deliberate misdirections: that he was telling some other story underneath the obvious one. So it was not hard to suspect his manipulation of the reader as well as his tendency to hide/display deeper revelations underneath the surface narrative. Benito Cereno fell quickly (for me) into that category because I didnt believe a kidnapped African slave en route to ownership by a stranger in a foreign land would be so accommodating. Why would he care about the health and well-being of his captor? I understood that the massacre of violently rebelling slaves would be condoned in nineteenth-century slave history as the erasure of evil or the culling of herds. But I saw the equally violent response of the slaves on the ship as that of rational, if enraged, humans unwilling to be kidnapped for profit.

Following the discovery of Babos rebellion, Amasa Delano has a choice between fear and profit. But when measuring fear and the loss of control against money, money wins. Delano has to lie and promise his men gold and silver to encourage them to recapture the ship. More than two centuries have passed since the events on Benito Cerrenos ship took place, but the deception of racial inferiority as an excuse for theft of resources and labor is worldwide and in important ways contemporary. Slavery was not unique; the Americas, Europe, Africaall knew its benefits and engaged in a moral rationale of benevolent civilizing efforts in order to deflect from its lethal consequences. A stunningly deceitful discourse had to be developed among slaveholders and abolitionists alike.

More here.
Robert Crawford at Literary Review:

Examining some of Pounds late prose writings, Swift concludes that Pound never calls for violence, but preaches brutality in code. His book concentrates on the period, between 1945 and 1958, when Pound was incarcerated in the huge Washington mental hospital of St Elizabeths  which Pound nicknamed the bughouse  after his legal team had successfully argued that he could not be tried for treason because he was insane. Before joining about seven thousand other inmates at St Elizabeths, Pound had been detained in Guantanamo-like conditions in a prison camp near Pisa controlled by US forces. The crime he was accused of was making, throughout the Second World War, radio broadcasts for Mussolini in an attempt to convince Americans of, among other things, the rightness of the Fascist cause. For Pound, Americas modern political leaders had abandoned true American values; he considered Hitler to be a martyr, Churchill a supporter of kikes and Mussolini a great Boss.

Pound was lucky not to be executed as a traitor. The defence of insanity saved him but also condemned him. From the asylum he submitted for publication his Pisan Cantos, which was soon awarded one of Americas most prestigious literary awards, the Bollingen Prize. This is a reminder, if one were needed, that he continued to be regarded as one of the 20th centurys leading English-language poets. He had, after all, been at the heart of the Imagist movement; he had also produced, in Cathay (1915), perhaps the greatest volume of verse translations in English and, Swift asserts, arguably the book which invents modernist poetry; his friend T S Eliot had described him as il miglior fabbro (the greater craftsman) after Pound helped edit The Waste Land; his ongoing Cantos, an epic of Coleridgean and Ossianic ambition, ranked among the most provocative achievements in the poetry of the Anglophone avant-garde. At the heart of Swifts book is the issue of how Pound could be at once Fascist, madman and great poet.

more here.
Carl Zimmer in The New York Times:

Over the years, scientists have come up with a lot of ideas about why we sleep. Some have argued that its a way to save energy. Others have suggested that slumber provides an opportunity to clear away the brains cellular waste. Still others have proposed that sleep simply forces animals to lie still, letting them hide from predators. A pair of papers published on Thursday in the journal Science offer evidence for another notion: We sleep to forget some of the things we learn each day. In order to learn, we have to grow connections, or synapses, between the neurons in our brains. These connections enable neurons to send signals to one another quickly and efficiently. We store new memories in these networks.

In 2003, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli, biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed that synapses grew so exuberantly during the day that our brain circuits got noisy. When we sleep, the scientists argued, our brains pare back the connections to lift the signal over the noise. In the years since, Dr. Tononi and Dr. Cirelli, along with other researchers, have found a great deal of indirect evidence to support the so-called synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. It turns out, for example, that neurons can prune their synapses  at least in a dish. In laboratory experiments on clumps of neurons, scientists can give them a drug that spurs them to grow extra synapses. Afterward, the neurons pare back some of the growth. Other evidence comes from the electric waves released by the brain. During deep sleep, the waves slow down. Dr. Tononi and Dr. Cirelli have argued that shrinking synapses produce this change.

More here.
Let's catch up ...





Can Trump Cut Off U.C. Berkeley?, New York Times



President Trump fired off a tweet early Thursday that sent chills through higher education circles in California.

The night before, violent protests had forced the University of California, Berkeley, to cancel an event featuring Milo Yiannopoulos, a right-wing figure and writer for Breitbart, the outlet once headed by the White House adviser Stephen K. Bannon.

"If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" Mr. Trump wrote.

As it stands, the president has no legal basis to cut off a university over a First Amendment dispute, said Donald E. Heller, the University of San Francisco provost and a professor of education. Read more.





Silicon Valley Is Making Plans to Move Foreign-Born Workers to Canada, TechCrunch

... At least one small group of cofounders has banded together to make it easier for U.S. companies to create subsidiaries in Canada and to move their U.S.-based employees to a new, Vancouver-based office, and all within what they describe as weeks, not months. They haven't created a nonprofit. They've instead formed a new company called True North that's right now offering a $6,000 package that includes airfare for one person to Vancouver, two nights of accommodations, and a day with "world-class immigration professionals who will walk you through the process and answer any questions you have."

The package is somewhat rich. For example, an employee could fly from the Bay Area to Vancouver, land accommodations, and talk with immigration attorneys for far less than what True North is charging. But the broader idea is interesting, and that's for employees to keep their current jobs with their current employers but to have the option to work via a wholly owned Canadian subsidiary that can provide them with protected status in the event that the U.S. changes its employment regulations. Read more.





From His Home in Russia, #Calexit Leader Plots California Secession, KQED

On paper, the leader of the California secession movement lives in an apartment complex near San Diego's Golden Hill neighborhood. But in reality, the Calexit campaign is being run by a 30-year-old who lives and works in a city on the edge of Siberia.

Louis Marinelli heads the secessionist group Yes California. Following the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the organization has gone from an unknown fringe group to one discussed seriously in mainstream media. Read more.





Earth Day Picked as Date for Science March on Washington, CNN

Just like protesters who have taken to the streets and airports -- for the Women's March and against the travel ban -- scientists are planning their own march.

The group behind the March for Science in Washington just announced in a tweet that they will rally on April 22 -- Earth Day.





More Than 200,000 People Deleted the Uber App Leading to CEO's Departure From Trump's Economic Council, Jezebel

After Uber attempted to undermine the New York Taxi Workers Alliance's hour-long strike against Trump's Muslim ban, and the detainments at JFK, the public reacted with a swift boycott of the app.

Following the bad press, Lyft opportunistically announced they'd be donating $1 million to the ACLU, which is good, but Lyft has many of the same issues that Uber doesnamely, investors and associates who have significant ties to Trump. One of the additional complaints lodged against Uber was that their CEO, Travis Kalanick, was serving on an business advisory council for Trump, the Strategic and Policy Forum. Read more.
Federal guidelines for adults call for 150 minutes of physical activity weekly to prevent serious illness, but that amount is daunting for those with inflamed joints. Only 1 in 10 older Americans with arthritic knees get that much.

Researchers wondered if older arthritis patients could benefit from a lower amount of exercise. They analyzed data from more than 1,600 adults age 49 and older with osteoarthritis whose physical activity had been monitored for two years as part of a national study.

They found that those who got a minimum of 45 minutes weekly of moderate activity, such as brisk walking, were 80 percent more likely to improve or maintain the physical functioning needed for independent living compared with those who did less. This applied for both men and women.

Even a little activity is better than none, coauthor Dorothy Dunlop, professor of rheumatology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a statement. And for many older adults with arthritis, 45 minutes a week  about a 10-minute walk a day, five days a week  might feel more realistic.

Lack of exercise may also raise the risk of developing dementia, making sedentary adults as likely to develop dementia as those genetically disposed to the condition, a Canadian study found.

The research, published in the Journal of Alzheimers Disease, looked at more than 1,600 adults age 65 and older followed for five years and found that those who were basic couch potatoes had the same risk of developing dementia as those who carried the genetic mutation, called apolipoprotein E (APOE), which put them at greater risk for dementia.

Those who were physically active  typically, walking three times a week  were less likely to develop dementia, the study found.
Mercatus Center reports dings Tar Heel State for certificate-of-need law and rules limiting telemedicine

Robert Graboyes' 93-year-old mother had a phone and an iPad, and she knew how to use them.Those skills probably saved her life.During a Facetime conversation a few years ago with her grandson, a medical doctor, she complained about a lingering sore. As Graboyes' nephew watched her breathing and facial expressions, he knew something was wrong. He asked to see the sore, which she showed him with the aid of her iPad. The grandson called his father, also a doctor, to consult.Graboyes said. She arrived at the hospital in time to receive powerful antibiotics to kill the infection.Graboyes said of his now-deceased mother.Graboyes would know. He uses telemedicine services and has studied the practice extensively.A senior research fellow and health-care scholar at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, Graboyes recently helped with a study showing North Carolina trails the national average in all four key telemedicine indicators - Medicaid reimbursement levels for telemedicine and telemonitoring; requirements imposed on "telepresenters" - medical professionals who consult with or treat patients remotely; and whether the state allows online prescribing.In fact, the Healthcare Openness and Access Project ranked North Carolina No. 43 among the states and District of Columbia for how open and accessible the state's health care system is for patients and providers. The flexibility measure looked at multiple indicators in 10 subindexes from a free market perspective.(See the chart here .)Overall, on a scale of 1-5, with one being worst, North Carolina had a score of 2.87. The national mean score was 3.17. In fact, the state ranked 24th or lower on six of the 10 categories.Graboyes said.that can be evaluated.Incumbent hospitals and doctors often are, ironically, the most opposed to easing regulations and opening the market to medical professionals, Graboyes said.said Julie Henry, spokeswoman for the North Carolina Hospital Association.North Carolina hospitals and health systems' goal is protecting access to high-quality, safe, affordable health care, she said.Henry said.The North Carolina Medical Society did not respond to a request for comment.Resistance to innovation often results from being comfortable with traditional practices, and turf protection, Graboyes said.In telemedicine, for example, doctors may think,Graboyes said.ThatGraboyes said.Still others might be wary of allowing people to have a medical checkup by remote sensing, he said.States "have an enormous amount of power" over allowing delivery of care by telemedicine, Graboyes said, and they should exercise it.Indeed, during one of his U.S. Senate confirmation hearings, Georgia Congressman Tom Price, President Trump's nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, called telemedicine "one of those exciting innovations" that will allow residents in rural and underserved areas to get access to medical care.Occupational regulation, for instance, hurts North Carolina's overall score in the Mercatus study.While the state allows for medical licensure reciprocity with other states, it hasGraboyes said.he said.Provider regulation also damages the state's ranking. North Carolina has strong certificate of need laws restricting competition among hospitals and doctors, Graboyes said. There are tight restrictions on compounding pharmacies where drugs prescribed for specific patients are made, and strong mandates on prescription monitoring.In the corporate category, North Carolina was 25th overall. That's mostly due to a good score for allowing licensed doctors to split fees with unlicensed individuals. But scores were low in allowing private companies to hire their own doctors to treat employees, and in restricting somebody who's not a doctor from owning a medical business.The state ranks ninth for pharmaceutical access, including access to such things as experimental drugs, the decongestant pseudoephedrine, oral contraceptives, and medical marijuana, Graboyes said.He characterized North Carolina as "sort of middle of the road" in limiting pricing flexibility that insurers have, and for direct primary care , under which individuals pay a flat fee to belong to a medical practice that does not accept insurance, thereby lowering costs. The state scored low for having a high number of mandated health insurance benefits.North Carolina ranked highest, tied at No. 1 with several other states, in the public health category. It allows access to e-cigarettes, the overdose prevention drug naloxone, and has strong "Good Samaritan" protection when offering medical assistance to others.
Warner thumps Harding Co.-Bison; Patriots, Wolverines to meet for title

Hunter Cramer ran for 2 touchdowns, passed for 1 and returned a kick for 82 yards as the Monarchs won 63-20 in the Class 9A football semifinals.
Growing up with your leading man has its advantages.

Billings natives Whitney Miller and Hunter Hash know each other well enough to plan a coffee date to scream at each other for character development. Other acting teams may have to work up to a practice session with that much intensity.

Miller and Hash will bring Neil Simon's 1963 comedy Barefoot in the Park to the Alberta Bair Theater stage at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 7. The show is being produced by Montana Repertory Theatre, which is based in Missoula where Miller and Hash are theater students at the University of Montana.

Hash jokes that the ABT will resemble a wedding next week with Millers family and friends on one side and Hashs on the other, possibly filling up half of the theater.

Playing to the hometown crowd makes it fun, but its still nerve racking, he said.

I get nervous every single show, Hash said. Its not something that just clicks and youre done with it. I like the butterflies.

Remember the old adage, pretend the audience isnt there? Thats not what Hash and Miller do.

Since the show just opened on Jan. 20, Hash and Miller are still getting feedback from the audience.

Its important for us to respond to the audience, where they are laughing and when they are not, Hash said. That determines how we play it, the ebb and flow.

Hash, a West High graduate, and Miller, who was home schooled, first performed together in the Billings Studio Theatre production of Beauty and the Beast Jr., several years ago. Both are now juniors at UM, where they have performed together in a few shows, including A Christmas Carol their freshman year.

In Barefoot in the Park, they play newlyweds Corie and Paul Bratter who set up house in a fifth-floor apartment in New York. Miller and Hash aren't a couple in real-life, but they have been cast as a couple before and are confident they can bring the fireworks to their roles.

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda played the Bratters in the 1967 film version, giving Miller and Hash some large shoes to fill.

Gregory Johnson, artistic director of Montana Repertory Theatre, chose the play to celebrate the Reps 50th anniversary because he sees Simon as the American Moliere, a genius of comedy and of the human heart.

Miller described Corie as a woman who wants everything to work out and everyone to be very happy.

She sees so much color and joy in life. She wants everyone to find that joy, Miller said.

Miller has to find that authenticity in Corie since she'll be playing her for the next four months in 55 shows across the country.

Hash and Miller get paid for their performances and receive college credits, a sweet deal for budding actors. As part of the arrangement, they are also part of the stage crew, assembling the set and tearing it down after the show.

If youve got the acting bug and the chops, theres no better way to thrive.

Theater is this beautiful way of bringing so many different types of people together," Miller said. "Its a privilege to tell other peoples stories.
In partnership with the Montana State University Billings Library, The Writers Voice will introduce a new generation of Montanans to the writing of Carson McCullers through a collaboration among the university faculty and students, Billings Public Library, and area high schools.

The program is also supported by Humanities Montana.

The Writers Voice, received an $11,900 grant to host the NEA Big Read in Billings this spring. A program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. The Writers Voice is one of only 77 nonprofit organizations to receive a NEA Big Read grant.

The NEA Big Read in Billings will focus on McCullerss book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.

"It is hard to believe that 'The Heart is Lonely Hunter,' was the first book of a 23-year-old author," said MSUB Library Interim Director Megan Thomas.

This tragic, small-town drama is so ambitious in its scope-presenting five radically different characters whose troubled lives intersect in the Depression-era South. It always seems like the work of a master storyteller, she said.

The public is invited to pick up a free copy of the book at the MSUB Library and sign up for a discussion group. Sessions begin March 1.

Thomas indicated that the NEA Big Read events will be one of two lecture series sponsored by the MSUB Library.

The second lecture series will begin in late March and feature four events around democracy.

The librarys participation with Big Read was made possible by The Writers Voice and the grant it received and we are excited to take part, Thomas said.

Managed by Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read offers grants to support innovative community reading programs designed around a single book. The program supports organizations across the country in developing communitywide reading programs which encourage reading and participation by diverse audiences.

The Writers Voice has been a literary presenter since 1991 and has spent 25 years developing and expanding literary programs for youth and adults. Formerly a program of the Billings Family YMCA, The Writers Voice now operates as an independent project of the Billings Cultural Partners. For more information about The Writers Voice, contact Corby Skinner at 294-2390 or Corby@skinnerbenoit.com.
3 February, 2017  Singapore  Bronze Media LLP, a branding and marketing agency headquartered in Singapore, has been awarded exclusive rights as Global Brand Manager for Khun Thai Tea, a Thai beverage business that is pursuing overseas expansion.

Founded in 2013, Bronze Media made a name for itself by launching successful branding campaigns and online reputation management services, using the latest technologies in digital, social and content marketing.

In August 2016, the agency announced its plans to drive growth in its core business by working with overseas brands which want to expand their regional presence. Notable clients to date include NetGain Systems Singapore, developer of bespoke network monitoring solutions, as well as PayEasy, brand owner of Taiwanese cosmetics giant BeautyMaker.

Khun Thai Tea Goes Regional with Bronze Media

Bronze Media LLP was engaged in 2016 to launch Khun Thai Tea in the Philippines. It has since opened three Khun Thai Tea Shops in Manila, Philippines, at the following locations: SM Mall of Asia, StarCity, and SM Megamall.

With its operations HQ based in Singapore, under this framework, Bronze Media LLP will be devising global marketing strategy for Khun Thai Tea, building up new and existing markets in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines

2017 is looking to be a good year for Khun Thai Tea, said Mr. Lee, co-founder of Bronze Media LLP. We are expecting to see more Khun Thai Tea franchises open in Singapore and Malaysia. This aligns with our plans to bring the signature Thai ice tea recipe to every mall in Manila, as well as to Jakarta, Indonesia, Taipei, Taiwan, and other markets in the region.

New Online Shopping Platform Planned

Bronze Media LLP is also announcing its development of an E-commerce shopping online platform dedicated to helping Singapores value-conscious consumers find and obtain the best buys and deals.

According to a report filed by Fortune.com, consumers now buy more things online than in stores. More and more Singaporeans are also turning to shopping online, and more do so increasingly via their mobile phones, a trend that Bronze Media intends to capitalise. High mobile phone penetration rates in Singapore and in emerging economies around the region also mean that online retail is set to take off in unprecedented volume.

Mr. Lee said that they are looking at a March 2017 launch date for the platform, which is currently under testing and development. Meanwhile, merchants and advertisers seeking advertising and listing opportunities on the new platform can contact Bronze Media for further details.

And to entice shopper sign-ups, said Mr. Lee, those who register on the site before June 1 2017 will be eligible for lucky draws to win customized, made-to-measure pillows from Blue Oktopus (www.BlueOktopus.com.sg), the local distributor for the chiropractor-approved Australian brand, Sleep-Made-To-Measure which makes a comprehensive line of organic, completely customized sleeping products.

About Khun Thai Tea LLP

Khun Thai Tea began life in the 1950s with Auntie Marlee, the proprietress of the original push-cart, who has zealously honed and guarded her Thai ice tea recipe on the streets of Bangkok for 61 years. Her original Khun Thai Tea push-cart located at Sukamvit Sol 11 will cease operations at the end of January 2017, as Auntie Marlee is finally ready to retire and enjoy her old age.

Her tea-recipe however, will continue life in the form of Khun Thai Tea LLP, which will see to its global expansion via the franchise business model.

About Bronze Media LLP

Founded in 2013, Bronze Media LLP is a digital marketing, branding and online reputation management agency that uses the latest marketing techniques, social media platforms, digital distribution solutions, and creative content strategies to deliver visible, quantifiable results. The agency now serves markets in Singapore, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines.

Media Contact

Company Name: Khun Thai Tea LLP

Contact Person: Jeremy Lee

Email: bishop@bronzemedia.com.sg

Country: Singapore

Website: http://www.bronzemedia.com.sg
This update reports on the opening of Khun Thai Tea Shops 3rd outlet in the Philippines; introduction of new beverages and menu items, announcement of Auntie Marlees retirement, and the naming of Khun Thai Tea LLP Singapore for global expansion of the franchise.

Manila, Philippines  3rd February, 2017  After months of preparations, Khun Thai Tea, the cha-yen (Thai ice tea) sensation that set the Philippines capital of Manila abuzz in 2016, has officially opened its 3rd outlet. The new counter is located at SM Megamall, in Metro Manilas bustling Ortigas business district.

This opening makes it the third outlet launched by Khun Thai Tea in the Philippines. The other two Khun Thai Tea outlets are located at SM Mall of Asia Manila and at Star City Manila.

Thai Ice Black Tea Rocketing In Popularity

Since the opening of the first outlet at SM Mall of Asia Manila, the Khun Thai Tea franchise has piqued the interest of Filipinos, enjoying a surge in popularity with shoppers. Word of mouth has spread via fans who have taken a firm liking to the traditional and mouth-watering tea: many believe it to be extra thirst-quenching in Manilas hot and humid weather and make it a point to frequent the outlet at least once a week.

The Manila residents affinity for Khun Thai Teas cha-yen is not down to its taste alone. It also takes advantage of a trending wave of interest in the cuisines of other cultures in South-East Asia, as Filipinos become increasingly well-travelled, discerning and sophisticated  a trend that the Khun Thai Tea franchise is positioning itself to ride as it pursues expansion in the Philippines.

New Flavours, New Menu Items 

Khun Thai Tea is where these Filipinos can enjoy a taste of other South-East Asian cultures, said Mr. Jeremy Lee, who together with Ms. Elis Chai and Ms. Nancy Padilla, created the first global Khun Thai Tea outlet.

On the menu are variations of Khun Thai Teas Thai ice tea inspired by drink recipes from around the region, such as a mix of coffee and tea (Yuan Yang), which was first brewed in Hong Kong; Ice Bandung, inspired by the popular Malaysian beverage recipe that combines the alluring taste of rose syrup with the velvety smoothness of milk; and Taiwanese bubble milk teas, which feature small chewy tapioca balls (boba, or bubbles) for added textures and flavours.

The opening of the new outlet coincides as well with the announcement of two new beverages, Ice Cappuccino and Ice Mocha, plus new items on the snacks menu influenced by Thai tastes  Tea Toast and Crispy Kangkong.

These new items reflect the franchises efforts to keep updating its menu to suit the changing tastes and sensitivities of consumers. The original cha-yen recipe, for example, featured a black ice tea made from strongly brewed ceylon tea. It has since been modernised with a Thai-grown assam tea known as Bai Miang, that is infused with spices to maintain the headiness of the original and bring out its complex flavours.

As a result, the traditional sugar, condensed milk and evaporated milk-heavy recipe has today been transformed into a more contemporaneous and healthy version suitable for modern health-conscious global consumers.

Seeking New Franchisees

These regionally-inspired additions to the original Thai ice tea offerings are expected to create even more demand for Khun Thai Tea outlets at malls across the Philippines.

2017 is looking to be a good year for Khun Thai Tea, said Mr. Lee. He added, We are expecting to see more Khun Thai Tea franchises open in Singapore and Malaysia. This aligns with plans to bring the signature Thai ice tea recipe to every mall in Manila, as well as to Jakarta, Indonesia, and Taipei, Taiwan.

Meanwhile, even as a new chapter begins for Khun Thai Tea, its origin story will soon be coming to an end.

Khun Thai Tea began life with Auntie Marlee, the proprietress of the original push-cart, who has zealously honed and guarded her Thai ice tea recipe on the streets of Bangkok for 61 years.

Her original Khun Thai Tea push-cart located at Sukamvit Sol 11 will cease operations at the end of January 2017, as Auntie Marlee is finally ready to retire and enjoy her old age.

The Khun Thai Tea enterprise will continue however, in the form of Khun Thai Tea LLP Singapore HQ, which will see to its global expansion via the franchise business model. Meanwhile, Ms. Nancy Padilla has been named as the sole business owner of Khun Thai Tea Shop Philippines.

Khun Thai Tea LLP is actively looking for franchisees who are interested in opening their own Khun Thai Tea outlets. Said Mr. Lee, Franchise opportunities will be open from March 2017 onwards.

About Khun Thai Tea

Khun Thai Tea is a premium franchised Thai Ice Tea company in the Philippines. The brand aims to bring the authentic taste of traditional Thai ice tea, made from Auntie Marlees closely-guarded 61-year old secret family recipe, to cities all around the world.

To get a taste of authentic Bangkok street Thai ice tea, drop by the Khun Thai Tea outlets at Star City Amusement Park, SM Mall of Asia, or SM Megamall. Or, visit www.khunthaitea.com for more information.

Media Contact

Company Name: Khun Thai Tea LLP

Contact Person: Jeremy Lee

Email: jeremy@khunthaitea.com

Phone: +65 8292 3955

Country: Philippines

Website: http://www.khunthaitea.com
Lifespot Health Ltd (ASX:LSH) operates within the digital health sector and is focused on developing and commercialising medical diagnostic and monitoring technology, which includes the BodyTel system and the My-Lifespot system (Lifespot Business).

The Company is developing digital healthcare solutions to assist doctors and empower patients to diagnose and manage skin diseases. The team has created a powerful platform for skin disease diagnosis and management which only requires patients to take a picture of their skin condition, without requiring any physical contact. With the high quality camera resolution of smartphones, the platform can operate without the need for additional hardware.


Lifespot Enters New Market Segment of Coagulation Home Monitoring

Melbourne, Feb 3, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Lifespot Health Ltd ( ASX:LSH ), an international digital health company focused on the management and monitoring of chronic diseases, is pleased to announce that its 100% owned subsidiary, BodyTel GmbH and Roche Diagnostics Deutschland GmbH, have signed an agreement to integrate Roche's ( VTX:ROG ) ( RHHBY:OTCMKTS ) newly developed Bluetooth enabled PT/INR device 'CoaguChek(R) INRange' into BodyTel's telemedical platform.



- Lifespot 100% owned subsidiary BodyTel to integrate Roche's new Bluetooth enabled PT/INR device 'CoaguChek(R) INRange'



- New PT/INR device completes product range of wirelessly communicating vital sensors for the company's chronic disease management offering



- Home monitoring will set a new standard of care for anticoagulated patients



The new device is the first Bluetooth enabled PT/INR home health device that helps patients and their healthcare providers to have greater control over their coagulation status. It targets patients who are in need of anticoagulation medication. These so called 'blood thinners' reduce the risk of heart attacks and stroke by reducing the formation of blood clots in arteries and veins. Studies have proven that people that already had an event like stroke or 'mini-stroke' are at high risk for a second similar event or other serious medical problems for at least five years. Telemonitoring of INR values can help to develop appropriate prevention programs for those people.



The new device will smoothly get in line with BodyTel's existing range of Bluetooth enabled vital sensors already including blood glucose, blood pressure, weight and activity monitoring.



BodyTel's strategy is to incorporate best of breed sensors from third party suppliers into its medically certified telehealth system to let them send measured values into BodyTel's mobile apps and medial data cloud. From there data can be transferred into other professional applications or be viewed by patients and their authorized caregivers in BodyTel's own webportal.



Stefan Schraps, managing director of BodyTel remarks: "Home- and telemonitoring of the coagulation status is an exciting developing market where evidence already exists that home testing on a regular basis and communicating these values to healthcare providers helps patients to stay in their therapeutic range. As a result, payers can save significant money which otherwise would be spent on follow up care for patients that are severely affected in their health after a second similar event. Once integration is completed, we will be able to address insurance companies, monitoring centers, clinics and doctors offices enrolling patients on this device by offering a complete monitoring solution."



Integration is expected to be done in the next months. The Company is pleased to provide this update and will continue to provide updates as appropriate.



For further information on the Company's portfolio of projects please refer to the website at: http://www.lifespot-health.com



About Coagulation Home Monitoring



PT/INR is an internationally standardized measurement that describes how fast the blood coagulates.



Patient self-testing with CoaguChek(R) INRange sets a new standard of care by enabling healthcare providers to monitor patients' INR data, while reducing their need to make continuous visits to doctor's offices and clinics for such examinations.



It has been proven that patients who adhere more to their monitoring therapy, spend more time in their therapeutic range which results in lower incidences of stroke or bleedings. It has been demonstrated that 50-60% of patients can be expected to remain in their target range if the monitoring of INR occurs monthly, 77-85% if monitored weekly and up to 92% if monitored every three days.



This is most important for people that have severe atrial fibrillation (AFib), artificial heart valves, thrombophilia or a ventricular assist device (VAD).



About Lifespot Health





Lifespot Health Ltd (ASX:LSH) operates within the digital health sector and is focused on developing and commercialising medical diagnostic and monitoring technology, which includes the BodyTel system and the My-Lifespot system (Lifespot Business).

The Company is developing digital healthcare solutions to assist doctors and empower patients to diagnose and manage skin diseases. The team has created a powerful platform for skin disease diagnosis and management which only requires patients to take a picture of their skin condition, without requiring any physical contact. With the high quality camera resolution of smartphones, the platform can operate without the need for additional hardware.

About Roche Holding Ltd

Roche Holding Ltd (VTX:ROG) (OTCMKTS:RHHBY) is a global pioneer in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics focused on advancing science to improve people's lives. The combined strengths of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics under one roof have made Roche the leader in personalised healthcare - a strategy that aims to fit the right treatment to each patient in the best way possible.

Roche is the world's largest biotech company, with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, immunology, infectious diseases, ophthalmology and diseases of the central nervous system. Roche is also the world leader in in vitro diagnostics and tissue-based cancer diagnostics, and a frontrunner in diabetes management.

The Roche Group, headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is active in over 100 countries and in 2016 employed more than 94,000 people worldwide. In 2016, Roche invested CHF 9.9 billion in R&D and posted sales of CHF 50.6 billion. Genentech, in the United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche is the majority shareholder in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan. For more information, please visit www.roche.com.
After meeting her youngest great-grandchild for the first time the week before, having played the past week with her two grandchildren from Macau, and having finished her last daily crossword, bible readings and her most recent mystery novel, on the evening of Jan. 30, 2017, Trudie Kinnard removed her bookmark and glasses one last time, closed her tired eyes and peacefully joined her maker from Fischer Cottage at St. Johns. She was 22 days short of her 99th birthday.

The second of six children, Gertrude Johanna Dobler was born on Feb. 21, 1918, in Tripp, S.D., to Jacob Dobler, Jr. and Johanna Schaefer Dobler. Her mother died of influenza when Trudie was 2, so she was sent to live on a farm with her grandmother, until her father remarried in 1922. She spent her early years growing up in Tripp and graduated from high school there in 1936. She attended Springfield Normal School in South Dakota for two years. Upon receiving her teaching certificate, she taught in one-room country schools for three years near Armour and Tripp, S.D., for a salary of $50 per month (but learning how to stoke the coal furnaces to keep the buildings warm) before attending Augustana College in Sioux Falls for two years.

During one of his sales trips across the prairies of the Midwest, a handsome traveling salesman, Brooke Kinnard, originally from Cashmere, Wash., first spotted a gorgeous young teacher working for the summer in a Tripp drugstore and asked her to meet him that night at the local county fair. Not liking her given name, he called her Trudie, a name that stuck. Their courtship was interrupted with his absence for the service during World War II. In the interim, she taught three years in Tripp and two in Cashmere. Following the war, Trudie, the girl that waited, and Brooke were married in Tripp on Feb. 10, 1946, and began a loving walk together that lasted over 60 years until his untimely death in 2006.

They first lived in Bonesteel and Mitchell, S.D., and then in Sioux City, Iowa. In 1951, they made the decision to adopt and literally overnight became the proud parents of a 3-month-old infant, who they named David Brooke Kinnard. Brooke and Trudie also lived in Texas, South Dakota, North Dakota, Utah and Idaho before moving to Billings in 1964. During that time, she did the books for Brookes businesses, was a substitute teacher and taught Sunday school. In 1965, she obtained her bachelors degree in education from Eastern Montana College and continued teaching while serving as a Pink Lady at St. Vincents Hospital and being very active in ladies church groups.

In 1969, Brooke and Trudie moved first to Reno, Nev., and then to the San Francisco Bay area of northern California. She was active in many church activities there, volunteering at a nursing home and enjoyed bridge, ladies auxiliaries and her many friends. They also spent a portion of many summers relaxing at the family cabin at Lake Wenatchee, Wash. In 1995, they retired to a new home in Billings, to be close to Dave, his wife, Elaine, and their family. Trudie enjoyed her time in retirement, socializing with her many friends and neighbors, as a member of the Supporting Cast of Billings Studio Theatre, her book clubs, bible study and Quilters at her church, as well as the Rimrock Red Hats. She loved her daily crosswords, nonstop murder mysteries and attending plays, especially those Dave was either in or had directed. Until her death, she was always a snappy dresser, complete with a matching scarf!

Trudie was predeceased by her parents, two sisters and three brothers. She is survived by her son, Dave (Elaine) Kinnard of Billings; her grandchildren, Chad (and fiancee, Dawn) Watterud of Hastings, Minn., Derek (Lai) Watterud of Macau, China, Lisa (John) Webster of St. Paul, Minn.; her beloved great-grandchildren, Tyler and Jared Watterud of Hastings, Oliver and Megan Watterud of Macau, Addison and Parker Webster of St. Paul; Dawns daughters (Taylor, Rylee and Cadence) of Hastings; two sisters-in-law; one brother-in-law; numerous nephews and nieces; and many good friends.

Cremation has taken place. A celebration of Trudies magnificent life will take place at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, at American Lutheran Church, 5 Lewis Ave., in Billings. Michelotti-Sawyers Mortuary is in charge of arrangements.

The family would like to thank Dr. Neal Sorensen and his staff who took such wonderful care of Trudie the past 22 years and always made her smile. We also extend our gratitude to the past and present staff of St. Johns Lutheran Ministries at The Vista, TCC and Fischer Cottage for her amazing care the past six years  we will never forget your loving care, concern and friendship for her, far beyond what was expected. We would also extend thanks to the Billings Public Library Senior Outreach Program for keeping her supplied with many engaging mysteries.

Memorials may be made to Billings Studio Theatre, American Lutheran Church, St. Johns Lutheran Ministries or charities of choice.

In her almost 99 years, Mom saw a lot of changes, from growing up with a party line telephone to being able to FaceTime on an iPad with her great-grandchildren in Minnesota and China. She could still tell you in great detail the plots and characters of the countless mysteries she read. While in recent years, she had to put up with several medical challenges and hearing loss, she seldom complained. She was unwavering in her faith and eternal love for my father and me. I am truly blessed to have her as my mom.
Warrior exercise integrates Air Force, Marine search and rescue mission

Exercise Coronet Warrior 17-01 was a two-day event that tested the abilities of the 4th Fighter Wing members to complete contingency operations at an overseas location in our current area of responsibility.



Members of Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina and Marine Corps Air Station New River, Jacksonville, North Carolina, completed a simulated rescue mission during CW 17-01.



The scenario consisted of a simulated crash of an F-15E Strike Eagle. Capt. Steve Keck, a 336th Fighter Squadron pilot, and Capt. Cody Williams, a 336th FS pilot and weapon systems officer, acted as the downed aircrew from the simulated crash.



Their goal was to give rescue crews a precise location to conduct rescue procedures. The aircrew were able to utilize a field for cover while awaiting help. They were rescued within an hour.



Staff Sgt. Joshua Krape, a 4th Operational Support Squadron survival, evasion, resistance and escape specialist, was the lead organizer for the mission.



The objective for this exercise was to test (the aircrew members) SERE skills, Krape said. We wanted to see if the members knew what to do after a crash, and if they could get the proper rescue from the allied team. Also, we were throwing opposing forces at them and seeing if they could stay hidden while waiting for help to arrive.



Two F-15Es from Seymour Johnson AFB, a UH-1Y Venom and an AH-1W Super Cobra from MCAS New River, were tasked to find the downed aircrew. In addition, the aircraft worked together to neutralize simulated threats as part of the combat, search and rescue team.



Communication played a key part in the exercise. The team on the ground coordinated with all aircraft to ensure a successful rescue. After the members were found, it was the rescue teams job to authenticate the rescued participants identity.



Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Daniel Fitzgerald, a crew chief with the Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 269, was one of the participants in the rescue portion of the training exercise. The scenario tested SERE capabilities of the downed aircrew and also provided an opportunity for joint training between the sister services.



The scenario involved an F-15E crew go down over enemy territory and our unit was on-call for tactical recovery of aircraft and personnel, or TRAP, Fitzgerald said. When we got the call that an aircraft went down, we started our planning process and prepared our aircraft and from there we took off and executed the mission.



According to Fitzgerald, training in a joint environment allows them to not only practice proper procedures and gain confidence and familiarization with those procedures and equipment, but it also helps work out the minor differences between the services so they can make sure everything works well if a real-world situation arises.



Its important to have training scenarios like this, especially for our young Marines who are getting to practice TRAP for the first time, Fitzgerald said. Weve been able to practice internally, but its never as effective as when we get to train with other (branches). This one went way better than any other training mission Ive done before.
Goldfein shares space focus

Space is no longer the final frontier for the joint warfighter as the Air Force will organize, train and equip those who rely on the critical domain of space.



During the Mitchell Institutes Space Power Breakfast Feb. 3 at the Capitol Hill Club, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David L. Goldfein described space as a warfighting domain, and said the Air Force is responsible for 90 percent of the Department of Defenses space assets. The Airmen responsible for securing these assets hold tremendous responsibility.



Only when we think about and talk about space in the same way we talk about operations in the air, on land, at sea or in cyber will we move in the direction of truly integrating space across all warfighting domains, Goldfein said. Because the opposite of integration is separation which moves us in exactly the wrong direction as a joint team.



Goldfein shared anecdotes from his recent trip to California where he met with Airmen and leadership from Vandenberg and Los Angeles Air Force Bases. Overall, the general said he was in awe of the Air Forces space warrior and proud of the achievements made thus far.



I dont think anyone would trade our space capabilities with any other nation on the planet, Goldfein said. And we have achieved this with our industry partners despite eight years of continuing resolutions and single-year budgets we are forced to execute in the last half of every year.



While were doing great things in space, there is always room to get better, and we can never get complacent in this domain which remains a harsh and unforgiving environment, Goldfein continued.



The CSAF wants to focus future discussions on how to provide ready space forces to combatant commanders, how the U.S. builds and issues space policy and strategic guidance, and an acquisition strategy.



(Space) has been our business since 1954 and I hope it will be so through 2054, Goldfein said.
- On this look around the Air Force, three B-2 Spirit bombers return to Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, after a deployment, Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, has begun construction of a next generation 9-1-1 call center, U. S. Air Force in Europe and Air Forces Africa has a new command chief, and February is American Heart Month. Hosted by Airman 1st Class Cory Kuttler.For previous episodes, click
You never know what curveballs life and, in particular, the Air Force are going to throw at you. In October 2015, I was stationed at Little Rock Air Force Base flying a standard Friday afternoon student sortie as a C-130J schoolhouse instructor. As soon as we landed I received a message to call my operations group commanderwhich isnt usually good news.

However, that phone call set off a whirlwind of events wherein two weeks later Id been hired as the commander of the 815th Airlift Squadron and three months after that was living in Biloxi, Mississippi, having my new ops group commander hand me the squadrons guidon.

That was only the beginning of this adventure.

The 815th Airlift Squadrons exceptional recent history includes being the very first C-130J unit in the Air Force and completed five deployments to Southwest Asia between 2004 and 2014. During those deployments they set numerous combat records, notably the most airdrops in a single month -- 82.

Even more recently, the unit was reeling from more than two years of uncertainty about the future. During this period of time, it looked as if the Air Force would move the squadron and its aircraft elsewhere, but Congress ultimately decided to keep the unit in the 403rd Wing. This period of uncertainty led to where we were one year ago.

When I arrived, I immediately realized that those who had stuck with the 815th through all of the turmoil were an outstanding group of professionals. From day one we began executing a plan to requalify the squadron and rebuild each office and their associated processes. At the same time, we were looking around the country for individuals we wanted to add to our team. Our manning has since grown considerably with even more aircrew members coming to us in the next few months. Those who are in the unit have worked tirelessly and I am constantly blown away by the commitment that the Flying Jennies have made to the effort of regenerating this unit. All of this work has ultimately led to the 815th stepping back in line to deploy in 2018. Thats an entire year earlier than Lt. Gen. James Jackson, the former Chief of Air Force Reserve, promised Congress.

As an active duty member, I am constantly learning about the nuances of the Air Force Reserve, which Ive equated to a foreign language. One such lesson that sticks out is when our deployment was officially on the books and the squadron leadership began building the path to our departure date. While, in my mind, we had plenty of time to prepare for the deployment, my director of operations provided me with a reality check. In the world of unit training assemblies, we could only rely on two training days per month. Wow! But this shock was shortly replaced with confidence as the squadron began to build a training plan to make our tasking a reality.

So, you might be wondering, What are the 815ths plans to prepare for a deployment in 2018 since much of the squadron hasnt deployed in many years, and the rest may not have deployed at all?

We will continue to conduct flying training locally and at Pope Field, North Carolina. These missions are designed to improve our skills in the many unique combat airlift and airdrop missions well be asked to fly in the area of responsibility. Additionally, the 815th will participate in training around the country throughout the year. We will get our most realistic deployment assessment by joining the 803rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron and members from numerous other 403rd Wing units in taking part in a Joint Readiness Training Center exercise at Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas. Well transport an Army division to Louisiana, via two weeks of simulated combat airdrop and air-land missions.

This will test the wings ability to deploy our airlift team and provide us with realistic lessons that we can build upon for the remainder of the year. Then, 815th crews will train at the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center in St. Joseph, Missouri, where they will improve their skills in low-level mountain flying, night vision goggle use in hostile environments, and defeating enemy ground threats, all while flying realistic combat airdrop sorties. This is followed by a trip to the Advanced Mountain Airlift Tactics School in Reno, Nevada, to master the challenges of flying and airdropping troops and equipment in a challenging mountainous environment.

In addition to this training in the U.S., Flying Jenny tails will be travelling all around the world to provide our aircrew with irreplaceable worldwide experience. We will have multiple crews on call in support of CORONET OAK, which is a continuing operation to provide theater airlift support in Central and South America since 1977.

Then, the 815th has, again, been asked to take part in the D-Day Memorial activities in Normandy, France. This event is awe inspiring, to say the least, and gives our crews the opportunity to airdrop paratroopers into the same drop zone that our combat airlift predecessors did in the night before D-Day. Im ecstatic to have our squadron take part in such an important historic event once again.

Later this year, we will take part in the Pacific Air Rally in Malaysia where our crews will promote partnership-building and advance military airlift interoperability with the nations of the Pacific Rim.

Finally, we are working with International Affairs representatives at the Pentagon to build a partnership with a British C-130J squadron and facilitate an ongoing interfly agreement whereby we would alternate training with each other in England and Mississippi on an annual basis.

The 815th Airlift Squadron has set lofty goals that will, no doubt, be a challenge to achieve and will ultimately take a strong investment from every single member of the squadron. I am continually blown away by the passion and dedication of the Flying Jennies and have absolute confidence we will not only achieve, but surpass these goals. It is an extremely exciting time to be a Flying Jenny, and I couldnt imagine being anywhere else right now.

Day by day, we get better and better.
Concerns about the spread of invasive mussels won't put a halt to any of the 58 fishing derbies proposed for Montana this year, the Joint Mussel Response Implementation Team announced on Friday.

That's in part because all boats entering Montana are already required to be inspected for invasive species, and all boats leaving invasive mussel-detected waters  such as Canyon Ferry and Tiber reservoirs  will now be inspected and decontaminated when necessary upon leaving those waters. There will also be additional restrictions and inspections to prevent the spread of invasive mussels.

Among the approved fishing contests are five scheduled on waters where invasive mussels have either been detected or are suspected to be present.

With these recommended rules in place, rules that would apply to all watercraft, not just boats in fishing tournaments, the Joint Mussel Response Implementation Team believes people can continue to recreate safely on Montana waters and that fishing contest can take place, said Randy Arnold, co-commander of the team.

By existing Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks rules, each contest sponsor is responsible for notifying participants that boats and trailers must be cleaned before and after the event to prevent the transport and introduction of aquatic invasive species to Montana waters.

That will be especially important this year and for years to come, said Eileen Ryce, FWPs Fisheries Division administrator. Were in the process of alerting each contest organizer to expect additional boat and equipment cleaning requirements.

In October 2016, Montanas first-ever detection of invasive aquatic mussel larvae showed up in Tiber Reservoir, and suspect detections turned up in Canyon Ferry Reservoir, the Missouri River below Toston Dam and the Milk River.

One fishing contest  the Tiber Walleye Tournament  is set for May 20-21 on Tiber Reservoir. Four others will take place on Canyon Ferry Reservoir: the Canyon Ferry Carp Safari, June 10; the Canyon Ferry Walleye Festival, June 24-25; the Broadwater Rod and Gun Club Walleye Derby, July 15; and the Camp Mak-A-Dream Walleye Benefit, Aug. 12. In all, more than 400 boats are expected to be launched during the contests.

Weve scrutinized each application with care and with an eye toward the recent invasive mussel developments, Ryce said. We believe these contests can be held safely with additional restrictions that further protect the fishery. Its not going to be business as usual, and the anglers and the contest organizers recognize that.

Ryce said FWP will be on hand at the Tiber and Canyon Ferry contests to ensure boats are properly decontaminated upon leaving the water.

Earlier this month, the Montana Mussel Response Team removed temporary emergency restrictions on the launch or removal of all boats, docks and other structures for Tiber and Canyon Ferry reservoirs. The restrictions, in effect for about six weeks as a precaution against spread of invasive mussels, were in place until ice-up on both reservoirs. Winter is a low-risk season for transmitting mussels from one waterbody to another since neither invasive zebra and quagga mussels reproduce when water temperatures drop below 48 degrees. The movement of boats, docks and other structures is also minimal in winter.

The new joint team, which includes staff members from FWP, DNRC and other agencies, is considering options for how to further minimize the risk of spreading mussels from Canyon Ferry and Tiber to other waters, and to help assess whether to extend or implement other restrictions following ice breakup in spring.

Ryce urged all boaters and anglers across the state to take year-round precautions and to clean, drain and dry their equipment properly after each use. For more information visit musselresponse.mt.gov or Montana Mussel Response on Facebook.
Second chance to fly: Pilot, cancer survivor reunite after 28 years

Marcus Foiles beamed with excitement as he piloted an A-10 in the skies over a virtual southern Arizona landscape. Foiles had been in a flight simulator before, but today was a whole new experience. The odds of him sitting where he was at that moment in time were immeasurable.



The last time Foiles held the simulators control stick was when he was 10 years old, after being diagnosed with leukemia. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base rolled out the red carpet for the young boy from Springfield, Illinois, who was granted a tour of the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center with sponsorship from the Make-A-Wish Foundation.



As far as I knew, we were going to pull in to a lot full of airplanes and that would be it, Foiles said. Instead, we come through the front gate (with) the honor guard there and thats where I met Gregg.



In 1989, then-Air Force Capt. Gregg Montijo, was an A-10 instructor pilot who volunteered for an additional duty as a tour guide at the AMARC. With the help of other agencies on base, Montijo was able to give the Make-A-Wish recipient an exclusive tour of Davis-Monthan AFB and his very own flight suit.



Getting to work one-on-one with someone was kind of a unique experience at the time, said Montijo. They could have just simply showed (him) the boneyard but it became a special day.



In 2016, Foiles had the idea to reconnect with some of the friends he made during his trip to Davis-Monthan AFB. He was able to find Montijos contact information, so he decided to send him an email. Attached to the email was a weathered newspaper clipping of Foiles and Montijo behind the controls of an A-10 simulator during the visit in 1989.



I see the name and theres something in the back of my brain going, I know this name, its ringing a bell, its tied to my past somewhere, Montijo said. I clicked on it and it had the picture (that) brought back a lot of memories.



On Jan. 27, 2017, Foiles and his wife Melanie made the trip back to Davis-Monthan AFB to reconnect with Montijo, take another spin in the A-10 simulator, and have a quick look at an A-10 on the flight line.



Just to get caught up with him was awesome, and for the rest of this to be possible is exceeding expectations, Foiles said.



The A-10 simulator that Foiles flew this time around was generations ahead of the one in 1989.



I was in awe at the fact that you can go and sit inside the cockpit, close the doors behind you and have 360-degree viewing night or day. (It) was just amazing, Foiles said. The controls are the way that they would be if you were on the aircraft; it was definitely a rush.



During the visit, Foiles and Montijo shared an easy rapport as if they had just seen each other yesterday.



It was like finding an old, long lost friend, Montijo said. Its a part of my life that has now come full circle. Its been a little bit emotional to have someone from your former life come back.



Foiles brought along a photo album that his mother put together from the original trip. The book contained photos of the tour, old newspaper clippings, and a running commentary written by his mother in the margins.



Foiles endured a total of two and a half years in chemotherapy, one of which followed the trip in 1989. But his visit to Davis-Monthan AFB provided him with memories he could reflect on for a lifetime.



I would get (the photo album) out every once in a while as a kid and look through it, Foiles said. There was never a time when I could look through that book and not have a smile on my face. I know I really did something special.



The Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center transitioned to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in 2007.


[dropcap]P[/dropcap]eople in two and half years have become aware about the ground realities of Narendra Modis promises that has all been spun to Jumla a prank as mentioned by Amit Shah. Modi is a bundle of falsehoods and that he has proved for himself. Where is the black money? How much fake currency has been detected? And the terrorists who are still at large attacking our country from all corners are also caught with new Rs. 2000 currency. They have tried all gimmicks and made fool of people. In UP, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur, the BJP has turned out to be the party of defectors and traitors from Congress mostly. It seems that BJP has run short of candidates and they are inducting candidates from the Congress party. However for this time, Amit Shah and Modi would be given a warm send off from states like UP.

Amit Shah said that the party would win in all the five poll-bound States. However, in Uttar Pradesh it would get a two-thirds majority on Prime Minister Narendra Modis development plank. Here question is that, where the development is and what development he is speaking about?

Modi is hoping on the demonetisation as opponents lack credibility at the national level, apart from being divided. They are also hoping and thinking people have accepted their demonetisation as they shown extraordinary patience. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won 71 parliament seats by winning 328 (81 per cent) of 403 assembly segments. This was extraordinary performance by any party in the recent history of UP elections. To put that in context, the last time a political party won more than 80 per cent of all constituencies in UP was in 1977, when the Janata party won 80 per cent of the seats in a post-emergency landslide. Not only did the BJP win 81 per cent of seats in 2014, but it did so by a massive margin.

There are four major political parties in the fray in UP  the ruling SP, Congress (INC) in alliance with SP, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), and BJP. These parties have traditionally contested the UP elections independently. The 2015 loss of the BJP in Delhi to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) coming on the heels of the formers sweep of Delhi in the 2014 elections is another popularly cited example. After that in Bihar BJP was shown doors. Slowly Modi wave started settling to dust and party is losing its sheen.

Further, in five of the last six state and national elections in UP since 2002, the two regional parties have won a greater majority of the votes combined than the two national parties  BJP & INC  except in 2014. The SP won the 2002 state election and the subsequent 2004 national election in UP. The BSP won the 2007 state election and was the leading party in the 2009 national election in UP. People of UP gave them chance turn by turn, this time the equations between Dalit-Muslim and upper caste votes changed and so the political strategies. Samajwadi chose to go with Congress and BSP, BJP, BSP may join hands after elections. Inspite of serious Dalit issues, Mayawati could not gain much popularity in the state and BJP with demonetisation lost all chances.

If the BJP secure less than required seats in the 2017 UP election, it indicates that a large number of UP-voters changed the decision they made in 2014 and would also, perhaps, go down as among the most significant vote-share swings in Indias electoral history. Only under this scenario, can the 2017 UP electoral outcome be a true omen for the 2019 national elections, not otherwise.

This time BJP and BSP has to make real efforts in Uttar Pradesh to retain power. On the other hand, surprisingly if you look at this crooked political plot of SP, son and father very well managed the emotions of rural and urban voters of the state. This too posed a big challenge to rival parties because all of them have gone out of limelight.

Though, Mulayam and Akhilesh both managed to capture National attention by dominating headers of news and news spaces other political parties could not get much presence in news these days. Modis demonetisation stunt has taken a backseat in UP, rather we can say without spending any single penny, Samajwadi Partys son-father duo have single handed managed to create hype for themselves and stole the show so far.

BJP actually lacks agenda for contesting UP polls. The same old blabbering may not get them much vote. Modiji, anyhow managed to get the crowd from neighbouring state for his rally by paying them huge amount, providing food, travel and other facilities. However, they are not listening what Modiji is saying in speeches, but they used BJP offers to cope up with demonetisation. If we talk about Congress and AIMIM, they might win some seats. But still while concluding let me say we cannot refute the fact that SP played it well against all forces. BJP at 11th hour is trying hard to regain its sheen and Congress anyway has formed alliance with SP. Behenji, too is trying her best to regain power. Lets see who makes it.

(Any suggestions, comments or dispute with regards to this article send us on feedback@afternoonvoice.com)
Krishna Hegde says that Congress doesnt follow transparency norms while distributing tickets and has sidelined Marathi candidates.

Former Congress MLA Krishna Hegde has alleged that Congress has failed to issue ticket to Marathi candidates in those areas where there is sizeable number of Marathi voters. He said that the party has sidelined Marathi candidates and has expressed his displeasure over the flawed ticket distribution process adopted by senior Congress leaders. Hegde added that the Congress doesnt follow transparency norms while distributing tickets. Last month, Hegde had quit Congress party to join BJP ahead of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) election. He has been appointed as the vice-president of BJP Mumbai unit by Adv Ashish Shelar.

Hedge said, Six corporators exist in Vile Parle constituency. More than two lakh Maharashtrians are residing in this assembly constituency and around 1,40,000 Maha-rashtrians caste their votes. Congress has not issued ticket to even a single Maharashtrian candidate and has sidelined them which is unjustified.

Tickets have been issued to relatives of party leaders and grassroot workers were ignored. As a result of this, they are unhappy with the Congress leadership. There is a huge disconnect between party workers and senior leaders as they remain inaccessible, added Hegde.

I am not issuing any personal comment against anyone. Due to the prevalence of internal conflict within the Congress party and flawed ticket distribution process the party may be able to win only 20 to 25 seats in the civic body polls. BJP will emerge victorious in the election. On the other hand, BJP has issued tickets to four Maharashtrians out of six constituencies. Congress is anti-Maharashtrian and has overlooked them. There is total chaos. No norms have been finalised for ticket distribution. The frontal organisations have been sidelined for two years, he added.

Countering his former colleague, Javed Shroff, former chairman of Maulana Azad Minorities Financial Development Corporation (MAMFDC) and General Secretary of MRCC said, People are issuing misleading statements. We are not anti-Marathi party. In my constituency where I am the voter Congress has issued ticket to Jyotsna Dighe. She is the third time sitting corporator. We have issued ticket to Geetanjali Mahadik who is another Maharashtrian. Thus we have allotted tickets to many Maharashtrians. The Congress party follows some guidelines while selecting candidates and we have adhered to that.

Without naming Sanjay Nirupam, Shroff said, It is unjustified to make allegation against someone as the high command has appointed an observer like Bhupinder Singh Hooda for overseeing the allocation of tickets.
A day after a scuffle among Congress workers, apparently belonging to two factions in the city unit led by Sanjay Nirupam, senior Congress leader Gurudas Kamat condemned such violent actions and distanced himself from them.

The AICC general secretary also objected to certain media reports which have mentioned the agitating workers as from Kamat group

The feud between Kamat and Nirupam over selection of candidates for the February 21 BMC polls is well known. The Congress veteran and former MP had earlier announced his withdrawal from the campaigning in Mumbai.

In a statement issued, Kamat said he condemned the violence between Congress workers in the last two days. The Congress leader stated he had ever encouraged violent actions resorted to by party workers while demonstrating or meeting party leaders to vent their grievances.

He has appealed to the media not to refer to any and every agitating group as Kamat group as a large number of people have been ventilating their grievances, with whom he has no connection at all.

The simmering tension between factions led by Nirupam and Kamat boiled over yesterday with their supporters engaging in a scuffle in suburban Juhu.
In a gruesome incident in Bhopal, police recovered a body of a woman buried under a concrete structure in the citys Govindpura area.

The 28-year-old woman, Akansha Sharma, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was allegedly murdered by her husband Udyan Das, who hid the body by building a marbled platform over it.

The woman left her parents and home town and decided to live with her man in Bhopal. Within six months, their relationship soared to such an extent that the man murdered the girl and put the body in an iron box and buried her into a grisly marble tomb inside the house in Bhopal.

The accused who claims to be an IIT Delhi pass out lived with the victim in his Bhopal residence. His mother, who reportedly stays in the USA sends him money and his father died a few years back.

On the other hand, Akanshas father works as a chief manager at a bank. It was her father who lodged a complaint with the police, after she stopped calling them. The father of the victim filed the complaint on January 3.

Udyan was booked based on his confession that he did indeed kill the girl on December 2016 by strangling her after a verbal fight.

On being questioned where he had disposed off the body, Udyan revealed he had put the body in a wooden box and put cement and concrete along with water into the box to convert it into a slab. After the slab dried he converted it into his bed on the first floor of his house and used to sleep on it.

However, Udyan was arrested soon after the parents of the victim lodged the complaint and they found the victims location using the mobile phone. The police reportedly dug the marble tomb for three hours on Thursday night and finally got a glimpse of the iron box which contained the dead body of the victim.

According to neighbours and tenants who live on the ground floor of the house they had seen the girl come into the house several times. The last time she was seen was around two months back. Though we knew him for the past 25 odd years he hardly used to interact with anyone. He used to lead a lavish lifestyle and claim that he had a factory in Raipur. We thought since was the only child of his parents he must be getting money from them, a neighbour told.
Any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an effective and overwhelming response, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Seoul Friday as he sought to reassure Washington`s Asian allies following President Donald Trump`s inauguration.

Mattis was in the South Korean capital before going on to Tokyo, on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

South Korea has enjoyed US security protection since the 1950-53 Korean War, but on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces from it and Japan if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to defend it against the nuclear-armed North, and 47,000 in Japan.

Pyongyang was continuing to engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour, said Mattis, who first came to the South as a 21-year-old lieutenant in the US military.

Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming, Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

He was in Seoul to underscore America`s priority commitment to our bilateral alliance and make clear the administration`s full commitment to defending South Korea`s democracy, he said.

Han added that the alliance reaffirms its firm will and strength to remain unwavering against all challenges and adversaries.

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-Un said in his closely-watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the final stages of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: It wont happen! On Thursday Mattis and South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South this year as planned.

Beijing fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities, weakening its nuclear deterrent. It has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilising regional security, and imposed measures seen as economic retaliation in South Korea.

The dispute makes it harder to convince Beijing  the Norths most important diplomatic protector and main provider of aid and trade  to act against its neighbour, analysts say.

Deepening tensions between China and the US adds to the Norths strategic value in the eyes of China, said Lee Ji-Yong, a professor at South Koreas government-financed Institute for Foreign Affairs and Security.

It will make more difficult for the US to persuade China to cooperate in pressuring the North to give up its nuclear arsenal.

Mattis visits to South Korea and Japan, he added, were a message that the Trump administration is giving top priority to ensuring security on the Korean peninsula against North Koreas nuclear sabre-rattling and the US is a reliable security partner in the region.
In the week following Trumps controversial meeting with vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 1 , STAT contacted all 23 members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and asked whether they shared Trumps concerns about vaccine safety. The committee oversees public health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and held a hearing 2 last February on the re-emergence of diseases that can be prevented by vaccines.

Most members of a key Senate committee are rejecting President-elect Donald Trumps skepticism about the safety of vaccines, which suggests Trump could face significant backlash in Congress if he seeks to advance the anti-vaccine movement from the Oval Office.

Eighteen senators, including eight of the 12 Republicans in the committees majority, expressed confidence in the US vaccination system and recognized the health benefits of vaccination.

Representatives for three lawmakers  Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Democrat Michael Bennet of Colorado  did not respond to repeated requests for comment by phone and email.

Staff for two other Republicans, Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Richard Burr of North Carolina, declined to comment....

No senator who responded indicated any level of concern regarding US vaccine safety. Allegations about the dangers of vaccines have been thoroughly discredited3 by the current science.

Indiana Republican Todd Young did offer a measure of understanding to those opposed to or skeptical of government-mandated vaccinations.

As the father of four children, Sen. Young is persuaded by the scientific evidence in favor of vaccination and immunization, a spokesperson for Young said. However, he also understands citizens concerns anytime government expressly intervenes in health care decisions.

Other Republicans were straightforward in endorsing the health benefits of vaccination.

As a doctor, said a spokesman for Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy, Senator Cassidy knows the US vaccine program is both safe and effective.

Some Democrats went a step further, criticizing Trumps comments on the issue.

Senators, both Republican and Democrat, defend the safety of vaccine program, according to this article.

But notice these names. 

Representatives for three lawmakers  Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Johnny Isakson of Georgia and Democrat Michael Bennet of Colorado  did not respond to repeated requests for comment by phone and email.

Staff for two other Republicans, Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Richard Burr of North Carolina, declined to comment....

My message to all those senators who so enthusiastically endorse the mandated vaccine program: You have failed the children of America.

You willingly close your eyes to the thousands of parents who, for years, have come to rallies on Capitol Hill and to all those constituents who visited your offices and pleaded with your staff members to look into the damage from an unchecked vaccine schedule, damage that happened to their own children.

You defend vaccines, trusting in the assurances from health officials in the pay of the vaccine industry and from the pharma lobbyists sitting in your senate offices.

You willingly overlook egregious actions by our federal government.

In 2008 we learned that HHS conceded the claim of Hannah Poling whose vaccine injury included autism.

In 2011 it was made public that in over 80 cases, the U.S. Vaccine Court compensated victims of vaccine injury for autism.

Members of the CDCs Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the people who approve and recommend vaccines to the states for mandate, have a web of money ties to the companies theyre supposed to regulate.

A top vaccine researcher at the CDC, Dr. William Thompson, admitted in 2014 that his agency ordered him to destroy study findings showing a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. He said he is willing to testify before Congress, but no one on the Oversight Committee will call for a hearing.

The studies that supposedly debunked a link between vaccines and autism are based partly on the questionable science from a Danish researcher who is currently under indictment by the U.S. government for 22 counts of wire fraud and money laundering. He is alleged to have stolen more than $1 million from a CDC grant to Denmark. His study on thimerosal and autism was the science used by the 2004 Institute of Medicine panel to dismiss a connection between vaccines and autism.

What has happened to the health of Americas children as a result of an ever-expanding, unsafe vaccine schedule will be the biggest medical scandal in our history. The truth is being exposed. In the end, senators who blindly parrot the safety claims from corrupt public officials will look like they helped cover it up.
HELENA  Big game hunters may be able to sport a new color for safety next season under a bill introduced by a state committee.

Big game hunters are required to wear 400 square inches of visible fluorescent orange, and the Senate Fish and Game Committee voted 9-2 Thursday to introduce a bill that would give them the option to wear fluorescent pink instead.

As a committee bill rather than one introduced by a lawmaker, it needed a three-quarters majority to be introduced. The bill failed by one vote on Tuesday with one committee member absent, gaining the needed support on Thursday.

(Were) trying to add an option color more attractive to the female hunters or guys who like pink, Sen. Jennifer Fielder, R-Thompson Falls, said Thursday.

On Tuesday, Sen. Jill Cohenour, D-East Helena, voiced support for the bill in part to appeal to younger hunters by adding color choices.

Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, voted against the bill. On Thursday he explained that he believes safety colors should be optional, and he was concerned the bill would further cement them in law.

A measure to make hunter orange optional failed during the 2015 Legislature.

The bill must still go through a yet-to-be-scheduled committee hearing to see if it advances for full Senate consideration.

A bill allowing Wisconsin hunters to wear pink became law last year. Similar measures have gained traction in other states as well, including Colorado and Michigan.
A federal jury on Thursday convicted Gary Lee Quigg, a paroled murderer who worked for the states Public Defenders Office in Billings, and his wife of methamphetamine trafficking charges.

The panel deliberated about six hours before finding Quigg and his wife, Dusty Whitehouse, guilty on all counts in an indictment.

The indictment charged each with conspiracy, possession with intent to distribute meth and with distribution. The jury also found that drug quantity was more than 50 grams, rather than the 500 grams alleged by the government.

Quigg and Whitehouse face a minimum mandatory five years to 40 years in prison and a maximum $5 million fine.

District Judge Susan Watters said sentencing would be set for later in May or early June and ordered Quigg and Whitehouse to remain in custody.

Federal prosecutors accused Quigg, 68, and Whitehouse, 48, of conspiring with co-defendant Charity Leigh Mendonsa, 40, of Rancho Mirage, Calif., to distribute meth in the Billings area from about December 2014 until September 2015.

Mendonsa, who pleaded guilty to a possession count as part of plea deal that could reduce her sentence, testified against Quigg and Whitehouse during the four-day trial. Mendonsa is awaiting sentencing and faces a maximum 20 years in prison.

Quigg, who testified in his defense and was his only witness, denied the charges. Quigg said he never provided money for a drug run to California, didnt sell or use meth and didnt use his cellphone to arrange drug deals.

Quigg said his wife used meth with Mendonsa but that he had asked Mendonsa not to give Whitehouse meth because he didnt like what it did to her. He also said he was too broke to get meth and, choking up with emotion on the witness stand, said he couldnt even afford to buy his wife of five years a wedding ring.

I never had any money, Quigg said.

Convicted of murder in 1969, Quigg was paroled in 2006 and went to work for the state Public Defenders Office in Billings as a legal assistant. Quigg is facing revocation of his parole pending the conclusion of the federal drug case.

Quigg was 21 when he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the shooting death of a Billings drug salesman. He was paroled and revoked several times for drug and alcohol violations, then he completed a treatment program prior to his 2006 parole. He had no major violations until the federal indictment.

Whitehouse did not testify and called no witnesses.

Whitehouses attorney, Lance Lundvall of Billings, told the jury at the start of the trial Monday that Whitehouse was guilty of distributing meth because she is an addict, but that the sale, which was a recorded undercover deal, involved only 3.7 grams. Whitehouse was not a big time drug dealer and didnt conspire with anyone, Lundvall said.

In closing statements on Thursday morning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bryan Whittaker of Helena said Quigg and Whitehouse were partners in a conspiracy in which they bought meth from Mendonsa and sold the drug, including selling to a cooperating informant and an undercover agent during a controlled buy.

Both Lundvall and Quiggs attorney, Vern Woodward of Billings, attacked the governments evidence as lacking proof of the alleged crimes and called Mendonsa and informants admitted liars who were trying to help themselves.

The governments case relied on witnesses, including testimony from confidential informants, law enforcement agents, a secretly recorded drug deal and text messages from Quiggs cellphone, along with other investigative evidence.

Mendonsa, Whittaker said, supplied Quigg and Whitehouse. Mendonsa and her husband, Kevin, who died in April 2015, lived in Molt. Kevin Mendonsa made drug runs to California to supply his wifes habit and also sold to Quigg, Whitehouse and others, he said.

After Kevin Mendonsa died, Charity Mendonsa began making trips to California to get meth for redistribution in the Billings area.

Charity Mendonsa testified that her husband initially brought back 36 ounces of meth a month for the first two months, then increased the drug amount to about 46 ounces a month. After her husband died from inconclusive causes, Mendonsa said, Quigg and Whitehouse called and told her they had given Kevin $1,800 for meth but that he died two days before a scheduled trip to California.

Mendonsa said she responded that she didnt have money to refund but that she would go to California to get meth and charge them for it.

Mendonsa further testified that she sold meth to Whitehouse two times, one sale involved an ounce for $800 and a second sale involved four ounces, which was fronted because Whitehouse didnt have the money at the time. She said she sent her brother to collect the money for the four ounces the next day.

Quigg, Mendonsa testified, called her and was upset for having sold meth to Whitehouse because Whitehouse didnt have the money and he was tired of cleaning up the mess.
Aiken, SC (29801)

Today

Cloudy with a few showers. High near 80F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain showers. Low 67F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Strangulation is a violent and dangerous enough act to be prosecuted as a felony, according to Montanas prosecutors.

Sen. Margie MacDonald, D-Billings, is sponsoring SB 153, which would make strangulation of a partner or family member a felony offense. MacDonald testified for the bill before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

If the bill is passed, Montana would join 44 other states that have created laws against strangulation in the home, MacDonald said. The Violence Against Women Act also made strangulation a felony under federal law.

An amendment is already being proposed to get rid of the two-year mandatory minimum sentence attached to the bill. Sen. Nels Swandal, R-Wilsall, said he proposed the amendment out of a general dislike of mandatory minimums.

The amendment would allow for the mandatory minimum in the event of a second strangulation offense, Swandal said.

The bill's fiscal note states the law would have an unknown cost impact to the Montana Department of Corrections and the Office of the State Public Defender, due to the creation of a new offense and the addition of a mandatory minimum sentence.

MacDonald brought the bill forward after being approached by the Montana Attorney General's Office and the Yellowstone County Attorney's Office.

After the 2007 Legislature changed language in the aggravated assault statute to allow for the prosecution of strangulation, the Yellowstone County Attorney's office prosecuted more than six times as many aggravated assault cases, with 56 percent of those cases involving strangulation.

Since 2013, the office has charged 161 aggravated assault cases, with about 66 percent related to a strangulation offense, according to Yellowstone Chief Deputy County Attorney Juli Pierce.

Assistant Attorney General Ole Olson also helped write the bill and represented the attorney general's office at the hearing.

Charging under the aggravated assault statute creates many barriers for prosecutors, Olson said. Rather than figuring out if strangulation occurred, prosecutors need to figure out if the victim felt like they were either going to be seriously injured or killed.

Victims are not always aware of the dangers of strangulation, Olson said. Even when they do, it is hard to prove serious injury because strangulation can sometimes leave little physical evidence.

"An autopsy is the best way to prove the serious bodily injury of strangulation," Olson said.

Strangulation might leave a victim with either bruising or a raspy voice, but sometimes it doesn't, Olson said. This does not equate to the damage done when a person's brain is deprived of either oxygen or blood, Olson said.

Robin Turner, public policy and legal director for Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, described the long-term effects of strangulation that can't always be seen during an initial report. Strangulation can result in serious brain damage, short-term memory loss, loss of bladder control and sometimes death.

One victim who was strangled came out of the experience more submissive to her abuser, Turner said. The victim told Turner that after she felt how easy it was for her abuser to kill her, she thought he had more right to her life.

Strangulation is often used as a control tactic by abusers who might not intend to kill their victim, making it hard to charge strangulation as attempted homicide, Olson said.

When someone either puts their hands around another person's neck or blocks their airway, unconsciousness can occur in seconds and death in minutes, MacDonald said.

We cannot protect these families without this law, MacDonald said.

Senate Judiciary Chair Keith Regier, R-Kalispell, asked why the law was made specific to domestic relationships and not strangulation as a whole.

The need isn't in strangers strangling one another, Olson said. Where strangulation is seen most often is in homes, he said.

Sen. Chas Vincent, R-Libby, asked if the law would make it more likely that offenders who are not guilty are prosecuted based on a false accusation. In his own community, victims use the system to either discredit or punish former partners, Vincent said.

Prosecutors put a lot of effort into these cases, Olson said. This law wouldn't change the burden of proof needed, he said. It would simply acknowledge strangulation as a serious crime.

In Vincent's own district, 42-year-old Trevor Joseph Mercier was accused in October of killing his girlfriend, 30-year-old Sheena Devine.

Charging documents say Mercier told investigators he went to Devine's house to throw rocks at her car windows, but she came out to confront him. He said he put her in a "sleeper hold," causing her to lose consciousness. He said she was breathing and snoring when he left the house.

Mercier has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The committee took no action after Thursday's hearing.
50 years ago today the first Airbus aircraft, the A300B, embarked on its maiden flight. On this historic anniversary we look back with pride and admiration at the aircraft and programme that were at the beginning of the Airbus story.

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A Washington man accused of being the supplier in a large drug ring that brought an estimated 60 to 65 pounds of meth to the Billings and Belgrade areas admitted federal charges this week.

Juan Ramon Delgadillo-Meza, 41, of Ephrata, Wash., pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess meth with intent to distribute and to conspiracy to commit money laundering during a hearing on Thursday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Cavan.

In a plea deal filed in the case, Delgadillo-Meza agreed to a $1.3 million money judgment to be paid jointly with his co-defendants. The money represents proceeds of drug conspiracy, the agreement said.

Delgadillo-Meza also agreed not to dispute the forfeiture of a 2010 Dodge Avenger, $52,930 in cash that was seized from a safe deposit box at Western Security Bank in Billings and residential property at 319 S. 30th St. in Billings.

Delgadillo-Meza is the last of four people indicted in the drug case to plead guilty.

Belgrade resident Edward Lee Donnes, 55, who admitted making drug runs to Washington and to stashing meth in his storage shed, was sentenced in January to about 10 years in prison.

Billings resident Noel McDermott Morris, a local dealer, was sentenced in November to more than 12 years in prison for conviction on conspiracy and money laundering counts.

A third co-defendant, Bethany Ann Fairchild, 30, of Libby, pleaded guilty in January to a conspiracy count and is awaiting sentencing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brendan McCarthy said the four conspired to bring large amounts of meth into Montana for redistribution from about 2014 to 2016.

During the investigation, agents with the Eastern Montana High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force and the FBI seized more than two pounds of meth that were hidden in a vehicle and also seized about 13 ounces of meth from a storage facility rented by Morris.

Morris initially bought the meth for about $12,500 a pound, but later got the price dropped to about $7,000 a pound, McCarthy said in court records.

The investigation identified Delgadillo-Meza as one of those transporting the meth from Washington and Morris and Donnes as local distributors.

Surveillance by agents showed Delgadillo-Meza on Billings South Side on Aug. 7, 2015 and meeting with Morris and others in a restaurant parking lot. During the meeting, Morris, holding a thick manila envelope in his hand, and another person got into Delgadillo-Mezas vehicle for about a minute, McCarthy said in court records.

When Morris exited the vehicle, he no longer had the envelope, the prosecutor said.

Agents also got information in late October and early November 2015 that Delgadillo-Meza and Morris met in the parking lot of a convenience store in Columbus.

On Nov. 15, 2015, agents surveilling Delgadillo-Meza saw his vehicle traveling back to Billings, and a Montana Highway Patrol officer stopped the vehicle for a traffic violation near Manhattan. Delgadillo-Meza and Fairchild were occupants.

Investigators got a warrant and a search of the vehicle turned up two pounds of meth hidden in the front drivers side fender and about three-quarters of an ounce of meth in various places in the passenger compartment.

A search of Fairchilds phone showed drug-related text messages and that she had accompanied Delgadillo-Meza on trips to Montana.

And in January 2016, agents executed a search warrant at Morris home and a storage facility he had rented and seized about 13 ounces of meth from the storage unit.

Delgadillo-Meza faces a minimum mandatory 10 years to life in prison and up to a $10 million fine on the drug count.

Cavan recommended that Delgadillo-Mezas plea be accepted by U.S. District Judge Susan Watters, who will set a sentencing date. Delgadillo-Meza remains in custody.
January 23, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  In the northern Gaza district of al-Saftawi, the Nawar neighborhood remains socially isolated from its surroundings. Many Gazans discriminate against the Nawari community based on old societal beliefs.

Mussa Natour, a researcher on Palestinian history and member of the Palestinian Curriculum Development Center at the Ministry of Education, stressed to Al-Monitor that there are no Gypsy communities in Palestine at present and that the Roma groups that once spread throughout the Levant area have left Palestine because of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He explained that although Gazans consider the Nawaris Gypsies, they are not. They are a separate community. He added, Nawaris in Palestine are treated the same way as the Roma community is treated in other countries, since the Nawaris customs and traditions are similar to those of the Roma community. These rituals run contrary to the traditions of Gazan society, which has been heavily influenced by Islamic rule, especially after Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Al-Monitor visited the Nawar neighborhood, which hosts the second largest population of Nawaris of Palestine. The Nawar neighborhood of Jerusalem is home to the largest Nawari population in the Palestinian territories.

Amal Anwar, 70, is one of the oldest women in the Nawar neighborhood. She told Al-Monitor, Before the Palestinian Nakba, when I was only two years old, we lived in the east of Jabalia. Other Nawaris lived in other Palestinian areas and were fully integrated with Palestinian society, even if we had different roots. But as a result of harassment and oppression that our community faced within society over decades, especially in the 1970s, when our women would dance and sing, Nawaris all moved in the 1980s to a vacant area in al-Saftawi district." The area is now known as the Nawar neighborhood.

Anwar expressed her concerns over the poverty and marginalization her community faces, the lack of access to public services and their status as "Gypsies."

She explained that they are known for dancing and singing in return for money. Anwar did not deny that many Nawari women in the Gaza Strip have indeed worked as dancers, an occupation considered shameful in conservative societies like Gaza's.

After the events of the first intifada in 1987, Nawari women quit [dancing] as a job. But society in Gaza still remembers them as such and they are still stigmatized as obscene dancers, she added. We are not ashamed of being Nawaris. We are committed to the habits and values of Palestinian society, but when people hear our language that they do not understand. They believe we have Indian origins. This misconception has spread.

There are no official statistics for the Nawari population in the Gaza Strip. Anwar reported that her community counts around 250 people, with 200 of them living in the Nawar neighborhood and 50 in other governorates of the Gaza Strip.

In addition to the Arabic language, Nawaris in Gaza speak Domari, which is unwritten. Nawari children grow up speaking it in their families and wider community. But use of the language is falling, and only the older generation is now truly proficient.

The Nawari community relies on begging as a source of livelihood. Many women beg, and passersby are shocked by their lack of shame.

Ahmed Awni has no problem sending his wife to roam the streets begging for money, provided she wears a veil to cover her features. He told Al-Monitor, "If we had jobs or unemployment benefits from the previous or current Palestinian governments, we would not have accepted begging. But we are deprived of job opportunities because we are a marginalized sector and Palestinian society refuses to see us in public posts.

Awni noted that his community is also deprived of the financial aid provided by the Palestinian governments and civil organizations, such as the foreign aid provided during the Israeli war on Gaza. Awni said that when he approached a local institution in charge of disbursing financial aid from Qatar to families affected by the war, the institutions director refused to send anyone to inspect the damage to his home.

He told me, 'Go beg. This is how you became rich,' Awni said.

Nawaris are prohibited from marrying outside their community for several reasons, including seeking to preserve their lineage. They perceive women as income earners just like men, and they are sent to beg in the streets to provide for the family. Even when inclined, Nawaris find it hard to marry outside their community in light of their social alienation in Gaza.

Ahmed Jlou, 26, was in love with his university classmate, but the girls father rejected Jlous marriage proposal because he is a Nawari.

He told Al-Monitor, There are good people and also bad ones in my community. Nawaris of my generation are all educated. We managed to develop good relationships with our neighbors who do not discriminate against us, and some of them I am friends with. Unfortunately, there is a part of Palestinian society that attributes to us issues that I have not experienced in my life.

Zahia Qara, a psychologist at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, told Al-Monitor that the way the Nawari community is treated in Gaza owes to the perception that their practices are shameful and sinful. Many Gazans perceive singing and dancing as sinful under their tribal and partisan authority structures, which marginalizes this community because of its origins, she said.

Qara added that Nawari women are forced to beg in the streets because they are marginalized and denied their rights. She noted that the negative image of Nawaris is creating resentment and frustration and causing negative and aggressive behavior. She said, We fear that continuous injustices will be inflicted on the new Nawari generation, which will produce retaliation.

Natour stressed to Al-Monitor that historians widely disagree on the pre-Islamic history of the Nawari community in Palestine. Some see this community as part of the Gypsy community, with the same traditions and origins, while others disagree. Based on historical references, he concludes that they are an extension of the historic dispute between Jassas and al-Zir Salem  two clans in medieval Saudi Arabia  that led to a 40-year cycle of vengeance from 494 to 534 CE. He explained that the Nawaris were al-Zir Salem allies and supported him in his war against Jassas. But Jassas ended up ruling the Nejd (todays Saudi Arabia) and Yemen areas, and the Nawaris were forced to flee toward the Levant, where they took up dancing to earn a living. They started to be viewed with a negative lens hundreds of years ago, according to Natour.
February 3, 2017

CAIRO  On Jan. 21, Egypts High Administrative Court issued a final verdict forcing the Egyptian government to prosecute Israel internationally for committing acts of violence and torture against Egyptian prisoners of war during the 1956 and 1967 wars. The verdict brought back to the forefront Israels crimes against hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war more than half a century ago and raised questions about whether Cairo will abide by the verdict.

In 2001, released Egyptian soldiers who survived captivity and the families of deceased soldiers filed a lawsuit with the State Council, asking the Egyptian government to prosecute Israel internationally and give them their wasted rights due to the torture in Israeli prisons in the wake of the wars. Egyptian prisoners of war were caught during the attacks between Israel on the one hand, and Egypt, Syria and Jordan on the other, on Egyptian territory in 1956 and 1967. Today, 16 years later, the court has ruled in their favor.

Nasser Amin, the director of the complaints office at the National Human Rights Council and lawyer at the International Criminal Court (ICC), said in a press statement Jan. 21, The verdict forces the Egyptian government to take judicial measures against Israel and reflects Egypts slackening in this regard, calling for legal measures to hand over the criminals to justice.

On Jan. 23, Egypts El-Watan newspaper published documents that the government had given to the court before the ruling. They read, Between 1995 and 2007, Egypt called on Israel to investigate the crimes that Israeli soldiers committed during the two wars and tried to regain the rights of the prisoners of war. But Egypts Foreign Ministry faced difficulties at the time in getting sufficient evidence to prove the occurrence of the crimes.

However, Wahid Fakhri al-Uksory, the defense attorney of 24 plaintiffs (military and civilian prisoners of war), told Al-Monitor, I have documentaries  including the Israeli film 'The Shaked Spirit' [Shaked was an Israeli defense unit]  confirming that Israel murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war. He said that these crimes cannot be dropped by pleading the statute of limitations, as per Israeli Law No. 5710 of 1950.

Uksory called for treating Egyptians in the same way that Israelis were treated following the Nazi Holocaust when they received compensation from Germany.

The Reparations Agreement that forced Germany to compensate Jews who survived the Nazi Holocaust from 1933 until the end of World War II was signed between the two countries on Sept. 10, 1952, and is considered the most significant case of prisoner of war compensation.

Spokesman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry Ahmed Abu Zeid told Al-Monitor over the phone, We have not been notified yet to start implementing the verdict.

He added, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail and the countrys political administration have to assign the tasks of the Foreign Ministry before the latter can proceed with the implementation of the courts order.

Uksory, who heads Egypts Arab Socialist Party, indicated that he is waiting to receive the verdicts final formulation. As soon as that happens, he said he would accompany the families of the prisoners of war to the Egyptian governments premises to inform it of the verdict and pave the way for its enforcement. He noted, The government, represented by the prime minister, the foreign minister, the minister of defense, the minister of social solidarity and the public prosecutor  as per the text of the verdict  has to resort to whatever it takes to reach international courts and claim compensation for the prisoners of war who were killed.

The courts ruling read, Israel signed the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war in August 1949. This forces Israel to investigate with and prosecute Israeli criminals of war who committed crimes against detainees and civilians.

Member of the International Association of Lawyers Khaled Abu Bakr told Al-Monitor that the verdict is legally problematic for Egypt, in case it decides to implement it. He explained that resorting to the International Court of Justice necessitates the approval of the two disputing states. The ICC, for its part, pursues individual war criminals when there is sufficient proof to condemn them and does not accuse or condemn governments or organizations. He added that the political resorting to the United Nations Security Council to form a special international court requires the approval of all the councils members.

Bakr said, There are many problematic points at the moment.

For his part, Amr Hashem Rabih, the deputy head of Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor, International law considers Israel a 'disobedient' state that does not respect international law, and it is difficult to obtain any legal or judicial gains from the US-backed Israeli state in the Security Council.

He said, If we were to explore the possibility of Israel paying compensation for the Egyptian prisoners of war due to the Egyptian steps, we would realize it is effectively a far-fetched ambition. Israel has committed many crimes against the Palestinians, and the international community has never been able to stop it from committing more.

Rabih added, Egypt might be able to gain moral impetus by internationalizing the case before the Security Council to expose the crimes. The Egyptian government would then prove to its citizens that it is not taking the abuse of their rights lying down.

The director of the Israeli-Palestinian Research Unit at the National Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Tarek Fahmi, told Al-Monitor, The issue of prisoners of war between Egypt and Israel falls in the category of affairs kept in the dark.

He noted that the Camp David Accord stipulates in one of its clauses a financial settlement for the wars between Egypt and Israel. But this still has not happened. Fahmi said, The verdict has legal and political dimensions, and the political one prevails. Before delving into the legal side and prosecuting Israel, Egyptian political will must be present, but this is not the case now.

He asserted that the current rapprochement between Egypt and Israel does not allow for internationalizing the prisoner of war compensation case, and he indicated that Israel holds pressure cards also. It can easily bring up the case of compensation for Israeli soldiers who were held by the Egyptian military in the same wars and their release  a point that Bakr had also raised.

Fahmi added, I do not think that the Egyptian government will prosecute Israel under the current circumstances. Consequently, the verdict becomes symbolic, despite its importance, since it lacks clear methods of enforcement.

Uksory, who has waited for 16 years for this verdict, insists on the governments implementation of it. He said, It is a tough nut to crack. But I will follow up on the implementation of this verdict until my last breath.
February 3, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  The Palestinian Al-Azhar Institute, founded in 1955, is reeling from a financial crisis that could close it down. The institute has seen a 50% drop in student enrollment, from 2,000 students in the 1990s to 1,000 today.

The institute was one of the first Palestinian educational institutions in the Gaza Strip to offer religious and academic education concurrently. It provides classes from elementary to university levels and abides by the same educational policies, terms of acceptance, curriculum, examination system and certification process adopted by Al-Azhar in Egypt. The institute offers several specialized religious courses in two preparatory and secondary schools free of charge.

The Egyptian administration that ruled Gaza in the 1950s allocated approximately 108 acres for the institute's campus. Only 8 acres are left unused, with the largest part of the land dedicated to the Islamic University in Gaza (1979) and Al-Azhar University in Gaza (1992).

Imad Hamattu, dean of the institute in Palestine, told Al-Monitor the financial crisis is the most important challenge the institute faces today. Without an infusion of funds, the institute may close. Hamattu said the institute is calling on several potential local and Arab sources, including the office of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as officials in Qatar, Oman and Kuwait.

To fund operations, the institute currently has only 6,000 shekels (about $1,600), which well-off Palestinians in Gaza donated during the last academic term. Hamattu said the institute needs an estimated $20,000 a month for operations; most of that would be used to transport students to and from the institute. Meanwhile, the accumulated debt it owes to transportation companies and contractual employees exceeds 1 million shekels ($266,000).

The institute needs more teachers but can't afford to hire them, Hamattu said. Many contractual employees haven't been paid for three months. Some of the aging buildings risk falling into decay because the institute can't pay for their upkeep. The school also needs new or restored furniture, and the classrooms haven't been painted for many years.

Institute director Jihad Assaf told Al-Monitor, A great number of students were enrolled in the institute in the 1990s, but this number started to decline in the past 10 years for financial reasons." Also contributing to the shortfall, Assaf said, were actions taken by the former dean, Yusuf Salameh.

"Salameh closed in mid-2016 some scientific sections in the secondary school, for reasons he chose not to disclose to the institutes board of directors. He also issued a decision to raise the students' admission grade average to a minimum of 85% before it returned to 75% early this year, Assaf said.

Assaf pointed out that the institute's 1,000 students are about 70% men and 30% women. The curriculum combines religious study (the Quran and the hadith) and academic study (biology, chemistry and mathematics).

Each semester, Al-Azhar in Cairo sends textbooks, exams and certificates to the Gaza institute, but otherwise does not fund the institute in Gaza. The Palestinian Ministry of Finance is supposed to pay the salaries of the 115 employees, based on a prior agreement between Egypts Al-Azhar and the PA in 1994.

Mohammed Debabeche told Al-Monitor he joined the institute to pursue religious studies and to take advantage of scholarships provided for some students with a grade average of at least 65% at the secondary level who want to attend university once they finish their studies at the institute.

Debabeche said that many of his friends have refused to join the institute because of the decline in financial and academic scholarships, which can include money for traveling to complete their university studies at Al-Azhar University in Egypt. Also, students face hardships getting through the Gaza border crossings.

Al-Azhar in Cairo once offered 30 scholarships per year to students seeking to continue their studies in various majors. But those scholarships have stalled since the internal Palestinian division in 2007 and the closure of the Rafah border crossing for long periods over the year.

Youssef Hamid stressed to Al-Monitor that he joined the institute primarily because it is the only one in Gaza specialized in religious studies.

He explained that the heavy course load at the institute (16 academic subjects per year, compared with eight in public schools) is one reason some students don't enroll and others drop out after just a semester.

Hamid called on Abbas to help the institute overcome the financial crisis. The institutes students and academics hope the administration's efforts bear fruit, in light of the Gaza Strips need for specialized religious institutes and schools.

Hamattu said he expected a meeting with Abbas to be held soon  without specifying when  in the hope of receiving money for student grants and to resolve the institute's financial woes before it is forced to close its doors.
February 2, 2017

Ever since US President Donald Trump took up office in the White House on Jan. 20, Palestinians have felt the weight of tensed relations in the years ahead, in light of his positions supporting Israel and his expected hostility toward the Palestinians. Trump has expressed his intention to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and apparently believes the settlements in the West Bank are not an obstacle for resuming negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Indeed, Trump began his inauguration speech Jan. 20 by threatening to eliminate radical Islamic terrorism. Although Trump did not mention Palestine, Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas political bureau, said on the same day that Trumps stance against Palestine does not serve the regions stability, but rather entices Israeli extremists to exhibit more extremism.

Hamas seems to believe that under Trumps reign, Israel would more easily pressure the movement, by tightening the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2006, or even carrying out a military aggression against it. To make matters worse, Trumps inauguration came only a few days before Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman mentioned Jan. 24 the possibility of occupying a quarter of Gaza in the coming war.

Husam Badran, a Hamas spokesman and former commander of its military wing, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades in the northern West Bank, told Al-Monitor, Hamas is a resistance movement that believes Israel is its only enemy. We operate within the occupied Palestinian territories. The new US administration should re-examine the situation in our region to see that putting a check on peoples choices and denying them the chance to reach their ambitions cannot last forever; the people in the region have the right to freedom much like the rest of the world.

On Jan. 24, Hamas issued a statement about the US intention to move its embassy to Jerusalem, warning about Trumps biased policy toward Israel. The statement said the US presidents positions create an unstable atmosphere and add fuel to the fire in the region, calling on Palestinians to confront Trump and set the resistance in motion as a strategic choice.

Another observation made by Hamas was Trumps tight relationship with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was the first Arab president to congratulate Trump on winning the presidency. It should be noted that Sisi does not hide his hostility toward Hamas and has made great efforts to dry up its financial sources and limit its military capabilities, by destroying the tunnels between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula.

In this context, Ahmed Yousef, a former political adviser to Hamas political bureau Deputy Chairman Ismail Haniyeh and founder of the House of Wisdom Institution for Conflict Resolution and Governance in Gaza who lived for many years in the United States up until 2006, told Al-Monitor, With Trump as president, Israel will find a good opportunity to deal a heavy blow to Gaza, as part of its mowing the grass policy that Israel has been adopting since 2006. However, any Israeli aggression against Gaza could start from Sinai, where the armed organizations are located.

Yousef said, If Egypt and Israel were to think that Sinai has turned into a breeding ground for [terrorist] organizations, they would accuse Gaza of providing these organizations with financial and armed support, as a pretext to get a US cover to attack [Gaza]. This is why organizations active in Gaza  such as Hamas and other armed resistance factions  should stop flaunting their military power as the situation at this moment is critical and cannot afford any security tensions.

Hamas concerns about Trump do not mean that his predecessor Barack Obama had a peaceful relationship with the movement. Obama had supported two wars waged by Israel against Hamas in 2012 and 2014  even if political differences existed between Washington and Tel Aviv over ending these wars more quickly. But under Trumps reign, these differences could subside.

Osama Abu Arshid, a Palestinian researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha and a resident of the United States, told Al-Monitor, Attacking Hamas in Gaza is an Israeli decision, although Trump would give Israel more aggressive support to strike Hamas. Trump is the most populist, extremist and arrogant president there is and he could stand beside Israel in its aggression against the Palestinians, while classifying Sisi and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as role models in fighting Islamists. This is why Hamas has every right to fear an alliance between Sisi, Trump and Israel against it.

It seems that the Palestinians are not only afraid of an upcoming Israeli war against Gaza under Trumps presidency; they fear that the international silence about the horrifying scenes of bloody battles and attacks against armed groups in Syria and Egypt could incite Israel to commit the same atrocities against the Palestinians, if encouraged by Trump.

In this regard, Yoni Ben-Menachem, a former officer of the Israeli military intelligence service, told News1 on Jan. 25 that Hamas is worried about a rapprochement between Trump and Sisi as well as their alliance against the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, as one of its wings.

Ghazi Hamad, the undersecretary at the Foreign Ministry in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, Israel waged three wars against Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014 but failed to achieve any political gains. This might persuade it from pursuing a fourth war under Trumps reign. However, it does consider the tunnels dug by Hamas to be a pivotal threat and will raise this issue as a main point of discussion in the upcoming period in order to obtain further support from Trump. This, however, does not guarantee that a fourth war will not erupt, especially since Palestinians still lack any Arab support today, despite the relative stability since the 2014 war.

Hamas seems worried about Trumps advent to power while the Israeli police are investigating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges. The Palestinians believe Netanyahu will be able to dodge these charges and avoid any ensuing dismissal attempt by attacking the Gaza Strip and diverting Israelis attention away from his government and partisan issues, after being given carte blanche by Trump to act as he pleases.
February 3, 2017

TEHRAN, Iran  Spouses of politicians rarely take center stage on Irans political scene and, for the most part, remain entirely out of the public eye. Few Iranians know very much about their presidents' wives, including their names. Effat Marashi, however, is an exception.

The wife of the late Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was born into a prominent clerical family. One year younger than her husband, she married Rafsanjani in 1959 at the age of 23, when the future two-time president of Iran was a young seminary student. Marashi would later become one of the most political and high-profile wives of an Iranian president.

Marashi wrote in her memoir, Step by Step with the Cedar, I, Effat Marashi, am the wife of the devoted scholar, pious cleric, famous Iranian politician who was schooled in the discipline of the Household of the Prophet [Muhammad], a noble and honorable human being, his eminence Ayatollah Sheikh Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. The dear people of Iran mostly know of me because of two incidents. The first incident was in 1979, when I played a part in protecting my husband, who was miraculously saved, from an assassination attempt. The second incident is related to the 2009 presidential elections and the unfortunate incidents that took place following those elections. Certain sentences uttered by me while I was casting my vote at the Jamaran Prayer Hall were published by the media outlets and used as an excuse by the hard-liners to attack my husband and children.

The assassination attempt took place in September 1979, a few months after the Islamic Revolution. Members of the militant group Furqan, at the time engaged in a series of attacks on revolutionary leaders, entered Rafsanjanis home and tried to shoot him. Marashi confronted the gunmen and jumped in front of her husband, resulting in the bullets hitting his abdomen instead of his head. Her confrontation with the attackers, which Rafsanjani himself describes in his memoirs, resulted in them fleeing and Rafsanjani escaping death. Marashi's influential role in her husbands political life and her bravery during the attempt on his life are laid out in Rafsanjanis memoirs, in which he also discusses their disagreements on some political issues.

Marashis strength as a woman in Iranian political life, albeit most influentially behind the scenes, appears to have influenced her daughters, who are as politically active as her sons Mohsen and Mehdi and have never lived in the shadow of men. Indeed, Faezeh and Fatemeh have been even more politically active than their brothers, perhaps evidence of the absence of a stridently patriarchal atmosphere in the Rafsanjani household. It would not be surprising if Marashi were the one responsible for such an environment in her home.

The comments Marashi made in connection with the controversial 2009 presidential elections, which ushered Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power for a second term, raised her profile. While casting her vote, Marashi told reporters, If the elections are rigged, people should take to the streets. Media outlets critical of Rafsanjani cited her comments in trying to paint the widespread post-election unrest as having been organized in advance by supporters of presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, former Reformist President Mohammad Khatami and, of course, Rafsanjani.

A figure close to the Rafsanjani family who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said, Mrs. Marashi is an unseen and hidden character who played a great role in Rafsanjanis success. She is the one who kept Mr. Rafsanjani going all these years. More importantly, she is a member of the Marashi dynasty herself, a well-known Shiite clerical family.

The source added, During the crisis concerning [the cleric Hassan] Lahouti [Eshkevari], when some of his children were arrested after being accused of collaborating with the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq [MEK], Mrs. Marashi showed strength and managed the crisis from within the Abode [of the then-supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini].

Lahouti, a revolutionary activist, had had connections with the MEK during the time of the shah. Although he parted ways with the MEK, he was suspected of having maintained connections with the group through his son Vahid, who was a member and was executed in 1981 after the MEK had become a sworn enemy of the Islamic Republic. Rafsanjanis daughters were married to Lahoutis sons Hamid and Said, so his arrest and subsequent death, reportedly from a heart attack in Evin prison on Oct. 29, 1981, caused a crisis for the Rafsanjani family given their familial ties.

After Rafsanjani's sudden death last month, Marashi again became a focus of attention, with Iranian media outlets examining the role she had played in Rafsanjanis political life. Some of her statements and personal writings were published online, mainly concerning her extreme sadness at the loss of her husband.

The Marashis, apart from being a noted clerical family, are also prominent in Iranian politics. Her brother, Hossein Marashi, served two terms as a lawmaker and is currently the spokesman for the central council of the Executives of Construction, a Reformist party.

Given Effat Marashis half a century of experience at Rafsanjani's side, some analysts have speculated that she might become more active in politics in the coming years. Another source close to the Rafsanjani family who spoke to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity said, however, Mrs. Marashi is almost 82 years old, and I think it is unlikely that she has any plans to take the political stage. Also, she has always had enough courage to honestly express her own opinions. Ayatollah Hashemi was never a barrier for her [expressing herself], and thus there is no reason to think that with his death she will now have more opportunities to be politically active.
February 2, 2017

Iran has been restrained in its response to the US warning that it is officially on notice over its regional policies and ballistic missile tests, with one high-ranking official describing them on Feb. 2 as hollow threats. The harsh reactions out of Washington were prompted by an Iranian missile test conducted Jan. 29.

At the request of the United States, the UN Security Council convened Jan. 31 to discuss the missile launch. After the meeting, Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the United Nations, said the council should take action over what she called an alarming test. The following day, US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn said at a White House press briefing that the missile test had been in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorses the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran's nuclear deal with the six world powers. He also said, Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened. ... As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice. President Donald Trump echoed the latter on Feb. 2, tweeting, Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the US made with them!

Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 2, 2017

Of note, the nuclear deal does not address Irans ballistic missile program, while UN Security Council Resolution 2231 states, Iran is called upon not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology. The language of the resolution is nonbinding, while Tehran has on repeated occasions stated that it has no plans to design missiles capable of delivering atomic weapons.

In this vein, Iran's defense minister, Gen. Hossein Dehghan, on Feb. 1 said, The recent [missile] test is in line with our plans, and we will not allow any foreigner to interfere in our defense affairs. The following day, he pronounced the test a success.

Responding to Flynns remarks, Ali Akbar Velayati, foreign policy adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, downplayed the Trump administrations warnings. Velayati, who also heads the Expediency Councils Center for Strategic Research, said Feb. 2, The missiles which were tested are for defensive purposes, and Iran will strongly continue its activities for defense purposes.

Referring to Flynn as an inexperienced man who speaks illogically, Velayati emphasized, Iran doesnt pay attention to these [warnings]. The Americans have done nothing positive for Iran. He went on to say, On the issue of the JCPOA, Mr. Obama's government didnt honor its commitments, and it is the US which is indebted to Iran and should honor to its commitments.

Bringing up new threats [against Iran] every day is against the spirit of the JCPOA, and they [the United States] should stop doing so, Velayati continued. It would be good if the Americans reviewed their past experiences. These hollow threats wont make us leave the right path we have chosen in strongly defending ourselves.  The American people are dissatisfied with the hard-line positions that Mr. Trump and his entourage have adopted, and in the end, the side that will be harmed is America.

That same day, Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi criticized the United States for its provocative claims, noting that its warnings were being issued while the efforts of the Islamic Republic of Iran to fight terrorist groups in the Middle East region is no secret.

Referencing Trumps Jan. 27 executive order banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Ghassemi said, It is unfortunate that instead of thanking the Iranian nation for its continued fight against terrorism, the US government practically helps the terrorist groups by repeating baseless claims and adopting unwise policies.  How is the arrest and handcuffing of a 5-year-old child, which has been confirmed by the White House, considered fighting terrorism?

The child in question is the son of an Iranian woman who is a US citizen. The White House acknowledged that he had been handcuffed and detained for hours without his mother at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia on the ground that he could have posed a security threat.

Changing tracks, Ghassemi said, The legitimate defense policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is based on international law and not negotiable under any circumstances, and none of [Iran's] missiles are designed for carrying nuclear warheads. Thus, the missile tests arent in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

Flynns remarks also triggered a response from Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Feb. 2. If our missile power wasnt a power that could scare the US, there would be no reason for all the ballyhoo, and today, Iran's big missile power is among the unique deterrent capabilities of the world, Salami said. Each day, the number of [Irans] missiles, warships and defensive missile launchers will be increased.

Furthermore, former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei tweeted, Mr. Trump, Irans missile tests have been for defensive and peaceful [purposes] during the past 40 years. [Do not let Saudi Arabias] King Salman and [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu deceive you.

Many Iranian officials believe Saudi Arabia and Israel are hoping to convince the Trump administration to adopt policies hostile toward Iran.
A Washington man accused of bringing two people to Montana for sexual activity denied trafficking charges in U.S. District Court in Billings this week.

Andrew Anthony Rivera, 23, of Tacoma, pleaded not guilty to an indictment charging him with sex trafficking by force and with transportation of a person with intent to engage in sexual activity.

The indictment alleges that in October 2014 in Billings and elsewhere, Rivera forced a person to engage in commercial sex and that in April 2016, he brought another person to Montana from Washington with the intent of having the person engage in prostitution.

Rivera was arrested in Washington and had an initial appearance on Jan. 26 in Yakima. The Washington magistrate judge released Rivera on conditions, including electronic monitoring and home detention.

The sex trafficking crime carries a mandatory minimum 15 years to life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy Cavan in Billings continued Riveras release pending trial. The case will be heard by U.S. District Judge Susan Watters.
February 1, 2017

BAGHDAD  Iraqi women are dealing with worsening harassment in the workplace and sexual abuse in general, according to statements made by Iraqi members of parliament and media reports.

On Jan. 15, 2017, parliament member Aaliyah Nasif revealed that she has been receiving complaints of sexual harassment of female employees in a number of ministries, while on Jan. 17, Education Minister Mohammad Iqbal dismissed the director-general of the ministry for soliciting sexual favors in exchange for a promotion.

On Jan. 17, a Finance Ministry employee told Al-Aalem newspaper that her division director trapped her in the vault, the place where documents are archived, after she refused to become his secretary, a position that would have entailed harassment by him.

Kurdistan Alliance parliamentarian Rizan Sheikh Dalir, who was interviewed in the report, told Al-Monitor, Women are perceived as inferiors by the male politicians. This is why even women MPs had to deal with harassment during parliamentary sessions, adding, They would bully a woman MP by saying that there are no laws that prohibit polygamy, which is derogatory to women.

In a Jan. 14 article for al-Hewar al-Motamaden, writer Dawood Salman al-Kaabi argued, It is possible that MP Aaliyah Nasif, who blew the whistle on the sexual harassment of female employees, had been subject to it herself by some MPs with whom she had altercations.

While there are no statistics available for the past year on harassment in Iraqi society, a report published in September 2015 by a conference of Iraqi civil society organizations revealed that 77% of Iraqi women have been victims of sexual harassment.

Although women often avoid admitting that they were harassed for personal and social reasons, journalist Safaa Ali told Al-Monitor, I have indeed dealt with sexual harassment myself, and I had to step away from this embarrassing situation immediately, adding, Other colleagues were also subject to verbal and physical harassment.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, journalist Hiba Noureddine said, The phenomenon is growing worse. MP Nasif and the Iraqi Women's Journalists Forum reflected this fact. She went on, Some officials and colleagues see women as only bodies.

Qassem Hussein Saleh, head of the Iraqi Psychological Association, told Al-Monitor, The phenomenon has become widespread, especially in public institutions. It is due to the pervasive political corruption, which is closely connected to the moral crisis.

Saleh offered his psychological analysis of the phenomenon: Many officials with modest educational backgrounds have not been exposed to gender mixing and cultural openness at university and throughout their careers. Sexual harassment was a way to compensate for personal and social restraint.

Rehab al-Abouda, the head of the parliamentary Committee for Women, Family and Childhood, told Al-Monitor, Harassment is prevalent in the workplace and high-profile institutions. However, female victims almost never file a complaint to avoid shame.

Jawad al-Shamri, the media director at the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, told Al-Monitor, This phenomenon is  a result of the financial and administrative corruption in the country. He explained, The physical and verbal harassment of women in the workplace is a violation of international human rights declarations. Shamri pointed to a complaint filed by a female journalist at one of the Iraqi TV stations after she was subjected to sexual harassment, forcing her to quit her job for good.

Iraqi researcher Rabia Shaker al-Obaidi published a study on Jan. 16 revealing other contributors to harassment, such as unequal educational practices that lead to an unequal social perception of men and women and family disintegration as well as offenders' low self-esteem, which can lead to the failure to establish healthy relationships and even violence.

Journalist Asmaa Obaid expressed pride in Iraqi women and told Al-Monitor, Although Iraqi women were able to enter many sectors like medicine, engineering, the media and politics, they are still objectified and perceived as maids. She stressed, Sexual harassment is the product of a patriarchal culture, and, Whether they wear hijab or not, women face sexual harassment. Obaid called for deterrent laws to put an end to this phenomenon.

In the Iraqi Penal Code, Paragraph 400 of Section 3 covers "immodest" and "shameful" acts. It states: Any person who commits an immodest act with a man or woman and without his or her consent is punishable by a period of detention not exceeding one year plus a fine not exceeding 100 dinars.

Obaid believes that such punishments are not strong enough deterrents, and that harsh sentences alone are incapable of ending an entrenched social phenomenon like sexual harassment. Social awareness campaigns are needed to help citizens, both men and women, realize that women must not be treated as second-class citizens, she added.
February 2, 2017

RAMALLAH, West Bank  The Israeli government delayed voting on a bill to annex the settlement of Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem, which was scheduled for Jan. 22. The governments decision comes after advisers of US President Donald Trump sent letters to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, asking him not to take any unilateral decisions before meeting with Trump, Haaretz reported Jan. 22. The two leaders are scheduled to meet Feb. 15.

Maale Adumim, one of the largest settlements in the West Bank, was erected in 1979 on a total area of 48 acres of land in the towns of Bethany and Abu Dis, east of Jerusalem. It is separated from the city of Jerusalem by 12 square kilometers (about 4.5 square miles) of land, known as the E1 zone and classified by Israel as state land that is part of Area C under the administrative control of Israel.

In 2005, Israel had halted construction in the E1 zone because of international criticism, but it still plans to build neighborhoods for settlers in this area in the future and annex it to Jerusalem.

If Israel were to annex Ma'ale Adumim, it would put a bullet in the establishment of the State of Palestine. According to Khalil Tafakji, the director of the maps and survey department at the Arab Studies Society in Jerusalem, the annexation would achieve strategic goals for Israel and prevent the establishment of the Palestinian state.

Tafakji told Al-Monitor, Annexing Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem means the northern West Bank would be completely separated from the south, as the area [Maale Adumim] stretches from the east of the city of Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley at a depth of 35 kilometers [22 miles] and a width of 20 kilometers [12.5 miles]. This would also prevent East Jerusalem from becoming the capital of the Palestinian state, which would disrupt the demographic balance in Jerusalem in Israels favor.

The Israeli government had scheduled a session to vote on the bill to annex Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem around the same time news emerged about the possibility of moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem mentioned by Trump only a few days before his inauguration Jan. 20.

Such talks raised the ire of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which warned Israel and the international community about the seriousness of such steps. On Jan. 19, spokesman for the Palestinian presidency Nabil Abu Rudeina said in a press release, Annexing Ma'ale Adumim will lead to devastating results. We will consider this a serious escalation that will end any peaceful course of action. This step will introduce a new stage that no one will be able to control. If Israel were to cross its limits in this regard, then all limits will disappear.

The Palestinian statements warn Israel and the international community of the danger of this Israeli step, which could open the door for several options for the Palestinians. The Palestinians may not only resort to international diplomatic work, but could also threaten to turn the popular uprising into an armed one in the event that the international community fails to put pressure on Israel to back down.

However, the Palestinians did not wait long before taking action. On Jan. 20, a group of activists from the popular resistance and foreign supporters of the Palestinian cause rallied in the park in Maale Adumim, where they pitched a tent to protest against the Israeli governments intention to annex the settlement and the E1 zone to Jerusalem. The Israeli police cracked down on the protesters and forced them to clear the area. Even so, this protest might as well be a prelude to further escalation by the popular resistance.

Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatahs Central Committee, told Al-Monitor, The Palestinians could employ several alternatives to respond to Israels intention to annex Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem. They could either resort to the International Criminal Court or the UN Security Council, which issued Resolution 2334 condemning the settlements. The Palestinians could also demand to impose sanctions on Israel, request the suspension of Israel from the United Nations or call on the PLO to withdraw its recognition of the State of Israel  and thus returning to square one in the relationship with Israel.

Zaki said that the Palestinian street will go to the fullest extent of escalation, because such Israeli action would prove that everything else is over, in reference to the peace process that was established in virtue of the Oslo Accord signed between the PLO and Israel on Sept. 13, 1993.

For his part, Walid Assaf, the chairman of the PA Commission Against the Wall and Settlements and member of Fatahs Revolutionary Council, told Al-Monitor, Annexing Ma'ale Adumim would deal a fatal blow to the political process, after which no political negotiation could ever be conducted with Israel.

He said, We have plenty of options to choose from in order to respond to Israel, whether on the international diplomatic level or by resisting the occupation in all means necessary. The second intifada in 2000 and the popular uprising in October 2015 were the result of Israel messing with Jerusalem.

Assaf added, Without an open political horizon, Palestinian individuals, parties and organizations could take any action they find necessary and an intifada or a new uprising could break out once again.

Political analyst and political science professor at Al-Quds University Abdul Majid Sweilem told Al-Monitor, If Israel annexes Ma'ale Adumim, it would pave the way to annexing all settlements in the West Bank to Israel and imposing a one-sided de facto. For the PA, this would represent a dead end for the political process and the two-state solution.

He noted, The PA will no longer be obliged to recognize Israel or abide by the Oslo Accord. In this case, it would resort to diplomatic means within the framework of international law and the UN.

Sweilem also said that the Palestinian leadership cannot control the outbreak of an uprising as only the people can take such a decision, and consequently, annexing Ma'ale Adumim and imposing a fait accompli by Israel would make it difficult to predict the reaction of the people  which Israel has previously failed to tame and control.

Although the PA claims to have all its options open, it prefers to avoid a field confrontation with Israel by allowing an armed intifada to erupt. The PA is rather leaning toward diplomatic and political action in international institutions and organizations that it has joined, as well as pleading its case once again before the international community to put pressure on Israel.
February 3, 2017

The conversation with Jamal, a resident of the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, was fraught with emotion  long periods of silence punctured by weeping. His 11-year-old daughter, Rima, was diagnosed several months ago with leukemia, and he fought for weeks with the Gaza health authorities to get permission to take her out of the Gaza Strip for life-saving treatment in Israel.

When we got there, her situation was almost hopeless. They said she could not be saved, he told Al-Monitor, asking that only his first name be used. Initially, he said, the doctors considered sending her home, but eventually Rima underwent a bone marrow transplant and her situation improved, though she was still not out of the woods. In November, she was released from the hospital to return to her home in Gaza. Once every two weeks she has to go back to the Israeli hospital for checkups and monitoring.

But the drive from Gaza to Tel Aviv is an expense very few in Gaza can afford. A taxi to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem from the Erez crossing on the Gaza-Israel border can cost as much as 500 shekels ($133). It's a fortune in the besieged enclave, where many inhabitants are unemployed and rely on handouts from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. Were it not for a group of Israeli volunteers who turn up every morning at the Gaza border crossings into Israel (and at Israeli military roadblocks throughout the West Bank), these seriously ill Palestinians would probably not get the life-saving care they need.

Road to Recovery is an Israeli nonprofit that takes Palestinians from the crossings and roadblocks to hospitals. It was founded by Yuval Roth, whose brother Ehud was kidnapped and murdered by Palestinians from the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades while he was serving in the military reserves in 1993. Another volunteer who organizes volunteer drivers is Buma Inbar, whose son Yotam, a Golani Brigade fighter, was killed in Lebanon in 1995. Buma has since taken on the task of driving Palestinians who essentially have no other way to get to Israeli hospitals for treatment.

The demand far outstrips what we are able to supply, said an activity coordinator for Road to Recovery who asked to be identified only as A. She is in daily contact with Palestinian Authority (PA) officials in Ramallah and with their representatives in Gaza, through whom she arranges pickups for Palestinians needing to be driven to the hospital. A. said some 700 sick Gaza residents and their escorts come out of Gaza every week, but not all get the transportation they need. Even after investing tremendous efforts into convincing the local authorities to let them go for treatment in Israel, some never make it to the hospital.

Jamal said he has the phone numbers of volunteers to coordinate his daughters travel in Israel. I know they are doing everything they can," he said with a sigh, "but every time I see more and more sick people waiting at the Erez crossing. Sometimes these are kids who can barely walk or are in wheelchairs, and sometimes with a grandfather or grandmother accompanying them because their parents are not allowed to leave Gaza to go with them. Isnt it a pity? Some wait for half a day at the crossing, until they miss their appointment at the hospital and have to go back home without getting treatment.

[Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas has forgotten them. They are paying the price of the struggle between Hamas and Fatah, because they are the weakest and most downtrodden links in the chain, an officer with Israels Southern Command told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. They could have rented buses for them or recruited transportation companies with Arab-Israeli drivers who speak Arabic and could have made it easier for them, at least to give them the feeling that their lives matter, he said.

There was once a proposal to set up a transportation system from within Gaza to the Erez crossing and from the crossing to Israeli hospitals, he said, but the initiative was buried because the PA was unwilling to invest in it. Its convenient for the PA to depend on Israeli volunteer organizations, he added.

Amram Mitzna, the former Labor chairman and one-time mayor of Haifa, is one of the Road to Recoverys volunteers. For the past year, he has been driving to the Erez crossing every Monday morning to take sick Palestinians to Jerusalem hospitals for treatment. He told Al-Monitor that both his sisters volunteer with the organization, and he joined them.

I try to do even small things in order to feel at peace with myself and have contact with Palestinian society, he said in an interview. To do good for sick, miserable people who go through an impossible system in the Gaza Strip and come up against the terrorist rule of Hamas that doesnt show consideration for anyone. Medical treatment is something basic and humanitarian.

Mitzna said some of his sick passengers recognize him. They know who I am and theyre very moved over this gesture, he said. But I dont talk politics with them; I talk with them about daily life. I very much want to hear what theyre going through, what life is like there in Gaza under Hamas rule, but usually theyre not interested in complaining to me.

Mitzna said the Palestinian patients who see Israeli volunteers drive up in their own cars to take them for the treatment they so desperately need are deeply touched. I hope they will have a small corner in their hearts for us, because thats the least we can do in this insane and impossible reality in which we live, he concluded.
February 2, 2017

With cement walls and electric fences making a comeback, with the word Muslims becoming synonymous with terrorists, with racism enjoying a revival, the recommendation of the Talmud-era sage Hillel the Elder takes on new meaning: In a place where there are no humans, one must strive to be human (Pirkei Avit 2:5). It is harder, still, to be a decent human being  in Yiddish, a mensch  in a fraught relationship between occupiers and the occupied. Despite the abundance of vitriol injected into the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians by those at the apex of Palestinian and Israeli power, however, there are those who refuse to abandon their humanity.

One such person is Mohammed Jamal, from the West Bank village of Lubban al-Sharqiya, south of Nablus, who rushed to save the victims of a fatal bus crash Jan. 27 outside his house on a rainy winter night. Jamal and his family were the first to help the surviving Jewish passengers, who were on their way to a nearby settlement. In the days that followed, Israeli officers from the Central Command and Civil Administration called the Jamal family to express their gratitude. Capt. Sivan Raviv, the medical officer from the Binyamin Division who oversaw the rescue efforts, said that Jamal and his family arrived at the scene in their pajamas and carrying flashlights. They didnt stop to think or consider, the officer said. All they saw was the need to save lives.

Jamal remarked to Israeli television, When you see an injured person who needs help, you want to help and you must help. His words brought to mind the image of the Israeli soldier Elor Azaria, who shot and killed a wounded Palestinian assailant last March in Hebron. Too bad Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who took the trouble to call the soldiers family to comfort them at the time, could not find the time to say a few words, or even send a tweet, praising the Palestinian family that came to the rescue of injured Israeli settlers. Think how great it would have been if Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, who attended Azarias court martial to express support for the soldier, had invited the Jamal family to his office to shake their hands. He even could have awarded them a medal, used to commemorate and praise a special act, but also to make an educational gesture. Such gestures remind us of the values behind the deeds and decisions of remarkable individuals. It is probably time that Israel established a Medal of Fraternity or a Medal of the Olive Branch to celebrate people like Jamal.

That said, Jamal is not alone. Palestinian civilians have on numerous occasions extricated Israeli civilians and soldiers who unwittingly entered territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and found themselves surrounded by an angry mob. Three years ago, Palestinian peace activists prevented the lynching of a group of young, radical right-wing Israelis, so-called hilltop youth, from the Esh Kodesh settlement, who entered a Palestinian village to carry out a violent hate crime. The activists and local Palestinian leaders alerted Israeli and Palestinian security forces and called them to come and extricate the besieged Israeli youths. According to PA data, in 2015 it handed over 634 Israeli citizens to Israeli authorities who entered Palestinian villages in the West Bank whether by mistake or for nefarious purposes.

On the other side of the conflict one can also find people who view a sick or injured Palestinian first and foremost as a human being in need of assistance. Volunteers from The Road to Recovery, among them former Haifa Mayor Amram Mitzna and former state attorney Eran Shendar, drive hundreds of sick Palestinian children from the Gaza Strip for treatment in Israeli hospitals every week.

In 2015, some 130,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank were treated in Israeli hospitals (with most of their treatment and hospitalization paid for by the PA). That same year, Dalia Bassa, a vaunted health liaison between the Israeli military and Palestinian authorities, arranged for 120 corneal transplants for visually impaired Palestinians as well as bone marrow transplants for Palestinian children.

In A Woman on Her Own, the Israeli translator and author Ilana Hammerman tells of the many years during which she accompanied Palestinian families and friends across the West Bank, helping them in various capacities. Volunteers for Yesh Din provide legal aid to Palestinians who have had their lands taken by Jewish settlers under the auspices of the state. Israeli women from MachsomWatch, an anti-occupation organization, arrive at dawn at military roadblocks to monitor them and help Palestinians with their passage. Members of Physicians for Human Rights, under the leadership of Rafi Walden, operate mobile health clinics throughout the West Bank and provide emergency medical assistance to Gaza residents. I apologize to all the many other human rights groups that I have not the room to mention here.

Nonetheless, people like Jamal and Hammerman are rare, proving that most Israelis and Palestinians have become victims of the violent conflict and of its nationalistic-religious-political incitement. Members of the Jamal family experienced hateful attacks by Palestinians who condemned them for collaboration with the Jewish occupier. Meanwhile, a majority of Israeli Jews, 60%, said they did not think Azaria should have been court martialed for killing the injured Palestinian terrorist.

The left-wing Meretz, the only remaining Zionist standard bearer of Jewish-Arab fraternity, is perpetually at the bottom of public opinion polls. A majority of the Jewish public, 57%, has bought into the right-wing propaganda that accuses former President Barack Obama of being unfriendly to Israel, and 69% anticipate a friendlier attitude from Donald Trump as president. On the other hand, the percentage of Palestinians in favor of armed struggle against Israel is on the rise, currently at 37%.

Israeli and Arab human rights and peace activists can only look on with envy at the nationwide protests in the United States against their new president's immigration bans and provocation of the United States' neighbors to the South. In light of the tragic Jan. 18 events involving home demolitions in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran  which took the lives of a local resident, Yakoub Moussa Abu al-Qian, and an Israeli policeman, Erez Levi  some 20 Israeli groups, among them the Meretz and the Hadash parties, will hold a joint Jewish-Arab rally Feb. 4 in Tel Avivs Rabin Square. The slogan chosen for the event is A joint future: they destroy, we build.  This is the moment to stand together, Arabs and Jews, and to issue a clear call: all citizens are equal  both Arabs and Jews, and this home belongs to us all. One should not be sitting at home, frustrated and frightened, while such events take place. It will be interesting to see how mensches leave the comfort of their living rooms on Saturday night and go out to the square.
February 3, 2017

Following the Jan. 25 announcement of the liberation of eastern Mosul by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, an increasing number of families are leaving the camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Kurdistan Region. They are returning to Mosul and its surrounding area in the hope of rebuilding their lives as the Islamic State (IS) retreats further and the government tries to shoulder its responsibilities.

On a burnt-out road in Nour neighborhood in eastern Mosul, where just two weeks earlier IS militants and Iraqi security forces fought a ferocious battle, former civilian pilot Abu Salim, 75, has a smile on his face and is happy to be alive in spite of the fighting and the airstrikes that targeted his neighborhood repeatedly. People like Abu Salim, flanked by two of his sons, are volunteering to clean the streets in the hope to restore a normal routine to their lives after living under IS terror for more than two years.

"[IS] destroyed all the Sunni cities in Iraq; they were the enemy of the Sunnis," Abu Salim said, echoing a prevailing sentiment in the city of Mosul.

This sentiment is in stark contrast with how the residents of Mosul felt in June 2014, when many Sunni residents were happy to see the Iraqi army and federal police, perceived to be highly corrupt and sectarian, being routed by a group of several hundred militants that morphed into IS.

The caliphate that IS proclaimed was a result of years of grievances and open revolt against the central government by the Sunnis in Ninevah province since the invasion of 2003. However, over 2 years of IS rule has made residents question the insurgents and hope for a reconciliation with the government in Baghdad  a crucial opportunity for Abadi to make peace in this turbulent region. By the time the Mosul operation started in late October 2016, people in Mosul were so fed up with IS that hundreds if not thousands volunteered to provide intelligence to the army and the peshmerga forces to rid their city of what many described as the "savage" militants. The residents had enough of IS in a city that is renowned for its ancient history and coexistence between various communities and religious denominations.

But IS brutality reappeared, even if far away, once the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) liberated the eastern neighborhoods in early November. IS militants fired rocket after rocket into these neighborhoods, as they regarded the residents to have strayed from its puritanical interpretation of Islam by assisting the Iraqi security forces. In late January, two CTS officers attended to a motionless 71-year-old man lying on a stretcher with injuries to his right leg and his face in a clinic in Baladiyat neighborhood. "My father was cleaning outside our house in Sediq neighborhood when an improvised explosive device blew up in the rubble," said his son, who was erratically trying to help the medics as thick blood dripped from the old man's face.

The father's injuries were not life-threatening, but the sound of mortars landing in the distance meant more civilians like him were at the militants mercy. The punishment of the civilians by the militants was in contradiction to their message propagated to the Sunnis of Mosul for over 2 years  that they were there to protect the Sunnis against their Shiite rulers in Baghdad.

This brutality from IS coupled with the supportive conduct of the CTS officers in dealing with civilians caught up in the fighting has played a crucial role in alleviating the peoples fear. In the early days of the Mosul operation, when CTS reached the first neighborhoods of the city on its eastern side, hundreds of civilians were treated by tireless CTS officers in rudimentary field clinics set up in damaged houses.

"Life is much better now," Mahmoud Kheder, who has been an employee at the Ministry of Education for 35 years, told Al-Monitor. "[IS] only knew killing." Life for Kheder and other residents is still very difficult; with no water and electricity this winter, it means his seven children will be shivering in the cold at night. But he said the fact that they have no IS terror hovering over their heads is enough to celebrate life.

"Our top priority in the local government is for the IDPs to return to their areas in and around Mosul," Sido Hussein, a member of the Ninevah provincial council, told Al-Monitor. "We are working hard to resume services such as water and electricity, but given the level of destruction by [IS], it will take some time."

Many in Mosul have lost everything, including their vehicles and homes in airstrikes, suicide car bombs or during the fighting. People who spoke to Al-Monitor said they hope the government will take responsibility for providing services and compensation so the residents can rebuild their lives. Mosul used to be the center for trade and industry in northern Iraq, and with its close proximity to Syria and Turkey, its economy could revive fast.

Peace in Mosul is crucial if Abadi wants to see stability in Iraq. Since the 2003 invasion, Mosul has been the strategic center of gravity for terrorist groups and its been in a state of rebellion. Until now, by and large the Iraqi security forces and in particular the CTS have treated the people in east Mosul with dignity and respect. However, in recent days, videos have surfaced on the internet that show individuals accused of collaboration with IS being killed on the spot. Other videos show children and adults accused of IS ties or membership being tortured and humiliated. Abadi has ordered a field investigation.

Mosul residents say that peace is possible in Mosul if the government continues its commitment to prevent sectarianism, provide services and increase transparency in a city where the government and corruption have gone hand in hand for years. But for now, while more than 750,000 people are under siege in west Mosul and await a bloody battle to be liberated, people in the east have different priorities. When asked about the three things the government can do for the residents right now, Abu Salim replied, "[Provide] water, electricity and kerosene."

He has no qualms about the damage that IS has done to the fabric of Iraqi society. "These beasts brought Iraq to its lowest point in history," Abu Salim said, adding in broken English while still smiling, But I stay hopeful.
February 3, 2017

Conflicting portraits are emerging of Omar Assi, who police said attempted a suicide bombing Jan. 21 at a Beirut cafe. The young man is allegedly the second suicide attacker in recent years from the city of Saida.

The city, about 25 miles south of Beirut, was also home to Mouin Abou Dahr, who was behind the deadly November 2013 terror attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. Both men were followers of radical Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir. Assir is now in prison, but observers say he has a pool of followers in Saida, some of whom have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. The Lebanese authorities say Assi confessed to being one of them.

Officials allege Assi walked into the Costa cafe in the bustling Beirut neighborhood of Hamra and attempted to set off an 8-kilogram (17.6-pound) shrapnel-laden explosive belt before he was arrested by the security forces. According to sources within the Ministry of Interior, Assis arrest was made possible by the December arrest of several terrorist cells in Saida and north Lebanon.

Islamic State activity has been curbed by the efficiency of security services. [IS] now operates in small, decentralized cells, a ministry source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity.

The Daily Star reported Jan. 27 that, according to Lebanese military officials, Assi confessed to the plot and admitted he had pledged allegiance to IS.

Assi, who was working as a registered nurse in Saida, is from Sharhabil, a calm neighborhood in the city. Located on Saidas north side, the lower-to-middle-class area is home to merchants, taxi drivers and workers with limited means. Most residents Al-Monitor spoke with described Assi as an extremely polite man.

He comes from a very nice family, one neighbor told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. He is always polite and helpful. He used to carry my shopping bags.  He never went out; he went directly to his place of work and back home.

Assi is portrayed as a lonely and responsible figure. His brother, Farouk Assi, denies Omar was involved in the bombing. He told Al-Monitor, The accusations are fabricated. They dont make sense. I used to frequent Costa and my brother knew that. The pictures shown of my brother with an explosive vest were tampered with. My brother has a smaller frame.

Another neighbor spoke of Omar Assis extreme religious devotion, saying, He was overly religious in a strange way, quoting the Quran in every mundane discussion. He had a strong view of his role as the family provider and leader, although he was the middle child.

Lebanese security sources said Assi was a member of a Saida terrorist cell. Moustapha, a pastry shop owner in Saida who preferred not to divulge his family name and who knew Assi personally, said that like Abou Dahr, Assi followed the cleric Assir, who in 2013 led a two-day battle in the Saida neighborhood of Abra against the Lebanese army, killing 20 soldiers in the process. Assir was a fierce opponent of Hezbollah and accused the Lebanese government of colluding with the militant group.

Both Omar and Mouin resented what they perceived as the persecution of Sheikh Assir. They both felt they needed to do something to repair the damage done to him. Sheikh Assir has successfully built a large network of followers among the citys youth, Moustapha told Al-Monitor.

Saida journalist Fadi Talej told Al-Monitor that an unknown faction is galvanizing the pool of Assirs followers through a Facebook page called Karama Awalan (Pride First), highlighting the oppression of the families of militants involved in the Abra clashes. Over a hundred young men disappeared from the city after the 2013 clashes  some fled to Turkey, others are in hiding. They might be activating Assirs followers. There is also possible involvement of radical factions in Ain al-Hilweh, Talej said.

Security sources in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in Lebanon, southeast of Saida, report that the PLO and some Islamic factions are clashing with a group called Shabab Muslim, which is affiliated with IS and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra). Shabab Muslim includes remnants of the extremist organizations Jund al-Sham and Fatah al-Islam.

We know that many of Assirs youth pledged allegiance to IS and have connections with people inside the camp, a Palestinian source speaking on condition of anonymity told Al-Monitor.

Small, densely populated Ain al-Hilweh is home to more than 100,000 Palestinian Lebanese, as well as Palestinian refugees from Syria. The camp is a known jihadi bastion, home to multiple factions such as al-Qaeda-affiliate Abdallah Azzam Brigades and Osbat Ansar. An Ain al-Hilweh radical sheikh, Oussma Shehabi, had reportedly issued a fatwa against allowing the bombing. However, Salafist Sheikh Ahmad Amoureh told Al-Monitor that Shehabi denied the camp had any connection with the suicide attacker.

Still, Amoureh believes that the increase in the level of violence, from the Abou Dahr event to the Assi terror plot, is worrisome, despite the failure of the operation. When Abou Dahr had targeted the Iranian Embassy, it was a political statement, while Assi was just targeting civilians, the cleric said.

The proximity of Ain al-Hilweh to Saida may facilitate the activity of terror networks because of lax security measures inside the camp, according to Al-Hayat journalist and analyst Hazem Amine. Pressure is high in Saida due to pockets of poverty and extreme religiosity. In addition, the city is a demarcation line [between Sunnis and Hezbollah], Amine told Al-Monitor.

Saida is the birth city of Sunni Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a massive blast in 2005 in which five Hezbollah members were implicated. The city is mostly Sunni but located in southern Lebanon, which is mostly Shiite and considered a Hezbollah bastion.

Assir can still count many followers in the city who believe they are marginalized and treated unjustly. That feeling will not subside soon and may generate further attacks that may be more successful.
February 3, 2017

ALEPPO, Syria  A group of journalists and cameramen in Aleppo worked for almost two years under difficult and dangerous circumstances to produce a documentary film capturing the suffering of the city's residents in the ongoing civil war. Their efforts recently paid off: Last Men in Aleppo won the 2017 World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for international documentary film at the Sundance Film Festival. Director Feras Fayyad collected the prize along with co-director Steen Johannessen at the Jan. 28 ceremony in Park City, Utah. The film was made possible through the collaboration of Larm Film, a Danish company, which funded the production, and the Aleppo Media Center, which reports on Syrian news and produces video projects.

Work began in mid-2015 on the 90-minute documentary, which depicts daily life in Aleppos neighborhoods when they were under the control of the armed opposition, which was forced to withdraw in late December following heavy shelling and aerial attacks by government forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and his allies. The film highlights the day-to-day experiences of Syrian civil defense volunteers, also known as the White Helmets, as they go about trying to save civilians being shelled. It also documents the regime siege on Aleppos eastern neighborhoods.

Hasan Kattan, the executive director of the Aleppo Media Center and part of the team that worked on the documentary, told Al-Monitor, The idea for the film came up when the Syrian regimes aircraft were shelling Aleppos neighborhoods erratically. As journalists in Aleppo, we wanted to reflect the pain of the city, which buried hundreds of its citizens and witnessed the homelessness of millions. We wanted the world to feel the suffering of Aleppos citizens before they had to leave at the end of 2016.

Kattan added, The documentary tells of episodes in Aleppos eastern neighborhoods through two members of the White Helmets. It shows the difficulties they faced during their work and daily lives, the massacres that the regime committed against civilians and how they coped under the siege that lasted for more than three months. In general, the documentary sheds light on the humanitarian aspects in Aleppo through these two men.

On the film's success at Sundance, Kattan said, When we found out that we had won first prize at the Sundance Film Festival, we were overwhelmed. Our work had finally paid off, and we managed to show the world our suffering, despite the tough filming conditions. The Syrian people have made many sacrifices to get their freedom, and we have been doing our best to show these sacrifices over more than six years.

Shooting the documentary was obviously not a walk in the park. The team members faced hardships over the past two years, but their insistence on producing a good piece of work true to the peoples suffering and to their sacrifices to obtain freedom and a good life kept them going.

Fadi al-Halabi, a cameraman from the Aleppo Media Center and director of the filming crew, told Al-Monitor, We faced many difficulties during the shooting process. A missile from an aircraft or an explosive barrel would fall next to the set, but we insisted on completing what we had started. Sometimes, we would become rescuers due to the injuries around us. One day, when the military aircraft were hitting Aleppo, with more than 100 air raids, one of the film's characters  a White Helmets member whom I followed like his shadow  died. I survived by a miracle. I posted on my Facebook page, I knew I would not survive this massacre. Death is piercing through me like a body without a soul.

Halabi added, Journalism and reporting in war zones are courageous acts. When I started shooting documentaries, I imagined how the world would watch this film when completed. I would wonder whether the world would support us till the end or forget us forever. The incidents in Aleppo are beyond words, and cameras do not do them justice. It was hell personified. Watching the battles on television or in cinemas and living them are two different things. But we wanted the world to feel, even if slightly, Aleppos suffering. I am happy that we presented a documentary that dazzled the world and won first prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

The team that produced Last Men in Aleppo has sent a powerful message to the world. Those involved know that what they have presented is only a small part of the sacrifices made by the Syrian people in their quest for freedom and dignity. They say this film will not be their last as long as Syrians continue to face missiles and barrel bombs and the world fails to take an effective stand against the ongoing tragedy. Syrians have been suffering since the revolution began, when peaceful protesters demanded freedom, dignity and justice and the regime's removal, and the government responded with bullets and machines of war.

The Aleppo Media Center remains active in the Aleppo countryside. It has two movies underway  one examining Aleppos fall, and one looking at the work of media activists during the revolution.
February 3, 2017

The sharp increase of Israeli settlement building since the swearing in of Donald Trump, coupled with the anger brewing in Europe over the new US president, is providing an opening for the Palestinians. Attempts to encourage the International Criminal Court (ICC) to initiate a probe into Israeli war crimes have received new life due to the rift between Washington and the European Union.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator and secretary-general of the PLO, called Jan. 30 on the ICC to immediately open a probe into what he called immoral Israeli actions. The Palestinian leadership will pursue all necessary political, legal and diplomatic steps in order to hold Israel accountable and to bring justice to our people. This includes sending all the related information to the ICC urging it to open an immediate investigation into Israel's settlement enterprise, Erekat said in a statement posted on the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department website.

Ever since Trump took office Jan. 20, and especially since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked by phone Jan. 22, Israel has been almost daily announcing new settlement plans in the occupied West Bank. On Dec. 23, the United Nations Security Council approved Resolution 2334 demanding that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.

Two days after Trump was sworn in as Americas 45th president, Israel announced plans to build 600 new settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem.

After Israels prime minister talked by phone to the newly elected US president, the Israelis made another announcement. On Jan. 24, Israel announced its intention to build 2,500 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank. Netanyahu arrogantly said, Were building  and will continue to build, in reference to the defiance of international law.

PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi immediately responded by calling Israeli actions a war crime. All settlements are a war crime under the Rome Statute of the ICC and constitute a direct violation of international law and conventions, including UNSC Resolution 2334, Ashrawi said in a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency Feb. 1. The PLO official concluded, The enormity and severity of the situation should send a strong message to the international community, including the United States and the European Union, to intervene immediately.

Nasser al-Qudwa, the former Palestinian representative to the UN, told Al-Monitor that the Israeli actions have the hallmarks of a violation of the Rome Statute. The continued settlement activities in defiance of UNSC resolutions could very likely be a violation of the Rome Statute.

While conceding that getting the ICC to act is rather complicated, Qudwa feels that this is uncharted territory. There are three ways to trigger a formal probe by the ICC. It can be initiated by a Security Council resolution or by the ICC prosecutor  or also, a member state of the ICC can make an official request.

Qudwa is doubtful about any of these options taking place largely because of political posturing, but he does accept that the current European anger with the Trump administration could provide an opening. The United States has always been against the ICC, and Europe tried to ease their opposition by giving the Security Council, where the United States has a veto, a say in triggering a war crime probe, he added.

Qudwa admits that the effort is not that simple and will certainly not be initiated if the accused party makes an effort. We should try to trigger the ICC, but at the same time we need to be cognizant of the fact that it is not that simple. The UN veteran said that the ICCs response is conditional on the failure of the local government to address the issue of any potential war crime.

It is not clear if the latest effort by Palestinians will succeed in getting the ICC to initiate a probe into Israeli violations of the Geneva Conventions with its illegal building efforts.

Palestinian efforts for nearly half a century to reverse or at least put a halt to Israeli settlement expansion into the areas earmarked for the Palestinian state have so far failed to produce the desired outcome. If Palestinians resist Israeli actions, whether violently or nonviolently, the Israelis respond with more settlement activities. If Palestinians go to international forums and extract a demand for Israel to stop settlement activities, the Israelis take revenge on such decisions by making new settlement announcements.

If Democrats win in America, Israelis build; when Republicans win, Israelis are given a green light to build. If Palestinians go to Israeli courts and in rare cases receive a decision to evacuate one settlement, as in the case of Amona, Israel immediately announces its intention to build new settlements. Whether in peace or war, the Israeli settlement machine is unstoppable. No effort that could stop Israeli settlement expansion into occupied Palestinian lands has so far succeeded in stopping Israeli bulldozers.
By Jeremy Burgess

Photos by Art Meripol

This story appears in Birmingham magazine's February 2017 issue. Subscribe today!

November 12, 2016 was the first time I met Henry "Gip" Gipson, but he spoke to me as if I were familiar.

We were set up on a couch inside a trailer parked alongside a driveway, one of the many hideaways residing on his property. After Gipson milled about for an hour and a half--shaking hands with old friends and new, pumping air into a four wheeler tire, and picking on his guitar as the crowd began to find their seats--I finally pulled him away from the commotion. What I expected to be an interview ended up feeling more like a sermon.

But, that's the nature of Gip's Place. For more than 60 years, the beloved Bessemer juke joint has been part concert venue, part church, part fortress of gratitude. No matter what's going on in the outside world, be it widespread political turmoil or police sent to uphold city regulations, Gip's Place provides a stronghold every Saturday night for anyone that wants to join the party.

And no man is turned away.

--



One might say that the blues is a paradox. A joyful noise born of hardship--or more accurately, an outlet of expression for a desire to overcome that hardship.

It's fitting, then, that Gipson's labor of love was born out of an act of hate.

Henry Gipson was born in Perry County, Alabama in 1920. One of his first loves was the blues, a love that guided him to juke joints throughout town.

"I used to steal out the house and go to hear people playin' as a child," Gipson says. "I could go to these places every now and then."

By 12 or 13, he began to make music of his own. "That was just picking up a guitar and foolin' around with it," Gipson says, noting that he didn't begin playing seriously until a few years later.Nevertheless, a bond had been formed.

This was before the Civil Rights Movement began to take shape, however. Opportunities were limited for Gipson, and even when he was allowed to play for an audience, he wasn't always welcomed.

One of those instances took place at a venue in Hueytown, Ala., a story that he recalls all too vividly in the documentary "Gip" by Patrick Sheehan. As Gipson was performing, a white man offered him some food, and a little girl passed him a plate minutes later--an act that a group of men took offense to, "all of it because white folks don't pass anything to black folks," as he says in the documentary. They assaulted him on the spot, stomping his body and his hands with their boots and sending him straight to the hospital.

Though Gipson's physical wounds healed, the emotional wounds remained. All was not right with the world, especially the world he'd been born into, and this latest run-in was a cruel reminder of those injustices. Feeling detached from and unsatisfied by his situation, Gipson sought to create a refuge of sorts, where all people would be treated equally and accepted unconditionally.

"This saved my life," Gipson says. "Because after I was stomped and blood was everywhere, on account of some fools being deliberate. I decided that I would do some things. Let me find out why we can't come together."

And what better way to do that than with the blues?

--

"Sometimes he's in a playin' mood, sometimes he ain't. Tonight he's in a playin' mood."

Diane Guyton, Gipson's booking agent and general confidant, let me know early on that tonight was going to be a good one.

"He ain't drinkin' right now," she adds as Gipson ironically picked at a Jack Daniel's guitar, while folks began to fill in. "He's runnin' on his water so we're doing pretty good."

At Gip's Place, Gipson is the opening act, the intermission, and the closing number. While the visiting band for the evening loads their gear onto the stage and the sound man checks the levels, the man who's played alongside the likes of B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, and Chuck Berry sits to the far side of the stage, perched below the pink and blue neon sign that bears the juke joint's moniker, picking on his guitar and singing from the heart, even when you can't make out the words.

And when he's not on the stage, he's hard to miss.

As the master of ceremonies, Gipson says hello to just about everyone that walks down his driveway and puts on a wristband. He pauses for photos, all the while shaking hands and hugging strangers and old friends alike.

There's always a new face or two at Gip's Place on a Saturday night. As Alabama's only remaining authentic juke joint--and one of the few left in the country--it's the real deal, bringing in visitors from all over the world who want to experience a piece of music history.

I'd spent nearly three decades in Alabama and had never been. But one visit on a brisk fall evening was all it took for the magic to sink in.

The cozy quarters that still left room for dancing. The rows of smoked meats cooking on the grill. The glowing green and blue lights sparkling as they reflected off the trees above. The couple who got engaged midway through the evening. The modest television projecting sounds of LSU putting a hurting on Arkansas. The dozens of tables outside surrounded by mismatched plastic chairs, wooden chairs, folding chairs, even a computer chair or two. The aging but sprightly dog, Missy, showing love to visitors just as her owner taught her. The banners and signs and photos and flyers covering every inch of the building. The coolers full of bring-your-own beers.

And of course, a diverse crowd congregating pleasantly in spite of the recent culmination of a brutal election year.

Beyond the perimeter, we were a nation divided. At Gip's Place, none of that seemed to matter.

--

Less than four years ago, the future of Gip's Place was uncertain.

City officials in Bessemer, including Mayor Kenneth Gulley, were concerned with the legitimacy of Gipson's operation. Because Gip's Place is in the middle of a residential area--despite being around longer than just about any neighbor living there--complaints surfaced of noise, traffic, parking, and other inconveniences, all of which were amplified by the fact that Gipson didn't possess a business license.

So on May 4, 2013, local police showed up (as promised) and told Gipson that he had to shut the show down or else they'd do it for him.

It was quite the ordeal, from the first rumblings of civic unrest to the official public hearing. Thankfully, there was a camera crew there to capture it all.

At first, Nashville filmmaker Patrick Sheehan only set out to do a short documentary, a sort of historical file to help preserve a cornerstone of local lore and its aging proprietor. But when the pieces began to fall into place, he

realized that he and his crew had a much bigger story on their hands.

"We knew the city had been threatening to shut him down for over a year, so we really didn't see that as part of the story," Sheehan says. "It wasn't until the city came and shut him down that we realized we were going to make a full-length documentary."

The original six-month timeline stretched to three and a half years off and on, culminating in May of 2016 when Sheehan and company "got [their] ending" after facing some structural questions.

Gipson's popularity had already been on the rise as a result of the city's attempts to shut Gip's Place down, and Sheehan's documentary--named, simply, "Gip"--is helping keep one of Alabama's sacred relics fresh in the minds of many. It premiered last summer at the Sidewalk Film Festival and has since gone on to screen at other highly-touted film festivals like Indie Memphis and Cucalorus in Wilmington, North Carolina. Plans are currently in the works to expand the film to a larger audience.

Gip's Place is a true Alabama tale, and "Gip" is the latest chapter. Lord willing, there are still a few chapters left to be written.

--

"There's no place in the world like this place here, let me tell you."

King Bee of Montgomery, Ala. was the latest band to grace the stage at Gip's Place, but their praise was an echo of all who came before them.

And why not? One might say things are better than ever at Gip's Place. Peace has been made between city officials and local police, and the turmoil only brought more attention to the juke joint. Gipson just turned 97, and as his legend continues to grow, more and more people will line up to witness his story--and to attempt to tell it.

I'm one of those people now. There were many before me, and there'll be others soon. But what is there new to say about Henry "Gip" Gipson at this point? How do you add to a story that's been told so many times?

As I soak in my surroundings, a local bystander finally checking off a long-overdue destination, I'm reminded of one of Bruce Springsteen's best lines: "The poets down here don't write nothin' at all/They just stand back and let it all be."

"Down here" is Gip's Place as much as it is anyplace else. And while I wasn't tasked with poetry per se, it was nonetheless a bit daunting.

But Gipson wasn't bothered by such as that. Because in his mind, it wasn't about him--it was about me.

"I don't know why He sent you here to want to make a recording," he says to me. "But if I was to do the thing that He said, and He said 'Turn no man away' ... and He means that today...'Turn no man away, for you may turn away your own angel' ... you might be my angel."

Minutes later, I stopped recording, and Gipson made his way to the stage to preach for a while before playing "Amazing Grace" on the harmonica to open

the show.

Saturday night didn't feel all that different from Sunday morning that weekend. We sang, we danced, we ate and drank. We came together, just as he'd

envisioned it in 1952.

And just like always, the invitation was open to all.

Details

Gip's Place | 3101 Avenue C, Bessemer | Open every Saturday at 8 p.m.
Merchants Square

A rendering of Merchants Square. (Courtesy/RCP)

A Tex-Mex restaurant founded in Austin will launch at a new project at Bob Wallace Avenue and Memorial Parkway in Huntsville.

RCP Companies Director Odie Fakhouri confirmed Chuy's will open a 7,100-square-foot eatery in 2018 at Merchants Square, a proposed development across from the Whole Foods-anchored Shops at Merchants Walk. Chuy's operates 80 full-service restaurants across 16 states and has two locations in Alabama.

ULTA will also open a 10,800-square-foot cosmetic and beauty product store at Merchants Square in fall 2018, Fakhouri added. The retailer has stores at Huntsville's Bridge Street Town Centre and at the Market Shoppes in Decatur.

"The goal for this project was to create a more connected, safe, and walkable environment from Parkway Place Mall, Merchants Square, and Merchants Walk," Fakhouri told AL.com. "Having Chuy's in the project was good news for the many people who only get to enjoy the restaurant when they're in another city in the Southeast."

A rendering of Merchants Square. (Courtesy/City of Huntsville)

Chuy's, open since 1982, specializes in authentic, from-scratch Tex-Mex cuisine. The chain debuted its first Alabama restaurant at The Summit in Birmingham in 2010, followed by a second location in 2015 at Tuscaloosa's The Shoppes at Legacy Park.

Attempts to reach Chuy's this week for information were unsuccessful. Click here to check out the menu.

The Huntsville City Council agreed last month to spend $3 million toward a new 300-unit parking deck at Merchants Square, which will include 41,500 square feet of commercial space. In return for that investment, the city projects that the development will generate $19 million in tax dollars over the next 20 years.

Arora Properties is spending $22 million on the 5.3-acre development, which will operate on land currently occupied by a vacant industrial plant.

The proposed Merchants Square project is outlined in red. (Courtesy/City of Huntsville)

"That project will commence in the next few weeks as City Council has given us the go ahead and we prepare contractors for construction," he said.

If the landowner does not complete the project within two years, the city said the company must reimburse the city the full amount of its contribution toward the parking deck.

RCP is the same real estate firm over MidCity Huntsville at Madison Square Mall and CityCentre at Big Spring in downtown Huntsville. The company is also revitalizing The Fountain Shopping Center in north Huntsville and opening Jodeco | Atlanta South, a $300 million project with Cabela's as its first tenant and a 12,000-square-foot Mt. Olive Market food hall.
U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., is asking the next Agriculture secretary to focus on trade relations, forestry and the food labeling requirements important to Montana farmers and loggers.

Daines made his requests recently to Sonny Perdue, former Georgia governor and President Donald Trumps nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, Daines will be questioning Perdue during an upcoming confirmation hearing.

Perdue appears to be a good fit for Montana agriculture and forestry, Daines said. Perdues experience promoting exports of Georgia farm products will come in handy when negotiating a bilateral trade agreement with Canada, something Daines said will be needed after President Trump withdraws the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement.

When you are governor, you spend a lot of time promoting your state as it relates to international markets. He talked about opening China to Georgia pecans, Daines said. The point is that his DNA innately is about promoting American agriculture overseas. Hes experienced that as governor and he will continue to do that as secretary of Agriculture.

Daines pressed Perdue to improve management of federal forest lands. USDA includes the U.S. Forest Service, which Daines said should be logging more in northwestern Montana, particularly the Libby area, where logging has declined.

He understands that a managed forest is a healthier forest, Daines said.

The two talked about federal food labeling requirements for ingredients from genetically modified plants, namely sugar beets. The USDA had found no difference between sugar from non-GMO beets and other sources. Sugar beets in Montana are genetically engineered to resist sprayings of the herbicide Roundup.

Daines also invited Perdue to the senators agriculture summit in Great Falls at the end of May.
Roots & Revelry, a new fine-dining restaurant from Birmingham chef Brandon Cain, opens tonight in the recently renovated Thomas Jefferson Tower downtown.

The restaurant, which is located at 1623 Second Ave. North, will be open for dinner from 4 to 11 p.m. tonight and Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. for Sunday brunch. Starting Monday, it will also open for lunch at 11 a.m.

For Cain -- who was previously the chef de cuisine at Ocean and is one of the founders of Saw's Soul Kitchen and Post Office Pies in Avondale -- Roots & Revelry is a dream he's been working toward for the past several years.

"The 12 years I've been in Birmingham, I've just been making relationships with everybody," he says. "I knew when I went to Saw's and started that, everything was to get back to this."

Cain, who is the executive chef and co-owner of Roots & Revelry, says he will continue to be involved as a partner in Saw's Soul Kitchen and Post Office Pies.

Some of the appetizers on the Roots & Revelry dinner menu include pork rillettes with pickled vegetables and chicken liver mousse ($10); chilaquiles with Berkshire pork, tomatillo and corn tortillas ($12); and poke with yellowfin tuna, sweet onion, lime and macadamia nuts ($16).

Entrees include Korean hot chicken with blistered haricot vert, Brussels sprouts, carrot and pork shank ($18); spaghetti and clams, with lemon, garlic and a white wine sauce ($18); and grilled octopus with cannellini beans, olives, Tuscan kale, preserved lemon and saffron ($24).

For meat lovers, the Roots & Revelry menu also includes a New York strip with crispy jasmine rice ($24) and a patty melt with caramelized onion, mushrooms and Gruyere ($14).

"I'm trying to stay in the $18 to $25 price point range as far as entrees go," Cain says. "The idea is that the whole experience feels like fine-dining, but when you get your bill, you're like, 'I'll be back two days from now.'"

The restaurant is on the second floor of the Thomas Jefferson Tower, which is in the latter stages of a $30 million redevelopment that includes 96 apartment units. The first tenants started moving into the building in December.

The 19-story building, one of the tallest in Birmingham, opened in 1929 as the Thomas Jefferson Hotel but had been vacant since 1983.

Brian Beshara of Beshara Investment Group bought the building in 2013 and has spearheaded its restoration. Beshara and Cain are partners in the restaurant.

"We've been working on this restaurant for a long time, and I've been working on this building for a long time," Beshara says. "Bottom line, we're almost there and can't wait to show everyone what we've been working so hard and so long for."

In addition to the dining room, which features tabletops with Alabama white marble repurposed from the building's former hotel rooms, Roots & Revelry features a terrace that overlooks downtown Birmingham from the west and a parlor for guests to mingle before and after their meals.

"We see this (parlor) as being really, really fun," Cain says. "Hopefully, the day comes when people are coming here just for the parlor and then we'll drop our parlor menu, which will be more small bites."

Scott Cohen, formerly of Bottega, is the chef de cuisine at Roots & Revelry. Craig Olack from Highlands Bar and Grill, and Rachel Merk, who worked for James Beard Award-winning New Orleans chefs John Besh and Sue Zemanick, are the sous chefs. Janet Lee, previously with We Have Doughnuts, is the pastry chef.

The name Roots & Revelry celebrates good people and fun times, Cain says. He is also calling the restaurant R&R for short.

"The roots are kind of like the roots of the community and the table, where people eat and share fellowship," Cain says. "And revelry is just us trying to create an atmosphere of fun and revelry and excitement."

After this weekend's opening, regular hours for Roots & Revelry will be 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays. The restaurant does not take reservations.
A Roanoke man faces charges of electronically furnishing obscene material to a minor and criminal attempt to commit child molestation in Georgia after authorities say he was came there to have sex with a teenager.

Pickens County (Ga.) Sheriff's investigators say Edwin Brian Lumpkin, 27, of Roanoke, drove to Pickens County, in north central Georgia, thinking he was meeting a 15-year-old female he had communicated with over the Internet.

Instead, investigators were waiting on him.

"You can only imagine the surprise on Mr. Lumpkin's face when he discovered that he had drove such a long distance to meet (Detective Steven) Holmes and a team of Deputies and Detectives," reads a post on the Pickens County Sheriff's Facebook page. "We believe it is possible that this may not be an isolated incident and want to ensure no additional victims exist."

Investigators say Lumpkin used online communication to solicit a meeting for sex, using graphic language and including nude pictures of himself. He was arrested at a convenience store.

Anyone believing their child had any social media contact with Lumpkin is asked to contact detectives at (706) 253-8935.
TomBrown.PNG

(Jonece Starr Dunigan/jdunigan@al.com)

Authorities have released the name of a man shot to death Thursday night in Birmingham.

The Jefferson County Coroner's Office identified the victim as Antwon Hawkins. He was 37, and lived near where he was killed.

The shooting happened at 7:22 p.m. in the 4100 block of Fifth Court North. Birmingham police responded to the scene after residents called reporting gunfire in the area.

When officers arrived at Tom Brown Village public housing community, they found Hawkins on the sidewalk. He had been shot multiple times, and was pronounced dead on the scene at 8:43 p.m.

Residents in the area said they heard three shots. So far, no arrests have been made and the investigation is ongoing.

"As of now we feel this may not have been random, and our investigation is ongoing,'' said Sgt. Bryan Shelton said. "Further we ask the community to assist us and for anyone with information to come forward."

Anyone with information is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
williamlumpkinarrested.jpg

Walter Lumpkin, 71, is charged with two counts of first-degree robbery. He spent 34 years in law enforcement, including as an investigator for the Alabama Public Service Commission.

(Walker County Sheriff's Office/FBI )

A 71-year-old former law enforcement officer has been charged in connection with two bank robberies.

Walter Lumpkin, who lives in Cullman, is charged in connection with holdups at the First Bank of Jasper in Curry, according to Walker County Sheriff Jim Underwood. The holdups happened June 17, 2016 and Jan. 20, 2017.

In the 2016 robbery, authorities said the suspect - now identified as Lumpkin - entered the bank on Curry Highway about 9:36 a.m. that day. He was wearing a black suit jacket and a fedora and had a brace on his left arm. He was also wearing blue slacks and a plaid shirt.

He claimed to have explosives strapped to his body, but employees didn't actually seen any. He fled with an undisclosed amount of money, and left the scene in a white pickup truck with a camper.

On Jan. 20 of this year, authorities say the suspect entered the bank just before 5 p.m. that Friday, again wearing his fedora. Again, he was armed with a handgun and claimed he had a bomb. That time he was driving a dark-colored Hyundai Sante Fe.

On Wednesday, Walker County sheriff's investigators obtained search warrants for Lumpkin's home. Deputies and Investigators from the Walker County Sheriff's Office, the Cullman County Sheriff's Office, Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation carried out the search warrant at 1525 County Road 1141 in Cullman. Evidence was recovered along with a large amount of money.

He is charged with two counts of first-degree robbery, and is being held without bond in the Walker County Jail. More charges could follow.

Authorities said Lumpkin had worked for 34 years in law enforcement. While Lumpkin was an enforcement officer with the Alabama Public Service Commission, he was charged and indicted on nine counts of violation of Alabama's laws. According to court records, Lumpkin had a private consulting business and carried out much of that business while on duty for the state.

In 1996, Lumpkin pleaded guilty to five of the nine misdemeanors.
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Birmingham Mayor William Bell announced his bid for re-election at an event held in north Birmingham on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. (Roy S. Johnson/rjohnson@al.com)

Birmingham Mayor William Bell Sr., on Friday, officially announced his bid for re-election.

Bell, who is seeking his second full four-year term as mayor, was joined by campaign supporters at the Katanya's Cafe Soulfood Restaurant in north Birmingham for the 2 p.m. announcement.

Bell won his first bid for mayor in a special election in late 2009 to replace former Mayor Larry Langford following his federal conviction. Bell then won a shortened two-year term in 2011 that was abbreviated to synchronize the mayor and council elections.

He touts the revitalization of downtown Birmingham, including Regions Field, which returned the Birmingham Barons to the city from the suburbs, the completion and development of the Birmingham Crossplex, Birmingham Intermodal Transit Facility, Operation Green Wave to clean up the city, and the creation of the Land Bank Authority to re-house neighborhoods as successes during his administration.

Bell is a graduate of John Carroll High School and the University of Alabama at Birmingham where he received his master's degree in psychology and guidance and counseling. He received a law degree from Miles College. Bell is married to Sharon C. Bell, an administrator with the Birmingham City School System. They have two children and two grandsons.

Randall Woodfin, a Birmingham assistant city attorney and Birmingham Board of Education member, announced his plan to run for mayor in August 2016.

The City of Birmingham municipal election will be held on Aug. 22, 2017.
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Gun violence must stop.

That was the message issued Thursday by Jefferson County's top law enforcement, city and community leaders. District Attorney Pro Tem Danny Carr held a news conference to decry violence in the city, and said he will vigorously prosecute those who carry out the crimes.

"We cannot be everywhere, but we can and will be here ready to do our part in remedying this plague in our communities,'' said Carr, who was appointed to serve as district attorney while a perjury charge is pending against District Attorney-elect Charles Todd Henderson. "

Carr was joined by Birmingham Mayor William Bell, Birmingham Police Chief A.C. Roper, Birmingham City Schools Superintendent Dr. Larry Contri, and various others community leaders including Black Lives Matter activist Eric Hall.

Birmingham finished 2016 with 104 homicides, of which 92 were deemed criminal by authorities. So far in 2017, the city has had six homicides of which one has been ruled justifiable. Though Birmingham had two less criminal homicides in January compared to the previous year, Carr said that's not good enough.

In less than an hour on Tuesday, 17-year-old Wenonah High School senior Juzahris Webb was gunned down while he and a friend were walking home from school. Police have a suspect in custody, but have not yet announced formal charges. Also Tuesday, 33-year-old Andreas Kashif Brown was killed when police say he was a bystander caught in Birmingham's Gate City community. No arrests have yet been announced in that case.

"There is no obvious answer to this apparent epidemic of violence,'' Carr said Thursday. "No one should use a gun to resolve difference."

Doing so, he said, affects all involved: the parents and family members of the victims, the parents and family members of the killer, the law enforcement personnel who arrive at the scene and view a young male or female's body lying in a pool of blood, the various communities and the court system which ultimately decides a young man or woman's fate.

"Young people must learn that once you pull that trigger, there is a great likelihood that you may spend a considerable amount of what is left of your life in the prison system,'' he said. "Make no mistake, in partnership with law enforcement, we will aggressively investigate these cases. The District Attorney's Office stands ready to vigorously prosecute these senseless, unjustified killings."

Carr said law enforcement can't be everywhere, but ask the public for help in "remedying the plague."

"We ask that you do your part as well in helping us prevent the killings before they happen, before another person loses their life,'' Carr said. "Speak to your community, to your friends and neighbors about the violence.

"Spread the word that it needs to stop,'' he said. "I myself have been and will also continue to attend the various community meetings throughout this county. I will continue to speak out against the violence. We can make a difference together."
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(Jonece Starr Dunigan/jdunigan@al.com)

A man was shot to death in Birmingham's Tom Brown Village public housing community Thursday night.

The shooting happened at 7:22 p.m. in the 4100 block of Fifth Court North. Birmingham police spokesman Sgt. Bryan Shelton said the victim was shot multiple times.

He died while Birmingham Fire and Rescue Service paramedics were working on him. His name is being withheld pending notification of his family.

Residents in the area said they heard three shots. So far, no arrests have been made.

The investigation is ongoing, and this story will be updated as more information is released.
Monsure Davis

A Birmingham teen is charged with capital murder in the slaying of a Wenonah High School senior.

Birmingham police announced the charge against Monsure Davis, who just turned 18 last week and attends Jackson-Olin High School. Davis is being held on $250,000 bond.

The charge against Davis is capital because the shots that killed 17-year-old Juzahris Webb were fired from a vehicle. The two were apparently in a disagreement over a girl.

"Our team of officers and detectives did outstanding work on this case but the entire situation is simply sad,'' said Birmingham police Chief A.C. Roper. "A young man throwing away his life while taking the life of another and causing indescribable heartbreak to both families."

A second suspect - 18-year-old Sha Quon Edwards, is charged with first-degree theft of property in connection with a stolen car the pair was driving. Edwards' bond is set at $5,000. He has not been charged in connection with Webb's death.

Just hours before the formal announcement of the charges, Jefferson County District Attorney Pro Tem Danny Carr held a news conference to denounce gun violence in the city, in part because of Webb's shooting. Carr's mother, Regina Carr-Hope. is the principal at Wenonah High School.

The shooting happened just before 4 pm in the 3200 block of Cedar Avenue Southwest, just out of eyesight of the high school. Webb and his friend were walking to the friend's grandmother's house on nearby Hemlock Avenue when a car passed them at an intersection.

It appears the car turned around, and drove back by the teens. Someone inside the vehicle opened fire, and Webb was shot in the stomach. After the shooting, the two teens ran back to the nearby Coleman Auto Parts and Sales, with Webb clutching his abdomen. He collapsed on the floor, telling shop employees, "Somebody shot me. Call the police."

Employees said the victim wasn't bleeding externally, but began to drift into unconsciousness. "He was very alert,'' said an employee who asked not to be named. "But the longer he sat there, he just started to go."

Webb's friend wasn't injured but was visibly shaken at the scene. Birmingham police spokesman Lt. Sean Edwards said detectives learned Webb had several altercations with some boys from his school and in the neighborhood recently. "Our goal in this case is to identify and arrest the person responsible,'' he said. "Senseless."

Davis and Edwards were taken into custody Tuesday night after they were spotted in a stolen vehicle matching the description of the vehicle used in the shooting. Birmingham police, with the help of tracking dogs, spent three hours searching for them after they bailed from the vehicle, which rolled back and hit a police cruiser.

ShaQuon Edwards

Webb's father, Chris Major, said his son was involved in a dispute Friday at a Birmingham park with another teen - believed to be Davis - who was jealous of Webb over a girl. "He didn't really have a lot of enemies,'' Major said. "He had his head screwed on right."

"He was a real kind person,'' Major said. "Everybody loved him."

In an online profile, Webb described himself as "the most happiest person you will ever meet in your life." He said he wanted to be a firefighter after graduating Wenonah. "I want to be a firefighter after I graduate high school because it would make me feel wonderful to know that I have saved someone's life or house or anything that caught fire that belongs to them."

Webb's slaying has been a hard-hit for his family and friends. "Nobody will ever understand how I feel. Juzahris been my brother since the 3rd grade,'' Martez Wilson said. "We was always there for each other no matter what the situation was. Being up at that hospital with the doctors not telling you anything was very hard for me."

Wilson said he and Webb were always there for each other. "Like if I got a dollar and he had nothing, we split that 50-50. I could call on Juzahris before some of my own family members,'' Wilson said. "It was times when I was at school already but he ain't have no way so left school to go get him. People be jealous of him because he went out and got a job."

Webb bought his first car, Wilson said, with help from his sister. Webb earned $700 to pay for that car. "Juzahris was the coolest, funniest person I ever known,'' Wilson said. "He was only involved in one little fight over a girl."

Another friend, who asked to go only by the name Bender, had this to say: "Juzahris was a good person. He didn't mess with nobody,'' he said. "Juzahris was a happy person. He kept a smile on his face, and kept everyone else happy if they was feeling down. You would have never thought the most nice, coolest person would die so early."

Corrina Charles said Webb was her closest friend. "He always kept a smile on his face and when I was down and out, I could call on him, and he would have me feel better and whenever he called me, I was on the way,'' she said. "Just Friday we were talking. I told him not to fight. I wish everything could have went a different way. I swear I'll always love him."

Webb's funeral will be held Saturday, at 11 a.m., at Hopewell Baptist Church on Jefferson Avenue S.W. Burial will follow at Elmwood Cemetery.
A former math teacher at Crossville High School in DeKalb County is charged with having sex with a student.

Billy Carl Jones

Billy Carl Jones, 42, of Fyffe, has been indicted on two counts of school employee engaging in a sex act with a student, a Class B felony, and one count of school employee soliciting a sex act from a student, a Class A misdemeanor, according to the Sheriff's Office. Jones was released from the DeKalb County Jail on $60,000 bail.

Jones was employed at the school when the allegations were made, Sheriff Jimmy Harris said.

Investigators were notified in December, and the case was presented to a grand jury that determined there was enough evidence to formally charge Jones and set the case for trial.

DeKalb County Superintendent Jason Barnett said Jones was placed on administrative leave after the allegations were made and fired at a Jan. 12 school board meeting.

"Protecting our students is our No. 1. priority," Barnett told AL.com. "I'm thankful for the Sheriff's Office and their quick, swift work and communication with us on this issue."

Barnett took over as superintendent in January, after the allegations had been made.

"It is my understanding the report came about through a parent," he said. "Any time we receive any kind of information or allegations of this nature, protecting our children is our foremost priority."

Jones formerly was employed with a youth sports league in Fyffe, Barnett said, adding the ex-teacher didn't coach any school sports teams.

Further details were not immediately available.

If convicted, Jones faces up to 40 years in prison.
Huntsville radio host Dale Jackson (r.) shakes hands with Rep. Mo Brooks in this March, 13, 2012 file photo.

Huntsville talk radio host Dale Jackson used his opportunity while asking a question at Friday's White House press briefing to thank press secretary Sean Spicer "for taking questions outside the elite media bubble."

Spicer took Jackson's question on immigration from one of the press briefing's "Skype seats," a new feature unveiled by the White House press office that lets press beyond the White House press corps to ask questions.

Spicer has used the Skype seats to call on non-traditional journalists for questions, such as radio host Lars Larson, who referred to Spicer as "Commander Spicer," a reference to Spicer's service with the Navy Reserve.

Before getting into his question Jackson, who hosts a conservative talk show on WVNN in Huntsville, took a dig at the White House press corps.

"Thank you very much for taking questions outside the elite media bubble there in D.C.," he told Spicer.

Jackson asked Spicer when Trump will end the DACA and DAPA programs. The programs came into effect through executive actions from former President Barack Obama and deal with illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and illegal immigrant parents of U.S. children.

Spicer didn't give a direct answer, pointing out that Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly was sworn in last week.

"We are reviewing these programs," Spicer said. "We've made it very clear that we'll have further updates on immigration with [respect to] both DACA and DAPA."

Jackson also asked when the Trump administration would stop the issuing of work permits to DACA and DAPA recipients.

"The president has made significant progress on addressing the pledge he made to the American people regarding immigration problems that we face, and I think we're going to see more action on that in the next few weeks," Spicer said.
Rocky Mountain College student Joshua Lieuallen took a stand Thursday afternoon, using a canvas of glistening white snow.

Lieuallen, a senior psychology and sociology major, held a bottle of bio-friendly blue dye in one hand and meticulously wrote the words from Proverbs 31:8: Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

He was part of a small group of students and community members who came together for a "public art action" they titled "Make Prejudice Melt Away. It came out of a discussion Aaron Rosen, professor of religious studies, had with his students in which he challenged them to find biblical verses that relate to caring for strangers.

Lieuallen, the son of a Baptist pastor, approached the event as a protest against President Donald Trumps executive order temporarily banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. Some Evangelicals, including Franklin Graham, have said the ban is not a biblical issue and the Bible has nothing to say about it, Lieuallen said.

The Rocky student disagrees, saying the Bible talks about helping people such as immigrants and refugees, especially those who are unsafe in their own countries.

I think its very important for those of us who are safe and those of us who do have a voice to speak out for them, Lieuallen said.

Sophomore Amanda Balter wrote Love thy neighbor as thyself, from Mark 12:31.

I think its applicable to a lot of different situations, including the current atmosphere that were seeing here in America, she said, bundled up against the frigid 12-degree day.

Balter, who is majoring in communications and philosophy of religious thought, said any kind of political or even artistic expression can be negative.

I think its important that regardless of how you feel politically, that your message is derived from love and not hate, she said.

Rosen encouraged the public to enter the conversation on social media with the hashtag #MeltingHate. He acknowledged that as temperatures begin to rise, the messages the students scrawled will melt.

Thats OK because one of the points of being socially active is you have to keep getting messages out there and you have to keep rewriting them and making sure people hear, he said.

For his part, Rosen, who is Jewish, wrote: We (heart) Islam. Its important, he said, to see things from a wide spectrum of history.

And when I think about the Jewish relationship with Islam through history, I think about the times of tremendous tolerance and cross-pollination and mutual interest, Rosen said. And for many periods of Jewish history, Jews experienced greater tolerance and greater cultural activity under Islamic hegemony than they did under Christianity.

Rather than fear, he said, its important to focus on the shared images and histories that Islam and Judaism have together.

Billings artist Ellen Kuntz had been looking for a way to rally her support for refugees and immigrants when Rosen told her about the event.

Kuntz wrote we are all immigrants and (heart) not hate. She also drew a peace sign, which gave her some difficulty, since drawing in the snow isnt easy.

She didn't let it stop her.

Im out here because I dont agree with Trumps ban on refugees and immigrants and I want to protest, Kuntz said. And the only way I really know how to do that is through art and expressing myself.
Shadi Bozorg was born in Iran, but her family fled to Canada when she was three years old. She grew up in Vancouver and went to film school there, graduating in 2015 before moving to Toronto in January 2016.

She made some shorts in school, but her first more ambitious film was going to be a documentary shot in Alabama and other southern states until last week, when President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown drove her to shelve the project.

As an Iranian-Canadian dual citizen who lives in a diverse, cosmopolitan city and describes herself as westernized, the 25-year-old says it is still "always assumed" that she is Muslim -- despite the fact that she does not identify with any religion.

"I say that not because I discriminate against the religion, but because it's just a stereotype that I want to break," she told AL.com on Wednesday.

Breaking stereotypes is a big part of what Bozorg had hoped to accomplish with her documentary on the American South, which she and two filmmakers with Mexican citizenship were planning on filming together.

Rather than accepting the impressions of the South as the racist, backwards place that many people in cities like Vancouver and Toronto have long harbored, she planned to make a film that she expected would expose those notions as overly reductive and false.

"The idea was to drive through the South, and meet people. See what kind of conversations we could have, and how they would react to us," she said. "We wanted to shed some positivity, to shatter the notion that people are inherently racist or hateful there, but that they could see us as people and not just as a religion or race."

The filmmakers did not intend to stoke racial hostilities or provoke anyone, but Bozorg, who is fluent in both English and Farsi, was concerned that they "may create some tension" just by being who they are. But they were excited to see what would happen if they took that trip together to states like Alabama - places they've never been but with which they have long had a certain fascination.

"I've always wondered how I would be perceived there, as a westernized Iranian woman who has visible Farsi tattoos, who just enjoys meeting people and learning about life," she said. "I've never encountered that deep-rooted American racism before, and I wondered if it even really existed, face-to-face."

But the political events of the past week have led her to question her documentary plans and to reevaluate much of her worldview.

She refers to herself as a "cynical optimist," and yet finds herself questioning whether humanity is moving as inexorably in the direction of progress and as she once thought.

"We've lived in this cloud for a while now, that racism was dying out and things were progressing, but it has all come to head again. And it's come out even darker because it was hidden for so long," she said.

"The sad thing is that I feel like that's a delusion of me. To think that the world could go in that direction, it's too idealistic to believe in united human compassion. I used to really believe it, but lately I don't know."

The increase in divisive, even bigoted rhetoric that Bozorg perceived in American politics in recent months ultimately led her to conclude that she and her co-filmmakers might be risking their personal safety if they were to venture into Dixie.

President Donald Trump's executive order last week restricting immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries including Iran was the final straw.

"Since Trump has sent out the executive order, I've decided to put the [documentary] idea on the shelf. I feel like it's unsafe for me, even though I'm a Canadian citizen, to come down to the States," she said.

"I may be able to get through the airport, but I officially feel unwelcome and afraid. I don't know what could happen, it says I was born in Tehran on my passport and even though I haven't travelled back there in almost 15 years, I assume it wouldn't go totally smoothly."
A long-time special education teacher in Jefferson County said he is being fired because he witnessed a principal and a staff member abuse a 9-year-old with special needs.

The teacher, Michael James, reported the incident to Jefferson County school superintendent Dr. Craig Pouncey and the director of special education Susan Wirt. James said that one week later, Pouncey asked him to resign.

Pouncey said that James is not being fired for reporting the incident. Pouncey instead said James refused to return to work at Erwin Intermediate after reporting the allegation and has technically "abandoned" his job.

Pouncey wrote James a letter stating that he would be fired at the board meeting on Jan. 26 for job abandonment. That action was postponed until the board meeting on Feb. 23. James provided the letters to AL.com for review.

The alleged incident occurred after school on Dec. 19, the Monday before schools let out for winter break. The student, a third-grader, was suspended the following day. Schools closed on Dec. 21 and students returned to school on Jan. 10.

On Jan. 4, James hand-delivered a letter to Pouncey and Wirt in which he detailed the allegations. James also requested a transfer to another school immediately because he feared retaliation. Additionally, he said he "could not work for an administration that apparently lacks the basic skills, empathy and knowledge of treating 'all' students with respect and dignity."

James has not returned to work since reporting the incident on Jan. 4.

James said the incident occurred after the student missed the bus to go home. The child has a behavioral disorder that qualifies her for special education services. Earlier in the day, the child was found to have taken items from the principal's office. The principal was visibly frustrated with the child, James said. He said the principal and other staff members took the child to the office and forcibly sat the child in a chair.

James said he saw scratches on the staff member's arm. The principal and another staff member held the child's arms to the chair, and the principal yelled in the child's face, telling her to "shut up" and mocking the child's yelling in protest at being restrained, James said.

The child was physically held in the chair for 30 to 45 minutes, James said, while they waited for the child's mother to pick her up from school. At one point, the staff member pinched the child's upper arm, causing the child to jump out of the seat and cry. James said the staff member said, "Now you know how it feels," presumably because the child had scratched her.

James said that while the principal is "strict and loud," he had never witnessed an incident like that in that school or any other. "That was off the wall," James said.

Asked why he waited until Jan. 4 to report the incident, James said he felt the child was "safe at home" for the holidays and wouldn't return to school until the following week.

Pouncey said after James reported the incident to him on Jan. 4, Deputy Superintendent Dr. Rebecca Lee spoke to Erwin Intermediate Principal Dr. Kirsten Logan-Marshall and asked her to gather statements from other teachers who might have witnessed the incident.

Pouncey said James' allegations were not corroborated by those witnesses.

Logan-Marshall, in her first year as principal at Erwin Intermediate, referred AL.com to Pouncey for comment. She previously served as assistant principal at Bottenfield Middle School in Jefferson County.

The student's mother told AL.com she was first made aware of the incident by James on Jan. 13. Her child confirmed the staff member pinched her. Her child is still enrolled at the school, but she is concerned about her child's safety. "They didn't tell me when it happened. Mr. James had to be the one to tell me. It's hard to trust them now," she said.

Though James had only been employed in Jefferson County schools since October of last year, he has worked with students in special education for 13 years, he said, and currently hold a Master's-level certification in special education in Alabama according to the state department of education web site.

During the meeting on Jan. 12, James said Pouncey asked him to resign as there was no other position open to which he could be transferred. AL.com found four open special education positions on the state's teacher application web site. Pouncey told AL.com those were not actually open positions but remain posted on the web site to garner a pool of applicants.

James refused to resign, but has not returned to work as Pouncey ordered.

James said he filed a report with the Jefferson County District Attorney's office on Jan. 11. Educators are "mandatory reporters," meaning they must report any allegation of child abuse to proper authorities. The District Attorney's office did not return a request for comment from AL.com.

According to a timeline provided by Jefferson County schools, after the Jan. 12 meeting with James, Wirt reported the incident to the Alabama Department of Human Resources on Jan. 13 and delivered appropriate paperwork to them on Tuesday, Jan. 17. An official with DHR was unable to confirm the complaint had been filed, but said if any of the allegations are criminal in nature, they must allow the District Attorney's office to conduct their investigation first.

Neither James nor the child's mother have been contacted by the District Attorney or the Department of Human Resources.

Special education teacher Michael James protests in front of the Jefferson County Board of Education building in Homewood, Al., Feb. 2, 2017

James has been protesting outside of the Jefferson County central office in recent days saying he wants to call attention to the incident he reported.

James said he is not worried about saving his job, but wants to make sure the allegations don't get swept under the rug. "This isn't about me. This is about a nine-year-old student that was abused at school."
Tennessee officials said they will not release any additional information related to last year's deadly fire in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, including the status of two juveniles charged in connection to the blaze.

In December, Fourth Judicial District Attorney General Jimmy Dunn issued a memorandum saying the prosecution of the two juvenile suspects could be jeopardized by the release of more information. Other public records - including 911 calls - related to the fire have been deemed off limits as well, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.

A News-Sentinel request for autopsy reports and death certificates for those who died in the fire was also denied.

In his letter, Dunn said the investigation could take weeks "if not longer" and no more information will be provided.

"All of the information regarding this case that can legally be shared has already been made available," Dunn wrote.

The two teen suspects, boys ages 15 and 17, were charged with aggravated arson on Dec. 7, about two weeks after a fire in Great Smoky Mountain National Park spread to the neighboring communities, killing 14 people, destroying more than 2,000 homes and businesses and forcing the evacuation of as many as 14,000 visitors and residents.

Damages from the blaze are expected to top $800 million.

Reports at the time said the two boys were suspected of dropping lit matches along the park's Chimney Tops Trail, which was under a no-burn order at the time. If convicted, they face up to 60 years in prison on aggravated arson charges and life sentences if prosecutors pursue murder charges in adult court.

A hearing for the two suspects was set for shortly after their arrest but was cancelled and a new date has not been set. Like most states, Tennessee law shields much information about juveniles involved in alleged crimes.
Gov. Robert Bentley has narrowed the list of possible replacements for Jeff Sessions to six names, including that of one state official who could be investigating the very governor that would appoint him to the U.S. Senate.

Bentley's list, released Thursday, includes State Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh; U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt; Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affair Director Jim Byard; former State Rep. Perry Hooper Jr.; state Rep. Connie Rowe of Jasper; and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange.

The six were selected from a large field of people seeking to be appointed to replace Sessions, President Donald Trump's pick to lead the Justice Department. Sessions' nomination cleared the Judicial Committee yesterday and will now head to the full Senate, where it's expected to be approved.

Sessions' move to U.S. Attorney General's office will leave a Senate vacancy, leaving it up to Gov. Bentley to appoint a successor. Bentley interviewed several lawmakers, members of the state's Congressional Delegation and even suspended Chief Justice Roy Moore in an effort to find Sessions' replacement.

"I have had the honor of spending several hours interviewing some of this state's finest public servants," Bentley said when announcing the six final candidates. "I am proud of all these men and women who serve our state with integrity and humility. Our people should be proud to have such a large number of qualified candidates who have a heart for serving our great state."

Bentley indicated he would name Sessions' replacement after the Senate vote on the Attorney General.

A Strange situation

The inclusion of Strange on the list has raised questions - and concerns.

The Alabama House Judiciary Committee - which had been investigating Gov. Bentley in connection to possible impeachment offenses in connection to his relationship with former adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason - said its work is on hold while it awaits Strange's approval to proceed.

Strange said in November 2016 his office was doing "necessary related work" to that of the committee but would not elaborate or confirm if the governor was under investigation.

The governor has denied all allegations.

Strange previously announced he would run for Sessions' seat in 2018, even if he's not appointed by Bentley to finish out the term.

"I'm running because I think I'm the best candidate to take Jeff Sessions' place," the AG said.

AG appointment

If Bentley appoints Strange to the U.S. Senate, the governor will then be able to appoint his successor.

That's too much for State Auditor Jim Zeigler.

"Pray for anybody but Luther Strange," Zeigler said. "The reason? If Strange is appointed, then Bentley gets to single-handedly name a new State Attorney General who can 'handle' the investigations of Bentley and Rebekah Mason. If you think Bentley has been bad the last two years, just wait to see the next two with him having his own attorney general.

"If you thought things could not get worse in Montgomery, think again," Zeigler said.

For this part, Strange hopes Bentley will look to the current AG staff for his successor if he makes the move to D.C.

"We have a great team of people in this office," Strange said. "I'm very proud of the legacy and any questions related to anything going on in the state would really be a question for anybody he appoints to take my place if he decides to do that."
The Alabama State Port Authority has announced a new memorandum of understanding with the National Port Administration of Cuba, potentially laying the groundwork for future trade deals.

Alabama's Port Authority announced that state and Cuban officials met Thursday in Tampa, where they signed a Memorandum of Understanding described as the first Cuban ports agreement signed on U.S. soil since 1959. The five-year cooperative agreement is based on "a mutual interest in facilitating trade growth," according to the ASPA. The two agencies agreed to collaborate on "port and cargo marketing studies and strategies, engaging in promotion and exhibition activities, and sharing data to the mutual benefit of their respective seaports."

"We are seeing increasing demand for normalized trade between the United States and Cuba," said Jimmy Lyons, CEO of the Alabama port authority, "and it is our goal to foster relationships between the ports and their maritime communities to further changes in U.S. Cuban trade policy and facilitate improved ocean carriage services to the benefit of our shippers."

The possibility that trade relations between the United States and Cuba has been of keen interest in Alabama, which has historic shipping ties to the island nation. State and local authorities gathered in June for the launch of the Alabama State Council of the Engage Cuba Coalition.

Speaking at that occasion, Johnny Adams, executive director of the Alabama Poultry Association, who said Alabama already ships 10,000 tons of poultry per month to Cuba. That figure could rise dramatically, he said, if the current "cumbersome" limitations on the exchange were lifted.

"This is one of these issues that defies gravity, common sense, logic, emotion," said Williams. "We've been having a policy for 55 years that on all objective merits has failed to meet any of its intentions."

James Williams, the president of Engage Cuba said at the time that Alabama "is a state that probably has more to gain, more quickly, than any other place in the country" if longstanding trade barriers with Cuba are ended.
A 30-year-old woman was arrested for shooting multiple cars at a Subway restaurant and four juveniles tried to elude police in the Mobile Police Department's overnight crime report.

Police said at approximately 2:29 p.m. officers responded to the Subway restaurant located at 1411 North Lafayette Street for a report of shots fired.

When officers arrived they located the victim who stated that a woman fired a shot into her vehicle. Police said as Miller was shooting into the victim's vehicle a projectile struck another victim's vehicle.

Police were able to arrest Nicole Miller, 30, of Vancleave, Mississippi and charge her with two counts of discharging a gun into occupied vehicle and one count of persons forbidden to carry a pistol.

Miller is currently in jail awaiting a date to be set for a bond hearing.

Less than an hour later at approximately 3:22 p.m. officers responded to the area of Seabreeze at Thornton for a report of shots fired.

Responding officers located an attempted to detain four male juvenile subjects.

After a short vehicle pursuit the subjects bailed from the vehicle.

Officers detained two 16-year-old male juvenile subjects and later arrested the subjects for attempting to elude police officers.
Ostrich Endangered Species.jpg

A new map released by the U.S. Wildlife Service showing the White Alabama Democrat has joined the gopher tortoise and manatee as endangered species.

Matt Mitchell is the creator of The Ostrich, Walker County's least trusted news source, and was the 3rd round draft pick of the Denver Nuggets. Roughly half of what he writes is untrue.

The once-thriving White Alabama Democrat has been added to the list of endangered species and may be "on the brink of extinction," according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The White Alabama Democrat population reached its peak in the 1950s and early 60s when herds of the doughy-white creatures would roam freely from Florence to Fairhope. But as populations slowly started to decline in the mid-1960s, most of the remaining White Alabama Democrats migrated from their rural habitats to the bustling cities of Huntsville and Birmingham.

According to Jack Ribble, regional director for the Wildlife Service, the rural population of the White Alabama Democrat is at a critically low level. So low, in fact, agents with the Wildlife Service are currently unable to obtain an accurate count of the creatures.

"In the early 1990s we would drive the back roads in places like Walker and Winston County and just count the Clinton/Gore campaign signs and bumper stickers. There weren't many, but they were there," recalled Ribble. "But last year we drove the same roads and found absolutely zero Hillary signs. Well, there was one, but it was being used for target practice."

Ribble and other wildlife officials believe the White Alabama Democrat still exists in rural areas, they have just been forced to blend in with the White Alabama Conservative that has overwhelmed their environment.

"I could stand the two different species side-by-side and most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. To the untrained eye they appear completely identical," said Ribble. "That's why we're having to try new things to identify them, like playing a continuous loop of conservative political commentator Tomi Lahren from a set of loudspeakers. If forced to listen, the White Alabama Democrat's eye will start twitching uncontrollably within thirty seconds. It's remarkable."

Once officials believe they have located a White Alabama Democrat they move quickly to electronically tag the creature. Instead of inserting a microchip under the skin, each identified White Alabama Democrat is given a tracking device disguised as an NPR pledge drive coffee mug.

Ribble believes there are steps the public can take now to help preserve the current population of White Alabama Democrats. Avoid political discussions with co-workers who stare blankly as you rant for twenty minutes about how global warming is a hoax. Ensure the Rick and Bubba Show is played at volume only you can enjoy. Strategically leave treats like Starbucks gift cards in your break room. Change the television channel from anything on Fox News to Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

"This is least we can do for the remaining White Alabama Democrats still roaming our rural counties. They will be just as upset as their big city counterparts over the next four years, except they will have no one to protest with," explained Ribble. "It's important that we keep them in their natural habitat and avoid forcing them into migration. The craft breweries of Birmingham and Huntsville are already at maximum capacity."

Ribble also suggested reporting any sightings of Alabama Libertarians to the Wildlife Service. While not technically endangered, libertarians are also greatly outnumbered in every area of Alabama, they are just much easier to spot.

"You will know when you've found the elusive Alabama Libertarian because they'll openly identify themselves as such," stated Ribble. "And then they will never shut up about it."

[This is a work of satire. All content is the creation of Matt Mitchell, the Ostrich.]
When a pair of rural Republicans in Congress announced Wednesday they would vote against Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos' confirmation, Democrats needed only one more defection to swing a 'no' vote. It sparked a flurry of speculation about other rural Republicans that could flip.

Don't expect it to be Montana Sen. Steve Daines.

Daines has been an ardent supporter of DeVos, a Detroit billionaire, and said that she endorses his education proposal that would make sweeping changes to federal funding and let schools opt out of federal accountability programs.

That hasn't stopped local education advocates from burning up the phones.

"As a 27-year educator, it was excruciatingly painful to listen to this woman, whos supposedly going to be the face of public education," said Missoula Education Association president Melanie Charlson.

The Missoula union has a postcard-writing campaign, board members wrote letters and the group has taken to social media. In Billings, the local union hasn't launched a formal campaign, but president Rita Wells said that many members have been contacting Montana's senators.

"(DeVos) has absolutely no experience with public education," Wells said.

DeVos' confirmation hearing left many teachers and education groups miffed by her support for easing laws banning guns in schools and her apparent confusion about a federal law for students with disabilities.

DeVos' signature issue is the expansion of school choice she helped drive in Detroit. Many public school advocates have argued that Detriot's system has a checkered record of success and poor accountability.

In rural states, experts have questioned whether programs supporting vouchers or charter schools would have a significant effect; having a small population across a far-flung area often means that there are few choices other than local public schools. Advocates argue that if small schools lose per-student money, it would have a disproportionate effect on the quality of education.

Sen. Susan Collins from Maine, one of the Republicans who defected Wednesday, specifically questioned DeVos' rural chops.

"I'm concerned that Mrs. Devos' lack of experience with public schools will make it difficult for her to fully understand, identify and assist with those challenges, particularly for our rural schools in states like Maine," a statement from her office said.

No Senate Democrat has said they will vote for DeVos, including Montana's Jon Tester, who blasted her school choice advocacy.

A Daines spokeswoman said that his office has gotten calls urging both support and rejection of DeVos, and that Daines' stance remains unchanged.

A Thursday search of Twitter posts citing Daines' account with DeVos' name showed many tweets urging 'no' votes. A Tester spokesman said his office heard from more than 3,000 people on DeVos, 95 percent of whom urged a 'no' vote.

Critics have also zeroed in on political donations to Republican senators from DeVos and her family; Daines received $5,200 from DeVos in his 2014 campaign, and $41,600 from other members of her family. Daines and other senators, who have received almost $1 million in total from the DeVos family, have brushed off calls to recuse themselves from DeVos' confirmation vote.

DeVos' confirmation still appears likely as no other Republicans have indicated they'll vote against her. A political analysis story from "Education Week" speculated that Republican leadership was unconcerned by the public defections of Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

"Those two senators can please voters in their home states who don't like DeVos, without ultimately sinking DeVos' nomination and facing political backlash from GOP leadership and (President Donald) Trump," it reads.

Democrats protested when Republican leaders limited questioning at DeVos' confirmation hearing; outside of DeVos' school choice advocacy, there's little known about her education policies.

Her apparent support for Daines' accountability opt-out is perhaps her most illuminating statement on the topic; during an exchange with Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine in her hearing, she responded to repeated questions about whether she would support applying the same accountability measures to any school that receives taxpayer money with the phrase, "I support accountability," four times in a row, including when Kaine asked, "Do you not want to answer my question?"
Despite the challenges of Israeli occupation, a small yet determined Drum and Bass scene draws the crowds in the West Bank.

The DJ drops a tune. The crowd raises its collective arms. The bass falls to the floor. The treble of the strings dances above their heads. In an obscure dancehall in the occupied West Bank a revolution is taking place.

Not one that involves throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers on Palestinian territory, but one that involves music and in particular, the Drum and Bass genre.

Right now, in the midst of the track being played through the giant speaker stacks just after midnight, no one cares about the occupied territory.

They care about the dancefloor they occupy.

Shouting above the music as she talks to me, Ramallah resident Tala has a smile that is an indication of how much this crowd appreciates the sounds and the club.

This is decent music and we have seen lots of acts outside, but its extra special when good acts come to Ramallah because it doesnt happen much and takes lots of effort because of the Israeli restrictions, she said.

I try to shout another question at her but she disappears into the crowd as DJ Sinistarr plays an anthem that has the small but joyous crowd screaming.

Sinistarr is one of the outside acts Tala is talking about. From Detroit, he was at the Exit Records party in London last weekend. Tonight its the occupied West Bank.

I wanted to play here because I grew up with Arab culture, with Arab friends. To come here, this is special, he said. My friend invited me here. I was never going to say no.

Universal beats

His friend Odai Masri is the organiser of tonights event. For him, any artist that will play is welcome as long as they bring what he calls the funk.

The DJs that play here come because they want to spread the vibe. We tell them that they might get stopped by the Israelis, but they come. They come for the music, Masri said.

Tonight everyone in this club is dancing, but not for the same reason they dance in the West. Well, almost. The beat is universal and so are the dance moves that go with it, but in Ramallah it is slightly different.

Dressed in a lumberjack shirt and sporting a fulsome beard, Khader looks like he could be in Brooklyn or London.

Ramallah is a whole other thing, dude. We know we are surrounded by Israelis. But we are not going to let them beat us. The music goes on, he said.

In Ramallah, an event like this is so much more difficult to organise than say, New York, or even Tel Aviv.

The Israeli authorities question anyone coming into the country and especially if they find out you are travelling to the occupied territories without a strong family connection. The Palestinian authority is suspicious of strangers as well.

But this small scene is a powerful testament to the fact that occupation may be the Palestinian everyday experience, but for tonight music is what counts.

Follow Imran Khan on Twitter: @ajimran
Comrat, Gagauzia  Mihail Formuzal sits in a comfortable office in a three-storey administration building on Lenin Street in Comrat, capital of Gagauzia, the autonomous region of Moldova. In front of the building, dozens of fresh red flowers are laid on the pedestal of a statue of the communist leader Vladimir Lenin.

Serving up Turkish coffee and referring to himself as Gagauzias president, Formuzal said: I am a democrat. I battled against the communist regime [which ruled the country until 2009], but now I wonder whether it was worth it.

In a referendum Formuzal initiated, Gagauzias population voted against a free trade deal with the EU, set to be finalised in late June. Almost 98 percent of the regions citizens voted in favour of the Russia-led Customs Union instead.

The Customs Union  still under development and currently with only Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan as its members  aims to set up a free trade system. Russian President Vladimir Putin wants all former Soviet states to join the bloc, his brainchild, and needs Ukraine and Moldova to finalise the process.

Relying on such popular approval in the referendum, Formuzal, governor of Gagauzia, says he is fighting mutant communists  his term for the ruling coalition government in Moldovas capital of Chisinau, which seeks to integrate the country into the European Union , a bloc he associates with a communist regime.

In neighbouring Ukraine, former president Victor Yanukovich rejected a trade agreement with the EU last November in favour of closer ties with Russia, prompting months of street protests that eventually led to his fleeing the country, and Moscows annexation of Crimea .

Rejecting the EU

Mihail Formuzal says the central government is robbing Moldova of its future by trying to force integration with the EU [Tamila Varshalomidze/Al Jazeera]

Moldova is the poorest country in Europe with almost 200,000 of its 3.5 million people currently working in the Russian Federation. But the central government in Chisinau believes the countrys future  for the sake of economic development and national security  depends on closer ties with the EU.

Gagauzias leader, however, says Moldova should stay neutral, otherwise it would risk disintegration with the breakaway region of Transnistria already seeking to join Russia .

Formuzal says the EU plans to merge Moldova with Romania, a neighbouring EU member state, restoring the geopolitical order of the region to the pre-Soviet era.

If Moldova joins the EU and gives up its sovereignty [by joining Romania], we [Gagauzia] will go on our own path as an independent state, says Formuzal.

If Moldova joins the EU, the Gagauz people as a unique ethnic group will lose their identity, he adds.

Good old days

This Turkic community of less than 200,000 people is no stranger to transformations. When they were defeated by the Russian Empire in early 19th century, they abandoned their Islamic faith and became Orthodox Christians, but kept their Turkic language, Gagauz.

Gagauzia declared itself independent in 1991 after the break-up of the Soviet Union, but Moldova resolved the conflict peacefully by awarding it autonomy  the right of external self-determination  in 1994.

Natalia Dobrioglo, an ethnic Bulgarian citizen of Gagauzia who has worked for almost two years as a cleaner in Sochi before the Winter Olympic Games, says she does not even want to hear about the EU.

Russia has been our employer forever, so many of us Gagauzs work there, says Dobrioglo, whose husband Ivan works in St Petersburg, installing heating systems.

What will happen to my family if the Russian job market closes for Moldovans because of Europe? There is no way we can survive on Gagauz salaries.

She blamed the situation on the Soviet Unions last leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, whose policies of glasnost, openness, and perestroika , restructuring, eventually led to the dissolution of the USSR.

Gorbachev has created this mess. We [former Soviet countries] used to live together. Why did it have to end like this? Dobrioglo says. I still remember everything. I could eat everything. I would go to a shop and for five kopek [coins] I would buy everything I wanted. What will you buy now for five ban [coins] in Moldova? Not even matches.

Struggle to relate

On the other side of the debate is Ludmila Mitioglo, president of the European Centre Pro-Europa in Comrat. She says politicians manipulate the people, creating confusion in their minds with negative stereotypes about the EU.

Ludmila Mitioglo says politicians are manipulating Gagauz people with negative stereotypes about the EU [Tamila Varshalomidze/Al Jazeera]

They dont know what is Europe [the EU]. Whatever they know about it comes from some local politicians who are manipulating them. They spread stereotypes about Europe that it is Romanians [arch-rivals of Moldovans] and homosexuals, says Mitioglo.

The devout Orthodox Christians of Gagauz view homosexuality as a negative influence. Al Jazeera talked to a number of people in Comrat and Chisinau who said the EU is forcing Moldova to reform its legislation, so that homosexuals are protected against violence and discrimination.

Mitioglo says the Gagauz favour the Russia-led Customs Union more as they associate it with the Soviet Union that gave them decades of stability.

In this region, people feel closer to Russia, they are calmer like that, says Mitioglo.

Russia acts as the driving cultural and economic force in this country, including Gagauzia. Almost 33 percent of Moldovas products are exported to Russia , and there are about 280 Russian-language schools across the country.

The more EU gets closer, the more they start getting nervous, the more they reject it, says Mitioglo, putting the blame on the current Moldovan government for failing to explain the benefits of EU integration to the people.

They talk about Europe as if it was a fairy tale. They are not explaining the progress of development in the newly joined EU states.

Follow Tamila Varshalomidze on Twitter: @tamila87v
Cyprus marks 40 years since the Turkish invasion and division of the island. What hope is there of unity today?

There had been ample warning of a Turkish invasion: the build-up of 38,000 troops at the Adana military base in southern Turkey; a flotilla of ships carrying tanks and armoured personnel carriers; preparations to launch some 80 aircraft. But it seems that Greek intelligence interpreted all this, along with radar sightings of an approaching fleet on the morning of the invasion itself, as a mere exercise.

At dawn on July 20, 1974, Turkish fighter jets began to strafe Greek infantry billets, light artillery batteries, and air force early warning stations on Cyprus northern shore. Moving inland, they laid waste to Greeces main military camp in the capital, Nicosia.

Cyprus fell within days, but Turkish forces advanced into August, long after the UN-ordered ceasefire, stopping at the line of division between ethnic Greek and Turkish communities suggested by the British in 1964.

This Green Line, as it is now known, is where Cyprus remains divided today, cutting across Nicosia to create the worlds last divided capital.

The invasion marked the only occasion when one NATO ally fought another  and it remains the only occupation on EU soil. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared independence in 1983, but remains recognised only by Turkey.

Roots of division

Cyprus division marked a failure to graduate a European country from British rule to independence. After World War II, a Greek-Cypriot lieutenant colonel, Yiorgos Grivas, set up a guerrilla organisation, EOKA, which attacked British troops as part of its goal to merge Cyprus with Greece. Its battle cry was Enosis, or union.

In 1955, British governor, John Harding, offered the Greek-Cypriot community leader, Archbishop Makarios, self-determination after seven years. Makarios turned it down and instead condoned the EOKA campaign  at which point Britain began to stoke Turkish interest in Cyprus.

The following year Britain offered a plan allowing some self-government to the two communities separately. Prime Minister Harold MacMillan went further down this path in 1958  but, like the previous plans, it was rejected by Makarios.

Cyprus was given independence in 1960 on the basis of a power-sharing agreement negotiated by Greece and Turkey, which installed Makarios as president and a Turkish-Cypriot as vice president.

By December 1963, this system of self-rule broke down. Turkish-Cypriots withdrew from the administration and Turkey declared the constitution of 1960 void.

The breakdown sparked the worst intercommunal clashes to date  early in 1964  leading Turkey to deploy troops along the highway between Nicosia and the northern port of Kyrenia, and depriving Makarios of control over parts of the island.

We just want to have our island back and to be left alone. by - Christos, banker , Nicosia

Makarios turned down one last chance at Enosis that year: A US proposal that unified Cyprus with Greece, allowing Turkey to lease a small military base for 50 years.

In 1967, a group of nationalist Greek colonels who had served in Cyprus in the 1950s and grew radicalised there, seized power in Athens to prevent the election of a centre-left government. On July 15, 1974, they tried to bring about Enosis by deposing Makarios in favour of their own man, Nikos Sampson, a former EOKA guerrilla. Makarios fled, denouncing the coup as an invasion and inviting intervention  a call that Turkey answered.

Is the status quo permanent?

I am not sure we can live with the Turkish-Cypriots, said Christos, a banker raising a family with his wife, Anita, in a plush neighbourhood of Nicosia. Both grew up in the homogeneous state that has existed since Turkeys intervention.

He is suspicious of Turkish motives in backing recent talks, the first since Cyprus discovered large reserves of natural gas in its territorial waters in 2013, which could transform the economy over the next few years.

Its obvious that they want a share in the gas wealth. Frankly, I think that we should just let them have all the gas, in return for pulling out their troops, he said. We dont need the gas to prosper. Were perfectly capable of building an economy out of our own labour. We just want to have our island back and to be left alone.





Anita agrees, despite the fact that a reunification settlement could compensate her at todays property rates for luxury hotels her family lost in the invasion. I just dont think we should legalise the invasion, she said. The Greek word she uses means both to legalise and to render legitimate, reflecting a sentiment among Greek-Cypriots that they are being asked to surrender a moral high ground.

Christos and Anitas scepticism echoes throughout Greek-Cypriot society, and lies at the heart of a disastrous attempt to reunify Cyprus ahead of its last major invasion anniversary a decade ago.

In April 2004, four out of five Greek-Cypriots rejected a UN-proposed plan that would have created a federal state, giving Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot communities powerful local governments.

Today, many Cypriots on both sides are beginning to wonder whether they should accept the status quo as the lesser of many evils.

For me there is no division, said Osman Sakale, a Turkish-Cypriot shopkeeper who lives in northern Nicosia. Turks are on this side living happily, Greeks are on the other side living happily. Any reunification by force wont work.

Sakale is not a native-born Turkish-Cypriot, but a settler, one of many brought in over the last 40 years by Turkey as part of an effort to alter the islands demographics. Greek-Cypriots currently number 600,000, Turkish-Cypriots only 200,000  and of those, an estimated 80,000 are indigenous.

Turks are on this side living happily, Greeks are on the other side living happily. Any reunification by force won't work. by - Osman Sakale, shopkeeper, Nicosia

Born on the island, Turkish-Cypriot filmmaker Mustafa Ersenal supports reunification. We really do feel very claustrophobic in Cyprus; especially in northern Cyprus, he said.

Elena Tanou, a businesswoman who has organised a Greek- and Turkish-Cypriot business forum, agreed: The situation now with the economy brings us to a dead end. People in both communities feel that a solution  a political solution  will bring jobs, and the chance to restore the country again altogether.

Mightier than the sword

Despite its effectiveness, the invasion has become a millstone around Turkeys neck. Keeping 40,000 troops on the island costs an estimated $480m a year; subsidising the TRNCs budget costs hundreds of millions more.

Meanwhile, the expulsion of some 200,000 Greek-Cypriots from their homes in the north  from July 1974 to May 1978  is also increasingly expensive. In 1996, a landmark European Court of Human Rights awarded Titina Loizidou, a Greek-Cypriot teacher, $915,000 in compensation for the violation of her right to the peaceful enjoyment of her property by preventing her from visiting her home in the north. Hundreds more cases have been filed.

In May, the ECHR ordered Turkey to pay Cyprus more than $120m  to the relatives of some 2,000 people missing since the invasion, and to Greek-Cypriots living in an enclave in the north.

These costs stand in contrast to the peace dividend Turkey could gain through reunification. In 2010, the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), a think tank, estimated the potential annual benefits to Turkey at over $16bn  chiefly in travel, tourism, financial services and exports, in addition to some $7bn in savings.

The potential benefits to Cyprus are even greater, the PRIO believes. With a solution to the Cyprus problem, all-island GDP [at constant 2012 prices] would rise from just over $27bn in 2012 to just under $61bn by 2035  compared with around $34bn without a solution. In other words, the peace dividend over 20 years would be approximately $27bn. This would translate into earnings of $38,000 a year per person, compared to $23,000 today.

And there are the diplomatic costs: Occupation has become a major obstacle to Turkish hopes for EU membership, which has helped Cyprus win diplomatic ground. The Republic of Cyprus has since 2012 been a recognised member of the EU, while the TRNC in the north is not.

Potential diplomatic, legal and financial gains all advocate in favour of reunification, but political trust still eludes the two communities. The occupation can be withdrawn, but can Cypriots overcome the separate Greek and Turkish nationalisms that have nurtured them for so long?
New $9bn solar plant has been praised for its great potential, but some locals say they are being left in the dark.

Ouarzazate, Morocco  The southern sun bakes down upon Moroccos 580-megawatt solar plant, in line to be the largest in the world upon its completion in 2018.

This $9bn plant, known as Noor  light in Arabic  positions Morocco as a global leader in sustainable energy development. Situated in a dry, rocky, rust-coloured plain 13km outside the southern city of Ouarzazate, the plant has contributed energy to the countrys national power grid for the past year. Since the February 2016 inauguration of Noor I, the first of four phases, there have been many positive stories about the plants great potential, power and beauty.

Its our showcase, Chkoukout Abdelkaht, a provincial tourism official, told Al Jazeera. Ouarzazate became an international city because of the solar complex.

Moroccan reliance on foreign energy imports exceeds 91 percent, but the country predicts that by 2030, more than half of its energy will be renewable  of which 14 percent will be solar power.

Ouarzazate was selected for Noor because it receives optimal solar radiation. After a bidding process, it was determined that the plant would be built by a collaboration between Saudi Arabias ACWA Power and the Spanish consortium TSK-Acciona-Sener. There have also been promises to pursue local development efforts  which, according to Tarik Moudden, of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen), are centred on the villages nearest to Noor, notably Tasselmante and Ghassate. He pointed to the building of an 18km road, along with the provision of water and public health services.

We develop the region with the solar plant, but also, we contribute to local training that will benefit the citizens of Ouarzazate, Moudden told Al Jazeera.

However, for some Moroccans living near the plant, the reality on the ground does not live up to the hype.

We had to [protest] just so we could get jobs in the complex, Mouad el-Ghali, 29, told Al Jazeera. Ghali landed a job as a security guard at the facility  but only until last year, when he was laid off.

Six years ago, some of Tasselmantes sheep-herding lands were sold to Masen. The villagers were told that their payment, in addition to modest monetary compensation, would be through jobs, most of which have yet to materialise.

To be honest, were not profiting from stable jobs [at Noor], said Mohammed el-Ghali, Mouads cousin, noting that the more than 50 international companies involved in the plant were each hiring workers for their own projects. People work there for five months or less. Sometimes, you work two months and wait six months with no job.

Moroccan solar power Moroccan reliance on foreign energy imports exceeds 91 percent, but the country predicts that by 2030, more than half of its energy will be renewable  of which 14 percent will be solar power.

Publicity and tourism efforts involving the plant have been in full force, with a tourist overlook tower at Noor and international celebrities invited to the plant during last years COP 22 climate-change conference. But many people in Ouarzazate say they are in the dark when it comes to Noor.

Its true that the station is there; its true that were right next to it, said Azeddine el-Khattabi, the engineer-in-chief of Ouarzazates regional agricultural development office. But we dont know what happens there.

Hassan el-Haj, a 37-year-old farmer at a nearby olive grove, said that he had never heard of the existence of Noor until its inauguration: It feels far away, he said.

Jaouad Ait Rabah, the owner of the Moroccan Institute for Solar Energy, a company that installs solar units and conducts educational trainings on solar power, said that out of all of the places where he works, the least amount of training takes place in Ouarzazate. When it comes to appreciating the value of solar energy, he said, people in Ouarzazate dont have the culture. The solar plant is just a brand image.

READ MORE: The Muslim world has to take climate action

At the same time, Riccardo Fabiani, a senior North Africa analyst with the political consulting agency Eurasia Group, wonders about the plants lasting local impact.

Theres a question obviously of whether this could be a cathedral in the desert as they say in Italian  that theres a huge project that is connected with a broader economy, Fabiani told Al Jazeera. Is this a strategy to make [Noor] the beginning of a wider push for economic development locally, or is it just going to be an isolated project that the king loves but doesnt have any spillover effects?

Fatima Ahouli, who worked on a 2015 local development assessment report published by the public policy NGO Germanwatch, found that some local development efforts have not been clearly communicated to local residents.

Whenever I discuss [Masen] with people, its always like, They dont tell us, they dont ask us, they dont communicate with us. So [the residents] are always the last people to know about something that is going on in their region or in their village, she said. Communication in Masen is really, really, really weak.

Whenever by Fatima

with people, its always like, They dont tell us, they dont ask us, they dont communicate with us. So [the residents] are always the last people to know about something that is going on in their region or in their village.]

Ahouli says that this is also because many Moroccans  especially those living in villages  are illiterate, and messages often become confused because of language differences between Masen officials and local authorities.

Meanwhile, the number of renewable energy degrees being awarded at Moroccan universities has been on the rise, leading to a wider pool of applicants for high-skilled production and engineering jobs on renewable energy projects. Still, Moroccans in Ouarzazate feel that the majority of engineering jobs at Noor have been given to foreigners; Masen confirmed that engineers on the project primarily come from Spain, Germany and China.

Said Chabe, 21, a graduate of the renewable energy engineering programme at Faculte Polydisciplinaire de Ouarzazate, said that this was frustrating.

Back in school, teachers used to tell us that theyre training us to be a part of the project, Chabe told Al Jazeera. As a student, I got nothing. Its like theyre renting Noor to foreigners.

Sitting in a cafe about 500km from Ouarzazate in Rabat, renewable energy engineering student Sarah Bentahar, 25, said that she was supportive of Moroccos energy initiatives  but in the end, she believed the project was more about exploiting the countrys ample sunlight than about benefitting Moroccans.

Morocco gives the sun, it gives the surface, she said. Thats all anybody wants.

Danielle Douglas and Wesley Lickus spent several months in Morocco on an SIT Study Abroad programme and produced this story in association with Round Earth Media. Sapha Bouamara contributed to the reporting.
In South Africa digging for diamonds with picks, shovels is only means of income for many, though it is against the law.

Namaqualand, South Africa  For more than 80 years, large mines operated across Namaqualand, a remote, rocky expanse of land high up South Africas west coast. Today, most of these mines are closed, but millions of diamonds remain in the ground, providing bounty for illicit diggers who say they have no other means of survival.

To make money you can either steal, sell drugs, or look for diamonds, said one digger, Paul, crouching beside a shallow crevice he had excavated inside an abandoned mining area. Hundreds of similar holes surrounded him, spreading in an arc from the base of an old tailings dump. There are no jobs. It doesnt feel good to break the law, but this is all I can get.

He had been digging since dawn with two accomplices, working by hand in 40C heat. As the evening approached, it was still hot enough to sweat. He lifted another sack of gravel and poured it through a rectangular sieve, shutting his eyes against the dust. Later the men would rinse the gravel in plastic drums to determine their luck.

Weve been sleeping in the bushes here for six weeks, working like this every day, said Paul. We havent found any diamonds yet.

Christmas was a week away. He wanted to buy presents for his wife and three children, to sit with them around a table laden with food.

Perhaps God will bless us this year. If not, Ill carry on, he said, hoisting the sack to walk back to his camp.

READ MORE: Fighting the legacy of mining in Lesotho

Illicit mining

With the richest diamond seams depleted, large-scale mining is seldom viable any more in Namaqualand. The expense of stripping away tonnes of sediment to reach the bedrock, where alluvial diamonds accumulated millions of years ago, is no longer offset by adequate yields.

But in a region of scarce work and chronic poverty  conditions largely attributable to mine closures in the early 2000s  digging with picks and shovels can still be profitable, even though it is against the law.

The South African Chamber of Mines estimates that there are currently some 14,000 illegal miners in the country, targeting gold and other precious minerals in addition to diamonds. At least 350 of these miners have died while working in the past five years, with thousands more arrested.

There can be up to 100 diggers working at a time, said Captain William Diergaardt, a local police chief responsible for curbing illicit mining. We dont have the manpower to stop them.





Formalising the sector and allowing diggers to legally pursue residual diamonds would, in theory, make Diergaardts job simpler, diminishing the appeal of illicit activity and adding value to local mining operations.

But despite policy provisions to the contrary, South Africa has no systems in place to support artisanal mining, leaving diggers with no recourse beyond the black market.

Current mining legislation effectively forces artisanal miners to work illegally, said Ingrid Watson, a researcher at the Centre for Sustainability in Mining and Industry (CSMI) at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Government attempts to enable and enhance small-scale mining, while effective in some instances, have not yet achieved enough.

The Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, the overarching legal framework for all mining activities in South Africa, recognises artisanal and small-scale mining as a legitimate industry subsector. According to the Chamber of Mines, illicit mining is currently worth some $440m a year.

The national Department of Mineral Resources has an entire directorate, or organisational wing, dedicated to small-scale mining.

It is essential that small-scale miners in South Africa become integrated into the greater South African mining community, states a notice on the directorates website .

READ MORE: The sordid tale behind S Africas mine strife

Artisinal v large-scale mining

Despite these stated government intentions, artisanal miners  the technical term for miners who work with basic tools and low levels of mechanisation  remain excluded from participating in the industry, with no practical means of legally accessing resources.

Artisanal miners dont have the resources to comply with mining regulations, said Watson. There are too many hurdles.





To obtain operating permits, artisanal miners would have to meet many of the same conditions as larger mining companies, including submitting environmental impact assessments, making financial provisions for mine closure and rehabilitation, and drafting health and safety plans. Existing laws make no clear distinction between artisanal miners and small mining firms.

Small-scale mining has been defined as a capital-intensive process, said Christopher Rutledge, from ActionAid South Africa, a human rights organisation focusing on artisanal mining. Our laws dont recognise the rights of these diggers to work.

These laws are currently being challenged in Kimberley, a small town 750km inland from Namaqualand, where South Africas mining industry began. The diamond rush of the late 18th century transformed South Africa into one of the worlds fastest-growing economies and led, in 1881, to the formation of the De Beers cartel.

For decades the Kimberley area produced the most diamonds in the world, threatening the stability of the diamond price. The economic boom triggered by mining disproportionately benefited South Africas white minority, laying foundations for subsequent apartheid laws.

Scraping the floors

Today, as at the coast, teams of illicit diggers target diamonds that were left behind.

The diamonds occur in thin gravel layers known as floors. The floors remained when De Beers removed old mine dumps, created over a period of 130 years, for further processing.

Improved technology has made it possible for companies to recover diamonds that formerly escaped detection, but diggers in Kimberley discovered that they could go one step further, scraping marginal extra yields from these reworked sites.

This is basically wasteland, discarded by mining companies, said Rutledge, who has been helping diggers organise their resistance. These miners arent infringing on productive property. Ignoring their potential to spread wealth and reduce unemployment is a shame.

In 2015, De Beers sold its Kimberley operations to a joint venture called Ekapa Minerals. By then more than 1,000 diggers had gathered on the floors, living in temporary informal settlements.

Last September, Ekapa filed a court application to prevent these diggers from further mining on the land. The diggers challenged the interdict, represented by human rights attorney Richard Spoor.

[Mining laws] operate as a barrier to artisanal mining, the court papers presented by the miners stated. They therefore unjustifiably infringe upon artisanal miners right to freedom of trade.

The miners also accused Ekapa of operating illegally. The company has begun mining the floors without a licence, claiming that they do not require authorisation to proceed.

Ekapa Minerals categorically denied this accusation and told Al Jazeera that they would  under no circumstances conduct any mining operations that are illegal.

On January 13, the Kimberley High Court ruled in favour of Ekapa, granting an eviction order. The legal team representing the miners appealed against the ruling on January 23.

READ MORE: The heavy toll of coal mining in South Africa

A source of employment

Artisanal mining proponents see the case as an opportunity to bring broader change to the sector.

Wed like to take steps towards decriminalising digging, said Spoor, the attorney, in an interview last December. There could be a constitutional argument that preventing these people from working lawfully infringes on their basic rights.

South Africas constitution enshrines the right to freely choose a trade, occupation or profession. According to Spoor, laws that serve as barriers to trade  the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, in this instance  may not withstand scrutiny in the Constitutional Court. But taking a case that far is tremendously expensive, and this is pro-bono work.

Were focusing on the eviction order and trying to raise funds for future litigation, said Spoor. There has to be a more sensible way to regulate artisanal mining. We cant keep chasing people off the land.

Responding to questions, the Department of Mineral Resources wrote that there were formal processes for unlicensed diamond diggers to become legal operators. What they need to do is to apply for a mining permit  Any mining operation that is not supported by a legal document  is considered illegal.

Just as ancient rivers transported diamonds from the Kimberley area to Namaqualand, so has the struggle for more equitable mining rights spread west. Last January, residents from old mineworker towns protested outside the gates of West Coast Resources, the company that bought De Beers local mines in 2011.

READ MORE: Illegal mining in S Africa draws migrants

They have broken promises about employing our people, said one protest leader, who asked to remain anonymous. Were sitting here without work. Eventually we need ownership of these resources ourselves.

West Coast Resources told Al Jazeera that the company was proud to be creating new employment opportunities and had created more than 250 jobs since 2015, with 75 percent of their employees hailing from local communities. De Beers employed more than 1,700 Namaqualand residents in the 1990s.

For diggers in the area, working without legal or strategic support, there remains little option but to keep hoping for good fortune, searching for diamonds in the vast landscape while evading capture by private security guards or the police.

Paul sat beneath a thorn tree shortly after sunset, inspecting a washed mound of gravel. A fellow digger handed him a cigarette rolled in newspaper. With a blunt knife, he picked through the stones, bent low in the fading light.

You stay hopeful youll get something, he said, brushing the gravel aside. They had reached their final sack but recovered no diamonds yet. One of the men shook the sieve inside a drum of muddied water. He swirled the sieve upside down and dumped fresh gravel onto the earth.

All three diggers leaned forwards, balancing on their forearms. Their eyes darted keenly over the wet sediment. White quartz pebbles shone dully, but there were no diamonds. Tomorrow, beneath the same beating sun, the men will try again.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, one of them sang quietly, bunching up the empty sacks. Paul said nothing and passed him the cigarette.
If approved, the legislation will ban those who called for boycott from receiving temporary residency permits in Israel.

Occupied West Bank  Spouses hoping to reunite with their families in Israel, as well as Jewish and non-Jewish visitors, that have endorsed a boycott of Israel and Israeli settlements could be banned from entering the country if a new bill becomes law.

The anti-boycott bill passed a first reading in the Israeli parliament in mid-January and is set for a final vote in early February.

The legislation would deny entry permits and temporary residency permits to anyone who has publicly called for a boycott of Israel or represents an organisation that has called for a boycott.

The Israeli minister of interior would be able to make exceptions to the ban at his discretion.

Based on a 2011 law that allowed for civil suits against people, including Israelis, who called for a boycott of Israel, the current bill refers to the same definition of a boycott.

It defines a boycott against Israel as anything against Israel or territories under Israeli control. It includes boycotts of the settlements, said Michal Pomeranz, an Israeli human rights lawyer. Its specifically BDS-related.

READ MORE: Is Israel ramping up crackdown on BDS activists?

Established in 2005, BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) is a Palestinian-led international movement that calls for a boycott of Israeli goods, divestment from Israeli companies and governmental sanctions on the country in order to pressure the Israeli state to prevent human rights abuses against Palestinians.

The movement is loathed by the Israeli government and has been cited as a national security threat. In August 2016, Gilad Erdan, Israeli public security minister, announced the formation of a new task force that would seek to identify, track and deport activists who supported a boycott, as well as prevent their entry into the country.

The new legislation would give the Ministry of Interior more powers to prevent activists from entering Israel at all.

Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli parliament with the Palestinian Joint List faction, told Al Jazeera that the boycott movement had become more popular internationally and the legislation was an attempt to curtail BDS and stifle criticism.

Israel is violating international laws and they are making laws to give legitimacy to the violation of international law. That's the real meaning of the new Israeli law, which says 'if you call for international law, you are violating Israeli law'. by Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Israeli parliament with the Palestinian Joint-List faction

Its an attack against anybody who protests against Israeli policies. The boycott movement is not a violent action against Israel. They are using legitimate steps to change policies and to force Israel to obey international law, he added.

Israel is violating international laws and they are making laws to give legitimacy to the violation of international law. Thats the real meaning of the new Israeli law, which says if you call for international law, you are violating Israeli law, he said.

Israels Ministry of Interior already has extensive powers to prevent individuals from entering the country. For example, if ministry staff members believe that a visitor is planning to stay in Israel or commit a crime, or if they are worried about their political activity, they can deny that person an entry permit.

The current law pretty much gives the Ministry of Interior and the officials working for it very broad discretion whether to let someone in or not. Most people dont have a right to enter Israel, unless they are here for part of family unification or something like that, said Pomeranz, noting that officials have been allowed to use their discretion to act on what they think is evidence that a persons activity could potentially harm Israeli interests.

The law changes this and gives the official no discretion and says that anyone that has been found to be part of a BDS movement is not allowed to enter. The starting point changes from everyone is allowed to enter and we prevent people if there is a reason not to. It now says anyone involved in the BDS is not allowed in, she said.





The bill has been advanced by Bezalel Smotrich, a member of the right-wing, pro-settlement Jewish Home party. According to Israeli media reports in the run-up to the final reading, Smotrichs spokesperson said: The State of Israel need not and cannot allow entry to those calling for a boycott of it. The BDS leaders are working to spread anti-Semitism in the world and do everything in their power to harm the State of Israel.

As well as banning entry to foreign visitors, the legislation would prohibit people who have called for a boycott from receiving temporary residency permits in Israel. Around 8,000  10,000 Palestinians are going through the process of family unification and use temporary residency permits to stay with their spouses in Israel.

These temporary permits last for six months and have to be renewed twice a year.

It will affect people who are in the family unification process, who still didnt get permanent residency in the family reunification process. So it will lead to the violation of the right to family life, because it will lead to the separation between spouses and children, said Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, the legal centre for minority rights in Israel.

OPINION: What we can legally do against the anti-BDS campaign

Together with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah has sent a letter of objection to the proposed legislation to be sent to senior figures within the government, urging them not to support it.

The issue is more related to the arbitrary enforcement of an authority and discretion that will be based on political and irrelevant considerations, while checking or examining who will enter the state of Israel and who will not, Zaher told Al Jazeera, adding that the bill was the latest in a wave of political moves to stifle political dissent in Israel.

The main purpose is to silence the opposition, it is to shrink the space of freedom of expression for whoever is opposing the Israeli occupation and discrimination against Palestinian citizens, she said.

Pomeranz agreed that the bill was part of a broader political trend.

Instead of dealing with the criticism itself, Israels tendency is to just delegitimise the boycott itself, the same as it does with Breaking the Silence, the same as it does with any NGO or human rights organisation. Thats the policy nowadays, said Pomeranz.
There are few Western politicians whose election aroused as much excitement and hope both in the West and East, in the north and south, as Barack Obama. But there are also few politicians that have caused as much dismay and disappointment worldwide as Obama. Therefore his legacy will certainly be controversial.

After the United States two catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the ill-conceived strategy on the war on terror, Obamas election represented hope and a new beginning towards recalibrating US foreign policy and rethinking its position in the world. This was particularly important in rehabilitating US relations with the Middle East and the larger Islamic world.

In this vein, Obamas impassioned and eloquent speeches in Turkey and Egypt were seen as the advent of a new era between the two sides. His emphasis on democracy, human rights, pluralism, good governance, and economic development were particularly noteworthy and inspiring, given the US previous tendency to sponsor authoritarian regimes in the region with almost no regard for any of these values. By any account, the stage was well set for a new beginning in regional relations, which were to be underpinned by the shared values of democracy, human rights and economic progress, as well as the long-awaited rejection of the authoritarian-stability thesis.

The observation or analysis of Obamas foreign, and in particular regional policies is more than a matter of analytical or political curiosity for me. It is also very personal. I became foreign minister of Turkey very soon after Obama took office: on May 1, 2009, to be precise. Three factors in particular led me to have high hopes for his presidency and to feel optimistic about the future prospects of his foreign policy.

The Audacity of Hope

First, the election of a black president was in and of itself good news for the United States and for the world at large; a thought I first expressed back in April 2002 during a conference at Princeton University, long before the prospect of Obamas presidency came to light. Such a choice, I believed, would reflect the inclusive nature of US politics and American identity. The rise and embracement of these values in US politics and their promotion through American foreign policy would have been one of the strongest sources of support for inclusivity and diversity worldwide. As the boundaries between domestic and foreign policies have become ever more insignificant, the political spillover of such a quintessentially American domestic policy development would encourage positive change across the globe.

Second, we expected that the Bush administrations militant unilateralism and interventionism would be followed by a new multilateralism. Though with the benefit of hindsight, we anticipated a responsible and consequential multilateralism, which would not have slipped into passive diplomacy and inconsequential policies of engagement as easily as it did.

Third, as stated above, we expected that his stress on human rights and democracy would go beyond rhetoric and form part and parcel of US foreign policy, particularly towards the MENA region. This was not and is not purely a normative or idealistic expectation: I believe that such a regional policy would also have borne more positive results for US interests in the region. Such a policy, in fact, would have enlarged the social and political constituency for American foreign policy in the region, which is, in its current form, confined to the triangle of security, foreign policy and economic elites whose legitimacy, and hence their very survival, is now at stake.

Unmet expectations

Hence, in my view, the election of Obama by the American people in 2008 was in line with the zeitgeist, and I believed that his foreign policy would also reflect the values and aspirations associated with it.

These expectations have remained unfulfilled. Failure, disappointment and dismay have characterised his foreign policy more than success or audacious hope. The US has alienated its traditional allies and emboldened its adversaries. The defence of democracies and promotion of pluralism, human dignity and decency have remained half-hearted at best.

To be fair, Obama began in the right way, but he never followed through throughout his term. He articulated the right statements profusely, but never matched them with the right actions. He projected a benign vision but did not support this with deeds that have had consequences. In short, there has been a glaring gap between the rhetoric and the implementation.

Though it may be a commendable personal feature, eloquence is no substitute for political vision, courage and responsible policies. Plus, we were unfortunately never able to convert our well-functioning personal dialogue with the Obama administration into political progress on the issues and themes of common interest and concern.

To put it more precisely, Turkey mediated four indirect rounds of peace talks between Israel and Syria to settle this dispute between 2007 and the end of 2008. The talks, mediated by a team led by myself, advanced smoothly to the point that by the end of 2008, many expected the two countries to sign a framework agreement for a peace settlement. Yet the Israeli invasion of Gaza at the end of 2008 derailed the process. We naturally felt betrayed by the fact that Israel had once again chosen war at the very moment that the prospect of a peace deal with Syria was becoming attainable, and that they failed to inform us about their intention to go to war despite the fact that Israels then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had a long talk over dinner with our then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey only days before the invasion. The timing of this derailment coincided with the commencement of the Obama presidency. A peace treaty between Israel and Syria would have had a dramatic transformative impact on the regional political scene. It would probably have set the stage for a new beginning in relations between the countries of the Levant, and later the broader region. Yet, to our dismay, the Obama administration chose not to invest any energy or effort in reviving this initiative.

Fast forward to 2011: The Obama administration has adopted the right discursive position on Syria. It declared the Assad regime to be illegitimate in August 2011, well in advance of Turkey doing the same. In fact, on August 9, 2011, I held a six-hour-long talk with Assad himself. We agreed on a 14-point framework for a peaceful transition and two-week time period for him to declare this framework after necessary preparations. We informed our American counterpart about the deal. Yet the US administration was rushing to declare the Assad regime as illegitimate, which it did only a week after we agreed upon the framework deal. Needless to say, during the same time period, the Assad regime also violated the terms of this framework deal several times. Thereafter, we also cut all the contacts with the regime.

Along the same lines, the Obama administration rightly condemned the brutality of the Assad regime, called for a regime change, and denoted the use of chemical weapons as red lines that would trigger a military response and lead to severe repercussions for the Assad regime. All these publicly declared positions and red lines have since been violated by the Assad regime with more or less impunity, not least by the use of chemical weapons in August 2013.

On a more bilateral note, even though the Obama administration denoted the Assad regime early on as illegitimate and rightly accused him of committing grave crimes, including crimes against humanity, the same administration has proven to be unsympathetic towards the difficulties, challenges and threats that Turkey has faced as a neighbour to a war-torn country nominally ruled by an illegitimate regime. From the flow of millions of refugees into the country to Syria-induced ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as ISIS) and PKK terrorism, Turkey has faced myriad hardships and threats. In other words, this illegitimate regime was the source of these challenges and threats for Turkey, yet the Obama administration was unwilling to recognise it as such and act upon it accordingly. To the contrary, at the end of the day, the Obama administration allowed Assads brutality to continue while supporting his ally Turkeys foes, on the ground.

2013: Regional and global implications

Furthermore, just as Obamas Cairo statements were commendable, forward-looking and encouraging, his stance on the military coup against the first elected president in the most populous country in the Arab world was disheartening and discouraging. The militarisation of the Syrian uprising, the coup in Egypt and the rise of ISIL have been three factors that have turned the tide of the movements of democracy and human dignity in the Arab world. In this respect, 2013 was a crucial year. Obamas equivocal responses to the breach of his red lines in Syria and the coup in Egypt encouraged dictators to commit further atrocities to retain power, fed into the narratives of extremists, and undermined the cause of democracy and human dignity. To understand ISILs exponential expansion from 2014 onwards requires a better comprehension of what happened in 2013.

But the story doesnt end there: US failure in 2013 also sent signals to the adversaries and rivals of the United States that they could count on the US inaction. This message, it seems, Russia has taken deeply to heart. Arguably, Russia would have not been so defiant and groundbreaking in Crimea and the Ukraine in 2014 and later in Syria from 2015 onwards if the Obama administration had been able to match its discourse with deeds. In other words, Russian activism from Ukraine to Syria, and from Crimea to Libya, is all the direct result of the fading away of the deterrence built on the US commitment to upholding the rules and principles of international law and its declared goals, be it by default or by design. Perhaps future historians will treat 2013 as the year that shaped the course of ensuing decades, reversed the tide of region-wide change, and redefined the dynamics of global power relations.

Misconceptualisations and faulty prescriptions

Even more tragically, Obamas ineffective strategies seem, after a while, to have culminated in his reconceptualisation of the issues and of rereading events.

Obama has easily fallen into the trap of trading symptoms for causes. The Syrian crisis has been progressively reduced to yet another war on terror  this time in the form of ISIL  plus the need for humanitarian assistance, while Iran has been reduced to the nuclear file. Such a reading misses the true source of tension between Iran and its neighbours: its regional policy. Even on the nuclear file, the US had to settle for a less favourable deal than the one we, in partnership with Brazil, had negotiated with Iran in May 2010. I still remember the last day, our tough negotiations with the Iranian team, together with my colleague Celso Amorim, foreign minister of Brazil, lasted 17 hours without break. We had informed the US about our efforts and intention to settle the dispute. After long and cumbersome negotiations, we reached a deal on May 16, 2010. We expected a positive response from Washington, but the Obama administration rebuffed the deal, only because it wasnt achieved by the P5 1. At that time, Irans level of enrichment capacity was relatively low. Five years later, the P5 1 had to settle on a deal at a time when Iran had achieved a much higher level of enrichment. Lastly, on Iraq, getting out of Iraq has taken precedence and priority over getting Iraq right for the Obama administration.

Most of the malaises associated with Bushs half-baked and shortsighted policy of interventionism, particularly but not exclusively in the Middle East, were mirrored in Obamas misplaced policy of withdrawal from the Middle East. The idea and mindset of withdrawal from the Middle East seems to have afforded the Obama administration the space to pursue inconsequential, ineffective and irresponsible policies towards the region.

This mentality of withdrawal was not solely confined to the Middle East: instead it seems that the US was withdrawing from its responsibilities worldwide. For instance, one reflection of this withdrawal was that the Obama administration preferred to invest its time and energy in relatively comfortable issues rather than dealing with the root causes of the real troubles. To put it more concretely, the Obama administration largely reduced the nature of its relations with Europe to that of negotiating over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership  at a time when the European integration project was facing its severest crisis since its launch in the aftermath of World War II. This in return has left Americas allies between a rock and a hard place.

The Nobel Prize Effect

Arguably, Obama winning a Nobel Prize early on in his presidency did damage his future foreign policy. It encouraged him to stick to diplomatic passivity and to not undertake foreign policy decisions that would have required tough choices and using hard power. This crippled his foreign policy. With the benefit of hindsight, he should have won a Nobel Prize based on a real achievement instead of being given one in advance. This Nobel Prize came too early and too easily for Obama.

History will pass its own verdict on Obamas foreign policy. In all likelihood, it will be a damning one. Rather than becoming a transformative global foreign policy figure, and in spite of his rhetoric, Obama chose to be a prisoner of the status quo.

Though the early signs arent encouraging, President Trump has four years ahead of him, which represent a new opportunity to get US foreign policy towards the region and the world at large right.

Lessons for the Trump administration

Good policies require a sophisticated analysis of what is happening in the world, particularly in the MENA region. Since the region is passing through one of its most transformative periods, it is important that the Trump administration begins to work on a more sophisticated regional policy starting from the first day in office. In this respect, three factors are particularly important for the new administration to take into account while formulating a new foreign and regional policy.

First, the underlying causes that led to uprisings across the Arab world are still there. If anything, these causes have deepened and gained further salience. Two weeks ago, there was a peaceful transition of power in Washington DC. No tanks were on the streets. The military personnel that were visible were only for ceremonial purposes. The people of this region deserve the same as well. And until and unless they acquire this opportunity, the dust of the region is unlikely to settle.

This picture stands in stark contrast to what was attempted in Turkey on July 15, 2016. The July 15 failed coup attempt perpetrated by the Gulenist terror cult aimed at bloody transfer of power from democratically elected civilian government to a secretive cultish terrorist organisation. Unfortunately, the Obama administration did not show sufficient level of solidarity with Turkey in the face of this brutal coup attempt. What we expect from the new US administration is to show solidarity with its ally, Turkey, by handing over the coup leader Fethullah Gulen, who is residing in Pennsylvania, to Turkey to be held accountable for his deeds.

Second, there is a new and consequential political psychology prevailing among people, and particularly young people, across the region, which will shape future political trajectories. Despite all the trauma that they have been through, this new political psychology refuses to condone their being ruled by this new and more brutal form of authoritarianism or treat it as their fate.

Third, the interconnected nature of todays world means that the crisis in the Middle East is no longer a regional but a global one with far-reaching consequences.

The more the West consents to the authoritarian comeback in the region, the more it risks the erosion of democracy in their own national contexts. Europe doesnt appear to realise that it has only a fluid border, in the shape of the Mediterranean Sea, between itself and the MENA region.

As the great but tragic human migrations of recent years have shown, this fluid border is passable, no matter how much investment Europe makes in border security and fences. The human tragedy on this side of the Mediterranean engenders political calamity in the form of the rise of political populism and the decline of democratic standards in Europe. Putting aside the effort of political leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, President of the European Council Donald Tusk and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, with whom we spearheaded a process in 2015-16 that culminated in the signing of the EU-Turkey Refugee Deal on March 18, 2016 in the EU-Turkey Summit and which in return has prevented the death of refugees in the Aegean Sea, Europes political leadership underestimates and underappreciates the interconnected nature of the political destiny of the people of the Mediterranean basin. They hence tend to forget that Europe is a peninsula between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Along the same lines, the destiny of one component of the Atlantic community, Europe, will inevitably shape the destiny of the other, North America (and particularly that of the United States). Therefore, it is in the immediate interests of US and European political elites or the community of democracies to search for real and sustainable solutions for these Middle Eastern crises.

The danger of a tragic beginning and fatal mistakes

Here, extreme caution is warranted. While the expectations that we had vis-a-vis Obama remained unfulfilled, the political discourse of President Trump prior to the election and its performance and decisions since then carry worrisome elements and are in complete contradiction of our expectations.

First, instead of inclusivity, exclusivity has become the defining feature of this new administrations major decisions since the election. Trumps campaign rhetoric about immigrants and people of different identities  but particularly Mexican immigrants and Muslims  were toxic or problematic at best. The exclusionary nature of US domestic policy towards its citizens, residents and people living on US soil sets a dangerous path and precedent for far-right parties to pursue elsewhere and will tarnish the US image globally, and destroy the foundation of its soft power, which has formed a significant chunk of the countrys overall power and standing in the world.

Second, instead of multilateralism, an unproductive unilateralism has once again become the order of the day. From the ban on the citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries to the decision to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border, the new administration has opted for a counterproductive unilateralism.

It is rather a paradox at a time when the new US administration has ordered the Pentagon to devise a plan to deal a death blow to ISIL in Iraq and Syria, it is also instituting a Muslim ban. There can be no stronger gift to be given to ISIL than such an ill-conceived Muslim ban.

Also, it was a twist and irony of history that President Trump signed the Muslim ban on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Never again to stigmatise any people, religion, societies collectively should have been the guiding principle for this remembrance.

Likewise, the idea behind 9/11 was to drive wedges between different people, religions, societies and civilisations. First and foremost, 9/11 attacked the inclusivity of societies, the idea of co-existence, the phenomenon of multiculturalism. If insisted upon, this Muslim ban will reward these perpetrators with a gift that they could never have imagined before. This Muslim ban will be the institutionalisation of Islamophobia as the government policy of a superpower. This will increase polarisation worldwide and activate socio-political faultlines among societies, religions and civilisations. Fears shouldnt be operationalised to score political gains.

Inclusivity, respecting human dignity and upholding rights and liberties would be the most powerful means to counter the twisted ideology of the perpetrators of 9/11 and the cowardice of ISIL. Defaulting on these principles and values will in contrast be tantamount to breathing life into these perpetrators decaying and dying ideology.

The securitisation of Islam and Muslims will drive a further wedge not only between the US and its own Muslim population, but also between the US and the larger Islamic world.

Third, the US policy towards the MENA region should be premised on a sophisticated understanding of the region. In this respect, Trumps declared intention of moving the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, if implemented, will be a tragic beginning and a fatal mistake. It would be inimical to US interests, cause tension and almost certain bloody conflicts between Palestine and Israel, and would torpedo any chance of a two-state solution. It would ignite a further cycle of violence and bloodshed, and provide fertile political ground for extremism of all sorts to thrive in the region. Jerusalem is not only Jerusalem. It is not only a disputed issue between Israel and Palestine or even the Arabs as a whole, but is a much bigger potential source of friction.

The combined impact of these three points will be the further diminishing of the US role and presence in the region and the world. This in return will provide further opportunities for other powers, be they Russia or China, to exploit the void created by the fraying of ties between the US and its traditional Middle Eastern allies, and marginalise the United States in the region and, by extension, the world.

Fourth, if not reversed, Trumps belittling of the European integration project and downplaying of the significance of NATO will shake the bond between the transatlantic community, which again will be counter-productive to the US national interests. In particular, his praise of Brexit, and encouragement of its repetition in other contexts, as well as courting populist movements across the continent, invite security challenges of all sorts, be they political, economic or social. The reversal and undoing of the European integration project would be one of the gravest mistakes since World War II, and its consequences would be deep and far-reaching. This process may once again give rise to the long-buried question of the balance of power in Europe. This would not only be tragic news for Europe, but it would also directly and immediately undermine the global standing of the United States. The Trump administration, therefore, should strive to regain the trust of its traditional allies, be they in the Middle East, Asia or Europe, and solidify its existing bonds.

Obamas lacklustre foreign policy legacy should motivate the new US administration to devise a new democracy and human rights oriented, people-friendly foreign policy. It should strengthen its ties with its current allies and search for new ones. It is for the whole world to shoulder the burden of preventing further destruction and halting the global drift towards authoritarianism.

The need of humanity today is obvious: a more inclusive, more multilateral and more humanitarian international order.

Professor Dr Ahmet Davutoglu is the former prime minister and foreign minister of Turkey and a member of parliament from the AK Party.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.


New York City, United States  Hundreds of Yemeni Americans in New York shut their shops on Thursday in a city-wide strike protesting against the Donald Trump administrations executive order banning visitors from seven Muslim-majority nations, including Yemen.

More than 2,000 people gathered at Brooklyn Borough Hall in Brooklyn Heights to oppose Trumps ban, in an effort to highlight the role of immigrant labour in the city.

Approximately 80,000 Yemeni-American citizens and green card holders live in the five boroughs of New York City.

Many of them own the bodegas which were shuttered in protest. The small grocery shops and delis keep long hours and often serve as informal gathering places for neighbourhood residents.

Some protesters had relatives with pending US visa applications that are now on hold.

Arafat Aljamal of Crown Heights Deli and Grocery, 28, had applied for his wife and son to join him but was notified a few days ago that their case was suspended.

Every single day I worry about them, says Aljamal, speaking of the increasingly protracted war in Yemen.

We have the rights to bring our families from back home. Everybody does.
Funding for streets and fighting for senior services were on the minds of some of the 30 or so people attending Thursdays legislative teleconference, held every two weeks at MSUB to enable Billings area residents to lobby their legislators in Helena.

Lynn Mullowney Cabrera, executive director of the Alzheimers Association in Montana, praised one of the legislators, Sen. Roger Webb, R-Billings, for trying to revive HB 70, which would strengthen guardianship services. The bill was tabled last week by the House Judiciary Committee.

You are going to see a whole raft of bills, Cabrera told the six Billings area legislators attending the meeting by teleconference. In addition to Webb, others present for the broadcast were his wife, Rep. Peggy Webb, R-Billings; Rep. Barry Usher, R-Billings; Rep. Geraldine Custer, R-Forsyth; Sen. Tom Richmond, R-Billings; and Rep. Don Jones, R-Billings.

The forthcoming bills, Cabrera said, are designed to help individuals stay in their homes and in their community and to receive the highest care at the least expense.

Denise Armstrong, executive director of Big Sky Senior Services, said a $258,000 financial note attached to the bill may have been a drawback, but that she too hopes legislators will revive the bill because in the long run, it will save taxpayers 10 times that.

She also praised Custers House Bill 163, which allows for the designation of lay caregivers and requires hospitals to discuss a patients discharge plan with the caregiver. The House Human Services Committee passed the bill with amendments Thursday.

We deal with a lot of vulnerable seniors, low-income seniors with nobody else in their life to be there, Armstrong said.

Legislators offered mixed support on a proposal to boost the states share of the gas tax by up to 10 cents per gallon in order to meet state match requirements for federal transportation funding and to send more money to help fund city and county transportation projects.

Usher said hes been met with a lot of fuzzy math and shell games trying to learn more about Montana Department of Transportation funding.

Roger Webb said the current legislative appetite is not in favor of raising the gas tax, but Richmond said theres little pushback for raising it 5 or 6 cents per gallon, but substantial pushback at 10 cents.

Custer said that MDT will have to reorganize to gain efficiencies, but we cant leave federal money on the table when they give us 87 percent of the cost to improve our highways.

When money is tight, maintenance is passed over, she said. We are not keeping up.

The lack of available funding is at the heart of many up or down votes on bills. Usher said the states budget picture is not only bad, but worse than most people even know at this point.

He said constituents should watch out who you listen to. If you have someone trusted at the Capitol, call us to give you the real scoop.

People who spread rumors and those who write and broadcast news reports dont sit on committees and they dont always know whats going on, Usher said.

Bill Cole, president of the Billings Chamber of Commerce board of directors, told the legislators theyll be receiving letters of support on local option authority to expand the resort tax.

He described the proposal as a narrower tax that wont raise as much as a pure local option tax might, but its less regressive since it would be levied on such goods as luxury items, alcohol and restaurant meals.

Cole told legislators that 80 percent of the chambers membership support allowing communities the right to vote on enacting a resort tax.

When he added that supporters would appreciate a GOP sponsor to help carry the legislation, none of the six lawmakers had a response.

Jones, who chairs the Joint Education Appropriations Subcommittee, said that because revenue is just not there, legislators will be making some tough decisions" in the coming weeks.

We have to have a balanced budget, and we just dont have the revenues, he said. Some of this should have been cut back a lot sooner than it was.

The next teleconference is set for noon Feb. 16 in Room 155 in the College of Business building on the MSU Billings campus. Attendees should park in the parking garage and take the skybridge across to the College of Business. A light lunch is served.
Triggering Article 50

Did UK MPs represent their constituents in parliament over Brexit?
A recent ruling [Es] by the Dominican constitutional court on citizenship eligibility has generated a lot of media controversy. Al Jazeera joined prestigious newspapers in covering the issue and published a commentary by Dr Manuel Barcia. Unfortunately, Dr Barcias article exhibits multiple problems, including one-sided compassion, brazen unfairness, and misleading and provably erroneous information. If these inaccuracies and problems are not addressed, impoverished innocent people may suffer undesirable side effects.

The ruling: clarifications and justification

One cannot be stripped of something one has never had.

For starters, it is simply false that according to the ruling all those born in the country after 1929, and whose parents were not Dominicans, should no longer be considered Dominican citizens. The ruling has no effect on anyone ever born in the DR to a legal permanent resident.

Furthermore, the ruling did not strip four generations of Dominicans of Haitian descent, of their citizenship. One cannot be stripped of something one has never had. The ruling does dictate that according to all Dominican constitutions [Es] since 1929, those born to illegal residents, or to individuals in certain transient categories, have never qualified for Dominican birthright citizenship (jus soli), unless they were ineligible for the citizenship of their parents (by jus sanguinis).

The ruling makes no change to the official policy of the Dominican Republic. For instance, it can be easily verified that, at least since 1939, a valid Dominican birth declaration has required parents to show valid officially issued identification cards (cedulas de indentidad). Illegal residents cannot legally obtain such IDs. Hence, any Dominican birth certificate, a person in such status may have obtained, is necessarily invalid. Such residents have been, for decades, expected to get birth certificates for their children from their consular authorities.

However, immigration errors, whether by mistake or mischief, are a problem in many societies, and when discovered anywhere around the world, the records are corrected. In fact, the birth certificate presented by the plaintiff explicitly indicates the absence of the parents official IDs, which is prima facie evidence of the certificates invalidity. Since the plaintiff was not likely to be the only one with an improperly obtained Dominican birth certificate, the ruling did order an audit to identify all of those who, for whatever reasons, may have been improperly registered as Dominicans.

The ruling is not retroactive, since each case is considered under the constitution in force at the time of birth (hence the 1929 starting date). In fact, it agrees with previous Dominican court rulings and administrative decisions. For instance, years ago, the Dominican Supreme Court argued [Es] that for as long as parents in legal status under certain (de transito) categories were excluded from jus soli privilege, illegal residents needed to also be excluded, simply as a matter of judicial consistence: No one should gain additional legal benefits as a consequence of falling outside the rule of law.

Comparison to other countries

The excessive outcry by Dr Barcia and others against the ruling inherently implies that the Dominican citizenship policy for illegal residents is exceptionally severe. However, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, 145 of 194 countries do not award automatic citizenship at birth to those born to illegal residents, and 19 are of unknown policy, leaving only 30 countries confirmed to do so (and in only a fraction of these is illegal immigration a serious problem).

In fact, many countries award citizenship regardless of birthplace, but only to children born to their own citizens (jus sanguinis) as, ironically, does Haiti itself! According to Haitis constitution, no one with a Haitian parent can become stateless, and Haitian parents can obtain birth certificates from Haitian consulates worldwide (four of which are in the Dominican Republic). By the same token, a child born in Haiti to Dominicans or any non-Haitians is denied Haitian citizenship, not only if the parents are illegal residents in Haiti, but even if they have long been legal permanent residents there.

Yet, commentators like Dr Barcia do not accuse Haitians, or any of the great many countries with similar policies, of xenophobia or racism.

Likewise, it is disingenuous to imply that a person born to Haitians in the Dominican side of a small island (about the size of Austria or the US state of South Carolina) somehow manages to lose her/his parents language (even though she/he needs it to communicate with them!), as well as all connections with the relatives and culture on the other side of the small island, even though she/he can, on Dominican soil, interact with other Haitians, receive Haitian broadcasts, and possibly, periodically cross the porous border back and forth. And, again, if such argument was valid in the Dominican Republic, it would also apply in any of the 145 plus countries where similar cases arise with normality.

Racial issues

Those who have written the Dominican constitutions have known the past and present factors that induce legitimate concerns on the Dominican people about Haitians massive presence. Dr Barcia, as others, repeatedly accuse Dominicans of racial prejudice. Yet he himself touches on historical events that provide alternate non-racial explanations for Dominicans to feel apprehensive about Haitians and their massive presence. In the early 19th century, Haiti started out as the more prosperous and populous side, officially defined itself as including the entire indivisible island, and promptly invaded the Spanish-speaking side. Retreating Haitian troops committed well-documented abuses on the local population. Years later, shortly after Dominicans became independent from Spain, Haitians invaded again, and went on to rule the Dominican side with an iron fist for over two decades. In 1844, Dominicans fought and won their independence from Haiti, but for years had to resist repeated major armed invasions from Haiti.

Since then, Haiti has retained a numerical population advantage, and a much higher population density. Very large numbers of Haitians have, at one point or another, for various reasons, entered and/or remained in the Dominican Republic without legal approval from the Dominican authorities (currently at least over half a million do so). The possibility that masses of Haitians occupy large portions of the DR, eventually gaining political control over the Dominican Republic through their Dominican-born children is by no means far-fetched.

Moreover, the fact that, in Dr Barcias words, Haitians have constituted the most substantially underpaid labour force forces impoverished Dominicans competing with Haitians for the same jobs to accept the same low wages. They must also compete with Haitians in the informal economy, as well as for overloaded important public services, such as hospitals and schools. It is then undeniable that the massive Haitian presence in the Dominican Republic, while possibly beneficial to certain business interests and wealthy individuals, significantly lowers the living standards of the Dominican poor.

Those who have written the Dominican constitutions have known the past and present factors that induce legitimate concerns on the Dominican people about Haitians massive presence. It stands to reason that they have considered such concerns, while writing the constitutions. This may very well be the strongest argument in favour of the Dominican Constitutional Courts [Es] ruling.

Dr Virgilio Rodriguez is a research scientist at the University of Paderborn in Germany. He has great interest in Dominican migratory and constitutional issues. He holds a doctorate degree from the New York Universitys Polytechnic Institute, and has postgraduate training in economics at the Birbeck College of the University of London.
The history of ancient Egyptian woman can teach the West that it is not the first region in the world to empower women.

Like our Greek cousins across the Mediterranean, Egyptians take outsized pride in their contributions to shaping human civilisation, partly as an antidote to our contemporary state of disarray.

For their part, Europe and America have enjoyed an infatuation with ancient Egyptian civilisation ever since Egypt fell into the European sphere of influence in the 19th century and the architectural splendour of the pharaohs entered popular culture.

But while ancient Greece is widely regarded as the cradle of western civilisation, ancient Egypt is generally viewed as a distant remote and exotic land that bears little direct relation to contemporary life in the West.

Although ancient Greek philosophy, science and culture have exercised a profound influence on European society since the Renaissance, the influence of Egypt on western civilisation should not be underestimated, both directly and through its influence on Greece and Rome.





Cradle of gender equality

One area where Egypt deserves the title of the cradle of western civilisation is, perhaps surprisingly, gender equality.

In ancient Greece, womens status bore little resemblance to the contemporary West and was more akin to that in the most conservative Muslim countries today  and, in some ways, was far worse, as Greek women were generally not allowed to own property.

In contrast, Saudi women, who are not allowed to drive, at least own the lions share of the kingdoms cash, and female entrepreneurs manage a whopping $385bn of wealth in the Gulf as a whole.

Unlike in todays West, ancient Greek women were not regarded as citizens, could not vote, and were excluded from many public spaces. They went from their fathers guardianship to their husbands.

Spartan exception

The relative exception to this was Sparta, where women could own property, be educated and, unlike their shrouded Athenian sisters, were free to exercise outdoors and dress in revealing clothes. This prompted Aristotle to partly blame the downfall of Sparta on the freedom its women enjoyed. The want of men was their ruin, the famed philosopher concluded, because women, in his view, owned too much of Spartas property which resulted in the disorder of the women [that] tends in a measure to foster avarice.

Spartan women were not the most empowered in the ancient world. In fact, the relative rights they enjoyed paled into insignificance compared with their Egyptian counterparts. Unlike women anywhere in the world until the 20th century, Egyptian women were essentially the legal equals of men for millennia.

Despite their legal equality, Egyptian women experienced something that would be familiar to their 21st-century counterpart: the glass ceiling. by

From our earliest preserved records in the Old Kingdom on, the formal legal status of Egyptian women  whether unmarried, married, divorced or widowed  was nearly identical with that of Egyptian men, observes professor of Egyptology Janet Johnson, whose special interests include ancient Egyptian women.

Under the protective gaze of the goddess Isis, who signified the throne of Egypt, women were entitled to work, own property, go to court, bear witness, serve on a jury and much more.

In their private lives, they had the right to choose their partner freely, to marry out of love, to spell out detailed prenuptial agreements to protect them and their children, and to divorce for any reason they wished.

In fact, in ancient Egypt marriage was very different to our conceptions of it. Marriage was not a religious matter in Egypt, no ceremony involving a priest took place, but simply a social convention that required an agreement, explain Egyptologists Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs.

Reversing the common practice of mankind

Given the huge disparity between Egyptian women today and their ancient sisters, it is little wonder that Greek travellers expressed dismay when visiting ancient Egypt. In most of their manners and customs, [Egyptians] exactly reverse the common practice of mankind, observed the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. The women attend the markets and trade, while the men sit at home at the loom.

While Herodotus was wrong about Egyptian men, few of whom practised role reversal, he was right about the women, who could theoretically pursue any profession or career they wished.

While Greek women could not practise medicine until the advent of Agnodice  who fled Athens to study in Alexandria  female doctors were highly regarded in Egypt. This included Peseshet, who was known as the overseer of doctors, and Merit Ptah, who is the first woman ever recorded to have practised medicine, some five millennia ago.

Despite their legal equality, Egyptian women experienced something that would be familiar to their 21st century counterparts: the glass ceiling. Although they had the legal right to practise any profession they desired, the upper echelons of Egyptian society were overwhelmingly male. Only a tiny minority of scribes and priests, two of the most respected professions, were women.

OPINION: Say enough to violence against women

The top job of all, that of pharaoh, who was regarded as both human and divine, was mostly off bounds to women, with some notable exceptions, such as the amazingly accomplished Hatshepsut, Nefertiti and Cleopatra.

We can draw two important lessons from the under-appreciated history of ancient Egyptian woman. Firstly, it can teach the West some humility, by showing that it is not the first region in the world to empower women.

Secondly, it can shatter the myth that I hear so often from conservatives in Muslim societies and the global South, that gender equality is some alien western import.

It can provide Egyptian, Arab and non-western feminists living in post-colonial societies with alternative inspirations for female empowerment and emancipation, not just to emulate but to surpass.

Khaled Diab is an award-winning Egyptian Belgian journalist, writer and blogger. He is the author of Intimate Enemies: Living with Israelis and Palestinians in the Holy Land. He blogs at www.chronikler.com.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
The past week has been distressingly sad, following the outrageous news coming from the United States featuring Muslims who are affected by President Donald Trumps racist Muslim ban.

Reading about the heartbreaking stories of the bans victims, among them separated families, anxious students, and banned scientists, I was struck by the similarities between their plight and that of millions of Palestinians around the world.

From the seven million refugees and their descendants who were forced out of Palestine after Israels creation in 1948 and who are not allowed to return to their homes in Palestine (mainly because Israel destroyed their homes and replaced them with new ones for Jews who agreed to come to Israel), to the two million people in Gaza whose entire lives have been subject to a ruthless siege for the past 11 years, and the three million Palestinian hostages to an apartheid wall, checkpoints, and illegal settlements in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Palestinian Christians, Druze and Muslims alike, we have all been subject to something of a ban  whether a ban on returning to our homeland, a ban travelling within it, a ban on leaving it, or a ban on re-entering it.

While the bans we have suffered bear an astonishing resemblance to Trumps ban, one major difference is that while Trumps Muslim ban has enraged people, governments, international businesses and organisations around the world, Israels ongoing Palestinian bans enjoy the indifferent silence, complicity and, in some cases, support of the world.

Walls and racial profiling

In the midst of international uproar against Trumps Muslim ban and his plans to build a wall along the border with Mexico, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, enjoying unabashed backing from the US president, posted a contemptible tweet where he indirectly defended Trumps plan to build a wall along the US-Mexico border by boasting about the wall he built along Israels southern border, which he claimed stopped all illegal immigration, for it  as he himself has put it  had to protect Israels existence as a Jewish and democratic state by stopping African immigrants from reaching Israel. Earlier this year, Trump defended his plan by saying: A wall protects. All you have to do is ask Israel.

It is rather telling that Netanyahus tweet caused a bigger diplomatic backlash against him than the fact that Israel continues to build the apartheid wall in the West Bank, which was deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice.

More than 85 percent of the wall is actually located in the West Bank, dividing the already occupied territory into ghettos and military zones, and turning the daily lives of thousands of Palestinians into a nightmare.

The actions of Trump, Netanyahu, and other racists around the world will cause an increase in isolated communities around the world, leading to things we have never imagined could happen. by

Another interesting fact hasnt received much attention: Trump is likely to use the experience of the Israeli security firm Magal Security Systems to identify the most suitable smart technology for his Mexico wall.

The company, which played the leading role in building the apartheid wall in the West Bank, enjoyed a 20 percent rise in the price of its shares after Trumps victory in November.

To draw the parallel further: the White House was highly criticised this week for unrepentantly stating that a five-year-old American boy who was detained and handcuffed at an airport posed a security risk.

Here, I urge every American who was justly outraged by this malicious act and statement to note that US tax money goes into funding Israeli occupation, which in the year 2016 alone arrested, held, and in some cases tortured more than 500 Palestinian children, and killed 35 others.

Normalised suffering

Palestines only airport was built in Gaza in 1998, but was destroyed by Israel in 2001. The following year, Israel embarked on building the apartheid wall in the West Bank, and in 2006 it imposed the Gaza ban.

Out of diplomatic duty, the world politely criticised Israels walls and bans at the time, but it forgot about the victims all too quickly. Today, we Palestinians have become experienced victims of Israels racist walls and bans, viewing Trumps shockingly similar policies with a fatigued eye.

We thought the ban was going to last for a few weeks, or months, at the most. Eleven years later, for many Gazans the idea of travel has become so abstract, invoking feelings of anguish at the hellish experience one has to endure in order to travel, and only for extreme necessity.

The stories of the two million people in Gaza, of whom less than a mere 7 percent were allowed to travel via Israel or Egypt combined throughout 2016 alone, barely make it to the news any more.

OPINION: Donald Trump is wrong about Israels security wall

Over the past 11 years, Israels ongoing Gaza ban has deprived an entire generation from travelling outside of Gaza, divided thousands of families, wasted countless visas and scholarships (including six Fulbright scholars from Gaza whose scholarships were revoked by the US after Israel banned them from travelling in 2012), prevented Gazas Christians from celebrating Christmas and Easter in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, barred Gazas Muslims from travelling to Mecca for the hajj or to Jerusalem during Ramadan, and cost the lives of hundreds of patients in need of sophisticated healthcare that lies beyond the capacity of Gazas hospitals.

Thus, from a weary Gazans perspective, I expect that the world is likely to forget about the Muslim ban, like it forgot about Palestine.

The actions of Trump, Netanyahu, and other racists around the world will cause an increase in isolated communities around the world, leading to things we have never imagined could happen.

OPINION: Trumps Muslim ban is a dangerous distraction

The experiment started in Gaza, spread to the seven countries banned by the US, and will likely expand to include even more countries.

I urge everyone fighting Trumps bigotry to remember that the same policies have been implemented against the Palestinians for decades. In order for justice to truly prevail, we must target racism in all its forms across the world.

Yasmeen Elkhoudary is a Palestinian from Gaza currently based in London. She is an independent researcher specialising in Gazas archaeological and cultural heritage.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
State department figure contradicts US media reports quoting government lawyer saying 100,000 visas have been cancelled.

Up to 60,000 travellers to the United States had their visas revoked after President Donald Trump ordered a ban on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, according to the State Department.

The admission on Friday came hours after US media reports quoted a government lawyer as saying that about 100,000 travel visas had been cancelled following Trumps move.





A week ago, Trump issued an executive order halting arrivals for at least 90 days for the citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

All refugee arrivals from around the world were also halted, in this case for 120 days.

Fewer than 60,000 individuals visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the Executive Order, Will Cocks, spokesman for the departments bureau of consular affairs, said on Friday.

We recognise that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the Executive Order, he said.

During the 90-day ban period, the US administration will review visa procedures with a view to introducing what Trump has called extreme vetting to weed out suspected extremists.

OPINION: All international laws Trumps Muslim ban is breaking

US officials have denied the ban amounts to an anti-Muslim measure, despite the order saying religious minorities in the mainly Muslim countries will get priority treatment.

Trump said the move is needed to tighten US security against foreign terror threats, citing the September 11, 2001 attacks, despite the hijackers having no links to the named countries.

In the days after the move, dozens of visitors with valid visas and many with green card residency permits were detained on arrival at airports and many were sent back.

The White House has said 109 people were held for questioning upon arrival under Trumps executive order. US media have cited homeland security officials as saying many hundreds were denied boarding to the US as the ban was rolled out.

Meanwhile, four US states  Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington  were in court on Friday mounting challenges to Trumps ban, with the challengers contending the move was unconstitutional.

The states arguments focused on the bans alleged targeting of people based on religion, which would violate the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution prohibiting the government from favouring one religion over another.

The White House has contended the moves were necessary for national security, and Department of Justice lawyers on Friday said religion had not been a factor in the selection of the seven countries.
President says he will not run in August vote after decades in power, but will retain control of powerful ruling party.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Africas second-longest serving leader, has confirmed he will not run in this years presidential election, calling an end to 38 years as head of state, but he will retain control of the powerful ruling party.

Dos Santos, aged 74, said in March last year he would not run in elections due in August 2017, but opponents remained suspicious given he had reneged on similar pledges during in the past.

The ruling Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) approved 62-year-old Defence Minister Joao Lourenco as its presidential candidate at a meeting on December 2, dos Santos said in a televised speech on Friday.

Dos Santos will remain president of the MPLA, retaining sweeping powers that include choosing parliamentary candidates and appointing top posts in the army and police.

READ MORE: Angola launches crackdown amid plunging oil prices

Al Jazeeras Tania Page, reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa, said dos Santos will remain as an influential figure.

He will stay on as the leader of the governing party, which is expected to win the election. That means he has an enormous amount of say not only on who his anointed successor  who is a close ally of his  will be, but also on other key government officials, she said.

Dos Santos has held tight control of Angola, where he has overseen an oil-backed economic boom and the reconstruction of infrastructure devastated by a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002.

The real news is dos Santos hanging on, Gary van Staden, political analyst at NKC African Economics, told the Reuters news agency.

He is going to stay in a very powerful position in the party, which means he is going to stay in control and the president will defer to him.

Dos Santos dynasty

Despite its oil wealth, most of Angolas 22 million people live in poverty.

The country is in sub-Saharan Africas third largest economy but a collapse in oil prices has triggered a full-scale national economic crisis since 2013.

Critics accuse dos Santos of mismanaging Angolas oil wealth and making an elite, mainly his family and political allies, vastly rich in a country ranked among the worlds most corrupt.

READ MORE: Angola jails 17 activists for anti-government rebellion

His daughter, Isabel dos Santos was appointed last year as head of the state oil company, Sonangol, while his son, Jose Filomeno, is chairman of Angolas sovereign wealth fund.

Hes pursuing a legacy plan with family members retaining control of key financial institutions, Darias Jonker, Africa Director at Eurasia Group, told Reuters.

We see signs that he plans to retain some power behind the throne.

The MPLA won parliamentary majorities in the three elections since the end of the war.

Lourenco, a former soldier and deputy president of the MPLA, is also a veteran of the independence struggle, Lourenco studied history in the Soviet Union from 1978 to 1982 before starting a long career in politics.

Lourenco has proven himself as competent technocrat without major scandals in his past and hes probably the best selection the party could have made, Jonker said.
Fridays fatalities bring total death toll of latest wave of violence to 34 after relative calm in 33-month war.

At least nine people, including civilians, have been killed in eastern Ukraine as an upsurge in violence between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia rebels has raised fears of a humanitarian disaster.

The Ukrainian army said Fridays fatalities included a local woman and an emergency worker in the government-held town of Avdiivka, where mortar and rocket fire were exchanged between the warring sides.





Five soldiers were killed in other parts of eastern Ukraine where a pro-Russia unrest has raged since April 2014.

The rebels said that shelling by the Ukrainian army also killed two civilians in the separatists de facto capital of Donetsk.

AFP news agency reporters in Avdiivka said on Friday the shelling had died down considerably in the town itself, and that only sporadic echoes of mortar fire could be heard on its outskirts.

The latest reports from both sides take the death toll since Sunday in the eastern war zone to 34, a level not seen since the height of the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and 2015.

In a statement on Friday, the UN warned that both government forces and armed groups must take all feasible measures to protect the civilian population in the areas under their control.

We are seriously concerned about the dire humanitarian and human rights situation of civilians in eastern Ukraine where there has been an escalation in fighting along the contact line, the UN said.

INTERACTIVE: Ukraine divided  personal stories from warring sides

The separatists sudden assault came after a month-long spell of relative calm and has sharpened the worlds focus on the bloodshed.

Negotiators from Ukraine and Russia, as well as the rebels, agreed in the Belarusian capital Minsk on Wednesday to withdraw heavy weapons from the frontline by Sunday.

The deal suggests that the Avdiivka violence may soon wane.

Aggressive actions

Ukraine and Russia have traded blame over who started the violence and who was responsible for the deaths.

Nikki Haley, the ambassador of the United States to the United Nations, on Thursday condemned Russias aggressive actions in Ukraine.

But Russian President Vladimir Putins spokesman Dmitry Peskov countered that without question, we dispute (Haleys) position.

Peskov said Moscow continues to coherently explain our own position to all members of the UN Security Council and our other partners, including the permanent representative from the United States.

The US also said it would not lift sanctions against Russia, as many in Kiev feared it would do under US President Donald Trump, until the Kremlin returned the annexed Crimean peninsula to Ukraine.
European Union leaders have agreed on a controversial plan to help stem the flow of African migrants from Libya this spring.

At a summit in Malta, the blocs leaders on Friday decided to give 200m euro ($215m) to Libyas fragile government to step up efforts to stop migrant boats in the countrys territorial waters.

Under the plan, the EU will also provide support for the setting up of safe refugee camps in Libya and the voluntary repatriation of refugees willing to return to their countries of origin.

It will also boost training and equipment to Libyas struggling coastguard and get more involved with neighbouring nations, including Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt, to contain the flows.





Aid groups, however, accused the EU  whose leaders are under popular pressure to be seen to be controlling immigration  of abandoning humanitarian values and misrepresenting conditions in Libya, where the UN-backed government of Fayez Seraj has only a shaky and partial hold on the country.

Libya is not a safe place and blocking people in the country or returning them to Libya makes a mockery of the EUs so-called fundamental values of human dignity and rule of law, said Doctors Without Borders (known by its French initials, MSF), which works in camps there.

Others warned the deal could result in women and children being returned to inhumane conditions and left vulnerable to rape, beatings and forced labour, as well as forcible repatriation to uncertain fates in their home countries.

Sending children back to a country many have described as a living hell is not a solution, said Ester Asin of British charity Save the Children, in advance of the approval of the widely trailed new EU strategy.

READ MORE: 2016  The year the world stopped caring about refugees

Yves Pascouau, director of migration and mobility policies at the European Policy Centre, told Al Jazeera, that talk of stemming refugee flows and breaking the business models of people smugglers was futile.

We all know that if we really want to break this business model, we also need to provide legal ways to enter the EU, which [do not exist] today, he said.

There is only one focus [at the EU level] and thats the security-oriented dimension; the idea that were going to stop arrivals from Turkey first and then from Libya.

The chaos in Libya has thwarted any hope of a quick fix in the way that a controversial EU deal with Turkey a year ago led to a virtual halt to a migrant route to Germany via Greece along which a million asylum seekers travelled in 2015.

READ MORE: Ten countries host half of worlds refugees

The agreement on Friday came a day after Seraj signed a deal with Italy, which offered 200 million euros ($215 million) of its own. Rome fears new arrivals this spring, following a record influx of 181,000 migrants last year, would put pressure on services and risk a popular backlash  especially since its EU neighbours are no longer letting most migrants travel north out of Italy.

Many EU governments are sceptical that the latest measures can have much effect on migration. One senior diplomat called it a long shot. Several said the declaration was intended partly to appease Italian demands that the EU be seen to be acting.

In the longer run, analysts say European leaders are placing hopes in using their aid muscle in Africa to reduce incentives for people to leave, while giving African governments reasons to take back citizens who fail to win asylum in Europe.

Deporting more of those who reach Italy is part of a wider plan to send signals to Africans not to risk the Sahara and Mediterranean in the vain hope of a better life.

At Agadez in Niger, numbers gathering to cross the Sahara have plunged in recent months, which some EU officials think may indicate that strategy of deterrence is working. However, human smugglers may just have altered routes.
Police say there was a terrorist nature to the incident as security cordon is thrown up around iconic museum.

A soldier on Friday shot and wounded a man armed with a machete who was trying to enter the Louvre museum in central Paris, police said.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the incident was terrorist in nature.

Police said that the man had been trying to get into the museums underground shop with a suitcase. His bag contained no explosives.

We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident, Michel Cadot, the head of the French capitals police force, said, adding the man had shouted, God is great.

The attacker was shot five times and seriously wounded. The soldier suffered slight head injuries.

The interior ministry said on Twitter that the incident was serious. An anti-terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement.

Evenement grave de #securite publique en cours a #Paris quartier du #Louvre, priorite a l'intervention des forces de securite et de secours pic.twitter.com/PxTLacJk7a  Ministere de l'Interieur (@Interieur_Gouv) February 3, 2017

Al Jazeeras Natacha Butler, reporting from Paris, said the motivation and the identity of the attacker is unknown.

The entire area has been cordoned off with high-level security at the site, she said. France has been in a state of emergency after a string of attacks for the past few years. And there [are] soldiers in several public places in Paris.

A spokeswoman for the Louvre said the museum was closed for the moment but would not confirm reports it had been evacuated.

The huge former royal palace in the heart of the city is home to the Mona Lisa and other world-famous works of art but is also a shopping complex and houses numerous exhibition spaces.

France has suffered a string of attacks.

In January 2015, gunmen killed cartoonists and journalists at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper in Paris, while another attacker went on to kill shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, bringing the total number of people killed to 17 in three days of bloodshed.

Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people.

Last July, a Tunisian man rammed a truck through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on Frances south coast, crushing 86 people to death.

After Fridays incident at the Louvre, US President Donald Trump tweeted: A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.
What can we do, Dad?

It was just before Christmas and the Jarecke family of Joliet was distraught about the safety of their extended family in Syria. Family members have been kidnapped and one was killed.

They posed the question to their father, Ken Jarecke, a Pulitzer Prize-nominated photojournalist who has covered the Gulf War and 10 Olympic Games, in addition to photographing the people of Syria where his wife, Souad, was born.

Ken Jarecke said their fear has grown to the point that they don't mention Syrian family members by name, fearing for their safety.

Souad immigrated to the U.S. with her parents and siblings when she was 3. She is a naturalized citizen of the U.S., but she has close relatives in Syria, where 250,000 have died and 7.6 million have been displaced since 2011.

Since the Jarecke children, ages 16 to 22, were raised so far away from their mother's homeland they wanted to send help. Jarecke's agent suggested a fundraiser featuring Jarecke's portraits of Syrians, many of which were taken on Jarecke's last trip there in 2006.

'I can smell the mist'

One stunning photo showing a man diving off an ancient water wheel into the Orontes River evokes strong memories of a beautiful place that may no longer exist.

I can smell the mist. The water wheels create a mist and I can smell that, Jarecke said.

Jarecke wrote this about the image: "Young men ride these ancient water wheels, known as norias, and either jump or dive off, depending on their level of skill. It's quite a show and many come to watch the spectacle as the sun goes down."

Jarecke got help selecting the 12 collectible prints he is offering for sale at a price much lower than his usual rate. They are available at jarecke.bigcartel.com. In just over a month, Jarecke has almost reached his goal of raising $25,000 for Syria. Individual archival prints signed and printed by Jarecke are $185 or you can purchase six for $810.

The Jareckes have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support for their fundraising effort. Huffington Post recently wrote about it.

Its surprising in a delightful way. Its different than just getting likes on Facebook or Instagram  its people making an investment to bring these photos into their homes, Jarecke said.

One photograph of a young boy leading his camel in the ancient city of Palmyra had never been printed before Jarecke put it up for sale in December, 2016. That photo is one of the most popular in the series.

Jarecke wrote this about the image: "I'm not sure what remains of this ancient city. To me, it was a true treasure. As a kid growing up in Omaha, Palmyra was what I imagined the exotic Arab world to be."

Showing empathy

Another photo shows a group of children sharing swings made out of wire, tied around a low-hanging tree branch.

Jarecke said he tries to convey his empathy for every subject.

"You need to capture the image so the viewer can recognize themselves in it. Without empathy, the images have a very short shelf life."

Jarecke is still offering the prints for sale, but he is not actively promoting the project because he's been both appreciative and overwhelmed with orders.

The money is being donated to International Orthodox Christian Charities, which is helping supply clean water, food and medical care in Syria.

Some people have mailed in donations without asking for a print and a church in Chicago contacted Jarecke for assistance in sending a representative and money to Syria.

The Jareckes stay in touch with their Syrian relatives, mostly on Facebook. Jarecke said the relatives tell them things are getting better in Syria, but he suspects they are putting a positive spin on a dire situation.

He wants to return to Syria, but he fears it will be hard for Souad to get back into the country.

'Treasure of my life'

The Jareckes moved to Joliet in 1992, and the Jarecke children attend Laurel High School, Rocky Mountain College and Montana State University.

On Jarecke's first trip to Syria in 1993, he and Souad visited one of the oldest Christian monasteries in the world, Our Lady of Saidnaya. A nun whispered to Souad that she was with child. Nine months later, their first child, Shadya, was born.

Now 22 and a student at Rocky Mountain College, Shadya has helped promote the Syrian prints.

"I am so proud of my dad. He's one of the most compassionate people I know," Shadya said.

Jarecke and Souad met in the 1980s when they attended the University of Nebraska in Omaha. In 1989, Jarecke moved to New York to work for Life and Time magazines. A friend suggested that Souad get in touch with Jarecke so he could show her around New York.

For their first real date, he left Beijing where he was on assignment to photograph the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, which led to the June 4, 1989, massacre.

I called her and said, Its my grandmas birthday. Maybe you can have dinner with us. Her sister said, Hes calling from China, you have to say yes. I left China to make this date and I didnt even tell my editors I left. I upset a lot of people, but I got the greatest treasure of my life  my wife.
The Trump administration said on Thursday that Israels building of new settlements and expansion of existing ones in the occupied territories may not help to achieve peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than previous pro-Israel announcements.

In a statement issued two weeks before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit US President Donald Trump, the White House said the administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity.

While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal, the statement said.

Trump has signalled he could be more accommodating toward settlement projects than his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Al Jazeeras Imran Khan, reporting from West Jerusalem, said there was certainly a change of tone in the White House statement.

In the last two weeks they have not reacted at all to the 6,000 new settlements announced by the Israelis. And a lot of people, particularly right-wing politicians, took that as a green light, he said.

This is nowhere near as strong a statement as compared to the previous administration under former President Barack Obama.

READ MORE: Israel approves permits for 566 settler homes

Obama routinely criticised settlement construction plans and his administration often described settlement activity as lacking legitimacy and impeding peace.

The White House statement came as Israel ratcheted up settlement activity. On Wednesday, it said it would establish a new settlement in the occupied West Bank, the first since the late 1990s.

It also announced plans for 3,000 more settlement homes in the West Bank, the third such declaration in less than two weeks since Trump took office.

An announcement a week ago by Israel that it would build some 2,500 more dwellings in the West Bank, where Palestinians now seek statehood, drew rebukes from the Palestinians and the European Union.

Al Jazeeras Khan said that the Palestinians were very angry. They said the settlement activity might be the death of the two-state solution and frenzied escalation.

Analysts have told me that the international condemnation and shock may have forced the White House to issue some sort of a statement, Khan said.

Israels top court ruled in 2014 that the hilltop outpost of Amona, with 280 residents and located some 20 kilometres north of Jerusalem, was built on land belonging to Palestinians and had to be vacated by February 8.
Army has carried out mass killings of Muslim minority, UN rights office says, in possible ethnic cleansing.

Myanmars security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Rohingya Muslims and burned down villages since October in a campaign that likely amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing, according to the United Nations.

The area clearance operations have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths, a report from the UNs human rights office said, referring to a military crackdown launched in the wake of an attack on a military post.





Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the UN high commissioner for human rights, said that Myanmars leader Aung San Suu Kyi promised on Friday to investigate the allegations.

She informed me that an investigation will be launched. She said that they would require further information, he said.

The report, which was based on interviews with 204 Rohingya refugees who fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, recounted gruesome violations allegedly carried out by members of Myanmars security services or civilian fighters working alongside the army and the police.

Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half said they had been raped or sexually assaulted.

Several women told UN investigators how their young children, including a newborn, were trampled or cut to death.

Security forces were also accused of opening fire at people fleeing and burning entire villages, as well as of massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food.

Tun Khin, a Rohingya activist, told Al Jazeera that the international community now needed to change what he called a soft approach towards Myanmars government.

Every day Rohingya are facing abuses and extrajudicial killings are going on, Khin, who heads the UK-based Burmese Rohingya Organisation, said.

The [UN Security Council] has to come up with a strong binding resolution to take action against the Myanmar government, he said, adding that he was pushing hard for the issue to be tabled there.

IN PICTURES: Rohingya  Chased by Myanmar, unwelcome in Bangladesh

The UN said it had reports of three children aged six or younger being slaughtered with knives.

An eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers, the rights office also said, citing witness accounts.

What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mothers milk, UN rights chief Zeid Raad al-Hussein said in the statement. What kind of clearance operation is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?

Fleeing over the border

The Rohingya, numbering about 1.1 million, are loathed by many among Myanmars Buddhist majority and live in apartheid-like conditions in the Muslim-majority Rakhine state in the north.

Yangon refuses to recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic minority, instead describing them as illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh, even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

The governments own investigation into the violence found that the security forces had not carried out a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.

WATCH: Aung San Suu Kyis shameful silence on the Rohingya

About 66,000 people have fled from Rakhine to Bangladesh since the army launched a security operation in response to attacks on police border posts on October 9, the report said. The UN humanitarian office has recently put the figure at 69,000.

The UN report was issued in Geneva after the investigators gathered testimony last month from Rohingya victims and witnesses who fled the lockdown area in Maungdaw in Rakhine for Coxs Bazar in Bangladesh.
Demonstrators take to the streets as ombudsman challenges amendment that would decriminalise minor graft offences.

Tens of thousands of people across Romania have rallied for a fourth day, protesting against what they deem an alarming retreat in the countrys fight against corruption.

The marches on Friday came as the political crisis over a controversial decree showed no sign of easing.

Earlier, Romanias ombudsman went to the Constitutional Court to challenge the decree that decriminalises abuse of power offences in which the sums do not exceed 200,000 lei ($48,000).

A separate bill, to go before parliament, would free some 2,500 prisoners on short sentences.

PHOTOS: Protests surge as Romania decriminalises corruption

The government insists it is bringing legislation into line with the constitution and that it wants to reduce overcrowding in prisons.

Ombudsman Victor Ciorbeas move echoed a plea from the general prosecutor and added to challenges to the top court by centre-right President Klaus Iohannis and the council of magistrates.

General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar said he welcomed the court challenge and that his office had its own case before the Court of Appeals.

Biggest protests in decades

The street protests have been on a scale not seen since the fall of communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

On Friday, some 180,000 people marched across the country, with the majority in the capital, Bucharest.

Al Jazeeras David Chater, reporting from Bucharest, said: Its becoming a fight for survival for the Social Democratic government.

The Social Democrats are determined to ignore this huge protest. Its turning from a protest against these amendments, to a protest against the government itself, and demands for the government to resign.

The decree potentially scuttles an ongoing trial of the governing Social Democrat party chief and benefits dozens of other public officials.

Laura Codruta Kovesi at DNA, a corruption prosecuting agency, said: Indirectly, the entire Romanian people will suffer  The damages from these cases over the past three years is over $1bn. Its worth mentioning that this money will never be recovered if these amendments pass.

The government has rejected calls to rescind the decree.

OPINION: Romania  Keep the corrupt in jail, where they belong

On Thursday, after a meeting in Bucharest of his ruling Social Democrats, Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu said: We took a decision in the government and we are going to press ahead.

But cracks in cabinet unity emerged with the resignation on Thursday of a minister and a call from a vice-president of the ruling party for the measure to be withdrawn.

Protesters said they would return every day until February 10, when the contentious decree  issued by the government late Tuesday  is due to enter into force.

A major demonstration in Bucharest was planned for Saturday afternoon, with protesters expected to march to the parliament.
Military says a total of 47 fighters killed in northern Syria in clashes and air raids in the past 24 hours.

Turkish and US-led coalition fighter jets have carried out bombing raids against ISIL positions near Syrias al-Bab, a town held by ISIL and besieged by Turkey-backed Syrian rebels for almost two months, according to a Turkish military statement.

A total of 47 ISIL (also known as ISIS) fighters were neutralised in clashes and air raids in the past 24 hours, the statement said, adding that buildings, defence posts, shelters and an ammunition depot were destroyed in raids.

The Turkish army also hit 135 Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant targets in northern Syria, the General Staff said in a statement.

Turkish jets destroyed 64 targets, including 45 buildings, three bomb-laden vehicles and five headquarters used by the armed groups in the region around al-Bab, according to the statement.

There was no immediate response from ISIL.

Turkey first sent tanks across the border on August 24 as part of the operation Euphrates Shield. Four days later, the Turkish army suffered its first fatality in northern Syria, in a rocket attack blamed on Kurdish militias.

The city is in a strategic area, close to the Turkish border in northern Syria en route to Raqqa and Idlib. Al-Bab is one of the few remaining strongholds of ISIL.

If it takes Al-Bab, the Turkish military says its next objective is to clear the whole area and retake the town of Manbij from the SDF, a largely Kurdish militia.

More than 215 residential areas, including Jarablus city in northern Syria, have been cleared of ISIL as part of the Euphrates Shield operation so far, according to the Turkish military.
The US defence secretary warned North Korea on Friday of an effective and overwhelming response if Pyongyang chose to use nuclear weapons.

Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming, Defense Secretary James Mattis said on a visit to South Korea, one of Americas closest allies.

The remarks came as concern from mounted that North Korea could be readying a new ballistic missile test, in what could be an early diplomatic challenge for President Donald Trumps administration.

Al Jazeeras Harry Fawcett, reporting from Seoul, said: There is a great deal of focus as to potential change in US policy towards North Korea and towards the alliance here in South Korea as well.

North Korea, which is technically still at war with the South since signing an Armistice agreement in 1953, carried out more than 20 missile tests last year, as well as two nuclear tests, in defiance of UN resolutions and sanctions.

READ MORE: Analysts say North Korea not bluffing on ICBM launch

North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons programme and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour, Mattis said at the end of the two-day visit  his first overseas trip.

Missile system

A US missile defence system, known as Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), is due to be deployed in South Korea later this year. China has objected to THAAD, saying it will destabilise the regional security balance, leading to calls from some South Korean opposition leaders to delay or cancel it.

Both governments committed themselves to implementing it by the end of this year, but a presidential impeachment scandal is still ongoing here, Al Jazeeras Fawcett said. It is possible there will be a change in government before that. So it remains something of an open question.

South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo, though, reaffirmed plans to deploy THAAD and said Mattis visit to Seoul  his first trip as defence secretary  sent a clear message of strong US support.

Faced with a current severe security situation, Secretary Mattis visit to Korea  also communicates the strongest warning to North Korea, Han said.

READ MORE: Will there be a Korean war under Donald Trump?

The US military has a permanent base in South Korea and the two countries conduct regular military drills that the North has called provocations. The reclusive state has often threatened military action, including nuclear and missile attacks against South Korea and the US.

The North appears to have restarted operation of a reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear facility which produces plutonium that can be used for its nuclear weapons programme, according to US think-tank 38 North.

Once fully developed, a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) could threaten the continental US, which is about 9,000km from North Korea. ICBMs have a minimum range of about 5,500km, but some are designed to travel 10,000km or more.
Mozambiques former rebel group Renamo and the Frelimo-led government have signed a ceasefire deal, ending two years of armed conflict, ahead of a presidential election scheduled for October 15.

Chief negotiators from the government and Renamo signed the declaration late on Sunday night in the capital Maputo, ending a nearly year-long negotiation process.

A ceasefire has been signed, Renamos chief negotiator at the peace talks with the government, Saimon Macuiane, told the AFP news agency, adding that the definitive agreement was effective as of 20:00 GMT on Sunday.

Renamo forces have waged a low-level armed struggle since party leader Afonso Dhlakama returned to the bush in 2012, two decades after he signed a peace accord with the ruling Frelimo party.

Men thought to be members of the former rebel movement have been attacking buses, trucks and cars on the main north-south highway since April last year.

Government forces overran the Renamo base camp in the central Gorongosa district a few months later in August.

The late night declaration came after the two sides reached a general peace agreement a week ago, including consensus over the integration of Renamos remaining armed forces into state security forces.

Rebel leader in hiding

Dhlakama, who has been hiding in the remote Gorongosa mountains in central Sofala province for close to a year, did not travel to the capital to sign the ceasefire himself, despite previously promising he would do so once his party reached a final agreement with the government.

He mandated me to declare it, Macuiane said but suggested Dhlakama would meet Mozambiques President Armando Guebuza at a later date.

It is obvious that there will be a high level, symbolic meeting later on, he said.

Under terms agreed with the government, Dhlakama expects to keep his personal security guards [numbering several hundred] until they can be integrated into state forces, a process that will be overseen by an international force.

Similarly, Renamo only expects to hand over its remaining weapons after the integration process has begun.

We have begun a new era for the country, Macuiane said, calling the ceasefire an important step towards national reconciliation  and a durable peace.

Parliament is expected to begin working to create conditions as set out in the peace agreement in the coming week.

Despite the ceasefire, Renamo and the government will continue negotiations as not all points have been settled including economic questions and the status of Renamo appointees into security structures, Macuiane said.

The date set for presidential and national polls, October 15, remains unchanged, Macuiane indicated.

The ceasefire will also allow Dhlakama to leave his bush base and campaign for the elections.

The constitution bars Guebuza from running for a third term and former Defence Minister Filipe Nyusi will run as the Frelimo candidate.

Whoever wins the vote will face the challenging task of bringing to fruition major coal and offshore natural gas investment projects that have the potential to bring billions of dollars to a nation that was in ruins two decades ago.
Morocco wants the border reopened for economic reasons, but the issue remains a low priority for Algeria, experts say.

Marsa Ben Mhdi, Algeria  The Algeria-Morocco frontier has remained closed for the past 20 years because of political friction, with locals on each side of the border eagerly awaiting a resolution.

To the west lies Saida beach in Morocco; to the east is Marsa Ben Mhdi, also known as Port-say, a small city on the Mediterranean coast in Algeria. Only a small sandbank separates thousands of Moroccan-Algerian families living in the borderland.

Every week, I used to visit my aunt and my cousins, who reside in Saida. Since 1994, I have not seen them a single time, Hamouda, a former Algerian policeman who did not provide a last name, told Al Jazeera.

RELATED  Analysis: Hamrouche Algerias next president?

The border between Morocco and Algeria, which runs for about 1,600km, is one of the longest closed frontiers in the world. Algeria shut its land border with Morocco in 1994 after Rabat imposed visa regulations on Algerian visitors in the wake of a terrorist attack on the Atlas Asni Hotel in Marrakech. At the time, Morocco suspected Algiers was behind the bombing.

Rabat expected Algiers to slap visa requirements on Moroccans, but the kingdom could not imagine that Algeria would also retaliate by closing the border crossings, Abdelaziz Rahabi, who served as the Algerian ambassador in Spain at the time, told Al Jazeera. Algeria reacted firmly as the country was going through a rough patch. Actually, 1994 was one of the bloodiest years of the black decade [when a civil war raged between the government and armed groups].

Since then, checkpoints, on both sides of the border, have been closed and controls tightened. The two countries marked the 20th anniversary of the closure of their common border this year by building a barbed-wire fence, starting from the beach, under the pretext of fighting both terrorism and trafficking. It is expected to separate the entire frontier, a young guard, posted in Marsa Ben Mhdi beach, told Al Jazeera in an interview last month. So far, the fence stretches about 40km along the border.

In Morocco, this is a burning topic but in Algeria, this is really not the top priority. by - Amel Boubekeur, international security expert

As a consequence of the closure, families separated by the frontier must fly to the neighbouring country to visit their loved ones, although some manage to reunite on the parallel roads leading to the coast alongside the border. Hamid, who did not want to provide a last name and whose mother was recently planning to fly to see her sister in Morocco for the first time since 1993, described the journey as a long and expensive trip.

Signs of a thaw between Algeria and Morocco initially appeared years ago, after King Mohamed VIs accession to the throne in Morocco and the election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika as Algerias president in 1999. In the summer of 2004, Morocco decided that Algerian travellers would no longer need a visa to enter Morocco.

A year later, in 2005, Algeria returned the favour. But the two countries stopped engaging in dialogue soon after, when Moroccos King Mohammed VI announced, at the last minute, that the visit of then-Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia was inappropriate.

As a result, what was first a temporary measure in 1994 has become the status quo. Now in his fourth term and at the age of 77, an ailing Bouteflika has consistently refused to reopen the border.

In Morocco, this is a burning topic but in Algeria, this is really not the top priority. So, the Bouteflika administration turns a deaf ear to Moroccos persistent calls for the reopening of the border, Amel Boubekeur, a non-resident fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Al Jazeera. Some Moroccans believe that the powerful State Intelligence Service (DRS) prevents Bouteflika from reopening the border, she added.

The row over the Western Sahara has further strained diplomatic relations between the two countries. Morocco has asserted control over this desert region against demands for independence made by the Polisario movement, whose claims Algeria supports. And given recent security threats along Algerias Libyan border, Africas largest country is unlikely to reopen its Moroccan border, experts say.

Morocco keeps pushing to reopen the border with its wealthier neighbour because, unlike Algeria, it has no gas or oil of its own, Rahabi said. The closure of the land border impacts Moroccos economy more, mainly in potential tourist and trade flows.

Algerian-Moroccan political deadlock also deeply impedes economic integration in the Maghreb, which is among the least economically integrated regions in the world. The Arab Maghreb Union, a regional organisation created in 1989 to foster economic and political union, has failed to encourage trade in North Africa in large part because of this deadlock, said Hichem Sakhi, a member of the 20th February Movement, a liberal grassroots organisation calling for free movement of all Maghreb people.

The development of Morocco and Algeria depends on economic cooperation between these two countries, said Sakhi, who dreams of being able to drive to Algeria. According to World Bank data, the per-capita GDP in Algeria and Morocco would have nearly doubled between 2005 and 2015 had meaningful regional integration been promoted.

In the wake of globalisation, it is time for reunification, not division, Abdelmoumen Fersaoui, an Algerian social activist and a member of the Maghreb Social Forum, told Al Jazeera.

RELATED: UN: Western Sahara needs rights monitors

Meanwhile, the border region remains the territory of smugglers. Perched on the far western edge of Algeria, about 600km west of the capital Algiers, Maghnia, the main city in the oriental region of Maroc, is the capital of smugglers. Here, the cafeterias are full of bootleggers.

Their phones never stop ringing, said Massi, 22, who works in a pizzeria.

Clothing, food, medicine  every product is 10 times cheaper here than in Morocco, local resident Mohamed, 35, told Al Jazeera. The most valuable commodity is petrol.

While petitions calling for the reopening of the border are regularly posted online, local resident Tarik Nesh-Nash believes that sport may also help to restore relations between Algeria and Morocco. Inspired by a similar venture in the US state of Arizona, Nesh-Nash, who lives in Tangier, is helping to organise a cross-border volleyball game this month.

We would love to bring together people from each side, he said. The border was closed during almost my entire life. The situation must change.
Is the US lending financial support to a police force and army linked to a campaign of extra-judicial killings?

Honduras has become the newest front in the US war on drugs in Latin America. The US has provided financial support for both the police and the military there in spite of its deep corruption issues.

Furthermore, members of both institutions have been linked to a range of killings. Political dissidents, human rights workers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community have all been killed at alarming rates.

In May, a mission in the Moskitia region, which was led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), left four innocent civilians killed and four others wounded. It was followed by two more incidents where a US DEA agent shot and killed an alleged drug trafficker. Local communities have demanded a thorough investigation but so far nothing has been done.

The US has a long and controversial history in Honduras. In the 1980s, the US built a base there and trained an elite Honduran military unit. That unit went on to carry out tortures, kidnappings and killings.

Who is responsible? What should be the role of the US in Honduras? And what happened that night in the Moskitia when a US raid ended up leaving innocent people dead?

Fault Lines travels to Honduras, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world, to find out.

In Pictures:
Romania has seen the largest protests since 1989 after a government decree decriminalising corruption.

Around the world, tens of millions of people can only dream of an income of $48,000.

But in Romania today, that is how much money public officials can steal without fear of prosecution.

Strictly speaking, the newly issued government decree does not make theft legal, but it decriminalises government misconduct if less than $48,000 is involved.

The move has resulted in the largest protests the country has seen since the fall of the communist government in 1989. Hundreds of thousands of Romanians say the measure undermines a decade of anti-corruption reforms.

The government says the proposal will lower prison overcrowding.

Demonstrators are calling for the government to resign. But even after days of protests, the ruling party is refusing to withdraw the decree.

Meanwhile, other EU countries say they are watching the events in Bucharest with great concern.

The embassies of the US, Canada and several European countries have released a joint statement saying the decree can only undermine Romanias standing in the international community and risks damaging partnerships that are based on common values, inherent in the guiding principles of the EU and NATO.

So, what does this crisis mean for Romanias future and its broader relationship with fellow EU members?

Presenter: Jane Dutton

Guests:

Alexandru Coita  Political analyst

Laura Stefan  Anti-corruption campaigner and former director at the Ministry of Justice of Romania

Paul Ivan  Senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre
We talk to counterterrorism expert and former FBI agent Ali Soufan, and debate Putins role on the world stage.

In this weeks UpFront, we speak to former FBI agent and counterterrorism expert Ali Soufan on the potential consequences of President Donald Trumps Muslim ban.

In the Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan points out the hypocrisy of global leaders of nuclear powers on their ever-expanding nuclear arsenals.

And in the Arena, we debate whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is outmanoeuvring his political opponents both at home and abroad.

Headliner  Former FBI agent: Muslim ban not about security

Last week, President Donald Trump implemented a travel ban from seven Muslim-majority countries coming into the United States.

Will this so-called Muslim ban backfire and simply embolden groups like ISIL, or will it help to protect the US?

Former FBI agent and counterterrorism expert Ali Soufan says Trumps policy decisions are a godsend to ISIL.

ISIS members and ISIS leaders, at least in their propaganda, have been calling President Trump and his ban and his recent policies a godsend, says Soufan, who is also the CEO of intelligence think-tank The Soufan Group. We cannot win this war by dealing with our friends the same way we deal with our enemies.

Asked if this was in the interests of national security, Soufan said it would hurt, not help.

Its very difficult, Mehdi, to say its about security, says Soufan, who also serves as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Its very difficult to say there is not an anti-Muslim sentiment in these policies to cater to a specific base that they probably have in Washington.

We have to protect our country, but we have to do it in sync with our principles, in sync with our values.

In this weeks Headliner, former FBI agent Ali Soufan discusses the Muslim ban and its potential fallout.

Reality Check  Nuclear disarmament or nuclear hypocrisy?

President Donald Trump reportedly asked a foreign policy expert three times why the US cant use nuclear weapons during his presidential campaign.

While world leaders may have been right to criticise Trumps line of questioning amid global promises to reduce nuclear stockpiles, why are world nuclear powers expanding and updating their arsenals instead?

In this weeks Reality Check, Mehdi Hasan exposes the hypocrisy of the global nuclear elite.

Arena  Has Putin outplayed his rivals at home and abroad?

With Russias uncontested hold on Crimea, the air campaign in Syria and Vladimir Putins seeming influence with President Donald Trump, does the Russian leader have the upper hand on the international stage strategically, militarily and geopolitically?

Thats an exaggeration  he has a certain way to approach things and he manifests himself very nicely, says Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of the Russian parliament. But, the question is whether Russian people are living better than they were previously? No.

Putin is simply using the lack of any initiative on the part of the Western governments, on the part of EU and, obviously, the absolutely disastrous foreign policy of Obama, says former Kremlin adviser Alexander Nekrassov. Id rather say the West is losing than Putin is winning.

When asked about Ponomarevs 2015 claim that Russia was seemingly like 1930s Germany, the former Duma member said that though Putin is no Hitler, what Putin is doing reminds him of Nazi Germany.

Vladimir Putin is not Hitler, he is just a kleptocrat, says Ponomarev. But in terms of what hes building inside the country, reminds me very much of that period in Germany.

Putin has to have a strong hand because you cant run Russia being a weak leader, counters Nekrassov. Russia is still in the transition stage. It had the most horrible dictatorship for more than 70 years.

In this weeks Arena, commentator and former Kremlin adviser Alexander Nekrassov debates Putins role on the international stage with former Duma member Ilya Ponomarev.

Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.
Through the frigid air "peace" echoed out in four languages from the steps of a downtown Billings church on Thursday night, as roughly 40 people gathered for an interfaith service.

Called "Love Your Neighbor," the half hour ceremony took place on the steps and sidewalk in front of Billings First Church and included remarks from people inspired by Christianity, Judaism, Islam, humanism and the traditions of the Blackfeet tribe.

Each speaker was followed by a group recitation of the words "Paz, peace, shalom, salaam, you are our neighbor and we're glad you're here."

Tracy Heilman, a pastor at a Columbus church, said the event came together after she stumbled across a group of people at a Starbucks in Billings earlier in the week. They were discussing their concerns about the recent actions of President Donald Trump, including an executive order signed last Friday that instituted a 90 day ban on travel to the United States from people of seven majority Muslim nations, a 120 day ban on the United States accepting refugees and an indefinite ban on the United States accepting refugees from Syria.

Seeing familiar faces, Heilman joined the group and ultimately offered to help coordinate the event at the downtown Billings church of her husband Rev. Michael Mulberry.

According to Heilman, the gathering on Thursday was intended as a show of unity and a testament to what she described as the belief in caring for one another that she said is broadly shared regardless of faith or secular beliefs.

Some in attendance held signs with messages including "Refugees Already Made America Great" and "Love Not Hate."

Adam Mallak, a local Kurdish imam who immigrated to America decades ago, spoke and also read from the Quran. "Love is everything," Mallak said repeatedly.

After the event, Mallak described his thoughts since President Trump signed the executive order. Mallak said the personal freedoms so many associate with American society seem to be under threat.

"A lot of people come here for the American dream because it's different than all countries," Mallak said. "You can pray, you can do whatever you want to without being interrupted by anybody. But all of that is changing all of a sudden. This is turning into something else."

Mallak said he fears that many American Muslims are increasingly seen as guilty by association and generalization, despite having committed no crimes.

"If we start to bring in this system of hatred, division, then we have nothing," Mallak said. "Only by unity we can succeed. Without unity, we have nothing."
Update: 2 p.m. Friday

UF spokesperson Janine Sikes wrote in an email that UF is aims to be a safe community for all students and faculty, specifically those who are international. She said UF is committed to keeping sensitive records about individuals confidential, and it doesn't collect records of the identities of undocumented students. Students can choose to not publicize their address. University Police will also not take law enforcement actions under the immigration law because that is the role of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she said. UF offers confidential counseling through the U Matter, We Care program.

Original Story

A week following President Donald Trumps travel ban, five UF students are pushing to make UF a sanctuary for undocumented Gators.

The petition, published Wednesday by Gators for a Sanctuary Campus, aims to collect 5,000 signatures in hopes of persuading UF President Kent Fuchs to take extra steps to protect undocumented students, faculty and staff.

In just a day, the online petition has gathered more than 1,000 signatures on change.org.

Although the students formed the group just after Trumps inauguration, the recent executive order to ban immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries forced them to take action, group spokesperson Christian Tirado said.

The petition, signed by about 1,100 as of press time, asks President Fuchs and Vice President for Student Affairs David Parrott to protect members of the UF community by not sharing their personal information and immigration status with the U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement.

The petition also asks they prevent law enforcement agencies from conducting raids on campus and encourage University Police to not enforce immigration laws.

As of press time, Fuchs has not released an official statement about the petition or UF being a sanctuary campus, but on Jan. 29, he sent an email to students voicing his support to all international students, faculty and staff. Currently, UF has 167 students, faculty and staff from the countries part of the travel ban, which bars U.S. entry to citizens of the seven countries  Syria, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen  for 90 days, according to Alligator archives.

But Tirado said UF needs to become a sanctuary to ensure all students are protected.

I remain hopeful that we will be able to resist the vitriolic attacks against immigrants, the 21-year-old UF political science and history junior said.

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Gators for a Sanctuary Campus is also planning to ask for support from the City Commission, specifically Mayor Lauren Poe, and to pass a resolution about the sanctuary campus in the UF Student Senate, Tirado said.

Adrian Acuna Higaki, a 21-year-old UF microbiology and cell science junior, signed the petition Thursday after seeing a friend share it on Facebook.

An immigrant from Peru, he became an American citizen after going through the legal process for 12 years. But he knows others who havent been as lucky, and students need sanctuary in their universities.

Education is a human right, he said. Its something you shouldnt be punished for wanting.

But others dont see a sanctuary campus as the right option for UF.

Theodore Dale, 20, said sanctuary campuses and cities suggest theyre above the law. Housing undocumented people is a problem because it goes against legal boundaries.

The problem with this is that just because you have an emotional-suffering story does not grant you status above the law, the UF materials science and engineering junior said.

@paigexfry

pfry@alligator.org
Jill Sonke and Trent Williams remember Rwanda fondly: the culture, the people, the dancing.

In December, the UF faculty members visited an indigenous group in the African country and danced.

Specifically, they taught members of the Batwa community how to profit from their dancing in a country where they have historically been viewed as lower class.

Art was a way for the Batwa people to become more visible and have more economic opportunity and ultimately raise their health and quality of life, said Sonke, the director of UFs Center for Arts in Medicine.

Longing to return, Sonke and Williams, a UF dance and choreography professor, plan to head back in the Fall  and this time theyre going to bring along students.

Prior to 1994, the Batwa, also known as the invisible people, lived in forests and hadnt assimilated into the countrys main culture, Sonke said.

In 2010, she was in Rwanda volunteering with a different Rwandan community through the UF Center for Arts in Medicine when Batwa members approached her, asking for similar help.

Sonke returned in December with Williams and four other professional dancers to develop the Batwas art and dance skills and create ways for them to profit from

their art, according to a press release.

Of the 10 trips Sonke has taken to Rwanda, December was the first time stu- dents werent able to go. Sonke said she plans for students to travel with her in the Fall to continue practicing with the Batwa dancers.

Williams said he enjoyed learning the Batwa communitys traditional dances while teaching them new techniques.

I got to see people really living out of their (tradition) and living in their voice through movement, Williams said.

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Valentine Mercury is like any other user of Instagram, except hes a dog.

In pursuit of social-media fame, Valentines owner has been hoping to take more high-end photographs of the American pit bull terrier.

Most of our pictures are just me snapping pictures of him, said his owner Amanda Joa.

But on Sunday, Valentine will get his chance to pose for a professional photographer as a part of a photo-shoot fundraiser to benefit the Alachua County Humane Society.

Adam Goldberg, a self-taught pet photographer, will be taking photos of dogs, cats and other pets at Swamp Head Brewery from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. to raise money for the shelter.

I try and set myself apart from other photographers, he said. All my pictures are kind of goofy and silly.

The 29-year-old used to work for the Humane Society of Broward County, Florida, and said he had the idea for this fundraiser when he realized he could pair his gift of photography with his passion for animals to make a difference.

Of the $100 fee, half of the money raised will go to the humane society, Goldberg said.

Joa said shes excited to have photos of her four-legged friend. The fee is a small price to pay, she said.

Margot DeConna, the director of development at the Alachua County Humane Society, said the money will go directly to animal care. The humane society is striving for Gainesville to become a no-kill community in 2017.

Every donation counts, and every donation helps us inch closer to that overarching goal, she said.

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In the near future, UF students may be able to take as many credit hours as theyd like without paying an additional fee.

Filed Jan. 11 by Sen. Bill Galvano, Florida State Senate Bill 2 would require all 12 state universities to charge a flat tuition rate, regardless of the number of credit hours students take.

Block tuition would allow students to take as many hours as they want, helping them to graduate on time, said Katie Betta, a spokesperson for Senate President Joe Negron.

Negron worked closely with Galvano on the bill, Betta said.

President Negrons priority is to elevate the national reputation of Floridas university system, the overall goal being flexibility for the students, Betta said.

An identical bill was filed in Floridas House of Representatives on Jan. 27. If passed, both bills will go into effect July 1.

Each university would develop an individual plan that best fits its student population, which would later be reviewed and approved by the Florida Board of Governors, Betta said.

At UF, four-year graduation rates are at 67 percent while six-year graduation rates are at 88 percent, UF spokesperson Janine Sikes said.

We are certainly interested in measures to help improve graduation rates, and block tuition is believed to be one way to do that, Sikes said. We are considering some options to bring to the legislature.

Although the details of UFs block tuition have yet to be finalized, student Chloe Flynt likes the idea.

From my personal point of view, I think they should definitely have a base rate, the UF health science sophomore said.

Flynt, 19, said although she hasnt been charged for taking additional credits, she knows many people who have.

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Thirteen is the most that I can take, Flynt said. But some people, if theyre really school-focused, they should take 15 hours and shouldnt be charged extra for that.

However, not all students think block tuition is a good idea.

Ashley Bennett, 18, said students should be focusing on having fun in college, not killing themselves with too much classwork, so taking extra credits shouldnt be a priority.

In college, you shouldnt go out and party every single night, but just enjoy it while it lasts, the UF marketing freshman said. Youll be able to have a job for the rest of your life.

mvossler@alligator.org

@molly_vossler
For the most part, my political views can be summarized by simply saying, The less government, the better. This applies to almost everything from education to health care, but a recent trip to Washington, D.C. may have caused a slight shift in that view.

I have mixed feelings about D.C. Having spent a considerable amount of time in France, I find the districts history fascinating and unique among all other American cities. Designed by Frenchman Pierre Charles LEnfant, after being appointed by George Washington himself in 1791, the city is one of the few in the U.S. that was carefully laid out before being built. The influence is impossible to ignore, with the same magnificent avenues and chaotic roundabouts as Paris. Situated on a river, populated with buildings no taller than 130 feet and home to the impressively powerful architecture that only massive governments can create, D.C. and Paris both give the impression of a city with purpose.

City design aside, I did not find myself falling in love with D.C.

Unlike Paris, D.C. lacks vibrant personality and creative energy. Politicians and lobbyists roam the streets alongside lost tourists, all walking uptight with a destination in mind. Nobody is seen loafing around in a park or resting by the river, such as in Paris. No, Washington, D.C. knows that its there for a specific reason: to run a country.

The exception, however, is the gift that is the National Gallery of Art.

Its a bright and brisk day in December, and all Im seeking is a place to get warm. I pass the Museum of American History, which has a Space Mountain-caliber line wrapping around it. Several blocks down, I see a museum with no line and learn its the National Gallery of Art. As I open the door, I begin to take out my wallet and look for the price for admission. Instead, I simply walk into a silent, almost empty, hallway lined with the works of Monet and Rembrandt.

I look around for a counter to pay but cannot find one. It takes about two minutes for me to realize that this wonderful museum is actually free.

Free.

For $0, I spent an entire afternoon enjoying the creativity of our species, lost in a labyrinth of canvases and sculptures.

But whos paying for this? I wonder. My mind doesnt want to admit that it is, in fact, the government paying for it, because the government only gets its money from taxpayers. Eventually, I reluctantly come to the realization that there are, in fact, a few things I would not mind the government helping out with. Art is one of them.

Creating art is not hard. Being able to sell good art and make a living off of it certainly is. The periods of artistic expansion and growth throughout history have occurred when it was accepted, encouraged and funded by the public. During the Renaissance, wealthy families paid artists to allow them to fully devote all of their time and energy toward their craft.

Nowadays, it is nearly impossible to create art full-time. I am not calling for the government to simply pay any artist who doesnt want to work, but instead to just help with overall exposure to the arts. Public access to free museums is something nobody should take for granted and is a great way to both support artists and inspire new generations. Investing in an infrastructure and creating opportunities for artists to sell work will help, too, but overall, as the law teaches, if you encourage something, you will get more of it. If the government starts rewarding great artists and their works  and starts making said art more accessible  a wonderful positive feedback loop will be initiated.

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No, this would not create thousands of jobs or reduce the deficit, but I believe the societal benefits of more art would far outweigh any of the costs. Whos going to say no?

Andrew Hall is a UF management junior. His column appears on Fridays.
Ill be blunt: Our country is out of whack right now, and Im petrified.

One thing that has caused my fear to skyrocket recently is the ignorance that is plaguing the nation. President Donald Trump has decided to castigate the media by calling organizations he dislikes fake news and claiming journalists are the most dishonest human beings in the world, unless they're treating him nicely, of course. With these allegations and labels, Trump has essentially ignited the first war of his presidency  a war on the media.

What has been troubling me lately is so many people are taking Trumps words without a second thought. Ive seen Facebook posts spewing out hateful and uninformed claims that the media is cancer and that the dishonest media is ruining our country. This misconception about the media is spreading like wildfire and leading to the growth of an even less-informed society.

What Americans need to recognize now more than ever is that the president is simply using members of the media industry as scapegoats. Journalists are not out to get the president, nor do they deem it acceptable to feed lies to the people of this nation. There are, after all, laws in place to prevent lies from going unpublished. Journalists have a thankless commitment to reporting the truth and exist for no other reasons than to keep the public informed and help make sense of what is happening in the world.

With the signing of Trumps many severe executive orders, the past two weeks have been action-packed and emotionally trying for many Americans.

Members of the media, including those who Trump likes, have done their jobs and told the public what these orders call for and what they mean for the citizens of our nation. They have explored the impacts of these orders and done their duties as journalists to dig deep into the issues and find the most interesting and newsworthy stories surrounding them. These journalists have done their jobs.

Unfortunately, as journalists have reported on what many Americans consider to be the adverse impacts of Trumps orders, Trump has called for an all-out rejection of the media. Every negative fact printed or spoken now has to be taken with a grain of salt, according to our president. He has warned his constituents that the media is out to get him and they cant be trusted. As a result, many Americans have started to boycott media sources Trump has deemed untrustworthy.

By alienating the media, Trump himself has become the main source of information for many citizens. Needless to say, this source is a rather biased one. Of course Trump will portray his actions to be nothing short of genius. If people are lead to believe every negative word about Trump is false, he becomes Americas ever-protected golden boy.

It is important to note that some fringe outlets are indeed producing fake news and have been for years. But to paint the entire media industry, including well-established, trusted sources like The New York Times or The Washington Post, as bold-faced liars is wholly irresponsible.

People must learn the difference between the sketchy websites that pop up on our Facebook feeds and the decades-old media companies that have informed generations of readers, including Trump himself. These companies are not going to stop producing news, and they are here to inform.

I encourage you to keep in mind the undying integrity of our nations journalists and to remember that, at this point, they're all we have left.

Abigail Miller is a UF journalism sophomore. Her column appears on Fridays.

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Before World War 2, the German Bund played a big role in American politics, generating sympathy for German-Americans, and even for the Kaiser and the Hitler regime, at least until Pearl Harbor.

But in the end, in both world wars, Americans of German ancestry played very pro-American roles, a fact that cannot be forgotten. General Ike Eisenhower was only one among many.

Nevertheless, it was true for some time that the Bund attracted Americans who identified with the Kaiser in WWI and with Hitler in WWII. I also know of a German-American who went to France before the U.S. entered WWI to drive an ambulance at the front, a very dangerous assignment, and received the Croix de Guerre from France. Many German-Americans were passionately pro-American.

Historically, many Germans came to the United States as refugees from the usual tyrannies, and of course, Jewish Australians and Germans were a major influence on the Manhattan Project. Albert Einstein was a Swiss citizen when he fled to the U.S., and Leo Szilard was a Jewish Hungarian who actually called the FDR White House on behalf of Einstein to explain the real possibility of a nuclear bomb.

Since the Hitler and Tojo regimes were working on nuclear weapons as well, it was a matter of life or death for the U.S. (and the Brits) to develop a nuclear device first.

The left always twists history  it's a principal pillar of leftists' power. Hiroshima and Nagasaki have now been added to our long list of historical sins, the liberation of African slaves being conveniently forgotten. But Einstein was a lifelong, passionate pacifist, who still sent the key message about The Bomb to the White House. He was hardly a militarist; he just faced a tough moral dilemma and ended up doing the right thing.

As a nation of immigrants, we've always have ethnic groups who sympathized with other countries, including declared enemies. We've always known it, and taken adequate measures to avoid subversion and sabotage. Our melting pot of nations has responded well: Japanese-Americans often fought with exceptional bravery on our side.

But it is suicidal to ignore the possibility that there may be a jihad equivalent of the modern German Bund, with many enemy sympathizers.

One of them is named Barack Hussein Obama, who showed us in a thousand ways that he took the side of jihad against civilization. That is a sad and shocking fact. But it is a fact. (See our previous columns for scores of examples.)

If you are wondering why Foggy Bottom is being purged today, and why the CIA will soon receive a similar treatment, the answer should be clear enough. Just as in the Stalin period, the State Department under Hillary (ably assisted by Muslim Brotherhood loyalist Huma Abedin) allowed the SecState to set up her own insecure email system, to which only Hillary's circle had access, and which was obviously used to trade State Department goodies for big money to the Clinton Foundation, including oil-rich jihadist Arab Gulf regimes and probably Iran. This is clear criminal conduct, even if the Trump DOJ chooses to turn a blind eye.

Today, jihadists from the Saudi Wahhabis and the Shiite branches of Islam have already killed Americans with barbaric hate-driven attacks on thousands of civilians, beginning with the 1993 Twin Towers bombing. The blind media tell us jihadist terror has not taken as many lives (yet) as the bubonic plague  or whatever  but wars should be fought to prevent carnage, not just to retaliate for it. And when it comes to carnage and genocide, the enemy has a long, long record of horrific crimes against humanity.

According to our highest-level public source, Admiral James Lyons (USN, ret.), jihadist infiltration in the U.S. government started as early as the late '60s and early '70s, when the newly rich OPEC regimes began a jihad-driven campaign of infiltration, immigration, subversion, blackmail, and simple bribery of big politicians and media in Europe and the U.S. Jihad successfully deprived Europe and the US of our normal, rational caution about war theologies that hate us, on the model of Japan's Divine Emperor Cult.

Jihad terrorism is not new; it has simply been shrewder than General Tojo. Scratch a hysterical snowflake on any campus, and you find a jihadophile. Ask any Democrat politician, and you get a passionate defense of jihad's God-given right to infiltrate and sabotage our national security.

Since the left no longer believes in anything, especially American security, leftists have forged a close alliance with the rich and clever forces of jihad. It all comes under the heading of enlightened "globalism." The other phrase for globalism is "war against America."

Islamophobia has never been a problem in the U.S., contrary to that well financed P.R. campaign. Our clear and present danger is jihadophilia, a suicidal doctrine that sucks in useful idiots by the millions. The New York Times and WaPo add millions more dunderheads. It's no wonder that Michael Scheuer, a bin Laden fan, was actually put in charge of the CIA bin Laden desk during the Clinton years, in the run-up to 09/11/01. The CIA never acted against him and, in fact, permitted him to do his book tours. All that suggests deep penetration of the CIA by jihad.

The fact is that we've been deeply infiltrated by an ancient anti-American, anti-modern, and anti-human rights theology of world conquest.

You might read that sentence again if it comes as news. You might even send it to friends who have fallen for the cruel joke. It explains why Trump's purge of the upper levels of the State Department is absolutely necessary. FDR purged the upper ranks of the military after Pearl Harbor, but George W. Bush actually expanded the "intelligence community" after 09/11/01. Massive failure was a career enhancer.

When the media-Democrat complex comes out against American self-defense, please don't believe Chuck Schumer's crocodile tears. Chuck knows exactly what this is about and is merely playing for the biggest money and influence peddlers. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem  and that includes the pro-Jihad Democrat-Media complex.

Google president Eric Schmidt is appalled, simply appalled by our elementary steps for self-defense. But it was Google's V.P. of North African sales who helped to run the "Arab Spring" campaign in Egypt, which brought the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt  and not by accident. Google has been an Obama tool for years, with Schmidt making numerous visits to the Obama White House. Other Silicon sultans, as Drudge dubs them, are in on the scam as well, which means our email and web security is full of potential holes. Any of Google's mind-washed little hackers can penetrate whatever electronic security you think you have.

Obama is a jihadophile. He has made that clear in a thousand different ways during his eight years, enough time to plant agents and suborn U.S. government personnel. No wonder we couldn't do anything effective to resist jihad; Obama even refused to use the words "Islamic terrorism." But he is still beloved by a veritable snowpack of campus flakes.

Exposing the real enemy is only the first step in national defense. Fighting the enemy is a next step, and even today the Democrats and EuroSocialists are self-righteously refusing to do that.

In Churchill's words, this is not the end of the war. It is not even the beginning of the end. It may be the end of the beginning.

It will require a lot of truth-telling, and a real mobilization of our national will, not to mention major resources, to stuff that evil genie back in the lamp. It has been done before, when the Ottoman Empire lost in World War I. That led to half a century of secularization and rationality in Turkey. It can be done again. But if the civilized world can't arouse itself from its cowardly apathy, we are looking at complete and utter disaster  back to the 6th-century desert.

If you don't care, consider your children and grandchildren. And consider the fate of the last, great hope of mankind in the years to come.
Iran was involved in a long slate of aggressive measures up to the very doorsteps of President Donald Trump taking the helm in Washington. This concerning pattern of escalating extremism ironically increased following the Iran nuclear deal sealed between the P5+1 and Tehran, despite many in the West arguing such an accord would rein in the mullahs. And now, a new U.S. president has rightfully pinpointed radical Islamic terrorists, of which the root lies in Iran.

Further to the mullahs advantage was the Obama administrations reluctance to adopt any serious stance against Iran running its Shiite extremist rampage across the region. Obamas White House only imposed sanctions considered anything but harsh.

This paved the path for Iran to unleash its Shiite puppets and proxies throughout the region, cementing sectarian strife and as a result pushing more Sunni youth to join ISIS and other radicals.

Obamas nuclear deal, with all its flaws made evidently clear, only placed speed bumps in Irans quest for the bomb. This came at the heavy price of America losing the trust of its regional allies, disheartening them also in their efforts against Iran-supported terrorism in their backyards.

President Donald Trump has rightfully pinpointed the root of all crises in the Middle East.

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones -- and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the Earth, he said.

This is exactly where the Trump administration has an extraordinary opportunity to begin launching a widespread strategy vis-a-vis Tehran, targeting specifically the disease Iran is spreading: meddling across the region and fueling sectarian emotions.

While the international community was focused sealing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran used the opportunity to storm Syria and Iraq with Shiite militias dispatched from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and its own paramilitary forces, all commanded by the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC).

While Obama continuously boasted the JCPOA campaign, Irans Middle East interference reached a point where 11 Arab states unprecedentedly voiced their rage by accusing Iran of supporting terrorism and completely disrupting the sheer Middle East fabric.

Irans atrocities had reached the point that even Secretary John Kerrys State Department cited Tehrans scope of activities to destabilize the region in designating Iran as the worlds state sponsor of terrorism.

President Trump and his team can easily take action by simply covering the numerous loopholes left by the Obama administration. U.N. travel bans on senior Iranian figures, including IRGC Quds Force chief Qassem Suleimani. This individual is known to travel across the Middle East and literally wreak havoc by commanding Irans Shiite militias.

Iran has also taken advantage of Obamas negligence -- aiming to safeguard his previous Iran-JCPOA legacy -- to pursue its ballistic missile ambitions and carry out major test launches. This has been in violation of U.N. Resolution 2231, and President Trump can easily begin holding Tehran accountable.

Iran came to the nuclear negotiations following continuous revelations made by Iranian opposition National Council of Resistance (NCRI) and under pressure from international sanctions. This policy has worked once and it can work again. President Trump and his team should care less about Irans remarks or reactions in threatening to burn the JCPOA.

Irans financial pipeline, established through a windfall of billions provided to Iran under the nuclear pact, should come to an end, and licenses revoked for Airbus and Boeing deals. Irans airlines are known to provide manpower and weapons to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and Lebanese Hizballah.

These efforts only promote further killings and, as previously explained, instigate a Shiite-Sunni conflict across the Middle East. Iran is profiting from the existence of ISIS, using this phenomenon as a pretext to justify its presence in Iraq and Syria.

President Trump can also team up with Congress under a new bipartisan effort aiming to curb Irans destabilizing role in the region. A strong foundation can be found in the Preventing Destabilization of Iraq and Syria Act of 2016 aiming to mandate new sanctions against foreign states and terrorist organizations.

This initiative must include Iran, as the mullahs are known to threaten the peace or stability of Iraq or Syria, as the bill explains. U.S. allies can benefit extremely, especially the Gulf Sunnis that Obama sidelined in the past eight years.

The regime in Tehran is the source of crisis in the region and killings in Syria; it has played the greatest role in the expansion and continuation of ISIS. Peace and tranquility in the region can only be achieved by evicting this regime from the region, said NCRI President Maryam Rajavi.

The NCRI is an umbrella dissident group including the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

And yet the nail in the coffin for the mullahs would be for the Trump administration to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Iranian people in their struggle to establish freedom and democracy. Nearly two dozen former senior U.S. government officials provided such a game-plan to President in a hand-delivered letter encouraging his administration to work with the NCRI.

Such initiatives send clear messages to Tehran about the unacceptable nature of its current involvement in the flashpoint Middle East. As President Trump takes actions to diminish Irans role across the region, especially from backing Assad, sectarian friction will diminish and all efforts can focus on ISIS.

Heshmat Alavi is a political and rights activist. His writing focuses on Iran, ranging from human rights violations, social crackdown, the regime's support for terrorism and meddling in foreign countries, and the controversial nuclear program. He tweets at @HeshmatAlavi & blogs at IranCommentary.
It is difficult not to cackle with irony at the possibility of President Trump -- he of the monosyllabic vocabulary, odd sentence structures, and Joe Six-pack mentality -- forcing Ivory Tower elitists to raise their sights above their current postmodern descent.

Instead of fiddling while Berkeley burned, Trump quickly responded to the anarchy that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking after an invitation by the campus Republican Club. Upon witnessing scenes from the spectacle, which included thousands of protestors, numerous fires, smashed windows, and at least one vicious beating, the President tweeted:

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view -- NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

Milo, for those still unaware of his emergence as a public figure, is an outrageously flamboyant gay Breitbart editor who is the most popular speaker on college campuses nationwide. He, along with Trump, is a leading figure in the fight to end the overbearing political correctness in speech that stifles the national dialogue.

Milo adoringly refers to Trump as Daddy, which may be a truly appropriate moniker. Intellectuals and pundits (including myself) can discuss the free speech issue ad nauseum, citing the most learned philosophers, jurists, and Founding Fathers. But Trumps reaction was instinctive, from the gut and to the point: when Junior drives the car into a ditch, he loses the car keys. When he buys thousands of dollars worth of pornography on the Internet, he gets his credit card taken away. And when he shouts over everybody else at the dinner table, he gets a sharp rap on the knuckles with a butter knife.

The actions of the Berkeley rioters went far beyond those out-of-control teenagers. According to a CNN article:

Black-clad protesters wearing masks threw commercial-grade fireworks and rocks at police. Some even hurled Molotov cocktails that ignited fires. They also smashed windows of the student union center on the Berkeley campus where the Yiannopoulos event was to be held More than 1,500 protesters had gathered at Sproul Plaza, chanting and holding signs that read: "No safe space for racists" and "This is war."

But the real problem is not the illegal activity of the protestors and rioters -- they were clearly not acting in the schools name. The problem is academias ongoing failure to ensure that varying viewpoints can be expressed on public campuses. In a remarkably ironic twist, while Berkeley is an esteemed institution for many reasons, it is best known as the home of the 1960s Free Speech Movement.

In this case, Berkeleys chancellor, Nicholas Dirks, initially tried to live up to his schools free speech legacy by rejecting calls to cancel Milos appearance. But he did so in such condemnatory language that he may have helped to stoke the impeding protest even further: In our view, Mr. Yiannopoulos is a troll and provocateur who uses odious behavior in part to entertain, but also to deflect any serious engagement with ideas. He has been widely and rightly condemned for engaging in hate speech directed at a wide range of groups and individuals we have also clearly communicated to the BCR that we regard Yiannopouloss act as at odds with the values of this campus.

Dirks also said the school was providing extra security and that the school would not stand idly by while laws or university policies are violated, no matter who the perpetrators are.

But in the final analysis, rather than taking all the steps necessary to ensure Milos appearance came off, the Berkeley administration caved in to the pressure and canceled it.

Afterward, the school issued a statement condemning the rioters, but overall, the schools defense rings hollow. There were many signs that rioting was a near-inevitability in the build-up to Yiannopouloss appearance. For instance, members of the Berkeley Republicans had their addresses posted on the Internet and were inaccurately called white supremacists and fascists -- an overt act of intimidation. It was clear that Milo was not going to be facing an ordinary protest, but hard-core radicals hell-bent on silencing him.

And it also appears that the university was more concerned about empowering the protesters than promoting the marketplace of ideas. The event was scheduled for 6:00 p.m. Things were out of hand well before then -- it was cancelled at approximately 5:00 -- and the school called for help. According to the university newspaper, Mutual aid officers from the city of Oakland and from Alameda County arrived at Berkeley around 7:45 p.m. to assist UCPD and Berkeley city police.

Then university made an astonishing admission: No arrests had been made by UCPD as of 9:30 p.m.

In other words, the school was clearly not doing everything possible to stop the violence and punish perpetrators. Instead, it was giving them tacit approval, managing their rampage rather than stopping it. It thereby made a different statement: that, while the administration pays lip service to free speech, conservatives are not really welcome at Berkeley.

President Trump heard that message and he cut through the academic fog with a simple tweet. There are so many ways academia has left the world of reason, civility, prudence, and practical common sense behind, to the detriment of the nation. For every sensible college president, such as Purdues Mitch Daniels or UNC-Wilmingtons Jose Sartarelli, there are dozens -- or even hundreds -- who are tools of the political left. Board governance has proven ineffective on so many levels. Faculty bodies are often dominated by their most radical elements.

So the nation has two choices. The first is to accept the status quo and adopt a Panglossian this is the best of all possible worlds attitude, as has been the case up until now. Or, we can follow Trumps lead and use the last line of defense in the culture war: the power of the government purse.

And it can be a powerful weapon indeed. Except for a few private schools, academia feeds primarily at the public trough, through financial aid, state appropriations, and research funding. Although nobody wants it to come under government authority more than it already is -- it provides many worthy services and employs many worthy scholars and scientists -- certain segments of the Ivory Tower have been steering the academy into an intellectual ditch. Financial waste abounds as well.

Americans have shown their disapproval with the direction the left has been leading the country by voting Republicans into office in overwhelming numbers. It is time for those elected to act instead of sitting on their hands as they have done. And to recognize that it is their job to ensure that universities spend their government funds wisely and to ensure that public academia maintains a vibrant intellectual atmosphere instead of both expressly and implicitly silencing alternative views.

Despite his rough-hewn manner of speaking and unintellectual unfamiliarity with lofty theories, it may be that Daddy really does know best.
Saudi Arabia may have just lost the American presidential election, but its lobbying interests are alive and well in the U.S. Congress.

The Saudis, who are said to have financed as much as a fifth of Hillary Clintons presidential campaign, didnt prevail there, but they continue to work at the highest levels in Washington to assert their will and scuttle American initiatives.

Last year, for example, Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, or JASTA, which allows American citizens to sue the government of Saudi Arabia for people and property lost in the 9/11 attacks. Fourteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and American officials have long suspected the government knew about and perhaps even financially assisted the operation.

Specifically, JASTA creates a narrow exception to the U.S. law that grants foreign governments immunity from jurisdiction by U.S. courts. It authorizes federal courts to hear civil claims against foreign states for physical injury to a person or property or death that occurs inside the U.S. because of an act of international terrorism or damages caused by an official, agent or employee of a foreign state acting within the scope of that employment.

The legislation, introduced in 2015 by senators John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., passed both houses of Congress but was vetoed by President Obama in September. Congress then overrode the veto -- 348-77 in the House and 97-1 with only Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada voting against.

President Donald Trump supports the legislation, and the Saudis already are coming to understand that their relationship with the new administration wont be as cozy as it was with the present group.

So, before power changes hands, the Saudis allies in the Senate -- Sens. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz. -- are pushing a measure that critics say would effectively gut JASTA before any of the survivors of 9/11 victims ever have their day in court.

Graham, McCain, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who also supports the measure, propose changing the law to say foreign governments could be held liable for terrorist attacks only if they knowingly engage with a terrorist organization directly or indirectly, including financing, Graham said.

This, of course, would require plaintiffs to prove the Saudi governments connection to the 9/11 terrorists, which would require, among other things, access to sensitive intelligence and make the process longer and more expensive.

The senators argue that the law, as written, would produce retaliatory suits against the United States. They say moving the goalposts will reduce that likelihood and balance concerns raised by others in Congress.

If we dont make this change, heres what I fear -- that other countries will pass laws like this, and they will say that the United States is liable for engaging in drone attacks or other activity in the war on terror and haul us into court as a nation, Graham said. I dont want any nation state, including ours, to be sued for a discretionary act unless that discretionary act encompasses knowingly engaging in the financing or sponsoring of terrorism whether directly or indirectly.

The problem is that these concerns were aired during the debate over the legislation. Congress has ruled on this question, and there is no sign the people of the country want the legislation watered down. Their representatives voted overwhelmingly to enact the law, then by even wider margins to override the presidents veto. The incoming president supports it as is, and 9/11 survivor groups are outraged.

Terry Strada, chairman of 9/11 Families and Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism, said Graham met with survivors in April and told them he supported our cause 100 percent. Now, Strada says, Senator Graham is stabbing the 9/11 families in the back. He and Sen. McCain are seeking to torpedo JASTA by imposing changes demanded by Saudi Arabias lobbyists. We have reviewed the language, and it is an absolute betrayal.

A congressional aide familiar with the changes told Politico the provision was a giveaway to K Street lobbyists and the Saudis.

One thing that came through loud and clear in the results of Nov. 8 is that voters are ready to put America first. That means, when it comes to paying the piper for the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil, they want American interests to come before those of the Saudis or their allies on K Street.

Members on both sides of the Capitol have pledged to keep an eye on the legislation see if the opponents arguments materialize and adjust if necessary. But it hasnt even had time to work. This ought not be up to the Saudis, their high-powered K Street friends or their minions in the Senate.

Its up to the American people, and the way they overwhelmingly want this handled ought to be given a chance.
Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen seems to have borrowed a ham-handed technique from Washington, D.C.

As public educators and leaders from around the state were gathered in Great Falls, grilling her with questions which she struggled to answer, Arntzen tried to shift blame away from her, placing it on the state's media.

Keep in mind, she had roiled conference attendees at the Montana Association of Elementary and Middle School Principals when, after being asked a question about publicly funding preschool, Arntzen replied that she would not impede it. Educators scoffed at the superintendent repeatedly using the word "impede" when it came to public education programming. Why, they wondered, would an education leader even contemplate impeding? Why not helping or empowering?

During the question-and-answer period, Arntzen was also criticized for her plans to abandon the statewide Graduation Matters program which had been championed by her predecessor, Democrat Denise Juneau.

Instead of giving a straightforward defense of her position, Arntzen instead blamed the media saying, "All I can tell you is you say one word in the press and it turns into a firestorm," according to The Great Falls Tribune.

No, Elsie. It wasn't just a word.

Instead, Arntzen removed the program from the website and said it was being phased out.

Quite a bit more than just a word.

In Great Falls during a span of five years, the Graduation Matters program helped cut the number of high school drop-outs in half, from 210 to 101. Last year with continued focused effort, the program helped bring the number to less than 100.

Impressive results. And, while the drop in dropouts is certainly due to the hard work of teachers and administrators, the benefit of community collaboration and focus cannot be underestimated.

Similar Graduation Matters groups existed throughout the state, including in Billings, which aimed at tackling the complex, multi-faceted problem of high school dropouts. (Disclosure: Editor Darrell Ehrlick served on Billings group.)

Here's why it's shocking  if not appalling  that a Republican would seek to end the program: Graduation Matters brought private leaders, public educators together with state and private resources to tackle graduation. How many times have we heard leaders, especially those who claim conservative values, talk about how solutions must be found pairing the public education community together with leaders in the private and business sectors?

That's exactly the model for Graduation Matters across the state. It took business leaders, like Bill Underriner who led the initiative and paired them with other community leaders like John Felton of RiverStone Health, Dennis Sulser formerly of Billings Public Schools and now with St. Vincent Healthcare Foundation and superintendent Terry Bouck.

What Arntzen has done in her very short administration is dissolve those bonds that gave rise to these powerful collaborations. But isn't that the exact model she should be considering?

Yes, if her goal is to strengthen public education. But, we can't help but wonder if this is an intentional dismantling of those programs which would strengthen public education, only to make it easier for privatization efforts and charter initiatives?

Preschool funding has shown great promise in other states  conservatives states which have chosen to see such public funding as an investment in the workforce of the future which local businesses will need in order to compete.

Arntzen's blame-the-media play was lame and hardly original. It tried to distract from the fact that Graduation Matters is indeed being phased out or relegated. Arntzen is simply upset that her actions have been made public.

However, the media also has an obligation not to let her off by passively accepting the blame. In this day of blaming the media, we cannot let the assertion pass.

When Graduation Matters was removed from the state's website, we reported it.

When we followed up the next day, her spokesman insisted that phasing out doesn't mean it is being phased out.

When criticized about her approach to education in Great Falls, the Tribune ran her words verbatim.

What, Elsie? What hasn't been represented?

If there has been a firestorm during her brief tenure, we'd suggest Elsie's the one holding the match.
President Trump's first steps to secure the U.S. borders as he promised during his run for the presidency have been greeted by protest, demonstrations, and outrage. Yet the record has been clear for years that our country is at grave risk, not only from those who cross our porous borders to do us harm, but also from those who have turned a blind eye and refuse to see what has been occurring at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In August 2014, Judicial Watch (J.W.) broke the story that Islamic terrorist groups, including ISIS and al-Qaeda, were operating in the Mexican border city, Juarez, and planning attacks against the United States and that Fort Bliss, the El Paso Army installation, was beefing up base security. Remarkably, the Department of Homeland Security failed to respond to the story itself and to direct inquiries from conservative, non-partisan Judicial Watch.

A few years earlier, at an El Paso meeting with border city mayors, DHS chief Janet Napolitano stated, "There is a perception that the border is worse now than it ever has been."

In a reproach to public concerns about cross-border terrorist activity and Republican opposition to the Obama administration's lax border and illegal immigration policies, she asserted, "That is wrong. The border is better now than it ever has been."

Clearly, it was politically inconvenient for Napolitano to admit that the southern border was compromised, serving as the nexus of drug cartels that control businesses worth hundreds of billions of dollars and of Islamic terrorist group operatives, as cogently detailed by Judicial Watch investigations.

Adding their voices to the politically correct chorus on border security were FBI director James Comey and Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke (D). In 2015, Comey responded to J.W.'s report by proclaiming it "nonsense." He took a swipe at the government watchdog by complaining about the inconvenience it posed to his staff to chase down spurious charges. Congressman O'Rourke's comments arose from his background as a former El Paso city councilman, known for his boosterism of neighboring Juarez, Mexico, who had attempted to stop the Minuteman Project  a citizen effort dedicated to patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border  and had sponsored a resolution asking the federal government to end the prohibition of illegal drugs. Not surprisingly, O'Rourke responded to border security concerns with "[t]here has never been a terrorist organization or terrorist plot that has successfully entered this country through the southern border."

The pushback from the FBI and other government officials was surprising, especially at a time when there were anti-ISIS investigations in all 50 states. According to a study from George Washington University's Program on Extremism, "As of the fall of 2015, U.S. authorities speak of some 250 Americans who have traveled or attempted to travel to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State (ISIS) and 900 active investigations against ISIS sympathizers in all 50 states."

A recently released report from the Texas Department of Public Safety in collaboration with other law enforcement and homeland security agencies confirms terrorist infiltration across the U.S.-Mexico border. It cites examples of jihadists who have crossed the border since 2012, including several who have used the opportunity to attempt travel to Syria to join ISIS.

In "The Sun City Cell," a film produced by Judicial Watch in collaboration with Blaze TV, former military intelligence officer Chris Farrell exposes the fallacy of such denials as he reveals the underbelly of life at the southern border: an extensive narco-terrorist network with ties to cartels, gangs, jihadist groups, law enforcement, and politicians vying for money and power. Farrell has investigated the region for four years and conducted extensive interviews with law enforcement, government officials, civilians, and even sources with direct contact with cartel members. He reveals how unpatrolled remote farm roads, unguarded border areas, unsecured private airstrips, and hundreds of sanctuary cities amount to a border-jumper's dream and an open invitation to criminals and terrorists.

Farrell, who currently serves as director of research and investigations for Judicial Watch, explains how the Juarez-El Paso corridor is a secure route for smuggling all kinds of contraband  money, drugs, people, weapons  with the express assistance of corrupt and incompetent government officials on both sides of the border. He describes how border-crossers can easily acquire new identities replete with fake documents and obtain training in language, culture, reconnaissance, and terrorist tactics. A symbiotic win-win relationship between the cartels and Islamists offers mutual assistance with counterfeiting expertise, drug-harvesting techniques, smuggling operations, and guerrilla warfare training.

According to Farrell and his informants, Juarez, Mexico and El Paso, Texas, the second largest binational metropolitan area on the Mexico-U.S. border, are inextricably linked cartel-run cities. They inhabit opposite sides of the Rio Grande and are connected by four international ports. Juarez, situated on the Mexico-U.S. border just south of El Paso with a population of 1.5 million, has been billed as "the world's most violent city." It is home to over 300 maquiladora manufacturing or export assembly plants employing over 250,000 workers, which means constant cross-border traffic, not all of it legitimate.

In direct contrast, El Paso, a city of 700,000, often referred to as "the safest city in America," is an air, truck, and rail hub for commercial traffic. Its low crime rates belie the overriding presence and influence of the cartels. According to informants, the cartels control law enforcement and government officials and won't tolerate any openly unlawful activity by its associates that could disrupt business in what is considered its operational base in the U.S.

According to an El Paso Metropolitan Planning Organization report, in 2007, there were close to 23 million crossings by pedestrians, commuters, and commercial trucks between Juarez and El Paso. With the constant movement of people and goods back and forth, the area presents great opportunities for moving contraband, money, and people across the border.

The extent of the threat is exemplified by thwarted Chicago-area terrorist attacks planned by two wanted senior-level al-Qaeda officers who entered the U.S. from Juarez in 2009. According to Judicial Watch, Adnan el Shukrijuma, a commercial pilot and explosives expert billed as al-Qaeda's #2 and "the next Mohammed Atta," and Jaber Elbaneh, an associate of the Lackawanna Six terrorist cell that trained with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, easily entered the U.S. by avoiding established border crossings altogether. They flew unhindered from Juarez, Mexico to the Cielo Dorado Estates Airport, a private airfield eight miles across the border, a short distance from El Paso, Texas.

Once in El Paso, the pair met with Emad Karakrah, an ISIS operative and transportation and logistics expert involved in smuggling operations for the cartel, and Hector Pedroza Huerta, his longtime associate and an illegal alien with multiple arrests for intoxicated driving, to identify potential terrorist targets inside the United States. Together, they planned to attack Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios and the Sears Tower in Chicago.

After renting a U-Haul trailer and purchasing a step van, they acquired Tannerite, a binary explosive, legal for purchase in all 50 states and used for exploding targets in firearms practice, and C-4, a malleable plastic explosive used by the U.S. Armed Forces and acquired through access to Fort Bliss in El Paso. Karakrah and Huerta then drove to Chicago, where they were foiled by law enforcement.

Curiously, at the time of Karakrah's and Huerta's apprehension, the FBI did not publicize the thwarted attack or release any pertinent information. The perpetrators were remanded to county jails on lesser charges and soon released. Requests for information from the FBI and the Department of Justice went unanswered. It wasn't until five years later that news of the foiled attack was revealed, when two unrelated arrests brought the situation to light.

On August 28, 2014, Karakrah was arrested in Chicago after leading the police on a high-speed chase while flying an ISIS flag out of the window of his car. When officers attempted to inspect his vehicle, he threatened to detonate an explosive device. A few weeks earlier, Huerta, his partner in crime, was arrested in El Paso for a third DWI.

After their arrests, it was revealed that both men, alleged smugglers of drugs and weapons, had partnered in a plan to commit the Chicago bombings at the behest of two of the FBI's "most wanted" terrorists: Jaber Elbaneh and Adnan el Shukrijuma. Curiously, neither Karakrah nor Huerta faced federal charges for their respective roles in the failed plots. Remarkably, both men were released from custody in 2015 on plea deals, and their current whereabouts are unknown.

Surprisingly, the attempted bombing received little media attention. Instead of arresting Karakrah in 2009, the FBI enlisted him as a confidential informant. It is speculated that no federal action may have been taken for political reasons, either to maintain Obama's charade that al-Qaeda had been defeated and that "ISIS is a J.V. team" or to avoid the embarrassment of revealing that people implicated in attacks were cooperating with the government.

In December 2014, Shukrajumah, who had left the country to avoid capture and questioning, was killed by the Pakistan Army. Possibly, as a top al-Qaeda leader and coordinator of terrorist operations wanted by the U.S. government, he represented too great a risk to future al-Qaeda operations.

Clearly, every part of the country is affected by the growing threat posed by cartels, terrorist networks, and criminals who traffic in drugs, humans, weapons, and money. This bad situation deteriorated further under Barack Obama's lax border and immigration policies and his mandate to reduce the presence and authority of law enforcement and border and customs agencies.

The Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C. reported that under the Obama administration, the number of illegal aliens selected for deportation from the United States declined 34% between FY2011 and FY2013, and criminal arrests declined by 11% from FY2012 to FY2013. In 2012, Obama closed nine border stations: six in Texas and one each in California, Montana, and Idaho.

Fortunately, the days of Mexican drug cartels and terrorists being able to operate with impunity on both sides of the border may be over. In October 2016, presidential candidate Trump said, "I have a message for the drug dealers, for the gang members and the criminal cartels: your days are numbered."

Hopefully, President Trump's pledge and his recent executive orders to build a wall on the Mexico-U.S. border, end aid to sanctuary cities, and limit immigration are just the start of efforts to enforce immigration laws, secure the border, and put an end to this grave threat to the homeland.
Over the last eight years, the Left has taken the offensive continually while Republicans either capitulated, cooperated, procrastinated, or employed purely defensive maneuvers that amounted to a finger in the dam.

How things have changed.

Its been barely two weeks since Donald Trump has taken office and Democrats are facing a political blitzkrieg. They are grappling for the means to handle the assault, as the party of the Left has long thought it had total control of both the narrative and the battles.

Stunned political operatives like Nancy Pelosi dont recognize President Trump is not interested in guerilla warfare tactics, but has put into effect a broad-based offensive against the very citadels of liberal power and bloated government.

The president is putting into play a classic military maneuver applied to politics: keep going on a total and accelerated offensive no matter what in order to keep your enemy digging foxholes and putting up barriers -- while all the while they actually are being forced to slowly retreat under the onslaught, screaming and holding up protest placards all the way to the back of the line.

Democrats are unused to a total war offensive, as they have relied on relentless guerilla warfare and the long march. They are even more unused to being on the defensive, and are ill-prepared to fight defensively. They are aghast over the Trump tactics being applied against them, are assuming the old weapons once applied so effectively against their political enemies still work.

One is reminded of the French infantry fighting in World War I. Elan, which was a mystical sense of inevitable victory, was supposed to be enough to win the day. The result was that French soldiers were woefully unprepared for German machine guns. Guns did not take elan into account.

In like manner, Democrats are still hauling out old and worn out tropes from the 1960s, weapons that won victories and intimidated the opposition for two generations. But the old tactics are obsolete and increasingly prove to be virtually useless. Millions of Americans have repudiated the orthodox liturgy of the Left, wedded as it is to constant and relentless battles about race, diversity, open borders, and globalism. Millions are also sick and tired of being labeled heretics by radical Democrats who constantly dismiss decent and basically charitable Americans as haters, homophobes, misogynists, and bitter clingers to guns and religion.

Not many Democrats realize the most powerful weapon they have employed over the last two generations; namely the mainstream media, is now as obsolete as the Maginot Line. For decades, the Lefts Maginot Line has had its guns pointed in one direction -- against those who have opposed liberalisms excesses and who have and still are resisting its long march through major American institutions -- citadels such as academia and the Church.

But liberals badly miscalculated by underestimating Trump, (along with, at times, the author of this article, who has gradually changed her mind). Like the Germans who simply went around the Maginot Line, Trump has simply gone around and over the fortifications built by leftist media outlets.

In so doing, Trump has effectively neutered the fourth arm of the government. The Left can no longer rely on the mainstream media as a powerful weapon, as due to new technology and the internet, it is becoming as archaic as Big Bertha in the face of the development and implementation of missiles.

Trump correctly discerned that ordinary citizens who desire nothing more than to be left alone to enjoy peace and while at an actual job or sitting by their undisturbed hearths are sick to death of constantly being roiled by the incessant demands of the latest approved victim of the month. They are fed up with the constant assaults on authority and on their faith. For them, the old tactics from radicals playbooks dating from the 1960s have become merely irritating and meaningless liturgical chants rather than urgent and legitimate calls for justice.

The fact is that millions of Americans do not want the fundamental transformation desired by the Left. They want an America transformed by fundamentals -- the fundamentals that have been and still are the bedrock of American society; namely, constitutional law and adherence to the Bill of Rights.

At the heart of the Trump political blitzkrieg is the core belief that America has been going down the wrong path for many years and that it is urgent that the ship of state be turned around before it sinks into the vortex created by extremists.

The battle in America is the same battle that is being fought in Europe and around the world. Will it be the ideology of the radical Left that prevails? Will globalists prevail or will the legitimacy of national identities endure? Will a monoculture of the Left be established or will peoples of the world be free to be truly diverse in thought, word, and deed? Will international law trump national sovereignty or will Americans and citizens of other free nations retain their unique and indelible character as formed by founding documents, history and traditions?

It seems that for Trump, the time is now or never. It appears he is willing and able to go after the citadels of power that have weakened America and her foundational beliefs, he not inclined to take the George McClellan way of battle -- endlessly organizing and rehearsing battle maneuvers, studying textbook battles while preparing for attacks by erecting ineffectual bulwarks. Instead he seems more inclined to the tactics of William Tecumseh Sherman -- as applied to political war.

That is perhaps why he picked John Gorsuch, who is the judicial equivalent of General Robert E. Lee, for a position on the Supreme Court. Gorsuch has signaled he is not prepared to adjudicate on the bases of mystical penumbras, from anti-science argumentations, and from mere hunches or intuitions like those of a wise Latina. Gorsuch shares the late Justice Antonin Scalias dedication to the interpretation of laws based on the actual text.

He has stated: Judges should instead strive, if humanly and so imperfectly, to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be.

Further, Gorsuch believes the Constitution should be interpreted as Americas Founders intended, not used as a vehicle for ever changing and fluid fundamental transformation.

The responses of Democrats have been predictable, old school radical, boring and outdated. Already they are characterizing Gorsuchs stances as not being mainstream. No sooner was Gorsuchs name announced than a group of protestors appeared carrying professionally printed signs calling him extreme and dangerous.

Yes, there is nothing quite as convincing as a spontaneous uprising from people who are probably hirelings. We have seen such spur-of-the-moment outrages many times. The extemporaneity of the Left is always so compelling.

The truth is that their weapons are outdated will prove futile in the long run.

However, it is still wise to put on helmets when engaged in guerilla warfare and facing sniper fire. There are still many battles to be fought, though it might appear liberalism is in the position of Custer during his last stand.

But due to Trumps broad front against the excesses of liberalism and the tacit complicity of some with leftist goals, at least conservatives are on the offensive and conducting total warfare for the first time in a very long time.

Fay Voshell is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. Her thoughts have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Fox News, CNS, RealClearReligion, and National Review. She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com
In the two weeks since the inauguration of our 45th president, we have seen the world erupt into predictable chaos. Anarchy has been fomented by the growing underworld of arrogant progressives who believe they are the most intelligent beings on the planet. Some say this effort is orchestrated by a billionaire who lives for just one thing: to tear down the fabric of our society, destroy our Constitution, and remove the collective freedoms we have all come to enjoy. His methods revolve around inciting fear in women and minorities who fail to realize that their freedoms in America are unprecedented and available nowhere else on Earth. The endgame is to install a globalist-dominated one-world order and destroy the American two-party system.

Thankfully, his progressive agenda has been disrupted by Americans who successfully voted against his plan. As a pernicious architect, George Soros has drafted his mindless minions to attack anyone whose opinions do not match their own. Groupthink is mandatory. Many adherents are making it personal to the point of attacking longtime friends and loved ones. In recent evidence, we saw riots at U.C. Berkeley, coordinated via social media, to protest the speaking engagement of Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay conservative thinker.

Ironically, Hollywood has instituted a ground game akin to 1950s McCarthyism, targeting only conservatives. Actors and screenwriters were once blacklisted as communist sympathizers. Sixty years later, they have turned the tables. Assuming they are geo-political experts, Hollywood A-listers call on their colleagues and sycophantic admirers to stand firm against anyone who does not share their cult agenda. Although charismatic and glamorous, most have neither the historical expertise nor the intellectual acumen to logically analyze national or world politics. Yet they gladly act as a collective Pied Piper, leading simple-minded fans to a false paradise, dividing citizens and families  pitting one against the other.

Similarly, many Millennial-aged university students and their peers are following the progressive blueprint to disrupt and discredit the life of anyone who does not agree with them. Attack is their modus operandi.

Personally, I have been targeted by someone who was once a close friend. This individual has attempted to quash my First Amendment rights and smear my reputation through email, social media, and other public forums. Sadly, this person also teaches at the university level and has stooped to tactics unbecoming an educator or leader of students. To this person, Millennials, and progressives, I direct the following:

I could address you in a disrespectful manner  but I won't. My preference is polite discussion and intelligent debate. I could be emotional and unhinged; however, I prefer logical thought and positive contemplation. Finally, I could absorb your vitriol and retaliate in kind. Instead, I will simply avoid you, because your actions supplant rational thinking. Someone needs to smack you awake and tear down the web of indoctrination in which you've become entangled.

You pompously believe that your newly acquired advanced education makes you more worldly and intelligent than those of us who have been fighting the battle for much longer than you have  or ever will. We have witnessed and rejected the evil you fawn over. In the past, to keep you safe, we've stared it down and beaten it back. Many gave their lives to save yours. Yet you are petulant, cheeky, and ungrateful.

Your moral high ground is actually buried deep within the belly of the beast. You are too blinded by your self-congratulatory, high-five stance to see it. You've approached current events from the standpoint of a brainwashed infant, a mere puppet, joining an army of vacant-minded, pampered, and precious children who have always gotten their way. You are clueless to the spreading global evil that has devoured your soul. You scream Nazism when it is you who are a newly anointed brown shirt  a pawn. You broadcast and signal your virtue by standing with people who follow and praise unimaginable malevolence.

Perhaps you will wake up and realize that what you have done is self-defeating not only to your country, but to your children and grandchildren. You have let your guard down and sold your soul to the master manipulator. Eventually, you will wish you had taken more time to study and analyze the malignant undercurrent of which you are now a part. Will it be too late? Will you ultimately regret the day you fell for the chicanery? Wake up! Study before you act. Contemplate before you speak, and for the love of God, stop before you destroy yourselves and everyone you value.
This doesnt sound like the role envisioned by the founders. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist No. 78, the judiciary is (theoretically) the least dangerous branch of government because it has no influence over either the sword or the purse. So how have the courts been afforded so much power?

Its no surprise the Democrats plan to fight against the nomination of President Trumps Supreme Court pick, 10th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Neil Gorsuch. There are no confirmation battles like Supreme Court confirmation battles because, as we always hear, such a decision can shape the country for a generation.

Afforded is the word. In reality, the judiciary has become the most dangerous branch due to ignorance and congressional abdication of responsibility.

Conservatives often complain that the courts thwart the peoples will, act unconstitutionally and impose their own biases via judicial fiat. A good example is the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision dictating that states must recognize so-called same-sex marriage. What most dont know is that Congress could long before have prevented the courts from weighing in.

Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts below the Supreme Court (SC) and the appellate jurisdiction of the latter. In other words, Congress could simply have prevented federal courts below the SCOTUS from ruling on marriage (and other issues) to begin with and the SCOTUS from reviewing lower-court decisions on those issues. This would, essentially, have left marriage where it belongs: in the states.

Why was this not done?

Cowardice.

Congress wouldve had to take a firm stand on a contentious issue and perhaps suffer electoral consequences. Its easier for politicians to just puff up their chests, complain of judicial overreach, then throw up their hands and say The courts have ruled  theres nothing we can do. Few today understand the Constitution, so who will argue?

Congress also has the power under Article III to eliminate any and every federal court except the SCOTUS. For example, it could have sent the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit  known for insane rulings and as the nations most reversed court  packing long ago. It certainly would make judges mind their ps and qs, too, if they knew acting unconstitutionally could mean their jobs.

Again, though, this would require Congress to take a stand. Besides, if it actually did so and drained the judicial swamp, what could Congress blame for divisive political outcomes? The transgressing courts would be gone and the remaining ones chastened, and judges would more often leave issues (e.g., abortion, marriage) in the legislatures hands, putting politicians on the hot seat. Cant have that. Federal judges dont have to be reelected  congressmen do.

Yet this is why courts are going rogue. How can there be a balance of power in our system, as the founders intended, if one branch refuses to exercise its power?

The kicker is that accepting the courts current role is not only misguided, but, according to Thomas Jefferson, makes our Constitution a felo de se  a suicide pact.

Jefferson was warning of judicial supremacy, the idea that courts have the power to determine what law means and thus constrain not only their own branch, but the other two as well. Why did this bother Jefferson?

The legislatures power to create law and the executive branchs power to enforce it are granted by the Constitution, yet judicial supremacy is not. Rather, this power was declared by the courts themselves, most notably in the Marbury v. Madison decision in 1803. Talk about circular reasoning: The SCOTUS has trump card power.

Because the SCOTUS says so.

The result? The Supreme Court was only meant to be supreme among courts. Instead, in a government supposedly of, by and for the people, five lawyers can determine what law means for 320 million Americans.

With Trump poised to transform the SCOTUS, conservatives may say that now isnt the time to question its power. But Republican judicial nominees have often disappointed. Moreover, draining the swamp is fine, but if we want the right kind of governmental revolution, perhaps we should start by listening to the revolutionaries who created our government.

Contact Selwyn Duke, follow him on Twitter or log on to SelwynDuke.com
All the smartypants experts on diplomacy, who were horrified the announcement of a short pause in the issuance of visas to citizens of seven nations, know lots of little things but evidently are ignorant of the Big Thing that matters in the Middle East. David P. Goldman, writing as Spengler at the Asia Times, explains in the read of the day. Read the whole thing, but here is the essence:

Critics of President Trump's temporary travel ban on seven Muslim nations should remember the Chinese proverb, "Kill the chicken and let the monkey watch." The much-criticized measure was a warning to the governments of the Gulf States, Turkey and Pakistan, who walk a fine line between support for Western counter-terrorism efforts and concessions to jihadists. It has had precisely the result that the White House intended.

Trump has handed a tool to our allies to use against their domestic jihadist enemies, who also happen to be ours:

Counter-terrorism officials in Muslim countries contending with a jihadist minority view Trump as an ally against their domestic enemies.

There is much more, including the shocking signs that Turkey's Erdogan government may be warming up to Trump.

It turns out that Osama bin Laden was correct, and that people are drawn to a "strong horse." President Obama's spineless policies brought forth a disaster for the Middle East. No wonder Trump's changes are being welcomed where it counts.
On Wednesday, the campus of UC Berkeley (in the 1960s a conservative institution) erupted with protests and riots. This reaction by the elite students of this now radical state-supported California institution should raise serious questions about freedom of speech and tolerance. Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, invited by a Republican student group, was unable to deliver his speech as a result of this riot. A new cold wind has descended upon our nation, threatening our body politic.

Yiannopoulos is an interesting character for these fiery antagonists to oppose. He is a conservative British citizen born in Greece. He is Catholic and gay but recognizes Jewish roots through his mother. His parents divorced while he was young, so his grandmother helped raise him. He is hardly the usual conservative 32-year-old. Opponents call him a member of the "alt-right" (reminiscent of Steve Bannon), as some ideas do overlap.

The behavior of these rioting students raises more important questions for our nation. The radical left has called conservative opponents racists, homophobes, misogynists, anti-LGBT, fascists, anti-Semitic, corporation supporters, and un-American. These epithets are used by liberals to marginalize any but the most moderate Republicans. They claim to want multi-culturalism but thwart diversity of ideas. Silencing ideas strikes against freedom of speech. It is borrowed from those fascists they claim to oppose. The most disturbing aspect is the support for these approaches that the governing Democrat elite in Washington and liberal state capitals has provided.

Some have called Trump "Hitlerian," but this demonstrates their lack of historical knowledge. After World War I, Germany and Italy were left without the financial means to feed and provide for their populations. As a result, dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini rose to power and created fascist regimes. These socialist conglomerates with large corporate entities consolidated power by identifying enemies domestic and foreign.

Hitler's propagandist Joseph Goebbels would repeat lies until they were accepted as truth. The techniques of modern politicians are borrowed from this approach. Hitler sought to divide the citizenry by eliminating groups of people as scapegoats, including Jews, gypsies, and the handicapped. This approache worked to generate nationalist fervor. He utilized techniques of indoctrination through the Hitler youth. Our high schools and colleges do this more subtly today. Our children are taught Marxist philosophy (unknowingly) with its partiality to the disadvantaged, minorities, and poor. Few academic economists support laissez-faire capitalism today.

The modern marginalization of opponents is effective with conventional politicians but has little affect upon President Trump. Hitler attacked German citizens (principally Jews), French disputed territories, Czechoslovakia, and then Poland to start World War II. Trump is arguing to change policies to protect American citizens (as opposed to foreigners) and reduce our footprint in the Middle East. This is hardly the dictatorial expansion of power that Mussolini (in Africa) or Hitler pursued. The Nazi party was anti-communist but German socialist  again, hardly the entrepreneurial approach of Trump, with tax cuts and limiting national governmental power.

Many higher educational institutions have failed to give these students adequate understanding of these differences. Would the students feel the need to disrupt a Trump supporter such as Yiannopoulos otherwise?

Major universities such as Rutgers, Penn State, and Ivy League schools have been inhospitable to Republicans and conservatives, including former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Ben Shapiro, and David Horowitz. This intolerance demonstrates that agitators have great latitude. Universities usually require conservative student groups to pay for extra security when their speakers attend. Yet often the events are canceled. President Trump tweeted his concern about federal funding for such institutions. It may be time to consider some changes.

Kristallnacht, or "the night of broken glass," in 1938 may be considered the beginning of the final solution that led to the Jewish Holocaust. The Nazi regime had found its scapegoat to give ordinary people a group to attack. They actively encouraged the destruction of these people's property  hardly anything like the immigration pause from seven Islamic countries. The media and Democratic opposition have used this memory to falsely equate the two situations. Further, they do not distinguish that the "America First" movement of the 1930s was principally anti-war, rather than pro-Nazi, in contrast to Trump's policy.

The radical left anarchistic bullying is aimed at causing enough pressure upon its opposition to force reversal of policies. The leaders of the congressional Democrats have determined to reinforce this approach by absence of condemnation. The attempts to slow the establishment of Trump's cabinet encourages further protests.

The search for political power by the left is disturbing in that the attempt threatens our constitutional process. It uses ignorant youths, some with longstanding grievances against our system. It is anti-democratic and fails to understand our representative republic. More importantly, it fosters a form of intellectual secession. It is underlying the movement within California to leave the Union. This movement is clearly removed from the issues that prompted the Civil War.

It is necessary for leaders on the left to consider the consequences of their animosity toward Trump. They have set forces in motion that could erupt into the riots of the 1960s. Pushing the envelope can lead to backlash beyond the left's imagination. Angela Merkel of Germany aimed to accept Syrian refugees as a way of removing the memory of Nazi Germany. The result has been unhappy and might allow neo-Nazi re-emergence.

Be careful what you wish for! George Santayana warned us to remember the past, lest we repeat it. Will our education system provide adequate history training, or will conservatives have to create new institutions?
The new Mayor of Berkeley, Jesse Arreguin, made a fool of himself on Twitter both in the run-up to and the aftermath of the riots that denied First Amendment rights to Milo Yiannopoulos and the many students who bought tickets to his sold out speaking engagement at the University of California. The rookie mayor, now in a national spotlight, bears some responsibility for signaling the rioters that their attack is understandable because, as he put it in a tweet just a couple of hours before the event was scheduled to begin, "[h]ate speech isn't welcome in our community."

Using speech to silence marginalized communities and promote bigotry is unacceptable. Hate speech isn't welcome in our community.

 Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

This was highly irresponsible. How does "speech ... silence marginalized communities"? Milo or anyone else who expresses ideas the mayor doesn't like is not silencing people. But by maintaining that allowing him to speak would "silence" groups that the mayor likes, he provides justification for those who would and did silence Milo. After all, in the mayor's telling of it, Milo was striking first by "silencing marginalized communities," so retaliatory silencing is only fair play.

As the riots predictably happened, the mayor must have had an "oops" moment.

Violence and destruction is not the answer  Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

Twitter exploded with well justified mockery of the mayor. Twitchy has collected a number of gems, but this one documents the mayor's consistent fanboy attitude toward protesters and hostility toward police.

@JesseArreguin you demonized police and were cool with protesters engaging in criminal behavior pic.twitter.com/9KzrgZh4Ek  Razor (@hale_razor) February 2, 2017

But the mayor wasn't done making an ass of himself. He went on the throw the Berkeley Police Department under the bus:

Police strategy was ordered by the department, not me. They did an excellent job in preventing further risk to safety. (4/5)  Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

Now, I have a lot of sympathy for the Berkeley Police Department, working in the most politically correct city in the world. But the officers on the line were guided by policy of the department, and there was ample time for the mayor to review the threat posed by enemies of free speech and discuss the use of force by the cops. The last time the BPD used tear gas on rioters in downtown Berkeley, they came in for criticism from then-mayor Tom Bates, a man who used to vacation in East Germany before the wall came down. His successor, Mayor Arreguin, is widely considered to be well to his left. In fact, it is widely believed that the endorsement of Bernie Sanders was a key to his election victory.

Now this is what must be understood:

The Berkeley and university cops, and whatever other law enforcement might have been present (Alameda County sheriff?), allowed over a hundred masked demonstrators, carrying weapons and dressed in all black uniforms, to march through the streets of Berkeley onto the campus. That violated multiple laws but went unopposed. That was the moment to act, and for reasons that ought to be investigated (Hello, A.G.-to-Be Sessions!), nothing was done to stop this imminent threat.

That is the scandal.

But Mayor Arreguin still was not done beclowning himself. He issued an official statement via Twitter that called Milo Yiannopoulos a "white nationalist." After a firestorm...

@JesseArreguin YOU are attacking a LGBT jewish immigrant with a black boyfriend, and calling him a "White Nationalist"? Seriously?   2017:Exit the Matrix (@ShutdownDUMBS) February 2, 2017

...he apologized:

I consider much of what Mr. Yiannopoulos says to be hateful. But I regret and apologize for the white national label.  Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

...and issued a revised statement that called Milo an "alt-rightist," another trigger word for violence by the fascist left.

The mayor now has to face the consequences of signaling that Berkeley is not a safe place to invest money in downtown real estate. That's a shame, because there has been a huge building boom, as people unable to afford San Francisco rents are flocking to Berkeley, which has fast BART trains into the city and which is slightly less outrageously unaffordable, though still quite expensive. These new developments have been providing a lot of tax revenue to the city, and a lot of new business for downtown restaurants, bars, theatres, and merchants. A lot of people are going to be very unhappy if some of the big new projects in the pipeline get canceled because Berkeley is unsafe. A few more minutes on BART will take commuters to safe spaces for normal people, like Lafayette, Orinda, and Walnut Creek.

Mayor Arreguin has made himself a virtuoso of politically correct incompetence. If the mainstream media were conservative, not leftist, he would be driven from office over his comic (except for the damage to people and buildings) ineptitude. Somehow, I suspect he has not learned his lesson. We'll see.
It's 1968 all over again. Violent protesters are filling the streets, lighting fires, vandalizing private and public property, and beating people without knowing what "side" those people support.

Most likely there was some spontaneity to the protests of the 1960s; college students did not want to be drafted into the military. Once Nixon ended the draft in 1973, the protests stopped.

This time, it's different. The protests against Trump and all things conservative and Republican are organized, paid for, the protesters and vandals recruited and trained by a panoply of radical leftist groups, some of them funded by the odious nihilist George Soros.

He funded the many groups that recruited the marchers for the Women's "pussy" March that took place the day after Trump's inauguration as well. What was the purpose of that march? Unclear. There was no stated purpose beyond hating the newly elected president. Many of the marchers were completely unable to articulate why they were there. Trump had been president for a day, and they were blaming him for every imaginable and imaginary potential blight upon their womanhood. The woman who headed up the march, Linda Sarsour, is a Muslim sharia law supporter with a vicious streak. The women who marched were pawns in a very dangerous game. They willingly and unwittingly gave their contact information to a communist group.

All of this brings us to the latest rent-a-mobs. What happened at U.C. Berkeley Wednesday night was appalling. At the home of the Free Speech Movement of 1964-65, there is no longer even a semblance of respect or reverence for free speech. Mario Savio is rolling over in his grave. A calculated riot took place to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos, a young gay Jewish conservative, from speaking. Protests occur everywhere he appears, and his talks are often canceled for the same reason: militant intolerance. These radical leftists are the new fascists. They have gone so far to the left that they've run smack into Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin on the circle of ideologies. Hitler's Nazism was only a hair's-width different from Stalin's communism anyway.

Sen. Schumer is playing the pitiful fool in this grand hysterical play. He thinks that by crying fake tears over a few detained immigrants from nations known to harbor and train terrorists, he will reinvigorate the Democratic Party. He has never cried over the thousands of Americans killed in Chicago or the hundreds of thousands brutally killed in the Middle East thanks to the policies of Obama or the victims of illegal immigrant criminals. Like Nancy Pelosi, he is absolutely clueless as to how Trump won, so he is doubling down on what he knows: denigrate, disparage, and lie. And the more he plays this part, the more people support Trump and his take-no-prisoners style.

Keep it up, Chuck. Along with all the professional protesters, you are guaranteeing Trump's re-election just as the protesters of the 1960s guaranteed Nixon's victory.
Iran's illegal missile test on Sunday is likely to lead to new sanctions on several Iranian individuals and companies, according to Trump administration sources.

While the sanctions will not violate the 2015 nuclear agreement, they will present Tehran with a dilemma they were never forced to confront during the Obama administration: whether or not to follow through on their threats and scuttle the nuclear deal if the U.S. imposes new restrictions on Tehran.

Reuters:

In the first tangible action against Iran since Trump took office on Jan. 20, the administration, on the same day he insisted that "nothing is off the table," prepared to roll out new measures against more than two dozen Iranian targets, the sources said. The announcement is expected as early as Friday, they added. The new sanctions, which are being taken under existing executive orders covering terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, may mark the opening shot in a more aggressive policy against Iran that Trump promised during the 2016 presidential campaign, the sources, who had knowledge of the administration's plans, said. But the package, targeting both entities and individuals, was formulated in a way that would not violate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal negotiated between Iran and six world powers including Trumps predecessor, Barack Obama, they added. The sources said the new sanctions had been in the works for some time and that Iran's decision to test-fire a ballistic missile on Sunday helped trigger Trump's decision to impose them, although Washington has not accused Iran of violating the nuclear deal. The White House declined comment. A U.S. State Department official said: "As standard policy, we do not preview sanction decisions before they are announced." The White House signaled a tougher stance toward Iran on Wednesday when Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, said he was putting Iran "on notice" after the missile test and senior U.S. officials said the administration was reviewing how to respond. A top adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country would not yield to "useless" U.S. threats from "an inexperienced person" over its ballistic missile program. The adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, did not identify a specific U.S. official in his comments. The impact of the new sanctions will be more symbolic than practical, especially as the move does not affect the lifting of broader U.S. and international sanctions that took place under the nuclear deal. Also, few of the Iranian entities being targeted are likely to have U.S. assets that can be frozen, and U.S. companies, with few exceptions, are barred from doing business with Iran.

The real value of these new sanctions is that they send an unmistakable signal to Iran: the free ride is over. The United States will no longer accept behavior from Iran that violates either the nuclear accord or U.N. resolutions that restrict its ballistic missile program.

The Trump administration is likely to interpret the nuclear agreement far more aggressively than the Obama administration, who gave in on every point of contention that Tehran brought up. The Obama administration also ran diplomatic interference for Tehran while the Iranian leadership continuously trashed the U.S. and challenged us at every turn.

There was no pushback when Iran seized our sailors who veered off course off Iranian territory. Indeed, the U.S. paid a hefty ransom to get our sailors back. That sort of appeasement will be a thing of the past, and Iran has some very hard choices to make if it wants the flow of cash released by the West in compliance with the nuclear agreement to continue.

So it's put up or shut up time for the Iranians. They are going to be given a choice: join the league of civilized nations, or be frozen out again.
FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security, on October 21, 2015, that we cannot properly vet Syrian refugees. Comey said:

We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.

According to the Daily Caller article, supra:

More than 4 million Syrians have fled their homeland amid a brutal civil war. But many Middle Eastern countries have refused to accept refugees, putting the burden on Europe and the West.

Comey is correct that we cannot properly vet Syrian refugees or refugees from other Middle East countries. The typical vetting would involve researching public records, police records, and court records; interviewing friends, neighbors, and acquaintances of the refugee; and interviewing with the refugee. Comey said these records do not exist, so we are left with just interviewing a refugee and accepting what he tells us.

There is no evidence that the situation has changed since Comey's testimony of October 21, 2015, nor is there any evidence from responsible authorities to contradict Comey.

Former National Intelligence director James Clapper said in September 2015:

I don't, obviously, put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees, so that's a huge concern of ours[.]

The WikiLeaks release of Hilllary emails shows that Hillary said in 2013 that the country of Jordan "can't possibly vet all those Syrian refugees  so they don't know if  jihadists are coming in along with legitimate refugees."

Obama appointees Comey and Clapper, responsible for vetting refugees, expressed doubt about properly vetting such refugees. It logically follows that if we cannot properly vet the refugees, then Trump's directive for a temporary ban on allowing refugees into our country so we can review the vetting procedures for the seven designated countries is reasonable and in the interest of protecting Americans.

The background of this refugee problem is the Syrian Civil War that started in 2011. Syria has a population of about 22 million, with demographics of 60% Sunni Muslim, 10% Christian, 11% Shiite-Alawite, 9% Kurd, 3% Druze, and others.

From this we can assume that most of the refugees are Muslim. As of December 2015, only 3% of the Syrian refugees to the USA were Christians.

Russia, Iran, and Hezb'allah support Assad, a Shiite-Alawaite. Turkey, USA, and others supported the rebels who started fighting Assad in 2011.

Complicating the war is that ISIS joined the fight against Assad, which increased the brutality of the war and the number of refugees. Obviously, the interests of the USA and ISIS differ, but we were on the same side fighting Assad. It is difficult to tell the good guys, if any, from the bad guys. For example, in 2013, U.S.-supported "rebels" massacred 45 Christians and destroyed 14 churches in Sadat, Syria, while shouting, "Allahu akbar." And in August 2014, an al-Qaeda group attacked the Christian town of Maaloula and were beaten back by Assad's forces, aided by Hezb'allah.

But the opposition party acts as if the victims were only Muslims and as if vetting refugees were somehow anti-Muslim.

The war is bad guys against very bad guys. We opposed Iran in Syria at the same time that Obama was negotiating the nuclear deal that gave Iran 150 billion dollars, which it used to finance Hezb'allah.

Obama threatened Assad if he used chemical weapons, but Obama did not follow through, as demanded by war hawks such as John McCain. Obama stumbled into the correct policy of not bombing Assad because the removal of Assad would further destabilize Syria, which would lead to ISIS gaining more control as it did in Libya and Iraq. This would have caused more refugees, especially Christian refugees as in Iraq.

Unfortunately, the choice in Syria is between Assad, a thug, and ISIS, a murderous group that supports terrorism in Europe and the USA. From this mix of Hezb;allah, ISIS, al-Qaeda, and others, how do you vet refugees who want to leave Syria?

Even by raising these facts, the opposition party (Democrats/MSM)

blathers that we cannot consider the background and religion of the refugees because this would be un-American. The first American value is to protect Americans, not to allow in refugees who have not been properly vetted.

We do not know if the vetting process questions the refugees on whether, as Muslims, they believe in sharia law, and whether it should be applied in the USA. Since ISIS is in Syria, its members can easily infiltrate the refugee camps, as Comey and Clapper said.

There should be a thorough evaluation of the vetting procedures and the history of the refugees who have been settled in our country and in Europe. The Obama political appointees should all be removed, and the investigation and evaluation must be done by professionals with the first priority to protect our country.

There is no evidence that the situation has changed since Comey's and Clapper's statements. There is no assurance that ISIS is not infiltrating terrorists among the refugees. There is no assurance that the refugees do not have terrorists in their midst.

Even if one terrorist infiltrates, that will result in deaths and injuries for Americans. The speeches by the opposition party of the Democrats and MSM, coupled with Madonna's testimony, are not evidence that the facts and analysis set forth by Comey and Clapper have changed.

The opposition party are more concerned with using the refugee issue to attack President Trump than with the safety of the United States.
As our nation goes through the transition process from President Obama to President Trump, and the vetting process for numerous political appointments escalate, perhaps none will receive more scrutiny than nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court. Why is this?

Justices serve during good behavior,  according to Article 3, Section 1, U.S. Constitution. In practice, this means for life, or until they are so old they can barely function. The average age for justices when they are appointed is 53, and, since 1970, the average service for a Justice has been 26 years. Thus, the one or more justices President Trump appoints could serve through four to seven presidents.

In addition to the Supreme Court opening, there are 84 vacancies for U.S. District Court judges and 14 vacancies for federal Circuit Court judges. In total, there are 890 full-time federal judgeships, thus over 10 percent are unfilled today. President Obama appointed 329 federal judges; President George W. Bush appointed 326; President Reagan appointed 384; and President Clinton appointed 379. President Reagan also appointed three Supreme Court Justices, while Presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton each appointed two to the Supreme Court. The legacy of any president is significantly tied to their federal judge appointments, particularly the Supreme Court.

Journalists, insiders, and think tanks have been looking very hard at the people President Trump listed as potential Supreme Court nominees. The U.S. Senate has the important task of scrutinizing and vetting the eventual nominee. This vetting is necessary because once appointed, getting someone off the federal court is nearly impossible. What to look for and what is disqualifying is subjective and will vary with each senator. Supreme Court nominees have been rejected for various reasons, and, of course, nominees have been approved despite some issue(s) in their past, including questionable business dealings, sexual harassment allegations, and even perceived racist views.

Allow me to illustrate with an example from my own background. When I started this column I promised to be authentic, and, while uncomfortable to recall, it illustrates the point. In 1984, I wrote onto the Montana Law Review while in law school, something I was proud of. While then writing a case note (a summary of a case), I did not use quotation marks properly around the authors writing. The transgression was a small part of the article, but technically I plagiarized. I was not trying to conceal anything, as evidenced by the fact I cited the case and page number. But, I made a mistake. I decided the right thing to do was resign from law review, which I did.

In the end, I learned some valuable life lessons. One, be more attentive when writing. Two, when you make a mistake, admit it, take your lumps, and move on. And three, give a little grace sometimes  everyone makes mistakes. Since that time 33 years ago, I have gone on to a rewarding career as a lawyer, legislator and judge, including handling over 25,000 cases and writing thousands of orders and opinions. Obviously, the president is not going to nominate me for the Supreme Court, but if he did, the president, the Senate, and the American people would have the right to know about things like this before I served on the court. I do not think this long ago mistake would be disqualifying, but it would have to be considered by the Senate, along with what I have done since then.

So, thats why vetting and the scrutiny court nominees face is so important, and takes place in such a public, and politicized, environment. When the press and senators dig deep into every facet of a Supreme Court nominees past, it is part of a process that helps us know who we are getting before we give them essentially a life term on the highest court in the land.
Located just over eight hundred kilometers away from the North Pole, the community of Alert, on the northeastern tip of Ellesmere Island, in Nunavut, Canada, is the most northerly permanent settlement in the world. The nearest populated place is another 540 kilometers south, in Greenland, while the nearest Canadian city is over two thousand kilometers away. The place is so close to the North Pole that it cant connect with communication satellites because their orbit lies below the horizon.

For four months, Alert exist in total darkness. For another four months, the sun never leaves the sky, but rising no more than 30 degrees above the horizon at noon. The land remains frozen and snow covered for almost ten months of the year. Winters are harsh and cold with temperatures regularly dropping thirty degrees below zero. Peak summer temperatures are just a couple of degrees above freezing.

Photo credit: Johannes Zielcke/Flickr

At any time in this godforsaken place, youll find several dozen people living. Thankfully, Alert is not their permanent home; they are merely here on work. These cold and miserable people, nicknamed The Frozen Chosen", include members of the Canadian Armed Forces which maintains a signals intelligence intercept facility called CFS Alert and scientific personnel working at the two research facilities here the Environment Canada weather station and a Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) atmosphere monitoring observatory.

Update: In July 2019, during a global heat wave Alert recorded the highest ever temperaturean unprecedented 21 degrees Celsius, about 14 degrees higher than normal.

The community of Alert is named after HMS Alert, a British ship which set up camp near Alert in the winters of 187576. The ship's captain, George Nares, and his crew were the first recorded people to reach the northern end of Ellesmere Island.

The weather station was established here in 1950. The military station came eight years later. During the Cold War, Alert was strategically important because it was the only point in North America that was closest to the northwestern area of the Soviet Union. In fact, Alert is closer to Moscow (2,500 miles or 4,000 km) than it is to Ottawa (2,580 miles or 4,150 km). Alerts proximity to the Soviet Union allowed the US-Canada-UK-Australia-New Zealand intelligence sharing alliance, also known as the Five Eyes, to eavesdrop on the Russian communication network. The station soon became a key asset in the global ECHELON network.

At its peak, CFS Alert had upwards of 215 personnel posted at any one time. But after budget cuts in the 1990s, CFS Alert was downsized to approximately 74 personnel, but during summers, its population can rise to over hundred.

A Sun newspaper article dated November 14, 2004, provides readers with a glimpse of life at Alert:

The soldiers, a lot of them volunteers, serve six month postings -- divided by a three week vacation. Today, the food is as good as it ever was. TV's in various rooms show four channels of live television and another four of movies, played from the stations stock of 4,500 video and DVDs. Listening to the base's CHAR-FM 105.9 trivia shows are another popular pastime. Much of the station is devoted to recreation, with two gyms, a darkroom, a bowling alley and a theatre. Evenings are filled with activities -- multi-player computer games, woodworking, bingo, euchre and trivia. Most personnel volunteer to come here. Like a crew inside a submarine, the isolation and uniqueness of Alert pull people together and drive others apart -- earning them all the 50-year-old nickname of 'The Frozen Chosen.". The only way to transport anything here is by air. Every year, the RCAF makes about 225 Hercules flights to Alert to bring in around two million litres of fuel and 300 tonnes of cargo. In addition to the weekly flights, supplies are shuttled in twice a year in massive operations involving dozens of flights to and from the nearest deep-water port, Thule, Greenland. The problem is, much of the time Canada's Hercules C-130 aircraft aren't flying. The resupply flights are routinely delayed 24 hours or cancelled altogether when planes are grounded by mechanical problems or diverted elsewhere by military priority. Military physicians note most people gain weight after arriving. Those who aren't able to deal with the remoteness are weeded out before they touch down on the gravel and snow runway. "It's great to be here, but you must keep yourself busy all the time," says Station Warrant Officer Serge Oullet in 2004. "We try to get people to socialize with each other in off hours."

United States Ambassador Jacobson in front of CSB Alert welcome sign. Photo credit: US Embassy Canada/Flickr

Danish sled dogs in Alert, Nunavut. Photo credit: US Embassy Canada/Flickr

Canadian Rangers training camp near CSB Alert, Nunavuk. Photo credit: US Embassy Canada/Flickr

Snow transport in Alert, Nunavut. Photo credit: US Embassy Canada/Flickr

A memorial commemorating the men who died in a 1950 plane crash in Alert. Photo credit: jasonbelliveau/Flickr

The graves of the crew who died in the 1950 crash remains buried at Alert. Photo credit: JEROME LESSARD/Flickr

The wreckage of an airplane. There were actually three crashes on Alert. The photographer doesnt mention to which crash this wreckage belongs to. Photo credit: Andrew Johnson/Flickr

Ice crystals. Photo credit: Andrew Johnson/Flickr

Frost flowers. Photo credit: Johannes Zielcke/Flickr

Some vegetation. Photo credit: Johannes Zielcke/Flickr

Photo credit: Johannes Zielcke/Flickr

Photo credit: jasonbelliveau/Flickr

Photo credit: jasonbelliveau/Flickr

Sun rise at 2am. Photo credit: jasonbelliveau/Flickr

Satellite photo of Alert. Photo credit: Google Maps

Sources: Wikipedia / www.jproc.ca / Wikipedia / The Globe And Mail
Quick Charge 3.0 isnt the latest and greatest edition of Quick Charge any more, but there are still plenty of devices on the market with compatibility. And Quick Charge 3.0 allows your device to charge pretty freaking fast. Qualcomm says that you can go from 0% to 80% in about 35 minutes, which is mostly unheard of (except with very small batteries). And Anker has a big supporter of Qualcomms Quick Charge technologies, including this wall charger which has 5 USB ports, of those five, there are two that are compatible with Quick Charge 3.0  they are colored blue so you know which is which. The other three support their PowerIQ Technology which does fast charging, by talking to your device to see what speeds it can handle. All told, this wall charger can do 63W from all five ports combined.

This wall charger is usually priced around $45, but right now Amazon is offering this for just $29. Its a great wall charger, and one that will definitely make your life a lot easier if you have a lot of devices that need to be charged every single day. This 5-port wall charger is also available on Amazon Prime, so you can pick it up and have it delivered in two days.
South Korean authorities will use the ordeal surrounding the Galaxy Note 7 to establish a regulatory framework for faulty phones that all manufacturers in the country will be required to adhere to. A source close to Seoul told The Investor that the government will soon implement regulations according to which original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) will be mandated to report cases of their devices catching fire, melting, and exploding as soon as they learn about them, in addition to taking additional measures to handle such unfortunate scenarios. The new safety measures are expected to be officially announced by the South Korean government next week.

Apart from being completely transparent about any potentially hazardous failures of their devices, the new regulations will reportedly require that consumer electronics manufacturers start investigating any incidents as soon as they report them to authorities, the source said. Immediate investigations will be mandated so that OEMs quickly identify causes of any potential incidents and take additional measures like recalls if necessary. Furthermore, the source from the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy told The Investor that the new regulatory framework will be announced by Seoul on Monday, February 6. The new set of rules was designed as a direct response to the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco as Samsung only notified the Korean government about potential issues with its 2016 phablet ten days after recording the first incident. While Samsung was initially criticized for the way it handled the ordeal last fall, the company didnt do anything illegal seeing how no regulations mandated the company to notify Seoul about the incident any sooner. The South Korean government wants to prevent similar cases in the future, and the incoming set of regulations was designed precisely for that purpose, the source said.

While Seoul is expected to announce new rules on Monday, they wont be put into force immediately. Instead, the new set of regulations is expected to come into force at some point in the next 12 months. Apart from new rules regulating OEMs, the South Korean authorities will also reveal the results of their own investigation into the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco on Monday, but their findings arent expected to differ from those Samsung shared in January.
Sony just put out their third quarter earnings call for 2016, and it seems that their mobile business has taken a roughly 35% nosedive from where it was during the same period in 2015. The fall took Sonys third quarter mobile numbers from 384.5 billion to 248.6 billion. Operating income for the division, meanwhile, fell about 12% from 24.1 billion to 21.2 billion. According to Sony, the huge drop in total sales and operating revenue was mainly due to decreased smartphone sales in a few key regions, such as Europe, as well as regions where Sony was forced to downsize. The huge deficit was enough to overcome all of Sonys attempts at cost-cutting and otherwise throwing cash at their smartphone operations, thus the 12% decrease in operating income.

Sonys mobile division is not the only part of the company to post a loss, but it did take the biggest hit. Sony Pictures saw a 14% year on year drop for the quarter. Sony has refuted previous whisperings that they were planning on exiting the smartphone market, and even seem to be doubling down recently. It should be noted that these fairly grim third quarter figures were barely grazed by the debut of the Xperia XZ on September 30th, which means that the flagship had a fair chance to pull Sony Mobiles Q4 up significantly on the back of the sales boom it experienced in the wake of Samsungs troubles with their own flagship, the Galaxy Note 7, and its fairly disastrous recall.

Another good note among a fairly dismal quarter for Sonys mobile division was the fact that they did not hemorrhage the most money of any division to have posted a loss; that honor belongs to Sony Pictures. Massive worldwide downsizing measures were responsible for making Sonys adventures in the smartphone world a small enough enterprise to not lose a huge amount of money, which makes the bittersweet news that much more so. Just as rumors swirled of a possible sale of Sony Mobile in the wake of bad performance last year, word on the street is that Sony Pictures may soon be unloaded. The departure of CEO Michael Lynton seems to corroborate this, but Sony denies it for the time being, again mirroring the fate of Sony Mobile. A number of upcoming Sony smartphones seem to have broken cover lately, so whatever else may be going on, Sony is not throwing the towel into the mobile arena right now.
LG Electronics is seemingly preparing a new smartphone for market release. The device recently passed through and has been approved by the FCC, where its listed as carrying model number LG-US110. Specifications remain largely unknown, but the regulatory agency confirms that the device takes advantage of Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) and Wi-Fi 801.11 b/g/n connectivity.

As usual, the FCC documentation shows the location of the FCC ID label, and in this particular case, it indirectly confirms that the mysterious LG smartphone takes advantage of a user removable battery. The FCC filing reads that the battery will not be assembled with the device on delivery, and that the FCC ID label will be visible to users once they unpack the product and prepare for installing the battery. Sadly but unsurprisingly, the FCC documentation doesnt reveal much else in regards to the smartphones characteristics. However, assuming that the FCC ID Label application showing the battery housing reflects the smartphones overall design then we can assume that the device doesnt follow the same design language as the new LG K series, at least judging by the shape of the camera module. It also doesnt seem to be related with the LG Aristo launched recently in the United States, which carries model number LG-MS210.

In any case, the smartphone underwent testing at the FCC in late December-early January, which theoretically means that LG Electronics should be relatively close to an official unveiling. Either way, the Korean company is expected to attend Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Spain at the end of February, where the company should introduce a range of new products for the first half of 2017, including the highly anticipated LG G6 flagship phone. The tech giant could also prepare more than one smartwatch for unveiling at MWC 2017, and of course, it remains to be seen whether or not the new and mysterious LG-US110 will also be present on the show floor. Whatever the case may be, the smartphones debut might be just around the corner and more details regarding its specifications, availability, and pricing are likely to emerge and reach the headlines in the following weeks.
Nokias Mobile World Congress (MWC) invitation just surfaced. If you take a look at the image below this article, youll get to see Nokias alleged MWC 2017 invitation. The date listed here is February 26th, and it seems like the companys press conference will kick off at 4:30 PM (local time in Barcelona). Now, this date is not exactly new to us, as the company had already teased said date back on January 11th when they tweeted out February 26th and teased more announcements.

So, what is Nokia planning to announce during this event? Well, well probably see at least one more smartphone announced by the company, though its also possible that theyre planning to intro some more products. The companys gigantic tablet surfaced on GFXBench last month, so thats always a possibility, and who knows, maybe the company even announces some type of a wearable product during MWC, its a perfect setting for something like that. The companys flagship has been leaking for a while now under two names, Nokia P1 and Nokia 8, and we still dont know which of these two names will the company use once the device lands. This smartphone is rumored to ship with the Snapdragon 835 SoC, though thats highly unlikely if Nokia plans to announce it during the Mobile World Congress, mainly because Samsung will probably pick up the whole first batch of Snapdragon 835 SoCs, which means that Nokia will have to wait if they want to release a Snapdragon 835-powered smartphone.

The Nokia P1 / Nokia 8 is rumored to sport Sharps IGZO QHD (2560 x 1440) display, and a 24-megapixel rear-facing snapper had also been mentioned in previous rumors. Android Nougat will come pre-installed on that smartphone, and youll also get some of Nokias custom features on top of it. Nokias leaked tablet features an 18.4-inch QHD display, while it packs in 4GB of RAM and 64GB of native storage. A 12-megapixel snapper is placed on both its back and front side, and Andriod 7.0 Nougat was also mentioned by GFXBench. All in all, Nokias MWC press conference is still a mystery, but chances are more info will leak before MWC kicks off.
Mobile World Congress 2017 may not be as big of a trade show as it has normally been, thanks to the Snapdragon 835. Typically, HTC, LG and Samsung all dominate the media day before the trade show officially opens its doors. But not this year. HTC has decided to skip the show, at least they wont be holding a major press conference. Something that they did last year as well, since they were opting to launch the HTC 10 in April. LG will still be there to announce the LG G6, Samsung will also be present, but it appears that they are looking to launch a tablet and not a flagship smartphone like the Galaxy S8  which is confirmed to be a no-show in Barcelona.

So the big question here is why are so many manufacturers looking to skip the biggest mobile trade show of the year? Well, nothing is confirmed, but speculation in the industry is that the Snapdragon 835 is the reason. Samsung is again manufacturing the chipset for Qualcomm, and they also reportedly have the exclusive on the chipset for their own smartphone  the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus  which are due to come out in April. Leaving Qualcomm customers out in the cold until around the summer-time. So many companies are opting to wait, instead of releasing a flagship device with a Snapdragon 821, which is a very small upgrade over the Snapdragon 820.

HTC has confirmed that they are going to release a new flagship once the Snapdragon 835 is available later this year, but for now theyll be sticking with the HTC U Play and U Ultra, which were announced last month and are due to start shipping in March. Having a lot of the big names skip out on Mobile World Congress this year is allowing companies like LG, Huawei and Sony soak up all of the attention. And for manufacturers that are really looking to add to their market share, thats definitely a good thing. All three (LG, Huawei and Sony) have announced that they will be holding press conferences, and all of them appear to be launching flagships too.
Contrary to initial rumors, T-Mobile seemingly isnt rolling out support for Googles Rich Communication Services (RCS) protocol to Messenger. Reports of RCS support for Messenger coming from T-Mobile initially emerged on Tuesday after several T-Mobile customers started reporting that their Messenger app started supporting Googles RCS protocol. However, after 9to5Google investigated the matter, the outlet concluded that the initial report was based on rumors and possible misinformation.

The possibility of T-Mobile adding support for Googles RCS protocol to Messenger appeared when one Reddit user recently posted on the T-Mobile subreddit claiming that the service is active. The source wasnt a T-Mobile customer but has instead provided several tweets from anonymous Twitter users who were claiming that their Messenger app now supports Googles RCS. Today, the source claims that those tweets are inaccurate as the outlet debunked a follow-up from another Reddit user who was claiming that they have a source at T-Mobile who said the feature is currently in testing with early digits adopters. As some Reddit users were skeptical about the possibility of a random person online conveniently having a source close to the third largest wireless carrier in the United States, the user in question even posted a Hangouts screenshot that was supposed to confirm the legitimacy of their source. Over the course of the next 24 hours, this confusing situation was tipped to 9to5Google by a Google+ user and as it turns out, that person seems to be the same source revealed by the Reddit user who contributed to the initial rumor about T-Mobile adding Googles RCS support to the Messenger app. While blurred for anonymity, its easy to see that the two screenshots below depict messages that were likely sent by the same person seeing how their names match.

Overall, it seems that these rumors dont have a lot of basis in reality as they were apparently prompted by a small number of people that either didnt prove to have any connection to T-Mobile or arent even T-Mobile customers. Even though T-Mobile seemingly isnt rolling out support for Googles RCS to Messanger, the wireless carrier did already introduce its own RCS solution back in 2015.
A 19-year-old Wyoming man charged with shooting three good Samaritans on Montana's Crow Reservation had ingested "a considerable amount" of a drug that can cause psychotic episodes before he was arrested, according to his defense attorney.

Jesus Deniz Mendoza faces trial March 27 in the July 2015 shooting deaths of Jason and Tana Shane and the wounding of their daughter.

The family had been attempting to help Mendoza on a roadside near Pryor when he shot them with a rifle, according to authorities.

Federal Defender David Merchant said in a court filing Wednesday that evidence in the case suggests Mendoza had been using the drug spice, sometimes referred to as synthetic marijuana, before his arrest.

Merchant did not further specify when Mendoza took the drug. He was arrested about 2  hours after the killings by authorities in neighboring Wyoming, where authorities say he was spotted driving the Shanes' car.

Mendoza has said he will rely on an insanity defense at trial. He was previously diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression and post-traumatic syndrome, according to Merchant.

The defense plans to introduce testimony from Penn State University researcher Antolin Llorente saying spice can cause psychotic episodes and delusions and exacerbate many mental illnesses.

During a December competency hearing for Mendoza, federal Bureau of Prisons psychologist Cynthia Low said she did not believe Mendoza's use of spice had incapacitated him based on his behavior and answers when he was being interrogated by investigators, according to court documents and news reports.

She described his use of the drug as severe and said he also was addicted to methamphetamine.
Samsung Pay is launching in India by mid-2017, a person with knowledge of the matter told Mashable. The South Korean tech company is apparently preparing for the launch of its mobile payments service in India and has already agreed to collaborate with American Express to facilitate that endeavor. Furthermore, Samsung is reportedly negotiating with MasterCard, Visa, and other major financial giants over potential partnerships in the South Asian country, but no other collaborations have been agreed upon at this point in time.

Reports of Samsung Pay launching in India started circulating the industry in December, shortly after New Delhi surprised the public by suddenly announcing a demonetization of several common banknotes. While the Indian government claimed its decision will combat the use of counterfeit cash and suppress the shadow economy, the decision disrupted the countrys economy and created a significant shortage of cash. Due to that state of affairs, mobile payments solutions like MobiKwik became extremely popular virtually overnight and are now reportedly enjoying a larger popularity than traditional plastic cards. Seeing how that trend is likely to continue, Samsung is understandably eager to enter the Indian market as quickly as possible.

The Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge recently started receiving the Android 7.0 Nougat update in India, and that update reportedly shipped with a pre-installed version of the Samsung Pay app, suggesting that Samsungs mobile payments solution will soon make its way to the South Asian country. Samsungs alleged partnership with American Express in India also wouldnt be surprising seeing how the two companies are already collaborating in other markets like the United States, Australia, and South Korea. Furthermore, the Seoul-based tech giant is rumored to expand Samsung Pay to more devices over the course of this year. Samsung Pay is currently only compatible with the companys flagship devices launched in 2015 or later, as well as the Gear S2 and the Gear S3 smartwatches. It remains to be seen whether other providers of digital wallets will follow Samsungs lead and launch their services in India, but as things stand right now, the South Asian country seems like an incredibly lucrative market for mobile payments solutions.
New info from China sheds more light on Galaxy S8s camera sensor. According to a Twitter user @mmddj_china, an industry insider, the Samsung Galaxy S8 will ship with a camera which will support Dual ADC. Now, the source also mentions that Sonys IMX204 sensor offers support for Dual ADC, but that sensor is not meant to be used in smartphones, and quite frankly it doesnt fit in there, the Galaxy S8 would have to be huge, and that wont happen, of course. For those of you who dont know, ADC is short for Analog-To-Digital Converter, and a dual ADC setup would surely boost cameras performance.

A camera setup with support for the Dual ADC sure sounds interesting, and compelling, but truth be said, Samsung will hardly incorporate this into the Galaxy S8, though its not impossible, of course. In any case, the Galaxy S8 will probably ship with Sonys sensor on its back (a completely new sensor perhaps?), especially if todays leak is accurate. In addition to all this, the source also released some pricing info for the Galaxy S8, by saying that Korea and China will get only the 6GB RAM variant of the Galaxy S8, and that such variant will be available in both 64GB and 128GB storage flavors. The 64GB storage model will, reportedly, cost 6,088 Yuan ($885) in China, while the 128GB storage variant will set you back 6,488 Yuan ($943). It is also worth mentioning that this very same source shared some info regarding the Galaxy S8 RAM variants a couple of days ago. He essentially said that we can expect to see both 4GB RAM and 6GB RAM Galaxy S8 models, on a global scale.

Samsung is not planning to announce the Galaxy S8 during this years Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 in Barcelona, the company will host a separate event instead. The Galaxy S8 is expected to land in March or April alongside the Galaxy S8 Plus, a larger variant of the companys flagship. These two devices are rumored to sport curved displays, and Android Nougat will come pre-installed on both of them. Qualcomms Snapdragon 835 64-bit octa-core processor will fuel the Galaxy S8, and chances are we wont see an Exynos variant of the companys flagship this time around, though Samsung could surprise us with the Exynos 8895, well see. The company will tease the Galaxy S8 during MWC 2017, though, as they plan to release a couple of teaser videos during the tradeshow, so stay tuned for that.

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S8s CMOS may support Dual ADC.IMX204 support Dual ADC.But S8s CMOS is not IMX204,I think.BTW,IMX204 is 20MP 1/1.7,its not for smartphones   (@mmddj_china) February 1, 2017

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maybe Chinese and Koran version are only with 6GB RAM,6+64/6+128.thats why I say a little different.   (@mmddj_china) January 31, 2017
Samsung will bundle an S Pen with the Galaxy Tab S3 Android tablet, latest industry rumors suggest. Despite shipping with the companys stylus, the upcoming flagship tablet wont feature a special slot for the S Pen, SamMobile claims. The South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer is also reportedly looking to release a number of other accessories for the Galaxy Tab S3, including a Book Cover case and a Keyboard Folio. Recent reports indicate that all Galaxy Tab S3 accessories apart from the S Pen will be sold separately, as expected. As for the tablet itself, the device will initially launch in the United States through Verizon and US Cellular. Latest rumors make no mention of any firm release dates, but the Galaxy Tab S3 will likely hit the South Korean market in early March before making its way to the U.S. Samsung is expected to launch two variants of the device  the base Wi-Fi one and an LTE-enabled model. Theres still no word on whether other American carriers other than Verizon and US Cellular will be selling the Galaxy Tab S3.

Samsung is expected to officially unveil its next flagship tablet on February 26, a day before Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2017 kicks off. Images allegedly depicting the Galaxy Tab S3 already leaked earlier today, showcasing a curved display that was seemingly designed in a fashion similar to the one featured on the Galaxy S7 Edge. The highly anticipated Android tablet also appeared on Geekbench in late January. According to that listing, the Galaxy Tab S3 will be powered by the Snapdragon 820 and 4GB of RAM. The base Wi-Fi model is expected to feature 32GB of internal storage, while the LTE variant of the device will likely sport 128GB of storage space. Samsungs upcoming Android tablet is also said to feature a 12-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front shooter.

Seeing how the South Korean consumer electronics manufacturer already confirmed that it wont be unveiling the Galaxy S8 at MWC 2017, the Galaxy Tab S3 could be Samsungs star product at the upcoming Barcelona-based trade show. With MWC 2017 just around the corner, more information is bound to follow soon.
Samsungs latest payment app, which comes in the form of Samsung Pay Mini, is expected to directly compete with Googles Android Pay when the former service is officially launched. This is due to the fact that both Samsung Pay Mini and Android Pay are quite similar in the way the two services work. Samsung Pay Mini has the capability to work with any Android smartphone which comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher, while Android Pay is able to run on Android smartphones running on Android 4.4 KitKat and above.

It is also rumored that Samsung and Google are planning on testing their respective payment services in South Korea soon. However, the competition is expected to become tougher once LG launches their own payment service, which will likely come in the form of LG Pay. Before this, Samsung only had Samsung Pay and it is currently supported by a limited number of Samsung devices, which includes the Galaxy S7 family, Galaxy S6 family, Galaxy Note 5, Galaxy A5 and Galaxy A7. Samsung Pay Mini on the other hand, supports Android devices of other brands. However, to be able to use Samsung Pay Mini, your device has to come with Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher and come equipped with a HD display or better. Samsung Pay Mini supports most Samsung Pay features, including online payment and more. One feature which is available on Samsung Pay and not on Samsung Pay Mini, is the offline payment option.

Samsungs Pay Mini competitor, Android Pay, was launched by Google a couple of years back but it is currently available in a limited number of countries. It was first launched in the US, and it is currently available in the UK, Singapore, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and most recently in Poland. Like Samsung Pay Mini, it can be used on Android devices from other manufacturers but Android 4.4 KitKat is a requirement. Another smartphone-based payment service is LG Pay, which is expected to be launched in Barcelona later this month and it will be similar to Samsung Pay. LG initially planned to launch its payment service last year, but had to delay the launch due to issues faced when testing the service in South Korea.
Samsung rejected the gratitude President Trump expressed on Thursday over a factory that the South Korean tech giant is considering building in the United States. Yesterday, Trump took to Twitter to thank Samsung for its initiative, adding how the current U.S. administration would love to have the Seoul-based conglomerate open another factory in the country. The move was initially interpreted as Samsungs attempt to appeal to the new administration, but one of the companys officials soon issued a statement expressing confusion over President Trumps tweet. In a statement given to The Korea Herald, Samsung distanced itself from Trumps gratitude by saying how it wrongly implies that the company did something because Trump wanted it, which apparently isnt the case.

Furthermore, Samsungs official stated that the new U.S. factory still hasnt been approved and that the tech giant may end up not building one in the end. The same source said that Samsungs leadership feels pressured by President Trumps public show of gratitude over nothing. The new factory that the company is considering building in the U.S. presents a large investment that will take more time to evaluate, the official said, adding how they dont want Samsung to be seen as retreating from an initiative that has never been approved in the first place. Its currently unclear whether Trump was aware that Samsung has yet to approve the factory in question as neither the U.S. President nor his administration made any further comments on the matter since Samsung clarified the situation on Friday.

Samsung currently owns a semiconductor factory based in Austin, Texas. The company said it already invested approximately $17 billion in that facility, adding how its constantly monitoring the market situation and is always ready to make additional investments if it deems them necessary. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump often said how hell consider imposing high tariffs on products made outside of the U.S. to help bring back jobs to the country. Two weeks into his tenure, the new President has yet to mention such a move again, but it remains to be seen whether tech giants with a huge stateside market presence like Samsung will be willing to wait for him to do so before they start building new manufacturing facilities in the U.S.
Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge units running on the latest version of Android 7.0 Nougat, are receiving an update which comes with a few bug fixes. The update comes with the build number G935XXU1DQAS and it is a pretty small in size, coming in at only 15.13MB. The new update comes with bug fixes and improves device stability. However, it doesnt seem as if the update comes with the latest security patch for the month of February. Samsung has yet to release to full changelog for the update, but the company will likely do so once the update has been pushed out to all devices.

If you havent already received the notification prompting you to update your device, you could check whether this bug fixing update is available for your Galaxy S7 Edge, and all you have to do is proceed to Settings, select About Device, tap on Software Update, and tap the option titled Download Updates Manually. On the other hand, you could wait for the system to prompt you to install the latest update when it is available for your device. However, for that to happen, you will need to have at least 50% of battery life remaining in your device or it is plugged into an outlet. As this bug fixing update is being delivered over-the-air (OTA), it might take a few days for you to receive it as it is released to compatible devices in stages to avoid the possibility of the servers being overloaded. It should be noted that this update is currently being pushed out to the Galaxy S7 Edge, and not the smaller Galaxy S7, though the smaller handset may receive a similar update in the coming days.

South Korean electronics giant Samsung, began pushing out the Android 7.0 Nougat update to the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge a few weeks. However, most regions only began receiving the update last week and the update brings a ton of new features to both devices. The two flagship devices from Samsung has been selling incredibly well, especially after the plug was pulled on the Galaxy Note 7. Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S8 in a few months time.
A new unknown and unreleased Samsung tablet has been certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance, and there are at least four variants. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi Alliance does not provide much detail about the new model, which is listed under the primary designation of SM-T378. The information shows that the new tablet runs the Android operating system and supports both the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz Wi-Fi bands plus the usual array of power saving and connection technologies. The three other models are the SM-T378S, SM-T378K and SM-T378L, which are likely to represent different chipsets or cellular modem functionality, and sometimes both, rather than color or screen size options. Unfortunately, there is no detail as to what these tablets might otherwise feature such as screen size, type and resolution, chipset or even the version of Android.

Samsung have, however, produced a teaser poster for their Mobile World Conference attendance later this month. The advertisement features a tablet and as such the South Korean conglomerate is expected to be basing its MWC attendance around tablets, although the industry is expecting a brief video of the new Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone family. With this in mind it is likely that the company is planning to release this particular family of devices at the trade show: what could the new model be? These model numbers do not match the rumored designation of Samsungs new high end Galaxy Tab S3 family, which is the SM-T820 and SM-T825; instead the model numbers are similar to the 8.0-inch variant of Samsung Galaxy Tab E as released in early 2016. This tablet sold under the model number of SM-T375 for the Wi-Fi only model but Samsung produced another four variants with a model designation starting with SM-T377 and equipped with a modem; the exact model number depended on the carrier and network the tablet was designed to work with. The early 2016 Samsung Galaxy Tab E is based around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chipset but Samsung have used a range of chipsets for its tablets in addition to Qualcomm, typically Spreadtrum or its own in-house Exynos System-on-Chips.

The Mobile World Congress is only a few weeks away and Samsung appears poised to release details of its 2017 tablet product family, hopefully including the SM-T378 family.
February only started yesterday but Sony has already pushed out this months Android security patch. The company, which has gradually been getting quicker with its Android updates, has pushed out Februarys security patch in record time. So quick, in fact, that even Google has not pushed out the update for its Pixel and Nexus lineups. Usually, Google is the first to release the update but it appears Sonys push to get updates out much quicker than it has previously managed is working.

Currently, the devices receiving the update are the companys flagship Xperia XZ alongside the Xperia X, X Compact and X Performance, though it appears users of the Xperia XA will have to wait a bit longer for the update. Either way, the company has also been trying its best to push out Android version updates much quicker as well, with the Xperia XZ receiving the Nougat update much earlier than the companys usual timeline. In fact, the company has been so quick with its Nougat update rollout that the company managed to start sending out updates for a number of its previous Xperia Z flagships, though, unfortunately, this had to be paused due to bugs. Nonetheless, the company is sure to turn the publics focus towards its upcoming devices within a couple of weeks. Specifically the rumored lineup of devices that are expected to launch at MWC 2017 in Barcelona at the end of this month.

Sonys MWC lineup is expected to consist of a successor to last years Xperia XA as well as the Xperia X and three other possible devices. Among these other possible devices is a successor to Sonys Xperia Z5 Premium which launched back in September 2015. This years device is also rumored to bring back the 4K display, though this time the company is rumored to have also packed between 4GB and 6GB of RAM. As well as this, Sony is expected to launch another premium smartphone, though with a lower QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution and a Snapdragon 835 processor. To round off the lineup, the company is expected to launch a third mid-range smartphone that will compliment the successors to last years Xperia X and XA. Itll remain to be seen what companys final device lineup will look like, but if rumors are anything to go by, the company is clearly looking to impress at this years MWC.
The most effective way to bridge our differences is through dialogue.

Mark Feierstein This was the overarching theme of ASUs 2017 E. James Holland-Roy A. Harrell Jr. Foreign Affairs Speakers Program, with this years topic focusing on the relationship between the United States and Cuba.

On his first stop since ending his tour in the White House two weeks ago, Mark Feierstein, former director of western hemisphere affairs for the National Security Council, headlined this years program Jan. 30-31, speaking on U.S. relations with Cuba since Fidel Castro.

Armed with a passion for international affairs and, as he said, a little bit of luck, Feierstein served as former President Obamas principal advisor on Latin America and the Caribbean.

I actually wanted to be a journalist, Feierstein said. I intended to be a foreign correspondent. Then the job offers I had were more attractive in other fields of international affairs, and Ive been fortunate enough to do that for 30 years now.

Feierstein gave two public lectures over his two-day visit to campus. His first lecture, Behind the Scenes: Bridging the Gap to Cuba, focused on the policy changes leading up to re-establishing ties with Cuba in 2014.

The message is how we implemented former President Obamas mandate to pursue engagement over isolation, Feierstein said. Engagement would be a more effective policy than isolation in trying to both promote political reform and help the Cuban people.

I want students to see that we shouldnt be afraid to sit down with our adversaries. We may not agree on everythingbut we have areas where we agree, and we can collaborate Mark Feierstein

Through historical references, Feierstein went on to discuss how previous policy was designed to isolate Cuba, but ultimately it was the U.S. that was being isolated. While Cuba is still wary of the U.S., more interaction is occurring between Americans and Cubans. Since the re-establishment of diplomatic ties, Feierstein explained how travel has increased to the area. While recreational travel to Cuba is still prohibited, access to the country and its people has increased significantly.

Its more economical to travel to Cuba now than before, he said. Tourism is still banned, but you can still engage and have meaningful interactions with the Cuban people if your travel fits within the 12 categories of allowed travel.

In his second lecture, U.S.  Cuba Relations after Fidel Castro, Feierstein discussed the increasing public support for engagement as opposed to a policy of isolation.

There are a more diverse set of voices in Congress, he said, as well as strong support from Cuban Americans. We tried a policy of isolation for 50 years and it failed. Its time for a new approach, one that is more consistent with what the rest of the world is doing.

Citing examples such as working together to combat the Zika virus, smuggling and drug trafficking, Feierstein continued to stress that in order to bridge our differences, there must be dialogue. Better relations with Cuba also benefits the United States relations with the greater Caribbean and Latin American communities.

Mark Feierstein taking questions from the audience at his Jan. 31 lecture in the C.J. Davidson Conference Center. In addition to his public lecture sessions, Feierstein spent plenty of time in the classroom, speaking to students all over campus. He also attended a banquet with members of the ASU Honors Program.

Its personally enjoyable to engage with students, he said. They ask great questions and come from a diverse set of backgrounds. There are certain assumptions I may have in my head, and they challenge those. Its mutually beneficial.

Feierstein also encourages students to take advantage of the airlines that now provide service to Cuba since educational visits are listed as one of the 12 allowed travel categories.

I want students to see that we shouldnt be afraid to sit down with our adversaries, he said. We may not agree on everything, and with Cuba obviously we have profound differences  different political systems, different economic systems. We have strong differences over the issue of human rights.

But that being said, he continued, we have areas where we agree, and we can collaborate.
A Billings accountant who admitted embezzling $30,000 from the Crow Tribe while working as the tribes comptroller will spend two years on federal probation.

During a hearing on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Susan Watters sentenced Karla Elizabeth MacCatherine, 43, to the probationary term and ordered $30,000 restitution to the tribe, court records said.

MacCatherine pleaded guilty in October to embezzlement from an Indian tribal organization.

Prosecutors said the thefts occurred from February 2013 until August 2014 while MacCatherine was employed as the tribes comptroller. The tribe paid her $70 an hour.

The tribe had hired MacCatherine to prepare documents for its 2013 annual audit, which was due in June 2014, the prosecution said. The report was not finished by the deadline and no work had been done to prepare the audit, which caused the accounting firm to suspend its audit work, he said.

MacCatherine, however, billed the tribe $44,542 for the work specifically for the audit.

MacCatherine also paid herself twice in the amount of $8,322 for the same expenses and receipts and did not reimburse the tribe.

The investigation also found that MacCatherine overstated her work hours and billed for hours when she was on vacation.

MacCatherine told the judge when she pleaded guilty that she stole the money for personal use. She also said she was working as the financial director at the Yellowstone Art Museum.
High winds, snow and drifting snow continued to cause severe driving conditions in the Red Lodge area Friday, but U.S. Highway 212 that was closed from Red Lodge to Joliet for most of the morning has reopened.

The Montana Department of Transportation said shortly before noon that Highway 212 from Red Lodge to the junction with Highway 421, near Joliet, has reopened.

However, severe driving conditions continue on area roads, and the agency advised motorists to reduce speed and to expect some drifting.

Also, the National Weather Service said that high winds are expected to decrease later in the day.

The Red Lodge area has a 20 percent chance for snow before 11 a.m. while the high will be about 36 degrees. Southwesterly winds will be from 17 mph to 20 mph on Friday.

In the Billings area, temperatures will warm to a high of about 31 degrees on Friday while skies will become cloudy. Southwesterly winds will be up to about 15 mph.

Skies will be mostly cloudy Friday night. The low will be about 19 degrees with winds continuing.

There is a slight chance for snow on Saturday, while the high will be about 31 degrees with partly sunny skies. Southwesterly winds will be up to about 10 mph.

The low will be about 19 degrees with mostly cloudy skies.

Skies will be partly sunny on Sunday while the high will be about 40 degrees and southwesterly winds will be up to about 15 mph. The low will be about 22 degrees with mostly cloudy skies.
The Royal Anguilla Police Force on Wednesday 1st February, 2017 wrapped up a week of DARE Graduations of Grade Six students across the six Primary Schools in Anguilla. Some 189 students from the six primary schools across the island were exposed to the program.

The graduation ceremonies which concluded the four month long delivery of the program to all grade six students was held at the various schools over the past week.

These students have all been exposed to this program during their entire primary school and this is not the last time they will hear about DARE, said PC Shawn Lake. These students will also be exposed to DARE when they go to the Albena Lake Hodge Comprehensive School where the program will be presented at a higher level in Campus B.

Officer Lake who has been with the DARE Program from its inception, some ten years ago, remarked that the program continues to be a collaborative undertaking between the RAPF and the Education Department through the primary schools. DARE continues to impact the lives of the students by exposing them to several strategies in dealing with the many situations they may experience on a day to day basis. These strategies include the Decision Making Model, Just Saying No and Walking Away.

During the ceremonies that were also attended by teachers and students of the schools as well as parents remarks were made by a senior police officer from the RAPF and the Head Teachers of the various schools.
There was a time not too far distant when we could enter most barns and see harnesses and collars hanging up ready to use, but if you blinked your eyes, the scene changed to where youd find them mostly in a tangle on some junk pile. The change might have come hard for some, especially diehard horse lovers who refused to give in to gas power. Consider owners of livery stables, wagon makers, harness makers, blacksmiths, horseshoers, horse traders and field hands who found themselves phased out.

Cities were faced with monumental tasks of cleaning up after all the horses that conveyed people and freight. One horse daily created up to 50 pounds of feces and urine that it deposited out of necessity on the streets. As it dried and got tromped by hooves and wheels, it turned to dust and was carried in the air by any old breeze. Heavy rainfall turned streets to running swamps filled with muck that bred insects and contaminated open wells. Efforts were made to clean it up, but then piles of waste generated an intolerable stench. Vacant lots had become easy-to-use dump sites. Residents in New York City even complained about the loud noises created by clip-clopping iron horseshoes.

Overworked, mistreated or injured horses were commonplace, and it was nothing for one to die in the streets and lie there until disposed of. In 1908, an estimated 120,000 horses worked in New York City, where many of them also died.

In the countryside and other settings, horses were set to work drawing families to church in buggies, hauling logs in the woods, building roads, excavating basements, pulling plows, hauling grain bundles and towing artillery on the battlefield. Wherever and whatever job needed doing, horses had to do it. The U.S. Department of Agriculture stated that the average farm in the Great Plains between 1880 and 1920 was 348 acres and supported seven horses. The animals needed about five acres of land to support each one for a year, or 35 acres, or 10 percent of the farm. Nationwide, it took 23 million acres to satisfy the needs of horse power.

As we look back, it is no surprise that people started looking closely at gas engines to power vehicles when they became cheaper and better adapted to practical applications. In its journal published in the fall of 1987, the State Historical Society of North Dakota published an informative article about early autos in North Dakota, A History of the Automobile in North Dakota to 1911. In it the author dated the first appearance of an automobile in the state on June 28, 1897. A German-built vehicle named Benz Velo came into Grand Forks steered with a tiller by one of the two men jammed into the seat. Its purpose was to advertise the brand name of Carnation cigars, which can be read painted on it in the accompanying picture.

Inventive, resourceful North Dakotans began handcrafting their own cars, such as the one built by Samuel Holland of Park River, a car that has been restored to its original appearance and now sets prominently in the lobby of the state museum. One cant help but admire it for its seeming simplicity, though as simple as it looks, it took a long time for the concept to develop. A hand crank was used to start cars of this period, and Ive heard many a story of how a balky engine could backspin the crank and break the arm of the unwary.

The state's first recorded auto accident occurred Sept. 6, 1901, in Grand Forks when a Loco mobile struck a young girl who veered her bicycle into its path. After a slight injury, she soon recovered. The first fatality in the state occurred in 1906 when the steering gear on a Packard locked, whereupon it headed into a ditch, overturned and pinned its driver.

People working in various occupations such as doctors, land agents and traveling salesmen early on took to the car, more than likely happy they didnt have to worry about keeping and maintaining horses. The state Legislature in 1905 wrote the first laws governing the use of autos on the streets and roads. Eight mph in cities and 25 mph on the highways became the law. Upholding this law, a lawman wrote the first speeding ticket on record in Valley City to the tune of $8.50.

In an article in the North Dakota Studies program, Barbara Handy-Marchello wrote that in 1911 the state started a vehicle registration system to record over 150 different makes of automobiles driving around the state. It cost $1. In that year, 7,220 registrations were processed, a number that grew to almost 92,000 by 1920. Engine power had arrived!
Each spring the North Dakota League of Cities sponsors a statewide Mayor of the Day Essay Contest for students in third and seventh grade. The contest aims to encourage young students to think about public service and future community leadership.

Essays must address why the student feels their community is great and what they would do to improve their city if they were mayor for a day.

Students may submit their essays on their own or through their classroom teacher.

Contest winners will receive $150 cash prize and have their essay featured in the League's publication, "CITYScan." They will also be invited to an award presentation at the capitol during the League's Celebrate the City on March 3.

For more information, or to see submission requirements, visit www.ndlc.org/essay.
(ANSA) - Rome, February 3 - After Grand Master Matthew Festing was removed from his position following a clash with the pope, the Knights of Malta on Thursday publicly reaffirmed their loyalty to the pontiff and gratitude for his resolving of what they called "a government crisis". Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager, who was fired by Festing and reinstated by Pope Francis, spoke before a crowded press conference and said that Grand Commander Fra' Ludwig Hoffmann von Rumerstein, "lieutenant ad interim", would be in charge until a new Grand Master is elected in late April. "Let me reassure our members, and everybody, that the government is and will remain as a service of the Holy Father," the German baron said, stressing that their devotion to Church teaching "is irrevocable and beyond question." The crisis the Order underwent "was a government crisis brought about by an act illegal under the constitution," he said, voicing his gratitude to the Pope for offering guidance that led "to a swift solution." He added that Pope Francis's intervention had not violated the sovereignty of the Knights of Malta, which is a Rome-based institution ancient Catholic order of knights that is now a worldwide charity. It has sovereign status, is run like a small country, and its all-male leaders are not clerics but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. On the issue of the pontifical delegate to be nominated, the Pope has said that his role will be to concentrate on the religious aspect, Boeselager said. In response to a question about why he had been asked to resign and then abruptly removed after his refusal, Boeselager said that it was a "mystery" to him but that it had come after growing disagreement between the elected government and people who had been brought in by the Grand Master, "in violation of the constitution and in positions that had not been foreseen". No statement was made on clashes concerning the large-scale assets held by the Knights of Malta or disputed inheritances in Liechtenstein. On the issue of condom distribution by NGOs connected to the order in Myanmar and Africa when Boeselager was in charge, the matter was discovered in an internal audit by Malteser International and that he had not been aware of it. He said that all the projects were suspended as soon as he found out. He noted that a Vatican commission had found the accusations against him to be baseless and expressed "regret" that the commission has been accused of conflicts of interest. The order will now focus on its humanitarian programs in 120 countries throughout the world amid concerns that the crisis might lead to a drop in donations, he added.

Boeselager stressed that "we are alarmed and concerned by the proliferation of discriminatory positions against migrants based, among other things, on their nationality. History has given us numerous examples showing the tragic and monstrous consequences of policies based on origins and ethnicity."
(ANSA) - Valletta, February 3 - EU leaders on Friday said the EU "welcomes with favour and is ready to support the development of the accord signed between Italy and Libya on February 2" by Italian authorities and Libyan Premier Fayez al-Serraj, according to a joint statement issued by the leaders after the Valletta summit's first session of work on immigration.

Premier Paolo Gentiloni said on arrival at the informal EU summit on migrants in Malta that "the accord with Libya opens a new chapter" and Italy "has done its part, now we expected resources and commitment from the European Union". EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Federica Mogherni said she expected "very strong backing" for the accord from the summit and said Libyan Premier Fayez al Serraj "will be in Brussels again today to discuss further European support for these measures".

Gentiloni said Thursday was "an important day for relations between Italy and Libya" after he signed a cooperation agreement with al-Serraj in Rome. "Above all because it confirms that cooperation that has been taking place for months via the Italian government's commitment on many fronts".

European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday that the goal of stemming the flow of migrants from Libya to Italy was "within reach" thanks to the cooperation agreement. Tusk said that after talking with Gentiloni, al-Serraj, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, the leaders had "agreed on the need to support Italy in this cooperation".

"Europe must be at Italy's side in sharing this responsibility," he added.

Tusk said after talks al Serraj Thursday that "it is time to close the (migrant) route from Libya to Italy".

He said "the EU has shown it is able to close the routes of irregular migration, as it has done in the eastern Mediterranean.

"I spoke at length with Gentiloni yesterday and I can assure you we can succeed. What is needed is the full determination to do so.

"We owe it first of all to those who suffer and risk their lives, but we also owe it to the Italians and all the Europeans".

The EU and Libya, Tusk observed, have a "common interest in reducing the number of irregular migrants risking their lives in the central Mediterranean".

He said that flow was "not sustainable either for the EU or for Libya" where "the traffickers are undermining the authority of the Libyan State for their profit".

In Friday's summit, he said, there will be "additional measures" to "more effectively combat the networks of traffickers and better manage the migratory flows".

The EU, the European Council president added, "fully supports the Libyans' efforts to find a political accord and the United Nations' efforts for detente".

Tusk reiterated his "full support" for the national-unity government of Serraj but also issued an appeal to Serraj's opponents, stressing that "further results, in a constructive sense" are needed to involve "those in Libya who have not joined the new institutions".

After observing that the "humanitarian and security situation has devastated the prospects for the civilian population," Tusk said the EU "will continue to supply assistance to the Libyan people" but he also "urged all Libyans to put aside their differences so that the EU can make a greater commitment" to the troubled north African country.


(ANSA) - Rome, February 3 - Italy doesn't risk an EU budget infringement procedure, Premier Paolo Gentiloni said Friday. "I don't think there are elements pointing in this direction and in any case we are surrounded by countries that are in an infringement procedure and they don't seem to be very embarrassed," he said, answering a question on whether a possible procedure would embarrass Italy as it marks the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome next month. "Anyway Italy isn't running this risk," he said.

Gentiloni said he was "confident that the (budget) talks between the (European) Commission and the Treasury will conclude positively". He said "Italy is a country that has decided to respect the EU rules and it will also do so at this juncture.

"However, it will do so with a way, timeframe and tools that will not provoke depressive effects on our economy". He said "I spoke about this with Juncker again today" at an informal migrants summit in Valletta, Malta.

EU sources told ANSA that "more details are needed" to assess Italian budget moves ahead of February 13 economic forecasts and "contacts are ongoing for this reason". Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan phoned Economic Commissioner Pierre Moscovici today and Padoan's indications go in the right direction, the sources said.


Morocco's 'great comeback' in Africa Sahara issue remains but Rabat eyes economy, diplomacy

(ANSAmed) - RABAT, FEBRUARY 3 - Morocco is back in the African Union after leaving in 1984. The issue is whether it can say that it has won the battle for Western Sahara. On a symbolic standpoint, it has but the political issues remain.



''The day in which you go back home is beautiful after too long an absence! I have missed you all!'', were the first words of King Mohammed VI who has been building a diplomatic network since 2016 for this moment.



De facto, nothing changes for the country, unlike the European Union where membership has direct consequences for the economy or, for example, the exchange of goods and travelling.



But the king's speech at the end of the summit was deemed ''historic''.



Algeria remains quiet for the moment.



The key issue is the relationship between Morocco and the Polisario front.



The entry of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) - only partly recognized by the international community - was the reason Morocco left in 1984. At the time, the king was Hassan II, father of the current sovereign and the AU was called Organization of the African Union.



Before coming back, Morocco did all it could to exclude the SADR.



Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, Sahrawi foreign minister who welcomed Morocco was more diplomatic, urging ''all African states to cooperate so that the two countries regulate their conflicts''.



Some predict harsher tones soon. Others, on the contrary, say the comeback is like the fall of the Berlin wall at an African level, ''the end of ideologies connected to the cold war''.



No conditions were set for Rabat to return and the Sahara issue remains hot.



The desert occupies 80% of the Sahrawi territory that Morocco considers as its province.



SADR for its part plays the card of ''Africa's last colonized territory''.



Morocco however looks farther. With 46 visits to African countries since 2000, the mobilization of all economic, diplomatic and religious resources and about 1,000 accords in various cooperation sectors, Africa is at the center of the attention of this king with some even talking about a sort of neo-colonialism. (ANSAmed)
Former Congressional candidate Chase Iron Eyes was among 76 people arrested Wednesday after Dakota Access Pipeline protesters tried to establish a new camp on private property located on the west side of N.D. Highway 1806 in southern Morton County.

After failed negotiations with leaders of this new camp, law enforcement moved in around 3:30 p.m. and arrested people who refused to leave, according to the Morton County Sheriff's Department. The confrontation continued until about 4 p.m.

The short-lived encampment, known as the "Last Child Camp," was composed of several teepees atop a hill across from the main Oceti Sakowin camp. According to a post from Dallas Goldtooth, a campaign organizer of the Indigenous Environmental Network, police told Oceti Sakowin camp security they would not be raiding that encampment on U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land.

To access the protest site, law enforcement briefly removed part of the barricade on the Backwater Bridge, but they replaced it after the standoff. Police said representatives of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe collected teepees left after the raid. Bureau of Indian Affairs officers also set up a roadblock at Cannon Ball to keep people from driving north during the raid.

Joye Braun, a longtime protest organizer affiliated with IEN, said she was not sure exactly of the intentions of the camp. Unlike the "front line" or "treaty camp" from October, this was not atop the pipeline route. She suggested that since many there view the whole area as treaty land, they may have moved atop the hill across the road in the spirit of leaving the flood plain and setting up on higher ground.

Braun, who was not atop the hill, said she believed people had been mostly prayerful there.

Police are characterizing the group on the hill as a rogue faction, but Braun contends that's unlikely, given the number of arrests.

"How can 76 people getting arrested be a faction?" she asked.

Arrestees have been transported to jail across the state, including Morton County, Mercer County, Cass County, Stutsman County and Barnes County.

As recently as Jan. 29, ongoing dialogue between all parties, including camp leaders from the various protester camps, resulted in agreements to start cleaning up the camps, to have protesters leave the area and for steps by law enforcement to help de-escalate the situation.

Public safety, including that of residents and protesters alike, is our No. 1 priority, said Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier.

What law enforcement calls an illegal action follows news that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is expected to grant the final easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline to cross the Missouri River within the next few days, according to Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.

In spite of the actions of this rogue group, we will strive to continue efforts on both sides to move forward and find common ground as steps are taken to ensure public safety and begin healing the relationships that are so important to the region and our state, Gov. Doug Burgum said.

Meanwhile, activists from Camp of the Sacred Stones, Honor the Earth, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the International Indigenous Youth Council are maintaining that granting the easement would illegally circumvent the environmental impact statement process and allow the company to begin drilling immediately.

The EIS was ordered by Jo-Ellen Darcy, the assistant secretary of the U.S. Army, on Dec. 4. On Jan. 14, the corps filed a notice of intent in the Federal Register to begin the scoping process for the study, for which a public comment period is currently open.

"By attempting to approve this easement, the administration's actions reveal a blatant disregard for the rule of law and a clear interest in lining the pockets of Big Oil," Goldtooth said.

"Now he (Trump) is working even harder to attack sovereign tribal nations and historic treaties. Come what may, we have drawn our line in the dirt. We are here to defend Mother Earth and our inherent rights as the first people of the land," he said.

Bismarck Tribune reporter Caroline Grueskin contributed to this report.
ROME - Over the past three months, at least 1,354 migrants and refugees have died at sea including around 190 children, UNICEF told leaders of European Union member states meeting in Malta on Friday as part of an urgent appeal. UNICEF noted that ''The true number of child fatalities may never be known as many children on the move in 2016 were unaccompanied, with their deaths neither recorded nor reported.'' The period in question was from November 2016 to end of January 2017, with the majority of deaths occurring on the dangerous Central Mediterranean sea route between Libya and Italy where 1,191 people are reported to have perished.



This is almost 13 times the number of fatalities reported for this route over the same period in 2015-2016. UNICEF warned that ''with winter weather still gripping much of Europe, this route and others including from Egypt and elsewhere could become even more treacherous over the coming weeks.'' The refugee and migrant crisis is the focus of the day's summit meeting of 28 European Union member states in Valletta, Malta. ''The growing number of children lost at sea underscores the acute danger of the journey from North Africa to Italy, as well as the pressing need for governments on both sides of the Mediterranean to do more to keep them safe,'' said UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Justin Forsyth. ''The decisions taken at Friday's summit could literally mean the difference between life and death for thousands of children transiting or stranded in Libya. They need urgent action now.'' UNICEF calls on the EU and its member states to commit to the following actions to protect uprooted children: prevent the exploitation and trafficking of children; adhere fully to the principle of 'non-refoulement' as sending children back into harm's way or returning boats to Libya without a proper plan to protect them, would only add to their hardship; commit resources to the strengthening of child protection programmes in Libya; invest in reception and care centres in Libya; these centres should provide education and health services, and should never be used to detain children based on their migration status; and invest in credible resettlement and family reunification programmes so that desperate refugees and migrants do not have to turn to smugglers and risk their lives.



UNICEF is operating along the migration routes, including in Libya, providing refugee and migrant children and families with child protection services, water and sanitation, education, health and hygiene support. On Wednesday night, UNICEF and Intersos took part in the rescue of 754 people in the Central Mediterranean, including 148 unaccompanied children.



In recent days, the Italian Coast Guard has saved 285 children with the help of UNICEF and Intersos. (ANSAmed).


Paris, soldier fires at attacker near Louvre Man with knife, suitcase, injured

(ANSAmed)- PARIS, FEBRUARY 3 - A soldier on Friday morning opened fire on a man armed with a knife who was trying to attack him in front of the Louvre, online local media report.



The man reported serious leg injuries, the reports said.



Luc Poignant, a spokesman for police union SGP, told BFM-TV that the man tried to enter inside the corridor of the boutique of the Carrousel du Louvre with a suitcase. He was stopped by security personnel and when a soldier walked up to him, he attacked him with a knife.



After the incident, which the interior ministry called a ''grave event for public security'', the area around the Louvre was cordoned off and the museum was closed alongside the Palais Royal. (ANSAmed).




ANSAmed - Today's events in the Mediterranean

(ANSAmed) - ROME, FEBRUARY 3 - The following are some of the main events scheduled for today in the Euro-Mediterranean area: VALLETTA - EU informal summit on the migrant plan.



PRISTINA - visit by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.



BOLOGNA - Visit by Elzbieta Bienkowska, European Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, who will be meeting with Emilia Romagna regional president Stefano Bonaccini and the entrepreneurs community.



TUNIS - conference on 'Shared Holy Places: Architectonic Affinities' organized by the Italian Institute of Culture as part of the 'Lieux Saints partages' exhibition at the Bardo Museum.



(ANSAmed).




BEIRUT - Lebanese president Michel Aoun on Friday called on the international community to set up safe zones in Syria in collaboration with the government in Damascus. The zones would be used to bring refugees back from abroad including from Lebanon, where approximately 1.5 million are currently living. Aoun made the appeal in meeting with UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi in Beirut. US president Donald Trump said last week he would ''absolutely do safe zones in Syria'' for refugees escaping violence and that Europe had made a mistake by admitting millions of refugees. Damascus had responded by saying that any initiative of the sort not in collaboration with the Syrian government would be considered a hostile act. Lebanese media quoted Aoun as saying that Beirut did not intend to force refugees to go back. However, he warned that ''they cannot stay in Lebanon forever''.



Over a million Syrian refugees are registered in Lebanon, which has an overall population of just over 4 million people, and another approximately 500,000 that are not registered.

''Frankly, I don't see in Syria the conditions'' to create successful safe zones, Grandi - who has recently visited Damascus - said at a news conference in Beirut. ''Let's not waste time planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe enough for people to go back,'' he added. ''Let's concentrate on making peace so that everything becomes safe. That should be the investment.''

Meanwhile, most of Raqqa - a city in eastern Syria considered the 'capital' of the Islamic State (ISIS) in the country - was left without drinking water due to airstrikes by the US-led international coalition that hit the main pipes for water supplies. It also destroyed two bridges over the Euphrates river, reported several local sources. The activists' network Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently called the airstrikes ''absolutely unacceptable'', noting that the bridges had been used by civilians and that none of the city now has access to drinking water. The coalition is bombing Raqqa and ISIS positions in the province as part of its support for efforts by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS.
VALLETTA - EU leaders on Friday said the EU "welcomes with favour and is ready to support the development of the accord signed between Italy and Libya on February 2" by Italian authorities and Libyan Premier Fayez al-Serraj, according to a joint statement issued by the leaders after the Valletta summit's first session of work on immigration.



Premier Paolo Gentiloni said on arrival at the informal EU summit on migrants in Malta that "the accord with Libya opens a new chapter" and Italy "has done its part, now we expected resources and commitment from the European Union". EU Foreign Affairs High Representative Federica Mogherni said she expected "very strong backing" for the accord from the summit and said Libyan Premier Fayez al Serraj "will be in Brussels again today to discuss further European support for these measures".



Gentiloni said Thursday was "an important day for relations between Italy and Libya" after he signed a cooperation agreement with al-Serraj in Rome. "Above all because it confirms that cooperation that has been taking place for months via the Italian government's commitment on many fronts".



European Council President Donald Tusk said Thursday that the goal of stemming the flow of migrants from Libya to Italy was "within reach" thanks to the cooperation agreement. Tusk said that after talking with Gentiloni, al-Serraj, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, the leaders had "agreed on the need to support Italy in this cooperation".



"Europe must be at Italy's side in sharing this responsibility," he added.



Tusk said after talks al Serraj Thursday that "it is time to close the (migrant) route from Libya to Italy".



He said "the EU has shown it is able to close the routes of irregular migration, as it has done in the eastern Mediterranean.



"I spoke at length with Gentiloni yesterday and I can assure you we can succeed. What is needed is the full determination to do so.



"We owe it first of all to those who suffer and risk their lives, but we also owe it to the Italians and all the Europeans".



The EU and Libya, Tusk observed, have a "common interest in reducing the number of irregular migrants risking their lives in the central Mediterranean".



He said that flow was "not sustainable either for the EU or for Libya" where "the traffickers are undermining the authority of the Libyan State for their profit".



In Friday's summit, he said, there will be "additional measures" to "more effectively combat the networks of traffickers and better manage the migratory flows".



The EU, the European Council president added, "fully supports the Libyans' efforts to find a political accord and the United Nations' efforts for detente".



Tusk reiterated his "full support" for the national-unity government of Serraj but also issued an appeal to Serraj's opponents, stressing that "further results, in a constructive sense" are needed to involve "those in Libya who have not joined the new institutions".



After observing that the "humanitarian and security situation has devastated the prospects for the civilian population," Tusk said the EU "will continue to supply assistance to the Libyan people" but he also "urged all Libyans to put aside their differences so that the EU can make a greater commitment" to the troubled north African country.
PARIS - Marine Le Pen wants to include the ''national preference'' - ''France first'' - in the Constitution and has promised two referendums if she wins presidential elections: one on precedence to be given to French workers for a job and another on 'Frexit', France's exit from the European Union.



The first vote - she said, interviewed by Le Monde - concerns a constitutional reform providing for, among other things, a ''national employment priority'', or ''an additional tax on any new contract to foreign employees'' to be given to the unemployed.



The Front National leader said that in this way ''a certain number of people will want to leave because France will stop inciting immigration''. And, for the rest ''we will make sure that the people we accept respond to some criteria and don't weigh on public finances''.



Le Pen's program includes an 80-euro bonus for the poorest: it will be funded with a 3% social contribution on the import of goods and services, which - she assures - will bring a minimum of 15 billion euros to the country's coffers.



As far as Europe is concerned, if elected president, the FN leader has promised to start six-month talks with Brussels to recuperate ''four sovereignties: monetary, legislative, territorial and budgetary''.



But if negotiations were to fail, she will campaign for a 'Frexit' after calling a referendum for France's EU exit. ''I am convinced I will launch a movement'', she told Le Monde. ''There will be elections everywhere: the Netherlands, Germany, perhaps Italy. And today the European Union is in a situation of little glory''.



On Wednesday, the Front National lawmaker attacked the European Parliament and repeated that she will not give back the 300,000 euros that she was supposed to pay for giving the salary of a parliamentary assistant to Catherine Griset, her secretary, then a top official in the party. Interviewed by CNN, she rejected allegations of a fake employment, including that of bodyguard paid for by Europe, and approved a ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries issued by US President Donald Trump. ''It is a temporary measure'', said Le Pen. ''Those criticizing it are in bad faith''.


LA VALLETTA - Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni on Friday said Italy is playing its part in the refugee crisis, urging the European Union to help, arriving at La Valletta for an informal European summit on immigration.



''The agreement with Libya opens a new chapter'', he said.



Italy ''has played its part, now we expect resources and commitment from the European Union''.



Gentiloni and Libya Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj on Thursday signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation to combat illegal migration, human trafficking and contraband and on reinforcing the border between Libya and Italy.
LA VALLETTA - The ''European Union supports Italy'' in better managing the migrant flow from Libya, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Friday, on the sidelines of a pre-summit of Socialist leaders.



She added that, thanks to an agreement between Italy and Libya, ''we will have a more effective job and I believe a Europe that is entirely united behind a job that is not just Italian but fully European, starting today''.




NEW YORK - US President Donald Trump has warned Israel that the construction of new settlements or the enlargement of existing ones beyond their current borders "may not help" achieve peace with the Palestinians. After turning support for Israel into one of the milestones of his foreign policy, the American president appears to want to change position. Although with more caution and a gentler tone compared to previous administrations, including Barack Obama's, the White House sent a clear message to Israel on the settlements, while specifying that an official position has not been taken yet.



And Trump means to discuss it with Premier Benyamin Netanyahu during a trip to Washington in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, however, the message has been sent, with the White House, in statements to the Jerusalem Post quoted by US media, going further and asking ''all sides'' not to take unilateral actions that could endanger the ability to make progress towards peace, ''including announcements on settlements''.



The change in strategy comes after a meeting with the King of Jordan, Abdullah II, who arrived in Washington without an official appointment with the president and succeeded in meeting with Vice President Mike Pence and in talking with Trump.



Jordan did not hide its concern regarding Trump's promise to move the embassy to Jerusalem, a move that Obama and other presidents have refused over fear of a violent response.



Trump's White House has pushed the breaks on moving the embassy, adding that it has just started discussing the issue.



Adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner appears to be behind the intervention, which comes after Netanyahu announced the construction of new housing - counting on Trump's unconditional support.
As lawmakers debate a bill containing rules to govern the state's voter-approved medical marijuana program, the North Dakota Department of Health has named someone to lead it.

Kenan Bullinger was named director of the states medical marijuana program on Friday, effective immediately.

Bullinger has been with the health department for 33 years, serving as director of its Food and Lodging Division for the past 25 years.

Kenans background in licensing, regulation and lab management all make him an ideal person for the job. He has also been in discussions and provided valuable input regarding the measure, and now law, since the beginning, Arvy Smith, interim co-director of the health department, said in a Friday release.

Nearly 64 percent of voters approved Measure 5 in November, legalizing medical marijuana in North Dakota.

In response, the 81-page Senate Bill 2344 has been introduced to amend that law.

The first hearing on SB2344 is scheduled for 9:45 a.m. Wednesday in the Brynhild Haugland Room. Lawmakers and state officials say the changes are needed to run a viable program. Measure 5 proponents plan to lodge their complaints, claiming the bill overrides the intent of the law as passed.

We have a tremendous amount of work to do working hand in hand with the Legislature and governors office to get some needed changes made to the Compassionate Care Act that will result in having safe medical cannabis in the hands of qualifying patients in an affordable, efficient and fiscally responsible manner, Bullinger said in the release.

An estimate the health department released to Legislative Management last fall put the cost of implementation for the 2017-19 biennium at about $7.35 million, with up to 32 full-time staff needed. Department also estimated the impact on the Bureau of Criminal Investigation at nearly $2.8 million per biennium, with a need for 15 additional full-time staff.

The new division will oversee the issuance of medical marijuana cards, licensing and regulation of manufacturing and dispensary facilities, and regulation of medical marijuana products.

Information on medical marijuana in North Dakota can be found at www.ndhealth.gov.
For the first time ever, Qatar Airways Privilege Club members can convert their Qmiles into Le Club AccorHotels points for redemption on accommodation at more than 3,400 hotels and resorts across AccorsHotels global network. Le Club AccorHotels loyalty programme members can enjoy the same benefit of converting their points into Qatar Airways Privilege Club Qmiles for redemption on flights to the more than 150 places the airline flies.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club members can take advantage of a conversion rate of 4,500 Qmiles for 1,000 Le Club AccorHotels points, while Le Club members can benefit from an exchange rate of 2,000 points to 1,000 Qmiles. This agreement allows both loyalty members to redeem a number of exceptional rewards across both programmes  sooner.

Qatar Airways travellers can now book a return ticket and accommodation to a number of exciting destinations, all on points. Travellers can treat a loved one to an upgrade to the Worlds Best Business Class and experience the magic of Sydneys summer on Bondi, or cherish the beauty of the Northern Lights in the winter time in Helsinki, Finland. Travellers can now take full advantage of the Privilege Club and Le Club AccorHotels reciprocal partnership, flying on board the worlds leading airline, and staying in one of the worlds leading hotels or resorts.

Qatar Airways vice president, customer loyalty and relationship management, Dr. Ian Di Tullio, said: Qatar Airways Privilege Club is delighted to partner with Le Club AccorHotels to provide members with even more opportunities to earn and redeem their Qmiles. This partnership heralds the beginning of an exciting partnership with the AccorHotels Group as we continue our commitment to provide the very best rewards programme for our most valued guests. Im confident our new partnership with AccorHotels will be a greatly appreciated addition to our programme, enjoyed by many of our discerning Privilege Club members as we go places together.

Emanuel Baudart, chief customer officer at AccorHotels, added: Since its inception, the Le Club AccorHotels loyalty programme has focused on recognising our guests, and continuously enriching the services and experiences we offer them. Thats why we are delighted to have this partnership with Qatar Airways which reflects the dynamic momentum of our burgeoning programme and allows us to supplement the already wide range of benefits and rewards we reserve for the Groups loyal guests.
A Senate bill rewriting language of Measure 5 would institute $300 fees for applicants wanting medical marijuana cards and a $100,000 fee for certification of compassion centers that would manufacture and dispense the substance.

Proponents of Measure 5, which passed in November with nearly 64 percent of the vote, are upset over changes to virtually all of the language to their initiative and its replacement with a proposed 81-page Senate Bill 2344. State officials counter that changes are necessary as the law, in its existing form, is unworkable and requires more stringent oversight and guidelines.

Fargo resident Rilie Ray Morgan, who spearheaded the Measure 5 campaign, minced no words on SB2344.

Its a punch in the gut to the patients of North Dakota, and a slap in the face to the voters of North Dakota, Morgan said.

He said the bill's application and certification fees are out of line. The fees in Measure 5 were a fraction of whats proposed in SB2344, which is slated for debate on Wednesday morning in the Brynhild Haugland Room.

SB2344 limits the amount purchased in a 30-day period at 2.5 ounces and limits possession to 3 ounces. Pill, oil and liquid forms of the substance would be allowed for patients and only oils permitted for minors.

Measure 5, by comparison, allows for people to have up to 3 ounces of medical marijuana in a 14-day period for treatment of up to nearly a dozen medical conditions. Facilities for medical marijuana distribution would be licensed by the state Health Department and be operated by nonprofit organizations. Those who live more than 40 miles from a licensed facility would be able to grow up to eight marijuana plants after providing notification to law enforcement as long as theyre grown in an enclosed facility.

Morgan questioned not allowing smoking or vaping of medical marijuana as well as limiting minors to using only medical marijuana oils.

Theyre playing doctor with the patients of North Dakota, said Morgan, who expects to have a large contingent of supporters from all corners of the state make their case to lawmakers.

Theres a line in the sand where youve kinda got to say, hey hold on, this is way too far, Morgan said.

A nonpartisan effort

SB2344 primary sponsor Sen. Rich Wardner, R-Dickinson, called the bill a nonpartisan effort to get the right program in place for North Dakotans.

Theyre going to get medical marijuana, said Wardner, who indicated enforcement and cost are of concern to lawmakers.

Two-thirds legislative majority votes will be needed to change the wording, which Wardner says can be achieved.

Visual aids

Rep. Pam Anderson, D-Fargo, a supporter of medical marijuana, devised a visual aid to display the degree of change between the language of the measure and SB2344.

Anderson took a copy of the 33-page Measure 5 and used a yellow highlighter for every word that had been struck out in favor of proposed changes via SB2344. Every word of the measure except for the first line, which is the title of the new law, was yellow. Andersons highlighter ran out of ink halfway through the process.

Its not at all what the voters approved. I dont know how you can take out every word, Anderson said. If were the peoples house and we dont listen to the majority of people in the state, then were not to the peoples house."

Mary Rennich, a Bismarck resident who worked to pass Measure 5, said shes waiting on a viable program to be up and running in order to treat her son, who has lissencephaly, a malformation of the brain which can cause severe mental disability, poor motor functions and other symptoms, including seizures.

Rennich said her son has had regular and severe seizures for around 25 years; she and her husband never know when a seizure might take his life.

She said medical marijuana is a last resort that could help ease her sons suffering after trying virtually every medication on the market.

I have faith that theyll make the right, intelligent choices to do what the voters voted for, Rennich said.

Courtney Koebele, executive director of North Dakota Medical Association, said the organization, with a stance that marijuana has not received any approvals from the federal government for medical use, supports SB2344, standing by its belief shared during the Measure 5 debate.

I think this bills moving in the right direction, Koebele said of SB2344. We still question the validity of medical marijuana.

A cost estimate the Health Department released to Legislative Management last fall put the cost for the 2017-19 biennium for implementation at about $7.35 million and up to 32 full-time staff. Department estimates also put the impact on the Bureau of Criminal Investigation per biennium at nearly $2.8 million with a need for 15 additional full-time staff.

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 2154 in January, suspending enactment of parts of Measure 5 relating to the application process until the main marijuana legislation is passed or until July 31, whichever comes first.
The South Dakota Legislature is known for its penchant of adding to the criminal code, which would explain why it is the only state that makes ingestion, or previous consumption, of marijuana a felony.

In fact, only one other state  Utah  has made ingestion a crime but only as a misdemeanor violation.

So it was a surprise when Senate Bill 129 was introduced with a total of 15 sponsors, including Rep. David Lust, of Rapid City, the prime sponsor in the House. Rapid City lawmakers who co-sponsored the bill are Sens. Terri Haverly and Jeff Partridge and Rep. Kristen Conzet  all Republicans.

The sponsors of the bill are quick to note that this is not a first step toward legalizing marijuana. It is, however, a step toward common sense that does little, if anything, to prevent law enforcement from putting drug users in jail.

Lust, an attorney, told the Rapid City Journal that he felt a felony charge for ingestion was unduly harsh and that it is costly for the state as it is increasing incarceration rates and parole violations, which is coming at a time when the state is trying to reduce the number of drug offenders who are sentenced to prison.

The bill also makes sense at a time when more and more states are legalizing marijuana use, either for medical or recreational purposes. The way it stands now, residents from South Dakota can travel to Colorado and smoke or eat marijuana products and then have to worry about a felony conviction when they return home.

Then there is the case of visitors who have prescriptions for marijuana and are visiting South Dakota. Should they have to worry about going to prison for taking medicine legally prescribed in another state? So, at the very least, the patchwork of marijuana laws in this country is a significant complicating factor when it comes to prosecuting an ingestion crime.

On the other side of the issue is Pennington County Sheriff Kevin Thom. When asked why he opposed the bill, he asked, "What problem is it solving?" Conversely, one could ask what did the legislation do in the first place other than give law enforcement another reason to arrest someone and prosecutors additional leverage while working out a plea bargain? Did it solve any problems? The fact of the matter is that our jails are already filled with drug offenders.

If this bill passes and becomes law, it will still be a crime to possess or sell marijuana in South Dakota and still be against the law to ingest hard drugs like methamphetamine  as it should be. The passage of this law will not signal the end of the state's war on drugs. It will just remove a law that is not needed.

 Rapid City (S.D.) Journal
EDP Headquarters is the new institutional headquarters of Portugals main electrical company, which intends to affirm itself as the dynamic pole of an area in Lisbons river front under urban restructure. The project vied to innovate, reflecting the companys image and allowing for it to become an icon, in a close relation with the city.

The location, in a landfill site in the citys front line between the hill and the River, corresponded to an empty lot, where in the past a power plant operated.

The building is composed of two towers, connected by two ramped passes (south and north), that create a shaded public square at street level. Both towers are joined together in the underground floor, below the square, forming a grand common courtyard, where all accesses and internal circulation conjoin, being illuminated by four generous patios of light.

Regarding the programme, it's predominantly composed of offices, that fully occupy the tower floors. At ground floor level, facing the square, there are two commercial areas; under the square one can find the main lobby and the large common areas: the auditorium, the cafe, a fitness centre and meeting rooms. There are also 4 underground parking floors.

The layout aims to be integrated in the city: the towers rise perpendicularly to the river and the hill, in a way that preserves the system of views and the permeability between Lisbon and the Tagus. This is emphasized by the square, allowing for the building to be crossed by public space, fusing itself with the street and city.

The buildings image came from the research of a system of lights and shadows. This concept, in association with the idea of transparency, comes true through the repetition of vertical lines which are simultaneously the organization module of the office programme (1.20m); through the structural solution of the building (to each line corresponds a steel column); and through the facade that results from the geometric game created by the sequence of lines in full continuity from street-level, covering the roof and crossing the square to the other tower.

These also function as shade structures and, although static, the angle in relation to the facade was studied to go against the strongest solar exposure (south/west).

This inclination also creates a dynamic effect, depending on the observers position: sometimes opaque, sometimes transparent.

The construction system of the building is divided in two distinct parts: the underground levels are in white concrete, a heavier and more opaque solution where large spaces and patios of natural light stand out; in opposition, the raised floors (towers) stand out for their transparency, through a light metallic structure, that comes true in the facade lines (coated in GFRC  Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete) and in the glazing. As a complement to the predominant materials (concrete and glass), the interior finishes are always metallic, in stainless steel and aluminium.

In the public areas (square and lobby), due to these places dignity, the option went to a white stone covering.

The emblematic character of the building is also reflected in the institutional responsibility to become an example of energetic sustainability, which culminated in Gold LEED certification. The whole roof is covered by solar panels, there is a rainwater harvesting deposit used for irrigation and sanitary waters, the quality and origin of the materials are certified, all of the buildings energy systems run on a low consumption mode.

Studios

AIRES MATEUS

Authors

Francisco Aires Mateus, Manuel Aires Mateus

Collaborators

Coordination: Francisco Caseiro, Ana Rita Rosa, Pedro Ribeiro



Collaborator (office): Paolo Agostini, Francesca Lupo, Marco Campolongo, Joao Ortigao Ramos, Teresa Mascarenhas, Patricia Marques, Neus Beneyto, Olga Sanina, Luisa Sol, Humberto Fonseca, Humberto Silva, Joao Esteves, Rita Conceicao Silva, Filipa Ferreira, Diana Mira, Andre Passos, Catarina Bello, Joao Caria, Carlotta Fantoni, Valentina Del Motto, Mariana Barbosa Mateus, Vania Fernandes, Francesca Gagliardi, Martina Palocci, Borja Fernandez, Duarte Madrugo, Joao Pedro Miguel, Mizuho Anzai

Consulting: Frederico Valsassina, Jose Maria Assis

Engineering: AFA Consult



Construction company: Mota Engil , HCI

Program

Office



Labels

Corporative Building



Total area

5.656



Usable floor area

46.274



Cost

57.000.000




YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. Recently the students of Armath engineering club-laboratory of Gyumri branch of the National Polytechnic University of Armenia hosted the project representatives from Ucom and Union of the Information Technology Enterprises (UITE), Ucom told Armenpress.

During the tour the students of Armath demonstrated everything they have learnt throughout an entire year. The children became skilled in creating games, doing animation, performing mathematical calculations with the help of Scratch and K-Turtle programs, also in object modelling and printing with the help of three-dimensional printer. Moreover, there they have an opportunity to design and develop different types of equipment and robot models.

We have taken part in almost all events and competitions organized in Armenia and mostly occupied the winning places. As an example I can mention the Minesweeper Robot competition, which enables many of us to contribute to the development of military industry and do our best so that robots seek mines instead of people, student Sona Harutyunyan said.

We always take pride in a variety of innovative solutions offered by foreign engineers with Armenian descent. I am convinced that tomorrow we shall be mentioning the names of many of the Armath laboratories just right here, in Armenia, which is open for all those solutions, Hayk Yesayan, director general at Ucom, said.

According to the Memorandum of Cooperation signed between the Union of Information Technology Enterprises (UITE) and Ucom, the latter invests to open around 70 more engineering club-laboratories named Armath in 9 regions of Armenia. The project aims to promote the technological education in all schools of the Armenian communities, to assist students in their early interest emergence in modern high technology, to promote the development of engineering mindset from early ages and to prepare competent students. The project enables practical support for the integration of qualified IT-specialists into the Armenian and world markets, the exchange of the experience between them, and the attraction of large-scale investments into the IT-industry.

It is noteworthy, that the software and assembly drawings of the labs-developed equipment are open to public. The computer programs and systems are armenianized to the extension possible, while during the project implementation for the acquisition of the equipment and software, the priority is given to the local producers, the bright example of which serve the high-quality three-dimensional (3D) printers, mini-computers, robotics kits and other devices produced in Armenia.
YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 3, ARMENPRESS. By the assistance of the Armenian viticulture and winemaking foundation, 12 Armenian winemaking companies will present their products in the upcoming Prod Expo 2017 International Exhibition in Moscow, Russia. The exhibition will be held February 6-10.

The Armenian companies will present over 50 types of wines and sparkling wines.

The ministry of agriculture told ARMENPRESS the exhibition hosts producers, businessmen, producers of winemaking equipment. The expo enables to establish business ties and review global trends in the industry.
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TO THE EDITOR:

About three weeks ago I went with a friend to Dexter. She had a dentist appointment. While she was in the dentist office I decided to go to the DMV as my drivers license expired on Jan. 27 and I had heard from several people that you did not have to wait very long in Dexter.

Only one person was ahead of me. The lady took one look at my birth certificate and stated she could not accept it as it was a corrected copy and I would need other information from the Bureau of Vital Statistics from Texas Department of Health. I told her this is all I have from Texas. She finally agreed to accept it. Everything else I had was OK. Then the eye test.

I could not read the fourth line. She gave me a form to take to the eye doctor. I had an appointment in February, so we changed the appointment to Jan. 25 as that was as soon as he could see me. I decided to try Artesia DMV as I had never had a problem reading their chart. It is different from Dexters. The lady in Artesia took one look at my birth certificate and stated she would have to have the managers approval. She came back shortly and stated they could not accept it.

OK, the lady in Dexter had already agreed to accept it so I thought all I needed was the form from the eye doctor. On Jan. 25, I took a trip to Roswell. The doctor filled out the form. So, I go to Dexter. This time she would not accept the form from the doctor as he had left one place blank. Back to the doctor in Roswell. I told the lady at the desk what had happened. She took the form to the doctor. He sent back that was not necessary as it was on the form that I needed glasses to drive. I informed her the DMV employee would not accept it. He filled in the blank.

Back to Dexter. This time she would not accept the birth certificate as it did not have a number in the upper right hand corner. I told her there is a form she could give which would allow me to get the medication for which I have to show my drivers license. She started looking through her book and stated she could not do it. I asked her to please call Santa Fe and ask what to do. She informed me she could not call Santa Fe as she did not work for the state. She works for Dexter.

I had already pointed out to her the only numbers on my birth certificate from the Texas department were the numbers below the seal. Also when I asked about the form for medication, she said the only thing I had with my middle name on it was my birth certificate. Nothing else to prove that was me. Needless to say I left that office very angry.

After a very sleepless night, early the next morning I headed to Carlsbad. There were several people ahead of me, some of them from Artesia. When it was my turn at the window I told the lady I think I have a problem, I need to see the manager. She said I am the manager. Wonderful. I told her what had happened. She took one look at my certificate and stated, There is nothing wrong with any of the information you have. The only number required is the number below the seal.

MY QUESTION: How can someone who is not employed by the State of New Mexico be allowed to issue state drivers licenses when they do not have the knowledge of what is legal and what is required and cannot get in touch with the state office that could give them the information?

The Carlsbad ladies were very nice, very professional, and wonderful to work with. Thank you, ladies in Carlsbad.

Nancy King

Artesia Resident Since 1951
While he had successful stints at most of Londons broadsheet newspapers, Chancellor was best known for turning The Spectator from a tired old Tory weekly into a lively magazine he once described as more of a cocktail party than a political party.
WHAT IS THE TRUE AGENDA OF THE ARCHON, ANUNNAKI & DRACO CABAL? WHAT ARE THEY REALLY TRYING TO ACHIEVE HERE ON THE EARTH  AND WHY DO YOU NEED TO KNOW?by Bradley LovesIf you have not already read my long series  THE GREAT CON OF MAN  located  HERE  Or, the shorter series  SILENT WEAPONS FOR QUIET WARS  located  HERE  And finally  THE KEY TO OUR ENSLAVEMENT IS THE SEXUAL ENERGY  located  HERE  then this next piece will make very little sense to you!I recommend that you stop reading this right now! If you can, please go back to read these other articles first, so that you can understand the important back ground information, and links necessary for THIS Article to make sense, or you will most likely be totally confused by what has been written here.This is a summation of everything written so far! And, it is a logical end to the thought process that asks in no uncertain terms and in a point blank manner: WHERE is all of this Cabal activity that we are seeing daily ultimately trying to lead us?Is it just simply that they want to be in control of everyone living on the planet? Is it nothing more than wanting to have all of the money and to call all of the shots for the masses that compel them to do these sordid things? Do they want to kill 90 percent of the people on Earth just to save the planet itself from over population  as some of them CLAIM?My firm belief is that these ideas are not only FAR from the truth  they barely scratch the surface of the REAL PURPOSE.The real goals of the ruling CABAL are far darker  and more evil than most people can conceive of, because it goes both OFF WORLD and then literally transmogrifies into a long term and OVER REACHING AGENDA which has very little to do with the somewhat trite notion of elites ruling the world! The actual agenda takes us directly into the mire of the Archon  Anunnaki and Draco Reptilian Control Matrix!Most of the unenlightened henchmen who are  or have been working very hard in support of the NEW WORLD ORDER, really have no concept of who they are truly working for! Even those who are in the upper echelons of management, or the higher ups within both World Government positions and the Military  which all-be-it are great positions of power and authority, still have NO IDEA what the ULTIMATE GOAL of all of this BLACK MAGIC is, and even worse, just where all of this Occult Darkness is leading us!These are not stupid people by any means! Installed within the positions Ive listed, we have men and women who have working knowledge of Time Travel  Teleportation, Anti-Gravity Driven Space Craft  Super Advanced Ancient Technologies found on the Moon, Mars, and yes even on the Earth!They have knowledge of Extra-Terrrestrials, Extra-Dimensionals, and alternative Time Lines  and all of the Parallel Universes of Space  and yet EVEN THEY, dont completely know where all of this secrecy leads, and what these convoluted compartmentalizations were designed so carefully to keep under wraps.So why are they helping?Its all DECEPTION! From the top to the bottom, and everywhere in between, THE LIE IS DIFFERENT AT EVERY LEVEL!As a result  and through a system of world wide corruption, which includes: Bribes, blackmail, murder, drug running, world-wide weapons sales, mind control, human sex trafficking, pedophilia and ultimately even the Satanic Ritualistic Blood Sacrifices of young children, which are used to feed very real discarnate beings that live on other frequency levels just outside of our range of sight  we have millions of henchmen who are either terrified, or totally corrupted minions, who have become the mid-level management of this bizarre Off World Control Matrix  and are thus walking and stumbling forward while doing what they are told, with NO REAL CLUE as to where it all leads, because even they are just grunts!Only a handful of the worlds top leaders  know this goes off world!This is not something told to all mid-level management. For who would willingly commit treason against their own species, while helping an other -dimensional Satanic Force to take over.The lie is different at every level! Even those at the very top think theyve been told the truth by these off worlders! It is everyone else who gets lied to, but not them!How is it that a group of Satan worshipping Lucifereans could manage to infiltrate the highest levels of Government  The Vatican  the Military and even age old Secret Societies like the Templars, the Freemasons, and the Knights of Malta? The LIE would have to be so huge, as to be almost indistinguishable from the truth!These people, including: Military Leaders  Bankers  Corporate CEOs  Clergy  Media Executives  Top Judges  Top Law Enforcement and Top Lawyers  Hollywood Producers and Actors  along with a gaggle of NSA/NRO/CIA/FBI/DHS/KGB/FSB/MOSSAD/MI-5&6 would have to have been told some of whats being planned so they could carry out their portion of the plan, but theyhave been lied to about the rest! Because if they WERE told the ENTIRE agenda  then EVEN THEY would not want to go along with it!Here are the Cliff Notes on the REAL END GAME  and all of the dots finally connected  which no one can seem to connect for all of the seemingly chaotic and disconnected things currently happening on the EARTH, which is BY DESIGN!WE as a group, are currently living within a synthetically created Magnetic Hologram! It is ages old, and until quite recently was serving an AGENDA that most people were unaware of!It has to do with an ALIEN DIRECTED disconnect from Prime Creator or what some people may even call THE SOURCE.AS an artificially created construct, our 3-D reality is actually quite similar to the MATRIX as was seen and described in the TV Movie, only with many differences of course, since our 3-D bodies are not actually locked into pods in a machine-like world and stacked in order to create tall buildings.This hologram was developed, designed, and is being run by both on world (Black Occult Magicians) and off world Reptilian and Human Hybrids, who are Masters at both DECEPTION and MIND CONTROL!Long ago, the Original Organic and Divine Human Body Form  the physical body that we (as Earth Humans) use to inhabit while living in 3-D  was given a Reptilian based genetic DOWNGRADE!Many strands of our DNA Genetic Code were totally dis-connected from the single primary strands in order to dis-connect us from the Great Cosmic Intelligence, which as immortal and eternal souls, we had always been connected to.They did this, so that we as a complete group would accept their MIND CONTROL programs, and once that was achieved, they began to compel us to very actively behave in ways that were quite destructive to both ourselves and to our planet. This was a NECESSITY because they needed us to behave in very low vibrational ways in order to achieve a very controlled and illusionary reality which could not have happened otherwise!This is because what we call our reality is a collectively created, and very changeable or moldable day to day magical (magnetical) and illusory environment, which can literally move back up the scale toward extremely HIGH VIBRATIONS if not totally monitored and controlled DAILY to keep it from doing so.This is the TRUE REASON that we are seeing mind-controlled and low vibratory behavior happening daily all over the planet! Through the World Wide Controlled Media, a continuously NEGATIVE News Stream is carefully dispensed through devices, including TV  Radio  Magazines  Newspapers, which actually use either frequencies OR symbolism and sacred geometry to hi-jack and stimulate the human brain in such a way as to hypnotically mold its perceptions toward a BASE VIBRATIONAL PROGRAM which is VERY important to their Control of our Reality.It is important for many reasons, but mostly because it is OUR COLLECTIVE behavior, which includes all of our thoughts, all of our words, and all of our actions, when we are interacting with each other here on Earth that literally assist them in both creating, and then sustaining the MAGNETIC PRISON that we all together are living in, and that literally exists all around us  however invisible it may be.The careful use, and manipulation of this SECRET, ESOTERIC AND ANCIENT KNOWLEDGE has everything to do with the Tandem Earth Grids  or the ley-lines that skirt the surface of the planet  and the duplicate grid of ley-lines that is approximately sixty miles high above the planet, all of which are highly magnetic and are symbiotically functional frequency regulators that greatly depend upon the transmitted or transmuted energies of human beings to CREATE VISUAL HOLOGRAPHIC representations of reality.Do not under estimate the importance of this!Our consciousness, which includes our focused thoughts, words, and actions, assisted by the conveniently structured sacred geometry of all of the government, military, and religious buildings that were placed directly on top of these ley lines AND at major intersection points along the grid are being captured, then highly distorted, and then FUNNELED back into the TANDEM GRIDS in order to control, re-direct, and ultimately USE these transmuted human energies to forcefully create a DESIGNER REALITY.This would NOT be possible without the bastardized use of the magnetic grids and the continuous force feeding of negative energy backward into these sacred grids.Once again, the importance of this can NOT be overstated ! It is the KEY to their whole hi-jacking operation!This controlled prison Matrix has worked very well for thousands of years until PRIME CREATOR himself finally got involved in the matter and said NO MORE!It is against HIS Cosmic Law to do what these very high frequency (but obviously dark beings) have been doing to both the Earth, and to those who have incarnated here. Some literally arrived on the Earth EONs ago, and having been trapped here ever since in endless cycles of reincarnation.The unfortunate beings who actually incarnated here eons ago, and have been stuck or trapped inside of this synthetic frequency prison for so long, have literally forgotten who they truly are!They no longer have any IDEA that they are eternal souls of Prime Creator, or that they are simply reincarnating here on the Earth over and over again, and living baseless lives that serve only the dark dreams of those higher dimensional beings who are now feeding off of the MATRIX.When PRIME CREATOR finally said no more, AN EPIC WAR was started between those who are of the light  and those who are in support of the DARK ONES. Those in support of Prime Creator were indignant that these certain high beings and players within the Universal Game of Free-Will, would NOT STAND DOWN and release the poor unfortunate souls they were holding prisoner in such a deceitful way as to claim in front of all that they were actually CHOOSING it!These dark beings had long ago decided that they wanted to be cut off from PRIME CREATOR  so they could then live in a way that suits their desires without ever having to MOVE ON!Fast forward to recent times!Because of Prime Creators decision to put a stop to this, the GALACTIC CENTER is now sending out waves and waves of very high frequency light waves, as well as higher dimensional/transformational LIGHT PHOTONS, which are literally designed not only to reconnect the damaged DNA STRANDS within the maligned human form, but to also cause human beings to literally BY-PASS several of the very controlled frequency levels where the Archon- Anunnaki- Dracos exist. This would then deny them access to us permanently, and block their use of our consciousness as a food source.AS A RESULT OF THIS ACTION  THE WAR HAS GOTTEN WAY OUT OF HAND  and WE have come to be where we are at the present moment.For the past 70 to 100 years  those who are working with  and in support of the Archon  Annunaki  Draco Agenda (both human and non-human) have been working very hard (behind the scenes) to genetically create a brand NEW HUMAN BODY FORM which can live on the surface of the Earth in an even more controlled way.This genetic research has already been done in secret, in deep underground labs and by using some of the best genetic scientists the world has to offer  working along side of their own!Many of these scientists were never told the truth of what they were working on. Some were told that it was a new body for the Grays, or any lie other than the fact that it was actually a new, and better prison suit for human souls.ENTER FREEWILL! The one stumbling block to this entire plan of the DARK, and the subject of my now many previous articles, is that of FREEWILL.Backing up in time When Prime Creator got involved and said enough  he was immediately challenged by the Dark, who claimed that he was reneging on his own decree that this was a FREEWILL Universe. The dark maintained that if it was truly a FREEWILL Universe, then they had a right to both disconnect from him, AND to never have to progress past where they were if they didnt want to.And, because they had an infinite crop or source of energy to feed off of in the form of younger upward coming souls, they figured there was nothing that could be done to stop them, regardless of what was decided.It was at this point that they were told that they could do what they wanted AS LONG AS EACH SOUL WAS ALWAYS GIVEN A CHOICE in the matter.So you can now see their dilemma!They have been told that they can do what they want  but those countless souls who they were depending upon to feed them with energy  needed to always be given a choice as to whether they will participate with the dark or NOT!This did not sit well with these very high level Dark Frequency Beings because they formulated that eventually their plan would end because NO ONE WOULD PARTICIPATE OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL! Thus in order to counter this potentially unwanted outcome  the first version of the dumbed-down human body form was created  and installed on the Earth.The Earths magnetic grids were hi-jacked and began to produce a fake, synthetic reality, so that even when given a freewill choice, due to the extremely low vibrations covering the Earth and the endless MIND CONTROL being used on them, the human souls themselves would simply always CHOOSE the dark path. PROBLEM SOLVED!Needless to say PRIME CREATOR was NOT IMPRESSED with the solution that the Dark Energy Beings came up with to solve their problem of diminishing returns once FREEWILL was accorded to every soul!Since He wanted these Dark Beings to Return to Him, he gave them another chance and told them that they must ALWAYS tell the human souls caught in their prison in advance what they were going to do here on Earth, so that souls collectively would really be able to make an honest choice.Not wanting to do this, but forced to co-operate, the Dark Beings started to use symbols and languages with words that had double and even triple meanings, and then by switching the words from backwards to forwards and vice versa, and even by putting these mixed-up words in obscure places, and doing it years in advance of any action they intended to do, they thus CLAIMED to be fulfilling PRIME CREATORS directive of giving everyone here advance notice!Again Prime Creator shook his head!Maybe you can finally understand why I personally am having a real problem with these beings!!The real amusing thing here is that there are literally millions of adult men and women living on Earth  right now as we speak who are totally in service to these beings and dont even know it!!For money, fame, status, and reward, they are willing to carry out the agenda! They are dressed in business suits and work in the very halls of Government  Education  Business  Religion  The Military  The Media  Science  Hollywood And if they are in public life  they do stupid things like flash the pyramid symbol  or the so-called ALL SEEING EYE  or go on TV and stick out their tongue into the pyramid symbol  and use any number of secret handshakes or symbols to show they are in service to the DARK! Without really knowing what that DARK REALLY WANTS!Getting back to the present-The reason those in service to the DARK needed to use human scientists to help them is NOT because they could not do this work by themselves  it is so that they can make the CLAIM to PRIME CREATOR and to the Higher Universal and Cosmic Councils that the EARTH HUMAN BEINGS themselves were very complicit in this plan, and thus CONSENTED to it fully!They needed this one loophole plugged if they hoped to get away with their plan which is constantly being reviewed by very high COSMIC BEINGS.The biggest problem for the Dark is this: The old genetically downgraded human body form  the one which which you see everywhere, walking on the planet, the one which we all incarnate into  IS NO LONGER WORKING to hold our consciousness down to a very low vibrational level, and WE as a group are literally breaking free of the hold that it has had on us! This was PRIME CREATORS intention.THE CABAL HOWEVER IS NOT GIVING UP SO EASILY!They decided to create an entirely new, and even more disconnected human body form, or human body suit for all of the souls that are still caught within the Prison Matrix.This body suit will not only be dumbed down far below what we currently have now, it will be even more controllable.It will have machine parts and machine technology inserts all throughout it which will assist in TOTAL A.I. COMPUTER CONTROL of the living being, such that almost NO ability exists for the poor incarnated soul within that body to have a freewill choice OTHER THAN WHAT THOSE WHO ARE IN CONTROL OF IT WANT!So now that you know this  How can they EVER hope to get this past the Universal Councils and Prime Creator?THEY ARE GOING TO MAKE THE CLAIM THAT THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE EARTH HUMANS WANTED ALL ALONG  OF THEIR OWN FREEWILL! TO BE ENSLAVED THEY ARE DOING SO BY TACIT CONSENT  BECAUSE THEES HUMANS ARE NOT SAYING NO TO IT!They are saying that:All of the freedoms being taken away daily, are being consented to by the majority of the species! They say humans are asking for more and more protections from the government! They say humans are AFRAID, and thus want these restrictions in order to feel safe!The newly created human body suit will be exactly the safest place for the soul that is AFRAID! It will be provided to that soul, because thats what they want!!They dont want freedom, they want safety! They want Safety inside this nice synthetic reality prison!At this time:The Dark is currently terra-forming the planet by Chem-Trailing it daily  and also changing the environment by placing toxic NUCLEAR WASTE DUMPS everywhere  and by also using weather modification to get the surface world into a BETTER Frequency Range for the new hybrid bodies to operate within.Remember the Earth is actually a FREQUENCY! If the Frequency is too high  the new hybrid bodies will not live long or function well within it. They are being specifically designed to live in a very low and quite toxic vibration!For those who think this is all too far fetched  this has been done before!The GRAYS are the perfect example of actual living beings whose souls were forced into genetically manipulated bodies which were then very controllable by the Dracos. They have no real free will  and are considered to be a servant race to the Dracos all over the Universe.The REAL plan  known only to the highest members of the CABAL  is to GET RID OF THE OLD DISCONNECTED BODY FORM (By killing off 90 percent of the Earths population) and thus exterminating the old body suit that is no longer working for them!Then  they will drag out the new body suit  the human 3.0 suit, which has already been created, and is waiting in the underground labs  and through a process most people can not even conceive of  literally force all the souls who can not get free of the Earths Gravity  back into the reincarnational cycle, and into these newly created, and very machine-like bodies. Problem again solved.If this occurs  it will be almost IMPOSSIBLE for anyone in this FREEWILL UNIVERSE (EVEN PRIME CREATOR HIMSELF) to help these souls who did NOT STAND UP FOR THEMSELVES AND STAND UP AGAINST THIS TAKE OVER  which is becoming more and more obvious by the day!This is the reason for the WAR  and the very reason why all of the LOVING SOULS HAVE INCARNATED HERE at this time, and are being called into very positive and loving action!It is action  action  action  in thought  word  and deed which has the greatest affect/effect upon this magnetic hologram!It is positive, light-filled action every day which re-tunes the endless energies being backward forced into the Earth Grids.Yes  LOVE IS THE GREATEST POWER THERE IS! I HAVE PERSONALLY WRITTEN ABOUT THIS MANY TIMES! And it was/is the plan of those who came here to USE LOVE  to literally dissolve the MATRIX!However, this is the part of the HARRY POTTER MOVIE where Harry tells his friends that VOLDEMORT has finally discovered that they are hunting HORCRUXES and literally destroying them! And, now that he knows  boy is he PISSED!The CABAL has finally discovered that millions upon millions of light orientated beings are now here on EARTH and are using the LOVE VIBRATION against them  AND BOY ARE THEY PISSED! THEY HAVE NOW DECLARED AN ALL OUT WAR ON EVERY LIVING BEING ON THE PLANET THAT IS NOT ONE OF THEM!These higher frequency dark souls who are the so-called OVER LORDS of this planet DO NOT WANT TO PROGRESS  EVER!They do NOT WANT TO MOVE FORWARD within Prime Creators plan of soul-growth-evolution!They are HAPPY with what they have attained  and because they have UNPLUGGED themselves from PRIME CREATORS Universal System of energetic support THEY ARE NOW IN NEED OF OTHER BEINGS TO FEED OFF OF IN THE FORM OF RAW BATTERY-LIKE ENERGY /CURRENT (CURRENCY) WHICH WILL ALLOW THEM TO LIVE FOREVER AS A TOTALLY FREE AND SEPARATE PART  ETERNALLY CUT OFF FROM PRIME CREATOR AND HIS RULES.Remember this is a Freewill Universe. Prime Creator has said so  so they (the dark ones) are now claiming to be well within their rights of freewill to stay exactly where they are  and to NOT HAVE TO MAKE PROGRESS EVER!The rules of Freewill in this Universe are absolute  but they do NOT WORK like most people think they do. Yes there ARE lessons here to learn, but they are not structured in the way that most people think they are structured.It is all about the choices that you make at each and every moment of your life! But it is far MORE than that. It is not only ABOUT WHAT YOU CHOOSE TO DO HERE! It is also very much about what you DO NOT CHOOSE TO DO HERE, AS WELL!Only 50 percent of the total vibrational grade has to do with what you are choosing to do daily! The other 50 percent (in order for perfect and total balance to be achieved) has to be about what you did NOT CHOOSE AS WELL! That my friends is the OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN  and there really are two sides.Which is why I am literally beating the drum every single day saying HEY  Everyone out there  half of the vital ingredients are missing from the recipe that assists EACH SOUL in gaining THEIR VIBRATIONAL FREEDOM!IF YOU DO NOT SPEAK OUT, AND GO ON RECORD against the AGENDA as it is occurring on the planet right in front of you visually THEN A VERY IMPORTANT RULE OF FREE WILL SAYS THAT YOU TACITLY CONSENTED TO IT  AND ARE ALSO IN SUPPORT OF IT.If you do not actively say NO  then it can be assumed according to the rules that you said yes!THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY AROUND THIS RULE  YOU CAN ACT LIKE THE YOGIs OF THE PAST  GO LIVE IN A CAVE, AND MEDITATE ALL DAY LONG  AND BY YOUR ACTIONS OF NOT PARTICIPATING IN THE ILLUSIONARY WORLD AT ALL  THE MAGNETIC HOLOGRAM  YOU THUSLY HAVE NOT CONSENTED TO IT! THEREFORE  YOU HAVE LITERALLY REMOVED YOURSELF FROM THE SYSTEM BY YOUR DAILY ACTIONS AND DEEDS OF NON CONSENT.This was how they got around the rule of tacit consent and were eventually freed from the hologram! Very few souls have been able to do it this way! Another way is to have someone who is already FREE from the hologram  take on ALL OF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOU AS A SOUL  which is also very rare  and this HARDLY EVER HAPPENS.Those who has NOT taken these drastic and dramatic steps, and who are still USING the system in their every day lives, are thus TACITLY CONSENTING TO IT unless they are speaking out against it.Just look at all of the so-called on-line contracts that are being handed to you by the likes of Google and Facebook every day now! They are SHOWING YOU how it is now  because they HAVE TO!Every time a new change comes out in their software and their on-line programs, they automatically opt you into all of the changes!You are automatically set up to be included into everything they want!This is not an accident!UNLESS YOU TAKE ACTION TO OPT OUT OF WHATEVER NEW IDEA THEY HAVE  BY DOING SOMETHING VERY PHYSICAL LIKE PUSHING BUTTONS AND REMOVING YOUR CONSENT TO THE NEW CHANGES  you are opted in.Is this happening by chance? NO  They are SHOWING you what you must know because they are compelled to do this by Cosmic Law.They are showing you very clearly that if YOU DO NOT CHOOSE TO OPT OUT OF THEIR SYSTEM OF IDEAS  Under their rules and laws  YOU WILL BE OPTED INTO THEM  AND COUNTED AS COMPLICIT!YES THERE ARE RULES to this game  only they are not the rules that you have been hearing about for decades.Every court system in the world operates in the exact way that Ive just described to you and has been doing so for almost 100 years now. Is THIS AN ACCIDENT? No!I dont care HOW MUCH you object to what I am saying in this one article  the truth is that if you are dragged into a court room by the police, you are automatically opted into their system from the moment you get there  UNLESS YOU TAKE VERY REAL AND COURAGEOUS STEPS TO OPT OUT!I, and many others, have said this over and over again now! The data and the information is OUT THERE for everyone to see.BY being opted into their system  REAL CONSEQUENCES WILL TAKE PLACE FOR YOU IN YOUR LIFE! About this, no one who has ever been to a courtroom can argue.So the real question is this: WHY?Do you think it is different on the higher levels? What are the higher levels? How many people have been there and seen them? Do you understand what happens on the higher levels when you do get there?Even if you find yourself more or less comfortable on the other side temporarily, what kind of body will be available for you to incarnate into, if the CABAL gets its way?The Matrix needs to go! It can be destroyed!Its the dark energy being sent into the grids which has to be changed. This we can only do collectively, as a large group!By removing our consent to everything the Cabal is attempting to do to us  they lose power.There are grand beings of LOVE working with each soul. Daily action is necessary to break the Matrix!Now is the TIME to do it once and for all!
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem described the U.S. border with Mexico as a war zone last year when she sent dozens of state National Guard troops there. Noem said theyd be on the front lines of stopping drug smugglers and human traffickers. But newly released records from the National Guard show that in their two-month deployment, the South Dakota troops didnt seize any drugs and sometimes went days without encountering any migrants at all. Noem justified the deployment and a widely criticized private donation to fund as a state emergency because of drugs making their way across the southern border to South Dakota. But the records cast doubt on whether the deployment was effective in addressing that.
By Alexander Chipman Koty

The Philippines garnered substantial international attention in 2016, owing largely to President Rodrigo Dutertes unexpected rise to power, his litany of controversial remarks, and contentious war on drugs campaign. Lost in the Philippines political drama, however, was the countrys strong economic performance. The Philippines posted a robust 6.8 percent GDP growth rate in 2016, outperforming popular investment spots such as China (6.7 percent) and Vietnam (6.2 percent). This follows years of sturdy growth under the previous Aquino administration, where growth averaged 6.2 percent per year.

FDI into the Philippines also increased in 2016, reaching US$6.2 billion in net inflows through the first 10 months of the year  a 22.2 percent increase over the US$5.1 billion accumulated over the same period the previous year. In 2015, total FDI amounted to US$5.7 billion. Intercompany borrowings accounted for almost two thirds of net FDI inflows (US$3.9 billion) in 2016, up 34.9 percent from US$2.9 billion in 2015. Despite improved FDI, the Philippines continues to lag behind fellow ASEAN countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand in this regard.

The Philippines strong economic performance is projected to continue into 2017, primarily on the back of healthy domestic spending, infrastructure development, and remittances. As opposed to many emerging Asian economies that are reliant on affordable exports, the Philippine economy is primarily bolstered by consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of GDP and grew by seven percent year-on-year. Consequently, the Philippines may be better positioned than its more export-reliant neighbors to weather 2017s uncertain global economic climate. Standard Chartered projects the Philippines economy to grow by 6.7 percent in 2017, while HSBC projects 6.5 percent growth. Meanwhile, the Philippine government is targeting growth between 6.5 and 7.5 percent in 2017 and to grow between 7-8 percent per year in the medium term, while aiming to attract US$7 billion in FDI over the coming year.

RELATED: Pre-Investment and Market Entry Advisory from Dezan Shira & Associates

Tax reform

One of the Duterte administrations main initiatives in 2017 will be rolling out the Comprehensive Tax Reform Program (CTRP). The reform will see the highest personal income tax bracket rate reduced from 32 percent to 25 percent and corporate income tax lowered from 30 to 25 percent. The initiative aims to make the Philippines tax environment more competitive with its ASEAN peers, as the region as a whole has been gradually harmonizing and lowering tax rates.

To offset losses from lowered personal income and corporate income tax rates, the government will expand the value-added tax (VAT) base by reducing exemptions, and add taxes on automobiles and fuel excise, among other measures. Additionally, the government has announced that it will expand the tax collection powers of the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), which will resume conducting field audits, and is also debating a tax amnesty to raise revenues and bring more companies into the formal tax regime.

Additionally, tax forms will be simplified to encourage tax compliance and make the process more approachable for small taxpayers. Complicated and burdensome administrative measures, both in time and cost, often deter small taxpayers from participating in the official tax system. Also to this end, Project Repeal: The Philippine Red Tape Challenge aims to improve the countrys inefficient bureaucracy  the Philippines is ranked 106th in the World Banks Ease of Doing Business index  by streamlining administrative and regulatory procedures and to remove unnecessary laws. The tax reforms are projected to add an additional PHP 206.8 billion to government coffers, and the BIR is aiming to collect a record PHP 1.829 trillion in 2017. From January to November 2016, the BIR collected PHP 1.45 trillion in taxes.

Development initiatives and ASEAN integration

The Philippine Development Plan covering the years 2017-2022 is set to be unveiled in the coming months, which will be a 10 point plan outlining measures and goals to raise the countrys standard of living. While more details will be released when the plan is officially announced, its central aim is to cut poverty incidence from 21.6 percent in 2016 to 14 percent by 2020. The previous plan, which covered the years 2011-2016, sought to reduce multidimensional poverty from 2008s levels of 28.2 percent to 16-18 percent by 2016. The plan calls for inclusive growth, fostering a trust-based society, and developing a knowledge-driven economy.

President Dutertes pledge for economic growth to be more inclusive and tangibly raise the standards of living of the Philippines most vulnerable citizens ties into the goals of the Philippine Development Plan. Notably, point zero of the plan sets to achieve peace and order, which falls in line with Dutertes drug eradication and crime reduction campaign and ties into a number of his economic and social policies. In 2016, Duterte also signed an executive order that officially adopted the broader AmBisyon Natin 2040 project as the countrys long term development vision. AmBisyon Natin 2040 envisions the Philippines tripling GDP per capita to US$11,000 and becoming a high income country by 2040 by maintaining GDP growth of at least 6.5 percent per year.

The Philippines will also chair ASEAN for 2017, meaning that it will host a series of summits and events concerning the regional blocs integration and political, economic, and social issues, and will be expected to champion particular initiatives. Areas of focus for the Philippines will be to reduce the cost of doing business across ASEAN, harmonize safety codes for products and services throughout the region, and support the creation of innovation-driven economies. Beginning in April, the government will host a series of nine conferences geared towards multinational small and mediums sized enterprises (MSMEs), startups, and attracting investment. As has been the case in recent years, 2017s ASEAN summits will be notable for how the regional bloc approaches an increasingly aggressive China. Duterte shocked the political world when he renounced the US in favor of China despite the contentious land disputes in which they are engaged in the South China Sea, and ASEAN as a unit has growing divisions over how they view China and its rise.

Industry opportunities

Property, infrastructure, and consumption have all been important elements of the Philippines growth in recent years, and this should remain the case in 2017. The Philippines has long had a substantial infrastructure deficit, and Duterte seeks to address this by incrementally raising spending on hard infrastructure from five percent of GDP to seven percent by 2022. For 2017, infrastructure spending is earmarked at PHP 850 billion  5.3 percent of GDP. The Philippines has a wide variety of infrastructure needs, from the construction of new ports, airports, bridges, and expressways to electricity generation and telecommunications infrastructure.

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank is already involved in two new projects in the Metro Manila region targeting flood prevention and mass rapid transport, and the government hopes to attract foreign funds, expertise, and technology to bridge its various infrastructure shortages. It is hoped that improved infrastructure will benefit multiple facets of the economy, including tourism, access to energy, and reducing the countrys infamous congestion.

Other sectors of the economy will benefit from the Philippines well-equipped workforce and sizeable service industry. Only three percent of employers in the Philippines cite inadequate skills in the workforce  the lowest rate in ASEAN. The Philippines is known for its Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry, which will continue to be a key growth area in 2017. As reflected in the Philippines development goals, the government hopes to parlay this area of expertise into higher value-added services, emphasizing innovation, research and development, and the establishment of a knowledge-driven economy. The government also aims to expand its industry and manufacturing sector by leveraging the Philippines innovative capabilities in order to produce more highly value-added products than regional rivals skilled in mass producing cheap exports.

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Outlook

The Philippines economy appears well-positioned for another year of steady growth in 2017 despite significant global political and economic uncertainty. However, the Philippines itself may contribute to this uncertainty under the unpredictable leadership of Duterte and his controversial anti-drug campaign and bold pivot to China. That being said, increased investment from China would help mitigate any losses that may be incurred as a result of new US president Donald Trumps protectionist tendencies, and Duterte has been building upon his predecessors macroeconomic reforms.

There is also potential for a rapprochement between the Philippines and the US, as there appears to be more goodwill between Duterte and Trump than there was between Duterte and Obama. Despite the focus on China and the US in the Philippines political and economic relationships, Japan is consistently the biggest provider of FDI into the Philippines  providing 28 percent of the total in 2015  and Duterte paid a state visit to the country in late 2016, securing more investments in the process. While the Philippines has traditionally lagged behind its Southeast Asian neighbors in attracting FDI, it is making steady progress to close the gap, and its economy as a whole looks quietly set for another year of potent growth.



About Us Asia Briefing Ltd. is a subsidiary of Dezan Shira & Associates. Dezan Shira is a specialist foreign direct investment practice, providing corporate establishment, business advisory, tax advisory and compliance, accounting, payroll, due diligence and financial review services to multinationals investing in China, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Singapore and the rest of ASEAN. For further information, please email asean@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. 

Human Resources in ASEAN

In this issue of ASEAN Briefing, we discuss the prevailing structure of ASEANs labor markets and outline key considerations regarding wages and compliance at all levels of the value chain. We highlight comparative sentiment on labor markets within the region, showcase differences in cost and compliance between markets, and provide insight on the state of statutory social insurance obligations throughout the bloc.

Managing ASEAN Expansion from Singapore

In this issue of ASEAN Briefing Magazine, we look at the benefits of using Singapore a hub for the management of regional operations throughout ASEAN. We firstly focus on the position of Singapore relative to its competitors, such as the Netherlands and Hong Kong. We then provide step-by-step instructions on corporate establishment, and provide expert insight on maximizing returns through the reduction respective tax burdens.

The 2016/17 ASEAN Tax Comparator

In this issue of ASEAN Briefing, we examine regional taxation in ASEAN through a comparison of corporate, indirect, and withholdings taxation. We further present an overview of the compliance environments found across the region and analyze ASEANs tax environment in the context of the time and documentation required in each country.
Tata is also likely to showcase a sportier version of a currently offered car.

As the media invite suggests, Tata Motors is going to introduce a new sub-brand called TaMo. The details for the same are quite scarce. However, the new brand will be unveiled today at a press conference in Mumbai. Tata is also likely to showcase a sportier version of a currently offered car.

Products under the TaMo brand are expected to be based on entirely new platforms and offer better performance and sportier handling than we have seen on any Tata product before. That said we also expect sportier versions of current products like the Tiago and Bolt in the near future too. According to reports, TaMos first car is being developed in partnership with Tata Motors European Technical Centre or TMETC in Coventry, UK and the Tata Engineering Research Centre (ERC) in Pune.

It is expected however that the car will be showcased at this years Geneva Motor show as a concept rather than a production ready version. Traditionally, the Geneva Motor Show has always been a place where Tata Motors has showcased new products and it wouldnt be surprising if the brand uses the opportunity to debut the new sub brand. Goes without saying this would be a giant leap forward for Tata Motors, a brand that had been ailing for a while, primarily due a lack of new and exciting products in its line-up. The Bolt, Zest and Tiago have sure done their bit in helping the brand come up in the recent past, and if the initial response to the new Hexa crossover is anything to go by, we can only expect Tata Motors to revive its fortunes.

Its obvious Tata Motors is keen on catching the attention of younger buyers with their newer products and the new design philosophy, and the introduction of a performance brand seems perfectly in line with that thought process. Several years ago, J Anand, a well-known name in Indian motorsport and the man responsible for making some of the best race cars in the country had made a performance version of the Indica. More recently, Anand had made a 230PS version of the Tata Nano, powered by the 1.3-litre, inline four cylinder engine from the Suzuki Hayabusa. These were one-offs but clearly hinted at the brands sportier intent. A sub performance brand should certainly help Tata Motors get into the fast lane in the minds of enthusiasts then.

Source: Zigwheels.com
Pirojsha, who joined GPL in 2004, has been the managing director and CEO since 2012.

Mumbai: Godrej Group on Thursday elevated Pirojsha Godrej, the son of group chairman Adi, as the executive chairman of the realty arm as the senior Godrej decided to step down from the post.

Adi Godrej, who will turn 75 in April, will continue as chairman emeritus at Godrej Properties, which earlier in the day reported a two-fold jump in net profit at Rs 77.25 crore, the company said.

Yesterday, the 36-year-old Pirojsha was also nominated as a director on the board of Godrej Consumer Products, the flagship company of the group, which is engaged in the FMCG market. Pirojsha, who joined GPL in 2004, has been the managing director and CEO since 2012.

Mohit Malhotra, currently the executive director, will now replace Pirojsha and assume the charge of managing director and CEO at Godrej Properties.

Mr Malhotra, who joined Godrej Properties in 2010, and headed business development and has since taken on larger leadership responsibilities that currently include heading GPLs operations. He was appointed to GPLs board as an executive director in 2015.

Meanwhile, the company reported an over two-fold per cent jump in consolidated net profit at Rs 77.25 crore for the December quarter against Rs 27.06 crore in the year-ago period. Its income from operations also rose two-fold to Rs 518.25 crore during the Q3 from Rs 247.24 crore in the same period a year ago, it said.

Commenting on these developments, Adi Godrej said, Pirojsha, Mohit and the GPL team have delivered tremendous results in a difficult market environment and I'm sure will lead the company to new heights.
The much-loved on screen pair was not seen in any film after link-up rumours between the two surfaced.

Mumbai: Like every year, Akshay Kumar is set to feature in four films this year, with the first one 'Jolly LLB 2' set to release on February 10.

The superstar is on a promotion spree for the venture and is making a lot of television appearances for the same. In one of the talk shows, Aap Ki Adalat, the actor tackled many tricky questions with equally witty answers.

But the most apt response came when the host inquired about his alleged fallout with superstar Priyanka Chopra who he has worked with in five blockbusters and triggered some linkup rumours in the early 2000s.

He said, There is nothing like that. I have worked on five films with Priyanka. It's not like I don't want to work with her. Except for Rani Mukerji, I have worked with every heroine. If there is an opportunity, I will surely work with Priyanka Chopra.

Akshay also rubbished rumours of him parting ways with producer Ekta Kapoor and choreographer Farah Khan saying, Let us call Priyanka Chopra, Ekta Kapoor and Farah Khan and check if they have any issue with me. That way you will know for sure.

Now thats what you call a perfect way to dodge tricky questions!
The Stanley Tong directorial stars Jackie Chan, Sonu Sood, Disha Patani and Amyra Dastur in the lead roles.

Rating:

Director: Stanley Tong

Cast: Jackie Chan, Sonu Sood, Disha Patani and Amyra Dastur

Expectations are generally higher when our Bollywood stars collaborate with international stars and when its Jackie Chan, you expect the unexpected. But Kung Fu Yoga is no where close to what you expect from a much anticipated cross-border project.

Chan (Jackie Chan) is a famous archaeologist in China who teams up with Indian professor Dr. Ashmita (Disha Patani) and her teaching assistant Kyra (Amyra Dastur) to locate India's lost Bhima treasure in Tibet. Things change upside down when a badass villain, Sonu Sood, tries to acquire the treasure with his bunch of silly goons. Chan, Ashmita and Kyra escape from there and reach Rajasthan to unravel the Magadha treasure and what happens next is what 'Kung Fu Yoga' is all about.

Director Stanley Tong certainly thinks that Indian audience has no brains. Keeping Bollywood sensibilities in mind and signing Indian actors, this film probably indicates that according to international directors, Bollywood stands really low in terms of content and 'Kung Fu Yoga' is one such example. It is a pot-boiler which has no head or tail. It is horribly written and executed. There is so much to play with such a fascinating subject. The film has no thrill from beginning to end. The reviewer wonders why the film is called 'Kung Fu Yoga'. Jackie does Kung Fu in film but Yoga is no where in the entire film except for the one scene where Disha helps other actors to run away from the arrest of Sonu Sood.

Brain dead action sequences and impractical humour make the film look even more awful. The scenes where Jackie Chan does Kung Fu to scare a bunch of wolfs is silly. Chans car-chasing sequence with a giant lion in his car seated behind is annoying. The scene where Chan and Disha are chased by a VFX-generated orange snake while hanging on the roots just spoils the film. The only scene which looks real is when Amyra escapes from the cage surrounded by aggressive Jackals. The biggest hiccup of the film is that there are no subtitles while the film is in Chinese and English.

Over to the actors, this is probably the worst of Jackie Chan movies. Looks like, he took Bollywood too seriously! He is cute while dancing but nothing will get in your head because he is talking and singing in Chinese. Though the film got the biggest opening ever in his homeland China, it lacks logic in every aspect. He will surely impress the kids, must say. Disha Patani and Amyra Dastur look just pretty and the two have nothing much to act. Sonu Sood has played the villain several times before in our Hindi films but you will see him in an English-speaking villain's avatar for the first time and it is a total disgrace to the language. He is unpleasant to the core in his act. His sudden transformation from a villain to a good guy is laughable.

'Kung Fu Yoga' is definitely a waste of time but can recommend to kids over the weekend. Dont expect logic even for a second, or else you will come out scratching your head.

PS: Dont mess with womens hair.
Jackie Chan is great. Not just as the bumbling, fighting professor, but also as the Bollywood hip-shaking hero.

Rating:

Cast: Jackie Chan, Sonu Sood, Amyra Dastur, Aarif Rahman

Director: Stanley Tong

Unlike how it was in our days, aaj kal just kung fu is not enough. It is treated like a sad, lone salwar in need of a matching kurta.

So filmmakers feel the need to accessorise it  with pandas, hustle, fury and, now, yoga  to make it more, I guess, palatable and fun.

I shouldnt say that tastes are getting worse, at least of B-grade chop-slash-kick-haiiya filmmakers and audiences, but they are.

Kung fu has lost its cool quotient. When it was austere, it had gravitas. Now that it is all animated and glamorous, it is silly and comical.

What we get now mostly is kung fu with life drained out of it, as if after destroying Bollywood dancing, Shiamak Davar has taken it upon himself to ruin kung fu by choreographing it in six-step routines.

If you are of my vintage, then you have grown up on films that were pure kung fu. Of course, those were kung fus heydays because we had in our midst Bruce Lee.

We all religiously trekked to the local video shop owner bhaiyya to rent and then bow to Lees chutzpah and superfast superpowers.

We grew up, and sometimes still live on Enter The Dragon, Fist of Fury, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Thats before the time of the silly, bumbling god of kung fu, Jackie Chan. Once we discovered him, it was, every other weekend, Drunken Master, Snake in the Eagles Shadow and whatever else we could find.

Compared to those films, kung fu films now are apologies. The action is all video-game like, and if chopped heads are not spouting blood, then someone is doing something stupid to make us laugh.

Kung Fu Yoga is that sort of film. Its not bloody, because its aimed only at 12 year olds and younger. Its just desperate that we laugh. That, for me, is very sad.

Jackie Chan is old, sure. He is slower, and the chops dont fly. But he has that magical thing few have  he can transform into a Miyagi-like kung fu master which we witnessed in the new Karate Kid. I wish there was bit of that magic here too.

We land in an animated world where Indian haathis are running about tossing people. Some sort of war is going on and it involves the ancient Tang Dynasty and Magadha, not necessarily on the opposite side.

One key person then was Geetanjali Maharani, a strange radio newsreader voiceover tells us. And there is talk of some very precious khazana.

Apparently, India and China were friends then, and India and China are friends now, Chacha Nehru notwithstanding.

So cut to present-day China where anthropologist-professor-genius Jack (Jackie Chan) is pioneering some colour restoration technique to bring out the true nature of the Terracotta Army.

His fame and fabulous talent have drawn one Asmita (Disha Patani) to him and thus beings the gathering together of a lot of people who talk about some lost treasure, finding it by going on a mission to some frozen parts of the world where the Twin Dragon River runs cold and deep. Pause now for Asmita and her yoga gyaan.

She says  and you must listen carefully to this  that humans are actually like fish. Because, you see, in mymmyjis tummy we all float and breathe and live for nine months, we can all breathe and live in water when we grow up. And yoga, she adds, teaches us how to.

All the time wearing a smug expressions. Apparently, like stone beats scissors, yoga beats kung fu. Asmita, of course, forgets to finish off her gyaan with, a salute and Jai Hind!

In all, yoga, kung fu and lots of mumbo jumbo make up an idiot premise thatll do for a film like this. I just wish they had all talked less and kicked each other more.

Kicking begins only when evil man Randall (Sonu Sood) enters the scene to steal the diamond key to find the real khazana.

I have never heard of any Rajput called Randall, but there he is, riding a horse, weaing ugly velvet kackets, unleasing evil men and forces on the good people after the khazana.

The keys he is after keep going from one person to the other and this, luckily for us, results in funny and rather entertaining fight sequences. The one with the hyenas is better than the one in the icy gufa.

But the chase with the pukey lion in the backseat and the hanging in the ancient, underground ruins with the swaying orange cobra are both great fun.

If you can tolerate or, well, sleep through about 80 minutes of Kung Fu Yogas idiot talk, you will come to an Indiana Jones-goes-bonkers type of climax. And then the kung fu master and his minions will break into the cutest Bollywood-dance. If you are going to pay to watch this film, I beseech you to stay on for the last song. Itll send you off smiling.

Jackie Chan is great. Not just as the bumbling, fighting professor, but also as the Bollywood hip-shaking hero.

Sonu Sood seemed as misplaced and wasted as the Indian beauties in their dupatta-less ghaghra-cholis.
The ED also urged the apex court to not release the properties attached in the case.

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday moved the Supreme Court against the special court's order on Aircel-Maxis case which discharged Maran brothers and other accused without furnishing the bail bond properly.

The ED also urged the apex court to not release the properties attached in the case.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar and comprising Justice N. V. Ramanna and D. Y. Chandrachud said they would hear the matter at 2 pm on Friday.

The Pataiala House Court on Thursday discharged former communications minister Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran after it found insufficient evidence to prosecute them.

Maran brothers were accused by investigating agencies of helping Malaysian group Maxis to acquire Aircel in exchange for a kickback of approximately Rs. 700 crores.

The court also discharged Kalanithi's wife Kavery Kalanithi, South Asia FM Ltd (SAFL) Managing Director K. Shanmugam and two companies -- SAFL and Sun Direct TV Pvt Ltd (SDTPL) in two different cases.

The CBI Court on December 19 last year deferred pronouncing its orders against the Maran brothers and others to December 22.

A special 2G court had earlier on September 17 last year dismissed the applications filed by the ex-telecom minister and his brother, challenging its jurisdiction to try the Aircel-Maxis deal case in which they have been summoned as accused.

Pronouncing the order, the court had then said, "There is no manner of doubt that by the standard of subject matter and periodicity of alleged crime, the case fairly/squarely falls within the description/ designation of the 2G scam."

The Maran brothers challenged the jurisdiction of the special 2G court in both cases lodged by the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI.

The Enforcement Directorate alleged that two firms, South Asia FM Limited (SAFL) and Sun Direct TV Private Ltd. (SDTPL), had received Rs. 742.58 crore as "proceeds of crime" from Mauritius-based firms and that the two firms were then allegedly controlled by Kalanithi Maran.
A proposed bill that would allow North Dakota cities and the governor to place a moratorium on refugee resettlement while data is collected drew several hours of public testimony, mainly in opposition. The bill generated so much discussion that now the topic will be turned into a legislative study during the 2017-18 interim.

House Bill 1427 was presented Friday at the House Government and Veterans Affairs committee meeting, where it drew a crowd of more than 150 people at the state Capitol.

The bill would allow local and state governments to halt refugee resettlement in areas that don't have the resources to handle refugees. It also would gather data on refugees and allow local and state governments to have more input on refugee resettlement.

"The purpose of my bill ... is not to ban refugee resettlement. The purpose of the bill is to put into (North Dakota Century Code) that state and local governments be consulted as per federal law, which already requires this. And thats not happening," Rep. Chris Olson, R-West Fargo, primary sponsor of the bill.

The bill's hearing lasted four hours Friday morning, and continued that afternoon after the House floor session adjourned. At the second half of the hearing, the bill was amended into a legislative study of refugee resettlement in the state.

According to the bill, the moratorium must not exceed one year. Olson said the moratorium ability would give local and state governments "more teeth in the negotiating process," allowing governing bodies to be consulted in the refugee resettlement process and to determine their own capacities.

The bill's hearing drew opposition from several refugees and representatives from the North Dakota Catholic Conference and the American Civil Liberties Union. Those who oppose the bill said it could prevent other refugees fleeing persecution from entering the state and paint the wrong picture that refugees are a burden to their communities. Some said the bill was discriminatory by singling out refugees.

The big elephant in the room is whats making this public sentiment very negative toward refugees? We cant ignore that. Its not about money, I think, its about fear, said Zahra Mohamed, who came to the United States in 2005 from Somalia.

Mohamed, who lives in Bismarck with her husband and four kids, graduated from the University of Mary in 2015.

"This country has given me opportunities that my own country wont give me," she said.

The state's refugee resettlement agency is Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, which operates three U.S. State Department-approved sites in Fargo- West Fargo, Grand Forks and Bismarck. Last year, LSSND helped to resettle 558 people and 236 families  38 percent of whom were children and 85 percent were reuniting with families.

According to LSSND, 70 percent of the resettlement in the state occurs in the Fargo and West Fargo area, about 20 percent in Grand Forks and 10 percent in Bismarck.

Jessica Thomasson, CEO of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, told the committee that the agency opposed the bill primarily because of the idea of a community's "absorptive capacity" as well as potential untended effects of the bill.

"Im not questioning the intent of the bill, but, if we are to make the assumption that somehow a refugee, just because of their status as a refugee, creates a different set of costs in the broad way thats described in this bill, that does seem to me to be crossing a line," Thomasson told the committee.

If enacted, the bill could make it difficult in the future for refugees to reunite with their families, which Hukun Abdullahi, a Somalian refugee, said was his "biggest fear."

Abdullahi came to the Fargo-Moorhead area three years ago from Kenya and met his mom after 15 years of separation. His mother came to the U.S. as a refugee.

Abdullahi said he goes to college, works and runs a nonprofit. His two youngest brothers, ages 9 and 11, are still back in Africa and are going through extensive vetting processes.

My biggest fear is  if this bill passes, I may never have my other brothers join their mother, because, who knows, we may have a state moratorium in place by the time they are approved to come over," Abdullahi said at the hearing.

Those in support of the bill included representatives from local municipalities, who told the committee they want to be more involved in the process of refugee resettlement in the state.

We have no involvement, the city commission. We have no partnership, Fargo City Commissioner Dave Piepkorn told the committee. "To me, thats alarming.

Chad Peterson, chairman of Cass County Commission, echoed Piepkorn's comment.

Theres no one I work with, no one I serve with, that wants to see this program end, Peterson said. "All we want to do is figure out whats going on, become better partners with (Lutheran Social Services) .... We want to be involved. We want to be heard.

Thomasson said LSSND strives for "transparency and regular discussion with local stakeholders on strategies for working with refugees. The agency also holds quarterly meetings and has strong cooperative relationships" with schools, law enforcement and local and state governments.

Kathy Hogan, D-Fargo, testified against HB1427.

I think how we accept and move with refugees is really a reflection of who we are as a state. Are we truly an open community where strangers are welcomed and honored?" she said.
The local people in Kairana vehemently deny that it is only the Hindus who have left the town.

Kairana: The BJP manifesto includes migration of Hindu families in Western UP as a major issue but in Kairana, a township in Shamli district, but the issue is nowhere to be found.

There has been no migration on communal lines from here. There are thousands of people who work in Panipat and Karnal and commute on a daily basis. Some families have even shifted to these places but that is because they work there and not due to any other reason, said Rajvir Malik ,a well- to-do farmer whose three sons are working in Karnal and two of them have shifted with their families.

Sanjeev Tyagi, a railway employee, said that the real issue in Kairana and adjoining districts was unemployment which had not been addressed by any political party. There are no job opportunities for the youth who are forced to move to bigger cities or other states for livelihood. Instead of giving the issue a communal colour, these parties should try and set up industries here so that migration level comes down.

The local people in Kairana vehemently deny that it is only the Hindus who have left the town. I know of more Muslim families who have migrated than the Hindu families. When this issue was raised, some people deliberately did mischief and wrote on some house that it was up for sale, said Suresh Tyagi, a businessman.

Citing an instance, he said that his cousin had gone to Mumbai to make arrangement for his daughters wedding when this issue was raised.

Someone wrote his phone number on his locked house and also that it was up for sale, Suddenly, all TV channels started showing this and my cousin was flooded with inquiries. He called me up from Mumbai wanting to know what had happened, he said.

Political parties, however, are out to derive mileage form the issue that is basically non-existent.

BJP MP Hukum Singh who claimed in June that 346 Hindu families had migrated from Kairana after being harassed by the local Muslims, is now campaigning for his daughter Mriganka Singh who is the local BJP candidate.

People may or may not admit but the fact is that since Hindus are a minority here, they live under the shadow of fear. The BJP has promised to set things right and we are trying to convince everyone that there will be no reason to be afraid if the BJP comes to power, Mriganka Singh said.

Nahid Hasan, the Samajwadi candidate is the son of former MP Munawwar Hasan , and he insists that Muslims are being unnecessarily maligned.

Apparently, the main contest in Kairana is between the progeny of two powerful political familiesHukum Singh and Munawwar Hasanand there is no denying the fact that voters will be polarized on religious by the time it is to poll their votes.
He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead.

New Delhi: An eight-year-old boy was crushed to death allegedly by a tempo in southwest Delhi on Friday, police said.

Ankush Kumar, a student of class Ist at MBD school, was hit by an Eicher tempo at around 9.15 PM, they said.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital where he was declared dead.

The driver has not been arrested yet. A case has been registered against him.
During investigation the police found out that Akansha had met Udayan through a social media website.

Bhopal: In a grisly incident, a man has been arrested here for allegedly murdering his live-in partner and virtually entombing the body under a marble platform at his residence here.

The body of the woman, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was exhumed in the wee hours today and it took police six hours to recover it, they said.

The accused Udyan Das (32) strangulated the woman to death, stuffed the body in an iron box and then constructed a marble platform over it to hide the crime. "West Bengal police have arrested Udyan Das (32) here on charges of murdering his live-in partner Akanksha (28) alias Shweta Sharma. The accused admitted to killing her in December last year and then burying the body under a marble platform on the first floor of his house," Govindpura City Superintendent of Police Virendra Mishra said today.

"We exhumed the body from under the platform at around 4 AM with the help of drilling machines. It has been sent for postmortem and further interrogation is underway," he said.

The incident came to fore yesterday when West Bengal police arrived in the state capital in search of Akanksha following a complaint lodged by her father Shivendra Sharma after the family lost touch with her.

According to police, Udyan had befriended the victim on a social media site. The accused told police that he killed Akanksha in a fit of rage by strangulating her in the last week of December 2016, after they had a dispute over an issue.

Das further told the police that after strangulating Akanksha, he packed her body in an iron box and then buried it under the platform, police informed. "The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform," he said.

According to police, the accused has been changing his statements on various aspects, including his relationship status with the victim. "Das initially said that he had married Akanksha at the local BHEL Kalibadi temple. Later, he said that he married her in New York. But it was found that he never visited New York. So, we are still in the process of ascertaining the details given by him," an officer at Govindpura police station said.

According to police, the accused claimed that he had first met Akanksha in 2007 and remained in contact with her on a social networking site. He later changed his version, stating that the victim came to live with him in Bhopal after they became friends on Facebook last year, the officer said, adding that Udyan had a lavish lifestyle and used to travel in costly cars. "We have been verifying details. He would be produced in a court today," the police officer said.

Police also said Akanksha's family had lodged a complaint with West Bengal Police in Bankura after they lost touch with her.

Akanksha's father claimed that his daughter had left home in June 2016 seeking job. She was in touch with her parents over phone, but it stopped in December last year and since then remained in contact only through text messages. She told her parents in a message that she was working in the US.

Suspecting her activities, the family traced the phone number through which she used to text and found that the number was registered on an address in Saket Nagar here. Later, they lodged a complaint with Bankura police on January 5.

The West Bengal police kept an eye on Udyan's phone records and detained him after reaching Bhopal yesterday. He then spilled the beans during interrogation.

Police said that based on Udyan's admission, they started digging the marble platform at his house and recovered the body this morning.
Katiyar also among star campaigners; Shah padyatra in Meerut today.

New Delhi: With the going getting tough, the BJP has summoned all its strength for the coming Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. All three key leaders whose names were missing from its first list of star campaigners  Varun Gandhi, Vinay Katiyar and Murli Manohar Joshi  for the first and second phase of polling, have been included in the second list of campaigners for the third and fourth phases submitted to the Election Commission.

BJP president Amit Shah will embark on a two-hour-long padyatra in Meerut on Friday, and this will be followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modis rally on Saturday.

Mr Shahs maiden padyatra in the region, comes as the party looks to do well in communally-sensitive western UP and its neighbouring areas, whose 140 Assembly seats will vote on February 11 and 15.

However, veteran leader Lal Krishna Advanis name is missing from the second list of star campaigners too.

Mr Gandhi represents Sultanpur parliamentary constituency, Dr Joshi is Kanpurs MP and Mr Katiyar, who had played a prominent role in the Ram Mandir agitation, is a Rajya Sabha MP. Comedian Raju Shrivastava is also among the 40 star campaigners for the third and fourth phases of polling.

A senior BJP leader said the three names had not been omitted earlier as the Kanpur region will go to the polls in the third phase and Sultanpur in the fifth phase. Faizabad, where Ayodhya is located, will also go to the polls in the fifth phase. The state will witness seven-phased polling  on February 11, 15, 19, 23, 27, March 4 and 8.

Mr Modis name tops the campaign list, followed by Mr Shah and Union ministers Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari and Arun Jaitley.

Other star campaigners in the second list are Union ministers Uma Bharti, Smriti Irani and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi. Actor-politician and Mathura MP Hema Malini and two party chief ministers  Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Vasundhara Raje  will also be campaigning. Mr Gandhis mother, Union minister Maneka Gandhi, whose name figured in the first list of star campaigners, is not in the second list.
Ads in print media have to be cleared by poll panel.

The Election Commission issued the directions in exercise of its powers under Article 324 of the Constitution.

New Delhi: With less than 48 hours to go for polling in Goa and Punjab, the Election Commission on Thursday asked political parties and candidates to get all advertisements, which they wish to get published in the print media, pre-certified from the poll body.

In a directive to the presidents of all political parties as well as candidates contesting in the two states, the Election Commission said that many advertisements of offending and misleading nature have been brought to the notice of the commission in the past, published in print media.

Such advertisements in the last stage of the election vitiates the election. The affected candidates and parties will not have any opportunity of providing clarification or rebuttal in such cases.

The directive further said that it was in order to ensure that no such instance is repeated, and no untoward incident takes place because of any inflammatory, misleading or hate advertisements, and that the commission directs that no political party or candidate or any other organisation or person shall publish any advertisement in the print media on February 3 and 4 unless the contents of the advertisement are pre-certified by Media Certification and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) at state or district levels.

The commission issued the directions in exercise of its powers under Article 324 of the Constitution.

The EC also asked the MCMC committees to be immediately activated and alerted in order to examine and pre-certify all such advertisements received from political parties and candidates and others.

It should also be ensured that the decision by MCMC in such cases is made expeditiously, the commission said.

The EC also directed that the state election commissions bring the clause of compulsory pre-certification to the notice of presidents of all political parties, contesting candidates and newspapers in the state of Goa and Pubjab. Both Punjab and Goa will have single phase election on February 4.
A number of royals have thrown their hat in the ring in the high-voltage Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

MLA Nawab Kazim Ali of Nawab family is once again in the fray to ensure his fifth consecutive victory from Swar seat, where he is being challenged by Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan's son Abdullah Azam, a debutant. (Photo: Video grab)

Lucknow: They might have lost their kingdom, but the urge to rule still seems to dog them, as a number of royals have thrown their hat in the ring in the high-voltage Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.

In Rampur, sitting MLA Nawab Kazim Ali of Nawab family is once again in the fray to ensure his fifth consecutive victory from Swar seat, where he is being challenged by Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan's son Abdullah Azam, a debutant.

This time Ali is contesting from a different party, BSP.

The majestic Noor Mahal, where he resides, used to be the centre of activity for Congress in the days gone by.

Ali's father Nawab Julfikar Ali Khan and mother Noor Bano have represented Rampur in Lok Sabha.

In Agra, Bhadawar dynasty's Rani Pakshalika Singh, who lost 2012 polls from Khariagarh seat on SP ticket, is again contesting from the same seat on BJP ticket.

Her father-in-law Mahendra Ripu Daman Singh has represented Bah Assembly constituency four times while son and Pakchhalik's husband Raja Mahendra Aridaman Singh is the sitting MLA. Aridaman, who was a minister in Akhilesh Yadav cabinet but was later sacked, joined BJP recently.

Pratapgarh's Kunda constituency always remains in news due to Raghuraraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiya of Bhadri dynasty.

He is again in fray from the same seat as an independent candidate and is looking forward to a double hat-trick of his victory as an Independent.

Raja Bhaiya has been a minister in the governments of Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta, Rajnath Singh and Mulayam Singh Yadav in the past. He is now in Akhilesh Yadav cabinet.

Former MLA, Bargadikot dynasty's Kunwar Ajay Pratap Singh alias Lalla Bhaiya is in fray from Colonelganj seat of Gonda on BJP ticket.

Singh has been a five-time MLA. His sister Kunwari Brij Singh had contested 2012 polls on BSP ticket from the same seat but could not win.

Another royal Mayankeshwar Sharan Singh is in fray from Raebareli's Tiloi seat on BJP ticket. He has been an MLA thrice but lost previous polls on SP ticket.

In Allahabad, Baraon dynasty's Ujjwal Raman Singh is contesting on SP ticket from Karchhana seat. His father Reoti Raman Singh is a senior SP leader and sitting Rajya Sabha member.

Reoti won the seat six times and after winning Lok Sabha polls in 2004, he left the seat for his son, who also won the elections but he could not taste success in past two Assembly polls in 2007 and 2012 respectively.

In eastern UP, Kunwar Shivendra Singh of Siswan dynasty is contesting on SP ticket from Siswan seat of Maharajganj district.

Amethi is also going to witness 'rani versus rani' battle with Congress MP Sanjay Singh's wife Amita Singh likely to take on his first wife Garima Singh, who is contesting on BJP ticket.

BJP has fielded Garima, ostensibly to reap sympathy for her and redeem her name and position in the royal family.

Samajwadi Party, which got a seat under a sharing arrangement with Congress, gave ticket to sitting MLA and controversial leader Gayatri Prajapati in the Congress

bastion, leaving Amita in the lurch.

Amita, however, is in no mood to relent and has let it known to her party leadership that she has worked hard for so long and will not quit the fray.

"Amethi is my family and my home and I cannot leave it... I will contest from here," she said, adding that she had been working hard among the electorate since long and was on a very strong footing.

Amita has minced no words in condemning BJP for fielding Garima (60), who will be making her first political venture in the Assembly polls.

Garima was in news when she returned to the family's Bhupati Bhawan palace in Amethi in July, 2014 along with her son Anant Vikram and daughters Mahima and Shaivya, and camped in one portion of the palace for days.

She had also got involved in a bitter battle for control over the family fortunes against Sanjay and his second wife Amita.

Garima happens to be the niece of former Prime Minister VP Singh and is a descendant of the royal family of Daiya and enjoys fair amount of support among locals despite her prolonged absence.
Shah said that the two princes of Congress and Samajwadi Party wanted to destroy the fabric of UP and the country.

Lucknow: BJP president Amit Shah on Friday stalled his padyatra in Meerut in reverence to a trader who was shot dead by dacoits and four other traders were injured on Thursday night. Later Mr Shah visited the house of the deceased and offered his condolences.

The BJP president cited the incident as an example of the deteriorating law and order situation in the state and asked traders to vote out the Akhilesh government for their own safety and security.

He said that the two princes of Congress and Samajwadi Party wanted to destroy the fabric of UP and the country. The BJP chiefs padyatra was scheduled to move through the Sharda Road before reaching out to the traders community in Kabari Bazaar, Sarrafa, Valley Bazaar and other adjoining markets.

BJP city president Karunesh Nanndan Garg said that in the wake of unfortunate incident, Mr Shah decided to stall the padyatra and visit the deceased house instead. Traders are considered to be the traditional voters of the BJP but have been unhappy due to the demonetisation that affected their trade. Meerut is in the crucial and communally sensitive region of western Uttar Pradesh where the party had fared well in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Meanwhile, according to reports, Sushil Verma, a distributor of a famous gutka brand, was finalising the account of days sale along with his son Abhishek at his office on Sharda Road on Thursday night. His agent Rohit also came there to deposit some money from sale when three dacoits allegedly followed him and entered the office while two others kept guard outside the office. They looted cash worth Rs 3 lakh and jewellery after taking them on gunpoint and downed the shutter before fleeing. The trapped traders somehow lifted the shutter and chased criminals and caught one of them.

One of the dacoits opened fire and the bullet hit Abhishek, 21, on his chest and Mr Verma also sustained injury on his hand while two other shopkeepers Umesh and Akhil, who dared to chase the criminals, also received injuries.
Polling a week away, but ticket bickering continues.

Lucknow: There is bonhomie at the top but total confusion on the ground. Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi may have struck a warm rapport, and they may be united in their attacks on the BJP from atop their roadshow truck, but the cadres of their parties are jostling for space, trying to outdo each other.

Mr Gandhi and Mr Yadav, who held a 12-km roadshow in Agra on Friday, waving and addressing a massive, cheering crowd throughout, have not yet resolved the issue of ticket distribution.

Worse, several Samajwadi Party candidates are contesting on Congress symbol, a confusing situation thats apparently part of Prashant Kishores political strategy.

Though it has been formally announced that the SP would contest 298 seats and the Congress would get the rest 105, the SP has already released its list of 336 candidates, while the Congress has named just 68 candidates. And the process of changing candidates in both parties has become a continuous process, causing considerable confusion among cadres. Reports on Thursday claimed that the SP had consented to leave eight of the 10 Assembly seats in Rae Bareli and Amethi parliamentary constituencies for the Congress, keeping only Amethi and Unchahar for itself.

The Congress, later in the night, released its list keeping Rae Bareli, Harchandpur, Sareni Jagdishpur and Tiloi for itself. Uttar Pradesh goes to the polls in seven phases starting February 11, but the two parties have till date failed to resolve the issue of ticket distribution.

Congress sources said that candidates on the remaining seats (Salon, Gauriganj and Bachhrawan) would be announced soon. Overlapping is, in fact, taking place in several other seats, including Bhognipur in Kanpur Dehat where both parties have fielded candidates.

A similar situation prevails in at least a dozen seats, including five in Kanpur and Barabanki districts. On some seats, SP candidates are waiting to use the Congress symbol. Anurag Bhadauria, an Akhilesh loyalist, has filed his nomination form Lucknow East on a Congress symbol.

This is unheard of in political history, and is setting a very bad precedence. How can one party give its symbol for candidates of another party? If SP candidates, who are contesting on Congress symbol, walk out of the party after polls, who will be responsible? asked a former UP Congress president.

Congress sources blame political strategist Prashant Kishore for the mess. This is Prashant Kishores idea that wherever the Congress does not have strong candidates, it can make SP leaders contest on its symbol. This trend, if not checked immediately, will finish off the party, said a veteran party leader.

How much this impacts the party will be apparent on March 11. For now, Mr Gandhi and Mr Yadav seem happy with the massive turnout for their road shows.

Agra was apparently chosen for Fridays roadshow to target the BJP and the BSP. The BJP holds the Agra parliamentary seat, while the BSP holds six assembly seats in the constituency.

Addressing a gathering at the culmination of the roadshow, Mr Yadav slammed the Modi government for failing to keep its promise of achche din.

Mr Gandhi also criticised the demonetisation decision, and said that if the SP-Congress alliance came to power, it would work for the poor and the farmers, and change the face of Uttar Pradesh in five years.
Unlike popular belief most couples prefer having sex in the day

The study says that the best of the day to have sex is actually in the morning. (Photo: Pixabay)

Couples usually have sex in the night and that is a known fact but some also do have sex at other times of the day. A surprising new study breaks all our notions regarding the best time people have sex and it is definitely not in the night.

According to a report in the Independent, a new study says that the best time to have sex is actually 9 am on a Sunday. Most British people spend their weekends in bed but the mornings is their most favourite time to have sex other than the nights and other weekdays. Sex on the weekends tends to be a lot more than the weekdays with the most common time of the day being 11:30 am Saturday, 10:30 pm and 11:30 pm are other most popular times that people have sex.

The study highlighted that since people are in high spirits on the weekend it is an obvious time to indulge in some good time for sex. However, if it becomes a routine it could get boring and become more of a task than passionate sex among two individuals.
Rasila Raju OP, 23, from Kerala, was found murdered by security guard in the conference room on the 9th floor of the Infosys building.

Pune: In the wake of murder of a woman employee at the premises of Infosys here, the IT giant today said it is carrying out a complete review of security procedures by an expert third party consultant.

"At Infosys, we have always been focused and committed to the safety of our employees. The unfortunate incident on January 29, however, is a reminder that nothing can be taken for granted and no security measure is fool proof," the company said in a statement issued here.

Rasila Raju OP, 23, from Keralas Kozhikode, was found dead in a conference room on the 9th floor of the Infosys building at Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park in Hinjewadi on Sunday evening. A security guard was later arrested in connection with the murder.

"We are therefore taking some additional steps with immediate effect to further strengthen the security at our all campuses to ensure a safer working environment for all our employees," it said.

The statement, citing security measures being undertaken, stated that rosters are being re-looked, especially where single team members are required and also trying to ensure that no employee works alone on a shift.

"In unavoidable situations, we are looking at additional security (including female security guards) being deployed, as well as increasing the frequency of floor walks by security personnel," it said.

The company further said they are immediately carrying out a complete review of security procedures at the campuses by an expert third party consultant. "We are also collaborating with local police across our development centres and seeking their advice on additional security measures that we can implement," the statement read.

"In addition, we have already invited all our employees to share any recommendation that can help us improve the safety of their work environments and have received several suggestion that are being reviewed by our security teams," it said.

The firm said that they undertake periodic mail communication to all employees on safety and have several programmes aimed to help employees by providing personal safety tips and self-defence programme/sessions and have increased deployment of panic buttons across buildings as well as rapid response teams to take immediate action.

Infosys said it is providing police all the support required in the investigation into the alleged murder case and also applauded the police for prompt action in apprehending the accused.

The security guard Bhabhen Saikia (27) was arrested from CST station in Mumbai. In the past, he was reprimanded by Rasila for staring at her.
Native Americans and members of other minority groups urged North Dakota legislators Thursday to require cultural competency training for all lawmakers.

Senate Bill 2337 would require at least four hours of training to aid legislators in working with diverse populations in the state, including Native Americans.

One of the bill sponsors is Sen. Richard Marcellais, D-Belcourt, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, who said the proposal aims to improve communications and relations with the states five tribal nations.

Hopefully its going to enlighten our legislators knowledge, skills and abilities on Native American ways, said Marcellais, who has introduced a similar bill to the predominantly white Legislature in the past.

The training would be provided at no cost to the state during orientation for legislators, he said.

The bill was not prompted by the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, but several who spoke in favor of the training referenced issues related to the protests, which have been supported by tribal nations from around the world. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe fears the pipeline, which crosses the Missouri River less than a mile north of the reservation, could contaminate its water supply and threaten sacred sites.

Some told the Senate Government and Veterans Affairs Committee that cultural sensitivity may have prevented some of the conflicts related to the pipeline protests.

Were not connecting. Were not seeing eye to eye, said Brenda White Bull, a Standing Rock Sioux Tribe member.

Lisa DeVille, a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, said the pipeline protests have prompted some state leaders to overreact to temporary situations.

If we had some sort of respect and understanding of each others history and culture, we wouldnt have bills that suggest that people are allowed to run over protesters, said DeVille, referencing one of many bills introduced this session in response to the protests.

Another fallout from the protests was the cancellation of this years State-Tribal Relationship Address, which legislative leaders canceled citing concerns about security and strain on law enforcement resources while responding to protests, including some that prompted the Capitol to be on lockdown. The State of the Judiciary Address also was canceled.

Ruth Buffalo, also a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes, said the training can help legislators become more aware of their own biases.

We look to you as our leaders, our lawmakers, to effectively represent all of our states citizens to the best of your ability, said Buffalo, who ran unsuccessfully for state insurance commissioner last year.

Some who testified said they havent felt welcome at the North Dakota Capitol recently.

We live in a state that claims to be proud of its native history, yet our people are treated with discrimination and anger, DeVille said.

Tara Okpalaeke-Wood, who moved to Bismarck from Winona, Minn., said she is treated differently as a minority in North Dakota than she was in Minnesota.

Some individuals that I encounter on a daily basis are very outspoken on their dislike of people of color, she said. I hear and read this day in and day out.

Committee Chairwoman Nicole Poolman, R-Bismarck, thanked people for sharing their stories.

I think we are at a key time where we can start to see one another, Poolman said.

The committee is likely to make a recommendation on the bill today.
In Congress, the ticket for Nitesh Singh, son of former MLA Rajhans Singh, has been finalised from Dindoshi.

Mumbai: Dynasty politics is likely to rule the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) again. All the political parties, including the Shiv Sena and the BJP, have resorted to the tried-and-trusted formula of offering tickets to party leaders relatives.

According to political sources, with all parties contesting separately, none is willing to lose the golden chance of ruling the richest municipal corporation in the country. Hence, apart from nominating those who have come from other parties, these parties have decided to field their party leaders kin. Top BJP leaders Kirit Somaiya and Raj Purohit have sought tickets for their son Neil and Akash respectively, from Mulund and Colaba. However, Mr Purohit while denying demanding the ticket said, Akash got the ticket on his own merit and the work he did for the party. I had not asked for a ticket for him.

Meanwhile in Andheri, Yograj Dabhalkar, a nephew of MLA Bharati Lavekar, will be receiving a ticket to contest from ward 60, whereas MLA Ameet Satam has succeeded in nominating his brother-in-law Rohan Rathod from ward 68, sources said. Deepak Thakur, son of BJP minister Vidya Thakur will be contesting on the BJP ticket from ward number 50 in Goregaon. The BJP has also decided to give tickets to Makarand Narvekar, a citizen corporator who recently joined the party, and his wife Harshada from ward 226 and 227 respectively.

As far as Shiv Sena is concerned, the party has decided to field Kamini Shewale, wife of MP Rahul Shewale, from Govandi. The move has irked the local corporator Dinesh Panchal, who had sought a ticket for his own wife Anita. As a result, Mr Panchal and his wife joined the BJP on Thursday. The party has also finalised the names of Samadhan Sarvankar, son of MLA Sada Sarvankar, from Mahim, Tejaswini Ghosalkar, daughter-in-law of former MLA Vinod Ghosalkar from Dahisar, Preeti Patankar, wife of former corporator Prakash Patankar from Dadar as candidates.

In Congress, the ticket for Nitesh Singh, son of former MLA Rajhans Singh, has been finalised from Dindoshi. The shortage of strong and competent candidates is forcing political parties to field relatives of political leaders in elections, said political observers. An analyst also said that instead of going for unknown faces, it is always better to field wives of elected male politicians, they said.
First list of the grand old partys BMC polls candidates put on hold.

Mumbai: Infighting in the Congress city unit doesnt seem to be ending any time soon even after the party declared it first list of 115 candidates for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls. Alleging that Mumbai Congress president Sanjay Nirupam had the upper hand in selecting candidates, supporters of veteran party leader Gurudas Kamat held a protest. The top party leadership has given stay to some of the candidates names. Also, senior party leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda has visited the city again to resolve the issue.

Anti-Nirupam Congress workers held a protest at a Juhu hotel on Wednesday night on Mr Hoodas arrival. Later, on Thursday, Mr Hooda called Mr Nirupam and other Congress leaders to discuss the issue. During the meeting, supporters of Mr Nirupam and Mr Kamat clashed and shouted slogans against each other. The workers alleged that loyal party workers had not received tickets for the civic polls.

However, Mr Nirupam denied any such development. There is no stay on the list. Some workers are miffed over not getting tickets and hence protested. I will soon release the first list, Mr Nirupam said.

Mr Hooda also met Maharashtra state president Ashok Chavan to seek details of the ongoing situation of the BMC polls. Sources said that Congress final list would come late night on Thursday or on Friday, the last day of filing nominations. The sources said that the partys parliamentary committee discussed Mumbai polls along with the Zilla Parishad polls. However, no consensus was reached.

Mr Nirupam has been targeted by Mr Kamat and his supporters for some time now. Mr Kamat recently also expressed his displeasure about Mr Nirupams leadership. Two of Congress leaders joined BJP, blaming Mr Nirupam for their exit. However, one of the leaders, sitting corporator Parminder Singh Bhamra, returned to the party within eight days. Congress would be contesting polls alone for the BMC and has 52 corporators at present.
Delhi has around seven doctors while Mumbai has around twelve of them working for the airline.

Mumbai: It has come to light that an executive director of Air India, who is also a pilot, had piloted around 10 international flights in a month without undergoing breath analyser tests. Furthermore, according to sources, doctors with the airline are on contract and are being dominated by seniors. The Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) on Monday wrote to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to check all the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage to establish evidence against the AI employee concerned.

The letter written by the ICPA states that one of the executive directors has been evading pre-flight medical tests, endangering the safety of passengers and crewmembers. The letter has requested an investigation into the violation of the DGCAs Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) by procuring the pre-flight medical records and all the CCTV footage in the despatch and PFM room at Delhi for a fortnight.

According to sources, more than half of Air Indias 30 doctors are on contract. Delhi has around seven doctors while Mumbai has around twelve of them working for the airline. The ED in question has flouted the mandatory CAR for almost ten flights in one month. The doctors who are on contract stand nowhere in front of such senior officials and, hence, obey what they are told, an airline official said.

A top airline official alleged, Why would one not get the breath analyser test done if one hasnt consumed alcohol? According to the rules, skipping these mandatory checks amount to the same as testing positive for alcohol.

The letter does not state the name of the executive director in question. Commenting on this, an airline official said, The name of the ED has been not included in the letter as the DGCA has been asked to review the CCTV footage and get to know the person themselves. Another airline official said, There are two EDs names that have been doing rounds. However, it will only be after the DGCAs investigation that the person at fault will be declared.

Confirming the complaint received by the airline, Air India spokesperson Dhananjay Kumar said, We have begun an investigation into this matter and will take the necessary action against the person once we come to know the details. Air India is committed to its passengers and does not compromise on safety at any cost.
Shiv Sena has been eyeing the Gujarati vote bank, which has been loyal to BJP during the last two elections.

Mumbai: The reason Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackerays first rally for the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) polls will be held on Saturday at Charni Road is because of a belief within the party that the place is auspicious for Sena. Even in the last BMC elections, Sena started its campaign from Girgaon. However, this time the party has ventured a bit further to Chira Bazaar, instead of Thakurdwar like last time, which is because of the Gujarati votes that Sena is eyeing.

Pandurang Sakpal, Shiv Senas head in South Mumbai, said even in the previous BMC elections, Senas campaign started from Thakurdwar area, which is very close to Chira Bazaar.

Mr Sakpal said, This place is subh (auspicious) for us, from here we start and then we will win the whole of Mumbai.

Party leaders claim that by launching the campaign at Chira Bazaar, two aims will be achieved: first, the area is close to Girgaon  a strong Marathi belt  and second, it is also within the Gujarati belt of Mumbai.

Sena has been eyeing the Gujarati vote bank, which has been loyal to BJP during the last two elections. In the last two weeks, leaders from the Gujarati community from Congress, NCP and even BJP have joined Senas fold and the party has been boasting about it. Senas internal team had made a huge list of Gujarati voters and was carrying out surveys on how to win Gujarati votes.

Post demonetisation, many Gujaratis are upset and they are looking for an option, which we are trying to be, said a senior leader from the party.
Mr Sonis relative said, His wife returned to village three days ago and his four children were alone at their residence.

Mumbai: Family members of the three persons, who died after the slab of a public toilet in Mankhurd collapsed, are still coming to terms with their loss.

Four daughters of hawker Ganesh Saha Soni, who was among the three who died after drowning into the septic tank, were alone at their residence when they heard about the tragedy.

Mr Sonis relative said, His wife returned to village three days ago and his four children were alone at their residence. They saw the commotion and heard about accident near the toilet. His eldest daughter rushed to his aunts residence to inform her about the incident. When we all rushed to the spot, Sonis body was pulled out from the tank in front of us.

Wife of victim Harish Tikedar, a carpenter, is still kept in dark about his demise. Tikedar and his wife Aruna stayed with each other. His wife has been in a state of shock and hence we have told her that he is undergoing treatment and will recover soon, Azeema is grieving her brothers death.
CBI alleges their organisation violated FCRA rules in using funds.

Mumbai: A special CBI magistrate court on Friday granted bail to social activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand in case of alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registered against them. The court also handed them over the copy of chargesheet filed against them by the CBI in connection with the case. The CBI has alleged that Sabrang Communications and Publishing Pvt Ltd run by the two allegedly utilised funds received from the Ford Foundation in violation of foreign funding rules.

The CBI in its chargesheet has claimed that co-accused Sushma Raman who was the then programme officer of the Ford Foundation allegedly connived with director of Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Limited (SCPPL) for granting around 2.9 lakh dollars in foreign donations in violation of FCRA.

According to CBI, the company is engaged in publication and hence is not authorised to receive foreign contribution without prior permission from the MHA. The FCR Act states that no person having a definite cultural, economic, educational, religious or social programme shall accept foreign contribution without prior permission of the MHA. It is further alleged in the chargehseet that Aanand and Setalvad did not maintain exclusive bank account for receipt of foreign contribution. The Sabrang has mixed foreign contribution with their domestic contribution.

The chargesheet also claims that as per project modules submitted to foreign donor it is mentioned that Sabrang would lobby with government in public sphere to deepen and broaden the concept of minorities. Lobbying with political parties is not allowed as per the provision of FCRA.

This is a false case and relates to a consultancy with Ford Foundation and Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt Ltd, said Ms Setalvad adding, Today was the routine conversion of the ABA to a judicial bail. This is however a long string of persecutions against us (Gujarat Polices false FIR, MHA inspection, cancellation of FCRA etc and the eighth false criminal case against me. She said, This is a compoundable offence. At worst it is a civil one. The brazen attempt by the regime to criminalise it and to actually chargesheet Anand and me bespeaks a desperation and vindictiveness that is unprecedented.
She feels that the 'banned' countries are where most of UNICEF's work is carried out.

After Hollywood A-listers Jennifer Lawrence, Ashton Kutcher, John Legend and among others slammed President Donald Trump's temporary immigration ban, actress Priyanka Chopra has spoken out against it saying, this has deeply affected me.

Trump signed the executive order on last Friday to suspend entry of refugees to the US for 120 days, and imposed an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria. A 90-day ban was also placed on citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

In an emotional LinkedIn blog post, the 34-year-old star and UNICEF Goodwill ambassador, wrote, "As a global citizen, this has deeply affected me. All of the 'banned' countries are places where a lot of UNICEF work is going on, where children are suffering the most."

The actress said the anger, frustration and helplessness that followed Trump's order temporarily barring citizens from the seven countries from entering the United States was justified.

She called on others to speak out against it.

Please join me in making our voice stronger so that globally, our children are not discriminated against on the basis of their religion and do not have to bear the brunt of a political witch hunt, said the Quantico actress.
Pakistan was forced to close down JuD offices after the outfit was put on the list of terrorist organisations by the United Nations.

With one stroke of the pen Donald Trump slammed the doors on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries throwing the United States and the world into unprecedented chaos. Extreme vetting of travellers from Pakistan and Afghanistan has already been ordered and a complete ban on them is not being ruled out. The registration of the Muslim population in the US is also reportedly under consideration setting a cruel precedent somewhat reminiscent of Nazi rule.

Notwithstanding the massive protests across the US and in Western capitals, Trumpism seems unstoppable, making the world more dangerous and insecure.

Understandably, Trumps radical steps are cause for serious concern to Pakistan too. Notwithstanding the friendly phone conversation between the Pakistani prime minister and Trump soon after the latters election in November, the signals from Washington have not been encouraging. It was clear from the outset that the new administration would exert increasing pressure on Islamabad to crack down on Pakistani militant groups such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

True to character, the Sharif government waited passively for things to pass. But now there is sign of panic with Trump moving fast on his election promises and the impending threat of extending the travel ban to Pakistanis. The dramatic crackdown on the JuD and the decision to place Hafiz Saeed under house arrest highlights panic. Interestingly, the crackdown came hours after the publication of a report in a national daily claiming that Pakistan was threatened with sanctions if it did not act swiftly against the group.

For many years Islamabad had resisted pressure from Washington and other countries to clamp down on the groups that were still being protected under various pretexts despite Pakistans war against militancy. It was apparent that the JuD was the new banner for Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most lethal of Pakistani militant outfits that was banned in 2002 because of outside pressure.

Pakistan was forced to close down JuD offices after the outfit was put on the list of terrorist organisations by the United Nations. But the action was short-lived as a Lahore high court bench found no grounds for banning the group, providing Islamabad with a convenient excuse to defy international pressure. Hafiz Saeed roamed around freely addressing rallies and appearing on primetime TV, reinforcing international scepticism regarding Islamabads double standards in dealing with the scourge of militancy and extremism. The 2008 Mumbai terror attacks involving members of the banned outfit intensified the call by the international community for action against the JuD. The anger grew further after Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the carnage, was freed by the court. All this obscured the success in containing militant violence inside the country.

But now, the belated and somewhat half-hearted action against the JuD and confinement of its leaders may not satisfy the international community, particularly the Trump administration. The pressure will intensify to crack down on the banned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar who has resurfaced after keeping a low profile for several years.

The JeM disintegrated into various cells after being proscribed in 2002 and many of its senior members were involved in terrorist attacks inside Pakistan.

Maulana Azhar came into focus again late last year after JeM was accused of masterminding the attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. But Azhar has remained free. Pakistan has been able to block the move in the UN Security Council to declare him a terrorist with the help of China. But this cant be sustained for long. It will be another test for Islamabad.

Yet another pressure point for Pakistan is the detention on treason charges of Dr Shakeel Afridi who helped CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Trump had vowed to get him released and bring him to the US within days of his taking over. This presents a very tricky situation for the Pakistani government. It remains to be seen how Islamabad deals with this highly sensitive issue and avoids any punitive action by a rogue American administration.

Although the Trump administration still does not have a clear Afghan policy, the issue of how to deal with the crisis remains a source of conflict between Islamabad and Washington. There is some indication of continued US demand on Pakistan for taking action against the Haqqani network, the strongest faction of the Afghan Taliban believed to be operating from its sanctuary in Pakistan.

There is no doubt that Pakistan should have acted against the groups in its own national interests long ago. It will certainly bring more humiliation if we wait for the Trump whip. Have we not already been trumped?

By arrangement with Dawn
The ISI kept a large chunk of the inflows to itself and channelled the rest to loyal Islamist Afghan groups.

Pakistan might be viewed as a failed or failing state but there is one area where it continues to be hugely successful: in using terrorism as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from the rest of the world.

The recent incarceration of terrorist mastermind and mass killer Hafiz Saeed by Islamabad is the latest manifestation of this dynamic.

Saeed, don of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jamaat-ud-Dawa outfits, is a creation of the Pakistani military establishment, designed to sow misery in India and other parts of the world where Islamabad feels it necessary to wreak havoc. He has served his purpose, at least for the time being, and is being reined in temporarily to reap desperately needed benefits.

Saeed is just one pawn in Islamabads inventory of terrorist assets. He like others remains critical to Pakistans grand strategy of using terrorism as a bargaining chip.

The late Pakistani dictator, Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, who deserves to be titled the father of jihadi terrorism in South Asia, was a man of enormous vision, albeit of a jaundiced kind. He envisioned harnessing the power of Islamist extremism to further his countrys larger geopolitical aims.

Although he was killed in an aircrash before he could see the complete efflorescence of his dream, the general had sown the seeds of a virulent dynamic that would haunt South Asia and the rest of the world for decades to come. He successfully bargained with the United States, charging billions of dollars for helping the Afghan Mujahideen.

At the same time, he ensured that the entire Mujahideen opposition fighting during the Eighties to free Afghanistan of Soviet troops was Islamist and loyal to the Pakistan Army.

The Pakistan militarys secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, oversaw the distribution of the flood of arms and money from the US and Arab sheikhs.

The ISI kept a large chunk of the inflows to itself and channelled the rest to loyal Islamist Afghan groups. This strategy led to the defeat of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan but also unleashed the Islamist Frankenstein in the region.

It precipitated religious civil war in Afghanistan which continues to this day and which has resulted in the death of millions of Afghans.

The seeds of the Kashmir jihad too were sown by Gen. Zia but it was his successors in the Pakistani establishment who nurtured the anti-India movement in the Valley.

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the mentor of militant Islam, mastered the use of terrorism as a bargaining chip.

After the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US, when Washington threatened to bomb Pakistan out of existence, Gen. Musharraf squealed in fright and promised to abandon the Taliban.

The Taliban fled from Afghanistan but Musharraf secretly provided them a safe haven and once things had quietened down began financing and arming them once again.

Over time, the resurgent Taliban became a powerful threat to US forces in Afghanistan, forcing Washington to tacitly accept defeat and pull out most of its troops leaving behind a token military presence.

Today, the Taliban, armed and funded by Pakistan, controls vast swathes of territory in Afghanistan and shows no signs of battle fatigue.

It could well be the long-term victor. Even Washington acknowledges that peace in Afghanistan would be impossible without an accord with Islamabad.

Thus, the strategy of using and manipulating extremist Islamist forces has worked. Why would the generals in Islamabad want to abandon it?

In the Kashmir Valley, rabid Islamists control the forces opposed to New Delhi. These forces have successfully radicalised the majority of the population of the Valley and have emerged as a permanent or long-term threat.

Pakistans generals have also widened the scope of terrorist groups originally created for the Kashmir jihad to strike in different parts of India and other selected parts of Asia.

Thus, Saeed was directed to participate in one of the worst terrorist carnages in history, the 26/11 Mumbai attack.

A number of intelligence agencies, including those of the US, picked up and identified the electronic chatter generated by communications between the Mumbai terrorist attackers and their controllers in Pakistan. Saeeds group was identified and so were serving Pakistan Army officers.

Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, LeT commander and a right-hand man of Saeed, was implicated and later imprisoned (only to be released in time). Everything pointed to the Pakistani establishment and its murdering henchmen.

Yet, Washington sat back and instructed its diplomats in New Delhi to restrain the Indian leadership and to ensure that it did not carry out military strikes against Islamabad.

Pakistan remains a key factor to Washingtons larger West Asian strategy as well as the only physical gateway into Afghanistan. Islamabad also holds the extremist card so crucial for the West.

In 2008, the US was even more dependent on Pakistan than it is today given that over a hundred thousand active combatants and tens of thousands of American civilians, allied soldiers and support personnel in Afghanistan were totally dependent on access routes running through Pakistan.

Washington was busy on several fronts, including in Kosovo where it was pitched against Serbian and Russian interests, in quietly fuelling conflict in Georgia and in shadow fighting with Iran.

The US itself was shaken by a financial crisis and Barack Obama had just been elected President. A crisis in Pakistan was the last thing the Americans wanted. New Delhi therefore had to lump it.

The newly-elected US President, Donald Trump, is viewed as a disruptive force in world politics and a person unlikely to gloss over Islamabads continued ambivalence towards Islamist extremism.

Saeeds arrest has thus been attributed to Mr Trumps election. The director-general of Pakistans Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor, confirmed that the decision to put Saeed under house arrest is a policy decision that the state took in the national interest. Much was left unsaid.

New Delhi is not impressed given Islamabads track record. The cynical view is that things will return to normal once the desperately required dollars flow into the depleted coffers of the Pakistan Army.

Given the history of Islamabads manipulations, can New Delhis mandarins be faulted?
Tillerson reached out by phone to counterparts from Mexico and Canada, spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson accompanied by acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon waves as he arrives to speak to State Department employees at the State Department in Washington. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for unity and understanding on his first day at the State Department amid internal dissent over policies of President Donald Trump, which have also antagonized a range of allies. Within hours of starting the job, Mr Tillerson reached out by phone to counterparts from Mexico and Canada, spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, department officials said.

Hundreds of State Department officials greeted the former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive with applause as he entered the building. Louder cheers broke out when Mr Tillerson thanked acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon for standing in after the departure of John Kerry.

"Hi, I'm the new guy," said Mr Tillerson, who was sworn in on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed him to his post despite concerns about his ties with Russia. Mr Trump has called for closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In remarks that did not touch on foreign policy specifics, Mr Tillerson addressed the dissent within the department that emerged this week in a memo signed by more than 900 officials in protest against Mr Trump's decision to suspend the US refugee program and restrict travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"One of the great challenges and thrills for the State Department staff is deciding how to confront changing conditions in every corner of the world," said Mr Tillerson, "I encourage all of you to use your natural and well-developed skills to adapt to changes here at home as well.

"I know this was a hotly contested election and we do not all feel the same way about the outcome," said Mr Tillerson.

"Each of us is entitled to expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team," he added.

He also signaled he would impose changes to improve the functioning of the department and said the security of diplomats was a priority.

There was no readout after his meeting with Mr Gabriel at the State Department, although discussions were likely focused on the NATO alliance, the future of the Iran nuclear agreement and trade.

His separate phone calls with foreign ministers from Canada and Mexico coincided with Mr Trump saying on Thursday he wanted early talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he wants to renegotiate or repeal.

Mr Tillerson also spoke by phone with Mr Netanyahu, the State Department said in a statement. It did not say whether they discussed a White House statement that said Israeli settlements in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements.

Mr Tillerson inherits a messy globe, with war in Syria and Iraq, nuclear-armed North Korea threatening to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, and increased violence in eastern Ukraine.

Over the past 48 hours, more foreign policy challenges piled up as tensions erupted between the United States and ally Australia over an existing refugee swap, which Mr Trump called a "dumb deal."

Strains with Iran also increased after the White House said it was putting Tehran on notice for test-firing a ballistic missile and the new administration moved to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter.
FARGO -- Late last year, Joe Moran lost seven friends in just a few weeks to drug overdoses or drug-related deaths. Prior to that time period, he lost many more.

In fact, Moran has a zippered pouch in his apartment where he keeps funeral programs for people he cherishes -- people he met in recovery. The deaths, though profoundly sad, dont shock him anymore.

This is reality, Moran said, thumbing through the bulletins.

Moran, 39, knows he could easily have been one of them. A drug user since his early teens, hes now a recovering addict after six years of medication-assisted treatment received through his physician.

Soon, another similar option will arrive here: Fargo will be the site of just the second methadone clinic in North Dakota, a step many think is a key move in combatting the areas growing opioid problem.

Community Medical Services set up its first clinic in the state in Minot a few months ago and will open one in Fargo at 901 28th St. S. late this spring or early summer. The site is near the Southeast Human Services Center, in a non-residential neighborhood. CMS already runs four methadone clinics in Arizona, four in Montana and one in Alaska.

Mark Schaefer, regional manager of CMS, has dealt with addiction previously in work with Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch and the state Department of Human Services, and in his own family. He says medication-assisted treatment is making a difference.

Its changing the world, really, for this population, Schaefer said.

The clinic will provide physician and nursing services and counseling, in addition to daily dispensing of methadone. When taken as prescribed, the drug can reduce opioid withdrawal symptoms and cravings, yet shouldnt give the user a high.

We need more options

Schaefer expects the Fargo location to draw 150 or so at first, eventually building to about 300.

It will employ a clinic manager, two counselors, a medical provider -- either through telemedicine or in person -- along with nursing and clerical staff.

First, a client is screened and sees a doctor, who assesses the depth of their addiction. Then, they see a counselor and start a plan of care. That first day, they receive a dose of methadone.

Clients return daily to receive a single dose, which they ingest with a nurse observing.

Throughout their treatment, they receive counseling, doctor visits on a regular but tapering basis and random drug tests. In order to earn the privilege of taking multiple doses home, the client needs to keep all of their appointments and have negative urine tests.

For now, the Fargo site will dispense methadone only, but CMS is testing suboxone, another medication used to wean opioid addicts off drugs, at an Arizona clinic.

The cost will be $85 per week and will include physician, nurse and counseling services, along with the methadone. Its private-pay only, but Schaefer said they have an application in for Medicaid coverage, and he hopes someday, the treatment will be covered by most health insurance plans.

Schaefer said about 80 percent of the people who stick with it 30 to 90 days or more dont go back to using opioids.

People are getting back into the community, being a safer worker, or having their children back in the home, Schaefer said.

Before the clinic can open, it needs licensing through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Schaefer said the DEA will inspect the building to see it has property security systems, including video cameras, alarms and a secure safe to store the methadone.

Fargo Police Chief Dave Todd said he was cautious when first approached about the clinic a year and a half ago, but he and city leaders have met with the operators. Todd has also spoken with Minot Police Chief Jason Olson, who told him they havent had any problems on site.

Despite his early concerns, Todd said its another tool for people with addiction issues.

Weve got overdoses happening on a regular basis, Todd said, so we need more options and this is one of those options.

Schaefer said the company aims to be a good neighbor wherever they set up shop. His own family, including four young children, live in Minot.

Schaefer encourages people to reach out to him if they have questions or concerns.

I prefer to have conversations rather than have people opposed, he said.

It saved my life

Moran was treated with suboxone. He credits it with allowing him to function normally, to hold a job and attend recovery meetings.

He said his last taste of illicit drugs was in 2010, and after starting suboxone, he has been clean since.

It saved my life, Moran said.

The Moorhead High School graduate moved to Minneapolis at age 21, became heavily entwined in methamphetamine and later turned to opioids.

I slept in dumpsters, I ate out of garbage cans. I did whatever I had to do, mostly to use, Moran said.

Hes been arrested on drug charges, beaten and threatened at gunpoint, all as a result of trying to support his habit.

At age 33, he finally grew tired of the chaos and tried to stop but couldnt deal with the withdrawals.

For the last year and a half of his drug use, he said he took opioids begrudgingly to avoid the flu-like symptoms, sleeplessness and sensation of wanting to rip my skin off.

Moran was on suboxone for six years before weaning off it completely. He said he didnt say much to others due to the stigma that youre not clean if youre on medication-assisted treatment.

Last fall, he let the cat out of the bag.

I got such good responses from everyone, which I was really grateful for, he said.
The official asserted that Pakistans efforts to combat terrorism have been acknowledged at the world level too.

Islamabad: Pakistan on Thursday said it is taking action against some terrorist and other proscribed groups without any discrimination.

At a weekly news briefing here, foreign office spokesman Nafees Zakariya took strong exception of the Indian external affairs ministrys statement on Jamaat Ud Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeeds house arrest. He said India should take corrective measures for itself, rather than comment on the affairs of other countries.

Mr Zakariya said there were irrefutable evidences suggesting Indias involvement in perpetrating terror in Pakistan. He reminded that Indian institutions also carried out terrorism on their own soil and put the blame on others.

The official asserted that Pakistans efforts to combat terrorism have been acknowledged at the world level too. Expressing concerns over the ongoing human rights violations in Kashmir, Mr Zakaria said India was trying to change the demography of Kashmir and the international community should take notice of it.

The spokesman said the United Nations and the world community should try to resolve the raging Kashmir dispute. It was vital to ensure peace and stability in the South Asian region, he added. He said the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) had been playing an effective role vis-a-vis Kashmir issue.

When asked about Indias decision to increase defence expense by 10 per cent, the spokesman said Pakistan was opposed to conventional and nuclear arms race in the region.

He described the Indian arms buying spree as a threat to the region, adding that Pakistan does not want to indulge in any arms race.

When asked about the new US visa policy, he said it was every countrys right to decide its immigration policy.
Chief statistician of the PBS clarified that all the citizens would be enlisted in the census, whether they had the NIC or not.

Pakistan is going to conduct new census after 19 years as the last time it was conducted in 1998.

Islamabad: Pakistan Bureau of Statistics has said that all the citizens, including transgender persons, would be enlisted in the sixth national population Census.

Chief statistician of PBS and chief Census commissioner Asif Bajwa, while addressing a news conference here, said that for the first time in the countrys history, transgender persons would be included in the Census form.

We have introduced a category in the Census forms to distinguish the Pakistani nationals and foreigners, he said.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senior leader Syed Naveed Qamar the other day had raised concerns in the National Assembly that citizens without National Identity Card would not be allowed to enlist in the Census. However, chief statistician of the PBS clarified that all the citizens would be enlisted in the census, whether they had the NIC or not.

He said that all Pakistanis living abroad for the last six months would not be enlisted in the census. Mr Bajwa said that foreigners living in Pakistan for the last six months would be included in the Census process.

Pakistan is going to conduct new census after 19 years as the last time it was conducted in 1998.
He was sentenced to 26 months and one week in prison after being convicted of outraging modesty.

The victim had initially refused to report the incident but staff members at the hotel later convinced her to contact police after they found out that she had been molested in Alzahrani's room. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Singapore: A Beijing-based Saudi diplomat was sentenced in Singapore Friday to more than two years in jail and four strokes of a cane for molesting a hotel intern.

Bander Yahya A Alzahrani, 39, was sentenced to 26 months and one week in prison after being convicted of "outraging modesty", the legal term in Singapore for sexual assault short of rape.

Alzahrani was granted bail for Sg$20,000 ($14,140) and will be appealing the sentence and conviction, his lawyer Shashi Nathan told AFP.

"He's obviously upset and disappointed, but he understands there's another stage of the appeal to be had, and that's what we will be preparing for," Nathan said.

The victim had initially refused to report the incident but staff members at the hotel later convinced her to contact police after they found out that she had been molested in Alzahrani's room, court papers showed.

The diplomat, who handled media affairs at the Saudi mission in the Chinese capital, was in Singapore on holiday with his family. However, he was alone in the room with the victim during the incident.

Alzahrani had said in his defence that the victim was conspiring with hotel staff to extort money from him, an allegation which the judge dismissed.

"The accused preyed on a young, naive victim," said district judge Lee Poh Choo. "He knew and intended his actions."

Outrage of modesty is punishable by up to 10 years in jail and whipping with a rattan cane, a punishment which dates back to British colonial rule in Singapore.
The High Court dismissed a plea for a fresh judicial review of the process to leave the EU single market.

London: The British government on Friday won a new legal challenge brought by campaigners who wanted a "soft Brexit" after the High Court dismissed a plea for a fresh judicial review of the process to leave the EU single market.

Campaigners including Peter Wilding, chairman of the pro-Europe pressure group British Influence, and lobbyist Adrian Yalland, had brought the case in the High Court to demand that British Prime Minister Theresa May seek parliamentary approval before taking the UK out of the European Economic Area (EEA), dubbed a so-called soft Brexit.

However, Lord Justice Lloyd Jones and Justice Lewis dismissed the application for a fresh judicial review of theBrexit process.

"It's incredibly disappointing. It seems as if the judges have decided this is a matter of prematurity rather than merit and if the government is allowed to act unlawfully that would be a travesty of justice," said Wilding, the man credited withfirst coming up with the term Brexit.

The UK government's legal team had argued that the application was "premature" because nothing had yet been decided.

"The court is being invited to embark on an exercise which is discretionary. This application is premature and should be dismissed for that reason," James Eadie said, appearing on behalf of David Davis, the minister for exiting the EU.

Under the terms of the EEA, which first came into legal force in 1994, the EU's 28 members and three other signatories have to accept the free movement of people, services, goods and capital across their borders. May has said staying within the EEA was not an option because it would "to all intents and purposes mean not leaving the EU at all".

The new legal case revolved around Article 127 of the EEA Treaty, which states: "Each contracting party may withdraw from this agreement provided it gives at least 12 months notice in writing to the other contracting parties."

If the UK government chooses to use Article 127 of the EEA Treaty, then an act would be required in Parliament in the same way that a bill triggering Article 50 of the European Union Treaty is now going through Parliament.

The Supreme Court had ruled last month that May must seek Parliament's approval before invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty to begin official talks on leaving the EU after the June 2016 referendum in favour of Brexit.

MPs backed the Bill in a vote in the House of Commons earlier this week and it will now return to the Commons next week before becoming law.
The man was carrying two backpacks and had two machetes and when soldiers told him that he could not come in with his bags, he attacked.

Paris: A French soldier shot and seriously wounded a man in a shopping mall beneath the Louvre Museum on Friday after he tried to attack them and shouted "Allahu akbar," officials said.

The man was carrying two backpacks, and he had two machetes, and when soldiers and police officers on patrol told the man that he could not come in with his bags, he attacked, said Yves Lefebvre, a police union official.

"That's when he got the knife out and that's when he tried to stab the soldier," he said.

A soldier opened fire and the man was struck five times, once in the stomach, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said. The backpacks didn't contain any explosives, he said. One of the soldiers was slightly wounded on the scalp.

The French interior ministry said that anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating the Louvre attack, but that there were still no details about the identity of the attacker. "Allahu akbar" is the Arabic phrase for "God is great."

The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital's biggest tourist attractions. Police have sealed off entrances around where the attack took place and closed the area to vehicles, snarling traffic in a busy part of central Paris. The situation is mainly calm, with confused tourists being gently shooed away by officers.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that a second person also was arrested but it is unclear whether they were linked to the attack. Brandet said about 1,000 people were inside the actual museum and were held inside in safe areas.

The French capital has seen a spate of attacks, some claimed by the Islamic State group, since 2015. Friday's incident created panic.

Olivier Majewski was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people, 30 or 40, running and screaming "there's been a terror attack." The 53-year-old said he hid for about 15 minutes before gingerly making his way upstairs. He said people were clearly scared.

"They were panicked," he said.
Swedish counter-terrorism police found four mobile phones and two computers in a raid on Wednesday on an apartment in Malmo.

A Swedish citizen of Syrian origin, Krayem was arrested on April 8 in Brussels over suspicions he brought the bags used for two separate attacks on an airport and a metro last year, killing 32 people. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Stockholm: A Swedish court decided on Friday to hand over evidence seized in the southern city of Malmo to Belgium in connection with the Brussels attacks last year, public prosecutors said.

Swedish counter-terrorism police found four mobile phones and two computers in a raid on Wednesday on an apartment in Malmo, Sweden's third largest city, where one of the Brussels attacks suspects grew up. The court ordered the six items sent to Belgian investigators, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Hans Ihrman, told AFP.

"They are important for the investigation," he said, without specifying how the possessions were connected to the 28-year-old suspect, Osama Krayem.

A Swedish citizen of Syrian origin, Krayem was arrested on April 8 in Brussels over suspicions he brought the bags used for two separate attacks on an airport and a metro last year, killing 32 people.

A surveillance video showed him accompanying Khalid El Bakraoui, the Brussels metro suicide bomber, minutes before the attack.

Held in Belgium since his arrest, Krayem is believed to be a link between the cells that attacked Paris in 2015 and Brussels. He has been charged in both investigations.
Pakistans Ambassador in Kuwait Ghulam Dastagir has refuted reports of a visa ban placed on the country by Kuwait.

Kuwait City: After US President Donald Trumps executive order banning seven Muslim-majority countries last Friday, the Kuwaiti government has now told would-be migrants from the five banned nations to not apply for visas.

The five countries include Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. However, Pakistans Ambassador in Kuwait Ghulam Dastagir has refuted reports of a visa ban placed on the country by Kuwait.

With this, Kuwait will be the only nation to prohibit the entry of Syrian nationals prior to Mr Trumps executive action. Kuwait City had earlier issued a suspension of visas for all Syrians in 2011.

In July 2016, Kuwait had foiled thee terror plots planned by the ISIS. Several pre-emptive raids inside and outside Kuwait ended in the arrests of militants which the interior ministry had said belonged to Daesh. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS. In July 2015, the Gulf country, home to several US military bases, suffered its first ever

ISIS-claimed attack, when a blast targeting a Shia mosque killed 27 people and injured over 200. Kuwait had also issued travel advice last year stating that Terrorists continue to issue statements threatening to carry out attacks in the Gulf region. These include references to attacks on western interests, including residential compounds, military, oil, transport and aviation interests, as well as crowded places, including hotels.
Trump described the resettlement plan as the worst deal ever and accused Australia of trying to export the next Boston bombers.

Sydney: US President Donald Trump labelled a refugee swap deal with Australia dumb on Thursday after a Washington Post report of an acrimonious telephone call with Australias Prime Minister threatened a rare rift in ties between the two staunch allies.

The Post reported that Mr Trump described the resettlement plan as the worst deal ever and accused Australia of trying to export the next Boston bombers. It said the call had been scheduled to last an hour but Mr Trump cut it short after 25 minutes when Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull tried to turn to subjects such as Syria. Mr Turnbull told reporters the call with Mr Trump at the weekend had been frank and candid but refused to give further details. I do stand up for Australia. My job is to defend Australian interests, Mr Turnbull said in Melbourne.

He refused to confirm the Post report that Mr Trump, who had earlier spoken to world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, had angrily told him that the call was the worst so far. As reports of the conversation hit headlines on both sides of the world, Mr Trump tweeted: Do you believe it? The Obama administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Aust-ralia. Why? I will study this dumb deal.

That threw more confusion over the status of the controversial deal Austra-lia agreed with Mr Obama late last year for the US to resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps on Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.
Majority of people swam to the bank on their own, while rescue teams saved eight others, who were shifted to hospital.

An eye witness said that there were over 70 people and nearly 20 motorbikes aboard the ferry, the report said. (Photo: Representational Image)

Lahore: Several people were missing after a ferry carrying over 70 people capsized in River Ravi near Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab province, with rescueoperation still ongoing, officials said.

The boat, sailing from Nankana's tehsil Said Wala to Okara, with more than 70 people aboard, capsized shortly after leaving Said Wala, prompting district administration and rescue teams to swing into action and save as many people as possible, Geo News reported.

"The ferry was overloaded with passengers," Deputy Commissioner Saira Umar said, adding that majority of people swam to the bank on their own, while rescue teams saved eight others, who were shifted to hospital.

The rescue operation will continue until the recovery of all the people, she added.

An eye witness said that there were over 70 people and nearly 20 motorbikes aboard the ferry, the report said.
Pakistan said it does not need any endorsement from New Delhi over actions against the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind.

Islamabad: Snubbing India's demand of a credible crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, who was recently placed in house arrest, Pakistan has said that it does not need any endorsement from New Delhi over actions against the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry on Wednesday said that Pakistan does not need any certification or endorsement from India over the recent actions it has taken in relation to Hafiz Saeed, while reacting to the statement of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding the JuD chief's detention.

India had earlier said only a credible crack down on the Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and terrorist organizations involved in cross border terrorism would be proof of Pakistan's sincerity.

"Exercises such as yesterday's orders against Hafiz Saeed and others have been carried out by Pakistan in the past also," the MEA said.

The Interior Ministry spokesperson said if India is serious about its allegations then it should come up with concrete evidence against Saeed, which is sustainable in the court of law in Pakistan or anywhere in the world.
WINNIPEG, Man.  An increasing number of immigrants who left African nations for the United States are crossing the northern border and seeking refuge in Canada, according to immigration resettlement workers in Manitoba.

Rita Chahal, executive director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, said they have experienced a sharp uptick in people crossing around the Pembina and Emerson, Man., points of entry in the past four months. Many have braved walks through high snows and harsh conditions to reach Canada.

On Monday, Chahal said 10 people, mostly men and one family primarily from the East African country Djibouti, walked across the border from North Dakota.

The total number of refugee claimants at Welcome Place between Oct. 1 to Jan. 31 was 118.

In a normal year, we would get something like 50, 60 maybe 70, Chahal said.

The 10 walked over the border and came to Winnipeg where MIIC workers at the Welcome Place residence got to work on their claims.

They did not file anything in the U.S. at all, just because they said they were fearful of deportation, Chahal said. So they didnt file in the U.S., they came straight to Canada, and risked their lives walking through those conditions.

In years past, most claims filed by MIIC came from people who visited Canada, but in the recent surge more than 80 percent of their claimants have come through the U.S. at the Pembina and Emerson border crossing, Chahal said. Those people have been primarily from Somalia, Djibouti and Ghana.

In early January, CBC news reported on two men from Ghana who experienced frostbite after walking into Canada from Minnesota. The two men left Minneapolis when their visas expired and stopped in Grand Forks before heading to the border in a taxi.

The MIIC has a good relationship with Canadian Border Services, who regularly direct those crossing the border to Winnipeg to receive paralegal assistance, according to Chahal.

Its heartbreaking those kinds of situations and scenarios you hear about where somebody didnt even have the proper clothes on their back to make that journey, Chahal said.

Changing climate

President Donald Trump has promised a more rigorous process for immigrants and refugees seeking permanent residence in the United States. Last week, Trump signed an executive order that bars entry of any refugee awaiting resettlement in the U.S. for 120 days, prohibits all refugee status for anyone from Syria for an undetermined time and bans citizens of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Libya and Yemen from entering the country on any type of visa.

Once someone arrives in Canada, they have three days to file a claim for refugee status, a service the MIIC provides. Lately, their paralegals have been filing about 10 a day, Chahal said, which has been stretching their resources.

The process takes time, including listening to stories, working with interpreters and trying to help people find legal advice.

People are just really, really scared in terms of whats going to happen, she told the Herald. I mean they are walking into uncertainty. While they might have heard that in Canada they have an opportunity to file for a claim, it doesnt necessarily mean their application will be accepted.

She said about 60 percent of claims are ultimately accepted in western Canada.

These folks have no idea whats going to happen to them, they have no place to stay, they dont know where their next meal is going to come from, she said.

The MIIC has access to three housing units at their Welcome Place residence, but with a rise in claimants, quarters have become tight.

Were moving people through as quickly as possible, Chahal said Sometimes three to five people need to share an apartment while they wait to find more permanent housing.

Cynthia Shabb, executive director of the Global Friends Coalition, which assists new Americans in Grand Forks, said she has not heard talk of heading for Canada among the local immigrant community and said she believes it is mostly people with expired visas passing through the region.

In North Dakota, about 400 refugees are resettled each year, according to Lutheran Social Services, the organization with a federal contract to resettle refugees in the state. Of those, about 100 each year are settled in Grand Forks according to Reggie Tarr with LSS.

The state Legislature is considering a law that would allow communities to seek a pause in refugee resettlement in their city. House Bill 1427 will be brought before the Government and Veteran Affairs committee Friday morning.

Tarr said most of the refugees in Grand Forks come from Somalia, Iraq and Bhutan. He said the organization has not had contact with anyone seeking to relocate to Canada, and that all people working with LSS already have refugee status granted by the federal government.

We dont work with anyone who is in this country illegally, Tarr said.
"Dad, When I die, you will be happy because you wont be bothered anymore, the boy writes in suicide note. China has 61 million left-behind children, the population of Great Britain. Children are often raised in conditions of social deprivation. The government is trying to deal with the problem.

Beijing (AsiaNews)  A 15-year-old boy in Yunnan took his own life by drinking pesticide on Lunar New Years Eve after years of neglect and abuse at the hands of his father, the Chuncheng Evening Post reported.

Before he took a lethal dose of poison, the unnamed boy left a heart-wrenching letter in which he attributed his extreme action to years of suffering at the hands of his violent father, a migrant worker, also from Yunnan.

During every Lunar New Year, I was blamed and yelled at ... Dad, When I die, you will be happy because you wont be bothered anymore, the boy writes in the note.

In his suicide note, the boy decried the extreme abuse and vitriol he faced at home during the annual spring festival whenever his migrant worker father returned.

In it, he says he was raised by his grandparents, who are in their 70s, because his parents worked away from home in another city, and rarely came home except for holidays.

I dont want to add any more burden on you, Mum and Dad, the 15-year-old says.

The sad note goes on to describe how he was neglected by his parents throughout the year, and that during the holidays he would go through a real ordeal since his father would take out his anger and frustration on him.

During the Lunar New Year season this year and last year, I have never had a good day. Last year, my dad beat me and yelled at me all because of the most trivial things. Because of that, I spent my whole year crying.

The boy's death and the message caused quite a stir across China, where leaving children behind is widespread, especially in rural areas.

Low wages, poor housing, and municipal bans make it impossible for many parents to bring their children to the cities where they work.

The so-called left-behind children spend most of the year without their parents who moved to the big cities of the coast in search of work.

The latest government report on internal migration estimates that some 61 million left-behind children live in China's countryside. This is the equivalent of the population of Great Britain. Of these, more than a third are under 17. However, independent studies indicate that this is an underestimation.

Leaving children behind is a great social problem for China and has led to countless tragedies that have shocked the whole nation.

These children, who are often raised by grandparents, or in some cases simply abandoned, have attracted increasing public attention as they are often involved in suicides, accidents and juvenile delinquency due to the absence of adult supervision and family support.
Beirut (AsiaNews / OLJ) - Msgr. Mounir Khairallah, Maronite bishop of Batroun yesterday announced that the year 2017 will be celebrated by the Maronite Church as "the year of martyrdom and martyrs." The announcement came during a press conference at the Catholic Information Center.



The year will extends from the February 9 next, Feast of Saint Maron (the fifth century hermit, who gave his name to the Maronite tradition), until March 2, 2018, feast of St. John Maron, the first Maronite Patriarch (seventh century ).



The year will be enriched by different programs, to which the faithful are invited to participate. In a message for the occasion, the Patriarch Bechara Rai said that it is very appropriate to dedicate a year to this theme, at a time when the Church suffers persecution in many places, and particularly in the Middle East.



Even Pope Francis often speaks of contemporary martyrs, saying that "today they are much more numerous than in the first centuries." In his Homily last January 30th in Casa Santa Marta, he added: "The greatest strength of the Church today is in the little Churches, tiny, with few people, persecuted, with their Bishops in prison. This is our glory today, this is our glory and our strength.
by Sumon Corraya

Msgr. Moses Costa is the new archbishop. The appointment was announced by Msgr. George Kocherry, apostolic nuncio in the country. The Catholic religion arrived there in the mid 1500s with Portuguese missionaries. Today the faithful are almost 49 thousand; 8 diocesan priests, 10 religious priests and 71 nuns.

Dhaka (AsiaNews) - Bangladesh has a new ecclesiastical province. Yesterday Pope Francis erected the Archdiocese of Chittagong, on the east coast of the country, raising the bishopric of the same name to Metropolitan See.

At the same time, Msgr. Moses Costa, now Bishop of the diocese, was appointed first Metropolitan Archbishop of Chittagong. Upon hearing the news, he said with emotion: "I thank God for this blessing. His grace gladdens me. I will continue to preach the Gospel with enthusiasm and help our people to be witnesses of God among the people".

According to the Archbishop, there are different challenges facing the new ecclesiastical province: "First of all encouragement to religious vocations, which here are not numerous. We need more priests, nuns and religious and we hope that more and more young people will choose consecrated life. "

Another field of action, "is the fight against poverty. Most of the Catholics are of tribal origin and live in conditions of extreme need ". In addition, "our territory extends in hilly and inaccessible areas, difficult to reach and where it is not easy to create places of prayer. But preaching the Gospel among the tribal is really a great opportunity. "

Card. Patrick D'Rozario, present at Mass during which he announced the creation of the archdiocese, addressed a prayer to God: "Oh Lord, take care of your shepherd and guide him according to your desire." "God will help us - he added - we are very happy for this blessing given to the Catholics of Bangladesh".

Hundreds of faithful, nuns and priests were present in the cathedral. The news of the papal appointment was announced by Msgr. George Kocherry, Apostolic Nuncio to Bangladesh, who also read a letter sent by the Pope. The newly elected province will have as the diocese of Khulna and Barisal suffragan Churches.

The elevation of the bishopric has spread joy among the Catholic community. One of the faithful, Liton Tripura, says: "We are grateful to God and to Pope Francis. The creation of the archdiocese will urge us to practice our faith in more appropriate way. "

The Catholic religion arrived here in 1537, when Portuguese missionaries created settlements in the area. The first church was built in 1600 in Diang, where the present town later arose. Today the population is more than 19 million, mostly Muslims. Catholics 48,917, are spread across 11 parishes. The Archdiocese has 8 diocesan priests, 10 religious priests and 71 nuns.

As for the Archbishop Costa, he was born on November 17 November 1950, in the village of Tumilia near Gazipur. He was ordained a priest on February 5, 1981. He served the diocese of Dinajpur as bishop from 1996 to 2001. Addressing the faithful present at the time in the diocesan Cathedral, Msgr. Costa said: "Now your responsibilities will increase. Please pray for me."
In a message addressed to the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates Francis writes that "when the victims of violence are able to resist the temptation of revenge, they become the most credible promoters of nonviolence and peace-building".

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - May nonviolence become the characteristic style of politics, writes Pope Francis in a message addressed to the 16th World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates being held in Bogota, on the theme "Peace and reconciliation."



In the document signed by Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, Francis writes: "The efforts in Colombia to build bridges of peace and reconciliation can inspire all communities to overcome the animosities and divisions".



"When victims of violence are able to resist the temptation of revenge - the message continues  they become the most credible promoters of nonviolence and peace-building".



The Pope, reads the document encourages efforts "to promote understanding and dialogue between people." Francis prays, finally, that "non-violence can become the characteristic style of our decisions, our relationships, our actions, politics in all its forms."



In the picture: the intervention of Leymah Gbowee (Nobel 2011)
But there are also many Christians who for various reasons work outside of this scheme and are missing in anything with this. For Protestants there are those who are "house churches call": they often meet in private homes because they are not allowed to have their churches to practice their faith even if in fact they do the same, but at home. For Catholics have "underground churches": they also meet in private homes and are officially considered illegal, and the government tries to suppress them. The people taking part is not necessarily contrary to the government, but they want to practice their faith according to a theology that is not the one promoted by the government with the Patriotic Association. The government wants to unify the Chinese official and underground church but it is a challenge rather difficult.



On the other hand, Christians sometimes fit in very creative ways in Chinese society. For example, in Shanghai there is a Christian pastor who runs a company, a community that is registered as a company, not as a Christian group, either as NGOs: is a "consulting company" that provides help, maybe even business advice, but especially with regard to marriage and family. In fact it is a Christian group: all employees are Christians led by the pastor; They have a room for activities; have space for worship and organize activities on weekends, as a parish. But being registered as a company, the government does not touch her, or rather see well because it recognizes [that in Chinese society there is] a problem in divorce, in family problems, in the divisions. This group provides moral support and not being protesters, are accepted locally as a good thing, even if everyone knows what it is.



Another Christian group composed of foreigners - approved by the government - is also organized as a company and is focused on the family. Here in the US is well known, focused against abortion, they provide family counseling on family values. You can tell that they have positions to conservative Christians, even in China. And the government like because from his point of view in some way help to the stability of families and society. There are also Buddhist groups organized as companies that support cultural centers in their temples. There are in fact many groups. One way that people live these activities is inventing stories, lying if you will, that is, people know that there are these groups, which are asked, but registered as companies, but having positive purposes people leave to run ... Every culture does this, in China I think is just more "extreme" because the government is authoritarian. I believe that to some extent, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping would like to get rid of this thing, would put everything clearly and in the same plane. He knows what's going on and would like to clean up this attitude. He thinks it is necessary to rationalize and that the new regulations are able to achieve this goal. If this is possible, it is a big question ... [but I] do not think this will be possible. If you pull too much on this point, it is likely to be counter-productive.
Mattis and South Koreas acting president reiterated the need for the THAAD anti-missile system. For the Chinese, Trump is strengthening the US presence in Northeast Asia. Catholic Church is against turning the Korean peninsula into the focus of a new cold war.

Seoul (AsiaNews)  Seoul (AsiaNews)  The new US defence secretary, James Mattis, and Acting South Korean President Hwang Kyo-ahn reaffirmed on Thursday their resolve to deploy the anti-ballistic Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea to counter North Koreas nuclear programme.

Mattis two-day trip to South Korea, which will end today and be followed by a stop in Japan, is designed to get US allies to spend more on regional defence.

The THAAD, which costs 800 million US dollars per weapon, provides high-altitude radar monitoring and "automatic response" against threats, but has been immediately opposed by China, Russia and the Korean Catholic Church.

Beijing and Moscow are concerned that the monitoring on the peninsula is also directed at them. Russia, in addition, fears an escalation of tension between the two Koreas, with unpredictable actions from Pyongyang.

While Trumps America first pledge may lead to US retreat from many of the worlds affairs, he is going to strengthen the US presence in Northeast Asia, said Cui Zhiying, Director of the Korean Peninsula Research Centre at Tongji University.

The Korean Catholic Church has long opposed THAAD, which could transform the peninsula into "the centre of a new Cold War".

On 15 July 2016, in an official statement, the bishops reiterated that "peace is never achieved with weapons but through faith." For this reason, they asked South Korean authorities to drop the THAAD system and their North Korean counterparts to halt their nuclear enrichment.

In addition, the bishops called for greater joint economic development opportunities between the two Koreas. The path, they wrote, is not via "military pressure" but through "dialogue, reconciliation and cooperation."
Hard line of the new US administration against the Islamic Republic now confirmed. The measures relate to individual or entities involved in the missile program. Delicate nuclear deal increasingly at risk. Tehran's reply: "provocatory" and unfounded attitudes. Trumps actions undermine moderates in Tehran.

Washington (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The US administration seems determined to enact new sanctions on Iran, reflecting the tough position of the US president Donald Trump against the Islamic Republic. Yesterday, just hours after the statements of the National Security Advisor, who "warned" Iran over its last missile test and support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen, White House sources have leaked the possibility of "new sanctions".

The measures should target individuals and entities linked to the program on armaments and will be imposed in the context of presidential powers already in place. This would be the actions already taken in the past by Barack Obama, who has targeted companies and the upper echelons of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

In recent days, the US has denounced the last missile test in Tehran to the UN, in which carriers "capable of carrying nuclear warheads were used. The White House believes that these experiments are a violation of Security Council resolution on the Iranian nuclear issue. In addition, the new US administration wants to clearly show the break with the previous administration and the intention to use an iron fist against Iran.

The risk, in case of tougher sanctions at the economic level, is that it will blow the delicate agreement on the controversial atomic program, achieved in 2015 and that led to a partial easing of Western economic sanctions. The deal was warmly received by the majority of the international community, but criticized during the election campaign by the new president Trump and Israel.

Now the US President has relaunched a hard line against Tehran, without excluding even military action against the country. "Nothing - said Trump - is being ruled out."

The Iranian leadership immediatly rejected the warning launched by the tenant of the Oval Office terming it "provocative" and unfounded.

In a climate of growing tension between Washington and Tehran, the leaders of the Guardians of the Revolution are stirring up popular sentiment against President Trump. "The number of Iranian missiles, warships and missile defense system - said General Hossein Salami, head of the Pasdaran - grows more every day. The sky, the earth and the sea are under the control of this nation". This, concluded the head of the armaments program, "is not a land where a foreigner can put the foot with sinister intentions".

The increasingly tough position of the US towards Iran is bolstering the friendly relationship with Saudi Arabia and Israel, great allies of the US, and make re-election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani on May 19 in favor of " hawks "of the Islamic Republic increasingly unlikely
Phil Shiner, a once-revered human rights lawyer in the UK, has been struck off.

Defrauding the UK government led to the ultimate downfall of the man who was awarded Human Rights Lawyer of the Year by Liberty, the top civil liberties body in the UK, in 2004. The UKs Law Society also named him Solicitor of the Year in 2007, according to a report from Legal Cheek.

Shiner became a household name in the UK for representing Iraqis in abuse cases against the British military. However, one of the most expensive disciplinary proceedings in the UK  which cost 25m in 2014  found that Shiners claim that British military personnel had tortured and executed a number of innocent Iraqi civilians were wholly baseless.
In fact, Joyner believes that the rise of the TMT sector is only starting as he observes the general public seems to have an insatiable appetite for products coming out of the industry.

You get obvious consequences when you match [TMTs rapid evolution] with the fact that people just keep buying more and more of what they are selling. Im not just basing that on my childrens consumption habits, but if they are any indication, the TMT ride has only just begun, he said. That whole shift is continuing and wont change any time soon. We see our clients getting so interested in it, in many different ways.

One only has to look at growth in cybersecurity, media consumption, fintech, the Internet of Things and big data to see the massive potential of the space, he said.

Companies will be created, companies will change what they do, companies will merge, companies will be catapulted into areas that were inconceivable five years ago: and thats when deals happen, he said. Australia will be part of that more and more.

Furthermore, Herbert Smith Freehill does not really see political headwinds hurting Australian M&A all that much this year, though the firm acknowledges that this is a trend thats at play. But if theres a silver lining, it may be that Australia can even take advantage of the uncertainty created by moves by the Trump administration such withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Hello,I do not know how to delete my post from today, I gave it wrong name and have no answer..well I do need help with the 309 visa application. I do have to fill some birth certificate ID number and I do not know which one is the right oneI have my own from Czech Republic, which I know. Other 2 are British for our kids and here I just hope these are the right corner letters with numbers right??But my partner has the Australian one(Queensland) and there are 2 numbers on it. One is the right top corner and again it has letter and numbers, but then there is another one on the first line and it just saying 1. number and xxxx.What is this number?? Second and other lines are place of birth, name etc. Which one is the birth certificate ID number???It's confusing and Google doesn't know the answer ...
Hi EveryoneI already have started to create the needed documents for the CDR track. One thing still confuses me.I already have taken the IELTS test and my overall score is 7 with lowest module result of score 6 which can be submitted for the Engineers Australia assessment however if submitted for the immigration department I won't be awarded any points for the language proficiency.so my question is " can I apply for the assessment using the current IELTS result and after the assessment outcome is granted I plan to take the IELTS test again so if a higher score is achieved I'll submit my EOI for immigration department using the new IELTS test ?? "Is it accepted?Simply the IELTS test report submitted to Engineers Australia will be different than that submitted to immigration department is it ok??Thank you in advanceRegardsTarek
New Street Triple range unveiled in London; phased global release likely to include India this year.

Triumph has taken the wraps off its new Street Triple family at an event held in London in January. The highlights of the new bikes include a larger 765cc engine that puts out more power and torque, a new ride-by-wire system with up to five riding modes, a new specification chassis, a chiselled, sharper styling and a fully digital 5.0-inch colour TFT instrument panel. The Street Triple is available in three variants: S, R and RS.

The 12-valve, liquid-cooled, three-cylinder, in-line, DOHC engine is based on the Daytona 675s unit with an increased bore and stroke and 80 new parts that include a new crank, balancer shaft, con-rods and pistons. The engine is offered in three states of tune: on the Street Triple S, it puts out 113hp at 11,250rpm, on the faster R it makes 118hp at 12,000rpm, and on the super-hot RS it pumps out 123hp at 11,700rpm. There is also a larger air box and a new exhaust system tuned for more power and a better soundtrack too.

The rest of the powertrain also receives improvements. Theres a slipper clutch now to reduce wheel hop under heavy engine braking, the gearbox geometry has been revised for smoother cog swapping and the first and second gears have shorter ratios for improved acceleration. The RS version also gets a quick-shifter as standard which allows for quicker clutchless upshifts. The shifter is also available on the S and R variants as an accessory.

Keeping things in check is a ride-by-wire system that has five riding modes for conditions like rain, track, road, etc. While all modes offer full engine power, they influence the throttle response, traction control and the ABS settings. The ABS is also independently adjustable in three ways. On the R and RS, the modes are linked to individual styles on the digital display which offers customisable views and is controlled by a five-way joystick. The S, however, misses out on the digital instrumentation and instead gets an updated analogue tacho and digital speedo unit. There is a new gullwing design, aluminium swingarm that has increased torsional stiffness and, according to Triumph, has improved the bikes high-speed stability.

Style-wise, the new bikes have sharper and more aggressive cues with a nose-down posture influenced by the new-generation Speed Triples. The signature twin-pod headlamps now have LED lighting for the position lights and DRLs.

Apart from these three main variants, the Street Triple family also includes two special models  a low ride height version based on the R which has its own suspension and seating setup, making it 30mm lower than standard, and an A2 licence version based on the S with a smaller 660cc engine for riders in Europe and other markets where licence restrictions apply based on a bikes power.

The Street Triple is not Triumphs largest selling model line in India, but it is quite successful and the new bikes will likely head to our shores later this year as CBUs. For India, however, expect the three main variants only.
Sen. Fischer

The first highway bill has emerged in the 115th Congress a two-pronged measure introduced on Feb. 1 by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE).

The proposal calls both for temporarily depositing certain Customs and Border Patrol revenues into the Highway Trust Fund and giving states greater control over how road projects are built if they forego some federal highway funding.

The Build USA Infrastructure Act would pour the first $21.4 billion of CBP revenue collected into the Highway Trust fund every year for five years, starting after the current FAST Act highway bill runs out in 2020.

As for the windfall of flexibility aimed at states, the bill would let them enter into agreements with the Federal Highway Administration. And in return for remitting 10% of their federal-aid highway dollars, states would receive control over federal approval of the design, environmental permitting and construction aspects of federal highway projects. The remitted funds would also land in the HTF.

Fischer, who chairs the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, said the Build USA Infrastructure Act is modeled after her legislative success developing innovative, sustainable transportation funding solutions in the Nebraska Unicameral, including the Build Nebraska Act and the Federal Funds Purchase Program. She said her state is initiating and completing projects at a faster pace because of these measures.

Funding challenges and the burdensome federal regulatory approval process have delayed infrastructure projects across America for decades, Fischer said in a statement.

The Build USA Infrastructure Act is a responsible, forward-looking proposal to strengthen roads, bridges, and highways for the benefit of the American families and workers who use them every day," she added.
The giant carmaker Honda has issued a recall for their faulty Takata airbag inflators. The replacement is part of Hondas preventive global recall campaign concerning the defective airbag inflators that were made by Takata Corporation.

According to The Economic Times, Honda Cars India has volunteered to replace all front airbag inflators in previous generation models that have been manufactured during the year 2012. There are 7,265 units of hatchback Jazz, 32,456 units of the model City, 659 units of premium sedan Accord and 1,200 units of Civic recalled so far. The replacement will be free of charge at Honda Car India.

Even though there are no guidelines for recalls in India, there have been over two million cars recalled since the voluntary recall policy was announced in July 2012. The customers have to check whether their cars are covered by this campaign by submitting their Vehicle Identification Number on Honda Car India's official website.

This is not the first time Honda has had problems with Takata airbags, Cars Guide reported. Over in Australia, Honda has recalled their Takata airbags for the second time. 15,535 Jazz models, 4,804 Accord Euro models, 2,656 Accord models, 1,426 City models and 36 Legend models all built in 2012 have been recalled as well. All the vehicles have been affected by faulty Takata airbag defects. The problem occurs when the airbag inflator ruptures during an accident or deployment as a result of moisture intrusion, which can lead to the propellant becoming unstable.

Honda encourages all the owners to replace their faulty airbag inflators at authorized Honda dealers. The replacement will come at no cost to the customer. Honda is not the first one to recall their vehicles due to Takata airbag issue.

BMW, Daimler, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Ford General Motors, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota have all issued forced recalls for the Takata airbag issue that was discovered in 2008. Owners can reach to Honda recall contact center for further information. Unfortunately, there have been 16 deaths so far that are caused by a handful of the approximately 100 million cars recalled globally.
One of the lead designers in the mobile industry Samsung is long due for a new release. After the incidents of the latest Galaxy Note 7, Samsung has been keen on making things right this time.

According to Boy Genius Report, Samsung has issued press invites for its usual pre-Mobile World Congress press event with a hint that the latest Galaxy S8 wont be the star of the show. Two of the predecessors, the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S6 were both launched at the Mobile World Congress. But multiple reports have confirmed that Samsung Galaxy S8 would not be launched at Mobile World Congress in Spain this year. They want to make sure the phone doesnt pose any security risk like Galaxy Note 7 did. CEO of Samsungs mobile division said that theres not going to be a Galaxy S8 announcement in Barcelona.

The next generation Samsung Galaxy S8 will ship with a bigger battery than its predecessors, Express UK reported. A report from SamMobile, a technology blog, claims that there have been requests made by Samsung for both 3,250mAh and 3,750mAh batteries from its suppliers. Samsung Galaxy S8 is expected to launch with 5.8inch Quad HD display and a 3,250mAh battery. And the rumored Samsung Galaxy S8 Plus is expected to launch with a larger 6.2inch Quad HD AMOLED display model with a bigger 3,75mAH battery. The phone is rumored to be running an energy efficient Snapdragon 835 processor.

The phone is rumored to be launched on March 29th with 4GB of RAM, Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor, and dual camera set. On the physical side of things. Samsung will drop all physical buttons from the front of the device. The decision to ditch the buttons will allow Samsung to reduce the bezels at the bottom of the device.

With its removal, Samsung will have to relocate the fingerprint scanner to the rear of the phone. There have been some rumors that Samsung will use one of the headline features of the latest generation iPhones  3D Touch. But in order to use it Samsung will have to adapt the Android operating system itself since the software doesnt support the technology yet.
The race for the best German luxury brand continues and it will remain that way. Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW have always been the front-runners in terms of luxury brands, German-made or not. Each of the three has enjoyed its fair share of being on top for being the choice of the modern day's elites and most powerful and influential of individuals.

According to Car Buyer UK, UK buyers particularly can't even wrap their heads around the possibility of choosing which among the three is the winner for being the best. It was reported that back in 2015, almost half a million units from the three German manufacturers were sold in the UK.

It is easy to understand why the trend remains this way. It definitely goes beyond image. Each manufacturer definitely excels at what it does. Each of the three produces the best engines, impeccable interiors which define ultimate comfort and luxury, and most importantly high resale value. These factors make its vehicles the best in all aspects.

Why Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche should be worried about Teslas Model 3 https://t.co/nOPKVjkcgG pic.twitter.com/aBJNGbg3tt  Bloomberg (@business) May 22, 2016

This unbridled and unmatched qualities make it difficult for the upper crust members of the society to choose. Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW all offer enviable features which others can just dream of. The UK market for that matter is one that can comfortably afford such vehicles from the German brands.

To make it simple, unique characteristics and USPs or Unique Selling Propositions are provided for each of the three. Audi is known for luxurious interiors, quiet driving experience, four-wheel drive, and understated styling. This is perfect for the businessman who cares more about luxury more than sporting an eye-popping drool worthy of a ride.

BMW is known for its rear-wheel drive and enjoyable driving experience, driver-focused dashboard, and an impressive and excellent infotainment system and standard sat nav. BMW is perfect for those who want the best of the best in terms of infotainment, for a more enjoyable and entertaining drive along the beautiful coastline.

Finally, Mercedes-Benz is notorious for its cosseting driving experience, sumptuous interior, and top of the class pioneering safety system. Perfect for the elite family which prioritizes safety more than anything else.

As added by Automobile Mag, each of the three brands have remained homogenous as they all exert effort to grow their product lineups. Each of the German brands has their set of unique qualities which make it extra challenging to decipher for the individual luxury buyers.

At the end of the day, all three brands namely Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and BMW are clear winners in their own right. They have withstood the test of time for still emerging to be the best over several decades being in the market. Any of the three is an excellent choice. There is no competition.
Hawker Pacific has solidified its position in Australia with the acquisition of Adagold FBOs in Brisbane and Cairns. Hawker Pacific has operations throughout Australia, the Middle East, Pacific and Asia. The acquisition is a strategic one as opportunities for business aviation expand in Queensland. The acquisition comes as Queensland gears up for the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, the scheduled completion of a new runway at Brisbane Airport in 2020 and the opening of a new Casino in Brisbane, the company said in a news release. Cairns continues to be a premier tourist destination with increased business traffic.

The two FBOs began operating under the Hawker Pacific brand on Jan. 24. The company will operate two facilities at Brisbane, its existing facility and the new one in the general aviation precinct. In addition to added capacity, the closer proximity of the new FBO facility to the new runway at Brisbane Airport will deliver significant time saving for Hawker Pacific customers particularly when utilizing the General Aviation precinct, the company said. For more, see Hawker Pacifics website.
Now that it has been established that we live in a world of regular facts and alternative facts, the morass of confusion over the announced closing of the much-fought-over Santa Monica Airport comes into perfect focus. As far as this airport is concerned, there arent so much alternative facts as multiple parallel realities. I think even if you live there, its not possible to discern the right thing to do.

In this space, Im an aviation opinion writer and on the subject of airport closures, Im expected to default to auto-preach and thunder about the FAAs back-alley decision to allow the city to first shorten the airports runway and second close it by 2028. But Im not much of a choir leader because I believe keeping an airport open in the wrong place may be bad public policy in the service of what is, after all, just another special interest: general aviation.

Ive been to Santa Monica exactly once and have flown over it several times. Its stunning how this strip of pavement survives, encroached by a relentless tide of urban development. Like clockwork since the day AVweb started, we have published multiple Santa Monica stories. Google offers up more than 18 million hits on everything combined and in the distant back pages youll find a trail littered with court fights, FAA decrees, city council intrigue and vocal pilots. Our story over the weekend details the latest development which wassuspiciouslyengineered over the weekend between the FAA and the city. It allows the city to whack 1500 feet off the runway and eventually close it in 2028. Aviation alphabets and local interests were unaware of it.

Personally, I dont see how this was ever not going to happen, given the value of the real estate and the overwhelming economic pressure on it to deliver more of a return than an airport ever could. As pilots, were good at tuning out these larger considerations in favor of our own interests. But I like to think in addition to being a pilot, Im also a citizen capable of weighing pros and cons that may affect my own fortunes. I also like to think I know the greater good when I see it.

With Santa Monica, the alternative facts kick into high gear. For every article like this one that provides a glimpse into what some neighbors think, you see a counterargument from airport supporters who are just as sure theyre right. As pilots, after all, we are perfectly capable of being our own worst enemies if we argue that neighbors knew the airport was there when they moved in. True, but they also have a voice in whether it stays there. As the Air & Space article points out, some residents didnt mind the airport until jet operations ticked up. When a Gulfsteam blows over your picnic table, you tend to notice.

A few years ago, a cabal of irate neighbors elected council people to curtail or close my home airport and, at the time, I wondered then if that was good public policy. Did it represent the will of the community? It turns out that it did not and the FAA did a stellar job of keeping the council from gaining an inch at the airports expense. Is this true at Santa Monica, too? How could we possibly tell? I dont see the FAAs decision as a sellout so much as the kind of negotiation regulatory agencies do. On the other hand, I dont like that it was done quietly on a weekend. What dont we know about this deal?

Im not so sure this perspective from the local paper is any more right than anything else Ive read. The author concludes that FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, an Obama appointee, made the decision to close SMO as a slap in the face to Republicans and that President Trump will reverse it. The reason is that Trump will want to punish the rich liberals in Santa Monica by sticking them with a stinky, noisy airport.

The flaw in that theory is that the rich Hollywood liberals who railed against Trump base their jets at SMO and closing it would deny them access. Or maybe just shortening the runway would chase the jets away, but keep piston aircraft active. That might actually be a net plus for the community, since the pistons are quieter. Either way, nothing is happening toward closure until beyond 2028.

How about an alternative fact theory? Trump actually ordered the closing because hes a real estate guy and knows an opportunity when he sees one. Nice place for a hotel or a resort, no? Or maybe a rich donor asked for a little payback for as surely as I sit here typing, not everyone in Santa Monica is liberal. This could be just as likely as Trump reversing Huerta. Or not. Watch closely to what happens with the runway shortening to see whats next.

Meanwhile, my successor will be stuck writing Santa Monica stories for at least the next decade, maybe longer. I hope I dont have to.
Ignoring warnings from Russia and Armenia, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday told law-enforcement authorities in Belarus to extradite to Azerbaijan a Russian-Israeli blogger arrested by them because of his trips to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Lukashenko defended the December 14 arrest and said the blogger, Alexander Lapshin, should have been handed over to Baku long ago.

Azerbaijan appealed to Interpol, not to us, the Interfax news agency quoted him as telling a news conference. We detained him in accordance with Interpols decision and must hand him over to Azerbaijan in accordance with all laws and regulations.

The Azerbaijani authorities say Lapshin illegally entered occupied territories of Azerbaijan when he visited Karabakh in 2011 and 2012 without their permission. The 40-year-old, who holds Israeli, Russian and Ukrainian passports, gave detailed accounts of the trips on his Russian-language blog.

A court in Minsk upheld last week Belarusian prosecutors decision to authorize Lapshins extradition. He appealed against that ruling.

They say that he appealed but Im sure that the court will still back our decision because its legal, said Lukashenko.

The Belarusian leader, who has faced strong Western criticism of his human rights record throughout his long rule, made clear at the same time that he would accept any agreement on the Lapshin case that could be reached by Azerbaijan, Israel and Russia.

Lapshin was detained in Minsk two weeks after Lukashenko visited Baku and received Azerbaijans highest state award from President Ilham Aliyev. The two presidents have long maintained a warm personal rapport.

Lukashenko ruled out Lapshins release from Belarusian custody despite Russias objections to the bloggers extradition, which were first publicly expressed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last month.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, reiterated earlier on Friday that Lapshins handover to Baku is inadmissible. According to the RIA Novosti news agency, Zakharova said Moscow is engaged in intensive contacts with the Belarusian authorities on the matter.

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian condemned Lapshins prosecution as a disgrace on Tuesday. Both Armenia and Belarus are members of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

Lukashenko defied the criticism amid rising tensions between Moscow and Minsk that have been triggered by a fresh dispute over the price of Russian oil and gas supplied to Belarus.

The 62-year-old strongman on Friday condemned Russias decision earlier this week to step up controls on the Russian-Belarusian border. He accused the Kremlin of violating treaties between the closely linked neighbors and using energy supplies to "grab us by the throat."
Prime Minister Karen Karapetian promoted on Friday a $10 million plan to refurbish Gyumris historic old town which the Armenian government says will greatly stimulate economic activity in the impoverished city.

The tourism-oriented program drawn up by Armenias Central Bank and a private charity at Karapetians initiative calls for capital repairs of the two main streets in Gyumris central Kumayri district mainly constructed in the 19th century. This will supposedly attract many Armenian and foreign tourists.

Official said old houses to be reconstructed there over the next two years will offer about 8,000 square meters of commercial space to businesspeople interested in opening shops, restaurants and centers for traditional arts or handicrafts.

Accompanied by several dozen entrepreneurs, Karapetian visited Armenias second largest city to tour its old district and attend the official presentation of the tourism development plan. He said Kumayris renovation will be financed from a $10 million investment fund that will have mostly private contributors.

We regard the establishment of the fund and the street repairs as an important catalyst for business processes here, Karapetian said at the presentation. The state will stand by this fund with all its budgetary and financial instruments.

As a former businessman who was very successful in business, I want to assure you that the invested funds will be recouped quickly, he told entrepreneurs.

Speaking to journalists afterwards, the premier, in office since September, said he and his family will invest $500,000 of their money in the project.

Some local reporters voiced skepticism about the effort, saying that previous Armenian government failed to make good on their pledges to breathe a new life into Gyumri. What kind of a guarantee do you want from me? an irritated Karapetian replied. He insisted that his cabinet is serious about the project.

Gyumri has still not fully recovered from a catastrophic 1988 earthquake that killed 25,000 people and left hundreds of thousands of others homeless in this and other parts of northwestern Armenia. The city has long had one of the highest poverty and unemployment rates in the country.

The upcoming launch of the tourism development project should coincide with a large-scale reconstruction of Gyumri streets and roads which have been in an increasingly poor condition in the last few years.

The Yerevan government and the municipal administration secured last year $25 million in funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the planned street repairs. The money will also be used for installing new and energy-efficient lighting and upgrading the municipal drainage infrastructure.
3 February 2017 10:35 (UTC+04:00)

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 10 times violated the ceasefire in various directions along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported on February 3.

The Azerbaijani army positions located on the nameless heights of Azerbaijans Gazakh district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located on the nameless heights of the Noyemberyan district of Armenia.

Moreover, the Azerbaijani army positions were shelled from the Armenian positions located on the nameless heights of the Armenian-occupied Goranboy and Fuzuli districts of Azerbaijan.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
3 February 2017 14:43 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Armenians have long realized that they were deceived by a group of greedy people, and feel guilty towards Azerbaijanis, said Vahagn Karapetyan, famous Armenian writer in an interview with Azeri.Today.

Currently, Karapetyan lives in Canada. He is the editor-in-chief of the Literary Canada magazine and a member of the Writers Union of Armenia.

Talking about the economic-political situation in his motherland, the writer said that the main source of income for Armenian authorities is the budget of the country. Therefore, in the upcoming parliamentary election, the parties will struggle to gain access to those funds.

As for ordinary people, their welfare does not even bother the Armenian authorities, said Karapetyan. Citizens of Armenia are only meant to pay taxes and replenish the budget, which will then be successfully stolen.

The writer went on to say that most Armenians opt to leave the country; in some cases the government itself forces them, as it happened with the famous human rights activist Vahan Martirosyan.

As a result, only humbled and unpretentious people, who cannot confront the rising tyranny, remain in Armenia, he said.

Karapetyan is sure that incumbent President Serzh Sargsyan seeks to keep the power in his hands.

Speaking about the Karabakh issue, he said that it is a burden for the citizens of Armenia, primarily from an economic point of view.

Due to this conflict, the living standard in Armenia constantly falls and people, who have lost all hope, leave their homeland, he said. My compatriots have long realized that they were deceived by a bunch of greedy people, and feel guilty towards Azerbaijanis.

Karapetyan added that the two nations should come to the negotiating table and solve all their problems by themselves.

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. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia still controls fifth part of Azerbaijan's territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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3 February 2017 18:15 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Many Armenian diaspora organizations parasitize, and in particular, they parasitize the Armenian people, Lev Spivak, director general of the Israel-Azerbaijan International Association, told Trend on February 3.

"At least, here in Israel, I see that Armenian diaspora organizations often make much ado about nothing, though everyone knows that they will achieve nothing."

Spivak says Zehava Gal-On, a member of the Knesset, Israeli parliament, can be shown as an example.

Zehava Gal-On yells in support of various Armenian ideas and, in particular, the so-called Armenian genocide, although she is well aware that everything is in vain, he said.

"Many representatives of the Armenians and their lobbyists also support various Armenian ideas, he said. I am very sorry for their sponsors and people whom they really parasitize."

Earlier, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) attempted to distort the phrases brought by Trend Agencys author in an article dealing with the strongly worsening situation of the Armenian diaspora in the US.

Citing a paragraph from the article titled Trump puts end to Armenian lobby's influence on US on its official Twitter account, the ANCA twitted a quote from Adolf Hitlers book.

By comparing these two absolutely different quotes the ANCA tried to reduce the devastating effect of the article.

"I do not even think that the author of the article had some anti-Semitic intent, Spivak added. I was born and brought up in Baku. I visit Azerbaijan three times a year. I have a lot of friends in Azerbaijan and I have never encountered anti-Semitism there."

People have lived in harmony in Azerbaijan for centuries regardless of ethnicity or religion, he said. It was important that you are my neighbor, rather than the way you pray.

Spivak also appreciates that the Azerbaijani government is promoting multiculturalism at the state level today.

"The promotion of Azerbaijani tolerance in the world shows the world that it is possible to live in harmony, he added.

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3 February 2017 18:23 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The Armenian leadership is infamous for its fascist statements, Vahid Bayramov, a representative of the Israel-Azerbaijan International Association in Azerbaijan, told Trend on February 3.



Bayramov was commenting on the attempt of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) to compare a phrase about the Armenian diaspora parasitizing on the US with a quote related to Jews, from Adolf

Hitlers book.



ANCA attempted to distort the phrases brought by Trend Agencys author in an article dealing with the rapidly worsening situation of the Armenian diaspora in the US.



Bayramov said that words about the Armenian diaspora parasitizing on the US have no relation to the Armenian people, and refer specifically to the Armenian diaspora.



Let me remind you that it was the ex-president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan who said that Armenians and Azerbaijanis are genetically incompatible. Such phrases refer directly to Alfred Rosenberg, who was engaged in studying and measuring human skulls, thus identifying people as Aryans and non-Aryans, Bayramov said.



The Armenian diaspora, and in particular its leaders, are a bunch of people trying to push through their own interests, and some get fooled by it, Bayramov added.



He noted that its natural for the government of Armenia and its diaspora to engage in provocations and distortions of this kind.



They like to call things by different names, making provocative statements, Bayramov said. Namely their actions can be compared to the policy of the Third Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.



The phrase The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed is widely attributed to Goebbels, Bayramov added.

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3 February 2017 09:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

USACC will host Annual Conference with focus on business, trade and investment promotion between Azerbaijan and the United States on March 1-2, 2017. In an exclusive Interview with Azernews Susan Sadigova, Executive director of the U.S.- Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce based in Washington DC, talks about major milestones of the signatures.

Question: Could you share some information with our readers about the upcoming USACC Annual Conference on U.S.-Azerbaijan relations?

Answer: USACC Annual Conference is our signature event that we organize every year. The last conference took place at the Harvard Club of New York and generated a lot of interest from local business community. Our next conference is scheduled to take place on March 1-2, 2017 at the historic Willard Hotel of Washington, D.C. near the White House.

The first day of the conference will have separate discussion panels covering the topics of energy, banking and finance, economic reforms, investment opportunities in the non-oil sectors of economy, as well as discussions on public-private partnership opportunities in Azerbaijan.

On the second day USACC plans to organize a series of briefings and roundtables with focus on business opportunities in agriculture and food processing, renewable energy, as well as opportunities in the industrial parks of Azerbaijan with focus on petrochemical industry.

This year, in addition to banking and finance, we have a good list of companies and attendees representing other areas, such as international trade and export finance, import-export management, new product development, food processing, real estate development and renewable energy. This year we also invited experts specializing in so-called P3 (public-private partnership) projects, which I think is very essential instrument to attract foreign direct investments into Azerbaijan. U.S. offers great amount of knowledge, resources and expertise that can help Azerbaijan in the development of P3 basis business ventures. Whether it is P3 DBB (Design-Bid-Build) or P3 DBFOM (Design-Build-Finance-Operate-Maintain) structures U.S. has enough resources to help Azerbaijan in that direction.

We already have a great line-up of speakers and experts and welcoming all the Azerbaijani companies to join this event to learn more about doing business with the United States.

Question: You presently serve as the Executive director of USACC. What are the principal activities of USACC?

Answer: Washington DC based U.S. - Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce was established in 1995. It is a U.S. incorporated non-profit organization managed by the Board of Directors, the members elected from the U.S. and Azerbaijani companies. The USACC was a key driving force behind the two of the world's most strategic and ambitious regional energy projects, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum gas pipeline, both of which are operational today.

USACC owns a four-floor historic building located in the heart of Georgetown. The building hosts USACC as well as Azerbaijan Trade and Cultural Center (ATCC). The Azerbaijan Trade and Cultural Center (ATCC) was founded by USACC in September 2000 to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States and was inaugurated by late President Heydar Aliyev.

USACC organizes annual conferences, round tables, trade missions, industry-specific seminars, as well as member-to-member meetings in the United States and Azerbaijan, which brings together high-rank government officials and private sector representatives from both countries. On a regular basis, we organize trade missions of American companies to Azerbaijan and vice versa. In the organization of those missions we partner with both Azerbaijani and U.S. governments, as well as trade promotion and business development organizations in both countries.

Among other things USACC also organizes social events, such as Novruz, New Year and solidarity day celebrations for our diaspora members. Washington DC metro area houses the large number of our diaspora members. All these events provide multiple opportunities for business networking among our members and business community of tristate area, which includes the states of Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Overall, all USACC activity aimed at serving the interests of its members, and as a platform for members to network, grow business contacts, exchange ideas, share knowledge and experience of doing business in both countries. USACC is also a good starting point for its members in gaining market insight and helping to locate local partners both in Azerbaijan and the United States.

Question: What business prospects do you see for U.S. investors in the non-oil sector of Azerbaijans economy?

Answer: While the main target of Azerbaijan today is to diversify its non-oil exports, the attraction of investments, advanced technologies and management experience from abroad is, still, one of the main directions in Azerbaijan's economic policy. Both U.S. and Azerbaijani companies are encouraged to partake and submit their proposals to their counterparts in either country. USACC can serve as a bridge and help companies to identify contacts and facilitate communication between interested parties whether they are in Azerbaijan or in the United States.

Taking into account business opportunities, the government incentives available both from Azerbaijan and the U.S., the co-investment opportunities with private and public funds, as well as tax breaks and other business perks for the development of non-oil sector, I think that USACC can play vital role in attracting American capital into Azerbaijani economy.

State support and incentives can increase the interest of U.S. businesses to do business with Azerbaijan. Take the agriculture and food processing sector, for example. It is one of the significant employment sectors in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijans climatic diversity provides the perfect environment for the cultivation of a wide range of crops. Agricultural processing, including food and beverage processing, is increasing rapidly, with many food products intended for export to CIS, Middle East and EU countries. Consequently, there is a great demand for technology and know-how intended for food processing and packaging for different consumer market segments, especially ready-to-drink and ready-to-eat food and beverage products. You can find many success stories of business ventures in the U.S., where companies were successful in establishing business operations, developing new products and selling them both in domestic and international markets.

Question: What private, government and non-profit organizations USACC sees as either a strategic partner or as a rival?

Answer: USACC is closely cooperating with government institutions both in Azerbaijan and the United States. In Azerbaijan, we can name the Embassy of the United States, AmCham Azerbaijan, AZPROMO, Azerbaijan Investment Company. In the United States, the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Washington DC, The Global Chamber, DC Export Council, as well as the U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, U.S. Trade and Development Agency, U.S. EXIM Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC)  all responsible for international investments, trade and commerce of the United States.

For example, USACC has very good working relationship with the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), which is the U.S. Governments development finance institution. OPIC provides investors with financing, political risk insurance, and other forms of business support. Over the past two decades, OPIC has invested around $230 million in Azerbaijan in 24 business projects. While Azerbaijans financial services has been the major sector for investments, OPIC is very interested in tapping into other industries as well, such as high technologies, start-ups, agriculture, renewable energy, real estate and tourism. OPIC is not only mandated to lend capital, but also authorized to provide skills, knowledge and technology transfers for businesses overseas. OPIC funded projects include investments in the energy (BTC oil pipeline), franchising, banking, microfinance, hotel and hospitality sectors of Azerbaijan.

For your readers information, OPIC managing director Kenneth Angell, who oversees the South Caucasus region will be among the speakers at our Annual Conference. Mr. Angell will talk about how businesses in Azerbaijan can benefit from OPIC financial products and services. OPIC also provides business insurance, which looks very attractive financial product for investors reluctant to invest in emerging and developing markets around the world. Having said that the conference will allow event participants to meet in-person and discuss their potential business projects with OPIC representatives and other companies during their visit to Washington DC.

For example, this year we have few companies from Azerbaijan among the attendees, who operate in microfinance, agriculture (pomegranate growers), beverage manufacturing and in real estate development sectors of Azerbaijan. They are looking for investors, who can invest either in the form of debt or equity in their existing projects. In another example, one of attendees from Azerbaijan is looking for financial leasing of the manufacturing and packaging equipment that he wants to export from the United States vendor. USACC arranged one-on-one meetings with OPIC representatives and some of our members, who provide financial services for clients in emerging markets.

Question: What are the requirements to be the USACC member? And what are the industries your current members do represent?

Answer: USACC has four membership levels open for businesses and individuals operating either in the United States or in Azerbaijan. While benefactor, sustaining and regular memberships are designed for legal entities, the associate level is for individuals only. Each membership level has different benefits and options for members. Depending on membership level, USACC members have access to different services, including access to networking events, as well as other members contacts, the use of USACC facility for private meetings, events and company presentations, visa application support, translation and logistics support, and one-time assistance on ad-hoc individual business requests.

As far as your second question concerned, our members include financial institutions, energy firms, law firms, companies specialized in accounting, audit and tax consultancy, manufacturers of durable and non-durable goods, including food and beverage products, construction materials, global transportation and logistics, hospitality, engineering firms, real estate and construction, a company helping to get international trade and export finance, a company providing import-export management and new product development services, a company providing business consulting services, especially on P3 related projects. We also have few individuals as USACC associate members as individual business practitioners.

Having few weeks left until the Conference, I encourage all the interested to consider attending the Conference. For more information about USACC conference please visit the event website: www.usazconference.com

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Watching the unfolding violence and chaos at UC-Berkeley last night, I could not help but think of two people: August Landmesser and Zacchaeus, the reformed tax collector from the Gospel of St. Luke.

In my branch of the Orthodox Christian Church, the story of Zaccheus (St. Luke 19:1-10) was read on Sunday as the first of several weeks in preparation for Lent. The tax collector, too short to see over the crowd, climbed up a sycomore [sic] tree in order to see Jesus as He passed through Jericho. To his surprise, Jesus eats in his home and, overcome by the Lord of Mercy, he changes his ways.

The image of Zacchaeus strenuously climbing above the crowd in order to see Jesus came to my mind upon re-reading the remarks of Declan Ganley at the Acton Institutes Crisis of Liberty in the West conference in London on December 1. Ganley, an internationally renowned businessman, provoked the comparison by referring to the famous photograph of another, little-appreciated personality: August Landmesser.

Landmesser is one of those historical figures destined to be known by sight and reputation rather than by name. A 1936 photograph taken at a Nazi rally in Hamburg, Germany, captures Landmesser as the lone holdout who refused to give the Heil Hitler salute. He, too, stood out from the crowd.

Ganley told an Acton audience last month:

His act of defiance was not targeted simply at the Nazis and their Fuhrer; it was also a powerful rebuke of the hundreds around him, the people who raised their right arms, the people who went along with the crowd. It takes courage not to go along with a crowd, especially when that crowd is screaming at you that you must. But throughout the history of humanity, our race has shown time and time again that the human spirit will never be broken by even the most immense pressure to conform, or to abandon its conscience.

That need for resistance is greater yet, Ganley said, when the crowd is not a random collection of people but a self-selected group of our peers. Ganley referred to the online echo chambers, created through never-ending rounds of unfriending and mutual political affirmation, that comprise the modern online community:

Not only have we been granted an unprecedented power to speak; we have been given more control over the voices we listen to than any humans who came before us. We can create our own bubbles, and live within them and hide ourselves away from the unbeliever. We are in the process of fracturing ourselves as a people.  We are told that we live in a multicultural, pluralist, cosmopolitan society. But the truth is that many of us dont. Instead we too often live in monocultural, rigid, and highly ordered little societies of our own choosing  and increasingly, there are those who react badly to the discovery that they are not the majority anywhere outside of the world that they have created for themselves.

Reacting badly may be the most charitable description of the would-be censors and rioters at Berkeley on Wednesday night. Outraged by the presence of divergent viewpoints, they began destroying their own university rather than permit the physical presence of dissent  a process Ganley discussed in detail in his remarks, as did Sir Roger Scruton in his presentation.

Zacchaeus literally had to rise above the crowd in order to see clearly, to behold the face of the Savior obscured by his society. This is true for those of us in the modern West, as well. This is true, paradoxically, especially in institutions dedicated to higher learning and the free exchange of ideas, where illiberalism, intellectual sclerosis, and occasional outbursts of violence have replaced open inquiry, debate, and dialogue.

But the need for courage only increases as we progress in age, because the stakes get higher. It takes tremendous courage for the scholar to see above the shallow academic consensus and find a new interpretation, or a theory that upends sterile dogma; for the researcher to sift through mounds of fruitless test results and discover among them a hidden innovation.

Of those undertakings that require courage, the entrepreneurial vocation stands out.

The entrepreneur, the creator, has seen what others have not: a new product or service that others have not offered, or not offered with the same degree of quality. He  or she  must rise above the criticism of friends and family that the new proposition is doomed and his or her lifes passion is hopeless. He must sacrifice security, time, on an uncertain proposition  to go out on a limb, as it were  in order to try his fortune and transform a new product or improved service from a mere dream into reality.

Amid this is the government, trying with ferocious might to bring down the entrepreneur, to level the achiever with the inert, to take the creative element down a peg through levies, licenses, and redistribution.

Those who resist the forces of entropy  whether produced by the private or public sector  make the world better for all of us.

Sundays Gospel closed with Zacchaeus, having been granted essentially a license to steal from his countrymen by the imperial Roman government, vowing to make four-fold restitution for all the money he had purloined. He leaves, apparently reduced to poverty, but rich in the spirit.

Here endeth the Gospel. However, there is more to his story.

In the tradition of the Orthodox Church, we learn that Zacchaeus followed the Apostle Peter, who appointed him bishop of Caesarea in Palestine where he faithfully served the Gospel and died peacefully. He is named among the 70 Apostles, the larger group of followers who traveled with the 12 Disciples.

The life of the Apostle Zacchaeus, as he is known in the East, bears one further testimony against statism and absolutism: On the Orthodox Churchs calendar, he is commemorated on April 20  Adolf Hitlers birthday.

His life is a reminder that all of us must struggle, to the point of tremendous exertion, and expose ourselves to potential embarrassment if we are to rise in the spiritual life. Once we do so, Ganleys lecture is a stark reminder of the duties we owe, to one another and to our tradition of ordered liberty, in order to preserve the historic rights the West has bestowed upon all of us.

Read Declan Ganleys full remarks here.

(Photo credit: Public domain.)
3 February 2017 10:42 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

A round table on EITI Mainstreaming was held at Azerbaijans oil fund SOFAZ on February 2, Azertac reported.

Head of the EITI International Secretariat Jonas Moberg, Executive Director of SOFAZ Shahmar Movsumov, the World Bank Country Manager for Azerbaijan, Europe and Central Asia Naveed Hassan Naqvi, members of the World Bank, ADB, EBRD, NRGI, Government, NGO Coalition and local and foreign extractive companies attended the round table.

The participants made discussions on the provision of EITI Mainstreaming concept to the public, bringing together all stakeholders and application of this concept and its benefits to the country.

EITI is a special multilateral and voluntary initiative, supported by a coalition of companies, governments, investors and civil society organizations and global standard for improved transparency in the oil, gas and mining sector. Azerbaijan joined EITI in 2003. Azerbaijan was awarded the "2009 EITI Award" for its commitment to EITI principles and criteria and achievements in EITI Implementation.

SOFAZ, which is engaged in accumulation and management of oil and gas revenues of the country, was established in 1999 with assets of $271 million.

SOFAZ revenues for 2017 was approved at 8,370 billion manats and expenditures at 14,484 billion manats.

Based on SOFAZ's regulations, its funds may be used for construction and reconstruction of strategically important infrastructure facilities, as well as solving important national problems.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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3 February 2017 15:34 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The Asian Development Bank may issue a credit worth some $200 million to Azerbaijan within its Railway Sector Development Program.

ADB mission is expected to arrive in Azerbaijan in August 1-11 to consider the issue. Management of the Bank will held an assessment of the project on September 13.

Azerbaijan Railways (ADY) is the executing agency for obtaining the loan.

The proposed program is deemed to be a government priority and a part of the Azerbaijan State Program for the Development of Railways 2016 -2020. The program fits with ADB's Midterm Review of Strategy 2020 and 2010 Sustainable Transport Initiative.

The government of Azerbaijan is endeavoring to transform ADY into a profitable company and to improve railway service delivery. In this regard, it has requested the ADB to finance railway sector, corporate reforms, and ADY financial restructuring.

Besides, the funds will be directed at the improvement of railway infrastructure, particularly along the North-South Railway Corridor. The funds are planned to be drawn for the development of Baku-Yalama (border with Russia) rail line (part of the North-South)

The North-South transportation corridor is meant to connect Northern Europe to South-East Asia and has a strategic importance for the region. It will serve as a link connecting the railways of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia.

Azerbaijan, which became a member of ADB on December 22, 1999, has a 0.5 percent share in the banks capital.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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3 February 2017 15:54 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The Museum Center of Azerbaijan's Culture and Tourism Ministry will host a personal exhibition of young artist Milena Nabiyeva on February 8-11.

"Minabi - Patterns of the Universe" is a bright palette that reflects the artist's personal feelings. The artist expressed her inner world not only in paintings but also in furniture, painting on crockery, textiles and accessory, Trend Life reported.

Just this diversity created the very Universe of the artist, which she decided to share. The distinctive works of Milena Nabiyeva makes an unusual approach to creating art paintings. In addition to traditional acrylic and oil paints, she uses Swarovski stones. As the artist herself says, she wants to give even more brightness to colors not only in color, but also to add sparkle crystal placer of glares.

The combination of colors in the works of the artist is a celebration of love and life, a vivid manifestation of the solar paints that characterized the nature of the author.

Milenas path to the art began with an interest in patterns characteristic of Turkic motives. She admits: Patterns are interesting to me in any manifestation. My long-standing passion for history flowed into the study of patterned designs. Especially those covered with historic dust. They have so much mysticism, mystery, hidden meaning.

The artist claims that the patterns are all around us. We should only want to see them: in a pool, in the shade of leaves, in the reflection on glass... 

Trying to reproduce a lacy outline of the image the artist often uses contour technique which is a complex one and requires the attention and patience. For Milena, work in this technique is similar to immersion in a world where the edges of reality blurred giving way to an atmosphere of spiritual flight. Often, the artist draws inspiration in others. In those communication with which enriches herself. After all, the aura of such people according to Milena is patterns that depend only on what a person is inherently.

I believe that every meeting with an interesting person is not a simple case. I am absolutely sure that those who come on our way are sent by God with a specific mission. And do not refer to these meetings as something having no meaning and take them seriously. These are the same patterns that are written into the fabric of our lives, says Milena.

"Minabi - Patterns of the Universe" will give guests the space, filled with rich flashes of color emanating from each of the presented works. The artist herself is inherent in organic life-affirming colours. After all, she admits she does not like dark colours. And even in a monochrome palette she chooses the brightest one.

Media partners of the event are Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az, Azernews.az.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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3 February 2017 12:18 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Pakistan has reiterated its support to Azerbaijan on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution and condemned the occupation and ethnic cleanings policy of aggressor Armenia.

The Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of Pakistans National Assembly has passed a resolution condemning the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia, the Pakistani TV channels website khybernews.tv reported.

The resolution was passed during the meeting of the Committee held in Islamabad on February 3. The resolution also condemned the genocide committed by Armenian armed forces in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly on February 26, 1992, against civilian population.

The Committee re-affirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders, further demanding implementation of resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly on immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

The Committee supported the efforts of Azerbaijan to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by peaceful means.

Pakistan and Azerbaijan enjoy close and cooperative relations, which are underpinned by commonalities of history, culture and faith. The baku-Islamabad ties are characterized by mutual respect, shared perceptions and common desire to promote peace, stability and development in the region.

The two countries also share common views on major regional and international issues and cooperate closely in the regional and multilateral forums, including the UN, the OIC and the ECO.

Pakistan is the only country which has not recognized Armenia due to its illegal occupation of the Azerbaijani lands. Islamabad repeatedly stressed the need for early settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by peaceful means and in accordance with the relevant UN, OIC and OSCE resolutions.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign State with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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3 February 2017 14:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Russia welcomes any public initiatives for peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, the two parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Any existing initiative to find peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia may be useful, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova while commenting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace, initiated by Azerbaijan.

The Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace was established on December 6, 2016 in Baku, to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Platform for Peace is an initiative of the citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia, who wish to contribute to the peace process.

We highly appreciate the role of public diplomacy in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Zakharova said. Raising awareness within social circles about the need to peacefully seek mutually acceptable compromise solution to the conflict is the most important mission.

The spokesperson stressed that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a direct threat to the security and stability of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Recently, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that Moscow is trying to arrange a meeting of Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian foreign ministers and Baku has already given its consent to this meeting.

Russia is one of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries and in April 2016, the protracted conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh has shown signs of becoming a hot war, while the ceasefire was restored after Moscows mediation.

Last year, the country was a very active mediator to move towards a fair settlement to the problem, while Moscow already vowed to do utmost for the conflict resolution in 2017.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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3 February 2017 11:03 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijans state communication operator Aztelekom will restore telecommunications infrastructure in the Jojug Marjanli village of Jabrayil region, a source in the Azerbaijani telecommunication market told Trend on February 2.

He said that the work to be carried out with the support of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies stipulates deploying the communication services in the liberated village.

All work in this direction will be coordinated with structures responsible for the reconstruction of the village. The work provides for construction of a telephone exchange, allocation of additional numbering capacity, etc, the source said.

The optic cable, laid along the Shirvan-Fuzuli route, was previously expended to the city of Horadiz in the framework of the Great Return project. The continuation of the project, as previously planned, will include the work on cabling up to Zangilan, Gubadli, Jabrayil and Lachin regions.

Under the presidential order dated January 24, 4 million manats ($2.12 million) was allocated from the President`s 2017 Contingency Fund to the State Committee for Affairs of Refugees and IDPs for the construction of 50 private houses, a school building and relevant infrastructure at the first stage.

More than 190 families out of 400 families, who once lived in the village, have already expressed desire to return to their homeland. The construction work in the village will begin soon, as first 50 families out of 190 will be settled in this village at the first stage.

Work is underway on identification and assessment of the old property in the village, while ANAMA carries out operation on mine clearing.

Moreover, the Internet Community of Azerbaijan (ICA) is ready to provide free access to the Internet for the Jojug Marjanli village, and Azerbaijan's postal operator Azerpoct will open a post office in the village.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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3 February 2017 10:41 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

As part of their visit to Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijani media representatives have visited Saudi Press Agency (SPA) headquarters in Riyadh, Azertac reported.

President of Saudi Press Agency Abdullah bin Fahd Al-Hussein stressed the agencys role in information policy of the country, its technical and professional progress.

The Azerbaijani journalists toured the agencys Media Center and conference room.

The sides also discussed how to expand cooperation among the media outlets of Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia.

Earlier, Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov had met President of Saudi Press Agency (SPA) Abdullah bin Fahd Al Hussein at the agencys headquarters.

During the meeting Ali Hasanov spoke of the relations between Azerbaijan and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in various areas.

Azerbaijani Presidents Assistant noted that his visit to Saudi Arabia is arranged in order to further develop relations between the two countries in many areas including in the field of media.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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3 February 2017 15:02 (UTC+04:00)

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Swiss Confederation.

Foreign ministers of the two countries have had an exchange of congratulatory letters to mark this solemn day for both Azerbaijan and Switzerland, Azertac reported.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, in his letter addressed to his Swiss counterpart Didier Burkhalter, mentioned that there is a huge potential for the cooperation and partnership has vastly grown to encompass many areas between the two countries.

He emphasized the importance of dynamic political dialogue and inter-parliamentary ties.

Touching upon the successful activity of more than 70 Swiss companies in Azerbaijan and SOCARs operation in Switzerland, Mammadyarov stressed that the engagement of the Swiss companies in the transportation and railway projects in Azerbaijan not only benefit the bilateral relations, but also open vast regional prospects for the Swiss businesses in a large geographical area from Far East to North Europe.

He also stressed the development of cooperation in the education, culture, agriculture and tourism sectors.

Burkhalter, for his part, underlined the excellent relations between Azerbaijan and Switzerland and the manifold areas of cooperation which we have developed over the past 25 years.

Azerbaijan is a bridge between Europe and Central Asia, not only geographically, but also economically and culturally, the minister stressed in his letter addressed to Mammadyarov .

Burkhalter stressed that the current partnership reflects the strong ties between the two countries and expressed his confidence in further development of these relations. In the spirit of friendship he wished the people of Azerbaijan all the best.

Switzerland recognized Azerbaijan as an independent state on 23 December 1991. Diplomatic relations between the two states were established in January 1992.

In December 2011, Azerbaijan opened its embassy in Bern, while Switzerland has its embassy in Baku since 2007. The Azerbaijani-Swiss Friendship Group within Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan has been active since 2009. The Swiss-Azerbaijani Friendship Group in the Swiss Federal Assembly was established on 2 March 2009.

The Joint Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation between the two countries was established based on the agreement on trade and economic cooperation.

Azerbaijan, which is Switzerlands most important trading partner in the South Caucasus, enjoys good economic ties, since the federal republic in Europe cooperates with the country for over 20 years. The trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Switzerland hit 93, 865 million in January November 2016.

Moreover, soon visa regime between Azerbaijan and Switzerland will be simplified.

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4 February 2017 10:30 (UTC+04:00)

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has ordered to deal with the extradition of blogger Alexander Lapshin to Azerbaijan, BelTA agency reports.

There is no reason not to extradite Lapshin to Azerbaijan, President Lukashenko said in a meeting with representatives of the public, Belarusian and foreign media representatives.

Alexander Lapshin is a citizen of several countries and has had a criminal conspiracy with Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. He also illegally visited these territories.

Lapshin is accused of violating Azerbaijani laws on state border in April 2011 and October 2012.

In order to promote the illegal regime created in the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia, Lapshin presented Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state on his social media account and supporting the independence of the unrecognized regime he made public incitement aimed at violating Azerbaijans territorial integrity on April 6 and June 29, 2016 in those territories.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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3 February 2017 19:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Nigar Abbasova

The TAPI Pipeline Company Limited, created to construct the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, continues active negotiations with all the parties desiring to join the project.

The Turkmen online newspaper Nebit-Gaz reported that various options, including taking part in the companys share, project financing, funding through international development banks and with the help of export credit agencies, are currently being studied.

As of today, the TAPI Pipeline Company Limited comprises gas companies of the participating countries.

The Oil and Gas Complex of Turkmenistan earlier said that Ashgabat is ready to provide certain volumes of gas in the TAPI pipeline on the swap scheme to foreign companies that produce gas on the Turkmen shelf should they enter the TAPI Pipeline Company Limited consortium.

Besides, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov earlier offered the business circles of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Germany and other countries to take part in the implementation of the project.

Turkmenistans Turkmengas State Concern was appointed the leader of the consortium in August of 2015. The capacity of the TAPI pipeline is expected to stand at 33 billion cubic meters of gas per year, and its total length will amount to 1,814 kilometers. It is planned to commission the pipeline in December 2019.

Construction of the Turkmen section of TAPI was launched on December 13, 2015, while the main document for the TAPI, known as the Ashgabat Interstate Agreement, was signed in 2010.

The total length of the TAPI pipeline will stand at 1,814 kilometers with a 214-kilometer section running through Turkmenistan, a 774-kilometer section through Afghanistan and an 826-kilometer section through Pakistan. The $10 billion project is aimed to carry 33 bcm of gas to the participant countries by 2021.

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Nigar Abbasova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @nigyar_abbasova

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3 February 2017 15:19 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The new draft Constitution of Turkey, which might become a turning point in the political system of the country and its history, has been submitted to the Presidential Palace in Ankara for approval by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet said on Thursday.

After the voting process with the participation of 488 MPs at the Grand National Assembly (parliament) of Turkey, the bill, which consists of 18 articles, was approved by a majority, of which 339 MPs supported the adoption of the law, while 142 were against.

The bill was signed by the member of the parliament, Ahmet Aydin.

The Turkish President has 15 days to approve or reject the law. In the case of the Presidents approval, the text of the law will be submitted to the Prime Minister and published in the Official Gazette.

The amendments to the constitution will be put to a referendum on the first Sunday, 60 days after the publication of the text of the law in the Official Gazette.

The constitutional committee of MPs from the AK Party and the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) submitted the list of proposed amendments to parliament for ratification on December 30. Turkey's largest opposition parties, the Republican People's Party (CHP), and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) opposed to these changes.

The constitutional changes envisage increasing the number of sits at the parliament from 550 to 600 and holding parliamentary elections every five years. Currently, the parliamentary elections are held every four years.

It was also proposed to lower the age limit for a candidate to MP to 18 years from the current 25 years.

In accordance with the amendments, President-elect must be a citizen of Turkey and aged above 40 and he will also be empowered to appoint and change the ministers. The president-elect will not be obliged to be a non-party nominee any more.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his supporters have claimed that Turkey needs a strong presidency and leadership to prevent weak governance and help the country to deal with a number of challenges successfully, including terror attacks from Daesh, the PKK and the Feitullah Terrorist Organization. His opponents think that it will weaken democracy in the country and result in authoritarianism and the transition from a parliamentary to a presidential form of government.

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3 February 2017 15:09 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aiyeva

The U.S. administration of President Donald Trump is preparing new sanctions against Iran, which could be introduced this week.

The sanctions may be introduced as early as Friday, RIA Novosti reported with the reference to Reuters. It is offered to impose sanctions against eight organizations on charges of supporting terrorism and around 17 companies in accordance with an earlier decree of the President of the U.S. on the distribution of weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time the sanctions will be introduced partly as a response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test.

An agreement with Iran on the peaceful nature of Tehran's nuclear program is expected not to be affected by the sanctions.

Despite the fact that the U.S. is committed to lifting sanctions over nuclear program against Iran, the country retains other sanctions against Tehran. Some of these penalties are over Iran's human rights policies and its support for terrorism.

These sanctions bar American citizens and companies from most forms of investment or trade with the country.

Iranian authorities claim that it violates the essence of the agreement on the nuclear program, while Washington disagrees with that.

The negotiations on the Iranian nuclear issue began in 2004, as Western nations were accusing Tehran of developing a "secret military nuclear program." Since 2006, negotiations with Iran were led by the "six" of international mediators (the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany). A number of resolutions were adopted requiring Iran to stop enriching uranium with nuclear proliferation purposes. These resolutions were progressively accompanied by restrictive measures to persuade Iran to comply. In 2006-2010 the United Nations, the United States and the European Union implemented several packages of sanctions against Iran.

Lengthy negotiations resulted in the adoption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the fulfillment of which could completely remove previously lifted economic and financial sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, the United States and the European Union. The long-anticipated deal was achieved in Vienna on July 14, 2015, that committed Iran not to produce weapons-grade plutonium for 15 years, to keep no more than 300 kg of enriched uranium to 3.67 percent, and to convert nuclear facilities and use them exclusively for peaceful purposes.

In December, Washington prolonged the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) by the United States that passed in 1996 and was set to expire on December 31, 2016.

The Bill on extension of sanctions came into force without President Barack Obama's signature. Although Obama refused to sign it, he expressed no veto claims. Thus, the Bill became law as it had been passed by both chambers of the U.S. Congress by an overwhelming majority.

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3 February 2017 15:42 (UTC+04:00)

Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance returned 73.5 tons of food products imported from Kazakhstan.

The Service reported on February 3 that the goods supplied to Russias Chelyabinsk region on January 26  February 2 did not have phytosanitary certificates.

Among the products illegally supplied to Russia there were 26 tons of grain, 35.1 tons of fresh vegetables, 0.35 tons of fresh fruits, 12 tons of hay and 0.13 tons of flour.

The trucks loaded with supplied products were returned to Kazakhstan.

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3 February 2017 16:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The next meeting of the joint Turkmen-UAE intergovernmental commission will be held in the first half of 2017, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message on February 3.

According to the message, the issue was raised during the meeting of Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov and UAE Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador Hassan Abdullah Al Adhab.

Particular attention was paid to the strengthening of the political and diplomatic cooperation, intensification of the trade and economic relations and expansion of cultural and humanitarian contacts between Turkmenistan and UAE, the ministry said.

In this regard, the need for improving the effectiveness of bilateral cooperation mechanisms, in particular, joint intergovernmental commission, was stressed, the ministry said.

According to the message, Turkmenistan and UAE will consider the possibility of preparing the cooperation program between the foreign ministries soon.

Diplomatic relations between Turkmenistan and the UAE were established in October 1995. The UAE companies successfully operate in the local energy market. One of such companies - Dragon Oil has been operating in the Turkmen sector of Caspian Sea since 1999 as part of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA). The company is one of the largest foreign investors in Turkmenistan.

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3 February 2017 17:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Moscow considers unacceptable to postpone the talks on Syria in Geneva, said the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

For our part, we fully support the strong commitment of Staffan de Mistura for an early resumption of Intra-Syrian contacts in Geneva, RIA Novosti quoted Zakharova as saying at a briefing on Friday adding that any attempts to tighten or postpone the talks are unacceptable.

The Secretary-Generals Special Envoy for Syria Staffan De Mistura said that during this meeting the Syrian government will have an opportunity to engage in serious negotiations on the issue and opposition groups, in their turn, will be given a chance to come to the Geneva talks as one unified group.

The resumption of peace talks under the auspices of the UN was rescheduled from the beginning of the month to February 20. Initially, the talks were slated for February 8.

The Astana talks on Syrian settlement were brokered by Russia, Turkey, and Iran and took place in the Kazakh capital on January 23-24. They marked the first time since the beginning of Syrian civil war in 2011 when the government of Syria and the armed opposition sat together at the negotiations table.

Following the Astana talks, Russia, Iran, and Turkey agreed to create a trilateral mechanism to monitor the Syrian ceasefire.

Representatives of Russian delegation who took part in Astana talks presented a draft Constitution to the representatives of the armed opposition of Syria.

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov previously noted, Russia thus opened the discussion on the content of the basic law, which is essential for stabilization of the situation in the country.

Armed conflict continues in Syria since March 2011. Government troops are confronted by militants of different armed rebel groups. Russia has begun airstrikes on terrorist facilities in Syria since 30 September 2015. The Russian military involvement follows an official request from President Bashar Assad to President Vladimir Putin.

The UN has repeatedly tried and failed to end the Syrian conflict, which has killed 300,000 and displaced 11 million since it began five years ago.

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In 1980, PBS first aired Milton Friedmans series, Free to Choose, which chronicled the glories of liberty across a range of areas, from welfare policy and education to healthcare, monetary policy, and beyond.

In a new 19-minute documentary, Johan Norberg revisits Friedmans famous episode on trade, applying its core arguments to our modern economic context and debate, summarizing the key arguments with refreshing concision.

Friedmans episode rested heavily on the story of Hong Kong, which he visited in the original series. Norberg returns to the city, even tracking down and interviewing a business owner who has adapted his enterprise throughout the economic changes of the past few decades.

The episode highlights the arguments for trade as it relates to efficiency, economic dynamism and diversification, innovation and creative destruction, and equal opportunity. Yet as I argued rather recently, the material features offer but a hint of other baseline benefits, which are ultimately social and spiritual.

On this, Friedman connects the dots accordingly, noting the benefits of trade when it comes to fostering harmony and collaboration among workers, trade partners, foreign countries, and even competitors. The operation of the free market is so essential, not only to promote productive efficiency, Friedman explains, but even more, to foster harmony and peace among the peoples of the world.

Further, in an age where free and open exchange is now ridiculed as benefiting only a conspiratorial global elite, Friedman reminds us that it is trade, not protectionism, that ultimately benefits the least powerful in a society. Indeed, the more protections, the more cronyism.

As Friedman explains, the major beneficiaries are always the small man:

When people are free, they are able to use their own resources most effectively and you have a great deal of productivity, a great deal of opportunity. The major beneficiaries are always the small man. The man who has power who is at the top of a society, hes going to do well whatever kind of society you have. Its the society which gives the small man the opportunity to go his way, which is going to benefit him the most.

The more basic economic arguments are important, and they will always be worth revisiting and reexamining and re-articulating. Norberg reminds us how well Friedman covered those bases, but more importantly, of his enduring contributions on the deeper and more profound social value of liberty itself.

Photo: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, CC0 1.0
 German School Hails Opposition to Holocaust Remembrance Day | Main | E.U.-Supported Palestinian University Calls to Blow Up Jews 

February 03, 2017

The Atlantic Stumbles on the Truth About Potential Palestinian State

A January 28 piece about the city of Hebron in The Atlantic by Zach Dorfman contains a few errors and omissions, some more egregious than others, but also includes an unusual moment of honesty about the settlements there.

The most glaring omission in the piece comes after Dorfman details the Oslo II agreement, including that in that agreement, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) formally agreed to the terms an independent Palestinian state [sic] by 1999.? He omits, however, that such a state was offered to, and rejected by, the Palestinians three times. While its unfortunately commonplace for journalists to ignore Israeli peace offers, in this case the omission is particularly bad because the implication is that Israel agreed to Palestinian independence and then reneged on that agreement, when in fact it was the Palestinians own leaders that turned down statehood.

Another issue is Dorfmans statement that Jews believe the Temple Mount, where the mosque now stands, is where the two great Jewish temples were once located.? The statement that Jews believe? that the Temple Mount is the location of the two ancient Jewish Temples implies that this is something that is legitimately in question, something that can be subjectively believed or not. In fact, as CAMERA has noted in the past, there is ample archeological evidence of the Temples, and there are no credible scholars who question the existence of the two temples or who deny that they stood somewhere on the Temple Mount.?

Turning to Hebron, the main topic of the article, Dorfman recounts that he asked a senior Israeli military official  about the IDFs efforts to prevent violence by settlers against Hebrons Palestinian community.? He ignores, however, the spates of violence against Hebrons Jewish community that ensued particularly after the signing of the Hebron Protocol in 1997 and in the early 2000s when Shuhada Street was briefly reopened. This is especially notable because Dorfman discusses both Shuhada Street and the Hebron Protocol in some detail.

Dorfman makes a basic error when he asserts that Jewish settlers returned to Hebron in 1979. In fact, Jews returned to Hebron to reconstitute the ancient community there almost immediately after the Six-Day War, on the eve of Passover in 1968. (Dorfman may possibly be conflating the 1968 event, in which Jews checked in to a Hebron hotel and initially refused to leave, eventually establishing the adjacent town of Kiryat Arba, with the 1979 establishment of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron.)

Dorfman also claims that the December passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 reaffirm[ed] long-standing international consensus: that Israels settlement-building in the territories it has occupied since 1967 is illegal under international law.? He then adds parenthetically that [h]istorically, U.S. officials have massaged the issue by calling settlements obstacles to peace and refrained from explicitly referencing their illegality." In fact, however, it is Dorfman that is massaging? the issue. As CAMERA has shown repeatedly, successive US administrations have not considered the settlements illegal. And his description of then-Secretary of State John Kerrys speech following that vote as largely recapitulating U.S. policy,? is contradicted by the Washington Posts fact-checker.

At the same time, Dorfman includes some history that is rarely discussed. He writes that Hebron was home to a Jewish community for centuries, and that the community persisted until a bloody 1929 pogrom in which a mob of Arabs traveled house-to-house, killing 67 Jews and wounding scores, wiping out the citys Jewish community.? He includes a witnesss account of one incident of more recent, fatal violence perpetrated against the Jews of Hebron. He also includes the information that Hebron, the site of the Tomb of the Patriarchs, is a holy city to Jews.



Most notable, however, is the very rare acknowledgement of the real reason that withdrawal of the IDF would necessitate removal of the Jewish settlers. He writes:

In any future peace deal, the IDF would likely be required to uproot over 75,000 Jews from the West Bank, some of them religious ideologues, from their homes near some of the holiest places in their faith. In this equation, the settlers of Hebron seem unlikely to voluntarily quit their second-holiest site. This is the paradox: The Jews of Hebron cannot leave, but neither can they stay. If the IDF withdrawsas it must under any future peace dealthe radical settlers of Hebron and elsewhere could face another massacre, another 1929.

In contrast, no journalists appear to have questioned then-Secretary Kerrys claim in his December 28 sunset speech about Israel and the Palestinian territories that:

Now, you may hear from advocates that the settlements are not an obstacle to peace because the settlers that don't want to leave can just stay in Palestine like the Arab Israelis who live in Israel. But that misses a critical point, my friends; the Arab Israelis are citizens of Israel, subject to Israel's law. Does anyone here really believe that the settlers will agree to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine?

The question of whether Kerry had any basis for the claim that Jews would be unwilling to live under Palestinian law, or the question of whether such an assumed unwillingness to live under Palestinian sovereignty was really what would prevent them from doing so, doesnt seem to have been addressed in the mainstream media. Though Dorfman still ignores statements by Palestinian leadership that Israelis wont be permitted to stay in a future state, he deserves credit for the candid admission that it is not Jews willingness to live under Palestinian sovereignty that causes a problem. Rather, what complicates efforts at partition is the danger to any Jews that would stay behind in such a deal.



Posted by kabe at February 3, 2017 11:20 AM

The only reasons Jewish settlers would refuse to live in a Palestinian Arab state would be because (1) the laws in that country discriminated against Jews - as in establishing the dhimma regime for unbeliever peoples of the book or (2) any law providing for equal rights was not enforced or (3) the state could not/did not guarantee the security of all its citizens/residents, regardless of the motive for the failure.

In fact, these are reasons why no non-Sunni Arab would choose to live in that prospective Arab state if there was a reasonable alternative. .

Posted by: Charlie in NY at February 4, 2017 07:28 AM

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By David Britton

Every day millions of new things get connected online, including toasters, heart monitors, cars and even cows. Thats right, cows.

In the Netherlands farmers have connected their cows to the internet, giving them access to the 200 megabytes of data each cow generates every year. This data gives the farmers insight on the cow that they might not have known otherwise. For example, where the cow may be located at a moment in time, how the cow is behaving, and even the health of the cow.

This level of connectivity and insight certainly brings convenience to both businesses and consumers. It also, however, highlights the security challenges involved in protecting a connected environment that freely passes data between many different devices.

The worlds population is projected to be at almost 8 billion people by 2020, and much of that population will have several smart devices in the home. However, many of these connected products have weak security and controls, which create points of weakness in a users critical private networks, systems and data.

Complicating matters is that there is little or no consistency in how connected products actually connect to the internet. Products can be connected using WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID and so onall of which have different connection technologies that could create points of weakness in users critical private networks, systems and data.

A seemingly non-critical device within the network of things, such as a simple fitness bracelet, can now be leveraged to gain access to other systems or more critical devices within the same connected network. Any good cyber-criminal knows that the best place to attack an entity is at the weakest point, and the internet of things is no exception. Cyber-criminals are creative and motivated. If they are persistent enough, they will find the vulnerability and get into the network through the IoT.

As more and more products are connected, the casual mindset about the security risks inherent in the IoT must begin to change. Working in the mindset that any product poses a significant potential for threat, here are some helpful guidelines.

1. Access to systems should require more than just credentials. Businesses should leverage cyber-intelligence and complex device recognition solutions to prevent unauthorized access.

2. Designate who has access to systems and clarify why they need it. It is also important to understand the normal access behavior of the individuals logging into these systems, so that when anomalies occur, immediate preventative action can be taken.

3. Clearly outline roles and responsibilities in terms of access monitoring. This can be segmented by factors such as channel or line of business.

4. Share intelligence across the consumer and enterprise side of your business. Many businesses have strong authentication requirements for their customers, but most data breach activity happens as the result of employee credentials being compromised and used to gain access.

5. Partner with providers that have been successfully solving the account takeover problem. The concerns and vulnerabilities of account takeover problems in the digital realm using fit-for-purpose technologies are similar to the concerns and vulnerabilities in the IoT world.

6. Apply robust privacy policies and practices. Doing so will ensure that the data you are collecting is actually required for the services you offer, and that the data collection practices are easily understood by the consumer.

7. Any collected data must be treated as highly sensitive information. It is important to note that even seemingly uninteresting data can be used by fraudsters to build robust and accurate stolen identities, which can be used for online impersonation, social engineering, phishing attacks and more.

To help consumers protect themselves against the risks and vulnerabilities regarding the internet of things, employ these tips to help limit your exposure to risk.

1. Make sure that the products and services you are purchasing and plugging in are from reputable companies.

2. Ensure that the providers of those products and services have clear privacy and data usage policies.

3. Be aware that the data from any smart device may make its way to third parties for a variety of purposes, and that there are not always standard policies across providers.

4. Make sure that any access to those systems is always closely guarded.

5. Be aware about IoT applications installed on a device and only download applications from the iTunes App Store or Google Play, rather than gray market app platforms. Apps that are downloaded should only be ones that are created by trusted entities.

The IoT future is here as it relates to online access to multiple devices, and there are massive benefits to society. But with those benefits comes accountabilityboth from businesses that develop and create connected devices and from the consumers who enjoy them.

Thoughtfully applying appropriate levels of holistic thinking will go a long way to ensure that the internet of things continues its rapid and exciting expansion.

David Britton is the vice president of industry solutions, fraud and identity, at Experian.
The man who was shot Saturday in an apartment on Jefferson Avenue has died, police said Thursday.

La'Mel Johnson, 29, suspected in fatal shooting

Michael Rackard, 34, died Thursday at hospital

Anyone with information asked to call 727-562-4242



Clearwater Police Department detectives have obtained an updated first-degree murder warrant for the suspect in the case.

Michael Rackard, 34, died at Bayfront Health St. Petersburg, where he had been since he was shot at 124 N. Jefferson Ave.

Police have obtained a first-degree murder warrant for La'Mel Johnson, 29, the suspected shooter.

Police said Johnson should be considered armed and dangerous. He is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs 205 pounds. He has multiple tattoos, including "110 percent gangsta" on his left arm and "death before dishonor" on his right arm. He also has a five-point star tattoo on his neck.

Anyone with information on Johnson's whereabouts should call Clearwater Police at 727-562-4242 or email tips@myclearwater.com.
Palmetto-based Southeastern Guide Dogs will be in the national spotlight come Super Bowl Sunday, as the annual "Puppy Bowl" will feature a commercial showing off some of the organization's service dogs.

Southeastern Guide Dogs provides service dogs for those in need for free

Two of the organization's dogs featured in Puppy Bowl XIII

Puppy Bowl XIII airs at 3 p.m. on Animal Planet

The commercial, sponsored by Subaru, will spotlight two Florida pups from Southeastern Guide Dogs. One of the dogs, Suba, currently has a home with the Folkmans, a Tampa-Bay area family.



"He's very intelligent," said Debi Folkman when talking about Suba. "He's a lot of fun, good energy, very smart."



The Folkmans will raise and train Suba for a year before he returns to Southeastern Guide Dogs to complete his training as a service dog.



The organization, which provides service dogs for those in need for free, operates on a $9 million budget derived entirely from donations. The organization's director, Larissa Daigle, called the potential exposure the commercial could provide "priceless."



"The wider our audience, the more exposure we can get in front of people who might be interested in supporting us," said Daigle. "It's a god send. It's really wonderful."



The Folkmans hope the commercial will impact others the way their experience with Suba has impacted them.



"I hope it reaches a lot of viewers," said Debi. "I hope like those Subaru commercials out there that touch your heart, I felt that this, it really touched my heart to see it."



Puppy Bowl XIII airs Feb. 5 at 3 p.m. on Animal Planet. The "game" itself will feature a number of pups from the Central Florida area, as well.
Hundreds of would-be parents waiting to adopt children may have just had their dreams shattered.

Independent Adoption Center files for bankruptcy, goes out of business

Hundreds of would-be parents remain in limbo

Child Welfare Information Gateway

Independent Adoption Center statement



The Independent Adoption Center, which had branches across the U.S. - including in the Bay area - abruptly filed for bankruptcy this week and shut down business operations.

Rebecca LeClair and her husband are among the hopeful parents that spent thousands of dollars but remain childless for now. The LeClairs were waiting for Wyatt Lee LeClair to be born in May.

"We got contacted a few months ago with this birth mother, and then the 22nd of December, a few days before Christmas, she notified us and the agency that she wanted to commit to placing the child with us," LeClair said. "I was Cloud 9 on Christmas Day, and now... square one."

All that planning and preparation didn't prepare the LeClairs for an email she got from the adoption agency this week stating the company filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy and were closing immediately.

"I've lost all contact with them," LeClair said. "The only contacts we had was through the agency. We don't have personal cell phones, communications or anything."

LeClair said the most information she has received from the agency was an email stating: "The court will notify you of the case, shortly after the bankruptcy is filed and you will have the opportunity to file a Proof of Claim for any refunds you believe are due to you."

But the LeClairs said they don't care about the $14,000 spent so far during the adoption process. They have invested their hearts in making their family whole and now continue to wait to see what will happen.

"At least with the agency we thought, well if something falls through we'll just push it back on our list," LeClair said. "Well now there's no list. This falls through, we're done. I mean we just can't keep searching for birth mothers and paying out the expenses."

Rebecca LeClair has taken her cause to Facebook and quickly discovered that she's not alone.

Forty people have reached out to her who are in the same situation here in Florida. And she says that number jumps to more than 500 across the country. Hundreds of familes with a home, but no child to give it to now.

The Independent Adoption Center did not respond to multiple emails for this story but there is a statement on its website saying there are fewer potential birth parents for people wanting to adopt. The company also said via its website that it just could not remain viable financially.

Here is a database compiled by government agencies of reputable adoption agencies by state.
Authorities in Hernando County are calling a drug bust there the biggest in the county's history.

Kelvin Johnson arrested after drug probe

He was taken into custody during traffic stop

5,500 doses of heroin was seized



The Hernando County Sheriff's Office seized 5,500 doses of heroin. Kelvin Johnson, 46, was taken into custody.

The eight-month long investigation started with an alert from the U.S. post office about a package.

"That package contained heroin, roughly 550 doses, Sheriff Al Nienhuis said.

Investigators said Johnson would drive to the Northeast, then purchase and ship the drugs to different areas of Spring Hill. That ended Friday with a traffic stop as Johnson was entering Hernando County.

Officials displayed some of the seized items Friday. Some were labeled with Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo, Guzman, another drug lord, and even President Donald Trump.

"All I want to say to this drug dealer, big mistake by putting the president's picture on this," said Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who attended Friday's news conference.

"Big mistake, because he is going to be our most fierce advocate in taking this junk off of our streets," she said.

Nienhuis said there has been an uptick in heroin use in Hernando County. He hopes Johnson's arrest serves as an example to those selling in the county.

"I can tell you my vice unit, I'm almost sure they already know who (dealers) are, and there is a very good chance that we've already made buys from you," Nienhuis said.

"It just takes us a while to get to you, but we're going to get to you and we're going to be knocking on your door, and when that happens, don't be surprised," he said.

Johnson faces numerous drug charges and up to 15 years in prison. He already has 12 felony convictions  some of those drug charges  in Hernando County.



Kelvin Johnson, 46, faces charges in the heroin investigation.
Authorities said Friday there may be additional victims in the case of a Tampa man arrested last month and charged with sexual assault.

Tampa man arrested and charged with sexual assault in January

Leoncio Martin Tejas, 26, was arrested Jan. 29

Investigating detectives say there may be more victims

Leoncio Martin Tejas, 26, was arrested and charged with sexual assault with a deadly weapon on January 29, stemming from an incident two days before.

According to the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, a woman was sexually assaulted just after 1 a.m. while walking north on Webb Road coming from the 7-Eleven gas station located at 8305 W. Hillsborough Ave.

Deputies said Tejas approached the woman from behind, placed his hand over her mouth and forced her to the ground. He then sexually battered the victim and told her not to scream because he had a knife and he would harm her. He then rode off on a white bicycle.

Authorities said during the course of the investigation, detectives identified the suspect as Tejas and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Police are now investigating if there are additional victims.
The U.S. Senate voted to 52-48 to move forward with the nomination of Betsy DeVos for education secretary.

Republicans, Democrats unhappy with Betsey DeVos pick as education secretary

U.S. Senate expected to make final vote next week

The final vote will likely happen next week.

The proceeding started at 6:30 a.m., an unusually early time for a confirmation vote on a nominee, who's facing opposition even from some Republicans.

Of all the cabinet nominees, some say the education secretary nominee has been one of the most controversial. President Donald Trump's nominee has spent more than two decades promoting charter schools across the country. Her nomination has come under fierce criticism from labor unions, who accuse her of seeking to dismantle public education.

DeVos is also a billionaire Republican donor and school choice activist. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York calls her "one of the worst nominees."

Schumer says, "Ms. Devos does not deserve to be secretary of education."

Democrats have been trying to derail a confirmation vote for her, but today Republicans seemed to want a head start on the process by scheduling the vote for 6:30 a.m.

Two Republican senators Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, and Susan Collins, of Maine, have said they will not vote for Devo.

That would likely make the vote 50-50.

In a tie, Vice President Mike Pence would be the deciding vote, so Democrats have been scrounging to find one more Republican who will vote against her.

Democrats are still fighting to keep her out of the position.

Senator Bob Casey tweeted:

This isn't over. We have up to 30 hours of debate to convince one more Senate Republican that Betsy DeVos is the wrong choice for @usedgov. https://t.co/McVoF4f1Zd  Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) February 3, 2017
Moss Point reverse osmosis water treatment plant comes online

A bucket full of untreated water (left) sits next to a bucket of treated water at Moss Point's newly constructed reverse osmosis water treatment plant Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009. The plant, which became fully operational as of Tuesday, uses reverse osmosis technology said to clean water of all impurities, removing odor, discoloration and sulfurous tastes in the water of the city's 6,000 households and 400 businesses. (Press-Register, Bill Starling) MSMETRO

(Bill Starling)

MOSS POINT, Miss. - Mayor Billy Broomfield in conjunction with H2O Innovation and Utility Partners held an informational forum to address water within the City of Moss Point and to address or answer any questions or concerns residents may have had.

Jason Deal of H2O Innovation presented a power point to residents in attendance about reverse osmosis and how it worked.

"Reverse osmosis is the separation of dissolved solids, salts, and water," said Deal. "Ultimately what we are trying to do at the molecular level is separate water from salts such as sodium, chlorides, so that we can provide citizens with very clean and safe drinking water."

Deal said their intentions at the community informational was to inform citizens about the level of technology that goes into providing quality of water disseminated by the water plant. Because of state of water in Flint, Michigan, residents according to Deal, water has become much more of a concern to citizens.

The system is Moss Point has been in place since 2009 and before the reverse osmosis system was in place, the Mississippi Department of Health scored the city's water as two out of a possible five. Since that time, the city has scored five every year. While the city is able to boast about the quality of water it provides its residents, all residents are not satisfied with the quality of water.

Alma Hill has been a resident of Moss Point since 1969 and says she's seen the worst of water quality within the city. Thursday evening, she brought a wet, oily washcloth which she says the water has caused.

"If the water is good, my towel shouldn't be oily, and it's oily," said Hill. "If the osmosis is doing what he says it is, then I shouldn't be breaking out, and spending money on antibiotics for my skin because of the water that is coming to my home."

Hill wasn't alone as other residents stood and spoke about their issues with water also. Broomfield said issues posed by residents will be addressed.

"We are going to address those issues individually because what we do know is that the water that comes from reverse osmosis to their meter is not a problem," said Broomfield, "but once it goes from the meter to their faucets, something is happening and something is causing that to happen and I have to send someone out to investigate."

According to Ward 6 Alderman Wayne Lennep, the city has replaced the original plastic pipe at the original reverse osmosis plant to stainless steel pipe - along with multiple projects to improve infrastructure within the city.

Broomfield said that the city is starting to replace water lines all over the city and that he plans to alleviate the needs of residents such as Hill.

"It could be a litany of things going on, but I want to get down to the source of the problem to provide the people with the relief that they need," said Broomfield.
The State Board of Education didn't do Texas students any favors this week when it rejected efforts to remove vague references to creationism in high school biology curriculum.

Not only are the realities of evolution and natural selection endorsed by virtually all serious scientists, this issue doesn't have to conflict with anyone's religious beliefs. Countless educated Christians believe in a supreme being and the science of evolution. The two are compatible, and this old controversy should have been settled long ago.
JACKSON, Miss. - Moss Point City Clerk Stephanie Coleman has filed a harassment suit against the City of Jackson, according to a published report.

According to a report in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, her suit is related to broader allegations of favoritism and other malfeasance in Jackson, where she previously worked as a Jackson Equal Business Opportunity Manager.

Coleman's complaint alleges that higher-ups were upset that she openly objected to the Jackson evaluation committee's attempts to steer public works contracts to friend of Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber and his administration.

According to the Clarion-Ledger story, Coleman's complaint also alleges that her immediate supervisor informed her that she would eventually be terminated unless someone interceded on her behalf. The supervisor offered protection in return for sex, Coleman alleges, and her refusal led to her termination. In August, Yarber's former assistant filed a similar suit against the city because she alleges he pressured her into continuing a sexual relationship.

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, Yarber campaign donor Mitzi Bickers also has been caught up in allegations of improper activity in Jackson and Atlanta.

Since coming to the City of Moss Point, Coleman has been instrumental in discovering fraud and misappropriation of funds within the city and on multiple occasions has been praised by the Board of Alderman as being a much needed asset within the city.

The Mississippi Press contacted Coleman for comment, but was told she had been advised to not make any statements at this time.
British Medical Journal published a study finding Medicare patients who obtained care from physicians who were trained outside the United States had lower 30-day mortality rates than those patients cared for by U.S.-trained physicians, according to Medscape.

Researchers evaluated 30-day mortality rate, readmission rate, treatment costs and whether clinical condition impacted differences in patient outcomes and care costs between patients treated by physicians with or without U.S. medical school training. Researchers analyzed 1,215,490 patients admitted to the hospital under the care of 44,227 general internists between 2011 and 2014

In the study, 44.3 percent of the internists obtained medical school training outside the United States. These providers were more likely to work in non-teaching, for profit, medium-sized hospitals lacking intensive care units. Their patients were more likely to be on Medicaid, be non-Caucasian, have lower median household income and have more chronic comorbidities.

Here are five points:

1. Those patients treated by non-U.S. medical school graduates had a mortality rate of 11.2 percent. Comparatively, patients treated by providers with U.S. training had an 11.6 mortality rate.

2. Based on these figures, the researchers stated, "Based on the risk difference of 0.4 percentage points, for every 250 patients treated by U.S. medical graduates, one patient's life would be saved if the quality of care were equivalent between the international graduates and U.S. graduates."

3. Patients of internationally trained internists had adjusted costs of care per admission totaling $1,145. Non U.S.-trained internists had $1,098 adjusted costs of care per admission.

4. The researchers did not note a difference in adjusted readmission rates.

5. The study authors noted a study limitation included not being able to assign patient outcomes to physicians from individual countries.
President Donald Trump's 90-day immigration suspension is causing havoc for many medical students who are waiting to see where they will begin their residency program, STAT reports.

Here are five points:

1. Both residency programs and medical students have to submit their preference rankings by Feb. 22, 2017.

2. However, officials may not permit students to enter the United States as the ban applies for 90 days, causing concern amongst students and program directors.

3. Mona Signer, president of the National Resident Matching Program, told STAT many residency program directors may not prioritize ranking applicants from the following countries as many are not sure what the ban could mean for these individuals. The ban applies to Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan and Somalia.

4. American Medical Association CEO James Madara, MD, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly to voice its concerns over President Trump's executive order. The AMA wants the Trump administration to clarify the order so there are not empty training slots in the upcoming residency matching program in March 2017, which eligible international medical graduates applicants can fill.

5. IMGs play a crucial role in the United States by meeting the healthcare needs of rural and low-income areas. In the letter, the AMA said these physicians  which constitute 25 percent of all practicing providers  have licenses that meet the "same stringent requirements applied to medical school graduates."
Here are 10 notes on Physicians Endoscopy:

1. Headquartered in Jamison, Pa., Physicians Endoscopy focuses on developing and managing freestanding, single-specialty endoscopic ASCs.

2. The company was established in 1998 and today operates 43 surgery centers across the country.

3. The company finalized a joint venture relationship for its 43rd ASC on Dec. 1, 2016, along with the physicians of the Gastroenterology Group PA, the Center for Colon and Rectal Health and St. Mary Medical Center, all based in Langhorne, Pa.

4. Physicians Endoscopy offers its partners a variety of opportunities, including building an ASC from the ground up, flexible partnership models and hospital joint ventures. The company's services include professional management; billing and collections; design and development; and physician recruiting.

5. In August 2016, Charlotte, N.C.-based Pamlico Capital sold Physicians Endoscopy to Kelso & Company in a recapitalization transaction with management. Pamlico acquired Physicians Endoscopy in August 2013. The parties did not disclose the terms of the agreement.

6. The company collaborated with The Joint Commission and CDC in May 2016 on an initiative focused on infection prevention in ambulatory healthcare settings. The goal of the initiative is to create model infection control plans and expand the reach, uptake and adoption of these as well as other infection control materials in outpatient settings.

7. The three-year initiative with The Joint Commission is called Adaptation and Dissemination Outpatient Infection PrevenTion, or ADOPT, Guidance. The Joint Commission and CDC selected 12 outpatient-focused professional organizations and 10 ambulatory healthcare facilities to participate in the project, and Physicians Endoscopy is one of them.

8. Physicians Endoscopy partnered with Atlanta-based Clearwave Corp., in February 2016 to incorporate patient check-in solutions at its centers. Clearwave's software integrates with healthcare providers' existing systems to help verify patient demographics as well as insurance and payment information.

9. Barry Tanner serves as CEO of the company. He previously co-founded and served as CFO for Miami-based Navix Radiology Systems, a physician practice management company. Karen Sablyak is the company's CFO, while Frank Principati serves as COO.

10. Physicians Endoscopy publishes a GI-dedicated quarterly journal called EndoEconomics. It aims to offer physicians business advice while also addressing economic topics of interest.
The following hospitals announced or completed plans in the last week to expand, upgrade or renovate their facilities.

1. Froedtert Hospital proposes $43M hospital expansion

Increasing occupancy at Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa, Wis., prompted the hospital to propose a $43 million, four-story addition to its Center for Advanced Care, according to the Milwaukee Business Journal.

2. Scripps Women's Heart Center opens in San Diego

San Diego-based Scripps Health on Jan. 31 opened the Scripps Women's Heart Center, a facility that offers cardiology care for women by women.

3. Board approves $200M UCSF research facility at SF General Hospital

University of California, San Francisco's board of supervisors approved the lease agreement put forth by UCSF to construct a $200 million research building at San Francisco General Hospital, according to KTUV/FOX2 News.

4. First Ascension Medical Group clinic opens in Wisconsin

The first Ascension Medical Group clinic in the U.S. opened Jan. 31 in Wausau, Wis. The new facility, called Ascension Medical Group at Westwood, marks the beginning of the naming transition of Ministry Health Care hospitals and clinics to Ascension, a transition that was first announced in September.

5. Wayne Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania plans expansion

Honesdale, Pa.-based Wayne Memorial Hospital revealed expansion plans for its campus, reports The News Eagle.

6. The Valley Hospital to build $735M facility

The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., will construct a new facility in Paramus, N.J., for an estimated $735 million, according to Healthcare Design Magazine.

7. Akron Children's Hospital reveals $4.5M pediatric behavioral health unit

Akron (Ohio) Children's Hospital finished construction of its $4.5 million inpatient pediatric behavioral health unit.

8. Mercy Health System plans microhospital

Janesville, Wis.-based Mercy Health System plans to build a microhospital in Crystal Lake, Ill., according to a Northwest Herald report.

9. Marshfield Clinic Health System proposes to build new hospital

Marshfield (Wis.) Clinic Health System submitted an application to build a hospital in Minocqua, Wis., attached to its current clinic and ambulatory center.
The following hospital and health system rating and outlook changes and affirmations took place in the last week, beginning with the most recent.

1. Moody's affirms 'Baa2' rating on St. Anthony Regional Hospital's bonds

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "Baa2" rating on Carroll, Iowa-based St. Anthony Regional Hospital's $9.3 million of outstanding rated revenue bonds.

2. Moody's affirms 'Aa1' on Charleston Area Medical Center's bonds

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "A1" long-term joint support letter of credit-backed rating on Charleston (W.Va.) Medical Center's series 2008A variable rate revenue bonds.

3. S&P revises St. Luke's Episcopal-Presbyterian Hospital's outlook to negative

S&P Global Ratings revised Chesterfield, Mo.-based St. Luke's Episcopal-Presbyterian Hospital's outlook to negative from stable.

4. S&P revises Coalinga Regional Medical Center's outlook to stable

S&P Global Ratings revised Coalinga (Calif.) Regional Medical Center's outlook to stable from negative.

5. Moody's assigns 'A3' rating to Dignity Health's bonds

Moody's Investors Service assigned the "A3" rating to San Francisco-based Dignity Health's $270 million of series 2016A revenue bonds.

6. S&P places Mission Regional Medical Center on CreditWatch negative

S&P Global Ratings placed Mission (Texas) Regional Medical Center on CreditWatch negative.

7. S&P revises Partners HealthCare System's outlook to negative

S&P Global Ratings revised Boston-based Partners HealthCare's outlook to negative from stable.

8. Fitch affirms 'BBB+' rating on Carson Tahoe Health System's bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed the "BBB+" rating on Carson City, Nev.-based Carson Tahoe Health System's bonds.

9. Moody's assigns 'Baa1' to Community Hospitals of Central California's bonds

Moody's Investors Service assigned a "Baa1" rating to Fresno-based Community Hospitals of Central California's proposed $397 million of series 2017A fixed rate revenue bonds.

10. Fitch affirms 'A-' rating on Butler Health System's bonds

Fitch Ratings affirmed the "A-" rating on Butler (Pa.) Health System's $91,230,000 of series 2015A revenue bonds.

11. Moody's affirms 'Aa1' on Charleston Area Medical Center's bonds

Moody's Investors Service affirmed the "A1" long-term joint support letter of credit-backed rating on Charleston (W.Va.) Medical Center's series 2008A variable rate revenue bonds.

12. S&P assigns 'A-' rating to Community Medical Center's bonds

S&P Global Ratings assigned an "A-" rating to Fresno, Calif.-based Community Medical Centers' 2017 tax exempt bonds.
Officials at North Texas Medical Center in Gainesville are going to great lengths to keep the hospital open.

The 60-bed hospital, which is owned by the Gainesville Hospital District, has faced financial troubles in recent years. With the hope of regaining its financial footing, North Texas Medical Center's board approved a partnership agreement with King of Prussia, Pa.-based Universal Health Services in December.

Under the agreement, Texoma Medical Center in Denison, Texas, which is owned by UHS, will lease all five buildings on North Texas Medical Center's campus and take over operations of the hospital.

While negotiations with UHS continue, North Texas Medical Center filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy  a bankruptcy proceeding that offers distressed municipalities protection from creditors while a repayment plan is negotiated.

In its bankruptcy petition, which was filed Jan. 17, North Texas Medical Center said it has a minimum of 200 creditors. The hospital said it has at least $10 million in assets and at least $10 million in liabilities.

On Jan. 24, the bankruptcy court approved a debtor-in-possession loan that will allow UHS to provide financial support to North Texas Medical Center during the course of the bankruptcy case.

"Allowing the debtor to enter into the DIP loan with UHS is in the best interest of the debtor, the creditors, and the parties-in-interest," wrote bankruptcy judge Brenda T. Rhoades in her order approving the loan. "The DIP loan is necessary for the debtor to have access to sufficient funds to conduct its medical care operations in the ordinary course during the case."

More articles on healthcare finance:

Louisiana Heart Hospital to close after filing for bankruptcy

Ochsner to take over St. Bernard Parish Hospital as billing issues cause debt to mount

Indianapolis hospital closes as resources shift to outpatient care
Here are 10 things to know about Watertown, Mass.-based athenahealth, one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world providing medical record, revenue cycle, patient engagement, care coordination and population health services.

1. Jonathan Bush  nephew of U.S. President George H.W. Bush and cousin of President George W. Bush  and Todd Park founded the company in 1997. Today, Mr. Bush serves as CEO, president and chairman of the board of directors; Mr. Park went on to serve as U.S. chief technology officer during the Obama administration.

2. There are roughly 88,000 providers and 86 million patients on athenahealth's network. A few recent contracts include Tandigm Health  a value-based healthcare company supporting primary care physicians  implementing athenahealth's population health management tool and Michigan State University HealthTeam  the multispecialty faculty group practice of the university  implementing athenahealth's suite of service.

3. In 2016, athenahealth reported a total revenue of $1.08 billion  a 17 percent increase compared to the $924.7 million it reported in 2015. In a list of health technology vendors ranked by highest revenues, IDC Health Insights named athenahealth the eighth highest earner compared to other companies that derive more than one-third of their revenue from healthcare payers and providers.

4. For three years running, athenahealth has ranked as the top vendor in user satisfaction among physician groups with six to 10 physicians and groups with 11 to 25 physicians, according to a Black Book poll. In the 2016 Black Book Inpatient EHR Surveys, athenahealth clients were also identified as "most loyal," meaning the company's clients intend to maintain their business relationship and have a positive attitude toward the vendor.

5. Only 22 of the 4,474 hospitals participating in the Medicare EHR Incentive Program use athenahealth's EHR technology, according to ONC data from July 2016, making it tied for the 36th most-used certified health IT vendor hospitals report for the program. However, ONC also notes that only 10 vendors, including athenahealth, supply 98 percent of hospitals with their certified IT technology, based on HHS' 2014 Edition Health Information Technology Certification Criteria.

6. In July 2016, the company announced its MIPS Guarantee program, which reimburses clients who face a downward payment adjustment under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System. The program is meant to help clients using the athenaOne services suite perform at or above the national performance threshold set by CMS, therefore avoiding any payment penalties on their Medicare Part B fee schedule.

7. One of athenahealth's core initiatives is its "More Disruption Please" program, which connects startups with the opportunity to sell to athenahealth clients. The program has collaborated with companies like Relaymed, which connects point-of-care devices to EHRs, and SnapMD, a telemedicine provider.

8. Another one of the company's primary focuses is interoperability. The company is a founding member of the CommonWell Health Alliance, a nonprofit and independent organization focused on developing and deploying interoperability solutions. Athenahealth, along with other major IT vendors like Epic and Cerner, also committed to the Interoperability Pledge, which HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced during HIMSS16 in February 2016.

9. In June 2013, athenahealth said it would move the majority of its Georgia operations from Alpharetta to Atlanta, and at the start of 2017, the company announced plans to expand its workforce in Atlanta to almost 1,000 employees by 2018. With this new expansion, athenahealth  which currently utilizes 98,000 square feet of space at Ponce City Market in Atlanta  will tack on an extra 40,000 square feet of space to its offices.

10. Athenahealth's CEO and cofounder, Mr. Bush, has made headlines for his outspoken views on both national politics and healthcare management. In a speech to Massachusetts Republicans in June 2016, he publicly stated he would not vote for Donald Trump, who has since won the national election. In an April 2016 interview with Bloomberg, he voiced that  although he is critical of the ACA  he credits some of athenahealth's growth to its ability to connect providers to the legislation.
Healthcare professionals are increasingly turning to data analytics to support their services; however, inefficient data technology may be holding the industry back.

In a webinar sponsored by MarkLogic and Intel, and hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, MarkLogic Healthcare IT and Payments Executive Bill Gaynor, Owensboro (Ky.) Health CMIO David Danhauer, MD, Senior Vice President at GE Healthcare Camden Group David A. DiLoreto, MD, and Marcee Chmait, who leads innovation at SCAN Health Plan, discussed how both providers and payers can leverage data analytics for improved outcomes.

"Healthcare organizations are having some data challenges," Mr. Gaynor said, noting how legacy software can impede efficiency, security and cost savings. "Business as usual is not gaining the results in enough time. Innovative programs and digital enterprise initiatives require modern and agile data technology."

Healthcare organizations are often focused on bringing together data from a disparate array of sources, many of which present their data in different formats. Today, data scientists spend up to 80 percent of their time preparing, rather than analyzing, data, according to a New York Times article, in part because they lack software to automate the organizing of their varied datasets.

"We're trying to approach 21st century opportunities and challenges with 20th century back-end technology," Dr. Diloreto said.

Enterprise databases can help organizations with this data integration by transforming and delivering data related to a range of sources  such as patients, physicians or products. Although developing an enterprise data strategy can seem daunting, Dr. Danhauer stressed the role it will play in keeping healthcare organizations competitive.

"Data is king," he said. "Those who have the data are going to survive; if you don't have the data, you're not going to survive."

But just having data will not help healthcare organizations make better business decisions. Companies need to be able to leverage all of their data to provide actionable insights, whether combing through EMRs to suggest next steps in patient care or connecting consumers with convenient resources to improve their overall health.

How an enterprise data strategy can help providers

Dr. Danhauer led the successful replacement of Owensboro Health's legacy technology in an effort to alleviate efficiency and quality setbacks associated with the original EMR documentation system.

He sought to identify a new system that would not only improve quality of notes and maintain physician workflow, but would also transform unstructured data, such as voice transcription, into discrete data.

"We wanted some kind of new technology to streamline that process," he said. "To not force our physicians to be data entry clerks, as they've been complaining about over the years."

He ultimately decided to implement an enterprise EMR. This system utilizes computer-assisted physician documentation, which reviews information from a physician note and offers suggestions to the clinician, in an effort to collect more actionable information.

"If they're using our EMR, as they're putting it in, they're now getting cues live in front of them," Dr. Danhauer said. "If they put a voice file in that says 'CHF' [congestive heart failure], they're getting cues right in front of them that say: 'Is that right sided? Left sided? Acute? Chronic?' They're getting those cues to say  please give us more detailed information."

The majority (53 percent) of physicians respond to these suggested documentation improvements, according to Dr. Danhauer, and Owensboro Health has used these insights to develop patient safety programs targeting abdominal aortic aneurysms and lung nodules. The system scans physician notes to identify information related to these two conditions, in order to provide patients with appropriate care as soon as possible.

Although physicians often balk when asked to adjust to a new technology system, Dr. Danhauer found 70 percent of physicians responded favorably toward use of the system. In addition, when he asked providers to review other providers' notes, he saw 83 percent responded favorably to the quality of documentation.

"That quality went through the roof," he said, noting that most of the CAPD suggestions are related to ICD-10. "Our queries out to physicians have significantly decreased for ICD-10. With all of the anticipated backlog we saw with the predictions with ICD-10, we have been current now with coding for the past 6 months."

How an enterprise data strategy can help payers

The healthcare space can be difficult for consumers to navigate. From the payer perspective, data-driven applications can help by addressing patient needs and increasing consumers' access to health and wellness resources with risk-adjusted patient insights.

As an example of a data-driven initiative, Ms. Chmait spoke to how she led the implementation of a consumer-focused care solution at SCAN Health Plan.

The Long Beach, Calif.-based nonprofit health plan connects seniors with a variety of services, from transportation to home care. To personalize this process, SCAN Health Plan has applied graph technology to connect the consumer to his or her healthcare needs.

"The technology that we have decided to use in our human-centered project is graph technology," Ms. Chmait said. This solution  used by companies like Facebook, LinkedIn and Walmart  puts the user at the center of the graph, which then "learns and predicts the needs of the user" through machine learning.

Families and enrollees using SCAN Health Plan can use an app to describe their needs and monitor their experiences. The app, using graph technology, then constructs a user profile to share with primary care physicians. The graph can also link a family's needs to relevant content, such as medical history or related research.

The machine learning algorithm will then use this information, along with the user's location, to determine "best fit" services in his or her area. "Our independent living graph will determine preferences and understand somebody's specific needs," Ms. Chmait said. "It will make recommendations and fulfill services at that very specific need level."

Through replacing legacy technology with NoSQL data platform and advanced analytics, health systems like Owensboro Health are able to improve physician satisfaction and patient care, while healthcare payers like SCAN Health Plan connect consumers to their localized environments. Moving into 2017, an enterprise data strategy will continue to help providers and payers stay competitive, as data insights and personalized care become increasingly important to the healthcare space.

Listen to the webinar recording here. View the webinar slides here.
In honor of Black History Month, here are 21 exceptional clinicians and healthcare professionals who advanced medicine and race relations in the U.S.

1. Alexander Augusta, MD. First black physician appointed director of a U.S. hospital. Alexander Augusta earned his medical degree at Trinity Medical College in Toronto, Canada, and established a successful medical practice in Canada before relocating to the U.S. in 1862. Drafted to serve in the Civil War, Dr. Augusta became the first commissioned black surgeon in the U.S. Army. He later became the first black physician to direct a U.S. hospital  Freedman's Hospital in Washington D.C. After leaving Freedman's, Dr. Augusta continued in private practice and became a professor at Howard University Medical Department in Washington D.C.

2. Patricia Bath, MD. First black female physician awarded a patent for a medical invention. Patricia Bath received her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in WashingtonD.C. She interned at HarlemHospital in New York City from 1968 to 1969 and completed a fellowship in ophthalmology at Columbia University from 1969 to 1970. Dr. Bath's accomplishments include the invention of a new device and technique for cataract surgery known as laserphaco, for which she was the first black woman to receive a medical patent. She was the first woman appointed chair of ophthalmology at a U.S. medical institution (UCLA) in 1983. Dr. Bath retired from her post 10 years later and has since become an advocate for telemedicine, serving in roles related to the emerging technology at HowardUniversity and St. George'sUniversity in Grenada.

3. Robert Boyd, MD. President and co-founder of the first professional organization for black physicians. The National Medical Association is the nation's oldest and largest organization representing black physicians and healthcare professionals. Racial exclusivity and segregation laws at the turn of the 20th century made black physician membership in America's other professional organizations, such as the American Medical Association, virtually impossible. Black physicians frustrated by professional disenfranchisement created the NMA to serve the black medical community. Robert Boyd, MD, of Nashville, Tenn., was appointed the group's first president in 1895.

4. Lonnie Bristow, MD. First black physician elected president of the American Medical Association. Lonnie Bristow earned his medical degree at New York University and practiced as an internist in San Pablo, Calif., for more than 30 years. Dr. Bristow joined the AMA in 1968 after the organization banned racial discrimination within its ranks and allowed black membership. In 1994, Dr. Bristow became the first black physician to lead the organization. Under his leadership, the organization focused on many of the issues Dr. Bristow dedicated his career to, including sickle cell anemia, coronary care and socioeconomic issues impacting healthcare.

5. Alexa Canady, MD. First black female neurosurgeon. Dr. Canady struggled to secure a neurosurgical internship after earning her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1975. But by 1981, Dr. Canady had become America's first black female neurosurgeon. She completed her residency at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and went on to specialize in pediatric neurosurgery, practicing at a number of respected medical institutions. In her most notable role, she served as chief of neurosurgery at Detroit-based Children's Hospital of Michigan from 1987 to 2001. Under her guidance, the department gained national recognition and has consistently been ranked among America's best pediatric neurosurgery programs in U.S. News & World Report's Best Children's Hospitals list.

6. Ben Carson, MD. First neurosurgeon to successfully separate conjoined twins attached at the back of the head. Dr. Carson was one of the youngest physicians to direct pediatric neurosurgery at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital. He successfully completed the first surgical separation of conjoined twins attached at the back of the head in 1987. Dr. Carson is the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Donald Trump. He earned his bachelor's degree at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and his medical degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and later completed his residency in neurosurgery at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

7. Donna Christian-Christensen, MD. First female physician elected to Congress. Representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, Dr. Christian-Christensen is the first female physician to serve as an elected member of Congress. She earned her medical degree from George Washington University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., in 1970 and completed her residency in family medicine at Howard University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Dr. Christian-Christensen is currently serving her fourth consecutive term in Congress. She served as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus's Health Braintrust in 1998, an advocacy group that leads efforts to oversee and advocate for minority health issues on national and international platforms.

8. Rebecca Crumpler, MD. First black woman awarded a medical degree from a U.S. college. Rebecca Crumpler graduated from New England Female Medical College in Boston in 1864 as the first black woman awarded a medical degree from a U.S. university. Dr. Crumpler achieved this feat at a time when women, regardless of race, were largely barred from secondary education or higher learning opportunities. She published Book of Medical Discourses in 1883, which drew information from her clinical experiences to help women better care for the health of their families.

9. Helen Dickens, MD. First black woman admitted to the American College of Surgeons. The only black woman in her graduating class, Helen Dickens earned her medical degree from the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1934. She completed her internship at Provident Hospital in Chicago during which she treated patients with tuberculosis in impoverished communities. In 1945, Dr. Dickens was the first black woman to receive board certification in obstetrics and gynecology. Five years later, she became the first black woman admitted as a fellow of the American College of Surgeons. She served as director of the obstetrics department at Mercy-Douglass Hospital in Collingdale, Pa., for more than 12 years.

10. Charles Drew, MD. First to use blood plasma to store blood for transfusion. Charles Drew pioneered methods of storing blood plasma for transfusion and organized the first large-scale blood bank in the U.S. during WWII. Following the war, Dr. Drew began developing a blood storage program at the American Red Cross but resigned soon after officials decided to segregate the blood of African-Americans. Dr. Drew continued on to become chief surgeon at Freedman's Hospital in Washington D.C., and the first black examiner for the American Board of Surgery.

11. Joycelyn Elders, MD. First black female physician appointed surgeon general. Born to a family of impoverished farmers in 1933, Jocelyn Elders grew up in a rural, segregated pocket of Arkansas. In spite of socioeconomic obstacles, Dr. Elders earned her medical degree from the University of Arkansas Medical School in Little Rock in 1960. She returned to the university for her residency in 1961, after which she became chief resident responsible for a team of all-white, all-male residents and interns. Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton appointed Dr. Elders director of the Arkansas Department of Health in 1987. As U.S. President, Mr. Clinton appointed Dr. Elders the first black U.S. surgeon general in 1993.

12. Roselyn Epps, MD. First black president of the American Medical Women's Association. Dr. Epps graduated with honors from Washington, D.C.-based Howard University College of Medicine in 1951. Dr. Epps devoted her life to advocating for women's health and public health issues in underserved communities and made extraordinary contributions to public health organizations. Her achievements include presiding as the first black president of the American Medical Women's Association in 1974 and serving as a scientific program administrator at the National Institutes of Health. In her lifetime, Dr. Epps produced more than 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals and served as co-editor for both The Women's Complete Healthbook and Developing a Child Care Program.

13. Kenneth Frazier, JD. First black man to lead a major pharmaceutical company. In 1992, Mr. Frazier joined Merck & Co.'s public affairs division as general counsel, helping to define the pharmaceutical giant's legal strategy during the next 10 years. He rose through the management ranks at Merck until he was appointed chairman and CEO in 2011, becoming the first black man to lead a major pharmaceutical company. Merck is among the five largest drug companies in the world by annual revenue. Mr. Frazier received his undergraduate degree from The Pennsylvania State University in University Park and earned his law degree from Cambridge, Mass.-based Harvard Law School.

14. Solomon Fuller, MD. First black psychiatrist recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Fuller pioneered Alzheimer's research during his career and advanced the study of many other neurodegenerative diseases, including schizophrenia and manic depression. After earning his medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine in 1897, Dr. Fuller became the first black psychiatrist in the U.S. recognized by the APA. He eventually became an emeritus professor of neurology at Boston University. The mental health program at the university bears Dr. Fuller's name today in honor of his contributions to psychiatric research.

15. Marilyn Gaston, MD. First black female director of an U.S. Public Health Service bureau. Marilyn Gaston earned her medical degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1964 and completed her internship in pediatric medicine at Philadelphia General Hospital. She is credited for her groundbreaking research in sickle cell anemia. Dr. Gaston was the first black female physician appointed director of HHS' Bureau of Primary Health Care in 1990, where she focused on improving healthcare access to underserved and minority communities. National and international organizations have recognized Dr. Gaston for her social and scientific achievements. She received each type of award given by the U.S. Public Health Service as well as the National Medical Association's most prestigious honor  the NMA Scroll of Merit.

16. William Hinton, MD. First black physician to teach at Harvard Medical School. William Hinton graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1909, after which he worked in Harvard's Wassermann Laboratory. Dr. Hinton was appointed professor of preventive medicine and hygiene at Harvard Medical School in 1918  the first black instructor in the school's history. Dr. Hinton later became a world-renowned expert in the diagnosis and treatment of syphilis. In 1927, he developed a diagnostic test for syphilis, known as the Hinton test, which was eventually endorsed by the U.S. Public Health Service.

17. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA. First black female president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey has more than 30 years of experience as a medical practitioner, policymaker, professor and nonprofit executive. In 2003, she became the first black female president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of America's largest philanthropic organizations devoted to public health and healthcare. Before joining the foundation, Dr. Lavizzo-Mourey served as a professor of medicine and healthcare systems at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, directed Penn's Institute on Aging and was chief of geriatric medicine at University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine.

18. Mary Mahoney, RN. First black woman awarded a nursing degree. Ms. Mahoney is credited as America's first black professional nurse. She graduated from Boston-based New England Hospital for Women and Children's training school for nurses in 1879 and became one of the first black members of the American Nurses Association. In addition to her pioneering efforts in nursing, Ms. Mahoney is recognized for her role in the women's suffrage movement. She was among the first women to register to vote in Boston following the ratification of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920.

19. James Smith, MD. First black man to practice with a medical degree in the U.S. James Smith was an American physician, abolitionist and author. He earned his medical degree from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and returned to the U.S. as the first black man to hold and practice with a medical degree. He was also the first black physician to establish and run a pharmacy. He used his training in medicine and statistics to refute common misconceptions about race, intelligence, medicine and society in general.

20. Daniel Williams, MD. One of the first physicians to perform a successful open-heart surgery; founded the first interracial and black-owned hospital. Dr. Williams opened ProvidentHospital in Chicago in 1893, the first black-owned hospital and the first medical facility with an interracial staff. He was one of the first physicians to complete a successful pericardial surgery, also known as open-heart surgery. He later became chief surgeon at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington, D.C. Dr. Williams was the first black member of the American College of Surgeons and co-founded the National Medical Association with Robert Boyd, MD. He earned his medical degree from Chicago Medical College.

21. Jane Wright, MD. First woman elected president of the New York Cancer Society. Jane Wright was a pioneering cancer researcher and accomplished surgeon. Her work is largely responsible for elevating chemotherapy from a last-ditch effort at treating cancer patients to a viable treatment option. She completed her residency at Harlem (N.Y.) Hospital, where she later served as chief resident. In 1964, working as part of a team at New York University School of Medicine, Dr. Wright developed a nonsurgical method using a catheter system to deliver heavy doses of anticancer drugs to previously hard-to-reach tumor areas in the kidneys, spleen and elsewhere. Dr. Wright served as associate dean and head of cancer chemotherapy department at New York Medical College in New York City in 1967.
Phoenix-based Banner Health is restructuring operations, and some management and corporate positions are being cut as part of the process, according to the Phoenix Business Journal.

Here are five things to know about the changes Banner is making.

1. Banner aims to become more consumer-focused through the restructuring process. "We want to make sure we are extremely focused on meeting consumer needs as well as the care standards that are expected in terms of medical care," Bill Byron, a Banner spokesman, told the Phoenix Business Journal.

2. To elevate customer service, Banner is making changes to its leadership structure. Mr. Byron told the Phoenix Business Journal that Banner is moving away from "a traditional hospital system [leadership] structure."

3. The changes will require some leadership positions to be cut. For example, Rob Gould, president of Banner's Arizona West Region, will leave his position as his region is being consolidated with the Arizona East Region. The consolidated division, called Arizona Community Delivery, will be led by Todd Werner, the current president of Banner's Arizona East Region.

4. In an email to employees that was obtained by The Arizona Republic, Banner officials said the changes will affect corporate positions across several divisions, and the position of associate administrator will be eliminated at some Arizona community hospitals effective March 31.

5. It is too early to determine how many leadership positions will be cut through the restructuring process, but Mr. Byron told the Phoenix Business Journal a "relatively small" number of leaders will be eliminated. He said many of those affected will be able to apply for other positions within Banner Health.

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MOSS POINT, Miss. -- An elderly Moss Point man succumbed to severe burns sustained to his body on Thursday afternoon after attempting to burn brush off of his land.

William Cunningham, 83, died around 2 a.m. Friday morning at the USA Medical Center in Mobile, AL after being airlifted from the scene on Thursday.

According to Moss Point Fire Chief Tommy Posey, the fire broke out across from Cunningham's residence on property that he owned.

Posey said that it appeared Cunningham was attempting to burn off some of the brush when the fire became to large to contain.

"What it looked like to me is that he was attempting to put the fire out until it got away from him," Posey said. "Strong winds, combined with old age I believe contributed to his inability to escape the fire."

When firefighters arrived onto the scene, they found Cunningham on the ground with severe burns to his arms and legs. Cunningham was then airlifted to the hospital in Mobile.

The fire spread to about 150 acres according to Posey and crews from Jackson County and the Mississippi Forestry Commission assisted in taming the fire.
International students from the nations subject to President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration are now uncertain whether they will be permitted to enter the U.S. for medical residencies  or if they will even be offered spots at American hospitals at all, according to STAT.

On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that temporarily blocks travelers and immigrants from seven Middle Eastern countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days while the government works to intensify its screening processes. "Match day," when medical students find out if and where they've "matched" for a residency in the U.S., falls within that 90-day period. Now, medical students from the seven countries named in the executive order  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  are wondering whether they will be allowed into the U.S. to work, while hospitals must decide whether to reserve the coveted slots for students who may not be able to fill them, reports STAT.

"It's just causing havoc," Atul Grover, MD, PhD, executive vice president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, told STAT. "Right now, you've got potentially hundreds of people that are actively pursuing a residency in the United States. This order gets executed, and now they're unclear on what it means for their status and whether they would be allowed to come."

Mona Signer, president of the National Resident Matching Program, told STAT hospitals are trying to learn more about the effects of the executive order, but that residency program directors "will be reluctant" to rank applicants from the seven affected countries.

American Medical Association CEO James Madara, MD, on Wednesday asked the Trump administration to clarify its policy. "The executive order places into question those [international medical graduates, or IMGs] who have applied for or who have been granted visas to come to the United States to train and provide care in underserved communities," Dr. Madara wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, according to the report. "Guidance is urgently needed from the administration to ensure the upcoming residency matching program in March 2017 does not leave training slots vacant and that all qualified IMG applicants can participate."
This Friday marks the first official National Women Physicians Day, 170 years after the first woman was accepted into medical school in the United States.

The day, which aims to recognize the accomplishments and struggles of women in medicine, will be held annually on Feb. 3. It marks the birthday of Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, the first woman accepted into medical school in 1847.

"We are all a little bit of her," says Hala Sabry, DO, who petitioned to establish the day of recognition. "While we have come a long way, we still have other barriers to break."

Female physicians account for only 34 percent of all physicians in the U.S., according to the latest data from Kaiser Family Foundation, and they still earn significantly less than their male counterparts. Female primary care physicians made an annual salary of $192,000 in 2016, compared to their male counterparts' $225,000. Female specialists made $242,000 compared to male specialists who made $324,000 in 2016, according to Medscape's Female Physician Compensation Report.

"Everyone deserves to know their male counterparts are getting paid the same for the same work. If you break that trust and make physicians feel unhappy or burnt out, they will not be able to treat patients to the best of their ability," Dr. Sabry says. "At the end of the day, this isn't about money."

For Dr. Sabry, National Women Physicians Day is about recognizing that gender disparities still exist in medicine and providing support for women in healthcare so they can focus on the patient, not politics.

Dr. Sabry first began advocating for women in medicine when she created a Facebook group two years ago called Physician Moms Group, which has grown into a network of roughly 65,000 physician mothers. "They are energized now that they have found their tribe," she tells Becker's. Dr. Sabry says the women in the group noticed they faced similar issues with gender inequality and the patient perspective of female physicians.

She hopes the day of recognition will also bring more awareness to patients about the issues female physicians face. "Many times you finish a patient interactionand sometimes [the patient's] next question is, 'OK, but when is the doctor going to come see me?'" Dr. Sabry says. "The woman in the room just might be the doctor."

To recognize the holiday, Dr. Sabry took the day off and plans to attend several events to represent women physicians. "I hope every woman physician will have the opportunity to broadcast her story to show how much love we have for the community," she says.

To share your story on National Women Physicians Day, use the following hashtags on social media: #IAmBlackwell #WomensDocsInspire #NWPD.

Editor's note: An early version of this story misstated that Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell was African American and the first African American woman accepted into a U.S. medical school. Dr. Blackwell was caucasian. Rebecca Lee Crumpler was the first African American woman to become a physician after attending U.S. medical school in 1860-64. Becker's regrets this error.

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Joe, J.D., and Teresa Lozano, Ed.D., Long have given $25 million to UT Health San Antonio, formerly known as University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, according to the San Antonio Business Journal.

Through their gift, UT Health San Antonio will create a $1 million distinguished chair endowment for the dean of UT Health San Antonio's medical school. It will also develop a $4 million endowment for student scholarships. Another $20 million will go toward supporting medical school faculty recruitment.

In honor of the gift, UT Health San Antonio renamed the medical school the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine. The UT System Board of Regents authorized the renaming decision.

This isn't the first time the couple has donated to the medical school. They gave $1 million to UT Health in 1999 and another $25 million in 2008. The $25 million gift created the Joe R. and Teresa L. Long Scholarship Research and Teaching Fund.

"Good health is necessary in life," Mr. Long said in a statement. "Our goal is to empower generations of young people to enter healthcare and enhance the quality of life in our state."
The healthcare industry added 18,300 jobs last month, with hospitals contributing 4,200 to that total, according to the most recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here are five things to know.

1. January marked a month of slower job growth for healthcare, as the industry added 41,000 jobs in December, according to the BLS.

2. Ambulatory healthcare services showed the biggest employment growth in the industry last month, with employment growing by 11,000 in places like physician offices (800 jobs), outpatient care centers (4,800 jobs) and home healthcare services (4,500 jobs).

3. Medical and diagnostic laboratories, nursing care facilities and "other ambulatory healthcare services" recorded job losses in January.

4. In the last 12 months, the healthcare industry added 374,000 jobs.

5. Overall, the nation's unemployment rate, at 4.8 percent, changed little in January. Total nonfarm payroll employment grew by 227,000.
From a former executive of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare being indicted in a $400 million fraud case to Nashville, Tenn.-based Hospital Corporation of America inking a $188 million settlement in a breach of contract case, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits and settlements making headlines.

1. Former Tenet executive indicted for alleged role in $400M fraud scheme

A former executive of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare was charged with paying kickbacks for patient referrals and misleading federal authorities.

2. VA to pay DaVita $538M for allegedly underpaying for dialysis services

The federal government agreed to pay Denver-based DaVita $538 million to resolve allegations that the Department of Veterans Affairs underpaid DaVita for dialysis services provided from 2005 through 2011.

3. Physician alleges Sharp Grossmont forced his resignation after patient safety complaints

Patrick Sullivan, MD, a one-time chief of anesthesiology at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, Calif., filed a 48-page complaint against the hospital Jan. 24 alleging administrators forced his resignation after he raised concerns regarding safety issues.

4. HCA inks $188M settlement in breach of contract case

Nashville, Tenn.-based Hospital Corporation of America entered into a $188 million settlement with the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City to resolve breach of contract allegations.

5. Diabetes patients sue 3 drug companies over alleged fraudulent insulin pricing

Eleven diabetes patients are suing several drug companies for alleged collusion on insulin pricing.

6. Cleveland Clinic intern barred from US entry sues Trump administration

Suha Abushamma, MD, a first-year internal medicine resident at Cleveland Clinic and a Sudanese citizen, is suing the Trump administration after she was detained and unable to reenter the U.S. due to President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration.

7. Former Jackson Health employee charged in ID theft scheme: 4 things to know

Federal investigators charged more than 100 individuals, including a former secretary at Miami-based Jackson Health System, for fraudulent schemes that allegedly compromised tens of thousands of Floridians' personal information.

8. NY cardiologist gets 5 years for attempt to kill competitor

Anthony Moschetto, DO, a cardiologist from Long Island, N.Y., was sentenced to five years in prison and five years of supervision post-release for conspiring to kill a competitor, among other charges.

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Suha Abushamma, MD, a first-year internal medical resident at the Cleveland Clinic and a Sudanese citizen, is suing the Trump administration after she was detained and unable to reenter the U.S. over the weekend due to President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, according to ProPublica.

The executive order, which President Trump signed Jan. 27, bars visitors from seven Middle Eastern countries  including Sudan  from entering the U.S for at least 90 days while the government develops more stringent screening methods. The rule also suspends the entire U.S. refugee admissions system for 120 days and the Syrian refugee program indefinitely.

Dr. Abushamma landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York at 11 a.m. on Jan. 28 after visiting family in Saudi Arabia. She was detained at the airport for about nine hours before she was forced to fly back to Saudi Arabia. Just twenty minutes after her plane departed, a federal district judge in Brooklyn issued a temporary stay blocking the government from deporting travelers held at airports.

Lawyers from the firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, working pro bono, are seeking a writ of habeas corpus and an order that would allow her to return to the country, reports ProPublica. On Tuesday they filed an amended petition in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn asking the judge to allow her to reenter the country. Lawyers had attempted to prevent her from being deported Jan. 28, but the emergency petition they filed was not acted upon before she left, according to the report.

The lawsuit on behalf of Dr. Abushamma contends she was denied access to a lawyer and was sent back unlawfully. It says she was told she either had to voluntarily withdraw her visa application and leave the U.S. or be deported, which would have prohibited her from returning to the U.S. for five years, according to the report. Dr. Abushamma asked an officer and supervisor with Customs and Border Protection to let her wait to hear the results of the legal hearing, but her request was denied, reports ProPublica.

Meanwhile, about two dozen of Dr. Abushamma's colleagues at Cleveland Clinic gathered this morning at the clinic's Miller Pavilion to demonstrate their support. While standing in silence, the group held photos of Dr. Abushamma and signs that said "#BringSuhaBack," according to a Cleveland.com report. The organizers of the gathering said they wanted to show their support for their colleagues and express their belief in the importance of diversity, inclusion and acceptance.

Earlier this week, hundreds of Cleveland Clinic physicians penned a letter to CEO Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, MD, asking him to denounce his perceived ties to the president and criticizing the decision to hold the annual fundraiser at one of the president's clubs in Florida.
Patrick Sullivan, MD, a one-time chief of anesthesiology at Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa, Calif., filed a 48-page complaint against the hospital Jan. 24 alleging administrators forced his resignation after he raised concerns regarding safety issues. Additionally, Dr. Sullivan alleges Grossmont administrators reinstalled hidden cameras to record surgeries without the permission of patients or physicians.

According to a KPBS report, from 2012 to 2013, Sharp Grossmont conducted video surveillance in operating rooms in the hospital's women's center to determine the cause for sedatives missing from anesthesia carts. The hospital apologized for the surveillance after a USB drive containing video clips of patients undergoing surgery were obtained by an attorney. The hospital currently faces two lawsuits from women accusing Sharp Grossmont of filming them without consent during labor.

Dr. Sullivan's lawsuit alleges he discovered in January 2016 that hospital administrators introduced computer monitors with embedded cameras throughout the hospital likely for the purpose of filming physicians and patients. While the physician said he has no hard evidence the hospital is again filming patients, he added that such a conclusion was warranted considering the hospital's history, according to KPBS.

"New laptops were installed in the ORs in support of SurgiNet, a perioperative and anesthesia information system," Sharp spokesman John Cihomsky told KPBS via email. "Like all new laptops, they came with built-in cameras; however, software was never installed on those laptops to activate the cameras. No surveillance occurred."

Dr. Sullivan's lawsuit says he repeatedly complained to hospital management about patient safety issues at Sharp Grossmont. Among the alleged safety issues are nursing shortages, inadequate stocking of medications and violations of leadership standards established by The Joint Commission.

According to KPBS, Dr. Sullivan said these complaints "would go into a black hole. You would never hear about it again. Or you'd get platitudes saying they'll fix the problem, but the problem would never be fixed."

Dr. Sullivan said, because of these complaints, administrators pushed him to resign. Dr. Sullivan is seeking compensatory and punitive damages for emotional strain and harm to his reputation.

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The University of Kansas in Lawrence is seeking an exemption from the state's concealed carry mandate for its medical school and KU Health System, reports LJWorld.com.

KU Health System officials testified Thursday before the House Federal and State Affairs committee to request exemption from a 2013 conceal and carry law. The law requires the hospital to allow adults who are legally allowed to own guns to conceal and carry them in its facilities, unless the hospital enacts security measures to ensure no one can bring in firearms, according to the report.

House Bill 2150 would provide a special exemption for the Kansas City Health Care District.

Rick Johnson, chief of campus police at KU Medical Center  the university's medical school  urged lawmakers to pass the bill.

"Allowing the carrying of concealed handguns in a healthcare environment will not increase security, but will create new public safety threats," he said, according to the report. "I am absolutely convinced that firearms do not enhance hospital security, but will contradict best practices already in place."

However, many members of the House Federal and State Affairs committee did not appear to be convinced by these arguments, according to the report.

"Right now, this bill takes away your 10,000 employees' right to carry a handgun into the facility, because they're working at all times of day, morning and night, and so is there no provision for them if they would feel safer in the nighttime traveling from the parking garage to one of the facilities?" asked Rep. Kristey Williams, R, according to the report. "That's one of the concerns of mine."

KU Health System CEO Bob Page said the health system's police force could escort employees to their cars in the evenings, according to the report.

The hearing came the day after the committee heard testimony on another bill to extend broader exemptions from the concealed carry law for buildings run by local governments, including university campuses, public hospitals and mental health centers, according to the report.
Medicare patients admitted to U.S. hospitals had lower mortality when cared for by foreign-educated physicians than by graduates of U.S. medical schools, according to a study published Thursday in the journal BMJ.

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For the study, Harvard University researchers examined data for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries admitted to the hospital with a medical condition between 2011 and 2014 and treated by international or U.S. medical graduates who were general internists. They looked at more than 1.2 million hospital admissions treated by 44,227 general internists.

After adjusting for patient and physician characteristics and hospital fixed effects, they found patients treated by foreign-educated physicians had lower mortality (11.2 percent) compared to patients treated by U.S. medical school graduates (11.6 percent).

"We found no evidence that patient outcomes for graduates who had trained outside of the U.S. were worse than for graduates from a U.S. medical school. If any, patients treated by the international graduates had lower 30-day mortality than those treated by the U.S. graduates. These differences persisted across a broad range of clinical conditions, and even among hospitalists, where patient selection might be less of a concern," the study's authors wrote.

Researchers said patients treated by foreign-educated physicians also had slightly higher costs of care per admission ($1,145) compared to patients treated by U.S. medical school graduates ($1,098). According to the study, readmission rates remained similar between foreign-educated physicians and U.S. medical school graduates.

Researchers noted several explanations for why foreign-educated physicians might have better patient outcomes than U.S. medical school graduates, including the fact that the approach for allowing foreign-educated physicians to practice in the U.S. may select for, on average, better physicians.

"Indeed, the match rate for U.S. residency programs is substantially lower for international medical graduates (49.4 percent) than for U.S. medical graduates (94 percent for graduates of U.S. allopathic medical schools), and therefore, it is possible that international graduates who are successful in the U.S. matching process might represent some of the best physicians in their country of origin," they wrote.
Dublin, Ireland-based Medtronic is planning to sell a portion or all of its medical supplies business, unnamed sources revealed to Bloomberg.

Here are six key insights:

1. Medtronic is working with advisers to identify potential buyers.

2. The division may be worth approximately $5 billion, the sources told Bloomberg.

3. The company's medical supplies business encompasses a variety of equipment, such as needles and monitoring technology.

4. Much of Medtronic's medical supplies line stems from its acquisition of Dublin-based Covidien in 2014.

5. Bloomberg reported Medtronic may seek one or several divestures of its medical supplies business.

6. A Medtronic spokesman did not disclose any information to Bloomberg.
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State Rep. Hank Zuber at the podium in the House of Representatives in Jackson. Zuber said Thursday he is giving serious consideration to a run for Mayor of Ocean Springs.

(Facebook photo)

OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- State Rep. Hank Zuber confirmed Thursday that he is giving serious consideration to making a run for Mayor of Ocean Springs in the upcoming municipal elections.

A Facebook post by Zuber earlier this week left many believing he was going to run or at least considering it.

"It's our time: time for Republicans/Democrats/downtown/east OS to take our great city to the next level," he wrote in the post. "It will take someone who is respected, a consensus builder, willing to work 24/7, and has relationships with County, state and federal officials. Yes, together we can do it and solve the serious issues facing our beloved city!!"

The post drew nearly 100 comments from readers, many of whom took the post to mean Zuber was throwing his name in the hat for the mayor's race, although Zuber did not reply to any of the comments.

Thursday, however, he confirmed to The Mississippi Press he is indeed contemplating a run for mayor.

"I'm considering it," he said. "Ocean Springs is at a crossroads and we're facing some serious issues and problems and we have to make sure we take the right direction, because if we don't, it could be detrimental for years to come -- not only for the city, but for our children and future generations.

"Infrastructure, traffic, sewer, taxation -- we're facing multiple issues in the coming years and we have to make sure we make the right decisions, to go down the right path."

Zuber, 50, was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives from District 113 in 1999 and has been reelected four times -- often without opposition. He is currently the Chairman of the House Banking & Finance Committee and also serves on the Gaming, Insurance, Judiciary B, Judiciary En Banc, Medicaid, and Ways & Means committees.

In 2014, he was named the Outstanding House Legislator by the Mississippi REALTORS for his staunch support of business in the state.

Zuber earned a bachelor's degree from Millsaps College and graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law. He owns his own law firm in Ocean Springs.

Zuber, currently in session with the Legislature in Jackson, said he will be returning to Ocean Springs for the weekend and intends to meet with a group of close confidants to discuss a possible run for mayor.

"There's a lot to consider," he said.

Incumbent Democrat Connie Moran has qualified to seek a fourth term, while newcomer Shea Dobson has qualified as a Republican. The deadline for candidates to qualify for municipal elections is March 3.
Denver-based North American Specialty Hospital unveiled a medical tourism practice, according to Physical Therapy Products.

"We're very pleased to offer what U.S. self-insured employers have told us they are seeking: U.S. standards of quality of care, billing that is both bundled and transparent, pricing that is internationally competitive at roughly half the US rates, and a travel destination that is at once appealing and convenient," said Jim Polsfut, CEO of NASH.

Here are five things to know:

1. Patients receive preoperative and postoperative care in the United States, but travel to Cancun, Mexico, to undergo surgery.

2. Patients undergo surgery at Galenia Hospital, where North American Specialty Hospital surgeons utilize two operating rooms and a patient recovery floor.

3. Mr. Polsfut said, "surgery is performed on a rotational basis in Cancun in collaboration with NASH's local medical personnel."

4. The hospital introduced the medical tourism services in October 2016, with a focus on orthopedics.

5. The hospital hopes to expand its medical tourism services to spine, cardiology and oncology in the future.
These spine surgeons tried to be above the law, committing fraudulent acts and endangering patients.

Dr. Aria Sabit  235-month prison sentence

In January 2017, neurosurgeon Aria Sabit, MD, received a 235-month prison sentence for fraud. He pleaded guilty to "various counts of fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit fraud leading to serious bodily injury and one count of illegally distributing a controlled substance," in May 2015, as reported by Medscape. The Department of Justice reported Dr. Sabit has stolen a total of $11 million from Medicare, Medicaid and private payers.





Dr. Cully White  Six-month prison sentence, six-month house arrest

Cully White, MD, a spine surgeon in Milwaukee, pled guilty to healthcare fraud in November 2013. He surrendered his medical license as well, following allegations of "substandard" surgeries dating back to 2004, Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reported. He had been performing about 600 surgeries yearly. In April 2014, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman sentenced Dr. White to a six-month prison sentence and a six-month house arrest. Six months after completing his sentence, Dr. White was back in the legal limelight regarding a counterfeit spinal implant lawsuit in June 2015.





Dr. Abubakar Atiq Durrani  Fled country following indictment

While performing surgeries at UC Health and West Chester (Ohio) Hospital between 2010 and 2013, Abubakar Atiq Durrani, MD, submitted more than $7 million in Medicare reimbursements, Cincinnati Business Courier reported. A federal grand jury indicted the spine surgeon for healthcare fraud and performing unnecessary surgeries. Dr. Durrani pled not guilty for healthcare fraud and fled the country in December 2013; a warrant is out for his arrest. UC Health and West Chester Hospital paid $4.1 million in October 2015 in a settlement regarding the spine surgeon's actions. UC Health did not employ Dr. Durrani, but he held privileges at West Chester Hospital.

Dr. Mark B. Kabins  Five-year probation, six-month home detention

A Las Vegas spine surgeon, Mark B. Kabins, MD, pled guilty to concealing fraud and received five years of probation and six months of home detention in 2010, according to Las Vegas Sun. Dr. Kabins was involved in an investigation of attorneys who allegedly received kickbacks from physicians for settling malpractice lawsuits. He worked with a medical consultant to corruptly influence the plaintiff's attorney not to sue for a spine surgery gone wrong. The sentencing also mandated Dr. Kabins pay $3.5 million in restitution to the paralyzed patient.




Four spine surgeons weigh in on the pros and cons of mega-mergers within the payer industry.

Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses.





Next week's question: Which regulation governing the healthcare industry would you like to see overturned?





Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 5 p.m. CST.





Question: What are some pros and cons to insurance company mega-mergers?





J. Brian Gill, MD, MBA. Nebraska Spine Hospital (Omaha): These insurance mega-mergers are being looked at with great scrutiny amongst U.S. regulators. The advantages of these mergers could possibly reduce administrative waste that comes when companies offer similar products. Mergers can reduce redundant processes and departments. With fewer insurance companies, negotiating is simplified as now there might only be a few companies to discuss contracts with instead of multiple companies.





However, these mergers can reduce competition allowing insurance companies to dictate reimbursement rates. If there are only a couple of insurance companies in a particular community, then physicians may have little choice but to accept the offered rates and terms or risk losing patients and ultimately their respective practices. Finally, these mergers might allow rationing of care to certain individuals or procedures which are considered to be high cost.





Brian R. Gantwerker, MD. Founder of the Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: I see only cons here. It is the very antithesis of what the Obama administration was trying to achieve  a competitive marketplace. Predictably, as the companies saw their profits dip, they are either trying to grab more market share or leave the exchanges completely.





Another very prescient movement is the trend towards a single payer system, and what I view as the inevitability of a two-tier system like the ones in Europe. With only the richest of patients being able to go "outside" the system I am very concerned about how everyone else will be able to get good surgeons. And, almost as important is how those doctors "inside" the system can keep from getting burned out. My concern is also for the unattractiveness of a career in medicine. I meet fewer and fewer young people who want to embark on a career in medicine.





Vladimir Sinkov, MD. Spine Surgeon at New Hampshire Orthopaedic Center (Nashua): Pros include insurance companies getting to post higher profits, creating more jobs and increasing their stock value. However, cons include the fact that further lack of competition will increase insurance rates and overall healthcare costs, put more administrative burden on physicians and patients and limit patients' access to and ability to get reimbursement for diagnostic studies and treatments.





Richard Kube, MD. Founder and CEO, Prairie Spine & Pain Institute (Peoria, Ill.): These mega-mergers are creating monopolies. There are no free market forces strong enough to counter what is being done by these large carriers. While collusion between the large carriers is not allowed, one can fit the CEOs of the companies insuring 50 percent to 75 percent of the PPO population around a large dinner table. Physicians are too segmented to be able to compete with numbers. The cons are the same as those faced with monopolies in any industry. I have yet to come up with a pro.

Payer mega-mergers  Are there any pros for spine surgeons?

Four spine surgeons weigh in on the pros and cons of mega-mergers within the payer industry.

Ask Spine Surgeons is a weekly series of questions posed to spine surgeons around the country about clinical, business and policy issues affecting spine care. We invite all spine surgeon and specialist responses.

Next week's question: Which regulation governing the healthcare industry would you like to see overturned?

Please send responses to Anuja Vaidya at avaidya@beckershealthcare.com by Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 5 p.m. CST.

Question: What are some pros and cons to insurance company mega-mergers?

J. Brian Gill, MD, MBA. Nebraska Spine Hospital (Omaha): These insurance mega-mergers are being looked at with great scrutiny amongst U.S. regulators. The advantages of these mergers could possibly reduce administrative waste that comes when companies offer similar products. Mergers can reduce redundant processes and departments. With fewer insurance companies, negotiating is simplified as now there might only be a few companies to discuss contracts with instead of multiple companies.

However, these mergers can reduce competition allowing insurance companies to dictate reimbursement rates. If there are only a couple of insurance companies in a particular community, then physicians may have little choice but to accept the offered rates and terms or risk losing patients and ultimately their respective practices. Finally, these mergers might allow rationing of care to certain individuals or procedures which are considered to be high cost.

Brian R. Gantwerker, MD. Founder of the Craniospinal Center of Los Angeles: I see only cons here. It is the very antithesis of what the Obama administration was trying to achieve  a competitive marketplace. Predictably, as the companies saw their profits dip, they are either trying to grab more market share or leave the exchanges completely.

Another very prescient movement is the trend towards a single payer system, and what I view as the inevitability of a two-tier system like the ones in Europe. With only the richest of patients being able to go "outside" the system I am very concerned about how everyone else will be able to get good surgeons. And, almost as important is how those doctors "inside" the system can keep from getting burned out. My concern is also for the unattractiveness of a career in medicine. I meet fewer and fewer young people who want to embark on a career in medicine.

Vladimir Sinkov, MD. Spine Surgeon at New Hampshire Orthopaedic Center (Nashua): Pros include insurance companies getting to post higher profits, creating more jobs and increasing their stock value. However, cons include the fact that further lack of competition will increase insurance rates and overall healthcare costs, put more administrative burden on physicians and patients and limit patients' access to and ability to get reimbursement for diagnostic studies and treatments.

Richard Kube, MD. Founder and CEO, Prairie Spine & Pain Institute (Peoria, Ill.): These mega-mergers are creating monopolies. There are no free market forces strong enough to counter what is being done by these large carriers. While collusion between the large carriers is not allowed, one can fit the CEOs of the companies insuring 50 percent to 75 percent of the PPO population around a large dinner table. Physicians are too segmented to be able to compete with numbers. The cons are the same as those faced with monopolies in any industry. I have yet to come up with a pro.
Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council, Terence Brannigan, Chairman of Tourism NI and Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Richard McClean, Managing Director of Belfast Telegraph, Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council, Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council and Terence Brannigan, Chairman of Tourism NI pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council and Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council and Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Terence Brannigan, Chairman of Tourism NI, Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council and Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council, pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Caroline Redmond and Stephen McMurray pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Caroline Redmond and Stephen McMurray pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Sarah Travers and Susie Brown, Tourism NI pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Julienne Elliott and Joanne McLaughlin pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Tanya Cathcart and Louise Curry pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Shauna McFall and Laura Goodall pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Sarah Travers, Susie Brown, Naomi Waite and Carolyn Boyd pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. John Hood, Paul Brown and Nigel Hardy pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Julienne Elliott and Joanne McLaughlin pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Mark Baxter, Roger Wilson, Sarah Travers and Darren Causby pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Danny Millar, Sarah Travers and Paula McIntyre pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Kathleen McCaul and Patrick McKeown pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Stephen Daye, Councillor Audrey Wales, Ald. John Carson, Mayor of Mid & East Antrim, Philip Thompson and Alison Diver pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Simon Dougan, Joris Minne, Gail Walker and John Best pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Gail Walker, Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and John Best pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Michelle Shirlow, Charles Campion, Georgina Campbell, Sarah Travers and Sharon Machala pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Simon Dougan, Joris Minne, Gail Walker and John Best pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Mollie Cunningham, Chloe McCullough and Kelly Millar pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Lynn Savage and Lucy Cairns pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Mollie Cunningham, Chloe McCullough and Kelly Millar pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Lynn Savage and Lucy Cairns pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 1 Best NI Food Event or Festival Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Noel Lavery, Permenant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs presenting Derry City & Strabane District Council with the award for Best NI Food Event & Festival for the Legenderry Food Festival. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers, Noel Lavery, Permenant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council and Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 1 Best NI Food Event or Festival Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Noel Lavery, Permenant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs presenting Derry City & Strabane District Council with the award for Best NI Food Event & Festival for the Legenderry Food Festival. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Noel Lavery, Permenant Secretary of the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council and Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Wendy Gallagher, Ald. Maura Hickey, George Nelson and Richard Connor pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Colin Prentice and Sharon Machala pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Graeme Millar, Anne-Marie Clarke and Jarlath Watson pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Phil Ervine and Caroline Wilson pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Tracey Hamilton, Tim Acheson and Clare Forster pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Sharon Machala and Jackie Reid pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Lee Jolliffe, John Hood and Grainne McGarvey pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Jennifer O'Donnell and Louise Millsopp pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Sarah Little and Jackie Reid pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 2 Food Innovation Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Michele Shirlow from Food NI, presenting Mash Direct with the award for Food Innovation for their Crispy Vegetable Bakes. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers, Tracey Hamilton, Michele Shirlow from Food NI, Tim Acheson and Clare Forster. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 3 Growing for the Future Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Paddy Doody from SPAR NI, presenting representatives from the North West Regional College with the Growing for the Future award for the Foodovation Centre. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers, Brian McDermott, Paddy Doody from SPAR NI, Leo Murphy and Dr Fergal Tuffy. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Tracey Hamilton, Mash Direct pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 3 Growing for the Future Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Paddy Doody from SPAR NI, presenting representatives from the North West Regional College with the Growing for the Future award for the Foodovation Centre. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers, Brian McDermott, Paddy Doody from SPAR NI, Leo Murphy and Dr Fergal Tuffy. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Lee Gibson and Richard Connor pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Uel Mackin, Natalie Brown, Brian Bloomfield, Mayor of Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council and Riki Neill pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 4 Best Food Story Sarah Travers, host at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with John Hood from Invest NI presenting Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Council the award for Best Food Story with the Armagh Food Heartland Forums. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers, Brian Irwin, Roger Wilson, John Hood from Invest NI, Simon Dougan and Colin McCusker. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Jill McLernon, Riki Neill, Jolene Kelly and Natalie Brown pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 5 Best NI Tours & Trails Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with John McGrillen, CEO of Tourism NI, presenting Far & Wild the award for Best NI Tours & Trails for Cycle Sperrins. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured is Lawrence McBride. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 5 Best NI Tours & Trails Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with John McGrillen, CEO of Tourism NI, presenting Far & Wild the award for Best NI Tours & Trails for Cycle Sperrins. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: John McGrillen, CEO of Tourism NI, Sarah Travers, Lawrence McBride and Kevin Hickey. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 5 Best NI Tours & Trails Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with John McGrillen, CEO of Tourism NI, presenting Far & Wild the award for Best NI Tours & Trails for Cycle Sperrins. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: John McGrillen, CEO of Tourism NI, Sarah Travers, Lawrence McBride and Kevin Hickey. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 6 Roots to Market Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Suzanne Pollock from Sodexo, presenting Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council with the Roots to Market award for their Food Heartland Initiative. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Colin McCusker, Brian Irwin, Suzanne Pollock from Sodexo, Roger Wilson, Sarah Jane Macdonald and Sarah Travers. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Destination Delicious Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Terence Brannigan, Chairman of Tourism NI and Richard McClean, Managing Director of Belfast Telegraph presenting food producers, businesses and the council of Derry~Londonderry and the North West area with the Destination Delicious Award. Judges selected the area to win the prestigious award on the night thanks to the collaborative efforts from all in the food, hospitality and tourism industries to make the region a real foodie destination. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers with Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 9 Destination Delicious Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Terence Brannigan, Chairman of Tourism NI and Richard McClean, Managing Director of Belfast Telegraph presenting food producers, businesses and the council of Derry~Londonderry and the North West area with the Destination Delicious Award. Judges selected the area to win the prestigious award on the night thanks to the collaborative efforts from all in the food, hospitality and tourism industries to make the region a real foodie destination. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 8 Best NI Local Market Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Jackie Reid from the Belfast Telegraph presenting the Comber Regeneration Community Partnership with the award for Best NI Local Market for Comber FarmersO Market. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Jackie Reid from the Belfast Telegraph, Roy Murray, Alderman Deborah Girvan, Mayor Ards and North Down Borough, Kirsty Atkinson, Sarah Travers and Mike Moore. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 9 Destination Delicious Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Terence Brannigan, Chairman of Tourism NI and Richard McClean, Managing Director of Belfast Telegraph presenting food producers, businesses and the council of Derry~Londonderry and the North West area with the Destination Delicious Award. Judges selected the area to win the prestigious award on the night thanks to the collaborative efforts from all in the food, hospitality and tourism industries to make the region a real foodie destination. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Sarah Travers, Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council and Stephen Gillespie. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Richard McClean and Joris Minne pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 7 Best Marketing Achievement Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Aisling Graham from Moy Park presenting the Lough Neagh Partnership with the award for Best Marketing Achievement, for the Eel-Eat project. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Aisling Graham from Moy Park, Cathy Chauhan, Emer Kearney and Sarah Travers. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Award 7 Best Marketing Achievement Sarah Travers, host of the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards is pictured with Aisling Graham from Moy Park presenting the Lough Neagh Partnership with the award for Best Marketing Achievement, for the Eel-Eat project. The inaugural awards celebrated the collaborative efforts of all from the food, drink and hospitality industry during the NI Year of Food & Drink 2016, with an gala awards evening at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured left to right: Aisling Graham from Moy Park, Cathy Chauhan, Emer Kearney and Sarah Travers. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Hilary McClintock, Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council with guests at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

Press Eye - Belfast - Northern Ireland - 2nd February 2017 - NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Jackie Reid and Susie Brown pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Pictured: Sarah Travers with Ald. Hilary McClintock, Mayor Derry City and Strabane District Council. Photo by Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye.

The north west was the biggest winner in the first Northern Ireland Food and Drink Awards on Thursday night.

Londonderry's hospitality and food saw it praised as a must-visit area after it won the Destination Delicious award at Tourism NI's Year of Food and Drink Awards in association with the Belfast Telegraph. Around 300 representatives from the tourism and food industries attended the glittering event, hosted by broadcaster Sarah Travers at the Culloden Hotel outside Belfast.

View photos from the NI Year of Food and Drink Awards event in our gallery above



Don't miss the 12-Page NI Year of Food and Drink Awards supplement in the Belfast Telegraph on Feb 7

Guests were served a sumptuous five-course banquet planned and prepared by Culloden head chef Paul McKnight.

While Londonderry won the top award, Armagh, Banbridge, Craigavon, Comber and the Sperrins were celebrated for their contribution through tours and events during the Year of Food and Drink.

Products including Mash Direct's crispy vegetable bake, free range Cavanagh Eggs from Co Fermanagh and Lough Neagh eels were also praised, with the crispy vegetable bake winning an award for food innovation.

Tourism NI was the awards' main sponsor, while categories were sponsored by catering firm Sodexo, Invest NI, the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, Spar, Moy Park and Food NI.

Welcoming guests last night, Belfast Telegraph managing director Richard McClean said that while the year had passed, the legacy of the Year of Food and Drink would continue.

He added: "We are here to make a simple point and that is to remind ourselves that the Year of Food and Drink was the ignition key to a much longer-term commitment to the sector."

He also noted that the signs for the future of the industry were "very good".

"Our dairy, beef, pork and poultry exports are well established success stories.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Judges Charles Campion and Georgina Campbell, host Sarah Travers and Sharon Machala at the NI Year of Food and Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel last night Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Belfast Telegraph Editor Gail Walker and food critic Joris Minne (centre) with Simon Dougan (far left) and John Best (right) Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Richard McClean, Managing Director of Belfast Telegraph, Mary Blake, Tourism Manager Derry City and Strabane District Council and Hilary McClintock, Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Phil Ervine and Caroline Wilson pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye Jennifer O'Donnell and Louise Millsopp pictured at the NI Year of Food & Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel. Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye / Facebook

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Whatsapp Judges Charles Campion and Georgina Campbell, host Sarah Travers and Sharon Machala at the NI Year of Food and Drink Awards at the Culloden Hotel last night

"Close behind them are the fast developing seafood and produce industries carving for themselves an international reputation for excellence," he said, adding Northern Ireland had only just learned to shout about its success in food and drink.

"We are still too often surprised by how good our food is. This is maybe down to our inherent sense of modesty or maybe it's a clever ruse which allows us to keep the best for ourselves.

Mr McClean observed that things were now changing.

"The truth is that the message is starting to get out," he said.

"What we make and grow, what we cultivate and harvest and what we nurture for future generations is a sustainable industry which creates job stability for thousands of people and raises our visibility as an exporter of highest quality."

As representatives from Londonderry's council and food businesses collected the Destination Delicious award, judges praised the area's collective will "to progress the city and county into a food and hospitality destination for tourists and locals to enjoy".

The winners were selected by an esteemed panel of judges - Professor Una McMahon Beattie of Ulster University, food critics Charles Campion and Georgina Campbell, and Belfast Telegraph food writer Joris Minne.

The banquet featured culinary delights such as Glenarm organic salmon as an appetiser, followed by a starter of local chicken terrine, paired with a Comber leek jelly and Northern Ireland's famous Nutty Krust Bread.

For a main course, guests were served Carnbrooke braised short rib beef with an Abernethy Butter mash.

The dessert consisted of panna cotta with Farmview Dairies cream, and Culloden signature shortbread was served with a Northern Irish coffee.

Each course was also paired with a delicious locally brewed craft beer.

Who picked up the prizes

Best Food Story sponsored by Invest NI

Food Heartland Forums, Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council

Best NI Food Event or Festival sponsored by the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs

Legenderry Food Festival, Derry City & Strabane District Council

Best NI Local Market sponsored by Belfast Telegraph

Comber Farmers' Market, Comber Regeneration Community Partnership

Food Innovation sponsored by Food NI

Crispy Vegetable Bakes, Mash Direct

Growing for the Future sponsored by SPAR NI

Foodovation Centre, North West Regional College

Roots to Market sponsored by Sodexo

Food Heartland Initiative, Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon Borough Council

Best NI Tours & Trails sponsored by Tourism NI

Cycle Sperrins, Far & Wild

Best Marketing Achievement

sponsored by Moy Park & Food NI

Eel-Eat, Lough Neagh Partnership

Destination Delicious

Derry-Londonderry & the North West
Bank shares have soared after US President Donald Trump signalled he would tear up regulations put in place after the financial crisis to better police the sector.

Mr Trump plans to sign an executive order on Friday demanding a review of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law, which aimed to rein in reckless financial firms following the 2008 banking crisis.

The billionaire has dubbed Dodd-Frank a "disaster" and said he could repeal and replace the law, which also created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Barclays, which has a US investment banking operation, was up more than 3% on the London Stock Exchange during lunchtime trading, while Royal Bank of Scotland climbed around 2%.

Jasper Lawler, senior market analyst at London Capital Group, said: "Since Dodd Frank was introduced, banks have devoted a lot more capital towards compliance and have had to decrease leverage, both of which are a direct hit to profitability.

"If Dodd Frank is watered down, that's a direct boost to the bottom line for banks."

The Trump administration has argued Dodd-Frank has not achieved its purpose and is an example of government over-reach.

While the order will not have any immediate impact, it will direct the Treasury secretary to consult with members of different regulatory agencies and the Financial Stability Oversight Council and report back on potential changes.

It may include a review of the CFPB, which vastly expanded regulators' ability to police consumer products, from mortgages to credit cards to student loans.

It came as Ben Broadbent, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, said Mr Trump's election victory had been marginally positive for the British economy.

The president has pledged to slash taxes and ramp up infrastructure investment in a raft of measures designed to turbo charge America's manufacturing industry.

"You've seen business confidence rise particularly in the United States. You've seen financial markets get more optimistic and I think that has had some impact on us," Mr Broadbent said.
The Brexit white paper is a wish list, with no details on how to achieve its objectives, Mario Giro said

The Brexit white paper has been branded a "wish list" by Italy's deputy foreign minister.

Mario Giro also said that the EU could not accept the UK becoming a tax haven on its doorstep.

He told BBC Newsnight: "Everything is negotiable and then also deliverable, everything.

"On one side the white paper is a wish list, with no precision on how to handle it. It's main things are 'what we want', what UK wants in this negotiation.

"But, on the other side, the tonality of the white paper is a good one ... The white paper says more or less what are the best results for both."

Mr Giro's comments came as Prime Minister Theresa May was meeting fellow EU leaders at a summit in Malta.

She has threatened that Britain could cut its tax rates to attract investment if it did not get the deal it wanted from the EU, but Mr Giro said Brussels would resist such a move.

"We cannot accept that UK will become a tax haven near to Europe."

Mr Giro said Britain's divorce from the EU would be painful for both sides.

"I think it is a daunting task for both because, of course, it's a divorce. In a divorce, divorce is always painful and it's a failure. We are all responsible, and we have to act quickly, and with fairness.

"I mean quickly also because I know that it is very complicated and we don't know exactly how to handle it. It is the first time. I say that we need to be quick because the financial markets let us no time."

Asked what would be the most difficult aspects of the negotiations, he said: "Probably the commercial thing ... because, of course, the common market is very important for us, it's the building block of the EU, and we need to speak a lot about that."

The white paper unveiled by the Government set out the 12 main objectives Mrs May seeks to achieve from withdrawal from the EU.

The document indicated Britain looks likely to quit the European Customs Union.

It also said the UK could become subject to a new arbitration panel to resolve disputes with the EU after it removes itself from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

It made clear that Brexit would not happen as an abrupt "cliff-edge" moment, because changes including new immigration controls, customs systems and business regulations would be phased in gradually.

Mrs May is expected to use the gathering in Malta's capital Valletta to hold one-to-one talks with a series of EU leaders.
Early consultations must take place on dealing with the movement of goods and people across the border post-Brexit, a major all-island business body has said.

Liam Lynch, president of Chartered Accountants Ireland, claimed a hard Brexit appeared likely, with the UK out of the single market and customs union.

"This will be extremely challenging for the island of Ireland," he added. "We need to work now to establish how the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will work and how it can cause the least amount of economic disruption."

He also told how he was encouraged by indications that "some type of e-border or virtual border" could be set up, but added that "significant" consultation should now take place.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Prime Minister Theresa May said they envisaged a "seamless and frictionless" border.

Earlier this week, MPs voted by a majority of 498 to 114 in favour of a bill to start the process of leaving the EU.

Mr Lynch last night addressed the Chartered Accountants Ireland annual dinner. He said a solution to the border issue required "all the talent we possess on this island and beyond to come up with the most innovative and practical solutions".

"We need to find innovative ways to retain the common travel area with the UK, while at the same time maintaining and strengthening our position within the EU, because that is where our future lies," he added.

"We need to be open-minded to practical solutions which will respect the UK's desire for border controls, but also allow businesses to survive and thrive."

He also said chartered accountants should make their voices heard: "We need to bring these issues to the table ahead of Article 50 being invoked.

"We need to take a lead position with the other 27 EU States, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament to represent the concerns and opportunities of Irish business."

While the Taoiseach and PM have said they want a frictionless border, a former head of the European Commission's customs procedures unit has said strict border controls will be required to avoid penalties from the EU.

Michael Lux told a parliamentary committee that Northern Ireland could remain in the customs union for up to 10 years after Brexit to ensure border controls could be implemented.

He also said new arrangements would be needed to control goods being brought across the border by both private citizens and companies.

Asked by MP Lady Sylvia Hermon if a "seamless border" could be achieved, he replied: "If you define seamless as no border controls, then the answer is no, at least for Ireland as it is obliged to apply EU law."
Uber has been hit by boycott campaigns that began when people perceived it as trying to break a taxi strike at New York's JFK Airport

Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's business leaders' forum, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Mr Kalanick wrote that he had spoken with Mr Trump on Thursday and "let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council".

He said: "Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."

The ride-sharing company has been buffeted all week by boycott campaigns that began when people perceived it as trying to break a taxi strike at New York's JFK Airport.

The strike was inspired by Mr Trump's executive order temporarily suspending the country's refugee programme.

Mr Kalanick subsequently condemned the executive order and has contributed to relief groups, but calls for a boycott have continued.

AP
You did a very bad job protecting the environment and may have made many of the worst effects of climate change more likely. It could hardly have been worse.



On the upside for President Trump, Republicans in Congress and many of the people who voted for him will support most of your decisions. We guess its true what they say about dark clouds (something about silver linings?).







Lord Greg Barker publicly pleaded with Ebell to please, please stop trashing experts. It is an incredibly dangerous thing to do.



The former UK climate minister said: The idea that climate deniers or the extreme sceptics represent anything other than a tiny disproportionate voice at the extreme of the argument is wrong. Mainstream Conservatives are pro-climate action.



Michael Liebrich, chairman of the advisory board of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, likewise said he was uncomfortable about the comments Ebell made in his speech.



In his own keynote address, Liebrich said we dont have to reject the arguments and say we dont believe in experts. We absolutely believe in experts. We cannot be in the business of rejecting science.



EU climate chief, Jos Debelke, also rejected Ebells anti-expert posturing.

From the WUWT comments





It's not just that the conspiracy theorists are not ashamed of their appalling ignorance, it's that they gloat about how dim they are.

February 2, 2017 at 7:26 am

Im not clicking that link.

February 2, 2017 at 7:33 am

I took the George Mason Universitys Center for Climate Communications quiz several years ago. I was rated as Dissmissive complete with a graphic of a gauge pegged out at zero. I was so proud of myself I used the graphic as my Facebook profile picture. Sadly, they no longer offer it, but it was the usual clap trap.

http://www.climatechangecommunication.org/

February 2, 2017 at 7:42 am

I started to take the quiz but the choices are insufficient to make rational decisions. They equate pollution with CO2 and do not differentiate between real pollution such as smog, and aerosols. If you want to give a quiz it must be unbiased or it is useless. I could go on and on but will leave it there.

February 2, 2017 at 10:43 am

I am a bad person also.

I bet I will kill off all the coral reefs and annihilate oceanic life.

ah well its nice to have goals.











Eric chose to tell Donald Trump to trash the planet, and then pretended to be deeply offended when he was told by the New York Times in response to his choices:What does he expect? That anyone but his fellow planet wreckers would thank him for more floods, more drought, more heat waves, poorer crops, more wildfires, more skin cancer and faster global warming?One other thing his short article shows is that Eric knows that deniers, disinformers and fake sceptics will avoid reading facts they don't like. They'd probably rather read nonsense at climate conspiracy blogs, fake news and white supremacist rants at Breitbart than have to face reality.As you know, there is a large proportion of the US (and Australian) population who are opposed to education, knowledge and the advancement of humanity. That's not the case everywhere, thank goodness. An illiterati from the USA, Myron Ebell, was recently told where to get off by conservative politicians in the UK, Eric Worrall's home country. Ebell basically said - don't listen to experts. I don't know if he said just who he thinks the deplorables should listen to, though I doubt it was Eric Worrall. Anyway, the response was sharp, according to Desmog UK Thankfully, it's not yet the entire world who wants to promote dumb ignorance over the best, most knowledgeable information from the cleverest people in the world. What will Eric do when the food runs out? He'll probably just say "it's happened before, this is nothing unusual, it's nothing to worry about" as he totters through the floods and pouring rain, or drives his dirty unwashed car over his dead lawn in the next major drought.By the way, the blurb you get back from the NY Times when you answer the questions (whatever you reply) is extremely polite. One could hardly take offense. Either Eric is very thin-skinned or he's just pretending to be offended to get page hits for Anthony Watts.is afraid to even look at the NY Times. He's probably scared that someone will reach out through his monitor and nab him and put him in a FEMA concentration camp.isn't alone in being proud of his illiterati status:says he "could go on" and travel further into Dunning Kruger land.is one sick dude. He or she claims toto kill all life.
Sometime in 2014, two years after releasing their record-breaking second album Babel, Mumford & Sons announced they were taking a break. They'd been hard at work for the best part of five years, had toured the world several times over, won Grammy and Brit awards, and had the accolade of 2012's fastest-selling album under their belts. They deserved a rest.

However, just over a year later, they returned with Wilder Mind, which, like Babel, went to No 1 in both the UK and the US. Then, after another hugely successful round of touring, they once again hinted at taking a break, but...

"We're pretty restless and we've got very short attention spans," says the band's Marcus Mumford (29). "I think that comes across in our music. Even on stage it's a microcosm of what we're like - we change instrument if we do one thing for too long."

The band released a new concert film, documentary and album, Live From South Africa: Dust And Thunder, this week.

It captures their first-ever performance in Pretoria, South Africa, in front of 50,000 ecstatic fans, and follows on from their Johannesburg EP, released last June, recorded in the eponymous city with Senegalese musician Baaba Maal, Cape Town band Beatenberg and Brit-Malawian trio The Very Best. A special documentary, We Wrote This Yesterday, is included with the special edition of the Blu Ray/DVD. It was filmed during sessions for Johannesburg, and sees the musicians collaborating.

Hot on the heels of the film's release, the band - Mumford along with Ted Dwane, Ben Lovett and Winston Marshall - have announced three headline shows in the US, will support U2 around Europe and the States as part of the Irish band's Joshua Tree anniversary celebrations, and will very shortly be heading into the studio to record what will be their fourth album.

"We feel really blessed that there are enough people in the world that want to hear us, so we have this vague responsibility to play to them," says Mumford, who was born in California but grew up in south-west London. "We do work hard, but we've got friends with real jobs, and they work a lot harder than we do. When we're on stage, we're as happy as we can be. So we want to keep making albums so we can keep justifying going on tour.

"There's no point sitting back when we're enjoying it so much, and we're all young and able to carry on at this pace."

He says the songs for album number four are currently only embryonic, but experiences in Johannesburg, and his own adventures with The New Basement Tapes - a Bob Dylan-themed collaboration with artists including Elvis Costello, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and Rhiannon Giddens of Carolina Chocolate Drops - could well see any new record being Mumford & Sons' most collaborative.

"Our old producer, Markus Dravs, always used to say, 'The mind is open', when it came to making music, so we like to think after all we've done, it's even more open," he says.

"I don't think we'll get anyone else involved in the writing, because the four of us still have so much to give on that front. We've all done so much playing now, we listen to so much more diverse music. The main thing I've learned is that the studio should be a relaxed place to be. We want to get on with the next album, but saying that, we definitely won't rush it or release anything until it's absolutely as we want it to be."

Mumford says the main aim for the future is to write songs so good that they can retire their biggest crowd-pleasers, Little Lion Man and The Cave, two songs guaranteed to turn even the most sedate of gigs into a hoedown.

"We were headlining festivals when we'd only released one album, so we really had to make that set work," he says. "Even with the second album, we were playing almost every song, so it was great with the third to have competition in the set, to be able to drop some of the older songs.

"It would be unthinkable to leave some of our songs off a set list, but that's the aim, to write better and better songs."

He doesn't think the band have worked out exactly what the next album should be, whether it will stray further from their roots, as they did with the stadium rock of Wilder Mind, or embrace them.

"We need to think about what makes a Mumford & Sons record, what makes a record unique to us. We've been kicking about a few ideas, but we're yet to come up with any answers."

One thing Mumford knows is that he doesn't want to spend much more time watching footage of the band performing. The flip side of being in control of all their output, to a degree to which other bands would be envious, is that Mumford and co must approve everything.

"It's just so awkward. I really don't like it. But it was nice while putting together the film to watch the other guys getting into the music. Of course, I just see a show from my own perspective, so it was great to see what they were up to, and to see what the crowd were doing further back than the front few rows. There were a lot of people all the way at the back dancing, and that's a very flattering thing.

"But yeah, it's still very awkward watching yourself, so I try to avoid that. And I'd just like to say I'm much thinner than I look on camera too."

The concert captured in the film was the band's first show in South Africa. Despite the country being among the first to embrace the band's music, right back in 2009 when they released their first album Sigh No More, they took their time getting there.

From the crowd's reaction, it was worth the wait, and it seems the feeling was mutual.

"We should've gone there sooner, but we feel we made up for it," says Mumford. "It was one of the best shows we've ever played, and having it on film is the perfect representation of us on that tour."
HMV's flagship store on Oxford Street could be under threat

Fears have been raised that HMV's flagship London store is set to close.

Landlords for the building have started talks with property agent Savills to surrender the lease, according to Property Week.

Closure of store at 363 Oxford St, which played a part in the Beatles story, would end a 96-year residence on the central London street.

A HMV spokesman said: "While we don't usually comment on individual stores, there is no agreement in place to close the Oxford Street store.

"The HMV portfolio is constantly evolving in order to ensure it best suits the strategy of the business and there are at least two new store openings taking place this year, with more likely to follow."

The original shop was opened by Sir Edward Elgar in 1921.

The shop burnt down in 1937, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1939.

The brand moved to a site further down London's famous shopping street, before returning to its original address in 2013.

It was a visit to the HMV shop in Oxford Street by the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein in 1962 which set their eventual deal in motion.

Epstein called in to see a friend he had made on a retail management course, who suggested his tapes should be transferred to discs - to make it easier to hawk the songs around.

The shop engineer was so impressed he called down a music publisher from the top floor office, who in turn, made a call to producer Sir George Martin's secretary to recommend a meeting with Epstein.

A few days later on February 13, Epstein visited the record label HQ within EMI's Manchester Square office in London, at which Sir George heard the disc and spotted some potential and showed interest in meeting the band.
Northern Ireland-born filmmaker Mark Cousins this week shocked a movie festival audience by giving his latest film the chop - literally.

After a screening of his latest film, Bigger Than The Shining, at the 2017 International Rotterdam Film Festival, Cousins (51) took an axe to the movie in a bizarre homage to Jack Nicholson's scenery-chewing axe psycho performance in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror classic.

Speaking to Screen Daily, the former St Louis Grammar School pupil explained the reasons behind his dramatic and unforgettable stunt.

"I think I always intended to destroy Bigger Than The Shining," he said.

"It's an experiment and a provocation which should probably only exist for a short period.

"It's a hybrid of other films, so a long life for it is not justified.

"It's a bit like the two main characters in La La Land. The two films in my movie meet and have fun, but it was never going to last. It becomes a memory.

In 2014, Cousins - a former presenter of BBC2's cult film show Moviedrome and Scene By Scene - released I Am Belfast. He described it as his "love letter" to the city, where he was born and grew up.

With a score by Northern Irish electronic musician David Holmes, I Am Belfast was well received by the critics.

Several new films by Cousins are in the works, the director told Screen Daily.

"My film Stockholm My Love comes out this year - March in Sweden, June in the UK," he explained.

"I definitely won't destroy it. I have three more films in the pipeline, but none are yet announced.
Vehicle with two flat tyres following the use of a stinger. Newraypics.com

A man was remanded in custody on Friday charged with motoring offences linked to a police pursuit from Belfast to Newry.

James Maughan, 36, was arrested after the PSNI helicopter and trained drivers tracked a Renault Scenic for up to 40 miles after it failed to stop on the Falls Road on Wednesday afternoon.

The car also allegedly reversed into a police vehicle causing damage and injury to two officers before heading out of the city and travelling across country.

The pursuit ended when a stinger device was deployed to bring the Scenic to a halt just outside Newry.

Maughan, of no fixed address, appeared before Belfast Magistrates' Court to face a total of 14 charges connected to the incident.

They include dangerous driving on Belfast's Ligoniel Road, failing to stop, report or remain at the scene of an accident causing injury, and criminal damage to a PSNI vehicle.

He is also accused of driving while disqualified and without insurance.

No further details of the alleged incident were disclosed during the brief hearing.

Maughan spoke only to confirm he understood the charges against him.

A PSNI constable said she could connect him to all the alleged offences.

Defence solicitor Adrian Harvey put no questions to the officer and confirmed he was not seeking bail.

He also disclosed that his client was only released from custody last month.

Dstrict Judge Fiona Bagnall remanded Maughan in custody to appear again by video-link on March 3.
A trawl for all police documents in a legal action over alleged State collusion with a loyalist paramilitary agent suspected of up to 15 murders could take years and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, the Court of Appeal has heard.

Counsel for the Chief Constable argued that ordering full discovery in a case where liability had already been accepted would be an oppressive and disproportionate step.

But lawyers for John Flynn, who sued after surviving two UVF attempts on his life, insisted the material is required to ensure any suspected police wrongdoing is uncovered.

Mr Flynn, from north Belfast, issued proceedings against the PSNI over murder bids, allegedly carried out by an agent who operated in the city's Mount Vernon area.

In 1992 a gunman tried to shoot him after he was lured to Whiteabbey Hospital on the outskirts of the city.

Five years later a second attempt was made to kill him in a failed car bomb attack.

The 57-year-old brought a lawsuit against the Chief Constable for alleged negligence and misfeasance in public office.

The PSNI has admitted his misfeasance claim and accepted he should be paid damages, which could ultimately reach 75,000. But the force denies negligence or having ever employed the agent - identified only in the case as 'Informant 1'.

He is suspected of involvement in up to 15 murders and a litany of other crimes.

Mr Flynn's action was triggered by the findings of Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan that some Special Branch officers colluded with loyalist killers. Her 2007 Operation Ballast report centred on the activities of a UVF gang allegedly led by Mount Vernon man Mark Haddock.

As part of the lawsuit, Mr Flynn's lawyers are continuing to seek access to a number of categories of documents. Last year a High Court judge ruled police had failed to disclose enough documents.

Appealing that decision, Nicolas Hanna QC, for the Chief Constable, insisted it was an unnecessary step when Mr Flynn has effectively won the case.

Senior judges were told it would take an estimated two years to identify all the files and comply with the level of discovery being sought.

A Public Interest Immunity process alone would cost in excess of 300,000, according to a Superintendent asked to assess the scale.

But Brian Fee QC, for Mr Flynn, claimed his client was treated as "collateral damage", and stressed that more information was needed for the ultimate assessment of damages.

Judgment was reserved.
WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump bows his head in prayer while attending the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. Also pictured are (L-R) television producer Mark Burnett and Sen. John Boozman (R-AR). (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump bows his head in prayer while attending the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump (C) applauds at the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. Also pictured (L-R) are television producer Mark Burnett, and Sen. John Boozman (R-AR). (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFPT OUT) U.S. Television producer Mark Burnett introduces U.S. President Donald Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump listens as television producer Mark Burnett introduces him at the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump listens as television producer Mark Burnett introduces him at the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump talks with television producer Mark Burnett (L) at the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. Also pictured are (L-R) Mark Burnett and Sen. John Boozman (R-AR). (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 02: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast February 2, 2017 in Washington, DC. Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the annual event. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Donald Trump has paid tribute to Northern Ireland producer Roma Downey at the high-profile National Prayer Breakfast in Washington.

The annual event brings together faith leaders, politicians and dignitatires.

Every US president since Dwight Eisenhower has addressed the event.

President Trump was introduced to give his speech on Thursday by Roma Downey's TV producer husband Mark Burnett.

The Derry actress and her husband produced the American Apprentice of which Trump was the face of, which apart from his business success is a key part of his fame.

As Mr Trump thanked Mark for his introduction he paid tribute to Roma - who is Northern Ireland's second richest woman.

He said: "I also want to thank my great friends the Roma. Where's Roma, beautiful Roma Downey, the voice of an angel.

Expand Close Londonderry-born actress Roma Downey / Facebook

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"She's got the voice -- every time I hear that voice; it's so beautiful.

"That -- everything is so beautiful about Roma, including her husband because he's a special, special friend. Mark Burnett for the wonderful introduction."

Also at the event Donald Trump took a swipe at Arnold Schwarzeneggerwho has taken over as the host of The Apprentice.

He asked those in attendance to say a prayer for him - as Mr Trump has mocked his ratings since his departure.

We had tremendous success with The Apprentice. When I ran for president I had to leave the show.

They hired a big, big movie star to take my place, and we know how that turned out. The ratings are right through the tubes. Its been a total disaster, so maybe we should pray for Arnold - for his ratings.

On Thursday the movie star spoke back and said they should switch jobs.

He said: Hi Donald, I have a great idea - why dont we swap jobs, he said in a video message. You take over TV because youre such an expert on ratings, and I take over your job so that people can finally sleep comfortably.
Regulations to crack down on animal cruelty, like horse soring, arent a cost to business, but a reflection of our deepest values. The only people who despise that kind of rulemaking are the perpetrators of animal abuse. Photo by Lance Murphey/For The HSUS

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Even with so much other political activity in Washington, its hard not to notice the anti-regulatory rhetoric streaming out of the White House and Congress in the new political setup, and wonder where the balance is. President Trump has frozen many new regulations, including one to crack down on horse soring (which the Obama administration failed to publish). Given his allegiance to the NRA, Trump may also nix a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service order to phase out lead ammunition on national wildlife refuges and allow the resumption of ruthless predator control activities on millions of acres of federal lands in Alaska. Alaska Rep. Don Young and Sen. Dan Sullivan have already introduced resolutions urging a repeal of the Alaska rules that forbid aerial gunning of wolves and trapping of grizzly bears.

Trump announced this week that for every new regulation taken up, he wants to repeal two. On top of that, the Republican-controlled House is eagerly invoking the Congressional Review Act, which would allow some late-term Obama administration regulations to be reversed with simple majorities in the House and Senate. And the House passed the REINS Act a couple of weeks ago, which would require congressional approval of all major regulations, with the intent of keeping new rules to a trickle. It also passed the Midnight Rules Act, which would allow the House and Senate to bundle together regulations and repeal the entire roster all at once.

Sure, there are times in which government overreaches. But many rules and regulations that once seemed jarring to some businesses and private citizens are now viewed as essential safeguards in our society. Its a regulation to have car manufacturers build automobiles with greater fuel efficiency so we are not so dependent on foreign oil. Its a regulation to do random testing for salmonella bacteria or E. coli before food gets to the supermarket or the table. And it is a set of federal regulations that help assure safety in the airline industry.

Regulations to crack down on animal cruelty, for example, arent a cost to business, but a reflection of our deepest values. The only people who should despise that kind of rulemaking are the perpetrators of animal abuse. Good businesses embrace these rules, and understand it will help the bottom line when their customers know that they are adhering to standards.

When the U.S. Department of Agriculture says that horse show trainers shouldnt torment horses by intentionally injuring their feet just to produce an artificial, prize-winning show gait known as the big lick  a practice known as soring  thats a regulation, and a good and overdue one. When the USDA says that the term organic should mean that animals are not confined in small cages or mutilated as a routine husbandry practice, thats a common-sense regulation, benefiting family farmers who can sell their products at a higher rate in return for their sustainable husbandry practices. What decent person wouldnt agree with these rules, or begrudge the horsemen or farmers doing things the right way and not cutting corners?

We live in a society that observes standards of regulated capitalism. A purely free market is an illusion in a representative democracy. Its an American value for business to operate with tremendous freedom and latitude, but businesses must also be subject to reasonable guidelines, which are a blend of self-restraint and the application of law.

So, by all means, stop government waste and overreach  particularly where it favors special interests at the expense of the public. But dont accept the notion that eliminating regulations is good for its own sake, without examining the merits. We need the government to shield us from bad actors. Thats why the Senate should reject the REINS Act and the Midnight Rules Act. And both chambers should take a look at the merits of the regulations that they are considering for repeal. Cut the ones that dont work and run against the grain of our values. But defend the ones that protect the public and that require businesses to play by a fair set of rules.

In the workings of government, and through the pressure applied to government, we seek to find that sweet spot where private industry can flourish and private citizens and animals and the environment are protected. Thats the essence of a regulated capitalism and a civil society. And thats where well always take our stand.
Prominent loyalist Mark Harbinson has been found guilty of causing criminal damage to road signs by painting them red, white and blue.

Harbinson (49), from Sheepwalk Road in Lisburn, is also facing separate weapons charges.

Yesterday in Lisburn Magistrates Court District Judge Amanda Brady found Harbinson guilty of two counts of criminal damage between September 11 and 15 in 2015.

She fined him 150 for each count, but as he remains in custody on other charges the fines are to be served out by no more than seven days each in custody.

As the verdict was delivered Harbinson sat in the dock in jeans and a grey T-shirt.

Judge Brady rejected claims from the defence Harbinson had been overcharged with criminal damage, when a lesser road traffic offences charge would have sufficed. She added that Harbinson had made himself known when police attended the scene of the damage.

Addressing Harbinson's defence lawyer, she said: "Is it not the case that when the police were at the location, the defendant appeared and said: 'Is it me you're looking for?'

"They looked in the vehicle and there was the red, white and blue paint."

Concluding, Judge Brady added: "I'm satisfied that Mr Harbinson did indeed commit criminal damage on the dates set out in the two summonses."

Harbinson remains charged with a number of other more serious offences. They include charges of possessing a firearm and ammunition in suspicious circumstances as well as possessing a pistol and ammunition without a certificate.

In January a further charge of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life was dropped at Belfast Crown Court.

In November last year a High Court application for bail was refused. A judge was told during the hearing he had previously fled to England for 10 days after police had searched his Co Antrim home on December 21, 2015, finding the gun and ammunition.

The items were discovered by police in a biscuit tin in the rafters of a barn beside the property.

A shebeen-style drinking den was also said to contain items associated with the Orange Volunteers, including a banner for the banned terror group.

At the time Harbinson denied possession of the firearm, 28 rounds of ammunition and a silencer with intent to endanger life.

Following the discovery Harbinson fled to England to stay with friends in Cumbria. The PSNI launched a joint operation with Cumbria Police to arrest him and he was eventually detained 12 miles from the property.
In an exclusive interview, Claire McNeilly talks to 'Greg' about how he was groomed and pimped out by a sadistic paedophile at just 12 years old.

At first, Greg comes across as your typical Northern Ireland student. The 22-year-old attends his lectures, shares a home with a friend and makes the most of his downtime. He enjoys life in Belfast, mingles with other young people and harbours dreams of a successful career after graduation.

But any sense of ordinariness belies Greg's horror backstory. It fails to reveal a tale of such revulsion that you involuntarily wince just listening to it.

It's a story of grooming, of exploitation, of repeated rape, of systematic and persistent sexual abuse of a young boy mercilessly and brutally robbed of the childhood that so many of us take for granted.

It's a cautionary account of someone who was targeted by a vile, violent paedophile who not only used an innocent adolescent for his own gratification, but pimped him out to countless others.

Yet, despite the violence, the mental and physical violation, the seemingly never-ending nightmare and the psychological scars, Greg wants his story to be heard.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all, however, is that he's still around to tell it.

He's a survivor. And he has chosen this week - Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week, organised by the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland - to share with us how he clawed his way back from a darkness that, thankfully, most of us will never encounter but, sadly, some of us still do.

It all started a decade ago, when Greg (not his real name) was just 12. His mum and dad had separated, his two older sisters had flown the nest and he lived with his builder dad, who was in his mid-40s and drank heavily.

School life for the already troubled youngster was never wonderful, but after Greg came out prior to turning 13, things took a terrible turn for the worse.

That was when he made the fateful decision to go online, where he would make contact with Jason - a 26-year-old paedophile who called himself a businessman.

After two weeks of virtual chatting, Greg and Jason agreed to meet up, and just three weeks later they spent the night together.

"We stayed in a hotel and got intimate... it was my first time," recalls Greg. "I felt very loved. I felt that, above all, Jason was my friend. I was quite happy to just be friends, but he appeared to want a loving, intimate relationship, which I went along with.

"When someone buys you stuff and listens to your problems and tells you it's not your fault - which is what you think - it's very powerful... it swallowed me up. I bought into it".

Greg saw Jason as a route away from his troubled life, and Jason took full advantage.

"I was living with my dad, but we argued constantly and he drank a lot because of stresses at work," says Greg, who was living in London at the time.

"I just remember feeling that no one understood me. Then I came out as gay at school and immediately lost all my friends. I thought they'd understand... they were all I had.

"I suffered quite significant homophobic bullying in school and constant emotional abuse.

"The day I came out, a teacher took me aside and told me to report any problems, but I wasn't going to grass. I thought it would just make it worse."

In Greg's mind, the time had come to find new friends.

"I discovered a site that let young people join and I met Jason, who told me he was 18," says Greg.

"I could see from his pictures that he was clearly older, but I didn't mind because here was someone who was actually interested in me and what I had to say.

"Social services never listened to me. They came to assess me and I told them how unhappy I was with my dad and how we were always arguing, but they said it was my behaviour and nothing to do with my dad.

"It's no surprise that after chatting online every day for a couple of weeks I met up with Jason.

"He turned me away from everyone. He said the friends who deserted me after I came out were cowards. He said everything I wanted to hear.

"The first thing I thought when I met him was that he wasn't 18. About a month later, I confronted him about it and he admitted he was 26. But I went along with it because I felt important and I felt valued."

Jason showered Greg with gifts including new clothes, mobile phones, alcohol, drugs and more - and won him over.

"When I first met him it was lovely," he recalls.

"My dad had stopped giving me money and Jason bought me a new pair of trainers that I wanted.

"I was bunking off school and meeting him every day at that point.

"Less than a month after we met, he began taking me to a flat. It was sparsely furnished. There was so much food ground into the living room carpet that if you scraped it up you could have made a meal out of it. It was revolting.

"That's where some of the 'parties' were held. The others were in cheap hotels.

"There would be one or two other boys (aged 14 or 15) and six or seven grown men.

"The first time Jason asked me to do him a favour, it was to get intimate with a man in his late 40s.

"I didn't like the man and I didn't feel very comfortable with it, so I said, 'No, I'd rather not'. Then Jason slapped me across the face and said, 'Do you feel any more comfortable now?' That was three months down the line..."

Soon, being intimate with Jason's 'friends' became commonplace, as did the psychological conditioning.

"I sort of learned to not enjoy it, but not see it as a bad thing," Gregg says, at this point visibly struggling to speak as some of the more lurid memories flooded back into his mind.

"It became my new normal and I just took drugs to block everything out."

Greg explains that all he had wanted, as a troubled youngster who had just come out, was to be part of a world of like-minded people - and that's what Jason had promised to get him into.

"He took me to a bar when I was only 13 and I just felt so grown up," he remembers.

"He'd buy me drinks, then we'd go to a hotel or the flat and I'd go missing for two or three days."

Eight months after meeting Jason, Greg lied to a suspicious social worker that his new friend was 18.

"I thought if I said he was 26, she'd call the police," he says.

"Sexual exploitation was suspected, but no call was made to Barnardo's (the UK's largest charity for vulnerable children) at this stage."

Social services did, however, inform his family - and his father repeatedly punched him in the face until he gave up his mobile phone, which contained indecent images of him and Jason.

The phone was handed over to the police, but the abuse continued for another year.

"Without a statement from me, they couldn't do anything with the phone," says Greg, admitting he has never given that statement.

"Despite everything, I still felt that these people were my friends."

But it wasn't long before the child abuse and rape got a lot worse.

"Soon, all Jason needed me for was to have sex with other people," Gregg says.

"Men paid him - and he mostly paid me in the form of drugs, which I was now dependent on. I was on crack, heroin, ecstasy, a lot of ketamine, everything. I felt worthless; someone who was only good for having sex with.

"Not only was I going to the flat, but I was being taxied around the country to be with men... sometimes many of them at a time.

"The abuse then got more sadistic. My hands were tied with a scarf to a headboard and I was left there for hours.

"I had marks on my wrists for days afterwards. I was so terrified I didn't even try to free myself."

Things came to a head on Greg's 14th birthday, in May 2008.

"I was in foster care at that time and I hated my foster carer," he explains. "I hadn't been at school for months and I kept going missing for days at a time.

"The whole point of putting me into care was to safeguard me, but it just made it worse.

"It was as if, as soon as Jason found out I was in care, he upped the ante.

"He promised me we'd do something special together to celebrate my 14th birthday, but instead I got severely beaten up and raped that day.

"Finally, in the early hours of the morning, he unlocked the flat door and let me out. I made my way to A&E.

"I told the nurse I'd been in a fight - just like I had before - but she didn't believe me.

"She was different - she was warm and open. I finally broke down, told her that I'd been beaten and raped and social services were informed.

"I was taken to hospital, spoke to a counsellor there and then I was sectioned for three months."

Effectively, the nightmare was over, although the physical and psychological scars would be much harder to erase.

Greg had, after all, spent a year-and-a-half being horrifically abused by at least 100 different men, many of whom had got together at times to 'share' their vulnerable prey.

The young survivor believes social services must take some of the blame for this unthinkable ordeal. "They failed me monstrously," he says.

"I begged them to put me in care when they first started working with me before the exploitation started, but they wouldn't.

"I should have been referred to Barnardo's from the moment I disclosed I had met an 18-year-old, but no one did anything.

"It was that one nurse in A&E who showed a little bit of interest that changed everything.

"The exploitation stopped because while I was in hospital I had no access to a phone and I wasn't allowed out for three months.

"But the second I came out of hospital I would have gone straight back into the exploitation cycle if I hadn't been referred (by social services) to Barnardo's in August 2008. It was them who saved my life."

Greg was eventually discharged and put into a foster home.

He was still in the throes of drug addiction, something he wouldn't fully escape from until a 28-day spell in rehab when he was 16.

"I was in the foster system until I got my own place," he explains

"By the time I was 18 I'd been through therapy, got a job and a flat and was paying my own rent.

"I did it all by myself. I was free of professionals and I could stand on my own two feet.

"I felt a sense of accomplishment and pride. It felt good doing that."

A tale of redemption in the end, but with one note of caution that resonates even more during this particular week.

Jason - like so many other monsters - is still out there.

Drive to highlight signs and protect vulnerable kids

Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week is aimed at broadening the awareness of an increasingly important issue.

All week, members of the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland  including Barnardos, the PSNI, local health trusts and the NSPCC  have been escalating their social media activity to highlight the threat faced by Northern Ireland children and increase awareness of the danger signs.

Barnardos NI has a service  called Safe Choices  which is dedicated to supporting young girls and boys who are, or are at risk of, being sexually exploited. It has been operating for 17 years.
Ciaran Maxwell, a Royal Marine from Northern Ireland, has pleaded guilty to offences related to dissident republican terrorism, including bomb-making and storing weapons.

Maxwell, 31, from Larne, Co Antrim, appeared via video link from Woodhill jail at the Old Bailey in London and spoke only to confirm his name and enter guilty pleas to all the charges.

Maxwell was arrested on August 24 by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's counter-terrorism command after the the discovery of two dissident republican arms dumps near Larne, County Antrim.

According to the charge details, he had a stash of explosives in purpose-built hides in England and Northern Ireland.

He compiled a library of terrorism documents, including instructions on how to make explosives and tactics used by terrorist organisations.

He also had maps, plans and lists of potential targets for a terrorist attack and images of an adapted Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) pass card and a PSNI uniform.

He bought chemicals and components and went on to manufacture explosives and devices, the court heard.

Maxwell was also charged with possessing images of bank cards for fraud and possessing cannabis with intent to supply.

In March the PSNI uncovered a "significant terrorist hide" including bomb-making paraphernalia at Carnfunnock Country Park near Larne.

In May it uncovered a further collection of explosives and bomb parts at Capanagh Forest, also close to Larne.

Commander Dean Haydon of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command acknowledged the "excellent" joint work between the Northern Ireland force and the UK national counter terrorism network. He said: "This investigation resulted in a significant disruption and protected public safety by removing a large quantity of dangerous material from circulation."

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin said by working together they had removed a significant threat.

"The arrest and charge of Ciaran Maxwell highlights the benefits of excellent collaborative working between the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Metropolitan Police and other national partner agencies," he said.

"Working together, we have disrupted the activity of a dangerous individual and removed a very significant threat."

Maxwell was remanded in custody to be sentenced on a date to be fixed.

Background

Anti-terror operation linked to Marine cost 1.1m

An anti-terror search operation that led to the arrest of Ciaran Maxwell cost a police force in England more than 1.1m.

The extensive search operation carried out near Exeter on behalf of the Metropolitan Police at the end of last year cost Devon and Cornwall Police 1.1m.

Police were asked to search woodland in August after the arrest of Maxwell.

The cost includes 660,000 Devon and Cornwall had to pay other forces to borrow officers to help with the search, while also paying its own staff 320,000 in overtime.

The cost of hotel bills for the 18-day operation amounted to 82,000, and catering added a further 38,000.

The search took 34,000 officer hours, or 2,800 officer days, and 70 miles of blue and white police cordon tape was used during the operation.

The figures, which were revealed following a BBC Freedom of Information request, show that the operation involved 2,000 nights of accommodation and 8,500 meals.

Royal Marine Ciaran Maxwell 'beaten by Larne loyalists in 2002'

It emerged last year that as a 16-year-old, Ciaran Maxwell was the victim of a savage sectarian beating in his home town.

He sustained a fractured skull and suffered multiple other injuries when a gang of loyalists attacked him with iron bars and golf clubs.

Expand Close Maxwell aged 16 after being attacked by loyalist thugs / Facebook

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During his recovery he recounted the incident to republican newspaper An Phoblacht in an article that was accompanied by a picture showing the extent of his injuries.

The paper said: "He was struck by a bottle and fell under the blow. Kieran struggled to his feet and despite losing a shoe, tried to run away. At this point up to ten loyalists arrived in two cars.

"This gang was armed with iron bars and golf clubs and they immediately attacked Kieran. He was beaten to the ground and lost consciousness.

According to the paper, eyewitnesses said that loyalists appeared to have been waiting in ambush and kept beating Ciaran "as he lay prone on the ground".

One local man told the Larne Times at the time: "Ciaran is from a mixed background, his mother is Catholic and dad is Protestant.

"He grew up in the Seacourt estate and was absolutely tortured by the UDA when he was a teenager.

"He was regularly chased off the street by loyalists. On one occasion they gave him a very bad beating and left him in a very bad way."

Ciaran Maxwell charges in full

Ciaran Maxwell was charged with the following offences on 2 September 2016:

Charge 1

Between 1 January 2011 and 24 August 2016, with the intention of assisting another to commit acts of terrorism, engaged in conduct in preparation for giving effect to this intention, namely:

- Research resulting in the creation of a library of documents providing information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism specifically information regarding the manufacture of explosive substances, the construction of explosive devices and tactics used by terrorist organisations.

- Purchasing or otherwise obtaining articles for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism. Specifically chemicals and components to be use in the manufacture of explosive substances, the construction of explosive devices; an image of an adapted PSNI pass card; items of PSNI uniform.

- Manufacturing explosive substances.

- Constructing explosive devices.

- Creating and maintaining hides in England and Northern Ireland to store explosive substances, explosive devices, components for explosive devices, ammunition, weapons, tools and resources used during the construction of explosive devices and assorted other items linked to the preparation of an act of terrorism.

Contrary to section 5 Terrorism Act 2006

Charge 2:

On 24 August 2016 had in his possession a quantity of a controlled drug, namely cannabis, with intent to supply it to another.

Contrary to section 5(3) and (4) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971

Charge 3:

Between 1 November 2015 and 24 August 2016 had in his possession articles, namely images of bank cards and associated CVC numbers, for use in connection with fraud.

Contrary to section 6 Fraud Act 2006
A new mum has described the shocking moment she woke up and discovered she had a 10-day-old baby boy after giving birth while she was in a coma.

Ciara Murray (33), from Enniskillen, suffered a stroke when she was 37 weeks pregnant and doctors had to put her in a coma to save her and the baby.

Before the dramatic birth, Ciara had experienced a normal pregnancy and had barely even suffered from morning sickness.

However, on October 29, 2015, she unexpectedly suffered a massive stroke because of a blood clot on her brain.

Feeling unwell after breakfast, Ciara went for a lie down - but she didn't make it to the bed and instead collapsed onto the bedroom floor.

With her husband John (36) out at work as a bricklayer, Ciara was unable to move and she lay there drifting in and out of consciousness for seven hours.

Ciara, who was working as a clerical officer in a school before she became ill, explained: "My husband was at work and I couldn't get up at all to get the phone. Every time I tried to pull myself up, I kept slipping down.

"I couldn't feel the baby at all. I was far more worried about him than myself. I thought I had just fainted.

"I was so frightened. I just had to close my eyes and hoped that the time would go quickly."

When John came home at 6.30pm, she was finally able to shout out for help.

"I was so glad to hear the key in the door," she said.

"I said to him 'Is that you John?' He came in and he tried to lift me."

John rang for an ambulance and Ciara was brought to South West Acute Hospital in Enniskillen.

Doctors told her that she had suffered a stroke, but luckily, a scan of her baby showed that he was fine.

She said: "It was so lucky that he was alright, but they found that I had a clot on my brain and told me I had to be moved to the Royal Victoria Hospital.

"I knew that I was very sick, but John tried to tell me that we'd be fine. That is the last thing I remember."

Ciara was in and out of consciousness and the next day, they carried out a three-hour surgery to remove the clot on her brain and also performed a caesarean section.

Her son James arrived on October 30, 2015, weighing 5lb 5oz. He was healthy and was able to leave hospital a few days later.

However, it took 10 more days before Ciara woke up and met her little boy. She was placed in an induced coma after the operation to give her body time to heal.

Ciara said: "They didn't tell me before the surgery that I was going to give birth. I woke up on November 10, which happened to be my husband's 35th birthday. The nurse told me the date and I said 'That's John's birthday.'

"Then she told me that I'd had a baby. I couldn't believe it. John brought him into me and it was just amazing.

"I could hardly move but he just lay there on my chest. He was just a wee tiny bundle but he was perfect.

"I just felt so lucky that he was doing well because I was so worried about him."

Every day John had to take him home without Ciara due to the intense rehab she required in order to help her regain the feeling on her left side.

The dedicated dad made the three-hour, 160-mile round trip from their home in Co Fermanagh to Belfast every day to make sure they got to spend time together as a family.

She said: "It was quite a journey for him every day but it was worth it. Luckily, I had no problem bonding with James. I clicked with him and loved him straight away."

After a month at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Ciara moved back to the hospital in Enniskillen for more rehab, meaning she got to see James twice a day - but soon had to return to Belfast for the next stage of her treatment.

"After 10 weeks in Enniskillen, I moved to Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast to the brain injury unit for intense rehab for three months," she said.

"It was hell knowing that I had to leave the baby again."

After her release from hospital on April 29, 2016, Ciara returned home and adapted to looking after her six-month-old baby.

She said: "I had to learn to change a nappy with one hand as I couldn't use the other. It was definitely challenging but having to look after him was great motivation to get better and stronger."

Ciara has had support from a local stroke group to help her to learn to live with the effects of her stroke, which had left her without feeling down the left side of her body.

She explained: "Getting out with other young stroke survivors means I can talk about it with people who understand.

"I am still having rehab as well, but it is a long process. I have regained some feeling in my leg, but there's no arm movement yet.

"I am still in a wheelchair, but I can walk a bit round the house with a stick. I'm just working hard every day and I'm determined to get all my mobility back."

Luckily, James, now 15 months, is thriving and didn't suffer any impact from the stroke.

"He is completely fine," Ciara said. "He's full of energy and he's ready to walk at the minute. We're both trying to get on our feet at the same time."

"Doctors still don't know what caused the stroke but I'm just so pleased that we're both doing ok now."
After a six-day hearing, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said he believed the evidence of Mr Walsh

David Walsh, who sued his stepmother for a share of a jackpot lottery win, has won his case in the Irish High Court .

Mr Walsh, from Knocknagreena Ballinasloe Co Galway sued his step mother Mary Walsh claiming he was entitled to some 560,000 from a 3.4million jackpot win.

Mrs Walsh denied the claim.

She says he was given the option of either a house that had belonged to his late father Peter and Mrs Walsh or 200,000 from the win, and he chose the house. David Walsh denies that.

After a six-day hearing, Mr Justice Richard Humphreys said he believed the evidence of Mr Walsh over that of his stepmother whose evidence he described as unreliable consisting of "ducking and weaving and self contradiction".

He ordered her to pay him 564,000 with costs.
Sinn Fein veteran Martin McGuinness has been nominated for a peace prize which includes the likes of Nelson Mandela among its past winners.

The former Deputy First Minister, who stepped down from politics last month due to ill-health, is on the shortlist for the 2016 Tipperary International Peace Award.

Mr McGuinness, a former IRA commander, spent almost 10 years at the helm of devolved government in Northern Ireland with DUP leaders, first with the late Ian Paisley then Peter Robinson and Arlene Foster.

He stood down as Deputy First Minister amid the "cash for ash" scandal of the Renewable Heat Incentive which paid over-the-top subsidies for those who put in special boilers.

TUV East Londonderry candidate Jordan Armstrong criticised the decision to include Mr McGuinness on the shortlist.

"McGuinness remains unrepentant about his role in IRA terrorism," he said.

"What the Tipperary Peace Award Committee are really saying is that you can be involved in a terrorist organisation and be recognised for a contribution towards peace without expressing one scintilla of remorse or regret of the suffering you and your organisation caused," he said.

The former Sinn Fein chief negotiator joins five other contenders for the award including human rights lawyer Amal Clooney - wife of Hollywood actor George Clooney - who has represented WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy.
Virgin Media is to take on staff in billing, sales and other back office roles at its call centre

More than 100 jobs are being created by one of the country's biggest telecoms and TV companies.

Virgin Media is to take on staff in billing, sales and other back office roles at its call centre in Roxboro in Limerick.

The company said it was also expanding its broadband network in the region connecting another 10,000 homes to its network.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan attended the announcement and said: "This is a very welcome development for Limerick and it underpins the city's track record as a hub that can deliver strong results for high tech multinational companies like Virgin Media."

The 120 new jobs will take the company's workforce in Limerick to 400.
Christopher Nunn is reported to have been injured in fighting between government troops and Russia-backed rebels in Ukraine (AP)

A British photographer has been injured in Ukraine as fighting between government and rebel forces stepped up, military officials have said.

The journalist - reported to be documentary photographer Christopher Nunn from Huddersfield - was hit in the eye during shelling on Thursday night , according to the Facebook page of Ukraine's anti-rebel military operation.

Mr Nunn is said to have picked up the injury during fighting between government troops and Russia-backed rebels in the town of Avdeyeka in the east of the country.

International monitors issued a sharp call for both sides to cease the fighting.

The monitoring mission of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation In Europe described the escalation in conflict as "unacceptable".

Ukraine said three of its soldiers and an emergency worker died in the past day.

At least 33 people including civilians have been killed in fighting this week and several dozen injured.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that several civilians were killed in the city of Donetsk, the main stronghold of Russian-backed separatist rebels, but did not give details.

The death toll in the war that began in April 2014 has exceeded 9,800, according to United Nations figures and a tally of recent fighting.

Although a ceasefire and pullback of heavy weapons is called for in a two-year-old peace agreement, violations by both sides are frequent.

AP
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attended the funeral of three men killed in a shooting at a mosque in Canada

The Canadian prime minister has attended the funeral of three of the six men killed in an attack at a Quebec City mosque.

Justin Trudeau spoke to the thousands of people packed into Quebec's Maurice-Richard Arena in Arabic. There was applause after he said "as-Salaam-alaikum", which means "peace be unto you".

The Liberal Party leader stood before the caskets of Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi and Aboubaker Thabti, which were draped in the flags of their homelands.

He said the massacre has left Canada in shock but also unified the country in solidarity with the Muslim community.

"It is with a heavy heart that we come together this afternoon to grieve the loss of these innocent lives," he said.

"But as a community and as a country, together we will rise from this darkness stronger and more unified than ever before. That is who we are."

Mr Thabti, 44, was a pharmacist of Tunisian origin who had three children.

Mr Belkacemi, a 60-year-old father-of-two, was from Algeria and a professor at Universite Laval.

Mr Hassane, a 41-year-old also from Algeria, was a father-of-three and worked in information technology for the Quebec provincial government.

Mr Trudeau said they were devoted fathers who worked hard to ensure their families had a bright future - a dream, he said, that Canadians have known and shared for generations.

The men, along with three others, were killed when a gunman entered the mosque and opened fire during evening prayers. Nineteen more people were wounded.

University student Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. He was arrested on Sunday night following the attack.

Bissonnette was a fan of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and US president Donald Trump, and acquaintances said he took extreme nationalist, pro-Le Pen positions at Laval University and on social media.

Quebec mayor Denis Coderre, who was also among the dignitaries at the funeral, said the attack was a blow to everyone.

"I think that we are all suffering" after the shooting, he said. "Not just the Muslim community, it's not just the people of Quebec. Everyone is suffering from this."

Philippe Couillard, premier of Quebec province, noted all six dead were fathers like him.

He said: "They were sons and brothers and uncles, like me, like us. Friends, co-workers, like us. They were us.

"They were loved, appreciated, respected and they always will be. We won't forget them."

"I want to tell Muslim Quebecers: You're at home here. We are all Quebecers," Mr Couillard said, to thunderous applause and cheers.

A funeral is expected in Quebec City on Friday for the three other victims: Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Ibrahima Barry, 39; and Azzedine Soufiane, 57.

AP
Israeli left wing activists from the Peace Now movement protest outside the Knesset (Parliament) on January 30, 2017, to protest in support of the evicition of those living in the settlement outpost of Amona, which was established in 1997 and built on private Palestinian land. Israel's parliament began discussions on the final adoption of a bill retroactively legalising thousands of homes on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. / AFP PHOTO / THOMAS COEXTHOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images

Israeli settlers gather infront of the Knesset (Parliament) on January 30, 2017, to protest against the evicition of those living in the settlement outpost of Amona, which was established in 1997 and built on private Palestinian land. Israel's parliament began discussions on the final adoption of a bill retroactively legalising thousands of homes on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. / AFP PHOTO / THOMAS COEXTHOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images

The Trump administration has told Israel to stop constructing new settlements - or expanding others - because it "may not help" achieve peace with Palestinians.

President Donald Trump has offered his firm support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on a number of occasions, signalling he could be more amenable towards the process of settlement building than his predecessor Barack Obama, who repeatedly condemned their construction.

Mr Trump has also characterised Mr Obama actions towards Israel as weak and accusing him of treating the country with "disdain."

However, it appears the White House were taken by surprise by the speed with which plans for thousands of new settler homes - construction of which is condemned by much of the international community - were put in place by Israeli authorities.

In the last two weeks 5,500 new homes have been approved for construction in the West Bank, land that the Palestinians want as part of any future state.

It is the largest expansion of construction since US-led peace talks broke down in April 2014.

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The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years, the White House statement reads.

While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region, the statement adds.

Perhaps in a nod to the visit of Mr Netanyahu to Washington on 15 February, the White House statement adds that the Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity" and that the administration "looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.

The carefully-worded statement stepped back from previous statements by Trump officials on settlements, including Mr Trump's pick as ambassador to Israel David Friedman. The statement was reportedly issued after a report in the Jerusalem Post on Thursday that quoted an unnamed US official as saying that Mr Netanyahu's government should stop the spree of construction in case it interferes with Mr Trump's plans to work towards peace. The White House seemingly thought the quotes, as reported, went too far and looked to dial down the tone of the debate.

Mr Trump has a number of advisors who see Israeli security as a major concern, including Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and Mr Friedman. But it is not the first time since his inauguration that Mr Trump's administration has appeared to step back and previous rhetoric. A pledge to quickly move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - which the Palestinians also claim as their capital - has seemingly been softened with progress on a potential move not coming until at least June according to some reports.

In the first Israeli reaction to the statement, Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, said it was too early to tell how it would affect future building.

It's still too early to tell ... I would not categorise this as a U-turn by the US administration but the issue is clearly on their agenda ... the issue will be discussed when the prime minister (Netanyahu) meets the president in Washington, Danon told Israel Radio.

We will not always agree on everything, he added.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with Mr Netanyahu on Thursday, the State Department said. It did not say whether they discussed the White House statement.

The group representing Israeli settlers brushed off the White House statement saying that it looks forward to "working closely with our friends" in the Trump administration.

Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers' council, told teh Associated Press that group "thanks the White House for asserting that our communities were never an impediment to peace."

Using the biblical name for the West Bank he said "nothing is more natural and morally just than Jews building in Judea."

"We look forward to working closely with our friends in the new Trump administration to build a brighter future all," he added.

In an interview with the CBS program 60 Minutes, former President Obama discussed his decision to abstain from the United Nations vote to condemn the construction of Israeli settlements.

"Because of our investment in the region, and because we care so deeply about Israel, I think [the US] has a legitimate interest in saying to a friend, 'This is a problem,'" he explained. "It would have long-term consequences for peace and security in the region, and the United States."
Melania Trump filed a lawsuit against the Daily Mail and a blogger (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A Maryland judge has dismissed first lady Melania Trump's libel lawsuit against Britain's Daily Mail newspaper over an article that she said published false statements about her.

Court records show that Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell ruled on Thursday to dismiss the suit against Mail Media Inc, the corporation that publishes the Daily Mail's website.

T he Daily Mail's argument centred on whether the lawsuit should have been filed in Maryland and whether Mrs Trump was suing the correct corporate entity.

Mrs Trump has also filed a lawsuit against the paper in London.

The first lady's libel suit against blogger Webster Tarpley of Gaithersburg for reporting similar statements was allowed to move ahead last week.

She filed the lawsuit in Rockville in September, after both Mr Tarpley and the Daily Mail issued retractions.

AP
A man holds a Romanian flag as his dog sits next to him at the end of a protest in Bucharest against a government decree that dilutes what qualifies as corruption (AP)

Romania's political crisis has deepened after a key government ally said an emergency decree that would dilute the anti-corruption fight was not constitutional.

Ombudsman Victor Ciorbea, who previously backed the measure, reversed his position on Friday and said he would tell the Constitutional Court that the decree passed overnight on Wednesday to decriminalise official misconduct was "not justified".

He claimed the measure risked "taking out of the reach of criminal law almost all the public administration".

Earlier, justice minister Florin Iordache said he stood by the law, defying strong criticism from home and abroad and days of massive protests.

Mr Iordache, who had temporarily handed over his duties to a subordinate, told reporters: "I take responsibility for this ordinance."

The ruling centre-left Social Democratic Party has defended the decree, which has sparked some of the biggest protests since the 1989 fall of communism

Romania's Constitutional Court - the last legal resort to stop the law - will rule on it on Tuesday.

Speaking at a European Union summit in Malta on Friday, President Klaus Iohannis called the situation "very complicated".

"We have hundreds of thousands of my Romanians out on the streets, and I trust them. I trust my people," Mr Iohannis said.

"I believe in Romania ... European values have to prevail and this is what I believe will happen. "

Amid strong international criticism, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the US was "deeply concerned" about recent measures "that undermine rule of law and weaken accountability for financial and corruption-related crimes".

AP
On Tuesday morning I turned on the Stephen Nolan Show and heard a woman saying the most hateful, appalling things about Muslims.

The caller - Janice from Belfast - started off by asking why "so many Muslims wanted to come to our country when there are so many Muslim countries they could go to". After that it got a lot more bizarre. Janice claimed that Muslims were trying to "take over the UK".

Finally she said that, if she was sick in hospital, she would rather "go home and die" than be treated by a Muslim doctor.

It was like Pastor McConnell all over again, with those lurid claims that the Islamic faith was "heathen", "Satanic" and "a doctrine spawned in Hell". If anything, it was worse.

Janice's comments, quite naturally, sparked an enormous outpouring of revulsion on social media and beyond. So was Nolan right to allow such views to be broadcast on his show?

Yes, of course he was.

Far better to expose such prejudices to the bracing air of public challenge than to let them fester in the dark. Suppressing hatred only allows it to grow stronger. Drag it into the light, confront it, put it to the test of truth. That's the best way to deal with such ignorance.

'No-platforming' offensive views, refusing to allow them to be heard, is not the answer. All it does is turn bigots into martyrs, thus strengthening their appeal.

We know that Janice isn't alone in her suspicion and hostility towards the Muslim faith. According to the latest Northern Ireland Life and Times survey, 60% of people living here would not accept a Muslim as a close friend, while 50% would not be willing to accept them as a colleague at work. 68% of residents would object to a Muslim marrying into their family. It's depressing stuff.

So we can't pretend that people like Janice don't exist. They have been given confidence by President Trump's cruel and discriminatory travel ban on people from that highly selective list of countries. Yet the Janices were here all along, nursing their hatred of difference, well before Trump left reality television and started playing dangerous power games in the real world.

But let's remember that social media isn't the real world either. In some ways it's every bit as fake and distorted as reality TV, because it's incapable of showing the full picture.

Yes, it's the driving force behind the enormous petition against Donald Trump's proposed State visit to the UK later this year, and the mass protests demanding that the invitation be revoked. If you go by social media alone, it looks like the whole country is up in arms against him, getting ready to bar the borders against the orange-tinted antichrist.

Yet a new YouGov poll shows that 49% of Britons believe that Trump's visit should go ahead, while just over a third (36%) want it to be cancelled.

This doesn't mean that people who want Trump to come to the UK are necessarily in favour of his travel ban. But it does show that public opinion is not synonymous with what's trending on Twitter.

Nolan was right to cut Janice off at the point when she started ranting about Muslims "breeding like rabbits". By then she'd had her say and been thoroughly challenged, and there was nothing to be gained by allowing her to continue. Just as it's not right to forcibly silence people with offensive views, we don't have to indulge them endlessly either.

But in condemning Janice's irrational and fearful hatred, it's important not to go so far that we disallow any criticism at all of Islam and its adherents. No religion, Islam included, should be beyond critique.

You can't treat anyone who expresses disquiet about certain tenets of the faith, held by many Muslims - opposition to homosexuality, for example - as if they're automatically a bigot. We must be free to question, to comment and to disagree.

There's a big difference between mindless prejudice and reasonable dissent. It's sad that people like Janice - and the large numbers of Northern Ireland citizens who would refuse friendship with a Muslim - hold the opinions that they do.

But we won't change those prejudices by pretending that they don't exist. And we can't challenge them unless we hear them and speak about them openly. That's why it was right to put Janice on the radio, and let her talk.
It is US President Donald Trump's first week in office and already he has scrapped the Trans-Pacific Partnership, backed the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, and banned immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries.

There is anguish around the world at these policy decisions. But why? Mr Trump promised to implement these during the election campaign, so why are people so shocked?

Is it because we are so used to politicians breaking their promises as soon as they enter office, that when we finally have a politician that keeps them, we can't get our head around it?

Some voters are just never happy.

JASON FITZHARRIS

By email
MSM758

http://time.com/4658012/donald-trump-national-prayer-breakfast-transcript/

America is a nation of believers. In towns all across our land, it's plain to see what we easily forget -- so easily we forget this, that the quality of our lives is not defined by our material success, but by our spiritual success.

I will tell you that and I tell you that from somebody that has had material success and knows tremendous numbers of people with great material success, the most material success. Many of those people are very, very miserable, unhappy people.

And I know a lot of people without that, but they have great families. They have great faith; they don't have money, at least, not nearly to the extent. And they're happy. Those, to me, are the successful people, I have to tell you.

TRUMP: I was blessed to be raised in a churched home. My mother and father taught me that to whom much is given, much is expected. I was sworn in on the very Bible from which my mother would teach us as young children, and that faith lives on in my heart every single day.

The people in this room come from many, many backgrounds. You represent so many religions and so many views. But we are all united by our faith, in our creator and our firm knowledge that we are all equal in His eyes. We are not just flesh and bone and blood, we are human beings with souls. Our republic was formed on the basis that freedom is not a gift from government, but that freedom is a gift from God.

(APPLAUSE)

It was the great Thomas Jefferson who said, the God who gave us life, gave us liberty. Jefferson asked, can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God. Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs. That is why I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember.

(APPLAUSE)

Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but it is also a right under threat all around us, and the world is under serious, serious threat in so many different ways. And I've never seen it so much and so openly as since I took the position of president.

The world is in trouble, but we're going to straighten it out. OK? That's what I do. I fix things. We're going to straighten it out.

(APPLAUSE)

Believe me. When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. They're tough. We have to tough. It's time we're going to be a little tough folks. We're taking advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore. It's not going to happen anymore. We have seen unimaginable violence carried out in the name of religion. Acts of wantonness (ph) (inaudible) just minorities. Horrors on a scale that defy description.

Terrorism is a fundamental threat to religious freedom. It must be stopped and it will be stopped. It may not be pretty for a little while. It will be stopped. We have seen...

(APPLAUSE)

And by the way, General, as you know James "Mad Dog", shouldn't say it in this room, Mattis, now there's a reason they call him "Mad Dog" Mattis, never lost a battle, always wins them, and always wins them fast. He's our new secretary of Defense, will be working with Rex. He's right now in South Korea, going to Japan, going to some other spots. I'll tell you what, I've gotten to know him really well. He's the real deal. We have somebody who's the real deal working for us and that's what we need. So, you watch. You just watch.

(APPLAUSE)

Things will be different. We have seen peace loving Muslims brutalize, victimize, murdered and oppressed by ISIS killers. We have seen threats of extermination against the Jewish people. We have seen a campaign of ISIS and genocide against Christians, where they cut of heads. Not since the Middle Ages have we seen that. We haven't seen that, the cutting off of heads. Now they cut off the heads, they drown people in steel cages. Haven't seen this. I haven't seen this. Nobody's seen this for many, many years.

TRUMP: All nations have a moral obligation to speak out against such violence. All nations have a duty to work together to confront it and to confront it viciously if we have to.

So I want to express clearly today, to the American people, that my administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in our land. America must forever remain a tolerant society where all face are respected and where all of our citizens can feel safe and secure.

We have to feel safe and secure. In recent days, we have begun to take necessary action to achieve that goal. Our nation has the most generous immigration system in the world. But these are those and there are those that would exploit that generosity to undermine the values that we hold so dear. We need security.

There are those who would seek to enter our country for the purpose of spreading violence, or oppressing other people based upon their faith or their lifestyle, not right. We will not allow a beachhead of intolerance to spread in our nation. You look all over the world and you see what's happening.

So in the coming days, we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty. And that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination. We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values.

We will be a safe country, we will be a free country and we will be a country where all citizens can practice their beliefs without fear of hostility or a fear of violence. America will flourish, as long as our liberty, and in particular, our religious liberty is allowed to flourish.

(APPLAUSE)

America will succeed, as long as our most vulnerable citizens -- and we have some that are so vulnerable -- have a path to success. And America will thrive, as long as we continue to have faith in each other and faith in God.

(APPLAUSE)

That faith in God has inspired men and women to sacrifice for the needy, to deploy to wars overseas and to lock arms at home, to ensure equal rights for every man, woman and child in our land. It's that faith that sent the pilgrims across the oceans, the pioneers across the plains and the young people all across America, to chase their dreams. They are chasing their dreams. We are going to bring those dreams back.
Pakistani police stand guard outside the home of Hafiz Saeed after he was placed under house arrest by authorities in Lahore, Jan. 31, 2017.

Mumbai resident Tarun Sethi is unmoved by news of Pakistans decision to place the suspected mastermind of a terror attack that rocked Indias financial capital in 2008 under house arrest.

Pakistani authorities arrested Hafiz Saeed, co-founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and chief of Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD), and four others on Monday.

They described the move as a policy decision in the national interest.

On Wednesday, Pakistans Interior Ministry added the names of Saeed and 37 members of his group to its Exit Control List (ECL), which effectively means they cannot leave the country, according to Pakistani media.

What house arrest? How many times has he [Saeed] been detained? It upsets me that this man is still not behind bars while we have to live with the trauma of the terror he unleashed in Mumbai, Sethi told BenarNews.

House arrest is not enough. It is not a fitting punishment, he added.

Globally designated terrorist

Sethi, 35, survived the Nov. 26, 2008, shootout at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbais main railway station, where he had gone to see off a cousin. The station was one of the locations targeted by suspected LeT members during the deadly three-day siege that killed 166 people. About 60 were killed at the station.

This is the fifth time since the Mumbai attack that Pakistani authorities have detained Saeed. The U.S. government labeled him a globally designated terrorist in 2012, putting a bounty of $10 million on his head.

Indias foreign ministry reacted to Saeeds detention in Pakistan, its arch rival, with skepticism.

Pakistan needs to do more to tackle terrorism. Only a credible crackdown on the mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attack and terrorist organizations involved in cross-border terrorism would be proof of Pakistans sincerity, said Vikas Swarup, spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs.

Pakistan blames India

India should look at its own involvement in pushing militancy into Pakistan before pointing fingers, Pakistans Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakari said at a weekly press briefing Thursday.

India itself has been involved in terrorist activities in Pakistan, he said, according to the Press Trust of India.

Saeed has said he would appeal.

My detention orders are unlawful and I will challenge them in court, he told reporters as he was being led away by police on Monday, adding that his detention orders came from Delhi via Washington.

Outside pressure

To some degree, analysts agree with Saeeds claim.

The move [to detain Saeed] has nothing to do with pressure from India. It smacks of pressure emanating from outside India. One should remember several U.S. citizens and Israelis were killed in the 2008 attack, former Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) officer Prakash George told BenarNews.

With newly inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump slapping an immigration ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan  which is not on the list  is trying to play safe by detaining terror suspects operating from its soil, according to Mridul Nile, an international relations professor at Mumbai University.

In the next few months, you will see several hard-line fundamentalists being house arrested in Pakistan. This is more of a smokescreen and nothing else, Nile told BenarNews.

But peace activists were more optimistic.

The increased pressure from the U.S. has no doubt prompted this [Saeeds detention]. But then, look at the prevailing conditions in Pakistan; it is in bad shape financially, it is roiling with ethno-centric movements, battling its own war on several fronts. Going by its recent actions, there is an indication that it wants to improve strained ties, Jatin Desai, with the Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy, told BenarNews.

For Priyanshi Shekhawat, 24, whose father and sister narrowly escaped death when two gunmen opened fire inside a popular cafe in south Mumbai, Pakistans claim of detaining Saeed is hogwash.

Nine years down, and placed under house arrest! Tell me, why isnt he already being tried for crimes against humanity? Shekhawat told BenarNews.
Wiranto, Indonesias coordinating minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs (right), and Australian Attorney General George Brandis speak to reporters in Jakarta, Feb. 2, 2017.

Indonesia and Australia pledged to cut off sources of funding for terror groups, a top Indonesian official said Thursday after meeting with his Australian counterpart in Jakarta.

The two sides discussed how Indonesian and Australia would work to curb the flow of money used to finance terrorism, Wiranto, Indonesias coordinating minister for Political, Legal and Security Affairs, told journalists after meeting with the delegation from Canberra, which was headed by Australian Attorney General George Brandis.

Wiranto said terrorism and a regional threat posed by Islamic State (IS) sympathizers and supporters exist because of the availability of funding from many sources.

I dont make any accusations, [but] I think in the current development, terrorism funding may flow from anywhere. With the existing technology, both countries have taken many steps to cut funding, he said.

In August 2016, Indonesia and Australia co-hosted a meeting of 26 nations in Bali, at which delegations pledged to cooperate in strengthening intelligence efforts in cutting off funding sources, even as terrorists change their methods of delivering cash.

Cooperation is important in curbing the flow of terrorism funding, Brandis said.

We know that one of the most effective ways to combat the surge of terrorism is to attack the funding and the movement of money, Brandis said.

Meetings that began in December 2015 have significantly strengthened bilateral relations in law and security, he added.

Meanwhile, Indonesias Center for Financial Transaction Reporting and Analysis (PPATK) has revealed that funding from some sources in Australia assists radical networks in Indonesia. Funds have been sent to Indonesia 97 times through individuals and groups, according to PPATK.

About 88.5 billion rupiah (U.S. $6.6 million) has come from groups and individuals in Australia to terror group networks in Indonesia, the center also reported. Other countries linked to terror funding are Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand.

Special team

Suhardi Alius, who heads Indonesias National Counter Terrorism Agency (BNPT), said his agency was part of a special team formed by PPATK to stem the flow of international terrorism funding.

When a report comes, it would be verified first if it is from an individual, a group, or a foundation, he said.

From January 2013 to November 2016, PPATK submitted 105 financial transactions allegedly linked to terrorism.

During the same period, the agency also received 267 suspicious transaction reported by financial service providers.

Last year, 25 suspicious transactions were detected  an increase of 12 cases from 2015, PPATK reported.

In 2014, the agency reported 26 suspicious transactions, while in 2013 there were 13 reported suspicious transactions and in 33 cases in 2012.

South China Sea

In addition to terrorism funding, both countries discussed their concerns about the South China Sea.

We exchanged our views on the dynamics of security in the area and the importance of maintaining stability. We support all countries around the South China Sea to respect the international maritime law, Wiranto said.

He emphasized that Indonesia is not a claimant state in territorial disputes over the sea has no overlapping border with other countries.

We agree that whatever happens, as countries in the region, we should together maintain the regional stability, Wiranto said. Dont let the South China Sea issue grow into [a] conflict between countries as it would disrupt the regional economy.
Demonstrators protest outside the American embassy in Kuala Lumpur against an immigration ban by the Trump administration on seven Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa, Feb. 3, 2017.

Updated at 7:45 p.m. ET on 2017-02-03

The American move to block citizens of seven Muslim countries from entering the United States over security concerns could harm counter-terrorism efforts, Indonesias foreign ministry said this week, while Malaysia sought clarification about how the policy would affect Malaysians.

But both Southeast Asian countries are not among those affected by the ban.

An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump last week imposed a 90-day ban on citizens of seven countries  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  from entering the U.S. It also froze for at least 120 days the admission of all refugees from anywhere in the world, and it barred Syrian refugees from arriving on American soil indefinitely.

Even though this is the sovereign right of the United States, Indonesia deeply regrets the issuing of this policy, because it is likely to have a negative impact on global efforts to fight terrorism and the handling of refugee issues, Arrmanatha Nasir, spokesman for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told BenarNews in a text message.

It is wrong to associate radicalism and terrorism with a particular religion, he added.

President Joko Jokowi Widodo said Indonesians need not be concerned about the ban.

We are not affected by the policy, why worry? he said in a statement.

Indonesia is the worlds most populous Muslim nation. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a group of 57 Muslim countries, including Indonesia and Malaysia, and the United Nations voiced alarm over the move widely seen as discriminating against Muslims.

Malaysia not affected: Embassy

In Malaysias capital Kuala Lumpur, around 100 protesters demonstrated Friday against the ban outside the U.S. embassy. They delivered a letter for the American ambassador in which they described the ban as divisive and smearing Islam.

This executive order would create further division among people of the world of different religions and origins. It also will strengthen the mistaken perception of Islam, and damage the reputation of the citizens of those seven countries; further victimizing the religion in the already war-torn nations, said the letter signed by parties in an opposition coalition.

The Malaysian foreign ministry had sought clarification from the embassy after a Malaysian newspaper reported that at least one Malaysian was among 71 foreign travelers held by immigration authorities at New Yorks JFK Airport, because of the new policy.

The Ministry has clarified with the Embassy of the United States of America in Kuala Lumpur that the travel ban does not include Malaysia and her citizens. Malaysians who have valid travel documents and necessary visas are allowed to enter the United States, officials said in a statement.

The embassy in Kuala Lumpur said Malaysians could travel to the United States with a valid visa, pointing out that Malaysia was not affected by the executive order.

Selective and discriminatory



The OIC called on the Trump administration to reconsider the blanket order and said this would further complicate the already grave challenges facing refugees.

Such selective and discriminatory acts will only serve to embolden the radical narratives of extremists and will provide further fuel to the advocates of violence and terrorism at a critical time when the OIC has been engaged with all partners, including the U.S., to combat extremism and terrorism in all their forms and manifestations, the world Muslim body said Tuesday in a statement.

Antonio Guterres, the new secretary general of the United Nations, echoed that sentiment in calling for the U.S. to lift the ban.

Those measures indeed violate our basic principles and I think that they are not effective if the objective is to, really, avoid terrorists to enter the United States, he told reporters on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

Going after extremists

The Trump administration has defended its move, saying it does not target people who practice Islam and that it aims to stop foreign terrorists or criminals from infiltrating the U.S.

In a statement late Friday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security listed several types of travelers from the seven countries for whom the 90-day ban on entry to the United States does not apply, including dual passport holders and diplomats.

"Importantly, these seven countries are the only countries to which the pause on entry applies. No other countries face such treatment. Nor have any other countries been identified as warranting future inclusion at this time, contrary to false reports," the statement said.

It also said that in the future the U.S. government could be alerting some foreign governments that they need to provide more information on their nationals who are seeking admission to the United States.

"The goal is to ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward the United States and its founding principles," it said.

The consequence [of] extreme vetting [by the U.S.] will increase radicalism inside America itself, warned Rakyan Adibrata, a Jakarta-based security expert.

Such a unilateral move by the new American government, Rakyan told BenarNews, could become a justification for countries that already hate America to hate [it] even more.
A Thai volunteer is seen through a bullet hole after suspected insurgents ambushed the offices of the district administration in Choi Ai Rong, in southern Thailands Narathiwat province, March 13, 2016.

Updated at 7:10 a.m. ET on 2017-02-03

Six men arrested in Northeast Malaysia last month on suspicion of possessing bomb-making materials were involved in a bomb-plot targeting Thailands insurgency-wracked Deep South, Thai security officials said Thursday.

Three of the six who were arrested on Jan. 15 in Pasir Mas in Kelantan state  just across the border from the Deep South  were Thai citizens who included a member of the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), one of the regions rebel groups, two Thai security officials told BenarNews on condition of anonymity.

But none were linked to the Islamic State as originally suspected by authorities in Kelantan, a Malaysian police source told BenarNews separately.

We believe they were planning a plot to attack targets in Thailands Deep South. Malaysia caught them with bomb-making materials, one Thai official told BenarNews, citing Malaysian police reports about materials that were seized from the suspects and information gathered by Thai intelligence.

The suspected BRN fighter is a leader of the armed separatist group based in Yala, one of the provinces in Thailands predominantly Muslim and Malay-speaking southern border region, the source said, citing a file of information compiled on the man.

The man is Uzman Jeh-umong, 40 years of age. He has a record being the leading militant under the cell of Deng Aweji, said the official, referring to a BRN commander in Yala.

From my childrens broken toys

The New Straits Times (NST) newspaper in Malaysia reported that the six suspects were living close to one another in Kelantan, and were picked up in police raids.

The suspects, who were in their 30s and 40s, possessed parts and materials that could be used to build bombs, including wires and batteries, state police chief Ab Rahman Ismail told NST.

The wife of one of the six suspects told NST that her husband, who worked as a carpenter, was not a militant or insurgent.

He is not involved in any group and has not done anything wrong, said the woman, who was identified as Yah.

The battery unit and wires found in our house came from my childrens broken toys. My husband wanted to repair them.

Both the chief of police in Kelantan and Malaysias police chief, Khalid Abu Bakar, did not respond to requests for comment from BenarNews.

But a police official in Kelantan, who also declined to be identified, told BenarNews that investigators no longer believed that the suspects were connected to IS activities.

Most probably all six were part of an insurgency group in Thailand close to the border, the official said.

Shortly after the arrests, Malaysian officials said they were investigating the suspects for possible links to the Middle East-based extremist group.

The arrests on Jan. 15 were carried out by the special branch of the Royal Malaysia Police, and the suspects are in custody at national police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur, the Kelantan police official said.

Many residents in the state hold dual Malaysian-Thai citizenship. Kelantan is where top leaders of the BRN and other Deep South rebel groups are believed to be hiding out from Thailands military.

BRN is the largest and most heavily armed of the rebel groups in Thailands Deep South. Nearly 7,000 people have been killed in violence associated with the insurgency since 2004, according to Deep South Watch, a local think-tank.

The insurgents operate across the border, going back and forth, Maj. Gen. Nakrob Boonbuathong, the former secretary of Thailands delegation in exploratory peace talks with southern rebel groups, told BenarNews in 2015.
SAN NARCISO, Calif. -- Chuck E. Cheeses is a chain of pizza restaurants and arcades that have become popular locations for childrens birt...
A bid from Pulte Homes to rezone and add 465 residences and possibly a school near Sandy Run Creek on Jedburg Road wasn't met with open arms at a Oct. 26 community meeting on the part of local homeowners seeking to preserve the area's rural characteristics. Read moreJedburg Road residents tell Pulte Homes: 'Keep it rural'
The Senate voted Friday to move the nomination of Betsy DeVos for education secretary to a full vote next week.

By a party-line vote of 52-48, the Senate voted to close debate on DeVos nomination by President Donald Trump, which has sparked a controversy unlike any seen before over a potential secretary of education. The final vote on DeVos is expected to take place Monday or Tuesday.

Two Republicans, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, announced earlier this week they would vote against DeVos. With all Democrats appearing to be opposed to DeVos, the final vote count appears to be tied in the Senate at 50-50however, in that scenario, Vice President Mike Pence would be able to break such a tie and ensure the success of DeVos nomination.

DeVos formerly led the American Federation of Children, which advocates for vouchers and other forms of school choice, and is a prominent GOP donor. Several Republican senators from rural states have been heavily lobbied to join Collins and Murkowski, oppose DeVos, and sink her nomination. But those senators, including Sen. Deb. Fischer of Nebraska and Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, have said in the last few days that they will support DeVos.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the Senate education committee chairman, said in a speech Friday that DeVos will be an excellent education secretary in my opinion, and an important one. And he praised her for championing the all-American idea of educational choice, although he also stressed that she will not impose mandates for teacher evaluations, vouchers, and other issues from the U.S. Department of Education.

But Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the committees top Democrat, blasted DeVos in her own floor speech for DeVos lack of qualifications, her opaque and tangled finances, and her lack of belief in public education itself. And she highlighted the enormous pushback to DeVos in the media and through protests.

Betsy DeVos is committed to privatizing public schools, Murray said in a speech on the Senate floor.

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Former U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr., is taking the helm of The Education Trust, an organization in Washington that has spent decades advocating for poor and minority children.

King will be only the second leader in Ed Trusts history, taking over for Kati Haycock, the organizations chief executive officer who founded Ed Trust in the 1990s.

Over its 25-year history, The Education Trust has been a leader in the work to bring attention and action to closing long-standing opportunity and achievement gaps that separate too many low-income students and students of color from their peers, pre-kindergarten through college, said David V. Britt, the chairman of Ed Trusts board of directors. This history provides a strong foundation on which to build new partnerships, new work, and new learningindeed a new movementand we think John is exactly the right leader for this next stage of the organizations work.

The move seems like a natural fit for King, who made advocating for equitable access to education for all students, including historically overlooked kids, a central mission in his single year as the head of the department.

King, who served as President Barack Obamas second education secretary, has outlined an ambitious agenda for the organization, starting with working with states and districts to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. He noted in an interview that Ed Trust has recently participated in a training institute, helping advocates on the ground in 22 states learn about the law and how its new flexibilities can be used to help at-risk children.

King is hoping to build on that work. He wants to Ed Trust to help galvanize a movement among educators, parents, civil rights leaders, the business community, faith-based organizations, to insist that states use their flexibility under ESSA to advance equity. That would include both gaps in achievement and gaps in opportunity such as unequal access to advanced coursework and arts education.

And he expects the organizationwhich has offices in California, Michigan, and New York, as well as Washingtonwill continue to bring a real vigilance when it comes to making sure civil rights laws are enforced at both the federal and state levels.

Ed Trust will continue to be a loud voice for protecting student civil rights, and well continue to use data, research, evidence to call attention to places where students civil rights are not being protected, King said.

For instance, he recalled a case where the Education Departments office for civil rights worked with a district that had sent around notices to parents about STEM-focused programs written only in English. Kids from Spanish-speaking homes were significantly under-represented in the program. OCR worked with the district to correct the problem.

Whether its at the federal level or the state level were going to be a voice pointing out those kinds of disparities, insisting that policymakers take responsibility for changing them, King said.

And while hell continue the organizations focus on college access, hed also like to emphasize college completion. He praised universities that use data to help figure out which students are in danger of falling behind.

In his work as education secretary, King, the former state of commissioner of education in New York, often talked about his own background to make a case for the impact K-12 policies cooked up in Washington, states, and school districts can have on vulnerable children.

The son of two educators, King, who is African American and Puerto Rican, was orphaned at 12, following his fathers struggle with Alzheimers disease. King credits New York City Public School teachers with saving his life. After graduating from Harvard University and earning a masters degree at Teachers College, Columbia University, King taught at charter schools before helping to start Roxbury Prep, a charter, and later, helping to found Uncommon, a network of charter schools.

Later, during his tenure as state education commissioner in New York, he clashed with teachers unions on implementation of the Common Core State Standards, but won plaudits for his work in pushing open educational resources and encouraging the use of school integration as a strategy to improve low-performing schools.

Everything Ive done in education has really strung from a commitment to students who are most vulnerable, King said.

Ed Trust has a history of working with both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, most notably with the No Child Left Behind Act and, most recently, with ESSA. As secretary, King clashed with key Republicans in Congress, including Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the education committee chairman, over ESSA regulations on accountability and spending. Alexander felt that Kings proposals overstepped the boundaries of the law.

But King doesnt expect those past differences to be a roadblock in his new role.

He said he always had a positive relationship with Alexander and that their conversations were constructive and thoughtful. He sees a push by Alexander and others to allow students to use Pell Grants during the summer, and an effort to make over career and technical education programs as two areas on which Ed Trust could partner with Republicans.

Before leaving office, King didnt say much about his views on Betsy DeVos, his would-be successor at the Education Department. She is the first education secretary whose confirmation The Education Trust has opposed.

In his interview Wednesday, King said he has deep concerns about DeVos understanding of key areas of the departments responsibility, including when it comes to special education, as well as her commitment to the work of the office for civil rights and continuing the progress weve made.

He added, Speaking as a former secretary, I hope that she will lead in a way that is consistent with the departments mission of protecting students civil rights and advancing equity. ... I hope that if shes confirmed shell prove those concerns wrong.

Kings new role won plaudits from both state and non-profit leaders.

I have worked with John King for more than a decade, at the school level, the state level, and the national level, said John White, Louisianas state chief in a statement. There is not a more informed or compelling advocate for our kids and for our nations potential.

And Evan Stone, a co-chief executive officer of Educators 4 Excellence, called King an educators educator, who deeply understands the challenges teachers face every day and is committed to finding ever better ways to address thoseall in the service of kids.

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
This post is by Sacha Garcia-Mailloux, Assistant Principal of the Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, Massachusetts.

As our students enter the doors of our school on November 9, 2016, to unpack decisions made by our nation, tweets and news comments from an array of citizens murmur a mix of fear, disbelief, exhaustion, detachment, and hopelessness.

The texts among staff members continue from the night before. How do we respond knowing that our community reflects a diverse political population? What are our next steps?

We gather as a staff and do an early morning check-in, a common structure in our community that allows for expression and reflection and encourages active listening and effective problem-solving. A tissue box is passed as we listen to each other. We recognize that we must act so that our students and families are seen, heard, and supported. The question is how?

We divide ourselves into groups of two to three staff members and visit every classroom within the first hour of the day. We reach into our seven community commitments--courage, self-discipline, responsibility, perseverance, cultural sensitivity, friendship, and respect--to guide our conversations. The message is clear: We are here to support all students and are willing and ready to provide a space for processing, through one-on-one conversations or small groups. Why? Because we love our students.

The Springfield Renaissance School is a public school located in Springfield, the second-largest school district in Massachusetts, with 25,633 students. Renaissance is home to 707 urban students in grades 6 through 12. Over 60 staff, including paraprofessionals, clerks, nurses, and lead teachers, work together with families from various racial and economic backgrounds. Recognized for our positive school culture (in the top 10 percent in the nation of schools that participate in the Organizational Health Index survey) and strong teacher/student relationships, Renaissance exemplifies a community that strives to engage our students in difficult conversations, thus pushing deeper to complete our mission:

Our mission is to provide a rigorous academic program for college-bound students in a small, personalized setting that impels and supports students to use their minds well, to care for themselves and others, and to rise to the challenges and duties of citizenship.

I grew up in Holyoke, an Irish-established paper mill city that houses a Latino population of close to 50 percent. I too was an urban student in the public schools. Although in the top 10 percent of my class, no counselor ever spoke to me about college plans. It took a government-funded program for first-generation college-bound students from low-income families, the Upward Bound program, to assist us with this overwhelming process. I attended Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and traveled to France, Spain, Italy, Sardinia, and Mexico. As the student speaker for the Bates graduating class of 1996, I spoke about my trip to Senegal, West Africa, and to the city of Dakar and the Island of Goree. I was now a student of the world, but knew I needed to carry the torch and return to my community to give back. So I began my journey back to the public schools in Springfield, starting as a teacher and now an assistant principal at Renaissance.

Renaissance is a community where we take our mission seriously. With support, 100 percent of our graduates have been accepted to college. Now its time to focus on what it means to rise to the challenges and duties of citizenship for our students and our staff.

The author (right) with students from Springfield Renaissance School.

Starting with the Story of Self

On November 8, 2016, the day of the presidential election, Darnisa Amante, CEO of Disruptive Equity Education project and a Harvard Teaching Assistant, conducts a workshop with our staff around the idea of the Story of Self. She introduces the difference between a technical versus an adaptive challenge and helps us apply this concept to racism. To change a mindset about values, beliefs, and perspectives is an adaptive challenge and it requires people to change their minds about something already perceived. Darnisa explains that people do not fear change but they do fear loss. She challenges us to think about what triggers us. She gives us time to write and share our story of self while being explicit about the challenge, choice, and outcome of the experience.

Staff sharing sessions give us the opportunity to team-build and to get to know each other in a way that requires vulnerability. In groups of 10 to 12 we read our stories and our colleagues write their thoughts and words of encouragement on post-it notes that are later given to each speaker.

Meanwhile, our eleventh-grade English teacher digs deep into the N word and students actively participate in a Socratic seminar. History classes unpack the election. We close 2016 in week-long intensives with our students, following our personal and intellectual passions.

Holiday vacation is over. Darnisa is present again and gives us 10 minutes to continue working on our stories. She then divides us into groups of five and tells us that each speaker will have two minutes to speak and that each member will give feedback. She encourages us to show up in true form and lean in to our conversations. In my group sits my close friend, Deidre, and as she shares the story of her mother unable to love her and of a teacher who saved her, my heart saddens and it is then that I know her even deeper still. At this point I feel more strongly than ever that our work to show up in our true form as educators positively impacts our students on their journey to know themselves and their place in this changing world.

Although this isnt the poem I wrote that day, I was inspired to continue writing after an inaugural weekend of action and motivation.

This poem I dedicate to my colleague...my friend...my sister...Deidre.

Pre- and Post- Assessment of our Nation

The melting pot is freezing.

Im cold.

My toes are numb.

The tips of my fingers hurt at the touch of warm water.

My nose is the color of Rudolphs.

My teeth chatter a Morse code asking for help...for warmth...

asking for protection.

How could this be? Im scared...for my dad...for my friend...for me.

I need a rebirth...Renaissance...La Familia...

We listen and then speak. They speak and we listen.

Action not reaction.

We reach out and within

We pass around a tissue box.

We hug to remind each other...we are a community...we are family...

We reassure undocumented students,

no...your dad will not be deported back to Mexico.

You are safe...with us...here...

A message of love for the unaffected

Those without opinion, without investment

Still.

Martin Luther King, Jr., awakes from his 1963 dream to the cries of the oppressed

writing a new speech where BIG black boys and girls join hands with BIG white boys and girls

as Sisters

as Brothers

We are still not satisfied...

But still

We open doors and doors are opened

We embrace our crew even in times of dysfunction.

We love our students in a way that only our community knows how

Relevance...experience...building confidence...

Avoiding secondary means and connecting with primary sources

Pushing ourselves to work hard, be nice and get smart and rise to the duties and challenges of citizenship

A shared library...diverse educators...water bottles and edamame beans...savoring a small piece of chocolate

From their secret...

Secret stash of emotions...

Feelings of anxiety creep up at sharing

The story of me...the story of you...the story of us.

The impact, the decision, the lesson-

Our life at a crossroads

Stories of sadness, growth, disappointment

We ask ourselves...

Inclusion? Immersion? Acceptance?

For my students?

I dont know who they are... I dont know who I am...

The American dream...what is it?

Developing...still...so...

I needed your hands to guide me Down These Mean Streets of inequality and rejection.

And you gave me strength, endurance and resistance.

I needed your feet to take me where my ancestors ruled the world before discoveries.

And you took me to Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC

I needed your eyes to see what we had done...I had done...we had done to our childrens world...

It was a matter of survival...

And you showed me compassion, empathy and kindness...

Because you loved me...

And you taught me to see...

That...

The melting pot is feeling warmer...

Pink hats unite

on womyn, children and men

Signs of oneness...

The voices of mothers and daughters...sisters and brothers...families speaking equality

Still

Pandoras box is revitalized

Esperanza Rising

Nadya is here

Hope is alive...

Photo by Sasha Garcia-Mailloux
Media Advisory, February 3, 2017 Contact: Kieran Sucking, (520) 275-5960, ksuckling@biologicaldiversity.org Bundy Standoff Trial to Begin Monday in Nevada LAS VEGAS Experts are available to discuss the jury trial of Cliven Bundy, his sons Ryan and Ammon Bundy and 14 other defendants for their infamous paramilitary standoff with federal authorities in Nevada. The Bundy trial begins Monday, Feb. 6 in federal court in Las Vegas. What: Interview with experts to discuss background and origins of public-lands seizure movement and the 2014 Nevada standoff in advance of the Feb. 6 start to the Bundy trial. Who: Kieran Suckling, executive director, Center for Biological Diversity

Ryan Beam, public lands campaigner, Center for Biological Diversity Where: Outside the courthouse, U.S. District Court, 333 Las Vegas Blvd. South, Las Vegas, NV 89101, before Chief Judge Gloria M. Navarro When: Monday, Feb. 6, at 8:30 a.m. Background

In 2014 the Bureau of Land Management attempted to end 24 years of illegal cattle grazing on public lands by rancher Cliven Bundy in the Gold Butte region of Nevada. Heavily armed militia members from across the United States converged on the Bundy ranch to confront federal officials conducting the roundup. Officials then aborted their law-enforcement action. Click here for a history of Bundy's illegal grazing and armed conflict in Nevada. The Nevada standoff fanned the flames for the paramilitary seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, where sons of Cliven Bundy and other anti-federal militants occupied the wildlife refuge at gunpoint for 41 days. To the nation's shock, a jury acquitted the defendants in October 2016. This week's trial is for charges in connection with the April 2014 Nevada standoff. The Bundys and their followers believe that the federal government lacks constitutional authority to own or manage federal public land  an idea that conflicts with two centuries of federal case law. Cliven Bundy, in the context of federal litigation relating to his 24-year refusal to pay federal grazing fees, has made and lost that argument in federal court. He has been quoted as saying, I don't recognize the United States government as even existing." Some federal elected officials are working to seize federal public lands or their control. Funded by the Koch brothers and other industry interests, these elected officials have advanced legislation to sell, give away, or otherwise privatize public lands. Click here to read more about the anti-public lands movement in Congress. But public awareness of these privatization efforts is growing. One week after Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced a bill (H.R. 621) to sell 3.3 million acres of public lands, massive public outcry forced him to withdraw the bill. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.2 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
DAKAR, Senegal  Dakar has unveiled Africa's first Resilience Strategy' in partnership with 100 resilient cities. The strategy includes five priority initiatives to strengthen urban resilience through a collaborative approach - 23 activities are identified for implementation of the strategy.

Dakar. Image by 123RF

The use of technology as a lever for resilience, the implementation of an inclusive and effective governance strategy, citizen participation from all of Dakar, the involvement of the private sector and the creation of a healthy living environment, are at the heart of the strategy of resilience that the City of Dakar published this week at City Hall in partnership with 100 Resilient Cities  Pioneered by The Rockefeller Foundation.

Selected in 2013 as a member of the 100 Resilient Cities Network, the City of Dakar is the first African city in the prestigious network to publish its resilience strategy. The 100 Resilient Cities Network is dedicated to helping cities adopt and integrate resilience into their planning and development projects so that they are better prepared for disasters and extreme risks, as well as for social and environmental stresses.

The strategy focuses on five priority goals, supported by individual actions that will have an impact across all sectors of society:

Promote an inclusive resilience agenda by and for Dakar citizens. Provide a healthy living environment to Dakars citizens. Position the private sector as a resilience partner. Leverage energy efficient technologies to support the citys resilience. Promote inclusive and efficient governance.

"As one of the African cities selected in the first round of the 100 Resilient Cities Challenge, Dakar has time and again been a pioneer in our global movement. With the completion of their Resilience Strategy, the first in Africa, Dakar is helping spread urban resilience to cities across the region and the world," said Michael Berkowitz, President of 100RC, at the release event. The next big challenge for Dakar is to implement the unique vision laid out in this strategy, and continue the hard work to ensure real and lasting change.

Dakars Chief Resilience Officer, Antoine Faye, led the development of the strategy and gathered input from more than 50 institutional, economic, associative and academic actors. The private sector, development partners and have also taken part in the development of the strategy.

The Rockefeller Foundation wanted to encourage the cities of the world to anticipate the crises and disruptions that can occur and turn them into development opportunities.



Unemployment, energy demand, degradation of the environment, low civic engagement and the effects of climate change, particularly coastal erosion, have been identified as major constraints and potential causes of stress to which the city Of Dakar is confronted.

To begin addressing these challenges, the Strategy proposes 23 activities that cut across all sectors of society. These include: teaching the concept of resilience in basic education; developing green spaces; making users aware of the rational and efficient use of energy; a competition to find Innovative solutions; addressing the city's energy challenges; and strengthening the dialogue between the central government and the municipality to collectively address issues related to resilience.

In launching the 100 RC program, the Rockefeller Foundation wanted to encourage the cities of the world to anticipate the crises and disruptions that can occur and turn them into development opportunities.

Speaking to the participants, Khalifa Ababacar Sall, Mayor of the City of Dakar, urged all of Dakar to take ownership of the resilience strategy because, "Resilience issues need to be addressed urgently, not only to strengthen in the face of shocks and stresses, but also to improve the well-being of vulnerable people. This partnership with 100 Resilient Cities, of which we are delighted, enable us to realise very quickly our ambition to make the city of Dakar, a clean city, with a healthy living environment, improving energy efficiency through planning and the collective commitment of all stakeholders. "

Mayor Sall called for the continuation of the partnership and in particular the technical support of 100 Resilient Cities for an effective and successful implementation of this first resilience strategy in Africa.

The 100 Resilient Cities program was announced on the Foundation's centennial in 2013. Dakar was selected alongside cities such as London, Durban, Paris, New York, Bangkok, and Kigali.
The New York Festivals International Advertising Awards has invited Eoin Welsh, chief creative officer for Havas Johannesburg, to join its 2017 grand jury.

The awards has been honouring the worlds finest creative advertising since 1957. Every year, world-class judges review submissions in the most current and relevant categories to award creativity across all media.

Eoin Welsh

The New York Festivals Grand Jury consists of more than 400 of the world's most respected, award-winning executive creative directors. This diverse group of top-level industry professionals determine the shortlist through two rounds of online judging sessions in over 70 countries.

Its an honour to be invited, says Welsh. Theres no more inspiring task a creative can hope for than being exposed to the worlds most prestigious work, and to have the opportunity to really analyse, and ultimately help recognise and reward it. Its something Im really looking forward to. Last year I got the opportunity to judge at Cannes, and its fantastic to have another such opportunity this year.

The winners will be announced at a gala event in New York on Thursday, 18 May 2017.

For more information on the awards visit New York Festivals website.

Facebook | @HavasJHB
Journalists from South Africa, Zambia, Tanzania, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria can win a fully paid study tour to major US newsrooms as part of a new impactAFRICA reporting contest. Their entries must shed light on the challenges women and girls face in accessing health care and health services and solutions to improve the quality of life for them and their families.

Gender inequality is not just an abstract issue. It directly affects the health and lives of women and girls across the continent, as well as societies and communities. According to UNWomen, eight out of 10 of all new HIV patients are women. Girls across Africa still suffer from a lack of proper sanitation at schools, contributing to a higher dropout rate than amongst boys. A lack of family planning contributes to preventable deaths of women and to keeping a family in poverty.

 Carline Bon-Ami via 123RF

African women are often the backbone of their communities and economies but many of the health challenges they face and the resulting impacts on society remain underreported. Poor media coverage translates into poor public understanding of the issues, explains impactAFRICA programme manager Haji Mohamed Dawjee. We are therefore looking for stories that help demystify complex issues and give both citizens and policymakers actionable information for better decision-making.

An independent international jury will choose winners in three categories: best community impact; best audience engagement; and best use of data. The winners will spend 10 days visiting newsrooms in three cities in the US, learning from some of the worlds top digital media outlets.

Journalists should have published, broadcast or produced impactful stories on any platform and in any medium in at least one of the target countries during the period 15 November 2016 to 15 March 2017. The best submissions will highlight solutions and offer evidence that the reportage has had a positive impact on policies or services.

All impactAFRICA winners help shine a light on blind spots in our societies, using digital and data journalism to help expose under-reported issues in ways that give people information they can use to make better informed decisions, says Code for Africa director, Justin Arenstein. Our aim is to support journalism that engages and empowers people.

For more information, click here.
When autistic students take an interest in a subject, their interest can be intense. In the past, teachers tended to suppress these interests in order to avoid disrupting planned lessons. A new study suggests they should do just the opposite.

According to New York Universitys Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, the field of autism research has shifted in its view of the obsessive interests of autistic students, seeing these interests not as weakness but as strengths that can turn into future careers.

The study looked into the ways adults with autism viewed their childhood interests and the role those interests played in the participants current careers. Of the 80 participants, 69 percent reported they currently hold a job or are enrolled in an educational program related to their interests. A yen for mechanics, for instance, led to jobs in mechanical engineering, and deep engagement with computers led to IT careers, according to Kristie Patten Koenig, an associate professor of occupational therapy at NYU and the studys co-author.

If you are visually detailed with a specialty for solving really complex puzzles, there is a strength there, says Koenig. We need people who have good visual detail. We need all kinds of minds, not just one kind, to be successful. So how can we help kids use their strengths to develop vocational pursuits, rather than just focusing on their deficits?

The majority of participants viewed their interests as positive (81 percent) and calming (92.4 percent) pursuits that teachers and others should encourage. Yet only 10 percent reported that their teachers had been supportive of their interests when they were in school. Many participants, according to the study, said teachers even discouraged their interests if they were aware of them at all. Most participants (87.3 percent) said that teachers should find a way to make use of autistic students interests in the classroom.

The studys authors conclude that teachers should receive training in how to turn the interests of autistic students into activities that will motivate and improve skills. This is the approach NYU takes in its work with the ASD Nest program , which is in 39 schools serving 1,000 autistic students in inclusive classrooms in New York City. Leading each of the classrooms is one general education teacher and one special education teacher.

Lets say a child has a strong interest in the subway system, says Koenig. If you view their talking about the subway as a barrier, youre going to work to manage and decrease that behavior. But if you see that interest as a strength, youre going to find a way to help them use that interest to demonstrate their knowledge and to work on areas of weakness. Were not saying let the kid dominate the conversation, and let it be about the subway from morning until night. But how can you help him learn when, where,and how to talk about that interest versus holding up a sign of a train with the line through it that says, No train talk?

Koenig suggests teachers give students opportunities in the classroom to demonstrate their knowledge in writing or in conversations with classmates. The student with the interest in subways might write a report on the history of subways. If he doesnt like spelling, he might be motivated to study words pasted to model subway trains. But, Koenig suggests, the teacher must also establish rules for when and how the interest can be addressed in class. The idea, says Koenig, is that students dont come away thinking that their interests are bad and something that they get in trouble for, but rather something that boosts their confidence.

Stephen Shore, a self advocate with autism, has devised some tips for identifying and cultivating interests in the classroom. He suggests that, for a student who is interested in train schedules to the exclusion of other topics, the teacher might suggest what he calls an excursion. She might push the topic of train schedules in a slightly different direction. This could include calculations of how long it takes for the train to get from one station to another, or employment opportunities that involve operating the train. You can read Shores other suggestions here .

Koenig suggests that future research should take a closer look at how to link up interests with career paths. To this end, NYU is piloting an after-school program for autistic students in three New York City middle schools. Classroom teachers, along with engineering graduate students from NYU, lead after-school clubs that focus on design using computer programs and 3D printing. Students are encouraged to use their specific interests to inform their project, which might be to design a subway car or a spacecraft. The overall goal is to develop students interests in STEM subjects and demonstrate how to turn those interests into possible career paths in the future.
HARARE: Zimbabwe started levying a 15 percent value-added tax on basic foodstuffs Wednesday, the government said, dealing a further blow to cash-strapped consumers already battling to survive in an ailing economy.

The tax affects meat and staple foods such as cereals, rice and potatoes. Other goods listed by the finance ministry include margarine, fish and pork. The move comes at a time when Zimbabweans are faced with unemployment of over 90 percent and rising levels of poverty.

The country, once considered the bread basket of Africa, now imports most of its food, after the agricultural sector was brought to its knees by the seizures of white-owned commercial farms under President Robert Mugabe's administration.

In 2016 the government banned a range of food imports from neighbouring South Africa, in a bid to boost the local market which is battling cash shortages.

The VAT announcement was slammed as "anti-people" by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which predicted a sharp increase in food prices.

"This is an anti-people statutory instrument which will make it hard for the poor to afford meat," party spokesman Obert Gutu told AFP.

"The regime is bankrupt and scrounging for money to pay a bloated civil service and to pay for Mugabe's extravagant lifestyle," he added.

The southern African country is this year running on a $4.1 billion budget. The long-ruling Mugabe is being blamed for ruining a once prosperous economy.

Mugabe, who has been in power since 1980, turns 93 later this month. He has faced calls to step down, but his ruling ZANU-PF has endorsed him to stand for the 2018 presidential elections.

Source: AFP
Packaging giant Nampak, which has about R2bn of restricted cash locked up in Nigeria and Angola, has placated investor fears that a rights issue could be in the offing.

Nampak CEO Andre de Ruyter

Speaking at the annual general meeting on Wednesday, CEO Andre de Ruyter said the sale and leaseback of 15 industrial properties in June 2016 had raised R1.744bn and pushed gearing below 50%.

"This transaction was instrumental in avoiding a rights issue at this stage. We don't anticipate that this is a significant risk to be concerned about...."

Shareholder activist Chris Logan raised concerns over the pile of restricted cash, which grew from R700m in financial 2015 to R2bn in 2016. "This will continue to grow a lot more, perhaps to as much as R3bn by the end of this financial year."

De Ruyter said the growth in the restricted cash pile in Angola and Nigeria indicated significant profitability in the businesses in those countries. "If that cash pile started shrinking there would be even greater cause for concern."

Nampak was pursuing a number of steps to limit the exposure to further deterioration in the Nigerian naira and Angolan kwanza. "We have been steadily acquiring dollar-linked kwanza-denominated bonds in Angola. This programme continues and acts as a very solid hedge," he said.

Logan said that sometimes there were vast discrepancies between the "official" rate for the naira and the unofficial market rate.

Nampak chairman and former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni conceded that mismatches in currency rates were a challenge Nampak management faced all the time.

Asked whether Nampak had engaged with African governments about currency fluctuations and liquidity, Mboweni said Nampak was already contributing to the issue in Nigeria. He hoped to "visit the Reserve Bank governor in Nigeria for a cup of coffee to talk about the architecture of the foreign exchange policy. We don't want to impose... just to discuss."

De Ruyter was cautious in responding to questions about dividends. He indicated that there was an intention to resume dividends as soon as this was deemed prudent by the board - after taking into account macroeconomic conditions and excluding restricted cash.

Source: Business Day
The Rwandan government has introduced a Bill that seeks to dissolve the Rwanda Natural Resources Authority (RNRA) and form three independent and specialised bodies focused on oil, gas, and minerals as well as land, water, and forestry.

The minister for natural resources, Dr Vincent Biruta, introduced the draft law in the lower house last week, and its basis was unanimously approved by MPs, which means that laws governing the new bodies will be assessed at the house's committee level before being passed.

RNRA was formed in 2010 as a merger of the National Land Centre, the National Forestry Authority (NAFA), and the Rwanda Geology and Mines Authority (OGMR).

While the merger was initially intended to streamline the bodies' services, Biruta told MPs that RNRA was no longer fit to deliver on the new goals set by the government to maximise efforts in the exploration and exploitation of minerals, oil, and gas, as well as efficient management of land, water, and forests.

"The merged centres under RNRA performed well in the last six years but we now have to make changes given the current orientations we have in line with meeting our economic targets," he said.

The new agencies to be created will include Rwanda Land Management Authority, Rwanda Water and Forestry Management Authority, as well as the country's oil and gas authority.

An explanatory note submitted by the government to parliament to accompany the draft law dissolving the RNRA says the new bodies to be formed will have financial and administrative autonomy and will be in a better position to focus on their specific objectives.

MPs welcome the Bill

MPs welcomed the move, with the majority indicating that the envisaged entities will bring more focus on specific areas that need to be exploited to improve the lives of Rwandans.

"These are bodies that will have a great role in our country's economy and wellbeing of Rwandans," said Speaker Donatille Mukabalisa.
Traders and hawkers armed with brooms and bags sweep pavements and scoop up rubble in Benin's economic capital Cotonou, where the authorities have ordered a vast city cleanup.

From informal street markets to bars and food stalls illegally built on public land, nothing has been spared, as squads of workers move in toclear the chaos and make the bustling city beautiful again.

But the cleanup has made daily life hard for many in Benin, where the vast majority work in the informal sector.

Like other fast-growing west African urban hubs, Cotonou has vendors selling everything from clothing to fast food by the roadside, and restaurants that spring up all over with their plastic chairs and tables.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," deputy mayor Florentin Tchaou told AFP. "People will take advantage of any empty space to expand their businesses and increase their visibility so as to improve sales."

But in July, freshly elected President Patrice Talon decided it was time to give the country a facelift and gave major cities a six-month deadline to clear their chaotic crowded roads.

Large red crosses were spray painted on building walls due for demolition and posters added warnings that eviction day was near.

Ageline Bocovo, who has been selling clothes in Cotonou for five years, didn't believe it would happen, but was wrong.

"We couldn't fight the police with our bare hands, we had no choice," she said, when, on January 5, she was forced to leave.

Bocovo personally smashed her stall into smithereens, keeping some of the bricks to build a new stall on a smaller street.

"The rest of the rubble will be sold. But it won't bring in much cash," she said.

Armelle Choplin, an urban planner at Cotonou's Research Institute for Development, said the "measure affects the little people, who aren't necessarily organised into associations or unions, as is the case in Anglophone countries like Ghana."

Clearing operations such as this are not uncommon on the continent, where many cities have grown at a rapid rate without much thought about planning.

"Most people welcome it," Choplin said. "It's Haussmann in the tropics," she added, referring to the 19th-century French urban planner best known for transforming Paris into a city of sweeping boulevards.

Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world's population growth between 2015 and 2050 - 9.7-billion - according to a 2015 United Nations report.

That means unchecked activity on public space isn't going to disappear anytime soon.

But the relatively peaceful departure of the squatters in Benin contrasts with neighbouring Nigeria, where clashes with police enforcing eviction notices can lead to violence and even death.

Nevertheless, Cotonou's poor will suffer most by being forced to move stalls to less busy streets at a time when Benin's economy is being hit by recession in Nigeria.

In Ghana's Accra, for example, alternative marketplaces were set up for those evicted. But in Cotonou there is no such relocation or compensation.

So for some, the beautification of Cotonou is a nightmare.

"Where do you want me to go?" asked Eugenie Yovogan, whose small street restaurant stood in front of a government building providing lunch for civil servants.

The clearance robbed her of a prime location and customers. "I lost my clientele forever," she said.

Cotonou's authorities maintain they will support people like Yovogan - even if it's unclear if they have the funds to do so.

"Our citizens have demonstrated a very high social maturity, respecting the laws," said Tchaou.

"Now we must be able to relocate them so that their turnover does not fall. But this requires the means, and sweeping, garbage collection, this is already expensive."

Source: AFP
Vadim Ginzburg via 123RF

Topping the list was Biome Makers, a startup company that takes advantage of the natural agricultural microbiome-community of microorganisms. It does this by testing soil to determine what microbial species  microscopic organisms such as bacteria  are present. It then uses the information to offer recommendations about how to improve the quality and yield of the crops.

Of course, that they won does not come as a surprise. Microbial-based solutions for agriculture are among some of the new innovations making waves in the sector in the developed world. The market for these products is valued at $2.3 billion globally). Biome Makers raised $2.2 million in seed funding in 2016 alone.

Microbes are tiny microscopic organisms such as bacteria and fungi that interact with soils and plants. Microbial-based solutions, which are formulated from microbes, offer multiple benefits to crops. These include improved growth as well as protection from insects, drought, and other climate-related extremities. The solutions also offer environmentally sustainable approaches to improved crops and productivity while ensuring the resilience of agricultural systems. Poncho/VOTiVO is an example of a microbe-based solution product developed by Bayer Crop Sciences. When applied to corn plants as a seed treatment, it improves their growth, protects them from pests and ultimately increases yields by 15%.

Unfortunately, the appreciation of microbes and the potential microbial-based solutions have for improving agriculture in Africa is in its infancy. It hasnt yet enjoyed the same traction as in developed countries.

It is easy to understand why this industry has been slow to jump start in Africa. The startup costs associated with setting up cutting-edge laboratories that are equipped to do soil microbial research are high. They range from $300,000 to $1,000,000. This means were yet to see research institutions or private industries based in Africa taking the lead in spearheading this research.

African initiatives

Despite the hurdles, a few initiatives are starting to roll out across Africa.

The University of Pretorias Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics and nine other African countries recently launched an initiative that aims to discover the microbial diversity in African soils. Data obtained from this initiative would help document and uncover the types of microbes present in African soils. New microbe species with unique traits to influence crop, soil, and plant growth could also be used to formulate products that help improve crop productivity.

Ag Biome, based in North Carolina, was awarded a multi-year grant by Bill and Melinda Gates to create microbial-based products for the control of weevils which can cause 60-100% losses in sweet potato in Africa.

The Innes Centre, based in the UK, is working on research to discover if microbes can be tapped to help cereals access nitrogen. This would help improve yields for smallholder farmers in Africa.

Room for more

But there is room to do more. The question is how to inspire African countries to jump on the agricultural-microbial-based-solutions bandwagon and revolutionise agriculture in Africa.

Perhaps the first natural thing would be to launch microbial-based solutions within Africas existing research institutions that are already focused on agriculture. It makes sense to work with institutions that have previously managed successful soil initiatives.

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), for example, successfully implemented a soil health programme. It helped improve agricultural production in several African countries. Adding an additional component to this soil health programme would be a natural fit. AGRA draws some of its funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has already shown interest in the field as evidenced by its funding for AgBiome.

Venture funders also need to expand their portfolios to accommodate startup companies that fit this niche. The startup culture is not new in Africa. Kenya, for instance, is known as Africas Silicon Valley. It has been the hub for funding more than 3,500 tech-related startups and over $1billion in venture capital being made available to accelerate these startups.

Alternatively, venture funders can bankroll pre-existing startups. There are several to choose from, like Soil Doctor: a company thats already up and running in Kenya, Uganda and Nigeria. It tests microbial diversity in soils and uses the information to advise farmers.

The future

All the evidence suggests that microbial-based innovations will continue to play a role in improving agriculture in years to come.

Just recently, the BioAg Alliance announced that it will introduce two new products in 2017 developed from soil microbes, Acceleron B-300 SAT and Acceleron B-200. These increase the nutrient uptake of corn and soy plants.

It will take every resource and innovation available to ensure that Africa can feed its rapidly expanding population and eradicate hunger. The continent must harness everything it can with the potential to impact and revolutionise agriculture. Innovations spinning off from microbes derived from soil have proven that they can do this.





This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Tenant rights and obligations are not automatically forfeited when a landlord puts their property up for sale. Selling a rental with a tenant in residence isn't always an ideal situation, but the laws and processes in place are designed to treat all parties as fairly as possible.

 Wavebreak Media Ltd  123RF.com

A lot of tenants rely on the South African legal principle of huur gaat voort koop to protect their interests, says Jacqui Savage, national rentals business development manager for the Rawson Property Group. Under this principle, a lease agreement is given precedence over an agreement of sale, which effectively entitles tenants to retain occupation until such time as their lease agreement expires.

Complicated circumstances

While this is the default principle, Savage warns that there are circumstances in which it does not apply.

'Huur gaat voort koop' only comes into play when a property is sold under normal circumstances on the open market, she says. In distressed sales, where banks and sheriffs are involved, things get a little more complicated.

Savage explains that if a property is being put on auction by the bank that holds the bond, and the bond was registered prior to the conclusion of the lease, the bank and sheriff must still attempt to sell the property subject to the lease if theyre aware of its existence. If, however, the bids received are not sufficient to cover the banks claim, the obligation to honour the lease falls away.

The same is true if the bank and sheriff are unaware of the lease, she continues. If a tenant with a valid lease comes forward after the auction has taken place, and the bid was sufficient to cover the outstanding amount to the bank, the lease must be honoured. If the bid was insufficient, however, the lease can be cancelled as required.

Thankfully, not all sales of tenanted properties are bank-enforced auctions, in which case huur gaat voort koop does apply. Or does it?

Sales provision

A lot of landlords will include a sales provision in their lease to give themselves and their tenants more flexibility in the event of a sale, says Savage. The terms could allow the tenant or landlord to cancel the lease early, with a prescribed notice period, if the property is placed on the market. As long as both parties have agreed to the terms, they replace the huur gaat voort koop principle.

Without a sales provision in your lease, cancelling your contract early can be tricky. A tenant may be able to do so if their contract falls under the CPA, but this only occurs if the agreement is between two or more natural persons, or natural persons and a juristic person (a company, trust, body corporate, partnership or association). Any agreement between two or more juristic persons is not covered by the CPA.

Even though you can legally cancel a lease early, there are often penalty fees to take into account, warns Savage, so youll need to decide whether the cost is worthwhile under your circumstances. Very often, its easier for everyone to simply uphold the lease agreement. In these cases, all the terms and conditions of the lease will carry over to the new owner and landlord.

Handling property viewings

Of course, with a tenant in place, it can be challenging to find a new owner if show houses and property viewings arent handled well.

Tenants are required to allow reasonable access to their property for the purpose of showing it to prospective purchasers, says Savage, and should make an effort to keep things as neat and clean as possible when visitors are expected. Its a two-way street, though  estate agents and landlords need to respect the tenants rights as well. You cant force someone to vacate their home every Sunday for months on end, or allow visitors to wander around at all times of day and night.

To keep tenant/landlord relationships amicable during the marketing of the property, Savage recommends negotiating set dates and times for holding viewings.

Tenants do have the right to request to be present when the property is shown, but its often less disruptive if the agent takes buyers around while the tenant is at work or away, says Savage. Its always best if everyone can sit down and discuss their preferences for the marketing period in advance, and find a compromise that satisfies the most important factors for all involved.

Be upfront and honest

According to Savage, this kind of open communication between landlord and tenant can make all the difference when it comes to a smooth sales process.

Its often a difficult and emotional situation when a tenanted property is sold, she says, but with the right attitude and sensitivity to all parties, it doesnt have to be unfair or unpleasant. If everyone is upfront and honest about their plans and expectations, and is willing to compromise for the sake of a positive outcome, both tenant and landlord can enjoy a stress-free experience.
A Uitenhage teenager has been granted an all-expenses-paid trip to the US Space and Rocket Academy in March.

Muir College prefect Matthew Arnold, 17, said he was thrilled about attending the Honeywell Leadership Challenge Academy hosted at the US Space and Rocket Academy in Alabama.

"I have never been overseas before and I am looking forward to the experience," Matthew said.

He is one of two South Africans - the other is from Gauteng - taking part in the leadership challenge.

Matthew said he had first learnt about the leadership programme while in Grade 8 at Muir.

"I was too young to apply then because it is only for the 16 to 18 age group," he said, adding that in Grade 9 and Grade 10 he did not perform well enough to apply.

"Once I got my performance up at school in Grade 11, I applied in September with the previous term's results," he said.

As part of the stringent selection process, Matthew was required to submit a number of essays detailing what he hoped to achieve by attending the academy as well as detail his leadership positions at school.

A keen saxophonist, Matthew has been involved in the wildlife society, Scripture Union and the blood donor panel at Muir College.

"Some of my friends are a bit jealous but they are happy for me," he said.

The aspiring engineer said he enjoyed maths and science most and hoped these subjects would help him while at the academy, where he will learn more about leadership positions and challenges in the field of space technology and astronomy.

"The leadership camp will test us in different leadership positions," he said.

Matthew said he hoped the experience would make him a better leader at Muir College.

"There will be a few students from the University of Alabama to teach us about rocket technology, which I really enjoy," he said.

For his future, Matthew intends to study engineering at the University of Cape Town or the University of Pretoria before specialising in astrological engineering.

"Once I am qualified, I can then go back and tutor at the Space Academy," he said.

Muir College headmaster Robin Stephenson said he was proud of Matthew for taking on the unique opportunity.

"He is an inspiration to the other boys. He must be quite brave.

"It says a lot about him to step out of his comfort zone," Stephenson said.

Matthew leaves for America on 3 March and will return on 10 March.

The Honeywell Leadership Challenge Academy provides scienceoriented workshops, lectures and team exercises for the participants to develop their leadership skills.
The global perception of Africa is changing, and this change in perception is led by destinations previously not thought of or avoided altogether. Countries like the Congo, Rwanda, and Malawi is making an impression for all the right reasons.

The number of international visitors travelling to these historically avoided or forgotten destinations in Africa has seen a steady increase since 2000. Malawi, for instance, has had their tourism numbers increase by an average of 12 percent a year over a 10 year period according to the Malawi Tourism Guide, while the Congos tourism increased six-fold in six years as reported by the World Tourism Organisation.

Photo: Inspired Journeys - Tchegera Island, Congo

The reasons for avoiding certain destinations in Africa in the past are quite obvious: political unrest, lack of infrastructure and general safety levels being the first few to come to mind for the average traveller. However, the reasons for why these countries are now seeing a tourism boom is a much more nuanced topic and one that other countries in Africa and the world would do well to decode in order to achieve this level of growth in tourism.

Globalisation

One of the major contributing factors to the success of Africas remote destinations is that of globalisation. According to a European Scientific Journal report, globalisation has led to the fact that tourists looking for experiences are not interested only in the nearby destinations, but the world becomes a potential destination. The compounding factors of cheaper airfare, the internet, and more recently social media, has made it possible for countries like Malawi, Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda to paint a fresh and more accessible picture of themselves to the affluent travellers of the world.

Travel bloggers such as Natasha and Cameron of The World Pursuit have driven this education first hand, travelling through Africa and sharing their experiences with the world. Cameron and Natasha notes, we have found an interconnected Africa filled with unique experiences, unparalleled landscapes, friendly people, and high levels of industry service. Sharing our travels with our audience has painted a new picture and perception of Africa in many minds."

Travel bloggers Natasha and Cameron of The World Pursuit

Adventure travel

One niche that quickly latched onto this fresh understanding of remote Africa, was that of adventure travel, lauded as the travel trend of 2016. This travel style has played perfectly into the hands of African destinations not traditionally known for luxurious hotels and established infrastructure who has now become more desirable amongst the growing class of international thrill-seeking travellers looking for a break from corporate confines and a departure from cliche travel experiences.

Adventure Travel companies like Ker & Downey Africa have seen a steady increase in global travelers proactively seeking out these remote and lesser known destinations as a result of this trend, and the awareness created through online media. As travel writer Larry Olmsted puts it, Americans have become much more worldly and adventurous travellers. Similarly, Lee Kelsall, CEO of Ker & Downey Africa mentions that travellers are looking to push their boundaries, summit volcanoes, walk through the wild - anything but the usual - and there is no better place to push your boundaries than the forests, savannas, waterways and peaks of Africa.

Spend a night next to one of the most active volcano's in Africa, the Nyiragongo Volcano, Congo

Transformational travel

2016s adventure travel has evolved into what international publication Vogue has stated to be the travel trend of 2017 - transformational travel. Sarah Tjeenk Willink of Inspired Journeys defines transformational travel as a form of travel where travellers are looking to make a positive impact on their environment. Transformational travel draws travellers away from developed countries and popular, highly monetised travel destinations where travellers dont feel that they can make an authentic impact as an individual, and increases interest in visiting villages and tribes in the depths of Africa. It is here, in the far reaches, amidst the raw elements of Africa that travellers feel they can make a personal impact on the places they visit and the wildlife and people they encounter.

Tours to the Congo Hounds community as part of the anti-poaching unit of Virunga National Park

As a result, Africa finds itself in the perfect position to benefit from trends in technology, social and travel in the coming years. With the correct management of these factors by the relevant tourism boards and governments of the developing world, African travel is set to flourish.
More than 30 million tourists visit Africa every year. Over half of the international arrivals are for business purposes and may partake in tourist activities as well, while 15% travel for pure tourism and 30% visit friends and family.

Tourists select the continent as a destination for wildlife viewing and to enjoy the sunny skies. Africa is the worlds number one destination for safaris which range from the exotic to the very simple.

The tourism industry is one of the most important for the continent: it provided 12.8 million people with jobs, directly and indirectly, in 2011. Tourism in 2012 contributed over US$36 billion or 2.8% of the continents GDP.

The continents vast and diverse nature makes it complex and difficult to decide on the best region for a safari. But the east, central and southern parts of the continent are by far the preferred choices. These areas generally have well developed or fast developing tourism sectors. There is an abundance of wildlife as well as low to no visa requirements. Tourists to these regions mostly come from countries like France, the UK, the USA, Germany and Portugal.

Below is a quick guide to some of the safari hotspots on the African continent.

East Africa

East African countries are strongly reliant on the tourism industry for generating income. Strong improvements in marketing and cooperation between these nations will help to ensure the success of this vital tourism sector.

Standardised criteria for hotels, restaurants and other services across these countries will make it easier for tourists to find suitable services. These countries possess various natural and cultural resources that make tourism possible.

The Serengeti wildebeest migration is the main reason Kenya and Tanzania have become popular safari destinations. This migration sees millions of wildebeest, accompanied by various other animal species, move between Tanzania and Kenya. The best places to view this migration include Kenyas Maasai Mara and Tanzanias Serengeti National Park..







Shutterstock





And while in the area, dont forget to visit Africas highest mountain - Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzanias Kilimanjaro National Park.

The Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area is also a great choice with an abundance of big 5 - the African elephant, African lion, white/black rhinoceros, African leopard and the Cape buffalo - and will not disappoint.

Central Africa

Civil wars and terrorist groups have made it dangerous to travel to some countries in this region. Many tourists still take their chances, though, as Central Africa is an area of immense natural beauty.

The Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda are great places to view the endangered mountain gorillas. The best places for viewing them include the Virunga National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mgahinga Gorilla National Park in south-west Uganda, or Volcanoes National Park in north-west Rwanda.

Various factors have threatened the population of gorillas, including poaching, habitat loss, disease, war and unrest, and poverty. Today, due to conservation efforts, the population of mountain gorillas is showing steady growth. The fact that many tourists want to get up close to these animals also drives conservation efforts, since with tourism comes economic improvement.

If youd prefer to take part in Africas best on-foot chimpanzee encounters, visit Kibale Forest in Uganda.

Southern Africa

South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi offer very diverse wildlife. This is because of the variety of biomes in the region.

Chobe National Park is home to the biggest concentration of elephants in the world - 70 000 of them. It lies between the Chobe River and the Okavango Delta in the north-eastern parts of Botswana. Also in Botswana, the Moremi Game Reserve, in the iconic Okavango Delta, is the first reserve in Africa to be established by local residents.

The Etosha National Park in the northern arid region of Namibia offers great chances of spotting endangered black rhinoceros as well as flamingos in the salt pans.

The Kruger National Park in South Africa is in its own league because of its diversity of animals as well as advanced environmental management techniques and policies.

iSimangaliso Wetland Park was the first site in South Africa to be awarded World Heritage status. It contains most of South Africas remaining swamp forests and is Africas largest estuarine system, which is a partially enclosed body of water where freshwater from rivers and streams mix with salt water from the ocean. The park borders Kosi Bay and St Lucia Lake which is the only place in the world where you can find sharks, hippopotamus, and crocodiles in the same body of water.

Addo Elephant National Park in the Eastern Cape province is the only park where you can find the Big 7: the African elephant, Cape buffalo, African lion, African leopard, African rhino as well as whales and Great White sharks.

The Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park consists of mostly unspoiled wilderness in the north of South Africa, crossing over into Botswana. This park is largely located in a desert area and is famous for animal species such as the Kalahari black-maned lions and the Gemsbok or Oryx.





This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
In a local business ecosystem that is fraught with both political and economic uncertainty, companies are under pressure to innovate and expand with few resources.

Leon Coetzer

For many South African businesses, and particularly those in the fast moving and highly competitive world of IT, forming strong international partnerships is a savvy, but difficult, way of injecting new energy and IP into local operations. But for those who can get it right, the short and long-term benefits are numerous.

Securing a solid international partnership

Securing an international contract and solid partnership requires a great deal of research, due diligence, and internal transformation.

Our Cape Town-based firm has partnered with PCMS, a UK-based technology retail provider and a worldwide leader in its field. The multinational group was looking to establish a local centre of excellence in software development in South Africa, and their research led them to redPanda Software.

In our case, the courtship process took close to a year, and both parties got to know each other extraordinarily well from both a business and technical perspective. Since the contract was secured and the engagement formally started, we have seen a marked increase in interest from both local and global clients.

Internal transformation

The partnership has resulted in a noticeable internal shift within redPanda Software, with significant changes being made to systems, processes and team management. We are now able to draw on global best practices and to exchange valuable learnings and IP with a renowned specialist.

As a result, we have been able to more clearly define the different roles and responsibilities within the company and its structures and to have the right combination of talent within our teams. For employees, the international partnership also brings with it exciting new opportunities, added personal development and greater visibility in the IT sector worldwide.

Besides the operational, cultural and reputational gains that the partnership has brought, the financial gains could be significant  albeit hard-won. Its important not to view earning foreign currency as simple and a get rich quick strategy, primarily because it brings with it many hidden costs as well as administrative challenges.

The volatility of exchange rates can certainly eat into profit margins. Also, transparent and clear negotiations upfront can go a long way in ensuring the success of a partnership with global companies.

True job creation

The foreign currency benefits pale in importance when one considers that true job creation is taking place.

We are not simply moving people between companies, we are (through this contract) creating exciting new work opportunities for local talent, while simultaneously growing and enriching the local IT industry.

South Africa has a pool of immensely talented and ambitious technology and IT professionals, and it's important to be committed to developing and supporting local talent in every way possible.
NJ Beauty Queen Faces Criminal Charges for 10 Minors' Drinking

The former Mrs. Bergen County, Soneca Guadara, is facing criminal charges as a result of an alcohol fueled party involving 10 minors, where she may not have even been present. When one minor was discovered drunk and passed out off the property in the neighborhood, police were called. Officers discovered nine additional juveniles at Guadara's home where alcohol was being served, and described the situation as the "standard kids getting together having alcohol party."

The 47-year-old former beauty queen lives in the suburbs of New Jersey and is now a fashion designer. It is likely that one of the former beauty queen's four children hosted a party and invited minor guests, but details on the incident are scant. What is known is that Guadara is facing criminal charges for nuisance, as well as "leaving property in custody of another where alcohol was being served to minors."

Also, while authorities assert that she was arrested, Guadara maintains that she was never arrested, charged, or even notified. Lastly, it was reported that the drunk minor found passed out was transported to the hospital, and that there are no other criminal charges being filed at this time.

Serving Alcohol to Minors Doesn't Require Serving

While most people are aware that serving alcohol to minors is illegal, many people don't realize that allowing a minor to serve themselves, or deliberating not noticing if they do, is also illegal. Parents can also be liable for their children serving alcohol to other minors at their home. Additionally, parents need to be aware of the fact that not properly supervising a party can lead to criminal charges for contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Guadara is not the first parent to be arrested for this, and likely won't be the last. In fact, considering other arrests that make the news, hers hardly qualifies as shocking. A California father learned a hard lesson after being charged with 44 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor as a result of a party his high school aged child threw. He was charged with one count for each minor that was present at the party.

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African infrastructure equity investment manager, African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) has announced the successful acquisition of a 60% effective interest in DSM Corridor Group Tanzania (DCG), a specialist dry bulk terminal operator in the Port of Dar es Salaam.

 Ruslan Ivantsov via 123RF

AIIM is a member of Old Mutual Alternative Investments (OMAI), and develops, advises and manages private equity infrastructure funds designed to invest long-term institutional equity in African infrastructure projects.

The deal was executed via a strategic holding company - African Ports and Corridors Holdings (APCH) - which will facilitate the acquisition of further terminals and other corridor expansions across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Servicing multiple landlocked countries

AIIM CEO, Jurie Swart, explains that the Port of Dar es Salaam is forecast to grow to 41.5mtpa by 2028, which represents almost three times the current volume. The port and surrounding infrastructure is set to be refurbished under the lauded Dar es Salaam Maritime Gateway Project which is jointly funded by the World Bank, the United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DfID) and TradeMark East Africa (TMEA). The ports strategic location services multiple landlocked countries including Zambia, Uganda, DRC, Rwanda, Burundi and Malawi.

Key dry bulk commodities flow through these corridors and the planned rehabilitation of the Central Corridor Railway project will further anchor the port as a critical East African hub.

A strong pipeline of opportunities

Swart says that the combination of a critical requirement for greater efficiency in African ports and the development of private investment programmes is driving a strong pipeline of opportunities, particularly in the dry bulk cargo area.

AIIM has circa US$1.6 billion of funds under management with a track record extending across six infrastructure funds, and over 16 years experience managing investments in 19 portfolio companies across the renewable energy, power generation, transport, port logistics and telecommunications sectors.
Many consumers believe that because generics are cheaper they must be inferior. This lack of understanding costs consumers and medical aids millions of rands each year.

What is a generic drug?

Copies of brand-name drugs that have exactly the same dosage, intended use, effects, side effects, route of administration, risks, safety and strength as the original drug. In other words, says Kenneth Marion, acting chief operating officer for Bonitas, their pharmacological effects are exactly the same as those of their brand-name counterparts. In more scientific terms, they are defined as a bioequivalent of a branded medicine with respect to pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics.

But much, much cheaper...

Why are generics cheaper than the original brand?

Marion explains, Pharmaceutical companies are researching and testing new active ingredients and medicines all the time. As they start working on a new molecule they patent it to get exclusivity on its use.

The patent is valid for about 20 years, the company alone may research, create a new formulation and register the medicine. This understandably takes years and is a huge financial burden on the company. After about eight to 10 years on the market the patent usually expires and other drug companies can copy exactly the same drug without the initial clinical research costs.

What guarantee is there that generics are true replicas?

The Medicines Control Council (MCC) carries the responsibility of making sure that generic drugs are safe and effective in South Africa. Generic manufacturers have to prove their medicine is bioequivalent to the innovator brand before a product is allowed into the local market.

Cost containment

Competition has exploded among manufacturers of generic equivalents of brand names, which is driving the cost of generics so low, that some are practically free. Even brand name products, still protected by patents, are feeling the price squeeze. The increased uptake in generics spells good news for consumers. Generic medicines cost on average between 30 and 80% less than the original product.

Its hardly surprising that generic prescribing is as high as 70% in most medical practices. Generics are used in all areas of medicine including oncology and approximately 65% of acute and chronic ailments/diseases?

Increased consolidation in the healthcare industry is also having a positive impact on medicine prices and availability. Medical aids are trying to create more competition, even among medicines that are still under patent. They are also tightening up their formularies, in part to force pharmaceutical manufacturers to compete on price.

The Pharmacy Act of 1997 and the Medicines Control Amendment Act, among other things, have made it mandatory for dispensers of medicine, be they doctors or pharmacists, to offer the patient a generic substitute if one is available.

Making clones and generics

Often the pharmaceutical company that made the original drug also manufacture a generic, or clone, in their own factory, selling it under a different brand name.

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Why do some patients complain the generic doesnt work?

Bonitas believes that the most likely reason is that people may have so little faith in the generic - or anticipating it will not work - that it may not. Greater understanding of what generics are will go a long towards patients taking generics and reducing costs.

However, in some cases even though the active ingredients are the same the fillers may differ slightly. Although unlikely, this may cause a slight difference in the outcome. One example is for anti-seizure medications where a tiny, change may make a difference.

Generics are a way of saving millions on healthcare costs in South Africa and more specifically making medical aids go further. Ultimately, these measures mean generous savings for consumers and is consistent with government's overarching goal of health reform, says Marion.
Many in the business world are glad to see the back of 2016, but one month into 2017 and not much has changed. This is because what we are experiencing is not just a bump in the road; we are living in an inflection point in history where all the rules are being rewritten.

Currently we're seeing deep structural change where the shift in one industry ripples around the entire globe, Graeme Codrington, futurist and CEO of TomorrowToday told delegates at the Qlik Southern Africa Summit 2017 that took place at the Sandton Convention Centre on Thursday, 2 February.

Three or four significant things will change our world, he says.

The first is how and where we get our energy from. Fifteen years from now energy will be free in many parts of the world. New technologies will deliver energy at remarkable speed and prices are already being developed.

One such technology is ITER, which will be the first fusion device to produce net energy. For example it will produce 500mW of energy from 50mW of energy through self-replication, like the sun does. It's due to come online in 2027.

Batteries are another technology that will change our world. Batteries store energy and Elon Musk is working on this. Already his can drive 600km on batteries that only take 15 minutes to charge! Bill Gates, together with others, has formed the Breakthrough Energy Coalition which invests in new energies.

Why is this important?

Because of the ripple effect. Not only does a world with no energy costs remove 20% of costs, adding that percentage to GDP, but if there is no energy problem, then there is no water problem because we can literally make water and if we solve our water problems then we can solve our food problems.

All these key constraints on the world's economy could be removed in the next 10 to 15 years.

It's not just technology that's changing the world. One of the mega trends in the world is longevity. We will all live longer. Today many people are living to 100 years old, and nearly half a million people are 100 years or more. In South Africa 15,000 people are 100 years or older, and every day 1,000 people turn 100.

Furthermore, 80 is easily achieved and many will make it to 100 (most of our children will make 100). This years matrics will live beyond 100 to 110 or even 120.

This has to do with many things, for example genetic sequencing. By knowing where you come from and who you are, your doctor can treat you accordingly. Robotic, wearable healthcare, etc. will dramatically expand our lifespan. But no one wants to be older; everyone wants to be younger, so we will need to take care of ourselves.

If we're going to live 40 years longer, then retiring at 60 becomes tricky, so we cannot think about retirement like we use to.

This links to his final big trend: work. In 10 to 15 years half of us will not have jobs, he says. We will not have employment like we have it now. We will not be responsible to one employer, but work on demand and contract, so the way we engage in employment will be very different.

Any task that can be done at a digital distance can be done by someone online, and we need to realise that there are certain ones that can be automated. The tasks that require human skill is where we will  and must  deliver our value.

The problem is that we can  and do  often miss these turning points, he says. This is because we're not always looking around us to see the big unprecedented happenings. Our brains are not tuned in to the these and the concept of exponential change, but to small changes. As a result, when everything happens and changes, we suffer. We need to switch on our radar by lifting up our heads from our work to see what's happening.
Primedia Unlimited has partnered with Dublin based Bionic, a Facebook marketing partner, in its first entry into the African market. Currently operating in 25 markets globally, Bionic has seen rapid growth in recent years and sees the diverse African landscape as a key territory for the future.

Bionic COO Patrick Dawson commented, We are enthusiastic about Bionic Africas early successes in South Africa and, together with our partners in Primedia Unlimited, we are committed to supporting great South African and African brands to scale their social media investment efficiently. Our approach, strong local presence and track record in delivering exceptional performance will provide a winning combination for our partners in Sub-Saharan Africa.

L-R: Aidan Baigrie (client partner Facebook), Patrick Dawson (BIONIC COO), Nunu Ntshingila (regional director  Africa Facebook ), Ryan Williams (Primedia Unlimited Group CEO), Paolo Picazio (partner manager SEMEA Facebook), Cian Buckley (BIONIC business development manager  Africa Region), Keith OReilly (BIONIC CPO and director), Aidan Doherty (client solutions manager, SSA Facebook)

Through the partnership deal, the company is now supporting and servicing clients from Johannesburg, combining high-level service-expertise with its intelligent automation features.

Ryan Williams, Group CEO of Primedia Unlimited says, With traditional advertising budgets shifting significantly into the digital arena, we are delighted to have such a successful, sophisticated and experienced partner like this on board, as we grow and develop our business into the future. The level of sophistication of the platform, its track record around the world, its Facebook marketing partnership status and the opportunity for more efficient social media investment create a recipe for success. Success not just for Bionic Africa, but more importantly for the clients and partners we have been working with over the past 14 years.

Imraan Rajab, head of biddable & technology at Mediacom, an existing South Africa Bionic client, said, We are delighted to welcome the company to Africa and are excited about its commitment to this region, our continued collaboration and our combined efforts in servicing our local clients. Its subject matter expertise, powerful targeting algorithm and highly responsive servicing have led to great efficiency gains for our clients. We wish the company the best in this region and look forward to working with its local agile and innovative solution.

Bionic recently attended and presented at the Facebooks Performance Summits last week, in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
There are five titles releasing this week: in Live By Night, a fiery affair sets a policeman on a path of revenge, ambition, romance and betrayal in the roaring 20s; an interplanetary visitor races against time to unravel the mysteries of how he came to be, and where he belongs in the universe in The Space Between Us; a super soldier battles ravenous hordes of the undead in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter; the exploration of a dark supernatural subculture unleashes hell in Rings, the prequel to The Ring; and Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco offers viewers an incredible operatic experience.

Live By Night

It is set in the roaring 20s when Prohibition hasnt stopped the flow of booze in an underground network of gangster-run speakeasies. The opportunity to gain power and money is there for any man with enough ambition and nerve and Joe Coughlin, the son of the Boston Police Superintendent, long ago turned his back on his strict upbringing for the spoils of being an outlaw. But even among criminals there are rules and Joe breaks a big one: crossing a powerful mob boss by stealing his money and his doll. The fiery affair ends in tragedy, setting Joe on a path of revenge, ambition, romance and betrayal that propels him out of Boston and up the ladder of Tampas steamy rum-running underworld.

Oscar winner Ben Affleck (Argo), who directed, produced and stars in the dramatic crime thriller Live by Night, also wrote the screenplay, based on the award-winning bestseller by Dennis Lehane, marking the second collaboration for the Boston natives, following the acclaimed drama Gone Baby Gone  the film was produced by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson under the Appian Way banner; and Ben Affleck and Jennifer Todd for Pearl Street Films.

As a lifelong film buff, Affleck posits that the story has all the tropes that made him a fan of the gangster genre in particular: beautiful women, dangerous men, cops, the mob, shootouts, car chases the whole fiery, combustible mix. As soon as I read Denniss book I knew that there was something there for anyone who just really likes to have a great time at the movies.

As a filmmaker, this was a chance to pay homage to the classic Warner Bros. gangster movies of the 1930s through the 70s. I grew up watching them and they had an epic, sprawling feel that really took you into a different world, a different era.

Rings

Youve heard the legend: You watch the tape, the phone rings, and seven days later, youre dead. Since 2002, the vengeful spirit of Samara Morgan has wreaked havoc on the curious souls unfortunate enough to stumble upon her cursed VHS tape.

In this new chapter in the beloved RING horror franchise, a young woman (Julia Matilda) becomes worried about her boyfriend (Alex Roe) when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a movie within the movie that no one has ever seen before

The Ring was such a game changing movie that ushered in a completely different kind of horror film, says Director F. Javier Gutierrez. It wasnt really gory or violent but every frame fills you with dread.

As a culture, were obsessed with videos, and the way we watch them has changed so dramatically since the first two Ring films, Gutierrez explains. There used to be a ritual to watching VHS. You chose a tape off the shelf, sometimes you had to rewind it or adjust the tracking it was all very time consuming, but today, you press a button on various possible devices, and a video instantly plays.

I wanted to explore how technology fundamentally changes how the curse works, and how it spreads, Gutierrez continues. Its not only easier to watch videos, its also much easier to make copies and pass the curse on. With two clicks, youve sent it to a dozen people and theyre watching it on their laptop or their phone. Today, screens are everywhere, so youre never really safe from Samara.

The Space Between Us

A futuristic sci-fi love story that chronicles how Gardner (Asa Butterfield), a 16-year-old boy born and raised in the first human colony on Mars, decides to journey to Earth for the first time to meet a girl (Britt Robertson) he has a crush on and communicates with online. When Gardner makes it to Earth, he not only sees the planet from an "alien's" perspective, but he finally meets his girl. From there, they endeavour to find Gardner's mysterious father, whom he has never met.

This interspace romance will likely appeal to both teens and adults and was directed by Peter Chelsom, produced by Richard B. Lewis and written by Allan Loeb from a story by Stewart Schill, Lewis and Allan Loeb.

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter

The human races last hope against apocalyptic obliteration is super soldier Alice (Milla Jovovich), but shes been stripped of her psychic powers. She must form alliances and rally survivors in Raccoon City for the climactic battle against the Umbrella Corporation and its ravenous hordes of the undead.

It is the sequel to Resident Evil: Retribution (2012) and the sixth and final instalment in the Resident Evil film series, which is loosely based on the $1bn Capcom survival horror video game series Resident Evil.

Paul W.S. Anderson has been involved with the Resident Evil film franchise as a director and/or writer since the very beginning in 2002. With Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, he brings the story of to a close with the biggest action weve seen from the series to date.

Nabucco

Giuseppe Verdis epic opera Nabucco, with baritone Placido Domingo in his Met role debut as the title character, releases in cinema for limited screenings from Saturday, 4 February. The legendary Domingo plays the title king in Verdis Nabucco, under the baton of his longtime collaborator and Met Music Director Emeritus James Levine. This duo has worked together many times over the past four decades, but this is the first time the pair are working together on Nabucco. Liudmyla Monastyrska sings Nabuccos alleged daughter, the ambitious Abigaille, who is determined to seize control of the Babylonian empire.

The cast also includes Jamie Barton as the heroic Fenena, Nabuccos heroic daughter; Russell Thomass as Ismaele, nephew to the King of Jerusalem; and Dmitry Belosselskiy is the stentorian voice of the high priest of the oppressed Hebrew people, Zaccaria. Nabucco established Verdis reputation as a composer, and according to his writings, Verdi noted, This is the opera with which my artistic career really begins. And though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is certain that Nabucco was born under a lucky star.

The cinema transmission of the Mets production of Verdis Nabucco offers viewers exclusive backstage content and behind-the-scenes interviews, giving cinema audiences an unprecedented look at what goes into staging an opera at one of the worlds greatest houses.

Hosted by bass-baritone Eric Owens, this operas intermission features include Live backstage interview with the legendary Placido Domingo, who stars as Nabucco, the Babylonian King who saved the Israelites. Moderated by Met General Manager Peter Gelb, an interview with Met Music Director Emeritus James Levine and Placido Domingo on their legendary collaboration of nearly 350 performances together.

The running time of Nabucco is approximately two hours 44 minutes, and includes one intermission. Screening times at Nouveau and select Ster-Kinekor cinemas are as follows: 4 February at 17.00; 5 February at 14.30; 7 and 15 February at 11.30; and 14 February at 18.00.

For more information on the latest film releases, visit www.writingstudio.co.za
The world of design is dynamic and ever changing as designers get bolder. Some designs are for leisure, others for sustainability and others are for the people. Here are four cool and quirky infrastructure designs from around the world that caught our eye.

Smog eating music academy in Poland

Polish studio FAAB has proposed a concept for a smog-fighting music school in the city of Krakow, fitted with a German air purification system that will work as effectively as 33 000 city trees. The music academy, which was designed as part of a larger Krakow Music City, will be covered in a mossy roof to absorb large amounts of airborne pollutants. Krakow has some of the worst air pollution in the world and the studio envisions the entire music city as a largely car-free and environmentally friendly development.

The architects will cover the rooftops in moss and embed an air purification product developed by Green City Solutions to convert pollutants into biomass.

The academy, which will be built on top of an old military base, will have an education wing, a concert hall and a small guest building; all to be nestled between Krakow and Vistula river. Rainwater would also be collected in an underground tank and reused where possible.

Eco huts in the middle of a French pine forest

Designed by French firm Patrick Arotcharen Architecte, the sustainable eco-huts hover on a private lake in a picturesque pine forest in France. The design of the huts was intended to create a contrasting homology with the natural landscape. The huts make up the Les Echasses Hotel and were constructed from locally sourced timber. Each structure is built on stilts and has an open-air balcony for the magnificent views.

Modular housing in Dublin

To combat homelessness, the Dublin Region Homeless Executive (DRHE) advocated for the use of modular homes as emergency housing for the regions homeless population and all those at risk of being homeless. A modular housing demonstration took place in 2015 with six modular housing suppliers. Each home in the exhibition was equipped with two bedrooms, a kitchen, living area, storage space and a bathroom.

Initially meant to be a short-term solution, modular homes are now to be used as a permanent housing solution for applicants on Dublin City Councils housing waiting list.

A naturally cooling culture centre in Senegal

Thread Artist Residency and Cultural Centre; in the village of Sinthian in Senegal, is a sinuous structure designed by New York-based firm, Toshiko Mori Architect. It is made from local materials and the buildings large thatch openings and rammed earth help promote natural cooling.

The eye-catching structure has a variety of uses. The centre comprises of two artists dwellings and studio spaces for local and visiting international artists. It also serves as a community hub for Sinthian and surrounding villages. The centre provides agricultural training, an exhibition space, kindergarten, a library, performance space and a centre for charging mobile homes.

The structure was built from a bamboo framework with fitted rammed earth bricks, which help absorb heat during the day and dissipate warmth at night. The thatch roof is designed to promote rainwater collection, provide shade and promote natural ventilation.
Cement maker PPC says its balance sheet which showed significant degearing to September 2016 has improved further following the conclusion of its first empowerment transaction.

This resulted in a cash inflow of R1bn in December 2016 which will be used to further reduce debt and fund capital expenditure. In terms of broad-based black economic empowerment codes PPCs contributor level has improved from level eight to level four.

The companys balance sheet has been strengthened significantly against the cyclical nature of the business it said in a trading update on Thursday, 2 February. But following selling price increases the groups Gauteng and inland regions experienced high single-digit declines in cement sales volumes for the quarter ending December 2016 compared to the same period in 2015.

Despite strong volume growth in the Western Cape region PPCs overall cement sales volumes in SA declined marginally when compared to the same quarter in the previous year the group said. But for the nine-month period to December 2016 PPCs overall cement sales volumes in SA rose by 4% as average selling prices fell by 4%.

The company has implemented further price increases in selected regions effective 1 February 2017 the effect of which would begin to reflect on the average selling price in the next few months. Meanwhile business units in Zimbabwe Rwanda and Botswana saw cement sales volumes rise a collective 9% for the nine-month period to December 2016.

BDpro
The South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) says it will approach the Constitutional Court to ask for permission to validate and extend the contract of a company it currently uses to pay grants to millions of South Africans.

The agency said this when it appeared before the Portfolio Committee on Social Development to brief MPs on the progress made in implementing the Constitutional Court ruling on the bidding for the new social assistance payment tender and the institutionalisation of the grant payment system on Wednesday.

The agency is tasked with paying social grants to at least 17 million beneficiaries across South Africa.

The briefing came as the current contract with Cash Paymaster Services is set to expire at the end of March. The Constitutional Court had previously made a ruling that the contract between SASSA and Cash Paymaster Services was invalid and ordered a re-run of the tender process.

But Cash Paymaster was allowed to continue to fulfil its contractual obligations so that social grants payments would not be disrupted.

Raphaahle Ramokgopa, the Executive Manager for Strategy and Business Development at SASSA, said the agency would approach the Constitutional Court as a short-term measure to ensure that beneficiaries will receive their payments on the first of April 2017.

She said a number of options were considered by SASSA, but there were concerns that the options would not be feasible and could lead to social grant recipients being paid late.

The option that is left for us, if we are to guarantee payment by the first of April, [is procuring the services] of the current service provider for a limited time in order to pursue option six ... as recommended by the task team.

After doing that, we also came with timelines ... to say if we were to go for option one, which is going with the current service provider, automatically it makes it irregular and any expenditure incurred would be irregular.

The only thing that would make us survive would be to go to court, approach the court as a matter of urgency and request the  suspension of invalidity and then also go to the office of the Chief Procurement Officer and follow the deviation process, Ramokgopa said.

She said SASSA would ask for the current contract to be extended by a period of one year.

While a number of options were taken into consideration to resolve the current challenges, the sixth option that Ramokgopa referred to, which the National Treasury supports, involved appointing a service provider for cash distribution to grant recipients who are currently using cash pay points.

It also means that banked beneficiaries would use their existing bank accounts to disburse grants through the banking sector.

Following the Constitutional Court ruling, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini set up a Ministerial Advisory Committee, which later recommended that the payment system be developed in-house.

As a medium-term option, SASSA proposed that it should procure the services of all banks for those beneficiaries who seek to be paid through the banking infrastructure.

It also proposed that it should procure the services of a service provider to pay beneficiaries that are currently using cash pay points.

We found that while this option would ensure that beneficiaries are paid in terms of the guaranteed service delivery, it had problems.

From a supply chain point of view, it would be inappropriate to go and extend an illegal contract.

From a Constitutional Court point of view, we found that it would be something that is in violation of the Constitutional Court recommendation. And also, from a public perception [point of view], we found that it would be something that would really be compromising the organisation.

But in terms of delivering services, we found that this option is the only one that can ensure that come the first of April, all beneficiaries are paid.
The multi-sensory cinema, 4DX opens at Nu Metro Menlyn Park on Friday 10 February 2017. This is the fourth such cinema for the group; the others being at Nu Metro V&A Waterfront (Cape Town), The Pavilion (Durban) and Hyde Park (Johannesburg).

4DX pushes the limits of cinema to its pinnacle. The 3D visuals on-screen, along with Dolby 7.1 surround sound, are enhanced to the max, with effects targeted to submerge the viewer in a fully immersive, multi-sensory experience  including wind, water, scents, moving seats, lightning effects and lots more. 4DX transports the viewer as close to experiencing the action on-screen as you can get.

We are excited to introduce Pretoria to the phenomenon that is 4DX. Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg have been enjoying and supporting this exclusive cinema experience en masse, explains Nitesh Matai, Nu Metro Cinemas: managing executive.

Most of the worlds leading filmmakers and the major film studios now work in conjunction with 4DX to convert movies to this format, in sync with the films action and general ambience. Nu Metro is the first to show South Africans all the latest blockbusters in this revolutionary new format.

The films are projected in HD/2D and Digital 3D on a silver curved wall-to-wall screen. Its audio system is the upgraded Dolby CP750 with 7.1 full surround sound. The Barco projector used in the cinema also uses an enhanced lamp for brighter picture in both 2D and 3D.

We had to install a complete new steel floor structure in the 4DX cinema to be able to handle the 0.3 G-force the unit moves with; as well as water, air and scent lines. The complete system uses 24 computers (one in each of the 21 seats, motion PC, monitor PC and screen server). The force utilises Servomotors and transducers, not hydraulics, making the movement much smoother and more active. Following Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg - Pretoria is now also in for a new way of watching movies, explains Johan van Staden, Nu Metro Cinemas: head of technical.

Premium pricing applies to 4DX; loyalty discounts are not applicable.
Flint Residents Sue EPA for $772M in Class Action

Jan Burgess, a Flint, Michigan resident, is the named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit filed against the USA on behalf of over 1,700 residents of city alleging the Environmental Protection Agency failed to protect them from the Flint Water Crisis. Shockingly, the city still suffers from water problems today, but that has not stopped residents from seeking relief for the damages and injuries already suffered. And because they are alleging the EPA failed them, the case is against the United States of America.

The class action is seeking nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for negligence, failure to warn, as well as a result of failures pursuant to the Safe Water Drinking Act. Emotional and physical injuries are alleged and include lead poisoning, dermatological conditions, loss of hair, as well as other injuries to both adults and children. Further damages include loss of value of real estate and personal property.

Flint Water Crisis

In 2015, it was discovered that the water in Flint contained dangerously high levels of lead and other contaminants. The contamination was the result of the city switching water supplies in order to save money due to a constrained budget. Unfortunately, the new water supply was not properly tested and as a result thousands of Flint residents were exposed to the dangerous, contaminated water.

What makes this a crisis is the fact that the residents were advised to drink the water despite officials knowing the dangers, and what's worse is that they have still not had the water problem corrected after over a year.

EPA Sued for Failure

While the lawsuit is seeking damages for the residents of Flint, it is doing so based on the failure of a federal agency to act. The EPA is alleged to have failed to protect the residents of Flint by failing to issue an emergency order when it discovered that the city's drinking water was contaminated, and also failing to take corrective action after discovering the problem, both of which are required by the SWDA.

The damages that are sought seek to compensate the residents who have suffered actual physical injuries as a result of their exposure to the contaminated water, as well as residents who have suffered emotional or consequential damages.

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While nearly all (98%) of small businesses admit that they build a website to make more money, 91% do not consider this when it comes to designing a website, according to a survey conducted by Digimax.

Just 3% of website consultation time is given over to developing a small business brand and 9% focusing on conversion, according to the survey by Digimax. Eighty-eight percent of the time is, instead, taken up with discussion about design, content, layout and graphics.

The research suggests that many in the web design industry are too focused on aesthetics and not enough thought is being given to converting visitors to customers.

Having a marketing website is almost pointless if it is not presenting your company with the opportunity to convert visitors to customers effectively, says Shaz Memon creative director at Digimax. Conversion is about purchase beacons that are clearly defined and set out, integrated through a beautiful user experience that increases the chance of your visitor making contact with you. An experienced marketer and designer should be able to deliver a rounded experience that delivers on all fronts.
Liberal Politics from the Heart of Bluegrass Country
We asked them yesterday if we can have an informal meeting between UPC and DPN before the official meeting. But they replied to us that they were preoccupied with preparatory meetings for upcoming second meeting of 21st century Panglong Conference and they could not meet us yet for an informal meeting, he said.

In the last informal meeting between UPC and DPN, held on 13 January, they agreed to meet at the end of January.

UPC member Hla Maung Shwe said, We are negotiating to fix the meeting date but DPN has not given their proposed date. In their letter sent on 26th, they told us to negotiate on date only. They did not give the exact proposed date. We told them to come to Yangon for a meeting and we will take responsibility for their security.

Twan Zaw also said that the meeting between State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and UNFC which has not yet signed Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) was still under negotiation as they needed more clarification on the meeting.

First they asked us if we can meet Aung San Suu Kyi on January 30 and 31 and we replied we were okay for that date. And then they informed us again that they were ready for meeting between UPC and DPN. So, we are unclear about first proposal and next invitation. And then we sent a letter to them for more clarifications in this regard, he said.

TwanZaw said that after the informal meeting with UPC led by Aung Kyi on 13 January, DPN sent a letter requesting a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi to settle the current difficulties and then they received a positive response from Aung San Suu Kyi after which the UPC proposed the meeting date on January 30 and 31.

We dont know yet about our proposed meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi. We sent a letter to ascertain the last situation but we have not yet received their official reply. But we had informal talks between the two offices yesterday. What Dr. Tin Myo Win from UPC said was UPC was ready for talks with us which meant only UPC would be available for meeting and Aung San Suu Kyi was not. Twan Zaw added.

On the same day, 27 January, Dr. Tin Myo Win sent a separate invitation to Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) which says KIO can come to Yangon if they want to have political dialogue with the government. KIO sent their response the same day saying they want more clarification on ongoing military offensives against them and the governments designation of KIO as terrorist organization.
On the MSNBC show Hardball with Chris Matthews Thursday night, Donald Trump spokesliar Kellyanne Conway went on a weird tangent about a "massacre" she blamed on Muslims, as she defended the so-called President's racist Muslim Ban.

"I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," Conway said during an exchange on the program.

"Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered," she snipped.

The Bowling Green Massacre "didn't get covered" because it never happened.

From Daily Beast:

What Conway was likely referring to was an incident in 2011 in which two Iraqi nationals were indicted for allegedly having ties to IED (Improvised Explosive Device) attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq.

According to a 2013 release from the Department of Justice pertaining to their sentencing for terrorist activities, "Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, a former resident of Iraq, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31, a former resident of Iraq, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison." The two men lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky and according to the release "admitted using improvised explosive devices (IEDs) against U.S. soldiers in Iraq and who attempted to send weapons and money to Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) for the purpose of killing U.S. soldiers." There is no information about the men having committed violent offenses in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Conway's reference to a "ban" from Obama likely alludes to a review of vetting procedures for individuals coming from Iraq which did occur in 2011 as a result of the Bowling Green arrests.

Sounds like there's a lot of fear and loathing inside the Trump camp.

In The Week, a related profile of Kellyanne Conway, described as a "master of the art of message-muddying."

Here's the thing: You're-so-meaning and Ice-queening in this way doesn't work nearly so well when you're actually in power. Neither does portraying yourself as the fragile injured party. Conway's strategies and microarguments worked as long as she was the embattled underdog. Now she's not. And she's flailing.

.@KellyannePolls says that 2 Iraqi refugees "were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre."

(There was no such massacre.) pic.twitter.com/sD3Nnb5xfE  Joe Sonka (@joesonka) February 3, 2017

REPORTER: how can u justify the muslim ban

KELLYANNE: well as we all know a refugee masterminded the texas chainsaw massacre  Bob Vulfov (@bobvulfov) February 3, 2017

Perpetrators of the "Bowling Green Massacre" pic.twitter.com/8PBJkjDo84  Dave Zirin (@EdgeofSports) February 3, 2017

.@KellyannePolls Blamed Iraqi immigrants for masterminding made-up massacre Blasted media for failing to cover it#BowlingGreenMassacre  Tim Dickinson (@7im) February 3, 2017

The Bowling Green Massacre is an alternative fact.  Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 3, 2017

Deep into a Bowling Green Massacre investigation. https://t.co/qfuMi74ciA  Ben White (@morningmoneyben) February 3, 2017

when will Hillary be investigated for her role in the Bowling Green massacre  Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) February 3, 2017

KellyAnne says most don't know about the 2 Iraqis behind Bowling Green Massacre cause it didn't get covered. It literally never happened. pic.twitter.com/DKlecc3Rya  Yashar (@yashar) February 3, 2017

She literally invents it. This insanity coming from a White House official. They are going to get innocent people hurt or killed doing this. https://t.co/dWGf97WYQC  Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 3, 2017

Perhaps the worst part of that @KellyannePolls clip is that she isn't immediately caught in the lie. On to the next question.  Jamil Smith (@JamilSmith) February 3, 2017
Saw Ophar Ngah, a villager from Htee Noh Hta village in Mae Tha Wor area had to have his right leg amputated below knee.

Saw Ophar Ngah and friends from the same village have been living in a temporary shelter in Myaing Gyi Ngu since been displaced by fighting in September, 2016 between the breakaway Democratic Kayin Buddhist Army (DKBA) and the government militia, the Border Guard Force (BGF). The conflict forced as many as 6,000 villagers in Mae Tha Wor areas out of their homes and into displaced shelters. Most of the villagers are still unable to return to their villages.

Saw Ophar Ngah and friends decided to return to see what the conditions were like in their village and to check on their plantations as they had been abandoned for more than four months. Saw Ophar Ngah trod on a landmine that was planted in a rubber plantation.

Saw Win Nyo, a friend of Saw Ophar Ngah, who also went back to the village and is now caring for Saw Ophar Ngah at Hpa-an hospital, spoke to Karen News about the incident.

We were in the rubber plantation all morning. Only when we were leaving, Saw Ophar Ngah was the last one to leave and he stepped on the mine. It is very sad. He is lucky he is not dead. Now, no one dares to go back to the village. We dont know where they [militias] have planted all the landmines.

According to Saw Win Nyo, the blast blew off Saw Ophar Ngar right leg from above his ankle and his left leg was also wounded by shrapnel from the mine.

Friends of Saw Ophar Ngah said that although they dont have to worry about the medical costs, they are in need of support for food for both the patient and the carer.

Saw Ophar Ngah was taken first to Myaing Gyi Ngu hospital, but later transferred to Hpa-an hospital where his leg was amputated.

Dr. Ye Kyaw Thu, a surgeon at Hpa-an Public Hospital who took care of Saw Ophar Ngahs case told Karen News that he had also arranged for the recovery for the victim.

We operated on the patient as soon as he was admitted to the hospital. We will continue to give him other necessary treatment for now. The patient can be discharged after a week depending on his condition. After that, we also plan to refer him to the prosthetic clinic at Taungalay and have him recover there until he can walk with a prosthetic leg.

Displaced villagers from Mae Tha Wor areas said that the danger of landmine in their villages is high as this incident is not the first. A village leader from the area, stepped on a landmine and died on the way to hospital. The villagers said that their livestock left in the village such as pigs and cattle also stepped on landmines.
Karen nationals held their last round of National-Level Political Dialogue at the Karen National Union controlled territory at Lay Wah from January 28 to 30 to add the final touches to the draft policy paper that deals with political, economic, social and land and natural resources issues.

Karen representatives from all over Burma came together to finalize the draft papers that had been attained from previous national level political dialogue held in Hpa-an. The papers were re-discussed in order to keep terms standardized across all the four sectors, according to the dialogue convening committee.

Padoh Saw Hla Tun, the chairman of the dialogue convening committee spoke to Karen News.

Although the draft papers have been finalized and completed, there may still be some points that need more work. However, the papers do reflect the voices of the Karen people and it is satisfactory in some degree. And the papers will be discussed in the political talks at the different levels, so they will be more complete.

The draft policy papers were finalized by representatives from the Karen National Union (KNU), Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA), KNU/KNLA Peace Council, Karen political parties, Karen religious leaders, Karen delegates from upper Burma, Mon State, Karenni State, Pegu, Yangon and Ayeyarwaddy Regions, Karen CSOs, Karen Women, Karen youth, Karen scholars and special invited Karen guests  a total number of 291 delegates.

During the three-day discussions, the constitution for a federal union and guidelines for a state constitution were discussed by the various sectors such as political, federal economic principles, principles for rehabilitation, resettlement and social development were discussed by social sector and principles for farmland and natural resources were discussed by the land and natural resources sector.

Mahn Kyaw Nyein, secretary of the Karen National Party told Karen News that although the draft policies are not perfect, he is happy with the result.

Speaking to Karen News, Mahn Kyaw Nyein said.

Even though it is not totally complete and comprehensive, it is still pretty good. There were great inputs from the delegates and the scholars. So, we can conclude that the standard of these papers are not low.

In addition to the four sectors, the security sector was also discussed during the talks, although there have not been any concrete draft policies laid out. The drafted policy papers are now ratified as the papers that are to be used by the Karen people at the Union Peace Conference.

According to a source from the organizers, there was an agreement to form a systematic Facilitation Team and Documentation Team that can help with future Karen national political discussion process.
This is part two in my "The Backfire Effect" series. This one focuses on motivated reasoning, specifically something called motivated skepticism. In addition, it features interviews with the scientists who coined the backfire effect term itself and who have extended their original research outside of politics and into health issues.

By now you've likely heard of confirmation bias. As a citizen of the internet the influence of this cognitive tendency is constant, and its allure is pervasive.

In short, when you have a hunch that you might already understand something, but don't know for sure, you tend to go searching for information that will confirm your suspicions.

When you find that inevitable confirmation, satisfied you were correct all along, you stop searching. In some circles, the mental signal to end exploration once you feel like your position has sufficient external support is referred to as the wonderfully wordy "makes sense stopping rule" which basically states that once you believe you've made sense of something, you go about your business satisfied that you need not continue your efforts. In other words, just feeling correct is enough to stop your pursuit of new knowledge. We basically had to invent science to stop ourselves from trying to solve problems by thinking in this way.

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You could, instead, try and disconfirm your assumptions, to start your investigations by attempting to debunk your beliefs, but most of the time you don't take this approach. That's not your default method of exploring the natural world or defending your ideological stances.

For instance, if you believe that vaccines cause autism, and then you go searching for data that backs up that hypothesis, with the power of search engines you are guaranteed to find it. That's true for just about everything anyone has ever believed whether it's the moon landing was a hoax, the Denver airport is a portal to Hell, or that there is a fern that produces small animals that eat grass and deliver their nutrients into the plant via an umbilical vine.

We even reason through a confirmation bias when searching our memories. In one study, subjects read a story about a woman named Jane. In it, she exhibited some behaviors that could be interpreted as introverted, and some that seemed more extroverted. Several days later, psychologists divided those same subjects into two groups. They told one group that Jane was thinking about applying for a job as a real estate agent, and asked if they thought she was suited to the work. Most people said she would be great at it, and when asked why, those subjects recalled all the extroverted behavior from their memories, citing those parts of the narrative as evidence for their belief. The scientists then said that Jane was also considering a job as a librarian. The subjects groused upon hearing this, saying that Jane was too outgoing for that kind of environment. For the other group, the order was flipped. They first asked if Jane should take a job as a librarian. Just like the other group, most of the subjects said "yes!" right away, taking an affirmative position by default. When asked why they felt that way, they too searched their memories for confirmation that their hunches were correct and cited all the times they remembered Jane had acted shy. When scientists asked this second group if Jane should go for a real-estate job instead, they were adamantly opposed to the idea, saying Jane was obviously too reserved for a career like that.

Confirmation bias is an active, goal-oriented, effortful process. When tasked to defend your position, even if you just took it, even if you could have taken another, you tend to search for proof, pushing past a threatening, attitude-inconsistent thicket to cherry-pick the fruit of validation.

There is another process though that is just as pernicious but that runs in the background, passive, waiting to come online when challenging information is unavoidable, when it arrives in your mind uninvited. This psychological backup plan for protecting your beliefs is called motivated skepticism.

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler saw the power of motivated skepticism when they confronted anti-vaxxers with a variety of facts aimed at debunking myths concerning a connection between the childhood MMR vaccine and autism. In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, they explain how they were successful at softening those subjects' beliefs in those misconceptions, yet those same people later reported that they were even less likely to vaccinate their children than subjects who received no debunking information at all. The corrections backfired.

As I've written before, "when your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger." In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast, the second in a series on the The Backfire Effect, we explore how motivated skepticism fuels this bizarre phenomenon by which correcting misinformation can cause people to become even more certain in their incorrect beliefs. (This is a link to part one in the series).

This episode's cookie is espresso dark chocolate sent in by Sarah Hendrickson.

Links and Sources

 The Makes-Sense Stopping Rule: Perkins, D. N., Farady, M., & Bushey, B. In Voss, J. F., Perkins, D. N., & Segal, J. W. (1991). Informal reasoning and education. Hillsdale, N.J: L. Erlbaum Associates.

 Jane Confirmation Bias Study: Snyder, Mark, and Nancy Cantor. "Testing Hypotheses about Other People: The Use of Historical Knowledge." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 15.4 (1979): 330-42.

 Vaccine Corrections Study: Nyhan, B., J. Reifler, S. Richey, and G. L. Freed. "Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial." Pediatrics 133.4 (2014).

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Previous Episodes

Part One of this Series

Boing Boing Podcasts

Cookie Recipes

The Backfire Effect

Effective Messages in Vaccine Promotion: A Randomized Trial

Study: You Can't Change an Anti-Vaxxer's Mind

Vaccine Opponents Can Be Immune to Education

Brendan Nyhan on Twitter

Brendan Nyhan's Website

Jason Reifler's Twitter

Jason Reifler's Website

Music in this episode donated by: Mogwai
We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. Here are a few facts that every employer should know or, at the very least, desperately need to hear. First, more than four out of five workers feel that corporate culture READ THE REST
PODCAST Part Two of our two-part series on New York City in the years following the Revolutionary War.

During a handful of months in 1789 and 1790, representatives of the new nation of the United States came together in New York City to make decisions which would forever affect the lives of Americans.

Related: Listen to Part One of the series here.

In this second part of our two-part show on New York as the first federal capital of the United States, we roll up our sleeves and get down to business. (In the first part, he moved the capital to lower Manhattan and inaugurated ourselves a new president George Washington!)

The men of the first Continental Congress  which first met in the Spring of 1789  had a lofty job in front of them that year. They needed to not only construct the tools and offices of a brand new government, they were also tasked with defining the basic rights of American citizens via a set of amendments to the U.S. Constitution  the Bill of Rights.

Now imagine doing this in your post-Colonial era garments during a hot summer, all crammed into a few rooms at Federal Hall, the former City Hall building on Wall Street.

It was here that the Bill of Rights was introduced, debated and voted upon. But those werent the only monumental decisions being made in the city.

When nobody could come to an agreement on two major issues  the assumption of state debt and the location of the permanent federal capital  it was up to Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to craft a deal, made during a legendary dinner party on Maiden Lane. We live today with the critical decisions made by these three men on that night over food and wine.

ALSO: The tale of James Hemings, an enslaved man who became an accomplished French chef and most likely theA cook for that very dinner, witness to the events in the room where it happened.

The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you . by you!

We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every two weeks. Were also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well  through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!

We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.

Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If youd like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too  Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.

We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come!

The setting for much of our show today is Federal Hall, the former City Hall turned headquarters of burgeoning American government.

It was demolished in the 1810s and replaced many years later with the U.S. Customs House (later the Sub Treasury Building).

Alexander Hamilton, the first head of the Department of Treasury and one of the architects of the Great Compromise of 1790.

James Madison (depicted here in a pose as the fourth President of the United States) was instrumental in crafting the Bill of Rights and was also involved in the compromise involving the assumption of state debts

Thomas Jefferson (depicted here in a pose as the third President of the United States) was Americas first Secretary of State and was instrumental in pulling together the ingredients of the Great Compromise.

Its likely that James Hemings, the brother of Sally Hemings and an enslaved man owned by Jefferson, served the meal that evening in the room that it happened, aka the Great Compromise.

An inventory of kitchen tools written out by Hemings that he used at Monticello. More details on Hemings here.

A plaque marking the spot on Maiden Lane where Thomas Jeffersons house once stood.

The sizable home of Alexander Macomb who rented half his house to George Washington in 1790. In addition to his offices and household, many of his enslaved people worked here as well.
A trio of "scientists against a fascist government" set out a program for resisting trumpism with science, delving into the moral duty of scientists to resist the perversion of their work to attain cruel and evil ends.



Trumpism includes savage attacks on ideologically inconvenient science  climate science especially  as well as xenophobic attacks on scientists themselves; as with Max Planck's arguments for sparing Jewish theoretical physicists (because they were different from other kinds of Jews), the trumpist agenda will likely grant exemptions for Muslim scientists if they're working on projects revelant to the Trump program  there are a lot of oil engineers who graduate from universities in the Islamic world, for example.

In order to move away from a constrained, collaboration-oriented stance, we propose that starting points for discussion should include those with the most power taking the highest risks. Among a growing number of proposed ways to engage in resistance, one option is for tenured faculty to engage in work slowdowns and strikes, with teaching and committee work stoppages. We cannot afford to normalize this administration's attempts to subvert the rule of law, which has often fallen short in protecting people at the margins and more often than not has established their place at the margins. It is not up for debate; science can be, and has been, used as a tool of fascism. We cannot do business as usual anymore, regardless of how much we love our research or how important it feels. It is for the love of science and our long-term ability to study it that we must take a stand now, while there is still time. This is not just a matter of individual action, but collective action: Faculty and administrations must visibly oppose marginalizing policies, whether they target immigrants from majority Muslim countries or further institutionalize destructive mass incarceration of American residents. We believe that scientific research is a creative enterprise and expect that scientists can and should come up with creative ways to stand in solidarity with society's most vulnerable, whether or not they are members of the scientific community. There is a proud tradition of the revolutionary scientist. Linus Pauling, a nobel laureate and protein chemist, worked with the Black Panther Party to develop inexpensive diagnostic tests for sickle cell anemia. Albert Einstein worked as an anti-racist and peace activist during and after World War II. Max von Laue resisted Nazi infiltration of German physics and maintained relationships with Jewish scientists, while publicly eulogizing those who were lost. This is a tradition we see as our duty to uphold.

We Are The Scientists Against A Fascist Government

[Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Sarah Tuttle, and Joseph Osmundson/The Establishment]





(via Skepchick)




KOCHI (PTI): Vice Admiral R C Wijegunaratne, the Commander of Sri Lanka Navy, accompanied by a four-member delegation, is on a two day official visit to Kochi, consolidating existing strong bilateral naval relations between the two countries.



Prior to arriving in Kochi on Wednesday, he had visited Delhi and Goa.



A Navy release said Wijegunaratne had the occasion to undergo training course at Kochi as a Sub Lieutenant of Ships in 1983-84 and subsequently his specialisation course in Anti-Submarine warfare in 1989.



The Admiral had also undergone a course at the prestigious National Defence College New Delhi in 2010.



"Vice Admiral A R Karve,Flag officer Commanding-in-Chief, Southern Naval Command, held discussions with the Commander of Sri Lankan Navy wherein he was given an overview of activities conducted by Southern Naval Command."



"Vice Admiral Wijegunaratne also held discussions with Rear Admiral M A Hampiholi, Flag Officer Sea Training on issues concerning work up," it said.



During his visit, the Commander also interacted with Sri Lanka Navy personnel who are undergoing training with Indian Navy at Kochi and visited the Anti-Submarine Warfare School, it added.


Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The impending closure of Elkhorns only banking institution is causing a great deal of anguish for residents, according to the president of the local chamber of commerce.

CIBC will be closing the Elkhorn Banking Centre on Aug. 18, due to low business volumes.

From the senior end its a great blow  and the business end, said Mark Humphries, Elkhorn District Chamber of Commerce president.

Google Maps The CIBC Banking Centre in Elkhorn will close its doors in August. The local chamber of commerce hopes the community will be able to entice another financial institution to open a branch.

About 100 people turned up for a community meeting earlier this week, hosted by CIBC. Humphries believes that number would have been a lot more if there was a chance to reverse the decision.

A lot of people had decided not to go just because the CIBC had made it quite obvious and quite pointed that there was no way the meeting was going to change their decision to close, he said.

CIBC provided an emailed statement about its decision.

Any time we look at closing a banking centre, its a decision that we take very carefully. In the case of our Elkhorn Banking Centre, we have seen low business volumes, which have been declining in recent years, stated the email from Caroline Van Hasselt, CIBC spokesperson.

The largest demographic in attendance was the senior population, many of whom still prefer in-person banking, rather than online.

A lot of the guys in town arent able to operate the cellphones, are not interested in having a computer, Humphries said. They want the ability to go  like they always have done  to their nearest financial institution, get their cash out, go spend it at the local stores, and live their life quite comfortably in their retirement.

Many have given up driving out of town as well, he pointed out. Once the branch closes, residents will have to drive to Virden or across the border to Moosomin, Sask., for their banking needs. This would be approximately a 20-30 minute drive.

Theyve got that  extra burden on them to either find transport, or to ask somebody else to go for them, Humphries said. Thats the issue that most of them there were raising.

The bank has been in the community for nearly 115 years, and a lot of the residents have used the local bank for their entire lives.

On the business side, Humphries said there will be the added burden of travelling to another centre for bank deposits.

Humphries points out the small community of about 500 people, also pulls in residents from the surrounding communities. He said its a growing town with an increasing population.

Theyve managed to save the local school from closure a few years ago, he said, and added the community raised $300,000 for a new spray park.

The hope is that Elkhorn can entice another financial institution to come to town.

We seriously hope so, Humphries said. We know its going to be a fight, we know its going to be an uphill battle, but Elkhorn is not one to give in. So were going to push forward and try.

CIBC states they will transition clients to the Virden Banking Centre. CIBC staff in Elkhorn will be available to assist clients in person or by phone while the branch is still open.

While many clients in Elkhorn are already banking online or by phone, our team in Elkhorn will be spending time with clients in the coming weeks to help them learn more about these options for their everyday banking, Van Hasselt stated.

 jaustin@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @jillianaustin
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Housing remains tight at Westmans First Nations communities, with Birdtail Sioux First Nation Chief Ken Chalmers citing some households with up to 15 people living in them.

These cramped living quarters are not conducive to education and it has far-reaching effects socially, Chalmers said.

It was a year ago this month that the federal government estimated that it would cost about $6 billion to adequately address the housing shortages and deficiencies at Canadian First Nations communities.

Of this total cost, about $2 billion would be need to address housing shortages at Manitoba reserves.

At the time, Waywayseecappo First Nation Chief Murray Clearsky said that his community needed at least 130 new houses to be built in order to address its over-crowding, with only 460 housing units to accommodate their 2,800 residents.

This week, Clearsky updated his communitys backlog to about 140 units and growing.

As members turn 18 they become eligible for their own houses, he explained, noting that his communitys population is continuing to grow.

His community still receives $635,000 per year for capital improvements, which is eaten up quickly in the scope of Waywayseecappos operations.

A new grader could cost as much as $400,000, and upgrades to their water treatment plant or lagoon can get expensive in a hurry.

The capital improvements fund is chewed up like nothing, leaving very little left over for housing repairs and improvements and even less for new builds.

We have no money to be paying a bunch of houses, he said. Were trying to make it work, but its pretty hard when you have limited resources.

Unable to afford the construction of new housing units, the First Nation has taken to mortgaging their own builds, paying for them with rents collected through tenants subsidization through the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp.

Once the mortgages are paid off, theyre owned by the reserve and the collection of subsidized rent ends.

As such, while the community is able to add housing units to their stock in this manner, they dont get any additional funds for repairs or maintenance.

If they were able to collect rent, there wouldnt be this problem, Clearsky suggested.

Chalmers agrees.

Hes currently negotiating an arrangement wherein rents can be collected after a housing unit has matured so theyre able to fund the units upkeep.

Like all First Nations, theres such a huge demand for housing, Chalmers said.

Where Clearsky said that his community hasnt seen things improve over the last year, Chalmers shares a slightly different tune.

Slightly, because hes quick to clarify that a lot more work needs to be done.

Birdtail Sioux First Nation applied for, and received federal funding for, five new duplexes at four bedrooms apiece.

Weve got big families out here, Chalmers said with a laugh.

One of these buildings will be an eight-bedroom foster home.

Theyve applied for more units on top of these, which are set to be turn-key ready by April.

Theyve also been renovating buildings under a national renovation program.

It takes a lot of work and expertise to apply for and receive such funding, Chalmers said, adding that his community has the know-how to get it done quickly.

You have to be technically sound in your proposals and watching your budget, he said.

Its hard to manage what the federal government gives us, so you try to have success there so you manage properly.

Theyll have to do a lot more of this type of work, with Chalmers estimating that his community will need 100 new housing units within the next 10 years.

While Chalmers said that the Liberals have been relatively easy to work with, hes still waiting for them to follow through on some things  namely, the two per cent cap on annual funding increases the Liberals imposed in 1996.

That would really alleviate a lot of the problems for chiefs and council, he said, adding that hes of the belief that everyone has the right to housing  something he, as an elected official in a First Nations community struggles to provide.

Although things are difficult enough in southern Manitoba, Chalmers clarified that he recognizes things are even tougher in the north, where just about everything is significantly more expensive.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada was unavailable for comment by press time on Thursday.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A four-block stretch of Victoria Avenue stretching west from 34th Street will be paved this year.

Manitoba Infrastructure Minister Blaine Pedersen was in Brandon on Thursday to host a press conference on behalf of the provincial government to announce this joint infrastructure effort with the City of Brandon.

The next step will be getting in touch with stakeholders to see if they have concerns about the project, create a final design and then put it out to tender.

Colin Corneau/The Brandon Sun Assistant deputy mayor Barry Cullen (left), Infrastructure Minister Blaine Pedersen, Brandon West Progressive Conservative MLA Reg Helwer and Indigenous and Municipal Relations Minister Eileen Clarke stand by a section of Victoria Avenue West slated for work during an announcement on new road works projects in Westman on Thursday afternoon.

As such, he didnt have a total cost estimate for the project. Pedersen was also unable to share how the joint effort would be cost-shared with the City of Brandon, other than to say that its not a 50/50 cost sharing and that the provincial government would be contributing more than half.

In addition to re-paving these four blocks, the project will also include a restructuring of the intersection of Victoria Avenue and 34th Street, where assistant deputy mayor Barry Cullen said that separate swing lanes and improved pedestrian and bike paths would be installed.

Brandon West Progressive Conservative MLA Reg Helwer said that this roadway, which is also considered a stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway, has been on the provinces list of requested improvements for a long time and that hes been asked about it frequently.

There are always more infrastructure projects to take on, he said  a sentiment Pedersen also shared on Thursday by noting that theres no end to the demand and need across the province.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
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This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canadas Heart Month efforts are relying heavily on the support of Westmans business community.

February is Heart Month, one of the organizations biggest fundraiser months, with all proceeds raised going toward medical research and education efforts.

While a team of volunteers are keeping busy throughout the month through door-to-door canvassing, Westman area manager Amber Meszaros clarified that the bulk of money collected will come from the business community.

Colin Corneau/The Brandon Sun Candace McKenzie pins up an entry on the Shoppers Malls Valen-tile mosaic on Wednesday.

Jeans Days at work, sales promotions and having people simply collect donations in work spaces are bolstering their efforts.

One of these programs launched earlier this week at Shoppers Mall, where a Valen-tile has been posted to the wall near customer services.

Paper tiles can be purchased at guest services for $5 each, on which recipients can write whatever they want and post it to the Valen-tile  a heart-shaped mosaic.

Called the Live to Give, Love to Get campaign, this is the giving part. The getting part comes in the form of $5 Shoppers Mall gift cards theyre handing out for those who pledge donations.

The early response has been quite good, Shoppers Mall marketing director Candace McKenzie said, offering that they might have to expand the tile effort beyond the space allotted within the heart.

Its been a positive effort McKenzie said that shes proud to have been a part of.

You develop an internal sense of love when you help someone else, helping others creates love and enjoyment throughout the community, she said.

The Live to Give, Love to Get campaign will continue at Shoppers Mall until Feb. 14.

In addition to such fundraising efforts, Meszaros and her team of Westman volunteers have been promoting a heart and stroke risk assessment questionnaire, available online at heartandstroke.ca/risk17.

The risk assessment is basically just so people are knowing their risk and doing something about it, she said.

Those with a family history of heart disease or stroke have almost double the risk of having heart disease or a stroke in their lifetime, and yet only one-third of people are doing something about it, she said, affirming that her organizations intent is to make sure that people are aware of what heart disease and stroke is and what they can do about it.

In addition to Heart Month, the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada hosts Big Bike events in September and the Jump Rope for Heart program at area schools.

Heart Month toques are also available at Brandons Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada office at 2430 Victoria Ave., Unit 3, for $10.

A special Red Out Game is being held during a Virden Oil Capitals home game on Feb. 10, during which Heart and Stoke Foundation of Canada representatives will be present selling toques, collecting donations and handing out door prizes.

 tclarke@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon University has received federal funding this year to support research.

The Research Support Fund, a federal program that assists Canadian post-secondary institutions with research costs and maintaining research environments, provided $328,897 in federal funding this year.

The RSF will help BU offset the cost of research resources, maintaining and upgrading facilities, and administration.

Funding is used to help maintain lab facilities at BU, including updating hardware and software as well as servicing equipment. It also provides resources for the John E. Robbins Library, supports efforts of the Office of Research Services and assists with the training for personnel.

We are very proud of the research being conducted by our faculty at Brandon University, Heather Duncan, associate vice-president of research at BU said in a statement. The Research Support Fund is vital to our efforts as it helps to lay the foundation that makes research possible at Canadian universities. It is with the support of this infrastructure that our researchers are able to make the important discoveries that benefit our community and our society.

The support from RSF has contributed to the recent success of faculty members in 2016. Researchers at BU were involved in projects that have generated more than $6 million in funding from Canadian Tri-Agency grants.

 The Brandon Sun
Opinion

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This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The folks over at RateBeer.com released their best of for Manitobas best brewer, new brewer and best beer for 2016 on Monday. Half Pints won the award for Manitobas best brewer and for Manitobas best beer  Le Temps Noir Batch Two, which was featured in last weeks article as one of the best beers Ive ever reviewed so far!

Torque Brewing took the award for Manitobas best new brewer. Congratulations to Half Pints and Torque on the awards, Manitoba is lucky to have a great up-and-coming beer industry!

In coming weeks you will start seeing Winnipegs newest brewery, Little Brown Jugs 1919 Belgian Pale Ale available in Brandon. First off, they are supposed to be part of the 10th and Victorias growler bar tap list but Im not sure when that will be happening as they didnt take part in Liquor Marts Little Brown Jug tap takeover for some reason. The beer is now available in 750ml little brown jugs at Prairie Firehouse but they were sold out when I visited the other day, only days after announcing they brought the beer to Brandon!

Submitted First Draught columnist Cody Lobreau says Farmery's Pink Lemonale, as a beer, is way too sweet, but as a cooler, it will sell well, like lemonade on a hot summer day.

On Wednesday, Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries announced they were giving more choice to beer vendor-based growler bars when it comes to beer selection. Considering that the only beer vendor with a growler bar is at the Keystone Motor Inn  they will be given the ability to choose their own tap selection when it comes to growler fills. Previously, beer vendor growler bars essentially carried the same beers as the Liquor Marts did. With the changes in the regulation, growler bars such as the Keystone Motor Inn will be able to order in an alternative product when a Half Pints beer sells out as Half Pints only delivers to Brandon once per month.

One beer that Keystone Motor Inn will be getting in for growler fills in the near future is Vankleek Hill, Ontarios Beaus 80 Shilling Scottish-style ale.

Now on to the review! In the three years Ive been writing this article Ive only had three or so people ask me why havent you written a review on Farmery yet? This is a bit of a surprise to me seeing that the brewery is now brewing locally in Neepawa and locally owned by the Warwaruk Brothers, originally from Erickson. Well, the fact is that most of my readers have tried Farmerys brews back when it was being brewed at Muskoka Brewing in Ontario and at one point  I was planning on reviewing their Canadian Pale Ale but was told that it was still being tweaked so it wasnt ready to be reviewed.

Since the end of August they have been brewing out of Neepawa, using a good deal of ingredients sourced from their farms in Arden Ridge and Erickson as they possibly can but I dont know how it would be possible to malt their grain without it getting crossed contaminated with grain from say, Lauder or Gravelbourg, Sask., unless if theyre malting it themselves or if the malting is done in very select batches at the maltster.

Since Farmery has opened up in Neepawa, they have released three new products  Prairie Berry Ale (sour cherry, raspberry and Saskatoon), Windchill Winter Lager, Pink Lemonale and soon a Hard Iced Tea. Honestly as a beer critic, this disappoints me  this is western Manitobas first new brewery since the 1930s and my gut feeling is that their products are aiming toward the Bud Light and Twisted Tea markets  because thats exactly what it is.

Well, thats actually smart planning on their part because western Manitoba is still pilsner country with a splash of malt coolers! Its February and I still see people buying six packs of Twisted Tea Half and Half as if it was actually July! I wish Farmery was brewing a Saskatoon porter or session India pale ale, but Im not the brewerys target demographic.

I picked up a six-pack of Farmerys Pink Lemonale the other day after overhearing multiple customers asking specifically for the brew, unable to find it in the regular Farmery display. It turns out that Farmerys Pink Lemonale is being considered a malt based cooler rather than a beer, so its sitting amongst the likes of Mikes Hard Lemonade and Not Your Fathers Rootbeer, near the fridges. Farmery Pink Lemonale tops out at four per cent ABV, making it lighter than your typical Farmery lager.

Pouring Farmerys Pink Lemonale, its reminiscent of radler  it gives off a kind of cloudy yet dull, pink body with a good amount of carbonation to it. Theres a moderate amount of white head on top. The aroma is a liberally sweet and sour lemonade smell with notes of a grainy barley malt, decent for a cooler but its masking the beer properties so this isnt trying to be a beer at all. The taste is sour lemon with a good amount of glucose-fructose, a bitter yet gritty barley taste thats typical for most malt-based coolers with notes reminiscent of a radler or shandy. The dominating notes are lemon, sugar and a hint of barley.

As a beer, this is way too sweet to the point that its almost sweeter than a carbonated lemonade soda. As a cooler, this will sell well, like lemonade on a hot summer day. My problem with this product is that they released it in the coldest months of the year. They could have released ANYTHING else. A stout, a strong malt liquor product to take on Fort Garrys Stone Cold Draft or even a malt based root beer. But instead they decided on a pink lemonade inspired malt beverage.

Well, it seems to be selling well even if its -20 C out. This I cant even imagine how popular this will be June hits, but it could easily be the most popular made-in-Manitoba beverage after Crown Royal. Well, who doesnt like a cold lemonade with a bit of alcohol to it on a hot summer day? Available at Liquor Marts in Brandon, Dauphin, Killarney, Minnedosa, Neepawa, Roblin, Russell, Swan River and Virden, as well as likely at local beer vendors for $13.85 per six-pack (355ml cans).
Opinion

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This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Just one.

Out of six samples, that was all I liked.

One single wine.

And that surprised me. Because I really do like Spanish wine. And I have some favourites, which Ill detail a little bit further into the column, and which have made dinner guests in my home, and others whove been gifted with them, very happy indeed.

But I was really dismayed by my lack of enthusiasm for the five wines I tasted recently. I thought I was making tons of progress, as it were  Ive always loved New World wines (U.S., New Zealand, Argentina, Chile, Australia, South Africa, and  please dont be insulted here  to a lesser degree, Canada) but Ive been delighted by the fact Ive begun to enjoy Old World wines, those from countries where viniculture all began (think Europe  primarily France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Greece). But there was no denying I wasnt crazy about  dislike is a pretty strong word, but hey, lets tell it like it is  the rest of the wines we tried.

For starters, I loathed both of the whites. Ive always believed in not slagging products in this column  if I like something, Ill write about it, and if I dont, I wont. In my opinion, theres nothing to be gained from singling out a wine others may like  and others at this tasting did like these whites  for derision, let alone ridicule. Because all palates are different, and people should drink what they enjoy. And enjoy what they enjoy! Who am I to judge?

But the whites werent for me. And the reds ranged from light- to fuller-bodied, although generally  generally  Old World wines tend to be light- to medium-bodied, while New World ones are frequently medium to full. And while I like the fruit-forwardness and full-bodied nature of New World wines, Ive come to appreciate the subtleties and the earthier (tobacco, leather and  my favourite  really!  barnyard) qualities of Old World wines.

One thing worthy of note is that Old World wines generally taste better when paired with food rather than sipped on their own. And theyre even better still with foods from, or typical of, the region in which the grapes were grown and the wines made. Italian wine with Italian foods, Spanish with Spanish food, German with German. You get the idea. Theres a reason why terroir  the soils and climatic conditions in and under which particular grapes survive and thrive  is so very important when it comes to the characteristics of certain varietals, and consequently, the wine that is produced from them.

And it follows that if vegetables are grown in similar conditions, and animals consume feed that is as well, the tastes of those veggies, and the meat and dairy products from the same region, will be similar, and will pair with each other very well.

Anyway, the wine I loved at the tasting Id had before, and it was the Montecillo 2007 Gran Rioja Reserva. Made from 100 per cent Tempranillo. This well-aged and splendid wine boasts smoky black cherry, liquorice, tobacco, and leather aromas and flavours, as well as a soft texture that makes it an absolute delight to drink. Pair that with parmesan cheese and bread and youve got yourself a decadent winner here for $34.64 a bottle.

Other impressive Spanish wines I currently have on my wine rack are the somewhat lesser version of the Montecillo, the 2009 Reserva. With beautiful dark berry fruit complemented by delicate touches of liquorice, herbs and spices, this is a wine that over delivers for its $20.99 price tag.

Same with the Monasterio de las Vinas Gran Reserva. A blend of Grenache, Tempranillo and Carinena grapes, this is a gorgeous wine that sings with layers of ripe fruit. Since its recommended to be consumed between 2013 and 2017, I shouldnt hang on to this bottle for too much longer. But any vintage of the Monasterio is likely to be fabulous if its laid down for the recommended length of time. And in my opinion, its a steal for $19.99 a bottle.

But regardless of my love for these three wines, the bottom line is, I guess I still have a way  maybe a long way  to go in appreciating Old World wines. However, Im determined to try to keep trying, because Id like to be able to enjoy more of them more often. So Ill be diligent and open-minded as I continue to explore. I promise.

And Ill have the opportunity to do just that very soon. Because next months scheduled tasting is the wines of France.

Wish me luck.
Opinion

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This article was published 03/02/2017 (2101 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO  U.S. President Donald Trump paid back a loan within three days of taking office. He reinstated what is known as the global gag rule, removing funding from any foreign aid group that provides abortions, abortion facilities or abortion education outside of the United States.

The policy extends to birth control as well as abortion, meaning countless women in the developing world will now die through botched home abortions and births without proper medical aid, and many more will be forced to have children when they have neither the food nor the resources to care for them.

It is nothing short of a disaster.

White House press spokesman Sean Spicer gave us some alternative facts and said the policy represented the values of the president, when, in fact, Trump was pro-choice until he entered the presidential race and then explained that women should be punished if they had an abortion.

This leads us to that loan being paid back, because the Christian right loaned its support and votes to Donald Trump, and the price to pay was reactionary action on abortion, gay rights and euthanasia, and the protection of Christianity as a privileged religion in a country that boasts the separation of church and state.

Right-wing Christian magazines and blogs are performing liturgical dances of delight at all this, made all the more euphoric by the announcement that conservative judges will be appointed to the Supreme Court, leading to more anti-choice decisions and support for those individuals and states opposed to equal marriage.

In fact, the abortion ruling does less than it appears, in that since 1973 there have been severe restrictions on aid groups supporting reproductive rights in Africa and Asia. This goes further, however, and the rationale behind it is poisonous.

First, the assumption is that groups working in dangerous and difficult conditions in areas of poverty and conflict are obsessed with abortion. That is pure fantasy. They are dedicated, informed men and women working to improve the lives of the vulnerable, and none are more vulnerable than women in the Third World.

Second, abortion has never been forced on anyone; but family planning and, in the final analysis, termination is made available if desired. This is not some lifestyle choice but a cry for some sort of hope in circumstances that are often hideous. The alternative to an abortion is not a happy, healthy mother and baby but frequently a sick or dead mother and baby.

Yet Christian conservatives in North America apparently know far more than local activists thousands of miles away about all of this. Abortion is, for them, the great sin, the great crime that is screaming out for justice, and it doesnt matter how many suffer or even perish. They demanded Trump act, and this man with so little regard for female dignity did just what was asked.

The moral dysfunction goes even deeper. One of the most important methods of reducing abortion rates is to provide good and modern sex education and cheap or free contraceptives. This new measure makes both of those difficult, if not impossible. Its a cycle of cruelty and even more pernicious that it comes from a man who we all know is indifferent to the issue.

There is a whiff of triumphalism in the air on the Christian right at the moment, and they will surely push for the reversal of Roe v. Wade and for the introduction of so-called protection of religion legislation, which is a euphemism for the promotion of homophobia.

Franklin Graham spoke warmly of his new best friend the president at the inauguration, and there is a whole crew of prosperity preachers, Baptist and Pentecostal ministers and right-wing Roman Catholic laypeople who are now surrounding the Trump regime. They have the time, resources, money  Graham alone is paid US$800,000 a year by his charity and earns more beyond  and now the influence.

The U.S. election unleashed many worrying forces and enabled all sorts of previously bashful ideas. Top of the pile is the modern incarnation of the Christian Coalition and the Moral Majority, and as the old guard forms new ranks, we all need to worry.

What begins in the United States often travels north, and a lot of people inside the Conservative party are learning very quickly indeed.

 Author and broadcaster Michael Corens latest book is Epiphany: A Christians Change of Heart and Mind over Same-Sex Marriage. His column was also recently published by the Winnipeg Free Press.
Bungling burglar Sean Crawshaw has been branded Britain's worst crook after getting stuck in the bathroom window of a house he was trying to raid.

Crawshaw was in the frame when police arrived on the scene to read him rights - as he hung in mid-air from the window sill.
Enda Kenny and other European leaders expect to hear from British prime minister Theresa May about her recent meeting with US president Donald Trump at an EU summit today, writes Irish Examiner Political Correspondent Juno McEnroe from Malta.

The Taoiseach will also be discussing the migration crisis and the future of the European Union with his counterparts at the informal summit in Malta.

Mr Kenny and other leaders will meet Ms May over lunch this afternoon where she is expected to discuss her visit to the White House and meeting with President Trump last week.

While Mr Kenny did not comment on his way into the summit venue this morning, other EU leaders took an opportunity to note their concerns about the new US administration.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern admitted he had pretty mixed feelings over the new US President and the tangible politics of the Trump administration raised concerns.

A central part of talks at the informal summit will be the migration crisis and in particular how member states can agree measures to stem the flow of migrants from Libya, which is close to Malta.

A spokesman for Mr Kenny told the Irish Examiner that he supported ongoing efforts to strengthen government in Libya, but he added that other issues must be addressed.

There will be an upcoming crisis with migrants [coming to Europe] and the changing good weather.

Leaders here today are expected to agree steps to stop migrants taking boats in the first place, including help for the Libyan coastguard and border forces.

Mr Kenny also hopes that issues such as jobs and growth are addressed by members about the future of the EU.

EU leaders today are also expressing comments of solidarity, given the pressure with the upcoming triggering of Brexit and criticisms from Washington of the union.

Mr Kenny will seek out other leaders in a bid to get support for Ireland's situation ahead of the formal Brexit talks beginning next month.

While it is an informal summit, Brexit is expected to be discussed by the 27 members without Ms May during formal talks in the afternoon. There is also increasing speculation London may trigger the start of its exit process in early March, in advance of a formal EU summit in Rome at the end of that month.
The Office of Public Works is coming under fire for its controversial flood relief plans for Cork city.

Critics say the 140m project will cause huge damage to business and tourism and may even increase the risk of flooding in the city centre.

A major protest will take place along the quays tomorrow, with campaigners also gathering in boats along the River Lee.

To see this post on Facebook, click here.

Cork city boasts the longest stretch of Georgian quay walls in Europe - but campaigners say these are now under threat from the OPW's flood relief plans.

The Lower Lee Flood Relief scheme will take up to 10 years and involves replacing historic quay walls with concrete barriers, embankments and floodgates at various parts of the river.

Local pressure group Save Cork City says the measures will stop the river from flowing into its natural floodplain and channel more water faster towards the city centre, increasing the flood risk.

The OPW has defended its plan, saying it is the result of ten year study and is the most cost-effective option.

Tomorrow, campaigners will form a human chain along the quays demanding a full review of the design and the examination of more holistic solutions which have proved successful in other countries.

Anyone wishing to make a submission on the proposals to the Office of Public Works must do so by the deadline of February 17.
A Royal Marine has admitted hoarding explosives and making bombs for a Northern Ireland-related terror attack.

Ciaran Maxwell (aged 31) of Exminster, Devon, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to preparation of terrorist acts between January 2011 and August 2016.

According to the charge details, he had a stash of explosives in purpose-built hides in England and Northern Ireland.

He compiled a library of terrorism documents, including instructions on how to make explosives and tactics used by terrorist organisations.

He also had maps, plans and lists of potential targets for a terrorist attack and images of an adapted Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) pass card and a PSNI uniform.

He bought chemicals and components and went on to manufacture explosives and devices, the court heard.

Maxwell was also charged with possessing images of bank cards for fraud and possessing cannabis with intent to supply.

He appeared before Mr Justice Sweeney at the Old Bailey via video link from Woodhill jail and spoke only to confirm his name and enter guilty pleas to all the charges.

Maxwell was arrested on August 24 by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service's counter-terrorism command, supported by Avon and Somerset and Devon and Cornwall Police.

He was remanded in custody to be sentenced on a date to be fixed.
Lawyers defending Sean FitzPatrick have accused investigators of crafting and creating statements in order to get evidence to prosecute the former Anglo Irish Bank chairman.

Mr FitzPatrick (aged 68) is accused of misleading auditors about multi-million euro loans from 2002 to 2007. He has denied all charges.

On day 75 of the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Bernard Condon SC, defending, finished his lengthy cross-examination of Kevin O'Connell, a lead investigator from the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE).

During seven days in the witness box, Mr O'Connell admitted that the methods used to produce statements from witnesses in the investigation were wrong and unlawful.

He told Mr Condon that the mistakes he made were down to his inexperience of investigating criminal offences and denied they were part of a deliberate effort to get a prosecution at all costs.

Today, Mr Condon put it to him that the investigation was a shambles and one which you should not take any pride in and one which the ODCE should never repeat.

Mr O'Connell replied that he took no pride whatsoever in all the manifold mistakes made by him. He said that since these mistakes were deemed unlawful by Judge Mary Ellen Ring during the first trial in May 2015, the ODCE has modified its practices.

The jury heard that in February 2012, Mr O'Connell's then boss, previous director of corporate enforcement, Paul Appleby, wrote to an ODCE colleague thanking her for her work.

He said: Let's hope we get prosecutable offences out of all your work.

Mr Condon said this comment by Mr Appleby spoke volumes about a desire of the ODCE to prosecute Mr FitzPatrick.

Nothing was going to stop you, counsel said.

The witness replied that they would have been stopped if relevant evidence had not been available.

So what you did was crafted and created witness statements so you could get evidence, Mr Condon said. Mr O'Connell repeated that his inexperience and a lack of input from other colleagues led to mistakes being made.

Mr Condon said the statements of witnesses from Anglo's auditors EY (formerly Ernst & Young) were a result of coaching and contamination.

He said they were statements by a committee formed by a triangle of three separate bodies, the ODCE, EY and A&L Goodbody, a legal firm representing EY.

He named 22 people. These included five gardai, four people and other unknown persons from EY and Liam Kennedy, a partner with A&L Goodbody.

Mr O'Connell agreed that these people were involved to one degree or another in the drafting of statements using methods later ruled to be unlawful.

Earlier this week the jury saw a note to garda management stating that no gardai were involved in the drafting of the statements.

The jury also heard previously that during the first trial in May 2015, Mr O'Connell shredded documents relevant to the investigation.

Today he told Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting, that the five pages destroyed would have been jottings and scribbled notes of phone calls.

He said that the investigation into Anglo had created thousands of paper documents, as well as 850,000 electronic documents.

He said not all of these would be relevant to the audit fraud offences before the court.

Mr FitzPatrick, of Whitshed Road, Greystones, Co Wicklow, has pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act.

These include 22 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007.

The trial continues before Judge John Aylmer next Thursday.
Enda Kenny has said that most EU leaders understand Ireland is a "special case" when it comes to Brexit and he has warned Britain that fresh borders in the North will have "very serious consequences", writes Juno McEnroe, Political Correspondent in Malta.

Speaking at press conference at the EU summit in Malta today, Mr Kenny outlined how leaders had also discussed US President Donald Trump as well as the migration crisis.

Enda Kenny says it can't be business as usual for EU with Donald Trump. But US can't rule by executive order. #MaltaEU2017 #iestaff pic.twitter.com/7CzoYFl2KE  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) February 3, 2017

The meeting of union leaders is the first since British Prime Minister Theresa May set out plans for a hard Brexit during a recent speech and ahead of Britains exit being triggered next month.

Mr Kenny said he had spoken to many leaders at the summit, including from Sweden, Denmark, Italy as well as Ms May among others.

Asked what impression he had left with Ms May with today as well as during her visit to Dublin earlier in the week, Mr Kenny said: "My discussions with the Prime Minister today were in relation to our meeting in Dublin on Monday, which was a good meeting where we set out in a frank and constructive way the issues as we see them."

He also added that Ms May and other EU leaders know very clearly understood that Ireland needed special consideration when Brexit is triggered.

We repeated this at our meeting on Monday, the common travel area between Ireland and Britain and Ireland and the North has been there since 1922 [with Britain]," he said.

"We do not see any change in that and its not just a travel arrangement, its also a residency and labour arrangement."

Both countries had committed to "no return" to a hard border and this meant this that this is a "really serious issue" for Ireland and for Britain.

Mr Kenny added: "Because I did point out before that any semblance of a hard border would have very negative consequences and the British government fully understands that and the Prime Minister fully understands that.

"I made it crystal clear and so plain, thats a real issue."

He also stressed that other EU leaders at the summit now knew Irelands position.

"When the United Kingdom leave we will be the only country without a land border in the EU. We have these particular circumstances, we have a special case already there and it is quite unique.

"I think most of the leaders around the council table fully understand that."
A woman has described hearing two gunshots on the afternoon a dissident republican was shot dead outside a pub across the road from her house.

Peter Butterly (aged 35) was shot dead outside The Huntsman Inn, Gormanston, Co Meath on March 6, 2013.

Two Dublin men are on trial at the Special Criminal Court, charged with his murder.

Edward McGrath (aged 35), of Land Dale Lawns, Springfield, Tallaght and Sharif Kelly (aged 46), of Pinewood Green Road, Balbriggan have both pleaded not guilty to the alleged murder.

Mr McGrath has also pleaded not guilty to firearms offences on the same occasion.

A third accused, Dean Evans (aged 24), of Grange Park Rise, Raheny, Dublin, failed to turn up for the trial, and has not been located by the gardai. The non-jury court decided to proceed with his two co-accused in Mr Evanss absence.

Today, Adriana Skorus told Alex Owens SC, prosecuting, that at the time of the shooting she was living opposite the Huntsman Inn.

The court heard that she was in her living-room, talking with a friend on Skype, when she heard "weird noises".

"I knew after that it was two gunshots," she said.

Ms Skorus said that she looked out the window and saw a man standing in the Huntsman's carpark.

The court heard that the man was holding a small black handgun and facing in the direction of Balbriggan.

There was a car behind the man, either cream- or silver-coloured, Ms Skorus told Mr Owens.

She said that after a few seconds, the man sat in the back of the car, which drove out of the carpark.

A few minutes later Ms Skorus went outside and saw another car going into the carpark, the court heard.

She said that a man got out of the car and went to the corner of the carpark. He was looking a the ground, she said.

Earlier, the court rejected an application by defence counsels to rule out the evidence of the accused men's arrest.

The barristers had argued last week that their detention were unlawful.

It is the second trial of Mr McGrath and Mr Kelly. The original trial collapsed after 55 days in January, 2015, and a retrial was ordered.

The trial continues before the non-jury court, with Mr Justice Tony Hunt presiding.
The US-led coalition's aircraft have destroyed the main water pipeline supplying the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State (IS) group, according to activists.

Two bridges linking the city with the southern countryside were also destroyed amid fighting between the extremist group and US-backed fighters.

The coalition has been targeting IS in the area for more than two years and US-backed Kurdish-led fighters have been on the offensive in nearby areas, mostly north of Raqqa.

The city is the de facto capital of IS's self-declared caliphate and has been held by the extremist group since January 2014.

The attacks on Raqqa are similar to those conducted in Iraq late last year when Iraqi forces began their offensive to capture the city of Mosul from the extremists.

Destroying bridges makes it difficult for IS to move fighters but many complain that the adverse effects are worse for civilians.

Syrian state news agency Sana and an IS-affiliated website said early on Friday that the city's main water pipeline was damaged in an airstrike, cutting off the water supply to Raqqa.

The IS-affiliated website also reported the only two bridges on the Euphrates river on the southern edge of the city have been destroyed.

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a local media collective, criticised the destruction of the two bridges, saying they are used by civilians and adding that such acts are "absolutely unacceptable".

The group said it appears that the US-led coalition is trying to "besiege the civilians of Raqqa by demolishing bridges and destroying the infrastructure".

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of on-the-ground activists to track Syria's war, reported clashes between IS fighters and the US-backed Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces (SDF) north of the city.

It said the US-led coalition has been providing air cover to SDF fighters during Friday's fighting.

There was no immediate word from the US-led coalition about targeting the water pipeline.

The attack comes at a time when Iraqi forces are on the offensive against IS in Mosul, where the US-led coalition has destroyed much of the bridges on the Tigris river.

- AP
The Australian Federal Police is enlisting the help of trained volunteers around the nation to help promote cybersafety to teachers, parents and carers, with 11,000 reports of online child exploitation received by the AFP in one year alone.

The program is designed to teach adults, many of whom may feel overwhelmed by technology, the techniques to ensure young people stay safe online and avoid predators lurking on the internet, but also deal with potential dangers from their own peer groups.

Datacom account manager and father-of-two Kal Thompson, has been volunteering his time to help teach adults how to keep young people safe online. The Australian Federal Police runs the ThinkUKnow program with the AFP's coordinator of missing persons and child exploitation, Marina Simoncini, urging adults not to be intimidated by technology but to help their children navigate it safely. Credit:Elesa Kurtz

It covers issues including online grooming, sexting, cyberbullying, privacy and helping young people to understand what they post online can affect their reputation in years to come.

The ThinkUKnow program comes from parents, carers and teachers telling the AFP they want to know more about the specifics of what children are doing online, which apps they are using and steps they need to take to keep children safe.
With Malcolm Turnbull desperate to keep burning coal for electricity, just how important is the mining industry to our economy? Short answer: not nearly as much as it wants us to believe, and has conned our politicians into believing.

Because people like me have spent so much time over the past decade and more banging on about the resources boom, we've probably left many people with an exaggerated impression of the sector's importance.

It's true that, thanks to a quadrupling in the value of its physical capital, mining now accounts for about 7 per cent of our total production of goods and services (gross domestic product), compared with less than 5 per cent in 2004, at the start of the boom.

But 7 per cent ain't all that much, and if you measure mining by how much of our workforce it employs, it's even less: 2 per cent.
That smudge on the line above Australia is 0.7 per cent. That sort of GDP gain for the US and Australia over a dozen years is, to use a technical term, pretty much stuff-all. Local TPP critics claim the small gain would come at a high cost in acceding to US demands on copyright, intellectual property and investor-state dispute settlement. But that's "Australia first" talking. It fails to credit the benefits that come from other countries doing well. To keep it simple for those focused on the simple, you're generally better off if your neighbours are better off. Trade is not the zero-sum game mercantilists like Trump think. The other team winning doesn't mean your team must lose. Vietnam gaining 10 per cent is a good thing. In the longer term, Vietnam doing well is good for Australia and everyone else. NAFTA is an easier example to use because there are only three players and it turns 23 this year so the impact can be measured, not just modelled with all the usual likelihood of being wrong. And it's the one Trump campaigned so hard and misleadingly against.

The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School ran the tape measure over NAFTA to mark its 20th anniversary in 2014. Yes, NAFTA helped Mexico subsequently "take" hundreds of thousands of American manufacturing jobs. The automobile industry is the most obvious example. Mexico has become the biggest exporter of cars to the US. Pre-Trump, it was estimated that by 2020, nearly 25 per cent of North American vehicle production would take place in Mexico, compared with 10 per cent in Canada and 65 per cent in the US. The job impact is greater, given that the more labour-intensive parts of the supply chain are more likely to turn Mexican. But that's the simple stuff. NAFTA has helped change the nature of the North American car industry, making it internationally competitive again by becoming a single supply chain. And as for the broader question of overall manufacturing jobs lost, Wharton management professor Mauru Guillen reckons most would have been lost to other countries anyway. And it's not a matter of simple import versus export figures: "Walter Kemmsies, chief economist at Moffatt Nichol, an international infrastructure consultancy, notes that close to 40 per cent of what the US imports from Mexico is derived from US sources. This is the symbol of the success of NAFTA. Twenty years ago, he estimates, that percentage was less than 5 per cent."

Mexico is the United States' third-biggest trade partner. Yes, the US runs a trade deficit with Mexico - Wharton's Guillen quotes $US54 billion in 2013. But the deficit with China was $US318 billion. (Australia ran a goods and services trade deficit with the US last financial year of more than $25 billion.) While many jobs were lost to Mexico, many were created in the US because of NAFTA, and not just directly by Mexican trade. As colleague Peter Martin has very nicely explained in another context, consumers gain from lower trade barriers. The money Americans saved by being able to buy cheaper stuff from Mexico, they spent elsewhere in their economy, creating jobs. But even that is not the point I've been working towards. The Wharton article again: "Now think of where Mexico would be today without NAFTA," Guillen writes. "Today, Mexican migration to the US has come to a halt. There are Central Americans coming to the US  but virtually no Mexicans. That's because Mexico is doing well. So just imagine, without NAFTA and with Mexico not doing that well, we would have had the additional problem of an unstable Mexico with lots of people wanting to come to the United States." That's the really big point Trump doesn't see, the big picture that matters much more in the long run than a relative handful of specific jobs: neighbours doing better, becoming comfortable, make much better neighbours than those in dire straits.

Less obviously and dramatically, something similar applies with the TPP. We are much better off being in a region where the poorest nations are becoming better off. There's much, much more in the World Bank study than is normally quoted. For a start, the study warns that those growth figures for the period to 2030 don't really tell the story as the agreement takes quite a while to really work and would only be hitting its straps around 2030. Furthermore, there's the potential that the TPP would grow or in effect grow as other nations were granted similar status. The introduction sums up the big picture within the 2030 limitation: "If ratified by all, the agreement could raise GDP in member countries by an average of 1.1 per cent by 2030. It could also increase member countries' trade by 11 per cent by 2030, and represent a boost to regional trade growth, which had slowed to about 5 per cent, on average, during 2010-14 from about 10 per cent during 1990-07. To the extent that the benefits of reforms have positive spillovers for the rest of the world, the detrimental effects of the agreement due to trade diversion and preference erosion on non-members, would be limited. The global significance of the agreement depends on whether it gains broader international traction."

You hear about the very real IP and dispute-settling challenges, but critics overlook this: "The TPP seeks to incorporate International Labor Organization (ILO) obligations, require domestic laws to be consistent with international standards, and provides for enforcement. Environmental standards introduced in the agreement address illegal wildlife trafficking, logging and fishing. They also include provisions on conservation, biodiversity, protecting the ozone layer and environmental goods and services." Vietnam and Malaysia were forecast to do well out of the TPP because of lower tariff and non-tariff mechanisms both abroad and at home (my emphasis) and by becoming more integrated into the regional supply chain. Yes, there tends to be a loss of lower-skilled, lower-paid jobs in advanced countries to the less-advanced, but there also tends to be a gain in higher-paid, higher-skilled jobs in the advanced nations. That's no comfort to a low-skilled worker who loses his or her job. It's part of the broader inequality problem that requires broader solutions involving education and income redistribution and support. There's no point blaming the TPP for something that, like the NAFTA example, would happen anyway. Multi-lateral and bi-lateral trade agreements are very poor substitutes for global agreements. With that acknowledgement, the World Bank concluded: "Against the background of slowing trade growth, rising non-tariff impediments to trade, and insufficient progress in global negotiations, the TPP represents an important milestone. The TPP stands out among FTAs for its size, diversity and rulemaking. Its ultimate implications, however, remain unclear. Much will depend on whether the TPP is quickly adopted and effectively implemented, and whether it triggers productive reforms in developing and developed countries. Broader systemic effects, in turn, will require expanding such reforms to global trade, whether through TPP enlargement, competitive effects on other trade agreements, or new global rules."
In light of Donald Trump's fiery phone call with Malcolm Turnbull, we have received an unprecedented number of letters from Americans apologising for their president. Here's a selection:

Americans apologising at the Australian embassy in Washington DC. Credit:Twitter/@steph_march

Please share with the good people of Australia our deepest and sincerest apologies for the behaviour of the man who now occupies the White House. ("Donald Trump will 'respect' deal made with Prime Minister 'Trunbull'", February 3)

As an American citizen, who has spent a lifetime in government service, who has lived through the administrations of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and beyond, I can tell you that we have never had such an oaf in office before. I am so sorry. To PM Turnbull, please accept our apologies.

Please, never forget, He does NOT represent the views and attitudes of the American people. He is a minority president who lost the popular vote by approximately three million votes. He barely won the electoral college by 42,000 votes in states where over 400,000 voters were purged from the rolls and were not permitted to vote. It will get worse before it gets better ... brace yourselves, we're all in this together.

Robert Mikol, Fairbanks, Alaska



Dear Australia,

I am so very sorry that we have elected such a boor and ignoramus as our president, and that he has chosen to insult such a good friend as you have been to us. As you probably know, most of us did not vote for this so-called person, but through bad luck and electoral peculiarities we are stuck with him. I just want all of you to know that we love and appreciate Australia, and that we are horrified and embarrassed at his daily hissy-fits. You, of all people, should never have been at the receiving end of one of his tantrums. Please bear with us and accept our heartfelt apologies.

Love America.

Kyle Riggs, Ashland, Oregon

Come now, can anyone be surprised by anything that Donald (Tweety) Trump says and does? Weren't you watching and listening to his performance during the campaigns and election for the presidency? It's P.T. Barnum Goes to Washington. Malcolm Turnbull should not feel too upset that his call to the White House ended abruptly. Anything that runs beyond 140 characters stretches beyond Tweety's attention span.

Bill O'Reilly, Hastings on Hudson, New York
"Clean coal" plants that the Turnbull government has flagged could get clean energy subsidies are more expensive than solar, wind and gas-fired power and would lead to higher electricity price rises, analysts have warned.

Support for what the government calls "clean coal" stations - ultra-supercritical plants, which still emit greenhouse gas - would also be at odds with a 2015 OECD agreement under which Australia agreed not to fund any type of coal power in developing countries if cleaner options were available.

An analysis by Bloomberg New Energy Finance released on Friday found this type of plant was the most expensive and dirtiest source of mainstream electricity supply available.

Across their lifetime, the most efficient modern coal plants would cost a minimum $134 per megawatt hour of electricity generated, and possibly as much as $203.
Angelina Jolie has become the latest high-profile woman to make a powerful stand against President Trump's executive order to restrict travel and refugee admissions from seven predominantly Muslim countries. In an opinion piece for The New York Times Jolie has spoken out against Trump's immigration executive order, saying that "implying Muslims are less worthy of protection" may inadvertently give "oxygen" to extremism and increase the vulnerability of refugees.

Jolie, who is a special envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees, wrote that America's response to the global refugee crisis and threat of terrorism, "must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear."

Angelina Jolie is another high-profile woman to speak out on the executive order on immigration. Credit:Getty Images

While Jolie's estranged father, Jon Voight, spoke at Trump's pre-inauguration concert, the Oscar-winning actress has made her stance on the reality television star, turned President, clear.

Without explicitly naming Trump, Jolie said refusing refugees on grounds of religion is "playing without fire" and divisive for the entire world.
While the Jenners and the Hadids of the world continue to clamour for high-profile gigs, like the Victoria's Secret show, Kloss at just 24 she has already been an Angel of the brand and happily missed the recent show due to conflicting work commitments.

A supermodel also knows when to diversify. Look at Elle, Gisele and Heidi Klum and everyone in that George Michael film clip.

When Kloss is not being a top model - something she's been doing for about a decade - she's also enrolled at NYU as a part-time student, established a software coding company that offers scholarships to young women and is the co-founder of a cookie brand that makes vegan and gluten-free treats which donates some of the proceeds to charity.

Sure these extracurricular ventures are all named in the narcissistic, Kardashian-vein - Kode With Klossy and Karlie's Kookies - but they're not only cash generating brand extensions, they are passions she decided to pursue in order to create a "vehicle to help others," she told Fairfax Media.

"From a distance they seem very random and people must think that this girl is all over the place," she said. "I love to learn and about six months into taking classes I had this realisation of wanting to share what I was learning as it really can transform someone's future. With this skill you can use it in really creative way, in entrepreneurial ways and to make social change. If you have a passion for art and fashion you can use it in a more creative way than a guy in a hoodie who doesn't have the same ideas as you, and come up with better solutions."
An American man allegedly involved in an international cocaine syndicate is the latest to be arrested in an investigation that has also netted the brother of a slain crime figure and an aspiring politician.

Alfred Manukyan, 47, had only been in Australia for a few days before he was picked up by NSW Organised Crime Squad detectives on Thursday.

Police during the raids in Punchbowl in June, 2016. Credit:Daniel Munoz

Police allege he was one of multiple people involved in a cocaine importation racket which saw drugs sourced from Southern California and sent via air freight and mail to Australia.

The cocaine was allegedly concealed within parcels carrying machinery.
Lucky Gattellari tried to persuade one of the contract killers in the murder of Sydney businessman Michael McGurk to take the fall for all of the conspirators.

"If the shit hits the fan, I would like you to put something in your handwriting clearing everybody," Gattellari is heard saying to Haissam Safetli, who was wearing a wire.

Ron Medich leaves court in May last year. Credit:Daniel Munoz

On the evening of September 3, 2009, Safetli, then 45, and Christopher Estephan, 19, drove to Mr McGurk's Cremorne house and shot him in the back of the head as he was getting out of his car.

Gattellari, the Crown's star witness, along with Safetli and Estephan, have pleaded guilty to their roles in the murder.
Marj Armstrong, centre, at an anti-merger protest in Orange last year. Oberon Shire, home to around 5000 people largely employed in farming and forestry, was facing the prospect of being merged with the much larger Bathurst Council. The RSL vote was emphatic: 94.3 per cent were against the merger. A few months later, it was standing room only as locals crowded into a second meeting at the Oberon showgrounds. The public meeting was open to comment, and 83 people registered to speak  all but one of them in opposition to the merger. In Cabonne Shire, less than two hours' drive away, a similar movement was afoot. In May 2015, community group Amalgamation No Thank You (ANTY) formed after 400 locals turned up to a meeting in Molong to protest the proposed merger with Orange and Blayney councils. In New England, which was expected to host a tough battle in the July 2016 election, federal Nationals leader and canny retail politician Barnaby Joyce started to campaign against any forced merger of the small Walcha council. The result was that the eventual announcement of forced mergers in May 2016 was both a bombshell, yet only a partial job. Baird and Toole, the local government minister, announced the creation of 19 new bodies formed from the immediate sacking of 42 councils. But they didn't touch Walcha because of Joyce's intervention. And they didn't create a further nine councils, to be formed from the sacking of 25 existing bodies, because some of those councils had signalled their intent to challenge their mergers through the courts.

But the announcement did not quell the opposition. In fact, the manner in which it was made only intensified the disquiet. Mayors and councillors were given little or no forewarning of their dismissal. Bob Stewart, Mayor of Bombala in the state's Monaro region, was driving into town from his farm when he learned by ABC radio he and his colleagues had been sacked. "We could never get a meeting," says Marj Bollinger, a Molong-local and ANTY spokeswoman of her attempts to talk to the government. "They were invited to every rally, every meeting, everything we had. They were never available." Toole, who had once promised Oberon locals he would oppose mergers and was now in charge of implementing them, was not explaining himself to the community, Oberon mayor Kathy Sajowitz says. "There is a general feeling in the community Mr Toole has let Oberon down," she says. "The community has lost faith in their local member." Adding to the government's troubles, it found it increasingly hard to sell the potential benefits of mergers in local media that had always had a close relationships with its councils and councillors. On the radio, Alan Jones was decrying Baird's despotism. Those who had been agnostic or supportive of mergers found that the issue had been swept up in fast-surging anti-government sentiment. The narrative had been established: mergers were on the nose.

The opportunity to fight back emerged in November when a by-election was held in Orange to replace Andrew Gee, a National who had left for federal parliament. By this stage, regional community groups had become something of a network of anti-amalgamation activists. They crossed shire districts for rallies and protests, placarded Cabonne, and on election day, manned polling booths in Orange. "The byelection was the last chance we had to make our voices heard," says Bollinger. The result, also influenced by Baird's greyhound racing ban, was a crushing loss for the Nationals in a seat it had held by almost 22 per cent. The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party won its first ever lower-house position. An emboldened Robert Borsak, one of its two upper house MLCs, told Fairfax Media at the time preparations were under way for a lower house campaign for the 2019 election. The party, which has been consistent in its opposition to forced mergers, intends to take on the Nationals in eight to 10 seats. For the Nationals, the loss precipitated a spill. The Member for Monaro, John Barilaro, claimed the leadership and the deputy premiership from Troy Grant, and started on trying to repair the party's relationship with its bush base. In December, he met with the Oberon anti-amalgamation group that had previously failed to gain a meeting with Toole. Spokeswoman Marj Armstrong articulated to Barilaro a sentiment bubbling across the state's pending council districts. "We won't give in, and we won't give up. And we will put the Liberals and Nationals last every time we vote," says Armstrong of her message. In the heights of government, the change in political sentiment has been rapid. When Baird stood down last month, Barilaro immediately insisted there would be no more forced amalgamations in country areas. And the day before the incoming premier, Gladys Berejiklian, was unanimously elected Liberal party leader, some of her closest confidantes and advisers met to discuss controversial policy areas that were ripe for dumping or overhaul. Council amalgamations was first on the list. Keith Rhoades, the president of industry group Local Government NSW, said he had hour-long meetings with both Barilaro and new Local Government Minister Gabrielle Upton on Wednesday. "I found them to be very receptive," says Rhoades.

Even now, a third of the proposed new councils are still pending the resolution of legal disputes. While that drags on, 29 councils are in limbo. Many councillors and mayors who were elected on four-year terms and were due to face an election in September last year are now serving overtime. Late last year, the NSW electoral commission added another layer of complexity to the unfolding democratic debacle when it said it may not be able to hold elections until 2020 for councils whose disputes extend beyond August. Such a delay would expose the government to wrath of voters at the 2019 state election. Yet the unravelling of the amalgamations policy may be as messy as the policy's development. There is as yet no clear indication of what the government will do, though Fairfax Media has reported there is likely to be a halt for further forced amalgamations and mini-plebiscites to allow for communities to decide the future of their councils. It remains unclear what will happen to councils that have already been merged  though one suggestion is that they too could face plebiscites about the prospects of de-merging, potentially as late as 2020. Berejiklian said this week a decision was "imminent" and councils that have fought the proposal are sniffing victory. "This is a win for democracy," says Woollahra Mayor Toni Zeltzer. "Clearly the state government has listened and they have got the message loud and clear that local communities want to have a say on the future of their local areas." However Upton need look no further than her Vaucluse electorate for an indication of the complexities to come. Although Woollahra is firmly opposed to a merger (a position endorsed by Upton as recently as 2015), Waverley and Randwick remain keen. "To a certain extent Waverley has already had a plebiscite," Waverley's Mayor Sally Betts says. Surveys of residents and ratepayers showed strong support for the amalgamation in that area. "We've identified fantastic savings for all our residents, including Woollahra residents. It would be a pity. Our residents would lose out on some pretty good savings and funding to fix up all sorts of infrastructure." But the benefits were evaluated based on the three-council scenario, and should the government put a new proposition on the table  such as a merger just with Randwick Council  all bets are off. "We would need to go back and do a completely different assessment," Cr Betts says, adding "If the government changes its policy we would prefer to stand by ourselves."

And if Woollahra Council, which has already spent $850,000 on legal appeals, is allowed to remain independent while other mergers stand, that is sure to stoke questions of political equity. It would mean, for instance, there would be one council for Woollahra's 60,000 residents (in the city's most exclusive suburbs), and one council for Canterbury-Bankstown's 360,000 residents. Hunters Hill, with its 15,000 residents, continues to fight to stand alone. "It just stinks, it's got politics written all over it," says the former mayor of Parramatta, Paul Garrard, who says he will be campaigning for Cumberland Council to be de-merged. "It's like there's two laws in this place. The inner city and west are being treated differently and now there's a fear we are going to be treated from our country cousins as well," says Garrard. Unscrambling mergers that have proceeded would be its own nightmare. The government has already paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in incentive payments to merged councils, on top of the millions it spent on consultants such as KPMG to prepare reports into the mergers. One issue is that if there were plebiscites would those plebiscites provide the opportunity for residents in the old council areas to vote? Or would the votes of the new combined council areas be tallied together? The results could point to very different outcomes.

There are myriad of other practical considerations. Administrator of the new Inner West Council, Richard Pearson, says reverting to three councils  Marrickville, Leichhardt and Ashfield  would involve unpicking the "very well advanced" integration process, and imbue the council's functions with uncertainty. "The prospect of a plebiscite means you would have to also be more conservative in your decision-making," says Pearson, scheduled to be replaced by elected councillors in September. "You don't want to be spending public money and then in six months time have to reverse your decisions." Long-term savings which underpinned the rationale of the merger process, and made largely from the retrenchment of staff, would immediately be jettisoned. Redundancy packages paid out to former general managers, and other senior management across the three councils would be sunk costs. "You'd have to re-recruit a whole management layer," he says. "You are reinstituting a cost that the merger was designed to save." Restoring the three councils management structures is expected to cost $4.5 million annually. While the councils await a clear decision from the Berejiklian government, the uncertainty is destabilising for council staff. "There's a lot of people here who are saying 'What's going on?'," Pearson said.

Greg Wright, the administrator of Bayside Council formed in September from the former Botany and Rockdale councils, said it would be increasingly difficult to pick apart functions that had started to come together. "We are starting to integrate systems and people and locations," Wright said. Another factor is that while a backdown on mergers might deliver some political reward, Berejiklian may also face a backlash within her own party. Fairfax Media has been told many Liberal councillors who agreed to back mergers in their own areas to support the government are furious at the prospect of a plebiscite option. "After doing the right thing by the party and local government state wide, to let these recalcitrant councils off the hook is a betrayal of good councillors across the state," said a senior Liberal local government source. And then there is the business community, and the original arguments in favour of amalgamations. "Whatever they do will have consequences," says Patricia Forsythe from the Sydney Business Chamber. "The future of Sydney requires strong local government, it requires them to have adequate resources and infrastructure to manage the growth and none of that has changed," says Forsythe, who would prefer Sydney's councils reduced to only six.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk's return to Brisbane from a week governing in central Queensland has been delayed by an urgent organ retrieval.

The premier was due to return to Brisbane from Gladstone on Friday morning but the government aircraft was called to retrieve an organ from north Queensland for a transplant recipient.

"Organ retrievals are the priority for the use of the government aircraft," a spokesman for the premier said.

The Queensland Government Air Wing can be tasked across Australia and New Zealand to collect organs from the donor list for lifesaving surgery.
The results of an inquiry into what went wrong at Queensland Rail have been handed over to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

The Premier met with Phillip Strachan on Friday afternoon to discuss the fruits of his three-month investigation into train crewing failures at QR.

The inquiry was sparked following the cancellation of 100 services in October after the opening of the Redcliffe Peninsula Line due to a shortage of train drivers.

About two-thirds of services were also cancelled on Christmas Day and the debacle has resulted in some QR executives leaving the organisation.
A girl who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a 34-year-old man she was forced to marry was just 14 at the time, a Melbourne court has heard.

Mohammad Shakir, 34, is accused of having sex with the girl between September 30 and October 1, 2016, following their wedding, which was conducted by former imam Ibrahim Omerdic.

Former imam Ibrahim Omerdic officiated at the forced marriage. Credit:Facebook/Sead Jukic

The ceremony was conducted by ex-imam Ibrahim Omerdic, who also faces charges relating to the illegal marriage.

The girl is in a "fragile state" and has "ongoing health issues", prosecutor Ranjani Padmanabhan told Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday.
The alleged mastermind of the Victorian end of an operation to import $60 million worth of cocaine has been refused bail because his alleged crimes were driven by the lure of profit and he might reoffend.

Moshey Youkhana, 46, is among six men accused of trying to import 186kg of cocaine, which was seized from a 50-metre former commercial vessel on December 12.

Police claim the alleged smugglers used this boat, which ran aground off Port Fairy. Credit:Rob Gunstone

Despite the offer of a surety of up to $300,000, Melbourne Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg ruled on Friday that Mr Youkhana had not shown cause for his release.

He said Mr Youkhana posed an unacceptable risk of reoffending and his alleged crimes were deliberate, and driven by the lure of substantial profit.
Stacey Yean loved animals, food, music and thunderstorms. She was just 23 when she died in her sleep after developing fever-like symptoms.

Desperate for answers, Stacey's family are set to give evidence at an upcoming coronial inquest, which they hope will shed some light on the circumstances of the popular young woman's unexplained death.

Stacey Yean was 'smart, energetic, beautiful, kind and loving'.

Stacey died in Ballarat in January last year, leaving Adrienne Yean to wonder if her daughter would still be alive had she been taken to hospital by the paramedics who attended that night.

The family is expected to tell the inquest that they made a series of phones calls in the hours before Stacey's death, first to the nurse-on-call service and finally to triple zero.
A school bus has burst into flames on a remote stretch of road in WA's Kimberley, with nine school children and the driver escaping the blaze unharmed.

Senior Sergeant Steve Principe from Kunnunurra Police said the school bus was travelling along the Victoria Highway outside the town when children on board noticed smoke coming from the front of the vehicle.

The school bus engulfed in flames. Credit:WA Police

"Somethings gone wrong with the bus - whether it's mechanical or it's dragged something under the wheels we don't know yet.

"Our roads can be like Mad Max up here, they get pretty wild with debris. But the driver pulled to the side of the road and the kids on board got off very quickly, they were helped along by a prefect who was on board, so quick thinking all round."
Tigerair Australia has been forced to cancel its service to Bali indefinitely after Indonesian authorities refused to provide the airline with approval to operate under its new administrative requirements announced in January.

In a statement, the airline said it would take at least six months for Tigerair to implement an "alternative regulatory solution" and that its low-cost airfares would be compromised as a result.

"As a result of this development, Tigerair Australia has today made the difficult decision to withdraw from flying between Australia and Bali permanently, effective immediately," it said.

Customers due to travel from Bali to Australia on February 3 would be re-accommodated by Tigerair onto services back to Australia operated by Virgin Australia and other carriers.
Paris: A video showing a reporter being grabbed by security men and hustled away after asking a question of National Front leader Marine Le Pen has gone viral online amid confusion over the circumstances of the incident.

It was not clear what had happened beforehand in a room at a convention centre where Le Pen was encircled by reporters and camera crews covering her presidential election campaign.

According to the National Front, it was not responsible for the reporter's ejection from the business forum she was visiting.

In the video, the accredited reporter, Paul Larrouturou of TMC satirical show Quotidien, was filmed shouting "Get off me, get off me... what about freedom of the press?," as he was pulled from the room.
Some residents of Kampung Akuarium, in North Jakarta, refused to leave when evicted in April. Credit:Irwin Fedriansyah But Dharma says it is not an option to relocate to low-cost rental apartments provided by the government 25 kilometres away. "Some of us are fishermen or work at the fish market. If you move us somewhere four hours away in heavy traffic, how can we work? How can we pay?" Dharma's eyes well with tears as she talks to us in a crude shelter - the community's "crisis centre" - which has a banner proclaiming "my kampung is my life". "Ahok labelled us as illegal squatters and says we just occupied empty land and spread tuberculosis. We tried to meet him but he didn't want to receive us. He is too much. He is cruel. For us a leader is not like that." Dharma Diani, resident of Kampung Akuarium, North Jakarta, Indonesia. Credit:Irwin Fedriansyah The irony is that almost all of the residents of Kampung Akuarium, including Dharma, supported Ahok when he successfully ran in the gubernatorial elections in 2012 as Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's deputy.

Jokowi, now the president, visited Kampung Akuarium three times during the campaign. Dharma says he made a political contract to end evictions and give land certificates to those who had lived in the kampung for more than 20 years. A resident at Kampung Akuarium. Credit:Irwin Fedriansyah The sense of betrayal is deep. "Ninety-five per cent of the people from the kampung voted for them. It didn't matter to us Ahok was Christian and Chinese, we never cared about race and religion. Now we have this problem because of Ahok himself. He is a troublemaker." Residents have been living in tents and shelters donated by political parties Credit:Irwin Fedriansyah

Asked if there is anyone left in the kampung who would vote for Ahok in the February 15 gubernatorial election, Dharma shakes her head bitterly. "Null per cent. It's common sense. He makes the poor become poorer. This has made a lot of people more political, including me." The former red-light district of Kalijodo was virtually razed overnight last February after Ahok decided he wanted to clean up the so-called den of vice and turn it into a park. A Kampung Akuarium residents walks through mountains of rubbish and rubble in the makeshift neighbourhood. Credit:Irwin Fedriansyah In September hundreds of families were evicted from Bukit Duri, as part of a plan to mitigate flooding by widening the Ciliwung river, despite legal proceedings being before court. Several months later the State Administrative Court ruled their eviction had violated the law.

Murdoch University Research fellow Ian Wilson gets frustrated when so much of the commentary around the sometimes vitriolic campaign against Ahok, who is on trial for allegedly insulting Islam, centres on concerns over growing religious and racial intolerance and radicalism in Indonesia. "This ignores the fact there are solid material grievances," he tells Fairfax Media. Wilson visited Kampung Akuarium soon after the homes were bulldozed. He says the people were shell-shocked. One fisherman, who had been out of mobile range because he was fishing around Kalimantan in Borneo, came back to discover his home had gone. "When I first went out there, people had signs of post-traumatic shock disorder and real psychological damage because of what had been done to them. This neighbourhood was fully supportive of Jokowi and Ahok. You can't explain [the opposition to Ahok] by saying they are sectarian or racist against the Chinese - it is simply not the case. It happened as a direct outcome of the impact of policies." The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute estimates that more than 16,000 families have been displaced in the last two years alone. Hafid Abbas from the National Commission for Human Rights says forced evictions violate human rights: "The poor has likely no space to live safely in Jakarta."

Hafid warns that in order to prevent social unrest in Jakarta the Jokowi administration should stop forced evictions for unjust reasons such as development of land by companies. Visit Kampung Akuarium and you will be left in no doubt for whom its remaining residents will vote. Everywhere you look are banners for Ahok's rival Anies Baswedan and his running mate Sandiaga Uno. The ticket, which is endorsed by government opposition party Gerindra and the Islamist Prosperous Justice Party, has vowed it will not carry out evictions. A Gerindra flag flutters from the ruins. Dharma says Gerindra distributed tents, food and medication to the displaced people. "A lot suffered flu because their homes are now open to the elements and skin problems because it is dusty," she says. "Of course we are sympathetic to Gerindra because they give us things. It's not because they want our votes, it's not because of politics because there are not many of us left here." Wilson, who is researching how evicted neighbourhoods are engaging with the upcoming election, says political opportunists - including the hardline Islam Defenders Front (FPI) - have capitalised on this disenchantment.
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The gang of bike thieves operating in north Bristol have been unmasked by a group of concerned citizens.

Many people believe the teenage thieves have been operation with impunity and have even been brazenly posting their antics on social media sites.

As reported in the Bristol Post the thieves have been posting pictures on an Instagram account called Bristolbiketaker.

The thieves are believed to be based in the Southmead and Lawrence Weston area. Many of the bikes are stolen from across Bristol and then used by the gang before being set on fire.

Last year police appealed for more help catching thieves following a spike in bike crime in the city.

But members of the public have become increasingly frustrated about the perceived lack of action from the authorities.

Several members of the public have collected a dossier of information about the gang. The website names and shames many of the members of the gang  which is thought to number at least 16 or 17.

A statement on the site reads: "There has been a massive rise in bike theft in Bristol in recent years, especially in the North Bristol area.

"The police can't do much about it even though they know who is responsible, probably because there's quite a bit of paperwork and not much return for their efforts.

"The thieves are often in court but see it as a game, stealing bikes, ragging them around secluded fields, burning or selling them, evading the police, getting caught, getting a slap on the wrists and then bragging about the whole thing on Facebook or Instagram.

"That all leaves a massive paper trail, but until now no-one has bothered to follow this trail and pull it together in one location.

"We've decided to show you this information so you can decide for yourself whether you think these are the thieves in question, so you can take the necessary steps to avoid them  or to have a word with them about it if you prefer.

"You know, ask them politely not to steal your bike."

The gang appear to be unconcerned about the media attention their crimes are attracting. They have reposted the Bristol Post story on Instagram and have even boasted about not getting caught. One group of bikers have reacted angrily to the brazen acts.

A spokesman for the UK Motorcycle Theft Protest Group said: "We are outraged and appalled by the out of control, lawless moped gangs that have been committing crime in Bristol without fear of punishment, and brazenly showing off their exploits on social media.

"These gangs have been causing misery for thousands of ordinary people by stealing countless motorbikes every day, often in broad daylight."The stolen motorbikes are then being sold for parts on the black market or for use in further illegal activity.

"We urge Somerset and Avon Police to take urgent action to stop this from spiraling even more out of control."

As reported last week in the Bristol Post two males were involved in a serious accident in Henbury involving a stolen motorbike. A 14-year-old who was driving the bike escaped with minor injuries.

His passenger, Adam Nolan, 18, is still in hospital with critical injuries.

Avon and Somerset Police said they are aware of the Instagram account and have been investigating it for some time.

They said they are also aware of the dossier but add that it contains many inaccuracies and false information.
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Legendary Bristol landlord, community leader, DJ and music guru Dutty Ken has passed away suddenly at his home, the Star and Garter pub in Montpelier.

Ken, whose real name was Louis Hayles, was the landlord of the pub for the past 24 years and would have celebrated his 77 birthday next month.

He transformed the pub, and the area around it in the heart of Bristol's African-Caribbean community, through sheer force of will and personality.

His death has stunned the wider community across the city, especially given that he was behind the bar  and the decks - earlier this week and in fine form.

After getting a hefty tax bill a couple of years ago, the entire city rallied round and crowdfunded an appeal to save the pub from closure  and ensure Dutty Ken remained in charge.

Rocking to the last, Dutty Ken played a DJ set at the Star & Garter on Wednesday night, but had been complaining of chest pains earlier this week, his eldest daughter Norma Purnell said.

"Where do you start with him? He was a legend," she said. "He changed the pub, changed the area for the better, and was such a figure for the music scene in Bristol.

"He had everybody at the pub, he had DJs, artists, poets: people from all over the world would come and they wouldn't come for the art, they'd come to the pub," she added.

"He complained of chest pains over the weekend, but on Wednesday said he was absolutely fine. Today he called an ambulance, but it didn't get there in time. It is very sad, everyone is very upset."

Born in March 1940, the father of four and grandfather of ten, Ken arrived in Bristol from London in 1963, and took over the Star & Garter in 1993.

Immediate family were gathering at the pub this evening and it will be open tomorrow, Saturday, to accept condolences and well-wishers. Arrangements are yet to be finalised, but in accordance with the Jamaican tradition, there will be a nine-day wake held at the pub.

As well as fostering, supporting, showcasing and encouraging musicians and DJs from across the city and the world, Dutty Ken was loved in St Paul's and Montpelier for his efforts to improve the community and the area.

He battled drug dealers in the early 1990s, to the point where he would have to leave the pub armed with a machete to protect himself.

"He did so much to reduce the drug taking, not just at the pub but on his corner and in the streets," said Norma. "This was his corner, and he stayed and they all left the area, and there's nothing like that now. It's really improved - we don't get the vandalism and the drug taking and dealing anymore here.

Louis Joseph Hayles  aka Bristol legend Dutty Ken  leaves four children: Norma Purnell, Dawn Hayles, Lorna Hayles and Daniel Toy, and ten grandchildren: Nicholas, Nathan, Hannah, Gemma, Joshua, Zion, Tai, Joseph, Chaka and Kibibi.

"He was also really proud to make the Bristol Post 'Coolest Bristolians list' last week, he was so pleased when he saw that."
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There is life after Death By Audio.

More than two years after Williamsburg music hotspot Death By Audio closed its doors, one of its founders will discuss his documentary detailing the last days of the beloved all-ages music venue. Director and club co-owner Matt Conboy says that he started filming Goodnight Brooklyn: The Story of Death By Audio, which screens at Nitehawk Cinema on Feb. 7, when he suspected the end was near.

I could sense that something crazy and potentially interesting might be on the horizon, Conboy said. By the summer of 2014, we knew our lease would not be renewed and that [building owner] Vice would ultimately take over our space. I thought there was a chance that things might get nasty.

His director of photography, Jon Yi, began shooting events at the venue, capturing what turned out to be the last six weeks of its life. The film also includes interviews filmed in its practice space, concert footage, and outtakes and clips from two other documentaries filmed at Death By Audio: Fuzz and You Were Here. Those movies, filmed in 2007 and 2008, offer an invaluable look at the early days of the venue, said Conboy .

We were very fortunate that these filmmakers shared their work with us, he said.

Conboy, who still lives in Williamsburg, is philosophical about the venues closure, seeing it as part of the natural flow of the citys creative life.

This is a city in constant flux and transition, he said. My community of artists and musicians is fairly fractured now. Without places like Death By Audio, Monster Island, and Dead Herring, its hard for a scene to exist for new ideas. I think the closing of the venue matters to some people and others dont even know it existed. Thats just how it goes.

Though the slow march of gentrification means independently owned spaces can be harder to find, Conboy can recommend a handful of venues that are still going strong.

I like Shea Stadium, Silent Barn, Trans Pecos, Warsaw, Babys All Right, he said. Im excited for some of the new things opening in the coming months from our friends at Secret Project Robot and Popgun. There are still people out there trying to build new and interesting homes for creativity.

Goodnight Brooklyn: The Story of Death By Audio screening and discussion at Nitehawk Cinema [136 Metropolitan Ave. between Wythe and Berry streets in Williamsburg, (718) 7828370, www.niteh awkci nema.com ]. Feb. 7 at 7:30 pm. $16.
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Friday Feb. 3 Hair apparent

Check out tonights debut of indie-rock musical Beardo, about the mad Russian monk Rasputin, who rose from peasant to powerful advisor to the czar before being poisoned, shot, and finally drowned by his rivals. This production details his rise and fall in the form of sexy dance numbers and power chords.

8 pm at St. Johns Lutheran Church [155 Milton St. between Manhattan Avenue and Franklin Street in Greenpoint, (718) 3894012], www.pipel ineth eatre.org . $25.

Saturday Feb. 4 Red letter day

Grumpy Bert gallery celebrates moving into the Chinese Year of the Rooster with an exhibit of hundreds of pieces of original art painted on red envelopes, traditionally used to deliver gifts during the holidays. And stick around  the opening reception will have a lion dancer to end the night!

69 pm at Grumpy Bert (82 Bond Street between Pacific Street and Atlantic Avenue in Boerum Hill, www.grump ybert.com ). Free.

Monday

Feb. 6

Fur n film

If you missed the kitty half-time show of the Puppy Bowl yesterday (what, was another game on?), get your feline fix at this advance screening of Kedi, a documentary about the wild cats of Istanbul. The city kitties roam the streets freely, accepting donations of food and scritches from residents, but rarely calling any one place home.

Flash forward: Get one of these feminist tattoo designs on your skin for $40 at the Tattoo To Protect Your Parts benefit for Planned Parenthood on Feb. 8.

7 pm at Videology [308 Bedford Ave. at S. First Street in Williamsburg, (718) 7823468], www.video logyb arand cinem a.com . Free with RSVP.

Wednesday Feb. 8 Femme and ink

If youre a fan of Betty Boop tattoos and reproductive rights, youre in luck! The Tattoo to Protect Your Parts dance party and tattoo-a-thon in Greenpoint will ink you up with your choice of female-empowerment images (pictured) for $40, with all the cash going to Planned Parenthood. Another fund raising event with lots of bands and burlesque acts follows around the corner at St. Vitus Bar.

27 pm at Magick City (37 Box St. between Manhattan Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint, www.magick.city). Free ($40 for a tattoo).

Thursday

Feb. 9

Super bowl

Americana band Dustbowl Revival is no nostalgia act  its members play old-timey instruments, but the songs have a sharp modern edge. The stop at Union Pool on Feb. 9 is the first stop on the bands winter tour, and you can get an advance listen to tunes from the upcoming album, which adds some slinky funk and soul tones to the bands bluegrass background.

8 pm at Union Pool [484 Union Ave. at Meeker Avenue in Williamsburg, (718) 6090484], www.union -pool.com . $15 ($12 in advance).
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Sen. Bernie Sanders is finally getting a degree from Brooklyn College  58 years after he enrolled!

The Midwood-born former presidential hopeful is returning to his native land to give the schools commencement address at Barclays Center in May, where may also receive an honorary doctorate.

We are honored to be able to welcome Bernie home this spring to this great college, and to have him send off the Class of 2017, said college president Michelle Anderson.

Sanders (IVermont) enrolled at Brooklyn College after graduating from James Madison High School in 1959, but only stayed there a year before transferring to the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in political science.

The self-proclaimed socialist hasnt lived in the borough since Robert Wagner was mayor, but he milked his Brooklyn bona fides while stumping here during the 2016 Democratic primaries, albeit to limited success  a record 28,000 people turned out to see him speak in Prospect Park but 60 percent of borough Democrats ultimately voted for his rival Hillary Clinton.

If the schools board approves the degree, Sanders will likely score a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the college  an honor he will share with musician Harry Belafonte, filmmaker Ken Burns, developer Bruce Ratner, and Title IX godmother Bernice Sandler.
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Talk about bodega heroes!

Yemeni deli workers protesting President Trumps Muslim ban went on strike on Thursday and flooded Borough Hall Plaza, carrying flags from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen  and plenty of Old Glory. They were showing their dedication to the American dream, said one business owner.

We are here to stay. We are the fabric of our communities, our city, and our country. People depend on us and our businesses, and we deserve to be here, our families deserve to come here, and we deserve respect., said Ahmed Abboud, who closed his Bay Ridge bodega earlier in the day and came down with his brothers and staff.

President Trumps order suspends all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocks citizens of the seven countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days, except legal permanent residents.

Demonstrators packed in hours before the 5 pm kick-off, chanting No ban, no wall, NYC for all and We stand together. The rally began with an Islamic prayer followed by remarks from a slew of local pols and community activists urging solidarity.

We are all Muslim today, said Borough President Adams. You have the right to your American dream. And to be part of what America stands for. And this sends a loud and clear message.

Many at the rally said they have been in the U.S. for decades. But some were newer arrivals who came a few years ago fleeing political instability  only to jump out of one frying pan and into another.

The section of Bay Ridge jokingly called Bay Root for its sizable Middle Eastern community was a ghost town Thursday afternoon. More than a dozen Fifth Avenues businesses went dark for the rally, many of which with signs plastered in their storefront that read, Refugees and Immigrants are welcome here. No Muslim ban. No border wall. Our communities stand tall.

Taking a hit at the cash register was worth it to make a statement, one store owner said.

I dont even care that this is costing me, said Hussein Bahar who co-owns a bodega with his brother in Sunset Park. This is too important not to. How can I stay at home and not come out and defend myself? The people need to know we are upset.
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Brooklyn cant hold El Chapo.

Thats the message the Feds sent when they decided to keep slippery Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman in a Manhattan lockup rather than a Brooklyn jail  even though hes standing trial in Downtown Brooklyns federal court on a blockbuster, 17-count international drug-trafficking indictment.

Then again, Sunset Parks Metropolitan Detention Center  where El Chapo would likely have stayed had he been kept in the Borough of Kings  may not be the best place for an escape-artist who bribed guards to roll him out of Mexican jail in a laundry cart and later escaped another south-of-the-border lockup via a mile-long tunnel, according to an ex-con who did time in the Brooklyn detention center twice and said the jailhouse is full of security holes.

For the New York dudes that did time there, they always spoke very highly  its sweet, wide open, said Seth Ferranti, a jailbird-turned-author who did a pair of two-week stints in Brooklyn while in transit between prisons in the 1990s. Its a lot of activity of people coming in and out  so theres a lot of hustling.

Contraband, that is.

That was back in the rough-and-tumble 90s, but the high-security behemoth is apparently quite accommodating, even nowadays.

Notorious convicted cop-killer Ronell Wilson knocked up his guard after multiple trysts while doing time in 2013, and Brooklyn Federal judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered a formal investigation into the Sunset Park slammer after determining Wilson was permitted to treat the MDC as his own private fiefdom.

Reps from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which runs the detention center, say they have tightened security.

In order to mitigate life-endangering consequences of dangerous contraband introduction for both staff and inmates, including cellphones, weapons, and narcotics, BOP has deployed a number of new strategies and enhanced existing practices, spokesman Justin Long said.

But even if the jails guards were impregnable, the ground it sits on is not.

Feds crowed that El Chapo will face American justice in a city thats foundation is bedrock, during a press conference announcing his extradition to the U.S.

Thats true for the Manhattan lock-up  but Sunset Park sits atop a squishy mix of dirt and rocks deposited there by a glacier 15,000 years ago  not the tough-as-nails bedrock that Manhattan sits on, according to a local geologist.

Manhattan bedrock extends into Brooklyn, but thats up more toward Flatbush Avenue Extension, said Brooklyn College chief geology lab tech Guillermo Rocha.

The earth beneath Brooklyns jail at Second Avenue and 30th Street  a two-minute walk from the Gowanus Bay  is all sediment and boulders, he said.

A judge recently ruled that the kingpin could physically come to the Kings County courthouse, which will likely require the temporary, partial closure of the Brooklyn Bridge while U.S. Marshals transport him to and from trial.

Reach deputy editor Max Jaeger at mjaeg er@cn gloca l.com or by calling (718) 2608303. Follow him on Twitter @JustTheMax.
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A driver plowed a school bus full of kids into a fire hydrant outside a Fort Greene elementary school on Feb. 1, sending one distraught youngster to the hospital with an injured leg.

The driver picked up kids outside the educational PS 67 on St. Edwards street at Auburn Place around 3 pm, then crashed into the poles surrounding the hydrant as he was driving off, according to police.

One boys right leg was pinned inside the bus by the crash, and the pupil screamed in agony as medics came to assist him, according to ace photographer Paul Martinka, who rushed to the scene from an assignment nearby.

Emergency responders took the boy to nearby Brooklyn Hospital for treatment for lacerations to his leg, and checked out six other kids and three adults at the scene, according to the police and fire departments.

The bus driver remained at the scene and police didnt charge him with anything, authorities say.

The driver said it was an accident and he just didnt see the hydrant, according to a spokesman for the buss operator Lorinda Enterprises.

Still, the company plans to hold a hearing with the drivers union rep from Local 91, and could face discipline if they determine he did something wrong, the spokesman said.

Were very happy children were okay  were just waiting for a union representative to have formal hearing with him, said company director Corey Muirhead.

The Department of Education did not immediately comment on the crash.

A woman who picked up the phone at PS 67 inexplicably transferred the call to Downtowns PS 369. The woman who picked up the phone there said she had no idea why.

Reach deputy editor Ruth Brown at rbrow n@cng local.com or by calling (718) 2608309. Follow her at twitt er.com/ rbbro wn.
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It was Supremely safe.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor gave a decidedly apolitical talk at St. Francis College Brooklyn Heights on Thursday, disappointing some audience members by failing to discuss either President Trumps potentially unconstitutional travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim countries or his recent nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the highest bench in the land.

I was expecting her to talk about the immigration ban more, said Dragina Dzidoski, an alumnus who lives in Bensonhurst. I understand that maybe she cant discuss it, but I wanted to hear her opinion on it.

Sotomayors hour-long talk featured pre-approved questions from the audience, so she ended up focusing more issues such as being a woman in the workplace and her journey to the Supreme Court.

She did reference Gorsuch, but only to point out that he is a spring chicken by Supreme Court standards at 49 years old, which means he will serve for decades if confirmed.

But the legal eagle didnt completely play if safe  she sneaked in some veiled advice for protestors while talking about the post-inauguration Womens Marches, telling those in attendance that it is important to speak up.

Does it mean youll always be listened to? No. But sometimes youve got to keep going until you get a response, she said.

And many attendees said they appreciated what Sotomayor did share, regardless.

I think we did hear quite a bit that was current, said Assemblywoman Jo Anne Simon (DCobble Hill), who argued a case in front of Sotomayor while she was at the Manhattan Federal Court in 1993. I thought it was great.
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A rooftop heating unit at New York Universitys Tandon School of Engineering caught fire and began bellowing out clouds of black smoke on Friday afternoon, forcing the college to evacuate students and faculty from the Downtown campus.

There were no injuries as a result of what firefighters described as more of a malfunction than a raging inferno, but the irony of a broken machine hobbling a building full of tech geniuses was, of course, not lost on the whiz kids.

Thats always a classic thing here, said Brooklyn Heights junior Alex Lawson. Were a school full of engineers and everything goes wrong engineering-wise. Its no help that were all learning science.

Reporters with Brooklyn Papers New York University Rooftop Action News Bureau  which also broke the 2012 story of a leaking water tower located on the same roof  spotted smoke from their 10th-floor vantage at the newspapers Metrotech office at around 1:50 pm.

The fire broke out during demolition work on the roof, according to a school spokeswoman.

School staff were spotted attempting to combat unseen flames using handheld fire extinguishers, but their efforts only seemed to illicit larger plumes of smoke from the rooftop heating unit.

Firefighters were called to the scene at 1:53 pm, and 65 of New Yorks Bravest responded to the emergency, which was declared under control at around 2:30 pm, a spokesman for the Fire Department said.

Amid the drama, a fire alarm sent students streaming out of the building shortly after 2 pm, and some scholars were happy for a chance to skip class.

I got here and I was like yes, excuse, said senior Luis Valdez, who travels from his home on the distant isle of Manhattan for a quality Kings County education.

But others werent so thrilled about the study break, which interrupted their Zen-like focus on crucial tests.

I was in the middle of a test and I wanted to keep taking the test because I was like, Oh Im good at this and now I have to leave, said Brooklyn Heights junior Gio Abou Jaoude.

 with Lauren Gill
This episode of Greys Anatomy was a bit of a mixed bag. On the upside, it was a vast improvement over the last episodes pretentious and preachy outing. On the downside Jukebox Hero felt like an episode in limbo. So many questions. So few answers. Baby steps, yes. Better than nothing, but not entirely satisfying either. And then there was the Alex Karev of it all. To which I can only ask yet again: Seriously? SERIOUSLY??? More on that later. Hold that thought.

Greys Anatomy Recap: Orange Is The New Blah>>>





Where is Everybody?

Its not a good sign when ominous music plays underneath Merediths opening voice over. Not good at all. As the day begins, Meredith and Maggie are trying to locate Alex whos been MIA since he said goodbye to Mer the night before and went off to accept a plea deal. After searching online for clues to Alexs whereabouts, the sisters are more mystified than ever. First Maggie makes a typo which pulls up the wrong file (good thing  that perp is getting thirty to life). Then, when they finally do find the right case, confusion over deposition vs. disposition and phrases like criminal proceedings concluded and indefinitely postponed lead Meredith and Maggie to assume the worst: Alex is in jail. But where exactly? Undaunted, Meredith spends the entire day searching for him.

Meanwhile, Owen is worried and more than a little panicky when Amelia is nowhere to be found, having broken up with him by Post-It letter. After checking with Meredith to see if Amelia turned up at Casa Grey (nope), Hunt goes to work at the hospital and asks Amelias protegee, Stephanie, if she knows where Dr. Shepherd is. Stephanie replies that Amelia has taken a few days off, but neglects to mention to Hunt that Amelia is camped out at Stephanies apartment. Owen doesnt take long to figure this out and implores Stephanie to tell Amelia to come home. Stephanie relays the messages but Amelia insists that she cant do that. Owen will just try to fix things and some things cant be fixed. So true. Like this ridiculous story line. Yes, Amelia, we know. You have issues. You are wounded. You are broken. Got it. Talk to your husband like an adult and figure things out or go away and leave the man in peace.

Greys Anatomy Prepares To Lose A Doctor>>>

The Battles Begun

In other news, its Eliza Minnicks first day on the job and Richard Webber, emboldened by the support hes received from the attending surgeons, has decided to fight the impending coup. Since hitting directly could be considered nepotism (Richard is married to Catherine Avery) which could, in turn, lead to a wrongful termination lawsuit, the docs decide to be more stealthy. Minnick cant win the attendings over to her way of teaching if they refuse to work with her. And one by one (Nathan, Arizona, Jackson) they do just that. The only one to welcome Eliza into a surgery? Richard Webber, who pointedly admits to being curious. He overheard her telling Miranda that every new program she takes over has a Richard Webber. How exactly is she planning to neutralize him? #OhNoHeDidnt

A Pregnant Women Walks Into A Bar Gets into a Taxi

No, its not a punchline. Its the case of the week. Leah Murphy pulls Arizona (whos exhausted from her all-nighter at the prison from the last episode) from the Take Down Eliza meeting and into a video chat from a patient who is deep into labor and just a few blocks from the hospital. Robbins tells the patient to put her feet on the dashboard to relieve her pain and theyll meet her at the hospital entrance right away. But wait! Theres more! The taxi gets into a terrible accident as Murphy and Robbins watch the video feed in horror. Cut to the scene of the accident: taxi driver is basically fine, pregnant mom is critically injured (more so because her feet were on the dashboard), and the driver of the other car iswait for itthe womans husband, who was rushing to the hospital to be with his wife.

Long story short, the baby girl is saved, though immediate surgery is necessary. The mom is still alive, but we dont learn whether or not shell survive or if shell forgive her husband. Husband is shaken and devastated.

Robbins laments the loss of Karev, both as her mentee/friend and as a pediatric surgeon. What is she going to do without him? Arriving home that night, she hesitantly confesses her feelings to Andrew, who is  after all  the victim of Alexs assault. Awkward. Yet Andrew seems to get it. And maybe theres another layer of meaning here? Because

Ellen Pompeo To Direct An Episode Of Greys Anatomy>>>

Whos Been Sleeping in My Bed?

After searching all day for Alex to no avail, Meredith comes home and finds him sleeping in bed! Hes been there all day and seems fine. Fade to black. No explanation. Again. ARRRRGH! But at least hes okay, right? Which is more than can be said for Jo (who sulks and simmers and nearly kills a patient because shes in her own head and refuses Bens kind attempts to be supportive).

Ditto Richard and Miranda, who are having it out, again, over the remake of the hospital training procedures. Each seems to have people on their side, though both are cryptic with details. Each thinks themself in the right and the other in the wrong. This is not going to end well. How long before it explodes? And what is the deal with Alex? Hit the comments with your thoughts!

Memorable Moments and Quotes

April: You declared war on Eliza Minnick. Were ready to throw down and now youre just calling a truce before we even start?

Richard: Im no suggesting we back down. We need to be smart, strategic, organized. You just dont rush into battle. Thats what gets people killed.

Stephanie (to Eliza): No one touches the (surgical) board except Chief Bailey. If Chief Bailey even sees you lay a finger on it, she will take that finger and she will kill you. You cant take my career to the next level if youre dead.

Eliza (to an aghast Arizona): Apparently we need to hire a new Peds Surgery Chief. Seems ours went up the river. #OhNoSheDidnt

Stephanie (to Amelia, whos staying at her place): You are welcome. Its just, that was my last yogurt.

Amelia: I will go to a hotel.

Stephanie: Just go to a store!

Arizona: I need to be two people. I need Alex.

Meredith: Its Karev. K-A-R-E-V.

Clerk: Nope. Hes not in the computer. I dont have him.

Meredith: Okay. Socan we call around to some other jails?

Clerk: Sure! Cuz this is Saks Fifth Avenue.

Miranda: How goes the battle for hearts and minds?

Eliza: Change doesnt happen overnight.

Miranda: That sounds like someone whos won no hearts or minds.

Meredith: Ive been looking for you all day!

Alex: Ive been here. Ive been sleeping.

Meredith: All day?

Alex: All day.





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Campus News

Tripathi signs higher ed letter regarding immigration

By SUE WUETCHER

President Satish K. Tripathi is among leading college and university presidents from across the country to sign a letter to President Trump asking him to rectify or rescind his executive order closing U.S. borders to immigrants and others from seven predominantly Muslim countries, and to refugees from throughout the world.

The letter, drafted by Princeton University President Chris Eisgruber and University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, states that if left in place, the order threatens both American higher education and the defining principles of our country.

The executive order unfairly targets the seven countries in a manner inconsistent with Americas best principles and greatest traditions, the letter says, noting the contributions of Muslim students and scholars to both higher education and to the country exemplify the value of the religious diversity that has been a hallmark of American freedom since this countrys founding.

The American dream depends on continued fidelity to that value.

The letter points out that American higher education has benefited tremendously from this countrys long history of embracing immigrants from around the world. Their innovations and scholarship have enhanced American learning, added to our prosperity and enriched our culture.

We recognize and respect the need to protect Americas security, the letter states, noting that vigorous vetting procedures already are in place. Improvements to them should be based on evidence, calibrated to real risks and consistent with constitutional principle.

We are confident, the letter says, that our nation can craft policies that secure us from those who wish to harm us, while welcoming those who seek to study, conduct research and scholarship, and contribute their knowledge and talents to our country.

Tripathi signed a similar statement last fall supporting the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and undocumented immigrant students.

In a Jan. 30 letter to the university community in response to Trumps executive order, Tripathi said UB is committed to remaining a welcoming campus for students, faculty and visitors from across the globe regardless whether current and pending executive actions affect access to the U.S. for anyone from designated countries.

UB continues to monitor the executive order and other possible actions that may affect the universitys international students, faculty, visiting scholars and staff.

Members of the UB community concerned about the issue can find the latest information on a new Immigration Update website managed by the Office of International Education. The office is actively assisting 122 UB students and 20 faculty, staff and scholars who are impacted by the executive order.
Twenty sixteen proved to be a year of significant change for the Rainy Day Trust. Not only did the charity become a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, but it also launched a whole series of new programmes, specifically designed to tackle the impact of low income in the industry.

The Rainy Day Trust has, and always will be, a grant maker. It provides financial assistance where and when it is needed and, in 2016, the number of people the charity helped grew by nearly 20%. The amount of money it awarded grew by 23%.

Offering financial help is just one part of what the Trust now does. If someone needs a new washing machine because they cant afford it themselves then thats what the charity is here to do. The charity now asks the following questions: Why cant you afford it and what can we do to help you buy it yourself next time? It isnt about offering judgement; its about offering support to overcome whatever difficulty is acting as a barrier, says the charity.

The Rainy Day Trust now offers free housing advice in partnership with Shelter to cover everything from dealing with difficult landlords, to what to do about mortgage arrears or how to seek help with a boundary issue. It has an e-learning package designed to help people re-train or upskill, and it even supports apprentices to give them a better chance of passing their course and securing a full-time job.

The Trust also provides a winter fuel pack, which will service someones boiler and pay towards fuel bills. A telephone-based counselling offering is also available to help deal with bereavement, anxiety or stress.

Finally, the charity has just launched a new debt advice partnership with the Debt Advice Foundation, which helps callers deal with personal debt, identify the right solution and reduce stress in the process.

If you would like to work more closely with the Rainy Day Trust, e-mail chief executive officer Bryan Clover at bryan@rainydaytrust.org.uk.
Daylight saving time ends soon, but will it soon be the new normal?
is likely to begin producing iPhones for the local market in Bengaluru as early as April this year, helping bring down the cost of its premium devices and appealing to a larger base of buyers.
Indian IT sector leaders will meet both US lawmakers and officials from US President Donald Trump's administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country's $150 billion .

R Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of India's big IT would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of Feb 20.

India's software services is concerned about a bill introduced in the US Congress seeking to double the salary paid to H-1B visa holders which would dramatically increase the costs for the Indian employing them.

Indian IT service use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the US, their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace US jobs.

Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a US labour shortage in the tech sector.

Chandrashekhar told Reuters that the visit would also seek to emphasise the "the economic partnership that is being built between the two countries."

India's IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services , Infosys and Wipro , have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the US presidential election.

IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire US firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.

"Immigration concerns were a risk item, always there, but they are more pronounced now," said a senior executive at L&T Technology Services , who declined to be named.

Speculation that Trump may issue an executive order curbing the H-1B programme sent shares in IT companies tumbling this week.

An Indian consultant working for Infosys in the US said many of his colleagues were "dejected," while another engineer working for Cisco in North Carolina said management had called in an immigration attorney to reassure employees.

India's Ministry of External Affairs said it had expressed its concerns to the US government.

"No executive order has been signed so far," Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for the ministry told reporters on Thursday. "Such bills have been introduced in the past too and such bills have to go through the full Congressional process. So let's not prejudge the outcome."
Apple is looking to produce lower-cost at its upcoming facility in Bengaluru as it looks to gain a price advantage in the market in which it has been a fringe player so far.
companies, both domestic and foreign, have increased prices by 2-5 per cent, attributing the hike to the increase in rubber prices and to margin pressures.
On February 5, when Yogesh Chander Deveshwar steps down from his role as chief executive officer, after a stint spanning more than two decades, he would be leavingfor his successor an ITC very different from the one he inherited.
In a significant development, the Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear afresh the aspect of awarding death penalty to four convicts in the sensational December 16, 2012 gangrape and murder case.

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra prima facie agreed with the contention of senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting it as the amicus curiae, that the provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC), relating to sentencing of convicts, has not been followed in letter and spirit by the trial court in the case.

It was submitted that section 235 of the CrPC provides that an accused, in the event of conviction, would be heard by on the question of sentencing individually before the trial judge passes the order awarding punishment.

The bench, also comprising justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, then mulled ways to rectify the apparent error and said there are two modes: either the case be remanded back to the trial court to pass a fresh order on sentence or the apex court itself hears this aspect of the matter afresh.

The bench then said, "We think the second mode is more appropriate. We would like to give the opportunity to the accused persons to file affidavits along with documents stating mitigating circumstances."

It then permitted M L Sharma and A P Singh, lawyers representing the convicts, to visit the condemned prisoners in Tihar jail here to apprise them about today's order so as to enable them to file affidavits detailing mitigating circumstances in their favour.

The court, which said the convicts are required to file affidavits by February 23, decided to keep hearing the appeals on the substantial issue of conviction in the matter.

It will decide the future date for hearing afresh the arguments on sentencing on February 6.

The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gangraped by six persons in a moving bus in south Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The trial court had awarded death penalty to convicts, Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh. While fifth and one of the key accused, Ram Singh, allegedly committed suicide inside jail during the trial.

Earlier also, the court had asked the convicts to file their responses detailing mitigating circumstances favouring them on the issue of sentencing.

Besides senior advocate Ramachandran, another senior lawyer Sanjay Hegde is also assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter.

While Ramachandran is assisting the court in appeals of convicts Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde is assisting in appeals of other two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh.

Ramachandran had said that the trial court and the high court were "so overwhelmed by the nature of the crime" that they did not follow the proper procedure for sentencing the accused in the instant case.

He had submitted that the courts below did not consider the mitigating circumstances of individual accused in the case.

These four convicts had approached the apex court against the Delhi High Court's March 13, 2014 verdict which had observed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and had upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court.

The prime accused, Ram Singh, was found dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated.
The Supreme Court on Friday asked the Centre to prepare a comprehensive policy for implementation of a plan within four weeks for the eradication of .

A bench of Chief Justice J S Khehar and justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud said the Centre should also submit the plan as how it intends to fill the large-scale vacancy at the ground level.

"You need people to successfully implement your policies at the ground level," the bench told the Centre.

Standing Counsel Bala Subramanium appearing for the Centre said Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are endemic states and efforts are being made to eradicate the disease.

He said an online programme is being launched to detect the patients and their treatment.

Earlier, the apex court had asked the Centre and state governments to apprise it of steps taken to eradicate and curb leprosy, saying it was their responsibility to stop the spread of the disease which is curable.

The bench which was hearing a PIL filed by advocate Pankaj Sinha had earlier rapped the authorities for their "apathy" in eradicating from the country, saying despite it being "curable", the disease still remains a stigma.

Earlier too, the apex court had granted time for filing of replies by the Centre and others and had said, "This is a case which should have been taken on a priority basis. Leprosy, as on today, is curable and yet because of apathy shown by the authorities concerned, it still remains a stigma."



Sinha, in his plea, has alleged that leprosy affects over 1.25 lakh people annually in the country.

He had also alleged that governments have failed to eliminate the disease despite medical treatment available since 1981.

"Despite an effective cure, namely Multi-Drug Therapy (MDT) which has been available since 1981, that can completely cure 99 per cent of leprosy bacteria, due to apathy of the government of India and the state governments, people are still suffering from the said disease, which is treated as a social stigma," the petition said.

It has sought a direction to the governments that drugs be made available at primary centres in the country.

It also pleaded that an appropriate scheme should be formulated to bring people suffering from leprosy into the national mainstream.
Violence continued in the capital on Thursday as a mob went on rampage, burning down several government properties and vandalised government vehicles in protest against Chief Minister TR Zeliang's refusal to meet their demand on local body polls.

Over a thousand tribesmen armed with spears and machetes took to the streets and set afire the old secretariat building which housed the offices of Kohima Municipal Council, Regional Transport Office and State Disaster Management Authority and damaged government vehicles.

The tribal bodies were demanding the resignation of Zeliang's cabinet following the government's decision to hold local body elections in 12 towns across the state and the killing of two persons in the state following clashes between the police and the public at Dimapur, the commercial hub of on Tuesday night.

Naga People's Front legislator Neiphrezo Keditsu on Thursday submitted his resignation as Chairman of Nagaland State Mineral Development Corporation (NSMDC) Limited on moral ground since one of the person killed at Dimapur police firing happens to be from his own village.

"The situation is totally volatile. The mobs are on rampage. We are making all attempts to bring the situation under control," Nagaland Police Chief, L.L. Doungel told IANS.

Troopers of Assam Rifles have been deployed in Kohima to assist police to tackle the situation.

The tribal bodies vowed to continue with their protests till Chief Minister Zeliang steps down.

The state government has shut down internet and mobile data service to stop the spread of rumours through social networking sites, a government official said.

Zeliang, who said he is distressed by the unfortunate turn of events in the last few days, asserted he enjoys the full support of not only his party legislators  the Naga People's Front and Independent legislators besides the BJP legislators and party have also reaffirmed their support.

On the demand of his government's resignation, Zeliang said: "Making unreasonable and unconstitutional demands such as asking the entire cabinet to tender resignation when the ministry have undisputed, unquestionable majority and support of the entire assembly, is simply unacceptable and non-negotiable."

Confirming the resignation of Keditsu "owing to immense pressure from various quarters" on moral ground, he said no other legislator has resigned.

Appealing to citizens not to indulge in senseless vandalism and arson destroying public properties and spreading fear and panic in the minds of peace-loving citizens, he said that the government had been lenient enough to give in to the demands of the agitators even though it was steadfastly abiding by the Constitution.

He also appealed to all social media users to be responsible and desist from spreading false, malicious rumours.

"Governments come and go, and people in authority change but public property, which belong to all of us, shall continue to belong to us and posterity. It would be sheer stupidity on our part to destroy our own property since it would be akin to cutting off our own limbs," said a statement from his office.

The tribal bodies have been opposing the Naga People's Front government's decision to hold the elections with 33 per cent women reservation, stating it infringes on the special rights for Nagaland guaranteed by Article 371 (A) of the constitution.
The government on Friday appointed noted economist as the principal economic adviser in the Ministry of Finance.

"The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) has approved the appointment of Sanjeev Sanyal, former Global Strategist and Managing Director, Deutsche Bank, to the post of Principal Economic Adviser in the Department of Economic Affairs," an official statement said.

He has been appointed in a pay scale of Rs 67,000-79,000 for a period of three years.

In 2007, Sanyal was awarded the Eisenhower Fellowship for his work on urban issues and was also honoured by the Singapore government at the World Cities Summit 2014.

He attended Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi and St. John's College, Oxford, where he was Rhodes Scholar.

Sanyal has authored several books, including Land of the Seven Rivers: A Brief History of India's Geography, The Indian Renaissance: India's Rise After a Thousand Year's of Decline and The Incredible History of India's Geography.

He has been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, London, Visiting Scholar at Oxford University, Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore, and a Senior Fellow of the World Wide Fund for Nature (formerly World Wildlife Fund).
The will hear a plea later Friday that property belonging to former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanithi should not be released in the wake of their acquittal in the Aircel-Maxis case by the trial court.

The bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice N V Ramana and Justice D Y Chandrachud said that they will hear the matter in the post-lunch session at 2 pm, after Special Public Prosecutor Anand Grover mentioned the matter for an urgent hearing.

The CBI had alleged that Dayanidhi Maran, as Union minister in the UPA-I government, used his influence to help Malaysian businessman T A Ananda Krishnan buys Aircel by coercing its owner Sivasankaran to part with his stake.

Sivasankaran alleged that Maran favoured the Maxis Group in the takeover of his company. In return, he alleged, the company made investments through Astro Network in a company stated to be owned by the Maran family.
Railways

While presenting the Economic Survey, an annual report on the economy, on Tuesday, Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian said that two new methods of data analysis, including a railway passenger data based metric, reveal that Indians are migrating in far larger numbers for economic reasons to other states than they did previously.

In 2001-11, the rate nearly doubled as compared to the previous decade, rising to 4.5% per annum from 2.4% in 1991-01, noted the Survey. The acceleration in the rate of migration is particularly high for women  during the 2000s, females migrated at nearly twice the rate of males.

Yet, in contrast to international migration trends, the free movement of people across states has not led to poorer states with low health outcomes becoming less poor and more healthy, said the Survey.

Migration doubled

The decadal Censuses, of which the last was held in 2011, estimate the annual average number of inter-state in India to be 3.3 million.

The Census defines a migrant as such: When a person is enumerated in census at a different place than his/her place of birth, she/he is considered a migrant.

However, the Survey put out new migration figures that are significantly greater than those put out by the Census or any other previous study.

In a chapter on inter-state migration titled India On The Move and Churning: New Evidence, the Survey estimated that between 2001 and 2011, annual inter-state labour mobility averaged at least 5-6 million people, yielding an inter-state migrant population of about 60 millon and an inter-district migration as high as 80 million.

It arrived at these estimates using a new methodology called Cohort-based Migration Metric at state and district levels.

The rate of economic migration is twice of what it was to prior to the 2000s, finds the Economic Survey.

This was the first time the Survey used origin-destination monthly railway data on unreserved passenger traffic between every pair of stations between 2011-16 as a proxy for work-related migrant flow.

This class of travel serves less affluent people, who are more likely to travel for work-related reasons, noted the Survey.

For the 2011-16 period, the Economic Survey estimated that nearly nine million people migrated between states annually. The analysis excluded those traveling within 200 km.

A new method of analysis using passenger traffic data showed that metros accounted for the highest inflows for work, followed by industrialised states.

According to the Survey, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and even Kerala are net in-migration states (the rate at which people move in). There was lower in-migration into Maharashtra than before.

Higher out-migration states were Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh. There was lower out-migration in Assam in this period than previous years.

Chandigarh, Delhi, Gurugram in Haryana, Gautam Budh Nagar in western Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest net in-migration. Hamirpur in Himachal Pradesh, Churu and Pali in Rajasthan, Uttarkashi and Chamoli in Uttarakhand, Muzzafranagar and Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh, Darbhanga and Gopalganj in Bihar were among districts with highest net out-migration.

Language did not seem to be a barrier to the movement of people.

The Survey also found that female migration for work is growing at twice the rate of migration by males. This is so even though in the last few years the growth in the female workforce has not happened at a correspondingly fast rate. Between 1991 to 2001, and 2001 to 2011, men giving economic reasons for migration grew from 2.7% to 4%. Among women it increased from 0.4% between 1991 and 2001, to 7.5% between 2001 and 2011.

Inequalities increasing

Though nearly twice the number of persons are migrating for economic opportunities than before, this has not translated into reducing the gap between well-off and underdeveloped states.

In a chapter on health and income, the Survey found that despite overall growth, there continues to be divergence in India, or an aggravation of regional inequality.

It noted: During the 2000s, China posted a convergence rate of nearly 3 percent in income which implies that the poorest province will catch up with half the level of the richest province in 23 yearsThe evidence so far suggests that in India, catch-up remains elusive.

The report said that it is unclear why even the free movement of people across porous state borders is not helping reduce inequalities across regions.

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Businesses and professionals could soon have to pay salaries of Rs 10,000 or more to their employees through cheque or bank transfer if they want to claim tax credit, reported the Times of India on Friday.



According to the report, this is part of the government's focus on moving towards a less-cash economy. However, this would apply to businesses and not individuals.
In order to prevent misuse, the Finance Ministry could suggest a 30-day window within which would need to redeem the soon-to-be-introduced Reserve Bank of India (RBI) electoral bonds. Measures aimed at reducing the incidence of black, or unaccounted, money in political funding were among the major highlights of the Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday.
Antibiotic Resistance

There has been an increase in the antibiotic resistance in the past few years. There are many publications from various institutions in India showing high level of resistance to antibiotics.

Government of India has launched the National Programme on Containment of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) under the 12th Five Year Plan under which a surveillance lab network of ten labs has been established to monitor trends of AMR in the country. The trends from AMR data gathered in the year 2015 from these tertiary care centres show high resistance to commonly used antibiotics for treatment of bacterial infections.

Through various studies conducted in various institutions in India, it is a known fact that over/ mis-use of antimicrobial drugs are responsible for rising antimicrobial resistance in human, animal and food sectors.

Other factors are inadequate sanitation and infection control practices in health care settings and also in the community.
Demand of Point of Sales (PoS) / Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines in the country The demand of such machines in the country has increased after November 9, 2016, which is evident from the fact that during the months of November and December 2016, 2.52 lakh PoS machines have been installed. Neither the Government has undertaken any study to assess the number of PoS machines needed to ensure smooth cashless economy in the country nor Government has any proposal for procuring PoS machines. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued guidelines to prevent PoS fraud and directed the banks to add more security features in credit and debit cards to stop frauds, vide its circular dated May 26, 2016 on upgradation of ATMS and cards. Public Sector banks have been advised by the Government to structure rental payments in such a manner that the small merchant does not have to pay more than Rs. 100 per month rental on installation of PoS terminals. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has committed to support banks through the Financial Inclusion Fund for deployment of up to two PoS devices per village, to cover one lakh villages of Tier 5 and 6 areas. This was stated by Shri Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Healthcare in India

There are various estimates for world average for number of beds per 1000 population. As per High Level Expert Group for UHC, it is 2.9 beds per 1000 population while higher estimates in the range of 3.5 are also quoted. In January 2016 as reported by CBHI, about 7.71 lakhs beds are available in public healthcare facilities. In addition, there are IPD beds in private healthcare facilities too.

There is unmet need of specialized care and large number of people has no or poor access to specialized care. Unmet need and poor access can lead to mortality. As per SRS 2015 death rate in India is 6.5 while it was 6.7 in 2014.

The Government of India has implemented PMSSY with the primary objective of correcting the imbalances in availability of affordable/reliable tertiary level healthcare in the country in general and to augment facilities for quality medical education in the under-served States. Several new AIIMS are being set up and existing medical institutions are being upgraded under PMSSY.

The Govt. of India launched the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) in 2005 to supplement the efforts of the State/UT governments to provide accessible, affordable and quality healthcare to the citizens. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) has now been subsumed under the National Health Mission (NHM) as its Sub-Mission, along with National Urban health Mission (NUHM) as the other Sub-Mission. Under the NHM, support is provided to State/UTs to strengthen their health systems including support for setting up/upgradation of health Centres on the basis of requirements posed by the States in their Programme Implementation Plans. 492 MCH Wings with bed capacity of more than 30000 have also been approved under NHM.

The Minister of State (Health and Family Welfare), Sh Faggan Singh Kulaste stated this in a written reply in the Lok Sabha here today.
Joint Military Exercise between India and Maldives

India and Maldives conduct joint military exercise named Exercise EKUVERIN alternatively in India and Maldives with participation of an Infantry platoon from each side. The latest exercise was conducted in Maldives in December 2016.

The objectives of the exercise are to enhance defence cooperation and interoperability between the army of both countries with emphasis on Counter Insurgency and Counter Terrorist operations under UN mandate. This information was given by Minister of State for Defence Dr. Subhash Bhamre in a written reply to Shri Naranbhai Kachhadiya in Lok Sabha today.
Steps taken for Welfare of Jute Workers

In order to assess the living conditions of jute workers, a study on the Socio-Economic Conditions of Jute Mill Workers was conducted in 2015-16 by National Jute Board (NJB). The findings of the study, inter alia, indicate that 96.4% workers have electricity in their houses; that 91% of the families have piped water supply; that 99% of the workers have access to toilets; and that the mill workers have health coverage under ESI.

Government of India provides an assured market to the jute sector under the Jute Packaging Materials Act (JPM), 1987. Under this Act, Government has mandated that 90% of foodgrains and 20% of sugar be packed in jute bags. The annual subsidy for this amounts to Rs.5,500 crores approximately. Apart from this, the National Jute Board (NJB) has been implementing several measures for the benefit of workers, artisans and small producers and for promotion of the jute industry. These include:

(i). Workers Welfare Scheme (SulabhSauchalaya) for improvement of sanitation, health facilities and working conditions of jute mill workers.

(ii). Incentives to Children of Jute Mill Workers for extending support to the Workers' families towards education of their children through a scholarship scheme.

(iii). Export Market Development AssistanceScheme to facilitate registered manufacturer exporters of jute products to participate in international fairs and take business delegations abroad for export promotion of lifestyle and other diversified jute products.

(iv). Retail Outlet of Jute Diversified Products Scheme for providing assistance to jute entrepreneurs for opening of outlets of jute lifestyle jute products in Metro Cities, State capitals, District Head Offices and Tourist spots; and

(v). Focused Market Initiatives for organising and participation in Jute Fairs, National Fairs / Regional Fairs, Export oriented fairs in India & abroad to extend marketing support to the artisans, small and micro entrepreneurs:

The above information was given by the Union Textiles Minister, Smt. Smriti Zubin Irani today, in a written reply to a Rajya Sabha question.
Use of USSD for Cashless Payments

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has introduced USSD for mobile banking. It is an interoperable payment platform, comprising of customers 51 banks & 11 telecom operators in India, which provide basic banking services in 9 different languages, including Hindi & English, to under-banked / un-banked customers across India.

USSD works both on smart phones and feature phones. *99# service of NPCI uses the USSD technology to make banking services accessible wherever voice grade mobile signals are available. USSD works on feature phone and without internet. It will help rural accountholders to carry out fund transfer through mobile banking. This was stated by Shri Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
Visit of Trade Delegation to Iran

20 member trade delegation led by Chairman, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) visited Iran from January 28-30, 2017. The main purpose of the visit related to promotion of export of rice since Iran is one of the largest importers of Basmati rice from India. About 250 people participated in the sales promotion event held at Hotel Espinas Palace, Tehran. On the spot preparation of Iranian dishes prepared by Iranian Chefs with use of Indian rice was demonstrated and served as part of the lunch. Participants included about 30 media personnel, importers, inspection agencies and government officials from Food and Drug Organisation (FDO) etc.

Film of about 3.5 minutes duration was screened depicting different aspects of Basmati cultivation, processing, issue of health certificate and assurance of Indian rice being GMO free. The delegation met various departments in the government of Iran including Food and Drug Organisation, Governmental Trading Corporation and Trade Promotion Organisation. Meetings were also held with Iran Chamber of Commerce and Rice Importers Association. The deliberations helped to dispel the negative publicity which appeared in some part of Iran media causing doubts about the health and safety of rice from India. Government of Iran may soon issue the notification about resumption of issuance of permits for import of rice. To supplement domestic production of about 2 million MT, Iran imports about 1 million MT of rice every year out of which about 7 lakh MT is exported from India. MJPS
WCD Ministry holds national consultation to discuss issues related to Indias accession to Hague Convention on Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction

The Ministry of Women and Child Development held a National Consultation to discuss issues related to Indias accession to Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, in New Delhi today. The consultation was chaired by the Minister of Women and Child Development, Smt. Maneka Sanjay Gandhi.The consultation was attended by Honble Justice Mukta Gupta and Honble Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva of Delhi High Court, Honble Justice Inderjit Singh and Honble Justice Anita Chaudhury of Punjab and Haryana High Court, Honble Justice (Retd) Rakesh Kumar Garg, Chairman of Punjab NRI Commission; Honble Justice Ravi R. Tripathi, Member of Law Commission, Smt. Pinki Anand, Additional Solicitor General of India, Smt. Stuti Kacker, Chairperson, NCPCR, members of legal fraternity as well as parents who have been affected. Representatives of MEA, MHA, NHRC and NCW were also present.Addressing the participants, Smt Maneka Sanjay Gandhi said that a large number of women married to Indians abroad are compelled to return to India with their children when they undergo violence in their marriages. She expressed concern at the difficulties being faced by the affected parent, whether men or women and their children as a result of breakdown of marriages abroad. However, the women who have suffered from violence in marriages abroad far exceed men, she added. After listening to the viewpoints expressed by all the stakeholders , the WCD Minister opined that the problems being faced by the parents must be addressed and an effective mechanism for the same must be created. A model legislation to safeguard not only the interests of the child but also of the parents, especially women must also be developed, Smt Maneka Gandhi concluded.Accordingly, based on the discussions and guidance given by the Honble Judges, it was decided that the Chandigarh Judicial Academy Chandigarh along with NRI Commission of Punjab to examine in detail the legal issues involved by taking all viewpoints into account including those of suffering women.

They will give recommendations as to how the problems of parents and children involved in such situations can be addressed. They will also study the draft Protection of Children (Inter-Country Removal and Retention) Bill, 2016 . It was also decided that if a model legislation is required to safeguard the interests of parents and children, the same will be drafted. It was decided that this exercise will be completed in four months. Hague Convention is a multilateral treaty which came into existence on 1st December, 1983. The convention seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of abduction and retention across international boundaries by providing a procedure to bring about their prompt return. The convention is intended to enhance the international recognition of rights of custody and access arising in place of habitual residence, and to ensure prompt return of the child who is wrongfully removed or retained from the place of habitual residence. It seeks to return children abducted or retained overseas by a parent to their country of habitual residence for the courts of that country to decide on matters of residence and contact. The convention shall apply to any child, up to the age of 16 years who is a habitual resident of any of the contacting states. Currently, there is no specific Indian legislation addressing issues related to abduction of children from and into India. However Law Commission of India had submitted the 218th Report titled Need to accede to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 1980" on 30th March, 2009. In view of this report, before acceding to the Convention, the Ministry of Women and Child Development prepared a draft Bill titled The Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction Bill, 2016". The draft Bill was placed on the Ministrys website for comments and suggestions from various stakeholders. The Law Commission of India has recently suggested some modifications in the above mentioned Bill and re-named it as the The Protection of Children (Inter-country Removal and Retention) Bill, 2016".
The benchmark indices on Friday continued to trade lower as investors kept to the sidelines ahead of the Reserve Bank of India's policy meeting next week.
The coastline of Chennai and Ennore, which are affected by oil spill, is expected to be cleaned up completely by tomorrow.

"Marina Beach will be cleaned completely by tomorrow. We have already already completed 80 percent of it," Rajan Bargotra, IG, Coast Guard, told ANI.

It is, however, feared that it would take longer to get rid of the oil coating from the affected beaches.

The Indian Coast Guard, the coordinating agency for removal of the oil sludge, also said there are no traces of oil spill inwards into the sea, though a few stretches of the coasts near Ennore Kamarajar Port remain blackened with the oil pollutants.

On January 28, a large amount of oil spilled into the sea following the collision of two ships - MT Dawn Kancheepuram and MT Maple, near the port at Ennore, 30 km off Chennai.

The Kamarajar Port officials had initially declined of any such accidents. The spilled heavy furnace oil, however, later landed on the seashore of Ennore upto Thiruvanmiyur beach polluting a coastal line of about 24 km.

A massive clean up operation was then launched with more than 2,000 people as told to ANI by Union Shipping Minister Pon Radhakrishnan.

"The cleaning work is going on. The state and the centre are coordinating. And we will take another day or two to finish off the work," Radhakrishnan added.

It was assured that marine life of the sea will not be affected.

"Coast Guard is giving full support so that there is no loss to marine life," S Parmesh, IG, Coast Guard said.

It's estimated that over 20 tonne of oil had spilled into the Bay of Bengal, with 40 tonne of oil sludge and 27 tonne of oil mixture and water already removed.

Full-fledged clean up operations had begun only a day after the collision. The Coast Guard along with personnel from the state government, the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the Kamarajar Port and local fishermen were joined by hundreds of volunteering youth and college students in removing the oil slick manually and using dispersing agents.

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The Congress Party on Friday demanded a probe by parliamentary committee into circumstances surrounding former union minister and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader E. Ahamed's death.

He accused that the medical status of the deceased MP was hidden just to proceed with the Budget Session on February 1.

"Want statement from government for its 'inhuman' approach towards E. Ahamed. We demand an enquiry into the issue," leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge said.

Kharge added that after collapse, E. Ahamed was taken to hospital but no official announcement of his health status was made.

Ahamed passed away in the wee hours of Wednesday morning at the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) hospital, after he suffered a cardiac arrest in the Parliament.

The minister was admitted in a critical condition after suffering a cardiac arrest during the President's address in both Houses on Tuesday.

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Reacting to the Muslim ban in the U.S. for the first time, Pakistan has said it is every country's sovereign right to regulate its immigration policy and decide who could enter their territory, but at the same time expressed concern that this move could become a propaganda opportunity for extremists.

"It is every country's sovereign right to decide its immigration policy," Foreign Office spokesman Nafees Zakaria said on Thursday at his weekly media briefing.

The spokesman, however, asked the US administration to consider "humanitarian and political dimensions" of the decision, reports the Dawn.

Meanwhile, Trump's decision to indefinitely bar the Syrian refugees from entering the country, suspend all refugee admissions for 120 days and block citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries namely Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days has been widely condemned.

It is facing legal challenge within the United States and experts believe that it also contravenes international law.

"Countries would be well advised to adopt policies that are not susceptible to be exploited as propaganda tools by entities wishing to see cracks in the coalition against extremism and terrorism along religious lines," said Zakaria.

The spokesman also underscored the importance that Pakistan attached to its relations with the U.S.

"Pakistan and the US have longstanding and cooperative relations in diverse fields and we look forward to further strengthen these ties," he said.

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In the wake of the missile test by Tehran, the United States is likely to impose additional sanctions on Iran under existing executive orders that predate President Donald Trump.

Citing sources familiar with the move, the CNN reports that the additional sanctions are in response to Iran's ballistic missile test Sunday.

They are similar to actions taken by former President Barack Obama after Iran's previous ballistic missile tests.

In a letter to Trump, a bipartisan group of senators said "Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities, from sponsoring terrorist groups to continued testing of ballistic missiles."

"Full enforcement of existing sanctions and the imposition of additional sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program are necessary," the letter said.

Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn condemned Wednesday Iran's recent ballistic missile test launch, calling it a "provocative" breach of a UN Security Council resolution. Iran denies that's it's violated any UN mandate.

However, Iranian adviser, Ali Akbar Velayati, dismissed what he called the US leader's "baseless ranting" and said that even Americans were not satisfied with "Trump's extremism," according to Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency.

Speaking to reporters Thursday in Tehran, Velayati blasted Trump as lacking sufficient experience, saying he should take lessons from his predecessor, Barack Obama and asserted that all test-fired missiles were defensive and that Iran did not need to seek permission to carry out such activities.

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In the latest development in the Nirbhayai Gangrape Case, the Supreme Court on Friday directed the superintendent of the Tihar Jail to allow the lawyers of the convicts to meet them and file a detailed affidavit within two weeks related to the circumstances in which the brutal offence was committed by them.

The hearing on the case will continue tomorrow and will be held at 10.30 am at the Apex Court.

The date for rehearing sentencing of the case will be decided on February 6.

Earlier, the Supreme Court had accepted Amicus Curiae Raju Ramachandran's submissions that there has been violation of procedure with regard to the sentencing of the four convicts.

In his written submissions, the senior advocate listed six fundamental errors committed by the trial court while awarding death sentences, including not taking the mitigating circumstances of the accused persons into consideration and not hearing them in person on their punishment.

Amicus curiae refers to someone who is not a party to the case but volunteers to offer information on a point of law or some other aspect of the case to assist the court in deciding a matter before it.

A Bench of Justices Dipak Misra, R. Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan then decided that it would hear afresh the matter with regard to sentencing of the four convicts.

The four convicts - Akshay, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh - have challenged the Delhi High court order which had sentenced them to the gallows after keeping in view the fact that it was a rarest of the rare case.

The Apex court had on April 4 begun final hearing of the convicts' appeal almost two years after staying their execution.

Two of the four death-row convicts had written to Chief Justice T. S. Thakur and Justice Deepak Misra, stating that they do not approve of the defence counsel appointed by the court to argue their case before the top court as they had given statements against them to the media in the past.

The trial court in September 2013 had awarded death sentences to the convicts. Six months later, the Delhi High Court upheld their conviction and sentence. All the convicts moved the apex court in 2014, which stayed their execution. Six people, including a juvenile, had brutally assaulted the woman in a moving bus in South Delhi.

Later, the accused threw out the victim and her male friend at an isolated spot. She died in a Singapore hospital on December 29, 2012, triggering nation-wide protests that resulted in giving more teeth to laws related to rape and other forms of sexual harassment.

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After Pakistan placed Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Mohammad Saeed and 34 colleagues on the Exit Control list, the ruling regime has blamed the former Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Government for the present situation and messing up the case.

A Ministry of Interior spokesman on Wednesday said that the previous government did not take the required actions under the 2008 United Nations resolution, designating Saeed's organisation as a terrorist outfit.

"As a matter of record, the actions taken by the government of Pakistan have been carried out as per obligations vis-a-vis listing of Jamaatud Dawa under UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in December 2008," the Nation quoted the spokesman as saying.

The spokesperson's remarks came in reaction to an Indian statement that said only a credible crack down on the Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and terrorist organizations involved in cross border terrorism would be proof of Pakistan's sincerity.

"Various actions that needed to be taken under the relevant resolution, i.e. arms embargo, travel ban and asset freeze, were not carried out for some reasons by the previous governments," the spokesperson said without naming the PPP.

"The international community should take note and understand that Pakistan is a democratic society where judiciary takes free, independent and transparent decisions," he said.

The Interior Ministry spokesperson said if India is serious about its allegations then it should come up with concrete evidence against Saeed, which is sustainable in the court of law in Pakistan or anywhere in the .

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Pakistan's former interior minister & chairman, Senate Standing Committee on Interior and Narcotics Control, Senator A. Rehman Malik has appealed global leaders not to use the word 'Islamic terrorism' as Islam teaches peace like all other religions.

In his speech on "Current Affairs and Global Threat of Terrorism" at the United Nations Conference in University College London on Sunday, he said it is time to realise and admit our mistake if we as state, organization or individual had made in past due to which today the whole is suffering of ongoing terrorism and extremism.

Malik appealed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and U.S. President Donald Trump on behalf of entire Muslim Umah not to use the word 'Islamic terrorism' as it is hurtful and offensive and as the religion teaches peace like all other religions, reports the Nation.

He added that President Trump must know that disgruntled criminals are using the name of Islam and U.S as country is signatory to Baguio Conference 1995, where these terrorists have been named as "religious extremists".

"Certainly no one will call it Christian terrorist if the Christians kill innocent people in USA/ Ireland/ other place," he added.

He also drew attention towards the problems and crisis of terrorism stricken countries particularly Pakistan which is suffering due to terrorism since the Afghanistan War.

He said that the international community did not learn lesson from the creation of Jehadis in Afghanistan, which became the source of Terrorism from Manila to New York.

He detailed the terror attacks in Pakistan during 2003-2017 (to date) and said in total 61,554 were killed, out of these 21,526 were civilians, 6,669, security force personnel and 33,359 terrorists or insurgents.

"We must accept that terrorism and extremism are byproduct of conflicts, invasions and disputes, so we have to solve the conflicts to have peaceful world," he said.

He also appealed the community to let us give due importance to interfaith harmony and peace with real meaning.

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A woman from Ugandan origin was allegedly murdered last night in Bengaluru by a youth over a trivial row at her house in Kothanur.

The deceased, N. Florence, had met Ishan, a B. Tech student and native of Himachal Pradesh, at MG Road and later took him to her house in Thimmegowda layout allegedly for sexual favours after he promised to pay her Rs. 5,000.

According to the police, Florence soon after reaching home had demanded Rs. 10,000 and threatened Ishan at knife point.

Heated arguments ensued and took an ugly turn when Ishan snatched the knife and stabbed her to death.

The investigation is currently underway.

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Over 100,000 visas have been revoked since US President Donald Trump's temporary travel ban a week ago, media reports said.

According to the Washington Post on on Friday, the attorney revealed the data during a hearing in a lawsuit filed on behalf of two Yemeni brothers who arrived last Saturday at an Dulles airport near Washington D.C. but were sent back to Ethiopia due to the controversial order issued.

"The number 100,000 sucked the air out of my lungs," Xinhua news agency quoted Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represents the brothers.

For people like the Yemeni brothers, the US administration appears to be attempting a case-by-case reprieve. They and other plaintiffs in lawsuits around the US are being offered new visas and the opportunity to come to the US in exchange for dropping their suits.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer, when asked about the case during his daily briefing, said he had no information about it.

The White House has downplayed the order's effects on people in transit after chaos and protests erupted at airports around the country last Friday.

Under the executive order Trump signed on January 27, refugees from all over the world will be suspended US entry for 120 days while all immigration from so-called "countries with terrorism concerns" will be suspended for 90 days.

Countries included in the ban are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Last Sunday, thousands of protesters rallied before the White House, at more than 30 US airports and in big cities including Boston, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Seattle and Chicago.
At least 92,000 people have been displaced since the last October attacks on police posts in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, officials told reporters here.

spokesperson Stephane Dujarric on Thursday made the remarks by citing information from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Xinhua news agencyreported.

This includes some 69,000 people who have fled across the border into Bangladesh, Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The UN estimates that 23,000 people remain displaced in the north of Maungdaw Township where security operations continue, the spokesperson said.

"After a three-month interruption in most aid deliveries provided by UN agencies and partners in northern Rakhine, the government has allowed an incremental resumption of some activities," Dujarric said.

"With staff still facing severe movement restrictions, national staff are distributing food and other items in most villages," he said.

"While health clinics and nutrition centres have re-opened in most areas, few people have been accessing them, as the situation remains tense," he said. "People are still afraid to move freely to access services, and movement is restricted by a travel pass requirement."

The UN is calling for the relaxation of travel restrictions in northern Rakhine, both for local people who are impeded in accessing humanitarian aid and basic services, as well as for staff from aid organisations, he added. At least 92,000 people have been displaced since the last October attacks on police posts in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, UN officials told reporters here.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Thursday made the remarks by citing information from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Xinhua news agency reported.

This includes some 69,000 people who have fled across the border into Bangladesh, Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The UN estimates that 23,000 people remain displaced in the north of Maungdaw Township where security operations continue, the spokesperson said.

"After a three-month interruption in most aid deliveries provided by UN agencies and partners in northern Rakhine, the government has allowed an incremental resumption of some activities," Dujarric said.

"With staff still facing severe movement restrictions, national staff are distributing food and other items in most villages," he said.

"While health clinics and nutrition centres have re-opened in most areas, few people have been accessing them, as the situation remains tense," he said. "People are still afraid to move freely to access services, and movement is restricted by a travel pass requirement."

The UN is calling for the relaxation of travel restrictions in northern Rakhine, both for local people who are impeded in accessing humanitarian aid and basic services, as well as for staff from aid organisations, he added.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday urged IFFCO Kisan special economic zone (SEZ) to allot land to investors at a lower rate.

Inaugurating Spanish wind turbine major Gamesa's Rs 500 crore integrated facility here, Naidu said: "I wanted to bring a fertiliser plant here. The land was given to IFFCO."

The fertiliser cooperative IFFCO did not set up a fertiliser plant but converted its business plan into an agro based SEZ.

The SEZ is being developed on 2,775 acres here.

In a voice that sounded to be stern, Naidu said IFFCO should reduce its land rates so that investors can come and set up their units.

Naidu said a meeting with the fertiliser cooperative IFFCO will be called to discuss the issue.

He also stressed the need for creating employment opportunities within the country so that Indians need not go abroad.

According to him, Andhra Pradesh is an attractive investment destination as land, labour, power and water are available in plenty.

The state also has several deep draft ports which eases exports.

According to Jose Antonio Cortajarena, Chief Corporate-General Secretary, Gamesa said India accounts for close to 30 per cent of sales for Gamesa global.

"With the inauguration of the Nellore facility, one of the largest for the company in the world, Gamesa India will be integrated even more strongly to cater to the growing energy demands of the country," he added.

According to Ramesh Kymal, Chairman and Managing Director, Gamesa Renewable Private Ltd, the new plant is an integrated plant that will make blades first followed by inverters and generators.

Around Rs 500 crore has gone into the Nellore facility out of the company's over all investment plan of Rs 1,000 crore.

Andhra Pradesh is turning into a renewable energy manufacturing hub with companies like Gamesa, ReGen Powertech, Suzlon, Windar and others setting up their plant in the state.

--IANS

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The Arunachal Pradesh government on Friday asked the public sector Oil India Ltd (OIL) to resume oil operation in the state besides exploring areas from where oil and natural gas can be extracted.

"The operation of oil extraction and setting up of oil and natural gas plant in the state would lead to more business activities which would add to the economy of the people," said Deputy Chief Minister Chowna Mein.

"It will help in setting up of more industries as power will be generated from the oil and natural gas plant which in turn will provide employment opportunities to the unemployed youths of the state," he said.

The Deputy Chief Minister promised the OIL officials to take up the issues pertaining to Ningru Extension Petroleum Mining Lease (PML) in Changlang and Namsai districts with the Chief Minister as the forest clearance of the projects which is a requisite for the re-grant of PML to OIL is pending with the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change.

On the proposed setting up of 10 MW Natural Gas Plant at Kumchai under Diyun Circle of Changlang district, Mein asked the officials to expedite the formalities for setting up the plant.

He also asked the OIL officials to take up social welfare activities for the people of the area under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme.

--IANS

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Britain is offering 198 scholarships collectively worth one million pounds (Rs 8.4 crore) for Indian students to study in 40 universities across Britain, Ireland and Scotland, a British Council official said on Friday.

"This is the first time Britain is offering 198 scholarships to Indian students through in subjects ranging from art and design, engineering, law and management in 40 universities," said British Council Director Mei-kwei Barker at an event here.

Of the scholarships, 29 will be under-graduate and 169 for post-graduate courses.

The scholarships will be awarded to students who qualify for admission to the universities on merit, which is assessed on the basis of their grades at school and college levels, scores in entrance tests and International English Language Test.

"The new education is part of the great campaign and designed to promote the best of British education overseas so that Britain is the first choice for the students the world over," asserted Baker.

The Council also organised an expo 'Study UK: Discover You' on Friday to generate interest in the Indian youth for pursuing higher studies in British universities, with details on its website.

"The exhibition focused on experiences, knowledge and confidence students can gain from UK study, whether in Britain or overseas, or through distance learning, online provision, and other models," pointed out Baker.

Representatives from 50 British universities briefed several aspirants on education opportunities in Britain, on course choices, visas, applications and scholarships.

"Students at the exhibition benefited from career seminars on MBA, IT and engineering and manufacturing, with sessions by experts on visas," noted Baker.

The Council will soon unveil a mobile app (application) on Android and iOS devices to help students and parents with information on British institutions, registering for seminars and selecting a course of choice or field of study at a specific university.

"Studying in Britain offers Indian students a world-class education, being part of an international student body and the chance to work post study, added Baker.

The British government also offers the Chevening global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth office and partner organisations.

The India programme is the world's largest with a budget of 2.6 million pounds (Rs 21.8 crore) for 2016-17 with 130 scholarships being offered.

--IANS

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Home Minister Rajnath Singh said India may go for more cross-border surgical strikes, if the need arises, to safeguard its territories.

On September 29 last year, Indian Army commandos carried out cross-border raids deep inside Pakistan-administered Kashmir to destroy the militant launch pads, some 10 days after militants attacked an army base in Uri on September 18.

In an interview with CNN News18, to be aired on Friday, Singh said: "Pakistan is our neighbour. If it changes for good, we may not need such a step again. But if terror organisations or others target India, we can't guarantee that surgical strike will not be repeated."

The Home Minister also said the recent house arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed was an "eyewash", and if Islamabad is really serious about tackling terror, it should pursue legal options, chargesheet Saeed and put him behind bars.

Rajnath Singh said nabbing fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who is said to be hiding in Pakistan, was just a matter of time.

"I am confident that we will succeed in getting him back. It is just a matter of time," the Home Minister said.

While Singh took a hard line towards Pakistan, he was more measured when it came to China.

He refused to criticise it for repeatedly blocking the designation of Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar as a terrorist at the United Nations.

"Maybe, China did not support us because of their own internal compulsions. But I am hopeful they will support us in future," he said.

Interestingly, the Home Minister also steered clear of any negative comment over US President Donald Trumps' decision to put a blanket ban on the entry into US of travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries -- a decision that has attracted widespread flak.

Singh only said President Trump must have taken such a decision after "assessing local terror situation".

Talking about assembly elections in his home state Uttar Pradesh, Singh expressed hope that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would win over 250 of the 403 assembly seats at stake.

Singh, a former Uttar Chief Minister, ruled himself out of the race to become the state's chief minister again.

"I am already the Home Minister, it would be an injustice if others are not given a chance," he said, noting that going ahead with the poll campaign without declaring a chief ministerial candidate would not affect his party's chances.

With regard to the candidature of his son Pankaj, Rajnath Singh said his opinion was that a leader's son should work for at least 10 years in the party before fighting elections.

He pointed out that when Atal Bihari Vajpayee had recommended Pankaj's name to be a candidate in 2007, he had politely declined since Rajnath Singh was the BJP president then.

--IANS

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Protesting against the AAP ministers and MLAs for "deserting" the national capital to campaign in Punjab and Goa, the Delhi unit of the Congress on Friday held a 'ghar vapasi' programme outside the Delhi Secretariat.

Scores of Congress workers assembled at the entrance of the secretariat with clay urns, earthen pots and oil lamps shouting slogans against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and other Aam Aadmi Party leaders.

Delhi Congress President Ajay Maken alleged that 52 of the 67 AAP MLAs were out of Delhi to campaign in Punjab and Goa.

"The whole Cabinet was outside Delhi. Did people of Delhi give an unprecedented majority to the AAP so the Delhi Chief Minister, other ministers and the MLAs neglect the development of Delhi to campaign for their party at other places," he asked.

Several AAP ministers and MLAs had been campaigning over the last month in Goa and Punjab, both of which go to polls on Saturday.

Maken said the cultural tradition in India dictates when a new couple comes home after marriage or spending a lot of time in a foreign country, they are welcomed by placing an urn and spreading mustard oil at the door of the house.

"Congress workers today (Friday) welcomed the AAP ministers and MLAs in a similar fashion."

"The development work has stopped in Delhi after the AAP came to power. It is unfortunate that at such a time, these ministers and MLAs have abandoned Delhi," he added.

--IANS

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The death of Kerala MP and former union minister E. Ahamed snowballed into a major row with allegations of "deliberate" attempts to delay the announcement of his demise. Both Congress and Left demanded a probe.

Besides complaining that those accompanying the late Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader, including his family, were made to wait endlessly at the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital, the RSP asked why Ahamed was shifted out of the intensive coronary care unit.

Raising the issue in the Rajya Sabha, CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury alleged attempts, including by the Prime Minster's Office (PMO), to suppress the news of Ahamed's death.

"The way in which the news of his death was sought to be suppressed and there is interference, is what I hear, from the highest authority in the country, the PMO," alleged Yechury, demanding a thorough probe into the death.

Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge alleged in the Lok Sabha pressure from the government on the RML to keep the news of Ahamed's death under wraps to ensure the Union Budget was presented as scheduled on February 1.

"The body was kept in the hospital in an inhuman way. His family was not allowed to meet Ahamed for several hours. The government pressurised the doctors to ensure the Budget is presented," said Kharge.

The Congress leader asked the government to issue a statement and called for parliamentary committee to probe the issue.

Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) member N.K. Premachandran claimed that Ahamed might have died soon after collapsing in Parliament on Tuesday.

"We were at the hospital along with other IUML MPs and from the versions of the doctors we had this impression that Ahamed may have died soon after collapsing," Premachandran told the media.

"We could not fathom why he was shifted form the intensive coronary care unit to trauma care," said the MP from Kerala who gave a notice for adjournment of business of the Lok Sabha to probe into the "ill treatment and grave disrespect" by the hospital to Ahamed.

The notice, along with other adjournment notices, was not accepted by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Echoing the RSP member's views, Congress General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media Ahamed passed away "much earlier" then declared by the hospital.

"The government wanted to keep the news under wraps until the budget was presented. So nobody was allowed to meet (him)."

Meanwhile, IUML Lok Sabha member E.T. Mohammed Basheer said that all those accompanying Ahamed, including his family, had a harrowing time at the hospital.

"The doctors were not allowing anyone inside the trauma centre where Ahamed was kept. No doctors were coming out of it either and there was no update about his health," Basheer told IANS.

Basheer alleged that the doctors and the security staff were not behaving properly even with MPs and Ahamed's family. Among those to visit the hospital were Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

"I believe he was dead long back. Why were they not letting us know or not giving any update on his health?" Bahseer asked.

RML Hospital Medical Superintendent A.K. Gadpayle denied allegations of suppressing the news of Ahamed's death.

"There was no political pressure on us. The protocol is to not to allow anyone in ICU when treatment is on. Ahamed was alive when brought to the hospital. He died at 2.15 a.m. I am hurt by the allegations," he said.

The Kerala Congress flayed Speaker Sumitra Mahajan for not adjourning the Lok Sabha on February 1 and also held Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible.

"Mahajan has totally failed in upholding the courtesy of the house. The union government owes an explanation and apology to the nation, to the Lok Sabha and to Ahamed's family," Kerala Congress chief V.M. Sudheeran said.

"The Prime Minister is also responsible. Without their knowledge such things don't happen," he said.

--IANS

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European defence firm Thales, which is supplying the radar and electronics equipment for 36 Dassault Aviation Rafale fighter jets that India is buying from France, on Friday appointed Emmanuel de Roquefeuil as its new country head.

In a statement, the defence electronics firm said that Emmanuel, in his new role as the Country Head, "will lead and drive Thales' growth in the country and also realise the Group's overall goal of 'Make in India' and export from India" -- a major initiative of the Indian government to facilitate investment and boost manufacturing in the country.

Emmanuel said he was "honoured to be entrusted with the role of leading Thales in India at a time when we are poised to scale new heights in our partnership and collaboration with the country".

He said he was looking forward to working with his team in India and "entities across the world to deliver on our commitment in the coming years".

Emmanuel succeeds Antoine Caput with effect from February 1.

Thales equipments will constitute 25 per cent of the value of the $8.9 billion deal for 36 Rafale combat jets that India and France signed last year. The company is also involved in more than Rs 10,000 crore worth of the Indian Air Force Mirage 2000 upgrade programme.

Thales has been operational in India since 1953 and has over 300 employees working with its wholly-owned Indian subsidiary, Thales India Pvt. Ltd. based in New Delhi.

--IANS

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Criticising the introduction of electoral bonds to promote legitimate funding of parties, an NGO Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) said the bonds had the potential to make political funding opaque.

To ensure greater transparency in political funding, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday sharply cut the cash donation a political party can accept and announced "electoral bonds" to promote legitimate funding of parties.

Presenting the Union Budget for 2017-18, Jaitley said any anonymous cash donation to a political party will now be limited to Rs 2,000 -- a sharp drop from the Rs 20,000 limit earlier -- and that political parties would now have to take donations above Rs 2,000 through cheque and digital payments.

Further, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would issue bearer bonds that a donor may buy through cheques and digital payments. He or she can then give the bond to a political party which must deposit it within a month in a pre-determined account.

According to CHRI, the RBI Act is sought to be amended to allow for the issuance of electoral bonds that individuals and companies can buy through commercial banks.

"In simpler terms, the IT Act is sought to be amended to exclude donations received by these political parties through "electoral bonds from being reported to the IT Department every year in order for them to continue to avail the exemption from paying income tax," said Venkatesh Nayak, Programme Coordinator, CHRI.

"The import of the amendments proposed to the RP Act, 1951 is that political parties will not be required to disclose the identity of individuals and companies who make donations through electoral bonds bought from the commercial banks," he added.

According to CHRI, if approved by Parliament, the combined effect of the amendments to the RBI Act, the IT Act and the Representation of the People Act would be:

"Many political parties are likely to strive to receive cash donations below Rs. 2,000 only. According to Section 29C of the Representation of the People Act, which applies to donations of Rs. 20,000 or above only, these will not be required to be reported to the IT Department or to the Election Commission of India." said Nayak.

--IANS

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The Union Health Ministry on Friday said that it has decided to limit the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) attempts to three, with the NEET-2017 to be counted as the first attempt.

The Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) will be conducting NEET (Under Graduate) on May 7, 2017. The upper age limit shall also be limited to 25 years with 5 years relaxation for reserved categories.

"It was decided by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in consultation with Medical Council of India that there shall be an upper age limit of 25 years as on the date of exam with 5 years relaxation for reserved categories and a maximum of 3 attempts for all candidates," said a statement from the ministry.

According to the ministry, in the information bulletin published by the CBSE on its website, it was mentioned that the candidates who have already appeared in All India Pre Medical Test (AIPMT)/NEET on three occasions are not allowed to take this examination.

"It is now clarified that since any new regulation takes effect prospectively, NEET-2017 shall be counted as the first attempt for this purpose irrespective of the previous attempts in AIPMT/NEET, subject to the upper age limit," said the statement.

"The CBSE has been advised to make necessary corrections in the information bulletin and on their website cbseneet.nic.in so that any application is not rejected on this ground. Data pertaining to applications already rejected will be erased so that rejected applications can be filed afresh," added the statement.

Meanwhile, the CBSE also clarified that appearance by candidates in the AIPMT/NEET prior to 2017 will not be taken into account and as such NEET-2017 will be counted as their first attempt.

"The Department of Health and Family Welfare on February 3 has communicated that the Medical Council of India (MCI) has clarified that the attempts made by candidates for AIPMT/NEET prior to 2017 should not be counted," the CBSE said in a statement.

--IANS

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Indian-American hotelier, Chandubhai Patel, has been convicted in a scheme to underpay workers at two of his establishments, a federal prosecutor announced said.

The hotelier, who also uses the name Mike Patel, admitted before federal Magistrate Judge Ellen Carmody in Grand Rapids, Michigan state, that he lied to Labour Department investigators about wages paid to his staff, acting federal prosecutor for Western Michigan Andrew Birge announced on Thursday.

The Labour Department found in 2014 that he had paid his employees at hotels in Battle Creek and Coldwater in Michigan less than the legally prescribed minimum wages and he signed an agreement with the department to pay his workers the amount he had underpaid them, the prosecution said.

Patel, 31, sent the Labour Department checks showing he had made the payments, but he had made the staff give him back the amounts, leading to the charge of lying to the department.

If sentenced, Patel could be asked to pay his workers and sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison.

--IANS

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Indian-American Republican leader from Virginia Puneet Ahluwalia is contesting for the state's House of Delegates for the 34th district against the incumbent Kathleen Murphy.

Ahluwalia, 10th District Representative on the Virginia Republican State Central Committee, served as a financial chair of the Asian American presidential inaugural ball in January, American Bazaar online reported on Friday.

"The success of our community demands us to be active and participate in mainstream . It is our responsibility to strengthen the diversity of our nation," he said.

"... We should be supporting President Trump and Republican leadership in creating and promoting American jobs with strong emphasis on balanced trade between US-Indo Pacific Region."

"We should not lose focus on eradicating terrorism and enemies of democracies," he added.

Ahluwalia said that he would work to strengthen the Republican Party's base in Virginia, among other things.

"We will watch our allies' back and it is important that communities, including the Indian-American community that has benefited most from this great nation, play a pivotal role in the revival process. I had a choice but I chose to stand up and participate in the political process and serve the public of 34th district," Ahluwalia said.

"Our nation is at a crossroad where we will take new positive direction as we embark on a journey to make our nation stronger."

He added: "I have the support of my wife, kids and friends, and supporters and very importantly the leadership of the Republican Party, especially Barbara Comstock."

A Delhi Public School (DPS) alumni, Ahluwalia heads consultancy and IT businesses in the Washington DC area, along with active participation in the US politics, since 1998-99.

--IANS

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Authorities on Friday placed Huriyat leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq under house arrest to prevent him from leading a protest march in the city.

Separatists had called for protests after Friday prayers against a West Bengal court awarding a death sentence to a Kashmiri -- Mushtaq Ahmad -- from south Kashmir's Kulgam district.

The Huriyat Conference (M) Chairman was placed under house arrest in his upscale Nigeen residence.

He was scheduled to lead the march in old city's Nowhatta area.

--IANS

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Film: "Kung Fu Yoga"; Director: Stanley Tong; Cast: Jackie Chan, Sonu Sood, Disha Patani, Aarif Lee Rahman, Yixing Zhang, Mu Qimiya, Zhang Guoli, Eric Tsang, Amyra Dastur and Coco Jiang; Rating: **

The title conjures an exciting amalgamation of practices of world's most ancient and traditional civilisations -- Chinese and Indian martial arts with the spiritual and ascetic discipline of meditation, breath-control and body postures for health and relaxation. But alas! These elude you in the film.

Kung fu and Yoga are probably what the cast and crew of the film intended to indulge in while making the film, but landed up having fun and frolic on the sets. And, this is what reflects in the end product -- a mishmash of ideologies and a B-grade entertainer. It is an ungainly action-adventure that ties the Chinese and Indian film industries together.

Released in Hindi and English, the film is steeped in a superficially crafted history. The narration begins with an ostentatiously impressive slapstick fight scene in motion capture animation reiterating the tale of Wang Xuance, the envoy of the Tang dynasty to India, who defended the Kingdom of Magadha from its rebellious general Arunasava. This prologue forms the back story to the contemporary setting.

The plot, though convoluted, begins in present day China, where Jack is a reputed Chinese archaeologist who has invented an infra-light technology to study ancient artefacts. He is approached by an Indian princess and her younger sister who are impersonating a history professor and her assistant, to read a vintage map which was left by her ancestors. They claim that the map would lead them to the lost treasures of their ancestors.

Paying tribute to Indiana Jones, Jack along with the princesses, a treasure hunter Jones and an oil-drilling expert Jianhua, land in the Kunlun Mountains where they find the cave along with the treasures. But soon, Randall -- a descendent of Arunasava -- arrives with his cronies to lay his claim. A cat and mouse chase ensues, till both the parties are fatigued with the shenanigans.

The story is a flighty and frivolous reboot of a number of earlier treasure hunt films. The screenplay and dialogues are too skewed to cater to the mindless frontbenchers ogling at the colourful sets and slapstick kitsch. Among the dialogues that stand out is when Randall tells Jack, "Stop boring me with your superstitions" -- when he actually meant, stop boring me with your lessons in astrology.

Also with just one reference to yoga, the writing along with the incoherent screenplay weights down this caper.

But what keeps you glued to your seat are the kinetic, by-the-numbers action sequences strewn throughout the plot along with the slapstick humour that accompanies the action.

Jackie Chan has the star charisma, but he lacks the energy and vitality to carry the action thriller on his shoulders. He is aptly supported by his co-stars but then, they lack magnetism. Their actions by far are perfunctory, nevertheless, they leave a mark onscreen. Impressive among the few are Disha Patani and Amyra Dastur as Asmita and Kyra - the Indian princesses, Arif Lee Rahman as Jones, Eric Tsang as Jianhua and Yixing Zhang as Jack's assistant Xiaoguang.

On the other hand, Sonu Sood as Randall, is totally mediocre.

On the production front, the camera work, editing and sound design are of ace quality. But with a potpourri of races; Caucasian, Chinese, Aryans and Dravidians, interspersed on the screen the film looks like a confused composition especially during the stunts and dance sequences. The locales too seem to be far from authentic. Tacky in appearance, they seem to be studio created.

All in all, the film is a time-pass B grade entertainer.

--IANS

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Security forces on Friday arrested a local militant of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) outfit in south Kashmir's Pulwama district, officials said.

"A local militant identified as Manzoor Ahmad of the LeT outfit was arrested during the operation. A pistol, magazine and two hand grenades were recovered from him," a police official said.

Troops of 55 Rashtriya Rifles and Special Operations Group (SOG) of the local police launched an operation in Lassipora village of Pulwama district following information about the presence of militants.

A group of protesters attacked the security forces with stones in Lassipora village when the operation was going on.

Security forces had to fire in the air to disperse the mob.

--IANS

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Dozens of people took to the streets of the Malaysian capital to denounce the policies of the new United States President.

The protest on Friday, held in front of the US Embassy, was joined by about 100 people, mostly Malaysian Muslims and small numbers of Chinese and Indian protesters, Efe news reported.

Around 2 p.m. (local time), they began their rally, which consisted of carrying banners, making speeches and shouting slogans.

A man with a megaphone led the group in chanting "Long Live Islam" in Malaysian and "No Muslim Ban" and "No Wall No Ban".

Their placards carried the same message of "#NoWallNoBan" and "#NoMuslimBan", referencing the controversial executive order issued this week by Donald Trump banning entry to the US for nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries including Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

Many protesters were members of various Malaysian opposition parties and NGOs, with some from the Socialist Alternative group.

Muhammad Emuzufar, that group's leader, said that his organisation opposes racism, homophobia and Trump's alleged anti-Islam stance, and criticized the US president as representing "the worst face of capitalism".

Around 40 police officers were standing guard near the protest area, but there were no reports of arrests.

About 61 per cent of Malaysia's population of 31 million people adhere to Islam, with most followers being ethnic Malays.

--IANS

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The West Bengal government on Friday hiked the allowances of several panchayat-level functionaries and announced emoluments for some rural bodies officials who were denied the privilege till date.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the two day state-Panchayat meet, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said zilla parishad (topmost layer of the three-level rural bodies in the state) members would get an honorarium of Rs 1,500 per month from March 1.

The allowances of district council presidents have been raised to Rs 4,000 from Rs 3,000 while the vice president would get Rs 2,000.

The allowances of the panchayat samiti sabhadhipati (president of the panchayat samiti -- the middle rung of the three-tier rural body system in the state) has been increased to Rs 3,500 from Rs 2,800, and that of his deputy from Rs 2,500 to Rs 3,000.

The heads of the gram panchyats (the lowest rung of the rural body set-up) would now be paid an allowance of Rs 3,000 as against Rs 2,000 they used to get earlier.

The deputy heads allowance would go up to Rs 2,000 from the Rs 1,500 they received so far.

--IANS

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A Bhopal resident has been arrested on the charge of murdering his live-in partner and burying the body in his house here before constructing a concrete platform on the spot, police said on Friday.

Accused Udyan Das had come in contact with victim Shweta Sharma (28) from Bokaro in West Bengal through a social networking site and was living with her at his Saket Nagar residence since June 2016.

Gobindpura police said police personnel broke the concrete platform on Thursday night and recovered the body buried underneath. Police are questioning the accused regarding the crime.

--IANS

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A mother leopard cautiously but happily reunited with her two cubs which had been caught by farmers but later left in a field for her to spot.

The Wildlife SOS and the Maharashtra Forest Department filmed the beautiful reunion in a sugarcane field near Somatwadi village near Pune.

Wildlife experts said several lessons were learnt while filming the reunion on Wednesday night.

The film and photo documents released by Wildlife SOS on Thursday showed that big cats don't give up on their babies and that rescuers must try reconciliation before thinking of their rehabilitation, experts said.

The farmers found the three-week-old cubs while harvesting sugarcane.

They called forest officials fearing the wrath of the mother leopard who was reportedly lurking nearby in search of her missing cubs.

"We placed the cubs in a safe box and kept them at the same spot where they were found... After hours of waiting, the mother leopard came looking for them and took them away. The photos show how much she missed them," Ajay Deshmukh, Senior Veterinarian at the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre, told IANS.

Deshmukh said the healthy cubs were scared. Since 2009, Wildlife SOS has reunited about 60 leopard cubs with their mothers.

"We learn from this documentation that rescuers must not give up by relocating or shifting the cubs in zoo. The primary aim should be to reunite," Deshmukh said.

Due to shrinking forest cover, big cats, especially leopards, find the sugarcane fields a suitable shelter for giving birth and rearing the cubs.

But the cubs often get separated when their mother leopards go for a hunt.

"It is not uncommon to spot leopards in this area... But this also gives rise to conflict situations when farmers harvest sugarcane," said Sanjay Gaikwad, a forest department official.

--IANS

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Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has been the most popular political figure in Pakistan, liked by 63 per cent people of the country, according to a survey published on Friday.

Around 39 per cent people favoured Imran Khan, while Bilawal garnered appreciation from 32 per cent, Geo News cited a joint survey by the International Republican Institute and Institute for Republic Opinion Research.

The same people were also questioned about their dislike for leading political personalities. The survey suggested 85 per cent Pakistanis disliked Muttahida Qaumi Movement founder Altaf Hussain, 80 and 90 per cent expressing their dislike for Asif Ali Zardari and Tahir-ul-Qadri respectively.

Asked about their satisfaction over government performance, 64 per cent people expressed satisfaction over the performance of the federal government.

Among provinces, Punjab stood on top hailed by 79 per cent Pakistanis, followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

Interestingly, 59 per cent people across the country, when asked about Panama Papers leaks, said they knew nothing of it, while 26 per cent called for a complete probe into it.

Nearly 38 per cent people said they were partially interested in the Panama Leaks case.

They said that power shortage was the biggest issue.

The survey said that 74 per cent Pakistanis feel themselves safe.

--IANS

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American luxury retailer, Nordstrom announced that it will stop selling Ivanka Trumps clothing and accessories line, the media reported.

"We've said all along we make buying decisions based on performance," Nordstrom said in a statement on Thursday.

"In this case, based on the brand's performance, we've decided not to buy it for this season," referring to the spring/summer collection, The New York Times reported.

The move comes amid an effort by what is called the #GrabYourWallet campaign to encourage shoppers to boycott products with ties to US President Donald Trump, his family and his donors.

The retailer has some Ivanka Trump items in stock, a representative said, and will sell through that remaining inventory, The Washington Post said.

On the company's website on Thursday evening, the only Ivanka Trump-branded items available were four styles of shoe, all being sold at a discount.

Shannon Coulter, who helps run "Grab Your Wallet", said that number is down sharply from early December, when Nordstrom had 71 Ivanka Trump items for sale.

Ivanka Trump's business began with a jewellery collection in 2007, and has grown to include clothing, shoes, fragrances, handbags and other products.

However, there has been no immediate response from the brand.

Ivanka Trump intends to resign all management positions in her company and her father's Trump Organisation, attorneys for the Trump Organization have said.

On Thursday, the attorneys told the news site ProPublica that the paperwork would be completed on Friday.

Ivanka Trump has moved from New York to Washington, where she is serving as an adviser to her father.

--IANS

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Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan said on Friday that the oil spill off Chennai, following a collision between two tankers on January 28, would be cleared in another two to three days.

In a statement in the Lok Sabha, Radhakrishnan said oil booms placed around the ship prevented further spread of oil in the sea.

"Kamarajar port deployed oil boom around the vessel to contain seepage," the Minister said.

He said that the vessel, which was carrying 32,183 tonnes of petroleum oil, was brought to the port where it has offloaded 30,013 tonnes of oil and the rest will be discharged on Friday itself.

"This major step has prevented any further possibility of oil spill," he said.

The Minister said that teams from the Shipping Ministry, Petroleum Ministry and DG Shipping were sent for inspection of the area and sufficient manpower and equipment are available to battle the situation.

"More than 80 per cent of the work has been completed and most of the residual work is expected to be completed within two to three days," he said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Navy said on Friday that two naval ships at Chennai have been kept on standby for immediate deployment to provide support as requested by the Indian Coast Guard.

Navy personnel have been deployed between North Kasimedu and Thiruvottiyur to assist shoreline clean-up of the oil spill. The personnel are also assisting in the clean-up of Marina and Adyar beaches.

Coast Guard officials said till Friday, 72 tonnes of oily sludge, 84.5 tonnes of oil mixed with water and 39 tonnes of tar had been removed.

On January 28, MT Dawn Kanchipuram, carrying petroleum oil lubricants (POL), and MT BW Maple, loaded with LPG, collided off Kamarajar Port in Tamil Nadu.

Several tonnes of crude from MT Dawn spilled into the sea. The oil has spread over a 30 km stretch along the coast, from Ennore where Kamarajar port is situated.

--IANS

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Patient care in over 700 government hospitals and dispensaries in Himachal Pradesh was again hit on Friday as more than 3,000 doctors went on strike for two hours.

However, emergency services worked in the state's major hospitals.

The strike followed the Himachal Pradesh Medical Officers Association's call for mass casual leave for a day on January 23 over its demands, including safety of doctors and pay parity.

Patients at the Indira Gandhi Medical College and Hospital in Shimla and the Rajendra Prasad Medical College at Tanda town in Kangra district were worst hit as even resident doctors joined the strike.

Association president J.N. Chauhan said they had already given a notice to the government over their strike.

"We met the Chief Minister recently and apprised him about demands. The government doesn't seem to be positive towards our demands. We have no option but to continue with the protest," he said.

Chauhan said the doctors would continue till February 12 and if the demands were not met, they would again go on a mass casual leave.

The association has claimed that a doctor after facing humiliation from politically connected people in a hospital in Una suffered a heart attack.

Congress legislator Bambar Thakur is also accused of misbehaving with a government doctor last December over issuing a differently-abled certificate.

Health and Family Welfare Minister Kaul Singh said the government was bringing a bill in the ensuing budget session to ensure safety of the doctors.

"We are going to make assault on the doctors on duty a non-bailable offence," he told IANS.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Friday issued notice to Gujarat government on a petition by former top policeman Julio Francis Ribeiro challenging post-retirement three month extension given to Gujarat Police chief P.P.Pandey - an accused in Ishrat Jahan alleged staged shootout case.

The bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice N.V.Ramana and Justice D.Y.Chandrachud issued notice as senior counsel Kapil Sibal described as "unfortunate" the extension to Pandey who is on bail in the case in which besides Ishrat Jahan, three others were also gunned down.

Sibal told the court that Pandey was not only reinstated but also promoted and rewarded despite being an accused.

The notice has also been issued to Pandey. The Centre granted three months extension to Pandey who was to retire on January 31.

Ribeiro has moved the top court challenging the Gujarat High Court's August 3 order rejecting his plea against Pandey being made an officiating state police chief on April 16, 2016, after the exit of then incumbent P.C.Thakur.

Pandey, along with other Gujarat Police officers, was named as an accused in Ishrat Jahan case. The CBI had filed the chargesheet in 2013, accusing them of conspiracy, kidnapping, murder of Ishrat Jahan and three others.

Pandey headed the Gujarat Police's Crime Branch when the alleged gunfight took place in 2004. Besides Ishrat Jahan, other killed in police action included Javed Shaikh alias Pranesh Pillai, Amjadali Akbarali Rana and Zeeshan Johar.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Friday refused to put on hold the screening of "Jolly LLB 2" before a three-member panel appointed by the Bombay High Court.

The bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Ashok Bhushan asked the petitioner Fox Star Studios to approach the High Court and advance all its contentions before it. The bench asked the High Court to hear the matter on Monday - February 6 - allowing film producer Fox Star Studios to come before it on Tuesday - February 7.

The film is set for release on February 10.

"We are keeping it pending," the bench told senior counsel Kapil Sibal as he said that the film was cleared for release by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and under law the screening of the film before the panel comprising two lawyers and a doctor could not be done.

"Go and tell this to the High Court," Justice Gogoi told Sibal. "We will not say anything. We will keep it pending. Go to the High Court."

As Sibal urged the bench to see the film, Justice Gogoi said "We will not see the film. We will tell you why we will not see the film. We don't have three hours' patience. Don't you think that three hours is too long."

The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court set up the committee to see the film after a Nanded lawyer, Ajaykumar Waghmare, told the court that the film was an attempt to portray the country's legal profession and the judicial system in a poor light.

It is "an attempt to portray the Indian legal profession and judicial system as a laughing stock to society at large", Waghmare told the High Court.

The High Court directed for the review of the film by the panel on February 1 and set the next hearing on February 3.

--IANS

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An all party delegation of Telangana led by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on February 6, seeking categorisation of the Scheduled Castes, it was announced here on Friday.

The delegation will urge him to table a bill in the Parliament to facilitate the process

The Chief Minister on Friday wrote a letter inviting all the political parties to be part of the delegation.

State Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy, AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi, Bharatiya Janata Party state President K. Laxman, Telugu Desam Party president Ramana, Communist Party of India-Marxist Secretary Tammineni Veerabhadram, and Communist Party of India Secretary Chada Venkatreddy are among the invitees.

Last year, the Chief Minister had met Modi and submitted a memorandum, requesting categorisation of the Schedules Castes to enable judicious distribution of reservation fruits among all SC communities.

He had brought to the notice of the PM that the Telangana assembly unanimously passed a resolution on the issue.

Madiga, one of the SC communities in Telangana, has long been fighting for SC categorisation.

--IANS

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Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump defended his controversial immigration ban by citing a fake terror attack, the media reported.

In an MSNBC interview on Thursday night, Conway blamed two Iraqi refugees for the fictional "Bowling Green massacre".

"Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered," Conway said.

However, there has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky, carried out either by Iraqi refugees or anyone else, the Washington Post reported.

Conway was likely referring to two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green who were arrested in 2011 and eventually sentenced to federal prison for attempting to send weapons and money to Al Qaeda in Iraq for the purpose of killing US soldiers, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31, to 40 years in federal prison, followed by a life term of supervised release. Both men pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges.

Both men admitted having taken part in attacks against US troops in Iraq, not in Bowling Green.

In the interview, Conway also reiterated claims from Trump that his refugee policy is similar to "what (former) President Barack Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months."

Conway said it was "brand new information" to people that Obama enacted a "six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee programme".

However, this was also untrue.

Former Obama administration officials told the Washington Post that there was never a point when Iraqi resettlement was stopped or banned.

In the aftermath of the arrests of the two Iraqis living in Bowling Green, Obama imposed more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees, and the new screening procedures created a dramatic slowdown in visa approvals.

--IANS

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Kellyanne Conway, President Trump's adviser, who made an assertion to defend the White House's refugee ban that appeared to be factually indefensible was on Friday pushed back on her claim.

Appearing on MSNBC's Hardball TV programme on Thursday night, Conway referred to the "Bowling Green massacre" in Kentucky as part of her attempt to justify Trump's temporary restrictions on refugees and nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

At one point, Conway made a reference to two Iraqi refugees whom she described as the masterminds behind "the Bowling Green massacre". She was mocked over her statements about a massacre that never happened.

"I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee programme after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," she said during the interview.

"Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

No terrorist attack had taken place at Bowling Green, though a Washington Post report said that Conway was referring to two Iraqi refugees Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan who were arrested in 2011 for trying to send money and weapons to Al Qaeda in Iraq for the purpose of killing US soldiers.

The men had been living in Bowling Green and after their arrest it emerged they had taken part in terrorist activities in Iraq, not the US, according to the report.

Conway later backpedalled her statements, clarifying in a tweet on Friday that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" instead.

She has previously said that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was using "alternative facts", when falsely claiming President Trump's inaugural crowds were "the largest audience" to witness an inauguration.

Twitter users were quick to jump on Conway's new "alternative" fact.

"Here are the names of all those who lost their lives at the Bowling Green Massacre: Kellyann Conway's career.. Let us give thanks," tweeted one user.

Another tweet read, "I heard the attackers in the Bowling Green Massacre were radicalised by a movie where Sinbad played an Arab cleric with magical powers."

"Maybe Kellyanne is from an alternative timeline where all of this did in fact happen and she's trying frantically to return," said another user.

Conway's interview was by no means the first time the arrests of the two Iraqis in Bowling Green have been politicised as support for blocking refugees from reaching the US, reported the Post.

In December 2015, Senator Rand Paul released a dramatic campaign video ad featuring images and video footage of the two Iraqi nationals, while criticising then-rivals in the presidential race Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio.

In the 90-second ad, the faces of Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi are featured with pounding, dismal music, establishing that the men were "welcomed into America, given public housing and public assistance -- as refugees."

--IANS

soni/vt

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump and the King Abdullah II of Jordan met in Washington and discussed the joint fight against the Islamic State (IS) terror group and the Syria conflict, the White House said.

On Thursday, Trump expressed Washington's commitment to "stability, security, and prosperity" in Jordan, a country he lauded for its "leadership in promoting peace and stability in the region", the White House said.

He also stressed Jordan's role as a "model of tolerance and moderation", Efe news reported.

Trump and King Abdullah II discussed the conflict in Syria, with the former highlighting Jordan's "critical contributions" in the fight against IS terrorists and proposing the possibility of establishing "safe zones" in Syria.

Jordan is a member of the US-led international coalition against the IS in Syria and Iraq.

In June 2016, Jordan was the target of a car bomb attack near the border with Syria in which six soldiers were killed.

Another suicide attack 15 days later claimed the lives of seven soldiers.

The IS also carried out an attack in December in the historic city of Al-Karak in southern Jordan, which killed 14 people.

--IANS

ksk/vm

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The US President raised questions about whether the University of California should continue receiving federal funds after demonstrators at the Berkeley campus forced the cancellation of a speech by Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos.

"If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?" Donald Trump said in a Twitter post on Thursday.

The 33-year-old Yannopoulos is a vocal far-right supporter of Trump and self-proclaimed Internet troll. His comments have been criticized as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist.

He was forced to cancel a speech on Wednesday at UC-Berkeley when protests against his appearance turned violent.

Writing on his Facebook page, Yiannopoulos said he had been evacuated from the Berkeley campus when "violent leftist demonstrators" put up barricades, set fires and threw rocks and fireworks at the building's windows.

Hundreds of protesters gathered on Wednesday afternoon at Berkeley and some of them clashed with police.

Once Yiannopoulos's speech was cancelled, the gathering turned into a celebration with music and dancing as police looked on.

Yiannopoulos, a controversial British writer, works as an editor for Breitbart News, a outlet run until last August by Steve Bannon, who is now the chief strategist for Trump at the White House.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A phone call between US President Donald Trump and his Mexican counterpart Enrique Pena Nieto last week was constructive and not confrontational, Mexico's Foreign minister told CNN in an interview.

Videgaray said during the conversation on January 27, the two leaders agreed on more points than they disagreed on, he said in the interview on Thursday.

"It was not a confrontational call," he said.

Regarding the border wall issue, Videgaray said: "It's very clear, we have a significant difference and the presidents have a significant difference."

"And it's ... well-known, but they agreed that they would not continue to publicly argue about that, because there are so many other things that we need to work on."

Videgaray said he talked to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday.

The Foreign Minister also said that his nation was very willing to discuss the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the White House.

"We're absolutely open to making NAFTA better."

"This does not have to be a negotiation in which one of the countries loses...We can make it a very good deal for both countries," he added.

Pena Nieto had cancelled a meeting with Trump that had been set for this week after renewed tensions erupted last week over Trump's plan to build the border wall.

"Unless Mexico is going to treat the US fairly, with respect, such a meeting would be fruitless and I want to go a different route," he said in prepared remarks. "We have no choice."

Trump had tweeted that it would be better to skip the meeting if his Mexican counterpart continued to insist Mexico would not pay for the wall.

While saying that Mexico paying for the wall is "totally unacceptable," Videgaray said his ministry would take a cooperative stance toward Mexico's northern neighbour and largest trading partner.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Despite US President Donald Trump being a prolific Twitter user, the employees of the micro-blogging site donated $1.59 million to an organisation to fight Trump, a media report said.

According to a report in TechCrunch on Thursday, nearly 1,000 employees donated the hefty amount to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to fight Trump's executive order on temporary travel ban.

CEO Jack Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani also contributed.

"Our work is far from done. In the coming months we'll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements," Vijaya Gadde, General Counsel, Twitter was quoted as saying.

"But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I am proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people," Gadde said.

Apart from Twitter's donations, ACLU has raised over $24 million within a few days, six-times more than it did in the entire 2016.

"In a further sign of support from Silicon Valley, the ACLU entered

Y Combinator's accelerator programme earlier this week where it will receive mentorship and guidance around areas like hiring, the use of technology and more," the report noted.

--IANS

qd/in

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Delhi police arrested a private cab driver after his vehicle carrying school children flipped and fell on its side here on Friday injuring two children, police said.

The incident took place when the van was ferrying 15 children from Central School in Dwarka to their homes, Deputy Commissioner of Police Surender Kumar said.

The two students who sustained minor injuries were shifted to Deen Dayal Upadhyay (DDU) Hospital. They were discharged after primary treatment.

"We have arrested the accused driver, Rambir - a resident of Rajapuri in Dwarka - for rash or negligent driving causing hurt to any other person," he said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Business / Local

by Dillon Kamutenga

ZimTrade, in collaboration with Open Trade Gate Sweden (OTGS) and the Embassy of Sweden in Zimbabwe, will host a seminar on 'How to Export to Sweden' on 15 February 2017 at the Holiday Inn, Bulawayo.Over 30 participants from the clothing, textiles as well as leather sector will attend this session. This session follows a similar one held in Harare in September 2015.The Seminar will raise awareness on the rules and requirements for exporting to Sweden as well as to the European Union (EU).Open Trade Gate Sweden will also provide requisite market intelligence to Zimbabwean companies, particularly those with the potential as well as the capacity to export to Sweden and the EU. Some of the areas to be covered in detail include export procedures, trade agreements, as well as Swedish imports and consumer demands.According to Trademap, in 2015, Sweden imported US$4.4 billion of clothing & textiles and US$4.3 billion worth of leather products globally. Zimbabwe's exports of clothing and textiles to Sweden during the period under review stood at US$15 000. This, therefore, presents a huge opportunity for local players hence the need for this session.OTGS is a one-stop information centre that was set up by the Swedish Government as a public service to exporters from developing countries. It is mandated to facilitate trade and increase exports from developing countries to Sweden.
Washington's Crimea-related sanctions against Moscow will remain in place until the peninsula is returned to Ukraine, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told the Security Council.

"The US continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation in Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain ...," Haley said in her first public remarks to the Security Council, on Thursday.

The sanctions were imposed on Russia over its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, Sputnik reported.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US Defence Secretary James Mattis on Friday reiterated Washington's security commitment to Seoul and vowed to overwhelmingly respond to any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

"America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told the media here.

Mattis made the remarks during a press briefing before he began talks with South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo, to discuss ways to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The retired Marine Corps general arrived here on Thursday for a two-day visit for talks with top South Korean officials.

On Thursday, he met with South Korea's Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn to underscore the "priority" that the US President Donald Trump's administration places on the Seoul-Washington alliance.

It is his first overseas trip since he took office less than two weeks ago.

Mentioning ways to counter saber-rattling by North Korea, Mattis, on Thursday said: "Due to North Korea's threatening rhetoric and destabilizing behavioor, we are taking defensive steps like deploying the highly effective THAAD anti-missile unit to South Korea to protect its people and our troops that stand with our ally."

In July 2016, Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the THAAD -- Terminal High Altitude Area Defence -- anti-ballistic missile system to South Korea this year to better defend against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

In other efforts, Mattis stressed the need to expand "trilateral venues of cooperation with Japan, where the mutual defence of the three countries is best served through teamwork."

Mattis is scheduled to depart for Japan on Friday afternoon after paying his respects at the National Cemetery in southern Seoul.

--IANS

ksk

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Water supply has been cut off in the city of al-Raqqa, the main stronghold of the Islamic State (IS) terror group in Syria, after the recent bombing of two bridges over the Euphrates River, a monitoring group said on Friday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said an aircraft, most likely from the international coalition led by the US, destroyed the old and new bridges of the city on Thursday, Efe news reported.

The bombing of the old bridge caused the water supply to be cut in al-Raqqa as the main pipeline supplying the town suffered damage.

The group added that planes also bombed the al-Abara bridge on the northern outskirts of al-Raqqa.

The activist group "Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently" said the water supply was cut off in the city because of the destruction of the old bridge in an aerial attack by the international coalition.

The group added that the new and old bridges are the only ones that connect the northern part with the south of the city.

--IANS

ksk/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two persons were detained with Rs one crore in new Rs 2,000 notes in east Delhi's Madhu Vihar area today, police said.

Ashok and Ramzan Ali were detained during a routine checking while they were about to board a bus, said a senior police officer.

Constable Sandeep stopped them and on checking, they were found to be in possession of Rs 50 lakh each in denomination of Rs 2,000 notes, he said.

They allegedly tried to bribe the constable who did not budge and informed his seniors, he said.

They told police that the money belongs to a man from Meerut.

They have been handed over to the IT department officials for further interrogation, said the officer.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There are over 25 lakh in the country of whom over 1.25 lakh are Nepali citizens, the Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.

In written response to a question in Lok Sabha, Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State for Defence, said as on February 1, there are 25,00,631 with Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh topping the list.

Punjab has 2,77,985 pensioners, the highest in the country, followed by Haryana (2,71,034) and Uttar Pradesh (2,24,971).

Sikkim has only 288 while nearly 1,07,837 Nepali citizens are pensioners of the Ministry of Defence.

Nepali soldiers have been a part of the Gurkha Regiment of the Indian Army since the British era.

Bhamre said pension disbursing agencies have started releasing arrears due to the pensioners in the light of 7th Central Pay Commission.

He said, resettlement training schemes of the Directorate General of Resettlement has been in existence for the last four decades and has helped retiring and retired personnel in their life post-superannuation.

"Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), as well as other reputed institutes, conduct 24 weeks certificate course for retiring/retired officers of the armed forces, which assists them in taking up employment in the civilian field," Bhamre said.
The opposition AIADMK today flayed the territorial government for the "delay" in carrying out dredging operations at the estuary off the coast here, which has affected fishing activities in the Union Territory.

AIADMK legislature wing leader A Anbalagan told reporters here that the "turf war between the Lt Governor Kiran Bedi and the Congress government on assigning the work for dredging the estuary had been causing intolerable delay in fishing operations."



He stated that when the dredging work was done by private players, the Lt Governor intervened and handed the job to the Dredging Corporation of India in December last year.

"The operations by the corporation did not bear fruit as there was no successful desilting of the sand and fishermen had not been able to venture into the sea for fishing activities for nearly five months now," he alleged.

The AIADMK leader also sought the government to pay a compensation of Rs 30,000 per month for each fishing vessel owner.

Criticising the Lt Governor and the Chief Minister for paying "lip service" on financial allocation during their visits to Delhi, he said, "they had placed before the Union Ministers reports highlighting the poor financial status of the Puducherry government."



On the Union Budget, Anbalagan said the budget had let down Puducherry with allocation of funds being retained at the same level as in the previous years.

He attributed this failure to the unending differences between the Lt Governor and Chief Minister over constitutional and administrative powers to them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Malaysian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan and top official of his Maxis Group Augustus Ralph Marshall, who are accused in Rs 742.58 crore Aircel-Maxis deal, on Friday got a stern warning for "running away" from Indian court of law by the Supreme Court which said it will ensure that "there is no absconder".

The apex court, which in the earlier hearing had said it "cannot tolerate that a person uses India's national resources and evades the law," maintained that these accused must have to come and "answer summons of the court".

The top court took offence to their having evaded court summons and warrants in the case in which former Telecom Minister and DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran and others were chargesheeted by CBI in a probe related to money trail of around Rs 600 crore allegedly used as bribe in the Aircel-Maxis deal.

Maran brothers were on Thursday discharged in the case by a special court which had segregated the case of Krishnan and Marshal as they have failed to comply with summons to appear before it.

They were accused of pressuring and coercing Chennai-based telecom promoter C Sivasankaran, who got 2G licences in 2006, to sell his stakes in Aircel and two subsidiary firms to Malaysian firm Maxis Group.

When the matter came up for hearing, a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said the Malaysian businessmen have not complied with its January 6 order which had clearly stated the non-appearance before the apex court would lead it to pass an order to restrain the earning of any revenue by the company from 2G spectrum licences.

The bench, also comprising Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud, said they will have to face the "consequences" for failing to appear before courts in India and it "might order auctioning of the spectrum allotted to Aircel-Maxis to recover the Rs 20,000 crore debt".

It said these Malaysian nationals, who have been summoned as accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal case, were not respecting the orders of the courts here and if they "don't care about the law and court's order" the apex court will deal with them.

The bench said if these accused do not respond to the summons and appear before the court here, then "it will not be open for them to raise objections in case of monetary loss".

"We will adopt any mean to ensure there is no absconder from this country and there is no absconder to the summons of the courts here," the bench said.

"We are hearing for those persons who are running away from the law. He (Krishnan) is an accused and he has been chargesheeted. Why he is running away? He should come and explain and finish the matter.

"Here is the Supreme Court which is asking these people to come but they are saying no we will not come. People from our country are running away one after other and are not coming back," the bench said.

"Why he (Krishnan) is not coming? We are not punishing him. He has been summoned by a court and he is not responding to it. The other country is saying no he will not come. Ok, don't come but there will be consequences here. It is clear that he does not care for the courts here," it said.

When senior ad vocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Aircel, referred to yesterday's order discharging Marans to buttress that now no case survives, the bench shot back, "It seems everyone is trying to be a proxy for these accused."



When he informed the bench about the proposal of merger of the shares of the firm with Reliance Wireless, the bench asked him about debt of around Rs 20,000 crore which was given by banks.

"Rather than allowing the transfer of shares to Reliance, we will allow the Government of India to auction these very assets to be merged in some other company and if some other company brings more money, this money will be discharged to banks," the bench said.

"The interest of the banks have to be protected and we are here to protect them," it said, adding that "the government never supports a person who is an absconder.

Singhvi tried to persuade the bench that after yesterday's order passed by the special court discharging Marans and others in the case, all the accused in the case stand discharged.

"There was a charge of conspiracy. The principal accused are discharged by the court. There can't be a conspiracy qua the co-accused if main accused are discharged," he said.

The bench, however, said, "But the fact of matter is that summons issued to these accused in Malaysia still exist."



However, Singhvi said that the company has no control over Krishnan and "today Aircel is being punished for something which it has not done at all".

"I as Aircel can't ensure presence of Krishnan here. Can the court punish Aircel for not ensuring the presence of Krishnan before the courts here?" he said.

To this, the bench said, "This man (Krishnan) will have to come to us. He must come to answer summons of the court. You don't worry, we will deal with it."



The bench observed that it can't allow anyone to benefit from the allotted spectrum unless the accused appear before the court of law.

It also noted that despite publication of this matter in the leading newspapers of Malaysia, these accused have not appeared before the courts here.

"Despite this, can they be allowed to continue to earn from here?" the bench observed.

At the fag end of the hearing, Singhvi sought time from the court to file an affidavit explaining all the issues which he was arguing in the matter.

The bench allowed Aircel to make clear all the points raised by it till February 8 and posted the matter for hearing to February 10.

Threat to Aircel, RCom merger

At one point the bench threatened to stall the planned merger between Aircel and Reliance Communications (RCom).

"We will not allow this transfer to Reliance. We will ask the government to auction it off... We will adopt any means so that no one runs away with a debt to the country or tries to avoid summons of an Indian court... You are hand in glove with him," the bench said as reported by Economic Times.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today held their second road show here, reflecting the new found bonhomie between the two parties in the poll-bound state.

Large crowds and party workers of both the parties cheered the two leaders who targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi in their speeches from their special 'Rath'.

The three-hour long exercise covered 12 kilometres from Dayalbagh to the Bijlighar crossing.

The first joint road show was held in Lucknow on January 29.

Rahul said Akhilesh has done good work in the state and "We will now oust the BJP and the RSS from UP".

The road show touched the minority areas as it inched its way along the life line of the city, the MG Road, bringing traffic to a halt.

There would be a three-cornered fight between BJP, BSP and SP-Congress alliance in UP.

Out of the 403 assembly seats, SP would be contesting 298 and Congress the rest 105.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
in Yemen has taken over three southern towns just days after a deadly US special operations raid targeting its commanders, a security official and tribal sources said on Friday.

The jihadist advance into the Abyan province towns of Loder, Shaqra and Ahwar came as the White House defended Sunday's raid on an compound as a "success", even though multiple civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed.

Abyan has long been an stronghold and it was only through a major offensive backed by a Saud-led coalition last summer that the government was able to drive its fighters out of the province's main towns.

The jihadists' entry into Loder and Shaqra on Thursday evening was helped by a pullout by government forces angry over the late payment of their wages, a security official told AFP.

"Our forces are also angry that they have not been provided with the weapons and other equipment to confront the jihadists, who have been stepping up their armed attacks," the official said.

Al-Qaeda fighters set up roadblocks around the towns and blew up two security service buildings.

Saudi-led aircraft carried out two strikes on jihadist positions in Loder overnight, the official added.

Tribal sources said there were fears that the jihadists would now move on the provincial capital Zinjibar.

Zinjibar lies just 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Yemen's second city Aden where the government is based.

Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of nearly two years of fighting between government forces and Shiite rebels who control the capital Sanaa to entrench its presence in the south.
US President Donald trump today said the American economy is headed for "exciting times" as he has already taken steps to get rid of regulations and reducing taxes.

"I think that it's gonna continue big league. We're bringing back jobs, we're bringing down your taxes, we're getting rid of your regulations. I think it's gonna be some really very exciting times ahead," Trump said in a meeting with CEOs and economic experts for a strategy and policy forum in White House's State Dining Room.

"We're and we're gonna be coming up with a tax bill very son, a health care bill even sooner. And it's really working out," he said and expressed satisfaction over the monthly jobs report.

Trump said "a couple of things happened this morning" like creation of 227,000 new jobs in January, "great spirit in the country right now. So we're very happy about that."



"We will use very smart people to make money. Why don't you get other people to run the economy? I said no, we have to get the right people. And the people that voted for me understand that and that's what they want," he said.

"We're looking forward in a little while in the upcoming few moments to discuss all of the things that you think we can do to bring back our jobs, to get taxes even lower than we're gonna be cutting. We have a great plan, but I want to have your input on the plan in particular and to do what we have to do in terms of regulation. We have some of the bankers here," Trump said.

Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone group said the purpose of this group is to get things done, to advise the government as to areas where they can do things a lot better as a country for all Americans.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Entertainment / Music

by Future Moyo aka Jamelah

+27730573036 , Facebook Page: Mthabisi Moyo or on Instagram (using the same name)

Email: mthaeguitar91@gmail.com

JOHANNESBURG - The versatile Nkayi born and Bulawayo bred guitarist Mthabisi Moyo who dropped a hot gospel album last year in November has penned a new book that will be used as a manual for guitarists across Africa.Speaking from his base in Johannesburg,in an interview with Southern Times Express, Moyo said: "I am actually about to launch my manual book for guitar lessons I specifically wrote for Africans so as to keep our music alive. My plan is to approach the government schools and start teaching kids about our own music and to make them understand how important it is to appreciate what God has given you and make use of it," Moyo said.Powered by his experience and inspired by the lack of talented guitarists in Zimbabwean music industry as evidenced by his continuous hiring across genres, to play different guitar tunes, the 26 year old Moyo is determined to unlock the potential of upcoming artists.The book project itself is a way of donating his thinking cap that ought to be translated into practical creative projects by the decoders.Talking of his experience , the multi-faceted artist has been a darling to different genres. His appearance in maskandi acoustics was notable in Zinjaziyamluma's latest album and on the oncoming fresh album from Mehlokazulu which happens to be the later's debut Afro-jazz offering.Again, If you have been wondering whose fingers were behind the now 'national anthem- SamaMoe,' a track by the troublesome Madlela and Thula Sana by Jeys Marabini, then you will be clearly answered today.Although Moyo has played electrifying rhumba beats he refuses to be branded as a rhumba artists , rather he opts to stand as an unlimited edition fond of trading under maskandi and Afro-pop sounds."I Play both a lead and acoustic guitar with a fusion of South African maskandi and some elements of jazz," Moyo told Southern Times Express."In music industry I have worked with Jeys Marabini, the one who discovered my gift and nurtured it up until Mthabisi Moyo the guitarist was revealed. I have also worked with Mehlokazulu, Madlela (Samamo) the late Sfiso Ncwane, and the Austrian based Vusa Mkhaya, I can't count them all but I'm still looking forward to helping as many artists in Africa as possible," he said.Apparently Moyo also dropped a sizzling 10 track gospel album on the 4th of November 2016 at Prevailing Word Ministries International led by Pastor Tich and Prinsisca Tanyanyiwa, whom Moyo says has opened many doors for his music career."I have released an album titled Ngiyabonga last year 2016 with 10 powerful praise and worship songs. I call my music Afro Gospel, it is generally gospel in African rhythms. The tracks include the following: Ngizocasha, Amagama abangcwele, Ngiyabonga, Uphakeme, Jesu siyakubonga, Ungithethelele, Akhona amandla, Sizohlabelela, Favor and Ngiyabonga," Moyo said."In my music project I featured Pastor Owen Wozhele (Botswana) and Kudakwashe Chikwanda, (keyboards) Travolta Chikwanda (Bassist), Caleb Dube (Drummer)," Moyo continued.When asked about his role model, Moyo had this to say: "My role model is Siphokazi, a South African artist whose music is so reach in African elements and has since taken our traditions to the world and that is also my dream. I want to take our African music ,which is being rated as music for the uneducated people, to the whole world and to also reach people in rural areas who still think gospel is for Americans because most of the churches today are influenced by Americans."Those who have watched one of his music videos Sizohlabelela on DSTV channel 340 will attest that Moyo is a rare finding in modern day music industry."I have been in music industry for 6 years, playing with different artists across genres from both Zimbabwe and South Africa but people would always tell me that I sound African so I had to stick to that because that is what God gave me."So my vision is to spread the word of God through our African music and also teach our next generation to prioritise what is ours. I believe that it is not a mistake for us to be in Africa and God had a good purpose for us so there is no need for us to abandon our music as if God is not happy with it. God does not have any problem with our African music so I want to introduce this Afro Gospel to churches, to the world and show them that God has blessed us with our own genre," Moyo said.The album is now available on the market for music lovers to treat themselves to a new gospel menu .CDs are available in Zimbabwe and South Africa, going for $5-00 and R100-00 respectively. For more details the following contacts can be used:
US Vice President Mike Pence today defended President Donald Trump's executive order halting immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, saying that "any fair-minded person" would understand the directive's intent.

"Any fair-minded person looking at the President's action knows that what President Trump has done is essentially imposes a pause on countries that have been compromised by terrorism, so that we can evaluate the screening process and establish an extreme vetting so that people coming into this country don't represent a threat to our families and to our communities," Pence was quoted as saying by Fox .

"It's an indefinite pause with regard to Syria, but with regard to the other countries, we're going to be calling on the Department of Homeland Security, all of our team to work together to evaluate how we can continue to go forward with immigration from those countries but not compromise the safety and security of the American people," he said.

Pence asserted that the ban imposed on seven Muslim-majority country is not a Muslim ban.

"Clearly, it's not a Muslim ban. It's not in any way associated with religion," he said.

"This president made it clear in this executive order that we are not going to compromise the safety and security of the American people with regard to these seven countries that the Obama administration identified as compromised by terror, that the Congress has identified. We're take a pause. We're going to step back and we're going to put safety and security of the American people first," Pence said in response to a question.

Pence said the they are now reviewing the list.

"This list has really garnered around whether the countries that we're looking at have the internal systems that we can be certain that people are who they say they are," he said.

"And with regard to other countries, Saudi Arabia being among them, we have confidence that they have the kind of safeguards, the kind of law enforcement, the kind of screening in their country that when a person presents a visa or attempts to come into the United States, that we know they are who they present as," Pence said.

"The Obama administration and the Congress have identified these seven countries as having systems that have been compromised through strife, through the advent of terrorism, in the case of Syria through civil war, so that we need to step back to make sure that we have the additional safeguards," Pence said.

Trump has a lot of priorities, but his number one priority is the safety and security of the American people.

"And that's why this decisive action took place," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Afghan policeman turned his rifle on his colleagues in a northern province, killing eight, while a gunman in the country's east fatally shot a cleric and his wife, officials said today.

The policemen were killed while they were sleeping in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to the provincial police spokesman, Abdul Karim Yuresh.

The attack happened last night and according to the spokesman, a policeman who was on duty opened fire and killed his colleagues, then collected all their firearms and fled the scene presumably to join the Taliban.

The Taliban made no official statement or claim about the attack but Afghanistan has seen several such incidents over the past years. There has been a growing number of cases in which Afghan troops or policemen or Taliban militants dressed in Afghan uniforms have turning their guns on their colleagues or US-led coalition partners.

Also last night, in the country's eastern Paktika province, a gunman killed a cleric and his wife, said Mohammad Alias Wahdat, the provincial governor.

Wahdat said the gunman entered the cleric's home in the Yusof Khail district and shot the cleric and his wife. Two of their children who were in the house survived.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the attack and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings. In other violence, Gul Agha Roohani, the chief of police in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said Islamic State group militants stormed the security posts in the district of Kot early today, killing at least one police officer.

Afghan security forces responded and killed 12 militants, he said.

Afghanistan has been facing major political and security challenges since the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014, leaving a smaller contingent of troops behind to focus on training and counterterrorism.

Also, President Ashraf Ghani has been dealing with a stepped-up insurgency by the Taliban seeking to topple the government as well as an affiliate of the Islamic State group, which emerged two years ago and has expanded its footprint, especially in the country's east and in Nangarhar province.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Meghalaya unit of BJP today demanded Chief Minister Mukul Sangma's resignation for passing a legislation which ultimately did not stand judicial review and was struck down by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court had recently upheld the May 31, 2016 ruling by the then Governor V Shanmuganathan that the post of MDC (Meghalaya District Council) is not an office of profit.

"We demand Chief Minister Mukul Sangma to step down for he has taken the people of the state for a ride by passing such an Act," BJP state chief Shibun Lyngdoh said.

The ruling Congress had in 2015 passed a legislation -- the Prevention of Disqualification (Members of Legislative Assembly, Meghalaya) (Amendment) Act, 2015, which bars legislators to hold another elected post in the tribal councils in the state.

The legislation forced seven out of eight MLAs holding two elected posts for which by-elections were held for the tribal councils in Khasi and Jaintia Hills districts last year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Centre has sanctioned construction of at least 7 new railway lines in Maharashtra, including the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST)-Panvel fast elevated corridor, collectively worth Rs 31,196 crore.

These seven new lines-- 3,123 kms long-- and several other projects have been sanctioned by the government in the Union Budget 2017-18 presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. This year, Railway budget was incorporated in the general budget after a gap of over 90 years.

According to officials, Maharashtra has got budgetary allocations to the tune of Rs 5,958 crore for upcoming fiscal years, which is 408 per cent higher that the average allocation of last five years. Railway officials welcomed the budget saying the allocations made for the new projects were "unprecedented" and "more than expected".

The Pink Book of the Railway Budget put up on the Ministry of Railways website, provides the detailed list of projects. Pink Book is an official record of Indian Railways, which lays down the arrangement of fund allotment to different railway projects.

Out of seven new lines, four big ticket projects are: Fast Elevated Corridor between CST to Panvel (55-km with initial cost of Rs 14,525 crore), Vasai-Virar-Panvel Corridor (72-km new suburban corridor with initial cost of Rs 8,787 crore), and 3rd and 4th suburban lines between Pune and Lonavala (64-km with initial project cost of Rs 4,253 crore) and Bandra-Virar Elevated Rail Corridor (Phase I) (42-km with initial cost of Rs 762 crore).

The other three new railway lines are: Jeur-Ashti (78 km, Rs 1,560 crore), Phaltan-Pandharpur (105 km, Rs 1,149 crore) and Hatkanangale-Ichalkaranji (8 km, Rs 160 crore).

Besides, four railway electrification projects of in different sections of the state, have also been sanctioned.

In addition to this, Rs 148 crore for traffic facility works, Rs 636 crore for Metropolitan Transport Planning have been allocated for the suburban section of Mumbai.

Survey for 13 new railway lines has been proposed with the initial allotment of Rs 6.68 crore. Thirty new ROBs (road over bridges) and 23 RUBs (road under bridges) are also planned to be constructed with a total cost of Rs 691.38 crore, in which Railways would bear Rs 331.91 crore, while the rest would be borne by the state government.

Shakuntala Railway, a narrow gauge railway line operated by private owners in , has also been allotted Rs 22 crore for its upgradation and conversion into broad gauge.

A senior Central Railway (CR) official told PTI on the condition of anonymity, "In terms of monetary allocations, this year's budget is unprecedented. This will eventually transform the mass transportation scenario of the state and Mumbai, especially in the view of different projects of Metro rail being executed.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China today said its Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Australia next week to "cement political trust", just days after reports said US President Donald Trump berated Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull on phone over an Obama-era agreement to accept 1,250 refugees.

Wang will visit Australia and New Zealand from February 7-10, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang told reporters here.

It will be Wang's first foreign visit following Chinese New Year and assumes significance as the Trump-Turnbull phone call, that was to last for an hour but abruptly disconnected by Trump after 25 minutes over disagreement on the "dumb deal" on accepting refugees, is likely to upend the US' bilateral diplomatic landscape with a "strong ally".

According to a report in The Washington Post, Trump called the conversation with Turnbull "the worst by far" of his calls with world leaders that day. American media reports say Trump insisted it was a very bad deal for the US to take refugees and that one of them was going to be the "next Boston bomber".

Australia's The Sydney Morning Herald has commented that Trump's behaviour "came as a shock for many in Australia and overseas that Trump would publicly create waves with such a strong ally."



The verbal spat could provide China an opening in the important country surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans. Australia is already upset over Trump rescinding the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement reached by Obama keeping China out of the deal.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wang will co-host the fourth China-Australia diplomatic and strategic dialogue with his Australian counterpart during the visit. He will also meet his New Zealand counterpart and other leaders.

"We hope the visit will help cement political trust, expand cooperation and boost the China-Australia and China-New Zealand all-round strategic partnerships," Lu said.

Also, Australia has invited China amid reports that Beijing may try to take the leadership of the TPP vacated by the US.

China itself is bracing for a tense standoff with Trump over a host of issues, including the disputed South China Sea, trade tariffs and allegations of currency manipulation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China announced today that Foreign Minister Wang Yi will visit Australia next week, raising the prospect of stronger bilateral ties as US President Donald Trump unsettles the global diplomatic landscape.

Wang will travel to Australia and New Zealand from Tuesday to next Friday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said during a press briefing.

It will be Wang's first foreign visit following Chinese New Year, and Lu called the trip "a full demonstration of the importance China attaches" to relations with Australia.

Though such visits are often planned well in advance, the announcement coincided with the fallout from a phone call between Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Australia has long been a close Washington ally and has supported the United States in most conflicts since World War II. But Sunday's call, in which Trump reportedly lambasted Turnbull over a refugee agreement before abruptly ending the conversation, suggested a rocky start to the relationship under the new American leader.

The clash could provide an opening for China as it eyes ways to take advantage of shifting foreign relations under Trump.

With the US withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Australia is among the countries that have expressed interest in an alternative, Beijing-backed trade deal.

While China is Australia's largest trade partner, relations between the two countries have been complicated by Australia's alliance with the US.

In July, a joint statement from the US, Japan and Australia urged China not to construct military outposts and reclaim land in the disputed South China Sea.

At the time, Wang condemned the statement and accused the three countries of "fanning the flames".

China and Australia signed a free trade agreement in 2015, after years of difficult negotiations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With members in Rajya Sabha expressing concern over deployment of teachers on poll duties, government today assured that the matter will be conveyed to the Election Commission as part of the electoral reform process.

The assurance by Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad came during a discussion on a private member bill, moved by Tiruchi Siva (DMK). Convinced by Prasad's assurance, Siva decided to withdraw the Constitution Amendment Bill 2015 (Amendment of article 324).

Earlier, the DMK member had made a passionate plea that teachers should not be enrolled for poll duty and asked the government to consider deploying unemployed youth for this purpose.

"Tiruchi Siva has articulated a very serious concern. I do appreciate his concern that teachers must be put to maximum use for teaching the students only...I want to assure that these concerns shall be conveyed to the Election Commission (EC)," Prasad said, while intervening in the debate.

Stating that holding polls was in the domain of the EC, he said the poll body "should do the best while upholding the majesty of free and fair elections" and hoped that the EC would take pro-active measures in this regard.

He assured that the views of DMK member will also be included in the all-party meeting on electoral reforms with the Election Commission. "We need to further improve the electoral system. These are in the pipeline," he said.

Prasad said that elections are not held in any state during the examination period.

Earlier replying to the debate, Minister of State for Law and Justice P P Chaudhary said teachers were being deployed for poll duties on holidays and non-teaching hours as per the directions of the Supreme Court.

Moreover, he said it was not only teachers, but officers from other departments, local authorities and government companies who are also enrolled for poll duties. "It is wrong to say that it is a wastage of time," Chaudhary said.

He noted that there were lakhs of polling booths across the country and hence "teachers alone are not enough" to conduct free and fair polls.

Stating that participating in the election process was a national duty and service, Chaudhary ruled out outsourcing this job to private parties.

He also suggested that "not only teachers, but students should also participate in the process of elections" for a healthy democratic process.

Chaudhary said even in the Right to Education Act,



provision has been made that services of teachers can be taken for election purposes. He also said the Prime Minister has suggested holding simultaneous holding of Lok Sabha and assembly elections.

The Minister said the amendment Bill moved by Siva was devoid of any merit and urged him to withdraw it.

Unconvinced with the Chaudhary's reply, he refused to withdraw the Bill and charged that the government did not have a soft corner for the teachers. "Lawmakers should have a human approach," Siva said.

Later, Chaudhary assured Siva that the poll reform process was in the pipeline and his suggestion will be taken into consideration.

Participating in the discussion on the measure, members cutting across party lines, supported the legislation.

While initiating the discussion, Tiruchi Siva, who moved it, said deployment of teachers on election duties was against the interest of the students.

"Putting teachers on election duty adds to the distress of the students. It also leads to non-completion of the syllabus and lack of learning for the students," Siva said.

He said over 7 lakh posts of teachers were lying vacant across the country and in such a situation, putting them on election duties does not make sense.

On hearing that the country had so many teaching positions lying vacant, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman P J Kurien asked Minister of State for External Affairs M J Akbar to bring the matter to the notice of the HRD Minister.

Commenting on the dismal condition of the education system, Siva while citing an ISRO report said that only 26 per cent of engineering graduates who passed out were employable. "This unemployability will increase if teachers are deployed for non-teaching duties," he said.

Giving example of US and Australia, he said in these countries volunteers opt for election duties. "Why can't our country follow the same," he asked and suggested that even retired teachers could be deployed for poll duties as they knew the process pretty well.

"In the interest of students and to end the suffering of teachers, I urge the members to adopt the Bill," Siva said.

Viplove Thakur (Congress) said children would not be able to progess if education system is weak. "Like potatoes, teachers are made to fit in every kind of job including election duties," she said.

"In rural areas where there is always a scarcity of teachers, even there, teachers are drafted for election duties. It hampers students' progress," she said, adding other government officals could also be used for poll duties.

Other members including Vijila Sathyananth and N Krishnan (both AIADMK), KVP Ramachandra Rao, R Anand Bhaskar (both Cong), Vijaysai Reddy (YSR Congress), Bhushan Lal Jangde and Shankarbhai Vegad (both BJP) also spoke.
For the first time, the Directorate of Gurdwara Elections (DGE) has introduced photo electoral roll to bring transparency in the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee polls.

Around 3.80 lakh voters will cast their votes in the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) elections to be held on February 26.

"Of the total voters, about 60 per cent of them have been included into photo electoral roll," a senior DGE official said.

He official also said that for the first time in the DSGMC polls, voter slip will be provided to electors in order to prevent bogus voting.

Meanwhile, the DGE in an order directed the voters to produce required documents as identity proof at the time of casting their votes.

Among the documents which voters can produce are passport, driving licence, PAN Card, SC/ST/OBC certificate, Aadhar Card.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The government today urged the Opposition Congress to "not politicise" sudden demise of IUML MP E Ahamed and sought cooperation of all parties in smooth conduct of Parliament.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar today said the RML Hospital's Superintendent has already given a detailed statement on the sudden demise of the leader.

The Minister was responding to Congress general secretary and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad's allegation that Ahamed had passed away "much earlier" than declared by RML hospital.

Azad had also accused the government of keeping the body at the hospital as it wanted to go ahead with presentation of the Budget on February 1 despite Opposition demanding its postponement.

"I urge Congress party to not politicise the death of Ahamed sahab...And I also urge them to cooperate in running both Houses," Kumar said.

The Minister also requested all parties to participate in the debate and make the Budget session fruitful by maintaining high traditions of the Parliament.

Former Union minister and Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) MP E Ahamed passed away in the early hours of Wednesday. His funeral took place yesterday in his home state Kerala.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
News / Africa

by Staff Reporter

BANJUL - A dog that killed a young son of the Gambian president Adama Barrow has undergone a fatal injection, according to the veterinary unit of the country's Ministry of Agriculture.Seven-year-old Habibou Barrow was bitten by the dog on January 15.He was pronounced dead while being transported to the hospital.The president's team confirmed that he had died as a result of dog bites, without explaining the circumstances of the tragedy."On Tuesday we administered an injection to the dog to "put him to sleep", the anonymous Ministry official told AFP, in reference to an operation of euthanasia."We concluded that it was not prudent to let this dog continue to wander the streets," the source said, adding that tests indicated that it was not affected by rabies."We carried out tests which showed that he was not infected with rabies," he added.The death of young Barrow occurred while his father, then President-elect was in neighbouring Senegal awaiting his investiture on January 19 this year. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) flew Barrow out of the Gambia at a time that his predecessor Yahya Jammeh refused to cede power amid high political tension.Meanwhile, President Adama Barrow revealed Wednesday the names of the first batch of some 10 ministers appointed Tuesday and swore them into office.The ceremony was held at Kairaba Hotel, the temporary office of Barrow, who has yet to occupy the State House, or the presidential palace, which was "sanitised" by ECOWAS forces following the forced departure of Barrow's predecessor Yahya Jammeh."This is a new Gambia. The new Gambia is a reality with these cabinet appointments," Barrow said in the swearing-in ceremony he presided over.
The over three-month-long economic blockade in Manipur is likely to end soon with the Union Home Ministry saying "substantial progress" has been made in the talks held today with the Manipur government and a Naga group spearheading the agitation in the poll-bound state.

The tripartite talks, among the officials of the Centre, Manipur government and representatives of United Naga Council (UNC), were successfully organised here. The Ministry successfully brokered the talks and the economic crises will end soon in Manipur, official sources said.

They said an agreement in this regard has been reached between the agitating Naga group and the state government which is likely to be signed shortly.

The key National Highway number 2 (NH 2) is blocked since November 1 by UNC cadres leading to normal life being severely affected there. The Council is protesting against creation of seven new districts in the state.

"A meeting to formally sign the accord to end the crises has been called on Tuesday and it is hoped that the blockade would end soon after that," a source said.

A late-night statement issued by Home Ministry said there was "substantial progress" on the issues in the talks.

"The issue of creation of 7 new districts and the ongoing economic blockade was discussed in a tripartite meeting today at New Delhi between UNC, Government of Manipur and Government of India. There was substantial progress on the issue in the talks. A few points needed further discussions at their organisation level.

"Next tripartite meeting is expected on 7th Feb, 2017 on the issues," it said.

Today's meeting was attended by UNC president Gaidon Kamei and the Council's information secretary Sangkhel Stephen, both of whom are lodged in Imphal central jail since January after Manipur police arrested them on November 25 last for leading the indefinite blockade.

Both the leaders were brought to the North Block in police custody for the talks which were led by Satyendra Garg, Joint Secretary, Home Ministry.

The talks continued for over five hours, the sources said.

Due to the blockade, normal life in Manipur has been badly affected and prices of essential commodities have sky rocketed.

(Reopena DEL 82)



Polling for the 60-member Manipur Assembly is scheduled to be held on March 4 and March 8.

The personnel of Assam Rifles are deployed is deployed along the Indo-Myanmar border and deal with insurgents in the northeast.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh had twice written to Manipur Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh to ensure reopening of the National Highway. Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju had visited Imphal recently to convey the Centre's concern over state government's failure to reopen the NH-2.

However, despite the central government's initiatives and sending around 7,000 paramilitary forces, the highway continues to be seized by the UNC since November.
Enforcement Directorate official Manoj Kumar, who was asked to appear before Kolkata police for questioning today in a money laundering case, has sought more time.

"We had asked him to come for questioning today but he had sought more time as an internal inquiry of ED is pending. He has asked for few more days, we have granted it," a senior official of Kolkata Police said.

Kumar, who has been suspended for allegedly compromising the Rose valley probe, was summoned by the police yesterday for questioning in the money laundering case.

Meanwhile Suvra Kundu, wife of Rose Valley Group Chairman Gautam Kundu, was today questioned for the third time by sleuths of Kolkata police in relation to black money and money laundering case and her alleged relationship with Kumar, who was investigating the Rose Valley scam.

Suvra and Kumar have been in for the past two days after a CCTV footage purportedly showed them both travelling together by air from Kolkata to Delhi last month and later having checked into a hotel in the Sunder Nagar area of Delhi.

ED Officials said Kumar, an Assistant Director of the agency, has been "suspended pending enquiry" and has been removed from the cases he was probing like the Rose Valley chit fund case and some pertaining to the coal blocks allocation.

Kumar has denied the charges saying the entire episode was being blown out of proportion and was part of a "larger conspiracy" to take him out of the case.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Biennial elections to Maharashtra Legislative Council for five Graduates and Teachers constituencies were held today with over 51 per cent of the electorate exercising their franchise.

The constituencies which went to polls are Amravati, Nashik (both graduates division), Nagpur, Aurangabad and Konkan (teachers division).

"51.41 per cent voters cast their votes till 2 pm. Final percentage of the polling till 5 pm will be available later," said an election official.

Till 2 pm, Amravati constituency polled 40.46 per cent, while Nashik division polled 38.29 per cent. Nagpur teachers division polled 55.82 per cent, while Aurangabad registered 56.08 per cent and Konkan division polled 66.41 per cent, the official informed.

As many as 76 candidates are in fray for the five seats. Congress is contesting three seats -- Nashik graduates division (Sudhir Tambe), Amravati division (Sanjay Khodke) and Nagpur teachers seat (Anil Shinde).

NCP is contesting from Aurangabad teachers seat (Vikram Kale), while it has fielded Balaram Patil from Konkan seat.

Dattatraya Mhatre is contesting on Shiv Sena ticket from Konkan seat, while BJP supported candidate Ramnath Mote too is in the fray from the same division.

For Aurangabad teachers seat, Sena has fielded Vikram Kale. It is also contesting from Nagpur teachers constituency (Prakash Jadhao).

BJP has renominated minister of state for home Ranjit Patil in Amravati graduates seat, while Prashant Patil of BJP is in fray from Nashik graduates seat.

Counting of votes will take place on February 6.

The tenure of these five seats ends on December 5, 2016 but the election was postponed after Supreme Court directed that voter rolls in all teachers and graduates constituencies for the legislative councils be revised.

(Reopens BES24)



A report from Nashik said polling for graduates



constituency was held at 353 centres in districts of Nashik, Dhule, Nandurbar, Ahmednagar and Jalgaon.

48.06 per cent voting was recorded in Nashik, Ahmednagar registered 56.61 per cent, Jalgaon 58.01 per cent, Dhule 61.39 per cent and Nandurabr62.06per cent.

A total of seven candidates are in fray for the post, but the main tussle is between sitting congress MLC Sudhir Tambe, BJP's Prashant Patil and CPM's Raju Desale.

A report from Nagpur said polling for Teachers' Constituency was held in six districts of Vidarbha.

The polling was held at 124 centres in the districts of Nagpur, Bhandara, Chandrapur, Gondia, Gadchiroli and Wardha.

A total of 16 candidates are in fray for the Member of Legislative Council election.

According to District Information Office(DIO), Nagpur district recorded 78.54 voting percentage, Bhandara saw 86 per cent voting, while Chandrapur registered 89.38 per cent voting, Gondia recorded 90.25 per cent voting, while, Gadchiroli saw 88.43 per cent voting and Wardha registered 80.39 per cent voting.
Senior Bihar BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi today asked his party workers to explain to the common people about the benefits of the Union Budget.

He also asked them to tell the people that poor and backward states like Bihar would benefit the most from the Union Budget.

"You (workers) should go among the people and tell them about the Union Budget and also about the confusion being created by the Bihar government over the state not getting any specific mention in the Budget and also tell them about special category status," Modi said while addressing 'Budget Pathshala' organised at party's state headquarters here.

The former deputy chief minister explained to the party workers about the broad outline of the various aspects of the budget and what it meant for everyone.

The one state that would be benefited the most from the Union Budget is Bihar, he said while referring to the manifold increase in allocations of various schemes for ministries of agriculture, poverty alleviation, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana, skill development, etc.

On Bihar not getting any mention in Union Budget, Modi said, "I can understand this if people like Lalu Prasad make such demand but it surprises me if educated and seasoned person like Nitish Kumar, who has been a railway minister, makes such demand that there is no mention of Bihar in the Union Budget ...There is no tradition of having separate page for each state in the budget."



On Kumar's statement that there was no mention of special status to Bihar in the budget, he said that "the very concept of 'special category state status' has been rejected by Raghuram Rajan committee set up by the UPA government and later the 14th Finance Commission also abolished it."



The Narendra Modi government has given Bihar much more than benefits under special category state through a special package for development of road and other infrastructure, the senior BJP leader said.

Modi said that the Budget mainly lays emphasis on building infrastructure, job creation, skill development, poverty alleviation besides checking creation of black money by promoting digital payment and transaction.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Several people were missing after a ferry carrying over 70 people capsized in River Ravi near Nankana Sahib in Pakistan's Punjab province, with rescue operation still ongoing, officials said.

The boat, sailing from Nankana's tehsil Said Wala to Okara, with more than 70 people aboard, capsized shortly after leaving Said Wala, prompting district administration and rescue teams to swing into action and save as many people as possible, Geo reported.

"The ferry was overloaded with passengers," Deputy Commissioner Saira Umar said, adding that majority of people swam to the bank on their own, while rescue teams saved eight others, who were shifted to hospital.

The rescue operation will continue until the recovery of all the people, she added.

An eye witness said that there were over 70 people and nearly 20 motorbikes aboard the ferry, the report said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Five Indians have been charged with making fraudulent Goods and Services Tax (GST) refund claims totalling about USD 118300.

Each of them faced more than 200 counts of abatement by conspiracy to make false statements in claims made under the GST Act to obtain refunds of GST, The Straits Times reported today.

The five of them have been identified as Kothandaraman Gnanam, 29; Karunanidhi Rajesh, 32; Karunanithi Saravanan, 36; Ramaiyan Karthikeyan, 43; and Waithiyalingam Karunanidhi, 63.

The men faced 1,197 charges in all.

They allegedly tried to abuse the electronic tourist refund scheme (eTRS) by making claims for jewellery they did not personally purchase.

Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (Iras) investigators nabbed them on Wednesday.

These arrests followed a joint operation by Iras and Singapore Customs on May 27 last year, in which the men were caught red-handed for allegedly making fraudulent GST refund claims totalling about USD 118300 (SGD 167,253) at Changi Airport.

The Indian nationals were each offered bail of SGD 50,000 yesterday and will be back in court on February 24.

A joint press release by Iras and Singapore Customs stated that tourists can claim GST refunds on goods they have bought and taken out of Singapore.

Those who do not purchase anything but seek or obtain a GST refund under the tourist refund scheme commits an offence under the GST Act.

Under the eTRS, a tourist receives a receipt for goods purchased and an eTRS ticket when he buys items from a GST-registered retailer that participates in the scheme.

The tourist can then use the eTRS ticket to make a GST refund claim at ports of departure such as Changi Airport.

They can also make similar transactions using the credit cards which they had used to buy their goods.

In a GST refund-claim fraud scenario, an offender will pretend to be a tourist and pay local customers, who are not entitled to eTRS refunds, for their jewellery invoices.

With these invoices and by using a passport, the offender will obtain eTRS tickets from the respective shops. He will then claim eTRS GST cash refunds at ports of departure.

Anyone who commits the offence of wilful intent to make a false GST refund claim, or assist any other person to make such a false claim, faces a penalty of up to three times the amount of refund wrongfully claimed and a fine not exceeding SGD10,000, and/or imprisonment of up to seven years.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Program officer of Ford Foundation connived with director of Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Limited (SCPPL) for granting around USD 2.9 lakh foreign donations in violation of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), a CBI charge sheet says.

The document, which was filed by the central agency last month against social activist Teesta Setalvad, her husband Javed Anand and Sabrang, the publishing company run by them, for alleged violation of foreign funding rules, was given to the accused today.

According to the charge sheet, Sushma Raman, program officer of Ford Foundation, received the first proposal from Sabrang for receipt of grant in 2004.

"Investigations revealed that Raman was aware that Sabrang was not eligible to receive funds since it was not in accordance with the provisions of FCR Act. She had communicated with Javed at that time of processing of the proposal for the grant. To circumvent the compliance requirements Raman connived with Anand who was trying to project the grant as consultancy charges", the charge sheet mentions.

It also said that Sabrang was a private limited company engaged in publications which is not entrusted to receive foreign contributions under any circumstances. Still if the company thought otherwise they could have applied for proper permission before accepting the foreign grant by not doing so they have violated FCRA, the charge sheet said.

"As per project modules submitted to foreign donor it is mentioned that Sabrang as part of its public campaign would lobby with government in public sphere to deepen and broaden the concept of minority/minorities. Lobbying with political parties is not allowed as per the provision of FCRA," the charge sheet reads, adding, that it mixed foreign contributions with their domestic ones.

The charge sheet also said they did not maintain exclusive books of account for receipt of foreign contribution and Sabrang could not produce segregated books of accounts for checking.

It said Sabrang could not produce minutes book to the inspection team for scrutiny and also the records prior to FY 2009.

"Sabrang had been publishing a monthly periodical and two of its directors have been writing columns and articles in leading newspapers and as per FCRA they are totally prohibited to receive foreign contribution," the charge sheet said.

The agreement was signed on September 2006 between Sabrang and Ford Foundation and under the clause it is mentioned that the funds may be expended only for charitable, scientific, literacy or educational purpose.

"As it has been clearly stated in the agreement that the



funds have been given for charitable, scientific, literary or education purpose, thus this fund could not be treated as amount provided for propose of rendering any service," the charge sheet mentions.

The probe agency had in July 2015 registered a case against Setalvad, who was at the forefront of campaign for 2002 Gujarat riot victims, and others for alleged violation of FCRA in receiving funds from abroad without taking prior permission from the Home Ministry.

The charge sheet has been filed under Section 120 B of Indian Penal Code (criminal conspiracy) along with FCRA 2010 and FCRA 1976.
Against the backdrop of the murder of a businessman's son in Meerut and a trader here, Union minister Piyush Goyal today slammed the ruling Samajwadi Party on law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh and claimed that "nobody feels safe" in the state.

Asserting that law and order situation has deteriorated in the state and "goonda raj" is prevailing all over, he claimed at a press conference here, "The situation is such that women and businessmen are the worst victims."



Commenting on the SP-Congress alliance, Goyal claimed the tie-up will spell doom for the state.

The Union Minister met the family members of Shrawan Sahu, who was shot dead here on Wednesday night.

In Meerut, BJP President Amit Shah called off his foot march following the murder of a businessman's son and lashed out at the Samajwadi Party government, saying Uttar Pradesh has become India's "crime capital" under it and vowed to make it a poll issue.

Abhishek (24) was killed last night when he was with his father Sushil Verma, who owns a gutka business, and three workers working in his godown near his house at Sharda road in Brahmpuri area of Meerut.

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The Centre is conducting a study to ascertain in major farmer suicide-hit states, Parliament was informed on Friday.

The data on a number of farmer suicides during 2016 has not yet been compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). The most recent NCRB data showed a number of farmer suicides to be 12,602 in 2015, with the maximum reported in Maharashtra (4,291), followed by Karnataka.

"Taking cognisance of the problem of and consequent farmers suicide in the country, the government has undertaken a study 'Farmers suicide in India: causes and policy prescription'," Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.

It is an all India coordinated study conducted in work plan 2016-17 period by Bengaluru-based Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC).

Singh said that agriculture is a state subject and so the state governments take appropriate measures for development of agriculture, while the central government supplements the efforts of the states.

To a separate query on the impact of demonetisation on farming sector, the minister said a short survey conducted in few villages around Delhi could not establish "any significant adverse effect of demonetisation on input availability, market arrivals of produce and area sown in rabi season".

The study was undertaken by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) and National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research (NIAP) under 'Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav' initiative.

According to the preliminary reports received from states, total area sown under rabi crops as on January 27 stands at 637.34 lakh hectare as compared to 600.02 lakh hectare in the year-ago period, indicating no significant impact of demonetisation on rabi sowing, Singh added.
The entire family system will be under great stress if marital rape is brought under the law, a parliamentary panel, which deliberated the issue of making amendments to Section 375 of IPC that defines rape, has observed.

Citing National Crime Records Bureau data, MoS Women and Child Development Krishna Raj today said in Lok Sabha that 700 cases pertaining to rape by live-in partners or separated husbands were filed in 2015.

However, she reiterated the government stance against bringing marital rape under the law.

"The Department-Related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs presented its 167th Report on Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2012 on 1st March 2013.

"The Committee deliberated amendments to Section 375 of IPC including the issue of marital rape and observed that if marital rape is brought under the law, the entire family system will be under great stress and the Committee may perhaps be doing more injustice," she said.

Union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi had last year stoked a controversy when she said in Parliament that there cannot be a law against marital rape because marriage is a "sacrament".

Gandhi has maintained that "a law on marital rape will make no difference because no one will complain".

Section 375, which defines rape and deals with punishment for the crime, states that the rape law would not apply to assault or sexual intercourse by a husband on his wife who is above 15 years.

The JS Verma committee set up in the aftermath of nationwide protests over December 16 gangrape had recommended that marital rape be criminalised.

The UN Committee on Elimination of Discrimination against Women also recommended that the Indian government criminalise it.

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News / National

by Dhodha Rekanyi

Harare businessman and Zanu pf youth member Malvin Chimutashu case has been referred to Constitutional court after Harare magistrate Lanzini Ncube granted an application for that referral to ConCourt today.Prominent lawyer Mr Clemence Ngweshiwa had argued that Chimutashu, s arrest was unconstitutional since Zimbabwe Anti corruption commission has no arresting powers.He had been arrested for Obstruction of Justice after it was alleged that he tried to influence one Chasara to withdraw charges against Deputy Higher Education minister Godfrey Gandawa on fraud charges involving Zimdef funds.Appearing for the state, Mr Michael Reza opposed the application submitting to the court that Chimutashu had admitted to the charges in a recording.That submission was vehemently denied by lawyer Clemence Ngweshiwa, who refutted that bald assertion much to the satisfaction of the presiding magistrate.
Hundreds of Yemeni Americans braved the winter chill in New York to demonstrate against President Donald Trump's travel ban, closing bodega stores in protest.

The crowd stood shoulder to shoulder, crammed onto the steps outside Brooklyn's city hall, waving a sea of American flags and carrying the odd Yemeni flag or placards with slogans such as "Muslim Lives Matter" yesterday.

"Hate Will Never Make US Great" and "No Ban No Wall Refugees Are Welcome Here" said other signs as the crowd of mostly men took the afternoon off work, foregoing business to send a message to Trump.

"We stand here for justice, for dignity," said Yousef al-Baadani, 31, who like many others works in a bodega, his in Queens.

"Most of the stores closed today," he told AFP in reference to the Yemeni-owned bodega stores dotted across New York's five boroughs.

Several of the protesters told AFP that they had been gathered for hours and some said they would remain until 8 pm (local time).

The Republican president signed an executive order last Friday that temporarily closed US borders to refugees as well as to visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

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Seeking to enhance people-to-people contacts and trade ties, India today further liberalised its visa policy for Afghan nationals to make it easier for them to visit the country.

"Embassy of India, Kabul is pleased to inform all Afghan nationals that with effect from February 1, 2017 Indian visa regime has been further liberalised to make it even more convenient for Afghan nationals to visit India," the Indian Embassy here said in a statement.

The duration of a tourist visa has been enhanced to one year with continuous stay of 90 days during each visit as against the existing provision of stay of 30 days.

The provision of a gap of 60 days between two tourism visits, however, remains unchanged, the statement said.

India promotes and encourages Afghan businessmen to visit India to further enhance Indo-Afghan trade ties. Henceforth, Afghan businessmen investing in India or having a large trade turnover with India, depending on volume of their investment/ trade, would be issued Indian visas for a duration of 1 to 5 years, with continuous stay of up to 180 days during each such business visit, subject to production of relevant business documents, the statement said.

"Embassy of India, Kabul is confident that these changes in the visas regime would further strengthen the historic people-to-people and business ties between our two countries," it added.

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India has held a range of talks on the sale of indigenously developed surface-to-air Akash missile and supersonic Bramhos missile to Vietnam, the government today said.

"India and Vietnam share a strategic partnership. Defence cooperation, including supply of defence equipment, is an important aspect of this partnership.

"Both countries have held discussions on range of issues in this regard," Subhash Bhamre, Minister of State in the Ministry of Defence said in a written reply in Lok Sabha on whether the government has any plans to sell Akash and Bramhos to the Southeast Asian nation.

Responding to another question, Bhamre said a Committee of Experts was constituted by Ministry of Defence under the chairmanship of Lt Gen (retd) D B Shekatkar to recommend measures to enhance combat capability and rebalance defence expenditure of the armed forces.

"The Committee has submitted its final report in December 2016. An internal committee has been constituted within the Ministry to analyse the report, identify the recommendations to be accepted and to frame the key action points as well as a roadmap for their implementation," he said.

The Minister, in reply to another question, said trials on Pinaka rocket were successfully conducted at Integrated Test Range (ITR) Balasore in two phases on January 12 and 24 this year, with range of 65 km and 75 km, respectively.

The guided version of Pinaka rocket incorporates Inertial Navigation Systems (INS)/ Global Positioning System (GPS) for the mid-course guidance with accuracy of 60m to 80m at all ranges.

Pinaka has been designed and developed for induction into Army after successful user trials. Two regiments of Pinaka unguided version have already been inducted into the Army.

"Current trials have been conducted for demonstrating the feasibility of the development of guided version of Pinaka rocket using the same launcher and ammunition configuration. In the recent trials conducted, the desired accuracy has been achieved," Bhamre said.

To a question on whether the air force has sufficient number of fighter aircraft to maintain its combat edge, he said, it is "adequately equipped" to cater for the threat environment that exists.

He said procurement of state-of-art fighter aircraft is on and it includes 36 Rafale jets, Su-30 MKI aircraft while procurement of LCA Tejas has also been approved.

Bhamre also said Advance Early Warning and Control (AEW&C) aircraft will be inducted into the Indian Air Force after completion of design and development flight trials and systems evaluation.

"Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) has fitted into AEW&C various indigenously developed Systems/ Equipment. Complete software for all systems have also been developed indigenously, mostly within DRDO," he said.

To another question, the minister said, in the past two years, 50,000 bullet proof jackets (BPJ) have been procured for the Indian Army through an Indian manufacturer. Further, the case for procurement of BPJs of quantity 1,86,138 through Capital Route is under Buy (Indian) category.

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A 31-year-old Indian-origin hotelier in the US has pleaded guilty to charges of underpaying his employees at two of his hotels and lying to federal investigators, according to a media report.

Mehul Chandubhai Patel, also known as Mike Patel, pleaded guilty to charges that stem from violations of minimum wage rules in connection with two hotels he operates in Battle Creek and Coldwater in Michigan, according to the US Department of Labor.

Patel appeared before Magistrate Judge Ellen Carmody in US District Court in Grand Rapids yesterday on February 2, and pleaded guilty to the crime of concealing a material fact from the federal government when obligated to disclose it, mlive.Com reported.

"Patel admitted that during 2014, the Department of Labor (DOL) had found him to be in violation of minimum wage laws by underpaying his hotel employees," the government stated in a press release provided by Acting US Attorney Andrew Birge.

"He thereafter signed an agreement promising to repay his employees. When requested to provide proof that he had done so, Patel sent DOL checks indicating that back wages had been repaid. However, he concealed the fact that he required his employees to return the money to him," he said.

Patel faces up to five years in prison and other penalties. He may be ordered to pay restitution and other penalties. He is to be sentenced by US District Judge Paul Maloney.

Patel owns the Rodeway Inn on Beckley Road in Battle Creek and the Super 8 Motel in Coldwater, it said.

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Iran's foreign minister said today that his country will "never initiate a war", despite facing threats, in reference to a series of US warnings over its testing of missiles.

Tehran was "unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense," Mohammad Javad Zarif said on his official Twitter account.

"We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement," the Iranian minister wrote.

His posts came after US President Donald Trump used his Twitter account to accuse Iran of "playing with fire".

On Thursday, Trump said "nothing is off the table" when a journalist asked him whether military action against Iran was an option.

That came only hours after Trump tweeted that he was putting Iran "on notice" following Sunday's missile test.

Iran has confirmed it tested a ballistic missile, but denied that it violated the terms of a UN Security Council resolution on its nuclear programme.

It denounced the Trump administration's warnings as "baseless" and "provocative".

On Friday, Iran's foreign ministry said it had refused visas for US athletes due to compete in a wrestling tournament in the country in response to Trump's travel ban on seven mainly Muslim nations.

"Considering the policies adopted by the new US administration, the foreign ministry was inevitably forced to refuse travel by the US wrestling team to Iran," ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA agency.

The team had been due to take part in the event in western Iran on February 16 and 17.

Trump signed an executive order a week ago barring entry of all refugees to the US for 120 days, Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocking citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entry for 90 days.

The order, which caused mayhem worldwide and has been met with legal challenges, was later clarified to say that green card holders were not targeted by the ban.

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US President Donald Trump today accused Iran of "playing with fire" after the Islamic republic dismissed his warnings over its latest missile test as unfounded and provocative.

In a series of early morning tweets, Trump wrote: "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"



But that was only the second of five tweets fired off between 6:24 am (local time) and 6:48 am.

The first in the series concerned Trump's feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest covered topics as varied as his conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, meetings with business leaders and anti-Trump protesters.

Yesterday, the Trump administration appeared poised to levy fresh sanctions on Iran in what would mark the first concrete evidence of the new president's tougher stance, hours after he and his national security advisor put Iran "on notice" over missile tests and support for Yemeni rebels.

The sanctions are likely to be levied on individuals or entities linked to Iran's missile program and will be taken under existing presidential powers, sources familiar with White House deliberations said.

The measures are likely to replicate actions by former president Barack Obama's administration, which targeted firms and the Revolutionary Guard's missile command after previous tests.

Asked by a reporter if military action was a possibility, Trump said, "Nothing is off the table."



On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn insisted the missile test was in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231. That calls on Iran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi called the claims "baseless, repetitive and provocative."



Iran has confirmed that it had tested a ballistic missile, but denied that it violated the terms of the nuclear deal.

Tehran says its missiles do not breach UN resolutions because they are for defence purposes only and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

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US President Donald Trump's controversial immigration policy on seven Muslim-majority countries has led to the cancellation of a life-saving surgery on a 4-month-old Iranian infant for a heart condition.

Baby Fatemah and her family were supposed to fly in for an appointment for a surgical consultation at at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) next week, but they were not able to finish their trip because of Trump's executive order on immigration, KPTV reported.

The gravely ill baby is Iranian, but Fatemah's family has decided they did not want her to have surgery in her birth country due to concerns about the quality of medical services.

"Over there, it's a very high risk because it's open heart surgery," her uncle, Sam Taghizadeh, said.

Fatemah Taghizadeh's parents were hoping to meet with doctors in Oregon on February 5 for the emergency surgery and travelled to Dubai to get the US visa. Their embassy appointment was cancelled because of the executive order preventing Iranian nationals, among others, from travelling to the US, Taghizadeh, who is a US citizen and lives in Portland, told reporters.

"All the paper, everything was ready, and just in the last minute they cancelled everything," Taghizadeh said.

"It's like a nightmare. You know, in the one night everything changes. Now you don't know what you're going to do," said Taghizadeh.

"Why we came to US, we came here for freedom. For a better life. I'm feeling nowhere is safe," Taghizadeh said.

Fatemah and her family left Dubai and are they are now back in Iran.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has expressed outrage and said the Empire State would be glad to help little Fatemah.

"Here's the consequence of this un-American policy," Cuomo tweeted yesterday. "An exception should be made. If OR has issue, NY will provide care," New York Post reported.

"The pain and damage of this flawed federal policy is especially repulsive in this case preventing a child from getting life saving treatment," said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.

"If the plane lands in New York the Governor will personally make sure the child gets the health care she needs. New York and America does not let children die because we deprived them of healthcare.?"



Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

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Jordan is serving as a model of "tolerance and moderation" in the Middle East, US President Donald Trump said as he met Jordanian King Abdullah II here.

During a brief meeting with the Jordanian King on the sidelines of National Prayer Breakfast yesterday, Trump conveyed America's "commitment to Jordan's stability, security, and prosperity".

The White House said Trump thanked the King for his leadership in promoting peace and stability in the region, adding that he highlighted Jordan's critical contributions to defeating ISIS and discussed the possibility of establishing safe zones in Syria.

"President Trump underscored that the United States is committed to strengthening the security and economic partnership with Jordan. The President also emphasized Jordan's essential role in serving as a model of tolerance and moderation in the region," the White House said.

The Jordanian King is the first leader from the Middle East to have met Trump and top officials of his administration.

"The two leaders discussed the King returning to Washington for an official visit in the near future," the White House said.

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BJP's Delhi President Manoj Tiwari today launched an attack on Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, alleging the AAP government has failed to fulfil its poll promises, including regularisation of unauthorised colonies and ensuring the safety of women.

Releasing a a "reality check" report, he said the AAP government did not hold even a single meeting for regularisation of unauthorised colonies in its two-year rule.

He said that reply to RTI queries filed by BJP has revealed that the government did not hold any meeting with the Ministry of Home Affairs on the issue of women safety.

"Why should not I call such a person (Kejriwal) bluff-master and lier as he failed to fulfil his promises to the people who gave him 67 seats in Delhi," Tiwari said in a press conference.

Tiwari said that the people in unauthorised colonies and shanties were not receiving drinking water despite the AAP government's claim of waiver of water bill.

"People in slums where I had spent a night were craving for water. The AAP government claims waiving water bills but what is the use when there is no water for people in slums and unauthorised colonies," he said.

Tiwari also termed Kejriwal the "biggest threat" to the country, referring to reports that the Delhi Chief Minister stayed at the house of a "terrorist" while campaigning in Punjab.

He also accused AAP of deploying 16,000 camerapersons for "spying" on election rallies of opposition parties and charged that Kejriwal was "wasting" money of the people of Delhi for political purpose.

Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly Vijender Gupta and New Delhi MP Meenakshi Lekhi also criticised Kejriwal and his government.

Lekhi said that Kejriwal who talks about prohibition in other states is "issuing new licences" for liquor vends, bars and pubs in his own state.

"The Kejriwal government has given licence to 250 pubs and 399 liquor vends in the national capital according to the RTI reply," she said.

Gupta said the AAP government has failed to act against "tainted" ministers and legislators.

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Roots in Kashmir, a youth organisation of displaced Kashmiri Hindus, today batted strongly for declaring the birth anniversary of Maharaja Hari Singh as a state holiday.

"Roots in Kashmir (RIK) demands that state government should declare the birth anniversary of Maharaja Hari Singh as a state holiday," Amit Raina, RIK member said.

RIK in a meeting had passed a resolution to request the government to declare the birth anniversary of Hari Singh as a state holiday.

Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Council in January passed a resolution to declare the birth anniversary of the erstwhile ruler as a state holiday.

The members applauded the role of Hari Singh as a modern ruler, who was a progressive thinker and a social reformer.

Anoop Bhat, Coordinator Roots in Kashmir, said that Hari Singh did not discriminate between his Hindu and Muslim subjects.

He gave importance only to meritocracy and appointed the best from his subjects irrespective of their religion in his court, administration and the army.

Raina said the king was remembered as a social reformer who abolished untouchability, Sati, child marriage and prostitution.

He promoted education by making it compulsory and making primary and secondary education free. He was a great supporter of women education.

Munish Jalali, a young RIK activist said that "our elders survived the wrath of exodus, thanks to the maharaja who not only made education compulsory but also offered it free through government schools".

All members agreed that Maharaja Hari Singh was a king of many "firsts", setting up a world class hospital, flood control department, price control department and the revolutionary Jammu and Kashmir Bank in 1938.

The resolution also stated that the maharaja was a "great Indian patriot, who chose India, a secular nation over a failed state Pakistan".

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News / National

by Staff Reporter

A 30-year-old violent man who kicked his six-month-old son to death has appeared at the Harare Magistrates' Courts facing murder charges.Chamunorwa Mavhunga of Ngwandangwanda Village was remanded in custody to February 15 by the magistrate Mrs Rumbidzai Mugwagwa.It is alleged that Chamunorwa Mavhunga of Ngwandangwanda Village on December 6 last year had an altercation with his wife, Ndakarevei Madyo, who was holding their baby boy in her hands.Apparently Mavhunga started assaulting Madyo with booted foot and clenched fists, before striking her with stones.It is also alleged that Mavhunga kicked the baby to the ground.After noticing that he had kicked the baby, Mavhunga disappeared and went to an unknown destination.Mavhunga was later arrested by the police at Arda Nijo in Borrowdale, Harare, following a tip-off.
Asserting that the latest round of sanctions against Iranian entities and individuals would help combat Tehran's "malign" activities, the US today said that it will continue to counter Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic missile programme and other destabilising activities.

"These types of designations are critical to combating Iran's malign activities that are outside the scope of the Joint Comprehension Plan of Action, or JCPOA. We will continue to counter Iran's support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program and other destabilizing activities, including through our sanctions," a Senior Administration Official told reporters during a conference call.

Earlier the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the Treasury Department designated 25 individuals and entities for their support to Iran's ballistic missile program or for their support to Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, and providing material support to various terrorist groups including Hezbollah and Hamas.

The US designated three networks totaling 17 individuals and entities for their support to Iran's ballistic missile program, including to the previously designated Aerospace Industries Organisation and Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which are central players in Iran's ballistic missile research, development and production activities, the official said.

"Iran's continued ballistic missile development and support for terrorism are very provocative and undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout the region. These designations today are our response to Iran's ongoing ballistic missile program, including its ballistic missile test on January 29, as well as its continued support for terrorism," Senior Administration Official said.

"We have taken these actions today after careful consideration and we will continue to respond with appropriate action, including through designating entities and individuals facilitating procurement for Iran's ballistic missile program. Iran's ballistic missile program continues to be a grave concern to the international community," the official said.

The January 29 ballistic missile test launch is inconsistent with UN Security Council Resolution and underscores the importance of continued international action to curtail such activity, the official alleged.

The United States is committed to the full implementation of Security Council Resolution, which calls upon Iran not to undertake any launches of ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering a nuclear weapon and which expressly prohibits the transfer of missile technology control regime items and related support by any country to Iran's ballistic missile program, the official added.

"Additionally, in the past six months, Houthi forces trained and armed by Iran have attacked Emirate and Saudi vessels and have threatened US and allied vessels transiting the Red Sea and they continue to threaten U.S. Friends and allies in the region," the official said.

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Fruit drink company Manpasand Beverages has reported a 49.28 per cent rise in net profit for quarter ended December 31, 2016 at Rs 7.24 crore, a top executive said here today.

The net profit for the corresponding period in previous fiscal stood at Rs 4.85 crore, its chairman and MD Dhirendra Singh told reporters.

The city-based company's gross sales for the quarter under review recorded a 13.97% jump to Rs 103.85 crore from Rs 91.12 crore in same period last fiscal.

EPS for Q3FY17 stood at Rs 1.27.

Singh said they have started construction for three units in Vadodara, Sri City, and Varanasi and has also identified a location in eastern part of country.

"It is part of future expansion plans as the upcoming units will not only double the company's production capacity in the next 12-18 months, but will also help us in reaching newer markets, especially in north-eastern and southern India," he said.

Singh said Rs 500 crore raised by the company through a QIP issue recently is well placed to fund the new plants with combined production capacity of 2 lakh cases per day as against current 1.7 lakh cases per day.

He said the company will introduce new brands into market soon and will also forge strategic alliances with key retailers.

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Merger of weak public sector banks cannot be ruled out in a run up to meet Basel III norms, a top bank official said today.

"I think they (government) will be looking to two quarters, December 16 (Q3) and March 17 (Q4) and then a decision may be taken on merger of banks specially which are not doing well," United Bank of India (UBI) Managing Director and CEO P K Bajaj said at a post-budget panel discussion organised by the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce.

However, he clarified that this has not yet been announced as of now and government was concentrating on merging associate banks of SBI with the parent.

Bajaj pointed out that Rs 10,000 crore each for FY2017-18 and FY2018-19 for recapitalisation of banks is not adequate given the stress in the banking system due to core sectors like steel, power, infrastructure and coal.

According to estimates, banking sector needs Rs 1.3 lakh crore to Rs 1.5 lakh crore to meet the Basel III norms.

Moreover, government was setting goals to get capital for recapitalisation and some banks may not be able to meet the criteria. UBI is one of the banks which have failed in meeting the goals and likely to lose out some capital.

Many banks which may not able to raise capital in equity, QIP will be an option but would depend on market conditions. However, a positive relaxation by RBI on AT 1 bonds interest payment norms will give some leeway for banks to raise tier I capital.

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The residents of Patna today witnessed a foggy morning followed by a bright sunny day with Met department forecasting yet another foggy/misty morning in the major parts of the state tomorrow.

"There was the possibility of another spell of cloudy and chilly weather conditions for next two days i.E. On Saturday and Sunday due to another round of western disturbance. But now it seems that it is no longer a strong one and hence the state may not witness another spell of chilly weather conditions as it had witnessed two days ago," Met official said.

It forecast that the major cities of Patna, Gaya, Bhagalpur and Purnea may witness a foggy/misty morning which would be followed by partly cloudy sky later in the day.

Though people of Patna woke up to dense fog but a bright sun shine was witnessed after 10 am making it a pleasant day for city dwellers.

The temperature- both maximum and minimum- hovered around one or two degree below or above season's normal, it said.

According to the MeT bulletin, among major cities Patna recorded the minimum temperature of 10.1 degrees Celsius against yesterday's 8.7 degrees Celsius.

The capital's maximum temperature was 24.2 degrees Celsius against yesterday's 22 degrees Celsius, it said.

The Met office has predicted that the state capital may witness tomorrow a maximum temperature of 25 degrees Celsius while the minimum may be around 11 degree celsius.

Among other major cities, Purnea recorded the highest maximum temperature at 25 degrees Celsius while Gaya and Bhagalpur recorded 24.7 and 23.7 degrees Celsius respectively, the weatherman said.

Gaya recorded the minimum temperature at 8.7 degree celsius which was followed by Purnea and Bhagalpur at 10.3 and 10.5 degrees Celsius respectively, it said.

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European Union leaders will try to rally together to revive the beleaguered bloc at a special summit in Malta today in the face of "threats" from migration, Brexit and Donald Trump.

It is the latest in a series of crisis meetings since Britain voted to leave the EU last June, but fears about the new US president have strengthened the sense that the bloc is now at a decisive moment in its history.

The first part of the meeting, which all 28 leaders will attend, will focus on the migration crisis amid warnings of a new surge in people making the dangerous sea crossing from Libya.

"Our main goal for the Malta summit is to stem the flow of irregular migration from Libya to Europe. This is the only way to stop people dying in the deserts and at sea," EU President Donald Tusk said in Valletta yesterday.

British premier Theresa May will miss the second part when the other 27 discuss the way ahead after Brexit, including a flagship summit in Rome in March to mark the EU's 60th anniversary.

With doubts growing over the Trump administration's commitment to the transatlantic alliance with Europe, the leaders will also discuss "international issues" facing the union.

Tusk, who will chair the summit, warned this week that Trump was a "threat" to the EU along with Russian aggression, an increasingly assertive China and domestic populism.

In a letter to EU leaders, Tusk said those factors "as well as worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable."



But Tusk also echoed what many EU leaders have said - that Trump is a chance for a Europe to finally unify after Brexit and the eurozone crisis, and perhaps even take Washington's place in global politics and trade.

Unity has, however, often eluded the EU on the migration crisis, which has seen more than one million people flee war, poverty and oppression in Syria, the Middle East and North Africa.

The route from Libya to Italy has become the most pressing problem, after the EU cut sea crossings from Turkey to Greece by 98 per cent thanks to a deal with Ankara.

Most of the 181,000 people who came via Libya in 2016 were illegal economic migrants, unlike the asylum seekers arriving in Greece from Syria, the EU says.

The leaders will agree steps to stop migrants taking boats in the first place, including help for the Libyan coastguard and border forces, according to a copy of a summit declaration seen by AFP.

With rights groups warning about terrible conditions caused by people smugglers, other steps include helping Libyan communities to host migrants and working with the UN refugee agency and the International Organisation for Migration, it says.

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A 35-year-old former Royal Canadian Mint employee has been sentenced to 30 months in prison for stealing gold coins by concealing them in his rectum.

Leston Lawrence stole USD 127,116 (165,451 Canadian dollars) of gold in 22 pieces, media reports said.

The man, who was found guilty last November, was caught after he had successfully sold 17 of the gold pieces through Ottawa Gold Buyers.

Ontario Court Judge Peter Doody ordered Lawrence to pay a USD 145,900 fine.

Passing sentence yesterday, he ruled that Lawrence should serve another 30 months in prison if he fails to pay the penalty within three years of his release.

Investigators had found vaseline and latex gloves in the mint employee's locker.

Judge Doody said these items "could have been used to facilitate insertion of gold items inside his rectum", reports the Toronto Star.

The 17 laundered pucks weighed as much as 264g apiece and were sold for sums up to USD 7,300 each between 2014 and 2015.

Lawrence was convicted of conveying gold out of the mint, breach of trust by a public official and possession of property obtained by crime.

He used the money to buy a boat in Florida and build a house in Jamaica, the court was told.

Lawrence's job was to purify gold and he occasionally worked alone in an area not covered by security cameras.

He worked at the mint from 2008 to 2015.

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Clashes between Ukrainian forces and Moscow-backed rebels left two more dead in a flashpoint town today and five others elsewhere in bloodshed that has prompted the US to condemn Russia's "aggressive" stance.

The latest reports from both sides take the death toll in fighting since Sunday in the eastern war zone to 32 -- a figure that has not been reached since the height of the war in 2014 and 2015.

The US criticism of Moscow will be welcomed in Kiev, particularly worried about losing Washington's support as new President Donald Trump seeks to mend ties with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian forces and the rebels have been exchanging mortar and rocket fire near the front line town of Avdiivka just north of the pro-Russian rebels' de facto capital of Donetsk.

The Ukrainian army said the latest fatal victims were a local woman and an emergency worker in Avdiivka. The toll in the blue-collar town where a giant coke plant employs almost the entire population of 25,000 people now stands at 27.

Authorities said that three soldiers had also been killed in other parts of eastern Ukraine in which pro-Russian insurgency has raged since April 2014.

The rebels also said that shelling by the Ukrainian army had reportedly killed two civilians in Donetsk.

Ukraine and Russia have traded blame over who started the violence and who was responsible for the deaths.

AFP reporters in Avdiivka said today the shelling had died down considerably in the town itself and that only sporadic echoes of mortar fire could be heard on its outskirts.

The separatists' sudden assault came after a month-long spell of relative calm in the 33-month war and sharpened the world's focus on the bloodshed in the European Union's back yard.

The conflict began less than two months after Ukraine ousted its Russian-back leader in February 2014.

Moscow responded by annexing Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March 2014 and then allegedly plotting the eastern insurgency to keep Ukraine under its thumb after its tilt toward the West.

The Kremlin sees most of the former Soviet Union as part of its geopolitical sphere of influence -- a stance strongly disputed by the United States and European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The United States' UN ambassador Nikki Haley has condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov countered that "without question, we dispute (Haley's) position".

Moscow, he said, continues "to coherently explain our own to all members of the UN Security Council and our other partners, including the permanent representative from the United States".

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Any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an "effective and overwhelming" response, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Seoul today as he sought to reassure Asian allies rattled by President Donald Trump's isolationist rhetoric.

Mattis was in the South Korean capital before going on to Tokyo, on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

South Korea has enjoyed US security protection since the 1950-53 Korean War, but on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces from it and Japan if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to defend it against the nuclear-armed North, and 47,000 in Japan.

Pyongyang was continuing to "engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour", said Mattis, who first came to the South in 1972 as a 21-year-old lieutenant in the US military.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

He was in Seoul to "underscore America's priority commitment to our bilateral alliance" and make clear the administration's "full commitment" to defending South Korea's democracy," he said.

Han added that the alliance "reaffirms its firm will and strength to remain unwavering against all challenges and adversaries".

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-Un said in his closely-watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: "It won't happen!"



Ahead of his departure for Japan, Mattis laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Seoul National Cemetery, where he met several hundred supporters and Korean War veterans waving American flags and pictures of Trump.

Yesterday Mattis and South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South this year as planned.

Beijing fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities, weakening its nuclear deterrent. It has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilising regional security, and imposed measures seen as economic retaliation in South Korea.

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A delegation from National Defence College, comprising 15 officers, called on Assam Governor Banwarilal Purohit at the Raj Bhavan here today.

The Governor discussed several issues with them and informed them of the state government's mission and vision of bringing about an overall change for all round development of the Assam, an official release said.

He drew the attention of the officers to Assam's rich and abundant natural resources, human resources and its diverse heritage in the fields of culture and ethnicities.

The Governor appreciated the rigorous training and discipline of the officers and asked them to dedicate themselves to propel the development of the state.

The Officers also expressed their gratitude to the Governor for all facilities given to them during their stay in the state.

The officers from the 57th course comprised officers from the Indian Armed Forces as well as from Civil Services, Indian Police Services and officers from friendly foreign countries.

The group, led by Senior Directing Staff Major General P Dere, toured Assam for five days and familiarised themselves with the socio-political aspects of the state.

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The United States and Germany agree that North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is central to security and stability of North America and Europe, the White House has said.

The statement from the White House yesterday, comes after a meeting between the Vice President Mike Pence and German Vice Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel, during which the two discussed a range of issues.

Both leaders affirmed the importance of close German-American cooperation and expressed their desire to strengthen already close German-American ties in the coming years, the White House said.

Pence and Gabriel also agreed on NATO's centrality in ensuring the security and stability of North America and Europe.

"Both leaders reaffirmed that all NATO allies must meet their obligations and contribute their fair share to our collective security. They also underscored that NATO must adapt to confront threats to our countries such as violent extremism and terrorism," it said.

Pence informed Gabriel of his plans to attend the Munich Security Conference and visit Brussels later this month, where he will engage with European allies and partners about how to deepen and strengthen the Transatlantic alliance.

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News / National

by Staff Reporter

MDC-T vice president Thokozani Khupe, has joined an increasingly vocal chorus by opposition and civil society groups who are calling for a boycott of president Robert Mugabe's 93rd birthday celebrations in Matobo.The bash, organized by the 21st February movement will be hosted by Matabeleland south province at the Rhodes estate preparatory school in Matobo where the Gukurahundi massacres took place between 1983 and 1987 when the national army's fifth brigade unit crushed the so called dissidents-disgruntled former guerillas and supporters of the late Joshua Nkomo killing thousands.Khupes sentiments are on the back of the Matobos business community this week calling on opposition parties to and civic groups to institute measures to block Zanu-pf from holding celebrations in the area.
There were 422 air safety violations by the crew of various air operators in 2016, a rise of nearly 50 per cent from 2015, resulting in de-rostering of 42 pilots besides suspension of 272 crew members, DGCA said today.

As per latest data available with the aviation regulator, there were safety violations involving 422 crew members of various air operators including scheduled airlines in 2016 as against 275 in 2015 and 391 in 2014.

Significantly, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the UN aviation monitoring body, is scheduled to carry out a comprehensive audit of India's aviation safety audit.

Last time ICAO had conducted such an audit in 2015.

Air services-wise data for 2016 shows the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) initiated 422 enforcement actions which include 272 suspensions of crew members and de-rostering of 42 pilots.

In addition, 108 crew members were let off after issuing warnings.

According to DGCA, private carrier Jet Airways along with its subsidiary JetLite had the highest number of enforcement actions (116) initiated against its crew. It was followed by SpiceJet and Air India with 101 and 61 instances of safety breach, respectively.

The number of enforcement action against IndiGo stood at 55.

SpiceJet reported the highest number of suspensions (68) in the previous year, followed by Jet Airways (53) while 41 pilots and cabin crew members of IndiGo also faced suspensions for various air safety violations.

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Nepal police today arrested a prominent Madhesi activist who has been advocating an independent Madhes, for allegedly committing "organised crime against the state".

CK Raut, who is active in the tarai demanding that the southern plains be separated from Nepal, was arrested at a time when the government was being criticised for doing nothing to those who have been openly talking about disintegrating the country.

Following complaints, Siraha district police office had written to the Dhanusha district police, asking the latter to arrest Raut on the charge of "organised crime against the state", My Republica reported.

Dhanusha District Police chief SP Lalmani Acharya said that Raut will be handed over to Siraha police soon.

United under banner of Alliance for Independent Madhes (AIM), Raut and his supporters have been organising gatherings in various parts of the country.

At a function organised on the premises of Pashupati Adarsha Higher Secondary School on January 18, Raut had spoken for about 11 minutes in which he had publicly stated that the tarai should seceded from Nepal.

Issuing a statement, Raut's supporters have also confirmed his arrest. "Nepali state has yet again shown its racist color by arresting Dr Raut from Janakpur in an undemocratic manner," said a statement issued by Kailash Mahato.

A scientist by profession, Raut holds a PhD from Cambridge University and had worked in the US.

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The White House has said it has not yet taken a position on Israeli settlements, but said their construction or expansion "may not be helpful" in achieving peace in the region.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said in a late night statement.

"The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month," he said.

Spicer said American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years.

"As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region," Spicer said.

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Cyberabad police have arrested a 37-year-old Nigerian national for allegedly cheating a woman with a job offer and collecting Rs 6.5 lakh from her in the name of 'visa processing fee'.

Chidiebere Vincent, the accused, was arrested by officers of cyber crime police station on January 31 in the national capital.

The victim, who works in the pharma industry here, got a job offer through email in November last year. The sender claimed to be a leading international drilling and engineering company, police said.

She then got a call asking her to contact 'Tony More Travelling Ltd' for VISA processing. She was informed that her job offer documents were at present stuck with Customs in Delhi, and she would need to pay Rs 6.5 lakh for "VISA Processing Fee" and similar formalities.

She borrowed money from her colleagues and also from a gold loan firm, police said based on the complaint, and deposited it in various bank accounts as instructed by the accused.

Later she realised that she had been duped.

The accused allegedly told the police during the questioning that six others were involved in the crime. Probe is on.

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Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's famed "seven resolves" of good governance for ushering Bihar into development would find rich depiction in a 144 square feet painting to be created jointly by traditional and modern artistes.

The 144 sq ft painting would be created by Art Investment Company, a social entrepreneur body, involving 40 artisans from across the country with 12 students of NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology) in Patna in 10 days time, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Prashant Singh told reporters.

In the middle of the 12x12 sq ft canvas would be theme centred at women empowerment, he said.

"We will present the painting to the CM in 10 days time when Patna Book Fair starting tomorrow would last," Singh added.

The Artisans who would be involved in preparation of the painting includes Padma Shri awardee Madhubani painter Bahua Devi, Jitendra of Sikki art, Amin Mara of Lippan centre in Gujarat, SriDevi & Vishwanath engaged in Leather Puppetry craft of Andhra Pradesh, Anita Kumari involved in preparation of Chamba Rumal (handkerchief) of Himachal Pradesh and Mamani Chitrakar of West Bengal.

Asked as what inspired them to paint the seven resolves, which is theme of "sushashan" (good governance) of grand alliance ministry in Bihar headed by Nitish Kumar, Singh said "we thought to tell the world as how Bihar would look when all the programmes related to seven resolves are completed."



Besides, the seven resolves have many programmes for youths which is our focus area, he added.

The "seven resolves" of Kumar which has been adopted by the coalition ministry as policy of governance for next four years of the term of the present government has programmes related to skill development for youths and 35 per cent reservation for women in state government jobs.

It has components related to scaling up civic facilities by providing free electricity connection, drinking water, sewage connection and toilet to every household of the state.

The Art Investment company would set up a "kala kendra" (art centre) in the Patna Book Fair starting at Gandhi maidan tomorrow in which artistes from 22 states including Bihar would make people aware of the arts and paintings of their regions.

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One person was killed and 10 others were injured when the mini-truck in which they were travelling hit a pillar of a flyover and overturned at Birshibpur in the district today, police said.

A group of folk artists from Kakdwip in South 24 Parganas were travelling in the mini-truck when its front wheel burst and it hit a pillar of the flyover and overturned, the police said.

The injured were first rushed to Uluberia hospital and then shifted to hospital in Kolkata.

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Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the "political mud" created by the SP and the BSP with their "deeds" will only help the lotus (BJP symbol) to bloom.

"Whether it be SP or BSP government, both created only political mud and it is only lotus (BJP symbol) which can grow in mud," he said at an election rally here in Kasta constituency in support of BJP candidate Saurabh Singh Sonu.

Singh also attacked the SP and Congress in his 30-minute speech.

Taking a jibe at the SP-Congress alliance, he said "Mulayam Singh opposed Congress tooth and nail but UP Chief Minister forged an alliance with that party.

"He (Akhilesh) forged alliance with the Congress whose youth leader held meetings on 'khatiyas' (cots)," he said.

Attacking Congress, the Minister said "Arey cycle hi pakadni thi to kayde ki pakadte, aisi cycle pakdi jo puncture hai" (If you had had to hold a cycle, you should have chosen a better one, why to choose a punctured one)."



Reacting to the family tussle in SP, Singh said, "If they had to fall out, they should have done it five year back."



Hailing the BJP government at the Centre, Singh said, "For the first time in political history of India, a non-Congress government came to power at the Centre with full majority and it has held the India's head high during its two-and-a-half years in power.

"Even our political opponents cannot raise a finger of doubt at any of the ministers in Modi government that he or she is tainted," he said.

Referring to his journey to Pakistan, he said that he was not intended to visit the neighbouring country, "but when it came to my knowledge that terrorists in Pakistan are opposing my visit, I decided to go."



"I visited Pakistan and I challenged them on their soil, saying they (Pakistan) are promoting terrorism by differentiating between good and bad terrorism," Singh said, adding that he returned without even taking any food there.

Justifying the surgical strikes, he said "Through the surgical strikes, we were able to send a message to the world that if need be, India can strike not only within its borders but across the borders."



He said that it was a message by our brave army that it could act anywhere if need arose.

Seeking to puncture the UP government's development



slogans, Singh said "UP's GDP has declined to 3.6 per cent from 5.6 per cent five year ago. Is this development?"



He said agriculture productivity has fallen to 1.8 per cent from 2.8 per cent and asked, "Do you call this development?"



Flaying the SP government on the law and order front, he said "Once BJP comes to power, no criminal would be allowed to move on roads."



Singh said UP has changed the politics of India in 2014 by giving maximum seats to BJP and now it is going to change the politics of the state.

He assured the farmers of exemption from crop loans, minimum interest on agriculture loans, free education up to graduation for poor girls, free education to boys up to intermediate if BJP came to power. Also, about 1 crore youths will be given jobs in five years, if a BJP government was installed in the state.
Over 100,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, an attorney for the government said today.

The number came out during a hearing in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia in response to the president's executive order.

The government attorney could not say how many people with visas were sent back to their home countries from Dulles in response to the travel ban, Washington Post reported.

An executive order signed by Trump over the weekend had halted the US refugee programme for 120 days and indefinitely banned all Syrian refugees.

A separate order also suspended all entry from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Syria on national security grounds.

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Pakistan and the US today undertook an early year review of the state of bilateral ties as Islamabad sought to reach out to the new administration in Washington amid concerns that Pakistanis may be impacted by President Donald Trump's controversial visa ban.

The Special Assistant to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Tariq Fatemi, met with US ambassador to the country David Hale to discuss cooperation and engagements with the new administration.

Foreign Office (FO) spokesman said in a statement that Fatemi in a meeting with Hale undertook an early year review of the state of Pak-US bilateral relations.

Fatemi the US Ambassador discussed the prospective engagements in the coming months as the new US Administration settles down in Washington DC, with the two expressing confidence that the momentum built over the past years, would be taken to higher levels, FO said.

Fatemi underscored the need to further deepen engagements between Pakistan and the US, both in the economic and security realms.

He also expressed confidence that by continuing to work together, the two countries will be able to strengthen cooperation in fighting terrorism, in promoting peace and security in the region and in harnessing the potential for regional connectivity.

The two sides noted that the strategic dialogue mechanism provided the requisite framework for constructive and mutually beneficial cooperation.

This Framework comprises of six Working Groups: (i) Law Enforcement & Counter-Terrorism (ii) Economy & Finance (iii) Education, Science & Technology (iv) Energy (v) Security, Strategic Stability and Non-Proliferation, and (vi) Defence Consultative Group.

Fatemi also said in the meeting that given the state of flux in global geo-political environment and growing turmoil in parts of the world, it was needed to pursue policies that promote harmony, inclusiveness and cooperation.

"In the present scenario, approaches that divide the world on religious, ethnic and racial lines should be eschewed," he said.

The meeting came as Pakistan sought to reach out to the US administration in the wake of tough talking by Trump after he took over office.

It was the first meeting between the officials of the two nations after Pakistan detained Jud chief and Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed apparently under pressure from the US.

Trump last Friday issued an executive order banning the entry of citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.

There has been increased concern among Pakistanis after top US officials hinted that Pakistan may be added to the list of countries whose citizens are barred from entering the US.

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The main suspect in the machete attack on a soldier near the Louvre museum in Paris today is a 29-year-old man who says he was born in Egypt, sources in the investigation said.

The man is thought to have entered France on a flight from Dubai, but investigators are still trying to establish his identity, the sources said.

In his visa request to come to France he declared that he was Egyptian.

The man wielded a machete and shouted "Allahu Akbar" ("God is greatest") as he lunged at soldiers patrolling outside the Louvre, home to the Mona Lisa and one of the world's most-visited museums.

The man was shot five times and is in a serious condition. A soldier suffered a minor head wound.

The attack has thrust security and the terror threat to France back into the limelight three months before elections.

More than 230 people have been killed in terror attacks in France since January 2015, including 130 who died when gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State group struck at Paris on November 13, 2015.

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News / National

by Stephen Jakes

The United States Government has provided an additional US$4 million in response to drought affected areas in Zimbabwe, targeting people living with HIV in the most severely affected areas of the country.In a statement, the US Embassy said this funding brings the total U.S. support to alleviate the effects of drought to $131 million, assisting 2 million people since June 2015."The funding comes from the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The activities will be implemented by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)," reads the statement.USAID's support to WFP will expand its nutrition activities at health clinics across Harare, Bulawayo, and Mutasa District, with a focus on providing food assistance and nutrition rehabilitation for malnourished individuals living with HIV and TB. With this funding, WFP will scale up its assistance from the current 2,348 beneficiaries to over 27,000 individuals in the coming months.USAID's funding to UNICEF will expand its water, sanitation, and hygiene activities in 10 drought-affected districts with high HIV prevalence. These activities will target 350,000 beneficiaries and aim to reduce morbidity and mortality from diarrheal diseases."These additional resources will complement US$127 million in emergency drought assistance which has been provided by the American people since the onset of the drought," stated USAID Zimbabwe Mission Director Stephanie Funk. "We stand with the people of Zimbabwe as the effects of this drought continue. USAID continues to address Zimbabwe's immediate food needs while also building resilience against future droughts.""Food security is especially critical for people living with HIV," stated WFP Country Representative Eddie Rowe. "These resources will ensure that people living with HIV can access the food and nutrients they need to adhere to treatment and live healthy, productive lives."UNICEF Country Representative Dr. Mohamed Ag Ayoya added, "The rainy season has increased the risk of diarrheal diseases as many families, including people living with HIV, still do not have access to safe water and sanitation. This funding will enable us to save lives by increasing access to safe water, improving sanitary conditions, and providing much-needed information on hygiene and HIV."People living with HIV are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity, malnutrition, and diarrheal diseases. HIV treatment is more effective for those who are properly nourished, and antiretroviral medications should not be taken on an empty stomach. Lack of food is directly correlated with non-adherence to treatment which can lead to increased viral load, opportunistic infections, progression of the disease, and a higher risk of transmitting HIV to others. Food insecurity can also pressure people into harmful coping strategies, such as transactional sex, which can make them more vulnerable to HIV infection.PEPFAR contributed $135 million toward Zimbabwe's national response to HIV and AIDS in 2016, bringing total U.S. funding for the HIV epidemic to over $650 million since 2006.For more than 30 years, the American people, through USAID, have contributed over $3 billion in assistance to Zimbabwe. Current projects include initiatives to increase food security, support economic resilience, improve health systems and services, and promote a more democratic system of governance.UNICEF promotes the rights and wellbeing of every child, in everything we do. Together with our partners, we work in 190 countries and territories to translate that commitment into practical action, focusing special effort on reaching the most vulnerable and excluded children, to the benefit of all children, everywhere. For more information about UNICEF and its work visit: www.unicef.orgWFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, delivering food in emergencies and working with communities to build resilience. Each year, WFP assists some 80 million people in around 80 countries.
PMK leader and Lok Sabha member Dr Anbumani Ramadoss was today admitted to a private hospital here with complaints of mild chest pain and giddiness.

48-year old Ramadoss, a former union health minister, was admitted to Narayana Hrudalaya Hospital tonight after being rushed from Dharmapuri, his Lok Sabha constituency, in neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

"Anbumani Ramadoss has been admitted in our hospital. He came with compliants of giddiness and mild chest pain," Senior Consultant Cardiologist of the hospital Dr Kannan told PTI.

He was undergoing diagnosis and several cardio tests, but there was no cause of worry, he said.

"We are conducting tests and diagnosis. So far, everything is fine. There is nothing to worry," Dr Kannan said.

Ramadoss, son of party founder Dr S Ramadoss, had a meeting in Hosur in Dharmapuri District, bordering Karnataka when he complained of chest paind and giddiness, he said.

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A principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya school has been arrested under the POCSO Act for allegedly sexually abusing and harassing girl students and women staff, police said today.

"We arrested the principal on January 31 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act for sexually abusing and harassing girl students and the women staff of Kendriya Vidayala school situated at Sadashiv Nagar," DCP (Central) Chandragupta told PTI here.

The principal, Kumar Thakur, was arrested at his school and produced before a city court which remanded him in judicial custody.

The accused principal had sought bail and now is out on bail, the official said.

Police arrested Thakur after receiving a letter written by Vasudeva Sharma, who is Nodal Director of Bangalore Childline Nodal Centre, a Child Rights Trust.

Sharma in his letter alleged that the principal was sexually abusing and harassing girl students, particularly of class X and XII standard over a three year period.

The complainant also alleged that the principal was sending messages to girl students on WhatsApp that were personal in nature.

Listing instances, Sharma also alleged that the women staff also reported that Thakur had sexually harassed them, especially the younger women, showing obscene pictures and making statements with sexual innuendos.

He also alleged that Thakur used his authority and power to punish staff who questioned him, or dared to disobey.

"At this point of time, the teachers wish to remain anonymous for the fear of being targeted but they have expressed their intention to fully cooperate with all efforts to secure justice," Sharma said in his letter to police.

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The Railway Ministry has sanctioned a preliminary survey for the 138-km long new rail line between Sagar Port and Dankuni, in a boost to the proposed deep sea port at Sagar Island in West Bengal.

"The chief administrative officer (administration) will conduct a preliminary survey for a new line between Sagar and Dankuni here," Eastern Railway General Manager Ghanshyam Singh told newspersons here.

The ministry, in the general Budget placed before the Parliament, has sanctioned the preliminary survey for the new lines from Sagar Port to Dankuni via Kashinagar, Kulpi, Bakrahat, Majherhat, Shalimar, Santragachi.

After the preliminary survey is placed and approved, a detailed survey would be conducted, Singh said.

The Union Cabinet has given an in-principle approval for a deep sea port at Sagar Island in South 24 Parganas district as the existing riverine ports at Kolkata and Haldia are facing problems over decreasing draught.

However, a proposal by the Mamata Banerjee government to set up a deep sea port at nearby Tajpur in East Midnapore district has cast a shroud of uncertainty as the existence of two large ports in near vicinity might prove to be unviable.

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Filmmaker Shoojit Sircar has denied signing actor Ranbir Kapoor for his upcoming biopic on revolutionary Udham Singh.

The film is based on Singh, who shot dead Michael O'Dwyer, the former Lieutenant Governor of Punjab in British India in 1940, to avenge the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre. He was later hanged by the British Government.

There were reports that Ranbir will play the martyr in the film. Asked about the same, Shoojit told reporters, "I don't know about this news, where has this come from."



Shoojit was speaking at the launch of "Mannerless Majnu" song from his upcoming production "Running Shaadi.Com". The filmmaker said when director Amit Roy approached him with the romantic-comedy he instantly related with it.

"I've helped elope a lot of friends in my life. I can't tell you how much fun it is. But one has to be prepared to hear lots of abuses too. You have to co-ordinate everything. What time to reach, where to meet...."



The filmmaker says though the movie is light and comic, the issue they are dealing with is serious.

"When I was reading it (the script) I thought these are the problems we have faced. It may be a light film but it's a serious issue of small towns. There have been instances where people who have gotten married have been separated..."



"Running Shaadi.Com", starring Taapsee Pannu and Amit Sadh in the lead, is scheduled to release on February 17.

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A Singapore court today sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to 26 months and one week in jail and four strokes of cane for twice molesting a young hotel intern and using criminal force on her.

Bander Yahya A Alzahran, a father of three, was on a holiday here with his family when the offences were committed at a hotel on the Sentosa resort island in August last year.

The 39-year-old, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, The Straits Times reported.

Alzahran was found guilty on Wednesday after an eight-day trial of kissing the 20-year-old on her neck and hugging her while wrongfully restraining her inside the hotel room.

He was also found guilty of kissing the victim's neck a second time, touching her improperly and forcing her to touch him in return.

District Judge Lee Poh Choo had found him "unusually convincing".

She rejected the defence assertion that the whole incident was a set-up and that the victim conspired with other staff to level false allegations against Alzahrani to extort money from him.

The victim had been reluctant to divulge anything as she was "confused" and did not know what to do. She had said to a colleague, who had noticed the victim's distress and unusual behaviour, that the guest had told her this was a "top secret" between them.

Cajoled for hours by her colleagues, the victim eventually told and demonstrated her version of events to various persons, including the front office manager and a security executive, at different times that day.

The maximum penalty for aggravated molestation is between two and 10 years in addition to caning on each charge.

For using criminal force, the maximum penalty is three months' jail and a Singapore dollar 1,500 fine.

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Security forces today apprehended a suspected Lashkar-e-Taiba militant from Pulwama district of south Kashmir, a police official said.

Manzoor Ahmad Ganaie, who was reported missing since January 19, was apprehended by security forces during cordon and search operation at Nowpora in Pulwama this afternoon, the official said.

One pistol and two hand grenades were recovered from the possession of the arrested ultra, believed to be a member of LeT, the official said.

Further details of the incident are awaited as search operation was still in progress, he said.

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A Swedish court decided today to hand over evidence seized in the southern city of Malmo to Belgium in connection with the Brussels attacks last year, public prosecutors said.

Swedish counter-terrorism police found four mobile phones and two computers in a raid on Wednesday on an apartment in Malmo, Sweden's third largest city, where one of the Brussels attacks suspects grew up.

The court ordered the six items sent to Belgian investigators, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Hans Ihrman, told AFP.

"They are important for the investigation," he said, without specifying how the possessions were connected to the 28-year-old suspect, Osama Krayem.

A Swedish citizen of Syrian origin, Krayem was arrested on April 8 in Brussels over suspicions he brought the bags used for two separate attacks on an airport and a metro last year, killing 32 people.

A surveillance video showed him accompanying Khalid El Bakraoui, the Brussels metro suicide bomber, minutes before the attack.

Held in Belgium since his arrest, Krayem is believed to be a link between the cells that attacked Paris in 2015 and Brussels. He has been charged in both investigations.

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Raising the fishermen's issue with the Centre once again, the Tamil Nadu government has sought Prime Minister Narendra Modi's intervention in securing release of 25 fishermen and 119 fishing boats from Sri Lankan custody.

Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, while taking up the latest instance of arrest of five fishermen from Puthukottai on Wednesday, told Modi in a letter that Lankan authorities "continue to infringe upon the historical rights enjoyed by our fishermen to fish in their traditional waters of Palk Bay."



The letter, dated February 2, 2017, was released by the state government today.

The Chief Minister said the Sri Lankan authorities have not released any of the fishing boats that had been apprehended by them since February 2015.

"With their sole means of livelihood taken away, the Indian fishermen from Tamil Nadu are in a despondent state. Presently there are 119 boats in Sri Lankan custody, which are precariously berthed on the Sri Lankan shore," he said.

"Though the government of Sri Lanka committed to consider the release of the boats in the Ministerial-level meeting held in Colombo on January 2, 2017, no action has been taken as yet in this regard," he added.

Panneerselvam told the PM that India should take up the matter with the Lankan authorities and ensure the immediate release of the boats and restore them in refurbished condition to the fishermen for their immediate use.

He requested Modi to instruct the External Affairs Ministry to take up the issue "effectively" with Sri Lanka and to secure the release of 25 fishermen and 119 fishing boats, including the five fishermen and their mechanised fishing boat apprehended on February 2, without any delay.

The Chief Minister also recalled that his predecessor, the late J Jayalalithaa, had moved the Supreme Court against ceding of Katchatheevu islet to Sri Lanka by India by way of an agreement in 1974.

He also reminded the PM of the state government's demand for a deep-sea fishing package of Rs 1,650 crore.

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Workers with well-honed soft skills - time and stress management, problem-solving, communication and good teamwork - tend to work at better firms and fetch higher wages, a new study conducted in India suggests.

Employer surveys suggest that this set of skills is just as highly demanded as technical know-how, researchers said.

Achyuta Adhvaryu, assistant professor at the University of Michigan in the US, analysed whether providing soft skills training to female garment workers in India could improve their workplace outcomes.

"We found that despite a high overall turnover rate in the industry, more treated workers are retained," Adhvaryu said.

"And treated workers are 12 per cent more productive than those who did not receive the training in soft skills," said Adhvaryu.

The programme Adhvaryu and colleagues evaluated aimed to empower female garment workers with training in a broad variety of soft skills, including communication, time management, financial literacy, problem-solving and decision-making and legal literacy.

To assess the programme's impacts, the researchers conducted a randomised controlled trial in five garment factories in Bengaluru.

Workers enrolled in a lottery for the chance to participate, and then were chosen at random to take part in the programme. Those who were not randomly selected served as controls.

Nine months after the programme ended, productivity gains, along with an increase in person-days due to retention changes, helped generate a whopping 256 per cent net return on investment.

"Wages rose very little - about 0.5 per cent - after the programme period, indicating that the firm keeps most of the gains from the increased productivity of labour," said Adhvaryu, who collaborated with Namrata Kala of Harvard University and Anant Nyshadham of Boston College in the US for the study.

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News / News

by Staff Reporter

A tuck-shop owner near the controversial Chiadzwa diamond fields close to Kurauone Primary school was reportedly gunned down by two yet to be known gun men at his business premises early today.The deceased tuck-shop owner was identified as Blessing Chikwangura and was in his early 30s, a close relative told Bulawayo24.com this Thursday evening.Chikwangura was said to be selling basic groceries and beverages at his homestead.According to information obtained by Bulawayo24.com, a Constable Jakata and one Assistant Inspector from Marange Police station attend to the scene." His body has been taken to Mutare. His name is Blessing Chikwangura, he was in his early 30s. He was short twice in the chest and once in the head " a relative told this publication."We understand that the murder occurred at a homestead in Chiadzwa."Two robbers approached him around midnight/early morning (today) shortly after his arrival and had got in his house. They broke the door into his house and forced their way in. They requested for cash and he complied and gave them the cash. He later tried to fight one of them."Then he was shot twice in the stomach and once in the head" said the relative.In the past decade , allegations of mass murder by government soldiers in a diamond field in the east of the country have been widespread.That attracted attention from the Kimberley Process (KP) in 2009.The KP has established a system of international diamond trading which bans the sale of diamonds that have been exploited in "conflict areas" or where diamonds are used to prop up violent regimes.The Chiadzwa area has been the centre of controversy since when hundreds of soldiers from President Robert Mugabe's army were deployed late in 2009 to drive off thousands of wildcat diggers and panners who invaded the area.
The US must "get smart" in addressing the challenge posed by "radical" terrorist groups, President Donald Trump said today after a machete-wielding man attacked security forces in France.

In a tweet, Trump said France is once again on edge and it is time that the United States become smart in addressing the challenge posed by such terrorist groups.

"A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART US," Trump said in a tweet this morning.

Media reports said soldiers shot at a terrorist outside Paris Louvre museum.

The alleged suspect, according to the police shouted "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great: during the incident".

"We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident," Michel Cadot, the head of Paris Police said.

The suspect was found to have been carrying two machetes. No fire explosives were found so far.

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Tyre manufacturers and MSMEs in rubber industry have expressed disappointment over the Union Budget not addressing their demand to remove inverted duty structure on tyre and rubber.

While hailing the increased allocation for infrastructure and road sector in the Union Budget, the tyre industry expressed concerns over exclusion of rubber and tyres in the list of items on which duty inversion has been addressed.

"The tyre industry was pinning high hopes on long pending correction of inverted duty on natural rubber. Regrettably, tyres or rubber have not been included in the list of items where duty inversion has been addressed," Automotive Tyre Manufacturers Association (ATMA) Chairman K M Mammen said in a statement.

He further said: "Correcting inverted duty on rubber is important to increase competitiveness of the tyre sector. Currently, the import duty on natural rubber is 25 per cent while the duty on import of tyres is just one third at around 7 per cent."



Expressing similar views, All India Rubber Industries Association (AIRIA) President Kamal K Chowdhury said: "In view of government's emphasis on domestic manufacturing, we were hopeful that inverted duty will be corrected. However our hopes have been dashed again."



Rubber MSMEs have asked for an increase in import duty on finished rubber goods to 30 per cent with a view to correct inverted duty.

AIRIA also said finished products "can be easily imported as the import duty on rubber products is between 0 to 10 per cent, while the duty on raw materials for rubber industry is between 5 per cent to 70 per cent".

Not only import duty on raw materials is higher, the duty is levied even on those raw materials which are not produced in the country thereby increasing the cost of production in India, it added.

According to AIRIA, overall import of rubber products in India has gone up 120 per cent from Rs 4,180 crore to Rs 9,202 crore in four years between 2011-12 to 2015-16.

Mammen, however, said the big push to the infrastructure spending is a big positive for the automotive tyre sector as the growth in tyre is closely linked to the growth in economy.

"Infrastructure investment means more movement of goods and that translates in increased demand for tyres especially commercial vehicle tyres. Increased allocation for the National Highways to Rs 64,000 crore will also aid the tyre sector," he added.

Chowdhury also welcomed Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's move to reduce corporate tax for MSMEs saying it would help the industry that has been going through a challenging period.

"Reduction on income tax for MSMEs from 30 per cent to 25 per cent is a highly positive move. After demonetisation, MSMEs which are largely cash dependent have been reeling under stress. Relief in the corporate tax has not come a day too soon," Chowdhury said.

Rubber industry is dominated by MSMEs. Out of the 6,000 rubber units in the country, approx 5,500 are in the MSME space, AIRIA said.

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The UN's top official on refugees pushed back against a proposed initiative that has gained recent traction to create "safe zones" in Syria for refugees, saying the country was "not the right place" for the initiative.

"Let's not waste time planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe for people to go back," said Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner on Refugees.

"Let us concentrate on making peace so that everywhere becomes safe. That should be the investment," he said. U.S. President Donald Trump has floated safe zones as a substitute for resettling refugees in the United States and elsewhere around the globe.

The president explored schemes with Jordanian King Abdullah II in a face-to-face meeting in Washington, DC on Thursday.

Jordan is host to some 650,000 Syrian refugees.

Turkey and Lebanon, which both border Syria, are also pushing for safe zones across their borders. The two countries host 3.75 million refugees between them.

Grandi cited terrorism and the fragmentation of Syria and its warring parties as obstacles to creating working safe zones in the country.

Damascus has expressed its deep concern over the various proposals, saying they would have to be set up in coordination with the Syrian government.

Trump plunged the international refugee system into crisis last week when he issued an executive order forbidding refugees to enter the US for 120 days.

Grandi called the executive order a "dangerous weakening" of the established international norms to protect refugees. He spoke in Beirut a day after returning from a field mission to Syria. He said the war-torn country was "devastated" and likened many urban zones to "ghost cities."



"These are people that flee from danger, they are not dangerous themselves," he said of refugees. The six-year-long war has displaced half the country's population.

Grandi criticised the US and Western nations for "not doing enough" to share the burden of resettling Syrian refugees.

"(Lebanon) hosted more than 1 million people in the last three years, why can't rich countries host even a much smaller number?" he said.

Meanwhile, Turkey hosted talks with Syrian opposition members today ahead of UN-backed negotiations with the Damascus government in Geneva later this month.

Participants included political and military representatives of the Syrian opposition such as Riad Hijab of the High Negotiations Committee, and Syrian National Coalition President Anas al-Abdah, according to Turkish Foreign Ministry officials.

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An Integrated Underwater Harbour Defence and Surveillance System was inaugurated by Vice Admiral Girish Luthra, Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command here today.

The system will enhance the security of valuable assets against asymmetric threats, a Defence spokesperson said.

Vice Admiral Luthra said the inauguration of IUHDSS is a significant step in strengthening Harbour Defence and Security at Mumbai.

The IUHDSS is a state of the art system with integrated radars, electro optic cameras and sonars. The sensors have been strategically installed around the Mumbai Harbour to provide comprehensive real-time situational awareness for monitoring and analysis, the spokesperson said.

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US Ambassador Nikki Haley has condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine and pledged strong US support to Kiev even as the new US administration seeks to improve ties with Russia.

"We do want to better our relations with Russia. However the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions," she said in her first public remarks at the UN Security Council.

A surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine has presented the new administration of President Donald Trump with a first test of its Russia policy and Haley's comments were closely watched for signs of any shift.

The US ambassador opened her remarks stating that it was "unfortunate" that her first appearance at the council required her to "condemn the aggressive actions of Russia" in what she described as a "replay" of past US statements.

"The United States stands with the people of Ukraine who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention," she said yesterday.

"Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue."



Haley asserted that US sanctions imposed on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea would remain in place "until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."



The sharp escalation of fighting since Sunday in the town of Avdiivka has raised concerns of a humanitarian crisis, with some 20,000 people left without heat or water in freezing winter weather.

At least 23 people have been killed in mortar and rocket attacks.

"This escalation of violence must stop," Haley said.

Ukraine and Russia used the council meeting to trade accusations over who was responsible for the flare-up of fighting.

Ukrainian Ambassador Vlodymyr Yelchenko accused Russia of blocking repair work to restore electricity to Avdiivka.

"This is another clear evidence of the Kremlin's intention to create a humanitarian catastrophe in Avdiivka as it was done by the Russian army in Aleppo," he charged, referring to the city seized by Syrian government forces with Russia's military support.

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin accused Kiev of igniting fighting to attract international attention and draw support from the new US administration.

"Kiev is trying to use the clashes that they themselves started as a pretext to pull out of the Minsk agreements," said Churkin.

The Minsk agreements, backed by France and Germany, lay out a series of measures to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine -- but their implementation has been faltering.

"Kiev intends in this way to keep on the international agenda the crisis that they themselves started and suck in newly elected heads of states," Churkin said.

The conflict has killed nearly 10,000 people since 2014, more than 2,000 of whom are civilians.

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The White House has defended a US special operations raid in Yemen as a "success by all standards," even though multiple civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed, and the mission was beset with problems.

Sunday's raid -- the first authorised by President Donald Trump -- saw US special operations forces enter the Yakla region of Baida province and target a compound occupied by Al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP) operatives.

Washington views the Al-Qaeda affiliate, known for plotting attacks in other countries, as the global terror network's most dangerous branch.

Navy SEAL Team Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens, 36, was killed and three other US troops were wounded in a fierce gunfight.

Three more service members were injured when their tilt-rotor aircraft made a "hard landing." The USD 75 million MV-22 Osprey had to be destroyed in place to avoid having it fall into enemy hands.

And on Wednesday, the Pentagon acknowledged that several non-combatants, including children, had apparently been killed in the raid.

A Yemeni provincial official had previously said 16 civilians were killed -- eight women and eight children -- but the Pentagon did not provide numbers.

Washington is also facing questions on whether an eight-year-old American girl died. Local sources say the girl was the daughter of senior Al-Qaeda cleric and US citizen Anwar al-Awlaqi, killed in a 2011 US drone strike.

After previously saying the raid snagged an "unbelievable" amount of intelligence, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said yesterday the raid had been successful.

"When you think of the loss of life throughout America and institutions and in terms of the world, in terms of what some of the individuals could have done, I think it is a successful operation by all standards," Spicer said.

But he added it was hard to talk of success when an American was killed, and praised the sailor's sacrifice. He made no mention of the civilian victims.

Spicer said the plan had been under consideration since November 7, and officials under the administration of Barack Obama reviewed and approved it January 6, but did not proceed because they were waiting for a moonless night -- the next one wouldn't be until after Obama had left office.

But Colin Kahl, a former senior Obama administration security official, said on Twitter that "team Trump didn't do a careful vetting of the overall proposal or raid" and that Obama had taken no decision, believing the raid represented an escalation of US involvement in Yemen.

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The Gujarat Government today appointed retired bureaucrat V S Gadhavi as the new state Chief Information Commissioner (CIC), a post lying vacant since December last year.

Gadhavi, a retired IAS officer, presently serves as one of the four State Information Commissioners of Gujarat Information Commission.

State government has announced the appointment of Gadhavi as the new CIC, an official release said here.

Confirming the developments, Gadhavi said he will now step down from the current post to take charge of CIC.

"I will now resign as the the State Information Commissioner to assume the charge of CIC," Gadhavi told PTI.

The announcement by the government came at a time when the Gujarat High Court is hearing a PIL regarding the appointment of CIC.

The High Court on February 1 sought reply from the state government on a PIL seeking transparency in selection of state CIC.

Through his PIL, petitioner Chandravadan Dhruv sought court's direction to the state government to follow due procedure and ensure that transparency is maintained in the appointment of the next CIC after former CIC Balwant Singh retired on December 5 last year.

The petitioner argued in his petition that the appointment should be expedited as till December 2016, over 5,783 cases are pending before the commission which hears cases related to Right to Information.

In addition, Dhruv had sought court's direction to the government to draw a list of ten eminent persons who meet the criteria for the post and ensure that no bureaucrat is included in the list.

The petition has also sought the court's direction to the government to come out with advertisement seeking application from persons interested for the post.

During the hearing of the case on February 1, the High Court was informed by the government pleader that government is proceeding with the process of appointment of the CIC.

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The opposition Left Front led by CPI(M), staged a protest inside the House against the West Bengal Governor K N Tripathi's customary speech at the start of the budget session.

As soon as the National Anthem concluded after the Governor's speech highlighting the achievements of the state under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Left Front members marched towards the exit gate which Tripathi was to take escorted by Speaker Biman Banerjee and the chief minister.

The protesters shouted that there was no mention of the law and order situation in the speech nor the Bhangor and Ausgram incidents which saw killing of one person and torching of a police station respectively.

They collectively shouted that the entire speech was a bunch of lies scripted at the behest of the ruling party which chose to skip these incidents.

After Tripathi left, a disappointed Banerjee said "there is a limit to uncivilised behaviour".

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- Iran has signed a flurry of deals with Western companies over the past year since the easing of international sanctions on Tehran after an accord was reached over its nuclear programme.

However, tensions between the United States and Iran are on the rise again with the administration of President Donald Trump expected to impose fresh sanctions on multiple Iranian entities following Tehran's recent ballistic missile test.

Sources close to the matter say fresh sanctions will not violate the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the West.

But they are expected to add caution to decision making by many Western companies before they start investing money in Iran's economy.

Iran needs foreign investment for repairs and upgrading of its oil and gas fields. It also seeks the transfer of technology to its oil industry after a decade of isolation.

Below is a list of deal and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) Iran has signed over the past year.

OIL AND GAS

* France's Total became in November 2016 the first oil major to sign a big deal with Tehran since the lifting of sanctions and agreed to help it develop the world's largest gas field, South Pars.

* Shell signed a provisional deal in December to develop Iranian oil and gas fields South Azadegan, Yadavaran and Kish in December. Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beurden said however that Shell has no near-term investment opportunities in Iran.

* Iran has named 29 companies from more than a dozen countries as being allowed to bid for oil and gas projects using the new, less restrictive contract model.

The firms include Shell, France's Total, Italy's Eni, Malaysia's Petronas and Russia's Gazprom and Lukoil, as well as companies from China, Austria, Japan and other countries.

* Russia's Zarubezhneft signed an MOU for a feasibility study on two joint fields in the west of the country.

* Norway's International Aker Solutions Company signed an MoU to modernise Iran's oil industry.

* Austria's OMV signed in May an MoU for projects located in the Zagros area in western Iran and the Fars field in the south.

* South Korean Daewoo Engineering and Construction (Daewoo E&C) signed an MoU to carry out construction of an oil refinery in Bandar Jask on the southern coast of Iran.

* Italy's Saipem signed MoUs to cooperate on pipeline projects, upgrading of refineries and development of Tous gas field in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi.

* Norwegian oil and gas company DNO said was the second western energy company after Total to sign a deal with Iran under which it agreed to study the development of the Changuleh oil field in western Iran.

* Lukoil, Russia's second biggest oil producer, hopes to reach a decision on developing two new oilfields in Iran.

* Germany's Siemens AG signed an MoU in May to overhaul equipment and facilities at Iran's oil operations and refineries.

* BASF's Wintershall oil and gas exploration subsidiary signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the National Iranian Oil Company in April 2016.

AVIATION

* IranAir has ordered 100 aircraft from Airbus and the first plane has already been delivered.

* Boeing has a deal to sell 80 aircraft to IranAir and plans to arrange the lease of a further 29; the deal is not yet formally on the U.S. manufacturer's order book.

* European turboprop maker ATR, half-owned by Airbus and Leonardo, has provisionally agreed to sell 20 turboprop aircraft with options for a further 20.

AUTOMOTIVES

French carmaker PSA Group was the Iranian market's biggest foreign player with nearly 30 percent of sales prior to its withdrawal in 2011 due to sanctions pressure.

In June 2016, PSA signed a 400 million euro production joint venture renewing the Peugeot brand's longstanding partnership with Iran Khodro to build Peugeot 208, 2008 and 301 models for the domestic market and export, starting in second half of 2017.

In October 2016, PSA finalised a new joint venture agreement with Citroen brand's historic partner SAIPA to invest 300 million euros in the production of Citroen models at Iran's Kashan plant, starting in 2018. Plans to open 150 dedicated Citroen outlets across Iran within five years.

CHEMICALS/INDUSTRIALS

German industrial group Siemens has ties with Iran going back to the 1867 Indo-European telegraph. It stopped doing new business in 2010 after being slammed for selling equipment that was used to spy on dissidents but maintains an office in Tehran. Recently, it has been in negotiations with Iran over an order for track technology and intercity trains that could be worth over 2 billion euros. It signed a contract to upgrade Iran's railway network in October.

Unconfirmed Iranian media reports last year said German chemicals giant BASF was in talks with Iranian officials about investing in a multi-billion-dollar petrochemical complex. BASF has declined to comment on these.

The company has said it welcomed the lifting of sanctions and was strictly adhering to international rules and agreements. BASF has a sales office in Iran and some polyurethane foams operations for finished products with "currently very limited commercial activities". It says it is observing the situation very closely.

BANKING

Major global banks have so far shied away from handling Iranian-related business, citing the ongoing risk of violating ongoing U.S. sanctions. Among them is HSBC, which has said it has no intention of doing any new business involving Iran.

The Iranian central bank said in June 2016 that a few small European banks were among businesses that had links to the country, including Germany-based Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank AG and some small Italian lenders.

(Compiled by Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, Ron Bousso, Jonathan Saul, Georgina Prodhan, Tim Hepher and Laurence Frost, Editing by Parisa Hafezi/Ruth Pitchford)

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By Rajendra Jadhav

MUMBAI/BENGALURU (Reuters) - Demand for gold in India rose this week as many jewellers resumed purchases after having stayed away for a few weeks hoping for an import duty cut in the government budget.

On Wednesday, the Indian government presented its budget for the 2017/18 financial year, but did not change the import duty on gold.

The bullion industry had been urging a reduction in the duty to combat smuggling, which has increased since India raised import duty to 10 percent in August 2013 in an effort to narrow a gaping current account deficit.

"Since there is clarity on duty structure now, jewellers have started buying. Even at higher levels, they are making purchases," said Ashok Jain, proprietor of Mumbai-based wholesaler Chenaji Narsinghji.

In the local market, gold prices were trading around 28,900 rupees per 10 grams on Friday. In December, prices had hit 26,862 rupees per 10 grams, their lowest since Feb. 2, 2016.

"Supply in the local market is limited as banks curtailed import last week. That's why now they could charge a premium despite the price rise," said a Mumbai-based dealer with a private bank.

Dealers in India, the world's second-largest consumer of the metal, were charging a premium of up to $2 an ounce this week over official domestic prices, unchanged from last week. The domestic price includes a 10 percent import tax.

Gold demand in India will be muted this year after dropping to multi-year lows in 2016, with trading dented as the government pushes to make markets for the metal more transparent and brings in a new tax, the World Gold Council (WGC) said on Friday.

Elsewhere in Asia, demand remained subdued with Chinese markets shut for the week-long Lunar New Year holidays.

"The physical demand remained very quiet owing to Chinese holidays and movements across Asia also remained very weak," a Singapore-based banker said.

Premiums in China, the top-consumer nation, were about $6 in the previous week. Meanwhile, premiums in Singapore and Hong Kong remained unchanged at $1-$1.40 an ounce.

Premiums were also flat in Japan, unchanged from last week.

(Additional reporting by Nallur Sethuraman and Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

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News / News

by Alice Dube

Gukurahundi

Gukurahundi

Matabeleland

Matabeleland

Kandamana

Hwange

Nyadzonya

Chimoi

Gukurahundi

Bhalagwe

Bhalagwe

Another heart wrenchingpoem has emerged on social media demanding answers to the atrocities which government is not keen to provide.Themassacres are an emotive issue in, with reports that up to 20 000 people were killed when the government sent a North Korean-trained militia toand Midlands to crack against President Robert Mugabe's rule.The government is yet to apologies for the killings, with Mugabe only describing the era as a "moment of madness".The poet asks 'what exactly happened to my son, what unforgivable sin did he commit, how did he become the enemy of the state at the age of 16?".The poet says several tragedies stretching fromMine disaster in,mass graves inandall had explanations and apology but there is a deafening silence on, now am at 90, i need to know before i meet my ancestors, where is my son..."., why threaten me when i call your name, why harass when i question the whereabouts of my son...'.This week Zanu PF was forced to move Mugabe's planned birthday bash from from Matopos National Park to the Rhodes Estate Preparatory School (Reps).There had been an outcry that the initial venue was too close to Bhalagwe, where there is a mass grave for people killed during the Gukurahundi massacres of 1983 to 1987, which could have forced organisers to move the venue, but the choice of Reps could be awkward for Mugabe, who blames most of the country's problems on colonialism and Western interference.
A government source said additional precautionary measures would be put in place to ensure anonymity of the donor. The bonds are also likely to reduce internal corruption within political parties, which get a lot of donations in cash and is usually collected by second- or third-rung leaders.
The Reserve Bank of India may soon decide on lifting the weekly withdrawal limit from the ATMs, news agency PTI reported. Economic Affairs Secretary, Shaktikanta Das said that only few people withdraw Rs 24,000 in a week or Rs 96,0000 per month, which is at present the current limit on withdrawing money from ATMs.

Das also said that the remonetisation excercise is nearly completed.

Meanwhile,the Central Bank has detected delays of up to four years by some banks in reporting financial frauds related to bad loans and has warned that bankers indulging in such acts could be charged for abetting the offence.

A senior official confirmed that Reserve Bank Deputy Governor S S Mundra brought up the issue at a recent meeting with bankers.

During the 2015-2016, loan-related frauds constituted nearly 92% of the total frauds reported by all banks. This was more pronounced in case of public sector banks and less in case of private and foreign banks.

Mundra pointed out that in almost all the cases it was observed that the exposure had got seasoned as an NPA for 3 to 4 years before the borrower was declared as fraudulent. As a consequence, the gap between the date of occurrence and detection has been widening. Further, the gap between first bank and the last bank reporting the borrowal account as fraud to RBI is also very long.

He explained that since fraud is a criminal offence any delay on the part of the bankers in initially red flagging an exposure and subsequently declaring it as a fraud will have far reaching implications on the employee conduct and internal governance standard.

``Banks and bankers could be charged for abetting the criminal offence. My call to you therefore, is to identify and declare the account as fraud without wasting time,'' he said.

The best course of action would be to follow the instructions in letter and spirit and take a responsible and proactive stand while attending consortium meetings.

As a penal measure borrowers who have committed a fraud in the account are debarred from availing bank finance from banks and NBFCs for a period of five years from the date of full payment of the defrauded amount. After this period, it is for individual institutions to take a call on whether to lend to such a borrower.

A senior official said any delay in reporting keeps other banks in the dark and they may also end up giving loans to these fraudsters.

Mundra said that ``anecdotal evidence and our transaction testing on the ground has suggested that this instruction is not always being followed.




One of the promises Finance Minister Arun Jaitley made in his budget speech on February 1 was to formulate a new rule to regulate medical devices.

The assurance came while he was talking about the budgetary measures the government was taking to help 'the poor and the underprivileged'. Jaitley claimed that the new rule will be internationally harmonised and hence attract investments to India. This, (and he probably meant local manufacturing), will reduce the cost of devices to the customer, including the poor.

The very next day, health ministry put out the new rule on its website. The ministry was in fact ready with the law, as it had notified a medical device regulation draft in October 2016, and sought public comments. The final rule was notified in the official gazette on January 31, though the public announcement happened after the budget.

Will the 250-page, all new, medical device rule help achieve the twin objectives - harmonised standards and low cost - Jaitley had targeted? The initial reaction from the industry seems to be mixed. While there is close to unanimity in the way regulatory standard setting has been proposed, the global medical technology firms and their local counterparts are not equally impressive with the measures meant towards 'cost reduction'.

The international medical device firms Medical Device Industry is also disappointed that there's nothing to penalise pseudo Manufacturing by making country of origin as a labelling requirement and ban on second hand imports of Medical equipment to safeguard patient from non calibrated equipment.

The domestic industry representatives believe that the new rule has nothing to encourage local manufacturing. Instead, it may result in India becoming a safe place for second hand imports, in the guise of making affordable devices available, they fear.

THE NEW RULE

One of the major complaints of the medical device suppliers, all these years, has been the absence of a regulatory and quality testing mechanism, that was distinctively different from the one existed for drugs and pharmaceuticals. The point they tried to make was that these two categories were entirely different and medical devices itself was a term used for a wide range of electrical and mechanical products. Their long standing demand was to have a certification mechanism that was similar to what exists in other countries, especially advanced economies. The Medical Devices Rules 2017 has addressed that problem. The new set of rules, which will come in force in the next 12 months, has been framed in conformity with Global Harmonisation Task Force (GHTF) framework and conform to best international practices.

Medical devices will, under the new rules, be classified as per GHTF practice, based on associated risks, into Class A (low risk), Class B (low moderate risk), Class C (moderate high risk) and Class D (high risk). The manufacturers of medical devices will be required to meet risk proportionate regulatory requirements that have been specified in the rules.



The ministry claims that the new rules have many unique features. "It will be for the first time that there will be no requirement of periodic renewal of licences. Accordingly, manufacturing and import licences will remain valid till these are suspended or cancelled or surrendered", an official statement said. " The issuance of licences for Class A medical devices on the basis of self-certification coupled with a system of checks and balances for ensuring compliance is a departure from the inspection based regulatory regime. Risk based audit of manufacturing units will be carried out to assess conformance with standards and quality parameters. These rules envisage creation of a robust eco-system for all stakeholders including innovators, manufacturers, providers, consumers, buyers and regulators".

AFFORDABILITY

"There is nothing (in the rule) to penalise pseudo manufacturing by making country of origin as a labelling requirement and ban on second hand imports of medical equipment to safeguard patient from non calibrated equipment", Rajiv Nath, MD of Hindustan Syringes and the forum coordinator of Association of Indian Medical Device Industry says. The Medical Technology Association of India, a rival lobby group which represents global firms was not critical. "This is a reflection of the growing and clear understanding of the International interconnectedness of this sector and the importance of the global technology, investments and best practices for its progress", the association said in a statement.

Since the implementation of the new rule is a year away, it is too early to predict its impact on the cost of medical devices. That does not mean that the government should avoid further stakeholder consultations. Patient safety and affordability are both important. And that is what Jaitley has promised.
The new President of Dublin Chamber of Commerce, Brendan Foster addressed an audience of more than 500 guests at the Chamber's AGM Dinner in the Intercontinental Hotel last night.



Mr Foster is a partner with Grant Thornton. At yesterday's AGM, the new President questioned whether the division of the county into four separate local authorities remains the best structure for a prosperous Dublin.



While Dublin Chamber is open to the idea of a Directly Elected Mayor office, Foster stressed that any such structure must have the right remit and the right powers.



Speaking at the Dinner, Mr Foster said, "We need to get serious about how we run our city. Is Dublin best-served by being divided into four local authorities? Lets remember that the division of the county was introduced for historical, and perhaps political, reasons back in 1994. Now is a good time to re-think whether these reasons remain relevant today for our city and county. We have been talking for years about how joined up thinking is what Dublin badly needs. In fact, the division of the county works against such kind of kind of joined-up thinking."

He added, "Businesses are the largest funders of local government in Dublin city, and they have been over the last 5 years. This year alone, businesses will contribute over 635 million in commercial rates for the benefit of the Dublin Region. Unfortunately, there is a very weak sense of Value for Money for this contribution. Almost three quarter, of businesses recently surveyed by the Chamber say that they do not know what their commercial rates are used for. Of those who do know, only a third of them think they get value for money. This must be addressed."



Source: www.businessworld.ie

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The Irish Whiskey Association (IWA) has welcomed planning permission for a new 12m Whiskey Distillery in the historic Ebrington square in Derry town which will also include a visitor centre.

The new distillery will be run by a local Derry company, Niche Drinks, who are aiming to have first distillations by early next year. Niche Drinks have been manufacturing and exporting Irish Cream Liqueurs from their site on Rossdowney Road since 1983 and this will continue alongside the new distillery development.

The company currently employs 65 people and use 25% of all milk produced in the North West in the production of their Irish Creams.

In 2013, there were only four distilleries operating in Ireland, now there are 16 distilleries in production and a further 14 in planning.

Commenting on the announcement, Head of the Irish Whiskey Association, Miriam Mooney said, "This is fantastic news and is further evidence that the renaissance of Irish whiskeys is occurring throughout the island of Ireland, creating jobs and supporting local economies. Irish whiskey is now the fastest growing premium spirit category in the world, with exports valued at 505 million last year, an increase of more than 300% in the last 10 years."

He added, "We believe that given the right government supports and collaboration of state agencies north and south of the border, Irish whiskey tourism will increase from 650,000 a year to 1.9 million by 2025 across the island."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Global businesses started 2017 on a solid footing, surveys showed on Friday, thriving ahead of a myriad of political risks in the coming year.

Fears of a growing protectionist agenda in the United States, whether national elections across Europe upset the status quo and just how fractious Britain's divorce proceedings from the European Union become, are all expected to weigh in the months ahead.

Yet so far those risks seem to have been mostly ignored with firms from Asia to Europe to the United States increasing or at least largely maintaining activity.

Euro zone businesses started 2017 by increasing activity at the same multi-year record pace they set in December while the U.S. non-farm payroll report showed job growth surging more than expected in January as construction firms and retailers ramped up hiring.

"Overall while this report is further evidence that the (U.S.) labour market is buoyant the continued slow pace of wage growth means that the (Federal Reserve) will feel under no great pressure to step up the pace of monetary tightening," economists at Lloyds Bank told clients in a note.

China's factory activity grew for a seventh month and while India's services business contracted for a third month as firms struggled to recover from a government crackdown on currency in circulation, the pace slowed.

"The outlook for this year is reasonably bright despite all the risks. The numbers for January have generally been quite positive," said Andrew Kenningham, chief global economist at Capital Economics.

Growth in Britain's services sector slowed for the first time in four months in January, dipping just below its long-run average, as businesses battled the sharpest rise in costs in more than five years.

But on Thursday the Bank of England sharply revised up its growth forecast for 2017 to 2.0%, a view held by only the most optimistic forecaster in a Reuters poll of 50 economists taken last month.

Britain's economy unexpectedly outpaced all its major peers last year, wrongfooting those who expected an immediate hit from June's Brexit vote.

The Markit/CIPS British services Purchasing Managers' Index dropped to a three-month low of 54.5 last month from December's 15-month high, at the bottom end of a range of forecasts in a Reuters poll of economists, but Markit said the PMIs still point to first quarter growth of 0.5%.

"Despite the slightly disappointing outcome this remains a very strong report," said James Knightley, senior economist at ING.

IHS Markit's final composite PMI for the euro zone, seen as a good guide to growth, held at 54.4. It has not been higher since May 2011 and has remained above the 50 mark dividing growth from contraction since mid-2013.

That points to first quarter expansion of 0.4%, Markit said, matching the median prediction in a Reuters poll.

A similar survey from the U.S. showed non-manufacturing growth dipped marginally last month.

China's factory activity expanded for the seventh straight month in January, giving Beijing more room to tackle chronic imbalances in the economy. The Caixin/Markit Manufacturing PMI fell to 51.0.

The world's second largest economy has seen a broad-based pickup in recent months, with fourth-quarter GDP beating expectations due largely to a strong housing market and higher government spending on infrastructure projects.

A recovery in the country's "smokestack" industries has also been supported by government mandates to close down outdated production capacity in the coal and steel sectors, as well as a rebound in investment in the property sector that came amid a record flood of credit.

India's Nikkei/IHS Markit Services PMI remained below 50 registering 48.7 in January as firms still reel from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's decision in November to abolish high-value bank notes.

Modi's policy removed 86 percent of the currency in circulation, hitting consumption and capital investments, and shattered traditional cash-reliant supply chains. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie

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News / News

by Staff Reporter

Zimbabwe People First leader (ZimPF), Dr Joice Mujuru's home province, Mashonaland Central is in a panic mode following revelations that three other provinces from greater Mashonaland could be supporting the candidature of Ray Kaukonde for the party's top post, ahead of ZimPF's anticipated Congress.ZimPF plan to hold its first ever elective congress in September.The three provinces are Mashonaland East, Manicaland and Masvingo.During an emotionally charged ZimPF Mashonaland Central Provincial meeting recently held in Bindura, the party's Provincial Coordinator, Godfrey Chimombe, told a group of bemused provincial members that Mujuru was fast losing support to Kaukonde."Ray Kaukonde with the support of Didymus Mutasa, Rugare Gumbo and Kudakwashe Bhasikiti-Chuma is now gunning for the party's province." Indications on the ground are that he would easily win Mashonaland East, Masvingo and Manicaland Provinces," Chimombe reportedly said.He added that indications were that more provinces could be mobilised against Mujuru who he accused of causing a lot of disgruntlement amongst national executive members."Dr Mujuru at the moment stands accused of causing a lot of disgruntlement within members of the national executive."She unilaterally printed a picture of her face on party t-shirts despite a resolution by the National Executive not to do so. This is the reason of her fall-out with Bhasikiti-Chuma".Meanwhile, ZimPF Harare Province Interim Deputy Chairperson, Norman Chiroto was recently purged from the party for supporting Kaukonde.
Gwalia, Western Australia, 1897. A young man, an American man, rides with his entourage into town, on camelback. He is covered with blackflies. He has the air of an arrogant yet honorable man. The ragged miners assembled there know that the man has recently earned a degree in geology from a university on the other side of the ocean. He has come to apply the most advanced knowledge of modern mine engineering to extract, with their labor, the metal riches from this continent of red dust.

The man succeeds. He cuts costs by employing desperate Italian immigrants, ready to work for lower wages, for any wages. They are scabs, as the English and Irish union militants see it, but they get the job done.

The mans employers, the London-based Bewick, Moreing & Co., are impressed, and send him to China to continue his work. He is now accompanied by his former Stanford sweetheart and new wife, Lou, nee Henry. They will live through the Boxer Rebellion together, in Tianjin in 1900. Both, it is reported, show courage under siege and agility with firearms.

The man is made a partner in his company, and the couple will enjoy long sojourns in London, he directing mining operations around the world from an abstract distance, she continuing in her study of languages and literatures, notably Latin and Chinese. In 1905, she comes across a copy of Georgius Agricolas (or Georg Bauers) 1556 work, De re metallica, on the subject of metals, mining, and metallurgy. It has never been translated into English. The couple decides to undertake this project together.

The resulting edition is published in London in 1912. It is the very model of what historians of science today call Whiggish scholarship. It is solid and rigorous as far as facts go, and precise in matters of translation (going so far as to include a thorough study of the sixteenth-century German mining vocabulary that Agricola had rendered, for the first time, into learned Latin). Yet it is also triumphalist, presentist, and hermeneutically blind, setting out from the premise that we, today, in 1912, know better than they did in the past, and that history has been a long, slow march out of foolishness, from a world of dark superstition to one of no-bullshit problem-solving: Agricola is an impressive thinker for his era. The translators do not seem to be worried that their own thought too is of an era, of which it may one day be taken as typical. (Curiously, Whiggism in science can coexist with the staunchest classicism in philology. Thus, in the translators preface, we are told that Agricolas Latin is mostly free of medieval corruption, yet regrettably tainted with German construction.1)

Leaving aside our translators Whiggish bent, the British political party known as the Whigs do have a complicated historical relationship to the American party of our mining-engineer-turned-Latinist. In 1929, he will be elected, as a Republican, to the office of president of the United States.

When we speak of a presidential philosophy, we do not ordinarily have in mind the intellectual debt a president may have had to Renaissance natural philosophy. But Herbert Hoovers intellectual development seems to require that we widen our ordinary scope. Hooverism may in fact be the last echo of a sort of statesmanly engagement with philosophy that probes somewhat deeper into the order of things, and into humanitys place in that order, than does the recent genre of campaign-minded, policy-focused, ghostwritten memoirs.

Hoovers philosophy is continuous with a long American tradition, born in England, of engaging with nature, both for the wonder of the thing itself and for the more practical empiricist aim, typified already in the seventeenth century by Francis Bacon, of discovering better ways to dominate it and to put it to use for us. The idea that philosophy might be practical in this way has been almost completely erased from our consciousness today, above all in the professionalized bubble of academic philosophy. Yet, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the period from which Hoover drew the most, common usage of the term makes perfectly clear that what a philosopher does primarily is to inquireas Socrates was, wrongly, accused of doinginto what goes on in the heavens above and the earth below (and everywhere between as well). In a characteristic usage of the term, John Evelyn, in his 1661 work Fumifugium; Or, The Inconveniencie of the Aer and Smoak of London Dissipated, speaks of these unwholsome vapours, that distempered the Aer, to the very raising of Storms and tempests; upon which a Philosopher might amply discourse.2 Or, as Agricola himself explains, there are many arts and sciences of which a miner should not be ignorant. First there is Philosophy, that he may discern the origin, cause, and nature of subterranean things.3

Thomas Jefferson would amply discourse on the floral and faunal diversity of the New World, not least with his contemporary, the French natural historian Buffon, and also participate in ethnolinguistic surveys of the Native American groups of the Northeast. This sort of practical undertaking was one of the principal tasks of philosophy as commonly understood into the eighteenth century, and particularly so in the United States, where it was the only conception of philosophy that seemed appropriate for the nascent nation. Even those Americans who drew on supremely abstract continental systems, such as the one Hegel had lately produced, nonetheless understood that a philosophy that did not directly engage the hard resistant bodies of the physical world and their strange propertiesmetals and mines, electricity, hydraulics, and magnetismhad no place on a continent and on a frontier that had only just begun to be subjugated.4

Knowledge is power, Francis Bacon said, long before Michel Foucault would transform this evident truth to mean something different: that knowledge is nothing but the expression of power. The removal of supernatural beings and other products of ignorance from our imagination enabled the removal of precious metals from underground veins. Agricola cleared the mineshafts of gnomes and helped along the appropriation of all that lay hidden under the earth. Jefferson surveyed the natural diversity of a new continent, and the new knowledge of it fed the dream of the full conquest of it. Even the recording of Native languages was a prelude to the elimination of those who spoke them. And Hoover carried this project even further. Born in Iowa in 1874, while the so-called Indian Wars were raging, the first president from west of the Mississippi would continue westward still, to California, and from there he would cross the ocean, to new continents, to old new continents. The year after Hoover crossed the Pacific, the United States would annex Hawaii as a territory and set up a military government in the Philippines. Knowledge is power, the young Stanford graduate must have thought to himself as he set out from California across the ocean. So powerful in fact that it cannot be stopped at the edge of a continent, but, manifestly, is destined to take over the world.

In De re metallica, Agricola felt compelled to neutralize a certain deep-seated and ancient anxiety about mining. It is one that Pliny the Elder expresses in his Natural History when he bemoans the absurd lengths to which men will go to rape the earth out of greed for gold. We penetrate into her entrails ... as though each spot we tread upon were not sufficiently bounteous and fertile for us.5 But in the new, modern spirit, of which Agricola is an early harbinger, the earth does not have entrails, only resources. He no longer believes that minerals are born of a sort of seed in the earths matrix: a Latin term that was common in geology into the eighteenth century, and that translates as womb. As the Hoovers will later remark, it is interesting that Agricola preserves the term vein (vena), which, like matrix, is borrowed from the realm of biology.6 But for him, this is the mere lexical fossil of an outdated concept, for the earth is no longer living, no longer to be comprehended in the same terms as the vital, pullulating creatures that move on its surface.

And so the ironically named Agricola defends mining against those who glorify agriculture beyond measure.7 The earth we tread on may be bounteous, and it is good that the farmers know to extract its fruits. But let them leave to miners the gloomy valleys and sterile mountains, that they may draw forth from these, gems and metals which can buy, not only the crops, but all things that are sold.8 Mining trumps farming because its fruits are exchangeable for any and all others. But the work of getting these fruits, as the ancients had warned, is dirty. Poisonous air hangs down there, as if to warn us away. A philosopher-miner might amply discourse on it, if he is not yet dead of asphyxiation.

Among Agricolas preferred methods of mineral extraction is fire setting, a technique that induces thermal shock in subterranean shafts and causes the ore to break away more easily. This method would become antiquated with the use of explosives and, later, of chemical processes such as cyanidation. A century or so after Agricola, the German philosopher Leibniz would propose using water pressure to extract silver from the Harz mountains.

By the time of Hoovers presidency, Plinys admonitions against digging into the earth out of greed for gold would be entirely forgotten. In the nineteenth century, gold had itself become a significant motor in the westward motion of America, and by the late 1920s, the earth would be spotted with open mining pitsthough these were still sparse and no one had yet thought of simply removing the tops of mountains in search of valuable metals, as they began to do in Appalachia in the 1970s. Union Carbides Hawks Nest Tunnel project in West Virginia, begun in 1927, resulted a few years later, during Hoovers presidency, in the death by silicosis of 476 miners tasked with pulling silica out of the earth for use in electroprocessing steel.

The subterranean world had been depopulated of its gnomes and ogres and mysterious powers; the spirit of rational Agricola had won out over the hallucinations of the seventeenth-century Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who in his Mundus subterraneus of 1665 would give a rather detailed account of the malevolent beings one will encounter if one descends into the crater of a volcano.9 The triumphalism of Herbert Hoover, had he thought about it, might have been tempered by the awareness that something down there, underneath the earth, deep in its veins, still wants to kill those who are compelled to go down there. Or, rather, it kills us without even wanting to, which is perhaps more terrifying still. And it is Plinys forgotten warning that the ultimate cause of all this death is greedthat if the earth is killing us, this is only because we are probing into it without warrant or invitationthat points the way to a tertium quid that is neither ignorant superstition nor the triumphalism of the engineer, neither fear of nature nor domination of it, but rather the search after some sort of harmony with it.
A man at a securities company in Fuyang, Anhui province, watches stock market changes on Friday. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.6% to 3140.17 points on Friday, the first trading day after the Chinese New Year holiday. Photo: CFP

(Beijing)  Shares of companies controlled by Tomorrow Holdings Group Ltd., a conglomerate in turn controlled by Xiao Jianhua, declined sharply Friday on speculation as to the tycoons whereabouts.

On Friday, the first trading day after the weeklong Chinese New Year holiday, Shanghai-listed Xishui Strong Year Co. Ltd. Inner Mongolia, which provides property insurance, and Baotou Huazi Industry Co., a manufacturer of beet sugar and electronic products, both plunged by the daily trading limit of 10% soon after trading began. The share price of two other companies controlled by Tomorrow Holdings also fell, but to a lesser extent.

The shares fell after several overseas media outlets reports since Saturday that Xiao, one of the richest businesspeople in China, has been assisting mainland authorities with unspecified investigations.

Tomorrow Holdings published a statement Thursday on its official WeChat account that business operations remain normal at the company and its subsidiaries. Tomorrow Holdings had issued two other statements, on Monday and Tuesday, in Xiaos name denying the reports and asserting that he was receiving medical treatment overseas. The company noted that Xiao is a Canadian citizen.

But both of the two earlier posts were deleted by Wednesday. Caixin hasnt been able to reach the company or Xiao for comment.

Established by Xiao in 1999, Beijing-based Tomorrow Holdings has stakes in businesses as diverse as real estate, coal, chemicals, insurance, securities and banking. The company owns controlling stakes in Shanghai-listed Baotou Tomorrow Technology, Huazi Industry, Shanghai Ace Co., Xishui Strong Year Co., Henan Oriental Silver Star Investment Co. and Shenzhen-listed HNA-Caissa Travel Group Co., among others.

Along with several other publicly traded companies and financial institutions controlled by Xiao, the group of companies has been involved in a number of high-profile acquisitions in recent years, including the 2006 privatization deal of state-owned power company Shandong Luneng Group, a deal worth 3.7 billion yuan, or about $470 million at the time; and Thailands Charoen Pokphand Groups (CP Group) purchase of a stake in Ping An Insurance in 2013.

But the widespread use of shell companies and complicated transactions among interconnected companies in some deals linked to Xiao and Tomorrow Holdings have raised market concerns about legality and risk.

In 2013, China Development Bank canceled a plan to provide a HK$44 billion ($5.7 billion) loan to help CP Group buy 15.57% of Ping An Insurance from HSBC. China Development Bank dropped out of the deal after Caixin reported that a substantial part of CP Groups fund for the deal came from mainland lenders Xiao controlled, a practice violating Chinese regulations.

The policy bank had agreed to fund the acquisition by providing the loan to CP Group through its Hong Kong branch after the insurer said it had received the first tranche of payments worth HK$15.2 billion from the buyer. It backed out of the deal after Caixin published an exclusive report detailing how Xiao diverted money from three city commercial banks under his control to finance the first phase of the transaction.

However, a rule of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) in effect since 2010 bars the use of bank loans and other nonproprietary capital to acquire a stake in an insurance company. The rules also say neither an individual nor an institution can serve as a trustee holder of an equity stake in a Chinese insurance company. Xiaos maneuvering put in question the legality of the deal and prompted CDB to cancel the loan.

Xiao, 46, graduated from prestigious Peking University with a degree in law and started his business selling personal computers in 1993. In 2016, the Hurun Chinese rich list ranked him the 32nd-richest person in China with a net worth of $6 billion.

Xiao has maintained a low profile personally and reportedly has spent most of his time in Hong Kong since 2014 while directing his businesses in the mainland from the luxury Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, where he lives.

Contact reporter Han Wei (weihan@caixin.com)
News / Religion

by Mxolisi Ncube

JOHANNESBURG - A church leader sent a hard-hitting message Thursday, challenging Zimbabwean Christians and Ndebeles to "wake up" and lead the revolution, as a tidal wave of change sweeps across the country lately.During an exclusive interview with Southern Times Express in his home in Broncospruit, Mpumalanga, Prophet Cleo Gabriel Ndlela of the Spirit Tabernacle Ministries fell short of calling fellow Zimbabwean Christian leaders and Ndebeles of Southern Zimbabwe and the millions living in the Diaspora - cowards, when he said they should stop sitting on their laurels and lead the on-going peaceful fight against a fully entrenched system set up and maintained by the government of President Robert Mugabe.A survey by the International Republican Institute revealed that Zimbabweans now have more faith in religious leaders than they have in constitutional bodies and politicians. According to findings of the "Survey on Local Governance and Constitutionalism", released by IRI in Johannesburg in October 2015, religious leaders scored a 38 per cent approval rating followed by traditional leaders (26), way ahead of constitutional bodies that include the police (17) and the political party supported by respondent (15).As the already comatose Zimbabwean economy continues to deteriorate further, a greater part of the country's industrial area has been turned into what Prophet Cleo called a "Getseman place", as churches have invaded firms that previously employed most of the country's township population.The church leader said this was evidence enough that the time was ripe for Christians to lead the peaceful revolution against the current system of governance, which has relegated the majority of the country's population to a life of abject poverty and perennial fear."Zimbabweans, especially Christians, should stop running away from the revolution. Running away from your country's revolution is as good as running away from yourself," said the 32-year-old Prophet Cleo."As church leaders, we should stop being cowards and rise up to lead the revolution for the good of our children and the future generation. We should stop running to comfort zones in the Diaspora or hiding behind 'it shall all be okay' and 'God will answer our prayers'. God answered our prayers long back when he gave us Zimbabwe and its resources. It is now our duty to make things right by leading the revolution  not against a certain party and individuals, but against a fully-entrenched system that has affected and continues to affect our people. President Robert Mugabe and Zanu (PF) are not the enemy, the system is and Mugabe did not implement the system alone. He had people supporting him. The fight should now move away from concentrating on certain individuals and or a party into a full revolution against the system. We need to change the system and not just individuals."The clergyman drew inspiration from the bible, saying even Jesus himself died fighting against a ruling government, for the good of the people so he could liberate and prepare them for his kingdom."Jesus fought against the Romans for the good of the people, so who are we to shy away from politics? We should lead the fight against a system that continues to adversely affect those we witness to, those we minister to," said Prophet Cleo."Politically and economically, Zimbabwe is in total darkness right now, but you see church leaders - pastors and prophets, living large and telling their congregation that things will be okay. Realistically speaking, what can be okay in an economically arid country like Zimbabwe? You can only pray for people and tell them things will be okay in an economically sound country, not Zimbabwe. Nothing can ever be okay in that country where a greater part of the cities has been turned into a Getseman place, with churches opening in places that used to form the backbone of the economy - places where people used to work and earn a living. People cannot live on prayer alone."Pastors, prophets and other church leaders are living luxurious lifestyles and driving posh cars, while their congregation is suffering and living in abject poverty, while telling them things will be okay. What kind of God are we praying? It is high time we rose up and led our congregations and the rest of the country in this peaceful revolution. Whenever we say God is real, we must prove it by leading our flock to the Promised Land."You cannot just shout in Zimbabwe and proclaim that things will be okay. Let us stop being hypocrites. An prayer without action is a crippled prayer. It is a useless prayer. Christians must all get into politics and drive the change to make those things okay. With the economy in tatters, multitudes of Zimbabweans have run to hide in the church. The church has become the biggest constituency in Zimbabwe and that is why pastors and prophets should lead the revolution and spearhead change by telling our congregations to stand up and do something about the situation."The hard-hitting Prophet Cleo also rallied the youth to stop believing that change would come from geriatrics and outsiders."It's high time we stopped placing our faith in old people and outsiders. Zimbabwean change will not come from old people - they have run their race and failed. It will not come from Americans, the British, South Africans or any other outsider. Our change must be driven and achieved by us. None but ourselves. We are the ones who are suffering, we are the ones who feel the pain, we are the ones who know what kind of country we want and therefore, we must be the ones driving this revolution, in our own terms and to our own purposes," added the STM leader."Ecclesiastes 10:19 says, 'A feast is made for laughter and wine makes merry, but money answers everything'. A country without money can't answer problems of people; a nation without money can't solve its problems. Christians must have money so that the economy can be helped.He supported Pastor Evan Mawarire."Pastor Mawarire is a true man of God who knows that the time is ripe for Christians to take a stand and fight for what is right. He understands that Christians have now been given power to change the situation and I support his ideology," added Prophet Cleo."I wish all Christians and Christian leaders could stand up and support him in one voice. A man of the cloth has started the revolution, but he is now under attack by the system, let us all stand up and defend him. Let us stand up and defend his ideals because they are our ideals. Let us not start something of our own, but let us all rally behind him and fight in unison. Standing together, we can bring change. Mawarire is a giant who has stood up even when all the other religious leaders are dead scared. He has shown that he truly has Zimbabwe in his heart. If you can lead a church, you can lead a nation. Leaders are not created but born and he is a leader. For decades we have been praying and speaking to God, it is now time we spoke to people."Quoting Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Prophet Cleo said, "If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward them. Rather, be open-handed and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbour this wicked thought: "The seventh year, the year for cancelling debts, is near," so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing. They may then appeal to the Lord against you, and you will be found guilty of sin. Give generously to them and do so without a grudging heart; then because of this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to. There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be open-handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land."He also challenged the rest of the population to join the fight and not leave it to a certain tribe or population."We have seen Shonas lead this revolution. Where are the Ndebeles, the Chewas, the MaBarwes, the whites, the Kalangas, the Koisans, the Nambyas, the Shanganis, the Sothos, Tongas, Tswanas, Vendas and Xhosas? When we sit on our laurels and let just one tribe lead the revolution, won't we cry foul tomorrow and claim that we are being side-lined when they do things  each according to their contribution?"This revolution should be fought in unison. Let us rise up and force the current government and every party that is in parliament to task and tell them our demands."
In addition to Captain Chaos (aka Agent Orange) ... here are a few random concerns and observations:



 From Bloomberg: Chinas Army of Global Homebuyers Is Suddenly Short on Cash



Chinas escalating crackdown on capital outflows is sending shudders through property markets around the world. ... In Silicon Valley, Keller Williams Realty says inquiries from China have slumped since the start of the year. And in Sydney, developers are facing big problems as Chinese buyers pull back, according to consultancy firm Basis Point.



Everything changed as it became more difficult to send money offshore, said Coco Tan, a broker associate at Keller Williams in Cupertino, California.

If this continues, it could have a significant impact on housing, especially in some areas of the west coast. After the election, many analysts thought the priorities of the new administration would be tax cuts, infrastructure spending, and deregulation. Goldman Sachs analysts thought the negative policies - immigration and trade - would be delayed until at least 2018. So far the new administration has delayed the policies with potential short term economic benefits - and pushed the negative policies. This could have negative economic consequences. An airplane broker mentioned to me this morning that the high end used airplane business has slowed recently. Maybe this is related to less money from China and the strong dollar (fewer foreign buyers). A couple of observation about coastal California housing: There are many new high end homes under construction (this is all replacing existing stock with high end homes). I've never seen this many homes under construction in the coastal areas. Also there are many homes for rent (maybe this is just seasonal). It just seems odd.
Opinion / Columnist

Dear Herbert Marufu I beg to differ with your article of today's Bulawayo24.com the 2nd February 2017 . Trump has nothing in common with African race. He is a racist, white supremacist and wants to rekindle the good old days of slave-master: black slavery yes but in modern form of slavery. It is wholly folly to say Trump is on the same page with African values about homosexuality.In retrospect, homosexuality can never be fully abolished by anybody even Donald Trump with his billions worth of money. Homosexuality is as old as mankind. In every culture there was and there is homosexuality of every kind, forms and imaginations. For centuries almost all societies of this global village have put this practice under cover and strict scrutiny: nothing spoken openly, no secrets should go out of those premises it is practiced. It happens even in our own African societies as far back as we can remember. In the public Africa societies abhor homosexuality practices: in privacy it is done: well done. Those who do it, do it in absolute privacy will concur how different and equally as good as any sexual intercourse: it's just like heterosexuality as a matter of fact. It is the mind-settings of societies and individuals that reject and define it as bad and unacceptable. If you do not like it, but another person likes it: where is your problem?If there was no homosexuality in our culture how would we come out with names given to such people who are homosexually inclined: Izitabane, incukubili, Ingotshane! Where do those elaborate names come from if not from the very societies that have lived with those practices for centuries of time? This is evidence enough that these homo-people existed but were suppressed, in that total secrecy it was practiced, and never were allowed to surface as a distinct people with other sexual orientations than others.Two: centuries ago, how did our solders survive during their military trainings that took them away from their homes environment for several months of military training? There are some literatures dating centuries back that indicate that in any of these training camps: African, European, Asian or otherwise; there were those boys who were there for those purposes: homosexuality to quench the tired soldiers as there were no women around them. What is happening in our prisons is not new at all, in the absence of female partners; the men substituted women with men, which is an open secret; a fact!It has become a norm to put paid the homosexuality as a European culture. We want to feel good and tell ourselves that we are not homosexual in our cultures: we are better than Europeans when it comes to decent values. That is wholly untrue. Homosexuality is present, has always been present before. It is not indecent to be a homosexual person or gay or whatever name they want to give themselves. This natural and most hidden practice is generational: the only difference is that the Western cultures have accepted it and have come up in the open, transparent and said it loud and clear: this practice exits it is normal, lets embrace it as it is part of our cultures, it is in our culture in African societies equally whether we want to accept it or deny it.Zimbabweans be it as a party Zanu and government may say openly: "We forbid homosexuality," the fact is that there is homosexuality in Zimbabwe regardless of the prohibition and abhorrence of this practice. We hear it being whispered that inside Zanu PF itself there are homosexuals known by names. It is however not something that the western culture brought to the land: no; it is a practice that has existed for years: centuries of long practice but in total secrecy. We need to come to terms with actually legalizing it: We have a lot to lose when we abolish it: homosexuality can never be abolished at it is as old as human race itself. Just like prostitution is as old a tradition of mankind, homosexuality too is as old as human kind.How many honourable men are rumoured to be homosexual in our society? Die we not hear rumours about the Vice President John Nkomo as being homosexual? (Anofema kugotsi kwevamwe varume) Was Reverend Banana not homosexual? Did he not die in shame when he was found out? Was it necessary to shame him for what he believed was right for him? Who has the right to tell someone to be heterosexual or homosexual? Is it not a fundamental right for anyone to determine what is right for them than to get it from a script written by an individual whose values and principles are his/her alone? How many homosexuals do we really have in our societies: the number is very large, they are coming out in the open because they cannot keep this secret: it is some old fashioned thinking that homosexuality is satanic and bad.Homosexuality predates the Christianity and the Bible itself. Those persons who wrote the Bible had the social authority to discredit homosexuality and likened it to axis of evil. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality: we have to respect those who think different from us. If they want it that way let's give them the space to live the lives they want without prejudice or moral judgement to devalue, satanize and throw all manner of evil on their ways of life.It is folly to say that the Presidency of Donald Trump is a blessing in disguise in regards to his attitude to homosexuality. Donald Trump is a backward person who lives in the past glories of white supremacy. He wants to relive the slave-master relationship in today's America. He has nothing in common with African and African values. He hates Africa with passion; yesterday on Africa-American month he welcomed them only for that moment when he uses them to further his position as an inclusive president. In retrospect there is nothing African-Americans can hope for in the Trump's administration. Time will tell during his four years administration how much he loathes a black skin. You will never talk about Trump on the same page with African values after four years from today!The African-Americans will wake up one day and regret for not going to vote for Madam Clinton. As Africans in the African continent we should expect the worst from the trump administration, let's not dwell on illusions and talk about Trump who is on the same page with African thinking: he will hate you for that by making an equation of homosexuality-loathing with African-ness which he is not by any standard.Homosexuality becomes bad when they abuse young boys; equally children are abused by heterosexual men. It is wholly stupid and silly to associate homosexuality and the abuse of young children.
Senator Peter Mafany Musonge Archives

Shocked but helpless was the state of the Secretary General at the South West Region Governors Office, Clement Fon Ndikum from the North West Region.

He sat in the meeting held on Thursday February 2, 2017 at Mountain Hotel Buea, representing the governor for the first half of a gathering purportedly championed by former Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge dubbed the South West Elite Forum, what many consider as a break-away from the South West Elites Association, SWELA, whose stance on the Anglophone problem has never favored the regime.

Cameroons lone English daily, The Guardian Post reports that several speakers took to the rostrum to blast North Westerners in what they consider as the master minders of the ongoing strike action in the two regions.

Former Prime Minister Peter Mafany Musonge chastised the North West Population saying that it is time for South Westerners to take their destinies into their hands. According to him they are being controlled and could become slaves tomorrow if Federation is finally given because the North West man is a fighter.

The Newspaper further reveals that Chief Ebako Atem told participants that Ghost Towns in the two regions, Teachers and Lawyers Strikes are being spearheaded by North Westerners.

The Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea Dr Nalova Lyonga on her part is quoted as saying North Westerners are the main cause of series of strike actions in the University of Buea.

Senator Chief Tabe Tando made the big revelation of the day when he said it was South West Elites who advised Government to shut down internet in the two English speaking regions.

Calls were made for Children to go back to school and for non respect of the Ghost Town. Speakers maintained that North Westerners can stay for long without eating contrary to the people of the South West region, they insisted that South Populace are peace loving ,obedient and not used to hard life.

Some Pressmen who took part in the meeting said it was an embarrassment to the SG of the South West region and entire North Westerners present in the gathering.

Observers hold that the speech was well cooked in Yaounde to puncture the bond existing between the people of the two regions and subsequently destroying the strike action by putting both regions at loggerheads.
Opinion / Columnist

"THE Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) has softened its stance on the minimum conditions that were to be met by other opposition in order to consummate a coalition to confront President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party at the polls in 2018," we hear."Under pressure from its members to coalesce with other opposition movements ahead of make-or-break elections next year, Zimbabwe's largest opposition party this week said it will no longer discriminate against any political party in discussions to form a coalition as had been suggested last year."Dithering and blundering from pillar to post is what the nation has come to expect from MDC-T. The tragedy here is the party is wasting time on the trivial matter of forming a coalition and neglecting the big issue of making sure the 2018 elections are free, fair and credible.We all saw the hooded Zanu PF supporters on YouTube who were bussed from one polling station to the next to cast multiple votes. Nearly one million, mainly opposition supporters, were denied the vote because their details were deliberately posted in constituency voters roll and not the one they expected. These are just two example of the blatant vote rigging witnessed in the July 2013 elections.After the rigged July 2013 elections MDC-T together with the other MDC factions vowed they will not take part in any future elections until meaningful reforms are implemented. They are now talking of forming coalitions and contesting the next elections yet not even one reform has been implemented.Implementing reforms are about restoring the people's right to a meaningful say in the governance of the country; this is the basis of the people's power to hold those in government to democratic account. Since independence, Zanu PF has systematically undermined the country's democratic institutions to establish the de facto Zanu PF one-party dictatorship and usurped the people's power to hold the regime to account. So implementing the reforms is about wrestling the people's democratic power from Zanu PF back to the people.Zimbabwe is facing a serious economic meltdown as a result of 37 years of gross mismanagement and rampant corruption under this Zanu PF autocratic and dictatorial rule. Millions of our people are out of work and now live in abject poverty denied of all human dignity and hope. Implementing the reforms and holding free and fair elections will give the people the power to remove Zanu PF and elect a new and competent government that will address the country's economic challenges and revive the economy.The case to demand the implementing the democratic reforms is therefore self-evident and leaves no room for denial or compromise. MDC have not only compromised on implementing reforms, they have sold-out.MDC had the golden opportunity to implement the democratic reforms during the GNU but failed to get even one reform implemented in five years. President Mugabe bribed the MDC leaders with the trappings of power and a $4 million Highland mansion for Tsvangirai and they, in return, kicked reforms into the tall grass. SADC leaders' advice, first, to implement the reforms and then not to take part in the July 2013 elections with no reforms; fell on deaf ears.Tsvangirai & Co. sold-out by, first of all, failing to get even one reform implemented and, then later, by participating in flawed elections. They did not care that by participating they gave the process the veneer of democratic legitimacy and, worse still, are getting Zanu PF off the hook to implement reforms.Zanu PF have set their stall for the 2018 and future elections - they will never implement any reform because they will be "reforming themselves out of office", which is self-evident.MDC-T and the rest in the opposition camp, except for a tiny few, are going to contest all national elections for the few seats Zanu PF gives away regardless of how flawed the process happen to be.It is now for the people of Zimbabwe to declare their position on the 2018 and future elections - the people must demand the full implementation of all democratic reforms to ensure all elections are free, fair and credible. We, the people, must condemn unreservedly all those continue to deny the people their fundamental right to free and fair elections by organizing and/or participating in flawed elections!The people of Zimbabwe must not be fooled by all this talk of forming opposition coalitions; Zanu PF will rig and win the next elections regardless of what happens in the opposition camp as long as no reforms are implemented. Indeed, the coalition talk is just an elaborate hoax by the opposition to justify why they are participating in elections knowing they are flawed and, in the case of the MDC factions, in totally disregard of their party resolutions not to do so until reforms are implemented.
| BY Lynchy |

In a stinging comment under the Mumbrella story, Cummins &Partners founder Sean Cummins (left) wrote:

This is the most inaccurate reporting i have witnessed in years. I admired Mumbrella. I dont today.

We have moved office space. We have merged with a strong local born agency and have created an entity in Adelaide CumminsHybrid of which we hope the town will be proud. Mumbrella you shouldnt be proud of this sensationalist and quite honestly misleading report. We get no favours from an ad industry that revels in knocking us. And you have just fed that appetite with this slop.

Shame on you.

This is exciting news for Adelaide. And for us.

Sean Cummins

Three of the four other commentators agreed with Cummins.

Hi said: When two agencies merge  and merge names, and merge staff, and merge management teams  is it right to say an office has closed?

Yellow Journalism said: I know if I ran a business, I would certainly know the difference between a merged business and a closed business. This sounds like sensationalism at the expense of an agency trying to grow in a tough market.

Ouch said: Wow. ouch. In all mergers someones office must close but that doesnt mean the business closes. Its actually factually incorrect to imply the business has closed. Its living on right????

Cummins then made a further comment:

@Ouch

Yes. The business is living on. Bigger and better. But because the office building has closed, the clever clogs at Mumbrella thought that headline would sound more dramatic. It is pretty poor form, it suggests our agency is closing..and it has upset a lot of peopleincluding myself.. and yet Mumbrella stands by itbecause yes.. the office (building) we once inhabited is closed. Because we moved to a new one.

Hilarious right?

Sean Cummins

Later comments:

Unbelievable said: So even after Sean has written to you and clarified details on the merger, you still dont change the headline of your article? That sums up your lack of care for the truth and focus only on sensationalism.

To which Mumbrella editor Vivienne Kelly replied:

Hi Unbelievable, Sean has indeed written to us about this article, but I think he would agree with me that those emails are off the record.

Sean has executed his right to reply in this very comment thread for everyone to see. People can now read the article, and Seans take on it, and make a decision about where they stand  as you clearly have.

Mumbrella stands by the article as is and even though we have communicated with Cummins about the merger, we believe there are unanswered questions about the new ownership structure, staff numbers and stakeholders. Sean also stands by his position.

Its worth noting that despite the extent of this disagreement, we are by no means at war with Cummins or Sean.

Thanks,

Vivienne  Mumbrella

That comment was followed by this:

What?? said: At the time of posting, Cummins & Partners had not answered Mumbrellas questions about which clients or how many staff had moved across, other than an email saying it was all of them. That sounds like a pretty definitive answer to me. Im not sure how you could be any more clear?
| BY Lynchy |

New York-based creative agency Johannes Leonardo, co-founded by Aussie expat Leo Premutico, has hired former M&C Saatchi, Sydney senior creative team Jono Flannery and Paul Gregson.

The duo became creative partners at M&C Saatchi in 2012. Their four-year partnership has been punctuated by work for Comm Bank, Optus, Google, Asics, PepsiCo and more. Most notably, the pairs 2015 Clever Buoy campaign for Optus garnered industry-wide acclaim, earning a highly-coveted Titanium Lion at Cannes.

Were excited about what Jono and Paul will bring, say Johannes Leonardo co-founders and chief creative officers Jan Jacobs and Leo Premutico. They have all the right ingredients to make their mark herebig thinking, an openness to new ways of working and an unmistakable confidence.

Says Flannery (above right): Its colder here than I thought, so we probably didnt think the timing through, but the chance to work with Jan and Leo, in an agency stinging to do more great work, makes it seem worthwhile.

Says Gregson (above left): For me, coming to New York has always been a dream, and after four amazing years in Australia I now feel Im ready for the challenge. When the opportunity to work with Jan and Leo came up, it was impossible to turn down. The agency has an amazing client list, creative leaders and teams that have produced some of my favorite campaigns, and most importantly, an ongoing ambition to continue making great work.

The agency has recently added MassMutual to its impressive client list that includes adidas Originals, NYCFC, Sonnet, Coca-Cola, Google and NBC.

The agency recently released Original is Never Finished, the latest iteration of their three year-long Strikethrough campaign for adidas Originals, that has amassed nearly 10 million views on YouTube during its first two weeks since being released.
| BY Ricki Green |

The D&AD Festival is back for 2017, bringing you the biggest hive-mind of creative excellence across the industry  with six creative super-stars now confirmed as some of the headline speakers for the event including Anna Higgs, creative director, Nowness; Erik Kessels, creative director, KesselsKramer Amsterdam; Piera Luisa Gelardi, creative director/co-founder, Refinery29; Stefan Sagmeister, co-founder, Sagmeister&Walsh; Yancey Strickler, CEO, Kickstarter; Zane Lowe, creative director and LA anchor Beats1.

Anna Higgs, Nowness

Anna Higgs is an award-winning producer and creative executive who leads ground-breaking work at the intersection of film and digital storytelling. Higgs has recently taken up the position of creative director at Nowness, a global video channel bringing together the best in culture, with the best of emerging and established filmmaking voices.

Erik Kessels, KesselsKramer

Erik is a Dutch artist, designer and curator with great interest in photography. Creative director of communications agency KesselsKramer in Amsterdam, he works for national and international clients such as Nike, Diesel, J&B Whisky, Oxfam and Citizen M. As an artist and photography curator Kessels has published over 50 books and will be signing copies of his latest book Failed It! after his keynote.

Piera Luisa Gelardi, Refinery29

Creative director and co-founder at the lifestyle destination Refinery29, Gelardi leads a growing team of creatives who bring the brand to life online and IRL. With 225 million global users, it is the leading digital-media company focused on women and Gelardi and her team have been the recipients of numerous awards as well as co-authoring Refinery29s first book, the New York Times best seller, Style Stalking.

Stefan Sagmeister, Sagmeister&Walsh

Co-founder of world-famous design agency Sagmeister&Walsh, Stefan has designed for clients as diverse as the Rolling Stones, HBO, and the Guggenheim Museum. Hes a two time Grammy winner and also earned practically every important international design award. Sagmeister talks about the large subjects of our lives like happiness or beauty, how they connect to design and what that actually means to our everyday lives.

Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter

The man at the helm of an enormous global community built around creativity and creative projects, Strickler is the co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter. Over 10 million people, from every continent on earth, have backed a Kickstarter project and in 2015 it became a Benefit Corporation, a for-profit company that is obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on society, not only shareholders.

Zane Lowe, Beats1

Zane is a New Zealand-born radio DJ, record producer and television presenter. Originally coming to prominence through presenting on XFM and MTV Europe, and then on BBC Radio 1 from 2003-2015. He is now the creative director and LA anchor for Beats 1, Apples first free global radio station. Lowes wealth of music knowledge and creative vision bring personality back to the modern age of music discovery through the human experience.

And alongside:

Joining them across the four stages will be speakers including a food futurologist and Amsterdams Night Mayor as well as some of the most famous designers, creative directors, founders and CEOs from around the globe. Brands including WeTransfer, Sonos and Unmade will impart knowledge alongside agencies R/GA, adam&eveDDB, Leo Burnett, Turner Duckworth, Dentsu, FITCH to name a few.

Says Tim Lindsay, CEO, D&AD: Everything D&AD does is about celebrating, stimulating and enabling creativity  in the context of working towards a more sustainable and more diverse industry. The D&AD Festival is that mission and those values in action  a glorious celebration of the great work that results when diverse talent collaborates in pursuit of excellence.

To see the complete line-up click here.

D&AD Festival  What to Expect

This year the D&AD Festival has been organised into three distinct days, each with their own agenda.

Tuesday, 25 April  The Earth Will Shake: This is a day of responding to the big issues our world faces. D&AD want to inspire you to build a better, fairer and more sustainable future.

Wednesday, 26 April  Staring at The Sun: Shifts in technology, trends and work-styles are upending the creative industries. This is a day of leading innovators thinking, predicting and demonstrating how they are adapting to a transforming sector.

Thursday, 27 April  Outrageous Magic: This is a day of our industrys leading designers and creators talking about what they do when crafting the big ideas.

As well as headline and speaker slots, visitors to the D&AD Festival will be able to take part in Insight Sessions that cover many of the key categories from the D&AD Professional Awards and Bite-size Training classes to give them a taster of D&AD Professional Development Training. An exhibition of over 26,000 pieces of creative work entered into the Awards will be displayed throughout the venue and there will also be New Blood installations, and an exclusive Next Awards showcase of emerging directors and exhibition of emerging photographers in partnership with Getty Images to give attendants a full overview of what D&AD has to offer.
| BY Ricki Green |

The Australasian Writers and Art Directors Association (AWARD) is proud to present, Creative Masterclass by Steve Harrison, an exclusive event to be held in three capital cities this March.

Dubbed the greatest Direct Marketing Creative of his generation, the ex-Wunderman global creative director turned author and director will run exclusive courses in Melbourne (1 March), Sydney (3 March) and Perth (9 March).

The one-day masterclass features two sessions where professionals will learn how to write copy that works  whether it be writing the all-important brief that leads to inspiring creative, an attention grabbing headline or copy that impacts, engages and motivates audiences.

Additionally, AWARD is running exclusive screenings of Harrisons acclaimed documentary Changing The World Is The Only Fit Work For A Grown Man followed by a Q&A session with Steve Harrison in Melbourne (1 March) and Perth (7 March).

AWARD chairman Wilf Sweetland said this is a rare opportunity for creative agencies and freelancers alike: With an impressive career spanning more than 25 years, Steve is a creative guru and master copywriter like no other. We are excited and honoured to be partnering with him to deliver this exclusive event series in Australia.

While running his agency, HTW, Harrison won more Cannes Lions in his discipline than any creative director in the world. Following his departure from agency life he went on to pen his first book How To Do Better Creative Work, which became the most expensive advertising book of all time when it traded on amazon.co.uk at 3,854 a copy.

In 2013, Harrison wrote the biography of the 1960s adman Howard Gossage, Changing The World Is The Only Fit Work Of A Grown Man  which, in 2015, was the basis for his feature documentary of the same name.

Gossage is often credited as the first adman to realise the potential of building PR and other media into his marketing plans, as well as inventing interactive advertising, community building and an early form of social media.

The documentary has only ever been screened by AWARD, D&AD, The One Club, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Luerzers Archive and M.A.D. School Singapore.

For more information about the masterclass and screening times, please refer below or visit http://www.communicationscouncil.org.au/.

Tickets limited.

To get tickets, click here.

AWARD CREATIVE MASTERCLASS

Melbourne

1 March 2017, 10am-4pm, $560 members | $800 non-members

Sydney

3 March 2017, 10am-4pm, $560 members | $800 non-members

GOSSAGE DOCUMENTARY WITH BIOGRAPHER STEVE HARRISON

Melbourne
| BY Ricki Green |

By Genevieve Clay-Smith, founder, Taste Creative

Storytelling has become the new on-trend buzzword in advertising and marketing because advertisers and marketeers know that everyone loves stories. Its part of our DNA, and as humans weve been telling stories to pass on culture and educate the next generation for thousands of years. Just look at cave paintings and oral histories.

But in the flux of storytelling that has been widespread across our media platforms, not all have worked, gone viral and been loved. Some have flopped. This is because storytelling is an artform. Check out Joseph Campbells the Power of Myth, or Bruno Bettelheims The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales and youll see that stories require skill, understanding, knowledge and profound purpose.

Its our belief at Taste that stories are powerful for the reason that when told well and with purpose, they have the ability to reshape peoples attitudes, perspectives and understanding. Whatever Hollywood movie you decide to watch this weekend there are messages that you will subconsciously consume. These messages will either challenge or maintain the status quo. They will confirm our cultural identities, or shift them. They present us with a view of the world that has the ability to profoundly influence our thinking, whether we realise it or not. Think of that when watching the next Disney-Pixar film!

So if this is the case, how can we best use storytelling for the purposes of advertising and marketing?

One of the best examples of storytelling Ive seen in advertising is the Wells Fargo commercial Learning Sign Language which you can see here.

This ad went viral with over a million hits, earned amazing PR, and raised the profile of the bank dramatically.

So why did this ad become so popular and go viral, as opposed to something like NABS current More than Money films? Which you can watch here.

Understanding that storytelling is an artform and a learned craft skill is a very important first step in grasping what makes a story work. Here are a few craft skills implemented in the Well Fargo advertisement that has helped ensure its success:

1. The film explores zeitgeist issues

In this story the zeitgeist issues explored are marriage equality, diversity, inclusion and adoption. The Wells Fargo advertisement aligns itself with these issues, and obviously understands its customers, in this case celebrating its LGBTIQ customer segment. Its celebrating diversity and adoption as being good and worthy of support.

Using a zeitgeist immediately elevates the story to a higher realm of engagement, meaning it becomes relevant to real time issues we are facing in our society today and thus immediately transcends mediocrity, because this story has something powerful to say about the issues of our times, without being didactic.

Framing any story around a zeitgeist issue is a tool of storytelling that engages and emotionally connects with audiences.

2. Universal themes

This story deals with the universal theme of belonging. This is a powerful theme that every human being will emotionally engage with and question while alive. Everyone wants to belong, its a universal theme that digs deep into the human condition and draws to attention inherent human questions well all consider while alive. Because of this, themes such as belonging drives emotional connection  its something we can all relate to.

3. Stakes

Every successful story has stakes. The stakes give us the reason as to why we should care about this story. Because there is something to lose. The stakes should be something that we all understand and inherently fear losing or experiencing.

So what is at stake here?

Its the pain of rejection, happiness, being a complete and whole family  the mothers may not get the family they are dreaming of. If they cant communicate with their daughter, they may not win her love we watch them practice and do their very best to learn sign language in order to belong, find happiness and be a complete family. We can all relate to the fear of losing our family and being alone, at the end of the day thats why theyre learning sign language  to create a family and belong to one another.

4. Journey

There is a clear sense of journey in this story. Every story needs a sense of journey  when you watch a film, you expect to go on an adventure to be taken through varied emotional landscapes of uncertainty, curiosity, elevation, excitement, and revelation.

Now, journey is its own lecture, there are many elements within journey and depending on the length of the story you are telling, you wont be able to fit them all in. For this story, two of the key elements used are a dramatic question or throughline and a revelation.

We, as an audience need a dramatic question to sustain us. The reason we sit through a story or watch a movie is to find out whats going to happen to the characters. In this story we are held by the dramatic question of why are the women so passionately learning sign language? We are intrigued by the unbridled dedication and the anxiety they show about getting it right. This dramatic question is answered through a very clever reveal when the little girl is introduced to them as her two new mothers. The dramatic question and the reveal, create a wonderful journey which engages us and makes us go WOW.
| BY Kim Shaw |

The Asia Pacific Tambuli Awards has named Matt Eastwood, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer J. Walter Thompson, as the Overall Jury Chairman for 2017.

Eastwood (pictured) comments, Bill Bernbach once said, All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level. By celebrating work that not only does well but does good, the APAC Tambuli Awards lift creativity and, indeed, society to a higher plane. That is a good thing for our industry. And, more importantly, a good thing for our planet.

The pioneer in award shows globally to celebrate effective advertising for good, the APAC Tambuli Awards honors brands that do good and do well  showing the seamless integration of creativity + human good + results. Case study entries must demonstrate how brands uplift society, create positive change, and correlate purpose with purchase.

The APAC Tambuli Awards is not an award on charity, advocacy, pro bono, or CSR advertising, even if those campaigns are welcome and encouraged to enter. The award, however, focuses on mainstream brand campaigns that celebrate humanity, inspire purpose, and deliver results.

Eastwood joined J. Walter Thompson as Worldwide Chief Creative Officer in July 2014. He has overseen some of the most innovative and recognizable creative projects in advertising today. His career has spanned numerous agencies, specialties and countries, including Australia, the UK and US. Eastwood was a founding partner of M&C Saatchi in Australia before he went on to join DDB Australia as National Creative Director and Vice Chairman. In 2010 he moved to DDB New York as Chief Creative Officer. And in AdAges 2013 Awards Report, Eastwood was listed as the 5th most-awarded Chief Creative Officer worldwide. In 2016, Eastwood led J. Walter Thompson to a historic year at Cannes, winning a total of 80 Lions  more than the agency had ever won in their 150-year history.

Last year Charles Cadell, APAC President McCann Worldgroup and David Guerrero, Chairman and CCO BBDO Guerrero Philippines, told Campaign Brief how impressed they were with the Tambuli Awards and explained why all agencies in the Asia-Pacific region should enter.
| BY Ricki Green |

WPP owned Landor Australia and Designworks Australia have merged to form a leading brand and customer experience design agency.

The merger brings together two successful businesses with highly complementary offers: Designworks regional strength in corporate branding and customer experience design, and Landors globally recognised capabilities and proprietary methodologies in consumer branding and innovation.

Operating under Landors globally respected brand, the merged agency represents a new breed of omnichannel brand and customer experience practices with a full spectrum offering and unparalleled credentials in the region.

Says Michael Connaghan, CEO, WPP AUNZ: Landor and Designworks Australia are both outstanding businesses in their own right. Bringing them together creates a unique offering in the Australian marketing landscape; the power and strength of Landors global brand with the agility, the local expertise, and knowledge of Designworks. They are both highly innovative and future-focused in their approach to business, and their combined scale and capability will drive even greater value for existing and future clients.

With 27 offices globally and clients that include BP, FedEx, Procter & Gamble, and Singapore Airlines, Landor is one of the worlds leading brand agencies. Designworks is Australasias largest strategic design and branding consultancy with Australian offices in Sydney and Melbourne and a client list that includes Officeworks, Stockland, and Westpac.

Says Sven Baker (pictured above, left), chairman and group CEO, Designworks: Landors agile brands philosophy is remarkably similar to our own. Both firms employ design thinking as a strategic business tool in a rapidly changing world and put customer experience at the heart of designing for the future. Were delighted to be joining forces. Being part of the Landor global network will deliver significant benefit to our clients and it makes complete sense for the group.

Says Dominic Walsh (right), managing director, Landor Australia: We have long admired Designworks for its strategic prowess and creative excellence. Im thrilled that were now partnering with them, so together we can continue to develop and grow the market opportunity in Australia.

The combined business will be led by Walsh, reporting to Baker as executive chairman. Brad Doble, currently managing director of Designworks Australia, has been appointed to the newly formed role of managing partner in Sydney, and Landors Nick Davis as managing partner in Melbourne.
| BY Ricki Green |

The One Club for Creativity, the worlds foremost non-profit organization celebrating creativity in advertising and design, has today announced entry deadline extensions for the 44th Annual One Show Awards and the ADC 96th Annual Awards. The new deadline is February 17.

Visit www.oneshow.org to enter The One Show. Visit www.adcawards.org to enter the ADC Annual Awards.

This year, The One Show introduced two new disciplines:

Moving Image Craft, which recognizes the special skills demonstrated in branded content and commercial spots

Social Influencer Marketing, which recognizes the partnership with an established social media influencer to enhance or promote a brand through that influencers audience and style.

The One Show also created the Cultural Driver Award, a special award that celebrates influential ideas and executions that have had a noticeable impact on pop culture, often transcending the traditional categories in advertising and design.

The ADC Annual Awards, while now operating under the One Club for Creativity umbrella, remains an independent awards show recognizing the best work in craft, design and innovation.

ADC has 25 new sub-categories across four disciplines: Design, Motion, Digital and Advertising. Visit www.adcawards.org to view all categories.
| BY Ricki Green |

Based around the Kiwi notion of no invite necessary, highly acclaimed director Mark Albiston, represented by The Sweet Shop, is behind ANZs new brand film entitled Trampoline via FCB New Zealand.

Telling the story of a growing relationship between two kids, Fynn and Arty the spot opens on an early morning scene. Arty sits in her bedroom window doing her homework, when she notices a small head bobbing up and down, smiling at her cheekily through the window. Its Fynn, a complete stranger whos about her age and weirdly in her backyard, jumping on her trampoline.

Built on the engaging natural performances of the child actors, Fynn breaks the ice by calling out to Arty and we watch their disjointed conversation transform into friendship.

Says Albiston: I love this script as its about peeling back a layer of cynicism and re-discovering what New Zealand is all about. Were a nation thats always welcomed each other, thats always got its front door open. No invite necessary. And who better to bring this authenticity and instantaneous interaction to life, than kids.

Says Fiona King, managing director, The Sweet Shop New Zealand: Getting the casting right was always going to be the key to this campaign and letting the casting process shape the final film. The campaign really plays to Marks strengths  his ability to recapture the importance of relationship through which we see things more clearly.

Brand: ANZ Banking Group

Agency: FCB New Zealand

Regional Executive Creative Director: James Mok

Executive Creative Director: Tony Clewett

Senior Creative Lead: Hywel James

Creatives: Kimberley Torrie, Mitchell Crowe

Creative Services Director: Jenni Doubleday

Head of Content: Pip Mayne

Producer: Rebecca Casey

FCB Motion GFX designers: Corban Koschak, Jared Yearsley

Production company: The Sweet Shop

Director: Mark Albiston

Managing Director: Fiona King

Producer: Andy Mauger

Post Production Company: Palace VFX Studio
Opinion / Columnist

UMHLAHLO Wesizwe SikaMthwakazi, a group which promotes the Ndebele culture in Zimbabwe is still waiting for the Bulawayo City Council to change some names of suburbs and schools in the city to "reflect the dignity and honour they deserve."But the local authority has still not effected the changes, two years after the group made the demands. Below we publish the full letter which the pressure group wrote on 28 January 2015.Municipal BuildingsFife StreetBulawayoZimbabweAll protocol observedREF: CONCERN ON HISTORICAL STREET AND SCHOOL NAMES IN BULAWAYOWe write to you with compliments of the New Year 2015 from Umhlahlo Wesizwe SikaMthwakazi and express our warmest wishes for the rest of the year. As referenced above our concern is that the street name Lobhengula Street and a variety of other street and school names that are of historical significance to our City of Kings and Queens. These as named are not reflective of the dignity and honour as their beholders deserve.This proposition is meant to promote the City's status as a historical and heritage site. It is hoped that such a bold historic publicity initiative will make the city a cultural and heritage tourism destination of choice. We envisage that such an initiative will also preserve our history and make our children aware of their history and heritage.May the city fathers be reminded that history is a vital organ of any society's identity and moreover Lobhengula was not an ordinary man but a King of the Ndebele kingdom, thus his name cannot be merely inscribed as Lobhengula Street? However this very city that we are proud of today was named after the honour of his Majesty King Lobhengula.As a vanguard and shield of the cultural heritage of Matabeleland alias Mthwakazi we humbly request the street to be renamed King Lobhengula as it should be, and various other streets and schools be named with proper historical reference as all other places for example Queen Elizabeth Primary school who in this case is even a foreign or colonial reference and Princess Margaret Clinic, King George.We also request that L.Takawira Avenue be named King Mzilikazi Avenue as it is significant in our historic links with South Africa  KwaZulu-Natal. His Majesty King Mzilikazi was the leader and founder of this great nation called Mthwakazi whose capital was named Bulawayo by his heir King Lobhengula.We also propose that all monuments, schools, townships and any site that are named after members of the Khumalo Royal Family and their chiefs and all Mthwakazi heroes and heroines be renamed as such. These are Mzilikazi, Lobhengula, Matshobana, Lozikeyi, Nkulumane, Njube, Nguboyenja, Famona, Magwegwe, Fusi, and any other that the city fathers may identify.We also hope this renaming will be extended to modern day heroes like Lookout Masuku whose war name was Mafela and as such the school be renamed General Mafela Primary School.We hope that this email meets your favourable consideration.Yours FaithfullyMr. J.S. SilondaNational Chairman0775587664
Friday, February 3, 2017 at 11:02AM

In celebration of Canada's 150 anniversary of Confederation, Microsoft has launched a campaign that gives Canadian students the opportunity to explore their country without having to leave their classroom. Students across the country now have access to visit and learn about Canada's landscape and history from coast-to-coast. Explore. Teach. Build. is an education program that teachers can work into their curriculum and connect one-on-one with researchers, scientists, curators and others who will guide them in real-time at no cost through the power of Skpe.

The campaign was launched last week at the Toronto Zoo with students virtually in attendance from British Columbia who met with the Zoo's Curator of Fishes to learn about the Great Lakes. In addition to the virtual tours, classes can be involved with the challenge of creating a Canadian moment or favourite part of the virtual trip using Minecraft: Education Edition and share them online using Office 365 Sway or Mix presentations.

The overall program is designed for K-12 classrooms. Microsoft will also be providing a variety of free resources to help educators particpate inlcuding Teacher Ambassadors who will be on hand to offer free professional development workshops focused on how to use Minecraft: Education Edition. Virtual Field Trips will be available at all Microsoft Store locations across Canada for students to explore. Educators can also request a set of Windows 10 HP devices with Minecraft: Eduation Edition installed.
"That's a federal government responsibility rather than an ACT government responsibility but in terms of the role of the ACT government that really is around regulating for quality and supporting sector development so we can improve that quality. Where the ACT government has done some good work is the past is in the area of workforce development."
"The other thing everyone still needs to get their heads around is how much freight will use the road to get to Canberra Airport."
Opinion / Columnist

It is likely that the negotiations on the coalition of opposition parties in Zimbabwe to corporately face Zanu PF in 2018 national elections, will go beyond the elections date as the battles of egos and tribalism continue.The MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai wants a coalition where he will be the leader, a declaration that ZimPF used to contest before the Bikita West disaster of course. Now that ZimPF has proved itself in the recent Bikita West by-election that it does not have any support base of significance, the puzzle on who will the boss was naturally solved. ZimPF will join the coalition as the underdog, meaning its leader, Joice Mujuru will settle for the vice presidency. As is now the political tradition in Zimbabwe that every political party has a Ndebele representative in the presidium, obviously that coalition will also have a second vice president from that region.There is Thokozani Khupe, the MDC-T vice president who hails from that region. She has a chance of retaining her post in the coalition. However, it seems Tsvangirai and Welshman Ncube, the leader of the MDC, have buried the hatchet for the sake of the coalition. Thus, Ncube will come in also as principal of his own party. There has to be an incentive for Ncube to join the coalition and that can be nothing other than the vice presidency. But the coalition cannot have three vice presidents, meaning somebody will have to step down. In this case, the likely casualty is the honourable madam. This is so for two major reasons. Firstly, one party cannot have two members in the presidium. MDC-T will have Tsvangirai. Secondly, the gender element will have been catered for through Mujuru. Zimbabwe, as patriarchal as it is, cannot have two women in the presidium.Madam Khupe's thoughts have already raced ahead to these permutations. These are the possibilities that have caused Khupe to run scared of the coalition. She is emotionally against the coalition of the MDC-T with any other opposition party of significance. However, she is aware that even her leader is now supportive of the coalition and she cannot swim against the tide. Thus, she has decided to proffer a template of a coalition that she wants.This week, Khupe said the coalition is only needed in Mashonaland provinces where the MDC-T has not been performing well. She said: "As a political party, you want a coalition because you will have realised a gap in your party and as the MDC-T, where is our gap? It is clear that our gap is in Mashonaland East, West and Central where we have consistently not done well." It's quite interesting to have a coalition that will only apply in certain parts of the country. A coalition formed on regional basis will be one its own kind. Madam Khupe has exposed her fear of the coalition, fear of Ncube in particular. She knows for sure that she will kiss good-bye to her post of senior vice president' once Ncube joins the coalition.It never rains but pours for poor Khupe. Tsvangirai recently crowded her office by appointing Elias Mudzuri and Nelson Chamisa as additional vice presidents, an appointment that clearly shows she was not managing the duties of a vice president on her own. Tsvangirai fell short of expelling her but as a modestly educated lady; she can read clearly Tsvangirai's intention. She only survived through a tribal ticket and she wants to use same to survive in the coalition.However, madam Khupe forgets quickly. The year 2013 is not very far for her to forget that her party dismally performed in Matebeleland South and North provinces. So it's not only in Mashonaland provinces that the MDC-T has "consistently not done well," to borrow her words. She only wants to use Matebeland votes, perceived though, for power negotiations. The only sensible thing she said which deserves an accolade is her confession that her party has not been doing well in Mashonaland East, West and Central. She was not far from the truth. Her statement exonerates Zanu PF which her party has been accusing of rigging elections every time it was given a hiding. She has admitted that her party has not been doing well and that is the utmost truth.
The government subsequently widened the zone. But Mr Mellor was fined again on May 27 and again on Friday. He said he had written to police contesting the second fine but had heard nothing back.
No wonder Malcolm Turnbull's office down-played last Sunday's announcement that the Trump Administration had finally committed to the proposed Australia-US refugee swap deal. We now know, thanks to a leak to the Washington Post, that the phone call confirming the deal was strained, that the US President called it the "worst deal ever", and that he [Mr Trump] ended the conversation after 25 minutes  even though it had been scheduled to last an hour. But any embarrassment Mr Turnbull may have felt after his White House call was as nothing compared to the mortification visited on him on Thursday when Mr Trump tweeted "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal".
Not allowing itself to grasp the point that the current bargaining policy is incapable of honest and rational implementation, it's no surprise that all of the committee's recommendations, including those in a minority report, are useless. Wrong through and through, the committee ends up recommending that the "Public Service Commission and the CPSU [one of the relevant unions] consider a range of approaches for future enterprise bargaining and settle on the best and most productive approach". That is, it has dished up a recommendation the government can dismiss because any revision of the current policy is beyond the remit of the commission and the union. Moreover, after all its huffing and puffing, the committee hasn't had the wit or courage to make any suggestion about what a better and workable policy might be. And it seems not to appreciate that neither the commission nor the union seems to have the faintest idea about something better, practical and in the public interest.
MNF  which is the parent company of VoIP providers MyNetFone, Connexus, CallStream, PennyTel and The Buzz as well as VoIP wholesaler Symbio Networks  will add Conference Call International (CCI)to its portfolio for $A18 million ($13.75 million)

The acquisition of CCI provides MNF a significant entry into the audio conferencing and collaboration market in Australia and the region. These applications have the potential for consistent long term growth and innovation potential, said MNF chief executive Rene Sugo. MNF has already raised $A18.5 million from institutional investors to fund the deal.

CCI operates under the Express Virtual Meetings, Eureka Conferencing and Ozlink brands. Sugo said: These applications are an excellent fit with the current MNF business, enterprise and government sub-segment, as well as a high value synergy with the groups domestic and global network assets.

The acquisition is expected to complete at the end of next week. The deal will bring an additional 5,000 business, government and enterprise customers into MNF.

CCI operates from headquarters outside of Melbourne with a team of 23 staff. The business is on track to earn $A3.5 million EBITDA in the 2017 financial year, a 17% increase on the previous year.

In 2016 MNF completed purchase of the former Telecom New Zealand International (TNZI) from Spark Communications for $A22 million. TNZI sells voice, data, mobile, and digital services in six counties, and in 2015 was reported carrying more than 2.8 billion voice minutes.

Since then MNF has signed a 4G mobile virtual network operator deal with Telstra and has set up a point of presence for TNZI in Hong Kong.

In a separate announcement, MNF said it will become one of the three suppliers of voice services to the state government of the Australian province of Victoria. MNF already supplies services to the state governments of New South Wales and Tasmania.
Hollywood Sex Party Snctm Costs Men $2,000 To Attend

Trending News: A Peek Inside A Secretive, Exclusive Hollywood Sex Party

Long Story Short

Snctm, an exclusive monthly sex party that takes place in Los Angeles and sometimes New York, costs men nearly $2,000 to attend. Women can get in for free if they're attractive enough and provide a full-frontal photo.

Long Story

Have you ever wanted to participate in a glamorous Hollywood orgy with some of the industry's elite models and actors? Well, now's your chance.

But it's going to run you about $2,000.

Hollywood residents are paying a pretty penny to attend the high-end Snctm sex parties, which have been promoted by actors such as Gwyneth Paltrow, who covered them on her blog and is alleged to have even attended in the past. Models and participants partake in risky business wearing bondage gear, pig masks and lace, according to a report by the New York Post.

Men normally pay close to $2,000, with the annual fee being roughly over $75,000, which gives you access to private rooms. There is a discounted price of nearly $1,500 if a man brings a female companion. Women usually get in for free, but they've got to be hot enough, and a full-frontal photo is required.

Around us, a mostly female crowd of models, young professionals, actresses and assistants strut about in couture lingerie, much to the delight of older male guests in tuxedos, said Heather Hauswirth, the New York Post journalist who took a trip to party. One 20-something blonde crawls on the carpeted floor wearing red lace and a face mask with a leather pig snout and ears.

Other participants wear black badges that read Eat me or Touch me, while the Bunnyman wears a black leather mask and demonstrates multiple Japanese bondage techniques on an aroused woman sitting on a plush, gold-painted chair.

The parties were created by Damon Lawner, a 45-year-old divorced father of two who started throwing Snctm in early 2013. He hosts these sex parties full time, and he's even in talks with Fox to do a scripted show on his life with Glee producer Brad Falchuk. The producer just so happens to be dating Paltrow, and the two have attended these parties together. The Post's sources allege that even Bill Maher was seen at one of the parties, as he's reported to be a member.

If one wants to attend these parties, phones need to be left at the door, and the high-level Dominus membership is currently limited to just 11 men and one woman. They must also sign a blood oath to join, which is an initiation into the society. A second-tier Aurum membership can be purchased for $12,000, which includes discounted entry and access to Lawner's hedonistic work. The parties are also said to be very unpretentious, and everyone is very friendly.

Maybe Stanley Kubrick was onto something with Eyes Wide Shut?

Snctm also held a top secret party in New York during Fashion Week, where brass keys were being sold in stores like Soho and on Madison Avenue.

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

Who's the most famous person to have attended one of these?

Drop This Fact

An orgy was first introduced as a secret means of worship for mystery cults in ancient Greece that may have included group sex.
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After working in education for many years, Andrea Andrade saw an ongoing gap in access to financial guidance and resources for local underserved community members. From affordable housing to parents saving for their childrens future, Andrades work has centered around giving others an opportunity to recognize their voice and find the strength they need to meet their financial goals.
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.
The NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL), the incubation and entrepreneurship hub at IIM Bangalore (IIMB), has been selected by NITI Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) to receive INR 10 crore as scale-up support over the next two years, which will enable the centre to upgrade and expand its infrastructure and thereby its services to entrepreneurs. NSRCEL is one of the six established incubation centres in the country to receive this financial support under the Atal Innovation Mission.

Application

NITI Aayog received 232 applications from all over India last year for assessment under this scheme. A total of 17 shortlisted centres were interviewed and reviewed in depth by NITI Aayog, before the final six were picked.

Selection Process

The selection process included initial screening, data cleaning, evaluation and presentation followed by site visit, if required. The evaluation matrix covered years of relevant experience of supporting start-ups, quality of portfolio start-ups, quality/diversity of mentors and teams, proposed business plan and budget, quality/diversity of existing and proposed partners, and partnership with investors.

The objective of the scheme is to transform the start-up ecosystem in the country by upgrading the established incubation centres to world-class standards.

Entrepreneur Development

Explaining how NSRCEL at IIMB plans to use the grant to reap maximum benefits, Dr. Suresh Bhagavatula, Chairperson, Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Development, NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore, said: "We are very happy to receive the funding from NITI Aayog. In addition to helping start-ups, we will be using these funds to help SMEs and family businesses professionalise and scale their operations. In addition to incubation facilities, we plan to train entrepreneurs by using a blended learning approach, which uses both online and offline classroom training. Since IIMB already has over 20 online courses, it would be easy for NSRCEL to reach out to a large number of ventures."

About NSRCEL

NSRCEL is one of the most vibrant start-up incubators in the country, located inside a management school, operational since 2012. Over the years, it has helped thousands of entrepreneurs, actively incubating 67 ventures that have gone on to create close to 5000 jobs and today their cumulative valuation stands at a billion USD. Recently, NSRCEL has started focused initiatives designed to help women entrepreneurs and non-profit sector organisations. The centre is forming active collaborations with industry and other academic institutions to strengthen the much-needed start-up ecosystem in the country.

IIM-B Offers Course on Technology Partnership
British Council (South India) Director Mei-kwei Barker said they do not expect the UK to lose its sheen as the most popular study destination for international students after Brexit, amid fears of tighter immigration laws.

"We don't really expect Brexit to affect UK. It is not slipping as a preferred higher education destination for international students, including Indians, amid fears of tighter immigration laws and Brexit impact," she told reporters here.

Barker said that contrary to reports in the global media, there are presently five lakh international students studying in the United Kingdom.

She also said that last year over 6,000 graduates had switched from Tier 4 to Tier 2 work visa after their studies, which is an increase from 2014 onwards. "It has turned a corner now," she added.

Many Indian students are concerned over lack of a post study visa that would allow them gain valuable work experience in the UK after studies and thus give them a competitive edge in the job market both back in India as well as globally.

"There are whole range of ways that the students can stay on. There is a scheme wherein if a student has a good business idea, he or she can set up a startup. This is one way to do it. There are 12 months internships and doctorate extensions, among other things," she said.

Earlier the British Council announced its GREAT Britain Scholarships India 2017 worth 1 million as part of the 'GREAT BRITAIN' campaign along with a new proposition Study UK: Discover You. As many as 198 GREAT scholarships in subject areas ranging from art and design to engineering, law and management are on offer for students aspiring to study in UK, Barker said.

The Council would launch a mobile app (Study UK Discover You Exhibition 2017) for the first time in India which will help students and parents plan their visit to the education exhibitions effectively, Barker said. "The App contains all the necessary information about UK educational institutions," she said.

In addition, Chevening is the British Government's flagship global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and partner organisations. "The India programme is now the world's largest with a budget of 2.6 million budget for 2016-17 with 130 scholarships being offered," she said.

PTI
XLRI- Xavier School of Management has collaborated with Hughes Global Education India Ltd. (HGEIL), the education business Subsidiary of Hughes Communication India Ltd (HCIL) to launch 'Direct to Desktop' (D2D) Executive Development Programmes for working professionals and self-employed.

Admissions Open

The admission has already started for Executive Development Program in Strategic Management (EDPSM) Programme. The short duration e-MDP course intends to explicate the role of industry analysis, innovation focus and resource-based thinking in strategizing for growth. Many leaders and managers implicitly use the resource based logic in making strategic decisions.

Course Details

The last date of application for the course is 27th February, 2017.

The fees of the programme amounts to Rs. 77,000 + taxes, payable in two installments.

The registration details are available at: http://www.hugheseducation.com/xlri-jamshedpur/edpsm.

Prof. Ram Kumar Kakani, Associate Dean (VIL), XLRI said, "XLRI's Virtual Interactive Learning Programmes have been designed for working executives to upgrade their business acumen, hone their managerial skills that would add value to them personally as well as professionally in their careers without leaving their jobs, cities and families. HGEIL is one of our existing technical partners. By leveraging the complementary capabilities of each other, we look forward to successfully delivering high quality Programs to working professionals."

Courses Offered

Two short duration e-MDP courses are being offered under this Direct to Desktop (D2D) programme currently - Executive Development Program in Strategic Management (EDPSM) and Executive Development Programs in Human Resources Development (EDPHRD).

Course on HRD

The Executive Development Programs in Human Resources Development (EDPHRD) Programme aims at providing basic knowledge and better understanding of HRD theory and practices for HR/HRD professionals and line managers who are associated with HRD activities in their respective organizations.

Direct to Desktop Mode

A spokesperson from Hughes Global Education India Ltd. (HGEIL) said, "Direct to Desktop study has now-a-days been quite familiar in the education industry. It has eased the trouble of travelling to a specific study center. Students can now attend class sitting at their home on their PC/Laptop using broadband connection. Live classroom sessions enable the students to interact with the faculty and peers. HGEIL's collaboration with XLRI will help us offer this proposition to the appropriate learners."

About XLRI

XLRI-Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur is a premier, private management institute in India founded in 1949 by Fr Quinn Enright, S.J. in the 'steel city' of Jamshedpur (www.xlri.ac.in). Over the last six decades, the institute has grown into a top-ranking business management school of international repute with a wide portfolio of management programs and research publications. Its alumni are spread around the globe and have demonstrated responsible business leadership in their organizations.

XLRI continually strives to contribute its mite to the professional growth and management of numerous organizations and institutions across industry sectors. XLRI has been awarded two prestigious International Accreditations, viz., AACSB - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business and AMBA - Association of MBAs. XLRI has also earned the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) accreditation.

IIM Calcutta and Amway India Launch Course on Entrepreneurship and Leadership
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles chief executive Sergio Marchionne is confident that the brands 2017 diesel models will soon be approved by the EPA.



Marchionnes comments come two weeks after the U.S. government accused the company of violating the Clean Air Act. However, Marchionne said that the brand is already involved in deep discussions with the EPA to fix the affected vehicles, the 2014-16 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram 150 EcoDiesel, with a simple ECU re-flash, reports the Detroit Free Press.

During a conference call, Marchionne said We are in the midst of a series of pretty intense discussions with both EPA and (California Air Resources Board) on the certification of the 2017 models for both the Ram 1500 diesel and the Grand Cherokee diesel.

According to the executive, FCA will receive approval for the software needed to fix the offending older models if its 2017 diesel vehicles are certified by the EPA.

I think discussions are proceeding well, and I think they are a confirmation of the, certainly the goodwill thats been established with the regulatory agencies now for a number of years, and its something I expect that will continue, he said.

VIDEO
Deepwater Horizon

Nominees: Craig Hammack, Jason Snell, Jason Billington, and Burt Dalton

The toughest shot: Mike Williams jump to safety

Craig Hammack (visual effects supervisor): There were many challenging shots on Deepwater Horizon, but the one standout for me was the shot where Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) finally jumps from the rig into the water below. This was one of those shots that from its inception was incredibly difficult. [Director] Peter Berg was after an immersive experience, full of panic and pain that he wanted the audience to take in. It took multiple rounds of extensive previs from a few different companies to get something close to what Pete was looking for. The constraints were massive. It had to start with a large and potentially dangerous stunt that then transitioned through something like 10 other plates shot in various tanks to get the combination of actionsall hand held.

Shots like this you know will cause everyone involved some amount of pain as it goes through changes along the way. Its also the type of shot that will not look good until it looks great. This means an awful lot of salesmanship on my part and trust on Petes part. We had a team of artists led by our talented senior compositor, Shawn Monaghan, that worked on it from the first week of the show until delivery. In the end, I think it appears seamless and allows the audience to experience the harrowing jump from Mikes point of view.



Doctor Strange

Nominees: Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli, and Paul Corbould

The toughest shot: The magic mystery tour  Doctor Strange first enters the multiple dimensions

Stephane Ceretti (visual effects supervisor): I think if we consider the magical mystery tour as almost one long shot (its a bit of a cheat but visual effects are a cheat anyway!), it is definitely what took the most amount of R&D from a storytelling, visual, and technical point of view. It was like creating a film within a film. It took a lot of effort to go from the written words on the page to creating a previs.

This took about six months, and in parallel we created the design for all those worlds based on references and original concept art, while at the same time figuring out how to shoot it  stunts and special effect and lighting rigs had to be invented and custom made for this  and then going into post with countless refinements and revisions and technical challenges to create original imagery. It was definitely the most challenging thing on Doctor Strange but not the only challenging thing! Pretty much everything was, and thats why it was fun to do.



The Jungle Book

Nominees: Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones, and Dan Lemmon

The toughest shot: Consistency

Robert Legato (visual effects supervisor): In this film, since all the effects almost all had equal weight in terms of complexity I would have to say the most difficult time was spent in consistency. When our first few renders came back, they were pretty extraordinary as were the animation passes. So the hardest part became keeping this bar we created for ourselves both high and consistent. We could not hide behind any degree of fantasy or graphics as real world restraint was our key approach to believability.

We were trying to create the illusion that it could have been all naturally photographed and shot, so the weakest link would destroy that illusion. We became much more diligent even in the most simplest of shots keeping the quality to this very high standard. It was even harder a task as we also were in native stereo as well. In short there was no skimping on the family recipe.



Kubo and the Two Strings

Nominees: Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean, and Brad Schiff

The toughest shot: The big wave

Steve Emerson (visual effects supervisor): There were a lot of tough shots. But the first one that comes to mind is the wide shot of the big wave in the films opening sequence. Water is always a big challenge in stop motion films  and in this case we needed a looming, life-threatening wave that had massive scale, a naturalistic performance, handcrafted characteristics, and very specific elements of design. The reference art looked like a Japanese woodblock print and stage tests were done using garbage bags and shower curtains.

Basically we were being asked to create a giant woodblock-textured garbage bag that felt like a giant wave and didnt call attention to itself or pull viewers out of the story. Stages provided us with the puppet animation and boat on greenscreen, then it was up to the vfx team to take it from there. We collaborated with the art department, animation team and of course our director to develop the final look of the wave. The entire water development process took about eight months.



Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Nominees: John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal Hickel, and Neil Corbould

The toughest shot: Krennics shuttle leaving the Death Star on his way to Eadu

John Knoll (visual effects supervisor): This shot was an attempt to show just how big the Death Star actually is meant to be. A space station 100 miles in diameter is such a fantastical concept that its very hard for anyone to really grasp. What made this shot challenging was trying to marry the aesthetics of multiple different previous depictions: The original 3-foot spherical model, the matte paintings of the equatorial trench, the high and low altitude depictions of the surface during the attack run, and make them all feel like they belonged together.

The model required multiple octaves of detail that all had to be true to a design language established by Ralph McQuarrie back in 1977. That design language looks deceptively simple, but is surprisingly challenging to emulate and make it look like if you zoomed way out you would be seeing the same familiar Death Star you remember from the original film.

The 89th Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday, February 26th, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California.
Photo: Contributed

Time is running out to nominate someone for Kelowna's Civic and Community Awards.

The deadline to nominate outstanding artists, athletes, volunteers, environmentalists, businesses and volunteer organizations is Feb. 17.

The 42nd annual awards recognize the talent, dedication and generosity of the men and women who brought recognition to Kelowna in 2016.

Categories include:

Sarah Donalda Treadgold Memorial Award  Woman of the Year

Fred Macklin Memorial Award  Man of the Year

Male & Female Athlete of the Year

Bob Giordano Memorial Award  Volunteer Coach or Sport Administrator of the Year

Bryan Couling Memorial Award  Athletic Team of the Year

Champion for the Environment (individual and business)

Corporate Community of the Year (small/medium and large)

Central Okanagan Foundation - Volunteer Organization of the Year

Honour in the Arts

Teen Honour in the Arts

Young Male & Female Volunteer of the Year

The young volunteers will receive a post-secondary bursary through the Dillon Thomas Budd Youth Scholarship.

Nominations can be submitted online or by hard copy. Forms are available at City Hall and Parkinson Recreation Centre.

The awards will be presented on May 10 at Kelowna Community Theatre.
You won't get into the YMCA without government ID.

The Kelowna family Y is now part of a national initiative compelling patrons to show identification to use the facility.

But, it's willing to "work with people" who show up without any ID, says a local spokesperson.

Knowing who is in our building is what helps provide a safe environment, said risk and compliance co-ordinator Ashley Russo. We really want our children and youth to have safe programs that they can access, whether that is our child-care centres, our gymnasium, pool.

YMCAs across Canada started the initiative in 2012. It made its way to Kelowna last fall.

Public places are where our children and youth are most vulnerable, and we really wanted to make that commitment to making our YMCA the safest place, she said.

When using the facility, a membership card, which needs a government piece of identification to sign up, or government ID, such as a driver's licence, can be used.

Having a safe environment helps (children) learn and grow and play, and that is what we are all about, she said.

For more information, visit here.
Photo: Contributed

Frustrated Spallumcheen residents on Hullcar aquifer water hope to make their plight an election issue.

We are coming up on three years under a water advisory for unsafe levels of nitrates in our drinking water, said Al Price, spokesperson for the Save the Hullcar Aquifer Team.

The latest independent analysis, commissioned by SHAT, shows that cancer causing nitrate levels are increasing, Price said.

Samples taken by the water provider, Steele Springs, as well as the environment and forests ministries were included in the chart which was done by Lin Hammill, a retired mathematics professor from Kwantlen University.

The graph shows a year over year rise in nitrate levels of more than half a parts-per-million (ppm) each year. From January 2014 until January 2017, nitrate levels have increased to 12 ppm.

When it was clear nitrate levels were increasing, (Interior Health) claimed that there is no evidence to prove nitrate levels at 10 ppm to 13 ppm are a health risk. This ignores IHAs detailed list of health risks associated with long-term exposure to nitrates above 10 ppm. The government concedes that nitrates above 13 ppm can cause Blue Baby Syndrome, where babies can die within hours.

Armed with these results, Price said local residents will ensure questions are asked during provincial all-candidates' debates.

Shuswap MLA Greg Kyllo is the current representative for the area.

He sounds sympathetic but hasn't been able to make anything happen, said Price, who added that NDP candidate Sylvia Lindgren had already been in touch with the group.

NDP critics have visited the area over the past year, demanding the government take action to help the more than 300 people who get their water from the tainted source.

The group blames the problem on a large dairy operation that sprayed its fields with effluent.
Photo: Contributed

A researcher says the agency that monitors Alberta's energy industry has underestimated the impact of tens of thousands of spills going back decades.

Kevin Timoney, an Edmonton-area consulting biologist, used sophisticated statistical analysis, an extensive research review and comparisons with other jurisdictions to conclude the Alberta Energy Regulator doesn't have a good handle on how much oil and saline water has been released into the environment or remains there.

"Their spill volumes and recovery volumes are too good to be true," said Timoney, who did the study on behalf of northern indigenous bands concerned about spills on their land.

Timoney began with an AER database of 23,655 oil spills and 14,833 primary spills of saline water reported between 1975 and February 2013. The database included records of how much oil or water was spilled and recovered.

Timoney found that the regulator considered 100 per cent of the oil was recovered in 53 per cent of the oil spills. The median recovery rate for oil was 100 per cent and for saline water 80 per cent.

"Thousands of spills reporting essentially perfect oil recovery raise questions of data validity," he writes in a report which was to be released Thursday.

The regulator listed two types of spill environments: air-land or muskeg-stagnant water. Timoney found that recovery efficiency was reported to be the same for both. Nor was it significantly affected by the size of the spill.

Timoney turned to previous academic spills research. In eight major studies  five on land and three in water  the median recovery rate was 43 per cent. No one documented a perfect recovery.

He then looked at other jurisdictions.

North Dakota, one of the few places where data was available, said only 3.4 per cent of its spill recoveries were 100 per cent successful.

A graph of U.S. oil-spill volumes revealed a smooth, even curve while Alberta's graph looks like a staircase. That suggests, Timoney writes, "a large proportion of Alberta spill volumes are estimates of convenience rather than measured volumes."
Photo: Contributed

British Columbia's New Democrats are promising rebate cheques to offset increases in the cost of the province's carbon tax, if the party wins May's election.

NDP Leader John Horgan did not say how much the cheques would be worth, but promised 80 per cent of residents would be eligible for the rebates.

He says the NDP's plan targets the Liberal government's carbon tax, which is set to increase to $50 per tonne of carbon emissions in 2022.

The nine-year-old carbon tax is set at $30 per tonne and is scheduled to increase to comply with the federal government's national carbon plan.

Horgan said rebate cheques would be issued on the first month of each scheduled increase.

Horgan says carbon pollution has been rising under Premier Christy Clark's government and Environment Canada forecasts carbon pollution will increase by 32 per cent in B.C. by 2030.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Justin Trudeau will be travelling to northeastern New Brunswick to thank first responders after the ice storm that devastated much of the region.

The prime minister will visit Friday as crews continue to restore power  fewer than 5,000 customers were still in the dark Thursday afternoon.

At its peak, the ice storm left 133,000 customers without power, and the Armed Forces were called in to help with the cleanup and recovery.

NB Power hopes to restore up to 85 per cent of customers in the Acadian Peninsula by Thursday evening, with 99 per cent of customers targeted to be restored in Miramichi and Kent County.

New Brunswick Premier Brian Gallant on Thursday thanked the hundreds of volunteers who have been helping to run warming centres and shelters and going door to door to check on residents.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Ontario's acting Chief Medical Officer of Health is warning that two dozen cases of gastrointestinal illness may be linked to oysters from British Columbia.

Dr. David McKeown says there have been 24 cases of gastrointestinal illness since January consistent with norovirus in people who reported eating raw or undercooked oysters.

McKeown says cooking oysters at an internal temperature of 90 degrees Celsius for a minimum of 90 seconds should eliminate norovirus and other potentially harmful microorganisms.

Foodborne outbreaks of norovirus can occur when food is contaminated with the virus. Health officials say shellfish such as oysters can become contaminated from the water before they are harvested.

The common symptoms of gastrointestinal illness are nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps which will last one to two days in healthy people.

Anyone experiencing these symptoms after eating oysters is urged to contact a doctor.
Many of us who are fortunate enough to live in this beautiful province have had opportunities to travel or work in areas where wildlife roam freely across stunning landscapes or live in specialized ecosystems that support their particular needs.



With its new $27-million investment in a comprehensive caribou recovery program, the B.C. government is clearly demonstrating its commitment to preserving these majestic animals so that our children and grandchildren can continue to see them thrive in the wild.



Woodland caribou populations in B.C. have been declining in recent years, in part due to human activities that have altered their traditional feeding and wintering ranges. There are currently about 19,000 caribou living in the mountains and boreal forests of the province, compared to an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 animals in the early 1900s.



The government's new strategy will address this concern by: protecting and restoring critical caribou habitat; maintaining its maternity penning program to help protect female caribou and their young from predators and other dangers; controlling predators where they limit recovery; expanding its research and monitoring programs for existing herds; and stepping up compliance and enforcement efforts to ensure that at-risk caribou have the best possible chance of survival.



The primary goal of the program is the long-term viability of the province's 51 woodland caribou herds, which are concentrated in our northern boreal forests and the mountains of southern B.C.



Government biologists and ecosystem specialists will continue to work with communities, First Nations, resource licensees and other stakeholders throughout the province to ensure that these caribou herds are given the best possible chance to increase their numbers in a changing environment.



Preserving B.C.'s biodiversity and natural resources can be challenging at times, but it's an important responsibility that this government takes very seriously. This enhanced caribou recovery program is an important and necessary step in that ongoing journey.

Steve Thomson

Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations
Photo: Facebook - Nathan Fahl

A prolific carjacker has pleaded guilty to stealing a bait car  a week before his trial was set to start.

Nathan Fahl, the man originally charged in a high-speed chase that injured a pedestrian, was set to begin his trial earlier this week, but pleaded guilty on Jan. 24 to theft of a motor vehicle and operating a motor vehicle while disqualified, stemming from an incident on March 30, 2016.

The 27-year-old has an extensive prior record, including nine convictions of theft over $5,000, several of which were vehicle thefts, along with three dangerous driving convictions.

Fahl wasn't arrested for stealing the bait car until May and remained in custody until December. He was granted bail on Dec. 13 after telling Justice Greg Koturbash that he had come to a crossroads and was looking to Christianity to help him change his ways.

He was released into 24-hour house arrest at the Adult and Teen Challenge Okanagan Men's Centre, a Christian-based rehabilitation centre in Lake Country.

Fahl will remain out of custody until he faces sentencing. A pre-sentence report has been ordered for Fahl, which will be received by the judge on Mar. 7.

The report will include Fahl's history, life circumstances and his risk to reoffend. A sentencing date will be set following his Mar. 7 court appearance.
Photo: Contributed

The air out there is still not good.

The Ministry of Environment, in collaboration with Interior Health, has issued another dust advisory for Vernon due to high concentrations of coarse particulates, which are expected to persist until there is a change in current weather conditions.

A similar advisory was issued Tuesday.

People with chronic underlying medical conditions should postpone strenuous exercise until the advisory is lifted.

Staying indoors and in air-conditioned spaces helps to reduce particulate exposure.

Exposure is particularly a concern for infants, the elderly and those who have diabetes and lung or heart disease.
Photo: Google Street View

The RCMP explosives disposal unit from the Lower Mainland was called to Kelowna Tuesday, after an explosive device was found in a stolen car.

An ICBC employee at the claims centre on Springfield Road noticed what appeared to be an explosive device in a car that was associated with a stolen vehicle claim from the Lower Mainland. The car had been recovered by RCMP in the Central Okanagan.

Upon investigation, police determined the explosive material ... was considered more stable than your typical explosive, and required further components to actually discharge.

The explosives unit arrived in Kelowna at 8:15 p.m., secured the device, and cleared the rest of the vehicle.

RCMP wish to commend the employees of ICBC for taking the necessary steps to ensure their safety and the safety of the general public, Cpl. Jesse ODonaghey of the Kelowna RCMP said in a statement.

Police did not disclose what type of explosive device it was.
Photo: Tumblr

A B.C. Supreme Court judge is expected to deliver his ruling Friday in the case of three people accused of removing girls from Canada so they could be placed in plural marriages.

Evidence presented to Justice Paul Pearlman in a Cranbrook courtroom late last year delved into the polygamous beliefs and practices in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Brandon Blackmore, Gail Blackmore and James Oler  who are, or have been members of the church  are accused of taking girls across the border for a sexual purpose in 2004.

The trio are connected to the community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia, where the trial heard plural marriage was practised.

The charges against the Blackmores, who are separated as husband and wife, centre on a 13-year-old girl who records show was married to Warren Jeffs, the 60-year-old FLDS prophet now serving a life sentence in Texas.

Oler is accused of bringing a 15-year-old girl across the border to marry James Leroy Johnson, who was 24 at the time of the marriage.

Much of the evidence heard in the judge-only trial came about as a result of the U.S. investigation into Jeffs.

Special prosecutor Peter Wilson drew on records found locked away in a Texas ranch during the trial in an effort to prove the girls' marriages took place within days of the accused receiving instructions from Jeffs.

Wilson also focused much of his case on how sex and marriage were viewed in the church. The court heard from former members who said women were expected to obey their fathers and husbands, have as many children as possible and never turn away their husbands' sexual advances.

Brandon Blackmore's lawyer John Gustafson told the judge in his closing submissions that the prosecution failed to prove his client transported the girl across the border or that he knew beforehand that sexual contact with an older man would result.

Gail Blackmore and Oler have chosen to represent themselves during the trial, so an impartial adviser was appointed to assist the court and provide balance. The pair spent much of their time in court quietly reading and did not give opening or closing arguments for themselves.
Sediment pond almost done Vernon - 9:36 am
Photo: Contributed

If marijuana is going to be made legal, it should be restricted to those 21 and over, says the Canadian Consortium for Early Intervention in Psychosis.

That's in response to recommendations from the Task Force on Marijuana Legalization and Regulation, which said consumption should be restricted to those 18 and older.

The consortium also says quantity and THC potency for those 21-25 should also be restricted.

The CCEIP is a national body of mental health clinicians and researchers.

"We have evidence that exposure to marijuana by adolescents and young adults poses definite risks to their mental health, especially for those who may already be vulnerable to mental illness," said spokesperson Dr. Ashok Malla.

The task force recently released a report on a new system to legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana.

To minimize harm, it recommended the federal government set a national minimum age of purchase of 18, while recognizing the risks associated with cannabis use, including the risks of developmental harms to youth.

In response, the CCEIP says:
Photo: The Canadian Press File photo

The Department of National Defence has awarded a $55.45 million contract for the demolition of an outdated jetty at the navy dockyard in Esquimalt.

Pomerleau Inc. from Surrey, B.C., will demolish the existing B jetty as part of a $781 million recapitailzation project at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt.

The defence department says both A and B jetties were originally designed for ships that were smaller and lighter than today's modern Canadian patrol frigates, and both will eventually be demolished.

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan says the outdated jetties have served the Royal Canadian Navy for more than 70 years, but they are now well past their intended service life.

New docking facilities are designed for the modern frigates joining the navy fleet from 2018 to 2040.

The demolition and rebuilding of jetty A will start once the new jetty B is in operation.
The campaign manager for Conservative leadership hopeful Kellie Leitch has resigned after being the centre of some recent controversies.

Nick Kouvalis posted on Facebook that he is quitting because it has become clear he has become a distraction to Leitch's campaign.

He says a campaign should be about the candidate and not the conduct of the candidate's staff.

Kouvalis said last month that he posted false information about the governing Liberals in an effort to draw out left-leaning voters.

Last year Kouvalis tweeted a list of "billions'' of dollars Justin Trudeau's Liberal government had supposedly given to international aid organizations in the last year, including $351 million for the designated terrorist group Hamas.

He later said the information was false, telling Maclean's magazine that he posted it "to make the left go nuts.''

Kouvalis also attracted media attention after using a slur against a constitutional expert who was critical of Leitch's policies.

Kouvalis later apologized.

It's the second time Kouvalis has left the helm of Leitch's campaign. Last year he quit after being charged with impaired driving. The Toronto Star reported last May that he had pleaded guilty and was fined $1,690.

Leitch herself has also been no stranger to controversy since she launched her campaign, including a promise she would make potential immigrants undergo screening to make sure their beliefs are consistent with Canadian values.

Leitch issued a statement saying the three chairpeople of her campaign will manage the day-to-day activities on an interim basis, adding she has a strong campaign.
Photo: CTV

A woman on trial for pushing her husband to kill himself denied the allegations in a Cranbrook court while admitting to having marriage troubles.

Terri Reimer is accused of counselling her husband, Bill Reimer, to commit suicide as well as administering a noxious substance with the intent to endanger.

He survived and is expected to be one of several witnesses the Crown will call to testify.

Provincial court has previously heard that RCMP responded to a report of a suicidal man with a gun on March 22, 2016.

Terri Reimer testified Thursday that her husband had a history of depression, recounting two other times she believed he was considering suicide.

Reimer told the court that difficulties in their marriage over the past year stemmed from her infidelity and a $300,000 gambling debt she accumulated, but she denied counselling him to kill himself.

"I would never tell him to commit suicide," she said. "I love him too much. I still do."

Rhonda Reimer, who was with the RCMP for three decades and is the sister-in-law of Bill Reimer, testified earlier in the day.

She told the trial she was on the phone with him for hours on the night in question.

He was distraught and crying, testified the sister-in-law, who said she overheard the accused calling him a "coward" and telling him to "go ahead and just do it" and that she would get him the gun.

Court has been told that Bill Reimer consumed a large amount of prescription pills leading up to the incident, and that Terri Reimer threw even more pills at him saying they would work better for the suicide attempt.

The four-day trial that began Wednesday has been adjourned until March 15.
Photo: CTV One of the firebombings orchestrated by Vincent Cheung.

A former employee of the Insurance Corp. of British Columbia has been charged after a string of violent attacks on people associated with a justice training centre in New Westminster.

An earlier trial heard that 15 families across Metro Vancouver were subject to firebombings and shootings at their homes after a man who saw them park at the Justice Institute of B.C. tracked them down using information obtained from their licence plates.

The attacks were orchestrated by Vincent Cheung who was sentenced to 13 years in prison by a B.C. Supreme Court judge last July.

An investigation by the Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit says 44-year-old Candy Rheaume has now been charged for fraudulently obtaining the names of the attack victims using the corporation's computer services without authorization.

The earlier trial for Cheung heard that an employee of Insurance Corp. of B.C. had been fired after investigators found the person looked up the addresses of all the victims.

Police say Rheaume has no criminal record and is expected to appear in a provincial court on Feb. 15.
Photo: CTV

A man is dead following a serious car crash in Abbotsford overnight.

The 48-year-old died when a compact coupe slammed into a tree on Ash Street early this morning.

The passenger side the vehicle was heavily damaged in the impact.

Abbotsford Police are investigating the incident, and morning commuters are advised to avoid the area.

Ash Street, from Woodbine Crescent to Old Clayburn Road, was closed as of 4 a.m. due to the accident and recovery.
Photo: CTV

Residents are angry after live electrical wires were left exposed for weeks in Vancouver's trendy Yaletown district.

They question the city's slow response to what they felt was a dangerous situation.

The wires were left unprotected near Davie Street and Pacific Boulevard after vandals exposed them.

"It makes me nervous that one of those kids could twist off the connectors and get hurt," Erik Wiik told CTV.

He sent photos to the city on Jan. 11, yet it took more than three weeks for anything to be done.

When he phoned, he was told everything was fine, but Wiik, an engineer, said it was unsafe in an area where children and pets are common.

He took his own readings and confirmed that some of the wires were live.

Vancouver's chief engineer said staff will conduct a review of maintenance standards in response to the incident.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: The Canadian Press

A bizarre feud over Lee Murray's massive pile of manure has left the New Brunswick farmer steaming mad.

The ugly quarrel with Murray's next-door neighbours, the Gallants, made international headlines this week when a judge ordered he pay them $17,000 in costs and damages, saying he had used his tractor to build a fetid wall of feces along the Gallants' property line to make them miserable.

Murray, who has lived all his life on Indian Mountain near Moncton, N.B., said Thursday he is planning to file an appeal.

Murray, a cattle farmer, said his family got along just fine with Joan and David Gallant until about six years ago, when Joan Gallant complained about getting too much of the Murrays' junk mail.

"It was downhill after that," Murray said.

At the centre of the dispute is the Gallants' assertion that Murray and his son deposited hundreds of loads of raw cow manure on a strip of land adjacent to the Gallant property in November 2013.

The pile eventually grew to be about 18 metres long, 13 metres wide and as high as his nearby three-car garage, David Gallant said. He said the smell was so bad, he couldn't stay in the building.

"I almost couldn't make it out the door," he said. "It was just suffocating in there. You couldn't catch your breath ... We're talking tonnes of manure here."

He said he asked Murray to move the pile, but he refused.

Murray said he had no choice but to put the pile near the garage because to do otherwise would have been unsafe. He said it was late in the fall, the ground was wet and slippery from recent rains, and it would have been dangerous to move the manure down an adjacent hill.

The frustrated farmer insisted the mound  Gallant called it a "manure mountain"  soon froze solid and did not stink at all.

Justice George Rideout of the Court of Queen's Bench concluded that Murray dumped the dung to antagonize the Gallants, saying his actions were "wilful and reprehensible."

The judge imposed an injunction on the Murray family, saying they can't pile or spread manure within 300 metres of the Gallant home, or within 60 metres of any part of their property.
Photo: Teresa Deak

Interfaith groups across Canada will be forming protective "rings of peace" around local mosques today in a show of solidarity with the country's Muslims.

Sunday's deadly shooting at a mosque in Quebec that killed six men during evening prayers has prompted various religious organizations to stand up for the right to worship in peace.

In Toronto, Rabbi Yael Splansky has rallied a number of synagogues to show support to neighbouring mosques.

Splansky says hundreds of Jews will be forming protective "rings of peace" around seven mosques across the city during mid-day prayers on Friday.

A "human shield" demonstration will also be taking place at a mosque in St. John's, N.L.

Splansky says she hopes to send a message of compassion and support to Canada's Islamic community, as well as to build bridges for ongoing partnerships and communication between faiths.
Photo: The Canadian Press

Canadian crooner Michael Buble says his three-year-old son Noah is "progressing well" as he undergoes treatment for cancer.

"The doctors are very optimistic about the future for our little boy," Buble and his wife Argentine actress Luisana Lopilato said in a statement Friday.

"He has been brave throughout and we continue to be inspired by his courage."

The statement comes a few days after it was announced that Buble cancelled his gig as host of the Brit Awards on Feb. 22 in London.

Buble is still slated to host the Juno Awards on April 2 in Ottawa.

Buble and Lopilato announced in November that they would put their careers on hold to devote their attention to helping Noah get well. They also have another son, Elias, who turned two in January.

On Friday, they thanked Noah's medical team and fans for their support.

"Our gratitude to his doctors and caretakers cannot be put into words. We'd also like to thank the thousands of people that have sent their prayers and good wishes to us. As we continue this journey, we are greatly comforted by your support and love."
Photo: The Canadian Press Brandon Blackmore

UPDATED: 12:10 p.m.

A former couple from the polygamous community of Bountiful have been convicted of taking a 13-year-old girl into the United States to marry the now imprisoned leader of the sect that practises plural marriage.

Justice Paul Pearlman of B.C. Supreme Court found former husband and wife Brandon Blackmore and Gail Blackmore guilty of the charge of taking a girl across the border for a sexual purpose in 2004.

He found James Oler not guilty of the same charge, saying he couldn't prove that the man crossed the border with a 15-year-old girl who was later married to a member of the polygamous church.

The Blackmores will be sentenced April 13.

The court in Cranbrook heard during their trial late last year about the polygamous beliefs and practices in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

The three, who are or have been members of the church, were accused of taking two girls across the border for a sexual purpose in 2004.

They are connected to the community of Bountiful in southeastern British Columbia, where the trial heard plural marriage was practised.

They were alleged to have taken the girls to marry members in a polygamous community in the United States.

The charges against the Blackmores centred on a 13-year-old girl who records show was married to Warren Jeffs, the 60-year-old church prophet now serving a life sentence in Texas.

Oler was accused of bringing the 15-year-old girl across the border to marry James Leroy Johnson, who was 24 at the time of the marriage.

Much of the evidence heard in the judge-only trial came about as a result of a U.S. investigation into Jeffs.

Special prosecutor Peter Wilson drew on records found locked away in a Texas ranch during the trial in an effort to prove the girls' marriages took place within days of the accused receiving instructions from Jeffs.

Wilson also focused much of his case on how sex and marriage were viewed in the church. The court heard from former members who said women were expected to obey their fathers and husbands, have as many children as possible and never turn away their husbands' sexual advances.
Photo: Contributed

Search and rescue crews are looking for three people reported missing on Cypress Mountain, near West Vancouver.

North Shore Rescue members were called to the search this morning.

It's not yet known how long the group has been missing or how they got lost.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: CTV

Once again, the rainy city is struggling to cope with another blast of winter snow.

Transit buses are experiencing delays across Metro Vancouver as snow hit the region this morning.

Environment Canada issued a special weather advisory Thursday that up to 15 centimetres of the white stuff is expected by Saturday.

Riders report buses were sliding and skidding in several areas.

At least six buses were pulled off to the side of Robson Street in downtown Vancouver after having trouble getting up a hill.

Roads are congested throughout the region, where many drivers don't use winter tires.

Mayor Gregor Robertson tweeted this morning that city crews were out salting and clearing major roads, bus stops, schools and emergency routes.

 with files from CTV Vancouver
Photo: RCMP Andrew Hardenstine

UPDATE 8:55 p.m. Feb. 3:

The Penticton RCMP arrested Andrew Robert Hardenstine without incident in the Summerland area Sunday evening.

Hardenstine is a 33-year-old Federal Parolee wanted on a Canada-wide warrant since January 2013.

Photo: Adam Proskiw Photo: Adam Proskiw Photo: Adam Proskiw Photo: Adam Proskiw Photo: Adam Proskiw 1 2 3 4 5

Uniformed, plain-clothes, K9 and heavily-armed, black-clad Emergency Task Force members encircled a property Sunday afternoon shortly after 3 PM on Giant's Head Rd. in Summerland.

They began stopping and searching vehicles that were passing by on the residential road.

Photo: Contributed A photo taken by a resident who lives on the road that shows RCMP officers as they search for a fugitive.

A member of the RCMP K9 Unit was also spotted searching along the walking-path that runs beside the road.

One local resident, who wishes to remain anonymous, says that she opened her front door and "there were police everywhere."

She was told that an armed fugitive was in the area and that they should go back inside immediately.

They also told her to be on the lookout for a lone male wearing a white shirt.

"They grid-searched our property and searched our motorhome," said the neighbor. "When I drove by at 7:30 there was still an undercover truck parked at the end of the road."

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Pakistan: first dry bulk terminal to open in March

03 February 2017

Pakistans first dry bulk terminal will open next month and is expected to handle 3Mta of coal imports, rising to 20Mt over the next five years, the ports chief executive said on Thursday.

The US$285m Muhammad Bin Qasim Port, which was built with support from the World Bank, will also be used to export cement and clinker, Sharique Siddiqui, chief executive for Pakistan International Bulk Terminal, told Reuters at a coal conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Pakistani cement plant and a growing number of coal-fired power plants are expected to provide most of the demand at the new port, Mr Siddiqui said.

Currently, coal ships stop at ports in Karachi and Qasim, where they can stay for up to a week being offloaded manually. The new terminal can complete turnarounds in 24-36 hours.

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In this Nov. 12, 2015, file photo, a man walks past a building on the Google campus in Mountain View, Calif. Alphabet Inc., Google's holding company, reports financial results Monday, Feb. 1, 2016. (Jeff Chiu / AP)

The concept of workplace culture  uniting employees behind a set of shared goals and values  has never been more important.

Companies hire on the basis of cultural fit. They recruit using culture as a lure that can hold greater sway than perks, benefits and even salary.

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But commitment to culture can require leaders to take a stand, particularly when significant outside events contradict the values a company claims to hold dear.

We're in that moment right now.

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In the early days of Donald Trump 's presidency, many companies have spoken out against the new commander in chief's executive order temporarily barring entry for refugees and people from Syria and six other predominantly Muslim countries.

Microsoft released a statement describing the executive order as "misguided and a fundamental step backward."

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos sent a memo to employees saying, "We are a nation of immigrants whose diverse backgrounds, ideas and points of view have helped us build and invent as a nation for over 240 years."

Amazon, Microsoft and Expedia all expressed support for a lawsuit being filed by the attorney general of Washington state claiming the order is unconstitutional.

Google executives created a $2 million crisis fund with the goal of raising $2 million more from employee donations, all of which will go to immigrant rights organizations.

Ford Motor Co. released a statement saying, "We do not support this policy or any other that goes against our values as a company."

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told employees via a voicemail message that Trump's executive order "is not a policy we support."

Blankfein later quoted from the company's business principles: "For us to be successful, our men and women must reflect the diversity of the communities and cultures in which we operate. That means we must attract, retain and motivate people from many backgrounds and perspectives. Being diverse is not optional; it is what we must be."

I applaud these companies and many others that didn't hesitate to stand up and make clear that the values they've espoused for their workers are values they'll stand up and fight for, even if it means opposing the president.

Regardless of your political beliefs, the issues presently being debated  immigration, civil rights, health care, the environment  are not ones that companies can ignore. They're too fundamental to everyone, and if a company has defined its culture as one that supports diversity and inclusion, it's unlikely to stay silent on policies that exclude.

Corporate cultures exist for moral and financial reasons. The two are intertwined  moral clarity gives employees reason to be engaged in and feel good about their work, which in turn makes them more productive and devoted.

Given the choice between staying quiet about a political decision that drives tens of thousands of Americans out to protest in airports coast to coast and assuring workers your company's values won't bend, the smart financial move is to take a stand. (I'd argue that's the moral move as well, but business sense will likely be the primary driver.)

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Gregory Unruh, the Arison professor of values leadership at George Mason University , wrote a piece for The Huffington Post arguing that companies must defend the values they've forged: "There is an opportunity for global brands to commit to, and contribute to, the forging (of) a global economy founded on global values that ensure shared prosperity and justice. Populism is an historic throwback and commercial dead-end. Take a risk and take a stand for an equitable, prosperous global future."

Ron Fournier, editor and publisher of Crain's Detroit Business, pleaded with local business leaders to push back against Trump's executive order: "How can this be good for your business, your city, your country? You're an important person with power to leverage. Call your congresspeople. Deploy your lobbyists. Write an op-ed. Unite with like-minded civic leaders, and force Trump to fix this."

Working Lunch Weekdays Get the latest business news headlines, delivered to your inbox midday weekdays. >

I expect we'll see more of this under Trump's administration.

And on the major issues I mentioned earlier, I don't think companies can get away with staying silent. Nor should they.

Employees have every right to press their leaders on issues that get to the heart of who we are as a nation and to make sure those leaders are staking out positions consistent with the cultures they've created.

We've talked about the importance of workplace culture for years and counted on those cultures to carry workforces through tumultuous times.

Now there's some external tumult, with more likely to come.

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And company's may have little choice but to stand up or shut up.

TALK TO REX: Ask workplace questions  anonymously or by name  and share stories with Rex Huppke at rhuppke@chicagotribune.com, like Rex on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rexworkshere and find more at www.chicagotribune.com/ijustworkhere.
Ryan Loess, cultivation manager at PharmaCann, a medical marijuana cultivation center in Dwight, Ill., discusses the process for growing and processing the plants. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

It should be a routine call, scheduling a visit from the cable guy to set up internet access. But nothing's routine when you're running a medical marijuana company.

"There's this flurry of activity that starts with the account manager with a headset on in a cubicle," said Jeremy Unruh, general counsel and compliance chief at PharmaCann, which operates two cannabis cultivation centers and four dispensaries in Illinois. "'Can we do it? Can we not do it? How do we contract with a marijuana company?'"

Unruh has grown used to the uncertainty, the "let me ask my manager" responses. The cable company ended up working with PharmaCann, but Unruh said the extra steps it took are an illustration of what it's like building a new industry, one that used to have to operate in the shadows.

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"Engaging in normal business activities is made that much more complicated by the subject matter of what we do for a living," he said.

State lawmakers approved Illinois' pilot medical cannabis program in 2013, and dispensaries started opening two years later. Despite generating more than $42 million in retail sales so far, the nascent industry in Illinois is going through more than the normal growing pains of new companies. It's marijuana, after all, and entrepreneurs are learning just how hard it is to shake off the stigma attached to a substance the federal government puts in the same class as heroin and LSD.

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Illinois companies also are grappling with slower-than-expected growth of patient numbers, so while they wait for demand to increase here, they are eyeing other states for expansion.

And beyond all those nuts and bolts is the overarching fear the new administration will nullify the industry's progress. President Donald Trump showed support for medical marijuana on the campaign trail but Jeff Sessions, Trump's attorney general nominee, has criticized the drug's legalization, saying he won't commit to disregarding federal law.

Grower James Walker tends to newly transplanted cannabis Jan. 23, 2017, at PharmaCann, a medical marijuana cultivation center in Dwight, Ill. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

The challenges begin where they do for any startup: With capital.

The U.S. Department of Treasury has given banks the green light to work with legal marijuana entities under some conditions, but most lenders still hesitate. Elected officials, including Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs and a group of U.S. senators led by Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren, are pushing to make it easier for banks to work with companies in the $7 billion industry.

In Illinois, there are just a few banks willing to take on medical marijuana companies as customers, which means no ready access to lines of credit or loans. One bank that medical cannabis business owners said they work with declined to confirm on the record that it operates in the industry. Another did not return requests for comment.

Entrepreneurs frequently find themselves looking elsewhere for their financial lifelines.

The founders of Cresco Labs, which operates three cultivation facilities in Illinois, first tapped friends and family for startup funds, and then other investors. A bank loan helped Cresco secure and construct its facilities.

"A lot of companies use lines of credit to smooth out cash flow," said Charlie Bachtell, Cresco's CEO and co-founder. But in the medical cannabis industry, companies need "to have cash in the bank," he said.

Most dispensaries cannot accept credit card payments from customers, and all that cash on hand can tempt criminals. A bank account also lets companies write checks to vendors, and employees receive paychecks instead of envelopes stuffed with cash.

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But those little victories come at a cost. Banks pass along the cost of the extra compliance work it takes to do business with companies in the space  like paperwork to prove money isn't being laundered.

A bank told New Age Care in Mount Prospect last May that its monthly servicing fees were going to almost double, to $600, a sum that pushed the dispensary to drop day-to-day banking operations and start dealing mainly in cash or money orders, said co-owner David Knapp. The company hired a security firm to transport funds, adding another expense to its accounts payable ledger.

Processing technicians Mike Benner, from left, Curtis Roff and Cindy Kromka trim cannabis flowers Jan. 23, 2017, after a harvest at PharmaCann, a medical marijuana cultivation center in Dwight, Ill. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

Rule No. 1 in the medical marijuana business, Knapp said: Always have a backup plan.

If fluctuating expenses haven't reinforced that rule, the stunted growth of the program has. Illinois' program has about 16,000 qualified patients, a number 10 to 12 months behind projections made in 2014, said Cresco's Bachtell.

"All of our revenue projections are driven by patient population," Bachtell said.

The limited number of conditions medical marijuana can be used to treat has contributed to the low patient numbers.

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Illinois launched its program 14 months ago with 39 qualifying conditions, and today there are 41. Some pioneering states, such as Colorado, grant medical marijuana cards to patients based on broad definitions of symptoms and conditions.

Lawmakers signed a bill last summer that pushed back the end of the pilot program to 2020, but it also changed the way qualifying conditions are approved. Originally, an advisory board composed of patients, medical experts and advocates vetted the conditions that people petitioned to be added, then the director of the Department of Public Health decided whether to approve them.

The legislation eliminated the board's role in the process, putting approvals solely in the hands of department Director Nirav Shah, who hasn't approved any additional qualifying conditions. Post-traumatic stress disorder and terminal illness were added to the original list of 39 conditions as part of last summer's bill.

Products are put on display before store hours Jan. 16, 2017, at Dispensary 33, a medical marijuana dispensary in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune)

There are seven lawsuits pending in court seeking to add conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome and osteoarthritis to the list.

Department of Public Health spokeswoman Melaney Arnold declined to comment.

The new approval process has come under fire, but many cannabis business owners agree that strict regulations are necessary to make the pilot program successful. The rules help fight the image that pops into many people's heads when they hear the word marijuana, and has drawn operators accustomed to highly regulated industries, including former lawyers, commodity traders and real estate professionals.

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With slow growth in Illinois, entrepreneurs are expanding their business to other states.

PharmaCann operates a cultivation facility and four dispensaries in New York, has been awarded a dispensary license in Maryland and is developing a cultivation center and dispensary in Massachusetts. Cresco won a license in Puerto Rico, is about to partner with a group in Massachusetts that has a license already, and is eyeing opportunities in four other states. Other companies are formulating plans beyond Illinois' borders as well.

But there's still work to be done to combat the stigma surrounding marijuana and to increase understanding of the drug, business owners say. Parts of the state law can inhibit that and make business operations more difficult.

Regulations restrict cultivation centers from advertising their products to the public. Mark de Souza, interim CEO for Revolution Enterprises, which has two cultivation facilities in Illinois, partially blames that rule for the program's slow growth.

A rule for how to dispose of cannabis plant waste  like the stocks and roots  amounts to another huge expense. Unruh likens the process to disposing of "weapons-grade plutonium."

Companies paving the way for Illinois' year-old medical cannabis industry are experiencing some growing pains. (Ally Marotti / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

And the struggle to find vendors willing to work with marijuana companies seems constant, said Zachary Zises, one of the owners of Dispensary 33 in the Uptown neighborhood.

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The electronic security monitoring company that covered the building on bustling North Clark Street dropped its service, Zises said. The company that first provided general liability insurance to Dispensary 33 for the dispensary also exited the cannabis space. Less competition among vendors translates to higher rates.

"The risk-reward isn't there with any of these providers," Zises said.

Finding a property to house a dispensary can be a search of needle-in-a-haystack proportions. State laws mandate that dispensaries must be 1,000 feet from the property lines of schools or day care homes, for example. And good luck finding a landlord willing to work with a cannabis company, said Knapp at New Age Care.

It was almost like dating again. There was just a ton of rejection.  New Age Care co-owner David Knapp on the struggles of working with other businesses

"It was almost like dating again," he said. "There was just a ton of rejection."

Things change constantly as the industry grows and works to become established, but one thing is for sure, Knapp said.

"It's been a wild ride."

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amarotti@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @AllyMarotti
Several groups are speaking out against a proposal to allow new doctors to work up to 28-hour shifts  an idea that's raised questions about patient safety, physician well-being and what's necessary to train great doctors.

Supporters say boosting the maximum number of work hours allowed doesn't affect patient care and can lead to better educational opportunities for new physicians, while critics of the proposal say it's dangerous for patients and doctors

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Those critics include advocacy groups Public Citizen, Care2 and the American Medical Student Association, which delivered a petition against the proposal Friday to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in Chicago, which makes rules about physician residency programs. The petition had 67,000 signatures on it, gathered online from all over the globe.

First-year residents  doctors who just graduated from medical school and are training at hospitals  currently are limited to 16-hour shifts. The council's proposal would raise that limit to 24 hours, the same limit in place for residents past their first year of training. It also would allow residents to work an additional four hours  for a total of 28  if they wish, to follow through on patient care.

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The proposal also would eliminate the requirement that residents get at least eight hours off between shifts.

A current requirement that residents work no more than 80 hours a week, averaged over four weeks, would remain in place, and residents would still have to get at least one day off a week, averaged over four weeks.

Kelsey Bourgeois, who works for Care2 and whose husband is a first-year resident at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said the proposal is bad for doctors and patients.

"These are 26-year-old new doctors supposed to work 28-hour shifts and provide critical care," Bourgeois said. "It just doesn't make a lot of sense."

Her husband, Isaac Bourgeois, said the first year of residency can be overwhelming for doctors practicing medicine in real life for the first time. During his first days as a resident, "I was just mentally wiped out, just obliterated because it's all new," he said.

Advocates of the proposal, however, say it's a common-sense measure that could allow for better patient care and improved educational opportunities for young doctors.

Hannah Hughes, center, whose fiance is a first-year medical resident, walks with Jorge Arevalo, left, whose sister will soon be a first-year resident, and Jeff Horwat, whose wife is a first-year resident, on Feb. 3, 2017, as a medical student group delivers a petition to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education board meeting in Chicago. The petiton urges the board to reject a proposal to allow first-year residents to work 28-hour shifts. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Dr. Karl Bilimoria put it this way: "If you had your surgery in the morning on a Monday and Monday evening you had a complication that required you going back to the operating room at midnight, would you want the on-call person there or the team that was there and did your first operation in the morning who knew everything that happened and had a relationship with you?

"Things get lost when doctors hand things off to each other," said Bilimoria, director of the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.

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A study conducted at 151 hospitals across the country found no difference in patient outcomes, regardless of whether doctors were allowed to work 16 hours or 28 hours. The results of the study were published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year.

Bilimoria, the principal investigator in that study, said many residents are in favor of allowing for longer hours, noting that residents are allowed to sleep during their shifts when there's downtime. The study found that surgical residents reported no decrease in morale or their personal safety when they were allowed to work the longer hours.

The council's proposal has been in the works for more than a year. It began reviewing the hour requirements as part of a five-year scheduled review. It solicited public comments and got position statements from more than 60 organizations.

If the council approves the proposal, it means new doctors will revert to longer hours similar to those allowed before 2011. The council lowered the maximum in 2011 to 16 after recommendations from the Institute of Medicine, which worried fatigue would put patients' safety at risk and undermine residents' learning experiences.

The board is expected to vote on the measure sometime this year.

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @lschencker
Many worry that up to 1 million Illinois consumers could lose their health insurance if Obamacare is repealed.

But Chicago Department of Public Health leaders aren't just worried about that part of the Affordable Care Act being repealed. They're also concerned about the possible loss of funds used to vaccinate Chicagoans and deal with disease outbreaks.

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The Prevention and Public Health Fund created under the health care law has distributed about $12.8 million to the city's Department of Public Health since 2012 for programs to vaccinate thousands of Chicagoans and educate consumers on diseases, among other things.

Statewide, Illinois health departments and organizations got $18.6 million last year, according to the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

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"It really allowed public health systems throughout this nation to be stronger," said Dr. Julie Morita, Chicago public health commissioner. "It's a critical piece of the Affordable Care Act that really needs to be sustained."

It's unclear whether congressional Republicans will try to erase the fund as part of a broader effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act  but they've already tried to get rid of it multiple times in the past, said Jeffrey Levi, a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University. Levi said the fund "clearly is at risk."

Representatives of House Speaker Paul Ryan and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Chicago health leaders are watching the issue closely. In recent instances, the city used the funds to:

Deal with an outbreak of bacterial meningitis in 2015 and 2016. The department partnered with other agencies to vaccinate 20,000 at-risk Chicagoans, Morita said.

Undertake a media campaign in 2013 and 2014 to encourage use of a vaccine that protects against the human papillomavirus, which currently infects about one out of every four people in the U.S. and can lead to cancer, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The city department spread the message through radio ads, posters and billboards, and worked with doctors. In 2013, only about 50 percent of the city's teenage girls had gotten the first dose of the vaccine. In 2014, after the campaign began, that figure rose to 80 percent, Morita said.

Improve its system for identifying foodborne outbreaks of disease, such as at a restaurant or event, "so fewer people go on to get sick," Morita said. In 2015, the department identified and responded to 16 such outbreaks  nearly triple its typical annual amount, she said.

"We've made huge strides, but there's still more work that needs to be done," Morita said.

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It's not just a Chicago or Illinois issue.

Last fiscal year alone, the entire fund totaled $932 million  more than 10 percent of the CDC's budget. Most of that money went to state and local health departments and organizations, Levi said.

"It would be a huge problem, ranging city-by-city and community-by-community," said Chrissie Juliano, director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, which includes as members officials from 28 city health departments across the U.S. "In a field that does not get a lot of money and has seen continual cuts, losing these dollars really makes it hard for them to do their jobs, which is keeping communities healthy and safe."

Levi also noted that a loss of the money might hit poor people especially hard. Public health departments can sometimes be a "provider of last resort" for people who don't have insurance or money for things like vaccines.

"The last time I looked, Chicago didn't exactly have a lot of extra cash floating around to close those gaps," Levi said. "When you're losing literally millions of dollars toward a program, it's going to be very hard for local revenues to close that gap."

lschencker@chicagotribune.com

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Famed chef Rick Bayless is partnering his Frontera Farmer Foundation with the nonprofit FamilyFarmed, which seeks to expand the production, marketing and distribution of locally grown and responsibly produced food. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

When Rick Bayless ' Frontera Grill opened almost 30 years ago, according to the celebrity chef, Chicago was a "wasteland for local agriculture."

Before the proliferation of farmer's markets and surge of farm-to-table marketing, Bayless pleaded with farmers in Illinois and Wisconsin to just sell him some tomatoes, he recalled Wednesday.

He even lent farmers money to grow food for him, a prelude to what would become the Frontera Farmer Foundation.

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"I knew if we could get chefs to taste stuff that was seasonal and fresh and do a little work with farmers ... it would really change the restaurant culture in Chicago," Bayless said.

His mission continues this spring with a new partnership with FamilyFarmed, a Chicago nonprofit that trains farmers and mentors local food entrepreneurs. By joining forces, Bayless' foundation and FamilyFarmed hope to raise enough money to bolster the "good food movement" in Chicago in a meaningful way, perhaps commencing a long-term arrangement that could eventually grow to a national effort.

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Neither side is rushing into marriage just yet, choosing instead to see how the first date goes. The collaboration kicks off April 30 with a fundraiser celebrating Frontera Grill's 30th anniversary; the event will be held at the Art Institute, during the week of the James Beard Awards. The Frontera Farmer Foundation and FamilyFarmed will split the proceeds 50-50.

"This is our little 'let's test the waters' event," Bayless said.

The partnership could provide a boost for FamilyFarmed, which runs a six-month food business accelerator program that connects food startups to mentors and resources to grow their businesses. Many of the participants now sell their wares in Whole Foods Market stores in Chicago.

Since 2004, the nonprofit has also staged the Good Food Festival, a three-day trade show showcasing food that's somewhere in the ballpark of local, healthy and sustainably produced. And FamilyFarmed, which has received more than $1.8 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture since 2010, also provides training and technical assistance to farmers throughout the U.S.

Jim Slama, FamilyFarmed founder and president, hopes the partnership with Bayless will mean more money to add staff and expand services. A new FamilyFarmed program called Incubator Without Walls would provide guidance  in areas such as marketing, financing, food safety and distribution  tailored to the specific needs of a given company, Slama said.

And Slama hopes to launch a regional grain network, connecting grain farmers to distributors, retailers and restaurants. But those dreams take money, which is where Bayless comes in.

"With Rick's success and brand, we think we can leverage this partnership to attract additional funders both regionally and nationally," Slama said.

Though similar in mission, the two nonprofits have different funding streams. FamilyFarmed brought in about $1.2 million in revenue in 2015, according to financial filings, the vast majority of it coming from governmental and corporate grants, and from foundations. Only about $19,000 came from individuals.

In contrast, the Frontera Farmer Foundation raises the vast majority of its money on one night every year at its "Dinner Like No Other" fundraiser at Frontera and Topolobampo. In 2015, the bulk of its $182,310 in revenue came from that event, according to financial statements.

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A small nonprofit with no paid staff, the foundation awards about 15 grants to farmers per year, maxing out at $12,000 a piece. The hope is to award more grants of higher value if the partnership with FamilyFarmed pans out, said Frontera spokesman Casey Cora.

Howard Tullman, CEO of tech hub 1871, has known both Slama and Bayless for years. FamilyFarmed's Good Food Business Accelerator is also housed at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart.

Tullman said he saw promise in the new partnership, particularly the idea of the Incubator Without Walls, which could help businesses in areas with little access to healthy food on Chicago's South and West sides. But the model needs to be proven locally before expanding nationally, Tullman said.

"I always say you need to nail it before you scale it. ... Our suggestion is to do it so well people are begging you to expand," Tullman said.

Times have changed since Frontera Grill opened March 21, 1987. Bayless now oversees 14 restaurants, in addition to his media appearances, cooking classes and travels. But as Frontera turns 30, Bayless said he saw an opportunity to deepen his commitment to locally produced food.

"I like to see a thriving agricultural economy in the place that I'm doing my work, which is my chef work. Every place I've been in the world, where there's really good agriculture, there's good food on the table. Where there's not good agriculture, there's mediocre food on the table," Bayless said.

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gtrotter@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GregTrotterTrib
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's council of business leaders, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Kalanick wrote to his employees that he'd spoken with Trump on Thursday to "let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."

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His departure came on the eve of the first meeting of the group at the White House, planned for Friday.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.

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Led by Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive of the private equity group Blackstone, the council has about 15 members, including the leaders of Wal-Mart, Tesla, the Cleveland Clinic and Pepsi.

The council is "designed to provide direct input to the president from many of the best and brightest in the business world in a frank, non-bureaucratic, and nonpartisan manner," according to a Blackstone press release in December announcing its formation.

Yet public outcry about Trump  specifically his executive order suspending the country's refugee program and halting other aspects of immigration  has put some business leaders in an uncomfortable spot.

Uber, a ride-sharing company has been buffeted all week by boycott campaigns that began when people perceived it as trying to break a taxi strike to and from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport that was in response to the executive order on refugees.

Kalanick subsequently condemned the executive order and has contributed to relief groups, but calls for a boycott had continued. One woman urging boycotts for all companies tied to Trump said only total resignation from the Trump business forum would satisfy her.

"This is not a 'seat at the table' moment. This is a flip-the-table moment," said Shannon Coulter, one of the organizers of the anti-Trump social media campaign "Grab Your Wallet."

Other forum members said they'd keep their commitment.

General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra remains a member of the advisory group and plans to attend the meeting on Friday, spokesman Patrick Morrissey said.

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Tesla Inc. didn't immediately respond when asked whether CEO Elon Musk planned to remain on Trump's business and manufacturing councils. Earlier this week, Musk asked his Twitter followers to read the immigration order and send him specific amendments he could present to the president.

Musk has said that the refugee order "is not the best way to address the country's challenges."

Associated Press
This is a rendering of the 490-foot apartment building planned for 727 W. Madison St. An early version of this caption had an incorrect address. (FitzGerald Associates Architects)

Construction is underway on a luxury skyscraper that will be the tallest building in the city west of the Kennedy Expressway.

Co-developers Fifield Cos. and Skokie-based F&F Realty recently broke ground on a 44-story, 490-foot-tall tower that will bring 492 apartments and 375 parking spaces to the city's West Town neighborhood, near Greektown.

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Mark Lecocq, a senior vice president at Fifield, said a name for the building, on Madison Street just east of Halsted Street, had not been decided. The completed building is expected to be valued at roughly $280 million, he said.

Rents for the apartments, which will range from studios to three-bedroom units, haven't been decided and will be based on the going market rates in 2019 when the building is expected to be completed. The building also will include 10,200 square feet of retail.

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"Architecturally, the building is pretty significant," Lecocq said. "It's cylindrical with an all-glazed glass facade." The roughly seven-story parking structure will be beneath the apartment tower.

The building's amenities will include many found at luxury rental buildings these days: a yoga room, a coffee bar, gym, fire pits and an outside kitchen. Some apartments will offer a 360-degree view of the city, he said.

The skyscraper will be adding a substantial number of residential units to what is already a building boom in the neighborhood, but Lecocq isn't worried.

With companies moving into newly constructed offices and the arrival of new residents in other buildings and restaurants, it feels like a neighborhood of 24/7 live, work and play, Lecocq said.

"The West Loop is really coming into its own," he said. "And we want to be a part of it."

Fifield also is building The Sinclair, a 390-unit luxury building in the Gold Coast neighborhood set to open later this year. The development company has been the source of other local luxury buildings, including Next in River North and K2 Apartments in the Fulton River District.

The project is owned by F&F Realty and affiliates of Ares Management. Financing was provided by Bank of the Ozarks and F&F, Lecocq said.

An earlier version of this story erroneously said F&F Realty was an affiliate of Ares Management.

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crshropshire@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @corilyns
Aurora mayoral candidate Richard Irvin, right, who currently is alderman at large, jokes with his mother, Paula Irvin, left, with supporters around him at a rally. (Steve Lord / The Beacon-News)

With a roomful of supporters around him Friday, Aurora mayoral candidate Richard Irvin announced a bevy of endorsements from throughout the community.

"The folks you see here believe in my plan," Irvin said, pointing specifically to continued rehab of downtown, more economic development, improving education and keeping a check on crime. "My supporters believe in me because I believe in Aurora, and I'm Aurora through and through."

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Irvin, an Aurora alderman at large, is vying to become the next Aurora mayor against three opponents: state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia, D-Aurora, Ald. Michael Saville, 6th; and Rick Guzman, assistant chief of staff in the mayor's office.

They face off in the Feb. 28 primary, which will whittle the field down to a final two candidates for the April 4 general consolidated election.

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Irvin released a list of a little more than 50 people who endorse him, from the business, political, law enforcement, faith-based and military veteran communities, as well as the community at large.

Many of them also took time Friday to speak in favor of Irvin, echoing the words of Dolores Hicks, an Aurora Township trustee, who told the candidate, "It's your time now."

"He is able to take this city forward; I know he's prepared," Hicks said.

Mike Poulakidis spoke from the standpoint of working as an attorney with Irvin and now working as a businessman in Aurora. Poulakidis owns O'Malley's Restaurant on Hill Avenue on the East Side and Spartan House on Prairie Street on the West Side.

He said he also worked as a defense attorney when Irvin was a Kane County prosecutor, and they often opposed each other.

"He was tough, fair, but he always did the right thing," Poulakidis said. "He is caring, compassionate and committed."

Marshall Gauer, who spent 34 years as an Aurora police officer before retiring, said he also has known Irvin since he was a prosecutor. He said he spoke for himself and Wayne Biles, another retired police officer who served as president of the police union for about 20 years, when he said Irvin "knows what Aurora needs."

"He's not always going to say yes, but at least you know where he stands," Gauer said.

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Among those listed on Irvin's sheet of endorsers were Democrats such as Aurora Township Trustee David Moore; Aurora Township Clerk Jason Owens; Aurora Township Democratic Central Committee members Juan Thomas and Ron Ford; and Kane County Board member Angie Clay Thomas, 4th District; and Republicans such as Sal Abate and Lou De Martelli.

Ministers endorsing Irvin include Dan Haas, Pat McManus, Peggy Hicks and Ed Ruiz.

Among the business people listed were Dan Hiites, Kurt Becker and Sherman Jenkins.

Friday was the first time Irvin released any endorsements.

Chapa LaVia also has listed a long line of endorsements, which she has been releasing as the campaign goes along.

Most recently, she announced the endorsement of the Service Employees International Union Illinois State Council. A number of labor unions have endorsed Chapa LaVia, including Aurora Firefighters Local 99, which represents Aurora firefighters, and AFSCME State Council 31, which represents a number of public employees in Aurora.

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She also has endorsements from U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.; U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White; Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs; Illinois Comptroller Susanna Mendoza; former Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes; U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson; state Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora; state Sen. Pamela Althoff, R-McHenry; former Kane County Board Chairman Mike Tryon; and Naperville Township Assessor Warren Dixon III.

Saville has the endorsement of Ald. Juany Garza, 2nd.

slord@tribpub.com
In defending President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning refugees, immigrants and citizens from Iraq and six other Muslim-majority countries, White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway referred to something that didn't happen - the "Bowling Green massacre."

"Two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people didn't know that because it didn't get covered," she said Thursday in interview with MSNBC's Chris Mathews.

Conway was on her way to an untrue rating when, about an hour and a half after The Fact Checker sent her a query about her remarks, she tweeted that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists."

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She added that this was an "honest mistake" of the type also made by journalists, tweeting:

1/2: Honest mistakes abound. Last night, prominent editor of liberal site apologized for almost running a story re: tweet from fake account

In an email she wrote to the Washington Post's Fact Checker, she said: "Not exactly the paragraphs of corrections we see in WaPo but hopefully this helps."

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We applaud when government officials concede they made an error. As we frequently note, we understand that mistakes can be made in live television interviews - and we do not try to play gotcha.

But this case is certainly important to understand. On Jan. 31, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also made a reference to it. Referring to a 2011 slowdown in the processing of Iraqi refugees, Paul said in an interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe:" "This was done by President Obama in response to the possibility or the attempted bombing in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where I live."

The Facts

Two Iraqis in Kentucky in May 2011 were arrested and faced federal terrorism charges after officials discovered from an informant that Waad Ramadan Alwan, before he had been granted asylum in the United States, had constructed improvised roadside bombs in Iraq.

The FBI, after examining fragments from thousands of bomb parts, found Alwan's fingerprints on a cordless phone that had been wired to detonate an improvised bomb in 2005.

Although Conway claimed that the media did not cover the story, the arrests caused an uproar in Congress. In response, the Obama administration pledged to reexamine the records of 58,000 Iraqis who had been settled in the United States. The administration also imposed new, more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees. Media reports at the time focused on how the new screening procedures had delayed visa approvals, even as the United States was preparing to end its involvement in the Iraq War.

In 2013, the Justice Department announced that the two men had pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges. Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Alwan, 31, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, followed by a life term of supervised release.

"Hammadi and Alwan both admitted, in FBI interviews that followed waiver of their Miranda rights, to participation in the purported material support operations in Kentucky, and both provided the FBI details of their prior involvement in insurgent activities while living in Iraq," the statement said. "Both men believed their activities in Kentucky were supporting AQI. Alwan admitted participating in IED attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and Hammadi admitted to participating in 10 to 11 IED attacks as well as shooting at a U.S. soldier in an observation tower."

That was in Iraq, obviously. And so was the "massacre" that Conway was referring to - although the evidence was murky and never proved.

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Four Pennsylvania soldiers were killed in an Aug. 9, 2005, IED attack: Pfc. Nathaniel DeTample, 19; Spec. Gennaro Pellegrini, 31; Spec. Francis J. Straub Jr., 24; and Spec. John Kulick, 35. Two others, Sgt. Brahim Jeffcoat, 25, and Spc. Kurt Krout, 43, died Aug. 6, 2005, when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb. They were all part of a National Guard unit known as Task Force Dragoon, stationed near the city of Baiji, also spelled Bayji, north of Baghdad.

The Associated Press reported in 2012 that documents showed that Hammadi and Alwan were insurgents in the same area around Baiji at the time the Pennsylvanians' Task Force Dragoon was stationed there and hit. But the connection was never definitively made.

And what about Paul's claim of an attempted bombing? He is on more solid ground than Conway. ABC News reported in 2013:

"Prosecutors later revealed at Hammadi's sentencing hearing that he and Alwan had been caught on an FBI surveillance tape talking about using a bomb to assassinate an Army captain they'd known in Bayji, who was now back home - and to possibly attack other homeland targets.

"Many things should take place and it should be huge," Hammadi told Alwan in an FBI-recorded conversation, which a prosecutor read at Hammadi's sentencing last year."

Despite this incident, which resulted in tougher vetting of Iraqi refugees, it is important to remember that resettled refugees have not been a major terrorist threat to the U.S. homeland. On occasion, refugees have posed terrorism threats and have been linked to international terrorist groups: There have been at least 10 occasions since 2009 when refugees were arrested on terrorism-related charges in the United States, but that's a tiny percentage of the refugees admitted in that period.

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The Pinocchio Test

Any White House has a very large megaphone, and officials must be careful in how they use it. It is especially important to stick to the facts. Here's what Conway got wrong in her original statement:

There was no massacre in Bowling Green.

The discovery that former Iraqi bomb makers had been admitted as refugees was widely covered.

They were not "radicalized' after they came to the United States.

Instead, she meant to refer to the alleged (but not proved) killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq by bomb makers who were arrested in Bowling Green and then sent to prison for decades - before they killed anyone in the United States.

Conway says it's an "honest mistake." We appreciate that she sought to correct the record. Readers can judge for themselves, but we don't play gotcha.
Pedestrians walk past the green silhouettes of children displayed on the glass windows at the Chicago Public Schools headquarters Tuesday, April 21, 2015 on West Madison Street in Chicago. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)

A couple of hundred demonstrators aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union crowded outside Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office Friday to voice opposition to district cost-cutting policies on the first of four unpaid furlough days enacted by Chicago Public Schools.

"We are here to let the mayor, the Board of Education and the upper echelon of Chicago Public Schools know: Enough is enough," said Michael Brunson, the union's recording secretary. "The imposition of furloughs on our members, before the ink even dries on our recently negotiated contract is an outrage."

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CTU's protest comes two days after the union's governing body demanded the "immediate resignation" of Emanuel-appointed schools chief Forrest Claypool.

"He is not an educator, he is a terminator," Brunson said Friday.

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State Rep. Will Guzzardi, a Chicago Democrat and CTU ally, pointed to the ongoing impasse in Springfield and Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of a measure that would have sent $215 million to the school district.

"State government seems far off and distant and hard to reach, but the decisions that we're forced to make at the city are governed by factors that happen down there in Springfield," he said.

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Rauner said Democrats went back on a deal that tied the school aid measure to broader changes to the state's highly indebted employee retirement system. The administration was open to reconsidering the bill if lawmakers approve statewide pension reforms, according to his office.

Classes were already scheduled to be out of session Friday for a "school improvement day." Students get to stay home on those days, but teachers and staff are supposed to report for a paid day of planning and other work.

The union says the furloughs eliminate critical professional development opportunities and point to a clause in its recent contract agreement with City Hall that requires the Board of Education give CTU 10 professional development days per year.

A resolution from the union's governing body this week called the furloughs a violation of the contract and labor law. It's not clear how far they'll push the issue in the legal realm.

The union said the furloughs could delay the entry of students' grades for at least a week.

jjperez@chicagotribune.com

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There will be Free Home Run Inn pizza today for the first 200 people to visit the Niles Public Library District for its new exhibit, "I Love Pizza," featuring material from the U.S. Pizza Museum. The kickoff event starts at 6:30 p.m., at the 6960 West Oakton St. library in Niles.

The "I Love Pizza" exhibit will be on display through March 31 in the library's Franklin Gallery on the third floor. The exhibit offers visitors a chance to learn about the history of pizza in Chicago, what the Chicago pizza styles are and how they compare with other regional pizza styles.

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"Our mission aligns with the library's mission to enrich and connect with the community," U.S. Pizza Museum founder Kendall Bruns explained in a press release. "In addition to being a great public space to display items from our collection, the Niles Public Library District is also very close to the original Pequod's and Burt's Place  two legendary Chicagoland pizzerias."

Items from those pizzerias will be on display, as well as menus, pizza boxes and other memorabilia from various Chicago restaurants.

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The U.S. Pizza Museum, founded in 2015, doesn't have a permanent home; its collection can be found on the museum's website and in exhibits like this.

Today's kickoff is one in a series of events planned around pizza at the library over the next two months. Among those events: a pizza box art contest for students in grades 5-12; Bruns will speak on the history of pizza at 7 p.m. Thursday in honor of National Pizza Day; and Derrick Tung, of Paulie Gee's in Chicago's Logan Square, is slated to give an interactive demonstration on how to make pizza dough at 11 a.m. Feb. 18. For the full list of pizza-themed activities, go to the library's website.

wdaley@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @billdaley






As a California native, I entered the wine scene assuming the domestic wine market orbited around Napa and Sonoma. Getting my start in wine retail in Chicago, that's a majority of what I sold and drank: cabernet sauvignon, pinot noir and chardonnay. Then I moved to New York, and I learned about the Finger Lakes. An area in Central New York named after the 11 tendril-like lakes carved out by glaciers, it's New York State's most recognized wine region, known for interesting, cool-climate wines.

One such producer, Red Tail Ridge, is slowly trickling into Chicago, with bottles appearing on some of the city's best wine lists. At new West Loop restaurant Bad Hunter, you'll find Red Tail Ridge's Miscreant, a blend of chardonnay and pinot gris that's seen skin-contact  a white wine that drinks unexpectedly like a red. Cherry Circle Room, Beatrix, RPM Italian, Maple & Ash and many others carry Red Tail's refreshing rieslings, chardonnays, sparkling wines and more.

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Try it, and you'll become a fan. "It's hard for us to keep (Red Tail) on our lists" because of the demand from the drinkers who have discovered it, says Ryan Arnold, divisional wine director for Lettuce Entertain You restaurants (Beatrix, Ema, Hub51, many more).

The brains behind the winery are winemaker Nancy Irelan and her husband, Mike Schnelle, who spends his days in the vineyards, caring for the grapes. Before launching Red Tail Ridge, Irelan was the vice president of viticulture and enology research and development at E&J Gallo, one of the largest corporate wineries in the world, behind brands like Barefoot Wine, Boone's Farm and Carlo Rossi. Running Red Tail, which produces only a few hundred cases of each wine, is quite the departure.

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It's also a departure in style. Unlike big-name Napa and Sonoma wines, which almost formulaically deliver velvety fruit, plush body and heady juiciness, Red Tail Ridge's wines are curious and exciting entities, each with its own personality. As at many Finger Lakes wineries, riesling is a big focus  the grape thrives in the region  but don't expect a sweet, viscous wine. Red Tail's rieslings are decidedly fresh, bright in citrus, flower and melon flavors.

"People weren't taking New York seriously for a while, but there are cool wineries like Red Tail Ridge with a global scope  they're taking risks, being intentional about their winemaking," says Michael McAvena, beverage director, beer and wine, of Heisler Hospitality, which owns Bad Hunter. "They're also consistent from each vintage. Their wines are flawless."

Irelan and Schnelle dedicate vineyard rows to little-known grapes, like teroldego and lagrein, both red grapes from northern Italy, and Blaufrankisch, a red from Germany. And Irelan is constantly experimenting, particularly with red sparkling winemaking techniques, lightly bubbly pet-nat styles and so-called orange wines, made from white grapes thanks to prolonged skin contact, like the Miscreant carried at Bad Hunter. There's little she doesn't try.

"To be able to make so many kinds of wine is stressful and very difficult," Arnold says. "They're incredibly curious farmers  I want to applaud their experimentation."

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Bad Hunter, 802 W. Randolph St., 312-265-1745, www.badhunter.com

Beatrix, multiple locations, www.beatrixchicago.com

Cherry Circle Room, 12 S. Michigan Ave., 312-792-3515, www.cherrycircleroom.com

Maple & Ash, 8 W. Maple St., 312-944-8888, www.mapleandash.com

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RPM Italian, 52 W. Illinois St., 312-222-1888, www.rpmitalian.com

jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @joeybear85
Quiote, Dan Salls' epic new Mexican restaurant project in Logan Square, opens Monday, Feb. 6. What can you expect? Well, that depends significantly on what time of day you drop by.

BREAKFAST

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In the morning, you can swing by for coffee from Sparrow Coffee and Mexican-style pastries, including conchas, breakfast buns topped with a shell-like pattern of sugar. These are a staple of Mexican bakeries, but Salls' are made by (excellent) Lincoln Park bakery Floriole.

LUNCH

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At lunch, the space transforms into a taqueria, specializing in tacos and tortas. "It's not dissimilar from the taco truck I did," says Salls, referring to The Salsa Truck, which he ran for a few years. As of Friday, that menu had not been finalized, though you can expect at least one beef filling, one pork and one seafood. The menu will change often; Salls estimates that he has a database of around "200 different kinds of taco fillings" that he can pull out at any time.

If the imposing list of potential tacos hasn't already made your head spin, consider this: The kitchen isn't using premade tortillas or masa. Instead, cooks will nixtamalize dried corn to make masa themselves  a time-consuming process of soaking dried corn to soften its skins to make it more nutritious and palatable. Very few restaurants in Chicago do this in-house.

But Salls also knows when to ask for outside help. Floriole is making the bolillo rolls for his tortas.

DINNER

By dinner, all of the taqueria items are jettisoned in favor of a menu featuring traditional Mexican dishes like a tamal Oaxaqueno ($14) and chicken en mole ($24), along with creative interpretations of regional dishes Salls encountered while traveling around Mexico. He says the chorizo verde ($16), which features links of green chorizo mixed with potatoes and poblanos, is basically a deconstructed version of a taco he fell in love with in Mexico City.

Salls designed the menu so that nearly every dish includes chiles, but "not just by chopping up a jalapeno." For example, the plate of aguachile ($14) features raw hamachi drizzled with an arbol chile vinaigrette made by charring arbols and then blending them with oil. The bowl of mussels ($15) features a broth laced with serranos.

LATE NIGHT

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After dinner, you can head downstairs to The Mezcal Bar, a golden-lit cocktail lounge featuring 86 different bottles of mezcal. The bar is being run by Quiote's beverage director, Bobby Baker, who was the bartender at Mezcalogia in Oaxaca City when Salls met him and convinced him to join Quiote. Because of his time in Oaxaca, Baker has a lot of personal connections to mezcal producers in that area, and he's proud of many of the small-batch labels he has.

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Interestingly, Baker's cocktail list draws a lot of inspiration from classic gin cocktails. Though mezcal and gin seem like opposites, Baker finds that their profiles match up extremely well. "As a young bartender, I think the smoke in mezcal reminded me of scotch, so I tried using mezcal in place of whiskey in drinks," says Baker. "But it didn't work." Instead, he notes that mezcal has layers of flavor, like a well-made gin.

Though Baker is proud of his cocktail list, he does have an ulterior motive: "The best thing the cocktails can do is act as a gateway drug to drinking mezcal straight."

WILL IT WORK?

It remains to be seen whether all of these disparate concepts will function together, but you can't fault Salls' ambition. The dining room is lined with black-and-white photos that Salls' business partner, Paul Biasco, took while the two of them were traveling around Mexico doing research for Quiote. "These were life-changing events," Salls says. "I didn't grow up in Mexico; I'm a 6-foot-2 Jew. But these (trips) took me from simply cooking to where we are today."

Quiote, 2456 N. California Ave., www.quiotechicago.com

nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @nickdk






The lobster salad piles the meat on an artichoke-heart base, which is surrounded by mini-pools of lobster emulsion inlaid with blood-orange sauce. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

When a restaurant reaches the 30-year milestone, it's natural for the chef to take a look back and savor the journey. Unless you're Jean Joho, a chef whose mantra is, "What's good enough for me today isn't good enough for me tomorrow," and a man who never looks back.

Well, maybe a little.

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Like to October 1986, Everest's first week in business.

"I remember (then-Tribune critic) Mark Knoblauch came into the dining room. I was open for four days, and I thought, 'My God, what happened?' And my English was so bad," said the Alsace-born chef.

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Apparently, nothing was lost in translation. After a few more visits, Knoblauch hung four stars on Everest, then 3 months old, predicting that Joho's collaboration with Lettuce Entertain You founder Rich Melman "may turn out to be one of the most inspired partnerships in Chicago restaurant history."

That launched an unbroken string of four-star accolades for Joho (spoiler alert: I'm not going to break the string today) and his 40th-floor restaurant, which combines a majestic city view with dishes so beautifully composed that one sometimes forgets to admire the view.

Decision-making at Everest is never terribly taxing. Diners choose among three- and four-course tastings, selecting dishes from some 10 appetizers (not including the caviar-based dishes, which carry a supplemental charge) and eight main courses, or surrender completely and select the day's degustation of six chef-selected courses.

A six-course degustation seems almost quaint in an era of 12-course (and more) tastings, but Joho always has preferred to keep his stories short.

"When you're sitting for so long and taste too much, your stomach and whole body tires," he said. "And too many courses makes it very difficult with the wine (pairings)."

Joho's shorter menu doesn't mean less food, however. To the contrary, portions tend to be substantial, and even dishes that look smallish ... well, though Joho's creations are invariably light on the tongue, let's concede that the man isn't counting calories.

I do understand the two-bites-and-I-get-it approach  it's the way most critics, who want to taste absolutely everything, like to eat  but there's something to be said for dishes on which you're able to spend a little time. Joho's venison loin, for instance, which consists of two hefty medallions graced with cocoa nibs and wild-huckleberry jus, flanked by a bit of braised cabbage, splayed slices of spiced pear and, in a side dish, spiced knepfla (Alsatian dumplings). I've had duck-breast entrees that consisted of three slices, and enjoyed them; the duck that arrived at my table (bathed in a light cardamom-accented sauce) had seven.

As part of the restaurant's 30-year celebration last month, Joho created a degustation menu of dishes of 1986 staples, including his sublime "black and white" dish of squid-ink risotto (Joho was probably the first chef in Chicago to use imported carnaroli rice exclusively) topped with pure-white hoops of tender squid; and the banana terrine, at the time Joho's rebuttal to the ubiquitous creme brulee, a square of chocolate-barded banana terrine topped with maple-cap ice cream (maple cap is a mushroom that smells and even tastes of maple) and a sugar-dusted arlette cookie.

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The throwback menu proved so popular that Joho concedes he may have to bring back one or two dishes from time to time, but there is no shortage of excellence among the current offerings, beginning with the stellar Maine lobster salad, a towering composition of lobster meat on an artichoke-heart base, surrounded by mini-pools of lobster emulsion inlaid with blood-orange sauce. Lobster also stars in a presse (terrine) with potato brandade. Another terrine features slowly cooked game bird (duck, pheasant, quail) alongside beet diamonds dotted with apple-carrot aigre doux, and splashes of truffle vinaigrette forming little commas on the plate.

Foie gras, again in impressive portion, gets a sweet-sour treatment from beet verjus and persimmon sauce and is topped with bee pollen and spice-cake croutons. Beef Wellington arrives as a thick slice (exposing the mushroom duxelles layer and perfectly pink beef, graced with Maldon salt flakes) over a light veal jus in which dots of bearnaise sauce have been pulled.

Service, never a problem at Everest, is even more on-point than I'd remembered, particularly concerning wine service. Everest's wine list includes the sort of vintages that make you wish you'd bought Apple stock in the early '80s, but there are affordable options, and wine director and sommelier Jen Schmitt makes the search easy. Or you can opt for wine pairings ($98; $145 premium pours) with any menu.

As I've said before, one doesn't merely arrive at Everest; one ascends.

From the subterranean parking garage (free indoor valet, thank you), it's a quick elevator ride to the lobby security desk, and a more leisurely climb to the 39th floor to access the private elevator to 40, where a narrow corridor opens to the splendor of Everest's bilevel dining room, the elegant but understated decor (long gone are the original animal-print wall treatments and leopard-spot carpeting, which I miss only a little), the beautiful Ivo Soldini bronze sculptures (no two alike) topping each table. The room instantly justifies the effort expended in reaching it, and that's before "les preludes" (three to four pre-meal nibbles, presented at once) hit the table.

Thirty years is a milestone achievement for any restaurant. For a restaurant to remain at the top of its game after 30 years? Extraordinary.

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pvettel@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @PhilVettel

Everest

440 S. LaSalle St.

312-663-8920

www.everestrestaurant.com

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Tribune rating: Four stars

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Open: Dinner Tuesday to Saturday

Prices: Six-course degustation, $165; three- and four-course prix-fixe menus $98 and $130

Credit cards: A, DC, DS, M, V

Reservations: Strongly recommended

Noise: Hushed

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Other: Wheelchair accessible; complimentary indoor valet parking

Ratings key: Four stars, outstanding; three stars, excellent; two stars, very good; one star, good; no stars, unsatisfactory. The reviewer makes every effort to remain anonymous. Meals are paid for by the Tribune.






Swedish Bakery in Andersonville will close at the end of February after 88 years in business, according to Dennis Stanton, operations officer, whose parents bought the store in 1979.

Why the closure? A multitude of reasons, said Stanton. Were all getting older here.

My mother, whos still involved, is 86, he added. Its increasingly more difficult to compete and our current customer base dying off.

Plus its hard to attract millennials who are looking for a food experience. Were pretty humdrum. Were just a bakery.

The most popular items now are the classic green marzipan princess torte, chocolate ganache cake and whipped cream cake with fruit, said Stanton, who added cakes make up 50 percent of the bakery's sales.

But when the bakery first opened in 1929, it was probably sweet rolls and bread, he said, specifically the Swedish rye known as limpa, which it still bakes.

The last day, Tuesday, Feb. 28, will be Mardi Gras, aka Paczki Day. Stanton said the bakery's most popular paczki flavor is custard-filled, with chocolate fudge on top.

But customers have been calling to stock up on the house special Andersonville coffeecake made from cardamom dough, with almond and cinnamon sugar filling, plus chopped almonds and crystal sugar on top.

Stanton said the bakery will consider selling its recipes.

But the food scene in Chicago is competitive, he added, People are not interested in history. Theyre interested in making their own history, and thats understandable.

Swedish Bakery, 5348 N. Clark St., 773-561-8919, www.swedishbakery.com

lchu@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @louisachu






Swedish Bakery announced Thursday that it is closing at the end of this month after 88 years in business in Andersonville. If you tried phoning Friday morning when it opened at 6:30, your call probably went on automatic hold for five minutes, then rolled over to voicemail.

However, it was not generations of regular customers trying to place their last orders for traditional princess cake or the house special Andersonville coffeecake, but an areawide outage, Comcast told the bakery's operations officer, Dennis Stanton, whose parents bought the store in 1979.

The phones were still out midmorning, with the house full in front and busy in back, but both scenes were surprisingly calm, even with the next waiting number at 82 but next up only 47.

The only customers tasting the sample pastries on the counter were grandfather Dick Smith and grandson Ethan Cloud. But it was the younger generation of this family who was the regular. "I'm just visiting from Arizona today," Smith said. "My daughter told me they were closing, so we're getting some cookies and a coffeecake."

"I live in the neighborhood," said Ethan, who is 8. "Their cookies and cakes are really good and fresh here."

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 30 Customers line up many hours before the 6:30 am opening of the Swedish Bakery. Feb. 28, 2017. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

Had he ever had a birthday cake from Swedish Bakery? Ethan nodded enthusiastically, "It was chocolate, and that was really good too." What will he do for his next cake? He paused, then said, "I don't know."

Bakery family matriarch Marlies Stanton (86 old next week, she said) bought the business with her late husband, George Stanton, 38 years ago. Friday morning, she sat in the front corner of the kitchen, in what her youngest son, Dennis, said is called the captains chair. She no longer bakes but is still involved and lives upstairs.

The family is not Swedish, but instead took over from a Swedish family. Marlies was born in Germany, growing up in Duesseldorf in her parents pastry shop. I did my apprenticeship first in a store as a saleslady, then as a pastry cook, she said. When asked her childhood bakery favorite, I like sweet stuff, but I like sausage better, said Stanton, laughing.

In and out of the kitchen was Genny Malapit, who has worked at the bakery for 10 years, now as the main order packer. What will Malapit stock up on before the bakery closes? Im thinking of almond thins, she said. Those are good cookies. Theyre light and thin and crispy with slivered almonds, with powdered sugar or without, and theyre not too sweet.

The question of what happens next for Malapit and about 40 other employees has kept Dennis Stanton occupied.

We are actively trying to place them with other businesses," he said. "We know other bakeries that are looking for staff. And thats the one thing in this town, there are a lot of shops that are looking for employees who have experience, and thats the big thing.

Were placing those people with some of our friends  theyre not competitors. We know everyone in the industry, so hopefully everyone who wants a job will be able to find one in a Chicago-area bakery.

He added, We wish it hadnt happened this way. One of the reasons we were so tentative about closing was we did have some inquiries, and some people were actively look at buying the business, but it just didnt pan out.

At that point, we finally said we cant keep on doing this to our employees and to ourselves quite frankly. At this point, were just going to have to say the time has come.

The future of the building itself is also in question. Stanton, whose family owns the property, said developers have also made inquiries.

Meanwhile, the business will be baking every day as usual, except Sunday when it's closed, until Feb. 28, which falls on Mardi Gras, celebrated in Chicago as Paczki Day.

lchu@chicagotribune.com






Jun Fujita poses for a portrait in the 1930s with his Contax II camera in a photo taken by Louis Tendler. (Graham and Pamela Lee private collection)

Jun Fujita is the man who shot Al Capone.

Not only did he shoot photos of the famous gangster but of his handiwork, being among the first on the scene after Capone's machine gun-toting buddies had their bloody way in a garage on Clark Street on a certain St. Valentine's Day.

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Believe me, you have seen the photo  the dead bodies on the floor. Others too, because Fujita was there when the SS Eastland went down in the Chicago River in the summer of 1915, capturing the heartbreaking images of some of the 844 people who died then and there. He was here during the savage 1919 race riots and when young men marched off to World War I. He shot photos of Capone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Albert Einstein and hundreds of others.

Jun Fujita, one of the first Asian-American photojournalists, was at scene of the St Valentine's Day Massacre on Feb. 14,1929. The Poetry Foundation's exhibit, Jun Fujita: Oblivion, which also features some of his poems, runs through April 21. (Topical Press Agency / Jun Fujita)

From about 1915 to 1930, Fujita was a newspaper photographer, working for such bygone papers as the Evening Post and Daily News. He was the first Japanese-American photojournalist in this city and arguably the first in the country.

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So what, you might ask yourself, is this newspaper photographer doing as the subject of a handsomely crafted and compelling exhibition at the Poetry Foundation "Jun Fujita: Oblivion" is open through April 21 at the foundation's home at 61 W. Superior St. (www.poetryfoundation.org).

It is because Fujita was also a poet, his work appearing in Poetry magazine in the 1920s (along with that of another newspaperman named Carl Sandburg, who worked for the Daily News, for a time serving as its first movie critic). In 1923, Fujita's only collection of poetry was published here by the firm of Covici-McGee. It is titled "Tanka: Poems in Exile" ("tanka" being a form of Japanese poetry similar to the more familiar haiku).

Here is one of that book's poems:

A sudden caw, lost in the air,

Leaves the hillside to the autumn sun;

Save a leaf or two curling

Not a sound is here.

Fujita was also an actor, outdoorsman and painter during a life that, as buried as it may have been by history's dust until now, makes him one of the most fascinating characters Chicago has ever known.

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He was born in a small village near Hiroshima in Japan. He immigrated to Canada as a teenager and it was there he got his first camera, sent to him by an uncle who was a Japanese editor eager for photos of the fishing and lumber industries.

By 1910 he was here, finding work as a train porter, a domestic servant, construction worker and an actor, appearing in several films shot at the Essanay Studios on the North Side. He attended high school and later enrolled at what was then the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology), to study mathematics. To pay his tuition, he talked himself into a job as a photographer at the Chicago Examiner.

"They should make a movie about this guy," says WTTW-Ch. 11 television producer Marc Vitali, perceptively. "But they'd probably cast Brad Pitt."

Vitali, who produced an artful segment for Wednesday's "Chicago Tonight" program, first became aware of the photographer two years ago, when he was doing a story about an exhibition at Roosevelt University's Gage Gallery titled "Above the Fold: 10 Decades of Chicago Photojournalism" and noticed Fujita's name alongside that famous photo of the St. Valentine's Day massacre.

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"It struck me as highly unusual that a Japanese-American was working for a Chicago newspaper in the '20s and took this photo that I've known all my life," Vitali says. "I made a mental to note to follow up on it but I forgot all about it until last month, when I received the winter/spring catalog from the Poetry Foundation."

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That catalog features a 1922 photo of a pipe-smoking Fujita with Florence Carr, the woman who later would become his wife, taken at the Indiana Dunes.

"I asked myself, 'Who was this charismatic Asian dude with his white girlfriend?'" says Vitali.

He started doing his research.

One of the people he talked to was Fred Sasaki of the Poetry Foundation.

"We had been given a manuscript by (noted photographer) Orlando Cabanban and in it was some of Fujita's writing," says Sasaki. "We were intrigued and started digging."

He and his colleague Katherine Litwin are co-curators of the "Oblivion" exhibit and she says, "There were so many mysteries surrounding his life and work and when we started to fill in the blanks, we were stunned by what we learned and haunted by the photos we saw."

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The person who helped unlock the mysteries and who supplied many of the photos and items in the exhibit was Graham Harrison Lee, Fujita's great-nephew.

"I was born two years after Jun died but he was always alive and around in our house, in his books on our shelves and his photographs," says Lee, who grew up and still lives in Wisconsin. "He and my grandfather (Florence Carr's brother) were best friends and from the time I was a little boy I heard stories."

Lee eventually became keeper of his Fujita's materials. "I really started to look through everything about five years ago and in so doing thought it a good idea to start scanning the photos," he says. "It gave me a deeper understanding of his life."

He also got to know Cabanban, who had been a good friend of Fujita's and supplied other mementos and photos that Fujita had given to him.

"There was a stack of love letters in there," says Lee. "It was all so fascinating."

It was Lee's wife, Pamela, who finally said to him, "You just can't keep this to yourself."

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And so Lee wrote a book. While he searches for the right publisher, that book can be viewed on an iPad that sits near the Poetry Foundation exhibit. It's not only a stunningly designed and illustrated book but it neatly fills out Fujita's story.

The overturned SS Eastland in the Chicago River in 1915. Electric lights aid workers and rescuers. (Chicago History Museum / Getty Images)

After his newspaper days, Fujita operated a photo booth at the 1933-34 Century of Progress world's fair here and later ran a commercial photo studio that did work for corporate clients. He shot photos around the country as part of a Works Progress Administration project. He began to paint and continued to take pictures, spending a great deal of time at a cabin he built in Minnesota near the Canadian border. After decades together, he and Carr, a former journalist, were married in 1940. He had, decades before, been granted U.S. citizenship by special congressional action introduced by then-Illinois Sen. James Hamilton Lewis, but still suffered indignities  all of his assets were frozen  during World War II. He and Carr lived for a time in Furnessville, Ind., an hour's drive from Chicago. He was 74 when he died here in 1963, 10 years before his wife.

At noon March 9, the Poetry Foundation will feature a program with Lee as well as writer Takako Day. They will, of course, discuss Fujita's amazing career but also, says Litwin, "the struggles of Japanese immigrants to this country, the sense of exile they must have felt. This is something that resonates in the world today."

Says Vitali: "I'm just blown away that Fujita took so many photos that we know. He was everywhere during a very interesting time in Chicago history. Plus the fact that a conspicuously non-white person was photographing the brutal race riots of 1919, well, it gives me chills, and really speaks to Jun Fujita's fearlessness."

Most of the 30-some photos on display at the Poetry Foundation are not of famous people or tragic events. In sharp contrast to the visceral horrors he captured with his camera for newspapers, his private work focused on the less harsh and hard natural world.

Near these photos is something he once wrote about flowers: "I feel that moods are beyond the reach of the camera. But I feel words are too crude for the delicate moods of wild flowers."

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rkogan@chicagotribune.com

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Watch the latest movie trailers.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
New research suggests that women have slightly higher chances of complications if giving birth Saturday or Sunday. (Layland Masuda / Getty Images)

New research suggests that for pregnant women, a weekend delivery could mean a slightly increased risk of complications, including maternal death.

While the rate of deaths was higher on weekends, the researchers stressed that any one woman's risk is quite small.

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Women don't need to think: "Oh gosh, I'm going into labor on Saturday, I'm going to die," said lead researcher Dr. Steven Clark. He's a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and maternal-fetal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

"The actual differences in the risk of death are extremely small, and the majority of women are going to be fine no matter when they deliver," Clark said.

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For the study, researchers reviewed outcomes from more than 45 million pregnancies in the United States between 2004 and 2014. They found a slightly increased risk of death among mothers who delivered over the weekend  about 21 per 100,000 deliveries, compared with about 15 per 100,000 during the week.

The Baylor researchers also found that weekend deliveries were linked to the need for more maternal blood transfusions and more tearing in the area between the vagina and anus (perineum). In addition, neonatal intensive care unit admissions, neonatal seizures and antibiotic use all rose on weekends, compared with other times of the week, the study reported.

"There is clearly something different about the health care offered to women on the weekends," Clark said.

Although the exact reasons for this weekend effect aren't known, several factors may be in play, he speculated.

"It may be that there are less experienced people on weekend shifts," Clark said. "That's commonly seen in nursing and physician staffing. It may also be that people on those shifts are tired."

Or, it may be that doctors are distracted, Clark said. "They may not be focused on patient care, but rather other things they want to do on the weekend," he said. "Our data does not allow us to say which of these things is linked to worse care."

Dr. Mitchell Kramer, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwell Health's Huntington Hospital in Huntington, N.Y., questioned the study's findings.

"They are grasping at straws to explain why infant and maternal mortality rates increase on weekends," Kramer said. "I think it's more complex than what they say."

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Kramer said he found the notion that doctors are distracted and patients fare worse over the weekend "disturbing and insulting. That comment alone makes me very dubious about the results of this study," he said.

Clark, however, sees the weekend effect as one possible reason for the overall higher maternal mortality in the U.S., compared with other countries. Moreover, the rate of maternal death in the United States is increasing, Clark said. It's more than double what it was in 1990, he said.

Clark's team also looked at July as a possible month when maternal and infant deaths might rise. July is usually the time when new, less experienced interns and residents start working in hospitals. That has led to concerns that care is compromised as the new staffers adjust to their new responsibilities. The study authors didn't find an increase in infant or maternal deaths in July, however.

The weekend effect that results in more deaths Saturday and Sunday occurs in many areas of medicine, not just childbirth, said Dr. James Ducey, director of maternal-fetal medicine at Staten Island University Hospital in New York City.

Ducey believes the problem is one of weekend staffing. "There are fewer nurses and fewer doctors on duty on the weekend," he said.

The results of the study were presented recently at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine meeting, in Las Vegas. Findings presented at meetings are generally viewed as preliminary until they've been published in a peer-reviewed journal.






We human travelers have airport lounges, wine bars, massage chairs and in-terminal yoga classes. Our pets have a crate and water.

In an effort to improve equality among the species, the world's first privately owned animal terminal and quarantine recently opened at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The ARK at JFK offers round-the-clock service to animals with flight plans. The $65 million center occupies a hulking 178,000-square-foot cargo building that is intimate enough for a munchkin kitten and roomy enough for a Belgian draft horse. The new facility's mission is to provide a safe, healthy and Zen environment for animals on the go. To ensure the highest standards of care, Racebrook, the company behind the project, partnered with such experts as Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine and the Agriculture Department.

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"Transporting live cargo by plane can be a complex and stressful process for owners and animals alike," said John Cuticelli Jr., chief executive of Racebrook and founder and chairman of ARK Development. "Our goal is to create a more efficient and safe process by reducing the need for additional travel and offering trained animal care staff pre- and post-flight."

In early January, Racebrook/ARK Development unveiled the first phase of its Dr. Dolittle enterprise - the ARK Pet Oasis and the Equine and Livestock Export Center. The company, which expects the ARK to be fully operational by the second quarter, will next roll out the Equine Quarantine/Import, Grooms' Lounge and Aviary, which are all part of the ARK Import-Expert Center.

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In November, I visited the 14.4-acre facility, where workmen outnumbered animals 10 to 0. Nevertheless, Cuticelli showed me around the facility-in-progress. He explained that the ARK caters to travelers who send their animals as cargo and don't want Precious languishing in the holding tank before or after the trip. (By comparison, owners who carry their pets onboard or check them as luggage have quick access to their animals.) He showed me the area where the majority of companion animals will stay: the Pet Oasis, an airy space with 47 kennels for dogs and a dozen spots for cats.

The Oasis welcomes pets arriving, departing or in-between flights for an accommodation fee starting at $125. Before takeoff, the owners can drop off their animal at the facility, which will prepare the pet for travel - a preflight walk and survey of the crate for airline compliance, for instance. The staff will transport the pet to the aircraft and coordinate with the airline on the departure time to minimize the wait at the boarding area.

On the arrival side, the staff picks up the four-legged traveler from the airplane and handles the customs details. Once at the Oasis, the animal receives the full-on pampering treatment: bath, meal, fur-coat brushing, stroll on a wide strip of lawn. The staff also cleans the travel crate and tucks the pup into an individual kennel until his or her ride arrives. The cats are also fed and groomed. Owners itching to see their bestie can, for an additional fee, receive a photo and update of their pet's ARK holiday. (Feel free to share with everyone in the taxi line.)

The Equine and Livestock Export Center is dedicated to horses and livestock scheduled for transport. Who travels with their horses, you might ask? Generally, breeders, jockeys and grooms. The center serves as a rest area for inspection before horses travel internationally from the United States. The 24 covered stalls come with nonslip flooring (on certain materials, hoofs slide like skates), cushy bedding and the Veuve Clicquot of hay. Meanwhile, the Equine Import and Quarantine area will care for horses that have just landed and are subjected to a three- to seven-day quarantine, per USDA orders. Neigh-guests stay in one of 48 stalls and receive two daily feedings. In a separate section of the building, the Aviary will house birds required to undergo a 30-day quarantine. The ARK has built specialized habitats for birds of all wing stripes, such as waterfowl, gulls and parakeets.

A vet clinic is also on the horizon, as is Paradise 4 Paws, a luxury pet resort that already operates near airports in Chicago, Denver and Dallas/Fort Worth. (The latter occupants are subtenants.) At the resort prices range from $55 to $125 a night for dogs and $30 to $45 for cats. The lodging doesn't skimp on amenities: There is an indoor grassy area, a playground for cats and a dog bone-shaped swimming pool. We human travelers don't get such great perks.
It's a reliable rule of history that by the time the president is using a once-hip phrase from the young people's popular culture, it's probably getting a little stale.

But eight months after Barack Obama "dropped the mic" at the end of his last White House Correspondents' dinner, the Illinois GOP has dug up the bloated corpse of the tired saying, sprinkled it with a little stardust and inserted it in an ad that urges voters to "Drop the Mike" Madigan.

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The ad  featuring a caricature of the Illinois House speaker  uses Gov. Bruce Rauner's bottomless war chest and the latest technology to answer a question literally nobody was asking: What would Mike Madigan sound like as a rap star?

Like an old Republican with no flow, apparently.

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"Word. Don't fight the feeling," the Madigan caricature raps over a plodding beat. "I'm Mike Madigan and I rock Illinois. I'm speaker of the house, and these are my boys."

Viewers unable to yank their TV power cord from the socket quickly enough are then subjected to dancing caricatures of Democrat state Sen. Andy Manar, of Bunker Hill, and potential gubernatorial candidates Chris Kennedy and J.B. Pritzker, who jump on stage and act as Madigan's hype men.

"I'm the longest-serving speaker in the USA," Madigan drones on. "I love to raise your taxes, and I'll make you suckers pay."

Posted early last week on YouTube, the ad had garnered only a modest 6,000 or so views as of Friday lunchtime, though with nearly two years until the next gubernatorial election, there is still plenty of time for both sides to suck more beloved music genres into the black hole of their unending feud.

Madigan spokesman Steve Brown told Chicago Inc. he was not among those who had clicked on the GOP's latest effort, but he added that "in the unlikely event I find time with nothin' to do, I may take a look."

kjanssen@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimjnews
Jihad Farhat looks over her husband Samer Musleh's paperwork as a new U.S. citizen after his naturalization ceremony Feb. 2, 2017, at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Judge Mary Rowland wasn't quite finished with her welcome speech when the new Americans who packed the courtroom burst into applause.

It was Thursday afternoon, at a swearing-in ceremony for new citizens in downtown Chicago, and from her high seat in the wood-paneled room, Rowland had begun by congratulating the immigrants for their endurance.

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So many miles traveled. So many forms and interviews survived. So much waiting.

"I'm not sure I would have the stamina or the patience or the courage to go through what you went through to get here today," she said.

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A good thought, but that wasn't the applause line.

In front of the judge sat 120 new Americans, natives of 33 far-flung countries, accompanied by dozens of parents, children, spouses, brothers, sisters who had come to watch them take the oath of allegiance.

Jose Siguachi, a 54-year-old garage attendant born in Ecuador, was there in a pale metallic blue suit, accented by a hot pink shirt, an outfit he bought just for the occasion.

Jae Myung Kim, a nursing student who had moved to the U.S. from South Korea as a child, was there for a double celebration: It was his 24th birthday, and he was about to collect his citizenship certificate, which renamed him Jeffery.

Noha El-Shareif, a 38-year-old business owner whose Muslim family immigrated to Canada from the United Arab Emirates when she was 10, was there. After six years in the U.S., she views the current climate for immigrants as "unnerving," so even though her husband was out of town and she would have preferred he be there as her witness, she decided not to wait.

"I was an immigrant and didn't get discrimination," she said, glancing toward her young daughter, "but I worry for my kids who were born here."

They all listened raptly as Judge Rowland talked about the values Americans hold dear.

Equality, tolerance, goodwill toward our fellow citizens.

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"All of our fellow citizens," the judge said.

Judge Mary Rowland greets new U.S. citizen Noha El-Shareif and her daughter Elissa Malak Taha, 2, after a naturalization ceremony Feb. 2, 2017, at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

Another good thought, but that wasn't the applause line either.

Rowland made no mention of politics, but in the windowless 25th-floor courtroom of the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, it was hard not to connect her words to the argument going on in the world outside.

The new administration's new travel restrictions and its rhetoric have left immigrants and refugees  both those who are here and those who'd like to be  wondering what's next. Who will be let in, who will be kicked out?

The uncertainty pervaded what otherwise might have been a routine citizenship ceremony.

Hafeez Mohammad Faridi felt the urgency.

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Faridi  who mentioned that "Hafeez" is Arabic for "protector"  is a Muslim who grew up in India, where he attended Catholic schools. Now an assistant professor at a university, he has learned the connectedness of peoples and religions.

"It's the same," he said, "Ibrahim or Abraham."

But Faridi, who is 39, grew worried that without citizenship he would no longer be able to travel freely.

"It might clear up later," he said, "but why get in a situation like that?"

Lillian Adjoa Blankson, a 34-year-old from Ghana, had travel concerns, too, but they were different. She regularly returns to Ghana, sometimes passing through the United Arab Emirates.

"With the new government," she said, "I'm thinking how will other people see me because I have an American passport? I'm not going to be treated right because people feel America isn't treating them right."

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But on this life-changing day, the concerns of these new Americans paled in comparison to the happiness everyone in the room seemed to share. They used words like "awesome" and "opportunity" and "love" to describe what it meant to become American.

"When you become a citizen, you get more respect," said Jesus Abraham Solano. Respect, he said, translates to "better jobs."

Born in Durango, Mexico ("Make sure you say Durango"), Solano, who is 33, has been in the U.S. for 17 years. Why, after all this time, did he want to become a citizen now?

"I wanted to vote," he said.

And getting to vote, the judge told them, was one of the rights they would now have. But first she told them this:

"I'm guessing you were drawn toward America because it is the beacon of hope and freedom in the world. It always will be. I am so proud of that and I am so proud of you."

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She went on.

"We are a country that celebrates diversity and builds bridges between cultures. That's what makes us the United States of America. We are a country that welcomes people from all over the world, including many fleeing persecution. We were founded by people escaping religious persecution so we enshrine in our Constitution that we will never favor one religion over another."

Someone clapped. Someone else clapped. And soon the room was full of applause.

The judge talked a little longer, about the cultures, skills and perspectives the new Americans bring, their love of family and country. Afterward, she stood at the front of the courtroom as many of them paraded by to pose with her for a cell phone photo.

Then the courtroom emptied. The new Americans headed back into a country that is arguing over immigrants. Someone said they were going out for Mediterranean food.

mschmich@chicagotribune.com

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Chicago's unusual midseason snow drought has city workers getting a head start on patching potholes, a process that would normally start in late winter or early spring.

"When weather's better and there's no snow, (there are) more crews out filling more potholes," Randy Conner, first deputy commissioner for the city's Transportation Department, told reporters Friday morning at a residential block in Calumet Heights, where workers were filling small potholes with asphalt.

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But, he said, when "there's snow and ice out, we can't get to them."

Potholes are caused by moisture seeping into the pavement, which then expands as it freezes, causing the asphalt to pop. Without the abundance of snowfall and low temperatures to cause these conditions, patching crews this winter can keep up with the potholes that are reported, Conner said. And without snowplows on the streets, which can occasionally rip out the material that fills potholes, crews don't have to revisit the potholes they already filled.

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About 16 city crews are able to hit the streets each day this winter, filling more potholes than they typically would. In January, workers repaired more than 56,000 potholes, compared with just more than 40,000 in January 2016, according to the transportation officials.

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Warmer weather during the past couple of winters also has led to a drop in pothole complaints. The number of city pothole complaints was down 18 percent from 2015 to 2016, from 38,664 complaints to 31,736 complaints. Complaints were down 37 percent in 2016 compared with 2014, when the city experienced a memorable polar vortex and its ninth coldest winter on record, city officials said.

There were 50,000 pothole complaints in 2014, officials said. An unusually brutal winter with extended periods of subzero temperatures and heavy snow led to City Hall receiving triple the number of pothole complaints compared with the two winters preceding it, according to a March 2014 Tribune article.

A crew with the Chicago Department of Transportation fixes potholes along East End Avenue at 88th Street in Chicago on Feb. 3, 2017. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

There has been record-low snowfall this winter, with just 0.6 inches recorded at O'Hare International Airport since Dec. 19. It's the second least snowfall during that time period, since snow records began in Chicago in 1884. The only time less snow fell during the midwinter period was 1899-1900  just 0.3 inches.

"Right now, we're hoping that the weather just holds up the way that it is now  without the snow, without the ice," Conner said.

The city plans to continue patching potholes through spring, and encourages residents to report potholes by calling 311.

meltagouri@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @marwaeltagouri
Susan Olsen, Maple Park, Ill., is still searching for her son Bradley Olsen, who disappeared from DeKalb 10 years ago. (Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune)

Once in a while, Susan Olsen goes into a bedroom in her basement where her son once slept, to think, to look around.

Bradley Olsen's clothes still hang in the closet and fill a chest of drawers. Atop the chest sits his last pack of cigarettes, spare change and a red solo cup with a key inside. Susan Olsen isn't sure what the key opens.

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It's been 10 years since her 26-year-old son vanished.

"It would absolutely kill me to put those things in the garbage," she said. Instead, Susan Olsen keeps the room much like her son left it, but has added plastic tubs filled with paperwork, laminated newspaper articles and various mementos from searches and vigils to remember her son and others who have disappeared.

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Pulling out a T-shirt commemorating one of those events, Susan Olsen points to the faces of her son and other missing people, naming them: John Spira, Scott Arcaro, Lisa Stebic, Stacy Peterson.

Like her son, they're all adults who went missing in 2007 without a trace in all but one case  Arcaro's. Part of his skull and a few other bones showed up in a wooded area in 2013, but police still don't know what happened.

In the weeks and months after these five Chicago-area people went missing in unrelated cases, their families formed a bond and still keep in touch to varying degrees. A decade ago, they united for searches and news conferences. They taught each other how to mobilize and get help from police and volunteers. Those who knew Stebic and Peterson  who captured national media attention  helped the families of the men get more publicity.

They say few understand their nightmare. None of them think their loved one is alive, but no one knows exactly what happened. There's no final resting place to visit, and there's no justice for whoever is responsible.

They say that makes it a fate worse than death; it's death without knowing.

Bradley Olsen  last seen Jan. 20, 2007

Susan Olsen hasn't stopped searching. She often wears a button with her son's photo, and his face also graces the back of her trucks with a number to call police with tips and advertisement of a $50,000 reward.

She's placed large signs near the entrance to her rural town of Maple Park, on the outskirts of western Kane County. Bradley was last seen outside a bar in nearby DeKalb, trying to find a ride back home.

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"This has been my life," said Susan Olsen, 63, who works in rental management. "It's been a really long 10 years. Sometimes I think all that's happened is I've gotten older."

She monitors a Facebook page she set up to find Bradley, routinely replaces weathered posters around DeKalb and checks in with police periodically. She makes sure details about her son and his disappearance are updated on a national database  the U.S. Department of Justice's National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. Everyone she's talked to and everything she knows about the investigation is recorded in a journal.

Olsen said she's conducted her own searches, gone along on police-led ones and even attended searches for other missing people. She estimates she's been a part of close to 100 searches  in creek beds, abandoned properties, basements of homes and dense areas of land "where the weeds and corn are over your head."

According to DeKalb police, Bradley Olsen went out the night of Jan. 19, 2007, to what was then called Bar One in DeKalb. Although his friends left, Bradley Olsen stayed until closing time.

He was last seen outside, police said, trying to find a ride home. Calls he made to friends after 2 a.m. were the last on his cellphone, his mother said. Because she and her husband were out of town on vacation, Bradley Olsen was not reported missing until Jan. 31, police said.

Since then, police have followed numerous leads, DeKalb Cmdr. Robert Redel said, including some that led investigators to dig up two basements on what turned out to be bad information.

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Redel said the case is still considered active and is the only unsolved missing person investigation for the department. It's also well known in the area, in part because of Susan Olsen's efforts, he said.

"Sue is one of a kind," he said. "She is not going to give up. Her love for her son, it is unbelievable. She's still pushing."

Bradley Olsen's case garnered local media attention and was featured on a local unsolved mystery show. However, a lot of that attention faded away, his mother said, especially after two missing south suburban mothers grabbed national headlines later that year  Lisa Stebic and Stacy Peterson.

Olsen eventually met Stebic's and Peterson's families, as well as the loved ones of two other men  John Spira and Scott Arcaro  who disappeared from DuPage County towns about a month after her son.

"We all started attending each other's searches," she said. And, because "the guys were getting zero (media) attention, (the families of Stebic and Peterson) started including us" at vigils and press events.

"They called us the Families Five," she said, recalling how they all sat on a couch one day in 2007 to talk to the media about their cases. She recalled that she turned to the others and said "I hope we are not doing this five years from now."

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"Now, we're at the 10-year mark," she said, wiping away tears.

Olsen said she does not believe her son is alive. She thinks he was killed the day he was last seen. She's even gone through the legal process of having her son declared dead and was issued a death certificate.

"Until we find the body, we don't know what happened," Redel said. Court records show Bradley Olsen has had a string of arrests dating to his teens for mostly misdemeanor offenses such as disorderly conduct, property damage and resisting arrest. Susan Olsen said her son was known to drink, and Redel said he "was hanging out with the wrong people."

"How can somebody just go missing?" Redel said. "Since this case, it's been really eye-opening how many people go missing."

Scott Arcaro  last seen Feb. 22, 2007

Nicole Goyette, of Lisle, was away on a mother-daughter retreat when she couldn't get ahold of her boyfriend.

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It wasn't like Scott Arcaro, then 37, to not return her phone call or text. Then Arcaro's friend called to ask if she had heard from him.

"I knew something was very wrong," Goyette said.

The next morning, Goyette and friends met with Lisle police to report Arcaro missing.

"I'm sure he was murdered that night," said Goyette, now 44, thinking back 10 years. "The night he went missing, I had a nightmare he was murdered. I woke up crying.

"Part of you thinks, oh, maybe ... he's being held hostage," she said. "But in your heart of hearts, you know."

It was six years before she knew for sure. Part of Arcaro's skull, leg bone and knuckle bones turned up in nearby Woodridge, discovered by kids in a wooded area behind a park, Woodridge Deputy Chief Tom Stefanson said. Police said he had been killed but would not release further details. The case is open but has gone cold, Stefanson said.

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"That's what is tough about a case of someone who is found ... years after he's killed," he said. "There's not a lot of fresh ... leads."

Goyette and Scott, whose full name was Anthony Scott Arcaro, dated for about 3 1/2 years. The two knew each other in high school, she said, and then reconnected after Goyette had gotten a divorce. "We intended to be married."

Arcaro had served prison time for drug charges in the 1990s, but Goyette said he left that life behind and was working as a maintenance worker for several area apartment complexes. But after Arcaro went missing, Goyette learned he was having financial problems and wonders whether he had become involved with some sort of illegal activity again.

After Arcaro disappeared, Goyette dropped out of nursing school.

"The kids were upset so I was trying to keep it together," Goyette said.

When his remains were found, old wounds were opened, she said, but she was relieved for some, if not all, of the answers.

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"I almost feel guilty because there are some wonderful families that are dying for information," she said. "I won a morbid lottery to get some answers."

Because there was almost no media coverage of Arcaro, Goyette said she was grateful to the other families who invited her to speak at news events. "If it wasn't for them, we would've been completely forgotten."

Goyette is married again with her own errand and cleaning business. She still thinks about Arcaro and the rest of the missing people whose families she met 10 years ago. She still prays for them.

"How can somebody just be murdered, and (someone) gets away with it? I can't wrap my mind around it," she said.

Every year, Goyette and friends have a party to raise funds for local animal shelters in Arcaro's honor. Arcaro, a dog lover, had a party every year and asked friends to bring something to donate to shelters, Goyette said.

"Scott, he really genuinely cared about people," she said. "He just made a wrong choice at the wrong time."

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John Spira  last seen Feb. 23, 2007

Stephanie McNeil's last words to her brother John Spira were "I'll see you in 10 days."

After visiting his sister and mother in Phoenix, Ariz., Spira was flying back home to Chicago. He had planned to return to Phoenix the next month to celebrate McNeil's birthday.

Instead, 10 days later, McNeil flew to Chicago. Her brother, 45-year-old Spira, had disappeared. The St. Charles resident was last seen at his cable construction business just outside West Chicago.

According to police reports, Spira was seen at work at Universal Cable Construction by his co-owner and their employees. No one saw him leave, his truck was still in the parking lot, and when he didn't show up for plans later in the weekend, friends and family became worried.

DuPage sheriff's police consider Spira's disappearance suspicious, Sgt. Robert Harris said, but police have never named any suspects. "There's no crime scene; there's no physical evidence."

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Six months later, Spira's business burned down. It was found to be arson. "Is it a coincidence the business burned down? It's hard to say. It's certainly suspicious," Harris said.

Police do not consider the case cold, Harris said, but so much time has passed there are no longer leads to chase. Investigators have run into roadblocks when some people they've questioned haven't been "cooperative," he said. "There comes a point in the case where you may come to a dead end. John's case could turn into a cold case. It's super unfortunate that ... people don't cooperate with police."

McNeil, now 53, said she believed from the beginning that someone hurt her brother. The last day he was seen, Spira made dinner plans and was supposed to play with his band the Rabble Rousers the next night. Spira, a guitarist known as "Chicago Johnny," wouldn't miss a gig, his family said. He had also just completed a yearslong divorce, McNeil said.

Family members said Spira wouldn't have taken his own life, nor deliberately disappeared.

After flying to Chicago, McNeil said she wasn't sure what to do. She eventually went to a bookstore to try to find some sort of guide to finding a missing relative.

"What do you do when someone goes missing? There are no books," she said.

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Eventually, McNeil met families of others who had gone missing. She took her cues from them, arranging for billboards, talking to the media and organizing searches. McNeil said she learned more from them than police on ways she could bring light to her brother's disappearance.

It became McNeil's routine for years to travel back and forth from Phoenix, leaving her husband and two sons behind to attend searches and vigils for her brother and other missing adults, meet with police and do other work to try to find Spira. Besides media attention in the Chicago area, Spira's case was featured on a cable mystery show.

Now, McNeil said she's "lost some steam for sure."

McNeil still checks in with police, Harris said, and will forward any tips she gets from a website she started, johnspira.com. She's scaled back her trips to the Chicago area because there aren't new places to search, she said.

"We're in limbo," McNeil said of her family.

"I'm always wondering what happened. I'm still sad, I'm still angry. You can't really heal from that because what are you healing from?"

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For Tom Spira, questions about his brother's final moments run through his mind regularly, he said.

"What actually did happen? Did he suffer? Was he taken somewhere? Did he know (he would die)? Did he not know? I think about that all the time," he said.

Lisa Stebic  Last seen April 30, 2007

When Lisa Stebic, a 37-year-old Plainfield mother, never returned home from an evening workout in the spring of 2007, her case quickly captured the public's attention.

On the same day Lisa Stebic disappeared, she had mailed papers to her lawyer seeking to evict her husband as the two went through a divorce.

Craig Stebic was later named a person of interest in the case, and still is, Plainfield Detective Carianne Siegel said. Craig Stebic could not be reached for comment. He has never been charged.

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Siegel said police still follow up on leads, although they have slowed considerably, and the case is periodically discussed in front of a Will County grand jury.

For Lisa Stebic's family, it's been a difficult 10 years.

"Of course, there will always be a hole in our hearts," said Lisa's sister Debbie Ruttenberg. "There's a loss and sadness, but there's also this anger."

Constant searching, vigils, news conferences and a court battle for visitation of Lisa Stebic's children over the years have given way to less action as the family ran out of options. What continues, she said, is the grief.

"You're hopeful that this has some resolve, but a lot of years have gone by already," Ruttenberg said. "I never would've expected to know somebody in this situation, let alone it be me and my family."

Lisa Stebic's family members have not seen her two children  now in their early 20s  since not long after Stebic disappeared, Ruttenberg said.

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Melanie Greenberg, Lisa Stebic's cousin, served as the family spokeswoman in the months after Stebic vanished, and was active in organizing a public campaign to find her. Soon after Lisa Stebic was reported missing, Greenberg helped set up a website and organized searches. At some point, the Olsen, Arcaro and Spira families reached out to her and joined in, Greenberg said.

On a past Mother's Day, the family handed out flowers with a tip hotline number. They held framed photos of Lisa at news conferences, splashed information about her on billboards over major highways and even had a sign up at Wrigley Field  all tactics learned from others who had been in the same situation, and Greenberg's friend, who was a TV producer in another state.

When Stacy Peterson of nearby Bolingbrook went missing six months after Stebic, the media attention was even greater than in Stebic's case, so Greenberg offered that family guidance.

"Who else could understand the chaos of that moment?" Greenberg said. And, because the press, including national media, was camped outside Stacy Peterson's house, the five families used it as a tool to keep their loved ones' names in the public.

"I felt like I did as much as I could," Greenberg said of her search for answers. But, "here we are, 10 years on."

Stacy Peterson  last seen Oct. 28, 2007

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Cassandra Cales tells her 4-year-old son about his Auntie Stacy, wishing the boy could've met her. She points her out in photographs, so he knows who she is.

"'Auntie Stacy. She's up in the clouds,'" the boy tells her.

The truth is, Cales, 31, doesn't know where her sister is but doesn't believe she's alive.

Stacy Peterson was 23 when she went missing. She was the fourth wife of Drew Peterson, a former Bolingbrook police officer whose third wife, Kathleen Savio, died in 2004, found in her bathtub. Although Kathleen Savio's death was initially ruled an accident, Stacy's disappearance prompted investigators to exhume Savio's body and re-examine the case. Drew Peterson was later convicted in Savio's death and is in prison.

The bizarre circumstances surrounding Stacy Peterson's disappearance made national news and eventually inspired a Lifetime movie that cast the blame on Drew Peterson. Although investigators long ago named him a suspect in Stacy Peterson's disappearance, he has not been charged and has said repeatedly his wife left him for another man.

That's almost beside the point to Cales.

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Drew Peterson "is going to die in (prison) no matter what," she said. "I just want to put (Stacy) to rest. I just want to bring her home."

That vow has driven Cales to join in police- and volunteer-led searches for Stacy and others. She's gone downstate acting on a tip that came to her website, searchingforstacypeterson.com, but didn't turn up anything. She has conducted her own "interviews" with anyone who saw Drew or Stacy in the days leading up to Oct. 23, 2007. She keeps her findings on a detailed spreadsheet.

"I'm relentless and I will not give up," she said. "After Stacy went missing, I didn't date, I didn't do anything. My life was Stacy."

In the early days, Cales said she relied on the help of families of the missing and still keeps in touch with some of them, mostly through Facebook.

"We all became family," she said.

Anne Bielby, 63, of Bolingbrook, was a volunteer searcher back then. That helped bring them together.

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"It was so overwhelming to see these people not being found, one by one," said Bielby, now a trained forensic artist. She was inspired to become a volunteer after a 13-year-old went missing near her home in the 1990s. "I felt like I had to do something to help."

She remembers 2007 as "the year of strong women that were fighting for their families," referring to the female relatives of those missing that year.

Bielby connected them with each other and with services that could help them, such as a Texas search dog group.

"Lisa and Stacy's cases were so high-profile, they literally had all these resources knocking on their door," she said, but other families aren't sure what to do.

That's where groups such as the New Hampshire-based nonprofit LostNMissing come in. Founder Cynthia Caron started the group in 2006, which grew from her interest in helping families with missing children. Her group works with families of missing adults.

Families can register and get guidance on working with the police, the press, and assistance with social media and databases for the missing, along with tips on when to hire private investigators and warnings of how they might be the target of psychics' scams.

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Since the group's inception, Caron said she's helped about 3,000 families nationwide. Of those, about 85 percent of their loved ones are never found, she said. But she tries to help the families keep hope and connects them with others who know what they're going through.

Closure lacking; support remains

While the hope of finding their loved ones alive may have faded, the families of those missing since 2007 still hope for closure.

McNeil is planning another billboard with Spira's photo, hoping it will inspire tips. Goyette is planning her next animal shelter fundraiser in memory of Arcaro.

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Olsen recently marked the 10th anniversary of Bradley Olsen's disappearance with an event at Molly's in DeKalb  the bar that replaced Bar One.

A crowd gathered outside, held signs, handed out fliers and released balloons before gathering back at the bar.

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On the Help Find Bradley Facebook page, photos of the event show Susan Olsen holding blue balloons. Comments of love and hope appear on the page.

McNeil's is among them.

"Wish I could be there. You are in my thoughts as always."

kthayer@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @knthayer
Two Congolese refugees arrive at O'Hare International Airport on Feb. 2, 2017, among the last refugees to be resettled in Chicago in the aftermath of President Donald Trump's executive order. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune) (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

The Congolese sisters were weary but smiling as they took their first steps in their new country at O'Hare International Airport. They are two of the last refugees to trickle into Chicago following last week's presidential order suspending the national refugee program.

"We are happy," Geogette, 32, said through an interpreter. "We want to look for a job and school."

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Edwina, 26, simply touched her palm to her chest several times.

Despite the Trump administration's 120-day ban on new refugees, entry was permitted this week for 872 who were already in transit because denying them would cause "undue hardship," according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

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Geogette and Edwina, who came Wednesday, were among those final arrivals. As young girls, they'd fled violence and civil war in their native Congo and spent the past 18 years in a refugee camp in Zambia. They were scheduled to come Tuesday to Chicago but were delayed in Dubai.

"We've been holding our breath every step of the way," said Jessica Schaffer, director of Hebrew Immigration Aid Society Chicago.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 10 Immigration attorney Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz holds her sign before the arrival of refugee sisters Geogette, 32, and Edwina, 26, of Congo, at O'Hare International Airport's Terminal 5 on Feb. 1, 2017. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)

Left behind were the sisters' parents and younger siblings, who were approved for resettlement but had not yet bought airplane tickets. With the U.S. refugee program stalled, any kind of family reunion for them is in limbo.

Last week's executive order also banned entry from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and barred Syrians from travel to the United States indefinitely. The Trump administration and others who support the measure consider these restrictions crucial to properly vet migrants and protect the nation from terrorism. Many opponents have denounced the order for damaging the nation's reputation abroad as well as unfairly separating family members.

Refugees already undergo lengthy background checks and security screenings that take at least 18 months prior to approval, according to the U.S. Department of State.

"Certainly these two women, and all of the folks we work with, have been waiting years, sometimes decades, to arrive," Schaffer said. "And to know that process has now been stalled by this executive order, it's just heartbreaking."

Caring for the stranger

Wearing jackets and sharing one small piece of luggage, the sisters were welcomed to their new home with flowers and balloons  and thick winter coats  by about two dozen volunteers from a north suburban synagogue and church that jointly sponsored them.

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The week has been an emotional roller coaster for those sponsors, who raced to furnish and decorate a local apartment when they learned the sisters narrowly made it. They plan to pay their rent and help the sisters acclimate to the culture and customs of their new homeland  everything from navigating bus routes to writing a resume.

"It's very much at the core of our tradition to make sure that we are taking care of the stranger, making sure that we are looking out for the vulnerable of society," said Rabbi Paul Cohen of Temple Jeremiah in Northfield. "Because we know what that's like from very early on, from Egyptian slavery all the way through history. We know what it's like to be oppressed, persecuted and to be exiled."

Vic Doucette, a volunteer from St. Francis Xavier Church in Wilmette, also said his Catholic faith prompted him to help folks he's never met from across the globe. He said he's skeptical of the Trump administration's plan to give immigration priority to religious minorities  typically Christians  in those restricted Middle Eastern nations.

"We wonder about how that's going to affect other people who aren't Christian," he said. "I would help anybody."

A teddy bear

An empty two-bedroom apartment in Skokie has been fully furnished for three weeks, awaiting a Syrian family that was scheduled to arrive Feb. 6.

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A little teddy bear sits atop one of the beds, intended for a 10-year-old boy.

"It was cleaned and readied with love and anticipation," said Pastor Kevin McLemore of Epiphany United Church of Christ in the North Center neighborhood, which had volunteered to host the refugee family. He said many volunteers were excited to help guide the family in "all of the frustrations and all of the joys that come with anyone navigating a new place."

The mother, father and two sons have been awaiting resettlement since 2013. Their arrival, however, has been stalled indefinitely with the executive order.

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Thursday afternoon, two more Congolese refugees arrived at the O'Hare international terminal. Mwenge, 65, and her son Mukamba had been living in a refugee camp in Uganda for about five years. They had already been traveling when the new immigration restrictions took hold but were able to arrive just in time, according to officials with their resettlement agency, RefugeeOne.

Mwenge will be reunited with her daughter  who had just been released from the hospital after giving birth  and seven grandchildren. They were all resettled as refugees in the United States in 2015 and live in Chicago.

Mwenge and Mukamba initially will live in that Skokie apartment once intended for the Syrian refugee family.

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"We're thrilled that the space is going to be used," McLemore said. "It mitigates some of the pain and sadness around that empty apartment."

The Associated Press contributed.

eleventis@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @angie_leventis
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson received an outpouring of support after he disclosed last week that he is on the waiting list for a kidney transplant because of glomerulonephritis. Dozens of strangers and Chicago Police Department employees offered to be donors, in hopes that they would be a match for Johnson.

While the response does not necessarily mean Johnson will receive a kidney  finding a match is incredibly challenging  transplant advocates said the attention paid to his condition could help others even if it doesn't immediately help Johnson.

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"Many, many more patients are in the same situation as the superintendent," said Dr. Paul Crawford, Johnson's nephrologist, or kidney specialist. "They're waiting for organs and for the public to step up to the plate and be a donor. You have to go through a screening test, but a lot of people are responding and calling and willing to donate, so that's been a very positive outcome of the announcement of the status of his kidney."

Glomerulonephritis is an inflammation of the kidneys. When it occurs, the kidneys stop properly filtering blood and eliminating waste through urine. They begin to scar and shut down, eventually failing and resulting in potentially life-threatening complications.

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One out of every nine people have chronic kidney disease, and most of them do not even know they have it. African-Americans are affected by kidney disease 75 percent more than Caucasians and need to be extra diligent, Crawford said.

"Most people don't know they have it because they don't feel it, and they don't have a symptom attached to it," Crawford said. "It's a silent progressing disease. You could feel fine and have stage five kidney disease."

For the more than 100,000 people nationally who already have advanced kidney failure, getting a new kidney could take more than five years, Crawford said. More than 4,700 people die each year while waiting for a kidney, according to the National Kidney Foundation.

Most people on the waiting list receive a kidney from a deceased person who had signed up as an organ donor or from a friend or family member.

Roughly 90 percent will receive a kidney from someone who has died. The other 10 percent have a friend or family member who volunteers to be a living donor. But volunteering does not necessarily mean the donor will be able to give because finding a match is incredibly challenging, said Dr. Jochen Reiser, a nephrologist and chairman of internal medicine at Rush University Medical Center, which performs about 100 kidney transplants a year.

"You need to be in perfect shape," Reiser said. "There are a lot of potential donors and a lot of people would like to donate, but they're very quickly excluded because it's such a harshly scrutinized screening process."

Potential donors are extensively tested to make sure they are healthy and their kidney is compatible with the recipient. The screening process could last as little as a few days to more than a year  as long as it takes for the donor to meet the requirements because some may need to make long-term changes like losing weight.

Once a person qualifies as a donor, there is a 30-day cooling-off period before the transplant can occur to prevent donations being made based on emotions that may change. The actual transplant and recovery are relatively straightforward, Reiser said. Donors typically go home shortly after the surgery with relatively few adverse effects.

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In Chicago, Gift of Hope is one of the organizations that works with area hospitals to provide organs.

"This effort is going to shine a light on the need for kidney donation, and it's going to save a lot of people outside of (Johnson)," said Jack Lynch, director of community affairs for Gift of Hope. "It is our prayer and belief that it's going to work out just fine for him because the general public sees the positives in saving someone like him and giving him back normalcy in his life."

Johnson was diagnosed more than three decades ago when he underwent testing as part of applying to become a Chicago police officer. The disease can be acute or chronic, and Johnson has the chronic form of the disease, which can be managed without dialysis as long as the patient is diligent about taking medication and living a healthy lifestyle, Crawford said.

"Controlling the blood pressure is a critical part," he said. "Even if the kidney disease is controlled by (other medication), if high blood pressure is not controlled, it can worsen and progress rapidly."

Medication is usually prescribed to help stabilize high blood pressure, and people can "do very well" if that is maintained, Crawford said.

"No matter how much blood pressure medicine you're using, if you take a salt shaker to your food, it's not going to work," he said.

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But the biggest problem with kidney disease is that many people don't realize they have it until their kidneys are already seriously deteriorating and in need of dialysis or a transplant, Reiser said.

"Think of it like driving a car," Reiser said. "Whether you have a full gas tank or a low gas tank, you drive fine. But at some point you start to notice it when the gas runs out. This is a disease that can go unnoticed for a long time because of that."

Crawford hopes Johnson's condition will raise awareness about consulting with doctors and leading healthy lifestyles. People should ask their doctor to test their urine and blood to see whether there are any abnormalities in order to catch kidney disease earlier.

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"We have quite a lot of work to do in educating the general public about healthy lifestyles and asking their doctor if they have protein in their urine," Crawford said.

Finding protein in the urine is one of the first abnormalities that is typically seen in patients with kidney failure. But oftentimes patients don't know to ask their doctors to check, and urine tests can still come out normal.

Reiser and his team at Rush found that a particular protein found in a blood test can reliably predict a person's chances of developing chronic kidney disease up to five years before kidney damage. The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015.

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As Johnson's case brings more attention to kidney donation, Crawford hopes that more people will sign up to be donors.

"I always tell people that the Lord gave you two kidneys," Crawford said. "One to give away and one to keep you healthy."

gwong@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @GraceWong630
For four days after being detained at a Houston airport and relocated to Chicago, a 16-year-old Jordanian boy wasn't allowed to talk with his Texas attorneys  even after arriving at a youth shelter on the North Side that is run by a nonprofit, his attorneys said Thursday.

Mohammad Abu Khadra is staying at a shelter operated by Heartland Alliance that serves unaccompanied minors traveling without proper immigration papers, according to the teen's brother.

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The high school student was detained Saturday at George Bush Intercontinental Airport amid the chaotic rollout of President Donald Trump's executive order suspending the U.S. refugee program and freezing the immigration of travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries. Jordan was not among those listed in the order, but Mohammad's attorneys said they think the events are connected.

Mohammad's brother, Rami Abu Khadra, with whom the teenager was staying in the U.S., attributed the situation to "bad timing." Khadra said he was able to visit with Mohammad briefly at the Houston airport but had not been able to talk to him at the shelter as of Wednesday.

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"Everything should be fine, but it's some procedure we have to go through," said Khadra, 37, of Katy, Texas. "I spoke to the shelter there. They said he is eating good ... he made some friends there."

The situation is stressing out his parents, who live in Jordan, Khadra said. Khadra has lived in the U.S. for several years on a green card with his wife and three children and works in a furniture store.

The Department of Children and Family Services, which licenses facilities for minors, confirmed the Chicago address that Khadra was given is a youth shelter. Online records and phone calls also show there is a shelter for children at the same address linked to Heartland.

The Heartland Alliance, an anti-poverty nonprofit, will not confirm whether Mohammad is one of its residents, citing confidentially reasons.

Heartland operates nine shelters in Chicago and its suburbs that house unaccompanied minors referred by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to Susan Trudeau, a senior director at Heartland.

The children at the shelters were flagged by the Department of Homeland Security, she said.

The average stay for a child is 30 days, and they are allowed to contact family, she said. In all, the facilities have up to 512 beds.

"(The shelters) are very homelike, comfortable" Trudeau said. "Children go to school. They receive medical attention and counseling. They have mental health professionals ... they also go out on field trips."

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Heartland Alliance, founded in part by Jane Addams, has combated homelessness since 1888 and offers services in housing, health care and jobs throughout the Midwest. The organization also helps resettle refugees in Chicago and operates the National Immigrant Justice Center, which provides legal services to immigrants, refugees and asylum-seekers.

It is not clear why Mohammad was taken to a shelter in Chicago after being detained in Houston. The Office of Refugee Resettlement and Customs and Border Protection would not comment on the specific case, citing privacy laws. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago said it did not have any information about the case.

A CBP spokesperson said in an email that the case is not related to the executive order because Mohammad is not from one of the seven countries.

Prior to his detainment, the 16-year-old had been staying with his brother on a travel visa for about three months attending school and had returned to Jordan after it expired. He was on his way back with a renewed visa when he was taken into custody.

A teacher at his school noticed his absence, and she and her husband took to social media to highlight his predicament, garnering more than 1,500 retweets.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Texas learned about his situation and referred it to Mohammad's current attorneys

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Ali Zakaria, one of Mohammad's attorneys, said he is working with the Chicago shelter to reunite Mohammad with his family, but that could take up to one month. He was finally able to make contact with the boy Wednesday morning, Zakaria said.

In the meantime, the boy is allowed to talk to his family twice a week for 10 minutes on the phone now that he's been processed, Zakaria said.

Rachel Cheng, a music teacher, works with students in a music class at the Heartland Alliance International Children's Center in Chicago in Chicago on Wednesday, May 28, 2008. Heartland operates nine shelters in Chicago and its suburbs that house unaccompanied minors referred by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Mohammad Abu Khadra, a 16-year-old Jordanian boy, is staying at a Heartland Alliance shelter. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)

Zakaria said he thinks the case is related to the executive order because other clients told him that Muslims from many countries beyond the seven have been subject to intensive questioning. Without the order, he said, Mohammad would have sailed through customs in 10 minutes. Zakaria said it's horrible to deny a child access to an attorney for so long.

He would not comment on specifics of the case, saying he was forming a defense for his client.

Zakaria said he doesn't condone immigration violations or breaking the law but challenged the gravity of consequences for some cases.

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"The overriding factor is that this is a 16-year-old kid," he said Thursday. "Even if it is a visa violation, it's equivalent to a Class C misdemeanor  the same as a traffic ticket. Have we become a country where we detain a teen for five days or two weeks or two months on issues that are tantamount to a traffic ticket?"

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Chicago immigration attorney Christopher Elmore, who is not involved in Mohammad's case, said sometimes immigrants or refugees are transferred across state lines because existing facilities are full or do not exist.

Mohammad, for example, cannot be housed with adults because he is younger than 18 and must be in a youth-only shelter, attorneys said.

Still, the excess travel can traumatize kids who feel lost in the system and make connecting to their lawyers more difficult, Elmore said.

"It complicates the process if the person's only family contacts are in another state and the attorneys are in another state," Elmore said. "It's the logistics. Its not necessarily uncommon, but its definitely a problem that practitioners would like to see reduced."

echerney@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @Elyssacherney
Eleven people were taken to hospitals after a semi-truck crashed on the inbound Dan Ryan Expressway on Friday afternoon.

The truck crashed into at least two cars about 1:55 p.m. near 79th Street on the inbound Ryan, according to an Illinois State Police trooper.

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Earlier, the trooper said the truck crashed into one other vehicle.

Eleven people were taken to hospitals with injuries that are not life-threatening, according to the trooper and the Chicago Fire Department.

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As of 3 p.m., the wreckage was being cleared away and traffic was able to get by.

Check back for details.
Two women watched early Friday as Chicago paramedics wheeled their neighbor, cursing and groaning, into an ambulance on the Southwest Side.



"Tell my mom it's Mike," one woman said to the other.



The man, in his 20s, was shot in the right shoulder, just after midnight, in an apartment across the street in the 6300 block of South Rockwell in Marquette Park, police said.

A woman was also shot there, one of four double-shootings over eight hours in Chicago.



The woman, also in her 20s, was standing on the front porch of the man's apartment when two men approached and opened fire, police said. She was hit in the head and taken in critical condition to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.



The man was in the apartment when he was hit. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where his condition was stabilized.



Neighbors gathered on porches as police taped off the crime scene and placed evidence markers on the front lawn of the man's apartment.



"It's ridiculous," said the woman who knew the victim as Mike. "It's scary."



She woke up to four or five gunshots that sounded like someone was pounding on her home. Just a few months earlier, an 18-year-old was shot just steps from her home when two men emerged from an alley and opened fire.



"I know where it's coming from," she said. "We mind our own business."



The woman said the violence has escalated so much that her family doesn't let her 18-year-old brother go out when he comes home from college out of fear that something might happen to him.



Another neighbor, Jose Perez, said he woke up to seven gunshots, followed by five more gunshots. He called police and later stood outside his porch with a child.



He remembered the December shooting.



"I mean it's not that bad," Perez said. "Sometimes they shoot, but it's not that bad out here."
Welcome to Clout Street: Morning Spin, our weekday feature to catch you up with what's going on in government and politics from Chicago to Springfield.

Topspin

Before diving into politics, Gov. Bruce Rauner made his bones as a private equity investor. But the Republican said Thursday he earlier had been interested in bones of a different type.

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During a visit to a Rockford elementary school, Rauner told students that his third-grade dream was to become an archaeologist.



"Boy did I ever want to dig up dinosaur bones," he said. "I thought that was going to be so great."

The governor touted the importance of hard work in school and told students they would be interested in different things as they grew up  just like he was. Besides archaeology, Rauner said he considered being a police officer, doctor and scientist before eventually settling on economics in college.



"I saw how economics can create jobs and have a better life for everybody, and I got really drawn into economics and business," he said.

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The governor encouraged students to keep their eyes and minds open to different possibilities.



"Whatever you choose to do, do it really well," Rauner said. (Haley BeMiller)

What's on tap

*Mayor Rahm Emanuel will be talking about pothole filling.

*Gov. Rauner's schedule was not available.

What we're writing

*Judge's secrecy shrouds case of Chicago cop charged with killing Laquan McDonald.

*City sued for banning ads in ride-share vehicles.

*Bill seeks to allow 16- and 17-year-olds to register as organ donors in Illinois.

*Hoping for 'adrenaline boost' in flagging neighborhoods, Cook County selling more than 4,000 vacant lots.

*Ad agency Leo Burnett uses #reverseforkindness to protest Trump travel ban.

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What we're reading

*Controversial former Cook County medical examiner dies.

*Feds investigating Lincoln-Way's $419,000 in payments to custom lettering company.

*Woodstock Willie the groundhog made his prediction. Probably will tomorrow too.

From the notebook

*Madigan gets a court date: Attorney General Lisa Madigan's attempt to halt state worker paychecks in the absence of a budget deal is set to get a hearing Feb. 16.

To review: Madigan has asked a downstate judge to lift the court order that's been keeping salaries paid since July 2015.

The attorney general contends the Illinois Supreme Court has since ruled paychecks can't go out unless lawmakers and the governor have approved spending for salaries. And she says stopping the paychecks might provide the sense of urgency needed to end the historic stalemate.

Gov. Rauner and the state's largest employee union have opposed the move.

The judge in the case hasn't weighed in since Madigan's filing, so Feb. 16 could bring some insight into what happens next. ( Monique Garcia

*CPS teachers to stage grade-in: Chicago Public Schools employees Friday plan to use their first of four unpaid furlough days putting pressure on Mayor Emanuel. Chicago Public Schools employees Friday plan to use their first of four unpaid furlough days putting pressure on Mayor Emanuel. Union members plan to hold a 10 a.m. grade-in and teach-in outside the mayors office. Organizers said some teachers would bring papers to grade and teach the mayor and his CPS CEO to appreciate the work we do that they havent learned to respect or value, according to the union's website. Classes were already scheduled to be out of session for whats known in the district as a school improvement day. Students get to stay home on those days, but teachers and staff are supposed to report for a day of planning and other work. The union says the furloughs eliminate vital professional development opportunities and point to a clause in its recent contract agreement with City Hall that requires the Chicago Board of Education give CTU 10 professional development days per year. A resolution from the unions governing body this week called the furloughs a violation of the contract and labor law. Its not clear how far theyll push the issue in the legal realm. The union said the furloughs could delay the entry of students grades for at least a week. But some union members plan to bring in papers to grade during their sit-in at City Hall. CPS ordered the furlough days last month in response to Gov. Bruce Rauner's veto of legislation that would have sent the district $215 million. The plans come two days after the unions governing body demanded the immediate resignation of Emanuel-appointed schools chief Forrest Claypool. Emanuel responded in a statement this week: "Instead of throwing stones at each other, everyone who cares about Chicago's schools and Chicago's students should be focused on coming together to fight for fair funding in Springfield." (Juan Perez Jr.)

*Hultgren to co-chair human rights panel: Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren, of Plano, has been named a co-chair of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.



The commission is chaired by two members of the House of Representatives who are appointed by the Republican speaker and Democratic leader. Hultgren, who has actively worked to promote efforts to curb human trafficking, served previously on the commissions eight-member executive committee.



"I know Randy cares deeply about fighting injustices like human trafficking and threats to religious liberty, House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.



As co-chair of the commission, hell have an incredible opportunity to use his passion to support human rights around the world, Ryan said.



Hultgren, who has been critical of President Donald Trumps executive order on immigration, said in a statement that now more than ever we need Congress to be a strong voice for the vulnerable, oppressed and marginalized everywhere. ( The commission is chaired by two members of the House of Representatives who are appointed by the Republican speaker and Democratic leader. Hultgren, who has actively worked to promote efforts to curb human trafficking, served previously on the commissions eight-member executive committee."I know Randy cares deeply about fighting injustices like human trafficking and threats to religious liberty, House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement.As co-chair of the commission, hell have an incredible opportunity to use his passion to support human rights around the world, Ryan said.Hultgren, who has been critical of President Donald Trumps executive order on immigration, said in a statement that now more than ever we need Congress to be a strong voice for the vulnerable, oppressed and marginalized everywhere. ( Rick Pearson

*The Sunday Spin: On this week's show, Chicago Tribune political reporter Rick Pearsons guests are Todd Maisch, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce; Democratic state Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Rebecca Shi, executive director of the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition. The On this week's show, Chicago Tribune political reporter Rick Pearsons guests are Todd Maisch, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce; Democratic state Comptroller Susana Mendoza and Rebecca Shi, executive director of the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition. The "Sunday Spin" airs from 7 to 9 a.m. on WGN 720-AM.

Follow the money

*The campaign fund of Ald. Sophia King, who was appointed to her 4th Ward seat by Mayor Emanuel and faces the electorate for the first time in this month's special election, gave $5,000 to the 4th Ward Democratic Organization led by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

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*Track Illinois campaign contributions in real time here and here.

Beyond Chicago

*At a prayer breakfast, Trump says he'll "totally destroy" the rule that bars tax-exempt churches from political activity.

*Conservatives start getting behind Supreme Court nominee Gorsuch.

*The leaks coming from inside Trump's White House.

*Rebuilding shattered Aleppo will take billions  and peace.
A top ally of Gov. Bruce Rauner warned members of the largest state employee union to be "careful" about "crossing" the Republican governor by going on strike, suggesting that individual jobs are more important than the group's political standing in Springfield.

The comments by House Republican leader Jim Durkin come as members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31 are voting on whether to authorize a walkout amid a prolonged contract battle with Rauner.

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"They are dealing with a person who's a very determined individual, and he's a tough person. And he drives a bargain," Durkin said during a Friday taping of WLS-AM 890's "Connected to Chicago" that airs at 7 p.m. Sunday.

"But the fact is, if you cross him, I think you have to be careful. That's a situation, if you do that, you're crossing a governor who's, I think he's going to do what he thinks is best at the end of the day, which is not going to be in the best interests of AFSCME members and their families and loved ones," Durkin said.

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Rauner's office issued a memo last week laying out potential consequences should workers decide to walk off the job, noting they would go without pay and health insurance subsidies. Their pensions also would not grow during that time, and replacement workers used during a strike could be hired permanently.

Durkin said Rauner "would have no problem replacing those men and women on the job."

"And I think it's a very, very risky proposition for them to take," Durkin said. "I know their leadership is going to do what they're going to do, but their rank-and-file members need to realize that their jobs are important, we support them."

Union spokesman Anders Lindall said Durkin should be "ashamed of himself," accusing him of parroting Rauner talking points and "threatening the public service workers who serve our state."

"It's disturbing and revealing that Durkin believes Bruce Rauner will not act 'in the best interests of AFSCME members and their families and loved ones,'" Lindall said in a statement. "After all, AFSCME members are public service workers who protect kids, respond to emergencies, care for veterans and more. They want to serve their communities, not be forced out on strike, but Bruce Rauner's refusal to negotiate has left no choice but to consider a strike as a last resort."

Even if the majority of union members vote in favor of a strike, it does not mean a work stoppage would occur. The union's collective bargaining committee is seeking the authority to call a strike as it tries to pressure the Rauner administration back to the bargaining table. Voting ends midmonth.

The strike vote follows a ruling last year by the Illinois Labor Relations Board, which sided with Rauner by declaring the two sides had reached impasse  a technical stage in negotiations in which the administration can try to impose its own contract terms on workers. Rauner's office began to put in place some of those terms, but AFSCME sued to temporarily halt those moves.

It's a particularly fraught time for state employees. In addition to a possible strike, they also stand to lose out on pay after Attorney General Lisa Madigan went to court last month to lift an order that has kept paychecks flowing to workers even though Illinois has no spending plan in place.

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Rauner has criticized that move, and House Democrats plan to push legislation this week that would keep paychecks flowing if the order is lifted. Republicans are pushing an alternative plan that would reclassify salaries to ensure money goes out the door automatically regardless of whether a budget is in place. A hearing on the case is set for Feb. 16.

mcgarcia@chicagotribune.com

jebyrne@chicagotribue.com
The Russian ultra-nationalist dubbed "Putin's Rasputin" by Breitbart News when it was run by President Donald Trump's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has emerged as an unlikely foreign-policy fixer for the Kremlin.

Alexander Dugin, whose bushy beard gives him a passing resemblance to the Siberian mystic who bewitched the last czar's family, says he played a key but largely clandestine role in patching up Russia's relations with Turkey, an account confirmed by a senior figure in Ankara. And with people he calls ideological allies now in the White House, Dugin says he's bullish on better ties with the U.S., too.

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After Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border in 2015, prompting "World War III" to trend on Twitter, the firebrand philosopher used his contacts in both countries to form a backchannel that helped Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan end an increasingly dangerous feud, according to a retired Turkish general who flew to Moscow for secret talks.

Alexander Dugin, in a Nov. 10, 2016 video titled "Donald Trump's Victory."

The rapprochement allowed Putin to outmaneuver the Obama administration and turn the tide in Syria's civil war on behalf of Bashar al-Assad. For Dugin, whose views on the evils of liberalism have been cited by Bannon and other far-right leaders, it also moved Russia a step closer to fulfilling his vision of unwinding the U.S.-led global order, in part by luring Turkey away from NATO and creating a "Russo-Islamic pact" that includes Iran.

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Dugin, the son of a Soviet military-intelligence official, said being independent makes him an effective go-between in matters of state. The 55-year-old rabble-rouser, blacklisted by the U.S. for aiding the insurgency in Ukraine, has no official post. But he has advised a member of Putin's inner circle and written a textbook on geopolitics that's been used by the military.

"I can talk to people like an official can't," Dugin said in his Moscow office at Tsargrad TV, where he's a commentator and chief editor. "A diplomat says what he's told. What does a military man say? Even less. And an intelligence officer? Nothing at all. You don't understand where the truth lies. I speak from the perspective of geopolitics. That's why the Turks started to trust me."

Dugin, who's been described as everything from an occult fascist to a mystical imperialist, lost his prestigious job running the sociology department at Moscow State University in 2014 after activists accused him of encouraging genocide. Thousands of people signed a petition calling for his removal after a rant in support of separatists in Ukraine in which he said, "kill, kill, kill."

He's seen as a brilliant philosopher, but brilliance and madness are very close to each other.  Sergei Markov, a political consultant to Putin's staff

The Kremlin, which gave the prolific polemicist prominent airtime on the biggest networks to cheerlead during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, has kept him at arm's length since he criticized Putin for not taking more of Ukraine. When asked if Dugin played a role in the detente with Turkey, Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said, "No."

"He's seen as a brilliant philosopher, but brilliance and madness are very close to each other," said Sergei Markov, a political consultant to Putin's staff. Even though Dugin's not an official envoy, Markov said, "he appears to have given the Turks some very good advice."

Dugin made "everyone happy" by organizing a November visit to Crimea by a Turkish delegation that included one of Erdogan's cousins, a few weeks after meeting Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara, Markov said. The trip was a major fillip for Russia's efforts to gain recognition for Putin's annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, which provoked U.S. and European sanctions.

"Incredibly beautiful-one of the best moments of my life," Dugin said after Trump's inauguration.

Dugin's writings, in dozens of books and countless blogs, have made him an influential thinker not only in Turkey, but also Iran, where's he's a frequent visitor, and among anti-establishment parties that are on the rise throughout the West, a trend that is welcomed by Russia's leadership.

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Apart from Turkey "only two countries really pay attention to me-Iran and the U.S.," Dugin said.

The foreword to one of his books was written by a retired U.S. professor, Paul Gottfried, a Trump supporter who was among the first political philosophers to use the term "alternative right" to describe the radical conservative movement. In July 2016, a month before he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon described Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right."

The Russian "equivalent" of Trump putting Bannon on his security council would be if Putin did the same with Dugin.  annotation of blog post by Michael McFaul, former U.S. ambassador to Russia

In a video address to a Vatican conference in 2014, Bannon, whose White House role has been elevated to include a seat on Trump's National Security Council, defended the traditionalist views espoused by Dugin and other nationalists who want "sovereignty for their country." Dugin said he's never met Bannon.

The Russian "equivalent" of Trump putting Bannon on his security council would be if Putin did the same with Dugin, Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, wrote in a blog for the Ekho Moskvy radio station in Moscow.

Dugin's role in resolving the crisis with Erdogan over the jet incident was confirmed by Ismail Hakki Pekin, a former head of Turkish military intelligence. He was one of five members of the Patriotic Party, including a fellow retired general and a retired admiral, who flew to Moscow in December 2015 for four days of meetings that Dugin arranged with current and retired Russian officers.

During the visit, Dugin took the Turkish delegation to a "secret room" in a "special place" to meet his benefactor, Konstantin Malofeev, a multimillionaire with ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, Pekin said in an interview in Ankara.

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Dugin and Malofeev, who's also under U.S. sanctions for supporting the revolt in Ukraine, started Tsargrad, an old name for Constantinople, in 2015 and the TV channel now has some 20 million viewers. It was the only major station to carry a speech former Trump adviser Carter Page gave in Moscow last year.

Pekin said Dugin introduced Malofeev as Putin's "right-hand man," and the Turks came to learn the financier really can "knock on Putin's door."

"That's how the trip became effective," Pekin said. "We knew what we said went directly to Putin."

And what they said was that Erdogan had nothing to do with downing the bomber the previous month. Pekin said he and his colleagues were successful in convincing the Russians they spoke with, including two plainclothes generals, that rogue elements in the military were responsible for the shootdown.

It was a "conspiracy" involving followers of Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric based in Pennsylvania, and U.S. and NATO officials who wanted to drive a wedge between Russia and Turkey, said Pekin, who briefed senior diplomats and military officials in Ankara after the Moscow trip.

Pekin said Dugin had sought out the two retired Turkish generals and former admiral specifically because they all had a history opposing Erdogan and spent time in jail for alleged plots to overthrow the government, which made them more credible in the eyes of their Russian interlocutors.

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In March, with tensions between Putin and Erdogan still simmering, Dugin flew to Ankara for a follow up visit that included talks with relatives of Erdogan and other influential figures.

Dugin said he told the Turks that arresting the person accused of shooting dead one of the Russian pilots as he tried to parachute to safety would go along way toward re-establishing relations. The next day, on March 30, the suspect was taken into custody in the eastern city of Izmir.

"They said they were carrying out an investigation and that Erdogan would apologize," said Dugin, who passed on the information to Russian officials.

Three months later, on June 27, with Turkey's economy squeezed by the trade curbs Russia introduced after the shootdown, Erdogan finally expressed regret for the incident, paving the way for a resumption of ties.

But less than three weeks later, on July 15, something Malofeev and Dugin warned about back in that "secret room" came true-an attempted coup by disgruntled members of the military, according to Pekin.

Malofeev dismissed the assertion he's Putin's right-hand man as "a flattering exaggeration." Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, denied the financier played a role in the rapprochement with Turkey.

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Dugin, a dissident in the 1980s who co-founded the National Bolshevik party after communism ended, was in Ankara at the time of the military revolt. He gave a series of TV interviews in support of the Turkish leader's decision to mend ties with Russia, the last of which, at state-run TRT Haber, concluded just 2 1/2 hours before the coup plotters seized the station.

Erdogan blamed Gulen and his U.S. benefactors for the putsch, responding with a sweeping crackdown of suspected Gulenists that has upended society and driven Turkey and Russia closer together. The re-energized partnership was put to the test in December, when Russia's ambassador to Turkey was assassinated by a police officer in Ankara.

"That was the last attempt by the outgoing U.S. administration and the globalists to disrupt Russia's rapprochement with Turkey," Dugin said.

Dugin has delighted in watching Russia and Turkey take the reins in resolving the Syrian crisis, elbowing the U.S. aside.

America not only isn't an opponent, it's a potential ally under Trump.  Alexander Dugin

Erdogan, with Putin's blessing, sent troops into Syria in August to fight Islamic State and U.S.-supplied Syrian Kurdish YPG forces, which Turkey views as terrorists for their links to autonomy-seeking PKK rebels. In return, Turkey blocked rebel supplies into Aleppo, enabling Assad's forces, backed by Russian firepower, to capture the former commercial capital in December. In January, the two leaders started joint air strikes against Islamic State targets.

Dugin, who has long predicted the demise of "the West's liberal hegemony," said the election of Trump promises to change the course of world history.

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"Incredibly beautiful-one of the best moments of my life," he said after Trump's inauguration.

After decades of railing against Washington for seeking the "Westernization of all of humanity," Trump's elevation has led to a Damascene conversion for Dugin, who declared anti-Americanism "over."

"America not only isn't an opponent, it's a potential ally under Trump," he said.

Now Dugin's focusing on Europe, where he's been cultivating ties with anti-establishment parties that threaten a political and military union seven decades in the making.

With key elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands this year, the Russian polemicist has a new mantra for Europe that's ripped straight out of Trump's campaign playbook:

"Drain the swamp."



With assistance from Stepan Kravchenko and Joshua Green.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, and South Korean Defense Minister Han Min Koo salute during a welcome ceremony for Mattis at Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea on Feb. 3, 2017. (Ahn Young-joon / AP)

TOKYO  U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Friday reassured two key U.S. treaty allies, South Korea and Japan, that President Donald Trump, who has raised doubts about the value of such partnerships, is fully committed to defending them.

"I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, 100 percent shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people," Mattis told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

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Earlier in the day, in Seoul, with his South Korean counterpart, Han Min Koo, at his side, Mattis said, "the United States stands by its commitments, and we stand with our allies, the South Korean people." He also explicitly warned North Korea against using a nuclear weapon, saying such an act would be met with a response that is "effective and overwhelming."

These were the only two stops on Mattis's first overseas trip since taking office Jan. 20. He said he chose to go to Japan and South Korea first in order to demonstrate that nothing will weaken the U.S. security promises.

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During the last year's U.S. presidential campaign, Trump complained that defense treaties disadvantaged the U.S. and that he would not rule out abandoning signatories, including Japan, if they refuse to pay more for their defense. He also suggested that South Korea and Japan, which are already within the range of North Korean missiles, might acquire their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on U.S. deterrence. In Seoul on Friday, Mattis was firm in stating that Washington will not waver in the face of defiant progress by North Korea toward developing a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and hitting the U.S.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior," Mattis said.

"We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region," he added. "America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming."

U.S. defense secretaries have long offered assurances to South Korea and Japan that the American nuclear "umbrella" will protect them, but Mattis's statement in Seoul was perhaps more pointed than some.

The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korean and about 50,000 in Japan, including on the island of Okinawa, where Mattis served as a young Marine officer in the early 1970s.

Throughout his time in Seoul and Tokyo, Mattis repeated his criticisms of North Korea and stressed that the Trump administration is committed to carrying through on a deal the Obama administration reached with the Seoul government last year to deploy a high-end U.S. missile defense system to South Korea this year.

The Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, is meant to improve protection of South Korea and Japan  as well as U.S. troops stationed in both countries  against a North Korean missile attack. Mattis said the deployment will go forward, despite its political sensitivity in Seoul, which faces possible presidential elections soon. He called it an example of "defensive steps" the United States is taking in response to Pyongyang's "threatening rhetoric and destabilizing behavior."

The current South Korean government supports THAAD deployment, but China has pushed hard to change that.

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On Friday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China's opposition to THAAD at a regularly scheduled briefing.

"We have resolute opposition to the deployment of THAAD to South Korea by the U.S. and ROK, which remains unchanged and will not change," the statement said, using initials for the Republic of Korea. "Such actions by the U.S. and ROK will jeopardize security and the strategic interests of regional countries, including China, and undermine the strategic balance in the region."

In his remarks Friday, the South Korean defense chief, Han, echoed Mattis's concern about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. He said they "blatantly threaten" the international community and have created a "severe security situation" on the Korean peninsula. He described Mattis's visit so early in his tenure as a warning to North Korea.

The Trump administration is reviewing the U.S. approach to North Korea, along with other aspects of U.S. defense and foreign policy. Mattis has said he would consult with South Korean and Japanese officials about whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs was adequate. North Korea has said it was nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

Associated Press
February 3, Saint

Source: Lives of the Saints by the Benziqer Brothers.

Roman Martyrology: In Sebaste, Armenia, St. Blase bishop, crowned with martyrdom in the persecution of Licinius, in 316, by the command of Agricolaus, governor of Cappadocia and the lesser Armenia.



SHORT BIOGRAPHY

St. Blase devoted the earlier years of his life to the study of philosophy, and afterwards became a physician. In the practice of his profession he saw so much of the miseries of life and the hollowness of worldly pleasures, that he resolved to spend the rest of his days in the service of God, and from being a healer of bodily ailments to be- come a physician of souls.

The Bishop of Sebaste, in Armenia, having died, our saint, much to the gratification of the inhabitants of that city, w-as appointed to succeed him. St. Blase at once began to instruct his people as much by his example as by his words, and the great virtues and sanctity of this servant of God were attested by many miracles.

From all parts the people came flocking to him for the cure of bodily and spiritual ills. Agricolaus, Governor of Cappadocia and the Lesser Armenia, having begun a persecution by order of the Emperor Licinius, our Saint was seized and hurried off to prison. While on his way there, a distracted mother, whose only child was dying of a throat disease, threw herself at the feet of St. Blase and implored his intercession. Touched at her grief, the Saint offered up his prayers, and the child was cured; and since that time his aid has often been effectually solicited in cases of a similar disease.

Refusing to worship the false gods of the heathens, St. Blase was first scourged; his body was then torn with hooks, and finally he was beheaded in the year 316.

Reflection: There is no sacrifice, which, by the aid of grace, human nature is not capable of accomplishing. When St. Paul complained to God of the violence of the temptation, God answered, My grace is sufficient for thee, for power is made perfect in infirmity.''
WASHINGTON  Even after her botched confirmation hearing, almost nobody paying attention to President Donald Trump's Cabinet confirmation process thought his pick for education secretary would be in trouble.

And yet, she is now just one GOP defection away from being the first Cabinet nominee defeated by a Senate from the same party in nearly a century.

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Two moderate GOP senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said Wednesday that they can't support Betsy DeVos, largely because of her inexperience in public schools. Republicans have a 52 to 48 majority in the Senate, so if all members of the Democratic caucus join Murkowski and Collins in opposition, DeVos could be the first Cabinet nominee ever to require a tie-breaking vote by the vice president to be confirmed. If even one more GOP lawmaker opposes DeVos, her nomination fails.

In retrospect, say education experts, it makes sense that a billionaire with no experience in public schools who was seemingly ill-prepared for her confirmation hearing could be in trouble. Let's look more in depth at why:

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1) She's a one-issue nominee

When people in education policy think of DeVos, they think of school choice.

DeVos has made herself a national figure on the cause of giving vouchers to parents so they can choose whether to send their kids to private or public schools. She's also a big supporter of charter schools. She chaired the American Federation for Children, a D.C.-based group that advocates for school choice.

All of that is mostly a non-starter for Democrats. But the school-choice-above-all-else narrative also doesn't fit with some red-state Republican senators, whose rural states don't necessarily have a ton of private or charter schools to choose from. And because DeVos's positions on a host of other issues aren't well known, she isn't giving those senators much else to work with.

"If you are a senator who disagrees with DeVos on the issue of school choice and vouchers," said Elizabeth Mann of the Brookings Institution, "there aren't a lot of other places to find common ground."

2) She doesn't have experience in public schools

DeVos has not attended, sent her children to or worked in public schools.

And that's a big problem for people who see the education secretary's primary role as managing public schools, which a majority of American students attend. What else do they have to fall back on when searching for a reason to support her?

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"[L]ike all of us, Mrs. DeVos is the product of her experience," Collins said on the Senate floor Wednesday, explaining why she'd be voting against DeVos.

DeVos's inexperience also underscores how unconventional Trump's Cabinet picks are: an oil tycoon for secretary of state or a neurosurgeon for chief of Housing and Urban Development.

Neither Secretary of State Rex Tillerson nor U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have formal diplomatic training. Trump's pick for Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, literally said he'd be "a fish out of water" in a federal bureaucracy.

But there's wiggle room when describing one's experience with diplomacy and bureaucracy. By contrast, you either have familiarity with public schools or you don't.

3) That confirmation hearing

The idea that guns in schools could help protect students "from potential grizzlies." Confusion about a federal law requiring schools to help students with disabilities. Little to no understanding of a long-standing debate in the education community on whether to use test scores to measure a student's proficiency. A casual acknowledgment that her family probably gave some $200 million to the Republican Party over the years.

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Far from alleviating some people's concerns about her inexperience with the average American parent, DeVos' moment in the spotlight exacerbated them - and even added a few more.

"I didn't see opposition or concerns from groups concerned about protecting rights for students with disabilities going into the confirmation, or guns in schools," Mann said. "It certainly was after the hearing."

4) A united opposition, a split front of support

Two weeks after DeVos' hearing, more than 300 (overwhelmingly Democratic) lawmakers in all 50 states submitted a letter to Congress opposing DeVos. Two powerful national teachers unions helped mobilize thousands of calls to senators' offices to decry DeVos. (Murkowski said she had been swayed by "thousands, truly thousands, of Alaskans who shared their concerns" about DeVos.)

The increasingly nationalized debate over school reform has helped build up a sizable, well-organized and often powerful coalition of labor and progressive groups that are opposed to DeVos' school choice position. In an already contentious confirmation fight, that counts for something, said Frederick Hess, a DeVos supporter with the American Enterprise Institute.

"I don't know who has that kind of mobilization on the secretary of state, no matter how much more high-profile the position is," he said.

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The heat on DeVos even forced a Republican super PAC to spend money on a digital advertising campaign to defend her as someone who "knows what it takes to repair our failing schools."

Meanwhile, supporters for school reform weren't nearly as united. The Post's Emma Brown reported Wednesday that one of DeVos's peers in the charter school fight, billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad, even urged senators to oppose her - for many of the reasons listed above.
Donald Trump's spats with U.S. allies as close as Mexico and as unlikely as Australia are leaving his new secretary of state and others in his Cabinet to clean up a lot of potential damage. It's a good-cop, bad-cop dynamic that could define America's foreign policy for the next four years.

President Trump's first two weeks on the job have rattled foreign friends and foes alike  and even members of his own party  starting with his order to temporarily halt all refugee admissions as well as immigration from seven mainly-Muslim countries. Concern only escalated the past few days with his personal dust-ups with foreign leaders and declaration that Iran is now "on notice" for possible American action.

"It's time we're going to be a little tough, folks," Trump said at a National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, as unseemly details circulated about his private phone calls with the Mexican and Australian leaders. "We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore."

Trump's blunt comments came a day after word emerged of a tense discussion with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull, in which the new U.S. president lambasted an Obama-era deal to resettle some 1,600 asylum-seekers.

Diplomatic dysfunction was clear. Minutes after the U.S. Embassy in Canberra said the deal was still on, Trump seemed to contradict that message, tweeting: "I will study this dumb deal!"

On the other side of the globe, new details emerged about strained ties between the U.S. and its southern neighbor. There was already irritation on both sides following Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto's cancellation of a trip to Washington after Trump made the visit contingent on Mexico agreeing to pay for a U.S. border wall.

In a follow-up phone call, Trump warned Pena Nieto that he was ready to send U.S. troops to stop "bad hombres down there" if Mexico's military can't control them, The Associated Press learned. The White House said the comments were made in a "lighthearted" manner. But administration officials described the calls with both leaders as contentious.

Some top aides are underscoring Trump's emphasis on toughness and brawnier U.S. negotiations, dominant themes of his "America First" foreign policy.

At the United Nations, Trump's U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, said the U.S. would be "taking names" of countries that "don't have our back." His national security adviser, Michael Flynn, made a surprising appearance at the White House daily briefing to "officially" put Iran "on notice" after its ballistic missile test. Trump topped Flynn Thursday by saying "nothing is off the table" when it comes to a potential American response.

But Trump's top diplomats are striking noticeably softer tones.

Rex Tillerson, in his first day as secretary of state, implicitly acknowledged in an address to staff that many U.S. diplomats oppose some of Trump's positions. Without criticizing that, he called for unity.

"Honesty will undergird our foreign policy, and we'll start by making it the basis of how we interact with each other," Tillerson said. "We are human beings first."

The former Exxon Mobil CEO offered an olive branch to hundreds of diplomats who signed a "dissent cable" challenging Trump's order on immigration and refugees, affirming that "each of us is entitled to the expression of our political beliefs." While noting the nation's "hotly contested" election campaign, Tillerson stressed that "we cannot let out personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team."

Andrew Harnik / AP Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, accompanied by State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, center right, stops before a memorial wall in the lobby of the State Department that honors employees who have given their lives in the line of duty, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, upon his arrival at the State Department in Washington. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, center, accompanied by State Department Undersecretary for Political Affairs Tom Shannon, center right, stops before a memorial wall in the lobby of the State Department that honors employees who have given their lives in the line of duty, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, upon his arrival at the State Department in Washington. (Andrew Harnik / AP) (Andrew Harnik / AP)

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought to project the same sentiment internationally in South Korea on Thursday, in his first official trip abroad. He said the president's message was "about the priority that we place on this alliance between our two nations," seeking to reassure an ally that was unnerved by Trump the candidate when he said it should take on greater self-defense responsibility.

While Trump drives foreign policy from the White House, he appears to be tasking his top Cabinet officials with the responsibility of follow-up reassurance. They're also fielding questions from allies about his taboo-shattering language and trying to clarify the true U.S. positions behind the rhetoric.

Though Tillerson himself lacks experience as a diplomat, he portrayed himself in his Senate confirmation hearing as a levelheaded tactician with foreign policy views within the Republican mainstream. He spent his first day at work meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel.

For many of Trump's supporters, each new antagonistic tweet, statement or executive order has been a fresh measure of proof that he intends to shake up a foreign policy establishment they reject and fulfill his promise to put "America first." They argue he is reasserting American strength after the weakness of the Obama administration.

After winning the presidency, Trump quickly ruffled China, a chief American economic and political rival, with a call to the president of Taiwan, breaking longstanding U.S. policy.

Trump's first meeting with a foreign leader, last week with British Prime Minister Theresa May, had been a bright spot in his diplomatic debut. But his immigration order brought thousands of protesters to London's streets labeling her "Theresa the Appeaser." Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson then called Trump's order "divisive, discriminatory and wrong."

Trump's warnings to Iran prompted a more hostile response from Tehran on Thursday.

"It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran," said Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader. According to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency, Velayati said: "The U.S. will be the final loser."

Meanwhile, it fell to Sen. John McCain, a hawkish Republican, to smooth relations with Australia. McCain said he phoned Australia's ambassador to affirm "unwavering support for the U.S.-Australia alliance."
President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence greeted Harley-Davidson executives on the South Lawn of the White House on Feb. 2, 2017. (Drew Angerer / Getty)

Five Harley-Davidson motorcycles rolled onto the White House's South Lawn Thursday afternoon, where they were greeted by President Donald Trump.

He praised the riders - Harley-Davidson executives and union members - for building their bikes in the United States.

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"Harley-Davidson is a true American icon. One of the greats," Trump said of the Milwaukee-based company. "You've given me tremendous support, your workers in particular."

But earlier in the week, Harley-Davidson employees heard Trump would be coming to their heartland factory, and at least one alerted a group of local protesters. That call set in motion a series of events that ended with news reports that Trump's Wisconsin appearance had been canceled and a White House announcement that he would meet with company executives in Washington.

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Flight records show a presidential VIP flight was scheduled to touch down in the Rust Belt state, which flipped from blue to red in the 2016 election, on Thursday.

On Monday afternoon, a second-shift worker at Harley-Davidson's powertrain plant in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, learned that Trump was slated to visit the plant Thursday. Feeling sick to his stomach, he wrote a private Facebook message to a local protest group.

The demonstrators, who call themselves the Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump, contacted Harley-Davidson through Facebook, telling the company that they would gather outside the factory to protest the president's immigration policies. The group organized a call-in campaign, urging activists to flood Harley-Davidson and chief executive Matt Levatich with messages, emails and phone calls condemning the Trump appearance.

On Tuesday night, CNN reported that an unnamed administration official said the trip had been canceled.

During a White House briefing Wednesday, press secretary Sean Spicer insisted that the trip was never set in stone and suggested that the planned protest had no bearing on whether Trump would make the appearance. Trump had considered his options, Spicer said, and ultimately decided to invite the Harley-Davidson executives to Washington for lunch.

"Look, it was easier for the executives to come here, considering the week and all of the activity that's been going on," Spicer said. "No decision had been made about or announced as to what we were doing."

Harley-Davidson officials on Tuesday released a statement, first reported by CNN, saying they "don't have, nor did we have, a scheduled visit from the President this week at any of our facilities."

But workers said preparations for the president were well underway. Secret Service members had cleared rooms in a Hilton hotel in Milwaukee, and agents had toured the Menomonee Falls plant, said a hotel worker and two factory employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because their employers had not authorized them to talk to the media.

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The Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment; nor did officials at Harley-Davidson and Hilton hotels.

An employee at the Hilton City Center in Milwaukee provided to The Washington Post a hotel document that informed staff members that Secret Service agents would arrive Monday. The note, which appeared to be sent from a manager of the hotel's restaurant, said to expect 100 Secret Service staffers by Wednesday.

The employee said no plans had been shared for Thursday.

A "presidential" flight on Feb. 2 from Washington to the Milwaukee area, meanwhile, was canceled Wednesday, according to the National Business Aviation Association's website, which tracks temporary flight restrictions.

It would have been one of Trump's first appearances outside Washington since he entered the White House. Such trips take a lot of planning, and it's possible that even a potential visit from the president would require businesses and the Secret Service to begin preparing days in advance.

Still, Harley-Davidson workers said the messages they received from management sounded definite. One worker, who talked to The Post on the condition of anonymity to protect his job, said he saw people who appeared to be Secret Service agents checking out the 92,000-square-foot grounds Monday. Then, he said, his boss told him Trump was coming to speak to them at 2 p.m. Thursday. The worker said he didn't want the president in his workplace but didn't say anything; he figured that most of his colleagues had voted for Trump.

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"He's against everything I stand for," the worker said. "The way he talks about people, about women and immigrants, is unacceptable."

Another employee separately told The Post that she caught wind of Trump's visit Monday. She said a team leader called her co-workers into a huddle at the start of the second shift and told them the president would stop by.

The employee, who builds engines, almost left the building. She thought Trump took credit for jobs he didn't save and named as an example Chrysler Fiat, where she said her son works. (Last month, Trump thanked himself for the automaker's upcoming U.S. expansion, but the company said it had planned the growth before the election.)

Nobody knew why Trump was coming, she said. Plenty of folks were excited because they liked his talk about keeping manufacturing jobs in the United States. She noticed the place looked cleaner than usual.

Then on Tuesday afternoon, the team leader gave the workers an update. Trump would no longer make the trip to the plant in Waukesha County, home to about 44,000 manufacturing jobs.

Wayne Ranick, communications director for the United Steelworkers' international organization, heard the same account from some of the union's Milwaukee members. "We knew he was planning to visit the facility," Ranick said. "Then we learned that visit had been canceled."

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Gregory Chambers, 32, co-founder of the Milwaukee Coalition Against Trump, said his group's mission was to publicly oppose Trump's travel ban, signed last Friday, and discriminatory measures in general.

"After [Harley-Davidson] heard we were coming," he said, "everything was canceled."
During his Senate confirmation hearings, Neil Gorsuch may be grilled on such legal topics as due process, enumerated powers and stare decisis. I'm hoping the discussion will also get around to a less arid subject: sodomy.

Not that I care what the Supreme Court nominee does under the sheets, and the dialogue I envision would probably qualify as PG-13. But his view of two major rulings on state laws banning certain types of sexual conduct is worth investigating. A candid discussion might make Americans wonder whether the judicial philosophy he upholds is quite as appealing as it sounds.

In nominating Gorsuch, President Donald Trump said he wanted to duplicate the late Justice Antonin Scalia's "image and genius." Gorsuch described Scalia, whose death created the vacancy he was chosen to fill, as a "lion of the law." In a speech last year, he embraced him as a model. Both Republicans and Democrats agree that the two are as different as twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen.

That brings us to the matter of sodomy. In 1986, shortly before Scalia joined the Supreme Court, the justices upheld a Georgia law making it a crime to seek gratification in oral or anal sex, gay or straight. The case arose after police arrested two men caught lustily violating that law in a private home.

"The Constitution does not confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy," said the court. Had he been a justice at the time, Scalia would have voted with the majority.

We know because he bitterly objected in 2003 when the court changed its mind. Striking down a Texas ban on homosexual sodomy, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the two men challenging the law "were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

Conservatives denounced the decision as a case of judicial activism. Then-Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., said it opened the way to legalizing incest. Evangelist Jerry Falwell called it "a tragedy for America."

What they were defending was a criminal statute telling grown-ups what they could do to gratify each other in bed. The very idea may sound preposterous now, but it wasn't then; 14 states had similar laws. Such medieval prohibitions would still be allowed if a certain sainted justice had gotten his way.

In a blistering dissent, Scalia insisted the state of Texas was perfectly entitled to outlaw "certain forms of sexual behavior" because it regards them as "immoral and unacceptable." In overturning the ban, he charged, the court had "signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" and invited "a massive disruption of the current social order."

By the logic of his judicial philosophy of originalism  relying on what the words of the Constitution were understood to mean when it was ratified  his view was understandable. After all, the words "oral sex" are flagrantly absent from the Constitution. He could also point to the long history of laws against oral and anal pleasuring and to the obligation of the court to follow precedents, notably the 1986 ruling.

So the question for a nominee who fervently champions Scalia's approach to judging is: What about sodomy?

The 2003 decision no longer gets much attention from conservatives. Scalia's caustic fulminations on the topic were left out of the eulogies. No Republican has endorsed Gorsuch on the grounds that he would uphold laws against gay sex.

But given the chance, why wouldn't he? If he reveres Scalia and his approach, it would be logical for him to agree that oral and anal sex can be banned. But to admit as much would alarm most Americans  who think that adult partners should be free to do whatever floats their boats.

To repudiate Scalia, however, would suggest there is something fundamentally defective in Gorsuch's entire approach to judging. It would imply that the late justice was not all-wise.

It would suggest that the principles established by the Framers can clash with conservative ideals. It would imply that the meaning of important constitutional provisions is not fixed for all time but evolves under the pressure of new circumstances and changing standards  and that judges have to acknowledge as much.

So by all means, let Gorsuch explain his view of those decisions. In doing so, he might reflect that what one New Orleans mayor said about prostitution applies as well to sodomy: You can make it illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.

Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman.

schapman@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @SteveChapman13

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More than two centuries after the fact, the American Revolution and its aftermath continue to be a topic of interest for many Americans. A new Museum of the American Revolution is slated to open in Philadelphia in April. Books about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams have been best-sellers in recent years. And of course, the phenomenal popularity of "Hamilton" is the best example of all.

The firestorm of controversy in the wake of President Donald Trump's order barring persons from seven overwhelmingly Muslim countries from entering the U.S. raises an interesting question. We know what The Donald is doing. But what would George have done?

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By George, I of course refer to George Washington. As the nation's first chief executive, and a model of decorum throughout his personal and public life, he was acutely aware of how his actions would be scrutinized, and took care to set good examples and precedents.

So what would Washington have said about these recent events?

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Anti-Muslim sentiment was not an issue in his time (although conflict with the Barbary pirates some years later might have come under that umbrella). That said, Washington has given us two clear examples of how he likely would view the current situation.

Let us start with the summer of 1787. Delegates from the 13 former colonies were slowly working their way to Philadelphia, where the Constitutional Convention would convene to draft the founding document that still governs us today.

Washington was the overwhelming consensus, if indeed not unanimous, choice to preside over that assembly. As the chair, he was in the first wave to arrive in Philadelphia.

It is important to note that at that time, Roman Catholics were a very small, and much-despised and discriminated-against minority in the U.S. Lurid tales of debauchery in convents, fears of Romish conspiracies and papist plots were an everyday part of the folk wisdom for many people.

And what did George do, as part of the process to unite 13 disparate former colonies into the United States of America? On a Sunday shortly after his arrival in Philadelphia, he and several other delegates went to services at a church  a Roman Catholic church. Done without fanfare, no press releases, photo-ops or the like, the gesture nonetheless sent a powerful symbolic message for religious tolerance  a gesture coming from a man so respected, so revered by so many that his troops, during the war, typically referred to him as "His Excellency."

Another example: In August 1790  Washington was president by then  he traveled to Newport, R.I., where he was warmly received by many individuals and groups.

Among those extending warm greetings in a letter to Washington was Moses Seixas, an official of Yeshuat Israel, the first Jewish congregation in Rhode Island.

Washington, ever the gentleman, promptly responded. No doubt aware of the bigotry Jews had faced in many other countries, he wrote a powerful letter. Washington's words are as applicable today  perhaps even more so  as they were those 237 years ago.

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He wrote that "all possess alike liberty of conscience." And in telling words, he continued " for, happily, the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no tolerance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."

In a further call for tolerance, he continued, "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants  while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

The original letter is now in the archives of the Touro Synagogue in Newport. Each year, the Touro Synagogue commemorates Washington's visit by holding an annual reading of this letter. The synagogue's website indicates the next reading is scheduled for Aug. 20.

So, President Trump, while the website notes seating space for the event is limited, have your staff contact the synagogue and see if they can squeeze you in. As President No. 45, you might want to listen and reflect on what President No. 1 had to say on the subject of tolerance.

Mark Iris, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the mathematical methods in the social sciences program at Northwestern University.
Despite the intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in our presidential election, President Donald Trump and Republican leadership seem wholly uninterested in examining how and why Russia targeted us  and what we must do to prevent it from happening again.

Recently, the intelligence committees in both the Senate and House announced bipartisan investigations into Russian hacking and election interference. As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I welcomed this announcement and take seriously my duty to follow the facts, wherever they lead. I support the investigation because I believe American citizens deserve to know what really happened during this past election.

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Unfortunately, Trump doesn't seem to share these concerns. Instead, he has chosen to praise Russian President Vladimir Putin as "very smart" while comparing our intelligence community to "Nazi Germany" by suggesting members were leaking documents to the press.

Americans recognize that the true purpose of these investigations is not to undermine the election results, but to understand how and why Russia carried out these cyber attacks and develop a strategy to ensure this type of intrusion never happens again. Cyber attacks like these not only undermine our values and the core of our democracy  they also put our national and economic security at risk.

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Although the promise of a free and fair election is central to our democracy, the risk posed by foreign cyber attacks extends far beyond elections. From bank accounts to financial systems, power grids to air traffic controls  our most critical infrastructure remain attractive cyber targets, and if they are ever compromised, the effects could be devastating.

These dangers do not emanate from Russia alone. China, North Korea and Iran, for example, all pose cyber threats to the United States. If nothing else, the cyber attacks that occurred during the 2016 presidential election have laid bare the very real vulnerabilities that exist across our government and the private sector. Imagine the harm that could be done if our enemies ever hack into the Department of Defense or Homeland Security.

The fact that Russia has shown a willingness to disrupt elections and undermine institutions should come as no surprise. Just ask our allies across Europe, particularly in places like Georgia and Ukraine. At a recent defense conference, Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven discussed the upcoming Swedish elections saying he "couldn't rule out" Russia interfering like they did in the U.S., and he warned, "We've got elections in France and Germany this year and probably in Italy. I think all countries are now thinking about what could happen in our democracies."

Russia has a long history of hacking, spreading propaganda and disseminating fake news  not to mention blackmail, extortion, disappearances and murders of political opponents and journalists. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, remains committed to reviving old Soviet tactics  yet now, he is aided by 21st century technology. The times have changed, but Putin's goals have not.

Consider Russia's disregard for international law and human life in Aleppo and across Syria. The recent past shows us that Putin is not a friend to the United States, despite Trump's attempts to make it so.

Russia is in a race against time. U.S. and multilateral sanctions are working, and the Russian economy is on the verge of collapse. At best, its economy is equal to that of Italy, but with a population that's more than double. While Trump often characterizes Putin as strong, Russian society is anything but. There's little reason to believe that the money freed up by lifting sanctions would be used for anything other than the expansion of the Russian military and other "active measures" directed at the U.S. and its allies. However, just this week, President Trump eased sanctions on Russia's principal intelligence agency, the FSB  a move that instantly received praise from Russian officials.

Why remove sanctions now, effectively relinquishing our leverage in return for nothing? Could this move lead to the Trump administration legitimizing Russia's invasion of Crimea? Will this lack of response give Putin the green light to push further into the Baltic States, Georgia or Poland?

We must also acknowledge that the president's current position on Russia stands in stark contrast to many of his past statements. On March 4, 2014, Donald Trump was quoted as saying: "There are a lot of things we could be doing economically to Russia" and "We should definitely do sanctions." Later that month he stated: "Russia's our biggest problem, and Russia is, you know, really something." Since being elected president, Trump has instead argued that Russia could be a partner in the fight against the Islamic State and that sanctions should be revisited. So, what changed? In reality, Putin's government has done nothing to show it deserves sanctions relief.

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Our democracy not only depends on our participation in the democratic process, but also on the promise that our participation allows the voice of the people to be truly heard. Our elections must remain free and fair and conducted without interference. Russia's hacking matters in every aspect of our way of life, and Congress must find the courage of conviction to put politics aside in order to conduct a thorough investigation immediately.

Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Chicago, represents the 5th Congressional District of Illinois.
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, listens as Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner delivers his State of the State address in the Illinois House chamber on Jan. 25, 2017, in Springfield, Ill. (Ted Schurter / AP)

Return we now to Springfield, for while we've been gnashing our teeth about the goings-on in the nation's capital there's been a bipartisan breakthrough in Illinois.

OK, a potential breakthrough.

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Don't want to get ahead of ourselves. After all, the entire country is dividing into extremes not seen since the late '60s. The ascent of President Donald Trump, of partisan media, of everybody's-an-expert digital sloganeering, is fast eroding the old deliberative order. The center is not holding.

But lo, what light through Springfield window breaks?

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It's a state budget compromise proposed by Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, and Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno, R-Lemont.

That's right, Democratic and Republican leaders have actually agreed on something. Not just the time of day, mind you, but a raft of interlocking legislation  13 fat bills to be exact  that attempts to give Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner some of what he wants, to give teachers and state employees some of what they want and, most important, to give fiscally stricken Illinois a real budget after almost two years of going without.

Trouble is, politics along Springfield's Sangamon River has not been immune to the winner-take-all fever that has swept up the Potomac in Washington. No sooner did Sens. Cullerton and Radogno surface their handiwork in January than did our state's competing constituencies line up to take whacks at the pieced-together pinata.

"Act now to stop a 'grand bargain' that would give in to some of Rauner's reckless demands!" thundered the Illinois Federation of Teachers, likely fearful of the two-year local property tax freeze contained in the proposal.

"The package on the whole is very much a net negative for the business community," harrumphed Todd Maisch, president and CEO of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce. The chamber especially doesn't like new taxes on services such as dry cleaning, a new payroll tax on small business and restoration of the state's income tax to just under 5 percent for individuals, 7 percent for corporations.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks to the Chicago Tribune editorial board at Tribune Tower on Feb. 1, 2017. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

And so it goes. When lawmakers return to Springfield on Tuesday, the governor's allies will fume that items from his proposed "turnaround agenda," such as reforming the decennial remap process, are nowhere to be found. And that other items have been watered down, such as imposing term limits only on legislative leadership positions and not on all the lawmakers as Rauner wanted.

Opponents of legalized gambling will mobilize against giving Chicago permission to build a casino to fund police and fire pensions. Most loudly of all, state workers unions  emboldened by court decisions that their pension benefits are sacrosanct  will fight a proposal that they trade away their guaranteed-but-unsustainable pension cost-of-living increases for a different kind of guarantee: that future pay raises will count when computing those pensions.

The unions' standoffish attitude may change, however, now that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has asked the courts to vacate an order that state workers get paid on time, even though, without a budget in place, other state contractors and institutions have been getting IOUs. Many of those IOUs, incidentally, carry late payment penalties that by July are expected to add $700 million to the whopping $15 billion in bills that are past due.

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Illinois' fiscal mess is so bad, and deteriorating so quickly, that the single biggest obstacle to the Grand Bargain might even move out of the way. That would be the personal animus between our Republican governor and House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago. Many think the two are willing to let the crisis deepen for two more years so they can blame one another during the 2018 campaign. So eager are they for this showdown that they soon may agree  gasp!  to protect pay for essential state workers and let the rest go begging.

That would be madness.

A bipartisan budget compromise has been placed on the table in Springfield. Nobody likes all of its many moving parts. Nobody.

So tinker with the details if you must, fellas, but do not walk away. Help find the center. Then hold it.

John McCarron teaches, consults and writes on urban affairs.

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A Turkish police officer secures a road near Istanbul's main police headquarters on Jan. 20, 2017. A Turkish media report says a rocket-propelled grenade was fired near the headquarters but that it missed the building. There was no further information on the incident, which comes at a time when Turkey has suffered a series of deadly attacks carried out either by the Islamic State group or Kurdish militants. (Emrah Gurel, AP)

America has fixed coordinates for the geography of the Islamic State, the West's deadliest terror threat. There's Mosul, now in the midst of a U.S.-backed bid by the Iraqi military to eradicate Islamic State militants from the northern Iraqi city. There's also North Africa and northern Syria, where the Islamic State inflicts its barbarism on Syrian civilians and blueprints attacks on the West.

But there's another part of the world where Islamic State is rising, a region few Westerners know: Deadly attacks at a crowded Istanbul nightclub on Jan. 1 and on Istanbul's main airport last summer have raised alarms about a worrisome, largely ignored node of Islamic State militancy. Both attacks involved terrorists from the steppes of majority Muslim Central Asia, a region once under the thumb of Soviet leaders.

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It's a region the West can't neglect, lest that node grow fast. The Soufan Group, which provides security and intelligence assessments to countries and multinational organizations, estimates that roughly 2,000 Islamic State fighters come from Central Asia, an area made up of the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Central Asian militants comprise the third largest component of foreign fighters for Islamic State, behind Western Europe and Arab nations in the Middle East and North Africa.

In recent months, it's become clear that the Islamic State sees a role for Central Asian fighters beyond the battlefields of Iraq and Syria. Case in point: Abdulkadir Masharipov, of Uzbekistan, a well-educated speaker of four languages who was trained in Afghanistan to become a militant. Early on New Year's Day, just after midnight, Masharipov walked into Istanbul's Reina nightclub on the Bosporus and sprayed the crowd with gunfire from his Kalashnikov, killing 39 people.

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That carnage was preceded by attacks on Istanbul's Ataturk Airport last June, carried out by two Islamic State suicide bombers from Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and one from Russia. The bombers killed 44 people and injured some 230 others.

Impoverished Tajikistan also is producing Islamic State fighters. Before his radicalization, Gulmorod Khalimov, a senior commander with the Islamic State, underwent American military training while he worked as a Tajik police commander. "I was in America three times," Khalimov said in an online video, according to The New York Times. "God willing, I will come with this weapon to your cities, to your homes, and we will kill you."

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 22 A Turkish special force police officer patrols in front of the Reina nightclub on Jan. 4, 2017, in Istanbul. (Ozan Kose, AFP/Getty Images)

The dynamic behind Islamist radicalization differs in Central Asia from that in the Arab world. During the Soviet era, Moscow's embrace of atheism prevented Muslims in Central Asia  and anyone in the Soviet Union, for that matter  from openly practicing their faith. That repression bred Muslim radicalization that continued long after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet regime, and persists today. One of Asia's most dangerous terrorist groups, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, has in the past allied itself with al-Qaida and fought alongside Taliban fighters against American troops in Afghanistan. Today, the IMU pledges allegiance to the Islamic State.

As the Trump administration and other Western leaders map out their anti-Islamic State strategies, they'll need to sharpen their focus on the group's presence in Central Asia. What specifically should the West do?

Central Asian governments rely on the U.S. for tens of millions of dollars in military and economic aid. The U.S. should use that leverage to push the region's authoritarian leaders to abandon policies aimed at repressing Islam, and give Muslim political movements space to participate in governance. Russia, of course, could fill the void if the U.S. pares back assistance, but perhaps President Donald Trump can keep newfound pal Vladimir Putin from doing so.

Also, the U.S. can divert some of its foreign aid to labor migrants in Central Asian countries prone to Islamic State recruitment. Washington can do the same in Turkey, home to a burgeoning Central Asian community that's economically marginalized.

Fighting Islamic militancy is an exercise in whack-a-mole. As the U.S. and the West made headway tamping down al-Qaida in Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan, Islamic State emerged from the chaos in Syria and Iraq. As the U.S.-backed security forces work to free Mosul and zero in on Raqqa, the West can't let Central Asia become the next Islamic State haven.
Iran fired off another ballistic missile test Sunday, and President Donald Trump fired back with a Twitter salvo.

In a Thursday tweet, Trump said, "Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!"

In a follow-up, he added, "Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a lifeline in the form of the Iran deal: $150 billion."

Iran harrumphed back that "this is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened" the country.

On Friday, more incoming: The Trump administration announced new economic sanctions against several Iranian officials and entities involved in Tehran's missile testing program. That builds on previous sanctions imposed by the Obama administration.

In launching the missile, Iran presumably expected the usual round of sputtering and tut-tutting from Europe and the United Nations. What Tehran didn't know  but most certainly was seeking to gauge  was the response from President Trump. Iran's leaders  like North Korea's Kim Jong Un and, heck, every other leader in the world  have no idea what to expect from the blustering, often-contradictory Trump. Neither do most Americans, possibly including top aides. Trump harshly criticized the Obama nuclear deal but hasn't said much since taking office about tearing it up. (For the record, we're against that, absent a huge Iran violation.)

Vahid Salemi / Associated Press Iranian leaders look on during an army parade and ceremony marking National Army Day just outside Tehran in April 2010. Iranian leaders look on during an army parade and ceremony marking National Army Day just outside Tehran in April 2010. (Vahid Salemi / Associated Press) (Vahid Salemi / Associated Press)

So what now? Before the Trump tweets, national security adviser Michael Flynn declared that "we are officially putting Iran on notice." Flynn also predictably blamed the Obama administration for appeasing Iran in the name of preserving its landmark 2015 nuclear deal.

Putting Iran "on notice" sounds like Dean Wormer's menacing but vague "double secret probation" from the 1978 movie "Animal House." We hope that warning came with private, specific threats of severe economic and diplomatic repercussions should Iran continue to launch missiles that unnerve the region, including U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, Jordan and particularly Israel. Recall last March, when Iran test-fired a missile inscribed with the phrase "Israel must be wiped out" in Hebrew.

Trump also said military action against Iran isn't off the table, a boilerplate response of presidents past. Well short of that, however, there are many other ways  economic and diplomatic  to slap Iran for its missile launches and aggressive support of global terrorists.

Trump needn't tread lightly for fear that Iran will abandon the deal. Its leaders won't. The regime is vulnerable to harsh economic sanctions. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei grudgingly negotiated a pact with the Great Satan because of stifling economic sanctions. Curbs of that severity, now largely lifted, won't be revived in a hurry, or probably at all. Chicago's Boeing is already selling planes to Tehran, and European companies are piling back into the country to do business.

But Trump and his Treasury Department still have power to make it hard for Iran to do business with banks and companies that want to do business with the U.S. That is, almost everyone. Any hint of a chill from Washington would spook Western companies. They already see Tehran as a risky place to hustle business. This is a regime that takes foreign hostages and extracts ransoms.

A new president confronts an old adversary. Stay tuned. More fireworks guaranteed.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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President Donald Trump says he wants an end to rampant gun violence in Chicago. He's talked about our city several times in his first two weeks in the White House. So far he's offered no remedies. On Jan. 24 he tweeted: "I will send in the Feds!" That's not a policy prescription. It's a movie cliche, no better than, "Get me Batman!"

Yet we welcome Trump's obsession with Chicago's enduring tragedy of murder and mayhem. In fact, we challenge him to talk and think more about the crisis. Because the bully pulpit of the presidency is no small thing. Maybe Trump is just popping off, but the more he threatens to act, the more heat he puts on Chicago's leaders to do the hard work of healing broken neighborhoods. By the same token, the more involved he gets, the more he must accept a share of the responsibility for solutions or risk looking like a do-nothing.

On Wednesday at a White House event for Black History Month, Trump heard from a concerned Ohio minister who wants to arrange a gang summit in Chicago. The minister's idea, while well-meaning, holds little promise because the city's gang structure is atomized. There appear to be no leaders empowered to negotiate a truce.

But Trump's response to the Rev. Darrell Scott contained seeds of a valuable promise: "If they're not going to solve the problem  we're going to solve the problem for them because we're going to have to do something about Chicago," the president said. "Because what's happening in Chicago should not be happening in this country."

On this, the president  unproven in leadership, often foolhardy with his words  is correct. What's happening in Chicago should not be happening in this country.

January was another terrible month: 51 homicides, according to the Chicago Police Department. That's one more than the 50 killings in the first month of 2016, the city's worst year for violence in two decades, with 762 homicides. Shootings, which not only injure people but terrify entire neighborhoods, are preposterously out of control. The Tribune counted 4,367 people shot last year, plus an additional 319 last month. In one 12-hour period Wednesday, eight people in Chicago were shot. Among them, a 15-year-old boy shot in the neck, a 23-year-old man struck in the abdomen, a 19-year-old man hit in the lower back, a 23-year-old woman grazed in the head.

Alyssa Pointer, Chicago Tribune A woman, who asked not to be identified, holds a sign in the Gold Coast neighborhood near the scene of a shooting involving multiple victims, including an off-duty police officer on Jan. 28, 2017, in Chicago. "I've been a direct target of [gun violence]," the woman, a resident of the Englewood community, said." Every time there is a shooting, I'm coming up with this sign until he does something." A woman, who asked not to be identified, holds a sign in the Gold Coast neighborhood near the scene of a shooting involving multiple victims, including an off-duty police officer on Jan. 28, 2017, in Chicago. "I've been a direct target of [gun violence]," the woman, a resident of the Englewood community, said." Every time there is a shooting, I'm coming up with this sign until he does something." (Alyssa Pointer, Chicago Tribune) (Alyssa Pointer, Chicago Tribune)

There is no easy explanation for the violence. The causes run deep in communities where hopelessness and guns proliferate. Many shootings are gang-related, but not all. The Police Department is absorbed by the task of containing crime, while struggling to fix its own dysfunctions. City Hall, other government officials, neighborhood leaders, all try. President Barack Obama tried, but didn't put Chicago violence at the top of his agenda. Trump, by contrast, is fascinated.

While his attention may pass, we see an opportunity. Politics is about attention and momentum. When the president of the United States calls out Chicago for its blood lust and threatens to swoop in if things don't improve, political pressure builds. Let Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the 50 aldermen, Chicago's state legislators, police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and others feel that pressure. Let them use it constructively to improve policing and stabilize neighborhoods.

We've criticized aldermen and legislators for doing too little, in their neighborhoods and in their lawmaking. That said, we trust that virtually all Chicagoans care deeply about trying to curtail the violence. But nothing has solved this crisis  and now the president is fixated. Let him escalate the pressure.

Let him feel it, too  and act. Some options:

Trump's Department of Justice can support CPD by intensifying federal law enforcement resources. Maybe that means more manpower, more imaginative approaches, more technology. DOJ also should negotiate the consent decree that wasn't concluded by the Obama administration. There's speculation Trump isn't interested in addressing excessive force and other problems that isolate cops and communities. But if he wants to see a stronger Police Department, he'll pursue the decree.

There are existing, effective social service programs in Chicago, ranging from gang conflict mediation to teen mentoring, that would benefit from a targeted infusion of federal dollars. George W. Knox, director of the National Gang Crime Research Center, wrote in a recent Tribune commentary that a "strategic approach" would include job skills programs and improved conditions in juvenile detention centers.

The broadest target is a focus on job creation in impoverished neighborhoods. Emanuel had a notable success bringing a Whole Foods to Englewood. Trump's bet the success of his presidency on creating jobs. Can he muscle business to make more investments in Chicago's South and West sides  and to do more hiring and training there?

There's symbiosis here if the Republican president and Democratic mayor can suppress their rivalry and work together. Lives are at stake, and so is the city's future. Both leaders want to end the scourge. Mayor Emanuel: Keep trying to secure resources from the White House. President Trump: You're riveted on Chicago violence. Good. Now take some ownership.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Board and on Facebook.

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Illinois has the most regressive school funding system in the nation. This means we provide students who need the most resources the least. The people of River Forest and of other affluent communities in Illinois are beneficiaries of this system. We pay high property taxes, and our schools are funded at very high levels. In many cases this higher spending corresponds with higher achievement.

So we may seem unlikely voices in the fight to change the way schools are funded in Illinois, but we don't see how anyone who understands how the current system works could think that it should be preserved. In the 2014-2015 school year, each District 90 River Forest student was funded at $15,320. Just to the west of us, students in District 89 Maywood were funded at $9,415. Students in school districts with low property wealth face challenges that our students never have to think about, including the lack of basic school supplies, larger class sizes, and outdated textbooks. The impacts of these disparities are also reflected in teacher salaries, years of experience, and retention of the best teachers. Students in these school districts need at least the same resources as our privileged students, if not more.

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This is a problem that our legislators in Springfield have not yet shown the courage to tackle, maybe because they don't want to face the wrath of powerful, affluent and active constituents like those in the tony Chicago suburbs. So several residents of River Forest and I have sent letters to our representatives in Springfield expressing our support for a change to the funding formula.

Although our children may benefit from the current system, we have to be true to our values of equity and fairness, values we are trying to instill in our children. We urge our elected officials to support school funding reform in any "grand bargain" or other agreement in Springfield. Stand up for the children languishing in schools with few resources and underpaid teachers. Our kids will be fine.

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 Allison Jack, River Forest
President Donald Trump holds an African-American History Month listening session attended by nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Ben Carson and other officials in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Feb. 1, 2017, in Washington, D.C. (Michael Reynolds, Getty Images)

Here's a tip, if you're going to speak at a Black History Month event: It helps to know a little black history.

President Donald Trump overlooked that advice as he delivered a rambling Black History Month address Wednesday before engaging in a "listening session" with African-American professionals at the White House.

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It didn't take long for the real estate developer and former star of "The Apprentice" to start talking about what seems to be his favorite topic, himself.

First, he repeated a worn-out assertion that he keeps making at speaking events that "the media" deliberately reported falsely that he had removed a bust of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office. In fact, the Time magazine reporter who was providing pool reports that day realized his mistake within minutes and sent out more than a dozen tweets correcting the mistake and apologizing. White House press secretary Sean Spicer tweeted back, "Apology accepted."

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Still, Trump, the man who questioned President Barack Obama's birth certificate for five years, talks about the episode as if the reporter misreported on purpose. Why let anything as inconvenient as a lack of evidence impede his "running war" on the media?

Yet Trump showed less confidence as he dropped names of important African-Americans in history, including one particularly notable orator, activist, journalist and abolitionist.

"Frederick Douglass," he said, "is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job, that is being recognized more and more, I notice."

Yes, and just about everyone watching him on TV could hear Trump's use of the present tense. Did Trump think that Douglass, who died in 1895, is still alive?

In fairness, Paris Dennard, a black Republican CNN commentator who attended the meeting, defended Trump, saying his remark was actually referring to a Douglass exhibit in the new National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. But even if that was his intent, Trump's odd sentence structure leaves me asking, as Dorothy Parker is said to have responded to news of President Calvin Coolidge's death, how can they tell?

Spicer seemed to be caught completely off-guard by requests at a later news conference to clarify Trump's statement. But he forged ahead, sounding as confident as a man who actually knew what he was talking about, although not quite.

"I think he wants to highlight the contributions that he has made," Spicer said. "And I think through a lot of the actions and statements that he's going to make, I think the contributions of Frederick Douglass will become more and more."

And more. Yes, as Spicer tried to explain his boss's remarks, he too sounded as though he thought Douglass might still be around.

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Where, I wondered, has Douglass been hiding for 122 years? In some warehouse, perhaps, with the millions of ballots that Trump insists were illegally cast for Hillary Clinton?

As if that were not enough mixed messages for one day, Vice President Mike Pence posted a tweet in which he too recognized the beginning of Black History Month  by honoring a white man:

"As #BlackHistoryMonth begins, we remember when Pres. Lincoln submitted the 13th Amendment, ending slavery, to the states #NationalFreedomDay"

I'm certain that Pence meant well. I love Lincoln for many reasons, not the least of which is the freeing of my ancestors.

Still, Pence could have avoided this dust-up if he had taken the time to find a black American worth honoring, as the name of Black History Month suggests.

For example, do you know who happened to be one of the most staunch, eloquent and influential voices among those who urged Lincoln to free the slaves? Frederick Douglass.

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And, like most black voters in those days, he was a Republican. "I recognize the Republican Party," he wrote in 1888, "as the sheet anchor of the colored man's political hopes and the ark of his safety." Those were the days.

So much has changed since then that the two parties have switched places on race, especially since the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, and the divide has only deepened in recent years.

Against that historical backdrop, Trump has promised to be a president for all the people. Great. But as an old saying goes, we need to know where we have been before we can figure out where we're going.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

cpage@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @cptime

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Why Democrats should obstruct Neil Gorsuch's confirmation

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Oh, Democrats, you poor, dear Democrats:

Last March, your then-President Barack Obama tried appeasing the Republican majorities in Congress by nominating Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to fill the U.S. Supreme Court seat vacated when Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February.

Garland was a centrist pick, a politically moderate white guy who, at 63, was the oldest judge on Obamas reported short list for the lifetime appointment on the nine-member panel. The choice was tailored to appeal to Republicans in the Senate majority, many of whom had already declared that Scalias seat should remain open so that the winner of Novembers presidential election could fill it.

In particular, Obama was hoping to win the support of such institutionally minded Republican senators as Orrin Hatch of Utah, who had previously said Garland would be a consensus nominee who would unquestionably be confirmed to the high court.

The choice was not tailored to appeal to the Democratic base, which was more energized by the idea of such prospective justices as U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch or California Attorney General Kamala Harris, either of whom would have been the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court, or such known civil rights warriors as federal judges Robert Wilkins or Jane Kelly.

And how did that work out for you?

The Republican senators held firm. Even when their presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was well behind in the polls and it looked as though Democrat Hillary Clinton was going to be able to name Scalias replacement, the GOP refused even to give Garland a hearing on Capitol Hill.

And Democratic voters largely shrugged it off. Perhaps because they werent all that enthusiastic about Garland. Perhaps because they thought it didnt really matter since Clinton was sure to beat Trump. Or perhaps because they arent nearly as motivated as Republican voters are by concerns over the ideological composition of the Court.

The depths of the GOP obstructionism was revealed just before the election when Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Ted Cruz of Texas and Richard Burr of North Carolina, assuming Clinton would win the presidency, preemptively floated the idea that their party should put a brick on any nominee she put forward.

Cruz argued that theres a historical precedent for fewer than nine justices on the Supreme Court. Burr said that, if Clinton is elected, I am going to do everything I can do to make sure, four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court.

Other senators, such as Floridas Marco Rubio, indicated theyd block any Clinton nominee who didnt share their highly conservative view of the Constitution.

And how did this tactic work out?

Where has this attempted appeasement, this reach across the aisle, left you?

In the wilderness.

Populist carnival barker Trump pulled off the upset, in part because your voters werent particularly outraged or concerned by the shafting of Merrick Garland, and in part because socially conservative voters held their noses and voted for Trump because they believed hed appoint strongly conservative judges to the Supreme Court.

Now youre looking at Trumps appointee, Neil Gorsuch, a 49-year-old federal judge whom some analysts believe will be even further to the right than Scalia was.

The Republicans went low when they obstructed the Garland nomination. Now they, along with some in your party are urging Democrats to go high  to give Gorsuch a fair and open-minded hearing and a confirmation vote based on his qualifications, and to thereby give Trump the deference to which the president is due.

The conciliatory caucus is urging Democrats not to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination, a move that would require at least eight Democrats or independents to agree to give him an up-or-down vote on the floor. Turn the other cheek! Take the high road!

And how do you think that tactic is going to work out?

Do you think that rolling over and showing your belly to President Trump will prompt him or the Republican majorities to compromise with you? To gratefully moderate their agenda in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation?

Please.

That high road leads only to the edge of a cliff.

The GOP will, quite rightly, see your capitulation as weakness and naivete of the sort that prompted Obama to blink first in some of his confrontations with them.

And your base  those who remain infuriated by the theft of the seat that rightfully belongs to Garland  will be demoralized.

The feckless hand wringers who are now pleading for us all to get along are fretting that if you try to filibuster the Gorsuch nomination, the Republican leadership in the Senate will go nuclear and get rid of the long-standing 60-vote requirement for a Supreme Court appointment thats meant to be a moderating force.

They probably will. But if their exercises in power politics have taught you anything, its that youre not going to stop them from getting rid of the filibuster whenever it suits them. So you might as well start fighting like hell today, when Trumps popularity is low and his leadership skills are in serious doubt.

Obstruct Gorsuch, not on the merits but on principle. You may not be able to even the score, but you will be able to show the public that the days of Democratic obsequiousness are over.

Dont ask him any questions at his hearing. This will dramatize the point youre trying to make and recall the GOPs failure to give Garland a hearing in which he would have been asked questions. And do provide to the White House a list of moderate Republican judges whom you consider acceptable replacements for Gorsuch.

Theyll ignore it. But even if, as expected, you lose this round, at least youll have your self-respect back.

Roger over and out

Anyone who wont miss the print punditry of Roger Simon should be beaten with sticks.

Simon, a witty and insightful columnist who worked for the Sun-Times and Tribune before ending up at Politico, published a farewell to readers Wednesday and said hell be traveling with his wife in retirement.

One of the hallmarks of his occasional Simon says ... columns of one-line observations were decrees that certain people who violated his sense of right and wrong should be beaten with sticks.

For example, channeling Simon in tribute:

Those who use the freighted word regulations to apply to all government rules that define how business and industries operate should be beaten with sticks.

Many dreaded, reviled regulations would be better described as protections  for the environment, for the safety of consumers.
Officials with Township High School District 214 in Arlington Heights have appointed a district principal to an administrative position that supports the district's burgeoning number of students who are English language learners.

Angela Sisi, who currently serves as principal at Wheeling High School, was appointed to the position of director of language development, effective July 1, 2017, officials said.

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"It's going to be very hard to leave the Wheeling High School staff, students and parents, but the opportunity to work with English language learners across the district is really exciting to me," Sisi said on Wednesday. "The fact that these students know a second language, whether it's Spanish or Russian, is an amazing skill, and they need to embrace it."

ELL students are learning English as well as their native language. In the role, Sisi will work with the district's English language learning staff and parents to ensure the ELL program aligns with the ideal practices and results in higher levels of student achievement, while maintaining compliance with state and federal regulations, officials said.

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Sisi will also head up the district's newcomer center, a personalized learning program at the Forest View Educational Center that supports newly immigrated students who have limited English-language skills.

In addition, officials said Sisi will also oversee specialized summer school programs and assist with other district-wide initiatives.

Sisi's current salary as Wheeling's principal is $161,139 and will remain the same with the new position, according to the district.

A graduate of Buffalo Grove High School, Sisi has an undergraduate teaching degree in Spanish and French from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a master's degree in curriculum and instruction from Northern Illinois University.

Sisi began her teaching career at Elk Grove High School, then went on to hold a variety of positions at Stevenson High School, where she taught Spanish, served as dean of students, interim assistant principal and then director of student services.

She returned to District 214 in 2013 when she was hired as principal of Wheeling High School, officials said.

"When I thought about re-imagining this role, I reflected on Angela's leadership and experience in both world languages and student services and I knew she would be the perfect person for this position," District 214 Supt. David Schuler said in a statement this week.

The district's current Director of English Language Learners, Norm Kane, will now lead the Young Adult Program, replacing the current program leader who is retiring at the end of the 2017-2018 school year.

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District 214 will be conducting a national search during the month of February to identify Sisi's successor, officials said.

kcullotta@tribpub.com

Twitter @kcullotta
A group of Arlington Heights residents are demanding that a local dentist, Joe Favia, pictured here, withdraw his bid for a seat on the village's board of trustees, after learning the candidate had posted a Facebook meme about the recent women's march that they said was offensive. (Courtesy of Joe Favia / Handout)

Some Arlington Heights residents are demanding a local dentist withdraw his bid for a seat on the village's board of trustees after learning the candidate posted a Facebook meme they say is offensive to women.

It's estimated that millions marched on Jan. 21 in Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York and Los Angeles, among other locations, in protest of statements made by President Donald Trump and to support other causes from LGBT rights to immigration reform.

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Trustee candidate Joe Favia posted a meme on a relative's Facebook page that shows participants in marches, and states, "In one day, Trump got more fat women out walking than Michelle Obama did in 8 years."

As a result, a group of residents say they plan to be at the Monday night Village Board meeting, demanding that Favia withdraw his candidacy from the April 4 election. Favia is running unopposed.

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"When I saw the post, I thought to myself, 'This is someone who is going to be a new trustee representing women, who are 50 percent of Arlington Heights?'" said Lauree Harp, one of the residents seeking Favia's withdrawal from the race.

"It's junior high stuff, and though he says he's sorry, it's too late, and it's disrespectful," Harp said. "The fact that he posted the meme at all shows me he will not be able to be objective, and I just don't trust his judgment."

Favia, 50, said Friday that while he can understand why some were upset, he said "there was no malice intended at all."

He also noted that it was not posted to his page.

"I did not post it on my Facebook page, but posted it on my brother's account, and I didn't mean any harm by it," said Favia, a former president of the village's Chamber of Commerce, and a 2013 Heart of Gold winner for his volunteer service in the community.

"It's not in my character to be like that, and I apologize if I offended anyone," Favia added.

Resident Dave DiVito, a friend and neighbor of Favia's, said that posting the Facebook meme was "a lapse in judgment," but one he believes does not reflect Favia's character.

"He is an extremely dedicated resident to this community, and for someone to use this single instance and try to say it defines him is completely unjust," DiVito said. He said Favia is known for his sense of humor and cheerful demeanor.

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"Joe is not a career politician, but a human being who made a mistake," DiVito said.

But resident Richard Baldino said he was so troubled after learning about the post that he decided to become a write-in candidate so that Favia would have some competition in the race. Baldino, one of two write-in candidates, said he found himself scrambling to submit the required paperwork to the Cook County Clerk's office before the deadline.

It's junior high stuff, and though he says he's sorry, it's too late, and it's disrespectful.  Lauree Harp

According to village clerk Rebecca Hume, Baldino and resident Mark Walker are both registered with the county as write-in trustee candidates for the April 4 election.

Three incumbent trustee candidates, Thomas Glasgow, Bert Rosenberg and Jim Tinaglia, also are running for re-election, with Trustee Joe Farwell opting not to run again.

"I had not really considered running in the past, but after what happened, I wanted to offer my neighbors a choice," said Baldino, an officer on the board of the First United Methodist Church in Arlington Heights. Baldino's wife, Mary Kay Baldino, is serving as his campaign manager.

"I have real concerns about the political climate today, and the fact that politicians feel like they can say whatever they want, even if it shows a real lack of respect to people," Baldino said.

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Last month, Sen. Jack E. Sandlin, R-Indiana, posted the same Women's March meme that Favia used, but took down the message after it sparked a strong backlash from critics on social media.

Joe (Favia) is not a career politician, but a human being who made a mistake.  Dave DiVito

Arlington Heights Mayor Thomas Hayes, who also is running for re-election unopposed, said Friday that he was disheartened after learning of the meme posted by Favia.

Hayes said he plans to address the incident in a statement he will deliver before Monday night's Village Board meeting.

"I'm obviously very troubled and upset, and I found the post inappropriate and offensive," Hayes said. "But that being said, we all make mistakes, and if he does become a trustee, he has a lot to learn.

"As I will say in my statement on Monday," Hayes said, "I'm trying very hard to keep politics out of the Arlington Heights Village Board."

kcullotta@tribpub.com

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East Aurora School District 131 officials expressed support for recent city and police statements on President Donald Trump's immigration and refugee restrictions.

In a statement posted Wednesday to the district website, officials highlighted the city and police responses to a series of executive orders on immigration and refugees, saying residents might have concerns about how they could be affected.

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"District 131 applauds the city of Aurora's commitment to its residents, many of whom are students and families we serve each day," they said.

Mayor Robert O'Connor told the Beacon-News in late January the city, after federal and judicial actions, was not making plans to change any policies or protocols, and officials were waiting for further developments and clarification on what the executive orders mean for local municipalities.

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"The city of Aurora stands in support of families in our community," he said in an emailed statement. "The very fabric of Aurora is interwoven with the stories of immigrants of the past and present."

Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman said, also in late January, that police contact federal immigration enforcement agencies when they arrest a violent offender who is undocumented, and do not otherwise inquire about a person's immigration status.

"We have made a great investment in the human beings that live in our community and have worked diligently to earn their trust as (a) police department that acts with legitimacy and fundamental fairness," she said in an email. "My priority is that the law-abiding citizens (including undocumented) feel as though they can call the police to ask for assistance or to report a crime."

Thursday, East Aurora spokesman Tom Jackson reiterated that the district applauds the statements and said officials thought it was appropriate to share them with the school community.

District officials want students to feel "safe and protected at school," he said. He could not estimate how many students could be affected by the recent executive orders.

"I think it's clear that our city has a strong relationship with our residents and wants families to feel at ease," he said. "And we view that as their remarks are showing care and concern for the very same students we educate each day."

sfreishtat@tribpub.com

Twitter @srfreish
This month, Lee University will present a series of lectures, discussions, and documentary presentations on the journey refugees take from their home country to the United States. Lee professors Drs. Carolyn and Murl Dirksen will head up the series.

Unsheltered was envisioned by Erin Williamson, Lee alumna, who spent time in Egypt with refugees. In a way, we hope to take students on a journey from conflict to host countries to resettlement without ever needing to leave campus, said Ms. Williamson. Each speaker has been selected to introduce a different and significant aspect of the modern global refugee crisis, while also showing the impact of refugees in our local Tennessee communities.

Chelsea Markham Lyle, a representative for Catholic Charities, will kick off the series on Tuesday, talking about the journey refugees take from their homes to resettlement in the United States. Lee religion professor Dr. Michael Fuller will offer a biblical framework for a Christians response to refugees, as well.

On Thursday, Feb. 9, the documentary Exodus will be shown, which includes first-person stories of refugees and migrants as they flee war and persecution. The film will be followed with a discussion panel of Lee professors including Dr. Ana Alves, Dr. Rolando Cuellar, and Dr. Murl Dirksen.

The Student Leadership Council social justice committee will provide food and drinks after the screening. SLC and the Cultural Diversity Committee are helping sponsor the series.

On Thursday, Feb. 16, Lee students and alumni Emily Martin, Myka Retro Smith, and Matthew and Kristin Turvin will discuss their work in refugee camps in Germany and Austria. Augustine Bocco, Lee alum and current French professor at Tennessee Wesleyan, will share his experience as a refugee.

Bassam Issa, president of the the Islamic Center of Greater Chattanooga, will discuss the experiences of being Muslim in Tennessee and the relationship between Islam and Christianity in Tennessee communities on Tuesday, Feb. 21. Current Lee student Alwatheq Zboun will offer personal insights into his experience as a refugee.

On Thursday, Feb. 23, Bridge Refugee Services of Chattanooga will present a session including refugee clients who have made East Tennessee their homes and now run independent organizations designed to help refugees adjust culturally to the Chattanooga area. Lee students will also be informed about local volunteer opportunities.

We started planning this series last semester, and it has become increasingly timely, said Dr. Carolyn Dirksen. Our goal is to provide information for our students and the Cleveland community about the plight of the growing number of refugees in the world and the processes they go through for resettlement.

The community is invited to enjoy this free, reflective experience and join the discussion.

All events will take place at 7 p.m. in the Paul & Carmelita Walker Lecture Hall in the Science and Math Complex.

For more information about the series, contact Dr. Carolyn Dirksen at cdirksen@leeuniversity.edu.
A worker died Friday inside the bell tower at Geneva Commons shopping center in Geneva. (Linda Girardi / The Beacon-News)

Authorities say a construction worker found dead inside a 35-foot-tall bell tower at the Geneva Commons shopping center in Geneva Friday was likely crushed to death.

"He was working in an aerial lift. We believe he was crushed between the aerial lift and part of the tower," said Scott Allen, spokesman for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. "We are still trying to determine what happened. We do believe he was crushed."

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Allen said they have begun an investigation with the company on the scene, Identity Services.

"We have interviewed witnesses, workers and the employer to determine what may have caused this tragic accident," Allen said.

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Geneva first-responders were dispatched shortly before noon Friday on a report of an unresponsive person inside the tower.

The tower has been under renovation, and a contractor's bucket truck was being used to lift two workers inside the upper section of the structure. A third worker was at the base of the tower.

Geneva police Chief Eric Passarelli on the scene said the investigation was in its early stages. He said they do not believe the cause of death was suspicious in nature.

"Our hearts go out to the family," the police chief said.

All of the stores at Geneva Commons remained open. However, Geneva policed cordoned off the central section of the mall around the bell tower.

Geneva fire Chief Michael Antenore said the technical rescue team was called to the scene. The rescue team raised a ladder to reach the victim and then carried a gurney to the top of the tower to bring the body down. It was about three hours before the body was lowered to the ground level.

The Kane County coroner's office on the scene assisted the family in identifying the body. OSHA was on the scene as well.

Antenore said the man who died was approximately 30 to 35 years old.

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Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
For the second year in a row, most major crimes decreased in the village of Oswego, according to information released by the Oswego Police Department.

In a news release sent by department spokeswoman Cathy Nevara, Police Chief Jeff Burgner reported that they'd seen a 19 percent reduction in the overall crime rate based on "part 1 crimes," a state category including murder, sex crimes, robbery, aggravated battery and assault, burglary, theft, vehicle theft and arson.

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In 2016, 414 such crimes were reported in Oswego, down from 508 in 2015, according to the police department. Crime decreased in three of the seven "part 1" categories, but increased in four, according to the department's figures.

No murders were reported either year. Down were sex crimes, reduced from 14 to eight; burglaries, from 34 to 27; and thefts, from 438 to 250. Up were robberies, which increased from three to five; aggravated batteries and assaults, which increased from 10 to 12; vehicle theft, from eight to nine; and arsons, from one to three, according to the department.

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Most part 1 crimes have been on the decline in the past few years, with 2016 at the third-lowest reported number since 2004 in Oswego, according to the news release.

Other offenses  "part 2 crimes"  experienced an overall decrease by 25 percent in 2016 compared with the previous year, police said.

Weapon offenses, domestic batteries, and certain alcohol- and drug-related offenses, such as possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia, driving under the influence and illegal alcohol possession or consumption had the most marked declines, police said.

"These decreases illustrate the success of the dedication and partnerships that exist in Oswego, most notably between the police department and the citizens and businesses in the community that work together toward the goal of enhancing the quality of life in the village," police said in the news release.

hleone@tribpub.com

Twitter @hannahmleone
Refugee mission thwarted

I'm deeply saddened and frustrated by President Trump's decision to block refugee resettlement. I've met many refugees who have been resettled by World Relief DuPage/Aurora, and they have enriched my life.

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I've worked with dozens of local churches for whom welcoming refugees has been a transformative ministry for their congregations. The president's decision has thwarted these churches' ability to live out our faith by obeying the biblical call to welcome these vulnerable refugees.

So much of the fear of refugees is stoked by "alternative facts"  what we used to call lies. Here are some realities:

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The plurality of refugees who came to the U.S. last year came from the Democratic Republic of Congo, almost all of them Christians

While Syrian asylum-seekers in Europe may be, on average, young men, the U.S. has a very different situation, and more than 70 percent of the carefully vetted refugees from Syria have been women or children under 14.

Since the Refugee Act was signed in 1980, about 3 million refugees have entered the U.S. Not a single one of them has ever taken an American life in a terrorist attack.

Facts are our friends. We should welcome refugees.

Matthew Soerens, Aurora

Endorses Chapa LaVia

I support Linda Chapa LaVia for mayor of Aurora.

I've known her for many years and have admired her work representing the Aurora region. Linda will be an outstanding advocate and powerful voice for the people of Aurora. I urge the voters of Aurora to join me in supporting Linda by voting for her in the Feb. 28 primary election.

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Suzanne Deuchler, retired state representative, Aurora

Saville earns endorsement

Aurora has, and has had, fine leaders. One of those is 6th Ward Ald. Mike Saville, who is a candidate for mayor. With over 30 years of dedicated service and experience in local government, Saville has been an integral part of this city's success.

With his experience on the Planning Commission, projects such as the River Walk and Rivers Edge Park have added beautification to our downtown area. An advocate of green spaces, he has seen five new parks added to his ward in recent years for Aurorans to enjoy.

Fiscal responsibility is a hallmark of his tenure, having balanced budgets for more than 30 consecutive years. He has demonstrated leadership in economic development, desiring to promote business interests and increasing the tax base.

He has co-sponsored the Crime Free Housing ordinance for safer neighborhoods. A proponent of historic preservation, Saville strives to meet a balance between preserving and upgrading older areas while supporting new economic expansion.

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What should matter to a city electing a new mayor? Saville answers that question with his significant experience, leadership and dedicated service, and a willingness to reach out to others to accomplish expanding horizons for Aurora.

SK Nuernberg, Aurora

Where's Peter Roskam?

Rep. Peter Roskam, you haven't met me, yet, but not for my lack of trying. I am one of your constituents from the 6th Congressional District. I feel like I know you already because of how many times you've called me. No one really calls my landline anymore, except for you. And you call a lot. In fact, every time the landline rings, I just assume it's you. Even my 86-year-old father knows to call my cellphone.

My only complaint with these calls is that they're as far as it ever goes: I only hear from your robocalls but never you, live. So you can imagine how excited I am to hear that the League of Women Voters has invited you to a constituents' meeting being held in your honor on Feb. 23, right here in your hometown of Glen Ellyn. Finally! At last! Your constituents will get to see you in the flesh and hear your non-robocall voice.

You don't have to be scared of us. We just want to talk. Calmly. Rationally. This won't be a rally, like your friend Donald Trump so enjoys. There will be no chanting, no mean-spirited signs, no bullying. If you don't show up for this meeting, some people (I'm not saying me, personally) might think this type of avoidance behavior is rather  squirrelly. You don't want to be known as Squirrelly Roskam. People can be so mean with their nicknames. Like "Crooked Hillary." Or "Poodle Ryan," which is what everyone (OK, just me) is calling Paul Ryan since he's such a lap dog to Donald Trump and the NRA. And now, #PoodleRyan is everywhere (OK, just my Twitter feed so far, but I think we can make it happen). You don't want #SquirrellyRoskam to start trending.

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I'm simply looking out for your best interests here. All you have to do is show up, in person, and talk to us.

Lynn LaPlante Allaway, Glen Ellyn

Something positive in protests

All around me I hear versions of "the sky is falling, the sky is falling." As an indubitable optimist, I find it just the opposite. Actually, the sky is opening up.

Donald Trump has been a boon to democracy, nowhere more evident than the Jan. 21 Women's March. What began as a demonstration of the feminist movement became a dramatic statement of support for not only feminism, but also minorities and social justice. Where did all these people come from? People from all over the world were committed to a public and dramatic display of the meaning of democracy.

We saw that again on the travel ban signed Jan. 26. We saw a worldwide statement of a demand for social justice, democracy and the promise of freedom from all those who sought the message of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Only Native Americans can claim to be anything less than an offspring of a refugee. Only the offspring of a refugee can respond so dramatically and publicly to this new administration. My great-great-grandmother fled Czarist Russia, and my great-great-grandfather fled England because of religious persecution.

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From the ashes of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan, real freedom has been found. Each of us must make our own statement. I am proud to be one more voice demanding justice. I am proud to be an American committed to democracy. Donald Trump has a battle he cannot win. I am not only an optimist; I am a student of history. In our country, democracy has always prevailed.

Dr. Olive Poliks, Aurora

Guzman has 'bold vision'

Aurora has a clear choice on Feb. 28. A lifelong resident, I can clearly see the positive changes that have taken place in our city over the last decade  all while our state officials created $150 billion of debt, watched residents flee the state, and worked Illinois into the bottom of every list in education and business friendliness.

As president of Kelmscott Communications in Aurora, I understand that growing a small business is about seizing opportunities. That is why I've joined countless other business leaders in supporting Rick Guzman for mayor. Not only does he have a proven track record of bringing millions of dollars in private business investment to our community, he is the only candidate to clearly articulate a bold vision and tangible plan to increase investment in Aurora in the years to come.

Over the last three years, business investment in Aurora has been at an all-time high. And yet there remains so much untapped potential in our city. Guzman has spent his entire career bringing people together to tackle our toughest challenges. He has worked to empower community groups to combat gang violence. He has attracted private development partners to preserve and redevelop Aurora's decaying historic buildings. His initiative to fight poverty by creating a path to homeownership for the working poor was recognized in 2016 as one of the "most innovative nonprofits" across the globe.

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Aurora is at a crossroads, and we cannot afford to stand still. We need to elect a proven leader who can seize the opportunities in front of us. There is no doubt in my mind Rick Guzman is the guy with the vision, plan and commitment to bring Aurora together, to strengthen business and grow our city.

Scott Voris, past chair, Aurora Chamber of Commerce

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Submit letters to the editor via email to suburbanletters@tribpub.com. Please include your name and town of residence for publication. Please include phone number and email address for confirmation. Letters should be no more than 250 words.
The for sale sign no longer is necessary, as a new restaurant is planned for 34 S. Prospect Ave. (Chuck Fieldman / Pioneer Press)

Despite being only 28 years old, Ahmed Zayed is bringing considerable restaurant experience with him for the Brama La Pizza restaurant he plans to open in downtown Clarendon Hills.

Zayed said he has worked in his uncle's pizza restaurant for the past 12 years, and he now plans to join forces with his nephew, Angelo Zayed, to bring life back to space previously occupied by Mario's Pizza and Pasta and Hills Cafe & Pizza at 34 S. Prospect Ave. Mario's closed July 31, 2016.

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"I know the last two places didn't do very well in there, but we have a plan and are very determined to make it work," said Zayed, who shared that much of his cooking knowledge has come from his Italian mother.

"We have worked for my uncle for many years and always wanted our own place, so this is very exciting for us," he said.

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Zayed said he chose the vacant space at the northwest corner of Prospect and Park avenues after also looking elsewhere in Clarendon Hills and in Hinsdale.

"I have friends in Westmont and they always complain there is no good pizza in the area," Zayed said. "I like this neighborhood; you get treated like family here, and there are three schools within a quarter-mile."

Zayed said one of the specials he plans to offer likely would be especially appealing to kids.

"We're going have big slices, a quarter of an 18-20 inch pizza and give a free drink with free refills for $5," he said. "The slices will be big enough for two kids to share if they want."

Along with the pizza slices, Zayed said the menu will include whole pizzas, both thin crust and stuffed, along with pasta, appetizers and Italian sandwiches, such as Italian beef and sausage.

Planning to open at 10 a.m., Zayed also plans to serve some breakfast sandwiches. He has not yet decided how late he will keep Brama La Pizza open each day.

"We're going to remodel and have an open kitchen and a retro, '60s and '70s look inside," he said.

Zayed said he plans to offer seasonal outdoor seating for dine-in customers along with carryout, delivery and catering. He plans to open in April or May.

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"We are hoping in the five or six years to stay open 24 hours, or at least until 3 a.m.," he said.

Zayed said he doesn't believe being located just a few doors down from Domino's Pizza will create any problems.

"Domino's is totally different than us," he said. "We believe we can make this a destination for people in Clarendon Hills and other towns in the area. The key is that you have to have good food and good service. And we plan to offer both."

cfieldman@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @chuckwriting
A three-year investigation into police misconduct in the southwest suburb of Willow Springs has led to several officers leaving the force, but critics argue it's nothing more than smoke and mirrors to distract voters in the upcoming village election from the administration's mismanagement of federal forfeiture funds.

Mayor Alan Nowaczyk said five officers  or about one-third of the mostly part-time 16-member force  either resigned, retired or were fired for allegations that include lying under oath or falsifying police records. The internal investigation has cost the village more than $100,000 so far, and officials said it is ongoing as they continue to look into possible misuse of taxpayer money.

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"It has been difficult  and painstakingly slow  to build solid cases, but the cost of inaction, of turning a blind eye to what's been done, is far greater," Nowaczyk said in a statement at a recent news conference.

Willow Springs officials have publicly named only one of the two terminated officers. Michael Giorgetti, a 24-year police officer, confirmed he was fired in fall 2014, nearly 19 months after he was involved in a traffic accident in Wisconsin while his superiors alleged he was working a side job unrelated to his official duties. Giorgetti was accused of driving a village-owned vehicle while moonlighting for a former Willow Springs contractor and later, when questioned, lying about what he was doing in Wisconsin.

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The investigation that began with Giorgetti morphed into something bigger, village officials said, and other Willow Springs officers were questioned about their truthfulness related to their duties. Among the possible infractions village officials said they still are investigating is whether any members of the police force worked for a long-defunct private security firm while on the job patrolling the village.

Former Willow Springs police Chief John Carpino, who is challenging Nowaczyk in the April election for village president, said he ran the security firm for about five years until 2007. He served as police chief in the village from late 2002 to 2004, then went on to serve as police chief and village manager in other Chicago suburbs before retiring last year. Four chiefs have followed him in the last 12 years in the Willow Springs Police Department.

Giorgetti told the Tribune he did nothing wrong. Rather, he said village officials fired him in retaliation because he reported the mismanagement of federal forfeiture funds  which included money spent to help buy a rarely used $300,000 police boat.

In a special assignment, Giorgetti worked undercover for a decade for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In exchange for dedicating an officer to the program, Willow Springs was able to get a local cut of cash and other assets Giorgetti confiscated as part of a federal "equitable sharing" program. Giorgetti's duties included working on a federal money-laundering team. A federal audit released in March showed just how lucrative the partnership was for Willow Springs. The Police Department had $1.4 million on hand from the program as of May 2012, according to federal officials. The village took in nearly an additional $590,000 over the next three years and spent nearly $967,000, the 40-page audit showed.

Wyn Hornbuckle, a U.S. Department of Justice spokesman, said Willow Springs was directed to return approximately $1 million to the asset forfeiture program and has been "suspended" from further involvement. The action was taken, he said, because of "continuing concerns with the law enforcement agency," as well as the "egregious" findings of the Justice Department's inspector general audit.

According to the audit, which began in 2014, the village failed to follow the program rules and lacked internal controls and formal policies and training to protect against abuse. For example, the report expressed concerns about the purchase of more than one dozen vehicles that were only minimally used, including two Harley-Davidson motorcycles for nearly $70,000 that were equipped with high-end accessories like heated handgrips and chrome upgrades. The motorcycles had less than 1,500 miles of combined use in almost two years, the audit found.

Giorgetti said he reported misuse of the federal dollars to the Cook County sheriff's office in 2013, before he was fired but after the traffic accident. According to a copy of the sheriff's investigative report, Giorgetti accused village officials of allowing the department's 26-foot 2013 Firehawk boat to be used improperly for purposes unrelated to law enforcement. The boat was intended for emergencies at businesses along the waterways that run through the small village of about 5,000 residents.

"The bottom line is they were using federally forfeited property improperly, and when I (reported it), they made false accusations about me and terminated me," Giorgetti said. "It's all for political publicity. They're just bringing this stuff up because it's an election year."

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Nowaczyk is seeking his fourth term as mayor in the April 4 election. He held a news conference about the internal investigation late last month. The mayor denied the announcement is rooted in politics. Rather, he said residents began asking questions about all the personnel changes in the Police Department and "they deserved answers."

In the mayor's news release, he raised questions about Carpino's former security firm, and said several local police officers, including Giorgetti, are believed to have worked for him. Carpino said he employed many skilled part-time police officers but he vehemently denied any of them worked for his security business while also on the clock in Willow Springs.

He noted the business closed a decade ago.

"They're just trying to cast aspersions on my name because of the election," Carpino said. "It's called dirty politics."

Giorgetti filed a federal lawsuit in September 2015 against the village, claiming wrongful termination. He voluntarily dropped the suit in June after village attorneys filed a subpoena to get records from Carpino's now-defunct security firm, according to court records. The mayor said he stands by Giorgetti's dismissal and the village's ongoing Police Department investigation. He noted the arbitrator who presided over Giorgetti's hearing to keep his job found that the officer lied under oath.

The village's internal turmoil also led to fallout with the Cook County sheriff's office. Giorgetti said he blew the whistle to the sheriff in 2013. A report within the sheriff's inspector general unit  which investigates allegations of community corruption  found fault with Willow Springs' handling of Giorgetti's dismissal and recommended the mayor, village administrator and a former official be charged with a misdemeanor for allegedly violating the state whistleblower act.

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The Cook County state's attorney's office declined to prosecute, and village officials questioned the objectivity of the sheriff's investigation because the lead investigator served as a part-time Willow Springs police officer several years ago and was a partner in Carpino's firm. The former sheriff's investigator, Luke Hartigan, also a retired Illinois Department of Corrections chief of staff, did not return a phone call seeking comment, but sheriff's officials said Hartigan's resignation had nothing to do with Willow Springs and they described their investigation as "extensive" and "unbiased."

In a written response to several Tribune questions, Village Administrator William Murray said Willow Springs hired a law firm, Walsh, Fewkes and Sterba of Palos Heights, to conduct the investigation of its police force. The probe is being led by a former appeals court judge, David Sterba, and is ongoing, Murray said.

The village administrator declined to immediately provide specifics about the allegations that led to the other officers' departures but, regarding the federal audit alleging widespread mismanagement of the forfeiture money, Murray said it is Giorgetti who is to blame because it was his job to oversee the program.

"The forfeiture account is under the control and direction of the Police Department," Murray said. "The police determine how the money is used, not the village officials. It is not taxpayer money. It is money brought in by officers assigned to a unit of several DEA agents."

Giorgetti, a former police sergeant, noted it was above his paygrade to approve the purchases or sign checks. He insists he is the victim.

"I'm a police officer who spoke out about wrongdoing at the Police Department, and they came after me," he said. "You try to be an honest cop, and they want to ruin your life and destroy you."

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cmgutowski@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @christygutowsk1
La-Z-Boy Incorporated officials announced today that the upholstery furniture manufacturer and marketer will expand in Rhea County. La-Z-Boy, Rhea Countys largest employer, will invest approximately $26 million over three years and create 115 new jobs in Dayton.

La-Z-Boy has been a part of the Rhea County community for more than 40 years and we appreciate its commitment to Tennessee and for creating more than 100 new jobs in Rhea County, Governor Bill Haslam said.

I want to thank La-Z-Boy for choosing to expand operations in Rhea County, Ted Townsend, chief operating officer of TNECD, said. There are more than 333,000 Tennesseans employed in manufacturing and it means a great deal that a company with such a long history in our state will continue to strengthen our Team Tennessee workforce and this sector.

La-Z-Boy Incorporated is a manufacturer, marketer and retailer of upholstery products. The company has been located in Dayton since 1973. La-Z-Boys Dayton plant has approximately 1,400 employees, which makes it the largest employer in Rhea County. In 2012, Industry Week Magazine named the Dayton facility one of the 10 best plants in North America.

We have a long history in the state of Tennessee, having built the Dayton facility almost 45 years ago, and it has grown to become our largest plant, Kurt L. Darrow, chairman, president and chief executive officer of La-Z-Boy Incorporated, said. We are proud of our longstanding relationship with the community, which is very much a part of the fiber of our company, and we look forward to continuing to operate in Dayton for many years to come. We thank the great State of Tennessee and City of Dayton for their support throughout the years and, in particular, for this important project as we continue to invest in our U.S. facilities.

La-Z-Boy will be expanding its current facility as well as adding a new Innovation Center and logistics facilities. With this expansion, the company will develop, manufacture and distribute La-Z-Boy products.

Local leaders and partners expressed gratitude to La-Z-Boy for choosing to expand in Rhea County.

La-Z-Boy has been in Dayton since 1973 and it has continued to seek growth opportunities, Dayton Mayor Gary Louallen said. It is the largest employer in the county and the fact that it is willing to expand even further, as well as locate its research and development department here, speaks volumes about La-Z-Boys confidence in our community. We are happy, as community leaders, to have partnered with La-Z-Boy and TNECD to bring this project to life here.

Rhea County is fortunate to have an industrial facility such as La-Z-Boy a nationally known brand in the furniture industry with a great reputation for quality and customer service, Rhea County Mayor George Thacker said. We are excited to see it grow, and the jobs created by this expansion will help boost our economy and expand our tax base.

We work really hard to create an environment in this community that is conducive to industrial success, Dennis Tumlin, executive director of the Rhea Economic and Tourism Council, said. The fact that La-Z-Boy feels comfortable in making this kind of investment in our community means we have created the right infrastructure for them to continue growing their business.

La-Z-Boys decision to expand here is a direct reflection on the quality of the workforce we have here in the Rhea County area. Hats off to those employees who continue to deliver long-term quality and reliability, Tumlin added.

Dayton and Rhea County are represented by Senator Ken Yager (R-Kingston) and Rep. Ron Travis (R-Dayton) in the Tennessee General Assembly.
Carter G. Woodson in an undated photograph. Woodson is a founder of the Association for the Study of African American History, who first came up with the idea of the celebration that became Black History Month. (AP)

Black History Month, celebrated each February, has its roots in Chicago's South Side.

There, in 1915 at the historic Wabash YMCA in Bronzeville, a group of African-American intellectuals led by historian Carter G. Woodson of Washington, D.C., formed an association to promote black history, which they felt had largely been ignored or misrepresented by scholars.

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The men, who were in town for a weekslong exposition at the Chicago Coliseum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of emancipation, would spend their nights at the Y, which in those days served as an important black social hub, absorbed in conversations of black history, race relations and politics.

"(Woodson) comes here as a way to carry out his own program of educating people about black history," said Lionel Kimble, a Chicago State University history professor who is president of the Chicago branch of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. "But what he finds here is that there are already a large number of people who are doing the same thing  talking about the glorious history and what black folks are doing  so he realizes he's not by himself.

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"It was really a perfect storm of Woodson's education background  and this exhibition put on in Illinois. Woodson found himself in the right place at the right time and with the right background."

His efforts were unique and necessary, Kimble argues, because at the time white scholars weren't conducting comprehensive studies of black history and black bibliophiles interested in the history weren't chronicling it systematically, as a trained historian would.

Woodson, who had a master's degree from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, viewed the study of black history as a vehicle to empower blacks to recognize their impact on history, not necessarily to focus on how they had been victimized. He also believed that studying black history could alleviate racial prejudices by educating whites about the positive contributions blacks had made throughout time.

"He argued that if the historical record was set straight and that if the history of black people were studied along with the achievements of others in schools, not only would black youth develop a sense of pride and self-worth, but racism would also be abolished," Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, a professor of African-American history at Michigan State University, wrote in his biography of Woodson, who is considered the father of black history.

Over the next decade, Woodson grew the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (now called the Association for the Study of African American Life and History) through outreach  doing speaking engagements, corresponding with black history acolytes and pushing for the establishment of black history clubs across the country  in an effort to gain a mass following and get the study of black life and history incorporated into school curricula.

In 1926, he designated the second week of February as Negro History Week, the forerunner of Black History Month, because it coincided with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (Feb. 12) and Frederick Douglass (Feb. 14), which black communities had celebrated for decades.

Woodson was a multiculturalist who viewed black history as integral to American history, and ultimately wanted to see the black experience incorporated seamlessly into history texts and studied year-round. His intention in creating Negro History Week, Dagbovie wrote, was to serve as a steppingstone toward a "Negro History Year," wherein black history would be incorporated into all lessons taught throughout the education system.

"We should emphasize not Negro History, but the Negro in history," he wrote in 1927. "What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race, hate, and religious prejudice. There should be no indulgence in the undue eulogy of the Negro. The case of the Negro is well taken care of when it is shown how he has influenced the development of civilization."

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To promote the cause, Woodson instructed schoolteachers on how to prepare for and teach black history to students, and mailed out "Negro History Week Circulars" to educational institutions, newspapers, radio stations and various organizations.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

His efforts paid off, and celebrations of Negro History Week took off across the nation within black churches, public schools and self-help organizations.

"We can assume that many of those blacks who took part in these events felt great pride in their heritage and that some open-minded whites who witnessed and helped sponsor such events may have changed their views of black history and culture," wrote Dagbovie, who called Negro History Week a "monumental educational and cultural movement."

In 1976, 50 years after Negro History Week was formalized and a few years after its celebration had informally expanded from a week to a month, President Gerald Ford formally recognized Black History Month. Every president since Ford, Democrat or Republican, has endorsed this celebration of black life and history and it's become ingrained in our culture.

While some view Black History Month as divisive, Kimble said he believes that recent political developments like President Donald Trump's recent executive order on immigration make celebrating Black History Month more essential than ever.

"In today's political climate," he said, "I'd say that any time (devoted to) a multicultural history month is more needed today than it probably ever has been in the last 50 years.

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"We're really losing the true story of who we are as a nation."

zkoeske@tribpub.com Twitter @ZakKoeske
Hadessah O'Neal, 17, has been chosen to be one of nine members of the national Girls Action Network. The Girls Action Network will collaborate with the new Girls Inc. Policy Advisory Group to advise the national Girls Inc. Public Policy team on the development and advancement of the Girls Inc. policy agenda, assist with advocacy, outreach and public education efforts to implement that agenda.

For decades, Girls Inc. has advocated for the needs of girls, especially those often neglected by policy makers. Last year, the national offices of Girls Inc. began growing its public policy office and creating advisory groups to help inform the work, recognizing that the only way to ensure all girls have the opportunity to succeed is to advocate for policy reforms that bring about systemic change, said officials.

Ms. O'Neal will help to inform the development and implementation of the Girls Inc. policy agenda, and to participate in mobilizing grassroots action and cultivating strong community leaders among our Girls Inc. girls. Others selected include representatives from Connecticut, Boston, Minneapolis, Birmingham, Sarasota and Santa Fe.
Alzheimers Association staff and advocates from across the state will travel to Nashville on Wednesday, Feb. 15 to advocate for increased care and support for those facing Alzheimers disease.



"There are 120,000 Tennesseans living with Alzheimers disease and by 2025 that number is expected to increase to 140,000. This day of advocacy encourages family caregivers, professional caregivers, and community members to share their personal and professional experiences with Alzheimers disease during face-to-face meetings with state representatives," officials said.



Facing a diagnosis of Alzheimers disease is overwhelming for everyone involved and loved ones often ask what they can do to help, said Amy French, manager of programs for the Alzheimers Association. In addition to becoming informed as much as possible on the disease, making their voice heard and advocating for those living with Alzheimers creates an opportunity to help shine a light on Alzheimers disease and the support that is needed.



Officials said Alzheimers disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States and the only Top 10 cause of death that cannot be prevented, cured or even slowed. The disease is affecting more and more individuals as they are diagnosed or put into a caregiver role.



Ms. French adds that progress has been made due to the passionate efforts of advocates across the country including an increase in Alzheimers research funding at the National Health Institute; the passing of the HOPE for Alzheimers Act that provides Medicare coverage for comprehensive care planning services for those living with Alzheimers disease and other cognitive impairments; and increased support for other legislation that will provide support to those living with Alzheimers disease and their caregivers and will ultimately help achieve the Alzheimers Associations vision of a world without Alzheimers.

"These incredible accomplishments have been vital in the fight to end Alzheimers, but more needs to be done for the more than 5 million Americans living with the disease," she said. "Day on the Hill is free to attend with transportation and meals provided. Advocates will also join us for a rally and proclamation in the Senate Chambers at 1 p.m. CT. Registration is required and those interested can call our local office at 1-800-272-3900 to register."
William Bomar Tapp was a distant relative of mine who lived well over 100 years ago in northwest Chattooga County, Ga. It is not clear whether he owned the little brick store, pictured, or merely leased it, but it was well-known for being the only such store in the entire area.

That is Georgia Highway 337 in the foreground, with York Road crossing it left and right. It was located just south of the Walker County line, approximately 10 miles below LaFayette.

This was not far north of Neal's Gap Road - another place of Civil War interest, as it was the road which Sherman's army used to descend from Lookout and Pigeon Mountains when on their way to burn Atlanta.

Eliza Neal, daughter of Adam Neal, married Enos Martin and became my Great Grandmother. As a child, I spent many a Sunday afternoon in an old farmhouse (which I wrote about earlier) where my aunt and uncle lived - in sight of Valley Store. During most of those years the windows were boarded over and the building deserted. After World War II, however, someone re-opened it and called it, "Cordell's Cash Store". Their main product was eggs.

The building had also been earlier used by my Uncle Augustus M. (Gus) Martin for one of his several businesses - but that was before my time. Word is that the Post Office function of the building was discontinued in 1906, but it had served my "original settler" G-G-Grandfather, Joshua Martin, (1796 - 1874) as the source for his mailings. His farm was a few miles to the west, off York Road, at the foot of Pigeon Mountain.

Valley Store was demolished about 1970 and people came from miles around to cart away some of the historic bricks which wound up in planters, or for other decorative purposes. A simple roadside marker - facing York Road - indicates its former location. It is shown on at least one vintage map of Chattooga County as, "Tap's Store" on either "Broomtown" or "Brainerd's" Road.

Some kind-hearted person made sure I have one or two envelopes bearing the Valley Store, Ga., historic postmark. The pictured building sits on the northeast juncture of the two roads. Tapp eventually left the area for Texas, and there is an interesting story of how a Tapp daughter came East to find her roots - a story we will postpone til another day...

(Chester Martin is a native Chattanoogan who is a talented painter as well as local historian. He and his wife, Pat, live in Brainerd. Mr. Martin can be reached at cymppm@comcast.net )
Crye-Leike Real Estate Services, the nation's sixth largest residential real estate brokerage firm, concluded its 2016 United Way Workplace Campaign by raising a total of $ 89,387 company-wide to support United Way agencies located in 29 counties in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Since becoming a partner with United Way in 1995, Crye-Leike, its sales associates and corporate staff company-wide have contributed in excess of $800,000.

Our companys partnership with United Way is a perfect philanthropic fit for our real estate company," said Joyce E. Friedman, affiliate broker and vice president of corporate communications of Crye-Leike Real Estate Services who served as co-chair of Crye-Leikes 2016 United Way Workplace Campaign. "By giving to United Way, Crye-Leike is investing in the communities we serve.

"We know that United Ways board members and other volunteers safeguard the monies raised with a stringent process for prioritizing needs, evaluating agencies and their programs and distributing funds to those agencies most deserving and in need. Their diligence produces results and allows United Way to make a positive impact on our neighbors like supporting people in crisis, enriching seniors lives, strengthening families, promoting health and independence and helping youth succeed.

Second only to the federal government, United Way is the largest provider of funding for health and human services in the nation.




I am a proud resident of Park Ridge, but it is no secret that our city lacks significant progress. Too many storefronts sit empty, debts and expenditures are strictly dependent on increased property taxes, and investments that can make or save money for our city are being ignored. Park Ridge has a lot of untapped potential. We can do better.

My family (parents and older brother) moved to Park Ridge 30 years ago. We struggled after first immigrating from Poland, through Austria, at which time we landed in Chicago with the little money we had and the personal property we could carry. Serendipitously, the only people my family knew and could rely on lived in Park Ridge and so for the first few weeks of our new lives in the United States, we lived in their basement. Hoping they could one day live in Park Ridge, my father and mother set out on capturing the American Dream by initially working unskilled jobs. Through their hard work, we made Park Ridge our permanent home in 1986 in a modest two-bedroom apartment.

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Since then, property taxes have increased so much that many Park Ridge families have been forced to move out. We desperately need other sources of revenue, and we can gain them by growing our retail sector. Retail sales generate sales tax revenue. Park Ridge does very little to attract and keep quality retailers. We greatly lag in the efforts of our neighboring communities. We have no economic development department (or director) and we do not invest in our community in a way that would make Park Ridge attractive to regional and national retailers. Such retailers will help our mom-and-pop shops and give our residents more opportunities to shop locally.

I returned to Park Ridge after marrying my wife, who was born and raised in Park Ridge, in order to raise our family in what I believe is the best community in the Chicagoland area. My three little girls (and boy that is due in April 2017) will enjoy the great schools and friendly neighbors that Park Ridge offers, but without significant progress in a competitive environment, I worry that they may not raise their families here.

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My name is Lucas Fuksa, and I ask for your vote for mayor of Park Ridge so that we can build a better Park Ridge now and for our children.

Lucas Fuksa

Park Ridge
Two men being held as "persons of interest" in an early Friday shooting that injured a woman in Munster.

Munster Police spokesman Lt. Ed Strbjak said Friday that the department received a call at 5:40 a.m. of a person getting shot at 101 45th Ave. Officers arrived at the address  a FedEx Home Delivery hub, 101 45th St., No. 2  and found a woman who'd been shot once, he said.

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Shortly after the initial call, Strbjak said the department received a call from Family Christian Center, 340 W. 45th Ave., concerning "two suspicious men" running eastbound near the church. A third call to the department came in from the 500 block of Progress Lane, describing two suspicious men in the area, he said.

The fourth call came from Fitness Pointe health club, 9950 Calumet Ave. A caller said two men who'd come into the building and were "acting suspiciously," Strbjak said. Officers arrived and took the two into custody.

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The woman, meanwhile, was taken to Methodist Hospitals Northlake in Gary for treatment, Strbjak said.

The investigation remains ongoing, but Strbjak said the woman knew the two men, and it doesn't appear to be a domestic incident. He also said there was no threat to the community.

Additionally, Strbjak thanked the residents for their diligence.

"We got the initial call at 5:40 a.m., and by 6 a.m. we had the men in custody," he said. "We greatly appreciate the assistance from the community."

The Dyer, Lansing and Highland police departments assisted Munster in the search.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter with the Post-Tribune.
Picking a college major is something many pupils do as an afterthought.

By the time they reach junior or senior year in high school, they generally choose something they are good at, such as math or English. They want to major in subjects in which they got the highest grades in school.

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Teachers and counselors reinforce this idea by telling students and their parents that the son or daughter "is a natural mathematician" or has a "real gift for English."

For the student with at least some doubt of what to major in, there is always the school guidance counselor.

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For the average student, guidance counselors provide a service. They do their best to make sure that students meet the minimum requirements for admissions to a state college or university.

But at many schools, the quality and quantity of time a counselor can spend with a student is severely limited. At most public schools, the actual contact time a student can expect to spend with a counselor is less than an hour per year. This can be troubling if the school does not normally send students to top-ranked universities. Students might find themselves at a huge disadvantage.

Leading universities have highly qualified applicants from which to choose. Changes in admissions policy happen more frequently at selective universities. The need to meet regularly with a counselor, perhaps even as often as several times a year (with their parents), can make all the difference.

Another area I find worrisome is the quality of advising that students receive on the link between careers and possible majors. To students nervous about the adult world of work, the choice of what to major in can be daunting. Students typically fall back on the subjects with which they are familiar when choosing a major. This is a pity because a great many variables should be considered when choosing a career  the job market being the No. 1 concern. Sticking with subjects you know best is not always the wisest decision.

For example, a student who is strong in math and raised in a manufacturing culture might be tempted to major in engineering.

In Indiana, the majority of the engineering majors are from blue-collar families. Most have parents that are machinists or hold other technical positions in manufacturing. Few students realize that their math ability might also be put to good use in other fields. Math is used in economics and in the social sciences. Job opportunities might be more plentiful as we turn away from manufacturing skills and move toward a more service-oriented economy.

Engineering wages have stagnated over the last few years, while financial services and investment banking have expanded. The trend is expected to continue.

I would encourage students to take their time when choosing a major. Sticking with the familiar can stifle creativity and prevent them from learning about other fields of study  in many cases, more suitable to their personality.

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All of this requires careful discussion. High school and even college counselors are not always the best sources of information on choosing a major. Take some chances and find out for yourself.

Take classes in other fiends, not just the ones at which you excel. A liberal education means diversifying one's knowledge. The best way to find a link to a career is to try something different, look toward what the future economy may offer, then make a decision.

Gerald Bradshaw is an international college admission consultant with Bradshaw College Consulting in Crown Point.

gerald_bradshaw@post.harvard.edu
St. Elmo Body Shop, which was in business for 70 years at the same location at the foot of Lookout Mountain, has settled into its new location four and a half miles south in Chattanooga Valley.

It is located in a cluster of businesses by several lakes on Highway 193 just south of Highway 2A.

"We are doing just fine at the new site," said Donnie Covey, who acquired the business from his grandfather when he was 23.

Ken Covey started the body shop in the 1940s in a one-stall former blacksmith shop.

He just kept adding more stalls as the business thrived.

The property was sold by Donnie Covey's grandmother to Rock City after Ken Covey became sick with cancer and died.

Mr. Covey opted to keep the name St. Elmo Body Shop despite the move to Georgia.

His family is also involved in the operation of Covey Creek Farm, an event venue off Cloud Spring Road.
With the help of dual-credit classes, it took Hobart resident Zachary Staback just three and a half years to earn his bachelor's degree in business. (Photo Provided by Purdue University / Post-Tribune)

With the help of dual-credit classes offered through Purdue University Northwest, it took Zachary Staback just 3 1/2 years to earn his bachelor's degree in business.

He began planning for college while he was a student at Michigan City High School. He was able to earn college credit for specific classes offered at his school and ended up with 15 credit hours  the equivalent of one semester.

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He also took part in the College Bound program, which offers qualifying students academic enrichment opportunities in high school to help prepare them for the rigors of college and offers tuition assistance to those who enroll at PNW.

"I'm very proud that I started college with 15 credit hours and that I graduated so quickly," said Staback, a Hobart resident. "And with College Bound helping with tuition, a lot of stress was taken off me. Together, the two programs helped to make college more affordable."

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Taking part in the Student Support Services TRIO program gave him a place to study and academic support, which helped earned the grades that placed him on the semester academic honors lists.

Staback complemented his business major with a minor in human resources, which he believes is his "perfect career fit."

As Staback reflected on this time as a student, he admitted, "Going to school full time is a tough task. You constantly worry about school. My last semester, I moved to working full time at my job, so learning how to balance work and school was a difficult task. But I've made it, and it's a great feeling. My friends and family are there to help. My friend, Zachary Malcer, also a student at PNW, constantly helped me stay sane."

He recalled that his biggest obstacles came when he faced two tough classes. "I got really frustrated with the classes and wanted to drop them," he said. "But I just kept telling myself that I could do it, and I stuck through them. I passed both classes."

There are many good memories of his time as a student, notably taking part in the national McNair scholars conference in Atlanta, Ga., he said. "Learning about graduate school and meeting new people was probably the best part about the trip," Staback said.

Off campus, he enjoyed his leisure time as part of the Young People's Theater Company of Michigan City, he said.

"Acting allowed me to become someone else and just continue to be involved," he said. "Every show, you get together with this group of people, and by the end of the show, you've become a family."

As a new graduate, Staback is not shy about recommending PNW, saying, "I liked the small class sizes. At PNW, you have the opportunity to find out what program of study is going to work for you. It is also a place where you can meet new people in every class. The College Bound and TRIO programs provide great support."

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Carol Connelly is the director of media relations and communications at Purdue University Northwest's North Central campus in Westville.
Prepared childbirth classes in Gary

Methodist Hospitals will offer Prepared Childbirth Classes at 6 p.m. Mondays through Feb. 27 at the Northlake Campus, 600 Grant St., Gary. The four-week course for pregnant women and their partners will focus on labor, delivery and the immediate postpartum period. Registration is at 800-909-3627.

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Portage Kiwanis Club to host speakers

The community is invited to join the Portage Kiwanis Club at their 7:30 a.m. meetings every Tuesday as they host presentations of local interest. Pam Gumns, of Free the Girls, will address the club Tuesday; Jan Zurek, of Portage Township YMCA, will speak Feb. 14; and Randi Light, of Enlightened Living, on Feb. 21. All meetings are held in the cafe at Porter Hospital, 3630 Willowcreek Road, Portage. More information is at 219-781-3295 or www.kiwanis.org.

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Porter Hospital offers support groups

Porter Regional Hospital has announced upcoming support groups. Hope and Healing, a women's cancer support group, will meet from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Fagen Pharmacy, 3400 N. Calumet Ave., Valparaiso. More information is with Peggy Banks at 219-983-6128. An infant loss support group for grieving parents will be at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 at Christ Lutheran Church, 2610 N. Campbell St., Valparaiso. Information is at 219-309-6116. Beyond the Baby Blues, a support group for mothers struggling with postpartum depression, will meet from 5 to 6:30 p.m. Feb. 22 in the Community Room at Porter Regional Hospital, 85 E. U.S. Highway 6, Valparaiso; and from 6 to 8 p.m. Feb. 22 at Childbirth Melodies, 138 S. Main St., Crown Point. More information is at 219-331-1945 for Valparaiso or 219-782-4149 for Crown Point. The Ostomy Support Group will meet from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Feb. 23 in the community room at Porter Regional Hospital, 85 E. U.S. Highway 6. Information is with Sarah Grcich at 219-309-5939 or Michele Kaplan-Jones at 219-406-0019. A stroke survivor support group for survivors, caregivers and family members will be from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Feb. 23 at the Duneland Family YMCA, 215 Roosevelt St., Chesterton. More information is at 219-983-8355.

Workshops to spotlight substance abuse

The Family and Youth Services Bureau will provide essential information about the nature of and solutions to substance abuse issues in Porter County through a series of four free workshops in 2017. The first workshop, "Heroin and Other Opiates" will be from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the FYSB office, 253 W. Lincolnway, Valparaiso. Led by Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris, the workshop will provide an understanding of the extent of substance abuse in Porter County, and resources on how to protect youth from drugs. Registration is required by Tuesday at 219-464-9585 or kunderwood@fysb.org. Upcoming workshops include "Prescription Drugs and the Link to Heroin, a Personal Account of Life as a heroin Addict," presented by Herb Stephenson, on March 14. More information is at www.fysb.org.

 Staff report
A company meant to help Gary municipal government's efforts to consolidate plots of land into large-enough chunks to attract commercial real estate developers has opened an office downtown.

MaiaCo, a firm with ties to Chicago-based Tur Partners whose executive chairman is former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, was created in 2016 and was retained in July by the Gary Redevelopment Commission. Its new office is in the 504 Broadway building, on the second floor down the hall from the redevelopment commission.

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The company also has kicked off its website  at maiaco.com  to help explain the company's purpose to Gary residents, and hired Ben Robinson as senior community engagement coordinator and Taylr Davis as community engagement coordinator.

Robinson is a retired manager of the Gary Building Commission, while Davis is a graduate of St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Ind., who was an intern in communications at city hall. Both said they are life-long Gary residents.

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Michael Reinhold, the partner in charge of MaiaCo, said there be additional hires later this year, but he could not say when.

MaiaCo also has hired the public relations firm of Resolute Consulting, and spokeswoman Meredith Shiner said there likely will be an assistant hired who will be Gary-based.

Resolute does public relations work for the Gary/Chicago International Airport. One of its executive vice presidents is B.R. Lane, who is a MaiaCo shareholder and once was the Gary airport executive director and a chief of staff to Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson.

Reinhold appeared recently before the Gary Redevelopment Commission to present its annual plan  a 15-page document that outlines goals for the year. That plan was required under the agreement the redevelopment commission approved last summer.

The plan was accepted by a unanimous vote and dictates how the company plans to spend some $2.85 million  of which $2 million will be used for land acquisition by the Redevelopment Commission, $500,000 for studies to determine what should be done with the land and $350,000 for MaiaCo administrative expenses.

Joseph Van Dyk, redevelopment executive director, said he was pleased with the company's progress.

"They have done a lot of work to prepare themselves," he said.

Reinhold, who said the company ultimately intends to help Gary acquire ownership of some 3,500 tax delinquent properties in the city, said he expects the first of those efforts to take place by the end of the year.

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Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The new entity meant to work with Gary municipal government to consolidate vacant properties into plots of land, many of which the city likely would seek to redevelop for commercial purposes, said it wants to be sure its efforts wind up benefiting local residents.

MaiaCo, which opened an office Feb. 1 in downtown Gary, is creating the Maia Community Foundation  a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization to inform residents about its work in coming years. If they then don't take advantage of the changes, it will have been for naught, said MaiaCo principal partner Michael Reinhold.

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"We have to let people know what could be coming and help to prepare them now," he said, giving as an example the opportunities for working at new businesses.

"Once those companies materialize (in Gary), it's really too late," Reinhold said, adding that Gary residents need to be properly trained in order to land some of the possible jobs.

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In its initial progress report to the Gary Redevelopment Commission, MaiaCo said the foundation is "in the early phases of planning its role" in the city and that there will be conversations with community leaders and residents to determine how to reach Gary natives.

"We recognize that this is a long-term project and are committed to sustaining and growing the foundation as long as it can serve the public good," the progress report reads.

Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said she was pleased to see MaiaCo include a foundation as part of its efforts. She compared it to efforts undertaken by entities such as the Northern Indiana Public Service Co. in reaching out to residents.

"They're realizing they have a responsibility to the community to let us know what they intend to do on our behalf," the mayor said.

Skeptical of the effort was Jim Nowacki, a Gary resident who often is critical of local government activities.

"A foundation sounds nice, it's what they all say they're going to do," he said. "But who's actually running this foundation? What will it do?"

In its progress report, MaiaCo said the foundation's costs would be covered by MaiaCo investors and private donors.

"At no time today or at any point in the future will the (Gary Redevelopment Commission) be responsible for any costs associated with the foundation," it reads.

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MaiaCo is working to overcome the skepticism caused by the company being headed by someone who used to work for Chicago-based Tur Partners, which is run by former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.

Reinhold insists Daley is not among MaiaCo's financial investors, although he said that when he first began reaching out to Gary officials four years ago, Daley "paid my salary for a year" before he branched off on his own. Now, Daley is an "unpaid adviser at this point," Reinhold said, adding, "He has been supportive to get us to this point (with Gary) because he thinks it's the right thing to do."

MaiaCo will work with the redevelopment commission so the city can consolidate vacant land into plots for economic development; particularly through the acquisition of some 3,500 vacant, tax-delinquent plots. Reinhold said that total is about one-quarter of the parcels available through the county tax sale, most of which are plots too small for business development.

He said city officials, and not MaiaCo, ultimately will decide which plots of land they will acquire and what will be done with them.

But Andy Young, a former Gary resident who still follows local activity, said he wonders if MaiaCo's involvement could result in people losing their property to benefit future real estate developers.

"MaiaCo wants to say other people are being predatory, but what they're doing sounds predatory to me," he said. "What will (we) do with people who are already on properties that are taken over."

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Gary Redevelopment Commission Vice President Eric Reaves said most of the plots to be acquired are ones that currently are vacant or in decrepit condition.

"There would be no need for MaiaCo if property owners would pay their taxes," he said.

Commission President Kenya Jones said, "I'll take it a step further and say if they'd develop their property instead of doing nothing with it."

Gregory Tejeda is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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Tourists cram to the Bund during the Spring Festival holiday in Shanghai, east China, Jan. 29, 2017. (Xinhua/Tian Yiwei)

China's tourism industry raked in 423.3 billion yuan (61.7 billion U.S. dollars) in revenue during the Lunar New Year holiday, as more affluent people become increasingly keen to travel.

The volume marked a year-on-year increase of 15.9 percent, according to calculations by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA).

During the seven-day holiday, which ends on Thursday, some 344 million visitor trips were made, up 13.8 percent from the same period last year.

The CNTA previously expected that China would see 344 million visitor trips during the holiday.

Overseas travel gains increasing popularity. Some 6.15 million Chinese people travelled abroad during the holiday, up 7 percent year on year.

The travel peak fell on Jan. 27, the first day of the seven-day holiday, which saw 50.5 million vistor trips, up 10.4 percent year on year.

During the New Year holiday, hundreds of millions of people go back to their hometowns to meet relatives and old friends, and in recent years, family travels have become increasingly common that help to drive a tourism boom across the country.

China's domestic tourism industry earned about 3.9 trillion yuan in 2016, and the country plans to raise tourism revenue to 7 trillion yuan by 2020.

The nation will work to develop tourism into a major driver of economic transformation and upgrading. By 2020, investment in tourism is expected to grow to 2 trillion yuan, and the sector will contribute more than 12 percent of GDP, according to a State Council five-year tourism plan (2016-2020).
Two of the premium wines Changyu's Ningxia winery sold in Europe. [Photo provided to China Daily]

China's biggest wine producerChangyu Wine Group Co Ltdsaid it plans to sign with distributors in about 15 European countries, to sell its globally competitive wine products in large-scale local supermarkets.

Changyu said it had signed cooperation agreements with distributors from Germany and the Netherlands.

That was after the Yantai, Shandong province-based winemaker made its products onto the shelves of the United Kingdom's second-biggest supermarket chain Sainsbury's, where they were featured during the Chinese New Year, which began on Saturday.

Sainsbury's added Changyu's Noble Dragon Red, which sells at 8 pounds ($10.63) per bottle, equivalent to its price in China.

The wine is a Cabernet Gernischt, a red wine grape variety used in China originally believed to be of European origin. It is a blend of two types of grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Changyu describes it as a smoky red with blackberry and cassis flavors and a smooth finish.

"This is the first time that we are selling our products in a mainstream local supermarket chain in the UK and we are mainly targeting middle-class consumers," said Sun Jian, Changyu's deputy general manager.

Sun said the wine producer hoped to expand its business to other European countries with a similar strategy.

He added that with a small local production of wine, UK consumers had a big appetite for global wines.

"The UK wine market is one of the most diverse worldwide and local residents are interested in trying wines from different regions. In the past few days, the sales of our wines at Sainsbury's have been pretty good," Sun added.

The new sales at Sainsbury's have taken Changyu a step forward from its first entry into the UK in 2013, when its wines were made available through luxury wine and spirits merchant Berry Bros and Rudd.

"We know that customers are keen to broaden their repertoire and we have been looking at some distinctive regions and countries for new additions to expand our range," said Georgina Haughton, Sainsbury's wine buyer for products from South Africa, South America and China.
Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park invites the public to participate in a 60-minute program on Saturday, Feb. 18, beginning at 2 p.m. at the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center. Participants will car caravan, then take a short hike to Union General William S. Rosecrans headquarters in south Dyer Field.

Prior to the Battle of Chickamauga, General Rosecrans was being strongly considered as a presidential candidate in the 1864 election. Up to that point, he was the most successful Union general in the field.

However, the Battle of Chickamauga changed those thoughts about Old Rosy. Instead, the battle became a stepping stone that eventually landed another man in the White House  James A. Garfield. Come and learn, on Presidents Day weekend, how the Battle of Chickamauga both diminished Rosecrans aspirations in 1864 and enhanced Garfields path to the presidency in 1880.

As a reminder, comfortable, supportive footwear, chairs, appropriate clothing for the weather and water are recommended for this program.



For more information about programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, contact the Chickamauga Battlefield Visitor Center at 706 866-9241, the Lookout Mountain Battlefield Visitor Center at 423 821-7786, or visit the parks website at www.nps.gov/chch.
New Zealand Economic Development Minister Simon Bridges on Friday welcomed the opening of a new regional Chinese e-commerce base as an opportunity for exporters.

Bridges said he would attend the opening of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group's Australia and New Zealand headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday.

"Alibaba Group is the world's largest online and mobile marketplace and presents an enormous opportunity for New Zealand exporters to sell their products into the huge China market," Bridges said in a statement.

"China is our second-biggest trading partner after Australia and we have all witnessed the rise of e-commerce platforms globally, but few countries have embraced e-commerce with the gusto shown by Chinese consumers," said Bridges.

"In the last year, China's e-commerce retail sales have grown 37 percent versus 11.3 percent in standard retail; mobile commerce sales have grown 123 percent; and 50 percent of the population are yet to access the Internet," he said.

"With a population size of 1.4 billion and growing recognition and demand for Western brands, it is clear that e-commerce presents significant opportunities for our exporters. Alibaba is a key gateway to taking advantage of this."

The opening of the headquarters followed last year's memorandum of understanding signed between the government's New Zealand Trade and Enterprise agency and Alibaba Group, which formalised discussions for strengthening trade between China and New Zealand.
Airplane 9N-AKR, with 56 seats, is produced by Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation under the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC). [Photo / China.org.cn]

The new China-made airplane (Y12E series) for state-owned Nepal Airlines Corporation arrived in Kathmandu on Wednesday, with another airplane of a different category having already arrived on January 26.

The E-series of Y12, developed by Harbin Aircraft Industry Group, landed at Tribhuvan International Airport (TIA) via Kunming, Burma and Calcutta. The Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal (CAAN) has designated 9N-AKT as its callsign. Two more 16-seater aircraft are also yet to arrive. The two small airplanes have received typical names of small birds such as "Koili" and "Gauthali."

Similarly, Xi'an MA-60 with 56 seats produced by Xi'an Aircraft Industrial Corporation under the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) has a callsign of 9N-AKR.

In November 2014, the Government of Nepal signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to purchase six airplanes worth 4 million yuan as part of soft-loan and grant deal.

"MA-60 and Y-12E airplanes will serve on trunk routes (Biratnagar, Nepalgunj, Bhairahawa etc.) and remote areas (Jomsom, Lukla, Manang etc.), respectively," said deputy spokesperson of NAC Shailesh Kansakar.

At present, the corporation has a total of six airplanes for domestic flights and three jets for international flights.
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Part of a five-storey residential building in Dahui village of Wencheng County collapsed at about 8 a.m. Thursday. [China Daily]

One survivor was rescued and five were found dead after a residential building collapsed in Wenzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province, local authorities said Thursday night.

Part of a five-storey residential building in Dahui village of Wencheng County collapsed at about 8 a.m. Thursday, burying nine people from two families.

A 63-year-old woman was pulled out from the debris at about 10:40 p.m. and rushed to hospital for emergency treatment.

Rescuers located the woman after she made a phone call to her family under the rubble at 7 p.m..

Three were still buried under the rubble but rescuers found no signs of life.

With the help of eight cranes and excavators, more than 400 paramilitary officers, fire fighters, township officials and medical workers were carrying out rescue operation.

"The scene is quite chaotic, as if the place was leveled by an earthquake," a rescuer told Xinhua by telephone. "We have to work very carefully because the wreckages of the ruined building are joined to homes still standing."

One of the adjacent homes, he said, was already damaged with a big hole in its outer wall.

A total of 58 people living nearby were evacuated to safe places.

Local authorities have launched an investigation into the cause of the building collapse.
Editor's note: The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) will be held in Beijing from May 14 to 15. People from both home and abroad have expressed keen interest in the BRF since President Xi Jinping announced it at the Davos Forum in January. On the occasion of the 100 day countdown, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, who is in charge of the preparatory work, gave a comprehensive over view in an interview with the People's Daily and China Daily.

China will host the BRF in May this year. What is your vision for the Forum? What are the objectives that you hope to achieve at the Forum?

President Xi Jinping announced at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan 17 that in May this year, China will host the BRF in Beijing, which aims to discuss ways to boost cooperation, build cooperation platforms and share cooperation outcomes. The Forum will also explore ways to address problems facing global and regional economy, create fresh energy for pursuing interconnected development and make the Belt and Road Initiative deliver greater benefits to the people of all countries. These messages from President Xi have outlined our vision and considerations for the Forum and set the direction for our preparatory work.

In the fall of 2013, President Xi Jinping put forward the Belt and Road Initiative to enhance complementarity and synergy of development strategies and promote common progress of participating countries through closer international cooperation. Over the past three years and more, the Initiative has made good progress in various cooperation and won warm response and active participation. Now it is at a critical juncture of making all-round progress. The BRF will be a good occasion for us to review past progress and plan ahead.

The BRF will be the highest-level forum under the Initiative since its launching over three years ago, and an important diplomatic event China will host this year. It has great significance for international and regional cooperation. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, we hope to achieve the following objectives at the BRF: first, thoroughly review the progress of the Initiative, showcase important early harvest outcomes, further build consensus for cooperation and sustain the momentum of cooperation; second, discuss major cooperation measures going forward, facilitate greater synergy of development strategies, deepen partnership and work for interconnected development; third, while promoting China's economic and social development and structural adjustment, work to advance international cooperation for win-win outcomes. As one Chinese saying goes, a tree needs strong roots to grow tall and a river needs an inexhaustible water source to flow far. By hosting the BRF, we look forward to working with others to take the Belt and Road forward, lay a more solid foundation and foster greater connectivity for world economic growth and deeper regional cooperation so as to bring more benefits to various countries and their people.

The Belt and Road Initiative was put forth more than three years ago. What are its achievements since then? How has it been received internationally? Has it made any difference to people's lives in other countries?

The Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by China. Yet it's not going to be China's solo show. A better analogy would be that of a symphony performed by an orchestra composed of all participating countries. This Initiative is meant to be a major international public goods benefiting all countries. It is not an empty slogan, but rather a series of visible and concrete actions centering around the crucial link of connectivity and infrastructure development as a key part of economic cooperation, which is well-suited to the needs of countries and regions along the route.

We are committed to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. We stress practical cooperation, win-win outcomes and step-by-step progress. We are looking to align China's development with that of other countries and encourage greater synergy between their respective development strategies and cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative. This will be conducive to expanded regional investment and domestic demand, job creation and poverty reduction and to a higher level of development of the entire region.

The past three years have witnessed the launching, expansion, faster-than-expected progress and fruitful outcomes of the Belt and Road Initiative. More than 100 countries and international organizations have joined this Initiative, among which more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China, reaching a broad international consensus on Belt and Road Initiative. The UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, UNESCAP, APEC, ASEM, the GMS have all incorporated or reflected Belt and Road cooperation in their relevant resolutions and documents.

A number of important early harvests have been made. Economic corridor development is making steady progress. An interconnected infrastructure network is taking shape. Trade and investment has increased significantly. Key project cooperation is underway. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Silk Road Fund have provided firm support to financial cooperation. China Railway Express trains to Europe have been operating on the vast Eurasian continent, loaded with goods and matching the market needs of countries along the route. The trains have also set up a bridge of communication and friendship between peoples along the route, and become a welcome sight along the Belt and Road.

The joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative is an important channel to step up international cooperation, a cause embraced and advanced by all parties. It is generating new development opportunities to make people's lives better. It is fair to say that this Chinese initiative is delivering benefits to the whole world.

In a world faced with sluggish economic, investment and trade growth, backlash against globalization and rising uncertainties, how do you envision the BRF's contribution to the global economy and international cooperation? What are the theme and agenda for the Forum?

It is true that the global economy is yet to emerge from the profound impact of the international financial crisis. The recovery is fragile and slow, and the foundation for growth still shaky. There are rising protectionism, louder voices against globalization and the mounting tensions between openness, change and economic integration on the one hand and isolationism, outdated thinking and fragmented trade arrangements on the other. That being said, bilateral, multilateral, regional and global cooperation on infrastructure, connectivity and sustainable development is gaining momentum. In countries around the world, priority is given to the real economy, the manufacturing sector, industrialization and economic diversification. It is important to grasp new development opportunities and find effective means to overcome the difficulties and solve the problems.

History provides us a useful source of wisdom for addressing today's challenges. The land and maritime Silk Road over 2,000 years ago enabled people from various countries to defy national borders and conduct trade and friendly exchanges on camelback or merchant vessels. Those interactions left a glorious chapter in human history. History has proven that closed and exclusive arrangements have no future, while welcoming cooperation with open doors and ensuring benefits for all is the only way forward. This still rings true today. As President Xi Jinping said earlier at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, "Any attempt to ... channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible. Indeed, it runs counter to the historical trend." The Belt and Road Initiative, rooted in the Silk Road spirit of peace, cooperation, openness, inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit, follows the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. Openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit are the defining features of the Initiative and the very source of its strong appeal. We hope the BRF will help drive away the clouds of the economic doldrums and channel more positivity to global economic growth.

To better build consensus and advance cooperation, China has set "Belt and Road: Cooperation for Common Prosperity" as the Forum's theme. The agenda will focus on connectivity of policy, transportation, trade, finance and people. Discussions will be conducted on key topics such as infrastructure connectivity, economic cooperation and trade, industrial investment, energy and resources, financial support, people-to-people exchanges, ecological and environmental protection and marine cooperation. The Leaders Roundtable, the highlight of the Forum, will focus on two topics: Policy Synergy for Closer Partnership and Connectivity Cooperation for Interconnected Development.

In our view, the theme and agenda are highly relevant, considering the circumstances and challenges our world faces. Underscoring the importance of international cooperation, connectivity and synergy, the theme and agenda largely overlap with the world's major agenda. I also wish to add that many national and regional plans and global agendas have emerged in recent years, including such regional initiatives as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity, the Investment Plan for Europe, the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa and the APEC Connectivity Blueprint as well as global agreements like the Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The international community needs to seize this opportunity and form synergy between those initiatives to deliver cooperative and shared benefits.

We have learnt that some foreign leaders will attend the BRF and there is great international interest in this event. How are the preparations going and which countries will participate in the Forum? What will be the outcomes of the BRF and what are your expectations?

We attach great importance to the preparations for the BRF. We have set up a committee to look after and coordinate the preparation. Thanks to the concerted efforts of responsible departments and the local government, the preparation is well underway. Many foreign leaders have expressed their interest in attending the event. Political preparation is making steady progress. Arrangements about key events, venues, logistics and security are being substantiated. For the coming weeks and months, we will keep the international community updated about its preparation for the Forum whenever necessary, in a spirit of openness and transparency.

Leaders from about 20 countries have confirmed their participation, representing Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America at the Forum. This testifies to the great attention and support the Forum and the Belt and Road Initiative have received from the international community. We will also invite ministerial delegations from some countries, representatives of international organizations, former foreign heads of state and government, business leaders, experts and scholars to join the discussions on how to promote cooperation.

The success of the Forum very much lies in its outcomes, and we are working vigorously for that to happen. We hope that the Forum will deliver important outcomes in three aspects:

First, expanding international consensus on cooperation. The Forum is expected to encourage all parties to uphold the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, pursue peace and cooperation in a spirit of openness, inclusiveness and mutual learning, and seek win-win and interconnected development. Economic growth, job creation, poverty reduction, delivering a better life to the people and environmental protection shall be underlined as the priorities of international cooperation. The Forum will also encourage the formation of synergy among national, regional and global development agenda, with a view to moving the world toward a community of shared future for mankind featuring common development and prosperity.

Second, enhancing practical cooperation in key areas. The Forum is expected to cement the good momentum of cooperation in all fields under the Belt and Road Initiative, paying particular attention to those key areas and directions with far-reaching and long-term implications. The Forum will enhance cooperation in infrastructure connectivity, trade and investment, financial support and people-to-people exchanges, facilitate a number of major projects and cooperation agreements, and come up with some key mid- to long-term measures.

Third, mapping out plans for long-term cooperation. In jointly building the Belt and Road, we will explore, together with the related countries, long-term cooperation mechanisms through equal-footed consultations that take the interests of all parties into balanced consideration. The Forum will help to enhance communication and coordination, build mutual trust and a solid network of partnerships, increase real input, deepen the convergence of interests, and draw up a blueprint of development in the common interests of all parties.

From your remarks, we get the sense that the BRF will help advance international cooperation, enhance the alignment between the Belt and Road Initiative and the development strategies of partner countries, and strengthen China's economic cooperation with the world. How then are we to understand the importance of the BRF to China's efforts to implement its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), boost all-round reform and opening-up, and achieve the two centenary goals (namely, ushering in a moderately prosperous society in all respects when the Communist Party of China celebrates its centenary in 2021 and becoming a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious when the People's Republic celebrates its centenary in 2049)?

The Belt and Road Initiative aims to promote common development and win-win cooperation. China does not intend to monopolize all the benefits or even take the lion's share, but will work with partner countries to make the pie bigger and divide it equitably. In this process, through strengthened cooperation among the parties, we will make contribution to the international community as well as promote reform and development at home. China will pursue its development in the context of international cooperation by fully reflecting international consensus.

As its economy enters the "new normal", China faces both opportunities and challenges, particularly regional disparity. With an emphasis on expanding westward opening-up, the Belt and Road Initiative will accelerate development of China's western region, and contribute to a more coordinated development of the whole country. The Initiative covers multiple provinces, autonomous regions and major municipalities in China's interior and coastal regions. It hews closely to China's regional development strategy, new urbanization strategy and opening-up strategy, and will provide a strong boost to China's all-dimensional opening-up.

The Belt and Road Initiative will create synergy between China's efforts to boost international economic cooperation and to deepen reform and opening-up, enable China and partner countries to jointly pursue the new vision of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development, and facilitate China's endeavor to implement the 13th Five-Year Plan, boost all-round reform and opening-up, and achieve the two centenary goals. We are full of expectations and confidence about this.

China successfully hosted the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Beijing in 2014 and the G20 Summit in Hangzhou in 2016. How is the Belt and Road Forum different from these two events and what are its unique features?

The AEPC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Beijing, the G20 Summit in Hangzhou and the BRF are all important international conferences. The three events follow the same idea, namely, the emphasis on openness, inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, on connectivity and interconnected development and on innovative development to tap potential driving forces and contribute to the well-being of people around the world.

The BRF has its own features compared with the previous two events. First, the Belt and Road Initiative is an international initiative for cooperation launched by China. The Forum is the first of its kind. Nevertheless, it is easier to draw the most beautiful picture on a piece of blank paper. Second, the Belt and Road Initiative is open to countries of different regions. The idea originates from the ancient Silk Road but the Initiative is not confined to it. We welcome the participation of various countries, international organizations, multinational corporations, financial institutions and non-governmental organizations in specific cooperation projects for achievements through concerted efforts. Third, compared with the well-established mechanisms that have long been in operation such as APEC and the G20, the Forum is more flexible in agenda items, cooperation areas and ways to advance cooperation. It will fully accommodate the comfort level and accessibility for the parties concerned.

We believe that the Forum will be a useful platform for strengthening coordination, mutual complementarity and international cooperation. We hope to work with other participating parties to push forward the Belt and Road Initiative so as to lay a solid foundation for the kind of cooperation that will facilitate long-term development and benefit the people, and usher in a better future for all.
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Iranian Foreign Minister on Thursday dismissed a U.S. security official's remarks about Iran's recent missile test as "baseless," official IRNA news agency reported.

Michael Flynn, national security advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, said Wednesday that Iran's recent ballistic missile launch is in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.

"Iran's missile test does not contradict the UN Security Council Resolution 2231," Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying.

The remarks by Flynn are "baseless and provocative," Qasemi said, adding that "none of the Iranian missiles has been designed for delivering nuclear weapons."

Resolution 2231, adopted on July 20, 2015 to endorse a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.

Iran's defense minister on Thursday called the recent Iranian ballistic missile test "successful."
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Algerian army on late Wednesday killed three drug trafficker-terrorists in an ambush in the southernmost locality of Illizi, near the border with Libya, said a statement of the Defense Ministry on Thursday.

The troops retrieved weapons, ammunition and a large quantity of cannabis, added the source.

This operation is part of counterterrorism efforts of the Algerian army troops deployed on the border with Libya.

The troops exploited accurate information about the existence of a terrorist group, as they set an ambush and clashed with three armed men, specified the source.
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Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says his phone conversation with US President Donald Trump this week was "cordial" but "very frank" as Trump reportedly expressed his anger over the proposed refugee deal between the two countries.

The deal was signed by Turnbull and the previous Obama administration late last year, and requires the United States to take in around 1,200 asylum seekers from Australia's offshore detention centers on Nauru and Manus Island.

Information leaked earlier in the week, and first published by the Washington Post, revealed the President described the 25-minute phone call with Turnbull as his "worst of the day", reportedly cutting it short by 35 minutes.

On Friday morning, Turnbull admitted the call was "forthright" and said the president was a larger-than-life character.

"He's clearly a big personality," Turnbull told radio journalist John Laws on Friday.

"I note that his official spokesman described the conversation as a cordial one this morning.

"I can say that it was very frank, it was forthright."

Trump made his feelings known about the refugee deal publicly on Thursday when he publicly Tweeted his displeasure: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"

Turnbull told the Australian media that the refugee deal would go ahead despite the President's strong words.

"As I've said, the President made a commitment to honor the deal which had been entered to by his predecessor. That's been confirmed now several times," Turnbull said on Friday.

"It's very important that it goes ahead because it will enable us to secure resettlement options for a number of the people on Nauru and Manus Island."

But the testing week for Australian-US relations was heightened further overnight, when the President's press secretary, Sean Spicer twice referred to Turnbull as "Prime Minister Trumbull", while the White House continues to backflip on whether or not the deal would proceed.

The President's attitude came as a shock to political experts across the world, as Australia has long been considered one of America's staunchest and oldest allies. Australia is also one of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance members along with Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The leaded reports of Trump's candid phone call to Turnbull were picked up by major news outlets around the world, including CNN and the BBC.

Despite the worldwide reaction to the Turnbull-Trump phone call, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said he believes the bilateral relationship was "big enough, old enough and ugly enough" to cope with the minor "snafu".

"(The relationship) been around for the better part of 100 years - in fact it's 100 years this year since Australians and Americans first went into battle with each other on the Western Front," Rudd told CNN from Abu Dhabi overnight.

"I think this snafu will blow over and we'll get back to the fundamentals of the relationship. On that, both sides of politics in the US and in Australia remain deeply committed.

"The bottom line is neither of us, you or I, were party to the actual conversation itself, so we'll let the two principals place their accounts of the call on the record.

"The fundamentals of this alliance have survived 14 US presidents, 14 Australian prime ministers, both sides of politics, and will keep going in the future because we have mutual interests at stake."

However former Australian Ambassador to the United States, Kim Beazley, said he would be "surprised" if the United States approves all asylum seekers as part of the deal, considering the "extreme vetting" promised by the White House.

"I'd be most surprised if absolutely every one of the (asylum seekers) was seen as acceptable," Beazley said.
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Iran is negotiating with major European enterprises from France, Germany and Britain on developing its petrochemical industries, Iran local media reported on Thursday.

Iran is in talks with French oil and gas company Total, German chemical company BASF and Britain's oil major Shell on investment in the country's petrochemical projects, Managing Director of Iran's National Petrochemical Company (NPC) Marzieh Shahdaei was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

Shahdaei said that a new round of talks was held with representatives of Total on Tuesday, who were accompanying France's foreign minister in his visit to Tehran.

Talks with Total were focused on construction of a petrochemical plant for producing ethylene and polyethylene, she said.

She added that talks with BASF and Shell are also underway.

Reports said that German major oil and petrochemical companies have offered to invest in the Iranian oil and petrochemical sectors.

A total of 12 billion U.S. dollars in finance have been offered by the German companies, including BASF.

BASF, whose managing director visited Iran last year as a member of a delegation accompanying German Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel, has offered to invest 6 billion dollars project in a petrochemical project in the south of Iran.

Wintershall Holding GmbH, Germany's largest crude oil and natural gas producer, is another company that has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to make studies on four oil fields in the west of Iran.

One year after the sanctions against Iran were lifted, several international companies have started negotiations to establish themselves in Iran's oil and gas projects.

Iran possesses one of the world's largest oil and gas reserves.
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At least 92,000 people have been displaced since the last October attacks on police posts in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, a UN spokesman told reporters on Thursday.

The spokesman made the remarks by citing information from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

This includes some 69,000 people who have fled across the border into Bangladesh, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The United Nations estimates that 23,000 people remain displaced in the north of Maungdaw Township where security operations continue, the spokesman said.

"After a three-month interruption in most aid deliveries provided by UN agencies and partners in northern Rakhine, the government has allowed an incremental resumption of some activities," he said.

"With international staff still facing severe movement restrictions, national staff are distributing food and other items in most villages," he said.

"While health clinics and nutrition centres have re-opened in most areas, few people have been accessing them, as the situation remains tense," he said. "People are still afraid to move freely to access services, and movement is restricted by a travel pass requirement."

The UN is calling for the relaxation of travel restrictions in northern Rakhine, both for local people who are impeded in accessing humanitarian aid and basic services, as well as for staff from aid organizations, he added.
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The Google logo is seen at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California November 13, 2015. [Photo: China Daily]

Search giant Google has replaced iPhone makers Apple to be the world's most valuable company in the Brand Finance's Global 500 2017 report.

Google's brand is now worth more than 109 billion U.S. dollars, around 2 billion dollars more than Apple, making it the most lucrative in the world.

This marks the first time that Google has topped the list since 2011.

After Google and Apple, are Amazon, AT&T and Microsoft.

A total of 16 Chinese companies are in the top 100 on the list, including China Mobile, Alibaba and Tencent.

Ranked 10th position, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China is the highest ranking Chinese company on the list.
Tickets are still available for the Father Daughter Dance at the Chattanooga Convention Center, Ballrooms E-J, next Friday, Feb. 10. The dance will be from 7-10 p.m., with photos at 6:30 p.m., and is for ages three to 18.



Tickets are $30 per person. Light hors doeuvres and a dessert buffet are included.



There are two ways to purchase tickets:

- call 842-6748 from 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Friday to purchase tickets using a credit card or check, (Visa/MC/Amex or Discover with a 2.39% processing fee) and receive your tickets via email.

- come to Chester Frost Park, 2277 N. Gold Point Circle in Hixson, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday through Friday to pay cash, credit, or check, but call before coming.

Tickets sales are limited to 500. For more information, contact Maureen Davis at 842-6748 or maureend@hamiltontn.gov.


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U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis [File photo/Chinanews.com]

Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reaffirmed the controversial deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea despite strong opposition at home and abroad.

The Pentagon chief under Trump administration held talks in Seoul Friday with his South Korean counterpart, Defense Minister Han Min-koo, reaffirming the agreement that was abruptly announced in July last year to install one THAAD battery in southeast South Korea by the end of this year.

The contentious decision drew sharp criticism and strong objection from China and Russia as its X-band radar can peer deep into territories of the two countries, breaking strategic balance and bolstering arms race in the region.

It has also caused opposition from local residents as the radar emits super microwaves detrimental to environment and human body. Civic group activists and opposition lawmakers have objected to it for lack of public consensus.

While the defense ministers' talks were going on, residents and advocate group members gathered in front of the South Korean Defense Ministry's headquarters to protest against the THAAD deployment.

The opponents said no parliamentary and public consent were given to the U.S. missile shield deployment, calling for the reversal of the decision on THAAD that has no defense effectiveness and never helps bring peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Mattis said the THAAD in South Korea would be defensive in nature to protect U.S. troops stationed here and its ally South Korea from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear and missile threats, but nobody would naively believe such claim.

The THAAD is designed to shoot down incoming missiles at an altitude of 40-150 km, but most of DPRK missiles fly at an altitude of less than 40 km.

THAAD placed in southeast South Korea is incapable of intercepting missiles targeting Seoul and its surrounding metropolitan areas, which have around half of the country's total 50 million populations.

Major presidential contenders in the South Korean opposition bloc demanded the THAAD deployment decision be cancelled or delayed to the next government as President Park Geun-hye was impeached in December.

During the talks, Mattis reassured South Korea of the U.S. commitment to the defense of its Northeast Asian ally, saying any attack on his country and U.S. allies will be beaten off effectively and overwhelmingly.

He noted that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a "linchpin" to support peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, saying the U.S. will make efforts to let the region become peaceful, safe and liberal through cooperation with its allies and partners.

The Pentagon chief reiterated that his country places priority on the U.S.-South Korea alliance as he mentioned at a Thursday meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn who is serving as acting president.

In response, the South Korean defense minister said his talks with Mattis will act as an opportunity to reaffirm the firm alliance and further develop the comprehensive strategic alliance.

The retired four-star Marine general arrived in Seoul Thursday on his first overseas trip since he took office about two weeks earlier. He will then visit Japan for two days.
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U.S. President Donald Trump's defense secretary Jim Mattis reiterated his country's mutual defense commitment to Japan in a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Friday.

Remarks made recently by U.S. President Donald Trump had some Japanese officials on edge regarding the future of the special security alliance and the costs shouldered by Japan.

Mattis stressed that his country's resolve to adhere to its security obligations remained unwavering.

"I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington that we stand firmly, one-hundred percent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people," Mattis said at the beginning of his meeting with the Japanese leader.

Mattis also said that a clause written in Japan's Constitution was as relevant today, as it was when it was first written.

"I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago -- and as it will be a year, and 10 years, from now," Mattis said.

The clause in question calls for the United States to defend territories that are under the administrative control of Japan.

The U.S. defense chief also said that the treaty obliges the U.S. to protect Japan if it came under an armed attack.

Abe made it clear to Mattis that he hopes to show that the Japan-U.S. alliance is as strong as ever even under a new administration.

Certain remarks by Trump about Japanese currency valuations and the cost the U.S. incurs in posting its troops to Japan, had perplexed the government here.

Abe believes his upcoming summit meeting with Trump will be an opportunity for him to put forward Japan's opinions and better understand Trump's "America First" policy agendas.

In trade and economic terms, Abe has already said he will seek to inform Trump of how Japanese businesses can be of benefit to the U.S. in terms of increasing competition and creating new jobs in North American markets.

The Japanese leader has also intimated that he will speak to Trump if deemed necessary following his accusations that Japan was manipulating its currency to the disadvantage of the United States.

Abe thanked Mattis for choosing Japan to be one of the first stops on his first tour as the Pentagon's chief and said that he believed this shows the U.S. continues to hold Japan in high regard.

On Saturday, Mattis, a retired Marine general, is scheduled to hold talks with Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who is likely to maintain her position that Japan is paying its fair share in costs related to U.S. troops being stationed here.

Along with Japan's top government spokesperson, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Inada has said that the bilateral security alliance has been of mutual benefit to both the U.S. and Japan.
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Up to 12 militants loyal to the Islamic State (IS) group and six others have been killed as clash erupted in Kot district of the eastern Nangarhar province on Friday, district governor Sayed Rahman Momand said.

"A group of IS rebels attacked local police checkpoints at 04:00 a.m. local time today triggering gun battle which lasted for a while during which 12 attackers have been killed," Mohmand told reporters here.

Six more people including five policemen and a chieftain have also lost their lives in the gun battle which is sporadically continuing.

IS militants who are active in parts of Nangarhar province with Jalalabad as its capital 120 km east of Kabul are yet to make comment.
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A police vehicle is seen near the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, on Feb. 3, 2017. A French soldier on duty opened fire on Friday at a man who tried to attack him with a knife at the entry of the Louvre Museum, according to local press and witnesses. (Xinhua/Chen Yichen)

A French soldier on Friday shot and wounded a man armed with a machete after he tried to enter the Louvre Museum in central Paris, Paris prefect Michel Cadot said.

machete attacker carrying two backpacks attacked soldiers while trying to get into the museum underground shop before being shot and seriously wounded, Cadot said.

The "aggressive" man yelling Allahou Akbar (God the Greatest) menaced soldiers who were securing the capital's landmark museum in a context of high terrorist risk, he added.

The attacker whose identity remains unknown, slightly injured one serviceman before the other soldiers fired five bullets at him, according to Paris prefect.

"There was also a second individual who was behaving suspiciously, who has also been detained, but for now there does not appear to be a link between that individual and the attack," he said.

Cadot added that no explosives have been found in the man's bags with operation underway to ensure security in the area.

In a statement, the public prosecutor opened an anti-terrorism inquiry into the attack which Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said it "obviously of a terrorist nature."

Police cordoned off the area where circulation is suspended. Louvre official held 250 visitors in safe place and will be evacuated in small groups.

France has been the target of terrorist groups in response to its military operation in Syria, Iraq and Sahel region.

A recent attack, claimed by the Islamic State, claimed 86 victims when a man drove a truck into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day in the southern city of Nice last summer.
Bow Truss CEO Blames Problems On Failed Deal In New Lawsuit

By Emma G. Gallegos in Food on Feb 2, 2017 10:00PM



Inside a Bow Truss coffee location (Photo by Fogel's Focus via the Chicagoist Flickr Pool)

Local businessman Marcus Lemonis' failed deal to take over Bow Truss has gotten even messier. The Chicago coffee shop chain's owner, Phil Tadros, filed suit against Lemonis and his company ML Foods, claiming that they had nefarious motivations in their overtures to buy the company. The suit also blames Lemonis for Bow Truss' payroll problems that meant employees weren't paid this month, prompting walk-offs and store closures.

The suit is asking for $26 million in damages. Lemonis calls the suit a "nuisance" that he vowed to fight it, according to Crain's.

In December, Lemonis signed a letter of intent that said he would control Bow Truss, and made statements in public implying he was the new CEO. The suit claims that he promised to send fundsincluding money that would be used to make payrollbut then backed out and asked for the price of the company to be lowered.

The suit says that Lemonis "devised a fraudulent scheme to attempt to purchase [Bow Truss] at a rock bottom bargain basement price and failing to accomplish that to destroy [Bow Truss]." This alleged fraudulent scheme, the suit claims, involved making social media posts and comments to the press that were "false, misleading and held [Bow Truss] in a false light," in order to "embarrass and harm the plaintiff."

The suit says Lemonis' true aim was to lower Bow Truss' price or put the company out of business altogether, which would clear the way for Lemonis' business plans in Chicago. This tweet is alleged evidence of the conspiracy:

I'm bringing my #la biz in coffee to chicago. In the middle of the episode. #StayTuned jobs available https://t.co/xofufi91JB  Marcus Lemonis (@marcuslemonis) January 23, 2017

Bow Truss is asking for $6 million in damages to the company's reputation, value and sales. Tadros is asking for another $20 million in punitive damages plus $162,500 and interest for the break-up fee agreed to in the letter of intent.

Lemonis vowed to fight the suitand that he'd also like to see the $97,000 he loaned the company in the days after he signed a letter of intent. He told Crain's, "I will spend whatever I have to make sure he doesn't get a penny from me, and whatever I have to get my $100,000 back." He told the Chicago Tribune "desperate people do desperate things."

He also admonished Tadros for not paying his employees on Twitter this morning, in response to the suit:

This will be interesting. Hopefully he takes a screen shot of this as well as pays his former employees. Pay your bills Tadros. Honor people https://t.co/OssD3ds8eH  Marcus Lemonis (@marcuslemonis) February 2, 2017

Many of the employees have been paid since they walked off, but some told Crain's they're still owed back pay. Two stores have been reopened since then, according to the Tribune.

Lemonis is the CEO of Camping World, host of "The Profit" on CNBC and he said he'll be announcing the name of a Los Angeles-based coffee venture he'll be bringing to Chicago on his show.
Christian Daily

Lorraine Caballero

02 February, 2017 2:59 am

 Due to a widespread crackdown, two Christian human rights lawyers were arrested and subjected to electrocution and other forms of torture while inside prison, China Aid has recently discovered.

Human rights lawyers Li Heping and Wang Quanzhang were detained in 2015 in connection with their defense work. Li, who is currently at the Tianjin Municipal Detention Center No. 1, was previously held at an unknown place for six months before he was formally arrested on Jan. 20 of last year for alleged subversion of state power, China Aid details.

On Jan. 23, Lis wife Wang Qiaoling said her husband and the second lawyer were tortured using electric batons and other methods. Li reportedly fainted a number of times because of what he was put through in prison.

Buildings are seen through smog behind an unfinished bridge

near the Yujiapu financial centre, in Tianjin, China February

22, 2016. (Reuters / Jason Lee)

In a story posted on The Guardian on June last year, Terence Halliday recalled how he met with his friend Li for lunch a few days before the lawyer disappeared. Li had predicted that the Chinese government would want to disband his informal anti-torture group because it was considered as a challenge to its authority.

A Chinese security agent once told Li that Beijing sees him as someone more dangerous than Bin Laden because of his activist movements. Halliday lamented the governments violent response to the lawyers demand for stronger laws and constitution.

Even before Li went missing during the massive crackdown, the human rights lawyer told Halliday that he would most likely be tortured. Once a person is detained in China, he cannot be reached by family members, lawyers or even international diplomats.

In light of the situation, Halliday thinks forgiveness and love is the only answer to the brutality, repression and fear imposed by the government. Li once told his friend that they have to forgive police and government officials who hurt them.

In addition, Li said being detained is like living in a smaller prison, but being released is also tantamount to living in a bigger prison. Halliday ended his story by saying how authorities treat Li and the other human rights lawyers will reflect the future of liberty in China.

ChinaAid Media Team

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Chinese banks are now global leaders not just by asset base but also brand value, according to the latest version of Brand Finance Banking 500, which shows the combined value of Chinese banks has surpassed that of US banks for the first time.

A man speaks on the phone outside the Bank of China head office building in Beijing, China, March 30, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The report, released on Wednesday by the London-based business valuation consultancy, has placed the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China as the worlds most valuable bank with a brand value worth $47.8 billion, representing a 32 percent year on year growth.

Brand Finance's CEO David Haigh, said: "Chinese banks are being carried along in the slipstream of industrial giants as they grow and expand into international markets. Facilitating international deals boosts revenues, but more importantly, enables the banks to build their reputations with potential clients across the world."

Marketing investment and the brand's credibility with customers, staff and shareholders, among other factors, are all taken into consideration in calculating brand value. Essentially, the ranking rates how a bank's soft values translate into performance.

The report also shows Chinese banks as having an aggregate total brand value of $258 billion, accounting for 24 percent of the total brand value of the top 500 global banks by brand value, in comparison to 23 percent of aggregate US banks.

In addition to the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and Bank of China also showed rapid brand value growth of 17 percent and 13 percent respectively. Harbin Banks brand has trebled in value in the course of 2016 to $811 million, representing the fastest-growing bank by brand value in 2016.

The success of the Chinese banks came at the expense of US banks, such as Wells Fargo, which once topped this list. Wells Fargo's fake account scandal, which led to court fines in 2016, contributed to a 6 percent fall in brand value to $41.6 billion.
European representatives at the Zhengzhou-Europe Block Train during their visit to Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan province. Chen Yingqun / China Daily

Belt and Road gathering to be year's diplomatic highlight

By hosting a high-level forum on the Belt and Road Initiative in May, China aims to boost an open and inclusive economy amid rising protectionism and loud voices against globalization, said the country's top diplomat.

The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which will be held in Beijing on May 14 and 15, will "explore ways to address problems facing the global and regional economies", State Councilor Yang Jiechi said in an interview with China Daily and People's Daily.

The forum will be the biggest diplomatic event hosted by China this year amid Beijing's efforts to advocate interconnectivity and cooperation to invigorate the global economy, observers said.

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, aim to boost interconnectivity by reviving the ancient trade routes with a focus on infrastructure.

In his keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month, Xi announced the Belt and Road forum, which he said will be a platform for the countries to look for solutions to global economic problems.

Leaders from about 20 countries have confirmed their participation, representing Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America at the forum, said Yang, who is in charge of the forum's preparatory work.

China will also invite ministerial delegations, representatives of global organizations, former foreign heads of state, business leaders, experts and scholars to join the discussions on how to promote cooperation.

The agenda for the forum, which will have the theme "Belt and Road: Cooperation for Common Prosperity", will focus on connectivity of policy, transportation, trade, finance and people.

Yang said the initiative is not an empty slogan, but a series of concrete actions to boost connectivity and infrastructure development.

"This will be conducive to expanded regional investment and domestic demand, job creation and poverty reduction and to a higher level of development of the entire region," he added.

More than 100 countries and international organizations have joined the initiative, among which more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China.

Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said that the Belt and Road Initiative is a public service provided by China for the world.

"The international community has higher expectations toward China nowadays, and China should shoulder the responsibility within its capacity," he said, adding that China will share development opportunities with countries along the route.

The Belt and Road forum is expected to boost the world's confidence toward globalization when some countries turn to protectionism while facing economic slowdown, said Wang Yiwei, a professor of international relationship studies at Renmin University of China.

During Xi's five overseas trips last year, he made continuous efforts to call on countries to cooperate with China on the initiative.

He said in June that trade volume between China and countries along the routes had reached $1 trillionone-fourth of China's total foreign trade volume.
By ZHU WENQIAN in Beijing,JU CHUANJIANG in Jinan and CECILY LIU in London | China Daily | Updated: 2017-02-03 08:52

Two of the premium wines Changyu's Ningxia winery sold in Europe. [Photo provided to China Daily]

China's biggest wine producerChangyu Wine Group Co Ltdsaid it plans to sign with distributors in about 15 European countries, to sell its globally competitive wine products in large-scale local supermarkets.

Changyu said it had signed cooperation agreements with distributors from Germany and the Netherlands.

That was after the Yantai, Shandong province-based winemaker made its products onto the shelves of the United Kingdom's second-biggest supermarket chain Sainsbury's, where they were featured during the Chinese New Year, which began on Saturday.

Sainsbury's added Changyu's Noble Dragon Red, which sells at 8 pounds ($10.63) per bottle, equivalent to its price in China.

The wine is a Cabernet Gernischt, a red wine grape variety used in China originally believed to be of European origin. It is a blend of two types of grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Changyu describes it as a smoky red with blackberry and cassis flavors and a smooth finish.

"This is the first time that we are selling our products in a mainstream local supermarket chain in the UK and we are mainly targeting middle-class consumers," said Sun Jian, Changyu's deputy general manager.

Sun said the wine producer hoped to expand its business to other European countries with a similar strategy.

He added that with a small local production of wine, UK consumers had a big appetite for global wines.

"The UK wine market is one of the most diverse worldwide and local residents are interested in trying wines from different regions. In the past few days, the sales of our wines at Sainsbury's have been pretty good," Sun added.

The new sales at Sainsbury's have taken Changyu a step forward from its first entry into the UK in 2013, when its wines were made available through luxury wine and spirits merchant Berry Bros and Rudd.

"We know that customers are keen to broaden their repertoire and we have been looking at some distinctive regions and countries for new additions to expand our range," said Georgina Haughton, Sainsbury's wine buyer for products from South Africa, South America and China.
More Than 4,000 Empty Lots Are Going Up For Sale In Cook County

By Emma G. Gallegos in News on Feb 2, 2017 11:24PM



For sale (Cook County Land Bank)

Interested in owning some land in Cook County? More than 4,000 vacant lots have been put up for sale in the city and neighboring suburbs. Prices range from $3,000 to $5,000.

The 4,437 properties are tax-delinquent, and many of them have been abandoned for a decade, if not longer, according to the Tribune. The goal of the sale is to help boost communities hit hard by the decline in manufacturing and the foreclosure crisis. Most of the lots in Chicago proper are on the South and West sides of the city. You can check out a map of the available land here.

The Cook County Land Bank Authority has cleared red tape and is hoping local developers, not-for-profits and other community organizations will step up to buy the blighted land and transform it. Many of the pieces of land have desirable locations, close to CTA or Metra stops or parks and other open space. To buy a piece of land requires living in the same ward or suburbor having the support of the local alderman or municipality.

Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer told the Tribune, "I can't read the minds of the developers, but why not try it  maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but I'm not going to give up trying." But she's hoping the project will allow people "to bring imagination to our community."

Related:

Thousands Of Chicago Lots Are Available To Buy For $1 Each
A shopper takes an escalator heading to a duty-free shop in downtown Shanghai. [Photo/VCG]

China's overseas direct investment is estimated to soar 40 percent to a record $189 billion in 2016 from the previous year, according to a study released by the US consultancy Rhodium Group and Berlin-based Mercatur Institute for China Studies.

Europe emerged as a key investment destination, as the country's investments in the EU jumped 77 percent to over 35 billion euros, with Germany grabbing 11 billion or 31 percent of the total, according to the report.

Chinese investors have shown particular interests in advanced manufacturing and service sectors, it noted, citing last year's mega deals including the acquisition of KUKA, Skyscanner and the cinema chain Odeon.

Such trends coincided with China's latest move to warn against State-owned enterprises' outbound investments in mining or heavily polluting industries.

Although official full-year ODI data is not yet available, Rhodium Group expects the increase will cement "China's role as one of the top direct investor nations globally".

However, the report also noted China is implementing more "stringent reviews" for certain outbound investment deals with the goal of cracking down on illegitimate transactions, which are to blame for putting increasing downward pressure on the renminbi.

The country's top State-owned assets regulator plans to further enhance the accountability and risk control of overseas acquisitions by the SOEs, according to documents released early last month.

Unreasonable cases may still exist as the outbound investments soar, and such risks, once unguarded, may backfire on both sides.

Therefore it's necessary to appeal for prudent investments, said Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference in January, adding that "the overall support for Chinese firms going global hasn't and will not change".
MONTEVIDEO - Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa confirmed Thursday that his country hopes to press ahead with negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with China and would ask the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) to consider it.

"We are absolutely convinced and committed" that "if China wants the treaty, we will do it and the parliament will approve it," the minister said after a meeting in the Senate, where results of President Tabare Vazquez's official visit to China in October 2016 were discussed.

A major roadblock to the FTA is that Uruguay is a member of Mercosur, which is seeking its group FTA with China. Furthermore, other Mercosur members are not keen to have Chinese goods imported through Uruguay, dodging tariffs or customs requirements.

According to Nin Novoa, the position of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay will be "key, depending on the time of the deal" reached with the Asian giant.

He also suggested that the negotiations between Uruguay and China could lead to a broader FTA with Mercosur.

"Until we have established the basis of the treaty and this has been accepted by China, we cannot ask the other Mercosur countries if they want to join us or not," said Nin Novoa.

Mercosur requires any member to get approval from others to sign an FTA outside the bloc.

During Vazquez's visit to Beijing in October, the governments of China and Uruguay announced that they would begin to study the feasibility of holding FTA negotiations.

China has been the main destination of Uruguayan exports since 2014.
Faraday Future's FF 91 prototype electric crossover vehicle is displayed at 2017 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, US, Jan 3, 2017. The 1,050-horsepower FF 91 features autonomous driving with 3D lidar and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 2.39 seconds. [Photo/VCG]

Luxury electric car startup Faraday Future, one of several Chinese-funded companies taking aim at Elon Musk's Tesla Inc, is throttling back on plans to build vehicles in the United States, the company and public officials said.

Faraday, an affiliate of Beijing-based Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp, has also pared its planned product portfolio down from seven to two vehicles, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the company's plans.

Faraday will build a much smaller auto assembly facility than originally planned in North Las Vegas, Nevada, a city official said late on Tuesday. North Las Vegas city manager Qiong Liu said Faraday told the city it will build a 60,390-square-meter facility, beginning later this year.

The downsizing follows an acknowledgment by the company's founder Jia Yueting that his global operations were overextended. Former Faraday executives have said the company struggled with cash flow issues almost from its inception.

At least a dozen key US executives have departed Faraday in the past nine months, according to the company and several of those executives.

In a statement, Faraday said it still plans to eventually construct the larger plant, but gave no timetable.

Reuters
By LI FUSHENG in Beijing and MA CHENGUANG in Hefei | China Daily | Updated: 2017-02-03 09:19

Mexico's Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo holds a model of a car during a news conference to announce the new plant of JAC Motors in Mexico City. [Photo/Agencies]

Chinese firm sets sights on Central, South America

China's Anhui Jianghuai Automobile Co Ltd is teaming up with Mexican company Giant Motors Latinoamerica to localize its sport utility vehicles, but analysts doubt the wisdom of a move which will target customers in Mexico, and Central and South America.

Hidalgo State Governor Omar Fayad announced the cooperation at a news conference on Wednesday, saying that the two companies will invest a total of $212 million to expand the capacity of a plant owned by Giant Motors in Ciudad Sahagun, Hidalgo, AFP reported.

A JAC spokesperson told China Daily that it is currently strengthening technological cooperation with Giant Motors but did not confirm the investment.

AFP quoted Giant Motors head Elias Massri as saying that it will start producing SUVs at the plant within two months, with 1,000 vehicles in the first year and the goal of making 10,000 per year by 2021.

JAC sold 367,300 passenger vehicles in 2016, a year-on-year increase of 6.09 percent, and 27,500 of them were SUVs.

But some analysts said it may not be wise to make big investments in the country if JAC aims to sell its cars in Central and South America.

John Zeng, managing director of LMC Automotive Consulting Shanghai, said it would be baffling if JAC did make such an investment.

He said that it is cheaper to export cars to those countries from Mexico than from China but JAC could have built a plant somewhere in the South American countries.

Yale Zhang, managing director of consulting firm Automotive Foresight, said several other Chinese automakers had contemplated building plants in Mexico, but all of them saw it as a natural gateway to the United States and Canada.

In 2016, 17.59 million cars were sold in the US and almost 2 million cars in Canada, much larger than Central and South American markets combined.

He said Chinese carmakers may find it even harder, if not impossible, to fulfill their goals now that US President Donald Trump has threatened to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which includes the US, Mexico and Canada.

Mexico is the world's fourth-biggest car exporter. It produced 3.46 million cars in 2016. Of them, 2.77 million cars were exported, with three quarters of them to the US, according to local industry association AMIA.
Chinese shoppers can now enjoy a real-time VAT refund service via their mobile phones at three airports: Milan Malpensa, Munich and Helsinki, saving them weeks of waiting time if receiving refund by card.

An Alipay logo is seen at a train station in Shanghai, February 9, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

The announcement, made on Thursday by Chinese fintech firm Ant Financials' payment arm Alipay, is the latest milestone in Chinese fintech companies' overseas expansion. Last month Alipay collaborated with Finnish mobile payment provider ePassi to begin taking mobile payments for shopping and services on Finnairs flights, marking the first ever mobile payment service in air.

"In the fintech and mobile internet sectors, China is a global leader thanks to business, innovation, market size and population density", said Alexander Yin, chief financial officer of TCG, parent company of the Finnish mobile payment provider ePassi.

The fintech sector grew rapidly in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as the downturn cast traditional banking models into doubt.

China's strong start-up culture, significant venture capital availability and need for alternative financing have all contributed towards its fintech boom.

A 2016 report by KPMG - a professional service company and one of the Big Four auditors - and the Australian investment firm H2 Ventures notes that five of the worlds top 10 fintech firms are Chinese. Ant financial topped the list. Another report by EY noted China has eight of the world's 27 fintech unicorns - start-ups worth more than $1 billion - and last year received more than 2 billion pounds of investment.

The UK has signed an agreement with China to help cross-border fintech investment in November 2016. The Irish Minister for Financial Services Eoghan Murphy also recently led a delegation of fintech firms to visit China in search of opportunities along the Belt and Road countries.

Other notable Chinese fintech firms expanding into the UK include big-data firms Wind Financial Information and BBD, both of which established London operations last year.

BBD, known for its innovative data analysis algorithms, is now developing indexes specific to the UK and European markets, with one index assessing credibility and risk profile of UK crowd funding platforms and companies, expected to be launched in the second half of 2017.

Wind Financial Information, dubbed the "Chinese Bloomberg terminal", is eyeing opportunities to sell its data on Chinese and Asian asset classes including equities, bonds, funds and commodities to European investors.

Thomas Zhang, General Manager of Europe at Wind Financial Information, said: "We are seeing more interest in China's markets from global institutional investors. If China's A-share is admitted into the MSCI index one day, there will be a further boost to the global demand for China-related financial data."
A customer talks with an employee at an Apple Store in Beijing. [Photo/Agencies]

Apple Inc's iPhone last year lost the title of the best-selling smartphone in China for the first time in four years, highlighting the mounting challenges it faces from local smartphone vendors, a new report said.

The decline is in line with the US tech firm's latest financial report that its sales in China dropped 12 percent in the quarter ending December.

According to Counterpoint Technology Market Research, Oppo Electronics Corp's middle-end R9 handset was China's most popular model in 2016, with an annual shipment of 17 million units and a market share of 4 percent.

Apple's flagship model, the iPhone 6s, ranked second with a market share of 2 percent. This is the first time the California-based company lost the title since 2012.

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, which aims to outcompete Apple in the premium segment, secured the third spot with its affordable Honor Joy 5S model.

"Oppo's omnipresent distribution channels from big to small cities across China and its aggressive marketing strategy are giving its products an edge," said Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint.

The result came as Apple said on Wednesday it shipped 78.3 million iPhones in the final quarter of 2016, hitting an all-time high, thanks to the popularity of its iPhone 7 series.

But amid the intensified competition in China, Apple failed to stop the bleeding in the world's largest smartphone arena. China remained the weakest market for Apple in the latest quarter, with sales down 12 percent from the same quarter last year to $16.2 billion.

Apple said part of the decline was due to the continued weakness in China's currency. And it added that it was narrower than the almost 30 percent decline in the previous quarter.

"I'm encouraged with the significant improvement, but we're not without challenges there," said Apple CEO Tim Cook on a conference call.
A worker adjusts the logo at the stand of Huawei at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, March 15, 2015.[Photo/Agencies]

PARIS - Huawei, Chinese telecoms giant and Orange, French telecommunication group on Thursday signed an agreement to bolster partnership on 5G services and cloudification, the Chinese firm said.

With the new accord, the two companied will cooperate on key technologies related to 5G to "encourage innovation in three areas of 5G services: infrastructure, operations and ecosystem development."

In this context, they will collaborate on mobile network cloudification with open service interfaces, network flow cut and sharing 4G and 5G power in the frequency bands.

In addition, Huawei and Orange will focus on specific use scenarios for 5G such as ultra large coverage in Africa and energy efficiency, the statement added.

"We are pleased to announce this new milestone in our long-term cooperation with the Orange group on mobile technologies and in particular in view of the imminent arrival of 5G," said Zou Zhilei, president of the Huawei Carrier Business Group.

"It also shows our commitment to our best customers to help them build a better connected world," he added.

Alain Maloberti, vice president of Orange Labs Networks, said the accord is a part of plan to face "technological challenges that will make possible the future uses of augmented and virtual reality and ...improve the performance of our mobile network... when it is needed, for our customers in Europe and Africa."
A view of Alibaba Group's headquarters in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, March 21, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

WELLINGTON - New Zealand Economic Development Minister Simon Bridges on Friday welcomed the opening of a new regional Chinese e-commerce base as an opportunity for exporters.

Bridges said he would attend the opening of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group's Australia and New Zealand headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, on Saturday.

"Alibaba Group is the world's largest online and mobile marketplace and presents an enormous opportunity for New Zealand exporters to sell their products into the huge China market," Bridges said in a statement.

"China is our second-biggest trading partner after Australia and we have all witnessed the rise of e-commerce platforms globally, but few countries have embraced e-commerce with the gusto shown by Chinese consumers," said Bridges.

"In the last year, China's e-commerce retail sales have grown 37 percent versus 11.3 percent in standard retail; mobile commerce sales have grown 123 percent; and 50 percent of the population are yet to access the internet," he said.

"With a population size of 1.4 billion and growing recognition and demand for Western brands, it is clear that e-commerce presents significant opportunities for our exporters. Alibaba is a key gateway to taking advantage of this."

The opening of the headquarters followed last year's memorandum of understanding signed between the government's New Zealand Trade and Enterprise agency and Alibaba Group, which formalised discussions for strengthening trade between China and New Zealand.
5 Local Albums To Buy On Bandcamp Today To Donate To The ACLU

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Feb 3, 2017 8:35PM



Photo by Freshly Diced

There are many reasons to be a fan of Bandcamp. It's a great place for artists to get their music out there with a low barrier of entry, and the site's cross-platform embed codes make it super simple to share and promote music. We've even used to it release one of our favorite "unreleased albums of all time. But today there's a new reason to visit the site.

For any purchase made on the site today, Bandcamp will be donate 100 percent of their share of the proceeds to the American Civil Liberties Union. Additionally, over 400 artists and labels are donating their proceeds as well, but the Bandcamp donation applies to any purchase you make.

In an online statement, Bandcamp founder and CEO Ethan Diamond explained the motivation behind this move:

Like 98% of U.S. citizens (including the President), I am the descendant of immigrantsmy great-grandparents came to America from Russia and Lithuania as teenagers and worked in sweatshops until they were able to afford to bring the rest of their families over. Most everyone you speak to in this country has a similar story to tell, because we are, in fact, a nation of immigrants, bound together by a shared belief in justice, equality, and the freedom to pursue a better life. In this context, last weeks Executive Order barring immigrants and refugees from seven Middle Eastern countries from entering the United States is not simply immoral, it violates the very spirit and foundation of America.

Needs some help to get you started? Here are five local acts whose albums we think would make a fine addition to any music collection.

Silk Prison (Part 1) by Tight Phantomz

Silk Prison (Part 2) by Tight Phantomz

Tight Phantomz's Silk Prison came out in 2012, but we still don't think the double-album has been heard by nearly enough people. Local musician and engineer Mike Lust leads the group, and while they've been largely dormant recently, this album still feels vital and new.

The Lost Demos by Love in October

Love In October is primarily a studio project now, with it's two members living in different cities, but this grab bag of old demos is worth a listen. Actually, calling these "demos" seems like a misnomer since this is a largely polished and solid selection of power-pop gems.

Gush by Tom Schraeder and His Ego

Tom Schraeder pumps out a ton of music, and generally enjoys pushing boundaries and exploring every dark corner he can root in his brain. On Gush, though, Schraeder concocted an amazing collection of rock songs that feel perfectly put together and wise beyond their years. He sat on the album a long time and long considered never releasing it, but we are so happy that he did.

The Incessant by Meat Wave

If you don't mind waiting a few days to hear your purchase, now would be a good time to pre-order Meat Wave's The Incessant, out Feb. 17. The Chicago trio takes their cues from the classically brutal sound championed by many '80s and '90s groups on Touch & Go. But it's not all sledgehammers to the skull: there are some pretty great hooks fighting their way out of the fray.

A Waltz For Old Jeppson (Carl's Theme) by Archie Powell & The Exports

And let's double up on the Chicago-ness with this ode to Jeppson's Malort by Archie Powell and the Exports.

Of course this would also be an excellent time to fill in any holes in your Drag City collection, now that much of the local label's iconic discography is recently available on Bandcamp. Download some classic independent rock and give to a good cause!

We also reached out to Jes Skolnik, managing editor at Bandcamp Daily and a Chicago resident, for her recommendations.

Demo by Tigress

PKR-061: Udusic 7" by Udusic

DEMO 2016 by Silent Age

DEMO by Espejos
A popular Chinese teenage star Yuan Wang on Tuesday spoke at a UN youth forum and called for equal access to quality education for young people worldwide.

Wang, member of the famous Chinese boy band TFboys, told the crowd that China has 278 million young people, the second largest youth population in the world, and he is fortunate to work with the UN to inspire China's young generation to promote a set of global goals aiming to end poverty, promote gender equality and combat climate change.

The goals, know as sustainable development goals (SDGs), are outlined in the UN-facilitated 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. There is one goal asking for complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education by year 2030.

Yuan Wang (C), member of the famous Chinese boy band TFBOYS, attends a UN youth forum at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on Jan 31, 2017.[Photo/Xinhua]

"My passion for 2030 is that every young person can access good quality education; girls have the same potential to achieve amazing things as boys," said Wang.

The Jan 30-31 youth forum is aimed at trying to involve the efforts of youth to eradicate poverty and promote prosperity across the world. It brings youth leaders worldwide and gives them an opportunity to engage with police-makers and civil society representatives to discuss on the SDGs.

Yuan Wang (C), member of the famous Chinese boy band TFBOYS, attends a UN youth forum at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on Jan 31, 2017.[Photo/Xinhua]

Related:

UN Women's HeForShe Arts Week launched in NY
New, short-range AR-2 is perfect for mounting on drones in anti-terrorism uses, officials said

China can now offer users of its combat drones a new missile designed for anti-terrorism operations and low-intensity conflicts.

The China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, the country's largest military drone exporter by number of products sold overseas, said it recently conducted live-fire tests on the AR-2 short-range air-to-surface missile in northwestern China.

The AR-2 is seen as tough competition for US, French and Israeli missiles.

A CH-4 reconnaissance/combat drone was used in the tests, though the missile can also be mounted on other CH drones, officials said. The academy's CH-series drones have been sold to military users in over 10 countries.

The missile also can be carried by Chinese attack helicopters and other unmanned aircraft after minor technical modifications, they said.

With a weight of about 20 kilograms and a 5 kg warhead, an AR-2 has a maximum range of 8 kilometers and a top speed of 735 kilometers per hour. It is effective against personnel, armored cars, houses or bunkers, its designers said.

Zeng Like, project manager for the AR-2, said that the academy hopes to win market share from the United States' AGM-114 Hellfire, widely used in the 1990s and 2000s. At least 29 nations, including Australia, France and South Korea, deploy the Hellfire, according to Jane's Weapon Systems.

"There are a lot of counterterrorism operations and low-intensity conflicts in the world that create a huge demand for low-cost, high-efficiency weapons to hit cars or light-duty, armored vehicles," he said. "We believe that most ground targets designated for drones are soft targets or lightly armored vehicles, so using a heavier missile such as the AGM-114 Hellfire for such operations is a waste."

Smaller, cheaper missiles like the AR-2 are powerful enough to handle those targets, and their lighter weight enables a drone to carry more missiles, Zeng said.

The AR-2's biggest competitors are the US' AGM-176 Griffin, currently the best-selling lightweight precision-strike weapon, France's Lightweight Multirole Missile and Israel's Whip Shot missile, he said.

But, Zeng said, "the AR-2 features strong capabilities and a lower price, so we are positive it will have good market prospects".

Many of the academy's clients now use the bigger, heavier AR-1 missile with CH drones, he said.

In another development, the academy said trainees from one of its foreign clients performed a test in which four CH drones were networked to perform as a fleet.

Ground controllers from the unnamed foreign nation who were trained at the academy guided four CH-4B drones via satellite to work together in a patrol.

Huang Wei, a senior researcher who oversaw the test, said the networking of multiple drones is useful for joint operations in combat. Huang said only China and the US are capable of conducting joint operations using multiple drones.
Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang visits a survivor of Saturday's tour boat sinking on Wednesday at a hospital in Kota Kinabalu.Xue Fei / Xinhua

Chinese Consul General Chen Peijie has asked Malaysia to search underwater for the bodies of six people - including five Chinese tourists - missing since a tour boat foundered off Borneo on Saturday night.

Chen, China's top diplomat in Sabah, said the missing may be trapped by marine plants, fishing nets or debris, Xinhua News Agency reported.

"Please check carefully and look carefully for every possibility," Chen asked First Admiral Adam Aziz, Kota Kinabalu director of the Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, Xinhua reported. Kota Kinabalu is the capital of Sabah, one of two states on the Malaysia island of Borneo.

Aziz said Thursday's search operation, involving 22 vessels and other assets, will still focus on the 3,900 square nautical miles searched on Wednesday.

Because the exact position where the boat capsized is not known, their only option is to search a large area, where the water can reach 50 meters deep, he said.

"Our normal divers can only go down to 20 meters, so for 50 meters, we will try to get, maybe, remotely operated vehicles," Aziz said.

The catamaran, carrying 28 Chinese tourists and three crew members, sank in rough seas on its way to the popular tourist island of Mengalum. Three tourists were found dead on Sunday and 22 were rescued after being afloat for more than 30 hours.

Chinese Ambassador to Malaysia Huang Huikang visited some Chinese tourists at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kota Kinabalu on Wednesday, where they have been treated for dehydration and severe sunburn.

"We will not give up any gleam of hope and will ... urge the Malaysian side to continue their search efforts and thoroughly investigate the incident so that tourists' safety in Sabah can be ensured," said Huang.

Borneo is a popular Spring Festival destination for Chinese tourists.

News reports have raised questions about the boat's licensing and its operation, including whether it was overloaded and whether safety precautions were taken. Police in Sabah said a thorough investigation will be carried out, and the boat's owner and the two rescued crew members were detained.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
Beijing should adopt an open-minded approach toward Manila's request for Chinese patrols of piracy-plagued international waters in its southern seas, but dispatching vessels would take time and require cooperative efforts, academic observers said.

Patrols should be organized and overseen by a body established between China and other countries in the region, they said.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said he had asked for China Coast Guard patrols of waters leading to the Malacca Strait and the Sulu Sea.

"We would be glad if we had their presence," Duterte said in a speech to newly promoted Army generals on Tuesday, according to local news outlet Philstar.

Duterte cited Beijing's assistance to Somalia in combating piracy, but he didn't say whether China had responded to his request. Chinese government officials had not commented as of Thursday.

The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia have an agreement to patrol problem areas and combat the activities of Abu Sayyaf, a small group of Islamic State-linked militants sustained by piracy and kidnap-for-ransom activities.

China offered small arms and fast boats, worth $14 million, to the Philippines to assist Duterte's fight against terrorism and drugs in December, after the Philippine president made his first state visit to China in October, helping to repair bilateral ties.

Li Jinming, a professor of Southeast Asian studies at Xiamen University, said Duterte might not have fully considered the feasibility of Chinese patrols when he made the remarks.

"It is difficult for China to send ships there within a short time frame because the surrounding waters may involve territorial waters of some other countries," he said, adding that China's offer of arms had been a strong signal of support.

However, Xu Liping, a senior researcher of Southeast Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said, "Although the request for patrols is only a unilateral appeal from the Philippines now, it is not impossible for it to come to pass in the future, given China's successful experience of escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and the need to fight piracy in the waters."

Xu said China should take an open-minded attitude as a responsible country in the region, and consult with other countries to work out "an institutional practice concerning joint patrols there".

The International Maritime Bureau said in a report released recently that maritime kidnappings had hit a 10-year high last year, with the Sulu Sea singled out as an area of concern.

mojingxi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 02/03/2017 page3)
BEIJING - A Chinese regulator has urged local tourism authorities and travel agencies to step up safety checks at major tourist spots after a boat accident in waters off the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah.

In an emergency notice, the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA) demanded safety inspections at popular tourist attractions and recreation facilities that are most prone to accidents.

Ice-snow, coastal tourism and passenger transport are among the key areas that need strengthened safety inspections, according to the CNTA.

The notice came after a catamaran carrying over two dozen Chinese tourists and three crew went down in turbulent waters while heading for the popular island of Mengalum on Saturday.

Twenty-two people have been rescued, but three Chinese tourists have been confirmed dead. A further five Chinese tourists and a crew member are still missing.
Rescue workers search for survivors after four homes collapsed in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, on Thursday.[Provided to China Daily]

Five people were killed when four residential buildings collapsed on Thursday morning in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, according to the local government.

An estimated nine people from two families were buried in the accident, which occurred around 8 am, the provincial government said.

The residential buildings, four to five stories tall, were in Dahui village, Wencheng county.

Three hundred rescuers from the city and the county, including police officers, firefighters and medical workers, were carrying out a rescue operation, but had made little progress as of 1 pm.

"The scene is quite chaotic, as if the place had been leveled by an earthquake," a rescuer said by telephone. "We have to work very carefully because the ruined buildings are still attached to standing homes."

Two people were pulled from the rubble at around 3 pm, but both had no vital signs after being sent to hospital.

Another three victims were discovered later.

A 63-year-old survivor, who was buried in the debris, called for help using a cellphone, China Central Television reported.

The rescue is continuing, the local authority said. Investigators have yet to confirm the cause of the collapse.

Xinhua contributed to this story.
Every cloud has a silver lining - even clouds of smog, as factory owners in an eastern Chinese village have discovered.

Dadian, just north of Jiaozhou, Shandong province, is home to 300 factories churning out those thin, ubiquitous face masks that can be seen on anyone from nurses to shop assistants to subway commuters.

Concern over air pollution has helped fuel a multibillion-yuan industry for manufacturers and suppliers of raw materials, with orders for face masks skyrocketing when the National Meteorological Center issues red or orange alerts for smog.

"We can make 20,000 face masks a day, but our orders are often double our capacity," said Gao Jian, a factory boss in Dadian.

The demand has seen this once remote, impoverished village become a busy manufacturing base in just over a decade. Its factories produce over 1 billion masks a year, generating annual revenue of 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million).

The village supplies 80 percent of China's standard face masks and also ships its products to the United States and Japan.

"We have a complete industry chain from raw materials to textile processing to distribution," said Jiang Xiubin, head of the Dadian Face Mask Manufacturers Association.

Business was tough in the 1990s, he said, with traders having to travel 36 hours by train to promote their masks in Lanzhou, Gansu province. However, in 2000, Beijing was hit by a sandstorm, leading to surge in demand for the village's products.

Sales soared again in 2003 when the nation was hit by SARS. Dadian had just 23 workshops at the time, and laborers had to work around the clock to meet orders. That year, the local industry made 20 million yuan.

Since then, business has continued to flourish, with the peak season being August, when some parts of the country are regularly affected by sandstorms and smog.

However, the village's face masks have come under scrutiny after false claims by advertisers that they can protect against air pollution.

Dadian's factories have never claimed their masks are effective against hazardous PM2.5 particles, and even state as much on their packaging, Jiang said. Yet he added that it was hard to prevent retailers from spreading misinformation to boost sales.

Although Jiang was unwilling to link the village's rapid development with environmental issues, he conceded that the face mask industry has "benefited a lot" from pollution.

"Before I opened my factory, my family's annual income was about 40,000 yuan. In 2013, I made 90,000 yuan from making 300,000 masks," he said. "But if it came down to it, I'd prefer to live in a better natural environment than make more money in smog."
The case of a Chinese man, reportedly a veteran soldier, who has been unable to leave India for 54 years has triggered calls on social media for him to be repatriated.

According to a BBC report on Tuesday, Wang Qi, now in his 80s, "entered India in 1963 but could never go back" shortly after a war between the two countries in border areas.

It is unclear under what circumstances he was taken into custody by the Indian authorities and whether he is a prisoner of war, but it is believed he was not carrying any form of identification.

Wang is currently living free in central India but cannot leave the country, according to the report.

The Chinese embassy in New Dehli responded on Wednesday, saying that Wang "has been denied official Indian documents and citizenship" by the authorities and "denied permission to travel back" to China.

Zhao Jun, head of the embassy's consular section, said in a statement that the embassy "is aware of the case and is in close contact with Wang, his relatives and the Indian authorities".

"We're greatly sympathetic about his suffering and have consistently offered help," Zhao said, adding that with the joint efforts of China and India, this case "will surely be resolved in an ideal manner on the basis of respect for the will of the individual concerned".

Zhao did not confirm Wang's age or whether he had been a soldier.

The BBC report was cited by many Chinese online news services. A subtitled version of the two-minute video report attracted more than 780 comments on Toutiaoxinwen, a popular news feed on Sina Weibo.

"Hopefully, the elderly man can get home as soon as possible," read one typical post.

The Global Times reported on Thursday that the embassy has submitted the necessary paperwork to allow Wang to travel to China, but the Indian authorities had not responded.

Ye Hailin, an expert on South Asian studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the first step for the two governments is to clarify Wang's identity, as blocking someone from leaving the country for decades goes against international codes and norms.

"No matter whether Wang is a veteran or a civilian, India should ensure humanitarian treatment, including giving him any necessary medical care," he said.

It is still unclear whether Wang would want to re-enter India in the case he is allowed to leave the country, according to the BBC.
Passengers make their way home after arriving at Beijing Railway Station on Thursday, as the city witnessed a growing number of people returning as the Spring Festival holiday came to an end. [Photo by Zou Hong / China Daily]

94.2 million people expected to travel on last day of holiday

Traffic slowed to a crawl on major highways on Thursday as tens of millions of people returned home after the Spring Festival holiday.

According to China Central Television, about 94.2 million people were expected to travel on Thursday.

Traffic was slow on several major highways, including Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao Expressway and Shanghai-Chongqing Expressway, according to the Ministry of Transport, with traffic jams in some sections extending for dozens of kilometers.

In Henan and Hunan provinces, some highways were partly closed due to snow or smog.

According to the ministry, the rush of traffic into major urban areas, including the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, was expected to last past 10 pm.

About 1.5 million vehicles were expected on highways in Central China's Hubei province on Thursday as many parts of the province experienced light rain.

Chen Ying, who was heading to Hubei's capital Wuhan from the province's Enshi Tujia and Miao autonomous prefecture, encountered a traffic jam after passing Yichang city.

"I don't know whether it was because of the weather or there was an accident ahead, but the traffic was terrible," the 53-year-old said.

She said the traffic was so slow that some people even got out of their cars and did some exercise, and many service zones were so packed that it was hard to find somewhere to park.

The 340 kilometers from Yichang to Wuhan, which usually takes about four hours, took Chen nine hours. "At its worst, we moved only about 5 km in 80 minutes," she said.

China Railway Corp was expected to log 11.5 million trips on Thursday, 11.3 percent more the last day of Spring Festival in 2016. The company had to add 819 temporary trains to meet the high demand.

About 8.48 million people left Beijing during Spring Festival - 39 percent of the city's population - according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport. Now, their return is putting stress on the capital's transportation system.

Almost 1,700 flights were expected in Beijing on Thursday. According to the commission, 224 trains a day arrived at Beijing South Railway Station during the Spring Festival holiday.

The commission said it has taken various measures to help travelers get back home using the capital's public transport system. From Feb 1 to 4, 1,000 taxis will be dispatched to Beijing South Railway Station and the operation of the subway's Line 4 will also be extended.

Zheng Jinran and Luo Wangshu contributed to this story.
Butt Out: Hundreds Expected To Moon Trump Tower In Chicago

By Stephen Gossett in News on Feb 3, 2017 6:59PM



Facebook

The mission statement for Chicagos, uh, cheekiest anti-Trump protest is pretty straightforward: "Kiss Our Asses, Release Your Taxes!"

The minds behind a new comedy enterprise are urging Chicagoans to join them on Sunday, Feb. 12 for a good old-fashioned mass mooning of Trump Tower, with the hopes of keeping light (and skin) shining on Trumps refusal to release his tax returns.

As of Friday afternoon, more than 300 people had RSVPed to attend and another 1400-plus were interested in Chicago Moons the Trump Tower.

The butts-out action was put together, appropriately enough, by Shitshow, a new Chicago-based satirical news show cut from the mold of The Daily Show and the old Colbert Report.

Were not trying to be big political players, but at the same time, we see a lot of hypocrisy in the administration and the arguments people put forth to defend it, Bailey Davis, 20, told Chicagoist.

Chicago has seen plenty of fanciful Trump Tower-related protests since the rise of Donald, including a proposal to hide the tower sign with giant flying pigs and a planned post-election mass flipping-off. But we havent seen nearly as many since inauguration, when, for non-Trump fans, the situation has steadily grown more dire. Still, theres room for such juvenilia, Davis argues. (Note: a more traditional, seemingly fully clothed protest with the same goal is scheduled for April 15, at Millennium Park)

Different things get different people on their feet. Regular everyday protests might not get this kind of press. I hope it brings attention to his tax returns and our butts dont swallow up the rest, Davis said, also citing the raid on Yemen and the Dakota Access Pipeline as issues that should stay on radars even as Trumps executive orders dominate news coverage.

Sometimes you have to fight absurdity with absurdity, he added.
From exporting low-cost, effective vaccines to sending doctors to combat outbreaks of disease, China is increasingly benefiting the world with its enhanced medical capacities and expertise, according to an international health expert.

Seth Berkley, CEO of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, said Chinese vaccines are "significantly cheaper" than those made by many other countries.

The Chinese-made vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, for example, is up to 95 percent less expensive than those produced in the West, he said.

Transmitted by mosquitoes, Japanese encephalitis is the leading cause of viral encephalitis in Asia and the Western Pacific.

With an average price of 42 cents a dose, the live attenuated vaccine made by the Chengdu Institute of Biological Products is providing lifesaving protection to millions of children in low-in-come countries, including Laos, Nepal and Cambodia, under the alliance's program, Berkley said.

The alliance has committed to using 27.7 million doses of the vaccine. In light of this, Berkley hailed China's efforts to move on from being an alliance recipient of vaccines to being a key supplier.

The nation's Japanese encephalitis vaccine became available on the global market after the World Health Organization endorsed China's vaccine regulatory body in 2011. Two years later, the product became the first prequalified Chinese vaccine to be licensed for use on children.

"We're seeing huge potential for China to supply the global public vaccine market via WHO prequalification, including for emergency outbreaks such as yellow fever and Ebola," Margaret Chan, director-general of the WHO, said last month.

During the Ebola outbreaks, China sent 1,200 medical workers to affected regions. Chinese experts also trained more than 13,000 local medics to treat patients in nine countries in Africa.
Dongguan, one of the major production centers in Guangdong province, was ranked the emptiest city on the mainland during the Spring Festival holidays, which ended on Thursday.

Nearly 70 percent of the city's residents left Dongguan - known as a migrant city - to spend the Lunar New Year with family members, according to 360 Big Data Center.

Located in the middle of the prosperous Pearl River Delta, Dongguan joined three other Guangdong metropolises in the top five.

Foshan, Guangzhou and Shenzhen had more than 60 percent of their residents leave for the holidays.

Changsha, capital of Hunan province, was the fifth-emptiest city. The central Chinese city was followed by Shanghai, Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Beijing, Wuhan in Hubei province, and Zhengzhou in Henan province.

All first-tier cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen saw more than 50 percent of their residents leave for Spring Festival.

"The parks have had few visitors since the beginning of the Lunar New Year," said Xie Shanshan, a Guangzhou housewife. "And the streets are not as busy as usual."

"It's hard to get used to the park being so quiet," said Xie, who goes to the park near her home to exercise every morning.

First-tier cities, which offer myriad employment opportunities and good salaries, advanced facilities, improved public services as well as rich educational and medical resources, are still the major destinations for large numbers of migrant workers from around the country.

Guangdong, which has a population of more than 100 million, has more than 22 million migrant workers.

On the other side of the equation, Jiangxi province has the largest percentage of people working elsewhere.

As much as 7.25 percent of the residents in Jiangxi have left their homes, followed by Hunan (7.16 percent), Henan (6.3 percent), Anhui (6.27 percent) and Shandong (6.05 percent) provinces.

Guangzhou and Shenzhen have become the major destinations for migrant workers from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan and Hubei provinces.

Beijing mainly attracts workers from Shandong and Hebei provinces and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. Migrant workers from Shandong account for more than 20 percent of the transient population in the capital.

Shanghai mainly attracts workers from Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces in the Yangtze River Delta. Migrant workers from the three provinces represent more than 50 percent of the city's total.
Ticket scalpers, once the scourge of Spring Festival train travelers, have seen their profits derailed by online booking services and the rapid expansion in high-speed rail.

For years, Manniu, who would give only his nickname, used to hide from police at a railway station in Jiangxi province to resell tickets. He has now switched to selling cakes to commuters instead.

"No matter what I do, I can earn more money than by scalping," he said. "Plus, it's not so easy to scalp tickets anymore."

Inadequate rail services, which result in severe ticket shortages, especially during the Spring Festival peak when millions of people return home to visit family, have long been a headache for the Chinese authorities.

Scalpers would stockpile tickets, reselling them at high margins, disturbing the market and sparking public anger.

Guo Ping has worked as a railway police officer in Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi, since 1997 and has rich experience in pursuing scalpers.

"In the past, we stood on top of a building to observe ticket buyers with telescopes to identify suspected scalpers," he said, adding that officers were also watching via video cameras installed in ticket halls.

Although scalping is illegal, scalpers were a common sight at railway stations. Yet thanks to the expansion of the high-speed railway network and the introduction of a system that requires real-names and ID numbers to be printed on all tickets, scalpers are a dying breed.

Liu Quan, who spoke on condition of using a pseudonym, was punished in 2010 for ticket scalping and now operates a fruit stand in Xiamen, capital of Fujian province.

"Ticket scalping has become more difficult since 2011," he said, one reason being the online booking system. He added that many of his former colleagues had also switched to new businesses.

Up to 356 million journeys are expected to be made on the railways during this year's Spring Festival travel rush, up 9.7 percent year-on-year, according to China Railway Corp.
Tan Jiangyong (left) talks with a foreign buyer about bamboo bikes.Provided To China Daily

Though bamboo craft is commonplace in Tan Jiang-yong's home county, none took the 28-year-old seriously when he returned home from university and began making bicycles out of the plant.

He was inspired to try building such a contraption himself after a friend showed him a photo of a bamboo bike online shortly after he graduated in 2011.

"It looked so unique and stylish, and I just couldn't wait to ride it," said Tan.

"The only problem was, how could I get my hands on one?"

After approaching two factories in China that work with bamboo, the clothing design major found their products wanting, so he decided to build one himself.

"My idea was to have a bike with a flawless bamboo frame that was stable and moisture-proof, built without using any glue or screws," he said.

"Bamboo grows everywhere in my birthplace, Hechi, so I thought maybe I should return home to take my shot."

Tan retreated into the karst landscape of Huanjiang Maonan autonomous county near his home in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, built himself a workshop out of bamboo, and started on the project.

After several months, he finished his first creation and posted a picture of it on an online bicycle enthusiast forum.

It attracted the attention of a Swedish student, who offered to buy the two-wheeler for 4,500 yuan ($660).

"The buyer told me that environmental friendly products are extremely popular in Sweden. I remember thinking this was a good chance to try out my product in the overseas market," Tan said.

To his surprise, the cold of Northern Europe caused cracks to appear in the bike's frame.

"At first I was quite frustrated, but later I thought 'maybe these setbacks can make the bike better'," Tan said.

Following an exhaustive search, a more durable species of local bamboo was found that Tan says is as hard as metal. He also started using resin to seal the joints on his bikes, which improves the appearance and makes them more weatherproof.

"I hope people will appreciate the texture of bamboo and the lingering smell of nature while they ride my bikes," he said.

"Making a bespoke bike is quite time-consuming; at first it took me 10 days to produce one bike, but that's been shortened to two days now as I have eight employees to help."

In March last year, Tan established his own company to produce bamboo handicrafts. He has sold more than 600 bikes since the first one was bought in 2014, with many exported to countries such as Israel, Denmark and Singapore.

His success encouraged his fellow villagers, many of whom were farmers struggling below the poverty line. He helped 15 farmers to start an agricultural cooperative that produces bamboo handicrafts.

"I didn't mean to make a career out of this business, but it turned out to be a good way to promote the culture of the Maonan people, and more importantly it helps my fellow villagers out," Tan said.
A Chinese language exam is likely to be introduced in Russian schools from 2018, according to a national-level education body in Russia.

"There is a plan to introduce the Chinese language test to the Basic State Exam in 2018 and to the Unified State Exam in 2020," Oxana Reshetnikova, Director of the Russian Federal Institute for Pedagogical Measurements, was quoted as saying by the local Moskva news agency on Tuesday.

Russia's Basic State Exam is a series of obligatory examinations for ninth grade students and the Unified State Exam for 11th grade students necessary to qualify for university education.

Takers of the two exams currently have a choice of English, German, French and Spanish as part of the exam's foreign language component.

The Chinese language is now taught in 123 educational institutions in 34 regions in Russia, with the total number of student learners exceeding 17,000, of which around 5,000 are in eighth to 11th grades, according to Russia's education watchdog.
The State Council, China's Cabinet, approved two important five-year plans on Friday to enhance supervision of food and medicine safety amid the government's efforts to better protect the publics health.

The two plans, passed at an executive conference presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, outlined the government's blueprint in ensuring food and drug safety during the 13th Five-Year Period (2016-20).

According to the plans, the government will keep a close eye on key areas, such as schools and roadside vendors, to ensure that the food sold there is safe. The authorities will also enhance supervision toward excessive pesticide usage and misuse of food additives.

The government will speed up the establishment of a mechanism to make sure all medicine production procedures and sales are traceable, and the production and sales of counterfeit medicine will be punished heavily.

The sample tests will cover all kinds of food, blood products, vaccines and essential medicines to improve the capacity of risk surveillance and assessment, according to the plans.

The government will also speed up the amendment to the national standard on food safety and raise the safety standard of food, medicine and cosmetics.
Police officers in Linyi, Shandong province, help migrant workers get payment that had been withheld by their employers last month.[Zhu Wutao/for China Daily]

State Council also protects migrant workers' right to prompt payment

The State Council, China's Cabinet, approved two important five-year plans on Friday to enhance supervision of food and medicine safety amid the government's efforts to better protect public health.

The two plans, passed at an executive conference presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, outlined the government's blueprint for ensuring food and drug safety during the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20).

According to the plans, the government will keep a close eye on key areas such as schools and roadside vendors to ensure that the food they sell is safe. The authorities will enhance supervision guarding against excessive pesticide use and misuse of food additives.

The government will speed up the establishment procedures to make sure that all phases of medicine production and sales are retraceable, and the production and sale of counterfeit medicine will be severely punished.

Sample testing will cover all kinds of food, blood products, vaccines and essential medicines to improve risk surveillance and assessment, according to the plans.

The government will also speed up the amendment to the national standard on food safety and raise the safety standard of food, medicine and cosmetics.

The executive conference announced strict measures to protect the legal interests of migrant workers who were not paid by their employers.

Provincial governments will be held accountable for ensuring the timely payment of migrant workers. Provinces that produce large numbers of migrant workers are urged to help workers get their pay on time.

Companies that fail to pay wages promptly will be put on a blacklist that will be published at regular intervals. Their market access will be limited in the future.

"China has made impressive progress largely thanks to the effort and contribution by our migrant workers," the State Council said in a statement.

Huang Leping, director of Beijing Yilian Legal Aid and Research Center of Labor, said that Li has paid attention to the legal interests of migrant workers, showing the central government's concern over the suffering of the grassroots.

Those who refuse to pay the migrant workers should face tougher punishment in keeping with the Criminal Law, which rules that employers can face up to seven years imprisonment if they maliciously delay or refuse to pay workers, said Huang, whose NGO has helped more than 140,000 employees, mostly migrant workers, to protect their rights.

Compared with employees in many other occupations, such as teachers, migrant workers are more vulnerable to the infringement of their rights because they have little knowledge and few channels to safeguard their rights, he added.
China's Yan Zhuyin celebrates the uncorking of Beaujolais Nouveau with French winemakers in Les Sarmentelles.[Photo provided to China Daily]

As wine drinkers around the world savor the latest vintage of Beaujolais Nouveau, one public face of the wine has much in common with the celebrated French red - youth - and one distinct dissimilarity: She's Chinese.

The 22-year-old Yan Zhuyin is candid about the advantage that she thinks won her the crown of Miss Beaujolais China in the fall. The Shenzhen native's youth is a perfect fit for the promotion of one of the world's youngest wines.

A light and fruity red wine made from handpicked Gamay grapes from the Beaujolais region, Beaujolais Nouveau has established its reputation as the "world's fastest wine". Fermented just six to eight weeks before it's sold, the wine is intended for immediate consumption, or more precisely, consumption within a year of harvest.

While the other Beaujolais wine is casked for a year before it's released and develops character with aging, the nouveau's quick production means there is very little tannin, so fruit flavors are right up front and the wine will not mature over time.

The taste of the new Beaujolais has thus been compared to a young ballerina's first attempt to stand on her toes. Its spirit has been championed by French poet Robert Sabatier, who wrote "be young as a Beaujolais and age as a Bourgundy".

Opinions about the quality of the fast wine have been divided in France and beyond. Too simple? Immature? The Wine Bible author Karen McNeil said, "Drinking it gives you the same kind of silly pleasure as eating cookie dough." But another eminent wine critic, Robert Parker Jr, wrote that such criticism was "ludicrous" and declared the better vintages as "delicious, zesty, exuberant, fresh and vibrantly fruity."

The wine itself seems to have shrugged off controversies. The uncorking of the first bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau, scheduled on the third Thursday every November in France, is widely celebrated as the world's most famous wine party.

The celebration was joined by its first non-French ambassador for the first time in 2016.
A new study adds to the evidence that red-hot chili peppers can boost health and longevity, Mike Peters reports.

Like spicy food? New research suggests that besides giving a flash of heat to your favorite dishes, chili peppers could also help you live longer.

For centuries, peppers and spices have been prized for their power to treat some diseases, but only one other study - conducted in China and published in 2015 - has previously examined chili-pepper consumption and its association with mortality. The new US research, published recently in the journal PLoS One, corroborates the earlier study's findings.

Scientists at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont found that consumption of hot red chili peppers is associated with a 13 percent reduction in total mortality - primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke.

Using data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey, the researchers looked at 16,179 participants who were at least 18 years old, and followed them for up to 23 years.

The data show that those who ate more of the spicy ingredient tended to be "younger, male, white, Mexican-American, married, and to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and consume more vegetables and meats ... had lower HDL-cholesterol" in comparison to participants who did not consume red chilies.

The scientists also found that the participants who consumed hot red peppers benefited from a 13 percent reduction in risk of death.
Illinois Holocaust Survivors Blast Trump's Immigration & Refugee Ban

By Stephen Gossett in News on Feb 3, 2017 4:12PM



Getty Images / Photo: Carsten Koall

In the Chicago area, we've seen a strong sense of kinship between the Jewish community and the refugees and immigrants singled out by Donald Trump's ban, be it the Glencoe Reform synagogue who welcomed one of the last Syrian refugee families to arrive before the clampdown, or local Jewish organizations standing in solidarity with targeted peoples on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. But perhaps the most powerful affirmation yet came on Thursday, when Chicago-area survivors of the Holocaust spoke out publicly against Trump's executive actions at Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie.

Survivor Aaron Elster, whose parents and sister killed by Nazis, warned of a slippery slope that might affect even more immigrants in the future. "I don't know if you want to know what I'd say to the president if he was here," Elster said, according to the Tribune. "For somebody to come along and say, 'These people cannot come in,' I believe that's a sliding slope. It starts that way. What group will be next?"

Museum president Fritzie Fritzshall, whose mother and two brothers were killed at Auschwitz was unmoved by the argument that the ban is only temporary. "Ninety days is a lifetime," Fritzshall said, according to the Reader. "Ninety days was a lifetime for us. When you're hungry and thirsty and cold, 90 days is a very, very long time to wait."

People from seven Muslim-majority nations are not allowed entry 90 days from when the executive order was signed, one week ago. The order temporarily suspends the refugee resettlement in the United States and bars Syrian refugees indefinitely.

Aside from the ban itself, the Trump administration has also come under fire for intentionally omitting mention of Jewish victims in a statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Museum CEO Susan Abrams on Thursday said such a decision is tantamount to "soft-core denial" of the Holocaust, the Trib reports.
Israeli doctor Moris Topaz.[Photo provided to China Daily]

Israeli doctor Moris Topaz's ties with China have grown since a massive earthquake struck Sichuan in 2008, Liu Xiangrui reports.

Moris Topaz sees medicine as a unique link between China and his home country, Israel.

"This is the beauty about cooperation in medicine. It's never a one-time project, because we need to improve all the time," says Topaz, 66, who has maintained his relations with Chinese doctors with whom he has cooperated in the past. "We are a bridge between the two countries."

Topaz, who heads plastic surgery at Hadera's Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, a prestigious Israeli hospital, has dedicated decades to research. He has also served on the International Committee for Quality Assurance and Medical Technologies and Devices in Plastic Surgery, of which he was secretary-general.

In 2015, Topaz visited China on invitation from the government, and traveled to Taiyuan, capital of North China's Shanxi province, which has since become a "base" for him in the country. His local colleagues at a hospital helped him to know more about China, even though he cannot speak Mandarin.

"We speak the same professional language of medicine and surgery. This way we can bridge a lot of verbal gaps and make friends everywhere," he says.

In 2008, Topaz had volunteered to help those injured in a massive earthquake that hit Southwest China's Sichuan province after learning about the natural disaster in the news back home. He soon arrived in Deyang, among the worst-affected areas, and worked for days along with an army unit overseeing rescue and relief work there.

He also donated medical devices and medicines worth 100,000 yuan to a local hospital. He revisited the area during the later stages of relief work to train local medical professionals with advanced wound-healing methods. He was impressed by how the government was able to rebuild the whole area with hospitals and other facilities just a year later.

"That was a very difficult situation at the time. I think the entire world can learn from China about how to deal with this kind of crisis," he says of the aftermath of the 8-magnitude quake.

His involvement also allowed Topaz to establish close ties with the People's Hospital in Deyang.
China's development provides an enormous opportunity for the European Union and it is a pity that EU President Donald Tusk has failed to realize that. He said recently that China represents an external threat to Europe, an accusation which is groundless as well as outrageous.

Both sides have benefited from their strong and stable ties. Following a dramatic increase in trade in recent years, the EU is now China's biggest trading partner, and China is the EU's second biggest.

With a fragile economy, the rising threat of protectionism and uncertainty in relations with other major world powers, the EU can continue to benefit significantly from forging stronger relations with China.

The two can work closely together on global governance issues, climate change being a prime example. With the Paris Agreement having entered into force, China and the EU will need to trust each other more than ever to help ensure that the critical measures of the agreement are implemented fully and correctly.

Global security is also a core principle of China-EU relations. With Chinese President Xi Jinping calling for a community of shared destiny, China has demonstrated its commitment to this vision through involvement in the Iran nuclear talks, the facilitation of peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and the Belt and Road Initiative, among other things.

In all global issues, China is a partner of the EU, a sign of the friendship and mutual trust built up over the 42 years since diplomatic relations were formally established in 1975. Strong bilateral ties need these guarantees to ensure that different political systems and different cultures can still find common ground.

International relations are not a zero-sum game. As China has repeatedly shown, it seeks a relationship with the EU that is win-win.

Senior European politicians should safeguard the long-term and steady development of China-EU relations. Biased views will only bring harm.
Tourists visit the Ruins of St. Paul's in Macao, South China, on Feb 1, 2017, during China's Lunar New Year holiday. [Photo/Xinhua]

THE RESTRICTIONS on the number of tourists that can visit scenic attractions are compulsory legal limits that must be strictly abided by for safety concerns. Beijing Youth Daily commented on Thursday:

The Spring Festival holiday has seen not only an exodus of people from the big cities, but also a tourist rush to scenic areas in China.

However, some scenic areas receive more tourists than they should. According to reports by Xinhua News Agency, 64,700 tourists visited Tianmen Mountain in Central China's Hunan province on Tuesday, more than four times its legal limit. Excessive numbers of visitors were also evident in Aizhai Town, Fenghuang Ancient Town and Hengshan Mountain in the province.

The legal limits on the number of tourists allowed at various tourist attractions are set out in the Tourism Law and are calculated to not only protect the natural scenery and historical relics, but also to ensure the safety of tourists.

After the Chinese Lunar New Year crush on the Shanghai Bund in 2015, which killed 36 people and wounded 49, the central authority imposed compulsory caps on the number of visitors at tourist sites. Breaking these limits constitutes a violation of the Tourism Law, and the owner and managers of the scenic spots, must be punished, even if no public safety accidents happen.

The scenic areas in Hunan have the audacity to ignore the legal limits on the number of visitors they can receive, because no violators of the law have ever been punished.

Also, local tourism administrations are obliged to provide the latest weather, traffic and tourist number information of their scenic areas to help people plan their trips.

In Hunan, the local authorities have obviously neglected their duty to ensure the safety of tourists.
A Chinese doctor talks with family members of a young patient as he examines him with a Type-b Ultrasonic Diagnostic Instrument at a hospital in Beijing, China, 11 September 2013. [Photo/IC]

MORE THAN 1.5 BILLION YUAN ($218 MILLION) was misappropriated from the medical insurance fund last year, according to a report released by the National Audit Office. Beijing News commented on Wednesday:

The National Audit Office report outlined 180 cases in which doctors and patients conspired to swindle the country out of over 200 million yuan by forging hospitalization records and having non-existent treatment costs reimbursed by the medical insurance fund.

Such collusion is deceptive and not easy to track. In other words, it is almost impossible to nip such medical fraud in the bud, and there might be yet more such fraud that remains undiscovered.

What really makes the illegal alliance between patients and doctors seem unbreakable is that they are on the same side when it comes to "picking up windfalls" from the public fund.

By co-sponsoring such scams hospital-goers do not have to pay for drugs at all as long as they are masked as prescriptions covered by medical insurance, and some hospitals could have more in their pockets by forging medical records.

However secretive it may be, such conspiracies to defraud will gradually come to light when stricter supervision is in place. Whether the purchase and prescription of drugs add up or not, for instance, should not be too difficult to find out. Other dubious events such as repeated treatments in a short time, too, must be scrutinized closely.

Of course, medical staff should be included in the supervision as they possess the necessary medical knowledge to unearth medical fund fraud. They have the professional knowledge to recognize which drugs are necessary for patients and which are not, enhancing the likelihood of keeping fraud at bay.

The fundamental cure still lies in an overhaul in the use of medical insurance fund, which covers beneficiaries' cost on the basis of specific programs instead of their illnesses.
CHINA DAILY

Editor's note: The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) will be held in Beijing from May 14 to 15. People from both home and abroad have expressed keen interest in the BRF since President Xi Jinping announced it at the Davos Forum in January. On the occasion of the 100 day countdown, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, who is in charge of the preparatory work, gave a comprehensive over view in an interview with the People's Daily and China Daily.

China will host the BRF in May this year. What is your vision for the Forum? What are the objectives that you hope to achieve at the Forum?

President Xi Jinping announced at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan 17 that in May this year, China will host the BRF in Beijing, which aims to discuss ways to boost cooperation, build cooperation platforms and share cooperation outcomes. The Forum will also explore ways to address problems facing global and regional economy, create fresh energy for pursuing interconnected development and make the Belt and Road Initiative deliver greater benefits to the people of all countries. These messages from President Xi have outlined our vision and considerations for the Forum and set the direction for our preparatory work.

In the fall of 2013, President Xi Jinping put forward the Belt and Road Initiative to enhance complementarity and synergy of development strategies and promote common progress of participating countries through closer international cooperation. Over the past three years and more, the Initiative has made good progress in various cooperation and won warm response and active participation. Now it is at a critical juncture of making all-round progress. The BRF will be a good occasion for us to review past progress and plan ahead.

The BRF will be the highest-level forum under the Initiative since its launching over three years ago, and an important diplomatic event China will host this year. It has great significance for international and regional cooperation. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, we hope to achieve the following objectives at the BRF: first, thoroughly review the progress of the Initiative, showcase important early harvest outcomes, further build consensus for cooperation and sustain the momentum of cooperation; second, discuss major cooperation measures going forward, facilitate greater synergy of development strategies, deepen partnership and work for interconnected development; third, while promoting China's economic and social development and structural adjustment, work to advance international cooperation for win-win outcomes. As one Chinese saying goes, a tree needs strong roots to grow tall and a river needs an inexhaustible water source to flow far. By hosting the BRF, we look forward to working with others to take the Belt and Road forward, lay a more solid foundation and foster greater connectivity for world economic growth and deeper regional cooperation so as to bring more benefits to various countries and their people.

The Belt and Road Initiative was put forth more than three years ago. What are its achievements since then? How has it been received internationally? Has it made any difference to people's lives in other countries?

The Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by China. Yet it's not going to be China's solo show. A better analogy would be that of a symphony performed by an orchestra composed of all participating countries. This Initiative is meant to be a major international public goods benefiting all countries. It is not an empty slogan, but rather a series of visible and concrete actions centering around the crucial link of connectivity and infrastructure development as a key part of economic cooperation, which is well-suited to the needs of countries and regions along the route.

We are committed to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. We stress practical cooperation, win-win outcomes and step-by-step progress. We are looking to align China's development with that of other countries and encourage greater synergy between their respective development strategies and cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative. This will be conducive to expanded regional investment and domestic demand, job creation and poverty reduction and to a higher level of development of the entire region.

The past three years have witnessed the launching, expansion, faster-than-expected progress and fruitful outcomes of the Belt and Road Initiative. More than 100 countries and international organizations have joined this Initiative, among which more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China, reaching a broad international consensus on Belt and Road Initiative. The UN General Assembly, the UN Security Council, UNESCAP, APEC, ASEM, the GMS have all incorporated or reflected Belt and Road cooperation in their relevant resolutions and documents.

A number of important early harvests have been made. Economic corridor development is making steady progress. An interconnected infrastructure network is taking shape. Trade and investment has increased significantly. Key project cooperation is underway. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Silk Road Fund have provided firm support to financial cooperation. China Railway Express trains to Europe have been operating on the vast Eurasian continent, loaded with goods and matching the market needs of countries along the route. The trains have also set up a bridge of communication and friendship between peoples along the route, and become a welcome sight along the Belt and Road.

The joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative is an important channel to step up international cooperation, a cause embraced and advanced by all parties. It is generating new development opportunities to make people's lives better. It is fair to say that this Chinese initiative is delivering benefits to the whole world.

In a world faced with sluggish economic, investment and trade growth, backlash against globalization and rising uncertainties, how do you envision the BRF's contribution to the global economy and international cooperation? What are the theme and agenda for the Forum?

It is true that the global economy is yet to emerge from the profound impact of the international financial crisis. The recovery is fragile and slow, and the foundation for growth still shaky. There are rising protectionism, louder voices against globalization and the mounting tensions between openness, change and economic integration on the one hand and isolationism, outdated thinking and fragmented trade arrangements on the other. That being said, bilateral, multilateral, regional and global cooperation on infrastructure, connectivity and sustainable development is gaining momentum. In countries around the world, priority is given to the real economy, the manufacturing sector, industrialization and economic diversification. It is important to grasp new development opportunities and find effective means to overcome the difficulties and solve the problems.

History provides us a useful source of wisdom for addressing today's challenges. The land and maritime Silk Road over 2,000 years ago enabled people from various countries to defy national borders and conduct trade and friendly exchanges on camelback or merchant vessels. Those interactions left a glorious chapter in human history. History has proven that closed and exclusive arrangements have no future, while welcoming cooperation with open doors and ensuring benefits for all is the only way forward. This still rings true today. As President Xi Jinping said earlier at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, "Any attempt to ... channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible. Indeed, it runs counter to the historical trend." The Belt and Road Initiative, rooted in the Silk Road spirit of peace, cooperation, openness, inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit, follows the principle of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. Openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit are the defining features of the Initiative and the very source of its strong appeal. We hope the BRF will help drive away the clouds of the economic doldrums and channel more positivity to global economic growth.

To better build consensus and advance cooperation, China has set "Belt and Road: Cooperation for Common Prosperity" as the Forum's theme. The agenda will focus on connectivity of policy, transportation, trade, finance and people. Discussions will be conducted on key topics such as infrastructure connectivity, economic cooperation and trade, industrial investment, energy and resources, financial support, people-to-people exchanges, ecological and environmental protection and marine cooperation. The Leaders Roundtable, the highlight of the Forum, will focus on two topics: Policy Synergy for Closer Partnership and Connectivity Cooperation for Interconnected Development.

In our view, the theme and agenda are highly relevant, considering the circumstances and challenges our world faces. Underscoring the importance of international cooperation, connectivity and synergy, the theme and agenda largely overlap with the world's major agenda. I also wish to add that many national and regional plans and global agendas have emerged in recent years, including such regional initiatives as the Eurasian Economic Union, the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity, the Investment Plan for Europe, the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa and the APEC Connectivity Blueprint as well as global agreements like the Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The international community needs to seize this opportunity and form synergy between those initiatives to deliver cooperative and shared benefits.
Theresa May remains firm that Britain remains committed to its "golden era" of relations with China, as she and Philip Hammond continue to court Chinese investors, following in the footsteps of David Cameron and George Osborne. However, many of us are left wondering: whats next?

President Xi Jinping believes his One Belt, One Road initiative (OBOR) will transform China, and open up new business opportunities for Great Britain.

More than 2,000 years ago, Chinas imperial envoy Zhang Qian established a network of trade routes from China to Europe via Asia, Africa and the Arab world. Named after one of Chinas most valuable exports, the Silk Road has played a significant role in shaping political and economic relations between countries located along the route and helped develop the backbone of the old British Empire.

Trumpeted regularly throughout last year by the Chinese government, OBOR aims to foster trade and investment growth by creating a continuous network that stretches from East, Central and South Asia to the UK and Europe, through the Middle East and Africa. It is an extensive Chinese economic development zone that spans 65 countries.

President Xi also launched OBORs $50 billion sister, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which, together with the Silk Road Fund and the New Development Bank, will fund and finance new infrastructure projects along the OBOR. The first western ally to sign up with AIIB was Britain with investments of up to 40 million  a clear indication of the nations intention to remain Chinas golden partner.

OBOR and the banks demonstrate Chinas commitment to free trade and open markets, which President Xi, an advocate of globalization, emphasized at the World Economic Forums Annual Meeting in Davos this past January.

Many of the OBOR countries that are modernizing their economies will need roads, railways, ports, airports, pipelines, energy, information infrastructure, either now or in the coming years, to move up the value chain as well as support the fast growing population and urbanization. This could bring billions in Chinese investment to Britain and Great Britains businesses.

China has signed bilateral cooperation agreements with Hungary, Mongolia, Russia, Tajikistan and Turkey. Projects such as the freight train transport, which connects eastern China to 15 European cities including London commenced in January this year. There are also new rail links to Laos and Thailand and high-speed rail projects in Indonesia. Chinas Ningbo Shipping Exchange is collaborating with the Baltic Exchange on a container index of rates between China and the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Europe. Chinas state rail contractor signed construction deals in Africa worth $5.5 billion. More than 200 enterprises have signed cooperation agreements for projects along OBORs routes. These projects are just the beginning.
National security adviser General Michael Flynn delivers a statement daily briefing at the White House in Washington US, February 1, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON  The Trump administration is preparing to levy sanctions on Iran after it test-fired a ballistic missile, according to US officials and others with knowledge of the decision.

The sanctions are expected to be levied as early as Friday. Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized.

The sanctions come on the heels of the Trump administration's warning that it was putting Iran "on notice" after the missile test.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says the US has been consulting with allies in Europe and elsewhere on the matter. Dubowitz says he has been advising the administration and Congress on Iran issues.

The US officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the upcoming sanctions.
Britain's Secretary of State for Leaving the EU David Davis arrives for a cabinet meeting in Downing Street, London, January 31, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

LONDON -- A policy paper spelling out the British government's plans for exiting the European Union was published Thursday.

Brexit Secretary David Davis listed 12 main points in the document detailing how the government wants to make its exit from Brussels and how it sees its new partnership with the remaining 27 EU members.

He said Britain's best days were still to come outside the EU.

The document lays out general principles rather than specific details and says the government will keep its positions closely held and will need at times to be careful about giving a running commentary in public.

The publication of the document, known as a white paper, came less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Theresa May was given an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons over her plans to trigger the Article 50 mechanism for leaving the EU.

Davis told members of parliament (MPs) in the Commons: "This White Paper confirms the prime minister's vision of an independent, truly global UK and an ambitious future relationship with the EU."

He said the exit strategy was based on principles that will guide the government following last June's referendum vote when a majority of people backed leaving the EU.

They cover Britain taking control of its own borders and law making, controlling immigration from EU countries into Britain and protecting workers' rights achieved through EU legislation.

The strategy also seeks to secure rights for EU citizens already living in Britain and the rights of British nationals living in EU countries.

Davis said the government recognizes EU principles which include freedom of EU citizens to freely cross borders of all member states. As a result, he said, Britain will leave the single market.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivers remarks to Department of State employees upon arrival at the Department of State in Washington, US, February 2, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON - US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for unity and understanding on his first day at the State Department amid internal dissent over policies of President Donald Trump, which have also antagonized a range of allies.

Within hours of starting the job, Tillerson reached out by phone to counterparts from Mexico and Canada, spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, department officials said.

Hundreds of State Department officials greeted the former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive with applause as he entered the building. Louder cheers broke out when Tillerson thanked acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon for standing in after the departure of John Kerry.

"Hi, I'm the new guy," said Tillerson, who was sworn in on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed him to his post despite concerns about his ties with Russia. Trump has called for closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In remarks that did not touch on foreign policy specifics, Tillerson addressed the dissent within the department that emerged this week in a memo signed by more than 900 officials in protest against Trump's decision to suspend the US refugee program and restrict travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"One of the great challenges and thrills for the State Department staff is deciding how to confront changing conditions in every corner of the world," said Tillerson, "I encourage all of you to use your natural and well-developed skills to adapt to changes here at home as well.

"I know this was a hotly contested election and we do not all feel the same way about the outcome," said Tillerson.

"Each of us is entitled to expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team," he added.

He also signaled he would impose changes to improve the functioning of the department and said the security of diplomats was a priority.
China's overseas direct investment is estimated to soar 40 percent to a record $189 billion in 2016 from the previous year, according to a study released by the US consultancy Rhodium Group and Berlin-based Mercatur Institute for China Studies.

Europe emerged as a key investment destination, as the country's investments in the EU jumped 77 percent to over 35 billion euros, with Germany grabbing 11 billion or 31 percent of the total, according to the report.

Chinese investors have shown particular interests in advanced manufacturing and service sectors, it noted, citing last year's mega deals including the acquisition of KUKA, Skyscanner and the cinema chain Odeon.

Such trends coincided with China's latest move to warn against state-owned enterprises' outbound investments in mining or heavily polluting industries.

Although official full-year ODI data is not yet available, Rhodium Group expects the increase will cement "China's role as one of the top direct investor nations globally".

However, the report also noted China is implementing more "stringent reviews" for certain outbound investment deals with the goal of cracking down on illegitimate transactions, which are to blame for putting increasing downward pressure on the renminbi.

The country's top state-owned assets regulator plans to further enhance the accountability and risk control of overseas acquisitions by the SOEs, according to documents released early last month.

Unreasonable cases may still exist as the outbound investments soar, and such risks, once unguarded, may backfire on both sides.

Therefore it's necessary to appeal for prudent investments, said Xu Shaoshi, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a press conference in January, adding that "the overall support for Chinese firms going global hasn't and will not change."
Mexico's top drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted as he arrives at Long Island MacArthur airport in New York, US, January 19, 2017, after his extradition from Mexico. Picture taken Janaury 19, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

NEW YORK  Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is scheduled to appear in person in a federal court in New York.

A judge initially ruled that Guzman would appear in court by video on Friday rather than have marshals escort him to and from a high-security Manhattan jail cell. The order was changed after his lawyers asked the judge to reconsider.

Guzman is charged with running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings.

Guzman has repeatedly been imprisoned and escaped in Mexico. US authorities have pursued him for years.

To get Mexico to hand him over to the US, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. They're demanding he forfeit $14 billion in assets.

Guzman has pleaded not guilty.
PARIS - A French soldier on Friday opened fire on and wounded a man armed with a knife after he tried to enter the Louvre musuem in central Paris carrying a suitcase, police sources said.

One source said the man had been trying to get into the museum's underground shop and had attacked another soldier before being shot and seriously wounded.

Police said the area had been evacuated.

The interior ministry said on Twitter the incident was "serious".

A spokewoman for Louvre said the museum was "closed for the moment" but would not confirm reports it had been evacuated.

A Reuters witness at the scene said police had cordoned off access to the museum.

France has been hit by a series of militant Islamist attacks over the past two years.
Life jackets found in search for missing of Malaysia's boat accident

Agencies | Updated: 2017-02-03 17:56

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia -- Two life jackets were found and a floating object was spotted as Malaysian authorities continued the search for the six remained missing in the boat accident off its Sabah state, officials said Friday.



The authorities have not yet known whether the two life jackets belong to the missing as there were no symbol or mark on them for identification, said Adam Aziz, chief of Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency in Kota Kinabalu, the state capital.



The two life jackets were picked up from two separate locations more than 60 nautical miles from the last known position of the sunken boat and had been sent to the police for identification, said Adam.



"Both are orange-colored and of the same pattern," he said.



Search personnel onboard a Malaysia air force C-130 has reported a floating object in the search area, and a vessel was dispatched to the location but has no findings so far, he added.



The search on Friday narrowed to an area of 2,990 square nautical miles, comparing with 3,900 square nautical miles in the past two days. Some 350 personnel and 21 assets including ships and aircrafts combed the waters near Malaysia and the neighboring Brunei.



The weather was good in the morning before turning bad later, hampered the search effort with lower visibility, said Adam.



He said the search would continue with more focus on the south, after taking into account the wind and current.



The catamaran, carrying over two dozen Chinese tourists and three crew, went down in turbulent waters while heading for the popular island of Mengalum on Jan. 28. Twenty-two people have been rescued but three Chinese tourists have been confirmed dead. Another five Chinese tourists and a crew member are still missing.



The rescued tourists are receiving treatments and are in stable conditions, officials from China's Consulate General in Kota Kinabalu told Xinhua.
So here we are, it's another year, and this year it's the turn of the rooster to step forward from the zodiac and rule our lives.

I've always been interested in the Chinese zodiacactually, it's something China shares with Vietnam, and as I have a Vietnamese wife (born in the Year of the Tiger, since you ask), that's doubled my interest.

As is my usual practice, I held a quick straw poll among my Chinese colleagues here in London and asked for one word to describe the attributes of the Rooster. Naturally, I got several words, including diligent, leadership, reliability, hardworking, frank and honest.

One of my colleagues was brave enough to admit to having been born in the Year of the Rooster, so I turned to the internet to be told that Roosters are expected to pursue the following eclectic occupation paths: sales person, restaurant owner, athlete, teacher, waiter, journalist and surgeon.

Guess whatmy colleague, in his 50s, has followed all of those occupations except restaurant owner and surgeon. He's working on the restaurant bit.

One thing Roosters have to avoid is the color red, which is considered unluckyfrom the point of view of a humble laowai I would have thought it very difficult to avoid the color red in China. My colleague was challenging fate by wearing a red sweater, however.

I am told that the younger generation in China takes the zodiac less seriously than, say their parents and grandparents, for whom superstition played a major role.

Certainly my Vietnamese brothers and sisters-in-law take the zodiac far less seriously than my dear mother-in-law, who after due consideration (I like to think she was just humoring me) decided it was fine that I, born in the Year of the Boar (I refuse to say pig) would be well suited to her daughter, born in the Year of the Tiger.

We Boars are, I find, compassionate, generous, easygoing, ambitious, earnest, responsible and er, modest. Not sure about the last one.

Tigers, as my wife will attest, are brave, confident, expansive, open and independent, and she's certainly an artist and a musician.

My eldest daughter was, to her initial chagrin, born in the Year of the Rat, but I have to say she's lived up to her alleged attributes-quick-witted, resourceful, kind, smart and lovely (I hope you are reading this, Kim).

Daughter two followed four years later and is a Dragon Ladyand I have to say she's lived up to her zodiac description of being enthusiastic, confident, intelligent (two master's degrees in five years from Edinburgh), ambitious, hardworking and straightforward. (Mai-Anh, I think that's you).

As for me, I delved a little further and discovered there are several subcategories of people born in the Year of the Boar. According to the zodiac information I have just found, I am a Fire Pig.

This is where it gets really serious-Fire Pigs are ambitious (yes), hardworking (yes, well, sometimes) and impatient (definitely). Just ask any of my colleagues when they ask what the deadline is on the story I've just assigned them. "Yesterday" is my stock reply.

Of course, it's all a lot of fun, and when we see the various decorations put up to greet the Year of the Rooster, whether it's in Beijing, Ho ChiMinh City, Paris or London, we'll all raise a glass while at the same time furtively checking the Chinese zodiac.

I know I will.

Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com
PARIS - The Paris police chief says a man armed with a machete and shouting "God is great" in Arabic launched himself at soldiers and police officers near the Louvre Museum. One of the soldiers shot the attacker five times, gravely wounding him.

French police secure the site near the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, France, February 3, 2017 after a French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a knife after he tried to enter the Louvre museum in central Paris carrying a suitcase, police sources said. [Photo/Agencies]

Police chief Michel Cadot says the attacker was also carrying two backpacks but they were later found not to contain any explosives.One soldier had a minor scalp injury.Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated.The Paris police press office said it has no other details other than that a soldier opened fire.A police union official, Luc Poignant, told BFM-TV that an attacker assaulted the soldier and that the area is now being secured.The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital's biggest tourist attractions.Soldiers on patrol are part of security measures that have beefed-up in the wake of terror attacks in France in 2015 and 2016.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China's sovereignty over the South China Sea islands on Thursday, asking countries "outside the region" to help maintain peace in the South China Sea.

When requested to respond to comments Steve Bannon, chief strategist of the White House, made more than 10 months ago that "there's no doubt" that China and the US will fight a war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years, Lu said China has "indisputable sovereignty" over the South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters.

"China firmly safeguards its territorial sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea," the spokesman said.

"Meanwhile, China is committed to maintaining peace and stability of the South China Sea together with countries in the region," he said.

"We hope countries outside the region will respect the common interests and common wishes of the regional countries, and make sure the region remains peaceful, stable and secure, which benefits all parties," Lu added.
The Japanese embassy in the UK has chosen to stay silent after a British media report claimed that Japan had been paying a British think tank to wage an image-tarnishing campaign against China.

The Japanese embassy in the UK is seen in this file photo taken on March 6, 2008. [Reuters/Toby Melville]

The embassy did not respond to questions about its work with the think tank, but told China Daily in an email that "the embassy of Japan is not in a position to comment on the article since it is about the activities by a British private entity which do not concern the embassy".

On Jan 29, the Sunday Times ran an article saying that Japan had been paying 10,000 pounds a month to the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a registered charity, to encourage British politicians including the former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind and journalists to voice opposition to Chinas foreign policy.

It was claimed that the HJS, which is run by Alan Mendoza, an unsuccessful Tory candidate at the 2015 general election, is being paid by the embassy to run the campaign.

The Sunday Times report claimed that the deal with the Japanese embassy in London was made in response to growing cooperation between Britain and China, which was advocated by George Osborne when he was UK chancellor of the exchequer.

Last weekend, Malcolm Rifkind acknowledged that the HJS had approached him to put his name to an article published by the Daily Telegraph last August, expressing concerns about Chinas role in Britains Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant.

The HJS declined China Daily's interview request, but said in a statement, that "the Henry Jackson Society had approached Sir Malcolm Rifkind who generously agreed to work with us in the drafting of this article which appeared under his name. He proposed a number of amendments to the initial draft which we had prepared to ensure that he was in agreement with its contents."

Rifkind claimed he was not made aware of the HJS's financial relationship with the Japanese embassy, adding that the HJS "ought to have informed me of that relationship when they asked me to support the article they provided. It would have been preferable if they had".

Headlined "How China could switch off Britains lights in a crisis if we let them build Hinkley C", the article raised fears that no one knows what backdoor technologies might be able to be introduced into the building of a power plant.

The British media said the campaign also reflected Japans concerns about Osbornes call for a "golden decade" of Sino-British cooperation.
VALLETTA - European leaders agreed Friday on an action plan to stem the migration flow into Europe along the central Mediterranean route during an informal summit in Malta.

L-R, Greek Prime Minister Alexis tsipras, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visit a vantage poit overlooking Valletta during a break in the European Union leaders summit in Valletta, Malta, February 3, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

According to the plan, priorities will be given to training, equipment and support to the Libyan national coast guard, further efforts to disrupt smuggling business, supporting the development of local communities in Libya, adequate reception capacities and conditions in Libya for migrants and support to international organisations in stepping up assisted voluntary return activities."The European Union is strengthening the mainstreaming of migration within its Official Development Assistance for Africa, which amounts to 31 billion euros during this financial period. Some of the actions can be funded within projects already underway, notably projects funded by the EU Trust Fund for Africa as appropriate, which mobilizes 1.8 billion euros from the EU budget and 152 million euros from Member States' contributions," said EU leaders in the Malta Declaration adopted at the ongoing informal summit.To cover the most urgent funding needs now and throughout 2017, the European Commission has decided to mobilize as a first step an additional 200 million euros for the North Africa window of the Fund and to give priority to migration-related projects concerning Libya.The external dimension of migration is one of the top issues of the Malta summit.The Mediterranean route is now the main gateway to Europe, with some 180,000 arrivals in Italy last year.The number of persons dead or missing at sea has refreshed record each year since 2013, and hundreds have lost their lives in the beginning of 2017, said the Declaration."We are determined to take additional action to significantly reduce migratory flows along the Central Mediterranean route and break the business model of smugglers, while remaining vigilant about the Eastern Mediterranean as well as other routes. We will step up our work with Libya as the main country of departure as well as with its North African and sub-Saharan neighbours," it added.The EU paid more attention to the central Mediterranean route after the figure of asylum seekers nosedived on the eastern Mediterranean route since a EU-Turkey deal took effect last year.Under the deal signed last March to stem the influx into Europe, all people who are entering Greece illegally on boats from Turkish shores will be sent back, in the case that their asylum requests are turned down."We remain committed to the EU-Turkey statement and the full and non-discriminatory implementation of all its aspects, as well as to continued support for the countries along the Western Balkans route," said EU leaders in the Malta Declaration.The EU also reaffirmed its support to efforts and initiatives from individual member states directly engaged with Libya.It welcomed the Italy-Libya memorandum of understanding signed on Thursday to curb the flow of migrants to Europe.Rome has pledged money, training and equipment to help the UN-backed Libyan government to manage its vast desert borders and boost its limited coast guard fleet.
Huawei, Chinese telecoms giant and Orange, French telecommunication group on Thursday signed an agreement to bolster partnership on 5G services and cloudification, the Chinese firm said.

A worker adjusts the logo at the stand of Huawei at the CeBIT trade fair in Hanover, March 15, 2015. [File photo]



With the new accord, the two companied will cooperate on key technologies related to 5G to "encourage innovation in three areas of 5G services: infrastructure, operations and ecosystem development."

In this context, they will collaborate on mobile network cloudification with open service interfaces, network flow cut and sharing 4G and 5G power in the frequency bands.

In addition, Huawei and Orange will focus on specific use scenarios for 5G such as ultra large coverage in Africa and energy efficiency, the statement added.

"We are pleased to announce this new milestone in our long-term cooperation with the Orange group on mobile technologies and in particular in view of the imminent arrival of 5G," said Zou Zhilei, president of the Huawei Carrier Business Group.

"It also shows our commitment to our best customers to help them build a better connected world," he added.

Alain Maloberti, vice president of Orange Labs Networks, said the accord is a part of plan to face "technological challenges that will make possible the future uses of augmented and virtual reality and ...improve the performance of our mobile network... when it is needed, for our customers in Europe and Africa."
Photo taken on Aug. 1, 2016 shows Apps of Didi and Uber on a cellphone of a citizen in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province. [Photo/Xinhua].

According to United Daily News in Taiwan, after three and a half years of operation in Taiwan, Uber received 11 penalties with fines totaling US$7.42 million and was required to close business by the transportation administration in Taiwan yesterday. Uber announced to close its business in Taiwan on Feb. 20. Meanwhile, the Uber TAXI service, which is scheduled to be online in February, was also closed. However, UberEATS service, which was online at the end of last year, will continue its service.

Uber said it will restart communication with Taiwan authorities. The transportation administration of Taiwan asked Uber to operate its business legally. Hochen Tan, the head of the transportation administration, said that both sides should seize the opportunity to communicate and avoid a dead end.

In July 2013, by establishing a company named Taiwan Yu Bo Shu Wei service Co., Ltd, Uber entered Taiwan. The new company is registered as an information service business. Its service area includes Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Keelung, Taichung and Kaohsiung.

However, Uber's business is related with motor transport service without business registration certification and professional driver licensing. Over the past three years, Taiwan authorities issued 513 penalties with a total fine of US$3.11 million to Uber and its drivers. Uber paid US$2.2 million.

With the implementation of an updated law, the fine amount has been increased greatly by the Taiwan authorities. Since the implementation of the new rule Jan. 6, any company who breaks the new rule will be fined US$32.3 thousand, and the fine amount will be raised to US$161.2 thousand for the second violation. Anyone who breaks the rule six times in total or three times in half a year will be fined with US$806 thousand and required to close its business.

By Jan. 20, 48 Uber cars had been banned and a total amount of US$35.47 million in fines had been issued by the transportation administration of Taiwan.
(Photo : Getty Images) Xiaomi Mi 5c is likely the affordable version of Mi 5s.

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Xiaomi's upcoming smartphone Mi 5c gets certification from China Quality Certification centre (3C), responsible for implementing of product certification.



The Mi 5c is likely the affordable version of Mi 5s, which was launched in September 2016. The certification of Mi 5c was leaked online and displayed few details on the specs of the mobile device. The design of the device was also leaked recently on the Chinese social media site Weibo, suggesting that it has basic and simplistic design.



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The leaked images of the Mi 5c reveal a metal body, somewhat comparable to the Mi 5s. It also suggests that the device has a soft aluminium unibody with cut-outs for the camera and antenna bands at the top and bottom ends. The Mi 5c will attempt to rebuild the sophistication of Mi 4c that was unveiled a year ago.



Codenamed Meri, the certification has shown that the mobile device will be powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 14nm octa-core chipset clocked at 2.0 GHz, running MIUI 8 and an unknown version of Android. The power rating of the device used a 5V/2A power adapter as well as the indication that there will be no quick charging support.



Xiaomi Mi 5c will have 3GB of RAM paired with 64GB of internal storage. The rear-facing camera on the device has 12MP and the front-facing camera boasts 8MP. The battery capacity is not yet known but it may have a 3200mAh battery just like Mi 5s.



The Xiaomi Mi 5c is expected to launch ahead of the upcoming Mi 6 flagship, which should arrive around March or April. It is possible that Xiaomi will unveil Mi 5c at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February.



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(Photo : KCNA) Is the KN-08 missile a prototype for North Korea's first ICBM?

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North Korea appears dead set on launching this year its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the U.S. mainland using the invaluable experience it gained from the development of its Hwasong-10 (Musudan) mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) it launched multiple times in 2016.



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South Korea media reports the north is preparing to test-launch a new, upgraded ICBM prototype. That test launch "could be imminent," claims South Korean media without speculating on a date.



The new ICBM will likely be a road-mobile missile similar to the Musudan IRBM. Korean intelligence sources told media they believe the new ICBM consists of two stages, with each stage less than 15 meters long.



In the past, North Korea has paraded dummies of a road-mobile missile believed to be an ICBM given the designation KN-08 by western observers. This missile is also believed to have an upgraded version, the KN-14.



South Korean intelligence agencies a few weeks ago said they discovered missile parts believed to be the lower-half of an ICBM being transported on trucks for assembly at another site. This discovery has ignited fears of an imminent test launch within the first six months of the year.



Intelligence sources told media the missile they discovered is different from a conventional Musudan missile in its length and shape. The Republic of Korea Army is monitoring the reports and striving to confirm their veracity.



North Korea began 2017 with its leader, Kim Jong-un, saying his country was making final preparations to conduct its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) this year. North Korea has never designed and flown an ICBM.



The announcement means North Korea will soon have the means to attack American allies in Asia and the American homeland next with nuclear ICBMs.



From 2006 to 2016, North Korea conducted five nuclear tests and more than 20 ballistic missile tests in 2016 alone.



North Korea has conducted seven tests involving eight Musudans from April to Oct. 15, 2016. None of these tests were considered completely successful by the west. One test, a launch of two Musudans on June 22 from Wonsan, was considered a partial success.



North Korea, however, praised the twin launches as a complete success. The latest test on Oct. 15 from Kusong on the west coast was a complete failure that saw a Musudan destroyed at launch.



The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned for the October launch, calling it a "grave violation" of resolutions banning North Korea from using ballistic missile technology.



First revealed in 2010, Hwasong-10 is a liquid fueled IRBM capable of carrying a 1,000 kg high explosive warhead and, later on, a nuclear warhead if the North ever perfects this technology.



North Korea claims the missile can reach out to 4,000 km but western analysts believe this to be false based on the trajectories of the missiles used in its tests.



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TagsNorth Korea, intercontinental ballistic missile, ICBM, Hwasong-10, Musudan, intermediate-range ballistic missile, KN-08, KN-14
(Photo : USMC) U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis as a General in the United States Marine Corps.

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U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has begun the process of rebuilding the United States Armed Forces, which will now be targeted at better combating high-end foes such as China and Russia through the application of more and deadlier military force.



In a directive addressed to Department of Defense budget planners on Jan. 31, Mattis indicated his objectives, which included actions addressing immediate readiness shortfalls, and adding more military personnel in the coming years, among others.



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According to Mattis' directive, the main aim of this re-building is to "build a larger, more capable and more lethal joint force." This deadlier U.S. military will be shaped and guided by a new national defense strategy, said Mattis.



Mattis' defense strategy overhaul will be in full swing from 2019 to 2023. This re-arming calls for an increase in the force size of the U.S. military. Equally important, it will enhance the U.S. military's lethality against China and Russia.



Mattis wants to "grow the force quickly, but responsibly," according to his directive.



Mattis' rebuilding push will also devote more resources to defeat ISIL faster. It's also directed against a "broad spectrum of threats," which means other terrorist groups.



More resources will also be available to the U.S. military to either maintain or enhance its presence in other parts of the world such as the South China Sea and Eastern Europe where the U.S. has vital strategic interests.



After the 2018 federal budget is approved by Congress, Mattis wants to focus on buying weapons whose stocks have been depleted; boosting the U.S.' overall military force structure and fixing important facilities that need upgrades or have fallen into disrepair.



Mattis has previously called for boosting U.S. naval power by building more warships and deploying more advanced technologies in light of Beijing's increasing and unrelenting aggression in the South China Sea.



"While our efforts in the Pacific to keep positive relations with China are well and good, these efforts must be paralleled by a policy to build the counterbalance if China continues to expand its bullying role in the South China Sea and elsewhere," he said.



Mattis once said China must be denied "veto power" over the territorial claims, security and economic conditions in the Pacific.



He also called on the United States, especially the Congress, "to adapt to changing circumstances, to come out now from our reactive crouch and take a firm, strategic stance in defense of our values."



Congress must play a key role in developing this "refreshed national strategy" that will guide the military forward as it faces down the United States five greatest threats: Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and Violent Extremist Organizations (VEOs).



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Demonstrators participate in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily barring all refugees and seven Mideast and North African countries' citizens from entry into the U.S. in front of the White House in Washington D.C., the Unite States, on Jan. 29, 2017. Protesters rallied in front of the White House on Sunday while demonstrations continued across more than 30 American airports after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order temporarily barring all refugees and seven Mideast and North African countries' citizens from entry into the United States. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

As if by brute force, Donald Trump has opened up several fronts within just two weeks of taking office. Starting from the executive order to pull out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, he then banned entry of citizens of seven Muslims countries and angered Mexican people and leaders by suggesting a 20 percent tax on their imports to finance a controversial border wall.

In one of the poems by famous American poet Robert Frost, the protagonist tries to argue with his neighbor who is building a wall to demarcate the boundary but fails to convince him. The neighbor repeatedly asserts that "good fences make good neighbors." Mr. Trump might have keenly read the poem. That is why he is trying to erect a physical wall and several unseen fences to keep out the people he considers unwanted.

I am not sure if he will be able to keep everyone out. At least he cannot confine the anger and raging sentiments against his disturbing philosophy. And surely he cannot clip the wings of ideas and information that easily transcend the boundaries he is trying to erect. America itself was an idea for the immigrants who had escaped the confines of Europe and found a place where freedom could flourish.

Mr. Trump's unbridled recklessness is linked with his obsession that every migrant is a terrorist. He is so consumed by this that he has decided to flout a commitment by his predecessor Barack Obama to take several hundred immigrants from Australia.

Mr. Trump believes in doing things in his own way, no matter how provocative and irritating that might sound to others. For example, while referring to the agreement with Australia, he tweeted that he would like to read the "dumb deal."

As a matter of fact, every nation has a right to take measures to shore up its security in the age of terrorism. But using militancy as a pretext to create a cage would be a very dumb idea.

It shows that Mr. Trump has unleashed a new brand of war. He is at war with the media, with Congress, with his political opponents, his critics, minorities, immigrants, his allies in Europe and elsewhere, key trade partners of the United States and everybody else.

They are new wars, vastly different from the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq by George Bush and the hot pursuit of militants through drones and targeted actions by Barack Obama. Mr. Trump wants to fulfill every tall promise he made with the people. I wonder if he was sure to be on the winning side while making unrealistic commitments to please the ultra-conservatives.

He was wrong to make promises that could only be realized at the cost of huge damage to the international standing of the U.S. But trying to fulfill those promises would be making the same mistake twice. Politics is the art of the possible. Even the voters know what a leader can do. Instead of fighting everyone and wasting energy, the president should focus on the economy so that lives of average Americans improve.

The immediate result of Mr. Trump's actions and rhetoric is the bitter division visible in the country. How will he be able to regain the American glory when everyday hundreds and thousands of people have taken to the streets against his polices. The first condition for development is not just peace but "positive peace," if I can use a term from Johan Galtung, a great advocate of peace.

Mr. Trump should try to mend fences instead of making fences by getting into arguments and conflicts. By doing what he is doing, the president will make the job of his detractors very easy.

Sajjad Malik is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SajjadMalik.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
To help the Asian Pacific Islander (API) community get connected with the employment resources they need, Korean Churches for Community Development (KCCD) has partnered with the city of Los Angeles to launch the API JOBS (Job Opportunities and Business Success) Initiative, which was announced on January 26.

This initiative, in partnership with the City of Los Angeles, will be the first of its kind to serve the Asian Pacific Islander (API) community in providing and connecting vocational training, employment, career pathway, community and social services to linguistically isolated participants and their family members, KCCD said in a statement.

This is historic, said Hyepin Im, the president of KCCD. But we know that this is just the start of the journey.

Im said that though there are numerous employment opportunities and resources available to the Asian community, many are not able to take advantage of them due to language barriers. The API JOBS Initiative would provide orientations, job readiness workshops, and other programs to help members of the Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander (AANHPI) community in-language.

KCCD will specifically be collaborating with the California Labor Federation Workforce and Economic Development Program, and Workforce Connections Inc., to carry out the API JOBS Initiative.

Jan Perry, the general manager of the Economic and Workforce Development Department for the City of Los Angeles, said that though there was a competitive bid to secure funding from the city, KCCD was selected because of its many years spent building their vision by providing a wide array of social services, and a very well thought out strategic positioning in reaching out to the community.

Charlie Woo, the chair of the Workforce Development Board in the City of Los Angeles, expressed excitement for the initiative, and recalled his own experiences of seeing members of the API community not getting access to employment resources.

Im excited to see how Asian Americans will lead the way in this initiative, he added. Many underserved people will benefit from this.

Other partnering organizations include Asian Americans Advancing Justice Los Angeles, Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment, CAUSE, Asian Pacific Policy & Planning Council, the Los Angeles Community College District Board, Pilipino Workers Center of Southern California, and Thai CDC, among others.

Through the initiative, KCCD will host orientations and workshops in the coming weeks, including two orientations on February 7 and 10. Resume and job readiness workshops will take place between February 21 to 22, and February 28 to March 1.

For more information, visit kccd.org.
5 branches of Korea Campus Crusade for Christ (KCCC), one of the largest Korean-American Christian ministries for college students gathered at Moore Hall in UCLA for a collaborative night of worship on the 30th. A total of 5 campuses with KCCC ministries were present; UCLA, USC, Cal State Northridge (CSUN), Santa Monica College (SMC), and Glendale Community College (GCC). The students and staff were there to challenge members to participate in one of the campus ministrys largest annual events  Higher Calling Conference.

Higher Calling Conference, formerly known as Vision Conference, is KCCCs largest annual event alongside its summer mission project. It is a gathering of not only all the leaders and members of KCCC to worship God, but many Korean-American EM church ministries also join to challenge the next generation of Christian leaders to find their vision or higher calling for their lives that God has planned for them. The first Vision Conference was held in the 1990s at Big Bear with only 80 students, where Dr. Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ was invited to speak. Now, Higher Calling Conference happens in 7 different regions; Los Angeles, Northern California, New York, Boston, Canada, Atlanta, and Chicago.

The Open Chapel, or KCCC's weekly campus worship, on the 30th was the first time ever since the inception of KCCC, 5 different schools had gathered for a joint worship, outside the weekly regional prayer meetings that happen on Friday nights. Interestingly, these students and staff were also worshipping at the university where the global ministry (currently called Cru) was first established by Dr. Bill Bright in the 1950s.

It was a good chance for students from different college campuses to mingle with each other before the actual worship began, reminding everyone that they were part of a much larger movement that not only worked to spread to Gospel to all the regions of the U.S. but Korea and nations all over the world.

After a testimony from a senior student from USC, message was delivered by Ji-Hyang Lee, a full time KCCC staff who had just finished her Ph.D. for Christian education at Talbot Theological Seminary at Biola University. Before diving into the business of challenging the students to participate in Higher Calling Conference, she started to share about her own personal life, growing up in a very typical Korean-American family and how she came to know Christ through her experiences in KCCC ever since its very get-go.

Pastor Lee shared how she first learned to be thankful to God for her circumstances regarding her unloving family and her life before she became a Christian. Through her time in KCCC and participation in the conference and short term missions, she was convicted to be thankful to God for her hardships, and eventually led her father, who was a non-believer at the time, to Christ.

After message was over, the students were challenged to pray for 2 topics; that God would remove any obstacles that may hinder them from participating in the conference, and to pray for other people that God has placed in their heart to bring to Higher Calling with them. In the end, the students who felt convicted filled out commitment cards to show their faith and obedience.

On November 15th, all the KCCC campuses of the Los Angeles region will be travelling down to Town and Country Resort in San Diego, where the conference will be held, for a Joshua Prayer to pray for the facilities and the programs. Student leaders will be receiving training to lead Bible study and small groups at the event.
Not every Christian is celebrating the Reformations anniversary this year. Its not just Catholics who have reservations; many Protestants do as well. Our enthusiasm for the Reformations emphasis on Scripture as the highest and final authority does not mean we can ignore how Scripture repeatedly decries division in the church.

Paul, for example, rebuked the Corinthians, One of you says, I follow Paul; another, I follow Apollos; another, I follow Cephas; still another, I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? (1 Cor. 1:1213). It sounds an awful lot like the eight different congregations on Main Street.

Paul noted four factions in the Corinthian church. The Center for the Study of Global Christianity counts 45,000 denominations around the world, with an average of 2.4 new ones forming every day. The center has an admittedly broad definition of denomination, but even a dramatically lower count will be absurdly high in light of Jesus prayer in John 17 that we all might be one. It makes some wonder about the Reformation. As one theologian lamented, Isnt this the movement that drove the church into the churches? Should we wholeheartedly celebrate the Reformation when one of its main legacies seems to be so much division?

Rethinking that Memorable Story

The problem seems to have surfaced early on. No other theological matter of the Reformation has provoked more dispute than the Eucharist, and no other historical event has more reinforced the idea that Protestantism is divisive by nature than the Marburg Colloquy.

Perhaps you have heard the story: Martin Luther, the leader of the Wittenberg reformers, met with Ulrich ...

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We need to stop whining about peoples lack of commitment to our churches and give them something - and someone - worth committing to.

People Arent as Loyal to a Church Or Denomination Anymore  Good For Them

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Brand loyalty is dead.

Good riddance.

The so-called good-old-days when a person committed to a church, then stuck with it no matter what, have come to an end. But many churches dont know it yet.

The same goes for denominations. Today, even fully committed believers are unlikely to limit their church options to a specific denomination.

Maybe thats why I keep hearing ministers harping on the same old complaints. My church cant get good volunteers any more! People arent as faithful as they used to be. And, my personal [ahem] favorite, Whats wrong with this generation? You cant count on them for anything.

If those complaints sound familiar (as in, youve heard them come from your own mouth) please take this in the way Im giving it  with all the love in my heart.

Stop whining about peoples lack of commitment to your church and give them something worth committing to!

People shouldnt commit to something that isnt worth committing to.

After all, people shouldnt commit to something that isnt worth committing to.

The Death of Brand Loyalty  A Real-Life Parable

For too many years, brand loyalty allowed mediocrity to survive and thrive. And not just in the church.

For example, brand loyalty nearly killed the US auto industry.

In my grandfathers era, if dad was a Chevy man he wouldnt drive anything else. Later, as German and Japanese imports started arriving, that brand loyalty broadened to all American vehicles.

Domestic auto manufacturers were aware of that loyalty. It made them arrogant. So they rejected crazy new foreign ideas like smaller cars, fuel-efficiency and lower prices. They kept making cars the way theyd always made them  big, expensive, inefficient and ugly.

When the next generation of car buyers came of age, they felt no brand loyalty and bought whatever worked for them  including the smaller, cheaper, more reliable, fun-looking, non-US cars.

American car manufacturers lost massive market share and nearly killed an entire industry because they relied on brand loyalty instead of doing their job better.

Sure, there are still people who love particular brand names. But its not what it used to be. Companies like Apple and Starbucks know that todays loyalists will only stay with them as long as they keep one step ahead of the competition. Otherwise, even the most devoted customer will be gone. Fast.
Ambassador to Israel Nominee is the Right Person for the Job

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit



WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- About 70 Christian leaders met on Tuesday with David Friedman, President Donald Trump's nominee as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. "David Friedman is the right person to represent the United States to Israel," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, President of Christians in Defense of Israel, and Founder and President of Covenant Journey.



Photo: David Friedman and Mat in Washington, D.C.



Friedman is an Orthodox Jew whose father was a rabbi. Ronald Reagan spoke at his father's synagogue. "Friedman loves Israel and he loves America," said Staver.

"We have a historic opportunity to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Israel. This opportunity to forge stronger bonds between the two nations could not come at a more critical time," said Staver.

For 50 years, the United States has attempted to force upon Israel a failed land for peace policy. Giving control over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority has resulted in the Hamas terrorist government takeover. Jews can no longer live in Gaza. Bethlehem is no longer a safe place for Christians, and signs at the entrance warn Jews not to enter. "It is time to honor Israel's right to self-determination and to stop imposing our failed solutions on the sovereign state of Israel," said Staver.

"The time has long since come to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the eternal and undivided capital of Israel," said Staver. "Jerusalem was established by King David as the capital of Israel 3,000 years ago. To not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel defies the historical record and is anti-Semitic. I urge President Trump to move the Embassy to Jerusalem. Delay or failure to move the Embassy to Jerusalem will be seen as a sign of weakness that will embolden those intent on wiping Israel off the map. As soon as possible, I urge the Senate to confirm David Friedman as the Ambassador to Israel," concluded Staver.



Liberty Counsel is an international nonprofit, litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family since 1989, by providing pro bono assistance and representation on these and related topics.
home World Christian jailed for refusing to renounce his faith in Chiapas, Mexico

A Christian in the state of Chiapas, Mexico was jailed and told to leave town after he refused to deny his faith and contribute to Traditionalist Catholic festivals.

Juan Gabriel Lopez Perez, 28, was jailed for three days on Jan. 7 and was warned by officials in Rancheria El Encanto, Municipality of Las Margaritas that he would not be released unless he sold his house and leave the area within 20 days, Morning Star News reported.

The authorities, who practice the Traditionalist Catholic blend of indigenous pagan and Roman Catholic rituals, gave Lopez the option of paying a fine amounting to 5,000 pesos ($240) or face 72 hours in jail. He was sent to jail after he refused to sign a document denying his evangelical faith and agreeing to contribute to the Traditionalist Catholic festivals.

When Lopez fell ill and was temporarily released for treatment, his wife served time in jail in his place, according to the Coordination of Christian Organizations (COC).

"On Jan. 9, the health condition of the prisoner were getting worse from the climatic conditions, so that in spite of requests for medical attention, it was not possible until night, when it was proposed that another person go to jail in his place, as a doctor had diagnosed the onset of bronchitis," the COC said in a statement. "His wife, Eduvina Lopez Santiz, went into the jail at that time," it added.

When Lopez returned to jail, he was sent to another complex where he is more insulated from the cold. His wife decided to stay with him despite having the opportunity to go home.

A government official, Jose Avenamar Peres Santiago, urged the family to pay the fine and leave the Pentecostal church, according to the COC. The official also offered them the funds to pay the fine, but they declined on grounds that accepting it would not guarantee that they will no longer be persecuted for belonging to the Pentecostal church.

The COC further noted that Lopez's incarceration came after area Christians filed a complaint against the authorities in December for cutting off their water supply and suspending government benefits and medical services. Their children were also reportedly denied the right to remain in school.

"The lack of attention, and the reluctance of the sub-secretary of Religious Affairs and local authorities to address this problem, resulted in the illegal deprivation of the designated people," the COC said, noting that Chiapas Gov. Manuel Velasco Coello and his officials had been informed on Dec. 14 about the situation of Christians in Rancheria El Encanto.

Mexico is currently ranked on the Open Doors World Watch List as the 41st out of 50 countries where Christians experience the most persecution.
3 Ways Trump Missed The Point At The National Prayer Breakfast

Yesterday Donald Trump hosted his first White House National Prayer Breakfast. The President used the unique gathering of leaders of the nation's many rich faith traditions to praise his own success on The Apprentice and to mock the waning ratings of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Trump made some other more relevant and occasionally coherent, thoughtful points, but people of faith should still be incredibly wary of Trump's attitude to religion in society. Here are three things that Trump got wrong in his speech, and why it matters.

He got distracted by himself

Following the speech social media made much of Trump's comments about TV ratings, which though not central to his speech, certainly overshadowed it. Trump said he'd had "tremendous success" with The Apprentice. "And when I ran for president, I had to leave the show," he continued. "That's when I knew for sure that I was doing it. And they hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out.

"The ratings went down the tubes. It's been a total disaster... And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?"

White House press secretary Sean Spicer today defended the remarks as "lighthearted", which perhaps they were, but many will simply see it as a sign of Trump's brash lack of restraint, and his overly-defensive disposition that distracts him from the actual duties of his office. Why does the most powerful man in the world need to obsess about ratings? This is the annual prayer breakfast, and the fact that the only thing Trump implored people to pray for was Arnold Schwarzenegger's ratings will be taken by many as a sign of the crass attitude the president has towards genuine faith. It also demonstrates a deeper, scarier character flaw: Trump's insecurity and obsession with his own success.

Krish Kandiah compared Trump's remarks to those made at a previous prayer breakfast:

Some prayer breakfasts are better than others.#nationalprayerbreakfast

Here's a quote from 2011 pic.twitter.com/R4xwuMPOqD  krish kandiah (@krishk) February 2, 2017

While Preident Obama spoke of how he needed God's grace, Trump seems more confident in his capacities: "The world is in trouble, but we're going to straighten it out. OK? That's what I do. I fix things." said President Trump. The breakfast should not be a contest of piety, but it is a chance for the President to share what he cares about. What does Donald Trump believe in?

He ignored a key faith initiative

The President's other error was ignoring a key faith-based initiative of the White House. At Barack Obama's first Prayer Breakfast, the President took the opportunity to announce his plans for the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, a key faith-based initiative begun by President George W Bush. The department worked within the White House, developing relationships with faith groups, engaging on issues such as adoption, abortion, community cohesion and anti-human trafficking efforts. The office made considerable successes during the Obama administration, and even only at the symbolic level represented an effort to see the positive value that faith groups have in society. However, President Trump made no reference to the office at all. At a time of increasing division and religious tension in particular, the relevance of an office that promotes positive dialogue with faith communities could hardly be more clear.

He emphasised something on the fringe of Christian concerns

Instead, Trump emphasised his commitment to religious freedom, declaring he would "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution." The amendment is a complex one, and Trump's promise is not insignificant, but it is odd.

Firstly, when most Christians think of 'religious freedom', they are probably thinking about freedom of conscience in the workplace and the public sphere, not the freedom of their pastor to declare political allegiances. Trump's move implies religious groups are primarily defined by narrow self-interest, only concerned with protecting their own rights, rather than for example, promoting the common good. Every time Trump promises 'power' or 'protection' to religious groups, it only exacerbates the doubts that many secular people may have about a positive, constructive role for religion in society.

Some will take Trump's promise as a sign that he doesn't really understand religious communities and their interests. Trump is a dealmaker who understand the world in zero-sum terms, where "winning" takes absolute priority. That's not a game religious groups, and certainly not Christians, should ever be interested in.

Trump did make some surprisingly heartfelt comments in his speech. They may have been genuine, though Trump's professions of piety are heard to take seriously when the man previously boasted that he doesn't need to seek forgiveness from God for anything.

With his executive orders on issues like abortion, conservative Supreme Court nominations, and potentially sweeping legislation on religious freedom (the kind that many really are concerned about), Trump may be seen as granting favours to religious conservatives, and securing their support. Trump previously gained 80 per cent of the vote of white evangelicals, so his ability to court Christians shouldn't be undermined. But does Trump offer support that will promote the common good, or will it only further religious tensions and resentment in society?

If religious groups continue to support Trump while he promotes torture and issues immigration bans on religious minorities, then their credibility and value in society may be seriously questioned, and they will ultimately suffer.

Some evangelicals made their stance against Trump quite clear yesterday, and won't have been won over by his rhetoric. Trump said he hopes to host seven more prayer breakfasts. If he continues to be preoccupied by TV ratings while refugees starve, he might not be so lucky.

You can follow @JosephHartropp on Twitter
American Heroes: The Incredible Sacrifice Of The Four Chaplains

Today is Four Chaplains Day: an occasion which looks back to the incredible courage of four men who, in the face of disaster, gave up their lives to save others. The four chaplains are symbol of remarkable, faith-inspired leadership and self-sacrifice, and their legacy continues to move many today. What is their story?

When tragedy strikes

George Lansing Fox, Alexander David Goode, Clark Vandersall Poling and John Patrick Washington were four friends and fellow chaplains in the US army. Fox was a Methodist minister, Goode a Reform Rabbi, Washington a Roman Catholic priest and Poling a minister in the Reformed Church of America. They boarded the SS Dorchester, an originally civilian vessel adapted for military service as a troop transport, on January 23, 1943, during World War II. The ship carried the chaplains and about 900 military personnel, and was en route to Greenland.

The Dorchester had been on high alert, with its Captain Hans J Danielsen wary of German U-boat submarines that were monitoring the sea lanes. On February 3, 1943, at 12.55 am, disaster struck, and Dorchester was torpedoed by the German submarine U-223, just off Newfoundland in the North Altantic Ocean.

The torpedo strike eliminated the ship's electrical system, leaving the crew, many of whom were trapped below deck, lost in darkness. Amid this chaos, Fox, Goode, Vandersall and Washington stepped up and sought to calm the men, help the wounded, and lead an orderly evacuation.

One survivor, Private William B Bednar, had found himself in oil-covered water surrounded by dead bodies and destruction. "I could hear men crying, pleading, praying," Bednar said. "I could also hear the chaplains preaching courage. Their voices were the only thing that kept me going."

"Witnesses of that terrible night remember hearing the four men offer prayers for the dying and encouragement for those who would live," says Wyatt R Fox, son of George Fox.

No greater love than this

When most of the men were topside, the chaplains opened a storage locker to get life jackets for the men. When it became clear that there weren't enough life jackets, the chaplains each removed theirs and gave them to four frightened men. In doing so they sacrificed any hope of their own survival, but gave hope to others.

"It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven," said John Ladd, a witness of the moment.

As the ship sunk, survivors who made it to lifeboats looked back to see the four-chaplains on Dorchester, with arms linked, praying for the safety of the men and singing hymns in the face of death. They were never seen again.

A profound legacy

The disaster on the Dorchesterwas still a tragedy: only 230 of the 904 men on board survived. Many died of hypothermia in the water, even those with life jackets. Nonetheless, the remarkable courage of the chaplains stands out. Their role was to witness and serve the men they were with, and they did that with every last fibre of their being.

The chaplains were posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Distinguished Service Cross, and in 1960 a new medal was created and awarded in their honour, the Four Chaplain's Medal. In 1988, February 3 was established by Congress to be recognised as Four Chaplain's Day.

The Four Chaplain's Memorial Foundation website gives this tribute:

"The altruistic action of the four chaplains constitutes one of the purest spiritual and ethical acts a person can make. When giving their life jackets, Rabbi Goode did not call out for a Jew; Father Washington did not call out for a Catholic; nor did the Reverends Fox and Poling call out for a Protestant. They simply gave their life jackets to the next man in line."

The chaplains are also known as the "Immortal Chaplains". They died a tragic death, but their legacy of courage in the face of crisis, and profound self sacrifice, is one that can never die.
China Crackdown: Human Rights Lawyers And Christians Arrested And Tortured

Two human rights are believed to be the latest victims of China's crackdown on Christians and other dissidents after a charity claims they were tortured in custody.

Li Heping and another lawyer, Wang Quanzhang, were electrocuted several times with electric batons during their first six months in prison, according to the charity China Aid.

They were initially arrested on January 20 2016 for "subverting state power" and remains incarcerated at the Tianjin Municipal Detention Center No. 1.

Li's wife told the watchdog he fainted several times due to the severity of the attacks.

Beijing reportedly considers the human rights attorney to be "more dangerous than Bin Laden", according to the Guardian

"Chinese say that they are living inside a prison," he said before his arrest. "If you are detained, you are in a smaller prison. If you are released, you are in a bigger prison."

The emergence of torture by the Chinese regime comes as part of a wider trend attacking Christians, pastors and churchgoers, as well as lawyers.

Zhang Xiuhong, a deacon at the Guiyang Huoshi Church in Guizhou province, was detained by local police in July 2015, according to China Christian Daily.

Last month Pastor Yang Hua, also known as Li Guozhi, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for "divulging state secrets" after he tried to stop officials confiscating his church computer files.

He has also been tortured, according to a local news site.
European Space Agency To Build Temple On Moon To Serve As 'Place Of Contemplation' For First Lunar Settlers

It's going to be a temple like no otherliterally out of this world.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed plans for building a temple on the moon as part of mankind's first lunar settlement.

Why build a temple?

Artist Jorge Manes Rubio, part of ESA's future-oriented Advanced Concepts Team (ACT), says his designed "Moon Temple" with a 50-metre high dome would provide the first human settlers on the moon "a place of contemplation."

"Lunar settlement represents a perfect chance for a fresh start, a place where there are no social conventions, no nations and no religion, somewhere where these concepts will need to be rethought from scratch," he says in the ESA news release.

"Humans have brought flags to the Moon, but they've been bleached white by sunlight since then  almost as if the Moon is protecting itself from such terrestrial concepts.

"So this Temple is intended as a mythic and universal structure that can hopefully bring people together in this new environment in novel ways," he says.

Rubio has selected a near-perpetually sunlit peak called Shackleton Crater, which is close to the Moon's South Pole, as the site of the temple. The Earth will always be visible on one of the two openings in the temple while the other will peer out into deep space.

The Moon's poles are seen as promising locations for future human settlements because the lowness of the Sun in the sky allows the area to serve as "cold traps" where water icewhich could be a vital source of water, air or rocket fuelcould be stored.

ESA's plans to build a human settlement on the moon are just part of a much bigger plan to explore the solar system, including Mars.

Speaking at a recent conference, ESA chief Jan Woerner said, "I think we should go first to the moon and then further on," the Daily Mail reported.

ESA's announcement did not mention any timetable for its planned lunar base.

Last year, NASA scientists announced that Moon colonisation could begin as early as 2022 at a cost of just $10 billion, according to Science Alert.

NASA had earlier focused on a mission to Mars, but talk later shifted to establishing a human colony on the Moon first.

"My interest is not the Moon. To me the Moon is as dull as a ball of concrete," NASA astrobiologist Chris McKay, told Popular Science. "But we're not going to have a research base on Mars until we can learn how to do it on the Moon first. The Moon provides a blueprint to Mars."
 Flash

China and the United States should always cooperate in the face of challenges, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Cui Tiankai said Wednesday.

"We have learned that we should always respond to difficulties and challenges by cooperation, instead of conflict or confrontation," Cui told a 500-member audience at the embassy's New Year reception.

"We should work together for win-win cooperation, instead of being misguided by zero-sum or cold war mentality," the ambassador noted.

Cui stressed that cultural exchanges can bring people closer to each other, and he hoped the traditional Chinese music, Peking Opera, Acrobatics, and handicrafts featured at the reception would win the hearts of the guests.

Hailey, 8 and her sister Ashley, 7, were beaming when they were given a tiger figurine made of sugar from one of the Chinese craftsmen. "I was born in Hong Kong and knew a little about Chinese culture, I really like coming here," Hailey said.

Erika Crowell, another guest, said it's the third time she has come to such an event, and each time she learned something new about China.

"All the handiwork were very intricate and I was impressed by how dedicated the craftsmen were to their work, I should learn from them," She said.

Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, also came to the event with her daughter.

The reception was one of a series of Spring Festival-themed events organized by the Chinese Embassy. Chinese artists and craftsmen will also perform and display their talent at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington on Saturday.
Fancy Applying To Be The Next Bishop Of London? Here Are 50 Tips To Help You Decide

Now the Bishop of London has said "goodbye", the Church will soon advertise the job. Christian Today has decided to help out. Here are 50 vital tips to help you decide whether you have the gifts to be the next Richard Chartres.

1. The ability to work miracles. Real ones. While believing totally in science.

2. You must manifest all the gifts of the Spirit listed in 1 Corinthians 12 except speaking in tongues  that would be suspect.

3. You will have mastered the art of ordaining women while not ordaining them.

4. Likewise with gays.

5. You are up with the "young"  ie you use Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and Houseparty all at the very same time  while not upsetting your own children or the comms staff at Church House.

6. You have a wondrous ability to talk to the Royal Family  but never ever say a word about them.

7. You can communicate everything important to any congregation in a single monosyllable such as "er".

8. You can deliver very long sentences packed with sub-clauses and multi-syllabic words such as "Augustinian" and "patriarchal" while actually saying absolutely nothing at all.

9. You talk about God the whole time. And Jesus. But you absolutely never say "Oh God!"

10. "Oh Heavens!" is permitted from time to time.

11. You are fluent in Russian, Arabic, Punjabi, Biblical Hebrew, modern Hebrew, classical Greek and modern Greek. Alternatively, you are familiar with Google Translate. No need to worry about Latin any more though.

12. You can quote from the 1552 Book of Common Prayer. It's not enough just to know the 1662.

13. But you never admit to having having read, used or liked in any form the 1980 Alternative Service Book, let alone having served on one of the committees responsible for its formulation.

14. Are you common enough for Common Worship?

15. You understand when and how to make the Sign of the Cross in Orthodox and Catholic Churches. And what to do when evangelicals are watching you do this.

14. You have done or are willing to do at least one Music And Worship course at the London School of Theology. You know at least three chords on the guitar. You know which three.

15. You have mastered the saintly attribute of translocation and can therefore visit every parish and speak to every vicar in your diocese in the first six months.

16. You know the name of every archdeacon in your own and each neighbouring diocese, especially Southwark. You already know exactly what if anything they know about you, and who does and does not care about faculties. You don't care about them much but you pretend you do, especially to your chancellor.

17. If you can't face learning the names of all your clergy, in London you can simply call them 'Father'. The women too. Go on, we dare you.

18. You have a working acquaintance with the key operatives of the City of London police, the Metropolitan police and all the security services. Be prepared to watch them as hard as they'll be watching you.

19. You can talk about how God loves both Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump, and can see the good in them in spite of their regrettably manifest flaws. But secretly, you're wondering who's really in charge at the moment.

20. You understand how women's shoes work and why they are important.

21. You are married to a member of the opposite sex, and have children.

22. You might be gay. This does not necessarily negate 21.

23. You have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ

24. Do you know about Gog and Magog, the idols kept at the Guildhall in the City of London that lead the procession in the annual Lord Mayor's Show? Best find out sooner rather than later.

25. Sermons. Short and holy, unless you're called Rowan Williams, when long and holy is the rule. It's quite a good idea never to write them down or put them on YouTube. That way you can repeat them and no-one need ever know.

26. You have a theological argument for why you prefer Benedict to Francis.

27. You have a spiritual argument for why you prefer Francis to Benedict.

28. You are on Twitter and Facebook but you don't follow Donald Trump and you never tweet or comment on anyone's status. It's probably best if you don't actually read your own Twitter feed.

29. If you're having a bad day, read the Twitter feed of @JustinWelby and pray for him.

30. Never wear a clerical collar.

31. Always wear a clerical collar. Never refer to yours or anyone else's as a dog collar.

32. Always wear a black cassock shirt

33. Always wear a light blue cassock shirt

34. Never wear a bright pink cassock shirt

35. Learn the difference between a chasuble, amice, cincture, dalmatic, cassock alb, surplice, soutane and stole.

36. If in Italy visiting the Pope, would you order zucchetti or zucchetto for dinner? That's what we would ask you if we were on your interview committee.

37. Do you know the difference between east and west and why it matters which way you pray?

38. Learn to sprinkle that aspergillum and swing that thurible. You'll never be as bishopy as Richard Chartres but you will be expected to try, just so congregations can grumble that you're not as bishopy as Richard Chartres.

39. Know the difference between Shia and Sunni, when a temple is not a temple but a synagogue, when a Reform Jew is a liberal and when they are a conservative, and why it is all so different in America.

40. You can discern at a glance when a church is not a church any more but a block of flats, or when is still a church but not consecrated as a church because it's owned by a trust or Andrew Lloyd Webber or something that means you can still use it as a church but not put on musicals ...... oh I give up. But you can't give up. Ever.

41. Develop a relationship with former Times editor Simon Jenkins and study his books so you can talk knowledgeably about the historic merits of all your medieval churches and cathedrals and know more about places such as Salisbury, Ely and Winchester than their own bishops do.

42. Of course you know the difference between St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Don't you? One is yours and one is the Queen's. It's all rather Peculiar.

43. Actually St Paul's is not yours either. It belongs to the Dean. Oh alright, and the Chapter too. Even though you live in the Old Deanery. You have to knock very loudly even to be allowed in. Three times. But at least you don't have to pay. At least not if you're going in to pray. Which you will need to do often.

44. If a terror group bombs one of your historic churches into smithereens, don't for even a microsecond feel secretly relieved you have one less building to worry about it. Raise the cash to rebuild it as fast as possible, even if you suspect that Jesus would rather you spend the money on building houses for the poor.

45. Talking of St Paul's, it's worth becoming familiar with the works of John Donne. But be very, very careful which bits you quote in sermons.

46. As so many of your churches in London are used for meetings of 12-step fellowships such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, you must be "with the programme"  but preferably but not "on" it. Not in "that" way anyway. You must certainly believe in a "Higher Power" but make no bones about it  this can't be "Good Orderly Direction" or any other such syncretistic nonsense. It must be Jesus Christ.

47. Sometimes, you might have to talk to journalists. Be brave. After all, Jesus supped with sinners. Then there's always Luther Pendragon so it's not completely hopeless.

48. Learn some good jokes but never use the joke about the bishop who says: "There's something wrong with this microphone" and the congregation that replies: "And also with you." This betrays familiarity with the ASB (See 13). Resist the temptation to repeat that joke about the Church of England being like a swimming pool, with all the noise being at the shallow end. If you use this one, you are doomed.

49. Do you know the difference between St Paul's Knightsbridge, All Saints Margaret Street, St Helen's Bishopsgate, Holy Trinity Brompton, the Vineyard churches and Hillsong? Do you know which are CofE and which are not? Do you understand in which ones you preach a homily and in which ones, a sermon? Do you know who among your friends and colleagues is a conservative evangelical, a charismatic evangelical, a liberal Catholic, an Anglican-Catholic? Or do you secretly pretend these differences do not exist or matter? Surely even you can't truly honestly believe that we are all just "middle of the road" Anglicans.

50. General Synod. 'Nuff said. Welby and Sentamu will tell you that you have to go. They might want you there to keep them company. It's pretty lonely on that top table. But actually you need never go. All the real work is done these days by the Archbishops' Council, and you're not an Archbishop. Yet. Read and learn these 50 tips, though, and you might be one day. Good luck, God bless, and prayers. You're gonna need them!
Kirk Cameron On Why Religious Liberty Is Good Even For Atheists

Not a few people have chosen to live their lives without God. Many even claim that God serves no purpose in today's society. But have you ever truly wondered what the world would be like if God was not present?

"Growing Pains" star Kirk Cameron tried to paint a picture of life without God, and it looks pretty bleak, if not downright terrifying, according to Faith Wire.

"If there's no God then you have to throw out so much else," Cameron said in a recent episode of The Kirk Cameron Podcast. "You have to throw out the ideas of goodness and love and truth and knowledge and beauty, because those ideas don't even exist in a world where there is no God."

During his show, Cameron also tried to address bashers who think badly of Christians. The actor knows that believers often get persecuted in today's society. They are often belittled and jeered at for being close-minded, but the truth is that those without faith are the ones truly missing out, he said.

"I just want people to understand that we who have faith in God and God's Word are not living in some little bubble off in a corner. We're the ones who have our eyes wide open, who see the beauty of all that God has made," he said.

Christians are currently fighting for their religious freedom, and Cameron said atheists and non-believers have to help out on this, too because it would be good for them.

"You don't want to be an atheist in a certain kind of country that insists on only one religion," he explained. "If you have religious liberty, which allows you to be here in the U.S. and practice your faith according to the dictates of your conscience under law, you can be an atheist without worrying that you're going to be thrown in prison for that."

Earlier, Cameron said people are currently living in the last days of America because of society's dwindling moral values. However, there is still time to turn things around.

"Is it too late? No, it's not too late. It's not impossible to turn it around, but there's no time to wait any longer. We are nearing the point of no return, but we're not there yet. But we must lean in, double down and engage [as soon as possible] because we've been coasting for too long," Cameron said, according to Cj Online.
Millions At Risk As Famine Looms In Somalia  Unless We Act Now

How far did you have to walk to get clean water this morning? For me, it was 10 feet. A cool glass of life-sustaining water was enjoyed without a second thought.

But millions aren't so fortunate. As the second famine to hit Somalia in six years looms, the average distance to water points has risen to 50 km, with some communities forced to travel as far as 125 km.

Severe drought has plagued the country for more than a year, affecting millions of families. 1.1 million people are internally displaced and 3.3 million people already require livelihood support.

The United Nations on Thursday warned that the situation could soon spiral further into catastrophe. Almost half of the Somali population  6.2 million people  are now in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, up from five million in September. "In six months, we'll be facing a catastrophe and a famine on a scale we cannot imagine, if we don't act right now," a UN representative said.

2.9 million people are facing crisis or emergency levels of food insecurity, and 363,000 children under five years old are acutely malnourished. Around 71,000 children are severely malnourished.

Daily water consumption has dropped from 7.5 litres per person to just three litres  well below the internationally agreed minimum standard. And this severe fall in water levels has been matched by a steep rise in prices. Since June 2016, the cost of water has gone from $5 a barrel (200 litres) to $15. In some remote areas, the price has rocketed to as high as $30.

But spiralling costs are far from the only concern  in the Gedo region in Southern Somalia, 90 percent of villages are now reliant on unsafe water sources. Fears are growing about the spread of water-borne diseases after cholera outbreaks were reported across 25 districts late last year and animal carcasses are increasing the threat of water contamination.

Millions of families are at risk  including Deeqa Muuse, who was forced to leave her village along with her four children as a result of the drought.

"Water, food and shelter are the main problems we are facing; no support is coming from anywhere. We only get water once every three days," she said.

Deeqa and her family are from Beer village in the Togdheer region of Somaliland. They are among 330 local households moved three hours' drive away to seek better living with access to clean water. Deeqa's oldest son is just eight years old, but is no longer attending school  he is among 3 million school-age children Somalia who have lost access to education.

The worsening drought has caused multiple other problems, piling extra pressure on families which has led to separation, gender-based and sexual violence, and an increase in child marriage and child labour. Before the drought, Deeqa had more than 150 sheep and goats. Now she has just 40, all of which are weak and likely to die soon.

The crisis follows a famine that hit Somalia in 2011, killing more than 250,000 people before the international community woke up ready to help. Now the need is dire once again, the 'Never Again' pledge made six years ago is at risk of becoming an empty promise.

The UN's humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, warned yesterday that the international community will need to "redouble our efforts to go into full emergency mode in the next few weeks".

"We are seeing growing similarities to the conditions that led to the famine in 2011 though, as numbers are showing, a much larger percentage of the country is at risk this time around," he said.

Hundreds of thousands of children and their families need immediate life-saving assistance and access to food, water, medicine and other basic services essential for their survival. World Vision, as part of the Somalia Humanitarian Country Team, has been at the forefront of fighting the drought. As the possibility of famine looms, we must respond immediately to avert a catastrophe, and not repeat a lesson that has already been learned. It is time to stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow human, like Deeqa and her children.

It is time to act.

Geeta Bandi-Phillips is director of advocacy and external engagement at World Vision Somalia. Follow her on Twitter @bandiphillips
Rebel #ThisFlag Pastor Still Vlogging From Jail

"Thank God I am well" was the message from rebel Zimbabwean pastor Evan Mawarire that flew around social media after his arrest on Wednesday.

The #ThisFlag pastor, who prompted a mass protest movement across the beleaguered southern African country, fled to the US after an initial stint in jail six months ago.

But he was arrested immediately at Harare International Airport this week.

He faces up to 20 years in prison under the charge of subverting the government. He is yet to appear in court.

A video clip shared of him in handcuffs after his arrest told reassured his fans, many of whom were furious when he quit the country, for the US.

"Thank God I am well. Hello, everyone. Unfortunately I have been arrested. I hope we will get through this," he said in the video blog

"This is home and I have committed no crime and I am allowed to come home."

Mawarire was initially arrested in July and charged with inciting public violence and subverting the state.

It came after he accidentally sparked a protest movement that led to two-days of mass strikes against Robert Mugabe's handling of the economy.

He achieved cult status for his message shared on Facebook and it led to a social media-led campaign against the regime.

His latest arrest comes after a series of threats from government officials and President Mugabe himself. He accused him of being sponsored by foreign governments and of being a false preacher.

"A man of religion will speak the biblical truth. 1 Corinthians what does it say? Love one another," said Mugabe.

"So beware these men of cloth, not all of them are true preachers of the Bible. I don't know whether they are serving God. They spell God in reverse," the president said.

"The Mawarires and those who believe in that way of living in our country, well, they are not part of us in thinking. They are not part of us as we try to live together," he said,
The 10 Lessons Pastors Of Expanding Churches Have Learned

If you want your church to grow, there's no substitute for leaning on the Holy Spirit. But there are also practical lessons to be learned. The Barna Group has released 10 lessons for church expansion that have come from detailed research.

First, it says church expansion takes many forms  with congregations of many shapes, sizes and styles. Secondly, the biggest reason churches expand into new sites is to reach a particular geographical area.

The third lesson is that church expansion is tough. A third of leaders surveyed said that their expansion was harder than they anticipated. This ties in with the fourth lesson  sometimes churches close or sever their ties with other ministries.

Branding matters  that's the fifth lesson. Apparently half of pastors think having a recognisable brand attracts new visitors to church. A similar number of leaders affirmed the sixth lesson, which is that a new church plant benefits the local community as well as offering chances to develop the existing church members.

Another lesson was the way in which expansion exposes the skills gap in a congregation  almost a quarter said they'd experienced that. The eigth lesson is about logistics  some leaders said they'd been unprepared for the details of securing buildings for an expanded church as well as the costs associated with it.

The penultimate finding is that church plants mostly fund themselves. Congregational giving increases as the church grows, allowing them to do more. That's linked to the final point  a new church plant helps to accelerate growth. "Many [pastors] believe a church that is new and local is far more likely to attract new unchurched visitors than one that has been around for years," says the report.

The report contains many valuable lessons for churches looking to expand with a positive outlook, alongside the reality of more testing lessons. You can read more here.
Ukraine, Separatists Say More Civilians Killed In Eastern Flare-up

Ukrainian authorities and pro-Russian separatists accused each other on Thursday of carrying out fresh artillery attacks on frontline residential areas in eastern Ukraine, resulting in civilian casualties on both sides.

The reports follow a short lull in fighting in the wake of the deadliest clashes in recent months that have brought global attention back to the conflict. NATO and the EU have called on Russia to use its influence with rebels to stop the violence.

The head of the Ukraine-controlled Donetsk regional administration, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, said a humanitarian aid point in the government-held industrial town of Avdiyivka had been hit by mortars late on Thursday.

"According to preliminary figures, one person has been killed and one wounded in the attack. Shelling continues," he said on Facebook, blaming Russia-backed rebels.

In a separate post, Zhebrivsky said one civilian was killed by shelling in another part of the industrial town that has been the focal point of the recent flare-up in hostilities.

Damage from the escalation has cut power and water supplies to thousands of residents on both sides of the front line at a time of freezing winter temperatures, prompting warnings of a potential humanitarian crisis from aid agencies.

Separatist officials said around 10 civilians had been wounded as a result of fresh shelling by Ukrainian forces, also on Thursday evening, separatist website DAN reported.

None of the casualty reports have been independently verified.

Earlier the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ukraine called for all sides to hold fire to allow the emergency repair work to be carried out on damaged utilities infrastructure.

In a statement, the head of ICRC in Ukraine, Alain Aeschlimann, warned of "potentially tremendous humanitarian consequences" if the situation for civilians living near the eastern front line does not improve.

A Reuters witness in Avdiyivka said the intermittent boom of artillery fire could be heard in the distance throughout the day.

A February 2015 'Minsk' peace agreement locked the two sides in a stalemate which has been broken periodically by surges in fighting that Kiev and the Kremlin accuse each other of instigating.

Thirteen Ukrainian servicemen have been killed and around 30 wounded since Sunday, according to the military's press service in Kiev. Separatists have also reported casualties among their fighters but not provided an exact toll on a regular basis.

The clashes come as Kiev seeks to persuade the United States and the European Union of the need to maintain economic sanctions against Russia linked to its involvement in the conflict and annexation of Crimea.

Moscow denies accusations from Kiev and NATO that it supports the separatists with troops and weapons.

This is the first significant escalation of violence in Ukraine since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, whose call for better relations with Moscow has alarmed Kiev with the conflict unresolved.

On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of provoking the flare-up as a ploy to win the support of the Trump administration.

But US Senator John McCain said Russia had instigated the violence to test Trump, and he urged the president to give Ukraine the lethal aid it needs to defend against the attacks.

Fighting between pro-Russian separatists and government forces first broke out in April 2014 after a pro-European uprising in Kiev ousted a Moscow-backed president. Close to 10,000 have since been killed.
WATCH: Thousands Celebrate Bishop Of London's Farewell Service At St Paul's Cathedral

Thousands of people packed in St Paul's Cathedral for a farewell service to Rt Rev Richard Chartres on Thursday night.

The Bishop of London has been in the post for 22 years and retires later this month.

A formal eucharist was attended by clergy and representatives of a number of Christian denominations, with Chartres hailing the gathering as "a symbol of unity".

Outside the Cathedral hundreds more met around a "pop-up cathedral" with King's Cross Church offering worship and the Bishop of Edmonton presiding over a more informal alternative celebration.

The Bishop of London told Christian Today before entering the Cathedral: "For too long we have expected people to come to us. Increasingly we have got to go to them."

He said he leaves the number three job in the Church of England at a time of "promise and peril".

He added: "What we are offering is not just one more ideology in the noisy marketplace where salesman for various ideologies are trying to drown each other out.

"What we are offering is a community in which the spirit of Jesus Christ dwells and a community which brings people together rather than prising them apart.
What Is The Johnson Amendment And Can Trump Repeal It?

Donald Trump has promised to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment, fulfilling another campaign promise and prompting wild praise from Republicans and conservative Christians.

He told hundreds gathered for the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday he would "get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution".

Here are five points to help you understand the Johnson Amendment and why it is so vociferously opposed by many Republicans.

1. What is the Johnson Amendment?

Introduced in 1954 by then Senator Lyndon Johnson, it stops churches, charities and other organisations that are exempt from paying taxes from intervening in a political campaign.

It stops tax-exempt groups  including churches  from collecting money for a political campaign or openly endorsing any particular candidate from the pulpit.

The US' Internal Revenue Service explains that religious groups "are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office".

2. Does this mean churches cannot be political in any way?

No. Pastors can preach on social issues and "issue guidance" to voters.

The law is actually very narrow in scope and is mainly centred around money. Churches can encourage voting, organise voter education events and preach on political issues, but just not endorse or openly support a particular candidate.

3. Isn't this violating free speech?

It is more about money and politics than it is about free speech.

Conservative groups who want religion to play a bigger role in public life have campaigned for the law to be overturned and claimed it inhibits free speech.

But it is actually one of the clearest barriers in the US between Church and state.

If the law were repealed and churches and faith leaders allowed to endorse and support candidates, religious support would become a huge factor in US politics.

If tax-exempt religious groups were allowed to donate large sums of money to political campaigns or candidates, churches could become vehicles for political fundraising.

4. Why do Republicans oppose the Johnson Amendment?

Because of their conservative status on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, Republicans tend to gain the majority of churches' support. This was shown in the 81 per cent of white evangelicals who backed Trump in the 2016 election.

So they have the most to gain financially by repealing the law.

But it was actually originally passed by a Republican congress and signed into law by a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower.

5. Can Trump actually repeal the Johnson Amendment ?

Not on his own.

Despite his promise to "totally destroy" it, the Johnson Amendment is part of tax law and so will need to repealed by Congress.

This is not unlikely though, as the Republicans now control both the House and Senate.
Why Donald Trump Is Right  And Brave  To Get Rid Of The Johnson Amendment

When the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie asked worshippers at St Paul's Cathedral in a service intended to mark Britain's victory in the Falklands War to pray for the dead of both sides, the right wing erupted in fury.

His sermon was seen as meddling in politics and an attack on Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

If Britain had its own Johnson Amendment, and the sermon had been during an election campaign, would he have risked in that single sermon the loss of the tax exempt status of the entire Church of England? That would have been some sweet revenge by Thatcher.

It seems incredible that in a country such as the United States, that has made freedom of speech a cornerstone of its constitution, clergy are inhibited in what they can say about politics from the puplit.

Britain has its own rules regarding campaigning and political activity by charities. Although praying for the dead or advocating particular policies would not be a violation of these or the US rules, Runcie's sermon was seen as a personal attack on the Prime Minister. In any case in the UK, the rules are not objected to by church leaders.

Our reporter Harry Farley explains the Johnson Amendment here for Christian Today.

In the US, evangelicals believe strongly that the restrictions brought in by the amendment are an unjust inhibition on freedom of speech.

It was in 1954 that Congress amended  without any debate  the Internal Revenue Code. This means that non-profit organisations, including churches, risk losing their tax-exempt status if they preach politics from the pulpit during an election campaign.

Trump recognises this. His promise to rescind the amendment, made at a private meeting with evangelical Christian leaders during the campaign, is among the main reasons he won their vote.

Trump recognises that preventing clergy from speaking out about individual politicians during campaigns is unacceptable censorship of their Christian witness. It also goes directly against the Bible.

In book after book, we see the people of God engage directly with and against the political rulers of their day  Joseph, Moses, Nathan, Isaiah, Jesus himself. "All authority in heaven and on earth is given unto me," said Jesus in the Gospels. That is in heaven and earth, not just in heaven.

It is biblically and morally wrong that Christian preachers be denied the authority to preach for politics and justice, to speak out against individual wrong or right.

Jesus warned his followers that by following Him, they would cause offence. And in Acts, we read how Peter and John did indeed go against an order not to preach and were arrested. Civil disobedience has long been a key part of Christian social witness. Today we call it "speaking truth to power". St Paul understood how political power comes from God, and how secular authority can be challenged through the spiritual authority of Christ.

No evangelical wanting the repeal of the Johnson Amendment imagines for a moment that Trump is the perfect example of Christian witness to the nation.

But this he does understand.

As he said at the National Prayer Breakfast: "America will flourish as long as our liberty, and in particular our religious liberty, is allowed to flourish."

Rescinding the Johnson Amendment will allow religious engagement with political life in America as not seen since the middle of the last century.

It fits in with Trump's moves to roll back regulations in financial and other areas, and introduce a new religious freedom act.

And ultimately it is an incredibly brave act by this supremely flawed human being.

Because once the Johnson Amendment is gone, who is likely to be the target of the most vitriolic political tub-tumping from the pulpits of America in four years time?

Of course it will be Donald Trump himself.
Why This Conservative Is Calling On Churches To Sever Ties With The Boy Scouts Of America

The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has long been revered as an organisation that trains young men to become responsible citizens who are self-reliant and morally upright.

But on Monday, the youth organisation announced that it would begin accepting transgender boys, Charisma News reported. It even vowed to defy its age-old practice of acknowledging the gender stated on the birth certificate of applicants to determine eligibility.

"Starting today, we will accept and register youth in the Cub and Boy Scout programs based on the gender identity indicated on the application," Boy Scouts of America communications director Effie Delimarkos said in a statement.

Fox News and Commentary host Todd Starnes is not pleased at all with this development, and has called on churches and parents to sever ties with the organisation.

"The Boy Scouts of America sacrificed its last vestige of integrity on the altar of political correctness," he wrote. "What's really sad is the BSA rarely talks about its original mission  to teach young people ethics and morals  to teach them how to make ethical and moral decisions through their lifetime. But those days are long gone."

Instead, Starnes is recommending Trail Life USA - a Christ-centred scouting programme that was founded back in 2014. It currently has 30,000 youths involved in the programme, including former Boy Scouts.

After the BSA's announcement, Trail Life USA offered a statement of its own and assured parents that their values and leadership style will not be swayed by society's demands.

The group assured its "members and charter organisations nationwide that we are committed to the biblical traditional values affirmed in our statement of faith and values."

John Stemberger, chairman of Trail Life's board of directors, said they are deeply saddened over the BSA's decision. He believes that the group's decision will only "put boys in a state of confusion and does nothing to help normal psychological development."

They might also face logistical issues as well when deciding whether or not boys and girls will be allowed to shower together or use the same camp dressing rooms.

"Aside from the fact they are now going to confuse literally hundreds of thousands of young men and boys  you are now going to have further youth protection problems," he said. "Facilities and campgrounds are not designed for this type of thing."
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A policy paper spelling out the British government's plans for exiting the European Union was published Thursday.

Brexit Secretary David Davis listed 12 main points in the document detailing how the government wants to make its exit from Brussels and how it sees its new partnership with the remaining 27 EU members.

He said Britain's best days were still to come outside the EU.

The document lays out general principles rather than specific details and says the government will keep its positions closely held and will need at times to be careful about giving a running commentary in public.

The publication of the document, known as a white paper, came less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Theresa May was given an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons over her plans to trigger the Article 50 mechanism for leaving the EU.

Davis told members of parliament (MPs) in the Commons: "This White Paper confirms the prime minister's vision of an independent, truly global UK and an ambitious future relationship with the EU."

He said the exit strategy was based on principles that will guide the government following last June's referendum vote when a majority of people backed leaving the EU.

They cover Britain taking control of its own borders and law making, controlling immigration from EU countries into Britain and protecting workers' rights achieved through EU legislation.

The strategy also seeks to secure rights for EU citizens already living in Britain and the rights of British nationals living in EU countries.

Davis said the government recognizes EU principles which include freedom of EU citizens to freely cross borders of all member states. As a result, he said, Britain will leave the single market.

Instead, he said government negotiators will also seek a free trade agreement with European markets, forging a new strategic partnership with the EU, including a bold and ambitious free trade agreement and mutually beneficial new customs agreement.

Beyond the EU, the government wants to forge ambitious free trade agreements with other countries across the world.

Davis said the British government wanted the EU to succeed, politically and economically. He added that while Britain cannot sign new trade deals until after Brexit, the country can and is preparing the ground for them.

"This means updating the terms of our membership of the World Trade Organization," he said.

Sir Keir Starmer, Labour's Shadow Brexit Secretary, described the white paper as a "wish list rather than an action plan."

He said: "For months they have refused to publish a plan or allow proper scrutiny, and when they are finally forced to produce a White Paper, it is rushed, limited and not well thought through."

One of Britain's biggest trade unions, the GMB described the white paper as "bordering on a fairy tale."

Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the Confederation of British Industry, said later that Britain falling back on World Trade Organization rules would be damaging. She said the pressure was on for the government to deliver the best possible deal, as well as a smooth and orderly Brexit.

Political observers say despite political battles, May is expected to beat off challenges to trigger Article 50 next month.
A benchmark of quality and refinement  the Virata Collection

Experts and family members remember the larger-than-life Marie Theresa L. Virata, whose collection of classical Chinese furniture, ceramics, English furniture and decorative arts was assembled over 40 years  and is offered on 16 March

Over the course of three generations, the Virata family has assembled one of the most significant collections of Asian art in the Philippines. Started by larger-than-life matriarch Marie Theresa L. Virata, also known as Bebe, the 40-year-old collection is a masterful blend of classical Chinese furniture, ceramics, English furniture and decorative arts.

Open a larger version of this image Marie Theresa L. Virata, whose collection of classical Chinese and English furniture, ceramics and decorative arts represents an exquisite blend of Asian and Western aesthetics

The global scope of the collection and expert merging of cultural influences was inspired by Bebes formative experiences in the foreign services. Leonides J.M. Virata explains that his grandmother Bebe always had that very global perspective and managed to forge real lasting relationships throughout her travels. Her commanding presence also helped  a tall and elegant woman, she always made a visual impact, says Corazon S. Alvina, a friend and the Executive Director of the Museo ng Kaalamang Katutubo.

Bebes collecting was rooted in her interest in archaeology and her desire to connect to the past. In 1966 she sponsored a school at the site of one of the most important excavations in Philippine history. She continued to be involved in the excavations of early export Chinese ceramics in association with Sir John Addis, the British ambassador to the Philippines and a collector of Chinese furniture. The legendary dealer and collector Robert Hatfield Ellsworth was also a major influence in the shaping of Bebes collection. His striking New York apartment on Fifth Avenue served as a model for her interiors, in which Chinese furniture and objects complemented Japanese screens, English furniture and European decorative arts  distinct elements coming together in finely balanced harmony.

Other influences included dealers Nicholas Grindley, Grace Wu Bruce and Charles Wong, all of whom assisted with acquiring the significant examples of huanghuali and zitan furniture that form the crux of the Virata Collection. Standout pieces include the 17th-century huanghuali compound Piccus cabinet; the 17th-century pair of huanghuali Southern officials hat armchairs, also known as the Ecke Chairs; and the 17th/18th-century pair of zitan officials hat armchairs, the only known pair of zitan chairs in this style, according to Grindley.


Shoppers from across Latin America and the Caribbean flock to the Colon Free Trade Zone to buy everything from toys to tools.

Instead of leaving with a few shopping bags full of goodies, these buyers typically order 20- and 40-foot-long containers stuffed with items they will resell.

Bras, blenders and bikes decorate the more than 2,800 storefronts. This shopping center is where buyers for small and medium-size stores come to fill their shelves with sandals that may cost $6.50 a pair  if they buy 18 pairs.

"Instead of saying I'll take one of these shirts and one of these barbecue grills, they place a minimum order, like a pallet-sized quantity," said Daniel Crocker, a senior commercial officer for the U.S. Embassy in Panama City.

The world's second-largest free trade zone - eclipsed only by Hong Kong - exported more than $11.4 billion in merchandise last year, according to the Colon Free Trade Zone. It carries mostly Asian-made goods but also some U.S.-manufactured items.

A key benefit of the zone, on the Atlantic entrance of the Panama Canal, is that taxes aren't charged on the merchandise imported or exported through the area.

Many buyers prefer to visit this free trade zone instead of traveling to Asia, operators said. In Colon, they can buy containers filled with a variety of items. If they traveled to China to shop, they would likely have to buy containers filled with one product, said Jack Hamoui, a buyer for Colon-based May's. It owns factories in Asia that churn out jeans, coolers and glasses, among other items.

Other Colon companies import Asian-made radios, DVD players and other electronics and then resell them.

Buyers can make quick trips to Panama and refill their inventory within days instead of spending weeks traveling to Asia and then waiting for the shipment to arrive, said George Punjabi of Hermanos Punjabi, a Colon-based importer.

Among Colon Free Trade Zone tenants are Milano Group, which sells major label perfumes, and other exclusive distributors in Panama for brand-name items.

Crocker said Colon stands out because many of the world's other free trade zones are "bonded warehouses," which store items duty-free but don't necessarily operate sales markets.

Colon's trade zone, by contrast, tends to draw "people coming in and doing what appears to be retail shopping and having stuff packed up and sent back to the home market," Crocker said.

On a recent overcast day, Haitian buyer Marriette Volney perused racks of women's clothing at the four-story department store operated by May's, a 35-year-old retailer that carries more than 100,000 items ranging from ladders and tools to sandals.

Volney, making her second visit to Colon, was shopping to stock her 8-year-old clothing store in the Caribbean island nation about 800 miles to the northeast.

Venezuelan Fernando Castro plans to open his own shoe and clothing store in the fall but visited Colon recently to find clocks for a store his mother runs back home.

"I've never seen such variety," Castro said as he jotted down lists of everything he considered buying. Every week, 150 containers filled with goods, mostly from Asia, arrive at May's, and every week, the same amount of merchandise is exported across Latin America and the Caribbean.

"We're like a department store for department stores," said Javier Rivera, a sales executive at May's, where employees carry electronic scanners to keep track of shoppers' large orders.

A refreshment bar is on every floor so shoppers can order beverages while they peruse the products.

"You don't have to leave. There's coffee here. If you get tired, there's furniture there for you to sit," Castro said.

jenalia.moreno@chron.com
Hammer & Nails Grooming Shop for Guys is scheduled to open its first Houston-area location this summer.

Bill Fleming has purchased a franchise from Hammer & Nails Salon Group, LLC. He and company area representative Ron Guthrie plan to open in the Towne Lake community near Cypress, northwest of Houston, according to a statement.
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Texas has regained its ranking as the top state for inbound U-Haul moves.

The state experienced a 4 percent increase in one-way arrivals in 2016, making it the relocation services retailer's Top U.S. Growth State for that year. Departures held steady last year, according to U-Haul.

The ranking is almost reciprocal from the state's No. 39 ranking in the 2015 survey, which signaled more outbound moves.

RELATED: Houston suburb among leaders in inbound U-Haul moves in 2016

"Arrivals outpaced departures 50.8 to 49.2 percent in Texas last year thanks to locations such as Austin, the No. 2 U.S. Growth City in the 50,000-plus population category behind Madison, Wis.," U-Haul noted in a statement. Corporate expansions, including Toyota, Apple and Amazon are credited with increasing jobs that attracted new residents.

U-Haul added 80 neighborhood dealers across Texas in 2016.

The other Top 10 U-Haul growth states, ranked in order, were: Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Maine, Idaho, Louisiana, Vermont and Arkansas.
PKRS Management has bought the recently constructed Holiday Inn Express & Suites Houston Northwest at 10520 Huffmeister from Cypress Hotels.

Eric Guerrero, Michael Yu and Rahul Bijlani of CBRE Hotels brokered the sale of the 125-room hotel near North Cypress Medical Center.

"This sale points to the trend that investors are continuing to have confidence in the Houston hotel market and based on our current pipeline, we expect to see strong transaction activity in 2017," Guerrero said in an announcement.

CBRE Hotels has 10 transactions under-contract, including three under the InterContinental Hotels Group brand in the Houston area.

RELATED: Motel 6 at Hobby Airport changes hands
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Valentine's Day is upon us, and if you still haven't made dinner reservations in Houston: Now is the time!

Some of the city's most romantic restaurants book up fast, despite the fact that we're teeming with warmly lit establishments ready to serve world-class food. >>Take a look at our guide to Houston's most romantic restaurants and bars in the gallery above.

River Oaks' State of Grace, 3258 Westheimer, is offering a four-course meal for $85 per person. Some of the entrees include butter-poached lobster with cotija grits, diver scallops with stewed lentils and roasted-beet pansoti. Call 832-942-5080 for reservations.

LATE-NIGHT DEALS: Houston's late-night, 'reverse' happy hours to check out now

CityCentre's Radio Milano will have some of chef Jose Hernandez's best dishes on display this holiday. Wagyu beef carpaccio, oxtail tortellini with English peas and passion fruit-topped white-chocolate mousse are some of the prix-fixe menu dishes. The three-course meal is priced at $70 per person. Wine pairings can be added for an additional $40. Call 713-827-3545 to save seats.

The Four Seasons Hotel Houston, 1300 Lamar, is featuring couples relaxation packages. Couples pedicures will cost $180 per 50-minute session and $400 for an 80-minute massage. Champagne and treats will be served with both. Call 713-650-1300 to reserve one of these date-night experiences.

BOOZY BREAKFASTS: Brunch like a pro at the best restaurants in Houston

Midtown's Damian's Cucina Italiana, 3011 Smith Street, is offering a three-course menu for $55.95 per person. Place reservations at 713-522-0439. Some of the notable offerings are the sweet potato ravioli in a sage butter sauce as an appetizer, the grilled snapper served over arugula for an entree and the Tuscan bread pudding for dessert. Make sure to have that decadent finishing course with some Jack Daniel's bourbon sauce.

Over in the River Oaks District, French and Vietnamese fare from chef Nicole Routhier awaits. The three-course menu, priced at $75 per person, includes grilled Mangolian lamb chops, crepes Suzettes and stir-fried Chinese broccoli. Call 713-629-4444 to schedule dinner.

Memorial-area French restaurant Bistro Provence is offering three-course meal with a glass of sparkling wine for $65 per person. The cozy spot's menu, curated by owner Genevieve Guy, will be offered at set times between 6 and 9 p.m. Call ahead to reserve a time at 713-827-8008.

GUIDE: Where to drink in the (greater) Heights

For a more casual, low-key Valentine's night, head to Le Mistral's Rouge Wine Bar, 1400 Eldridge Parkway. Chef David Denis is offering a bottle and any choice of wood-oven pizza for $39. Champagne and prosecco are included in this offer.

Another laid-back date night will be at the Raven Tower, 310 North Street, which will be hosting "LIttle Debbie Does the Tower" on Feb. 11. Drinks will range from $5 to $8, and guests will be paired with a fun dating game for singles.

Note that these prices don't include taxes or gratuity, and reservations are encouraged for Valentine's Day and the weekend before.

Note: The following items are must-haves for your special someone in mind: Flower seeds, Polaroid cameras, Scented candles, & Foot spa's.
Klein ISD is participating in a pilot version of a leadership institute that is being invested by H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt.

In January, Butt announced that he will invest more than $100 million in creating a leadership institute to support and train public school leaders across Texas. Butt is funding the center with his personal fortune and there are no ties to H-E-B.

Klein ISD officials are working to create a strong profile so that the district is seen as quality place for students and leaders.

"One primary goal for this initial phase of the work includes the development of a quality leadership profile that supports our shared vision of promise to purpose. Our vision for this guiding document is that it is one that inspires and challenges our leaders and future leaders to recognize current areas of strength and opportunities for growth," said Jenny McGown, Klein ISD chief learning officer, teaching & learning center. "Additionally, as Holdsworth is a strategic thought partner for our focus on leadership, our goal is to create the initial strategy, plan, and measures for our leadership pipeline in Klein ISD."

Through the leadership institute, the Holdsworth Center in Austin, in a span of five years, will work with school districts to cultivate superintendents and principals. The center is named in honor of Butt's late mother, Mary Elizabeth Holdsworth Butt, who lived a life of philanthropy and social justice.

"Developing individual leaders is a critical part of the Holdsworth mission, but the big picture is that we want to help districts learn how to grow their own leaders more effectively. It's about personal leadership combined with systems thinking and a strategic approach to talent management," said Kate Rogers, Holdsworth Center acting executive vice president. "The majority of any school district's budget is human capital. Putting the right people in key decision-making roles, providing good training and support and cultivating aspiring leaders from within is critical to maintaining high-quality schools."

International travel is also included in the program. The center aims to introduce education leaders to a large spectrum of learning models.

"The reason we include international travel in the program is so that we can offer superintendents and their teams a front row seat to observe successful models in action and challenge their thinking about how systems can be more intentionally designed in order to drive results," Rogers said.

June will mark the center's inaugural class with six school districts that will be chosen by the end of March. In the future, the application process will be open to districts statewide. Klein ISD and Grand Prairie ISD are two districts participating in the pilot version of the program.

Klein ISD in northwest Harris County and Grand Prairie ISD are the two Texas districts participating in the pilot version of the program.

"School districts are like ecosystems that flourish when you have powerful leadership at all levels from the classroom to the Board room. In the end, our theory of action is pretty straightforward. When teachers feel empowered and supported by their leaders, they flourish and ultimately perform better," Rogers said. "When teachers perform better, students perform better."

The center will consist of a 17-member board, which will be led by Chairwoman Ruth Simmons, the first African-American woman to head an Ivy League university. Simmons' resume includes serving as the president of Smith College from 1995-2001 and president of Brown University from 2001-2012.

The Klein district does not know if the leadership center would invite it to be part of its inaugural class. District representatives hope participation in the pilot program will yield positive results for the district in working with the Holdsworth.

"We also want to ensure that the process and products we develop during this pilot ultimately benefit other districts across the state who may be selected to partner with Holdsworth in the future. We know that all of us in public education benefit when we work together to develop outstanding leaders who relentlessly pursue excellence for every single one of the over 5.2 million students attending Texas public schools today," McGown said. "This collaboration between Klein ISD and Holdsworth is outstanding. It is a privilege to partner with such thoughtful, bright folks who are truly committed to developing and supporting world-class leadership in Texas public schools."
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"There are new warnings that the humanitarian situation has further deteriorated in Somalia and there are worrying signs that famine is possible in the country this year," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters on Thursday.

The UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says the number of people in need of assistance in Somalia has increased to 6.2 million -- roughly half of the population, Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

"Nearly three million people are classified as facing crisis and emergency food insecurity," he said.

Acute malnutrition levels remain high with 363,000 malnourished children under the age of five; including 71,000 who are severely malnourished and face increased risk of morbidity and death, he noted.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Somalia, Peter de Clercq, warned in a statement issued earlier Thursday that unless a massive and urgent scale up of humanitarian assistance takes place in the coming weeks, famine could soon hit some of the worst drought-affected areas in the Horn of African country.

Last December, Clercq said the 2016 Humanitarian Response Plan seeking 885 million U.S. dollars is only 47 percent funded four weeks before the end of the year while worsening drought conditions have left hundreds of thousands of Somalis facing severe food and water shortages.

The UN official highlighted the urgency of responding to the drought situation in Somalia, noting that drought in Puntland and Somaliland has deepened and spread to southern and central regions of the country.

According to the UN, 5 million Somalis -- more than 40 percent of the country's population -- do not have sufficient food.

In addition, over 320,000 children under five are acutely malnourished, including more than 50,000 severely malnourished.
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Search for Jeffry Sowell ended around 3 a.m. as police apprehended the suspect after he hid for several hours in the woods surrounding Valley Ranch.

After failing to yield to a deputy for having an expired registration sticker at around 4 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 1, Sowell fled in a 2003 maroon Chevrolet Tahoe, is a stolen vehicle from Orange County, Texas, states a news release from the Pct. 4 Constable's Office.
Standing near the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, Kasey Lock and her family could see the United States Capitol, where President-elect Donald Trump was taking the oath of office during what she described as the most educational vacation her family has ever taken.

Kasey and her husband Randy Lock accompanied their daughter, Raimi Lock, and 37 of Raimi's fellow students from Splendora Junior High and Splendora High School, as two of the 13 adult chaperones on a trip to Washington, D.C.

The trip, through Education First Tours, had been planned since fall 2015.

The group spent four action-packed days in Washington, D.C., starting Jan. 19, visiting historical sites and witnessing history in the making.

"I really feel like there is no other better way to learn about history than to be there and live through a historical event," Kasey Lock said. "It was a very memorable overall experience to see historic places where great people have walked. I think it was probably the most educational vacation we've ever taken. We were able to see a lot."

Their stops included Smithsonian museums, the Jefferson Memorial, the Martin Luther King Memorial, Korean War Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Marine Corps Memorial, the World War II Memorial, Mount Vernon, Arlington National Cemetery, the United States Capitol, Supreme Court and the White House.

Raimi's favorite destination was Mount Vernon, which provided a more relaxing educational experience compared to attending the inauguration.

"The inauguration was a little chaotic," Kasey Lock said. "It was a very long day. It started before dawn. We had to walk several miles to the National Mall area. We weren't able to make it onto the National Mall because of increased security, but we were able to make it to the Washington Monument area, and from there we could see the Capitol Building and the White House."

The trip offered the opportunity for students to witness important events first-hand. After observing the inauguration, the Splendora ISD students attended a ball. The next day, the group saw protesters in action during the Women's March on Washington on Jan. 21.

"I think it's important for my daughter to see these events in person," Kasey Lock said. "We saw protesters, witnessed the inauguration and visited important buildings. She can learn about it in school, but to be a witness to history and see it in person, I think it will be something she never forgets."

Splendora High School librarian Rhea Young also served as a trip chaperone. Having a scholarly fascination with the presidency and assassination of John F. Kennedy, she was excited to have the opportunity to visit the Eternal Flame. To Young, the historical sites the group visited served as inspirations for students and chaperones alike.

"I think the students were able to learn that expressing one's opinion in our country is a constitutional right," Young said. "They learned that there have been great sacrifices by many to give us that right. Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial and reading and hearing about what he was able to accomplish was incredible, and that was true of each historical place we visited."

She feels the experiences Splendora ISD students, staff and parents were able to share in Washington, D.C., will have a lasting educational impact.

"Witnessing the inauguration of President Trump was exciting," Young said. "We were among millions who were there, and it gave me an opportunity to see history in the making. Seeing demonstrators among supporters gather, for the most part peacefully, was a hands-on way to see democracy in action. It is something I'll never forget, and I doubt the students will either."
WINDCREST  Police arrested a man in his 30s Wednesday accused of shooting his mother to death at a home in the small San Antonio-area community.

Windrest Police Department Chief Al Ballew said officers responded to a welfare check call around 10:10 a.m. in the 8900 block of Willmon Way.

When they arrived, they found the woman dead from an apparent gunshot wound. A man in his 30s was arrested at the scene within minutes of authorities arriving on scene.

Ballew said police believe the 62-year-old woman is the suspect's mother and that she was shot overnight. He declined to identify the suspect and his mother by name.

READ ALSO: Witness testifies of drinking, drug use and sex before S.A. man shot to death

Helen Grossman, 88, lives across the street from the home where the victim was killed. She said she heard two loud bangs Tuesday evening.

"I thought they were fireworks," she said.

Her daughter, 68-year-old Barbara Cannon, said she's not surprised the man is accused of killing his mother.

"The kid was a psycho," she said.

READ ALSO: Major accident involving 18 wheelers, up to 20 vehicles shuts down I-37 heading into downtown

Cannon said the suspect, who was in and out of mental hospitals several times over the past few years, has been a problem in the neighborhood for more than 5 years. She said the victim was "scared to death" of the suspect.

"It was a matter of time," Cannon said.

Police found multiple weapons inside the home, including the firearm with which the suspect allegedly killed his mother.

"This is very rare," Ballew said, adding the last homicide investigation in Windcrest was in 2012. "We pride ourselves on a low crime rate here. This wasn't a random act. There's no danger to the [Windcrest] residents."

Ballew said the suspect will be transported to the Bexar County Magistrate's Office later Wednesday.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

cdowns@mysa.com

Twitter: @calebjdowns
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On Jan. 11, Destiny Lorraine Rasmussen got a text message from the babysitter.

"911-Landon please," it said.

Rasmussen rushed to her Killeen home and was greeted by the police her 8-month-old son Landon was found unresponsive in the bathtub. The babysitter, Rasmussen said on a GoFundMe page, had left her son in the tub because there was an armed man trying to get inside the house.

After arguing with the man, Rasmussen said the babysitter found her son under water in the tub and attempted to perform CPR.

Local police told KWTX they were still investigating the incident, and charges have yet to be filed.

RELATED: SAPD: Grandfather punched toddler in face during family altercation

Landon was transported to the hospital, where he was treated for three weeks before he died Jan. 30.

"His body was getting tired and couldn't fight much longer. Landon took his last breath in my arms and is now flying high with the angels," Rasmussen said on the GoFundMe page. "Please continue to pray for our strength."

RELATED: Affidavit: Toddler drowned in tub during mom's 'booty call' in North Texas

Kim Kardashian West, reality star and mother of two, tweeted a link to the GoFundMe page set up to help cover the infant's medical and funeral expenses.

"This breaks my heart. Please pray for this family," she said. "Rest peacefully sweet angel."

So far, $26,254 has been raised.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
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Fans flooding into Houston for Super Bowl LI could land in hotels and motels that have not been fully inspected, a local critic of the Houston Fire Marshal's office said Thursday.

Randall Kallinen, a civil rights attorney who has represented fire inspectors, said the department scaled back inspections about a year ago in favor of self-inspection forms that could be filled out by the facilities.

"There are thousands and thousands and thousands of people from out of town staying in our motels and hotels and they have not had the proper fire inspection," Kallinen said.

Records were not immediately available to show how many of the city's hotels and motels have received inspections in the past year. The Chronicle asked the fire department Jan. 11 for the records under the Texas public information laws, but the department has not produced any records related to that request.

Fire Marshal Jerry Ford did not respond to specific questions from the Chronicle about the inspections, but in an email late Thursday denied ordering subordinates to delay or cease inspections.

"On the contrary, inspectors were instructed to ensure that fire suppression system inspection reports were up-to-date for all facilities being utilized during the Super Bowl," he said. "The safety of our citizens and visitors is our number one concern."

The city houses about 700 hotels and motels, according to employees with the fire marshal's office. But only two inspectors - out of about 100 in the office  handle the bulk of those inspections; some of the larger hotels are assigned to the department's high-rise team.

The fire code grants the city the authority to inspect those facilities but does not set a time limit on how frequently they must be reviewed.

Kallinen's allegations come months after inspectors raised concerns over what they said was an order from Ford to stop performing physical inspections and instead send out "pre-inspection checklists" to hotels and other buildings to verify they had proper fire suppression systems and fire alarms.

Some inspectors told the Chronicle that the orders compromised public safety and caused the number of buildings receiving inspections to plummet.

Others defended Ford's order as a way to try to address safety issues with limited inspectors and little time before the Super Bowl.

Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association President Patrick M. Lancton said the allegations and staffing levels underscore the need for more resources at the Houston Fire Department.

"If true, the allegation raises some troubling questions," Lancton said. "The question really becomes, '[Are] there enough assets to go out there and inspect these buildings when they're required?' We don't believe there's enough assets. I don't believe in an expanding city like ours, that life safety and permitting and inspections should be something that's not a high, high priority, especially in the event of an emergency."

The allegations this week are the latest in a series of controversial incidents at the Fire Marshal's Office over the past few years.

In 2014, fire inspectors balked at orders not to cite city buildings that violated local safety codes.

At the time, then-Fire Chief Terry Garrison dismissed the inspectors' allegations, saying they had "little merit" and came from "disgruntled employees."

The city's Office of Inspector General, however, launched an investigation into the claims that resulted in the demotion of then-Fire Marshal Richard Galvan.

Then last year, the office became embroiled in controversy after inspectors accused Ford of ordering them to skip floors when inspecting high-rises to speed up the process.

Kallinen, who represented inspectors in several of those controversies, reiterated his concerns Thursday that the department has cited businesses for fire safety violations but has not corrected similar violations at city buildings.
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A woman was found shot in the head early Friday morning along a street in southwest Houston.

The woman was spotted about 3 a.m. at 10039 Bissonnet near Forum Park, according to the Houston Police Department.

Sgt. Kenneth Daignault, a homicide investigator, said the woman, whose name has not been released, was rushed to Ben Taub General Hospital. She was in critical condition.

Daignault said patrol officers saw a vehicle leaving the area moments before the woman was found wounded. When the officers tried to pull over the vehicle, the driver refused to stop. After a brief pursuit the vehicle stopped and the officers took into custody the two people inside the car.

Investigators are interviewing the two people in the vehicle to determine if they are connected to the shooting.

Police said investigators have no suspects or motive in the case.

Anyone with information about the incident is urged to contact Crime Stoppers at 222-TIPS or the HPD Homicide Division at 73-308-3600.
 Flash

Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai talks with Ivanka Trump during the Chinese New Year reception at the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. on Feb 1, 2017. [Photo by Zhao Huanxin/China Daily]

US First Daughter Ivanka Trump and her daughter Arabella Rose Kushner visited the Chinese Embassy for the Chinese Spring Festival celebrations on Wednesday night in Washington D.C.

When Ivanka did have some questions while touring "Chinese New Year traditions in Beijing" and other art shows at the embassy, her five-year-old, who has been learning Mandarin, was there to help. A video clip showing her reciting a simple ancient Chinese poem in Mandarin two months ago has since gone viral on Chinese social media.

Throughout the tour at the embassy, Ivanka knelt down several times to talk with her daughter, who seemed to be enjoying her new present.

"She is my translator," a smiling Ivanka told Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai.

Ivanka's appearance at the Chinese New Year celebration has attracted widespread attention and curiosity from Chinese social media users. Her father, the new US president, has broken the tradition of sending New Year greetings to people of Chinese origin in the US during their most important festival.

"It is amazing!" Ivanka said after watching a performance of traditional Chinese instrumental music and a group of dancers juggling hats on each other in a formation.
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.
When Trump signed an executive order Friday that placed a 90-day ban on visa holders from seven countries entering the US, a cascade of stories of lives thrown into turmoil ensued. Some were left stranded while traveling overseas, unable to re-enter the country they call home. Others cancelled plans to leave the US out of fear they wouldnt be able to return. As of February 1, The Washington Post reports that 940 people were prevented from boarding planes bound for the US and some 200 more were denied entry after landing. Today it was reported that 100,000 visas have been revoked.

Journalists were not immune. Iraqi Kurdish journalist Namo Abdulla was granted asylum in the US five years ago, and has been waiting two years for his wife to join him. Those plans are now on hold. The BBCs Ali Hamedani, a British reporter born in Iran, was detained at Chicagos OHare airport for more than two hours while officers searched his computer, phone, and Twitter account. Nesrine Malik, a Sudanese-born, London-based journalist wrote eloquently for The Guardian about what its like to think that she could no longer travel to America (restrictions against British nationals are now reportedly in question). It is a curious feeling, a new feeling. One that collapses space-time and connects you to all those before you who have found themselves on the ugly end of a collective insanity. It is a feeling that rocks the very ground on which you thought we all stood.

As #GreenCard holder, I've effectively become a prisoner in America. No place for me to see my #Iraq-based wife who is awaiting visa.  Namo Abdulla (@namo_abdulla) January 28, 2017

But beyond the immediate impact on journalists whose travel is now restricted, the visa ban could have larger and more far-reaching implications. In the worst case scenario, reciprocal bans could prevent journalists from traveling to places where important events are unfolding that affect Americas national security. Reporters covering the ban could be discouraged from writing about it due to harassment. And sources could be discouraged from talking about how the ban affects them for fear of reprisals. In short, stories that need to be told may not be.

Tim Arango, Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, has spent several years in Iraq. In a story published Monday in the Times, Arango wrote about the sense of betrayal felt by many Iraqis, some of Americas most important allies in the fight against ISIS, and reported that the Iraqi parliament was calling for their government to respond by banning US citizens. Arango says its unlikely the Iraqi measure will pass, but if the Iraqis do ban US citizens for a time, then it will make it very difficult to cover the country at a time when the battle against ISIS is reaching a critical stage, and when the American military may become more deeply involved, he tells CJR via email.

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Related: Dear journalists: Things are about to change

Americans have historically enjoyed wide-ranging freedom to cover the Middle East and other Muslim-majority regions, while decisions about whether or not to enter active conflict zones have largely been made by news organizations based on safety considerations. If the seven countries listed in President Trumps executive orderIran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemenwere to institute reciprocal bans it would be detrimental to coverage of a region that holds interest for families of US troops and many concerned citizens.

Arango is also seeing how the ban is affecting local Times staffers, many of whom he considers friends. We as a newspaper have had hundreds of Iraqis, employees of ours and their families, resettle in the United States in recent times, he says. Many others have been waiting for decisions on their cases, and now those dreams have been dashed. In one particular case, a close friend of Arangos whose mother had been visiting him in Baghdad was afraid that as a green card holder she would be unable to return home to Seattle. Arango was relieved to see the restriction on green card holders lifted so she could do so.

Logic suggests that the journalists best equipped to report with depth and nuance on whats happening in their communities, both in the US and abroad, are those most significantly impacted by the ban. Ismail Kushkush, a Sudanese-American dual national and former New York Times East Africa stringer, was recently on assignment in Jerusalem for the Associated Press, where he filed stories about Afro-Palestinians and Sudanese Jews. Currently based in Virginia, Kushkush was planning to return to Israel for further reporting, but now hes uncertain about leaving the US for fear that border security will prevent him from re-entering. It doesnt seem theres a clear understanding of this order and what it means, he says. Im better placed than a green card holder or someone who is a journalist and coming with a visa, but still it seems there is a lot of chaos. Will this extend to dual nationals? I dont know.

The executive order also has more subtle repercussions. Sarah Harvard, a Mic journalist who covers Muslim identity, Islamophobia, and counter-terrorism, worries about the emotional impact on journalists. The fact that the seven countries listed in the executive order are majority Muslim made the ban feel personal to Harvard, who is the Muslim daughter of Moroccan Berber and Japanese parents who moved to the US when she was five. The ban brought back her own memories as a young Muslim in America after 9/11, when her family experienced FBI surveillance, racism, and harassment in a town on the outskirts of Chicago. When she interviewed people affected by the recent ban, she says, I could hear the pain in their voice, the sense of betrayal, the sense of vulnerability and feeling of helplessness. Hearing them cry on the phone is just scarring.

Related: Two dozen freelance journalists told us the best places to write

Just as scarring is the harassment that Muslim journalists face. Sabrina Siddiqui, a Muslim reporter for The Guardian, experienced harassment in person while covering Trump on the campaign trail last year. A supporter told her he believed Muslims should either be forced to leave the US or be exterminated. I dont know how angry this individual is. I dont know if hes going to follow me if he figures out that Im Muslim. I dont have any sense what to do in that moment other than to just finish my interview with the voter and then just say, Thank you for talking with me, and have a nice day, Siddiqui told CJR for our election oral history. Harvard points out that the threats and the harassment theyre getting make [Muslim journalists] jobs difficult to do and sometimes deter people from reporting certain stories. Adding another layer of difficulty, Harvard says that many Muslims are afraid to speak to journalists because they could implicate their own families.

Harvard sees a broader problem in the way the press reports on Muslim issues, noting that fake news about Muslims has been circulating for years, but the issue is only now being taken seriously. The problem of false narratives and the larger media not really understanding, or having the right resources or perspectives, to cover Islam and Islamophobia is that there arent enough Muslim journalists out there, she says. In response to the ban, Harvard pressed go on an idea she has been harboring for more than a year: to start a Muslim American Journalism Association (MAJA).

In the years since 9/11, Harvard has seen slow improvement in societal attitudes toward Muslims, and she doesnt want that progress undone. I was told for 12 years never to say I was a Muslim or defend Islam or anything like that, and 15 years later, Im writing about Islam in the World Trade Center [where Mics offices are located], she says. The silver lining in Trump being so blatant and so outwardly xenophobic [is that it] has made people wake up and realize our community has been marginalized for so long, and finally enough is enough.

Being Moroccan Berber and also Japanese means Harvard doesnt easily fit into one of the existing associations that support minority journalists, such as the South Asian Journalists Association or the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association. She wants to create a universal group, for both Muslim journalists and those reporting on Muslim issues, as a way to increase accuracy in reporting on Islam and stand as a counterpoint to the current hyper-partisan atmosphere.

When Harvard saw how many people were taking to the streets to protest, she teared up at the show of solidarity. At 10:03 pm Friday, Harvard posted a message to Twitter: If youre a Muslim journalist in the U.S. contact me.

If you're a Muslim journalist in the U.S. contact me. I'm working on starting the Muslim American Journalism Association (MAJA).  sarah amy harvard (@amyharvard_) January 28, 2017

The responses that poured in were overwhelmingly positive. Its kind of like putting yourself in the middle of the ocean, she says. But its astounding. Over 300 journalists have emailed me asking me to be a part of it, and what was even more touching was that other journalism associationsthe Society of Professional Journalists, Asian American Journalists Association, National Association of Black Journalistshave all reached out to me and offered to help. The City University of New York offered space for meetings; product designers and developers offered to build the associations website. It was the right moment, she says.



Harvard met with a group of New York-based Muslim journalists Wednesday to chart a path that will ensure everyone interested, from across the US and abroad, has a voice in the process. By providing a support network and sense of community for those covering these issues, Harvard hopes MAJA will encourage more Muslim voices in the American media at a time when the visa ban threatens to silence them.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Shelley Hepworth , formerly a CJR Delacorte Fellow, is Technology Editor at The Conversation in Australia. Follow her on Twitter @shelleymiranda.
GO-PRO Video Leads to Conviction of Insurance Fraud Suspect

Robert Atlas falsely reported to GEICO that he had crashed his 2012 Corvette Stingray while exiting the I-10 freeway, on the exit ramp at Wild horse pass in Chandler Arizona. Robert was paid $61,465.11 by GEICO for the loss of his Corvette. It was later discovered that on October 10, 2015, Robert Atlas had actually raced his Corvette Stingray in a drag race at a drag racing event at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park. He subsequently lost control of his corvette during the race and crashed into the concrete barrier totaling his Corvette Stingray. This crash was captured on a Go-Pro video and published on YouTube. The policy does not cover damage caused to the vehicle if it was involved in drag racing. Robert was later shown the video footage and he admitted to making the false claim to GEICO Insurance.

On 1-25-17, Robert Atlas pled guilty to Insurance Fraud as a Class 6 Undesignated offense and as required by the Plea Agreement he paid the entire amount of restitution back to GEICO Insurance prior to sentencing. He was sentenced to two years supervised probation and was assessed $1,560.00 in court costs.

The case was investigated by the Arizona Department of Insurance Fraud Unit and prosecuted by the Arizona Attorney Generals Office.

California DA and Insurance Commissioner Bust Insurance Fraud Ring in San Diego

The San Diego County District Attorneys Office and California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced a major auto insurance fraud ring takedown, which was operating in San Diego County.

Nine defendants have been charged with 34 felony crimes including filing fraudulent auto insurance claims. Six defendants were arrested on January 31, and police are searching for one more. Two people received notices that they have been charged and must appear in to court.

When cheaters scam insurance companies, law abiding citizens end up footing the bill, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis said. Our insurance fraud team did an excellent job collaborating with the California Department of Insurance and Highway Patrol to dismantle this crime ring.

Operation Persistent was a two-year investigation that uncovered a web of fraudsters who victimized insurance companies over several years. The ring used various schemes to file 34 false insurance claims for auto property damage. The schemes included staged collisions, non-existent collisions, using already damaged vehicles, and phony vehicle thefts.

The crimes were discovered thanks to the diligent efforts of the San Diego Automobile Insurance Fraud Task Force. The joint task force is dedicated to investigating all forms of auto insurance fraud and is supervised by the California Department of Insurance. It is made up of law enforcement officers from the Department of Insurance, the San Diego District Attorneys Office, and California Highway Patrol. The National Insurance Crime Bureau also provides support to the task force.

Insurance fraud is not a victimless crime, said Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones. We all pay for these crimes when insurers pass along the losses through higher premiums.

The San Diego ring made false insurance claims totaling approximately $200,000. The defendants bilked 12 insurance companies out of about $125,000. Victim insurance companies include: Allstate, Access, GEICO, Infinity, State Farm, Rental Insurance Services, Fred Loya, Nationwide, Alliance, Farmers, Nations, and Travelers.

Insurance fraud can directly impact the lives of law-abiding people and staged collisions have taken the lives of innocent people in our state, said Jim Abele, border division chief for the California Highway Patrol. The California Highway Patrol is dedicated to reducing collisions, vehicle theft, and insurance fraud. The San Diego Automobile Insurance Fraud Task Force partnership provides a needed focus on auto-insurance crimes and enables better sharing of case information among fraud fighters.

Defendants include: Yesenia Perez, 26; Darice Orozco, 37; Oscar Vargas, 31; Jesus Diego, 31; Roberto Ramirez, 27; Abel Ramirez, 31; Maria Linares, 24; Juan Augustin, 30; and Francine Moreno, 25.

Maria Linares and Juan Augustin will be arraigned February 3, at 8:30 a.m. and Jesus Diego and Yesenia Perez will be arraigned February 7, at 1:30 p.m. All arraignments are scheduled in Department 12 of the downtown courthouse.

Abel Ramirez, Roberto Ramirez, Oscar Vargas and Darice Orozco were arraigned Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. Their next court date is February 10, at 8:30 a.m. in Department 53 of the downtown courthouse.
Oklahoma has been placed under a national fire advisory as much of the state struggles with unrelenting drought and tinder-dry vegetation capable of igniting and quickly spreading out of control, state forestry officials said Wednesday.

The rare advisory  and the first for Oklahoma  issued by the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, is in effect for two weeks and warns residents and fire departments to prepare for potentially severe wildfires.

The national center also cautioned that areas in the neighboring states of Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and Kansas could be ripe for similar extreme wildfires through February. While only two of Oklahomas 77 counties are currently under a burn ban, Oklahoma Forestry Services officials cautioned residents Wednesday to avoid doing anything that can cause a spark.

The ingredients for a potentially disastrous fire outbreak are already in place in the mounds of accumulated limbs, dry brush, leaves and needles from years of ice storms and tornadoes that carpet forest floors.

The situation were in with the state of our fuels, drought, dryness of fields, fires become more resistant to control under these conditions, said Mark Goeller, the forestry services fire management chief. Pine needles, logs, big-diameter woody material  the things from these natural disasters weve experienced throughout the state, all those fuels are critically dry.

Oklahoma is just entering its peak fire season of February and March, but dozens of wildfires have already scorched thousands of acres in the past two months.

Last week, a fast-moving wildfire 30 miles north of Oklahoma City devoured two homes, outbuildings and hay bales. In December, seven fires broke out in one afternoon across Oklahoma City; another consumed 200 acres near the town of Tecumseh the same month.

Were just entering a period where things can get really dicey with the fire situation, said state climatologist Gary McManus. We have set ourselves up for more of a damaging wildfire season.

Oklahoma is enduring a drought that has lasted for several years. Except for a handful of counties in the very southwestern part of the state, most of Oklahoma is in some state of drought, according to the latest data from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Conditions are worse in southeastern Oklahoma, where roughly eight counties are in an extreme drought, according to the monitor.

Wheat farmer Jim Freudenberger said Wednesday hes keeping closer watch over his 750-acre property in Coyle, a town in north-central Oklahoma where several wildfires have recently broken out.

Seems every time the wind gets up good, theres a fire somewhere, he said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Heavy snow has caused dozens of onion storage sheds in eastern Oregon and Idaho to collapse, resulting in as much as $100 million in damage.

About 50 onion buildings collapsed under the weight of up to 40 inches of snow, reported The Capital Press. The general manager of Owyhee Produce in Nyssa, Oregon, said three of the companys storage sheds and a building housing one of its packing lines have collapsed.

Its an absolute catastrophe, said Shay Myers, the Owyhee manager. He estimated that the total damage to the onion industry in southwestern Idaho and Malheur County, Oregon, could be near $100 million.

The regions 300 onion farmers produce more than 1 billion pounds of Spanish big bulb onions annually, or about 25 percent of the nations big bulb storage onions. A big chunk of last years harvest, however, was lost in the building collapses. Once the onions are exposed to the cold and freeze, they are no good.

The production loss has dramatically increased the price of onions. A 50-pound bag of yellow jumbo onions was about $3.50 before the collapses and is now nearly $10.

Partners Produce co-owner Eddie Rodriguez said his company has lost four buildings, including its main packing line in Payette, Idaho.

Theyre still going down as we speak, he said. Now, its just happening everywhere. The snow is heavy and theres too much of it.

Onion industry leaders have asked state and local representatives to help find assistance for the region. An estimated 150 buildings have been destroyed.

Ive personally seen at least 40 collapsed buildings, probably more, said state Rep. Cliff Bentz, an Ontario Republican. It really looks like they were hit by a bomb. Its really shocking.

U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both Democrats, have asked the federal government to begin a process that would result in a federal disaster for Malheur County and other counties harmed by the severe winter. That would make farmers and businesses eligible for low-interest loans, insurance relief and other disaster aid.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Breaking & entering, North Rocky River Drive: About $300 in cash was stolen late Jan. 24 or early Jan. 25 from Berea Bicycles & Scooters, 300 North Rocky River.

Someone smashed a front window of the business to get inside. Police believe a bike rack that was outside the store, or a sign above the rack, was used to break the window.

The money had been in a cash register drawer, which was yanked from the register. The shop owner said he had locked the register drawer before leaving late Jan. 24. However, anyone could have unlocked the register by pushing a button. The business had no alarm or security cameras.

Found property, Spring & Seminary streets: A Berea man, 21, landed in trouble with police after he dumped a sign that said, "No dumping."

The man dropped the sign after noticing that police had spotted him carrying it at about 12:45 a.m. Jan. 29. The officer asked the man what he was doing with the sign. The man, a Baldwin Wallace University student, said he had found the sign at the corner of Jacob and Beech streets and thought it would look "neat" hanging in his room.

The officer advised the man to use better discretion when picking things up from the street. The man said he understood and apologized.

Grand theft auto, Emerson Drive: A 2006 Ford Explorer was stolen between 2-3 a.m. Jan. 31 from a driveway. The owner had left the vehicle unlocked and the keys inside. The victim had also left his driver's license and $30-$40 in cash in the vehicle.

Marijuana possession, Edgewood Drive: Two Berea boys, 14 and 13, face charges in juvenile court after police caught them smoking marijuana in a shed outside a vacant house.

A citizen called police at 5:20 p.m. Jan. 30 after seeing the boys break into the shed. Police ordered the boys out of the shed, and one officer sustained a small head cut from a piece of metal in the shed.

Petty theft, Stone Ridge Circle: A backpack, hammock, rain pants and nylon rope were stolen between 10 p.m. Jan. 30 and 8 a.m. Jan. 31 from a car parked outside Stone Ridge Apartments, 6102 Stone Ridge. The victim believes he may have left his car unlocked. There were no signs of a break-in.

Marijuana possession, Stanford Drive: A Cleveland man, 19, was arrested at about 12:15 a.m. Jan. 31 after he passed a marijuana cigar to police.

A police officer had stopped the man's Ford Ranger after seeing it drift left of center. The vehicle smelled like marijuana. When the officer asked about the odor, the man handed over the marijuana cigar, which he said he had just finished smoking.

Police found a baggie of marijuana in the man's jacket pocket, and a digital scale and marijuana shake in his Ranger.

Marijuana possession, Front Street: A Cleveland man, 23, was cited at about 2:30 p.m. Jan. 25 after police noticed that his Buick Regal's license plate was not displayed clearly.

The plate was propped up by a shirt in the car's rear window. After police stopped the man on Front near Adalbert Street, they smelled marijuana in his car. Officers found a small bag of marijuana in his jeans pocket.

Overdose, West Street: A Berea man, 31, was taken to Southwest General Health Center at about 4:30 p.m. Jan. 29 after he overdosed on heroin.

A 31-year-old woman who lived with the man called police after he passed out in their driveway. When police arrived, the woman was trying to revive the man using chest compressions. His skin was blue and he had no pulse. Police gave the man Narcan, a heroin antidote, and his eyes started moving.

Paramedics arrived and continued chest compressions. The man was awake and talking before paramedics transported him to Southwest.

The woman said she had driven the man to a Cleveland drug dealer to buy heroin earlier that day. The man inhaled the heroin from the back of a cell phone in the woman's car while it parked outside a restaurant on Ohio 237. As she drove him home, he started "nodding off."

Police found 10 prescription pills - acetaminophen-codeine, methocarbamol, a muscle relaxer, and ranitidine, an antacid - on the woman. The pills had been prescribed to someone else. She faces drug charges.

To comment on this story, please visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Ohio Sens. Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown will recommend Cleveland lawyer Justin Herdman to be the next U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, the senators said in a news release Friday.

Herdman, 41, is a partner at the Jones Day law firm, which routinely represents President Donald Trump in legal matters. He was one of four attorneys that Portman's office settled on as finalists last month.

Herdman would replace U.S. Attorney Carole Rendon, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. The U.S. Attorney's Office here prosecutes cases in 40 counties, including areas in and around Cleveland, Akron, Youngstown and Toledo.

"Justin Herdman has the unique qualifications that are needed to lead as the next U.S. Attorney for the Northern District," Portman said in a news release. "His legal, military, and public service background, combined with his skill set addressing complex legal issues, makes him a strong candidate for this position that will serve the citizens of Ohio well."

To advance the nomination, Trump must accept Portman's recommendation. The U.S. Senate would then have to confirm the appointment.

Herdman said in a statement that "I am honored to have the confidence of Senator Portman and Senator Brown.

"If nominated and confirmed, the opportunity to lead the outstanding men and women of the United States Attorney's Office would be the greatest privilege of my career, and I look forward to working with our Senators and the White House as this process continues," Herdman said.

Brown, a Democrat, said in the release that he supports Herdman's nomination, which was coordinated by Portman, a Republican.

"It's clear Justin Herdman is committed to both public service and to northern Ohio," Brown said in the release.

Herdman was at the U.S. Attorney's Office between 2006 and 2013, and worked in the office's terrorism squad. He was on a team that prosecuted a group of five activists that plotted to blow up the Ohio 82 Bridge spanning the Cuyahoga Valley National Park in 2012.

He serves as a judge's advocate in the U.S. Air Force Reserve for the 910th Airlift Wing in Youngstown. He received his law degree from Harvard University and is an adjunct law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Attorneys in Cleveland praised Herdman, saying he was more than capable to lead the office.

David Sierleja, first assistant for the U.S. Attorney's Office and a finalist for the top slot, said Portman made a good choice.

"He'll make a great U.S. attorney," Sierleja said. "We worked together before, and I'm looking forward to working with him again."

Jim Wooley, a fellow Jones Day attorney, said he mentored Herdman when he came to the firm a few years ago. Both men started their careers under longtime Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morganthau. Wooley said Morganthau drilled into new employees that the job is about doing the right thing, and not winning or advancing a career.

"We're all going to be just fine with him as the U.S. attorney," Wooley said.

Trump is expected to put forth nominations for U.S. attorneys for offices across the country. The new regime brings a new U.S. Justice Department with its own priorities.

Trump and his Attorney General nominee, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, are viewed as law-and-order politicians. Session's approach to civil-rights issues sparked concern that the Trump Administration will back away from interventions with police departments that became a hallmark of the Justice Department under the Obama administration.

This is of particular concern in Cleveland, where the Justice Department has a police-reform agreement with the city over how its police department carried out and handled the fallout of use-of-force incidents involving officers.

Wooley, also a former federal prosecutor, said while Herdman would lead the local office, the priorities are set by people in Washington, D.C., and it would be his job to act on those priorities.

Rendon, who supports the Justice Department's consent decree with Cleveland and its police department, wrote in an email to her office that she has faith in Herdman's ability. She wrote that he would be an "excellent" U.S. attorney.

"You are all so very fortunate to be welcoming Justin back to the office and to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing lawyer and dedicated public servant," Rendon wrote.

Portman and Brown will also recommend U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott stay on through Trump's administration. Elliott has been the U.S. marshal since 2003 after being appointed by President George W. Bush. Obama asked him to stay on.

Both senators praised his work in the news release.

Elliott said he was "extremely honored and humbled" to again be nominated.

"I'm looking forward to continuing our outstanding partnerships and continuing with my men and women to make a tremendous difference in northern Ohio," Elliott said.

The senators also announced that they will recommend former Hamilton County commissioner Greg Hartmann to be the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, which includes Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton.
Screen Shot 2017-02-03 at 10.40.57 AM.png

A Parma police officer has been indicted on charges of obstructing official business and identity fraud.

(File photo)

PARMA, Ohio -- A Parma police officer was indicted on criminal charges after officials from the Ohio Casino Control Commission said he lied to agents.

Michael Yonek, 42, was charged Thursday with obstructing official business and identity fraud, according to court documents.

The charges are related to an incident that happened Nov. 18, 2016 at Jack Casino in Cleveland, according to records.

Investigators said that Yonek gave agents a fake name for a woman that he said was his girlfriend after the woman won money at the casino.

The indictment does not say why agents questioned Yonek and his girlfriend.

Sandra Niermeyer was indicted Dec. 20, 2016 on charges of identity fraud, forgery; forging identification cards and tampering with records, according to court records.

She is scheduled for a pretrial conference hearing at 9 a.m. Feb. 22.

Cleveland.com has requested a copy of Yonek's personnel file from Parma police.

Yonek is set to be arraigned in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Feb. 16.

Parma police Capt. Kevin Riley confirmed Yonek is an officer with the department. He has been placed on unpaid administrative suspension, Riley said.

Yonek has been with the department since Aug. 28, 1997. He is assigned to the patrol division.

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A 50-year-old man died after being stabbed several times Friday afternoon.

STRONGSVILLE, Ohio -- A 50-year-old man was found stabbed Friday afternoon in Strongsville, police say.

The man was taken to Southwest General Hospital where he died, according to a statement released by the Strongsville Police Department.

The stabbing happened shortly before 1 p.m. in the 13500 block of Sprague Road just next to Barbara Drive.

Police were called to the home on a report of a domestic violence incident, according to the news release. The man was found with several stab wounds, the news release said.

Police have not said whether they have any suspects in the case or if an arrest has been made.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - Fifty-five percent of Ohio's school districts would receive less state money by the second year of Gov. John Kasich's proposed two-year budget, data released Friday by the administration showed.

In comparing current state funding to the proposed amount for the 2018-19 school year, 338 districts would receive less, 262 districts would receive more and 10 districts would experience no change. Yet, for about a third of the districts the change would be less than 1 percent.

How the budget would impact your district

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(Read complete budget coverage from cleveland.com)

Details have been released for how Ohio Gov. John Kasich's budget could impact each school district in the state.

Among schools in the Greater Cleveland and Akron areas, the sharpest gains would be for Richmond Heights (up 10.4 percent, or $170,954) and Cleveland Heights-University Heights (up 10.4 percent, or $2,107,569).

The districts dropping the most sharply - at 5.1 percent each - would be Lorain ($112,684), Cardinal ($129,433) and Strongsville ($463,665).

State funding for the Cleveland school system would increase 4.4 percent, going up from an estimated $435 million during the current school year to $454 million in 2018-19.

The governor's proposal is just the first step in the budget process. The Ohio House and Senate will each have their say, and could present entirely different plans.

Ohio's two-year budget must be approved by the end of June.

Rich Exner, data analysis editor for cleveland.com, writes about numbers on a variety of topics. Follow on Twitter @RichExner.
J. K. Rowling

J. K. Rowling attends the 2016 world premiere of "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

(Charles Sykes, Associated Press)

If there's any doubt left that we live in divisive political times, know this: Some fans of Harry Potter are burning their copies of the books to protest J.K. Rowling's political views. And she's fighting back on Twitter, insulting those very fans.

That's right, one of the most beloved books in modern history has now become a political prop. Is nothing safe?

Critic on Twitter: "just burned all my Harry Potter books after begin a fan for 17 years. ... I'm upset it has to be that way. You embarrassed me, disgusted me, and I will never read your work again."

Rowling's response: "Guess it's true what they say: you can lead a girl to books about the rise and fall of an autocrat, but you can't make her think."

Critic: "glad I caught this article on yahoo. I will now burn your books and movies too."

Rowling: "Well, the fumes from the DVDs might be toxic and I've still got your money, so by all means borrow my lighter."

I'd just like to thank everyone sending me lovely messages, which greatly outnumber the bad ones  I'm now off to produce more kindling...  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 1, 2017

Rowling has long been vocal about her feelings concerning President Donald Trump for some time. She's mostly used the president's favorite platform, Twitter, to share her criticisms.

"Well, there you have it," she wrote on Twitter on Oct. 19. "A highly intelligent, experienced woman just debated a giant orange Twitter egg. Your move, America."

On Oct. 9, she wrote: " 'It's your fault I didn't pay taxes, Hillary. Women let you do anything when you're a star." A day later: "When a man this ignorant & easy to manipulate gets within sniffing distance of the nuclear codes, it's everyone's business."

These tweets have generated a Facebook page's worth of headlines. But Rowling's brushes with political controversy are nothing new.

Rowling is a dedicated progressive.

She's a strong believer in welfare, which she relied on during a particularly rough period in her life. As she said during a 2008 Harvard commencement speech, "An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless . . . By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew."

More recently, Rowling found himself in the midst of a Twitter battle surrounding Brexit, which she staunchly opposed.

Much of this now-seemingly-endless debate was absent during the height of the Harry Potter craze because she didn't publicly discuss her views until the publication of the final Harry Potter book. A year after it hit bookshelves, though, she gave 1 million pounds to Britain's Labor Party.

That same year, speaking to El Pais, she said of the U.S. election, "I want a Democrat in the White House. It seems a pity that Clinton and Obama have to be rivals, because both are extraordinary."

Anyone who gave the text a close reading likely wouldn't have been surprised by Rowling's politics.

Most of the subplots involve the triumph of marginalized peoples, be it the mixed-heritage Hermione, a "mudbl--d," the poverty-stricken Weasleys, the stigmatized Hagrid (essentially an ex-offender reintroduced to society who can no longer practice magic as a result) or the "lower class" house elf named Dobby (the most obvious analogue to American slavery).

Harry himself, after all, was an orphan and survivor of attempted infanticide.

In his book, "Harry Potter and the Millennials," Anthony Gierzynski wrote that, "the evidence indicates that Harry Potter fans are more open to diversity and are more politically tolerant than nonfans; fans are also less authoritarian, less likely to support the use of deadly force or torture, more politically active, and more likely to have had a negative view of the Bush administration."

Rowling invites anyone to challenge her.

Once Rowling opened up about her beliefs, it's been a steady stream ever since. And while attacking her own fans might seem like a poor marketing choice, it's important to note one of the things Rowling holds most dear: freedom of speech.

"Intolerance of alternative viewpoints is spreading to places that make me, a moderate and a liberal, most uncomfortable. Only last year, we saw an online petition to ban Donald Trump from entry to the U.K. It garnered half a million signatures," she said during the 2016 PEN America Literary Gala at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. "I find almost everything that Mr. Trump says objectionable. I consider him offensive and bigoted. But he has my full support to come to my country and be offensive and bigoted there. His freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot. His freedom guarantees mine."

Of course, Rowling has found herself in conflict with the right before she opened up about her political views. Notably, her Harry Potter books were maligned by many Christian groups, making it one of the most challenged books in 2000, according to the New York Times.

"The challenges seem to be objecting to occult or supernatural content in the books and are being made largely by traditional Christians who believe the Bible is a literal document," Virginia Walter, president of the ALA's Association for Library Service to Children, told the newspaper. "Any exposure to witches or wizards shown in a positive light is anathema to them. Many of these people feel that the books are door-openers to topics that desensitize children to very real evils in the world."

The outcry didn't come only from fringe, radical sects of Christianity, either. As noted in the Christian Post, when Pope Benedict XVI was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger he condemned the books for their "subtle seductions, which act unnoticed . . . deeply distort Christianity in the soul before it can grow properly."

There's a certain irony to this, considering Rowling has said that Christianity was a great inspiration for the books.

"To me [the religious parallels have] always been obvious," she said at a 2007 news conference. "But I never wanted to talk too openly about it because I thought it might show people who just wanted the story where we were going."

There were hints of this throughout the series.

When Harry visits his parents' graves, it's marked with, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" - an abridged version of 1 Corinthians 15:26. Also in the graveyard is the tomb of Dumbledore's mother and sister, which is marked by "Where your treasure is, there your heart be also," which is a direct quote in Matthew 6:19.

"I think those two particular quotations he finds on the tombstones at Godric's Hollow, they sum up - they almost epitomize the whole series," Rowling said at the news conference.

Travis M. Andrews, The Washington Post
Match Day at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic's Medical Schools

Match Day, the day when domestic and international medical students find out where they'll spend their residencies, is usually a joyful time. This year, it's been complicated for U.S. hospitals and international applicants by President Trump's executive order barring immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries.

(Thomas Ondrey, The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- President Donald Trump's controversial executive order on immigration couldn't have hit at a worse time for international medical students and U.S. hospital residency programs -- right in the middle of the competitive process leading up to Match Day March 17th.

In Northeast Ohio, between 15 and 25 percent of residency programs are filled by international students. Trump's executive order temporarily barring immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries has thrown a wrench into an already complex match process, causing uncertainty for medical students and concerns about fairness among those who are ranking them.

"It seems likely that residency program directors will be reluctant to rank J-1 visa applicants because they may not be able to enter the country to begin training," said Mona Signer, president and CEO of the National Resident Matching Program in a statement.

In a statement earlier this week, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center said "we may be forced to turn away our best candidates for fear that their citizenship will be an obstacle. This is detrimental to both the advancement of medicine and the care of our patients. And it is an affront to our faith."

The executive order has already interrupted medical training for one Cleveland Clinic doctor, internal medicine resident and Sudanese citizen Suha Abushamma, who was detained and unable to return to the U.S. after traveling to Saudi Arabia last week.

The Clinic, which receives more than 5,000 applicants each year for its 650 residency slots, said international medical graduates fill about a quarter of those slots.

Clinic spokeswoman Eileen Sheil said the hospital system's plan this year is still to "rank to match the best and the brightest applicants from around the country and around the world."

Dr. Cindy Kelley, vice president of medical education at Summa Health in Akron, said the health system has candidates in consideration for its 80 available residency slots who would be impacted by the executive order.

But, she said, Summa will not change its approach to ranking in light of the order. Graduate medical education staff there met to discuss the order Thursday afternoon.

"Of course, everybody wants residents who will be physically available on July 1st, but this is in such flux and even if this 90-day ban played out, the students would still have time to get their paperwork in place to come here," Kelley said.

Most residencies start nationwide on July 1st, though some fellowships start after.

Summa had about 8,400 applicants this year, according to spokesman Jim Gosky. About 17 percent of Summa's current residents and fellows are international medical graduates, or IMGs, but none right now are from the seven affected countries.

If any of this year's crop of residents are affected, Kelley said, "we will support them in every way we can should there be issues that arise with visa status and such. We'll put the full force of our resources behind that to support them."

At University Hospitals, about 14,000 students apply for 192 slots in the main residency match, and 20 percent of residents and fellows are international graduates. Spokeswoman Alicia Reale said UH will continue to analyze the order's impact on recruitment and "remains committed to recruiting the most promising rising physicians from all nations and backgrounds to train at UH."

In an email sent last week, MetroHealth Director of Graduate Medical Education Marcie Becker told staff compiling their match lists to be aware of the travel restrictions.

"Please check your match lists and check citizenship of your applicants who are requesting a visa," the email read. "I will be happy to review any applicant file prior to submitting your rank list."

Becker was not available to comment on the email.

"We try to match with the best possible candidates, and that includes physicians from outside the United States," MetroHealth spokeswoman Tina Arundel said. "MetroHealth does not discriminate based on national origin."

Last year, there were 10,170 non-U.S. citizen international medical graduates who registered for the main residency match, 7,460 who submitted rank order lists, and 3,769 who matched, according to the resident matching program.

NRMP does not keep track of international medical graduates by citizenship, so it's hard to know exactly how many students could be impacted by the executive order, which targets Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia and Libya.

There are about 1800 doctors enrolled in residency and fellowship programs who graduated from medical school in the seven countries, according to a letter sent to members of the graduate medical education community Thursday that was written by Dr. Thomas Nasca, CEO of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

"These physicians are providing much-needed medical care to a conservatively estimated 900,000 patients in urban, suburban, and rural communities across the country annually. They too are a valued and welcomed group of colleagues," Nasca said.

Noting this fact, the American Medical Association on Wednesday asked the Trump administration to clarify the executive order to avoid affecting patient care and the training of international medical graduates, or IMGs.

"The executive order places into question those IMGs who have applied for or who have been granted visas to come to the United States to train and provide care in underserved communities," wrote AMA CEO Dr. James Madara to Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. "Guidance is urgently needed from the Administration to ensure the upcoming residency matching program in March 2017 does not leave training slots vacant and that all qualified IMG applicants can participate."
Trump digs coal.jpg

A pro-coal sign distributed to delegates at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.

(Sabrina Eaton, Cleveland.com)

WASHINGTON - Republicans this week kicked off their drive to roll back Obama-era environmental regulations by repealing a "Stream Protection Rule" meant to keep coal mines from dumping waste into streams.

The U.S. Senate approved the measure Thursday in a 54 to 45 vote that went largely along party lines, with backing from Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman, and a "no" vote from Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown.

The House of Representatives approved it 228 to 194 on Wednesday, with support from all Ohio's Republicans and opposition from all of the state's Democrats.

I will be on @cspan at 2:40 PM to speak on House Joint Resolution 38 & need to protect OH jobs & electricity costs.https://t.co/Z7zw1jmasc  Rep. Jim Renacci (@RepJimRenacci) February 1, 2017

Marietta Republican Rep. Bill Johnson - who introduced the measure - said the stream protection rule was "designed for one purpose--to regulate the coal mining industry out of business. It is the centerpiece of the Obama administration's war on coal."

Democrats argued the rule was needed to protect the health of people who live near mines from hazards like lung cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, birth defects, hypertension, and other problems caused by open pit mine runoff.

"If this body is seriously going to weaken vital drinking water protections, the American people deserve ample opportunities to inform themselves and to make their voices heard," said Virginia Democratic Rep. Donald McEachin. "This rushed-through proposal denies them that opportunity.

The repeal was hailed by mining interests, who said they expected President Donald Trump will swiftly sign it.

"The alleged 'Stream Protection Rule,' was never about the environment and was always about carrying out the previous administrations radical anti coal agenda," said a statement from Ohio Coal Association President Christian Palich. "If implemented the rule would have killed thousands of jobs, while depriving families' access to affordable energy."

Environmental groups like the League of Conservation Voters said the repeal shows the GOP-led Congress was making sure "federal government works for Big Polluters above all else."

"This is simply the first step in President Trump's war on clean water and the environment more broadly," said a statement from the organization's president, Gene Karpinski.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Dr. Mohamed Abdalla is a nephrology fellow at Case Western Reserve University, a Sudan native and a permanent U.S. resident.

For now, he knows he can stay in the United States, but President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim majority countries has him worried about himself, his family and scores of others already here or with plans to emigrate here.

"We're still confused about what exactly to do. It is still a very chaotic situation," he said Wednesday after his shift at University Hospitals ended and while he worked at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.

Abdalla expects to graduate from Case in June and planned to invite his father and father-in-law from Sudan to the ceremony. That likely won't happen now.

The order also means he and his family can't travel to Sudan for vacation this summer, Abdalla said.

"This is a summer vacation and we need the kids to know their relatives, their cousins and their grandparents," he said.

Abdalla is one of many medical professionals and students whose future in the United States is unclear in the wake of Trump's order.

Cleveland is a city with three major teaching hospitals that regularly employ residents from overseas. The 43-year-old Abdalla is one of several Sudanese doctors in the city who are affected by Trump's order. Cleveland Clinic resident Dr. Suha Abushamma was detained in New York on Saturday before being put on a plane to Saudi Arabia. Abushamma was here on a work visa but claimed in a lawsuit that immigration officials misled her into signing forms to invalidate her visa.

The Clinic, along with Abushamma's lawyers, are working to bring her back to the U.S.

Trump's order included a 90-day travel ban affecting citizens of seven countries, including Sudan. The president has said the order was to prevent a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The ban affected people with work visas and green cards, though the federal government on Sunday said people with green cards may enter the U.S.

Abdalla, a Muslim, does not know Abushamma but expressed concern for her well-being. He said the Islamic State, a terrorist organization that carries out attacks in the name of Islam, has tarnished the reputation of all Muslims, the vast majority who are peaceful.

"I think now Muslims all over the world are paying the price for whatever ISIS is doing," Abdalla said.

Abdalla has been in the United States since 2010 when he came here on a work visa. He got his green card in 2015.

He lives in Westlake with his wife Nada Maar and his six children. His wife and three of their children are permanent residents, while their other three children were born in the United States. The family plans to stay in the country after Abdalla's fellowship ends.

Maar said Trump is unpredictable. She worries his actions may affect more than just traveling outside the U.S. She said she plans to become a citizen and worries that might not be possible under this president.

She said she and her husband have been glued to CNN when they are both at home.

"He is very worried," she said. "I'm a stay-at-home mom, so my worries are contained in the house. I'm pretty sure he worries outside the house more than me."

Both said they have has never been hassled about their religion in the United States. Maar said she answered a question on a form when applying for her visa in 2010. She wears a hijab so her faith is obvious, but she said it has never caused concern.

Abdalla said this kind of treatment is why they came to the United States.

"Because of the freedom," he said. "So now we have to fight for freedom in our country and here."

He expressed concern for fellow medical professionals from Sudan and other banned countries who either are here or want to come here. Interviews for this year's residency program, which are conducted for March, are also up in the air for many applicants in the countries listed in Trump's order. Abdalla said he was not sure how program directors for the teaching hospitals in the Cleveland area would react to Trump's order.

At least one local hospital, the MetroHealth System, has appeared to acknowledge the trouble prospective foreign medical residents might face. Marcie Becker, the hospital's director of international affairs and graduate medical education, said in a Jan. 26 email to her employees that any doctors matched with the hospital from those seven countries may not be able to come to the U.S. until visa applications are being processed again.

Abdalla stuck up for Sudan multiple times during his interview, saying many people who emigrate from the country contribute great things to the United States.

"That's good for them. That's good for their families. That's good for the country," he said. "That's even good for the United States because they contribute. Whenever somebody gets something from here and he leaves or stays here, still his contribution is there somewhere."
BEREA, Ohio - The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office on Friday identified a man killed 37 years ago when a train struck him in Berea.

James Francis Williams of Grand Haven, Michigan, died Nov. 14, 1980 on the train tracks near Front Street.

Officials buried him at Memorial Park (Potter's Field) in Cleveland because they could not identify him at the time, the medical examiner's office said in a statement.

In 1980, investigators used fingerprints and released information to local media in an attempt to identify the man. But new technology helped the medical examiner's DNA Parentage and Identification Department -- which routinely investigates cold cases -- identify him in 2017.

"It is gratifying to be able to provide closure to any family who loses a loved one. This particular case is especially so because of the long time involved before an identification was made," Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Gilson said. "Families never forget their loss and it is our mission to aid them in difficult times."

The Berea Police Department provided the original case file to the DNA Parentage and Identification Department. The case filed contained the a postmortem fingerprint card, which the medical examiner's office entered into the nationwide Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Fingerprint examiners also compared the postmortem prints to the Next Generation Identification federal database. The database matched the fingerprints to Williams.

The Grand Haven Department of Public Safety, the Sault Tribe Police Department, the Luce County Clerk, and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System provided vital statistics that confirmed the identification.

"This case highlights the importance of collaboration and communication between different units of the laboratory, as well as different local, state and federal agencies," Dr. Harmeet Kaur, the director and quality manager of the medical examiner's DNA Parentage & Identification Department, said in the news release.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . ."

. . . And your tortured and your abused -- beaten, raped, starved, shot, hung from trees, forced to drink boiling water and dig their own graves . . .

This addendum to the traditional welcome at the Statue of Liberty is a matter addressed by 35 centers in 23 states that treat survivors of torture, who come to the United States as immigrants and refugees.

The Center for Victims of Torture estimated recently that as many as 44 percent of those immigrants and refugees have been abused, with a potential 1.3 million torture victims now living in the U.S.

The national effort to aid these victims, funded by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, includes the first such centers in Ohio, established in late 2015 in Columbus (operated by the US Together agency) and Cleveland.

In the past year, the Catholic Charities of Cleveland's Ohio Center for Survivors of Torture has provided free services to 175 individuals who have been tortured abroad.

Utilizing a team of lawyers, social workers, mental health providers and employment specialists, plus links to community groups, the center offers such assistance as legal aid, mental health counseling, group therapy, job placement and employment readiness training.

Anyone contacting Catholic Charities' Migration and Refugee Services is now screened for a possible background of torture abroad.

"We had known for a long time that many of the refugees we serve are survivors of torture, but we never had funding specifically to meet those needs," said Camille Gill, managing attorney of immigration legal services. The center also can aid native-born U.S. citizens who have been tortured abroad.

In the past year, 33 percent of refugees seeking immigration legal services at Catholic Charities, and 17 percent of all individuals seeking the same aid have qualified for the torture survivors program, according to Gill.

To qualify, the act must have happened outside the U.S., been intentional, occurred while the survivor was held captive, caused severe harm (physically or psychologically), and have been committed under government control or authority.

The abuse could have been recent, or decades old. It is invariably horrific.

"The kinds of torture are anything you can think of, and more," Gill said. "I had been working with immigrants as a lawyer for close to a decade and thought I'd heard the worst stories I would ever hear, until I started working with this population.

"You have individuals who are jailed and beaten, hung from a tree. We've had people who have been put in holes and forced to stay in that hole for days at a time in extreme temperatures," she said.

"We've had lots of sexual trauma, a lot of rape, a lot of being forced to watch your family members being raped, people who have been shot, who were forced to watch their children being killed," Gill added. "It's rough stuff."

Heath Rosenberger, program director, also noted, "We've seen a lot of cases recently where folks have had to dig their own grave and live in it, but were able to escape. It seems to be a trend with a lot of our clients coming from the (Democratic Republic of the) Congo."

The center has handled cases involving children. "We have a number of children who are either suffering because of the direct things they experienced, or because they witnessed things that their parents experienced," Gill said.

The impact on survivors of torture can be physical and/or psychological, she noted. "It varies. We see a lot of depression and anxiety. We also occasionally see individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder," Gill said.

Future success stories could be affected by immigration policies of the new presidential administration.

Gill noted that recent reports of President Donald Trump planning restrictions on refugees from certain nations could affect the recovery process of center clients.

Fatima Adam, for example, has a goal of bring her family to the U.S., but Sudan is on the list of nations included in the restrictions, Gill said.

"Building family support helps recovery, and a big part of what we do is to reunite a family so survivors can move on and move forward," she added.

"But Catholic Charities has been serving refugees since the 1940s, and we've heard nothing to this point that would make us think that we won't continue to do so," Gill said.

"Like everything, when it comes to immigration and the political climate, we just have to wait and see what progresses, and we have to be ready to tell our political leaders that this is something that's important, and they need to continue to support it," she added.

For the moment, the program could use more staff and funding, according to Gill. She said more than 200 people are currently waiting to be screened for possible qualification in the torture survivors program.

The Catholic Charities' center is funded by a $237,000-per-year grant that expires in 2018.

Catholic Charities will host a workshop, "Crossing Worlds, Intersecting Services," on April 24, featuring Dr. Hawthorne Smith of Bellevue Hospital in New York, who will present a program based on his work with survivors of torture and forced migrants. (For details, contact Mead Wilkins at 216-939-3727 or gmwilikns@ccdocle.org.)

One downside of offering services to torture survivors is the impact on providers who deal with the aftermath of a litany of horrors.

"It definitely makes me feel helpless when I'm listening to their stories. It's just a lot to take in, I guess, because they've been through so much," said Maggie Barnard, job developer. "All we can do is ask, How can we help?"

According to Gill, working with the survivors, "really puts into perspective your own life, because the things that you are worrying about today -- Oh, I really need to work out more, I'd like to re-do my bathroom -- these sorts of problems just seem totally insignificant after you realize what our clients have been through."

Gill said a staff psychologist who helps torture survivors, also aids workers -- teaching self-care techniques such as "reminding yourself that you don't carry the weight of the world on your back. You have this limited gift to give and you need to protect yourself, and don't get burned out and can't give that gift any more."

But the resiliency -- a word repeatedly used by center staffers to describe their clients -- that brought torture survivors this far can also be inspiring.

"It can get gloomy sometimes, but our clients do so much to energize us and to really keep us positive and keep us wanting to keep going," Gill said.

And, "when you see them gain an immigration benefit, or get a job, or make such a big improvement in their mental health and well-being, it just makes you feel good about what you're doing, and makes you want to continue," she added.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Eighty Ohioans on Friday became naturalized citizens of the United States, with a welcome from more than a dozen strangers holding signs and offering congratulations.

Supporters held signs in French, Spanish, Farsi and other languages and lined the hallway at Cleveland's federal courthouse leading to the courtroom where the naturalization ceremony would take place.

The gathering wasn't political, organizer Rebecca Maurer said. But it came a week after President Donald Trump signed an immigration ban that led to massive protests nationally, including at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

"This room is filled with so many people from all different walks of life and different countries and different places in the world, and it really embodies the American story," she said.

The supporters left just before the proceedings began. Then, 80 people took the oath and received paperwork that showed they were officially citizens in a ceremony the court does nearly every other week.

Jane Maima and daughter Fidelis immigrated from from Kenya. They moved here because of the career possibilities, said Jane, a nurse.

"(Being an American citizen) means being accepted for being yourself but being a part of something good, something great, where your individuality isn't something that is washed out," Fidelis said. "That you're allowed to be who you are, that you're allowed to be Kenyan, and still be proud to be American."

Ruben Bonilla, an immigrant from Colombia, said he had been trying to become an American citizen for 11 years. Why? "I love America."
Should Ohio continue to force utilities to obtain a percentage of their electricity from renewable sources, such as the wind or the sun?

If so, how much renewable energy should they be required to use? And when should they have to meet those standards?

Those are questions that the Ohio General Assembly expects to discuss this year as part of an overall revamping of the state's energy policy.

Conservatives in the legislature oppose mandates on a philosophical basis. They don't necessarily oppose renewable energy, but they want it to pay for itself.

Advocates for renewable energy point out that fossil fuels also are subsidized, just in different ways. Promoting renewable energy makes sense, they say, because today's technology companies are attracted to states that promote green energy.

Renewable energy mandates: How does Ohio compare with other states?

By Peter Krouse, cleveland.com

Feb. 3, 2017

Here is a list of the 29 states plus Washington, D.C., that require their utilities to obtain a portion of the electricity they sell from renewable sources. The information in this slideshow is taken from a report by Jocelyn Durkay of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The aggressive nature of some of the standards may surprise you, especially the last one on the list, Hawaii.

The slideshow begins with Ohio, then features Midwest states, followed by those in the East and then the West.

Photos: Peter Krouse, cleveland.com (L), Robert Higgs, cleveland,com (M), Krouse (R)

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Ohio's renewable energy standard requires investor-owned utilities to get 12.5 percent of the electricity they sell to customers from renewable sources by 2027.

The standards were first set in 2008 under then-Gov. Ted Strickland only to be frozen for two years under current Gov. John Kasich. Kasich vetoed a bill last year that would have effectively extended the freeze.

Now, legislators in the Ohio General Assembly are expected to debate the size and scope of a renewable energy standard as part of what could be a comprehensive energy-policy overhaul.

Photo by Peter Krouse, cleveland.com

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Rooftop solar panels in Philadelphia in 2011.

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Pennsylvania's standards were set in 2004 and call for utilities to derive 18 percent of the electricity they sell from renewables by 2020-2021. The requirement allows for a variety of sources to be used, including waste coal and municipal solid waste, among other more traditional forms of renewable energy.

AP Photo/Matt Rourke

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A wind turbine generates electricity near Caseville, Mich., in late 2015.

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Michigan set its original standard in 2008 and amended it in 2016. Now, 12.5 percent of the electricity sold by all utilities (investor-owned or otherwise) must be generated by renewable sources by 2019, and 15 percent by 2021.

AP Photo/Paul Sancya

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A grain farmer walks among the wind turbines on his land in central Illinois in 2008.

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In 2001, Illinois set a voluntary target for renewable energy use and then came up with a requirement in 2007. Utilities must tap renewable sources for 25 percent of their energy by 2025-2026. Utilities must provide 25 percent renewable energy by 2025-2026. Investor-owned utilities must get 75 percent of their annual requirement from wind while all the other electric suppliers in the state have a 60 percent mandate. All utilities must achieve a portion of their requirement by using solar.

AP Photo/Seth Perlman

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Wisconsin capital building in Madison.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin's mandate called for 10 percent renewables by 2015. The requirement was met and now must be maintained going forward.

AP Photo/Beth J. Harpaz

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The late Mary Tyler Moore played Mary Richards, a television news producer in Minneapolis, on Moore's eponymously named show in the 1970s. Would Richards have supported renewable energy standards today?

Minnesota

Minnesota first set its renewable energy requirement in 2007. Investor-owned utilities must use 26.5 percent renewable energy by 2025 and other utilities must hit 25 percent by 2025. Xcel Energy has a separate mandate calling for 31.5 percent by 2020.

Photo courtesy CBS Television/Creative Commons

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A turbine looms near a farmhouse in Adair, Iowa. The Hawkeye state is as wind-friendly as they come, getting a large percentage of its electricity from spinning turbines.

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Iowa established the country's first renewable energy standard in 1983 calling for investor-owned utilities to produce 105 megawatts of renewable energy. The state now produces more than 6,300 megawatts of wind energy and ion 2015 it derived 31.3 percent of its electricity from the wind.

AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

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St. Louis, Mo., and its famous Gateway Arch.

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Investor-owned utilities in Missouri must meet a 15 percent renewable energy standard by 2021 with a minimum of 2 percent of the electricity they sell coming from solar.

AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

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North Carolina is no stranger to wind. The Wright Brothers Monument celebrates the Ohio brothers' first-in-flight achievement at Kill Devil Hills, N.C.

North Carolina

North Carolina set a standard of 12.5 percent for renewable energy use by investor-owned utilities by 2021 and 10 percent by 2018 for municipal and cooperative electricity providers. North Carolina is the only state that requires a portion of its electricity to be derived from swine and poultry waste, which is converted into biogas, according to Jocelyn Durkay of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma

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Rehoboth Beach, Del., in 2012 shortly before the arrival of Hurricane Sandy.

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Delaware set its renewable energy standard in 2005 at 25 percent by 2025-2026. There's a requirement of 3.5 percent from photovoltaics (solar panels).

AP Photo/Suchat Pederson

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The historic Maryland State House in Annapolis.

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Maryland set its first standard in 2004. It called for 22 percent renewables by 2022 with a minimum requirement for solar. Maryland's legislature recently overrode a veto by the governor and passed a more ambitious standard that calls for 25 percent renewables by 2020.

AP Photo/Roberto Borea

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These solar-arrayed homes are in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, D.C., where the roots of the Community Power Network are traced.

Washington, D.C.

A renewable energy standard was established for Washington, D.C., in 2005. It set a 20 percent requirement by 2020. The standard was increased in 2016 to 50 percent by 2032. There is a modest minimum requirement for solar energy.

Photo courtesy of Community Power Network

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Solar panels, left, on top of a landfill in Kearny, N.J., in 2013. The New York City skyline is in the background.

New Jersey

The renewable energy standard for New Jersey is 24.5 percent by 2020. Along with the traditional sources of renewable energy, the standard also calls for some conversion of municipal waste into electricity or the use of hydropower.

AP Photo/Julio Cortez

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A photo from 2015 showing construction of a SolarCity solar-panel manufacturing site in Buffalo, N.Y.

New York

New York's renewable energy standard, set in 2004, was 29 percent by 2015. It was increased to 50 percent by 2030. There is a requirement that at least 8.4 percent of the renewable energy comes from distributed generation, which includes small-scale renewable sources such as rooftop solar, each year.

AP Photo/Mike Groll

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Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee looks over a solar rooftop array in the Quonset Business Park in North Kingstown, R.I., in 2013.

Rhode Island

The renewable energy standard in Rhode Island was set in 2004 and amended in 2016. It calls for 14.5 percent renewable energy by 2019, and increasing 1.5 percent a year after that until the standard reaches 38.5 percent in 2035.

(AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)

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Hartford, Conn.

Connecticut

The renewable energy standard in Connecticut calls for 27 percent of the electricity sold to be generated by renewable sources by 2020.

AP Photo/Jessica Hill

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Solar panels at a solar energy plant in Pittsfield, Mass., run by the Western Massachusetts Electric Co.

Massachusetts

The Bay State's renewable energy standard was set in 1997. It calls for 15 percent renewable usage by 2020 and an additional one percent each year after that.

AP Photo/Stewart Cairns

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Wind turbines in Sheffield, Vermont.

Vermont

Vermont had a voluntary renewable energy target that evolved into a standard in 2015. The standard mandates 55 percent by 2017 and 75 percent by 2032. The standard requires 10 percent of energy that is sold to come from distributed generation, which includes small-scale installations such as rooftop solar arrays.

AP Photo/Toby Talbot, File

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The mountains of New Hampshire.

New Hampshire

The electric renewable standard In New Hampshire was set in 2007. It calls for 24.8 percent renewables by 2025 with a mandate for a minimum amount of solar-power equal to 0.3 percent.

AP Photo/Jim Cole, File

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These turbines on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, provide power to communities on two islands.

Maine

Maine's renewable standard calls for 40 percent of electricity sold by 2017 to be derived from renewables. Separately, there are specific, non-binding goals to produce 8,000 megawatts of wind-generated electricity by 2030, including 5,000 megawatts from offshore and coastal installations.

AP Photo/Pat Wellenbach

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Montana has coal mines, but the state also appreciates clean energy.

Montana

Montana set its renewable energy standard in 2005. It required renewable sources to provide 15 percent of the electricity sold by utilities by 2015. The state has met that requirement.

AP Photo/Matthew Brown

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Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., front left, gestures as he walks with Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., front second from left, and Steve Beedy, a board member of the Colorado Wheat Administrative Committee, during a tour of the Colorado Highlands Wind farm, in Fleming, Co., in 2015.

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Colorado set its renewable energy standard in 2004. It calls for all investor-owned utilities to sell 30 percent renewable energy by 2020, and for municipal and cooperative electric providers to sell 10 percent or 20 percent, by 2020 depending on their size.

AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

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Wind farms are big in Texas, but everything big there.

Texas

Texas doesn't have percentage mandates for renewable electricity, but had a requirement to utilize 5,880 megawatts by 2015. That requirement has been met and a non-binding goal has been set to reach 10,000 megawatts of renewable-generated electricity by 2025. Texas generates more electricity from wind in terms of total volume than any other state.

AP Photo/LM Otero

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A solar panel provides electricity to the Jemez Pueblo Day School in Jemez Pueblo, N.M., in this 2009 photo.

New Mexico

In New Mexico, investor-owned utilities must procure 20 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources by 2020 There are percentage requirements for different types of renewable energy, including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and distributed generation, which is small-scale production such as rooftop solar.

AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan

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A saguaro cactus stands against the rising sun Monday, Feb. 22, 2016, in the desert north of Phoenix.

Arizona

The standard in Arizona is 15 percent renewable energy sold by 2025. A portion of the requirement calls for small-scale projects or so-called distributed generation.

AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

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Computer-controlled solar mirrors at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station in Nevada.

Nevada

Nevada's energy standard calls for 25 percent renewables by 2025. Six percent of the annual requirement must be provided by solar through 2025.

AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File

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Turbines spin at the Chopin Wind Project near Weston, Ore. The wind farm is capable of producing 10 megawatts of electricity and can power roughly 7,500 homes.

Oregon

Oregon's renewable standard was established in 2007 and amended in 2016. It calls for utilities that supply at least 3 percent of the state's electricity to tap renewable sources for 25 percent of their load by 2025 and 50 percent by 2040.

The standard for utilities supplying 1.5 percent to 3 percent of the state's load is 10 percent by 2025. Tor utilities supplying less than 1.5 percent, the standard is 5 percent.

E.J. Harris/East Oregonian via AP

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Wind turbines near Goldendale, Wash.

Washington

Washington's renewable energy standard was created in 2006. It called for 9 percent renewables by 2016 and 15 percent by 2020. The standard applies to all utilities serving more than 25,000 customers.

AP Photo/Rick Bowmer

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This NASA photo shows the 9.5-square-mile Topaz Solar Farm in San Luis Obispo County, Calif.

California

California first set its renewable energy standard in 2002, but it has been amended several times. The current standard mandates 33 percent renewables by 2020, 40 percent by 2024, 45 percent by 2027 and 50 percent by 2030. The California Public Utilities Commission can adopt additional requirements.

Photo by NASA Earth Observatory/Creative Commons

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Panels go up on a rooftop in Honolulu, Hawaii, in July of 2016.

Hawaii

Hawaii has the boldest renewable energy standard of any in the country. A standard has been in place since 2001. It was amended in 2015 and calls for 30 percent renewables by 2020, 40 percent by 2030, 70 percent by 2040 and 100 percent by 2045.

Now that's commitment. For more stories about renewable energy and Ohio's pursuit of wind and solar energy, check out cleveland.com's series Impact 2016: The path to green energy by clicking here.

AP Photo/Cathy Bussewitz
WASHINGTON - Columbus-area GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi wants to use tax reform legislation to steer investment towards urban and rural areas bypassed by past economic recovery.

On Thursday, Tiberi and a bipartisan group of Congress members introduced legislation that would defer capital gains tax payments on investments channeled into "opportunity zones" in census tracts with high levels of poverty, unemployment and vacant housing.

Data released last year by the Economic Innovation Group ranked Cleveland as the nation's top city with residents living in economically distressed zip codes, Tiberi said. He said Appalachian sections of Ohio need similar help.

"Success in your life shouldn't be determined by where you're born and where you live," said Tiberi "It shouldn't determine the investment that goes on in the community but unfortunately, as we've seen over the years, the economic recovery was quite uneven."

The "Investing in Opportunity Act" that Tiberi re-introduced Thursday with U.S. Senators Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, and Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat, would also create "opportunity funds" where investors could pool their resources to invest in areas that need it.

Today I reintroduced the Investing in Opportunity Act to foster economic growth where it is needed most https://t.co/LlLXQRWEsf #IIOA  Pat Tiberi (@PatTiberi) February 2, 2017

Tiberi said money could be used to build projects such as grocery stores that would produce jobs and stimulate more investment. No tax credits or public-sector financing would be involved.

Scott said he recently discussed the legislation with Vice President Mike Pence and President Donald Trump's nominee for Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and both were supportive.

"We are not asking for a new federal program," said Scott. "We all have the same goal - to help people that need help."
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Eritrea is commonly dubbed "the North Korea of Africa" for its repressive policies that have forced thousands of residents to flee that country. Among them is Dawit, who does not want his full name used for fear of government retribution against family members still living there.

Dawit said he was a teacher with a college degree in business management, but also a member of the Pentecostal Christian Church, which was outlawed by the government in 2010.

Because of that membership, Dawit said he was imprisoned, tortured and beaten until he managed to escape and make his way to the U.S. by way of Mexico. He was caught coming into Texas and transferred to a detention facility in Ohio, where he heard about Catholic Charities' legal aid services.

His petition for asylum was granted last March, and he was able to find a job and housing (with an Eritrean family) in Cleveland with the assistance of Catholic Charities.

"I was lucky to come here," he said. "They (Catholic Charities) helped me with everything. Once I came here I had a place to live, a job, and a place to recover my mind."

His case for asylum was argued by Adriana Coppola, immigration staff attorney, who said only a third of such requests are usually granted. Dawit's case was based on religious persecution.

Another success story involves Yvon Kipata, 56, who was jailed and beaten by government troops during the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo that started in 1998. He and his wife and six children were able to escape, and spent 15 years living in a refugee camp before coming to the U.S.

Kipata recently told how he was a businessman, running boats on Lake Tanganyka, when his operation was taken over by government troops.

"We lived like slaves," he said. "They forced you to work for them for nothing."

Kipata said that when his pregnant wife was identified as a Tutsi, a group that sided with rebel forces during the war, she was briefly jailed. Then, a soldier who belonged to the same tribe as Kipata was able to sneak her and their children out of the country.

Kipata was not able to go along and was imprisoned. He said he was forced to work and was regularly beaten. "It was very bad," he said. "It's pain, but you must stay strong. But that is not easy. You try."

One day, when a guard shot another soldier in a dispute, Kipata was able to take advantage of the resulting confusion and escape, later re-joining his family.

They have been in Cleveland for nearly a year. Catholic Charities arranged for housing, and helped Kipata get a job as a food porter with Sodexo at the Cleveland Clinic.

"It's a good life here," Kipata said. "I like Ohio and Cleveland.

"I thank the whole Catholic Charities, the staff, for what they do for us," he added.

Fatima Adam, 40, fled from her village in the Republic of Sudan in 2004 after it was attacked by counter-insurgency militia forces, and her father, a farmer, was shot to death. The nation that has been wracked by war and famine had more than 1 million refugees like Adam last year.

"The government gives the guns to the (militia) and tell them to go out and kill all the black people, because we are black and not Arab," Adam recently recalled.

She escaped with her mother, brothers and sisters to a refugee camp in Sudan, but even there, safety was not assured. Adam said women who left the camp to gather firewood were often attacked, beaten and raped. "The men, they just kill them," she said.

Her legs still bother her from the beatings she suffered.

She and her family spent eight years in the camp before medical problems forced her to seek attention in the country's capital, Khartoum.

Then, she and her brother decided to seek out a country "that had good health and a safe place (where) no one can hurt you," she said.

They came to Cleveland in 2015, and Catholic Charities helped her with job training, employment, finding a residence, learning the language and counseling for the memories that still linger.

"It was bothering me. Always I was remembering my dad, our village," she said.

Working, and the counseling, has helped. "Yeah, I'm a little better," Adam said. "It's just sometimes . . . You cannot forget these things that happened. You cannot forget."

Adam, who is a leather worker for Fount in Cleveland, hopes to obtain her U.S. citizenship in five years, then bring the rest of her family from Sudan to America.

"Cleveland is very, very nice because people are very good here. Everything is safe here," she said. "I'm very happy to be here."
APTOPIX Israel Palestinians

Israeli police evict settlers from the West Bank settlement of Ofra on Thursday following the evacuation of Amona outpost. Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. The outpost was found to be built on private Palestinian land and the Israeli Supreme Court ordered it demolished.

(Oded Balilty, Associated Press)

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The White House on Thursday gently warned Israel that new or expanded settlements in the West Bank "may not be helpful" in achieving a Middle East peace, while insisting it has no "official position on settlement activity."

A statement issued by press secretary Sean Spicer said that although the administration does not believe settlements are "an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

"The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years," Spicer's statement said, a reference to President Donald Trump's insistence that a return to the Middle East negotiating table is a goal he hopes to achieve.

While the statement carefully parsed it words, it marked a step away from what some Trump officials - and the president's designated new ambassador to Israel - have said in favor of settlements. Trump's first foreign call as president was to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and he has been sharply critical of former president Barack Obama, whom he characterized as weak on Israel.

The apparent genesis of the statement was a story in Thursday's Jerusalem Post, which quoted an unnamed senior administration official telling Netanyahu's government to stop a spree of housing construction approved since Trump's inauguration, lest it interfere with Trump's plans to work toward a peace plan. "As the president has expresses many times," Spicer's statement said, "he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region."

The White House thought the rebuke, as reported, went too far and issued Spicer's statement in an attempt to dial it back, while also giving itself breathing room as it develops a more comprehensive policy on the Middle East.

At the very least, the White House wants to wait until Netanyahu's scheduled visit to Washington Feb. 15. Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke Thursday with Netanyahu, according to the State Department.

The administration has also pulled back somewhat on a pledge to quickly move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which the Palestinians also claim as their capital. Middle Eastern diplomats who have been in contact with the administration have said they believe it will not take that step immediately, perhaps waiting at least until June, when an Obama-issued waiver of a congressional mandate to make the move will expire.

Trump's frequent mention of Middle East peace suggests it's a real goal for him, despite the failure of the last effort, in 2013 and 2014, and bleak signs since then that either side is ready to bargain.

Trump has surrounded himself with at least three close advisers for whom Israel and its security are a paramount concern - his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; his ambassador choice, David Friedman; and his chief of international negotiations, Jason D. Greenblatt. Trump recently said that if Kushner - who has no foreign policy background - can't bring peace to the region, "nobody can."

Thursday's statement came as Netanyahu's government has approved 5,500 new Israeli housing units in the West Bank over the past two weeks in the largest expansion since U.S.-led peace negotiations broke down in April 2014. Until now, Israel had every reason to believe it had a green light from the Trump administration.

The unusually large approvals were criticized as a land-grab implicitly backed by the United States. But the announced approvals appeared to come as an unwelcome surprise to the new U.S. administration.

During the campaign and since his election, Trump has been unstinting in his support for Israel in general, and Netanyahu's government in particular, a coalition under continuing pressure from the right to move away from a two-state solution that for the past quarter century has been seen by the world as the only way out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump sharply criticized the Obama administration's abstention in December that allowed passage of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning settlements. Just before Trump's inauguration, diplomats from 70 countries, including the United States, met in Paris and criticized settlement building as a threat to a two-state solution.

David Halperin, executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, which advocates a two-state solution, said the White House statement serves as a caution to Netanyahu and proponents of building more settlements and annexing the large settlement of Ma'ale Adumim.

"It's a warning sign to the Israeli right that their celebration [of the new administration] may be premature," Halperin said.

The White House statement came a few hours after Trump met with King Abdullah of Jordan, which borders Israel and is burdened with waves of Syrian refugees. The kingdom is concerned Trump's stated intention to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could cause tensions among its own citizens, more than half of whom are of Palestinian origin.

"Jordan can ill afford unrest on its streets," Halperin said. "The king undoubtedly warned President Trump against any provocative moves. If the Trump administration abandons hope for a two-state solution, Jordan fears the unrest will spill over the border."

Halperin predicted Trump will be unable to avoid backing two states as the ultimate goal of peace talks.

"This may be an initial signal the Trump administration realizes that working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict requires working with Jordan," he said.

The Washington Post's Abby Phillip, Karen Deyoung, Anne Gearan and Carol Morello contributed to this report.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A proposed amendment updating Ohio's crime victims' rights has cleared the initial hurdle on its way to the ballot box.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on Friday certified the group's petition summary as a "fair and truthful" summary of the proposed constitutional amendment. The amendment, called "Marsy's Law" by supporters, would replace the 1994 Ohio Victims' Rights Amendment.

Next, the Ohio Ballot Board will decide within the next 10 days whether the proposal contains one or multiple amendments.

Then the petitioners need to collect at least 305,591 signatures of registered Ohio voters -- meeting a minimum number in 44 of Ohio's 88 counties -- to qualify for the ballot. The deadline for the November ballot is July 5.

The proposed Marsy's Law for Ohio outlines 10 rights of crime victims, including the right to:

be treated with respect, fairness and dignity throughout the criminal justice process;

be notified of all public proceedings involving the offense and the right to be present at all proceedings;

receive reasonable protection from the accused or any person acting on his or her behalf;

be notified of any release or escape of the accused;

have a prompt conclusion of the case, without unreasonable delay;

The amendment explicitly states victims can assert these rights in court and, if denied, file an appeal.

Mobile readers, click here to read the proposed amendment.
Tigerair Australia said on Friday it would permanently quit flying to Bali after Indonesian authorities said it would have to switch to a new operating model - one that the budget carrier said would take six months to put in place.

Last month Indonesia revoked the Virgin Australia Holdings unit's permission to fly, saying it did not meet charter flight regulations. Virgin Australia had previously operated the flights itself but shifted them to Tigerair in an attempt to restore its international division to profitability.

The budget subsidiary of Virgin Australia had been expected to restart flights to the island on Friday, but on Thursday evening it said final approvals from Indonesia had not been received.

"Providing a reliable, low-cost service is critical for Tigerair Australia and our customers, and therefore our only option is to withdraw from flying to Bali altogether," Tigerair Chief Executive Rob Sharp said in a statement.

Customers who had booked tickets to Bali will receive a full refund, the airline said.

Bali is an Indonesian holiday island known for its beaches and rice paddies, and is a popular holiday destination for Australian tourists. Tigerair usually carries hundreds of passengers to Bali each day from Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

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A scene outside a Wells Fargo Bank in Berkeley, California on February, 1, 2017, during protests against a scheduled speech by Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California at Berkeley.

Reactions from civic and community leaders are pouring in after Donald Trump's apparent threat to pull federal funding from U.C. Berkeley. Trump's comments came after the university cancelled an appearance by Breitbart editor and Trump supporter Milo Yiannopoulos, following a fiery protest by more than a thousand demonstrators. The protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and sparked a massive bonfire to protest the firebrand editor's speech, scheduled for Tuesday night.

In a statement, university officials wrote, "UC Berkeley condemns in the strongest possible terms the action of individuals who invaded the campus, infiltrated a crowd of peaceful students, and used violent tactics to close down the event," adding U.C. Police "concluded that the speaker had to be evacuated from campus for his own safety, thereby bringing the event to an end."

In an early morning tweet Wednesday, Trump condemned the university:

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?



According to the university's 2014-2015 Annual Financial Report, U.C. Berkeley received $466.5 million in federal funding. The number includes grants, contracts and bond subsidies.

Among the Democrats who fired back at Trump was Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), whose district includes the campus:

Pres. Trump doesn't have a license to blackmail universities. He's the president, not a dictator, & his empty threats are an abuse of power.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin told CNBC that Trump's tweets could put U.C. Berkeley students on edge.

"It's a real concern. I think the university's been concerned ever since he took office that there would be deep cuts in federal funding, " said Arreguin. "It's really irresponsible for the President to make such a claim," he added.

But Ed Wasserman, dean at U.C.Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, believes Trump's tweets shouldn't be taken literally.

"I don't think that Trump's implied threat should be taken seriously. I don't think 90 percent of his tweets should be taken seriously. He tweets the way someone doodles on a scratchpad when we're sitting in a meeting," Wasserman told CNBC.

The incident also touched off debate about freedom of speech. While Trump argued in his tweet that Yiannopoulos' freedom of speech was curtailed, critics of the Breitbart editor say Yiannopoulos' provocative language is hate speech.

Wasserman says in this case, the line between free speech and hate speech is murky.

"I'm reluctant to condemn it as hate speech...," said Wasserman, "but I would certainly say that I understand the discomfort that people feel about him, and understand people who feel that way not just because they don't like to be referred to in the ways that he refers to them, but they're very much afraid that other people will be emboldened by his words and act in ways that are genuinely harmful to them."

The university dean later pointed out to CNBC that while hate speech on its own is not illegal, it can be used as evidence of hatred, which can lead to stiffer punishments in certain hate-crime cases.

For his part, Wasserman worries that political divisions across the country will mute freedom of speech.

"It certainly doesn't look good right now," he said. "People aren't listening to each other, they're shouting at each other."

Correction: Ed Wasserman, dean at U.C. Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, says he misspoke in an earlier version of this article. It was updated to clarify that hate speech is not, on its own, illegal.


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President Donald Trump's bold and unpredictable leadership style tends to spark volatility in the stock market, prompting many investors to ask Jim Cramer if it is time to shift retirement investments to cash. "My answer is no and yes," the "Mad Money" host said. Yet that doesn't mean investors should go into cash and dump their stock exposure in their 401(k) and IRA plans, Cramer said. If you are on the verge of needing that money, then he blessed taking some out.

As for a stock investment, a low cost Index fund is something that could be considered for the long-term. "You can still pick stocks, but they have to be part of a broader theme, a theme solid enough that it can trump, well, Trump," Cramer said. "Otherwise you will just jettison the stock when the 'Tweeter in Chief' frightens you into selling, at what will no doubt be an inopportune time." For investors that believe in the social, mobile, cloud and artificial intelligence cohorts, Cramer recommended Alphabet , Amazon and Facebook . Amazon's stock fell 4 percent after-hours on Thursday because of a lighter than expected forecast. "These are your chances to get in, not get out and don't be deterred with Facebook just because SNAP filed to go public tonight and its growth looks solid," Cramer said.

President Donald Trump stands before signing executive orders in the Hall of Heroes at the Department of Defense in Arlington, Virginia, on Friday, Jan. 27, 2017. Olivier Douliery | Pool via Bloomberg | Getty Images

Facebook has perhaps the best business model of all time, according to Cramer. "When you have an amazing product that is beloved and in demand worldwide and it costs very little to produce and has no serious competition. That's Facebook," he said. Thus, Cramer was shocked when investors sold the stock of Facebook on Thursday. He considers the social network to be a very rare company with incredible prospects, with a fairly low stock valuation compared to most other stocks. "There aren't many of those and as it goes down over the next couple of days, which has been the pattern, I think you would be nuts to pass it up," Cramer said. Shares of International Paper fell 5 percent on Thursday after the company reported earnings, which CEO Mark Sutton attributed to a "margins squeeze" that occurred in the second half of 2016. "We had input costs rising. We were able to raise prices, but that's just beginning to take traction as we turn the calendar into 2017," Sutton told "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer. International Paper is the top maker of corrugated packaging in North America, and a major producer of coated paperboard and un-coated free sheet. The stock has had a big run since the election, up to nearly $58 last week from $44 on Election Day.

Wings too hot?

Boston Globe | Getty Images
Pakistan must do more to combat homegrown terrorism or risk joining the Muslim-majority nations on President Donald Trump's travel ban, political risk consultancy Eurasia has warned.

"Pakistan's continuing loss of influence with the [U.S.] executive branch and Congress could result in some form of economic and travel sanctions," said analysts Sasha Riser-Kositsky and Shailesh Kumar in a Thursday note.

"A senior White House official already suggested that Pakistan could be included on a list of terrorism-wracked countries whose citizens are now temporarily banned from entering the U.S."



Some policy experts were surprised that the South Asian nation wasn't included on Trump's Jan. 27 executive order. The Islamic Republic of Pakistan has long been a hotbed for various militant groups and those motivated by sectarianism, anti-India sentiments, the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, or ISIS, are among the most prolific.

Washington and Islamabad share a multi-faceted relationship in areas of security, energy and investment, with the U.S. being Pakistan's largest export destination. In a December phone call, Trump told Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif that he was "willing to play any role" to help "fantastic' Pakistan."
Former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of State, testifies during his confirmation hearing before Senate Foreign Relations Committee January 11, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Alex Wong | Getty Images

What does Tillerson think about climate change?

Judging from what we learned at his confirmation hearing on January 11, Tillerson is a "lukewarmer," someone who acknowledges that the climate is changing, but doesn't think it will be that bad and doesn't think we know enough to take serious action anyway. Functionally, a lukewarmer isn't much different than an outright denier  they do not support serious policy. But politically, lukewarmism is a much smarter, more soothing stance, because it dodges the uncomfortable "denier" label. At his hearing, Tillerson tried to get away with lukewarmism. Usually it works; very few US politicians scratch more than an inch deep on climate change, and lukewarmism has very nice-sounding inch-deep answers. Unfortunately for Tillerson, as I wrote in a post at the time, he ran into a politician who actually understands climate change and was not satisfied with inch-deep answers. Here's how it went down: Late into the hearing, it came time for Sen. Jeff Merkley's second round of questioning. What followed was something rare in US politics: a substantive back and forth on the subject of climate change. It was a deft bit of work on Merkley's part, as it drew Tillerson out. Underneath the polish, it turns out, he is a very familiar sort of climate skeptic. Being a "lukewarmer" means you acknowledge that carbon emissions are having a warming effect, but say we can't predict what will happen, we can't live without fossil fuels, and we can adapt to whatever climate change does occur. I don't doubt that many lukewarmers sincerely believe all this, and maybe Tillerson does too. But regardless, it is an extremely convenient stance for someone in his position. And it is strategically savvy. It enables him (and ExxonMobil) to appear sober and sensible in contrast to science deniers like, uh, Tillerson's boss, who think it's all a hoax. But it doesn't commit them to any urgency or suggest any particular level of greenhouse gas reductions. Similarly, supporting a global, revenue-neutral carbon tax enables them to appear open-minded and solution-oriented without committing them to any policy that actually has a chance of passing. Lukewarmism has always been the smarter play for conservatives, but their zealotry carried them over into conspiracy theories. It's making a comeback, though, especially among the think tank set. One key insight behind lukewarmism is that interest in climate change among US elected officials and national journalists is an inch-deep at best. Almost never will a US politician be pushed beyond bromides, usually about whether climate change is "real." (Imagine: "Senator, what is your position on diabetes? Is it real?") A lukewarmer has plenty of bromides: Climate change is a real risk; we should do something about it; research and innovation are great. That's all it takes to be deemed sensible on climate policy. Rarely if ever will anyone probe beyond that. And Tillerson is smooth, too. It's easy to see why he's good in negotiations. He rarely says more than he has to and betrays little emotion. But Merkley actually pushed.







[W]e see Tillerson beginning to show his cards. That there is uncertainty in climate models, particularly when it comes to predicting specific regional impacts in specific future years, is undeniable. Its practically a truism in the field.

He starts by trying to get Tillerson to plainly acknowledge that climate change is a serious risk. Tillerson doesn't want to get caught sounding too unequivocal, so he grumbles about how "the models" don't agree on what's going to happen. In fact, "none of them agree." And here we see Tillerson beginning to show his cards. That there is uncertainty in climate models, particularly when it comes to predicting specific regional impacts in specific future years, is undeniable. It's practically a truism in the field. But by the same token, models do converge with high confidence on big-picture impacts at high temperatures. There is more than enough model agreement to alarm the hell out of scientists.

Merkley then points out that noticeable impacts of climate change are already taking place in his state and many others, and that it's only going to get worse. He notes that many people are coming to see global warming as a national security threat. Does Tillerson? "I don't see it as the imminent security threat that perhaps others do," Tillerson acknowledges. Those "others" include a wide swath of the national security community and the Department of Defense itself, which called climate change a "threat multiplier." Obama climate tweet

Merkley then points out that the drought in Syria is what helped cause the civil war and migrations that ended up producing so much political trouble across Europe. Has Tillerson considered climate's role as a threat multiplier? Tillerson acknowledges that there are droughts and insect infestations, but says "the science behind the clear connection is not conclusive." He says there are "many reports out there" that say we can't connect individual weather and climactic events to global warming. This kind of hair-splitting about causality is an old chestnut in climate debates, but it too is rapidly being rendered anachronistic. The National Academies of Science recently issued a book-length report, authored by dozens of researchers, surveying the rapidly maturing field of attribution science. They emphasize that it's important to frame the question correctly. No, background atmospheric conditions are never "the cause" of a weather event, much less a complex sociopolitical event like armed conflict. What changes in background atmospheric conditions do is raise the probability of more proximate threats. They make a whole range of dangers more likely. But properly understood, yes, it is increasingly possible to attribute individual weather events to changes brought about by global warming. We can say that it is very unlikely a particular event would have happened without warming, which amounts to the same thing. Merkley explains all this and asks whether Tillerson agrees that climate change raises the odds of extreme weather events. "Some literature suggests that," Tillerson says. "There's other literature that suggests it's inconclusive." Again, Tillerson is showing his cards. "Scientists disagree" is the oldest skeptic argument of all. The global warming signal amidst the weather noise is getting clearer and clearer, but the argument never changes. Merkley doesn't soft-pedal it either. He says Tillerson's position is "disappointing."



Merkley then asks about the Paris agreement. Tillerson says (what he said probably a half-dozen times at the hearing) that the US "needs a seat at that table." This is clearly a talking point, but it is, deliberately, I think, ambiguous. A "seat at the table" could mean staying in the Paris agreement, or it could simply mean staying a part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. I wish Merkley had pushed a bit on this. But more interesting is Tillerson's view of the dynamic of international climate negotiations. Another very, very old skeptic argument is that even if climate change is real, other countries aren't doing anything about it, so if the US does, it's only playing itself, putting itself at a competitive disadvantage. Trump 2012 tweet But the Paris agreement has rendered this argument finally and completely absurd. Nearly every country involved has pledged specific emission reductions and committed to a system whereby those reductions will be regularly reviewed and the information transparently shared. The notion that the US is at risk of acting alone is a decade old. If anything, the US has become a laggard. China is now investing more in renewable energy and building more renewable energy capacity than the US, by an increasing margin. Merkley points out that US leadership matters. Does Tillerson agree? "We need a seat at the table," he repeats. Then he says it's important that "others step forward" and "decide if it's important to them or not." "If America's the only one that's willing to lead," Tillerson says, beginning to sound somewhat exasperated, "then my conclusion is that the rest of the world doesn't think it's very important." America the only one willing to lead? The international community is going to find that darkly amusing. Merkley points out that China and India are both rapidly shifting toward renewables. He pushes again: Other countries are stepping up. Shouldn't we? Tillerson stubbornly repeats that the US needs to be "part of the conversation." In other words, no. He doesn't think the US should lead on this issue. It took someone asking him directly to make that clear.


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HACKBERRY, La.  Theresa Horner was once a stay-at-home mom with a degree in criminal justice that she wasn't interested in putting to use. Looking to try her hand at a new skill, Horner decided to take a welding course at SOWELA Technical Community College not far from here in Lake Charles. She graduated at the top of her class in November 2015. Then just over a year ago, she landed a job with Chicago Bridge & Iron , a global energy infrastructure company with more than 40,000 employees.

Theresa Horner, CB&I Structural Welder. Source: CNBC

Today, Horner works as a structural welder at the Cameron LNG Liquefaction Project under CB&I. That includes a liquefaction facility and 36-mile natural gas pipeline that goes through Louisiana's Gulf Coast region, which will be exporting natural gas primarily to Japan come 2019. "There are just all these different people, with different crafts working together as a team," Horner, 34, said of the job site, where more than 10,000 people have worked since 2014. "You have to co-exist in this environment  it's unlike any other job." The construction industry has undergone a boom in hiring in the post Great Recession era, adding 1.3 million jobs in the past six years, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. That growth is poised to continue under the Trump administration, if the president makes good on his promises to invest in infrastructure spending. As a candidate, Donald Trump proposed a targeted investment to fill a funding gap of some $1 trillion the National Association of Manufacturers estimated the U.S. would face. Just last week at a Republican retreat in Philadelphia, Trump reiterated his campaign promises to increase infrastructure investment. "We believe the world's best country should have the world's best infrastructure," he said. "We will build new roads, and highways, and tunnels and airports and railroads across the nation. We will fix our existing product before we build anything brand new." Since taking office he's also used executive action to advance the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipeline projects Overall, the construction industry is feeling optimistic, and Trump has caught its attention. A survey released in January from the general contractors association found 73 percent of firms plan to expand their payrolls this year thanks to strong demand from the public and private sectors. This is the most optimistic outlook in seven years.



Theresa Horner, CB&I Structural Welder Source: CNBC

"There's certainly the potential for seeing a lot more construction," said Kenneth Simonson, the association's chief economist. "But we are not really sure yet how that money would be deployed and equally important, is where it would come from." Construction employment set an all-time high of 7.7 million jobs in April 2006, but then lost 2.3 million positions, or 30 percent of its workforce, hitting a low of 5.4 million jobs in January 2011, according to the association. "Partly because the industry's job losses were so steep, long-lasting and did not end until a year after the rest of the economy began adding workers in early 2010, it's been hard to find experienced workers, or convince new entrants that construction offers a secure and high-paying career," Simonson said. He added that 73 percent of firms are struggling to hire, thanks to the black eye the recession made on the industry. The job losses suffered during the recession have created a skills gap within construction, one that companies like CB&I are trying to fill. The company has partnered with community colleges, vocational and technical schools to create customized workforce development programs in Louisiana, and is increasing its military recruiting as well. The graduation rate for these training programs is at 87 percent, and offers have been made to at least 75 percent of those who participated, according to CB&I CEO Philip Asherman. "These are good-paying jobs," he said. "They're not minimum-wage jobs, the average mechanical rate on the Gulf Coast is roughly $32 to $33 an hour plus benefits. They also have the opportunity for career advancement into field supervision and project management."



Philip Asherman, CB&I President and CEO Source: CNBC
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Chipotle 's woes may not be behind it just yet. The burrito chain still has plenty of work ahead to persuade diners to come back to its stores. After what CEO Steve Ells called the "most challenging [year] we've ever faced in our 23-year history," sales at the chain's established stores turned positive in December for the first month in more than a year. They had been in a downward spiral since last October, when news broke about its highly publicized E. coli outbreak. With comparable sales now trending in the right direction  albeit off a 30 percent decline in the prior-year period  Chipotle's management laid out its plans to continue growing these revenues next year, while saving $100 million in costs. The strategy was first outlined at the ICR Conference in Orlando, Florida, in January and was elaborated on during an earnings conference call Thursday. "Returning to our roots of what originally made Chipotle great has helped refocus all of our strategies toward the guest experience," Ells said in a statement Thursday. "In the upcoming year we intend to continue to simplify and improve our restaurant operations, utilize creative marketing to rebuild our brand, and further the roll-out of our digital sales efforts."

With this plan in place, Chipotle expects it will be able to turnaround its same-store sales and post increases in the high-single digits this year. Here are five ways the company plans to reel in more customers.

Promote digital ordering

Chipotle has been tweaking its online ordering technologies, and recently started promoting these easier-to-use tools. The campaign follows its launch of more accurate pickup times, which rolled out across more than 1,000 shops in December. The remaining 1,000-plus Chipotle locations will get this capability in the first quarter. By narrowing the pickup window  and trimming the amount of time it takes to put together online orders  the stores that have rolled out this upgrade have seen a lift in visits to its website. These stores have also turned more digital visitors into buyers. Remote orders account for roughly 7 percent of Chipotle's sales, and could lead to an additional 130 orders being made in an hour without any extra labor, the company said. Mobile order and pay apps promise more convenience for customers and restaurant staff alike. However, few chains are equipped to deal with patrons speeding through the checkout.

Starbucks disclosed that the increase in user volume and crowding at pickup stations caused incoming customers to leave without making purchases. Chipotle, however, said that that will not be a problem for its chains. The burrito company plans to add $2 million worth of additional labor to its stores to deal with influxes in mobile and digital orders.

Make its stores run more smoothly

One of Chipotle's founding principles was simplicity. But as its operations grew, so did its complexity. Under its previous strategy, employees were rewarded for how well they performed against 27 measures  most of which were not related to serving the customer, Ells said at ICR. That led to complaints about slow lines and dirty stores. Now, the chain is telling workers to focus on five strategies, three of which relate directly to customer service. Chipotle is seeking to deliver the best possible customer service, believing this to be the key in driving infrequent customers into becoming more frequent customers. The company is also making changes to its hiring process, which previously required all members of a store's team to meet every candidate. While well-intended, that policy often pulled workers off the food service line at peak hours. It was also time-consuming, as an average 17 candidates were interviewed for each open position. And because the process took an average five days, Chipotle lost some labor to competitors.

Bring back former customers

Even as Chipotle has made progress attracting new customers, it's struggled to bring former diners back into its stores. The chain is targeting some 60 million customers who have either stopped visiting its restaurants or go infrequently. It will also launch a scripted TV series for kids, focused on real ingredients. Though the company plans to spend less on marketing and promotions as a percent of sales, it will run ads more consistently throughout the year. "Over the second half of 2016 we attracted millions of new or lapsed customers and we are pleased with the rate that these new customers are converting from new or lapsed to regular customers," Ells said on the conference call Thursday.



Hold more fundraising events

Group visits to Chipotle have mostly returned, thanks to a lift in online orders and catering. But fundraising events are another way the company can attract large chunks of customers at once, management said. An added bonus: 40 percent of customers who come in for a fundraiser haven't been there in six months.

Tweak its menu

New menu items will not be a significant driver of Chipotle's business, as they can add complexity to its operations and slow down the line. However, the chain is testing a dessert item that adds only one ingredient not already found in its stores. If the secret menu item gets the green light, it would be released in the spring. Chipotle may also test some higher prices, but not in the near term, the company said Thursday. Ells noted during the conference call that the company has eaten a lot of the labor and food cost increases and that its menu pricing has lagged behind. However, it doesn't plan "jam a very high menu in crease" to on customers. "That's never been our strategy, we have always wanted to be accessible to the masses. We want to remain affordable," he said.



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The statue of Lady Justice stands atop the Court of Final Appeal building in the Central district of Hong Kong, China, on Friday, Nov. 4, 2016.

Was billionaire Xiao Jianhua abducted or did he return to the mainland voluntarily? Many people have already jumped to conclusions. Some are comparing his disappearance to that of five Hong Kong booksellers last year, who reappeared across the border "to assist in investigations" while claiming to have done so voluntarily.

It's understandable that Xiao's case has attracted international attention. He is one of China's richest people. If his abduction theory holds, it means no one in Hong Kong is safe from the long arm of Chinese law. But new reports about the case seem to indicate he went back to the mainland voluntarily.

Police said CCTV footage showed Xiao and two of his female bodyguards left the Four Seasons Hotel in Central on their own, without any sign of struggle. Citing unnamed sources, a Ming Pao report claimed the trio were seen travelling in a car across the border at the Lok Ma Chau checkpoint with no one else inside. Of course, it all depends on who you believe.

According to the anti-communist Apple Daily, mainland agents hired local triads to abduct Xiao. Some overseas newspapers reported that the agents themselves jumped an entourage of female bodyguards at the hotel to get their man.


Villagers listen to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley during a BJP-SAD alliance election campaign rally at a village called Rajasansi, located about 12 kms from Amritsar on January 29, 2017. NARINDER NANU / AFP / Getty Images

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tested the public with his controversial banknote policy last year. Now, upcoming state elections will give citizens a chance to grade Modi's leadership on the matter. Elections in five statesUttar Pradesh, Goa, Uttarakhand, Punjab and Manipurkick off this month, with final results due March 11. First up are Goa and Punjab, where polls open on Saturday.

As the country's most populous province and one with the biggest share of seats in parliament, Uttar Pradesh is a political bellwether and will be of most importance for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Voting there begins Feb. 11.



Because the polls come on the heels of demonetization, that's set to be a major theme. "The state poll results will be a key indicator for the 2019 general election on how people viewed Modi's drive against black money," Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML) summed up in a recent report. In November, Modi recalled existing 500 ($7.35) and 1,000 ($14.70) rupee notes, which make up 86 percent of Indian currency, and issued new 500 and 2,000 rupee notes in their replacement. The shock announcement, aimed at cracking down on undeclared revenues, caused a drastic cash shortage and economic pain, hitting everything from factory output to consumption.

Public opinion was mixedat the time; many complained about the impact on low-income citizens and business supply chains, whileothers praised Modi for his anti-corruption efforts.

Assessing the BJP's chances

Nearly three months on, Modi appears to continue to enjoy widespread support, pointed out Jan Zalewski, senior South Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft. Despite poor implementation and widespread ill-effects linked to the currency reform, the Prime Minister is still able to enter the election race on a moral high ground because he branded demonetization as an anti-corruption measure, he continued.

Recent opinion polls indicate victory for the BJP, particularly in Uttar Pradesh, where its primary rivals are regional factions, including the incumbent Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). In the other four states, the BJP faces national opposition parties, such as Congress.

Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi chief minister and head of the Aam Aadmi Party, during a road show ahead of assembly elections in Patiala on January 27, 2017 . Bharat Bhushan / Hindustan Times / Getty Images

A survey conducted earlier this month by THE WEEK-Hansa Research predicted the BJP to win the battleground state, while a separate survey by Axis-My-India for the India Today Group also projected a BJP majority there. BofAML however offered a more pessimistic take on the BJP's chances in Uttar Pradesh, noting that the race was split three-ways with the SP and BSP. A BJP loss in the all-important state could result in several long-term consequences. If SP candidatecurrent chief minister Akhilesh Yadavwins, SP will take a more prominent role in opposing Modi's agenda in New Delhi, with Yadav emerging as "a meaningful political threat to the BJP as a national leader and potential alternative to Modi," political consultancy Eurasia said in a note. If the low caste-centric BSP is victorious, that would imply caste and identity politics remain a major issue in India, which could result in the BSP having less bearing on the BJP and national politics, Eurasia explained. To boost its chances, Modi's administration was expected to unveil voter-friendly policies in its annual budget on Wednesday, which strategically preceded the polls. For the 2017-2018 fiscal year, finance minister Arun Jaitley did announce a number of populist measures, including more investment on rural development and infrastructure. "The mere potential of voter backlash raised the prospects of a populist budget," said Zalewski.

Is Uttar Pradesh really crucial?
International Paper is the top maker of corrugated packaging in North America, and a major producer of coated paperboard and un-coated free sheet. The stock has had a big run since the election, up to nearly $58 last week from $44 on Election Day.

"We had input costs rising. We were able to raise prices, but that's just beginning to take traction as we turn the calendar into 2017," Sutton told " Mad Money " host Jim Cramer.

Shares of International Paper fell 5 percent on Thursday after the company reported earnings, which CEO Mark Sutton attributed to a "margins squeeze" that occurred in the second half of 2016.

Even after an explosion occurred at one of International Paper's mills in Florida, the stock didn't budge. The company also recently doubled down on business with a $2.2 billion acquisition of Weyerhaeuser 's pulp making division.

Sutton attributed issues surrounding input costs to the rise of energy prices, specifically natural gas at the end of the year, and the rise in the price of recovered fiber. This includes bringing older boxes back into the stream. Sutton cited 90 percent of boxes in the U.S. are recycled back into the stream, making it a commodity, and the price rose quickly on demand from China.

"When you have that happen, it can squeeze margins until your price increases flow through," Sutton said.

Moving forward, Sutton expressed optimism for President Donald Trump's agenda. A strong U.S. economy will be good for customers, and be good things for the company, too. Deregulation could also help the company, Sutton said, because the company generates 70 percent of energy from burning wood biomass, and would like it to be declared carbon neutral.

"Those are the kinds of things that we just get hung up with in the EPA and other areas, and we need to move on, because it takes a lot of uncertainty off the table around where you need to spend capex," Sutton said.
Financier Xiao Jianhua, founder of Beijing-based Tomorrow Group, was staying long-term at Hong Kong's luxury Four Seasons hotel, according to reports in overseas Chinese-language media.

The abduction of Xiao Jianhua from Hong Kong by Chinese agents last week is stoking investor concerns about the network of businesses and shareholdings the billionaire controls.

The reopening of Chinese stock markets on Friday after a week-long hiatus will give them their first litmus test. Share prices are set to show whether the disappearance of the former "bagman" to families of Communist party leaders forces his powerful backers to liquidate their holdings. Others are speculating on a renationalisation of assets held by Mr Xiao or his Tomorrow Group.

The 45-year-old financier has not appeared in public since he left his Hong Kong residence in the early hours last Friday, accompanied by Chinese security agents. He later told his family he was in mainland China, according to people familiar with the investigation.

More from the Financial Times:

China sends its billionaires a chilling message

Xiao Jianhua, student leader who became an abducted tycoon

HK democrats condemn China's abduction of tycoon



Mr Xiao liked to style himself a value investor and disciple of Warren Buffett. But his primary asset seemed to be an ability to make himself useful when China's powerful families needed to move money around. Shell companies he controlled were instrumental in several deals involving families of Chinese leaders. These include the 2006 privatisation of Luneng Group, a state-owned power company in Shandong that was later renationalised, and the 2013 sale of a stake in Ping An Insurance .

In recent days the previously censored 2006 story of the Luneng privatisation by the family of Zeng Qinghong, a politician allied with Jiang Zemin, the former president, has been allowed to circulate freely on social media in China. Its resurrection is seen as a sign of larger political motives behind his repatriation.

His known investments stretched from chemical plants and coal mines near his wife's hometown in Inner Mongolia to property ventures and Ping An.
In an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews that aired on Thursday night, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway managed to get two huge things wrong in a short, 19-second answer. First, she said that the Obama administration banned Iraqi refugees from entering in the United States for six months in 2011  which is flatly untrue.

Second, and more significantly, she made up a terrorist attack committed by Iraqi refugees that never happened  the "Bowling Green Massacre":

Tweet 1

Joe Sonka is, to be clear, 100 percent correct about this. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky committed by Iraqi refugees.

Conway claims that "most people don't know that because it didn't get covered." Most people don't know about it because it didn't happen.
With a single tweet, New York City-based writer Ashley C. Ford sparked a movement that's raised thousands of dollars towards paying off student lunch debts across the country.

Students that can't afford cafeteria lunches have the option to receive a meal at no charge  often a cheese sandwich and a carton of milk  and the cost is carried by the school district. Communities are rallying en masse to help pay off that debt.

Since these modest meals are sometimes distributed from a separate line, it can make a student's financial distress obvious to classmates. Ford herself received substitute lunches, and wanted to make a wider audience aware of the opportunity to help. The tweet resonated with her 66,000 (now 68,600) followers.

Kristina Arwood of Evansville, Indiana, was one of those followers inspired by Ford's words. She launched a campaign that so far has raised nearly $24,000 to pay lunch debts in her region.

"It really hit home for me. I grew up on free and reduced-price lunches, but even that 40 cents was hard to get together with four kids," Arwood told the Associated Press. "There were times I wouldn't eat because I didn't have money and didn't want to be labeled as the poor kid."

Arwood is just one of hundreds of people who've sprung to action.
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U.S.-based Seagate , the world's biggest maker of hard disk drives, closed its factory in Suzhou near Shanghai last month with the loss of 2,000 jobs, in a move that has rekindled fears that China is becoming increasingly hostile towards foreign firms operating in the country. A passionate speech presented by Chinese president Xi Jinping at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in early January had been hoped to address the issue, and reassure investors that China's remained open to foreign investment. Xi defended globalization and promised improved market access for foreign companies, a positive sign seen by many that China is still sticking firmly to its opening up policies, first rolled out by late leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. Yet, Seagate joined a spate of foreign companies to shutter operations in China in recent years, for various reasons, but most have attributed the country's high tax regime, rising labor costs and fierce competition from domestic companies. Panasonic , for instance, stopped all its manufacturing of televisions in the country in 2015 after 37 years of operating in China.

WATCH: Why Trumps foreign policy is on a collision course in the South China Sea

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Pedestrians walk past the Marks & Spencer flagship store on December 21, 2015 in Beijing, China. The retailer has since exited the Chinese market. VCG | Getty Images

While it's still open to discussion whether those who have now retreated from China lacked "insight and courage", there are certainly some common factors emerging on why. Keith Pogson, a senior partner at Ernst & Young who oversees financial services in Asia, said the major one is quite simply fierce competition from Chinese rivals. "We are seeing more Chinese companies becoming champions in other countries, and of course that adds a lot of pressure on foreign corporates." he said, agreeing that the gradual phasing out of preferential policies for foreign firms was certainly in China's self-interest. Chinese TV brands, for example, for the first time overtook their South Korean rivals last year, ranking first in global sales, with the market share of TCL  a household name in the domestic home electronics market  increasing more than 50 per cent in Northern American market in the past year. With the rise of such home-grown firms, the Chinese authorities have been leaning towards their own "children", said Pogson, and this gradual phasing out of preferential policies for foreign companies is likely to continue. Preferential treatment towards foreign firms goes back to 1994 when they were included under the country's general tax regulations. Until 2007, firms that received foreign investment were subject to 15 per cent income tax while domestic companies paid 33 per cent tax.

But in recent years Beijing has stepped up its efforts to tighten such policies, with the new Enterprise Income Tax Law and Implementation Rules, effective since 2008 unifying the rate for domestic and foreign companies at 25 per cent.

Unclear laws and inconsistent interpretation of them have also been blamed for the flight of some foreign firms. A survey last year by consulting firm Bain & Company and the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham-China) highlighted those were the two top factors hindering foreign firms' ability to invest and grow in China. High labor costs and a lack of qualified employees were also among the top five challenges, the study showed. An example of the type of regulation that is now hindering foreign progress is the new cyber security law, approved by parliament last November. It sparked fears that foreign technology firms would be shut out and subjected to contentious requirements for security reviews, and for data to be stored on Chinese servers. Despite more than 40 international business groups signing a petition to amend some sections of the law, the final draft approved by the parliament remained unchanged  a clear indication of Beijing's determination to toughen its stance against foreign firms. A quarter of the AmCham-China's 532 member firms taking part in the survey said they had either moved or were planning to move operations out of China by the end of last year, with almost half moving to parts of "developing Asia". "If more overseas companies want to develop in China at this stage," Chong said, "I would suggest they consider second- and third-tier cities." Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.



WATCH: Here's how many jobs China actually stole from the US
Snap's irreverence in its public filing is in line with the way Spiegel has run Snap, as well as his own life. To begin with, the company is located in Venice Beach, Calif., not Silicon Valley. "We love LA, our office is on the beach, and that's pretty nice," Spiegel said at a reCode conference in 2015. "Frankly, for us, it's nice to get a little space from everything going on there, so we can really focus on our business." Spiegel, the son of two successful lawyers, grew up privileged in Los Angeles. In high school, he wrote out a budget to convince his parents that he deserved a monthly allowance of almost $2,000.

Spiegel dropped out of Stanford when he was just a few credits shy of graduating to work full-time on Snapchat. In 2014, a cache of leaked emails between Spiegel and his fraternity brothers when he was in college at Stanford revealed a brutish, offensive attitude towards women. He has since apologized.

In 2013, Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion. Then only 23 years old, Spiegel refused the offer. The media response was incredulous. A college dropout shut the door in Zuckerberg's face? Why? According to a Forbes profile, Spiegel said, "There are very few people in the world who get to build a business like this. I think trading that for some short-term gain isn't very interesting." In a 2015 address delivered at the USC Marshall Undergraduate Commencement, Spiegel framed his decision somewhat differently. "I'm asked one question most often: 'Why didn't you sell your business? It doesn't even make money. It's a fad. You could be on a boat right now. Everyone loves boats. What's wrong with you?'" But, he said, "I am now convinced that the fastest way to figure out if you are doing something truly important to you is to have someone offer you a bunch of money to part with it."

We are who we are today, right now. Evan Spiegel co-founder of Snap

Spiegel intended Snapchat to be the social media platform where users can live in the moment as their more authentic, unpolished selves.

"This traditional social media view of identity is actually quite radical: You are the sum of your published experience. Otherwise known as: Pics or it didn't happen. Or, in the case of Instagram, beautiful pics or it didn't happen AND you're not cool," Spiegel said in a speech he delivered to the AXS Partner Summit conference in 2014.

"Snapchat says that we are not the sum of everything we have said or done or experienced or published. We are the result," he said. "We are who we are today, right now. "We no longer have to capture the 'real world' and recreate it online. We simply live and communicate at the same time." His idea has resonated. Snapchat sees 161 million daily active users globally, with 60 million of those in the United States and Canada. Those users spend between 25 and 30 minutes a day on the platform.

As a manager, Spiegel says he knows he has some work to do. He's decisive, but he changes his mind frequently. "I'm not a great manager. I try to be a great leader. And for me that's been going through a process of, not how to be a great CEO but how to be a great Evan, and that's really been the challenge," Spiegel said at the reCode conference. And he's had to move fast, since the industry does. "I think the key thing there, in all that, is just trying to grow as quickly as possible," Spiegel said. "Again, I probably can't say this enough, but we're in a business that is growing really, really quickly, and at the same time evolving and changing really, really quickly."



In his commencement address, Spiegel also reflected thoughtfully on why he participated in his Stanford graduation ceremony, even though he hadn't completed enough coursework to graduate.



He attended because, in the moment, he "didn't want to be left out," but, he said, "it only recently occurred to me, while preparing this address, how totally absurd this whole charade was. It reminded me that oftentimes we do all sorts of silly things to avoid appearing different."

I am now convinced that the fastest way to figure out if you are doing something truly important to you is to have someone offer you a bunch of money to part with it. Evan Spiegel co-founder, Snap

Spiegel advocated for having the courage to defy expectations. "Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. We want to be accepted by our peers, we want to be a part of the group. It's in our biology. But the things that make us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction." Also in the speech, Spiegel told the story of Bob Rauschenberg erasing the work of his artistic idol, Bill de Kooning. The effort took Rauschenberg two months, and then their contemporary, Jasper Johns, framed the results. "I love this story because Bill de Kooning had the humility to recognize that the greatest thing we can do is provide the best possible foundation for those who come after us. We must welcome our own erasure."
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson greets Department of State employees upon arrival at the Department of State in Washington, February 2, 2017. Joshua Roberts | Reuters

Rex Tillersons 'golden parachute'

In blasting Tillerson, some media outlets have taken to implying that Exxon is showering the incoming secretary of state with additional cash simply because he's joining the government. "Rex Tillerson will make another $180 million if confirmed as Trump's secretary of state," wrote Mic's Jack Buehrer. The reality is more complicated: Tillerson is receiving the $180 million primarily because he's accumulated more than 2 million restricted shares of stock and restricted stock units in years leading the company. Obviously, nobody would argue that it'd be more ethical for Tillerson to keep his Exxon stock options while secretary of state  where he could potentially use the office to increase their value. The controversy instead comes in when we consider how Exxon and Tillerson agreed to separate his financial holdings. Exxon's company policy bans its employees from immediately cashing out on their stocks. To get around that problem, the plan is for Exxon to have Tillerson receive $180 million from an independent trust  one that will pay him over the next 10 years. That arrangement was brokered by the nonpartisan Office of Government Ethics, which signed off on the deal. Some experts, like ethics lawyer Stan Brand, have argued that Exxon's independent trust is in line with company policy. Brand told Bloomberg that since Tillerson's won't be able to immediately receive all the funds in the independent trust, the stocks were not being allocated to Tillerson on an "accelerated schedule" in defiance of company policy. Therefore, Brand said, the fund doesn't amount to any kind of special gift. But critics say Exxon still appears to be going out of its way to help Tillerson with a special exemption. Alan Johnson, a compensation consultant in New York, told Bloomberg that Exxon was deviating from its normal practice "of not delivering stock early" because the independent trust allows Tillerson to immediately separate from Exxon. That makes it look like Exxon is making a special exception to give Tillerson access to $180 million, right before he helms a government agency that could deliver huge financial rewards to Exxon. Exxon drills for oil and gas on six separate continents, and government agencies under the control of Tillerson's state department  like the Bureau of Energy Resources  are directly involved in managing the natural resources of foreign countries, according to Bloomberg. (That state department agency, for instance, helps the South American country of Guyana manage its resources  and Exxon owns nearly half of a 1.4 billion barrel oil field in the country.)

Chao and Cohn are explicitly being rewarded for taking government jobs

Chao and Cohn pose a different problem in the eyes of ethics advocates. That's because, unlike Tillerson, they both have provisions in their contracts that specifically require their companies to reward them with millions if they join the government, according to Holman, of Public Citizen. They would not receive these payouts if they left their companies either to retire or to join a competitor. We only know this kind of arrangement exists on Wall Street because of President Obama's Cabinet. During Jack Lew's Senate confirmation hearing for Treasury secretary in 2013, he revealed that he received $1 million in payments from Citibank in order to join the Obama administration.



Only in the Wonderland of Wall Street logic could one argue that this looks like anything other than a bribe. Sheila Bair Chair of Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

"The point here is clearly to buy favor with the regulator," Holman says. "If you can give the new person in the administration $1 million on their way out, the idea is that they'll then represent your point of view in the government." The idea of a "golden parachute" as a retirement or bonus package for a leaving employee is nothing new. But the revelation about Lew and Citigroup hinted at something much more suspicious  that big financial firms weren't just generously compensating outgoing employees, but that they were explicitly rewarding them for joining the government. That shocked experts, since it suggested that these government officials were taking huge sums of money not because of their work as private regulators but because they had become government officials. "Only in the Wonderland of Wall Street logic could one argue that this looks like anything other than a bribe," Sheila Bair, then the chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said in a statement at the time. At first, the Wall Street banks maintained that Lew's arrangement was an exception. "They were saying it's a one-shot deal and that nobody really did it," Holman says. "And then we found out it was fairly common." A company filing from Morgan Stanley revealed its executives are eligible for a bonus if they work for "a governmental department or agency, self-regulatory agency, or other public service employer." Stanley Fischer, now vice chair of the Federal Reserve, had a similar clause in his Citigroup contract, according to a report by Public Citizen. Antonio Weiss, a counselor to Lew, admitted that Weiss received $21 million from the bank Lazard for entering the government, according to a report by David Dayen in the New Republic. The public never saw the actual text of his contract, Dayen reported. Holman says Chao and Cohn's financial disclosure forms reveal that the practice is continuing into the Trump administration  at least for those two nominees, and possibly others.

We have no idea how many other nominations will have the same problem
Business leaders should be on board with President Donald Trump's executive order to temporarily block U.S. entry for all refugees and citizens of seven mostly Muslim countries, Trump aide Boris Epshteyn told CNBC on Friday.

"What I will tell you is the amount of concern over this pause  90 days  in one case 120, but [it is] completely overblown. We're talking about seven countries," Epshteyn said on "Squawk Box."



The restrictions bar people from the seven countries for 90 days, bans all refugees for 120 days and those from Syria indefinitely.



"As far as business leaders are concerned, if anything, they should be completely on board with the executive order because a safer America is ... better ... for our economy," Epshteyn said.

Trump meets with heads of major U.S. companies on Friday as the business community finds itself split over how to respond to his policies.


It's pretty incredible how often you hear managers complaining about their best employees leaving, and they really do have something to complain about  few things are as costly and disruptive as good people walking out the door. Managers tend to blame their turnover problems on everything under the sun, while ignoring the crux of the matter: people don't leave jobs; they leave managers. More from Travis Bradberry:

Core beliefs of great bosses

How To Crush Your Goals In 2017

Overcoming these challenges will make you more successful

The sad thing is that this can easily be avoided. All that's required is a new perspective and some extra effort on the manager's part.

Organizations know how important it is to have motivated, engaged employees, but most fail to hold managers accountable for making it happen. When they don't, the bottom line suffers. Research from the University of California found that motivated employees were 31% more productive, had 37% higher sales, and were three times more creative than demotivated employees. They were also 87% less likely to quit, according to a Corporate Leadership Council study on over 50,000 people. Gallup research shows that a mind-boggling 70% of an employee's motivation is influenced by his or her manager. So, let's take a look at some of the worst things that managers do that send good people packing.

They overwork people Nothing burns good employees out quite like overworking them. It's so tempting to work your best people hard that managers frequently fall into this trap. Overworking good employees is perplexing; it makes them feel as if they're being punished for great performance. Overworking employees is also counterproductive. New research from Stanford shows that productivity per hour declines sharply when the workweek exceeds 50 hours, and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours that you don't get anything out of working more.

If you must increase how much work your talented employees are doing, you'd better increase their status as well. Talented employees will take on a bigger workload, but they won't stay if their job suffocates them in the process. Raises, promotions, and title-changes are all acceptable ways to increase workload. If you simply increase workload because people are talented, without changing a thing, they will seek another job that gives them what they deserve.



They don't recognize contributions and reward good work It's easy to underestimate the power of a pat on the back, especially with top performers who are intrinsically motivated. Everyone likes kudos, none more so than those who work hard and give their all. Managers need to communicate with their people to find out what makes them feel good (for some, it's a raise; for others, it's public recognition) and then to reward them for a job well done. With top performers, this will happen often if you're doing it right.



They fail to develop people's skills When managers are asked about their inattention to employees, they try to excuse themselves, using words such as "trust," "autonomy," and "empowerment." This is complete nonsense. Good managers manage, no matter how talented the employee. They pay attention and are constantly listening and giving feedback. Management may have a beginning, but it certainly has no end. When you have a talented employee, it's up to you to keep finding areas in which they can improve to expand their skill set. The most talented employees want feedback  more so than the less talented onesand it's your job to keep it coming. If you don't, your best people will grow bored and complacent.

Phil Hartman and Jeff Daniels on Saturday Night Live. NBC | Getty Images

They don't care about their employees More than half of people who leave their jobs do so because of their relationship with their boss. Smart companies make certain their managers know how to balance being professional with being human. These are the bosses who celebrate an employee's success, empathize with those going through hard times, and challenge people, even when it hurts. Bosses who fail to really care will always have high turnover rates. It's impossible to work for someone eight-plus hours a day when they aren't personally involved and don't care about anything other than your production yield.



They don't honor their commitments Making promises to people places you on the fine line that lies between making them very happy and watching them walk out the door. When you uphold a commitment, you grow in the eyes of your employees because you prove yourself to be trustworthy and honorable (two very important qualities in a boss). But when you disregard your commitment, you come across as slimy, uncaring, and disrespectful. After all, if the boss doesn't honor his or her commitments, why should everyone else?



They hire and promote the wrong people Good, hard-working employees want to work with like-minded professionals. When managers don't do the hard work of hiring good people, it's a major demotivator for those stuck working alongside them. Promoting the wrong people is even worse. When you work your tail off only to get passed over for a promotion that's given to someone who glad-handed their way to the top, it's a massive insult. No wonder it makes good people leave.



Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly in "The Devil Wears Prada." Source: 20 Century Fox

They don't let people pursue their passions Talented employees are passionate. Providing opportunities for them to pursue their passions improves their productivity and job satisfaction. But many managers want people to work within a little box. These managers fear that productivity will decline if they let people expand their focus and pursue their passions. This fear is unfounded. Studies show that people who are able to pursue their passions at work experience flow, a euphoric state of mind that is five times more productive than the norm.



They fail to engage creativity The most talented employees seek to improve everything they touch. If you take away their ability to change and improve things because you're only comfortable with the status quo, this makes them hate their jobs. Caging up this innate desire to create not only limits them, it limits you.



They don't challenge people intellectually Great bosses challenge their employees to accomplish things that seem inconceivable at first. Instead of setting mundane, incremental goals, they set lofty goals that push people out of their comfort zones. Then, good managers do everything in their power to help them succeed. When talented and intelligent people find themselves doing things that are too easy or boring, they seek other jobs that will challenge their intellects.


Frankfurt expects up to 10,000 financial industry workers to relocate from Britain to Germany's banking capital as a consequence of Brexit, according to a Frankfurt lobby group.

"We're going to benefit most," Hubertus Vath, managing director at Frankfurt Main Finance, told reporters in London on Thursday.

"Within the eurozone you need to be in Frankfurt to service the area," he added.

Several U.K. based banks are poised to announce at least part of their business operations are being moved from London to another European city, with countries on the continent scrambling to attract top financial officials.

City lenders are attempting to maintain their services throughout the bloc as the U.K. begins its withdrawal from the European Union (EU).

Brexit negotiations have not yet started, however, the U.K. took a step closer to beginning formal negotiations with the bloc as parliament cleared its first legislative hurdle. The U.K. parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of starting the formal two year negotiation process with the EU on Wednesday.

Britain could be set to complete the legislative process by March 7 which would meet Prime Minister Theresa May's self-imposed April deadline.
WHEN: Today, Friday, February 3rd

WHERE: CNBC's "Squawk on the Street"

Following is the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn on "Squawk on the Street" (M-F, 9AM-11AM ET) today, Friday, February 3rd at 9:30am ET. Following is a link to the full interview on CNBC.com: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000590273.

All references must be sourced to CNBC.

CARL QUINTANILLA: AS PRESIDENT TRUMP CONTINUES HIS OUTREACH WITH CORPORATE EXECUTIVES AT THE WHITE HOUSE, NEW SIGNS TODAY ON THE STRENGTH OF THE U.S. ECONOMY. LABOR DEPARTMENT SAYS 227,000 JOBS WERE ADDED IN JANUARY. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE AT 4.8%. JOINING US TO TALK ABOUT THAT AND THIS MEETING AT THE WHITE HOUSE TODAY IS THE DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL FORMER GOLDMAN SACHS C.O.O. GARY COHN. GARY, WE'VE NOT HAD A CHANCE TO CONGRATULATE YOU ON THE NEW JOB. SO CONGRATULATIONS. WELCOME BACK.

GARY COHN: THANK YOU. THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

QUINTANILLA: THIS MEETING YOU'RE ABOUT TO GO INTO -- WE'LL TALK ABOUT JOBS IN A MOMENT, BUT INVESTORS SPENT THE LAST COUPLE MONTHS ABSORBING WHAT THEY SEE AS PRO GROWTH POLICIES, SOME SAY AT THE SAME TIME PROTECTIONIST POLICIES. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THOSE WHO FEEL LIKE IT'S STEPPING ON THE GAS AND THE BRAKES AT THE SAME TIME?

COHN: LOOK, CARL, WE'RE VERY MUCH INTO A PRO GROWTH STRATEGY HERE. AS YOU MENTIONED WE HAVE A CEO GROUP COMING TO THE WHITE HOUSE TODAY. THIS IS OUR FOURTH OR FIFTH, OR MAYBE EVEN OUR SIXTH MEETING WITH CEOs HERE AT THE WHITE HOUSE. WE'VE HAD A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT GROUPS IN ALL TALKING ABOUT GROWING THE ECONOMY, CREATING JOBS, WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP PROMOTE ECONOMIC GROWTH, WHAT WE CAN DO TO HELP PROMOTE JOBS AND PROSPERITY HERE IN THE UNITED STATES. SO EVERYTHING WE'RE DOING IS TRYING TO CREATE JOBS AND TRYING TO CREATE GROWTH HERE IN THE ECONOMY.

JIM CRAMER: GARY, JIM CRAMER. I TOO OFFER YOU CONGRATULATIONS. GREAT TO TALK TO YOU.

COHN: HEY, JIM, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

CRAMER: ABSOLUTELY. GARY, YOU HAVE BEEN FANTASTIC IN TALKING ABOUT WHAT TECHNOLOGY DOES TO JOBS AND HOW EVEN OUR CELL PHONE IT TAKES AWAY JOBS.

COHN: YEAH.

CRAMER: ABOUT HOW IT KEEPS WAGES DOWN. WE SAW WAGE NUMBER TODAY STILL NOT A LOT OF GROWTH. ARE YOU ACTIVELY INVOLVED WITH THE PRESIDENT TALKING ABOUT HOW, YOU KNOW WHAT, EVEN THOUGH WE WANT MANUFACTURING JOBS BACK WE HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT TECHNOLOGY AND WHAT TO DO WITH THE PEOPLE WHO ARE ACTUALLY PUT OUT OF WORK BY OUR FABULOUS TECHNOLOGY.

COHN: JIM, WE'RE SPENDING ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF TIME TALKING ABOUT THAT. THAT HAS BEEN A VERY INTERESTING TOPIC FOR THE FIRST COUPLE WEEKS IN THE WHITE HOUSE. WE REALLY HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT OUR WORKFORCE IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE IN 2020, 2030, 2050. OUR WORKFORCE AND OUR LABOR FORCE IS GOING TO LOOK DIFFERENT THAN IT DID IN THE 1920s, 1930s AND 1950s. MANUFACTURING'S GOING TO BE DIFFERENT. THE ROLE OF AUTOMATION, THE ROLE OF ROBOTICS, ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IS GOING TO BE COMPLETELY WE'RE THINKING ABOUT THAT. WE'RE THINKING ABOUT THE IMPACT. WE'RE THINKING ABOUT THE EDUCATION PROCESS. HOW WE TEACH PEOPLE, HOW WE EDUCATE PEOPLE, HOW WE GET PEOPLE READY TO BE ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN THE WORKFORCE IS GOING TO CHANGE AND CHANGE DRAMATICALLY AND IT'S HAPPENING RIGHT NOW.

CRAMER: ALL RIGHT. THE ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN TOUGH ON SOME OF THE AMERICAN AUTO COMPANIES, OBVIOUSLY HAD MARK FIELDS IN, MARY BARRA, TALK ABOUT GM AND WHETHER GM IS TAKING JOBS AWAY. HOW DO YOU CONVINCE THE BIG GERMAN AND JAPANESE CARMAKERS THAT IT'S NOT REALLY A GREAT IDEA TO OPEN IN MEXICO AND THAT IT WOULD BE BETTER IF THEY OPENED IN SOUTH CAROLINA, IN GEORGIA, IN TEXAS IF THEY REALLY WANT ACCESS TO THE U.S. MARKET?

COHN: WELL, LOOK, THERE'S A LOT OF DIFFERENT WAYS FOR US TO ATTRACT BUSINESS TO THE UNITED STATES. ALL OF THE CEO GROUPS THAT HAVE COME IN HAVE BASICALLY TOLD US THREE THINGS, AND THEY'VE ALL BEEN CONSISTENT WHAT THEY'VE TOLD US. THEY'VE TOLD IT TO US IN THIS ORDER. THE FIRST THING HURTING BUSINESS GROWTH IS REGULATORY POLICY. THE SECOND THING HURTING BUSINESS GROWTH IS TAX POLICY. AND THE THIRD THING HURTING BUSINESS GROWTH IS OUR INFRASTRUCTURE. SO WE HAVE TO ATTACK THOSE THREE THINGS. IRONICALLY THAT IS OUR AGENDA. WE'RE GOING TO GO AFTER OUR REGULATORY POLICY. WE'RE GOING TO LOWER REGULATORY BURDENS IN THE UNITED STATES. WE'RE GOING TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR BUSINESSES TO BUILD BUSINESSES, HIRE PEOPLE, BUILD FACTORIES. NUMBER TWO, WE'VE GOT TO MAKE OUR TAX POLICY MORE COMPETITIVELY ADVANTAGEOUS FOR COMPANIES HERE IN THE UNITED STATES. WE HAVE HIGH TAXES RELATIVE TO THE REST OF THE WORLD. THAT'S A DISADVANTAGE FOR U.S. COMPANIES. WE HAVE A 35% CORPORATE TAX RATE, THE OECD AVERAGE IS ABOUT 23%. GDP WEIGHTED IT'S ABOUT 26%. WE CAN'T BE THAT MUCH HIGHER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD. WE'VE GOT TO GET COMPETITIVE. WE'RE COMMITTED TO DO THAT. LAST THING IS WE'VE GOT TO BUILD A BETTER INFRASTRUCTURE. WE'VE GOT TO MAKE GETTING RAW MATERIALS TO FACTORIES AND GETTING FINISHED GOODS OUT OF FACTORIES MUCH MORE EFFICIENT FOR OUR COMPANIES HERE TO BE COMPETITIVE IN THE WORLD. AND WE'RE COMMITTED TO DO THAT.

DAVID FABER: GARY, IT'S DAVID FABER. YOU MENTIONED OF COURSE TAX REFORM WHICH YOU SAID IS A KEY COMPONENT OF THE OVERALL GROWTH AGENDA. SPECIFIC TO THAT, WILL THE ADMINISTRATION SUPPORT A BORDER TAX ADJUSTMENT AS PART OF ANY TAX REFORM PACKAGE?

COHN: DAVID, AT THIS POINT WE ARE EXPLORING EVERY AND ALL OPTIONS TO GET OUR U.S. CORPORATE TAX RATE DOWN TO THE LOWEST POSSIBLE LEVEL WE CAN GET IT. WE ARE OPEN TO EVERY OPTION. THIS IS A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN GETTING OUR TAXES DOWN. WE'VE GOT A LOT OF EXPENDITURES HERE IN THIS COUNTRY. WE WANT TO PRESERVE MANY OF OUR EXPENDITURES SO WE HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE REVENUE SIDE OF THE EQUATION. WE'RE OPEN TO EVERYTHING, WE'RE NOT EXCLUDING EVERYTHING. BUT I'M NOT TELLING YOU WE'RE INCLUDING THAT. IT IS ONE OF THE OPTIONS THAT'S ON THE TABLE. YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE IT FROM ME THAT THAT'S THE OPTION WE'RE GOING WITH, BUT I'M NOT GOING TO EXCLUDE THAT OPTION. WE ARE MAKING EVERY OPPORTUNITY AVAILABLE TO US TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM.

FABER: ALL RIGHT. WELL, WHERE ARE WE THEN IN TERMS OF WHERE YOU THINK TAX REFORM'S GOING TO GO ON THE CALENDAR, LET'S JUST SAY, AT THIS POINT IN TERMS OF THE ADMINISTRATION'S INPUT AND WHAT HAPPENS? YOU SAY BORDER TAX ADJUSTMENT NO DECISION IS YET. SO MANY IMPORTANT COMPONENTS OF THIS THAT HAVE TO TAKE PLACE AND YET YOU'VE GOT TO GET A SENATE ONBOARD THAT MIGHT HAVE SENATORS FROM STATES WHERE THEY HAVE HUGE RETAILERS WHO HAVE A LOT OF INFLUENCE. THIS IS GOING TO BE A MESS, ISN'T IT, GARY? CAN YOU REALLY SEE A STRAIGHT LINE HERE TO GETTING LEGISLATION LET'S CALL IT BEFORE, I DON'T KNOW, THE FALL?

COHN: SO, DAVID, LOOK, WE ARE WORKING AGGRESSIVELY. AND WE'RE PUTTING ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF TIME AND ENERGY INTO TAX REFORM. SIMULTANEOUS TO THAT WE'RE WORKING ON HEALTH CARE. WE'RE WORKING ON REPEAL AND REPLACE. AND REPLACE IS AS IMPORTANT AS REPEAL AND OBAMACARE. WE'RE WORKING ON TAX POLICY SIMULTANEOUSLY AND WE'RE WORKING ON INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS AS WELL. WE ARE WORKING ON ALL OF THESE THINGS SIMULTANEOUSLY. WE'RE WORKING AS FAST AS WE CAN. WE ALSO HAVE TO DO A BUDGET AND WE HAVE MANY OTHER THINGS THAT WE'RE WORKING ON SIMULTANEOUSLY. WE ARE GOING TO GET THERE. WE ARE SPENDING AS MUCH TIME AS WE CAN POSSIBLY SPEND ON THESE THINGS AND I'M OPTIMISTIC WE'LL GET TO THE RIGHT CONCLUSION.

QUINTANILLA: GARY, CAPITAL MARKETS, INVESTORS, EVERYONE'S TRYING TO ADAPT TO THE NEW TEMPO OF THIS ADMINISTRATION. SO WHEN SEAN SPICER COMES OUT AND FLOATS A 20% TARIFF TO PAY FOR A WALL, DO YOU HAVE INVOLVEMENT IN THAT? HOW MUCH ARE YOU A PART OF THESE THINGS THAT SEEM TO POP OUT OF NOWHERE?

COHN: WE'VE GOT A LOT OF BALLS UP IN THE AIR. WE'VE COME OUT ON THE BLOCKS FAST. WE'RE TRYING TO GET AS MUCH DONE AS WE CAN. WE'RE THROWING A LOT OF IDEAS AROUND. AND, LOOK, WE'RE GOING TO GET TO THE RIGHT PLACE. THE ONE THING I KNOW FOR SURE IS WE'RE GOING TO GET TO THE RIGHT PLACE.

FABER: WHY DO YOU KNOW THAT?

COHN: BECAUSE I'M CONFIDENT WE'RE GOING TO GET TO THE RIGHT PLACE. WE'VE GOT A LOT OF SMART PEOPLE WORKING ON THE TOPICS, WORKING ON THE ISSUES, WE'RE EXPLORING ALL THE OPTIONS AND WE'LL GET TO THE RIGHT PLACE.

QUINTANILLA: WE'VE HAD YOU ON FOR YEARS AND WE'VE KNOWN YOU AS SOMEONE WHO, WHEN YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE, IT GETS DONE. WE'VE TALKED A LOT ABOUT THAT AT THE CULTURE OF GOLDMAN. OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A DIFFERENT SETUP WHERE YOU ARE NOW. CAN YOU JUST TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT WHAT YOU'VE LEARNED SO FAR OPERATING IN THIS CONTEXT?

COHN: WELL, LOOK, THE LAST TWO WEEKS OR THREE WEEKS HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING FOR ME. COMING TO WASHINGTON, COMING TO THE WHITE HOUSE, GETTING INVOLVED IN THE TRANSITION, IT'S BEEN AN EXTRAORDINARY LEARNING EXPERIENCE FOR ME. PERSONALLY, I'VE LEARNED A LOT. IT IS A DIFFERENT CULTURE THAN RUNNING A FINANCIAL SERVICES COMPANY. AND, LOOK, EVERY DAY I LEARN MORE. EVERY DAY I GET SMARTER. BUT EVERY DAY I FEEL LIKE WE AS A TEAM IN THE WHITE HOUSE ARE GETTING BETTER AND BETTER AT WHAT WE'RE DOING. SO I CONTINUE TO BE VERY OPTIMISTIC.

CRAMER: GARY, DURING THE CAMPAIGN, THE PRESIDENT WAS NOT THAT SYMPATHETIC TO BIG BANKS. AND YET NOW WE SEE DODD/FRANK COMPLETELY REVISITED AND TAKE A LOT OF THE TEETH OUT OF IT. THE SUITABILITY ISSUES FOR THE LABOR DEPARTMENT. WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN CAMPAIGN TRUMP AND PRESIDENT TRUMP? AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO BE ABLE TO SAY, YOU KNOW WHAT, IF WE REALLY WANT TO GET THIS ECONOMY MOVING  SMALL BUSINESS, BIG BUSINESS  WE HAVE GOT TO BE ACTUALLY EASIER ON THE LARGE BANKS, NOT TOUGHER.

COHN: I THINK PRESIDENT TRUMP IS VERY REALISTIC ABOUT GROWING THE ECONOMY. HE'S HEARD FROM OVER 50 CEOs THAT REGULATORY ISSUES ARE WHAT'S SLOWING THEM DOWN. HE'S ASKED US TO START ATTACKING THE REGULATORY ISSUES THAT WE THINK ARE SLOWING DOWN ECONOMIC GROWTH. AND ONE BY ONE, WE WILL PICK OFF THESE ISSUES AND WE COME TO HIM WITH AN IDEA AND WE EXPLAIN TO HIM THE ISSUE AND WE EXPLAIN TO HIM WHY IT IS HINDERING SOMETHING OR WHY IT IS NOT HELPING THE AMERICAN CONSUMER. HE IS MORE THAN HAPPY TO GET INVOLVED. AND HE IS GIVING US THE LATITUDE TO FIX WHAT WE THINK IS WRONG.

CRAMER: ALL RIGHT. BUT LET'S GIVE YOU A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE. I HAD MARK SUTTON ON LAST NIGHT, CEO OF INTERNATIONAL PAPER. GREAT AMERICAN COMPANY. AND HE SAID LISTEN, THE EPA IS JUST WAY TOO TOUGH ON US. I HAVE MOST OF THE PIPELINE COMPANIES COME ON. THEY SAY THE EPA JUST WILL NOT LET US DO WHAT WE WANT. THE OIL COMPANIES COME ON AND SAY LISTEN, WE WANT TO DRILL, WE WANT TO PUT PEOPLE TO WORK, THE EPA SAYS NO. HOW DO YOU BALANCE THE IDEA OF  I KNOW YOU CARE TREMENDOUSLY ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT BECAUSE I KNOW YOU OUTSIDE OF WORK, AND I ALSO KNOW YOU CARE ABOUT JOBS. HOW DO YOU  WHAT HAPPENS IN THOSE MEETINGS? DOES THE PRESIDENT SAY LET'S GET EPA IN HERE AND LET'S START GIVING THEM THE BUSINESS? WHAT GOES ON?

COHN: LOOK, THE PRESIDENT SAYS LET'S IDENTIFY THE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. LET'S JUST NOT TALK IN GENERAL ISSUES. LET'S GET TO THE SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. REMEMBER, THE PRESIDENT IS A BUSINESSMAN. BUSINESSMEN ATTACK SPECIFIC PROBLEMS. SO WHEN YOU COME IN AND YOU TALK TO THE PRESIDENT ABOUT A PROBLEM, YOU CAN'T SAY, LOOK, THE PROBLEM IS BIG AND NONDESCRIPT. YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM WHAT THE DESCRIPT PROBLEM IS AND THEN WE ATTACK THE DESCRIPT PROBLEM. AND HE WILL SIT DOWN PROBLEM BY PROBLEM AND WORK THROUGH IT WITH YOU.

FABER: GARY, OUR AUDIENCE INTERESTED IN PART IN THE GSEs. AND I KNOW YOU'VE SPOKEN AND SAID A COUPLE THINGS, BUT WE'RE STILL TRYING TO UNDERSTAND DETAILS IN TERMS OF CHANGING THE CONSERVATIVESHIP, CHANGING THE SWEEP, CHANGING BASICALLY WHAT'S GOING ON WITH FANNIE AND FREDDIE. WHAT DO YOU HAVE PLANNED HERE? AND ARE WE ACTUALLY GOING TO SEE THOSE PLANS SOON?

COHN: SO THE GSE REFORM IS DEFINITELY ON OUR AGENDA. TREASURY SECRETARY DESIGNEE STEVE MNUCHIN HAS BEEN SPENDING A LOT OF TIME WORKING ON THAT. ONCE HE GETS APPROVED AND CONFIRMED, STEVE WILL BE TAKING THAT ON AS ONE OF HIS EARLY PRIORITIES. SO WE DEFINITELY HAVE SOME PLANS IN PLACE TO WORK ON THAT. AND HOPEFULLY HE GETS APPROVED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

QUINTANILLA: GARY, WILL THE PRESIDENT APPOINT A CHAIR TO THE CEA?

COHN: I THINK HE HAS EVERY INTENTION OF DOING THAT.

QUINTANILLA: AND FINALLY, YOU GAVE A QUOTE TO THE JOURNAL ON THE FIDUCIARY RULE. YOU SAID WE THINK IT'S A BAD RULE. IT'S LIKE PUTTING ONLY HEALTHY FOOD ON THE MENU BECAUSE THEN HEALTHY FOOD TASTES GOOD, BUT YOU STILL SHOULDN'T EAT IT BECAUSE YOU MIGHT DIE YOUNGER. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THAT?

COHN: I DON'T RECALL THAT QUOTE, BUT OKAY. LOOK, WHAT I'M SAYING IS, LOOK, THE FIDUCIARY RULE WAS COMPLETELY MISINTENDED. SO WHAT THEY WERE TRYING TO DO IS THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE TRYING TO PROTECT INVESTORS IN THEIR RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS, BUT BY PROTECTING INVESTORS, THEY HIGHLY LIMITED THEIR CHOICES. I DON'T THINK YOU PROTECT INVESTORS BY LIMITING CHOICES. WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO ENCOURAGE YOUNGER AND YOUNGER PEOPLE TO INVEST FOR A LONGER PERIOD OF TIME, YOU NEED TO GIVE THEM THE PROPER CHOICES THAT WILL ALLOW THEM TO ACCUMULATE WEALTH FOR A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. DON'T LIMIT PEOPLE'S CHOICES. GIVE THEM THE PROPER CHOICES TO ACCUMULATE WEALTH.

QUINTANILLA: GARY, WE KNOW YOU GOT A MEETING TO GET TO. WE APPRECIATE YOU COMING ON AS ALWAYS. HOPE TO SEE YOU A LOT. THANKS SO MUCH.

COHN: THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR TIME.

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Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has rebuffed accusations of currency manipulation by U.S. President Donald Trump, warning other countries in the European Union that the future of the 28-country bloc lies in its hands.

The new U.S. president's comments have been hard on the EU: he praised Brexit and criticized the bloc's refugee and monetary policies. Trump also said the EU was a "vehicle for Germany".

Asked by CNBC about those comments at a press conference Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe "will need to stand on our own two feet" as we may have some policy differences.

"We have to clearly nurture the values in our foreign policy that we consider to be important," Merkel said. "We also have to bear our vested interest in mind, that's what others have to do. It's what the President of the United States is doing.

"There will be invariably areas where we are linked with common interest. I don't think International terrorism can be fought on one's own, globally. That has to be done together. And then there will be tasks where, well maybe, in the future where we will need to stand on our own two feet."
European markets closed higher on Friday after the publication of the latest nonfarm payrolls in the U.S.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 was up 0.59 percent with almost all sectors and major bourses trading in positive territory. Food and beverage stocks were among the best performers Friday. The world's sixth-largest premium spirit maker Davide Campari announced the acquisition of Bulldog London Dry Gin on Friday in a $55 million deal, excluding liabilities.

Insurance stocks were also higher on earnings reports. The insurance firm Beazley was at the top of the European benchmark, up by 8.6 percent, after reporting full-year profit above expectations.

Basic resources , on the other hand, dropped more than 2 percent in mid-afternoon trade following the surprising announcement from Chinese authorities of an increase in short-term rates.

Meanwhile in the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average made triple digit gains shortly after the open with the broader S&P 500 also higher. Nonfarm payroll numbers were better-than-expected on Friday as the data showed payrolls increased by 227,000 last month.
The European Union (EU) and the new U.S. administration must maintain a common understanding when dealing with external risks, Estonia's Prime Minister told CNBC on Friday.

"What I know and understand (is) that the U.S., they said that they keep the sanctions (against Russia) if we are talking (about) Crimea, it is very important that we have here this common understanding between European Union and U.S.," Estonia's prime minister Juri Ratas told CNBC on Friday.

President Donald Trump had previously criticized the Obama administration for sanctions imposed on Russia for its illegal annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Trump has stated he would be in favor of lifting the sanctions against Moscow if he is able to negotiate a nuclear arms reduction agreement.
Lawmakers in Europe are putting on a rare show of unity: Two of the main parties in the European Parliament have both said they're against President Donald Trump's likely choice for ambassador to the European Union.

Members of the European Parliament believe that Ted Malloch - a businessman who supported Brexit and who has been named as the preferred choice of President Trump to represent the U.S. in Brussels - displays "outrageous malevolence" to the idea of the EU.

In a letter obtained by CNBC, European lawmakers said that if the "prospective nominee" takes on the ambassador role, the U.S. - EU relationship could be "seriously undermined".

"The prospective nominee expressed his ambition to 'tame the block like he brought down the Soviet Union', eloquently supported dissolution of the European Union and explicitly bet in the demise of the currency within months," the leaders of liberal and conservative parties said in a letter to the presidents of the European Council and Commission.
CNBC's Jim Cramer said on Friday he wasn't impressed by the numbers in Snap's IPO registration.

"I think their growth comes at a considerable expense. I think they're paying a lot for their growth," Cramer said on "Squawk on the Street," a day after Snap officially filed for an IPO.

Snap saw net revenue of $404.48 million in 2016, up from $58.66 million in the prior year, according to a Thursday filing. The company, however, said it also saw a net loss of $514.64 million in 2016. That means the ephemeral messaging service grew revenue almost seven times in a year  but its losses outstripped its revenue.



"They do have the right demo and they are a camera company trying to tell a good story. But at the same time I was like, wow, you're spending a lot of money. Are you ready to come public?" Cramer said.

Cramer admitted, however, that it appears younger people are going to Snapchat more than Facebook .

On Thursday, the social media company told investors in the filing it "may never achieve or maintain profitability."

"We have incurred operating losses in the past, expect to incur operating losses in the future, and may never achieve or maintain profitability," the filing said. Other similar companies, like Twitter, have also included similar language in their public offerings.

 CNBC's Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report.
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New sanctions the U.S. brought on Friday in response to Iranian ballistic missile tests won't undo a historic nuclear deal with Tehran by themselves  but the accord's odds of unraveling are rising. Both the administration of President Donald Trump and the Iranian regime likely want to maintain the deal, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for Tehran accepting limits on its nuclear program, analysts say. But rising tensions threaten to lead the two countries down a path of tit-for-tat provocations that ultimately makes the deal untenable. "Trump's bully pulpit will meet Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's pulpit. Iran uses a playbook a lot like Trump's  and that's incendiary," analysts for risk consultancy the Eurasia Group said in a research note on Thursday. The U.S. Treasury Department fired the latest salvo on Friday, sanctioning 13 individuals and 12 other entities linked to Iran's ballistic missile program. That followed Iran's latest missile test earlier this week  also its first since Trump took office.



President Donald Trump (l) and Iran's religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (r). Getty Images

Friday's sanctions are consistent with actions taken by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and their impact shouldn't be overstated, said Richard Nephew, who served as lead sanctions expert for U.S. negotiations with Iran. Indeed, sanctions on individuals are far less provocative than the alternative: measures aimed at crippling Iran's economy. Still, the Eurasia Group puts the Iran nuclear deal's chances of surviving at only 60 percent, and its analysts say those odds are declining after the White House's announcement on Tuesday that it is putting Iran "on notice." That warning was vague and risks backfiring, according to Eurasia Group. The consultancy notes that Iran has a history of not backing down and will likely test Trump's will  perhaps by conducting another missile test sooner than planned. Iran is not expressly prohibited from testing ballistic missiles per se. However, a United Nations resolution passed when the organization implemented the nuclear deal "calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons."

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Reva Goujon, vice president of global analysis at Stratfor, said in a video briefing the language of the resolution "is squishy by design because the nuclear negotiators knew that Iran would be violating it anyway and wanted to keep that distinct from" the nuclear deal. Goujon expects Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to impose further sanctions on Iran, which will lead Tehran to repeat accusations that the United States is in violation of the nuclear deal. That's potentially problematic for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has an election this year. A moderate who has pushed to open Iran to the world, Rouhani would likely be forced to take a more aggressive stand for political reasons, analysts say.

President Donald Trump and staff in the Oval Office. Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images
The Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan. Jason Kryk | Canadian Press | AP

Up until Donald Trump announced his 90-day entry ban announcement on travelers and green card holders from seven Middle East and African countries, the Canadian stock market had been on a tear. Between Jan. 1 and Jan. 27, 2016, the day the ban was announced, the S&P/TSX Composite Index was up 28 percent in U.S. dollar terms versus 14 percent for the . Year-to-date it had climbed by 3.3 percent, or nearly two percentage points higher than America's benchmark. As well, more than $1.3 billion had been invested in the iShares MSCI Canada ETF in 2016, the most new money of any non-U.S. country fund last year.

Since the announcement, though, the market has pulled back, falling by 0.2 percent in USD terms and 1.1 percent when currency isn't factored in. While that's only a mild drop, it's the market's biggest decline in a month. Could Trump's executive orders and other policies be impacting the country? It's possible, says Bob Sewell, CEO of Oakville's Bellwether Investment Management.

Typically, Canada's market follows America's, so if the U.S. investors are jittery, as it seems they have been since the ban was announced  the S&P 500 is down 0.6 percent since Jan. 27  then Canadian stockholders will be, too. "His first days in power have led people to be more uncertain," he says. "Until there's clarity around these positive growthtype aspects of his platform, we'll continue to see concern in the market." If there's anything that could shake Canada's market, it's Trump's policies on trade. The United States is Canada's largest trading partner  it sends about 75 percent of its goods across its southern border  but with the president arguing with Australia's prime minister and talks of border taxes, it's anyone's guess as to whether this decades-old relationship will remain intact. "You have to be mindful of the risks," says Risteard Hogan, manager of Fidelity's Canada Fund. "People are talking about this border tax, and there will be winners and losers from that. It's an issue for Canada."

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The energy sector, in particular, is getting nervous with talk of a border tax. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Tim McMillan, head of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, said the tough talk is "a bit of a wake-up call that we need to strengthen our relationships on energy with other countries." If the energy patch is impacted and it becomes more expensive for Canadian companies to ship oil and gas into America, then Canada's stock market would certainly take a hit. The energy sector makes up about 20 percent of the Canadian stock market.

Americans are invested

Americans tend not to pay too much attention to the goings on up north, but a decline in its stocks could have an impact on a number of U.S. investors. According to Lipper Research, 48.7 percent of all U.S. domiciled equity funds hold at least some Canadian stocks. Hogan's Fidelity Canada Fund holds the most, with a 92.4 percent allocation to the country, but several other funds, especially commodity-related funds  Canada is major commodity nation  hold a lot of Canadian stock. For instance, the EuroPac Gold Fund has a 70 percent allocation to the country, while the Invesco Gold & Precious Metals fund has a 69 percent weighting to Canada. Investors have also continued investing in the country, with $111.6 million having gone into the iShares MSCI Canada ETF year-to-date, according to First Bridge Data. For many Americans, Canada serves almost as an emerging markets proxy, says Hogan. Its stock market has a similar makeup to many developing nations  it's heavy in energy, materials and financials  but it comes with much less risk.

Pockets of opportunity

"It's a similar structure to emerging markets, but it's done quite well relative to them with lower volatility," he says. "It has a space in a risk-tolerant portfolio." He's finding opportunities in pipeline construction companies, such as ShawCor , which could get more work under a pipeline-friendly Trump administration, and he's also keen on Stantec, an engineering and construction firm with half of its business in Canada and half in the United States. It's benefiting from increased infrastructure in Canada but could also participate in America's infrastructure plans. Despite some short-term issues driven by Trump, uncertain energy prices and Canada's own sluggish economy, Hogan says there's a lot to like about the Great White North. It has good demographics relative to other developed nations, it has good corporate governance, low debt-to-GDP and an attractive resource base with large reserves of oils and other minerals, says Hogan. It's also performed relatively well over the long term.

People are talking about this border tax, and there will be winners and losers from that. It's an issue for Canada. Risteard Hogan manager of Fidelity's Canada Fund
President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka Trump walk toward Marine One while departing from the White House, on February 1, 2017 in Washington, DC. Trump is making an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force bace in Delaware to pay his respects to Chief Special Warfare Operator William 'Ryan' Owens, who was killed during a raid in Yemen. Getty Images

It might have been a barking dog, or a crashed drone, or overheard chatter on walkie talkies. But multiple military and intelligence sources told NBC News that something tipped off the terrorist targets of an early-morning raid by the U.S. and its allies in Yemen on Sunday, and all hell broke loose. A well-rehearsed mission that was supposed to extract computers and other intelligence from an al Qaeda camp near a mountain village turned into a massive firefight involving Harrier jets, helicopter gunships and gun-wielding jihadi women that killed one Navy SEAL, 14 al Qaeda fighters and, allegedly, non-combatant women and children. According to a senior military official, one of the dead was an 8-year-old American girl, the daughter of U.S.-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, who himself was killed in a U.S. strike in Yemen in 2011. More from NBC News:

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CDC issues yellow fever alert for Brazil But a senior military official told NBC News "almost everything went wrong." A senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the operation said it's not yet clear if the mission was a success. "We went in with the intent of capturing phones and computers and we don't know yet if anything of great value was obtained," the official said. "Who fired first? What was actually gathered? What went wrong?" a senior former special operations officer asked rhetorically. "These kinds of assessments just don't come in Twitter time. We'll have to wait and see."



Preparing for the raid

The raid, according to multiple military and intelligence officials and a post-battle briefing paper shared with NBC News, had been planned and prepared for months, and was part of a long multinational campaign to weaken the foothold of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), long considered one of the most dangerous arms of the terrorist organization. AQAP has a history of attacks against the U.S. and its allies, including the Christmas Day 2009 attempted bombing of a commercial airliner in the United States, the failed parcel bomb plot of 2010 and the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo office attack in Paris. The U.S. has been trying to dismantle AQAP since 2002. In addition to drone and air strikes  there were a half dozen drone strikes in 2016  the U.S. has also used boots on the ground. Small numbers of U.S. military personnel have engaged in unilateral operations against AQAP leaders and in support of Yemeni and coalition special operations forces. The U.S. began preparations for Sunday's raid on the al Qaeda camp months ago, according to a senior military official. The intent of the "site exploitation" mission was to capture important information about a terror network's personnel and supplies from a specific house in the al Qaeda camp near Ghabat Yakla in south Yemen. Planning was intense, with almost three months of intelligence collection  including "pattern of life" constant surveillance of the target home and the families in nearby dwellings. Because the targeted house was particularly well guarded, officials say, the "package size," or the volume of troops and materiel needed, was larger than usual. In early December, the USS Makin Island and its amphibious readiness group, including other ships and Marines, arrived in the area to serve as the quick reaction force for American operations in Yemen. They were joined in Djibouti by the Navy SEALs who would make up the main raiding party. On Dec. 21, the SEALs joined the Marines in a helicopter-borne training raid in Djibouti, an exercise that served as a rehearsal for Sunday's mission. The Obama administration then had to decide whether to carry out the mission. A former senior Obama administration official said that plans for the raid were presented to the Obama national security team before the inauguration as part of a menu of potential actions that represented a significant expansion of U.S. activity in Yemen. After a full interagency review, the official said, the Obama administration decided to pass the decision on the series of operations off to the Trump administration, since they would have to commence under the new president. The hesitation, the official said, related to the number of troops that would be involved and that the plans represented a wider use of ground troops than the U.S. had previously considered in Yemen. The official said the specific raid mounted on Sunday was not presented for a decision. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Wednesday that the raid was approved in an interagency deputies meeting on Jan. 6, and that the plan called for the raid to take place on a moonless night, which meant it would occur after Trump's inauguration. The former Obama official, however, said the interagency deputies committee of the National Security Council did not officially recommend for or against the raid. Ned Price, a former CIA officer who was spokesman for the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said in a tweet that Spicer was wrong and that the "specific operation in question was never presented to or considered by the Obama Admin for approval." @nedprice: Except it was misleading. The specific operation in question was never presented to or considered by the Obama Admin for approval. According to a former special operations officer with knowledge of the raid, one of the Obama administration's concerns was the integration of commandos from the United Arab Emirates, an unusual arrangement for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its elite task forces. In some ways, said the retired officer, it was an Emirati-driven operation, with their intelligence on the ground and their year-long preparation.

The firefight

Early Sunday, SEALS from SEAL Team 6 and Emirati commandos converged on a landing zone eight kilometers from the village, according to the briefing paper and a senior military official. Their target was the heavily guarded house where AQAP leaders were temporarily living, reportedly with computer and communications equipment of value to the ongoing campaign. They walked around five miles to their objective. Then, said officials, something tipped the targets off to their approach. Depending on the account, it might have been a barking dog, or Emiratis intercepted speaking in Arabic on walkie talkies, or the crash of a small Emirati drone surveying the target from a forward position. "Initial reports are always wrong, but it doesn't appear to be a failure of planning or intelligence," said the former special forces officer.





We saw during this operation, as it was taking place, that female fighters ran to pre-established positions  as though they had trained to be ready, and trained to be combatants  and engaged with us. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis Pentagon's chief spokesman
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Lockheed Martin's new deal with the Pentagon for F-35 fighters lowered the purchase price by nearly 8 percent yet should still be profitable for the defense contractor, according to industry analysts. That said, experts say Friday's agreement  valued at $8.7 billion, by some analysts  will step up the pressure on the defense giant to continue cutting the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's production costs and it risks margin erosion too.

"I'd say it's pretty aggressive price reductions," said Morningstar analyst Chris Higgins. "The key is Lockheed needs to reduce the costs at a faster rate than they are cutting the price."

Lockheed has been under pressure from President Donald Trump to reduce the costs of the F-35  the Pentagon's largest weapons program ever. Trump also suggested that the government might want to buy some of Boeing's F-18 fourth-generation fighters as an alternative to the fifth-generation F-35 aircraft.

"We're pleased to have reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense for the next 90 F-35 aircraft," Lockheed said in a statement. "The agreement represents $728 million in savings and a nearly 8 percent reduction in price over our last contract for the air vehicle delivered by Lockheed Martin and our industry partners."

Added Lockheed, "The increase in the number of aircraft in this agreement enables us to reduce costs by taking advantage of economies of scale and production efficiencies."





F-35 cost breakdown F-35 Cost Breakdown Breakdown of Costs Change from Lot 9 F-35A (Air Force model) $94.6 million -7.3% F-35B (Marine Corps) $122.8 million -6.7% F-35C (Navy) $121.8 million -7.9%

Source: Source: Lockheed

Lockheed maintained that "the agreement was reached in a matter of weeks and represents significant savings over previous contracts." Most of the planes being ordered by the Pentagon are for the F-35A, a conventional takeoff and landing variant for the U.S. Air Force. There's also the F-35B variant for the Marines Corps capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings, while the F-35C for the Navy is a carrier variant.

Lockheed's agreement announced Friday involves a contract for the tenth batch of F-35 aircraft and a total of 90 jets  a more than 40 percent increase from the previous lot. That includes 55 jets for the U.S. armed services and 35 jets for international partners and foreign military sales customers, Lockheed said.

The lot 10 deal cut the per-plane price on the F-35A to $94.6 million, or a 7.3 percent price reduction from the previous lot 9 terms. That marks the first time the F-35A variant has been below $100 million and also represents a more than 60 percent price drop on the plane since the first production lot.

Meantime, the lot 10 terms have the F-35B variant's per-plane price at $122.8 million, down 6.7 percent from the lot 9 terms. And the F-35C variant's per-plane price is $121.8 million, or 7.9 percent below the lot 9 price.

Higgins said that the price reductions on lot 10 were "on the high end of what they were talking about. They were talking about 6 to 7 percent price reductions compared with lot 9 and you're looking at the price reductions above 7 percent (on the F-35A and F-35C)."

Lockheed has been bringing down the recurring costs on the aircraft, he said, and the F-35 program still is profitable for the company and likely will remain so. Still, the analyst expects there's a question about whether the defense contractor will be able to expand margins as quickly on the F-35.

"They were expecting margin expansion on it," said Higgins. "This could potentially put that in jeopardy."

F-35 Bravo Lightning II stand ready on the deck of amphibious assault ship USS Wasp for day two of the first phase operational testing in the Atlantic Ocean in this handout photo taken May 19, 2015 and provided by the U.S. Navy. U.S. Navy | Reuters
The phrase "red states" could get a whole new meaning if Obamacare is repealed.

A new map starkly highlights the U.S. counties that are most at risk of ending up with zero insurers selling Obamacare individual health plans next year if Congress guts the law but suspends the effect of that repeal for some time.

That map's biggest concentration of high-risk counties, marked in red, is in the southern United States. That region heavily supported Obamacare foe Donald Trump in his successful campaign for president last fall.

But the entire states of Wyoming and Alaska, as well as large parts of Oklahoma, Missouri, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, also are at high risk of ending up with no Obamacare insurers, according to The Century Foundation, the progressive think tank that produced the map.All of those states, except for Nevada, gave their electoral votes to Trump.

The "red" counties at high risk contain a total of 10 percent of the U.S. population.





The Century Foundation's analysis and map, is based on a Congressional Budget Office report released last month.

That report analyzed the potential impact of a so-called repeal-and-delay bill that was passed by the Republican Congress last year but vetoed by President Barack Obama. The bill was sponsored Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., who is Trump's pick to run the Health and Human Services Department.

It would would dismantle certain key elements of the Affordable Care Act, but delay their actual removal.

The bill, which has been viewed as a template for possible repeal and replacement of Obamacare this year, would result in "roughly 10 percent of the population ... living in an area that had no insurer participating" in the first year after the bill became law, according to the CBO report.

There is no county currently in the U.S. that has zero insurers offering Obamacare plans.
The Trump administration's actions against Iran are warranted, and more will be on the way, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Corker, told CNBC on Friday.



The White House slapped Iran with new sanctions on Friday following the test-firing of a medium-range ballistic missile, a move it says is in defiance of a U.N. resolution.

Corker said the U.S. action does not violate the nuclear deal with Iran.

"If we do not push back against Iran and just  radically enforce this agreement, they will take every opportunity to violate and over time they will, in fact, be in a very different place. So this is an important step, it's an important signal and I think more is going to be coming on the way," the Republican from Tennessee said in an interview with "Closing Bell."

"If you are going to have an agreement with a country like Iran, you've got to enforce it and this is the first step toward making sure we are doing that," he added.

Iran denounced the sanctions as illegal and said it would impose legal restrictions on American individuals and entities helping "regional terrorist groups," state TV quoted a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement as saying.

Corker said he believes the Trump administration will ultimately renegotiate the existing agreement with Iran.

"Right now we really paved the way for them after year seven or eight to obtain the ability to quickly make a nuclear weapon with no breakout time so I think this is just the beginning," he said. "You are going to see an effort to really change the terms of this over time."

 NBC News and Reuters contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump attends the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, U.S., February 2, 2017. Carlos Barria | Reuters

At the annual National Prayer Breakfast this week, President Donald Trump complained that the United States is taken advantage of by virtually "every nation in the world." His administration directed that sentiment at several allies in its second week in office.

The White House claimed Germany manipulates its currency, warned Mexico that U.S. troops could enter the country, and abruptly ended a phone call with the leader of Australia  though Trump denies the latter.

Germany

Peter Navarro, Trump's choice to lead the National Trade Council, reiterated to the Financial Times this week that Germany is "one of the worst actors in the international environment" in the way it manages value-added taxes. Navarro, who also made the assertion to CNBC last week, claimed Germany was undervaluing the euro in an attempt to gain an advantage over other EU countries and the United States. Germany is one of the top five U.S. trading partners, accounting for 4.5 percent of total U.S. trade in 2016, according to the Census Bureau.

Mexico

In a phone call with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto on Jan. 27, Trump threatened to send U.S. troops into Mexico, accusing the Mexican president of not doing enough to stop "a bunch of bad hombres down there." "I think your military is scared," Trump said, The Associated Press reported this week, saying it had obtained a partial transcript of the conversation. "Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

Trump did not identify the "hombres" or what makes them bad. The Mexican government subsequently denied the conversation was adversarial in tone. Trump recently inflamed U.S.-Mexico tensions after repeating his campaign promise to build a border wall between the two countries. Mexico is the third largest trade partner with the U.S., accounting for 14.5 percent of total trade in 2016.

Australia
Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech at the 8th annual VTB Capital 'Russia Calling!' Investment Forum in Moscow on October 12, 2016. Alexei Druzhinin | AFP | Getty Images

U.K. Defense Minister Michael Fallon has openly criticized what he perceives to be Russia's interference in foreign affairs, warning of the need to "tackle the false reality" the country is propagating. In a speech given at St. Andrews University Thursday night, Fallon was unequivocal when describing a series of hacks and propaganda campaigns linked to the Kremlin in recent months, saying that the country was "clearly testing NATO and the West," as it had "chosen to become a strategic competitor."



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Fallon placed emphasis on Russia's non-military methods of extending its influence, describing how the country was "weaponizing misinformation" through its "use of cyber weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery." For Fallon, adapting to cyber threats was crucial for the security of the U.K. and its allies, as he explained that "cyber defense is now part of NATO's core task," and that it was a necessary part of "supporting reform to make NATO more agile." Russia has routinely denied involvement in foreign media, politics and security breaches. "We express regret for this hostile stance  We are sure that such allegations are baseless," Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters Friday. Fallon's speech also appeared to reiterate the U.K. government's alliance with new U.S. President Donald Trump. Fallon described Trump as a "realist" in terms of his stance on Russia.

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While it is not immediately clear how those actions would affect banks' behavior, Warren argued that they were a setback. The Massachusetts Democrat and other key party colleagues quickly signaled that they would use Trump's moves as political ammunition in a Congress that has become increasingly tense in the early days of Trump's presidency.

The order Trump signed starts a review of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, the bank industry rules passed after the 2008 financial crisis that he heavily criticized on the campaign trail. The second action was expected to delay a rule intended to require financial advisors to give customers advice that is in their best interest.

Noted Wall Street irritant Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed President Donald Trump 's new steps to ease some financial regulations, arguing that he showed hypocrisy after a populist campaign.

"Donald Trump talked a big game about Wall Street during his campaign  but as president, we're finding out whose side he's really on. Today, after literally standing alongside big bank and hedge fund CEOs, he announced two orders  one that will make it easier for investment advisors to cheat you out of your retirement savings, and another that will put two former Goldman Sachs executives in charge of gutting the rules that protect you from financial fraud and another economic meltdown," Warren said in a statement.

Warren criticized Trump for appearing with executives like JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon at an economic advisory meeting Friday. She also referred to Trump Treasury nominee Steven Mnuchin and economic advisor Gary Cohn, who both worked at Goldman. Trump repeatedly targeted the firm on the campaign trail as evidence of wealthy elites' influence on the financial system.



Trump's order directs the Treasury Department to review whether existing laws and regulations follow what Trump identified as "core principles" of his administration. The president directed the Treasury secretary to file a report within 120 days on possible regulatory changes or legislative recommendations.

The order said the review will focus on several broad administration goals that largely relate to his campaign pledges to reduce government involvement in business and make American companies more competitive. It said Trump aims to "empower Americans to make independent financial decisions," "prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts" and create economic growth through "more rigorous regulatory impact analysis."

The order also outlined goals to "enable American companies to be competitive with foreign firms" and "advance American interests in international financial regulatory negotiations." Trump's White House also wrote it wants to "make regulation efficient, effective and appropriately tailored" and "restore public accountability with federal financial regulatory agencies."

Bank stocks popped following Trump's move.



Supporters of the Dodd-Frank reforms, which were designed to make the financial system safer, say they increased the stability and liquidity of key institutions. Critics, many in the financial industry, have said it makes it more difficult to lend and harms smaller banks.



Trump said before the meeting with executives that he wanted to cut "a lot" of Dodd-Frank.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., also ripped the move, saying Trump is letting big banks "write the rules of the road."


Senator Amy Klobuchar wants drugmaker Kaleo to explain the $4,500 price tags on its auto-injector devices for opioid overdose and food allergies.

"Due to the severity of the opioid epidemic and Evzio's life-saving attributes, it is critical that your products remain affordable to Americans," Klobuchar wrote in a letter to Kaleo CEO Spencer Williamson.

Evzio dispenses naloxone, which can reverse the effects of opioid overdose, while Auvi-Q provides a dose of epinephrine, which is used to treat allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis.

The Minnesota senator also highlighted the price of the Auvi-Q, set to return to market Feb. 14 after being withdrawn for potential dosing problems at the end of 2015. The Auvi-Q's return follows outcry over the price of the EpiPen, for the same indication.

"Your price of $4,500 for a two-pack is especially disturbing, as more competition should mean lower rather than higher  prices for epinephrine injectors," Klobuchar told Williamson. "We must make the market work for consumers."

Kaleo said last month it would bring the Auvi-Q back to market after it was dropped by partner Sanofi following the dosage issues. The pricing scheme, announced at the time, was mind-boggling: a list price of $4,500 for two injectors, but a guaranteed cash price of $360 for those not using insurance and assurances of financial assistance for those whose insurance wouldn't cover the product.

CEO Williamson said at the time that no competing device, branded or generic, "will cost a commercially insured patient less out of pocket than Auvi-Q."

Drugs for both indications have seen prices rise over the last decade, leading to problems with access.


Top White House economics adviser Gary Cohn told CNBC on Friday the Trump administration is doing everything possible to boost the economy and create jobs.

Cohn said business leaders are telling the White House that onerous regulations, high taxes and crumbling infrastructure are impediments to prosperity.

"We're very much into a pro-growth strategy here," the director of the White House National Economic Council said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street."

President Donald Trump on Friday met with another group of CEOs at the White House, including financial chiefs JPMorgan 's Jamie Dimon, Blackstone 's Steve Schwarzman and BlackRock 's Larry Fink.

Cohn said all options for corporate tax reform are on the table, including the border adjustment levy, which taxes imports. He stressed that no decisions have been made on particular provisions.

The goal is to reduce corporate taxes to the "lowest possible level," Cohn said. "We have high taxes relative to the rest of the world. That's a disadvantage for U.S. companies."

The federal corporate tax rate is 35 percent, compared with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average of about 23 percent, he said. "We can't be that much higher than the rest of the world."

Read More from Cohn:

Lots of 'balls in the air," but we're going to get it right

A rule to protect retirement accounts was 'completely misintended'



The interview with Cohn, formerly No. 2 at Goldman Sach, also came on a day when Trump plans to take steps that will almost certainly result in the end of some bank regulations.



Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing the Treasury Department and other regulators to review parts of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law that was put in place after the 2008 financial crisis, including the Volcker Rule, according to a senior administration official.

Asked about banking regulations, Cohn spoke more generally and said the president has asked his economic team to identify the top growth-zapping regulations and respond with ideas.

In a presidential memo,Trump is expected to direct the Labor Department to delay implementation for the next 90 days and conduct a review of the Obama administration's "fiduciary rule," designed to prevent conflicts of interest when financial advisors give retirement advice.

Cohn said the rule ended up "highly limiting" consumers' choices. At a time when younger people need to be brought into the fold to invest for their future, limiting choices is counterproductive, he said.

With Trump's push to bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S., the administration is also cognizant of how advances in technology and robotics are changing the needs of the modern workforce, Cohn said.

"We really have to think about what our workforce is going to look like in 2020, 2030, [and] 2050," he said, adding he's thinking about how to re-educate Americans for the jobs of the future.
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It's official: President Trump is delaying the U.S. Department of Labor's planned fiduciary rule. Originally slated to begin implementation on April 10 and expected to have affected more than $3 trillion of retirement assets in the United States, the rule  crafted under the former Obama administration  would have required financial advisors and brokers to act in the best interests of their clients when dealing with retirement accounts. That regulation would have affected investors' retirement accounts and the relationships they share with their advisors. It wouldn't have affected non-retirement accounts. It's traditional for incoming presidents from opposing political parties to try to undo what their predecessors did in office and Trump has been no exception. To that point, one of Trump's top Wall Street supporters, Anthony Scaramucci, managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, promised throughout the 2016 campaign that Trump would rip up a Labor Department investment advice rule once he took office.

More from Portfolio Perspective:

A look at the world's top 20 female portfolio managers

Bond investors must adjust their expectations

Are your investments really diversified enough?

Despite all the debate around the rule, however, the Labor Department had made it clear that it was moving forward with the fiduciary rule. Knut Rostad, co-founder and president of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard and supporter of the proposed regulation, said in a statement that Trump's move was "both deeply disappointing and entirely expected." However, the pause in rule implementation "brings a new opportunity for fiduciary advocates to rethink strategies in line with how dramatically the positions of the field have shifted," he added. "We need to remake messages to better challenge dubious or misleading or plainly wrong statements about the DOL rule." Should the rule ever become effective, all financial advisors will be required to recommend what is in the best interests of clients when they offer guidance on 401(k) plan assets, individual retirement accounts or other qualified funds saved for retirement.
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No matter what ultimately happens with the Labor Department's investor protection rule, there's a lot more coming out of Washington that financial advisors will want to keep an eye on. Rules are in progress related to reporting money laundering and business continuity, among other topics, industry experts told advisors Wednesday at the TD Ameritrade National Linc conference in San Diego. Among the issues to watch:



Anti-money laundering responsibilities

Proposed rules from the Department of Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (aka Fincen) would require many investment advisors to take steps to prevent their firms from being used to launder money, and to report any suspicious activity. The future of the rule, proposed in 2015, is unlikely to change under the Trump administration, said Karen Barr, president and chief executive officer of the Investment Adviser Association.

"This is one of the few rules that we can talk about, that there's nothing partisan to it," she said. "It's a bipartisan issue."

Business continuity

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a proposed rule last year requiring advisors to adopt written business continuity and transition plans, to protect consumers from disruptions both external (say, a hurricane) and internal (the death of the advisor). Having such a plan is common sense and can make clients more comfortable working with you, said Karen Nystrom, director of advocacy at the Financial Planning Association. "I would hope that this isn't a partisan idea, either," said Nystrom. "It's what happens if something happens to you." The average age of FPA-member advisors, she pointed out, is 53. It's also worth noting that if the rule goes through and you don't have a plan, that would be considered fraud, said Skip Schweiss, managing director of advisor advocacy and industry affairs for TD Ameritrade Institutional. "That's a pretty big, serious hammer to hold over you if you don't have it," he said.
Donald Trump Getty Images

Lawsuits against US entry restrictions

Civil rights and Muslim advocacy organizations and groups of immigrants filed a wave of legal challenges to Trump's order on Jan. 27 that saw a number of Muslim immigrants detained at airports across the country and around the world and sparked mass protests nationwide. Attorneys general from New York, Massachusetts and Virginia have joined suits opposing the order. Washington state filed its own suit, which was joined by Minnesota on Thursday. Each is challenging the order on the grounds that it violates an individual's Constitutional right to religious freedom. The executive order temporarily bars entry by immigrants from seven nations  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  that are more than 90 percent Muslim. It also bans all refugees for 120 days and Syrian refugees indefinitely. The order also states that the U.S. would provide preferential treatment to religious minorities facing religious persecution in the seven countries. The Trump administration has pushed back on the claim that the order is a "Muslim ban." "If you're letting a million people in, if 325,000 people from another country can't come in, that is by nature not a ban  it is extreme vetting," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday. Nevertheless, more lawsuits could be on the way as attorneys general from California, New York, Pennsylvania, and 12 other states, plus Washington D.C., jointly issued a statement this week calling the order "unconstitutional, un-American and unlawful." Trump also faces lawsuits from individuals in states including Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Georgia.



Lawsuits against orders to build border wall and defend sanctuary cities

San Francisco is the first and only city so far to announce a lawsuit against Trump for targeting sanctuary cities in an executive order severely limiting federal grant money to cities that do not fully comply with all U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement requests. "The president's executive order is not only unconstitutional, it's un-American," said San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera at a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday, according to NBC Bay Area. "That is why we must stand up and oppose it. We are a nation of immigrants and a land of laws. We must be the 'guardians of our democracy' that President Obama urged us all to be in his farewell address." Though San Francisco is the lone city suing so far, many mayors and sheriffs have stated their displeasure over the announcement and plans to challenge it. Muriel Bowser tweet Mayor Marty Walsh Sylvester Turner California Attorney General Xavier Becerra promised on NBC's "Meet the Press" this week that he would do anything necessary to legally stop the border wall that was the subject of a separate presidential executive order. "There are any number of hurdles that any administration would have to jump to build a medieval wall, which probably wouldn't even work," Becerra told Chuck Todd.



Suits alleging Trump violated emoluments clause
Forty years ago, my parents were forced to flee their home in Uganda when the dictator Idi Amin came to power. Pushing nationalist "Uganda First" policies, Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of all people of Indian descent from the country within 90 days or risk being shot on spot. The dictator baselessly blamed ethnic Indians  many of whom were Ugandan citizens  of stealing jobs during a time of economic uncertainty. Even though two generations of my family had lived in Uganda, my parents' religion and national origin put them at risk.



My parents applied to several nations for refugee status, but received one heartbreaking rejection letter after another. Then, with the dictator's ninety day window drawing near, a letter came that literally saved their lives. "You've been accepted," it said, "to the United States of America."

Upon reaching America's shores, my parents did what so many generations of immigrants and political refugees had done before them. They worked hard day and night, saved every extra dollar, and helped their daughters seize every opportunity afforded to them by this great nation. They saw me grasp tightly to the American dream and serve my country as a lawyer, an activist, as the Deputy Public Advocate in New York City, and now as the CEO of Girls Who Code, a national nonprofit dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology.

Their journey affirms the central promise of America  that this is a place where if you work hard, you can have a fair shot at success and give back to the nation that gave you a chance. It's this promise of America that Mr. Trump, through his executive orders last Friday, has put at risk.

It's frightening to consider the parallels of what's unfolding in America right now and what my parents faced in Uganda four decades ago. Just like then, people today are being told that closing our borders and closing our hearts to those struggling and striving abroad is the only way. We're being told that America is a zero sum game  that the dreams of immigrants come at the expense of those native born and that the religious freedom of some threatens the security of others.
President Donald Trump on Friday will take two financial-related actions, including one to explore ways to fix "overarching" banking rules put into effect after the 2008 crisis, according to a senior White House official.

Trump will sign an executive order directing the Treasury Department and other regulators to review actions taken by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law, including the Volcker Rule, the Trump official said.



The Volcker Rule, originally proposed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, restricts U.S. banks, or an institution that owns a bank, from making certain kinds of speculative investments with their own money that could hurt their customers.



The White House official also mentioned as part of the executive order an examination of issues dealing with financial institutions that are deemed "too big to fail," taxpayer bailouts, and the role of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in the housing market.



"Everything is going to be looked at," said the senior official, when asked specifically about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That agency was put in place to shield consumers from deceptive business practices.



While the administration believes Dodd-Frank "in many respects was a piece of massive government overreach," the official added, "this is not an attempt to undo Dodd Frank."



"There are quite a few things that we could do on Dodd-Frank ... that we think will have fairly immediate and dramatic impact," the official said, including personnel changes at regulatory agencies and additional executive orders.



Trump plans to meet on Friday with leading CEOs, including many financial chiefs such as JPMorgan 's Jamie Dimon, Blackstone 's Steve Schwarzman, and BlackRock 's Larry Fink.

Earlier this week, during another meeting with business owners, Trump described Dodd-Frank as "a disaster."
A closeup satellite image of the Topside detention camp in Nauru. DigitalGlobe | Getty Images

U.S. immigration officials have postponed interviews with asylum seekers in an Australian camp on the Pacific island of Nauru since President Trump's executive order on immigration, suggesting Washington is already blocking progress on a controversial refugee resettlement deal. The deal sparked a rare diplomatic spat between the two staunch allies, with Trump berating Australia's prime minister in an angry phone call that led to quick moves in Washington to reaffirm the strength of the relationship. Asylum seekers on Nauru who are applying to settle in the United States under the refugee swap deal, agreed in the final months of Barack Obama's presidency late last year, told Reuters that planned second-round interview dates with visiting U.S. officials had been postponed indefinitely. Under the deal, the United States would take up to 1,250 asylum seekers. In return, Australia would take refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. More than a dozen asylum seekers on both Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, site of another Australian offshore detention camp, told Reuters they were afraid for their future since Trump said "extreme vetting" would be used and after his testy phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

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"We are deeply concerned about the U.S. deal," Imran Mohammad, 22, a stateless man from the Rohingya ethnic minority in Myanmar, told Reuters by telephone from Manus Island. "We don't know what to believe and the uncertainty is getting worse and worse," he said. "It is killing us inside every day." There are around 1,200 refugees, mostly single men, being held at Australian processing camps on Manus Island and Nauru in conditions that have been harshly criticized by the United Nations and human rights agencies. The Australian government, which maintains a strict policy of not allowing anyone who tries to reach the country by boat to settle here, has never detailed the nationalities of the detainees but refugee advocates say most are from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Sudan. Trump's executive order last week suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days and stopped visits by travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for 90 days. Trump has begrudgingly said he planned to stand by the deal, but described it on Twitter as "dumb". Also on Thursday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley called on Trump's administration to make the details of the deal public, noting it was made without Congressional approval. Extreme vetting An official source with knowledge of the process said confusion around exactly what "extreme vetting" would mean was the reason asylum seeker interviews by officials from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) were postponed. "The CIS team stage has been postponed as they seek clarification on what information is needed under extreme vetting," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media, told Reuters.

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"The feeling is that they didn't want to conduct the interviews and then find out they needed to do the process again," she said. The U.S. State Department did not respond immediately to requests for comment on the postponed interviews, which had been scheduled between Friday and Feb. 21, or whether the U.S. team would travel to Manus island as expected later this month. The White House is yet to determine and make public what an extreme vetting process would entail, but detainees and their advocates are concerned it would effectively rule out all the eligible detainees. It has proved almost impossible to determine what Trump means by extreme vetting. Some refugee advocates fear it will entail medical background checks as well as strict security assessments. They say many of the internees suffer mental illnesses after spending years in the camps. Harsh conditions and reports of systemic child abuse in the camps have drawn wide criticism. Negar, a 22-year-old from Iran who has been on Nauru for four years, said her first interview for U.S. resettlement on Jan. 24 lasted seven hours. She was asked about her background, including where her family is now, the reason she fled from Iran, and who financed her trip to Christmas Island, a remote Australian island off the continent's northwest that is targeted by many asylum seekers who make the perilous sea journey from Indonesia after paying people smugglers there. She was also asked whether she had links with any political groups in Iran.

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President Donald Trump claims that his intervention forced Lockheed Martin to reduce the cost of its F-35 airplane to the Pentagon, but the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee says that's not true.

Earlier this week, Trump asserted that his negotiating pressure had knocked $600 million off the costs of a deal, formally announced Friday, for 90 of the jets. At Friday's White House news briefing, press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that the president's handiwork had saved taxpayers $455 million. Trump had tweeted in December that program costs were "out of control," and summoned Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson to a meeting.



But Pentagon officials, who've long bargained to reduce costs of the massive F-35 order, announced before that meeting took place that Lockheed would bring down costs for the 90-jet order by more than $500 million. That move followed the Pentagon's decision before November's election to invoke a provision of its contract to unilaterally impose cost-cuts on Lockheed.



After Trump's $600 million claim earlier this week, Lockheed offered a statement of appreciation that Trump had recognized "the positive progress we've made on the F-35 program." After Spicer took credit for the president Friday, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Armed Services Democrat, responded more bluntly.



"This is simply taking credit for what's been in the works for many months," Reed told CNBC in a telephone interview. "These are savings that would have happened anyway."


Donald Trump Lucas Jackson | Reuters

The bottom line is that if the operations plan for the raid was really that flawed, then the blame for the Yemen raid lies primarily at the feet of the nations military planners, not the new commander in chief.

The New York Times article painted a picture of Trump and his top national security advisers casually approving the plan over dinner at the White House. "Just five days after taking office, over dinner with his newly installed secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff," the Times article read, "President Trump was presented with the first of what will be many life-or-death decisions: whether to approve a commando raid that risked the lives of American Special Operations forces and foreign civilians alike." The implication, in other words, was that the impulsive and inexperienced president ordered a poorly planned military raid with little regard for the lives of the US special forces involved or the potential for civilian casualties. But that doesn't seem to be an entirely fair assessment. While the idea of the bumbling neophyte president carelessly ordering a doomed military raid over appetizers may jibe with many people's preexisting fears about Trump, the bottom line is that if the operations plan for the raid was really that flawed, then the blame for the Yemen raid lies primarily at the feet of the nation's military planners, not the new commander in chief.



Trump didnt just wake up one morning and decide to launch a random raid in Yemen

Presidents do not plan individual military operations. That is what the military is for. What presidents do is authorize or reject the plans that are presented to them by military planners. Before ascending to the highest office in the land, Trump was a real estate developer and reality TV star. He's never served a single day in the armed forces. Which means he doesn't have any frame of reference for determining whether a military operations plan he's been presented is solid. So he's going to trust what his military advisers tell him. "Is this a good plan or not? Are you ready for this raid or not? Do we have enough intel or not?" If they say yes, he's probably going to trust them and approve it. If it wasn't a mature enough plan  if the military planners didn't have "sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations," as one of the unnamed military officials later told Reuters  then they shouldn't have brought it to Trump to approve in the first place. Indeed, Col. John Thomas, a spokesperson for US Central Command (CENTCOM), the combatant command responsible for operations in the Middle East, acknowledged as much in a statement Wednesday: "CENTCOM asks for operations we believe have a good chance for success and when we ask for authorization we certainly believe there is a chance of successful operations based on our planning."

Of course, the president, as commander in chief, is ultimately the one who will be held responsible for any operation that goes awry, especially if Americans end up getting killed, because at the end of the day it is the president who signed off on the operation.

The New York Times reported that "President Barack Obama's national security aides had reviewed the plans for a risky attack on a small, heavily guarded brick home of a senior Qaeda collaborator in a mountainous village in a remote part of central Yemen." However, the article says, "Mr. Obama did not act because the Pentagon wanted to launch the attack on a moonless night and the next one would come after his term had ended." That paragraph came in between two paragraphs describing Trump and his top advisers approving the raid over dinner at the White House. The Times article seemed to be trying  rather unsubtly  to draw a contrast between the idea of a cautious, deliberate Obama and the image of Trump casually signing off on a risky operation while sitting at the dinner table. But that framing is suspect. Because, as the Times report itself states, Obama rejected the plan not because it was too risky, but because he wanted Trump to be able to make the final call on an operation that would take place on Trump's watch. Of course, the president, as commander in chief, is ultimately the one who will be held responsible for any operation that goes awry, especially if Americans end up getting killed, because at the end of the day it is the president who signed off on the operation. And that's fair, I suppose. It's the way civilian control of the military is supposed to work. But taking responsibility for approving the plan is not the same thing as being the reason the plan went awry. If the plan really was that deeply flawed from the get-go, as those unnamed military officers are now claiming, then the fault really lies with the military planners who brought it to Trump for approval, not Trump himself.



The real question is why those military officers tried to shift the blame to Trump
WASHINGTON  If the 230-year American democratic experiment unravels  no longer an unthinkable possibility  the postmortem should focus on what happened in the Senate this week.

The majority Republicans could have put the brakes on President Trump and forced the rewriting of his travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries. They chose not to.

The sloppily executed travel ban, produced under the auspices of attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, has been blocked in part by federal judges, while the acting attorney general, doubting the orders legality, said she would not defend it. Trump aides reacted with conflicting signals of whether they would honor the court orders and by firing the acting attorney general  Trumps own version of Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, after just 10 days on the job.

Many Republican lawmakers voiced their objections. But given a chance to do something about the offending order, they demurred.

The Senate Judiciary Committee met Tuesday morning to vote on the Sessions nomination  a perfect leverage point to force Trump to revise or withdraw the order. Not one of the Republicans made a peep.

One of those on the panel, Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), had called the order unacceptable as written.

But Flake said nothing of that Tuesday morning in his brief statement calling Sessions a good man.

Another on the panel, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), had said in a joint statement with John McCain (R-Ariz.) that the order was not properly vetted and that we should not turn our backs on blameless refugees, mostly women and children, who suffered unspeakable horrors.

But on Tuesday, Graham enthusiastically saluted the man behind the order.

Also on the committee: Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), who called the order too broad and cautioned that it could help terrorist recruiters.

Sasse didnt speak at Tuesdays meeting.

Its commendable that many Republicans have spoken out against Trumps travel ban. But the disconnect between what they say and what they do was particularly pronounced Tuesday morning.

As The Posts Philip Rucker and Robert Costa reported, Sessions has been the intellectual godfather of Trumps policies, including the travel restrictions. Key Trump aides Stephen Miller, Rick Dearborn and Stephen Bannon have strong ties to Sessions, and Bannon called Sessions the clearinghouse for policy.

Roger Stone, a Trump confidant, described Sessions as Trumps John Mitchell  the Nixon attorney general who wound up in prison after an earlier constitutional crisis.

Its not much of an exaggeration to describe the current situation as a constitutional crisis  except in this instance, those in the legislative branch have quickly surrendered the Article I authorities given them in the Constitution.

Theres a strong case that Trumps unilateral action violates federal law, and the cavalier treatment of court orders is worrisome regardless of the outcome. But Senate Republicans have twice blocked attempts by the Democrats to rescind the order  swallowing their own misgivings along the way.

Back in December 2015, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), asked about Trumps proposed Muslim ban, said, Were not going to follow that suggestion. He called the proposal completely and totally inconsistent with American values.

Now Trump is doing just such a ban in the affected countries, a Muslim ban in all but name, and McConnell is punting: Its going to be decided in the courts as to whether or not this has gone too far.

Democrats delayed action on three of Trumps nominees Tuesday to protest the executives caprice, but ultimately only the majority GOP can stop Trump. And the Republicans will never have more bargaining power than they have now, with several of Trumps Cabinet nominees unconfirmed.

Democrats forced a one-day delay in the vote on Sessions with long-winded speeches on the Judiciary Committee. This is an administration that needed only one week to find itself on the losing side of an argument in federal court, Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said. Never, ever seen anything like that.

Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) tied the Muslim ban to the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II, and she praised Republicans such as Sasse, Flake, Graham and Orrin Hatch (Utah) for their critical statements.

But what about actions?

Hatch had previously encouraged Trump to move quickly to tailor its policy  as narrowly as possible.

But he didnt press the point Tuesday, instead calling Sessions qualifications unmatched in American history.

Mike Lee (R-Utah), also on the panel, had previously raised questions about Trumps order.

But he had no questions Tuesday. Lee praised Sessionss deep commitment to the notion that laws govern us rather than the will and whim of individual humans.

That was the notion, anyway  until 10 days ago.
To hear President Donald Trump tell it, you'd think the U.S. job market was in the worst shape since the Great Depression.



In fact, a broad review of the available economic data shows that the overall health of U.S.employment is better than it's been in decades. The supporting evidence goes far beyond the single unemployment rate reported Friday that draws the most attention every month.



The latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics  the decades-old survey that Trump took issue with during the campaign  showed that the U.S. economy produced an estimated 227,000 net new jobs last month, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.8 percent.



On the campaign trail, Trump dismissed officials numbers like those as a "hoax."

"Don't believe these phony (employment) numbers," Trump has told his supporters. "The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35 (percent). In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent."



After the jobs report, Trump said Friday before a meeting with top CEOs that he was happy with the 227,000 jobs and praised the "spirit in the country right now."



"I think it's going to continue big league," he added.



To be sure, the government's most widely watched employment report (officially the Employment Situation Summary) includes multiple measures of unemployment, six in all, to provide businesses and policymakers a more accurate picture of longer-term trends.



According to the broadest measure (U-6), which includes so-called discouraged workers, the jobless rate is much higher  9.4 percent as of last month. That measure has been much higher than the so-called headline rate since the government began the current six-tier data set in 1995.

By contrast, the narrowest jobless measure doesn't count someone as "unemployed" until they've been out of work for more than 15 weeks. That measure (U-1) was 1.9 percent in January.

Despite the variance in the different measures, these jobless rates have fallen close to levels not seen since the last days of the go-go '90s internet boom.



Even last month's one-tenth of a percent rise in the jobless rate was, in some ways, another sign of improvement. The increase came because the labor force participation rate  the share of the population working or looking for a job  rose by two-tenths of a percent as more than half a million people entered the workforce.

At least some of those were people who had given up looking for a job, but are now resuming a job hunt because their prospects have improved.

The job market momentum of the last few years is also pushing wages higher, after a long, painful pause for American households. Those meager gains in workers' paychecks for the last decade were a major theme of last year's campaign.

Now, the continued demand for workers to fill new positions is finally pushing wages higher, according to Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.

"The trend in employment growth remains more than strong enough to keep the unemployment rate trending down and adding to upward pressure on wage gains," he said.

Beyond the monthly unemployment rate data there are other job market statistics that are hard to square with Trump's dystopian take on the prospects for American workers.



For example, the pace of weekly unemployment claims, a benchmark for the rate of layoffs, is at the lowest level since the 1973 oil embargo.



A separate, less well-known measure of hiring, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), offers further evidence of that the economy is creating new jobs at a healthy clip.

While the more widely watched monthly employment report tracks the net gain or loss in payrolls, there are many more jobs created and lost each month. So the 227,000 new jobs reported for January are the difference between everyone who was hired last month and everyone who quit or was laid off.

The JOLTS survey tracks that broader churn in employment along with the number of job openings. And the latest survey shows that there are more than 5 million unfilled positions. That's the highest at any time at least since 2000, when the survey began.
South Korea's acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn with US Defense Secretary James Mattis in Seoul on February 2, 2017 Song Kyung-Seok-Pool/Getty Images

The U.S. Defense secretary on Friday warned North Korea that his government would respond to any use of nuclear weapons by the communist state against America or its allies with what he described as an "effective and overwhelming" response. James Mattis made the comments while in South Korea on his first official overseas visit since ascending to the post on January 20, according to a report in the Associated Press.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior," Mattis said, standing alongside his South Korean opposite number, Han Min Koo, during a press conference in the country's capital Seoul. "We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region," he is further quoted in the Associated Press as saying. "America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming." Secretary Mattis used the official visit to reaffirm the new administration's commitment to the longstanding cooperation between the two countries as represented by a defense treaty, despite rhetoric adopted by President Donald Trump during the election campaign suggesting the pact represented a poor deal for the U.S.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects a sub-unit under KPA Unit 1344 in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang November 9, 2016. KCNA | Reuters

The meeting between the defense counterparts also broached discussion of a timetable for implementation of the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense system (THAAD). This is an advanced U.S. missile defense system which carries the ostensible goal of improving the protection of South Korea and Japan as well as U.S. troops stationed in these nations, from a potential missile attack from North Korea. Mattis's continued push for THAAD to be deployed comes despite doubts held by South Korean authorities due to concerns over the domestic and international political sensitivity of the program. This as the Asian nation is preparing for upcoming national elections. "THAAD should be a worry to no nation other than North Korea," affirmed Mattis, in comments taken as a reference to China's objections to its implementation in South Korea.
Some U.K. supermarkets are rationing the amount vegetables that customers can buy and say a poor harvest in southern Europe is behind the shortage.

Lettuce, broccoli, butternut squash, eggplants and zucchinis are all affected by the shortage.

The U.K.'s largest grocer Tesco told CNBC Friday it is limiting shoppers to three iceberg lettuces per day because of supply problems.

"Due to bad weather conditions in Spain, we are experiencing some availability issues, but are working with our suppliers to resolve them as quickly as possible," the statement read.

During winter, Spain's south-eastern Murcia region supplies nearly all of Europe's produce but heavy rainfall has decimated growing fields.

The BBC reported that a concurrent cold snap in Italy is exacerbating the problem.
Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke with CNBC after President Donald Trump met with him and a group of prominent business executives to discuss issues related to job creation, immigration, taxes, trade and infrastructure. "You had the sense that there were an enormous number of ways that you can de-bottleneck the government and improve the economy," said Schwarzman regarding the meeting, which took place in the White House on Friday morning. "The people on this group who were there, and there were 18 of us, each came with a long list of things that can be done  some very quickly, some take a little longer  but the receptivity to that was instant." During the interview, Schwarzman shares his views on how the business community plans to deal with the new administration. PRO members have access to this full interview, which originally appeared on "Halfttime Report."

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke with CNBC after President Donald Trump met with him and a group of prominent business executives to discuss issues related to job creation, immigration, taxes, trade and infrastructure. "You had the sense that there were an enormous number of ways that you can de-bottleneck the government and improve the economy," said Schwarzman regarding the meeting, which took place in the White House on Friday morning. "The people on this group who were there, and there were 18 of us, each came with a long list of things that can be done  some very quickly, some take a little longer  but the receptivity to that was instant." During the interview, Schwarzman shares his views on how the business community plans to deal with the new administration. PRO members have access to this full interview, which originally appeared on "Halfttime Report."
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President Donald Trump issued an executive order Friday afternoon directing the Treasury secretary to submit a report on recommended changes to bank regulations in 120 days, and while the details of the order aren't yet known, experts are confidently making a few predictions. The first thing to know about the changes ahead for banks is that they won't be tailored to let big Wall Street institutions go back to the high-risk practices that triggered the financial crisis. Rather, the moves will take place more around the edges  cutting compliance costs, freeing up community and regional banks from the same rules as their bulge-bracket peers, and helping out investment advisors who believe they've been targeted unfairly. The second thing to know about the changes is no one is repealing Dodd-Frank, a term that has become shorthand for the omnibus rules put into place since the crisis.

Getting rid of the entire law would be far too onerous for a $16 trillion industry that already has implemented many of the measures. Unlike the effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act  Obamacare  there's little support for scrapping the entire reform package. The third thing to know is that those provisions that will change in Dodd-Frank won't go down without a fight.

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While Trump can roll back some measures through executive order, there are other provisions that will have to go through the same legislative process that created the law. The president can't simply void a law he doesn't like. Bottom line: major changes to the financial industry are going to take time. "The promises have been to simplify Dodd-Frank. It will probably be difficult to repeal it," said John Berlau, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. "What has been discussed is to make the playing field a little bit more even" between large institutions and smaller ones. Trump's order Friday begins what will be a lengthy process toward changing a law he vilified on the campaign trail. Compliance costs for banks have doubled since Dodd-Frank came into being, with the most recent figure put at $70 billion, or 23 percent of total expenses, according to Federal Financial Analytics. What Trump cares about most, though, is getting banks to lend money more aggressively. "We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank," the president said Friday while meeting with his business advisory council. "Frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, that have nice businesses that can't borrow money. They just can't get any money because the banks won't let them borrow because of rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank." Put broadly, Dodd-Frank mandated higher capital levels for banks, created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop loan abuses that proliferated in the years leading up to the crisis, and stopped banks from engaging in risky trading practices for their own benefit. The CFPB is expected to undergo significant changes and its leader may be replaced. It also established what's known as the "fiduciary rule," which requires investment advisors to act primarily in their clients' interest. The measure will be one of the White House's main targets, but also could be one of the most cumbersome to roll back. The administration likely will ask the Labor Department to delay the April 10 implementation. "We expect much of the focus of the action to be on opening access to credit, promoting economic growth, and removing burdensome regulations," analysts at investment bank FBR said in a note to clients. "Many of the regulations created by Dodd-Frank would be difficult to eliminate without action from Congress, but there are a number of changes that regulators can make (especially on the enforcement of these rules) which could have a significant impact on the business models of banks and other financial services firms."

There's going to be a big fight about all their measures. You can't just wave a magic wand and say the fiduciary rule is wrong Michael S. Barr law professor, University of Michigan

Big Wall Street banks, though, are only getting limited relief. Trump attacked them during the campaign as well, and they're unlikely to find many sympathetic ears around Capitol Hill. They aren't, for instance, going to get any breaks in terms of capital they have to maintain. They may get some help with laws restricting their trading activities  under the so-called Volcker rule  but that mainly will come in terms of the volume of paperwork they must file to show they're in compliance.

Regional and community banks will be getting some capital relief, which likely will come in the form of raising the level of assets a bank must hold in order to come under regulatory scrutiny. The net result would be less regulation on smaller banks. But the major banks "are very unlikely to escape from the broadest rules. Plus the reality is they have international operations, so many of them would be subject to other rules anyway," said Joo-Yung Lee, managing director for financial institution analysis at Fitch Ratings.

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"I don't think banks are going to go back to prop trading," she added. "The capital rules may get pretty unfavorable to do so, and many of the banks have acknowledged that's not where they want to do. It's really about the burden of proof, the reporting requirements around Volcker." To be sure, few of the changes will go off without a hitch. Any talk of rolling back bank regulations immediately sparks blowback from those who worry about a return to Wall Street's Wild West days. Congressional Democrats already are lining up to oppose the moves ahead. "I don't think it's a fait accompli at all," said Michael S. Barr, a law professor at the University of Michigan and editor of the nonpartisan Russell Sage Foundation's journal, Financial Reform: Preventing the Next Crisis. "There's going to be a big fight about all their measures. You can't just wave a magic wand and say the fiduciary rule is wrong."

Indeed, repealing the rule could be the most controversial move. While sounding like a common sense measure  getting fiduciaries to put clients first  industry advocates say it ultimately will limit choice and prove costly to investors. "It might be harder for some of the firms that have already taken some actions regarding their fiduciary rule plans to change what they've articulated," Lee said. "So I think it really depends on the nature or the depth of the rule's scope."
Google , Apple , Amazon , AT&T , Microsoft , Samsung , Verizon and Facebook are the technology-based companies that make up eight of the top 10 most valuable brands in the world, according to a report by consultancy Brand Finance published this week. Yet 10 years ago, the list looked very different, with Coca-Cola, Citi, Hewlett-Packard, HSBC and Marlboro featuring, none of which ranks in this year's top 10, although Wal-Mart and Microsoft are on both the 2007 and 2017 lists. So what does "digital" mean for businesses that are based on physical products or those that were founded in the analogue world? A new book, "Building Digital Culture: A practical guide to successful digital transformation," by Daniel Rowles and Thomas Brown explores how companies can make sure their whole organization succeeds.



Apple's iPhone turned 10 in January 2017

"Many industries, when technological disruption comes along, attempt to actively resist customer requirements. Customers have decided they want something different and the company's reaction is to ignore the change and carry on regardless. "However, in many cases the organizations may not be actively resisting, but the catch-up time between market change and company change is just too great," the authors write. But even for brands like Apple, change is hard to keep up with, says Simon Thompson, who held senior e-commerce roles at the company from 2009 to 2011, and was there for the launch of the iPad in 2010. "You have to bring your 'A' game to work every day [at Apple], the organization was going through massive growth, it was a totally magical time. "What was difficult at Apple was keeping up with the sheer pace of the change, when you are selling products that are brand new in the market, and they are growing exponentially, that is a pretty unique experience you'll have in any company or industry you work for," he told CNBC.com. Thompson, who is now global head of digital commerce at HSBC, and spoke in general terms and not specifically about the banking brand, added that businesses ought to be experimenting with innovation, and "placing some bets out there that you don't know are going to pay off." He urged companies to make sure that digital investments paid back quickly, however. "Digital isn't some future theory any more, it's here, it's now, it's everywhere, it's happening, so I don't think there's really any excuse any more for not delivering some benefit now, either to customers or shareholders. The days of it being a 10-year long project with a gazillion millions [of dollars supporting it], that is long behind us now."



The new Google logo is displayed at the Google headquarters on September 2, 2015 in Mountain View, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Having digital processes or culture is now essential to a business, says Dara Nasr, Twitter's UK managing director. "During my time at Twitter, and even before, I've seen a real recognition that there has to be change. "It takes time, sometimes. I think that there is a real acceptance that digital isn't a [separate] thing, that it's just one of those outliers. It's central to how companies interact with customers, communicate with customers," he told CNBC.com. Thompson warns brands that they may not get support from colleagues on digital initiatives until results are seen. He set up the e-commerce business at U.K. "big four" supermarket Morrisons in 2014, and writes in "Building Digital Culture": "The day we got true support for the online business was the day that everyone got a delivery at home You can talk as much as you want, but when people see real things they get involved." For Willy Kruh, global chair, consumer markets at KPMG International, becoming an "omni business," where every process or system is focused on customers, is the future for brands. "In the digital world, in online or dealing with mobile, you've got to have a platform or an internal system where supply chains, inventory management and HR comes through that so the center of that whole 'omni business' is the customer. They [businesses] talk about it but they are not there yet, it's aspirational and it's where they need to be," he told CNBC.com. Only 7 percent of companies have currently integrated all of their systems, according to KPMG's "Seeking customer centricity" report published in June 2016, while 32 percent of executives it surveyed plan to do so by 2018. "Many CEOs believe that in the next three years there will be more transformation and more upheaval than in the last 50. But [a KPMG] study which found such a disconnect, found that three-quarters of those companies say they'll be the same three years from now," Kruh said, adding "How can you be the same if three years from now the world is going to go upside down?"


Elizabeth Peratrovich, through her advocacy of Alaskan Natives, is credited with the 1945 passage in Alaska of the first anti-discrimination law in the United States.

John Bennett Herrington, a Chickasaw Indian, served as a U.S. astronaut on the International Space Station in 2002, whose service included three space walks.

Dressed in her native Cherokee ceremonial dress, a then 96-year-old Mary Golda Ross is escorted to the 2004 opening of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.

The 2008 grave marker for Mary Golda Ross, an engineer of Cherokee lineage whose work helped develop the spacecraft for the Gemini and Apollo space programs, bears the epitaph, "She Reached for the Stars" to the right of a rocket being launched. Ross is seen in the background image from 2004 attending the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian.

American Indians in the Space Program and Elizabeth Peratrovich and Alaskas Anti-Discrimination Law are the overall design themes, respectively, for the 2019 and 2020 Native American dollars.

Members of the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee met by teleconference Jan. 17 to discuss the narratives accompanying the design themes. The discussion focused more on design elements that would reflect Native American contributions rather than single out the achievements of one individual for recognition.

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The panels suggested elements will be presented to the U.S. Mints engraving staff, and possibly the U.S. Mints Artistic Infusion Program artists, for consideration in rendering proposals for reverse designs for the coins.

Once designs have been rendered, they will be presented to the CCAC and the Commission of Fine Arts for review by the panels members. The recommendations by those panels will then be considered by the secretary of the Treasury or designate in making final design choices for the coins.

The reverses will be paired with sculptor Glenna Goodacres obverse portrait of Sacagawea and her infant son, Jean-Baptiste, introduced on the Sacagawea dollar in 2000, and continued on the Native American $1 Coin series beginning in 2009

The Mint presented CCAC members the following narratives for their discussion:

??2019  American Indians in the Space Program:

American Indians have been on the modern frontier of space flight since the beginning of NASA.

The service of American Indians culminated in the flight of John Herrington (Chickasaw) on the International Space Station in 2002, including three space walks, but it dates to the work of Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008). She is considered the first female American Indian engineer, and in her work helped develop the Agena spacecraft for the Gemini and Apollo space programs.

2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface.

??2020  Elizabeth Peratrovich and Alaskas Anti-Discrimination Law:

The first anti-discrimination law in the United States, prohibiting discrimination in access to public accommodations, was passed in the Alaskan Territorial Government in 1945. Elizabeth Peratrovich (Tlingit), through her advocacy for Alaskan Natives with her husband Roy and an impassioned speech in the Alaskan Senate in support of the law, is widely credited with getting it passed.

2020 marks the 75th anniversary of Elizabeth Peratrovichs famous testimony in support of the nations first anti-discrimination law.

The Native American dollar program is an offshoot of the original Sacagawea dollar series. A different commemorative reverse is produced every year commemorating an historic accomplishment by the Native American community.

Like the now-completed Presidential dollars program, the coins in the Native American dollar program are not struck for circulation. They instead are produced with various finishes and are sold to Mint customers at premium prices.

The Native American dollar program began in 2009.
Live updates: Mizzou football takes on Kentucky

Mizzou football takes on Kentucky Saturday. We've got you covered with live score updates and analysis from the game.
Just 29 days ago, the FCCs Media Bureau issued an unusual decision denying Petitions for Reconsideration of an order adopted by the commissioners themselves, raising questions as to whos in charge at the FCC. The petitions were filed by noncommercial broadcasters in the Commissions long-running proceeding to update its broadcast ownership reporting requirements. Today, a much different Media Bureau backtracked on that decisionthe FCCs rules give it 30 days to change its mindand decided that ruling on petitions seeking reconsideration of a Commission-level order is a matter best left to the commissioners themselves.

You may recall SUFRN through my blog post a year ago when the Wheeler FCC issued its Report and Order making changes to the commercial and noncommercial broadcast ownership reporting forms while attempting to quell broadcasters long-running opposition to providing Social Security Numbers to the FCC as part of the reporting process. The FCC has long wanted individuals who hold attributable ownership interests in broadcast stations to have unique personal identifiers so that their ownership interests can be more easily tracked.

By the end of the Report and Order, the Commission had established three different options for the unique identifier: the FRN, or Federal Registration Number, which requires the submission of an individuals full Social Security Number (SSN); the Restricted Use FRN (RUFRN), which requires the submission of only the last four digits of the SSN, but also full name, date of birth, and address; and the Special Use FRN (SUFRN), which is only to be used when an individual (e.g., a board member) refuses to comply with the FRN/RUFRN obligation. While technically allowing use of a SUFRN, the FCC noted that those using a SUFRN could be subject to enforcement actions for non-compliance with the Commissions rules.

When the Report and Order was released, then-Commissioner Pai criticized the time and effort spent on coming up with what he termed this blizzard of acronyms and stated that, in particular, noncommercial broadcasters should be exempt from it:

I cannot support the Commissions imposition of a requirement that the officers and directors of noncommercial educational (NCE) broadcasters provide us with personal information, including the last four digits of an SSN, to obtain unique identifiers. For one, I fail to see how this will lead to any tangible benefit. After all, our multiple ownership rules do not apply to NCE stations. And in contrast with the commercial broadcast industry, where individuals often have multiple commercial broadcast interests, the existence of such interests is in fact quite rare in the case of NCE board members and officers. Therefore, unless we have reason to believe that many Americans are suddenly going to start volunteering to serve on the boards of multiple public broadcasting stations at once (and the record doesnt suggest that), the case for requiring NCE board members and officers to obtain a reliable unique identifier from the Commission is incredibly thin.

A number of noncommercial broadcasters petitioned for reconsideration of the Report and Order, arguing that the requirement to either submit an SSN or the last four digits of an SSN combined with additional personal information was unduly burdensome, especially considering that their board members are often community volunteers or government officials appointed to the board by virtue of their jobs. The petitions sat at the FCC for eight months, but when the departure of Chairman Wheeler became imminent, the Media Bureau took up the petitions and rejected them as merely being a rehash of what had already been argued and rejected by a majority of the five commissioners a year before.

Today, however, the Media Bureau (with a sign out front saying Under New Management) issued a six-sentence Order taking back its decision rejecting the petitions for reconsideration. It returned the petitions to pending status, concluding that the petitions are more appropriately handled at the Commission level.

With the next biennial ownership report filing deadline ten months away, noncom stations can now wait out this decision-making process before having to apply for the FCC acronym of their choice. Given the change in administration, Chairman Pais stance on the issue, and todays Media Bureau Order, it seems a good bet that at least noncom broadcasters will not be SUFRN under this requirement going forward. However, the impact might not be limited to noncom stations. Commercial broadcasters will also be watching this proceeding to see whether Chairman Pai might have something to say about how the blizzard of acronyms will be applied to commercial TV and radio stations. 2017 is off to an interesting start at the FCC.

(Click here for more news and insights on evolving regulations and policies under the Trump Administration.)
Sanctions imposed by former President Obama on Russia for hacking during the U.S. election had an unintended side effect: they essentially barred U.S. tech firms from selling new IT products in the country.

Part of last month's sanction order was designed to block U.S. companies from doing business with Russias Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB, because of its suspected role in influencing last years election.

[ For more, see Hacking the Election: Myths and Realities ]

But the FSB isnt just an intelligence agency. Its also a crucial regulator in Russia that clears new IT products, including smartphones and tablets, for sale in the country.

Following the sanctions, tech firms flooded the U.S. Treasury Department with inquiries, according to a senior official with the agency.

And so on Thursday, the Treasury Department basically tweaked the sanction order, so that U.S. tech firms can now interact with the FSB to clear their products.

News of the change immediately sparked questions over whether the new Trump administration had eased sanctions on Russia. However, the Treasury Department began considering the tweak during the Obama administration, according to the senior official.

Magdalena Petrova The U.S. Department of the Treasury building in Washington, D.C., on December 19, 2016.

The change means that U.S. tech firms can now interact with the FSB to pay for permits or issue notifications that do not exceed $5,000 in a calendar year.

According to legal experts, FSB approval is needed for imports of encryption technology, which can be found in many IT products.

For instance, companies must receive an FSB granted permit in order to distribute enterprise applications with encryption, said Janet Kim, a lawyer with Baker and McKenzie, whose firm was working on behalf of U.S. tech firms to amend the sanction order.

She said that Obama's sanction order had sparked concern from the U.S. tech industry that it wouldnt be able to distribute new products in Russia, including mass market devices. To sell a smartphone -- which also uses encryption -- a U.S. tech firm must send a notification to the FSB, Kim said.

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the U.S. was not easing sanctions against Russia. He called it a common practice for the Treasury Department to issue carve outs for certain products or industries, after a sanction order is placed.

Nevertheless, some are politicizing the matter.

Russia attacked our democracy. It should be punished. Instead, President Trump is easing sanctions against its team of hackers, the FSB," said U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, a democrat from California, in a statement.
Introduction

Im delighted to be here tonight to accept Sir Hews invitation to return to my alma mater and speak on the topic of Russian Resurgence.

Im sure it would make Professor Christian, who led the Russian department in my day, proud to see it ranked first in the UK for Teaching, Quality, and Experience. It forms a principal plank in the bridge between British and Russian academia. Scholarship, culture and history have always brought Britain and Russia together.

In recent times weve seen renewed interest in Russian scientific and artistic achievement. Last year saw the Cosmonaut exhibition at the Science Museum. This year the Royal Academy focuses on Russian art.

However, youll be relieved to hear that Im not about to launch into a lengthy discourse on Russias artistic renaissance. Rather my focus is Russias military resurgence  our response to which is a key factor in the formulation of our defence policy.

Resurgence isnt really the issue. Every nation has the right to compete on the global stage. The danger comes when that behaviour becomes aggressive.

President Trump has spoken about the need for engagement with Russia  hes right.

Great nations like the US and Russia will talk. Indeed, they must talk to preserve the rules based international system underpinning our security and prosperity. The UK too needs to engage with Russia, including military to military.

Yet President Trump is a realist. He knows engagement is an equation of risk versus reward with the outcome decided by a nations deeds not its words.

So this evening I hope to offer a sober assessment of Russias recent actions, our response as a leading member of NATO, and the prospects for the future.

Clear-eyed assessment

Let me begin with Russian behaviour.

We are all familiar with its principal theatres of involvement  Ukraine and Syria.

I was in Ukraine two weeks ago and, as this month marks three years on from the events leading to Russias illegal annexation of Crimea, its instructive to reflect on whats happened since.

In February 2014, President Yanukovych fled Ukraine in the wake of the Euromaidan protests.

The Ukrainian Rada elected an interim president and prepared for fresh presidential elections  won, in May 2014, by Petro Poroshenko.

But Russia did not allow Ukraine to decide its own destiny like any other sovereign country.

Instead, under the guise of ambiguous and deniable instruments it annexed Crimea.

Similarly deniable tactics were tried in the Donbas before it was forced to resort to sponsoring militias and deploying conventional forces.

A nadir was reached in June 2014  two days after I became Defence Secretary  when MH-17 was shot down killing, 283 passengers, ten of them British.

Yet despite an inquiry showing that the plane was shot down by a Russian provided missile, Russia denied it and continues to do so.

Since then, in the Donbas, almost 10,000 people have been killed and nearly 1.5 million displaced. Despite the Minsk Agreements and successive ceasefires, the conflict not only continues, but also intenifies.

Ordinary people suffer as the ceasefire is violated every day while Russian land mines and artillery take their toll. In January the US Mission to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) mission identified over 238 weapons in separatist-held Miusynsk, including over 40 multiple launch rocket systems.

So to Russias second theatre  Syria. Its intervention in September 2015 was not to target Daesh terrorists but to shore up the ailing Assad regime  demonstrated by 80 per cent of its air strikes being conducted against non-Daesh targets.

Since then Russia has targeted the Syrian opposition in Aleppo with little regard for innocent lives.

Yet Russian efforts have not been confined to Syria and Ukraine, nor limited to military means. Russias doctrine advocates co-ordinating multiple instruments  military and non-military  as part of a hybrid approach.

Snap exercises

A favoured technique is the use of no-notice exercises, often of very large formations.

OSCE rules state that when the number of troops equals or exceeds 13,000 they are subject to notification and observation.

But Russia has managed to avoid tripping the 13,000 threshold for a mandatory observation since the dissolution of the Soviet Union despite annually boasting of exercises more than a hundred thousand strong. In 2016, the Kremlin said 12,500 troops were to be involved in its summer exercise (called KAVKAZ). Later Russia bragged that ten times as many took part.

Critically, these snap exercises are frequently held near international borders with every intent to intimidate.

Hybrid

Another feature of Russian activity is the elevation of what Churchill called the terminological inexactitude, to an art form.

There is a special Russian word for this.. Not maskirovkathe old deception perpetrated by its intelligence agenciesbut vranyo where the listener knows the speaker is lying, and the speaker knows the listener knows he is lying, but keeps lying anyway.

Last year we saw Russia dismissing the Dutch forensic report into MH-17. Having first denied the plane was shot down  it used third parties to blame Ukrainian air-to-air missiles or US drone strikes.

Meanwhile Russia labelled the independent inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London  which found Russia responsible  a theatre of the absurd.

The Swedish Institute of Strategic Studies revealed Russias use of a wide array of active measures  including fake news  designed to frame NATO as an aggressor and military threat, the EU as in terminal decline, and Russia as under siege from hostile Western governments.

In his year of exile 43 years ago Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote In our country the daily lie is not the whim of corrupt nature, but a mode of existence.

Today we see a country that in weaponising misinformation has created what we might now see as the post-truth age.

Cyber attacks

Finally, there is the use of cyber weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery.

France knows this. In April 2015 TV5Monde was taken off air by a group calling itself the Cyber Caliphate. French investigators suggested the Kremlin was behind the cyber-attack.

Months later Germany was targeted too. Its lower house of parliaments network was shut down by a hacker group the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) said was steered by the Russian state.

What is concerning is that in 2016 we saw a step change in Russian behaviour.

In April, the Dutch referendum was targeted. A Washington Post journalist noted, Many of the no campaigns themes, headlines and even photographs were lifted directly from Russia Today and Sputnik.

In October, Bulgaria was subject to what President Plevneliev called the most heaviest and intense cyber attackconducted in south-east European attack on Bulgarian democracyconducted with a high probability from Russia.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that Russia targeted the US Presidential election and that its intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major US political parties.

And Russia involved itself in Montenegros sovereign affairs. On 16 October, Parliamentary elections were held but overshadowed by the arrest of 20 Serbian nationals  accused of planning attacks on state institutions. The Montengrin investigation showed the attempted coup was organised by two Russian nationalists. Montenegro has never been considered part of Russias near-abroad. It is, however, about to become a NATO member.

Meanwhile, the Head of the German BfV intelligence agency warned the Kremlin is seeking to influence public opinion and decision-making processes ahead of this years German elections.

Russia testing the alliance

What should we make of this persistent behaviour?

Russia is clearly testing NATO and the West.

It is seeking to expand its sphere of influence, destabilise countries, and weaken the Alliance. It is undermining national security for many allies and the international rules-based system.

Therefore it is in our interest and Europes to keep NATO strong and to deter and dissuade Russia from this course.

It hopes to stay below the threshold for response.

But we must be clear-eyed in exposing its actions and calling on all NATO members to recommit to strengthening our collective defence.

Its vital we demonstrate NATO is as essential to peace now as it was then. President Trump is 100 per cent backing NATO and Europe needs show that it does too. 19 of the 28 EU member states dont spend 1.5 per cent of GDP on defence; five (and by no means the poorest five) dont spend 1%. After we leave, EU counties will pay only 20 per cent of NATOs bills.

So he is right to challenge NATO to raise its game. All members need to step up to ensure NATO fulfils its role as the cornerstone of the Wests defence as effectively as possible.

That means, not five, but all members making a step change by meeting the two per cent commitment. Were doing that, others need to too.

It means supporting reform to make NATO more agile, resilient, and better configured to operate in the contemporary environment including against hybrid and cyber attacks.

Cyber defence is now part of NATOs core task. NATO must defend itself as effectively in the cyber sphere as it does in the air, on land, and at sea. So adversaries know there is a price to pay if they use cyber weapons.

Alliance members are strengthening their capability, collectively and individual, to resist any form of attack. The UK is playing its part by almost doubling our investment on defensive and offensive cyber capability to 1.9 billion.

Above all it means accepting that we need to commit our forces to defend other nations. Public support for NATO requires political leadership; it places a duty on us to keep making the case for the Alliance and to keep explaining its obligations.

Multinational institutions need commitment, reform and leadership to command loyalty.

Ultimately Britains national security rests on NATOs security.

That is why I deplore the Leader of the Oppositions failure to support the deployment of British troops to Estonia and Poland  and Article 5.

By contrast, the government is responding in three ways to the testing of NATO and the challenge to the international order.

1. Not business

First, by showing that Russias actions cannot be regarded as business as usual.

Our hope was to have a partnership with Russia that recognised nations pursuit of their self-interest within the framework of the rules-based international order. But Russia has chosen to become a strategic competitor of the West.

So realism must be our watchword, with guarded engagement. As the Prime Minister put it in Philadelphia  engage but beware.

There is nothing inevitable about a retreat to the days of the Cold War.

Russia can take a different approach

But, as the new US Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, said: Im all for engagement, but we also have to recognize reality in what Russia is up to.

Part of our response is for NATO and the West to do more to tackle the false reality promoted through Soviet-style misinformation. Whatever else we do on deterrence and dialogue we must counter Putins Pravda with a faster truth.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting its boots on.

We need to call out messengers like RT and Sputnik. In 2015 Ofcom sanctioned RT for broadcasting content either materially misleading or not duly impartial regarding Syria and Ukraine. It is beyond irony that one of those programmes was called Truthseeker.

2. Reinforcing deterrence.

Second, we are reinforcing our deterrence.

Deterrence is often associated with nuclear weapons. But it applies across the spectrum from peace to war. Its about ensuring that any potential adversary recognises that any benefits they may seek to gain by aggression will be outweighed by the consequences for them of its actions.

The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions following Russias action in Ukraine. They have weakened the Russian economy. This is the price it pays for its actions and by making that link it will deter them from similar actions in the future. Those sanctions remain in place today.

At the same time, NATO has responded to Russias behaviour with unity and resolve  with Britain having a leading role.

Following the Wales Summit in September 2014 the Alliance established its Very High Readiness Joint Taskforce  which the UK leads this year  to react in short order to security challenges.

At the Warsaw Summit in July 2016, NATO agreed to establish an Enhanced Forward Presence in Eastern Europe.

British troops will soon deploy to Estonia and Poland as part of that presence.

No one, save Sputnik, could pretend these measures are anything other than proportionate and defensive  Britains contribution is 950 troops.

But where we deploy battalions, Russia deploys whole divisionstens of thousands of troops.

Whereas their deployments seem designed to intimidate, ours are designed to reassure allies  especially those most threatened by Russian behaviour. They show that we stand by our partners and reaffirm that an attack against one NATO member would be considered an attack against all.

We also support greater cooperation between NATO and the EU to ensure we can deter coordinated hybrid attack using military and non-military levers.

Have these measures constrained Russian activity?

We cant prove a negative. But many feared Russia would push further into central and southern Ukraine.

So lets not rule out the possibility that overwhelming international condemnation, sanctions, and above all the bravery Ukrainians, gave the Kremlin pause for thought and dissuaded it from embarking on a wider conventional war.

3. Dialogue

My final point, something both President Trump and his new Secretary of State understand, is that deterrence and dialogue go hand in hand.

So weve kept our channels of communication open. This year marks the NATO Russia Councils 15th anniversary. Communication remains vital since, as our experience during the Cold War taught us, understanding is crucial even when trust seems in short supply.

We need to understand Russia better, and vice versa, because the risk of miscalculation is real.

December saw the passing of Thomas Schelling, noble prize winnerwho devised the hotline between the White House and the Kremlin during the Cold War.

He understood that, while nations will always disagree on some subjects, to hold dialogue hostage would be folly since its value lies not just in preventing miscalculation, not just in stopping the ignorance and isolation but in opening up fresh opportunities.

Earlier I spoke about the future prospects for Russia/UK relations.

They are not as bleak as painted.

We had shared interests with the Iran nuclear deal.

Even in Syria where we disagree on so much we are deconflicting flights in a highly congested airspace.

And we have common regional and global concerns such as in Afghanistan, Islamist terror, and we all stand to gain by limiting weapons proliferation.

As a student here in the 70s, during the Cold War, I believed the Soviet Union would never change. Fifteen years later it did. It came about through the steadfast refusal of President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to go along with the prevailing orthodoxy of quiet appeasement. It came too from the resilience of ordinary people, carrying messages beyond the Iron Curtain and linking hands across the Berlin Wall.

Last year our nations remembered our great Arctic convoys coming to Russias aid in its hour of need and turning the tide of war.

Shakespeares Twelfth Night and Tempest were performed by the Pushkin Drama Theatre in Moscow.

And Tim Peake shared a tiny capsule a Russian cosmonaut and US astronaut.

These interactions offer some hope for the future.

If the opportunities are out there to improve engagement Britain will do so  from a position of strength.

We accept that Russia with its vast geo-strategic span, like any major power, has legitimate interests

But we cannot accept the trading away of our interests and values or the continued violation of Ukraines territorial integrity and interference with the freedoms enjoyed by Eastern Europe.

Instead of weakening global stability, its time to strengthen the security architecture that guarantees the international rules based system.

And above all we must not accept as any kind of new normal Russias propaganda, whether overt or covert; its easy disregard for hard facts and numbers; or its blatant distortions and evasions.

On the contrary, we must continue calling Russia out on its activities, judging it on its deeds rather than words. As Bulgakov warned us: The tongue may hide the truth but they eyes  never.

Conclusion

So there you have it. A clear eyed assessment of Russian behaviour.

Weve seen a persistent pattern of behaviour that is becoming more pronounced.

We hope that Russia changes tack. That it abides by the Minsk agreements, curbs the reckless military activity, and ditches the misinformation.

If it does, then there is the potential for a better relationship.

Russia could again become the partner the West always wished for. We could dare to hope that, to quote Bulgakov again, everything will turn out right, the world is built like that.
Graeme Archer is a medical statistician, a former winner of the Orwell Prize for blogging, and was recently a speechwriter for a Cabinet Minister.

What do the following countries have in common? Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

Obviously theyre all places whose governments dont cause the Left to collapse in a fit of the vapours. Countries like Libya must be the last word in female emancipation: no-one marches against its regime, with or without a knitted vagina on their head.

I dont believe Jeremy Corbyn donned a pussyhat while fawning for Iran on Press TV either, although I wasnt a regular viewer, and he may well have done from time to time. I rang his spokeswoman to check: Jeremy doesnt get out of bed for less than 20,000, mumbled Diane, suspiciously. Can you send a car? Or some helium? I need to suck more hel- but I hung up.

However, the list of governments against whom the Left wont march is much, much longer than this group of sixteen, so no, thats not it.

Algeria locks gay people up for two years; Bangladeshs statute promises life imprisonment. Yemen has the death sentence for homosexuality, and Iran  Jezzas mates  hangs gay men from cranes, to widespread public amusement.

You and I might walk round the park on a Sunday, drive over to the Watford shops, watch a bit of (Jezza-less) telly. Iranian versions of ourselves gather to watch as harmless men are strung up to die. Iranian versions of yourself, I should say; the Iranian version of Graeme is either in hiding, or is hanging, dead, just above your head. (Best not to look; maybe pull that pussyhat down over your eyeline? There you go. Nice hat, man.)

So the listed countries wouldnt feature on my Grand Tour; but again, vicious treatment of gay people isnt unique to The Sixteen. So thats not it either.

Has Donald Trump banned citizens from all these places from temporarily entering the US? Not quite: for example, Somalia isnt on my list, while its certainly on his. But youre getting there. Hold that thought.

Are these the nations that Messrs Bush and Blair bombed into liberal democracy? To be honest, I lost track of the swollen list of countries to which armchair neocons sent working-class Britons to die, or be wounded, or sued by taxpayer-funded solicitors and their refugee clients. A small price to pay, youll agree, to test the exciting Blairite theory: that functioning (if unpleasant) states should be replaced with one Islamist bloodbath after another, and anyway, isnt that what our working-class countrymen are for? Some of their views about immigration  my dears!

Attention span of a fruit-fly, me; a bit like Blair and post bellum planning. But no, Im pretty sure that Saudia Arabia, for example, wasnt a Bush-Blair target; funny, that. Its not on Donald Trumps list, either; curiouser and curiouser.

Shades of Mrs Merton and Debbie McGee with Saudi Arabia, I always think: Just what was it about oil-wealthy, arms-purchasing Saudi Arabia, Prime Minister, that helped you turn a blind eye to the medieval barbarity it visits upon its people and the illiberal, wicked ideology it spreads throughout the UK? Long term partners, erm, war against terror, um, hang on, theres a corruption scandal Ive just got to close down look, can we send Prince Charles again?

Prince Charles! Could his crusade against global warming be the common factor? Do The Sixteens leaders tremble to attend state receptions at Buckingham Palace, lest the heir to our throne grabs the post-dinner mike and bores them all to death about windfarms?

No, no, no. Way off target. the Princes environmental concerns arent directed at, say, Saudi Arabia, but, naturally, Donald Trump. When Trump visits the UK, Prince Charles has promised some tough talk about climate change.

Here, he reveals his monarchical suitability, because millions of his fellow subjects are angry with the American president too. (The riots when Trump visits will be quite the lark, wont they?)

The latest causa irae uniting not only the Left, but much moderate Conservative opinion, was Trumps decision to ban residents from seven countries from visiting the US, for a few months, while his agencies tighten up immigration control.

For this action he has been condemned as a fascist. Quite right too. Thank God for great European leaders, like Angela Merkel, whose idiosyncratic approach to border control played such an understated role in last years Brexit vote.

Out of time! The answer to my question: The Sixteen all ban Israeli passport holders (know what they mean? nudge nudge!) from entering their countries: not temporarily, but completely.

Strangely, no-one gets all tearful on the BBC about this, which doesnt masturbate over the petition which nobody starts on the subject. Nobody takes over an airport in protest. Lawyers dont offer free legal advice on behalf of the banned Jews, sorry, Israelis.

Bunch of fascists, right? Whats that? Youre too busy to care, what with all the knitting youve got on, ahead of Trumps visit. I completely understand your reaction.

Nice hat, man. Make sure you knit it sufficiently long, that it keeps your eyeline safely covered.
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

I suspect that, like many of you, when I heard Theresa May was going to visit Donald Trump, I feared the worst. Although I thought it was right that she should go, I doubted whether much good would come of it. I also thought that there was a real risk of it all going wrong, largely because it didnt seem to me they would get on very well.

I was wrong. The visit was a triumph for the Prime Minister. She handled the press conference with great skill, and it was a masterstroke for her to make clear that the President had backed NATO one hundred per cent. Even those who thought she shouldnt have gone had to admit that she played a blinder.

But what a difference 12 hours make: for during them, Trump issued his presidential order banning people from seven countries from entering the country for three months. As May arrived in Turkey the next morning, details were sketchy, so when she was asked about it during her press conference with the Turkish Prime Minister, she didnt condemn it  merely saying that US immigration policy was for the United States.

The media went mental, and it took Downing Street a further ten hours for a spokesman to give the baying media some condemnatory words. But even at her press conference in Ireland with Enda Kenny on Monday, the Prime Minister didnt go much further. It was only at PMQs on Wednesday that the Prime Minister called the policy divisive and wrong. While I certainly didnt expect her to lay into Donald Trump all guns blazing, it took her far too long to get to the right place.

         

Sometimes people need to calm down. This is one of them. Lets put Trumps refugee ban into a perspective before we all rush away with the idea that Trump has done something totally unprecedented  and proved that he is a modern day incarnation of Hitler.

Dont get me wrong. I dont agree with the ban. I condemn it unreservedly. But people who want to shut down the debate have projected a familiar word  whataboutery. Apparently, were not allowed to point out any inconvenient facts which might jeopardise their argument.

So when asking people to consider the facts, Im not allowed to point out that Barack Obama banned refugees for six months  not three, six  back in 2011. But of course the sainted Obama can do no wrong.

In addition, sixteen middle eastern nations have a blanket ban on people from Israel entering their countries, as Graeme Archer also points out today on this site. Sixteen! They even ban anyone with an Israeli stamp in their passport. Do we hear any outrage from the Left about this? Of course we dont. Israel is fair game for discrimination.

The truth is that Trump is using the prospect of refugees turning into terrorists to frighten the American people. And one wonders why hes picked these seven countries only, rather than including, say, Saudi Arabia.

My main fear is that this policy will actually encourage a major attack on US soil. ISIS will know that if they manage to perpetrate even one, they will almost certainly manage to provoke the President to take even more extreme measures. The consequences are unthinkable.

         

Jeremy Corbyn and Tim Farron have the same problem. They cannot control their parties. Having enforced a three line whip on the Article 50 vote this week, more than a third of Labour MPs defied the instruction to support it. Forty-seven Labour MPs rebelled.

Surprisingly, Farron had a similar problem. 22 per cent of his MPs (admittedly, thats only two!) decided not to obey the party line. Only one Conservative MP, Ken Clarke, rebelled against the whip.

Corbyn also had to endure the humiliation of three of his Shadow Cabinet members resigning. Admittedly, they were three that few of us had ever heard of, but it demonstrated just how little control he is able to exert over his own parliamentary party. That several junior frontbenchers also voted against a three line whip without resigning or being sacked merely adds to the growing sense of chaos.

When the Bill comes to its third reading, Clive Lewis, the Shadow Business Secretary, is also likely to quit, since he has said he will vote against if the Bill hasnt been amended. Interesting times for Mr Corbyn. Its ironic that an issue that has torn the Conservative Party apart from decades is now doing the same to Labour.

         

Last Saturday morning, I sat in for Matt Frei on LBC. We decided to spend an hour on Theresa Mays visit to Turkey. That new LibDem MP Sarah Olney has written an article on it in the Guardian, said my producer. How very interesting. Not, I replied, rather dismissively.

Anyway, I read it  and couldnt believe the sanctimony contained in it. Erdogan is a nasty man, so the Prime Minister shouldnt have gone, was the articles message. There was no recognition that Turkey is a vital ally in the fight against ISIS, and that if countries like us dont engage with him, he is likely to cancel the agreement which has stemmed the flow of Syrian refugees through Turkey into Europe.

Her tone suggested that May was just as evil as Erdogan, mainly because she belongs to the Conservative Party. I then typed Nick Clegg Turkey visit into Google. And it turned out Clegg had led a trade mission to Turkey, as Deputy Prime Minister, in 2012. Gotcha, I thought to myself.

The day after her by-election victory in December, Olney was pulled out of a floundering live radio interview with Julia Hartley-Brewer. Had she had a spin doctor with her on Saturday morning, I suspect the same thing would have happened. Her sole defence seemed to be that Turkey was a nice country in 2012 but isnt anymore. Listen and enjoy.
Syed Kamall is Chairman of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group and is an MEP for London.

Januarys monthly plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg was dominated by an issue that excited the Brussels bubble and keen observers of EU politics, but very few of my constituentsnamely, the election of the President of the European Parliament. For those not interested in the machinations or the result, you can look away now and skip forward to the last sentence.

It was the end of an era, as the previous President, Martin Schulz, stepped down from the podium and returned to his seat as an ordinary MEP. This week, he resigned from the European Parliament altogether to begin his campaign to become Chancellor of Germany as the candidate for the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

On a personal note, I enjoyed a good working relationship with Schulz, and nobody can deny that when it came to his handling of the European Parliament, he was a serious backroom dealer. His departure from Brussels marks the end of a 30-month Grand Coalition between the Christian Democrat (EPP) and Social Democrats (S&D) groups that has sought to dominate the EUs supranational institutions. Under the deal, Jean Claude Juncker joined together with Schulz in a relationship akin to that of a President and a Prime Minister. Juncker controlled the executive, but Schulz was the man who would manage the coalition for him in the European Parliament. This was a demonstration of EU democracy.

However, that arrangement has  at least for the moment  ended with the election of the new President, Antonio Tajani. He was elected on a mandate of being a more neutral speaker, and not a partisan leader of the European Parliament.

We in the ECR put forward our own candidate for President  the indomitable Helga Stevens from Flanders. Overcoming the challenges of being born deaf, Helga has achieved much during an impressive career in law and politics. Since becoming a MEP, she has earned herself a reputation as someone who can bring people together, and respect the many different points of view. She ran a very strong campaign and her speech on the day of the vote was brilliant. Watch it here.

Before the voting had even begun, sensing an obvious lack of support, Guy Verhofstadt pulled out of the race, but not until he had agreed a new coalition deal with the EPP. It was a real shame for Helga, as I am certain that she would have beaten Verhofstadt.

Helga went through all of the first three rounds of voting but, in the final round, only the two top-ranked candidates can go forward. Therefore the ECR had a choice either to vote for the Italian Socialist, Gianni Pittella, or the centre-right Italian Antonio Tajani, or to abstain.

While most of the ECR groups natural inclination was reluctantly to vote for Tajani, the agreement that had been struck between the EPP  his political group  and the Liberals was much of the old, failed centralising direction that has failed the EU. We were very worried that Tajani would see this coalition agreement as his mandate, which we would could not support. So, in the middle of the afternoon, Mr Tajani came down to the ECR group meeting and agreed to publish a statement and a video making it clear that this was not his agenda, and to confirm that he would act as a speaker of the European Parliament. Watch the video here.

Without our support, the socialist could have won. Instead, thanks to our votes in the final round, the ECR emerged as the kingmakers and Tajani was elected President.

Of course, time will tell whether Tajani will represent a change from the approach of Schulz to the role. I certainly believe that in the UK, we can count on a fairer hearing from Tajani, who is at heart a centre-right pragmatist and wants the EU and the UK to enjoy a good relationship after Brexit.

Following on from that election, the European Parliament also re-constituted all of its committees. A threat to unseat British MEPs from major roles, made shortly after Brexit, was not followed through. Our very own indefatigable Vicky Ford was re-elected to chair the European Parliaments important Internal Market committee. In the spirit of Theresa Mays speech, as long as the UK remains a member of the EU and continues to pay into the budget, Conservative MEPs will continue to play a constructive role in the European Parliament.

The response to the Prime Ministers speech has led to a notable change in tone on the other side of the Channel in recent weeks. Senior EU negotiators told me they welcomed the clarity and looked forward to Article 50 being invoked. Shock, anger, sorrow and denial over the democratic decision of the British people to leave the EU has been replaced by a more business-like approach. I am more confident than ever that we can reach an agreement that will be in both Britain and the EUs interests.

So the ECR Group came away from Strasbourg in January proud of the performance of our own ECR candidate, strengthened in terms of our position in the European Parliament, and with a new President who claims to be more open to different points of view. For the British, we now have a European Parliament President who will be more fair-minded towards the UK.

As we say in Londonmustnt grumble!
Glennon is my church. Shes my spiritual space. I just love her. These words were spoken by another Belong Tour attendee, as we were exiting the arena when it was here in Colorado two months ago. Her friends gushed their approval, and based on the enthusiastic welcome of the other 5,000 or so women at the event, it appeared that most of them felt the same way.

Glennon Doyle Melton was a supposed surprise guest speaker at Belong. Shes not featured in any of their advertisements, but was their headliner on Saturday. My concern with Glennons message that day is the same as my concern with the entire Belong Tour, and its the same as my concern with the message of Love Warrior, and its the same as my concern with the message Glennon proclaimed on Facebook last Sunday when she told the world that Abby Wambach is her girlfriend: The message presents a false gospel. The message is one of SELF. It says that we women are enough in and of ourselves, we define our purpose, we conjure up our own energy to realize our own goals. We dont need anything or anyonewe command our destiny.

In stark contrast, the message of the Scriptures is that, because of our sin, we are desperately in need of Gods mercy, grace and resurrection power. Apart from Jesus we are dead (Ephesians 2:1).

Not only am I very concerned about this false gospel and frustrated with the lack of commitment to Scripture by women who claim to be Christian authors, but Im now fearful of the real intentions of the Belong Tour. Why do I feel like this was a prettily marketed campaign to roll out a new era of did God really say that? (Genesis 3:1)? Why does it feel sneaky that Jen Hatmakers and Glennons tours, books and announcements seem too well orchestrated and eerily scheduled?

It feels like Belong and its speakers and products are a Trojan Horsecarrying a gospel of self and a celebration of sexual sinthat is being strategically pushed into womens ministry in America. And it is being pushed in with little effort. In fact, its being welcomed in.

The message of these women is a siren song. Who doesnt want to believe that they are all they need? Who doesnt want to live for and worship themselves? Their authentic and winsome style is leading women into idolatry, and the women dont even know that its a twisting of the truth.

And, church, that is on us. These authors are merely exhaling the cultural air that we are all breathingthe supremacy of self, the idol of autonomy. But the fact that women in churches across the nation are inhaling it deeply and without reservation is an indictment of the lack of discipleship within our very own walls.

Somewhere along the way the church started outsourcing discipleship. Personal relationships were replaced with big programs. Celebrity Bible teachers were picked over ordinary gospel-formed women that sit to our left and to our right. And whats more, these famous Christian teachers are influencing our flocks, but they are not accountable to us. Theyre simply taking advantage of a moment made available to them by you and me.

But this moment can be redeemed. Our God is the author of Redemption, after all. Lets submit ourselves to Gods means for Gods ends, for Gods glory and our good. Lets be disciples who make disciples within the context of our local churches and local communities. Lets fill the current vacuum with the grace and truth of Jesus Christ so that women in our communities may be drawn to His church and to Him, above all.
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Sharp metal objects were found in some smokeless tobacco product cans on Tuesday. The US Smokeless Tobacco Company, a unit of Altria Group Inc., has ordered a recall of their products nationwide, such as Cope, Copenhagen, Husky Brands and Skoal.

The US Food and Drug Administration received a report from eight customers from Texas, Indiana, North Carolina, Wisonsin, Tennessee, and Ohio. They complained about metal fragments and sharp metal objects in the cans.

The products were manufactured in the company's Franklin Park, Illinois facility. The smokeless tobacco recall does not include Copenhagen Snuff Custom, Copenhagen Fine Cut, Copenhagen Long Cut, Copenhagen Long Cut Wintergreen, Skoal Long Cut Custom Straight, and Skoal Snus Original.

According to Daily Mail, the objects were visible to consumers from the cans. Luckily no injuries were reported. Altria spokesman Steve Callahan said "We appreciate our consumers' patience and loyalty while we work through this matter."

FDA and the US Smokeless Tobacco Company are encouraging customers, retailers and wholesalers to not open or use the products after the smokeless tobacco recall. Instead, contact the company at 1-866-201-9136 and return it for a full refund.

The FDA announced earlier this month that the carcinogen levels in the smokeless tobacco product called N-nitrosonornicotine (NNN) should be limited or reduced. FDA official said NNN is a potent carcinogenic agent that can greatly increase cancer risks to consumers of the smokeless tobacco. The said action is for the protection of the public's health.

According to Tech Times the proposed rule restricts NNN levels to go beyond 1.0 g/g of tobacco (dry weight) at any time through its expiry date. As part of the new standards set by the FDA the labels are required to contain expiration date, manufacturing code, and storage conditions if applicable.

The FDA aims to prevent 12,700 new oral cancer cases and 2,200 deaths in the country in the next 20 years following its implementation. If successful, an estimated 15,200 life years would be gained in the nation as a result.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
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A pioneering surgery that introduced a successful non-surgical technique in removing malignant cancer tumors in the breast has been successfully performed in Southend Hospital, Essex. The surgery was successfully done by the consultant radiologist of the hospital, Dr. Taghreed Toma and under general anesthesia.

Reports from Mirror UK revealed that Dr. Toma was already carrying out the treatment since 2005 and has been performing vacuum-assisted excision at the Southend Hospital for benign lesions. Despite his patient having additional conditions, his team felt that the procedure was ideal for the particular case.

The procedure required ultrasound and mammogram images during the actual procedure to be able to see if all the lumps being extracted are completely removed. The successful operation had a patient with 5mm cancer and was not induced with any form of anesthetic. The patient procedure took around half an hour and patients can immediately go home afterward.

The most significant benefit of the operation is that a needle puncture to the skin was all it took to remove the benign cancer cells. Patients can also continue with their normal activities afterward, something impossible in surgical procedures.

Meanwhile, Telegraph UK reveals that in recent findings, women who were diagnosed with DCIS, a form of non-invasive cancer, who underwent breast cancer screening are more health-conscious compared to the general population of women. Diagnosis of DCIS also does not increase the risk of a patient dying.

However, although DCIS is a non-invasive form of breast cancer, it can still progress into an invasive form of breast cancer that is life-threatening and can only be treated by surgery and radiation.

The pioneered study, however, opens several possibilities in creating more ways in treating and preventing breast cancer cells from spreading. Research also reveals that early screening and detection will eventually lead to a saved life needless of the treatment that they will undergo to remove breast cancer cells.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
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The impact of the new Trump administration to Americans is so uncertain, historians are starting to see the possibility of an authoritarian government in the US. Communities are starting to get anxious about the future of Muslims, low-income communities, immigrants and other non-US backgrounds as the new administration makes changes and amendments in the previous Obama administration.

Huffington Post reveals that after two weeks since Trump was seated into the presidency, the latest US president has already reinstated the Global Gag Rule and has also promised to revive the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines, ceased the immigration of Muslim countries to the US and is planning to build a wall between America and Mexico.

With the intense move of the new government, access to healthcare and protection from racial violence are just some of the challenges, minorities are anxious about in the present administration.

US News, on the other hand, reported several mass protests across the Americas during the first week of Trump's seat into the presidency. The raising fear about the president's next moves is seriously affecting the mental wellness of the people.

Psychotherapists are considering the new president's behavior. John D. Gartner, a psychotherapist at the Hopkins University Medical School provided a professional assessment on Trump's personality. He thinks that Trump is mentally ill and his temperaments make him incapable of becoming president. In addition, he sees Trump's narcissistic behavior as incurable.

Temperaments and personalities of former presidents were also comprehensively examined by professionals to figure out what makes the most powerful man in America tick. Former US President Richard Nixon was regarded as paranoid by most professionals. Former President Bill Clinton, on the other hand, is known for his hypomanic personality, describing him as highly energetic, hard-working and creative, but is also impulsive and has a quick temper at the same time.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
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A new study claimed that no common painkillers are effective for back pain. It found that aspirin and ibuprofen were mostly useless and its benefits are minimal for treating back pain and can cause side effects. Only one in six patients treated with the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug has achieved significant pain reduction.

The study was conducted by experts from The George Institute, at the University of Sydney, in Australia. Researchers said the study suggests urgent need to develop new therapies to treat back pain.

The team examined 35 trials involving more than 6,000 participants. Experts found that adult patients who took the pills were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from stomach ulcers, bleeding and other gastro-intestinal problems.

Lead researcher Manuela Ferreira said that back pain was the leading cause of disability worldwide. Doctors commonly manage the conditions by prescribing anti-inflammatory medicine.

Back pain affects 80 percent of people during their lifetime. It is commonly caused by lifting heaving object or bending awkwardly.

According to Daily Mail a recent research also found that paracetamol is relatively ineffective and opioids provide very little benefit compare to placebo. Exercises have proven to be more effective than medication.

The study results showed the drugs only provide very limited short term pain relief. They do reduce pain level but very slightly and not of any clinical significance.

According to The Sun, back pain usually gets better within a few weeks or months. NHS said most people will not need to see a doctor or health worker.

The researchers said that treatments that will actually provide substantial relief are needed and that the focus should be on preventing back pain. Education and exercise programs have proven to substantially reduce the risk of developing back pain.

John Smith from the Proprietary Association of Great Britain, which represents drug manufacturers, said: "Anti-inflammatory painkillers, such as ibuprofen, are an effective and appropriately safe way to provide short-term relief from back pain, if used in accordance with the clear on-pack instructions and the patient information leaflet inside."

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
A Delaware prison uprising ended Thursday with a longtime correctional officer dead, after a tactical team stormed a building taken over by inmates who had held four employees hostage the day before.

* * *

Prison officials offered no details on the death of Sgt. Steven Floyd, 47 years old, a 16-year veteran who was found unresponsive and pronounced dead at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Del., early Thursday morning.



Delaware Gov. John Carney called for an investigation to determine what happened and said the responsible parties would be held accountable.



Scott Calvert and Jon Kamp report for the WSJ:And how exactly are you going to hold them responsible, Governor Carney, if it turns out that the group includes persons already sentenced to life in prison? Give them another life sentence? Make it "consecutive"? Lives are issued one to a customer; there is no consecutive.Delaware has the death penalty in theory, but it does not have it in practice. The Delaware Supreme Court wrongly held that Hurst v. Florida rendered the state's death penalty law unconstitutional. At the time, I asked the rhetorical question, "Does Delaware Attorney General Matt Denn have the requisite vertebrae to petition for certiorari?" Alas, the answer is no.How about pushing through a bill to not only restore the death penalty but to expedite the review process?
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D&H Distributing Launches Yearlong Centennial Countdown Celebration

Jimmy Sheridan

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Although 2017 has just begun, D&H Distributing is already counting down to next year, its 100th year in business.

In preparation for that milestone, D&H kicked off a yearlong Centennial Countdown, which the company will celebrate throughout 2017 with employee celebrations and customer events, trainings and promotions.

This week D&H kicked off the first of the festivities, launching a new website and video messages from Co-Presidents Dan and Michael Schwab addressing the companys resellers, dealers and manufacturing partners throughout North America.

[Related: CRN Exclusive: Partners Applaud D&Hs New Push Into Cloud Services ]

This is a very rejuvenating year for us.  Heading into our 99th year has really allowed us to take a step back and go, How do we paint a picture for the future?  What are the things that got us here and how do we continue to invest in those things?  Dan Schwab said in an interview with CRN.

The Harrisburg, Pa.-based distributor was founded in 1918 by the Schwab brothers grandfather, David Schwab, as a small tire retreading company, Schwab said. Although his familys company has made many necessary adjustments to remain competitive over the years, it has always remained focused on keeping a foundation of thoughtful product expansion and customer focus, he said.

D&Hs focus on its customers is one of the reasons the distributor has gained a reputation as a preferred partner for customers like Ben Johnson, CEO of Griffin Ga.-based Liberty Technology.

Johnson said D&Hs practice of dedicating a representative to each of its clients is one reason he enjoys working with the distributor.

With other distribution partners, Johnson said he felt like he was kicked around from one rep team to another.  It was like getting remarried and divorced four times a year, he said.

But, since partnering with D&H, Liberty Technology hasnt switched reps at all. Johnson said that connection has allowed him to create a working relationship with D&H that feels personal and helps him get business done comfortably.

Creating a relationship with partners is an important part of D&Hs foundation, according to Schwab. D&H has always been focused on delivering personal attention to its customers by giving each one a dedicated service rep and focusing on driving customer success by carefully choosing the products it carries, he said.

We dont carry everyone, so we want the partners we have to win, he said, noting that D&H always tries to choose product lines with the potential services, solutions and applications in mind so everyone involved can make a higher margin.

The formula is simple, he said: If they are not successful, we are not successful.

As D&H looks ahead, Schwab said the distributor will continue its focus on partners and customers.

The distributor will build on the services it offers its reseller customers by expanding on initiatives like the pre-sales support programs it launched last year, growing education opportunities with new events and online webinars, and continuing its expansion into new technologies, he said.

We want to keep our eyes on whats around the corner. Today, we are focused on the Internet of Things and what it means from a consumer standpoint.  We see a huge opportunity in device as a service. We are taking that foundational customer service model and helping our customers and our manufacturers move on the opportunity, Schwab said.

That is why D&H has lasted as long as they have, said Liberty Technology's Johnson. They havent been afraid to go into new markets.  The diversity, the ability to pivot and stay agile and successfully enter new markets is the key to their longevity.

A timeline of those new markets includes selling the first color TVs in the 1950s, the first home PCs in the 1980s and now focusing on the cloud and the Internet of Things.

Like Gretzky said, we will continue to look where the puck is going to be, Schwab said.

As we move into the next century we are focused on having the strongest foundation possible to support an even larger organization, but we are not going to expand at the expense of that foundation, he said.
Networking News

Dell EMC Eyes Open Networking Expansion In 'Bold' Bid To Break Cisco's Proprietary Networking Stranglehold On Enterprises

Matt Brown

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Dell EMC networking boss Tom Burns is setting the company up for battle, pitting the Round Rock, Tex., IT giant and open networking advocate against industry stalwarts Cisco and HPE.

"Customers are looking to move away from traditional networking," Burns told CRN. "They want to do something different, and Dell EMC and VMware are the visionaries."

Burns published a blog Thursday about the advances Dell EMC networking has made over the last three years, highlighting the key differences between the company's open model and the proprietary model that has until now kept Cisco on top of the market. He previewed some of the market moves Dell EMC could make, including the introduction of more multi-rate 100GbE and next-generation open networking switching platforms aimed at the data center and campus environments.

[Related: 10 Networking Predictions For 2017]

Dell EMC is also looking forward to increased adoption of its products, especially in service provider data centers, and "even more customers and partners integrating OS10 into their solutions," he said on the blog.

"Any battle, any competitive RFP, generally Cisco is there, and we'll see HPE, Arista and Juniper, and we'll win, but it takes a bold move," by customers, Burns said. "It's a bold move to move away from tradition."

In his blog, Burns drew a clear line between Dell EMC's open networking model and the "traditional" model. Traditional networking requires proprietary architectures, management tools, operating systems and specially-built application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), Burns argued. By contrast, Dell EMC's open networking solutions run on standard architecture and orchestration tools; optional SDN/NVO controllers; any networking operating system, open standard hardware and circuitry, Burns said.

Click image for full-sized view.

Still, while Burns is pleased with the traction he says Dell EMC is gaining in the networking market, it's got what may be a long, uphill fight on its hands. Cisco still commands more than 60 percent of the market share and Dell EMC barely registers in industry market share statistics compiled by research firms IDC and Gartner. Dell EMC and Cisco have a history of cooperation on networking while doing battle in the server market.

Stephen Monteros, vice president of sales at Ontario, Calif.-based solution provider Sigmanet, said he's seen Dell EMC's open networking solutions win deals recently, but noted that many buyers are still "kicking the tires," and that "at this point, moving to Dell networking is not a trend at the street level."

"It's hard to compare cost advantages," Monteros said, "because in many cases you're comparing apples and oranges."

Burns said that for now, Dell EMC networking solutions are "moving beyond pilots and trials and into full implementations" among certain customer types, including web scale data centers, cloud and among SaaS start-ups and telcos.

"We've had very good wins in very large enterprise [customers] that I can't disclose, full data center implementations and a disaggregated approach.

In order to be successful with Dell EMC's open networking portfolio, solution providers have to rely on a specific strategy, Burns said. Dell EMC open networking solutions "provide a value proposition without upsetting traditional networking providers because they don't do it," Burns explained. "It's an alternative solution. It competes with HPE or Cisco, yes, but neither of them really offer what we offer."

Dell EMC's Open Networking Initiative was started in 2014 as a way to promote the separation of network switching hardware from its software. The company launched the Open Network Install Environment with Cumulus Networks, and subsequently added more partners, including Big Switch Networks, IP Infusion and Pluribus Networks. About a year ago, Dell EMC introduced its new Operating System 10, which separates the base networking operating system from the network operating system. The company also collaborates with Microsoft.

Late last year, Dell EMC released a beta version of OS10 Enterprise Edition.
WESTPORTPolice said that they arrested an elderly resident at his home Tuesday morning after his friend allegedly turned in a cache of weapons to the department days earlier.

Officers determined that one of the weapons met state criteria for an assault rifle, of unspecified make and model, citing a collapsible stock and a forward pistol grip, according to a Westport Police Department statement.
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BRIDGEPORT  A partially collapsed ceiling and a pew sale.

This is Rev. Sara Smiths new reality.

Smith is just two-and-a-half months away from handing the keys of the historic United Congregational Church to the Bridgeport Islamic Community Center for use as a mosque. The closing of that $1 million sale is May 1.

The steepled downtown building at State Street and Park Avenue will become a beacon of hope  Smiths words in December  for people of all faiths, all races, all backgrounds in this divided political time.

But a beacon still needs a structurally sound ceiling.

Earlier this month about a fifth of the plaster ceiling over the churchs basement hall came crashing down. It dated back to the 1920s when plaster was made with horse hair, not asbestos. Smith said the incident happened in the early morning, based on security camera footage.

The insurance company defined it as a catastrophic failure. Smith disagreed. She said lives could have been lost.

Twelve hours earlier or later, people would have been killed, Smith said.

We were blessed and lucky this time, Smith said, surveying the debris. I could be doing funerals. ... Thats catastrophic to me.

The 1,200-square-foot hall is the site of a food pantry, a soup kitchen, an emergency overflow shelter and other church programs and gatherings, all of which will continue, even after the worshipers on the floor above have changed from Christian to Muslim.

And Ahmed Ebrahim, director of the Islamic Center, said the ceiling problems have in no way given that group pause about moving head with the sale.

Yes, its going forward. And they are going to replace the whole ceiling, Ebrahim said.

Smith said that was a safety recommendation from the contractors.

Not only will it benefit the Muslims to have a good ceiling, but all of our neighbors (who participate in the various programs within the hall) sit under that ceiling, Smith said. Its has to be safe. That hall will continue to be used by hundreds of people each week.

Insurance is covering $50,000 of the repairs, leaving the church with a $95,000 balance. A very generous anonymous benefactor from out-of-town has pledged to cover half of that amount if Smith comes up with the rest.

God will take care of us, Smith said. Me feeling is  its very Buddhist  karma. When you put out God in the world, somehow, if you hold your breath long enough, it will come back to you and people will step up.

Ceiling troubles aside, some of that karma may already have kicked in.

With the Congregational church moving and downsizing, a lot of the furniture has to go, including dozens of pews where worshipers sat for services.

I suspect most will be out of there by the end of April, Smith said.

Smith said some of her members are buying the pews. But 36 are being purchased by Stepney Baptist Church in Monroe.

Our congregation had already voted to do a renovation of our sanctuary  our building is 170 years old, said Stepneys Rev. Kevin Merritt. We had already decided as part of that to replace our pews.

Merritt said his building committee, which is aiming for a summer construction schedule, learned about the sale of United Congregational from the newspaper and reached out to Smith.

We went down, looked at the pews, he said. Theyre absolutely beautiful. Really solid and much nicer than the pews we have in our sanctuary. ... About a dozen of them need to be modified to the right size, but 24 are perfect size for our sanctuary. And were also going to be taking some of the antique pieces around the room  the hymn boards, the kneeler, some plant stands, some of the religious tables  that well be working into the design of our space.

Ebrahim said the plan is for the mosque to be up and running by May 19, Which is the Friday right before the fasting month of Ramadan.

The biggest change is once all the pews are removed we will just put carpet in the prayer area, Ebrahim said. We are looking at different vendors. There is custom made carpet for mosques. It has Islamic art on it and is designed to give every individual his or her place  a spot. So when people line up for prayer, the lines are clear.

Smith said, and Merritt confirmed, that later in the year Stepney Baptist will host members of United Congregational at a reception to see how their pews and other furniture are being used.

I think that helps my people realize we can re-purpose things and life will go on, Smith said. It gives a little more comfort theyre not being destroyed, theyre being used, and by good, faithful people.
Lying on a sick bed in a specialist hospital in Jeddah, my dad asked my mom to come closer. Ill leave this world soon, he told her. Go back home with the kids. Your family will take care of you.

Thats when my mother began to cry, and the doctors told her to go out. After a couple of hours, they called to tell her that her husband had died. I was only six at the time, so I didnt know what was going on. In fact, I remember playing with my little sister on that fateful evening, while my mom and other family members were crying.

That was 1989. A year later, my mom flew the five of us back home to Nigeria where she struggled to feed us, to school us and to raise us. It wasnt easy for her. She ran out of money, and she fought with her relatives.

In her attempt to give us a life that we would be proud of, my mother would run multiple businesses -- a provision store, tailoring, selling snacks. Several of those failed. As I grew and watched her struggles, I learned many skills from her. Here are the top five business lessons that I learned from my mother:

1. Take risks.

When we flew back to Nigeria, we settled in our mothers family home. Life was great when our granddad was alive. He would check on us every day, ensuring that we ate, that we were taken to and from school on time, and that our toys were not broken. Our world was so much fun with him around, but everything changed when he passed away.

Not long after his passing, my moms stepmother started mistreating us. She would fight with my mother over everything. She would yell at me to go out and ride my bicycle, complaining that I was causing commotion in the house. She tried to boot us out of the room that I shared with my elder brother.

My mom tried to settle things with her stepmother in a peaceful manner. But all of her efforts were in vain. My mom soon decided to leave the house, taking all of us with her. We settled into a two bedroom flat, which she bought with the money she had inherited from our dad.

At first, some of her brothers and sisters mocked her, saying that shed come back within weeks. She never went back. Yes, the move was difficult, but my mothers decision had emboldened us to live on our own.

Lesson #1: Bleeding in a job you hate? Quit and build your own company. In the words of Mark Zuckerberg, The only strategy thats guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

Related: 5 Entrepreneurial Lessons I Learned From My Late Father

2. Be a great manager.

As a single mother and head of the household, my mother knew the burden of responsibility she shouldered.

Every day in the early morning hours, she would go around the house checking to be sure everything was in order. For instance, when she saw a broken pipe in the kitchen one morning, she immediately woke me up to call a plumber. Our house would have flooded if she hadnt seen that broken pipe in time.

Lesson #2: Keep an eye on every detail of your business. The sooner you can fix a problem, the better.

Related: What My Mom Taught Me About Being a Female Entrepreneur

3. Take charge.

When I was in elementary school, I loved playing with my friends all day, but my mom wouldnt allow that.

She would only allow me to play after school on Thursdays and after I had finished my studies on weekends. I wasnt happy about those rules. Sometimes, Id sneak out without her consent, and shed ground me for several days.

Shed double the punishment whenever I skipped school: No bicycle riding for one week; no playing Super Mario for two weeks. I would cry my eyes out, plead earnestly, and send my sisters to talk to her. My mom stuck to her guns. That, to this day, makes me think twice before breaking her rules.

Lesson #3:Youve got to take charge as a manager to exert authority and control.

Related: 20 Entrepreneurs on the Lessons Their Mothers Taught Them

4. Teamwork accelerates growth.

If anyone among us faces a challenge, such as lacking money to pay for school fees, looking for funds to start a business, or dealing with an intensive project, my mom asks us to team up and solve it together.

If you want to succeed in life, she always tells us. You must love each other and help each other.

When my elder brother was planning his wedding, for example, she told us to join hands and make it the most successful wedding on the planet. She asked our eldest sister to handle the gifts, instructed me to tackle the logistics, and ordered our two sisters to take care of snacks.

The wedding went well. Thats the power of collaboration, and the good news is, you can apply it in your family, in your life, and in your business.

Lesson #4: You cant do it alone. Get the right team to help you with the growing challenges of your business.

Related: 5 Fundraising Lessons From a Startup Founder and Single Mom

5. Say No!

One of my strongest weaknesses in the past was my inability to say no.

Even some of my friends used to request stuff from me because they knew that I couldnt say no. When I started my freelance writing career years ago, clients repeatedly beat my rates down. I couldnt say no to a bad deal. My mom? She will never say yes to a bad deal. When I was a little kid, one of my uncles wanted to adopt me. She said no.

When my mom decided to live on her own, everyone told her to stay. She said no.

When a wealthy politician wanted to marry my eldest sister, everyone said yes. Mom said no.

Saying yes often is not generosity. It is a weakness. If you cant say no, my mom once told me, then youre doing a great disservice to yourself.

Lesson #5: If you cant say no to a bad deal, then youre doing a great disservice to your business.

An entrepreneur is like a single mom.

Just like a single mom, we deliver a great business idea, give it a cute name, and work tirelessly to help it grow. We do this all alone, with joy and pride, because we love our business and have an intense passion for it. This passion to grow our business drives us to keep learning.

Sometimes we learn from our mom, sometimes from our colleagues, sometimes from business experts on the internet. We just cant stop learning about how to nurse and nurture our business. So, when your corporate account reads $0.00 or you get knocked down by a competitor, dont toss your business away. Instead, bear in mind that:

Youre a single mom. Your business is your baby. And your job is to make it thrive.

Related:



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Alex Bird, a Real-Life Jedi, Brings the Force to LifeBy Jack HittVQROn September 30, 2016, Alex Bird joined Jack Hitt onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series Amateur Hour, in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Bird, who lives in Kingston, New York, works to restore cognitive and social skills in survivors of brain injuries. He is ranked as a knight and deacon at the Temple of the Jedi Order, where he has three apprentices. The conversation that follows was recorded live and has been edited for brevity and meaning.Jack Hitt: As I was growing up in the Episcopal Church, there were things that we did: You said grace at a meal, you said your prayers before bed and sometimes when you got up. As a Jedi knight, what do you do during the day? How do you practice the religion? What happens?Alex Bird: I am a knight in the Temple of the Jedi Order, generally truncated to TotJO. Its a very new endeavor, and were in a place where were still creating the text from which we operate. The phrase borrowed directly from the movieand everyone is familiar with it: May the Force be with youis used, as are a dozen variations of it. But we try very hard to take it a step further. I and the people I practice with take the movie as a starting point. We say, Here is a myth. Here is a series of images that turned us on when we were kids. Rather than following them all in the fantasy direction, lets see how fantasy-oriented our lives can become.Does that mean you meditate? Do you pray?I do! I meditate, and I teach meditation as part and parcel of my work.Just general meditation or Jedi meditation?In Revenge of the Sith, we see Samuel L. Jackson, i.e. Mace Windu, sitting on a terribly uncomfortable-looking couch in his boots, which Ive always interpreted as him meditating. But what was the content of that practice? We dont know. But we can look at real-world analogues. The bulk of my practice personally lies in that vein of Vipassana meditation, something closer to Zen meditation for the men and women I serve. I think its more accessible to them.Is there a group with whom you meditate?Well, Ill back up a bit. We chose a myth. If you grew up in a religion, so did youor, rather, a myth was presented to you, a story that speaks to a culture in a specific time and a specific place, generally with a finite set of motifs. Creation, destruction, or heros journey. Every one of us was handed a myth, and these are things that before TV, before movies, when we were young, our elders would have sat us down and said, Heres where the world came from. This is a story about a villain. Dont act out these behaviors. This is the story of a hero. This is the way you should behave. And there will be a set of images that accompany it. These stories help you make decisions about how you want to live your life, but the language of the story also predicates your relationship with whatever it is you hold sacred, your notion of the transcendent. And if you are a Christian or a believer of one kind or another, it involves God.I am an ordained minister, and Im also an atheist, and thats okay, because I have my own sense of what is transcendent. For me, its not supernatural. It could be as simple as something beautiful. Soon, it will get cold and Ill go outside, breathe, and the moisture will leave my mouth. It will crystallize into fog: To me, a beautiful and transcendent thing about the world. But also, simple physics. But its beautiful and it speaks to me, and so, not supernatural, but still, sacred and beautiful. So the imagery that you use within your founding myth predicates your relationship with the sacred. If, going back to my Catholic upbringing, if the Lord is my shepherd, and his rod and his staff protect me, then what is my relationship to the sacred? That of the sheepand I dont mean this in a derogatory way. Im just unpacking the prayer. So I didnt grow up in an era where Im sitting around a fire as a child with my elders.So youre suggesting that the realities behind the old myths are no longer accessible to us?Right, so where do I encounter my mythology? I encounter it on television and in books, same way everybody else does, except that my mythology is quite young. But its about context: Here is a story in a language in a place and a time, and it speaks to me more than a story about a man who, we shall say, lived nearly 2,000 years ago and spoke a language that I do not speak in the context of a culture that I cannot pretend to understand. None of us can pretend that we actually have a handle on the culture in which Jesus Christ lived. A myth has got to speak to you.But your myth doesnt reach back to any time thats actually real.Thats true. I mean that it has to speak my language. It has to be relatable. And there are elements of classical religion that of course are relatable because were human beings and we havent evolved really that much over 2,000 years. But at the same time, theres a way to look at that type of religion and say, elements of what I might find sacred are kept in certain rooms and certain days of the week. All of a sudden, for many of us, it becomes a foreign language. It doesnt mean anything. Or at least it lacks personal resonance. So what happens? We kind of made a funny leap. We said, Thats our myth, and everybody said, Thats silly. And some of us said, That is a myth that speaks our language. Is it true? No, of course not. Yodas a puppet, we all know hes a puppet. But weve come to another conclusion and it is this: that myths are true, all myths are true. Not literally true; theyre truths about us, theyre stories about us, theyre always stories about people. The analogue must come back to the practical conduct of the individual, but the myth must be stated in a way that means something to you, or its just another story.So how is this a myth thats stated in such a way that means something? How do you get past the movie fun?Sometimes we dont. Im not past the movie fun twenty-four hours a day. I have a person in the temple who comes to me and says, Alex, I tried to explain that Im a Jedi to my boyfriend and he said, Thats silly. And I said, Well, theyre probably right. You have to understand: When you choose as your guiding story a movie with lasers and Wookieesand theyre not even good moviesWait, what?Can we all agree on that? I love them but theyre not actually good movies.Are you talking about the first three?Alec Guinness hated them all.But thats because Guinness was upset that his entire movie career had become a footnote to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Come on, the first three are pretty good. The second set of three, not so much.I love them but I dont think theyre the best.Youre saying youre not satisfied with the myth that you more or less believe in? That makes you a Protestant Jedi.No, what Im saying is that you chose as your guiding mythology this movie, so if people dont immediately take that seriously, youve got to own that. When I explain that Im a Jedi knight, I have to do it smiling because I know how it sounds. I dont get to pretend that Ive got 2,000-plus years of automatic respectability. I have in fact no legitimacy and theres value in that. I can come back to this, I dont sell it. We are adamantly not a missionary group. Thats not anyones goal. We never sell it. We live it. So maybe someone comes up and says, You treated that person really well. You put in time that someone else might not have. Why is that? Oh, because I do this training. Im a Jedi.Theres training?Oh, yeah.Are you training other Jedi? Other disciples?I am, but we dont use that word. I have students.What do you call someone whos not yet a knight but en route?So you join, youre a member, you do a certain amount of work. Its basically just getting everybody on the same page. We refer to it as the Initiate Program. You do the IP, youre an initiate.Like the Jesuits used to say: Give me the boy and I will show you the Jedi.We dont actually let young people train. Swords are dangerous. But we also take what were doing reasonably seriously. Not super seriouslywe still make jokes about ourselves.How long does the Initiate Program last?Its a certain body of work. You complete it over a bunch of nights. Mostly written lessons, because were an online temple.Is it a liturgy?Its a variety of sources. We deal with some theoretical work, what would you do in this sort of situation. But were reading Alain de Botton, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Alan Watts. To a degree, you really dont want people to summarize too much. Youd like them to synthesize and bring it into their lives. Once someone has completed this body of workHow long does that take?I did it in about four months. Ive seen people do it over the course of two years. It depends on whether you have a day job or how much you sleep.So its readingsand you have to write essays that then get graded?Its all pass/fail. Did you cover the subject matter adequately and do you understand why we did this?And is any of the scripture and any of the liturgical homework the movies?No. We take the fiction from the movies. And from there, again, we go back to the question, What is the foundation beneath these symbols? These symbols speak to us. When I sat down and watched the movies there was a part of my head that was like, Yeah! I was watching this stuff and Yodas syntax is reversed, and I went, That guys got a plan! But think about it. Hes on the screen for about, what, thirty minutes? Thats not much of a skeleton on which to hang much of anything, so what were going back to is something much deeper. Every myth digs into the same set of questions: Why am I here? What is my place in all this? What is my appropriate relationship with other human beings, with my environment? Some mythologies are better suited to speak to us in our culture and in our time. Others speak to these issues in ways that are quite racist or quite sexist, and while theyre still addressing those essential questions, theyre doing it in a way that doesnt grab me.Now how do initiates react? Theyre lured in the tent by the movies and they get there and instead of a lightsaber, you hand them Alan Watts and a bunch of homework and tell them they have to write essays. How many then flee the tent?Oh, 80, 90 percent. Right before the last movie came on, a bunch of people showed up, and they said, Oh, I read the front part of your webpage and I read the one or two things that are on there and I agree with everything you guys say, and Im gonna be here for life. Most of them didnt come back. But some people stay, and they stay because, by definition, seekers need.I think we all want the same thing. I want a series of stories and a series of examples that tell me, What is my appropriate relationship with the sacred? We chose, for instance, the knight as the guiding architect. Choosing a knight instead of a sheep is a very different way of relating to the sacred. It leads to a very different element of service and a much more active element of service. Many of the people within the Jedi community are active-duty military; we have a ton of first responders and cops. We have a lot of people who work in medicine. But we also have a lot of people who work in professions that are less obviously service-oriented but it becomes their way. For example, someone who sells clothing could put more attention into their work, make sure theyre not milking customers for money that they could be spending elsewhere, they can make sure the customer feels good when they leave. There must be some practical service element to Jediism.Are you all hammering out a kind of Nicene Creed?Yes and no. Were getting there, but we are deciding among ourselves what is a fair expectation. Ill give you an example that came up in a conversation we were having. An African-American man was shot by a police officer, and the community responded, and in and among that response there was an element of violence. Was that the entire communitys response? Of course not. But a car did get burned, and we were discussing that. Someone had just read an article that claimed that the violence of the response invalidated the protest. And I said, Okay, but think about it through the lens of your work as a Jedi: Do I have the right to tell a person how they should address their own emotions? Especially in the context of that level of struggle. And what I decided was: As a Jedi, I feel incumbent to exert control over myself, that I will have emotions but I will choose my behavior, and I will choose behavior that I consider responsible. If I were talking to another person who had made a similar commitment, I would say, You really cant behave that way. But not everybody makes that choice. Am I allowed to hope that people will be peaceful? Of course, I dont want anybody to get hurt. But am I allowed to decide what is valid about your dialogue because of how you express it? Unless youve chosen to speak the same language I do, maybe I dont. This is the kind of stuff we talk aboutthrough the lens of what is appropriate empathy, appropriate justice, appropriate equity.Am I hearing that the Jedi wouldnt cast judgment on someone who burned a car?Well, what youre hearing is that we had a conversation about it. But again, we have Jedis who are police and first responders who probably have a very different opinion. We are not a monolith. We are as diverse as any other community and so there will be Jedi who will say, That is absolutely unacceptable, and other Jedi who will say, Im going to make an effort to try to understand that. Its a community that is a great deal about commitment but also a great deal about consent.Are your meetings full of passionate intensity, or is everybody extremely Zen?Theres actually a lot of diversity in that, too.When you say diversity, are there strong differences about what Jediism should be?Absolutely.Do you have tax exempt status?We do. Were a temple.And you can marry people. You are a knight.Yes, a knight. You can be a senior knight, you can be a master. There arent many of those.In America, then, you are a religion. So, what is the religions relationship with the cosplay guys? I know there are guys who gather, they have lightsabers, they wear the robes, they train and fight.I wish I had a whiteboard so I could put up a Venn diagram. I mean its a multi-gajillion-dollar industry, right? The number of fans outnumber the Jedi a million to one, thats fine. The people who are cosplayers are primarily fans, and theyre interested, and Ive got no problem with these people. Im a fan, too. I dont get to pretend Im not. Very rarely will you find a person who is a Jedi who is not a fan because why would you gravitate toward a symbol that you didnt dig?So why not stick with the original? May the Force be with you is ripped straight from the prayer book: The Lord be with you. Why not be a Roman Catholic?Because there are elements of the history to which I am averse. Because my specific relationship to the transcendent didnt speak to me.So why not be a Zen Buddhist?I was a Buddhist. I served out my novitiate as a Buddhist monk in India and then for a time in Myanmar. And I came back to the United States and what I found was that operating as a Buddhist in the United States was profoundly difficult for me because my practice was entirely out of context. My practice became weirdlike I was speaking a foreign language. And the neat thing about being a Jedi is that if I say Im a Jedi, you might laugh, but you know what Im talking about. Im not speaking a foreign language. You might regard it as something kind of silly, but were all kind of familiar with the symbol.There are Jedi who are Buddhists, though. And a dear friend of mine is a devout evangelical Christian who is a Jedi. We have Jedi who are atheistsIm onewe have Jedi who are pagans. We dont as a community really rule that out. Theres a term that we use: orthoprax. Youre all familiar with orthodox, correct belief. We invest more in orthopraxy, good action. It doesnt matter how you arrive at that. If you love the people around you, great. If you arrive at compassionate decisions, great. If you seek some meaningful element of justice in your life, great. The means by which you seek those actions are not most important.So, then, what is the Force?I cant tell you. Its not that I cant tell you, its that Im not going to tell you. I kind of hold it as axiomatic that discovered insights are more valuable than received insights. Which is not to say that Im finding anything new, only that Im the one finding it. So if we say, What about the Force? Well, then we all have to agree on what that means.Do you all agree?No, and thats kind of the whole point. Ive instructed the people whom I work with in the clergy, Dont answer that question. And its not because your answers not as good as my answer. Its because if I put out the official word on what the Force is, that deprives others of the opportunity to create their own relationship with it.Is there going to be a bible? Will you ever create a sense of knowable dogma?We chose this story and we could have chosen another story. There are some who say that a religion is growing up around the movie The Big Lebowski. And the Dude is a good example because he speaks to a specific group of people in a specific time. But I dont know that in fifty years anyones going to look at those movies and go, Thats the thing. Joseph Campbell said that in modern society, the role of creating new myths is left to the poet. We are not a society that values poets. That is sad but it is true. But we have other people to fill that role. So is Dudeism a little tongue in cheek? Its actually utterly tongue in cheek. But I allow my Jedi path to be kind of tongue in cheek because it becomes an inherent humility practice. So one of the things I actually find quite valuable about the Jedi path is its relative lack of legitimacy because then I get to be just another bozo on the bus and be very conscious about that. Does it mean that what I do is a joke? No, but it relieves me of the burden of a little bit of my self-importanceand true humility is the basis of every great spiritual tradition.Jack HittJack Hitts most recent book is Bunch of Amateurs (Crown, 2012). A contributor to the New Yorker, Harpers, and This American Life, Hitt is the recipient of the Pope, Peabody, and Livingston awards. His book Off the Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrims Route into Spain (Simon & Schuster, 1994) was made into a motion picture, The Way (2010).Daniel TernaDaniel Terna has produced several photographic series and short films and has participated in select group exhibitions at MoMA PS1 (NYC); the International Center of Photography (NYC); Foley Gallery (NYC); Baxter St. at CCNY (NYC); and New Wight Biennial (UCLA). Residencies include UnionDocs and Outpost Artist Resources. Terna has a BA from Bard College and an MFA from ICP-Bard. He codirects 321 Gallery in Brooklyn.ISSUE: Winter 2017 Volume 93 # 1PUBLISHED: January 3, 2017
STORY LINK UK PMIs Fall on all Fronts, USD GBP Exchange Rate Rises

Gains Recorded in USD GBP Exchange Rate as Major January Jobs Stats Approach

USD Outlook: Greater USD GBP Advance Possible on Incoming US Payrolls Figures

GBP Slides against USD as UK Services PMI Greatly Disappoints Investors

PM Theresa Mays Comments could Degrade Confidence in GBP Today

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The US Dollar has risen by 0.3% against the Pound today, following the news that Donald Trump is planning to start the repeal process on the Dodd Frank regulations for mortgages and lending.While this might cause significant difficulties in the long-term, the near-term benefits will include a greatly deregulated house funding industry that could let more prospective homeowners get a foot on the property ladder, though at greater risk.Other recent supportive US news has focused on initial and continuing jobless claims in late January, which have both fallen to lower levels than forecast.The next US data to watch out for is due this afternoon, consisting of non-farm payrolls in January as well as unemployment and the non-manufacturing PMI for the same month.While the unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.7%, an upwards shift in non-farm payrolls from 156k to 175k has been forecast.Despite these predictions, however, the non-manufacturing PMI is expected to drop from 57.2 points to 57, which might dampen demand for the US Dollar slightly.As well as the Pound starting off on a poor footing today due to declining manufacturing and construction PMIs on Wednesday and Thursday, Sterling has failed to gain any positive momentum after the January services PMI was announced.This declined further from 56.2 as expected, but the actual move down to 54.5 was worse than forecast and further diminished confidence in the Pound.This release has come ahead of another potentially negative event for the Pound, which will be a meeting between European Council leaders in Malta this afternoon.The only notable remaining UK event this week will be Theresa Mays attendance of the Maltese European Council meeting.May is expected to echo US President Donald Trumps attitude on NATO, stating that EU member states need to contribute more towards the organisation.It remains to be seen whether the other leaders will take this to heart or turn away from May in the near-term, given that she may now be considered as an extension of the Trump administrations goals.Mays speech might also be discredited due to her political contact with Trump and the apparent animosity between Trump and some EU leaders.

International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements.

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We must rethink the U.S. response to infectious disease. Here's why.
My award for the most brilliant idea of the week goes to the darkly funny Rod Liddle.

Writing in tomorrows Spectator magazine, he suggests that instead of going on protest marches or signing online petitions against Donald Trump or Brexit, angry liberal Lefties should set fire to themselves, in the manner of Buddhist monks objecting to religious persecution.

Thus, they would give force to their protests and the rest of us might pay more attention.

Did the marchers honestly think by signalling their objections, they would persuade the President to dishonour his election pledge and scrap his executive order?

Of course, Mr Liddle sees the obvious snag: a conflagration of 1.7 million anti-Trump petition-clickers might exacerbate the smog problem that has plagued the capital over the past couple of weeks.

But as he points out, the long-term environmental effects should be entirely beneficial. This is because the sort of middle-class, politically correct virtue-signallers who join these protests probably own all the wood-burning stoves that have been blamed for the smog in the first place. It sounds like a flawless argument to me.

I write with some feeling, since I learned with horror this week that at least one of the younger members of my family joined Mondays fatuous mass demonstration in London. This had been organised to protest against Mr Trumps decision to impose temporary restrictions on travel to the U.S. from seven largely Muslim countries, identified by the Obama regime as breeding-grounds for terrorism.

Worse, to my utter mortification, I am told that the Family Member In Question (FMIQ) brandished a placard bearing the obscene legend: Trump is a c***.

To give her what little credit shes due, I gather she didnt make the placard herself, but found it on the pavement. She clearly agreed with its message, however, perhaps thinking it a profound and sophisticated piece of political analysis. Otherwise, why would she have held it aloft?

My immediate reaction when I heard about her conduct (in the interest of domestic harmony, I wont name and shame the FMIQ) was to scour all the news and picture websites, praying that she hadnt been caught on camera.

What did Gary Lineker (pictured, centre) and the other marchers hope to achieve, beyond feeling good about themselves?

Phew, all clear! At least there wont be embarrassing evidence in the public domain for her to explain away when she grows up a bit, develops a sense of propriety and sees the folly of her ways.

Indeed, it beats me what she, Gary Lineker and those thousands of other marchers hoped to achieve, beyond feeling good about themselves and showing the world that they have swallowed every right-on opinion spoon-fed to them by the likes of the Guardians Polly Toynbee, Harriet Harman and the BBC.

Of course, I can see Mr Trump is pretty ghastly, and not at all the sort of fellow respectable folk would want to have round for tea. His attitude to women in particular seems Neanderthal and offensive, even by my standards  and I write as a man who once said in print that he quite fancied poor, much-groped Ms Harman.

By the way, my confession of desire for the Labour MP drew howls of outrage from readers. But they didnt rebuke me for sexism, a charge to which I would have had to plead guilty. Instead, they accused me of an appalling lapse of taste, saying she was far too humourless to be fanciable.

I have to disagree. But then chacun a son gout, as they say  and my gout seems to have been shared by plenty of men, to judge by the tales in Ms Harmans memoirs of the serial sexual harassment she has had to endure.

But where was I? Oh, yes. Had I been a U.S. citizen, Im not sure that even I could have brought myself to vote for Mr Trump  though since the alternative was Hillary Clinton, it is just possible I would have held my nose, thought of America and given him the benefit of the colossal doubt.

So, yes, I quite understand why so many were unhappy about his election. But the FMIQ and her friends cannot surely have believed that by marching en masse to Trafalgar Square, they would persuade the Americans to tear up their constitution, defy 63 million Republican voters and install the losing candidate in his place.

For the same reason, I was mystified by the protests against the Brexit vote. Did those anti-democracy demonstrators seriously think by registering their disagreement with the verdict of 17.4 million of their fellow citizens, they would induce the Government to ignore the result?

Where were those thousands of righteous Left-wing protesters when Mugabe, Ceausescu, Xi and the rest came a-calling at Buckingham Palace?

As for Mr Trump, certainly his temporary immigration ban (the latest in a series of similar measures by past U.S. presidents, including Mr Obama) could have been introduced a great deal more competently. In the event, it caused chaos at airports and genuine distress to many travellers who posed no threat whatsoever to American security.

But, again, did the marchers honestly think that by signalling their objections, they would persuade the President to dishonour his election pledge and scrap his executive order? I suppose its just possible that he might have done. After all, he appears to have heeded his generals advice that torture is useless (though admittedly he still wont accept its plain wrong). He also seems to have listened to Theresa May, when she pressed him to give his support to Nato.

But amenable to persuasion though he may be, I somehow cant see Mr Trump going back on this particular policy, no matter how defiantly the FMIQ waves her placard, likening him to a part of the female anatomy.

Another possibility is that the marchers thought their protest might induce Mrs May to cancel the Presidents invitation to a State visit later this year. Indeed, the petition-clickers preposterously claim they are worried about embarrassing the Queen.

But as so many have pointed out, Her Majesty has played host to legions of blood-drenched tyrants, far more bigoted and unsavoury than brash Mr Trump. Just think of Robert Mugabe, that vicious anti-white racist who has transformed Zimbabwe from the bread-basket of Africa into a hell-hole of violence, poverty and disease.

Where were those thousands of righteous Left-wing protesters when Mugabe, Ceausescu, Xi and the rest came a-calling at the Palace?

As for the Queen, she has survived State visits from all these nightmare guests, and many more, without the slightest jolt to her dignity or blemish on her matchless reputation. It is simply laughable to suggest that she would be embarrassed to share a carriage with Mr Trump  the elected representative of one of the most civilised nations on Earth and our closest, most powerful friend and ally.

What is so contemptible is the hypocrisy of the petitioners claim that they are concerned to spare the royal blushes. Indeed, Id be prepared to bet a sizeable proportion of them dont give a stuff about the Monarchy, having bought republicanism along with the rest of that job-lot of Leftist opinions peddled by the Guardian and the rest.

You know the attitudes: in favour of the mass slaughter of unborn children, but against lavatory signs that discriminate against the transgender community; pro lavish state spending, but anti the private businesses that pay for the welfare state through their taxes; supportive of mass immigration, but hostile to the police who have to deal with the fallout from racial tensions

And so the wearisome litany goes on. Ill tell you what really annoys the protesters. Its the fact that after decades in which their minority opinions have held sway in the political class, on both sides of the Atlantic, they suddenly see the tide turning against them.

But now Im sounding angry myself. So let me just say that I love the FMIQ with all my heart  and theres nothing in this world that would distress me more than if she set fire to herself in protest against people and policies she dislikes.

But if she wants to know the meaning of embarrassment, she should try how it feels to have her nearest and dearest waving placards in public, proclaiming the President of the United States to be a c***.
Phil Shiner (pictured) was struck off after being found guilty of 22 charges by a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal

To this countrys self-righteous legal establishment  which garlanded him with awards  he was a campaigner for justice, and newspaper criticism of him was just media-manufactured vilification.

Well now the truth is clear. As the Mail long suspected, human rights lawyer Phil Shiner, who more than anyone led the shameful witch-hunt against our armed forces, was utterly corrupt.

The tribunal which struck him off found him guilty of 22 charges, including using an agent to drum up business in Iraq, then trying to cover it up. In an insult to his victims, Shiner didnt even turn up.

Rightly, these victims are suing him. If there is any justice, they will take him for every penny of his legal aid-funded fortune. The criminal investigation must now be pursued relentlessly.

But while Shiners downfall will be cheered by thousands of innocent soldiers whose lives he made a misery, his baleful legacy endures. Indeed, there are still dozens of active Iraq investigations despite not one successful prosecution.

Worse still, the witch-hunt extends to Northern Ireland, where police are investigating more than 300 killings by the Army during the Troubles. While British soldiers fear the knock at the door, there is little hope of any IRA murderers having their collars felt.

Ministers must end this persecution industry now, and the legal profession should examine how Shiner got away with it for all these years while it was busy attacking the Press.

A very dubious deal

The Mail has long had serious doubts about the proposed merger between one of our financial crown jewels, the London Stock Exchange, and its German rival.

Given the deal amounts to a takeover by Deutsche Boerse, shouldnt we be concerned about losing control of a firm which for centuries has been emblematic of our commitment to free trade?

It is indicative of where power would lie that Carsten Kengeter, the boss of the Frankfurt exchange, was expected to take charge of the new 21billion company.

So the revelation that he is under investigation over claims of insider trading could hardly be more damaging.

Prosecutors allege he bought shares worth 4.5million euros in his own company knowing the merger was a possibility. He denies any wrongdoing.

Clearly, the deal cannot go ahead with such a cloud hanging over it. Meanwhile, the Government should consider whether it really is in Britains interests.

 Who could doubt that the Rt Hon Lord Mandelson, ex-EU commissioner, Prince of Darkness and hero of the Remain campaign, is fully deserving of a French Legion dHonneur? In his determination to subordinate Britains interests to the EUs he has, as the citation says, been a long-term friend of France. Whether a man sacked twice for dishonesty serves the interests of this country is another matter. What is certain, however, is that his new gong will allow him to put another nought on the end of the bills he hands to his foreign despot clientele, while posing as a British elder statesman and not the cynical, manipulative, poisonous influence we all know him to be.

 Only Diane Abbott knows if she was genuinely unwell on Wednesday during the historic  and for Labour highly contentious  EU vote. The Mail notes that for someone used to a cosy life spouting Left-wing nonsense on the backbenches, elevation to shadow home secretary  and the prospect of actually having to make difficult political decisions  must be something of a shock. Could it be that Miss Abbott, who is well known for the hypocrisy of preaching about state schools while sending her son private, is also guilty of rank cowardice?
Now awarded France's highest so-called distinction  the Legion d'Honneur  Peter Mandelson is unlikely to have received it under a previous president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who couldn't stand him.

Like the editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, Mandelson was 'gonged' by Francois Hollande for supporting the EU.

Why wouldn't he when his 1million pension and add-ons depend on it?

The French embassy has revealed that Peter Mandelson (right) received one of France's top honours for his work promoting the EU and 'updating policies for tomorrow'

Re the not-before-time eclipse of grimy solicitor Phil Shiner, who enriched himself by pursuing cases against serving soldiers, it's worth recalling the advice of Mark Twain, 'the father of US literature': 'The mere title of lawyer is enough to deprive a man of public confidence.'

Journalist and Tory peer Matt Ridley, 58, recalls his friend and fellow Old Etonian Alexander Chancellor, who has died at 77.

Writing in The Spectator, he says of Alex, former editor of The Spectator and The Oldie: 'Alexander was once prosecuted for driving while many times over the limit in (I think) Alabama.

'His lawyer tried the long-shot argument that as a naive Brit, he felt unable to refuse his hosts' hospitality.

'It worked. The judge promptly halted the trial and apologised profusely on behalf of America.'

Novelist and journalist Shirley Conran, 84, pictured in her prime, remains proud of her bestselling 1982 literary offering Lace, telling Good Housekeeping magazine: 'Lace taught girls what to ask for in bed  everything then was still from the man's point of view. At that time, the average Englishman thought the clitoris was a Greek hotel.'

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron says that he plans to boycott any state banquet held for US President Donald Trump

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron says he'll boycott any state banquet for Donald Trump.

Who said he'd be asked?

Farron no longer qualifies for an automatic invitation after his party's 2015 electoral wipe-out masterminded by previous leader Nick Clegg.

Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the opposition, gets one.

So does the SNP's Angus Robertson, as leader of the third largest party at Westminster. Farron must rely on crumbs from their table.

A reader searching for a Donald Trump biography at Waterstones on the Isle of Wight says he found one under the True Crime section.

'I believe it was put there by a customer rather than the management,' he says.

The Radio 4 Today programme presenter Nick Robinson, 53, taunts shadow chancellor John McDonnell about his colleague Diane Abbott's non-appearance in the Commons for the big vote.

'Is it Brexit flu?' he inquires.

McDonnell deadpans: 'No, I don't think so. She's not been very well.'

Robinson: 'She's not made to feel a bit sick by a position she's uncomfortable with?'
A former catwalk model has described how she had to starve herself on just three apples a day and cans of zero-calorie Pepsi Max to become one of the fashion world's most sought-after names.

In a new memoir lifting the lid on the pressure to achieve a super-skinny frame, Victoire Dauxerre, now 23, from Paris, explains how she weighed just seven stone when the likes of Dior, Chanel and Alexander McQueen were booking the 5'10 teenager.

After being scouted at the age of 17, she earned 10,000 in eight months flying all over the world, but her eating disorder has left her with lasting health problems and at one point she was told she had the skeleton of a 70-year-old.

She would take laxatives and enemas after eating and did not menstruate for six months while starving herself as a model, something she claims has left many of her friends permanently infertile.

Victoire Dauxerre, now 23, from Paris, reveals how the pressure to lose weight saw her eat just three apples a day and cans of Pepsi Max as her eating disorder left her with the skeleton of a 70-year-old

Miss Dauxerre (pictured now) said agents literally 'applauded' her as she became even more dangerously underweight

In a new memoir lifting the lid on the pressure to achieve a super-skinny frame, Victoire Dauxerre (pictured now at the age of 23 and a size 10) explains how she weighed just seven stone at the height of her career

She is a different woman to the one who would take laxatives and enemas, pictured at her thinnest, after eating and did not menstruate for six months while starving herself as a model

And while she was literally 'applauded' as she became even more dangerously underweight, she was also told to shave her arms and thighs, which had become hairier as a natural response to keep the body warm after severe weight loss. But she was so unhealthy that the hair on her head started to fall out.

Now a size 10, Miss Dauxerre, who was once named as one of the top 20 models in the world, has broken the 'code of silence' on the quietly encouraged starvation that she claims models are still forced to endure today.

'It is pernicious. They don't tell you "you have to lose 22lbs in two months". What they say is "you need to be this size to fit into the clothes, otherwise you don't get any work". Then each time you come back into the agency and you are skinnier they literally applaud you," she said.

And despite being at the height of her success, flying all over the world working in the glamorous industry, she was far from happy. 'I just wanted to vanish so that it would all be over,' she said.

Miss Dauxerre was just 17, finishing school, and had recently come out of a relationship when she was spotted on the streets of Paris by a scout who told her she could be the next Claudia Schiffer.

Miss Dauxerre (pictured, left, at her thinnest and, right, now) was also told to shave her arms and thighs, which had become hairier as a natural response to keep the body warn after severe weight loss

She described how she had to starve herself on just three apples a day, pictured on a shoot, and cans of zero-calorie Pepsi Max to become one of the fashion world's most sought-after names

Her new memoir, Size Zero - My Life as a Disappearing Model - has already rocked the fashion world and is due for release in February. Left: Miss Dauxerre at her thinnest when she was a model

The model has penned Size Zero - My Life as a Disappearing Model, which is out on February 9

The model, from Paris, is pictured at her thinnest whilst on a casting. She has shared the images in her new memoir

She signed with one of the premiere agencies in the business, Elite, when she was already thin but says she felt a silent pressure to drop even more weight, going to extreme measures to do so.

Miss Dauxerre believes that agencies deliberately pick young, teenage girls because they are more impressionable and less likely to stand up to the dangerous demands of the industry.

She added: 'They take you on when you are at your most fragile - 16 or 17. They want the bodies of little girls.'

Keen to impress and 'naive', Miss Dauxerre, who was top of her class at school, also wanted to succeed in modelling and considered dropping weight an achievement so applied her considerable willpower to it.

MailOnline has contacted Elite and is awaiting comment.

The model is pictured in hair and makeup on a photoshoot during the height of her success

The model, left and right, at her thinnest, blames the designers, who 'dictate our image of beauty', and described how during castings they would be treated like 'a piece of fish at the market'

Although seemingly unaware at the time of what she was doing to her own body, she recalls worrying that a fellow model might die after seeing her, looking like 'an invalid', green, and with her eyes glazed over

She explained how there were always elaborate catering spreads at the shoots, as there still are today, but it's all a facade and the models are expected not to touch them

Eating three apples a day and drinking Pepsi Max, which has no calories and helps to suppress hunger due to the bubbles, she regularly hallucinated and passed out so she could fit into sample size zero outfits.

She has said fashion designers 'dictate our image of beauty', and described how during castings they would be treated like 'a piece of fish at the market', were never spoken to directly and referred to by their ages and nationalities.

She is now a much healthier weight - a size 10 and weighing around nine stone

And during 'seedy' night castings, the teenage Miss Dauxerre - who was a virgin at the time - recalls being stood backstage in nothing but a thong. 'They wanted you to be sexy on the catwalk but at the same time they wanted you to have the body of a girl. It was so f***ed up,' she added.

Although seemingly unaware at the time of what she was doing to her own body, she recalls worrying that a fellow model might die after seeing her, looking like 'an invalid', green, and with her eyes glazed over.

There were always elaborate catering spreads at the shoots, as there still are today, but it's all a facade and the models are expected not to touch them, she claims - and it's all due to a silent pressure that still exists.

'Girls on the runway would say I'm lying. But they can't say anything. There is a code of silence,' said Miss Dauxerre, who successfully campaigned for a law against size zero models in France - but it has made little difference to the thin faces of fashion.

While it has left her with a difficult emotional relationship with food, she is now a much healthier weight. A size 10 and weighing around nine stone, she proudly boasts that she does not have a pair of scales in her home.

Size Zero - My Life as a Disappearing Model, by Victoire Dauxerre, will be published by William Collins on February 9.

For more information on eating disorders visit B-eat.co.uk
A beautiful young woman escapes a bad date by phoning for a taxi and ends up falling in love with the handsome stranger sitting in the front seat.

It might sound like the plot of a big screen romantic comedy but this is the real-life story of how Hayley Mitchell, 27, met boyfriend Charlie Algar, 28, nine months ago.

In a scene reminiscent of Hollywood chick flick The Back-up Plan, their paths crossed, entirely by coincidence, when they shared the same UberPOOL home from Clapham, south London, one night in April last year.

Then just strangers, the pair chatted happily for the 10-minute journey before Charlie, an entrepreneur, asked Miss Mitchell for her phone number.

Meeting on the move: Hayley Mitchell, 27, ordered an UberPOOL, which allows users to split the fare with other passengers, and was put in a car with entrepreneur Charlie Algar, pictured

Lasting love: The couple have celebrated their first Christmas and have moved in together

'It seemed a little too good to be true,' she told MailOnline. But it wasn't.

Two days later she received a text from 'Charlie Uber' - the name she has kept in her phone book - and they arranged their first date, at a bar near Battersea.

Asked how it went, Hayley said simply: 'We just hit it off.'

The following day she was so excited her colleagues suspected she had met something special, and teased she had met 'the one'.

Fast forward to October last year and the couple moved in together. They now live just 50ft from where the Uber picked up Hayley.

Hayley said: 'We have celebrated our first Christmas together and we are looking forward to our first Valentine's together.'

THE BACK-UP PLAN After years of dating, Zoe (Jennifer Lopez) decides Mr Right is taking too long and conceives twins through artificial insemination. The same day she meets Stan (Alex OLoughlin) when they hail the same taxi and their paths continue to cross. She tries to conceal her pregnancy before eventually revealing the reason for her unpredictable behaviour. He promises to stand by her. The couple share ups and downs before Zoe ends the relationship, believing Stan is not ready to become a father. They reconcile and Stan is there for the birth of the twins. Advertisement

Miss Mitchell, a manager at St George's Hospital, in London, said she had gone on a date with another man but 'it was clearly not going well'.

'I was making my excuses quite quickly,' she said.

She went to order an Uber but accidentally requested an UberPool, which allows customers travelling in the same direction to share a car and split the fare.

But Hayley was not expecting another passenger so when she received an alert to say 'Charlie' was on his way in a car, she assumed it was the driver.

'There was someone in the front seat so I thought he must be a learner Uber driver or something,' she said.

Once he introduced himself she realised what had happened and said: 'Oh, you're Charlie'.

Miss Mitchell said: 'He thought that I knew him. I went along with it and said: "I can't believe you don't remember me" and he looked very pale all of a sudden.

Instant attraction: At the end of the 10-minute journey Mr Algar asked for Miss Mitchell's number. The couple, pictured, have now been together for nine months

'He went on for about 10 minutes listing all these places we might have known each other from.'

She admitted what she had done before they pulled up at his house. Fortunately, Charlie saw the funny side.

Hayley said: 'It was coming up to the Bank Holiday weekend at the start of May and he said: "What are you doing this weekend?"

'Because it had all happened so quickly, it sort of seemed a little to good to be true. But it wasn't and he text two days later.'

She added it was 'so much nicer' to be able to tell friends and family that they met 'in real life' in an age where dating is dominated by social media.

Rare: Miss Mitchell admitted it is 'so much nicer to be able to say you met someone in real life' in the age of dating apps and websites. Pictured, the couple together

The romantic coincidence recalls a scene in 2010 film The Back Up Plan, which sees Jennifer Lopez's character meet the love of her life when they try to hail the same taxi.

And much like the fictional characters, Hayley and Charlie have also found their happily ever after.

The couple are looking forward to celebrating their first anniversary in April.

And while they haven't been back in an UberPool together since, the night still holds a special place in their hearts.

Hayley added: 'We always joke we should send the Uber driver a bottle of Champagne!'
It's less than two weeks since Barack Obama handed over to his presidential successor Donald Trump.

But the former President does not appear to have had any problems shedding his politician's attire for street style.

The 55-year-old has been inundated with compliments online for wearing his cap backwards while on holiday with former First Lady Michelle on the British Virgin Islands.

Holiday style: Barack Obama shed his presidential attire for a backwards cap, shades and shorts and was inundated with compliments online

Rest and relaxation: The former President was on holiday in the British Virgin Islands with former First Lady Michelle

The father-of-two was spotted turning his cap from front-facing to back while relaxing with British billionaire Richard Branson, who owns Moskito and Necker islands.

He was also pictured walking with Michelle, who was dressed in beachwear, with his cap on backwards and wearing dark sunglasses, a polo shirt, shorts and flipflops.

Internet star B. Scott tweeted: 'Vacation mode on!' While spoof Twitter account 'Everyday Obama' shared a picture of the cap-wearing former President with the caption: 'Allow me to re-introduce myself.'

New look: The 55-year-old was spotted turning his cap from front-facing to back while relaxing with British billionaire Richard Branson, pictured

Relaxed: He was also pictured walking with Michelle with his cap on backwards and wearing dark sunglasses, a polo shirt, shorts and flipflops

Noted: Twitter users rushed to compliment him on his new relaxed look

Another user, Jordan from Boston, tweeted: 'President Obama with the backwards fitted! This man is culture.'

Bobby Blaxelrod, from Brooklyn, wrote: 'Obama waited eight years to put his hat to the back and y'all think we live in post racial society.'

Clothing designer Amat Victoria Curam added: 'Obama really in the BVI in flip flops just chillin [sic].'

Impressed: Jordan from Boston, whose tweet is pictured, complimented Obama

Surprised: Clothing designer Amat Victoria Curam added, 'Obama really in the BVI in flip flops just chillin [sic]'

Relevance: Bobby Blaxelrod, from Brooklyn, wrote, 'Obama waited eight years to put his hat to the back and y'all think we live in post racial society'

The Obamas are believed to have stayed at one of the British Billionaire's private islands before arriving at Tortola airport by helicopter today.

They were not joined in the Caribbean by their daughters Sasha and Malia but they spent time with them in Palm Springs, California, for a few days after the family left the White House.

Sasha is thought to be in Washington, D.C., where the family will live while she finishes high school, while Malia is believed to be in New York on an internship with film producer Harvey Weinstein.
An exclusive club invites members to indulge their sexual fantasies in the surroundings of a Beverley Hills mansion in the company of top musicians, models and Hollywood actors.

But membership to this elite group comes at a price: interested parties must submit an application and pay an annual feel of between $12,000 and $75,000, while highest level members take part in a 'blood oath', according to the New York Post.

Snctm creator Damon Lawner, 45, told the newspaper that only 11 men and one woman have been bestowed with the highest level membership.

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A-List erotica: Exclusive LA club Snctm invites members to indulge their sexual fantasies in the company of top musicians, glamorous models and Hollywood actors

Like minds: Snctm holds monthly parties where men and women are invited to explore their 'primal urges'

This includes entry to every party - including access to private rooms - a special silver necklace and the advice of sex experts.

Alternatively, there is a lower level membership that offers discounted party tickets and networking opportunities.

Lawner claims its members include Grammy-winning artists and said Gwyneth Paltrow has attended their parties with her boyfriend, Glee producer, Brad Falchuk.

'[Gwyneth is] not a crazy-kinky person, like people think,' Lawner said. 'Shes a down-to-earth total sweetheart...They are exploratory with each other.'

A recent event featured erotically dressed waitresses, Japanese bondage demonstrations, fire-eating shows and live sex acts, according to the newspaper.

Lawner, who is a father-of-two and divorced, founded the club four years ago.

Mission: Creator Damon Lawner, pictured, claims it has 'never been about sex'

Dress code: All guests are required to arrive at the parties wearing a mask. Men are required to wear tuxedos and women either evening wear or lingerie

Fee: Annual membership costs between $12,000 and $75,000 while individual party tickets cost over $1,000

He said some members attend parties to learn 'how to give better [pleasure]' while others see it as a place 'for primal urges to be explored'.

Single men pay $1,850 per party or $1,500 if they attend with a woman, according to the newspaper.

Women do not pay but are required to submit an application in the form of full-body photographs.

Privacy is an important consideration for the club. Mobile phones are banned and everybody is required to wear masks on entry.

The dress code consists of tuxedos for men and either evening wear or lingerie for women.

Last year Scntm held a secret party in New York to coincide with fashion week where guests were required to collect keys engraved with the location address.

Celebrity guests: Lawner claims actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her boyfriend Glee producer Brad Falchuk, pictured, have attended his parties

Committed: Highest level members are said to include 11 men and one woman who are required to take part in a 'blood oath' to join

Sexual: A promotional video, pictured, shows women in lingerie crawling around the floor and on their hands and knees serving and licking a masked man sat on a chair in a tuxedo

Lawner claims that his 20 employees and himself are banned from engaging in sex at the parties but, according to the New York Post, he likes to watch.

A promotional video shows women in lingerie crawling around the floor and on their hands and knees serving and licking a masked man sat on a chair in a tuxedo.

Despite the focus on eroticism of the club, Lawner claims it has 'never been about sex'.

He told Paltrow's lifestyle website Goop: 'There are sex parties out there and Ive honestly never been to one, nor desire to.

'Snctm is a place to get turned on, to explore, to hold hands, to realize that sex doesnt have to be hidden away. It can be open and celebrated, and thats all right.'
Perth twins Anna and Lucy DeCinque made headlines after spending almost $250,000 on plastic surgery in a bid to become the 'world's most identical'.

They had breast implants and lip fillers along with IPL, laser treatments and microdermabrasion to remain blemish-free.

The 31-year-olds also had their eyebrows and eyeliner tattooed on.

But the women now regret the way they look and revealed they have been battling a mental illness for years that distorts the way they see themselves.

Speaking to Sunrises Sam Armytage and David Koch, the twins said they are sharing their story to send a message to young people.

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On the mend? Twins Anna and Lucy DeCinque have opened up about their battle with body dysmorphia

The pair said they have been taking anti-depressants every day after being diagnosed with body dysmorphia a few months ago.

They revealed that it started when their father died, but they didnt realise how serious the issue was until last year  and the turning point came after they lost a job.

I dont know what we were thinking. We wanted things to look bigger, be more extreme.

It clicked in after we lost our father seven years ago, they explained.

We kind of knew back then but we did not want to admit it.

Obsessed? The pair spent $250,000 on cosmetic surgery to look as identical as possible

Rgeret: They say they are now trying to go back tot heir natural appearance (above, before surgery)

It had got so bad that the twins would scrutinise each other in the mirror and would forgo leaving the house if one had even the tiniest of imperfections.

They added: The doctor realised that we had something wrong.

We embraced it and now we are just working towards positive things in our life and trying to get over this thing that we are dealing with.

To be honest, she saved our life.

They added: I dont know what would have happened to us, we had a monster in the brain, constantly with these negative thoughts.

Its going to take some time, but we are on the mend, we definitely are.

They added that they want to raise awareness about the mental illness, urging young people to be wary of social media.

Extreme: The pair had breast implants, lip fillers as well as tattooed eyeliner and eyebrows

Influence: They blamed social media to perpetuating unrealistic body expectations

A message to the young people, men and women, is that you can get help. We got help. Dont be ashamed, just own it.

We are on the mend now. We are proud of what were doing.

They added: The world can be a nasty place. Social media can kill young people.

It can be evil, Facebook sometimes and Instagram. You see these perfect images of women and you think that everyone is perfect. It's not, you know?

We had a negative monster constantly in our brain every day. We were staying at home. It was not good for us at all. It took over our life.

But although the women admit they have been targeted by online trolls, they refuse to quit social media as they love the limelight.

Spreading awareness: The twins spoke to Sunrise hosts Sam Armytage and David Koch

Sharing: The pair have the same boyfriend (above, Ben with the twins) and claimed they both intended to marry him and have his children at the same time

We have got our lovers and our haters and the inbetweeners, they said.

While some see them as inspirational, others have written cruel messages, they said.

We have been a bit quiet [on social media] but we love this limelight, they said.

We have been in it for so long. We love our fans and getting to know them. We just want to grow.

But although they wont be indulging in further surgery, the twins still keep to a strict skincare regime to maintain their appearance.

And last year, they also revealed that they have a shared boyfriend, called Ben, and that they both intend to marry him.

In a video on their YouTube channel, they also claimed they wanted to both become pregnant with Ben's children at exactly the same time - and were planning to do so with IVF treatment.
A woman has given birth to one of Australia's largest babies - weighing almost 6kg - and the labour was so quick she didn't even have time to get to hospital for the birth.

Nina Tassell, 37, gave birth to her son in the foyer of her home on Australia Day in Applecross, Perth, with the help of her husband Adam, reported The West Australian.

Ms Tassell's hour-long labour, after her waters broke at 9am, meant the couple didn't have time to make it to St John of God Hospital in Murdoch as they had planned.

Perth woman Nina Tassell (right) has given birth to one of the state's largest babies (front) centre, after delivering him in the foyer of her house - helped by husband Adam (left)

Mr Tassel and his sister, Sonya Anson, who had recently picked up the couple's three other sons, called an ambulance, and Ms Tassell prepared for the home birth.

'I got down on the mat in the foyer near the front door but I was pretty nervous because I knew I was in their hands if anything went wrong,' she said.

'Sonya was on the phone getting advice (from the paramedics) while Adam handled the delivery and told me when to push.'

Mr Tassell said: 'We got a bit stuck getting his head out, but Nina changed position and then I saw his eyebrows and then the rest of him came out beautifully. He made a few coughing noises and we knew he was OK.'

The ambulance arrived soon after the the couple were taken to hospital.

The couple initially planned to go to St John of God Hospital (pictured) but Ms Tassell's labour was so fast she was forced to deliver the baby at home. She was later taken to hospital by ambulance

Obstetrician Michael Gannon told The West Australian there were significant risks, but congratulated the couple on how they handled it.

Their son, who is yet to be named, was born three days premature and weighs 5.95kg - compared with the average birth weight of 3.3kg.

He also measures 59cm long, compared to the average 51cm for newborns.
Its an image familiar to many women  an overflowing wardrobe, yet ironically, were at a loss for what to wear.

But now, a professional stylist has revealed how you live off a wardrobe consisting of just 30 staple pieces - but create 1,000 different outfits with them.

Wendy Mak details the only 30 items  including shoes and bags  that busy women actually need in their lives in her new book, The Capsule Wardrobe.

Live with less: Wendy Mak (pictured) has revealed how to mix and match 30 items to create 1,000 different outfits

In the book, the Sydney-based stylist and blogger gives advice on how to streamline your closet and introduces the essential pieces  tops, skirts, dresses, shoes and accessories  as well as how to put them together to achieve 1,000 different looks.

Aimed at working women and also mothers, Ms Maks combinations include outfits to suit every occasion, whether its for work or the weekend, in a bid to make dressing a worry-free experience.

But she doesnt expect women to dispose of every item of clothing they own to invest in the items she recommends.

Rather, Ms Mak wants women to embrace the idea of investing in timeless and better quality pieces over fast fashion as well as realise what items in their wardrobes they actually wear.

Multi-purpose: Her book is illustrated to show how to wear an item, such as a coloured blouse (above), in different ways for a casual, work or evening look

These days, we have forgotten how to live with less, she told Daily Mail Australia.

You dont need to buy buy buy when it comes to all of these things that you dont really need.

She added: I believe cluttered closets create cluttered lives.

My advice to realise what you dont need is when you wear something, put a clothes peg on the hanger.

Essential: One item the stylist recommends everyone invest in is a pair of wedges in nude

Go-to: Every woman should have a weekend jacket for casual days out or when travelling

This way, youll see which items youre actually wearing and then you can start to move things that youre not out of your wardrobe.

Declutter your life! Wendy Mak's book The Capsule Wardrobe (pictured) reveals how to live with only 30 items in your wardrobe

And two things that she believes all women should have is a casual weekend jacket and a pair of nude-coloured wedges.

This is your weekend go-to jacket so choose a relaxed style that will go with your accent and coloured pieces, so in khaki, navy or even dusty gold, she advised.

You can throw this over a T-shirt to dress it up and its great to wear when youre travelling.

For footwear, she says: Ideally, look for patent peeptoes in a classic tan or nude colour.

These will go with everything from shorts for a casual day out to dresses for work.

Another valuable tip she offers is when shopping for classic pieces, get one item in a light colour for wearing in the summer and a darker version, for the colder months.
A remarkable collection of letters was found in Ormesby Hall, Middlesbrough, a couple of years ago.

Written by women bereaved in World War I, they were sent to Mary Pennyman.

As secretary of the King's Own Scottish Borderers Widows And Orphan Fund, she gave sympathy and financial aid to women across the UK.

Pouring out their hearts to her, their letters  now online  are a moving testament to grief, courage and quiet endurance . . .

A collection of letters, written by widows (stock photo), has been unearthed and reveals how they poured out their hearts

Eliock, Sanquhar [Dumfriesshire], October, 1916

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

Thanks so much for offering to do anything for me, but at present I am here as lady's maid and have a good wage and my widow's pension and am really not in want of anything.

I have been obliged to sell my comfortable house which we only enjoyed together for 18 months.

Last week brought back to memory last year, as my husband left for France only arriving on the 15th [of October] to be killed on the 26th. It is all too sad as we were so devoted to each other.

I get about a great deal with my lady and my mind is partly taken up with my work. Really I shouldn't grumble, I often think of those who are left worse off than I am.

Thanking you for all your kindness.

I am yours faithfully,

Mary Smith

Sheffield, February 1, 1917

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

Altho' the letter you went to so much trouble to get me from France made us very sad, we were glad to know my brother had not suffered much and that he died peacefully, poor darling.

I often wonder who's worst off  those dead or those in the muddy trenches waiting for death. The war doesn't seem to get any nearer the end, does it? If only it were, tho' to be candid and I know it's selfish I'm not quite so anxious as I was previous to our Walter's death.

You'll understand this, won't you? We shall have no one coming home. I sincerely hope Mr Pennyman [Mary's husband, James, was a career soldier] may return to you safely after the conflict.

I remain yours gratefully,

Ada Thornton

P.S. You will notice we have removed from Ashberry Road. Memories there were too painful. A.T.

Sheffield, September 10, 1918

My Dear Mrs Pennyman,

Two years tomorrow since Walter died! I think the first shock has worn off somewhat, it never the less is as deeply felt, but now we can talk of him so it doesn't seem like the hopeless misery it formerly did. I have a brother in the Navy, also a nephew, so far they are doing fine. What a wretched September we are having.

I remain yours gratefully,

Ada Thornton

Written by women bereaved in World War I, they were sent to Mary Pennyman (pictured)

Aldersyde, November 27, 1918

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

The news I had on October 3 from my husband's platoon lieutenant was a bitter blow to me. As you say, so near the end, too. It's all too hard to realise he will not return.

It's difficult to say 'thy will be done', but God plans all these things for the best, so I must be brave, along with other mothers and wives, who have lost in this dreadful war.

There are no children, as we had only been married six weeks, so ours was a short-lived happiness together. I try to be a comfort to his poor old Dad and Mother, they feel it dreadful.

Perhaps it's wicked to say so, but I sometimes wish I could be old with them, as life feels rather empty at times. Thanks so much for wishing to help me, but there is nothing, just at present, that I know of, where you can help me.

I remain yours very sincerely,

Bessie Walker

Clydebank, July 20, 1916

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

I am in receipt of your letter which is kindly inquiring as to my welfare. Dear madam, after my husband's death I received 6 from the patriotic fund paid through the Soldiers & Sailors Families' Association and I am now in receipt of an Army pension for my child.

Perhaps it will interest you to know that with my little savings I went to London and was trained as a nurse, where I successfully passed my examination. I am now home again to my baby, she is not two years old yet. She was born after her Daddy went away and he, I am sorry to say, never seen her.

You will see my sorrow is heavy, but by the help of God I will try to cheer myself by nursing others.

I remain your humble

Agnes Septon

Kirkconnel [Dumfriesshire], March 4, 1917

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

Thanks for your kind sympathy in regards my husband, poor soul. He fell on May 6, 1915. He was nine months missing before I got right word he was killed, I never knew what happened to him.

He was a good steady husband, it makes it more hard to bear. However one need not complain as there are thousands the same, it is a terrible war. I was left with five children and the sixth one was born two months after he was killed, but I lost my dear wee darling when she was ten months old with pneumonia. She died a year to the day after her father was killed, May 6, 1916. I thought it was strange. I thought I would never get over it, but time works wonders.

My husband enlisted of his own accord, he thought it was his duty. He had not long of it, he was only three weeks in France.

Yours truly,

E. Walker

Northampton, August 20, 1918

Dear Madam,

Your letter comforted me and a relief to write about my son, from the officer's letter to me he took another sergeant's turn and was killed instantly by a shell.

I am glad he didn't suffer and was buried so nicely with, as the chaplain wrote, Christian rites and military honours. You say if you can help or advise me  well, there is nothing but his few articles such as watch etc and any money due to him, those I expect in time to have.

I am yours respectfully,

Isabella Slattery

Written by women bereaved in World War I (pictured, the Battle of the Somme), the letters were sent to Mary Pennyman

Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, date unknown

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

You will be glad to know that my baby came all right, a little boy. He is getting on splendidly. His father would have been so proud of him if he had been spared to come home and see him.

You were asking if I managed comfortably, but it is a great struggle to exist at all on the pension I receive from the government  it would nearly take it all to feed and clothe baby as I was not able to nurse him.

It is a good deal more expensive to bring up baby on the bottle. He is truly a splendid baby, any one who sees him will hardly believe I am his mother.

I am just 19 years and not at all big or strong.

I remain yours sincerely,

Mary Thompson

[Location unknown], April 30, 1919

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

I have just received your very kind letter and glad to know you have your husband home and that he has got over the flu. This war has been a terrible stain on most people.

I was wondering, if it would not upset him to speak of it all, could he give you an idea of where my boy's grave would be? It was a place called [unreadable] and he was buried just where he fell.

Perhaps your husband could tell me if there is any chance of a photo of the grave (but please do not ask him if it will remind him of the rough times he had)?

It is good I know he has come out of it all so well.

I am yours,

Mrs Robertson

Langholm [Dumfriesshire], February 27, 1919

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

Just a few lines to say that I got the first of the pay a fortnight past yesterday Wednesday. I drew 3/3s which went a long way in paying of my doctor's bills and I am thankful to say I am just wonderful, only I have to be careful, as there is such a lot of sickness through the flu all over the country.

I am going to write again to the Graves Committee as I have never got any more word since I first wrote to see if a photo [of her son's grave] could be got.

There is to be a memorial in the town. There was such a nice proposal that on a yearly festival day handed down for generations there will be a moment of silence round the place, so that as the years go by the Dear Dead will not be forgotten at that time and it will keep their memory green in the hearts of their old playmates as the Day comes round. Only the mothers need no minding, oh for a touch of their vanished hand and the sound of the voice that is still.

Lily Warwick

Langholm, March 28, 1919

Dear Mrs Pennyman,

When John (my John) was killed, his sergeant wrote such a nice letter enclosing two photos that he had taken out of his tunic pocket before laying him down to rest.

I always felt so grateful to that dear lad. So I kept writing something now and again, for well we know how letters brightened their hard lot out there.

Would you believe it, he was demobilised in November and got married that same month. I had a nice letter from his wife, she said Bob was coming through to see me in the summer. They live near Berwick-on-Tweed, just a pair of children I should say, but they seem to be quite happy.

I have been making a nice warm fireside rug from pieces of tweed and it takes up my time nicely. I must hurry, it is tea time, I am still feeling much better, trusting this finds you well and also your husband.

Lily Warwick

PS Mrs Mary Pennyman's husband, Jim, made it through the war despite being wounded and in 1920 retired from the Army with the rank of major. The couple moved from Ormesby Hall, where her husband's family had lived for nearly 400 years, and settled on a farm in Stainton, Middlesbrough. Tragically, Mary and their baby died in childbirth in 1924. She is buried at Ormesby Hall. Upon Jim's death in 1961, he bequeathed Ormesby Hall to the National Trust.

The letters to Mrs Mary Pennyman held by Teesside Archives, have now been collected online at dearmrspennyman.com by Teesside University researchers, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Nine news presenter Wendy Kingston has opened up about how it felt to wave her little boy off during his first week of school.

The mother of three told Nine Honey that there was a 'mix of nerves, tears (on his part) and happiness we actually made it on time' during the rite of passage, that many parents will relate to.

'I have never been more excited to see him than Monday afternoon, six hours and 20 minutes after my husband and I dropped him off,' Ms Kingston revealed.

Rite of passage: Nine news presenter Wendy Kingston has opened up about how it felt to wave her little boy off during his first week of school

'Survived Orientation at big school - now I just have to keep it together on Monday when this little man starts Prep!!!' Ms Kingston captioned this photo on Instagram ahead of the occasion

'Morning tears had been replaced with a huge smile and I got a hug I will treasure forever.'

The doting mum went on to say her little boy, Joshua, told her his day was great, but he was 'starving'.

The TV star also revealed that she took a week off work so that she could support her son through the important transition.

Time off: The TV star also revealed that she took a week off work so that she could support her son through the important transition

Mum's struggles: Previously Ms Kingston has spoken candidly about how returning to work after maternity leave following the birth of her youngest, Mia, was difficult

'Some people take holidays to go to Fiji. I took annual leave to go to school - for five days. It was worth every second,' she said.

Previously Ms Kingston has spoken candidly about how returning to work after maternity leave following the birth of her youngest, Mia, was difficult.

She said she was wracked with guilt about leaving her babies to work five afternoons a week  but at the same time, she was deliciously excited by the prospect of peeing alone.

Although she said that she was often called a 'super mum' after returning from maternity leave, it's a moniker she politely laughed off.

If I'm honest, some days I feel like an utter failure. A jack of all trades and a master of none,' she said.
A businesswoman and mother has revealed why she created a natural personal lubricant with her young daughters.

Bernadette Finney, 46, says she has always been open and honest about sex with her daughters Scarlett, 24, and Georgia, 22.

And after both of her parents died of cancer within three weeks of each other in 2011, she also adopted a natural approach to life  ridding her family home of chemicals and processed foods.

In 2015, she and her husband of 25 years, Scott, launched their first natural product  a natural coconut oil cooking spray.

Family affair: Bernadette Finney (right) developed a personal lubricant with her two daughters Scarlett and Georgia (pictured left)

And in December, the Sydney-based couple and their daughters developed Private  the countrys first completely natural personal lubricant made from only pure coconut oil.

If the girls had any questions dealing with the subject of sex, we always came from an honest and open place, Mrs Finney told Daily Mail Australia.

They were very involved with the coconut oil cooking spray, so when we discussed Private, they were really intrigued and supportive of the concept.

She explained that because shes never shied away from frank conversations with her children, it has helped her daughters with the business.

Ive never shied away from having frank, open discussions about sex with the girls, she added.

Why should I when it is such a normal part of life to be explored? Not talking about it creates awkwardness.'

Open: Mrs Finney said she's always had an honest approach to discussing sex with her kids. Pictured left, Georgia and Scarlett and right, Mrs Finney with Georgia

Working together: Mrs Finney said her daughters were involved with working on the cooking spray that she and her husband Scott developed

She explained that her mother, by contrast, was conservative - and because she had her eldest when she was only 22, she's able to talk to them more openly.

My own mother explained things, but we never engaged in these types of conversations as much,' she said.

Mrs Finney also explained that it was when her family embraced a healthier way of life that they spotted the gap in the market for the product.

I became very conscious of not only what I was putting into my body, but what I was putting onto it, she said.

Nothing like it! Private is Australia's first completely natural personal lubricant made from only pure coconut oil

Were constantly talking about ways we can lead a healthier life through the food we consume and the exercise we do, but what about healthier sex lives?

Most lubricants are laden with chemicals and we didnt find anything like this on the market, she said.

It came from a place of sheer desperation. My husband and I, we tried to find something for us to use and couldnt so we decided to make it ourselves.
A mother has shared a heartbreaking photo diary, showing the devastating decline of her three-year-old son after months of gruelling chemotherapy.

Charlie Proctor has gone from a bouncing toddler to being so frail that his mother Amber Schofield, 22, from Accrington, Lancashire, can fit her fingers around his legs.

The youngster has lost all his hair after 18 rounds of chemo and is currently so weak that he can't walk or talk and even finds attention from Amber and her partner Ben Procter, 27

'For the past week he's had so little energy, he won't even let you look at him,' she said. 'He's lost so much weight that you can see so many of his tiny bones.'

Charlie Proctor, three, from Lancashire has been left so weak after 19 round of chemo that he's currently unable to walk or talk

Two-year-old Charlie in December 2015, just before he was diagnosed with a rare form of liver cancer

Charlie before his hair fell out, at a charity parachute jump to raise money for cancer research, in May 2016

Amber has been documenting Charlie's cancer battle on Facebook to raise awareness of the reality of the disease.

'I realise he's not a funny meme or a joke about getting drunk,' she said. 'But he is my boy and it is real. I want people to share that.'

Charlie was diagnosed with with a rare form of liver cancer in January 2016, after suffering a bug over Christmas.

But still, his smile  although sometimes weak  remains constant.

Doting mother Amber is keeping a photo diary of Charlie's progress to show other parents the reality of childhood cancer

Good natured Charlie's smile  although sometimes weak  remains constant. Charlie, pictured in September 2016, has lost all his hair after chemo

Having a nap in hospital with his dad, Ben. Charlie is pictured here having lost weight, with no energy and a high temperature, in November 2016

Shocking photos show him lying still in bed, clutching sadly at a teddy bear. His current state is a far cry from the Charlie of autumn 2015, before he suddenly became seriously ill.

But Amber said it was important people realised that children suffered from cancer  and the treatments used to beat it.

She hopes other mothers - especially young mums, as she was just 18 when she fell pregnant with Charlie - find support in her posts.

The doting big brother with his younger sister Jessica in September 2016

Charlie and his mum Amber take a nap together in the midst of his gruelling treatment in June 2016

In one rcent post, she talked of her excitement, after realising her boy's low energy was a sign he needed a blood transfusion, not a sign the cancer had worsened.

'I wondered if all of this was because his disease was rapidly worsening. But I couldn't have been more wrong,' she explained.

'Yesterday he went to Manchester with his grandma for his bloods to be taken. When the results came back, they showed he needed some platelets and a blood transfusion. A blood transfusion? This could be why he's so weak? Correct!'

Charlie snuggled up with a cuddly toy, in November 2016

The toddler in hospital, before his hair fell out, in March 2016. He's undergone 19 rounds of chemotherapy

But there is sad news on the site too. His alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) levels, indicators of the cancer in his liver and lungs, remain high.

Now Amber fears that unless he gets specialist treatment in the USA, he will not live for much longer.

Doctors, who initially believed he had up to a 90 per cent chance of survival, have admitted chemotherapy is not working as well as they had hoped.

Amber - who was five months pregnant with his sister Jessica, now nine months when he was diagnosed  said doctors now fear it could be as low at just 20 per cent.

Amber fears that unless he gets specialist treatment in the USA, he will not live for much longer

A delighted Charlie enjoying a break from the hospital, in October 2016

And while she is not critical of the treatment he has received at Manchester Children's Hospital, she is desperate for him to visit America clinical trials and chemotherapy drugs that aren't available in the UK.

HEPATOBLASTOMA Hepatoblastoma is an uncommon liver cancer, composed of tissue resembling fetal liver cells, mature liver cells, or bile duct cells. It is the most common kind of liver cancer affecting children, and usually affects the under-threes. The only treatment for hepatoblastoma in the UK is chemotherapy, but transplants are recommended in other countries. Advertisement

At Cincinnati Children's Hospitat she hopes he will undergo further treatment, which will cost at least 25,000.

'I believe that if he does not go to America he will die from this cancer,' she bravely said. 'I am fundraising for treatment. I don't want to beg, but he is my son and I have no choice.'

Amber revealed how Charlie's stomach hardened and his veins became visible beneath his skin, prompting her to take him to Blackburn Royal Hospital where, on February 1, 2016, he was diagnosed with cancer.

Charlie, described as fun and cheeky, has so far undergone 19 lots of six-day rounds, which is stabilising but not curing him, according to Amber.

'When he was first diagnosed his AFP levels were around 700,000,' she explained. 'After chemo they drop to around 400, but then they go straight to 1,000.

The youngster being treated in hospital, in September 2016

Charlie with his dad, Ben, August 2016. Currently he's unable to walk or talk because he is so weak and in need of a blood transfusion

'Children's AFP levels should be around nought to five. So it is working, but not to the scale we'd hoped.

'Chemo is incredibly tough. He goes through stages of being incredibly thin and weak.'

Charlie's family are raising via GoFundMe.
A new mother who was still performing headstands the day before she gave birth says yoga was behind her speedy 10-minute labour.

Randi Greene, 30, from Chesapeake in Ohio, who gave birth to baby Quinn last month, refused to roll up her mat when she fell pregnant, and instead shared jaw-dropping photos of her pulling off impressive moves even with a growing bump.

Randi, who trained as an instructor after falling in love with yoga three years ago, credits her practice with helping her during contractions when she was giving birth, and says it helped her to create a 'deeper mind-body connection' during pregnancy.

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Randi Greene, 30, from Ohio, kept up her yoga practice until the day before she gave birth

Randi says her yoga helped with her breathing and contractions during labour last month

Randi, seen with baby Quinn, who was born in January, spent just ten minutes in labour

'There were definitely certain poses and movements that I was unable to do during my pregnancy,' Randi said.

But she adds: 'Though I had to stop doing certain poses, my body was able to do so much more than I could have ever imagined.

'I was able to hold handstands up until the day Quinn was born and teach hour long Buti Yoga classes well into my third trimester.'

Randi and her husband David Greene, 33, welcomed their son on January 16.

Randi and her husband David Greene, from Ohio, welcomed their newborn on January 16

Randi took up yoga three years ago, and loved it so much she started her own business

Randi decided to modify her moves during pregnancy rather than give up yoga altogether

Randi, seen with husband David and baby Quinn, said she was tired during her first trimester but later experienced a burst of energy

Randi said: 'During my first trimester, I was extremely tired and only practiced yoga two to three days a week when I was able to peel myself off of the couch.

'During my second and third trimester, when my energy started coming back, I would try to move my body for 45 minutes to an hour, four to five days a week.

'I taught Buti Yoga one to two times a week up until 37 weeks pregnant and also incorporated resistance training, dancing, and other forms of yoga into my weekly routine.'

'I 100% think practicing yoga and exercising during my pregnancy helped with my labour.

'It not only helped with my breathing during contractions and delivery, but it also provided me with a certain level of confidence that allowed me to really tune into my body during labour.

'Yoga helped me create a deeper mind-body connection during my pregnancy.'

Randi takes her mat outdoors for an alfresco yoga session during her pregnancy

She shared pictures of her journey on her Instagram account, @randilynngreene

Randi, who started practicing Buti Yoga in 2014, works as an instructor and runs Wild Spirit Yoga Camp for women.

But she revealed she hasn't always been a yoga-enthusiast.

Randi said: 'I was always into lifting weights and running, however I was never a huge fan of yoga.

'I had tried one class in my life and did not really enjoy that particular class, so I never tried yoga again, until I was introduced to Buti Yoga.

'I fell in love with the practice and decided almost immediately that I wanted to become a Buti Yoga instructor and share this life changing movement with others.

'I love that it is a complete workout all on its own and it's a movement to empower women and help you gain confidence and feel comfortable in your own skin.

'It leaves me feeling strong, energized, confident, and happy.'

She added: 'I am looking forward to getting back to practicing yoga with my new little partner, however right now I am just enjoying being a new mom and soaking up all of his sweet baby snuggles while I can.'
When someone new takes over your old job its always a bit awkward. You want them to do well, but not quite as well as you. You want them to be liked by your old colleagues, but not be as popular as you. Still, Kris Marshall almost makes a good fist of appearing happy for Irish funnyman Ardal OHanlon, who this week, we can exclusively reveal, becomes the lead detective in BBC1s hit murder mystery show Death In Paradise.

Weve been sworn to secrecy over what happens to Kriss accident-prone but deceptively brilliant Detective Inspector Humphrey Goodman, but Father Ted actor Ardals character DI Jack Mooney, seen last week helping the team out during a brief sojourn in London, becomes top dog on Saint Marie, the shows fictional setting.

Kris, 43, laughs about why hes moving on when I meet him and Ardal in chilly London thats the extreme opposite of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, where Death In Paradise is filmed. It seemed a bit selfish to take all the good stuff for my- self  I thought it was time to let someone else have a go.

Kris and Ardal in Death In Paradise

The reality is that with a growing family it was getting harder to spend six months of the year on location. When I first started, my son was six months old but now he has a baby sister and hes about to go to school, says Kris. There are challenges being in the Caribbean with young children, especially for my wife. Theres all the wildlife, the heat, and the swimming pools were a particular worry with a baby around. My family didnt come out this year because it was so difficult; so it seemed like the best time to go.

Kris had a few weeks to hand over to Ardal, 51, and gave him advice that had been passed down from Ben Miller, the original fish-out-of-water detective on the show, which regularly pulls in nine million viewers and has been sold to more than 200 territories abroad.

I told him to make sure you know the way the plot pans out because the days are really long, and also to make sure you do all your shots first in the morning before its too hot, says Kris. Then you wont have to do so much in the afternoon  instead you can just watch everyone else fry.

Ardal grins. By scaring me a bit, he prepared me for the worst but it was all fine. Maybe my metabolism means I dont overheat. Kris is very, very sweaty. I dont sweat that much.

Its not the only thing Ardal seems to be handling better. As the father of teenagers who have long summer holidays  he and his wife Melanie have three children aged 19, 17 and 15  travelling with the family is a lot easier. It was an easy decision for me to make because my children love the show and wouldnt have forgiven me if Id turned the job down, he says. Also, they love the idea of holidaying in the Caribbean. School holidays in Ireland are really long as they finish school at the end of May, so they can come out with me for quite a long time.

Even climbing the volcano on the island seems to have come easier for Ardal. It was my first day there when I climbed to the top, one of the highest points in the Caribbean, he says. I felt as though Id really conquered the island. It was a clear day and I could see everything. Kris admits, Im jealous. Ive climbed it three times and each time it was cloudy.

Ardal with Dermot Morgan in Father Ted

Oh dear. And thats when I raise the hot topic of whether or not Ardals Irish character will be wearing a jacket like buttoned-up Brits Humphrey and his predecessor Richard Poole (who was murdered at the start of series three). I actually got quite upset about this, admits Kris. To be honest, Im still not over it. I got pretty angry when I started to see the Polaroids of Ardal in his costume fittings. I said, Wheres the jacket?

Kris is now yelling. No, seriously, but where is the jacket? I asked them. My whole problem has been over this blessed jacket. It drove me mad. Having to wear the jacket in the police station scenes was a perfect storm. It was incredibly hot, there was extremely intricate dialogue and there were always time constraints. So for a man to come in and not wear a jacket and sail through it without breaking a sweat. Well! he sighs.

Ardal, who is cowering slightly, tries to appease him. Hes only there on holiday to start with so he might get a whole new uniform if theres a new series. I might end up having to wear a boilersuit...

Kris doesnt seem entirely placated, but he does admit that there are lots of things hell miss. Its not so much bittersweet as just bitter, says Kris. I miss it already. I saw a couple of the crew recently and they were telling me about their plans to go back and I thought, B******s! Wheres the solidarity? I miss it so much. I even miss the heat. I miss my morning swim in the sea every day before work. I miss the crew, I miss the healthy existence, I miss the commute of just slipping on your flip flops and being at work in three minutes.

Its not bittersweet, just bitter. I miss it already

I miss going on boats and diving. I miss the cast and going island-hopping on my days off. Sometimes I think Ive made a terrible mistake.

Oh dear, its too late now. Ardal, whos been a fan of the show since it started, is well and truly ensconced. Ive always loved murder mysteries, he says. Ive read every Agatha Christie; I love all of it from trashy pulp to Scandi Noir. I love crime fiction and Ive even written my own crime novel, though it hasnt been published. So this is a dream come true. Im nosy so I think I was perfect for the role. Its the job I was born to play.

He looks at Kris. I have huge shoes to fill, and its a brilliant show. I do feel a lot of responsibility and, of course, there is a lot of doubt that goes with the territory. Taking over is massive  you want to get it right. Its such a successful show thats been running for years and years. You dont want to do anything that would affect the dynamics.

Its quite formulaic in lots of ways but its also really ambitious and I think people underestimate how hard it is to get all those ingredients right. First of all, to have an ingenious mystery at the heart of it all. People of all generations love trying to guess the answer. Then you also have the comedy. And under the lightness is the drama.

Kris agrees. You walk a fine line; you dont want to parody the genre but theres an archness to it; youre gently poking fun at it.

As for Kriss future, hes about to start work on a play at the National Theatre but he isnt quite ready to completely let go of Death In Paradise

Ardal adds that while he doesnt like to be reminded of Father Ted all the time, he would like to bring some of the elements from that hit comedy to the show. Theres a gentle quality to both shows that people like across the generations, he says. People dont give those shows enough credit. He hopes DI Mooney will be taken as quickly into peoples hearts as Kriss Humphrey.

Theres a little bit of sadness in his life, says Ardal. Hes recently lost his wife and is at a bit of a loose end. He thinks hes going on a bit of a holiday as a thank-you from Humphrey and goes out there with his daughter  but then something happens and he ends up staying.

Hes a genial character and has that Columbo feel; he disarms people who underestimate him but hes dogged. Hes really curious about people and wants to understand why they do what they do.

Hes not an Irish stereotype and I like that; he prefers wine to Guinness. But he does have a folksy wisdom and a quirkiness that might be seen as Irish, he has a bit of the blarney.

Kris had no say over who would replace him but says he thinks it was a brilliant decision. Its very astute casting, he says. He had to be totally unlike my character and Bens. Making him slightly culturally different was definitely the way to go. As for Kriss future, hes about to start work on a play at the National Theatre but he isnt quite ready to completely let go of Death In Paradise.

I really enjoyed working with Ardal  Humphrey and Jack had a great relationship, he says. So if theres a chance to come back in the future, well, Id love it.

Death In Paradise continues on Thursday at 9pm on BBC1.
Kunta Kinte is a strapping young African warrior with a bright future ahead of him in Gambia in the late 1700s. But one fateful day his life changes forever when hes kidnapped by his familys arch-enemies, the Koros, and sold as a slave to the British in return for a cache of guns.

So begins Roots, a brutal but brilliant four-part drama that charts the lives of Kunta Kinte and his descendants over the course of 100 years.

Based on the book by US author Alex Haley, who traced his family tree back to 18th-century Africa, the original version of Roots remains one of the most watched shows in TV history. A staggering 100 million Americans tuned in to the final episode in 1977, with a further 19 million watching it on the BBC when it was broadcast here later that year. The series went on to win nine Emmys and a Golden Globe.

L-R: Fiddler (Forest Whitaker), John Waller (James Purefoy), Dr William Waller (Matthew Goode), Kunta Kinte (Malachi Kirby), Tom Lea (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), kizzy waller (Anika Noni Rose)

The remake maintains strong links with the original. One of the executive producers is LeVar Burton, the American who played Kunta Kinte first time around. He was on hand to advise Malachi Kirby, the 27-year-old London-born actor chosen to play Kinte in this remake.

I took on board all the advice I could get, admits Malachi, whose co-stars include fellow Brits Matthew Goode  Lady Marys second husband Henry Talbot in Downton Abbey  The Followings James Purefoy, The Tudors star Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Forest Whitaker and Anna Paquin from TV series True Blood. It was an incredibly challenging shoot. I had to learn how to ride a horse bareback and I swam and ran for miles. I went through the equivalent of a triathlon.

In one of the first scenes of the drama, which was shot in South Africa and Louisiana, we see a young Kunta Kinte experiencing the sheer joy of bareback riding in the wide open spaces of his homeland. But all too soon hes joining hundreds of his countrymen shackled to the floor of a slave ship en route to Americas south.

Kinte is part of an uprising on board the ship that eventually leads to a brutal showdown with the British crew, explains Malachi. He witnesses unspeakable brutality but shows a fighting spirit that stands him in good stead in Virginia.

LUCKY LAD Malachi Kirby was sure hed blown his chances of playing Kunta Kinte after he arrived late for his audition, forgot some lines and delivered others in a terrible accent. Its a miracle I got the part, he says. Advertisement

Kinte becomes a slave of tobacco plantation owner John Waller (Purefoy) and is mentored by fellow slave Fiddler (Whitaker). Kinte is then sold to Wallers brother Dr William Waller (Goode) to pay off his previous owners debts, becoming a father when his beautiful wife Belle gives birth to daughter Kizzy.

Kizzy is later sold to evil farmer Tom Lea, who immediately rapes his new slave. Tom Lea is ignorant and greedy, with uncontrollable anger, explains Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who plays him. He represents everything I detest.

Kizzy gives birth to her son George nine months after being raped by Lea, and so begins the final part of Roots, which focuses on George and his own son Tom. Its Tom who encounters Nancy Holt (Paquin)  a woman engaged to a soldier during the American Civil War  who leads an extraordinary and perilous secret life.

Mark Wolper, a producer on the new version of Roots, believes the story needed retelling. Its a powerful reminder of significant and terrible events in the past. I hope itll have as much impact as the original did.

Roots, Wednesday, 9pm, BBC4.
Emily, 50, who won a BAFTA for her starring role in the Fred West drama Appropriate Adult, plays scientist Yvonne Carmichael in BBC1s steamy thriller Apple Tree Yard. Here she talks us through a week on the shows London set

8 MONDAY

My character Yvonne is a scientist who begins an affair with a stranger she meets at the House of Commons, not realising it will be the catalyst for a mess beyond her worst nightmares. When I first got the script I was nervous, but the director, Jessica Hobbs, convinced me to do it. Throughout filming weve talked about women and sexuality and its been a very interesting experience to be a part of. This is a complex thriller that shows women in a light theyre not often seen in.

Emily, 50, who won a BAFTA for her starring role in the Fred West drama Appropriate Adult, plays scientist Yvonne Carmichael in BBC1s steamy thriller Apple Tree Yard

9 TUESDAY

A couple of weeks ago we saw Yvonne being raped by a work colleague, George, whod learned about the affair and was threatening to blackmail her. Now its all about the aftermath, and in many ways its more difficult than the actual rape scene. Today I have to try to get into the head of someone whos had that happen to them. Playing someone whos had this kind of trauma can leave you feeling a bit traumatised yourself, and when were not filming I try to zone out by playing Candy Crush on my phone.

10 WEDNESDAY

The crisis of Yvonnes rape has brought her closer to Mark Costley [Ben Chaplin], the stranger she began an affair with. Ive known Ben for a long time and today were doing another sex scene [right]. When youre younger those scenes involve a lot of fumbling around, but we know exactly what to do.

11 THURSDAY

She says: 'My character Yvonne is a scientist who begins an affair with a stranger she meets at the House of Commons, not realising it will be the catalyst for a mess beyond her worst nightmares'

Today were doing scenes at our studio set, where weve recreated the interior of the Old Bailey, as the rape sets in motion events that lead Yvonne here. We werent allowed to film at the House of Commons because apparently when we put the request in they said Not that book! when they realised it was based on Louise Doughtys racy bestseller. So its fine for James Bond to have bombs go off on Westminster Bridge but a book with a bit of middle-aged sex in it is banned? If Yvonne was a man I think wed definitely have been allowed to film in the Commons.

12 FRIDAY

One of the key components of this drama is the fallout from the affair and the effect of the rape on Yvonnes family. Her husband Gary has employed a lawyer called Jaz, played by Adeel Akhtar, to act on her behalf, and were filming scenes together today. It also affects her relationship with her children. Her daughter Carrie [Olivia Vinall] has always idolised Yvonne as a role model, while its even tougher on her son Adam [Jack Hamilton], who has bipolar disorder. There are a lot of moral ambiguities in this story and I hope it makes people talk.

Apple Tree Yard, tomorrow, 9pm, BBC1.
Even today, nine years after she staged the kidnapping of her own daughter, Karen Matthews is still reviled as the worst mother in Britain. Her audacious lies, the crocodile tears and the betrayal of the locals who rallied around to try to find nine-year-old Shannon make her crime one of the most shocking of the century.

For 24 long days and nights police and the people of the deprived Moorside Estate in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, searched for Shannon, not knowing that she had been drugged and shackled to a bed a mile from her home by the uncle of her mothers boyfriend  all with her mothers knowledge. The pair had hoped a reward would be offered to find Shannon so they could cash in.

Its ripe territory for the team whove offered us a different perspective on some of our most notorious criminals, from Fred West in the award-winning Appropriate Adult to the Moors Murderers in See No Evil. This story still reverberates, says Neil McKay, who wrote two-part drama The Moorside with long-time collaborator Jeff Pope for BBC1. But we didnt want the show to be purely about Karen or the crime. As with Appropriate Adult, we looked at her behaviour from the point of view of an outsider, to bring the audience in. We dont show the crime but the people around it. Its a story about people who had nothing but gave everything for the sake of a child.

Sheridan Smith as Julie Bushby, who led the search for Shannon

Neil and Jeff were first inspired by Julie Bushby, a local mother who spearheaded the campaign to find Shannon. She came to their attention because she had demanded an apology from then Tory leader David Cameron when he called Moorside a place where decency fights a losing battle against degradation in a newspaper article after Karens conviction. David Cameron came to Moorside to apologise but he wasnt wearing a tie and Julie berated him for it, says Neil. He started to read from a prepared statement and she stopped him and said, An apology comes from the heart, it isnt written by someone else. It made me think about how were often judged by where were from. All societys problems were made out to be the fault of these people, but when you meet them theyre good people. Thats the story we wanted to tell.

From the start the kidnapping was compared to that of Madeleine McCann, who disappeared while on holiday in Portugal with her middle-class doctor parents nine months before Shannon went missing. This disappearance was judged in relation to Madeleines, and initially there seemed to be a lot less attention given to this missing child from a council estate, says Neil. And then, after Karens betrayal, people piled in to say these people really were the low-lifes theyd been assumed to be.

BAFTA-winning actress Sheridan Smith plays Julie in the drama, and felt an instant connection with her when they met. The most important aspect of the story for me was how the community came together, says Sheridan. It shows how much good there was on that estate and how much people cared about that little girl, especially Julie, who refused to give up.

In the drama, as in real life, Julie never doubted her friend until Karen was forced to confess shed known where her daughter was all along. Shannon had been taken by Michael Donovan, the uncle of Karens boyfriend Craig Meehan. Even after Shannon was discovered at Michaels home, Karen  played brilliantly by Game Of Thrones actress Gemma Whelan  claimed she hardly knew him.

In the drama, as in real life, Julie (above) never doubted her friend until Karen was forced to confess shed known where her daughter was all along

Events started to unravel when Craig Meehan was arrested for having unrelated child pornography on his computer. Karens children were removed by the authorities and she finally admitted shed always known who had taken Shannon. In a confession in the car of policewoman Christine Freeman, played by Downton Abbeys Siobhan Finneran, she claimed shed been trying to leave Craig, and Michael had been helping her by picking Shannon up after school. But on the day she planned to leave, Craig stayed home from work so she didnt leave. Michael picked Shannon up as planned and Karen couldnt explain why she hadnt come home, so she claimed she was missing.

Another friend of Karens, Natalie Brown, played in the drama by Sian Brooke, was immediately suspicious. Natalie had been friends with Karen for a long time and she picked up on things not being right, says Sian, who spent time with the real Natalie to find out what motivated her. Karen wasnt acting like a mother whod lost a child. One time a phone rang while the police were there and the ringtone was Brown Eyed Girl. Karen stood up and started dancing. Another time she said Shannon was famous now because she was on the telly. It was odd behaviour.

Natalie told me many times how close the community was. When Shannon went missing they searched day and night for 24 days. You get an idea of the huge sense of betrayal there was for the whole community.

Karen Matthews, the mother of nine-year-old Shannon, in 2008

The show, filmed in Halifax rather than Dewsbury to avoid offending local sensibilities, is even-handed in its portrayal of Karen, which may prove controversial. Neil insists that Karen, who served half of her eight-year prison sentence for kidnapping, false imprisonment and perverting the course of justice, isnt a demon. Shes a deeply vilified character, he says. We dont make apologies for her crimes, but we show a balanced picture. To categorise her with Fred West and Myra Hindley is daft. We dont defend or condemn her; we just called it as we saw it.

Karen now lives several hundred miles away from Dewsbury and has changed her appearance to escape her notoriety. Shannon now lives in anonymity. Julie visited Karen in prison but has only spoken to her once since she left; Natalie hasnt spoken to her but approves of this more rounded portrayal of the friend who let everyone down. Natalie told us, I dont think Shannon knew how much she was loved, adds Neil. Maybe she will after this. Whatever she thinks about her mother, its better that theres a more nuanced portrait of Karen.

The Moorside starts on Tuesday at 9pm on BBC1
A cancer stricken teen has been given a lifeline after Hollywood star James McAvoy donated 50,000 towards the 1 million she needs for treatment in New York.

The X-Men star made the heart-warming gesture after he met Kelly Turner, 16, from Dover in Kent at a London hospital this week.

Scottish star James made a visit to her bedside at the Royal Marsden Hospital in Chelsea - even stopping for selfie with the star-struck teen.

And on Thursday a massive donation appeared on her JustGiving page with the message: 'Great to meet you the other day Kelly. I hope this helps you achieve your goal sooner rather than later. Good luck luv James.'

James McAvoy has given a cancer-stricken teen a lifeline by donating 50,000 towards treatment in the US

Up to October 2015 Kelly was a fit and well 15-year-old enjoying a happy and fulfilling life

Kelly's dad Martin last night took to social media to thank the star, tweeting: 'Thank you James McAvoy, you're wonderful.'

The cash is needed to get Kelly, who has desmoplastic round cell tumours, to America for treatment.

She needs $500,000 (dollars) - or just over 400,000 - for initial surgery at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

She will have follow-up immunotherapy and the total cost of her treatment will amount to $1,200,000.

Kelly has endured nine rounds of chemotherapy and because she has a tumour close to her liver doctors in the UK are unwilling to carry out surgery

The teen in hospital being visited by the Kaiser Chiefs' Ricky Wilson

Kelly visiting the Rovers Return, where she met actor Simon Gregson (left)

Kelly was given just two years to live when she was diagnosed in October 2015.

After nine rounds of chemo the NHS refused to carry out surgery or to fund it abroad abroad, forcing Kelly, her mum Linda and dad Martin, to fundraise on JustGiving for her treatment.

'She's been well cared for by The Royal Marsden, Sutton UK with nine rounds of chemotherapy which has responded well, Martin said.

Bubbly teenager Kelly, pictured before she underwent nine rounds of chemo

Family friend John Ashman pictured with Kelly during a sponsored sleep out which raised 10,000 for her treatment

Kelly celebrating her 16th birthday: She's been given a lifeline by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York where medics have agreed to carry out surgery, radiotherapy and immunotherapy

'But because there are tumours close to her liver they're not prepared to carry out any surgery.

DESMOPLASTIC SMALL ROUND CELL TUMOUR This rare cancer is an aggressive tumour that typically begins in the abdomen or pelvis. This rare type of soft tissue sarcoma generally affects teenagers and young adults, primarily boys In young women, it's sometimes mistaken for ovarian cancer. The prognosis is poor, but patients with inoperable tumours can benefit from low doses of chemo, turning the disease into a chronic illness. Advertisement

'We have sought a fifth opinion from Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York and they have agreed to do the surgery, immunotherapy and radiotherapy.

Thanks to the actor's donation, the family have now raised more 450,000.

Kelly's dad said he was impressed with the Hollywood actor's kind approach when he visited his daughter.

He said: 'He decided to come and visit everyone and spent a lot of time talking to Kelly and the others.

'She managed to grab a selfie with him, so that's another celebrity she's met.'

The teenager has also met the Kaiser Chief's Ricky Wilson who posed for a snap with Kelly at her bedside.

She's also been to visit the set of Coronation Street where she met Simon Gregson who plays Steve McDonald.

A family friend spent seven nights sleeping out in freezing temperatures to raise money for Kelly's treatment

Kelly funding has been given a further boost by family friend and father-of-four John Ashman, 50, who endured freezing temperatures while sleeping rough on the streets to raise money.

He managed to raise 10,000 - doubling his target of 5,000

Martin said: 'John doesn't take to compliments well, but as far as we're concerned he's a hero.'
A trip to Disney World is the stuff every child's dreams are made of.

With a good chance of bumping into the likes of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Goofy, or Cinderella, it's impossible not to enjoy your time at the park - hence its tag line of the happiest place on Earth.

But the children captured here have made the impossible possible, by throwing almighty temper tantrums at odds with their fairy-tale surroundings.

From the boy whose Mickey Mouse ears aren't enough to prevent his crying fit, to the glum little girl in a Belle costume slumped on a bench, these snaps will at least raise a smile from the people looking at them.

A Mickey Mouse hat just isn't going to be enough to stop those tears flowing down this unhappy girl's face

A Minnie Mouse fan looks like she's running away from something that has upset her as she cries for the camera

This Disney princess is not impressed by the happiest place on earth and wants nothing to do with the gold gleaming Pluto

This father has to put up with his son's lack of interest in the car ride - his crying face says it all, it's just not going to happen

Those Dumbo ears are not going to save the day for this tantrum-throwing child. Her father looks impressed with the ride

Sometimes when your favourite Disney character comes to life it isn't all it's cracked up to be, and judging by this reaction Minnie didn't make her day

This youngster has had enough of being dragged around Disney World, he's thrown his shoe and hat off in protest

A furry life-size Tigger has ruined this baby's day. Her mother laughs at her daughter's unfortunate reaction

(Left) This princess has had enough for the day, she's pouting on the street and won't even look at the camera. Mickey better watch how close he is to this little tot she isn't happy

The side-eye of this young toddler tells his parents everything they need to know about how he's feeling about Disney World
A plus-size woman who suffered from anorexia as a teenager has told how wearing a tutu helped her to love her body.

Marie Southard Ospina, 25, who grew up in New Jersey, said she used to be feel like her body occupied too much space when people avoided sitting next to her on public transport and she was bullied about her body.

But the Colombian American journalist and fat acceptance activist, who recently moved to Manchester, England, found that wearing bold clothes helped her feel confident and reclaim her 'right to be here'.

Eating disorder: Marie Southard Ospina, 25, pictured, who grew up in New Jersey and lives in Manchester, England, used to suffer from anorexia

Self-love: She said bold clothing such as tutus, fake furs and taffeta helped her to combat bullying and insecurity about her body

She suffered from anorexia from the ages of 13 to 16 causing her to faint regularly, become anemic and her digestive system to shut down.

Marie, who now weighs nearly 300lbs, had to go to hospital numerous times but she normally managed to convince doctors that she was suffering from stress or dehydration.

'Which honestly just proves that eating disorders are regularly overlooked if you don't fit the stereotypical image of "what a person with an ED [eating disorder] looks like",' she told Daily Mail Online.

In an article entitled 'Im a fat girl in a tutu who loves to take up space' for The Establishment she told how following her recovery she learned to wear bold clothing such as tutus, taffeta, big faux furs and feathers and to apologize for it.

She said: 'Through large fashions that take up space...my fatness is on display more than usual. It demands attention and it offers no sorrys for being seen.'

I chose to behave in the way Id watched thin people behave. I chose to dress in the way Id seen thin people dress

After buying her first tutu - which she said was 'pink' and 'loud' - she was stared at but she 'chose to perceive their gazes as confirmation of my fabulousness'.

The blogger said wearing the garment made her feel god because it felt like an act of self-love.

She wrote: 'I chose to behave in the way Id watched thin people behave. I chose to dress in the way Id seen thin people dress.

'I chose to love my body in the way I thought impossible and off limits to someone with back boobs larger than front ones.'

As a teenager, when Marie weighed 170lbs, she said she would not have believed that she would grow up to like her body if it weighed 300lbs.

She said the 'fat-shaming' and mockery of her peers, the portrayals of plus-size actors on TV and in film and the way people avoided touching her made her feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

Uncomfortable: She said she used to be made to feel like her body occupied too much space

Hurtful: She said people avoid sitting next to her on public transport because of her size and she used to be bullied about her body

Proud: But Marie found that wearing big clothes helped her feel confident and reclaim her 'right to be here'

Marie claims the more space a woman's body occupies 'the more she is shamed for her alleged failures' at not fulfilling society's expectations.

She added: 'She is not doing her job correctly. She is not dainty or meek. She does not resemble a pixie.

'She is occupying the space that would be far better suited to two far more conventionally attractive women. And even if she remains silent, her presence is too loud.'

Although it was a huge challenge for Marie to fight against that mindset, she said fashion, 'radical body politics activism' and inspiring bloggers helped her to overcome it.

Everything about my life is better now: my romantic relationships, my career, my friendships, my connection to family members, my wardrobe, my mental health

As a result of their legacy, she now feels confident to wear neon crop tops without feeling worried or insecure and no longer feels like she needs to apologize for eating a doughnut.

She said her changed perception of her body has enabled her to live a full life.

'I don't feel that I was really living my life in the way I wanted to when I was consumed by body hang-ups and operating under the twisted belief that fitting into a box of aspirational beauty was the be all and end all to a fulfilled existence.

'Everything about my life is better now: my romantic relationships, my career, my friendships, my connection to family members, my wardrobe, my mental health. I credit the fat positive community for much of my personal evolution,' she told Daily Mail Online.

But she said more progress is needed to change the way people view the human body - including changes to legislation and more body diversity in the media.

'I want people to realize that weight loss is not a requirement for having a good, exciting, successful life. That beauty is subjective and to be found in all figures if you only change your mindset.

'I want all the expectations placed on fat people in order to be deemed worthy of acceptance to vanish, from proving our health and fitness to being expected to put on a full face of makeup as compensation for our bodies,' she said.
Sotheby's might be best known as the home of fine jewellery and priceless works of art.

But the esteemed auction house is showing off its wild side with its latest collection - a series of erotic sketches, paintings and sculptures.

Among the 107 lots going under the hammer is a sculpture of Kate Moss in a provocative yoga pose which is expected to sell for more than 70,000.

Talking point: A painted plywood table that was supposedly delivered to Catherine the Great

Supermodel status: The sculpture Siren by Marc Quinn, left, depicts Kate Moss in a yoga pose

Retro: A series of four works called Tomato Catsup; Tobacco Red; Lola Cola; and A.C. Annie

The piece by artist Marc Quinn shows the model holding her legs behind her head.

One of the most outrageous items up for sale is a table with legs shaped like penises. Busts of nude women also adorn the rim of the tabletop.

Picasso's Nu Couche (Reclining Nude) is expected to fetch 60,000 while a carved mahogany bed could go for 800,000 - the most expensive item in the collection.

A series of retro nudes by American artist Mel Ramos and a pin-up girl flashing her thigh bring a touch of old-fashioned sex appeal to the collection.

A number of life drawings make an appearance, including one by Lucien Freud called Man Posing. The piece is expected to sell for as much as 20,000.

Among the more unusual lots is a German silver bourdaloue, or portable chamber pot, with an erotic engraving. The piece, which would have been carried by women who needed to relieve themselves, is believed to date back to 1802.

Raunchy: Modest Maneuver, by artist Gil Elvgren, is expected to sell for more than 25,000

High value: This carved mahogany bed could fetch as much as 800,000 at auction

Intimate: This piece called A Loving Couple Watched By A Maiden could sell for 4,000

Luxury: A silver bourdaloue, or portable chamber pot could fetch between 2,000-3,000

A series of trinket boxes with erotic art on the lids and a box with a naked woman and her cat are also going under the hammer.

The auction includes four paintings by German artist George Grosz depicting various sexual acts ranging from foreplay to intercourse.

Constantine Frangos, Head of Sale at Sotheby's, said: 'Art has always existed to tell a human story, and sex has always been part of that story - whether it is there to compel, to shock or to seduce.

Icon: Among the sketches is Man Posing by Lucien Freud which could sell for 20,000

Dainty: Erotic scenes are depicted on the lids of this collection of small trinket boxes

Distinctive: Nu couche by Pablo Picasso has been valued at between 60,000 and 80,000

Vibrant: This 18th century painting depicting a couple during intercourse could fetch 3,000

'Indeed, Eroticism in art has appeared in whatever form art has taken, and our exhibition will take the viewer on a journey through the centuries.

'This sale creates a stage on which we are able to bring together a fascinating array of artworks and objects across many disciplines - charting a history whilst also presenting stunning works by artists as eclectic as Picasso, Man Ray, Ettore Sottsass and Marc Quinn.'

The Erotic: Passion & Desire auction will be held in London on February 16.

Nudes: This piece is by Austrian artist Egon Schiele, who is known for his raw sexuality

Caught off guard: Baigneuses Surprises, or Surprised Bathers, by Camille Bombois
When it comes to fashion, we are all inspired by what we see; whether it be a well dressed celebrity, a blow-your-mind catwalk presentation or even a super stylish every-day passerby.

As fashion editors, we're moved by all of the above, and then some. We're exposed to under the radar labels; we get a first hand look at collections months before they hit stores; we're tapped into brands with chic-yet-cheap offerings and we shop - a lot.

To share our knowledge, FEMAIL brings you Style Swoon, a weekly series of the latest, greatest and on the verge. We hope this weekly Friday series will serve as a buying guide and point of inspiration for the clotheshorses and fashion fanatics alike.

YYIGAL

Catwalk cool: New York based fashion designer Yigal Azrouel is know for his eponymous line of ready-to-wear fashions (fall/winter 2016 runway pictured)

New York based fashion designer Yigal Azrouel is know for his eponymous line of ready-to-wear fashions.

This week, the 44-year-old launched a capsule collection with Macy's. 'The goal of this collaboration was to create something that was new and fresh that still had the feeling of luxury and innovative fabrics that you get from my RTW collections. I think we achieved that beautifully,' Yigal told FEMAIL.

Lucky for us, his Macy's line bares a striking resemblance to his higher-end line. 'The similarities can be found in my draping technique and design inspiration, along with the quality of the fabrics we used,' he said.

Colorblocked Cold-Shoulder Sweater by YYigal, A Macy's Exclusive, $89; macys.com

'The line continues the legacy of my signature pieces, including motorcycle leather jackets, intricate dresses, structured blazers, knitwear and statement jumpsuits.'

While Yigal believes every woman should own a leather motorcycle jacket and a perfectly tailored dress, he also feels that theres nothing more empowering than a woman that exudes confidence.

It comes as no surprise that he designs his clothes with that sentiment in mind.

Left: Lace Faux-Leather Moto Jacket by YYigal, A Macy's Exclusive, $119; macys.com. Right: Printed Faux-Leather Moto Jacket by YYigal, A Macy's Exclusive,$179; macys.com

GG MAULL

In the bag: 'Feminine, chic, sophisticated, innovative and multi-functional,' is how handbag designer Gretchen Maull describes her newly launched collection of carryalls. Rebel Holster, $1,595; ggmaull.com

'Feminine, chic, sophisticated, innovative and multi-functional,' is how handbag designer Gretchen Maull describes her newly launched collection of carryalls.

Having loved accessories ever since she was a little girl, it was always a dream of Gretchen's to have her own line.

Determined and focused to be a designer, she honed her craft interning at Proenza Schouler, Missoni and DVF, while working on a masters degree for accessories design in Italy.

After graduation, she got a job designing handbags at Juicy Couture, but it took a series of unfortunate events in 2014 (the company employing her was being sold and her sister was in a horrible car accident) that made Gretchen realize it was now or never to pursue her dreams.

On the fringe: Having loved accessories since she was a little girl, it was always a dream of hers to have her own line

Left: Bombshell Bucket, $695; ggmaull.com. Right: Baby Bombshell Bucket, $1,395; ggmaull.com

Unlike big companies that produce hundreds of bags each season, Gretchen wanted to combat fast fashion and return to a slow pace, making small quantities of well-crafted leather goods with lots of love in each design.

'Additionally, I felt there was no feminine handbag brand with a high-end design aesthetic that was made in Italy and under $1,000,' says Gretchen.

'This is a gap that I am proud to say GG Maull fills.'

A labor of love: Unlike big companies that produce hundreds of bags each season, Gretchen wanted to combat fast fashion and return to a slow pace, making small quantities of well-crafted leather goods with lots of love in each design Hobo, $995; ggmaull.com

Designed in New York City and produced in Italy, 'each design speaks to individuality, creativity and joy,' says Gretchen.

'Our customers are drawn to our aesthetic because we are different and dont follow any rules. We design for a confident woman.'

Incorporating Art Deco detailing (like her signature triple pointed diamond) into Italian leather, each bag is a timeless statement piece with whimsical flair. The collection is a true work of art.

But of course it is, she's been imagining it her whole life!

For modern gals: Incorporating Art Deco detailing (like her signature triple pointed diamond) into Italian leather, each bag is a timeless statement piece with whimsical flair. The collection is a work of art

THE DISNEY X CARRIE K. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST COLLECTION

Jewelry Designer Carrie K. has partnered up with Disney for the second time to create a line celebrating the live-action remake of the classic film Beauty and the Beast

Jewelry Designer Carrie K. has partnered up with Disney for the second time to create a line celebrating the live-action remake of the classic film Beauty and the Beast.

The Disney X Carrie K. Beauty and the Beast collection features fifteen styles, including earcuffs, necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings.

Each piece is handcrafted in sterling silver and plated with 14K gold, and ranges in price from $65-$375.

The Disney X Carrie K. Beauty and the Beast collection features fifteen styles, including earcuffs, earrings, necklaces, bracelets and rings

The elegant and enchanting offerings speaks to the beauty and beast in all of us, in the form of pearls and jagged edges that resemble teeth.

Limited edition pieces including ear climbers, pave ear jackets and the chunky cuffs will be available exclusively online at Carrie Rocks and the Carrie K. Atelier for pre-order on 8th March 2017.

The elegant and enchanting offerings speaks to the beauty and beast in all of us, in the form of pearls and jagged edges that resemble teeth

Limited edition pieces including ear climbers, pave ear jackets and the chunky cuffs will be available exclusively online at Carrie Rock s and the Carrie K. Atelier for pre-order as of 8th March 2017

KATE BOSWORTH'S TRENDY LOOK

A new way to show off lingerie: Kate Bosworth attended the InStyle EE Rising Star Party in London, England, looking beautiful in a one shoulder Giambattista Valli dress that put part of her lacy camisole on display

Leave it to Kate Bosworth show off a hint of lingerie in a way we've never seen before.

The 34-year-old actress attended the InStyle EE Rising Star Party in London, England, looking beautiful in a one shoulder Giambattista Valli dress that put part of her lacy camisole on display.

Arzano chandelier earrings, platform pumps and a swipe of red lipstick completed her trailblazing look.
A mother of triplets said she renamed her stretch marks 'hope wounds' as she shared her struggle with her body image following the birth of her children.

Desiree Fortin, 30, who lives in San Diego with her husband Ryan, 31, said she has always felt 'proud' of her body after giving birth to one-year-old Charlize, Jax and Sawyer following difficulties with infertility.

But recently she was prompted to reassess her feelings about her post-pregnancy stomach after two people mistakenly thought she was pregnant.

Symbolic: Mother of triplets Desiree Fortin, 30, pictured with her one-year-old children Charlize, Jax and Sawyer, has told how she renamed her stretch marks 'hope wounds'

Agonizing: The stay-at-home mother and photographer, pictured, from San Diego struggled with fertility for years before their birth

Hurtful: Desiree, pictured left pregnant and right recently, said she was proud of her pregnancy scars and her stomach until two people mistakenly thought she was expecting

The photographer and stay-at-home mother, who suffered from postpartum depression and anxiety after her children's birth, said she was congratulated on her 'baby bump' twice in one week.

'I am not pregnant. However, I do have a little left over postpartum pooch, but I have always felt amazing and proud of my body after having my triplets.

'What I went through to bring them into this world, and the scars that represent my story,' she wrote on her blog.

Initially she 'brushed it off' but but when it happened a second time she started questioning her relationship with her body.

Desiree said: 'I was challenged to really think about my body. Was I really proud of the wounds left behind on my stomach after carrying and delivering my triplets?

'Was I really beautiful? Do I really appreciate the fact that these scars represent the miracle of life? Did I truly understand the value of my hope wounds?'

She said her stretch marks are a reminder of the 'change my body never saw coming' during her struggle to get pregnant but that they also represent 'extreme joy' of having children.

Rethink: The experience made Desiree, pictured with her PE teacher husband Ryan, 31, and their triplets, reassess her relationship with her body

Proud: To reconnect with her scars, which she calls 'hope wounds', she posed in a bathtub for photographs that celebrate her stomach

Mixed emotions: She said her stretch marks are a reminder of the 'change my body never saw coming' during her struggle to get pregnant but that they also represent 'extreme joy'

'Every little wrinkle, every scar, and the saggy skin that rolls over my jeans show how great God is in impossible situations,' she added.

She calls them 'hope wounds' and her children 'hope babies' because of the long journey she went on to become pregnant.

'I called, and still call, my babies my "hope babies." My body is very different than what it used to be and I see hope when I look at my wounds and all it took to become a mother.

'I also see my journey as a mother and knew the term "hope wounds" would perfectly describe the scars on my body and truly represent my story so well,' she told Daily Mail Online.

The first perinatologist Desiree saw told her that it would be impossible for her to have a successful triplet birth because she was 'too thin, too short' and it was her first pregnancy.

But Desiree said her 'hope wounds' proved the doctor wrong after she delivered all three babies one day after their 'goal date' each weighing almost five pounds.

Reminder: She calls her scars 'hope wounds' and her children 'hope babies' because of the long journey she went on to become pregnant

Against the odds: The first perinatologist Desiree saw told her that it would be impossible for her to have a successful triplet birth

Fortunate: But Desiree said her 'hope wounds' proved the doctor wrong after she delivered all three babies one day after their 'goal date' each weighing almost five pounds

As well as positive emotions, Desiree said the scars also symbolize her 'dark days' as a new mother when she suffered from sleep deprivation, anxiety and depression.

'I felt ashamed of myself and incredibly lonely. I see that when I look at my scars,' she wrote.

She responded to the misled pregnancy comments by posing for a series of photographs in a bath.

'I felt so empowered and inspired to continually embrace my body for the beauty it is and truly represents,' she told Daily Mail Online.

She said numerous mothers have contacted her about their scars since speaking publicly about the subject.

'Behind every scar and tiger stripe is beautiful strong woman who brought life into this world and she has a story and that is something to be proud of,' she added.
Shock: Sarah Porter, 26, from Maine, was 20 when she had her first stroke, she was in math class. It was caused by an undiagnosed abnormal cluster of blood vessels in her brain

Sarah Porter was 20 years old, sat in math class, when she suffered her first stroke.

At first, she just carried on, scribbling notes to prepare for her finals the next week. But her classmate at the University of Maine looked alarmed.

'I went a bit foggy; I didn't think anything of it, I thought I was a bit tired' Sarah told Daily Mail Online.

'The girl sat next to me was like, "are you ok? I think you just had a seizure, your face was twitching and you passed out."'

That moment was the start of a years-long journey for Sarah, who has, at the age of just 26, lived through two strokes and two brain surgeries.

Now, she is days into a new job - working for the neurosurgeon that saved her life.

The first time it hit, however, she almost laughed at her classmate's concern, and insisted she was fine.

STROKE 1

Brushing it off as nonsense, Sarah tried to stand up, and found she had lost all feeling in her right side. Her face was spasming. She had a splitting headache.

She limped back to her dorm room and called her parents, who are both doctors. They recognized the symptoms immediately, and told her to get to the ER.

Far more concerned about her exams, Sarah reluctantly went to the hospital, met by her brother. By this point she had lost all control of her face and could barely speak.

The triage, however, thought she was faking it to avoid finals.

'She didn't believe me at all,' Sarah remembers. 'She was like, "no way, you're too young, there's no way you're having a stroke, you just want to skip your exams".

Ordeal: When Sarah got to the ER during her first stroke, the nurse thought she was trying to get out of doing her finals. Eventually, she got treated, but missed the window to operate. It wasn't until she had a second stroke four years later (pictured) that she could get brain surgery

WHAT IS A STROKE? There are two kinds of stroke: 1. ISCHEMIC STROKE An ischemic stroke - which accounts for 80 percent of strokes - occurs when there is a blockage in a blood vessel that prevents blood from reaching part of the brain. 2. HEMORRHAGIC STROKE The more rare, a hemorrhagic stroke, occurs when a blood vessel bursts, flooding part of the brain with too much blood while depriving other areas of adequate blood supply. As in Sarah's case, it can be the result of an AVM, or arteriovenous malformation (an abnormal cluster of blood vessels), in the brain. Thirty percent of subarachnoid hemorrhage sufferers die before reaching hospital. A further 25 percent die within 24 hours. And 40 percent of survivors die within a week. RISK FACTORS Age, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, family history, and history of a previous stroke or TIA are all risk factors for having a stroke. SYMPTOMS OF A STROKE Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body

Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding

Sudden trouble seeing or blurred vision in one or both eyes

Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination

Sudden severe headache with no known cause OUTCOMES Of the roughly three out of four people who survive a stroke, many will have life-long disabilities. This includes difficulty walking, communicating, eating, and completing everyday tasks or chores. TREATMENT Both are potentially fatal, and patients require surgery or a drug called tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) within three hours to save them. Advertisement

'The crazy thing is, I probably would have listened to her if my brother wasn't there kicking up a fuss. I had no idea what was happening to me, and to be honest I didn't think I could have a stroke that young either.'

Thankfully, as Sarah's brother argued vehemently with the nurse, a doctor popped his head in the door to see what was happening, and immediately called for emergency attention.

If he hadn't, Sarah could have died.

Sarah can't remember anything that happened during the 24 hours after that point. She woke up in the ICU to be told she'd suffered a hemorrhagic stroke.

There are two kinds of stroke. An ischemic stroke - which accounts for 80 percent of strokes - occurs when there is a blockage in a blood vessel that prevents blood from reaching part of the brain.

The more rare, a hemorrhagic stroke, occurs when a blood vessel bursts, flooding part of the brain with too much blood while depriving other areas of adequate blood supply.

As in Sarah's case, it can be the result of an AVM, or arteriovenous malformation (an abnormal cluster of blood vessels), in the brain.

Thirty per cent of subarachnoid hemorrhage sufferers die before reaching hospital. A further 25 percent die within 24 hours. And 40 percent of survivors die within a week.

Age, high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, diabetes, atrial fibrillation, family history, and history of a previous stroke or TIA are all risk factors for having a stroke.

Of the roughly three out of four people who survive a stroke, many will have life-long disabilities.

This includes difficulty walking, communicating, eating, and completing everyday tasks or chores.

Both are potentially fatal, and patients require surgery or a drug called tPA (tissue plasminogen activator) within three hours to save them.

Sarah had never been any symptoms, and was in perfect health - never smoking, exercising regularly, and taking an estrogen-free birth control pill.

The only health concern she ever had was a blood defect, which she was born with, that meant her blood clots more swiftly than most of us.

But her surgeon believes that condition saved her life, by stopping the bleeding in her brain, and giving them a cushion of time.

MISSED THE WINDOW TO OPERATE

Even with the safety net of her clotting condition, Sarah - like all stroke patients - had a window of three hours to get brain surgery that could remove her AVM and prevent a further attack.

Instead, after receiving tPA and recovering in hospital, she was referred to a neurosurgeon, Dr Robert Ecker, at Maine Medical Center who gave her two options.

First: wait and hope it never happens again - a significant possibility, though not certain.

Second: get preventative brain surgery to remove the AVM, but risk derailing her progress, along with all the standard risks that come with such a delicate operation.

Third chance at life: Sarah's brain bleeding slowed much quicker than surgeons expected thanks to an unrelated blood condition she was born with - which makes her blood over-clot

Cautiously, Sarah chose the latter, but felt paranoid for years.

'I was always thinking about it,' Sarah explains.

'For years I just couldn't stop thinking about it coming back, happening again.

'I only started to relax about three years later when I was heading to New York for grad school.

'I felt like, "right, it's ok, I'm past it, it won't happen again."'

STROKE 2

At the age of 24, months into her post-graduate degree in healthy policy at Columbia University, Sarah had her second stroke.

She was walking through the school's medical campus after going for her usual daily run in the gym, when she started to feel foggy.

'I knew immediately what was happening,' Sarah said without hesitation.

'I had only ever felt this sensation once before, and that was when I'd had my first stroke.

They told me I wouldn't have another one. But for years I just couldn't stop thinking about it coming back, happening again

'Luckily I lived on the Columbia Medical School campus. From my last experience I knew I had to be my own advocate.

'I walk two blocks to the ER at NewYork-Presbytarian Hospital, went straight the desk and said "hi, my name is Sarah Porter, I had a stroke four years ago and I'm having another one now".

'The triage was like, "what!?", she hit the stroke alarm, immediately three or four people were around me, getting me a CT scan.

'While I could still talk I said, "I don't want to do surgery unless it's an emergency and it's necessary. I'd rather do it with my neurosurgeon back home".'

BRAIN SURGERY - THAT WENT WRONG

Sarah was only in hospital in New York for a couple of days before she was able to travel home to Maine to meet with Dr Ecker.

The next week she was wheeled into the operating theater for a highly complex and risky operation to remove the AVM from her brain.

It all seemed to go smoothly. A few days later she returned home to be with her parents, carry out physical therapy, and do daily videos to practice speech and chart her progress.

One day, Sarah's eye was swollen so big she couldn't open it. As her mother filmed, she told the camera, 'I think I exerted myself a bit too much today in physical therapy'. She thought it was pressure in her brain during recovery.

Sarah suffered a very severe and very rare brain infection as a result of her first surgery, making her eye swell up (pictured). It meant she would need another and had to miss her finals

Keep on smiling: Sarah's friends said they were amazing she smiled all the way through

Out of precaution, they called Dr Ecker and described her symptoms. He told her to come to his surgery - a five-hour drive away - immediately.

It was a snow storm, and hitting nightfall. They didn't make it there until 11pm.

'My dad told me that was one of the hardest days of his life,' Sarah said.

'He was trying to drive so fast but he couldn't see anything and it was white-out conditions, and he was also concerned about me.'

When they arrived, Dr Ecker performed a few quick tests.

He confirmed Sarah had suffered a very severe and very rare brain infection as a result of the surgery.

'That was the only time I cried,' Sarah said. 'When he told me I would need another operation and I wouldn't be able to finish grad school.'

NOW WORKS IN A STROKE CENTER - WITH HER SURGEON

Now, having undergone a second brain operation soon after her first, Sarah will never have another stroke caused by her AVM.

She still has some side effects - some lack of movement on the right side of her face, for example. But they are noticeable only to her and her parents.

Sarah is concentrating on carrying on with the healthy habits she always had - running five times a week, using a low-estrogen birth control pill, and

New job: This week, Sarah started her new job at the Maine Medical Center's new neurosurgical practice - with the surgeon that removed her tangled blood vessels

Beyond that, she is focusing her efforts on working with other stroke patients.

When Sarah spoke to Daily Mail Online this week, she had just started her new job at the Maine Medical Center's new neurosurgical practice - with the surgeon that removed her life-threateningly tangled blood vessels.

She said: 'It's a dream come true! Honestly, it gives me goose bumps. It's so personal for me.'
If you have more than two children you're at risk of heart disease, new research suggests.

And it doesn't matter whether you're a man or a woman - the chances are the same, experts claim.

One child offers protection to parents, but any more than this increases the financial pressure on them to provide.

This burden causes extra stress to fathers, while hormonal changes from multiple pregnancies affect women, a study found.

New research has found that having two children or more increases the risk of heart disease in both mothers and fathers

A study of 500,000 people found a 'significant' relationship between number of children and risk of coronary heart disease - the world's leading killer.

The Chinese researchers noted that having two children was the cut-off point - with those who were parents to just one at less risk.

This provided evidence that pregnancy leads to alterations that change the body's reaction to additional cardiovascular risk factors.

But the findings, which were published in the journal Circulation, also gave a socioeconomic explanation.

'The striking thing was that the Chinese study showed the same association for women and men,' said Professor Regitz-Zagrosek, chairperson of the European Society of Cardiology.

'Number of children should be considered a new factor that may influence the risk for some cardiovascular diseases for women and men and included in research databases to be further investigated as a health indicator.

One child offers protection to parents, but any more than this increases the financial pressure on them to provide - causing extra stress

'Having one child is protective because parents have social support in older age.

'But if they have a large number of children this benefit goes away because it increases the economic and social pressure on the parents.'

DON'T SMOKE E-CIGS Smoking electronic cigarettes does increase your risk of heart disease, a study earlier this week found. Scientists found that habitual users of e-cigarettes are more likely to have increased adrenaline levels in the heart and increased oxidative stress, risk factors associated with cardiovascular disease. First marketed in the UK in 2005, and in the US one year later, e-cigarettes have gained unprecedented popularity, especially among young people, because they lack the dangerous smoke, tar, and carbon monoxide of traditional cigarettes. Advertisement

While another study found that experiencing multiple pregnancies increases a woman's risk of developing an irregular heartbeat later in life.

Known as atrial fibrillation, the condition can lead to blood clots, stroke and heart failure.

Researchers from McMaster University, Canada, and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, assessed 34,639 participants.

They discovered women who had been through four or more pregnancies were approximately 50 per cent more likely to develop the condition.

Also published in Circulation, the researchers speculated that exposure to hormones during pregnancy could explain the link.

But they were keen to not discourage women from having children, instead highlighting the need for further research.
Scientists have discovered a way to supercharge antibiotics to 'blow up' superbugs.

Researchers have found that using a specific drug with enough force has the power to tear bacteria apart, thereby killing them.

Normally, antibiotics bind to bacteria cells in order to destroy them - like putting a key in the lock of a door.

When bacteria become resistant to a drug, it's as if the lock has been changed so the key no longer fits.

But researchers found that one drug exerted such physical force on the bacteria that it 'tore the door off its hinges'.

The use of the antibiotic oritavancin exerted such physical force on superbugs that it literally tore the bacteria apart, thereby killing them, a study from University College London found

The study, conducted at the University College London, looked at vancomycin, a powerful antibiotic used as a last resort treatment for MRSA, and oritavancin, a modified version of vancomycin used against complex skin infections.

Researchers found that oritavancin pressed into resistant bacteria with a force 11,000 times stronger than vancomycin, despite having the same 'keys'.

Oritavancin can kill bacteria within 15 minutes as opposed to vancomycin which takes between six to 24 hours.

THE GROWING THREAT OF SUPERBUGS Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria change to 'outsmart' or resist antibiotic medicine, making it close to impossible to treat the infection. The bacterium that carries resistance genes to many different antibiotics is called a superbug. Most of these infections occur in hospitals or in medical care facilities, such as nursing homes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that more than two million people are infected with antibiotic resistant bacteria every year. More than 23,000 people die from these infections each year. Experts say that if the epidemic is not brought under control, superbugs may kill more people than cancer by the year 2050. There are multiple factors that have contributed to the rise of superbugs: Overuse of antibiotics: Doctors have prescribed antibiotics when unnecessary and people have taken antibiotics when unnecessary.

Evolution of bacteria: Currently, bacteria are evolving to develop resistance to antibiotics faster than we can create new medicines to treat them, leaving doctors with fewer tools in their arsenal to fight against bacteria.

Antibiotics in agriculture: The use of these drugs to promote livestock growth contributed to a rise of antibiotic resistance in animals, which has transferred to humans. Advertisement

Lead author Dr Joseph Ndieyira of the University College London said: 'Some of the antibiotics were so strong they tore the door off its hinges, killing the bacteria instantly.

'Our study suggests that the forces oritavancin generates can actually tear holes in the bacteria and rip them apart.

'Our findings will help us not only to design new antibiotics but also to modify existing ones to overcome resistance.'

He explained that oritavancin molecules stick together very well and form clusters, which dig into the surface of the bacteria, tearing it apart and killing it.

The researchers also found that conditions at the bacterial surface encourage clustering, which in turn makes the antibiotics more effective.

Scientists are currently searching for other antibiotics with similar properties to create a 'new generation' of drugs capable of defeating even the most resistant superbugs.

The growing crisis of antibiotic resistance, where bacteria change in a way that reduces the effectiveness of antibiotics, has had the health community on edge.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called antibiotic resistance one of the most pressing public health threats of our time, while a UN summit last year stated it was on par with the spread of Ebola and HIV.

The growth of antibiotic resistance has been driven by several factors including the over-prescription of drugs for viruses, (which are not a bacterium and therefore ineffective in treatment), incorrect prescriptions and doses, and the drugs' use in agriculture.

Antibiotics have been used to promote the growth of livestock animals.

Reports have emerged of bacteria resistant to even the 'last resort' antibiotics, such as colistin, and even superbugs releasing decoy molecules allowing them to escape being killed by drugs.

This has forced scientists to either create new antibiotics or to find a way for existing ones to still be effective

A study, conducted last year at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, found that blinding superbugs using a GM drug, so they could not find the places where they would normally stick to the host's body, proved more effective than killing them.
By DAMIAN LEWIS

Last updated at 17:44 02 June 2007

In 1976, a crack team blasted its way into Beirut's British Bank of The Middle East and stole gold bars worth 100 million at today's prices; the world's biggest bank heist. With the robbers never found, who was responsible?



The unit commander stood at the gaping window of a shattered tower block, five storeys above the war-torn city.

Points of light on distant hillsides showed where villages still had electricity, but the city itself was dark and deathly as the grave.

The commander surveyed the target building just across the street, then turned to face his men.

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It was January 1976 in Beirut, Lebanon.

Each of the eight soldiers was heavily armed, carrying an American-made M16 assault rifle with an M203 40mm grenade launcher attached, plus a Browning high-powered pistol with a staggered 13-round magazine.

This was state-of-the-art weaponry, the sort of kit not available to conventional military forces.

But what was even more remarkable was that each soldier was dressed in unmarked military fatigues, showing no identifying marks or signs of rank.

The commander issued a swift set of instructions. It was zero hour. Time to launch the attack.

He turned back to face the grand facade of the Bab-Idriss branch of the British Bank of the Middle East (BBME), one of the oldest and most pre-eminent banking establishments in Lebanon at the time.

Under normal circumstances, the banks cut stone walls and gracefully arched windows would not have looked out of place in the City of Londons banking district.

But now scorch marks and ragged bullet holes peppered the stonework, the result of fighting between the Christian Phalangist militia and their Muslim enemies.

The bank branch sign still displayed the BBMES logo  an Arabian sailing dhow flanked by a pair of palm trees  yet the lettering had been damaged by gunfire.

After nine months of vicious fighting, the city of Beirut was divided into a Muslim west and a Christian east, with the deserted no-mans-land of the Green Line running down the middle.

Rue Riad al-Solh  known as Bank Street and the citys financial district  lay in the heart of this no-mans-land.

The BBME was located near the junction of Rue Riad al-Solh with Place de lEtoile, a place of shattered and blasted shop fronts and offices.

Yet incredibly, the bank was still operational, albeit on an ad-hoc basis.

And in its supposedly impregnable vault contained in excess of 25 million  the equivalent of 100 million today.

An ear-splitting roar shook the building that the commander was standing in, as volley after volley of mortar rounds were fired from the roof above.

His men had two man-portable Israeli Soltam 60mm mortars, and under cover of their mortar barrage the remaining troops launched a full-frontal assault on the bank.

Firing 40mm grenades, they blasted their way into the lobby. Windows were shattered, furniture torn apart and pipes and electric cables ripped from the ceiling by the ferocity of the attack.

Within minutes, stage one of the raid was complete and the bank was securely in their hands.

Now the commander and his men turned to stage two of the operation  blasting open the banks vault.

The vaults door was several inches

of glistening steel, its massive bulk secured to the walls by internal locking bars. There was no going through that.

But the commander and his men had come fully prepared with an alternative route of entry.

Enough explosive force channelled in the right direction would blast a hole through the adjacent wall, so by-passing the metal door and gaining access to the vault.

This was highly specialised, potentially deadly work, of which only a few forces in the world are capable.

Four hours into the assault, several massive explosions rocked the bank building as charges of PE4 plastic explosives were detonated.

As the dense smoke cleared, a gaping hole had been blasted through the vaults wall.

Under the cover of the continuous shell blasts and the chaos in the city, the force was able to load up three trucks with the booty  consisting largely of gold bullion, plus cash dollars and a variety of shares, bonds and stock certificates. And then the commander and his men disappeared

The above reads like the plot from a work of fiction. However, it is all too real.

The Lebanon bank job took place in the same year that Nasa landed its first space probe on Mars.

Yet history had just been made in a somewhat less illustrious field. More than three decades

on, it remains the worlds biggest ever bank robbery.

It is recorded as such by Guinness World Records. Yet there is precious little written about the event, and there was practically no publicity at the time.

I have spent two years meticulously investigating the raid for my latest book, and yet I have found virtually nothing concrete about it.

In the immediate aftermath of the robbery, the accusations and counter-accusations began.

The Christian forces blamed the Muslim militias, claiming that the Marxist Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) had been behind it.

The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and DFLP were supposed to have fought a running battle for control of the banks loot at one point.

Predictably, the Muslims in turn blamed the Christian Phalangist forces for carrying out the raid.

When none of the loot was recovered, or anyone arrested, a multitude of theories surfaced as to who the unknown force of robbers might have been.

The first suggested that the Muslim and Christian enemies had cut a deal to jointly carry out the raid.

The second theory asserted that the Muslims had joined forces with safe-breakers from the Corsican or Sicilian mafia.

The third claimed that the Russian mafia, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, or even the IRA were responsible.

The most that has ever been written about the robbery is a one-page entry in a book called Inside The PLO, published in 1990.

In this, the authors Neil Livingstone and David Halevy conclude that the raid was carried out by the late Yasser Arafats PLO.

They claim Arafats bodyguards  the enigmatically named Force 17  hired Corsican safe-breakers and flew them to Beirut to blow the vault.

Immediately after, a mixed cargo of loot was then supposedly flown directly to Geneva and deposited in Swiss bank accounts.

This begs the question as to how the Muslim PLO and the Catholic Corsican Mafia joined forces, and how they apportioned the loot; and how a cargo of stolen gold bullion, cash and stock certificates could have made it through Customs at Geneva Airport.

The books author claims that the amount stolen was actually some $850 million (2 billion in todays money), or 17 times that recorded by Guinness World Records.

This is impossible. The total assets of the BBMEs Lebanon banking operations at the time were barely $300 million (840 million today).

The BBMEs own official monograph  The History Of The British Bank Of The Middle East (Volume Two)  devotes barely a paragraph to the raid:

"The robbing of the banks safety deposit boxes earned it the doubtful honour of an unsubstantiated entry in the Guinness World Records, under the heading of the worlds biggest bank robbery."

Regardless of who carried out the raid, not a penny has ever been recovered and no one has ever been charged.

For those responsible, it appears to have been the perfect crime.

I have extensive sources within British Special Forces (UKSF), and two years ago I was told a remarkable account of how the raid on the BBME was executed, and by whom.

"Mike", a retired soldier who has served with several militaries, including UKSF, had read a newspaper article I had written about British operations in Iraq, and had tracked me down to discuss a particular story. We agreed to meet in Bar Italia, in Soho, London.

Mike turned out to be barrel-chested, balding, with coal-dark eyes, and looked to be in his early sixties.

Like most military contacts I know, he wolfed down his fried breakfast in the time it took me to butter my toast.

Once hed eaten he proceeded to ask me what was the worlds largest ever bank job?

I guessed it was either the Great Train Robbery, the Brinks Mat raid, or the recent Northern Ireland bank job.

It was none of the above, he said. He proceeded to relate the story of the raid on the BBME.

The Christian and Muslim militias may have had armed men on the ground capable of launching such an attack, he said, but neither force had the training or expertise to blast open the bank vault without killing themselves, or blowing the money sky-high.

He fixed me with a hard stare: who did have such expertise and training?

There was only one answer I could think of. But could the British SAS, or one or two other highly trained special forces, have carried out the worlds largest-ever bank raid? And if so, why?

After two hours, Mike suggested I go away and do some research into the Lebanon robbery.

If I wanted the story, then I should also do some of the legwork.

I did as asked. What struck me first was that what happened at the BBME remains a total mystery even to this day, over 30 years after the raid.

For such a highly profitable robbery, this is unprecedented.

After the Lebanon job, the worlds second largest heist is the 1983 Brinks Mat robbery, in which some 26 million (53 million today) in gold bullion was stolen at Londons Heathrow Airport.

But within months, many of the robbers, fences and gold smelters were being rounded up.

The next largest is the 2006 robbery of a Securitas depot, in Kent, in which 45 million was stolen.

Within days arrests were being made and the bulk of the money was recovered.

The 1976 theft is unique in that none of the loot has ever been found and no one has ever been arrested.

I asked a trusted ex-SAS contact if British Special Forces had any prior history of carrying out bank jobs? If they did, it was something I had never heard of.

"In fact, banks are one of the favourite theoretical targets of the regiment,"

he told me, "although they like to keep quiet about it

"If youre the best in the world, you have to be capable of the impossible  like penetrating high-security set-ups without being caught."

Banks provide a distinct target opportunity, he explained, one where security is tight and ease of entry for the uninvited is particularly difficult.

As an exercise, it tests a forces ability to plan out an assault on a well-defended building, and to get in and out without being compromised.

On another level, if hostile regimes or terrorist groups have sensitive documents, banks are one of the commonest places of safety. Many offer blanket client confidentiality, which means that UKSF have to be ready to assault and burgle them whenever ordered to do so, or to rescue hostages hidden in their vaults.

But were the SAS present on the ground during Lebanons brutal civil war? Officially, they were not.

I turned to Ken Connor, a veteran of covert SAS operations, and one or two other ex-SAS contacts, to check.

In reality, the SAS had been present during Lebanons civil war, but on highly classified missions.

They had deployed into Beirut from the UK Armed Forces Base, RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, which has a secret eavesdropping site at Ayios Nikolaos, on the east side of the island.

They were tasked with intelligence-gathering work in Beirut, much of which was in preparation for hostage-rescue operations.

Later in the civil war in Lebanon, Muslim extremists took hostage Britons John McCarthy, Brian Keenan and Terry Waite.

In the early Eighties, an SAS assault force actually rehearsed a hostage rescue helicopter insertion into Beirut, although the operation was called off at the last minute.

But saying that the SAS had the means to rob the bank and were on the ground at the time doesnt mean they did it.

I went back to Mike, my original source. We met in Dublin, where he was advising the Irish military on security matters. This is what he told me.

In January 1976, a nine-man troop of SAS (a standard, 12-man troop, under-strength by three due to injuries) was briefed by its commanding officer at its Cyprus base.

The troop was tasked with a mission to infiltrate Beirut and gain access to the vault of the British Bank of the Middle East, to seize documents of value to Her Majestys Government.

Lebanon had become a hub of world terrorism, and those documents detailed financial holdings of terror groups worldwide, including the PLO, PFLP and Islamic Jihad.

Significant amounts of bullion and other valuables were stored in the bank vault.

A small amount was to be stolen, the operation commander said, as a token gesture to make it look like a genuine robbery.

The SAS troop boarded a submarine anchored off Cyprus, and 24 hours later they were dropped off the Lebanese coast under cover of darkness.

They moved quickly to the no-mans-land of the Green Line, heading for the citys financial district, all the while being careful to avoid detection.

Upon arrival, they set up a covert observation post (OP) in a deserted building directly opposite the BBME.

For two full days they watched the bank, using night-vision scopes in hours of darkness (the predecessor to todays lightweight night-vision goggles).

One of the team even opened an account with BBME to obtain detailed information about the interior.

They also used pistol-grip microphones to eavesdrop on the banks security staff.

Once they had built up a full picture of the banks operations, the SAS commander, a young and maverick warrant officer, drew up his assault plan.

His men would use Soltam 60mm mortars to hit the front lines in the war, and each side would presume that the mortar attack had come from the other  so provoking a massive firefight.

Under cover of that battle, the SAS force would blast their way into the lobby of the bank, having taken out the banks generator to disable the security systems.

Beirut was largely bereft of electricity at the time, so once the generator was hit the bank would go dark.

With the bank under their control they would prepare to blow the vault.

The SAS  plus their sister unit, the Special Boat Service (SBS)  are experts at the explosive method of entry (EMOE).

They are trained to use shaped charges of plastic explosives to blow access holes into enemy buildings, bunkers, ships and aircraft.

EMOE techniques are easily transferable to the business of blowing bank vaults.

An amount of plastic explosives was rammed into a funnel charge, and jammed in place against the wall of the corridor approaching the vault.

In theory, the funnel charge would channel the force of the blast into the wall, so blowing a hole through it.

Four hours into the raid and the charge was detonated. It worked perfectly.

It was then that there was a deviation from orders. Instead of just taking documents, the soldiers emptied the vault of the bulk of its contents.

The majority of the money stolen consisted of gold bullion  hundreds of 12.5kg London Good Delivery Bars.

This is the standard weight used by banking institutions around the world. Each bar is 99.99 per cent pure gold, and stamped with a unique serial number.

The loot was loaded into vans and driven across the Green Line, where it was transferred to a waiting landing craft.

From there the unit made its way back to Cyprus.

I was left stunned by Mikes story. Was I really to believe that the SAS team had been overtaken by greed?

I put the question to Mike, who claimed that there had been a failure in the A41 radio

set and a breakdown in communications.

Orders had become confused and that led to the bank being emptied.

The team delivered the terrorist documents and a large portion of the gold.

However, they kept an amount hidden for themselves, although Mike says this was in the "couple of million dollars range", much less than that delivered to the Government.

In 1976, an SAS soldiers wage was only 13,000 a year, so the sum they kept was still a fortune.

At first there was consternation at SAS headquarters when it became known that the SAS had taken the BBME for all it was worth.

But in time the freelance robbery was seen as a consequence of a difficult, covert, yet ultimately successful operation.

In the chaos of Beirut, the money would have been taken by opportunist thieves anyway. No significant disciplinary action was taken against the men.

Once Mike had finished telling me all this I asked him why he had done so.

He answered with a question: if I had pulled off the perfect bank job, would I not want the world to know about it?

I later learned Mike had been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and specialists had given him months to live.

That was three years back, and so far hed defied their direst predictions.

In the following months, Mike offered to introduce me to two of his colleagues from the raid.

In due course I met them. Jock was a towering hulk of a Scot, with a rugby players nose and a pronounced limp.

The third man, Jamie, was tall and spare, with aquiline features: I guessed he must have been the commander of the unit.

They were both less voluble than Mike had been. He had persuaded them to speak with me, and they were markedly less enthusiastic than him.

However, their accounts echoed his with only minor variations.

I have spent two years investigating whether the SAS pulled off the worlds biggest bank job.

I cannot definitely say that they did it. But I was to discover that this was not the first nor the last bank job conducted by the SAS.

The SAS had the motive, the means and the track record to have made history by carrying out that 1976 Beirut bank robbery.

When contacted by Live, the Ministry Of Defence declined to comment on the heist, but the Lebanon job would fit with the credo of the SAS and its motto Who dares wins.

And if the worlds elite military force did carry out the largest bank job in history, that may explain why it remains a complete mystery.

Damien Lewis has been nominated for a prestigious One World Media Award for his Live reportage piece on Darfur. He has also written two acclaimed non-fiction books about the SAS. His new book, Cobra Gold, about the Lebanon bank job, is published by Century Books, priced at 17.99
South Delhi Police are swooping down on landlords who have failed to comply with tenant verification rules in the national Capital.

According to police, 174 FIRs have been registered against erring house owners under section 188 IPC so far and the drive is likely to continue in the coming weeks.

It is mandatory for landlords to secure police verification for their tenants before renting out a property.

It is mandatory for landlords to secure police verification for their tenants before renting out a property

Any violation of 188 IPC  disobedience to order promulgated by a public servant  is punishable with one month of imprisonment or a fine of Rs 200, or both.

Sources in the south district police told Mail Today that maximum law breakers were found in areas like Saket, Fatehpur Beri, Malviya Nagar and Vasant Kunj.

'Almost 90 per cent of the landlords that we approached had not opted for tenant verification. The remaining 10 percent landlords live in certain apartment and gated communities where tenant verification is mandatory under housing society rules,' said a police official associated with the exercise.

Police officials, who requested anonymity, said initially the exercise began in view of the security threats in Delhi before Republic Day.

'However, considering the high number of violations coming to light, the drive was continued,' one of the official said, adding that it will continue for coming several weeks.

The drive comprises team of constables and head constables to hold random checks in uniform.

'Once a team reaches a house which has been let out, it asks for the rent agreement and the tenant verification form.

'Failure to produce the documents results in FIR against the landlord,' said the official.

Rakesh, 48, who lives in west Delhi and has let out his house in south Delhi, is one of the landlords who was booked by Fatehpuri police for not opting for tenant verification.

Speaking to Mail Today, Rakesh said he was unaware about the rule but police officials say that, 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse.'

'Several awareness campaigns have been undertaken, but we suspect that landlords have not yet understood the significance of tenant verification.

'It is a must especially in the Capital which is high on the target of terror outfits. Besides, criminal elements have also been found living under pseudonyms to evade detection,' an official said.

Sangeeta (name changed), who lives in Vasant Kunj with her live-in partner, said she too was not aware of tenant verification being mandatory and had to make a call to her landlord when police knocked on her doors.

Later, her landlord, who stays nearby, was booked for flouting the rules.

Apart from going to the police station to get the tenant verification done, one can also download the form online now.

According to the process, after filling the details of all the tenants that will reside in the property, the form has to be submitted at the local police station manually by the landlord.

However, several residents in south Delhi said in many cases police have not been very forthcoming in helping landlords go through the verification exercise.

Vet your tenants: Any violation of 188 IPC  disobedience to order promulgated by a public servant  is punishable with one month of imprisonment or a fine of Rs 200, or both

Even when landlords fulfill their end of the responsibility, only 7 to 8 per cent of forms actually get verified while the remaining requests keep gathering dust for various reasons.

Police officials said this was partially true for their counterpart forces from other states do not cooperate their requests on background checks.

'Usually, most tenants hail from outside Delhi. So to verify the documents enclosed with the verification form, it is not possible to send a police official to that particular place to establish whether the address mentioned is true or false and we need help from cops in other states,' a police official said.
A top bureaucrat under the UPA Government is alleged to have helped tycoon Vijay Mallya to secure bank loans to save his ailing Kingfisher Airlines.

The allegations were unearthed in series of emails written by the fugitive businessman and accessed exclusively by India Today TV.

Amitabh Verma, a joint banking secretary, is alleged have 'mediated' between Mallya, the Congress-led government, and various banks to push for a potential bailout package for Mallya's failing Kingfisher Airline.

Banks are seeking to recover Rs 97.2 billion which the Indian authorities claim is owed by his Kingfisher Airlines (pictured - Vijay Mallya (left) and Prince Charles at the Quintessentially Foundation and Elephant Family's Royal Rickshaw Auction)

In February 2009, the flamboyant founder of what is now a failed airliner wrote to his then CFO Ravi Nedungadi, insisting the government had assured full support to Kingfisher.

A meeting with the then banking secretary and the chiefs of the SBI and PNB would be held the same month, he wrote.

'I am pleased to inform you that following my presentation, the finance minister has approved, in principle, the comprehensive financial restructuring package requested,' read Mallya's email dated February 18, 2009.

'He has advised the chief economic advisor, in the presence of Mr Pawar and myself, that (the) government will support Kingfisher and he has convened a meeting with the secretary banking and the chairman of SBI and PNB on February 25 and 26 in Delhi,' the email added.

Vijay Mallya, owner of Royal Challengers Bangalore during the 2010 IPL

In another note to Nedungadi, accessed by India Today TV, Mallya offered to speak directly with the finance minister regarding his company's request to the SBI for finances.

'Urgently advise if you want me to speak to the finance minister regarding the detailed list of banks who have given us shortterm loans.

'Alternatively, I could speak to him about our application to SBI for comprehensive refinance,' he wrote.

In his third email, the billionaire bragged about spending time with Amitabh Verma.

He also claimed all publicsector banks had been ordered to approve a financial package for his Kingfisher Airlines.

'I spent the evening with Amitabh Verma. He says that he can get all PSU banks to approve our package in seven days,' read his note to A Raghunathan, the CFO at the time.

'It has been done before! I need an urgent note,' Mallya asked. In another note, Mallya claimed Amitabh Verma had advised then Oriental Bank of Commerce executive director Rathnakar Hegde to lend Rs 200 crore to his company.

'At the Kingfisher Calendar launch yesterday, Amitabh Verma (Joint Secretary, Banking) brought Rat(h)nakar Hegde (Executive Director, OBC Bank) to me and said that he has told OBC to give Kingfisher Rs 200 cr.

Amitabh repeated (in Ratnakar's presence) that we should talk to him and put in an application for Rs 200 cr which would get approved,' the email read.

'Between both of you, please put in the application urgently.'

In a letter in March 2013, Mallya sought then finance minister P Chidambaram's intervention in securing a loan from the State Bank of India.

The bank had already rejected the UB Group's request, he said. 'Mr Shyamal Acharya, Dy MD, SBI, clearly stated that SBI would not cooperate in any way with the UB Group.

He refused the issue of an NOC to United Spirits Limited. Further, he stated he was not interested in any meeting.

I seek your urgent and kind intervention in facilitating a meeting with SBI,' read Mallya's letter to Chidambaram, dated March 21, 2013 A day later, Mallya emailed the UB Group's president, informing him that the SBI had finally approved fresh infusion of funds into his embattled company.

After India Today TV aired the story about Mallya's emails, the BJP accused the Congress of helping Mallya escape the noose.

Outstanding hobnobery: Banks are seeking to recover Rs 97.2 billion which the Indian authorities claim is owed by his Kingfisher Airlines

However Congress leader Chidambaram, the former finance minister, described such notes as a routine for governments to receive.

'These are statements made by people who don't understand how the Prime Minister's Office functions or how a minister's office functions.

On any given day, you get dozens of letters, dozens of representations.

They are marked down to officers, departments concerned to take appropriate action,' he said.

'If the prime minister receives a letter from a businessman, saying that a policy change is required or some forbearance is required, he marks it down to his staff.

It's not the prime minister who starts taking every letter or starts replying to every letter, in which event, he'll be doing nothing else but replying to a letter,' he added.

'The question is, has anyone in the govt done anything illegal?' he wondered.
Violent mobs went on the rampage in the Nagaland capital Thursday to vent their anger against ongoing elections to urban local bodies, vandalising and setting on fire government offices and vehicles, prompting deployment of five columns of army to bring the situation under control.

Activists of several tribal groups vandalised the State Election Commission and Deputy Commissioner's office and set ablaze the Kohima Municipal Council building.

The regional transport office and that of the excise department were also set ablaze by violent mobs demanding the resignation of Chief Minister T R Zeliang and his entire cabinet for going ahead with the ULB polls despite opposition from powerful tribal groups that are against the 33 per cent reservation for women in the municipal bodies, sources said.

Anger has been brewing in the state since the killing of two protesting youths in police firing at Dimapur on Tuesday

Army sources said five columns, each comprising between 50 and 70 personnel, have been pressed into service to contain the situation.

The violent protests forced Zeliang to call off the elections. Earlier in the day, the Nagaland Tribes Action Committee (NTAC), representing different tribal organisations, had served an ultimatum to Zeliang and his cabinet to resign by 4 pm, remove Dimapur commissioner of police and also declare the election process, already under way, null and void.

The NTAC had also submitted a memorandum to the Raj Bhavan in the absence of Governor P B Acharya, who was in Itanagar, in support of its demands.

Acharya holds dual charge of the governor of Arunachal Pradesh.

Anger was brewing in the state since the killing of two protesting youths in police firing at Dimapur on Tuesday.

It grew further after the bodies were brought and kept in the heart of Kohima town Wednesday evening.

Under pressure from NTAC, Zeliang, declared the election process null and void and also transferred the commissioner of police and deputy commissioner of police of Dimapur to facilitate an impartial inquiry into the firing incident.

Though the Chief Minister's decisions were announced before an angry crowd of protesters after the 4 pm deadline had expired, they turned violent.

Violence in northeast India over women's poll quota

By AFP

Protests against the introduction of seats reserved for women in northeastern India erupted once more into violence Thursday, with a mob setting fire to a municipal building in the state capital of Nagaland.

Nagaland remained tense last night after 15,000 people ran riot in Kohima, where protesters, mostly tribals and representatives from the local bodies, have opposed local government moves to safeguard civic seats for women.

The local government's introduction of a 33 percent reservation for women in upcoming elections for urban local bodies prompted protests that spiralled out of control on Wednesday.

The Indian state of Nagaland remained tense after 15,000 people ran riot in Kohima, where protesters have opposed local government moves to safeguard civic seats for women

Two people have died in clashes with the police in Kohima, which remained shut down for the second consecutive day.

'Today the people initially only gathered for the funeral and condolence meeting of those who had lost their lives, but they soon started protesting,' LL Doungel, director general of Nagaland police told AFP.

'The protestors swelled to around 10,000 to 15,000 and went on a rampage. They demanded that the chief minister resign immediately and later ransacked and burned the local municipal council building,' he added.

A Press Trust of India report said that the protesting tribal organisations allege that the state government's decision to reserve 33 percent seats for women in the local elections infringes their special rights under India's constitution.

'There is anger among the people. Unless the situation improves, we will continue our protests,' Kevichata Sechi, a senior representative of a protesting tribal organisation told Hindustan Times.
The Mamata Banerjee government has now stirred a fresh text book row after its decision to add the names a dozen Trinamool Congress leaders to school history books in the state.

India Today has accessed the draft copy of the new text book, prepared by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, which includes a chapter on the Singur land agitation that once propelled Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress to power in the state.

The book titled 'Ateet O Aitjhyo' is being printed for class eight students to be taught in the coming academic session.

The specific chapter mentions Mamata Banerjee as the leader who organised the anti-land acquisition movement

Beginning with a reference to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee herself, the chapter on Singur mentions Trinamool Congress leaders like Partha Chatterjee, Mukul Roy, Purnendu Basu, Ashima Patra, Dola Sen, Bratya Basu, Arpita Ghosh, Sovan Chatterjee, Firhad Hakim, Sovandeb Chatterjee, Subrata Buxi, Rabindranath Bhattacharjee, Becharam Manna and others.

Terming the Singur agitation 'historic', the chapter mentions Mamata Banerjee as the leader who organised the anti-land acquisition movement and gave direction to the farmers' struggle.

The book titled 'Ateet O Aitjhyo' is being printed for class eight students to be taught in the coming academic session

It mentions that, 'The movement helped end the evil attempt to establish a factory for the one lakh rupee car project over multi-crop land aimed at industrialisation for development and job creation.'

Justifying the move, chairman of the expert committee responsible for re-designing the state government syllabus Aveek Majumdar said, 'If they have led the movement then it is only legitimate that they should be included.

'Why should we exclude someone just because they belong to a political party.'

Majumdar says the syllabus committee took utmost care in striking a balance by keeping references to previous land movements like the Tebhaga agitation intact.

'We have included Singur as a continuity of other land movements in India. It is a contemporary movement that led to the Supreme Court verdict which changed the century old land acquisition system in India,' he added.

In August last year, the Supreme Court had quashed the land acquisition by erstwhile Left front government for the Tata Nano project terming it 'illegal'.

The apex court had also ordered the state government to return the land to unwilling farmers who had opposed the project.

The verdict was seen as a historic political victory for Mamata Banerjee who had spearheaded the protest against the CPI(M) government's decision to forcibly acquire the land for Tata Motors Ltd.

It was after this legal victory last year that the Mamata government began mulling the idea of including it in school curriculum.

India Today has accessed the draft copy of the new text book prepared by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education which includes a chapter on the Singur land agitation that once propelled Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress to power in the state

'We want to include the Singur movement in school syllabus. We have already discussed the issue at length.

'A proposal in this regard is being sent to the syllabus committee for inclusion of Singur movement in the school syllabus,' state education minister Partha Chatterjee had announced in September last year.

After coming to power in 2011, in her very first cabinet meeting Mamata Banerjee had announced that the Singur land will be handed back to farmers who had opposed the acquisition.

Subsequently, the government had passed a legislation in the state assembly to facilitate the land transfer.

However, the Tata's had challenged the state government's 'Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act of 2011' in the Calcutta High Court which later struck it down as 'unconstitutional'.

However, Mamata Banerjee won the final battle at Supreme Court which ruled in her favour stating that the land acquisition by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee led Left front government was illegal.

Interestingly, even the BJP government in Rajasthan recently announced that it will include a chapter on demonetisation and cashless economy in the class twelve Economics textbooks from the next academic session in the state.
Government plans to strip buy-to-let landlords of mortgage interest tax relief have been branded 'terrible' by former Bank of England economist David Miles.

From April, landlords will start to lose the right to claim back their mortgage interest costs at the rate they pay income tax - currently up to 45 per cent. Instead, they will see this drop over the next three years and replaced with a 20 per cent tax credit.

Landlords have already slammed the move as disastrous, claiming it will result in rent hikes for tenants across the UK.

Now Miles, an eminent economist and former member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, has dubbed it 'a terrible tax change'.

Former MPC member David Miles has warned rents could rise by 30 per cent

Together with the introduction of a 3 per cent surcharge on stamp duty payable on buy-to-let purchases since April 2016, Miles has calculated rents would have to rise substantially to make up for landlords' higher costs.

Speaking at an event in Westminster this week, Miles said: 'If you are a landlord who is affected by both of these changes and you are a higher rate tax payer, then you might need your rental income to rise by somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent to maintain your return.

'I don't expect rents to go up by anything like as much as that, partly because tenants can't afford it, but I suspect there will be a fairly chunky rise in rents.'

Miles also warned that the tax change would exacerbate the plight of would-be home owners trying to save for a deposit for their first home by forcing them to spend even more of their income on rent.

'That makes life for those people who hope to be owner occupiers but are still in the rental sector unambiguously worse off,' he said.

'I think it's a terrible tax change for what it's worth, but we seem to be pushing on.'

The removal of tax relief on buy-to-let mortgage interest has been widely criticised by landlords, with the chairman of the Residential Landlords Association, Alan Ward, calling on the Chancellor to U-turn on the proposed changes earlier this week.

He warned that landlords, faced with significantly higher costs, will be forced to pass on at least some of the pain to tenants.

Recent research from buy-to-let lender Kent Reliance suggests a third of landlords expect to increase rents in the next six months by an average of 5.4 per cent - equivalent 571 per year for households.

Former Chancellor George Osborne unveiled the changes for landlords

Currently landlords are taxed on their profit because existing mortgage payments can be deducted from rental income before that income is declared.

A higher rate tax payer paying 40 per cent income tax can deduct their mortgage costs (buy-to-let loans tend to be interest-only) and therefore they pay only income tax on their rental income above that.

From April this tax relief - currently available up to 45 per cent for top tier taxpayers - will be reduced over four years down to 20 per cent.

It also won't be a relief. It is being replaced with a tax credit which must be claimed back meaning landlords will find 100 per cent of their rental income is taxable and they are then in line for a credit payment of 20 per cent back.

It's estimated that the changes will push half a million landlords into a higher income tax band - hitting their profits even harder.

Speaking at the same event as Miles, Paul Smee, director general of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, said it was unlikely the Government would backtrack on the proposed changes but pleaded with them to keep the policy under review.

He said: 'I think the small landlord is feeling fairly bruised at the moment and I think that should stop.'
Is the bottom dropping out of the posh car market?

Autins Group, which made its debut on AIM last August and which counts Jaguar-Land Rover and Bentley as customers, hit the skids this week as it warned a major customer had provided 'revised volumes and introduction timings for certain platforms.'

As a result, the board said revenues for the current year will be materially lower than expectations.

Customer base: Autins Group counts Bentley and Jaguar-Land Rover as customers

On the same day, the designer, manufacturer and supplier of acoustic and thermal insulation solutions for the automotive sector, announced that Jim Griffin has, for personal reasons, resigned as chief executive officer.

The shares shed a third of their value this week.

Also down by a similar amount was Jiasen International Holdings, which is to delist from AIM.

As investments go, this has not been a conspicuous success.

Floated in July 2014 at 82p a share, the Chinese wooden home furnishings maker is now, literally, a tupenny-ha'penny share.

Another company bidding adieu to AIM is Zamano, the smartphone content supplier.

New regulations have been introduced in the UK changing the way mobile operators charge their users for content.

The initiative is referred to as Payforit, and Zamano shareholders are indeed paying for it, as it has disrupted its UK business.

The company, despite cutting costs considerably, has decided to throw in the towel and wind up the business, returning any surplus cash to shareholders.

Expectations: The board of Autins Group said it expects revenues to be considerably lower than predicted

The final straw for the Dublin-based company was the probable introduction of similar regulatory changes in Ireland to the UK Payforit initiative.

There is likely some value in the companys UK and Irish listings and there might yet be a reverse takeover for this one, but for now, investors are heading for the exit.

Sector peer Adgorithms was another software platform operator having hard times this week, as it said it expects to announce a loss of around $8million for 2016.

Its indirect trading business, which focuses on leveraging undervalued inventory on online advertising exchanges  it sounds like an upmarket version of flogging off unwanted tat on eBay and Amazon - continues to be volatile and challenging.

'This division is now led by two industry veterans and has continued in its effort to diversify the business and explore new growth opportunities,' Adgorithms said.

Thats all very well, but around a quarter of the value was lopped off the company this week.

Happier news from the minerals sector, where Premier African Minerals announced what it describes as encouraging initial results from drilling at the Zulu lithium and tantalum project in Zimbabwe.

Drill hole 1A has confirmed significant lithium grade, up to 2.33 per cent lithium oxide, with lithium oxide encountered between 214 and 238 metres down hole.

Another hole, ZDD 10, encountered lithium mineralisation between 78 and 121 metres, with grades measuring up to 2.35 per cent.

Results are still awaited from a further eight holes drilled in the recent programme, meanwhile tantalum readings are pending for all holes.

Future pharma: It has been a good week for Redx Pharma , which at the end of last week confirmed the upcoming clinical trial of its Porcupine inhibitor, RXC004

Elsewhere in the resources sector, NU-Oil and Gas shares soared by two-thirds after it told investors it anticipates a production restart in Newfoundland, Canada.

It has signed a production sharing agreement with partner PVF Energy Services, which sees the AIM-quoted group retain a 50 per cent share of net revenue, once the partner has recovered its costs of performing its obligations.

Guscio, the sport-focused technology company, saw its shares surge 80 per cent but the directors have no idea why.

The directors issued a "search me, guv announcement on Tuesday, in response to the rapid share price rise.

It might or might not have dropped a hint, however: 'The company is focused on further developing its current intellectual property, creating a solid and recurring revenue foundation, and considering complementary earnings enhancing acquisitions. This process is on-going.'

So, now we know. Or rather, we dont.

We also dont know much about why the shares of spread betting and forex trading platform operator London Capital Group (LCG) shot up 48 per cent this week.

It has been a turbulent time of late for the spread betting industry, and it may just be a case of the shares bouncing back.

It is unlikely to be because of the departure of the companys senior independent non-executive director, Rebecca Fuller, who has left to spend more time pursuing her other business interests.

Finally, it has been a good week for Redx Pharma, which at the end of last week confirmed the upcoming clinical trial of its Porcupine inhibitor, RXC004, will assess the drug in combination with a checkpoint inhibitor as well as deploying it as a single treatment to tackle cancer.

Porcupine inhibitors are a new and potentially breakthrough method of fighting the killer disease.

They work by targeting cancer stems cells that can often lie dormant after traditional treatment and are associated with a recurrence of the illness. Kill the stem cells and you have a chance of eradicating the disease completely.

There is a growing bank of research that has found they may also be very effective in tandem with checkpoint inhibitors such as anti-PD-1, which lower or break cancers defence against the bodys immune system.

So, Redx, which is currently finalising its clinical trial application here in the UK, will build in a 'combination arm' to the study, 'reflecting our belief in the validity of this approach.'

The shares rose just under 30% this week.
The boss of Ralph Lauren is making a sudden departure after a row with its 77-year-old founder.

Stefan Larsson, 42, its president and chief executive, is leaving in May, just over a year after he joined the US brand with grand plans to slash jobs, close stores and shake-up the management.

In charge: Ralph Lauren, pictured with his wife Ricky, who had led the brand for 50 years before being succeeded by Stefan Larsson

Larssons idea was to speed up the supply chain to mimic H&Ms quick reaction time to fashion trends. But the measures failed and the company revealed yesterday that revenue had fallen for the seventh consecutive quarter.

Lauren, who had led the brand for 50 years before being succeeded by Larsson, said: We have found that we have different views on how to evolve the creative and consumer-facing parts of the business. After many conversations with one another, and our board of directors, we have agreed to part ways.
The British consumer goods giant behind Harpic, Dettol and Nurofen is seeking to buy an American baby formula maker for 13bn.

Reckitt Benckiser, the Slough-based firm which also owns Strepsils and Durex, has confirmed it is in advanced talks with Mead Johnson  a baby milk company.

If the bid is successful, it will be the second-biggest buyout by a British company since Brexit, behind British American Tobacco. The offer, at $90 a share, is 30 per cent higher than Meads closing price.

No pain, no gain: If the bid is successful, it will be the second-biggest buyout by a British company since Brexit

Mead, which makes Enfamil baby formula, has been embroiled in a number of takeover talks since 2009 after being spun off from American drugs giant Bristol-Myers Squibb. It is one of the biggest formula makers in the world and has a large presence in Latin America and Asia.

It had been rumoured that Swiss firm Nestle or French yogurt maker Danone would make a bid for Mead, as both already sell baby milk. But analysts ruled out Nestle due to competition concerns while Danone agreed to buy organic food manufacturer WhiteWave late last year instead.

Andrew Wood, analyst at Bernstein, said Reckitts choice of Mead Johnson as a target came out of left field and it hadnt been considered as a potential acquirer because infant formula was considered too far away from its core business.

Reckitt, which confirmed its offer late on Wednesday night, is likely looking to bolster its business in Asia where sales have been hit by the fallout after its steriliser product Oxy Sacsac led to 96 deaths between 2001 and 2011. It led to a boycott of Reckitts products in the country and a 300m compensation payout.

Up until now, Rakesh Kapoor, the chief executive of Reckitt, has turned more to over-the-counter health brands such as Mucinex and Scholl for growth, with the home and personal-care divisions expanding more slowly.

Reckitt said it expects to finance the possible transaction through a combination of cash and debt.
Nazi SS veterans march through Riga in event attended by right-wing party linked to Tories

Veterans of the dreaded Nazi Waffen SS marched in freezing temperatures in the Latvian capital Riga today cheered by locals who view them as heroes.



A city council ban on the march was overturned at the 11th hour by a court.



That meant that men who once wore the double S-flashes of the Nazi party's elite combat unit were honoured among the 2,000 who took part as freedom fighters from Communism.



A Latvian Legion veteran, who fought on Nazi Germany's side in World War II, takes part in a march to the Monument of Freedom as part of an annual commemoration in Riga today

All in their late 80s and 90s, the 30 odd Latvians who took up arms for the Third Reich against the Soviet Union in WW2 were the heroes of the day in the tiny Baltic state where Stalin was considered worse than Hitler.

The march was attended by a member of the right-wing Fatherland and Freedom party in Latvia, which is allied with David Cameron's MEPs in the European Parliament.



Efraim Zuroff, the worlds foremost Nazi hunter who was also in Riga for a Holocaust conference, pleaded for Latvians not to honour the memory of the 140,000 men who joined the Latvian Legion in 1943 to fight for the Third Reich. His pleas fell on deaf ears.



March 16 has become a hallowed date for Latvians. On that day in 1943 they fought the Red Army for the first time and halted it.



But history is never so simple: included in the ranks of these young conscripts were at least 500 men who had participated in the liquidation of the 40,000 Jews of the Riga ghetto.



Yet in this part of the world, following two bouts of occupation by the Communists - from 1940 to 1941 in which 65,000 people were deported to Siberian labour camps, and from 1945 until the collapse of the Soviet empire - many view these SS veterans as freedom fighters.



Supporters vastly outnumbered the handful of anti-legion protesters who heckled them with cries of 'No quarter for fascists' and 'Nazis get out of Latvia' as the old men, many wearing the L-flash of the legion with a sword running through it on their shoulders, walked stiffly and with pride through the beautiful old town of Riga.



A Latvian Legion veteran (centre), who fought on the Nazi's side, walks past demonstrators at the controversial event

Upon the anti-Nazi banners waved in their faces were grinning skulls in SS helmets with the words: 'Remember the 46,500' - a reference to the number of Jews they say Latvian Legion members helped massacre.



Two thousand armed police lined the route from the citys German built cathedral where the local bishop had given a sermon detailing the evils of Stalinism and Communism.



Junis Dogeds, 88, was one of those who fought for Hitler. He has no regrets; 'The Russians were the b******s in this country. They killed thousands before Hitler came.



'We fought for the lesser of two evils. Hitler was gone in three years but the Soviets stayed for another 50.



They were our real enemy. So I march with pride and I always will as long as I draw breath.



'The Nazis are estimated to have killed around 18,000 of us. The Russians did for over 300,000. So I ask you; who were the bad guys here?'



Nils Usakovs, the ethnic Russian politician who is the mayor of Riga and who sought to have the events called off, said the annual confrontation was 'disastrous' for Latvia's international reputation.



'It has nothing to do with commemorating those who were forced to fight. It is an event which is hijacked by small parties and politicians,' he said.



'It's pretty difficult to be a hero if you're fighting for a German Nazi.'



Yet that is how many see it. Katherina Sliane, a local news agency reporter, said: 'It will never be resolved.



'You have a million people in Riga, half of them Russian, half Latvian. One half will always think the other half wrong.



'Not all the people here are Nazis: this is more a celebration of Latvian nationalism and pride. The old Nazis just happen to be a part of it and it is the part that the world, and opponents, focuses on.'



She pointed out that the occupation museum in the city is divided 50/50 with exhibits that detail Nazi occupation and Soviet rule.



Aivars Ozols, 85, another marcher who dumped a boquet of white roses at the foot of the monument, said he had been conscripted by the Germans back in 1943 and had no choice but to fight.



'I spent nine years nine years in a gulag after the Russians captured me,' he said. 'I paid my dues and I come here to honour old comrades, nothing more.'



Standing among the demonstrators was Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem, who had called on the authorities to ban the parade.



'The event has taken place. I wanted to be here and stand on what I think is the right side,' Zuroff said.



No serious disturbances were reported. Police said they arrested five people for minor public order offences.



Housewife Irina Brodek, a Russian, spat at the foot of a demonstrator who tried to argue that Stalin was a worse mass murderer than Hitler.



'Tell that to the families of the 26 million Hitler killed in Russia. You are trying to rewrite history and it will not work.'


French troops gain control of key Malian city in offensive to drive out Islamic militants as they close in on Timbuktu



Special forces take airport in Gao, the country's largest northern city

Wrested back after it was seized by jihadist fighters nine months ago

Nearly 30 bombs have been dropped from fighter jets over past two days

French and Malian soldiers are heading north and reached Timbuktu today



France today reached the gates of fabled Malian city Timbuktu after yesterday defeating jihadist fighters to take control Gao.

The troops have been advancing through Kidal, Timbuktu, Lere and Diabaly - which had been seized by militants by are steadily being recovered.

The French military wrested control of the airport at Mali's largest northern city, under cover of darkness, in a major breakthrough in its offensive to rout the Islamists from power.

Today they were ready to flush out any rebels still hiding in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Timbuktu.

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Flight: A Malian family's taxi is searched at a checkpoint on the Gao road outside Sevare

Conflict: A French soldier sits behind a machine gun in a military convoy in central Mali today

War: Malian troops at a checkpoint near Sevare today as French-led troops advance on Timbuktu Success: French forces yesterday wrested control of the airport at the Islamist stronghold of Gao

Strategic: Malian soldiers man a checkpoint near Gao after troops took over a bridge and the city airport Our move: French soldiers man a checkpoint in Bamako yesterday, as special forces descended on Gao

Poised: A French soldier walks through the bush, left, while another keeps watch with a FAMAS assault rifle

Tense: Trucks full of people and goods head through Mali as soldiers advance on Timbuktu and beyond Watchful: Malian soldiers inspect a car from Sevare at a checkpoint in Thy today Ravaged: Malian soldiers walk past the bullet ridden wall of a house in a destroyed part of Konna yesterday

Offensive: French soldiers in Bamako check an aircraft used to send equipment to frontline troops

Under fire: French and Malian forces, pictured, faced sporadic 'acts of harassment' from the Islamist rebels

N early 30 bombs have reportedly been dropped from fighter jets over the past two days during the struggle to beat the extremists, who have links to al-Qaeda.

Special forces stormed in by land and by air two weeks ago, coming under fire from 'several terrorist elements' that were later 'destroyed' , the French miltary said in a statement on its website.

In a later press release entitled 'French and Malian troops liberate Gao', the French ministry of defence said they were bringing back the town's mayor, Sadou Diallo, who had fled to the Malian capital Bamako.

But a defence ministry official clarified that the city had not been fully liberated, and the process of freeing Gao was continuing.

Gao, in north-eastern Mali, was seized by the jihadist fighters nine months ago, and the battle to retake it was expected to be tough.

The rebel fighters are believed to include Algerians, Egyptians, Mauritanians, Libyans, Tunisians, Pakistanis and even Afghans.

French and Malian forces faced sporadic 'acts of harassment' during the day, said Colonel Thierry Burkhard, a French military spokesman in Paris. He had no immediate estimate on casualties.

Support: A French military medical team prepares to move out of the airport at Bamako, Mail's capital

Uprising: France admits Gao is still not fully liberated following the takeover nine months ago

Airstrikes: Kountoun Traore stares at the wreck of an Islamic militant's car outside his home in Diabaly

Fight: Gao, Kidal, Timbuktu, Lere and Diabaly (pictured) were all seized by militants but are steadily being retaken

Life goes on: The armies are advancing north along two fronts in Mali's north east and north west

The operation in Gao comes at the same time as airstrikes in the two other provincial capitals held by the extremists - the cities of Timbuktu and Kidal, which like Gao fell to the rebels last April, during the chaotic aftermath of a coup in the distant capital.

The simultaneous aerial attacks also come as ground troops are carrying out a pincer movement, with French and African land forces heading to Gao from Niger, where Chad has sent a battalion.

The Pentagon has said that the US will aid the French military with aerial refuelling missions.

US aerial refuelling planes would be a boost to air support for French ground forces as they enter areas of Mali that are controlled by the extremists.

The US was already helping France by transporting French troops and equipment to the West African nation.

French and Malian forces are also heading to Timbuktu, via the central corridor that leads north from the central Malian city of Segou, through the recently recaptured town of Diabaly.

Since France began its military operation, the Islamists have retreated from three small towns in central Mali - Diabaly, Konna and Douentza.
COLUMBUS  A Columbus woman avoided a Platte County District Court trial by pleading guilty to stealing an Oklahoma womans identity to work at a local manufacturing plant.

Maria Vega-Medina, 38, entered her plea to attempted criminal impersonation as part of an agreement with the prosecution.

Vega-Medina, who used an Oklahoma woman's name and Social Security number to work illegally at Behlen Mfg. Co. beginning in 2008, asked Judge Robert Steinke to proceed immediately to sentencing after entering her plea. The judge fined her $2,000 for her conviction of the Class IV felony, which had a maximum penalty of two years in prison, 12 months of post-release supervision and a $10,000 fine.

She was freed from jail after posting a $25,000 bond, 10 percent allowed for release, shortly after her arrest in November.

Vega-Medina was initially charged with two counts of identity theft, one of which carried a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. In exchange for her plea, the county attorneys office reduced one identity theft charge and dismissed the second.

The Platte County Sheriffs Office investigation got underway when Investigator Dane Jensen was contacted by Grace A. Moreno of Okemah, Oklahoma, who claimed to be the victim of identity theft.

The 35-year-old victim said for the last several years Behlen in Nebraska appeared on her tax documents reporting she earned income from the company, Jensen wrote in his probable cause arrest statement.

Jensen said the Oklahoman was able to provide a copy of her birth certificate, Social Security card, an Oklahoma identification card, Oklahoma drivers license and other documentation.

I determined that a female was employed there (at Behlen Mfg.) by the name of Grace A. Moreno and was using the same Social Security as Grace A. Moreno of Okemah, Oklahoma, Jensen wrote.

The Columbus woman later admitted she was born in Mexico and worked under the false identity since 2008, the investigator said.
Anna Duggar is reportedly getting ready to call it quits with husband Josh and ditch his very extended family for a new life with her four children in a different state.

'Anna hasn't told Josh she wants a divorce, but a friend of hers put her in touch with a lawyer and Anna has spoken to the lawyer on the phone,' a family insider told InTouch.

'She's been putting off meeting them for some time because she was terrified of being spotted at their office, but she is now finally ready to make the move and will be visiting the attorney in the next week or so.'

The long-suffering wife reportedly reached the end of her rope when she learned that a lawsuit filed against Josh in Los Angeles could result in her husband and his family being deposed - and forced to answer questions about his molestation of four of his sisters.

'Anna is sickened by the lawsuit, it is a major reason she is divorcing Josh,' said a source.

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Anna Duggar is reportedly getting ready to call it quits with husband Josh and ditch his very extended family for a new life with her four children in a different state

Anna is not the only one who is worried either, with a family insider revealing that Josh's parents are just as nervous about what may happen in court later this month.

'This legal case is the Duggars worst nightmare,' said the insider.

'Josh and his parents, Jim Bob and Michelle, are terrified of what this lawsuit will do to the Duggars' already tarnished reputation - and how many secrets will come spilling out.'

It has now been almost two years since it was revealed that Josh had been molesting five minors as a teenager including four of his sisters.

That same summer it was also revealed he had an account on the cheating website Ashley Madison and had allegedly been paying women for sex.

He flew off to a faith-based rehab facility in September of 2015 and stayed there until April of the following year, and in the months since his return to Arkansas had managed to avoid any major scandals.

The love however is no longer there says a source close to Anna, who tells the magazine: 'Anna and Josh share the same bed, but she never has sex with him anymore. She just does not want to.'

And the family insider said that Anna is hoping to be well compensated when she exits the union with her her husband.

'Anna knows the Duggar family has very deep pockets, and she will be aksing for a huge settlement from Josh,' said the individual.

'Anna feels Josh put her through hell with his disgusting behavior so she believes she is completely justified in squeezing every penny out of him that she can.'

The long-suffering wife (pictured with her husband and three of their four children) reportedly reached the end of her rope when she learned that a lawsuit filed against Josh in Los Angeles could result in her husband and his family being deposed

The lawsuit was filed last year by Matthew McCarthy (pictured), a popular DJ who lives in Los Angeles and spins at a number of Hollywood hotspots. This Saturday he will be performing for EMX on the Pioneer DJ stage at Avalon Hollywood

Josh's upcoming lawsuit was filed last year by Matthew McCarthy, a popular DJ who lives in Los Angeles and spins at a number of Hollywood hotspots.

This Saturday he will be performing for EMX on the Pioneer DJ stage at Avalon Hollywood.

McCarthy alleged in his papers that he was subject to ridicule after Josh used a photo of him on an online dating and hookup site which caused him to lose work.

His photo was apparently plucked from the internet by Josh and then used to create a misleading OK Cupid profile which is linked to one of Josh's email addresses.

McCarthy's lawyers can now depose not only Josh, but others connected to the incidents of sexual assault.

'Jim Bob and Michelle are worried that McCarthy's lawyers will also depose members of their family, which means they will all be forced to talk about Josh's inappropriate sexual behavior, as well as the family's cover-up of what he did,' says the family insider.

'The Duggars are scared.'

That insider then noted: 'Anna does not want to be there when the family's filthiest secrets are unearthed.'

More than anything said one source, Anna wants to protect her children with Josh from being impacted by any scandal.

The couple have two daughters, Mackynzie and Meredith, and two sons, Michael and Marcus.

More than anything said one source, Anna (pictured with Josh and their youngest child, daughter Meredith) wants to protect her children from being impacted by any scandal

The Duggars have been hard at work trying to rebuild their reality empire over the past year, which was destroyed after Josh's child molester past.

In the wake of that scandal, and the revelation that patriarch Jim Bob did not formally report the incident to law enforcement, TLC not only cancelled the family's popular reality show 19 Kids and Counting after nine seasons but also announced that they would no longer air any past episodes of the program on the network.

Things took another turn later in the summer with the news that Josh had been having affairs and allegedly paid at least one women for sex.

Soon after that revelation came to light, Josh entered a faith-based rehab facility in Illinois, where he stayed for eight months.

The network did not keep the family off the air that long however, announcing just a few months later that a new show would launch that December which focused on sisters Jill and Jessa, who were both married and starting their own families.

Those two also admitted in the wake of the molestation scandal that they had been two of their brother's victims, and sat down for an emotional interview in June of last year with Megyn Kelly on Fox News to share their story.

Josh also molested two of his other sisters it was revealed at the time, as well as a fifth girl who was of no relation to the family.
Donald Trump's defense secretary James Mattis has warned North Korean despot Kim Jong-un his hermit state faces an 'effective and overwhelming response' if it uses nuclear weapons.

During a visit to south east Asia, Mattis warned the dictator that he faces oblivion if he attacks either Japan or South Korea.

Pyongyang responded by claiming Trump was pushing the peninsula to 'the brink of nuclear war' as it emerged Kim Jong-un had sacked his spy chief Kim Won-Hong for 'abuse of power'.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (left) and South Korean Defense Minister Han Min Koo (right) salute during a welcome ceremony for Mattis in Seoul on Friday

Mattis travelled to South Korea to reassure authorities in Seoul after his boss Donald Trump appeared to criticize a defense treaty with the country during the presidential campaign

Mattis, pictured with Koo warned North Korea the United States was committed to the continued safety of South Korea and claimed the defense guarantees were 'ironclad'

Mattis issued the threat during a meeting with the South Korean defense minister Han Min Koo.

He said: 'North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior.

'We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region,' he added.

'America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.'

Some South Korean Christians praised Donald Trump during a demonstration in Seoul

Others criticized American plans and called for peace talks with Kim Jong-un's regime

In an explicit warning to North Korea, Mattis on Friday said any use of nuclear weapons by the North on the United States or its allies would be met with what he called an 'effective and overwhelming' response

But the North says that Mattis' visit 'worked out a plan for a preemptive attack on the North and ... desperately pushed forward it, pushing the situation on the peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war.'

Mattis's statement showed why he chose South Korea for his first visit overseas since becoming defense secretary January 20.

He sought to reassure South Koreans of the longstanding US commitment to a defense treaty that President Donald Trump suggested during the campaign was a bad deal for America.

Mattis also was discussing with the South Koreans a timetable for deploying an advanced US missile defense system, the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAAD, that is meant to improve protection of South Korea and Japan  as well as US troops stationed in both countries  against a North Korean missile attack.

North Korea reacted angrily on Friday, accusing the US and South Korea of pushing the peninsula to 'the brink of a nuclear war.' North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un (center) inspects a military drill in this January 28, 2017, file photo

The current caretaker South Korean government has said it supports THAAAD deployment, but the decision is in doubt because of approaching national elections.

In his remarks Friday, Han echoed Mattis's concern about North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.

He said they 'blatantly threaten' the international community and have created a 'severe security situation' on the Korean peninsula.

He described Mattis's visit so early in his tenure as a warning to North Korea.

After a series of meetings in Seoul, Mattis was scheduled to fly to Tokyo on Friday for further consultations.

The US has 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan.

Last month, President Donald Trump fueled speculation of possible US military action to pre-empt North Korea's weapons development

Trump also accused China of 'not helping the US with North Korea' in the above tweet on January 2

Speaking to reporters as he traveled to South Korea, Mattis said he would consult with South Korean and Japanese officials about whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs was adequate.

North Korea has said it was nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

'Were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea, we would have no need for Thaad out here,' Mattis said in his breif remarks to reporters.

Alluding to China's objections to having Thaad deployed in South Korea, Mattis said, 'Thaad should be a worry to no nation other than North Korea.'

Following his trip to Seoul, Mattis continued to Tokyo to hold talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Mattis, left, met earlier today with Japanese PM Shinzo Abe to discuss defense matters

Mattis said America continues to retain its role in guaranteeing Japanese security

Mattis was on a two-day mission to reassure leaders in South Korea an Japan on US suppoort

America is obliged to defend Japan in the event of attack in the event of a sneak attack

He said: ' I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago - and as it will be a year, and 10 years, from now.'

Article 5 obliges the United States to defend territories under Japanese administrative control.

Japan has been keen for assurances that Trump's administration would continue Washington's previous policy of committing to defend disputed East China Sea islands that are under Japanese control but claimed also by China.

Abe said he was convinced that, with Trump and Mattis, the United States and Japan could demonstrate to the world their 'unwavering alliance'.

Trump singled out both South Korea and Japan on the campaign trail, suggesting they were benefiting from the U.S. security umbrella without sharing enough of the costs.

Mattis is due to hold sit-down talks on Saturday with Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who has repeatedly said Japan is bearing its fair share of the costs for U.S. troops stationed there and has stressed that the alliance is good for both nations.

Japan's defense spending remains around 1 percent of GDP, far behind China, which is locked in a dispute with Japan over the East China Sea islets, known as the Senkakus in Tokyo and the Diaoyus in Beijing.

In Washington this week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its first policy hearing since Trump took office to discuss North Korea.

There were more questions than answers.

Last month, Trump fueled speculation of possible US military action to pre-empt North Korea's weapons development.

In response to Kim's threat, Trump tweeted, 'It won't happen!'

But he didn't elaborate how he could be so sure.

'Does that mean we have drawn a red line?' Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked at Tuesday's Senate hearing.

During the campaign, Trump complained that defense treaties disadvantaged the US and that he would not rule out abandoning signatories if they refuse to pay more for their defense.
A man accused of killing a transit officer in Colorado showed such alarming signs of 'radicalization' that members of two different mosques reported him to both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.

Joshua Cummings, 37, was arrested Tuesday in Denver, Colorado, just 20 minutes after he allegedly shot dead Scott Von Lanken, 56, a security contractor working for the city's Regional Transportation District.

Cummings was reportedly kicked out of a Texas mosque that relayed his concerning behavior to the FBI before the leader of another mosque in Denver wrote a letter to Homeland Security.

Joshua Cummings, 37, (left) was arrested Tuesday in Denver, Colorado, just 20 minutes after he allegedly shot dead transit officer Scott Von Lanken, 56 (right)

He such alarming signs of 'radicalization' that members of two different mosques reported him to both the Department of Homeland Security (above, a letter sent in December) and the FBI

Investigators interviewed Joshua Cummings, 37, in December after members of a Denver-area mosque reported concerns about him to federal authorities, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.

A leader at the mosque emailed the Department of Homeland Security to say a man identifying himself only as a Muslim convert named Joshua, from Pampa, Texas, made worrisome statements, according to a redacted copy of the email released Thursday by Qusair Mohamedbhai, an attorney for the mosque.

'He seems pretty advanced in his path of radicalization,' the mosque leader wrote.

'He also feels that it okay to fight now (not jihad/struggle,but actually fight), here to establish the rule of Islam. He was also quoting a verse from the Quran (2:54) where he claimed Prophet Musa (peace be upon him) was asked to kill his entire community (wrong).'

At an open house earlier in December, Joshua publicly rebuked a speaker 'as being soft' on Shariah law, the letter said.

'After talking to him for some time, he agreed to meet with some Imams to clarify his thoughts,' the person wrote.

'I am hoping to arrange a meeting of one of the stronger/more knowledgeable Imams with him to see if he can be mellowed a bit. But I doubt it would help. He is not listening to reason.'

The writer attached photos and a video of the man.

Last July, he tweeted that an Arizona police officer accused of brutality should be put to death for treason (above), but he published a post in September 2015 in support of police (above)

A motive has not been established and officials said they were looking into whether Von Lanken could have been targeted because he was a member of law enforcement

Mohamedbhai said the Denver-area mosque's report to the Department of Homeland Security highlighted an ongoing working relationship between law enforcement and the region's Muslim community.

Federal law enforcement 'took this alert very seriously,' he said, but did not know what actions were taken after the report.

The FBI declined to comment and the Department of Homeland Security didn't respond to a request for comment.

Before the Denver report, members of a Texas mosque reported concerning behavior by Cummings to the FBI, the law enforcement official said.

Cummings (above) opened a jiu jitsu academy in Texas, and told his friend Timothy he felt discriminated against for being Muslim and wanted to move to Colorado, KDVR reported

Von Lanken was talking to two women near Union Station on Tuesday night as they caught a late night train home and asked him about the different routes.

Cummings allegedly came up from behind, stuck a handgun to the officer's neck and fired, according to Denver police.

Barb Archer of the Denver Police Department's Major Crimes Division called the attack 'completely unprovoked'.

Von Lanken, who was a security officer who struggled to find work as a pastor, died on his way to the hospital.

Security camera footage helped police find and arrest Cummings just 20 minutes later. He was found with Islamic writings, according to 9News, and court documents state he was carrying a loaded 9mm pistol.

Cummings is being held without bond on suspicion of murder and hasn't been charged yet. He is expected to make his first court appearance Friday morning. It's not clear if he has a lawyer yet.

Denver police have not revealed a possible motive for the shooting or commented on how his alleged radicalization may have played a role in the shooting.

Von Lanken, who was a security officer who struggled to find work as a pastor, died on his way to the hospital after he was shot in the neck in an 'unprovoked' attack on Tuesday night

Von Lanken was married and had two daughters

Officials have said they were looking into whether Von Lanken, who was armed and wearing a dark blue uniform similar to those worn by police, could have been targeted because he was a member of law enforcement.

Cummings had social media posts that included both messages hostile to and supportive of law enforcement.

Last July, he tweeted that an Arizona police officer accused of brutality should be put to death for treason, but he published a post in September 2015 in support of police and the military in response to the murder of a police officer in his home.

The manager of a motel in the Denver suburb of Englewood where Cummings had stayed recently and also part of last year said Cummings was 'always a positive guy' who volunteered to pay the rent for any tenants strapped for cash.

Gary Kim said Cummings told him he was Muslim during long talks at the front desk or the small lobby at the Holiday Motel, recalling that Cummings did not want to give any negative connotations to the faith.

'He would say everyone should have a right to practice their religion as long as that religion isn't imputing on someone else's life,' Kim said.

Cummings was born in Pampa, Texas, and went on to join the army, where he was ranked as a sergeant and was at one point stationed in Germany.

He returned to his hometown and opened a jiu jitsu academy in 2015.

Cummings' friend Timothy told KDVR he ran into his childhood friend a few months ago. Cummings told him he was moving to Colorado because he felt discriminated against and thought people were trying to get him to leave.

Timothy told the local news station Cummings appeared high strung during their conversation.

Cummings had a wife, who followed him to Colorado. She is being questioned by investigators, 9News reported.
Billionaire philanthropist and public education backer Eli Broad has urged senators to vote against President Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, saying she is 'unprepared and unqualified for the position'.

Broad wrote in a letter to senators that if DeVos were confirmed, 'much of the good work that has been accomplished to improve public education for all of America's children could be undone'.

The charter school advocate said the country needs an education secretary 'who believes in public education and the need to keep public schools public'.

Comedienne Amy Schumer joined the charge against DeVos Thursday. She was spotted in Beverly Hills, California holding signs that read: 'Betsy DeVos is unqualified' and 'Call your senator to oppose - 202-224-3121'.

Billionaire philanthropist and public education backer Eli Broad has urged senators to vote against President Donald Trump's pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos (pictured)

Schumer's cousin, Democratic Senator Chuch Schumer of New York, is among lawmakers who have vowed to oppose Trump's pick.

DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor who spent more than two decades promoting charter schools, has emerged as one of Trump's most disputed Cabinet picks, facing fierce opposition from Democrats, teachers unions and civil rights activists.

Senator Schumer said during her confirmation hearing that she 'didn't know basic facts about education law'.

'When you judge her in three areas  conflicts of interest, basic confidence and ideology, views on Education policy, it is clear that Betsy DeVos is unfit for the job of Education secretary,' he said according to The Hill. 'In all three areas... she ranks among the lowest of any cabinet nominee I have ever seen.'

Broad (left), a charter school advocate, said the country needs an education secretary 'who believes in public education and the need to keep public schools public'. Amy Schumer joined the charge against DeVos Thursday with a signs that read: 'Betsy DeVos is unqualified' (right)

Schumer's cousin, Democratic Senator Chuch Schumer of New York, is among lawmakers who have vowed to oppose Trump's pick

DeVos is a major advocate of school choice programs, and Democrats and labor unions have protested her candidacy. Broad has given millions toward programs aimed at improving public education.

Two Republican senators have also vowed to vote against DeVos.

With Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in opposition, the nomination could die if DeVos loses the support of one more Republican  and all Democrats vote against her.

Murkowski said she believed DeVos has much to learn about public education.

The senator says she has 'serious concerns' about DeVos, saying the nominee has been 'so involved on one side of the equation, so immersed in the push for vouchers that she may be unaware of what actually is successful within the public schools and also what is broken and how to fix them.'

Two Republican senators have vowed to vote against DeVos. One of them is Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (pictured) who said she believed DeVos has much to learn about public education
The White House said President Donald Trump's warning to his Mexican counterpart that he was ready to send in US troops to stop 'bad hombres down there' was 'lighthearted'.

Trump's administration said Thursday that the remarks, in an excerpt obtained by The Associated Press from a transcript of the conversation, were 'part of a discussion about how the United States and Mexico could work collaboratively to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements, and make the border more secure.'

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the details publicly, described the conversation as 'pleasant and constructive.'

President Donald Trump (left) told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto (right) last Friday that he was ready to send US troops to stop 'bad hombres down there'

'You have a bunch of bad hombres down there,' Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, according to the excerpt given to the AP.

'You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it.'

The comments came last Friday in a phone call between Trump and Pena Nieto.

The excerpt from the transcript did not detail exactly whom Trump considers 'bad hombres,' nor did it make clear the tone and context of the remark.

The Mexican government said 'the negative statements' reported in the AP story 'did not occur during' the call.

The White House said that the remarks were 'lighthearted' and part of a 'pleasant and constructive' conversation between the two leaders. Trump and Pena Nieto are seen after a meeting on August 31, 2016, in Mexico City

The remark offers a rare and striking look at how the new president is conducting diplomacy behind closed doors.

Trump's remarks suggest he is using the same bravado with world leaders that he used to rally crowds on the campaign trail.

At the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, Trump told the large crowd that his calls with world leaders 'have to be tough.'

'When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it, just don't worry about it,' he said. 'They're tough.'

The president added that the world is 'in trouble' and the US is being taken advantage of by other countries.

'We're going to straighten it out,' he said. 'That's what I do. I fix things.'

Eduardo Sanchez, spokesman for Mexico's presidential office, said the conversation was respectful, not hostile or humiliating.

The Mexican government said 'the negative statements' reported in the AP story 'did not occur during' the call. Cars are seen waiting in line to enter the US at the San Ysidro Port of Entry on January 27 in Tijuana, Mexico

'It is absolutely false that the president of the United States threatened to send troops to Mexico,' Sanchez said in an interview with Radio Formula on Wednesday night.

The Mexican Foreign Relations Department had earlier told The AP: 'The negative statements you refer to did not occur during said telephone call. On the contrary, the tone was constructive.'

The phone call between the leaders was intended to patch things up between the new president and his ally.

The two have had a series of public spats over Trump's determination to have Mexico pay for the planned border wall, something Mexico steadfastly refuses to agree to.

A person with access to the official transcript of the phone call provided only that portion of the conversation to the AP.

The person was not authorized to provide the excerpt publicly and gave it on condition of anonymity.

The Mexican website Aristegui Noticias on Tuesday published a similar account of the phone call, based on the reporting of journalist Dolia Estevez. The report described Trump as humiliating Pena Nieto in a confrontational conversation.

Mexico's foreign relations department said the report was 'based on absolute falsehoods.'

Americans may recognize Trump's signature bombast in the comments, but the remarks may carry more weight in Mexico.

Political analyst and former presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar noted Pena Nieto had seen his low approval levels improve, as Mexicans rallied around him for publicly challenging Trump in the border wall dispute.

The latest remarks could undercut that, if Pena Nieto is viewed as 'weak,' he said.

Trump has used the phrase 'bad hombres' before. In an October presidential debate, he vowed to get rid the US of 'drug lords' and 'bad people.'

'We have some bad hombres here, and we're going to get them out,' he said.

The phrase ricocheted on social media with Trump opponents saying he was denigrating immigrants.

Trump's comment was in line with the new administration's bullish stance on foreign policy matters in general, and the president's willingness to break long-standing norms around the globe.

Before his inauguration, Trump spoke to the president of Taiwan, breaking long-standing US policy and irritating China.

His temporary ban on refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, aimed at reviewing screening procedures to lessen the threat of extremist attacks, has caused consternation around the world.

But nothing has created the level of bickering as the border wall, a centerpiece of his campaign.

The White House said Thursday that the remarks were 'part of a discussion about how the US and Mexico could work to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements.' Mexican police are seen above arresting suspects allegedly involved in a feud over local drug sales

Mexico has consistently said it would not pay for the wall and opposes it. Before the phone call, Pena Nieto canceled a planned visit to the United States.

The fresh fight with Mexico last week arose over trade as the White House talked of a 20 percent tax on imports from the key US ally to finance the wall after Pena Nieto abruptly scrapped his January 31 trip to Washington.

The US and Mexico conduct some $1.6 billion a day in cross-border trade, and cooperate on everything from migration to anti-drug enforcement to major environmental issues.

Trump tasked his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner - a real estate executive with no foreign policy experience - with managing the ongoing dispute, according to an administration official with knowledge of the call.

At a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May last week, Trump described his call with Pena Nieto as 'friendly.'
A waitress has been fired after her employer said her political views were damaging the restaurant's reputation.

Part-time Rhode Island state legislator Moira Walsh, 26, was dismissed from her job at Classic Cafe in Providence, after her boss said her 'vocal political discussions' were interfering with her work.

Diner owner Raymond Burns said the 'final straw' was a scathing review on Yelp.com from a customer that complained about the waitress and her 'anti-male' views.

Rhode Island state legislator Moira Walsh, 26, was dismissed from her job at Classic Cafe in Providence

Rhode Island state legislator Moira Walsh is seen above on January 3 listening during swearing-in ceremonies in the House Chamber at the Statehouse in Providence

Democratic representative Walsh, who has a two-year-old son, denied that she had been warned against talking politics with customers and said the negative review referred to her political beliefs, not her service.

The reviewer discouraged men from going to the diner because of what they described as 'anti-male' views expressed by Walsh on the radio and on social media.

Walsh said she got the job as a teenager and worked there for eight years before being fired last week.

Classic Cafe owner Raymond Burns said the 'final straw' was a scathing online review from a customer that complained about the waitress

She told WPRO-AM: 'His direct quote to me was, 'You know, we're very proud of everything that you're doing up at the State House, but your political views are affecting the business and we have to terminate your employment.''

Walsh said the complaints began with a post just before Christmas saying 'all my holiday cheer is for women, femmes and trans. The rest of you boys can kick rocks.'

She said on Thursday: 'Did my comments make men uncomfortable? Clearly.

'Social change comes at the price of comfort, and if you're agitated, it means it's working.'

Walsh said she got the job in the cafe as a teenager and worked there for eight years before being fired last week. She is seen above in a Facebook photo

Walsh took office last month after a surprising win over a longtime incumbent in last year's Democratic primary. She is seen above in Facebook photos

Walsh took office last month after a surprising win over a longtime incumbent in last year's Democratic primary.

Her advocacy for raising the tipped minimum wage and her openness about her struggles as a waitress and single mother have attracted wide attention.

Burns said it was 'not a case of political censorship or denial of her right to free speech,' but said Walsh's public comments were hurting the business.

He said in a statement: 'Walsh would often get into vocal political discussions with customers during her shifts, often sitting down with the diners in their booths.

'We sometimes had to ask her to return to her duties and advised her to continue her discussions when she was off the clock.

'These disciplinary instances were never about politics or free speech, but simply reminder of her job and responsibility to all customers.'

According to the Providence Journal Walsh said she received some criticism, job offers but much more support since her sacking.
The backlash against the Trump administration's isolationist policies continues - with a miniature world tourist attraction in Germany the latest to join in.

Bosses at the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg have put a wall around the United States in its model landscape, complete with barbed wire.

Operators at the venue, one of the city's most popular tourist attractions, said the move was in protest over 'ideological walls' between countries.

Visitors can now only look at landscapes in the US from behind a wall after the new addition was made

Co-founder Gerrit Braun said the idea for the wall was put forward during a discussion about whether the US display needed changing to reflect 'current developments'.

Braun said the wall wasn't meant to represent President Donald Trump's promised concrete barrier along the border with Mexico.

Instead, it was intended to encourage visitors to think about what happens 'when we build ideological walls around our countries'.

The wall bears the words 'Let the world be great again', alluding to President Trump's election slogan

Writing on one section of wall says: 'Let the world be great again' - a dig at President Trump's campaign slogan 'Let's make America great again'.

The move has split commenters after the attraction posted images of the wall on Facebook, alongside the caption: 'Dear friends in America, please do not put walls between us Your friends from the Miniatur Wunderland.'

Some leapt to the President's defence and criticised the attraction for putting up the wall.

Donald Trump's supporters have criticised the tourist attraction for making the political statement

Aaron Johnston wrote: 'Worst addition! Why turn this park into a political statement!'

And Dru Arnold wrote: 'Trump voter here! I enjoyed visiting Miniatur Wunderland on my 2011 vacation to Germany- but won't be back, obviously! Our president loves his citizens, and doesn't want to import people who hate America.'

But others congratulated bosses for taking a stand.

Jennifer Reinke wrote: 'Speaking as an American who did not vote for Trump and who has been protesting his racist and xenophobic agenda, this is wonderful.'

Fellow American Zach Anderson posted: 'Danke schon! As an American, I love this! Trump is and idiot, I refuse to call him my president. His policies are going to be disastrous for our country, from the stupid wall to his stupid ban. Again, thank you so much. Much love!'
The mother of a baby girl who was tortured and killed by her own father has revealed how she 'failed to look after her baby' because she didn't realise her partner had 'turned into a monster'.

Sarah Mooney, 26, has opened up about the death and torture of her 31-day-old baby Paige at home in Gympie, Queensland in a tell-all interview with Daily Mail Australia just one week after her ex-partner was jailed for the horrific crime.

The devastated mother has spoken out about how she 'missed the warning signs' and if she had her time over again, knowing what she does now she would be able to 'save her beautiful ''bubba girl'''.

Paige Ella Rose Humphreys was killed by her father when she was 31-days-old

Michael John Humphreys killed his daughter in September 2012, amid claims he was 'jealous of the attention the newborn was getting from her mother and couldn't handle her screaming'

Paige Humphreys was killed by Michael John Humphreys in September 2012  on Friday the 31-year-old was sentenced to nine years behind bars after a judge found he had 'tortured baby Paige for most of her young life'.

Disgusted with the length of the sentence, as well as the constant abuse hurled in her direction by strangers online, Ms Mooney has decided to speak out about how she lost her power.

'I can't even comprehend how taking my baby's life is only worth nine years in jail,' she said.

'A life should mean life  at the very least I think he should have been sentenced to ten years jail for every one of the 31 days the court found he made my baby suffer.

'Even then it wouldn't be enough  we need capital punishment for child killers and paedophiles.'

The young mother was just 22 when Paige died and it wasn't until six weeks later she found out authorities suspected foul play. At first, she thought her baby died from cot death.

But the moment police sat her down to tell her about Paige's horrific internal injuries Ms Mooney realised she had missed the warning signs and knew who was responsible.

Sarah Mooney, pictured, thought the baby died from cot death until six weeks later when police detailed her devastating injuries

She told Daily Mail Australia Humphreys was 'excited to become a father' and had been the one to suggest having a child together.

But she claims that after she fell pregnant he started to control her life  isolating her from her friends and family and taking control of their finances.

'It started emotionally, he would swear at my kids and yell at me,' Ms Mooney said.

What started out as excitement to become a father spiralled quickly into resentment for the life growing inside Ms Mooney  and the two children she already had.

'He was upset because the baby was taking too much of my attention,' Ms Mooney claimed.

'He would say I didn't love him as much as I loved the children  and that they were taking up too much time.'

The emotional outbursts continued to increase, he would scream at the two young children daily but 'never touched them' according to Ms Mooney.

Paige has been remembered by her family as a bright baby who loved the sound of her brother's voice and snuggling with teddy bears

Then one day shortly before Paige was born, Ms Mooney claims Humphreys' emotional outbursts turned physical.

'He pushed me against the bench when I was 37 weeks pregnant  that was the first time he touched me,' she claimed.

'But then he calmed down, like he did with his emotional outbursts, and I just made excuses for him.'

Humphreys' alleged aggressive attitude toward Paige started just four days after she came home from the hospital.

Ms Mooney delivered her via c-section so her energy levels were low, she was on bed rest and her new baby was her priority.

'He was annoyed I was taking more care of Paige than I was of him,' Ms Mooney said.

'He would wake up in the middle of the night and I would be asleep on the recliner after getting up to feed her, this would make him upset.

'A few days after I brought her home he lost his temper and started swearing at her all the time.

'He would just snap because he couldn't handle her screaming.'

When Paige was two weeks old Ms Mooney found a bump behind her ear  but was satisfied when Humphreys explained it was 'just an accident'.

Ms Mooney told Daily Mail Australia her partner's change in attitude started after she fell pregnant with Paige - her third child - his first

'He told me she got it when she rolled off the bed.

'Of course I knew she was too young to roll at two-weeks-old but I assumed he had sat her too close to the edge of the bed and she fell when he bounced down next to her,' she said.

The bump was bad enough for Ms Mooney to want to take Paige for a checkup  but she was stopped.

'When I tried to take her to the hospital he put his hand against my throat and said if I left doctors would blame him for the mark and the kids would be taken away.'

The then 22-year-old woman saw her partner hit her baby across the chin 'with three fingers' days later  after swearing at her for crying.

Instead of leaving she tried to keep her baby in another room  so her crying wouldn't aggravate her partner.

Paige was not allowed in public often, Humphreys would sit in the car with her 'with the aircon running' so he could avoid introducing her to people in the small Queensland town.

'My own father never got to meet Paige, neither did any of my friends because they had been pushed out of my life by him. My mum and one of my childhood friends were the only two people outside the house who got to hold her, who met her before she died.'

She never saw him hit her again but the night before the baby girl took her last breaths she notice a hand print on her back.

She said the family keep reminders of the baby all over the house and are glad Humphreys is in jail - even if Ms Mooney is 'angry' over the length of the sentence

'This was the second time I had seen a mark on her, I put her to bed and when I woke up in the morning she wasn't breathing.

'That morning is a blur I tried CPR but she was gone.

'I was still in denial and overwhelmed by grief, I thought she had died from cot death.'

Six weeks later when police knocked on her door all of Humphreys' actions and emotional torment flooded back.

Ms Mooney was told her baby suffered broken vertebrae and ribs, a fractured skull and a bleeding spleen and pancreas prior to death.

She realised her baby had been killed by the man she 'loved' so she left him  and helped police 'get justice' for Paige.

'As soon as I realised I left him, spoke to police and moved from the house.

'I couldn't walk down the hallway or into the next room without thinking 'is that the wall he hit her head on' or thinking about how he had hurt her.'

The mother says the day she found out her daughter had died of horrific injuries was the day her 'life sentence began' and every day has been like being 'stuck in a nightmare'.

Ms Mooney was told her baby suffered broken vertebrae and ribs, a fractured skull and a bleeding spleen and pancreas prior to death

In the four years since Paige died Ms Mooney has had plenty of time to reflect on the months leading up to her baby's death.

From Humphreys' escalating acts during the pregnancy, to the anger directed at her baby during the short time she was at home. Ms Mooney has come to realise she 'didn't keep her safe because she didn't see the signs'.

Since Humphreys' sentence was laid down on Friday Ms Mooney has copped 'online abuse from women who blame her for Paige's death' or 'question her actions'.

'Don't they realise in the four and a half years since Paige was killed I have already blamed myself or wondered why I didn't walk away or see there was a problem.

'We are supposed to be a nation against violence and here are a bunch of mostly women telling me what I should have done.

'He took away my power and cut me off completely, I had no support and I admit I missed the signs.'

Some online comments have openly criticised Ms Mooney because 'they wouldn't have been caught in the same situation if children were involved' but this just saddens the mum.

'He took away my power and cut me off completely, I had no support and I admit I missed the signs,' the mum said

'Everybody is effected differently by these sorts of situations of course if I knew I would lose my baby I would have left  but I didn't. I didn't think he would hurt her.'

The hurtful posts brought back bad memories from a moment after Paige's death when Ms Mooney was so low she thought about ending her own life.

'I would think about driving my car head-on into a truck but then I would tell myself that is just taking the easy way out.

'I had to remind myself my other kids needed me and mother wouldn't do that.'

Ms Mooney only realised how she was being affected by her ex-partner after they broke up and she started rebuilding her life.

'In hindsight I realise he always made sure I had a reason to go home  he would either be with me everywhere I went or he would have one of my children.'

She is now determined to never become a victim again.

'I was a pushover before I lost Paige, but now no one can walk over me.' Part of that healing process happens at home with her new 'amazing' partner and her children.

Whenever the family refers to Paige they drop her last name and call her 'Paige Ella Rose or bubba girl'.

This is because she wants her daughter to be remembered as the 'beautiful baby who loved teddy bears and the sound of her brother's voice' not the victim Humphreys turned her into.

'In my house we call him the ''sperm donor'' we don't say he is Paige's father because father's don't hurt their babies  they don't torture and kill their babies.' In fact Ms Mooney still can't even look at her ex-partner.

'During the court case I didn't look at his face once  I couldn't bear to see some smug smile all over it.

'If i knew what I know now I would have seen the signs and I would have been able to protect her'

'When I gave my victim impact statement I read to the judge and the floor  and when he was brought in by the prison guards I made sure I turned my head to the floor.'

The death of the 31-day-old baby has had a 'physical and emotional impact' on the whole family, according to Ms Mooney.

'My two older kids, my mum, my current partner  they have all suffered because of him.'

But those loved ones will now have closure.

The parts of Paige's body kept for evidence will now be released to Ms Mooney and her family so they can 'lay her to rest'.

'We will get the rest of her cremated and have a service where we can say goodbye to her properly.

'It has been a long four years and we want to be able to do this.' The service will take place in a park with Ms Mooney's closest friends and family.

Half of the baby's ashes are already kept in a special urn protected by her older sister.

This urn is just one of the daily reminders of Paige in Ms Mooney's life.

'Some of my closest friends had babies at the same time as Paige.

'Watching them grow up has been a blessing - sometimes I even see bits of her in them.

'Other times of course it is a curse.'

Paige would have started kindergarten this year- a milestone not lost on her mother.

But for Ms Mooney's family celebrating Paige's killer being put behind bars and being able to lay the baby to rest is an even bigger milestone they have worked hard to reach.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has so far refused to meet with President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch.

The White House wanted the New York senator to meet with Gorsuch this week, according to the Washington Post, but Schumer's aides declined saying the senator needed more time to study the judge's record.

This buys Schumer more time as Senate Democrats are in disarray over Trump's pick, who the president introduced at the White House Tuesday night.

While Gorsuch faced no Democratic opposition when he was nominated for the Tenth Circuit by President George W. Bush in 2006, now Democrats don't know what to do about the well-qualified judge.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch is being ushered through the Senate confirmation process by former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican

Sen. Ted Cruz (left), a prominent Capitol Hill Republican, wasted no time in meeting with Donald Trump's choice for the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch (right)

Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch (left) meets with Sen. Bob Corker (right), another Republican on Capitol Hill

Voters from their liberal base, apoplectic over Trump's presidency, are demanding opposition at any cost

But all-out war on a well-qualified nominee could alienate independent voters who will be crucial in next year's midterm elections, when Senate Democrats are defending a daunting 23 seats, including 10 in states Trump won.

Hearing about Schumer and other Democrats' refusal to meet with Gorsuch right away, Carrie Severino, the chief counsel of the Judicial Crisis Network suggested that many of them living in now red states may be booted from their seats in under two years.

'By refusing to meet with Judge Gorsuch, Senate Democratic leadership is taking Washington gridlock and obstruction to a new low and placing Senators McCaskill, Donnelly, Heitkamp, Tester and other Democrats up for re-election in 2018 on the endangered politicians list,' Severino said in a statement, listing off lawmakers from Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Montana.

Also threatening Democrats: the very real possibility that if they do try to block Gorsuch, a conservative 49-year-old federal appeals court judge with sterling credentials, Republicans will use their narrow Senate advantage to unilaterally change the rules and push through his nomination with a simple majority vote, instead of the 60 now required.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham (right) met with Neil Gorsuch (right) at his Washington office today. Republicans are lining up to meet the nominee, Democrats are not

The dynamics offer no clear end game for Democrats, putting them on defense and Republicans on offense for the first time in Trump's presidency.

'It is not easy for any of us,' said Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, noting that in addition to anger over Trump, many Democrats are still smarting over the treatment last year of former President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, who never got a hearing from Republicans as they held the Supreme Court vacancy open for the next president to fill.

'There are a lot of folks in my state and states across the country who are still outraged,' Carper said.

Senate Republicans, who'd been rattled over the rocky start to Trump's presidency, are now girding for a fight on their territory and their terms, one they feel quite confident they will win.

'It feels good to have a candidate that all of us can feel proud of. And I think you'll probably see some Democrats give him the benefit of the doubt,' said GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. 'I think he's a tough person to oppose on the basis of qualifications. I just don't see any opening there.'

Despite Gorsuch's credentials, including experience as a clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy, a number of progressive groups have already announced their opposition.

Among other things they cite his opinions in favor of 'religious liberty' exemptions for private companies that don't want to provide contraception coverage under federal law.

Groups including the Progressive Change Campaign Committee are keeping close track of what Democratic senators are saying about Gorsuch, praising those who've already announced their opposition to him while issuing veiled threats against any who haven't, and swamping phone lines on Capitol Hill.

'Any red state Democrat who thinks that it's smart to be weak in the face of Trump's unconstitutional agenda is lining themselves up for defeat in 2018,' said Adam Green, the PCCC's co-founder.

Green said his group will be pressuring Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., after Coons told reporters that Gorsuch deserved a hearing and a vote in committee.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is up for re-election next year, came under attack after saying over Twitter that any Supreme Court nominee should have a full confirmation hearing and a vote.

She tried to defend herself in subsequent tweets, including one that read: 'Why would anyone think that because I support confirmation hearing &60 vote threshold for SupCt nominee that means I'm folding to Trump?'

Protesters have swarmed Schumer's home in Brooklyn, New York, to demand that he stand strong against Gorsuch and other elements of Trump's agenda.

'People are very very active, very engaged,' said Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., adding that many of his liberal supporters would like to see him come out against Gorsuch now, before he even has a hearing. 'There's certainly a lot of folks that would like that, but I take my job very seriously, which means you have to be thoughtful and collect facts and then make a decision.'

Democrats who've already weighed in against Gorsuch, like Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are doing so without having met with him.

The judge has met with only one Democratic senator so far, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who's seen as the likeliest 'yes' vote in the 48-member Democratic caucus.

Gorsuch will meet on Monday with Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, and hearings in that committee are expected to start in about six weeks.

Schumer has tried to walk a fine line satisfying the liberal base while also giving space to red-state Democrats by insisting that Gorsuch should get 60 votes in the Senate, the level needed to end a filibuster, without specifically threatening a filibuster.

As for the 'nuclear option' of changing Senate rules and eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, McConnell has been noncommittal even as Trump himself has backed the scenario.

The tactic has recent precedent: Democrats themselves, while in the majority in 2013, eliminated the filibuster for all nominees except potential Supreme Court justices. That change is now allowing Trump to get his Cabinet confirmed.

But the very possibility seems to create a no-win scenario for Democrats: lend eight votes to put Gorsuch on the court, infuriating their base; or oppose the judge with a filibuster, potentially angering swing voters and forcing McConnell to 'go nuclear.'
The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, blamed Russia on Thursday for the recent surge of violence in eastern Ukraine and warned sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Moscow returns Crimea to Kiev.

'I consider it unfortunate on the occasion of my first appearance here I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia,' Haley said, making her first public remarks inside the Security Council since being sworn in as the United States' representative to the United Nations last month.

'It shouldn't happen, or be that way. We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.'

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, blamed Russia for the escalating violence in Ukraine during her first appearance inside the Security Council (above)

Her remarks came amid speculation over new U.S. President Donald Trump's intentions towards Moscow. Trump has praised Russia's President Vladimir Putin and expressed a wish for improved relations between the two countries.

Haley made clear that tensions over the Ukraine would not end soon, including the matter of sanctions slapped on Russia related to the annexation of Crimea three years ago.

'Eastern Ukraine of course is not the only part of the country suffering because of Russia's aggressive actions. The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea,' Haley said.

'Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine.'

The former Governor of South Carolina also warned Moscow that sanctions would not be lifted until Crimea was returned to Kiev. She is seen shaking the hands of Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft

Haley (pictured on Wednesday) made clear that tensions over the Ukraine would not end soon, including the matter of sanctions slapped on Russia related to the annexation of Crimea three years ago

The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine and Russia had blamed each other for a surge in fighting in recent days that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line.
COLUMBUS  Five years ago, Brent Melliger was looking for a way to deepen his Catholic faith as a husband and father.

Thats when Dan Keiter, a deacon at St. Bonaventure Catholic Church, came calling.

Keiter was starting a new program to help Catholic men in Columbus become better husbands and fathers. He needed a program director from St. Anthony Catholic Church, Melligers home parish.

It was something I was looking to do, and I wanted to join something similar at that time, Melliger said.

What Keiter, Melliger and the other program directors started is That Man Is You!, a program launched in Houston a decade ago that has spread across the United States and Canada.

According to Paradisus Deis website, paradisusdei.org, That Man Is You! is a mens program focused upon the development of authentic male leadership.

The first three years of the program specifically looked at becoming a better husband, becoming a better father, Melliger said. Last year was kind of a summary of the first three years, and this year, in Year 5, theyve started using some other material and its more of a Bible study."

The group meets each Thursday morning at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 3115 Sixth St. The morning begins with breakfast and social time at 6 a.m. After a brief introduction and announcements by Robert Csukker, a 25- to 30-minute film is shown about a particular topic. The men in attendance then break into smaller groups to discuss what they learned, with the session ending around 7:30 a.m.

Each year is split into two semesters, with each semester lasting 11 or 12 sessions. Melliger said during the fall the group studied the Virgin Mary and this spring is looking at the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church.

Melliger said around 55 to 60 guys are part of the program, but more are welcome, even if they want to join in the middle of the current semester, which began Jan. 26.

The program kind of builds on itself, but still if you start coming during the last half of the session, you would still get something out of it, Melliger said. If you want to learn more about the Catholic Church, more about being a better husband and a better father, come for a session or two and check it out, see if you like, see if it works. Its all about trying to improve.

One of the programs members is Fr. Joe Miksch, the pastor at St. Isidore Catholic Church. Miksch said he finds the program not only educational for the men, but encouraging for him.

Whats so good about the program is that, first of all, its a good lesson in Catholic theology, Miksch said. But secondly, its so edifying to me to see this group of men from all walks of life coming together and being very sincere in learning about their faith, and then listening to their discussions and also from their examples in their daily life, how theyre living their faith. To me its a tremendous program, and I find it a great source of encouragement to me as a priest to see people so interested and willing to take the time to learn more about their faith and put it into practice in their daily lives.

Another program member, Bob Voboril, has been part of the program for four years and found it to be beneficial in his life.

Basically, Im trying to deepen my faith and our religious life that we have in our society, how we can change it if we can, Voboril said. It has to start with each one of us.

Program member Tyler Erickson said it's helped him in his family life.

(Its helped me) realize the role of the family as the domestic church, Erickson said. Its my job to be there for my wife and my kids, to help lead them to God.

Melliger said he feels the program is reaching its goals, not only in Columbus, but across the country. He pointed out that Paradisus Dei is planning to build a new studio so it can produce more programs.

There are 60 guys who show up every week, so its filling a need, Melliger said. Were learning things together, but yet were also building community. We spend a half-hour in small group discussion time where were learning about each other and helping each other get to Heaven.
A highly damaging video has emerged of French Presidential candidate Francois Fillon's British wife Penelope admitting, in 2007: 'I have never actually been his assistant or anything like that.'

Mr Fillon was considered the front-runner to become President this spring but his candidacy has become mired in scandal amid allegations his wife and children had been paid large salaries by French taxpayers despite little evidence of any work.

He faces a strong challenge from the Far-Right Marine Le Pen and increasingly from the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

Earlier this week it emerged Wales-born Mrs Fillon had no identification badge or email address during a decade 'working' as a highly paid parliamentary aide.

Now the Daily Telegraph has unearthed a video interview from 2007 with Mrs Fillon, in which she is asked about how involved she was in her husband's career.

Police have discovered French presidential candidate Francois Fillon's wife, Wales-born Penelope Fillon, had no ID badge or email address during a decade 'working' as a highly paid parliamentary aide

She said she did 'bits and pieces' for her husband, including delivering leaflets during election campaigns.

But then she added: 'I have never actually been his assistant or anything like that. I don't deal with his communication.'

Kim Willsher, the journalist who interviewed Mrs Fillon in 2007, told The Guardian: 'A decade on, this seemingly inoffensive interview  and the key detail of whether she actually worked for her husband  has become a key part of "Penelopegate", a scandal that threatens to destroy the political career of the man who, until just a few weeks ago, was the clear favourite to be Frances next president.'

Ms Willsher said she contacted Mrs Fillon last year for the first time in almost a decade and asked for a fresh interview.

'Until a week ago, I was still hopeful it would happen. But I doubt (Mrs) Fillon will speak to me now. And, though it is not my fault, who could blame her?' she added.

The Fillons were questioned separately this week about why she was paid 700,000 to be his parliamentary assistant.

France's satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine discovered she was employed as her husband's parliamentary assistant from 1988-90 and 1998-2002 and by his successor, Marc Jouland, from 2002-2007. She also worked for Mr Fillon between 2012 and 2013.

Just three months ago in Dijon, the mustard capital of France, Mrs Fillon told reporters she had 'never been involved in the political life of my husband'

It has also emerged the couple had two of their children on the payroll, paying them a total of 82,000 as 'parliamentary assistants' while they were still students.

Police on Tuesday raided the parliamentary offices of Mr Fillon in connection with the fraud enquiry that threatens to destroy his campaign to reach the Elysee Palace.

The couple's lawyer, Antonin Levy, admitted to the Parisien newspaper that Mrs Fillon had no badge or dedicated email address when she was an aide between 1998 and 2007.

'Many parliamentary assistants from the provinces do not have a badge,' Mr Levy claimed, adding that the 'vast majority' of aides did not have dedicated email addresses.

But these claims by Mr Levy were flatly denied by sources at the National Assembly, who said all parliamentary workers had identity cards and email addresses.

Police have raided the parliamentary offices of Penelope Fillon's husband, Francois Fillon in connection with the fraud enquiry that threatens to destroy his campaign for president

The Fillons - both aged 62 - were placed in separate rooms in a Versailles police station on Monday night, as they were questioned about the growing sleaze scandal for more than five hours.

Despite their claims, nobody has any recollection whatsoever of Mrs Fillon having worked in her husband's office.

Other alleged scams include Mrs Fillon pretending she was an editorial consultant to a cultural magazine, so enabling a billionaire friend to funnel thousands more into the couple's account every month.

Fillon, pictured speaking during a debate on Tuesday, and his wife Penelope were both questioned on Monday by police over the growing scandal

Mrs Fillon, a solicitor's daughter from Wales who hopes to become First Lady of France, has not said a word in public since the scandal broke last Wednesday.

Prosecutors have opened an enquiry into embezzlement, misuse of public funds, and concealment.

All of the charges come with maximum prison sentences of between five and 10 years for those found guilty.

Three months ago in Dijon, the mustard capital of France, Mrs Fillon told reporters she had 'never been involved in the political life of my husband.'

As the time, even Mr Fillon told a TV interviewer his wife did nothing except for attend functions with him, and hand out leaflets.

Mrs Fillon, who is a devout Roman Catholic, was born and brought up near Abergavenny in south Wales.
Tavis Crane, 23, was shot dead by police in Arlington, Texas, after he ran over a cop - twice during a traffic stop

A 23-year-old man was shot dead by police after he reportedly ran over a female officer twice during a traffic stop.

The cop, who has not been named, pulled over Tavis Crane shortly before midnight on Wednesday in the 1700 block of Spring Lake Drive in Arlington, Texas.

Crane had several warrants out for his arrest for felony evading arrest and a probation violation.

She called for backup and got out to make an arrest when Crane put his foot on the gas and drove at her.

He struck the veteran officer, slamming into her own patrol vehicle, before running over her again as he attempted to flee.

The cop was pulled to safety by her colleagues and rushed to hospital in a serious condition.

As Crane tried to escape, other officers fired hitting and killing Crane. Two adults and a toddler, who were also in the car, were not hurt.

'The driver made a decision and reversed and struck an officer, actually ran over one of our officers and struck that officer's patrol vehicle.

The cop, who has not been named, pulled over Tavis Crane shortly before midnight on Wednesday in the 1700 block of Spring Lake Drive in Arlington, Texas (cops at the scene)

She called for backup and got out to make an arrest when Crane threw the car in reverse. He struck the veteran officer, slamming into her own patrol vehicle, before running over her again as he attempted to flee (pictured are officers at the scene

As Crane tried to escape, other officers fired hitting and killing Crane. Two adults and a toddler, who were also in the car, were not hurt

'While this is going on, another officer is having a struggle trying to get the driver to stop,' said Lt. Chris Cook with the Arlington Police Department.

The officer who shot the suspect has been placed on routine administrative leave, police said.

Crane has been arrested on multiple occasions since 2011 from drugs offences to aggravated assault.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi twice called President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon a 'white supremacist' during her weekly Capitol Hill press conference today.

'What's making America less safe is to have a white supremacist named to the National Security Council as a permanent member, while the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence are told, "Donald call us, we'll call you,"' the Democratic leader said.

Pelosi was referring to Trump's reshuffling of the 'principals committee' of the NSC, adding Bannon, the former head of right-wing news site Breitbart, a permanent seat at the table, while seemingly diminishing the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence.

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Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi (left) twice called President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon (right) a 'white supremacist' today

The White House has since called out media organizations for 'a lot of misreporting' on this particular executive order, with White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer calling the claims that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director of national intelligence were demoted 'utter nonsense.'

He explained during Monday's press briefing that 'they are at every NSC meeting and are welcome to attend every principles meeting as well.'

But the administration didn't want to burden, for instance, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, with an additional meeting on something outside his scope, Spicer explained.

On Bannon, the White House has defended the move by pointing to the fact that President Barack Obama's adviser David Axelrod would sometimes sit in.

Both Bannon and Axelrod are political strategists, not national security experts.

The White House's pushback didn't stop Pelosi from expressing her disgust today.

'It's a stunning thing that a white supremacist, Bannon, would be a permanent member of the National Security Council and dismissing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the director ... of national intelligence as permanent members,' Pelosi said again, at first butchering the title of the second official.

Pelosi wasn't the first prominent Democrat to link Bannon, through his ties to Breitbart, to white supremacy.

Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi wasn't buying the White House's comments that the reshuffling of the National Security Council didn't signal a demotion of two prominent members

Pelosi is not the first prominent Democrat to link Bannon, through his ties to Breitbart, to white supremacy

Bannon, tapped by Trump in August, to lead his presidential campaign, had told Mother Jones a month before, that Breitbart was 'the platform of the alt-right.'

In August, Trump's rival Hillary Clinton gave a speech in Reno, Nevada defining the alt-right as just a new term for white nationalism.

'The names may have changed ... Racists now call themselves "racialists." White supremacists now call themselves "white nationalists." The paranoid fringe now calls itself "alt-right,"' she said.

'But the hate burns just as brights,' she added.

Bannon was also featured in a Clinton campaign attack ad, which also featured imagery of the KKK.

At the time, team Trump fought back, with a campaign surrogate calling the video 'repulsive' and 'revolting.'

A week after the election, Breitbart News Network threatened to sue a 'major media company' for calling it a 'white nationalist website.'

There's no evidence that the media company took legal action after the initial threat.
Tamron Hall is breaking her silence and speaking out for the first time since quitting NBC in a video posted on her Twitter account Thursday afternoon.

In the video, a camera ready Hall takes some time to thank fans for their support and also shares what she has been up to since walking away after a storied 10-year career as a host on both NBC and MSNBC.

'OK, what have I been doing all day today?' says Hall at the beginning of the video, which she filmed inside her walk-in closet while outfitted in some designer pajamas.

'First of all, thank you guys so much for all your sweet social media messages. Its meant so much to me.'

A smiling and energetic Hall, 47, then reveals that she has spent the first two days of her unexpected time off from work doing a task dreaded by many - cleaning her closet.

Hall's decision to rid herself of some of her excess designer shoes and clothing comes just one day after news broke that despite a contract offering her millions, Hall had chosen to pass on staying at NBC after they informed her last Friday that her Today time slot would be going to incoming host Megyn Kelly later this year.

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Cleaning out her closet: Tamron Hall posted a video on her Twitter account Thursday (above) thanking fans for their support after she quit her job at NBC

Tickled pink: She revealed that has been busy cleaning her closet and gives viewers a peek of the designer shoes (left) and old work clothes (right) she is donating to Housing Works

Busy bee: The 47-year-old hosted the third hour of Today (above), MSNBC Live and Deadline: Crime on Investigation Discovery

Among the items being purged from Hall's immaculate looking closet were Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin shoes and even some dresses that might be familiar to Today viewers.

Her loss is soon to be someone else's gain however as she explains in the video that she will be handing off the bags full of designer duds she is riding herself of to Housing Works, a non-profit that operates a number of thrift stores in New York City.

The money made by the organization goes to help those living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.

'Ive got work clothes. Ive got party clothes. I have packed up a mother lode, heading to Housing Works to donate all these things,' says Hall, standing in front of three very large and very stuffed bags.

'Hopefully, you will support them. Its an amazing organization.'

Hall then signed off with a wave and a kiss, and wrote when posting the video: 'Today was a good day!!! Thank y'all so much. #tamcam'

This is not the first time Hall has documented how fabulous her day has been since her exit from Today, with the popular host also posting to Instagram and Snapchat on Tuesday after taping her final show.

She started off the day by posting a photograph of herself with Harry Connick Jr. and Keke Pamer on Instagram, which she snapped during her fianl hour behin the Today anchor desk.

'Thank you #kekepalmer and #harryconnickjr for making this morning so fun. The gag is ... @alroker was just a few steps away but missed out on this picture lol,' wrote Hall.

From there she headed over to Bergdorf Goodman for a Dolce & Gabbana event, and took some time to pose with the Adonis-like cater waiters who were on hand to tend to the needs of the fashionable crowd.

Then, to cap off what was no doubt a very bittersweet day, Hall posted a video on Snapchat of her and a few girlfriends sitting in the back of a car and singing along to The Four Seasons classic 'Who Loves You.'

Hall wrote: 'Who's gonna love you. Me!! And these crazy girls.'

Final look: Hall posted a photograph of herself with Harry Connick Jr. and Keke Pamer on Instagram Tuesday, which was snapped during her final Today appearance (above)

Fashionable lunch: After the show on Tuesday Hall headed over to Bergdorf Goodman for a Dolce & Gabbana event, and took some time to pose with the Adonis-like cater waiters

Party time: Hall and few girlfriends ended Tuesday by singing along to The Four Seasons classic 'Who Loves You'

Another person who very much loves Hall it appears is her co-host Al Roker, who paid tribute to his partner in crime while hosting their show without her on Thursday

'As some of you may have heard by now, our good friend Tamron Hall has decided to leave NBC News, ' said Roker.

'Personally, Tamron has been not just a co-host here on Todays Take for the past three years but a good friend. And not just to me, to all of us here.'

Roker then added: 'We want to wish her nothing but the best, much continued success and cannot wait to see what her next chapter is.'

Sheinelle Jones, the host of Weekend Today and MNBC Live who was filling in on Thursday, then added: 'Shes going to rock it, no matter what she does.'

Roker also wrote on Twitter last week that the show has been the top-rated morning news program in its time slot for seven straight weeks.

In a statement on Wednesday, NBC hailed Hall as an 'exceptional journalist' while stressing that it was her decision to walk away.

'We are disappointed that she has chosen to leave, but we wish her all the best,' said the network.

A source familiar with the discussions between Hall and the NBC told DailyMail.com: 'NBC News very much wanted Tamron to stay, she was offered a multi-million dollar/multi-year contract and she chose to go.

It takes two: 'Personally, Tamron has been not just a co-host here on Todays Take for the past three years but a good friend. And not just to me, to all of us here,' said Roker (above with Hall in 2016) on Thursday

New kid on the block: Hall's decision came after she was informed that she and Al Roker were being taken off the third hour of Today and replaced by Megyn Kelly

Backlash: 'Not a good way to start Black History Month @ NBC letting @TamronHall go. Who's next.... @AlRoker?' wrote one Twitter user

Hall has long been one of the hardest working personalities on the network, and in the past two months had filled in for both Savannah Guthrie on Today and Lester Holt on NBC World News Tonight while also anchoring the third hour of Today.

On one day in December she filled in for both Guthrie and Hall while also hosting MSNBC Live.

She also hosted Deadline: Crime on Investigation Discovery and Dateline Extra on MSNBC, as well as lending her on-air talents to NBC's coverage of the Westminster Dog Show.

Roker will now anchor the third hour of Today until the show debuts their new morning lineup this fall.

Unlike Hall however, the meteorologist already had a steady gig on Today, and will continue to appear on the program's first two hours when Kelly arrives on the scene.

The news of Hall's departure also caused outrage among many on social media.

That is due in large part to the fact that Hall and Roker, two African-Americans, are being moved out of the time slot to bring in Kelly, a white woman.

'Not a good way to start Black History Month @ NBC letting @TamronHall go. Who's next.... @AlRoker?' wrote one woman on Twitter.

Many on Twitter had that same thought, with some also going after Kelly in their comments, who was called everything from a 'racist apologist' to 'the racist "santa is white" b****.'

And one man wrote: 'NBC purging black faces. If they had any clue, @TamronHall would be co-hosting Today.'

There is still no word on where Hall may be heading next, and how long she might have to stay off the air due to any non-compete clauses in her NBC contract.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Black Journalists has requested a meeting with NBC to discuss the 'whitewashing' of the network.
An animal-loving woman spent five days recovering in hospital after she was savaged by her cat while trying to break up a fight.

The bite wounds became so infected that she had to undergo surgery, owner Kacey-Karen Mahon, from Mt Eliza in Victoria, told Daily Mail Australia.

Mrs Mahon's hand was left completely shredded after she tried to calm down her cat Smoochie, who had been 'bopped' on the head by her foster cat, Ralph.

Biting the hand that feeds: An animal-loving woman spent five days recovering in hospital after she was bitten while trying to break up a cat fight

Smoochie, pictured left, bit Kacey-Karen Mahon's hand after she tried to calm the cat down. The kitty was upset after a fight with a new foster cat, Ralph. Right, Mrs Mahon's swollen finger

Ralph, a foster cat that was recently welcomed into Mrs Mahon's home, is pictured relaxing

Smoochie, who was described as a timid female who tends to shy away from brawls, became upset and wouldn't calm down, Mrs Mahon said.

When Mrs Mahon tried to keep Smoochie from running away, the cat chomped down on her right hand, she said.

'Like a chipmunk chowing down on a nice length of corn cob,' she described the bite to the Mornington Peninsula Leader, which first reported the story.

'I should have listened to Smoochie. She was growling and crying, trying to get away,' Mrs Mahon told Daily Mail Australia.

'I will listen next time. If she's scared, she means it.'

Mrs Mahon's hand bled 'quite a lot' after the bite, she said. But it wasn't until later that night that the injury really began to sting.

'At 2.30 in the morning it was quite hot and throbbing. So I went down to the local hospital and got antibiotics, and was sent home.'

Mrs Mahon's hand bled 'quite a lot' after the bite, she said. But it wasn't until later that night that the injury really began to sting

Mrs Mahon, of Mt Eliza, Victoria, said she spent five days in hospital after her cat Smoochie bit her hand

Kacey-Karen Mahon's hand was bitten by her cat Smoochie

'By the next morning, I couldn't handle it anymore. My hand was blowing up, it felt like it was going to explode.'

After a visit to another doctor, Mrs Mahon was promptly sent to the operating room where a surgeon removed infected tissue in her hand.

Mrs Mahon said she ended up staying in hospital for five days.

'The nurses told me they see people with cat bites three times a week. Apparently cat bites and human bites are the worst,' she said.

But Mrs Mahon has no ill feelings towards her pets, and said she plans to make the foster cat Ralph a permanent member of her household - which includes her husband, Smoochie the cat, fellow kitties Sox and Fluffy, a dog and some cockatoos.

The self-described 'cat lady' said she learned her lesson, however. Apart from paying attention when her cats are trying to communicate, she said she will be more careful with wild animals as well.

'I always go up to animals - I'll hug a possum. If I see a possum I might go up and give him a chocolate chip cookie. But now I'll be more cautious.'

Another one of Mrs Mahon's cats, Fluffy, is pictured snoozing on a pink bed
A California man is facing charges after he allegedly ran over his girlfriend with his car during a fight this week.

San Leandro police said on Wednesday around 11.50pm that authorities 'received several 9-1-1 calls regarding a male and female in a verbal argument in the 400 block of Ruth Court in San Leandro.

'One caller reported that a female had been struck by a vehicle and the vehicle was still on scene.

A man allegedly ran over his girlfriend with his car during a fight in San Leandro, California. Police received a few 911 calls concerning a man and woman having an argument on Ruth Court (pictured)

'San Leandro PD officers arrived on scene to investigate and provide aid, but they discovered an unresponsive female traped [sic] under a vehicle.

'Paramedics responded and pronounced the female dead on scene.'

The female victim's name has yet to be released.

A neighbor told SF Gate: 'I was talking on the phone and I heard someone yell, "Somebody help," but I thought it was coming from the railroad tracks.'

San Leandro police said that information indicates 'there was some sort of domestic dispute that ended with the victim's boyfriend running her over with his car.'

Sgt. Dan Leja told the newspaper that 26-year-old Kevin Velasco was detained on Ruth Court and cooperated with authorities ahead of being arrested.

Suspect Kevin Velasco's being held at Santa Rita Jail, with his arraignment is set to take place on Monday

Authorities arrested Velasco for murder, assault with a deadly weapon, domestic violence, and battery, The East Bay Times reports.

Velasco and his girlfriend lived in the 400 block of Ruth Court, the newspaper reported.

Velasco's being held at Santa Rita Jail, with his arraignment is set to take place on Monday, according to the report.
They were inside her car outside her home in Newtown, Geelong

A woman who stole two wedding dresses from AFL star Tom Hawkins' wife worth $20,000 has been sentenced to 50 hours of community service.

Amanda Bramich, 58, says she stole Emma Hawkins' couture wedding gowns from an abandoned vehicle by railway tracks in North Geelong, a court heard.

Tom Hawkins' car had been taken from outside the couple's Newtown home in March last year - just a day after they tied the knot, however it is not suggested that Bramich was involved in the theft, the Geelong Advertiser reports.

A woman who stole two wedding dresses from AFL star Tom Hawkins' (left) wife Emma (centre) has been sentenced to 50 hours of community service

Amanda Bramich, 58, says she stole Emma Hawkins' (Pictured right with the AFL star) couture wedding gowns from an abandoned vehicle by railway tracks in North Geelong

The stunning bride wore two Sonia Cappellazzo dresses for her wedding, an off-the-shoulder gown with for the ceremony, and a second loose-sleeved frock for the following festivities.

They were in the car waiting to be sent to the dry-cleaners when they were taken, along with the vehicle, in the early hours of the morning.

Media attention surrounding the disappearance of the dresses was brought to the attention of Bramich, who happened upon the Cats player by chance in the carpark outside a bottle shop.

She told Mr Hawkins that she 'possibly had the dresses' and arranged to meet with him later that day to return them, according to the Geelong Advertiser.

She had also asked the AFL player whether there was a reward on offer for the frocks return  there was not.

The athlete and newlywed then contacted police who tracked Bramich's address using her mobile number.

Ms Hawkins was devastated to find her dresses were gone, along with the couple's car, the day after the couple's wedding in March last year

The childhood sweethearts wed in a lavish ceremony on the Bellarine Peninsula, south west of Melbourne

It has been an event year for the newlyweds, who welcomed a baby daughter Arabella Jennifer Hawkins on January 3

Bramich happened upon the Cats player by chance in the carpark outside a bottle shop and approached him about the dresses (Pictured: Mr Hawkins with baby Arabella)

Three months after the dresses were stolen Ms Hawkins posted on social media that they had been found - and that it was a 'long and very strange story'.

'Smiles all around - I have my dresses back!!!!,' the WAG posted to Instagram.

'Long and very strange story, but they are back and I couldn't be happier (although I'm not sure how happy our dry cleaner will be when he gets them)!

'Thank you SO MUCH to the Geelong Police and everyone who kept an eye out for them.

Bramich pleaded guilty in the Geelong Magistrate's Court on Thursday.

She was given a corrections order for 50 hours unpaid work without conviction.

It has been an eventful year for the newlyweds, who welcomed a baby daughter Arabella Jennifer Hawkins on January 3.

The stunning couple pictured with 10-day-old Arabella at a friend's wedding
Samara Tulloch was just a teenager when her mother was shot and killed by her abusive husband in a McDonald's car park.

So the news that another Gold Coast woman, Teresa Bradford, was stabbed to death by her estranged husband on Tuesday hit her particularly hard.

Speaking for the first time about her mother's death in September 2015, the 20-year-old said her mother also endured years of abuse.

Samara Tulloch, now 20, has recalled how her father Steven shot and killed her mother Katrina back in September 2015 after years of abuse

'My dad broke her. He completely ruined her and she turned into this scared, overreacting woman,' she told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

'Mum was very much by herself. Looking back, Dad would overrule her decisions. He was very dominating and they are the little signs people should look for in a marriage.'

Ms Tulloch said her mother was never allowed to see her side of the family, and later in the marriage not even spend time with her friends.

Though she and her two brothers, aged 28 and 18, and their 15-year-old sister watch their dad psychologically abuse Ms Lock, the beatings always happened in private.

Mrs Tulloch said the relationship 'broke' her mother (left), leaving her 'a scared and overreacting woman' before she was killed (Samara pictured far right with her family)

Mrs Tulloch is now married and moved to Tasmania with her husband (pictured)

She said the siblings were out a lot because life at home was 'uncomfortable', and she now wishes they knew enough to stay home and protect her.

Like Ms Bradford, her mother eventually left and moved her family out of town, but a few weeks later agreed to meet him at the Helensvale McDonald's.

They had agreed to sign the divorce papers, but Stephen Lock planned the murder-suicide weeks in advance.

Ms Tulloch now lives in Tasmania with her husband and like the AVO that did nothing to save Ms Bradford, she thinks the system let her mother down.

Ms Lock was shot to death in the car park of the Helensvale McDonald's

Paramedics try to save Mr Lock but he died after killing his estranged wife

She laughs at suggestion battered women can easily up and leave, as her mother tried for months but Mr Lock always 'found ways to weasel his way back'.

Ms Tulloch said her mother was so scared of her husband she told no one about the abuse, even her children, and deleted all her text messages in case he saw them.

'If you think something's happening, just try to get them to talk. Mum wouldn't talk to anyone. Her whole life had been filled with mental abuse so she didn't know who to trust,' she said.
Millions of patients are being left in the hands of nurses and paramedics out-of-hours instead of GPs, an investigation has found.

A tenth of health trusts admitted they were unable to find GPs for overnight or weekend shifts on at least one occasion last year.

They cover a population of about four million but the true figure is likely to be even higher because some areas did not supply figures.

The revelation will fuel concerns that problems in the GP system are adding to the pressure on A&E departments.

A tenth of health trusts, which cover a population of about four million, admitted they were unable to find GPs for overnight or weekend shifts on at least one occasion last year

Managers in Tower Hamlets, east London, admitted a quarter of a million patients had been left without a doctor on 12 separate occasions during 2016.

Patients were told to contact the community night team which is staffed by nurses or paramedics, or go to the nearest A&E.

In Peterborough the population of 237,000 was left without a GP out of hours on nine occasions. Each time, parents with sick children were told to go straight to A&E.

The shortage has come about as a result of a disastrous contract negotiated for GPs in 2004 that allowed them to opt-out of evening and weekend work.

Patients were told to contact the community night team which is staffed by nurses or paramedics, or go to the nearest A&E, which could fuel concerns over the increased pressure on A&E departments

These problems have intensified due to a steep rise in GPs insurance fees, which they have to pay before working out of hours.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairman of the Royal College of GPs, urged the Government to make out-of-hours work more attractive.

She said: More must be done to address the serious barriers that serve to make working out of hours an unattractive option for GPs. It isnt just the unsociable hours, but the indemnity costs to work out-of-hours simply make it unviable in many cases.

Freedom of Information requests by health magazine Pulse received replies from the majority of health trusts responsible for out-of-hours services. It found ten of the 104 trusts which replied were unable to fund a GP at least once in 2016.
LINCOLN  At all the doors she knocked on while campaigning in Lincoln's District 27, and among all the people she talked to, Sen. Anna Wishart never heard a negative comment about medical cannabis.

Her opponent in the campaign, Dick Clark, recalled district residents as he walked door-to-door bringing up to him the importance of having the drug available in the state.

"And that's me coming to the door with, 'Hey, I think your taxes are too high and they're taxing too fast and spending it too fast.'" Clark said. "Not exactly the come-on where anyone would think, 'OK this is the pro-medical marijuana legalization guy.'"

Clark, a registered Republican with libertarian leanings, and Wishart, a Democrat, had great differences then. But now that Wishart is in the Legislature, they have found a common issue to support, a bill (LB622) that would legalize medical cannabis.

When Clark heard about the bill, he sent Wishart a message via Facebook, thanking her for introducing it.

"I was showing my parents and everybody, and I was, like, 'this is the coolest thing ever,'" she said.

The bill has importance to Clark because of the positive effects of medical cannabis for his younger brother, Trevor.

He's a little nervous about telling his brother's story -- outing him as he called it -- even though Trevor lives in a state where it's legal. His hesitancy is because the drug is not legal in the eyes of the federal government, and no one is quite sure what might happen next in Washington.

Trevor Clark was diagnosed with diabetes as a child in Louisiana and Alabama. His case was severe, with his blood sugars bouncing all over the place and around 15 hospital admissions. High blood sugar damaged nerves in his body.

If that wasn't bad enough, a car wreck when he was 17 gave him multiple spine fractures, and a full body cast.

At the height of his illness and injuries, Trevor Clark spent several years in bed with intense pain, taking 11 hardcore narcotic painkillers, in addition to his diabetes medications. The drugs included opioids, such as fentanyl patches, morphine and methadone.

He was so doped, his brother said, it was hard to even engage him.

"The doctors said, 'Well, you know, we can keep this course for awhile, but in about 15 years we're probably going to be looking at liver failure for you because that's what happens with chronic opioid use,'" Dick Clark said. "For an 18-year-old kid, that's a pretty hopeless feeling."

When a doctor suggested he research herbal medicine and cannabis, even though the doctor couldn't recommend it, he finally found a way to improve his health.

His life changed quickly. He went back to school in a state where medical cannabis was legal. His health improved to the point where he eventually paddled 600 miles continuously in a canoe on an Alabama scenic river trail.

"That's not just a sort of marginal change," Dick Clark said. "That's a life change. And it's made a real difference."

He's 32 and has been off opioids for years. He now works as a product development director at a medical cannabis company in Colorado.

It's immoral to prevent patients from accessing medicine a doctor believes would work for them, Dick Clark said.

"We have to allow people to have hope in their treatment," he said.

Wishart's bill is similar to one introduced last session by former Sen. Tommy Garrett. It would allow any mixture or preparation from the cannabis plant to be administered to a qualified patient as a liquid or oil, vaporized or in solid form. Smoking it would not be legal.

Only certain medical conditions would qualify. And only a health care provider certified under the medical cannabis act could diagnose a patient for use of the drug. A patient registry would be part of the law.

The Department of Health and Human Services would have oversight, and a medical cannabis board would advise on rules and regulations.

Nine senators have signed on to the bill, including five on the Judiciary Committee where the bill will be heard. Wishart's office has met with many of last year's opponents to talk about objections and provide information.

She is glad to have Clark's support. A lot of people in the Legislature have a deep respect for him, Wishart said.

"To be able to come back together and work on an issue, that means a lot to me," she said.

The bill will also have the support of many of the families with ill children who have worked hard in the past with Garrett on his medical cannabis bill (LB643). It was filibustered on the second round of debate last session and went down when it received only 30 of 33 needed votes.

Shari Lawlor, whose daughter Brooke, 24, has severe epilepsy, continues to be a supporter of the bill. She and Josie Kranz, on the board of Nebraska Families 4 Medical Cannabis, say they will wait and watch to see how the bill does this session.

If it doesn't pass, the group must make a decision on whether to step fully into an initiative petition drive to get the issue on the statewide ballot. They speculate it could cost about $1 million.

"Why go through all that if they're going to finally come around like the other 28 states have, and give some of these people a chance at a better quality of life?" Lawlor said.

The Judiciary Committee advanced a bill (LB167) on Friday that would reclassify the drug cannabidiol, which is being researched in Nebraska for several types of epilepsy. Currently, cannabidiol in any form is a controlled substance with no approved medical use, and possession and its distribution and sale is a criminal act in Nebraska.

Cannabidiol is extracted from the Cannabis sativa plant and is distinct from the cannabinoid that is responsible for the drug-related high.

Epidiolex, the drug product used in the research, is a plant-based pharmaceutical formulation of pure cannabidiol, according to the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

The research has started and UNMC is in the final stages of recruiting about 25 patients, said spokesman Tom O'Connor. Doctors say studies are accumulating data that so far have shown no major side effects from the drug.
Yevgeniu Savenok (pictured) pleaded guilty to the brutal murder of his pregnant wife and their unborn son Lyuba Thursday morning

A father-of-two has admitted to stabbing his pregnant wife to death after months of violent abuse.

Yevgeniu Savenok pleaded guilty to the brutal slaying of wife Lyuba and their unborn son on Thursday morning.

The murder took place at the couple's home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, in May of 2016, reported Fox 9.

Savenok pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, and will likely serve 65 years in prison.

In exchange for his plea, prosecutors gave up a first-degree murder charge that would result in a life sentence.

Members of the Eden Prarie Police department were in court to hear his plea, and many described this case as one of the most brutal they had ever investigated.

The horrific attack took place Saturday, May 14, when Savenok stormed into the family home, allegedly grabbing a kitchen knife and stabbing his wife seven or eight times before fleeing with his children, according to court records.

The couple also had two other children (pictured), who are currently staying with family. The murder took place at the couple's home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, in May of 2016, in front of the two children

Lyuba Savenok died at the scene, and their unborn sun passed away 10 minutes after an emergency C-section attempting to save his life, reported Fox.

Around 1pm the day of the murder, Savenok walked into United Hospital in St Paul with the couple's children and admitted to a security guard that he had killed his wife.

In an interview with investigators, he said 'I stabbed my wife', and said that on a return trip from Chicago the night before the murder that he knew she was pregnant and had thought about using a knife to kill her.

Court records show that Savenok had a history of beating his wife, who had an active protective order against him when she was killed, reported Fox.

Court records show that Savenok had a history of beating his wife, who had an active protective order against him when she was killed, reported Fox. She ordered a protection against her husband in Wheaton, Illinois, where the family lived for a time

In an interview with investigators, he said 'I stabbed my wife', and said that on a return trip from Chicago the night before the murder that he knew she was pregnant and had thought about using a knife to kill her

She ordered a protection against her husband in Wheaton, Illinois, where the family lived for a time.

The order listed a series of incidents during August of 2014. She told police that he hit her repeatedly, leaving bruises and a bloody nose, pulled her hair, and took freedoms away from her such as her phone and ID.

A statement from August 27, 2014 said: 'With the increase of incidents and severity of them, I've gotten his parents and my parents involved, as well as our church.'

The order listed a series of incidents during August of 2014. She told police that he hit her repeatedly, leaving bruises and a bloody nose, pulled her hair, and took freedoms away from her such as her phone or ID. At some point before the murder, Savenok allowed her husband to move back in, reported Fox

At some point before the murder, Savenok allowed her husband to move back in, reported Fox.

Her family was shocked and shattered by the incident. They released a statement that said: 'It's hard for us once again to hear the details of Lyuba's senseless murder. Her family, friends and loved ones feel deep sadness, loss and anger.

'It has been especially difficult to learn that her son survived for a small time after the doctors tried to save him. Lyuba was going to name him Ellis.'

A GoFundMe has raised $70,000 to help with funeral expenses and funds for the two young children, who are staying with family, according to Fox.
Like the lookout on the Titanic spotting an iceberg, the Commons public accounts committee has issued a warning over the cost of health tourism that is draining the NHS and causing chaos for British patients.

But the thing about icebergs is, you only ever see the tip of the looming disaster. Theres much worse, unseen, beneath.

I believe MPs fail to grasp the severity of the problem, even as overseas patients rack up costs amounting to billions every year. An urgent solution is needed to save us from catastrophe  and I think that part of this solution exists in the foreign aid budget.

It is natural to feel compassion for Priscilla (pictured), who gave birth to quadruplets at Queen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital last year. Two of the premature infants have since died

For years, I have been highlighting the growing crisis of health tourism both in the media and to NHS officials  all the way up to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

It gives me no pleasure to see headlines that prove me right. I would far rather the problem had been dealt with in 2013, when I first blew the whistle in the Daily Mail.

The latest scandal concerns a Nigerian, identified only as Priscilla, who gave birth to quadruplets at Queen Charlottes and Chelsea Hospital, West London, last November.

Her story was featured on BBC Twos documentary series Hospital this week.

It is natural to feel compassion for Priscilla. One of her babies died shortly after birth, while another survived only until last weekend. The other two infants, Elijah and Esther, are in the neonatal intensive care unit.

They were born three months premature, and the cost of treating them has already topped 500,000.

The cost of caring for premature infants is extremely expensive. Priscilla's quadruplets cost the NHS around 500,000

If this were an isolated case, it would have no bearing on broader NHS policy. But it is far from unusual. There have been multiple cases of pregnant Nigerians seeking NHS care highlighted in the Mail in recent years.

In one instance, a woman flew from Lagos to give birth to premature quintuplets at Homerton Hospital, East London, in 2011. Costs reached 145,000, money the NHS failed to recuperate.

In another, a mother who had a caesarean at Luton and Dunstable University Hospital, Bedfordshire, last year gave birth to twins who spent two months in intensive care, at a cost of 350,000.

Shocking practices deliberately used by some IVF fertility clinics in Nigeria make this situation more frequent.

In the UK, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority ensures that only two eggs can be implanted during each cycle of IVF treatment. If both eggs develop into foetuses, the woman will carry twins.

More usually, one of the eggs will fail. Sometimes both will. Its difficult and tiring, and places an emotional strain on couples, but it is undoubtedly the most responsible way to carry out treatment.

In Nigeria, standards are very different. Private fertility clinics compete to boast of the best conception rates, and some will implant multiple eggs in each cycle.

Cases of triplets and quads are not uncommon as a result, and they are almost always born premature  sometimes by as many as three months or more.

And since intensive care for premature babies is either unavailable or hugely expensive in Nigeria, these women fly to Britain for treatment on the NHS.

This is what a number of Nigerian IVF merchants advise them to do, as late in term as they can manage. They come on a visitors visa  almost like a package holiday.

Once here, they know no airline will risk flying them back to Nigeria so close to their delivery date. And the NHS has to treat them  as all pregnancies are treated as priority cases, like infectious diseases (but unlike hip operations).

Because the NHS is so disorganised, without effective communication between hospitals, its impossible to know the full scope of this.

Priscilla cannot pay the bill for her babies' care. But the cost could be recovered by deducting money from the 380million Britain gives Nigeria in aid every year

We do know that at just one hospital last year  St Georges in South-West London  1,783 women from overseas gave birth. And that about 50 per cent of them were later found to be ineligible for free NHS care.

The hospital has admitted it was probably targeted for being an easy touch, because it did not carry out robust eligibility tests. What we dont know is how many of those women had multiple births . . . or were from Nigeria.

Priscilla openly admits she cannot pay her bill of 500,000, and rising. But that is no reason for the Department of Health to write it off. Nigeria currently receives 380million in UK foreign aid.

We should calculate the burden on NHS budgets from its nationals  in particular the pregnant women who travel here for free neonatal care  and deduct it.

This would make a sizeable hole in the aid package.

We should also consider freezing that aid altogether, unless the problem of reckless private IVF clinics in Nigeria is addressed.

If we do not, there will be many more tragic cases like Priscillas, and they will rob the NHS of badly needed funds.

But this is just one way that health tourism is draining our resources. Yesterday, a colleague at a major London hospital told me of another scam, which he is seeing more and more: identity fraud.

Patients from India and Pakistan are flying to Britain and turning up at hospitals. They arm themselves with false names and addresses, often of a relative.

Unless they are challenged by a doctor who knows the real individual personally, which is highly unlikely, the scam is undetectable.

Priscilla was from Nigeria but many of the worst health tourists are from India and Pakistan and often use the names of friends or relatives who are British citizens

My colleague frequently suspects fraud, but can do nothing about it.

The problem is made worse because GPs move around so much now, and are often replaced by locums. The days when everyone knew their doctor are long gone.

Again, the solution might be easier than it seems at first sight. At one health trust in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, simple checks have been brought in. Patients must show a passport and utility bill as proof of identity.

This would be normal procedure if they were taking out a loan or opening a bank account: it doesnt seem unreasonable to ask the same for free medical care.

The method doesnt catch the identity fraudsters. It just deters them. Without an address on a letter, let alone a passport, they cant claim health care  and melt away. This simple safeguard has been so effective that Peterborough is operating under budget, a notable achievement within the NHS.

I am not proposing that only UK passport-holders should be entitled to NHS treatment. Many British people dont have a passport, especially older residents who prefer staying at home to foreign travel.

Every hospital employs Overseas Visitors Officers, or OVOs, whose job it is to identify patients from abroad who are  and who are not  entitled to NHS care.

It would hardly increase their workload if they spent a minute with each older UK patient who didnt have a passport. A quick chat would soon establish which were the bona fide Brits.

And I am not proposing that these checks should ever be applied to emergency patients. This is a compassionate country, and we look after anyone who needs urgent care.

Unlike many nations, such as the US and Australia, where the means to pay is paramount, British doctors will never suspend emergency treatment to beset patients with financial questions.

But compassion all too easily falls victim to corruption. If we do not crack down on the fraudsters and health tourists making a mockery of the NHS, we will all pay the price.

J. MEIRION THOMAS is a cancer specialist and former consultant surgeon in the NHS.
In a stunning departure from President Donald Trump's close hug of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House announced Thursday that new settlement construction and expansion of existing West Bank settlements might be unhelpful for peace.

New and expanded settlements 'may not be' in the interest of peace, the White House said  echoing in a weaker form the Obama administration's strong admonitions against new settlement construction.

'The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal,' according to the White House.

In a surprise shift, the White House said 'the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful' to achieving peace

'As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region,' the statement continued.

Then, the statement hedged, saying, 'The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.'

The Netanyahu government has announced the construction of 5,500 new settlement units just during Trump's first days in office.

A senior administration official went further, telling the Jerusalem Post: 'As President Trump has made clear, he is very interested in reaching a deal that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is currently exploring the best means of making progress toward that goal.'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has announced the construction of 5,500 settlement units during Trump's first days in office

'UNHELPFUL': New settlements may make it harder to reach a peace deal, the White House argued

Dealmaker: Trump has said his son-in-law Jared Kushner would be tasked with working on Middle East peace. His family foundation has donated to Israeli settlements

A general view taken on February 2, 2017 shows Ramat Shlomo (top), a Jewish settlement in the mainly Palestinian eastern sector of Jerusalem and the Palestinian neighbourhood of Shuafat

'With that in mind, we urge all parties to refrain from taking unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress, including settlement announcements.'

'The administration needs to have the chance to fully consult with all parties on the way forward,' the official concluded.

STATEMENT BY WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY SEAN SPICER 'The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years. While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal. 'As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.' Advertisement

Trump has said he would like to bring peace to the region, and has said he would task son-in-law Jared Kushner with negotiating.

Netanyahu restated his longstanding support for settlements during a visit to the Ariel settlement Thursday.

Many U.S. diplomats, including top Obama officials, believed the expansion of settlements harmed peace efforts by inflaming Palestinians and taking away remaining slivers of land that would serve as an eventual Palestinian state in a two-state solution to the long-running conflict.

Dennis Ross, a longtime U.S. expert in the region, told the paper the message might be designed to 'chill some of the exuberance of those on the Israeli Right who think they have a blank check.'

Israel announced construction of another 2,500 settlement units in Trump's first week alone.

In a speech to AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby in March, Trump blasted President Obama for what he called 'moral equivalency' that equated Israel and the Palestinians.

'There is no moral equivalency. Israel does not name public squares after terrorists. Israel does not pay its children to stab random Palestinians,' Trump said.

'You see, what President Obama gets wrong about deal-making is that he constantly applies pressure to our friends and rewards our enemies.'
A mother narrowly escaped death after 14 bullets sprayed her home in a drive-by shooting in western Sydney early Friday morning.

The woman was forced to hide behind her sofa when the front of her home at Rooty Hill, in Western Sydney, was sprayed with 14 bullets believed to have been fired from a car that then sped from the scene.

The shooting is believed to be linked to the Rebels bikie gang, reported The Daily Telegraph.

Scroll down for video

A Sydney woman was left terrified after her home was sprayed with 14 bullets

Police investigate some of the evidence from the drive-by shooting in Rooty Hill

Windows were shattered at the front of the home with the ceiling also littered with bullet holes.

Police were seen examining what were believed to be bullet cases on the street after the shooting.

The neighbours next door were frightened for their four-year-old boy who was sleeping only metres away from some of the bullet holes that peppered the Bainbridge Crescent home.

The Daily Telegraph claims the bedroom belonged to Rishaad Christian, who was shot three times at the clubhouse of the Rebels Mt Druitt chapter in 2014, but survived

'We were asleep and we just heard gunshots, there were about 14 bullet holes, there were bullet holes all through the lounge room and the bedroom,' a neighbour told The Daily Telegraph.

'I heard a bang, bang, bang bang. I'll never forget the sounds, can you imagine how scary it was,' she said.

The publication claims the bedroom belonged to Rishaad Christian, who was shot three times at the clubhouse of the Rebels Mt Druitt chapter in 2014.

Mr Christian, then 33, attempted to flee before he was allegedly shot and beaten by three men on Grex Avenue, Minchinbury.

He survived the attack back in 2014 and it is believed Mr Christian only occasionally lives in the home.
Cambridge University now has fewer privately educated students than universities such as Bristol, Durham and St Andrews, new figures reveal.

Despite being one of the UK's most elite universities, it now has only the ninth most privately educated intake, according to entry statistics by the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

Among mainstream universities, Oxford has the fewest state school pupils followed by St Andrews, Durham and Bristol.

It comes amid a government drive to encourage top universities to take more pupils from state schools and poorer backgrounds.

Despite being one of the UK's most elite universities, Cambridge (pictured) now has only the ninth most privately educated intake

In her maiden speech as Prime Minister, Theresa May spoke of the injustice of white working class boys being the least likely group to go to university.

The government has said universities must be more transparent with their data so that those not recruiting a diverse range of students can be 'named and shamed'.

Dr Sam Lucy, Cambridge's director of admissions, said her university was a 'diverse place and nothing like the rumours or typical media stories'.

She told the BBC: 'Myths persist, but staff and students are breaking through them.'

She said the proportion of state sector entrants at Cambridge had risen from 54 per cent to about 62 per cent in a decade.

The figures reveal there are now more state-educated pupils at Cambridge - 61.9 per cent - than Bristol, with 61.4 per cent.

In response, the University of Bristol has already announced far-reaching plans to assist applicants from poorer backgrounds or who have been at underachieving schools.

Bristol will make offers two grades lower than the standard offer for applicants who have been at schools in the lowest-achieving 40 per cent for A-level results.

The university's pro vice-chancellor, Prof Judith Squires, said its outreach efforts are already making a 'hugely encouraging' impact, with the state school intake for this year rising to 64.7 per cent.

The overall UK figures, for young, full-time entrants in 2015-16, show a new high watermark for the state school university intake - nudging upwards from 89.8 per cent to 89.9 per cent.

Oxford University (pictured) has the fewest state school pupils followed by St Andrews, Durham and Bristol

It shows a slow, steady rise of state pupils, up from 87.4 per cent a decade before.

But many of the most competitive universities still have high levels of privately educated students.

These include specialist institutions such as the Royal Agricultural University and the Royal Academy of Music - both of which have less than half of their students from state schools.

Oxford University has 55.7 per cent of pupils from state schools - although these figures do not include the most recent intake from autumn 2016, which saw an increase.

St Andrews has 56.7 per cent of state pupils and Durham 60.5 per cent.

In contrast, Liverpool Hope and the University of Bolton had more than 99 per cent of their intakes from state schools.

Independent schools teach around 6.5 per cent pupils in the UK, but the proportion rises to about 18 per cent over the age of 16, according to the Independent Schools Council.
Soldiers hounded by disgraced lawyer Phil Shiner called last night for him to be jailed after he was struck off at a disciplinary hearing.

In a spectacular fall from grace, the former solicitor of the year was found guilty of professional misconduct for his role in drumming up cases against British troops.

Mr Shiner, who made his name suing the Government at taxpayers expense, was found to have been repeatedly dishonest in falsely accusing soldiers of war crimes.

Soldiers have called for disgraced lawyer Phil Shiner, left and right, to face the courts after he was struck off as a solicitor over false claims of war crimes against British troops

As he was removed from the roll of solicitors and ordered to pay an initial 250,000 in costs:

It emerged that the National Crime Agency was passed a file relating to misuse of public funds;

The majority of the remaining cases brought by the lawyer against Iraq War veterans will be thrown out;

A serving colonel who served in Iraq said a dark chapter was behind his men and they can now move forward with confidence on the battlefield;

Hounded troops vowed to sue both Mr Shiner and the Ministry of Defence over their decade-long ordeal;

The lawyer faced calls to repay at least 3.2million in public funds.

His now defunct firm, Public Interest Lawyers, brought the vast majority of 3,380 allegations of wrongdoing to the Iraq Historical Allegations Team, which is investigating claims of abuses by British troops.

The Mail has revealed that hundreds of soldiers were pursued for more than a decade as a result  but not a single case has resulted in a prosecution.

The outcome of the Al-Sweady public inquiry in 2014, which found that allegations troops had mutilated and murdered civilians were baseless, led to a series of investigations into PIL and Mr Shiner.

These culminated in Mr Shiner facing a disciplinary tribunal this week, although he refused to turn up on the grounds he was too ill.

He previously admitted nine allegations of acting recklessly and without integrity, including that he paid an agent to cold-call potential clients.

But after two days of hearings, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal yesterday found another five counts of dishonesty proved against him and said he would be struck off.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said: Justice has finally been served after we took the unprecedented step of submitting evidence on his abuse of our legal system.

Phil Shiner made soldiers lives a misery by pursuing false claims of torture and murder  now he should apologise. We will study any implications for outstanding legal claims closely.

Mr Shiner claimed British troops had 'mutilated and killed Iraqi civilians' in a 2008 press conference (file picture of British troops in Afghanistan)

Paul Philip, chief executive of the solicitors watchdog, which brought the charges against Mr Shiner, said: His misconduct has caused real distress to soldiers, their families and to the families of Iraqi people who thought that their loved ones had been murdered or tortured.

More than 30million of public funds were spent on investigating what proved to be false and dishonest allegations.

Mr Shiner, who was paid millions of pounds in legal aid, could now face criminal charges over his misuse of public money.

In the hearing it emerged he paid sweeteners to an Iraqi fixer, named Mazin Younis, to persuade him to change his evidence as part of a cover-up on cold-calling clients.

Jeremy Edgar, a soldier who was dragged before the Al-Sweady inquiry and still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, said Mr Shiner should be prosecuted.

BUT ULSTER SOLDIERS STILL FACE WITCH HUNT By Defence Correspondent for the Daily Mail British troops still face investigations over Army killings during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. MPs yesterday said the historic probes into incidents that occurred decades ago were absolutely immoral and a politically motivated witch-hunt. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is allowing its taxpayer-funded Legacy Investigation Branch to look at 238 fatal incidents involving British troops in Ulster, which led to 302 deaths. Up to 1,000 retired troops now in their 60s and 70s face being investigated as potential murder or manslaughter suspects. Ministers are working on legislation which will compel the police to behave with proportionality when it comes to allegations against troops. But the Bill  which is expected to state that 90 per cent of resources given to the police must go on investigating terrorists  could take months, if not years, before it becomes law. Former defence minister Sir Gerald Howarth said it was unacceptable that veterans who fought in the filthy war in Northern Ireland faced being dragged from their beds in dawn raids for questioning. Speaking in a backbench debate about the Armed Forces Covenant, he said: I think it is absolutely immoral. Fellow Army veteran and Tory MP Tom Tugendhat said: Im afraid our Government is not doing enough. We need to do more to protect those who have done the most for us. Tory Army veteran Jack Lopresti attacked what he described as the politically motivated witch-hunt in Northern Ireland. He said: We need in this place to bring in legislation quickly which provides a statute of limitations on all sides. Defence minister Mark Lancaster admitted it was wrong that investigations into Northern Irelands past focus almost entirely on former police officers and soldiers and said the Government was concerned. Advertisement

How have countless numbers of lives been irreparably ruined by his dishonesty? he asked.

I did nothing wrong, but for the sake of some peoples greed I was lied about and had my good name and my honour tarnished.

Who is going to give back all the years lost through stress and worry? I would love to see criminal charges brought against Shiner.

Joseph McCleary, who was cleared of manslaughter and then a further two probes over the drowning of an Iraqi, said: I went through hell and back, and spent years doubting myself.

'I tortured myself for years and even tried to take my own life. Shiner should be brought to trial and he should be behind bars.

The daughter of Sergeant Richard Catterall, who was cleared three times of any wrongdoing after he shot an Iraqi in self-defence, echoed their calls.

Demi Catterall said: I hope Phil Shiner now faces criminal charges, like my father had to face even though he was innocent.

Cases handed to Ihat by Mr Shiners firm will now all be reviewed, with the majority of them thrown out because they will fail a reliability test.

The probes 145-strong team now has just 250 active investigations and expects that figure to reduce to 60 by the middle of this year.

The two-day disciplinary tribunal found Mr Shiner behaved recklessly by claiming at a press conference in February 2008 that the British Army had mutilated and killed Iraqi civilians during the Battle of Danny Boy in 2004.

He also misled the 31million Al-Sweady inquiry, which threw out the claims after a five-year investigation.

Serving Colonel James Coote, who commanded troops during the battle, said the legal process had been harrowing for his men.

He told the BBC: We cant turn the clock back. Nothing will undo the decade or so that my soldiers, their families and indeed my family have been through.

It has been difficult, but I feel now that a chapter is certainly behind us. We can now operate with confidence in the demanding and challenging situations we will find ourselves in the future.

The case was one of the most expensive ever brought by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, with costs expected to exceed the 475,000 reached before the trial.

Mr Shiner was ordered to pay interim costs of 250,000, with a full means test to determine further costs to follow.

The tribunal will aim to publish its decision in full within seven weeks, and Mr Shiner will then have 21 days to appeal.

A Legal Aid Agency spokesman said: We are taking steps to recover any public money that has been obtained inappropriately by Public Interest Lawyers.

A spokesman for Ihat said yesterday that the evidence presented at the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal casts serious doubt on the reliability of some of the remaining allegations.
A revolutionary drug considered 'the closest thing to a cure' ever developed for breast cancer is set to be rejected for use on the NHS, officials have announced.

Experts said the decision highlights a serious problem at the heart of England' s drug appraisal system - and called for an urgent overhaul of the NHS drugs watchdog.

Palbociclib halts the most common form of breast cancer in its tracks, freezing the growth of aggressive tumours.

This delays the need for gruelling chemotherapy, enabling women to lead normal lives for years at a time.

Experts describe the development of the daily pill as the most important advance in 20 years - yet NHS patients are unlikely to ever benefit.

Rationing watchdog NICE last night published a draft decision rejecting the drug due to its 38,350-a-year cost.

Breast cancer drug Palbociclib freezes the growth of aggressive tumours, delaying the need for chemotherapy and enabling women to lead normal lives

Officials accepted the drug can make a huge difference to women's lives, even allowing them to continue to work after a cancer diagnosis.

But they said the cost was too high and demanded drugs manufacturer Pfizer lower the price.

The NICE documents, however, reveals officials will only view the drug as cost-effective if its price is cut by 80 per cent, taking it from 2,950 a month to less than 590.

Dr David Montgomery, medical director of Pfizer UK's oncology division, said this is unrealistic.

He said negotiations will continue in a bid to reverse the decision before final guidance is made later this year.

But he added: 'We will offer a discount but only to a reasonable price and only if we think it will get us past the NICE threshold.

'We would like them to take a more pragmatic view.'

The Daily Mail reported last June that the EU's medicines regulator had failed to reach a decision on whether to licence the drug despite a ten-month review process. Later in the year the EU approved it, only for it now to be rejected by NICE.

Breast cancer is Britain's most common cancer, with 45,000 new cases each year in England.

Palbociclib works on advanced forms of the most common type of breast cancer, the HER2 negative type.

Experts estimate 5,500 women in England would be eligible if it were approved.

Trials have shown taking palbociclib alongside a common drug called an aromatase inhibitor stops aggressive cancers progressing by just over two years - 10 months longer than the standard treatment.

Some women had much better results, they found.

Dr Nicholas Turner, of London's Institute of Cancer Research, who led the clinical trials, said: 'Palbociclib is one of the most important advances in treating the most common type of breast cancer in 20 years.

'It is very disappointing that palbociclib is not being made available to patients, but cost is the limiting factor.

But officials will only view the life-changing breast cancer drug palbociclib as cost-effective if its price is cut by 80 per cent, taking it from 2,950 a month to less than 590.

'If the manufacturer, NICE and NHS England can find a way of making this treatment available for patients, they will substantially improve the lives of patients with breast cancer.'

Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of the Breast Cancer Now charity, said: 'This is the clearest illustration to date that the drug appraisal system is totally unfit-for-purpose in assessing first-in-class breast cancer medicines.

'For women with incurable breast cancer in England to potentially be made to wait years for such a promising drug  while NHS bodies and pharmaceutical companies haggle over pricing  would be totally unacceptable.

'Palbociclib could benefit a large proportion of metastatic breast cancer patients and may even be the closest thing these women would have to a cure in their lifetime.

'Pfizer must urgently reconsider their decision not to offer the NHS any form of discount on the list price.

'But the decision also makes plain the systemic flaws of the NICE appraisal process.'

Professor Carole Longson, director of the centre for health technology assessment at NICE, accepted the drug can make a big difference to patients.

But she added: 'Even when allowing for these potential benefits, it was still not enough to make palbociclib cost effective at its current price.

'The committee heard from the patient expert that delaying the progression of their cancer for as long as possible and being able to continue with normal activities, including working, is valued very highly by patients and their families.

'It also heard that by postponing disease progression, palbociclib may reduce the number of people who are exposed to the often unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy, and delay the need for such treatment in others.

'Taking the costs into account, the committee concluded that it could not recommend palbociclib for NHS use at present.'

David Crosby, of the Breast Cancer Care charity, added: 'It is devastating access to palbociclib is being blocked.

'The drug will allow women to live well with the disease, to be there with loved ones for the moments that matter. This time is irreplaceable.

'Urgent conversations must happen so we do not sentence people to second-rate care.'
Young professionals in the UK face an uncertain working future after it was predicted they will be in jobs until they are 74.

It is understood the state pension age could rise by almost 10 years by 2060 to cover for our increasing life expectancy.

Pension age is due to rise from 65 to 66 in 2020, to 67 in 2028 and to 68 by 2031.

Young professionals born after 1989 could work until they are 74 according to predictions by the Office for Budget Responsibility (file picture)

Based on the predictions the pension age will increase steadily until it hits 74 in 2063

According to the Sun, the Office for Budget Responsibility, which draws up long term economic forecasts for the Chancellor, has made the mammoth prediction that anyone born after 1989 could work until 74.

Meanwhile former Lib Dem Coalition pensions minister Sir Steve Webb told the paper British society could be 'unprepared' for a 'transformation'.

He said: 'It is clear that the Government has already built in an assumption of a pension age of 69 for today's under-35s. But pension ages could rise much further and faster.

'A world where we cannot get a pension until we are 74 and a million people have celebrated their 100th birthday would need a total re-think of our approach to work, savings, health and care.'

It is believed the number of people in Britain reaching 100  currently around 15,000  could be closer to one million by the 2060s.

Others, including former Tory minister Baroness Altmann, have said the Government needs to find a different approach rather than raising the pension age.

She told The Sun: 'At the moment the Government plans to increase state pension age as average life expectancy rises. But this completely ignores the fact that there are huge variations in life expectancy across the country and many people will die much younger than average.'

A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said: No decision has been made on future changes to the current State Pension age timetable.

'We are committed to reviewing it in each parliament to ensure that it remains affordable, fair and sustainable for generations to come.'

Last October five million pensioners were robbed of the chance to cash in their rip-off annuities.

It is thought retirement age will continue rising in line with our life expectancy (file picture)

They had been promised the right to swap them for a lump sum under George Osborne's pension reforms.

But in a u-turn Treasury officials announced the plans had been scrapped.

It was a huge blow to older savers who were forced to convert their retirement savings into annuities. They can no longer hope to escape the often poor-value deals.

Ministers say they acted to stop pensioners being exploited  they were facing fees of up to 20 per cent for cashing in. But campaigners accused the Government of breaking its promises and leaving millions in the lurch.
The British military could carry out cyber-attacks against Russia, the defence secretary suggested last night.

Sir Michael Fallon said the UK's enemies should know there is a 'price to pay' if they use hi-tech subversion against Nato members.

He said Nato members were being 'tested' by Vladimir Putin and must compete on the cyber battlefield to counter an increase in Russian hacking attacks.

In a hard-hitting speech on Russia, he also accused Moscow of 'weaponising misinformation' and said they were guilty of Soviet-style 'fake news'.

He revealed Britain would double its investment on both defensive and offensive cyber capability following a string of Russian cyber-attacks across Europe.

In a speech entitled 'Coping with Russia' at St Andrews University in Scotland, Sir Michael Fallon said Nato members were being 'tested' by Vladimir Putin.

The money could be used to launch 'offensive' attacks against the Kremlin, such as jamming networks, it is understood.

It follows an announcement late last year that the UK military started carrying out cyber-attacks against Islamic State for the first time.

In a speech entitled 'Coping with Russia' at St Andrews University in Scotland, he said: 'Today we see a country that in weaponising misinformation has created what we might now see as the post-truth age.

'Part of that is the use of cyber weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery.

'Nato must defend itself as effectively in the cyber sphere as it does in the air, on land, and at sea.

'So adversaries know there is a price to pay if they use cyber weapons.'

He said Nato and the West needed to do more to 'tackle the false reality promoted through Soviet-style misinformation'.

He added: 'Whatever else we do on deterrence and dialogue we must counter Putin's Pravda with a faster truth.'

Fallon revealed Britain would double its investment on both defensive and offensive cyber capability following a string of Russian cyber-attacks across Europe. He said money could be used to launch 'offensive' attacks against the Kremlin. Pictured above, Russian president Putin

Sir Michael said Russia was trying to weaken the alliance and 'undermining national security for many allies'.

He added that President Donald Trump was 'right to challenge Nato to raise its game' as he urged other member states to increase their defence spending to hit the Nato target.

His comments come after Theresa May revealed the President was now '100 per cent' committed to Nato following their talks at the White House.

There are fears that President Trump could cosy up to Russia and lift sanctions against Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine without him withdrawing any troops.

In pointed remarks, Sir Michael said it was the sanctions, in part, that had given the Kremlin 'pause for thought' and stopped a wider conventional war.

He added: 'Russia is clearly testing Nato and the West.

'It is seeking to expand its sphere of influence, destabilise countries, and weaken the Alliance.

'It is undermining national security for many allies and the international rules-based system.

'Therefore it is in our interest and Europe's to keep Nato strong and to deter and dissuade Russia from this course.'

Fallon's comments come after Theresa May revealed the President was now '100 per cent' committed to Nato following their talks at the White House

Following comments by Trump that Nato had become 'obsolete', Sir Michael said Nato must become 'more agile, resilient, and better configured to operate in the contemporary environment including against hybrid and cyber-attacks'.

In December last year, Alex Younger, the head of MI6, warned that cyber-attacks and attempts to subvert democracy by states such as Russia posed a fundamental threat to British sovereignty.

Sir Michael's speech also came as the Public Accounts Committee warned the Government's ability to protect Britain from high-level cyber-attacks is being undermined by skills shortages and 'chaotic' handling of personal data breaches.

Ministers have also taken too long to consolidate the 'alphabet soup' of agencies tasked with safeguarding the UK from cyber-attacks and there appears to be no coordination across the public sector, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.

The MPs' warning comes amid increasing concern about Russian cyber-attacks after Moscow allegedly interfered with the United States presidential election in Donald Trump's favour.

The PAC said that despite cyber-attacks being ranked as a top four risk to UK national security since 2010, the role of the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for coordinating information protection across Government, remains unclear.
European Parliament leaders have urged the EU to reject Ted Malloch if he is named as US President Donald Trump's ambassador to Brussels.

The leaders of the main parliamentary groups said Malloch, whom they called Trump's likely choice, is 'hostile to the bloc'.

They claimed he has openly backed the dissolution of the 28-nation European Union, much like the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Ted Malloch, pictured right with Nigel Farage, is expected to be Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the EU

The leaders of the conservative European People's Party (EPP), the largest group in the parliament, the Socialists and Democrats and the liberal ALDE group wrote to European Council President Donald Tusk urging him not to accept Malloch's credentials if he is appointed ambassador.

EPP chairman Manfred Weber and ALDE President Guy Verhofstadt said in their letter: 'The prospective nominee... eloquently supported dissolution of the European Union and explicitly bet on the demise of the common currency within months,'

'These statements reveal outrageous malevolence regarding the values that define this European Union.'

They warned that if such remarks come from an official US representative, they could harm the transatlantic relationship that has preserved peace and prosperity for seven decades.

'We are strongly convinced that persons seeing as their mission to disrupt or dissolve the European Union, should not be accredited as official representatives to the EU.'

Socialists and Democrats leader Gianni Pittella warned that Malloch's appointment could 'potentially contribute to the spread of populism and euroscepticism across Europe.'

European Parliament parties have sent a joint letter to European Council President Donald Tusk, pictured, asking him to reject Mr Malloch's credentials because he is 'hostile to the bloc'

He added: 'Malloch should not be accepted as an official representative to the EU and should be declared 'persona non grata'.'

Malloch is a professor at the Henley Business School in Reading.

The Henley website said he held an ambassadorial level position at the United Nations in Geneva from 1988-1991 and has served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum.

Earlier this month, the departing US ambassador to the EU, Anthony Gardner, warned that the Trump administration would be committing 'sheer folly' if it supports the bloc's breakup.
LINCOLN  A proposed convention of the states to consider specific constitutional amendments to rein in the federal government attracted strong support Wednesday at a legislative hearing.

"The American people are asking for it," Mark Meckler, president of Citizens for Self-Governance and co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, told the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.

"The federal government is too big and does too much," he said.

Sen. Laura Ebke of Crete, sponsor of the proposal (LR6), guided a similar proposal to the floor of the Legislature last year where it ultimately was shelved on a 25-18 vote that returned it to the committee.

Ebke said the proposed convention of the states could only consider amendments limiting the size and scope of the federal government, proposals to impose fiscal restraints and imposition of term limits under the plan now being submitted to the states.

It would take action by at least 34 states to convene a convention and the support of at least 38 states to ratify any constitutional amendments proposed by the convention.

Ebke said fears of a runaway convention that would consider amendments on other topics are overstated. Some 2nd Amendment supporters expressed concern about chances that constitutional gun rights could be endangered.

Mark Adamson of Gretna, who identified himself as a small businessman, urged the committee to take action that might help "get the government off my neck."

Adamson said he is being "taxed and regulated to death."

Kerrey Winterer of Omaha, former CEO of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, said regulation has become "a fourth branch of government."

"The greatest threat is not ISIS, Russia or China," Steve Riese of Plattsmouth said. "It's the country's long-term national debt."

Spokespersons for Nebraskans for Civic Reform and OpenSky Policy Institute were among opponents who testified against the proposal.

Bri McLarty Huppert, speaking for NCR, said the scope of topics considered by a convention could not be limited once it convened.

Renee Fry of OpenSky said any efforts to eliminate the federal income tax or require a balanced federal budget could have a devastating effect on programs like Medicare, Social Security and farm supports.

Limiting the ability of the government to assume debt when that's required to meet needs or boost the economy would be counterproductive in recessionary times, she said.

If families did not assume debt when needed, she said, people could not buy a home, go to college or deal with emergencies.
A mother has spoken out about how her daughter, 13, was relentlessly bullied and then gang raped by two older boys before committing suicide two years later.

Cassidy Trevan was forced to miss out on her fourth term of Year 7 at a Melbourne high school after she was targeted by a group of bullying girls.

Her mother Linda told 9 News that the girls would slap her on the face, leave banana peels at the front door of their family home and regularly abuse her on social media.

Cassidy finally returned to school two days a week - where she was met with an apology from the girls, who asked her to be their friend and invited her to a festival.

But instead of going to the festival, the very same girls led her to a nearby house where she was subjected to a horrific gang rape that savaged her innocence.

Linda Trevan has opened up on how her teenage daughter Cassidy (pictured together) took her own life after relentless bullying and a horrific gang rape by her tormentors

Cassidy Trevan was forced to miss out on her fourth term of Year 7 at school after she was targeted by a group of bullying girls

'They were older boys that Cass didn't know. Two girls who sat and waited. Two boys who shared her and timed each other. One boy stood guarding the front door,' Ms Trevan told 9 News.

'Cass was scared to make a formal statement for fear of retaliation from the gang, and she also was worried reliving it would 'push her over the edge.'

In a heartbreaking open post on Facebook, Ms Trevan said she spent the next two years 'desperately doing everything' she could to keep Cassidy alive.

'I had to watch my baby suffer for the next 22 months from these demons,' she wrote online.

'She worried you would find her and get her again, she went through continued bullying from some of you who managed to get to her by phone or social media, via others, even after what you'd done to her.'

'She suffered flash backs of the crime, nightmares, insomnia, separation anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD and subsequent worsening mental illness.'

After making a recovery and returning to school, the bullying girls apologised to her and asked to be her friend. They asked her to go to a festival, but instead of taking her there she was led to a house where two older boys raped her, her mother claimed

The event caused Cassidy to suffer 'nightmares, insomnia, separation anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD and subsequent worsening mental illness,' Ms Trevan said. After two years of suffering, Cassidy committed suicide aged 15

The suffering teenager moved schools to escape the bullying, but was subjected to further verbal abuse by the main bully online.

'I had to get an intervention order on the main bully girl when she physically assaulted Cass at the shops, after the rape, and she was even calling my mobile demanding to talk to Cass,' Ms Trevan told 9 News.

Cassidy and her mother met with Detectives from Victoria Police's Sexual Offence and Child Abuse Investigation Team (SOCIT) over 20 times during a two-year period.

But because Cassidy never made a formal statement to Dandenong police, afraid of the social repercussions, authorities were never able to lay any charges.

Tragically, after years of torment, Cassidy committed suicide on December 12, 2015.

Cassidy never made a formal statement to police so they were never able to lay any charges on the alleged rapists

'I helplessly watched my precious child wither away before my eyes, mentally & physically, until she rarely got out of bed, until she could no longer take the pain and torment you caused her,' Ms Trevan wrote.

'What you did to her was a direct cause of her suicide on 12th December 2015.'

'I know who you are, you know who you are, and the police know who you are. I hope the knowledge of what you did haunts you for the rest of your lives, and one day, if you are lucky enough to have children of your own ... remember what you did to my precious only baby, and imagine how you'd feel if someone did that to your baby.'

'I'm not a mean, angry, or vindictive person ... but what you kids did ... I hope you never forgive yourselves and never forget the name Cassidy Trevan. You all have blood on your hands for as long as you live.'

'Bullying killed my child, bullying must be taken seriously.'

'The death of any young person is an absolute tragedy and our sympathies are with Cassidy's family,' a spokesman for the Victorian Department of Education told Daily Mail Australia in a statement.

'Schools have a range of ways to help students who may be experiencing bullying or mental health issues, including by providing qualified counsellors. School staff work hard to identify and support students who need support and we would encourage any students who need help to talk to staff at their school.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Cassidy's school and Linda Trevan for comment.

For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14.

Anyone across Australia experiencing a personal crisis or thinking about suicide can contact Lifeline.

Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation their trained volunteers are ready to listen, provide support and referrals.
Fat cat pay has been attacked by campaigners after it emerged one City worker pocketed more than 29million in just one year.

The unnamed fund manager took home a salary of 171,500 and a 29.1m bonus, according to figures from the European Banking Authority.

The pay deal sparked outrage, with critics accusing the finance industry of ignoring the lessons of the global crisis.

Fat cat pay has been attacked by campaigners after it emerged one City worker pocketed more than 29million in just one year

Yesterday, leading fund managers denied the mystery figure was their employee  leading to speculation it was the head of a secretive privately-owned hedge fund.

The pay figures show the staggering scale of wealth in Londons world-leading financial services sector.

They reveal that 4,133 people in the UK industry had annual earnings of more than 1million or 860,000 in 2015.

The average member of this elite group trousered 1.8million.

In total, they collected 2.8billion in fixed pay and 4.5billion in bonuses  or 7.3billion overall.

Stefan Stern of the High Pay Centre said: This shows the closed world of high pay, where these numbers just become normal.

Theyre everyday figures to these people and whats lacking is the perspective of ordinary men and women like their employees and customers.

The figures show that the ten best-paid financiers shared a pay-out of 197.9m  or nearly 20m each.

Coming in behind the mystery fund boss who took the top spot was another asset manager with a fixed salary of 204,200 and a bonus worth 24.1million  giving him 24.3million in total.

In third place was a top manager who picked up fixed pay of 10.5million and a bonus of 11.9million, for an overall package of 22.4million.

The figures also reveal Britains dominance of financial services as Britain prepares to leave the European Union.

There were four times as many high earners in the City as the rest of the EU combined.

Germany and France, which both want to steal staff from London, are way behind with 279 and 178 staff on more than 860,000 respectively.

Although they are symbols of corporate excess, the huge salaries paid to UK finance bosses contribute to Britains tax take.

The unnamed fund manager took home a salary of 171,500 and a 29.1m bonus, according to figures from the European Banking Authority

The industry raised 71.4billion for the exchequer in the year to last March, according to the City of London Corporation  equivalent to 11.5 per cent of total tax receipts.

The revelations come as bankers enjoy a bumper 15bn bonus season following strong market performance.

Big names in line to benefit were rumoured to include Michael Sherwood, newly-retired co-head of its European operations, who was expected to pick up more than the 17m he grabbed in 2016.

His colleague Anthony Gutman was also expected to do well, after advising chipmaker ARM Holdings  described as the jewel in Britains tech crown  on its 24bn foreign takeover by SoftBank.

Both men were heavily criticised for their role advising Sir Philip Green on his disastrous sale of department store chain BHS.

Another Goldman star is Mark Sorrell, son of WPP boss Sir Martin, who sparked outrage with his 70m pay packet last year.
The planned takeover of the London Stock Exchange has been thrown into chaos after prosecutors launched an insider dealing probe into the chief executive of its German rival.

German officials raided the offices of Deutsche Boerse, which is hoping to seize control of the London exchange, over 3.8million of shares bought days before the 21billion deal was announced.

Deutsche Boerses boss Carsten Kengeter  the driving force behind the takeover bid  is being probed over his purchase of the shares in his company, it was confirmed. Frankfurt-based Deutsche Boerses price has risen by 11 per cent since he bought the stock, netting him hundreds of thousands of pounds in profit.

The planned takeover of the London Stock Exchange has been thrown into chaos after prosecutors launched an insider dealing probe into the chief executive of its German rival

Mr Kengeter, 49, is set to become the new chief executive of the London Stock Exchange if the takeover is successful. But the explosive allegations throw a shadow over his future involvement and raise questions about whether the controversial takeover will be completed.

Last night MPs demanded an offical probe in the UK into the deal. Conservative MP Sir Bill Cash said: This is a very serious matter indeed and must be fully investigated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Bank of England and other regulatory authorities.

Mr Kengeter, who has a home in London, bought 60,000 shares worth 3.8million in three separate transactions on December 14, 2015. The two exchanges began official talks the following month.

It is claimed he purchased the shares under the instructions of his board as part of a new bonus scheme. Sources said this was signed off by the firms compliance department and disclosed in accordance with German law.

Deutsche Boerse said: The public prosecutors office of Frankfurt investigated at Deutsche Boerse in respect of a share purchase by its chief executive officer which was carried out on December 14, 2015 in implementation of the executive boards remuneration programme as approved by the supervisory board of Deutsche Boerse. The firm is co-operating with the authorities.

Deutsche Boerses boss Carsten Kengeter (right)  the driving force behind the takeover bid  is being probed over his purchase of the shares in his company

The merger has been mired in controversy since it was first mooted in January last year. Both sides insist it is a merger of equals. Mr Kengeter, who earned 2.8million in 2015, would be chief executive and the HQ would be in London.

Sources at Deutsche Boerse insisted the investigation would have no impact on the takeover. But it could lead to fears over whether it is a suitable custodian for the 216-year-old London exchange.

Regulators take a keen interest in stock exchanges as they are vital to the financial infrastructure and any failings could have a catastrophic effect on the global system.

EU competition chiefs considering if the tie-up would create a monopoly are due to deliver a verdict next month.
Sarah Stern (above), 19, was robbed and killed by an acquaintance in the early morning hours of December 3, New Jersey prosecutors say

A man has been accused of killing a 19-year-old woman by strangling her and then getting a friend to help him throw her off a bridge.

Liam McAtasney allegedly robbed and killed his acquaintance, Sarah Stern, on or about December 2.

Prosecutors allege that Stern was robbed after she had withdrawn large amounts of cash from the bank.

The two were said to have known each other because their families were close friends, according to Asbury Park Press.

Authorities say that McAtasney tried to steal the cash from Stern's house.

During the course of the robbery, he strangled her to death, prosecutors allege.

McAtasney then allegedly called his friend, Preston Taylor, who helped him move Stern's body from her home.

Authorities say that McAtasney and Taylor drove to the Route 35 bridge in Belmar, New Jersey, and threw Stern's body into the water.

The Route 35 bridge, which crosses over the Shark River, has a fixed vertical clearance of 50 feet.

Stern's abandoned car was found near the bridge on December 3. Initially, authorities suspected that the driver of the car had jumped off the bridge, according to NJ Advance Media.

McAtasney is charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, disturbing human remains, and conspiring with another to disturb human remains.

He is also being accused of hindering apprehension or prosecution.

Liam McAtasney (left) is alleged to have robbed and killed Stern. He then allegedly enlisted his friend, Preston Taylor (right), to throw Stern's body of a bridge in Belmar, New Jersey

Taylor and Stern are seen in this undated photo from 2014. Taylor is charged with tampering with evidence and hindering prosecution

McAtasney's friend, Preston Taylor, also 19, is alleged to have conspired with McAtasney to cover up the crime and hide evidence.

The two suspects appeared in court on Thursday afternoon to answer for the charges, according to Asbury Park Press.

Stern's body has never been found. Authorities believe that the currents swept the corpse out to sea.

Belmar, a borough of Monmouth County, is located on the New Jersey Shore.

Prosecutors say that they have obtained a recorded conversation between McAtasney and another individual that implicates him in the crime.

Prosecutors say that they have obtained a recorded conversation between McAtasney (right) and another individual that implicates him in the crime. Taylor is seen on the left

Stern's disappearance prompted authorities to issue a missing persons alert. Her body has never been found, as authorities believe it was swept out to sea by ocean currents

At their hearing in Monmouth County court, the two men were ordered to remain in detention until further proceedings.

Charles Stone, the attorney representing Michael Stern, the victim's father, said that his client is in the midst of deep grief.

'He's overwhelmed, as any parent would be,' Stone said. 'This is the worst nightmare you could imagine as a parent.'

Neither McAtasney or Taylor appeared to show any emotion during their court appearance on Thursday, according to Asbury Park Press.

McAtasney's attorney, Chuck Moriarty, said the fact that no body has been found is problematic in proving his client's guilt.

'It does create a problem, if they don't have a body, if she shows up in three weeks and says this is all part of a joke,' Moriarty said.

Initially, Stern's disappearance was treated as a missing persons case. But tips from the community led authorities to launch a criminal investigation that resulted in the arrest of McAtasney and Taylor

He said that his client's family and the Sterns were friends. That is how McAtasney and Stern knew each other.

'I know the families were close,' Moriarty said. 'The families were friends. If she is dead, it's a tragedy.'

The Monmouth County prosecutor trying the case, Christopher Gramiccioni, said that all three 19-year-olds knew each other and that the two suspects were close friends.

'We know they had a pre-existing relationship with Sarah Stern, growing up in the same area,' he said.

Initially, Stern's disappearance was treated as a missing persons case.

But tips from the community led authorities to launch a criminal investigation that resulted in the arrest of McAtasney and Taylor.
The French embassy has revealed that Peter Mandelson received one of Frances top honours for his work promoting the EU and updating policies for tomorrow.

Lord Mandelson, one of the chief opponents of Brexit, was made an Officer of the National Legion dHonneur.

There are five tiers of Legion dHonneur, and the New Labour grandee received the second one from the bottom.

Lord Mandelson, better known as plain old Peter Mandelson (right), received the award from the French ambassador, Sylvie Bermann (centre) at the ambassador's residence in London

It was still slightly higher than the chevalier award given to his fellow Remain supporter, Lionel Barber, who edits The Financial Times and was given the gong last August.

When contacted, Lord Mandelson confirmed that he received the award but would only reveal that the citation was six pages long.

However the French Embassy was more forthcoming about the reason for giving the Blairite a gong.

A spokesman for the French Embassy said: Lord Peter Mandelson was made Officier de lOrdre national de la Legion dHonneur for his entire career devoted to serving the United Kingdom and the European Union, be it through his active involvement in world affairs or through his work updating policies for tomorrow. Lord Peter Mandelson has been a long-time friend of France.

Lord Mandelson (pictured) joins Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Clint Eastwood and nearly a million other recipients

The honour was established in 1802 by Napolean Bonaparte and is awarded to the armed forces as well as civilians.

Lord Mandelson joins nearly a million other recipients, who include Sir Paul McCartney, Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, JK Rowling, Barbara Streisand, Clint Eastwood, Bob Dylan and Bob Geldof.

The French embassy in London drew attention to Lord Mandelsons award by tweeting a picture of him at the ceremony on Wednesday.

He was standing with the French ambassador, Sylvie Bermann, in front of the flags of France and the European Union.

Germanys ambassador to the UK, Peter Ammon, confirmed he also attended the reception in the honour of Lord Mandelson.

The peer, nicknamed the Prince of Darkness for his behind-the-scenes manoeuvring, has been one of the most outspoken critics of Brexit.

He is behind the pro-EU Open Britain campaign group, which demanded that MPs have a vote on leaving the EU.
A 16-year-old boy accused of stabbing his teacher and two classmates is 'shaken' but will fight the charges against him, his lawyer said.

The teen, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested on Thursday after he allegedly used a knife to stab Bonyrigg High School teacher Carolyn Cox, 48, and two other students, aged 16 and 15.

He was charged with wounding with intent to murder and two counts of cause grievous bodily harm.

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A 16-year-old boy accused of stabbing his teacher and two classmates is 'shaken' but will fight the charges against him, his lawyer said

The black Adidas back pack was lying in the car park next to a huge meat cleaver, a utility blade and an empty water bottle

In Parramatta Children's Court on Friday, the teenager did not apply for bail. His family was there to support him.

His lawyer Ron Malouf told the media outside court that the teen would be fighting the charges he is facing, saying the attempted murder charge wasn't justified.

'He's a bit shaken up by the whole situation as anyone would be,' Mr Malouf said.

'The allegations against him don't support the crime alleged against him.'

Mr Malouf said he couldn't comment on what sparked the alleged incident at the western Sydney school.

'There's no explanation at this stage, I think we just have to wait for the moment,' Mr Malouf said.

'He's a nice boy known to be a student with no bad reports so this quite a shock to everyone.'

The teenager will appear in court again on February 17.

The teen was arrested on Thursday after he allegedly used a knife to stab Bonyrigg High School teacher Carolyn Cox, 48, and two other students, aged 16 and 15

Science teacher Carolyn Cox, 48, (pictured) was taken to hospital with stab wounds to her upper back. She is in a stable condition in hospital

Science teacher Carolyn Cox, 48, (pictured) suffered stab wounds to her back after allegedly trying to stop the attack

A 16-year-old boy suffered stab wounds to his shoulder

A 15-year-old female student was stabbed in the shoulder in the alleged attack and is in a stable condition in hospital

It is alleged that the 16-year-old boy pulled out the knives after turning up late to class at Bonnyrig High School

Police and paramedics were called to the school just before 9am on Thursday after 'well liked' teacher Carolyn Cox and a male and female student were allegedly attacked in a science classroom.

It is alleged that the 16-year-old boy pulled out the knives after turning up late to class.

Shocking photos from the scene show a utility blade, a meat cleaver, a carving knife and scissors in the car park outside the school next to a black Adidas backpack.

The backpack reportedly contained two screwdrivers and police are yet to confirm if any of the weapons was used in the attack.

The alleged teen attacker was handcuffed and escorted to the station by police after he was arrested in a Aldi car park near the school, shouting: 'I didn't kill anyone. You have to tell my brother'.

Officers are seen standing near evidence in the Aldi car park

A forensic investigator is seen inspecting the meat cleaver found in the car park

The area was sectioned off as police investigated the incident

Students are seen outside at Bonnyrigg high school on Thursday

Forensic detectives were seen handling the alleged weapons at in the car park including a meat cleaver (pictured)

One teacher emerged from a meeting with the school's principal on Thursday afternoon and said teachers were shocked by the brutal incident.

'He's like normal until Year 11 and suddenly this,' the unnamed teacher told Daily Mail Australia, describing the boy as being 'fine, all fine...This was a surprise.'

The teacher said something must have changed 'just overnight, suddenly' for the boy, who had just returned for the first term of school when the incident allegedly happened.

Detectives placed a blue sheet on the ground in the car park underneath the Adidas backpack to examine the scene
A police officer who was dragged along the road at 90km/h by an ice-addled car thief has told of the terrifying near-death experience.

Solomon Iosia, 31, had been on a week-long ice bender when he was approached by Sen. Const. Lynn in a Perth car park in September 2015 after his stolen Holden Cruze was flagged.

When the policeman opened his door, Iosia reversed at high-speeds, leaving him holding onto the seats for his life as his legs dangled onto the road, reports The West Australian.

Solomon Iosia, 31, had been on a week-long ice bender when he was approached by Sen. Const. Lynn in 2015

Perth District Court was told Iosia sped off over a median strip at 90km/h, punching and kicking at the officer, who managed to pull himself inside the vehicle.

'It's simply incredible how this officer managed to deal with this situation under this kind of pressure,' Prosecutor Justin Keogh said.

An impact statement showed he was haunted by nightmares about being dragged from the speeding car.

Iosia escaped the speeding incident, but was arrested 10 days later. He has since been charged with a string of offences including home burglar and assaulting police officers.

Judge Bruce Goetze said it was a stroke of luck that Sen. Const. Lynn had not been been paralysed or killed.

Iosia was jailed for six years and six months for reckless driving, assaulting police and escaping custody.

When the policeman opened his door, Iosia reversed at high-speeds, leaving him holding onto the seats for his life
Millions of Telstra customers were left fuming after a fire at one of the company's exchanges triggered a nation-wide outage and caused millions of text messages to be sent to the wrong people.

And customers frustration turned to anger when in the middle of the outage on Thursday after, one of the company's spokespeople wasn't even aware of the massive outage

After tweeting the company, a consultant responded: 'I doubt it's nation wide. Though there is a 4G interruption listed on servicestatus.telstra.com for Sydney'.

This woman at a New South Wales Central Coast marketing company had no phone access

The man then reposted a number of tweets from other Telstra users across the country who also complained of not being able to use their phones.

He also tweeted his disdain as to how the company had spoken to him.

'They talk down to you without having any clue as to what's going on,' he wrote.

Many Telstra customers were left bemused after receiving random text messages from strangers.

Several took to social media to share some amusing text messages that weren't intended for them.

'We have no more peanut M&Ms,' one wrong message said.

The woman who received it felt sorry for the person who missed the text.

'Someone at home is going to be disappointed,' she said on Twitter.

Anna Riddell tweeted she had received a message about a dessert from an unknown number.

'I'm seriously craving trifle. Can I have your Christmas recipe?,' the wrong message said.

ABC reporter Jake Sturmer tweeted he didn't get any unintended naked selfies after receiving a message intended for 'Darren' about an arrival.

'No naked selfies received from the Telstra SMS mix-up,' he said.

Telstra CEO Andy Penn apologised for the disruption the fire had caused during a media conference and said that it was 'very disappointing'

Telstra has been blame for the lack of peanut M&Ms in one wrong text message

Telstra CEO Andy Penn apologised for the disruption the fire at the Chatswood exchange, on Sydney's North Shore had caused during a media conference and said that it was 'very disappointing'.

'I've never known that to happen before,' he said.

'Some SMS messages were corrupted, which resulted in potentially some of those going to the incorrect address.'

'It's very disappointing for our customers, I just want to just acknowledge the impact that would have had on a number of our customers and apologise for that,'

The Telstra debacle disrupted Jetstar flights, Sydney trains and inconvenienced mobile phone users in Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

Telstra's service returned to normal at 5.40pm on Thursday.

Someone's craving for a Christmas trifle may have to wait a little longer because of Telstra

ABC reporter Jake Sturmer saw the funny side of receiving a wrong text message

The Telstra outage caused delays at airports right across Australia, with Jetstar delaying flights
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Sales are soaring for the book 'Dangerous' by incendiary right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulis.

The controversy that has driven pre-orders for his new book has also made promotion for his book unusually complicated.

The 32-year-old Breitbart editor is a walking challenge to free speech principles. He is a vocal supporter of President Trump, who has threatened to cut federal funding to UC Berkeley over the riots that broke out at the California campus Wednesday night, in protest of a talk that would likely promote his book.

Yiannopoulis was able to capitalize off of the criticism that the protests ensued. He shared a link to his book on Facebook with the message 'My book has soared back up to #5. Thank you for all the support. Not a bad way of showing them that violence will not win.'

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In an interview Thursday night with Fox News , Yiannopoulis spoke to the press for the first time following the protests

Sales are soaring for the book 'Dangerous' by incendiary right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulis (pictured)

Yiannopoulis was able to capitalize off of the criticism that the protests ensued. He shared a link to his book on Facebook with the message 'My book has soared back up to #5. Thank you for all the support. Not a bad way of showing them that violence will not win'

In an interview Thursday night with Fox News, Yiannopoulis spoke to the press for the first time following the protests.

He said about the night that he was planning his speech, when: 'Suddenly there were these explosions outside, there were firecrackers and rocks being thrown at the building the police were having things hurled at them.'

He went on to speak about how he was put into a bulletproof vest and his opinion that law enforcement didn't seem to be doing much except for hiding in the building. He said that the Mayor of Berkley was 'gleefully egging this stuff on', adding that he had to apologize on Thursday for the usual 'leftist name calling'.

Yiannopoulis believes that the name-calling is the the real problem, saying 'The left call everyone Nazis, the subtext is you deserve it, the media has created this environment in which it's OK to say almost anything for anyone who is slightly left of Jane Fonda.'

He continued: 'I don't have an opinion that millions of American's don't share, I just share them on a slightly larger platform.'

However, the Breitbart editor explained that he is more optimistic about the outcome than the average conservative, explaining that he believes that there will be backlash by colleges who will have to do more to protect first amendment rights.

Yiannopoulis said that the name-calling is the the real problem, saying 'The left call everyone Nazis, the subtext is you deserve it, the media has created this environment in which it's OK to say almost anything for anyone who is slightly left of Jane Fonda'

Photos of the aftermath of the protests that turned violent on the campus of UC Berkley show a man walking into a boarded up Starbucks Coffee shop

The announcement of his book deal in late December was greeted with immediate anger. Hundreds of authors have objected and one writer, Roxane Gay, withdrew a book she had planned for Simon & Schuster.

Many independent sellers have also expressed uneasiness, saying they will make the book available if asked for, but will not promote it. One store, The Booksmith in San Francisco, has announced it will neither stock the book nor order a copy upon customer request.

Booksmith also said it was cutting orders for Simon & Schuster by 50 per cent.

In the past the editor has made vicious comments about Muslims, women and others, and on his web site offers such products as 'Feminism is cancer' T-shirts and 'Fat Shaming Works' hoodies.

His harassment campaign last summer against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones led to his banishment from twitter.

The protests on Wednesday at the nation's number-one-ranked public university were so violent that administrators warned the rest of the student body to shelter in place and the talk was eventually called off.

After the talk was cancelled Trump tweeted: 'If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS?'

Watch the latest video at <a href="http://video.foxnews.com">video.foxnews.com</a>

President Trump threatened to cut federal funding to UC Berkeley - the nation's top ranked public university - over demonstrations at the campus over a speech planned by alt-right leader Milo Yiannopoulos

A work crew cleans up the remains of a charred portable light on the University of California, Berkley campus after protests against alt-right speaker Milo Yiannopoulis turned violent on Wednesday night

Jack Palkovic says that the violence continued today when he was wearing a 'Make America Great Again' cap (pictured) on his way to class and a White SUV slammed to a stop and two young men ran toward him. Palkovic says he is a member of the college Republicans group and helped organize Wednesdays' event with Yiannopoulis, who said said he had been planning to speak about cultural appropriation but claims his speech was over taken by the 'hard left'

One of the men (pictured) screamed an epithet, grabbed Palkovic's hat and pummeled him before the two got back in the vehicle and tried to drive away

Pictured: Police arrived in time to block their escape and arrest both men

BERKELEY'S HISTORY OF PROTEST Berkeley has long been a center for protests in the nation, and is considered by many to be the birthplace of the counterculture era. Since before World War II, students have protested at the university, but these protests became more prominent and regular during the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s and 1960s. When the university tried to crack down on these demonstrations, the student body responded with even more protests - fighting for free speech. In the mid-1960s, the protests continued, but this time aimed at the Vietnam War. In 1965, an anti-Vietnam War march was organized through the streets of Oakland, California, after failed attempts to march in Berkeley. More than 10,000 people participated in the march, marking the first large-scale demonstration against the war. Since this tumultuous period, the school and town have upheld this tradition of protest. But like Wednesday night's demonstrations, the protests have not always been peaceful. Rosebud Denovo, a protester, was shot dead by police in 1992, when she broke into the chancellor's mansion. The break in triggered a silent alarm, leading police to safely escort the chancellor and his wife out of the residence. They then went back into the house with dogs and shot Denovo when they saw her hooding a machete. Advertisement

Protesters tore down barricades, let off fireworks and set the campus ablaze during the furious protests over the conservative Breitbart editor.

Hundreds rallied against Yiannopoulos in a demonstration which turned violent and destructive, with protesters vandalizing dozens of businesses and smashing storefront windows. University police locked down all buildings and responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, according to witness reports.

Yiannopoulos himself later posted a video complaining that UC Berkley was 'no friend to free speech any more.'

Further violence escalated today on campus, as a 21-year-old student who supports Donald Trump was beaten up.

Jack Palkovic says he was wearing a 'Make America Great Again' cap on his way to class when a White SUV slammed to a stop and two young men ran toward him.

One of the men screamed an epithet, grabbed Palkovic's hat and pummeled him before the two got back in the vehicle and tried to drive away.

Police arrived in time to block their escape and arrest both men.

Palkovic says he is a member of the college Republicans group and helped organize Wednesdays' event with Yiannopoulis, who said said he had been planning to speak about cultural appropriation but claims his speech was over taken by the 'hard left.'

'It turns out the progressive left... which has become so antithetical to free speech has taken a turn post Trump's election. Where they simply will not allow any speaker on campus even someone as silly and harmless and gay as me, to have their voice heard.

'They are absolutely petrified by alternative visions of how the world could look.'

He added that it was both 'ironic and sad' that the campus was the home of the free speech movement, but it was 'no friend to freer speech any more.'

'I am of course not the racist or sexist or anything else that the posters that they put up claim that I am.'

University police confirmed that the campus was on lock-down as they reported they were bringing in extra resources to tackle the 'violent demonstration.'

'Milo event cancelled. Shelter in place if on campus. All campus buildings on lock-down. #miloatcal,' they tweeted.

The 32-year-old right-wing provocateur is a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and a self-proclaimed internet troll whose comments have been criticized as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist. He was banned from Twitter after leading a harassment campaign against 'Ghostbusters' actress Leslie Jones.

Several of Yiannopoulos' talks at other campuses have been canceled due to protests or security reasons.

The Breitbart editor wrote on Facebook that he and his team were safe after being evacuated from campus.

He also took to Facebook to criticize news sources such as CNN, sharing one of their articles titled 'Milo Yiannopoulis is trying to convince colleges that hate speech is cool' and editing it to say 'Milo Yiannopoulis is trying to convince colleges that free speech is cool.'

He also took to Facebook to criticize news sources such as CNN, sharing one of their articles titled 'Milo Yiannopoulis is trying to convince colleges that hate speech is cool' and editing it to say 'Milo Yiannopoulis is trying to convince colleges that free speech is cool'

Protesters have tore down barricades, let off fireworks and set the campus ablaze during furious protests against speech by conservative Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley

Eddy Brock, who says he is a free speech advocate, was supposedly attacked by demonstrators protesting against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos

University of California at Berkeley police guard the building where Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos was to speak Wednesday

Graffiti which reads 'Kill Trump' was scrawled on a pillar by protesters who were against a scheduled speaking appearance by Yiannopoulos

Hundreds flooded the streets while a small group of people with their faces covered broke windows, hurled fireworks at police officers and threw smoke bombs

A protesters holds up a sign which reads 'Make racists afraid again' during the demonstration

Demonstrators held up banners which read 'Become ungovernable' at the UC Berkeley protest

Yiannopoulos's speech been cancelled amid the chaos and he has been evacuated, according to a post on his social media. UC Police, Berkeley confirmed that the campus was on lockdown

People protesting controversial Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos march in the street on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

A man with a horn addresses protesters Wednesday night in Berkeley, California

The protests turned violent with some damaging local businesses in the fury

BERKELEY, CA - FEBRUARY 1: Grafitti urging people to use Signal, a highly-enctypted messaging app, is spray-painted on a wall during a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

Some of the protesters covered their faces with bandannas and ski masks to hide their identity

A woman urges people not to photograph the damage done to a Chase Bank on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

Another protester appeared to ignite a flare on the protest route Wednesday night

BERKELEY, CA - FEBRUARY 1: People protesting controversial Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos burn trash and cardboard in the street on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

The communist sickle and hammer are seen spray-painted on a wall during the protest Wednesday night

Rainbow colors light up a building at UC Berkeley on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

'I have been evacuated from the UC Berkeley campus after violent left-wing protesters tore down barricades, lit fires, threw rocks and Roman candles at the windows and breached the ground floor of the building,' he wrote.

'My team and I are safe. But the event has been cancelled. I'll let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.'

He also claims that a Trump supporter wearing a Make American Great Again hat was assaulted and kicked while on the ground.

'This is what tolerance looks like at UC Berkeley,' said Mike Wright, a Berkeley College Republican member told SF Gate before someone threw paint on him. 'It's sad.'

The protest turned violent around 6pm when a group of demonstrators dressed all in black and wearing masks soaked in milk - to protect against tear gas - emerged from the crowd and began dismantling the security defenses - knocking down barriers and cutting through zip ties.

Rioters loot and vandalize a Starbucks store during a protest against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley

Windows were smashed in and scores of rioters, with their faces covered, looted and vandalize the Starbucks store

Shadi Banoo (center) protests against Yiannopoulos, holding up a sign which read 'Out of Berkeley Nazi scum'

Rioters smash windows at a T-Mobile store with hammers during the protest where demonstrators began vandalizing dozens of businesses and smashing dozens of storefront windows

A rioter smashes a window at a Mechanics Bank branch as hundreds of protesters rallied against Yiannopoulos, forcing the cancellation of his speech at UC Berkeley, eventually vandalizing dozens of businesses and smashing dozens of storefront windows

A rioter paints an anarchy symbol on a Wells Fargo bank during a protest against Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos

A demonstrator protesting Yiannopoulos sets fire to trash as university police locked down all buildings after the protests turned violent

Protesters tore down barricades and began throwing fencing at the student union where Yiannopoulos was waiting ahead of his speech, shattering the glass.

At one point a driver sped off with a protester still on his hood after rioters began attacking cars near UC Berkeley. Kelsey Walden, a local high schooler, was on top of the car when she was pulled off by other protesters.

A motorist who was surrounded by demonstrators drove at them running them over and sped off, according to a San Francisco Chronicle reporter at the scene.

Protesters ran after it but mistook another car and began attacking another car and its driver, spraying him with pepper spray.

Damage is seen to a Chase Bank branch following a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

Masked protesters use rods to smash the windows of a Wells Fargo in Berkeley, California on Wednesday

The inside of a Starbucks is seen after being looted by protesters on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

Police officers and a smashed window are seen inside the UC Berkeley student union building during a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

Damage is seen to a Chase Bank branch following a protest on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

A protester smashes the window of a Target store on February 1, 2017 in Berkeley, California

Police report at least three were injured in fights as the protest grew increasingly violent.

Others toppled a generator and light pole, scrawling Milo across it with spray paint before setting it alight.

'We're anarchists,' said one unnamed protester. 'This is war.'

Eddy Brock - who claims to be a free speech advocate - was seen with blood pouring down the side of his face after he says he was attacked by the demonstrators.

Meanwhile the campus protest spilled out onto the streets with reports of buildings being vandalized in the southern part of town.

The mayor issued a plea saying 'violence and destruction are not the answer'.

Yiannopoulos' event was canceled out of safety concerns after protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and started a bonfire

Protesters have torn down barricades and set fires during furious protests against speech by conservative Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos at UC Berkeley

The University of California at Berkeley condemned the violence in a new statement.

'The violence was instigated by a group of about 150 masked agitators who came onto campus and interrupted an otherwise non-violent protest,' UC Berkeley said in a statement. Some people were attacked and police treated six people for injuries.

'We condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence and unlawful behavior that was on display and deeply regret that those tactics will now overshadow the efforts to engage in legitimate and lawful protest against the performer's presence and perspectives.'

The school had been bracing for major protests Wednesday ahead of Yiannopoulos' arrival - the last stop of his Dangerous F****t Tour tonight aimed at defying what he calls an 'epidemic of political correctness on college campuses.'

His visit to Berkeley was sponsored by the campus Republican club.

'The free-speech movement is dead', the group said after his talk was shut down, according to KTVU.

The university stressed it did not invite Yiannopoulos, a right-wing provocateur who is gay, and does not endorse his ideas but was committed to free speech as it rejected calls to cancel ahead of the event.

Earlier on Wednesday, the university sent a notice to all students that warned of crowds near the student union, where the 500-seat, sold-out event was scheduled.

'We anticipate there will be major protest/ demonstration activity leading up to and surrounding this event,' the letter from school officials said. It did not discourage protests but advised those who didn't wish to participate to avoid the area.

Pieter Sittler, a spokesman for the Berkeley College Republicans, said the club doesn't support everything Yiannopoulos says but 'he gives a voice to repressed conservative thought on American college campuses.' He uses 'levity and humor' that should not be taken literally, Sittler said.

UC Police, Berkeley confirmed that the campus was on lockdown. 'Milo event cancelled. Shelter in place if on campus. All campus buildings on lockdown. #miloatcal,' they tweeted

The Breitbart editor wrote on Facebook that he and his team were safe after being evacuated from campus

Yiannopoulos' talks have sparked protests, shouting matches and occasional violence at stops around the country. A man was shot and wounded at protests outside his January 21 talk at the University of Washington.

Rowdy protests at UC Davis January 13 prompted campus Republicans to cancel his appearance last minute.

On Tuesday night at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, his speech was met with dozens of angry protesters outside a campus theater, but they were outnumbered by police who kept them far from the nearly 500 attendees and the event went on as planned.

His last stop was supposed to be UCLA on February 2, but that invitation was rescinded, making Berkeley the grand finale of his cross-country campus tour.

Professors had joined the hundreds of students calling for the event's cancellation.

But university officials refused to cancel ahead of time in the name of free speech.

Police say they have called in extra resources to deal with the 'violent demonstration'

People carry a banner which reads 'Queers bash back' at the protest over the appearance of Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos on Wednesday

People protest the appearance of Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos Wednesday at the University of California

But Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks was expecting protests to be 'substantial' amid tight security.

'In our view, Mr. Yiannopoulos is a troll and provocateur who uses odious behavior in part to 'entertain,' but also to deflect any serious engagement with ideas,' Dirks wrote last week to Berkeley's staff and 37,500 students.

'He has been widely and rightly condemned for engaging in hate speech.'

Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said: 'In our view, Mr. Yiannopoulos is a troll and provocateur who uses odious behavior in part to 'entertain,' but also to deflect any serious engagement with ideas'

But as a public university, Berkeley's administrators are legally bound by the First Amendment to protect free speech, meaning even offensive and hate speech cannot be banned or censored, Dirks said.

'We are defending the right to free expression at an historic moment for our nation, when this right is once again of paramount importance,' Dirks said.

The Berkeley Republican Club said earlier on Wednesday that it had no plans to cancel the event because that would send a message that intimidation and violence can win.

Administrators say the demands to stifle Yiannopoulos show that modern sensitivities are changing the debate about free speech on campus.

The number of attempts to keep speakers off college campuses because of their politics doubled last year, according to a report issued late last year by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

It logged a record 42 incidents of 'disinvitations,' with 25 percent aimed at Yiannopoulos.

Administrators have received hundreds of letters and emails calling for the event's cancellation.

There was also a 'No Milo' at Berkeley Facebook page with more than 3,500 people signed on, calling for a 'mass counter protest'.

Nearly 100 professors signed a letter to the chancellor urging him to cancel the event. It cited some of Yiannopoulos' earlier comments.

The polarizing editor from Breitbart News is a self-proclaimed internet troll who has been criticized as racist, misogynist and white supremacist (pictured speaking at California Polytechnic State University)

At the University of Delaware, Yiannopoulos referred to transgender people as 'mentally ill' and encouraged his audience to mock them.

He has called Black Lives Matter a form of 'black supremacism.'

Twitter banned him in July, as it cracked down on racist abuse targeting 'Ghostbusters' actress Leslie Jones.

At Western Carolina University he called feminism, 'a mean, vindictive, spiteful, nasty, man-hating philosophy.'

'The university should not provide a platform for such harassment,' the letter from professors said. 'We support robust debate, but we cannot abide by harassment, slander, defamation and hate speech.'

Yiannopoulos rejects accusations he is racist or white supremacist, saying his boyfriend is black and his humor is taken too literally in today's politically correct culture.

A group of veterans from Berkeley's 1960s Free Speech Movement praised administrators for allowing the event.

'Even the worst kind of bigot, including Yiannopoulos, must be allowed to speak on campus,' they wrote in In an op-ed published by Berkeley's The Daily Californian.
The best friend of a 13-year-old boy who took his own life after being bullied at school has revealed how she was punished for trying to stand up for her friend.

In November 2016 Tyrone Unsworth from Brisbane, Queensland took his own life, no longer able to handle the relentless abuse from bullies about 'being gay'.

His friend, Tanisha Blair, told the ABC she was forced to spend three days outside her primary school principal's office after an incident where she 'whacked' bullies out of the way two years before he passed away.

'I think four boys were pushing him,' Tanisha remembers.

In November 2016 Tyrone Unsworth, pictured, from Brisbane, Queensland took his own life

The teenager had been bullied for two years about his sexuality and had been 'pushed to the edge'

The principal of the high school Tyrone attended stated she wasn't aware of the ongoing bullying since primary school but was aawre of an altercation where he was hit with a paling

'I was like, I had better go up there and help him or I'll get in trouble.'

Tyrone didn't fight back which is why Tanisha knew she had to help.

Her mother, Renee McDonald, was proud of her efforts even if they landed her in trouble with the school.

She said one day in August 2014 she heard bullies calling him 'fairy and gay' so she took him aside to get him away from the unwanted attention.

The bullying followed Tyrone to high school.

Aspley State High School principal Jacquita Miller told media that whilst she was aware of a high school altercation where Tyrone was hit with a paling, she did not know about the ongoing bullying but she was 'sympathetic to all' who had been touched by the teenager's sudden death.

Ms Unsworth, Tyrone's mother, said before that attack the family had not reported the bullying to Aspley State High School.

Tyrone's best friend Tanisha Blair has revealed she was forced to sit outside the primary school principal's office for three days as punishment for sticking up for him two years before he took his life

Before his death he had also been hospitalised after he was hit across the jaw with a paling in a high school altercation

At the time of his death his devastated mother, Amanda Unsworth, told the The Courier-Mail people bullied her son because he was gay.

'He was a really feminine male, he loved fashion, he loved make-up and the boys always picked on him, calling him gay-boy, f****t, fairy; it was a constant thing from Year 5,' she was quoted saying.

Amanda went on to say the bullies ongoing bullying by primary and high school bullies pushed her son 'to the edge' and she believes they are the reason he took his own life.

Before his death he had also been hospitalised after he was hit across the jaw with a paling in a high school altercation.

The violent clash, allegedly with a fellow student, outside the school grounds.

Queensland police confirmed at the time of Tyrone's death that there was an investigation into the alleged assault.
A couple due to get married in Bali have had their wedding plans thrown into chaos, after half their guests, including the pair, were booked on cancelled Tigerair flights.

Adelaide couple Michael Della-Verde, 33, and Elisa Camerelli, 27, have planned their wedding in the picturesque seaside town of Sanur for April and sent out invitations to their 100 guests last Friday.

But the couple are now facing the reality 40 per cent of their guests might not make it after budget airline Tigerair cancelled all flights from Australia to Bali.

'When we booked the prices were expensive but it was manageable, but now it's between $300 to $600 dollars each way,' Mr Della-Verde told Daily Mail Australia.

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Michael Della-Verde (right), 33, and Elisa Camerelli, (left) 27, from Adelaide have had their Bali wedding plans thrown into chaos, after 50 guests booked flights with Tigerair. The airline announced on Friday they were ending flights to Bali

The couple are facing the reality 40 per cent of their guests might not make it to their wedding after budget airline Tigerair cancelled all flights from Australia to Bali

The budget airline initially cancelled flights to Bali for customers travelling on Friday, but later announced the cancellation was indefinite, after the Indonesian government refused to provide regulatory approval for them to fly.

Mr Della-Verde said the whole process had been 'quite disheartening'.

'There's quite a big possibility that we could have 40 per cent of our guests not come,' he said.

'Elisa gets texts once or twice a week counting down the days to go over there and everyone can't wait for a holiday and for something different.

'For 50 people to turn around and say they cant go, it will dampen the day.'

Mr Della-Verde said it was especially disappointing to see prices on other airlines had jumped so high in the wake of the news.

'Weve asked a lot of people to fly out of the country to go to a wedding, for them to now take that situation and benefit from it, its hard to accept,' she said.

Mr Della-Verde said it was especially disappointing to see prices on other airlines had jumped so high in the wake of the news

The couple are also concerned because Tigerair was one of only two airlines to fly the direct five hours to Bali from Adelaide

The couple are also concerned because Tigerair was one of only two airlines to fly the direct five hours to Bali from Adelaide. Jetstar is now the sole airline.

Ms Camerelli found out the Tigerair flights had ended on Facebook and said she has been calling and emailing the airline ever since.

She initially contacted the them with her concerns two weeks ago when they began cancelling flights and said it took them two or three days to get back to her.

'They said they'd reviewed our request and would get back to us, and we haven't heard anything since,' Ms Camerelli said.

Ms Camerelli said wedding guests had been contacting them non-stop all day worried about the announcement.

'We feel bad because theyre going there for us, were just as much in limbo as they are,' she said.

'We dont know what to do from here. We didnt have a back up plan, theres two airlines and we couldnt foresee this would happen. Next minute the cancellation is indefinite.'

Ms Camerelli said wedding guests had been contacting them non-stop all day worried about the announcement

Mr Della-Verde is flying to Bali next week on Jetstar with his family to do final preparations for the wedding

The couple, who have only ever flown Tigerair on domestic flights, said they were now looking to Jetstar in the hope they would honour the prices they originally booked with Tiger

Mr Della-Verde is flying to Bali next week on Jetstar with his family to do final preparations for the wedding, and said the trip will now be more stressful.

'It was supposed to be a fun trip for the family, and to close the book on all the running around we've done for the wedding,' he said.

'Trying cake, looking at food and all the fun stuff. Now we will have to go over and try and work out how to get everyone over in April.'

The couple, who have only ever flown Tigerair on domestic flights, said they were now looking to Jetstar in the hope they would honour the prices they originally booked with Tiger.

In a statement released on Friday, Tigerair said customers booked to travel from Australia to Bali from 3 February 2017 onwards would be proactively contacted and offered full refunds which will be automatically processed.

Tigerair said the cancellations were due to 'issues regarding final procedural approvals from Indonesian authorities'.
You might think this an optical illusion but this sneaky snake is hiding in one of these pot plants - the question is which one?

Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7 posted the image of six pot plants on its Facebook page and put this question to their followers.

It seems hard to fathom but one of the plants in the picture has a snake curled around it.

Six pot plants are pictured but which one has a large snake in it?

'BELIEVE IT OR NOT! ..... there is actually a 1.8m Carpet Python curled up behind one of these pots!' the post on their Facebook reads.

'Goes to show how well they can hide. If you can see it, try sharing this on your walls and see if your friends can see it too! Well done everyone that got it right!'

At first glance it seems impossible that there could be anything there at all, but a close up of one of the plants soon reveals all.

As it turns out the carpet python is in the top middle pot. He is wrapped up all around the plant.

The carpet python is actually in the top middle pot in the picture

'Sorry for leaving you all hanging! The answer is Top Middle!' Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7.

'You can see some scales hiding between the leaves when you zoom in! Goes to show how well they hide!'

Thew answer generated not shortage of comments on the organisation's Facebook page as they suddenly were able to make the snake out.

'I can see a tail top middle!' one surprised person wrote.

But another wasn't so sure joking: 'Still can't see it, it will have to bite me first.'
President Trump blocked publishers from releasing a book by his ex-wife Marla Maples detailing their relationship, a report suggests.

His once mistress wrote a tell-all about their 1989 affair and subsequent marriage, but it was put on hold before the election, and has now permanently been put on ice.

A source in the publishing industry told Page Six that the President declined to give his approval, effectively killing the book's release.

Maples posted a picture with Ricky Schroder while in Washington, DC two weeks ago for the President's inauguration. A source in the publishing industry told Page Six that her book, detailing her relationship with the President, was officially 'sunk' when Trump declined to give his approval

Maples worked with a ghost writer to put together a draft, but after the election lawyers reportedly became concerned that the president-to-be would sue, and would not sign off on the book deal until she received approval from her ex-husband.

Unsurprisingly, he did not give his approval, reported Page Six.

The memoir, 'It's About Time,' was supposed to cover her 1989 affair with New York's real-estate royal, their six-year marriage, and the birth of her daughter Tiffany Trump.

Maples, who famously said Trump was 'the best sex I've ever had', signed a non-disclosure agreement as a part of their divorce settlement in 1999.

After Maples worked with a ghost writer to put together a draft, but after the election lawyers reportedly became concerned that the president-to-be would sue, and would not approve the book deal until she received approval from her ex-husband

The agreement was the cause of the lawyer's concern, and guaranteed she could not deliver a manuscript as detailed and descriptive as one that she had promised.

Insiders say that the project is indefinitely on hold.

Maples has tried to deliver a memoir like this before, in 2001 when Harper Collins commissioned 'All That Glitters is Not Gold'. However, that book never made it to print either, according to Page Six.
Free-range egg and chicken farmers fear they could be driven out of business because of the fall-out of a bird flu epidemic.

Farmers have been forced to keep stocks of poultry birds inside since December 6 to stop them catching the virus from wild birds.

Under EU rules they are allowed to continue labelling the meat and eggs as free-range until February 28.

However, after that date this will no longer be permitted and the chicken and eggs will have to be labelled as coming from barn-reared birds.

Free-range eggs may have to be relabelled at the end of the month unless farmers can persuade the EU to change their rules. It comes after farmers were forced to keep chickens indoors due to a bird flu outbreak

If that happens, farmers may no longer be able to charge the price premium they get for free-range which will severely hit their finances.

British farmers unions are lobbying the European Commission and MEPs to allow them to carry on using the free-range label beyond February 28.

If that effort fails, they will have to go to the expense of putting stickers on egg boxes and producing new packs and labels for chicken meat.

Farmers unions say there is a very real prospect that producers will go out of business unless the European Union agrees to allow the use of free-range labels to continue.

In a joint statement, Britains farmers unions said: With this outbreak of avian influenza, we are in uncharted territory and this situation requires new measures that will help to solve the concerns of producers.

The four UK farming unions are calling on MEPs and EU decision-makers to extend the 12-week period on free-range status until the risk has subsided to previous levels. Farmers across the UK and Europe need this extension to give them certainty that their produce will have a market.

The demand from shoppers for free-range eggs and poultry meat has increased significantly over the past 25 years and we want our producers to be able to provide this for them. The UK market will, without doubt, be one of the most affected countries as a result of bird flu, due to half of our national flock being free-range, by far the highest percentage of any member state.

If these steps arent taken to protect the industry, producers are facing the very real prospect that they could go out of business and the UK market will be unable to enjoy the free-range products they demand.

Farmers have been forced to keep stocks of poultry birds inside since December 6 to stop them catching the virus from wild birds.

British farmers have been quick to introduce enhanced biosecurity measures and have ensured that the welfare of their birds remains an absolute priority.

Bird flu emerged on the Continent at the end of last year and has since been brought to the UK by wild birds.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has confirmed a case of bird flu in a flock of about 6,000 turkeys at a farm in East Lindsey, Lincolnshire. Earlier in the month, the strain was also discovered in two small backyard flocks of chickens and ducks on premises near Settle in North Yorkshire, and Carmarthenshire, south-west Wales.

The H5N8 avian flu strain has also been confirmed in pheasants in two farms in Wyre, Lancashire and proactive culling of 63,000 birds, including pheasants, partridges and ducks, at a third site nearby will take place to contain the spread.

There were 761 outbreaks of H5N8 in Europe between October and January  51 per cent in poultry and the rest in wild birds. About 1.6million poultry birds were destroyed.

Farmers in Holland are in the process of re-labelling free range eggs and poultry after recently losing an appeal against the EU to extend the 12-week rules.
Megyn Kelly could be poised to take over from Savannah Guthrie as the star co-anchor of Today with Matt Lauer, sources claim.

Guthrie, who recently signed a new contract with Today, could be bumped or could even take Tamron Hall's slot after she quit over Kelly's arrival, sources told Page Six. Hall's top rated morning show Today's Take was cancelled to make a slot for Kelly.

Sources say Kelly is likely to take the lead role on the NBC morning show with Lauer when she starts in September.

'NBC is not paying Megyn $12 to $15 million a year to be on at 9 a.m. The word is that Savannah could take the 9 a.m. slot and Megyn will go right in at 7 a.m. Andy Lack is completely behind all of this,' a source told Page 6. 'There's no way Megyn would have signed with NBC unless she was promised a big role down the line.'

But NBC executives insist there are no plans to replace Guthrie.

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Megyn Kelly (left) could be poised to take over from Savannah Guthrie (right) as the star co-anchor of Today with Matt Lauer, sources claim

It takes two: 'Personally, Tamron has been not just a co-host here on Today's Take for the past three years but a good friend. And not just to me, to all of us here,' said Roker (above with Hall in 2014)

'Let me say this for the last time and as clearly as possible: This is never ever going to happen,' Noah Oppenheim, SVP of Today, said.

Guthrie is currently out on maternity leave but sources say she is 'looking over her shoulder.'

They warned that the first time Guthrie is out, Kelly will take her seat.

Activists have accused the network of 'whitewashing' over the decision to bump Hall and Al Roker's 9am show for Kelly.

Roker praised his former co-host Hall on Thursday morning at the start of the the third hour of Today.

'As some of you may have heard by now, our good friend Tamron Hall has decided to leave NBC News,' said Roker. Personally, Tamron has been not just a co-host here on Today's Take for the past three years but a good friend. And not just to me, to all of us here.'

Sources say Kelly (left) is likely to take over the lead role from Guthrie (right) on the NBC morning show with Lauer when she starts in September

From left to right: Carson Daly,Tamron Hall, Al Roker, Savannah Guthrie, Matt Lauer, Natalie Morales, Willie Geist, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb appear on NBC News' Today show

Roker then added: 'We want to wish her nothing but the best, much continued success and cannot wait to see what her next chapter is.'

Sheinelle Jones, the host of Weekend Today and MNBC Live who was filling in on Thursday, then added: 'She's going to rock it, no matter what she does.'

The hosts then switched modes and began the show, which Roker wrote on Twitter last week has been the top-rated morning news program in its time slot for seven straight weeks.

Despite that success however the program will be taken off the schedule later this year when Kelly joins the network.

And after first learning that news last week, Hall informed the network she would be taking herself off the schedule at both NBC and MSNBC by refusing to sign a new multi-year contract that was offering her millions.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Black Journalists has requested a meeting with NBC to discuss the 'whitewashing' of the network over their decision to replace two African-American broadcasters with a white woman.

Friends for life: Al Roker paid tribute to Tamron Hall on the third hour of Today on Thursday (above) the morning after it was revealed she had quit her job after 10 years

Better days: Hall joined Roker on Today's Take in February of 2014, with the hour also including hosts Natalie Morales and Willie Geist at that time (l to r: Roker, Hall and Geist above in 2015)

In a statement on Wednesday, Hall thanked everyone at the network for all they had done for her over the years while NBC used their statement to hail Hall as an 'exceptional journalist' while stressing that it was her decision to walk away.

'We are disappointed that she has chosen to leave, but we wish her all the best,' said the network.

A source familiar with the discussions between Hall and the NBC told DailyMail.com: 'NBC News very much wanted Tamron to stay, she was offered a multi-million dollar/multi-year contract and she chose to go.'

There is not word as to where Hall might go next, and given her range she could easily end up back on daytime or primetime or both.

And NBC responded to the NABJ meeting request in a statement by saying: 'NBC News has a long and proven history as an industry leader in newsroom diversity.

'We will continue to engage in the running dialogue we've had for many years with the National Association of Black Journalists and other advocacy groups to advance those goals.'

Hall has long been one of the hardest working personalities on the network, and in the past two months had filled in for both Savannah Guthrie on Today and Lester Holt on NBC World News Tonight while also anchoring the third hour of Today.

On one day in December she filled in for both Guthrie and Hall while also hosting MSNBC Live.

Changes: Geist announced he was leaving in August and Morales moved to Los Angeles to host Access Hollywood, while Billy Bush came on to join Roker and Hall (l to r: Geist, Hall, Morales and Roker in early 2016)

She also hosted Deadline: Crime on Investigation Discovery and Dateline Extra on MSNBC, as well as lending her on-air talents to NBC's coverage of the Westminster Dog Show.

Roker will now anchor the third hour of Today until the show debuts their new morning lineup this fall.

Unlike Hall however, the meteorologist already had a steady gig on Today, and will continue to appear on the program's first two hours when Kelly arrives on the scene.

Today's Take had been enjoying a four-month streak without any internal drama before the news of Hall's departure, a relatively good run given the revolving door of hosts who have appeared on the program over the years.

It all began last summer when Willie Geist announced that he would be exiting the show, which he was hosting alongside Hall, Roker and Natalie Morales at the time.

NBC used that news to play around with the format of the show and welcomed Billy Bush to the Today team while shipping off longtime anchor Natalie Morales to Los Angeles where she took Bush's Access Hollywood job.

More changes: Bush exited the show two months later with a $10m severance package after audio of him and President Trump laughing about sexual assault was leaked (l to r: Hall, Bush,Roker and Kate McKinnon in September)

Bush reportedly butted heads with some on the staff shortly after coming on board, and then found himself out of a job when audio was leaked of President Donald Trump and himself joking about the billionaire businessman sexually assaulting women.

He reportedly got a $10million severance from the network after working a little over two months due to the fact that he had signed a three-year contract that was to pay him an annual salary of $3.5million.

It is not known how much Hall was being offered in her contract, and for how many years.

Roker and Hall somehow managed to keep the show going however by welcoming a new guest co-host almost every day since Bush left the show in a move similar to Kelly Ripa, who adopted the strategy May after Michael Strahan left her ABC morning show.
A Muay Thai boxer who did a burnout near a man's body after a deadly one-punch attack will spend at least six years behind bars for the 'inexcusable' crime.

Twenty-five-year-old Kaine Geoffrey Jones was sentenced over the manslaughter of Graeme Wilton, 56, on Friday, after pleading guilty to the crime in November 2016.

Jones punched Wilton and left him for dead on the side of a New South Wales Central Coast road in December 2013.

Kaine Geoffrey Jones will spend at least six years behind bars

Graeme Wilton was punched by Jones and left for dead on a New South Wales road

Wilton had been out been for an evening walk at Mannering Park when Jones drove by in ute, with witnesses reporting they could hear the sound of screeching tyres coming his car.

According to a statement of facts, Wilton slammed his hand on Jones' ute bonnet.

Jones jumped out and punched Wilton, who was knocked unconscious when his head hit the ground.

Witnesses said the 25-year-old then did a burnout and drove off. Wilton died in hospital two months later.

Mr Wilton pictured with his wife Marlene

Graeme Wilton's wife, Marlene, addressing reporters outside court

New South Wales Supreme Court Justice Ian Harrison said Jones' actions were 'literally inexcusable'.

'They are inconsistent with the civilised conduct of any normal society,' he said.

Outside court, Mr Wilton's widow, Marlene, told reporters: 'It has been a long period and a long time coming', The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'Nothing has changed really for me,' she said.

'My husband has gone but Mr Jones was responsible for that and now I've got to get on with my life.'
Delaware prison guard Sergeant Steven Floyd was found dead and a female employee was rescued on Thursday morning after inmates took jail staff hostage in a tense 20-hour standoff

Rioting Delaware prisoners apparently practiced how they were going to take control of the facility for months as a former death row inmate is blaming the inhumane conditions inside as the cause for the violent incident which left one veteran guard dead.

Sergeant Steven Floyd, 47, was found dead on Thursday morning after police entered Building C of the Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna following the more than 20-hour long hostage situation.

A female counselor was found alive but injured when police breached the building just after 5am.

Floyd had worked at the prison for 16 years. Police could not confirm how or when Floyd died.

The head of the corrections officers' union in Delaware says he believes that inmates had practiced taking over a prison.

Geoffrey Klopp, president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware, said Thursday that the prison agency has had staffing, salary and retention troubles for about the past decade.

Authorities say inmates used sharpened objects to take the hostages, as Klopp says Floyd was forced into a closet and yelled to other officers who were coming to help that the inmates had set a trap.

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Geoffrey Klopp (center), president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware, said Thursday he believes that inmates had practiced taking over a prison

Police searched Delaware prison inmates in the yard after they found an officer dead inside the building on Thursday morning following a 20-hour hostage situation

Klopp says Floyd's warning saved his fellow officers' lives and that he thinks Floyd was killed by the inmates.

Isaiah McCoy, a former death row inmate at the Delaware prison, says the prisoners were protesting what he called 'inhumane' conditions at the facility.

McCoy says several inmates who were in the building called him while a standoff was underway and told him they are tired of the 'oppression' and 'misconduct' at the facility.

McCoy would not say whether the inmates he spoke to were the hostage-takers or were just in Building C at the time. He would not provide the names of any of the inmates.

He says the inmates' nonviolent means of raising their concerns haven't been effective.

McCoy, who was released from prison in January after being acquitted of all charges in a retrial for a drug-related killing, said he served about 5 1/2 years at the Vaughn Correctional Center.

In addition, a prisoner who lived inside the building where hostages were taken Wednesday told his mother in several recent phone calls that his fellow inmates said they were fed up with conditions at the prison.

The woman spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her son said that he told her 'they were riled up and acted as though they were going to protest.'

She says her son was 'frightened to death' that there would be trouble.

Floyd had worked at the prison for 16 years. Police could not confirm how or when Floyd died

Prisoners took over part of the jail and seized the three officers and one counselor at 10.30am on Wednesday in a protest that was also over President Donald Trump.

Two of the officers were released and 41 inmates had exited the building by Wednesday evening.

Police said three maintenance workers who were hiding in the basement managed to climb up to the roof about 11pm and were rescued safely.

All 120 inmates who were inside the building when the siege broke out are now all suspects.

Inmates had earlier contacted a local newspaper to make demands and highlight their concerns, which included a fear of Trump and complaints over the lack of access to education and rehabilitation services.

One of the demands was for the water supply in the building to be switched back on.

Police said the inmates subsequently took advantage of this to fill steel foot lockers with water so they could help barricade the doors.

Joe Simon, a lieutenant at the prison described Floyd as an 'outstanding officer.'

'He was a straight-up guy - absolutely no bulls**t about him. You knew exactly where he was coming from. He was also very funny,' Simon told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

Floyd, pictured with his wife Saundra, had been working at the prison for 16 years. He has been described by colleagues as an 'outstanding officer'

After authorities found the guard dead inside the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center building, they took the inmates to the yard to search them all individually

'He ran a tight ship - and sometimes those inside don't like that. But he really cared for the people he was supervising in there.'

Simon, a 23-year veteran prison guard, confirmed that tensions inside the prison had risen in recent weeks, especially since the election.

'It's certainly got worse over the last couple of weeks,' he said.

'The prison population is probably 65 percent black and many of them don't like Trump's racial policies. But, of course, it's a black officer who has been killed. I don't understand that.'

Block C where Floyd met his death, houses 126 prisoners - who are either moving to a less restrictive area after time in maximum security or moving up after time in minimum security.

'It's either 'you've been good we'll give you a chance' or 'you've misbehaved and we need to move you',' Simon said.

Now, Simon, who got off duty shortly before the prisoners' blockade was ended after working 20 hours straight, says the officers will have to 'put our game-face on and go back in there.'

'But one thing's for sure, things will never be the same.'

James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware went into lockdown on Wednesday as police swarmed the facility due to a hostage situation

Robert Coupe, secretary of the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, confirmed Floyd's death at a press conference on Thursday morning

Governor John Carney said: 'I'm praying hard for the fallen officer's family.'

'This serves as a tragic reminder that members of law enforcement risk their lives every day on behalf of the people of Delaware. We will stand by the fallen officer's family and fellow law enforcement officers during what is an extremely difficult time.

'This was a long and agonizing situation. I want to thank all those involved in responding, including officers at the Department of Correction and the Delaware State Police, as well as our federal partners.

'Our priority now will be to determine what happened and how this happened. We will hold accountable anyone who was responsible. And we will make whatever changes are necessary to ensure nothing like it ever happens again.'

A large group of law enforcement officers surrounded the 2,500-inmate facility while the hours-long negotiations with the ringleaders progressed on Wednesday.

Authorities believe the takeover began around 10.30am on Wednesday when a prison officer inside Building C called for back-up. Officers responded to help and four employees were taken hostage.

The inmates released one hostage around 2.40pm on Wednesday who was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Another officer was released several hours later and was also treated in hospital.

Dozens of inmates surrendered to police through out the night.

Mounted police patrolled the road outside Vaugh Corrections Center on Thursday after the deadly hostage siege came to an end

Commissioner Perry Phelps fought back tears on Thursday morning as he revealed the identity of slain corrections officer Sergeant Steven Floyd

Video courtesy of WBOC

Inmates had earlier reached out to their local newspaper - The News Journal - in Wilmington in two phone calls to explain their concerns, including the leadership of the U.S., educational opportunities, rehabilitation and how the state spends money on prisons.

The made the calls with the help of one inmate's fiancee and another person's mother. The mother told the paper her son was among the hostages.

In that call, an inmate said their reasons 'for doing what we're doing' included 'Donald Trump. Everything that he did. All the things that he's doing now. We know that the institution is going to change for the worse.'

That caller said education for prisoners was the inmates' priority. They also sought effective rehabilitation for all prisoners and information about how money is allocated to prisons.

Video from above the prison Wednesday afternoon showed uniformed officers gathered in two groups along fences near an entrance to the prison.

Later, video showed several people surrounding a stretcher and running as they pushed it across the compound. People could be seen standing near a set of doors with an empty stretcher and wheelchair.

Blood Bank Delmarva tweeted about 12pm saying they were in need of O blood type and platelet donations to go to Smyrna.

Governor John Carney issued a statement saying he was praying for the officer's family

Four guards were taken hostage at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware at 10.30am on Wednesday

Firefighters were called to the scene after reports of smoke and were being held on standby

Dozens of emergency response teams and Delaware State Police swarmed the prison as helicopters circled above the buildings when the hostage situation was first reported.

The Department of Correction initially only said that an emergency situation was reported at the Smyrna prison late Wednesday morning.

The facility and all other prisons in the state were placed on lockdown, which is protocol if an emergency happens at one of the facilities.

According to the department's website, the prison is Delaware's largest correctional facility for men, housing about 2,500 inmates.

Video from above the prison on Wednesday showed uniformed officers gathered in two groups along fences near an entrance to the prison

It houses minimum, medium, and maximum security inmates, and also houses Kent County detainees awaiting trial. It is also the site of the state's death row and where executions were carried out. The prison opened in 1971.

The last hostage situation at the prison occurred in 2004 when inmate Scott Miller raped a counselor and took her hostage for nearly seven hours.

A department sharpshooter later shot and killed the 45-year-old ending the standoff.

Dover attorney Stephen Hampton, who has represented state inmates in civil rights cases, said complaints have increased in the past year from inmates system-wide about substandard medical care and poor record-keeping.

Hampton also said that pretrial inmates at Vaughn and other facilities are locked up for much of the day, without access to gyms or libraries, because rules prohibit mixing pretrial and sentenced inmates.

He said prisoners awaiting trial sometimes make deals to get out of their cells. He added: 'There gets to be a tremendous pressure on these inmates.'

The prison was placed into lockdown as police swarmed the facility early Wednesday morning
A new law in Arkansas allows a woman's husband to sue a doctor for civil damages in the event of his wife's abortion, which would block the woman from having the procedure.

The law also bans the majority of second trimester abortions, reported the Huffington Post.

The 'Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act' was signed into law last week by Governor Asa Hutchinson.

It includes a clause that says if the husband is the baby's father, he can file a civil lawsuit against the physician for monetary damages or injunctive relief.

Stock image of an Arkansas courthouse - A new law in Arkansas allows a woman's husband to sue a doctor for civil damages in the event of his wife's abortion, which would block the woman from having the procedure

The 'Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act' was signed into law last week by Governor Asa Hutchinson, pictured at the Republican National Convention in 2016. It includes a clause that says if the husband is the baby's father, he can file a civil lawsuit against the physician for monetary damages or injunctive relief

If he filed for relief, it would prevent the procedure from taking place.

The clause also gives power to the woman's parents or legal guardians, who can sue for the same damages if she is a minor.

In the cases of 'criminal conduct' - such as spousal rape or incest- the husband cannot sue the doctor for monetary damages, but can still halt the procedure.

The legislation bans dilation and evacuation procedures, in which the physician removes the fetus from the womb with surgical tools.

These are the safest and most common way that women end pregnancies after 14 weeks, accounting for 95 per cent of all second-trimester abortions, according to the American Medical Association.

Republican State Representative Andy Mayberry (pictured) co-sponsored the bill, which could go into effect as early as the spring, and told the Daily Beast 'We've tried to account for all the worst case scenarios'

The procedure is also common after miscarriages, when fetal tissue has to be removed from the womb to prevent infection, and during medical testing. The law would make it a felony only if used during abortion, reported the Daily Beast.

Republican State Representative Andy Mayberry co-sponsored the bill, which could go into effect as early as the spring, and told the Daily Beast 'We've tried to account for all the worst case scenarios'.

He also called it a 'gruesome, barbaric procedure' in the introduction of the bill, according to the Daily Beast.

Another co-sponsor, Senator David Sanders, described watching the procedure, saying: 'You see a baby, an unborn life, a fetus, engaging in a fight or flight reaction to the forceps going into the womb, trying to remove an arm, remove a leg.'

Another co-sponsor, Senator David Sanders, described watching the procedure, saying: 'You see a baby, an unborn life, a fetus, engaging in a fight or flight reaction to the forceps going into the womb, trying to remove an arm, remove a leg'

The American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas (ACLU) plans to challenge the abortion law in court before it takes effect this summer.

Holly Dickinson, legal director for the ACLU, told Daily Beast, 'They created a whole new right - the right of a husband or family member to sue a doctor on behalf of an adult patient.

'I cannot begin to tell you what the intent was, but we have raised concerns about that provision and the entire rest of the bill, which is unconstitutional'.

In four other where laws like this one were challenged, it was struck down by the courts, citing the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe V Wade, reported the Huffington Post.
Lawyers for Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman are complaining that his New York City jail conditions are too strict.

Guzman, who has broke out of maximum security prisons in his home country twice, appeared Friday in U.S. federal court in Brooklyn.

El Chapo's strict jail conditions were outlined on Friday by his defense attorneys in a failed bid to get a judge to loosen them.

They say he's on 23-hour lockdown, can't visit with his 27-year-old beauty queen wife or Mexican lawyer, and has even been denied water by his jailers on occasion. El Chapo is estimated to be between 59-62 years of age.

Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman, left, is shown with an interpreter in this courtroom sketch in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Friday

During the hearing, El Chapo's lawyers complained that he was on 23-hour lockdown at his Manhattan prison. From row, left to right: defense attorneys Michael Schneider and Michelle Gelernt, El Chapo and his translator

El Chapo's wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, exits the court house on Friday after attending her husband's first hearing

Authorities shut down the Brooklyn Bridge for 15 minutes during the morning rush hour so that El Chapo could be transported to federal court

His wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, sat in the front of the gallery during Guzman's court appearance. He looked at her and smiled.

Guzman smiled at his wife, a former local Coffee and Guava Queen, as he was led into the Brooklyn courtroom under heavy guard by deputy U.S. marshals at his second court appearance since being brought to the United States on Janunary 19.

'This was so far the only way she has been able to see him,' defense attorney Michelle Gelernt said afterward with a silent Coronel at her side.

El Chapo's wife, a former local Coffee and Guava Queen, addressed reporters after the hearing on Friday

Guzman, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges of running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings.

He's being held at a high-security federal jail in Manhattan, with U.S. officials mindful of how he twice escaped from prison in Mexico, the second time via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.

When he was transported to the court during the morning commute, authorities shut down the Brooklyn Bridge for 15 minutes so that the drug lord could be moved in a 12-car caravan. They did the same thing for the ride back into Manhattan later in the day.

The bridge was shut down again as El Chapo was taken back into the city after the hearing Friday morning

Defense lawyers complained to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan on Friday that the restrictions make it difficult for him to make decisions with them about how to fight the charges. They claimed his jailers are so zealous, they denied him water during a recent meeting with the defense team.

'I don't think there's any thought that if I have the guards give him a glass of water during a three-hour meeting that somehow that's going to effectuate his escape,' Gelernt told reporters outside court.

But Cogan, after alluding to having secret correspondence with the government about the risks of guarding Guzman, told the defense he wouldn't weigh in on the jail conditions.

'Based on what I know about this case, there are grounds for extra security measures,' the judge said, with Guzman listening through a Spanish interpreter.

Guzman is due back in court on May 5.
A six-year-old boy was pulled from a public swimming pool in country Victoria and rushed to hospital.

The child was swimming at the Swifts Creek Community Pool in the small rural town in the state's east when emergency services were called at about 1pm on Friday.

He was treated at the Great Alpine Road pool and airlifted to Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne.

A six-year-old boy was pulled from the Swifts Creek Community Pool (pictured) in country Victoria and rushed to hospital

He was treated at the Great Alpine Road pool and airlifted to hospital

The little boy was in a serious but stable condition late on Friday afternoon.

The complex features a six-lane, 24-metre outdoor pool and a shaded paddle pool for young children.

It is staffed by volunteers and only had one lifeguard on duty when Daily Mail Australia called.

It comes after a spate of more than a dozen child drowning around the country in the past few months, though they were mostly in backyard pools.
Jack Palkovic (above), a 21-year-old student who supports President Donald Trump, was beaten up on the University of California, Berkeley campus on Wednesday

A 21-year-old student who supports President Donald Trump was beaten up on the UC Berkeley campus less than 24 hours after violent protests led authorities to cancel a controversial speech.

Jack Palkovic says he was wearing a 'Make America Great Again' cap and on his way to class Thursday when a white SUV slammed to a stop and two young men ran toward him.

One of the men screamed, grabbed Palkovic's hat and pummeled him before the two got back in the vehicle and tried to drive away.

An Associated Press reporter witnessed the attack. Police arrived, blocked their escape and arrested both men.

Video of the incident was recorded on a cell phone by a reporter.

The footage shows Palkovic being attacked by one of the men who takes his cap.

He then gets into a skirmish with the man in an attempt to retrieve the hat.

I was standing at the entrance to the plaza and I was wearing the Trump hat, Palkovic told Jodi Hernandez of NBC Bay Area.

Two men that were driving north down Telegraph [Avenue] and were turning left onto Bancroft saw me wearing the hat and they parked their car in the middle of the intersection and proceeded to get out and immediately walk towards me and attempt to steal my hat.

The student attacked at @UCBerkeley for wearing a #Trump hat describes what happened & shares his reaction. pic.twitter.com/RDlhnLkeK0  Jodi Hernandez (@JodiHernandezTV) February 3, 2017

Palkovic says he was wearing a 'Make America Great Again' cap and on his way to class Thursday when a white SUV slammed to a stop and two young men ran toward him. One of the men in a checkered shirt is seen in the above photos accosting Palkovic

The man (far right) accosts Palkovic and begins to attack him, prompting Palkovic to retaliate

A scuffle ensues as Palkovic tries to retrieve his hat while the other man uses force to prevent him from doing so

They also used physical force to keep me from trying to reach for it back, Pakovic said.

I think its very unfortunate that many people in our community feel like they can attack people for associating themselves with Donald Trump, he said.

I would like [the men who attacked me] to know that they may have the views that they have and I sympathize somewhat with their views, but it does not give them the right to use violence and to intimidate people with a competing perspective.

Im gonna be careful where I wear it, but Ill wear the hat on campus and Ill continue to make my views known.

Palkovic says he is a member of the College Republicans group and helped organize Wednesdays' event with Milo Yiannopoulos, an incendiary right-wing commentator with Breitbart.

Palkovic takes a tumble onto the sidewalk as the two men try to flee with his red cap

Yiannopoulos said he had been planning to speak about cultural appropriation but claims his speech was over taken by the 'hard left.'

The protests on Wednesday at the nation's number-one-ranked public university were so violent that administrators warned the rest of the student body to shelter in place and the talk was eventually called off.

Protesters tore down barricades, let off fireworks and set the campus ablaze during the furious protests over the conservative Breitbart editor.

Police officers above arrest the two men on the Berkeley, California, campus after the incident

One of the men screamed an epithet, grabbed Palkovic's hat and pummeled him before the two got back in the vehicle and tried to drive away

Police arrived, blocked their escape and arrested both men. The entire incident was witnessed by an Associated Press reporter

Hundreds rallied against Yiannopoulos in a demonstration which turned violent and destructive, with protesters vandalizing dozens of businesses and smashing storefront windows.

University police locked down all buildings and responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, according to witness reports.

Yiannopoulos himself later posted a video complaining that UC Berkley was 'no friend to free speech any more.'

Palkovic (left) is a member of College Republicans, which helped organize an event on Wednesday featuring Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos (right)

University police confirmed that the campus was on lockdown as they reported they were bringing in extra resources to tackle the 'violent demonstration.'

'Milo event cancelled. Shelter in place if on campus. All campus buildings on lockdown. #miloatcal,' they tweeted.

The 32-year-old right-wing provocateur is a vocal supporter of Trump and a self-proclaimed internet troll whose comments have been criticized as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist.

He was banned from Twitter after leading a harassment campaign against 'Ghostbusters' actress Leslie Jones.

Hundreds rallied against Yiannopoulos in a demonstration which turned violent and destructive, with protesters vandalizing dozens of businesses and smashing storefront windows

University police confirmed that the campus was on lockdown as they reported they were bringing in extra resources to tackle the 'violent demonstration.' Shadi Banoo (above) holds a sign during the demonstrations on Wednesday

Several of Yiannopoulos' talks at other campuses have been canceled due to protests or security reasons.

The Breitbart editor wrote on Facebook that he and his team were safe after being evacuated from campus.

He also took to Facebook to criticize news sources such as CNN, sharing one of their articles titled 'Milo Yiannopoulis is trying to convince colleges that hate speech is cool' and editing it to say 'Milo Yiannopoulis is trying to convince colleges that free speech is cool.'

The rioting at Berkeley which forced the cancellation of Yiannopoulis' talk appears to have fueled soaring book sales.

He shared a link to his book, Dangerous, on Facebook with the message 'My book has soared back up to #5. Thank you for all the support. Not a bad way of showing them that violence will not win.'
Conservative comedian Gavin McInnes was pepper-sprayed in New York City on Thursday, ahead of his appearance at New York University.

Protesters came out to demonstrate against the scheduled event featuring the co-founder of Vice Media. A crowd started fighting while McInnes arrived, video shows.

McInnes, a conservative, was supposed to speak to the NYU College Republicans, The New York Post reported.

An event page on Facebook from the NYU Anti-Fascists was called 'Disrupt Gavin McInnes at NYU'.

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Jason Miller tweeted this photograph, writing 'They are definitely people getting arrested'

McInnes, a conservative and the co-founder of Vice Media (he left the company in 2008), is pictured in March 2016

The page - which appears to have been taken down - reportedly said: 'Come to Kimmel, Rosenthal Pavilion to let NYU know that we will not stand for bigotry, racism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny on our campus.'

'Gavin McInnes has a long track record of using incendiary language to attract media attention and frenzy,' it was quoted as saying.

It purportedly said: 'Most recently, in December 2016, Gavin McInnes launched an informal group called the Proud Boys, an "anti racial guilt," anti-feminist organization.'

McInnes was pepper-sprayed ahead of going inside the building he was supposed to speak at, and received medical care

Police are seen outside in New York City on Thursday in this Instagram photograph

NYU Local said in a tweet: 'Arrests happening outside of Kimmel,' and posted photos of police officers in uniforms.

Jason Miller tweeted: 'Just saw 4 vans of cops unload outside of the NYU Anti-Fa protest of Gavin McInnes' talk.'

In another tweet, he said: 'They are threatening to arrest everyone in the herd now, each cop with roughly 8-10 zip ties in tow.'

McInnes was pepper-sprayed ahead of going inside and received medical care, according to Washington Square News.

Gizmodo reporter Anna Merlan tweeted: 'Crowd of antifa rushed McInnes as he walked into NYU. Cops shoved them back, took a guy to the ground. Guy in a MAGA hat threw a punch.'

In another tweet, Merlan said: 'Now crowd is chanting "Nazi scum your time has come." One mocking a cop for protecting him, adds "and your favorite rapper is Flo Rida!"'

Merlan also tweeted: 'Looked like someone might've been trying to spray something at McInnes? Hopefully Nair.'

In a Periscope video from NYU Local, McInnes was filmed talking about being pepper-sprayed.

He told the crowd, 'And then you get this sense of panic, where you're like "How do I know this isn't acid?" And then oh yeah, this isn't Islam.'

The remark was soon met with both cheers and jeers, the video revealed.

'Whose campus? Our campus!' people yelled inside the building.

Members of the New York Police Department are pictured outside in this image

A man is pictured being arrested by police, as onlookers stand nearby

Protesters are seen holding signs with various slogans on Thursday evening

People in the crowd shouted over McInnes during his appearance.

Vice President of Student Affairs Marc Wais attempted to gain control of the crowd yet wasn't able to do so, the Washington Square News reported.

McInnes was filmed telling Wais: 'You're ridiculous, sir. You're a dumb, liberal a******.'

McInnes said: 'You don't want to lose your job, so you say "Sit down, try to be civil." That's a myth. You know this whole thing's a f****** charade.'

McInnes left the Rosenthal Pavilion 20 minutes after taking the podium, Washington Square News reported. There were five arrests at the event, police told the website.

Gizmodo's Anna Merlan tweeted that police arrested a girl who 'was just standing on the sidewalk'.

She said in another tweet: 'Cops arresting a MAGA fan who just assaulted a reporter. NYPD didn't seem to see but the rest of us did.'

It wasn't clear from her tweet where that arrest took place.

McInnes tweeted the above message on Thursday

In a statement to the website, the College Republicans said: 'Our intention was not to advocate for McInnes's views, in fact many of us differ with him when it comes to certain ideas.

'The purpose of this event was to promote free speech and not to promote certain ideas.

The purpose of our club is to give students the opportunity to meet and listen to conservative speakers from all across the political spectrum, especially since we are the largest conservative organization on campus.'
An elderly Korean grandma claims she was attacked in downtown Los Angeles by a woman screaming 'white power'

Officers were called to Korea town at around 2:30pm on Wednesday after reports the 83-year-old woman had been assaulted.

Alexis Duvall, 27, allegedly punched the grandma in the back of her head, knocking her to the ground.

The victim told investigators, via a translator, the unprovoked attack came out of nowhere.

Alexis Duvall, 27, (right) allegedly punched the grandma (left) in the back of her head, knocking her to the ground

Witnesses say they heard her yelling 'power is power', 'white power' and the N-word, the LA Times reports.

However, police confirmed that they are not treating the attack as a hate crime.

Sgt. Randy Espinoza of the Los Angeles Police Department said that none of the witnesses had reported Duvall making racist remarks.

She was arrested at the scene on suspicion of battery and is currently being held on $50,000 bail.

When she was arrested, she told officers her name was Patty Garcia, but her fingerprints revealed her identity was Duvall.

Police say she screamed obscenities as she was arrested, and seemed to be intoxicated or suffering from a mental problem.

Duval was arrested at the scene on suspicion of battery and is currently being held on $50,000 bail

Seng Vongphrachanh, a Koreatown resident, who chased after Duvall, claims that she repeatedly yelled 'power is power' and the N-word.

Linda Lee, who says she was a friend of witness at the scene, shared a picture of the bloodied vicitm lying on the sidewalk and another of the suspect being arrested on Facebook.

She added that Duvall had yelled 'white power' as she fled.

The vicitm, who has not been named, was left with a one-inch cut on her cheek and also hurt her knee in the fall.
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Emotional residents were forced to say goodbye to a neighborhood in Baltimore that was demolished after laying in ruin for decades in the city where roughly 17,000 buildings are estimated to be empty and abandoned.

Hundreds of people have called the 900 block of North Bradford Street home since the nine rowhouses were built on an old brickyard in 1905, according to The Washington Post.

But now, the largest city in Maryland has had a steady decrease in population through the years.

At its peak, Baltimore's population was 950,000 in 1950. It's estimated to be at roughly 620,000 now, and the lower number is apparent as their are thousands of abandoned boarded-up homes and buildings that are unstable and unoccupied throughout the city.

Hundreds of people have called the 900 block of North Bradford Street home since the nine rowhouses were built on an old brickyard in 1905. Above is the exterior of Sophie Kilma's store at 929 N. Bradford St., pictured in 1907

But now, the largest city in Maryland has had a steady decrease in population through the years causing many of the houses in the city to become abandoned. Above the rowhouses are slated for demolition in West Baltimore's Sandton-Winchester neighborhood

Jonathon Todd explores the house his great grandfather owned before it gets demolished on N. Bradford street in July

As an alternative to managing thousands of vacant homes, many cities, like Baltimore, have taken to having them demolished, whether they're in good condition or bad. Above heavy equipment takes down the sole remaining house on N. Bradford street

As an alternative to managing thousands of vacant homes, many cities, like Baltimore, have taken to having them demolished, whether they're in good condition or bad.

City officials hope that in demolishing the homes, it will boost the struggling and 'often crime-plagued communities'.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's Project C.O.R.E. or Creating Opportunities for Renewal and Enterprise, is a multi-year, multi-hundred million dollar initiative to address the blight in Baltimore. The joint city-state partnership will bring significant resources to demolish thousands of vacant buildings and replace them with green space and a stronger foundation for redevelopment and reinvestment in the city.

According to the Post, the city has spent roughly $40million since 2012 taking over neighborhoods that are filled with blight and crime. In 2016, 500 rowhouses were demolished, as Hogan pledged $74 million in state money to clear the empty homes.

It's estimated to cost in total about $500million to clear away all of the abandoned boarded-up properties in the city.

City officials hope that in demolishing the homes, it will boost the struggling and 'often crime-plagued communities'.

City officials hope that in demolishing the empty homes (above), it will boost the struggling and 'often crime-plagued communities'

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's Project C.O.R.E. or Creating Opportunities for Renewal and Enterprise, is a multi-year, multi-hundred million dollar initiative to address the blight in Baltimore with destroying the empty homes (above)

The joint city-state partnership will bring significant resources to demolish thousands of vacant buildings and replace them with green space and a stronger foundation for redevelopment and reinvestment in the city. Above a home slated for demo

However, some residents say many of the homes are safe and structurally sound, as they also represent the city's long history and show the perfection of how craftsmen built the homes decades ago.

The last resident of 936 N. Bradford, 69-year-old Mable Olds, said she hopes that the demolitions are 'not just to move black people out.'

'I don't know. I just don't know about tearing down good houses,' she told the newspaper.

She witnessed the government-paid excavator demolish the house where she had raised her family along with those who lived in the home before her.

The elderly woman moved into the 760-square-foot rowhouse in 1974 before buying it for $4,000 in 1978.

She raised her 44-year-old son and two daughters inside the home while working at a laundry plant, and continued to occupy the rowhouse until only three other homes were still being lived in on the street, as she was the last owner of the property.

It's estimated to cost in total about $500million to clear away all of the abandoned boarded-up properties in the city. Above the interior of a peeling door inside a home before it was demolished

In 2016, 500 rowhouses were demolished, as Hogan pledged $74 million in state money to clear the empty homes. Above a crew member watches as the last house on N. Bradford Street is demolished

Lewis Crossont, a German American, was the first person to own the rowhouse, as he purchased it in 1906 for $800.

The glass-factory worker moved into the home with his wife and sister. The rowhouse was also occupied by a factory foreman, barrelmaker and a house painter throughout the decades between Crossont and Olds living in the rowhouse.

Also on hand to witness the demolition was carpenter Jonathan Todd. His grandfather, Ed Mifkovic, was born inside one of the rowhouses, but Todd had never visited the home even though he lived nearby in a Baltimore suburb.

'This is where they ate dinner,' he told the Post while standing for the first and only time in the kitchen of 930 N. Bradford.

'I have a picture of them sitting around the table right here. God brought me here. He knows I'm sentimental.'
A woman who was described as a 'loving mother' drugged and murdered her severely autistic daughter.

Donella Knox, 49, cared for her daughter Ruby for 20 years before she gave her Risperidone and anti psychotic medication before suffocating her in May last year at their Blenheim home, in the north-east of the South Island of New Zealand.

Knox, a single mother, had dealt with Ruby's violent outbursts for two decades and felt let down by the health system, according to the New Zealand Herald.

Donella Knox, 49, cared for her daughter Ruby for 20 years before she gave her Risperidone and anti psychotic medication before suffocating her in May last year at their Blenheim home, in the north-east of the South Island of New Zealand

Before sentencing her to four years jail and acknowledging her devotion to her daughter, Justice Joe Williams described it as a 'once in a generation case', according to the paper.

'The common theme from all who knew you and Ruby was that you loved and cared for Ruby constantly, diligently, unselfishly and unconditionally. A tireless advocate with health authorities, you refused to give up,' Justice Williams said.

The day Ruby was murdered, Knox reportedly received a letter from doctors who could find 'no obvious reason for (Ruby's) severe pain'.

Justice Williams said: 'It seems that this letter was a trigger for your decision to take Ruby's life.'

In the weeks before the murder, Knox self-published 'Rubies and Pearls' and describes her 'rage' over attempts to find help for her daughter's condition

Knox gave her daughter 20 sedatives before holding her hand over her mouth until she stopped breathing, according to News Hub.

Three days before Ruby was murdered, Knox told Snuff NZ she began writing a book about her experience as the sole caretaker of her disabled daughter.

'Sometimes I would be feeling despairing or alone and sad at our situation. Any strong emotion that was overwhelming me, I would write it out,' she said.

'I found it helped. It was almost like I became my own best friend.'
A former Neighbours actor called up hospitals pretending to be friends with people critically injured in the Bourke Street tragedy in Melbourne because he believes the massacre was staged.

Peter Kusznir recorded himself phoning up two hospitals in Melbourne as he tried to track down Natalie Hakin, who was seriously injured in the crash and whose ten-year-old daughter, Thalia, was killed.

Audio from the sickening phone calls reveal how Kusznir tried to trick nurses into believing he was a friend of Ms Hakin.

After repeated attempts to find out her condition are thwarted by medical staff, the conspiracy theorist insists that Ms Hakin is 'a fraud' and claims she is not injured.

A number of other videos posted online Kusznir vilify victims of the crash and claim that witnesses were paid actors.

Former Neighbours actor Peter Kusznir called up hospitals pretending to be friends with people critically injured in the Bourke Street tragedy in Melbourne

Peter Kusznir recorded himself phoning up two hospitals in Melbourne as he tried to track down Natalie Hakin, who was seriously injured in the crash and whose ten-year-old daughter, Thalia (pictured), was killed

Kusznir took the videos down after a request from police, however other internet users have posted them back online.

Audio that Kusznir originally posted on YouTube shows him phoning Royal Melbourne Hospital on January 30.

'An old friend of mine is apparently in the Royal Melbourne Hospital and I was just wondering when visiting hours were,' he tells the receptionist.

'I'm not sure what condition she's in as she's been there for about a week now.'

He then supplies the woman's name as Natalie Hakin, who was mown down by a car on Bourke Street during the incident in February, while her daughter was killed.

The nurse reveals that Ms Hakin has been discharged to Epworth Hospital in Melbourne, potentially for rehab.

Thalia Hakin was one of six people killed in the crash on January 20 after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbourne's CBD

The car (pictured) mowed down dozens of pedestrians, killing six people and injuring 37

Kusznir's call is then transferred to that hospital and he tries once more to convince staff that he is a friend of Ms Hakin.

He once again describes her as an 'old friend of his' and asks what time visiting hours are.

The operator asks for his name but he initially refuses, before saying that his name is Peter.

She then transfers him to the head nurse on Ms Hakin's ward, who explains that she cannot give out visiting hours until he reveals his full name.

Growing frustrated, Mr Kusznir says: 'What's the big secret? She was involved in a terrible tragedy. I'm just being kind and want to visit her and give her flowers.'

When the nurse again refuses to provide more details, he adds: 'Excuse me, but I think she's a fraud and that she's not even injured. She's a fraud.'

The nurse then hangs up.

Kusznir, who played bit parts on Neighbours and Underbelly, removed the audio and a series of other videos about the Bourke Street massacre from YouTube.

He has not been arrested or charged.

The tragedy on January 20 claimed the lives of six people in Melbourne. Pictured, people are treated at the scene of the crash

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said: 'A personal safety order was issued yesterday against an Ardeer man following the publication of a number of videos on a social media site. The videos relate to the Bourke Street Mall incident.

'The man will appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on February 6 in relation to the matter.

'Police are aware the publication of these videos has caused significant distress to the victims.'

Thalia Hakin was one of six people killed in the crash on January 20 after a car mowed down pedestrians in Melbourne's CBD.

The others who died were three-month-old Zachary Bryant, Jess Mudie, 22, Matthew Si, 33, Bhavita Patel, 33, and an unnamed 25-year-old Japanese man.

Dimitrious Gargasoulas, 27, is charged with five counts of murder. He could also be charged with the murder of Ms Patel, who recently died in hospital.

A total of 37 people were injured in the incident.
Sergeant Steven Floyd, 47, was found dead on Thursday when police stormed Building C of the Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna to bring an end to the violent siege

A veteran guard killed during a 20-hour hostage situation at Delaware's largest prison was a hero who saved the lives of his fellow officers trying to come to his aid by warning them that inmates had set a trap.

Sergeant Steven Floyd, 47, was found dead on Thursday when police stormed Building C of the Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna to bring an end to the violent siege.

He had been forced into a closet by inmates but called out to the officers trying to help him - inevitably saving their lives with his final actions, according to the head of the state corrections officers' union.

'Even in his last moments as the inmates attempted to take over the building, Sgt Floyd told a couple of lieutenants to get out of the building and that it was a trap,' union President Geoffrey Klopp said.

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Police searched Delaware prison inmates in the yard after they found an officer dead inside the building on Thursday morning following a 20-hour hostage situation

Floyd, pictured with his wife Saundra, had been working at the prison for 16 years. He has been described by colleagues as an 'outstanding officer'

Police had to use a backhoe to smash through a barricade of footlockers to end the 20-hour hostage standoff.

A second hostage, a female counselor, was safely rescued minutes after tactical teams forced their way into a building at the all-male, 2,500-prisoner jail.

Authorities did not immediately explain how Floyd died. They have said the inmates used 'sharp instruments' to seize Building C and hold Floyd hostage along with two other prison guards and a counselor.

Klopp said inmates staged a fight to lure Floyd, who radioed for help. They then turned on him, forcing him into the closet.

Inmates staged a fight to lure Floyd, who radioed for help. They then turned on him and forced him into a closet

The inmates eventually released two hostages and got authorities to turn the water back on, saying they needed it for drinking and washing. Instead, they filled up metal footlockers and built barricades.

During negotiations conducted via an officer's walkie-talkie - which were broadcast online for more than an hour before officials blocked the transmission - the mediator tried to coax an unidentified inmate into letting him talk to Floyd to make sure he was okay.

The inmate responded that the negotiator would only be able to talk to Floyd once the inmates got to talk to Delaware Governor John Carney. He told the negotiator that the prisoners wanted a 'formal apology' from Carney for 'decades of oppression.'

Floyd, a 16-year veteran with the prison, is the first Delaware corrections officer to be killed, according to Klopp.

The union president described Floyd as a wonderful husband and correctional officer who went the 'extra mile for any human being he could help.' Last year, he received the warden's award for outstanding performance.

Geoffrey Klopp (center), of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware, said Floyd saved the lives of fellow officers trying to come to his aid by warning them inmates had set a trap

After authorities found the guard dead inside the Vaughn Correctional Center building, they took the inmates to the yard to search them all individually

Dave Dowty, a retired court-transportation worker for the Department of Correction, said he occasionally worked with Floyd.

'I just know he was a pretty good guy. He was quiet, professional,' Dowty told the Associated Press.

Former Vaughn Correctional Center inmate Kenneth Guinn, of Dover, had a low opinion of Floyd.

'He harassed inmates. He's been doing it for years,' Guinn said.

The others guards who were taken hostage were beaten severely by their captors and suffered broken bones, cuts and eye injuries, Klopp said. Authorities said their injuries were not life-threatening.

It wasn't immediately clear how many inmates took part in the uprising. About 120 were in the building when it began, but dozens were let out as the standoff dragged on. Authorities said all inmates who were in the building are being considered suspects.

One inmate told a local newspaper via phone that they were demanding better education and rehabilitation programs and were also upset over President Donald Trump and 'all the things that he's doing now.'

'We know that the institution is going to change for the worse,' he told The News Journal in Wilmington.

Four guards were taken hostage at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware at 10.30am on Wednesday

Mounted police patrol travel along Smyrna Landing Road alongside the Vaughn Corrections Center on Thursday after the 20-hour hostage standoff was brought to an end

Isaiah McCoy, a former death row inmate at the Delaware prison, says the prisoners were protesting what he called 'inhumane' conditions at the facility.

McCoy says several inmates who were in the building called him while a standoff was underway and told him they are tired of the 'oppression' and 'misconduct' at the facility.

McCoy would not say whether the inmates he spoke to were the hostage-takers or were just in Building C at the time. He would not provide the names of any of the inmates.

He says the inmates' nonviolent means of raising their concerns haven't been effective.

McCoy, who was released from prison in January after being acquitted of all charges in a retrial for a drug-related killing, said he served about 5 1/2 years at the Vaughn Correctional Center.
Missing British mother Lisa Brown

Police hunting for the body of missing British mother Lisa Brown have launched a major new search on ground near her home.

Around 20 Civil Guard officers took part in the operation after calling in council diggers to act on new information they had received as part of their ongoing inquiry.

Detectives confirmed last night they had not found the Scottish mum-of-one's remains, but had located objects they have passed on to forensic experts to analyse so they can determine if they are Lisa's.

The exact nature of the objects taken away has not been revealed.

They were discovered during a search Thursday morning of an area called Cerro Gordo - meaning Fat Hill in English - close to the missing expat's home in Guadiaro.

The search operation is believed to have been the first in more than a year.

Civil Guard officers combed woodland and a river near the 32-year-old's home after she disappeared on November 4, 2015.

Investigators revealed last September they were planning new sea and land searches after receiving confirmation a 'violent episode' had taken place at the home Lisa shared with suspect Brit boyfriend Simon Corner - but it is understood they never went ahead at the time.

Liverpool-born Corner, 35, has been held in jail on suspicion of killing Lisa since being detained in Denmark on a European Arrest Warrant last April and extradited to Spain.

Another Brit has been identified as a 'main suspect' alongside Corner and four other people arrested who are currently on bail.

Around 20 officers from the Civil Guard digging up evidence from near Lisa Brown's house

Simon Corner vanished after being interviewed him in the luxurious port of Sotogrande (pictured) but he was later found in Denmark, where he was held under an arrest warrant

A spokesman for the Civil Guard in Algeciras, which is leading the ongoing probe under the coordination of an investigating judge, said: 'The Civil Guard has renewed the search for Lisa Brown.

'During the new search carried out this morning, objects and remnants have been found that have been sent to our Criminalistic Service for further analysis.

'Today's search has taken place in an area called Cerro Gordo near to where Lisa lived.

'More than 20 Civil Guard officers along with town hall workers with excavating machines participated in the operation.'

Simon Corner has been held over Lisa Brown's disappearance

A source added: 'The operation will now be suspended while the objects are looked at to see if they have any bearing on this case.'

It emerged last September Madrid-based forensic specialists who had analysed DNA found in blood stains at Lisa's home had concluded that a violent incident involving her and Corner took place at her property.

DNA tests on Lisa's Ford Focus car, which Corner used, also come back with what detectives believe to be positive results for their probe against the former convict.

Sources close to the case have hinted they believe Lisa's body could have been disposed of at sea but never ruled out the idea she may have been buried on land.

Corner, who was born Dean Woods but changed his name after a string of run-ins with British police, is being investigated on suspicion of Lisa's death.

He was remanded in prison last May after appearing in a closed court hearing before the judge continuing to probe him.

He has not been formally charged with any crime, as is normal in Spain where charges are usually laid shortly before trial.

Lisa (pictured) has not been seen since November 4 2015 and was due to start a new job in Gibraltar two days later

Boat owner Corner, jailed for three months in Gibraltar in May 2014 for possession of an offensive weapon after a nightclub altercation, was lambasted by worried Lisa's family and friends for leaving Spain days after she vanished.

He sparked suspicion by flying to the Far East following a short police quiz after he was taken away by investigators from Sotogrande Port near Gibraltar as he worked on his 30-foot sailing boat.

He returned to the Costa del Sol in January last year promising to meet investigators - but left mainland Spain again days later to travel to the Canaries and then Ireland before a European Arrest Warrant was put out for him.

He has claimed he has no idea where his girlfriend is and says he is innocent of any wrongdoing.

Lisa's ten-year-old son Marco has been looked after by his dad Tony Tomillero at his home in La Linea opposite Gibraltar with the help of Lisa's relatives since she disappeared.

Speaking after Corner's arrest, Lisa's sister Helen who has led a well-supported Facebook campaign called Find Lisa, said: 'We're very happy but we still want desperately to find out what happened to Lisa.

'That's been the main purpose of our campaign from the start.'
Theresa May has arrived in Valletta for talks with EU leaders today

Britain will be a bridge between the EU and Donald Trump after Brexit, a top Eurocrat said today.

European Council president Donald Tusk said the UK would 'help' smooth relations with the White House despite leaving the bloc.

The comments - at an EU summit in Malta - are a boost for Theresa May, who has been seeking to forge a new role for Britain that straddles the Atlantic.

After rounding off the gathering, Mrs May told journalists she wanted to remain a 'reliable partner' to the bloc and stressed the benefits of strong US-UK relations.

'I was pleased to be able to visit President Trump so early in his administration and, crucially, when I was there I was able to confirm with him his 100 per cent commitment to NATO - NATO, which has helped keep the security of not just the UK but Europe, and is crucial in keeping that security in the future,' she said.

In further encouragement for Mrs May, Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy told Mrs May in talks on the sidelines of the summit that he favoured of an quick deal on 'reciprocal rights'.

Around 300,000 Britons live full time in Spain, the largest group among one million UK nationals living on the continent.

Some 2.8million EU citizens live in Britain and establishing the post-Brexit status of the expats has caused tensions.

Meanwhile, Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat has admitted Mr Trump's pledge to do a quick trade deal with the UK has strengthened Theresa May's hand in Brexit negotiations, an EU leader has admitted.

But he also cautioned that the new White House administration was 'unpredictable' and being tied to closely to Mr Trump could be Mrs May's 'downfall'.

'It does help the Brits to be able to say, 'We have the US at the end of the day so you'd better gives us a decent deal',' Mr Muscat told the Times.

'On the other hand ... Europeans will ... make sure we don't jeopardise our competitiveness in regard to the US.

'Ironically, it might increase the resolve of most European states to stick together right now.'

The Prime Minister, pictured with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Valetta today, has vowed to be a reliable partner

The PM - pictured with outgoing French president Francois Hollande - will tell her counterparts that they must boost defence spending

Mrs May told the gathering in Valletta that Britain will remain a 'reliable partner', and used one-to-one talks with fellow leaders to insist she wants a 'new, positive and constructive' relationship, according to Downing Street.

It was her first chance to discuss Brexit face-to-face since she set out her plans and MPs began considering the Bill allowing her to trigger Article 50.

Legislation being fast-tracked through Parliament is aimed at giving Mrs May permission to begin the formal process of Brexit by the end of March.

But a hoped-for formal meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel was replaced by a lengthy discussion during a walking tour of the Maltese capital.

Aides insisted that the talks 'covered everything they had wanted to discuss'.

The PM told her counterparts that they must boost defence spending, following her talks with Mr Trump about NATO in Washington last week.

At a press conference ending the gathering, Mr Tusk was asked whether Britain could be a bridge to the Trump administration.

'The UK can, inside the EU or outside, be very helpful,' he said.

'I have no doubt that today we can feel some kind of support, of solidarity among 28 nations.'

The main focus of the leaders gathered in Valletta was measures to tackle the ongoing migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.

Security is tight in Valletta, where the EU leaders will be focusing on the migrant crisis

The PM is expected to hold one-on-one talks with leaders as she lays the ground for the looming Brexit negotiations

Mrs May, pictured third from the right in the front row, met her fellow EU leaders for the first time Parliament endorsed new laws on starting official Brexit talks today

Mrs May will pledge her commitment to the 'long-term' challenge both before Brexit and afterwards.

Britain is to offer assistance to countries in Asia and Latin America to take in refugees from Europe.

The move is part of a 30 million package announced by the Prime Minister at the summit in Malta, bringing total UK humanitarian support in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis to more than 100 million.

The new funding will go towards measures to protect vulnerable migrants from freezing conditions and the threat of people-trafficking and sexual violence, but also to encourage them to return home rather than continue perilous journeys to Europe.

UK money will help countries like Greece, Egypt and the Balkan states provide for refugees who have reached their territory from trouble zones like Syria, and to integrate incomers into local communities.

And Britain is ready to offer support - through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' (UNHCR) Emerging Resettlement Countries Joint Support Mechanism (ERCM) - for countries in Asia and Latin America which need migrants but do not have the necessary infrastructure and systems in place to receive them.

The Prime Minister, who last week became the first foreign leader to meet Mr Trump since he entered the White House, updated European leaders on his views on Nato.

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is among those at the summit

Mrs May said she had secured confirmation that Mr Trump was '100% behind Nato' as she appeared alongside the president in the White House.

Mr Trump's criticism of the alliance in the past has alarmed Europe, and some on the continent also have deep concerns about the controversial tycoon's policies.

But Mrs May made clear Mr Trump's comments to her about Nato underline the importance of defence and security cooperation.

She also delivered the message that Nato members need to step up their spending on defence.

The UK and US are among a handful of Nato members to meet the pledge of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence.

The Prime Minister only attended the first part of the summit in Malta, with leaders of the other 27 EU nations continuing their talks on Friday afternoon without her as they consider Brexit and the future of the bloc.

Mr Muscat, an Anglophile who studied at Bristol University, said Mrs May was in an 'unenviable position right now' ahead of the looming negotiations.

'To my mind it is very clear that this relationship could be her Joker or Trump card but it could also be the downfall of everything. I go back to the issue of unpredictability,' he said.

'We are learning fast under this US administration all things are not equal, they mutate pretty fast.'

Meanwhile, Italy's deputy foreign minister Mario Giro has dismissed the Brexit White Paper as a 'wish list'.

Mr Giro also warned that the EU could not accept the UK becoming a tax haven on its doorstep - a threat that has been made by Mrs May if we do not get a good deal.

Mrs May proposed doing an early deal on reciprocal rights for British and EU nationals but was rebuffed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They are pictured together today at the EU meeting in Malta

Snipers have taken up positions on roofs to protect the EU leaders at the summit today




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
A psychologist tried to intervene with Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof just months before the massacre, it has emerged

A psychologist tried to intervene with Charleston church gunman Dylann Roof just months before the massacre, it has emerged.

Dr Thomas Hiers got in contact with Roof after spotting a disturbing Craigslist advert he had posted for a 'historical tour' in Charleston that specified 'no Jews, queers, or n*****s'.

He tried to arrange for him to meet a mental health professional, but Roof did not respond to the offer.

Roof was sentenced to death last month for killing nine black parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in June 2015.

Court documents reveal that a psychiatrist found that Roof 'suffers from 'social anxiety disorder, a mixed substance abuse disorder, a Schizoid personality disorder, depression by history, and a possible autistic spectrum disorder.'

Roof's 'high IQ,' his attorneys wrote, is 'compromised by a significant discrepancy between his ability to comprehend and to process information and a poor working memory.'

Retired child psychologist Dr Hiers, a board member and former director of the Charleston Dorchester Community Mental Health Center, contacted Roof in February 2015 after spotting the Craigslist advert.

He encouraged him to take a look at other views on the world, offering to pay for him to watch online TED talks, NBC News reported.

Roof responded by describing Dr Hiers as a 'nice man', but said he could not take up the offer because 'I am in bed, so depressed I cannot get out of bed.'

He also carried on making racist and anti-Semitic comments.

Dr Hiers continued trying to seek help for Roof, contacting a 'very experienced professional colleague' in Columbia, near where Roof lived, in an attempt to set up a meeting.

Dr Thomas Hiers got in contact with Roof after spotting a disturbing Craigslist advert he had posted for a 'historical tour' in Charleston that specified 'no Jews, queers, or n*****s'

Although Roof's mental health wasn't discussed much in open court, it played a large role in his trial.

Roof's attorneys asked that the judge allow for frequent courtroom breaks, longer times for lunch recess and perhaps even a day or two off from court per week.

The judge ultimately denied the motion, taking breaks at regular intervals and holding court for about eight hours a day.

Roof had lawyers during the guilt phase but represented himself at sentencing.

His legal advisers repeatedly expressed frustration that Roof wouldn't let them introduce mental health evidence that could possibly spare his life. Roof said he didn't want to embarrass himself or his family.

Roof asked jurors to forget anything they'd heard from his legal team about his mental state, declaring, 'there's nothing wrong with me psychologically.'

'I still feel like I had to do it,' Roof said in his closing argument. He continued: 'Anyone who hates anything in their mind has a good reason for it.'
A Brazilian pensioner has defied doctors to become the oldest person to get engaged at the age of 106.

Valdemira Rodrigues de Oliveira said yes to her 66-year-old toyboy Aparecido Dias Jacob at a ceremony despite being given advice by physicians not to go ahead with it.

The smitten seniors with the combined age of 172 years have separate rooms at Nossa Senhora Fatima retirement home in Pirassununga, south east Brazil, and were determined to prove it's never too late to be with your soulmate after three years together.

Valdemira Rodrigues de Oliveira gets her make-up done ahead of the big ceremony in Brazil

The elderly romantics could hardly wait to seal their engagement with a passionate kiss

The bride-to-be, Valda, walks down the aisle at the ceremony with her decorated Zimmer

Valda on her engagement day having said yes to Aparecido Dias Jacob's proposal

Medics assessed their health and age and warned the duo, known affectionately as Valda and Jaco, would not be able to cope with living on their own.

But the elderly sweethearts exchanged engagement rings in a betrothal service organised by volunteers under an initiative called the Project of Dreams.

Volunteer Fabiane Zaffalon, said: 'As they couldn't get married we came up with another way to make their dreams come true by holding an engagement ceremony at the retirement home.'

In Brazil, an engagement ring is placed on the third finger of the right hand and when the person gets married the same band is swapped to the ring finger on the left hand.

Speaking about her love for her future husband, the centenarian said: 'I fell in love with him.

'I like him a lot. If he dies, I die too.'

The two lovebirds were among 40 residents at the elderly care home who were asked by the Project's organisers what they would like to do 'most in their life to make them happy'.

The newly engaged couple are showered with rose petals at the ceremony

Aparecido Dias Jacob,66, is forty years younger than his fiancee and walks down the aisle

Valda gets the final touches before she meets her husband-to-be at the ceremony

Fabiane Zaffalon, a volunteer at the home, said: 'We came up with the idea last November to use the Project of Dreams to find out from our elderly residents what they wanted to fulfil in their lives.

'We asked Valda and Jaco separately what their dreams were. They both said to get married and to have a little house where they could live together.'

But doctors warned organisers the couple's age and health problems would make it difficult for them to do this.

Fabiane added: 'So we decided to make Valda and Jaco's wishes come true by arranging a spectacular engagement party where they could pledge their love for each other.'

The lovestruck pair met at the residential home in 2014 and it was love at first sight for Jaco, who suffers from paralysis of the left arm.

He has been living in the home for 19 years after being homeless and unemployed.

Jaco said: 'I fell in love with Valda from the moment I saw her. I know she's a little older than me, but that doesn't matter because she makes me really happy.

'I asked her to marry me and we always believed it would happen but getting engaged is a step forward for us right now.'

The couple are inseparable and spend all day with each other, chatting, eating their meals together and sitting side by side in the home.

'I know it's not going to happen but I would have loved to be able to wash Jaco's clothes, cook his meals and look after him like a wife,' said Valda.

The lavish ceremony was to commemorate the engagement and neither had married before

It's the first time either of them have been married.

Neither have children and most of Valda's relatives have died while Jaco has lost touch with his family.

A volunteer page boy and bridesmaid, Renan and Isabella, both 12-years-old accompanied Valda.

A live band played the wedding march as Jaco, dressed in a bespoke suit and tie, waited at the front with the master of ceremonies for his future fiancee.

At the altar, the couple couldn't hold back from sealing the occasion with a passionate kiss before taking their vows in front of the 150 invited guests.

After a short message and prayer, the happy couple said 'yes' to stay loyal to each other and exchanged engagement rings.

The event was lavishly decorated with a four-tier cake, flowers, cupid ornaments and scattered rose petals.

Valda wore a white dress with a fancy in her hair, pearls around her neck, nails painted and comfortable slippers.

She walked down the aisle with her Zimmer-frame decorated with roses.
A video clip of President Donald Trump's granddaughter singing in Mandarin to celebrate Lunar New Year has gone viral in China.

The clip posted by Trump's daughter Ivanka, after their visit to the Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C., shows 5-year-old Arabella Kushner wishing a happy new year while playing with a traditional Chinese puppet.

Arabella started learning Mandarin when she was only 18 months old, and the video has been viewed over 18 million times alone on Chinese social media website Weibo since being uploaded to Ivanka's Instagram page on Thursday.

Scroll down for videos

A video clip of President Donald Trump's granddaughter singing in Mandarin to celebrate Lunar New Year have gone viral in China

Year of the Rooster: Ivanka Trump attended a party celebrating the lunar new year on Wednesday night at the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC (Ivanka above with daughter Arabella)

Welcome: She attended the event with her daughter Arabella as the guest of China's ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai (Ivanka above shaking hands with her host after arriving at the event)

Viral: On Thursday morning, Ivanka posted a very public thank you to Ambassador Tankai in the form of a video that she uploaded to her Instagram which showed daughter Arabella performing

Donald's granddaughter has a history of celebrating the Chinese New Year, and this is the third year in a row that Ivanka has shared videos of her little girl performing a song or poem in honor of the holiday.

Last year, Arabella donned a red Chinese-embroidered dress as she sang a poem in Mandarin.

The businesswoman's only daughter was filmed saying happy new year in Mandarin in 2015 as well.

The most recent video and Ivanka's visit of the Embassy have received mixed reviews from Chinese web users with some praising the idea while others feel the president snubbed China by not sending his own greetings.

'Trump's daughter visits China's embassy and wishes China a happy New Year! The daughter understands more than the father,' one Weibo user commented.

Chen Zhijun a gold salesman said: 'A bridge of friendship is needed between China and the U.S.'

Arabella, who has been learning the language since she was 18 months old, donned a red embroidered dress as she sang a poem in Mandarin to celebrate the Chinese New Year in 2016

The little girl was also filmed saying happy new year in Mandarin in 2015

'I'm glad to see his daughter and little granddaughter being friendship messengers ... it is a sign of being nice,' Chen said.

However he added that Trump's apparent refusal to send a New Year Greeting is 'definitely is not helping' relations between the two nations.

Another Weibo user said: 'To be honest, I think that Trump really maybe just forgot. He's surrounded by anti-China people. There wouldn't be anyone to remind him,'

'Now it's already too late, and to wish happy New Year under pressure from the media would mean losing face, right? So he just lets his daughter make an appearance.'

Arabella also featured in a November video reciting Tang Dynasty poems in Mandarin while dressed in a traditional Chinese blouse. The clip has been viewed close to 100 million times.

Ivanka and her daughter visited the Embassy on Wednesday to attend a party celebrating the lunar new year.

Guests at the event surrounded the 35-year-old daughter of President Donald Trump as she entered the party accompanied by Arabella and their host for the evening, Ambassador Cui Tiankai.

A star is born: Arabella, 5, has become a minor celebrity in China ever since a November 2016 video of her reciting Tang Dynasty poems in Mandarin got over 100m views (on left Wednesday and on right at inauguration in her custom Oscar de la Renta coat)

Speaking at the event, Ambassador Tiankai spoke of her desire for 'win-win cooperation' between US and China instead of a 'zero-sum or cold war mentality'

Ivanka's evening with China's ambassador to the United States came just two months after her host had some less than kind words to say about President Trump following the news that he had spoken with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan after winning the election and violated the White House's 'One China' policy.

It capped off a busy day for the First Daughter, who accompanied her father to Dover Air Force Base in the afternoon to receive the body of a fallen SEAL Team 6 member and then headed back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Marine One to watch as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was sworn into office.

She then headed straight from the White House to the embassy event, at which her role seemed to be that of White House proxy, much like it was on Saturday when she and husband Jared Kushner attended the annual Alfalfa Dinner.

Ivanka and Arabella arrived towards the end of the Year of the Rooster festivities just as people were beginning to file out of the embassy, with Ambassador Tiankai meeting the two women at their car.

The First Daughter greeted Ambassador Tinkai with a smile and a handshake when he received her outside the event.

The three then walked into the embassy together, with Arabella clutching her mother's hand as the approximately 100 guests who were still at the party began to make their way towards the surprise attendees.

Ambassador Tankai took Ivanka and her daughter to look at some of the art and handicrafts on display and meet some of the other guests after the arrived at the party.

Making the rounds: Ivanka warmly greeted guests as she worked the room at the event

Arabella was dressed in head-to-toe red for the Year of the Rooster event, and wore the same custom Oscar de la Renta coat that she had on at the inauguration.

Ivanka warmly greeted everyone who approached her as she walked through the crowd with with Ambassador Tankai and spoke about her love of China, a country that is home to one of her closest friends, Wendi Deng.

Mother and daughter then had the honor of enjoying a musical performance at the event, which showcased some dancing and opera as well as acrobatics.

The pair later posed for some photos with the performers, who were dressed in traditional Chinese attire, while Arabella could be seen enjoying some of the Chinese food that was put out or guests.

Ivanka then dashed off with her daughter after making the rounds at the event, during which she never removed the $2,500 double-breasted velvet trimmed coat by Joseph Altuzurra that has been her go-to piece of outerwear the past few months.

Heading home: Ivanka dashed off with her daughter after making the rounds at the event, during which she never removed her $2,500 coat

Harsh words: Back in December, Ambassador Tiankai was critical of President Trump after he violated the 'One China' policy by speaking to President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan

Prior to Ivanka'a arrival at the event on Wednesday, Ambassador Tankai delivered a speech calling for cooperation between China and the United States moving forward, and his hopes for a more productive relationship between the two countries in the year to come.

'We have learned that we should always respond to difficulties and challenges by cooperation, instead of conflict or confrontation,' the foreign dignitary told the roughly 500 people who had gathered at the embassy for the celebration.

'We should work together for win-win cooperation, instead of being misguided by zero-sum or cold war mentality.'

That event was the first attended by Ivanka suggesting a role as White House proxy, with the president and first lady always choosing to attend the annual gathering.

The black-tie event also serves as a White House roast, and has been attended by every president since Ronald Reagan.

Melania was in New York City with 10-year-old son Barron however and President Trump opted out of attending, deciding to instead sent the First Daughter and her White House senior advisor husband in his place .

On Wednesday it was a different story however, with Ivanka filling in as her father's companion during his surprise visit to Dover Air Force Base.

Off they go: Earlier in the day on Wednesday Ivanka accompanied her father to receive a fallen SEAL Team 6 member killed in Yemen over the weekend as Dover Air Force Base (above boarding Marine One)

Home alone: Jared Kushner, Vice President Mike Pence and Reince Priebus watch as President Trump and Ivanka lift off in Marine One outside the White House on Wednesday (above)

More business: Ivanka then returned with her father and headed directly to the Oval office for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's swearing-in ceremony

The pair departed from the White House in Marine One and landed at the Delaware base to receive the body of Chief Special Warfare Officer William 'Ryan' Owens.

Delaware Senator Chris Coons also accompanied the two at the private return ceremony for Owens, which was attended by his family member including his wife and three young children.

Owens was killed in a pre-dawn raid, in which officials have said 'almost everything went wrong,' on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula last Sunday.

It was Trump's first clandestine strike, and it was not one that had previously been ordered by former President Barack Obama.

It was then back on Marine One and off to thew White House, were after landing President Trump and his daughter went directly to the Oval Office for Tillerson's swearing-in ceremony.
Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump's firebrand advisor Kellyanne Conway refused to let Chelsea Clinton's barbed tweet slide.

'I misspoke, you lost the election', Conway tweeted Friday afternoon, after the former First Daughter made the rare decision to jump on the Twitter band wagon and publicly criticize her over a live TV gaffe she made the night before.

On Thursday evening in an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Conway embarrassingly confused the arrest of two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky, for attacks the same men perpetrated on US troops in their home country.

She incorrectly told Matthews: 'I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre.'

Conway later tweeted to say that she had meant to say 'Bowling Green terrorists', as opposed to massacre, before posting a flurry of tweets in which she said how 'honest mistakes abound' and suggested the media was unfairly targeting her when others, like one unnamed 'prominent editor of liberal site' went unchallenged for nearly running a fake news story.

But already the Twitter onslaught had started. Among the accusers was Chelsea Clinton who begged Conway to refrain from 'making up attacks'.

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Chelsea couldn't resist weighing in with the above tweet

Conway was straight back at her with reminder of who won the election

She wrote: 'Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attacks... or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks'.

Former Star Trek actor Will Wheaton, who appears as himself on the Big Bang Theory also attacked Conway on Twitter with a satirical tweet comparing her to the disaster-prone air hostess played by Julie Hagarty in 1980 hit movie Airplane.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi (left) and Waad Ramadan Alwan (right) were two Iraqi refugees sent to federal prison in the Bowling Green, Kentucky terrorism case for scheming to help Al-Qaeda murder U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Both resettled in Bowling Green even though both had been detained during the war by Iraqi authorities

Kellyanne immediately took to Twitter when viewers slammed her for conjuring fictitious terror attack to justify Trump's controversial travel ban

Conway, left, also falsely claimed President Obama introduced a six-month ban on Iraqis

The White House didn't return a call for clarification early today, but it's understood that Ms Conway may have been referring to two Iraqis - Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 41 - who were jailed in 2011 for attempting to send weapons and money to al-Qaeda in Iraq for the purpose of killing U.S. soldiers, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31 to 40 years in federal prison, followed by a life term of supervised release. Both men pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges.

Ms Conway's comparison between Mr Trump's controversial executive order temporarily banning entry to the US to people from specific Muslim nations and a 'six-month ban' on Iraqis allegedly instituted by President Obama was also debunked.

"The Bowling Green Massacre? What is it?"



"It's yet another thing Kellyanne Conway made up, but that's not important right now." pic.twitter.com/5dtae1sdl7  Wil Wheaton (@wilw) February 3, 2017

Mr Obama did order a review of vetting procedures for Iraqi citizens in the wake of the capture of Hammadi and Alwan, but it wasn't a ban on travel to the US.

The debacle comes less than a fortnight after Ms Conway defended false claims made about the size of the crowd at Mr Trump's inauguration as 'alternative facts'.

WHAT THE JUSTICE DEPT. SAID IN 2013 Hammadi and Alwan both admitted, in FBI interviews that followed waiver of their Miranda rights, to participation in the purported material support operations in Kentucky, and both provided the FBI details of their prior involvement in insurgent activities while living in Iraq. Alwan admitted participating in IED attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and Hammadi admitted to participating in 10 to 11 IED attacks as well as shooting at a U.S. soldier in an observation tower. Court documents filed in this case reveal that the Bowling Green office of the FBIs Louisville Division initiated an investigation of Alwan in which they used a confidential human source (CHS). The CHS met with Alwan and recorded their meetings and conversations beginning in August 2010. The CHS represented to Alwan that he was working with a group to ship money and weapons to Mujahadeen in Iraq. From September 2010 through May 2011, Alwan participated in ten separate operations to send weapons and money that he believed were destined for terrorists in Iraq. Between October 2010 and January 2011, Alwan drew diagrams of multiple types of IEDs and instructed the CHS how to make them. In January 2011, Alwan recruited Hammadi, a fellow Iraqi national living in Bowling Green, to assist in these material support operations. Beginning in January 2011 and continuing until his arrest in late May 2011, Hammadi participated with Alwan in helping load money and weapons that he believed were destined for terrorists in Iraq. Advertisement

She said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave 'alternative facts' when he described the Washington crowd on January 20 as 'the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration'.

Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie claimed the president was 'playing with fire' and risked making the nation less safe with his travel ban.

Writing in the New York Times, Jolie, 41, said Mr Trump's decision to turn away refugees would cause 'more instability, hatred and violence'.

'Refugees are men, women and children caught in the fury of war, or the cross hairs of persecution. Far from being terrorists, they are often the victims of terrorism themselves,' she claimed.

'Every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear.'

The actress - whose father Jon Voight is a Trump stalwart - referred to her six children, who she said were 'all born in foreign lands and are proud American citizens'.

'If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire. We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against'.

The Hollywood star has shied away from the spotlight following her split from Brad Pitt. She said the world was witnessing 'the worst refugee crisis since World War Two'.
The parents of a toddler left fighting for his life after he was shot in the head with an air rifle have called for a change in the law.

Little Harry Studley was shot by Jordan Walters when the youngster visited the flat he shared with girlfriend Emma Horseman.

The bullet penetrated the 18-month-old's skull and he was airlifted to hospital for emergency surgery and still suffers several seizures a day.

Little Harry Studley nearly died and has been traumatised after he was shot in the head

His parents Amy Allen, 21, and Edward Studley, 22, have now called for laws requiring owners of air guns to have licences

Walters faces jail after he admitted GBH, but Horseman was cleared of aiding and abetting him.

Harry's parents Ed Studley and Amy Allen are now calling for a change in the law so a licence is needed for air rifles.

Currently most air weapons can be bought by anyone over 18 without a licence in England - but in Scotland one is needed for air rifles, following laws introduced last year.

Mr Studley said: 'We want to have a law put in place where people have to have a licence to own an airgun.

'We need to put the awareness out there so other parents who own air weapons, any kind of weapons, are careful round their kids so the same thing doesn't happen to their children because what we've been through I wouldn't wish on our worst enemy.

'We would like to try to start a campaign, get a petition going and get our local MP involved to maybe just impose a licensing law with air weapons, like they have in Scotland.

'I think that would be really important in our country, so that this doesn't happen to another child or an adult.'

Jordan Walters (left) faces jail over the shooting after he admitted GBH. His girlfriend Emma Horseman (right) was cleared of aiding and abetting him

A court heard this air gun was used to shoot Harry, to 'frighten him' and 'shut him up'

The trial of Miss Horseman at Bristol Crown Court this week heard Miss Allen and Horseman were in her flat when the incident happened on July 1.

Miss Allen had taken took sons Harry and Riley to the flat in Hartcliffe, Bristol, where Miss Horseman, 24, lived with Walters on April 1 last year.

Walters, 24, took the air rifle - used for shooting rabbits - out of a kitchen cupboard and clean it in front of the children, it was heard.

The jury in Miss Horseman's trial heard Harry started to cry because 'he wanted mummy' and she was alleged to have told Walters: 'Shoot Harry, just to frighten him, to shut him up, shoot it at Harry.'

Father-of-two Walters thought the weapon - which he was cleaning - was empty so 'aimed the gun at Harry and fired it right into Harry's head', the jury was told.

Miss Horseman denied telling Walters to shoot the toddler and was cleared by the jury in less than 40 minutes.

The youngster was saved by medics but still sufferes post-traumatic seizures every day

Harry, now aged two, was taken to Bristol Children's Hospital where he underwent emergency surgery.

His speech is now developing normally but he suffers from several post-traumatic seizures a day and is being treated with anticonvulsant drugs.

Mr Studley said he hopes Walters will be jailed for a long time when he is sentenced in a few weeks' time.

He added: 'It's an unforgivable act what he's done to hurt our child.

'It's unforgivable for life. We respect him for pleading guilty at such an early stage, but we definitely will never forgive him.

'To us, his sentence should be long and lengthy for what he's done.'
High Court judges today took just an hour to throw out 'premature' legal action to force a 'soft Brexit' and thwart Theresa May.

The new group of campaigners - including some granted anonymity on safety grounds - want Parliament to vote on keeping Britain in the European single market.

They include Peter Wilding, chairman of the pro-Europe pressure group British Influence, who is credited with coining the word Brexit and Conservative lobbyist Adrian Yalland, who voted Leave and runs the Single Market Justice Group.

The case started at 10.30am this morning but by 11.30am the judges refused to give the green light for the new challenge - but the group could still appeal.

Mr Yalland and Mr Wilding said later in a joint statement: 'We were right to bring this challenge, and unless the Government gives business and the country the certainty it needs and deserves, it is highly likely we will be here again'.

Their legal action comes just a week after Gina Miller and others defeated the Government in the Supreme Court and two days since MPs voted in favour of legislation to pave the way for Theresa May to trigger Article 50 - the formal process of leaving the EU.

New court case: A new group of campaigners have today launched a fresh legal action to thwart Theresa May led by Peter Wilding, left, chairman of the pro-Europe pressure group British Influence and Adrian Yalland, right, who runs the Single Market Justice Group

New legal bid: Prime Minister Theresa May speaks with France's President Francois Hollande today in Malta, her allies have dubbed troublemaking MPs who back the newc ase 'the new b******s'

Nigel Farage responded swiftly to the High Court decision to scupper the application, describing it on Twitter as 'Good News'.

Lord Justice Lloyd Jones, sitting with Mr Justice Lewis at a hearing in London, expressed concerns during the application hearing that the challenge might be premature.

And James Eadie QC, appearing for the Government, submitted: 'This application is premature and should be dismissed for that reason.'

Peter Wilding, head of the pro-single market organisation British Influence, laughs after posing for photographs outside the court - the case was blocked after an hour

The judges said they would give their reasons for blocking the application at 2pm.

It had been brought by campaigners including Peter Wilding, chairman of the pro-Europe pressure group British Influence, who is credited with coining the word Brexit.

He was joined by Conservative lobbyist Adrian Yalland, who voted Leave, and four anonymous applicants referred to as W, L, T and B.

George Peretz QC, appearing for Mr Yalland and Mr Wilding, said the case raised important legal questions regarding the UK's membership of the European Economic Area (EEA), which provides for the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital within the single market.

Mr Peretz applied for permission to seek a declaration that it would be unlawful for Prime Minister Theresa May to cause the UK to leave the EEA without prior parliamentary authorisation through a new Act of Parliament, and the serving of a withdrawal notice under Article 127 of the EEA Agreement.

The QC said it could not be done by the Government under the royal prerogative.

The Department for Exiting the European Union had maintained throughout that the case was unarguable and contended: 'Once the UK leaves the EU, the EEA Agreement will automatically cease to apply to the UK.'

A single judge who considered the case in private last December refused permission to apply for judicial review, but the applicants exercised their right to renew their application in open court.

Today Mr Yalland denied they were ignoring the will of the people and said: 'We do accept it (will of the people). I voted for Brexit but this is not about leaving the EU it is about leaving the EEA. If Parliament took us in then they should vote to get us out.

'We were asked about whether we wanted to leave. If it wants to go beyond that they need to vote in parliament.

'It's not about Brexit - it is a completely separate issue'.

In the same action are four people who granted anonymity because they feared for their safety.

The individuals, whose case could delay or even block the UK leaving the EU, have successfully argued their identities should be kept secret from the public.

They can only be called W, L, T and B.

Mr Yalland said today: 'I presume it is because Gina Miller suffered a lot of abuse. I have some sympathy for them but I don't think that applies in my case. I can handle it'.

The four anonymous applicants, who were either born in EU countries or married to someone who was, cannot be named after an anonymity order was granted by Mr Justice Cranston.

The group, who claim Brexit would leave them in 'limbo', asked for anonymity because of the abuse faced by millionaire businesswoman Gina Miller, who needed bodyguards as she took the Government to the Supreme Court over a Parliament vote to trigger Article 50.

But critics have said the public have a right to know who they are.

Ukip MP Douglas Carswell told MailOnline: 'In a civilised country, every individual has a right to take a case to court - and respected for it. But the rest of us should have the right to know who is trying to frustrate the referendum result. It's only fair.'

New Brexit case: Four people bringing a new High Court case linked to Brexit have won anonymity by a judge after they used the example of businesswoman Gina Miller, pictured with bodyguards at the Supreme Court last month

Row: Mr Justice Cranston said the four had a strong case and made an order barring journalists from revealing their names. Ukip MP Douglas Carswell told MailOnline that the public has a right to know who they are

Their case has been described as 'Article 50's bigger and uglier brother'.

Think tank boss and a Tory activist launch claim for judicial review The director of a lobby group, originally founded by Lord Mandelson, instructed lawyers to begin the new legal challenge designed to thwart Brexit. Peter Wilding, above today, director of British Influence and Adrian Yalland, a Conservative lobbyist who voted to leave, want judges to consider whether leaving the EU means automatic withdrawal from the single market. The British Influence think-tank, founded by the architect of New Labour and close ally of Tony Blair, wants to make MPs vote on whether leaving the EU means automatic withdrawal from the single market. If it succeeds, it would mean MPs  many of whom are opposed to a 'hard Brexit'  would be given a say. Leave supporters say remaining in the single market would mean businesses would still have to abide by stifling red tape, and Britain would have to sign up to continued freedom of movement of people. Advertisement

Lawyer David Golten, who is based at law firm Wedlake Bell, said: 'Potential litigation about Article 127 will make the Article 50 case look like a walk in the park'.

He added: 'The strength of feeling in Parliament and in the country about whether the UK should stay in the single market seems deeper than the feeling about membership of the EU.'

In a historic ruling, the Supreme Court declared that Parliament must give its approval to trigger Brexit under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

The new case centres on Article 127 of the 'separate treaty' relating to the UK's membership of the European Economic Area (EEA).

The EEA Agreement provides for the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital within the single market.

The applicants are asking the High Court in London for permission to seek a ruling that Parliament must separately give permission before the Government can pull out of the EEA.

They want a declaration that it would be unlawful for Prime Minister Theresa May to cause the UK to leave the EEA without prior Parliamentary authorisation through an Act of Parliament, and the serving of a withdrawal notice under Article 127.

The Department for Exiting the European Union says the case is unarguable and contends: 'Once the UK leaves the EU, the EEA Agreement will automatically cease to apply to the UK.'

A single judge who considered the case in private last December refused permission to apply for judicial review, but the applicants are exercising their right to renew their application in open court in a hearing before Lord Justice Lloyd Jones and Mr Justice Lewis.

Theresa May's allies have dubbed troublemaking MPs who back the case 'the new b******'
A British couple are planning to sue a holiday tour operator after the narrowly escaped death when the balcony on their third-floor room collapsed.

Greta Jarasiute and boyfriend Jerome Anyanwu suffered serious injuries when the balcony of their five-star Caribbean hotel collapsed.

Greta, 26, who works in retail, suffered multiple spinal fractures, a broken arm and needed surgery.

Greta and Jerome enjoyed a five-star stay in the Caribbean for Greta's birthday before the balcony collapse left them with serious injuries

Greta Jarasiute on the balcony which collapsed leaving her and her boyfriend with serious injuries

Jerome, 22, a customer service worked, also had surgery after his left hand was fractured and he had tissue damage to his neck.

Six months on, the pair are still unable to work.

The couple have decided to take legal action against tour operator The Holiday Place over the accident at the Hotel Barcelo Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.

They paid around 1,000 for the week-long stay last September at the hotel - since renamed the Occidental Caribe - which boasts a five-star rating.

The couple, from west London, were on holiday celebrating Greta's birthday.

She was sitting on Jerome's lap on a chair which was resting against the railings when they suddenly collapsed.

They both fell three storeys and were found by security staff who called an ambulance which rushed them to hospital.

The couple had been sitting on the balcony, on the third floor of the Occidental Caribe hotel, when it collapsed and plunged 40ft

Lithuanian-born Greta had to extend her stay in the Dominican Republic while she received treatment and her mother flew over to be with her in hospital.

Jerome was kept in hospital for eight days before being flown home a week later than planned and he has recently learned that he may require further surgery.

He said: 'It was not even the hotel we booked in the first place.

'The Holiday Place changed our hotel just three days before we were due to go without giving us a choice of alternatives.

'We had already moved rooms because of a cockroach so we weren't particularly happy about the hotel.

Jerome Anyanwu's injuries have meant he has been out of work for six months

'One minute we were just sitting on the balcony the next we had fallen three floors and were being taken to hospital.

'I spent the rest of my time in the Dominican Republic in hospital.'

The couple both face a long recovery period with potentially more surgery and challenges to overcome.

Jerome is still regularly visiting his physiotherapist and says his left hand will 'never be the same again'.

They are now taking legal action against tour operator The Holiday Place, an independent company whose website says: 'We're here to create an experience you'll always remember'.

Demetrius Danas, personal injury lawyer at Irwin Mitchell, said: 'Both Jerome and Greta have suffered serious injuries when they were simply trying to enjoy their holiday at the Barcelo Punta Cana.

'We have been asked to investigate what happened and take appropriate legal action for them.

'Our clients rightly have serious concerns about the safety of the railings which gave way suddenly.

'The railings are in place to protect guests but on this occasion they were the cause of the problem.'

A spokesperson for The Holiday Place said: 'As the matter is subject to legal proceedings it would be inappropriate for us to comment.'
Billionaire Elon Musk says he will not step down from Donald Trump's advisory panel despite growing pressure.

The CEO of Tesla and Space X argued that 'engaging on critical issues' will 'serve the greater good' in a lengthy statement issued ahead of today's meeting at the White House.

It comes after Uber boss Travis Kalanic quit the council on Thursday after pressure from those who oppose Trump's immigration order.

Billionaire Elon Musk says he will not step down from Donald Trump's advisory panel despite pressure from protesters

In a statement shared on Twitter, Musk said he and others would be expressing their 'objections to the recent executive order on immigration'.

He wrote: 'In December, I agreed to join the Presidential Advisory forum to provide feedback on issues that I think are important for our country and the world.

'In tomorrow's meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy.'

'Advisory councils simply provide advice and attending does not mean that I agree with actions by the Administration.

Musk continued: 'I understand the perspective of those who object to my attending this meeting, but I believe at this time that engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good.'

The tech billionaire is also on the council advising Trump on manufacturing growth and attended a meeting at the White House last week.

It comes after Uber boss Travis Kalanic announced he had quit the council on Thursday

Musk is also on the council advising Trump on manufacturing growth and attended a meeting at the White House last week

It was reported earlier this week that some Tesla customers have been cancelling their orders over Musk's decision to work with Trump.

Activists have also been taking to social media to call for Musk to quit his role in advising the President.

Yann LeCun, Director of AI Research at Facebook, also urged the Tesla CEO to quit on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Kalanick explained his decision to quit the advisory council in an email to Uber employees.

He said: 'Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community.

'I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that.'

Referring to Trump's controversial immigration ban, the Uber chief executive added: 'There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that.

'The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America. Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there's a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants.'

'We will fight for the rights of immigrants in our communities so that each of us can be who we are with optimism and hope for the future.'
Rare pictures have been released showing the ancient sex toys that once belonged to the Chinese royals and aristocrats.

The two pleasure devices, both made of bronze, date back more than 2,000 years to China's Han Dynasty (206 BC220 AD).

They were discovered in the modern-day Jiangsu Province near Shanghai inside the ancient tombs belonging to the rich and powerful.

The sex toy (pictured) was discovered in Yizheng inside the tomb of an ancient aristocrat

One of the two artefacts, which has a metal ring attach to it, was discovered in the Yizheng city in western Jiangsu.

The bronze artefact was discovered in 2009 inside the tomb which is believed to belong to a regional King in the Han Dynasty

It was unearthed by archaeologists in 2012 and has since been kept at the Yizheng Museum. It is not shown to the public.

A member of staff at the Yizheng Museum told MailOnline that the bronze item had been found inside the tomb of an aristocrat in the West Han Dynasty (206 BC8 AD), the first part of the Han Dynasty.

The other sex toy apparently belonged to a Chinese imperial family.

The artefact, which has a flat base, was found inside an ancient tomb in the Xuyi County in western Jiangsu in 2009. It has been kept at the Nanjing Museum, the capital of Jiangsu Province.

In 2011, the owner of the tomb was identified as Liu Fei (169BC-127BC), the first king of Jiangdu, an autonomous kingdom within the Han Dynasty, according to China News.

Liu Fei was also a half-brother of the Emperor Wu of Han, who ruled from 141BC to 97BC.

Both sex toys were unearthed in modern-day Jiangsu Province near Shanghai

The two extraordinary sex toys will go on display at an upcoming exhibition at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in the United States.

The exhibition, called 'Tomb Treasures', will showcase more than 160 artefacts from the Han Dynasty.

The historical items, all found inside ancient tombs, include luxurious daily life ornaments, worship items as well as private objects associated with sex and pleasure.

Zhang Fan, the co-curator of 'Tomb Treasures', said the two pleasure devices 'could be worn and used' and that they reflected an 'almost modern appreciation for the body's needs and wants'.

Art curator Zhang Fan (pictured) said the two pleasure devices 'could be worn and used'

According to Mr Zhang, the other intimate artefacts at the exhibition will include a large silver basin for taking baths, a working stone latrine with an armrest and an elaborate ceramic urinal.

Jay Xu, the director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and the co-curator of 'Tomb Treasures' said: 'This exhibition underscores how connected we really are to the past, that we share the same passions across time and culture.'

The exhibition will run from February 17 to May 28.
A starving child who was left for dead by his parents who thought he was a witch has been pictured full of joy as he sets off for for his first day at school.

Photographs of the little boy known as Hope broke the world's hearts last year after a charity worker found him emaciated and riddled with worms after being abandoned.

Having made a miraculous recovery, the now healthy-looking youngster set off to embark on his education in a strapping red outfit.

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A year on from being found abandoned (right), the boy known as Hope is off to school (left)

The healthy-looking boy has made a remarkable recovery after his traumatic ordeal

Hope was rescued by Danish charity worker Anja Ringgren Loven, who was working in Africa

Hope, pictured with Anja, was abandoned by his parents because they though he was a witch

Anja, who works with a number of children in Nigeria, sits with Hope and another child on her lap

The then two-year-old Nigerian boy was found in a shocking state last year.

Hope was abandoned by his family because they thought he was a witch and was found in the streets by Anja Ringgren Loven, a Danish woman living in Africa, in January 2016.

Almost a year on to the day, she posted amazing before and after photographs of her holding a water bottle up to the boy's mouth.

In an emotional Facebook post, she wrote: ' On the 30th of January 2016 I went on a rescue mission with David Emmanuel Umem, Nsidibe Orok and our Nigerian team.

'A rescue mission that went viral, and today it's exactly one year ago the world came to know a young little boy called Hope

'This week Hope will start school.'

Hope (pictured), was emaciated and riddled with worms when he was discovered naked and wandering the streets on January 31, 2016 by Anja (pictured, right)

Hope was abandoned by his family because they thought he was a witch and was found in the streets by Anja Ringgren Loven (pictured together)

Back in January, Ms Loven found the boy after he spent eight months fending for himself and living off scraps.

She bent down and gently began feeding him and giving him water from a bottle. She then wrapped up the disorientated toddler in a blanket and took him to the nearest hospital for treatment.

When Hope reached the hospital, he was given medication to remove the worms from his stomach and daily blood transfusions to incorporate more red blood cells into his body, Ms Loven said.

And two days after the aid worker asked for the community's help with Hope's costly medical bills, she received more than $1million in donations from around the world.

Ms Loven wrapped up the disorientated toddler in a blanket and took him to the nearest hospital

When Hope reached the hospital, he was given medication to remove the worms from his belly and daily blood transfusions

Ms Loven is pictured helping give Hope a bath after he was found walking the streets starving, disorientated and riddled with worms

Just eight weeks later, Hope was unrecognisable having gained weight and pictured smiling and playing with other children.

Ms Loven is the founder of African Children's Aid Education and Development Foundation, which she created three years ago to help children who have been labelled witches and therefore neglected or even killed by the members of their community.

'Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we've both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children,' she wrote on Facebook, accompanying images of her feeding the young boy and appealing for donations to help pay for his medical bills in January.

'With all the money, we can, besides giving Hope the very best treatment, now also build a doctor clinic on the new land and save many more children out of torture.' she said two months after his rescue.

Hope looked unrecognisable after gaining weight and he has been pictured smiling for the camera eight weeks after he was found

Hope gained weight and was pictured smiling and playing with other children (left)

This picture was published less than two months after Hope was found and shows just how much his health had improved

Hope (right) is pictured sitting with African Children's Aid Education and Development Foundation education officer, Don Udowan, and Felix, one

Hope is pictured having his hair cut at the centre in Nigeria after he was rescued on January 31

Hope is pictured looking at a book with two other children. He looks nothing like the starving boy found by Anja Ringgren Loven, a Danish woman living in Africa, on January 31, 2016

Ms Loven runs a children's centre where the youngsters she saves live and receives medical care, food and schooling.

She and her husband, David Emmanuel Umem, began building their own orphanage in late January last year.
BBC star Emily Maitlis has been left bewildered after a US human rights activist identified her as the new deputy CIA chief who ran a torture 'black site'.

Kenneth Roth, who runs Human Rights Watch in New York, used a picture of the journalist in a tweet last night criticising Donald Trump's choice.

Mr Roth, who has nearly 200,000 followers, accompanied the image with the message: 'Of all the people Trump could have picked as deputy CIA director, he chose woman who ran CIA black site for torture.'

It is not clear how he managed to confuse Newsnight presenter Maitlis with Gina Haspel - the real new deputy CIA director.

Kenneth Roth, who runs Human Rights watch in the US and has nearly 200,000 Twitter followers, used a picture of Maitlis as he complained about the new CIA deputy director

The tweet drew a bemused response from Maitlis herself, who replied that she was 'pretty sure' she had never run a torture 'black site'

The mistake remained in place for hours despite a slew of people pointing it out, sparking a series of memes - including one joking that former newsreader Moira Stewart was running 'death squads'.

Maitlis herself replied on Twitter: 'Erm. This is me. And I'm pretty sure I never ran a CIA black site for torture.. '

This morning Mr Roth finally deleted the tweet, posting: 'Sorry, wrong photo for new CIA deputy director Gina Haspel.'

User @simoncobbs1 responded: 'Really? Lucky no-one noticed!!'

CIA Director Mike Pompeo announced Thursday that Ms Haspel had been chosen to be the first woman deputy director of the CIA.

But critics have pointed to her role in the CIA's former covert program where suspected terrorists were subjected to harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding.

Ms Haspel allegedly ran a secret CIA prison where accused terrorists were waterboarded in 2002, intelligence officials have told the AP agency.

The technique, which was employed when George W Bush was US president, has not been used for a decade while Barack Obama was in power.

Mr Trump made clear last month that he believes that torture 'works'.

Mr Roth's error drew a series of responses suggesting other well known TV stars

One user joked that 1980s TV-AM favourite Rustie Lee was now running MI6

'I have spoken with people at the highest level of intelligence and I asked them the question "Does it work? Does torture work?" and the answer was "Yes, absolutely",' he said.

However, the US commander-in-chief he has said he will be guided by his senior officials, including his Defense Secretary James Mattis, when deciding whether waterboarding and other techniques should be reintroduced.

Theresa May has warned Britain could be forced to limit the intelligence it shares with the US on suspected terror plots if Mr Trump did bring back torture.

The PM said she 'absolutely condemns' techniques such as waterboarding, and the UK's strict rules state that officials will not share intelligence with countries if it involves a serious risk of a detainee being tortured, or that is how the information was obtained.

'The UK Government's position on torture has not changed. We condemn torture and my view on that will not change whether I am talking to you or talking to the President,' she said.

Mr Roth eventually deleted the tweet featuring Maitlis and apologised for his mistake

User @simoncobbs1 responded: 'Really? Lucky no-one noticed!!'
A schoolgirl has written a heartwarming letter to 'MrCadbury' to complain that she was denied a lunchtime snack because of a packaging error.

Macy Glen had to go to school without any chocolate fingers because her mother had bought a multi-pack that contained four mini bags instead of five, meaning there was no pack left for her.

The ten-year-old, from Redditch in Worcestershire, wrote to the confectionery giant: 'Dear Cadbury's owner, on my last day of school term I did not have a treat in my lunchbox but my two brothers did.

Upset: Schoolgirl Macy Glen has written a heartwarming letter to 'MrCadbury' to complain that she was denied a lunchtime snack because of a packaging error

'I told my mum and she said to write a letter to Mr Cadbury so here is my letter. Regards, Macy Glen, aged ten.'

Macy even added a picture of three Chocolate Fingers looking sad on the bottom of her note, which was sent to the firm's Bournville base.

Despite the tender letter, Cadbury failed to respond - so Macy's mum Layla Glen posted it on the firm's Facebook page.

The company later apologised and said it had not received the message. It faced a barrage of criticism for referring the family to the Burton's Biscuit Company, which makes Chocolate Fingers under a licence agreement.

Abbie Buckle wrote on Cadbury's Facebook page: 'Wow, disgusting response to a child's letter. The product is advertised as Cadbury's NOT Burton's!

'Never mind, Easter is coming - I'm sure I can convince several people not to buy your eggs.'

Mother-of-three Ms Glen, 38, said she was amazed when Macy presented her with a letter to post to Cadbury.

This is the letter the ten-year-old, from Redditch in Worcestershire, wrote to the confectionery giant

'Every morning I do the sandwiches and the kids do the snacks,' she said. But Macy said she couldn't have a snack.

'I said she should write to Mr Cadbury - and a couple of days later she presented me with the letter.

'Macy waited for a response in the post every day but nothing came so I put it on Cadbury's Facebook page.

'I have had so much support and now Macy thinks she's famous - but she just wants a letter from Cadbury.'

A Burton's Biscuit Company spokesman said: 'We are sorry to hear of Macy's disappointment and we apologise for any delay in replying to her'

A Burton's Biscuit Company spokesman said: 'We are sorry to hear of Macy's disappointment and we apologise for any delay in replying to her.

'All of the Cadbury Finger products we produce are packed and weight checked, so a missing packet is a rare occurrence.

'Our customer care team are currently investigating and would like to offer her some Cadbury Fingers to make up for her missing out.

'Our customer care team will be in touch with Macy once the investigation is complete.'
A six-year-old female elephant was rescued dramatically when she fell 30ft into a dried-up farm well in Southern India.

Heart stopping footage shows the distressed animal trying and failing to get a foothold to climb out of the parched well, in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

A herd of 40 elephants from the Udedurgam forest reserve had entered the village the night before.

Rescuers in Southern India battled to save a stricken six-year-old elephant who had fallen into a dry well after getting separated from her herd of 40

It is thought that the elephant received a shock from a low hanging electrical wire and tumbled into the baron well, injuring herself in the process

As the herd returned to the forest the juvenile female slipped into the deep well and was unable to climb out.

The alarmed herd remained nearby as the female elephant called out for help but eventually moved off when they couldn't find her.

The stricken elephant was injured in the fall which may have been caused from an electric shock delivered from a low hanging wire in the village.

Volunteers joined the effort and spent hours pouring water over the elephant to prevent it from overheating and become dehydrated

Eventually high powered machinery was contracted in to allow the well to be dug out. The machines built a slope for the animal to walk out of

Wildlife officials and volunteers came forward to rescue the frightened animal.

The video clip shows villagers pouring water over its head to stop it from overheating and becoming dehydrated.

Diggers were brought in and a makeshift ramp dug out of the soft ground.

E. Rajendran, district forest officer for the region, said: 'It took around six hours to create a slope for the elephant so that she could climb out of the well on her own.

A district forest official praised the efforts of the rescue team. He said: 'All our team efforts saved the gentle giant's life. I am glad that we could rescue the elephant successfully without any injures'

The animal was rescued safely once the mouth of the well was widened allowing her to walk out unharmed. She later rejoined her herd

'During the whole rescue operation the elephant was taken care by forest officials and doctor by providing food like Banana tree bark, sugarcane and water.

'All our team efforts saved the gentle giant's life. I am glad that we could rescue the elephant successfully without any injures.'

After several efforts, the elephant finally came out of the well without having a scratch on her body.
A hapless motorist has recorded one of the UK's fastest-ever driving test fails after driving out of the exam centre on the wrong side of the road.

Craig Barraza, 33, from Portlethen in Aberdeenshire, failed his test after just five seconds after suffering a mind blank.

The wind farm worker, who now lives in King's Lynn in Norfolk, took a '50/50 chance' when he pulled out of the test centre parking space and ended up driving onto the right lane.

His driving instructor, Steve Fletcher, and the examiner said they had never witnessed anything like it in their combined 50 years of experience.

'Oh no': Craig Barraza, 33, from Portlethen in Aberdeenshire, failed his test after just five seconds after suffering a mind blank

The wind farm worker, who now lives in King's Lynn in Norfolk, took a '50/50 chance' and pulled out of the test centre parking space onto the wrong side of the road

Epic fail: His driving instructor, Steve Fletcher, and the examiner said they had never witnessed anything like it in their combined 50 years of experience

To make matters worse, Mr Barraza had to complete the 40-minute test, knowing he had failed.

The Scot only clocked two minors in the rest of the test, meaning he would have passed if he hadn't mucked up right at the start.

Mr Barraza said cannot account for his blunder as he has lived all his life in the UK.

He had spent in the region of 1,000 on 40 driving lessons and the test itself and was confident of passing.

He said: 'I was only just leaving the centre to get out. We were literally just five seconds into it.

'I was approaching the junction to exit it and I had an absolute mind blank, questioning in my head: "What side of the road do we drive on"?

'I had a 50/50 chance, and I chose to exit it in the right lane. Instant fail. Had I not been so stupid I'd have breezed through.'

'My examiner with 20 years experience, and my instructor with 30 years, both have never witnessed anything like it in their careers, they said. I hadn't even left the test centre car park.'

Disaster: Mr Barraza had spent in the region of 1,000 on 40 driving lessons and the test itself and was confident of passing

Hilarious: Mr Barraza saw the funny side of what he had done and posted about his experience on Facebook

Mr Barraza, who is nicknamed Kiko, saw the funny side of what he had done and posted about his experience on Facebook.

He added: 'I've avoided driving because when I was 17 I stalled at a roundabout which just completely put me off. But I was more confident now.

I think it's when you get older you get a bit wiser but that's rich coming from me after failing like that.

'I've lived in the UK my whole life so there's no excuse for not driving on the left.

'This is gonna be a long saga now. I reckon I'll fail another four or five times now. I think I'm mentally scarred.

'Honestly, who fails a test quicker than that? I didn't even get to the junction.'

After sharing news of the disaster on social media, Mr Barraza has received dozens of messages of 'support' from his friends.
Amir Khan's father has been left 'humiliated' by his very public sacking as the boxer's manager as part of his bitter family feud with his son and his wife.

Sajjad Khan is convinced that Khan's wife Faryal Makhdoom was behind the decision to dump him, Khan's uncle and best man from the management team.

Mr Khan has always managed his son's professional career, seeing him through the ups and down of the 30-year-old champion boxer's life.

But a very public falling out between Khan's family and his wife which has played out in social media has now completely broken down.

Humiliated: Amir Khan's father has spoken of his 'humiliation' at the very public sacking by his son after weeks of in-fighting with Khan's wife Faryal Makhdoom (above)

Sacked: Sajjad Khan (above with his son in 2008) is convinced that Faryal was behind the decision to dump him, Khan's uncle and best man from the management team

Wife's influence: A close friend told MailOnline that while Khan and his young daughter Lamisah (above with Faryal) would always be welcome by the family in Bradford, a reconciliation with Faryal would be impossible

Rift: The very public falling out between Amir Khan, Faryal (above) and the rest of his family in Bradford - which has rumbled on for months - has now completely broken down

'He feels humiliated in his community, in my own homes, and globally,' a family friend told MailOnline. 'Credit for that goes to Faryal who got Amir to do it.'

The friend said that while the boxer and his young daughter Lamisah would always be welcomed by the family in Bolton, a reconciliation with Faryal would be impossible - adding: 'He will never be able to speak to her again.'

Khan and his wife have been in the US for several months as he trains and promotes his charitable foundation.

He missed his younger brother Haroon's wedding reception in Bradford in front of 1,000 guests last month after Faryal was not invited.

Faryal has never forgiven Haroon for saying that she looked like 'Michael Jackson' and other sleights by other family members online.

Khan tried to call for calm between the warring factions of his family, but to no avail.

Mr Khan, Khan's uncle and best man believe they were the 'core team' who built up the boxer's brand and were not expecting to be stabbed in the back by the former champion.

MailOnline understands that the sacking was done weeks ago but Khan did not want to make the announcement public.

Khan has previously said: 'The ending of those relationships was not so much that I fired them as they had already decided to cash out. To be honest I couldn't believe it.'

However, the family believes Faryal forced Khan to make a public statement, showing the world that he stands by her and not his family.

Last week, MailOnline reported that Faryal had issued a 'them or me' ultimatum to her husband of four years.

Feud: Faryal has never forgiven Khan's brother Haroon for saying on Instagram that she looked like 'Michael Jackson' and other comments from other family members online

At war: Khan called for calm between the warring factions of his family, but to no avail. He missed his younger brother Haroon's wedding reception in Bradford in front of 1,000 guests last month after Faryal was not invited

Driving force: Khan and his wife have now been in the US for several months as he trains and promotes his charitable foundation. She is said to have taken over the position of his manager

'Faryal wastes no opportunity to taunt the family and rubs their noses here and there,' said the friend.

'She has made it a point to be vindictive against the parents of Amir Khan and that has been widely disliked within the family.

'Faryal doesn't listen to Amir and Amir's father was right to go public about it.'

It is understood that Faryal has taken over the management of her husband's career and is making the key decisions about what he does.

The couple moved to the US for Khan to focus on his training, but also to be as far away as possible from his family, the family believe.

'For now, Amir is doing the bidding but he is not happy at all,' said a source.

Aside from the family fallout, Amir has been rocked by the recent emergence of a sex tape, which has reportedly been leaked to a major US porn site and is said to feature the former world champion boxer carrying out a sex act while speaking to a female model on Skype.

The Khans appeared on This Morning to claim that the webcam footage of Khan was made before they met.

However the boxer has failed to give Faryal and her parents reassurance that more explicit videos won't emerge to cause them further embarrassment, admitting he has been filmed 'here and there'.

Axed: Mr Khan, Khan's uncle Shahid and best man Sajj believe they were the 'core team' who built up the boxer's brand and were not expecting to be stabbed in the back by the former champion. Pictured: Khan with his parents and bother Haroon (right) in a private jet

Parents: The sacking was done weeks ago but Khan did not want to make the announcement public. However, the family believes Faryal forced him to make an official statement, showing the world that he stands by her. Pictured: Khan's parents Falak and Sajjad

Past: The couple moved to the US for Khan to focus on his training, but also to be as far away as possible from his family, the family believe. Pictured: Khan in happier times with uncle Shahid

Scandal: Aside from the family fallout, Amir, pictured at Wimbledon in 2013 with Fayral, has been rocked by the recent emergence of a sex tape, which has reportedly been leaked to a major US porn site. He has given Faryal access to all his phones to show her his loyalty

But as a way of proving his loyalty, Khan has given Faryal access to all his phone numbers and social media accounts to prove that he is not cheating.

He is also not answering calls from his family in the UK and only started speaking to his parents in the few days running up to Haroon's wedding reception.

Faryal has claimed that the couple was not invited but MailOnline understands that there was an open invitation for Khan to attend.

Although he was keen to attend, he stayed away as a sign of solidarity with his wife. The pair were both been present at the main wedding event in Pakistan last year.
Narayan Singh, 38, carrying his wife's head

A farmer decapitated his wife with a sword and carried her severed head to a police station after he caught her with another man in one of his fields.

Narayan Singh, 38, was charged with murder after finding his wife Sarita, 28, rolling around with another man before he flew into a fit of rage, according to neighbours.

Villagers claim the farmer - who claims to have caught his wife cheating before - took a sword and beheaded his wife and picked up her head.

Terrified locals claim they called police but before they arrived he walked five miles to the nearest police station - while clutching his wife's hair.

Singh, of Ghareli village in Ingoria, India, has been charged with murder and is due in court later this month.

Local sources outside the station in Ghareli village in Ingoria, India said before he handed himself in, he told onlookers: 'My wife had broken my trust.

'This is the reason why I beheaded her.

'I had warned her twice before, but she wouldn't mend her ways.'

Narayan Singh, 38, was charged with murder after finding his wife Sarita, 28, with another man before chopping off her head with a sword and carrying it to this police station

Singh claimed he found his wife (pictured) sneaking around with the same man he had caught her with previously

Dressed in a pink skirt and top, Sarita was said to have cheated on her husband twice

Singh, pictured carrying the head of his wife by the hair, arrived at the police station in India

Residents claim Singh had caught his wife with her lover twice before but let them go with a 'warning of dire consequence' if they met up again.

Singh was spying on his wife when he caught them in a farmers' hut again on January 30, according to neighbours.

Police sources said Singh was sent to judicial custody for 14 days before he us due in court.

Stunned police officers and locals gather around the body of Sarita after the beheading

Police officers carry the dismembered body of Singh's wife from a field to a blanket

Vijay Khatri, the investigating officer of the case, said: 'Narayan Singh had doubts on his wife's character - that she was having an extramarital affair with another man.

'According to villagers, Singh had been keeping a close tab on the activities and movements of his wife for the past few days.

'On January 30, he caught his wife in the act with her lover and, in a fit of rage, beheaded her.

'In delusion, he kept roaming in the area with the head in his hand.'
A shocking video shows a train stopping just in time after a woman got on to the tracks in India.

The footage shows the woman, believed to be a rag picker, walking along the train tracks in the empty Charni Road station in Mumbai.

She then pauses and is seen placing both of her hands on to the platform and trying to get on it.

A woman was filmed walking along the the train tracks in the empty Charni Road station in Mumbai while holding on to the platform with her hand for support

In a video of the incident, she is seen stopping and grabbing the platform with both hands and trying to get up

A train then appears in shot and the woman is in serious danger of being hurt. Luckily it begins to slow down

Suddenly, a train, bound for Churchgate station, appears and manages to stop just inches away from her.

The woman continues to try and clamber on to the platform before Santosh Kumar Gautam, the driver of the train, and another man appear and pull her to safety.

The incident took place at 12:10 am on December 6.

Speaking to Times of India, Mr Gautam said he was travelling at 43 mph and immediately tried to stop the train when he saw her on the tracks.

He said: 'I was seated in the motorman's cabin and jumped to get the train to a halt.

It stops just inches away from her and she starts to clamber on to the platform to get to safety

The driver, Santosh Kumar Gautam, dashes out of the train and attempts to save the woman with another man

The pull her to safety. Mr Gautam was praised by Western Railway for his efforts

'I halted the train for a few minutes and spoke to the guard on the further course of action as the train had halted in the middle of the platform.'

Indian railway operator, Western Railway, commended Mr Gautam for his actions.

Divisional Railway Manager of Western Railway, Mukul Jain, told Times of India: 'We generally reward motormen who report rail fractures and such incidents while being on duty. We do appreciate his work and will also reward him.'

The video was sent to Atul Kulkarni, a senior assistant editor of LOKMAT Mumbai, a newspaper website, who then published it on Twitter.

He said the video was 'horrible' and alerted Suresh Prabhu, minister for Railways, Government of India.

In a tweet to the minister, he wrote: '#HareKrishnaHareRam #ViruGyaan #IndianRailways @sureshpprabhu Sir what is this... Where is #railway #police ? Any thing in #UnionBudget2017'. (sic)
President Trump escalated his war of words with Arnold Schwarzenegger Friday morning, trashing his gubernatorial and reality TV hosting record.

'Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really bad job as Governor of California and even worse on the Apprentice...but at least he tried hard!' the president tweeted just before 6:30am Eastern Time.

Schwarzenegger replaced the Donald as host of the Celebrity Apprentice this season, after NBC severed their dies with the mogul in the wake of inflammatory statements he made on the campaign trail.

The new season of the show premiered this Monday, to dismal ratings - despite hopes that the controversy would cause more viewers to tune in.

Trump's tweet comes a day after he hit out at Schwarzenegger at the National Prayer Breakfast, calling on the attendees to pray for Arnold and 'for those ratings'.

Scroll down for video

President Trump hit out at Arnold Schwarzenneger again Friday morning, in a tweet trashing his gubernatorial and reality TV hosting record

The tweet comes a day after Trump asked attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast (above) to pray for Arnold and Celebrity Apprentice's ratings

Schwarzenegger, a former governor of California, quickly responded with a dig of his own in a video message that he posted to Twitter. 'Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs?

He skewered the movie star for running the television show into the ground this season, claiming, 'It's been a total disaster.'

Schwarzenegger responded to the diss by recording a video, proposing that they switch jobs if is so worried about the Celebrity Apprentice's ratings.

'Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs? You take over TV because you're such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job. And then, people can finally sleep comfortably again. Hmm?' Schwarzenegger said

Schwarzenegger, 69, is an Austrian immigrant. He cannot hold the office of president because he's not a natural born U.S. citizen.

Trump started a fight with Schwarzenegger earlier this month, before he moved into the White House, on Twitter over his debut as host of 'The Celebrity Apprentice.'

The movie star's debut as host of The Celebrity Apprentice this month garnered 4.9 million viewers. Trump's premiere his last season, in 2015, attracted 6.5 million viewers.

Trump said the 'Terminator' actor was getting '"swamped" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT.' Schwarzenegger encouraged him to 'work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings.'

After Burnett talked about the show's origins this morning in his introduction of Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, the president reiterated his unhappiness with Schwarzenegger at the beginning of his own remarks.

'They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes,' he said.

Turning to Burnett, who had been seated next to him on the dias, Trump called Schwarzenegger a 'disaster' and said, 'Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again.'

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the president meant for the diss to be a 'light-hearted' jab at Burnett.

'I think if you look at the totality of his remarks, they were absolutely beautiful,' Spicer said. 'And I think to hone in on that it was a light-hearted moment he was trying to have with a big supporter of the National Prayer Breakfast and a personal friend.'

Burnett, a television and movie producer, had spoken fondly of Trump - crediting the billionaire's book 'The Art of the Deal' as a bedrock for his personal success.

He recalled meeting Trump for the first time and said, 'My dream had come true.'

In addition to 'The Apprentice' and CBS' 'Survivor,' Burnett, along with wife, Roma Downey, star of the long-running faith-based program Touched By an Angel, produced the History Channel miniseries 'The Bible' in 2013 and the 2016 remake of the classic film 'Ben-Hur.'

In remarks introducing the president, Burnett said that working with Trump 'has been one of the greatest relationships of my life.'

Trump called Burnett and Downey 'great friends' in a speech that unraveled into a public shaming of his 'Apprentice' successor.

'Beautiful Roma Downey. The voice of an angel. She's got the voice. Every time I hear that voice, it's so beautiful. And everything is so beautiful about Roma, including her husband,' Trump said. 'Because he's a special, special friend, Mark Burnett.'

The president said the show they produced together 'had tremendous success.'

'We've had an amazing life together the last 14, 15 years, an outstanding man. And thank you very much for introducing me. Appreciate it. It's a great honor. '

His beef with Schwarzenegger is personal. The Republican politician supported Ohio Governor John Kasich in the GOP primary and refused to endorse Trump in the general.

At the bipartisan event in Washington this morning that the occupant of the Oval Office has attended since the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenshower, presidents have often shared messages of religious tolerance and togetherness.

Trump revealed plans to make immigrants and refugees assimilate to American traditions.

'We want people to come into our nation, but we want people to love us and to love our values,' he said. 'We will be a safe country, we will be a free country.'

Travel restrictions that Trump placed on seven nations whose citizens are mainly-Muslim inspired protests across the country. His plan to build a wall dividing the United States from its neighbors in Mexico was also met with uproar.

Trump skewered the movie star for running the television show into the ground this season, claiming, 'It's been a total disaster'

'I know what he's trying to accomplish - his fear about people coming in from other places, causing harm to the country,' told Extra's Mario Lopez on Monday. 'There is another way to going about it to do it the right way and accomplish all of the goals. I think they were hasty with it.'

The president made no apologies for his policies today at the Washington prayer gathering. 'We will be a safe country. We will be a free country,' he said.

The National Prayer Breakfast has been held in Washington since 1953. It is hosted by The Fellowship Foundation and a group of federal legislators from both chambers of Congress.

Dr. Ben Carson confronted Barack Obama in his keynote address in 2013. The episode launched his political career and unsuccessful bid for the presidency last year. He's Trump's nominee to lead Housing And Urban Development.

Obama's speech, in 2015, turned heads when he scolded 'less-than-loving expressions by Christians.'

After Trump proposed a Muslim ban last year while he was campaigning for presidency, Obama zeroed in on the treatment of Muslim Americans.

'Just as we call on other countries to respect the rights of religious minorities, we, too, respect the right of every American to practice their faith freely,' Obama said, 'This is what each of us is called on to do, to seek our common humanity of each other.'

Chris Coons, a senator from Delaware representing Democrats on the dias this year, alluded to the tumult in Washington that led Trump to win elected office, saying in his opening remarks that 'it may be the understatement of the century that Washington D.C. needs prayer.'

Rear Admiral Barry Black, the Senate chaplain and this year's keynote speaker, observed that Democrats and Republicans in the upper chamber come together for a weekly prayer session, regardless.

'I find myself thinking, "Where are the C-SPAN cameras when you need them?" ' he said.

Black recalled a senator saying that it's difficult to pray together like that, then turn around and 'figuratively stab one of your colleagues in the back.'

The senator 'quickly added that it's not impossible,' Black said to laughter, but it is hard.

Two heads of state were attending the breakfast this year, Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein of Jordan and the Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo Samy Badibanga.

Trump's Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, sworn in last night, was also there.

The president did not host Abdullah in the Oval Office, but they had a chance to talk at the breakfast, and the two heads of state had a 'very good conversation,' the White House says.

Contemporary Christian group MercyMe provided this year's music, performing their crossover hit, 'I Can Only Imagine' and another one of their songs.
Page Content

Less than a week after the release of the State of the Energy Union report, on 7 February a high level conference organised by the European Commission and the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) will consider how to build smart cities and regions across the EU. The event will be opened by the European Commission's Vice-President, Maros Sefcovic, the CoR President, Markku Markkula, and President of the Foundation for Economic Trends, Jeremy Rifkin. Local and regional politicians will showcase their own smart strategies and projects that are taking place across Europe. The issue will be further addressed on 8 February during the CoR's plenary session. The future of Europe and the contribution of cities and regions in restoring citizens' trust in the EU will also be debated during plenary on 9 February ahead of the 60 th anniversary of the Rome Treaty.

Ian Borg, Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds. The CoR will present its proposals on how to bridge the current investment gap by discussing and adopting an Markku Markkula. The Vice-President of the European Investment Bank, Vazil Hudak, will join local leaders in the debate. During the plenary on 8 February, the priorities of the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU and the cooperation between the Council and the CoR over the upcoming months will also be debated by members with, Parliamentary Secretary for EU Funds. The CoR will present its proposals on how to bridge the current investment gap by discussing and adopting an opinion drafted by President. The Vice-President of the European Investment Bank,, will join local leaders in the debate.

EU asylum policy

The CoR will adopt two sets of recommendations on migration, one on reform of the EU's asylum system and the other on the EU's new migration partnerships with non-EU states . The opinion on asylum reform has been drafted by Vincenzo Bianco, Mayor of the Sicilian port city of Catania, and focuses on the standards for reception and resettlement of refugees and migrants, paying particular attention to unaccompanied minors. It complements an earlier CoR report focused on the EU's asylum resettlement mechanism. The opinion on migration partnerships has been prepared by Peter Bossman (SI/PES), the Mayor of Piran. standards for reception and resettlement of refugees and migrants, paying particular attention to unaccompanied minors.EU's asylum resettlement mechanism. The opinion on migration partnerships has been prepared by(SI/PES), the Mayor of Piran.

Young farmers and the future of the CAP

Commissioner Hogan will invite regions to participate in the Arnold Hatch (UK/ECR), Member of Craigavon Borough Council, considers that support should be provided first and foremost to family farms on the grounds that they create added value and jobs, and help make it possible for new generations of farmers to enter the sector as it is easier to pass on farms that are viable and reasonably sized. will invite regions to participate in the public consultation on #FutureofCAP during his intervention in the plenary session. Supporting young farmers is a prerequisite for preserving agriculture across the EU and for keeping rural areas alive. In its opinion on Supporting young European farmers (UK/ECR), Member of Craigavon Borough Council, considers that support should be provided first and foremost to family farms on the grounds that they create added value and jobs, and help make it possible for new generations of farmers to enter the sector as it is easier to pass on farms that are viable and reasonably sized.

60th Anniversary of the Rome Treaty: 200 young people join the CoR plenary

th Anniversary for the Maastricht Treaty, creating the CoR, and the 60th anniversary of the EU's founding Rome Treaty must be seen as an opportunity to reflect on Europe and promote greater citizens' involvement in shaping a new path for the Union. The CoR will debate the issue together with a delegation of young Europeans citizens who will actively take part to the discussions. CoR members are due to adopt a At a time where the EU is confronted with the most serious crisis of confidence in its history, this year's celebrations of the 25Anniversary for the Maastricht Treaty, creating the CoR, and the 60th anniversary of the EU's founding Rome Treaty must be seen as an opportunity to reflect on Europe and promote greater citizens' involvement in shaping a new path for the Union. The CoR will debate the issue together with a delegation of young Europeans citizens who will actively take part to the discussions. CoR members are due to adopt a resolution setting out their contribution to the wider political reflection on the future of the EU, which includes the launch of an extensive citizens' consultation process on "Reflecting on Europe" throughout the EU.

Other opinions and papers to be adopted:

Where: The European Parliament Hemicycle  Paul Henri Spaak building - 60 rue Wiertz, Brussels

When: 8 February, 3:00-9:00pm; 9 February, 9am-1pm.
New Zealand is considering introducing a 'tourist tax', as one in five Kiwis say they are worried the country is attracting too many visitors.

Playing on the international success of The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, the tourism industry's 100 per cent Pure marketing campaign has been a huge success.

New Zealand, which has a population of 4.5milllion saw 3.5million tourists flock to the country in 2015- a 12 per cent increase from the previous year, Stuff reported.

New Zealand is considering introducing a 'tourist tax', as one in five Kiwis say they are worried the country is attracting too many visitors (stock image)

New Zealand, which has a population of 4.5milllion saw 3.5million tourists flock to the country in 2015- a 12 per cent increase from the previous year (Auckland pictured)

Road accidents, traffic congestion, overcrowding, insufficient infrastructure and environmental impacts were cited as the main concerns

The crowds are expected to continue, with numbers predicted to grow 5.4 per cent annually, but some locals aren't happy about it.

According to a recent survey by Tourism New Zealand, one in five locals believe the country is attracting too many visitors.

Road accidents, traffic congestion, overcrowding, insufficient infrastructure and environmental impacts were cited as the main concerns.

Increased competition for popular camping spots, and more people on once quiet hiking trails were further issues.

Increased competition for popular camping spots, and more people on once quiet hiking trails were further issues (stock image)

Playing on the international success of The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, the tourism industry's 100 per cent Pure marketing campaign has been a huge success (stock image)

A report suggested looking at funding options including a fee for hikes, a conservation tax for tourists, parking costs and the privatisation of walks

'Its impacts on infrastructure are obvious- roads, carparks, campsites, conservation honey pots, even recreation access across private land, all are creaking under the load, much of which is down to sheer numbers,' Jay Finlayson, vice-president of Federated Mountain Clubs said in a recent blog post.

A report commissioned by various tourism sector and other stakeholders found that the Department of Conservation covers only five per cent of its costs on average through user pays, compared with about 20 per cent in Australian parks.

The report suggested looking at funding options including a fee for hikes, a conservation tax for tourists, parking costs and the privatisation of walks.

'No decisions have been made but a number of options for alternative funding are being considered, such as differential fees for international and domestic visitors,' Tourism Minister Paula Bennett told Stuff.
This is the gruesome 'zombie knife' confiscated from a 12-year-old schoolboy by police in London.

The fearsome-looking weapon was brought into school by a boy in Ealing, in the west of the capital, who said he wanted to show it to his friends.

Police have released an image of the seven-inch weapon to highlight the dangers of knife crime and how it will be dealt with.

Police confiscated this horrific-looking weapon from a boy aged just 12 in west London

The force said they would by questioning the boy as part of their bid to tackle knife crime

The local force tweeted: 'Seized from a 12 year old school boy who brought it in to show his friends! He will be asked Q's re this! #StopKnifeCrime #Saferschools'

National crime statistics released last month show knife crime increased by 11 per cent to 30,838 offences last year.

The figure is slightly lower than than five years ago, but the outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner said the 'warning lights' are flashing over recent increases.

In an unrelated incident in November last year, a 14-year-old boy was stabbed outside a McDonald's in Ealing, not far from where the knife was confiscated today.

He was rushed to hospital and survived the attack, but it led to further warnings about youths carrying knives.

Last month, heartbroken mother Yinka Bankole called on the government to do more after her 17-year-old son Fola was stabbed to death in nearby Notting Hill by a 15-year-old.
The Trump administration made good this morning on its threats to punish Iran for its illicit ballistic missiles test.

Treasury sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 businesses Friday, several of which were based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.

President Donald Trump's press secretary suggested Friday afternoon that more sanctions, and even military action, could be on the way.

'He doesn't like to telegraph his options,' White House spokesman Sean Spicer said. 'I would never rule anything off the table,' he said of additional actions.

Later, in the Oval Office, Trump signaled that Tehran's not in the clear yet: 'They're not behaving.'

His National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, said Friday afternoon in a statement in no uncertain terms that this administration would 'no longer tolerate Irans provocations that threaten our interests.'

'The days of turning a blind eye to Irans hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.'

President Donald Trump dashed off this tweet early this morning, again raising the stake with Iran, after the Middle Eastern country tested a nuclear-capable cruise missile

Treasury sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 businesses Friday. Later, in the Oval Office, Trump signaled that Tehran's not in the clear: 'They're not behaving'

A medium-range ballistic missile was tested on Sunday in Iran and exploded after 630 miles, a US official said on Monday. The test was carried out from a site near Semnan, 140 miles east of Tehran. Pictured above is a file photo from a March 2015 ballistic missile test in Iran

Trump's action may be the first time a head of state has used social media to threaten action against a foreign country

The president dramatically raised the possibility of military action against Iran over its missiles test on Thursday saying 'nothing is off the table' amid reports that a new round of sanctions could be coming within hours.

He raised the stakes in a tweet early Friday morning.

'Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!' he wrote.

Trump's spokesman said of the sanctions Friday afternoon, 'We've taken these actions today after careful consideration and will continue to respond with appropriate action.'

Asked what constitutes 'appropriate action' - and whether that includes military action - Spicer said in his daily briefing that Trump 'doesn't like to telegraph his options.'

'That's how he believes he can have much greater successful options,' Spicer said. 'I'm not going to go into the full extent. I think today's sanctions really represent a very, very strong stand against the actions that Iran has been taking.'

Spicer refused to say whether more punishing actions were on their way.

'I would never rule anything off the table. I think the president has made it clear throughout his time that that's what's going to happen,' he stated.

Sources had told the Associated Press that up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, officials with knowledge of the coming actions said.

The White House had put Iran 'on notice' on Wednesday, refusing to rule out military action or sanctions in response to the ballistic missile test - something the nuclear bargain Iran struck with Barack Obama explicitly forbids.

A Reuters source said some sanctions would be seen as a response to terrorism-related activities and others would fall under separate existing U.S. executive orders.

That would sidestep the sanctions-relieving terms of Obama's agreement with Tehran.

It also emerged Thursday that Iran has tested a cruise missile called 'Sumar' that is capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

The development was reported by German newspaper Die Welt reported Thursday, citing unspecified intelligence sources.

Irans foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Friday, in response to the coming sanctions, 'Iran is unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people.

'We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement,' he said over Twitter.

Iran had previously said it would ignore the United States' 'useless' threats, belittling Trump as 'an inexperienced person.'

Trump inserted himself into the sanctions conversation Thursday morning when he used social media to issue an explicit warning to Tehran.

'Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile,' the president wrote on Twitter. 'Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!'

'Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion,' he added in a second tweet.

Making reference to the nuclear agreement on Friday, Trump's spokesman reiterated the administration's opposition to the terms of the Obama-era agreement.

'We make it very clear that the deal that they struck previously was not in the best interest of this country and that President Trump is going to do everything he can to make sure that Iran has stayed in check.'

Flynn likewise said, 'The Islamic Republic of Iran is the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism and engages in and supports violent activities that destabilize the Middle East. This behavior seems continuous despite the very favorable deal given to Iran by the Obama Administration. These sanctions target these behaviors.

'Irans senior leadership continues to threaten the United States and our allies. Since the Obama Administration agreed to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran in 2015, Irans belligerent and lawless behavior has only increased. '

He mentioned Iran's detention of 10 U.S. sailors last January and the 'unwarranted harassment of vessel traffic and repeated weapons tests.'

'The international community has been too tolerant of Irans bad behavior. The ritual of convening a United Nations Security Council in an emergency meeting and issuing a strong statement is not enough.'

Trump has been openly hostile to the terms of the Obama-Tehran nuclear deal, saying during his presidential campaign that it was 'stupid,' 'a disgrace,'' and 'the worst deal ever negotiated.'

His tweets likely stand as the first time a head of state has used social media to threaten a foreign country.

They were met with contempt by the Iranian regime.

This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran Ali Akbar Velayati, senior counsel to Iran's supreme leader

Ali Akbar Velayati said, who is a senior counsel to Iran's most powerful man Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hit back.

'This is not the first time that an inexperienced person has threatened Iran,' he said.

'The American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless.'

Hassan Rouhani, Iran's president, warned Trump that it 'will cost the US a lot' for its novice president to ''earn what is happening in the world.'

Senator Tom Cotton, a leading foreign policy hawk, said Friday that additional sanctions on Iran 'are long overdue, and they're sending the right message' to Tehran: 'Cease and desist immediately.'

'The president said we were putting Iran on notice, and Im glad to see hes as good as his word,' the Republican lawmaker said. 'Irans ayatollahs will stop their provocations only if the U.S. shows strength and resolve.'

The report of a cruise missile test in the German newspaper said the Sumar cruise missile was built in Iran and traveled around 375 miles in its first known successful test.

The missile is believed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons and may have a range of 1,200 to 1,800 miles, the paper said, citing intelligence sources.

A senior leader to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure, said America's threats were useless and that Iran did not need permission to defend itself

Cruise missiles are harder to counter than ballistic missiles since they fly at lower altitudes and can evade enemy radar, confounding missile defense missiles and hitting targets deep inside an opponent's territory.

But the biggest advantage from Iran's point of view, a security expert told Die Welt, was that cruise missiles are not mentioned in any United Nations resolutions that ban work on ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

There has been no explicit response from Iran or from Washington on the cruise missile disclosure.

However, Trump's National Security Advisor had issued his own stern warning to Tehran's mullahs on Wednesday.

Gen. Michael Flynn told reporters during a White House press briefing that the administration 'condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East that puts American lives at risk.'

'As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice,' he said.

It wasn't clear what that notice means, or what consequences Iran can expect if it continues to test missiles that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Senior administration officials wouldn't rule out military action or sanctions during a separate briefing with reporters that came later.

Officials said 'a large number of options' are being considered and would not reveal what those are other than to say that they include financial and economic actions.

'We are considering a whole range of options. We are in a deliberative process,' one said.

Flynn said that 'Iran is now feeling emboldened,' and criticized the Obama administration for failing 'to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions, including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms.'

Administration officials, speaking on background to reporters, said Wednesday afternoon that the Republican president was taking a 'different perspective' from his predecessor's.

'Iranian behavior needs to be rethought by Tehran,' one said.

An official added that 'there should be no doubt that the United States is committed to holding Iran accountable for adhering to missile restrictions and accountable for behavior in the region that we consider to be destabilizing.'

Iran, Republicans say, has built up its nuclear capabilities despite signing on to a multilateral deal designed to produce the opposite outcome.

A defense official said this week that the Iranian missile test ended with a 'failed' re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

The suggestion that the missile was designed to return to earth supports the contention that it was a test of an attack vehicle, not a rocket meant to launch satellites into space.

The official had no other details, including the type of missile, but spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Flynn said pointedly that Iran's action is 'in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231.'

That international consensus demands that Iran not 'undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.'

The White House said Monday that it was studying information about the ballistic missile test.

FLYNN PUTS IRAN 'ON NOTICE' National Security Advisor Michael Flynn delivered a statement on Wednesday during the White House's daily press briefing: 'Recent Iranian actions, involving a provocative ballistic missile launch and an attack against a Saudi naval vessel conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants, underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran's destabilizing behavior across entire the Middle East. 'The recent ballistic missile launch is also in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls upon Iran 'not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.' 'These are just the latest of a series of incidents in the past six months in which Houthi forces that Iran has trained and armed have struck Emirati and Saudi vessels, and threatened United States and allied vessels transiting the Red Sea. In these and other similar activities, Iran continues to threaten U.S. friends and allies in the region. 'The Obama Administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions, including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms. The Trump Administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity, and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place  which places American lives at risk. 'President Trump has severely criticized the various agreements reached between Iran and the Obama Administration, as well as the United Nations, as being weak and ineffective. 'Instead of being thankful to the United States in these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened. 'As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice. Thank you.' Advertisement

The White House sent several officials to brief reporters a hours later.

'We can confirm that Iran conducted a launch of a medium-range missile, the Shahab, and that launch was on 29 January. The launch we view as being highly provocative,' an official said. 'This affects us all and is a destabilizing factor in the region.'

Iran is the subject of a United Nations Security Council resolution prohibiting tests of ballistic missiles designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.

As part of the 2015 nuclear deal, the U.N. ban was prolonged by eight years, although Iran has flaunted the restriction.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. was looking into whether the ballistic missile test violates the U.S. Security Council resolution.

'When actions are taken that violate or are inconsistent with the resolution, we will act to hold Iran accountable and urge other countries to do so as well,' Toner said.

Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, condemned Iran for the missile test.

'No longer will Iran be given a pass for its repeated ballistic missile violations, continued support of terrorism, human rights abuses and other hostile activities that threaten international peace and security,' Corker, a Republican from Tennessee, said in a written statement.

Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen, meanwhile, claimed a successful missile strike against a warship in the Red Sea belonging to the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting alongside Yemen's internationally recognized government.

Video footage shown on the rebels' al-Masirah television on Monday shows a warship being hit and a fire on board starting as a man not shown in the video shouts the rebels' trademark chant of 'Allahu akbar [God is greatest], death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory for Islam.'
Caroline Kennedy demurred as she was asked about her political ambitions in an interview on the Today show Friday morning.

The former first daughter has just returned from her stint as ambassador to Japan under President Obama and said that she hasn't figured out just what she's going to do for a job yet.

Many Democrats have been hoping that Kennedy will follow in her father and uncle's footsteps by running for Congress, and then the presidency.

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Caroline Kennedy demurred Friday morning when asked if she is eyeing a political run, in an interview on the Today show

'You know, I just got home, so it's great to be home,' Kennedy told Matt Lauer with a smile. 'I've been home for a week or so, so really I'm looking around for what i'll do next.'

When Lauer pressed her again, asking if she wasn't ruling a political run out, Kennedy responded with a laugh - saying 'Well, I think I'd rather be on morning TV'.

But Kennedy certainly looked like she was taking aim at President Trump in the interview, criticizing his 'America first' policy.

'I hope that the president will realize the benefits of working with our friends and allies around the region,' she said.

Kennedy's interview comes as Trump's newly-minted Defense Secretary General James Mattis arrived in the region for talks with the Korean and Japanese governments.

I think that to be taken for granted or to be insulted as an ally who has fought beside the United States, for example with Australia, or who contributes a huge amount to American security...is alarming. Caroline Kennedy

Kennedy said she was heartened by the move because she thinks it's important that the administration 'reassure our allies about our commitment'.

She seemed to be hinting at possible damage control for Trump's incendiary remarks about Japan on the campaign trail, alleging that the country wasn't pulling its weight to maintain military bases in the country. Kennedy said that just wasn't true, since Japan already pays 'more than 70 per cent of the cost' - more than any other country.

She also cautioned against lashing out at our closest allies, including Australia. This week, President Trump reportedly yelled at Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in a call over a deal his predecessor, President Obama, made, agreeing to take in refugees from the country.

'I think America derives great benefit from our network of alliances which have been built by people over the last 70 years. And I think that to be taken for granted or to be insulted as an ally who has fought beside the United States, for example with Australia, or who contributes a huge amount to American security, in this case Japan and Korea, is alarming,' she said.

Kennedy served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan under President Obama. She's pictured above shaking the hand of Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in June
Spain does want to strike an early Brexit deal on expats despite Germany's refusal to resolve the issue first, Theresa May was told by her counterpart today.

In talks on the sidelines of the EU summit in Malta, Spanish premier Mariano Rajoy told Mrs May he was in favour of a quick deal on 'reciprocal rights'.

Around 300,000 Britons live full time in Spain, the largest group among one million UK nationals living on the continent.

Some 2.8million EU citizens live in Britain and establishing the post-Brexit status of the expats has caused tensions.

Mrs May arrived at the first EU summit since MPs backed a law to start official Brexit negotiations with a vow Britain will still be a 'reliable partner' for Europe.

Theresa May, pictured arriving at EU talks in Malta today, has been assured by Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy Spain backs an early deal on reciprocal rights for expats after Brexit

Mrs May proposed doing an early deal on reciprocal rights for British and EU nationals but was rebuffed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. They are pictured together today at the EU meeting in Malta

The PM - pictured with outgoing French president Francois Hollande - is telling her EU counterparts that they must boost defence spending

The Prime Minister proposed striking a deal to protect the rights of citizens on both sides last year but was blocked by Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel said there could be no Brexit talks until official negotiations begin this spring.

The Government's official Brexit plan yesterday made clear there was still a deadlock on the issue despite 'many' EU leaders being in favour of doing so.

After her talks with Mr Rajoy today, Mrs May's spokesman said: 'They both agreed it was an area it would be good to get agreement early on in the negotiations.

'He said we need to get an agreement on reciprocal rights.

He added: 'We are firmly of the opinion that we want this issue that is resolved early. There is some broad agreement across member states but not all of them.

'They both agreed it would be an area it would be good to get an early agreement on.'

Setting out Government policy yesterday, the Brexit white paper said: 'The Government would have liked to resolve this issue ahead of the formal negotiations.

'And although many EU Member States favour such an agreement, this has not proven possible.

'The UK remains ready to give people the certainty they want and reach a reciprocal deal with our European partners at the earliest opportunity. It is the right and fair thing to do.'

Mrs May, pictured third from the right in the front row, met her fellow EU leaders for the first time Parliament endorsed new laws on starting official Brexit talks today

The Prime Minister, pictured with German chancellor Angela Merkel in Valetta today, has vowed to be a reliable partner

Mrs May also greeted Irish premier Enda Kenny, one of her closest allies on the EU council, at the Malta meeting today

Mrs May proposed doing a deal on reciprocal rights ahead of a major EU summit in December.

But she was rebuffed by Mrs Merkel and EU Council president Donald Tusk - who even blamed British voters for causing uncertainty.

The future status of EU nationals in Britain has caused tension in the early stages of the Brexit process, with senior Tory Nigel Evans branding the ambiguous situation 'torture' for those concerned.

In wider discussions at today's summit, Mrs May is to tell the gathering in Valletta that Britain will remain a 'reliable partner'.

She will continue to use one-to-one talks with fellow leaders to insist she wants a 'new, positive and constructive' relationship, according to Downing Street.

It will be her first chance to discuss Brexit face-to-face since she set out her plans and MPs began considering the Bill allowing her to trigger Article 50.

Mr Rajoy, pictured at the summit today, held talks on reciprocal rights with Mrs May ahead of the main talks in Malta

The EU leaders were taken on a tour of St John's Co-Cathedral while in Valetta today

Mrs May was joined by Polish PM Beata Szydlo (left) and Mrs Merkel during the summit's 'cultural moment'

She is underlining her belief in a 'strong' EU, arguing that it is in the interests of the UK and wider world for the bloc to succeed.

Legislation being fast-tracked through Parliament is aimed at giving Mrs May permission to begin the formal process of Brexit by the end of March.

UK UNVEILS 30m AID PACKAGE FOR MIGRANT CRISIS Britain is to offer assistance to countries in Asia and Latin America to take in refugees from Europe. The move is part of a 30 million package announced by Theresa May at the summit in Malta, bringing total UK humanitarian support in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis to more than 100 million. The new funding will go towards measures to protect vulnerable migrants from freezing conditions and the threat of people-trafficking and sexual violence, but also to encourage them to return home rather than continue perilous journeys to Europe. UK money will help countries like Greece, Egypt and the Balkan states provide for refugees who have reached their territory from trouble zones like Syria, and to integrate incomers into local communities. Advertisement

The PM told her counterparts that they must boost defence spending, following her talks with Mr Trump about NATO in Washington last week.

But the main focus of the leaders gathered in Valletta will be measures to tackle the ongoing migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.

Britain is to offer assistance to countries in Asia and Latin America to take in refugees from Europe.

The move is part of a 30 million package announced by the Prime Minister at the summit in Malta, bringing total UK humanitarian support in response to the Mediterranean migration crisis to more than 100 million.

The new funding will go towards measures to protect vulnerable migrants from freezing conditions and the threat of people-trafficking and sexual violence, but also to encourage them to return home rather than continue perilous journeys to Europe.

UK money will help countries like Greece, Egypt and the Balkan states provide for refugees who have reached their territory from trouble zones like Syria, and to integrate incomers into local communities.

And Britain is ready to offer support - through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Emerging Resettlement Countries Joint Support Mechanism (ERCM) - for countries in Asia and Latin America which need migrants but do not have the necessary infrastructure and systems in place to receive them.

Security is tight in Valletta, where the EU leaders will be focusing on the migrant crisis

The PM is expected to hold one-on-one talks with leaders as she lays the ground for the looming Brexit negotiations

Mrs Merkel and Mrs May are due to discuss the latest developments in the Brexit process

Mrs May will pledge her commitment to the 'long-term' challenge both before Brexit and afterwards.

Her aims involve trying to prevent migrants heading to Europe in the first place by supporting refugees close to the homes they have been forced to flee and deterring economic migrants from attempting the dangerous crossing.

Mrs May's approach also involves returning those who arrive in Europe with no right to remain.

The Prime Minister, who last week became the first foreign leader to meet Mr Trump since he entered the White House, updated European leaders on his views on Nato.

Mrs May said she had secured confirmation that Mr Trump was '100% behind Nato' as she appeared alongside the president in the White House.

Mr Trump's criticism of the alliance in the past has alarmed Europe, and some on the continent also have deep concerns about the controversial tycoon's policies.

But Mrs May will say Mr Trump's comments to her about Nato underline the importance of defence and security cooperation.

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is among those at the summit

She will also deliver the message that Nato members need to step up their spending on defence.

The UK and US are among a handful of Nato members to meet the pledge of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence.

Downing Street said the Prime Minister will use the gathering to tell her counterparts they need to deliver on their commitments so the 'burden is more fairly shared'.

The Prime Minister is only expected to attend the first part of the summit in Malta, with leaders of the other 27 EU nations continuing their talks on Friday afternoon without her as they consider Brexit and the future of the bloc.

Mr Muscat, an Anglophile who studied at Bristol University, said Mrs May was in an 'unenviable position right now' ahead of the looming negotiations.

'To my mind it is very clear that this relationship could be her Joker or Trump card but it could also be the downfall of everything. I go back to the issue of unpredictability,' he said.

'We are learning fast under this US administration all things are not equal, they mutate pretty fast.'

Meanwhile, Italy's deputy foreign minister Mario Giro has dismissed the Brexit White Paper as a 'wish list'.

Mr Giro also warned that the EU could not accept the UK becoming a tax haven on its doorstep - a threat that has been made by Mrs May if we do not get a good deal.

He told BBC Newsnight: 'Everything is negotiable and then also deliverable, everything.

'On one side the white paper is a wish list, with no precision on how to handle it. It's main things are 'what we want', what UK wants in this negotiation.

'But, on the other side, the tonality of the white paper is a good one ... The white paper says more or less what are the best results for both.'

Mr Giro said Britain's divorce from the EU would be painful for both sides.

'I think it is a daunting task for both because, of course, it's a divorce. In a divorce, divorce is always painful and it's a failure. We are all responsible, and we have to act quickly, and with fairness.

'I mean quickly also because I know that it is very complicated and we don't know exactly how to handle it. It is the first time. I say that we need to be quick because the financial markets let us no time.'

Mrs May and Mr Juncker walked together after they finished the first working session at the summit in Malta

The leaders sat around strange futuristic sculptures as they held their private discussions
President Donald Trump slammed journalists who reported on a contentious call he had last weekend with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, suggesting the reports were 'FAKE NEWS.'

'Thank you to the Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about,' Trump wrote in an early a.m. tweet. 'Very nice.'

Turnbull and Trump were discussing a refugee deal, which was inked during the Obama administration and which the new American president widely panned.

Leaked details about the call revealed that Trump told the Australian leader, 'I don't want these people,' suggesting it was the 'worst deal ever' and that he was 'going to get killed' politically for following through on a resettlement agreement.

He also accused the Australian Prime Minister of looking to ship off the 'next Boston bombers' to the United States.

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President Trump (right) thanks Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turner (left) for 'telling the truth' about a phone call last weekend, which news outlets reported was contentious

In a flurry of tweets this morning, President Trump again brought up his conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, labeling reports of an angry phone call 'fake news'

Donald Trump is denying slamming Malcolm Turnbull over the proposed asylum seeker deal during their first official telephone conversation (Pictured: Speaking to Malcolm Turnbull)

On Thursday afternoon the newly-elected president took to Twitter to slam the Obama administration for making the 'dumb deal' to take on 'thousands of illegal immigrants'

A fuming President Trump reportedly told Turnbull that the conversation was 'the worst call by far' he had taken that day, after 'boasting' about pleasant exchanges with Russian President Vladimir Putin and three other world leaders.

Early reports suggested that Trump hung up on Turnbull, but Turnbull told 2GB's Ben Fordham: 'As far as the call is concerned, Im very disappointed, the report the president hung up is not correct, the call ended courteously.'

It was their first official telephone conversation.

Yesterday, while Press Secretary Sean Spicer described the call as 'cordial,' he also talked about how much the new president despised this deal.

Trump, he said, was 'unbelievably disappointed' and 'extremely, extremely upset' about the deal, which would bring in 1,250 refugees detained on Nauru and Manus Island into the United States.

A week before, Trump had taken to Twitter to express his displeasure as well.

'Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!,' he wrote.

Trump brought up the deal again yesterday.



'I love Australia as a country, but we had a problem,' Trump said, explaining how President Obama had agreed to resettle '1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons.'

At the top of a meeting Thursday with Harley-Davidson executives at the White House, Trump described the conversation with Turnbull, saying he continually asked the question 'why?'

'They were going to bring them and take them into this country and I just said why,' Trump explained. 'Why are we doing this? What's the purpose?'

He did commit to follow through on the deal.

'So a previous administration does something. You have to respect that. But you can also say "Why are we doing this?"' Trump said. 'That's why we're in the jams that we're in.'

Sky News sources claim Trump was 'yelling' at Turnbull at points during the heated conversation, which took place on Saturday afternoon Washington time, Sunday morning Australian time.

A fuming President Trump reportedly told Turnbull that the conversation was 'the worst call by far' he had taken that day (Pictured: Speaking to Malcolm Turnbull)

Sources claimed President Trump was 'yelling' at Turnbull during the conversation

WHAT IS THE AUSTRALIA-US REFUGEE DEAL? The Obama administration and Turnbull government struck a deal to resettle some of the refugees being held offshore in Nauru and Manus Island in November last year The Australian government has a 'zero tolerance' policy towards illegal boat arrivals and only genuine refugees are sent to Nauru and Manus Island There are approximately 1,250 refugees being held in the Australian-funded offshore detention centres A large majority of those refugees come from Iran, Iraq and Somalia - all countries on US President Donald Trump's travel-ban President Trump agreed to honor the deal, on the condition the refugees would undergo 'extreme vetting' The US President reportedly described it as the 'worst deal ever' in a heated conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday Advertisement

Trump indicated he was skeptical about what America got out of honoring the deal.

After Turnbull apparently suggested they move on and talk about foreign affairs, including the conflict in Syria, President Trump ended the conversation.

'During call with Australian PM on refugees, Trump pulled phone away from ear and says he wants off call, which ends abruptly per source,' CNN reporter Jim Acosta tweeted.

Under the agreement reached with the Obama administration, Australian would take a number of South American refugees, currently in a processing center in Costa Rica, in return.

These refugees are predominantly Christian, according to reports.

In response to revelations of the hostile phone conversation, Turnbull remained tight-lipped on Thursday and said that he wasn't going to comment.

'It's better that these things - these conversations are conducted candidly, frankly, privately. If you see reports of them, I'm not going to add to them,' he said.

Sky News reporter Laura Jayes said Australian government sources who took part in discussions after the call said Turnbull viewed the president as a 'bully'.

'What I derived from that was Malcolm Turnbull used this phone call to push back,' Ms Jayes said.

'He wasn't just sitting there being berated by Donald Trump, he talked about how important it was for (Trump) to honor the deal.'

The explosive report was viewed as a huge embarrassment for Turnbull, who has insisted in recent days the asylum seeker deal is solid and relations with Washington are fine.

The United States and Australia have been close military and economic allies for generations, with Australian troops fighting alongside Americans in every military conflict Washington has been involved in since World War II.

Australia is one of just four other countries the US shares security intelligence with under the Five Eyes alliance.

The two countries have also shared a free trade agreement since 2005.

Close analysis of the President's body-language during the call shows there were signs of bad news to come, as he appears to throw a middle-finger at the camera

CNN reporter Jim Acosta tweeted: 'During call with Australian PM on refugees, Trump pulled phone away from ear and says he wants off call, which ends abruptly per source'

President Trump described the resettlement agreement as the 'worst deal ever' and said he was 'going to get killed' politically for following through on it (Pictured: Speaking to Malcolm Turnbull)

President Trump indicated he was skeptical about what America got out of honoring the deal (Pictured: Speaking to Malcolm Turnbull)

President Trump reportedly ended the conversation after Turnbull suggested they talk about foreign affairs, including the conflict in Syria (Pictured: Speaking to Malcolm Turnbull)

In response to revelations of the phone conversation, Mr Turnbull said on Thursday that he wasn't going to comment and would not be adding to any reports

The official statement about the phone call released by the White House told a different story.

'Both leaders emphasized the enduring strength and closeness of the US-Australia relationship that is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and globally,' it said.

Turnbull on Monday described the call as constructive, saying the pair acknowledged the already strong and deep relationship between the US and Australia and committed to making it stronger.

'That's my job. My job is to defend the national interest of Australia and defend the interests of Australians,' he told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday.

'You may wish to speculate about policies and politics in Washington, that's not my role. My job is today and everyday to stand up for Australia and that's what I do. '

He also thanked the president for 'committing' to honor the refugee agreement.

Government sources told CNN that Trump pulled the phone away from his ear and indicated he wanted the conversation to end

Turnbull said the phone call with President Trump ended courteously (Pictured: Speaking to Malcolm Turnbull)

President Trump reportedly ranted about the deal the Obama administration struck with Canberra to take 1250 refugees being held on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island (pictured) and Nauru

About 1.30pm (AEDT) on Thursday the US Embassy in Australia released a statement that the deal would go ahead.

'President Trump's decision to honor the refugee agreement has not changed and Spokesman Spicer's comments stand,' a spokeswoman said.

'This was just reconfirmed to the State Department from the White House and on to this Embassy at 13:15 Canberra time.'

But it came after a morning of mixed messages from various official sources.

On Wednesday it was reported that the White House had backtracked on the asylum seeker deal, saying that President Trump was still considering it.

White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said the deal had not been confirmed.

He said if it were to go ahead, it would only be because of the United States' 'longstanding relationship with Australia,' The ABC reported.

Turnbull insisted in recent days the asylum seeker deal is solid and relations with Washington were fine

Last week Trump placed a temporary ban on refugees being admitted to the US and other strict border measures targeting seven countries

'CRUEL, INHUMAN AND DEGRADING': UN HITS OUT OVER 'OPEN-AIR PRISON' Australia has been heavily criticized by the UN for its policy of sending migrants to offshore detention centers. In November UN investigator Francois Crepeau visited the island of Nauru, where asylum seekers who arrive by boat are sent, and described conditions as 'cruel, inhuman and degrading'. Mr Crepeau said Australia's policies 'have increasingly eroded the human rights of migrants in contravention of its international human rights and humanitarian obligations'. And he continued: 'Australia would vehemently protest if its citizens were treated like this by other counties and especially if Australian children were treated like this.' Amnesty International said in October that the immigration center was an 'open-air prison'. Advertisement

It comes just one day after Spicer told reporters Trump would honor the 'one-off' deal with former President Barack Obama in November to resettle refugees detained on Manus and Nauru.

'Part of the deal is they have to be vetted in the same manner that we are doing now.

'There will be extreme vetting applied to all of them,' he said.

Last week Trump placed a temporary ban on refugees being admitted to the US and other strict border measures targeting seven countries including Iran, Iraq and Syria.

On Tuesday, Trump confirmed his administration would continue to honor the 2016 refugee resettlement arrangement while acknowledging a common interest in preventing irregular and illegal migration.

'The president, in accordance with that deal to honor what had been agreed upon by the US government, and ensuring that vetting will take place in the same manner that we are doing it now, it will go forward,' Mr Spicer said.

The refugees are being held on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island and Nauru.

Speaking to reporters at the G'day USA gala in Hollywood, Ms Bishop said Mr Turnbull would travel to the US for a yet to be scheduled meeting with the president.

Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said Mr Turnbull was 'pleased with the outcome' of his discussion. Manus Island is pictured

This was despite the 'one-off' deal with former President Barack Obama in November to resettle refugees detained on Manus Island (pictured) and Nauru

TOUGH IMMIGRATION LAWS WHICH SEE 'BOAT PEOPLE' SENT TO OFFSHORE CAMPS Offshore detention in Australia has been in place since 2001, and in 2013 Australia's mainland was excluded from its migration zone for people who arrive by boat. Now migrants who arrive on Australian shores by sea are immediately sent to the island of Nauru or Papau New Guinea. They stay in detention facilities while their applications to be accepted into Australia are processed. Although 90 percent are ruled to have valid claims, they are not allowed to settle in the Australian mainland, instead being allowed to stay in Nauru or Papau New Guinea. The policy has come under heavy fire, with conditions in the camp branded 'inhuman' by a UN inspector in November. Supporters claim it deters migrants from arriving in dangerous vessels, and ensures refugees enter the country through proper channels. In 2015 Australia agreed to accept 12,000 refugees from Syria. The previous year violence had erupted at a protest at the detention center on Manus Island, and a 23-year-old Iranian man was killed. Turnbull has previously stated that Australians cannot be 'misty-eyed' about immigration, saying: 'We must have secure borders and we do and we will, and they will remain so, as long as I am the prime minister of this country.' Advertisement




A 12-year-old has been arrested for shooting 21-year-old gas station clerk Christa Shockley (pictured)

A 12-year-old boy has been arrested for shooting dead a 21-year-old female gas station clerk in Arkansas.

A newspaper carrier found Christa Shockley unresponsive around 2am on Thursday at the EZ Mart in Fouke, about 140 miles southwest of Little Rock and near the state's borders with Texas and Louisiana.

The clerk was pronounced dead a short time later.

Investigators later found a pistol and clothes believed to have been used and worn by the gunman in the shooting, which led them to identify the boy.

The suspect - who is not being identified because he is a minor - was arrested at Fouke School later that morning around 8am.

'Our feelings have run the gamut of grief, shock, dismay and disbelief,' Fouke Mayor Terry Purvis said. 'We're a small town, and we're all family and close-knit. It's like it happened to your own family,' he said.

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The deadly incident happened around 2am on Thursday at this EZ Mart gas station in Fouke, Arkansas

A few hours later, the pre-teen suspect was arrested at his school (above)

The boy is being held in a juvenile detention center on preliminary charges of capital murder and aggravated robbery. Sources close to the investigation told KSLA that the suspect has autism.

The boy cannot be charged as an adult under state law, Miller County Prosecuting Attorney Stephanie Black told the Texarkana Gazette.

That means that he does not face the possibility of the death penalty, as a capital murder charge denotes.

Generally speaking, a juvenile can be held until his or her 21st birthday. In some cases, such as capital murder, a judge can decide whether release is then appropriate or if the individual should serve time in an adult prison, she said.

Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson ordered the boy's detention, and his next hearing is set for Wednesday, Black said.
President Donald Trump urged Americans to 'GET SMART' on terror after hearing about a machete attack on police officers guarding the Louvre in Paris.

'A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris,' Trump wrote. 'Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.'

A terror probe was launched in Paris after a man was shot trying to attack four soldiers outside the famous art museum on Friday.

The suspect was waving a machete and yelling 'Allahu Akbar'  Arabic for 'God is the greatest.'

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President Donald Trump sent out a tweet responding to news out of Paris that a Machete-wielding man tried to attack officers guarding the Louvre

President Donald Trump warned the U.S. to 'GET SMART' upon hearing about the attack on the Louvre by a machete-wielding terrorist

Photos from the Louvre today show the suspect on the ground after being shot multiple times in the suspect

Police were spotted outside the Louvre after a machete-wielding man tried attacking guards who wouldn't let him inside the famous museum, which houses the Mona Lisa

After he was refused entry to the museum, he pulled out the weapon and was shot five times in the stomach outside the Louvre.

He's in critical condition. A soldier is believed to have suffered a head injury as well.

A second man was arrested nearby after 'acting suspiciously.'

France's Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve described the attack as 'terrorist in nature.'

An estimated 1,250 people were inside the museum, where the Mona Lisa resides, when the attack occurred.

Guests were instructed to crouch down until the threat was mitigated and then they were gradually let out of the Louvre's corridors.

On the campaign trail Trump promised to be tough on terror and he followed through on that promise by signing a restrictive travel ban, hitting seven Muslim-majority countries.

Police officers stand guard outside the Louvre's famous glass pyramid entryway after a terrorist drew a weapon and was shot

Even after widespread protests in airports and major city centers, the Trump administration doubled down on the policy, though tried labeling as more of a pause than a ban.

Travel restrictions were put in place for citizens of Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Libya for 90 days, while the country's refugee program has been stalled for 120 days.

Opponents pointed out that the smattering of recent terror attacks in the U.S. have been predominantly homegrown, while the majority of those involved in the 9/11 attacks 16 years ago were from Saudi Arabia, a country not on the list.

France has had a much more sizable terror problem.

On November 13 2015, 130 people were killed when terrorists shot and bombed their way through Paris, which included attacks on the Bataclan concert hall and the Stade de France, along with a number of restaurants.

Earlier that year, two brothers killed 11 people at the magazine offices of Charlie Hebdo, which ISIS claimed was retaliation for the publication's cartoons of Prophet Muhammad.

Then in 2016, 86 people were killed when a truck driven by an ISIS-inspired extremist drove through a crowd in Nice as they celebrated Bastille Day.
German anti-terror police have arrested a suspected jihadist amid fears he was plotting an attack, it has emerged.

The Romanian man, 21, was held at Frankfurt airport in western Germany, before officers seized written notes and electronic storage devices from his home.

Karlsruhe police said in a statement that the man was arrested amid fears was planning to travel to his homeland to prepare an attack.

The Romanian man, 21, was held at Frankfurt airport (pictured) in western Germany, before officers seized written notes and electronic storage devices from his home

However, there were no indications that he had chosen a concrete target, prosecutors said.

The suspect was detained early on Thursday as he was about to depart Germany, allegedly for a meeting abroad to plan the attack, and formally arrested today.

The man had communicated online about 'preparing an Islamist-motivated attack in Germany', police and prosecutors said in a joint statement.

Police said they had confiscated electronic and handwritten materials in a search of his apartment, located in the Rhein-Neckar region south of Frankfurt.

German anti-terror police have arrested a suspected jihadist amid fears he was plotting an attack, it has emerged (file picture)

Germany remains on high alert after a series of jihadist attacks on its soil in the last 12 months.

In December an ISIS fanatic killed 12 when he drove a lorry through crowds of revellers enjoying a Christmas market in Berlin.

Months earlier, in July, a teenage Afghan refugee attacked passengers on a train in Wuerzburg with an axe and knife, wounding five before being shot dead.




The sudden death of Huw Jones, 51, is being investigated by police

A head teacher who starred in TV's Come Dine With Me has been found dead in a graveyard near his village school.

Huw Jones, 51, was discovered in the church grounds just months after his school was rated as 'excellent' by inspectors.

Mr Jones featured in a Shrove Tuesday special of the Channel 4 series where he made pancakes.

Parents of children at his primary school in Penarth, near Cardiff, were today shocked at his death - and all pupils were offered counselling to cope with their grief.

Pamela Hay, director of learning and skills in the Vale of Glamorgan, sent an email to parents to tell of her 'deep sadness.'

She said: 'The school will remain open today and staff will be on site. If you wish to take your child out of school today you will be able to do so at any time.

'A counselling service will be made available to all pupils and staff within the school.'

The 406-pupil Albert Primary School in Penarth, near Cardiff, was rated excellent by inspectors last year.

The body was found at St Lawrence Church in Lavernock, near Penarth.

Mr Jones appeared on Come Dine With Me, pictured, in 2011 and make pancakes on the show

His body was discovered in the grounds of St Lawrence Church in Lavernock, pictured

One parent said: 'This is a terrible tragedy. He was such a good sport and even went on Come Dine with Me.

'He was one of those heads you could easily talk to.

'Mr Jones has been at this school for about 12 years and is very popular. He has been under a lot of pressure like a lot of heads these days.

The head teacher pictured here appeaing on TV's Come Dine With Me was found dead in a graveyard near his village school

The Shrove Tuesday episode of the Channel 4 show has been repeated on TV many times

'We feel so sorry for his family.'

Mr Jones filmed the Channel 4 series in 2011 but it has been repeated many times - showing him tossing pancakes for fun.

A spokesman for South Wales Police said: 'We are investigating the sudden death of a 51-year-old man.

'The man's next of kin has been informed and a file of evidence is being prepared for HM Coroner.'
A 70-year-old grandfather was snared by a vigilante paedophile hunter after he arrived at a McDonald's with condoms and viagra to meet a 14-year-old girl.

James Ryan was exchanging messages on Facebook with a girl he believed was called Amy.

But the profile was fake, and had been set up by Joseph Catton, a driver in the armed forces, who wanted to trap paedophiles.

Ryan was jailed for eight months by a judge at Oxford Crown Court after admitting to trying to meet a girl under 16 following grooming.

Ryan, 70, tried to meet up with the girl he had been speaking with online at a McDonald's in Oxford, and drove from his home in Southampton to see her. File image

The court heard Ryan spoke to 'Amy' the day after Catton set up the profile on October 31 last year.

Prosecutor Alan Blake told the judge that the conversation quickly turned sexual in nature.

Pensioner Ryan asked 'Amy' if she was a virgin. Another explicit message said: 'I'd like to do everything with you but it's your decision how far you go. If you want to kiss and cuddle I'll be happy, if you want to f***, even better.'

Further messages asked Amy about the pair performing sex acts on each other.

He warned 'Amy' that moderators would be watching underage people on Facebook and suggested they talk on messaging app Kik. He also suggested she changed his name to one of her school friends in her phone so her mother would not find out about their conversations.

Ryan put his head in his hands in the dock, where he sat dressed in a suit and tie, as the messages he sent were read to the court.

The court heard that Ryan arranged a meeting with 'Amy' at a McDonald's in Oxfordshire on November 3 where he drove from his home in Southampton.

Mr Blake said: 'The meeting was set to take place at a McDonalds and following that meeting the expectation was they would return to her home for whatever would take place.'

Sentencing him, a judge at Oxford Crown Court, above, said Ryan had been devious and his actions were the result of significant health problems

When Ryan arrived at the fast food restaurant Mr Catton knocked on his car window and asked him what he was doing. Ryan said he was meeting a friend called Amy who he thought was 18. Mr Catton told him she was 14 and contacted the police.

Mr Blake said: 'Viagra tablets and condoms were in the car, he said they were from a couple of years ago.

'The Viagra was prescribed in June 2011 had an expiry date February 2016. The condoms were unopened in a sealed packet of three with expiry date March 2019.'

Matthew Scott, defending, said the condoms and Viagra had been left in Ryan's car for a long time and he did not intend to use them.

'He has erectile dysfunction, he hasn't been able to get an erection for many years,' he said.

'Your Honour has heard that the Viagra pills were in his car having been prescribed many years ago. He says he had simply thrown them in the glove compartment of his car many years earlier and they had just sat there.

'His fantasies clearly ran away with themselves and it is a sad story of a man with no sex life sat in front of a computer realising a fantasy that was wholly inappropriate.

'This is a case of a sad man in the autumn of his years letting his fantasy run away with him and doing something for which he is now hideously embarrassed.'

He added that Ryan was a father figure to his grandson and spoke of references from his ex-wife, son, and daughter, about how he had supported his family.

Ryan, who worked as a lift engineer and crane engineer, was supported by his daughter, Tracy Ryan, in court. He had admitted attempting to meet a girl under 16 following grooming at an earlier hearing.

In her sentencing remarks, Judge Maria Lamb said: 'In late October last year a member of the public set up a profile of a 14-year old-girl.

This is a case of a sad man in the autumn of his years letting his fantasy run away with him and doing something for which he is now hideously embarrassed. Matthew Scott, defending James Ryan

'It was of course a complete fiction but you believed it to be reality and it brought a response from you pretty much the very next day. You began a correspondence with what you believed was this 14-year-old girl asking her in a very short space of time sexually explicit details.

'It was an exchange with someone you believed to be a child and someone you believed to be a sexually inexperienced child at that. Penetrative activity was clearly something within contemplation.

'You arranged to meet this girl while her mother was out. This was fairly devious on your part.

'You had a protracted sexually explicit exchange and groomed her. You drove from Hampshire to Oxfordshire to meet her.

'I have read references from your ex-wife Norma, your son James who looked at your predicament and opined its a consequence of your retirement and ill-health which has isolated you.

'Your daughter Tracy speaks of you much the same and speaks of you as a supportive father figure and grandfather to her son James.

'What has brought you to this court has been an unhealthy interest of sex with a child - that is why you are here.

'Precisely what would have happened if you had met with a 14-year-old Amy perhaps remains to be seen. This offence is the grooming and thereafter the attempt at meeting.

'You are a man with no previous convictions, have been a hard-working man and a family man. You are a man with significant health problems.'

Explaining his vigilante move, Mr Catton told the judge: 'I have a three-year-old daughter. I don't want her to grow up in a world where people are willing to have sex with and exploit underage females.'

Ryan was jailed for eight months, gave him a sexual harm prevention order and placed on the sex offender's register for 10 years.
A council in the North East of England has been widely mocked after it passed a motion saying Donald Trump was 'not welcome' in the town.

Liberal Democrats in Gateshead tabled the 'emergency' measure insisting the council would not take part in any state visit to Britain by the new US President.

The council became a laughing stock online after it passed the motion condemning the US President this week.

Gateshead Council has said it will not take part in any UK state visit by Donald Trump

The decision was widely mocked online, with Twitter users saying the President would be sad

Under a report of the decision, Dave Wilson joked: 'This is devastating for world peace.'

Local John Iley added: 'Why would he even want to visit Gateshead? The only excitement we have is the traffic lights changing on the High Street.'

Another Twitter user added: 'Bet Donald Trump's gutted that he isn't welcome in Gateshead. I think he should be sent there as a punishment for his behaviour personally.'

The motion, proposed by Lib Dem councillor Dr Jonathan Wallace states. 'This Council notes with concern the decision by the Government to invite US President Donald Trump on a state visit to the UK.'

The Lib Dem motion was passed during a meeting at Gateshead council this week

The motion continues: 'This Council notes the extreme, discriminatory actions announced by the US President immediately after the visit of the Prime Minister to Washington DC.

'This Council notes that many residents of Gateshead are now barred from visiting the USA by these divisive measures.'

It continues: 'This Council agrees to (1) take no formal part in any state visit to the UK by the US President and to withhold any Council resources from being used to support any such state visit. (2) write to the LGA [Local Government Association] to encourage all councils to take a similar stand.'

No formal plans have been made for the President's visit other than it being penciled in for 'later this year' and it involving Trump meeting the Queen.

He is not thought to have been planning to go to Gateshead however, meaning the motion passed by the council is unlikely to have an impact.
Ivanka Trump held her own summit with top business executives at a dinner party at her new Washington home just hours before her father was to sit down with titans of commerce, according to a report.

Trump's daughter, who has already been taking on some ceremonial roles by accompanying her father to see the return of a fallen Navy Seal, also is carving out a role as a liaison to some of the nation's most powerful business leaders.

Attending the dinner party at her home in D.C.'s tony Kalorama neighborhood were JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon;Ernst & Young CEO Mark Weinberger, Johnson & Johnson CEO Alex Gorsky.

Also attending, according to a Politico report on the dinner, were investment banker Adebayo Ogunlesi; Gary Cohn, the head of Trump's National Economic Council, and former Goldman Sachs partner Dina Powell, an advisor to Ivanka Trump and her powerhouse husband Jared Kushner.

Representatives for Ivanka Trump didn't confirm details of the dinner or its occurrence after multiple contacts from DailyMail.com.

Ivanka Trump reportedly hosted a dinner party at her Kalorama home to brainstorm ideas for paid maternity leave and matters of women in the workforce.

The purpose of the meeting, attendees told the publication, was for Trump to brainstorm ideas for paid maternity leave and matters of women in the workforce.

Trump herself relinquished her executive role in the Trump Organization in order to move to Washington to assist with her father's administration. Her own business suffered a setback Thursday when Nordstrom stores removed her clothing line from its stores. Her line has been the subject of a boycott movement following her father's comments caught on the infamous 'p****' tape.

Nordstrom denied partisanship in the decision to drop Trump's brand, insisting the move was made as a result of poor sales months after it was hit by a grassroots boycott started by a marketing specialist and a grandmother.

The Grab Your Wallet campaign was launched on October 11 by Shannon Coulter and Sue Atencio after they 'simultaneously realized they could no longer in good conscience shop at retailers that do business with the Trump family'.

The campaign compiled a list of businesses that sell Trump family goods. The extensive list also includes companies that advertise on Celebrity Apprentice or executives that have raised money for President Donald Trump.

She was also not listed on Nordstrom's master list of brands available and the page that previously featured items from her brand was empty. Above Ivanka is pictured in 2011 at a Nordstrom in California presenting the launch of her footwear collection

A somber-looking Ivanka Trump was pictured leaving her D.C. home as it was revealed on Thursday that Nordstrom Inc. will no longer sell her fashion line after a drop in sales likely due to women boycotting the range

Ivanka Trump walks out of her Kalorama Heights home February 3

News of the high-powered dinner party only further cements Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's role as the ultimate power couple. Trump has tasked Kushner, one of his closest advisors during the campaign and now a White House advisor, with overseeing such wide-ranging topics as Middle East peace efforts to relations with key allies. He is on hand in the oval office frequently when Trump makes statements.

Ivanka Trump has been expected to take up some of the ceremonial duties associated with the first lady while Melania Trump lives in New York while her and President Trump's son Barron attends school.

Ivanka Trump hosted a dinner party last month with other high-profile figures, including Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, Deloitte CEO Cathy Engelbert at the home of her friend Wendi Murdoch.

The popular department-store chain is said the cut is based on the 'brand's performance' and that they decided 'not to buy it for this season'

Trump and Kushner's rented $5.5 million home is only about two blocks from the $4.3 million residence President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama are renting.
The former prime minister of Norway was detained at Washington Dulles Airport on Tuesday after customs officials noticed his passport was stamped in Iran in 2014.

Kjell Magne Bondevik, 69, had flown in for the National Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday only to be held in a room for questioning when he arrived.

Bondevik served as prime minister in 1997-2000 and again in 2001-2005 and showed his diplomatic passport which proved he was the former leader of a US ally, but was detained.

Kjell Magne Bondevik, who was Norway's prime minister in 1997-2000, 2001-2005, flew into the US for the National Prayer Breakfast but was detained at the airport

Bondevik was held in a room for questioning at Dulles Airport after officials noticed he had visited Iran in 2014

'It should be enough when they found that I have a diplomatic passport, [that I'm a] former prime minister,' Bondevik told ABC 7.

'That should be enough for them to understand that I don't represent any problem or threat to this country and [to] let me go immediately, but they didn't.'

Bondevik was placed in a room with travelers from the Middle East and Africa for 40 minutes before he was questioned for about 20 minutes he said.

The former Norwegian leader, who is president of a human rights organization called The Oslo Center, explained to officials he had visited Iran three years ago for a humans rights conference.

The former prime minster was not held due to Trump's travel ban, but by Obama's Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act in 2015 which states citizens of 38 countries can't use the visa waiver program if they've traveled to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen on or after March 1, 2011

Bondevik was held in a room at Dulles Airport in Washington D.C. (pictured) with travelers from the Middle East and Africa who were also under scrutiny

While he said he understood 'the fear of letting terrorists' in, he told Norwegian local news outlet TV2: 'There should be no reason to fear a former prime minister who has been on official visits to the country several times before.

'It appears that when the name of a certain country shows up, all of the antennas go up. This will create totally unnecessary suspicion. I think it was quite provocative,' he said.

Bondevik contacted the Norwegian Embassy in Washington during the incident and a spokesperson said the embassy was 'happy that things were sorted out.'

However, the ex-prime minister said it wasn't the president's recent travel ban which blocks people from seven countries including Iran, but a law implemented by Obama in 2015.

Bondevik said he understood the fear of terrorism but was still shocked to have been detained since it was not his first time flying to the US

The Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015 calls for extra restrictions on some citizens from 38 countries, including Norway.

Citizens from these countries do not typically need a visa to fly into the US unless they have traveled to Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria or Yemen on or after March 1, 2011.

However, Bondevik was still shocked to have been detained since it was not his first time flying to the States.

'What will the reputation of the US be if this happens not only to me, but also to other international leaders?' he said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection were not able to comment on the incident.
A Long Island farm owner and businessman has been accused of repeatedly raping his niece subjecting her to three years of abuse.

Steven Mezynieski, who was arrested and charged with sexual assault last August, has entered a not guilty plea to the charges.

The teenager says in the civil lawsuit filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court that the 44-year-old first sexually assaulted her when she was 15 years old on vacation in Punta Gorda in Florida, according to the New York Daily News.

Mezynieski, who owns Driftwood Farms and the Steven Mezynieski, Inc., excavation firm, is also accused of using rope to restrain the teen in order to perform oral sex on her without consent.

Long Island farm owner and businessman, Steven Mezynieski (left and right), has been accused of repeatedly raping his underage niece for three years, according to a lawsuit

The teenager says in the civil lawsuit filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court that the 44-year-old (center) first sexually assaulted her when she was 15 years old

That particular incident allegedly took place at the Driftwood Farms property that he purchased for $2million with his wife, Gretchen.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday, alleges that the abuse took place between 2012 and 2014.

In the summer of 2014, he allegedly pushed the victim, then 18, onto a bed and forced her to have intercourse while she tried to fend him off, the court documents say.

'This man is a sick human being,' the girl's lawyer, Rosemarie Arnold, told the Daily News.

Mezynieski, who owns Driftwood Farms (pictured), is also accused of using rope to restrain the teen in order to perform oral sex on her without consent. That particular incident allegedly took place at the Driftwood Farms property that he bought for $2million with his wife

Following Hurricane Sandy Mezynieski's excavation company helped rebuild many of the dunes protecting multi-million dollar homes. He is seen right during the rebuilding

His arrest followed an investigation by the State Police Troop L Major Crimes Unit.

Mezynieski's lawyer, Edward Burke, told reporters at the time of the arrest that his client 'adamantly denies the charges leveled against him'.

Following Hurricane Sandy Mezynieski's excavation company helped rebuild many of the dunes protecting multi-million dollar homes along the oceanfront, according to Construction Equipment Guide.

If convicted, Mezynieski faces 25 years in prison.
Alistair Leiper faces jail after admitting a series of child sex offences which took place over Skype

A police officer is facing jail after he admitted making a 14-year-old girl perform a sex act during on Skype.

Alistair Leiper pleaded guilty to four child sex crimes after police raided his home in Streatham, south London.

Colleagues discovered three videos on his computer showing sex acts, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Leiper has been suspended from duty at the Met's Westminster borough since his arrest on August 27, 2015 and will now be thrown out of the force.

The 37-year-old had a series of online video chats with two teenagers, the court was told.

He admitted three charges of attempting to engage in sexual activity in the presence of a child and one count of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

A further count of making indecent photos of a child and one count of attempting to engage in a sexual activity in the presence of a child will lie on file.

Edmund Gritt, defending, said: 'There are three Skype chat logs that have been found between Mr Leiper and two 14-year-old girls dating back to about 10 months before the search in his flat.'

He continued: 'The most serious log, which relates to counts two and three is just under one-and-a-half hours.'

A judge at Southwark Crown Court delayed sentencing to assess whether Leiper is a danger

The court heard Leiper has signed up to the 'Stop It Now' programme which provides 'counselling to enable individuals to address this sort of behaviour to prevent it in the future'.

Judge Joanna Korner said: 'With something as serious as this I would need, any judge would need, to know whether he is dangerous.

'I'm going to order a pre-sentence report purely from the point of view of whether or not he is dangerous.

'There doesn't appear to be any other proposal than a sentence of imprisonment.'

Leiper was released on conditional bail and will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on 3 March.
A Tennessee man has been charged after two soldiers were killed and a teenager was injured following a domestic dispute near the Fort Campbell Army post on the Kentucky-Tennessee line.

Jeremy Demar, of Clarksville, Tennessee, has been charged with murder, murder-domestic violence, burglary and assault.

Demar, 35, stands accused of killing his estranged wife, 32-year-old Priscilla Ann East, and soldier Christopher Ryan Hoch, 28.

Jeremy Demar of Clarksville, Tennessee, was in a domestic dispute with his estranged wife and soldier Priscilla Ann East and soldier Christopher Ryan Hoch. He fatally shot them dead and faces murder charges

Demar was in a domestic dispute with his wife and found her at a home on Arkansas Avenue in Oak Grove, Kentucky.

Police say he forced his way in to the home around 7.30pm Thursday evening and fatally shot East and Hoch.

Hoch, 28, was an infantryman who joined the Army in 2013 and arrived at Fort Campbell later that year

The two deceased were soldiers at the Army post on the Kentucky-Tennessee line.

Demar fled with his two-year-old son after the shooting, who was found unharmed when police apprehended him in Clarksville and took him into custody.

Police say a 16-year-old was in the home at the time and received minor injuries in a confrontation with Demar, and was treated at Tennova Healthcare Hospital.

Demar was arrested at his Union Lane home around 9.40pm on Thursday a few hours after the incident occurred.

He is being held at the Montgomery County Jail, and records do not indicate whether he has an attorney.

East had obtained a protective order against Demar for herself and their then-21-month-old son in August, which was dismissed without a hearing by a judge in October, the Leaf-Chronicle reported.

She described his previous threats and acts of violence in her protective order petition.

She wrote: 'I generally feel that my life is in danger and that the violence is escalating.'

She added: 'He wants me to check in with him every hour at work, arguments are becoming more heated again in the past week. I feel like I am on constant guard.'

She further said that he had threatened to kill her in February 2016 and had head-butted her and choked her to unconsciousness in May 2016.

Fort Campbell said in a statement Friday night that East and Hoch were both specialists and that Hoch was posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant.

East, of Missouri City, Texas, was a health care specialist who joined the Army in 2011 and began serving at Fort Campbell in 2014.

Hoch, of Ferndale, Michigan, was an infantryman who joined the Army in 2013 and arrived at Fort Campbell later that year.
Anthony Mundine did not get the opportunity to protest against the Australian national anthem because organiser's arranged it to be played when both boxers were still in the dressing rooms.

Earlier in the week Mundine, 41, made it clear he would not be standing for the national anthem before the fight against Danny Green, labelling it 'racist' and 'disrespectful to my people.'

'I ain't coming out until it's played. I ain't coming out,' Mundine said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Anthnoy Mundine did not get the opportunity to protest against the Australian national anthem because organiser's arranged it to be played when both boxers were still in the dressing rooms (Mundine pictured at press conference)

Popstar Jessica Mauboy sung the anthem before either boxer was in the ring

But popstar Jessica Mauboy sang the anthem before either boxer was in the ring.

Prior to singing Advance Australia Fair she yelled out 'let's go Mundine.'

Mundine had previously said he was surprised that as an indigenous Australian, Mauboy was singing the anthem.

'That surprised me... but I can't talk for Jess,' Mundine told The Daily Telegraph.

'She might not have researched or know the actual facts around the anthem. If she wants to do that that's on her but I want to educate black and white people.'

The Indigenous boxer, and former rugby league star, said he was trying to educate people that Advance Australia Fair is a theme song for the white Australia policy, which he believes is unjust to indigenous Australians.

Danny Green and Anthony Mundine fight at the Adelaide Oval on Friday

On Monday in Adelaide, Mundine said he was a man 'that stands against wrong' and believes the national anthem is a 'big wrong in our country'

Mundine's opponent Green was not worried about whether he came out ahead of the national anthem or not (press conference pictured)

Organiser Steve Crawley previously said that 'it [the fight] was in Australia so the national anthem must be played', but that Mundine was free not to get in the ring until after it had been sang.

Mundine's opponent Green was not worried about whether he came out ahead of the national anthem or not.

'He can do what he likes. We're just going to go out there and smash each other,' Green, 43, said.

Danny Green won the heated battle against his long-time rival Anthony Mundine on points at the Adelaide Oval on Friday night

On Monday in Adelaide, Mundine said he was a man 'that stands against wrong' and believes the national anthem is a 'big wrong in our country'.

''Advance Australia Fair', if you speak to your historians and educated college professors, [it's] fair - as in white fair - not as in fair go,' he told SBS.

'That was the theme song for the white Australia policy, from 1901 to the early 1970s when Aboriginal people weren't even considered citizens.'

Danny Green won the heated battle against his long-time rival Anthony Mundine on points at the Adelaide Oval on Friday night.
A casino has been fined $25,000 for serving a visibly drunk gambler 27 drinks in a nine-hour period.

Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania was fined Wednesday by Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board after a man began drinking on October 7 around 1pm.

He was served his last drink around 10pm, shortly before he fell off his bar stool, according to LeHigh Valley Live.

The Mount Airy Casino in Mount Pocono, above, was fined for serving a man too much booze

The man drank 27 drinks in the Glass Bar (above) on the gaming floor while playing slot machines

During that time, he continued playing table-top slot machines.

The gaming board said he began showing signs of inebriation about 3pm after nine drinks. The bartenders then served him 18 more, said the gaming board.

The three bartenders who served him have been fired.

Pennsylvania law requires casinos to have a plan in place to prevent obviously inebriated patrons from gambling.

The $25,000 fine is in addition to $2,500 in investigation costs the casino must pay.

The inebriated man continued to play table top slot machines until he fell off his bar stool - it's unclear how much he lost or won

It's unclear how much money the drunk gambler won or lost during that time.

The casino it won't comment on the fine. The gambling board says the fine was levied as part of a consent agreement, meaning the casino isn't contesting the penalty.

This year, the gaming board has approved a total of $190,000 against five casinos for violations, including a $50,000 fine levied against Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem for underage gambling.

Gambling at Pennsylvania's 12 casinos has brought in $3.2billion in 2016.
The pensioner was left bleeding and 'screaming' in shock and pain

Four teenagers who fractured a pensioner's skull after throwing a brick at a taxi in a 'reckless' attack have avoided jail.

The boys had been throwing objects at passing cabs near the busy Bristol Road in Birmingham in May last year.

Sentencing the four at Birmingham Youth Court on Friday, a judge told them it had been 'incredibly fortunate' nobody had been killed in their 'reckless' enterprise.

District Judge Joanna Dickens said: 'If you were adults you would all be going to jail today for a lengthy period of time, such is the seriousness.'

In an incident on the night of May 25 2016, the youths targeted a hackney carriage carrying an elderly couple along Bellevue Avenue, Edgbaston.

Its driver said in a statement afterwards that he accelerated when he saw a group of youths appear from behind a tree at the roadside, after recalling other attacks on cabs in the same area.

The next moment he heard a 'loud bang' and the sound of 'smashing glass', said prosecutor Angela Hallan.

The missile had shattered a window, hitting the 77-year-old woman and showering her fellow passenger in shards of glass.

The pensioner was left bleeding and 'screaming' in shock and pain.

At an earlier youth court hearing, a 17-year-old admitted wounding and was convicted of conspiracy to commit damage to other cabs.

The moment of the attack was captured on dramatic CCTV footage by a camera inside the cab

Five other taxis had been hit that same night, causing at least 1,600 in damage and one of which was also carrying a passenger.

Two 16-year-olds and another youth, 15, were also convicted of wounding and conspiracy to damage taxis.

In a victim impact statement, the injured woman said she and her husband had enjoyed a night out to the Birmingham Hippodrome, seeing The Sound of Music, before getting a cab home.

She said: 'I remember a loud bang and glass smashing.

'When I saw the blood on my hands, I realised I'd been hit by something on my head.'

The next moment he heard a 'loud bang' and the sound of 'smashing glass'

The missile had shattered a window, hitting the 77-year-old woman and showering her fellow passenger in shards of glass

The taxi driver described hearing his passenger screaming after the attack and, deciding it would be quicker than waiting for an ambulance, he drove her to hospital.

Doctors diagnosed a skull fracture, with the court told she had been left both mentally and physically scarred.

The moment of the attack was captured on dramatic CCTV footage by a camera inside the cab.

The victim added: 'We shouldn't have to put up with this sort of violence - if not for the taxi driver I could potentially have been killed.'

Sentencing the four Birmingham teenagers, who cannot be named because of their ages, Judge Dickens said there had been 'serious consequences' not only for the victim but for the youths.

The court heard that three of the youngsters' families were now being evicted from their homes as a result of their involvement.

In an incident on the night of May 25 2016, the youths targeted a hackney carriage carrying an elderly couple along Bellevue Avenue, Edgbaston

The oldest youth told the judge he was 'sorry', while one of the 16-year-olds expressed his remorse saying he had had 'sleepless nights' about his actions.

The youngest attacker, aged 15, said 'I feel bad for the injured woman', while the remaining youth, also 16, also apologised.

The judge handed each youth a one-year youth rehabilitation order with curfews of between three and six months.

Each teenager was also ordered to pay 50 compensation to the injured woman.

Speaking after the hearing Inspector Vanessa Eyles, of West Midlands Police, said: 'This was a horrifying attack that injured an innocent person; it is only by pure chance that we did not have to deal with something far more serious.'

She also praised witnesses who helped identify the culprits, for 'having the bravery to stand up to these thugs'.
Berlinah Wallace is accused of hurling a corrosive substance over Mark Van Dongen, 29 (pictured)

A 47-year-old woman has been charged with murdering her civil engineer ex-boyfriend in a suspected acid attack.

Berlinah Wallace is accused of hurling a corrosive substance over Mark Van Dongen, 29.

Mark, a Dutch national who moved to England six years ago to study at the University of Bristol, is believed to have suffered more than 80 per cent burns to his body.

He died at a hospital in Belgium last month, 15 months after the alleged sulphuric acid attack in Redland, Bristol in September 2015.

Wallace, of Redland, was originally charged with throwing a corrosive fluid with intent to burn, maim, disfigure, disable or cause GBH.

The charge was increased to murder during the Bristol Crown Court hearing following news of the victims death on January 2 this year.

It comes after British police travelled to Belgium, where Marks father lives, to carry out further inquiries.

Wallace, dressed in jeans, a black jacket and with her hair in an afro, wept as the charge was read.

Mr Van Dongen died at a hospital in Belgium last month, 15 months after the alleged sulphuric acid attack in Redland, Bristol in September 2015

Defending, Richard Smith QC said: The defendant is extremely emotionally involved in these proceedings.

Wallace was remanded in custody until the next hearing, on March 27.

Her trial, which is expected to last three weeks, is scheduled for April.
Salah Koubar, 20, has been jailed for seven years

A Sudanese sex attacker who raped a tourist outside a railway station after he was granted asylum in the UK has been jailed for seven years.

Salah Koubar, 20, threw the South Korean woman over the railings at West Dulwich Station in south London, dragging her into the bushes.

The attack was only stopped after a passer-by found the woman running along the platform wearing only a t-shirt and knickers.

She had hoped to meet a friend on her last night in London before travelling home to South Korea.

The woman met Koubar at Freedom Bar in Soho, where he promised to take her to another venue called VIP in Westminster.

Koubar tricked her into taking a bus leaving central London, and took her phone away when she realised she was going in the wrong direction.

After promising they would catch another bus to the venue, they got off the train at West Dulwich Station where the attack began.

Passing sentence, the judge Mr Recorder Timothy Greene told Koubar: 'It was terrifying for her to be in a strange city not speaking the language.

'You repeatedly lied to her and told her she could trust you. At some point you decided that you were going to have sex with her.

'Initially your attitude did not seem to be controlling or sinister.

'But then your behaviour became chilling. You took her phone off her, and then you took her bag.

'It was clear from the witness box of the effects your crime had on the victim. You took away her sense of security. Her self-image has been battered.'

Koubar showed no emotion as he was led to the cells.

After the sentence DI Ian Trantum said: 'As the judge described it, the events were chilling. The young victim came back from South Korea for the case and she was unbelievably brave to do so.

'She's a remarkable young lady, as was a Good Samaritan who helped her. I pay tribute to him for the actions he took in the early hours that morning.'

Koubar threw the South Korean woman over the railings at West Dulwich Station (pictured)

Prosecutor Warwick Tatford described how a passenger catching an early train heard the woman's screams and saw her running along the platform.

Mr Tatford said: 'The victim grabbed the passenger's arm and tried to use him as a human shield against the defendant.

'He described the female as 'shaking like a leaf and with tears in her eyes'.

'He said she looked like she'd been dragged through a hedge backwards - little did he know that's pretty much what had happened.

'He said the defendant appeared calm - or 'a bit too calm really'.'

The victim was shaking like a leaf and with tears in her eyes

When he realised the witness was about to call the police Koubar jumped on a train seconds before the doors closed.

Koubar, who came to the UK via France and was granted asylum in this country, was arrested two days after the attack on 28 July.

In interview gave a prepared statement saying he had paid the woman 200 for sex, but no intimacy had taken place.

Koubar of Beckenham, Kent later claimed he then snatched her bag to try and get his money back.

He also said that the victim had ripped her clothes herself.

The victim said in an impact statement 'I trusted him. I had no romantic intention with him at all.

'He betrayed my trust.'I was really scared when he was doing what he was doing. I thought he might kill me because of his action and power.

'If a member of the public had not come to help me he could have done more.'

The pair got off the train at West Dulwich Station (pictured) where the attack began

The woman had to delay her return trip to Korea for two weeks following the attack and still lives in fear.

She added: 'I was wearing a short dress and thought I was looking attractive and pretty.

'After the attack I felt it was my fault as I was wearing a short dress. I do not feel pretty anymore. I now buy long skirts and dresses.'

The victim said she believes Korea is a safer country but still cannot bring herself to go out after dark.
A 76-year-old dog owner from Los Angeles has sustained critical injuries after he was attacked by two pit bulls which also killed the victims Pomeranian.

Valentin Herrera was walking his five-year-old Pomeranian named Dodger along Lincoln Park Avenue in the Lincoln Heights section of LA at around 5.20pm Thursday when authorities say a pair of male pit bulls lunged at the small pooch and tore it apart.

At the time of the attack, Dodger was walking off the leash about 75 feet ahead of its owner.

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Vicious attack: Valentin Herrera, 76, (seen after the attack being taken to hospital) suffered serious injuries and had his five-year-old Pomeranian, Dodger, killed in a brutal pit bull attack in Los Angeles

Herrera, seen left, who is diabetic and has dementia, has undergone surgery and is expected to survive. His dog Dodger is pictured right

These two male pit bulls were said to have ripped Dodger apart Thursday evening

When Herrera rushed to his dog's aid, the pit bulls knocked the man to the ground and proceeded to bite him, leaving the victim with severe injuries.

Neighbor Frank Carrasco said he witnessed the ferocious attack on Dodger and its owner.

I saw these two pit bulls pulling something apart, he tells KTLA. I thought it was a piece of couch.

According to Herreras grandson, Christian Flores, the 76-year-old man, who suffers from diabetes and dementia, and who had survived a heart attack in November, sustained wounds to his arm and head, reported CBS LA.

He has since undergone brain surgery and was expected to recover.

Dodger's corpse is seen lying on the ground in this screenshot, which has been obscured due to the graphic nature of the image

A neighbor took this photo of Herrera sprawled on the sidewalk after the dog attack, with blood visible on his injured left wrist

Witnesses claimed the owner of the pit bulls did nothing to help the critically injured victim, seen above being loaded into the back of an ambulance

Some witnesses have suggested that the pit bulls' owner was nearby but did not try to help Herrera. Eventually, he did come out of his house and was able to drag both animals away from the injured dog owner.

According to the witness Frank Carrasco, the owner of the pit bulls offered no apology to the victim and made no attempt to administer aid as the 76-year-old was sprawled on the ground, bleeding from his wounds.

Officers with the Los Angeles Animal Services Department were called to the scene and removed both pit bulls, described as males between ages of 2 and 3. The dogs will spend at least 10 days in quarantine pending a hearing to decide their fate.

Residents in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood said the two dogs have been known to menace students walking to and from a nearby high school.

Their owner has been interviewed by officials but has not been charged with any crime in connection to the mauling.
Sweden's deputy prime minister has seemingly mocked Donald Trump - by posting an image which appears to parody one of him.

Many in the Scandinavian country were quick to notice the similarity between the image posted by Isabella Lovin and one of President Trump signing an executive order.

But there is one key difference - while Trump's team are all men, and he is signing legislation relating to women's reproductive rights, Lovin is surrounded exclusively by females.

The picture posted by Swedish deputy prime minister Isabella Lovin shows her surrounded by women while she signs the legislation

It marks a strong contrast to images of Donald Trump signing an executive order in the Oval Office last Monday

The document she is pictured signing binds future governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

After it was posted on Lovin's Facebook page, many posted to congratulate her for the parody.

Lisa Ringstrom wrote: 'Wonderful combination of important decisions and sense of humor!'

But not everyone agreed, with Ronnie Johannesson branding it 'immature'.

When quizzed about the resemblance between the images, she told The Local: 'We are a feminist government, which shows in this photo. Ultimately it is up to the observer to interpret the photo.'

She said the legislation marks a 'new era' in climate politics.
ISIS militants could set-up a base in Europe should they be outed from the Middle East after joint counterterrorism efforts by the United States and Russia, experts claim.

The Balkans nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been earmarked as an 'ideal refuge of last resort' for the Sunni terror faction, said political activist Djevad Galijasevic.

Galijasevic said the country, which is bordered by holiday hot-spot Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia, could be fertile ground for the jihadists to spread their ideology.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is bordered by Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia and has produced a number of Islamic extremists

'Islamist infrastructure has been around in Bosnia for the last three decades.

'There are no obstacles preventing it from developing. Propaganda of (radical ideas) and financial assistance (to extremists) have continued unabated. One can buy any weapon in Bosnia. Some terrorists have their own banks,' he told Sputnik.

The former president of the Forum for the Study of International Terrorism also agrees that the Muslim majority country of 3.5 million people would be the preferred destination for ISIS should they be forced from their strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

Milan Pasanski highlighted the European periphery, primarily Kosovo, the Serbian region of Sandzak as a place they could settle in the coming years due to counterterrorism operations in the European Union.

The country is 51% Muslim. Here a Bosnian woman looks at herself in a mirror and smiles after being helped to put on a hijab, on World Hijab Day (FILE PHOTO)

ISIS to set up camp in Europe? Militants for the Sunni group pose for a photo on the Iraq-Syria border (FILE PHOTO)

Last week, Austrian anti-terrorist units arrested imam Nedzad Balkan, a man thought to be as the most radical Bosnian extremist who was also active in Germany and Switzerland.

Pasanski said his arrest in the EU country shows that ISIS terrorists would reside in Balkan nations.

'By detaining Nedzad Balkan Austrian authorities have indicated that if a second wave of refugees comes, they will not turn the blind eye on the fact that terrorists could be among them,' he said.

'It's common knowledge that Vienna has become a place where Islamic fundamentalists, with some coming from Bosnia, gather.'
A Syrian family have been reunited in America after more than two years depart, despite Donald Trump's immigration ban.

Fadi Kassar, 40, embraced his daughters Hnan, eight and Lian, five, while his wife Razan broke down in tears after landing at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Thursday night.

Razan and their two daughters were sent back to Jordan from an airport in Ukraine last week, after their visas were revoked following Trump's executive order.

A Syrian family have been reunited in America after more than two years depart, despite Donald Trump's immigration ban. Fadi Kassar, 40, embraced his daughters Hnan, eight and Lian, five, while his wife Razan (right) broke down in tears

Razan and their two daughters had been sent back to Jordan from an airport in Ukraine last week, after their visas were revoked following Trump's executive order

But they were later allowed to fly to the US as they are among the 872 refugees granted a waiver because they were 'in transit' before the ban was issued, the Hartford Courant reported.

Kassar, who was granted asylum in 2015 and now lives in Connecticut, told the paper: 'I'm very, very happy to see my family.'

He later told France 24: 'May God just let all of the separated families gather'.

Senator Chris Murphy, who helped reunite the Kassar family, said: 'Tonight, the Kassar family gets to breathe a huge sigh of relief.

But they were later allowed to fly to the US as they are among the 872 refugees granted a waiver because they were 'in transit' before the ban was issued

'My staff worked tirelessly with the family, their lawyer, and the delegation to make sure Fadi could see his wife and two little girls tonight.'

But he added: 'It's outrageous that Trumps dangerous executive order forced them through unconscionable hoops to get here.

'Tonights good news for the Kassar family is only a dim light of hopethere are hundreds of other families out there crying themselves to sleep because they wont be able to see their loved ones.

'I wont stop fighting until Trumps dangerous ban is repealed.'
Two men arrested for performing a sex act in Bed Bath & Beyond during public opening hours were infected with scabies.

The men, who cannot be named for legal reasons, used a bed display in store in Clifton, New Jersey on January 30 at 5pm.

Staff reported the men to police who arrested the pair and took them to the station where it emerged they were infected with the highly contagious skin condition.

The two men were reported having sex on a bed inside the Bed Bath & Beyond store, pictured

Clifton Police Department, pictured, had to be fumigated after coming into contact with the two men who were infected with the extremely contagious skin condition scabies

Scabies, pictured, is caused by microscopic parasites who burrow under the victim's skin

The arresting officers were sent to St Joseph's Medical Center for decontamination treatment, while the police station had to be fumigated by exterminators to prevent an outbreak.

Bed Bath & Beyond was also forced to dispose of the bed used by the men because of the threat posed by the microscopic parasites.

Both of the 28-year-old men were charged with lewdness, criminal mischief and possession of marijuana.

One of the men was charged with having an outstanding arrest warrant.

A police report into the incident said a store employee reported the incident.

The men cannot be named because their medical condition under the terms of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

Neither of the men was an employee of the store.

A spokeswoman for the company told USA Today: ' [The company] takes the safety of our customers and associates very seriously.

'Out of an abundance of caution, the incident-related merchandise and display was immediately pulled from the floor and discarded.'

The spokeswoman added the incident was 'extremely upsetting'.
An Emmy-winning producer was found guilty on Thursday of stabbing his tenant in a fit of rage after the victim mocked his claims that he would one day win five Oscars.

Andre Bauth, the 38-year-old producer and star of an indie thriller about a landlord who kills his tenants, faces up to 13 years in prison at his sentencing on March 22 in a California court.

The Colombian-born Bauth, whose real name is Andre Salaman Bautista, stabbed Clayton Haymes on September 8, 2015 in the lung, after Haymes and several others laughed at his bravado.

The 'El Landlord' producer and actor fled to Mexico after the attack and finally surrendered at the US embassy in Mexico City.

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Andre Bauth, 38, has been found guilty of stabbing his roommate Clayton Haymes

Bauth stabbed Haymes, pictured because his victim laughed at claims he would win 5 Oscars

The pair had a row after Bauth claimed he would one day win five Oscars.

'We all laughed a little bit,' Haymes told the New York Daily News.

'The next thing I know, I'm being chased by Andre with a knife he grabbed from the kitchen.

Haymes, 25, alleged Bauth then chased him into one of their roommate's rooms before he stabbed him in the chest and punctured his lung.

'Andre never showed this kind of aggression or anger to me before,' said Haymes. 'I pray that he wasn't trying to imitate the plot of El Landlord on me.'

Bauth won a Daytime Emmy award earlier this year as a producer for soap opera The Bay.
Almost $250,000 has been raised to help the family of a truck driver who died after an innocent toothache turned into a fatal lung infection.

Vadim Kondratyuk, a 26-year-old long-haul truck driver and married father-of-two young girls was travelling from New York home to California but brushed off the pain.

In the early hours of Monday morning, Kondratyuk was pronounced dead in a Utah hospital, where doctors found that his tooth infection had spread to his lungs.

His wife of four years, Nataliya, made the trip from their home in Antelope, California, to Utah in time to say goodbye.

Since his death, people from more than 47 states and 17 countries have donated funds to help the family.

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Heartbreaking loss: This family photo shows Vadim Kondratyuk, 26, his wife, Nataliya, and their two girls, ages 2 years and 11 months. The father-of-two died of an infection Monday

Clinging to life: The long-haul truck driver spent four days in a Utah hospital, where doctors tried and failed to stop the spread of an infection that originated in his tooth

The trouble began when Vadim began complaining of the toothache two weeks ago.

On his way to New York in his truck, Vadim's pain gradually grew worse, forcing him to seek dental help in Oklahoma.

The dentist Vadim visited cleaned his infected tooth and proscribed him antibiotics for the infection.

At first, the treatment seemed to work and he reached New York feeling much better, but as he set out on the return trip back to the west coast, the side of his face became swollen.

Girls' guardian angel: Nataliya is now left to raise the couple's two daughters, two-year-old Vanessa (left) and 11-month-old Maya (right)

Young widow: Nataliya, pictured with Vadim during happier times. She has received almost $250,000 in donations from well-wishers to help the family get through these difficult times

His brother-in-law, Miroslav Kondratyuk, rushed to Vadim's side hoping to bring him home faster for treatment, but his condition was deteriorated so rapidly the pair were forced to stop in Utah and check into a hospital.

For four days, doctors tried to stem the infection but to no avail: Vadim's lungs ultimately filled up with fluid, rendering him unable to breathe.

He died on Monday with his wife, Nataliya at his bedside.

I don't think you could find a better husband, the young widow tearfully said of Vadim. 'I know he's in heaven. He's a happy person right now. He's gonna be my angel for the rest of my life.

Happiest day: The young couple were married for four years and lived in Antelope, California

A GoFundMe page set up to help bring Vadims body home to California, to pay for his funeral expenses and to provide for his widow and their two children, has raised almost $250,000.

The money will become all the more important for Vadim's family who are now without a breadwinner.

The young widow, will be left to raise the couple's two daughters, two-year-old Vanessa and 11-month-old Maya.
Glasgow Shettleston MSP John Mason (pictured) has been condemned for the remarks by relatives and politicians alike

A nationalist MSP sparked outrage yesterday by suggesting that IRA members who murdered three Scottish soldiers could be seen as freedom fighters.

Glasgow Shettleston MSP John Mason was condemned by politicians and bereaved relatives for the remarks, made after he was asked to support a campaign to bring the killers to justice.

The Scottish soldiers - Fusiliers Dougald McCaughey, 23, Joseph McCaig, 18, and his brother John, 17 - were killed on a remote mountain road in Northern Ireland on March 10, 1971.

The shootings caused widespread disgust and the public mourning led to a political crisis that resulted in the resignation of the then Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark.

Mr Mason was asked on Twitter to support a campaign to bring the IRA murderers to justice, with the message: Will you support this campaign, or are these brave lads not Scottish enough in your opinion?

In his response, the SNP MSP said: Happy to support all campaigns to bring about justice. But not taking sides between Irish and British.

It was then pointed out that they were Scottish soldiers and Mr Mason was asked if he was refusing to take sides between Scottish soldiers and Irish murderers.

Mr Mason responded: You say Irish murderers. Others say Irish freedom fighters. I support Scottish soldiers if they do good but not if they do bad.

The MSP was also asked if he supported the IRA during the Troubles. His replied that he was not taking sides on Irish issues.

Last night Fusilier McCaugheys cousin David, who is crowd-funding to bring the IRA killers to justice, said: This man should be ashamed to call himself Scottish. It is absolutely disgraceful.

He should have just come round to the victims families and spat in their faces rather than spreading this bile from his computer.

Previous generations of Scots died for his right to freedom of speech which he has abused. I would like to know what Nicola Sturgeon thinks of Mr Masons offensive nonsense.

The Scottish off-duty troops were drinking in Belfast bars when three men pretended to befriend them and lured them to their deaths with the promise of meeting young women at a party.

Fusiliers (from left) Dougald McCaughey, 23, Joseph McCaig, 18, and his brother John, 17, were executed on a remote mountain road in Northern Ireland on March 10, 1971

They were shot in the back of the head at close-range at White Brae in Ligoniel.

No-one has faced trial for their murders, even though one IRA terrorist confessed his role in the plot and named two accomplices during a Scotland Yard-led investigation 46 years ago.

Relatives of the three victims are launching a legal battle to bring the living alleged murderers to justice. They believe authorities should be forced to re-open the investigation - and are angry that the Police Service of Northern Ireland has snubbed calls to re-examine the case or identify the two unnamed killers.

Meanwhile, the PSNI is allowing its taxpayer-funded Legacy Investigation Branch to look at 238 'fatal incidents' involving British troops in Ulster, which led to 302 deaths. Up to 1,000 retired soldiers face a witch-hunt - and could be investigated as potential murder or manslaughter suspects over their actions at the height of the IRA's terror campaign.

Ex-soldier Dennis Hutchings, 75, has been charged with attempted murder over the 1974 fatal shooting of an IRA suspect.

MP'S WARNING OVER INQUIRIES The inquiry into actions of British troops in Northern Ireland will put them at risk of being hounded with false allegations like those against many Iraq veterans, a senior MP warned. Julian Lewis said those who served in the Troubles would face the same ordeal as soldiers who fell victim to bogus accusations after the Iraq War. The chairman of the Commons defence committee said many claims investigated by the Iraq Historical Allegations Team (Ihat) were made by lawyers cashing in on legal aid and had been shown to be spurious. Any country which allows its legal aid system to be used as a weapon against its own service personnel in this way has surely taken leave of its senses, Dr Lewis said in a speech at Speakers House in London. Unless the Government urgently gets a grip, the same will happen to hundreds of veterans of the Troubles  while amnestied terrorists freely walk the streets of Ulster. He said recruitment could suffer and called for a statute of limitations to stop prosecution of soldiers for events before the Good Friday agreement. Advertisement

Commenting on Mr Masons tweets last night, Matthew Jury, of lawyers McCue & Partners, representing the families of the murdered Scots, said: These soldiers were off-duty, spending their afternoon in the pubs of Belfast, when they were lured away and shot in the back of the head in a cowardly act of terrorism.

For an elected politician to appear to suggest that Dougald, John and Joseph were somehow responsible for their own deaths  three innocents murdered in cold blood  is simply shocking.

Ulster Unionist MP Danny Kinahan said: The level of offensiveness of these comments is hard to quantify.

These were young men, unarmed and off duty. They were gunned down by terrorists in cold blood at the side of a road on the northern outskirts of Belfast.

The fact that the McCaig brothers were from Ayr and Dougald McCaughey was from Glasgow and all were serving in the Royal Highland Fusiliers, just makes it all the more incredible that a Scottish elected representative should make such offensive comments.

As leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon needs to come out immediately and state whether or not the SNP agrees with John Mason that those responsible for these brutal murders could in any way be described as freedom fighters.

Democratic Unionist Party MLA [Member of the Legislative Assembly] Nelson McCausland said: This is a grossly offensive remark for which Mr Mason has deliberately not taken the opportunity to apologise for.

Unfortunately we are all too used to republicanism that wallows in the glorification of terrorism.

It seems however that some elements of Scottish nationalism also harbour such sentiments.

Last year an SNP MSP gave one his aides an official warning over pro-IRA messages posted on the staff members social media account.

Allan Casey, an employee of MSP Ivan McKee, repeatedly wrote Up the Provos and praised former members of the terrorist organisation.

In 2015, a leading SNP councillor apologised after quoting lyrics glorifying the IRA while comparing the UK Government to terrorists.

Christopher McEleny, the Nationalist opposition leader in Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, made the inflammatory comments on Facebook after a Commons vote to back airstrikes in Syria.

A Corporal of the Royal Highland Fusiliers sheds a tear during the funeral of his three colleagues in 1971

He posted the lyric and you dare to call me a terrorist, while you look down your gun. from the song The Ballad of Joe Mc Donnell.

The families of the slain Scottish soldiers have launched a campaign to raise 100,000 so that lawyers can obtain evidence and intelligence files from authorities, file submissions and, if necessary, pay for a private prosecution.

Last night Mr Mason posted a further Tweet which read: I have been asked to clarify that my comments were general and not about any specific case. I certainly did not intend to cause any offence.

A spokesman for the SNP said: John Mason has clarified his remarks and regrets any offence caused.

To donate to the campaign, visit www.crowdjustice.org/case/three-scottish-soldiers

British soldiers were lured into a 'honey trap' by the IRA and executed

At first the shapes were indistinct to the children playing by the roadside on that spring night 46 years ago.

But, moving closer, their laughter turned to screams as they discovered the bodies of three young men, piled on top of each other.

Next to the bloodied corpses lying in the darkness by the side of the mountain road were two discarded beer glasses.

The three dead men were in fact British soldiers who had been reported as AWOL only three hours before that grisly discovery.

Dougald McCaughey, 23, from Glasgow, and brothers Joseph McCaig, 18, and John McCaig, 17, from Ayr, had been the victims of an IRA honey trap.

The three fusiliers, all unarmed and in civilian clothing, had been lured away from a Belfast city centre bar, Mooneys in Cornmarket, one of the safer areas of the city for soldiers at this stage in the Troubles.

They were privates serving with the 1st Battalion, The Royal Highland Fusiliers, stationed at Girdwood barracks in Belfast.

On March 10, 1971, the three had been granted an afternoon pass which allowed them to leave their base.

Mr McCaugheys younger brother was serving in the same unit but was on duty and unable to join them.

The unsuspecting soldiers had been befriended by a group of men who promised to take them to a party where they would meet young women.

But the Irishmen turned out to be hardened Republican terrorists. The fusiliers were shot dead on a remote mountain road at White Brae, near Ligoniel, overlooking Belfast.

The inquest in August 1971 established that all three were shot at very close range, probably in a line.

Brothers Joseph McCaig (left) and John McCaig (right) were lured to their deaths by the IRA

The jury was told that the three were probably shot while relieving themselves beside the road.

Their commanding officer described the soldiers as just boys, adding: They werent hard-bitten professionals.

Coroner James Elliott was forced to record an open verdict because of the rules in Northern Ireland at the time over deaths that had not been through the criminal courts.

But he told the jury the cold-blooded slaying had been one of the vilest crimes ever committed in living memory. He added: In England it would be murder.

On the day of their funerals in Scotland, an estimated 20,000 people attended rallies across Northern Ireland as a mark of sympathy. A crowd of more than 10,000 gathered at the cenotaph at Belfast City Hall.

Traffic came to a halt as people flooded the city centre in shock at the murders and workers in nearby factories and shipyards downed tools.

The deaths  the first time off-duty soldiers were killed during the Troubles  are remembered as one of the key points in Northern Irelands descent into full-scale violence.

The atrocity led the Army to raise the minimum age of serving on the frontline to 18.

A memorial to the three young British soldiers was unveiled at White Brae in 2009 but since then it has been attacked at least 19 times.

Mr McCaugheys cousin David, who was five at the time of the killings, said: The one thing I can remember of the funeral is that our house was full of people, just hundreds of people standing around in black.

It was one of those things that was always in the family, it was always there just below the surface, like a scar thats never healed.

The Provisional IRA used similar honey trap operations several times throughout the Troubles.

In September 1981, Private Sohan Singh Virdee of the Royal Pioneer Corps was shot dead by the IRA in the Stranmillis Park area of Belfast after he and his colleague Private John Lunt were lured there by two females who they met in a disco in Lisburn.

IRA spy Rosena Brown, an actress, allegedly used her charms to befriend a senior Maze prison officer who became infatuated by Brown and was said to have passed her information about a colleague who was later murdered by the IRA in a car bomb in October 1988.

Brown - dubbed the IRAs Mata Hari - was later jailed for conspiracy to murder in a case not connected to Hanna.

Scots soldiers who served in Northern Ireland accounted for 63 of an overall death toll of 500.
Kyle Robert Wolfe, 15, of Mooresburg, Tennessee, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering 79-year-old retired elementary teacher Margaret Jack Sliger on her property

A 15-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to killing a retired teacher at her East Tennessee home.

Hawkins County Judge John Dugger sentenced Kyle Robert Wolfe, of Mooresburg, to 25 years in prison without parole after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in 79-year-old Margaret Jack Sliger's death.

Wolfe was prosecuted as an adult.

Authorities say Wolfe was 14 when he shot and stabbed Sliger on May 18, 2015, outside her home on Isenberg Lane in Mooresburg.

He then attempted to hide Sliger's body in some bushes in her yard. It was found by her family members that night.

Sliger was shot twice in the head and her throat was slit.

Wolfe, who lived adjacent to Sliger, was suspected after investigators learned she had confronted him for riding his four-wheeler in her cow pasture just before the murder, the Kingsport Times-News reports.

He was linked to the murder by DNA evidence found on Sliger's clothing.

Sliger's body was found in her yard by her family members the night of the murder

Wolfe was arrested by the Hawkins County Sheriff's Office and charged with first-degree murder as a juvenile on November 3, 2015.

During Wednesday's 20-minute plea hearing, members of Sliger's family watched as Wolfe answered Judge Dugger's questions.

On March 31, Wolfe's 16th birthday, he will be transferred from the Hawkins County Jail to a Tennessee Department of Corrections.

Despite not being eligible for parole, Wolfe's sentence can be reduced for good behavior after serving a minimum of 20.5 years.

The Sliger family agreed to the second-degree murder sentence, but told Attorney General Dan Armstrong they wanted him to serve more time in prison.

Wolfe, who lived near Sliger, was suspected after investigators learned she had confronted him for riding his four-wheeler in her cow pasture just before the murder

Sliger raised chickens, cows and other animals on this family farm where she lived all her life

'They (family members) agreed with me that the risk was too great. Obviously they want as much time as possible. Thats why I told the court ... they would obviously want more time if it was possible', Armstrong said.

Defense attorney Mark Stapleton said Wolfe, who was living with his grandparents at the time of the murder, has a history of violence.

'His mother has remarried and moved on, and his father unfortunately is incarcerated in Cocke County on theft charges.

'He has not had a close relationship with his father. Hes had a male influence issue that has been lacking, although his grandfather stepped up to the plate and did everything he can for his grandson', Stapleton said.

Sliger, who never married and did not have children, was much beloved in Mooresburg. She was a retired teacher at Mooresburg Elementary School and church organist.
Detectives in Washington state investigating a quadruple homicide that claimed the lives of a married couple and their sons have found dozens of marijuana pants, $60,000 in cash and shell casings at the victims' property in Seabeck, according to court documents.

The bodies of 37-year-old Christale Careaga, her 16-year-old son Johnathon Higgins, and her husband's son's, Hunter Schaap, also 16, were found last Friday night at the family's home near Lake Tahuye, according to the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office.

Deputies went to the house after getting a 911 call reporting that there was violence inside,KIRO reported.

They weren't able to enter the home at first because it was ablaze, with the bodies found after the fire was over, according to the TV station.

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Four members of a blended family were killed in Washington state Friday. The victims were named (from left to right) as John Careaga, Johnathon Higgins, Christale Careaga, and Hunter Schaap

Evidence: Deputies have found 33 pot plants, $60,000 in cash and shell casings on the family's property in Seabeck, Washington (pictured)

Deputies went to the house last Friday night regarding a 911 call that there was violence inside. They weren't able to enter the home at first because it was ablaze, with the bodies found after the fire was over

On Saturday, deputies found human remains belonging to 43-year-old John Careaga inside his burned-out Ford F150 pickup truck, which had been abandoned about 15 miles away from his house.

Detectives said they do not believe these four murders were a random act, and that John Careaga was likely the prime target.

'I think [the killer or killers] had more interest in him only because he was isolated and not found at the residence like the others were,' Detective Lt. Earl Smith told the Kitsup Sun.

When officials went back to search the murdered family's property on Tenino Drive, they came upon $50,000 in a safe in the master bedroom and another $7,000 stashed in a bank bag hidden in a dresser, according to search warrants filed in the case.

In a garage on the property, detectives allegedly found 33 mature marijuana plants and grow lights.

A search of areas outside the house, including a back deck and the driveway, yielded multiple shell casings, most of them 9mm.

Police had been looking for 43-year-old John Careaga and his Ford truck. The truck was later found to have been burned-out, and contained his remains

Police found a single latex glove next to the torched vehicle, pictured

On Thursday, the Kitsap Sheriffs Office stated in a press release that detectives have confirmed that John Careaga was at the Camp Union Store at around 9pm on Friday, less than three hours before his family were found murdered.

The sheriff's office released a screenshot from a surveillance video showing the 43-year-old victim at the convenience store, where he had purchased a pack of cigarettes, KIRO7 reported.

Final photo: This screenshot from a convenience store surveilance camera shows John Careaga less than three hours before his family were fund dea

Investigators are asking people who live in the vicinity of the two locations where the victims' bodies were found to come forward if they are in possession of CCTV video from the day of the killings that might help them establish a more accurate timeline of events.

Meanwhile, Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound is offering a $4,000 reward for any information about the quadruple homicide.

The victims were part of a blended family, Sheriff's Detective Lt. Earl Smith told Kitsap Sun.

Christale Careaga was the mother of Johnathon Higgins, and was married to John Careaga, the newspaper reported.

Christale and John Careaga reportedly owned Christales Java Hut & Juanitos Taco Shop.

John Careaga and Hunter Schaap's mother were previously in a relationship, according to Kitsap Sun.

Pictured are victims Johnathon Higgins (left) and Hunter Schaap (right)

Christale Careaga (left) and John Careaga (right) were married and reportedly owned a taco shop together

The Kitsap County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday: 'Detectives are continuing to follow up on the many leads received, interviewing subjects and collecting evidence.

'We have asked for assistance from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Fireams (ATF) and the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab.

'In order to maintain the integrity of the case and not compromise the investigation, specific details can't be released.

'This vicious crime of murdering a family, including two teenagers is difficult to comprehend for everyone.

'Our thoughts go out to our entire community affected by this tragic loss.'

A GoFundMe page meant to help the Careaga family says: 'This is the family that owns Juanitos Taco Shop on Kitsap Way, as you all know this family would do ANYTHING for anyone, they would give you the clothes off their backs, give you a place to stay and always welcomed you with open arms.'
An Illinois realtor and Trump supporter was fired after a Twitter spat with comedian Patton Oswalt turned personal.

Tony Brust, who worked at Jim Maloof/Realtor's Pekin, provoked the exchange after Oswalt tweeted his support for Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired on Tuesday.

'Oh ****, the little troll has an opinion again. Stick to show business and shut up,' Brust tweeted from his now-deleted account.

Comedian Patton Oswalt, 48, (left) was involved in a Twitter dispute when Illinois real estate agent Tony Brust (right) tweeted him after Oswalt showed his support for Acting Attorney General Sally Yates

Oswalt and Brust had a back and forth through a series of tweets, (which are now deleted) but which eventually took an ugly turn when Brust mentioned Oswalt's wife

The two men had a back and forth through a series of tweets, but it eventually took a nasty turn when Brust took a jab at Oswalt's wife.

'Im a psychic and Im channeling his wifes opinions,' Brust tweeted at the comedian.

Oswalt's wife, true crime writer, Michelle McNamara, 46, mysteriously died in her sleep in October. The actor had recently opened up about his heartbreak of finding his wife dead.

The tweets have since been deleted, but fans were quick to jump to the comedian's defense.

Brust was fired from his job the same day, but it wasn't over the political dispute, Chicago Tribune reported.

The company owner Michael Maloof told the Tribune: 'we were made aware that this had gone on and we parted company.'

'We're kind of a conservative, God-loving, family-oriented company down here and the respect of our fellow man is deep into our culture,' Maloof said.

Oswalt's wife, true crime writer, Michelle McNamara, 46, died in her sleep in October, The actor had recently opened up about his heartbreak of finding his wife dead

The tweets of the exchange have since been deleted, but fans were quick to jump to the comedian's defense

The realtor was fired from Jim Maloof/Realtors Pekin office on the same day

Oswalt later tweeted citing the ill-humored comment: 'Would've happily ignored Tony Brust if he hadn't sent THIS Tweet. But he did and it caught me at a dark moment.'

The 46-year-old funnyman also took to Facebook to address the incident in a lengthy post in which he said: 'HA HA! My wife's dead. Zing! Again, that was his FIRST go-to -- this patriotic, God-fearing, father of two. Insult someone and, if they respond? Go after their dead spouse.'

He later added: 'But I'm afraid Peoria Realtor is going to be the first in a long line of Trumpers who will realize, on the other side of firings and divorces and black eyes, that Trump's Teflon Umbrella covers Trump and no one else.

'His cabinet and staff are going to learn that as well.'

Brust deleted his Twitter account after the dispute
A couple who dumped their dead baby in a bag before hurling it off a railway bridge have walked free from court.

Claire Cook, 24, gave birth to the child, which was either still-born or died shortly afterwards, in 2014.

She and her boyfriend, James Hamshaw, 23, put the tot's body in a plastic shopping bag and hid it on wasteland by a railway line.

Ben Gow, defending Cook, said: 'The police took the view that both these defendants were vulnerable people, in view of their backgrounds and their chaoticness'

The couple were yesterday sentenced to ten months in prison, suspended for two years, after they admitted concealing a birth at Warwick Crown Court.

Judge Richard Griffith-Jones said: 'I am satisfied that that child was still-born or died of natural causes very soon after his birth.

'You Cook either knew you were pregnant and were in denial or, I accept, may not have known until very late on. You have a disturbing capacity for detachment and denial.

'When the baby was born there was an element of fear and panic about the fact that you had been pregnant and given birth.

'You Hamshaw, I am sure, did not know until very late on, and had very little time to prepare for such a fundamental event.

'However, what then happened can only really be described as offensive to right-thinking people, and to have shown a disregard for the sanctity of a dead baby.

Cook and her boyfriend, James Hamshaw, 23, put the tot's body in a plastic shopping bag and hid it on wasteland by a railway line

Warwick Crown Court handed the couple a suspended prison sentence

'For that baby to be put in a bag and thrown off a bridge is just an appalling thought for anyone to contemplate.

'If you Hamshaw are more responsible for what actually happened by throwing the baby there, it is counterbalanced by what I accept is the internal turmoil that resulted from what you knew you had done and by the fact it was you, not being able to bear the secret any more, who told the police when you were in trouble for something else.'

Judge Richard Griffith-Jones said: 'I am satisfied that that child was still-born or died of natural causes very soon after his birth'

The court heard that Cook, of Bedworth, Warks., fell pregnant after being in a relationship with Hamshaw, of Sheffield.

She gave birth on August 14, 2014, but shortly afterwards the couple put the baby in a bag and dumped it on wasteland near a railway line in Queen Street, Bedworth.

Prosecutor Sharon Bahia said Cook hid the fact that she had given birth because her grandfather, who she lived with, had threatened to kick her out if she got pregnant.

She said: 'It came to light because James Hamshaw was arrested in the Yorkshire area for battery and damage, and he disclosed to the police that this had happened and that the body was in a bag near the railway track.

'The police recovered the body, concealed in the manner he had described.'

Miss Bahia said the pathologist has concluded that the baby was eight weeks premature, but it was not possible to say whether it was still-born or died during the birth.

Ben Gow, defending Cook, said: 'The police took the view that both these defendants were vulnerable people, in view of their backgrounds and their chaoticness.

'Her parents both died when she was young, and she was brought up by her grandparents, with her twin brother.

'It appears she had been told at some point by her grandfather that if she got pregnant, that home would go, the sort of thing that might be said by a parent or grandparent.

Claire Cook, 24, gave birth to the child, which was either still-born or died shortly afterwards, in 2014

'She is adamant she had no idea she was pregnant until a month before the baby was born.

'When it happened she was taken by surprise, and didn't know what to do about it. She had not have time to come to terms with it when the baby was born.

'Her grandparents and brother remained completely ignorant of it until she was arrested, when there was loud press reporting, such that she had to be put in a hostel.'

Mr Gow said Cook was working as a carer in a nursing home at the time of her arrest, and has lost that job as a consequence of the offence.

He added: 'She says there's not a day goes by that she doesn't think about this.

'She has had to live with it in silence for a long time before it came to light. She said just a few minutes ago 'What I've done is horrible, I'm a horrible person.'

The couple were also ordered to pay 200 court costs.
More than 12,000 tweets have called for President Donald Trump's assassination since he was inaugurated two weeks ago, according to Dataminr statistics.

Social media users like Zachary Benton, 24, of Ohio have already been charged with threatening the president, while Madonna came under fire for saying she wanted to 'blow up' the White House during the Women's March in Washington DC.

Former Secret Service special agent Tim Franklin told Mashable that the agency was likely to look for repeated threats, specific details of any possible attacks, and other trends before launching an investigation.

Donald Trump entered office with historically low 45per cent approval rating and a Dataminr search of the keywords 'assassinate Trump' revealed more than 12,000 results on Twitter

Former Secret Service special agent Tim Franklin said repeated threats, specific details of any possible attacks, and other trends will certainly raise red flags

Donald Trump became the first US president to enter office with less than a 50per cent approval rating, according to Gallup polls.

A Dataminr search of the keywords 'assassinate Trump', revealed more than 12,000 posts on Twitter since January 20, Mashable reported.

But the Secret Service is likely to let many of the social media users off the hook, and Franklin said: 'They're not going to to beat down the door of everybody who makes a negative Twitter comment.'

Instead, the law enforcement agency will look out for certain trends, like those who make repeated threats, or include specific details about how they plan to take down the president.

Benson, from Fairview Park, Ohio, tweeted on election day: 'Diplomacy. F***ing fools. I hate you all. I want to bomb every one of your voting booths and your general areas.'

Minutes later, he wrote: 'My life goal is to assassinate Trump. Don't care if I serve infinite sentences. That man deserves to decease existing.'

Zachary Benton, 24, of Ohio (left) has already been charged for his tweets on election day. Heather Lowrey of Kentucky (right) was investigated by the Secret Service

Special Agent Richard Ferretti suggested people 'think twice' about their social media activity (pictured, Lowrey's tweet that landed her in hot water)

Madonna came under fire for saying she wanted to 'blow up' the White House, and later defended her comments, saying she was speaking metaphorically

Despite apologies to the Secret Service agents who showed up to question him the next day, Benson was charged with threatening the president and faces up to five years in prison if convicted.

Heather Lowrey, a burlesque dancer from Louisville, Kentucky, was also investigated by the Secret Service.

She tweeted on January 17: 'If someone was cruel enough to assassinate MLK, maybe someone will be kind enough to assassinate Trump.'

Special Agent Richard Ferretti suggested people 'think twice' about their social media activity.

While Facebook and Twitter have policies to suspend accounts or take down violent or threatening, thousands of posts against Trump remain on both platforms.
Knight's suspended sentence means it's now 'inevitable' that he will lose his job

A judge said Gareth Knight had 'no excuse' for his violent attack on William Kelly

A policeman who slammed a handcuffed Bells Palsy sufferers head against a wall is facing the end of his career after he was given a suspended prison sentence.

Gareth Knight had an 'intense and terrifying look' in his eyes when he attacked barman William Kelly by trying to headbutt him within seconds of seeing him before slamming him repeatedly into a wall.

The plain-clothed officer refused to show his ID before aiming a headbutt at the frightened Irishman, handcuffing and ramming his face against the bricks in front of shocked onlookers.

Kelly, who thought he had fractured his skull, said he did not know if he was dealing with a 'undercover officer or a nutter'.

The victim was defenceless when he was punched in the arms and repeatedly forced to the floor with his hands behind his back.

The attack began seconds after Knight had detained Mr Kelly.

The 38-year-old was arresting Mr Kelly as part of an undercover drugs operation in Brixton, south west London, at around 1.20am on January 30.

Earlier this week a jury at Southwark Crown Court found Knight unanimously guilty of one count of assault occasions actual bodily harm.

They also found him guilty of common assault by a majority of 10-2.

Today at Southwark Crown Court he escaped jail after his three month sentence was suspended for a year.

Knight, wearing a dark grey suit remained emotionless as he learnt his fate as his wife, Kate wept in the public gallery.

Kelly said that Knight had a 'very intense and terrifying look in his eyes' as he stopped him in Brixton on January 30, 2016

Judge Antoni Muller said it was an unprovoked, 'sustained and repeated' assault in front of members of the public who were so appalled they tried to intervene.

He told Knight he should thank Mr Kelly for getting his head out the way as the headbutt 'could have been horrendous'.

Judge Muller said: 'You have brought shame on yourself, shame on your fellow officers and shame on the job.'

It is now 'inevitable' that Knight will lose his job.

Mr Kelly, whose condition causes weakness or paralysis of the muscles in the face, finished working in a bar on January 30, 2016, when he was stopped by Knight at 1:20am.

Mr Kelly said he was so surprised by Knight's demeanour that at first he thought he was being assaulted rather than arrested as members of the public looked on.

Gareth Knight's wife, Kate, wept in the public gallery as her husband was sentenced

'I was in Brixton at midnight on a Friday night, I didn't know if I was dealing with an undercover police officer or a nutter,' he said.

'It was a very intense and terrifying look in his eyes - the whole thing didn't add up to me.'

'I was in two minds about it. I did think am I just sleepwalking into being assaulted?'

Mr Kelly said he was anxious because he knew resisting arrest was a much more serious offence than possession of cannabis, but Knight at first refused to show him any ID.

The 'aggressive' Knight tried to headbutt Mr Kelly but he managed to pull his head out of the way just in time.

Mr Kelly said he calmed down when Knight was joined by a 'calm, professional' female colleague who 'seemed like a police officer even though she was in plain clothes'.

'PC Knight then showed me his ID. He held it close to my face and shouted 'there's my f****** ID'.'

Mr Kelly said he and Knight traded hostilities while he was being searched and he joked about the officer enjoying strip searching him.

'Ultimately I ended up with my hands cuffed behind my back facing the wall. I wasn't in any way trying to resist it struggle with him.

Knight claimed that Mr Kelly had provoked him by shouting 'you thug' at him

'At some point PC Knight struck my head against the wall - I believe he places his hand against the back of my head and struck it against the wall.

'The shock was very immediate and very severe. When my head hit the wall the pain was quite extreme.

After falling to the floor Mr Kelly said 'think you might have fractured my skull'.

Mr Kelly said he had a large bruised bump on his forehead for three weeks after the assault.

He was found to have a small bag of cannabis in his jeans.

Knight denied assault causing actual bodily harm claiming that he used lawful force to arrest Mr Kelly.

He tried to cover his tracks telling his colleagues at Brixton Police Station Mr Kelly had got his injuries by headbutting him.

He claimed Mr Kelly had provoked him by shouting at him.

Judge Muller said: 'You owe William Kelly an apology and your gratitude.

'If he had not seen your headbutt coming then I am absolutely sure you would now be convicted of even more serious charges and I am absolutely sure had you been so I would have sent you to prison today.

'That is why you should thank Mr Kelly, he could have been drunk, he could have been high as a kite, he could have been looking the other way.'

'With no provocation at all you threw that headbutt, started the process of punching his arms, dragging him to the floor, pulling him back up repeatedly, pushing his head towards that wall until you eventually injured him.'

'Mr Kelly was shouting, 'you thug' and members of the public were so concerned about what you were doing and you just shoved them out of the way.

'Nobody watching that scene would say how proud they were in their police force.

'You have brought shame on yourself, shame on your fellow officers and shame on the job.'

Judge Muller said there was 'no excuse' for the violence and told Knight the public should not fund his trial.

'The taxpayer should not bear the cost of the prosecution.'

'I am sorry to say Mr Knight but losing your job you brought on yourself despite extensive training.'

'If you had had the courage or honesty to plead guilty I could have been more sympathetic, but you had neither.'

He told Knight there was a significant abuse of power, 'you had the power and he did not'.

Knight, of Colliers Wood, southwest London, was found guilty after trial of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and common assault.

He has no previous convictions.

Knight was sentenced to three months for both offences to run concurrently suspended for a year.

He was also ordered to pay Mr Kelly 500 compensation and 500 towards the court costs and undertake 150 hours of unpaid work.
A dance teacher has been charged with raping one of her male students at her home.

Sarah Lindsay Lewis, 27, from Payson, Utah, is accused of having sex with a 17-year-old student.

The alleged victim told police that Lewis gave him vodka and that he filmed them kissing on the couch on his cellphone before they went into a bedroom.

Sarah Lindsay Lewis, 27, from Payson, Utah, has been charged with raping a male student

The student reportedly told the teacher he wanted to have sex with her about two weeks before they met at her house, according to charging documents.

Lewis, who teaches social studies and dance at Landmark High School in Spanish Fork, has been charged with rape, tampering with a witness and two counts of supplying alcohol to a minor.

The teacher is accused of telling the teenager to deny their alleged relationship.

She is also accused of buying three packs of beer for the alleged victim and another teenager two weeks later, KSL.com reported.

Lewis first met the student when he was in her class in 2015. She taught him again in her class in 2016.

Nebo School District confirmed that the teacher was put on leave after the allegations came to light.
The ex-boyfriend of a 28-year-old woman who was arrested for kidnapping her planned to chain her inside a New Mexico cave and 'brainwash' her in to becoming his wife.

The victim, Jane Priebe, was found alive on Monday evening after being held captive for 12 hours.

Priebe's ex-boyfriend Jack Morgan, 31, and a 19-year-old transgender woman Sophie Brown have been arrested.

Priebe had been dragged out of her Las Vegas apartment, forced into a minivan and her abductors drove her more than 650 miles to New Mexico.

Priebe's ex-boyfriend Jack Morgan, 31, and a 19-year-old transgender woman named Sophie Brown have been identified as Jane Priebe's kidnappers

A witness called police saying they saw a woman in her underwear bound by chains being dragged into a white van.

Police tracked her using a signal from one of the abductors phones, and said they could hear screams of 'help me' coming from inside the vehicle when they approached it, the Las Vegas Review-Tribune reported.

Jane Priebe (left), 28, was rescued by police in New Mexico more than 12 hours after she was abducted in Las Vegas

Morgan reportedly convinced Priebe to get coffee with him a week before the abduction, and Priebe told investigators that the two had dated during college and for some time afterwards, but had since, 'cut ties'.

Morgan hatched a plan with Brown for approximately 'a year and three months' during which he created fake social media profiles to 'track and stalk her'.

Morgan and Brown followed Priebe to her apartment complex at 4201 South Decatur Boulevard in Las Vegas.

When they couldn't determine which specific apartment was hers, Brown posed as a volunteer collecting donations for a church to identify Priebe's home.

Police in Las Vegas received a 911 call about a woman only wearing her underwear who appeared to have been bound and was seen being dragged to a white van outside this apartment building at 4201 South Decatur Boulevard

Brown, 19, originally Samuel Brown, told police that she knew Morgan's plan was 'wrong' but that she didn't want to 'disobey' him.

Morgan, who is trained in mixed-martial arts, allegedly choked Priebe six times, rendering her unconscious and used 'a full roll of duct tape' around her face.

Priebe was found slumped over, her wrists handcuffed and legs bound with chains in the white van, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Priebe was rescued by police in Espanola, New Mexico, more than 650 miles away from the site of her kidnapping (seen on the map)

The abductors were on their way to their final destination, the cave, when police intervened, rescuing her near the city of Espanola, New Mexico around 11.30pm on Monday.

Priebe was found injured but alive and is being treated for non-life threatening injuries.

Police said: 'As would be expected (Priebe) was extremely emotional at times of the interview and cried much,'

'She expressed extreme fear of (Morgan) and is terrified he will find her and kill her.'
More than 100,000 visas have been revoked since the implementation of President Donald Trump's travel ban, a Justice Department attorney said at a Virginia court hearing today.

A judge had asked how many people had been affected by the new president's executive order, according to CNN.

Erez Reuveni, from the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Civil Division of the Justice Department, answered with the number, adding that no returning legal permanent residents had been impacted.

Later, the State Department said the figure was closer to 60,000 visas, according to the Associates Press.

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Two government officials are giving two different numbers for how many people were impacted so far by Donald Trump's travel ban

A Justice Department lawyer told a Virginia judge that 100,000 visas have been revoked, while the State Department is saying the number is closer to 60,000

Meanwhile a federal judge in Boston expressed skepticism on Friday about a civil rights group's claim that President Donald Trump's order banning citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States represented religious discrimination.

The hearing was one of a series of legal challenges to the measure the new Republican president signed last week, which blocked people holding passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The order also temporarily stopped the entry of all refugees into the country and indefinitely halted the settlement of Syrian refugees.

A federal judges in Seattle, along with Virginia, also weighed lawsuits filed by different states and advocacy groups challenging the order.

In Virginia, the judge extended a temporary order that would prohibit the removal of lawful permanent residents until next Friday.

Attorneys at the Boston hearing also said that visas had been revoked but did not cite a specific figure.

Early on Sunday, a magistrate judge in Boston issued an injunction that for seven days blocked enforcement of the order, which the White House has contended is necessary for national security.

'Where does it say Muslim countries?' U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton on Friday asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing the plaintiffs in the Boston case.

'If your honor's question is, "Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?," my answer is that it doesn't,' Segal said. 'But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out.'

Gorton shot back, 'Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?'

Massachusetts anti-poverty group Oxfam and seven Iranian nationals have joined a lawsuit asking Gorton to extend the injunction forbidding the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders, and legal permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries.

The initial ban on permanent residents, or green card holders, was one of the most confusing elements in the executive order signed on Jan. 27. But, following an outcry and legal challenges, the Department of Homeland Security said on Sunday that green card holders would be allowed on planes to the United States and would be assessed upon arrival.

Judge Gorton on Friday asked U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joshua Press how the seven countries had been selected.

Press responded that the list had come from a law passed in 2015 and amended early last year requiring that citizens of the seven countries apply for visas to enter the United States, 'out of concern about the refugees that were coming, mainly from Syria at that time and terrorist events that were occurring in Europe.'

The order caused chaos at U.S. airports last weekend, with some travelers abroad turned back from flights into the United States and crowds of hundreds of people packing into arrival areas to protest the policies.

Trump has told a Christian broadcaster that Syrian Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status in the United States.

The challenges to his order focus on religion because the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from favoring one religion over another,

In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota were together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive.

Should the Seattle judge rule that Washington state and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration.
Adalberto Aponte, 53, was arrested, even though his car was crushed by a truck

A Florida father says he was left with no choice but to drive his truck over another man's car, after a road rage incident threatened to turn deadly.

Adalberto Aponte, 53, has been arrested after the scene unfolded around noon on Wednesday, when Zach Waring, 18, was driving his Ford F-150 truck in Ocala.

Waring had his girlfriend and 11-month-old baby in the car when a Toyota Camry behind him began driving erratically, almost causing several crashes, police say.

Waring said he pulled to a stop at a red light when the Camry driver, Aponte, pulled up next to him, News 13 reported.

Aponte jumped out of his car, approached Waring's open driver's side window and 'began to strike him in the face through the window multiple times', police said.

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Zach Waring said he was forced to drive over an enraged man's Camry, after the man threatened to get a gun from his car

Waring feared for the safety of his girlfriend and baby, who were in the truck at the time.

Waring and his girlfriend Taylor Rich, 20, are shown in a truck believed to be Waring's

Panicking as the punches continued, Waring's girlfriend shouted at Aponte that they had a gun in the truck, although they did not, police said.

Aponte, enraged, replied back to the young couple, saying 'I'll show you a real gun,' according to police.

As Aponte wheeled around to return to his car, Waring feared he was indeed going for a gun, and had to think quickly.

Unable to proceed through the red light to escape the encounter, Waring backed his truck up and then drove it up and onto the windshield and hood of the smaller Camry, blocking Aponte's access to the car, photos from the scene show.

Waring and Rich had their 11-month-old son in the truck when they say they were attacked

Witnesses confirmed Waring's story about the confrontation. Police did not say whether they recovered a gun in Aponte's vehicle.

Aponte was arrested and charged with burglary, battery, and criminal mischief.

He denied striking Waring.

He was also charged with driving with suspended license, after his was suspended for failing to pay child support in September 2016.

Ocala ia a city of 57,000 about 80 miles north of Orlando.
Peter Tobin (pictured) is currently serving three life sentences after murdering young women between 1991 and 2006

New tapes reveal that serial killer Peter Tobin told police he 'could not give a f***' about the families of his victims.

Tobin, 70, is currently in prison serving three life sentences after he murdered three young women between 1991 and 2006.

The Scot, from Paisley, Glasgow, raped and stabbed 23-year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk before hiding her body under the floor of a church 11 years ago.

He was also convicted of killing two teenagers who went missing in 1991 before their bodies were found in his former home in Margate, Kent.

In 2007, the remains of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton, from West Lothian, and Dinah McNicol, 18 and from Essex, were discovered in the seaside town.

And never-before-seen recordings now show how he replied to a police officer who asked him about the families of the victims he targeted, reports the Daily Record.

He was asked: 'You're not interested in helping families who may have missed ones that you might have information about?'

Tobin replied: 'I couldn't give a f***.'

He stabbed 23-year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk before hiding her body under the floor of a church 11 years ago

The tapes will be broadcast at 9pm this Sunday in a programmed entitled Crimes that Shook Britain on the Crime and Investigation channel.

He has always denied killing the woman and was later asked by the same officer whether he attacked others.

But he would either reply by saying 'no comment' or 'go and waste your money.

Tobin had already served 10 years for raping two 14-year-old girls before he was convicted of murder for the first time.

In 2007, the remains of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton (left) and , from West Lothian, and Dinah McNicol (right), from Essex, were discovered in Margate

In 2006, he beat student Miss Kluk with a table leg before he stabbed and rape her and ended up hiding her body.

He was eventually arrested at a hospital in London.

Tobin later worked under a fake name at St Patrick's Catholic church in Anderston, Glasgow.
A four-year-old Somali girl was finally reunited with her family after two senators intervened on her behalf to circumvent President Trump's travel ban.

Trump's executive order was signed just four days before Mushkaad Abdi was due to fly to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and her flight on January 31 was cancelled as a result.

After Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar intervened, Abdi, who was separated from her family as an infant, arrived in the US on Thursday to the delight of her mother, Samira Dahir, and her two older sisters.

Mushkaad Abdi, 4, (center) was finally reunited with her family (pictured, mother Mushkaad Abdi and two older sisters) after President Trump's travel ban was signed

Abdi was separated from her family because her mother became pregnant after she was granted asylum in the US. After her mother worked tirelessly to bring her to the country, her trip on January 31 was thwarted by Donald Trump's executive order

Her 32-year-old mother was granted refugee status before she became pregnant with her third daughter.

According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the relationship between a 'principal refugee' and a child must have existed before the refugee was admitted to the U.S. or granted asylum.

It notes specifically that a child must have been born or conceived before a refugee is allowed entry or granted asylum.

So when Dahir became pregnant after she was granted asylum, she faced a difficult decision.

She could either put her resettlement and that of her two older daughters on hold for several more years and re-start the process with Mushkaad, or leave the little girl behind and try to bring her to the U.S. later.

Dahir left her youngest daughter with a friend in Uganda and worked for years to bring her to Minnesota.

The situation became more urgent months ago when the friend was no longer able to care for the girl.

Mushkaad was scheduled to arrive on January 31, but her trip was canceled by Trump's executive order banning refugees.

The exeuctive order, signed just days before the young girl's trip, suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days, and barred travel from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days.

Democratic Senators Al Franken (left) and Amy Klobuchar (right) intervened and pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to clear the girl's travel

The exeuctive order suspended the admission of all refugees for 120 days, and barred travel from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen for 90 days

Democratic Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar intervened and pressed Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to clear the girl's travel.

'It's been heart-wrenching for Samira and her two older daughters, who have waited to be reunited with Mushkaad since she was an infant.

'I'm very pleased that after far too long of a separation, this Minnesota family is now together,' Franken said in a statement.

'This case proves that President Trump's Executive Order was poorly thought out, poorly executed, and above all wrong for Minnesota and the nation.'

Klobuchar added that the executive order caused chaos and its impact was felt by Minnesota families and businesses.

'I am so glad that Mushkaad is now safe at home in the United States with her mother, Samira, and her two sisters,' she said.
A Tennessee woman will face a homicide charge in the death of a Metro Nashville police officer who died after slipping into the frigid Cumberland River while trying to save her from a suicide attempt.

Police spokesman Don Aaron said on Friday that an arrest warrant has been issued for 40-year-old Juli Glisson, who will be charged with aggravated vehicular homicide once she is discharged from the hospital.

According to police, an investigation has found that Glisson, who has a history of DUI incidents, was legally drunk when she put her car into gear as officer Eric Mumaw, 44, and another officer were trying to get her out of it and away from the water's edge.

Charges filed: Juli Glisson, 40 (left), will be charged with aggravated vehicular homicide in the death of Metro Nashville Police Officer Eric Mumaw, 44 (right), during a river rescue

Emergency workers search for Metro Nashville Police Officer Eric Mumaw on the Cumberland River Thursday in Nashville

A fire department diver found Mumaw's body about 70 yards from the boat dock just after 8 am on Thursday. He and another officer responded to a call about Juli Glisson, who relatives said was contemplating suicide and apparently drove her car into the Cumberland River

Glisson and Mumaw slipped into the bitterly cold waters. Glisson was eventually found on the riverbank and taken to the hospital. Mumaw's body was pulled from the water hours later.

Officer Nick Diamond was hospitalized in stable condition after trying to save Mumaw

Police said Mumaw was an 18-year veteran of the department, 'who gave his life this morning in service to Nashville'.

'I know he died doing what he loves. He loved his midnight shift and he gave his life', Police Chief Steve Anderson told The Tennessean.

Mumaw had been recognized multiple times by the department, including receiving the department's Life Saving Award in 2011 and the department's Exemplary Service Award in 2003.

'Officer Mumaw dedicated his life to the safety and protection of us all, and today he gave his life to that calling', Nashville Mayor Megan Berry said in a statement.

Two officers were responding at 4.19am Thursday to a call about Juli Glisson, who relatives said was contemplating suicide and drove her car into the river.

Video courtesy of FOX 17 Nashville

Glisson and the officer, Nick Diamond, were taken to hospitals and are in stable condition

Metro Nashville Police personnel console one another after Mumaw's body was found

Aaron said at a press conference Thursday that they found the woman in a car on the boat ramp near the water's edge.

He said it appeared that she was about to get out of the car to go with officers when the vehicle went into gear and rolled down the ramp, which ended up abruptly under the water.

'The two officers as the car was rolling tried to make heroic efforts to save the woman who was in the vehicle', said Aaron, but both officers slipped into the river.

Officer Nick Diamond was able to get back to the bank. Aaron said Diamond tried to grab Mumaw but he slipped from his grasp.

Aaron said crews found Glisson from the car about an hour later on the riverbank and she was taken to TriStar Skyline Medical Center for treatment. She is in stable condition.

Mumaw, center, was recognized multiple times by the department, including receiving the department's Life Saving Award in 2011 and the department's Exemplary Service Award in 2003

Robert Brown salutes after hanging a sign along Neelys Bend Road in memory of Nashville Police Officer Eric Mumaw

Diamond is recovering and in stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, police said.

Emergency crews from several agencies scoured the Cumberland River for Mumaw until a Nashville fire department diver found Mumaws body about 70 yards from the boat dock just after 8am.

'Its a really sad day. Were all mourning. We hope that the other officer recovers quickly and the woman gets as much help as she needs to find peace as well', said Councilwoman Nancy VanReece.

River conditions were brutal, with a fast current on top of cold temperatures, said Metro Nashville Fire Department spokesman Brian Haas.

'It's extremely dangerous for anybody to be in that kind of a situation', Haas said.

Glisson has a lengthy criminal record stretching back to at least 2003, including convictions for DUIs, vandalism, assault and possession of prescription pills, reported NewsChannel5.

At the time of her alleged suicide attempt, she was on probation stemming from a DUI conviction in April 2016.
A man plunged to his death with his baby daughter after leaping from a hospital window in Spain with the child in his arms following a row with her mum.

Local media in the capital, Madrid, said the killer dad was heard shouting out to his wife: 'You're going to pay for this with what will most hurt you.'

Seconds later the 27-year-old jumped from a fourth-storey window with the little girl in his arms.

The incident happened this morning at La Paz Hospital in Madrid (pictured)

An investigation has been launched into the incident, which happened at La Paz Hospital in Madrid around 8.30am today.

Paramedics spent 45 minutes trying to revive the child and her father, who was identified as a Chilean called Vladimir V, but they were both pronounced dead at the scene.

The child's mother was treated for shock.

The couple were understood to be going through a divorce and their child, who had been born prematurely, was due to go home today after several days in hospital after treatment for a heart problem.

The man jumped out of the window as nurses went to investigate after hearing shouting coming from a room in the paediatric section.

Police and a local judge are now investigating the crime.

Local media said the little girl's father had been arrested previously for domestic violence.

La Paz Hospital was opened in July 1964 and is the largest medical facility in Madrid.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see samaritans.org for details.
A gang of robbers who blew up cash machines stealing more than 350,000 in a string of raids across London and the Home Counties have been jailed for a total of 33 years.

Jamie Duggan, 26, Anthony Roswell, 27, and Trevor Collins, 26, targeted hole-in-the-walls by pumping them with highly flammable oxyacetylene gas.

The trio then stood back and igniting the cash points from 15 metres away.

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Jamie Duggan, 26, (left) and Trevor Collins, 26, (right) were jailed with Anthony Roswell, 27, for blowing up cash machines across London and the South East, stealing more than 350,000

The gas is normally used in welding producing a high temperature flame of over 3000 degrees Celsius.

During one attack, debris was blasted 40 metres away and detectives said it was 'sheer luck' no one was killed during the gang's nine-month long crime spree.

The trio managed to escape with 356,330 in cash from eight successful raids at banks, post offices and shops.

They left behind a trail of destruction estimated to be more than 320,000 when they failed to get money out of a further 19 cash machines.

They targeted hole-in-the-walls across west and north London and the South East between June 2014 and April 2015.

And on a single night in October 2014, they targeted three premises in just over an hour.

During their crime spree, the robbers tried 27 times to blow up cash machines.

After blowing up the ATM, the gang would try to break into the premises to get to the back of the machine to remove any cash.

But 19 of their attempts failed as they managed to blow up the machines but were unable to get to the cash.

The gang pumped highly flammable oxyacetylene gas before setting it alight, producing a flame of over 3000 degrees Celsius. In one attempt, debris from the machine was blasted 40 metres away. Police said it was 'sheer luck' that no one was killed

The explosions, which caused damage of more than 320,000, were caught on CCTV cameras in the shops

The flammable gas used by the gang is usually used in welding. DI Scott Hartley of the Flying Squad said: 'They handled an extremely dangerous substance carelessly and with complete disregard for the safety of others'

In three cases, they were disturbed or confronted by members of the public and fled the scene leaving their tools behind.

Detective Inspector Scott Hartley of the Flying Squad said: 'It was sheer luck that nobody was killed due to the actions of this gang.

'They handled an extremely dangerous substance carelessly and with complete disregard for the safety of others.

A fire burns beside a Costa Coffee kiosk after the gang used the gas to set fire to the cash point. The gang used stolen cars, or ones with cloned plates, to escape

A member of the trio is caught on camera checking whether the explosion was a success as the hole-in-the-wall shoots out sparks

'The level of threat they posed to community safety has been fully reflected in today's verdicts.'

The gang used stolen cars, or ones with cloned plates, as their getaway vehicles.

They were eventually snared by detectives after Duggan left DNA behind on the inside of the safe door of an ATM in November 2014 after they managed to steal just 30.

Flying Squad officers were able to identify Duggan of Staines-Upon-Thames, and eventually tracked down his two accomplices.

The shops targeted were badly damaged inside as the explosion rocked the shelves and counter. The gang targeted 20 cash points in London

Duggan, Roswell of Ashford, and Collins of Hayes, all admitted conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life and conspiracy to burgle.

At Kingston Crown Court today, Duggan and Rodwell were jailed for 12 years each, while Collins was jailed for nine years.

DI Hartley added: 'Given that this series of crimes involved 27 offences, it is fortunate that no unsuspecting members of the public were injured.

'In one case, the front fascia of the ATM and other debris was blown 30-40m from the scene.

Debris flies across the shop floor as the gang explode the cash point outside. Nine of the cash machines targeted were outside of London

'If this debris had struck a member of the public or a passing car, the resulting injuries could easily have been fatal.

'In addition to the danger the activities of this gang posed to the community, there was extensive damage to a number of small businesses who housed the ATMs as well as significant inconvenience caused to communities who in many cases rely on the use of the ATM itself or the facilities and services provided by the host businesses.'

Steve Hurst, head of SaferCash, said: 'These sentences reflect the serious nature of the offences and sends a message out to others who may contemplate this type of crime.

During one night in October 2014, the men targeted three machines in just over an hour. The group were found out after Duggan left DNA behind on a safe door in November 2014

'This gang embarked on a dangerous nine month crime spree attacking ATM's across London and the South East.

'The damage caused has been substantial and the impact to the local community significant.

'Local stores have been closed for repairs and in some cases the ATM has been removed permanently.

'The industry has responded by implementing a variety of deterrents to prevent similar attacks in the future.'

The gang targeted 20 cash machines in London, three in Surrey and four in the Thames Valley.
An unknown man set off an explosion at a Pasadena Cheesecake Factory in California that sent customers ducking and running for cover.

Witnesses said the suspect opened the door of the crowded restaurant around 6pm on Thursday and lit and threw the homemade device before fleeing towards Fair Oaks Ave.

The explosive was said to have landed at on unoccupied table and which gave off heavy smoke, NBC Los Angeles reported.

The popular restaurant chain located on the corner of Fair Oaks Avenue and East Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena was evacuated after an unknown man threw an explosive device

'People were jumping over one another, fighting to get over bar stools. People were tripping, falling...stuff going everywhere. It was very chaotic,' said one witness, Garrett Gunkle, who returned to the restaurant to collect his belongings.

Unfinished plates of food and personal belongings were abandoned mid-meal.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department bomb squad arrived at the restaurant and found the 'pyrotechnic device' containing gunpowder.

Restaurant patrons abandoned their unfinished meals and fled after the device exploded and set off a heavy smoke

No customers were hurt in the incident and the motive is still unknown police said. The suspect was described by witnesses as a 'Hispanic or Middle Eastern' man with a thin build and a beard.

The Cheesecake Factory released a statement saying: 'This evening, an incendiary device exploded within our Pasadena restaurant.

'Thankfully, none of our guests or staff was injured. Law enforcement is actively investigating the incident, and we hope to reopen in Pasadena on Friday, as usual.'
Omarosa Manigault was reportedly taken to a local hospital in Maryland on Friday to treat an injured leg.

The 42-year-old, who was appointed as the Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of the Public Liaison, was injured last month, according to TMZ.

She was reportedly driven from the White House in a government vehicle to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

It's unclear if she has a broken bone, but apparently her leg was placed in a new walking boot.

Omarosa Manigault (left) was reportedly taken to a local hospital in Maryland. She's pictured with President Donald Trump during a National African American History Month 'listening session' on Thursday

She was seen walking down the stairs after attending church service at St John's Episcopal Church in Washington on January 20, wearing the orthopedic boot with a high heel on the other foot.

Manigault accompanied President Donald Trump on Thursday to a National African American History Month 'listening session'.

The session was attended by African-American leaders, including Ben Carson, Trump's nominee to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development - his sole black Cabinet pick.

Leaders from the NAACP and the National Urban League were not in attendance.

Neither was Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond. The Louisiana Democrat said the meeting was a political stunt.

Manigault, who gained national fame for being a combative contestant on the reality show The Apprentice, was appointed her role in the White House last month.

The 42-year-old (pictured on Jan 20), who was appointed as the Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of the Public Liaison, was injured last month

Her appointment came as little surprise to those who have followed the career of the one-time Apprentice villain, as she has been a long-time vocal supporter of Trump, and even helped in his transition team.

Manigault's position as one of Trump's most prominent African-American supporters during the campaign drew stark criticism.

She has said in the past that she stayed close to Trump over the years and served as his campaign's director of African-American outreach after her role on the Apprentice.
Gun owners with prior alcohol convictions are five times as likely to commit a violent or firearm-related crime than those without, a new study finds.

Researchers from the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis, found that an arrest for a crime involving alcohol is a greater predictor of future violent behavior than a history of violence.

The study examined the criminal records of 4,066 gun owners in California who legally purchased a handgun in 1977.

Of those subjects, 32.8 percent of buyers with prior alcohol convictions, primarily for driving under the influence, went on to commit a violent or firearm-related crime during the study's 14-year period.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found that alcohol abuse is a greater predictor of future violent behavior than prior violence

About 16 percent of those offenders were arrested for murder, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault, according to the study.

'Understanding risk factors for violence is obviously of interest in a population that by definition has universal access to firearms.

'In essence, we've learned that a history of alcohol-related crimes such as DUI has the same type of predictive significance among firearm owners that it does in the general population', said Garen Wintemute, the program's director.

Gun owners with no criminal record at the time of obtaining a weapon were less likely to commit a crime.

While mental health has been singled out as a predictor of gun violence, previous studies have linked alcohol consumption with criminality, Vice reports.

A 2013 analysis of 23 studies concluded that 48 percent of murderers had been drinking alcohol at the time of the offense and 37 percent were drunk.

Their study looked at the criminal records of 4,066 gun owners in California who legally purchased a handgun in 1977

The UC Davis study, however, is the first to associate alcohol abuse with future criminal activity among legal gun owners - a group that is also more likely than others to report excessive alcohol consumption.

Alcohol is also linked with an increased risk of suicide, homicide and other forms of gun violence.

Men are also as likely to die from alcohol-related gun violence as they are from an alcohol-related car crash.

Although federal law prohibits the purchase and possession of a gun by anyone who is an illegal addict of any controlled substances, it ignores alcohol abuse.

Only a handful of states have vague laws that name alcohol abuse as a prohibitor of gun ownership.

It is difficult to police alcohol abuse because there is no precise definition of abuse.

Of those subjects, 32.8 percent of buyers with prior alcohol convictions went on to commit a violent or firearm-related crime during the study's 14 year period

'Not only are firearm injuries serious, but at the policy level, there's widespread recognition that people who are intoxicated or alcohol abusers shouldn't be using firearms.

'But our laws haven't kept pace with our thinking, so we are with firearms and alcohol where we were with motor vehicles and alcohol, let's say, 60 years ago', Wintemute said.

Researchers concluded that a prior alcohol conviction proved to be a stronger risk factor of gun violence than age, gender, or history of prior violent behavior.

More surprisingly, researchers found there was no correlation between the number of past alcohol-related convictions and the risk of future arrest.

'It was so unexpected that we basically took the entire study down to bare metal and we rechecked our data, we re-looked at all our programming, we tried some alternative ways of doing the models, and we kept coming up with the same thing', Wintemute said.

Wintemute and his colleagues are analyzing new data, which follows gun owners from 2001 to 2013.
The stepmother of President Trump's Supreme Court pick toasted the news of his nomination with champagne and pizza, saying he will do a 'wonderful' job.

Margaret Gorsuch, 83, of Denver, Colorado, has known stepson Neil since he was a teenager, and was married to his lawyer father David until his death 15 years ago.

Gorsuch's parents divorced in 1982 and his mother Anne also went on to remarry rancher Robert Burford. He died in 1993, and Anne passed away of cancer aged just 62 in 2004.

Margaret told DailyMail.com that she remains close to the 49-year-old and regularly sees the judge and his 'lovely' British wife Marie Louise for lunch and at family gatherings.

The stepmother of President Trump's Supreme Court pick, Margaret Gorsuch, toasted the news of his nomination with champagne and pizza, saying he will do a 'wonderful' job

During Tuesday night's announcement at the White House, President Trump described Neil Gorsuch as 'extraordinary' and 'as good as it gets'. Pictured, Gorsuch in the foreground as his wife, Marie Louise, looks on

Family: Neil Gorsuch was a teenager when his parents divorced and his mother Ann remarried to Robert Burford. She was a controversial political figure as Ronald Reagan's EPA administrator.

Speaking about her stepson, she said: 'He's brilliant, he's disciplined, he's handsome, he's witty - what else do you need to know?

'His wife is the most beautiful British woman, she's lovely. The whole family are very pleased with him.'

Margaret revealed that she watched President Trump's live announcement of his Supreme Court choice on Tuesday evening at her Denver home with friends and said she toasted the news with champagne.

'I found out the same way that everybody else did,' she said. 'I had a few people over, we turned on the television and had champagne at the ready and some pizza. The perfect combo!

'And we were of course thrilled to death when they chose him.'

Asked what sort of Supreme Court justice Gorsuch is likely to be, the proud step-mom said: 'He will be wonderful.

'His record would indicate that he would be consistent with what he's been in the past.'

Gorsuch, whose appointment was welcomed by conservatives, has been described as the ideological heir to Antonin Scalia, who died last February at age 79 during a quail hunting trip in Marfa, Texas.

Heir to Scalia: Gorsuch went fishing with the justice whose sudden death led to his nomination by President Trump. His stepmother said Gorsuch loves the outdoors and especially fishing

Family affair: JJ Gorsuch, the younger brother of the nominee, was on the same fishing trip with Justice Scalia and posted this picture in tribute when the justice died

Scalia's death left the Supreme Court seen as having an even split of liberal and conservative justices , and conservatives such as Texas Senator Ted Cruz are hoping Gorsuch's nomination will tilt the balance in their favor.

During Tuesday night's announcement at the White House, President Trump described Gorsuch as 'extraordinary' and 'as good as it gets'.

He added: 'Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support. It is an extraordinary resume - as good as it gets.'

Despite the plaudits, President Trump is unlikely to find Gorsuch entirely amenable thanks to his track record of voting to rein in executive power.

However, his conservative credentials include consistently backing religious rights and being seen as a Constitutional originalist in the mold of Scalia.

His position on abortion in particular is not known from previous rulings, but he wrote a book on euthanasia and suicide which is likely to be closely studied for hints of how he is likely to lean.

Home: The Gorsuch family live on a private gated estate close to Boulder, Colorado. Gorsuch and his British-born wife Louise have two teenage daughters

Worship: The family are members of St John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, where both of Gorsuch and his wife Louise's daughters have been acolytes

Gorsuch now faces a fight to have his nomination confirmed by the Senate, with Democrats describing his appointment as 'stolen' and insisting that President Obama should have been allowed to choose Scalia's replacement.

But Margaret said she was pleased by the nomination regardless of the difficulties he will inevitably.

She reminisced about the 'wonderful' boy and the family holidays they once shared.

'He was just wonderful,' she told DailyMail.com. 'Of course he was living back in Washington [D.C] when he was a teenager but he would come back for Christmas and Easter.

'We'd go up to the cabin and we'd all be fishing or something like that. We had that kind of very fun times. He is very outdoorsy  he loved those British [fishing] streams when he was living there.

'We were over there [the UK] for his wedding, which was very nice.'

Gorsuch married his wife Louise in her home town of Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire.

She was brought on a farm just outside the town - which itself is known for its annual voting regatta - by her parents Bryan and Prudence Burletson.

Burletson, a retired property developer, declined to comment on his son-in-law's potential elevation.

The family are close despite the distance they live from each other, and Gorsuch thanked his parents-in-law for their support in the foreword to his book on suicide and euthanasia.

His wife was educated at St Mary's School, Wantage, a private boarding school run by Anglican nuns which closed in 2007.

Dreaming spires: Gorsuch, met his wife while he studied for a D.Phil - the equivalent of a PhD - at University College, Oxford. The college was founded in 1249 and has a claim to be the oldest constituent part of the university. Its alumni include President Clinton

Magnificent surroundings: Gorsuch's wife Louise Burletson was a student at Christ Church College, Oxford, when they first met. Its alumni include 13 British prime ministers, the Winkelvoss twins who played a part in founding Facebook, and the author of Alice in Wonderland

Its alumnae include Viscountess Linley, the wife of Viscount Linley, whose mother Princess Margaret was Queen Elizabeth's sister, and Lady Helen Taylor, who is a first cousin of the Queen.

Her parents told The Daily Telegraph that the family was 'thrilled but terrified' at the nomination.

They had celebrated the move with champagne and his mother-in-law said: 'Theres going to be blood on the carpet but thats politics I suppose. So Im thrilled but Im a bit apprehensive.'

The couple met as Gorsuch studied for a D.Phil - the equivalent of a PhD - at Oxford University, to which he had won a Marshall scholarship while at Harvard Law School, where he was a contemporary of President Obama.

He was a student at University College, Oxford, whose famous alumni include President Clinton, who was a Rhodes Scholar, and Chelsea Clinton, who was not a Rhodes Scholar but who gained a master's degree there.

While studying Gorsuch briefly met Louise Burletson when she was a postgraduate business studies student at Christ Church College, at a party.

However she moved to work in London and Gorsuch got her number from a friend, then called her and asked her for a date. The couple married a year later and now have two teenage daughters.

The family are Episcopalian and worship at St John's in Boulder, near their home on a private gated estate. THeir daughters have been acolytes at the church.

If confirmed, Gorsuch would become the only Protestant on the bench.

The rest of the justices are either Catholic or Jewish and John Paul Stevens was the last Protestant on the bench.

The court will, however, remain majority Catholic because five of the existing eight justices are Catholic.
The author of American Psycho says he's tired of all the protesting following Trump's inauguration.

Speaking at the launch of his new art exhibit in London this week, Bret Easton Ellis said he's no fan of the new president, but doesn't see what kind of change protesting will bring.

'I didn't vote Trump, I'm just saying the hysteria is bothering me a lot more than the reality of what he's doing,' Ellis told the Irish Examiner.

Author Bret Easton Ellis (left, in April 2016) says that he's tired of all of the protesting in the wake of Trump's (right, on Friday) election

The American Psycho author put up a signed American Psycho poster for auction, signed 'Make America Great Again!' As of Friday afternoon, the highest bid was well over $1,000

'I dont really know what the path to power is with protest, its done, this is where we are. If you wanna protest, protest the DNC, protest Hillary, protest whatever. But what youre protesting here is an elected president,' he said, adding that he thinks the demonstrations are only 'aiding this divisiveness'.

'It happened. He was elected. He is our president. Hes moving very quickly. Its bothering a lot of people. He is doing what he said he would do. He is elected.

'I do think there has been an overreaction to whats going on. But thats just endemic in the culture,' he said.

Ellis is the author of several critically-acclaimed novels including American Psycho (pictured) and The Rules of Attraction, both of which were made into movies

Ellis said he was mostly annoyed with all of the celebrities that have been continuing to speak out against Trump, like Meryl Streep.

Streep used her speech at the Golden Globes to rail against Trump, which Ellis says is exactly 'hashtag why Trump won'.

'When celebrities become these kind of strident, political advisers, wagging their finger, really people dont buy it.

'It did not help Hillary Clinton at all having this mountain of celebrities on her side. Rejection, rejection,' be said.

Meanwhile, Ellis is using Trump's signature catchphrase to make a few bucks.

The author is auctioning off an American Psycho movie poster signed 'Make America Great Again!' on his website.

As of Friday afternoon, the highest bid for the item was $1,305 dollars. The online auction was set to end after 6pm Eastern Time.

Ellis was somewhat of a soothsayer during the campaign, tweeting in February 2016 about how friends in heavily-blue Los Angeles were planning to vote for Trump.

'Just back from a dinner in West Hollywood: shocked the majority of the table was voting for Trump but they would never admit it publicly,' Ellis wrote.

Ellis' new art show is in partnership with multimedia artist Alex Israel. It pairs photos with thought-provoking prose from Ellis, and runs at the Gagosian Gallery in London from February 3 to March 18.

Last year, Ellis tweeted about how he attended a dinner party in Los Angeles where the majority of attendees planned to vote for Trump
Pimps who preyed on 'weak and desperate' women trafficked into Manchester and forced to be prostitutes have been locked up after a police crackdown.

The young mothers were promised work washing dishes in the UK by Andras Lakatos, 32.

But when they arrived they were forced into degrading and unsafe sex with 'many customers'.

Pimps Andras Lakatos, 32, (left) and his aunt Jenone Orgona, 57, (right) trafficked women from Eastern Europe to Manchester to work in the city's red light districts. They took the girls' passports after promising them work washing dishes

Lakatos's aunt, Jenone Orgona, 57, acted as a minder to the women on the streets of Manchester's red light areas.

She told kerb crawlers the women were her daughters and that 'business was good'.

Lakatos and Orgona took the women's passports and lived off the thousands they earned.

Hungarian pimp Laslo Petrovich, 38, was jailed for three and a half years. One of the women managed to escape from Lakatos and Orgona but ran into the clutches of Petrovich

One managed to escape the pair, but she ended up in the clutches of Oldham-based pimp Laslo Petrovich, 38.

He drove her to car washes across Manchester to 'service' gangs of workers.

Lakatos, Orgona and Petrovich, who are all Hungarian nationals, were sentenced to a total of 25-and-a-half years at Manchester Crown Court.

Lakatos, of Bradford, admitted controlling prostitution for gain, human trafficking, forced labour and controlling prostitution charges and was jailed for 13 years and seven months.

Orgona admitted trafficking and forced labour charges and was jailed for eight years and five months.

Petrovich, of Oldham, admitted controlling prostitution for gain and has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Lakatos and Orgona have both been made subject to slavery and trafficking prevention orders.

Prosecutor Louise Brandon told the court that events date back to December 2015, when Lakatos flew over his girlfriend of a week on the promise of a job.

The women were forced to work in Cheetham Hill (pictured) and Strangeways. Lakatos had previous convictions for pimping out teenage girls and extorting prostitutes in Hungary

She fled when he tried to make her a prostitute.

Days later Orgona flew over two young single mothers for the Bradford-based sex ring.

On Christmas Eve, their second night in the UK, the two girls were forced into sex with a group of men brought to their flat.

One was literally pushed into the room, the court heard. When she emerged in tears, Orgona told her: 'Get used to it, every beginning is tough', adding the Hungarian phrase, 'this happens to every soldier'.

They were taken to Manchester to work as prostitutes by Lakatos for the first time on Christmas Day.

For the next few months, from 8.30pm to 8.30am every night, they were forced to pick up punters in Cheetham Hill and Strangeways under Orgona's supervision.

On one occasion one of the victims was pushed out of the car into the rain by Lakatos, who told her: 'Work, you dog.'

Police launched an investigation after learning of the influx of Eastern European girls in the red light district and Lakatos and Orgona were arrested.

By that stage one of the girls had escaped the Lakatos' ring, only to end up being controlled by Petrovich, after befriending one of the girls who worked for him.

Petrovich took control of one of Lakatos's girls and drove her to car washes where she would sleep with up to five men at a time. She fled from him after he wanted to advertise her services online. The father-of-four started controlling prostitutes in Hungary at the age of 18

Petrovich drove the woman to car washes to sleep with up to five men at a time while he waited in the car.

She fled after he wanted to market her services on the internet.

She faced the added ordeal of having the safety of her child in Hungary threatened by Lakatos' father, who blamed her for the arrest of his son and his sister.

Prosecutor Louise Brandon said: 'These three women were the ideal targets for this type of exploitation, they came from a very poor area, they were keen to work and they had families to support, but there was no work for them in the towns they lived.

'They were promised work and a better life in the UK. The reality when they arrived was far from the picture painted at home in Hungary.'

The trio were sentenced at Manchester Crown Court today. The woman who was exploited by Petrovich said: 'I have lost my cleanliness. I'm disgusted with myself'

Lakatos has convictions for pimping teenage girls and extorting prostitutes in Hungary.

Father-of-four Petrovich first began controlling prostitutes from his father's club in Hungary at the age of 18.

He has convictions for sex trafficking to the Netherlands and running a brothel in Hungary.

Speaking after sentence, Det Con Adam Cronshaw said: 'These victims could have been your friend, daughter, sister or partner.

They were dehumanised and deconstructed because of these narcissistic and controlling offenders, who were only interested in greed.'

In a statement, the woman who fled the Lakatos sex ring only to be exploited by Petrovich said: 'It's had a very heavy impact on me.

'Being forced to this job I have lost my cleanliness. I'm disgusted with myself and I will never be my old self again.'

Judge Michael Leeming said of the woman to the trio: 'She's been so affected she's been unable to inform her family owing to her sense of shame.

'She alleges she was raped on three occasions and that three attempts have been made to kill her.

'You placed this vulnerable woman in a position where she was exposed to that sort of risk by men who were potentially violent - physically violent and sexually violent.

'She holds all three of you responsible for what has happened to her, and feels her life has been ruined. Such is the impact offences like this can have on the innocent.'

Craig MacGregor, defending Orgona, said one of the girls was left with 'no prospects' after her knees were crushed in a factory accident in Hungary.

Richard Vardon, defending Petrovich for controlling the woman he took to car washes, said: 'He became involved in this dreadful matter by chance. He was involved in pimping the complainant for a week and no more, at a time when the complainant was actively engaged as a prostitute.

'He received very little by way of financial gain. She was living at his address, living under his roof, eating his food effectively for free, and was receiving some modest reward from the defendant for her services.'
Hand in hand, Prince Harry and his actress girlfriend Meghan Markle walk through the streets of London as rumours of an impending engagement continue to grow.

The prince was pictured with the American-born divorcee, who has been spending a lot of time with him at Kensington Palace since the beginning of the year, after a romantic dinner at trendy private members' club Soho House on Wednesday.

Harry, 32, was said by onlookers to be relaxed about being photographed with his new love, which is being seen by royal watchers as a sign of how seriously he is taking the relationship.

Another indication is that Miss Markle, 35, who is based in Canada where she films the hit television show Suits, has found a sitter for her dogs, Guy and Bogart, who live with her in Toronto.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were photographed holding each other's hand as they left a trendy club in London

Prince Harry, who was wearing a beanie hat, was holding hands with Miss Markle after they left the club in Soho

The prince, 32, and his actress girlfriend Miss Markle, 35, were holding hands after they left the trendy venue

Prince Harry, 32, was wearing a black blazer and blue beanie hat when he walked in Soho with his famous actress girlfriend

According to sources, she wants to spend as much time as she can in London with the Queen's grandson before she has to return for filming commitments in March.

Once a prolific social media user, Miss Markle has become much more circumspect about the information she puts out, not least because Harry is wary of such public forums.

She failed to highlight a charity trip to India last month  although some handpicked media were in attendance, it is believed  and has not posted any photographs on Instagram since December 11.

One source told the Mail that she may well move to London permanently by the end of the year, once her filming commitments have finished, and the creators of the legal drama she stars in are already looking at ways to write her out. They say Harry has fallen 'heads over heels' for the actress and is desperately keen for the relationship to work.

The couple walked together before they got into a car which was waiting for them on Wednesday night

Miss Markle was holding a clutch bag in her right hand when she walked next to the prince who was wearing a light blue shirt

The pair had just enjoyed a romantic dinner at trendy private members' club Soho House on Wednesday night

After strolling through Soho, the pair then got into a parked car which was waiting for them

Suits actress Miss Markle, 35, got in the vehicle first, followed by her 32-year-old boyfriend

FASHION VERDICT: A PERFECT MATCH They seem the perfectly matched couple  right down to the way they dress as bohemian thirtysomethings. For Prince Harry and Meghan Markle showed off their growing closeness on a low-key night out with matching laid-back outfits of blue jeans, shirts, jackets and casual blue suede boots. Miss Markles elegant slim figure was enhanced by her light grey shirt and dark skinny jeans tapering into dark boots with red stitching. Bearded Harry sported his favourite smart-casual combination of blue jeans, light shirt and darker jacket, topped with his signature blue knitted beanie hat. Although Miss Markle has often been seen wearing a similar hat, she clearly deemed it surplus to requirements  even in the February chill. Advertisement

He has long wanted to settle down and have children, while Miss Markle is said to be equally keen on starting a family.

Both are said to have been enjoying living together like any 'normal' couple at Nottingham Cottage, Harry's two-bedroom residence in the grounds of Kensington Palace.

One source said: 'She is beautiful, accomplished, whip-smart and has all the humanitarian credentials that Harry so admires.

'And although Meghan has her roots in the US and Canada, she is a keen traveller with a lot of friends in London, so moving over wouldn't be too seismic.

'The only issue would be getting [her dogs] Guy and Bogart settled permanently in the UK as the three of them come as a package.'

With the Queen due back from Norfolk next week, there is much speculation that the prince will take the opportunity to introduce his girlfriend to his grandmother, a sure sign that marriage is on the cards.

The prince was wearing a black blazer jacket and dark blue chinos when he walked with his girlfriend

The prince was pictured with the American-born divorcee, who has been spending a lot of time with him at Kensington Palace since the beginning of the year

Harry, 32, was said by onlookers to be relaxed about being photographed with his new love

They were pictured hand-in-hand leaving Soho House on Dean Street in London on Wednesday night

Although these sorts of introductions normally take years to achieve, the Queen has a soft spot for her grandson and wants to see him happy.

Harry is due to spend several weeks in Toronto later this year when the Invictus Games, his Paralympic-style event for injured servicemen and women, is held there. But after that, the source suggests, Miss Markle could become a permanent fixture in London.

The couple met last July after being introduced by Soho House consultant Markus Anderson, a mutual friend. Since then barely a few weeks have gone by without them criss-crossing the globe to spend time together.

Last month they enjoyed their first holiday together, visiting the Norwegian fjords.

It comes as friends of Harry and his actress girlfriend Miss Markle have said the pair are 'taking things to the next level and are practically living together'

The royal residence - showing the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's apartment in the background and Nottingham Cottage, were Prince Harry resides

According to a friend Miss Markle 'has always enjoyed spending time in London' but she is now 'really putting down roots'

He has long wanted to settle down and have children, while Miss Markle is said to be equally keen on starting a family.

Both are said to have been enjoying living together like any 'normal' couple at Nottingham Cottage, Harry's two-bedroom residence in the grounds of Kensington Palace.

One source said: 'She is beautiful, accomplished, whip-smart and has all the humanitarian credentials that Harry so admires.

'And although Meghan has her roots in the US and Canada, she is a keen traveller with a lot of friends in London, so moving over wouldn't be too seismic.

Hardly camera shy! Their dinner date at media haunt

By Daily Mail Reporter

Soho House is perhaps an unlikely choice for a couple who might wish to remain discreet.

Membership of the trendy private club is limited to those who work in the creative industries  film, fashion, advertising, music, art and, of course, the media.

However the swanky haunt in Dean Street holds memories for Harry and Meghan, because it was where they first met.

The club has 18 branches around the world, including Berlin, Istanbul and Miss Markles adopted home town of Toronto.

The couple were this week spotted hand-in-hand after enjoying a dinner date at Soho House, the private members' club in West London where they met last year (pictured)

The Dean Street branch, which is set over four floors of a Grade II-listed Georgian townhouse, has a courtyard, club bar, house kitchen, sitting room, top floor and a basement cinema and bar.

Membership that permits entry to all the clubs locations can cost in excess of 1,500 a year and prospective joiners must be nominated by two existing Soho House members.

Prince Harry and Miss Markle recently enjoyed minibreaks at Soho Farmhouse in the Cotswolds, as well as dinners and soirees at the Dean Street branch.

The original Soho House, on Greek Street, was founded in 1995 by Nick Jones, who is married to broadcaster Kirsty Young. It is currently closed for refurbishment.
Malia Obama only started her film internship at the Weinstein Company this week, but she is already rubbing shoulders with onscreen stars after she was spotted at the Girls final season premiere after party.

The 18-year-old daughter of former president Barack Obama mingled with the cast of the HBO series and a number of celebrities at the star-studded bash in New York on Thursday night.

While the aspiring filmmaker didn't walk the red carpet at the Lincoln Center, she was spotted making her surprise appearance at the HBO-hosted after party at New York's famed Cipriani.

Malia worked as an intern on Girls in the summer of 2015.

Malia Obama was spotted rubbing shoulders with the cast of Girls and a host of other celebrities at the HBO show's final season premiere after party in New York on Thursday night

Party guests were said to have been fawning over the former first daughter.

Having interned on the set, Malia would have been acquainted with show's cast and crew.

Those partying alongside Malia included Rita Wilson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann and the entire Girls' cast.

It comes after the former president's eldest daughter was spotted starting her internship with producer Harvey Weinstein's company in New York on Monday.

Cast Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet and Jemima Kirke were among those partying at New York's famed Cipriani 42nd Street on Thursday night

The Girls cast Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Lena Dunham, Jemima Kirke posed at the final season premiere at New York's Lincoln Center earlier on Thursday night

Malia worked as an intern on Girls in the summer of 2015 and would have been acquainted with show's cast and crew, including Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke

Photos of the teenager showed her arriving at work early Wednesday morning for her third day in the New York offices, wearing high-waisted jeans, a crop top, a sheepskin jacket and boots to keep warm in the freezing temperatures.

Later in the day, she was seen gabbing with a co-worker after stepping out to Whole Foods to pick up lunch.

Malia is working in the production and development department, reading scripts and deciding which are worth pitching to executives. The internship will run through the spring and pays around $9 an hour.

Malia graduated from high school last spring, but she's currently taking a gap year before starting at Harvard next fall.

Her parents have moved from the White House into another home in Washington, DC so that younger sister Sasha can finish high school.

Those partying alongside Malia included Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard (pictured, Judd Apatow, Leslie Mann Rita Wilson, and the entire Girls' cast

Malia was spotted out with a co-worker during the third day of her internship in the New York offices of the Weinstein Company
stupid' and said he 'wants to punch him'

Months after proclaiming his distaste for the 45th president of the United States, Robert De Niro still stands firm on his beliefs.

And it was on full display when he made an appearance on The View Friday morning to promote his new film The Comedian.

The legendary actor was asked by host Joy Behar about his threat of violence towards then-candidate Trump in October.

De Niro responded: 'I said that because he said that about somebody, that he would like to punch them in the face. How dare he say that to the crowd? How dare he say the things he does? Of course I want to punch him in the face.'

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Months after proclaiming his distaste for the 45th president of the United States, Robert De Niro still stands firm on his beliefs. And it was on full display when he made an appearance on The View (pictured) Friday morning to promote his new film The Comedian

The legendary actor was asked by host Joy Behar (left) about his threat of violence towards then-candidate Trump in October. De Niro told her that he still wants to 'punch him in the face'

He told Behar that his comments were 'only a symbolic thing', adding that 'it wasn't like I was going to go find him and punch him in the face'.

De Niro explained that it was something he felt Trump should hear.

'He's got to hear that, you know, that's how he makes people feel. It's not good to feel that way.

'It's not good to start that stuff up, but at the same time sometimes when people are bullies like that, that's what you have to do to shut them up. Bully them back.'

De Niro explained that his comments were something he felt Trump should hear because 'sometimes when people are bullies like that, that's what you have to do to shut them up. Bully them back'

He also told Behar that his comments were 'only a symbolic thing', adding that 'it wasn't like I was going to go find him and punch him in the face'

De Niro was also among the New York celebrities to protest outside Trump Tower on the eve of inauguration and speak out against the incoming president.

In October, while filming a political testimony video for a non-partisan group called #VoteYourFuture, De Niro was asked a question that all participants were asked: 'What do you care about?'

De Niro said what he cares about is the direction of the country - but to make that point, he had a few choice words for Trump.

'I mean, he's so blatantly stupid. He's a punk. He's a dog. He's a pig. He's a con, a bulls*** artist. A mutt who doesn't know what he's talking about,' De Niro said at the time.

De Niro continued to hurl insults at the then-Republican presidential nominee for an entire minute.

'He doesn't do his homework, doesn't care. He thinks he's gaming society. He doesn't pay his taxes.

In October, while filming a political testimony video (left) for a non-partisan group called #VoteYourFuture, De Niro went on a rant about Trump and made the initial comments about punching him in the face

'He's an idiot. Colin Powell said it best, he's a national disaster. He's an embarrassment to this country.

'It makes me so angry that this country has gotten to this point, that this fool, this bozo has wound up where he has,' De Niro said.

By the video's halfway mark De Niro still hadn't mentioned Trump by name but he continued to throw pointed attacks at him.

'He talks how he wants to punch people in the face. Well, I'd like to punch him in the face.

'This is somebody that we want for president? I don't think so. What I care about is the direction of this country. And what I'm very, very worried about is that it might go in the wrong direction with someone like Donald Trump.

'If you care about your future, vote for it,' he said as the video came to a close.

Most of De Niro's rant didn't make it in to the official #VoteYourFuture video.

Only two lines of De Niro's - none of which came from the rant - made it in to the final star-studded clip, which featured celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Olivia Wilde, Kendall Jenner among dozens of other famous famous.
Strange lights in the sky over Pennsylvania saw one woman grab her camera to snap a photo of the unusual and ethereal sight.

Brittany Smarkusky was driving home in her car when she witnessed beautiful 'pillars of light' hovering in the clouds over Wyoming County, near Scranton.

'It was such a strange sight. I was happy when someone explained what it was,' she wrote on Facebook alongside a picture of the stunning view. 'I was a little creeped out at first.'

People in Pennsylvanie were able to see light pillars in the sky. They occur when the light perfectly hits ice crystals in the air

'It was so strange,' Brittany told AOL. 'I was like, 'Oh, my God! It's an alien abduction!' I don't know. It was crazy!'

'They were in the entire night sky, and it was pitch dark out, and it was amazing how the camera picked up all the color and all the lights,'

The phenomenon can be explained, however: the streaks of light are known as light pillars and are visible when there are certain conditions in the atmosphere which sees light reflecting off ice crystals in the sky.

Other people in the area also managed to snap pictures of the icy phenomenon

WNEP meteorologist Joe Snedeker provided some further explanation: 'It was a very cold, dry night that night, and in the atmosphere, there are little plates of ice.

'As they tumble through the atmosphere, they reflect light when the plates are perfectly aligned, so you're seeing the reflection from a light source,' he said online.

The light can come from the Sun, usually when it is near or even below the horizon.

However, it can also come from the moon or from even ground based light sources such as streetlights.
The senior U.S. Secret Service agent who said she wouldn't want to take a bullet for President Trump has reportedly been suspended with pay.

Kerry O'Grady, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Denver district, made several posts on social media in the past year criticizing Trump, saying he would be a 'disaster' for the country - particularly for women and minorities.

She was placed on administrative leave on January 28 and suspended on Thursday. Sources told KDVR that the disciplinary action took months because of her high rank.

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Kerry O'Grady, a special agent in charge of the Secret Service in Denver, said she wouldn't take a bullet for Trump - she's been suspended with pay

O'Grady said that civil rights were moving back to the Dark Ages. She never names Trump but it's clear who she's talking about

O'Grady oversees presidential candidates' and presidential visits to the Denver region. It's not clear how long her suspension will last or if that is as far as her disciplinary action will go.

In October, she posted that she would rather go to jail than 'take a bullet' for Trump - although she avoided referring to him by name, prompting public outrage.

Officials have now confirmed that she's been suspended with pay, according to CBS4.

The post in question said: 'As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act,' which refers to the act that bars executive branch staff from engaging in certain political activities.

'So I keep quiet and skirt the median. To do otherwise can be a criminal offense for those in my position. Despite the fact that I am expected to take a bullet for both sides.'

She continued: 'But this world has changed and I have changed. And I would take jail time over a bullet or an endorsement for what I believe to be disaster to this country and the strong and amazing women and minorities who reside here. Hatch Act be damned. I am with Her.'

O'Grady said this week that she is devoted to her mission to serve her country and that nothing would stop her from doing her job.

'I hope you understand that's an emphatic no,' she said when asked if he political stance would affect her job, 'and I need to make sure that's resoundingly clear and just reinforces that this job needs to done well.'

'As a public servant for nearly 23 years, I struggle not to violate the Hatch Act,' she wrote, referring to the act that bars executive branch staff from engaging in certain political activities

Secret Service employees are covered by the act which bars employees in the executive branch from posting partisan messages on social media, or sharing and disturbing partisan material, according to the Washington Examiner.

In operational security training, agents are warned against the use of social media because it can expose their personal information and their movements, sources say.

That post triggered at least one complaint to the Secret Service, those sources added.

O'Grady told the Examiner she took down the post just a couple of days after it was posted.

She explained that she wrote the post shortly after learning that Trump was being accused of sexually abusing a number of women. It was just days after the notorious video of Trump telling Access Hollywood' host Billy Bush he could grab women 'by the p***y.'

As a survivor of alleged sexual abuse, O'Grady said she had written the message while overcome with emotion by the news.

O'Grady has also made numerous other posts criticizing Donald Trump during his campaign - and even after his election

But she took down the post after realizing 'it was not the sentiment that I needed to share because I care very deeply about the mission.'

'My government is the most important thing to me,' she said. 'I serve at the pleasure of the president, but I still have the First Amendment right to say things.'

However, that was not the only anti-Trump post O'Grady made.

Over the past few months, she continued to make political comments online criticizing Trump and his adversaries.

O'Grady previously shared a Huffington Post story with the headline: 'Scott Baio Defends Trump's Sexism with More Sexism', with her comment; 'One word: douche. How do you like them apples?!'

A month after her 'bullet' post, she shared a Vox post, headlined 'Donald Trump nominates Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general' on which Vox commented 'Just a few years ago, this would have been unimaginable.'

O'Grady, who removed the post a couple of days later, said she wrote it after being overcome with emotion following Trump's 'grab them by the p***y' video

O'Grady wrote: 'We are moving our civil rights into a period of bigotry, misogyny and racism that this country has not tolerated for decades. Dark ages. I am horrified and dismayed beyond words.'

During the Women's March, she posted the logo for the movement as her Facebook cover. She later wrote: 'All of these women represent me! Proud to say it! #nasty,' referring to the phrase Clinton supporters referred to themselves by after Trump labelled Hillary a 'nasty woman.'

On Inauguration Day, she updated her profile picture to a picture of Princess Leia with the words, 'A woman's place is in the resistance' - a reference to the rebel alliance in Star Wars, or those opposing Trump's presidency.

All political posts have since been removed.
President Donald Trump has been ridiculed after he appeared to be using today's incident at the Louvre in Paris as a justification for his travel ban - despite the fact that it would not have prevented the attack by a machete-wielding man.

A few hours after the attack Trump tweeted: 'A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.'

It has emerged the assailant was Egyptian and may have arrived from Dubai last month.

Neither Egypt or the United Arab Emirates are on the list of seven countries whose citizens President Trump has banned from entering the US.

American keyboard player Benmont Tench tweeted: 'Thank god the terrorist attacker at the Louvre was stopped. An Egyptian national, entered France from Dubai. Neither country banned by Trump.'

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President Trump appeared to be seeking to make political capital out of the Louvre attack

This picture showed the aftermath of the attack, with four French soldiers with their weapons out standing around the injured assailant and a small machete lying on the floor

R A Baker added: 'I don't usually comment on "unfolding events" where the full facts aren't available, but if the Louvre attacker is Egyptian...oops Trump!'

Jason, from Wales, tweeted: 'Hey with the louvre attacker being Egyptian, when is the ban on Egyptians coming in? It's America first not Trump first right?'

John Yazek added: 'The attacker was Egyptian. Does that mean Trump needs to add Egypt to the ban? Probably not - Trump makes $ there.'

French psychologist tweeted: 'Trump quickly condemns Louvre attack, still quiet on Quebec and he's Egyptian, so can be cleared into Trumpistan!'

Several Twitter users ridiculed Trump for suggesting the Louvre attack justified his travel ban

Chinese tourists mill around outside the Louvre after it was locked down after the attack

Star Trek actor George Takei tweeted: 'Trump was quick to condemn the Louvre attack. But he stayed pretty quiet over the mosque shooting in Montreal. That speaks volumes.'

Another Twitter user, Chris Martin, tweeted: 'Trump logic: Louvre attack- "told you we should ban Muslims." Quebec shooting - "We need more guns for the mentally ill".'

Today's Louvre attacker was shot and critically wounded by four soldiers and is under armed guard in a Paris hospital.

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has described the attack as 'terrorist in nature'

The chief of police in Paris said the suspect was shouting 'Allahu Akbar' - Arabic for 'God is the greatest' - but, apart from the machete, he was reportedly armed with nothing more than paint bombs.

The man has not been identified officially but is known to be Egyptian.

An unconfirmed report by French TV network LCI named the suspect as 29-year-old Abdallah EH, who arrived in France on a flight from Dubai on January 26.

He was not known to security services, said the network.

After being refused entry to the Louvre, he pulled out the weapon and was shot by a soldier, officials have confirmed. A paratrooper is believed to have suffered a minor head injury.

French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve has described the attack as 'terrorist in nature'.
Dog lover arraigned: Bradley Hubbard, 23, has been charged with cruelty to animals and sexual acts involving an animal after being accused of having sex with his pit bull mix, Baby Girl, more than 100 times over three years

A Florida man who was arrested on charges of bestiality involving his dog last month has been out on bond, while his alleged four-legged victim, a pit bull mix named Baby Girl, still languishes behind bars.

On Thursday, 23-year-old Bradley Jean Hubbard, of Pensacola, was formally arraigned on charges of cruelty to animals and sexual acts involving an animal

Hubbard was arrested on January 9 on suspicion that he had had sex with his pet dog, Baby Girl, more than 100 times over the course of three years.

From the time of Hubbard's arrest, Baby Girl has been kept at the Escambia County Animal Shelter because officials there say she is considered evidence in the case against her owner, reported the Pensacola News Journal.

Animal Control Director John Robinson tells the paper the pooch will remain in the custody of the county until the outcome of the trial.

Animal rescue and rehabilitation non-profits form across the country, including Virginia and California, have been clamouring to adopt Baby Girl for fear that she might be destroyed.

Robinson, however, was quick to reassure concerned animal lovers by pointing out that there are no polices in place requiring that Baby Girl be put down.

Were just figuring out her mental state and what will be the best thing for her, he said. The dog is scared to death and confused, and we want whats best for her.

Bradley Hubbard was arrested after a family member called police last month to report the alleged sexual abuse of the family's pet dog.

According to an arrest report, the relative 'could not take it anymore' after seeing Hubbard take the dog to his room to allegedly have sex with her.

The woman reportedly told deputies the abuse had happened more than 100 times over the last three years.

Troubled past: Hubbard has a lengthy criminal record that includes arrests on charges of battery, larceny and resisting arrest (pictured in past mugshots)

She explained how she had been able to witness the attack as Hubbard's bedroom door had a hole in it, as a result of a violent outburst.

The witness reportedly said she heard the dog whimper and cry out in pain during each incident.

She also told police how the dog would initially cry out and whimper during its attacks, but over time it had stopped making noises as it was victimized.

Investigators took Baby Girl to a veterinarian who concluded that the dog's genitals showed signs of abuse.

The report included a statement from a professional animal handler who said that Baby Girl had aggressive tendencies and would be loyal to only one person at a time.

Hubbard, who had been arrested several times in the past on charges including battery, larceny, and resisting arrest, is out on $15,000 bond.
Human remains were found Friday morning in West Texas near where 22-year-old college student Zuzu Renee Verk went missing four months ago.

A US Border Patrol agent found unidentified remains in a shallow grave off Wagon Road in the Sunny Glen area northwest of Alpine, the town where Verk was last seen in October, The Dallas Morning-News reports.

The skeletal remains are being sent to the medical examiner's office for identification.

Verk's family has been notified, although police are not sure if the remains belong to her.

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Human remains found in a shallow grave in West Texas on Friday morning may be 22-year-old Sul Ross State University student Zuzu Renee Verk (above) who disappeared in October

The Brewster County Sheriff's Office said the results may come back next week.

No arrests have been made, but police said Verk's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Robert Fabian, is their primary suspect.

Verk was reported missing by Fabian on October 14, who told police he had last seen her on a date two days prior.

He has since refused to answer questions about the last time Verk was seen, and he and a friend, Chris Estrada, were acting strange in the days following her disappearance.

Verk left her parents' home on October 11 to go on a date to the movies later that evening. Her parents reported her missing after she missed classes and work the next day

'Unfortunately we have one individual who has refused to come in and talk to us, he has retained an attorney,' said a police spokesman at an October press conference.

'This individual happens to know her better than anyone else. Investigators are waiting to talk to him.'

John Franco, who lives in the apartment directly below Fabian, told WFAA that he could hear arguing and pacing the night Verk disappeared.

Search warrants found that Fabian called Estrada twice during the early morning of October 12 and later borrowed a Ford F-150 pickup for an unknown reason.

Verk, a student at Sul Ross State University (file above) in Alpine, was last heard from during the early morning hours of October 12, Alpine Police say

Estrada tried to get his Ford Mustang cleaned three times at a local auto shop in the days following Verk's disappearance.

Both men testified in front of a grand jury in January but no indictments have been handed down.

Verk, who is originally from the Fort Worth area, was a student at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.

Her father, Glenn Verk, said she was absent from school, where she is studying conservation biology, and also missed work later that day.

The Alpine Police Department is looking for two vehicles possibly related to her disappearance: a grey 2006 Jeep Liberty (left) and a 2004 Mazda Miata (right) convertible with a beige colored top

'We're all special but there's something exceptional about this young woman. She's vibrant and she's full of excitement and life,' Glenn Verk told CBS11.

'I'm just very proud of her and I want to see her again,' her father said while choking back tears.

Zuzu Verk left her parents' home in Keller to go on a date to the movies back in Alpine with Fabian on the night of October 11, Fox News reported.

In addition, Verk had planned to go on a camping trip with friends that Friday.

Verk's family is still hoping for her safe return and is asking anyone who may have information to call police.

'The community has reached out to an amazing degree putting together huge search parties,' her father said.

Verk's on-again, off-again boyfriend, Robert Fabian, is the primary suspect in her disappearance. He has refused to answer questions about the last time he saw her

Fabian and his friend, Chris Estrada (above), were acting strange in the days following Verk's disappearance. Both men testified in front of a grand jury in January but no indictments have been handed down

'If they have any connection to anything that might've happened her in Alpine, the smallest inclining of a suspicion. Nothing is being overlooked.'

The Alpine Police Department is looking for two vehicles possibly related to her disappearance: a grey 2006 Jeep Liberty and a 2004 Mazda Miata convertible with a beige colored top.

Both of those vehicles were spotted in the area between 12am and 10am on October 12, police said.

Verk is described as 5 feet tall, weighing 110 pounds with blonde hair and hazel eyes.

The reward for her return reached $200,000 in October as authorities continued to search nearby counties and the US-Mexico border near the Big Bend state and national parks.

Anyone with information is urged to call the Alpine Police Department at 432-837-3486.
Towards the end of her record-breaking six-year stint as Home Secretary, Theresa May was widely described as unsackable. Shed not only survived in one of the toughest government posts, but shed consistently been on top of her brief.

Even when the referendum campaign threatened to rip the Conservative Party apart, she seemed unassailable. Shed come out for Remain  which was interpreted as a show of loyalty to Cameron. Yet she was surprisingly low-key in the campaign itself  thus avoiding a major clash with the Brexiteers.

There was, however, an entirely genuine reason for Mays stance. Although shed eventually backed staying in the EU, shed never been a passionate Europhile.

The future meets the past: Theresa May is pictured at the EU summit in Malta on Friday with France's outgoing President Francois Hollande

To add to that, she didnt see why she should go out of her way to support Cameron. In fact, unknown to the public at the time, there was real animosity between the Prime Minister and his Home Secretary.

Not only had she been seriously annoyed when he removed two of her special advisers from the Tory candidates list of potential MPs, but she was also highly sceptical of Cameron and Osbornes Project Fear.

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister decided that he needed all hands on deck, and that included May.

Instead of helping him out, though, she all but vanished for the whole of March and April last year. This soon led to her being nicknamed Submarine May by the exasperated team at Number 10.

According to Downing Street spin doctor Craig Oliver, Cameron asked May 13 times to take a more high-profile role in the Remain campaign, only to be let down on each occasion.

One source close to the Conservative Remain team says: There was definitely friction that shed done the bare minimum. She was obviously not keeping a low profile in order to stand for the leadership after the referendum, because like everyone else she thought Remain would win.

But she did seem to be playing a longer game. She maybe thought it would do her no harm to keep her head down. And there was frustration in the Cameron camp about that.

Osborne, in particular, was furious at Mays disappearing act, telling various allies that she could end up being demoted.

The unsackable Home Secretary was suddenly looking vulnerable.

Former Tory Cabinet minister Eric Pickles reveals: We had that ridiculous thing where Osborne was going to have her sacked because she wasnt doing enough. By God, she put him in his place [after she became Prime Minister].

Power struggle: (Left to right) Michael Gove, Theresa May and George Osborne listen to David Cameron's speech at the Tory Party conference in 2013. She would eventually outmanouevre both of them to seize power

If May sensed that her career was on the line, she had no intention of changing course. On the rare occasions when she did surface, she not only criticised EU human rights legislation and freedom of movement, but she even admitted the UK was big enough and strong enough to be a success story in or out of the EU.

No one, not even Cameron, was going to force her to be a whole-hearted Remainer  even if she had to lose her job.

But then for someone whose image is defined both in public and private by politeness and restraint, Theresa May has picked an incredible number of bruising and sometimes rather unseemly fights.

Shes always shown impatience with people she felt were lazy or not up to the job.

But the focus of her ire was reserved for those who disrespected her, or were rude in some way.

Once crossed, shed always seek revenge  and her grudges could last years. A victim might find themselves frozen out or treated with cool disdain until the right moment for more savage retribution. Over her years as Home Secretary, May became embroiled in feuds with a staggering number of fellow ministers, MPs, officials, organisations and individuals who crossed her path.

There were some long-running disagreements going on, William Hague agrees.

Shed stand her ground and sit the disagreement out. And thats different from some politicians whod say: We cant go on like this, lets go for a drink and sort it all out

Her approach is: No, no, Im right and you have to back down. She generally came off best from these things.

Eric Pickles jokes that Mays relationship with the Cameroons, nearly all of them 10 to 15 years younger than her, was bound by two steel bands of trust and understanding: they didnt understand her and she didnt trust them.

Put to the sword: Brodie Clark (picturede), the head of the UK Border Force, was forced to resign by May in 2011

Those she feuded with included Cameron, Osborne, Michael Gove, and Kenneth Clarke as well as the Lib Dems Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne. She also put Brodie Clark, the head of the UK Border Force, and the entire senior management of the Police Federation to the sword.

Sometimes the blade would be wielded by her two trusted special advisers, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, who were more than happy to do the blood-letting on her behalf.

If you dont treat Theresa with respect, says Pickles, thats about the worst thing you can do. If youre disrespectful and you make the mistake of speaking to a journalist and putting a story out about her, shes got two of the cleverest aides Ive ever dealt with. Theyre top-class, theyre well-clued in  so after even the most anonymous briefing [against May], theyll be able to finger someone within a very short time.

Among Mays most serious clashes were those at Cabinet meetings with Osborne. These were usually over immigration: while she was stolidly committed to bringing the numbers down, he urged a less rigid attitude towards economic migration.

Sometimes Cable, Gove and other ministers ganged up with Osborne to argue against May. But this had little effect: reducing immigration was a manifesto commitment she fully intended to honour.

Ice queen: There was a distinct frostiness between May and Cameron, Osborne, Gove and their inner circle and after Cameron's fall she airbrushed them all out of the equation

Then, on one memorable occasion in 2012, Osborne declared war. Looking across the Cabinet table, he announced  with a sneer on his face  that he had a true horror story to share.

At least one Chinese businessman, with millions of pounds to spend on British products, had been stopped at Heathrow and forced to submit to hours of interrogation  including a full strip-search. Hed returned to China on the next flight, and was telling his friends to avoid the UK at all costs.

Who, the Chancellor asked, his eyes flashing as he stared around the table, was responsible for this debacle?

Theresa May, whose department oversaw both visas and the Border Agency, refused to meet his eye and said nothing.

May never forgave Osborne: indeed, over the next four years, she positively burned with resentment. Or as one minister in her current Cabinet puts it: She couldnt stand him after that.

Andrew Lansley, who served in the Cabinet until 2014, witnessed the cooling of relations for himself.

At Cabinet, he used to sit on Mays left while Osborne sat on her right. Invariably, as ministers waited for the meeting to start, shed engage Lansley in small-talk but not the Chancellor  though, ironically, hed persuaded Cameron to make her Home Secretary. Incredibly, however, Osborne seemed unaware that she viewed him with disdain.

According to Eric Pickles, Cameron was also unaware that May resented the high-handed way shed been treated by his longtime friend, and therefore never attempted to smooth her ruffled feathers.

Cameron wasnt a very good manager of people, says Pickles. If you were in the room with him, there was no one more important [than him].

Another colleague suggests that the reason Osborne took their disagreements less seriously than she did was down to a fundamental difference of approach.

She clearly felt it was perhaps just a game to Osborne  and she hated that.

Its also undeniable that, despite her high office, May was never welcomed into Camerons gilded inner circle.

Eric Pickles (centre) said: 'Cameron wasnt a very good manager of people'[

Former Lib Dem minister David Laws recalls: She wasnt one of the boys and wasnt treated as such. Indeed, there was a distinct frostiness between her and Cameron, Osborne, Gove and their inner circle  which I never once saw melt away.

Another Lib Dem, Lynne Featherstone, was initially hostile when she started working for May as a Home Office minister. But she soon grew to admire her enormously.

She knew she was about to be PM - but told no one David Cameron had resigned 16 days earlier. Now there were just two left in the race to become Tory leader and thus prime minister: Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom. As always, May was admirably composed as she prepared to launch her bid. With an hour to kill, she sat in a room, chatting with her husband Philip and former Defence Secretary Liam Fox when her aide Fiona Hill came in to say Andrea Leadsom was on the phone. May calmly glanced at the two men and asked if theyd mind her taking the call alone. They left, closely followed by Hill. Why would Leadsom, of all people, be ringing? As they waited outside, all three had their suspicions. After all, Leadsoms campaign had been faltering  particularly after shed implied that May was a lesser politician for being childless It was some minutes before Theresa May allowed everyone back into the room. She said nothing about the phone conversation, and no one asked her about it. Her face gave nothing away: it was just as calm as before Leadsom had called. For the next 20 minutes, she chatted with Fox and her husband and they made a few last-minute revisions to her speech. She delivered it at 11am, outlining her vision for Britains future and promising that Brexit means Brexit. Afterwards, she was preparing for some interviews when news broke that Leadsom was about to deliver an important statement  and everyone immediately guessed what that meant. It was only then that May told Fox and her husband that her rival had pulled out of the race. For 90 minutes, Theresa May had kept her composure and counsel about the fact that she was about to become Britains second female Prime Minister. The reason was simple: Leadsom had asked her to keep news of her withdrawal confidential until shed announced the fact herself. The fact is that Theresa May had dreamed of becoming Prime Minister since her teens; there was nothing shed ever wanted more. Yet with steely self-control, she hadnt allowed herself a moment to savour her triumph, let alone share the news. And that, of course, takes quite extraordinary strength of character. At the most important moment of her whole life, she was still willing to put the assurance shed given about confidentiality before absolutely anything else, says Liam Fox. That spoke volumes about integrity. If you can be that controlled, if you can maintain that confidentiality at a time when, goodness knows, your first reaction would be to say Oh my God, Ive done it!  Instead, to tell yourself: No, Ive given my word and Ill stick to it  it was a very interesting moment. Advertisement

She explained: My party is horrified that I like Theresa quite as much as I do. I disagreed with her vehemently on many, many occasions, but I thought she was a principled person who had good judgment, who really wasnt swayed by the stupid political game.

I always thought all the men who found her difficult to deal with, including Cameron, just werent used to someone who stood their ground the way she did.

And one of those May argued with continually was the then Deputy PM Nick Clegg  over security measures, immigration, the Human Rights Act and EU freedom of movement. Cameron described the collision between their views as a f***ing car crash.

Vince Cable is even more blunt: I dont think they could stand each other. I obviously talked to Clegg quite a lot, and his eyes would go up whenever Theresas name was mentioned. Part of it was that Clegg had this system where he would bargain with Cameron over issues, whereas Theresa was never up for that.

May was always polite to him personally  though she sometimes behaved like a headmistress reprimanding a naughty schoolboy.

Cable says: I remember I made some fairly aggressive remarks about how much damage was being done by her crackdown on overseas students and I got a call on my mobile phone at about 11 oclock at night. It was Theresa. She must have been really irked by what Id said. It was very much: Vincent, Im very disappointed. That was one of her phrases: Im very disappointed.

On another occasion, May is said to have given Cable a dressing-down in front of officials.

Vince, your conduct is most disappointing  dont do it again, she admonished him, as the Business Secretary stared at his shoes. Cable doesnt bear a grudge. Shes not like Mrs Thatcher  kind of abrasively angry. She was always cool and rather charming and rather feminine in her way of dealing with people. We all respected her, in a strange way.

The senior colleagues who got on with her best were those who, like former Foreign Secretary William Hague, treated her with kid gloves.

He took this approach after she angered the Obama administration in 2012 by cancelling the extradition of Gary McKinnon, a 46-year-old Scottish computer systems expert accused by the U.S. of the biggest military computer hack of all time.

McKinnon was facing a sentence of up to 70 years, but he suffered from Aspergers Syndrome and doctors warned that he might kill himself if extradited.

Mays decision to defy Britains closest ally was extraordinarily bold, particularly as she hadnt consulted colleagues. It also left Hague with a major diplomatic headache, with potentially long-term repercussions for the military and economic security of the nation.

The reaction from the U.S. was as bad as he feared: White House officials immediately claimed that the relationship between May and Obama was finished.

The next time Hague flew to Washington, he was asked in no uncertain terms to get May to change her mind. Rather than promising to do so, he simply shrugged.

You go and talk to her, Hague said helplessly, adding: Good luck!

William Hague (right), who treated her with kid gloves, got on well with her

His U.S. opposite number was forced to concede defeat. Even he understood that no one could strong-arm Theresa May once shed made up her mind.

It did complicate relations with America, but I didnt press her to do anything different, says Hague, whos always respected Mays controlled approach.

Shes a difficult person to negotiate with. Once shes decided what the right thing is to do, shes very hard to budge. Thats why shes described sometimes as a difficult colleague. Shes not difficult in terms of personal relations.

It was Ken Clarke, of course, who famously called May a bloody difficult woman  while he thought he was off-microphone after a TV interview. Michael Gove  who usually took the opposite line on immigration issues to May  must have given a silent cheer.

For her part, colleagues say May generally found Goves manner obnoxious.

In Cabinet, he all too often rubbed her up the wrong way. Nor did it help that he openly supported Osborne to be the next prime minister.

In March 2013, Gove slapped May down in Cabinet for a speech shed just given. In his view, shed been far too obvious about setting out her stall for a future leadership contest.

That didnt go down at all well. Nor did Goves response after May delivered a carefully considered paper at another meeting. Hes said to have made some provocative and not very well-considered remarks  and May was furious.

One witness says: What she could have done is just brush them aside, but she leapt on them. She went off the handle. David Cameron just stared.

But Gove and May didnt terminally fall out until 2014.

At the time, there were reports that groups of Islamic fundamentalists were trying to take over a number of schools in Birmingham, as part of a so-called Trojan Horse strategy to recruit young people.

Casting caution to the wind, Education Secretary Gove briefed The Times that both May and counter-terrorism chief, Charles Farr, were more concerned about targeting individual suspects than about tackling the deeper problems that allowed radicalisation to thrive.

In response, Mays aide Fiona Hill launched a ferocious counter-attack. Goves own department, she said, had failed for years to act on warnings about infiltration into schools.

She was so angry that she tweeted a link to a letter from May to Gove.

Is it true that the Department for Education was warned in 2010? May had written bluntly. If so, why did nobody act?

There was no love lost between May and Michael Gove (pictured), whose Machiavellian plans collapsed during the leadership contest last year

The upshot was that an embarrassed Downing Street insisted that Hill should be sacked, and Cameron himself made Gove formally apologise to May.

However, the apology cut no ice. Theresa May, always loyal to her staff, was incandescent and upset at Hills forced departure.

In the long run, however, it was Gove who came off worst. Within a month, Cameron had moved him out of Education and demoted him to chief whip.

The fact is that Theresa May, as we know, never forgets a slight. Nor do her two favourite aides, who were both triumphantly back at her side when she became Prime Minister.

One MP says: Apparently, when they got into office, Fiona [Hill] and Nick [Timothy] sat down with a list, just binning people. It was: No, he crossed me once, and: No, theyre out.

People who were demoted and returned to the backbenches were not told in person. And May herself? Her first act as PM last July was to dispose of the bloodied corpses of Camerons Notting Hill set. And the first victim, just half an hour after she sat down in No 10, was Osborne.

As Chancellor for six years, he had been hopeful May would offer him a senior role. Yes, theyd had their disagreements, but they hadnt been personal. Also, hed supported her for the leadership after Cameron resigned. An Osborne ally confirms: He wanted the Foreign Office. There was some speculation that he could even stay on at the Treasury  hed have done that.

Instead, in a conversation that lasted no more than ten minutes, May made it clear there was no place for Osborne around her Cabinet table.

Some sources  almost certainly Mays advisers  claim he was given a severe dressing-down.

The new PM is said to have told him that hed over-promised and under-delivered on the economy. She even gave him advice for any future runs at the premiership  to show more humility.

Whether she said this or not, the fact that Theresa May allowed such stories to gain widespread currency is testament to her disdain for Osborne.

Over the next few months, she set about undoing many of his pet policies, such as the concept of a Northern Powerhouse and even his fiscal target of achieving a surplus by 2020.

It was a brutal rejection of the man who, perhaps more than anyone else in government, had made her feel excluded.

The next scalp was perhaps the one May enjoyed claiming most: Michael Gove. His meeting with her lasted only two minutes. There is not going to be room for you, May is said to have told him, making it clear that his sacking was a direct consequence of the way hed elbowed Boris Johnson aside in the leadership race.

Ive been talking to colleagues, and the importance of loyalty is something on peoples minds.

By lunchtime, May had also sacked Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin and Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.

Keith Simpson MP (pictured) said the way she purged many of Cameron's Cabinet members was 'disrespectful'

Tory MP Keith Simpson wasnt surprised at what he calls her ruthless dispatch of the Cameroon clique and all the Old Etonian boys ... I think bubbling up, suppressed inside her, was 20 years of being patronised.

She was quite determined, and burst forth: Its not going to be about what school you went to, or a chumocracy  Im just not going to put up with that.

Of Camerons 22 Cabinet ministers, only 13 remained.

Many MPs were shocked at this merciless purge which left the Cabinet with more state-educated members than at any time since World War II.

Simpson adds: It was disrespectful I am told that [one] minister, a Cameroon, was sacked in a 40-second phone call.

A number of Tory MPs were also concerned that by dispatching so many one-time ministers to the backbenches could leave her vulnerable to revenge attacks.

As one MP warns: There are some big players on the backbenches now, the likes of Gove and Osborne. Theyre not going to bother to turn up to every vote. With a Commons majority of 14, that will cause problems.

The fact is that Theresa May did not become party leader because she had a powerbase  or May faction.

So there are concerns that if things get difficult, there might not be enough loyalists to protect her.

The easiest way to counter this threat, of course, would be for May to have called a general election  which she would almost certainly have won by a landslide.

Theresa May, however, is made of sterner stuff than most other politicians. An early election, she reasoned, might be good for her  but not for a country facing all the complexities of Brexit.

So, instead, she told her team to get to it and get on with the job. And just in case they hadnt got the message, she added sternly: Politics is not a game.

Adapted from Theresa May: The Enigmatic Prime Minister by Rosa Prince, published by Biteback on February 13 at 20.  Rosa Prince 2017. To order a copy for 14 (offer valid to Feb 11) call 0844 571 0640 or visit www.mailbookshop.co.uk. P&P is free on orders over 15.
Chelsea Cameron (pictured) wrote her parents an open letter to thank them for her woeful upbringing

Memories of her childhood occasionally flash through Chelsea Cameron's mind. Mum and Dad in their usual repose, sprawled semi-conscious on the sofa in front of the television, sometimes spark out after taking too many drugs. The odd day out with them  shoplifting.

Then there were the livelier moments when the police would come to visit, or strangers would angrily bang on the front door. Or the times when she would look out of the window to see her parents fighting with other people in the street.

To an outsider, Chelsea's life would appear unremittingly grim. But to the daughter of two drug addicts, it was entirely normal.

It is nothing short of a miracle, then, that at the age of 18 Chelsea has emerged astonishingly unscathed by her parents's wilful reign of self-destruction.

Defying both her upbringing and the modern victim culture, Chelsea captured the nation's imagination this week with an open letter to her parents, Tammy and Alexander, in which she thanked them for her woeful upbringing.

For, unlikely as it sounds, Chelsea says she is grateful for the pain and turmoil she suffered at their hands. Her formative years, she says, have made her the person she is today  positive, happy, ambitious and eager to grab what life offers with both hands.

In her 1,300-word letter she wrote: 'Mum and Dad, Thanks for everything, I owe you . . . Parents, both of you, thank you for teaching me that taking drugs ruins lives, breaks families apart and gives no one a quality of life worth living . . .

'Thank you for teaching me to be ambitious. Your example showed me that no ambition for education, work or any type of success is very harmful and leads to not a lot of self-worth . . .

'Life is not sunshine and rainbows and thank you for teaching me that life is unfair, people disappoint you and there's sometimes nothing you can do about that. A lesson well learnt from the both of you.'

Since posting the letter on Facebook this week  it was picked up by her local newspaper in Dundee and sparked a surge of interest from TV and radio stations  Chelsea has become something of a star. An accidental poster girl, if you will, for the power of self-motivation.

Chelsea Cameron (pictured with her parents Tammy and Alexander), now 18, has emerged astonishingly unscathed by her parents's wilful reign of self-destruction

Giving her first interview since unwittingly stepping into the limelight, Chelsea comes across as a friendly and engaging young woman with all the normal interests of an 18-year-old girl. But underneath her sunny nature, there is a poise and air of wisdom of someone much older than her years.

Chelsea is at pains to stress that her letter was in no way a form of revenge on her parents for their catastrophic years of neglect. 'I'm not trying to slate my parents or belittle them,' she says. 'I was very conscious to write in a positive way. I thanked them because that's how I feel. The letter was not meant to be sarcastic. It was genuine.

'If I'd had a different childhood, maybe I would not be as independent or driven or motivated. I don't have any anger or bitterness because I've learnt a lot from it.

'I wanted to let other people know that they weren't alone. I wish when I was younger that someone had said to me, 'I was in this situation, but I've chosen to be positive and stay happy and choose a good lifestyle.' '

The idea of writing a letter came, ironically enough, from her father who, as he awaited sentencing on a charge of theft, wrote Chelsea a letter while on remand in prison a few weeks ago. He was handed a year's jail sentence on Monday.

Although the letter simply reassured her that he was doing well behind bars, it provided Chelsea with the impetus to address her lost childhood.

This is the letter she sent her parents, and she signed it 'Love Chelsea'

Quite what drove her parents to squander their lives, Chelsea will never truly understand. But what she does know  and tragically knew from a very young age  is that they made addiction a way of life.

Neither Tammy, now 37, nor Alexander, 52, apparently felt the need to hide their drug habit from their daughter.

'When I was really, really young, I can't recall what age, I saw them injecting heroin,' she says matter of factly.

'I also saw them taking Valium and different pills, I don't know what they were. They smoked cannabis in front of me. I remember occasions during my childhood when Mum and Dad would pass out in the evening with drugs.'

Not suprisingly, the family were known to the police. 'There were occasions the police would come to the door to question my parents when they had stolen things from shops,' she says.

'They used to steal in front of me. Sometimes I'd witness both my mum and dad being in fights with people in the street. I don't know why. I didn't get scared though because these things were just my life. You're used to what you're used to.'

But amid the chaos and drama at their council house in Dundee there was a routine of sorts, with school and the odd day out to the beach.

Chelsea says her parents, who lived off benefits, made sure she made it to school, but took no more interest beyond that. 'They were never discouraging of education, but just let me do my own thing,' she says.

The one person who provided any sense of stability was Chelsea's paternal grandmother, Helen. 'She was the polar opposite of my parents. She was this really reserved, conservative lady. She was a senior nurse. My dad always tried not to disappoint her.'

But invariably, he would. Even the arrival of Chelsea's younger brother in 2006, when she was eight, did not act as a spur for her parents to give up drugs, By now, with a new baby brother to care for, Chelsea found herself craving normality and would beg her parents to give up their drug habit.

'I often challenged their behaviour, but I think they thought I didn't understand because I was young. They often tried to sweep it off and lie about it. If they were drowsy they'd say, 'We're tired' or 'We're not feeling well'. I used to get very frustrated with them.'

She did her utmost to hide what was going on from her schoolfriends. In her letter, she writes that in the first few years at secondary school she created the 'alter-ego' of a carefree teenager so that her classmates would not suspect the 'harsh truth' or her daily life.

Life became even worse when, in 2008, Chelsea's beloved grandmother died. Now desperate for a guiding hand in life, she found herself drawn to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. 'My dad invited the missionaries from the Church round for a laugh,' she says. 'My parents weren't interested but the missionaries were keen to keep teaching me. I joined the church when I was ten.'

Although at first glance, the drug addicts' daughter did not fit the stereotype of the level-headed, churchgoer, Chelsea relished the new identity it gave her. 'Sometimes you don't know what's going on in someone's life or behind a closed door,' she says. 'And I think it's important to think about that.'

Chelsea was to draw on her new-found faith when she got home from school one day in 2012. 'My mum had gone and our lives changed dramatically,' she says.

Chelsea had no idea where her mum was or whether she had left a note or other message for her dad. She was simply no longer in her life. Today, Tammy is living in Fife with her new partner, with whom she had a baby daughter last year.

It was immediately apparent to Chelsea that her dad could not cope as the sole carer for Chelsea and her brother, then six. 'He took a lot more drugs and his life spiralled out of control. I know he was taking Valium, lots of other pills. He'd be totally incoherent, knocked out, slurring his words.

'My brother and I pretty much had to look after ourselves. That was probably the hardest time of my life.'

Chelsea (pictured) says she is grateful for the pain and turmoil she suffered at their hands

The family staggered on like this for a few months before Chelsea went to live with friends  she would prefer not to say who. 'They were lovely, they helped me, but it was traumatic to move out of my home.'

Perhaps inevitably, in the midst of all this strain, Chelsea rebelled at school. 'I was cheeky and destructive and I really hated school.'

It was only thanks to the dedication of her teachers at Menzieshill School in Dundee that her life began to turn around. 'There were teachers who went above and beyond what was expected of them. They would take me out for a hot chocolate in the week and supported me,' she says.

'I came to the point in my life where I realised you get out what you put in. I made that conscious effort to engage with the school and I began to get something great from it. I began to work really hard. I realised the importance of working hard.

'I was quite academic but excelled in social things. I was made head girl, I organised our school prom, I was the president of the charities committee at school.'

Chelsea went on a school trip to Uganda, she studied hard for her three Highers (the Scottish school-leaving examination) in English, French and German. School provided the stability and security she did not have at home and she was devastated when the school closed last summer.

Chelsea, its last head girl, gave a speech at a prize-giving event at the Caird Hall in Dundee last June.

'There were hundreds of people there. I spoke openly about this change in my behaviour, how I changed to love school and be positive. I spoke about the teachers who never gave up on me. It was a really emotional experience. Everybody in the hall got up and clapped in the middle of my speech and that was overwhelming. I really wish my parents had been there to see.'

Chelsea had no contact with her mother after she left the family home until last year, when she learned she'd had another child. They had a brief chat about the baby and arranged to meet. 'We met up once but then lost touch,' says Chelsea. Repairing a relationship with a mother who has abandoned you was never going to be simple. But Chelsea has stayed in touch with her father since she was removed from his care and sees him regularly. She plans to visit him soon in prison.

Her formative years, she says, have made her the person she is today  positive, happy, ambitious and eager to grab what life offers with both hands

'Dad still leads the same sort of life. When he's in a good place and he's not taken anything, we get on really well. He's a likeable person, anyone who's met him says that. Even the police officers who would come round would say so. When I see him, I try to persuade him to give up the drugs and he says, 'I'll try, but it's difficult.' '

Chelsea recently got her own place and has started an apprenticeship in an administrative job. She's hoping to go on a mission for the Church and is considering going into teaching. But the one thing she would love above all else is for her parents to find a similar zest for life.

'It's sad. Because they don't know what's out there. I've seen their lifestyle and now I've seen a different lifestyle and I know which one has more to offer.' In a touching display of role-reversal, she insists she is 'there' for her parents if they need her.

'It's unfortunate I've not had them when I needed their support, but I hope my mum and dad know that I'm there for them because now they could do with my support more than I need theirs.

'Who am I to give up on my parents? Although I know the bad things they've done, I'm not in a position to cut ties. My parents are good people, they've just made bad choices.'

As our interview draws to a close, Chelsea receives a text from her mum. It reads: 'Chelsea, I saw you on the telly today and I am so proud of you. I'm deeply sorry for everything. I also live with tremendous guilt day in and day out.

'I can't change anything Chelsea but I can change my life so that one day you will want to have a relationship with me. Love you more than life itself. You are my first born. Love Mum.'

Chelsea is going to hold her to it. Despite the years of chaos, a part of Chelsea still believes in her mum.

'No one's ever too far gone,' she says. 'It's never too late.'
An Oklahoma City grandmother pleaded guilty to five counts of felony child abuse admitting she took on a witch persona to scratch, burn, strike and torture her seven-year-old grandchildren.

Geneva Robinson, 49, is accused of brutally torturing her granddaughter and grandson while dressed up as her alter ego - a witch called 'Nelda.' She had her boyfriend videotape the sick abuse.

Oklahoma County prosecutors said in court: 'Robinson was not jokingly or playfully dressing as a witch to play with the children, but, in fact, believes herself to be a witch and carries out torturous or detrimental actions while dressed as Nelda,' reports NewsOK.

Robinson's boyfriend, Joshua Granger, also pleaded guilty to one count of felony child abuse. The two will be sentenced on March 28 and could spend life in prison.

Geneva Robinson (left) pleaded guilty of abusing her two seven-year-old grandchildren as her boyfriend Joshua Granger (right) taped it

Robinson pleaded guilty to horrors that included beating her granddaughter with a rolling pin, whipping her with a dog leash, cutting off her hair as she slept and burning her with cigarettes.

The grandmother is currently getting treatment in jail for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Robinson was arrested in October on child abuse charges after taking her unnamed granddaughter to the hospital, saying she 'could not control' the girl anymore.

Doctors reported that the girl was malnourished, and had bruises, burns and cuts all over her body.

The home: Geneva Robinson and Joshua Granger are accused of executing the abuse in this home

Police identified another victim, Robinson's seven-year-old grandson, and have also pressed charges against Robinson's boyfriend Joshua Granger who allegedly taped the abuse.

Granger's abusive alter-ego was allegedly referred to as 'Crew Crow.'

WWLP reports that Robinson is accused of using scissors to cut the boy's fingers as punishment because he 'cut the hair of a doll.'

Court documents say cell phone video shows Robinson abusing the children, grabbing one by the hair and face and dragging a child across the living room floor.

Robsinson's granddaughter told a Department of Human Services worker that her grandmother regularly dressed up as a witch wearing a green mask, hat and robe, to abuse her.

She says Robinson would take her to the garage and make her sleep there on a pair on pants because 'she was in trouble'.

Robinson allegedly used a dog leash to hang the girl from the garage ceiling by the armpits, telling her 'the creatures in the attic were going to come get her'.

Koco reports that after being arrested initially, Robinson told police, 'When I am Nelda, all I will say is all good girls and boys are in bed at night. Nelda's ghosts and goblins come out to get boys and girls in bed.'

The report also says Robinson burned her and hit her with an orange and black whip, and threatened to cut her with a knife.

When police searched Robinson's house, where she lives with three other children, authorities found the dog leashes and whip in the garage and the witch costume in the woman's bedroom.

The face of evil: Geneva Robinson of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma plead guilty to physically abusing her seven-year-old granddaughter and her grandson while dressing up as her alter ego - a witch named 'Nelda'

Another child who lives there said Robinson picked on the seven-year-old, making her eat different food and sometimes alone in the garage.

All four children who live with Robinson have been placed in the protection of DHS.

An adult who also lives in the home, and wished not to be named, allegedly told police that Robinson also abused him as Nelda, and that she kicked him in the genitals on a regular basis.

'Its not true at all,' Joshua said, adding that the children who live there are troubled. 'Shes never dressed up as a witch to punish any of the kids.'

Neighbors say they are shocked by the alleged abuse.

'I have two children of myself. I couldnt imagine doing that to my kids at all,' said Ruben Herreras, a neighbor.
Some of the prisoners' fondness for their feathered friends is reminiscent of Robert Stroud (played Burt Lancaster, pictured, in the film The Birdman of Alcatraz)

Inmates at some of Britains toughest prisons are allowed to keep pets.

Official figures released by the Ministry of Justice show that 27 animals are being kept by prisoners at three maximum security jails.

Most of the pets are budgies but two guinea pigs are also behind bars.

The jail with the most pets is Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn, Northern Ireland, where inmates keep 18 budgies.

Maghaberry is a high-security jail where prisoners have clashed with wardens.

Former inmates include the serial killer and paedophile Robert Black - who died last year - and the Ulster loyalist killer Michael Stone.

Nick Hardwick, chief inspector of prisons in England and Wales, described the jail as one of the worst prisons Ive ever seen and the most dangerous prison Ive been to. Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire has seven budgies.

The Category A prison houses some of the most high profile and dangerous offenders, including rapists and murderers.

Serial killer Dr Harold Shipman was held at Wakefield  known as the Monster Mansion  before committing suicide in his cell.

Inmates at Cornton Vale prison in Stirling, Scotland, have two guinea pigs. The womens prison has been criticised for its overcrowding and miserable conditions.

The keeping of pets in tough prisons has echoes of the 1962 film Birdman of Alcatraz, starring Burt Lancaster. It was a largely fictionalised account of the life of Robert Stroud, a murderer and rebellious prisoner kept in solitary confinement.

To break the monotony, he adopts an orphaned sparrow as a pet. He is allowed to build up a collection of birds, becomes an expert on bird diseases and even publishes a book on the subject.

Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland (pictured) has the most animals among all British jails

Nowadays in the US, prisoners are allowed to keep more high maintenance pets. Inmates often take in rescue dogs and then train them to sit, stay and roll over.

The revelation about prison pets comes amid growing concern about the cushy state of some of Britains jails and a lack of control, with numerous riots breaking out last year.

Inmates at lower security prisons are also allowed to keep pets as part of the incentives and earned privileges scheme if they have behaved well and the governor agrees.

In April 2015, four prisoners including one who was upset over the death of his pet hamster started a riot at Stocken jail in Rutland. They wrecked their cells and smashed furniture and light fittings, causing 12,000 worth of damage at the Category C jail.

Garth prison in Lancashire  a Category B jail  allowed inmates to run a budgie breeding programme for several years. But a new governor decreed that it had to stop.

The privileges scheme was tightened up under Chris Grayling, the former justice secretary. The new rules mean that new animals can no longer be brought in by inmates but prisoners are allowed to keep existing pets until they die.
Vernon Mussington, 52, (pictured) was charged with harassing Joanne Gullon

An entrepreneur was hauled before a court accused of a hate crime  for saying 'all right geezer' to a transgender Afghanistan veteran.

Vernon Mussington, 52, was charged with harassing Joanne Gullon, who served with the RAF Reserve as a man but now says she 'identifies as a woman'.

She claimed he had 'deliberately misgendered' her on three occasions by saying 'all right geezer' to her when they passed in the street.

Mr Mussington appealed after being found guilty by magistrates last year and his conviction has now been quashed.

The case follows a judge's criticism of prosecutors after a woman ended up before him for calling a man a 'pussy'.

Mr Mussington, a committed Christian, accepts he said 'all right geezer' on the third occasion  but insists he had never met Miss Gullon before then and did not know he was talking to a transgender woman as she was wearing jeans and a jacket.

At the appeal hearing on Thursday, Miss Gullon, 47, gave evidence from behind a screen. She said she began changing gender in 2014 and was having an operation in two weeks' time.

She sobbed as she told the court being addressed with 'all right geezer' was 'very upsetting' as it 'denies your humanity' and showed the speaker refused to accept who she was.

She claimed Mr Mussington first used the phrase to her in October or November 2015 in Bedford, where they both live.

She said he also stared in between her legs and laughed, prompting her to alert PC Abi Chapman. But PC Chapman told the appeal at Luton Crown Court that she did not recall Mr Mussington being there.

At an appeal hearing on Thursday, Joanne Gullon (pictured) gave evidence from behind a screen and said she began changing gender in 2014

A fortnight later, Miss Gullon claimed Mr Mussington said 'all right geezer' to her again when he walked past her. But she said the offender was aged 35 to 40 with short hair and a mark on his cheek, but he is older, bald and has no such mark.

The third alleged incident was on January 12 last year at around 5pm when it was dark.

Miss Gullon filmed Mr Mussington on her mobile phone after he had said 'all right geezer'. She claimed he said 'I don't talk to f*****s' and 'go away gay boy' when she challenged him  both of which he denied.

The court heard that, in the footage, Mr Mussington walks away and is not heard to say anything while Miss Gullon asks: 'Call me a gay boy? For a start I'm not a f****** boy, you idiot. I have breasts. So how many more times do you want to call me geezer and gay boy?'

GENDER ROWS: THE GROWING TREND - It emerged this week that a transgender teenager is suing 13,000-a-year Hereford Cathedral School for discrimination, claiming he was 'treated like a freak' for wanting to dress as a boy. The 16-year-old, who was born female, claims he was effectively excluded from the school because staff refused to let him wear a boy's uniform. The teenager is suing his former school under the 2010 Equality Act. The school said it would defend its actions at any hearing and always put pupil wellbeing first. - Doctors have been told they should no longer refer to pregnant women as 'expectant mothers' in order to bring 'inclusive language' to GP surgeries and hospitals. They have been advised to speak of 'pregnant people' to avoid offending patients in the process of changing gender. Details of the British Medical Association's advice came in the wake of the case of Hayden Cross, 20, who is five months pregnant. Mr Cross, who was born a girl but is in the process of changing gender, has had hormone therapy and is legally male, but has not had sex-change surgery. - Last year a ferry company was forced to change its toilet door signs after staff told a transgender taxi driver to use the disabled loo. Erin Bisson, 40, from Jersey, launched a discrimination case after she was left 'humiliated' by Condor Ferries. - In 2013 PC Emma Chapman sued her force for allegedly making her 'out' herself to hundreds of officers. PC Chapman, who was born male and went through gender reassignment, claimed Essex Police control room staff had challenged her identity when she called in on the radio. A tribunal said PC Chapman was 'unreasonably prone to offence'. Advertisement

Another man can be heard to shout the homophobic phrase 'batty boy' before Miss Gullon continues: 'See, I'm really enjoying this as I'm going to go down the police now and I'm going to get you arrested.

'Come on, tell me what you called me, big boy. You're not such a big man now are you? Are you scared of a tranny?'

Miss Gullon told police: 'As a trans person, transition is so hard anyway and at the end of the day all I want to be is accepted for who I am. I served my country in Afghanistan and I can't even walk down my own street without being afraid. I have been threatened and called a freak by complete strangers.'

Mr Mussington denied a charge of harassment by making derogatory comments in relation to her gender at Luton Magistrates' Court last September. But magistrates found him guilty and he was sentenced to 150 hours' community service, and fined 360.

At the appeal, when Natasha Lloyd-Owen, defending Mr Mussington, asked Miss Gullon if 'all right geezer' was a common greeting to men, she replied: 'Maybe in your life, not in mine', adding that she 'wholeheartedly felt it was abuse'.

Recorder Stephen Lennard ruled in favour of Mr Mussington because the prosecution had relied on a 'course of conduct' involving three incidents, but failed to provide sufficient evidence of identification of Mr Mussington for the first two.

But he said he had no doubt Mr Mussington was present on the third occasion and the exchange was offensive and abusive to Miss Gullon. After his acquittal, Mr Mussington, the inventor of a patented juggling sticks game, said: 'I can't believe anyone could end up in court for saying 'all right geezer'. It's absurd.

'Everyone has the right to greet people. I didn't expect my life to be sabotaged because of it. I didn't know the person was transgender. I'd never met her before what she claimed was the third incident.

'I was just saying hello. I try to get on with everyone and say hello, whoever they are. I've been under constant stress for nearly a year because of this.'

Lenny Palmer, 53, of Elstow, Bedfordshire, was convicted last year for shouting 'batty boy'. In the case of a woman who called a man 'pussy', Judge Daniel Pearce-Higgins said in a sentencing hearing at Worcester Crown Court: 'That's an offence, is it? Good heavens. It's fairly standard behaviour in life.'
While British shoppers are facing rationing over iceberg lettuce and courgettes, supermarket shelves in Spain are overflowing with vegetables.

Shoppers in the UK are being stopped from bulk-buying vegetables such as broccoli, aubergines and tender heart cabbages due to a growing fresh produce shortage.

The shortage is being blamed on extreme weather that has devastated crops in Spain.

Supermarket shelves in Spain are overflowing with iceberg lettuce, despite the UK shortage. Pictured is a Mercadona supermarket in Mijas, Malaga

Vegetables like iceberg lettuces, courgettes and aubergines are being rationed by British supermarkets. Pictured are empty shelves in Tesco in Goole, East Yorkshire

But despite the empty shelves across Britain, supermarkets in Spain are displaying an abundance of fresh vegetables.

The rationing in the UK comes amid reports of panic buying in response to a growing fresh produce shortage that has left shelves empty across Britain.

Asda's customers will not be able to buy more than six of each item at its 525 outlets.

Several supermarkets have also decided to block online sales of many vegetables and salads to ensure they have enough stock for their high street stores.

Droughts followed by storms, floods and snow, has had a devastating impact on crops across the Mediterranean farming belt.

The shortage is being blamed on extreme weather that has devastated crops in Spain. But an abundance of lettuces are available in the Mediterranean country, including at a Lidl supermarket in Mijas, Malaga (pictured)

Pictured are iceberg lettuces on sale at an Aldi supermarket in Mijas, Malaga

There were empty containers in a Sainsbury's store in Chelmsford, Essex, following the shortage

Just a few lettuces were left at a Sainsbury's branch in Solihull, West Midlands, on Friday

This has caused a shortage of lettuce, broccoli, courgettes and other ingredients, which could last for months and is driving up prices. The crisis has been exacerbated by restaurants and caterers raiding stores after their wholesale suppliers ran out.

The Daily Mail revealed yesterday how Tesco is limiting customers to buying a maximum of three iceberg lettuces. Morrisons is also rationing store customers to a maximum of three  two in some places  and three heads of broccoli.

Now Asda is to stop people buying any more than six of five key vegetables. A spokesman said: 'We have taken the decision so that individual customers are able to get hold of their favourite veg.

'A run of unusually bad weather has resulted in availability issues  We're doing everything we can to support our growers and get back up to full supply as quickly as possible.'

Other retailers, including Ocado online, are considering rationing and the Co-op has asked customers not to bulk-buy.

But yesterday at a Sainsbury's in Southampton which warned about the low availability of lettuce, customer Wendy Smith, 67, said: 'The shelves for one type of lettuce only had two left. I think it is people panic-buying.'

Iceberg lettuces are stocked high in a Lidl supermarket in Mijas, Malaga

But there were empty containers at a Tesco Express in West Norwood, South London, on Friday

Hardly any tomatoes remained at a supermarket in Exeter, Devon, on Friday as the food shortage continued

Beetroots, cucumbers, leeks and parsnips are just a few of the vegetables which are in season now

Supermarkets are also trying to conserve supplies of vegetables and salad for their bricks-and-mortar branches by removing them from online stores.

A long list of fresh products were 'not available' on the Tesco website yesterday  no whole cucumbers, organic and tender stem broccoli, beef tomatoes, aubergines, pak choi or spinach. Many bagged salads were also unavailable.

A spokesman said: 'Our priority is to keep the shelves in stores stocked. If supplies fall below a certain level our systems make sure the products we do have go to the stores ahead of the website.'

A BOX OF LETTUCE? THAT'LL BE 50 A box of 12 iceberg lettuces was on sale online yesterday for 50. A seller called Dave wrote on Gumtree: 'There are a national shortage of these beauties so the price is a little higher due to supply and demand.' But some social media users saw the funny side of the crisis. Karen Williams wrote: 'Get a grip and romaine calm, cos this could just be the tip of the iceberg.' Marcus Chown said: 'An inevitable consequence of global warming is no icebergs.' Another user wrote: 'Maybe there wouldn't be a shortage of iceberg lettuce in the UK if we'd voted ROMAINE' Advertisement

Products listed as out of stock on the Morrisons website included bags of iceberg lettuce, wild rocket, and a large Mediterranean salad bowl.

Many products were out of stock on Ocado's website, which sells many Waitrose items. A spokesman said: 'We are not yet limiting quantities customers can buy but this is under review.' He said shoppers 'may need to be flexible about the brands or varieties they buy'.

Online yesterday, Sainsbury's had no iceberg lettuces or aubergines, Waitrose had no iceberg lettuces and Asda had no courgettes or aubergines.

Sainsbury's said: 'We take products off our website when we have limited stock to avoid customer disappointment.'

Waitrose said it takes products off the website if availability at the customer's nearest store is running low.

Spanish exporter federation Fepex has warned European vegetables will be in short supply until at least early April.

Bad weather has cut harvests by an estimated 60 per cent, with production wiped out in the Mediterranean. In a normal year, Spain ships more than 100,000 tonnes a month of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.

Mitchell Redmond, who runs a fruit and veg stall in Essex, said wholesalers were charging 1.50 for an iceberg lettuce  at least double the normal price.

Ali Capper of the UK's National Farmers' Union said: 'For a reasonable price, there is plenty of home-grown fruit and veg for everyone.'

Sandwich seller's hunt for salad

By Tom Rawstorne

Rhys Harris, who runs a sandwich shop in Cardiff, has struggled to buy ingredients

Fresh produce aisles in supermarkets around the country were blighted by empty boxes and notices apologising for low stocks and rationing yesterday.

Courgettes and all varieties of lettuce had sold out at a Sainsbury's in Streatham, south London. Just one aubergine sat on a shelf.

Customer Jean Byrne said: 'I felt angry  It's not impossible to go further afield to places like Africa if you can't grow the crops in Europe.'

Rhys Harris, who runs a sandwich shop in Cardiff, has struggled to buy ingredients. After his wholesaler's prices rocketed, he turned to supermarkets to fill the gaps, but was shocked to find shelves almost empty of vegetables at his local Asda.

The 40-year-old said: 'Nowhere has any stock. In the last two-and-a-half weeks it's the worst I have seen it by a long way. When I should be at home relaxing I am out looking for salad.'

The Tesco in Goole, East Yorkshire, was selling imported romaine lettuces from the US. Customer Alfred Smithson, 88, said: 'It's crisis point  If we ate more of our own produce instead of shipping it in from abroad we wouldn't have this problem.' Courgette displays were empty at Morrisons in Chorlton, Manchester, and lettuce rationing was being enforced at a nearby Tesco.

At a Sainsbury's superstore in Sale, customer Ewart Dowall, 72, said: 'It's odd when you go in to buy something you expect to be there and there is a gap on the shelf.' A Waitrose in the centre of Birmingham had sold out of iceberg lettuce. Melissa Nesbitt, who was using a Tesco Express in the city, said: 'I buy broccoli all the time as well as iceberg lettuce and it's really gone up in price. Compared to last week, I'm paying 10p more.'
Arnold Schwarzenegger has joked that he would 'smash' President Trump's head into a table.

The Celebrity Apprentice host told the Men's Journal he suggested the idea to his assistant when he proposed organizing a one-hour meeting with his predecessor.

But insisted he had to be 'above all that' and would instead just put him on the spot.

The former Governor of California said he made the remarks after Trump slammed the opening night ratings of the NBC show he left before taking office.

'I said, "Let's sit on it for an hour," ' Schwarzenegger told the magazine. 'I called my assistant and said, "I think what we really should do is request a meeting and go back to New York.... And then we just smash his face into the table."'

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Arnold Schwarzenegger has joked that he would 'smash' President Trump's head into a table. The Celebrity Apprentice host told the Men's Journal he suggested the idea to his assistant when he proposed organizing a one-hour meeting with his predecessor

No words needed: Arnold Schwarzenegger responded to Trump's twitter jab this morning by linking to a 2006 article discussing his release of his tax records during his 2006 reelection campaign

President Trump hit out at Arnold Schwarzenneger again Friday morning, in a tweet trashing his gubernatorial and reality TV hosting record

Working off the stress: Schwarnegger taking a bike ride following Trump's decision to take his personal beef with Schwarzenegger into the spotlight

Schwarzenegger, who has been vocal in his opposition against Trump, shot back at president's Friday morning tweet that trashed his record as Governor.

But where Trump used words, Schwarzenegger opted for more of a 'mic drop' and simply linked to a 2006 article about how he released his tax records.

The Los Angeles Daily News article discusses how he earned around $17m as part of his business portfolio.

He released his records in the run up to his 2006 reelection campaign.

Donald Trump has not released his tax returns and his counselor Kellyanne Conway said that he does not plan to as of last week, the New York Times reported.

He'd previously said he would release them following an IRS audit.

He was the first presidential candidate since the early 1970s to not release his returns.

Earlier Friday morning, Trump tweeted: 'Yes, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really bad job as Governor of California and even worse on the Apprentice...but at least he tried hard!'

Schwarzenegger replaced Trump as host of the Celebrity Apprentice this season, after NBC severed their dies with the mogul in the wake of inflammatory statements he made on the campaign trail.

The new season of the show premiered this Monday, to low ratings - despite hopes that the controversy would cause more viewers to tune in.

Trump's tweet came a day after he hit out at Schwarzenegger at the National Prayer Breakfast, calling on the attendees to pray for Arnold and 'for those ratings.'

He skewered the movie star for running the television show into the ground this season, claiming, 'It's been a total disaster.'

Schwarzenegger responded to the attack by recording a video, proposing that they switch jobs if he is so worried about the Celebrity Apprentice's ratings.

'Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs? You take over TV because you're such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job. And then, people can finally sleep comfortably again. Hmm?' Schwarzenegger said.

Schwarzenegger, a former governor of California, quickly responded with a dig of his own in a video message that he posted to Twitter. 'Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs?

Schwarzenegger, 69, is an Austrian immigrant. He cannot hold the office of president because he's not a natural born U.S. citizen.

Trump started a fight with Schwarzenegger earlier this month, before he moved into the White House, on Twitter over his debut as host of 'The Celebrity Apprentice.'

The movie star's debut as host of The Celebrity Apprentice this month garnered 4.9 million viewers. Trump's premiere his last season, in 2015, attracted 6.5 million viewers.

The tweet comes a day after Trump asked attendees at the National Prayer Breakfast (above) to pray for Arnold and Celebrity Apprentice's ratings

Trump said the 'Terminator' actor was getting ''swamped' (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT.' Schwarzenegger encouraged him to 'work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings.'

After Burnett talked about the show's origins this morning in his introduction of Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, the president reiterated his unhappiness with Schwarzenegger at the beginning of his own remarks.

'They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes,' he said.

Turning to Burnett, who had been seated next to him on the dias, Trump called Schwarzenegger a 'disaster' and said, 'Mark will never, ever bet against Trump again.'

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the president meant for the diss to be a 'light-hearted' jab at Burnett.

'I think if you look at the totality of his remarks, they were absolutely beautiful,' Spicer said. 'And I think to hone in on that it was a light-hearted moment he was trying to have with a big supporter of the National Prayer Breakfast and a personal friend.'

Trump's beef with Schwarzenegger is personal. The Republican politician supported Ohio Governor John Kasich in the GOP primary and refused to endorse Trump in the general.

His beef with Schwarzenegger is personal. The Republican politician supported Ohio Governor John Kasich in the GOP primary and refused to endorse Trump in the general.
A young girl in China was saved by an operation after her cousin accidentally threw a four-inch-long dart into her forehead on January 31.

The six-year-old was playing when her cousin picked up the dart from the side of the road and threw it, landing on the girl's forehead, close to her eyebrow, reports Huanqiu, an affiliation with the People's Daily Online.

The girl has been moved into a general ward at the hospital following some brief time in intensive care.

Unfortunate: The four-inch-long dart landed on the girl's forehead right above her eyebrow

The girl's grandparents took her to hospital where she was transferred due to the severity

The child's parents were away working and her grandparents informed them of the accident.

They later travelled home to join the girl.

She was taken to Changshun County People's Hospital however because of the severity of the case, she was transferred to a more comprehensive hospital.

There were concerns that the dart may have damaged brain tissue.

The girl's mother told reporters that the on duty doctor could not handle the case and a neurosurgeon was called in to take control.

The dart was removed in a thirty minute long surgery and she was placed in intensive care

Ouch! The girl is now said to be recovering following the accident

She was taken for surgery where it took five minutes to remove the dart and ten minutes to stop the bleeding.

The girl was then put into intensive care and then transferred to a general ward.

Xu Yuan, the on-duty doctor said that the surgical process appears to be simple but in reality very dangerous.'

They scanned her brain and found that the dart in the forehead did not damage any brain tissue.
Its thought that there may be as many as 100 million to 1 billion black holes in the Milky Way  but, as light cant escape from their confines, these objects are extremely difficult to spot.

Now, researchers have revealed a new method that could transform the search for black holes.

By analyzing the motion in an enigmatic gas cloud, the team discovered signs of a hidden black hole in our galaxy, and they say the method could be used to find others.

In one scenario, called the irruption model, they describe a high speed black hole storming through a dense gas cloud. As this happens, the gas is dragged along by the gravity of the black hole, forming a stream. This is illustrated above

WHAT COULD BE CAUSING THE STRANGE MOTION In one scenario, called the explosion model, an expanding gas shell of the supernova remnant passes near a black hole The black hole pulls the gas close to it, spurring an explosion that accelerates the gas toward Earth after the shell passed the black hole. The researchers estimate the black hole to have a mass roughly 3.5 times that of the sun, or larger. In the other scenario, called the irruption model, they describe a high speed black hole storming through a dense gas cloud. As this happens, the gas is dragged along by the gravity of the black hole, forming a stream. For this explanation, the black hole would be at least 36 times more massive than the sun. But, they arent yet sure which scenario is more likely. Advertisement

Researchers at Keio University initially set out to observe molecular clouds around the supernova remnant W44, which sits 10,000 light-years from Earth.

Using the ASTE Telescope in Chile and the 45-m Radio Telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory, both operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the team planned to examine the amount of energy transferred from the supernova to the surrounding molecular gas.

But in doing so, they discovered signs of a stray black hole at the edge of the supernova remnant.

The researchers found a compact molecular cloud, dubbed Bullet, with a bizarre pattern of motion.

The cloud has a speed of over 100km/s  faster than the speed of sound in interstellar space by more than two orders of magnitude.

On top of this, the cloud moves backward against the rotation of the Milky Way.

The researchers investigated the mysterious cloud using the two telescopes, and found that it has immense kinetic energy, causing it to appear as though its jumping out from the edge of W44.

Most of the Bullet has an expanding motion with a speed of 50 km/s, but the tip of the Bullet has a speed of 120 km/s, said graduate student Masaya Yamada.

Its kinetic energy is a few tens of times larger than that injected by the W44 supernova. It seems impossible to generate such an energetic cloud under ordinary environments.

There are two possible ways this cloud may have formed, the researchers say, both of which involve a dark and compact gravity source  possibly a black hole.

Researchers found a compact molecular cloud, Bullet, with a bizarre pattern of motion. The cloud has a speed of over 100km/s. And, the cloud moves against the rotation of the Milky Way

In one scenario, called the explosion model, an expanding gas shell of the supernova remnant passes near a black hole.

The black hole pulls the gas close to it, spurring an explosion that accelerates the gas toward Earth after the shell passed the black hole.

The researchers estimate the black hole to have a mass roughly 3.5 times that of the sun, or larger.

In the other scenario, called the irruption model, they describe a high speed black hole storming through a dense gas cloud.

There are two possible ways this cloud may have formed, the researchers say, both of which involve a dark and compact gravity source  possible a black hole. The explosion model (a) and the irruption model (b) are illustrated above

As this happens, the gas is dragged along by the gravity of the black hole, forming a stream.

For this explanation, the black hole would be at least 36 times more massive than the sun.

But, they arent yet sure which scenario is more likely.

We found a new way of discovering stray black holes, said Tomoharu Oka, a professor at the university.

Moving forward, the team will further investigate the proposed scenarios to find more evidence for a black hole using a radio interferometer, like the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA).
The sound of noisy eating can trigger an extreme reaction, called misophonia (file picture)

Many of us find the sounds of our loved ones eating annoying.

But for some people simple sounds like this trigger an extreme reaction.

One sufferer of the condition, called misophonia, said she feels like punching people in the face when she hears the trigger sound of family members crunching on crisps.

But when she went to her doctor, she said he laughed in her face.

Now scientists have shown that the condition has a real biological basis and goes way beyond simply being irritable.

Brain scans show that people who find the sound of chewing, breathing, or numerous other conditions unbearable have a genuine brain abnormality.

People with misophonia  as the condition was named in 2001 - can respond with an intense fight or flight reaction.

Researchers at Newcastle University found a difference in the frontal lobe in misophonia sufferers, suggesting it is a genuine condition where medical opinion in the past has been sceptical.

Writing in the journal Current Biology, they found changes in the brain activity when a trigger sound is experienced.

They also found people with misophonia experienced an increased heart rate and sweated when they were confronted by a trigger sound.

The difference lies in the emotional control mechanism that causes their brains to go into overdrive on hearing trigger sounds, the authors write.

Dr Sukhbinder Kumar, from the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University, said: For many people with misophonia, this will come as welcome news as for the first time we have demonstrated a difference in brain structure and function in sufferers.

This study demonstrates the critical brain changes as further evidence to convince a sceptical medical community that this is a genuine disorder.

Tim Griffiths, Professor of Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University and UCL, said: I hope this will reassure sufferers.

I was part of the sceptical community myself until we saw patients in the clinic and understood how strikingly similar the features are.

One misophonia sufferer said her GP laughed when she told him about her symptoms.

Olana Tansley-Hancock, 29, from Ashford in Kent, was eight years old when family meals became unbearable for her.

She said: The noise of my family eating forced me to retreat to my own bedroom for meals.

I can only describe it as a feeling of wanting to punch people in the face when I heard the noise of them eating - and anyone who knows me will say that doesnt sound like me.

Brain scans show that people who find the sound of chewing, breathing, or numerous other conditions unbearable have a genuine brain abnormality (file picture)

The issue came to a head when she went to university and had to move train carriages seven times because the noise of people eating and rustling papers was unbearable.

When I saw my GP at the time, he laughed at me, she said.

Then I tried a counsellor but in my case, that made it worse as it made me even more sensitive to sound.

After researching misophonia, she has changed her lifestyle, reducing her caffeine and alcohol intake and uses headphones when visiting the cinema.

She said:This research is a huge relief as it shows there is a physical basis for misophonia which should help others understand the condition.

It also opens up the opportunity for better management.
They may be noisy, smelly and often aggressive creatures, but baboons could have had a special role in ancient Egypt 3,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have discovered a tomb belonging to man described as a 'true renowned scribe' intricately decorated with carvings of the great apes.

They believe the baboons may have been the scribe's muse, which is why they are given such prominence in his tomb.

Inscribed on the wall of the scribe's tomb were four baboons that appear to be worshipping the boat of the sun god Ra-Atum (pictured). Archaeologists believe the discovery could shed new light on the importance of scribes in ancient Egypt

The man, named Khonsu, is thought to have been a Royal Scribe to one of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt who ruled during the Ramesside period around 1200 BC.

The tomb was discovered among the ruins of the vast necropolis of Thebes in Luxor.

Professor Jiro Kondo, an Egyptologist at Waseda University in Japan, who led the excavation, said the discovery could shed new light on the role of scribes in Ancient Egypt.

His team discovered the tomb while exploring an area of the Thebes necropolis that housed the tomb of a high official called Userhat, who served Amenhotep III between 1386BC and 1349 BC.

WHAT WAS THEBES? Known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset, Thebes became the capital city of Egypt after Ahmose I founded the New Kingdom. It is located around 500 miles (800km) south of the Mediterranean. The city was one of the wealthiest in Ancient Egypt and became an important trading post in the Nile river valley. On the western bank of the Nile extends a large necropolis that houses many Royal tombs and the funerary complexes of other senior figures. It includes both the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens, where the tombs of Pharaohs and their wives are found. Advertisement

Professor Kondo said they found a hole while clearing rubble from the forecourt of Userhat's tomb and were stunned by what they saw inside.

He told MailOnline: 'No-one knew that there were tombs that have beautiful decorations or inscriptions inside that still remain undiscovered.'

Speaking to Seeker, he added: 'On the north wall of the entrance doorway, we found a scene showing the solar boat of the god Ra-Atum being worshiped by four baboons showing the pose of adoration.'

Baboons are thought to have been revered in ancient Egypt and were associated with wisdom and precision.

Their presence in the tomb of a royal scribe suggests these were considered to be valuable attributes for people of his status.

Some experts believe they were the spiritual muses of scribes.

Professor Kondo and his colleagues believe Khonsu must have held them in high regard for them to be carved in such a prominent place in his tomb.

Ra-Atum was a composite deity in ancient Egypt  the sun god and god of creation, who was often linked to the Pharaohs.

The intricately decorated tomb showed Khonsu and his wife worshipping the gods Osiris and his wife Isis (pictured). Osiris was the god of the afterlife

The newly discovered tomb was found after researchers climbed into a hole exposed when they cleared up rubble in the ruins of the necropolis at Thebes (pictured) in Luxor

The tomb uncovered by Professor Kondo and his team was T-shaped with an east-west main axis.

The entrance faced the east and the main chamber stretched 15 feet (4.6m) long while the traverse hall stretched 18 feet (5.5 m) in a north to south direction.

On the north wall of the entrance area, carvings depicted the boat that carries Ra-Atum across the sky being worshipped by the four baboons.

Adjacent to these hieroglyphics inscribed vertically describe Khonsu as a 'true renowned scribe.'

Professor Kondo said: 'The tomb was discovered while we were cleaning the area to the east of the forecourt of the tomb of Userhat, a high official under Amenhotep III.

Khonsu's tomb was discovered as archaeologists cleared rubble from the forecourt of another tomb complex in the necropolis of Thebes, close of the modern city of Luxor (shown on map)

'We found a hole hewn to the northern surface of the bedrock to the northeast of the forecourt.

'After entering the hole, it turned out the hole is connected to the south wall of the transverse hall of the previously unknown tomb of Khonsu.'

On the southern part of the eastern wall in the transverse hall, Khonsu and his wife are shown worshipping the ancient Egyptian gods Osiris and Isis.

Behind Khonsu and his wife is a depiction of two ram-headed deities, probably Khnum or Khnum-Re.

The ceiling of the tomb (pictured) was colourfully decorated in a style that is typical of the Ramesside period between 12921069 BC, according to the researchers

Osiris was the god of the afterlife and ruler of the dead while the goddess Isis was considered to be his wife.

On the northern part of the eastern wall in the transverse hall, the seated figures of the gods Osiris and Isis are depicted but the upper part of their bodies has been broken.

In the lower part of the same wall, a painting shows the fellows of the tomb owners. Most of the paintings on the western wall of the transverse hall are not visible.

THE SEARCH FOR HIDDEN CHAMBERS INSIDE THE PYRAMIDS For more than 4,500 years, Egypt's pyramids have kept their secrets hidden deep within the labyrinth of passages and chambers that lie inside their towering stone structures. But the long-running row over whether the Great Pyramid of Giza is hiding a network of previously undiscovered tunnels behind its stone walls could soon finally be answered. A group of researchers who have been using cosmic particles known as muons to scan the Great Pyramid of Giza have said they expect to finish their work later this month. They are using the scans to create maps to reveal the internal structure of the 479 feet (146m) high pyramid and say they could help to unlock ancient secrets that have been buried beneath the stone. In 2015 thermal scanning identified a major anomaly in the Great Pyramid, the largest and oldest of the pyramids at Giza and one of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Those scans identified three adjacent stones at its base which registered higher temperatures than others. This led to theories that they may be hiding a secret chamber that has yet to be discovered. A team of experts then set up the ScanPyramid's project to use muons, tiny subatomic particle that are typically produced by cosmic rays smash into atoms on Earth, to peer through the Pyramid's huge stone blocks, some of which weight up to 15 tons. Advertisement

A frieze pattern near the ceiling is in a typical khekher style of the Ramesside period.

Professor Kondo said the ceiling decorations are generally in better condition than the wall paintings.

He said the discovery suggests there may be more tombs  possibly of other scribes  waiting to be uncovered in the same area.

Professor Kondo said he and his team also plan to begin excavating the inner chamber of Khonsu's tomb.

'I think there could be more to find,' he said. 'I hope to do further research on the tomb of Khonsu at the coming season.'
The BBC's innovative 'Spy in the Wild' series ends tonight with a special episode on how the show's realistic animal cameras were made.

Spy in the Wild deployed over 30 ultra-realistic animatronic Spy Creatures across 31 locations over three years of filming.

Over the course of the series the undercover cameras got up close and personal with some unique animal behaviours.

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The BBC's innovative 'Spy in the Wild' series ends tonight with a special episode on how they made the show's realistic animal cameras. Spy in the Wild deployed over 30 ultra-realistic animatronic Spy Creatures to go undercover in the animal world

TONIGHT'S EPISODE In tonight's behind the scenes programme viewers see the extraordinary effort that goes into getting the Spy Creatures to become part of so many different animal families. It shows how the concept of the Spy Creatures evolved from the original and more simple 'Bouldercams' lodged in fake rocks to the animal cameras used throughout the series. The programme then follows the team who built the robots to become realistic animal spies. Viewers then join the robots as they are first deployed and operated in the field. Advertisement

The lives of a handful of animals were revealed in fascinating detail with many showing remarkably human-like behaviour.

The robotic lookalikes had to make realistic movements and noises to fit in and interact with the animals around them.

The innovative techniques involved in crafting the robot spies are documented in the fifth and final episode of the series, which airs in the UK tonight.

Viewers will see the creation of the spy creatures and witness their first moves before their deployment around the world.

One robot featured in the programme, known as 'Spy pup', was accepted by wild dogs on the African Savannah.

The team that built the robot, based in a small animatronics studio in London, designed him to take a respectful bow to his peers  a way of saying: 'I pose no threat.'

The lives of a handful of animals were revealed in fascinating detail, revealing remarkably human-like behaviour. One robot, known as 'Spy pup' (pictured), was accepted by wild dogs on the African Savannah

'Beneath the robot's skin is a miracle of animatronic engineering,' the programme explains.

'The moves of the different creatures' real-life counterparts are programmed and tested.

'Each one takes months to design and build.'

During the BBC's recording of the series, Spy Pup observed the incredible moment a rival lioness moved in on the pack's den to savage the group's 12 puppies.

The team, based in a small animatronics studio in London, designed Spy Pup to take a respectful bow to his peers  a way of saying: 'I pose no threat'

The creepy robotic skeleton of one of the programme's animatronic meerkats (pictured) is also revealed in tonight's episode

The footage shows the mother dog jumping wildly to distract the big cat, eventually succeeding in drawing her away from going in for the kill.

The creepy robotic skeleton of one of the programme's animatronic meerkats is also revealed in tonight's episode.

Stripped of all of its fur, the meerkat looks more like a tiny Terminator than a cuddly African mammal.

John Nolan, who designed the robot, has worked on many top Hollywood films.

When the wild meerkat colony that the robot infiltrated woke up to find a new arrival sharing their African termite mound, they surrounded him to investigate.

To make him smell, as well as look the part, the interloper's fur had been smeared with meerkat droppings.

Stripped of all of its fur, the series' robotic meerkat looks more like a tiny Terminator than a cuddly African mammal

To make him smell, as well as look the part, the interloping meerkat's fur had to be smeared with meerkat droppings

Series producer John Downer said: 'The others found him intriguing and tended to congregate beside him.'

From his unique vantage point, the newcomer was able to witness the high standards of loyalty that meerkats expect from one other.

'When a female mates with a male from another pack, she is excluded from the territory by the others to teach her a lesson, though they eventually let her back in.'

In tonight's behind the scenes programme viewers see the extraordinary effort that goes into getting the Spy Creatures to become part of so many different animal families.

When the wild meerkat colony that the robot infiltrated woke up to find a new arrival sharing their African termite mound, they surrounded him to investigate

The robotic meerkat (left) filmed how different members of the colony viewed loyalty among the pack

It shows how the concept of the Spy Creatures evolved from the more simple 'Bouldercams' made to look like fake rocks to the complex animal robots used throughout the series.

Viewers then join the robots as they are first deployed and operated in the field.

The episode airs in the UK on BBC1 tonight at 7:30pm.
The three 'norths' are due to combine over Britain this month for the first time in history, and will stay over the country for the next three-and-a-half years. What this means is that true north, magnetic north and grid north will all line up, according to national mapping service Ordnance Survey. True north is the direction along the surface of the Earth that ends at the North Pole, while magnetic north points where the planet's magnetic field goes downwards. Grid north is the direction of the grid lines on maps, that usually point towards or near the North Pole. The three norths will make landfall at the village of Langton Matravers just west of Swanage in early November, before slowly travelling up the country. Dr Susan Macmillan, of the British Geological Survey, said: 'This is a once in a lifetime occurrence. Due to the unpredictability of the magnetic field on long timescales it's not possible to say when the alignment of the three norths will happen again.'
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It is a bizarre sight - resembling the top of a giant ice cream cone at first glance.

New European Space Agency pictures from its Mars Express have revealed the Red Planets north polar ice cap and its distinctive dark spiralling troughs in unprecedented detail.

The giant troughs are caused by freezing and melting carbon dioxide, and get their distinctive shape from spiralling winds similar to hurricanes on earth.

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The mosaic was generated from 32 individual orbit strips captured between 2004 and 2010, and covers an area of around a million square kilometres. This image shows a perspective view of the Mars north polar ice cap and its distinctive dark troughs forming a spiral-like pattern. The view is based on images taken by ESAs Mars Express and generated using elevation data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) on board the NASA Mars Global Surveyor mission.

HOW THEY FORMED During the warmer summer months most of the carbon dioxide ice turns directly into gas and escapes into the atmosphere, leaving behind the water-ice layers. Strong winds are thought to have played an important role in shaping the ice cap over time, blowing from the elevated centre towards its lower edges and twisted by the same Coriolis force that causes hurricanes to spiral on Earth. Subsurface investigations by radar instruments onboard Mars Express and NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed that the ice cap is made up of many individual layers of ice and dust extending to a depth of around 2 km. Advertisement

The mosaic was generated from 32 individual orbit strips captured between 2004 and 2010, and covers an area of around a million square kilometres.

The ice cap is a permanent fixture, but in the winter season  as it is now in early 2017  temperatures are cold enough for around 30 percent of the carbon dioxide in the planets atmosphere to precipitate onto the cap, adding a seasonal layer up to a metre thick.

During the warmer summer months most of the carbon dioxide ice turns directly into gas and escapes into the atmosphere, leaving behind the water-ice layers.

Strong winds are thought to have played an important role in shaping the ice cap over time, blowing from the elevated centre towards its lower edges and twisted by the same Coriolis force that causes hurricanes to spiral on Earth.

One particularly prominent feature is a 500 km-long, 2 km-deep trench that almost cuts the cap in two.

The plunging canyon, known as Chasma Boreale, is thought to be a relatively old feature, forming before the icedust spiral features, and seemingly growing deeper as new ice deposits built up around it.

Subsurface investigations by radar instruments onboard Mars Express and NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed that the ice cap is made up of many individual layers of ice and dust extending to a depth of around 2 km.

This presents a valuable record for the nature of how the planets climate has changed as its tilt and orbit varied over hundreds of thousands of years.

The Mars north polar ice cap in context, left, and the same area as seen in the massive mosaic. The plunging canyon, known as Chasma Boreale, is thought to be a relatively old feature, forming before the icedust spiral features, and seemingly growing deeper as new ice deposits built up around it.

Earlier this week NASA revealed summer on Mars is a little different from an Earth season - especially at the north pole.

Stunning new images from NASA's HiRISE satellite reveal a dune field formed near the base of the North Polar cap.

The amazing patterns are clearly visible, and NASA says image was taken during the Martian northern summer, so there is no frost present on the dunes.Scroll down for video

However, dunes require a source of loose particulate material to form.

This perspective view of the Mars north polar cap focuses on the ~500 km long, 100 km wide, and 2 km-deep canyon known as Chasma Boreale. The giant trough, which gives the appearance of almost cutting the ice cap in two, is thought to have been present before the iconic spiraling ice cap formed, seemingly growing deeper as new ice deposits built up around it.

The source of the northern dune fields around the polar cap may be from the layers of dusty ice that are eroded by strong polar winds, experts believe.

This image was taken during the Martian northern summer, so there is no frost present on the dunes.

The dunes closest to the base of the polar cap are long and parallel, indicating strong winds from the direction of the cap.

This dune field formed near the base of the North Polar cap, and was taken during the Martian northern summer, so there is no frost present on the dunes. The dunes closest to the base of the polar cap are long and parallel, indicating strong winds from the direction of the cap. As they get farther away from the polar cap, they start to form more crescent shaped dunes, called barchan dunes.

As they get farther away from the polar cap, they start to form more crescent shaped dunes, called barchan dunes.

Repeated observations by HiRISE of dunes like these show measurable changes in some locations.

'This discovery adds to the growing evidence that there are active processes happening all over the surface of Mars today,' NASA says.

As the dunes get farther away from the polar cap, they start to form more crescent shaped dunes, called barchan dunes. Repeated observations by HiRISE of dunes like these show measurable changes in some locations.

The surface of the red planet may be a desolate land with little geological activity now, but it is filled with fascinating bumps and scratches from frozen poles to deep basins, all hinting at a geologically active past.

Earlier this year a team at Nasa has released more than 600 images of Mars, showing a range of gullies, dunes, craters, geological layering and other features.

Each feature teaches us something new about the history of our mysterious neighbour, which used to be covered with oceans, ice sheets and erupting volcanoes.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the red planet, capturing pictures using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, since 2006. Now the team behind the orbiter has published hundreds of new images. Hyblaeus Dorsa, one of the ridges on the planet, is shown

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been circling the red planet, capturing pictures using its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, since 2006.

The team behind the orbiter, led by Nasa's Jet Propulsion Lab in Passadena and the University of Arizona, has now published hundreds of new images taken by the instrument.

Among the images are hundreds showing one of its most fascinating features: craters.

There are hundreds of thousands of impact craters on Mars, caused by encounters with other objects such as asteroids, but only some of them have names.

Other craters were formed in different ways, through volcanic activity, for example.

Some of these craters have provided clues to the most fascinating history of the Martian surface.

Other craters were formed in different ways, through volcanic activity, for example. Some of these craters have provided clues to the most fascinating history of the Martian surface. Concave fagged features in the Tempe Fossae region, a group of troughs in the Arcadia quadrangle of Mars, shown

Among the images are hundreds showing one of its most fascinating features: craters. This picture shows a crater in the Chryse Planitia region, a relatively smooth, circular plain. Some think the plain is an ancient impact basin, in the north equatorial region of Mars

The surface of Mars is a well worn place in the solar system, heavily pounded by countless meteor impacts. And some of these craters are hundreds of millions of years old. So its unusual for there to be a completely fresh impact on the surface. A recent impact site is pictured

Mesa-Forming layered materials pictured. A mesa is an elevated area of land with a flat top and sides that are usually steep cliffs

Mars is now a frozen desert, but geological studies of rocks by previous missions to the surface have suggested the planet used to be warmer and wetter.

The polar caps on the planet spend much of their time, during the pole's winter, in continuous darkness.

When the poles are again exposed to sunlight, the frozen carbon dioxide sublimes into gas, creating enormous winds that sweep off the poles as fast as 250 mph (400 km/h).

The caps at both poles are mainly made of water ice.

Frozen carbon dioxide accumulates as a thin layer about one metre thick on the north cap in the northern winter only, while the south cap has a permanent dry ice cover about 26 feet (8 metres) thick.

Both polar caps have spiral-shaped troughs (pictured), which analysis of ice penetrating radar has shown are a result of spiralling winds.

The polar caps on the planet spend much of their time, during the pole's winter, in continuous darkness. When the poles are again exposed to sunlight, the frozen carbon dioxide sublimes into gas, creating enormous winds that sweep off the poles as fast as 250 mph (400 km/h). The south polar residual cap is pictured

Cerberus Fossae (pictured) is a long fracture system in the southeastern part of Elysium. The system has acted as a conduit for the release of both lava and water onto the surface of the planet. Mars is now a frozen desert, but geological studies of rocks by previous missions to the surface have suggested the planet used to be warmer and wetter

The total volume of ice in the south polar cap, including nearby layered deposits, is around 380,000 cubic miles (1.6 million cubic km). Both the north and south polar caps have spiral-shaped troughs (south pictured), which analysis of ice penetrating radar has shown are a result of spiralling winds

At one point, Mars was covered with oceans, ice sheets and erupting volcanoes that created the mountains that tower over the planet.

Some of these remain, like Olympus Mons - the largest-known volcano in the solar system, measuring 15 miles (24 km) high.

Olympus Mons, the solar system's biggest volcano, three times higher than Mount Everest, is thought to have had its last major eruption as recently as 25 million years ago.

At one point, Mars was covered with oceans, ice sheets and erupting volcanoes that created the mountains that tower over the planet. Some of these remain, like Olympus Mons - the largest-known volcano in the solar system, measuring 15 miles (24 km) high. Olympus Mons (pictured) is the solar system's biggest volcano, three times higher than Mount Everest

Groundwater moving beneath a massive tectonic rift zone helped carve some of Mars' deepest basins. A study published earlier this year claimed these basins may have been habitable, suggesting that life once existed on the red planet. A valley in the Northern Hellas Planitia, pictured

Billions of years ago Mars might have been home to even larger volcanoes.

Evidence collected by Nasa's Curiosity rover earlier this year showed these ancient volcanoes might have been a lot more powerful than we had thought.

Curiosity's instruments found a substance called tridymite - a kind of crystal that only forms on Earth as a result of extremely hot, silcic volcanoes.

The tridymite was found in the Gale crater, a crater that spans 96 miles (154km) in diameter and holds a mountain rising from the crater floor.

Silicic volcanism is a highly explosive form of volcanic activity, which happens as tectonics plates move from the Earths outer shell into the Earths mantle and force water into the molten depths.

The plates melt into magma, which is ejected out into the surface in a powerful eruption.

There has been no evidence found for plate tectonics on Mars so far, so how the silcic volcanism occurred is a mystery.

Coprates Chasma, is a major trough in the Valles Marineris canyon system, pictured. Evidence collected by Nasa's Curiosity rover earlier this year showed these ancient volcanoes might have been a lot more powerful than we had thought

Isidis Planitia, pictured, is a plain inside a giant impact basin on Mars. Groundwater moving beneath a massive tectonic rift zone helped carve some of Mars' deepest basins. A study published earlier this year claimed these basins may have been habitable, suggesting that life once existed on the red planet

Groundwater moving beneath a massive tectonic rift zone helped carve some of Mars' deepest basins.

A study published earlier this year claimed these basins may have been habitable, suggesting that life once existed on the red planet.

The discovery could help future exploration missions decide where to look for evidence of Martian life.

'The temperature ranges, presence of liquid water, and nutrient availability, which characterize known habitable environments on Earth, have higher chances of forming on Mars in areas of long-lived water and volcanic processes,' said lead author Alexis Palmero Rodriguez.

Sand dunes are among the most widespread features on Mars, serving as unique indicators of the interaction between the atmosphere and surface.

On a planetary body, dunes accumulate where a supply of sand-sized grains exists or may be abraded, is carried downwind by winds, and is subsequently deposited where these winds weaken below the threshold for sand transport.

Dunes can be preserved in rock over time. This means the deposits can reveal insights into the evolution of Mars' atmosphere from a more hospitable realm to the harsh, dry climate there today.

As a result, the study of dune processes contributes to both atmospheric and sedimentary science.

It might look more like bacteria growin in a petri dish, but this picture actually shows frosty dunes on Mars' surface. Sand dunes (pictured) are among the most widespread features on Mars. Dunes form where a supply of sand-sized grains exists or may be abraded then carried downwind by winds

Dunes in the Russell Crater, pictured. Dunes can be preserved in rock over time. This means the deposits can reveal insights into the evolution of Mars' atmosphere from a more hospitable realm to the harsh, dry climate there today. As a result, the study of dune processes contributes to both atmospheric and sedimentary science

On a planetary body, dunes accumulate where a supply of sand-sized grains exists or may be abraded, is carried downwind by winds, and is subsequently deposited where these winds weaken below the threshold for sand transport. Dunes can be preserved in rock over time

The surface of Mars is also covered with narrow, deep channels known as gullies.

Martian gullies carved into hill slopes and the walls of impact craters were discovered several years ago.

Exactly how these gullies formed is not fully understood - previous research had suggested the structures were a result of flowing liquid water, because water makes similar structures on Earth.

Polar ice caps were discovered on the planet four decades ago, and erosion patterns on the surface strongly suggest rivers and oceans may have existed there in its early years.

With low gravity and a thin atmosphere, it was thought that this water largely evaporated out into space, instead of falling back down, as it would have done on Earth.

But new research shows water is not behind the Martian gullies, instead suggesting they could be created by carbon dioxide freezing and thawing.

INDIAN SPACE PROBE SNAPS NEW IMAGES OF THE RED PLANET India's space agency has released a new series of beautiful images, beamed back from its Mars orbiter, revealing our closest planetary neighbour in all its glory The spotlight surrounding research on Mars is often on the US, European and Russian space agencies. But while it may be overlooked, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) remains one of only three national space programmes to have reached the red planet to date. To celebrate its achievements, the space agency has released a new series of beautiful images using data beamed back from its Mars orbiter, revealing our closest planetary neighbour in all its glory. India's Mars Orbiter Mission, called 'Mangalyaan', reached the red planet in September 2014. Since then it has been taking measurements, collecting data and capturing images from orbit. Last month, ISRO released its first full years data from the orbiter  covering the period up to September 2015  with its incredible images beamed back in a stream of pixels. Advertisement

The ExoMars Landing Site, taken on 14 August. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a heavy lift Proton rocket on 14 March to begin a seven-month, 300 million-mile (483 million km) journey to the red planet.

THE EXOMARS TIMELINE Launch: 14 March Mid-course correction: 28 July SchiaparelliTGO separation: 16 October 2016 TGO manoeuvre: 17 October 2016 Orbiter insertion into Mars orbit: 19 October 2016 Schiaparelli entry, descent and landing: 19 October 2016 Aerobraking: JanuaryNovember 2017 Science phase begins: December 2017 Advertisement

A spacecraft designed to search the atmosphere of Mars for clues of life on the surface of the red planet successfully blasted off in March this year.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan aboard a heavy lift Proton rocket on 14 March to begin a seven-month, 300 million-mile (483 million km) journey to the red planet.

It is due to analyse Mars' atmosphere to search for low levels of gases such as methane that may betray the presence of alien life on the planet's surface.

ExoMars 2016 is the first phase of an historic 1.2 billion (924 million) joint European-Russian mission to search for biochemical 'fingerprints' of past or present life high above Mars and on its surface.

Scientists believe the probe has the potential to find 'very strong evidence' of alien life when it arrives at Mars on 19 October.

Scientists hope to land the ExoMars rover in Oxia Palus, a plain located on the north east of Mars.

However, any new data won't be shared until the end of next year at the earliest, because the probe has to spend a year decelerating so it can graze the atmosphere at a slow enough speed.

In 2018, a robotic probe built by Lockheed Martin for Nasa, the Mars InSight mission, will set off for red planet.
Long periods in space can change the bacterial makeup of the human gut, researchers have found.

The find, made as part of NASA's twin study of Scott and Mark Kelly, could have major implications for prolonged trips - to the red planet, for instance.

Northwestern researchers are comparing the effect of living at zero gravity for a year on a human's gut microbiota - the 'bugs' found naturally in the gastrointestinal tract (GI) to aid digestion.

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While astronaut Scott Kelly (right) lived aboard the International Space Station for 340 days, his identical twin brother Mark (left) remained on Earth  and researchers have now found a number of differences between the two

WHAT THEY FOUND There was a shift in the balance between the two dominant groups of bacteria (Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes) in Scott Kelly's GI tract when he was in space. The balance returned to pre-flight levels when Scott Kelly returned to Earth. Fluctuations in the same bacterial groups were seen in Mark Kelly, the control on Earth, but the fluctuations were not as great as those seen in Scott Kelly in space. Differences in the viral, bacterial and fungal populations between Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly were pronounced at all time points; however, this was expected when comparing different individuals, even identical twins. The surprise finding was that a change in diversity of gut microbes (the number of different species) was not observed in Scott Kelly while in space. Advertisement

The Northwestern team is one of 10 NASA-funded research groups studying the Kelly twins to learn how living in space for a long period of time - such as a mission to Mars - affects the human body.

While Scott spent nearly a year in space, his brother, Mark, remained on Earth, as a ground-based control.

'We are seeing changes associated with spaceflight, and they go away upon return to Earth,' said Fred W. Turek, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Biology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is a co-leader of the study.

'It's early in our analysis, so we don't know yet what these changes mean,' said Martha H. Vitaterna, study co-leader and research associate professor of neurobiology at Northwestern.

'We don't know what it is about spaceflight that is driving the changes in gut microbes.'

The research team includes collaborators from Rush University Medical School and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

'We will be working closely with the other Twins Study teams to piece together a more complete picture of the effects of long space missions,' Turek said.

'What we learn will help us safeguard the health of astronauts, and it will also help us improve human health on Earth.'

Turek reported his team's preliminary research results at NASA's Human Research Program's annual Investigators' Workshop, held last week in Galveston, Texas.

This was the first meeting where the researchers with the 10 Twins Study teams, which are looking at different aspects of the twins' physiology, could share their data with each other.

'We were very excited to learn what the other teams have discovered and to start thinking about how it fits with our findings,' Vitaterna said.

'This is a big milestone - we now know things we didn't know before.'

The researchers cautioned that the findings are preliminary and that they have not had a chance to dig deeply to figure out what the data mean.

'This will happen in the coming months when we look at our findings in the context of what the other teams are finding,' Vitaterna said.

'Right now, we do not see anything alarming or scary - the Kelly twins seem to have healthy gut microbiomes.'

Scientists reported their preliminary results at a meeting for NASA's Human Research Program on January 26. The Kelly brothers have nearly identical genomes and similar life experiences, allowing for an unprecedented look at the physical effects of long-term spaceflight

Other teams in the project found astronauts suffer mysterious mutations in their DNA after spending just a year in space.

This is according to the first results of NASAs ground-breaking 'Twins Study' which looked at difference between astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly.

While Scott Kelly lived aboard the International Space Station for 340 days, his identical twin, Mark, remained on Earth.

Nasa has released its first set of data which suggests Kelly's genes changed during the 340 days on the International Space Station - but it isn't exactly sure why.

WHY YOU GET TALLER IN SPACE Astronauts can grow up to 3 inches taller in space because of how microgravity affects the human body. Imagine that the vertebrae in your back form a giant spring. Pushing down on the spring keeps it coiled tightly. When the force is released, the spring stretches out. In the same way, the spine elongates by up to three percent while humans travel in space. There is less gravity pushing down on the vertebrae, so they can stretch out - up to 7.6 centimeters (3 inches). To some degree, stretching of the spine happens to every night. When you lie down, gravity isn't pushing down on your vertebrae.

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Geneticists are working to determine which changes are the result of Scott Kelly's time in orbit.

Scientists reported their preliminary results at a meeting for NASA's Human Research Program on January 26, according to Nature.

The Kelly brothers have nearly identical genomes and similar life experiences, allowing for an unprecedented look at the physical effects of long-term spaceflight.

Blood and other biological samples were collected from the pair before, during, and after Scott Kelly's mission.

'Almost everyone is reporting that we see differences,' geneticist Christopher Mason, of Weill Cornell Medicine, told Nature.

'The data are so fresh that some of them are still coming off the sequencing machines.'

To their surprise, the researchers found that Scott Kelly's telomeres  the caps on the ends of chromosomes  grew to be longer than Mark's.

According to Susan Bailey, a radiation biologist at Colorado State University, 'that is exactly the opposite of what we thought.'

But, the findings have since been confirmed by a second lab.

Scott's telomeres soon returned to their normal, pre-flight lengths after he returned to the ground, and the team is working to determine what this means.

The study is so far one of the most detailed molecular profiles ever conducted, and could help pave the way for personalized medicines in future spaceflight. Scott Kelly can be seen floating during a spacewalk in December 2015

HOW DID SCOTT KELLY'S DNA CHANGE IN SPACE? - Scott's telomeres  the caps at the end of each chromosome  lengthened while in space - Telomeres are key to protecting DNA from damage and tend to shorten with age - Interestingly, Scott's telomeres shortened again once he was back on Earth - Nasa say that Scott's lengthening telomeres are linked with his diet and exercise routine on the station The Kelly twins are both astronauts with spaceflight under their belts; Scott holds a lifetime total of 520 days, while Mark has flown for a total of 54 - The ratio of two groups of gut bacteria shifted while Scott was in space, likely due to his change in diet - His gut bacteria levels returned to normal once he was back on Earth. - Nasa research has spotted hundreds of diverging genetic mutations in Scott and Mark's genomes. - The research team speculate that a 'space gene' could have been activated while Scott was in orbit Advertisement

They also noted changes in DNA methylation  the reversible addition of a chemical marker to DNA that can affect gene expression, according to Nature.

While DNA methylation decreased in Scott while he was in orbit, it simultaneously increased in Mark.

And, the levels returned close to normal for both men soon after Scott returned.

The meaning of this, too, still remains unclear, the scientists say.

In addition, the researchers also found differences in gene-expression signatures.

While these changes are common on Earth, they appeared to be much larger than normal in Scott Kelly.

This could be the result of the different stresses of space-life, from eating freeze-dried food to attempting to sleep in microgravity, Nature reports.

The study is so far one of the most detailed molecular profiles ever conducted, and could help pave the way for personalized medicines in future spaceflight.

HOW MICROGRAVITY TAKES ITS TOLL ON THE HUMAN BODY There is a loss of body weight and calcium. Bodily fluids are redistributed, with less in the lower extremities, and more in the upper body. Without the pulls of normal gravity, blood doesn't flow downhill, but pools in the extremities including the face, hands and feet, causing a puffy appearance. And without that downward pressure, height increases. Body mass often decreases with a loss of muscular tissue from nitrogen depletion; the veins and arteries of the legs become weaker, anaemia occurs, accompanied by a reduction in blood count. The calcium loss from bones subjected to extended microgravity takes place at 10 times the rate of an elderly person suffering from osteoporosis. Advertisement

But, with just two subjects, the results may not be generalizable.

The Kelly twins are both astronauts with spaceflight under their belts; Scott holds a lifetime total of 520 days, while Mark has flown for a total of 54.

When Scott Kelly first arrived back in Houston last March, he appeared to be slightly taller than his twin brother.

The height difference was caused by the ISS' microgravity conditions which elongate the spine  but the effect was only temporary.
Severe solar storms could be causing healthy marine animals to lose their way, leaving them stranded on land by the hundreds.

Scientists have launched an investigation on the mysterious phenomenon that has caused whales, dolphins, and porpoises to end up beached along coastal areas around the world.

While human-made influences, like the use of sonar-type equipment, could play a role in interfering with their internal compasses, researchers say the real driving force is likely more extreme.

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Severe solar storms could be causing healthy marine animals to lose their way, leaving them stranded on land by the hundreds. Scientists have launched an investigation on the mysterious phenomenon that has caused whales, dolphins, and porpoises to get stuck along coastal areas

THE IMPACTS OF SOLAR STORMS If Earth's magnetic field was hit by charged particles from a solar storm the effects could include: - Electric grid disruption - Radar interference - Solar cell damage - Telecommunication cable disruption - Pipeline corrosion - Loss of synchronisation of global internet - Airline passenger radiation Advertisement

Stranding events can effect as few as three or as many as several hundred animals at once.

And, theyre more likely to happen in New Zealand, Australia, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

These locations share some key characteristics, such as the geography, gently sloping beaches, and fine-grained sediment, which we think all play some role in these events, said project collaborator Katie Moore, the director of IFAWs global Animal Rescue Program.

Researchers have long suspected solar activity may contribute to this bizarre phenomenon, but this is the first time its being studied in depth.

Numerous other explanations have been proposed as well, with some suggesting the use of multi-beam sounders and other instruments used to map the seafloor or locate potential fishing sites are messing with their internal compasses.

However, these human-made influences do not explain most of the strandings, said NASA heliophysicist Antti Pulkkinen.

Theories as to the cause include magnetic anomalies and meteorological events, such as extreme tides during a new moon and coastal storms, which are thought to disorient the animals.

It has been speculated that due to the possible magnetic-field sensing used by these animals to navigate, magnetic anomalies could be at least partially responsible.

During a solar storm, the sun ejects giant bubbles of charged particles.

This is known to interfere with Earth-orbiting satellites and power grids, as the particles slam into the magnetosphere.

Stranding events can effect as little as three or as many as several hundred animals at once. And, theyre more likely to happen in New Zealand, Australia, and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. A beached humpback whale calf is pictured in Alaska

And according to the researchers, it may affect animals as well.

The type of data that Antti has accumulatd, together with the extensive stranding data at our disposal, will allow us to undertake the first rigorous analysis to test possible links between cetacean mass strandings and space-weather phenomena, said Desray Reeb, a marine biologist at BOEMs headquarters in Sterling, Virginia.

Researchers are now conducting a massive data-mining operation, with funding from BOEM and NASAs Science Innovation Fund.

We estimate that records on the order of hundreds of cetacean mass strandings will be available for study, thus making our analyses statistically significant, Pulkkinen said.

We therefore expect that we will be able to reliably test the hypothesis.

So far, there has been very little quantitative research just a lot of speculation. What were going to do is throw cold, hard data at this.

Its a long-standing mystery and its important that we figure out whats going on.

The study is expected to run through September, and could provide new insight on the mysterious phenomenon.

The results of this study will be informative for researchers, stranding network organizers, resource agencies, and regulatory agencies, Reeb said.

If we understand the relationship between the two, we may be able to use observations of solar storms as an early warning for potential strandings to occur, added Moore.

This would allow stranding responders in global hotspots, and really around the world, to be better prepared to respond, thus having the opportunity to save more animals.
Monty Python star Michael Palin has said it is a 'great honour' to be awarded for his outstanding contribution to travel writing.

The 73-year-old actor and writer was presented with the lifetime prize by TV adventurer and photographer Levison Wood at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards at London Olympia on Thursday.

Mr Palin's work as a keen explorer since 1980, including his famed book and television series Around The World In 80 Days, launched him to the high table of British adventurers long ago.

Michael Palin, pictured on Thursday, said it was 'great honour' to be awarded for his outstanding contribution to travel writing at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards

'To be given an outstanding contribution award for travel writing is a great honour,' he said.

'To be presented with it by an outstanding writer and adventurer like Levison Wood is the icing on the cake.

'The cake itself is that the award comes from Stanfords, the first port of call on all my travels, and one of the few truly indispensable shops in the world.'

Since the first release of Around The World In 80 Days 1989, Mr Palin's successes include Pole To Pole (1992), Full Circle (1997), New Europe (2007) and his BBC documentary series Himalaya and Brazil.

Meanwhile, Mr Wood's Walking The Himalayas account earned him the Wanderlust prize for adventure travel book of the year.

Dedicating his exploring passion to Mr Palin's travel career, he said: 'Michael Palin was one of my childhood heroes, a real inspiration that led me to want to explore the world with the same enthusiasm and curiosity.'

Mr Palin, pictured left with one of his books, was presented the award by TV star Levison Wood, pictured right, who won the Wanderlust prize for adventure travel book of the year

Travel book of the year was claimed by Julian Sayarer's Interstate: Hitchhiking Through the State of a Nation, which he dedicated to 'the immigrants'.

Judges described his 'post-modern' report of his travels from New York to San Francisco towards the end of the Obama administration as loaded with 'passion and anger'.

Madeleine Thien beat previous Man Booker prize winners Julian Barnes and Yann Martel in the shortlist to secure the travel fiction award with her 'epic and powerful' novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

Other award-winners included Lauren Williams for her blog The Enjoyable Rut, while Tessa Kiros's Provence to Pondicherry: Recipes From France And Faraway was named best food and travel book.

Edward Stanford Ltd boss, Tony Maher, said of the writers: 'They show us the world beyond our own horizons, taking us with them on their journeys.

'Their words let us see, smell, touch and hear from our own armchair as they explore every inch of this incredible planet.

'They are an inspiration.'
Theres only one problem with EastEnders being on top form, as it was during last weeks Great Bus Crash Disaster  namely, the anti-climax of the episodes that follow.

Thursday nights show for example included such sensational sub-plots as the caff buying a new coffee machine, the Queen Vics leaky roof, and a debate about the controversial topic of...having a bath.

(Never mind Brexit or Donald Trump.)

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Drama: Thursday nights show included such sensational sub-plots as the caff buying a new coffee machine, the Queen Vics leaky roof, and a debate about the controversial topic of...having a bath

Sharon turned down the flat me and Jay were after cos it didnt have a bath ! erupted Ben Mitchell with characteristic fury, bonding with Phil by asking: I mean Dad, how important are baths in your daily life?! I dont even think anyone under-40 even bothers !

I aint even had a bath in about a year ! chipped in Jay, closing the issue.

Such mundane matters were intercut with even more nonsensical, surreal, touches, like the latest of the Carters continental supper clubs.

No wonder the Vic was going out of business if this was the solution to their financial woes. The punters in an East End boozer were surely expecting a Swedish night would be more exciting than Aunt Babes grub and a cardboard cut-out of Zlatan Ibrahimovic standing at the bar whose acting was better than half the casts.

Dodgy: The punters in an East End boozer were surely expecting a Swedish night would be more exciting than Aunt Babes grub and a cardboard cut-out of Zlatan Ibrahimovic standing at the bar whose acting was better than half the casts

We cannot risk upsetting the entire Scandinavian community! warned Danny Dyer. If he watched EastEnders he would surely have seen that this was unlikely, given that there had rarely if ever been any one Scandinavian in Walford. It had only just had the first sightings of any Chinese people.

I suppose his fears were well-founded considering Sylvies farcical Suzie Wong tribute act  an ancient, racist, Geisha girl performance of the Goon shows Ying tong/ Ying tong/Ying tong/Ying tong/iddle I po.

Admittedly this was more terrifying than any of the traumas suffered by the residents (and us) in the bus crash but Denise was more prescient than she realised when she started Mondays show by saying Im just looking forward to things getting back to normal.

Moving on: Denise was more prescient than she realised when she started Mondays show by saying Im just looking forward to things getting back to normal'

No wonder even the characters had already become positively nostalgic about the horrors of the previous weeks action, even though it had only resulted in the death of one extra (the bus driver).

Its like nothing happened, Martin Fowler miserably lamented to Denise in the market, looking up at the bridge, which like everything was already back to normal. (If such a thing exists in Walford.)

Tell me about it ! agreed Denise.

Tell us about it !

Back to normal: Denise was back at work immediately suffering no negative symptoms at all

Why let a near-death experience get in the way of a family feud eh? Martin sympathised about her war with Not So Lil Kim. Its a bit of a cliche but its not until someone drops a bus on your head that you realise how precious it all is.

The first with this was that someone dropping a bus on your head wasnt a cliche.

Secondly, although someone (all their friends, family, and neighbours) HAD dropped a bus on Martins head (repeatedly), he was suspiciously fine, like everyone else.

Martin, Denise, and co. were all back at work immediately suffering no negative symptoms at all.

Moving on: As for the four teenagers that go to Walford Comp, Louise had recovered from her own near-death experience so quickly and painlessly that her main problem was a video of her ordeal going viral

As for the four teenagers that go to Walford Comp, Louise had recovered from her own near-death experience so quickly and painlessly that her main problem was a video of her ordeal going viral.

I can go down the school and have a word with them if you like, offered Michelle. Like the scriptwriters, she had seemingly forgotten that her last involvement in education had ended with having to flee her job as a teacher in Florida after shed been caught having an affair with one of her (under-age) pupils.

Michelle had also volunteered to look after Denny, Louise, Ben, and Jay while Sharon and Phil went on oliday.

Quiet word: I can go down the school and have a word with them if you like, Michelle told her. Like the scriptwriters, she had seemingly forgotten that her last involvement in education had ended with having to flee her job as a teacher in Florida after shed been caught having an affair with one of her (under-age) pupils

Considering Michelle was basically an alcoholic paedophile, the arrangement wasnt ideal  although it may have been preferable compared to being looked after by Sharon.

Lets hope she doesnt make a move on fellow paedophile Jay.

Michelles too busy to look after you, Sharon suggested to Denny  by which she meant busy drinking, or would have if she had known.

Michelle had taken over from Phil as the resident alcoholic of the house. Whether it was living with Sharon that drove everyone to vodka wasnt clear. But either way, Michelle was so unpleasant and tedious it was hard to care.

Sharon wasnt keen on going away for other reasons.

Big shos to fill: Michelle had taken over from Phil as the resident alcoholic of the house

What do people don holiday?! she demanded. They drink. Sun shining, foreign TV...What else is there to do?!

Never mind the fact that Phil (and everyone else in Walford) drank quite a lot in Walford. All the time actually...

Only one scene during all three episodes came close to matching the previous weeks drama.

This was Denise skewering sister Kim during the Fox's family meal (goat water stew).

Admittedly Denises original insistence that she couldnt come because it coincided with her GSCE English studies was based on a rather dubious comparison.

Controversy: Only one scene during all three episodes came close to matching the previous weeks drama. This was Denise skewering sister Kim during the Fox's family meal (goat water stew)

That class is the next bit of my life, she explained to Patrick. I cant give up my baby and then miss it.

Studying An Inspector Calls was hardly the same...

But Kims arrival in the middle of the lesson was unpleasantly vicious.

You know what these are? she announced to Ds fellow pupils. Breast pads to mop up all the wasted milk ! Thats right. She gave her baby away. Hes now in care. We dont know where or who with but shes here bettering herself. Nice ! Really nice !

With the help of her teacher and JB Priestley, Denise had worked out the route of Kims anger. When they were young, after their mother had left them Denise had raised Kim.

Hard to believe: Admittedly Denises original insistence that she couldnt come because it coincided with her GSCE English studies was based on a rather dubious comparison

You even used to call me Mummy ! she reminded Kim. I used to get slated by all my mates and everyone on the estate. I thought youd got over it but that is where all the anger comes from.

'You thought if I can give him up for adoption I can abandon you. Never mind all these marks and the milk and the loss. Ive got to deal with your anger ! Well heres the thing Kim.

'I never wanted the gig of being your mum then and I dont want it now. So you finally have to grow up because its actually happened. Consider yourself abandoned!

Ouch ! Kims nails may be long but she couldnt compete with being that cutting.
Miranda Hart in the final stages of negotiations to play Miss Hannigan in Annie

The sun will come out  maybe not tomorrow, but very soon  for Miranda Hart when she gets the chance to fulfil her dream and star in the musical Annie.

The actress and writer knows every role in the 1977 show, and it has long been a passion of hers to appear in it.

Now, she is in the final stages of completing contract negotiations to play Miss Hannigan, the inebriated harridan who runs the Dickensian-like orphanage where title character Annie languishes with other unwanted kids in Depression-era USA.

Hart included the schmaltzy but catchy Annie anthem Tomorrow on the soundtrack of one of the episodes of her eponymous sitcom Miranda.

And when she appeared on Desert Island Discs, she chose the burlesque number Easy Street  which is Miss Hannigans main song  as one of her eight recordings.

When Hart was at boarding school, rather than make friends in the playground, she said she would practise acting out every part of Annie to an imaginary audience of thousands.

She will star in the spruced-up road production that toured for a year until last summer, with Strictly Come Dancing panellist Craig Revel Horwood playing horrid Hannigan for some of the run.

The musical will move into the Piccadilly Theatre for a limited season in late May, after performances of three Russian plays  Three Comrades, Two For The Seesaw and The Three Sisters, all performed in Russian by the Sovremennik Theatre Company. The trilogy replaces the long-running Jersey Boys, which closes on March 26.

Hart has done a one-woman show and has some stage experience; but Annie would mark her West End musical theatre debut.

Strictly Come Dancing panellist Craig Revel Horwood has previously played horrid Hannigan

Shes immensely popular, thanks to best-selling books, film and TV work that includes her playing Camilla Chummy Browne in the BBCs popular Call The Midwife.

Annies likely to sell well with her name on the marquee, though Hart wont play the full London run because of prior commitments.

Neither Harts spokeswoman nor Annie producers Michael Harrison nor David Ian were prepared to confirm her involvement until the musicals dates and other contractual matters were fully sorted.

However, a spokesperson for the show acknowledged negotiations were close to being signed.

The heart of The Girls is apparent Claire Moore, Joanna Riding, and the rest of the cast of The Girls, the British beauty of a musical by Tim Firth and Gary Barlow which is based on the film Calendar Girls, were all ace at the preview I saw last weekend at the Phoenix Theatre in London. Theres some fine-tuning to be done, but its heart is already very apparent. Advertisement

A little miracle delayed my Holiday, says Audra

Audra McDonalds West End debut was postponed due to an unexpected delay

Audra McDonalds West End debut was postponed due to an unexpected delay.

The lauded Broadway actress  who has a record six Tony awards for acting  was meant to bring Lady Day At Emersons Bar & Grill, her acclaimed portrait of Billie Holiday, over to London seven months ago.

But as she declared on Twitter: Who knew that tap dancing during perimenopause could lead to pregnancy? Who indeed!

This baby was very much a surprise, Audra, 46, told me. A miracle baby! But very much a surprise.

The miracle in question is called Sally; and shes now three-and-a-half months old. (McDonald and her husband, actor Will Swenson, have four children between them; Sally is their second together.)

I said as soon as the baby is able to travel, were on our way. The baby will be stage right!

So Lanie Robertsons 1986 play with music  about one of Holidays last public appearances  will now start previews at Wyndhams Theatre from June 17, for a limited season through to September 9.

The baby break has given Audra time to reflect on her portrayal of Holiday. Recent developments in the US mean certain songs in the Holiday canon  such as Strange Fruit  have a greater relevance than they did one year ago.

Audra and director Lonny Price filmed Lady Day on location in New Orleans for HBO; and that experience exposed certain things, both good and bad, with regards to her approach to Holiday; and she reckoned the London run would expose something, too.

Audra McDonald performs as Billie Holiday at the Circle in the Square Theatre in New York

It was important, she said, to capture the essence of Holiday in 1959, when the play is set; but not imitate the artist. If I go at her by just trying to imitate her, Ill miss her completely.

Holiday herself warned about people trying to copy her.

McDonald tells the story of when Holiday saw Peggy Lee sing at a club. Lee decided, as a tribute, to imitate some of Holidays ways with a songs.

Why are you up there trying to sound like me? Holiday demanded. Sounding like me is not going to get you anywhere! Be true to who you are as an artist  not me.

McDonald becomes quieter as she talked about Holidays final days.

She was starting to slow down, she was drinking much more than she was doing heroin. Her feet and her stomach were swollen with fluid. She was in a bad way. Other people around her knew what was happening; but I dont know if she knew it or not.

Fans of the Broadway star can catch her before the Wyndhams show, when she and her husband will give four concerts at the Leicester Square Theatre in April.

And next month, she can be heard (and seen) singing in the Disney film Beauty And The Beast.
Kendall Jenner recently claimed she decorated her bedroom with a shade of pink which is 'scientifically proven' to suppress appetite.

But radio personality Fifi Box claimed the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star was sending a 'bad' and 'destructive' message to her millions of young fans.

The 39-year-old became emotional on Fox FM's Fifi, Dave, Fev & Byron on Friday, telling listeners: 'Hunger is a natural body function that you require to live.'

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Speaking out: Fifi Box (L) said Kendall Jenner (R) is sending a 'bad' and 'destructive' message to her young fans by recommending a shade of pink which is said to 'suppress appetite'

The former Neighbours star said: 'My issue is that Kendall Jenner is a role model for young girls and young women.

'And here's the thing, and I hope there are girls listening to this right now, hunger is a natural body function that you require to live.

'And suppressing your appetite is such a bad message - because you need an appetite! Because then you eat and your body continues to function and you get to enjoy your life.

'She is a role model for young girls and young women': Fifi said of Kendall's controversial decor advice, 'Messages like this are so destructive to little girls and young girls'

'I'll tell you when you don't enjoy your life - when you have an eating disorder.

'And anyone who's had an eating disorder knows you've got a life of hell ahead of you because you never break free of it.

'Messages like this are so destructive to little girls and young girls - and boys for that matter,' she continued.

Slim figure: Kendall, who rose to fame on Keeping Up With The Kardashians and is know a successful fashion model, has over 73 million followers on Instagram

'I know that she's got 73 million followers on Instagram and that's just one social media platform,' said Fifi. 'That's three times the population of this country.

'That's how many people who have now read: "Oh that lovely colour colour of pink means I won't have to eat and I can be as skinny as Kendall Jenner".

'That kills me. I know we certainly don't have 73 million listeners of this show, but I just hope there are girls listening who realise, "When you're tummy tells you you're hungry that's a great thing".'

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Kendall's representatives for comment.
He was seen professing his love for on-off girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian in a recent sneak peek of Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

But it seems Scott Disick was back to his partying ways when he was spotted with a bevy of beauties - including frequent companion Amber Davis - in Miami, Florida on Thursday.

The 33-year-old reality star cosied up to a gaggle of women as he enjoyed a lunchtime outing with friends, and was even seen planting a tender kiss on another girl's neck as they whispered sweet nothings to each other.

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Look away, Amber! Scott Disick planted a kiss on the neck of ANOTHER mystery blonde in front of new model squeeze Amber Davis as they hung out in Miami on Thursday

Brunching with beauties: The father-of-three was spotted with a gaggle of women as he stepped out for lunch

The self-proclaimed 'Lord Disick' opted for a laid-back look in grey sweatshirt with dark aviator shades.

He slicked his light locks back and sported a heavy beard as he was surrounded by numerous lovely ladies.

Amber showed off her model figure in a black bandeau crop top and jeans, opting for a natural look with her hair pulled up in a messy bun.

In a newly released sneak peek of KUWTK, Scott and Kourtney are seen getting cosy next to each other on a couch.

Constant companion: 'Lord Disick' has been spotted with model Amber Davis several days in a row now as he holidays in the sunshine

Ready to commit? The 33-year-old reality star had recently professed his love for on-off girlfriend Kourtney Kardashian but appeared he may be back to his partying ways

Gorgeous gals! Scott was spotted hugging Amber, looking extremely cosy with the star

Blonde bombshell: Scott certainly was not lacking attention at the busy Miami hotspot

Lucky man: Several girls in skimpy bikinis and ensembles surrounded the reality star

Laid-back look: The self-proclaimed 'Lord Disick' opted for comfort in a grey sweatshirt and black tracksuit bottoms

'I will never be over her, shes the love of my life,' he tells 32-year-old Khloe.

When the Strong Looks Better Naked author inquired if he and 'Kourt' kissed, the father-of-three smiles coyly and replies: 'We didnt kiss.'

'You told me you kissed?' Khloe quipped as Scott grins before the short preview ends.

Mane attraction: The father-of-three slicked his light locks back and sported a heavy beard

Lunchtime with his lady: Scott kept concealed behind aviator sunglasses while grabbing a bite to eat alongside gorgeous blonde Anastasia Galkova

More than friends? The twosome appeared quite comfortable with each other

Keeping Up With the Kardashians returns to the E! network on March 5.

It has been alleged that Kourtney's sister Kim Kardashian and momager Kris Jenner were behind Scott - who raises children Mason, Penelope and Reign with Kourtney - leaving the holiday early following a blistering row.

The womanising reality star reportedly felt the full wrath of Kim and Kris after inviting a woman to stay with him at the same hotel where Keeping Up With The Kardashians was being filmed.

Old habits? The womanising reality star reportedly felt the full wrath of Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner after inviting a woman to stay with him at the same hotel where Keeping Up With The Kardashians was being filmed

Centre of attention: All eyes were on Scott as his companions crowded around him

Chatting away: The father-of-three seemed totally engrossed in his conversation with the girls

Lady love? Scott was spotted cosying up to Amber just two days earlier, looking extremely close as they lay on a sun lounger together

TMZ claims the 'momager' found his actions disrespectful, but her disdain wasn't anything to do with her daughter Kourtney, who has long been separated from Scott.

Disick has since been spotted surrounding himself with a bevy of beautiful bikini-clad girls on the beach in Miami, Florida, in an apparent show of defiance against the KUWTK stars.

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Kim, Kris and Scott and is awaiting comment.

'She's the love of my life': Scott professed his affection for his ex Kourtney Kardashian in a new trailer for Keeping Up With The Kardashians




She is equally when it comes to street fashion and red carpet glamour.

Keri Russell looked sophisticated and chic while out running errands in New York City on Thursday.

The 40-year-old was on the go, spotted hailing a taxi cab in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan.

Street style: Keri Russell looked sophisticated and chic while out running errands in New York City on Thursday

The Americans actor had on a long-sleeved burgundy sweater, at time scrunched up to her elbows, with her brunette locks pulled back in a low bun.

She wore loose, ankle-grazing medium-wash denim jeans over brown, suede boots with a chunky heel.

Before she warmed up, Keri had a moss green pea coat draper over her shoulders to complete her look.

Taxi! The actor and dancer carried a canvas tote in one hand as she hailed her transportation on the bustling street

The actor and dancer carried a canvas tote in one hand as she hailed her transportation on the bustling street.

The mother-of-three looked refreshed and youthful as she made her rounds.

The Felicity star and her partner, Matthew Rhys, 42, just welcomed a new bundle of joy to their family in May.

Sophisticated and chic: The Americans actor had on a long-sleeved burgundy sweater, at time scrunched up to her elbows, with her brunette locks pulled back in a low bun

The couple, who star on FX series The Americans together, could not be happier.

Keri already has son River, eight, and daughter Willa, four, with ex-husband Shane Deary.

Their new son is her first child with her co-star and long-time boyfriend.
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She's a glamourous Victoria's Secret model and he's an in-demand DJ - so it's hardly surprising Shanina Shaik and her fiance Gregory Andrews travel in style during their trips to Miami, Florida.

And now incredible aerial photographs of their waterfront $100,000-a-month rental property have surfaced - and it appears the engaged couple certainly enjoy the finer things in life.

Shanina and Gregory, better known as DJ Ruckus, are known to spend time in the luxury $10.4million holiday home, which features six beautiful bedrooms and breathtaking bay views.

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Living the dream! Incredible aerial photographs of Shanina Shaik and fiance DJ Ruckus' waterfront $100,000-a-month rental property in Miami have surfaced - and it appears the couple certainly enjoy the finer things in life

Power couple! Shanina and DJ Ruckus, real name Gregory Andrews, got engaged on holiday in the Bahamas in late 2015 after just seven months of dating. The couple are currently planning their wedding. Pictured in NYC in November 2016

The beautiful home is privately owned, but it serves as Shanina and Ruckus' regular 'crash pad' during their regular visits to sunny Miami.

The bay front property is furnished and includes a fully stocked kitchen and striking 360 degree views from a 1700 sq ft rooftop terrace.

It also features a 30ft high living room, as well as a spacious family and dining area - with the luxury addition of a glass elevator and a heated swimming pool.

We're just stopping by! Shanina and DJ Ruckus are known to spend time in the luxury $10.4million holiday home during their trips to sunny Miami - and it features six beautiful bedrooms, a heated swimming pool and breathtaking bay views

But that's not all, as the couple also have a furnished wood dock with underwater lights at their disposal if they fancy exploring the neighbourhood by boat.

Meanwhile, Shanina told The Kyle And Jackie O Show in May last year she wants to keep her upcoming wedding private but would still like to have a 'fun party' vibe.

In September, the lingerie model revealed in an interview with Who magazine that her wedding dress will be something 'simple and sleek and a bit bohemian'.

Wow! The couple have a furnished wood dock with underwater lights available if they fancy exploring the neighbourhood by boat. Alternatively, they can relax in the 30ft high living room or take in the views from a 1700 sq ft rooftop terrace

She continued: 'For me the most glamorous day of my life will be my wedding day. I just want to look beautiful and feel like a goddess.'

The former Make Me a Supermodel contestant previously told Daily Mail Australia she will also be looking for a bridal gown to suit a 'location wedding'.

Speaking of their plans for a long engagement, she admitted: 'We are just very "go with the flow" but its definitely going to be a beach (wedding). I love the beach'.
Mandy would work with Emma Stone in the morning and co-star Ryan Gosling at night

When Mandy Moore was a little girl, she and her mum used to rent videos of MGM, RKO and other studio musicals from Hollywoods golden age.

Watching those pictures  An American In Paris, Singin In The Rain, Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, My Fair Lady and even Sandra Dee flicks  proved to be time well spent.

Because Mandy is the choreographer hired by director Damien Chazelle to infuse his glorious movie La La Land with a nod to the past  and a quick step to the future.

The photograph accompanying this piece shows Emma Stone, the Oscar-nominated leading lady of La La Land, in the movies Somewhere In The Crowd number.

Theres a moment where she snaps the skirt of her dress that reminded me of a sequence in West Side Story.

Mandy laughed and told me every film she and her mum watched when she was growing up in Breckenridge, Colorado, was important to her.

Anything I could get my hands on that had singing and dancing in it, me and my mom would watch over a weekend. Those films left an imprint.

Moore was on the project months before the main stars were cast, which meant she and Chazelle could lay the foundations for how the choreography would work.

Sometimes they would try out steps themselves. I wish someone had videoed him dancing, she said.

As much as Chazelle loved Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, he didnt want his stars to be Fred and Ginger perfect. Damien wanted these people to look like real human beings; having real emotions, while they were moving.

Theres no way that you could train someone to be Fred and Ginger in two months; or a year  or three years or four years. Fred and Ginger trained their whole lives to be who they were.

Despite that, the references to how they (Fred and Ginger) moved as a couple are peppered throughout the film.

Mandy was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her dad, Bob Moore, is an actor; her mother Wendy a high school drama teacher, and director. No one else in her family danced; but from the age of five, Mandy was putting on shows that included dance.

Mandy Moore was the choreographer hired by director Damien Chazelle for movie La La Land

When the Moores moved to Colorado, she trained at a local dance school and studied tap, ballet, jazz  and belly dancing (something thats come in handy for her work on So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars).

On La La Land, Mandy would work with Emma in the morning; and Ryan at night. Although both were what she called accomplished movers (I was lucky with that) she still had to drill them for two months, so they could move with ease and retain her choreography.

Her early start on the project (usually choreographers come on board at the last minute) meant the exhilarating opening number, where dancers perform in a traffic jam on a freeway ramp, could be plotted to the last detail.

The very beginnings of that egg was hatched on the back of a piece of paper, she said. We drew cars and boxes on paper; and Damien drew in arrows to show me where the cameras would be.

The art department used Hot Wheels cars on a model of the freeway in the opening scene

To randomly take a hundred cars and put dancers on them, there on the freeway, would have been a nightmare. We actually had only 30 dancers  and we had to be very smart about where we put them.

The art department created a model of the freeway, and used those little Hot Wheels cars, so we could play around and face them the right way; and work out which way  and on which car  a dancer would be.

A hundred extras were also used in the scene, but the dancers had to be carefully deployed, to make it seem as though there were scores of them, too.

The movie has garnered 14 Oscar nominations  including ones for Emma, Ryan, Damien, and the composer and lyricists: Justin Hurwitz Stone, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. But no honour for the choreographer.

Mandy says shes not fussed. She was just happy to get a chance to work on a movie in a million. Id love 700 more movie musicals to work on.

For now, though, its back to TV, and commercials. Oh, and the La La Land number, for the Oscar show on February 26.

Watch out for... Genevieve OReilly will appear in Jez Butterworths new play The Ferryman Genevieve OReilly (right) and Laura Donnelly, who will be joining Paddy Considine in the ensemble cast of Jez Butterworths new play The Ferryman, which will be directed by Sam Mendes. Performances of the play  about four generations of one family in Northern Ireland  start at the Royal Court Theatre on April 24. The hope is that if the play is well received there it will transfer to the Gielgud Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. As this page noted before, The Ferryman will mark Considines professional theatre debut. Advertisement

Its the truth! 1984 is bound for Broadway

Orwells landmark novel has been selling well following Donald Trumps election

The Ministry Of Truth is about to commence battle with alternative facts as efforts get under way to open a stage version of George Orwells 1984 on Broadway.

It would be part of the zeitgeist to get it on in New York as quickly as possible, an executive close to the show there told me.

Orwells landmark novel, published in 1949, has been selling well following Donald Trumps move into the White House.

But the book really started rocketing up the best-seller lists after Kellyanne Conway, one of Trumps key mouthpieces, came up with the Trumpian phrase alternative facts during an interview with Chuck Todd on NBCs Meet The Press.

Conway was defending White House spokesman Sean Spicer against accusations that certain statements hed uttered were falsehoods. Untrue, she said. They were alternative facts.

Interest in novels and other cultural works with totalitarian themes increased substantially. Now producers Scott Rudin and Sonia Friedman are looking for an available theatre on Broadway for the adaption of 1984 created by director Robert Icke and playwright Duncan Macmillan.

The play, from Headlong productions, was put together for Nottingham Playhouse and the Almeida, then transferred to the West End (three times). It also toured to Santa Monica, Boston and Washington.

A source connected to the show told me: Its definitely going to happen; and thats 100 per cent NOT an alternative fact. But the producers wont know yet if they will have a theatre this season, or next (which on Broadway kicks off in June, after the Tony Awards).

After Conways comments, thousands took to social media, quoting Orwells 1984 Ministry of Truth slogans: War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

I was struck by this graphic one: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face  for ever.
Amy Schumer left a sushi restaurant in Beverly Hills on Thursday with a message for Americans.

The comedienne exited the eatery holding handmade signs signalling opposition to President Trump's pick for Education Secretary.

'Betsy DeVos is unqualified,' read one sign Amy held up, while on the other she had written: 'Call you senator to oppose 202-2243121.'

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Made her feelings clear: Amy Schumer left a sushi restaurant in Beverly Hills on Thursday with a message for Americans regarding President Trump's pick for Education Secretary

The number on the sign is for the Capitol Hill operator in Washington, D.C.

The Trainwreck star clearly took advantage of the waiting paparazzi to get her message across as she left the restaurant by a back door,

Amy, 35, was dressed all in black in a crew neck sweater and shiny pants with matching ballet flats.

Her hair was tied back into a ponytail and she wore sunglasses.

Upside of fame: The Trainwreck star clearly took advantage of the waiting paparazzi to get her message across as she left the eatery by a back door carrying her handmade signs

'Call your senator': The comedienne said Betsy DeVos is 'unqualified' for the position that oversees the nation's public schools and gave the number for the Capitol Hill operator

Simple ensemble: Amy, 35, was dressed all in black in a crew neck sweater and shiny pants with matching ballet flats. She wore her hair tied back into a ponytail and added sunglasses

Speaking out: Amy has been one of the most vocal celebrities to challenge the new president's policies

Her lobbying against DeVos comes just two days after she blasted Trump on Instagram for claiming Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer cried 'fake tears' over the president's 'travel ban'.

The Comedy Central star, who is a cousin of the New York senator via her father, posted a tweet byTrump in which he heaped scorn on 'Nancy Pelosi and Fake Tears Chuck Schumer' for holding a rally on the steps of the Supreme Court with a microphone that didn't work properly.

'This is what he was thinking about at 621am,' Amy wrote. 'I know Chuck Schumer and HE CANNOT act trust me. He can barely smile on cue.'

Making a point: Amy is seen during her Thursday outing

Scornful: President Trump used his Twitter feed to deride Amy 's cousin Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for crying 'fake tears' over the immigration ban

Right back at ya: Amy defended the Democratic leader, who is a cousin of her father, in an Instagram post Tuesday saying the politician 'cannot act' and 'cab barely smile on cue'

Emotional: Schumer wiped away tears during a televised appearance in which he described Trump's ban affecting seven Muslim majority countries as 'mean-spirited' and 'un-American'

In several televised appearances, including a press conference where he choked back tears, minority leader Schumer described Trump's ban affecting seven Muslim majority countries as 'mean-spirited' and 'un-American.'

'He was hurt for those people and all the people facing such unconstitutional injustice,' she said of the New York senator, who is a cousin to her father.

Amy united with her relative to push for stricter gun control laws after two women were shot while watching the star's movie Trainwreck in a Lafayette, Louisiana, cinema in July 2015.

She also participated in the Women's March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday January 21, the day after Trump was sworn in as the 45th president.

'Trump is about to bombard us with so many awful decisions,' she wrote in her Instagram message posted Tuesday morning.

'We need people alert and fighting for each other's rights,' she said. 'Call congress. Call the senate. We need to wake up and rise up together.'

Activist: The Comedy Central star united with her relative to lobby for gun control after two women were shot and killed while watching her movie Trainwreck in 2015 in Lousisiana

Trump opponent: 'We need people alert and fighting for each other's rights,' she said in her Instagram post. 'Call congress. Call the senate. We need to wake up and rise up together'
The Glass Menagerie (Duke of York's Theatre)

Verdict: Glum, glum glum

Rating:

American actress Cherry Jones (pictured) gives a fine turn as Amanda Wingfield in a Glass Menagerie first seen in Boston, Massachusetts, four years ago

American actress Cherry Jones gives a fine turn as Amanda Wingfield in a Glass Menagerie first seen in Boston, Massachusetts, four years ago.

Fading southern belle Amanda is frantic to find a man for her lonely daughter, Laura. Miss Jones makes her almost a Hyacinth Bucket figure, over-anxious for social grace, a desperate snob whose drunken husband long ago fled the nest.

There is always some bleak humour to be had in this 1944 play, but playwright Tennessee Williams still leaves you with an unremitting sense of misery.

I loathe The Glass Menagerie  and did so the first time I saw it as a teenager  yet this is a strong rendition of the play, should your taste run to claustrophobic glumness. When Miss Jones's Amanda hears that a 'gentleman caller' is eventually going to come to dinner, she skips barefoot around the living room of her dingy St Louis apartment.

It is as though she herself, and not shy Laura, is going to be the young woman on offer.

Kate O'Flynn's Laura is suitably hesitant and physically lame  Miss O'Flynn gives her a tremulous voice. Brian J. Smith is charming as Jim, the gentleman caller.

I was less taken by Michael Esper as Laura's useless brother, Tom. The set is pared back and there is miming of certain props and of the food served at Amanda's table.

Tom, who claims to spend many of his nights at the pictures, rails against Hollywood for providing Americans with vicarious thrills.

Jane Wyman (pictured) played Amanda Wingfield's daughter, Laura, in the 1950 film, The Glass Menagerie

He feels that people should go and explore life and find adventure in the flesh.

Watching Williams's gloomy plot unfold once more, it struck me that a similar argument could be laid against this play.

Does it perhaps provide vicarious pessimism for a theatre-going public, who actually have plenty to be cheerful about?

The production is enhanced with mod music, but perhaps it should really finish with a song called Always Look On The Bleak Side Of Life.
They replaced Gretel Killeen as the hosts of Big Brother in 2008.

And Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson have very different memories of their short stint at the helm of the reality show.

The breakfast radio duo reflected on their colourful experience during the Kyle & Jackie O Show on Friday, with Kyle admitting her 'hated' the experience.

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Lights, camera, action: Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderon reflected on their colourful experience hosting Big Brother during the Kyle & Jackie O Show on Friday

'Two weeks into it I was like, "I'm never gonna remember anyone's name,'"' an exasperated Kyle described.

'I'd refer to everyone as the fat thing, or the old lady, or that clown with the red hair,' he continued. 'It was easier. People knew who I was talking about.'

'I was so into it, though,' Jackie enthused. 'I loved it, I'm such a Big Brother fan.'

'Two weeks into it I was like, I'm never gonna remember anyone's name,' an exasperated Kyle described of his time hosting the reality show

Agree to disagree? The hosts have very different memories of their short stint at the helm of Big Brother

'I hated it. I only did it because you loved the show so much!' Kyle admitted.

'Thanks babe,' she happily replied.

The shock jock, who was a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother in 2002 and was a guest in the house in 2007, continued to complain about his hosting role.

Party pooper: The shock jock, who was a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother in 2002 and was a guest in the house in 2007, continued to complain about his hosting role

'And every week we had to fly to the Gold Coast; it was hell on earth!' he recounted.

'You hated it!' Jackie said as she laughed. 'I loved it.'

'You'd come to me and go, "Terry's had a horrible week" and I'd say, "I don't give a s*** about any of these clowns!" he exclaimed.

Power players: They replaced Gretel Killeen as the hosts of Big Brother in 2008 and welcomed Pamela Anderson into the house that year

He revealed he agreed to join the show 'for the cash and to support [Jackie] only.'

'Aww, I love you,' Jackie responded.

The on-air team laughed as they remembered Kyle's constant eye twitch from reading the camera's auto-cue, which he said made him look like he was 'on crack'.
What's In A Name? (Birmingham Rep)

Verdict: Middle-class anxieties skewered

Rating:

South London, a middle-class supper party from Hell. Two fortysomething couples and a fifth guest, allegedly great friends (two of them are siblings), knock lumps off each other by, uh-oh, telling the truth and saying what they think of one another.

It all begins when property guy Vincent announces to his Left-wing chums that he and his girlfriend intend to call their imminent baby Adolphe or Adolf. It seems Vincent is serious about this.

Cue outrage from Vincent's language-professor brother-in-law, Peter. Before anyone can calm them down, the two men are deep into the truth-telling minefield. Peter tells Vincent he is a 'fascist'.

British playwrights were once brilliant at skewering our dainty middle class, but they have gone off the boil recently.

Was it because the middle class became so liberal and the subsidised theatre, while happy to see nasty Righties satirised, did not enjoy seeing lentil-leaning Lefties mocked and exposed? You don't get BBC commissions that way, please.

Jamie Glover, Raymond Coulthard and Nigel Harman (left to right) starred in What's In A Name?

French playwrights seem hungrier for this important work. First we had Yasmina Reza with Art and God Of Carnage, then the more lyrical Florian Zeller. Now we have an English version of Le Prenom, a comedy by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patelliere. It has been adapted and directed by Jeremy Sams.

This cracking Birmingham Rep production, which deserves a longer run, has an ace cast. Jamie Glover preens and bristles as Peter. Nigel Harman is suave and selfish as Vincent. Add Sarah Hadland as the hostess, Elizabeth, Olivia Poulet as Vincent's lady and Raymond Coulthard as apparently camp singleton Carl.

Some of the language is a little ripe. This is an adult comedy.

Peter and Elizabeth are such dahlings that they do the Guardian crossword, cook Moroccan food, visit a child psychologist and have called their (unseen) offspring Gooseberry and Apollonea. Naturally, they are quietly miserable.

Vincent is so busy being brash, he cannot see the damage he is doing to his relationships. As the raw insults are batted to and fro, drawing gasps and laughter alike, the play lightly points out modern obsessions with image and fashionable opinion.

What the playwrights have cottoned on to is the irreconcilable tension between modern-liberal tolerance and modern-liberal greed for self-determination. Only one of the characters has the essential virtue of keeping quiet and, therefore, neutral.

Plot twists keep coming. The characters, skilfully translated into modern London by Mr Sams, are horribly recognisable. The finale even elicits the odd happy tear. Great fun and long overdue.

Murder For Two (Newbury's Watermill)

Verdict: Killed by irony

Rating:

As the name suggests, it's a two-hander, with Jeremy Legat (pictured) and Ed MacArthur playing 13 characters

At the Watermill in Newbury we have another import: a wiseguy musical from America called Murder For Two. As the name suggests, it's a two-hander, with Jeremy Legat and Ed MacArthur playing 13 characters.

The show is exceedingly  excessively  clever. You can easily imagine its writers, Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair, cackling away with self-amusement as they devised this cod detective yarn.

Most of the multi-tasking falls to Mr Legat. He plays a widow, a ballet star, an old couple, some schoolboys, a student criminologist and more, rushing round the tiny stage using minimal props (headgear and a pair of specs) to assist his character changes.

Mr MacArthur plays the young policeman sent to a murder scene.

The set is done up like a gumshoe's office in Raymond Chandler, yet a mobile phone appears in the plot, so it is presumably meant to be modern-day.

Both Mr Legat and Mr MacArthur play an onstage piano, sometimes simultaneously. They and director Luke Sheppard must have been rehearsing for weeks and it is all done with admirable energy. They deserve plenty more work offers.

There is, however, a surfeit of irony. The whole thing is irksomely self-knowing and silly. That may be the idea but I prefer my murder mysteries less camp and sketchy.

The show moves to London (The Other Palace Studio) in March.
Escape To The Wild (C4)

Rating:

The Great Pottery Throw Down (BBC2)

Rating:

Toddler Max had the right idea. He screamed when he clapped eyes on presenter Jimmy Doherty in Escape To The Wild (C4).

He kept on screaming whenever Doherty tried to interview his mum, 29-year-old Sophie, beside the wooden huts on their paradise island beach in tropical Indonesia. He even screamed when Doherty said goodbye.

Hes not sure about beards, Sophie explained politely. But the obvious fact was that face fuzz had nothing to do with it. Max just didnt like Mr Doherty.

Sophie, Simon and their son Max (left) welcomed Jimmy Doherty into their remote island home for a week

And neither did his parents, by the end of the show. This matey media type represented everything they had moved 10,000 miles to avoid.

He turned up hours late at the harbourside rendezvous. He annoyed the locals, by crashing around long after dark, pleading for a place to sleep  and when he was offered a place on a porch, he shunned it, preferring his hammock. Even then, he kept moaning about the noise from the nearby road.

Sophie and her husband Simon, also 29, arrived by boat the next day, to welcome Doherty to their home for a week. They bought the remote beach four years ago and are building a tourist lodge for diving enthusiasts: the reefs around their island are reputed to offer the best scuba experience in the world.

Doherty went straight to bed, complaining about the long flight. Next day, he was horrified to see monitor lizards helping themselves to pickings from the couples compost heap. Then he trekked to the nearest village to fetch a piglet, for a pork dinner, and was aghast at the local slaughter method.

Doherty is a pig farmer as well as a TV presenter, and he was right to point out that the traditional Indonesian technique of slitting a pigs throat would be illegal in Britain. But he wasnt in Britain.

He took Sophie to task: was she happy to watch this and say nothing? Sensibly, she retorted that she was living on the island as an immigrant and a guest, not a missionary.

SUCCESSOR OF THE NIGHT Ardal OHanlon was a delight as daffy London police inspector Jack Mooney, helping Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) on Death In Paradise (BBC1). Now Marshall has decided hes had enough of Caribbean sunshine, Ardal will make the ideal replacement. Advertisement

But Doherty really put his foot in it on a late-night crabbing expedition. He spotted baby pythons, and started to panic that a monster mother snake could be lurking in the undergrowth.

What if it was already hiding in their thatched roof, he fretted. It could be big enough to swallow a whole pig  or a child!

At this point, Sophies patience snapped. There was only one child on this beach, after all, and it was their son. Sharp words were spoken, the camera was switched off, and despite the 40c heat next day, the atmosphere was frosty.

Abrasive TV personalities have their place. An interviewer who rubs subjects up the wrong way often gets the most interesting and revealing responses.

But Doherty is no Jeremy Paxman. He wasnt being provocative, just tactless. When he did ask a deeper question, about whether the couple missed their families in England, he let them off with the vaguest of answers.

We never found out, for instance, how Sophies mum felt at being parted from her grandson by half the planet.

The Great Pottery Throw Down would like to be the new Bake Off

When Ben Fogle did a similar show for Channel 5, New Lives In The Wild, he got to the root of what made people become exiles at the ends of the earth. This documentary failed to get close.

The Great Pottery Throw Down (BBC2) would like to be the new Bake Off, but this too fails to get close. It follows the format, with ten contestants, two judges and three trials in each episode, before one person is sent home.

But pot-making lacks the addictive excitement of bakery. Anyone can have a go at making a cake, and were all experts at eating Victoria sponges and Battenbergs  but the techniques of glazing and firing clay are completely alien to most of us.

Unless you happen to like the earthy, primitive style of pots hand-thrown by amateurs, the results arent very appealing either. To make it worse, the potters are racing against the clock, to give the show an edge of artificial excitement.

Its safe to say this is one show Channel 4 wont be poaching.
Georgia May Jagger, 25, joined Grumpy Cat this week at a party in Germany

One is a highly paid supermodel with millions of social media followers, the other is the daughter of Sir Mick Jagger.

Georgia May Jagger, 25, joined her furry friend Grumpy Cat this week at a party in Germany to celebrate the launch of a calendar in which they both star.

Grumpy Cat, whose real name is Tardar Sauce, earned her popular label thanks to her gloomy demeanour.

She couldn't even muster a smile when pouting model Georgia snuggled up to her in this picture.

The pairing isn't as strange as it seems. Each year, German car manufacturer Opel shoots a calendar featuring celebrities and/or cats.

In 2015, fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld did the honours with his Birman cat, Choupette.

While it's not unusual for rock'n'roll offspring to emulate their parents in the performing arts, Ronnie Wood's eight-month-old twin daughter, Alice, is starting impressively early.

She was the centre of attention this week as she appeared to demonstrate her yoga skills in a pink and white onesie.

Rolling Stone Ronnie, 69, and his wife Sally, 39, are both fans of the practice.

'So nearly, Alice,' Sally captioned this picture that she shared online, adding the hashtags #downwarddog and #moveouttamyway.

Ronnie Wood's eight-month-old twin daughter, Alice, is starting her yoga career early as she practices her downward dog

Rolling Stone Ronnie, 69, and his wife Sally, 39, are both fans of the practice, and Sally posted a photo of her daughter to Instagram

More curtain call political speechifying baloney.

At Wyndham's Theatre in the West End the cast of The Kite Runner are taking it in turns to make a speech at the end of every night's show, attacking Trump's immigration policy.

It was Benedict Cumberbatch who first ranted at theatregoers about refugees after performing Hamlet, but this thespy politicking is becoming seriously tiresome.

Do they not realise people have paid to see a play, not to hear luvvies drone on about politics?

Relief at last for divorced Lewis star Laurence Fox, who has just finished his gruelling month-long health kick.

The 38-year-old scion of Britain's most famous acting dynasty, which includes his film star father James and cousins Emilia and Freddie, boastfully paraded the results of his self-imposed alcohol ban on social media.

Laurence, who split from actress wife Billie Piper last year, shared this photo of his toned torso and biceps on the last day of January and captioned it: 'Day 31 of the health kick.

'Back to Dry Martinis and despair tomorrow . . . yippee!!!'

Well done. Now put a shirt on.

Lewis star Laurence Fox, who has just finished his gruelling month-long health kick, posted a shirtless selfie to Instagram

Harriet Harman seems to have set a bandwagon rolling when she called for the next Doctor Who to be a woman.

Now, Oscar-winner Glenda Jackson has joined the campaign, claiming such a move by the BBC would inspire girls to pursue careers in science.

'It would be a wonderful role model if the new Doctor was a woman because this country is in desperate need of women scientists, technologists, engineers,' says Jackson, 80, who stepped down as a Labour MP in 2015.

'A female Doctor may encourage girls who have the brain and the capacity to go into science and engineering. That is the future of our world.' She adds:

'There was a huge outcry when M in James Bond went to a woman [Dame Judi Dench] and you know the sky actually didn't fall in.

'One of the depressing things is that creative writers don't find women interesting and simply don't write for them.'
Loving (12A)

Verdict: Rousing true story

Rating:

When Richard Loving, a white bricklayer from Virginia, married his black girlfriend, Mildred Jeter, in 1958, a firestorm of publicity and a prominent footnote in the Constitution of the United States were the last things either of them expected. Or wanted.

Richard, certainly as depicted by Joel Edgerton in writer-director Jeff Nichols's wonderful film, was a simple soul, who with his crewcut and slow drawl might have seemed like the prototype of a Southern redneck, but clearly didn't have a bigoted bone in his body.

He married Mildred (Irish actress Ruth Negga) for uncomplicated old-fashioned reasons. They loved each other, and she was pregnant.

However, interracial marriage was prohibited by Virginia's miscegenation laws. They sidestepped that by tying the knot in Washington DC, only to find themselves arrested and jailed on their return home.

Richard Loving, played by Joel Edgerton (left) married Mildred (Irish actress Ruth Negga) for uncomplicated old-fashioned reasons in the film

The judge deemed that 'Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents . . . The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.'

He gave the Lovings a stark choice; either annul the marriage or leave the state for 25 years. They left, but secretly returned for Mildred to give birth, and were arrested again.

Their lawyer used his friendship with the judge to keep them out of jail, but told them there would be no further leniency.

Although they were country folk who yearned to go back to their roots, the Lovings were compelled to raise their growing family in the city.

A few years later, stirred by the spirit of the burgeoning civil rights movement, Mildred wrote to the attorney-general, Robert Kennedy, who referred their case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

An ACLU lawyer, Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), saw their predicament as perfect leverage for an appeal to the Supreme Court, and although Richard in particular recoiled from being leverage for anything, they duly became a legal precedent, a cause celebre.

Journalists descended on them. Life magazine sent a photographer (played here by the ever-splendid Michael Shannon).

And inevitably, the grotesque notion, long enshrined in Virginia's law, that interracial marriage was 'against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth', was overturned.

Loving v Virginia remains a landmark civil rights case.

It is a poignant tale, but then civil rights stories always are. Nichols's great skill is in maintaining its integrity. There are no eloquent, barnstorming speeches about injustice, least of all by the Lovings themselves.

This is not the America of Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?, Stanley Kramer's 1967 film in which Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn played the gnarled old white liberals grappling with their daughter Joanna's decision to marry Sidney Poitier's urbane black doctor.

This is an America in which you can practically hear the cogs turn when people think.

Edgerton and in particular the Oscar-nominated Negga are both superb, giving heartrendingly sensitive performances as two people bewildered by the events that have engulfed them. When their lawyer asks Richard if he has a message for the Supreme Court justices, it is a plain one: 'Tell them that I love my wife.'

His surname gave Nichols a conveniently plain title, too, and the narrative doesn't need much adornment either.

Maybe that's why the picture itself is not in the frame for an Academy Award, but Nichols's achievement should not be overlooked. He has made a fine film.

Gold (15)

Verdict: Worth a panning

Rating:

The same cannot be said of Stephen Gaghan, an Academy Award winner himself in the past (Best Adapted Screenplay, Traffic), who as director and co-writer has made rather a mess of Gold.

Which is a shame, because Matthew McConaughey, in the lead role as prospector Kenny Wells, gives an enjoyably over-the-top performance that applies even to his stomach in relation to his belt. It's not often you see a svelte Hollywood star turn quite this blubbery for a part.

The screening I attended was introduced by McConaughey himself, who announced that Kenny, modelled partly on his own late father, an oil-pipe salesman, is his favourite role ever. There was a due hubbub of anticipation across the audience, but then, as the film unfolded, an almost tangible sense of deflation.

The film is set in the Eighties and 'inspired by true events', that Hollywood euphemism for shameless dramatic licence.

In 1981, Kenny is in thrall to his charismatic father (Craig T. Nelson), who has built a successful mining company, but after the old man dies, Kenny, for all his swaggering charisma, runs the company into the ground in more ways than one.

By 1988 he has the unkempt look of a serial loser, and is desperate for the strike that will turn things around.

Matthew McConaughey, (right) in the lead role as prospector Kenny Wells, gives an enjoyably over-the-top performance

It comes after he dreams one night about finding gold in the Indonesian jungle. Impulsively, he heads out there and throws in his lot with a smooth-talking geologist, Mike Acosta (Edgar Ramirez).

Eventually, after a bout of malaria and an awful lot of extreme equatorial weather, Kenny's vision comes to pass. It is the biggest gold find in years.

He is rich, or certainly appears to be, beyond even his own wild dream.

Kenny returns triumphantly to the United States, where his down-to-earth girlfriend Kay (Bryce Dallas Howard)  the one person who can see beneath the bluster to the essentially kind-hearted soul underneath  looks on in despair as Wall Street fat cats begin to prowl around him, preparing to pounce on his business.

There is a memorable scene in which an actual big cat prowls around him; a tiger he recklessly agrees to try to tame, to show his bravado.

But we are meant to be more interested in the corporate man-eaters, especially when the narrative, with disorientating, lurching suddenness, introduces a whole new dimension that I won't share with you since it counts as a spoiler.

Really, though, the main spoiler is the screenplay itself. It's easy enough to see how this story could have hit cinematic pay dirt. But there is a glibness in its telling that makes it strangely uninvolving.

I found, as Kenny's fortunes took their endless pendulum swings, that I didn't much care either for him or about him. Gold poses as something much more substantial, but disappointingly it is less than the sum of its parts: a nine-carat film.
She always manages to look effortlessly chic.

And Olivia Buckland didn't disappoint as she attended Drake's London concert with fiance Alex Bowen on Thursday.

Cuddled up close as they posed for snaps, the Love Island pair looked cute together as they prepared to head in and hear the music.

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Cute couple: She always manages to look effortlessly chic. And Olivia Buckland didn't disappoint as she attended Drake's London concert with fiance Alex Bowen on Thursday

Highlighting her tiny waist, Olivia donned a plain black T-shirt with a corset cinching in her hourglass curves.

She teamed the garment with cropped black leggings that clung to her shapely pins and slipped her feet into a pair of leather ankle boots.

Layering up she also donned a white leather jacket that injected some colour into her ensemble.

Magical in monochrome: Highlighting her tiny waist, Olivia donned a plain black T-shirt with a corset cinching in her hourglass curves

Adding to the glamour, she also donned a glittering silver choker and a myriad of silver rings.

Her golden locks were styled in loose waves which she wore in a centre parting framing her pretty features.

She finished off the look by painting her plump pout with a slick of pink gloss.

Leggy lady! She teamed the garment with cropped black leggings that clung to her shapely pins and slipped her feet into a pair of leather ankle boots

Olivia soared to fame in June when she starred on the second season of the rebooted version of Love Island finished in second place with Alex.

Their relationship went from strength to strength, and they excitedly announced their engagement in December.

The announcement came as a shock to the reality world, after her and Alex met a mere eight months ago, but the pair appear more loved-up than ever.
Angelina Jolie shared a preview on Thursday of her Netflix passion project First They Killed My Father.

The 41-year-old Oscar-winning actress directed the film based on the 2000 memoir First They Killed My Father: A Daughter Of Cambodia Remembers by Jolie's friend and former refugee Loung Ung.

The preview clip opened with a title card that read: 'Between 1975 - 1979 Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge killed nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population.'

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Passion project: Angelina Jolie shared a preview clip on Thursday of First They Killed My Father that she directed based on a 2000 memoir

Two columns of armed troops were then shown marching down a city street.

Jolie was seen on the set that employed hundreds of genocide survivors and children of survivors to recreate history for the film.

'It's the first time there's something on this size about this war in this country,' Jolie said.

The clip showed Cambodians working on the set and tweaking props including barbed wire.

Major scale: The actress said the film was the first of its size about the war in Cambodia

Cambodian genocide: The clip opened with a title card about Pol Pot's deadly regime

'I feel like nobody is here for themselves and everybody here to do any job is here to put something forward and help their country speak,' Jolie said.

It was a theme echoed in the clip by producer Rithy Panh.

'In order to mourn we must speak. Its the possibility of using creation to reconstruct ourselves. Telling a story is also mourning, its also moving on,' Panh said.

Mourning story: Film producer Rithy Panh talking about the film helping the nation heal

Large scale: Cambodians were employed to recreate history

Jolie filmed her hit 2001 film Lara Craft: Tomb Raider in Cambodia and the humanitarian crisis she witnessed there sparked her work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

She has since visited refugee camps in Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Pakistan.

Jolie was named a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador in 2001.

Hit movie: Jolie is shown in 2001 on the set of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

War story: The film is based on the 2000 memoir First They Killed My Father: A Daughter Of Cambodia Remembers by Jolie's friend and former refugee Loung Ung

She adopted her first child Maddox in 2002 from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia.

Jolie credited Maddox with convincing her to make the film after it languished for years.

'He was the one who just called it and said he was ready and that he wanted to work on it, which he did. He read the script, helped with notes, and was in the production meetings,' Jolie recently told The Guardian.

On the set: Jolie was shown on the set directing the actors and crew

Her story: Loung Ung talked about the significance of Jolie's project

Jolie spoke out against US President Donald Trump's immigration ban on Thursday in an op-ed piece published in The New York Times.

She urged the US to address the refugee crisis 'based on facts, not fear'.

'Refugees are men, women and children caught in the fury of war, or the cross hairs of persecution. Far from being terrorists, they are often the victims of terrorism themselves,' she wrote.

First They Killed My Father will premiere in Siem Reap, Cambodia on February 18.

It will be released globally on Netflix later this year.

Mother and son: Jolie is shown in July 2015 in Los Angeles with son Maddox whom she adopted in 2002 from a Cambodian orphanage
She's Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld's muse.

And Lily-Rose Depp looked every bit the model as she left the Chanel store in Beverly Hill on Thursday.

The 17-year-old high fashion model put on a casual display as she left the designer boutique wearing a red and white polka-dot shirt and black pants.

She's a pro! Lily-Rose Depp looked every bit the professional model as she left the Chanel store in Beverly Hill on Thursday

Casual style: The 17-year-old high fashion model put on a casual display as she left the designer boutique wearing a red and white polka-dot shirt and black pants

She paired the outfit with a black jacket and black running shoes for the casual outing.

The model was joined by boyfriend Ash Stymest and her trusty bodyguard who made sure she was safe as she exited the store.

Lily-Rose appeared to be wearing little make-up on her flawless complexion and wore her hair in loose waves, parted down the center.

Protection: The model was joined by boyfriend Ash Stymest and her trusty bodyguard who made sure she was safe as she exited the store

Not her problem: Lily-Rose doesn't seem too concerned about her father's financial woes as she left the store with several bags of expensive items

Lily-Rose doesn't seem too concerned about her father's financial woes as she left the store with several bags of expensive items.

In addition to owning multiple homes and a luxury yacht, Johnny Depp spends $30,000 a month on wine, travels by private jet and maintains 12 storage facilities housing his fine art and memorabilia collections.

That's according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by his former managers who are asking a judge to rule that the actor has no-one but himself to blame for his financial troubles.

Big spender! Johnny Depp has reportedly splashed out $21million in the past year alone according to his former managers.

In documents filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Joel and Robert Mandel claim they repeatedly warned Depp that he was overspending, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

'Depp lived an ultra-extravagant lifestyle that often knowingly cost Depp in excess of $2 million per month to maintain, which he simply could not afford,' attorney Michael Kump wrote in the cross-complaint. 'Depp, and Depp alone, is fully responsible for any financial turmoil he finds himself in today.'

He's not a saver: In addition to owning multiple homes and a luxury yacht, Johnny Depp spends $30,000 a month on wine

Lily-Rose's visit to the designer store comes just days after she stole the show at Chanel's Haute Couture SS17 catwalk in Paris.

She certainly secured her place in the fashion world as she was the main attraction at Chanel's extravagant presentation.

The model/actress was selected by creative director Karl Lagerfeld to show off his bridal creation, which was a stunning ruffled pink number with ruffles on the arms and dramatic train.

Fashion staple: Lily-Rose's visit to the designer store comes just days after she stole the show at Chanel's Haute Couture SS17 catwalk in Paris

The teen - daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis - looked ethereally beautiful as she paraded in front the fashion pack on the front row.

While the dress was a showstopper, her make-up and hair was kept simple, with just a dash of lipstick and her blonde locks slicked back.

Other supermodels hitting the runway at the show included Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, who has previously been selected as Karl's 'bride'.

A life-long affiliate of the brand thanks to her mother Vanessa, Lily-Rose was made the face of Chanel No 5 L'Eau last year.

Her career is made: A life-long affiliate of the brand thanks to her mother Vanessa, Lily-Rose was made the face of Chanel No 5 L'Eau last year

She explained to Vogue: 'Chanel has always been part of my life. My mom has worked with them since she was 18 and Ive gone to the store with her since I was little. There are pictures of me literally in diapers wearing her Chanel pumps.

'I met Karl when I was eight and I had horrible side bangs  like a Donald Trump comb-over.'

And the man himself is equally as fond as his latest charge, adding to the fashion bible: 'She used to come to the Chanel studio with her mother. She was a very sweet child, but who would have thought she would have such a strong and defined personality this early on?

'The good thing is that she doesnt look like her father or her mother. With her fragile physique, the mix is surprising and it creates something that is completely different. Lily-Rose is a young girl from a new generation with all the qualities of a star.'
Rachael Gouvignon has claimed Tiffany Scanlon and Megan Marx were both seeing men around the time they went to Bali and fell in love, speculating the two might now be in an open relationship.

The Bachelor contestant, who made it to the final four of last year's season, told Daily Mail Australia she was surprised to learn of Megan and Tiffany's relationship, which the pair have repeatedly defended as authentic.

On Thursday, the first ever Bachelor lesbian couple fired back at claims made by fellow contestant Keira Maguire that their relationship was fake and a 'publicity stunt'.

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'Maybe their status should be along the lines of an open relationship': Rachael Gouvignon surprised by Megan Marx and Tiffany Scanlon's romance

In October, Rachael celebrated Tiffany's 30th birthday by going skydiving together over Jurien Bay when the conversation turned to romance.

'I'm not sure about the girls saying they fell in love after their first visit to Bali [in June] as when I caught up with Tiffany when we went skydiving she told me about a guy she was seeing,' Rachael said.

'Megan has also spoken to me about a guy she was seeing ... Maybe their status should be along the lines of an open relationship or bisexual!'

Is it an open relationship? In October, Rachael celebrated Tiffany's 30th birthday by going skydiving together over Jurien Bay when the conversation turned to romance

Finalist: Rachael also hails from Western Australia and made it to the top four contestants competing for Richie Strahan's affection

In response to Rachael's claims, Tiffany told Daily Mail Australia that 'for now we are keeping it under wraps' how the relationship turned romantic.

'The first time we met up in Bali we did not fall in love, we hooked up for the first time and it was the beginning of a new and somewhat confusing time for us,' Tiffany said.

'How our story unfolded from there was a gradual and fun process which we are yet to share the details of with anyone.'

Claims: Rachael's comments come after Keira Maguire claimed their relationship was fake

On Wednesday, Mamamia reported that Keira told an Instagram live stream Tiffany and Megan's romance was fake and a 'publicity stunt'.

'Yes they are faking their relationship,' Keira responded, before claiming Megan and Tiffany's union was nothing more than a 'publicity stunt'.

But Tiffany and Megan both blasted Keira for her comments, telling Daily Mail Australia on Thursday they could 'cause a lot of harm' and were 'extremely disappointing', while also refuting the accusation their relationship wasn't genuine.

'Extremely disappointing': Tiffany said she hoped that what Keira had said was only a misunderstanding, and wished she had approached her privately before airing her doubts publicly

'I haven't heard from Keira since we were filming, but I genuinely wish her the best and hope she can see that even comments made whilst drunk and loose-tongued can also cause a lot of harm,' Megan said of the comments made while Keira was out at an event and understood to have been drinking.

Tiffany said she hoped that what Keira had said was only a misunderstanding, and wished she had approached her privately before airing her doubts publicly.

'It is extremely disappointing to hear that a woman who has previously stated that women should be respectful to each other would make such remarks,' Tiffany said.
It's nothing new to see Scott Disick surrounding by smokin' women.

The 33-year-old was spotted sharing a suspicious-looking cigarette with some female friends on Thursday.

The reality star was chilling on the balcony of his Miami, Florida hotel, once again accompanied by a gaggle of unnamed beauties.

What a drag: Scott Disick was spotted sharing a suspicious-looking cigarette with some female friends on Thursday

The Lord looked relaxed in a pink sweatshirt and shorts, propping his feet up as he toked on a rollie.

He hung out with one girl in particular, passing the smoke back and forth between them.

Soon she was sidled up beside him, making herself comfy on the arm of his chair as they laughed and joked together.

Then they were joined by another pair of blondes, who inserted themselves into the passing rota.

Bad boy: The reality star was chilling on the balcony of his Miami, Florida hotel, once again accompanied by a gaggle of unnamed beauties

Chilled: The Lord looked relaxed in a pink sweatshirt and shorts, propping his feet up as he toked on a rollie

To the left: He hung out with one girl in particular, passing the smoke back and forth between them

Close: She sidled up beside him, making herself comfy on the arm of his chair as they laughed and joked together

The father of three has been chilling with the all-lady entourage ever since extracting himself from the Kardashian vacation to Costa Rica, after a fall out with matriarch Kris Jenner.

According to TMZ Scott paid $12,500 per night for a three-bedroom suite with spa/sauna and ocean views at the luxurious Setai Hotel.

Despite recent reports that the reality star was reconciling with ex Kourtney Kardashian, he appears to be going back to his old bad boy ways, partying with models, drinking and smoking.

My turn: Then they were joined by another pair of blondes, who inserted themselves into the passing rota

Blowing off steam: The father of three has been chilling with the all-lady entourage ever since extracting himself from the Kardashian vacation to Costa Rica, after a fall out with matriarch Kris Jenner

Only the best: According to TMZ Scott paid $12,500 per night for a three-bedroom suite with spa/sauna and ocean views at the luxurious Setai Hotel

Leopard: Despite recent reports that the reality star was reconciling with ex Kourtney Kardashian, he appears to be going back to his old bad boy ways

Scott reportedly felt the full wrath of Kim and Kris after inviting a woman to stay with him at the same hotel where Keeping Up With The Kardashians was being filmed.

TMZ claims the 'momager' found his actions disrespectful, but her disdain wasn't anything to do with her daughter Kourtney, who has long been separated from Scott.

The former couple share son's Mason, 7, and Reign, 2, as well as four-year-old daughter Penelope.

Meanwhile, in a newly released sneak peek of Sunday's KUWTK episode, Scott and Kourtney are seen getting cosy next to each other on a couch.

'I will never be over her, shes the love of my life,' he tells 32-year-old Khloe.

Womaniser: The E! star has been surrounded by a bevy of young models for the days he's been hanging out in Miami

Interchangeable: It's unclear if he was spotted with the same woman who cosied up to him two days earlier on Tuesday
He's the celebrity judge on My Kitchen Rules who's been called 'egotistical'.

And Colin Fassnidge appeared to believe he was above New South Wales law late last month, as he drove his motorcycle with what appeared to be an unsecured load.

The 44-year-old was spotted as he left his popular Sydney restaurant, 4Fourteen.

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Road rules: Colin Fassnidge appeared to believe he was above New South Wales law late last month, as he drove his motorcycle with what appeared to be an unsecured load

The Irish-born chef walked out of the modern Australian bistro casually dressed in a white t-shirt, black jeans and black and white Asics sneakers.

And while he wore a helmet for safety purposes, he also slung an over-sized duffel bag on the seat in front of him, driving away apparently with no regard for that particular road rule.

He also appeared to still have his white headphones in from a phone call he was on before he jumped on the motorbike.

Driven: The 44-year-old was spotted as he left his popular Sydney restaurant, 4Fourteen

Dubious: While he wore a helmet for safety purposes, he also slung an over-sized duffel bag on the seat in front of him, driving away apparently with no regard for that particular road rule

Noise blockers? He also appeared to still have his white headphones in from a phone call he was on right before he jumped on the motorbike

According Rule No. 292 in the NSW Road Rules 2014, a driver must not drive or tow a vehicle if the vehicle is carrying a load not properly secured to the vehicle.

The offence reportedly carries a $405 fine, plus three demerit points per offence.

The road rules are designed to protect drivers, motorcycle riders and other motorists in the event of a sudden stop or accident.

Laws: According to NSW Government legislation, a driver must not drive or tow a vehicle if the vehicle is carrying a load that is not properly secured to the vehicle

Preventative: The law is designed to protect drivers, motorcycle riders and other motorists in the event of a sudden stop or accident

Tension: The restaurateur was recently rumoured to be feuding with fellow MKR judge, Manu Feildel

The restaurateur was recently rumoured to be feuding with his fellow MKR judge, Manu Feildel.

An insider told Woman's Day Manu was 'sick of egotistical Colin' and concerned with the way he treats the reality show's crew.

'Everyone knows Manu is the linchpin of the show and the viewers' favourite,' the source stated.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Colin's representation for comment.

Trouble? An insider told Woman's Day Manu was 'sick of egotistical Colin' and concerned with the way he treats the reality show's crew
Julia Roberts seems to be having a very good week.

The 49-year-old beamed as she was snapped shopping in Malibu, California on Thursday with her daughter Hazel shopping for interior decorations.

The Oscar-winning Erin Brockovich had a stylish wintry get-up for the retail excursion, wearing an all-black outfit of a jacket, pants and boots with a sage green scarf on the sunny-yet-chilly day in Southern California.

Stunning smile: Julia Roberts, 49, looked to be in a great mood as she was snapped on a shopping excursion through Malibu and Calabasas Thursday with her daughter Hazel, 12

Stocking up: The mom-of-three carried two large bags as she left an upscale home decor establishment

The Closer star rounded out her fashionable look with a large leather teal purse and black sunglasses, as she toted two large brown bags from the Calabasas-based retail establishment Shoppe by Amber Interiors.

Her 12-year-old daughter Hazel wore a grey hoodie over a red polo shirt with a khaki skirt and white Adidas sneakers. Julia has two other children with her husband, 48-year-old cinematographer, Danny Moder: Hazel's twin brother Finn, 12; and Henry, nine.

Earlier this week, news broke that the Smyrna, Georgia native, a four-time Oscar nominee, would be reunited with celebrated actress Viola Davis - a three-time Oscar nominee and Julia's co-star in 2010's Eat Pray Love - for an upcoming film titled Small Great Things.

On the move: It's been a busy week for the A-list stalwart, as news broke she'll reunite with one-time co-star Viola Davis for an upcoming film called Small Great Things

Baby love: Julia and her daughter checked out a newborn in a stroller on their travels

The motion picture is adapted from a Jodi Picoult novel of the same name. It will tell the tale of a baby nurse in Connecticut named Ruth, who's told she cannot care for a newborn born to a white supremacist couple, who subsequently sue her after the child dies on her watch.

La La Land's Marc Platt is slated to produce the movie.

The Notting Hill actress has a few other projects in the hopper, including a voice-over role in Smurfs: The Lost Village; and a leading role in the drama Wonder, alongside Owen Wilson. Both films are slated to open April 7.

Dynamic duo: Roberts and Davis were snapped chatting amiably at the 2015 SAG awards
She is an award-winning meteorologist and busy mother of one.

And Magdalena Roze enjoyed some well-deserved down time during a recent trip to Byron Bay with her partner Darren Robertson and their son Archie.

The 34-year-old showed off her bikini body in a striped swimsuit, as she was seen enjoying a glass of rose at famous Belongil Beach.

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Magdalena Rose! Weather presenter Magdalena Roze enjoyed some well-deserved down time during a recent trip to Byron Bay with her partner Darren Robertson and their son Archer.

Magdalena looked to be having a great time as she strode across the sand to her group of friends with two wine glasses in hand.

The blonde joined a family friendly group, which included Biggest Loser stars Michelle Bridges and Steve 'Commando' Willis.

Magdalena was seen playing with her one-year-old son before the pair joined the rest of the group for a picnic.

Looking good! The 34-year-old showed off her bikini body in a striped swimsuit

Play time: Magdalena was seen playing with her one-year-old son before the pair joined the rest of the group for a picnic

Waving goodbye: Magdalena headed off for a swim as she took refuge from the heat

Beach day: Magdalena looked to be having a great time as she strode across the sand to her group of friends

Family time: Darren, a chef by trade, had the company of his two special people on the beach

Friends: The blonde joined a family friendly group, which included Biggest Loser stars Michelle Bridges and Steve 'Commando' Willis

Michelle, whose son Axel was born in the same month as Magdalena's youngster, was keeping a close eye on her tot.

The fitness guru kept her child, who she shares with fellow personal trainer Steve, on her lap as the group grabbed a feed.

Magdalena and Michelle ventured up and down the beach as they played with their children, the former stopping to snap a selfie with her son.

Motherly love: Michelle, whose son Axel was born in the same month as Magdalena's youngster, was keeping a close eye on her tot

Posers: The meteorologist found time for a selfie as she snapped a picture with her son

Need a refill? The former TV presenter was also seen talking to a bearded man, clutching a cigar and two wine glasses, by the water's edge

Having fun: Magdalena seemed to be having a good chat with her friends as she held a wine glass between her legs

The ex-TV presenter was also seen talking to a bearded friend, clutching a cigar and two wine glasses, by the water's edge.

Later, Archie watched on longingly at his mum as she packed up their possessions as they prepared to leave the beach.

Back in September, Magdalena spoke to The Daily Telegraph about the possibility of having a second child.

Mum's the word: Archie later watched on longingly at his mum as she packed up their possessions as they prepared to leave the beach

Planning ahead: Back in September, Magdalena spoke to The Daily Telegraph about the possibility of having a second child

On the idea of having a second child, she said: 'Im not sure when that will happen - we were planning to get married first, but well see. Itll probably in the next year or so'

She said: 'In the beginning, we couldn't even fathom the idea of a second baby because the first was so hectic. but now, we've reached this sweet spot we're starting to talk about it.'

'Im not sure when that will happen - we were planning to get married first, but well see. Itll probably in the next year or so.'

The couple had lived in Sydney before relocating to Byron Bay in 2014. They now live between the two.
She built a fitness empire after being one of the toughest trainers on The Biggest Loser.

But Michelle Bridges is enjoying life at a more relaxed paced to focus on her one-year-old son Axel with partner Steve 'Commando' Willis.

Since stepping away from the weight loss show last year, she has spent more time with family and friends - including a recent trip to Bilongil Beach in Byron Bay.

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Waving hello! Michelle Bridges (centre) and Steve 'Commando' Willis were spotted at Bilongil Beach in Byron Bay recently with their one-year-old son Axel (left) and friends, including Magdalena Roze (right)

She was also spotted with Commando's daughter Ella from a previous relationship while enjoying an afternoon picnic on the sand.

Also out with the family was friend and TV presenter Magdalena Roze, her partner Darren Robertson, and their son Archie.

Michelle looked every inch the doting mother as she carried her little boy and animatedly chatted to Ella as they walked back from the water.

Fun in the sun: They were also joined by Commando's eight-year-old daughter Ella from a previous relationship

Back to the picnic: Michelle looked every inch the doting mother as she carried her little boy and animatedly chatted to Ella as they walked back from the water

She dressed casually in a blue dress, and kept sunsafe with a straw hat and dark sunglasses.

The trio followed Magdalena back from the water as she flaunted her trim physique in a retro patterned bikini.

The group returned to the picnic blanket where they had a drink, shared a bite to eat and played in the sand.

Wrapped up: The Commando also joined the group after dip in the sea, wrapping a blue and white stripped towel around his waist

Hi five! TV presenter Magdalena waves at her child Archie as they sit on their picnic rug

Trio: Michelle looked back out at the sea with eight-year-old Ella by her side and her son Axel in her arms

Chilling: Michelle dressed casually in a blue dress, a straw hat and dark sunglasses

Also returning back to the party from the water was Commando who sported his trademark black sunglasses and a loose black singlet that showed off his heavily tattooed arms.

Steve also joined the group after a dip in the sea, wrapping a blue and white stripped towel around his waist, and enjoyed a few of the snacks on the picnic rug.

The families brought with them healthy snacks including olives, avocado and popped corn were among some of the nibbles eaten.
Amid rumors they're expecting a child, Hollywood super-couple George and Amal Clooney were snapped grabbing dinner at Barcelona, Spain's swanky Rooftop Smokehouse Restaurant on Thursday to meet his parents for a meal.

The debonair Ocean's Eleven star wore a dark grey polo shirt and a pair of denim blue jeans with his salt-and-pepper locks styled in a short, neat 'do. He wore a pair of grey shoes to round out the casual get-up.

Amal, a human rights lawyer, looked amazing with her jet black mane down and a black skirt, holding hands with her 55-year-old spouse as she walked in black heels.

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Out and about: George and Amal Clooney - rumored to be expecting twins - were snapped at Barcelona, Spain's swanky Rooftop Smokehouse Restaurant Thursday

Chow time: The husband and wife of two years were headed to meet George's parents, Nick and Nina Clooney

Best of times: George and Amal are reportedly overjoyed to be expecting twins, a source told In Touch, adding that they 'feel like theyve hit the family jackpot'

A source told InTouch last month that the dark-haired fashionista, who is of Lebanese-British descent, 'is pregnant with twins: a boy and a girl.'

The couple, who got engaged in April 2014 before tying the knot in Venice, Italy on September 27 of that year, 'feel like theyve hit the family jackpot' in light of the big news, the source told the magazine.

'When George and Amal found out it was twins they were surprised,' the source said, 'but also a little scared because they both had said that one was enough.

Family affair: Nina and Nick Clooney met their son and his wife for dinner

Going strong: George's parents have been married since 1959

Longtime journalist: Nick started out as a news anchor in the 1960s in Kentucky

'But the news that it was a boy and a girl made them both really happy ... they cant believe in just a few months, theyre going to have two babies.'

The Up in the Air star, long considered one of Hollywood's most-eligible bachelors, has done a virtual 180 in his attitude toward parenthood, the source told the outlet.

'Hes gone from never wanting to be a father, to being totally excited about Amals pregnancy and the thought of raising two children who will call him "dad."'

Glamorous: Both George and his stunning spouse shined at an LA benefit last October

He's been a completely caring spouse, catering toward the lovely legal eagle in the early days of her pregnancy, the source said.

'Hes been doting on Amals every need and talking to her belly,' the source told the magazine, adding, 'Hes also having a blast coming up with baby names.'

The Syriana Oscar-winner and Amal initially tried to conceive naturally before focusing on IVF treatment, the publication reported.

In addition to InTouch, Amal's pregnancy with twins was reported by The Lebanon Daily Star earlier this year.

In any event, the group had reason to celebrate on Thursday, as the Academie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema in France announced the actor would receive their Honorary Cesar Award later this month.

In making the announcement, the French film organization hailed Clooney's 'dazzling talent as an actor, director, scriptwriter and producer - and above all, his artistic and spiritual generosity.

'His charm, humor, personality and engagement are at the heart of our perpetual and eternal admiration.'
Those pregnancy rumors swirling around Rosie Huntington-Whiteley aren't going away anytime soon.

The 29-year-old model, and fiancee of Hollywood action hero Jason Statham, inadvertently kept the rumor mill spinning on Thursday.

The blonde beauty was photographed out and about in Los Angeles, keeping her hand strategically placed over her stomach.

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Out and about: Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, 29, held her arm over her stomach area as she was snapped in Los Angeles on Thursday, fueling rumors she's expecting her first child

The U.K.-born stunner looked ravishing, as usual, wearing a detailed camouflage top with a tie around the waist area, form-fitting black pants and black heels.

The 5ft9 catwalk queen wore her blonde mane parted and down with black sunglasses and a purse as she was snapped entering a building.

Simply stunning: The Victoria's Secret model was a vision of beauty and glamour in a camouflage jacket and black leggings with her hair falling loose around her shoulders

Agile: The statuesque veteran of the fashion industry had perfect posture as she headed into a building in very high heels

The stir around the Victoria's Secret model kicked off earlier this year when she posted a shot of herself clad in a baggy poncho for her 6.7 million followers on Instagram.

She captioned the post, 'Here's to fresh starts and exciting prospects for the new year. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2017.'

Shortly thereafter, sources told the Daily Mail that the blonde beauty is 'indeed pregnant and ... has been calling in clothes to suit her changing figure.'

Kickoff: Rosie, a horse lover, said she was excited for 'fresh starts and exciting prospects' heading into 2017

Longtime love: The breathtaking model and dashing film actor have been romantically linked since 2010. They were snapped last August at a Hollywood premiere

Rosie, who's been seen in films such as Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Mad Max: Fury Road, has opened up in the past on her thoughts about starting a family with her 49-year-old actor beau.

Speaking to The EDIT in 2015, Rosie said, 'Having a family is something I think about for sure, and whether I'd live here in America or in England. But it's not always as simple as that.'

She continued, 'I have no idea what will happen, but it'll be interesting to find out, right? And nothing will be perfect, I'm sure.'

Three years prior, Rosie, who's been involved with The Transporter star Statham for about seven years, told Elle UK there would come a time in her career when motherhood would take priority over modeling.

'I always see myself working, but definitely being a mum will be a big part of me,' she said. 'I think there is naturally a point where you think, "I dont care about myself as number one any more." I want to care about other things.'
The authenticity of her same-sex relationship with Tiffany Scanlon has been questioned by her former Bachelor cast-mates in recent days.

However, it doesn't seem Megan Marx is too phased by the controversy.

On Thursday, the star shrugged off the claims, taking to Instagram to share a snap as she joyously enjoyed a topless late night swim.

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'Unbeing dead isn't being alive': Megan Marx was feeling both frisky and philosophical on Thursday, taking to Instagram to share a racy image of herself swimming topless in a pool, as speculation intensified about the authenticity of her relationship with Tiffany Scanlon

In the photo, the flash from the camera lights up the pool to reveal Megan wearing nothing more than a pair of grey bikini bottoms.

The star has her mouth open and her tongue sticking out, as if she is tasting drops of tropical rain falling from the sky.

Although Megan's hands are placed on her chest, they fail to cover her ample assets, with a photo-shopped cross blocking her nipples so as not to violate Instagram's decency rules.

A new ritual: Megan took a cheeky skinny dip on Wednesday with her beau Tiffany

Proving she's more than just a pretty face, Megan captioned her photo with a quote from the late American poet, E. E. Cummings.

'Unbeing dead isn't being alive,' the philosophical quotation read.

The blonde beauty, originally from Western Australia, has recently relocated to Bali with Tiffany - another Bachelor contestant whom she met whilst filming the reality show in 2016.

Moved in together: Megan and Tiffany have relocated to the Balinese town of Canggu, and have been seen putting on loved-up displays at surrounding beaches and bars

And it appears the couple are doing their fair share of 'being alive', putting on loved-up displays in bars and on beaches surrounding their new Balinese home-base of Canggu.

Thursday's topless swimming session wasn't the only racy nighttime swim Megan has taken, with the raunchy pool dips becoming something of a new ritual.

On Wednesday, Megan shared a photo with her 142,000 Instagram followers, that showed her in the pool completely nude, as she rested on a floating pool lounger.

First lesbian Bachelor couple: Megan and Tiffany made worldwide headlines, but former cast-mates are now questioning their relationship

'Nudey Swims in Canggu with the DetecTiff [Tiffany Scanlon]! Nearly fell asleep like this thinking about lyyyfffee (sic),' read her caption.

Megan, who is known for writing lengthy, philosophical captions on her Instagram posts, recently used her way with words to pen an essay for Popsugar explaining why she threw away her vibrator, which she nicknamed, 'Andy'.

'Andy was  to be real  just too good on my own. We climbed the summit too quickly every time, and as a result I became lazy with my partner. I wanted less because I was getting it elsewhere,' Megan explained.

So long, Andy! Megan recently wrote an essay explaining why she threw away her purple pleasure apparatus

However, despite re-locating to Bali with beau Tiffany, two of the couple's former cast-mates have questioned the authenticity of their relationship.

Megan and Tiffany are the first lesbian Bachelor couple anywhere in the world, but on Wednesday, Keria Macguire stated that 'they are faking their relationship', before claiming that the pair's union was nothing more than a 'publicity stunt'.

Speaking out: Former cast-mate Keira Macguire called the pair's relationship a 'publicity stunt

And on Friday, the Bachelor's third runner-up, Rachael Gouvignon, questioned the couple's claims that they fell in love during their first trip to Bali last June.

'When I caught up with Tiffany when we went skydiving [in October] she told me about a guy she was seeing,' Rachael stated, before adding, 'Megan has also spoken to me about a guy she was seeing ... Maybe their status should be along the lines of an open relationship or bisexual!'

In response to Rachael's claims, Tiffany told Daily Mail Australia that 'for now we are keeping it under wraps' how the relationship turned romantic.
She is known in the modelling world for her sensational figure.

And Emily Ratajkowski was certainly confident to show it off in her new sizzling bikini shoot for Twinset on Friday.

The brunette beauty, 25, displayed her enviably toned stomach and leggy physique in a skimpy floral two-piece for all to see, as she posed on the beach seductively for the titillating new photos.

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Bikini babe: Emily Ratajkowski confidently showed off her sensational model figure in a new sizzling bikini shoot for Twinset on Friday

The stunner set pulses racing in the stylish bikini, which was formed of a delicate white floral pattern lines with burgundy stitching.

Plunging into a daringly low V at her chest, the halterneck top gave a sexy flash of her famously ample cleavage and deep golden tan as she smouldered for the shot.

Her enviably gym-honed waist and rippling abs were also left on full display as she paired the top with matching bottoms, which tied into single strings at the side to elongate her already long and lean legs.

Natural beauty: Leaving her face mostly bare and her brunette tresses in loose waves, the model showcased her clear, glowing complexion and naturally stunning features at the shoot

Giving the look a boho vibe, Emily then sported a cream kimono with pretty lace panels on top - which she draped casually and effortlessly across her shoudlers.

Leaving her face mostly bare and her brunette tresses in loose waves, the model showcased her clear, glowing complexion and naturally stunning features as she stared fiercely down the camera.

Covering up for further shots, the catwalk star later showed off her statueqsue frame and chic style further in a floaty floral maxi dress and thigh-skimming lace number.

Boho chic: Covering up for further shots, Emily later showed off her statueqsue frame and chic style further in a floaty floral maxi dress and thigh-skimming lace number (above)

The London-born stunner stars in the idyllic campaign, for Simona Barbieri's SS17 collection, alongside Sasha Pivovarova.

The Russian beauty, best known as the longest-running model for Prada, flaunted her enviably svelte legs and striking facial features as she photographed Emily int the shots from the comfort of an open-top jeep.

The likes of Austrian model Nadine Leopold and Victoria's Secret stunner Barbara Palvin have modelled previously for Twinset, proving Emily's career to only be going from strength to strength.

Teamwork: Emily appeared to play to her strengths during the shoot - as she emulated her model status to be photographed in the shots themselves

Twice as nice: The London-born stunner stars in the idyllic campaign, for Simona Barbieri's SS17 collection, alongside Sasha Pivovarova (above)

Dazzling: The Russian beauty, best known as the longest-running model for Prada, showcased her striking facial features from a few sultry shots in a jeep

Having risen to prominence in Robin Thicke's music video for Blurred Lines, Emily had since become a household name in the fashion world - best known for her scantily-clad displays in order to show off her model physique.

Last week, the star even revealed to her 10million-plus followers on Instagram that she had landed the cover of Vogue Espana.

The starring role was her very first for the Spanish publication and her second cover for the fashion bible internationally.

Proving she has multiple strings to her bow however, the brunette has also turned her hand to acting.

Better and better: Victoria's Secret stunner Barbara Palvin have modelled previously for Twinset, proving Emily's career to only be going from strength to strength

She starred alongside Zac Efron in We Are Not Your Friends back in 2015, before appearing on hit Netflix comedy Easy late last year.

However, Emily recently admitted to ES Magazine that her sexy appearance which has grabbed so much attention can hinder her in scoring different roles in film.

She explained: 'If you're a sexy actress it's hard to get serious roles. You get offered the same thing that they've seen you in. People are like sheep and they're like 'Oh, that's what she does well.''

'Whats so dumb is that women are 50 per cent of the population and they want to spend money to see movies where theyre portrayed as three-dimensional characters.
Kylie Minogue has ended her engagement to Joshua Sasse, with a report suggesting the singer was suspicions about his friendship with Spanish actress Marta Milans.

The 34-year-old star is said to have grown close to Joshua while filming TV series No Tomorrow in Canada last year, according to The Sun newspaper.

But Marta's family said on Friday they knew nothing about her supposed close friendship with Kylies ex Joshua.

Pictured: Spanish actress Marta Milans - who has allegedly become 'close' to Kylie Minogue's ex-fiance Joshua Sasse - can be seen enjoying a luxurious lifestyle on her Instagram account

Exotic break: The 34-year-old Spanish born actress, who moved to New York as a teenager, enjoys posted pictures of her jet set lifestyle on Instagram

Her brother Alfonso said when asked about the reports Joshuas increasing closeness with Madrid-born Marta were to blame: 'I have no idea what youre talking about, no idea at all.

'I know who Kylie Minogue is of course but I dont know where my sister comes into all this. Its something thats totally foreign to me.

'I havent got anything to say because I dont know anything. If I did, I doubt I would say anything anyway.

'Knowing my dad, he would probably just hang up the phone if he got asked about something like this.'

New York-based beauty Marta can be seen enjoying a luxurious lifestyle on her Instagram account, sharing snapshots from her exotic holidays, on-set antics and girly gossips with her 2.3k followers.

Marta isn't shy about showing off her fantastic figure in a bikini in her sun-kissed snaps from her recent getaways.

Split: Kylie has reportedly ended her engagement to Joshua Sasse over suspicions about his friendship with co-star Marta.

Several images see the brunette indulging in her passion for yoga, practicing her moves with her girlfriends on the beach.

Marta is joined by twin sister Gadea Perez-Andujar, who is a jewellery designer based in Hawaii, in several of the pictures.

Marta can also be seen partying with friends, attending charity fundraisers and trying out new skills like pottery.

She is friends with fellow Spanish beauty Elsa Pataky, who is married to Chris Hemsworth, recently sharing a sweet picture of them catching up over a glass of wine.

The actress got her big break in ABC's Killer Women, which was produced by Modern Family star Sofia Vergara.

Her film credits include Shame, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and Devoured, and she has also starred in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.

Breaking her silence: The singer confirmed the sad news on social media on Friday morning as she thanked her loyal fans for their messages of concern and support - however, she has yet to comment on the reason behind the split

Connection: The 34-year-old star is said to have grown close to Joshua while filming TV series No Tomorrow in Canada last year, according to The Sun newspaper

Sasse is alleged to have bonded with Marta while filming his latest project No Tomorrow in Canada last year, with a source who worked on the show telling The Sun it was well known that the pair had been close.

Marta, 34, was born and raised in Madrid and is reportedly fluent in seven languages, including Russian.

The actress helps run a family business called Santa Gadea Organic Goat Cheese, which imports cheese to the US from Spain.

She's also involved with Art of Elysium, an artists' charity which helps sick and developmentally challenged children both in New York and LA.

Marta likes to sing, is an expert yoga practitioner and supports Real Madrid.

After graduating from New York University with a double major in Acting and Art History, she found work in local theatre productions.

Swimming with turtles: The star - who got her big break in the Sofia Vergara-produced show Killer Women - leads a jet-setting lifestyle

Family-oriented: Marta is joined by twin sister Gadea Perez-Andujar, who is a jewellery designer based in Hawaii, in several of the pictures

Marta comes from a wealthy family; her father Alfonso Perez-Andujar is a millionaire landowner, who has reportedly upset locals by allegedly usurping public footpaths.

The star is said to be behind the number of furious arguments Kylie reportedly had with Joshua before travelling to France for Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week last month.

And it is on her return that The Sun reports she decided to end things with her partner - whom she met in the summer of 2015.

Kylie confirmed the news of their break-up on social media on Friday morning as she thanked her loyal fans for their messages of concern and support.

Alongside a picture of a beautiful sunrise, Kylie wrote: '#lovers ... Thank you for all your love and support throughout this recent chapter of my life.

Squad: Marta can also be seen partying with friends, attending charity fundraisers and trying out new skills like pottery

Gal pals: She is friends with fellow Spanish beauty Elsa Pataky (centre), who is married to Chris Hemsworth, recently sharing a sweet picture of them catching up over a glass of wine

'Thank you now for your love and understanding with the news that Josh and I have decided to go our separate ways.

'We wish only the best for each other as we venture towards new horizons. #thesunalwaysrises'.

A spokesperson for Kylie declined to comment. MailOnline is awaiting comment from Marta and Joshua's representatives.

Marta, who is better known abroad than in her home country, is one of three children born to millionaire landowner and dairy farmer Alfonso Perez-Andujar and his sculptor wife Maria.

The 34-year-old, who is believed to act under a stage name rather than her birth name, is the eldest child.

Her younger brother, a physicist who shares his dads first name, did a masters degree in wind energy in Denmark before returning to Spain.

Thespian: After graduating from New York University with a double major in Acting and Art History, she found work in local theatre productions

Kind-hearted: Marta is involved with Art of Elysium, an artists' charity which helps sick and developmentally challenged children both in New York and LA

The youngest sibling - called Gadea - was the inspiration for the organic goats cheese which the family make called Santa Gadea and which Marta often references on her social media sites.

Gadea studied Marine Biology at the University of Hawaii. She describes herself on social media as a biacoustic researcher.

The family patriarch, the owner and director of the company Santa Gadea and Fuentemorera, owns a 2,000-acre farm in the northern Spanish province of Burgos where the family cheese is produced.

The company website says the'misty valley' where the organic farm is hidden has seen 'battles waged on horseback and knights forcing kings to swear oaths.'

The farm is home to 1,200 goats said to sleep inside a 'magnificent construction of French design' fed on organic crops with no trace of chemical fertilisers.

The goats produce around 3,000 litres of milk a day which is used to make 3,000 to 4,000 pieces of cheese on a daily basis.

Around 250 acres is given over to feeding the animals on the farm, which boasts of making its own compost in a completely natural way.

Four solar farms and and a wind farm on the estate makes it energy self-sufficient.
Speculation is rife as to who will replace exiting Peter Capaldi - who on Monday announced he's leaving his role as Doctor Who.

And with names like Kris Marshall, Olivia Colman and Frances de la Tour in the running, it seems that it's anyone's guess.

And now Kelly Brook has thrown her hat in the ring for the job too.

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Presenting her fashion segment on Friday's installment of Lorraine, she addressed the apparent rumours that she's got her eye on the role in wake of the news that it's highly likely the 13th Doctor will be a woman.

'Well, I'm an out of work actress! So feel free to call my agent!' Kelly said, seemingly keen on the prospect.

'I love Peter Capaldi, I have worked with him, but he's not there any more...' she said, stating the obvious.

The 37-year-old model-turned-TV star has had her ups and downs as an actress.

'Give my agent a call!' Kelly Brook offered herself up for the role of the new Doctor Who after branding herself an 'out of work actress'

A lady Doctor? Presenting her fashion segment on Friday's installment of Lorraine, Kelly addressed the apparent rumours that she's got her eye on the role in wake of the news that it's highly likely the 13th Doctor will be a woman

Her film credits include Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo as 'Beautiful Woman in Painting' and the cult creature feature Piranha 3D.

With her character killed off, she wasn't around to make the sequel, Piranha 3DD.

She played herself in Keith Lemon: The Film and has enjoyed some UK TV success on the likes of Skins, Trollied and Miss Marple.

In the states, she has featured in episodes of Smallville and the short-lived NTSF:SD:SUV::.

In 2014 she landed a leading regular role in a sitcom produced by Ellen DeGeneres; but it flopped and was cancelled after just six episodes.

'I love Peter Capaldi': The 37-year-old model-turned-TV star has had her ups and downs as an actress

Varied career: Her film credits include Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo as 'Beautiful Woman in Painting' and the cult creature feature Piranha 3D

Kelly debuted her fashion segment on Lorraine last week and was met with a barrage of tweets about how 'hyper' she was.

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Friday was a similar story with several tweets instructing her to 'shout less' and to 'calm down'.

'What the F is Kelly Brook on? I want some...#hyperAF @ITVLorraine,' came one tweeter's remark.

'Has Kelly Brook had one too many coffees this morning?' wrote another.

'Turn it down Kelly compose yourself and concentrate #shouting,' critiqued another.

Others loved her segment, however. One tweet praising her read: '@IAMKELLYBROOK on @ITVLorraine on a Friday morning. What a way to start the weekend!'

Meanwhile, the odds are apparently on Olivia Colman for the first female Doctor role.

The actress, who recently received an Emmy award nomination for her role in The Night Manager, has even been tipped for the job by her Broadchurch co-star David Tennant who played the tenth Doctor.

In the running: Other favourites with punters include Broadchurch actor Andrew Buchan, Game Of Thrones star Iwan Rheon, James Bond's Q Ben Whishaw and and The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade

#shouting: Kelly debuted her fashion segment on Lorraine last week and was met with a barrage of tweets about how 'hyper' she was. Friday was a similar story with several tweets instructing her to 'shout less' and to 'calm down'

'Olivia would clearly be a magnificent choice. If you have the right people telling the right stories then its absolutely a possibility,' he said.

Other favourites with punters include Broadchurch actor Andrew Buchan, Game Of Thrones star Iwan Rheon, James Bond's Q Ben Whishaw and and The IT Crowd's Richard Ayoade.

Who will it be? Could it be a battle between Olivia, Frances and Kelly?

Capaldi himself joined in the name-dropping for the next Time Lord - and is giving his backing to Rising Damp veteran Frances de la Tour.

Bizarrely, she was considered to be the first female Doctor in the 1980s, when producers were desperate to change the sex of the time-travelling alien in a bid to keep it on the air - but it was cancelled, only to return again in 2005.

Could it be a battle between Olivia, Frances and Kelly?
She's been starring in Broadway play The Present since previews began on December 17.

And on Thursday, Cate Blanchett took time to thank and greet her fans after a performance at the Barrymore Theatre in New York.

The Australian actress, 47, was pictured signing memorabilia and posing for iPhone snaps with awaiting theatre goers.

Signing off! Cate Blanchett looks chic in rugged-up ensemble as she makes time for adoring fans waiting in the cold after her Broadway performance of The Present in New York on Thursday

The Hollywood star appeared in high spirits as she had her felt-tip pen at the ready.

Cate was warmly dressed for the chilly night, as were the hordes of fans queuing behind the barriers for a glimpse of the show's lead stars.

The mother-of-four cut a chic figure in a plum wool coat worn over a striped blouse, black skinny jeans and leather ankle boots.

Ready for her fans! The Hollywood star appeared in high spirits as she had her felt-tip pen at the ready to sign memorabilia for her fans, while rugged-up in a mauve coat worn over a striped blouse, black skinny jeans and leather ankle boots

She accessorised the look with a chunky grey knit scarf and a black handbag slung over her right shoulder.

Cate's makeup had been flawlessly applied for the Broadway production with a shimmery bronzed eye shadow palette, heavy blush and shiny lip still visible.

Her hair was tied up in a messy bun with her fringe clipped up away from her face in a quiff.

Her name in lights: Cate is co-starring with Richard Roxburgh in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of the little known Chekhov play adapted by her husband, Andrew Upton

The Australian actress is co-starring with Richard Roxburgh in the Sydney Theatre Company's production of the little known Chekhov play adapted by her husband, Andrew Upton.

It's the two-time Oscar winner's Broadway debut.

She plays a Russian widow who is turning 40 and worried about how to hang on to her home.

The limited production is due to close on March 19.
Last week, she admitted she'd happily go under the knife and candidly confessed a dislike of the ageing process.

But Amanda Redman was looking perfectly happy in her own skin as she left BBC Radio studios on Friday.

The 59-year-old actress looked casual in a padded black coat, jeans and boots after promoting her new TV series The Good Karma Hospital.

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Smiling: Amanda Redman emerged looking cheerful and relaxed on Friday after promoting her new TV series The Good Karma Hospital on BBC Radio 2

The smiling star wore her glossy blonde loose while accessorising with chunky silver rings, a silver circular pendant and hooped earrings.

The star's appearance came following a candid interview with Woman magazine, where she admitted that while she'd be happy to go ahead with a boob job now, her husband, designer Damian Schnabel, has told her he'd leave her if she went through with it.

She added that she believes anyone who says they don't mind getting older is telling fibs.

'Anyone who says "I love getting older" is lying. It's a PC thing that people say, but what's to like?' she said. 'You start losing people you love, you get aches and pains and if you're an actress you stop getting the roles you used to.'

Subtle: The blonde star sported black and copper eye make-up and nude lipstick for her appearance

Back to black: The star stuck to a wintry ensemble, teaming her coat with jeans and knee-length boots

She added that her breasts have got bigger since she went through the menopause and she'd love a reduction - and further plastic surgery - but her husband has other ideas.

'I want a boob job, but my husband says he'd divorce me. They're too big and they've got bigger during the menopause, but my husband is happy with them.

'If I got to the point where looking in the mirror depressed me, which happened to one of my friends, then I think, Yeah, why not?'

Yeah why not? Amanda said she'd go under the knife if she got to the point where the mirror depressed her

Not everyone's a fan: Amanda said she wants a boob job but her husband said he'd divorce me

Amanda, who was good friends with popular actress Lynda Bellingham, said losing her to cancer and also enduring the deaths of her mother and brother had hit her hard.

She said: 'I've just got through two very difficult years, with the deaths of my mother and my friend Lynda Bellingham. Lynda and I starred in At Home With the Braithwaites together, and it was so hard to lose her.

'My mum Joan died in October 2014 and I am the last one in my family after my brother, Tim, died in 2012 of alcoholism. It's a tough position to be in.'

Amanda's latest role, as Dr Lydia Fonseca, took her to sun-drenched Sri Lanka, for the new ITV series The Good Karma Hospital.

Truthful: Amanda said anyone who claims to love getting older is 'lying'

New role: Amanda is back on screens in The Good Karma Hospital, set in present day Sri Lanka, on ITV in February

The brainchild of real-life A&E doctor Dan Sefton, the show's title was inspired by the film The Exotic Marigold Hotel, the progamme is a life-affirming tale set in the present day in a small hospital in the fictional seaside town of Barco.

Amanda said the show is perfect Sunday night viewing during a British winter.

'Theres something special about this project,' she mused. 'Im especially fond of Lydia because shes as close to me as any character Ive ever played.

'So much so that when my agent sent me the script she said, All Im going to say about this part is its NAR  no acting required!
They've been enjoying a relaxing couple of days in Barcelona.

And amid rumours she's pregnant, Amal Clooney certainly looked excited to enjoy some time with her loved ones as she arrived in the city on Wednesday with husband George, 55, and the actor's parents Nick and Nina.

The human rights lawyer - who turned 39 on Friday - kept warm in a cosy loose fitting sweater dress as the group arrived at the airport, and appeared to be sporting a fuller figure in the casual outfit.

Happy time: Amid rumours she's pregnant, Amal Clooney couldn't hide her smile as she arrived at Barcelona airport with her husband George and the actor's parents on Wednesday

Amal had a big smile on her face as she led the way out of the airport, wrapped up warm for the chilly weather.

She layered a loose cream jumper dress under a casual black coat and added black opaque tights and a chic pair of knee-high boots.

A knitted cap and Altuzarra Bullrope Hobo bag completed the look, while the beauty added a touch of makeup and left her hair loose around her shoulders.

Pregnancy rumours: The human rights lawyer kept warm in a loose fitting sweater dress as the group arrived at the airport, and appeared to be sporting a fuller figure in the casual outfit

Family time: Amal and George looked in good spirits as they arrived in the Spanish city with the actor's parents

Beaming: Amal had a big smile on her face as she led the way out of the airport, wrapped up warm for the chilly weather

A dressed down George was seen chatting to airport staff before taking charge of the luggage.

The next night the foursome were seen grabbing dinner at Barcelona's swanky Rooftop Smokehouse Restaurant.

Amal looked amazing with her jet black mane down and a black skirt, holding hands with her 55-year-old spouse as she walked in black heels.

Taking charge: A dressed down George was seen chatting to airport staff before taking charge of the luggage

Expecting? A source told InTouch last month that the dark-haired fashionista, who is of Lebanese-British descent, 'is pregnant with twins: a boy and a girl'

We are family: The group looked relaxed as they made their way out of the airport and into the city

Killer footwear: The brunette beauty rocked some leopard-print wedge boots with panache

A source told InTouch last month that the dark-haired fashionista, who is of Lebanese-British descent, 'is pregnant with twins: a boy and a girl.'

The couple, who got engaged in April 2014 before tying the knot in Venice, Italy on September 27 of that year, 'feel like theyve hit the family jackpot' in light of the big news, the source told the magazine.

'When George and Amal found out it was twins they were surprised,' the source said, 'but also a little scared because they both had said that one was enough.

Something funny? Amal and George shared a chuckle as they walked inside

In relaxed spirits: The high-flying couple seemed to be having a good time

Travelling light? They appeared to have accumulated quite the baggage turnout

Having a whale of a time: George grinned as he chatted away happily to his parents

'But the news that it was a boy and a girl made them both really happy ... they cant believe in just a few months, theyre going to have two babies.'

The Up in the Air star, long considered one of Hollywood's most-eligible bachelors, has done a virtual 180 in his attitude toward parenthood, the source told the outlet.

'Hes gone from never wanting to be a father, to being totally excited about Amals pregnancy and the thought of raising two children who will call him "dad."'

Winter chic: She layered a loose cream jumper dress under a casual black coat and added black opaque tights and a chic pair of knee-high boots

Always stylish: A knitted cap and Altuzarra Bullrope Hobo bag completed the look, while the beauty added a touch of makeup and left her hair loose around her shoulders

Keeping close: The couple chatted to airport staff before heading to their hotel

Chic family: George's mother Nina was smart in leopard print heels and a blazer

He's been a completely caring spouse, catering toward the lovely legal eagle in the early days of her pregnancy, the source said.

'Hes been doting on Amals every need and talking to her belly,' the source told the magazine, adding, 'Hes also having a blast coming up with baby names.'

The Syriana Oscar-winner and Amal initially tried to conceive naturally before focusing on IVF treatment, the publication reported.

Out and about: George and Amal - rumored to be expecting twins - were snapped at Barcelona, Spain's swanky Rooftop Smokehouse Restaurant on Thursday

Chow time: The husband and wife of two years were headed to meet George's parents, Nick and Nina Clooney

Best of times: George and Amal are reportedly overjoyed to be expecting twins, a source told In Touch, adding that they 'feel like theyve hit the family jackpot'

Meanwhile, Radar Online reported on Friday that when asked when the baby was due by a pap recently, George gave 'a sly, wink and a nod.'

In addition to InTouch, Amal's pregnancy with twins was reported by The Lebanon Daily Star earlier this year.

In any event, the group had reason to celebrate on Thursday, as the Academie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema in France announced the actor would receive their Honorary Cesar Award later this month.

In making the announcement, the French film organization hailed Clooney's 'dazzling talent as an actor, director, scriptwriter and producer - and above all, his artistic and spiritual generosity.

'His charm, humor, personality and engagement are at the heart of our perpetual and eternal admiration.'
Halle Berry was spotted putting her hands up, a steely look on her face, while filming an outdoor scene from her forthcoming historical drama Kings on Thursday.

Doing the same thing near her were three child actors and none other than Daniel Craig.

Last June, Deadline reported Craig was in talks for a part in the film, but there'd been no confirmation since until he was spotted on the Los Angeles set this Thursday.

Hands up: Halle Berry and Daniel Craig were spotted with three child actors on Thursday, filming their LA riots drama Kings

The 50-year-old Oscar-winner wore a tight beige top and an oversize denim jacket, as well as faded jeans and a purple belt.

Meanwhile, the 48-year-old had on a black jacket with its sleeves rolled part of the way up his toned forearms.

His white T-shirt was tucked into his own faded jeans, which had been folded up at the hems over walnut brown boots.

Busy set: His sighting on the shoot confirmed rumors he was in the film after Deadline reported last June that he was in talks for a role

At another point, Berry could be seen leaning down to speak to one of the children, who appeared to be running. Both were in a street covered in scattered detritus.

Behind them stood a police car with its emergency lights on, as well as a policeman who seemed himself to be running.

In another sequence, the Craig character had put on a long black coat and black pants. Berry's wore a flowing charcoal cardigan.

Historical drama: Kings is its writer/director Deniz Gamze Erguven's first movie in English and revolves around a South Central LA foster family during the time of the Rodney King trial

Her arm was outstretched and she pointed her finger as the three children rushed around, gathering objects from the litter-strewn road.

Kings is its writer/director Deniz Gamze Erguven's first movie in English and revolves around a South Central LA foster family during the time of the Rodney King trial.

After the police officers who'd beaten King were acquitted, riots spread in Los Angeles for six days and resulted in 55 deaths.

Erguven's known for Mustang, a 2015 Turkish-French-German co-production set in Turkey which earned a Best Foreign Language Film nod at the Oscars.
She was discovered at the tender age of 15 in a local high street store.

But Jourdan Dunn proved just how far she's come in the fashion industry on Friday, as she took to Instagram to share a behind-the-scenes snap from the shoot for her new clothing line.

The 26-year-old displayed her enviably toned stomach and slender figure for all to see in the shot, as she posed in a skimpy bra and sporty tracksuit from her new collection with online retailer Missguided.

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That's how its Dunn! Model Jourdan, 26, showed off her killer body on Friday as she uploaded a behind-the-scenes snap from the shoot for her new clothing line on Instagram

The British beauty put on a sizzling display in the snap, which saw her clad in a racy plunging bra top to enhance her ample cleavage.

With the straps of the matching briefs poking out from above her trousers, the star left her enviably taut abs and plenty of her gorgeous, glowing skin on show.

Keeping the look both sexy and demure however, the Victoria's Secret model then layered a sporty-chic tracksuit on top of shimmering pale pink.

Design queen: The new collection, LonDunn x Missguided, marks the model's second clothing line - having released a range of kidswear for Marks and Spencer in April last year

The bottoms skimmed her famously long legs to the floor, while she left the matching jacket draped casually and effortlessly across one arm to saucily flash even more of her body.

She trendily tied the look together with a pair of black stiletto boot heels, and slicked her hair completely off her face to draw attention to her naturally striking features.

Jourdan was partaking in the shoot for her new clothing range, LonDunn x Missguided - which she announced was coming soon on her Instagram last week.

The new collection marks the model's second clothing line - having released a range of kidswear, Lil' LonDunn by Jourdan Dunn, for Marks and Spencer in April last year.

Humble beginnings: The supermodel was first discovered by a model scout in a branch of budget high street store Primark in Hammersmith, west London

The beauty was first discovered by a model scout in a branch of budget high street store Primark in Hammersmith, west London.

She has since appeared on countless covers of fashion bible Vogue and featured in campaigns for the likes of Burberry, Balmain, Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, DKNY, John Galliano and Tommy Hilfiger.

The model has one son, Riley, seven, with ex-boyfriend Jordan Cummings, who was sentenced to a drugs-related prison sentence shortly after Riley's birth.

However proving she was the ultimate professional, Jourdan modelled until she was six months pregnant and couldn't fit into clothes - and returned to the catwalk just 10 weeks after the birth.

The model recently praised her own mother for helping out with Riley while she jets across the globe to fulfill work commitments.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, she said: 'Thank God for my mum, because shes amazing.

'She said to me, "Once you have Riley, Im going to be here for you, 100 per cent. So do what you have to do".'
They've gone their separate ways following one very acrimonious divorce.

And that means Johnny Depp's headline grabbing money troubles are of zero concern to Amber Heard, something which couldn't have been clearer as she emerged on Thursday.

The actress happily headed out to do a spot of shopping, stopping by the high concept designer store You're So Baby in the Echo Park area of Los Angeles.

Amber Heard treats herself with a trip to designer store in Echo Park, Los Angeles on Thursday... as ex Johnny Depp's money troubles hit the news

Unzipped! The actress wore her trousers undone, and fastened with a fabric belt

Amber swung a bag from the fashionable hot spot, as she emerged in the early evening. The store was created by designer Tatum Kendrick and Natalie Krim and opened in December.

Dressed in a white shirt tucked into unzipped black high waisted trousers, fastened with a fabric belt, Amber was as fashion-forward as ever.

Her outing came amid lurid headline's about her ex - who is in a dispute with his former managers about the state of his financial affairs.

Details to emerge about his spending include the fact that the 53-year-old splurges $30,000 a month on wine.

Best foot forward! Dressed in a white shirt tucked into unzipped black high waisted trousers, fastened with a fabric belt, Amber was as fashion-forward as ever

No money troubles here! Amber swung a bag from the fashionable hot spot, as she emerged in the early evening. The store was created by designer Tatum Kendrick and Natalie Krim

Johnny recently accused The Management Group (TMG) of defrauding him out of tens of millions of dollars, but the firm has hit back in a blistering countersuit of its own, which was filed on Tuesday.

TMG claims the actor left himself on the brink of financial ruin due to his own eye-watering spending habits, which is also said to have included splashing out $3million to blast Hunter Thompson's ashes out of a cannon, $18million on an 150-foot yacht and $200,000 a month on private planes.

TMG insisted Johnny was kept fully informed that he was spending his fortune more quickly than he could afford.

Jetting off in style! Johnny recently accused The Management Group (TMG) of defrauding him out of tens of millions of dollars; he is seen on a private jet in this file picture

Not that this will matter to Amber.

She won $7million in a divorce settlement from Johnny, as well as $500,000 towards her legal fees.

She has pledged to give the money to the Children's Hospital in Los Angeles and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) domestic violence unit.
He's the Hollywood actor with an impressive Sydney real estate portfolio.

And in the midst of a belated divorce settlement with ex-wife Danielle Spencer, Russell Crowe has doubled his money through the sale of his Kingsford unit block.

The 52-year-old made $3.2 million for the apartment building he originally paid $1,454,000 for in 2001, according to The Daily Telegraph.

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Making moves: In the midst of a belated divorce settlement with ex-wife Danielle Spencer, Russell Crowe has doubled his money through the sale of his Kingsford unit block

The film star bought the property 15 years ago when he was part of the rock group 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts.

He had allowed his band mates to live rent-free in the three-storey, four-unit building for an extended period of time.

The block went up for sale at the end of last year, when Russell is understood to have told his friends who lived there it would be used 'as part of a divorce settlement'.

Money maker: The 52-year-old made $3.2 million for the apartment building he originally paid $1,454,000 for in 2001

Portfolio: The film star bought the property 15 years ago when he was part of the rock group 30 Odd Foot Of Grunts

The Gladiator star is now reportedly looking to sell another of his properties, a commercial building in trendy Darlinghurst.

He bought the space 13 years ago and it currently operates as the Riley Street Gym.

The jewel in the actor's portfolio is his Woolloomooloo penthouse, which has been on the market for some time with a staggering $30 million price tag.

Standout: The jewel in the actor's portfolio is his Woolloomooloo penthouse, which has been on the market for some time with a staggering $30 million price tag

Big screen: The father of Charles, 13, and Tennyson, 10, will next be seen in The Mummy reboot as the classic character Dr. Jekyll

The Finger Wharf apartment was bought by Russell and his former wife in 2003 for $14.35 million.

The father of Charles, 13, and Tennyson, 10, will next be seen on-screen in The Mummy reboot as the classic character Dr. Jekyll.

The Tom Cruise-lead vehicle is the first in the Universal Monsters shared universe series, which will include Van Helsing, Count Dracula and Gill-Man films in the future.
She's the Australian supermodel who bases herself in New York City.

And David Jones ambassador Jessica Gomes has weighed in on the country's divisive immigration ban, calling for greater unity and love in response during an interview with Yahoo! 7.

Last week, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning refugees from entering the country for 120 days, and restricting entry of passport holders from Muslim-majority nations Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Libya.

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'I think its so important for us to be caring': Jessica Gomes call for tolerance after President Donald Trump's controversial immigration ban

Jessica, who was born in Australia to a Portuguese father and Chinese mother, told the website that the immigration ban meant people 'need to come together and support one another at this time'.

It was crucial that extra effort was made to be tolerant and kind to others, the supermodel added.

'I think its so important for us to be caring of one another as human beings,' Jessica said.

Controversial: Last week, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning refugees from entering the country for 120 days, and restricting entry of passport holders from Muslim-majority nations

'I think that we should really be loving one another and be kind and just really having an open mind at this time.'

The 32-year-old made the comments ahead of her runway walk at David Jones' Autumn Winter launch on Wednesday night.

The beauty stunned as she made her way down the catwalk, ending the show in a striking strapless bridal gown.

Stunning: The 32-year-old made the comments ahead of her runway walk at David Jones' Autumn Winter launch on Wednesday night

Jessica revealed after the show her actor boyfriend Xavier Samuel, who did not attend the show due to acting commitments, was quizzed as to whether her wedding outfit meant nuptials were in the couple's future.

'He's getting the phone calls as well. He was getting asked all of that,' the model told Today Extra on Thursday.

Wedding bells? Jessica ending the show in a strapless bridal gown prompted speculation nuptials were on the horizon for her and Xavier

But Jessica later clarified the couple were happy to just continue dating, adding: 'We're happy. We're having fun.'

The couple went public with their romance in October last year and spent Christmas together with Xavier's family in Victoria.
Uber chief quits Trump advisory group after uproar

Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick on Thursday quit US President Donald Trump's business advisory group, as a movement grew to dump the ride-sharing service because of his connection to the new administration.

Kalanick said in an email to Uber employees that he spoke briefly with Trump about the president's recent executive order restricting immigration, saying he told him he would not be able to participate on his economic council.

"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda, but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that," Kalanick said in the email, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

A #DeleteUber campaign on social media urged people to dump the service and switch to rival Lyft after riders and drivers raged against CEO Travis Kalanick for what they saw as him teaming with Trump Lionel BONAVENTURE (AFP/File)

Trump's advisory group was established last year and includes Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk, as well as IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty. Its first meeting was reportedly scheduled for Friday.

"There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that," Kalanick said in the message to Uber workers.

"Immigration and openness to refugees is an important part of our country's success and quite honestly to Uber's."

Uber riders and drivers have raged against Kalanick and his service for what they see as him teaming with Trump, whose orders and appointments have triggered protests here and abroad.

A #DeleteUber campaign picked up speed on social media, urging people to drop the service and switch to rival Lyft -- a company that saw its popularity soar after it said it would donate $1-million to the American Civil Liberties Union, which has issued lawsuits against Trump's measures.

Trump's executive order issued last week targets people from seven Muslim-majority countries, temporarily banning nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

"This is an important show of solidarity with the immigrant drivers who helped build Uber," said Jim Conigliaro, founder of an Independent Drivers Guild that claims to represent more than 40,000 Uber drivers in New York City.
Holocaust survivors speak out against Trump travel ban

More than a dozen Holocaust survivors joined together Thursday in Chicago, in a symbolic gesture of protest against US President Donald Trump's immigration order.

The survivors drew parallels to the difficulties Jews faced as they fled persecution before and during World War II, and said they felt compelled to speak out against policies that slam the door on refugees in the name of national security.

"We cannot exclude thousands and thousands of people because of what the terrorists have done," said Aaron Elster, a Holocaust survivor in his 80s.

Demonstrator protest President Donald Trump's executive immigration ban on February 1, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois LOTT (AFP)

"Will somebody be able to sneak through and do us harm? Yes, a very likely possibility. But, you can't take a brush, and brush all the people with this small, tiny minority that are looking to harm us," Elster said.

Trump's executive order barring immigration from seven majority Muslim countries and halting refugee arrivals for 120 days, has sparked at least a dozen lawsuits and protests around the world.

Fritzie Fritzshall is in her late 80s and a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where her mother and two brothers perished. She said halting all refugee entry for four months was "a very, very long time to wait."

"These people there, are hungry and thirsty, and cold," she said.

She recalled how in 1939, the US government barred entry to European Jews by warning they could be secretly working for Nazi Germany.

In June that year, president Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration turned away the St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying some 900 Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. They were forced to return to Europe, where more than a quarter eventually died in death camps.

"We were not allowed to come, because we were Jews and no country wanted us at that point, and we had no place to go. It is not the same situation today, but... there definitely is a parallel," said Fritzshall.

Justifying his immigration restrictions eighty years later, Trump has echoed the logic of the 1930s, warning of a risk that refugees could join sleeper cells supporting the Islamic State jihadist group.

Together the Holocaust survivors warned against immigrants being kept out based on their religion or national origin.

The Holocaust survivors "feel viscerally for every individual who is persecuted and in mortal danger with nowhere to turn," said Susan Abrams, the CEO of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which claims the biggest speakers' bureau of Holocaust survivors in the world.
White House says new Israeli settlements 'may not be helpful'

The White House said that building new Israeli settlements or expanding existing ones "may not be helpful" in securing Middle East peace.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful," said spokesman Sean Spicer.

The statement is a break from Trump's previously full-throated defense of Israeli settlement building.

Israeli soldiers and Palestinian stone throwers clash east of Nablus, in the occupied West Bank JAAFAR ASHTIYEH (AFP)

Since Trump came to office Israel has approved a slew of new construction in existing settlements, the type of act that critics say risks making a two-state solution impossible.

Israel recently unveiled plans for 3,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, the fourth such announcement in the less than two weeks since Trump took office.

"The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month," Spicer said.

Trump is scheduled to welcome Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House on February 15.

Settlements in both the West Bank and east Jerusalem are viewed as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians want for their own state.

While former president Barack Obama grew frustrated with Israeli settlement building and declined to veto a December 23 UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements, Trump had called for the resolution to be vetoed.

The Republican president has moved quickly to befriend Israel's prime minister, and the pair spoke by telephone on Sunday.

"As the president has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region," Spicer said.

Trump has previously stated that his son-in-law Jared Kushner would play a role in trying to negotiate peace.

The idea of an Israeli and a Palestinian state coexisting has underpinned peace efforts for decades.

The president has also said he plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- a measure that the Palestinians have fiercely condemned.

If the US embassy is moved to Jerusalem, it would break decades of US policy and be at odds with the overwhelming majority of other nations, which believe the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiation.

Trump has also come under fire for failing to specifically mention in his Holocaust remembrance statement on Friday the six million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide.

Palestinian protestors stand facing the Israeli settlement of Qadumim (Kedumim) during clashes with Israeli security forces JAAFAR ASHTIYEH (AFP/File)
Trump's White House: Five takeaways from Thursday

US President Donald Trump had a busy Thursday, stirring up diplomatic controversy with Iran and Australia before asking national religious leaders to pray for his reality TV successor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

And that was just the beginning of his day.

Here are five takeaways from Thursday's events in Washington:

US President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence walk into the Oval Office at the White House NICHOLAS KAMM (AFP)

- Iran 'ON NOTICE' -

In typical fashion, Trump's latest toe-to-toe with a foreign power began with a pre-dawn tweet, this time over an Iranian ballistic missile test which Tehran denied was a breach of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

"Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile.Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!" Trump tweeted, echoing comments made by National Security Advisor Michael Flynn on Wednesday.

Tensions simmered as Iran rejected the warning, calling Trump's comments "baseless, repetitive and provocative."

- Prayers for Arnold -

On his maiden visit to the marquee annual prayer breakfast of religious leaders, Trump took a joking swipe at his successor as host of "The Apprentice."

"They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place, and we know how that turned out: The ratings went right down the tubes. It's been a total disaster."

"I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can for those ratings, okay?" Trump said.

- Russia's 'aggressive actions' -

In her first public remarks at the UN Security Council, US Ambassador Nikki Haley condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine and pledged strong US support to Kiev.

In stark terms that seemed almost at odds with Trump's friendly stance towards Russian President Vladimir Putin, Haley asserted that US sanctions imposed on Russia over its 2014 annexation of Crimea would remain in place until Moscow gave back the peninsula to Ukraine.

- Australia spat -

Ripping up the foreign policy rulebook became the day's theme, after The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Trump tore into his Australian counterpart during their phone call last week.

Trump abruptly cut short a fiery conversation after criticizing an agreement to re-settle people kept in Pacific camps, sparking a war of words with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Thursday.

- Uber out -

Uber users who have been threatening to dump the ride-sharing service got their desired outcome Thursday when CEO Travis Kalanick quit his seat on Trump's business advisory group.

Kalanick said in an email that he spoke briefly with Trump about the president's recent executive order restricting immigration, and told him he would not be able to participate on his economic council.
US Democrats in thorny resistance war against Trump

Two weeks after Republican Donald Trump took the oath of office, Senator John Cornyn deplored the "mindless obstruction, foot-dragging and delay" by Democrats over the US president's nominations for vital posts.

"I hope soon our Senate Democrats will start working with us and not against us," the Republican told Senate colleagues Thursday.

Good luck with that.

Senate Democrats, with new leader Chuck Schumer, have slow-walked all President Donald Trump's cabinet nominations with only four of 15 nominees confirmed so far Aaron P. Bernstein (Getty/AFP)

Trump has moved at a blistering pace to fulfill various campaign promises, issuing a stream of executive orders warmly cheered by the Republican base.

But he needs the Senate to confirm his cabinet picks, and Democrats furious over the controversial executive orders -- not to mention his propensity to provoke longstanding US allies -- have hit the brakes.

Of the 15 people nominated to Trump's all-important cabinet, only four have been confirmed.

At this point in Barack Obama's administration, 12 cabinet members were in place. By February 2, 2001, all of George W. Bush's lieutenants were on the job.

This year is different.

"These are not normal times, this is not a typical president," Senate Democrat Chris Coons told reporters.

"We're in a difficult place."

Anti-Trump demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court this week had a blunt message for Democrats: "resist."

- No 'tit for tat' -

Lawmakers appeared to be listening.

Deep gridlock has seized the chamber: boycotts of votes, procedural road blocks, heated confrontations.

Senate Democrats, with new leader Chuck Schumer, have slow-walked all nominations.

"I've never seen a cabinet this full of bankers and billionaires, folks with massive conflicts of interest and such little experience or expertise in the areas they will oversee," Schumer said Thursday.

Angry Democrats have boycotted three nominees whom they have described as ethically flawed, refusing to show up for committee votes.

Republicans took the extraordinary step of changing committee rules in order to advance Trump's nominees for US Treasury, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency, without participation by Democrats.

The three are expected to get final Senate confirmation votes next week.

With partisan tensions soaring, Democrats were forced to contemplate another nomination, one that could have far-reaching impact on the nation: Trump's pick to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court.

The choice of Judge Neil Gorsuch has triggered a sense of urgency among Democrats. They still bristle over last year's refusal by Senate Republican leadership to consider Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy following the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

The seat has remained open for 11 months. Democrats are considering whether to fight tooth and nail to block Gorsuch's confirmation, as several progressive groups have urged.

Senator Richard Blumenthal remains "deeply" troubled by how Republicans treated Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, saying it led to the politicization of the high court.

"But I'm not playing tit for tat," Blumenthal stressed.

Indeed, his party must be wary of taking the same obstructionist tack as Republicans did in 2016. Waging war over a qualified nominee could alienate middle-of-the-road voters so crucial in 2018, when 10 Senate Democrats face re-election in states that Trump won.

- A crack in the armor -

What Democrats will do, Schumer has insisted, is demand a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member chamber, rather than a simple majority, for Gorsuch's confirmation.

Republicans hold 52 seats, meaning at least eight Democrats would hold the key to Gorsuch's confirmation.

A months-long battle is expected. If Republicans are unable to sway enough Democrats to confirm Gorsuch, they may employ the "nuclear option:" changing the rules to allow confirmation by a simple majority.

"They can slow it down, but they can't stop it," Cornyn said of confirmations, as he accused the opposition of seeking to "undermine this new president" at every turn.

As Democrats dug in, a crack appeared in the Trump armor Wednesday as two Senate Republicans announced they would oppose his education secretary nominee.

Betsy DeVos, married to a billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, has faced intense criticism for her lack of education experience, and advocating the use of tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system.

If all Democrats and two Republicans oppose DeVos, her nomination would be deadlocked at 50-50, meaning Vice President Mike Pence, president of the Senate, would break the tie.

"Is there not one more Republican senator who will stand with the American people against Betsy DeVos?" fiery Senator Bernie Sanders pleaded in a tweet.

That remained to be seen. A DeVos procedural vote occurs Friday, while her full confirmation vote is expected Monday.

Donald Trump cabinet picks and cabinet-level appointees Laurence SAUBADU, Jonathan STOREY, Gillian HANDYSIDE (AFP)

With partisan tensions soaring Democrats were forced to contemplate a nomination, that could have a far-reaching impact, Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch SAUL LOEB (AFP)
Trump blast rattles alliance with Australia

Australia on Friday was scrambling to come to terms with the realisation that decades as one of the closest of US allies may count for little in the "America First" vision of President Donald Trump.

Australia has fought alongside the United States in most major conflicts since World War II, including Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current campaign against the Islamic State group.

But it took only a heated phone call from Trump to confirm Australia could expect to be treated no different to Mexico, Canada, Iran or anyone else who has felt public humiliation from Trump's tongue and social media feed.

US President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Australians Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, alongside Chief Strategist Steve Bannon (R) and National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, in the Oval Office on January 28, 2017 Mandel Ngan (AFP/File)

Trump's ire was triggered by a vague agreement entered into with former president Barack Obama last year to take in refugees Australia has parked on remote Pacific islands.

Canberra is also one of the trusted "Five Eyes" countries with which the US routinely shares sensitive intelligence, but the Washington Post said Trump abruptly cut short a fiery conversation with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Sunday after slamming the refugee agreement.

Soon after leaks emerged Thursday of "the worst call by far" Trump had with Turnbull, the new president got to work.

"Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!" Trump tweeted.

Canberra, used to cosy security and political ties with successive US governments, did not see it coming despite plenty of warning, notably the uncomfortable time British Prime Minister Theresa May endured in Washington and the diplomatic crisis with Mexico.

Australia has to wake up to the new dynamic where "alliances don't mean much to him (Trump)", politics professor John Hewson told AFP.

"We've seen it in his comments about NATO, the UN, China and many more countries.

"While we aren't going to give up on the alliance, we should realistically say, 'Look, what can we expect this guy to do moving forward?'"

And Trump had shown "it's not just America first but also America only", the former Liberal opposition leader said.

- 'Blinkered reliance' -

The difficulty of handling Trump was on display again within hours and his unpredictable pendulum seemed to swing as he declared his "love for Australia".

"I have a lot of respect for Australia, I love Australia as a country," Trump said, suggesting people should not "worry" about the "tough" calls he was making to world leaders.

"We simply have no idea what's going to happen," said political scientist Belinda Edwards, but foresaw "contingency planning around the notion that the (US-Australia) alliance is no longer reliable.

"We have had a somewhat blinkered reliance and set of assumptions about the alliance which we have often tended not to look past," she told AFP.

"Suddenly Australian policymakers will be giving really serious credence and consideration to how would we organise ourselves in a world where we couldn't rely on the alliance."

As the dust settled, Turnbull told reporters in Sydney Friday he still thought he had a deal, despite everything.

"The (White House) spokesman said that we had a very cordial conversation," the prime minister said.

"The president made a commitment to honour the deal that had been entered into by his predecessor.

"That's been confirmed now several times and it's very important that it goes ahead."

Hewson doubted Washington would end up taking any of the 1,600 refugees on Manus and Nauru but saw real difficulties ahead while "world leaders are scrambling for an effective response.

"Trump will soon learn that he can't run a government as he ran his businesses and will be progressively eaten by detail and the practical difficulties of administration.

"He can't govern by tweets."

However former prime minister Kevin Rudd said the relationship with Washington was "big enough, old enough and ugly enough" to handle the latest flare-up.

"I think this snafu will blow over and we'll get back to the fundamentals of the relationship," Rudd told CNN.

US-Australia refugee row John SAEKI, Gillian HANDYSIDE (AFP)
A struggle for land and survival in Kenya's restive highlands

The broad plains of Mugie, a huge estate on a high plateau northwest of Mount Kenya, are crisscrossed with cattle trails and the wildlife is mostly gone.

The knee-high grass remains, but not for long, reckons manager Josh Perrett.

Tensions between semi-nomadic pastoralists and settled landowners are nothing new, nor is competition between livestock and wildlife, but in Kenya's central Laikipia highlands they are taking a destructive, sometimes violent turn.

A young herder from the Samburu pastoral community grazes his family cattle on the dwindling pasture of the Loisaba wildlife conservancy, Kenya TONY KARUMBA (AFP)

Last month perhaps 30,000 livestock arrived on Mugie, displacing wildlife. The illegal herders -- some armed with spears, others with AK47s -- cut through fences, making off with wire and posts. The shooting, looting, poaching and rustling that accompanied them left Perrett despondent.

"Twenty years of time, effort, sweat, money... it's fallen apart in two weeks, destroyed," says the 35-year-old.

"Before, you would see elephant, a few hundred head of buffalo, Jackson's hartebeest, oryx, Grant's gazelle, impala. Now you see thousands of head of cattle, a lot of sheep and goats."

At the 44,000-acre (17,600-hectare) Suyian ranch, south of Mugie, thatched huts for tourists were burned down and shots fired this week as herders swept in. Black and white landowners alike speak of invasions, fear and siege.

- Too many people, too much livestock -

The dangerous situation in Laikipia is an acute expression of a chronic and complex tangle of population growth, livestock increases, overgrazing, erratic rainfall, climate change, weapons, money and politics.

A recently published four-decade study by the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi uncovered "catastrophic... widespread" declines in Kenyan wildlife as herds of livestock displace wild animals.

The data was Kenya specific but the problem is continental.

"At the basis of all this is the human population explosion," says lead author Joe Ogutu.

The report blamed "policy, institutional and market failures" and said regulation was needed to reduce livestock numbers, which have increased 76 percent while wildlife fell by 68 percent.

As pastoralist populations have grown so have their herds, grazing sparse pasture into desert. Exacerbating the situation, the value of cattle has increased dramatically, making it a smart investment for urban elites, a mobile bank account hidden from scrutiny and taxation.

When land can no longer sustain their livestock, the people move.

In Kenya, Laikipia's private and community reserves and ranches are the grassy frontier between the pastoralist north and the agricultural south.

"Population growth, livestock growth, that's the pressure on conservation," said Tom Silvester, the 49-year-old manager of Loisaba, a 56,000-acre conservancy to the east of Mugie which is recovering from large-scale illegal grazing last year.

Tens of thousands of cattle a day reduced Loisaba's grass plains to tufts of dry sedge and stubble, spike thorn, acacia and shimmering croton bushes.

- Legal vs. illegal grazing -

Well-managed, grassland acts like a reservoir in tough times.

Loisaba, Mugie and others have established controlled grazing programmes with neighbouring communities enabling the survival of both livestock and wildlife, but the system breaks down when huge herds arrive.

"We are neighbours with Loisaba, we are part of the whole thing," says 70-year-old Lesibia Larari, with 70 cows and silver rings in his stretched earlobes. "We have a stake in it but the others do not care about being good neighbours."

Adowan Letowon, a 28-year-old Samburu "moran" or warrior, with a long knife in his belt and a mobile phone in his hand, has relied on Loisaba to get his cattle through every dry season and drought since he was 13.

"We have been here for long. Our children, our cattle do not die because of this land," he says.

In easier times neighbouring communities are a buffer against illegal grazers, but when they come in their hundreds with tens of thousands of cattle they are unstoppable.

Nevertheless, "the answer is not fences and guns, it is conversation and understanding," says Charles Lekalasimi, a 24-year-old Samburu university student interning at Loisaba.

Like most of the herders -- legal and illegal -- Lekalasimi is a moran.

He understands the social value of cattle and, he says, his agemates listen when he tells them 50 fat cows are better than 200 skinny ones. But, he warns, the warlike culture of morans means, "If you try to be aggressive or violent, they will knock you down!"

- A looming disaster -

Conversation and understanding look a lot like capitulation.

Perrett is negotiating with the Samburu and Pokot to leave their guns and dogs behind, stop killing the wildlife and keep sheep and goats out in return for access for less destructive cattle.

But he expects Mugie to be "a dust bowl" by the time they leave.

Meanwhile, the wildlife tourism that drives the conservancy's business model is suspended. "What we were selling, you can't sell that now," he says.

Managing coexistence in an evermore crowded world is a challenge for individuals and government, but residents and landowners criticise Kenya for not playing its part.

Last month President Uhuru Kenyatta condemned those who "invade land" in Laikipia but took no action against lawbreakers, while local leaders have stoked tensions by encouraging pastoralists to take grass they say belongs to the herders.

With national elections due in August, few expect vote-costing action against the illegal grazers, while the ethnic logic of Kenyan politics means some candidates stand to benefit from a favourable shift in population dynamics ahead of the vote.

"The solution is coexistence, talking, dialogue. Recognising that resources are limited and working out how to equitably divide it between wildlife and livestock," says Silvester.

But if that fails, if the law is not applied to protect land, if livestock herds are not reduced to a sustainable level, if land management is not improved, the coming disaster will hit everyone and everything, he says.

"If we don't succeed, the terrible, apocalyptic vision is the guy sitting on a rock in the desert, with a begging bowl waiting for food aid."

A recent four-decade study by the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi uncovered "catastrophic... widespread" declines in Kenyan wildlife TONY KARUMBA (AFP)

As pastoralist populations in Kenya have grown so have their herds, grazing sparse pasture into desert TONY KARUMBA (AFP)
Prosecutors in standoff at S. Korea president's office

South Korean prosecutors investigating a massive corruption scandal engulfing impeached President Park Geun-Hye attempted to raid the presidential Blue House on Friday, sparking a stand-off with security guards.

It was the first time investigators had sought to search the top security complex for evidence since Park was impeached by parliament in December over the influence-peddling and power abuse scandal.

A platoon of prosecutors wielding a court search warrant and their assistants were immediately stopped by security guards as they tried to enter the premises.

South Korean prosecutors investigating impeached President Park Geun-Hye have been blocked from searching the presidential Blue House in Seoul Ed Jones (AFP/File)

The stand-off lasted about five hours before the prosecutors withdrew.

"We will send an official request" to the acting leader, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn, for permission to enter the Blue House, a spokesman for the prosecutors said.

The prosecutors have no legal means to enforce the search at the Blue House without permission as the complex is considered a top military security zone, he said.

But Hwang has close ties to the impeached president and the possiblity of his agreeing to the search is considered next to nil.

A presidential spokesman said the Blue House was profoundly opposed to a search but was willing to present documents and other materials prosecutors wanted to look over.

Park is accused of colluding with a longtime friend, Choi Soon-Sil, to strong-arm donations worth tens of millions of dollars from top firms to dubious foundations controlled by Choi.

The president is also accused of using her influence to ensure the merger of two Samsung units in 2015 to help facilitate a father-to-son power succession of Samsung's founding family, allegedly in return for bribes given to Choi.

The prosecutors' action comes as prosecutors plan to interrogate Park face-to-face next week.

The Constitutional Court has until June to decide whether to approve the impeachment, in which case new elections must be held within 60 days, or reinstate her.
Can Trump's 'America First' spur growth without immigrants?

The uproar over President Donald Trump's travel ban has thrown the plight of immigrants into stark relief, but it also has engulfed skilled foreign workers.

In dramatic scenes over the past week, outraged demonstrators flocked to airports to support refugees and migrants trapped there or unable to board flights to the United States.

Major US tech companies that are highly dependent on foreign talent said hundreds of their employees could be affected, and joined in the opposition to the immigration limits, which initially swept up legal residents as well.

In dramatic scenes over the past week, outraged demonstrators flocked to support refugees and migrants trapped at airports or unable to board flights to the US Joshua LOTT (AFP/File)

But Trump and his team have long expressed goals that extend far beyond Silicon Valley, signalling they planned to establish a general preference for US workers over migrant job seekers in their "America First" economic policy.

Since taking office, Trump has announced the ambitious goals of creating 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years and pushing economic growth to a torrid four percent, double the current rate.

Economists, however, say those goals will be difficult if not impossible to achieve without either delaying retirement for many older workers, admitting significant numbers of immigrants into the United States, or both.

- 'Destroy our jobs' -

Some Trump advisors and associates have sought to frame the question of immigration as a fundamental contest over the nature of American society.

Chief White House advisor Stephen Bannon said in 2015 that the presence of Asians in Silicon Valley could undermine "civic society" -- views that have been hailed by the extreme right.

But Trump publicly has stuck to national security and economic arguments.

He pledged not only to prevent employers from outsourcing "cheap labor" by using the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, but also to "institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program."

And in his inaugural address, he declared the country should protect itself from foreign countries seeking to "destroy our jobs."

But under current economic and demographic trends, Trump's goal of doubling economic growth and adding 25 million jobs by 2027 is incompatible with a clampdown on immigrants, economists say.

"The only way in which that statement really makes sense to an economist is if you increase the population," Jennifer Hunt, a former chief economist at the Labor Department, told AFP.

Hunt, now at Rutgers University, served on a National Academy of Sciences panel which found that over the longer term, immigration was a significant benefit to the US economy, with "little to no negative effects" on the employment levels or wages of native-born workers.

During the 1990s, immigrants resulted in a significant increase in per capita economic growth through innovation.

"In 2000, GDP per capita from 1990 was between 1.5 percent and 2.5 percent higher than it would have been without the immigration since 1990," Hunt said.

Amid an overall surge in patent registrations between 1990 and 2000, immigrants accounted for one third of new patents, she said.

- 'Wildly implausible' -

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Trump's goals were "wildly implausible" given the current size of the US labor force.

"There's just not the labor supply there to do it," he said, noting that employers already are finding it increasingly hard to fill vacancies, especially if Trump goes ahead with a massive infrastructure plan.

Demographics also are playing a role through the aging of the US workforce.

Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute agreed that increasing immigration is one of the only ways of meeting Trump's job creation goal, since about one in four Americans is expected to be 65 or older in the next 10 years.

The US would still fall short of Trump's goal by about nine million jobs even if each of five broad age groups matched their record employment levels from the last 50 years, he said in a blog post.

The current foreign-born labor force coincidentally numbers about 25 million people. "That's a sizeable part our economy," he told AFP.

"Efforts to reduce that and change the trend in negative ways are almost certainly going to shrink the workforce."

Nevertheless, Trump has shown no sign of increasing immigration to meet the demand. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The long, arduous trek to find the American Dream

In the spring of 2013, Buta Singh, a 34-year-old Sikh from India's Punjab state, fled his homeland out of fear of religious and political persecution, hoping for a new start in the United States.

It has been a bewilderingly long and brutal quest, spanning a traumatic 10-week journey, 11 months in detention and several years in legal limbo, with no immediate end in sight and new US President Donald Trump now looming large.

On a recent afternoon in a busy immigration courtroom in downtown Seattle, Singh's appeal for asylum was finally scheduled for trial -- on October 8, 2020.

Buta Singh, a Punjabi asylum seeker, arrived in the US after a 10-week journey and then spent 11 months in detention Jason Redmond (AFP)

"I can't do anything without patience," he said afterwards. "I just want a safe place -- my life in India is all done."

Trump has begun his term with hardline actions on immigration, temporarily barring the arrival of all refugees and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, and beginning the process of building a wall along the country's southern border with Mexico.

Singh's tale illustrates the emerging and complex nature of the ever-evolving US immigration landscape.

Although small in number compared to the hundreds of thousands arriving annually from Mexico and its neighbors, migrants and refugees from beyond the region like Singh now make up a significant and steadily rising proportion of those reaching America's southern doorstep.

And they have stretched its sprawling immigration system, from border enforcement to asylum adjudication, with no signs of abating.

Last year, the US detained more than 32,000 individuals from countries beyond Mexico, Central America and Cuba either trying to cross illegally or deemed inadmissible at entry ports, according to a review of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data.

The largest number came from Haiti (6,503), followed by Brazil (4,665), India (3,622), Ecuador (2,996), China (2,595) and Romania (2,569).

- 'Tidal wave' -

"I'd always represented people smuggled through Latin America... what was a trickle many years ago is now a tidal wave," said John Lawit, a Texas attorney representing Singh and many other such asylum-seekers.

The spike over recent years includes thousands of people from countries Trump has included in his visa ban -- such as Somalia, Syria and Iraq -- and other nations the US has long considered particularly vulnerable to terror-related activity and recruitment, like Pakistan.

The overwhelming majority presented themselves at official crossings where they could claim asylum -- rather than attempting to enter illegally. So far, no terror-related incidents on American soil have been linked to any such arrivals.

But an executive order issued last week by Trump, ordering authorities to start building a wall on Mexico's border, said: "Continued illegal immigration presents a clear and present danger to the interests of the United States."

It added: "Among those who illegally enter are those who seek to harm Americans through acts of terror or criminal conduct."

Congressman Ted Poe, a Texas Republican who serves as chairman of the House's subcommittee on terrorism and trade, noted that during a visit to his state's southern border, officials had detained three people from Ukraine.

"How did Ukrainians ever find Texas?" he said. "Word needs to get out that you're not getting into the United States across the southern border because we're going to have border security."

Experts say criminal networks and South American emigrants forged this increasingly well-trodden route over decades. They give various reasons for the recent surge, from word-of-mouth and recruitment by traffickers to recession in Brazil and natural disasters in Haiti.

- Roads, rivers and jungles -

Singh's journey highlights the perils of the path.

After his father sold land and paid smugglers in India about $40,000, he flew via Europe and South America to Nicaragua.

From there, he was hidden in suffocating bunks in truck cabins, traveled on rivers using ramshackle rafts and trekked through jungles.

A smuggler in Suriname stole his passport; Honduran military police demanded bribes, he said.

A vegetarian by faith, Singh found little he could eat, and often went long periods without water.

"I think nobody treats an animal like this," he recalled tearfully. "I thought, 'I may die'."

Singh finally reached the American border at El Paso, Texas, to claim asylum.

Under US law, arrivals without entry visas join those apprehended crossing illegally in expedited removal proceedings.

However, officials interview anyone expressing fear of persecution back in their home countries. If deemed credible, they can then appeal deportation in a lengthy asylum process.

Those who can prove their identity and ties to a community -- through a relative, sponsor or employer -- can also win relocation of their case and bonded parole.

Courts in southern border states saw a 21 percent rise in non-Central American cases last year, according to Justice Department data.

- 'Felt like a criminal' -

Singh, who has a sister living in Seattle, passed his asylum interview three weeks after arriving.

But an El Paso immigration judge repeatedly denied him parole, transfer, and appeals against deportation. So after 10 months, Singh joined a nine-day hunger strike with dozens of other Indian detainees.

"I felt like a criminal there," he said.

After a diplomat from the Indian consulate in Houston visited the group, Lawit got Singh's case reopened and transferred to Seattle.

Within a month, he was paroled on a $7,000 bond, living with his sister's family, and working first at a gas station and then as a driver for his brother-in-law's trucking company.

The transfer improved his asylum chances.

In El Paso, judges approved on average just three percent of asylum appeals between 2011 and 2016; in Seattle, it was nearly 40 percent over the same period, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University shows.

- 'Welcoming nation' -

Human rights groups complain that with a massive and growing caseload, the US has started impeding asylum access by turning people away at busier border crossings, like Tijuana and Nogales, Arizona.

They also say authorities are using harsh and arbitrary treatment in custody to deter others from making the journey.

"It's going to be tougher and tougher for anyone to get due process," said Kevin Appleby, of the Center for Migration Studies. "Whether that will decrease the numbers coming is unclear."

Customs and Border Protection officials said Trump's orders had led to no change in asylum policy on the southern border, and added that the US upholds all immigration laws and "continues to be a welcoming nation."

Singh's ongoing wait for trial is symptomatic of the overloaded system, with nearly 534,000 cases pending, according to TRAC, and just 292 judges.

Stuck in this backlog, under the specter of the Trump administration, Singh says he is scared.

"But I believe in the United States' laws," he added. "I believe the court will make a good decision."

Buta Singh, a Punjabi asylum seeker, waits for an immigration hearing: the system has a backlog of nearly 534,000 cases and just 292 judges Jason Redmond (AFP)

Buta Singh (2nd L) has moved to Seattle to be closer to his family, including nephew Sahibjot Singh and sister Davinder Kaur and improve his chances of gaining asylum Jason Redmond (AFP)
Apple is to start making iPhones in India this year, a local government official said Friday, as the company seeks to tap into a booming middle class while sales in China slow.

Karnataka's IT minister said Apple had agreed to assemble its hugely popular phones in the southern state, whose capital Bangalore is India's technology hub.

Apple, which has not commented on the minister's statement, remains a relatively small player in India, where sales of its smartphones lag those of rival Samsung.

Apple has only a two-percent share of the Indian market, well behind rival Samsung on 23 percent, according to research firm Canalys SAM PANTHAKY (AFP/File)

SLOW SALES Apple has only a two percent share of the Indian market, well behind rival Samsung on 23 percent, according to research firm Canalys. By pricing itself exclusively at the luxury end, Apple has distinguished its brand from Samsung which has both low-cost and high-end phones. Last year Apple had 48 percent of the premium sector in which phones sell for $450 and above. Advertisement

But chief executive Tim Cook said this week it would 'invest significantly' in the country of 1.25 billion people.

'We have an understanding with Apple and we expect them to start manufacturing in Karnataka by the end of April,' state minister of information technology and biotechnology Priyank Kharge told AFP.

He said the new operation would likely assemble iPhones for the domestic market.

Apple has only a two percent share of the Indian market, well behind rival Samsung on 23 percent, according to research firm Canalys.

By pricing itself exclusively at the luxury end, Apple has distinguished its brand from Samsung which has both low-cost and high-end phones.

Last year Apple had 48 percent of the premium sector in which phones sell for $450 and above.

It applied to open Apple Stores in India last year, but was reportedly rebuffed because of a diktat that states foreign retailers must source 30 percent of their products locally.

New Delhi has since relaxed the rules, giving companies up to eight years to meet the sourcing requirements, as part of a push to attract foreign investment and create jobs.

It is not clear whether the Karnataka plans would help it clear that hurdle but experts said manufacturing locally would reduce the company's costs and enable it to lower prices.

'They're eager to be here because they've identified India as a strategic focus market,' said Jaideep Mehta of research firm IDC.

'They had a fantastic 2016 in India and shipped more two million devices to India, and now they're looking to ultimately manufacture here as that gives them more flexibility to respond to market changes.'

Apple currently sells through third-party retailers in India, which accounts for only around one percent of global iPhone sales.

Experts say India's giant population and low number of smartphone owners relative to its size mean it is a huge potential market.

Last year Cook visited India on a charm offensive and was pictured using Prime Minister Narendra Modi's gold iPhone to launch the premier's new app.

Analysts said that if confirmed the move would be a coup for India's government, which has been trying to persuade foreign companies to manufacture in the country.

Reports in Indian media said Wistron Corp, a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, was lined up to assemble iPhones at a plant on the outskirts of tech hub Bangalore.
Suspected coalition raids cut water to IS Syria bastion

Water to the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion of Raqa has been cut after suspected coalition raids on the city's main pipeline, a monitor and activists told AFP on Friday.

"After coalition air strikes, the main water line was ruptured and water was cut to all of Raqa city," said Hamoud al-Mousa of the Raqa is Being Slaughtered Silently activist collective.

His group said the overnight strikes hit several bridges in the north of Raqa, including one known as the Old Bridge.

An alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters launched a major offensive against the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion of Raqa in November DELIL SOULEIMAN (AFP/File)

Mousa said a pipeline running along the Old Bridge into Raqa -- the only way residents could get water -- had been destroyed.

"People were heading to the river at dawn today to get water," Mousa told AFP.

Raqa, 90 kilometres (less than 60 miles) south of the Turkish border, is IS's de facto capital in Syria and remains home to more than 300,000 people.

The city and surrounding province have been battered by air strikes carried out by the US-led coalition fighting IS and by Russia, a key ally of Syria's government.

The coalition raids are backing an alliance of Arab and Kurdish fighters who launched a major offensive against Raqa in November.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed water to Raqa had been cut after "probable" coalition raids.

"Air strikes on the city destroyed a huge water pipe. It's almost certain they were coalition raids," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
Al-Qaeda enters three Yemen towns days after US raid

Al-Qaeda in Yemen overran three southern towns just days after a deadly US raid targeting its commanders, before withdrawing from two of them on Friday, officials said.

The jihadists' entry into the Abyan province towns of Loder, Shaqra and Ahwar came as the White House defended Sunday's raid on an Al-Qaeda compound as a "success", even though multiple civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed.

Abyan has long been an Al-Qaeda stronghold and it was only through a major offensive backed by a Saudi-led coalition last summer that the government was able to drive its fighters out of the province's main towns.

Yemeni government forces in Zinjibar in August 2016 after they entered the capital of southern Abyan province during an offensive to recapture it from Al-Qaeda Saleh AL-OBEIDI (AFP/File)

But the jihadists have faced some opposition from ordinary Yemenis.

"The Al-Qaeda fighters withdrew from Loder and Shaqra after protest demonstrations by residents," a local government official said.

"Residents made clear during the protests that they were ready to take up arms if necessary."

The jihadists' entry into the two towns on Thursday evening was helped by a pullout by government forces angry over the late payment of their wages, a security official told AFP.

"Our forces are also angry that they have not been provided with the weapons and other equipment to confront the jihadists, who have been stepping up their armed attacks," the official said.

Al-Qaeda fighters set up roadblocks around the towns and blew up two security service buildings.

Saudi-led aircraft carried out two strikes on jihadist positions in Loder overnight, the official added.

Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of nearly two years of fighting between government forces and Shiite rebels who control the capital Sanaa to entrench its presence in the south.

Washington has kept up its long-running drone war against the jihadists but that has done little to dent their influence.

Sunday's raid on an Al-Qaeda compound in Baida province was the first such operation of Donald Trump's presidency.

Navy SEAL Team Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens, 36, was killed and three other US troops were wounded in a fierce gunfight.

And on Wednesday, the Pentagon acknowledged that several non-combatants, including children, had apparently been killed.

A Yemeni provincial official said eight women and eight children died.
New US defence chief '100%' backs Japan alliance

US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Friday that the United States stands "100 percent" with Japan on a visit to reassure Asian allies rattled by President Donald Trump's isolationist rhetoric.

Mattis spoke in Tokyo on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official, as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

He arrived earlier in the day from Seoul, where he warned nuclear-armed North Korea that any attacks by their forces would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response.

James Mattis (left) meets Shinzo Abe at the prime minister's office in Tokyo on February 3, 2017 Eugene Hoshiko (pool/AFP)

Japan and the US have a decades long security alliance and US-South Korea military ties date back to the 1950-53 Korean War. But on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to defend it against the North, and 47,000 in Japan.

I want there to be no misunderstanding during the transition in Washington," Mattis told Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, referring to the changeover to Trump from former president Barack Obama.

"We stand firmly, 100 percent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people."

He added: "I wanted to make certain that Article Five of our mutual defence treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago and it will be a year and 10 years from now."

Article five commits each country to repel attacks against the other in Japan or territories it administers. The US has said that includes the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea administered by Japan but also claimed by China.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters after his separate meeting with Mattis that the US defence chief also reconfirmed that commitment.

On the campaign trail, Trump also raised the possibility of Japan and South Korea arming themselves with nuclear weapons, particularly sensitive in Japan -- the only country to ever be attacked by atomic bombs -- but later drew back from the remarks.

"I do have a hope, and also I am convinced, together with you and President Trump we will be able to demonstrate the unwavering alliance between Japan and the United State both to the public inside Japan as well as outside Japan," said Abe, who is set to hold a summit with Trump next week in the US.

- 'Effective and overwhelming' -

Abe has repeatedly argued that Japan bears an appropriate share of the costs of the alliance, which he stresses benefits the US, Japan and the broader region.

A senior South Korean defence ministry official told reporters that defence cost sharing did not come up at Mattis' meeting his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

A Japanese foreign ministry official also said that Mattis made no mention of base support costs in Tokyo.

Mattis' visit comes amid heightened fears over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, a major concern for both South Korea and Japan.

Before leaving Seoul, he sought to warn Pyongyang against violent adventurism.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with Han.

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-Un said in his closely watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: "It won't happen!"

On Thursday Mattis and South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system in the South this year as planned.

Beijing fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities, weakening its nuclear deterrent. It has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilising regional security, and imposed measures seen as economic retaliation in South Korea.

James Mattis and Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada speak in Tokyo on February 3, 2017 Eugene Hoshiko (pool/AFP)
Hundreds likely killed in Myanmar's Rohingya crackdown: UN

Myanmar's military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims has likely killed hundreds of people, with children slaughtered and women gang-raped in a campaign that may amount to ethnic cleansing, the UN said Friday.

Soldiers have fired on civilians from helicopters while bands of troops have gone door-to-door in northern Rakhine state, terrorising Rohingya and torching their homes, according to a report from the United Nations human rights office.

It was "very likely" that crimes against humanity have been committed in Myanmar, said the report, echoing previous UN accusations.

Myanmar's four-month military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims has likely killed hundreds of people, the UN said STR (AFP/File)

Rights office researchers interviewed 204 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, where nearly 70,000 people have fled during the four-month crisis.

The Rohingya Muslims are loathed by many among Myanmar's Buddhist majority and have faced persecution for years.

Violence has surged since the October 9 attacks on border guard posts that Myanmar and independent experts say was carried out by foreign-backed militants.

Myanmar's military launched "area clearance operations" the next day, which the UN report said "have likely resulted in several hundred deaths".

Myanmar's government spokesman Zaw Htay called the allegations "extremely serious" and said an existing Rohingya-focused commission led by Vice President U Myint Swe would investigate the UN claims.

- 'Unprecedented' violence -

While anti-Rohingya unrest has flared in the past, notably in 2012, a UN investigator who travelled to Bangladesh, Ilona Alexander, told reporters in Geneva that the current level of violence was "unprecedented".

"An eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers," the rights office said in a statement, citing witnesses.

Three children aged six or younger were "slaughtered with knives" and a five-year-old girl's throat was cut after she tried to protect her mother from rape, according to the report.

The UN said the alleged atrocities in Rakhine had been committed by the security services and armed civilians collaborating with the military and police.

But the most gruesome accusations, including rape and other sexual violence, were made against the army, UN investigators said.

"What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mothers milk," UN rights chief Zeid bin Raad Zeid al-Hussein said in a statement.

A full 47 percent of those interviewed by the UN said they had a family member who had been killed in the operation, while 43 percent reported being raped.

"Now is the worst it has ever been," the report quoted on unnamed witness as saying.

- Ethnic cleansing? -

Rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva that "the kind of systematic and widespread violations that we have documented could be described as ethnic cleansing", but noted that was not a legally defined offence provable in court.

Myanmar refuses to recognise the Rohingya as one of the country's ethnic minorities, instead describing them as Bengalis -- or illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh -- even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Witnesses told the UN they had been taunted while they were beaten and mocked over the failure of "Allah" to help.

Myanmar's probe led by the vice president has denied that the security forces had carried out a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.

The government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the allegations are invented and has resisted mounting international pressure to protect the minority.

But the UN's Zeid, who has previously urged Myanmar to act, hit back again on Friday demanding that impunity for such serious crimes had to stop.

"The Government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people, instead of continuing to deny they have occurred," he said.

Myanmar Muslims depart a meeting hall after hardline Buddhist nationalists stop a ceremony marking the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in Yangon on January 8, 2017 Romeo Gacad (AFP/File)
Philippines' Duterte ends ceasefire with Maoist rebels

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday lifted a ceasefire with communist rebels, jeopardising a peace process he launched last year to end a decades-long insurgency.

The move comes two days after the Communist Party of the Philippines announced the end of its own self-declared ceasefire and claims by the military that Maoist fighters had killed six soldiers this week.

The communist insurgency in the Philippines, which began in 1968, is one of the longest running in the world and has claimed an estimated 30,000 lives, according to the military.

Communists have been waging an insurgency in the Philippines since 1968 Mitchell Maduro (AFP)

"Because I have lost so many soldiers in just 48 hours, I think to continue with the ceasefire does not or will not produce anything," Duterte said in a speech.

"I really do not want to do this but if that is what the communists want, there is nothing I can do. So let's fight. Let's give it another 50 years."

Duterte did not say whether the fourth round of peace negotiations set to start in the Norwegian capital Oslo in April would be stopped. Talks in Italy last week ended with no deal on a permanent cessation of fighting.

A self-styled socialist, Duterte said he was disappointed by the ceasefire decision because his administration had provided a "golden opportunity" to a reach a peace deal with the rebels.

The two sides separately declared ceasefires in August, and the informal arrangement largely held as they continued discussions in Rome.

But the Communist Party said Wednesday it was ending its ceasefire and accused police and soldiers of human rights abuses in rebel-influenced rural villages.

Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff, General Eduardo Ano, welcomed Duterte's announcement.

"We will go after the (communists' armed wing) to prevent them from conducting atrocities and criminal activities against the public," Ano said in a statement.

"And we will hit them hard!"

In his speech Duterte criticised the rebels for making "unreasonable demands" including asking for the release of 400 jailed guerrillas before agreeing to a bilateral ceasefire.

He said he had already "walked the extra mile" by releasing 18 communist leaders to kick-start the peace process last year but added he also had to secure the support of his security forces.

"I really tried but the demands are just too huge that it is impossible to meet or even work out a compromise," Duterte said.
Chad's Deby postpones elections, citing lack of funds

Chad's veteran President Idriss Deby has announced a further postponement of parliamentary elections initially due in 2015, blaming a lack of funds as the oil-exporter struggles with a drop in oil prices.

"When I say that we can't hold legislative polls, it's because of a lack of means," Deby told journalists on Thursday on his return from an African Union summit.

"In the time of the lean cow, we can do nothing. Once we have the resources, we can organise the legislative elections," Deby said.

Chad's President Idriss Deby has postponed parliamentary elections, citing a lack of funds STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN (AFP)

Deby also called for talks with the political opposition, which hotly disputed his first-round victory in a presidential poll in April with almost 60 percent of the votes.

"They should not be afraid to have a dialogue with me, I'm also Chadian like they are," Deby said. "The opposition must stop cultivating hatred that tears the country apart. Chad doesn't need that."

In power since 1990, Deby has seen Chad develop from a deeply poor Sahel nation in north central Africa into an oil-exporting regional power with a seasoned military.

As outgoing chairman of the AU, he saw his foreign minister, Moussa Faki Mahamat, elected head of the pan-African body's executive commission during the annual summit in Addis Ababa.

Chad currently faces severe difficulties because of the global drop in oil prices while it has troops active on several fronts in the regional struggle against the Nigerian jihadists of Boko Haram.
Lourenco: Ex-general poised to be Angola's next leader

The likely next president of Angola, Joao Lourenco, is a ruling party loyalist andformer general who endured several years out of favour after he angled for the top job in the 1990s.

Since then, the 62-year-old Lourenco has convinced key regime players and analysts he is the right man to succeed President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled the oil-rich southwest African nation for 37 years.

Currently defence minister and deputy president of the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party, Lourenco is firmly "part of the inner circle of power", according to Didier Peclard, Angola specialist at the University of Geneva.

Angolan Defence Minister Joao Lourenco delivers a speech as part of celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of Angolan ruling party on December 10, 2016 in Luanda STRINGER (AFP/File)

Dos Santos on Friday named Lourenco as the party's presidential candidate in the general election expected in August 2017.

Lourenco previously failed to hide his desire to succeed Dos Santos when the president hinted in the 1990s that he might step down.

Dos Santos and his closest aides considered the ex-general was being opportunistic -- and Lourenco was forced into several years of "political purgatory", according to Peclard.

Dos Santos' apparent flirtation with resignation was merely "a political manoeuvre to bring those in the party with ambitions out of the woodwork, and Joao Lourenco paid the price," said Peclard.

As a young man, Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco fought against Portugal's rule of Angola and in the civil war that erupted between the MPLA government and UNITA rebels after independence in 1975.

Like Dos Santos, he was a student in the former Soviet Union, which trained a number of rising young African leaders during decolonisation.

Lourenco became political chief of the armed wing of the MPLA in the civil war -- a long and bloody Cold War proxy conflict involving Cuban forces and CIA-backed militias.

- 'A hardline MPLA general' -

In 1984, he was appointed governor of Moxico in the country's east, Angola's largest province, quickly rising through the MPLA ranks.

The ex-artillery general later led his party's group in parliament before becoming deputy speaker of the National Assembly.

His appointment as defence minister in 2014 secured his position as favoured successor to Dos Santos, who oversaw the country's move from Marxist rule to limited cooperation with the United States.

Angola has struggled with the shift to free market capitalism with volatile oil prices taking a heavy toll on the crude-dependent economy in recent years.

Lourenco "has a reasonable reputation as a moderate, not an extreme character," said Soren Kirk Jensen of the Chatham House study group in London.

"He is probably the right person to be the bridge as Angola goes through a transition."

Rumours abound that Dos Santos had hoped to hand over the reins of power to one of his children, who include Isabel dos Santos -- Africa's first billionaire woman according to Forbes magazine.

"There is speculation that high-ranked people in the party put their foot down against this," Jensen said.

The few vocal opponents of Dos Santos' all-powerful regime hold little hope that Lourenco offers a new chapter for Angola.

Activist and journalist Rafael Marques, a leading regime critic, said that Lourenco is at heart "a hardline MPLA general", while former political prisoner Nuno Alvaro Dala said that under Lourenco "power in Angola will continue to be militarised".

Lourenco was born on March 5, 1954 in Lobito in west Angola, and is married to a local employee of the World Bank.
A Saudi diplomat has been sentenced to be caned in Singapore for sexually assaulting a hotel worker while on holiday with his family.

Bander Yahya A Alzahrani was also sentenced to more than two years in jail after being convicted of 'outraging modesty' by molesting the young intern.

The Beijing-based 39-year-old was granted bail for Sg$20,000 (11,350) and will be appealing the sentence and conviction, his lawyer Shashi Nathan said.

Saudi Arabian diplomat Bander Yahya A Alzahrani (pictured) has been sentenced to be caned in Singapore for sexually assaulting a hotel worker while on holiday with his family

'He's obviously upset and disappointed, but he understands there's another stage of the appeal to be had, and that's what we will be preparing for,' Nathan said.

The victim had initially refused to report the incident but staff members at the hotel later convinced her to contact police after they found out that she had been molested in Alzahrani's room, court papers showed.

The diplomat, who handled media affairs at the Saudi mission in the Chinese capital, was in Singapore on holiday with his family.

However, he was alone in the room with the victim during the incident.

Outrage of modesty is punishable by up to 10 years in jail and whipping with a rattan cane, a punishment which dates back to British colonial rule in Singapore ROSLAN RAHMAN (AFP/File)

Alzahrani had said in his defence that the victim was conspiring with hotel staff to extort money from him, an allegation which the judge dismissed.

'The accused preyed on a young, naive victim,' said district judge Lee Poh Choo. 'He knew and intended his actions.'

Outrage of modesty is punishable by up to 10 years in jail and whipping with a rattan cane, a punishment which dates back to British colonial rule in Singapore.
Malaysia ship carrying Rohingya aid departs for Myanmar

A Malaysian ship carrying food, clothes and medical supplies departed for Myanmar on Friday which Prime Minster Najib Razak said would be used to ease the suffering of the Muslim Rohingya.

A fourth-month military crackdown on Rohingya in the western state of Rakhine has galvanised the Muslim world, particularly Malaysia, and Najib has previously accused Myanmar's leaders of permitting "genocide".

"We hear their sufferings and pain... those who have been raped, murdered and burned alive," Najib said at Port Klang, west of the capital Kuala Lumpur.

Malaysian aid ship Nautical Aliya loads up in Port Klang on February 3, 2017 Mohd Rasfan (AFP)

Around 700 people gathered to witness the departure of Nautical Aliya which was carrying about 2,200 tonnes of rice, medical aid, clothes and other essentials, as well as 238 activists and medical personnel.

It will travel to Yangon where authorities have agreed to take some of the supplies and distribute them to Rohingya living in Rakhine, said Wan Nordin, one of the coordinators onboard the ship.

The rest of the shipment, which has been sponsored by a coalition of aid groups based mainly in Malaysia, will be taken to Teknaf port in Bangladesh to support Rohingya refugees there, Wan said.

The bloody crackdown on Rohingya, which the United Nations said Friday had likely killed hundreds of people, has tarnished the image of the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, which took power in March.

Since October Myanmar's army has carried out "clearance operations" in the north of Rakhine to root out insurgents accused of deadly raids on police border posts.

At least 66,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh, alleging rape, murder and torture at the hands of security forces.

Suu Kyi's government has said the allegations are invented and has resisted mounting international pressure to protect the minority.

Myanmar has long faced criticism over its treatment of the Rohingya who are considered by many in the Buddhist-majority country to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Long before Trump, America's love-hate stance on immigration

America's distinction as a nation of immigrants -- that bedrock of its national identity -- has helped fuel the outpouring of outrage over President Donald Trump's travel ban. But it's hardly the first time that its borders have slammed shut.

A look back in time reveals that the history of immigration in America has been far from clear-cut, with many swings and contradictory messages.

"On the one hand, taking pride of being a nation of immigrants," says July Greene of the University of Maryland. "But at the same time, a long and complex history of trying to figure out whom to allow in and whom to exclude."

Demonstrators in Chicago protest against Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries Scott Olson (Getty/AFP/File)

Its story begins nearly 150 years ago, long before Trump unleashed the current storm by closing America's borders to refugees and travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act marked a radical shift for a young nation that had until then largely opened its arms to "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," in the words of the poet Emma Lazarus about the Statue of Liberty beckoning from New York Harbor.

"There was really no policy, anybody could come, you just had to show up," says Columbia University's Mae Ngai.

The first federal law excluding a specific group, the measure barred entry to all Chinese workers following racist incidents on the West Coast. It remained in place for decades until 1943.

"That was the product of the so-called manifest destiny philosophy," Ngai says, "according to which Americans claimed that the whole continent should belong to the Anglo-Saxons."

- Outcry over Asia -

The law shaped another major restriction between the two world wars.

The Immigration Act of 1924 set a limit for the first time on how many immigrants the United States could take in, setting quotas per country that strongly favored northern Europeans.

"It was not explicitly said, but the idea, inspired by eugenics and anti-Semitism, was to keep Jews and Italians out," Greene says.

By setting certain criteria to determine immigrants' eligibility to become citizens, the law also drastically hardened America's immigration stance, forbidding entry to all Asian travelers.

World War II opened a new thorny chapter that evokes the current controversy over Trump's executive order.

In 1939, the government barred entry to European Jews by warning they could be secretly working for Nazi Germany.

"There was a kind of hysteria about a threat of a fifth column," Greene says.

In June that year, president Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration turned away the St. Louis, a German ocean liner carrying some 900 Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. They were forced to return to Europe, where more than a quarter eventually died in death camps.

Justifying his immigration restrictions eighty years later, Trump has echoed the logic of the 1930s, warning of a risk that refugees could join sleeper cells supporting the Islamic State jihadist group.

- Scapegoat -

The second half of the 20th century saw more hardline chapters.

At the start of the Cold War, the 1950 Internal Security Act gave the US administration the power to turn back anyone who could potentially hurt national security, a move targeting communist sympathizers.

In 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act ended the way quotas had previously been allocated based on national origins, race or ancestry.

However, setting similar limits for all countries caused its own problems, putting migrants from more populous states at a disadvantage.

"It doesn't make any sense to have the same quota for China and Belgium," Ngai says.

Several decades later in 1980, president Jimmy Carter barred entry to Iranian nationals in response to the hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran.

Iran is one of the seven countries targeted by Trump today.

Although the various restrictions punctuating US history were the product of particular events, they were all predicated on the need to defend national security.

"All of those restrictions have been associated with nationalist appeals and have always used the question of national security to designate scapegoats," Ngai says.

This time around, Trump's action -- a thinly veiled attempt at keeping more Muslims out of the country, critics say -- may have more than ever to do with the prerogatives of one man.

It's one way, Greene says, "of gearing up this country to think of itself as being in war when it is not."

Immigration controls began 100 years ago in the United States, say academics Scott Olson (Getty/AFP/File)

The Immigration Act of 1924 was intended to keep out Jews and Italians, an academic says Jason Redmond (AFP)
Nepali transgender model hails 'dream come true'

Nepali model Anjali Lama hailed a "dream come true" on Friday after becoming the first transgender model to walk the runway at an Indian fashion show.

The 32-year-old, who was born a man in rural Nepal, has been strutting the catwalk at Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, India's premier fashion show, which started on Wednesday and runs until Sunday.

"Ever since I started modelling it's been my dream to appear in a fashion week. My dream has come true and I feel so happy and grateful," she told AFP.

Anjali Lama showcases a creation by designer Gen Next in Mumbai on February 1, 2017 Sujit Jaiswal (AFP)

Lama was born Nabin Waiba to a family of poor farmers in the remote Nuwakot region in mountainous Nepal.

But she always knew that she had been born in the wrong body and in 2005 took the decision to dress as a woman for the first time.

Lama, who has undergone partial sex reassignment was ostracised by members of her own family when she came out and said it had been a difficult journey to get to where she is today.

"The name I carved out as the first transgender model in India wasn't an easy process. I had to work hard, mentally handle stress and pressure. I struggled a lot," she said.

Lama added that she hoped transgenders across conservative South Asia would take heart from her success.

"Some transgenders may feel scared to come out. If they come out after being inspired by me ... (and) think 'I can be like her' and then believe in themselves, then I'll feel very proud of myself," she said.
Iran 'playing with fire,' Trump says

US President Donald Trump on Friday accused Iran of "playing with fire" after the Islamic republic dismissed his warnings over its latest missile test as unfounded and provocative.

In a series of early morning tweets, Trump wrote: "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"

But that was only the second of five tweets fired off between 6:24 am (1124 GMT) and 6:48 am.

The Trump administration appeared poised to levy fresh US sanctions on Iran in what would mark the first concrete evidence of the new president's tougher stance Brendan Smialowski (AFP)

The first in the series concerned Trump's feud with Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest covered topics as varied as his conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, meetings with business leaders and anti-Trump protesters.

On Thursday, the Trump administration appeared poised to levy fresh sanctions on Iran in what would mark the first concrete evidence of the new president's tougher stance, hours after he and his national security advisor put Iran "on notice" over missile tests and support for Yemeni rebels.

The sanctions are likely to be levied on individuals or entities linked to Iran's missile program and will be taken under existing presidential powers, sources familiar with White House deliberations said.

The measures are likely to replicate actions by former president Barack Obama's administration, which targeted firms and the Revolutionary Guard's missile command after previous tests.

Asked by a reporter if military action was a possibility, Trump said, "Nothing is off the table."

On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn insisted the missile test was in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231. That calls on Iran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi called the claims "baseless, repetitive and provocative."

Iran has confirmed that it had tested a ballistic missile, but denied that it violated the terms of the nuclear deal.
250,000 more Iraqis could flee Mosul as fighting moves west: UN

Up to a quarter of a million Iraqis could flee their homes as the city of Mosul braces for an escalation of the conflict in its densely-populated west, the UN warned Friday.

The UN refugee agency and other organisations are urgently preparing to respond "to a potential significant new flight of displaced Iraqis escaping the latest phase in the military offensive in western Mosul," UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh told reporters.

He said that as many as a quarter million more people could be displaced as fighting escalates in the west of the city, where an estimated 750,000 civilians are living.

The UN said that as many as a quarter million more people could be displaced as fighting escalates in the west of the city, where an estimated 750,000 civilians are living SAFIN HAMED (AFP/File)

"A significant population is trapped in western Mosul and we are of course extremely concerned about their welfare," he said.

That would be in addition to the more than 161,000 who have fled since the October 17 start of a massive offensive against the Islamic State (IS) group, although nearly 30,000 have returned home since soldiers recently won the east of the city.

The three months it took to reconquer Mosul's east saw some tough fighting, but even deadlier battles are expected on its west bank, home to the narrow streets of the Old City and some of IS's traditional redoubts.

Saltmarsh said most of those already displaced from Mosul, 83 percent, are living in camps and emergency sites.

The UNHCR currently has seven camps completed and two under construction, and is at the moment able to provide shelter to around 66,000 people.

Saltmarsh said the agency aimed to nearly double the accommodation available in the near term, but was waiting for land to be allocated.

By the end of March, the UNHCR hopes to be able to house 246,930 people in camps and emergency sites, he said.

The UNHCR also warned that a growing number of people were fleeing Hawija, southeast of Mosul, due to deteriorating living conditions and escalating fighting.

Saltmarsh said more than 82,000 people had fled the district since last August, moving eastwards towards Salah al-Din and Kirkuk, and cautioned that the number could rise to 114,000.
Trump's education pick advances in US Senate

The US Senate voted Friday to advance the nomination of Donald Trump's embattled choice for education secretary, setting up what will be a nail-biter of a final confirmation vote early next week.

Betsy DeVos, a Republican mega-donor from Michigan who is married to a heir of the Amway fortune, cleared a procedural hurdle when lawmakers voted 52 to 48 along strict party lines to move her nomination forward.

"She'll be an excellent education secretary in my judgment," Senator Lamar Alexander, himself a former secretary of education, told the chamber.

US President Donald Trump's choice for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, cleared a procedural hurdle when lawmakers voted 52 to 48 along strict party lines to move her nomination forward Brendan Smialowski (AFP/File)

The 6:45 am (1145 GMT) vote was extraordinarily early for the Senate. But Republicans have expressed frustration with Democrats' obstruction tactics and the early morning start helps leadership run time off the procedural clock.

Senate leadership has set up at least three more confirmation votes for next week: Steven Mnuchin to head the US Treasury, Tom Price as secretary of health and human services, and Scott Pruitt to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

Democrats boycotted all committee votes to advance the three nominations, but Republicans changed panel rules in order to jam them through with out any participation from Democrats.

DeVos's nomination appears to be under the greatest threat, as two Republicans have announced they will ultimately oppose her.

Provided all Democrats stand in unison against her, as expected, that leaves a 50-50 tie, meaning Vice President Mike Pence will cast the deciding vote, the first time a vice president has ever broken a tie on a cabinet confirmation.

Should one more Republican oppose DeVos, her nomination will collapse.

DeVos has been active in promoting school choice, a movement that advocates the use of tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system.

Democrats are livid about Trump's pick, warning that recent advancements in education could be undone by an ideologically conservative billionaire who never attended public schools.
Trump tells US to 'get smart' after Paris machete attack

President Donald Trump said Friday that the United States must "get smart" after a machete-wielding man attacked security forces at the Louvre museum in Paris while yelling "Allahu akbar" ("God is greatest").

Trump said the attacker was a "radical Islamic terrorist," using a term he has used previously to describe such attackers.

"A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.," Trump wrote on Twitter.

US President Donald Trump SAUL LOEB (AFP/File)

In a briefing earlier this week, a senior US administration official defended the temporary US travel ban on refugees and other travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries by saying America was trying to avoid the security situation in France and other European countries.

"The reality, though, is that the situation that exists today in parts of France, in parts of Germany, in Belgium, et cetera, is not a situation we want replicated inside the United States," the official said, warning against a "large and permanent domestic terror threat."

"We don't want a situation where, 20 to 30 years from now, it's just like a given thing that on a fairly regular basis there is domestic terror strikes, stores are shut up or that airports have explosive devices planted, or people are mowed down in the street by cars and automobiles and things of that nature," the official added.

Police held hundreds of tourists in secure areas of the renowned museum in central Paris after the assailant was shot five times around 10:00 am (0900 GMT) in a public area inside the Louvre complex.

The attacker is in a serious condition, while one soldier received a "minor" head wound and has been taken to hospital, security forces said.

Two backpacks carried by the assailant were checked by bomb disposal specialists at the scene and were found not to contain explosives.
Top Trump adviser in new 'alternative facts' flap

A top adviser to President Donald Trump found herself embroiled in a new "alternative facts" controversy Friday over her claim that two radicalized Iraqis had masterminded a US massacre that never took place.

Kellyanne Conway, a White House counselor who managed Trump's presidential campaign, made the remark Thursday in an interview with MSNBC while defending Trump's ban on refugees as similar to steps taken by former president Barack Obama.

"I bet it's brand new information to people that president Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. It didn't get covered."

Kellyanne Conway senior aide to US president Donald Trump and who managed his presidential campaign and is now a White House counselor Tasos Katopodis (AFP)

There was no massacre at Bowling Green.

Conway later tweeted that she "meant to say 'Bowling Green' terrorists."

Two Iraqi men from Bowling Green, Kentucky were indeed indicted in 2011 -- but for trying to send money and weapons to Al-Qaeda, and using improvised explosive devices against US soldiers in Iraq. Both are now serving long prison sentences.

After that incident, Obama did order more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees, but never stopped or banned the refugee resettlement program, The Washington Post reported.

Conway introduced the term "alternative facts" to the US political lexicon last month while defending White House press secretary Sean Spicer's specious claim that Trump's inauguration drew "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration -- period -- both in person and around the globe."
Afghan police officer kills eight colleagues

Eight police officers, all members of the same family, were killed in northern Afghanistan on Friday after a colleague working with the Taliban drugged and shot them at a checkpoint, police and government officials said.

No group claimed responsibility for the deadly attack but a spokesman for Faryab provincial police told AFP the suspected assailant had "fled back to the Taliban".

The victims, four regular police and four auxiliary officers, "were drugged by their colleague who then opened fire on them at a police checkpoint in the Almar district" of Faryab province, provincial police spokesman Abul Karim Yoresh told AFP.

A colleague has killed eight Afghan police officers at a checkpoint RATEB NOORI (AFP)

District governor Saleh Saleh confirmed that all eight of the police officers were members of the same family.

Local media reported that the suspected assailant police officer had joined the Taliban a year ago.

A similar incident happened in September when two Afghan soldiers opened fire on their sleeping colleagues in their barracks in the northern province of Kunduz.

On Wednesday the US government's Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said in a report that the death rate among Afghan troops and police soared last year as the Kabul government's overall control of the country declined significantly.
US hits Iran with fresh sanctions after missile tests

The United States slapped fresh sanctions on Iran Friday to punish Tehran for recent ballistic missile tests and its support for Yemen's Houthi rebels.

The first sanctions against Iran by the Trump administration targeted companies and individuals in Iran and China identified by the United States as supporting Tehran's ballistic missile program and the Revolutionary Guards military force.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States," said John Smith, acting director of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn declared he was "officially putting Iran on notice" over its ballistic missile test

The measures came after Iran on Sunday test-fired a medium range missile, which the White House contends violated a UN Security Council resolution proscribing missiles that could carry a nuclear device.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump's National Security Advisor Michael Flynn declared he was "officially putting Iran on notice" over the launch.

The newest sanctions seek to lock those blacklisted out of global trade and finance by banning any American or US-based entities from doing business with them. They named three trading networks and individuals allegedly involved in supplying goods to Iran's missile program.

One against already-sanctioned Iranian businessman Abdollah Asgharzadeh involves several Chinese companies and suppliers, mainly the Cosailing Business Trading Company based in Qingdao.
US Navy sends destroyer to Yemen

The US Navy has sent a destroyer to waters off Yemen in response to an attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels on a Saudi frigate, a defense official said Friday.

The USS Cole, which had been conducting operations in the Gulf, is now stationed in the Bab al-Mandab Strait off southwestern Yemen, the official said.

"They were moved down to the region in response to what happened to the Saudi frigate," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

This US Navy photo obtained February 3, 2017 shows the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Cole (DDG 67) as it flies the National Ensign and the 4th Marine Division (MARDIV) flag on January 16, 2017 Handout (Navy Office of Information/AFP/File)

Saudi officials say Yemeni rebel "suicide" boats recently attacked the Saudi warship that was on patrol in the Red Sea, killing two sailors.

The US Navy has not definitively said whether the attack was conducted by explosive-laden boats or a missile.

The USS Cole is well-known in naval circles as the target of an attack in October 2000 in the Yemeni port city of Aden that killed US military personnel. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The vessel's deployment comes amid rising tensions in the region after President Donald Trump put Iran "on notice" and slapped fresh sanctions on Tehran following recent ballistic missile tests.

Two amphibious warfare ships, the USS Comstock and the USS Makin Island, are also deployed in the same area as the Cole.
EU to enlist Libyan tribes to stem migrant flow

The European Union is to enlist the help of nomadic tribes in southern Libya to stem the flow of African migrants crossing the Mediterranean, Malta's premier said Friday.

Speaking after EU leaders approved moves to prevent migrant boats travelling beyond Libyan waters, Joseph Muscat said he believed he could deliver on a pledge to stop mass migration from Libya to Italy by the end of his country's EU presidency in June.

Muscat told reporters that Libya's UN-backed government had requested assistance to close its southern border as well as reaching agreement with Italy to establish EU-funded camps for illegal immigrants pending their deportation to their home countries.

(L-R) Malta's Prime Minister Jospeh Muscat, European Council President Donald Tusk, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev and French President Francois Hollande pose for a picture during an European Union summit on February 3, 2017 in Valletta, Malta ANDREAS SOLARO (AFP)

"There is also now direct engagement with the tribes in southern Libya who have until now been cooperating with the traffickers and earning between five and six million euros (dollars) a week from that," Muscat added.

"All of that is an extremely positive signal. If it is enough (to stem migratory fluxes), time will tell."

Muscat did not expand on what engagement with the tribes would involve. But Libya experts have long advised the EU that they could reduce the number of migrants reaching Libya by buying off the nomads who control major land routes into the country.

The plan for temporary migrant camps was agreed under a deal signed Thursday between Italy and Libya's Government of National Accord.

The scheme has provoked deep misgivings among humanitarian organisations and it is unclear if or how the camps will handle the many travellers on the Libya migrant route who are genuine refugees from conflict or political persecution.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni defended the plan as the only way of easing the pressure on his country's overwhelmed reception facilities.

"We are well aware of the humanitarian concerns," Gentiloni said, stressing that the UN refugee agency and the International Organisation for Migration had been consulted.

He warned that progress would be slow with the Libyan government only in control of part of the country. "We cannot expect the situation to suddenly change," Gentiloni said.

The vast majority of the roughly 500,000 migrants who have reached Italy in the last three years passed through Libya.
US revoked 60,000 visas after Trump order

The United States revoked 60,000 travel visas after President Donald Trump ordered a ban on visitors from seven mainly-Muslim countries, the State Department said Friday.

"Fewer than 60,000 individuals' visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the Executive Order," said Will Cocks, spokesman for the department's bureau of consular affairs.

"We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the Executive Order," he said.

People rally at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen, on February 2, 2017 Bryan R. Smith (AFP/File)

"To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015," he said, insisting national security remains "top priority."

A week ago, Trump issued an executive order halting arrivals for at least 90 days for the citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

All refugee arrivals from around the world were also halted, in this case for 120 days.

During the 90 day period, the US administration will review visa procedures with a view to introducing what Trump has called "extreme vetting" to weed out extremists.

US officials have denied the ban amounts to an anti-Muslim measure, despite the order saying "religious minorities" in the mainly-Muslim countries will get priority treatment.

Trump said the move is needed to tighten US security against foreign terror threats, citing the September 11, 2001 attacks despite the hijackers having no links to the named countries.

In the days after the move, dozens of visitors with valid visas and many with "Green Card" residency permits were detained on arrival at airports and many were sent back.
NY museum protests Trump travel ban through art

A famed New York art museum has joined the throng of protests against President Donald Trump's travel ban by replacing Western art with pieces by Iranian, Iraqi and Sudanese artists.

The Museum of Modern Art said works by Sudanese painter Ibrahim el-Salahi, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid and five artists with Iranian backgrounds replaced seven Western works, including by Picasso and Matisse.

The Republican president's explosive executive order came into effect last Friday, closing US borders to refugees for 120 days and visa holders from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York said works by Sudanese painter Ibrahim el-Salahi, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid, seen in 2013, and five artists with Iranian backgrounds replaced seven Western works, including by Picasso and Matisse LEON NEAL (AFP/File)

Syrian refugees have been banned indefinitely.

The museum switched the artworks late Thursday in its fifth-floor galleries, which ordinarily are devoted to Western modernism before 1945. The changes were reported by The New York Times and confirmed by the museum.

The five artists with Iranian backgrounds include Marcos Grigorian, the Los Angeles based video artist Tala Madani, photographer Shirana Shahbazi, sculptor Parviz Tanavoli and painter Charles Hossein Zenderoudi.

The museum also placed a large sculpture of aluminum and steel by Siah Armajani, a US artist who was born in Iran, in a lobby courtyard.

The museum has scheduled screenings of films from people subject to the ban, including the Iraqi-born German director Kais al-Zubaidi and Oussama Mohammad, a Syrian filmmaker living in France.

Founded in 1929, the museum is one of the world's premier modern art museums.

A gateway for immigrants into America for centuries, New York has staged multiple protests since the travel ban came into effect last Friday.
50 US lawmakers urge Trump to remove Bannon from NSC

Fifty Democratic congressmen wrote US President Donald Trump on Friday demanding he explain his placement of controversial chief strategist Steve Bannon on the National Security Council despite lacking formal foreign policy experience.

The letter follows the introduction of two Democratic bills, one in the Senate and the other in the House of Representatives, on Wednesday aimed at keeping Bannon off the NSC's core Principals Committee and reinstating the permanent status of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence.

Trump caused an uproar last weekend when he issued a memorandum that reorganized the NSC to elevate Bannon onto the Principals Committee and to relegate the Joint Chiefs chairman and DNI to roles where they only attend when "issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise" are discussed.

US President Donald Trump's decision to give Steve Bannon, seen in January 2017, a place on the council has alarmed former officials from Democratic and Republican administrations alike NICHOLAS KAMM (AFP/File)

"National security should never fall victim to partisan politics," said the House Democrats in their letter headed by congressmen Ted Deutch and Jerrold Nadler.

"We strongly encourage you to restore the DNI and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to their rightful status as regular members of the Principals Committee," they wrote.

They also asked the administration to provide Congress "a written explanation for your decision to inject politics" into the NSC by formally elevating Bannon to the Principals Committee.

"And the deeply troubling allegations that Mr Bannon supports or is tolerant of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim views take on added significance if he is to serve as a member."

The 63-year-old Bannon, former head of rightwing Breitbart News, is seen as a provocateur who rejects political convention and has an uncanny ability to steer Trump towards his own ideological agenda.

Trump's decision to give Bannon a place on the council has alarmed former officials from Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy, a former national security specialist at the Pentagon, introduced her bill in order to restore the permanent roles of the DNI and Joint Chiefs chairman to the council.

But it would also deny a seat to Bannon or any other individual "whose primary responsibility is political in nature," she said.
Mexico's top diplomat congratulates Tillerson in phone call

MEXICO CITY (AP)  The Mexican government says its top diplomat has spoken by phone with his newly sworn-in U.S. counterpart and they expressed interest in working together in a constructive relationship.

A Foreign Relations Department statement says Secretary Luis Videgaray congratulated U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday morning on his Senate confirmation the previous day.

It adds that Videgaray and Tillerson discussed the importance of the U.S.-Mexico relationship. They agreed to hold a meeting "in the near future" to work on "challenges" the two countries have in common.

FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2017 file photo, Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray pauses during a press conference, in Mexico City. Mexico's top diplomat said Monday, Jan. 30, 2017, his country will spend about $50 million to hire lawyers for migrants in the United States facing deportation. Videgaray said the effort "isn't about obstructing the enforcement of the law in the United States, or much less opposing law enforcement." (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
Hundreds of wild Yellowstone National Park bison are set to be slaughtered this winter to curb their migration.

25 of the animals, will however, be spared by American Indian tribes that want to start new herds.

The Associated Press obtained details on the deal between Montana, the park and the U.S. Department of Agriculture prior to its public disclosure.

It resulted from two weeks of intensive negotiations and removes a political obstacle for the park after Montana Gov. Steve Bullock on January 19 temporarily blocked Yellowstone's plan to kill up to 1,300 of Yellowstone's 5,500 bison this winter.

A deal will allow the mass slaughter of hundreds of wild bison migrating from Yellowstone National Park, while sparing 25 animals that American Indian tribes want to start new herds

The terms are likely to dampen public outcry by averting slaughter for most of a small group of bison that had been earmarked for a conservation effort intended at establishing new herds elsewhere.

Bullock lifted the slaughter ban in a Thursday letter to Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk that outlined the agreement to spare the 25 bison.

'My intent in invoking the (ban) was to prevent the slaughter of these bison and preserve them for transport to Fort Peck (Indian Reservation),' Bullock wrote. 'The parties have committed that these animals will be quarantined and safeguarded until they are ready for shipment.'

Wildlife advocates fiercely oppose the periodic slaughters of Yellowstone's world-famous bison herds. Stephany Seay with the Buffalo Field Campaign said what's needed is to repeal a law that places wild bison under the authority of the Montana livestock department instead of its wildlife agency.

Bison here, captured from Yellowstone National Park are being held in a government research facility near Corwin Springs, Montana

'Stop the slaughter, let them roam and manage them just like we do with elk, just like we do with deer, just like we do with other wildlife,' Seay said.

Park officials say they have little choice under a 16-year-old program intended to curb the animals' annual migration into Montana to prevent transmitting the disease brucellosis to cattle.

Brucellosis can cause pregnant animals to abort their young. It was brought to North America by the infected livestock of early settlers and has since been eradicated nationwide except in Yellowstone-area wildlife, including bison and elk.

The 25 bull bison saved from slaughter will be kept for a year for disease monitoring at a federal quarantine facility just north of the park in Corwin Springs. They will later be relocated to Fort Peck Reservation, home of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes.

Yellowstone spokeswoman Jody Lyle said the deal with the state and Agriculture Department marked a first step toward a long-term program to use some disease-free bison for conservation instead of sending them to slaughter.

Under public pressure, Yellowstone administrators last year proposed relocating about 40 animals captured during their migration to Fort Peck, which is already home to a small herd of park bison.

When Montana livestock officials objected to the transfer because of disease concerns, park officials said they would kill the animals, prompting Bullock to invoke the ban on slaughters.

The 40 bison had tested negative for brucellosis multiple times since they were captured last winter.

But because the animals potentially were exposed to diseased bison while being held in pens along the park boundary, the 15 females from the group will be slaughtered and only the males will be spared, Montana state veterinarian Marty Zaluski said.

The fate of about 20 bison already at the small town of Corwin Springs in Montana north of Yellowstone is uncertain. The animals were captured several years ago for use in animal birth control experiments.

State officials had said earlier they would be slaughtered to make way for the 25 spared bulls. But Bullock told Wenk that federal and state officials have agreed to further discussions on relocating the animals to Fort Peck.

So far this winter, hunters have shot more than 300 bison as they left the park seeking food at lower elevations in Montana, according to state wildlife officials.

Cold, snowy conditions are expected to prompt more bison to leave Yellowstone in coming days as foraging becomes more difficult.

About 400 migrating bison have been captured near the Yellowstone boundary and are being held for shipment to slaughter. Shipments will begin as soon as the park can make arrangements, Lyle said.

Meat from slaughtered animals is distributed to American Indian tribes across the region.

No transmissions of brucellosis from wild bison to livestock have been recorded, according to researchers and livestock officials. That's in part because more than 5,000 bison were killed or captured trying to leave the park since 1985.
Analysis: 2016 was busiest year for targeted refugees

President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily banning refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries has put a spotlight on those immigrant communities across the country.

The U.S. has taken in nearly 270,000 immigrants and refugees from the affected countries since 2007, according to an analysis of U.S. State Department data by The Associated Press.

Not surprisingly, many of the most populous states have taken in the largest share. California has accepted the most, by far, a total of 56,235. It's followed by Michigan, Texas, Arizona, New York and Illinois.

Florida, the nation's third most populous state, ranks somewhere in the middle, having accepted a little more than 5,000 immigrants or refugees from the seven countries. Yet of those, nearly 30 percent have arrived in just the past 13 months.

The AP analysis found that 2016 was the busiest year in the past decade for refugee arrivals from the seven countries targeted by the executive order  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Some 43,259 refugees from the countries arrived in the last year, more than a third from war-torn Syria. The number of Syrian refugees dramatically increased in recent years  from just 26 in 2007, to 247 in 2014 and to 15,479 in 2016.

Even within states, the distribution of refugees is typically concentrated to a few communities. Suburban Detroit, for example, gets the majority of Michigan's Syrian immigrants. In California, the most popular destination for Iranians, immigrants from that country mostly go to Southern California, with large concentrations in Los Angeles and Orange County. And yet the Central Valley farming town of Turlock, with a population of 73,000, has an outsized proportion of Iranians. It took in 1,175 over the 10-year period, more than double the number going to San Diego.

For Somalis, Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio, are the most common destinations.
US readies sanctions on Iran after missile test

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Trump administration is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first punitive action since the White House put Iran "on notice" after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, expected as early as Friday, said the officials and others with knowledge of the decision. The individuals weren't authorized to discuss the unannounced sanctions publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of President Donald Trump's term, reflect his administration's desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The White House and the State Department declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanctions authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

"This is fully consistent with the Obama administration's commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline U.S. position on Iran.

The impending sanctions come the same week that Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Iran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemen's internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," said Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have encouraged Trump not to let the missile test go unpunished. On Thursday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined more than a dozen other lawmakers to urge Trump to act.

"Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities," the lawmakers wrote.

Iran has reacted angrily to the threats of retaliation. Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, predicted this week that "the U.S. will be the final loser."

"It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran," Velayati said, according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency.

Though Trump has long derided the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, recently he has avoided repeating his campaign pledge to renegotiate it. Iran has insisted the deal won't be re-opened, and the other world powers that negotiated it with the U.S. have little appetite for revising it.

The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has stated that Iran's ballistic missile testing doesn't violate the nuclear deal itself. But as part of the final negotiations for that deal, Iran agreed to an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile development.

The U.N. Security Council later endorsed the agreement, calling on Iran not to carry out such tests. But Iran has flouted the prohibition regularly in the past year-and-a-half, drawing sanctions from the U.S. but also diplomatic cover from Russia.

___
Matt Kuchar shoots 7-under 64 to take Phoenix Open lead

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP)  Matt Kuchar hardly looked like a guy coming off a seven-week break Thursday in the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open.

Kuchar eagled the par-5 13th and added two late birdies and a big par save on the rowdy par-3 16th hole in an opening 7-under 64 at TPC Scottsdale.

"It was so nice to be home," Kuchar said. "Our kids got to play basketball. This is basketball season back home. I have always been traveling out west, so it was fun for me to be home, be dad, go to basketball games and practices. But we had such good weather, I got good practice in. My boys are now 7 and 9 and they're into golf, as well. In the afternoons, we'd sneak out and play a few holes. Wasn't too rusty."

Matt Kuchar watches his tee shot at the 16th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Playing in perfect afternoon conditions in front of a crowd estimated at 103,420, Kuchar took a one-stroke lead over defending champion Hideki Matsuyama and Brendan Steele.

"Someone told me it was 5 million," Kuchar joked about the crowd. "So many people out here. It's a good buzz. It's a good vibe."

He made a 25-foot eagle putt on 13.

"Chased a 3-wood up on the corner of the green, and it was a pretty straightforward 25-footer," Kuchar said. "That was a lucky place to be on that hole. Some of these pins were hard to get at. That was one that was hard to get at."

The seven-time PGA Tour winner ran in a 6-footer for birdie on the par-5 15th. He got up-and-down for par from the left bunker on the triple-deck stadium 16th, making a 12-foot putt, and chipped to inches from the front fringe on the short par-4 17th to set up his final birdie in the bogey-free round.

"I got some great work in this week with my instructor, Chris O'Connell, and it showed off with some great hitting out there," Kuchar said.

Matsuyama had a bogey-free round in the morning. Last year, he beat Rickie Fowler in a playoff.

"I wish I knew why I play well here," Matsuyama said through a translator. "I did hit the ball very well today, hit a lot of greens, a lot of good shots."

He won four times worldwide late last year, taking the World Golf Championships-HSBC Champions in China, two events in Japan and Tiger Woods' unofficial Hero World Challenge in December.

Steele holed out from 194 yards for eagle on the par-4 14th

"We were trying to land it about 10 yards short," said Steele, the Safeway Open winner in October to start the season. "Little outside right, and I pulled it just a touch. It landed about a yard left and about 4 yards short and went in the hole."

John Peterson, Robert Garrigus, Scott Brown, Byeong Hun An and Chris Kirk shot 66.

"I was very patient," said Peterson, the 2011 NCAA individual champion at LSU. "Usually, I'm not a very patient person, but this morning I was first off and I had great greens on the first nine holes."

Fowler, 2015 winner Brooks Koepka, two-time champion J.B. Holmes, Steve Stricker, Martin Laird, Webb Simpson, Graham DeLaet and Alex Cejka were at 67. Stricker is making his first start of the year. He will be 50 on Feb. 23.

Sung Kang also was 4 under on the final hole when play was suspended because of darkness.

Fowler made a 16-foot par save on the par-4 11th  his second hole of day  after driving into the water.

"To par the first three holes was nice. I could have easily been 3 over," Fowler said.

He was three strokes better than playing partners Jordan Spieth and John Rahm, the former Arizona State player who won Sunday at Torrey Pines for his first PGA Tour victory.

Spieth also saved par on 11 after hitting into the water, rolling in a downhill 50-footer. He struggled to find the fairways, and had a three-putt bogey on the par-4 17th  missing from 1 1/2 feet.

Phil Mickelson opened with a 68 in his third straight start in his return from two sports hernia surgeries to top playing partners Justin Thomas and Adam Hadwin, the latest players to shoot 59.

The 46-year-old Mickelson parred the final nine holes after birdieing Nos. 8 and 9 to get to 3 under.

"I'll take 3 under," Mickelson said. "I've got to get it a little bit better off the tee tomorrow. My iron play has been pretty good, so I should be able to make some birdies if I get the ball in play."

The former Arizona State player won at TPC Scottsdale in 1996, 2005 and 2013.

Thomas birdied 16 and 17 in a 69, and Hadwin shot 71.

Thomas has won three of his last five PGA Tour starts, successfully defending his title in Malaysia in October and sweeping the Hawaii events last month  shooting the 59 in the first round of his Sony Open victory. He's trying to become the first to win three straight PGA Tour events since Rory McIlroy in 2014.

Matt Kuchar waves to the crowd after sinking a birdie putt on the 15th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)n

Matt Kuchar stretches prior to hitting his tee shot on the 17th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Matt Kuchar, left, smiles as he tries a fist bump with Bubba Watson, right, after Kuchar nearly holed out for an eagle, settling for a birdie, at the 17th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Brendan Steele watches his tee shot at the 16th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

James Hahn, center, stands on the tee box as he tries to get the gallery at the 16th hole shouting during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Phil Mickelson hits out of a bunker on the second hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, hits his tee shot on the second hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, hits his approach shot on the first hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Brooks Koepka hits his tee shot on the second hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Rickie Fowler watches his approach shot to the 18th green during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

John Peterson hits his tee shot on the first hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Jordan Spieth hits out of a fairway bunker on the 18th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

John Peterson follows through on his tee shot on the first hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Hideki Matsuyama, of Japan, hits his approach shot on the 18th hole during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

Rickie Fowler, second from right, shakes hands with Jordan Spieth, second from left, as they are joined by Jon Rahm, left, of Spain, and caddie Joe Skovron, right, during the first round of the Waste Management Phoenix Open golf tournament Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
The Latest: Milo Yiannopoulos calls his views 'mainstream'

BERKELEY, Calif. (AP)  The Latest on violent protests at the University of California, Berkeley that shut down a scheduled speech by polarizing Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

Right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos said some news outlets appeared to blame him for the violence that erupted Wednesday night at the University of California, Berkeley before his scheduled speech.

Two women walk past graffiti on the wall of a Bank of America branch in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. The University of California, Berkeley has become a campus renowned for peace and openness where all viewpoints are welcome. It was anything but that on Wednesday night when violence and rioting forced the cancellation of a talk by right-wing provacateur Milo Yiannopoulos. A spokesman for the campus said it was "not a proud night" for the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Yiannopoulos told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday that police didn't seem to do much as he was evacuated to safety. The Breitbart News editor said he was put into a bulletproof vest and whisked away by car.

The 32-year-old is a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and a self-proclaimed internet troll whose comments have been criticized as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist. Yiannopoulos was banned from Twitter after leading a harassment campaign against actress Leslie Jones.

He says his opinions are mainstream, just delivered in a more colorful way.

Berkeley authorities say they believe the instigators were not students and what unfolded was "unprecedented."

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5:55 p.m.

The University of California, Berkeley cleaned up Thursday after violent protesters shut down a scheduled speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

The violence Wednesday was shocking not just for the images of protesters setting fires and hurling explosives at police, but because of where it took place.

UC Berkeley is the birthplace of the free-speech movement. Berkeley authorities say they believe the instigators were not students and what unfolded was "unprecedented."

Freshman Grace Schnetzler said outside demonstrators were diminishing the campus' reputation for free speech and tolerance. But she also wondered what he expected.

A man puts a wooden board over a window of the Student Union on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. The University of California, Berkeley has become a campus renowned for peace and openness where all viewpoints are welcome. It was anything but that on Wednesday night when violence and rioting forced the cancellation of a talk by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. A spokesman for the campus said it was "not a proud night" for the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A work crew cleans up the remains of a charred portable light on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. The University of California, Berkeley has become a campus renowned for peace and openness where all viewpoints are welcome. It was anything but that on Wednesday night when violence and rioting forced the cancellation of a talk by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. A spokesman for the campus said it was "not a proud night" for the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Protestors watch a fire on Sproul Plaza during a rally against the scheduled speaking appearance by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos on the University of California at Berkeley campus on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. The event was canceled out of safety concerns after protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and started a fire. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

University of California at Berkeley police guard the building where Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos was to speak Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. A small group of people with their faces covered broke windows, hurled fireworks at police officers and threw smoke bombs, prompting UC Berkeley officials to cancel Yiannopoulos's talk Wednesday evening. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

File - In this May 16, 1969 file photo, a lone demonstrator stays behind to argue with the National Guard troops who moved in to help California Highway patrolmen break up an unauthorized rally on the University of California campus in Berkeley, Calif. The University of California, Berkeley has become a campus renowned for peace and openness where all viewpoints are welcome. It was anything but that on Wednesday night when violence and rioting forced the cancellation of a talk by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. A spokesman for the campus said it was "not a proud night" for the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. (AP Photo, File)

A man walks into a boarded up Starbucks Coffee shop in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. The University of California, Berkeley has become a campus renowned for peace and openness where all viewpoints are welcome. It was anything but that on Wednesday night when violence and rioting forced the cancellation of a talk by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. A spokesman for the campus said it was "not a proud night" for the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Police officers arrest two men who attacked a student on the University of California, Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. Jack Palkovic, a student wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, was attacked on the University of California, Berkeley campus a day after violent protests led authorities to cancel a controversial speech. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

A bonfire set by demonstrators protesting a scheduled speaking appearance by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos burns on Sproul Plaza on the University of California at Berkeley campus on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. The event was canceled out of safety concerns after protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and started a bonfire. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

A hat with President Donald Trump's presidential campaign slogan on it is set ablaze during a rally against a scheduled speaking appearance by Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos on the University of California at Berkeley campus on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. The event was canceled out of safety concerns after protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and started a bonfire. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

Protestors against a scheduled speaking appearance by polarizing Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos march on the University of California at Berkeley campus Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, in Berkeley, Calif. The event was canceled out of safety concerns after protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and started a bonfire. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
Tigerair unable to meet Indonesia rules, ends Bali flights

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  Australia's Tigerair said on Friday it has permanently ended all flights to the popular resort island of Bali after Indonesian authorities required "an alternative regulatory solution" for its operations.

Hundreds of passengers were stranded in early January when Tigerair Australia suddenly canceled its Bali flights, citing what it called new administrative requirements from Indonesia. No other airlines were affected.

The budget airline, which is majority-owned by Virgin Australia, said it would take six months to meet the Indonesian requirements and they would compromise its ability to provide low-cost airfares.

"As a result of this development, Tigerair Australia has made the difficult decision to withdraw from flying between Australia and Bali permanently, effective today," it said in a statement.

The airline said its customers in Australia would be given full refunds and any travelers in Bali who had booked travel on the airline would be given accommodation and booked on Virgin Australia or other airlines.
Busy Alaska volcano: Seawater, magma figure in eruptions

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  Alaska's remote Bogoslof Island is only 169 acres, a third the size of the average American farm. And its highest "peak" is just 490 feet, half as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

Like other Aleutian islands, it's swarming with sea lions. But it's what's below the surface that sets Bogoslof apart.

The tiny island is the summit of an active, underwater volcano that extends down 5,500 feet, with its base on the floor of the Bering Sea.

In this May 10, 1994, aerial photo provided by Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey shows the Bogoslof Island looking south. Trace amounts of ash and the smell of sulfur reached an Alaska city 61 miles away after the latest eruption of Bogoslof Volcano in the Aleutian Islands. Bogoslof Volcano erupted late Monday night, Jan. 30, 2017, and its ash cloud reached 25,000 feet high. The Alaska Volcano Observatory says Bogoslof was quieting down Tuesday. (T. Keith/Alaska Volcano Observatory/U.S. Geological Survey via AP)

Since mid-December, the volcano has erupted more than two dozen times, sending up clouds of ice crystals and rock fragments that airliners must dodge as they fly between North America and Asia.

The explosiveness is partly due to the volcano magma's interaction with seawater, and the ash clouds could be a regular feature in 2017, said Chris Waythomas, a U.S. Geological Survey research geophysicist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

"Some of the previous, historical eruptions have lasted many months," he said.

Bogoslof is younger than the United States. The island appeared after an underwater eruption in 1796, the year John Adams defeated Thomas Jefferson to become the nation's second president. Castle Rock, a lava plug left by that eruption, stands like a Gothic church spire on the island's southwest side.

In 1883, Bogoslof Volcano erupted again and created a lava dome. The dome was once part of the island but because of erosion, now stands as a rock pillar 2,000 feet off shore.

Last month, Bogoslof blew from a vent in shallow water off its northeast side. The first confirmed ash emission was Dec. 14. Two acres on the island's east side disappeared in the eruptions.

Since then, Bogoslof has erupted more than two dozen times, sometimes sending ash clouds higher than 20,000 feet  potentially in the path of jetliners.

Air traffic controllers receive an advisory after eruptions, said Allen Kenitzer, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman. Bogoslof so far has caused no major interruptions. Flights have been slightly rerouted above or around ash clouds, Kenitzer said in an email response to questions. In years past, major eruptions have led airlines to cancel flights.

The Aleutian Islands are part of the Pacific Ocean "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Under the theory of plate tectonics, the Pacific plate of the planet's outer shell is being shoved under the North American continental plate.

That action creates magma, or molten rock, roughly 6 to 12 miles deep. With a lower density than surrounding rock, magma rises toward the Earth's surface. Volatile dissolved gases under pressure also push up magma. Whether a volcano explodes or oozes out lava depends on the dissolved gases and their ability to escape rapidly from the magma.

"It's not all that different from opening a can of soda on a warm day," Waythomas said. "The gas that's dissolved in the liquid comes out rapidly, and as it comes out, it brings magma with it. It fragments it as it expands. That produces the fine particles."

At Bogoslof, magma also interacts with seawater and water-saturated soils.

Typically, Waythomas said, when magma meets water, the Leidenfrost Effect kicks in. That's the phenomenon in which a liquid near an object that's much hotter produces an insulating vapor that keeps it from boiling rapidly.

"When you make pancakes, and you sprinkle water on your griddle, the water skates around on a film of vapor," Waythomas said. "If you break that vapor film down, and brought the water right into contact with the hot griddle, you'd produce a steam explosion. That's basically what's going on with Bogoslof."

Shockwaves from earthquakes break down the vapor film between hot magma and seawater, triggering explosions. Explosions cause more shockwaves and more direct contact between magma and water, leading to an eruption, Waythomas said.

Without an analysis of ash, it's difficult to know which explosions are driving the eruptions, Waythomas said.

Eruptions could end when the system runs out of shallow magma.

"Once the vent really pushes above sea level, that might change the eruption dynamics," Waythomas said. "Then seawater will play less of a role, and it's just a function of how gassy the magmas are. That might herald the end."
Activist: I called protesters 'freakin' morons', not mayor

WORCESTER, Mass. (AP)  A local activist has come forward to say he called protesters "freakin' morons" during a public meeting after the comments were captured on a live microphone and attributed to a Massachusetts mayor who apologized for the remarks.

Worcester (WU'-ster) activist Richard Aucoin and Democratic Mayor Joseph Petty both acknowledged Thursday that Aucoin made the remarks Petty apologized for on Wednesday.

Aucoin says he was frustrated that protesters were chanting at a City Council meeting on Tuesday. The demonstrators had gathered at City Hall earlier in protest of Republican President Donald Trump's immigration policies.

In a video of the meeting, someone can be heard uttering "freakin' morons. Morons, morons, morons."
Trump moves toward a tougher line on Israeli settlements

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Donald Trump is warning Israel that constructing new settlements "may not be helpful" to Middle East peace efforts, shifting toward a tougher line with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Still, the White House made clear Thursday that the Trump administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity," departing from previous administrations that have considered the settlements illegitimate.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements. Shortly before taking office, he vigorously criticized the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

Israeli police evicts settlers from the West Bank settlement of Ofra, following the evacuation of Amona outpost, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. sraeli police removed the remaining Israeli protesters from the West Bank outpost of Amona, which forces are evacuating under court order. The evacuation began Wednesday. Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. The outpost was found to be built on private Palestinian land and the Israeli Supreme Court ordered it demolished. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

But in a statement Thursday, the White House said, "While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House said the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington later this month. The two leaders are scheduled to meet at the White House on Feb. 15.

Meanwhile, the group representing Israeli settlers is brushing off the U.S. warning. Still, the Yesha settlers' council said Friday that it looks forward to working with the Trump administration.

The U.S. statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

Netanyahu repeatedly clashed with President Barack Obama during the Democrat's eight years in office, and Trump has vowed to be a better partner for Israel. Following the U.N. vote, Trump tweeted, "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"  referring to the date of his inauguration.

Trump has already appeared to slow his promises to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a promise often made by presidential candidates, but never carried out in office because of fears the move would inflame tensions in the region.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone Thursday with Netanyahu.

The prime minister's vow to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside. Netanyahu's pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona, but Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

Speaking at a ceremony in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed "great pain" over the removal of Amona.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some cases subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

"This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two-state solution - with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign - much harder to achieve," said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Police initially said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.

On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

"The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance," police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

Slogans including "Death to Zionists" and a swastika comparing the Israeli police to Nazis were scrawled on the synagogue walls. The police later began dragging young protesters out of the building.

Speaking to Israel Radio from inside the synagogue, the rabbi of Amona said the protesters were peacefully resisting the uprooting of the outpost. He spoke above loud noises and shouting in the background. Earlier Thursday, police removed protesters holed up in a small home nearby.

Police said 24 officers were slightly injured throughout the evacuation, and 13 young protesters were arrested.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. It witnessed violent clashes 11 years ago when police demolished nine homes found to have been built on private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court last year determined that the entire outpost was built illegally and ordered it demolished.

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Bernstein reported from Amona, West Bank.
Rule on guns and mentally ill people faces a GOP rollback

ATLANTA (AP)  In a sign of the new climate taking hold on gun issues under a Trump administration with a Republican-led Congress, a rule to keep guns out of the hands of certain mentally disabled people is on its way to being scrapped.

Under the rule, the Social Security Administration was to provide information to the gun-buying background check system on recipients with a mental disorder so severe they cannot work or handle their own benefit checks. Finalized in December as the Obama administration wound down, it affects an estimated 75,000 beneficiaries.

Gun-control advocates say the rule was meant to affect only those found to have a mental illness that makes them a danger to themselves or others, but was written too broadly. The rule didn't make certain people ineligible to buy a firearm, but was designed to ensure the background check system was comprehensive, accurate and flagged those already deemed ineligible.

"We would oppose any efforts to undermine that," said Kristin Brown, chief strategy officer for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

The idea for the provision emerged after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting in which a 20-year-old man with a variety of impairments, including Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder, shot and killed his mother at their home, then went to a school in Newtown, Connecticut, and fatally shot 20 children, six adults and himself. Adam Lanza used several weapons that his mother kept in her home and that they used to shoot at a range together.

Republican lawmakers and gun advocates criticized the regulation for reinforcing a negative stereotype that people with a mental disorder are dangerous.

"We have already seen federal authorities use psychiatric data to deny more than 257,000 military veterans their right to keep and bear arms ... But these are honest people who have committed no crimes," said Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America.

Democrats said Republicans were doing the National Rifle Association's bidding.

The Social Security regulation also established a process for people to appeal having their names submitted to the background check database. But attorneys general from a dozen states wrote to congressional leaders and said such appeals can take months or years to resolve. They said the regulation violates basic notions of due process by permitting an agency to revoke someone's Second Amendment rights without a hearing.

Jared Hamon, an engineering student at the University of Utah, said his mother was designated as his "payee" as a child. When he was born, he had a stroke and has cerebral palsy. He deals with poor balance and he described his left hand as akin to wearing an oven mitt with fingers that don't move well. When he turned 18, he didn't see any reason "to go through a huge bureaucratic process to change" the designation. He tucked away money each month to eventually afford a gun permit and to buy a firearm, on the very day of the Sandy Hook shooting.

It's not clear what impact, if any, the rule would have on Hamon, but he said he worried about being deemed unfit to buy a firearm and fretted about not being able to have a gun to protect himself.

A House vote on Thursday to roll back the rule "downgrades a system built to enforce existing laws that keep guns out of hands that shouldn't have them," said Erika Soto Lamb, the chief communications officer of Everytown for Gun Safety.

"Our background check system is only as good as the records it contains, and this vote re-opened the door for people prohibited from firearm ownership to illegally pass checks, buy and possess guns. Our public safety has been put at risk because of today's gun lobby-backed maneuver to advance their agenda of more guns for anyone, no questions asked."

The House passed the measure 235-180. The Senate has yet to act, and President Donald Trump must sign the bill into law before it can go into effect. The White House said Trump supports the bill and is likely to sign it.

Janet Delana of Wellington, Missouri, appealed to lawmakers to hold off on scrapping the rule, saying it would have prevented her daughter from purchasing a gun that she used to kill her father.

Her daughter, Colby, she said, was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and had been on Social Security disability. She said her daughter used those monthly disability checks in 2012 to purchase a gun from a dealer. Delana said her pleas to not sell her daughter the gun "were ignored" because her daughter passed the background check.

"An hour later, she shot her father to death, and tried once again to take her own life. She is now in an institution for life, and my husband is gone," Delana said.

___
Pro- or anti-Trump? Businesses pushed to pick a side

WASHINGTON (AP)  Uber's CEO quit President Donald Trump's business council. Nordstrom stopped selling Ivanka Trump's fashion. Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Toyota, meanwhile, suffered through the discomfort of being on the receiving end of Trump Twitter tirades.

The Trump era is a perilous new landscape for corporate America. Companies are feeling political pressure like never before, squeezed on one side by consumers who are boycotting products with any ties to the administration and on the other by the outspoken, social media-loving president.

For most companies, the decision to get political used to be made after long, careful deliberations among a company's leader, public relations team, lawyers and lobbyists. Now, in an increasingly divided America, companies may have no choice but to move quickly.

FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2016, file photo, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, poses during the launch of its bike-sharing product, uberMOTO, in Hyderabad, India. Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's council of business leaders, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press. Kalanick wrote to his employees that he'd spoken with Trump on Feb. 2, 2017, to let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A., File)

"You have to understand your customers in real time because political ramifications are happening instantly," said Matt Friedman, a crisis communications adviser based near Detroit who has worked with public and private companies. "Each business now has to look at where their customer fits into the political divide and how their company values align to what the president is doing on a day-to-day basis."

The predicament for companies was on display ahead of Trump's first White House meeting Friday with his business forum, a group that includes General Motors CEO Mary Barra, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon and a dozen others. The night before, Uber's Travis Kalanick told his employees he'd decided to quit the council because his presence on it was being "misinterpreted" as an endorsement of the president.

"I spent a lot of time thinking about this and mapping it to our values," Kalanick told employees in an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Disney CEO Bob Iger didn't attend either; instead he was at a company board meeting in California.

A seat on a high-profile White House council, no matter the political party in power, has previously been a can't-pass-up sign of prestige. It's a direct way for a company to express opinions to the president  far less fraught than trying to gain access through lobbying or donating money.

Trump said he intends to take advice from the council, which he said would meet regularly to discuss policies. Trump said he'd be seeking guidance on his plans to roll back the financial services legislation known as the Dodd-Frank bill from JP Morgan's Dimon.

"There's nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie," he said Friday.

But an audience with this president, at least at this stage, brings with it customer complications. No doubt weighing into Kalanick's decision to give up that influence was the boycott the ride-sharing company, popular in urban, largely Democratic areas, had been experiencing all week.

That campaign went viral on social media Saturday night when people perceived Uber as trying to break a taxi strike to and from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport that was in response to Trump's executive order suspending the country's refugee program. It didn't let up even after Uber publicly condemned Trump's executive order and contributed to relief groups.

Shannon Coulter, one of the organizers of the "Grab Your Wallet" social media effort to encourage boycotts of companies tied to Trump, said she would only be satisfied when Kalanick resigned from the presidential forum, saying: "This is not a 'seat at the table' moment. This is a flip-the-table moment."

Grab Your Wallet claimed another victory Thursday night when Nordstrom announced it had stopped selling first daughter Ivanka Trump's fashion line. The company cited the brand's performance. The department store was one of Grab Your Wallet's first targets. Neiman Marcus also appears to have stopped selling her jewelry.

"Companies have been late to the game with realizing how much ire it can create to associate with a person like Donald," Coulter said.

While the anti-Trump boycotters cheered Nordstrom, angry Trump supporters deluged the company with angry messages on Twitter  some saying they were now prepared to begin their own boycott.

Nordstrom spent the night responding to hundreds of them, with messages like: "We're so sorry to disappoint you. It's not a political decision for us."

Maine-based retailer L.L. Bean faced the flip side of that. Linda Bean, one of many family members involved in the company, gave money to a pro-Trump super PAC during the campaign, prompting Grab Your Wallet to call for a boycott, which in turn prompted Trump to weigh in with a bit of social-media marketing.

"Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L. Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L. Bean," Trump tweeted last month, a few weeks before taking office.

When they make a move that could be perceived as a knock on the president, companies like Nordstrom must calculate not only the financial impact of angering Trump supporters but also the possibility that Trump himself could take notice  spiraling the crisis to another level.

Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys Inc., said CEOs are especially vulnerable now because technology allows people to protest and vent their anger without organizing a march, or even leaving their home. Among those who can weigh in with a few finger taps: the leader of the free world.

"The direct communication from the president of the United States, with attacks on specific brands and specific people, is not something we've ever seen before," he said.

Just how much this new, perilous environment for CEOs will actually affect business in the long term is difficult to know.

Shares of Lockheed fell sharply after the president tweeted in December that the cost of its F-35 fighter jets was "out of control," then fell again after he complained about the military contractor at a news conference the next month.

The stock quickly recovered both times.

___

Associated Press writers Bernard Condon in New York and Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.
Trump hits Iran with new sanctions for missile test

WASHINGTON (AP)  The Trump administration ordered sanctions against more than two dozen people and companies from the Persian Gulf to China Friday in retaliation for Iran's recent ballistic missile test, increasing pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with the country.

Those targeted by the Treasury Department include Iranian, Lebanese, Emirati and Chinese individuals and firms involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. They are now prohibited from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens. The overall impact is likely to be minimal on Iran's economy, though some of the people and companies have relationships with Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guard military forces.

"The days of turning a blind eye to Iran's hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over," Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's national security adviser, said in a statement.

President Donald Trump speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. The Trump administration imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Irans recent ballistic missile test, increasing the pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with the country. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Although White House spokesman Sean Spicer acknowledged that much of the legwork had occurred under President Barack Obama, he told reporters the Trump administration "acted swiftly and decisively" after Iran's recent missile test and Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen firing on a Saudi naval vessel.

It is Trump's first package of penalties against Iran, reflecting his insistence on a tougher stance toward Tehran. Throughout his election campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran, and he vowed to crack down if elected.

Iran has acknowledged that it conducted a missile test. But it insists the test didn't violate the 2015 nuclear accord it reached with the United States and five other world powers, or a subsequent U.N. Security Council resolution extending an eight-year ban on ballistic missiles "designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons." Washington, under Obama and Trump, and its Western allies agree the matter is separate from the nuclear pact but maintain that the missile tests violate the U.N. ban.

Iran's foreign ministry decried the new U.S. sanctions on Friday as "illegitimate." It vowed counter-sanctions on American companies and firms.

Iran already has a formidable arsenal of thousands of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and other U.S. allies in the Middle East, as well as American bases, and has undertaken a series of tests in the year and a half since the nuclear agreement. The U.S. said the latest launch was of a medium-range missile, and an American defense official described it as failing re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump wrote, "Iran is playing with fire  they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me."

Despite the tough talk, the new sanctions represent a continuation of the Obama administration's limited punishment for Iran's ballistic missile activity and avoid a direct showdown with Tehran over the nuclear deal itself. The sanction targets were drawn up before Obama left office and don't affect Iran Air, a big Iranian bank or any major government entity, making it unclear how effective they'll prove as deterrents.

None of the new penalties reversed Obama's suspension of sanctions under the nuclear pact. Obama himself promised after the deal to continue going after Iran with non-nuclear penalties in response to missile launches, terror support or human rights abuses, and did so in January and March of last year.

"This is part of a much broader strategy and merely a sign of coming attractions," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who advises the administration and Congress on Iran-related issues.

Gary Sick, a Columbia University professor who handled Iran issues for Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, said Trump's limited response showed he doesn't intend to tear up the nuclear deal. "If they wanted to do it, that would have been the moment," he said.

On missiles, Iran said it would be undeterred.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Friday that his country was "unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense."

"Our missile drills are a show of our might," added Tehran prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. "We are living in a world of wolves  wolves such as the arrogant government of America. In this world of wolves, should we remain unarmed and they do whatever damn things they want? No way! This will never happen!"

At times, Tehran's leaders have argued that any new U.S. sanctions would violate the nuclear deal.

The agreement compelled Iran to curtail its enrichment of uranium, a material that can be used in atomic bombs, and other nuclear-related activity. In exchange, Iran received broad relief from U.S. and international sanctions that were crippling its economy. Trump has ridiculed the arrangement as a terrible deal, but America's closest allies in Europe as well as Russia and China are committed to it.

In the final days of the nuclear negotiations, Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work. That understanding was codified in a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in parallel, but separately, to the nuclear accord.

In Washington, lawmakers who have sought a sterner policy toward Iran applauded Trump's decision.

"It is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations," said Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.
Attacks in Afghanistan kill 9 policemen, cleric and his wife

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  An Afghan policeman turned his rifle on his colleagues in a northern province, killing eight, while a gunman in the country's east fatally shot a cleric and his wife, officials said on Friday.

The policemen were killed while they were sleeping in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to the provincial police spokesman, Abdul Karim Yuresh.

The attack happened on Thursday night and according to the spokesman, a policeman who was on duty opened fire and killed his colleagues, then collected all their firearms and fled the scene  presumably to join the Taliban.

The Taliban made no official statement or claim about the attack but Afghanistan has seen several such incidents over the past years. There has been a growing number of cases in which Afghan troops or policemen  or Taliban militants dressed in Afghan uniforms  have turning their guns on their colleagues or U.S.-led coalition partners.

Also on Thursday night, in the country's eastern Paktika province, a gunman killed a cleric and his wife, said Mohammad Alias Wahdat, the provincial governor.

Wahdat said the gunman entered the cleric's home in the Yusof Khail district and shot the cleric and his wife. Two of their children who were in the house survived.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the attack and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings.

In other violence, Gul Agha Roohani, the chief of police in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said Islamic State group militants stormed the security posts in the district of Kot early on Friday, killing at least one police officer.

Afghan security forces responded and killed 12 militants, he said.

Afghanistan has been facing major political and security challenges since the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014, leaving a smaller contingent of troops behind to focus on training and counterterrorism.
Europe plans to cut migrant influx by working with Libya

VALLETTA, Malta (AP)  European Union leaders at a summit Friday devised a plan involving largely lawless Libya to try to shut down the smuggling of hundreds of thousands of migrants from North Africa across the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.

The vast human tide has helped boost anti-Europe populist parties across the continent that have exploited the immigration crisis to gain voters.

But even as EU officials meeting in the Mediterranean island nation of Malta were voicing hopes that the strategy would help stop the loss of thousands of lives yearly when flimsy trafficking boats from Libya flounder or sink, concerns arose that the plan risks seeing thousands of people marooned in inhumane conditions in Libya.

A woman is assisted by members of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, as they crowd on board of a rubber boat sailing out of control in the Mediterranean some miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. European Union leaders are poised to take a big step on Friday in closing off the illegal migration routes from Libya across the central Mediterranean, where thousands have died trying to reach the EU, the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Much of the plan's success will depend on if Libya can be helped by Europe to deter smugglers from operating along its poorly patrolled coastline. That's a big unknown, given that the internationally-backed Tripoli-based government only controls part of the sprawling country. Libya is beset by rival governments, militias and tribal factions that were unleashed in 2011 after the ouster and slaying of longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

"Naturally, we're hoping for results," Italian Premier Paolo Gentiloni told reporters Friday. "There won't be any miracles, but better management and reduction of illegal migrants are what we're working toward."

He said if the plan can cut down on the hundreds of thousands setting off from Libya, it will also reduce the tragedies in which thousands of migrants die every year in the Mediterranean  including at least 5,083 last year.

In the last few years, Italy's coast guard has coordinated the rescues of hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers and other migrants who were then brought to safety on Italy's shores. Most don't want to stay in Italy but hope to reach families or find potential jobs in Germany or other wealthy northern European countries.

In March, the EU struck a deal with Turkey to stop huge number of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghanis and others heading from Turkish shores toward Greece and then overland toward northern Europe. That arrangement involved EU funds of some 3 billion euros ($3.5 billion) for Turkey, in exchange for that country keeping the migrants within its borders and caring for them.

"The Libyan government doesn't have the same control as (Turkish President Recep) Erdogan of his territory. We can't expect the situation will change suddenly" in Libya, Gentiloni cautioned.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel conceded that Libya doesn't have the needed stability to control all of its territory.

But citing an aid and cooperation deal that Italy signed Thursday with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez Serraj, Merkel said Europe would help by continuing to train the Libyan coast guard and would help Libya protect its southern border.

Migrant trafficking routes in North Africa pass through Niger then cross into Libya across the Sahara Desert.

The EU will also work to make sure there are better reception conditions for migrants. Voluntary returns will be stepped up, and the EU will get more involved with neighboring North African nations including Algeria, Tunisia and Egypt to contain the inflows of migrants. Brussels will provide an additional 200 million euros ($215 million) for the plan.

But there are deep concerns that migrants could become trapped in horrific conditions in Libya if the trafficking route is cut off.

"The EU is yet again outsourcing its responsibility to protect the rights of migrants and refugees with no guarantees about what will happen" to them if they are stuck in Libya, said Ester Asin of the Save the Children charity.

Doctors Without Borders director general Arjan Hehenkamp said the EU's plan shows that it is "delusional about just how dangerous the situation in Libya really is." The organization's boats are involved in sea rescues, and Hehenkamp said the survivors have recounted starving in Libyan detention centers and other abuse while in the North African country.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called not sending people back to countries where they may face torture, persecution or threats to their lives the "cornerstone of international human rights and refugee law."

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Frances D'Emilio is on twitter at www.twitter.com/fdemilio

Migrants and refugees are assisted by members of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, as they crowd aboard a boat sailing out of control in the Mediterranean Sea about 21 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. European Union leaders are poised to take a big step on Friday in closing off the illegal migration routes from Libya across the central Mediterranean, where thousands have died trying to reach the EU, the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2017 file photo, sub-Saharan migrants raise their hands to grab a life jacket as they are rescued by members of the Proactive Open Arms NGO, in the Mediterranean Sea north of Zumarah, Libya. European Union President Donald Tusk said on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, that a summit on migration on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, is poised to take a big step in closing off the illegal migration route through the central Mediterranean where thousands have died over the past several years trying to reach the EU from Libya. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

Sub-saharan migrants rest at the deck of Golfo Azzurro rescue ship after being rescued by members of the Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms, from a rubber boat sailing out of control in the Mediterranean Sea about 21 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. European Union leaders are poised to take a big step on Friday in closing off the illegal migration routes from Libya across the central Mediterranean, where thousands have died trying to reach the EU, the EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, right, and Prime Minister of Libya Fayez al-Sarraj exchange signed copies of a memorandum during a joint press conference at Chigi palace in Rome, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. Gentiloni and al-Sarraj signed a wide-ranging memorandum of understanding reinforcing Italy's role as the leading European country dealing with migration through the central Mediterranean. (Ettore Ferrari/ANSA via AP)
Soldiers thwart attack on Louvre, tourists held in lockdown

PARIS (AP)  Paris was plunged into panic  again  when soldiers guarding the Louvre Museum shot an attacker who lunged at them with two machetes on Friday and shouted "Allahu Akbar!" as the historic landmark went into lockdown.

The threat appeared to quickly recede after the assailant was subdued, but it cast a new shadow over the city just as tourism was beginning to rebound after a string of deadly attacks. Coming just hours before Paris finalized its bid for the 2024 Olympics, it also renewed questions about security in the City of Light.

The soldiers' quick action put an end to what French President Francois Hollande said was "no doubt" a terrorist attack at one of Paris' most iconic tourist attractions.

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

French prosecutor Francois Molins said the assailant was believed to be a 29-year-old Egyptian who had been living in the United Arab Emirates, though his identity has not yet been formally confirmed.

"Everything shows that the assailant was very determined", Molins told a news conference, adding that the attacker, who was shot four times, was in a life-threatening condition in a hospital.

Anti-terrorism prosecutors took charge of the investigation as police carried out raids near the tree-lined Champs-Elysees linked to the attack, which came two months after authorities carried out a special anti-terrorism exercise around the Louvre.

Molins said the attacker was not carrying any identity papers but investigators used his cellphone and a national data base of visa applicants containing their photos and fingerprints to determine that he was a resident of the United Arab Emirates who arrived in Paris on a tourist visa on Jan. 26.

Two days later the suspect bought two military machetes at a gun store in Paris, the prosecutor said. He also paid 1,700 euros for a one-week stay at an apartment in the chic 8th arrondissement of the French capital, near the Champs-Elysees.

In the apartment, police found an Egyptian passport and 965 euros, as well as a residence permit, driver's license and a credit card all issued from the UAE, Molins said. He said the suspect's return flight to Dubai was scheduled for Sunday.

Friday's attack targeted an entrance to a shopping mall that extends beneath the sprawling Louvre, a medieval former royal palace now home to the "Mona Lisa" and hundreds of other masterpieces.

Waving two machetes over his head, the assailant lunged at the soldiers patrolling in the mall, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" or "God is great!" Molins said.

One soldier fought him off and was slightly injured in the scalp. Another soldier fell to the ground as the assailant tried to slash him, then opened fire, shooting the attacker in the stomach. When that didn't stop him, the soldier fired three more time, gravely wounding him. The backpack the man was carrying contained cans of spray paint, but no explosives, Molins said.

The 1,200 people inside the Louvre  one of the world's biggest tourist attractions  were first shuttled into windowless rooms as part of a special security protocol before being evacuated. The museum in central Paris remained closed for the rest of Friday but will reopen on Saturday, Culture Minister Audrey Azoulay told reporters.

Hollande, speaking at a news conference in Malta where he was attending a European Union summit, said that while the Louvre incident was quickly contained, the overall threat to France remains high. He said the incident showed the need for the increased security patrols deployed around France since attacks in 2015.

Those patrols  numbering about 3,500 soldiers in the Paris area  were first deployed following the January 2015 attack on Paris' satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and reinforced after the November 2015 bomb-and-gun attacks that left 130 people dead at the city's Bataclan concert hall and other sites. The country has been under a state of emergency since.

Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux praised the soldiers involved in Friday's attack, saying "to wear a uniform, as we can see in the propaganda of those who want to attack us, is to be a target."

Restaurant worker Sanae Hadraoui, 32, said she was waiting for breakfast at a McDonald's in the Louvre's restaurant complex when she heard the first gunshot, followed by another and then a couple more.

"I hear a shot. Then a second shot. Then maybe two more. I hear people screaming, 'Evacuate! Evacuate!'" she said. "They told us to evacuate. I told my colleagues at the McDonald's. We went downstairs and then took the emergency exit."

Parisian Makram Chokri, who was shopping in the mall, described hearing a "boom, boom, boom over a few seconds. ... We thought it was an exercise at first but you know, you have a lot of scenarios going through your mind."

Police sealed off mall entrances near the Louvre and closed the area to vehicles, snarling traffic in Paris. Confused tourists were shooed away.

Lance Manus, a tourist from Albany, New York, described young girls crying in panic, and had immediate thoughts of the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

"That's what we're used to now," he said. "I mean we have to learn to live with it, be vigilant. So we listen to instructions from the security guards and do what they told us."

Eric Grau, a high school teacher chaperoning a group of 52 students, said: "We were in one of the galleries and a voice came through the loudspeakers to alert us, saying there was an alert." He said the group was taken to safety in the African art gallery.

The attack came hours before the city unveiled its bid for the 2024 Olympics. Paris is competing against Budapest and Los Angeles for the games, which it hasn't hosted since 1924.

Speaking outside the Louvre, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said terrorism threatens all of the world's big cities and "there is not a single one escaping that menace."

The speed with which Paris largely went back to normal after the attack, with officers gradually dismantling barricades and pulling down police tape around the Louvre just three hours later, underscored how the French city has  unwillingly but stoically  been forced to learn to live with extremist threats.

Within hours, French radio stations went back to talking about storms battering the west coast and school holiday traffic.

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Associated Press writers Angela Charlton, Greg Keller, Samuel Petrequin, Alex Turnbull and Jeff Schaeffer in Paris contributed to this report.

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers cordon off the area near the Louvre museum near where a soldier opened fire after he was attacked in Paris, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Police say the soldier opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers stand on patrol at a Metro station outside the Louvre museum near where a soldier opened fire after he was attacked in Paris, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Police say the soldier opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

French soldiers patrol outside the Louvre museum near where a soldier opened fire after he was attacked in Paris, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Police say the soldier opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

Rescue workers vans park carry outside the Louvre museum in Paris, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers guard the access to the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Rescue workers carry a stretcher outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Tourist leave the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. A French soldier shot and seriously wounded a man in a shopping mall beneath the Louvre Museum on Friday after he tried to attack them and shouted "Allahu akbar," officials said. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Rescue workers carry a stretcher outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Former Rutherford sheriff's major pleads guilty

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  A former sheriff's major in Rutherford County has pleaded guilty to lying in connection with his application for U.S. citizenship.

The U.S. attorney's office in Nashville said 47-year-old Terry McBurney pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court to unlawful procurement of naturalization, making false statements under oath and wire fraud.

The prosecutor's office said in a news release that McBurney indicated on documents he submitted for employment with the sheriff's office that he was a U.S. citizen. McBurney admitted during the plea hearing he was not a U.S. citizen.

The indictment said McBurney was born in Ireland.

Rutherford County required employees holding the position of captain or major to be a U.S. citizen.
The Latest: Louvre attacker near death; said to be Egyptian

PARIS (AP)  The Latest on an attack outside the Louvre Museum in Paris (all times local):

9:25 p.m.

A French prosecutor says the man who attacked soldiers in front of the Louvre Museum is believed to be a 29-year-old Egyptian who was living in the United Arab Emirates, but his identity has not been formally confirmed yet.

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Prosecutor Francois Molins says at a news conference Friday night that the French soldiers' quick reactions put an end to "a terror attack" Friday morning at one of Paris' most iconic tourist attractions. He says "everything shows that the assailant was very determined."

He says the attacker, who was shot by the soldiers, is in a life-threatening condition in a hospital.

Molins said the attacker had no identity papers but investigators used his cellphone to find out that he was a resident in the United Arab Emirates who came to Paris on a tourist visa on Jan. 26. Two days later he bought two military machetes at a gun store in Paris.

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7 p.m.

Two French officials close to the investigation into the attack at the Louvre Museum in Paris say several police raids are underway in the French capital.

A police official, speaking anonymously because he is not allowed to disclose details about the case, wouldn't give details on the precise location of the police raids Friday afternoon.

A police union official, Luc Poignant, said one of the raids took place on Rue de Ponthieu, a street near the Champs-Elysees Avenue, the city's famed boulevard.

A man attacked French soldiers on Friday morning near the Louvre, and they shot him while other security forces locked down the famous museum. He has been hospitalized and the French president says he will be questioned "when it is possible to do so."

 By Sylvie Corbet

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6:40 p.m.

French police union officials say the Louvre attacker is believed to be an Egyptian national.

Police union officials Yves Lefebvre and Luc Poignant say investigators have elements indicating that the attacker is an Egyptian. They were not able to provide more details on the identity of the man and the type of evidence that investigators have on him.

The man was shot by French soldiers after he attacked them Friday near the Louvre Museum in Paris and has been hospitalized.

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5:45 p.m.

The founder of the Museum Security Network says the Louvre Museum coped well with the attack by a man with knives.

Ton Cremers, former security chief at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, said the Louvre took quick action to protect visitors in a secure area while the police and military scoured the area outside the world famous museum for possible explosives.

Cremers says: "They did what they should do and what they had to do."

He says all major museums have detailed contingency plans in place for dealing with emergencies that may develop when there are thousands of visitors inside.

The trend intensified about two decades ago when the Getty Museum in Los Angeles published a book about emergency planning. He says the museum, located in a city where earthquakes often pose a hazard, can house and feed 1500 people for several days if needed.

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5:35 p.m.

French Interior minister Bruno Le Roux has praised the quick and effective response of France's military and police forces to protect about 1,200 persons who were in the museum and its underground shopping mall.

Le Roux, speaking to reporters in the Louvre Museum, said an exercise simulating an attack had been organized on Dec. 6 in the same area where the attack happened.

Le Roux says: "It enabled us to protect, clear, ensure security and then be able to give the museum back to those who are working there."

Defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the soldier who has been slightly injured in the attack is "doing well" and will rejoin his regiment in the evening.

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4:30 p.m.

French President Francois Hollande says there's "no doubt" that the attack on the Louvre Museum was of a "terrorist nature."

Speaking Friday to reporters at an EU summit in Malta, he said the situation around the Paris landmark museum is "totally under control" but the overall threat to France remains.

He said he expects the assailant to be questioned "when it is possible to do so." The attacker, who tried to attack soldiers guarding the Louvre with a machete, was shot five times and is hospitalized.

Hollande insisted the incident showed the need for the increased security patrols that have been deployed around France since attacks in 2015 and 2016.

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4:25 p.m.

France's culture minister says the Louvre Museum in Paris will stay closed for the rest of the day for security reasons but will reopen Saturday after a knife-wielding man was shot trying to attack soldiers guarding the site.

Minister Audrey Azoulay made the announcement Friday at the Louvre, where she and the defense minister and interior minister visited soldiers guarding the famed museum as part of heightened security measures after attacks on France in recent years.

Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux says French police and soldiers succeeded in ensuring that all 1,200 people at the museum at the time were safe and secure.

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3:50 p.m.

When a man tried to attack soldiers at the Louvre Museum, the historical landmark went into effective lockdown, with no one allowed to leave and hundreds of tourists whisked to safety in special rooms.

A Louvre spokeswoman said the visitors were taken to rooms in the vast museum  a medieval former royal palace  that have no windows and are considered "more secure" than the main halls.

For security reasons, she wouldn't say whether they are storerooms, or whether the rooms have any paintings in them. The spokeswoman was not authorized to be publicly named according to Louvre policy.

About 1,000 people were in the museum at the time of the incident Friday, in which a knife-wielding man was shot after trying to attack soldiers guarding the Louvre. After a couple of hours, the tourists were evacuated from the museum, without incident. The museum remained closed Friday afternoon.

Louvre visitor Conor Bakhuizen, 18, in Paris on a school trip, said he "was in the foyer and suddenly rushed into another room in the museum." He said the mood was "very tense at first but everyone was vigilant."

By Angela Charlton

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1 p.m.

A French Socialist lawmaker who wrote a report on the fight against terror is warning that France faces a "double menace," coming from both outside the country and from within.

Speaking after a knife-wielding man attacked a patrol of French soldiers near the Louvre Museum, Sebastien Pietrasanta told The Associated Press that "the worse has yet to come."

Pietrasanta said that France is likely to be targeted again, either by well-organized cells sent by the Islamic State group or by lone wolves radicalized in France and capable of launching attacks from one day to the next.

The said in a phone interview that "we are facing a persistent threat and instability will last for at least one generation."

Pietrasanta added that military personnel and police officers are particularly targeted by extremists because they represent the French state.

He said that "this is not something new, it already happened. Fortunately their protection gear has greatly improved."

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12:30 p.m.

Staff members are returning to a shopping mall beneath the Louvre Museum and roadblocks have been cleared after a man was shot after trying to attack a soldier guarding the site.

Police said the area around the attempted attack was evacuated following the incident. A French soldier shot the attacker  who shouted "Allahu akbar," or "God is great"  and seriously wounded him.

As the roadblocks were cleared, tourists began streaming out of the Louvre.

Hundreds of tourists had remained inside the museum during the incident, and some were brought into special safe rooms, according to a witness.

Conor Bakhuizen, 18, is in Paris on a school trip. In a Twitter exchange with The Associated Press, he said he "was in the foyer and suddenly rushed into another room in the museum."

He said the mood was "very tense at first but everyone was vigilant and now" everyone is in a good mood.

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12:20 p.m.

The attack on a soldier outside the Louvre Museum took place only hours before leaders of Paris' bid for the 2024 Olympics unveil their final candidate files.

French officials have repeatedly dismissed security concerns over the bid despite the wave of attacks that have left more than 200 people dead in the country over the past two years.

The attack will raise more questions before Friday's ceremony near the Eiffel Tower, although bid officials claim the French capital has the experience needed to organize and protect major events if it gets the 2024 Games.

Speaking outside the Louvre, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who will attend the ceremony alongside athletes and other bid leaders, said all big cities in the world are under threat. She said that "there is not a single one escaping that menace."

Paris, which hasn't hosted the Olympics since 1924, is competing against Budapest and Los Angeles. The International Olympic Committee will choose the host city in September.

---A previous version of this item has been corrected to show that the mayor's surname is Hidalgo, not Hidlago.

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11:45 a.m.

A spokesman for the military force that patrols key sites in Paris says a four-man patrol of soldiers attacked at the Louvre tried to fight off an assailant before they opened fire.

Spokesman Benoit Brulon says a soldier who was slightly injured by the attacker was not the solider who opened fire. Police say the man attacked soldiers after he was refused entry to a shopping complex under the museum with his bags. Officials found two machetes.

Some 3,500 soldiers patrol key sites as part of beefed-up security measures in Paris.

Exterminator Olivier Majewski says he was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people running and screaming "there's been a terror attack." The 53-year-old says he hid for about 15 minutes before gingerly making his way upstairs.

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11:30 a.m.

The French interior ministry says anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating an attack outside the Louvre Museum in Paris, but there are no details about the identity of the attacker.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet says a second person also was arrested but it is unclear whether that person was linked to the attack.

Police say a man attacked soldiers Friday morning when they told him he couldn't enter a shopping complex under the museum with his bags. The attacker was shot five times. One soldier had a minor scalp injury.

Brandet says about 1,000 people were inside the actual museum and were held inside in safe areas.

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11:25 a.m.

Police in Paris say a man attacked soldiers when they told him he couldn't enter an underground shopping mall beneath the sprawling Louvre Museum with his bags.

Yves Lefebvre, a police union official, says the man tried to stab one of the soldiers. The attacker was shot five times.

Lefebvre says police found two machetes on the man.

Police have sealed off entrances around where the attack took place and closed the area to vehicles, snarling traffic in a busy part of central Paris.

The situation is mainly calm, with confused tourists being gently shooed away by officers.

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11:05 a.m.

The Paris police chief says a man armed with a machete and shouting "God is great" in Arabic launched himself at soldiers and police officers near the Louvre Museum. One of the soldiers shot the attacker five times, gravely wounding him.

Police chief Michel Cadot says the attacker was also carrying two backpacks but they were later found not to contain any explosives.

One soldier had a minor scalp injury.

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10:40 a.m.

Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated.

The Paris police press office said it has no other details other than that a soldier opened fire.

A police union official, Luc Poignant, told BFM-TV that an attacker assaulted the soldier and that the area is now being secured.

The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital's biggest tourist attractions.

Soldiers on patrol are part of security measures that have beefed-up in the wake of terror attacks in France in 2015 and 2016.

Police officers take position outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

In this image made from video, a security official stands guard outside the Louvre Museum in Paris, France. Paris police said a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum. (AP Photo)

Police officers cordon off the area next to the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers cordon off the area next to the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers cordon off the area next to the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police and rescue workers car park outside the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

Police officers cordon off the area next to the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Paris police say a soldier has opened fire outside the Louvre Museum after he was attacked by someone, and the area is being evacuated. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Polish police raid office of anti-racism group

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Polish police on Friday raided an organization that monitors racism and xenophobia and the private homes of some of its board members, seizing computers.

The head of the Monitoring Center on Racist and Xenophobic Behavior said he considers the early-morning raids on Friday an attempt to intimidate the group and destroy evidence that is inconvenient for the authorities.

"It is a form of revenge against us, they want to silence us," Rafal Gawel told The Associated Press.

Board member of an NGO organization that monitors racism and xenophobia, Rafal Gawel, stands in his office in Warsaw, Poland, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, shortly after it was raided by the police who seized computers. He said the early-morning raid on the Monitoring Center on Racist and Xenophobic Behavior was an attempt to intimidate it and destroy evidence that is inconvenient for the authorities. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

He said the group has exposed ties between local officials, prosecutors and right-wing groups in Bialystok, a city in eastern Poland. The group also runs a theater whose program is "not appreciated by the ruling party," he said. It challenges the traditional national values on which the government is focused.

Gawel said he and other board members were "fearing for our lives" after receiving arson threats.

Lukasz Janyst, a spokesman for prosecutors in Bialystok, confirmed there were raids "at a number of locations in Warsaw" and said they were related to an investigation underway in Bialystok into fraud, the counterfeiting of documents and other wrongdoing. The investigation concerns the theater activity that the center's leaders opened in Bialystok and are now continuing in Warsaw.

Gawel admitted that he has been sentenced to four years in prison for business dealings unrelated to the anti-racism center. He is appealing that conviction.

The center has been filing complaints to prosecutors across the nation about anti-Semitic slogans or graffiti and recently it complained to the state broadcasting authorities about an anti-Semitic comment that was broadcast on public television.

Rafal Pankowski, the head of Never Again, a leading anti-racism watchdog, said Bialystok, the most multi-cultural city in Poland, "has a record of neo-Nazi activities and a pattern of the local authorities not dealing with those issues properly."

"Many serious investigations against violent neo-Nazi attacks have been dropped by the public prosecutor," Pankowski said. "They drop them and then go after the people doing the anti-racism work."
Poland assured that US troops presence is long-term

WARSAW, Poland (AP)  An aide to Polish President Andrzej Duda says he was told in Washington that U.S. troops will continue to be deployed in Poland.

U.S. troops deployed to Poland last month as a deterrent toward Russia, a decision made by former U.S. president Barack Obama.

President Donald Trump has indicated that Europe should rely more on itself for its defense, raising concerns in Warsaw about the future of the U.S. deployment.

Duda's foreign policy aide, Krzysztof Szczerski, met late Thursday in Washington with Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Szczerski said he was assured that the "presence of U.S. troops in Poland will be a permanent element of Polish-U.S. ties."
Recent major extremist attacks in France

France has suffered a series of extremist attacks in the past two years. Here are some of the major assaults.

July 26, 2016:

Two Islamic State militants attack a church during morning Mass in the small town of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray in western France, slitting the throat of the 85-year-old priest and wounding an 86-year-old parishioner. One nun escapes and gives the alert, and police shoot both attackers as they leave the church.

Tourist leave the Louvre museum in Paris,Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. A French soldier shot and seriously wounded a man in a shopping mall beneath the Louvre Museum on Friday after he tried to attack them and shouted "Allahu akbar," officials said. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

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July 14, 2016: During Bastille Day celebrations in the Riviera city of Nice, a large truck is driven into a festive crowd, killing 86 people. The driver is shot dead. Islamic State extremists claim responsibility for the attack. The state of emergency in France is extended and extra protection, including robust barriers to prevent similar attacks, is put in place at major sites in France.

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June 13, 2016: Two French police officers are murdered in their home in front of their 3-year-old son. Islamic State claims responsibility for the attack carried out by a jihadist with a prior terrorist conviction. He is killed by police at the scene.

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Nov. 13, 2015: Islamic State militants kill 130 people in France's worst atrocity since World War II. A series of suicide-bomb and shooting attacks is launched on crowded sites in central Paris, as well as the northern suburb of Saint-Denis. Most of those killed are in a crowded theater where hostages are taken.

Islamic State extremists claim responsibility and say it was in retaliation for French participation in airstrikes on the militant group's positions in Syria and Iraq. It leads to the declaration of a state of emergency in France. Police powers are expanded.

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Congress kills rule forcing payment disclosures by companies

WASHINGTON (AP)  Congress has passed legislation ending an Obama-era regulation that's required oil and gas companies to disclose payments to the U.S. or foreign governments for commercial development.

The Senate gave final congressional approval to measure Friday 52-47 in an unusual vote that began before dawn.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill. It represents an initial Republican swipe at the 2010 Dodd-Frank law curbing Wall Street that President Barack Obama and Democrats enacted following the 2008 financial crisis.

Republicans say the regulation gives foreign competitors valuable information about U.S. firms and would hurt the economy.
DeVos moves closer to confirmation as education secretary

WASHINGTON (AP)  Betsy DeVos moved closer toward confirmation as education secretary Friday after clearing a major hurdle in the Senate, even as Democrats and labor unions fervently sought another Republican vote against her.

Tensions flew on the Senate floor during an early-morning session, with a senior Republican saying DeVos will make an "excellent" secretary and a top Democrat calling her "one of the worst nominees." Republicans overpowered Democrats, voting 52-48 to cut off debate on the nomination, setting the stage for a final vote Tuesday.

DeVos, a billionaire Republican donor, has faced fierce criticism from labor unions for her promotion of school choice. Democrats and teachers' organizations have accused her of seeking to dismantle public education and divert taxpayer money to charter schools and private school vouchers.

FILE - In this Jan. 17, 2017 file photo, Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. DeVos bid to become education secretary could be in trouble. Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, announced their opposition to DeVos in speeches on the Senate floor Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they would vote against her nomination, and others are being bombarded by phone calls and letters from parents and teachers across the country. If all Democrats vote against her and no other Republicans dissent, Vice President Mike Pence would have to break a 50-50 tie to gain DeVos' confirmation.

Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, praised DeVos' work in reforming the school system through charter schools.

"Teachers have more freedom and parents have more choices, they are public schools and Betsy Devos is in the forefront of helping create that opportunity for public education," Alexander said shortly after Friday's vote limiting debate. He said DeVos will seek to diminish federal control over education and give more power to states and locales on such issues as academic standards, teacher evaluations and vouchers.

"We will be swapping a national school board for what she believes in, which is a local school board," said Alexander, who served as education secretary under President George H.W. Bush.

But Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the committee, said she strongly opposes DeVos because of her tangled finances and potential conflicts of interest, her lack of experience in public schools and knowledge of basic education issues. Murray complained that the confirmation hearing was rushed and that DeVos didn't answer all the questions from Democrats.

"Betsy DeVos is committed to privatizing public schools, and diverting public funds into private taxpayer-funded vouchers that would leave far too many students behind," Murray said.

In addition to the statements of opposition by the two Republican senators, billionaire philanthropist and public education backer Eli Broad also has come out against her.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said that Republican senators are under pressure to oppose DeVos.

"This grassroots outcry crosses party and geographic lines," Weingarten said. "If the DeVos vote was based on the merits, including what constituents are telling their senators, rather than senators being scared of President Trump, DeVos would not be confirmed."

In a tongue-in-cheek attempt to highlight opposition to the nomination, several fundraising efforts have been started on the GoFundMe online platform urging people to donate money to "buy" the votes of senators who have received campaign contributions from DeVos or her family and have said they would vote for her.

One such effort was launched by Katherine Fritz, a 31-year-old educator and artist from Philadelphia. "If Betsy DeVos can buy Senator Toomey's vote, we should be allowed to do the same," she said on the web page.

Fritz told The Associated Press that she started the campaign as a joke and a way to urge Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey to "reconnect with his constituents." She never expected it to garner more than $30  but as of Friday night, Fritz has raised over $40,000 in what has become the platform's top trending campaign, according to a GoFundMe spokeswoman.

Fritz said she never actually planned to bribe the senator and will donate the money to three educational charities. Toomey's spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.

DeVos, 59, is the wife of Dick DeVos, heir to the Amway marketing fortune. She has spent more than two decades advocating for charter schools in her home state of Michigan and elsewhere around the country. Her support of anti-LGBT organizations and her advocacy for conservative religious values have also caused concerns that she will be a weak advocate for the LGBT community and other minorities.

Even if she is confirmed in what some experts say is the most divisive nomination battle in the department's history, DeVos is off to an uneasy start.

"It's definitely been contentious in an unprecedented way," said Elizabeth Mann, an education policy fellow at Brookings. "Not having a majority vote when her party controls the Senate and when a member of her party is the White House does not send a signal bipartisan support of her agenda."

Patrick McGuinn, a professor of political science and education at Drew University said that while DeVos will emerge as "somewhat damaged goods" from the nomination process, that is unlikely to derail her work going forward.

"There is not as much need for the Secretary DeVos to seek compromise across the aisle," McGuinn said. "Where she may be starting under controversial conditions, the fact remains that Democrats will have a very difficult time blocking her agenda and actions as education secretary."

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, center, flanked by Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., left, and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., right, depart the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska defected from the GOP majority and voted against Education Secretary-designate DeVos. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
The Latest: Official: Officer's death homicide by trauma

SMYRNA, Del. (AP)  The Latest on a hostage situation and death of a guard at a Delaware prison (all times local):

7:50 p.m.

Delaware State Police say the medical examiner has ruled that the death of an officer in a prison disturbance was homicide by trauma.

Mounted police patrol travel along Smyrna Landing Road alongside James T. Vaugh Corrections center, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017 in Smyrna, Del. Inmates used "sharp instruments" to assume control of the building at the James T. Vaughn Correction Center on Wednesday, taking three prison guards and a woman counselor hostage. (Suchat Pederson/The Wilmington News-Journal via AP)

Troopers said in a news release late Friday that the Delaware Division of Forensic Science has completed the autopsy of Lt. Steven Floyd Sr. Law enforcers say no further information about the autopsy will be released.

Floyd, 47, was found dead early Thursday after a nearly 20-hour hostage standoff at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna.

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3:45 p.m.

Delaware Department of Correction Commissioner Perry Phelps has presented the department's highest honor to the son of the correctional officer who was killed during a prison disturbance.

Twenty-eight-year-old Steven Floyd Jr. received his father's Medal of Valor during a graduation ceremony Friday for a new class of correctional officer cadets.

Phelps also said he was posthumously promoting Sgt. Steven Floyd to lieutenant, effective Feb. 1. Phelps said Floyd's heroic actions prevented additional hostages from being taken, and that his bravery brought great credit to himself, the department, and the state of Delaware.

The elder Floyd was found dead Thursday after authorities broke into the prison and ended the siege.

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1:30 p.m.

A fundraising campaign has been started to help the family of the Delaware correctional officer who was killed during a prison disturbance. Funds will also be used to help the survivors of the incident.

A GoFundMe campaign was started on Thursday to help the family of Sgt. Steven Floyd, who was found dead after authorities broke into the prison and ended the siege. Other corrections officers and a counselor were injured while they were held hostage during the ordeal.

The campaign is trying to raise $30,000. It was started by two correctional officers.

9:30 a.m.

The Correctional Officers Association of Delaware is hosting a candlelight vigil to remember the guard killed at Delaware's largest prison.

The union is planning a vigil in memory of Sgt. Steven Floyd on Friday night at Smyrna Municipal Park.

Union President Geoffrey Klopp says Floyd saved his colleagues' lives by warning them that inmates had set a trap. He says after inmates forced Floyd into a closet, the 47-year-old called out to warn other officers coming to his aid. Klopp says Floyd "absolutely" saved lives.

Floyd was found dead early Thursday after authorities used a backhoe to smash through a barricade of footlockers and end a nearly 20-hour hostage standoff at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center.

Floyd was a 16-year veteran with the prison and is the first corrections officer in Delaware to be killed.

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7:25 a.m.

The Delaware State Conference of the NAACP wants to work with state correction officials to "resolve persistent issues" highlighted by the demands of inmates who took four corrections workers hostage at the state's largest prison.

In a statement released late Thursday, C. Linwood Jackson, the president of the state's conference of branches, says prayers go out to the family of Sgt. Steven Floyd, who was killed at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center.

Jackson says as the investigation identifies the perpetrators, their motives and the circumstances that led to the situation, they hope policies and procedures can be put in place to protect staff and address inmates' humanitarian and mental health concerns.

He says based on reports their concerns "identify overcrowding, understaffed shifts and excessive use of solitary confinement, as possible root causes of the action taken by the prisoners."

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3:15 a.m.

A corrections union official says the guard killed at Delaware's largest prison saved his colleagues' lives by warning them that inmates had set a trap.

Union President Geoffrey Klopp says that after inmates forced Sgt. Steven Floyd into a closet, the 47-year-old called out to warn other officers coming to his aid. Klopp says Floyd "absolutely" saved lives.

Floyd was found dead early Thursday after authorities used a backhoe to smash through a barricade of footlockers and end a nearly 20-hour hostage standoff at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center.

Floyd was a 16-year veteran with the prison and is the first corrections officer in Delaware to be killed. Klopp said Floyd went the "extra mile for any human being he could help."

This undated photo provided by the Delaware Department of Correction shows Sgt. Steven Floyd. Floyd died in a hostage standoff at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center in Smyrna, Delaware. Officers found him unresponsive when they breached the building where inmates had held hostages on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. (Delaware Department of Correction via AP)

Geoffrey Klopp, center, president of the Correctional Officers Association of Delaware, speaks about a prison uprising Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, in Dover, Del. Klopp says that he believes the uprising was due to low staffing issues at the 2,500-prisoner James T. Vaughn Correctional Center that have existed for years. (AP Photo/Brian Witte)

Robert Coupe, secretary of the state Department of Safety and Homeland Security, speaks at a news conference on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017 in Smyrna, Del. Police used a backhoe to breach a building at Delaware's largest prison early Thursday, ending what the governor called a "torturous" hostage standoff that left one guard dead. Inmates used "sharp instruments" to assume control of the building at the James T. Vaughn Correction Center on Wednesday, taking three prison guards and a woman counselor hostage. (Suchat Pederson/The Wilmington News-Journal via AP)
US reconsiders reporting rule on Congo 'conflict minerals'

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reconsidering its rule requiring public companies to report their use of minerals from Congo, where multiple armed groups have stakes in the vast country's trillion-dollar mineral wealth.

A change by the SEC could either benefit the armed groups and increase the region's potential for conflict or help everyday Congolese who have felt the economic pinch as some companies stayed away, experts say.

In a statement earlier this week, the newly appointed Republican acting chairman of the SEC, Michael Piwowar, called the rule "misguided," saying there is little proof it has reduced conflict or eased humanitarian suffering in Congo. In addition, he said, it may be creating a "vacuum filled by those with less benign interests" that could undermine U.S. security interests. He ordered the SEC to review the regulation.

The SEC issued the rule in 2012 under the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law. It has required public companies to disclose information about their use of minerals from Congo, where armed groups linked to atrocities have profited from minerals used in electronics, jewelry and other goods.

Companies that use the designated minerals from Congo and neighboring countries in their products must report annually on their efforts to trace the so-called "conflict minerals" back to their sources. The regulators said stricter reporting requirements might help curb the violence in Congo and would make companies more accountable to shareholders.

For years, armed groups and criminal elements in the Central African nation have fed off the illicit trade of gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten, according to reports by a United Nations panel of experts.

There could be $24 trillion in untapped mineral reserves in the Congo, the U.N. says.

The SEC rule unintentionally harms miners and local communities, some experts say, because companies have found it difficult to certify that minerals haven't been linked to armed groups.

Last year, Apple reported that while a third party verified its supply chain was free of minerals that financed armed groups, it was still not enough to be entirely sure its minerals were conflict-free because of opaque industry practices in Congo.

Carly Oboth, a policy adviser with the Global Witness advocacy group, criticized this week's SEC statement, saying it had information that was "outdated and characterized it in a way that is not entirely accurate."

It is unclear if the SEC rule has really taken resources away from armed groups, but it has been a "great mobilizer" for the business community to act more responsibly, said Ben Radley, a researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies. "It certainly had negative impacts on artisanal mining, households and communities" in Congo, he said.

The conflict minerals rule "has contributed a lot to the reduction of violence in mining sites," said Richard Mukena, director of the human rights program at African Resources Watch in Congo.
Prosecutor asks suspended sentence for Navalny

MOSCOW (AP)  The prosecutor in the retrial of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is asking for a five-year suspended sentence for the prominent foe of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny's initial conviction was overturned last year by the Supreme Court. Navalny has announced the start of his campaign to run against Putin in the 2018 elections, but would be barred from running if the conviction is reinstated.

The prosecutor at the trial in the city of Kirov said Friday that Navalny's guilt was fully proven. He is charged with embezzling timber worth about $500,000.
Serbia blames Kosovo for failed negotiations amid war talk

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP)  Serbia blamed Kosovo on Friday for the collapse of European Union-mediated talks as tensions escalated in the Balkans amid reports of troop movements and war rhetoric.

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic claimed the Kosovo leaders' "only goal is to storm" into northern Kosovo, an area populated by Serbs. He rejected calls by unidentified Western ambassadors to pull back Serb police forces from the border with its former province.

"Serbia is a sovereign country," Vucic said. "They can give such orders to whom they can, but they cannot give such orders in Serbia."

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic speaks during a press conference after talks with his Montenegro's counterpart Dusko Markovic, at the Serbia Palace in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Vucic has accused Kosovo for the collapse of EU-mediated talks as tensions escalated in the Balkans. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Vucic said Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders don't want an agreement with Serbia, and he blamed the EU for "tolerating" such behavior.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia has not recognized it as a separate country. Serbia, backed by Russia, has sought to maintain influence in Kosovo's north, where most of the country's Serb minority lives.

Vucic's comments followed a Brussels meeting Wednesday between the Serbian and Kosovo presidents and prime ministers that was convened by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. The latest in a series of meetings, crucial for accession of both countries into the 28-nation EU, it finished abruptly and no further session has been planned.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci urged the EU and NATO on Thursday to warn Serbia against inciting a new conflict in Kosovo and the Balkans.

Tensions have been building since December when Kosovo Serbs erected a wall at a bridge in the divided town of Mitrovica, seen as a provocation by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. Last month, a nationalist Serbian train with signs reading "Kosovo is Serbia" in 20 languages was turned back from the border with Kosovo.

Thousands of NATO-led troops continue to control Kosovo's territory since a three-month air war in 1999 to stop a bloody Serbian crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists.

On his visit to Kosovo on Friday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged Kosovo and Serbia to normalize their relations.

"We are committed to continue to stay here with a significant force," Stoltenberg said. "This is a very clear signal of our commitment to make sure that Kosovo is a safe and secure place."

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Llazar Semini contributed to this report from Tirana, Albania.

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, center left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg walk in the main square of Kosovo's capital Pristina on Friday, Jan. 3, 2017. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is in one day official visit to Kosovo. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic reviews the honor guard during a welcoming ceremony for Montenegro's Prime Minister Dusko Markovic, at the Serbia Palace in Belgrade, Serbia, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Vucic has accused Kosovo for the collapse of EU-mediated talks as tensions escalated in the Balkans. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, left,and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg walk in the main square of Kosovo's capital Pristina on Friday, Jan. 3, 2017. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is in one day official visit to Kosovo. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Kosovo president Hashim Thaci, center left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg walk in the main square of Kosovo's capital Pristina on Friday, Jan. 3, 2017. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has joined the international community calling on Kosovo and Serbia to normalize their ties. Stoltenberg on Friday is a one-day visit to Kosovo where he meet with local senior officials. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Kosovo prime minister Isa Mustafa, right, shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during a joint press conference in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Friday, Jan. 3, 2017. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has joined the international community calling on Kosovo and Serbia to normalize their ties. Stoltenberg on Friday is a one-day visit to Kosovo where he meet with local senior officials. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg gestures during a press conference in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Friday, Jan. 3, 2017. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has joined the international community calling on Kosovo and Serbia to normalize their ties. Stoltenberg on Friday is a one-day visit to Kosovo where he meet with local senior officials. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
Police testing drug-laced lollipops from Pennsylvania school

ERIE, Pa. (AP)  Police say they're having a lab test drug-laced lollipops that were handed out by a student at a Pennsylvania charter school, causing one student to overdose.

Erie police Chief Donald Dacus says police seized 15 of the lollipops from a 17-year-old girl at Perseus House Charter School of Excellence. Police are concerned because they believe a man gave the girl about 60 of the lollipops, which she distributed to students at Perseus and other schools in the city.

Police aren't saying what kind of drug they believe the lollipops contain. The 15-year-old girl who overdosed got sick Wednesday afternoon, and that prompted the police investigation.
Syria opposition members meet in Turkey ahead of Geneva

ANKARA, Turkey (AP)  Turkey has hosted talks with Syrian opposition members ahead of U.N.-backed negotiations with the Damascus government in Geneva later this month.

The Foreign Ministry says the meeting denounced "federalism" as a solution for war-torn Syria. It says the participants spoke out against a "new constitution, autonomy and federalism."

Turkish officials say participants included political and military representatives of the Syrian opposition such as Riad Hijab of the High Negotiations Committee, and Syrian National Coalition President Anas al-Abdah.

Friday's meeting concluded that those opposing Syria's unity have no place in Geneva.

A Syrian Kurdish group recently in Moscow proposed creating federal units in Syria to resolve the war. Ankara regards the Syrian Kurds as an extension of its own Kurdish insurgency.
Mars: "Miscommunication" led to Skittles spill

NEW YORK (AP)  Mars says a miscommunication with a subcontractor led to a defective batch of its Skittles, reportedly on their way to becoming cattle feed, ending up scattered across a highway.

The spill captured widespread attention after a Facebook post by a Wisconsin sheriff showed a road covered in the colorful candy. The sheriff wrote that they had fallen off the truck of a farmer who was going to feed them to cattle. Selling food byproducts for use in animal feed is not uncommon, but Mars had said that the factory that made the spilled Skittles was not approved to do so.

The candy maker also said that it only sells to third party processors that mix unused candy with other ingredients to make animal feed, not to individual farmers.

FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2014 file photo, a representative from the Skittles candy company poses with packages of a special "Seattle Mix" of the treat, that were being handed out in a limited number to Seattle Seahawks fans in Seattle. Mars says it was a miscommunication with a subcontractor that led to a defective batch of its Skittles being spilled on a highway while they were reportedly on their way to becoming cattle feed. The spill captured attention after a Wisconsin sheriff posted photos of the red candies on a road on Facebook, and wrote that they had fallen off the truck of a farmer who was going to feed them to cattle. Selling food byproducts for animal feed is common, but Mars had said the factory that made the Skittles in question was not approved to do so. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Now Mars says the mishap was the result of miscommunication between a vendor that handles its waste management and a subcontractor. The company says it doesn't believe there was "ill intent" and that "corrective action" is being taken. Mars said it can't say for certain whether the candy was given to the subcontractor to be turned into animal feed.

Messages left with a phone number for the farmer, provided by the Dodge County Sheriff's office, were not returned.

Mars has said the Skittles were supposed to be destroyed because a power outage during the manufacturing process left the candies without the "S'' on them.
Britain's High Court blocks new Brexit challenge

LONDON (AP)  Britain's High Court has blocked a new legal challenge to Britain's vote to leave the European Union.

The decision comes days after the House of Commons decisively backed a bill to authorize divorce proceedings from the 28-nation bloc, sending a measure on for committee scrutiny. That result was a victory for Prime Minister Theresa May's government, which had sought to avert the vote.

Campaigners in favor of keeping Britain in the single market sought to have a separate vote in Parliament to seek permission to pull out of the European Economic Area, which unites the EU member states and three other countries in an internal market governed by similar rules.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, center right, speaks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, center left, as they walk during an event at an EU summit in Valletta, Malta, on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. European Union heads of state and government gathered Friday for a one day summit to discuss migration and the future of the EU. (AP Photo/Rene Rossignaud)

The judges said Friday "the current claims are premature."

U.K. Independence Party ex-leader Nigel Farage quickly tweeted, "Good news."
2 Fort Campbell soldiers killed, suspect in custody

OAK GROVE, Ky. (AP)  A domestic dispute near Fort Campbell has left two soldiers dead and a juvenile wounded, authorities said Friday.

Jeremy Demar, 35, of Clarksville, Tennessee, forced his way into a house in Oak Grove, Kentucky, where he had tracked down his estranged wife, 32-year-old Priscilla Ann East, on Thursday night and fatally shot her and 28-year-old Christopher Ryan Hoch, Kentucky State Police said in a statement. East and Hoch were soldiers at the Army post on the Kentucky-Tennessee line, the statement said.

Police say a teenager was slightly injured during a confrontation with Demar, who fled with a young child.

This image provided by the US Army shows Christopher Hoch. Kentucky State Police say in a statement it appears 35-year-old Jeremy Demar of Clarksville, Tennessee, was in a domestic dispute with his estranged wife, 32-year-old Priscilla Ann East, and found her at a home in Oak Grove, Kentucky, where he forced his way in Thursday night and fatally shot her and 28-year-old Hoch. (US Army via AP)

Clarksville police later apprehended Demar and took him into custody. The child wasn't injured.

Demar was charged Friday with murder, murder-domestic violence, burglary and assault. He is being held at the Montgomery County Jail. Records don't indicate whether he has an attorney.

The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville reports that East had obtained a protective order against Demar in August, but a judge dismissed it in October. It wasn't clear why.

In her petition for the order, East described threats and acts of violence by Demar.

"I generally feel that my life is in danger and that the violence is escalating," East wrote in the petition. "He wants me to check in with him every hour at work, arguments are becoming more heated again in the past week. I feel like I am on constant guard."

She said he had threatened to kill her in February 2016 and had head-butted and choked her until she was unconscious in May.

Fort Campbell said in a statement Friday night that East and Hoch were both specialists and that Hoch was posthumously promoted to the rank of sergeant.

East, of Missouri City, Texas, was a health care specialist who joined the Army in 2011 and began serving at Fort Campbell in 2014.

Hoch, of Ferndale, Michigan, was an infantryman who joined the Army in 2013 and arrived at Fort Campbell later that year.

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The Latest: Army Corps to close land where protesters camped

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  The Latest on the proposed four-state, $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline. (all times local):

7:55 p.m.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers say it will close federal property where Dakota Access oil pipeline protesters have camped beginning on Feb. 22 because of concerns about flooding.

FILE - In this Feb. 6, 2014 file photo, Chase Iron Eyes, an attorney and American Indian activist on the Standing Rock Reservation, is seen in Fort Yates, N.D. Iron Eyes, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress last fall, is among Dakota Access pipeline opponents who were arrested Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, in North Dakota after setting up camp on private land. (AP Photo/Kevin Cederstrom, File)

In a statement on Friday, the Corps says there has been a record snowfall and long periods of frigid temperatures at the mouth of the Cannonball River where the protesters have been camped. There is a high potential of flooding from spring runoff and ice jams.

The Corps said it sent notices to the protesters saying that they risk possible injury or death if they stay. The notice added that debris, trash and untreated waste from the camp could pollute the river and Lake Oahe.

Opponents of the pipeline have been camped there to try to stop the completion of the pipeline.

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10:45 a.m.

An American Indian activist arrested along with 73 other Dakota Access oil pipeline opponents for allegedly trespassing on private land is now accused of inciting a riot.

Chase Iron Eyes could face up to five years in prison if convicted on the felony charge. He also faces a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass.

Iron Eyes and the others were arrested Wednesday after setting up teepees on land that authorities say is owned by the pipeline developer. Protesters say they were peacefully assembling on land they believe rightfully belongs to American Indians.

Iron Eyes issued a recorded statement from jail late Thursday. He doesn't dispute his involvement but says he wasn't the leader of the effort and had no authority to stop it.

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10:30 a.m.

North Dakota regulators say evidence presented at a hearing will determine whether the developer of the four-state, $3.8 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline violated state rules regarding the reporting of Native American artifacts.

Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners last October diverted construction of the pipeline around Native American artifacts without running the plan by the Public Service Commission, which oversees pipelines. Commission staffers say that warrants a fine of at least $15,000, even though the artifacts weren't disturbed.

ETP maintains it didn't intentionally violate state rules and in late November asked for the case to be dismissed. The three-member Commission this week rejected the request and said the company must provide evidence at a hearing.
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Pocket sized directories advertising the madams who walked the streets of 20th century New Orleans have been revealed, illustrating a lost era in the legendary city of good times.

Prostitution was legal in the early 1900s, and New Orleans - like many other cities - created a sanctioned red-light district, known as Storyville.

Author Pamela D Arceneaux, has pulled back the curtain in her new book, 'Guidebooks to Sin: The Blue Books of Storyville, New Orleans' in which the advertisements for women were printed long before the internet where people may now search for sex.

The Blue Books were sold over a century ago for 25 cents - the $50 coffee-table book will be released Saturday by The Historic New Orleans Collection.

This image provided by the The Historic New Orleans Collection shows an undated photo of Rita Walker from Blue Book (left) one of the pocket-sized directories of New Orleans prostitutes published more than a century ago

'Josie came to this city ... to have a good time and she is going to have it while she lasts,' one madam advertised in a 1903 directory.

'The Blue Book' was one of the most comprehensive of at least six guides published in New Orleans. The first known, likely published before the 1900 Carnival season, used an asterisk to denote 'a first class house, where the finest of women and nothing but wine is sold.''

Ads in the larger booklets show that they were aimed at white men, at least middle-class, who had come to New Orleans for the Carnival season, Arceneaux,curator of rare books for the city's French Quarter Museum, said.

One staple Blue Book ad touted two risque 'French balls' on the Saturday before Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday itself.

'The Blue Book' was one of the most comprehensive of at least six guides published in New Orleans

One staple Blue Book ad touted two risque 'French balls' on the Saturday before Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday itself

The first known, likely published before the 1900 Carnival season, used an asterisk to denote 'a first class house, where the finest of women and nothing but wine is sold.''

'Fun is the watchword' and 'good times reign supreme' are repeated in ads for numerous brothels. So is 'a visit will teach more than pen can describe.'

Liquor, champagne and beer, cigars, restaurants and saloons, and the occasional ad for a pawn shop, taxi service, laundry or purported venereal disease cure also appeared. One attorney was advertised in nearly every Blue Book.

Restaurateur and state legislator Tom Anderson, known as 'the mayor of Storyville,' apparently published eight-page, vest-pocket-sized guides with 30 or 40 listings and ads only for his own three restaurants, likely in 1903 and 1906.

Liquor, champagne and beer, cigars, restaurants and saloons, and the occasional ad for a pawn shop, taxi service, laundry or purported venereal disease cure also appeared

Ads in the larger booklets show that they were aimed at white men, at least middle-class, who had come to New Orleans for the Carnival season

'Thousands of these individual issues may have been printed. But so few of them seem to have survived,' Arceneaux said.

Advertisements for brothels, saloons, liquor, and hangover cures 'reveal how madams sought to portray their houses and offer a glimpse into what a night in Storyville might have been like,' she continued. Many advertise the music halls, restaurants, bars and saloons that also sprang up in the area.

Most people called it 'The District' back then, Arceneaux said. The area also came to be known as Storyville because Alderman Sidney Story wrote the 1897 ordinance restricting prostitution to 16 blocks just outside the French Quarter.

Many advertise the music halls, restaurants, bars and saloons that also sprang up in the area namely on Basin St

Most people called it 'The District' back then, Arceneaux said. The area also came to be known as Storyville because Alderman Sidney Story wrote the 1897 ordinance restricting prostitution to 16 blocks just outside the French Quarter

New Orleans wasn't the first U.S. city to restrict prostitutes to one area. Virginia City, Nevada; Omaha, Nebraska; Waco and San Antonio, Texas, all did so earlier, Arceneaux said.

Bordello guides date back at least to a 1565 list of 210 prostitutes in Venice, Italy.

New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Louisville and Los Angeles are just a few of the U.S. cities where 19th-century guides were published, Arceneaux said.

Storyville was shut down in 1917, after America entered World War I and discovered how many recruits had syphilis or gonorrhea - and is now home to cemeteries and apartment complexes under construction

A century after its closure following World War 1, construction is rampant in the area, though it appears to have kept some of the same architectural charm

Storyville was shut down in 1917, after America entered World War I and discovered how many recruits had syphilis or gonorrhea.

'Across the country, similar restrictions were made on any area of vice or prostitution within five miles of any military installation,' Arceneaux said.
Judge dismisses gun case against Trump adviser

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP)  A judge has dismissed a court case against a Trump administration adviser for national security issues who last year brought a gun to a Washington-area airport.

Sebastian Gorka was charged with carrying a weapon at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 31, 2016. Gorka entered an Alford plea to the charge in August, acknowledging that prosecutors could likely prove their case but admitting no wrongdoing.

He was ordered to forfeit the weapon and "be on general good behavior" for six months. The case could be dismissed if Gorka successfully complied with those conditions.
'El Chapo' lawyers say jail conditions are too strict in NYC

NEW YORK (AP)  He's locked up 23 hours a day. His wife can't visit him. He can't call anyone, except his lawyers. He even was denied water, his lawyers say.

The strict jail conditions for notorious Mexican drug lord and escape artist Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman were outlined on Friday by defense attorneys in a failed bid to get a judge to loosen them.

Guzman smiled at his common-law wife, Emma Coronel, as he was led into the Brooklyn courtroom under heavy guard by deputy U.S. marshals at his second court appearance since being brought to the United States on Jan. 19.

In this courtroom art, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, seated center, listens as his federal defender Michelle Gelernt, left, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Goldbarg, second left, talk at his Brooklyn federal court appearance, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017 in New York. Guzman is charged with running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)

"This was so far the only way she has been able to see him," defense attorney Michelle Gelernt said afterward with a silent Coronel at her side.

Guzman, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges of running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings. He's being held at a high-security federal jail in Manhattan, with U.S. officials mindful of how he twice escaped from prison in Mexico, the second time via a mile-long tunnel dug to the shower in his cell.

Defense lawyers complained to U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan on Friday that the restrictions make it difficult for him to make decisions with them about how to fight the charges. They claimed his jailers are so zealous, they denied him water during a recent meeting with the defense team.

"I don't think there's any thought that if I have the guards give him a glass of water during a three-hour meeting that somehow that's going to effectuate his escape," Gelernt told reporters outside court.

But Cogan, after alluding to having secret correspondence with the government about the risks of guarding Guzman, told the defense he wouldn't weigh in on the jail conditions.

"Based on what I know about this case, there are grounds for extra security measures," the judge said, with Guzman listening through a Spanish interpreter.

Guzman is due back in court on May 5.

The police motorcade escorting Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman leaves Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, in New York. Guzman, charged with running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings, is scheduled to appear in Brooklyn federal court Friday. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

The police motorcade escorting Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman leaves Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017, in New York. Guzman, charged with running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings, is scheduled to appear in Brooklyn federal court Friday. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

FILE - In this Jan. 8, 2016 file photo, a handcuffed Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is made to face the press as he is escorted to a helicopter by Mexican soldiers and marines at a federal hangar in Mexico City. Guzman is scheduled to appear in person in a federal court in New York. A judge initially ruled that Guzman would appear in court by video on Friday, Feb. 3, rather than have marshals escort him to and from a high-security Manhattan jail cell. The order was changed after his lawyers asked the judge to reconsider. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

A police convoy with Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman leaves Brooklyn Federal Court, Friday Feb. 3, 2017, in New York. Guzman, who has repeatedly been imprisoned and escaped in Mexico, appeared Friday in a federal court in Brooklyn. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Emma Coronel Aispuro, wife of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, talks with reporters as she leaves Brooklyn federal court following her husband's court appearance, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017 in New York. Guzman is charged with running a massive drug trafficking operation that laundered billions of dollars and oversaw murders and kidnappings. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Williams)
Confederate flag going back up in South Carolina

WALHALLA, S.C. (AP)  The Confederate battle flag is going back up at a monument in a northwestern South Carolina town.

Luther Lyle had maintained the memorial in Walhalla for years and had replaced the Confederate flag with a South Carolina flag in 2015, about the time the Confederate flag was taken down from the Statehouse following the Charleston church shootings.

Lyle said there was only one complaint then. The South Carolina Secessionist Party complained recently that the removal violated a state law that requires legislative approval to change monuments.
Iraqi 'speechless' after 7-year-wait to get into US

NEW YORK (AP)  Munther Alaskry first bonded with American Marines over a shared love of Metallica. He later cleared roads of bombs for U.S. troops and translated for them, helping the military navigate his war-torn country.

The 37-year-old Iraqi engineer spent nearly a decade working for the U.S. government in his home country and received death threats for doing so.

On Friday, a bespectacled Alaskry, his wife and children stepped onto American soil to begin new lives. His arrival ended an anxiety-filled week in which he was initially banned from the United States because of President Donald Trump's immigration order.

Munther Alaskry sits in the lobby of his New York hotel as his son Hassan naps behind him on a couch, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered.(AP Photo/Richard Drew)

His life, he said, had suddenly turned into a feel-good film.

"I don't believe this is real," he said. "We always watch American movies, and this is just like my life is in one now. I'm speechless."

Alaskry waited seven years for a special visa to the United States. But the last week seemed the longest: He and his family were booted off the final leg of their U.S.-bound flight only hours after Trump's Jan. 27 executive order halted travel from Iraq and six other Muslim-majority countries to the United States for 90 days.

His wife was shaking as she was escorted off the plane in Turkey. Their children were crying.

When they returned to Baghdad, the ordeal kept him up at night. Alaskry thought their hopes of living free from death threats had been shattered. Then the U.S. Embassy called and told Alaskry he would be welcome.

After arriving in New York at last, the family filled out paperwork for five hours. Alaskry said he felt like emotionally he had gone between "hell and heaven."

Less than a week ago, he struggled to console his 7-year-old daughter, who had asked him through tears "Why the Americans don't want us?"

On Friday, his daughter clutched a colorful paper sign covered in hearts and the words "Welcome Munther and family." It was given to the girl by a woman from a New York synagogue who volunteered to give the family a ride to a hotel.

"I'm so excited," Alaskry said at the hotel, where his children were playing with Legos, blocks and other toys given to them by New Yorkers who turned out to help.

Alaskry was among nearly a dozen Iraqi interpreters who told The Associated Press they were taken off planes or were told their flights were cancelled after Trump's order, which also banned refugees from Syria indefinitely.

The ban outraged combat veterans who credited the Iraqis with saving their lives. The Pentagon recommended that Iraqis who had supported the U.S. mission be let in.

Days after the order, U.S. Embassy officials in Baghdad began contacting Iraqis who had received special immigrant visas because they worked for the U.S. government during the war. Among them were Alaskry and a 26-year-old man who had worked for the State Department vetting Iraqi contractors.

Alaskry first started working for the U.S. military in 2003 after meeting Marines in the streets of Baghdad. He translated for the Army and National Guard and then cleared away bombs. In 2005, he fled to Jordan after a threatening letter was left hanging from his car door.

He returned to Iraq and got a job with an Iraqi company that supported K-9 teams for the U.S. mission and later worked for a U.S. government-funded project that provided information on health care and trauma to Iraqis displaced by the fighting.

All the while, he waited for his visa to the U.S., hoping to raise his children in a safe place. He applied when his daughter was a year old and was still waiting four years later when his son was born.

Meanwhile, he and his family limited their outings, afraid of the violence and crime. After hundreds of emails, multiple interviews and medical exams, he got the call in December. The visas were ready.

Alaskry promised his daughter that she would finally see Disneyland. He quit his job, sold his car and other belongings and bought their plane tickets, spending more than $5,000.

After he and his family were pulled from the plane in Turkey, he had to buy four more tickets to return to Baghdad.

They sat in silence in a taxi as they went to his in-laws' home.

"I felt so alone," Alaskry said.

Then he turned on the TV and saw the protests at U.S. airports.

"Every time I see those people protesting on the news, I cry," Alaskry said. "It's touching to me. These people don't know me. They don't know my story, though there are hundreds like me who supported the American troops."

When Trump was elected, Alaskry said, he was happy because he believed he would help Iraq get rid of the Islamic State group.

"I just want to tell Mr. Trump, President Trump: 'We are your allies,'" he said. "Please let us be your friends. We want to be your friends. Don't let the Iraqi people down. We look to America like it is our big brother."

In the end, he said, U.S. veterans, including the veteran-run No One Left Behind organization, came to his rescue during what he felt were his life's darkest moments after his return to Baghdad.

"When I lost hope, they told me they would fight for me, and that's what they did," he said.

Now he can fulfill his daughter's dream of going to Disneyland. But first on his list was a different tourist site: the Statue of Liberty.

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Watson reported from San Diego.

Munther Alaskry, accompanied by his son Hassan, and daughter Dima arrive at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Munther Alaskry, accompanied by his wife Hiba, son Hassan, and daughter Dima arrive at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Munther Alaskry, accompanied by his wife Hiba, son Hassan and daughter Dima have a luggage mishap when it fell from their cart as they leave New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Munther Alaskry, unloads his family's luggage as they arrive at their New York hotel, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Dima Alaskry, 7, daughter of Munther Alaskry, watches as her father load their luggage in a car at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Hiba Alaskry, wife of Munther Alaskry, talks with their daughter Dima as their son Hassan naps on a couch in the lobby of their New York hotel, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Munther Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Munther Alaskry arrives at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Munther Alaskry, right, is interviewed by members of the lawyers group NoBanJFK as he arrives at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Hassan Alaskry, the son of Munther Alaskry, surveys the arrival area as his sister Dima, and mother Hiba Alaskry arrive at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Munther Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Dima Alaskry, daughter of Munther Alaskry, hides behind her father as they arrive at New York's JFK International Airport, in New York, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Mexico arrests former Veracruz police chief in graft case

VERACRUZ, Mexico (AP)  The former police chief of the Gulf coast state of Veracruz was arrested Friday for alleged corruption in a case involving fugitive ex-Gov. Javier Duarte.

State chief prosecutor Jorge Winckler said Arturo Bermudez was detained on charges of illegal enrichment. Bermudez is suspected of amassing an ill-gotten fortune that allowed him to acquire at least five properties in Texas and become a hotelier in Veracruz.

He has denied the allegations in the past.

"I will show my face as many times as necessary," he told reporters before a court hearing in November. "I am in the legal process. I will be providing evidence ... to defend my innocence."

Bermudez was the public security secretary for Veracruz during the 2010-2016 administration of Duarte, who left office last year and is now sought by Mexican authorities and Interpol on charges of money laundering and organized crime.

The case against Bermudez began last summer when then-candidate and now-Gov. Miguel Angel Yunes Linares accused him and other officials of being part of a conspiracy  allegedly led by Duarte  to launder money pilfered from the state.

Bermudez resigned in August to face the allegations. Until Friday he had been allowed to remain free while the investigation proceeded, on the condition that he not leave the country.
The Latest: Man charged in Denver transit guard killing

DENVER (AP)  The Latest on the killing of a Denver transit guard (all times local):

12:20 p.m.

A 37-year-old man accused of killing a Denver transit guard has been charged with first-degree murder.

This booking photo released on Feb. 2, 2017 by the Denver Police Department shows homicide suspect Joshua A. Cummings in Denver. Cummings was arrested shortly after the point-blank shooting death of a transit guard in downtown Denver on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2017. (Denver Police Department via AP)

Joshua Cummings was advised of the charge filed against him in the death of Scott Von Lanken during a brief court appearance on Friday.

He wore a red jail jumpsuit and had his arms and legs shackled as he faced Judge Martin Egelhoff.

He answered "Yes sir" when the judge asked him if he understood his rights. He hasn't been asked to enter a plea yet.

Before he was led away he asked his lawyer for help getting a Quran, saying jail officials had been "dragging their feet."

Denver District Attorney Beth McCann declined to say whether investigators had uncovered a motive for the shooting.

She says the case is still being investigated.

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10 a.m.

A 37-year-old man accused of killing a Denver transit guard appeared briefly in court Friday under heavy security.

Joshua Cummings wore a red jail jumpsuit and had his arms and legs shackled as he faced Judge Martin Egelhoff.

He answered "Yes sir" when the judge asked him if he understood his rights. He struggled a bit to sign a document on an electronic tablet because of the restraints.

Before he was led out of the courtroom he asked his lawyer for help getting a Quran, saying jail officials had been "dragging their feet."

When asked after the hearing for a motive, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said the shooting is still being investigated.
Q&A: What is the program for Iraqis who helped US troops?

Iraqis who risked their lives helping the American military were taken off planes and returned to their war-torn country over the past week before the Trump administration exempted them from a ban on immigration from Iraq and six other Muslim-majority countries.

At the urging of the Pentagon, U.S. officials welcomed Iraqis who were given special immigrant visas, saying they are now exempt from the 90-day ban.

The initial denial of entry to the United States caused panic among dozens of Iraqis who had served the U.S. mission in Iraq as interpreters and cultural advisers. It was the latest hiccup in the special immigrant visa program. Here is a look at the program, its problems and proposed solutions.

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Q: WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF THE SPECIAL IMMIGRANT VISA PROGRAM?

A: Since 2006, Congress has enacted a series of legislative provisions to allow Iraqis and Afghans to become permanent residents of the U.S. if they worked as translators for the U.S. military or U.S. government in Iraq or Afghanistan.

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Q: WHO QUALIFIES?

A: Applicants must have worked a minimum of 12 months directly for the military or government and must have a letter of recommendation from a general or flag officer from a military branch or from an American embassy. Applicants can also get visas for their spouses and children.

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Q: HOW MANY SPECIAL IMMIGRANT VISAS HAVE BEEN ISSUED?

A: More than 37,000 Iraqis and Afghans were granted special immigrant status by the end of fiscal year 2015, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The Obama administration in 2011 slowed processing for Iraqi nationals seeking refuge in the U.S. after two Iraqi nationals were arrested on terrorism-related charges. But that year, 618 Iraqis were allowed to enter the U.S. with special visas. In 2014, no new special immigrant visas were provided for Iraqis, but U.S. officials continue to process the backlog of applicants and are down to about 1,000, according the veteran-run nonprofit, No One Left Behind, which helps translators get to the United States.

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HOW ABOUT AFGHANISTAN?

More than 13,000 Afghans and their immediate family members are waiting to get special immigrant visas for aiding the U.S. mission, according to the State Department. Congress approved 1,500 visas in December and extended the program until the end of 2020, but advocates say that number is woefully inadequate.

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WHY IS THE PROGRAM IMPORTANT?

Veterans credit interpreters with saving their lives. Many say their translators helped them traverse dangerous terrain, enter hostile communities and tipped them off to planned attacks by insurgents. Some even killed militants aiming to attack. The interpreters translate but also provide advice on cultural norms, helping prevent misunderstandings between troops and locals.

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WHY WERE THEY DENIED ENTRY AFTER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE ORDER?

Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said there was an initial problem with communication between agencies, but officials were spreading the word about the exemption. He said some airlines also "overinterpreted our guidance."

At the urging of the Pentagon, the Trump administration agreed to exempt special immigrant visa holders. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said entry of the Iraqis with special visas was "deemed to be in the national interest."

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HOW CAN PROGRAM BE IMPROVED?

Combat veterans have been lobbying Congress and raising money to get their translators to the United States because the translators' lives are threatened in their homelands for helping American troops. Many say the United States is not doing enough to protect them, and thousands have lived in fear for years while they await visas.
2 of 3 convicted B.C. judge in child bride case

CRANBROOK, British Columbia (AP)  A Canadian court has found two people guilty of taking a 13-year-old girl into the United States for a sexual purpose when she married one of the leaders of a polygamous community.

British Colombia Supreme Court Justice Paul Pearlman ruled Friday that former husband and wife Brandon Blackmore and Gail Blackmore are guilty of taking the girl across the border in 2004.

He found James Oler not guilty of the same charge, saying he couldn't prove that the man crossed the border with a 15-year-old girl who was later married to a member of the polygamous church.

The Blackmores will be sentenced April 13.

The three defendants were members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous offshoot church that has members in the community of Bountiful in southeastern British Colombia.

The charges against the Blackmores centered on a 13-year-old girl who records show was married to Warren Jeffs, the 60-year-old church prophet now serving a life sentence in Texas.

Oler was accused of bringing the 15-year-old girl across the border to marry James Leroy Johnson, who was 24 at the time of the marriage.

Much of the evidence heard in the judge-only trial arose from a U.S. investigation into Jeffs.
Police say an explosion that completely destroyed a home in northeast Georgia may have been caused by a gas leak, which left 'nothing but the foundation' and killed one person inside.

White County Sheriff Neal Walden said the blast around 10:30am on Friday on 64 Rhododendron Road in Sautee Nacoochee, near Cleveland, was so powerful that people reported feeling the shock wave as far as 16 miles away.

The identity of the man who was killed has not yet been revealed, though he is said to be in his seventies.

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Police say an explosion that completely destroyed a home in northeast Georgia may have been caused by a gas leak, which left 'nothing but the foundation' and killed one person inside. A propane tank can be seen to the bottom right of photo

White County Sheriff Neal Walden said the blast around 10:30am on Friday on 64 Rhododendron Road in Sautee Nacoochee, near Cleveland, was so powerful that people reported feeling the shock wave as far as 16 miles away

Video courtesy of 11 Alive/WXIA

Sheriff Walden confirmed the explosion left three or four homes nearby with broken windows and other damage, though no other injuries were reported.

Sautee Nacoochee is an unincorporated area in Georgia's northeast corner, near Cleveland, and about 95 miles from Atlanta.

The woods were on fire and what was left of the house was on fire,' Walden said.

'It looked like a war zone.'

Sheriff Walden confirmed the explosion left three or four homes nearby with broken windows and other damage

TV news stations broadcast footage from the scene of pieces of wood, concrete blocks and other debris strewn over a wide area.

'The exact cause of this explosion is still under investigation,' Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner Ralph Hudgens said.

'The body of an adult male was discovered in the rubble.'

People took to Facebook to report hearing the huge blast which killed a man in his 70s

Residents reported feeling the explosion across the county.

Facebook user Mikelisa Anderson said she heard the 'boom' in Cornelia, which is over 16 miles away from the home.

One user, Jessica Thompson, said she thought it was propane, as they heard it from Clarkesville Elementary school, nearly 17 miles away.

Before the explosion: The home was once a lush home surrounded by an ample forest at 64 Rhododendron Road has now been reduced to ashes
Police: Toddler escaped crib, wandered into neighbor's home

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP)  Police believe a 2-year-old girl somehow got out of her crib overnight, sneaked out the back door as temperatures dipped into the teens and got into a neighbor's apartment.

Zoey Rose Guerrero Pena was last seen asleep in her crib at about 9:30 p.m. Thursday inside her grandmother's house in Manchester, police said. Officers were called to the home at about 3:30 a.m. Friday and searched the neighborhood, using dogs and a helicopter.

A neighbor woke up in her apartment nearby at about 9:15 a.m. and saw the child inside. The neighbor contacted police immediately.

Authorities were having the child, who was only wearing a pink one-piece sleeper, checked out at a hospital. Police said they planned to gather more details on the case.

Manchester Police Lt. Brian O'Keefe thanked all the officers and firefighters who participated in the search. Police searched the home extensively as well as the surrounding neighborhood. Residents were asked to refrain from entering the search area.

The girl's mother, Geraldine Pena, said her daughter was in good condition. The Nashua woman was not at the Manchester home when her daughter was reported missing.
A former suburban Milwaukee police officer pleaded guilty Friday to killing a woman in Minnesota and ditching her body in a suitcase along a rural Wisconsin highway.

After pleading guilty to second-degree murder, Steven Zelich was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the 2013 death of 37-year-old Laura Simonson, of Farmington, KTTC-TV reported.

Zelich previously was sentenced to 35 years in prison in Wisconsin after pleading guilty to the 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Authorities say Zelich, 55, of West Allis, Wisconsin, met both women online, choked them at hotels during sexual encounters, hid their bodies in suitcases and dumped them along the same highway.

Zelich told investigators the deaths of both women were accidental.

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Steven Zelich (seen in the above August 5, 2014, file photo) appears in court in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He pleaded guilty Friday to killing a Minnesota woman and stuffing her body in a suitcase

Judge Pamela King choked back tears as she addressed Zelich, the Post-Bulletin reported.

'Mr. Zelich, a human life is not something to be played with,' King told the former police officer.

'Laura Simonson was loved and valued by those who called her mom, sister, daughter and friend.'

While the 25-year prison term will never bring Simonson back or replace her, the judge told Zelich 'you're going to remain in prison long enough that no other woman will be harmed at your hands.'

Laura Simonson is pictured here with six of her seven children. Authorities say Zelich met her online, choked her at a hotel during a sexual encounter, hid her body in a suitcase, and then dumped it along a Wisconsin highway

Some of Simonson's family members were unhappy that he did not receive the maximum of 40 years.

Daughter Sarah Simonson, 18, called Zelich 'a monster.'

'While he rots in a cell, maybe he'll realize what kind of pain and suffering he's brought to so many people,' she said.

Public defender William Wright told the court that Zelich is 'very deeply remorseful' and that he pleaded guilty to avoid further traumatizing Simonson's family.

Above is the Microtel Inn and Suites in northwest Rochester, Minnesota. This is the hotel in which Zelich and Simonson had their sexual encounter

After killing Simonson, Zelich stuffed her body in a suitcase and dumped it alongside a road in Wisconsin (above)

'He takes responsibility and has cooperated throughout the process,' Wright said.

Zelich declined comment to the judge, saying his attorney 'has expressed my feelings.'

He will serve the Minnesota sentence after completing his Wisconsin sentence.

Zelich's attorney said his client was devoted to a 'bondage, dominance and submission, sadomasochism,' or BDSM, lifestyle in which he sought relationships with women he could dominate in a 'master-slave' relationship.

Online, he went by the name Mr. Handcuffs.

Zelich previously was sentenced to 35 years in prison in Wisconsin after pleading guilty to the 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez (above), of Cottage Grove, Oregon

According to prosecutors, Zelich first met Gamez online when she was 16 years old, contacting her through a bondage website.

At the time the teen was living in the foster care system in Oregon.

Zelich and Gamez messaged online for six months, then reconnected again through the website when she was 18.

The teen agreed to visit Wisconsin in August 2012 and live with Zelich, who had encouraged her to cut off contact with people she knew and to delete her social media accounts.

Zelich is seen in the above photos in court on March 30, 2016, when he was sentenced for killing Gamez

She bought a one-way plane ticket to Milwaukee. Zelich picked her up and brought her to a Kenosha hotel.

Zelich told investigators that Gamez was bound and gagged, her hands bound behind her back while he choked her with a rope. He contends the 'play' was consensual and her death accidental.

He told investigators that after he choked her, he put her body in a suitcase and took it to his apartment and then put the body in his refrigerator.
Puerto Rico gov approves referendum in quest for statehood

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)  Puerto Ricans are getting another shot at voting on statehood after the island's governor on Friday approved a non-binding referendum to determine the U.S. territory's political future.

The referendum will be held on June 11 and gives voters two options: statehood or independence/free association. If a majority chooses the latter, a second referendum would be held in October and will ask voters to choose between the two.

"Colonialism is not an option for Puerto Rico," Gov. Ricardo Rossello said. "It's a civil rights issue ... The time will come in which the United States has to respond to the demands of 3.5 million citizens seeking an absolute democracy."

FILE - In this Oct. 29, 2016 file photo, Ricardo Rossello, then candidate for governor of Puerto Rico and president of the New Progressive Party, participates in a forum organized by the Gasoline Retailers Association in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans are getting another shot at voting on statehood after governor Rossello on Friday, Feb. 3 2017, approved a non-binding referendum to determine the U.S. territory's political future.(AP Photo/Carlos Giusti, File)

Backers say the referendum could help the island overcome a decade-long economic crisis as it struggles to restructure nearly $70 billion in public debt and faces a federal control board pushing for more austerity measures.

If U.S. Congress ultimately were to approve Puerto Rico as the 51st state, the island could receive an additional $10 billion in federal funds a year and its government agencies and municipalities would be able to file for bankruptcy, something that both local and federal laws currently prohibit.

Statehood supporters say it additionally would grant the U.S. territory more equality: Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens who are not allowed to vote in presidential elections and their representative in Congress has limited voting powers. The island also pays Social Security and Medicare taxes, but receives less benefits than U.S. states.

Roughly half a million people have left Puerto Rico for the U.S. mainland in the past decade, leaving the government with a shrinking tax base as it struggles to find new sources of revenue despite increasing taxes and utility bills.

Puerto Ricans have voted in four previous referendums that have resulted in no action from U.S. Congress, which has final say on any changes in Puerto Rico's political status. There was no clear majority in the first three referendums. In the last one, held in 2012, 54 percent said they wanted a change in status. Sixty-one percent who answered a second question said they favored statehood, but nearly 500,000 left that question blank, leading many to dismiss the result as illegitimate.

Concerns are now growing about the way the fifth referendum is worded.

"It doesn't leave room for any other options, which I think is a strong portion of the electorate," said Edwin Melendez, director for the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at New York's Hunter College. "It's not evident that statehood is the clear majority right now...If something like 2012 is repeated, it's not going to have any legitimacy to move forward."

Along with the referendum, Puerto Rico legislators expect to vote on a bill that would allow Rossello to draft a state constitution and hold elections to choose two senators and five representatives to Congress and send them to Washington to demand statehood, a strategy Tennessee used to join the union in the 18th century.

U.S. President Donald Trump did not say during his campaign whether he supports statehood, only that the will of Puerto Ricans "should be considered" by Congress.

"At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how people vote in Puerto Rico," Melendez said. "Congress needs to approve of it."

___
Photo provided by the Denver Police Department shows Richard Kirk, 50 who claimed that eating marijuana-infused candy led him to kill his wife

A Denver man pleaded guilty of shooting his wife dead after saying that he did it because he was under the influence of a marijuana-infused candy.

Richard Kirk, 50, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the April 2014 shooting death of Kristine Kirk under a plea deal with prosecutors, who dropped a first-degree murder charge against him.

Kirk faces between 25 to 30 years in prison and five years of parole when he's sentenced April 7.

Had prosecutors not dropped a first-degree murder charge, he had faced the possibility of life in prison.

Kirk initially pleaded not guilty, but in 2015 he changed his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity.

The defense said he was intoxicated with THC, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient, which led to delirium.

Before she was shot, Kristine Kirk told a 911 dispatcher her husband was hallucinating and was getting a gun after eating pot candy.

Before she was shot, Kristine Kirk (pictured) told a 911 dispatcher her husband was hallucinating and was getting a gun after eating pot candy

Authorities said low levels of THC were found in his blood, and a partially eaten piece of marijuana candy was found in the house.

According to investigators, the couple had escalating marital and financial problems, and Kristine Kirk had told a friend she was afraid of her husband because they had been fighting so much.

District Attorney Beth McCann declined to say what role marijuana may have played in the killing, but she said the judge would hear testimony about any 'mitigation or aggravation' at sentencing.

'The family did not want the case to go to trial given the personal and emotional toll family members have already suffered,' she said.

She also described the case as 'complicated and tragic', saying: 'Everyone involved in this case felt this was a fair and just resolution of a tragic case. The family did not want to take this to trial given there are three young boys,' reported Denver CBS local.

Authorities said low levels of THC were found in his blood, and a partially eaten piece of marijuana candy was found in the house (pictured)

Defense lawyers declined comment.

Under the plea deal, Kirk allowed his wife's parents, Marti and Wayne Kohnke, to adopt the couple's three children.

Last year, the Kohnkes sued two marijuana businesses that sold candy to Richard Kirk, saying they failed to warn him about its potency and possible side effects.
Artillery has been fired in eastern Ukraine as escalated fighting between government troops and Russia-backed separatist rebels continues for a fifth day.

Two Ukrainian troops were killed overnight and 10 others wounded, the government said, while rebels said one of their fighters was killed.

Shelling appeared to intensify after nightfall and both sides reported civilian deaths  two in Avdiivka and one in Donetsk city.

A Ukrainian truck with a howitzer drives on a road near Avdiivka, eastern Ukraine (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)

Wow. Tonight's shelling loudest I've heard in a very long time. Nonstop MLRS, other artillery. Reverberating across Donetsk region. #Ukraine  Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) February 2, 2017

Grad rocket launchers could be heard firing on both sides during the night. In the afternoon, shelling was heard in the distance from Avdiivka, a government-held town north of Donetsk, the largest rebel-controlled city.

At least 15 people have been reported killed since the fighting around Avdiivka surged over the weekend.

More than 9,700 people have been killed since the war with separatist rebels began in April 2014.

An agreement reached nearly two years ago called for a ceasefire and a pullback of heavy weaponry by both sides, but skirmishes persist.

It begins: @SenJohnMcCain writes a letter asking @realDonaldTrump to confront Russian aggression in Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/T42v0ocBZT  Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 2, 2017

Russian president Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of starting the latest escalation to rally support from the new US administration and other Western powers.

Ukraine is concerned that President Donald Trump could roll back some sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine, and that European Union members could follow suit.

The Ukrainian leadership needs money, and the best way to get the EU, the US and international organisations to pay is by posing as a victim of aggression, Mr Putin said.

He spoke in Budapest after a meeting with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban.

Great #UNSC debut speech by @NikkiHaley today. Fully agree that sanctions must remain until #Russia returns control of #Crimea to #Ukraine.  Matthew Rycroft (@MatthewRycroft1) February 2, 2017

Shelling over the weekend damaged water, heating and electricity supplies in Avdiivka amid a strong cold snap.

Valentina Pasternak stood on her porch clutching two loaves of bread brought by aid workers. A shell landed in her yard.

I was born in 1941. I was in a war at birth and now I see it again, she said.

By Thursday, water and heat had been partly restored, but Avdiivka remains without electricity.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine must stop now and ceasefire honoured. Russia should use its influence to disengage Russian-backed separatists.  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) February 2, 2017

In Brussels, European Union president Donald Tusk urged Moscow to pressure the separatists to make sure the flare-up of fighting ends and a ceasefire is restored.

Russia should use its influence to disengage the Russia-backed separatists, he said.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, maintained a low-key approach with a restrained tone that may reflect the start of a new US response to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
A health minister was moved to tears after hearing two MPs describe how they were children of alcoholics.

Conservative frontbencher Nicola Blackwood paused for several seconds as she neared the end of her speech during a debate on alcohol harm.

She welcomed the bravery of fellow MPs as she pledged to work with those from different parties to tackle the social injustice linked to alcohol abuse.

Nicola Blackwood (David Jones/PA)

There's been big breakthrough for the children of alcoholics. Here's my video report with @JonAshworth. https://t.co/zEieSkwE10  Liam Byrne (@liambyrnemp) February 2, 2017

Labour MPs Liam Byrne and Jon Ashworth spoke about what it is like to grow up in households where a parent was an alcoholic.

The duo, who have both previously publicly shared their experiences, said more needs to be done to ensure the more than two million children of alcoholics receive greater support.

Shadow health secretary Mr Ashworth said his parents divorced when he was either seven or eight years old due to the strain his fathers alcoholism placed on the marriage.

The work of @LiamByrneMP on children of alcoholics has been phenomenal. His speech today so brilliantly powerful & moving  Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) February 2, 2017

He told a Westminster Hall debate: Im an only child. In the week Id live with my mum and at weekends Id live with my dad, and my dad would spend the whole weekend drunk.

In fact, from the age of eight or so, going to my dads at the weekend, I was effectively the carer.

It was typical for my dad to pick me up from school, literally to fall over because he was so drunk.

I recall  because this wasnt the days of mobile phones and so on  going to a phone box to order a taxi to take us home because it wasnt a far walk, to be fair, but he could not walk up the street and I was a child.

BREAKTHROUGH: Minister agrees in our @HouseofCommons debate with our basic goal: no child of an alcoholic should feel alone #iamcoa  Liam Byrne (@liambyrnemp) February 2, 2017

I'm very grateful to Minister @nicolablackwood for agreeing to work with @LiamByrneMP MPs & me on supporting children of alcoholics  Jonathan Ashworth (@JonAshworth) February 2, 2017

Mr Ashworth said he and his dad always loved each other, although he felt feelings of shame, embarrassment  particularly as a teenager  and anger.

He added: We were lucky  he was never violent, he was never abusive. Millions of children, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, are not in that lucky situation.

Mr Byrne earlier described his father Dermot as an extraordinary man, noting his dependence on alcohol became deeper after rising up the ranks at Harlow Council.

He said: When my mum died of cancer of the pancreas when she was just 52, it knocked him over the edge.

He moved from I guess what you would call a functioning alcoholic to becoming a non-functioning alcoholic.

Mr Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill) recalled how his father started drinking again after pulling through following multiple organ failure, and also reflected on his death almost two years ago.

He said: I will remember for ever that cold dawn on St Josephs day nearly two years ago when the staff of the hospital folded down my dads blanket so that we could hold his hand as he breathed his last.

'Hopefully we have reached a tipping point' Fiona Bruce MP @LiamByrneMP @Bill_Esterson @JonAshworth Thankyou for todays debate #alcoholharm  FASD UK (@fasd_uk) February 2, 2017

Concluding the debate, Ms Blackwood gave her personal commitment to strengthen the information, support and, if necessary, treatment given to people to reduce the harms of alcohol misuse.

A visibly emotional Ms Blackwood paused, before saying: I hope that each member who has spoken here today will continue to work with me as we fight on to tackle this social injustice.
Consumers have been dealt a fresh blow by European vegetable shortages as lettuce became the latest staple to fall victim to the crisis.

Supermarkets have rationed the number of lettuces each customer can purchase in stores and iceberg, sweet gem and romaine varieties have been taken off sale completely by some online.

An extreme mix of drought followed by flooding and freezing conditions has severely affected growers in southern Spain, while poor conditions have also hit farmers in Italy, Greece and Turkey.

Experts have warned that if the weather does not improve in the coming weeks the problem may continue until April, with customers hit by price rises.

The lettuce shortage follows similar reductions in the supply of courgettes, while salad peppers, broccoli and cabbage supplies are also under pressure.

Iceberg lettuce, broccoli and courgettes are at a shortage (Victoria Jones/PA)

Concerned healthy eaters have been sharing pictures of bare supermarket shelves with the hashtags #lettucecrisis and #courgettecrisis, while complaining that prices have nearly tripled in recent weeks.

London retail analyst Rob Gregory posted a photo on Twitter of empty boxes in a Tesco and a sign that read: Due to continued weather problems in Spain, there is a shortage on Iceberg and other varied lettuce products. To protect the availability for all customers, we are limiting bulk purchases to three per person.

My local Tesco also affected by the lettuce and salad rationing. Not much there to ration though! pic.twitter.com/NX0Mo99Fts  Rob Gregory (@RobGregOnRetail) February 2, 2017

A Tesco spokesman said they were experiencing some availability issues due to the bad weather in Spain [We] are working with our suppliers to resolve them as quickly as possible, he said.

Sarah Morton, from Manchester, tweeted a photo of a Morrisons shelf label stating customers could buy a maximum of two each.

Just seen iceberg lettuce for 1.40 in Sainsbury's. A few months back it was 40p. That's inflation gone bloody mental #brexit #MaysBritain  Joey O (@JoeyO94) February 2, 2017

Spain normally supplies half the vegetables on the European market during the winter months.

Supermarkets have been forced to look as far afield as the US west coast - more than 5,300 miles from Britain  to meet demand.

A spokesman for Asda said it was doing everything it could to support its growers and bring them back to full supply as soon as possible.

Apologising for any potential short-term shortage, he explained: Contrary to popular belief it seems the rain in Spain doesnt fall mainly on the plain and a run of unusually bad weather has resulted in availability issues on a small number of salad items and vegetables such as courgettes and aubergines.

Empty iceberg lettuce shelves at a Tesco store in Kennington (Victoria Jones/PA)

Coos Hessing, of Hessing Super Fresh, said the situation for lettuce was particularly severe.

There have simply been too many cold days, and whats most bizarre about this situation is that it has hit all of south-eastern Europe. We had seen this before, but youd need to go back to 15 years ago, the buyer told industry site Fresh Plaza.

Consumers may see lettuces around two-thirds smaller than usual on sale, while buyers have been looking to the USA and Egypt in order to keep supplies from drying up, Mr Hessing said.

Fepex, Spains largest growers association, said the extreme conditions amounted to a force majeure and the availability of outdoor-grown vegetables will depend on conditions improving in the coming weeks.

It is a situation Fepex envisages remaining until at least early April for leafy vegetables grown in the open air, like lettuces, endives and spinach, and their availability will depend on weather in February and March.
Police are investigating a burglary at the home of rapper Nicki Minaj after items worth more than 175,000 dollars (140,000) were stolen.

The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed the incident took place at Minajs luxury mansion in Beverly Hills but the musician was not at home at the time.

An LAPD spokesman said: It is still undetermined how burglars got inside the home. They took jewellery and other property totalling approximately 175,000 dollars.

Nicki Minaj (PA)

No suspects have been identified yet and an investigation is continuing, the spokesman said.

The burglary took place between between November 24 and January 24, he added.

US police sources told TMZ that the mansion was vandalised during the raid, with furniture destroyed and some of Minajs clothing cut up.

Minaj  who has scored 10 top 10 hits in the UK  has not commented on the burglary but shared a photo of herself on Instagram on Thursday, which she captioned: Secret shoot.

A spokesman for Minaj could not be reached immediately.
Any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea will be met with an effective and overwhelming response, US defence minister Jim Mattis has said.

He made the warning in Seoul during an appearance with his South Korean counterpart, Han Min Koo.

North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons programme, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour, Mr Mattis said. We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region.

Jim Mattis with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min Koo (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

Americas commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad.Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.

US defence secretaries have long offered assurances to South Korea and Japan that its nuclear umbrella will protect them.

But the comments by Mr Mattis were tougher than usual and showed why he chose South Korea for his first visit overseas since becoming defence secretary on January 20.

He sought to reassure South Koreans of the long-standing US commitment to a defence treaty that President Donald Trump suggested during the campaign was a bad deal for America.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, right, and The two defence chiefs inspected a guard of honour (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

Mr Trump has complained the treaty disadvantaged the US and he would not rule out abandoning signatories if they refuse to pay more for their defence.

He also said that South Korea and Japan, which are already within the range of North Korean missiles, might acquire their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on US deterrence.

Korean War veterans wave US and South Korean flags (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

Speaking to reporters as he travelled to South Korea, Mr Mattis said he would ask South Korean and Japan whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programmes was adequate.

North Korea has said it is nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

The US has 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan.
The Government has welcomed a High Court decision blocking a fresh legal challenge over Brexit.

Two judges ruled the application by campaigners who want a soft Brexit and to keep Britain in the European single market was premature.

The campaigners applied for permission to seek various orders, including a declaration that it would be unlawful for Prime Minister Theresa May to cause the UK to leave the European Economic Area (EEA) because of Brexit without specific parliamentary authorisation, and the serving of a withdrawal notice under Article 127 of the EEA Agreement.

A group of campaigners were pushing for a soft Brexit (Jonathan Brady/P)A

Lord Justice Lloyd Jones, sitting with Mr Justice Lewis, refused the go-ahead for a judicial review, saying: In our judgment the current claims are premature and for that reason permission to apply for judicial review is refused.

There is no final decision by the Government as to the mechanism by which the EEA Agreement would cease to apply within the UK.

A Government spokeswoman said: As the Prime Minister has said, we will not be a member of the single market and we will be seeking a broad new partnership with the EU including a bold and ambitious free trade agreement.

Nigel Farage responded swiftly to the judges decision to scupper the new challenge, describing it on Twitter as Good News.

#Breaking A fresh legal challenge over Brexit has been blocked by the High Court pic.twitter.com/CtgBXIunbt  PA Media (@PA) February 3, 2017

The latest Brexit case follows the historic legal action in the Supreme Court brought by Gina Miller and other campaigners which led to a declaration that Parliament must authorise the triggering of Brexit.

Parliament has begun considering a Bill enabling the Government to formally notify the EU of the UKs intention to go ahead with its EU divorce.

MPs have backed the Bill on a second reading.

The applications for judicial review were brought by campaigners including Peter Wilding, chairman of the pro-Europe pressure group British Influence, who is credited with coining the term Brexit.

If permission is granted, a judicial review of the Government's decision to consider the UK automatically out of EEA post-Brexit will follow  League of Nations (@britinfluence) February 3, 2017

He was joined by Conservative lobbyist Adrian Yalland, who voted Leave, and four anonymous applicants referred to as W, L, T and B.

The four won the right to keep their identities secret after senior judges were told they risked threats and abuse because they had taken legal action.

The judges heard that one lawyer involved in their case had already received an offensive and racially derogatory message on social media implying that he deserved to be killed.

It was also submitted by the four that there was a real risk that they and their families would suffer a similar fate to Gina Miller, who was bombarded with rape and death threats by online trolls.

Mr Yalland and Mr Wilding said later in a joint statement: We were right to bring this challenge, and unless the Government gives business and the country the certainty it needs and deserves, it is highly likely we will be here again - only in circumstances where the merits of our case will be heard, as opposed to the outcome of today where the Government was able to use procedure to prevent the substantive issues being considered.
Theresa May has urged her European Union counterparts to be patient with Donald Trump as the continents leaders voiced their concerns about the US president.

The Prime Minister defended her decision to seek a close relationship with the Trump administration, stressing that she had secured his commitment to the Nato alliance.

But European leaders at a summit in Valletta warned that they would not let the controversial tycoon trample on their values and played down the role Mrs May could play as a bridge between the EU and US.

Theresa May arrives for talks in Malta (Gregorio Borgia/AP)

No comment from PM Theresa May as she arrives at #MaltaSummit pic.twitter.com/vOrNzEPgIR  David Hughes (@DavidHughesPA) February 3, 2017

The Prime Minister, the first foreign leader to visit Mr Trump in the White House, said she was pleased to have seen him so early in his administration and stressed that she had secured a 100% commitment to Nato from him.

She stressed that in negotiations over Brexit she wanted to build a strong partnership with the EU and pledged the UK would be a good friend and ally.

But German chancellor Angela Merkel  who Mrs May chatted to during a walk through the Maltese capital but did not have a formal meeting with  warned against allowing a race to the lowest taxes to take place when asked about the suggestion that the UK could slash business tax rates to remain economically competitive if it failed to strike a Brexit deal.

Theresa May chats to Angela Merkel and a friendly crowd during a walkabout in Valletta. pic.twitter.com/BxEVqcM5jf  David Hughes (@DavidHughesPA) February 3, 2017

The Prime Minister updated the 27 other EU leaders about her visit to Washington and advised them to engage patiently and constructively with the new administration.

A source said Mrs May urged other EU leaders to work with the US, a friend and ally which helped guarantee the longest period of peace this continent has ever known.

She said that the alternative of division and confrontation would embolden those who wished to do the EU harm.

We have started the discussion on the future of Europe. The developments on the international scene remind us how important a strong EU is.  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) February 3, 2017

My remarks at the press conference of the informal summit in Malta: https://t.co/HNkOBjeRie #MaltaSummit: pic.twitter.com/4tzwmt47Rw  Charles Michel (@eucopresident) February 3, 2017

But the summits host, Maltese prime minister Joseph Muscat said the 28 national leaders had voiced concern over some of Mr Trumps decisions and attitudes and agreed that it was time for the EU to lead at a global level.

Mr Muscat said there was no sense of anti-Americanism, instead there was a sense that we need to engage with the United States just the same, but that we need to show that we cannot stay silent where there are principles involved.

As in any good relationship, we will speak very clearly where we think that those principles are being trampled on.

PM: I look forward to working with @POTUS to deliver on the promises of freedom and prosperity for all people of our respective countries. pic.twitter.com/qTbBkKzucN  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) January 28, 2017

French president Francois Hollande said Mr Trump should not get involved in Brexit and played down the importance of Mrs Mays relationship with the Trump administration.

When Donald Trump said it was wonderful for a European country to leave the European Union, he should not get involved in this, Mr Hollande said.

He said Mrs May reported to us and also shared her views about the new administration, she did so in the name of the United Kingdom but also, I believe shes done it in Europes interests.

Close historic ties could make Malta a natural ally, but PM @JosephMuscat_JM has stressed #Brexit deal must be "inferior" to EU membership. pic.twitter.com/L17rSPyCHr  David Hughes (@DavidHughesPA) February 2, 2017

He added: But of course it is not about asking one particular country, be it the UK or any other, to represent Europe in its relationship with the United States.

On the margins of the summit, Mrs May had talks with her counterparts from Spain and Austria.

A hoped-for formal meeting with Mrs Merkel was replaced by a lengthy discussion as the pair walked through Valletta before the working lunch.

Prime Minister Theresa May and German chancellor Angela Merkel attend informal summit in Malta https://t.co/UYFyZ7rOhg : @StefanRousseau pic.twitter.com/fuUAOdrXsh  Alamy Editorial (@Alamy_Editorial) February 3, 2017

Aides insisted that the talks covered everything they had wanted to discuss.

But Mrs Merkel said the conversation did not touch on the UKs relationship with the Trump administration: We spoke, but not about that. I believe there is always a special relationship between Great Britain and the USA.

Mrs Merkel added: I am pleased that Theresa May has said that she wants a strong Europe. She repeated that once again today.
The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on 13 people and 12 firms in response to Irans recent ballistic missile test.

The move increases pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

Those targeted by the Treasury Departments action include various agents, companies and associates involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran.

US President Donald Trump (Stefan Rousseau/PA)

Iranians, Lebanese, Chinese and Emirati individuals and companies are also now blacklisted from doing any business in the US or with American citizens.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile programme poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States, John E. Smith, the Treasury Departments acting sanctions chief, said in a statement.

We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behaviour, Mr Smith said.

The sanctions are the first against Iran in Donald Trumps new presidency, reflecting his desire to take a tougher stance toward Tehran.

Throughout his campaign, Mr Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

#Iran's latest ballistic missile test was a flagrant violation of UN Security Council resolutions. I support Trump admin's new sanctions. pic.twitter.com/MhK06J2pcS  Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) February 3, 2017

None of the new sanctions appear to reverse the Obama administrations suspension of sanctions as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, the action will almost surely increase tensions with Iran.

The Islamic republic has insisted that new sanctions violate the deal and it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear programme has been sharply curtailed.

The US and western countries argue otherwise, noting that Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago.

BREAKING: Trump administration imposes sanctions on 13 people and 12 companies in response to Iranian ballistic missile test.  The Associated Press (@AP) February 3, 2017

That agreement was concluded in parallel, but separately to the nuclear accord.

This is fully consistent with the Obama administrations commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions, said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline US position on Iran.

The sanctions come after Mr Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Tehran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis.

The US accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemens internationally recognised government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.
Rory Best has backed Conor Murray to thrive amid the pressure of facing Scotland with a target on his back.

Scotland have made no secret of their bid to bully Murray in Saturdays RBS 6 Nations clash at Murrayfield, a tactic Glasgow employed in Champions Cup action against Munster.

Murray reacted angrily to what he felt were cheap shots as Munster edged out Glasgow 14-12 on January 14, claiming the Warriors players targeted his standing leg every time he lined up clearance kicks.

Conor Murray, centre, has been backed to come through what is expected to be a strong physical test against Scotland

Greig Laidlaw has vowed Scotland will follow Glasgows lead in singling out Murray - but Ireland skipper Best insists that will only draw an even finer performance out of the British and Irish Lions half-back.

Just like every other player pulling on an Ireland jersey tomorrow, Conor will want to play to the best of his ability, said Best.

Conor wants to make sure that the pressure that will be on tomorrow, that he rises to it, and that it spurs him on. He just wants to perform on the day and rise to the occasion.

What Scotland will or wont do, thats what theyve been discussing in their team hotel for the last two weeks. All we can do is make sure that as a pack of forwards we create a platform for him.

Were all under pressure; were all under pressure to perform, and at this level youre looking for every advantage you can get.

The pressure on the nine, the pressure on the box-kick, its something that a quality player like Conor expects. He expects them to pressure him around that area.

For us its about making sure that we cope with that pressure and we perform, and for him in particular that hes able to perform his role and we make sure that we get a good enough platform for him to get his box-kick or his pass off well. Weve got to give him as good a platform as we can.

Ireland will enter the Six Nations without linchpin playmaker Johnny Sexton, but captain Best has backed stand-in fly-half Paddy Jackson to control Saturdays Edinburgh contest.

Lions star Sexton could miss Irelands first two Six Nations clashes owing to calf trouble, so Ulsters Jackson again steps into the starting line-up.

Sextons litany of injury problems has afforded Jackson sufficient time in the Ireland shirt to register a tangible Test match foothold.

But now 100-cap hooker Best insisted Jackson must end any Ireland apprenticeship and master his outside-half craft.

I think we need both our half-backs to dominate, said Best, of Jackson and Murray.

Theres no doubt that the half-backs move you around and put you in position to win matches. With Paddy and Johnny (Sexton) we have two really, really good out-halves.

Its Jackos chance now to have a go at it. Hes played the majority of the Tests in the last 12 months. So hes ready to perform.
Governments ill-equipped to protect mangroves, need to involve communities - global study

By Matthew Ponsford

LONDON, Feb 2 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The majority of the world's mangroves are managed by government agencies that are too poorly equipped to protect them, according to a global review of the forests known for their effectiveness in absorbing carbon.

Four of the five countries with the largest mangrove areas are middle income nations - Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria - which lack the capacity to protect their millions of hectares of mangrove forest, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) said on Thursday.

Mangroves' management often falls under the jurisdiction of multiple ministries, from forestry to fisheries, creating a maze of vague responsibilities that deliver little protection on the ground, the report said.

Global attention on mangroves has grown due to their effectiveness in absorbing atmospheric carbon, one of the main drivers of climate change, as well as sheltering fisheries and protecting against coastal erosion.

Compounding the mangrove management problem is a lack of clear or documented rights and incentives for the communities living in the forests to use them sustainably, CIFOR said.

"Despite government intentions to manage them sustainably, governance regimes are generally ineffective at conserving mangroves because they generally fail to involve communities," said Steven Lawry, CIFOR's director of forests and governance research.

Instead, the study recommends that governments support existing community-based mangrove management programmes, which allow locals to sustainably fish and harvest timber in forests.

POST-TSUNAMI SHIFT

Since the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, Thailand and Indonesia have had the most successful mangrove rehabilitation programs.

The tsunami marked the moment when many governments realised the importance of mangroves as a "bioshield" that buffers coastal communities from damage, said Mani Ram Banjade, a researcher at CIFOR.

In Indonesia, home to more than one-fifth of the world's mangrove forests, the government has been supporting community projects, Banjade, who wrote the Indonesian section of the report, said.

"People have a positive attitude to mangrove conservation, so with a little bit of support from external agencies - in the form of technical input or funding support - they're really willing to contribute to mangrove rehabilitation efforts," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Although Indonesia is in favour of an approach that puts communities in partnership with charities and government, the situation remains mostly disjointed, said Banjade.

In protected coastal areas, where local communities are banned form harvesting mangrove timber, the government must understand that sustained conservation can only be achieved with added financial incentives, he added.

As in Indonesia, most countries lack a coherent and sustained policy on mangroves.

Only one country among those covered in the report, Mexico, has passed laws specifically designed for the management of mangrove forests.

Too often mangroves are caught in a middle-ground between territorial forest and seas, leaving no government agency with direct responsibility.
Brazil to expand home financing to more affluent -industry group

By Gabriela Mello and Ana Mano

SAO PAULO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Brazil's government is expected to dedicate 500 million reais ($160 million) of a national workers' severance fund to finance purchases of more expensive homes, a move designed to help homebuilders lower inventory, the head of an industry group said on Thursday.

Under the plan, the government will raise the price threshold of homes eligible for FGTS financing by nearly 60 percent to as much as 1.5 million reais, Jose Carlos Martins, president of construction industry group CBIC, said.

The government also intends to expand a subsidized mortgage program to more affluent Brazilian families earning up to 9,000 reais a month, who are among the top 5 percent of earners. The measures may be announced as early as Monday, when the FGTS board of directors is scheduled to meet, he said.

Government officials responsible for managing the worker-funded FGTS plan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

If confirmed, the measures would underscore a shift in housing policy from focusing on low-income housing under leftist former President Dilma Rousseff to broader support for a construction industry struggling with a long-running recession.

Homebuilders have struggled with a fall in demand because of high unemployment and borrowing costs, spurring a wave of canceled contracts that has hurt high-end homebuilders.

"The flurry of cancellations is compromising the viability of the projects, as banks condition financing on homebuilders projections' of units sold," Martins said.

The government has also considered defining an amount that companies would be allowed to keep in the event of a canceled home purchase, Martins said, but talks with consumer advocacy groups have not reached a consensus on the proposed rules.

Reuters reported that one of the proposals under discussion would let homebuilders retain 9 percent to 15 percent of the value of units if buyers cancel a purchase.
Bolivia opens $7 million museum honoring President Morales

ORINOCA, Bolivia, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Bolivia on Thursday opened a $7 million museum dedicated to President Evo Morales and indigenous peoples in Morales's birthplace of Orinoca high up in the deserts of the Bolivian antiplano.

Morales ordered the museum to be built by decree shortly after he became Bolivia's first indigenous president in 2006, creating a place to hold hundreds of his gifts as well as photos, videos and archeological treasures.

"This town that has raised me, this town that has taken care of me, I want to say 'thank you, we will keep working'," said a tearful Morales at the inauguration some 400 kilometers (249 miles) from Bolivia's main city of La Paz.

Morales was elected to a third consecutive term in 2014, a leftist holdout on a continent that is largely moving to the political right, and is seeking a way to run again in 2019 despite losing a referendum over a fourth term.

The museum, which Bolivia's minister called the largest and most modern in Latin America, tells the country's history with a focus on the achievements of Morales. It is divided into three wings, each named after mythic animals in Bolivian history.

Andean music and traditional dances from dozens of nearby communities rounded out the opening of the so-called "Museum of the Democratic and Cultural Revolution." Some have criticized the museum as a waste of money that is too remote to attract tourists.
N.Korea sacks head of secret police amid signs of "crack in elite"

By Ju-min Park and James Pearson

SEOUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - North Korea has dismissed its minister of state security, a key aide to the reclusive state's young leader, Kim Jong Un, South Korea said on Friday, in what a high-profile defector said would be another sign of a "crack in the elite" in Pyongyang if true.

Kim Won Hong was removed from office as head of the feared "bowibu", or secret police, in mid-January apparently on charges of corruption, abuse of power and human rights abuses, Jeong Joon-hee, South Korea's Unification Ministry spokesman, said, confirming media reports.

Jeong did not say how the South knew of Kim's ouster. But he said there could have been further dismissals in the North where the ruling Workers' Party's powerful Organisation and Guidance Department was investigating the ministry of state security.

"There is always a possibility that purges continue as part of constantly strengthening power," he told a briefing, adding punishment for Kim could be more severe depending on the outcome of the investigation, but he had been dismissed and demoted from the rank of general to major general.

Kim Jong Un became leader in 2011 after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, and his consolidation of power has included purges and executions of top officials, South Korean officials have said.

Last year, North Korea's vice premier for education was executed for not keeping his posture upright at a public event, South Korea said.

Thae Yong Ho, North Korea's former deputy ambassador to London who has defected to the South, told Reuters he was not surprised by the news.

"I cannot confirm if the reports are true or not, but this kind of power struggle is quite normal in North Korean history. Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un's style of control is always one of collective surveillance that checks the power of each organisation.

"Kim Jong Un has killed too many high officials and there are a lot of complaints and dissent amongst the high elite because of it. If the demotion of Kim Won Hong is really true, then that's another sign of a crack in the North Korean elite group."

It is difficult to independently verify news about top officials in the North, which has angered the West with a series of missile and nuclear weapons tests in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions.

Some reports of executions and purges have proved inaccurate.

North Korea rarely announces purges or executions, although state media confirmed the 2012 execution of Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, widely considered the country's second most powerful leader, for factionalism and crimes damaging to the economy.

A former defence minister, Hyun Yong Chol, is also believed to have been executed in 2015 for treason, according to the South's spy agency.

It said he was killed with an anti-aircraft gun.
Russia to ban beef imports from New Zealand

MOSCOW/WELLINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Russia plans to temporarily ban imports of beef and beef products from New Zealand from Feb. 6 after finding the feed additive ractopamine in some samples, Russia's agriculture safety watchdog said in a statement on Thursday.

The watchdog, known as Rosselkhoznadzor in Russian, said it was also considering banning fish imports from New Zealand due to traces of mercury in some supplies.

Ractopamine, which is used to promote muscle growth, is prohibited for use in beef cattle in New Zealand, which promotes its reputation as a safe, natural producer in marketing its food products - particularly dairy - overseas.

"New Zealand did not receive prior notification and officials are seeking further clarification about the announcement," a spokesman for the Pacific nation's Ministry for Primary Industries said in an email.

The head of New Zealand's meat industry body Tim Ritchie, told local media the country ran a testing system for ractopamine in sheep and cattle, and that traces of the additive had never been found.

New Zealand is not covered by a wider ban on most Western food imports which Moscow introduced in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its role in the Ukraine crisis.

The country's exported less than NZ$10 million ($7.3 million) of beef to Russian in 2016, out of NZ$3 billion in beef exports globally.

"New Zealand food standards are among the highest in the world and we are committed to producing high quality safe meat for domestic and overseas consumers," the Ministry for Primary Industries said.

Russia has previously limited imports in trade disputes. It has banned meat supplies from other countries due to traces of ractopamine, which is banned in several countries, including Russia and China.

Separately, the head of Russia's watchdog Sergei Dankvert plans to meet with an official from Brazil's Agricultural Protection Unit Luis Eduardo Pacifici Rangel in Moscow on Feb. 3, Rosselkhoznadzor said in a statement earlier on Thursday.

Both officials plan to discuss cooperation in veterinary and phytosanitory issues, it added. Brazil is a major global meat exporter.

Russia imported red meat worth $1.5 billion in January-November, 2016, according to customs data.
Poland - Factors to Watch Feb 3

Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Friday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour):

T-BILLS

The finance ministry is expected to release the supply for Monday's treasury bills tender at around 1400 GMT.

BANKS

Polish credit union Wielkopolska SKOK which gathered 302 million zlotys ($75.26 million) is about to go bankrupt and its operations were thus suspended, the financial regulator KNF said.

The Bank Guarantee Fund, financed by banks, will pay out compensation to SKOK's clients, KNF said late at night.

UNIFIED TAX

Polish government plans to resume works on introducing a unified tax that were abandoned in December, Fakt tabloid said.

SWAROVSKI

Several hundred people will be hired in a Swarovski global service centre in Gdansk, Puls Biznesu daily said. At the very beginning the centre will take care of Swarovski's finances, but it will enhance its activities later on, the daily said.

STARBUCKS

Starbucks could replace part its German employees that go on strike with Polish workers offering them the same pay as German workers, Gazeta Wyborcza daily said. Polish Starbucks employees earn considerably less than their German peers.

T-MOBILE

T-Mobile is applying for a 250 million euro credit at European Investment Bank to finance development of its LTE network, Puls Biznesu said.

VAT
Italy's service sector sustains growth in January - PMI

ROME, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Growth in Italy's services sector sped up a notch in January, a survey showed on Friday, signalling modest expansion in the euro zone's most chronically sluggish economy.

The Markit/ADACI Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) rose to 52.4 from 52.3 in December, its eighth straight month above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction.

The reading missed by a whisker a forecast of 52.5 drawn from a Reuters survey of 11 analysts.

The pace of growth in new business for companies from bars to banks was the slowest in three months, dipping to 52.7 from 53.5 in December.

A combined survey for manufacturing and services showed a small deceleration to 52.8 from December's 52.9.

On the heels of Markit's sister survey for manufacturers, which showed slower but continued growth in that sector, the data will make moderately reassuring reading for Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, who said he would continue the previous government's reform drive when he took office in December.

His government targets 1.0 percent GDP growth this year. Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan said this week 2016 growth had probably exceeded the official forecast of 0.8 percent.

- Detailed PMI data are only available under licence from Markit and customers need to apply to Markit for a licence.

To subscribe to the full data, click on the link below: http://www.markit.com/Contact-Us
Singapore to cane Saudi diplomat for molesting hotel intern -paper

SINGAPORE, Feb 3 (Reuters) - A Singapore court sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to four strokes of a cane and more than 26 months in jail for molesting a young hotel intern while on holiday in the city state last year, the Straits Times newspaper said on Friday.

Bander Yahya A. Alzahrani, 39, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, the newspaper said.

Caning is legal for male offenders in Singapore. The judicial system can hand down the corporal punishment for offences such as drug and sexual abuse, vandalism and rioting, or to foreigners who overstay visas by more than 90 days.
In Japan, US defense chief reaffirms commitment to security treaty

By Phil Stewart and Kiyoshi Takenaka

TOKYO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's defense secretary reaffirmed America's commitment to its mutual defense treaty with Japan on Friday when he met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo.

Jim Mattis, on his first trip since taking over the Pentagon, appeared eager to reassure Japan of U.S. resolve, after a 2016 election campaign in which Trump suggested both South Korea and Japan were benefiting from a U.S. security umbrella without sharing enough of the costs.

Abe is due to meet Trump for talks in the United States on Feb. 10.

Mattis said provocations by North Korea, which is advancing its nuclear weapons and missile programs, left no room for doubt about U.S. commitment. It was similar to a message he delivered over the past two days in South Korea.

"I want to make certain that Article 5 of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago - and as it will be a year, and 10 years, from now," said Mattis, a retired Marine general.

Article 5 obliges the United States to defend territories under Japanese administrative control.

Japan had been keen for assurances that Trump's administration will adhere to Washington's commitment to defend disputed East China Sea islands that are under Japanese control but claimed also by China.

A Japanese government statement, issued after the meeting, said Mattis told Abe that Article 5 of the security treaty applied to the contested islands and that the United States would oppose any unilateral action aiming to hurt Japan's administration over the islets.

Patrol ships and fighter jets from Japan and China routinely shadow each other near the islands, called the Senkaku in Japanese and the Diaoyu in Chinese.

A Pentagon statement said Trump's administration would not alter U.S. policy.

China's Foreign Ministry said the islands were Chinese, calling the treaty a product of the Cold War.

"We urge the U.S. side to take a responsible attitude, stop making wrong comments on the issue of the Diaoyu Islands sovereignty, and avoid further complicating the issue and bringing instability to the regional situation," it said.

Abe said he was convinced that, with Trump and Mattis, the United States and Japan could demonstrate to the world their "unwavering alliance".

He also told Mattis Japan intends to bolster its defense and to "expand the role it can play," according to the Japanese statement.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida echoed that message to Mattis in a meeting later on Friday, saying it was important to further strengthen the alliance in the face of an "increasingly severe" security environment in the region.

Japan's defense spending remains about 1 percent of gross domestic product, far less than that of China.

Mattis is due to hold talks on Saturday with Defense Minister Tomomi Inada, who has repeatedly said Japan is bearing its fair share of the costs for U.S. troops stationed there and has stressed that the alliance is good for both countries.

Since taking office on Jan. 20, Trump has jolted the region by pulling the United States out of an Asia-Pacific trade deal that Japan had championed.
Turkey says Greek military exercise on Aegean island breached intl law

ISTANBUL, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Turkey accused Greece on Friday of breaching international law by carrying out a military exercise on an island in the Aegean Sea, in an escalating row between the two NATO allies.

The Turkish foreign ministry said it was aware of Greek media reports that Greek special forces had parachuted onto Kos and said the exercise was a breach of a 1947 treaty that banned all such training on the island.

A Greek defence ministry source confirmed there had been a scheduled exercise at the beginning of the week involving parachutists.

"The training schedule of the Greek armed forces is not going to stop," the source told Reuters.

Turkey warned it could take action if necessary.

"We call on our neighbour Greece to refrain from unilateral actions that ... could trigger tensions and are against international law," foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Muftuoglu said in a statement.

Tensions between the two countries have been on the rise since a Greek court last week blocked the extradition of eight Turkish soldiers Ankara accuses of involvement in July's failed coup. Turkey has said relations with Greece would be reviewed.

KEEPING COMMUNICATIONS OPEN

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias told Greece's Alpha Radio that Turkey's behaviour appeared to be an "attempt to externalize their internal crisis" and said the important thing was keeping communication channels open.

"We have made known to all allies and partners in NATO, our EU partners but also the United Nations, that Turkey may occasionally behave nervously, in a manner not becoming to the needs of normal development of bilateral relations," he said.

On Wednesday, Greece reported mass incursions by Turkish military aircraft over the central and southern Aegean, which Athens termed "cowboy antics".

Kos is part of the Dodecanese chain of islands, placed under demilitarisation as part of a peace accord after World War Two, when Italy ceded them to Greece.

Greece, which says Turkey was not party to that treaty because of its neutral stance in the war, started to militarize some islands after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek-inspired coup.

Cyprus remains divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities living on either side of a U.N.-monitored ceasefire line. Reunification efforts have intensified in recent months, but a meeting in Geneva in mid-January involving guarantor powers Britain, Greece and Turkey was inconclusive.

Turkey and Greece came to the brink of war in 1996 over the ownership of uninhabited Aegean islets known as Imia in Greek and Kardak in Turkish.
Sale of Singapore's Global Logistic hots up with offers

By Anshuman Daga

SINGAPORE, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Interest in Singapore-listed Global Logistic Properties hotted up on Friday with the warehouse and distribution centre operator revealing it had received several bids, including some involving its own senior management.

GLP, which is backed by sovereign wealth fund GIC and whose customers include Amazon and JD.Com, operates about $40 billion of industrial properties worldwide and earns two-thirds of its revenue from China.

The interest in GLP comes as it has built up a dominant market share in China, where a boom in e-commerce business is fuelling demand for modern warehouses and logistics facilities.

Sources have told Reuters that Chinese investment firms and global private equity groups were interested in GLP which announced a strategic business review late last year, encouraged by GIC, which owns a stake of 37 percent.

"The company...has received various non-binding proposals from a number of parties in connection with the strategic review," GLP said in a statement.

GLP, whose shares have jumped about 50 percent since October to give it a market value of $9 billion, said there was no assurance any transaction will materialise.

Beijing-based Hopu Investment, which led a $2.5 billion funding by a Chinese consortium in GLP's China business in 2014, was in talks with Chinese investment firm Hillhouse Capital, which owns a 8 percent stake, and other partners to bid for GLP, sources told Reuters. Blackstone Group is also among other groups interested in GLP, they added.

GLP said Fang Fenglei, Hopu's founding partner and a non-independent director on GLP's board, had an interest in one of the parties which submitted a bid. GLP's CEO Ming Mei also had an interest in one of the bidding parties.

GLP said Mei and Fang had asked to be excused from all board matters related to the review since it started.

"Private equity funds are flush with cash and if you look across different sectors, logistics is one of the more high growth sectors and also seems to be quite sustainable," Nai Jia Lee, senior research director at Edmund Tie & Company, a real estate advisory services firm, said last month.

JPMorgan is advising the special committee.

GLP, GIC, JPMorgan, Hopu, Hillhouse and Blackstone declined to comment.

GLP has 15.8 million square metres of leasable or completed logistics facilities on lease in China, eight times the size of the second biggest player. It also has a big presence in Japan and the United States and owns assets in Brazil.

A sale of GLP could mark the biggest takeover of a Southeast Asian-listed company since Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi's $11.2 billion successful bid for Singapore's Fraser and Neave in 2013.

GLP's shares spent most of last year languishing below the 2010 IPO price of S$1.96 after slumping to a five-year low of S$1.595 in February 2016, halving from a peak in 2013.
Pakistan denies identity papers to family of doctor who helped trace bin Laden

By Jibran Ahmad

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Pakistan has denied identity cards to the family of Shakeel Afridi, the jailed doctor believed to have helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden in 2011, blocking college enrolment for his children, their lawyer said on Friday.

Afridi was accused of treason after word spread that he had helped the CIA collect DNA samples of the bin Laden family, paving the way for a secret U.S. Navy Seal raid that killed the al Qaeda leader in the town of Abbottabad.

He was arrested days after the U.S. operation - which Pakistan protested as a violation of sovereignty - and charged with aiding militants.

Now his 19-year-old daughter and 21-year-old son have been denied national identity cards, essential documents for Pakistanis, said Qamar Nadeem, the family's lawyer in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Nadeem said Afridi's children required identity cards for college enrolment, but authorities refused to issue them because their father had been barred from leaving the country.

"Afridi is in jail and his name has been put on the exit control list," Nadeem said. "I don't understand how he can escape from jail and leave the country."

The lawyer said he had received no response to his letters to the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA), which issues the cards, and the interior ministry.

"Getting an identity card is a fundamental right of every citizen and if NADRA or the interior ministry refuse to issue them, we will approach the Peshawar High Court for justice."

An interior ministry spokesman told Reuters it had not blocked the application. Reuters was unable to reach a representative of the database authority for comment.

Last May, Pakistan's foreign ministry angrily criticised U.S. President Donald Trump for a comment during his election campaign that he could get Pakistan to free Afridi "within two minutes".

After Trump was inaugurated last month, Pakistan's law minister vowed not to release Afridi despite any U.S. pressure.

Afridi's wife Imrana Ghafoor has been living at a secret location with her two sons and a daughter, for security reasons.

Afridi's lawyers have also received threats from militant groups. One of his lawyers, Samiullah Afridi, was gunned down by unknown men in Peshawar in March 2015.

Nadeem is now the sole lawyer willing to represent Afridi.
Freeport warns of cuts as it awaits Indonesian export permit

By Susan Taylor

TORONTO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Freeport-McMoRan Inc, the world's biggest publicly-listed copper miner, said on Friday it will cut staff, spending and production in Indonesia if it does not get a new export permit by mid-February, amplifying a warning it made last week.

The Phoenix-based miner said it continues to work with the Indonesian government to resolve issues after exports of its copper concentrate were halted Jan. 12. The Southeast Asian country banned export shipments of semi-processed ore to boost its local smelter industry.

Freeport shares were trading 5.7 percent lower at $15.85 on Friday afternoon. Last week, the stock dropped nearly 6 percent after the company outlined its Indonesian challenges, issued disappointing financial results and cut its 2017 production forecast.

Freeport said it has the right to export copper concentrate from its Grasberg mine in Indonesia without restriction or export duties under its current contract, and was considering alternatives to enforce its rights.

For every month it awaits export approval, Freeport said its share of production will be reduced by about 70 million pounds of copper and 70,000 ounces of gold.

"A prolonged production cut could push the market into deficit and prices much higher," RBC Dominion analyst Fraser Phillips said in a note to clients.

Copper prices touched a two-month peak earlier this week as workers at the world's largest copper mine, Escondida in Chile, voted to strike. On Friday, prices drifted down to $5,772 a tonne, near a two-week low, as the mine's workers resumed wage talks.

If the export delay in Indonesia continues, Freeport said it would need to make "near-term" production cuts to match capacity at its smelter, which processes about 40 percent of its concentrate production.

It will also need to "significantly adjust its cost structure," reduce staffing, investments on underground development projects and a new smelter, and spending with suppliers.

Delays for another new export license, for anode slimes required in smelter operations, could further hurt operations, Freeport said.
Canada's Hudson's Bay makes takeover approach for Macy's - sources

By Greg Roumeliotis and Michael Flaherty

Feb 3 (Reuters) - Hudson's Bay Co has made a takeover approach for struggling retailer Macy's Inc, people familiar with the matter said, trying to push further into the U.S. market where it already owns the Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue chains.

While the Toronto-based company faces major financing and operating challenges in completing a deal to buy Macy's, which is trying to overhaul its operations, it could use its existing foothold in the U.S. to save on administrative costs and have more negotiating power with its vendors.

Shares of Macy's closed up 6.4 percent at $32.69 on Friday. Hudson's Bay rose to C$10.39.

Talks between the companies are at an early stage, one of the people said. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Hudson's Bay said it does not comment on rumors or speculation, while Macy's declined to comment.

Macy's, the host of New York's annual Thanksgiving Day parade, is in the midst of a turnaround engineered by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren, who assumed leadership of the company in 2004.

Lundgren is set to step down this year, and could earn $80.24 million if there is a change of company control, according to a filing.

Macy's has also been under pressure from activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP since 2015 to separate its real estate from its retail business to better monetize its real estate assets. Starboard estimated those assets to be worth $21 billion.

Starboard held around 1 percent of Macy's stock as of Sept. 30 last year, making it the company's 15th largest shareholder.

Starboard founder Jeff Smith did not return calls seeking comment.

PRIME REAL ESTATE ASSETS

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Macy's has around 900 stores in the U.S., which includes its Bloomingdale's outlets and its flagship store in New York City's Herald Square.

Hudson's Bay is well known for making money off its real estate assets. After buying Saks for $2.9 billion in 2013, it secured a $1.25 billion 20-year mortgage for its Fifth Avenue flagship location in New York, valuing the property at $3.7 billion.

Should Hudson's Bay acquire Macy's, it will likely bring similar real estate prowess to the jewel locations owned by the retailer. Still, should Hudson's Bay opt to sell some of Macy's less desirable locations, it would have to compete with a flood of properties for sale, as other struggling retailers also shed properties.

Hudson's Bay has traditionally financed deals through its joint ventures, giving it the ability to pull off deals that many peers might struggle to do without impacting their credit rating.

It has a partnership with Canada's RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust and with U.S.-based Simon Property Group Inc.

Hudson's Bay could raise equity and debt against its real estate portfolio to fund the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Cowen and Company said in an analyst note that Macys has attractive qualities for a buyer, including a low price to earnings valuation of 10 times, $2.8 billion of free cash flow and a large real estate portfolio. But chances of a deal were dim, the note said.

Macy's struggling turnaround and the continued pressure it faces from Amazon make a deal unlikely, Cowen said in the note, adding that Amazon itself could be a potential buyer of the company, given its expansion into physical stores.

Amazon did not immediately return a request for comment.

Founded in 1670, Hudson's Bay began as primarily a fur trading business and once owned more than 40 percent of what is now Canada, and also a significant portion of Minnesota and North Dakota.

It was acquired in 2008 by mall developer NRDC Equity Partners, headed by Richard Baker. The company, which is still run by Baker, went public in 2012.
Malaysian PM sends aid for Muslim Rohingyas in Myanmar

By Rozanna Latiff

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Friday sent a ship carrying tonnes of food and emergency supplies to Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims, saying their suffering would not be ignored.

Najib has been an outspoken critic of the treatment of predominantly Buddhist Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya minority, calling on the government to stop attacks.

The Myanmar government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has denied the accusations, saying many reports of violence against Rohingya are fabricated. It insists strife in Rakhine State, where many Rohingya live, is an internal matter.

"This is a historic moment ... a noble effort that shows that all the pain and suffering of Rohingya in Myanmar will not go ignored," Najib said in a speech at a port near the capital of mostly Muslim Malaysia.

"We hear their pain, those who have been raped, murdered and burned alive."

Myanmar security forces launched a crackdown in the north of Rakhine State, on the border with Bangladesh, in October after nine policemen were killed in attacks on border posts the government blamed on Rohingya supported by foreign militants.

At least 86 people have been killed and about 66,000 have fled into Bangladesh since then to escape what refugees, residents and human rights groups say have been abuses by Myanmar forces including summary executions and rape.

The 2,200-tonne aid shipment, bound for Myanmar's biggest city and port of Yangon, has been organised by Malaysian Muslim groups, as well as domestic and foreign aid groups.

The ship is expected to arrive in Yangon on Feb. 9 where it will unload 500 tonnes of supplies, organisers said, before heading to Teknaf port, across the border from Myanmar, where many Rohingya refugees are camped.

At one stage the Malaysian foreign ministry said Bangladesh had denied permission for the ship to dock at Teknaf, casting doubt on where the bulk of the aid could be unloaded.

However, the ministry later released a second statement stating that Bangladesh reversed the decision late Friday evening following a meeting between Foreign Minister Anifah Aman and Bangladesh's High Commissioner to Malaysia.

"The matter has been resolved as a result of good relations between Malaysia and Bangladesh," the statement said.

'POLITICAL AGENDA'

Myanmar has not allowed the ship to sail to Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, as organisers had hoped.

Myanmar has also insisted that the aid to be distributed equally to both Buddhist and Muslim communities.

"We are still hoping with all our hearts that they will eventually allow us to visit Sittwe and distribute the aid ourselves," said the mission chief, Abdul Azeez Abdul Rahim.

Malaysia has urged the Association of South East Asian Nations to coordinate aid and investigate alleged atrocities committed against the Rohingya, breaking the 10-nation group's long-standing tradition of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

Myanmar, in turn, has accused Malaysia of exploiting the crisis "to promote a certain political agenda".

Najib hosted a meeting of representatives from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to discuss the treatment of Rohingya in January and urged Islamic countries to act to end the "humanitarian tragedy".

Malaysia's top counter-terrorism official has said Myanmar faces a growing danger of attacks by foreign militants in support of Rohingya.

Rohingya have faced discrimination in Myanmar for generations. They are not classified as a distinct group under citizenship laws and are regarded instead as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, entitled only to limited rights.
Bulgaria's centre-right GERB sets out its election stall

SOFIA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's centre-right GERB party pledged on Friday to maintain low rates of corporate and income tax and to raise the average salary by 50 percent over the next four-year parliament if it is re-elected next month.

The previous GERB-led government quit in November after the defeat of its candidate in a presidential election, triggering a snap parliamentary poll on March 26 - the third in three years - that analysts say may again fail to produce a stable majority government in the European Union's poorest member state.

But GERB leader and former prime minister Boiko Borisov, unveiling his party's election pledges, said Bulgarians could trust him to deliver higher living standards, given the economic stability and falling unemployment seen over the past year.

"We must not promise things we cannot fulfil ... so we have worked over the past week (on plans) that draw on what is available to our economy, budget and finances, to make a more successful government," Borisov told a news conference.

Bulgaria's economy grew by 3.4 percent in the third quarter of 2016 from a year earlier and unemployment was down two percentage points in December on an annual basis at 8 percent.

It had a budget surplus equal to 1.6 percent of national output at the end of 2016, against a deficit of 2.8 percent a year earlier.

In its election manifesto GERB promised to boost the average monthly salary by over 50 percent to 1,500 levs ($824) over four years, to double teachers' salaries and to keep corporate and income taxes unchanged at 10 percent.

"I do not think that these promises are unrealistic, given the expected growth and other economic factors," said Lachezar Bogdanov, an economist at the independent think-tank Industry Watch. "The average salary rose nearly 9 percent over the past year and the minimum salary increased by 36 percent in the past three years."

GERB also said it would set up a new body to fight rampant high-level corruption and proposed lifting lawmakers' immunity from prosecution.

Many in the Black Sea state will be sceptical of such promises, however, after GERB failed while in office to push through anti-graft legislation. A watering down of judicial reforms in 2015 prompted the justice minister to resign.

Bulgaria is under fire from the EU, which it joined in 2007, over its failure to reform its inefficient judicial system and to convict senior officials of graft, managing to jail only a few crime bosses since the fall of communism in 1989.
Divided on Trump, EU insists on European unity

By Alastair Macdonald and Gabriela Baczynska

VALLETTA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - European Union leaders said they agreed to stick together in dealing with Donald Trump, but at their first summit since he took office they were at odds on how far to confront or engage with the new U.S. president.

Trump and his policies, from questioning the value of NATO and free trade to banning Muslim refugees, came up repeatedly in discussions in Malta on external "challenges" facing the Union.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, about to lead her country out of the EU, briefed peers on her visit to Washington last week and assured them Trump was committed to cooperating in their defence -- just as Britain would also be after Brexit.

Francois Hollande, the outgoing Socialist president of France, led criticism of Trump, calling it "unacceptable" for him to applaud Brexit and forecast the break-up of the EU. In thinly veiled rebukes to May and some eastern states, he warned of trying to cut their own transatlantic deals.

"A lot of countries should think of their future first of all in the European Union rather than imagining I don't what kind of bilateral relationship with the United States," he said.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, who like many in the east is alarmed by Trump's conciliatory noises to Moscow, poured cold water on May's suggestion Britain could be a link to Washington. Europe did not need a "bridge", she was quoted as saying, because it could communicate with Trump on Twitter.

But her Polish neighbour, Beata Szydlo, reserved her main criticisms for her predecessor as prime minister, EU summit chair Donald Tusk, who described Trump this week as a "threat" to the EU, along with Russia, China and militant Islam.

"European politicians trying to build this sense of fear ... are making a mistake," said Szydlo, whose government, like Trump, has spoken out against Muslim immigration. "One cannot be confrontational in our relations with the United States."

MERKEL CAUTIOUS

Stressing the need for unity, the bloc's dominant leader, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said Europeans still had common ground with the United States in many areas, while not sharing Trump's scepticism about many international institutions.

"We have again made very clear our common values and our faith in multilateralism," she told a news conference.

The Union would, she said, push for free trade deals with more nations as Trump pulls back. But cooperation with the United States against militant threats would continue, she said.

One EU diplomat said France was clearly pushing to use the Trump presidency to rally Europeans behind a policy of greater distance from Washington and turning to the EU, rather than NATO, for their security.

"The Germans are much more cautious," the diplomat said. "There is a clear issue to be decided: whether we seek common ground to engage with the United States, or turn our backs."

Summit host Joseph Muscat, the Maltese prime minister, chose to emphasise balance in summing up the discussions, speaking of "concern" at Trump's policy but "no sense of anti-Americanism".
A Sri Lankan man accused of bringing hundreds of Tamil asylum seekers into Canada illegally has been granted bail after more than six years in jail, the Record said today.

A British Colombia Supreme Court judge ruled on Thursday that Kunarobinson Christhurajah does not have to remain in custody while awaiting a new trial over allegations of human smuggling.

Last week, a jury was unable to reach a verdict in the case of Christhurajah, who is accused of organizing the voyage of the MV Sun Sea, a rickety cargo ship that transported 492 Tamil asylum seekers from Thailand to Canada in August 2010.

The jury found three other men not guilty.

Christhurajah's wife, Mary Patrishiya, sobbed outside the courtroom after learning the result of the bail hearing.

"I have no words," she said

Christhurajah's six-year-old daughter was with her mother outside court on Thursday. The girl was born months after the couple arrived in Canada aboard the Sun Sea.

"Nobody here. No friends. No family. I was pregnant. I had hardship the last six years," his wife said. "But I forgot everything in this moment."

The criminal trial against the four co-accused began in October and lasted four months.

The Crown argued Christhurajah was the owner of the Sun Sea based on evidence that he rented office space in Bangkok in 2008 and 2009 under a fake name on behalf of Sun & Rashiya Co., the company that officially owned the vessel.

Christhurajah's lawyer told the trial there was no evidence his client profited from his actions and the Crown had failed to prove he hadn't acted for a humanitarian purpose, the Vancouver Sun reported.

Christhurajah's bail conditions include to keep the peace, to report weekly to a bail supervisor and to refrain from contact with any of the three co-accused with whom he stood trial. He has also been ordered to pay a $10,000 recognizance.

Outside court, Christhurajah's lawyer said a new trial date has not been set for his client.
An exhibition of paintings by one of Sri Lankas best known, best loved and most accomplished artists, S.H. Sarath, was held at the Harold Peiris Gallery of the Lionel Wendt Art Centre over the weekend. The above-mentioned attributes do not always co-exist happily for an artist. Sarath has demonstrated an ability to achieve material success without losing his values or identity. The works on display at the preview on Friday reflected his characteristically ironic interpretations, hints of satire, at times bordering on the surreal. His work is typically informed by a subtext of compassion for his fellow human beings.



Colour was the name of this exhibit, and colourful it was. Humans in various postures, female forms, faces, embracing couples, trees  both living and dying, were among the subjects. Less in evidence were the black and white line drawings, which are among his most interesting works. The few on display were however representative of his trademark style of satirical social commentary. Whether it was a Buddha sitting in meditation amidst tree stumps that were once a forest, a coffin surrounded by a variety of elements (open to interpretation by the viewer), or an assemblage of flag-waving men being herded along (or devoured) by monsters  Saraths line drawings always offer food for thought. If some of the paintings were weighted in favour of a colour palette that gripped the eye rather than the soul, it would be fair to say this was more a reflection of the context in which the artist works in contemporary society  which Sarath is keenly aware of  rather than any diminishing of his artistic integrity.



Having completed his early education at Weligama Siddhartha Maha Vidyalaya and Weligama Sri Sumangala Maha Vidyalaya, Sarath started his artistic training at the Government College of Fine Arts, Colombo in 1968. He is in that sense a very home-grown artist. He then honed his skills with a UNESCO fellowship on painting research at Silpakorn University of Fine Arts in Bangkok and later a print-making course at the University of South Australia School of Art, Adelaide. Over the years he has held many honorary positions in institutions relating to education and the arts, including that of Vice President of the Ceylon Society of Arts (Sri Lanka) and member of the Arts Panel of the Sri Lanka Ministry of Cultural Affairs. He has also lent his talents in an honorary capacity to a number of community projects, such as the four-storey mural at the National Library Services Board, Colombo.

Sarath has won numerous awards and displayed his work in solo and group exhibitions (too many to list), in a formidable list of countries: Canada, Norway, UK, Germany, Cuba, Brazil, France, Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Nepal, Korea, Japan, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Malaysia and Australia. Notable among them are solo exhibitions at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, at the Aud Slingnes Gallery in Stavanger  Norway, and at the United Nations, Palais de Nations in Geneva.



It is perhaps testimony to his non-partisan attitude that Sarath has had patronage from diverse political personalities. He recalls with some pride how the late Nalini Wickremesinghe, mother of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was chief guest at one of his first exhibitions held at the Hotel Lanka Oberoi (as it was then called). Former president Chandrika Kumaratunga too had assisted him at one point. Among the literary figures whose encouragement he remembers with gratitude are the late Prof. Ashley Halpe and Martin Wickremesinghe  the latter having been chief guest at his first solo exhibition at the Lionel Wendt, Colombo. Sarala Fernando and Jayantha Dhanapala were among the diplomats whose names came up in the course of conversation with Sarath, as people who supported him in his chosen vocation.



Relating how a scribble he had produced in the 1970s had been bought by a patron for Rs.500 and had been resold in the 1990s for Rs. 500,000, Sarath observed that there is a market for art in Sri Lanka. He regretted however, that art appreciation is lacking and lamented the absence of a national gallery that could house a permanent display of the best Sri Lankan art.
From left: Etihad Aviation Group President and Chief Executive Officer James Hogan, Etihad Aviation Group Board Chairman Mohamed Mubarak Fadhel Al Mazrouei and Lufthansa Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr at the signing of the new collaboration agreement at a press conference in Abu Dhabi

Etihad Aviation Group and Lufthansa German Airlines, part of Europes largest aviation group, recently unveiled the details of a new commercial partnership.

The two airline groups have concluded a US $ 100 million global catering agreement and a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to cooperate in aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul.

Addressing a press conference this week in Abu Dhabi, the chief executives of both airline groups spelled out plans to broaden their commercial partnership.

Etihad Aviation Group President and Chief Executive Officer James Hogan said, Partnerships are at the heart of our strategy and remain fundamental for us to compete effectively and efficiently in a complex and competitive global market.

Our collaboration with one of the aviation industrys most established and recognised brands is undoubtedly the most significant non-equity partnership with an airline we have ever announced.

This partnership is the platform for a much wider strategic collaboration between our two organisations. It demonstrates the commitment of the Etihad Aviation Group Board and Abu Dhabi to our European growth strategy.

Lufthansa Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Carsten Spohr said, We welcome the opportunity to strengthen our cooperation with the Etihad Aviation Group. Together we can create added value for our customers and shareholders. Partnering with the Etihad Aviation Group fits perfectly the Lufthansa groups global strategy for our passenger airlines and service companies.

The four-year catering contract will see Lufthansas LSG Sky Chefs provide catering services to Etihad Airways in 16 cities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. This makes LSG the largest provider of catering services to the UAEs national airline, outside its Abu Dhabi home base. Etihad Aviation Group and Lufthansa Technik (LHT) also signed an MoU to explore cooperation in maintenance, repair and overhaul services across Etihad Airways and its airline equity partners and opportunities for synergies with Etihad Airways Engineering.

Etihad Airways and Lufthansa are also exploring further cooperation in a number of areas, including freight operations, procurement and passenger services to improve their competitive offering globally and in the European market.

The previously announced codeshare between the two airline groups went on sale on February 1, for flights between Abu Dhabi and Germany. Lufthansa will place its LH code on Etihad Airways twice daily flights between its Abu Dhabi hub and both Frankfurt and Munich. Etihad will put its EY code on Lufthansas long-haul, non-stop intercontinental services between its home base of Frankfurt, the business and commercial capital of Germany and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and the Colombian capital, Bogota as soon as government approval is obtained. The codeshare agreement will grow both carriers global networks, giving Lufthansa increased access to important feeder markets throughout the Indian Subcontinent via Abu Dhabi, while Etihad will gain access into South America through Germany. To facilitate both connectivity and the customer experience associated with this codeshare, the Abu Dhabi-based airline will also move its operations at Lufthansas hubs, from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 in Frankfurt and Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 in Munich. The Lufthansa group signed an agreement in December 2016 with airberlin, in which Etihad Aviation Group holds a 29 percent stake, for the wet-lease of 38 aircraft.
Sri Lankas first Prime Minister D.S. Senanayake entered the National Legislature in 1924. He was relatively unknown in the country and was pushed into prominence by elder brother F.R. Senanayake, who was a very popular and an active figure in the social and political arena. Many were surprised and taken aback to see D.S. entering the political arena, because they expected his brother F.R. to fit the role. Perhaps the only person who had faith in DSs capability was none other that F.R. Senanayake himself.



Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was then known, was under foreign domination from 1505 to 1948. Three Colonial Powers namely the Portuguese, Dutch and the British ruled parts of the island till 1815 when the entire country was subjugated by the British Government. Many a battle fought by our heroes at different times to free the country remained unsuccessful and the freedom struggles thus brutally subjugated became dormant until its last phase was initiated by F.R. Senanayake in 1915, after being released from imprisonment.



The Colonial Government imprisoned FR and his brother DS and a host of other Sinhala Buddhist leaders of the Temperance Movement on trumped up charges. They had to be released because they could not find a shred of evidence against them. But the massacre of innocents under Martial Law continued unabated and FR vowed to free the country from colonial bondage. He set about revitalizing the freedom movement that lay dormant for many years.



Continuous agitation for reforms by the newly created Ceylon National Congress resulted in elections being held on a limited scale for the National Legislature in 1924 with D.S. Senanayake becoming an elected member of the Legislature. However, just two years later, in 1926, FR met with an untimely death at a relatively young age of 44. He was DSs mentor and his death was not only an enormous blow to D.S. Senanayake but also a severe setback to the freedom movement. In fact many thought that it was end of the freedom struggle. But DS kept his brothers dream alive and carefully planned and plotted the path to freedom. On February 4, 1948, twenty four years after entering the National Legislature, D.S. Senanayake raised Sri Lankas flag that was brought down by the British in 1815 and proclaimed Lankas Independence to the world.



Freedom was achieved by many nations all over the world by pursuing either a path of non-violence or by the barrel of the gun. Polemics of revolt have showed us the methodologies advocated by Gandhi to Guevara, from the apostle of peace to the votary of violence. D.S. Senanayake, however, followed another way, the way of effective negotiations. It may have taken him twenty four years to achieve this goal but he did so by periodically advancing towards freedom without spilling one drop of blood to achieve independence. Perhaps it was this peaceful transition that had created a misconception in the minds of some that freedom for Sri Lanka was gifted when India was granted her freedom.



India and Sri Lanka had their own independent freedom struggles. While Indian leaders were seeking freedom through passive resistance, Sri Lankan leaders were represented in the Legislature following a path of active negotiations. It was the capabilities shown by our leaders in the administrative affairs of the country that prompted the then Governor Sir Hugh Clifford to recommend to the British Government in 1926 that the existing Constitution should be viewed as transitional and that a more representative Constitution should be installed. On this recommendation, the British Government appointed the Donoughmore Commission in 1927 to bring about reforms. India received a similar commission, namely the Simon Commission in 1928.



India, however, totally rejected the Simon Commission report. They took up the position that the Simon Commission had no right to bring a constitution to India. Demanding Swaraj (independence outside the Commonwealth), non-cooperation was unleashed by the Indian leaders throughout the streets of India. Sri Lankan leaders did not resort to such methods. Though they did not accept the recommendations of the Donoughmore Commission in Toto, it was not rejected.



The recommendations were taken up in the National Legislature, amended through debate and discussion, and the amended version was accepted as a step towards achieving self-government. As a result in 1931, Sri Lanka became the first country in the whole of Asia to adopt universal suffrage with women being given the same voting rights as men; a feature that even some advanced European countries did not possess.



Though the Donoughmore Constitution did not measure up to the requirements of the elected representatives who were expecting a Westminster system of government, they were quite pleased with Adult Franchise and abolition of Communal Representation which were viewed as an obstruction to unification. The other main feature, Executive Committee System was received with mixed feelings. Deeply suspicious, D.S. Senanayake was very critical of the proposed Committee system. Having been involved in the functioning of existing committees, the unwanted delays experienced made him to view them as a hindrance rather than an asset to development. However, the amended form was accepted by him on the firm understanding that reforms would follow.



Bitterly divided, the amended Donoughmore Constitution was accepted by only a slender majority. Leaders such as Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, E.W. Perera and C.W.W. Kannangara opposed the proposals while Sir D.B. Jayatilaka, D.S. Senanayake and W.A. De Silva supported them. It was well known that it was D.S. Senanayake who used his influence to win over the majority for the proposals. He was of the view that though the proposed reforms did not measure up to what was expected, the proposals were an half-way measure to self-government and that it should be allowed a trial period.

The Donoughmore Constitution gave birth to the State Council in 1931 and for the first time elected Representatives entered the realm of the executive. In the election process of the seven Executive Committees announced, chairmen of each committee were designated as Ministers, they were,



1. Hon. D.B. Jayatilaka - Home Affairs.

2. Hon. D.S. Senanayake - Agriculture and Lands.

3. Hon. C.W.W. Kanangara - Education.

4. Hon. H.M. Macan Markar - Communications and Works.

5. Hon. Peri Sundaram - Labour, Industry and Commerce.

6. Hon. T.B. Panabokke - Health

7. Hon. C. Batuwantudawe - Local Government.

It is well known that no member of the Board of Ministers utilized Committees as much as D.S. Senanayake. Having realized that the mere possession of executive power was meaningless unless it was utilized for the betterment of the masses, he used his Committee to restore all ancient tanks and embarked on massive irrigation schemes to provide water to the rural masses. He opened up the neglected Dry Zone which was once the granary of ancient Sri Lanka and settled the landless villages in vast colonization schemes making them a great asset to the nation.



Speaking on the Committee system in the State Council on July 19, 1932, D.S. Senanayake said,

Sir, when The Donoughmore Report was accepted I was one of those who was rather apprehensive of the success of the Committee system. At that time I was not certain how the Constitution would work and what difficulties we would have to contend with. But since I have been in charge of a Committee for about an year, I must say that my faith in the Committee system has increased considerably.



Though many an achievement was made under the Donoughmore Constitution which was in operation for 16 years, it did not always bring about a smooth administration. There were many clashes between the elected Representatives and the Colonial bureaucrats; as such there was continuous agitation for reforms by both the State Council and the Ceylon National Congress. As a result, in May 1943, the Colonial government made a declaration authorizing the Board of Ministers to draft a Constitution within certain parameters, and stipulated that the proposed Constitution should be ratified by at least 75 per cent of the State Council. The Ministers welcomed this offer and proceeded to draft a Constitution with the aim of obtaining Dominion Status, the surest way for attaining Independence. The task was completed in four months, and the draft was submitted to the Governor to be presented to the Secretary of State for approval. However, what they received was a rude shock.



On July 5, 1944, the House of Commons made an announcement that a Commission will be

appointed to:



To visit Ceylon to examine and discuss any proposals for constitutional reforms in the Island which have the object of giving effect to the Declaration of His Majestys Government on that subject dated May 26, 1943, and after consultation with various interests in the Island, including minority communities, concerned with the subjects of constitutional reforms, to advise His Majestys Government on all measures necessary to attain that objective.



This was a sinister deviation from the original Declaration and a gross breach of trust. Sir John Kotelawala in his autobiography An Asian Prime Ministers Story refers to this incident. He states, Sir Ivor Jennings, the great authority on Constitutional questions, has expressed the view that the terms of reference of the Soulbury Commission, appointed in 1944, were undoubtedly a breach of an understanding given by the British Government in May 1943. What is worse, says Sir lvor, was the manner in which this breach was brought about. It left a very nasty taste in ones mouth. When it was all over, Colonel Oliver Stanley, Secretary of State for Colonies, remarked with typical English understatement that this affair had been badly handled.



Many Members of the State Council and of the Ceylon National Congress were aghast at this decision. They began to doubt the sincerity of the British Government. D.S. Senanayake, though disappointed and critical of what had happened, realized that sabotage had emanated from within and not from outside. Referring to this in the State Council on November 23, 1944, he said,

As the HON. Members are aware, we received a Declaration to which we gave our interpretation, and on that interpretation we grafted a constitution. We then decided -- at least I had stated our decision was -- that we should submit that Constitution to the Secretary of State first and that if it was considered acceptable to him we should bring it here for the approval by a 75 per cent majority of Members of this house. You see, Sir, when we drafted that Constitution we sent it to the Secretary of State and I believe, up to this day there were no conditions stipulated that a Commission should come out to examine the views of the interests that were here. If that was so, there was no need for them to tell us that it should get the approval of a 75 per cent majority in this House. I believe, and I honestly believe, that the reasons for sending a Commission here to consider various interests is due to the fact that the draft Constitution which was submitted by the Board of Ministers and which met with the requirements of the Secretary of State laid down in his Declaration is not the kind of Constitution that those who had influence with the Secretary of State expected us to bring out. So they felt that it was time to sabotage it.



He went on to say, I feel it is a mistake, a great mistake, to make an attempt to separate the people communally, and make a Constitution whereby the people will forever remain separated communally. If we want to progress, let us all unite. If we try to pander to the feelings of a section of the people, all that will happen is that we will be dividing the people, and that is the greatest danger that can befall any country. It is because of that danger that I do not want communal representation; it is not that I object to two seats here or two seats there. As long as there is this feeling that each community should be separated politically, that there should be this cleavage between community and community, those ideas will penetrate into our whole social life, our whole economic life and into all our activities in this country.



Dismissing the minority phobia, he said, When I suggested the procedure we adopted first, namely, that we deal with the Secretary of State and then the Council, I can honestly tell you that in my own mind I had no desire for Sinhalese domination, or Tamil domination, or European domination; my whole desire was for Ceylonese domination, and the freedom I wanted was for the people of Ceylon.

There was huge agitation to boycott the Soulbury Commission that arrived in the island on December 22, 1945. D.S. Senanayake, however, did not identify himself with such clamour. He was of the view that the Soulbury Commission should be won over to their way of thinking, and though the Ministers never gave evidence officially, they had many discussions with the Commissioners. D.S. Senanayake in particular had numerous discussions with the Commissioners and even accompanied them on their visits to all parts of the Island. Lord Soulbury was greatly impressed by D.S. Senanayake and took an instant liking to him. Lord Soulburys attitude and DS. Senanayakes commitment helped to rectify the stained relationship between the Imperial Government and the Board of Ministers, and most importantly it paved the way for D.S. Senanayake to obtain the approval for the Constitution that he was eagerly waiting for.



The Soulbury Report was published in September 1945, and a White Paper on the intentions of His Majestys Government was published on October 31, 1945. Though D.S. Senanayakes recommendations were included and further advancement had been made, the granting of Dominion Status was postponed. It is believed that the defeat of the Conservative Government in 1945 and the Labour Party assuming office caused this change as the new Secretary of State George Hall, who replaced Colonel Oliver Stanley, was not so amiable to the granting of Dominion Status. Had there been no change of government, Colonel Stanley would have remained as the Secretary of State and Sri Lanka on track to receive Dominion Status in 1945. Anyhow it was conceded that the New Constitution if adopted by the State Council, the Imperial Government would pave the way for the attainment of Dominion Status within a short period of time. On this understanding, on November 8, 1945, D.S. Senanayake moved the following motion in the State Council.



This House expresses disappointment that His Majestys Government have deferred the admission of Ceylon to full Dominion status, but in view of the assurance contained in the White Paper of October 31, 1945, that His Majestys Government will co-operate with the people of Ceylon so that such status may be attained by this country in a comparatively short time, this House resolves that the Constitution offered in the said White Paper be accepted during the interim period.



Addressing the State Council on November 8, 1945, D.S. Senanayake went on to say,

I was invited to London by Colonel Stanley, but my negotiations were conducted with the new Secretary of State, Mr. Hall. I should like at the outset to bear witness to the encouragement which I received from both of them. It has been a weakness in our case that we have had to correspond by telegram. They have not known the depth of our feelings; we have been suspicious of their intentions. Colonel Stanley was Colonial Secretary for most of the war. He was aware of the importance of our co-operation in the war effort; he was anxious to secure our political advancement; in him, I am convinced, we have a true friend. Mr. Hall - who is, if I may say so, a miner like myself -- came fresh to the problems of Ceylon. It was inevitable that he, and the Government of which he was a member, should require time for the consideration of our problems. That he and they approached with sympathy is proved by the result. For the Declaration which I ask you to accept is better than the Declaration of 1943, better than the Ministers draft and better than the Soulbury Report.



In his lengthy speech, he touched upon all aspects from the freedom movement, its origin, obstacles encountered, sabotage experienced and finally the achievement of the moment of freedom.



Allaying Minority fears, he said, The road to freedom was by no means straight. That we were correct in our procedure is proved by paragraph 12 of the White Paper, and I am glad that His Majestys Government has had the generosity to admit that we were right. We did all that we were asked to do and with a speed which, I think, surprised Whitehall. The procedure was changed not by us but by His Majestys Government, and the change was due solely to the representations of the minorities. After those representations, His Majestys Government felt the whole question should be examined by a Commission. We protested, as we were bound to do, at what we regarded as a breach of an undertaking. I am convinced, after hearing the case put in London, that the charge was due to an excess of caution. It was felt that the minorities should be given every opportunity of proving their case, if they could. They were given every opportunity, and they took it. The Ministers allowed their draft to speak for itself. If the Commissioners wanted to see anything, we showed it to them, but we gave no evidence. The fact that we gave no evidence has had two excellent results. First, the minorities said what they pleased and how they pleased. The Ministers were relieved of the temptation to retaliate. In this way we were, I hope, able to avoid adding to the bitterness and ill-will that we so correctly prophesied in 1941. If anybody ought to feel aggrieved it was those who were so bitterly attacked; but we do not feel aggrieved because the verdict has been in our favour. Secondly, that verdict is more impressive because we left our proposals to speak for themselves. No reasonable person can now doubt the honesty of our intentions. We devised a scheme which gave heavy weightage to the minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation; we vested important powers in the Governor-General because we thought that the minorities would regard him as impartial; we decided upon an independent Public Service Commission so as to give an assurance that there should be no communalism in the Public Service. All these have been accepted by the Soulbury Commission and quoted by them as devices to protect the minorities.

About mending the White Paper, he said, The great advantage of the White Paper is that it gives us complete self-government and puts an end to Commissions. If hon. Members study the White Paper alone they will obtain a false picture. It emphasizes the restrictions and precautions.

What they should study is the new Constitution. I have had a new draft prepared and I have compared it with the Constitutions of the Dominions. I can assure the House that there is nothing in it that might not be in the Constitution of a Dominion. In fact, in one respect it goes much further than any Dominion Constitution except that of Eire. It provides specifically and positively for responsible government; and this means responsible government in all matters of administration, civil and military, internal and external.



He concluded his speech by saying, The present proposal is for an interim period. We want Dominion Status in the shortest possible space of time. To achieve it we must show not only that we have successfully worked the self-government that the White Paper promises, but also that we are fundamentally agreed no matter what may be our politics or communities. In a short time the Cabinet will demand the fulfillment of the promises in the White Paper. Their hands can be immensely strengthened by this House and now. Every time we ask for a constitutional advance we are met by the argument that we are not agreed. Let us show that we are agreed by accepting this motion with a majority so overwhelming that nobody dares to use the argument against us again. I am not asking for a majority; I am asking for a unanimous vote.



And for what are you being asked to vote? It is a motion to wipe out the Donoughmore Constitution with all its qualifications and limitations and to place the destinies of this country in the hands of its people. It is a motion to end our political subjection and to enable us to devote ourselves to the welfare of the Island freed from these interminable constitutional disputes. A vote for this motion is a vote for Lanka, and it is a pleasure and a privilege to move it.



The State Council endorsed the Motion in an unprecedented manner; 51 Members voted in favour while only three voted against it. Those who voted against were two Indian Tamils and one a Sinhalese -- W. Dahanayake. D.S. Senanayake triumphantly cabled Lord Soulbury that he obtained 95% of the vote in favour of the proposals. Dominion Status that was promised within three years after the adoption of the White Paper was granted in two years. In February 1947, D.S. Senanayake addressed a personal letter to Secretary of State through the Governor requesting that Dominion Status be granted to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). This request was supported by the Governor. Three months later, in June 1947, an announcement was made in the House of Commons that, as soon as the new government assumes office, negotiations would begin to confer fully self-governing Status to Ceylon (Sri Lanka).



The General Election was held in August 1947, The United National Party (UNP) became the largest party in the House of Representatives, and since D.S Senanayake had the support of the majority of the Members he became the obvious choice as Prime Minister. The Ceylon Independence Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on November 13, 1947, and on December 10, 1947, The Ceylon Independence Act received Royal Assent. On February 3, 1948 Ceylon (Sri Lanka) ceased to be a Colony. Nearly 400 years of foreign domination came to an end and D.S. Senanayake took his rightful position as the Father of the Nation.



Sri Lanka never modeled itself or followed Indias path to Independence. Until the eleventh hour India was demanding Swaraj and not Dominion Status. During this period India was involved in widespread demonstrations advocating non-cooperation and asking the Imperial Government to quit India while almost all their leaders were languishing in jail. It was perhaps the decision to create Pakistan that made them change their demand to Dominion Status within the Empire, the position Ceylon (Sri Lanka) clung to from the very inception. The creation of Pakistan not only marked the division of India but it also brought about unprecedented communal violence where millions lost their lives. The only country that took Indias demand of Swaraj to its logical conclusion was Burma and even Burma after becoming an Independent nation outside the Empire, proceeded to sign a defence agreement with Britain. On the other hand D.S. Senanayake never deviated from his demand for Dominion Status. He was successful in uniting all communities and united, marched to freedom without shredding a drop of blood. It is the sheer ignorance of these facts that has prompted some to erroneously believe that Sri Lankas freedom was an extension of Indias Independence.



Sceptics have castigated our Independence as a half-baked measure and that it was not real freedom. Defence Agreements entered into with the British Government have been highlighted to show that Sri Lanka was never really free and that real freedom came in 1956 when the Defence Pact was abrogated. One begins to wonder how a Pact can be abrogated unless the Country concerned had the right to do so. It was the inherent right of Independence that allowed the abrogation of the Defence Pact. Independence of a country is not judged by the presence of defence pacts or the presence of foreign forces in the country concerned, but on the right of that country to abrogate such pacts or remove foreign troops if they so desire. Even today free nations stationing foreign troops and holding defence pacts can be seen all over the world. D.S. Senanayake did enter into a Defence pact with Britain not because it was forced on him but because he wanted it as a safeguard from external aggression. Introducing these agreements in Parliament on December 3, 1947, D.S. Senanayake said, The agreements became necessary for no other reason but because of the obligations that Britain had undertaken on our behalf. There was, therefore, this necessity for an agreement before Dominion Status was granted.



Besides that, it was necessary in our own interest to have an agreement to provide for our defence.

He went on to say, Now with regard to this Agreement, my Good Friend was not quite logical when he said that we would be prevented from terminating this agreement by virtue of the fact it did not stipulate a definite period, and that therefore we have no remedy. But these are mutual agreements to be entered into at different times. There is no question of giving bases to anyone. There was a question of bases being found in Ceylon, but I was certainly not prepared to grant any. What I felt was that if at any time we wanted the assistance of England we should be able to get that assistance by agreement, and if necessary for that purpose to get their aeroplanes we should give them aerodromes. There is no question of any bases being given to her. They were only to be given when it becomes necessary, in our own interest, and after entering into an agreement. So far as these agreements are concerned, it has definitely stated that they will be in force only during such time as they are necessary.



Referring to the Defence Agreement sought by Burma that had become Independent from the Britain, he went on to say, As far as Burma is concerned, she has got independence outside the British Empire, but she has come to an agreement with Britain. She is independent, but there is an agreement with Britain .Now that is a country that has obtained independence. But the people feel that it is in the interest of Burma itself and in the common interest to come to such an agreement. But as far as we are concerned, what is the position? We say we belong to one family, we have mutual interests, and it is by mutual agreement that we are able to decide what is to be done. I feel that does not in any way remove our independence; it only means that we can maintain our independence in our country. There is a good deal more that I should like to say, but I think I have said enough. I feel sure that no Member of this House or anyone outside can say that we could have more speedily better and more secure Agreements than those we have got. All those who have the love of this country at heart should rejoice not only over our getting freedom, but over securing these Agreements, so that we may be safe in Ceylon.



Parliament approved these agreements on 3rd December 1947. Incidentally, even S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who abrogated this pact in 1956, voted in favour of these agreements. What he did may have been a popular decision as cutting off all ties with the former Colonial Ruler was widely acceptable emotionally. But it certainly did expose Sri Lanka to brazen interference by our giant neighbour and we still continue to pay a heavy price for it.



D.S. Senanayake never advocated that Sri Lanka should have a permanent defence Pact with the United Kingdom but that to protect our newly won freedom we need the protection of a powerful Nation and at that time the best source was the United Kingdom. Referring to this predicament as far back as 23rd November 1944, speaking in the State Council of Ceylon on Reforms (Introduction of Constituent Bill), he stated, It may be that there will be a time when perhaps the British will not be our best shield; we may then join some other Commonwealth or come to some arrangement with some other people. But as long as there is no nation I could think of which is better than the British, I would like to get Dominion Status for Ceylon within the Empire. Now at this time, when countries, even big nations, consider it necessary that they should come to some arrangement for protecting each other, I think it would be foolhardy on our part to think that we can stand by ourselves.



Harbouring deep suspicions on the intentions of our giant neighbour; D.S. Senanayake was convinced that we need a defence arrangement with a powerful country for our safety. However, after his demise in 1952, the UNP Government led by Sir John Kotelawala was defeated in 1956 and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who was elected Prime Minister, proceeded to abrogate the defence pact with Britain. What followed thereafter was blatant interference in our internal affairs and continued infringement of our sovereignty. What we had to experience and continue to experience to date, more than justifies D.S. Senanayakes suspicions.



Sri Lanka was plagued by a foreign-sponsored armed terrorist organization committed to the division of our country. It took a herculean effort from our armed forces to free the country from this brutal terror. Now, in the name of peace another threat armed with international repercussions has emerged that threatens the very existence of this nation. It is our bounden duty to save our country from being dismembered and its dominance passed to Foreign Nations. If not the greatest disservice will be done to our National Heroes and another despicable betrayal will be featured in our history.
By Chandeepa Wettasinghe

The final details of the agreement to sell the Hambantota Port shares to Chinese State-owned enterprise China Merchant Port Holdings (CMPH) will be finalized this week and the details of the agreement would be announced soon, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said.

On the Hambantota Port agreement, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Sub Committee is meeting today and it will be announced today or tomorrow, Karunanayake said yesterday.

When asked what exactly would be discussed at the Cabinet Sub Committee meeting, he replied that there are some issues remaining to be ironed out, after which they would finish off the agreement.

The government is planning to sell 80 percent of the Hambantota Port shares to CMPH for US$ 1.12 billion for 99 years.

The government had planned to sign the agreement by January 8, 2017, in order to coincide with their rise to power on January 8, 2015, but then postponed the agreement signing to be

within January.

The grand Chinese plan hopes to make the Hambantota Port viable by creating trade volumes through 3 neighbouring industrial zones to which Chinese factories would be relocated to take advantage of Sri Lankas lower labour costs and strategic location.

China had also said that other countries are welcome to invest in the zones.However, without signing an agreement with a Chinese entity to develop the industrial zoneswhich would total over 15,000 acres and 2,600 factoriesthe government went ahead and launched the industrial zones last month.

Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama, who had announced this plan, had last month said that CMPH would still be willing to go ahead with the Hambantota Port agreement even if the industrial zoneswhich would make the port viabledo

not progress.

Both the sale of the port and the provision of land for the industrial zones have run into heavy public resistance.The manner of selecting the partner for the port is also being questioned by politicians of the former regime, since they assert that China Harbour Engineering Companya sister company of Chinese state owned CMPH, which was also directed by the Chinese government to bid for the porthad presented a better deal in terms of profit sharing and the duration of the lease.

When asked why the government had not opted for an international tender for the sale of the port, Karunanayake said that since a government to government opportunity presented itself, there was no need for a tender process.

Further, he shot down the possibility of Sri Lanka attracting a better deal for the port from another party through a tender.

Who wouldve gone for a debt to equity arrangement? he questioned.

However, the current deal is technically not a debt to equity arrangement, since CMPH is paying the government with cash equivalents, and some of the funds would be used to retire debt from various countries, and not just from China.

The rest of the funds would be diverted to Sri Lankas fragile foreign reserves.

Institute of Policy Studies Deputy Director Dr. Dushni Weerakoon had last week said that Sri Lanka would need an immediate injection of foreign capital to deal with external shocks through either debt or the sale of state-owned entities. Karunanayake yesterday said increased foreign direct investments (FDIs) are expected along with funds through a syndicated loan as sale of State-owned enterprises may take some time. Sri Lanka only attracted US $ 450 million in FDIs in 2016 compared to US $ 970 million in 2015.
The final details of the agreement to sell the Hambantota Port shares to Chinese State-owned enterprise China Merchant Port Holdings (CMPH) will be finalized this week and the details of the agreement would be announced soon, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said.

On the Hambantota Port agreement, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Sub Committee is meeting today and it will be announced today or tomorrow, Karunanayake said yesterday.

When asked what exactly would be discussed at the Cabinet Sub Committee meeting, he replied that there are some issues remaining to be ironed out, after which they would finish off the agreement.

The government is planning to sell 80 percent of the Hambantota Port shares to CMPH for US$ 1.12 billion for 99 years.

The government had planned to sign the agreement by January 8, 2017, in order to coincide with their rise to power on January 8, 2015, but then postponed the agreement signing to be within January.

The grand Chinese plan hopes to make the Hambantota Port viable by creating trade volumes through 3 neighbouring industrial zones to which Chinese factories would be relocated to take advantage of Sri Lankas lower labour costs and strategic location.

China had also said that other countries are welcome to invest in the zones. However, without signing an agreement with a Chinese entity to develop the industrial zoneswhich would total over 15,000 acres and 2,600 factoriesthe government went ahead and launched the industrial zones last month.

Development Strategies and International Trade Minister Malik Samarawickrama, who had announced this plan, had last month said that CMPH would still be willing to go ahead with the Hambantota Port agreement even if the industrial zoneswhich would make the port viabledo not progress.

Both the sale of the port and the provision of land for the industrial zones have run into heavy public resistance.The manner of selecting the partner for the port is also being questioned by politicians of the former regime, since they assert that China Harbour Engineering Companya sister company of Chinese state owned CMPH, which was also directed by the Chinese government to bid for the porthad presented a better deal in terms of profit sharing and the duration of the lease.

When asked why the government had not opted for an international tender for the sale of the port, Karunanayake said that since a government to government opportunity presented itself, there was no need for a tender process.

Further, he shot down the possibility of Sri Lanka attracting a better deal for the port from another party through a tender. (Chandeepa Wettasinghe)

Video by Buddhi
The Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka this week had said hopes Sri Lanka and India to sign the proposed trade pact without further delay, in order to strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries, a Finance Ministry communique said.

Indian High Commissioner Taranjit Singh Sandhu told the Finance Minister during the meeting that further strengthening the bilateral ties between India and Sri Lanka are of paramount importance for both countries. He said India expects both countries will be able to sign the proposed free trade agreement without further delay, it said.

Sandhu, the newly appointed High Commissioner said that the signing of the proposed trade pact between India and Sri Lanka would empower the ongoing development activities in the island.

The High Commissioner said that the proposed free trade agreement will bring a lot of privileges to Sri Lanka and said that his country has drawn attention to further diversify the existing Indian projects in the island, the Finance Ministry stated.

Responding to the Indian High Commissioner, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said that the assistance given by neighbouring India is highly appreciated by Sri Lankans.

According to the communique, the Minister further said that the international community including worlds powerful countries have agreed to assist Sri Lanka in its future forward march in respect of the transparent foreign policy of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Sri Lankas foreign direct investments have consecutively fallen since the current government came into office two years ago.

Now the government is negotiating Free Trade Agreements (FTA) with Singapore and China, while half a dozen more are planned, calling trade Sri Lankas only option.

The Indian trade pact, titled the Economic and Technology Cooperative Agreement (ETCA), is an expansion of the Indo-Lanka FTA to include trade in services and investment, and is a revival of the controversial Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Despite government officials claims that ETCA does not include the exchange of natural persons as CEPA did, ETCA has also run into similar levels of public resistance due to the governments reluctance to share details about the trade pact.

Indian media reports had last month said that the Indian government is not willing to allow Sri Lanka to remove limitations placed on key export products in entering India through the Free Trade Agreement, a condition upon which many supporters of ETCA in Sri Lanka are backing the deal.

Institute of Policy Studies Deputy Director Dr. Dushni Weerakoon last week said that Sri Lanka is unlikely to experience much investments through pacts with India or Singapore, but that the Chinese deal might be different since the Chinese government is able to direct actions of Chinese companies.
In 2003, six months after US troops invaded Iraq, I met this young Afro American researcher in Chicago, while I was touring the United States under a State Department International Visitors Programme. He was Amir Nashid Alid Muhammad, who had just published a book titled Muslims in America: Seven centuries of History (1312-2000).



His book says the first Muslims came to America 180 years before the European settlers came following Christopher Columbus voyage in 1492. They were explorers from Mali and other parts of West Africa. Abu Bakri, the brother of Mansa (Sultan) Musa of Mali, was one of the first to set sail to America from Africa.



Amir Muhammad is not the only person to say this. Ivan Van Sertima, in his books They Came Before Columbus and African Presence in Early America also confirms that Moors or Muslims arrived before Columbus.



The early Muslims in America, according to researchers, merged with the Native Americans, who were by and large monotheists. Most of these Muslims perished in the multitude of massacres the European settlers carried out in their greed for the gold and land that belonged to the Native Americans, who are even today misidentified as Red Indian or worse still as savages in comic books and Hollywood films.



History researchers say Muslims came to America in four different waves  first as explorers, then fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, then during the early 19th century Barbary Coast wars (which were incidentally the first conflicts the newly independent United States waged against North African Muslim states) coinciding with the enslavement of Africans and, finally, by immigration which started in the 1870s.



Property-tycoon-turned-president Donald Trump would do well to read this rarely-spoken-about history before he further undermines Americas core values by another executive order. During the campaign, he had vowed to impose a total and complete shutdown of Muslim immigration into the United States. To deal with the so-called Islamic terrorism, he promoted a policy of eliminating the entire families of terrorists.



As concerned Americans continue their protests against Trumps executive order prohibiting people from seven Muslims countries from entering the United States and subjecting Muslims from other countries to a tough vetting process, Muslims Under Trumps America is a dark chapter of the history of American Muslims. Throughout Americas history, the saga of Muslims was one of suppression and resilience, slavery and freedom, retreat and renaissance. Their history is part of Americas Black History, which is being observed this month  and, ironically, which Trump on Wednesday said he would promote.



The American Muslims predicament became worse after the 9/11 terror attacks. With fear gripping the Americans, President George W. Bush brought in draconian legislation such as the Patriot Act and tough security and surveillance measures which amounted to racial profiling and an invasion of privacy, while he launched a worldwide war to hunt down the terrorists. Apart from a few liberals and leftists, the Americans, by and large, felt these measures were necessary to ensure homeland security even though they ate into civil liberties.



Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the federation, said, Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. His advice was, however, lost on the American people in the post-9/11 period. Their timidity encouraged white supremacists to make a political comeback. Making the most of the fast-spreading Islamophobia, neocon ideologists executed their Project for New American Century (PNAC) which called for the US military dominance of the world, especially West Asia, to ensure the United States economic superiority.



As this global campaign for US military dominance continued under the pretext of a war on terror, with Islamic terrorists being generated in spy laboratories, the Muslims in the United States became a targeted community. Even during liberal Barack Obamas administration, Muslims were regularly offloaded from civilian aircraft whenever a passenger raised the slightest doubt about them.



When Obama was president, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation statistics, a record 257 incidents of hate crimes against Muslims took place in the United States in 2015. Under Trumps America, the attacks on Muslims have seen a sharp rise. Muslims, especially hijab wearers, face daily harassment. A mosque in Texas was set on fire last week.



Whats worse, Trumps key national security advisors are apparent warmongers and see Islam as a violent ideology. His National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, has already put Iran on notice for carrying out a missile test. To deal with radical Islam, he promotes total war. Trumps key strategic advisor Steve Bennon, now on the National Security Council, has said that Islam is the most radical religion in the world and the US is engaged in a civilisational struggle potentially leading to a major shooting war in the Middle East again.



Is the Trump-Flynn-Bennon combination trying to enact Samuel Huntingtons clash of civilisations? Neither Islam nor Christianity teaches adherents to fight the people of other faiths. Yet those who hijack the religion, giving a warped interpretation to the message of peace, commit horrendous crimes in its name. The so-called Islamic terrorists ideology has no place in Islam. The early caliphs slammed them as Khwarijs or the ones who live outside the fold of Islam.



Today, instead of a clash of civilisations, a clash within the civilization is taking place as far as Islam is concerned. The Sunnis and Shiites are at each others jugulars while hundreds, if not thousands of groups squabble with each other, sometimes by means of violence, over the ownership of Islam. The so-called radical Islamists, disproportionate to their horrors, are just a small minority within Islam. To deal with radical Islam, which is, to a large extent, a product of western intelligence outfits or geopolitical games, socio-economic measures, not wars, should be implemented. Taking education to places where ignorance prevails is one such measure. Creating economic opportunities and establishing a world order based on justice and peace are other measures.



War on terror is one thing, but war on Muslims is quite another thing and one that has no place in civilised society. It was indeed a defining moment when the United States Acting Attorney General Sally Yates stood up to Trump and advised her officials not to carry out what she interpreted as the Presidents unlawful order to restrict Muslims from entering the US. She was fired, but she showed the way to resist. Resist Fascism in whatever form it appears. Resist now rather than after a Hitler is created. A warning has already come from a group of American psychotherapists. Calling themselves the Citizen Therapists Against Trumpism, they warned: As psychotherapists practising in the United States, we are alarmed by the rise of the ideology of Trumpism, which we see as a threat to the well-being of the people we care for and to American democracy itself. We cannot remain silent as we witness the rise of an American form of fascism.
 Flights to Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad increase from double to triple daily

 Flights to Calicut increase from single to triple daily

 Flights to Lucknow increase from 11 to 14per week

Oman Air, the national carrier of the Sultanate of Oman is growing its capacity to India whereby it will increase its weekly frequencies from 126 to161 flights per week between Oman and its 11 destinations in India.

The growth in capacity follows the recently signed agreement between the Governments of Oman and India, where both sides agreed to increase the weekly seats.

Effective February onwards, Bombay, Delhi, Calicut and Hyderabad will be operated with 21 weekly flights each, and Luck now with 14 weekly flights. With this development, Oman Air is flying its multi award winning wide bodied aircraft to select Indian destinations.

Chief Executive Officer of Oman Air, Paul Gregorowitsch, commented:

India is a key destination for Oman Air and we are delighted to be offering thousands more guests the opportunity to travel between Omanand India (and beyond). The demand for all 11 of our Indian destinations has always been high and the increased frequencies offer yet more choice and convenience to our guests.Oman Air first launched flights to India in the 1990s and the demand for seats has grown exponentially amongst both business and leisure travellers, not only increasing tourism traffic and revenue but also promoting vital trade agreements between the two countries.

The extended traffic entitlements will give a further boost to the tourism sector, prompting many discerning tourists to visit magnificent Oman as well as Indias beautiful touristic spots. The bilateral trade and investment opportunities between the two countries are even further encouraged.

I would like to thank the Public Authority of Civil Aviation in Oman and the Indian Government for being so receptive to our proposals as well as our trade partners, travel agencies and sales agents who have all been incredibly supportive and contributed to this growing demand. They have fully endorsed our award winning product and our unique onboard service and hospitality, which help to differentiate Oman Air from the competition.

This growing commitment in India is part of Oman Airs ambitious and dynamic programme of fleet and network expansion. This has included the delivery of new aircraft and the introduction of a range of exciting new destinations and new products and services which contribute to a seamless passenger experience.

Oman Airs most recent expansion consolidates its position at the start of 2017 to continue progress towards becoming a successful, sustainable company of the highest quality: To Become the Best.

For further information on Oman Air, visit www.omanair.com
From left: PLC CEO/General Manager D.P. Kumarage, CEO Designate Sabri Ibrahim, Deputy General Manager Operations Damith Malavitantila and Chief Manager Hasantha de Silva in the first transaction of PLCs Walasmulla branch

The leading non-bank finance company in Sri Lanka, Peoples Leasing and Finance PLC (PLC), subsequent to opening its 101st and 102nd branches in Walasmulla and Kinniya, commissioned its 103rd branch ceremonially in Warakapola, at No: 177, Kandy Road, Warakapola.

The new branch was declared open by PLC CEO/General Manager D.P. Kumarage and CEO Designate Sabri Ibrahim in the presence of the PLC senior management, special guests and customers.

PLC commissioned its 100th branch in Hanwella in December 2016 followed by opening PLC branches and service centres in Walasmulla, Kinniya, Galenbindunuwewa and Hingurakgoda.

PLCs maiden branch was commissioned in 1996 in Kandy.

Speaking at the occasion of the 103rd branch opening in Warakapola that shed light on PLCs bicentennial branch opening phase in history, PLC Deputy General Manager Operations Lionel Fernando said PLC has identified its customers requirements well and catered to them with a hassle-free service over the decades.

We have been providing an unmatched financial service to all Sri Lankans for 14 consecutive years. Our intent is to enhance our service network to cover the whole island for the benefit of all citizens. A spacious and state-of-the-art branch in their nearest town that offers hassle-free services and convenience is our promise to PLC customers. PLC branches are being commissioned in almost every main city in the island with that object, he said.

Peoples Leasing Company was commissioned in 1995 as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the biggest state bank in Sri Lanka, Peoples Bank. PLC has retained the market leader in the non-bank finance sector in Sri Lanka.

In recognition of the quality credit and innovations of the company, Fitch Rating Lanka has assigned PLC a credit rating of AA-(lka), which makes PLC the highest rated finance company. PLC is the only Sri Lankan finance company to have two international ratings. PLC also became the financial services provider of the year for the fourth consecutive year at the SLIM-Neilsen Peoples Awards.

PLCs financial service product portfolio includes leasing, fixed deposits, saving accounts, personal and business loans, margin trading, factoring and Islamic financial services.

PLC conglomerate consists of five subsidiaries namely, Peoples Insurance PLC, Peoples Microfinance Ltd, Peoples Leasing Property Development Ltd, Peoples Leasing Fleet Management Ltd and Peoples Leasing Havelock Properties Ltd.

The uniqueness of PLC is its strength and the stability to provide diverse financial solutions under one roof to its customers, thus enabling the customers to obtain customer-friendly services.
The dawn of the New Year came with a promising start for over 3000 children in the Sabaragamuwa province thanks to Perpetual Treasuries Ltd, as they received a complete stationary pack to start off the new school term. Initiating a long term project, the company identified a number of students from 48 schools in the Sabaragamuwa Province who were in desperate need of support in order to continue and develop their standard of education.

All students from Grades 01 to 13 of the schoolsclassified as Very Difficult received the donation, which included all items required in a standard book list, including a water bottle and lunch box.

As an investment company that has made it their mission to support the growth and development of Sri Lankas capital market, Perpetual Treasuries believes that promoting the cause of education is the most suitable manner in which to invest in the future of the next generation. The organization has announced that the project  launched in January this year will eventually expand to all the provinces in the country. The main objective is to elevate the standards of schools step-by-step resulting in an island wide development program, which supports national education.

This is not just about donating books, stated Arjun Aloysius, Chairman of Perpetual Group. This project represents much more than that. As education is a basic right for every child, we want to provide these children with the means to receive a better and more wholesome education. We want to attribute a deeper meaning to Investment within the corporate world. Financial investment is only a small part of it. Our real investment has to be on the future and this is where our future comes from. The schools we selected were in dire need of support and we at Perpetual were more than happy to provide them with the necessities of elevating their standards and facilities.

Licensed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, Perpetual Treasuries is a non-bank primary dealer, whose team has dedicated themselves to the task of connecting both local and international investors with opportunities in Sri Lankas debt and equity markets, while supporting growth and development in the nations capital markets through the provision of specialized investment services.
Queen Elizabeth II in a message on Sri Lankas Independence Day has extended her best wishes for the good fortune and happiness of the people of Sri Lanka in the coming year.

It gives me great pleasure to send Your Excellency Maithripala Sirisena my congratulations on the celebration of your National Day, together with my best wishes for the good fortune and happiness of the people of Sri Lanka in the coming year, she said in the message.
REUTERS: The Sri Lankan rupee fell yesterday due to dollar demand from importers and banks as foreign investors continued to sell government securities, dealers said.

Rupee forwards were active with two-week forwards ending at 151.15/20, compared with Thursdays close of 151.02/10.

Demand first came in from foreign banks for bond sales, then we saw state banks also buying (dollars), said a currency dealer, requesting anonymity.

Sri Lankas Central Bank is scheduled to hold its first monetary policy review of 2017 on Tuesday.

The Central Bank could raise its key policy rates in coming months if it skips a chance to tighten next week, a Reuters poll showed, underlining renewed pressure on the rupee after the Federal Reserves rate hike last month.

The rupee has been under pressure due to rising imports and net selling of government securities by foreign investors, while the Central Bank has said defending the currency was not sensible.

The Central Bank revised the spot rupee reference rate to a record low of 150.50 from 150.25 earlier this week.

Foreign investors net sold Rs.26.6 billion ($177.10 million) worth of government securities in the four weeks to Feb. 1, according to latest Central Bank data.
Interview with Exiled Iranian Cartoonist Kianoush Ramezani

In 2009, the controversial Presidential election in Iran was met with mass public protests. What followed was State-wide crackdown on dissent. Iranian cartoonist Kianoush Ramezani, the founder of the countrys first independent cartoonists association was forced into exile. He is among Iranian intellectuals, journalists and bloggers who were forced to leave the country. Kianoush is no stranger to peril as he believes cartooning is the art of danger. In an interview with Dailymirror during his recent visit to Sri Lanka, Kianoush talks about his encounters with danger, the freedom of expression he strives for, the balance of satire, religion and the power of cartoons. Excerpts of the interview:



Q What was Iran like during your formative years and what made you become cartoonist?

I was born and grew up in North of Iran which is different from the rest of the country. My region is famous for having trouble all the time. We think too much and we create trouble for ourselves. It has been also famous for having peaceful deposition. They are always unhappy with their own government or state; it has been like that for over a century. When a child like me is born in this context he becomes a problem child. I was born in 1973. My family encouraged me to keep drawing which was what I was good at. But I didnt want to draw objects. It was a cliche, an obligation and a lesson. I refused, I wanted to draw the images in my head. My parents encouraged me. I studied by myself, I never studied art and never went to art school.

However when I was 18, I discovered cartoon was the outlet I was searching for since childhood. I wanted to give a message beyond my drawings. Then I realised that this form of art exists and its called cartooning. When I was in the University I started on my first cartoon exhibition and immediately I started working with the local newspapers. When my first cartoon was published, I was excited about the possibilities. Thats how I became a cartoonist.

QHow accommodating was Iran for a cartoonist?

Iran is a very different country when it comes to cartooning. It is a very developed country, where the tradition of cartooning is very advanced, which is good and bad at the same time. Bad because the regime knows about the impact of cartooning on society. Iranian people love humour, but they are also intelligent, they love to make jokes about the state. It has been a tradition and which is still alive. Criticial humour is alive in society because they cannot criticise the State and Government directly as we are under pressure all the time.



We have some sort of an advanced dictatorship which means the existence of a State with religion. This gives the authority the maximum power to control and survey people. When the Islamic Revolution happened in 1979 the State decided to control cartooning in a very precise way. Some cartoonists were appointed to direct this role and until now they are actively controlling and exerting pressure. For instance, I was threatened not by the intelligence service or by the State but by the Director of the Iranian House of Cartoon, the institutional centre funded by the State.



In Iran we have a government which is a kind of a joke, and also we have the State. Whenever there is a need for the propaganda to use cartoon this Iranian House of Cartoon makes the approach. For example they organised a second international cartoon competition against the Holocaust which ironically took place right after the attack on Charlie Hebdo.



QYoure living and working in exile and as a political refugee since 2009 in Paris. What are the events that led to this?

If I wanted to be a real cartoonist I had to be independent. I decided to not obey the Iranian House of Cartoonist. In Iran to find a job and to be able to work we had to adhere to the House of Cartoon. I denied this and my problems started. I went too far by deciding to create the first independent Iranian cartoon associations. I received threats, all my projects were suspended and I created a very domestic enemy. In 2003 I was appointed the Iranian representative for the cartoonists right network international, which is a Human Rights Organisation who were trying to help and defend cartoonists in trouble. It was a huge risk for me because I was appointed by a Human Rights organisation. In Iran, no human rights organisation is safe. In 2009 the State started to arrest bloggers, journalists and then my close friends. So I made the choice to leave and continue my activities from abroad. Exile became the choice and I found myself in Paris through the Embassy of France.



QWith what you have observed in Sri Lanka during your stay, are there any parallels that could be drawn between Sri Lanka and Iran?

I appreciate the recent developments in democracy in Sri Lanka. My first question about this country was if internet was free here, and they said yes. To me this is very important. Then I learned that this county is in a very interesting process of change towards freedom of expression. I learned that it wasnt this way before. Before coming here I had some image of your country through some Sri Lankan friends I found in Paris. They are in exile, they were activists and journalists from Sri Lanka. When I came I was surprised in a good way.

My experience is from the Alliance Francaise event we had in Kandy. The experience I gathered there was very interesting. Some locals were defending limitations in freedom of expression and I love this debate. Now again in Colombo Im also enjoying this observation. I feel this change and I can relate to it, I feel a thirst for change. I hope that in near future all journalists will be happy in Sri Lanka.



QCartoons have been known to strike a nerve with political figures worldwide. How and why do politicians react to cartoons?

Some politicians are aware of the strong impact of a cartoon. Either they take care of it, which means that they start to observe it and they start to use it, which is the

intelligent way.



Or they hate it and then the problem starts. In a democratic country, no President likes to be criticised. But I believe that they dont declare any disagreement. They start to observe, they start to see. I believe it can also help them.



Cartoonists dont criticise the system just to criticise. They also are trying to bring attention to an issue to fix it. I believe that independent cartoonists are observing the system, the society, government and politicians for good. Because they are sensitive, they are people searching for development, for better conditions for everyone. We have been misunderstood by some states, especially the religious states, they believe that we are some clowns who are mean and our job is just to insult people, which is not true.



But of course, when it comes to criticising an issue cartoonists use blasphemy as well. Sometimes they make fun of the Pope or even the Prophet. If there is a message behind this, I appreciate it. But sometimes I dislike for example what Danish cartoonists did with the cartoons about the Prophet. They are free to do whatever they want but I didnt find any intelligence behind it. For cartoonists I must say, use your freedom for some good, use your freedom for value.

QDo you find faith and art in conflict?

It depends on the definition of faith. My definition of faith is very Persian. 5000 years ago we had faith without having any religion. For Iranians religion doesnt exist because we dont need it. Its a very tricky thing to say because our country now is a Muslim country. Traditionally and officially they are declaring themselves Muslim and Shiite. I had to declare that I was Muslim and Shia even if I dont care about anything else. Because it is the only way you can receive some official papers. But Iranians can always be spiritual. So my definition of faith is spiritual which has been the philosophy of Zarathustra, respecting spirituality and humanity. Then Islam came to Iran. Lets say, they occupied Iran. Iranians adapted Islam in the Iranian way. That became the current Islam. Most Iranians, they dont say prayers but they believe in God. Im one of those. We believe that we dont need any religion to be blessed by God.



The only dialogue that we can have with God is to be thankful for everything. We are responsible for own destiny. Coming back to cartoons with this kind of faith, Im a very big fan of blasphemy. Because it prevents the authorities to use any form of religion to empower dictatorship. Im traumatised by the Islamic State of Iran.



QAs a cartoonist who sought political refuge in France, what was life like before and after the Paris attacks?

Life in Paris had its Parisian definition which means that life is difficult but carpe diem! or Vive la liberte! I was enjoying my freedom and Im still enjoying my freedom. But after the January 7, 2015 I know that Im not safe any more. I know that nobody can guarantee my security and I know that there is a domestic enemy called the radicalised people. They are French, they dont come from the sky, they dont come from Syria. They are born and bred in France. They are fortunately full of hate and can easily manipulate hate. Thats what happened to them. Most of these terrorists are still in prison. When they came back to society then they started their operations.



But then I found myself ten times more motivated for my visions. That also made me to create the International Organisation United Sketches. Its the only international organisation of cartooning that has two target missions to support cartoonists in exile, promoting freedom of expression in the world of cartooning. After the Charlie Hebdo attack many cartoonists started self-censorship even if they are living in a free country which enjoys democracy. They are afraid, and they will not draw as they used to draw. I really feel this necessity to remind them that freedom of expression is a necessary material to have as a cartoonists. Without this we are not cartoonists any more. We are just illustrators or some tool of propaganda.



QMuslim extremists attacked the Paris office of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, killing 12 people, including the editor and several cartoonists in 2015. Prior to the attacks, you had spoken of warning signs of an imminent attack. What was the reason for these statements?

I have the experience of living in an Islamic State. I know how an Islamic State works and I also grew up where besides me were radicalised people. And I know how Sharia works. Sharia has nothing to do with Islam. It is a very dangerous and changed way of using Islam to empower any authority. This is dangerous because I can compare this extremist Islamism to Nazi rule. They keep themselves alive to look at the others from above. To them we are inferiors and they know better than us and they want to correct the world in their own way. Which is very similar to the ideology of Hitler. That is why they can simply kill because for them its a sacred way, they dont feel ashamed or guilty. They glorify themselves using this. Thats why we see how simply they can kill themselves in suicide attacks. They dont think they are going to die or lose anything. They think they are going to the uppermost level.

I also know that we cannot change their minds. They never forget and they never forgive. When French media invited me to debate on the topic and by chance I met Charb the editor in chief of Charlie Hebdo (Stephane Charbonnier) and I asked him if he knew that he was in danger. I told him, I know them, they are not going to stop. He said Dont worry, come on, we are in France. I believe that either he knew or he couldnt really understand the ideology behind this.



QHave these incidents changed the way you approach freedom of expression?

Lets say in Western countries in a democratic country, lifestyle is very peaceful. In this way, we forget many threats. To confess, even though I warned Charb, I also forgot after two years .I even forgot that these threats exist and that its close to me. When finally it happened in 2015 after 3 years, they were surprised. Charb even had bodyguards and police. But its not enough. Another attack happened in the centre of Paris when people were most unsuspecting.



Im still worried about these terrorists, about how they view the terrorists. Whenever I hear or read that terrorists have been imprisoned it makes me mad. Because you need to accept a danger and you need to be prepared. If you dont know this, its like putting a wounded wolf in a cage and putting the cage in the middle of a flock of sheep. After a while you start to believe that the wolf is integrated with the sheep, and then you go and sleep. What will happen? This is the same. I believe the security measures must change. The President of a country after each terrorist attack calls for retaliation, even if it is Iraq or Syria. It is the most stupid declaration that I have ever heard. The danger is domestic and has nothing to do with the people from miles away. It brings more hate and its not helping. Thats why it makes me mad. I know how they can prevent this or reduce this.

QBeing away from Iran how do you observe your country from afar?

Thanks to social media I maintained my activities and connections with the people and with my friends. They accepted the risk. We used for example services like the Telegram app to communicate. Fortunately, the Iranian specialists who were also in exile gave me a security background from outside. They prepared software like the VPN and they sent it for free for Iranians. Thats how we could use the free internet and till now there are very active websites always updating these VPNs for free. This way people still can be connected through social media. In this way,I can keep my connections and I can still publish my works.



QIn your work, you are also a commentator of the situation in the Middle East. With Russia, Turkey and Iran now outlining a plan to reinforce a ceasefire in Syria, what do you see in this latest development?

Since 2012 I started drawing about Syria. I didnt do the same things that European cartoonists did with my cartoons. I didnt see Bashar Al Assad as the beast and the opposition as angels. That is stupid. Because I could see people out there dying. I illustrated them both as a beast. Because to me they are just fighting for power. There is no glory in this fight and now after many many years, unfortunately we see that now the world must negotiate with Bashar Al Assad. He is still there. All these bombs and all this effort it didnt work. What happened all these years, millions of people were displaced, tortured, killed. I dont glorify the Syrian opposition because they are responsible for their own nations suffering. My point of view is to condemn both sides and to condemn the war. I would also wish that the international community realise that they shouldnt send their soldiers there at all and contribute to this war.



QWith a new President at the helm of affairs in America, what fate do you see for the future of Irans relations with the US?

The relationship is already developing and its not thanks to President Obama. They had already been negotiating benefits. America has a lot of friends in Iran. At least 10 years ago in the field of petrochemicals and the oil industry and very surprisingly beverage giants like Coca-Cola. Iran has the biggest factory of Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola in the middle east, and they were established 25 years ago. During Friday prayers each week, you would hear calls saying down with the USA.

At the same time, these very people will be counting their money saying, how much did we earn? I believe that at the age of Donald Trump, they have to keep Israel satisfied too. But I dont believe that there is going to be some serious disagreement or serious conflict between the two countries.

QAny thoughts on the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministers statements that it will act with Trump to contain Iran?

Saudi Arabia is one of the most unwise countries in their foreign policy. Whenever I read some news about Saudi Arabia it drives me mad. No one is supporting

their policy.



They also lost a lot of influence in the United States. I believe that in Trumps time the influence in the US will be less. It seems as if they are building relations but they are not doing well. Who will be the winner in this big circus? I believe unfortunately Iran ultimately will be the first power of the

Middle East.



QWhat message would you give as an artist and activist lobbying for freedom of expression?

I observe the society and the interactions between human beings - philosophically, politically

and instinctively.



This is my main source of inspiration. I provoke society to remind it to act and sometimes to react. I put activism in every single line, pixel or kilobyte. My main intention is to remind the value of freedom of expression as a fundamental rights for

human beings.



My art is my activism and my activism is my life.freedom of expression is my main profound motivation for creation and it is present when Im drawing, when Im making a video art or delivering an artists speech. My name is known as an engaged activist and cartoonist by dozens of interviews with international media and journals, but my goal is to show the art of cartooning as a very powerful contemporary art.
In the aftermath of the World War 11, agitation for political reforms and independence began to gather momentum. However the British government insisted that three quarters of the population should support the demand for independence to ensure that the rights of minorities were protected. With the Sinhalese community as a whole constituting less than three quarters of the population, this was an impossible demand to fulfil unless the minorities supported it.

Crucial Muslim support facilitated the process of Sri Lanka gaining independence from the British in 1948 and helped end almost four and half centuries of European colonial rule in the island.



Many still remember the leading role played by Muslim leaders such as Dr. T.B. Jayah, Sir Razik Fareed, Dr. M.C.M. Kaleel and Dr. Badi-ud-din Mahmud in the constitutional reforms of this country and their enthusiastic support for the demand of the Dominion Status and independence. They never obstructed the political progress of the country.



For example when the demand for independence began gathering momentum, World War 11 broke out in Europe. The British government urged all its colonies to support them assuring that they would be given independence after the war.



In the aftermath of the World War 11, agitation for political reforms and independence began to gather momentum. However the British government insisted that three quarters of the population should support the demand for independence to ensure that the rights of minorities were protected. With the Sinhalese community as a whole constituting less than three quarters of the population, this was an impossible demand to fulfil unless the minorities supported it.



Tamil Congress leader G.G. Ponnambalam demanded equal representation, better known as fifty fifty. However the Muslims stood fully behind the majority community and helped to meet the British demand for the support of two third of the population, despite past sufferings and disadvantages.

Addressing a gathering at the Zahira College grounds under the chairmanship of Sir Mohamed Macan Markar to protest against the inadequate representation of Muslims in the Legislative Council, Dr. Badi-ud-din Mahmud, the Secretary of the All Ceylon Muslim Political Conference said on 5 March 1939;



Let me assure my Sinhalese countrymen that I am one among them in demanding complete freedom for our country. They can count on me as one of the most ardent admirers of their legitimate national and cultural aspirations. In me and in my community, let them know that they find the most trusted friends and kind neighbours in this island. They would never find wanting in me or in my community that unflinching loyalty and patriotism that this little island would demand one day from its sons and daughters to carve out a niche of fame for itself as a self-respecting unit in a world federation. Let me also assure my Sinhalese friends that the brave community to which I belong shall never consider any sacrifice too great to make Lanka a happy, prosperous and glorious country in the world where not one section of its population but every son and daughter of her soil shall legitimately take pride in her glorious destiny.



In keeping with this policy the three Muslim representatives in the State Council extended their whole-hearted support for the Dominion Status Bill  a Sri Lankan bill sponsored by the late Mr.S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike when it came for the vote on 9 November 1945. T.B. Jayah and Dr. M.C.M. Kaleel spoke in favour of the bill while Sir Razik Fareed and Dr. Kaleel voted in favour as Jayah was not present during the time of voting.



During his speech Razik Fareed said; The All Ceylon Moors Association pledge their support to the resolution of the Hon. Leader under discussion today. Nothing else would at the moment give me great pleasure to do so, and to express my whole-hearted support to the Hon. leaders proposal. As my community and I have always stood by them, I must say that in the hour of his triumph we join hands with him in the forward march to the goal of the proposal to which he aspires



Supporting the Sri Lankan Bill despite its disadvantages to Muslims and defining the attitude of Muslims towards the bill, Mr.T.B. Jayah said: I am glad, Sir, that it has been stated that this is not the moment for jubilation or exultation or even for mutual recrimination. I certainly think that this is not the occasion to speak of the discomfiture of the minority communities or of the victory of the majority community.



As far as I am concerned, I speak with the full support of members of the Muslim community. I saw to it that the Ceylon Muslim League, representing the Muslim community of Ceylon, consulted Muslim representatives in different parts of the country on the important issues before the house and I am in a position to say that the Muslim members of this Council have the fullest backing of the Muslim community in this island.



When the Muslims of the Council decided to take a definite stand at the time the Sri Lanka Bill was introduced, they did so for one and one reason only. The reason was that where the political freedom of this country was involved, they were prepared to go to any length, even to the point of sacrificing advantages and benefit as a result of such action. As far as I am concerned, Sir, I do not consider any right greater than the right of political freedom and therefore, although I am fully conscious of those disadvantages of the Bill, looking at it from a narrow point of view, yet I am prepared to support this Bill.



Expressing his gratitude to the Muslim members on behalf of the Sinhalese community, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike assured that he would consider any reasonable request by the Muslim community. Bandaranaike said: I say that if any member has brought closer the achievement of agreement among the various sections of the people of the country by an attitude of generosity where even those with whom he is concerned to differ, I say the fullest credit must go more than to anyone else among us, to the Honorable nominated member, Mr. T.B. Jayah. He has made a speech today that will have a great effect in bringing unity among the people of this country in bringing some sense of reality to this struggle, however it may shape, that we are going to undertake to obtain a satisfactory measure of freedom..



What have the three members,T.B.Jayah, Dr. M.C.M. Kaleel and Razik Fareed, done? There is provided in the Bill, a Scheme of Representation under which the Muslim community in this country might suffer in the form in which it appears, but yet, he himself so sincerely determined to work for the main idea of freedom that he was prepared to vote for the principle embodied in the Bill.



But I can give the Hon. Nominated member, Mr. T.B.Jayah, this assurance on behalf of, I think, the vast majority, at least the Community that I represent, that in the struggle for freedom, whatever may or may not be the recommendation of the Soulbury Commission on our representation, he may rest assured that we will be quite prepared to consider any reasonable point of view that might be put forward.



Thus the Muslims provided the required support of a two-third majority of the population, paving the way for the islands independence on 4 February 1948 when Mr. D.S.Senanayake lowered the British flag and hoisted the Sri Lankan National Flag and declared the islands independence.



Muslims have lived in harmony with the Sinhalese and Tamils for centuries and they want to continue to do so. As stated by former Chief Justice Sarath N. Silva rightly that Muslims have been a peaceful ethnic group interacting with other religious and ethnic groups, cordially interlinking those cultures with their own culture. They never organized themselves for armed insurrection or destruction.



They were not party to the ethnic conflict. However their sufferings were immense.



What many conveniently forget is the crucial role played by the Muslims even in preserving the territorial integrity of the island. For example, during the early days, the Tamil militants call for a separate state had the full backing of India, and the islands armed forces were not equipped or trained, as they are today, to deal with them.



From the very inception, Muslims throughout the country vehemently opposed calls for the division of the country and firmly stood for territorial integrity and unity. Nevertheless, they were entangled in this unfortunate and unwanted ethnic conflict only to face death, devastation, loss of properties and livelihood and displacement with no appreciation. Around 130,000 Muslims driven out from Jaffna have been still languishing in refugee camps in appalling conditions and their plight has been nobodys business for more than 20 years.



Had the Muslims joined the Tamil militancy during its early stage the islands fate would have been sealed and the history would have projected a new political landscape. It is unfortunate that these sufferings and sacrifices have never been highlighted in their proper perspective. I am sure the Muslim community is prepared to take ten steps if the authorities take one step to take them into confidence to pave the way for cordiality and communal harmony.
By D. B. S. Jeyaraj

What was your first military operation? was a question posed to Veluppillai Prabhakaran in a media interview many years ago. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) leader replied  Alfred Durayappah. Prabhakaran was of course referring to the popular former Mayor and ex-MP Alfred Thangarajah Durayappah who was gunned down within the Jaffna peninsula on July 27, 1975. Prabhakaran and three others Kalapathy, Kirubakaran and Satkunam were responsible for the cold-blooded murder which took place opposite the Ponnaalai Varadarajaperumal temple.



An assassination of an unarmed civilian holding elected office is generally regarded as an act of terrorism and not as a military operation. But Prabhakaran claiming the murder of Durayappah as his first military operation is indicative of Prabhakarans twisted mindset which perceived an act of terrorism as a military operation. This may perhaps throw much light on the personality of the ruthless Tiger supremo whose organization was responsible for the murders of many political leaders from the Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim communities of Sri Lanka.



Starting with Jaffna Mayor Durayappah, Prabhakarans LTTE went on to assassinate numerous political leaders, including a former Indian Premier, a Sri Lankan President, a Sri Lankan ex- leader of the Opposition, Several Cabinet ministers, ex-chairmen of District Development Councils, Parliamentarians and ex -parliamentarians, leaders of rival Tamil militant organizations etc. Many analysts have pointed out that the prevailing crisis of a lack of strong political leadership within the Tamil polity is very much due to the effect caused by the spree of continuous political assassinations by the LTTE.



All this however came to an abrupt end in May 2009 when the LTTE was defeated militarily by the armed forces. The Tiger leadership was eliminated. Over 12,000 members of the LTTE who surrendered were detained and released in stages after undergoing a process of rehabilitation. The overseas structures of the Tigers remained intact, but were seriously undermined by the fall of the LTTE in Sri Lanka. The Diaspora Tigers though active abroad could do a very little damage in Sri Lanka as their capacity to engage in violence on Lankan soil had virtually ended.



Tamil National Alliance

The Tamil people living in Northern and Eastern Sri Lanka in general and their political parties in particular were the main beneficiaries of this changed state of affairs. The premier political configuration of the Sri Lankan Tamil people - the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) - emerged free of the eight-year period of political bondage and servitude suffered under the LTTE. The TNA re-invented itself to changed circumstances accordingly and began chartering its political course independently. The chief constituent of the TNA namely the Ilankai Thamil Arasuk Katchi (ITAK) asserted itself more boldly and began playing a more strident role in Tamil politics. The TNA established itself as the dominant political entity representing the Tamils of North - eastern Lanka by doing well at Parliamentary and Provincial Council polls. The TNA won 14 and 16 seats at the 2010 and 2015 Parliamentary elections respectively. The TNA got 11 seats at the 2012 Eastern PC poll and 30 seats at the 2013 Northern PC elections.



Though Tamil politicians would not acknowledge the fact openly, it was in reality the defeat and destruction of the LTTE by the armed forces that had caused this renaissance in the democratic political sphere of Sri Lankan Tamil politics. After many years of being under the Tiger yoke, the Tamil leaders were able to engage in democratic politics without fear. To adapt the Orwellian (George) phrase Big Brother is watching to Lankan Tamil politics Little Brother (Thamby) was not watching any more. The danger of democratic Tamil politicians facing death at the hands of the LTTE began diminishing. Assassination of Tamil politicians by the Tigers became a distant memory.



Definite plot to kill

This situation underwent a drastic change last month. After many years of comparative calm and safety, the spectre of moderate Tamil political leaders being assassinated by the LTTE was raised again. The possibility of a Tamil parliamentarian being assassinated by the LTTE on Sri Lankan soil became once again a shocking reality. A definite plot to kill TNA MP for Jaffna district and lawyer M. A. Sumanthiran by exploding a claymore mine on the Soranpatru-Thaalayady road known as B402 road on January 13, 2017 was uncovered by the Police Terrorism Investigation Department (TID). Sumanthiran accompanied by his wife was scheduled to travel along the road to participate at a seminar in Maruthankerni on that day (13). However, due to some private reason, he had cancelled the trip on the previous day. This unexpected cancellation unintentionally thwarted the diabolical designs of the would-be assassins.



Four suspects, all of them former members of the LTTE were arrested and produced at the Kilinochchi Courts on January 20. Police told courts that a claymore mine, detonators and stocks of Kerala Ganja (Marijuana) were discovered in their possession. It was also mentioned that there was a conspiracy to kill a political VIP. Sumanthirans name was not mentioned. The four suspects were charged separately for the alleged offences of possessing narcotics and dangerous explosives and for plotting to kill a political VIP. Three B reports were filed. None of the suspects were charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA). All four were remanded to fiscal custody till January 30. They were held at the Anuradhapura prisons. The assassination plot against Sumanthiran had not been reported in the media at this point of time.



Extensive details of the assassination were reported exclusively in Sri Lanka by this column in the Dailymirror of January 28, 2017.The Indian English Daily The Hindu also carried a news story by its Colombo correspondent. Subsequently other newspapers too picked up the story. So, when the matter was taken up again at the Kilinochchi courts on January 30, the news about Sumanthiran being the target of an assassination plot was well-known.



Three separate reports

Yet, the Police maintained its earlier stance on January 30 too with one change. One more person, Vijayan from Mannar had been arrested and charged. Now there were five suspects. The alleged offences were still the same. There were three separate reports on charges of narcotics possession, possession of dangerous explosives and plot to kill a political VIP. Sumanthirans name was not mentioned explicitly. Police also requested the court to sanction the sending of mobile telephones of the five suspects to Moratuwa University for further decryption and analysis. Two lawyers appeared on behalf of the suspects and requested that they be transferred to Jaffna prisons from Anuradhapura. All five were further remanded until February 13.



After remanding the suspects, Kilinochchi Magistrate and District Judge A. A. Anandarajah summoned the Police to his chambers. The Judge queried from TID officials the name of the targeted VIP. He was informed that it was M.A. Sumanthiran MP. Thereafter Judge Anandarajah inquired from the Police as to whether any other political VIP was also being targeted in this regard. The TID had replied that only Sumanthiran MP was the target. Then the Judge had asked as to why the Police was not naming Sumanthiran explicitly in their reports. The Police had said that they wanted to do that after the mobile phones were scrutinised at the Moratuwa University. Thereupon Judge Anandarajah had advised the Police to combine the three separate reports into one report and file it in courts the following day. He also instructed Police to include Sumanthiran MP as the target of the assassination plot in the report.



This was adhered to promptly by the Police who filed a fresh report B 85/2017 on January 31. In that report filed at the Kilinochchi Courts, TNA parliamentarian M. A. Sumanthiran was specifically mentioned as the intended target of the suspected assassination attempt planned for January 13, 2017. Five persons, Gnanasekaralingam Rajmathan from Trincomalee, Lewis Mariyampillai Ajanthan from Maruthankerni, Karalasingham Kulendran from Kilinochchi, Velayutham Vijayan from Mannar and Murugiah Thavaendran from Kilinochchi are the five suspects. The next hearing will be on February 13, 2017.



It has been the usual practice in matters like this to charge suspects under the PTA and conduct further investigations. This however is not being followed in this matter. This has led to former External Affairs Minister Prof. G.L.Peiris raising the issue. Prof. Peiris in a media interview has questioned the Govt as to why the suspects were not being charged under the PTA. According to authoritative sources, this is so because the Govt had already taken a policy decision to repeal the draconian PTA and replace it with more acceptable anti-terrorism legislation. The Govt had decided not to charge anyone under the PTA until it was replaced. As such, the Govt does not want to utilise the PTA in this respect and is trying to conduct further investigations into the case without resorting to the PTA. Since Sumanthiran MP himself has been critical of the PTA in the past, this Govts decision is expected to strike a responsive chord with the TNA parliamentarian notwithstanding the fact that he himself is the target in this case.



Safety and security

The decision not to invoke provisions of the PTA does not mean that the Govt is not concerned about the safety and security of Sumanthiran MP in particular and Tamil MPs in general. The post-war years have seen many futile attempts to revive the LTTE on Lankan soil. These attempts were strongly backed by LTTE and pro-LTTE elements in the Diaspora. Fortunately, these attempts were checked and foiled on time by vigilant Police and Security Forces. This has been the case in this instance also. The plot to kill Sumanthiran has been uncovered. The crucial difference in this attempt as opposed to the earlier ones is the fact that for the first time a clear conspiracy to assassinate a specific individual has been detected. There is nothing vague or ambiguous about the overseas LTTE-backed plot by ex-Tiger cadres to assassinate Sumanthiran on the Soranpatru- Thaalayady road.



Sumanthiran is resented by the extremists in the Tamil community. This is particularly so with the Tiger and pro-Tiger elements in the global Tamil Diaspora. He has been constantly attacked and vilified in media organs partial to or controlled by the LTTE. In early 2015, there was an orchestrated campaign against TNA leader R.Sampanthan and M.A.Sumanthiran amidst the overseas Tamils. Their effigies were burnt. I have focused on those attacks in detail in these columns written for in the Dailymirror then.



An excerpt from the article headlined Tamil extremists target Sampanthan and Sumanthiran which appeared in the

Dailymirror of February 28, 2015 describes the political role of Sumanthiran and why the Tamil extremists attack him. Here is the excerpt - These opposing sections are always on the look out to find fault and embarrass the TNA particularly its leadership. Sumanthiran is singled out specifically because he is the most articulate TNA parliamentarian.



He is widely accepted by Southern politicians nationally as well as leaders and officials internationally. Sumanthiran is the most trusted and able deputy of the octogenarian Sampanthan. In recent times, Sumanthiran has been playing a constructive role in Tamil political affairs. In a blend of public advocacy along with quiet diplomacy, the TNA national list MP has been rendering yeoman service to his community. In many instances, those who want to weaken Sampanthan use Sumanthiran as a target. The idea is to cripple Sampanthan politically by undermining Sumanthiran.



Sumanthirans political role

Sumanthirans political role has been appreciated and praised by many but it has also led to some resentment in certain circles within and outside the TNA. The green eyed devil has much to do in this regard. Among the TNA parliamentarians of today, Sumanthiran is the only MP who has had no interaction with any of the Tamil militant groups including the LTTE prior to his entering politics. Though born at the Mcleod Hospital in Inuvil, Jaffna, he grew up in Colombo and studied at Royal College. Sumanthiran was aloof from active politics, practising law in Colombo until invited by Sampanthan to join the TNA. He was appointed national list MP in 2010 by Sampanthan.



When I wrote this article in 2015, Sumanthiran was a national list MP. However in the 2015 August polls, he contested from the Jaffna district and was elected MP. The Diaspora Tigers spent huge sums of money to defeat him at the 2015 Elections but he had won handsomely. But the people backed by the overseas Tigers like Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam of TNPF and Suresh Premachandran of EPRLF lost badly. Thereafter the Tigers coordinated and conducted a campaign to abuse and humiliate Sumanthiran publicly at different places in Jaffna and in Western countries like Australia, Britain and Switzerland. The idea was to pressurize him into quitting politics. This too did not happen.



Sumanthiran has been playing a very positive role in bridging the gap among the ethnicities and striving to ensure the restoration of Tamil rights through democratic means. In recent times, he has been making a constructive contribution to the Constitution making process in his capacity as TNA member of the Constitutional Assembly Steering Committee and also as co-chair along with Dr. Jayampathy Wickramaratne of the Management Committee of the Secretariat for the Constitutional Assembly. It is widely acknowledged that the enactment of a progressive Constitution would be a significant achievement that could usher in true justice, equality and ethnic reconciliation. It is an incontrovertible fact that the LTTE elements overseas and pro-Tiger elements within Sri Lanka are extremely antagonistic towards Sumanthiran. Also troubling is the fact that he has been intensively vilified and derogated by pro-LTTE elements in Sri Lanka and abroad. Traitorization and character-assassination has been the usual LTTE practice before and after killing a person. This modus operandi was patently visible in the assassination of Dr. Neelan Tiruchchelvam.



Phenomenon of traitorization

I did write about this traitorization and elimination process extensively in an article titled Recurring Phenomenon of Traitorization in Tamil Nationalist Politics published in the Dailymirror of March 14, 2015. Here is an excerpt - Any Tamil, proposing conciliatory politics or supportive of co-operation with the Government will have the Damoclean sword of Traitorization hanging over them. In the present situation, comparatively moderate TNA leaders such as Sampanthan and Sumanthiran are also being labelled as traitors. Their portraits and effigies are being burnt. The latter is the favourite target of the LTTE elements. He is being vilified widely as a thurogi or traitor. As noted earlier, the practise in the past when the Tigers were riding high was to demonize someone as a traitor and then exterminate him.



Mercifully, this is no longer an option for the Tigers and their fellow travellers because of Mahinda Rajapaksa, who has bestowed a great gift upon the Tamils by destroying the LTTE militarily in Sri Lanka. In a post-Prabhakaran era, the course of action available is not assassination but character assassination. The idea is to kill without killing by portraying the targeted victim as a traitor. Unable to kill physically, the bloodthirsty fiends satisfy their lust by cremating portraits and effigies. However, there is the danger of this trend acquiring a destructive capacity if left unchecked or not contained now.



When I wrote the above stated lines nearly two years ago, I was confident that the overseas Tigers and/or their minions would not resort to killing or encourage assassinations in the current post-war situation in Sri Lanka. This is because anyone with a modicum of rationality and at least a tiny amount of concern for the well-being of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka would realise that a resumption or eruption of violence would be suicidally detrimental to the interests



of the community. But the LTTE and its fellow travellers are guided by the politics of irrationality and complete lack of concern for the Tamil people. The course of events that led to the humanitarian catastrophe of Mullivaaikkal and Nanthikkadal illustrate this. The idea is to kill without killing by portraying the targeted victim as a traitor. Unable to kill physically, the bloodthirsty fiends satisfy their lust by cremating portraits and effigies. However, there is the danger of this trend acquiring a destructive capacity if left unchecked or not contained now.

When I wrote the above stated lines nearly two years ago, I was confident that the overseas Tigers and/or their minions would not resort to killing or encourage assassinations in the current post-war situation in Sri Lanka. This is because anyone with a modicum of rationality and at least a tiny amount of concern for the well-being of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka would realise that a resumption or eruption of violence would be suicidally detrimental to the interests of the community. But the LTTE and its fellow travellers are guided by the politics of irrationality and complete lack of concern for the Tamil people. The course of events that led to the humanitarian catastrophe of Mullivaaikkal and Nanthikkadal illustrate this.



All changed utterly

It is against this backdrop that I warned in March 2015 that the effigy and portrait burning campaign against Sumanthiran could take a dangerous turn and acquire a more lethal and destructive capacity if unchecked or not brought under control. The fears expressed then have now come true. For the first time, after the war concluded, the authorities have detected a conspiracy and plan by Tigerish elements to assassinate a democratic Tamil Parliamentarian. Not only Sumanthiran but all democratic Tamil politicians striving to arrive at reconciliation and peaceful co-existence now face potential risk, This has transformed the political situation entirely. As Yeats wrote in his Easter 1916 All (has) changed, changed utterly.



The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe Govt is not unmindful of this changed scenario. After protracted discussions at the National Security Council meeting chaired by the President and at the intelligence services coordinating meeting chaired by Defence Secretary Karunasena Hettiarachchi, a new security arrangement has been formulated. Protection for leader of the Opposition R. Sampanthan and Jaffna district MP M.A. Sumanthiran will be provided by the Police Special Task Force (STF). In addition, all TNA parliamentarians and Provincial ministers will be provided enhanced Police security.

This applies even to Northern Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran who has been accused in recent times of playing footsie with the Diaspora Tigers. The enhanced security scheme came into force from the beginning of this week for Sampanthan and Sumanthiran. The Jaffna district MP who was targeted for death in Jaffna in mid - January undertook a two-day trip to the northern peninsula mid-week to appear for the defendants in a murder trial and also to attend some social and political events. Many people in Jaffna did not expect Sumanthiran to visit Jaffna so soon after the assassination plot was detected. Most of his supporters were pleasantly surprised to see the MP in Jaffna and expressed concern over his safety. Jaffna High Court Judge Manickavasagar Ilanchelliyan told Sumanthiran in court that he did not expect him to be in Jaffna so soon after the plot to kill him was known. He replied that he was committed to appear for the young students charged for murder. Judge Ilanchelliyan instructed that maximum security be provided to Sumanthiran within court precincts and the surrounding environment.



Vetri,Maran and Amuthan

While it is certainly a matter for satisfaction that five suspects have been apprehended and security has been intensified, the fact remains that the ex-LTTE cadres were actually being controlled by Tiger agents abroad. As stated in these columns last week, TID officials have discovered that three persons namely Vetri in Australia, Maran in France and Amuthan in Malaysia have been planning, financing and coordinating the activities of the five ex-Tigers in Sri Lanka. Lankan law enforcement authorities have alerted their counterparts in all three countries. Investigations have commenced and are continuing in France and Australia but Malaysian security circles have indicated that Amuthan is no longer in that country. Incidently the phone used by Amuthan to communicate to Northern Sri Lanka had a Brazilian SIM card.



Amuthan, Maran and Vetri may have been the puppeteers of the five ex-Tigers arrested in Sri Lanka, but this trio too is part of a larger Tiger overseas network. Sri Lankan security officials firmly believe that this network is led by the Tiger operative known as Nediyavan whose real name is Perinbanayagam Sivaparan. 40-year-old Nediyavan is from Sangarathai, Vaddukkoddai in Valigamam West, Jaffna. He bears the nom de guerre Nediyavan means tall man. Nediyavan had joined the LTTE in 1994 when he was 18. He was sent to Russia for higher studies by the LTTE and studied political science but apparently Sivaparan did not complete his degree in Moscow.

Interestingly the financial arrangements for Nediyavans studies in Russia were handled by Selvarasah Pathmanathan alias KP who took a personal interest in the youngster. KP who was in charge of overseas administration, fund raising and procurement before 2002, got someone in France to send money regularly to Nediyavan. Ironically, the very same Nediyavan turned against KP later.



Nediyavan functioned in the LTTEs political wing and accompanied former Tiger political commissar Suppiah Paramu Thamilselvan to some of the peace talks during 2002-2003. He was later transferred to the overseas LTTE administration section under Veeragathy Manivannan alias Castro. Nediyavan was in charge of Castros public relations unit and interacted with several overseas functionaries visiting the Vanni during the peace process. It was then that Nediyavan met his future wife Sivagowri Shanthamohan. She was a Norwegian citizen. Her fathers brother was Gnanendramohan alias Ranjan Lala. Gnanendramohan was one of the pioneering members of the LTTE and a trusted confidante of Prabhakaran. Ranjan Lala was shot in Jaffna by the Army when riding a motor cycle.



Sivaparan and Sivagowri

Many young, unmarried female Tiger supporters who visited the Vanni during the peace process found themselves unable to resist the five flower arrows of Manmathan or cupid when they interacted with young Tamil male Tiger militants. Sivaparan and Sivagowri fell in love. Prabhakaran who had been very fond of Ranjan Lala supported the union. After their marriage, Sivaparan went to Norway in 2006. The LTTE had been sending a number of operatives abroad over the years. These cadres belonged to different departments of the LTTE and began functioning as Tiger operatives in these new countries. Most of these cadres were from the political and intelligence wings.

Nediyavan took up residence in Norway. The matrimonial alliance with Sivagowri had strengthened Nediyavans clout within the LTTE. Castro used him to communicate with overseas operatives. Contact between the Vanni and Tigers abroad was under strain as the war escalated. So Castro appointed an international representative on his behalf. This person was to be in overall charge of the LTTE overseas branches. This was none other than Nediyavan.



KP, who at one time was in charge of overseas LTTE branches re-joined the LTTE and was appointed head of international relations in January 2009. He, with Prabhakarans approval, used this position to re-establish control of the overseas LTTE. This was resented by Castro. With Castros authority, Nediyavan spearheaded resistance to KP taking over as global Tiger chief. This resistance continued even after the LTTE leadership was destroyed in May 2009. While KP donned the leadership mantle on account of his seniority, Nediyavan and his loyalists opposed it. After KP was arrested in Malaysia and deported to Sri Lanka in August 2009, Nediyavan established greater control over the overseas LTTE structures.



Nediyavans network primarily consists of one-time LTTE branches and front organisations. With the LTTE being proscribed as a foreign terrorist organisation in most western nations many of the identified Tiger branches became dormant or transformed themselves into new entities. New fronts were also established. The Nediyavan group also established a network of elected organisations in different countries among the Tamil Diaspora. These organisations were called either Makkal Peravai or Thesiyap Peravai (Peoples or National Assemblies or Councils) in each country. While these functionaries try to project themselves as democratic political activists at one level, many of them at other levels are involved in shady activity. This is because these outfits are fundamentally LTTE branches pretending to be legitimate political formations.



The Nediyavan network

Thus the Nediyavan network, despite its pretensions to the contrary is not transparent or accountable. Its so-called democratic credentials leave much to be desired. Many of Nediyavans followers are not committed to non-violence. Moreover, the Nediyavan network is shrouded in secrecy and ambiguity with many activists having shady, controversial pasts. A few of the key office-bearers in different countries are members or ex-members of the LTTE and have had weapons training as well as battlefield experience. Political statements made by the Nediyavan group are released by the LTTE office calling itself the Anaithulaga Seyalagam (International Secretariat or office).



Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan authorities requested Norway to hand over Nediyavan to them some years ago. Oslo did not oblige but Norwegian officials interviewed Nediyavan and warned him that he should not engage in or promote violence while living on Norwegian soil. Thereafter Nediyavan relocated to a place about 240 km away from Oslo. He maintains a low profile and is generally inaccessible. However, it is believed that he continues to communicate verbally with key deputies through trusted couriers and issues instructions. It is suspected that a major decision, such as the ordering of an assassination would have been done by Nediyavan himself.



It appears that the Sri Lankan Govt is likely to make a formal request once again to Norway that Perinbanayagam Sivaparan, also known as Nediyavan should be handed over to them for further interrogation and possible penalization. Sri Lankas case seems to be stronger than earlier in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Sumanthiran. It remains to be seen as to whether Oslo would accede to Colombos request this time or not.

D.B.S.Jeyaraj can be reached at dbsjeyaraj@yahoo.com
Every edifice was a house of memories of those that were not there anymore. They built the new cities brick by brick, leaving their memories in cement as they moved on and out of these places.

In Dubai, artist duo Thukral and Tagra watched migrant labourers from India build these structures over months and thats how the idea for Memoir Bar, an interactive project at the India Art Fairs 2017 edition, found life.

As the art scene pushes its way into the collaborative space, the artists say this particular one is a public project where people themselves collaborate by writing their memories down on a piece of paper and then marking two of six colours based on emotion.

At the Memoir Bar. Photo courtesy: India Art Fair

The paper is then shredded and made into a tile with their names and put on a wall.

It is like a memory bank. Memory becomes an object. It is like solidifying the memory, they say.

Thats one of the art projects at the art fair that Delhi is hosting from February 2 through February 5. It has expanded to include galleries and artists from the South Asian region. It has found a new investor in the form of Swiss-based MCH Group, which is the owner of the powerful Art Basel franchise.

Founding director Neha Kirpal says the move signals the quest for fresh content in art and pitches the South Asian region as a strong player in the field of arts.

What started off as an art summit has a key role in terms of providing a platform to artists from the region.

A Tale of Two Cities. Photo courtesy: India Art Fair

The Kochi-Muziris Biennale that kicked off last month has already been hailed as one of the most interestingly curated biennales where much impetus was given to collaborative works where art forms merged.

Curated by artist Sudarshan Shetty, the biennale's first artist was to be Chilean poet Raul Zurita whose "Sea of Pain" was an ode to the Syrian refugees.

Zurita flooded seawater into an old warehouse at Aspinwall House and, at the end of the manmade sea, there was a poem written in the memory of Galip Kurdi, the brother of the drowned Syrian child refugee Aylan Kurdi.

We have a lot of collaborative projects like the Tale of Two cities, a travelling project based in two countries - India and Sri Lanka - where artists are engaged in a research-based art-making process, she says.

She travelled on a sacred route portraying the emotional journey of pilgrims. The mapped landscape wasnt a physical space but a parallel one of sacred routes, says artist Anoli Perara, describing her responses to Varanasi and Anuradhapura, both sacred sites of pilgrimage.

'No Man's Land' by Britto Arts Trust Photo courtesy: India Art Fair

About her visit to Varanasi, the Sri Lankan artist says she was confronted with the landscape that played out the spiritual and the secular side by side.

In her imagination, the ancient city had always existed within the realms of Buddhist history and was a name associated with Buddhas first sermon to his disciples.

But then as the 11 artists, who are part of this collaborative project, walked through the city, their responses were different.

Peraras work was about the maps of pilgrimage that arent physical entities but emotional landscapes.

In a way the two cities became the point of departure for us to discuss larger socio-political and cultural landscapes of both countries, Perara says.

A Tale of Two Cities was conceptualised by Renu Modi, founder of Gallery Espace, and supported by the Serendipity Arts Trust, and Theertha Artists Collective, which includes multiple works by each artist in the exhibition.

It is a mixture of mediums including painting, installation art, film, sculpture, textile, photography and digital art.

"Varanasi (India) and Anuradhapura (Sri Lanka) from the site, the stage, the place of artistic interpretation and intervention in this cross cultural artistic exchange... These are cities of ritual: sacred and secular, intrinsically interwoven into the life of the people that populate these complex geographies. They are sites of heritage, of myth, of history and memory that have acquired many meanings. Located in states of transit - much like the two cities that sit between the terrains of history and religion, sacredness and modernity, life and death, war and peace, violence and healing - the travelling artist becomes provocateur, sifting through versions of truths, signifying frames and the many ideological claims on the two cities, the catalogue reads.

All The Flowers Are For Me' by artist Anila Quayyum Agha. Photo courtesy: India Art Fair

Ruhanie Perera, a performer, performance-maker and lecturer working in Colombo says she was trying to build a conversation around sacred sites born out of a reflective process.

We were there in the present but also in the past. It was all about how we created little pockets of storytelling and each art work is a result of a long period of thinking and the pieces are conversations, she says.

The artists were taken to both the cities and asked to make art that resonated with their responses to the cities.

"In the different stages of my process, the visuals of the throne, crown and sword occurred to me - referencing the history of "protecting" Buddhism as a history of violence and war. They became a reminder of the power dynamics that frame the spiritual unknown," says Pala Pothupitye, another artist.

Untitled, a steel, textiles and light bulbs work by Chittrovanu Mazumdar. Photo courtesy: India Art Fair

Renu Modi, founder of gallery espace, Theertha Artists Collective and with programming by the Serendipity Arts Trust, says she first toyed with the idea in 2001 when she had done a similar project in Hardwar where she had asked artists to make works based on their responses to that city.

"Times changed, things changed and I wanted to cross boundaries. I have a fascination for the Ganges and it has been this affinity for the Ganges that made me do this project," she says. She remembers a particular boat ride in Varanasi with the artists in 2015 where she noted the responses of the artists to the city.

"Someone talked about the end of life, another spoke about the pilgrims," she says.

"A Tale of Two Cities is not just an art exhibition, it's about artists coming together and starting a conversation in response to their own country, and one another's. Between India and Sri Lanka there are a lot of similar and often interconnected cultural, religious and political issues. Each of the artists involved in this project have a distinct voice and aesthetic. They are each established in their own practice and known internationally. This project started as a series of conversations at Gallery Espace, and with the Theertha Artists Collective in Sri Lanka. The support of Serendipity Arts Trust was integral and has made it possible for us to build the archive material and take the travelling exhibition to venues across India and Sri Lanka."

Among the other artists, there is Chittrovanu Mazumdar, an artist of the darkness, whose River of Ideas, a large installation at the ongoing Kochi Muziris Biennale, was a windowless, black-painted hall that contained Mazumdar's work - electric blubs, hundreds of which are bunched together into amorphous shapes - to emphasise that darkness is not a negative space, but a context to light.

Mazumdar will be showing at the art fair after a gap of four years.

"This is a kind of progression from Kochi," he says about his project. "There are heavy metal boxes, which are kind of little narratives and the emphasis is on the ephemeral, on the passing moments. It is all in the moment, he says.

"We need darkness. If there would be no darkness, there would be no shadow. Without space in between words, without the silence, there would no note, no meaning. Darkness and light work together in tandem."

The artist, who lives in Paris and India, conceives his art in a small village in Jharkhand where he lives in a remote place and where light assumes a different meaning given the place had no electricity for many years and that's how he saw the starry nights and the hurricane-candle lit evenings and darkness became the incubator for his work.
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A bill aimed at getting more defendants to pay fees, fines and restitution could wind up costing Cumberland County far more than what could be collected.

House Bill 280, introduced by Rep. Sheryl Delozier, R-New Cumberland, would allow courts to keep any money placed as bail to pay for fees, fines and restitution if the defendant is convicted or pleads guilty.

While the bill takes aim at dealing with a growing collection problem, it disincentivizes the posting of cash bail by defendants or, especially, their friends and relatives because some or all of that money would not be recouped if they are convicted. That could extend their stay in jail and increase costs for the county.

In effect, the potential expense outweighs the potential money collected.

This little bill probably doesnt seem like a big deal, or on its face even sound like a good idea, said Cherise Fanno Burdeen, CEO of the Pretrial Justice Institute. You know, they say theres no such thing as a free lunch.

The Pretrial Justice Institute is an advocacy organization that looks to advance safe, fair and effective pretrial practices.

The bill

Deloziers bill would require money put up by the defendant to be forfeited and would allow courts to keep any cash posted for the defendant by a third party, such as a friend or family member.

Most monetary bail is posted through bail bonds and not in cash, and most cash payments are made by people other than the defendant, according to court records.

Who benefits and who would be harmed? Burdeen said. ... Case-processing suffers and people who would put up money for their family or friends may be less likely to do so because they may not get it back now.

If the bill has the effect of increasing the amount of time defendants remain in prison for only a few days, the incarceration costs would likely exceed the amount the county could recoup.

That money could then be used to pay court imposed fees, fines and restitution.

If they have the $10,000 to have their freedom, but dont have the money to pay the victim when they are found guilty, I dont think thats a fair balance, Delozier said.

Current rules allow bail to be forfeited if it was posted in cash by the defendant.

Using bail funds to pay for unrelated court debts is a counterproductive policy, said Larry Schwartztol, executive director of the Criminal Justice Policy Program at Harvard Law School. For one thing, it undercuts the whole logic of money bail. The justification for money bail is that it incentivizes people facing criminal charges to show up for court by requiring them to forfeit the bail payments if they fail to appear. A policy that results in forfeiture of bail funds even when people do appear would eliminate any incentive effect.

More fundamentally, the pretrial process should not be a tool of debt-collection, he added. People facing criminal charges are presumed innocent, and should be detained before trial under only very limited circumstances.

The numbers

An analysis of court records conducted by The Sentinel found that out of more than 4,000 cases started in Cumberland County in 2015, only 19 met the requirements under Deloziers bill and only one of those defendants posted bail for themselves.

The total amount that could have been recouped through the bill was slightly less than $18,000, according to the analysis.

For context, roughly $52 million is outstanding for court-imposed fines, fees and restitution for cases dating back to the 1960s, according to Cumberland Countys second deputy controller Mike Clapsadl.

The median time between when bail was posted and the case was disposed of for these 19 cases was 126 days, according to court records.

The county estimates it costs $67.25 per inmate per day, according to Dana Best, director of finance for Cumberland County.

At that rate, and assuming cases get disposed of in half that time if the defendant remains in jail, Deloziers bill would have cost the county nearly $64,000 in 2015 alone.

Between 2014 and 2015, 52 cases in Cumberland County would have met the requirement of Deloziers bill. Bail was set at $100 or less in 25 of those cases. The countys cost to incarcerate the other 27 cases up to 30 days extra would have been $46,500, according to court records.

Under Deloziers proposal, the county could have recouped $28,700 through bail forfeiture, leaving a net loss of about $18,000.

The bill also comes at a time when Cumberland County has already seen a large growth in its prison population.

On May 27, 2016, the county housed 387 inmates. That number now sits consistently above 400 inmates, and on Friday more than 440 people were being held in Cumberland County Prison.

Delozier refuted the assertion that her bill would make individuals more hesitant to post bail for others, saying other states have similar legislation, and third parties who post bail already risk losing their money if the defendant does not appear in court as directed.

They are willing to give up the money if (the defendant) runs, so there is already a risk, Delozier said.

In general, bail is meant as a way to ensure a defendant appears as directed.

The money is generally held by the courts and returned at the end of a case.

Delozier said defendants also have other options of posting bail, including going through a bail bondman.

Bail posted in the form of a bail bond is not covered by the bill.

Rep. Stephen Bloom, R-North Middleton Township, originally was a cosponsor of Deloziers bill. He has since withdrawn his support after being presented with The Sentinels findings.

The bill is well-intentioned, and I may continue to support it if it reaches the full House for consideration, Bloom said. By that time we would have a completed fiscal analysis and ample opportunities, if necessary, to amend the bill to make sure there are no unforeseen local fiscal impacts. In the meantime, based on preliminary local data brought to my attention, I felt it was wiser not to remain as a formal co-sponsor.

Similar legislation introduced by Delozier last legislative session cleared the House and was awaiting a Senate vote at the end of the session.

The bill is one of several pieces of legislation that arose from the 2013 Restitution in Pennsylvania Task Force Final Report.

However, the tasks forces recommendation strictly focused on money posted by the defendant and not third parties.

The House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday.

Pennsylvania, like many states, has begun examining the use of money bail for pretrial release with a focus on the elimination of the money system.

The sweeping pretrial justice improvement movement that is happening across the country is singularly focused on replacing any cash bail system, Burdeen said. The goal is to replace that cash bail system with risk assessment and supervision.

Having bills that impact the administration of money bail are almost in my mind like talking about making rotary phones spin faster, she said. Why spend energy and effort on essentially an outdated system that should really be the focus of replacement?
USANA Health Sciences, Inc. develops, manufactures, and sells science-based nutritional and personal care products. The company offers USANA nutritional products that comprise essentials/CellSentials, such as vitamin and mineral supplements that provide a foundation of total body nutrition for various age groups; optimizers comprising targeted supplements that are designed to meet cardiovascular, skeletal/structural, and digestive health needs; and foods that include meal replacement shakes, snack bars, and other related products. It also provides Celavive, a skin care regimen for various skin care types and ethnicities; and other products for prenatal, infant, and young child age groups. In addition, the company offers materials and online tools to assist associates in building their businesses, as well as in marketing products. It offers its products directly in the Asia Pacific, the Americas, and Europe, as well as online. The company has a research collaboration agreement with Beijing University of Chinese Medicine for research in the field of traditional Chinese medicine; and National Sports Training Bureau. USANA Health Sciences, Inc. was founded in 1992 and is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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.
Investigators found evidence of cadet cheating, instructor misconduct and training and testing shortcomings at the Pennsylvania State Police Academy, the state inspector general said in a report released Friday, a year after the scandal first became public knowledge.

The 47-page inspector generals report on the probe suggested that the exchange of answer codes, test notes or other forms of advanced test answers was widespread in the class being investigated, as well as in prior cadet classes.

In some cases, instructors and troopers provided those materials to cadets, some of the cadets in the 144th class told investigators. Test content did not often change, even for years, and the academy seemed to lack any guidelines that prohibited troopers and instructors from providing direct answers to cadets in advance. It also seemed to lack a manual for instructors.

Several cadets told investigators that during test review sessions, instructors provided actual or direct test answers for upcoming Traffic Law, Taser, and Emergency Medical Response examinations, the report said.

One cadet told investigators that instructors held test review sessions in which the questions they asked would match exam questions.

It got to the point we didnt need to study, we knew that we would be given what we needed to know, a cadet told investigators, according to the report. Another cadet said that senior cadets in the prior class had told them, this is how it would be.

In one case, an investigator, using only a study guide, passed an emergency medical response test.

The report said the state police began an internal investigation after an academy staff member found a folded, handwritten piece of paper in a hallway that was determined to be a cheat sheet containing 20 answers on a traffic law test.

The state police disclosed their investigation last February and requested the inspector generals investigation. Cadets are subject to a battery of written tests during the more than six months of training. Dozens from the 144th class were dismissed or resigned. With about 6,000 uniformed and civilian personnel, the Pennsylvania State Police is one of the nations largest law enforcement agencies.

In its response, the state police said they were awaiting final approval from Gov. Tom Wolfs administration to institute a software program that could create unique tests for cadet classes. It also said it had written a new academy policy on the exchange of information.
After 18 interviews, the Carlisle Borough Councils Employee Relations/Citizen Participation Committee recommended four individuals to serve on the Human Relations Commission.

The recommendations were made during councils workshop meeting Wednesday.

Pending approval at councils Feb. 9 meeting to be held at 7 p.m. at borough hall, the members of the commission will be McKenzie Clark, Safronia Perry, James Hamblin and Nancy Gregor.

I believe the candidates we are recommending all possess the qualifications and skills that will fit the new Human Relations Commission, said councilman Sean Crampsie in an email following the meeting.

Clark has been nominated to serve a one-year term on the commission. He is an associate attorney at Martson Law Office, a firm with a great deal of experience in mediation and dispute resolution, said Councilman Sean Shultz as he made the recommendation.

Perry, the assistant executive director of Hope Station, has been nominated to serve a two-year term. Perry has also served with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, which brings experience to the board, Crampsie said.

Hamblin was nominated to serve a three-year term. He is a math professor at Shippensburg University with experience on the schools student judicial board. Crampsie said he stood out during the interview process because he talked about the need to gain public trust in the commission and to assure it that the commission is not engaged in witch hunts.

Gregor is a trained mediator who has served as counsel for the Johns Hopkins Medical System, Shultz said. She was nominated to serve a four-year term on the commission.

We are lucky to have two attorneys and two members with board experience. We believe these four candidates will work well together to get the commission up and running and also to fairly process claims and make the best decisions in accordance with the ordinance, Crampsie said.

The human relations commission was formed as a result of the non-discrimination ordinance passed by the borough last December. The commission members, who all serve on a volunteer basis, receive complaints and facilitate mediation between parties involved in a potential act of discrimination.

The ordinance and HRC go into effect March 1. The ordinance makes it unlawful for anyone to engage in discrimination related to employment, housing and commercial property or any public accommodation where it is not currently prohibited by other state or federal laws.

Pennsylvanias Human Relations Act  which the ordinance largely mirrors  currently provides these protections, including protection from discrimination at public accommodations, to all classes of people except sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

Carlisles ordinance expands protection to those three groups.
125 Years of Progress takes you inside The Daily Progress' archives every day in celebration of our 125 years serving Charlottesville and the rest of Central Virginia. Sponsored by Hanckel-Citizens Insurance Charlottesville

At 11:15 a.m. on Feb. 3, 1924, the 28th President of the United States and a Staunton native, Woodrow Wilson quietly passed away due to complications of a stroke that hit days earlier and a four-year battle with heart disease. The two-term president, who had also served as governor of New Jersey, president of Princeton University and alumni of the University of Virginia, was perhaps best known for his formation of the League of Nations, for which he was awarded the 1919 Nobel Peace Prize.

The Daily Progress issued a rare extra edition this date announcing Wilsons death. The newspaper was not printed on Sundays and it is likely that once the news arrived by telegraph, or ticker as it was known, an edition was hastily assembled and sold directly on the streets. The three editions prior to this date had included updates on the presidents declining condition, allowing writers to assemble the full-page detailed biography of Wilson. The story reported: More and more feebler became the pulse beat; there was a quickening of breath; little by little death was completing its conquest. A quick flutter of eyelids, a faint twitch almost like a smile across the wasted features and the spirit of the great war President had burst out at last the long weakening fetters that bound it to earth.

The editions that followed Wilsons death were filled with tributes and memorial services from local churches, the American Legion and the University of Virginia. The pages also chronicled speculation as to the presidents final resting place. Virginia Gov. Elbert Lee Trinkle and Richmond Mayor George Ainslie offered Hollywood Cemeterys Presidents Circle where he would join presidents James Monroe and John Tyler, and there was talk of interring the former president at Arlington National Cemetery. His widow, Edith Bolling Wilson, made the final decision, calling for a simple funeral, without the marshalling of troops or parade, and without the traditional setting of lines (or Lying in State). Wilson was buried in a sarcophagus at the National Cathedral and is the only president buried in the Nations Capital.
The offices of U.S. Sens. Bob Casey and Pat Toomey have been flooded with phone calls in the past few weeks, so much so, that many calls from constituents are going unanswered. Voicemail boxes are full. Other calls wont even connect.

Sometimes Im making 30 calls a day. Yesterday, I tried every single number three times, said Kate Kucharski of Dauphin County.

Kucharskis been trying to reach Toomeys office to express her concern over the nomination of Betsy DeVos as education secretary. She estimates she and a group of friends have made about 1,000 phone calls in the last week. Only about a handful were received.

Reached through a media line, Toomeys office told ABC27:

Sen. Toomeys staff in both Pennsylvania and Washington are taking an all-hands-on-deck approach in answering as many calls as possible while also attending to other responsibilities, such as helping veterans, seniors, and attending to legislative concerns. Voicemail accounts are being emptied regularly, but with call volume as heavy as it is, mailboxes do fill quickly.

Caseys office took to social media to post a video of the senator answering phones himself. His office said communication via phone calls, letters and emails increased 900 percent last week over the same period last year. Social media engagement is up 2,000 percent.

ABC27 tested how long it would take to reach one of their offices. We had no luck reaching either of Toomeys offices through publicly listed numbers and could only leave a voicemail on Caseys Harrisburg office number.

Kucharski says shell keep calling and trying to look on the bright side.

It is frustrating to get a busy signal or having voicemail boxes full, but at the same time, I know our voices are being heard, she said.
Cabinet approves Introduction of The Indian Institutes of Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2017

Published: February 2, 2017

The Union Cabinet has given its approval for introduction of The Indian Institutes of Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2017 in Parliament.

The amendment Bill has provision for the inclusion of Indian Institute of Information Technology Design and Manufacturing (IIITDM), Kurnool along with the other IITs in the Principal Act. With this, IIITDM Kurnool will become fifth Member as a Centrally Funded IIIT.

Key Facts

IITDM Kurnool inclusions will make it an institute of National Importance with the power to award degrees to students. Its academic session had commenced in two branches of study in 2015-16.

The expenditure for the operationalization of IITDM Kurnool is incurred from the Plan funds of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Background

The Indian Institutes of Information Technology Act, 2014 confers the status of Institutions of National Importance on the IIITs. It deals with matters connected with administering these IIITs. The Andhra Pradesh as embodied in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Act, 2014 had embodied creation of a new NIT at Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh. Subsequently, Government had approved its creation. Due to addition of a new IIIT, amendment has to be made in the IIIT Act, 2014.

Month: Current Affairs - February, 2017

Topics: Cabinet  Current Affairs - 2017  Education  IIIT  IIITDM  National

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This calendar, published every Saturday, lists special events of a religious nature. Because of space constraints, notices about regular worship services cannot be included. Items intended for publication, including an address and phone number, should be faxed to (434) 978-7252; mailed to Worship Calendar, The Daily Progress, P.O. Box 9030, Charlottesville, VA 22906; or emailed to ewood@dailyprogress.com. Material must be received by 4 p.m. the Wednesday prior to publication.
Members of the Charlottesville Police Department are gearing up to jump into the icy Atlantic Ocean for the 25th annual Polar Plunge in support of Special Olympics Virginia.

So far, 12 fearless crime fighters have raised $2,356 for a chance to hop into the frigid ocean at Virginia Beach on Saturday and help out more than 27,000 athletes through Special Olympics Virginia.

Team CVille PD hopes to raise $10,000. Cash or check donations can be dropped off or mailed to the Charlottesville Police Department, care of Lt. Steve Knick, 606 E. Market St., Charlottesville, VA 22902.

For more information, visit polarplunge.com.
A federal judge is still mulling over a request to dismiss a lawsuit filed against the commissioner of the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles for executing an unconstitutional statute that unfairly punishes the poor.

That was the language used in the July lawsuit, filed by attorneys from the Legal Aid Justice Center and the University of Virginia School of Law, challenging the states policy of automatically suspending the drivers licenses of people who are unable to pay their court fees and fines.

According to the class action suit, the statute puts poorer individuals into a legal Catch-22 by taking away their ability to drive to work, thus paradoxically inhibiting their ability to repay the court costs that led to their licenses originally being suspended. The statute is unconstitutional, the plaintiffs argue, because the automatic suspension penalizes people for their inability, rather than their unwillingness or inattentiveness, to pay the costs.

You cant punish poverty, said Angela Ciolfi, the litigation director in the case, back in December.

Attorneys for DMV Commissioner Richard D. Holcomb have moved to have the suit thrown out for a variety of reasons, all of which were discussed in a hearing before Judge Norman K. Moon in Charlottesvilles federal courthouse on Thursday.

Arguing for the DMV, attorney Margaret OShea noted that on Wednesday, a ruling from the Virginia Supreme Court that would resolve the central claims of the lawsuit went into effect. Rule 1:24, ordered by the court in November, mandates that each court in Virginia must offer defendants who cannot pay their court costs the opportunity to enter into some form of a payment plan tailored to their situation.

While court clerks around the state should be given time to see if the new ruling alleviates the issues highlighted in the lawsuit, the lawsuit itself fails substantively, OShea said, because courts already offer opportunities for defendants to enter into alternative payment plans.

On top of that, OShea said, the plaintiffs are suing the wrong party, because the DMV is only charged with carrying out the suspensions at the behest of the state courts thatissue them. A proper claim would go against the courts themselves at a state level, she argued, because they are the ones who actually instigate the suspension, which is only executed through an automated algorithm from the DMV.

This is not the right vehicle for this claim, OShea said.

Ciolfi and her colleagues have challenged that argument, stating that while Holcomb and the department do not have discretionary authority in the matter, their role in executing the statute makes them the party to file a complaint against.

In their own arguments, attorney Jonathan Blank advised Moon that there are more than 900,000 people in Virginia with suspended licenses, nearly 650,000 of which are only for non-payment of court costs. The recently enacted Rule 1:24 would not provide relief for those individuals who are still waiting to have their licenses reinstated. On top of that, the rule does not alter the fundamental flaw in the statute, in that it doesnt provide notice of an alleged default before a suspension is issued, nor does it take time to determine whether the default was intentional or the result of an inability to pay, Ciolfi has said.

Plus, Ciolfi said in court on Thursday, the conditions of the alternative payment plans that are offered can be tough to abide by. She noted that the plans often entail a large down payment, and missing just one payment can result in an automatic suspension, regardless of the reason behind it.

Nonetheless, OShea concluded that while the splashy lawsuit was well-intentioned  in that it tries to right a wrong  it was brought to the federal level improperly.

Moon is now reviewing the arguments and will decide whether the case should go forward in the coming weeks. A weeklong trial in the case is scheduled for Dec. 11.
University of Virginia officials talked about affordability in higher education at a non-voting work session at Morven Farm on Thursday.

The UVa Board of Visitors heard from a venture capital investor who argued that higher education as a whole will shift away from the four-year degree and more toward fragmented, technical credentials satisfying the needs of employers.

Ryan Craig, who heads University Ventures, prefaced his presentation by saying that the top-rated institutions, like UVa, would be insulated from these changes. But the ripple effect on all of higher education will eventually have an impact on UVa.

Craig said the four-year degree is becoming too expensive for most students. In the next few decades, the market will move toward a new model, he said.

Were beginning to see the emergence of different and better value propositions, he said.

Although degrees from elite liberal arts institutions like UVa will remain valuable, more students who would normally go to lower- and middle-tier schools will opt for cheaper options.

Craig envisions an unbundling of education after high school, with many students taking individual training courses that teach employment skills  computer programming, for example  instead of taking on the expense of a four-year degree.

Middle- and lower-tier schools will have to meet this need; UVa and other top institutions may be less affected but will likely have to make changes, as well, Craig said.

This could provide a boon for employers  many of whom believe colleges do a poor job of preparing graduates for the workplace  but hurt universities, he said.

Were going to see a real improvement in productivity and economic growth, he said, but universities may get sideswiped in the process.

In a discussion following Craigs speech, UVa officials  along with education reform advocate Ted Dintersmith  pondered how the university could adapt without giving up its tradition as a four-year liberal arts college.

The changing market will probably weaken middle-tier institutions while making degrees from the top universities more valuable, said Michael Lenox, chief strategy officer of the Darden School of Business.

Universities will be faced with the choice between rebranding as more technical, career training schools (which he called the Toyota option) and striving to become elite four-year institutions, Lenox said.

UVa, already one of the top-ranked public institutions, should stick to what it does best.

Wed better play the high-end elite game, because if we choose the Toyota option, its just going to be folly for us, he said.

Dr. L.D. Britt, a member of the board, said he doesnt like Craigs model  which he compared to the merit badge system used by the Boy Scouts  and said he doesnt believe it will apply to institutions in the top tier.

Were not Eagle Scouts, Britt said.

Craig said UVa could lose out to competitors that are more forward-thinking. Stanford University, for example, is looking to change its format by 2025, allowing students to temporarily put their education on hold if they get a job before they graduate, and then later pick up where they left off.

Youre going to lose some good students to those competitors because thats what students want, Craig said.

Dintersmith agreed that the focus needs to be less on traditional academics and more on preparing students for employment. But technical skills will be less important than the intangible skills, he said, especially as improving technology replaces many jobs.

I would say the only jobs that are safe for any kid are the ones they can create or invent, he said. So I would ask whether colleges are preparing them to create and invent rather than jumping through hoops.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Friday to reconsider regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis to rein in Wall Street, according to a White House spokeswoman.

The move addressed another one of Trump's campaign promises: dismantling 2010's financial overhaul legislation, known as Dodd-Frank. The legislation forced banks to take various steps to prevent another financial crisis, including holding more capital and taking yearly "stress tests" to prove they could withstand economic turbulence. The financial industry, particularly its small community banks, complained the rules went too far.

"We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank," Trump said during a meeting with business leaders Friday morning. "Because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine, that had nice businesses, they just can't borrow money . . . because the banks just won't let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank."

Trump also signed a separate presidential memorandum to delay the Labor Department's rules that would require financial professionals to put their clients' interests ahead of their own. The "fiduciary rule," scheduled to go into effect in April, has long been a target of Republicans, including close Trump Wall Street ally Anthony Scaramucci, who call it burdensome and costly.

The Labor Department should consider whether it could harm investors or disrupt the retirement services industry, Trump's memorandum said, according to a White House spokesman. The order comes as the fate of the rule is also being weighed in the courts. A decision on a lawsuit from major business groups challenging the rule, including the Chamber of Commerce, could come any day now.

These efforts are sure to anger Democrats in Congress and progressive groups who argue Wall Street needs more oversight - not less. It will also bolster critics who say Trump, despite promising during the campaign to "drain the swamp," has become cozy with Wall Street since the election. Trump has tapped several Goldman Sachs alumni for key positions in his administration, and his strategic and policy panel is led by Stephen A. Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone, a massive investment firm.

Trump's order does not mention Dodd-Frank but directs the Treasury secretary to report back in 120 days on what rules promote or inhibit the administration's priorities.

During his morning meeting with several high-profile CEOs, Trump noted that there were several bankers in the room, including Larry Fink, chief executive of the massive investment firm Blackrock. "Larry's got a lot of my money and I have to tell you, he got me great returns," Trump said to laughs in the room. Later he noted that Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banks in the world, was also there. "There is nobody better to tell me about Dodd Frank than Jamie," Trump said motioning to Dimon across the table.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a member of the Banking Committee, quickly pounced on Trump's effort to roll back the fiduciary rule. "President Trump's action will make it harder for American savers to keep more of what they earn," Brown said in a statement.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted: "After literally standing next to Wall St CEOs, @realDonaldTrump made it easier for investment advisors to cheat you out of your savings."

Trump has said Dodd-Frank is a "disaster" and that he would do "a big number" on the legislation. But it is unclear exactly which provisions he is likely to curtail or kill. The law gave the government new authority to seize and wind down large, troubled financial firms, set up a regulatory council to monitor threats to the financial system and mandate oversight of the vast market for derivatives, the instruments that helped fuel the crisis.

Big banks, which have spent millions complying with the law, have called for a tweaking of the rules, rather than a complete overhaul. Adjusting to a new regulatory environment would be too costly, they say. But smaller banks are expected to push for more aggressive changes. They say they are too small to pose a threat to the financial system but still face extreme regulatory burdens.

"Many of the regulations created by Dodd-Frank would be difficult to eliminate without action from Congress, but there are a number of changes that regulators can make (especially on the enforcement of these rules) which could have a significant impact on the business models of banks and other financial services firms," Edward Mills, a policy analyst at investment bank FBR Capital Markets, said in a research report Friday morning.

The administration's efforts could also land on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created by Dodd-Frank. Republicans have been pushing for an overhaul of the way the agency is run, including calling for its director, Richard Cordray, to be fired. But Democrats say the independent agency has played an important role in cracking down on big banks and corporations accused of misleading consumers. They have stepped in to defend the agency and Cordray over the last few weeks.

Trump's actions are aimed at attacking "overregulation," Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, said in an interview with Fox Business Network. "We have to get the United States banking system working again."

"Today banks do not lend money to companies. Banks are forced to hoard money because they're forced to hoard capital and they can't take any risk. We need to get banks back in the lending business. That's our number one objective," Cohn said.

Cohn met with Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee Friday morning to discuss the effort. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the Financial Services Committee, is expected to unveil legislation soon to overhaul Dodd Frank.
India signs $201.50 million Financing Agreement with World Bank for TEQIP III

Published: February 3, 2017

The Union Government has singed Financing Agreement for IDA credit of $201.50 million with World Bank for the Third Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP III).

The agreement was signed by Raj Kumar, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs and Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Country Director, World Bank India.

Key Facts

The aim of the TEQIP III programme is to enhance quality and improve efficiency of the Engineering Education System.

The objective of agreement is to improve Engineering Education sector in 8 states viz. Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan and UT of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The project has been designed as a disbursement linked one to the effect that the loan will be handed over only on completion of certain fixed outcomes. The closing date of TEQIP III is March 31, 2022.

Background

The TEQIP was launched by the Government in 2003 with World Bank assistance as a long term programme for transformation of the Technical Education System. It was to be implemented in three phases.

TEQIP-I (first phase) commenced in 2003 and ended on March 31st, 2009. It covered 127 institutes across 13 States including 18 Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs).

TEQIP-II commenced in August 2010. It had covered 23 States/Union Territories (UTs) and 191 Institutes (including 26 CFTIs). It concluded in October, 2016.

Both phases of the programme had a positive impact on the infrastructure and educational standards in the technical institutions where they were taken up.

Month: Current Affairs - February, 2017

Topics: Chhattisgarh  Education  india-world bank  National

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RICHMOND  The U.S. government is seeking to put on hold a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration over how it treated detainees at Washington Dulles International Airport.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and the federal government have a signed agreement to resolve the petitioners' claims, according to a joint request they filed in federal court Wednesday, asking a judge to "hold claims in abeyance."

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema will hold a hearing in the case Friday morning in Alexandria.

On Tuesday, Virginia filed a motion asking to join the lawsuit in Virginia's Eastern District against the president - Aziz v. Trump - over his order last Friday restricting immigration and suspending admission of refugees.

The suit charges that on Saturday customs officials at the airport in Northern Virginia forced two brothers who were flying from Yemen - lawful permanent U.S. residents - to give up their green cards.

The new filing says the agreement may take several days to fully implement. The parties asked the court to put the case on hold so that they could "focus the effort on resolving this case without further litigation."

Earlier Wednesday, lawyers for the state filed another motion, seeking answers about whether customs officials at Dulles complied with a temporary restraining order that the judge issued Saturday night.

Her order barred for one week the removal from the U.S. of green card holders arriving at Dulles. It also required that lawful permanent residents who were detained at the airport have access to legal counsel.
RICHMOND  For the second year in a row, the Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill to establish stronger legal protections for religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage.

Ahead of Thursday's 57-37 vote, Republicans argued that Gov. Terry McAuliffe's recent executive order barring companies that discriminate against LGBT people from receiving state contracts has helped prove the point that people who oppose gay marriage need to be shielded from governmental retribution.

Democrats and LGBT advocates opposed the bill as discriminatory and unnecessary, and McAuliffe has promised to veto it if it also clears the Senate.

Del. Nicholas J. Freitas, R-Culpeper, suggested, without citing a concrete example, that McAuliffe's Jan. 5 order could threaten religious groups' ability to help refugees resettle in Virginia by barring Catholic groups from partnering with government agencies.

"This governor crossed a line," said Freitas, the bill's sponsor. "And we have to defend those religious organizations."

"I fail to see why we can't live and let live," said Del. Robert G. Marshall, R-Prince William. "But I guess the word 'tolerance' has taken on a new meaning now."

Last month, McAuliffe said Virginia "will not do business" with contractors that discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The order applied only to future contracts worth more than $10,000.

Freitas' bill, House Bill 2025, states that no minister, religious organization or organization operated in connection with a religious organization can be penalized by government  through unfavorable tax treatment or the loss of funding or contracts  for sticking to traditional beliefs on marriage.

Del. Vivian E. Watts, D-Fairfax, said she re-read the governor's executive order after Republicans raised it during the debate.

"The bill before us is an overreach," she said. "There is nothing that should alarm anyone in this statement of Virginia being open in its government operations."

McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said state agencies are developing policies to implement the governor's order, but it is not expected to impact religious groups currently working with the state.

"The governor's order protecting LGBT Virginians from discrimination is not justification for writing more discrimination into our laws," Coy said, adding that McAuliffe will "happily veto it" if it gets to his desk.
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Sometimes, the friend on Facebook Messenger is not actually a friend at all.

Such was the case for Nancy Lynch of Farmington.

On Wednesday, Lynch said she was pleased when there appeared to be a message from a high school classmate upon opening the social medias messaging service.

Im not on Messenger a lot, but I have a classmate from years ago who is the head of the engineering department at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, Lynch said. I had lost contact with him.

Lynch said the friend was off Facebook for a period of time after his account was hacked  but she noticed he began posting recently.

I noticed that I had somebody on Messenger, she said. I dont get on there very often, but here was his picture and he was saying how are you doing?

At that point, Lynch said, she shared with her friend what was going on in her life since he was last in the lower 48 states.

We exchanged, I thought, a conversation back and forth for nearly an hour, she said. I asked if he was retired, he said yes, Im retired.

It was when her friend asked if Lynch had received her fund yet that she began to wonder if the friend was joking with her.

I asked my husband if he had any idea what (the person) was talking about and he said, no, she remembers. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about.

The friend then told Lynch the Department of Human Relations had a list of people who were owed money  prompting the Farmington woman to write back asking if it was a joke of some kind.

He told me he got $100,000 delivered by FedEx, she said. And, he that he gave to some charities, paid off his house and paid some bills. Im taking this as lightly as possible and said I hope you tipped the driver really well.'"

The person went on to write instructing Lynch to visit a Facebook page or text a number to receive on how to claim her money.

I got on Facebook and there indeed was a page, she said. He wrote back and said he saw my name was on the list and thats why he was contacting me.

She again asked her friend if he was joking with her  to which he replied he was not.

He said, this is no joke. When are you going to text this number? she said. I told him, probably when hell freezes over (with a chuckle).'"

Out of curiosity, Lynch said she called the number.

I no more than hung-up (the phone) when they called me and texted me, she said. A woman introduced herself and said this was for people with disabilities, retirees and it was a random (event) with Mark Zuckerberg with Facebook and they just needed me to fill out a form.

The person on the other end of the line also asked if Lynch preferred her money as a check or cash.

Around that time, Lynch said her son arrived home and immediately noticed it to be a scam.

She told her son about how her friend from school was the one to tell her about it  at which time she decided to call the friend on the phone.

He had not been talking to me at all, she said. (Her friend) has now erased his Messenger  how scary is this?

Thankfully, Lynch did not fill out any form. She has not received any phone calls or strange emails since that time. She told her story on her Facebook page last night to warn others.

I dont have a lot of friends (on Facebook) like some people, she said. But the people that I did  I was in choir practice last night and Im finding out people are going through similar things like this. This one just really got me.

She says her communication with her friend will be by phone from now on.

"Nothing really alerted me so much," she said. "I even went so far to say, 'you know, Leroy, I've not known you for a lot of years and I have no idea what your sense of humor is, so I don't know whether you're serious or not.

"I expect to maybe have something come up on my email or something like that. I didn't expect it on Messenger. It seemed like a true conversation.

"I've been telling everybody that I know and I'm finding that this isn't all that unusual. I don't know what would have happened if I filled out (the form) ... I think it's something we're all aware and afraid of now.

"A friend wrote 'nothing is free' and you have to remember that. I did not think I would get $100,000 ... I kept thinking it was a joke. I consider myself very much in the know, but I never expected (a scam) to come up like a personal conversation and respond back and forth to specific questions."
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He has been cited by Rush Limbaugh, quoted in the New York Times, featured at Real Clear Politics and Lucianne.com and interviewed on radio, TV and in social media.





Inducted into the Philadelphia Public Relations Hall of Fame, for many years he served as a Lecturer in Corporate Communication at Penn State University. A former President of the Philadelphia Public Relations Association (PPRA) he has lectured at Rowan University, Temple University, The College of New Jersey and Arcadia University. He has conducted workshops on public relations for thousands of participants throughout the nation and has taught countless others the art of public speaking. He has also advised numerous lawyers, judges, public officials and political candidates.





Cirucci is a prolific writer and his op-ed pieces have appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Courier-Post and other publications.



A native of Camden NJ, Cirucci is a former President of the Philadelphia chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. Cirucci served as Associate Executive Director of the Philadelphia Bar Association for nearly 30 years. He served as Chair of Penn State University's Professional Advisory Board for the Corporate Communication major at Penn State Abington and on the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Judicial Selection Commission.



He received his MA degree from Rowan University and his BA from Villanova University. He has been named a Distinguished Alumnus of Rowan's public relations program and received the E. A. "Wally" Richter Leadership Award, the highest honor from the National Association of Bar Executives' Communications Section. He has also been honored by numerous other local, state and national groups.









Cirucci's passions include politics, the popular culture, books and authors, art, communication, music, theatre, movies, dining and travel. In his hometown of Camden, Cirucci taught fifth grade at the Ulysses Wiggins Elementary School named for the founder of the Camden NAACP. There he was one of the first teachers in the country to teach African-American history to inner city students. He later served as editor of a local weekly newspaper, as Assistant to the Township Manager of Cherry Hill Township and as Associate Director of Communications at the New Jersey State Bar Association.

He's Dan Cirucci, the founder and editor-in chief of the Dan Cirucci Blog, Matt Rooney's sidekick on Save Jersey's videocasts and one of the most widely honored public relations professionals in his field. He's also been a public relations consultant to numerous organizations and individuals and hosted The Advocates on RVN-TV.
A blog about life under, and resisting, a dictatorship
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The fourth generation Honda City, since its launch in January 2014, has sold 2.24 lakh units in the country.

New Delhi: Honda Cars India today commenced pre-bookings for the new version of its mid-sized sedan City which it plans to launch in the country on February 14. The company has started the pre-bookings of the new version of the popular model at all authorised Honda dealerships with a booking amount of Rs 21,000.

The new version of the sedan comes with a stylish new look and a host of new features including a new LED package, enhanced safety package and a AVN infotainment system, among others.

"The Honda City has been our most successful model ever since the start of operations in the country. It commands tremendous loyalty among customers and we are extremely excited to add another chapter to the success story of the model with the launch of the new Honda City 2017," Honda Cars India President and CEO, Yoichiro Ueno said in a statement.

Sharing details, Honda Cars India Senior Vice President Jnaneshwar Sen said the new version of the car with added features would be even more compelling package for a customer.

"Besides exterior and interior changes, we have also introduced additional safety features on the model," he said. The car would however, come with similar engine options -- 1.5 litre petrol and 1.5 litre diesel powertrains, as the previous edition.

First introduced in India in January 1998, the Honda City is among the most popular sedans in the country and has a cumulative customer base of over 6.5 lakh owners. The fourth generation Honda City, since its launch in January 2014, has sold 2.24 lakh units in the country.
New Delhi: Government plans to exit its holding in three PSUs  Bharat Pumps & Compressors, Bridge & Roof Co and Hindustan Fluorocarbons  by selling its stake to strategic buyers.

Besides, armed with the 2017-18 Budget proposal of merger and acquisitions between PSUs, the finance ministry wants to merge four PSUs  Hindustan Prefab, Engineering Projects (India) Ltd, HSCC (India) Ltd and National Projects Construction Corporation  with similarly-placed CPSEs.

The government intends to divest 100 per cent equity in Bharat Pumps & Compressors Ltd through strategic sale with transfer of management control.

The Cabinet, in September, had cleared the strategic sale of the Allahabad-based PSU, which is into manufacturing and supply of heavy-duty pumps, CNG gas cylinders required in petroleum exploration and refineries and the fertilisers and power sectors.

Further, the government intends to go in for strategic sale of 99.53 per cent equity and transfer of management control in Bridge & Roof Company, which is under the control of the Ministry of Heavy Industries.

The Miniratna PSU is operates in the engineering and construction sector.

The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) is scouting for investment bankers and legal advisors to carry forward the transactions.

Furthermore, the government plans to sell the entire 56.43 per cent shareholding of Hindustan Organic Chemicals Ltd (HOCL) in Hindustan Fluorocarbons (HFL) through strategic sale.

The Ministry of Chemicals and Fertiliser is looking for advisors for the strategic sale of HFL, which is engaged in the manufacturing of poly tetra fluoro ethylene and fluoro methane.

Besides strategic sale, the government intends to disinvest its entire shareholding in 4 PSUs by way of strategic disinvestment through merger with similarly placed CPSEs.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech had said there are opportunities to strengthen CPSEs through "consolidation, mergers and acquisitions" so that they can be integrated across the value chain of an industry.

"It will give them capacity to bear higher risk, avail economies of scale, take higher investment decisions and create more value for stakeholders," Jaitley said. The government has budgeted to raise Rs 15,000 crore through strategic sale of PSUs next fiscal.
New Delhi: Loss-making telecom PSU MTNL has been hit hard by debt and it is borrowing money to meet its day-to-day requirements, Union Minister Manoj Sinha said today.

"Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) is borrowing money to meet its day-to-day requirement," Sinha said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha. Total debt on MTNL reached Rs 19,418.23 crore at the end of December 31, 2016, from Rs 11,542.3 crore in 2012-13, according to the data shared by the minister.

The debt is over six times MTNL's annual revenue registered in 2015-16. "Due to debt burden and fund crunch, MTNL has gone slow in upgradation of equipment during last 4-5 years. One of the reasons for service quality is due to non-investment in access network of fixed lines," Sinha said. In 2015-16, MTNL reported total annual revenue of Rs 3,197.41 crore and net loss of Rs 2,005.72 crore.
Is Tata Motors eyeing to woo millennials in an entirely different way with its performance division TaMo?

With the introduction of every new product, Tata Motors has constantly been improving its design and engineering. The Tata Tiago and the Hexa are testaments to the same. However, Tata is now entering the affordable performance segment with the introduction of a dedicated performance division, TaMo.

TaMo  short for Tata Motors, will be the company's exclusive brand for cars catering to enthusiasts. While details about the brand TaMo will be out soon, rumours about a souped up Tata Tiago (Tiago Plus or Tiago Sport) have been rife for quite some time now, which may turn out to be the first car of the TaMo range.

The Tiago Plus is touted to draw power from Tiago's 1.2-litre Revotron petrol engine fitted with a turbocharger to produce output levels of over 100PS. And the mods aren't just going to go under the hood with Tata expected to stiffen the suspension setup and fit lightweight alloy wheels to go with the beefed up engine. A roof spoiler, all-around skirting and body graphics may distinguish it from its saner counterpart.

Currently, the VW Polo GT TSI is the best-selling hot hatch. Performance-wise, it's the Abarth Punto that wins hands down in the sub-Rs 10 lakh segment with 147PS on tap. However, competition is going to get stiffer as Maruti Suzuki will enter the performance space with the Baleno RS in February 2017.

With the entry of a Maruti Suzuki in the frame, it'll be interesting to see how things shape up as its extensive network and buyer confidence, which Volkswagen lacks, may turn out to be the real catalyst for this segment. For Tata, it's going to be a bold move, and it'll be interesting to see the company's strategy for brand TaMo going forward.

Source: CarDekho.com
New Delhi: Telecom regulator Trai has imposed over Rs 11 crore penalty on service providers, highest on Aircel, for poor service quality including call drops, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha informed the Rajya Sabha today.

"Trai imposes financial disincentives for non-compliance with the benchmarks for Quality of Service parameters including call drops," Sinha said. As per data shared by Sinha, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has imposed over Rs 3 crore penalty on Aircel for not meeting set quality parameters for 2G service and Rs 1.56 crore for poor 3G service quality.

Penalty of Rs 2.27 crore has been imposed on BSNL, Rs 1.64 crore on Reliance Communications (including Reliance Telecom), Rs 89 lakh on Tata Teleservices, Rs 84 lakh

Vodafone, Rs 40 lakh on Bharti Airtel, Rs 13.5 lakh on Telenor, Rs 3 lakh on Sistema and Rs 1.5 lakh on MTNL for failing to meet 2G service quality parameters.

Apart from Aircel, Trai has imposed Rs 70 lakh penalty on BSNL and Rs 2.5 lakh on Vodafone for breaching 3G service quality benchmark. Sinha said that Trai monitors the performance of service providers through quarterly performance monitoring reports and publishes the same on its website.

"From analysis of the quarterly performance monitoring reports of September 2015, December 2015, March 2016 and June 2016 available on Trai website, it has been noticed that there has been consistent improvement in the performance of service providers in meeting the benchmark for call drop parameters," Sinha said.

He said that telecom operators have reported that they have already installed more than 1,60,000 additional BTSs (Base Transceiver Stations) across the country during the six and half month period from June 15, 2016 to December 31, 2016 and further plan to install about 1.1 lakh additional BTSs across the country up to March 31, 2017.
Talking about the possibilities of Indians getting iPhones at much cheaper prices, Mr Kharge said, Logically speaking, the prices should go down but Im not quite sure about that because they (Apple) will end up paying high import taxes.

Bengaluru: Bengaluru added a new feather in its cap as Apple chose the city to set up its first manufacturing plant in India.

Apple has preferred Bengaluru because the city offers a very supportive ecosystem, which is a home to high-end technology, startups and many research and development centers, IT minister Priyank Kharge told this newspaper.

He added that Apple has purchased an old facility in Peenya, which it has expanded according to its needs.

The state will get substantial employment opportunities. The medium and small enterprises will get an opportunity to manufacture components as Apple looks forward to procure locally, said Kharge.

Talking about the possibilities of Indians getting iPhones at much cheaper prices, Mr Kharge said, Logically speaking, the prices should go down but Im not quite sure about that because they (Apple) will end up paying high import taxes. The company is expected to start its operations by June.

According to a statement, the Karnataka government has welcomed Apples proposal to begin initial manufacturing operations in the state. Apples intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru will foster cutting edge technology eco system and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally, it said.

The Apples representatives including Priya Balasubramaniam, VP iPhone operations, Ali Khanafer, head of government affairs, Dheeraj Chugh, director, iPhone operations, and Priyesh Povanna, country counsel held a meeting with officials and ministers of the state government to discuss about the initiatives in manufacturing and possible collaborations.
Karachi: Chinese companies are in talks to snap up more businesses and land in Pakistan after sealing two major deals in recent months, a sign of deepening ties after Beijing vowed to plough $57 billion into a new trade route across the South Asian nation.

A dozen executives from some of Pakistan's biggest firms told Reuters that Chinese companies were looking mainly at the cement, steel, energy and textile sectors, the backbone of Pakistan's $270 billion economy.

Analysts say the interest shows Chinese firms are using Beijing's "One Belt, One Road" project - a global trade network of which Pakistan is a key part - to help expand abroad at a time when growth has slowed at home.

A Chinese-led consortium recently took a strategic stake in the Pakistan Stock Exchange, and Shanghai Electric Power acquired one of Pakistan's biggest energy producers, K-Electric, for $1.8 billion.

"The Chinese have got deep pockets and they are looking for major investment in Pakistan," said Muhammad Ali Tabba, chief executive of two companies in the Yunus Brothers Group cement-to-chemicals conglomerate.

Tabba said Yunus Brothers, partnering with a Chinese company, lost out in the battle for K-Electric, but the group is eyeing up other joint ventures as part of a $2 billion expansion plan over the coming years.

Mohammad Zubair, Pakistan's privatisation minister until a few days ago, told Reuters China's steel giant Baosteel Group is in talks over a 30-year lease for state-run Pakistan Steel Mills. Baosteel did not respond to a request for comment.

The negotiations come as Pakistani business sentiment turns, with companies betting that Beijing's splurge on road, rail and energy infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will boost the economy.

The Chinese charge is in contrast to Western investors, who have largely avoided Pakistan in recent years despite fewer militant attacks and economic growth near 5 percent.

It is welcomed by many in Pakistan: foreign direct investment was $1.9 billion in 2015/2016, far below the 2007/2008 peak of $5.4 billion.

At the stock exchange signing ceremony, Sun Weidong, China's ambassador to Pakistan, said the deal "embodies the ongoing financial integration" between Chinese and Pakistani markets.

"This will facilitate more financial support for our enterprises," Sun said.

Reservations

CPEC will connect China's Western region with Pakistan's Arabian Sea port of Gwadar through a network of rail, road and pipeline projects.

That will be funded by loans from China, and much of the business will go to Chinese enterprises.

The scale of Chinese corporate interest beyond that is difficult to gauge, but in Karachi, Pakistan's financial centre, sharply-dressed Chinese appear to outnumber Westerners in hotels, restaurants and the city's airport.

Rising skyscrapers testify to a construction boom in the city, businesses are printing Chinese-language brochures and salaries demanded by Pakistanis who speak Chinese have shot up.

Miftah Ismail, chairman of Pakistan's Board of Investment, said Chinese companies were interested in investing in the telecoms and auto sectors, with FAW Group and Foton Motor Group planning to enter Pakistan.

FAW said the Pakistan "project is going through internal approvals", but did not offer more details. Foton declined to comment.

But not everyone is excited by China's growing role in the Pakistan economy, including trade unions, who said Chinese companies' alleged mistreatment of local workers in Africa in the past had alarmed them.

"We have concern and reservations that the Chinese might use the same methods in Pakistan," said Nasir Mansoor, deputy general secretary of National Trade Union Federation, Pakistan, the national trade union body.

The Chinese government and Chinese companies have dismissed such accusations in the past.

And doing business may not be easy for newcomers. Security remains a concern despite a drop in Islamist militant violence, and in the World Bank's ease of doing business index, Pakistan ranks 144 out of 190 countries.

Next phase

The Chinese interest comes as Islamabad and Beijing discuss the next phase of CPEC: how to build Pakistan's industry with the help of Chinese state-owned industrial giants.

Pakistani officials are drafting plans for special economic zones which would offer tax breaks and other benefits to Chinese businesses.

But even before zones are established, Chinese investors are scoping out land deals.

"A lot of companies ... don't care about CPEC. They just want 500 acres of land to set up shop," said Naheed Memon, head of the Sindh province's Board of Investment.

Faisal Aftab, manager of private investment firm Oxon Partners, said Oxon was in talks with two state-run Chinese companies and a wealthy Chinese businessman to purchase and develop land for high-end residential and commercial properties.

"They are seeking land in prime markets such as Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad," Aftab said.

Yunus Brothers' Tabba urged Western investors to overcome their "phobia" of Pakistan.

"If they came here, they would see the momentum, the buzz of growth."
India has signed "the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which also similarly facilitates exchange of information".

New Delhi: India has revised 40 treaties for avoidance of double taxation so that the information exchanged with partner nations on tax matters can also be utilised for other purposes including criminal proceedings, Parliament was informed today.

"Treaty partner countries have been requested to modify the tax treaties, so as to explicitly include provisions that will enable information exchanged for tax purposes to be utilised for other purposes, including criminal proceedings in non-tax matters," Minister of State for Finance Santosh Kumar Gangwar said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.

"40 treaties for avoidance of double taxation have been revised accordingly," he said.

In addition, Gangwar said, India has signed "the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which also similarly facilitates exchange of information".

These developments enable use of such information by non-tax agencies, subject to agreement by the Competent Authorities of the Requested Contracting State, he said.

Replying to a separate question, Gangwar said the Enforcement Directorate has provisionally attached assets of worth Rs 9,298 crore in 2016. The minister said that as per estimate over 2,000 tonnes of gold is held by household, trusts and various institutions in India.
New Delhi: Captains of Indian industry have send an SoS to the government to form a high powered committee to prepare the country to deal with global headwinds following Donald Trump taking over as US President and Brexit at the horizon.

The situation is very fluid. Currently what is going to happen is not clear. But there is an impending concern about it, Ficci president Pankaj Patel told this newspaper in an interview.

He said that Ficci has represented to the government that the committee should have senior government officials and leading industrialist of the country to discuss and debate and be prepared with challenges as they come. The committee should brain storm how we should protect India from these challenges that we might face. We don't know whether we will face but if we are going to face then we should be fully prepared, said Mr Patel.

He said that India's diplomatic relationship globally are very unique and hoped that the impact on India should be minimal. With Trump Presidency and Brexit pointing towards growing protectionist tendencies in the world, Economic Survey had also expressed concern that it could hit Indias growth. Given that Indias growth ambitions of 8-10 percent require export growth of about 15-20 percent, any serious retreat from openness on the part of Indias trading partners would jeopardise those ambitions, the survey had said.
The rating agency also expressed concern over the budgeting of lesser capital -- Rs 10,000 crore -- for infusion into public sector banks in 2017-18, which it said is a "credit negative".

New Delhi: Acknowledging India's resolve to stick to fiscal consolidation road map as laid out in the 2017-18 Budget, Moody's today flagged "hurdles" to the revenue collection target.

The rating agency also expressed concern over the budgeting of lesser capital -- Rs 10,000 crore -- for infusion into public sector banks in 2017-18, which it said is a "credit negative".

The government has budgeted for a lower fiscal deficit at 3.2 per cent of GDP next fiscal and 3 per cent in 2018-19.

"Moody's expects the government to achieve its targets, based on achievable budget assumptions and demonstrated commitment to fiscal prudence, but also note that spending commitments are significant and structural hurdles to rapid increases in revenue collection are apparent," Moody's Investors Service said.

The government hopes to collect over Rs 19.06 lakh crore from taxes next fiscal. Of this, Rs 9.80 lakh crore are estimated to come from direct taxes and Rs 9.26 lakh crore from indirect taxes.

In a report titled 'Budget continues gradual fiscal consolidation, targeted public investment', Moody's said the budget provides modest economic support to low-income households, benefits the infrastructure sector with a boost in public spending and is generally supportive for business with its lower tax rates for micro enterprises and MSMEs.

"The merger of the previously separate Railway Budget and Union Budget and removal of the designation of Plan and non-Plan spending should improve Budget transparency and support the effectiveness of spending and revenue planning, moving forward," Moody's said.

The fiscal deficit target, it said, implies gradual medium-term fiscal consolidation, driven largely by higher nominal GDP growth and bolstered by improvements in revenue collection.

"High and sustainable nominal GDP growth will depend on the recovery of the private investment cycle, which in turn will be contingent on the successful implementation of current and future reforms," Moody's said.

However, state deficits -- which have risen steadily to about 3 per cent of GDP at present from around 2 per cent in 2011-12 -- could widen, potentially resulting in a higher overall general government deficit than expected, it said.

"Uncertainty surrounding the final impact of demonetisation and the pending goods and services tax (GST) on state revenues, combined with increases in total expenditure for government employees, point to a risk of fiscal slippage," Moody's said.

On the Rs 10,000 crore capital infusion plan in PSU banks, Moody's said "at a time when capital level remains precarious and market access to external capital difficult, this is a credit negative for public sector banks".

However, lack of a clear resolution mechanism is also credit negative for the sovereign, Moody's pointed out. The Rs 25,000-crore allocation for fuel subsidies is sufficient based on current oil prices, it added.

"This is credit positive for state-owned oil and gas companies as it implies that the government will not ask them to share the burden. The authorities are also mulling merging state-owned oil companies, which would ultimately be an overall positive," it said.

The planned increase in public infrastructure spending is credit positive for companies in this sector. It could also help address infrastructure constraints and support future private investment, it said.

Moreover, the Budget is positive overall for business. It has halved income tax rates for lower-income individuals and lowered the tax rate for micro, and small- and medium-sized enterprises to 25 per cent from 30 per cent, Moody's said.
New Delhi: As part of efforts to combat black money and fake currency through demonetisation, government agencies have conducted over 1,100 searches and issued 5,100 notices to verify suspicious high-value cash deposits.

This led to seizure of valuables worth over Rs 610 crore, of which as high as Rs 513 crore were in cash. "Post demonetisation, during November 9, 2016 to January 10, 2017, more than 1,100 searches and surveys were conducted and more than 5,100 notices were issued by the Income Tax Department for verification of suspicious high-value cash deposits," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha today.

He was responding to a query on the extent to which the government has achieved its objective of the cash ban announced on November 8. The seizure of the money in the whole exercise so far has involved Rs 110 crore in the form of new currency notes (of Rs 500 and Rs 2,000).

"The undisclosed income detected in these ongoing investigations till January 10, 2017, was more than Rs 5,400 crore," he said. In a separate reply, Minister of State for Finance Santosh

Read: Remonetisation nearly complete, says Shaktikanta Das

Gangwar said relevant information has been shared by the I-T Department with other law enforcement agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate and the Central Bureau of Investigation for appropriate action.

"As on November 8, 2016, there were 17,165 million pieces of Rs 500 and 6,858 million pieces of Rs 1,000 in circulation. The value of specified bank notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 returned to RBI and currency chests amounted to Rs 12.44 lakh crore as of December 10, 2016," Gangwar said.

Jaitley said demonetisation seeks to create a new normal wherein GDP would be "bigger, cleaner and real". "This exercise is part of the government's resolve to eliminate corruption, blackmoney, counterfeit currency and terror funding," said the finance minister.

The government is taking steps such as collection of requisite information from various sources, conducting investigations in appropriate cases, searches, surveys, assessment of income, levy of penalty and launching of criminal prosecution to curb blackmoney, he said.

Formation of the special investigation team (SIT) on blackmoney, enactment of comprehensive law, Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015, amendment of the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Act, 1988, are among other measures taken by the government to weed out blackmoney inside and outside the country, he said further.

In reply to a question on action taken or proposed against offenders, Gangwar said it is an ongoing process and a number of effective measures have been taken to verify cash deposits in old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in banks by those whose case deposits were not in line with their existing profile based on filings with the tax department.
Mumbai: The only thing as popular and as widely admired as Shah Rukh Khan himself, is his wit and humour.

The actor, who's basking in the success of his latest release, 'Raees,' has been promoting the film, all guns blazing.

At a recent event, when he was quizzed on what the first thing he does was, once the director screams pack-up, he revealed, tongue firmly in cheek, that he lets go of his pants.

It sounds wrong, I dont do it like that  I just take the lower part of my clothes off! Because invariably, you know, I dont like wearing anything else apart from jeans and when Im doing films, I am either wearing pants or suits or stuff like that, and I spoil my hair. I dont like my hair being combed all the time. I have an amazing team and I am very spoilt and I should not be saying it  I start taking things off, they take it off me and I walk in semi-naked, and change, and I am out," he revealed, with his inimitable wit in tandem.

Shah Rukh will next be seen in Imtiaz Ali's untitled next, alongside Anushka Sharma, and will commence work on Anand L Rai's upcoming directorial, where he will be seen playing a dwarf.

Well, quite an assemblage of interesting films for the most interesting actor around, we say.
Mumbai: After much speculation, Jackie Chan met Salman Khan during his one-day visit to Mumbai on January 23. The Sultan star also took to Twitter to share a snap of the two.

Not many know that Sallu had left the shooting of his home production, Tubelight, halfway to meet the Chinese actor.

Jackies co-star Sonu Sood told Bombay Times, "We had planned to take Jackie to Salman bhai's set who was looking forward to it and had even made some preparations. He wanted Jackie to see some scenes being shot and also get a feel of how Bollywood really functions."

He continued, "But we were running short on time. So, Salman bhai cancelled the remaining day's work and came to the hotel to meet Jackie, which was sweet of him. They bonded big time. Jackie also loves Salman's work.So, they had a lot to speak about."

Salman surely knows his priorities.

Sallu's Tubelight, directed by Kabir Khan will also star Shah Rukh Khan, Chinese actress Zhu Zhu and late Om Puri.
Mumbai: Karan Johars last production was the January release, OK Jaanu, and hes already back with his next, Shashank Khaitans Badrinath Ki Dulhania.

The film reunites Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt in Shashanks second instalment in his Dulhania' franchise, his follow-up to the successful Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania.

On releasing the film during Holi, Karan said, tongue firmly in cheek, Only Salman Khan owns Eids, I would never want to enter that territory. I would rather release my films on a day when my film works; I wouldnt dare clash with Salman Khan!

On making a third instalment, he said, "We do plan to make a third part in the Dulhania series. The first one got lot of love from audience and if the second one also gets that much love we shall make third part. The team will remain the same."

However, Shashank clarified that there's no story ready as yet.

"We don't have a script in place for the third part. If the second one does well, then only we will make the third one," Shashank said.

The film releases on March 10.
He will soon be making his Mollywood debut in a Mohanlal starrer.

Mumbai: The Tamil Nadu Film Producers' Council (TFPC) today informed the Madras High Court that it has revoked the suspension of actor Vishal on the basis of an apology letter submitted by him over his alleged remarks in a Tamil magazine against the film body.

When the appeal filed by the actor against a single judge's order came up today before the first bench comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M. Sundar, the lawyer representing the TFPC informed the court that Vishal's suspension has been revoked during the February 2 meeting of the Executive Committee.

A copy of the resolution passed by the committee, stating that the suspension was revoked on the basis of his (Vishal) apology letter was produced before the court.

Recording the same, the bench said the appeal stands infructuous and dismissed it.

Vishal had moved the court challenging the order of his suspension issued by the Tamil Nadu Film Producers' Council on November 14, 2016.

When the civil suit filed by Vishal came up before the judge, he ruled against the actor.

Vishal then filed an appeal challenging the single judge's directive stating that he had erred in making observations on the merits of the suit itself without hearing him on the merits of the case.

Vishal was temporarily suspended by the Council for his alleged remarks in a Tamil magazine against the film body last year.

Subsequently, the producer's council suspended the membership of the actor for a period of three months.
Rating:

Cast: Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Willem Dafoe, Jing Tian, Andy Lau

Director: Zhang Yimou

Matt Damon is one of the most bankable actors in the world; director Zhang Yimou is a name to be reckoned with in world cinema; and any fan of Game of Thrones would be excited to see Pedro Pascal  the guy who played Oberyn Martell. With such hefty names collaborating on an epic historical fantasy, the expectation for a phenomenal outcome is hardly excessive. But as Shakespeare wrote, Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises. Two European mercenaries  William (Damon) and Tavor (Pascal)  are travelling along the Silk Road in search for gunpowder. An attack from the Mongols isolates the two from their pack, and in the ensuing melee, they find themselves confronting a monster, whose hand William chops off.

The two are captured and brought to a military division, called the Nameless Order, at the Great Wall, which is now under siege by a horde of these green monsters  the Taotei  who resurface every 60 years to purge the empire of human greed. Commander Lin (Jing Tian) must enlist the help of her prisoners to kill the Taotei Queen, and at the same time, school our protagonist in the virtues of Chinese culture and philosophy, thereby humbling him and setting him on a righteous path. The film does slightly well in the technical department: the visuals and special effects are engaging (though not extraordinarily spectacular). The music by Ramin Djawadi blends well with the narrative, but lacks the memorable quality that his work has achieved with Game of Thrones, speaking of which, the central idea is uncannily similar to the TV series section on the wall in the north. A long, ancient wall has to be defended  come hell or high water  against creatures that can perpetuate unfathomable horrors.

The casting of Matt Damon has been a hotly contested issue, given how Hollywood continually throws up instances of insensitivity to diversity and whitewashing. First, the story takes place in the 11th century, a time in history when the Americas were blissfully inhabited by their native populace, with only a few Nordic incursions into the Canadian Arctic. Whatever two men with an American accent  the other one being Willem Dafoe  are doing in China, confounds me. Second, the film reiterates the white saviour narrative wherein, in spite of dwelling a good deal on the technological advancements and the militaristic strength of the Chinese, the rescue mission ultimately falls on the white shoulders of our hero.

The Westerners skill and finesse in archery cannot be dispensed with. This role could very well have been written for a Chinese actor. However, the scene that stood out for me was one where the commander of the Nameless Order looks at the scars on Williams naked back. Her gaze at once undercuts both racial and sexual power dynamics. A reversal of this gaze would have rendered the Chinese woman exotic. To my mind, the genre of epic historical fantasy seems to work best when set in a parallel universe. Middle Earth, Narnia, Westeros  all are brilliant stages for fantasy to take flight. The Great Wall is unable to offer a coherent system within which the monsters should exist. Imagine the Mughals trying to slay dragons.

The writer is programmer, Lightcube Film Society
The response to 'trigger sounds' can be an immediate and intense fight or flight feeling. (Photo: Pixabay)

London: Irritated by the sound of chewing or repeated pen clicking? Your brain may be wired to go into overdrive on hearing such trigger noises, researchers

including one of Indian-origin have found.

Researchers from Newcastle University in the UK found the physical basis for people suffering from a condition called misophonia, a disorder where they have a hatred of sounds such as eating, chewing or repeated pen clicking. Called "trigger sounds" by the misophonia community, the response can be an immediate and intense fight or flight feeling.

The researchers report the first evidence of clear changes in the structure of the brain's frontal lobe in sufferers of misophonia and also report changes in the brain activity. Brain imaging showed that people with the condition have an abnormality in the emotional control mechanism which causes their brains to go into overdrive on hearing trigger sounds.

Researchers also found brain activity originated from a different connectivity pattern to the frontal lobe. This is normally responsible for suppressing the abnormal reaction to sounds. The researchers also found that trigger sounds evoked a heightened physiological response with increased heart rate and sweating in people with misophonia.

"For many people with misophonia, this will come as welcome news as for the first time we have demonstrated a difference in brain structure and function in sufferers," said Sukhbinder Kumar from the Newcastle University. "Patients with misophonia had strikingly similar clinical features and yet the syndrome is not recognised in any of the current clinical diagnostic schemes," said Kumar.

"This study demonstrates the critical brain changes as further evidence to convince a sceptical medical community that this is a genuine disorder," Kumar added. Using brain scans carried out with Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) the team showed a physical difference in the frontal lobe between the cerebral hemispheres of people with misophonia - with higher myelination in the grey matter of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC).

The study also used functional MRI to measure the brain activity of people with and without misophonia while they were listening to a range of sounds such as - neutral, unpleasant and trigger sounds. This showed abnormal connections between this frontal-lobe area and an area called the anterior insular cortex (AIC).

This area is in the grey matter of the brain but buried in a deep fold at the side of the brain and is known to be involved in processing emotions and integrating signals both from the body and outside world. When presented with trigger sounds activity goes up in both areas in misophonic subjects, whilst in normal subjects the activity goes up in the AIC but down in the frontal area. The study was publishing in the journal Current Biology.
Hyderabad: Another traditional ritual that involves torturing an animal has attracted the attention of animal rights groups that have lodged a complaint against it. Peddamma Panduga is of recent origin and held in Muttireddypally, Kodair mandal in Nagarkurnool district.

As part of the ritual which began 25 years ago, villagers take out a procession with a buffalo, beating it with sticks and prodding it with sharp arrows and spears. The same night they will batter the animal to death as a sacrifice to Goddess Peddamma.

This barbaric ritual is a violation of Section 11 (1) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 and a violation of Section 429 of the Indian Penal Code.

A witness to this ritual informed the city-based animal welfare organisation People for Animals, which took the complaint to the Nagarkurnool collector and mandal revenue officer, pleading that the ritual be stopped from taking place on Saturday.

Revellers hide sacrificial buffalo

Mr C Krishnaiah, mandal revenue officer, Kodair, told this newspaper that Peddamma Panduga is celebrated in four villages in Nagarkurnool. Throughout the year a male buffalo is selected by the villagers and worshipped like a God is fed and well taken care of.

In 2014, the selected buffalo damaged the crops by entering the fields; however, it was untouched and considered a blessing. But on the day of the festival, as part of the ritual, they kill the animal as a sacrifice for the goddess.The buffalo is part of a massive procession, and is killed before the Peddamma idol.

Mr Krishnaiah said that the villagers were tipped off about his visit and the animal was transported to an unknown location. The Kodair police and the MRO's office picked up 15 villagers as preventive detention. No case has been booked.

Inspector Mohammad Shafi of the Kodair police added that villagers who appeared before the police station were warned not to torture or kill the animal.

The celebrations can continue without involving the buffalo. The team is still searching for the animal. Once it is found, it will be taken to the police station and then to a rescue home,he said.
New Delhi: A 15-year-old girl, who was allegedly raped multiple times by her traffickers since the past few months, was on Friday rescued by the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) from the slums near Humayun's tomb.

"The girl was travelling in a train in Chhattisgarh last October to visit her relatives but mistakenly boarded the wrong train and reached Delhi. At the railway station, she met a man selling water bottles, who took her to Sarai Kale Khan. He raped her and then sold her to a man in Sawai Madhepur, Rajasthan for Rs 30,000," a DCW official said.

The man married her, sexually assaulted her and brought her to Faridabad. The girl managed to escape and reached Delhi. However, she was seen by those who had earlier sold her, who then abducted her and kept her in a godown near Nizamuddin railway station.

"She was gangraped multiple times by the trafficker and his accomplices. However, yesterday night, she managed to escape from their captivity and reached the slums near Humayun's Tomb," he said.

The minor girl got some help from the slum dwellers who gave her shelter and contacted the DCW 181 women helpline, following which a counsellor along with Delhi Police reached the spot and rescued her.

According to police officials, the preliminary investigation has revealed that the accused are not repeat offenders.

"They are probably first-timers who used the opportunity to trap the victim. The girl was not accompanied by her family members which is why the accused thought they could target her. We have identified the accused. Efforts are on to arrest them," said a senior police officer.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) President Kadubale Srinivas was shot at by two bike borne assailants at the Kogilu Junction near Yelahanka, in Bengaluru on Friday.

Srinivas escaped the incidence with injuries, but his deputy is believed to have been killed in the attack. The injured have been moved to a local hospital for treatment.

The motive or the identities of the attackers are not known, but initial reports suggest that Srinivas was targeted over his financial disputes with a few people.

Reports revealed that assailants followed Srinivas, who was travelling in a government vehicle, since he left his home at 8.30 am. At least six rounds were fired at the car, police said.

Senior police officials, including City Police Chief Praveen Sood and DCP (North-East Bengaluru) P S Harsha, visited the spot and are overseeing the investigation.

A massive manhunt has been launched to nab the culprits and the suspected vehicles are being intercepted and checked.

"The investigation is on... Advanced scientific forensic team has come to the spot. The investigation is at an advanced stage. Police are also verifying CCTV footage near the spot to identify the assailants," Deputy Commissioner of Police Harsh said.
Manufactured sand is prepared from stone that is done by following set norms and hence is safe. (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: Civil engineers say that filter-sand is not recommended even for plastering of walls as it leads to cracks in a short period.

Consumers, especially those constructing independent houses, may not be aware of the danger of using this type of sand and are attracted by its low price.

Chief Engineer of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), K Suresh Kumar, says that filter-sand is not recommended for any major construction except flooring.

This sort of sand consists of more soil and leads to cracks in a structure. The life of constructions like pillars, columns, putting, beams, RCC slab and even plastering that use filtered-sand will be short; it will soon start flaking," he said.

He said 'manufactured sand' instead of filter-sand should be used. "Manufactured sand is prepared from stone. The manufacturers follow the rules while manufacturing such sand. It should be noted, though, that stone dust is not stone sand. Stone sand has a shape," he explained.

A structural engineer from Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC) said that natural sand has a smoother texture with a better shape.

"Moisture is trapped in between the particles in filter-sand and so it is not good for concrete purposes. The silt and soil in this sort of sand is above what is permitted and that weakens the cement. Minimum permissible silt content in sand is 3 per cent and the maximum is 5 per cent. But filter-sand will have 20 per cent to 40 per cent of silt content. Besides silt, other particles like grass, clay lumps, tree bark are high in filter-sand against the permissible level of 2 per cent. The silt, soil and clay lumps in concrete structures will lead to collapse of walls," the engineer said.
Hyderabad: Illegal sand mafia in the Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district is increasing with each passing day despite raids and cases from the government officials.

In fact, whenever the revenue and police departments register cases and demolish the illegal filter-sand units, organisers are quick to recover within the next hours.

To overcome losses and raids by officials, few organisers have even launched mobile filter sand units at few revenue mandals such as Turkapally, Bommalara-maram, Bibinagar and Mothkur in Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district.

Structural engineers and prominent builders consider the filter-sand as very low quality, which cant be used in the construction of basements, putting, pillar columns, beams, slab and even plastering of walls. Few locals with the support of sand mafia from Hyderabad are organising these sand units at Cheekati Mamidi, Maryala, Laxmi Tanda, Rameswar Tanda, Slipea, Timmapur, Jalalpur, Medipally, Mylaram and Muneerabad localities in Bommalaramaram mandal and at Nagayapally, Gopalapur, Madhapur, Vasalamarri, Veerareddypally, Tulza Tanda, Ganghu Tanda, Venkatapur, Rustapur and Pedda Tanda of Turkapally are having sand-filter units.

The sand unit organisers are taking assigned lands from SC/ST community on lease and establishing brick manufacturing and filter-sand units illegally. By utilizing water from the borewells, they are filtering soil for the artificial sand. As per estimations of Sand Lorry Owners in Hyderabad, nearly 100 loads of sand are being supplied per day.
Hyderabad: A criminal court here on Friday convicted a 55-year old man who had raped and impregnated his teenage daughter and sentenced him to seven years of rigorous imprisonment. The prosecution and investigation officials had submitted DNA test results to the court as proof.

As per the case, Omar Khan had raped his 15-year-old daughter for several months in 2005. Scientific investigation has established the offence beyond reasonable doubt with the help of a DNA test and report, said ACP Falaknuma Md. Tajuddin Ahmed. Judge B. Sai Kalyan Chakrava-rthi of AMSJ of Nampally court read out the sentence. The man had been charged with rape (IPC 376) and criminal intimidation (506).

The rape occurred when the two were living in the same house. It went on for months and the girl got pregnant. Following a complaint from her mother, we registered a case. During the probe, a DNA test was done by FSL, and the results matched, said the ACP.

Initially, the girl was afraid of telling her mother about her fathers deeds. The man had threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone about this. Then she became pregnant. Then too, it took some time for the mother to come and lodge a complaint. Both had been intimidated by the man, said another investigation official.

Omar Khan, a resident of Achi Reddy Nagar in Falaknuma, was doing petty jobs in the area. He was arrested after the case was registered. After medical examination, with nod from the girl and her mother, doctors had aborted the pregnancy. The victim now lives with her mother in the city.
Hyderabad: Tension mounted near Gandhi Bhavan when police assaulted two journalists who were covering a protest. They held a protest at the office of the police commissioner. Two reporters alleged that they were repeatedly slapped by a cop and that other policemen pushed them several times.

The action was recorded by journos and the video submitted to police commissioner M. Mahender Reddy. The commissioner ordered a probe into the incident and suspended the accused SI. A group of lecturers, who were hired on contract by the government for its junior and degree colleges, were staging a protest against the alleged delay in fulfilling their demands, especially the long pending one for regularisation. Journalists alleged that police started pushing them without provocation and when a journalist challenged them, they started beating him up.

An enquiry has been ordered into the manhandling of journalists by police while arresting protesters at Gandhi Bhavan. The central zone DCP has been appointed as enquiry officer. He has been asked to submit a report at the earliest. Disciplinary action will be initiated based on the report. Meanwhile, the commissioner said in a release that task force SI Thimmappa has been withdrawn from duties, and has been asked to report at head office.
Mumbai: Video shot by a commuter showing how an alert motorman saved a woman's life by applying brakes in time at the suburban Charni Road station in South Mumbai has gone viral on social media.

Thanks to the 46-second video, the incident which took place nearly two months ago -- on December 6 -- has come to light, and the Western Railway officials are considering rewarding the motorman Santosh Kumar Gautam.

The Churchgate-bound fast local train driven by Gautam, which was approaching the station at the speed of around 70-kmph, halted in the nick of time, just inches from the woman who was walking on the tracks unmindful of the coming train, said a senior Western Railway official.

"We have recorded the motorman's statement and we would like to felicitate him for his presence of mind," said the official.

In the video, shot post-midnight (12.10 am), the unidentified woman, in her fifties, is seen walking along the tracks, oblivious that a train was approaching on the same tracks.

Motorman sounded horn, but she did not hear and continued walking. Brakes were applied and the train came to a halt barely inches from her.

"When the train stopped, people on the platform helped pull her up to the platform," said the official.
New Delhi: Congress and Left today raked up inside and outside Parliament the issue of death of IUML MP E Ahamed, alleging that he was shown alive under PMO "pressure" to allow Budget presentation on February 1 and demanded a probe by a Parliamentary Committee into it.

While raking up the death issue, the members from Congress and Left forced premature adjournment of Lok Sabha for the day as they created ruckus by alleging that "ill-treatment" was meted out to Ahamed's family members at the government hospital after he was admitted there on January 31.

78-year-old Ahamed collapsed during President's Address to joint sitting of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on January 31. He was declared dead in the wee hours of next day, hours before presentation of the Budget. The issue was raked up in both the houses.

In the Lok Sabha, the Opposition members trooped into the Well, raising slogans over Ahamed's death and disrupting the proceedings. The uproar led to two adjournments before the final for the day at around 1.10 pm.

"The body was kept there in inhuman way. His daughter and son-in-law too were not allowed to meet for six-seven hours...This all shows that how the government shrouded such big incident to ensure the Budget is presented," said Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge.

Kharge, accompanied by Congress MPs including Jyotiraditya Scindia, claimed Ahamed's body was kept at RML hospital to send out message that "he was still alive".

"The government indirectly pressurised the doctors and kept the body there," he said, adding even Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and other senior leaders of the party were not allowed to even see Ahamed's body.

"We demand the government should issue a statement in this regard and a Parliamentary Committee be formed to probe it. Whoever is responsible, be it doctors, government officials, the ministry, the responsibility should be fixed."

RSP's N K Premachandran and Congress' K C Venugopal, both members of the Lok Sabha, gave adjournment motions related to the issue, demanding a probe.

Scindia, while raising questions over the entire episode, said, "Daal mein jaroor kuchh kala hai aur is liye hum jaanch ki maang kar rahe hai (There's certainly something fishy and that is why we are demanding a probe)."

CPM's P Karunakaran was heard telling Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar "it is not the issue related to Budget, but what happened in the hospital?"

Premachandran said, "Madam Sonia Gandhi had to wait for two hours in the hospital and they were pointing out protocols."

Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said the Congress was information that Ahamed had passed away "much earlier" than it was formally declared, but the government wanted to keep the body in hospital until the Budget was presented.

In Rajya Sabha, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury also demanded a probe into the manner in which Ahamed's death was "handled". Raising the Ahamed issue during Zero Hour, Yechury said there are various allegations and various information that "I have got that some doctors say he was declared dead when he was taken to the hospital".

Some say Ahamed died subsequently in the ICU, he said, adding that later he was shifted to trauma centre saying there are better facilities.

"I want a proper and thorough investigation into the manner in which death of one of our senior colleagues of Parliament and former Minister E Ahamed was handled and the way in which news of his death was sought to be suppressed," the CPI(M) leader said.

"There has been interference, that's what I hear, from the highest authorities in the country from the PMO and this is something which cannot be accepted. This is shameful.

"I want this issue to be thoroughly investigated. I wish my information is not correct what I heard. But if it is correct, then they must be made accountable and action must be taken against those who have behaved in this manner," Yechury said.

The Rajya Sabha MP also argued that a person cannot be put on life support without permission of nearest relative, and wanted to know "how was announcement of death delayed".
BENGALURU: The Karanataka came across an unusual case on Thursday, when a man sought directions to the Bengaluru city police to consider his request for a helicopter to fly over his newly-built house in Mullur village and shower petals on the occasion of house warming ceremony scheduled on February 9!

The court was astonished after hearing such an unusual prayer. "What kind of petition is this, the court observed while adding on what injustice has been caused to the petitioner. It adjourned the matter to February 6, for the authorities to respond to the plea.

The petitioner, M. Muniraju (45), stated that on December 29, he had approached the Deccan Charters Ltd., company for purpose of hiring a helicopter for floral shower on his newly built house and thereafter the company sent a letter addressed to the police commissioner for operation of helicopter for such a purpose. He then gave a representation to the police seeking permission for itinerary of helicopter from Jakkur aerodrome to the petitioner's house in Mullur Village, Varthur Hobli, Bengaluru East.

He even got it printed in his invitation cards about the proposed floral shower from helicopter. He pointed out that his neighbour too had a similar floral shower arranged during their house warming ceremony.

He had approached the court after the police stated that the representation was illegal and arbitrary. He said if he is not allowed then it will be a loss of face for him.
CHENNAI: Welcoming a CBI court discharging Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi Maran in the Aircel-Maxis cases, DMK working president M. K. Stalin on Thursday said the verdict shows judicial institutions will not accept false cases foisted due to political vendetta. Minutes after the CBI court judge O. P. Saini delivering his verdict, Stalin said the cases against Mr Kalanidhi and Mr Dayanidhi were based on imaginative figures and unsubstantiated allegations.

The case were lodged to bring disrepute to both Kalanidhi Maran and Dayanidhi Maran for political reasons. Those people who filed cases against the two have now been proved wrong. The cases were also foisted to bring disrepute to the DMK, Mr Stalin said about the cases against his nephews.

Maintaining that the cases against the media barons were foisted since they own one of the largest media houses in the country, Stalin said it was always a political case and now the court has refused to accept the allegations against the two at the initial stage itself. I have been maintaining from the beginning that the cases were filed due to political animosity and I am very happy that they have been discharged from the case, Stalin said.

We stand vindicated: Dayanidhi

Buoyed by the CBI court discharging him and his brother in the Aircel-Maxis case, former Union Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran on Thursday said his familys stand that they were innocent and that he never misused his official position was vindicated. The case relating to Aircel-Maxis deal was foisted against me, my brother Kalanidhi and his wife Kavery without any basis, Mr Maran said, adding that though he always knew he was innocent, he resigned as Union Textiles Minister after allegations of misuse of official position were leveled against him. We (Kalanidhi, Dayanidhi and Kavery) always had trust in Indian judiciary and that has been proven true today. False accusations were leveled against all of us and I was forced to resign. While resigning, I had declared that all of us were innocent and my stand has now been vindicated, Mr Maran said in a statement here.

The former Union Minister, grand nephew of DMK President M Karunanidhi, said his family fought the case legally since it had trust in the judiciary. We overcame every challenge and sufferings that we underwent in the past six years in the sheer hope that truth will come out one day and today we are happy that we have been discharged, Mr Maran said.

We have always maintained that it was a foisted case and there was no truth in the allegations and I have been saying that I never misused my official positionthe verdict has once again shown that honest always wins. Truth has won, Mr Maran said. He resigned as Union textiles minister on July 7, 2011 after the CBI mentioned his in a status report it filed before the Supreme Court on the 2G spectrum case.
New Delhi: There were 422 air safety violations by the crew of various air operators in 2016, a rise of nearly 50 per cent from 2015, resulting in de-rostering of 42 pilots besides suspension of 272 crew members, DGCA said today.

As per latest data available with the aviation regulator, there were safety violations involving 422 crew members of various air operators including scheduled airlines in 2016 as against 275 in 2015 and 391 in 2014.

Significantly, International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the UN aviation monitoring body, is scheduled to carry out a comprehensive audit of India's aviation safety audit.

Last time ICAO had conducted such an audit in 2015. Air services-wise data for 2016 shows the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) initiated 422 enforcement actions which include 272 suspensions of crew members and de-rostering of 42 pilots.

In addition, 108 crew members were let off after issuing warnings.

According to DGCA, private carrier Jet Airways along with its subsidiary JetLite had the highest number of enforcement actions (116) initiated against its crew. It was followed by SpiceJet and Air India with 101 and 61 instances of safety breach, respectively.

The number of enforcement action against IndiGo stood at 55.

SpiceJet reported the highest number of suspensions (68) in the previous year, followed by Jet Airways (53) while 41 pilots and cabin crew members of IndiGo also faced suspensions for various air safety violations.
New Delhi: The government currently has no proposal to link Aadhaar numbers with railway passes, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu informed Parliament on Friday.

"At present, there is no such proposal" to link Aadhar with railway passes, Prabhu said in Rajya Sabha during Question Hour while responding to a query on the issue by TMC member Vivek Gupta.

The government is in the process of putting in place a Human Resources Management System (HRMS) to ensure that employees and pensioners of Railways are able to book tickets online through any portal, he said.

Stating that railway pass holders at present do not have online facility to book tickets, the Minister said "we have started the job. We are working on Human Resources Management System (HRMS). Once this is ready, pass holders will be able to book tickets online."

There are 16,360 officers in Group A and B categories and 13,12,449 officers in Group C and D categories in the Railways. Passes are issued based on the basic pay.

Gazetted railway officers are given six sets of privilege passes in a year and the non-gazetted railway employees get one set of privilege pass up to end of fifth year of railway service and thereafter three sets a year, he said.

Employees of non-railway departments appointed on deputation to posts on Indian Railways and officers and staff of Railway Audit Department are also provided privilege passes compared to the railway employees of equal status, he added.

To a supplementary by Ripun Bora (INC) on delay in getting reimbursement after a train is cancelled, Prabhu said there is a procedure already put in place for this purpose.

To another query about providing the same facilities to both pass holders and those who buy tickets from the counters, the Minister said the two issues are different.

He said that monthly seasonal tickets can be purchased through four ways -- online, over the counter, ticket vending machines and mobile Apps. This facility is for everyone.

He also said it was not feasible to quantify the overall cost incurred on issuing of tickets through Passenger Reservation System counters and through the online mode.
Hyderabad: The Telangana state Cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal to enact legislation to provide continuing medical care to victims of acid attacks.

The TS Cabinet which met here on Thursday took a decision to this effect.

A Cabinet subcommittee headed by home minister Nayini Narasimha Reddy has been appointed to study the proposed changes. The government would make changes in the existing Act to ensure that those convicted for acid attacks are sentenced from 10 years to life imprisonment. It was also proposed to give the fine collected from convicts to the family members of the victims.

Acid attacks are covered by Section 326 of the Indian Penal Code. The law proposes punishment of not less than 10 years to a maximum of life imprisonment for perpetrators and fine that could go up to Rs 10 lakh.

However, activists are demanding separate provisions in the Act to aid acid attack victims who have to live with not just the physical disfigurement but also psychological scars and social stigma. They demand a new law to tackle the crime of acid attacks, including easy sale of nitric and sulphuric acid.

The existing law makes no mention of concrete solutions such as rehabilitation, insurance plan or long-term proper medical care for the victims. It has only made acid attack a criminal offence. A few lakhs in cash given by state governments and first aid will not be enough for the survivors of such attacks, an official told this newspaper.

They need a proper rehabilitation policy, such as specialised medical care for burns and elaborate plastic surgery. The government needs to bring in a separate law to incorporate all these provisions, the official said.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday warned Maxis group owner T. Ananda Krishnan of Malaysia that he must enter appearance in Indian court failing which 50 per cent shares in Aircel, in which he has major stakes will be auctioned.

Aircel and Reliance Communication have entered into an agreement to merge the two entities and 50% shares of Aircel valued at Rs 20,000 crores will be transferred to Rcom.

Chief Justice J.S. Khehar, heading a Bench which also includes Justices N.V. Ramana and D.Y. Chandrachud, told senior counsel Abhishek Singhvi for Aircel that the court will ask the Centre to auction the shares, keeping the value at Rs 20,000 crores, payable to the banks where the shares are pledged. If the auction price is less than Rs 20,000 crore then Rcom will get it or it will go to other entity.

Mr. Singhvi told that court that it cannot use Aircel to procure the presence of Ananda Krishnan. He said there is no outflow of money or sale as it is only a merger through transfer of shares. The CJI observed He (Maxis group owner) doesn't care for the law or the Supreme Court of this country, and yet you people stand up to defend him? One must subject himself to the process of law. We will not allow merger of Reliance Communication wireless with Aircel, unless Rs 20,000 cr debt of nationalised banks is liquidated. We will adopt any means to ensure his presence.

In the last hearing on January 6 he had indicated that it proposed to restrain the transfer of shares and sought response of Ananda Krishnan. Today the Centre informed the court that advertisements were issued in two newspapers in Malaysia requiring the presence of Ananda Krishnan in the court and yet he did not respond.

Taking note of this, the Bench in a brief order said we are of the view that it is necessary that some other appropriate order is passed to achieve the purpose of his presence besides the order earlier contemplated (to stay the transfer of shares). If the accused Ananda Krishnan and his one-time key aide and Director Augustus Ralph Marshal fail to present themselves before Indian courts it might not be to open to them at a later stage to object to the monetary loss that may be caused to them.
The TS government has said that the power plants were as good as new. (Representational image)

Hyderabad: As many as eight small thermal power plants in the state face closure due to environmental issues. The Centre has asked all states to shut ageing thermal power plants as part of a drive to check carbon emissions.

The Central Electricity Authority has asked TS government to close seven thermal power plants in Kothagudem and one in Ramagundam which were set up 25 years ago.

The TS government has objected, stating that some of these plants were generating power on par with new units and their pollution was within limits.

It told the CEA that the government was renovating and modernising the power plants regularly and had ensured that they complied with norms.

The eight plants in Kothagudem generate 720 MW and the Ramagundam station 62 MW. Their closure would result in a power shortage besides adding to the cost of purchasing power from outside sources.

We have agreed to close these plants in three years in a phased manner, Mr D. Prabhakar Rao, chairman and managing director of TS Transco and Genco said. He ruled out the possibility of a power shortage in the state on account of closure of these plants.

Mr Rao said, We will add 12,000 MW with the commissioning of new plants. The loss of 720 MW can be easily overcome. He said there would be no problem with the Ramagundam plant which had been renovated recently; only the seven plants in Kothagudem would be closed.
Bengaluru: In a murder bid in broad daylight, two bike-borne miscreants opened several rounds of fire at Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee (APMC) president K. Shrinivasmurthy alias Kababagere Seena on Friday morning. The incident occurred when Seena was in his car waiting for the signal to turn green at Kogilu Cross on the Kempegowda International Airport Road.

Seena, aged around 45, received three bullet injuries and was rushed to a private hospital, where he underwent surgeries. He is said to be out of danger. His car driver, identified as Moily, escaped with minor injuries.

Around 11.45 am, Seena, who had attended a Raitha Santhe programme at Yelahanka, was coming towards the city when the incident occurred. His friend, identified as Srinivasamurthy, was also accompanying him in the Honda City car, provided by the state government.

As the car stopped at the Kogilu Cross signal, two men, who had covered their faces with masks and helmets, stopped their Pulsar bike on the left side of the car and started pumping bullets into the car. The windowpanes of both left doors were smashed and three bullets hit Seena.

As the assailants sped away, there was utter chaos on the busy road and other commuters were shocked by the incident. Some passersby managed to rush both Seena and his driver to the hospital. Doctors, who conducted surgeries on Seena, removed three bullets and said he is out of danger and recovering.

Following the incident, all senior officers of the city and the IGP of Central Range, Seemanth Kumar Singh, inspected the spot and formed special teams to crack the case. Both the city police and Bengaluru Rural police are working together on the case.

Ballistics experts, who examined the car, said that totally seven rounds were fired from a 7.65 mm country-made pistol from a close range. A case was registered at the Yelahanka police station.
Hyderabad: Disappointed at not being allotted AIIMS or funds for Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya, the TS government is now pinning its hopes on Centres Supplementary Budget. While the Centre had promised to set up AIIMS in TS two years ago, the NITI-Aayog had recommended a grant of nearly Rs 20,000 crore to Misson Kakatiya and Mission Bhagiratha schemes. However, none of these schemes figured in the recent Union Budget.

The TS government has started stepping up pressure on the Centre to include these schemes at least in the Supplementary Budget in the ongoing Budget session. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao is also expected to take up these issues with Prime Minister Modi and Union ministers concerned during his scheduled visit to New Delhi on February 6. Though the main aim of CMs tour is to lead an all-party delegation to the PM to seek categorisation of SC reservations, he is planning to take up the issue of AIIMS, Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya.

Mr Rao has directed TRS MPs to utilise the ongoing Parliament session and take up the issues and schemes concerning TS during the debate on Budget and exert pressure on the Centre to incorporate them in the Supplementary Budget. He also directed party MPs and ministers to meet Union ministers in New Delhi and submit representations seeking AIIMS and funds for schemes.

The TS governments special representatives in New Delhi have also been asked to follow up these issues regularly till the Budget session concludes. We have been waiting for an announcement in the Budget on sanctioning AIIMS to Telangana for the last two years. This year, we were hopeful of getting AIIMS as suitable land was identified and proposals were submitted on time. But we were shocked to find that only Jharkhand and Gujarat were allotted AIIMS in the Budget. We will take up the issue with Centre and ensure that it makes a clear statement on sanctioning AIIMS to Telangana in this session, said Dr S. Venugopala Chary, the TS special representative in New Delhi.
Hyderabad: Without taking ground realities into consideration, the two Telugu states are competing with each other in increasing the Budget size for financial year 2017-18. Annual Budgets of both TS and AP are likely to touch Rs 1.5 lakh-crore each in financial year 2017-18. In the current year, the Budget of TS is Rs 1.30 lakh-crore and AP is Rs 1.35 lakh-crore. A TS finance official said they knew at the beginning of the financial year itself that it would be very difficult to reach the Budget target. He said for the next year too, the situation would continue. For the next financial year, TS Budget will be around Rs 1.40 lakh-crore and APs Budget will be around Rs 1.45 lakh-crore, the official said.

In the present financial year, the TS government has projected its tax and non-tax revenue to be Rs 72,361 crore, and AP projected it to be Rs 57,813 crore. Finance officials of both states said the governments had fixed unrealistic targets to boost the total Budget figure. A senior official of TS government said at the end of the financial year, they will face revenue shortfall of about Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore. AP too is in a similar position.

Due to shortfall of revenue, governments of both states have stopped clearing pending bills; the TS government is paying bills related only to Mission Bhagiratha and Mission Kakatiya. According to sources, bills worth about Rs 2,000 crore are pending. The AP government has also stopped all the pending bills worth about Rs 5,000 crore. After the Union Budget was presented, Chief Ministers K. Chandrasekhar Rao and N. Chandrababu Naidu held meetings with their finance officials and told them to try to tap maximum funds from the Centre in the next financial year.

In tapping funds from Centre, TS is far better than AP. In the present financial year, AP was not able to get Rs 350 crore under Backward Areas Development Fund and Rs 400 crore meant for construction of Amaravati as announced by the Centre. While TS has been submitting utilisation certificates promptly and as prescribed by the NITI-Aayog and getting all possible funds from the Centre, AP is not that prompt. But the AP government fails in submitting utilisation certificates to the Centre and as a result, is not able to get funds. The TS government has estimated that it will get over Rs 50,000 crore from the Centre in the next financial year.
The doctor told Mr Patel that he suspected him of being infected with AIDS.

Jaipur: A consumer forum has imposed a joint fine of Rs 5 lakh on a senior doctor in Udaipur and two public sector insurers for administering anti-HIV drugs to a person suffering from an ordinary flu.

The matter dates back to 2004, when victim Dhanraj Patel consulted Dr D.C. Kumawat as he had fever and cough. The doctor told Mr Patel that he suspected him of being infected with AIDS. Without waiting for diagnostic reports, the doctor treated Mr Patel for HIV till 2007.

Later, Dr. Kumawat referred him to Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai from where tests showed that he never had AIDS. Despite negative results, the doctor continued to treat him for AIDS and stopped the treatment only on the insistence of Mumbai-based doctors.

His treatment ruined my life. I took loan to buy expensive medicines. My business was affected as people maintained distance from me, Patel said in his appeal against the district consumer forum.
Pune: A 23-year-old IT professional working with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park in Hinjawadi here, allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his apartment located in the IT Park, said police.

The incident took place yesterday, four days after a 23-year-old woman employee of Infosys was allegedly murdered at her workstation in the same IT Park.

According to police, the deceased, Abhishek Kumar, who hailed from Kanpur, was working with TCS in Hinjawadi as a software engineer and stayed at a rented apartment in Phase III of IT hub along with his friends.

"Abhishek and his roommates were in the apartment around noon on Thursday. He went to his bedroom saying that he wanted to sleep and locked it from inside," said a police officer, attached to Hinjawadi police station.

"Meanwhile, his roommates received a call from a Abhishek's friend, who told them that he was committing suicide. Roommates then entered the bedroom through a window and found him hanging from the ceiling fan. He was then rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was declared brought dead," the officer added.

According to police, the deceased might have sent a message or a photo to his friend before committing suicide.

"We have not received any suicide note from the spot, however, primary investigations have revealed that he was depressed after his break-up with a girl. We are yet to record statements of his roommates and his cellphone is yet to be checked," the police officer said.

After the post mortem, his body was handed over to his parents, said police.

On Sunday, a 25-year-old woman software engineer from Kerala, Rasila Raju OP, working at Infosys was allegedly strangled to death by a security guard on the premises of her company in Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park in Hinjawadi.
New Delhi: Karnataka Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda and Revenue Minister Kagodu Thimmappa today called on Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and demanded early release of Rs 1,782.44 crore as drought relief fund approved to the state for 2016 kharif crop loss.

On January 5, the Union Cabinet had approved Rs 1,782.44 crore from National Disaster Relief Fund (NDRF) to the state.

"We met Jaitley and explained the difficulty the state is going through this year because of severe drought. We told him that despite the drought relief amount been approved in January, that amount has not been released to state," Gowda told reporters after the meeting.

Jaitley immediately called up the senior Finance Ministry officials and enquired about the issue. It was found that the relief amount could not be released due to lack of funds in the NDRF, he said.

"We have requested the Finance Minister to allocate funds from other resources as the state is facing drought even in the rabi season and the situation is very bad. The FM has assured early release of the amount," he added.

The state ministers along with senior officers met Union Minister Rajnath Singh and sought release of relief funds for flood-hit parts of the state.

Yesterday, the state ministers had submitted a memorandum to the central government seeking a drought relief of Rs 3,310 crore for 2016 rabi crop loss.
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: While Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, health minister K.K. Shailaja and politicians from all hues have been crying foul over the denial of All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS) to state, the big question is did the successive governments do their homework properly to deserve the prestigious project. The Cabinet had shortlisted six sites as early as July 2014 for setting up AIIMS. Even detailed proposal was submitted to the Centre.

Initially, the following sites with an area of over 200 acres each were short-listed; Thiruvananthapuram  Nettukaltheri, Kottayam  near Medical College, Ernakulam  HMT land Kalamassery and Kozhikode  KSIDC land at Kinaloor. But a section of ministers and politicians in UDF Government favoured HMT land considering accessibility for people of southern, central and northern parts of the state. Another batch favoured KSIDC land in Kinaloor Kozhikode. The confusion went on during UDF governments tenure and even continued when LDF came to power. While politicians kept arguing over ideal site, the Centre cleared AIIMS in 17 other states.

It was only recently that all MPs from Kerala reached a consensus on Kinaloor land. But that effort was too little, too late.The project is considered significant as it would bring in investment worth Rs 2,000 in the health sector besides advanced health care and research facilities. Experts say Kerala with its highly advanced and comprehensive health care infrastructure, would have benefitted immensely form such a prestigious institute. They say politicians and bureaucrats should take a leaf from the efforts made to bring IIT to Palakkad. Senior officials used to make regular trips to Delhi to keep pressure on the Centre and interact with people who mattered frequently.

Even as politicians vied with each other for getting the proposed AIIMS in their respective areas, the condition of the five government medical colleges which are bursting at the seams, deteriorated fast. All existing services - in patient, out patient, super speciality are being stretched to limits because of secondary care institutions' failure to step in effectively. Though the 1,250 odd health department institutions including district, general, taluk, CHCs and PHCs together account for over 30,000 beds, the facilities are not being utilised fully. Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital and associated wings which have nearly 3,500 beds, have almost double the number of patients at a given time. Similar situation prevails at medical college Kottayam with 1604 beds, Thrissur medical college  1564 and Calicut Medical College  3300 beds.
KOZHIKODE: For Slovene writer Evald Flisar, India is the most fascinating country in the world. Mr Flisar, who first travelled to India in 1974, made 14 more visits including presently for the Kerala Literature Festival but each time he discovers a new aspect which increases his fascination. In a talk with noted Indian-English writer Anita Nair, Mr Flisar- whose 160 books have been translated into 14 languages worldwide - said that India always offered a different perspective each time. Back home in Slovenia, people ask me why I chose India among all those countries in this planet. Every time I visit this country, it gives me something new. The diversity of culture, literature, languages etc are so different. I even have this feeling that I was born here in my previous life, he added.

Sharing his experiences on rightwing politics which is gripping the world, Mr Flisar said that he was scared of the future of mankind as a species. It is going from bad to worse day by day. If you look back at history, mankind had gone through such cycles all the time. We are collectively heading to a disaster as countries are piling up nuclear weapons, he said. He added that US President Donald J Trump did not know what he actually wanted. What scares me is in the morning he thinks of doing something and it turns into an executive order in no time. Russian President Vladimir Putin on the other hand is a much more reasonable man, he added.
New Delhi: Congress today objected to removal of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's name from 'Sadbhavna Diwas' observed every year on August 20 but the government asserted that schemes will no longer carry the names of "one family" under the Modi dispensation.

Raising the issue during Zero Hour in Rajya Sabha, Chhaya Verma (Cong) said since 2015, Rajiv Gandhi's name has been removed from Sadbhavana Diwas observed on August 20, birth anniversary of the former Prime Minister. She said if Gandhi's name has been deliberately removed, then it's a "conspiracy".

Supporting her, senior Congress leader Anand Sharma said Rajiv Gandhi was a "martyr" and the country owes a debt of gratitude to its martyrs. He said his birth anniversary was declared as Sadbhavana Diwas, but his name has been removed.

"It is an insult to the memory of a great Prime Minister who is a martyr. This government owes an explanation. It is functioning in an arbitrary and authoritarian manner," Sharma said.

He alleged that names of former Prime Ministers have been obliterated and it is insult to them. He also said the present government was naming schemes and programmes after those people who have "done nothing for the country".

To this, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said if Sharma thinks that only "one party and one family" has a right over country's resources, government schemes and programmes, then it is not possible.

He said there are thousands of people who have sacrificed their lives for the country and their contribution cannot be forgotten.

"If their wish is to seek continuance of one family's name on all schemes, it is not possible now in Modi Ji's time," Naqvi said.

Leader of Opposition Gulam Nabi Azad said the present government has been renaming schemes over the past two-and-a half years. He said schemes are being named after those who are directly or indirectly associated with the ruling party.
Karachi: With one stroke of the pen Donald Trump slammed the doors on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries throwing the United States and the world into unprecedented chaos. Extreme vetting of travellers from Pakistan and Afghanistan has already been ordered and a complete ban on them is not being ruled out. The registration of the Muslim population in the US is also reportedly under consideration setting a cruel precedent somewhat reminiscent of Nazi rule. Notwithstanding the massive protests across the US and in Western capitals, Trumpism seems unstoppable, making the world more dangerous and insecure. Understandably, Trumps radical steps are cause for serious concern to Pakistan too. Notwithstanding the friendly phone conversation between the Pakistani prime minister and Trump soon after the latters election in November, the signals from Washington have not been encouraging. It was clear from the outset that the new administration would exert increasing pressure on Islamabad to crack down on Pakistani militant groups such as the Jamaat-ud-Dawa.

True to character, the Sharif government waited passively for things to pass. But now there is sign of panic with Trump moving fast on his election promises and the impending threat of extending the travel ban to Pakistanis. The dramatic crackdown on the JuD and the decision to place Hafiz Saeed under house arrest highlights panic. Interestingly, the crackdown came hours after the publication of a report in a national daily claiming that Pakistan was threatened with sanctions if it did not act swiftly against the group. For many years Islamabad had resisted pressure from Washington and other countries to clamp down on the groups that were still being protected under various pretexts. It was apparent that the JuD was the new banner for Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most lethal of Pakistani militant outfits that was banned in 2002 because of outside pressure.

Pakistan was forced to close down JuD offices after the outfit was put on the list of terrorist organisations by the United Nations. But the action was short-lived as a Lahore high court bench found no grounds for banning the group, providing Islamabad with a convenient excuse to defy international pressure. Hafiz Saeed roamed around freely addressing rallies and appearing on primetime TV, reinforcing international scepticism regarding Islamabads double standard in dealing with the scourge of militancy and extremism. The 2008 Mumbai terror attacks involving members of the banned outfit intensified the call by the international community for action against the JuD. The anger grew further after Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the carnage, was freed by the court. But now, the belated and somewhat half-hearted action against the JuD and confinement of its leaders may not satisfy the international community. The pressure will intensify to crack down on the banned militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leader Maulana Masood Azhar.

Maulana Azhar came into focus again late last year after JeM was accused of masterminding the attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot. But Azhar has remained free. Pakistan has been able to block the move in the UN Security Council to declare him a terrorist with the help of China. But this cant be sustained for long. Islamabad. Yet another pressure point for Pakistan is the detention on treason charges of Dr Shakeel Afridi who helped CIA in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Trump had vowed to get him released and bring him to the US within days of his taking over. This presents a very tricky situation for the Pakistani government. There is no doubt that Pakistan should have acted against the groups in its own national interests long ago. It will certainly bring more humiliation if we wait for the Trump whip. Have we not already been trumped?

By arrangement with Dawn
Voting finally begins today for the much-awaited Assembly elections in five states. As much as a fifth of the countrys electors will be taking part in this exercise, that is coinciding with the Narendra Modi government at the Centre having completed half its tenure in office. Ordinarily, state elections are not unduly influenced by the state of affairs at the Centre. But in this case Prime Minister Narendra Modi has campaigned both extensively and intensively, as though he had high stakes, personally speaking, in the outcome. Massive defeats in the Delhi and Bihar Assembly elections earlier, for which the PM had campaigned aggressively too, making those polls a prestige issue, have not dimmed Mr Modis ebullience as a campaigner. Combined with the fact that the BJP does not appear to have very many stalwarts in the states (besides Goa, where defence minister Manohar Parrikar, a former CM, is campaigning widely), the clutch of Assembly polls appears to be taking on the colours of a referendum on Mr Modi.

In particular, the PM has campaigned with ferocity in Uttar Pradesh, where voting will begin a week from now. In Indias largest state, on account of his personal appeal, the BJP had picked up a very high proportion of Lok Sabha seats in 2014. Politicians and analysts are waiting to see how much of that goodwill can still be harvested by the BJP this time round. It is widely felt that a victory for the BJP in UP will make Mr Modi impregnable at the Centre for the foreseeable future, not just the next Lok Sabha poll. On the other hand, a below-par performance can diminish his authority considerably (and of his acolyte Amit Shah, BJP president), and open up intra-BJP fissures which remain concealed from view due to the PMs current stature in his party and government.

Thats why so much ammunition is going into the UP campaign. Many believe that the surgical strike and demonetisation had also been done in the hope of making a positive impact in the state elections, specially in UP. Indeed, the presentation of the Union Budget in the middle of the poll process raised eyebrows as the Centre influences perceptions throughout the country with its Budget each year, even if specific announcements are avoided in respect of states where polls are being held. It is worth pondering if the look of the Budget would have been different if there were no elections around the corner. Voting is due to be completed in Punjab and Goa today. For reasons of contiguity with Uttar Pradesh, and thus logistics, polling in the small state of Uttarakhand, once a part of UP, will be held around the early part of the seven-phase Uttar Pradesh election.
I dared to cast that first stone

Knowing I was not without sin

Which human heart will willingly own

To be a part of the devils grin?

The meek cant ever inherit the earth

While usury obtains

Its probably Ahura Mazdas curse

That flows through human veins

From The Tutinaama

by Bachchoo

The past year has proved, and 2017 looks likely to confirm, that democracy may be the best of the worst systems of governing human societies, being of the people and by the people but not necessarily ending up for the people. Democracy, this rule of the majority, be it a galloping deficit of three million votes for Donald Trump over those for Hillary Clinton, is determined by the unfair harness of a democratically framed Constitution. In Britain a popular referendum to leave the European Union by a million votes out of some 33 million could have been swayed by 500,000 voting the other way. The demonstrations against Mr Trump and his executive orders to ban Muslims from seven designated countries, at airports and in cities around the United States and the world, are manifestations of the minority determination against a slender or even negative majority will. The exercise of democracy in the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh elections has thrown up a very essential, even vital debate.

The BJP backed by Modiji himself has declared its intention to throw the weight of the ruling Central power behind the rights of Muslim women, when and if the BJP is elected in the state. The BJP manifesto supports a petition in the Supreme Court to prevent Muslim men from divorcing their wives through pronouncing the word talaq three times. Muslim men have been known to use triple talaq through mobile phones and the Internet. (Has anyone invented an app? Dont be frivolous yaar, this is a serious subject- Ed.) Triple talaq has often resulted in a denial of alimony, leaving an estimated 11 million divorced women destitute. Abolishing it, like banning the immolation of Hindu widows on their husbands funeral pyres, would be a progressive step into modernity. The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan has been campaigning for such an abolition of triple talaq and has won the support of millions throughout the country. Yet it has have proclaimed that the intervention of the BJP is unwelcome. The Andolans suspicion is not surprising. The muscular Hindutva agenda, which Modiji has never denounced or distanced himself from, sits uneasily with his manifesto proclamation to side with his Muslim sisters.

The Andolan and other commentators characterise Modijis intervention as a cynical ploy to divide the Muslim vote in the forthcoming Uttar Pradesh elections and steal the female Muslim vote away from the Samajwadi Party to the BJP. But is the BJPs proclamation that it would support the Andolan and the other groups who have petitioned the Supreme Court on the issue, really and merely cynical and opportunistic? Can it, and even Mr Modis seemingly hypocritical overture in claiming a spiritual kinship with Muslim women, not be seen as a manifestation of the BJPs commitment to passing the uniform civil code into Indian law? In Shakespeares words, Sweet are the uses of adversity, which like the toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head and if we substitute democracy for adversity we can see that the uniform civil code, which will include reform of the Muslim law on triple talaq and alimony to divorced women, is righting a shameful wrong! Of course some political philosophers would argue that all acts and announced intentions within a democratic structure are opportunistic in that they garner the support of a section of the population materially or otherwise affected by the act or intention.

Far be it from me to tell my Muslim sisters of the Andolan what stance to take, but surely getting the support of the state government of Uttar Pradesh for the abolition of the pernicious practice would be an important alliance? Overlook ideology and make democratic alliances to achieve a desirable goal? Sup with the devil when the cupboard is bare? Perhaps! It is inevitable that Muslim clerics and sections of the male Muslim population will characterise Modijis appeal and the intention to introduce a uniform civil code as an extension of the Hindutva agenda which they will say erodes the religious rights of minorities. They would be, in wider international terms, isolated and even wrong. The practice of triple talaq, though it is said to be rooted in scriptures, is not uniformly accepted as a sanctioned practice in the Muslim world. It is hotly contested in some countries and India is one of only a handful of countries in which it is legally enforceable. The Indian civil code would be catching up with more progressive Muslim and multi-religious societies by abolishing the practice.

The most startling objection reported in the UK press is the contention of some Indian Muslim clerics that the consequent avoidance of paying alimony to the divorced women is a safety valve that prevents estranged marriages from ending in their murder. The frightening thing about such an outrageous statement is that the statistics of what has become known as honour killings in the subcontinent make such murders a distinct possibility. According to non-governmental organisations, 20,000 murders labelled as honour killings take place internationally each year and a fourth or fifth of these occur in India. It is certainly imaginable that the impulse that results in the killing of women for some notion, however primitive, of family honour, can transfer to murderous intentions in disaffected or broken marriages. However daunting the possibility of talaq murders, it must not stand in the way of the abolition of a universal indignity and gender humiliation. That would be like saying if Hindu widows didnt commit sati, the husbands families would murder them. Does that happen?
The discovery was announced Thursday, exactly 75 years after the submarine was scuttled by its commander following a clash with the British destroyer HMS Westcott.

German researchers say they have found a Nazi-era submarine that sunk in the Atlantic Ocean during World War II.

The Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation says the wreck of U-581 was found last September at a depth of about 900 meters (2,950 feet) near the Azores island of Pico.

The discovery was announced Thursday, exactly 75 years after the submarine was scuttled by its commander following a clash with the British destroyer HMS Westcott. All but four of its 46 crew survived.

German researchers Kirsten and Joachim Jakobsen found U-581 using a custom-made submersible designed for exploring and filming underwater life. Footage captured by the researchers shows the wreck covered in cold water corals.

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Cupertino, California-based Apple, is keen to assemble its phones in India, one of the world's fastest growing smartphone markets.

The government of the Indian state of Karnataka said on Thursday it welcomed a proposal from Apple to begin initial manufacturing operations in the state, in a sign the tech company is slowly moving forward with plans to assemble iPhones in the country.

"Apple's intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru will foster cutting edge technology eco system and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally," the government of the south Indian state said in a statement.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters, however, that no deal, or memorandum of understanding had so far been finalised with the Karnataka government.

The person, who asked not to be named, said if Apple did go ahead with plans to begin assembling the iPhone, it was likely to do so initially at a plant being set up by its Taiwanese manufacturing partner Wistron Corp at Peenya on the outskirts of the tech hub of Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Apple was not immediately reachable for comment.

Cupertino, California-based Apple, is keen to assemble its phones in India, one of the world's fastest growing smartphone markets.

Apple representatives met with federal and state government officials in India last week, as it is lobbying hard for a raft of tax and sourcing concessions from India, before it begins to assemble iPhones in the country.

Following the meetings, Apple said it appreciated the open and constructive dialogue it held with Indian officials, around the expansion of its local operations in the country.

Any final decision around manufacturing in India however, is likely to still be contingent on the government's willingness to concede ground on the concessions sought by the company.

Last month, Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said India would consider Apple's request for incentives to invest in the country with an "open mind."

On its part, the government of Karnataka said on Thursday it was "committed to new initiatives in any sector for manufacturing and will provide a conducive environment for investment."

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It is eager to open its own stores but Indian law would require it to procure 30 percent of the components of its products locally.

Apple is to start making iPhones in India this year, a local government official said Friday, as the firm looks to tap a booming middle class as sales in China slow. The US giant has not confirmed the move, but chief executive Tim Cook said this week the company intended to "invest significantly" in India, where a pick-up in the economy provides ample opportunity for growth.

"We have an understanding with Apple and we expect them to start manufacturing in Karnataka by the end of April," Priyank Kharge, minister of information technology and biotechnology in southern Karnataka state, told AFP.

He said the new operation would likely assemble iPhones for the domestic market.

Apple has only a two-percent share of the Indian market, well behind rival Samsung on 23 percent, according to research firm Canalys.

However, last year it had 48 percent of the premium sector in which phones sell for $450 and above. Experts said manufacturing locally would reduce the company's costs and enable it to lower prices. "They're eager to be here because they've identified India as a strategic focus market," said Jaideep Mehta of research firm IDC.

"They had a fantastic 2016 in India and shipped more two million devices to India, and now they're looking to ultimately manufacture here as that gives them more flexibility to respond to market changes."

Apple currently sells its phones in India through third-party retailers.

It is eager to open its own stores but Indian law would require it to procure 30 percent of the components of its products locally.

It is not clear whether the Karnataka plans would help it clear that hurdle.

Reports in Indian media said Wistron Corp., a Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, was lined up to assemble iPhones at a plant on the outskirts of tech hub Bangalore.

Apple outsources all its manufacturing globally.

Analysts said that if confirmed the move would be a coup for India's government, which has been trying to persuade foreign companies to manufacture in the country.

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People rally with flags at Brooklyn Borough Hall as Yemeni bodega and grocery-stores shut down to protest US President Donald Trump's Executive Order banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Yemen in New York. (Photo: AFP)

Washington: The uproar over President Donald Trumps travel ban has thrown the plight of immigrants into stark relief, but it also has engulfed skilled foreign workers.

In dramatic scenes over the past week, outraged demonstrators flocked to airports to support refugees and migrants trapped there or unable to board flights to the United States.

Major US tech companies that are highly dependent on foreign talent said hundreds of their employees could be affected, and joined in the opposition to the immigration limits, which initially swept up legal residents as well.

But Trump and his team have long expressed goals that extend far beyond Silicon Valley, signalling they planned to establish a general preference for US workers over migrant job seekers in their America First economic policy.

Since taking office, Trump has announced the ambitious goals of creating 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years and pushing economic growth to a torrid 4%, double the current rate.

Economists, however, say those goals will be difficult if not impossible to achieve without either delaying retirement for many older workers, admitting significant numbers of immigrants into the United States, or both.

Destroy our jobs

Some Trump advisors and associates have sought to frame the question of immigration as a fundamental contest over the nature of American society.

Chief White House advisor Stephen Bannon said in 2015 that the presence of Asians in Silicon Valley could undermine civic society -- views that have been hailed by the extreme right.

But Trump publicly has stuck to national security and economic arguments.

He pledged not only to prevent employers from outsourcing cheap labour by using the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, but also to institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program.

And in his inaugural address, he declared the country should protect itself from foreign countries seeking to destroy our jobs.

But under current economic and demographic trends, Trumps goal of doubling economic growth and adding 25 million jobs by 2027 is incompatible with a clampdown on immigrants, economists say.

The only way in which that statement really makes sense to an economist is if you increase the population, Jennifer Hunt, a former chief economist at the Labour Department, told AFP.

Hunt, now at Rutgers University, served on a National Academy of Sciences panel which found that over the longer term, immigration was a significant benefit to the US economy, with little to no negative effects on the employment levels or wages of native-born workers.

During the 1990s, immigrants resulted in a significant increase in per capita economic growth through innovation.

In 2000, GDP per capita from 1990 was between 1.5% and 2.5% higher than it would have been without the immigration since 1990, Hunt said.

Amid an overall surge in patent registrations between 1990 and 2000, immigrants accounted for one third of new patents, she said.

Wildly implausible

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Trumps goals were wildly implausible given the current size of the US labour force.

Theres just not the labour supply there to do it, he said, noting that employers already are finding it increasingly hard to fill vacancies, especially if Trump goes ahead with a massive infrastructure plan.

Demographics also are playing a role through the aging of the US workforce.

Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute agreed that increasing immigration is one of the only ways of meeting Trumps job creation goal, since about one in four Americans is expected to be 65 or older in the next 10 years.

The US would still fall short of Trumps goal by about nine million jobs even if each of five broad age groups matched their record employment levels from the last 50 years, he said in a blog post.

The current foreign-born labour force coincidentally numbers about 25 million people. Thats a sizeable part our economy, he told AFP.

Efforts to reduce that and change the trend in negative ways are almost certainly going to shrink the workforce.

Nevertheless, Trump has shown no sign of increasing immigration to meet the demand. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

On the contrary, with Trump in office barely two weeks, raucous protests have erupted over policies such as plans to erect a wall on the Mexican border, create a registry of crimes committed by immigrants, punish municipal governments that fail to enforce federal immigration laws, and ramp up certain deportations.
Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Quebec premier Philippe Couillard, Quebec city mayor Regis Labeaume and Montreal mayor Denis Coderre pay their respects to three victims of the mosque shooting during their funeral in Montreal. (Photo: AP)

Montreal: The massacre at a Quebec City mosque left Canada in shock but it has also unified the country in solidarity with the Muslim community, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the funeral for three of the six men killed in the attack.

Trudeau on Thursday addressed the thousands packed into Quebecs Maurice-Richard Arena in Arabic, saying, As-Salaam-alaikum, which means peace be unto you, drawing rounds of applause.

The Liberal Party leader stood before the caskets of Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi and Aboubaker Thabti, which were draped in flags of their homelands.

It is with a heavy heart that we come together this afternoon to grieve the loss of these innocent lives. But as a community and as a country, together we will rise from this darkness stronger and more unified than ever before. That is who we are, Trudeau told the crowd.

Thabti, 44, was a pharmacist of Tunisian origin who had three children. Belkacemi, a 60-year-old father of two, was from Algeria and was a professor at Universite Laval. Hassane, a 41-year-old also from Algeria, was a father of three and worked in information technology for the Quebec provincial government.

Trudeau called them devoted fathers who worked hard to ensure their families had a bright future -- a dream, he said, that Canadians have known and shared for generations.

Those men, along with three others, were killed when a gunman entered the mosque and opened fire during evening prayers. Nineteen more were wounded.

University student Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. He was arrested Sunday night following the attack. Bissonnette was a fan of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and US President Donald Trump, and acquaintances said he took extreme nationalist, pro-Le Pen positions at Laval University and on social media.

Quebec Mayor Denis Coderre, who was among the dignitaries at the funeral, said the attack was a blow to everyone.

I think that we are all suffering from the shooting, he said. Not just the Muslim community, its not just the people of Quebec. Everyone is suffering from this.

Philippe Couillard, premier of Quebec province, noted all six dead were fathers like him. They were sons and brothers and uncles, like me, like us. Friends, co-workers, like us. They were us. They were loved, appreciated, respected, and they always will be. We wont forget them.

I want to tell Muslim Quebecers: You are at home here. We are all Quebecers, Couillard said.

A funeral is expected in Quebec City on Friday for the three other victims: Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Ibrahima Barry, 39; and Azzedine Soufiane, 57.
Mehul Chandubhai Patel pleaded guilty to charges that stem from violations of minimum wage rules in connection with two hotels he operates in Battle Creek and Coldwater in Michigan. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

New York: A 31-year-old Indian-origin hotelier in the US has pleaded guilty to charges of underpaying his employees at two of his hotels and lying to federal investigators, according to a media report.

Mehul Chandubhai Patel, also known as Mike Patel, pleaded guilty to charges that stem from violations of minimum wage rules in connection with two hotels he operates in Battle Creek and Coldwater in Michigan, according to the US Department of Labor.

Patel appeared before Magistrate Judge Ellen Carmody in US District Court in Grand Rapids yesterday on February 2, and pleaded guilty to the crime of concealing a material fact from the federal government when obligated to disclose it, mlive.com reported.

"Patel admitted that during 2014, the Department of Labor (DOL) had found him to be in violation of minimum wage laws by underpaying his hotel employees," the government stated in a press release provided by Acting US Attorney Andrew Birge.

"He thereafter signed an agreement promising to repay his employees. When requested to provide proof that he had done so, Patel sent DOL checks indicating that back wages had been repaid. However, he concealed the fact that he required his employees to return the money to him," he said.

Patel faces up to five years in prison and other penalties. He may be ordered to pay restitution and other penalties. He is to be sentenced by US District Judge Paul Maloney.

Patel owns the Rodeway Inn on Beckley Road in Battle Creek and the Super 8 Motel in Coldwater, it said.
The donation has been made to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that has reportedly raised more than USD 24 million in online donations in the past few days. (Photo: Representational Image)

San Francisco: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and about 1,000 of his colleagues have donated over USD 1.5 million to a rights group that has pledged to fight President Donald Trump's temporary ban on refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim majority countries.

The donation has been made to American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that has reportedly raised more than USD 24 million in online donations in the past few days.

Initially, 925 Twitter staff pulled together a donation of over USD 530,000. That was then matched by CEO Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani to take the total to USD 1.59 million, TechCrunch reported, citing a company-wide email.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the donation and the numbers involved to the tech industry news website.

"Our work is far from done. In the coming months we'll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements. But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I'm proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people," Twitter General Counsel Vijaya Gadde wrote in the memo.

"The Executive Order's humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting," Dorsey said on Twitter over the weekend.

"We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the US," he said.

Also, Microsoft has requested the Trump administration to ease travel restrictions on its employees affected by the executive order on immigration, visa and border security.

Trump last week signed the sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America.

Silicon Valley's top executives, including India-born CEOs Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella, had condemned Trump's immigration ban, voicing concern that the move could directly hit their own staffers and stop bringing great talent to the US.

Executives from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Netflix, Tesla, Facebook, Uber and other top American companies slammed Trump's immigration order that sparked widespread protests across the US.

Tech giant Google also created a crisis fund that could raise up to USD 4 million for four immigrant rights organisations, including ACLU and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one of the first to address the ban publicly.

"We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources," he had written on Facebook.
Washington: The Trump administration is imposing sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test.

The Treasury Department announced the action on Friday.

President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said this week that the administration was putting Iran "on notice" for its missile test Sunday and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen.

Trump tweeted Friday that "Iran is playing with fire, they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"
The policemen were killed while they were sleeping in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to the provincial police spokesman. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Kabul: An Afghan policeman turned his rifle on his colleagues in a northern province, killing eight, while a gunman in the country's east fatally shot a cleric and his wife, officials said on Friday.

The policemen were killed while they were sleeping in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to the provincial police spokesman, Abdul Karim Yuresh.

The attack happened on Thursday night and according to the spokesman, a policeman who was on duty opened fire and killed his colleagues, then collected all their firearms and fled the scene, presumably to join the Taliban.

The Taliban made no official statement or claim about the attack but Afghanistan has seen several such incidents over the past years. There has been a growing number of cases in which Afghan troops or policemen or Taliban militants dressed in Afghan uniforms have turning their guns on their colleagues or U.S.-led coalition partners.

Also on Thursday night, in the country's eastern Paktika province, a gunman killed a cleric and his wife, said Mohammad Alias Wahdat, the provincial governor.

Wahdat said the gunman entered the cleric's home in the Yusof Khail district and shot the cleric and his wife. Two of their children who were in the house survived.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the attack and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings.

In other violence, Gul Agha Roohani, the chief of police in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said Islamic State group militants stormed the security posts in the district of Kot early on Friday, killing at least one police officer.

Afghan security forces responded and killed 12 militants, he said.

Afghanistan has been facing major political and security challenges since the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014, leaving a smaller contingent of troops behind to focus on training and counterterrorism.

Also, President Ashraf Ghani has been dealing with a stepped-up insurgency by the Taliban seeking to topple the government as well as an affiliate of the Islamic State group, which emerged two years ago and has expanded its footprint, especially in the country's east and in Nangarhar province.
Singapore executed four people in 2015, one for murder and three for drug offences, according to prison statistics. (Photo: Representational Image)

Singapore: A former Singapore policeman is set to face the gallows for the double murder of a businessman and his son after his appeal was thrown out by the city-state's highest court on Friday.

Iskandar Rahmat, 37, was in 2015 convicted for the murders of car workshop owner Tan Boon Sin, 67, and his son, Tan Chee Heong, 42, at their home in July 2013 during a botched robbery.

The pair bore multiple stab wounds, and the younger Tan had his body dragged about a kilometre (0.6 miles) after he got caught under his father's car that Iskandar had used as a getaway vehicle.

Iskandar, who was in severe financial trouble, was arrested days later in neighbouring Malaysia.

During the appeal, Iskandar's lawyers said a new psychiatric assessment last year showed he was suffering from mental illness during the murders, an argument that was dismissed by the Court of Appeal.

In 2015, High Court Judge Tay Yong Kwang said Iskandar had attacked the victims "cruelly and relentlessly with the clear intention of causing death".

The elder Tan was found with 27 knife wounds while his son had 20, including an open fracture to his skull.

Iskandar was once portrayed as a model officer on the Singapore Police Force website, but he had fallen into severe debt and was facing possible expulsion from the department.

He has one final option of pleading for clemency from the president and if that fails, he will face death by hanging, a punishment carried over from British colonial rule.

Singapore executed four people in 2015, one for murder and three for drug offences, according to prison statistics.

Rights groups have called on Singapore to abolish capital punishment but the government argues that it is a deterrent to crime.
The maximum penalty for aggravated molestation is between two and 10 years in addition to caning on each charge. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Singapore: A Singapore court on Friday sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to 26 months and one week in jail and four strokes of cane for twice molesting a young hotel intern and using criminal force on her.

Bander Yahya A Alzahran, a father of three, was on a holiday here with his family when the offences were committed at a hotel on the Sentosa resort island in August last year.

The 39-year-old, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, The Straits Times reported.

Alzahran was found guilty on Wednesday after an eight-day trial of kissing the 20-year-old on her neck and hugging her while wrongfully restraining her inside the hotel room.

He was also found guilty of kissing the victim's neck a second time, touching her improperly and forcing her to touch him in return.

District Judge Lee Poh Choo had found him "unusually convincing".

She rejected the defence assertion that the whole incident was a set-up and that the victim conspired with other staff to level false allegations against Alzahrani to extort money from him.

The victim had been reluctant to divulge anything as she was "confused" and did not know what to do. She had said to a colleague, who had noticed the victim's distress and unusual behaviour, that the guest had told her this was a "top secret" between them.

Cajoled for hours by her colleagues, the victim eventually told and demonstrated her version of events to various persons, including the front office manager and a security executive, at different times that day.

The maximum penalty for aggravated molestation is between two and 10 years in addition to caning on each charge. For using criminal force, the maximum penalty is three months' jail and a Singapore dollar 1,500 fine.
Tokyo: US Defence Secretary James Mattis said on Friday that the United States stands "100 per cent" with Japan on a visit meant to confirm the importance of the countries' security alliance.

"We stand firmly, 100 per cent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and (the) Japanese people," Mattis told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after arriving on his first visit since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.

"I wanted to make certain that Article Five of our mutual defence treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago and it will be a year and 10 years from now," he added in remarks at the start of their meeting.

Article five of the security treaty commits each country to repel any attacks on each other in Japan or territories it administers.

Mattis arrived from South Korea and his visit marks the first overseas trip of any senior official from US President Donald Trump's administration, who suggested while campaigning that America's longstanding role in Northeast Asia could change.

On the campaign trail, Trump raised the possibility of Japan and South Korea arming themselves with nuclear weapons, and accused Seoul and Tokyo of not paying their fair share for US troops stationed in their countries.

Some 47,000 US troops are stationed in Japan and another 28,500 in South Korea.

Abe, who is set to hold a summit with Trump next week in the US, also stressed the importance of the alliance.

"I do have a hope, and also I am convinced, together with you and President Trump we will be able to demonstrate the unwavering alliance between Japan and the United State both to the public inside Japan as well as outside Japan," Abe said.

He also praised Mattis, who is scheduled to meet Japan's defence minister on Saturday, as the right person for the job of US defence chief.

"I was very encouraged to see someone like you who has substantial experience both in the military, as well as security, defence and diplomacy taking this office," he said.

Abe has repeatedly argued that Japan bears an appropriate share of the costs of the alliance, which he stresses benefits the United States, Japan and the broader region.

Before leaving South Korea, Mattis said that any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an "effective and overwhelming" response.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis shakes hands with South Korea's acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn, prior their meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul. (Photo: AP)

Seoul: US President Donald Trump's defence secretary warned North Korea on Friday of an "effective and overwhelming" response if it chose to use nuclear weapons, as he reassured South Korea of steadfast U.S. support.

"Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said at South Korea's defense ministry, at the end of a two-day visit.

Mattis' remarks come amid concern that North Korea could be readying to test a new ballistic missile, in what could be an early challenge for Trump's administration.

North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and its main ally, the United States, conducted more than 20 missile tests last year, as well as two nuclear tests, in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions.

The North also appears to have also restarted operation of a reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear facility that produces plutonium that can be used for its nuclear weapons program, according to the U.S. think-tank 38 North.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior," Mattis said.

North Korea's actions have prompted the United States and South Korea to respond by bolstering defences, including the expected deployment of a U.S. missile defence system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD), in South Korea later this year.

The two sides reconfirmed that commitment on Friday.

China, however, has objected to THAAD, saying it is a direct threat to China's own security and will do nothing to bring North Korea back to the negotiating table, leading to calls from some South Korean opposition leaders to delay or cancel it.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reiterated China's opposition, which he said would never change.

"We do not believe this move will be conducive to resolving the Korean peninsula nuclear issue or to maintaining peace and stability on the peninsula," Lu told a daily news briefing in Beijing.

South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Mattis' visit to Seoul - his first trip abroad as defense secretary - sent a clear message of strong U.S. support.

"Faced with a current severe security situation, Secretary Mattis' visit to Korea ... also communicates the strongest warning to North Korea," Han said.

Once fully developed, a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) could threaten the continental United States, which is about 9,000 km (5,500 miles) from North Korea. ICBMs have a minimum range of about 5,500 km (3,400 miles), but some are designed to travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles) or more.

Former U.S. officials and other experts have said the United States essentially has two options when it comes to trying to curb North Korea's fast-expanding nuclear and missile programs negotiate or take military action.

Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, U.S. allies in close proximity to North Korea. Mattis is due in Japan later on Friday.
Mattis was in the South Korean capital before going on to Tokyo, on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader. (Photo: AP)

Seoul: Any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an "effective and overwhelming" response, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Seoul Friday as he sought to reassure Washington's Asian allies following President Donald Trump's inauguration.

Mattis was in the South Korean capital before going on to Tokyo, on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

South Korea has enjoyed US security protection since the 1950-53 Korean War, but on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces from it and Japan if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to defend it against the nuclear-armed North, and 47,000 in Japan.

Pyongyang was continuing to "engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour", said Mattis, who first came to the South as a 21-year-old lieutenant in the US military.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

He was in Seoul to "underscore America's priority commitment to our bilateral alliance" and make clear the administration's "full commitment" to defending South Korea's democracy," he said.

Han added that the alliance "reaffirms its firm will and strength to remain unwavering against all challenges and adversaries".

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-Un said in his closely-watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: "It won't happen!"

'Top priority'

On Thursday Mattis and South Korean prime minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South this year as planned.

Beijing fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities, weakening its nuclear deterrent. It has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilising regional security, and imposed measures seen as economic retaliation in South Korea.

The dispute makes it harder to convince Beijing -- the North's most important diplomatic protector and main provider of aid and trade -- to act against its neighbour, analysts say.

"Deepening tensions between China and the US adds to the North's strategic value in the eyes of China," Lee Ji-Yong, a professor at South Korea's government-financed Institute for Foreign Affairs and Security told AFP.

"It will make more difficult for the US to persuade China to cooperate in pressuring the North to give up its nuclear arsenal."

Mattis' visits to South Korea and Japan, he added, were "a message that the Trump administration is giving top priority to ensuring security on the Korean peninsula against North Korea's nuclear sabre-rattling and the US is a reliable security partner in the region".

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe -- who is scheduled to meet Trump next week in Washington -- told lawmakers he intends to press Mattis about "the significance of the Japan-US alliance".

Mattis' tour comes as relations between the US and other world powers such as Mexico and Australia get off to a rocky start.

The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Trump ripped into his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull during a call last week, with the US president apparently fuming at a refugee accord he called "dumb" and cutting the conversation short.

Australia is a close US ally, and one of the so-called "Five Eyes" countries with which the US routinely shares sensitive intelligence.

Trump has meanwhile angered Mexicans by ordering the construction of a massive border wall and vowing to make their country pay for it.
They were given alcohol and cannabis and intimidated into performing sexual acts, court said. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

London: A gang of six paedophiles convicted of raping girls aged 11 and 13 years yelled "Allahu Akbar" as they were led out of a court in northern England following their sentencing totalling more than 81 years for the crimes.

The men in their 30s, believed to be of Pakistani-origin, were sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday after they were found guilty of drugging and then abusing two girls between 1999 and 2001.

Basharat Dad was jailed for 20 years, his brother Nasar Dad for 14 years and six months and their uncle Tayab Dad for 10 years.

Matloob Hussain was sentenced to 13 years in prison, Mohammed Sadiq was given 13 years and Amjad Ali was given 11 years, according to 'The Yorkshire Post'.

Judge Sarah Wright described how one of the girls was plied with alcohol and drugs and was having sex with a number of men from the age of 11 before she fell pregnant in 2001.

"As a result of what happened to her, her childhood and adolescence was taken from her. She remarkably transformed her life from thereon, putting her own child first. Hers is a tale of the most astonishing dedication and bravery," the judge said.

Mark Langan from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the men were guilty of a catalogue of "vile sex offences" against the two young girls.

"The girls were targeted by these men because they were naive and vulnerable. They were given alcohol and cannabis and intimidated into performing sexual acts. On one occasion one of the young girls was locked alone in a flat for hours without food, water or electricity," he said.

One of the victims, in a statement read to the court, said, "There's evil and truly evil people in the world. I feel my child was the product of pure evil."

The sentencing marks the end of a series of three major trials after the Jay Report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, northern England, in 2014.

Professor Alexis Jay's report had found that more than 1,400 children had been groomed, trafficked and raped in the town over a 16-year period.

The three trials based around two families and their associates have resulted in 18 people being jailed for sentences totalling more than 280 years.
Valletta: European Union leaders agreed a plan to curb mass migration from Libya at a special summit in Malta on Friday that was overshadowed by the challenges of Donald Trump and Brexit.

Faced with a surge in migrants this spring, the 28 leaders backed steps, including helping the Libyan coastguard to stop boats to Italy and setting up temporary camps in the north African state.

But they will also, without Prime Minister Theresa May, discuss the future of the bloc at a turning point with Britain set to leave, and an increasingly difficult geopolitical situation with the new US administration.

French President Francois Hollande lashed out at Mr Trump, who has predicted that other countries will follow Britain out of the EU and branded the transatlantic Nato military alliance obsolete.

The key issue for Europe on Friday was tackling the Libyan migration route, having already largely shut the route Syrian refugees have taken to Greece over the Aegean, thanks to a controversial deal with Turkey.

That deal provides for the establishment of EU-funded but Libyan-run camps to house migrants pending their voluntary return or repatriation to their home countries. Italy committed to funding medical services for the camps.
Al-Qaeda fighters set up roadblocks around the towns and blew up two security service buildings. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Aden: Al-Qaeda in Yemen has taken over three southern towns just days after a deadly US special operations raid targeting its commanders, a security official and tribal sources said on Friday.

The jihadist advance into the Abyan province towns of Loder, Shaqra and Ahwar came as the White House defended Sunday's raid on an Al-Qaeda compound as a "success", even though multiple civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed.

Abyan has long been an Al-Qaeda stronghold and it was only through a major offensive backed by a Saud-led coalition last summer that the government was able to drive its fighters out of the province's main towns.

The jihadists' entry into Loder and Shaqra on Thursday evening was helped by a pullout by government forces angry over the late payment of their wages, a security official told AFP.

"Our forces are also angry that they have not been provided with the weapons and other equipment to confront the jihadists, who have been stepping up their armed attacks," the official said.

Al-Qaeda fighters set up roadblocks around the towns and blew up two security service buildings.

Saudi-led aircraft carried out two strikes on jihadist positions in Loder overnight, the official added.

Tribal sources said there were fears that the jihadists would now move on the provincial capital Zinjibar.

Zinjibar lies just 50 kilometres (30 miles) from Yemen's second city Aden where the government is based.

Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of nearly two years of fighting between government forces and Shiite rebels who control the capital Sanaa to entrench its presence in the south.

Washington has kept up its long-running drone war against the jihadists but that has done little to dent their influence.

Sunday's raid on an Al-Qaeda compound in Baida province was the first such operation of Donald Trump's presidency.

Navy SEAL Team Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens, 36, was killed and three other US troops were wounded in a fierce gunfight.

And on Wednesday, the Pentagon acknowledged that several non-combatants, including children, had apparently been killed.

A Yemeni provincial official said eight women and eight children died.

The International Crisis Group think-tank warned on Thursday that operations like the Baida raid risked fanning hostility towards the United States among civilians, providing fertile ground for recruitment by Al-Qaeda.
Kuwait City: After US President Donald Trumps executive order banning seven Muslim-majority countries last Friday, the Kuwaiti government has now told would-be migrants from the five banned nations to not apply for visas.

The five countries include Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. However, Pakistans Ambassador in Kuwait Ghulam Dastagir has refuted reports of a visa ban placed on the country by Kuwait.

With this, Kuwait will be the only nation to prohibit the entry of Syrian nationals prior to Mr Trumps executive action. Kuwait City had earlier issued a suspension of visas for all Syrians in 2011.

In July 2016, Kuwait had foiled thee terror plots planned by the ISIS. Several pre-emptive raids inside and outside Kuwait ended in the arrests of militants which the interior ministry had said belonged to Daesh. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for ISIS. In July 2015, the Gulf country, home to several US military bases, suffered its first ever

ISIS-claimed attack, when a blast targeting a Shia mosque killed 27 people and injured over 200. Kuwait had also issued travel advice last year stating that Terrorists continue to issue statements threatening to carry out attacks in the Gulf region. These include references to attacks on western interests, including residential compounds, military, oil, transport and aviation interests, as well as crowded places, including hotels.
Beijing: China on Friday said it was making "joint efforts" with India to bring home one of its soldiers who crossed into the country over five decades ago and settled there after being released by Indian authorities, as the state media said his return would enhance bilateral understanding.

China is aware of the case of Wang Qi, who was detained when he crossed into India in 1963, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.

"We sympathise with what happened to him and will provide assistance to him. We believe under joint efforts and by respecting his will, the case will be solved properly," he said.

Wang, now 77, was reportedly nabbed along India's eastern frontiers in January 1963, weeks after the Sino-India war. He spent years in a number of jails before a court ordered his release in 1969. He was reportedly taken by police to Tirodi, a remote village in Madhya Pradesh where he has lived since.

He has sought permission from New Delhi and Beijing to allow him to travel to China to meet his three brothers and two sisters. Born in a farmer family in Shaanxi province, he studied surveying and joined China's People's Liberation Army in 1960.

His is a complex case for both the sides as Wang, after being released in 1969 settled in Tirodi village, where he married a local and has three children. His Indian family is anxious if he would return from China.

In New Delhi, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said, "We are in touch with Ministry of Home Affairs to ascertain the details and how best it could be

handled."

Wang's case has been highlighted in the Chinese media following a recent BBC television report on him. And, an Op-ed article in China's state-run Global Times said helping Wang return home would enhance mutual understanding and contribute to warming of ties between China and India.

"Although it's unclear whether Wang is a prisoner of war, it is inhumane to have isolated the elderly man from his family for such a long time," the article said.

India media has previously reported Wang's story but this is perhaps the first time Chinese media has highlighted it. However, the Op-ed piece did not mention Wang's marriage to the Indian woman.

"The Indian authorities should give their utmost attention to this case, actively communicating with the Chinese Embassy and improving administrative efficiency in processing this case, while the Chinese side should cooperate to provide the necessary documents pertaining to Wang that India requires," the article demanded.

"If properly handled and solved, the case will help enhance mutual understanding of the public of both countries, contributing to further warming bilateral ties," it said.
He succumbed on the way to Dhaka as his condition worsened. (Photo: Representational Image)

Dhaka: A Bangladeshi journalist was killed while covering clashes between two factions of the ruling Awami League party in a northern district, police officials said on Friday.

Abdul Hakim Shimul, a correspondent in Sirajganj in northern Bangladesh for Bangla daily Samakal, was reporting on clashes between two factions of the ruling Awami League activists on Thursday, a local police inspector said.

"One group suddenly opened fire on the other when Shimul was shot," the official told AFP on the condition of anonymity, adding that the journalist was hit in the head and chest.

Shimul was first taken to a local clinic but was later rushed to Dhaka for better treatment, district police superintendent Mirazuddin Ahmed said.

"He succumbed on the way to Dhaka as his condition worsened," Ahmed told AFP. "We are looking for the culprits."
Islamabad: Snubbing India's demand of a credible crackdown on Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeed, who was recently placed in house arrest, Pakistan has said that it does not need any endorsement from New Delhi over actions against the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks mastermind.

A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry on Wednesday said that Pakistan does not need any certification or endorsement from India over the recent actions it has taken in relation to Hafiz Saeed, while reacting to the statement of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) regarding the JuD chief's detention.

India had earlier said only a credible crack down on the Mumbai terror attacks mastermind and terrorist organizations involved in cross border terrorism would be proof of Pakistan's sincerity.

"Exercises such as yesterday's orders against Hafiz Saeed and others have been carried out by Pakistan in the past also," the MEA said.

The Interior Ministry spokesperson said if India is serious about its allegations then it should come up with concrete evidence against Saeed, which is sustainable in the court of law in Pakistan or anywhere in the world.
The iPhone-maker Apple, which is betting big on India, will set up its first manufacturing facility in the country at the Peenya industrial area here by June. Apple on Thursday held discussions with state ministers and officials, expressing its intention to set up a manufacturing facility in the city. Apples representatives had positive discussions about the initiatives in manufacturing and possible collaborations with the state government in other areas, Minister for Information Technology Priyank Kharge told DH.



The minister said, This will foster a cutting-edge technology ecosystem and supply chain development in Karnataka, which are critical for India to compete globally. Apples decision on initial manufacturing in Bengaluru has further enhanced the reputation of Bengaluru as the most preferred destination for foreign investment and further validation of the state government policies aimed at fostering manufacturing, innovation and investments in Karnataka, he added.



According to official sources, Apple is outsourcing its manufacturing of iconic iPhones in Bengaluru to Wistron, a Taiwanese OEM maker. The government is committed to new initiatives in any sector for manufacturing and will provide a conducive environment for investment, Kharge added. In May last year, Apple announced a new initiative to support engineering talent and accelerate growth in Indias iOS developer community by establishing an iOS app design and development accelerator in the city.



The facility will provide support and guidance on Swift, Apples powerful and intuitive programming language created to build apps for iOS, Mac, Apple TV and Apple watch. Swift enables developers to write safer, more reliable code, save time and create richer app experiences. During his India visit in May last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, With the opening of this new facility in Bengaluru, were giving developers access to tools which will help them create innovative apps for customers around the world.
A 24-year-old Ugandan woman was murdered at her house in Kothanur in the early hours of Thursday. Nakayaki Florence was a BCom student, and a native of Kampala in Uganda. Ishaan (27), who reportedly knifed her to death, was nabbed from her house. The incident took place between 1.30 and 2 am at her second floor house in Thimmegowda Layout, near the Kothanur bus stand. Police said she was involved in the flesh trade, a charge members of her community believe diverts the case.



Ishaan, a native of Himachal Pradesh, told the police he was an MTech looking for a job in Bengaluru. He worked as a part-time tutor and was a paying guest in BTM Layout, the police said. Ishaan met Nakayaki on Brigade Road, and struck a deal for Rs 5,000 to visit her house, a police source said, quoting Ishaan. She demanded Rs 10,000 as he had stayed longer than agreed, Ishaan purportedly told the police.



Drunken scuffle

This resulted in a quarrel. Both were drunk, and Nakayaki grabbed a knife and charged at Ishaan, injuring his hand, according to the police. Ishaan then snatched it from her and stabbed her four or five times, killing her instantly. Hearing the commotion, the landlady rushed to the second floor and locked the door from outside, trapping Ishaan inside.



We have already established that he (Ishaan) killed the victim, and prima facie, there is clear-cut circumstantial evidence, said P S Harsha, Deputy Commissioner of Police, North-East Division. However, he did not divulge details, saying the investigation was in progress.



Since it was a murder involving a foreigner, a large number of policemen rushed to the area. People from several African countries had gathered at the spot and were seeking access to Ishaan. The police caned the crowd and whisked him away around 3 am. Soon a platoon of KSRP personnel arrived. The police have booked some Africans for assault, a policeman said.



An association of Africans took objection to the way the city police approached the case. How can the police come out with conclusive statements that the victim was in the flesh trade and the cause of murder was money over unlawful activity? This is victimising the victim further, said Bosco Kaweesi, legal adviser, All African Students in Bengaluru.



The fact of the case is that someone went to Nakayakis house at night and murdered her, he said. Let the police probe the case impartially, Kaweesi urged.



Envoy coming

Three officials from the Ugandan High Commission, besides the Ugandan ambassador to India , will be coming to Bengaluru on Friday, said Bosco Kaweesi.


An Iranian man denied entry into the United States following President Donald Trump's travel ban was back in Los Angeles -- the first person allowed to return to the country under a judge's ruling.



Ali Vayeghan, who for 12 years had been waiting to immigrate to the US to join family, was met by his brother, his niece and a crowd of supporters at Los Angeles airport chanting "This Land is Your Land."



"This is what humanity looks like," the 61-year-old said in Farsi, as his niece translated. "This is what human rights looks like. I am shocked, honored and awed."



He said he was not mad at anyone, adding: "This is the greatest country in the world." The green card holder was forcibly carried on a plane back to Dubai after arriving in Los Angeles last Friday, shortly after Trump's temporary ban targeting seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, came into effect.



Acting on an emergency motion by attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and an immigration lawyer, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order calling on Vayeghan to be allowed into the country.



However, the order came too late and on Saturday Vayeghan was carried onto a plane by immigration officers and sent to the United Arab Emirates. The judge subsequently amended her order, instructing US officials to facilitate Vayeghan's return to the United States.



Trump's executive order suspends entry of all refugees to the US for 120 days, bars Syrian refugees indefinitely and blocks citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entry into the US for 90 days.



The order, which caused mayhem worldwide and has been met with legal challenges, was later clarified to say that green card holders were not targeted by the ban.
US President Donald Trump's controversial immigration policy on seven Muslim-majority countries has led to the cancellation of a life-saving surgery on a 4-month-old Iranian infant for a heart condition.





Baby Fatemah and her family were supposed to fly in for an appointment for a surgical consultation at at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) next week, but they were not able to finish their trip because of Trump's executive order on immigration, KPTV reported.



The gravely ill baby is Iranian, but Fatemah's family has decided they did not want her to have surgery in her birth country due to concerns about the quality of medical services. "Over there, it's a very high risk because it's open heart surgery," her uncle, Sam Taghizadeh, said.



Fatemah Taghizadeh's parents were hoping to meet with doctors in Oregon on February 5 for the emergency surgery and travelled to Dubai to get the US visa.



Their embassy appointment was cancelled because of the executive order preventing Iranian nationals, among others, from travelling to the US, Taghizadeh, who is a US citizen and lives in Portland, told reporters. "All the paper, everything was ready, and just in the last minute they cancelled everything," Taghizadeh said.



"It's like a nightmare. You know, in the one night everything changes. Now you don't know what you're going to do," said Taghizadeh.



"Why we came to US, we came here for freedom. For a better life. I'm feeling nowhere is safe," Taghizadeh said.



Fatemah and her family left Dubai and are they are now back in Iran. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has expressed outrage and said the Empire State would be glad to help little Fatemah.



"Here's the consequence of this un-American policy," Cuomo tweeted yesterday. "An exception should be made. If OR has issue, NY will provide care," New York Post reported.



"The pain and damage of this flawed federal policy is especially repulsive in this case preventing a child from getting life saving treatment," said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.



"If the plane lands in New York the Governor will personally make sure the child gets the health care she needs. New York and America does not let children die because we deprived them of healthcare.?"



Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
A 27-year-old Pakistani man was fatally shot dead by a police officer after he reportedly failed to stop at a checkpoint here, leading to rioting by angry locals in the country's capital city.





Taimur Riaz who was shot in Islamabad's Sector I-10/1 received at least one bullet injury to the head after a police official belonging to the Eagle Squad opened fire on his vehicle, the Dawn reported.



Taimur is reported to have died on the spot from the injury while the officer is said to have fled the scene after the incident.



Police said they have initiated a search for the police official. They said the police official opened fire at Taimur after his refusal to stop.



According to reports, a female passenger in the same vehicle was reported to be in safe condition. The incident led to rioting and protests in Islamabad, with the victim's family dismissing the police statement and saying there had been no prior warning or order to stop before the officer opened fire.



Protesters even set a police camp on fire, the report said. A case has been registered against the police officer by Taimur's brother.



In May 2015, two young men were shot dead by a police patrol in Karachi after the victims, along with four others on three bikes, refused to stop at a police checkpoint.



In June the same year, two young men were shod dead in Punjab's Sadiqabad by two members of the Muhafiz Squad.
Several people who had invested in an online trading company which allegedly duped nearly seven lakh investors to the tune of Rs 3,700 crore on the pretext of paying them in lieu of clicking on specific links today visited its office in Sector 63 here demanding their money back.





They also had a minor scuffle with the policemen when they forcefully tried to enter the office permises, forcing the police to used mild force to control the mob, a police official said.



UP STF had arrested the owner of the company Anubhav Mittal, its CEO Sridhar and the technical head Mahesh yesterday, after it busted the Rs 3,700 crore fraud.



Since then, police force had been deployed at the company's office to avert violent clashes.



As the news of fraud and arrest spread through the newspapers and television channels, more number of investors who had invested in lakhs rushed to the company, to get their money back.



Investors alleged that the company officials were trying to mislead them, by calling them and telling that everything would be fine and they should not panic.



"Company claims that some legal formalities would be completed and business will be back on track and investors money is safe. I had invested Rs 2 lakh. When I came to know about fraud, I came here to add my name in the FIR," said Subhash Gupta.


"We are hearing for those persons who are running away from the law. He (Krishnan) is an accused and he has been chargesheeted. Why he is running away? He should come and explain and finish the matter. "Here is the Supreme Court which is asking these people to come but they are saying no we will not come. People from our country are running away one after other and are not coming back," the bench said.



"Why he (Krishnan) is not coming? We are not punishing him. He has been summoned by a court and he is not responding to it. The other country is saying no he will not come. Ok, don't come but there will be consequences here. It is clear that he does not care for the courts here," it said. When senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for Aircel, referred to yesterday's order discharging Marans to buttress that now no case survives, the bench shot back, "It seems everyone is trying to be a proxy for these accused."



When he informed the bench about the proposal of merger of the shares of the firm with Reliance Wireless, the bench asked him about debt of around Rs 20,000 crore which was given by banks. "Rather than allowing the transfer of shares to Reliance, we will allow the Government of India to auction these very assets to be merged in some other company and if some other company brings more money, this money will be discharged to banks," the bench said.



"The interest of the banks have to be protected and we are here to protect them," it said, adding that "the government never supports a person who is an absconder."

Singhvi tried to persuade the bench that after yesterday's order passed by the special court discharging Marans and others in the case, all the accused in the case stand discharged. "There was a charge of conspiracy. The principal accused are discharged by the court. There can't be a conspiracy qua the co-accused if main accused are discharged," he said.



The bench, however, said, "But the fact of matter is that summons issued to these accused in Malaysia still exist." However, Singhvi said that the company has no control over Krishnan and "today Aircel is being punished for something which it has not done at all". "I as Aircel can't ensure presence of Krishnan here. Can the court punish Aircel for not ensuring the presence of Krishnan before the courts here?" he said.



To this, the bench said, "This man (Krishnan) will have to come to us. He must come to answer summons of the court. You don't worry, we will deal with it." The bench observed that it can't allow anyone to benefit from the allotted spectrum unless the accused appear before the court of law. It also noted that despite publication of this matter in the leading newspapers of Malaysia, these accused have not appeared before the courts here.



"Despite this, can they be allowed to continue to earn from here?" the bench observed. At the fag end of the hearing, Singhvi sought time from the court to file an affidavit explaining all the issues which he was arguing in the matter. The bench allowed Aircel to make clear all the points raised by it till February 8 and posted the matter for hearing to February 10.



Malaysian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan and top official of his Maxis Group Augustus Ralph Marshall, who are accused in Rs 742.58 crore Aircel-Maxis deal, today got a stern warning for "running away" from Indian court of law by the Supreme Court which said it will ensure that "there is no absconder". The apex court, which in the earlier hearing had said it "cannot tolerate that a person uses India's national resources and evades the law," maintained that these accused must have to come and "answer summons of the court".The top court took offence to their having evaded court summons and warrants in the case in which former Telecom Minister and DMK leader Dayanidhi Maran, his brother Kalanithi Maran and others were chargesheeted by CBI in a probe related to money trail of around Rs 600 crore allegedly used as bribe in the Aircel-Maxis deal. Maran brothers were yesterday discharged in the case by a special court which had segregated the case of Krishnan and Marshal as they have failed to comply with summons to appear before it.They were accused of pressuring and coercing Chennai-based telecom promoter C Sivasankaran, who got 2G licences in 2006, to sell his stakes in Aircel and two subsidiary firms to Malaysian firm Maxis Group. When the matter came up for hearing today, a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said the Malaysian businessmen have not complied with its January 6 order which had clearly stated the non-appearance before the apex court would lead it to pass an order to restrain the earning of any revenue by the company from 2G spectrum licences.The bench, also comprising Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud, said they will have to face the "consequences" for failing to appear before courts in India and it "might order auctioning of the spectrum allotted to Aircel-Maxis to recover the Rs 20,000 crore debt". It said these Malaysian nationals, who have been summoned as accused in the Aircel-Maxis deal case, were not respecting the orders of the courts here and if they "don't care about the law and court's order" the apex court will deal with them.The bench said if these accused do not respond to the summons and appear before the court here, then "it will not be open for them to raise objections in case of monetary loss". "We will adopt any mean to ensure there is no absconder from this country and there is no absconder to the summons of the courts here," the bench said.


The ballistic missile launch was the first by Iran since Trump became president. According to reports, Iran's missile test occurred at a well-known site outside Semnan, about 225 km east of Tehran. The Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding. In a statement, the Treasury Department said the multiple entities and individuals slapped with sanctions were involved in procuring technology and materials to support Iran's ballistic missile programme, as well as for acting for or on behalf of, or providing support to, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).



"This action reflects the United States' commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and destabilising activities in the region and is fully consistent with the United States' commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)," the Treasury said. "Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States," said John E Smith, Acting Director at the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).



"Today's action is part of Treasury's ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA," he added. The Treasury said OFAC designated several networks and supporters of Iran's ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his Iran - and China-based network, an Iranian procurement company and its Gulf-based network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an Iran-based procurement network connected to Mabrooka Trading, which was designated on January 17 last year.



It also designated a key IRGC-QF-run support network working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his associates Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat and Yahya al-Hajj, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon. Iran has previously warned that new US sanctions could constitute a violation of the nuclear deal, setting up a scenario in which the agreement could unravelsomething that hardliners in both countries would welcome. The row comes against a backdrop of already strained ties between Washington and Tehran over Trump's travel ban on citizens from Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries.



Senator Bob Corker, Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee, welcomed the sanctions. "This announcement makes clear that it is a new day in US-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Iran's destabilising behaviour," he said.



"A coordinated, multi-faceted effort to pushback against a range of illicit Iranian behaviour is long overdue, and after speaking with General Flynn this morning, I am very encouraged by the professionalism with which the administration has orchestrated these actions and how they have communicated their intentions to the international community," Corker said.



Paul Ryan, Speaker of House of Representatives, said: "Iran's latest ballistic missile test was a flagrant violation of UN Security Council resolutions. This swift and decisive response proves that our new administration is serious about holding the Iranian regime accountable for its illicit behavior."



Alleging that Iran's dangerous and provocative acts are a direct threat to the US and its allies, Ed Royce, Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said he is glad the administration is taking long-overdue steps to hold the regime accountable. "I look forward to working with the administration to build on these designations, push back against Iran's destructive policies, and promote stability in the Middle East," Royce said.



The US today slapped more than two dozen Iranian entities with sanctions, two days after the Islamic republic dismissed President Donald Trump's warnings over its latest missile test as baseless and provocative. The announcement also comes a day after Trump put Iran "on notice" for its alleged destabilising behaviour and carrying out ballistic missile test in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls on Tehran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.
Leading financial economist and Managing Director of Deutsche Bank, Sanjeev Sanyal, was on Friday appointed as the Principal Economic Adviser in the finance ministry.





Sanyal has been appointed on contract basis for a three-year term. In the finance ministry, his job will be to assist Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian in undertaking research on economic policies and management of the economy.



An Oxford Rhodes Scholar, Sanyal, has played an important role in changing the image of India as an international investment destination.



An Eisenhower Fellowship awardee for his pioneering work on urban systems, Sanyals appointment is significant at a time when a lot of policy changes are taking place around rapid urbanisation and infrastructure development in India to mitigate poverty.



In one of his earlier interviews, Sanyal had said, India will be an urban majority country within a generation but we are not preparing for this. We judge our cities by the size of their flyovers. In fact, walkability is the single most important urban design concept for old cities and new. People think that public transport is all about creating heavy metro rails, buses, or Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems. However, no public transport system can work without walking the last mile,



My idea is to invest heavily in this system by creating pedestrian crossings, increasing public security, improving street lighting, redesigning hawking, and creating overpasses. Always remember, road-widening within a city is euphemism for narrowing the footpath - its usually a bad idea, Sanyal said.
Home Minister G Parameshwara on Friday promised to facilitate the early release of the pending Rs 2.19-crore student scholarship funds from the Department of Social Welfare. Presiding over the quarterly Karnataka Development Programmes (KDP) progress review meeting held here, Parameshwara, who is also the district in-charge minister, reacted to the demand of MLA D N Jeevaraj. The legislator brought it to the notice of the minister that the scholarship funds were pending for last three years, owing to failure to sanction funds as explained by officials. Fellow MLAs from the district, C T Ravi and B B Ningaiah, seconded Jeevarajs demand, saying the officials are misleading the minister in this regard.



Following this, Parameshwara, who termed it a serious issue that needs to be dealt with, said, I fall in the same bracket, as I also pursued education with the aid of scholarship. Jeevaraj also complained against the Forest Department for unnecessarily troubling the forest dwellers of the Kudremukh National Park in the name of resurvey of properties and crops, although the forest dwellers were willing to come out of the forest seeking rehabilitation. In response, the minister sought a proposal on the basis of the inputs given by range forest officer at Karkala.



The RFO, in his explanation, said that while 91 families have been successfully distributed packages, a proposal to distribute Rs 42 crore to 22 families is pending with the government. While the Department has in its exchequer Rs 180 crore released under various heads, the funds can be diverted towards meeting the demand for rehabilitation package, if the principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) gives permission.



Slow work

The minister who was peeved over the tardy progress in the construction of community halls, fixed a deadline of March for district social welfare officer Manjunath to finish the works of 52 community halls. The minister was also surprised to know that the sowing activities had touched 87.7% although the district witnessed scarcity of annual rains by 32%. When he sought a reply from joint director of agriculture M C Seetha, the officer clarified that the district had witnessed average rains during the sowing period that came in handy for farmers. But there was scarcity of rain during the month of September and also November.



The officers from both Departments of Agriculture and Horticulture, however, fumbled for words when the elected representatives sought adequate information on the number of farmers having enrolled for Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojane and weather-based crop insurance scheme in the district and allied matters.



Following the allegations of another MLA G H Srinivas, the minister directed Deputy Commissioner G Satyavathi to probe into the allegation of tampering with the list of beneficiaries under the borewell scheme and initiate action against the guilty officers in the Dr B R Ambedkar Development Corporation.



The minister also promised to discuss at state-level, following a complaint from elected representatives across party barriers against the manager of Minorities Development Corporation, acting according to his whims and fancies by dropping the list of beneficiaries selected by the MLA-headed committee. It amounts to a breach of rights of MLAs, the representatives complained further.



Parameshwara took engineers attached to Mangalore Electricity Supply Company Limited (Mescom) and the manager of D Devaraj Urs Development Corporation to task for not providing electricity connection to 276 borewells drilled under Ganga Kalyana Scheme. He also gave the engineers a deadline of March to complete the work.



The minister instructed authorities concerned to drive the rogue elephant that claimed the lives of two people at Banakal in Moodigere taluk into the forest by the month-end. The deputy commissioner was told to submit a plea to reconsider the decision to drop Sringeri-Kerekatte highway development works. Zilla Panchayat vice president Ramaswamy Shettigaddhe, CEO Dr R Ragapriya and SP K Annamalai were present at the meeting.


Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said they had joined hands to defeat forces of hatred and would together change Uttar Pradesh. At a public meeting after holding their second joint roadshow in Agra, the duo raked up the issue of demonetisation and slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for causing inconvenience to the people, especially farmers and labourers.



They said the Union Budget had nothing for the weaker sections of the community. Modiji works only for some rich families in the country. He has no concern for the poor, Rahul accused Modi of not fulfilling the promises he had made during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Earlier, the two leaders held a 12-km joint roadshow in the town, which began from Dayalbagh and ended at Ramlila Maidan.



The roadshow passed through the narrow lanes of Sursadan, Diwani Crossing, Hari Parvat, Chipitola and Rakabganj. Flower petals were showered on the two leaders from rooftops as their vehicle passed by. Buoyed by the support, the poll strategists for the two parties have planned more roadshows of the two leaders. Sources said Akhilesh and Rahul will be holding roadshows at Kanpur and Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of the prime minister. The dates were being finalised.






The least they could have done is not put up candidates against the chief minister, Congress leader Hanif Ansari, who gave up his claim for the Haridwar Rural seat, told DH.



The unease in the Congress ranks is understandable as the Assembly constituency is dominated by Muslim voters. Of the 1.2 lakh voters, Muslims constitute 48,000, while Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs) form the next big chunks. The BJP had succeeded in wooing the Dalit and OBC communities in the last Assembly polls and now hopes that BSP candidate Ansari would help Yatishwarananda retain the seat.

Having bailed out Chief Minister Harish Rawat once, the BSP is looking to play kingmaker again in Uttarakhand. Uttarakhand has witnessed largely two-party politics with the Congress and the BJP being the key rivals and outfits such as the BSP, Uttarakhand Kranti Dal and Samajwadi Party remaining on the fringes.When the BJP tried to dislodge the Rawat government in May last year by engineering defections, it was the two-member BSP and some independent MLAs who saved the day for the Congress. The BSP has fielded 50 candidates in the 70-member Assembly and its influence can be seen in constituencies bordering Uttar Pradesh, particularly the Haridwar plains.Manglour, considered to be the gateway to Uttarakhand as one drives from Delhi to Haridwar, has legislator Sarwat Karim Ansari testing his luck again, while local strongman Subhash Chowdhary is in the fray from neighbouring Laksar. No government can be formed without the support of BSP, Chowdhary told DH even as he issued directions to his workers about campaigning.Flaunting his son of the soil credentials, the BSP candidate said he was confident that the party can also form the government on its own strength. In Haridwar Rural constituency, BSP leader Mohammad Mukkaram Ansari has thrown his hat in the ring against Chief Minister Harish Rawat and the BJP legislator Swami Yatishwarananda. The Congress is not amused at the BSP putting up candidates against the chief minister after supporting his government.
Action in Goa, the land of sea, sand and sun, will move from beach shacks to polling booths on Saturday as 11.10 lakh voters get to exercise their franchise to choose the next government. The election campaign has seen 251 candidates vying for the 40 legislative Assembly seats. With four major national parties, eight regional parties as well as independents in the fray, the choice before the voters doesnt appear to be a straightforward one.



With typical bravado, major political players have claimed their parties would win a majority. But away from the probing boom mikes and dictaphones, their spokespersons and senior leaders concede that the multi-corner contest may throw surprises and the key would be to emerge as the single largest party for starters. There is a confidence crisis among the voters. And the multiple choices available for them may just result in a fractured mandate. Our brief is to emerge as the single largest party and then leverage the advantage from there, a senior BJP leader told DH.



On record, the BJP, which is contesting 36 seats, had expressed confidence of winning 26 seats. But after Prime Minister Narendra Modis cue at a poll rally last week, it is two-thirds majority that the party says it is vying for. We are confident of a two-thirds majority. We have delivered as a government. The people will not forget that, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told a press conference on Thursday. The Congress, which is contesting 37 seats, also says it is confident of winning the polls on its own.



Dictatorial interference

The performance of the BJP government is before the people and so is the shambles of governance its leaders have delivered. The accounts of corruption, the unpopular policies, the dictatorial interference by Parrikar is all in the open. We are confident they will vote for the Congress and its policy of inclusive governance, All India Congress Committee secretary Girish Chodankar told DH.



The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (contesting 25 seats), Goa Suraksha Manch (5) and the Shiv Sena (3) form an electoral troika which cannot be ignored, especially because of its focus on the Hindu vote. Its convener, former Goa RSS chief Subhash Velingkar, claims the BJPs failed policies and a rebellion against the saffron party by the state RSS unit would serve as a death knell for the ruling party.

The BJP is doomed. Our alliance will form the next government, he said.



The Aam Aadmi Party which is contesting 39 seats is banking on an innovative campaign and the image of its chief ministerial candidate Elvis Gomes, a former bureaucrat, for a win. We are looking at 26 seats. The people of Goa are tired of corruption and we offer the only viable alternative, Gomes told DH.


Battle lines are drawn as Punjab votes on Saturday to elect its next government. This high-stake election is majorly a contest among the Congress, the SAD-BJP combine and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which is contesting its first Assembly elections outside Delhi. The incumbents, after a decade of rule, are facing strong anti-incumbency. The big fight is between Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and state Congress president Capt Amarinder Singh from Lambi.



Amarinder is also contesting polls from his hometown Patiala. This would be his last election. The seats of Congress candidate Navjot Sidhu from Amritsar and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader and Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal from Jalalabad are the prominent ones to watch out for.



In the 2012 Assembly elections, the SAD won 56 seats and its ally the BJP bagged 12. The Congress, despite getting the largest vote share of close to 40%, lost the elections with 46 seats in its kitty. Drugs, unemployment, corruption, and law and order have been the major poll issues this time around. The SAD made development its prominent poll plank.



Authorities have appealed for peace in the elections against the backdrop of the bomb blast at Bathinda this week, which claimed six lives, including four children. Punjab has a total electorate of over 1.98 crore registered voters. There are as many as 1,145 candidates in the poll fray. These include only 81 women and a transgender.



The BSP is contesting independently in 110 seats. Borders with the neighbouring states have been sealed. Nearly one lakh security personnel have been deployed to avoid any untoward incident during polls.


The Kerala State Beverages Corporations (Bevco) move to relocate its liquor outlets from highways as per the Supreme Court directive has met with stiff resistance from the public across the state. At Nanthancode in Thiruvananthapuram, girl students and teachers of Holy Angels ISC School joined an action council to protest against the opening of a Bevco outlet in the neighbourhood.



The protest that gained momentum on Thursday and led to the outlets closure, followed by a late-night attempt by Bevco staff to reopen it, hit a high note on Friday with the excise departments assurance that the outlet would remain closed. The mood at the protest venue was jubilant with students cheering and others excitedly sharing news about the agitation spreading to other parts of the state.



A liquor outlet in a residential locality, which has a girls school would have been disastrous. Its good to see the students coming out and making sure that it remains shut, Rajasekharan, a resident of the locality, told DH. As Bevco officials maintain that distance-based stipulations prescribed under the law are being followed, protesters have come together and ensured the closure of another outlet in Kazhakkuttom in Thiruvananthapuram.




The Congress and the Left on Friday demanded a probe over the way the government handled the death of senior Muslim League MP E Ahamed. The parties accused the government of covering up his death until the Budget presentation by giving the impression that the MP was getting treatment.



Cutting across lines

The parties forced an adjournment as they demanded a detailed probe by a Parliamentary panel. Kerala MPs, cutting across party lines, also demanded a thorough probe. Ahamed had collapsed at the Parliaments Central Hall on January 31 and was declared dead at 2.15 am the next day.



There were claims that Ahamed was brought dead to the hospital but the government wanted to delay the announcement fearing that the sitting MPs death would hamper the Budget presentation.




The Supreme Court on Friday refused to intervene in a special CBI courts order that discharged former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran and others in the Aircel-Maxis case. The apex court also allowed release of their attached properties worth Rs 750 crore.



The substantive part of the crime has gone (with their discharge), then this Rs 750 crore properties is not proceeds of crime... It is too trivial matter, a bench presided over by Chief Justice J S Khehar told special public prosecutor, senior advocate Anand Grover, who contended that the trial court should not release bail bonds of the accused till the appeals were decided.



The apex court, however, indicated that it may ask the Union government to auction the spectrum allotted to telecom company Aircel if its Malaysia-based owners continued to evade summons in the case. The auction would help in clearing the firms Rs 20,000 crore debts to a State Bank of India-led consortium of banks, it said.



The court noted that despite the apex court's order of January 6, T Ananda Krishnan, the owner of Malaysian company Maxis which controlled stakes in Aircel, and another official Ralph Marshall failed to appear before it.




The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike on Friday felled three trees and pruned branches of 16 trees to facilitate construction of a skywalk between Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium and the National Military Memorial on T Chowdaiah Road.





The 26-metre long skywalk, being constructed at a cost of Rs 1.8 crore under public private partnership, will have an elevator. Pioneer Publicity Private Limited is executing the project. Interestingly, the BBMP officials are yet to ascertain the passenger car per unit on this road. B S Prahlad, Chief Engineer (Major Roads) said that the controversial Hebbal steel flyover and the proposed skywalk were on the same alignment.



Meanwhile, the local residents have raised questions about the utility of the proposed skywalk. Raj Duggar, general secretary of Vasanathanagar Residents Welfare Association said that the skywalk was not required as the one opposite Sofia School was being used sparingly. He said that the underpass behind the planetarium always remains closed. Priya Chetty Rajagopal, a member of Citizens for Bengaluru, said that there was no for the skywalk as the waiting time at the traffic signal was quite long (nearly 120 seconds) and hence pedestrians get sufficient time to cross the road. She said that there was neither rush of pedestrians on the stretch.



Meanwhile, BDA and BBMP have issued work orders for axing 18 eucalyptus trees at the National Military Memorial (NMM). A member of the memorial said that the exhibits at the NMM were getting damaged as the branches of these trees were falling on them.



Hence, the government was requested to grant permission for cutting down them. Eucalyptus trees do not have any ecological value and they do not let anything else grow. So it has been decided to remove them and plant native and local tree species, the member added.






Operation intensified

Also, a senior official at Kamarajar Port told DH that officials from the Directorate General of Shipping were conducting a detailed inquiry. On Friday, too, the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) ship Varad with integral helicopter was deployed throughout the day for spill assessment and neutralisation.



ICG (East) Inspector General Rajan Bargotra said about 34,000 square metres of the sea were affected due to oil spill. Bargotra said oil patches near the shore have to be removed manually. MT Dawn Kanchipuram, carrying petroleum oil lubricants (POL) and MT BW Maple, loaded with LPG, collided near Kamarajar harbour off north Chennai in the early hours of Saturday. Soon after the mishap, several tonnes of crude oil from MT Dawn spilled into the sea, polluting the Chennai coast  a 31 km stretch.

As the clean-up operations along Chennais coastline enters the sixth day, the police on Friday registered cases against the managements of the two ships which collided last week, resulting in an oil spill. Based on the report on filed by officials at Kamarajar Port, the police booked the cases and summoned the captains of MT Dawn Kanchipuram and MT BW Maple. Cases were registered under six sections, including sections on polluting the sea.With the Madras High Court stating that it was for the central and the state governments to take appropriate steps, officials from the Tamil Nadu Coastal Security Group have detained the vessels. We have detained both the ships till we get further orders, a senior official aid.
Transport officials on Friday impounded 32 cars attached to Ola and Uber after the app-based taxi aggregators defied orders to shut down the car-pooling service on their platforms. Company representatives then rushed to the officials to seek 15 days to comply with the regulations. Transport Commissioner M K Aiyappa said they had to take action as the aggregators continued the operation that violated the permit given to them. They were given three days and they did not stop the operation that is against the law, he said.



Joint Commissioner J Gnanendra Kumar, who led the drive to detain vehicles offering shared rides, said the officials will not conduct similar drives for the next 15 days. He said charge sheets were being prepared on the detained vehicles which will be submitted to the court shortly. Officials who were part of the drive said the drivers did not have any documents from their aggregator companies to prove that carpooling service was legal.



Drivers hit hardest

An Uber driver whose car was impounded told DH on condition of anonymity: I had read reports of a ban on ride sharing. But I was confident that the company would find a solution within the three-day deadline. Why did they run the Uber Pool feature if they had not fixed the problem? I dont understand why a driver has to suffer for the companys mistake. Stating that drivers were the real scapegoats, he said he alerted his fellow drivers to opt out of the pool service.



I saved some drivers vehicles from being detained. Now I have to run from the RTO office to the court to recover my car. A company official assured me that they will refund the amount paid as fine to the authorities. But my daily earnings are hit. Who will provide for that, he asked.



Senior transport officials said they were aware of the situation, but were helpless in this regard. We know that a driver is not the employee of a company. The Karnataka High Court has brought a stay on rules made for aggregators. So we cant take action against the companies, they said.



When contacted, representatives of both companies had no response to the days developments. Ola followed Uber to launch an online campaign to garner support for the Ola Share service. Meanwhile, an association of drivers attached to aggregators started a counter campaign on doodle.com urging people to say no to Ola Share and Uber Pool.


The city police have taken strong objection to Africans posting mobile footage on social media of the murdered Ugandan national with the accused. The post that has been making rounds on Facebook, Whatsapp and Twitter says that it was a racial attack where the Indian man raped and murdered an African woman in her house. Bengaluru City police commissioner Praveen Sood said they were trying to trace down the Africans who are trying to not only instigate animosity, but also create social disharmony.



Preliminary investigations revealed that the murder took place over a fit of rage when the woman demanded more money from the accused than agreed upon previously for an alleged sexual favour. The city police have written to the Ugandan Embassy stating that the murder has nothing to do with racism as is being portrayed on social media. The city top brass has also directed the authorities concerned to prepare a list of overstaying foreigners, including Africans, in the city.




As the newest member of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, Kristin Gaspar quickly found herself in a high-pressure situation. At her first meeting on Jan. 10, she cast the lone no vote on a 12.5 percent raise for herself and her board colleagues, as about two dozen people spoke against the measure.

Gaspar, who made the jump to the county board from Encinitas, where she served as mayor, had only been sworn into her new position the previous day. But as she sat on the board dais and prepared to cast her vote, putting her in opposition to her new colleagues on her first full day in office, she said she did not feel overwhelmed.

Encinitas has many controversial issues. I felt a little bit like I was back at home. Its an environment I feel comfortable operating in, said Gaspar, whose election win over former Supervisor Dave Roberts, himself an ex-mayor of Solana Beach and a Democrat, put the Board of Supervisors back in all-Republican hands.

As Gaspar explained at the Jan. 10 board meeting, having been in office for less than 24 hours, she did not feel like she could properly evaluate whether the raise was justified.

Its a tough thing to do, she said of voting against all four of her fellow board members. Its not necessarily how youd like to cast your first vote. I tried the best I could to explain the reasons I couldnt support the raise.

Even her electoral victory wasnt without tension - Roberts led in the tally immediately following the election, but as absentee and provisional ballots were counted, Gaspars vote total increased. Ultimately, she won by 1,272 votes, out of a total of 229,318 cast.

As only the second new member of the Board of Supervisors in two decades, Gaspars learning curve will be steep. Over the next four years, all four of her board colleagues - Dianne Jacob, Greg Cox, Ron Roberts and Bill Horn - will be termed out, meaning that by 2020, four new members will join the panel, making Gaspar the senior member if she is re-elected for a second term.

Its a big change and we have to be ready for it, said Gaspar.

But she noted that she also experienced similar changeover in Encinitas when veteran members left the council after her first term.

During the campaign, Gaspar highlighted dealing with homelessness and mental health as among her key issues, and she said they will be a big focus of her upcoming term on the Board of Supervisors. On her first day, she met with San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer to discuss homeless issues.

Tackling homelessness doesnt necessarily mean spending more on the problem, she said, but instead critically assessing available services.

Were spending a fortune on this issue. Is there a better way? she said. Its about linking people to services and getting them back on their feet.

Another challenge will be dealing with the ramifications of Props. 47 and 57, two voter-approved measures that will result in the release of state prison inmates, Gaspar said.

Other key issues include fire response times in rural areas, and managing the countys $5 billion-plus annual budget.

In her first weeks on the job, Gaspar said, she is working to familiarize herself with county departments and staff, as she has moved from a city with 250 employees to an agency with a workforce of more than 17,000.

Its just a larger scale. Its just going to take a little time to better know the organization, she said.

Gaspar said she realizes that many of her objectives, such as reducing homelessness, wont be fully achieved in her first term.

In four years time, it really is only enough time to lay down a framework and establish goals for our region, she said. I would be grateful to serve two terms in office if the voters are so willing.

In her new role, Gaspar represents about 650,000 people who live in supervisorial District Three, which includes not only Encinitas but Del Mar, Solana Beach, Carmel Valley, Escondido, Rancho Bernardo, Scripps Ranch, Carmel Mountain and Tierrasanta.

Gaspar said she will be spending time in District Three, listening to constituents and, making sure the decisions Im making are in line with the priorities of the residents in the communities where I serve.

But even as she takes on new and larger responsibilities, Gaspar said, her heart will remain in her hometown of Encinitas.

I now enjoy watching Encinitas City Council meetings from the comfort of my sofa, she said.
The Del Mar Union School District is in the process of bringing in new materials for its English Language Arts curriculum  the district is looking to adopt McGraw Hill Wonders for kindergarten through sixth grade and Study Sync for sixth grade, a more digital program.

The current program was adopted in 2003 and there is a need for new materials to better align with the Common Core State Standards, according to Vivian Firestone from the districts instructional services department.

At the boards Jan. 25 meeting, held in the boards new meeting room at the district office, Firestone reported that the instructional services department team has been reviewing materials since January 2016 and honed in on five publishers they believed would be the best match. The team was looking for materials that offered quality and variation, as well as a high level of rigor that met the expectations of the standards.

Twenty-seven teachers across the district were selected to pilot the materials and an additional 53 teachers were provided the materials to allow them to collaborate with their grade-level teams. The district received feedback from the teachers in November with 100 percent consensus on McGraw Hill.

As the primarily digital program of Study Sync is more complex, the teachers have requested more time to fully vet all of the components so the pilot has been extended to April.

Firestone said they expect to bring both recommendations to the board for approval by the end of the school year, so materials can be ordered and training conducted for implementation in fall 2017.

Board member Kristin Gibson requested that the materials be made available for parents and Superintendent Holly McClurg said a review of the materials can be arranged at the district office.
The Carmel Valley Community Planning Board will consider a request for a new stop sign proposed for Carmel View Road and Caminito Mira Del Mar. The intersection is located just past Carmel Grove Park, at the entrance to the Sunstream community.

Niveen Farmer, a Carmel Valley resident for 13 years, said she has a petition with over 90 signatures requesting action be taken. The residents first made the request to the city, who came out last year but determined that the intersection did not meet the requirements for a four-way stop.

Every day I witness some kind of incident, said Farmer, who will no longer allow her 9-year-old to attempt to cross at the intersection when walking to school. Its extremely dangerous and a safety concern. Theres been too many close calls and its a nightmare waiting to happen.

Farmer said she doesnt want to see what happened at Del Mar Trails in April 2015, when a pedestrian was struck by a car and killed less than a mile away.

Currently there are stop signs on Caminito Mira Del Mar, but none to slow the cars traveling on Carmel View Road. Neighbors said it can be dangerous pulling out of the Sunstream community as there is blind spot due to a curve in the road.

The stop sign will be on the agenda for the boards Feb. 23 meeting.
Abbotts FreeStyle Libre flash glucose monitoring system is safe and accurate to use in children with type 1 diabetes, according to a study carried out by UK researchers.

The FreeStyle Libre, which was approved last year for use in the UK by children of 4 years old and above. The system provides charts to show how sugar levels have been rising and falling rather than the single number that blood glucose monitors show.

Users wear a glucose sensor on their skin for up to two weeks, which measures and stores up to eight hours of glucose levels and sends the data to a handset each time the sensor is scanned.

Whilst the FreeStyle Libre does not completely replace blood glucose tests, it allows the user to monitor their sugar levels much more often than is the case without finger-prick blood glucose tests.

The research, which was carried out by a team from the Oxford Childrens Hospital, wanted to find out the accuracy, safety and acceptability of the device among children.

Just under 90 young people aged between four to 17 took part in the study from nine different diabetes centres across the UK.

The authors concluded: Accuracy was unaffected by subject characteristics, making the system potentially suitable for a broad range of children and young people with diabetes.

It is anticipated that the provision of comprehensive glucose data for up to 14 days, from a system that is easy to use, with reduced pain and burden for the user since there is no requirement for finger-prick calibratio, could support enhanced diabetes management.

The technology has become popular among the diabetes community because it is largely deemed a more convenient way of monitoring sugar levels because it alleviates need for so many finger-prick tests, measurements can be taken through clothing and the sensor can be worn in water.

In February 2016, European regulators approved the system for use in children.

Speaking last year, Jared Watki, who is Abbotts senior vice president of diabetes care, said: Children and teens with diabetes and their families have to navigate many challenges in their daily lives as they care for this complex condition.

The scientists and engineers at Abbott have made it their lifes work to provide the most innovative technology to help people with diabetes improve their diabetes management and ultimately, live happier and healthier lives.

The findings were published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood journal.
The Swiss pharmaceutical company, Roche, has refuted reports that it was in the midst of closing a sale for its diabetes care business located in Basel.

There were talks that Roche was looking to sell some of its assets amid price pressures that have pushed other large drugmakers to exit the diabetes business.

According to Bloomberg, the company has been weighing up whether to partially sell the Basel unit or opt for a spinoff, allowing for the creation of an independent company.

An eventual sale of the unit was likely to attract bids from many medical-device makers and could have reportedly fetched as much as $5 billion.

A Roche spokesman has, however, formally told Reuters that a sale was no longer on the table and that the company had decided to keep the unit.

Other global drugmakers, such as Johnson and Johnso, have been exploring the possibility of selling some of their holdings related to their own diabetes care business.

Bayer AG already made the step of selling its diabetes devices unit to KKR and Panasonic Healthcare for $1.1 billion (870 million) in 2015.

As far as Roche is concerned, competition and spending on new drugs are among the reasons pushing the company to lean towards selling their diabetes unit.

Various business newswires have said that Roche was likely to grapple with competitio, as patents for some of its blockbuster medicines were near expiration.

Roche is also boosting investment in other areas of research it is actively involved i, with, for example, new drug launches announced in cancer immunotherapy.

Roche remains a leader in diabetes care regardless of the current unfavourable economic climate, and its CEO, Severin Schwa, intends for it to stay that way.

Its a difficult situation we are going through, but we remain committed to this business Schwan recently told Reuters reporters.
A new bill in Wales could provide the backing of the law to support hospitals in banning onsite smoking.

The Public Health Wales Bill, issued by the Welsh Government, lays out future plans in a bid to improve health in Wales.

If passed, the bill, which is being considered by the Welsh Assembly for the second time, will prohibit smoking on hospital grounds in Wales.

Health boards have expressed difficulty in preventing people from smoking outside of hospital buildings and are keen to have the backing of legislation.

The Welsh government has stated that the bill would allow hospitals to demonstrate a better example towards healthy living.

However, the document includes a clause which would allow managers of hospitals to create specific smoking areas on site if they wish.

Dr Phil Banfield, chairman of the British Medical Association Cymru, told the BBC he did not believe any exceptions should be made.

He said: There is a conception that hospitals are places of healing. Having an activity that is the leading cause of death and hospital admissions on the doorstep seems a contradiction.

Health promotion in hospitals has become important in Wales with a ban on vending machine junk food being in place since 2008.

We have previously reported that NHS England has proposed plans to improve the health within hospitals. In the English plans, a ban on the sale of sugary drinks is one of the options being considered.

Smoking and junk food are two of the factors linked with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other long-term health conditions.

Dr Banfield said: Hospitals need to be more inventive about how we promote the wider issues for the community.

We are very rigid in the way we run our hospitals, really we have to think about them as community assets  our hospitals belong to the people.
A new study has found that most fast food packages in the US contain fluorinated substances that could be harmful if they seep into the food.

Fluorinated compounds are used to treat the surface of various paper materials in contact with greasy food and is what gives them their anti-soaking, water and fat-repelling properties.

In this new peer-reviewed study, researchers measured the prevalence of a class of fluorinated chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAss), in 400 fast food packages from 27 restaurants across the US.

After a spectroscopy-based technique and particle accelerator were used to test the containers for fluorine, the findings  reported in the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters  revealed that a third of samples came back positive for fluorine.

Although not prove, researchers believe that part of these could, just like phthalates in plastic packaging, migrate directly into the food and expose consumers to their harmful effects.

Research scientist Laurel Schaider told CNN that the extent of migration depends on the temperature of the food, the type of food and how long the food is in contact with the paper, suggesting that the sooner the food is taken out of the packaging, the better.

Animal studies have linked fluorinated chemicals to abnormalities in reproductive functions, cancer and immune suppressio, to cite a few.

The level of toxicity of fluorine also varies from one specific type of fluorinated compound to another. Some of them dont persist for as long in the body, limiting the extent of damage it can cause at any one time.

The amount of fluorine, if any, passing through the food is to be determined, as this study focused on evaluating levels of the compound present in food packaging.

Among samples that tested positive for fluorinated chemicals, 56 percent were from Tex-Mex food packaging and dessert or bread wrappers, 38 percent were for sandwiches and burgers, and 20 percent were in French fries paperboard containers. Paper cups were the only packages to test negative for fluorinated chemicals.

The use of some of the more resistant fluorinated compounds is already partly regulated in the US, and some European countries like Denmark have called to set maximum levels for them in all food packaging.
The increasing cost of insulin is in the spotlight as a groundbreaking lawsuit in the US has been filed against three major pharmaceutical companies.

A group of people with diabetes, some of whom claim they are spending $900 (710) a month on the hormone which is needed to control the condition, have decided to take legal action.

Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi have been accused of working together to raise the price of insulin to skyrocketing prices.

In the past five years all three firms have increased the cost of insulin by more than 150 per cent, the lawsuit, which was filed at the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, said.

The court documents provide several patient accounts who admit to turning to extreme measures to avoid using the correct amount of insulin or paying for it.

Some of these include starving themselves, taking insulin that has expired, under-dosing and in some cases purposefully slipping into diabetic ketoacidosis in a bid to get free insulin samples from hospital.

The law firm Hagens Berma, which is representing the patient group, has called this a groundbreaking and the first-of-its-kind lawsuit.

Managing partner Steve Berman of the company said: People living with diabetes are practically imprisoned under the price hikes and sadly are resorting to extreme measures to afford the medication they need to live.

The lawsuit seeks to represent a nationwide class of consumers who have purchased analogue insulin at recently skyrocketing prices to reclaim economic losses in an amount to be determined at trial and to put in place an injunction halting this behaviour.

The companies have been accused of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act and several state consumer-protection laws.

The lawsuit is critical of the way two different prices are used for insulin. One is the benchmark price which is publicly quoted. The second is a much lower price available via rebates that are offered to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

The system has exposed people, such as those who cannot afford health insurance, to need to a pay a large proportion of the higher benchmark price.

All three of the drug companies have denied the charges.

Speaking to Medscape Medical News, Ken Inchausti, Novo Nordisks director, corporate branding and reputatio, said: We are aware of the complaint and its characterisation of the pharmaceutical supply chain.

We disagree with the allegations made against the company and are prepared to vigorously defend the company in this matter.

At Novo Nordisk, we have a longstanding commitment to supporting patients access to our medicines. Since this is an ongoing litigatio, we cant comment further.

Gregory Andrew Kueterman from Eli Lilly said: Lilly conducts business in a manner that ensures compliance with all applicable laws, and we adhere to the highest ethical standards. We are aware that a lawsuit has been filed against several insulin manufacturers. We have no further comment at this time.

Meanwhile, Ashleigh Koss, head of media relations for North American, Sanofi US, said: We strongly believe these allegations have no merit and will defend against these claims.
Apple's local manufacturing doesn't necessarily mean iPhones will get cheaper

Apple will soon start manufacturing its iPhones in India. Yes, we can soon expect to see iPhones with laser engraving on the back depicting that they are "Designed by Apple in California. Assembled in India." Apple has been considering India as its next base for manufacturing for some time now and it has received the nod from the Karnataka government to commence its operations.

The State government issued a release welcoming Apple's decision to start local manufacturing in Bengaluru. Apple is yet to comment on the government's disclosure, but the company has already chosen Wistron as its OEM partner. Apple will use Wistron's Peenya facility for manufacturing and will scale up to add Foxconn and meet future demand.

Here are three things you need to know about Apples proposed operations in India:

India in Apples crosshairs: Apple recently announced its first fiscal quarter earnings where the company saw iPhone sales reaching 78.3 million units and the average selling price hit an all time high of $695. The revenue came in at $78.4 billion in the quarter ending December 2016, but profits and sales from China declined. In an earnings call, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, said, "India is the place to be."

For Apple, India is more important than it has ever been before. According to Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments saw a modest growth of 3 percent in 2016, but Indias smartphone user base is growing exponentially. With increasing internet connectivity and 4G penetration, India is poised for a digital boom and Apple wants to tap into this growth.

Apple executives have met government officials in the past to discuss its vision of starting a local assembly unit. The company is seeking exemption from a norm that requires companies to source 30 percent of inputs locally. It is also reportedly seeking a 15-year tax exemption on import of components and other equipments. The government has said it is considering Apples demands, but the Commerce Ministry is yet to conclude its decision.

Make In India: Apple's idea of starting local manufacturing in India aligns perfectly with the Government's Make in India initiative. The Cupertino-based company has already set up a new iOS App Design and Development Centre in Bengaluru. At the time of its launch, CEO Cook said, "India is home to one of the most vibrant and entrepreneurial iOS development communities in the world."

The company has also opened a new Apple Maps office in Hyderabad to improve its mapping feature. Apple Maps offers features like 3D View, Public Transmit system, options to explore nearby areas, but it is barely usable here in India. With services being tapped, Apple has to start manufacturing and enabling these services on its products. For the record, Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, Asus and many other OEMs assemble their smartphones in India.

Whats in it for India and Indians: Will iPhones get any cheaper in India? It is unclear whether there will be any immediate impact on the pricing of the iPhone. Apple assembles a large chunk of iPhones in China, but the product costs way more in that country, than in the US. According to IHS Markit, it costs Apple nearly $225 to make the 32GB iPhone 7 and the product is retailed in the US for $649. The unsubsidised cost of that same 32GB iPhone 7 is 5388 Yuan (approximately $784) in China. The cost of the iPhone will come down only if Apple decides to cut its margins.

However, one thing is for certain - Apple starting local manufacturing in India will generate employment opportunity here. A Made in India iPhone will definitely be a big win for the Modi Government and it will also help attract other OEMs to set up shops here.
The delegation will meet US lawmakers on February 20 to plead against raising requirements for the work visa programme

Tech companies, both in India and US, have been on high alert since a bill was introduced in the US Senate last week, asking for tighter rules governing the H-1B work visa programme. The Trump administration has drafted an executive order which could change the way American companies recruit people, as it would make them try and hire Americans first, and if they have to recruit foreign workers, priority would have to be given to the most highly paid. H-1B visas are generally used by Indian tech firms like Infosys and Wipro to send skilled workers to the United States.

Given the development, a delegation of Indian tech CEOs is scheduled to meet with US government officials on February 20, to try and dissuade them from changing the rules for the H-1B visa. "We want to put across to the new administration and the lawmakers what would be lost by America closing those doors," said R Charashekhar, President, Nasscom, who will be part of the delegation visiting the US over four days. "We are parallelly pursuing our own course of action," he added.

The bill, called the High-Skilled Integrity and Fairness act of 2017 was put forth by congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. Amongst other things, the bill aims to reset the annual wage for H-1B visa holders from $60,000, to $130,000. This means that companies will have to bear higher costs for recruiting foreign workers.
It is official, Apple will be manufacturing iPhones in Bengaluru, India, or so says the Karnataka government.

The final word seems to be in. Apple, the Cupertino based tech behemoth, will manufacture iPhones in India very soon. As per a release by the Karnataka Government, Apple will be 'making in India' out of a facility in Bengaluru. The release welcomes Apple's proposal to manufacture iPhones in India and to "commence initial manufacturing operations" in the state. News of Apple's India manufacturing plans was first heard of in December, post which the company held talks with many senior government officials to finalise the terms of its operations in India. It is not clear if Apple got the heavy tax exemption approvals it was seeking from the government, but relaxations were announced for those seeking to make in India, in the budget.

Back in January, Apple officials also held talks with officials from the departments of commerce, industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), revenue, environment and forest, electronics and information technology (DeITY) to seek incentives such as long-term duty exemptions.

As per the release, which was signed by Karnataka IT Minister, Priyank Kharge, Apple "will foster cutting edge technology ecosystem and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally." However, the release does not mention a timeline for the start of iPhone manufacturing in Bengaluru. Reports suggest Apple, along with Taiwanese OEM, Wistron, will begin manufacturing the devices starting June, 2017. The Apple-Wistron manufacturing facility will be based out of Bengaluru's industrial hub Peenya. However, sources told Reuters that no deal or MoU has been finalised between Apple and the state government till now. In fact, the state IT Minister went on to tweet about the development as well, almost confirming Apple's plans. The tweet was later deleted by the minister.

The release went on to describe how Karnataka's state officials met with seniour management from Apple including - Priya Balasubramaniam, VP, iPhone Operations, Dheeraj Chugh, Director, iPhone operations, and more. The government also said that it was looking to collaborate with Apple in other areas of innovation as well. This will be Apple's third global iPhone assembly unit, putting India on the radar of the world's most iconic and valuable company.

Apple's entry to India as a manufacturer should be a signal to other smartphone makers looking to dip their toes in the Indian manufacturing space. It could also prompt other brands like Xiaomi and the world's third-largest smartphone maker Huawei, to ask for additional incentives from the government for their existing assembly lines in India. Apple is expected to start assembling iPhones in the country initially, with plans to manufacture the device end-to-end in the near future.
Paul Lynch, chief financial officer of Irish petrol retailer Applegreen , has decided to step down from his position after two and half years.

Applegreen said it has started to look for a successor immediately and Lynch, who was appointed CFO in July 2014 and joined the board as a director in August 2014, will stay in his position until the 30 June in order to facilitate a smooth transition.

Lynch, who lead the finance and IT functions, helped plan and manage the company floating on London's Alternative Investment Market (AIM) and Irelands Enterprise Securities Market (ESM) in June 2015.

Chief Executive Bob Etchingham said: "On behalf of everybody in Applegreen, I would like to thank Paul for his considerable contribution to the development of the business. He played a pivotal role in the initial public offering and has considerably enhanced the finance and IT function which has been of significant benefit to the Company."

Lynch added: "I have very much enjoyed the challenge at Applegreen. The business has travelled a long distance since I joined and is now well placed to meet its strategic objectives."
Global nanomaterials group Haydale Graphene announced on Friday that itself and Everpower International Holdings , a New York-based investment company engaged in investing in leading edge technologies and integration into China, have agreed to enter into a collaboration agreement.

The AIM-traded firm said as a first step, Everpower has conditionally agreed to make a strategic investment in Haydale of 3.26m to acquire a 9.9% shareholding, through its subsidiary Fu Xing New Materials Development Heze.

It confirmed Haydale and Everpower have entered into non-binding heads of terms as a precursor to entering into an exclusive binding collaboration agreement to manufacture, supply and market existing Haydale products and develop nanomaterials and new graphene products for the Chinese market.

Haydales board expected that the partners will negotiate and enter into the collaboration agreement following completion of the proposed investment.

The envisaged agreement should provide Haydale with an excellent platform to launch our products into China, said CEO Ray Gibbs.

Furthermore, any future collaboration products developed from the association will be allowed to be marketed and sold to the rest of the world by Haydale.

Gibbs said China represents a fast moving and significant end market for Haydale, and the board has been seeking a partner to help give it a footprint in the region for some time.

China is one of the world's largest markets for advanced composites applications and the company has taken its time to find the ideal partner to help maximise the commercial opportunities that arise from our operations there.

We are therefore delighted to be working closely with Everpower to introduce nanomaterials and graphene related products in the Chinese market.
-Oakley Capital Investments , an AIM-listed company established to provide investors with access to the investment strategy being pursued by the Oakley Funds, announced its trading update for the year ended 31 December 2016.

The company has an indirect interest of Fund I,II, and IIIs portfolio companies, representing 65.5%, 38.1% and 47% respectively, through its investments in the Oakley Funds.

Oakley Capital Limited, the companys investment adviser, estimates that the companys net asset value (NAV) will be in the range of 442m to 446m equating to a net asset value per share of 2.33 to 2.35.

Approximately 18p of the rise in NAV per share is attributable to the significant weakening of the pound between 31 December 2015 to 31 December 2016.

In December 2016, Fund III agreed to acquire a portfolio of European real estate websites including Casa.it in Italy and atHome.lu in Luxembourg. The company contributed 42.2m to the equity investment.

In October 2016, the company benefited from its investment in Fund II through a partial sale of Parship Elite Group, the leading online dating service in the German-speaking world, to ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, distributing sale proceeds of 43.3m to the company.

An agreement has been signed for a full exit of Fund II's minority interest in Host Europe Group (HEG), following its sale of intergenia Holdings GmbH to HEG in January 2015. Cinven, the majority shareholder, has agreed to sell HEG, the largest privately owned hosting provider in Europe, to GoDaddy Inc. This transaction is expected to generate cash proceeds to the company of around 14.4m.

Fund II also made follow on investments in Educas, Daisy, North Sails and Verivox in 2016, totalling 81.2m.

The company also has direct interest in Time Out Group following its listing in 14 June 2016 representing 24.0% of its issued share capital, and an indirect interest through Fund I of an additional 22.7%.

Fund I sold the remaining Broadstone Corporate Pensions division to Livingbridge in May 2016, distributing proceeds of 6.3m to the company.

With respect to Fund III, the Company has made, in line with its investing policy, a further commitment of 75m, taking the Company's total commitments to Fund III to 325m.

At the year end the company had 128.7m of loan and co-investment assets, which generated 11.3m of interest income during the year.

The company sold 15m treasury shares at a price of 1.57 per share compared to an average acquisition price of 1.46 per share. The dilution impact of this on the NAV per share is around 2.5%, or 5.9 pence.

Director Peter Dubens said: "There have been good levels of investment and divestment activity in the Oakley Funds' underlying portfolio companies. The overall Funds' portfolio continues to perform strongly, reflected in the 18% growth in the fair value of their investment portfolios (measured on a like-for-like basis). We are seeing an interesting pipeline of new investment opportunities for Fund III, as demonstrated by the recent acquisition of European real estate websites".

The share price rose 1.08% at 164p at 1047 GMT on Friday.
Residential repair and improvements business HomeServe announced on Friday that it has acquired shareholdings in Checkatrade in the UK and Habitissimo in Spain.

The FTSE 250 firm said the two separate businesses provide access to high-quality tradespeople performing home repairs and improvements via online platforms.

The two investments are in line with HomeServe's strategy, the board said, which was to develop its digital presence, extend the range of trades offered and broaden its demographic appeal through online platforms that provide customers with certified home experts whenever they need them.

Checkatrade, based in Selsey, is an online directory of customer-recommended tradespeople with nearly one million unique customer visits a month, resulting in approximately 1.3m jobs per annum.

HomeServe has acquired a 40% interest in the business with an option to increase its position by a further 35% in two years.

Habitissimo is an international online business that provides support for home improvements and repairs, connecting homeowners to trusted local tradespeople.

Based in Mallorca, Habitissimo receives more than 3.6 million unique customer visits a month, resulting in approximately 0.25m jobs per annum across four countries in Europe - Spain, Portugal, Italy and France - and five in Latin America - Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile and Colombia.

HomeServe confirmed it has acquired a 70% interest in the business with an option to increase its position by a further 30% in either four or five years' time.

Checkatrade and Habitissimo reportedly have access to around 24,000 and 21,000 tradespeople respectively, which - combined with HomeServe's existing networks - will give HomeServe access to more 50,000 certified home experts across a range of over 20 trades.

Both businesses have proven the success of their business models and the existing management teams will remain with the businesses, HomeServe confirmed, continuing to lead their development as part of HomeServe.

The combined consideration for these two acquisitions was 37m, and it was financed through existing cash resources.

Our investments in Checkatrade and Habitissimo underline HomeServe's ambition to be at the forefront of the technological revolution as the world's most trusted provider of home repairs and improvements, said chief executive Richard Harpin.

Both of these businesses provide innovative digital platforms, connecting customers to reliable tradespeople.

Harpin said with leading positions in the home repair and improvements market, the businesses will broaden HomeServe's reach enabling it to meet the needs of younger, non-insurance minded customers who are looking to find immediate help from a wide range of home trades.

Together, these investments open up exciting new possibilities to help our customers in their homes as we continue to develop our online capabilities and digital platform solutions."

At the same time, HomeServes board said it was trading in line with management's expectations and expected to deliver good growth in the year to 31 March 2017.

The next scheduled trading update would be on 6 April.
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By BETH J. HARPAZ

AP Travel Editor

iStock photo [enlarge] Alaska expects 1.06 million cruise passengers this year, likely breaking its 2008 record of 1.03 million visits.

NEW YORK  A demand for more in-depth experiences  from learning how to scuba dive to dining in a private home in port  are shaping what's new in the cruise industry this year. Other cruise news: a boom in Alaska trips, a few precious sailings to Cuba and potentially game-changing new technology.





. . .
If youre the corporate buck, you live and breathe mens suits. And, if you just really dig the sartorial look, its likely that a suave suit is an essential weekend outfit so youre decked out for dinner dates or drinks.

While a bespoke mens suit is the dream, we dont all have time or money for that kind of tailored treatment. So, how do you navigate the sea of ready-to-wear mens suits out there, without capsizing on a cheap poly-blend or an ultra-skinny fit?

Taking the guessing game out of off-the-rack and online shopping, here are the best suits for men you need to know right now. Nailing that corporate office look, fine dining date ensemble, and mates wedding outfit just got easy with our curated list of the best suit brands for men. Each brand offers impeccable suits, so take a look through and see which brand suits your taste and style best.

And, once youve found the best suit for you, ensure it lasts you as long as possible with these top care tips.

Buying A Suit Online

While buying clothes online has become a normality, and it even rose in popularity thanks to last years pandemic lockdowns, buying the best suit online may still seem like a bit of a gamble. But thats not the case at all! The best suit brands for men, all have excellently tailored suits thatll look good on anybody, any shape or size.

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Most suit brands also feature a size guide on their sites, so we highly recommend measuring yourself at home and then lining your measurements up with the size guide, to ensure you order the size that will give you the best fit. Finally, if youre still apprehensive about buying a suit online, most brands have a refund and exchange policy, meaning you can easily change the suit size, or return the suit for your money back.

If youre in need of a new suit, these are the best suit brands for men on the market thatll make you look ever so sophisticated.
A Donegal-based addiction counsellor says kids arent to blame for what happened at Copper Face Jacks nightclub on Monday night. He says adults still refuse to take responsibility for the epidemic of alcoholism that rages across the country, writes Sue Doherty

A Donegal-based addiction counsellor says kids arent to blame for what happened at Copper Face Jacks nightclub on Monday night. He says adults still refuse to take responsibility for the epidemic of alcoholism that rages across the country, writes Sue Doherty

Martin McFadden (pictured) from Kilcar is founder of the Friends of Bill W Club, a drop-in centre for people struggling with addiction in Donegal Town. After a number of young people were injured in a crush at a Dublin nightclub that was running a cheap drinks promotion, he told the Democrat of his concerns.

Promotions like that are replicated around the country every night of the week. They are probably the most widely known among a number of worrying trends, including The Twelve Pubs of Christmas and the Neck and Nominate game on Facebook.

These are all mechanisms to encourage, manipulate and condition young people to drink as much as they can as fast as they can as often as they can. The drinks industry uses advertising, availability and affordability to drive business and will often add the disclaimer, Drink responsibly. In my experience, however, when you tell a young person to do something responsibly, they usually do the opposite.

Mr McFadden says kids are seduced into dangerous drinking without understanding the consequences. He explains: Young people dont have that developed sense of responsiblity that comes with age and experience. Theyre easy prey.

The real responsibility, he continues, lies with adults. We still refuse to recognise and take responsibility for the epidemic of alcoholism in our country and I dont believe that theres enough will within government to implement any serious change in relation to policy.

What I see is the need for parents, peers, educators and role models to behave more responsibly ourselves around alcohol. A lot of what young people do is learned behaviour. The problem stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of alcohol, he said.

Many secondary school students are shocked to learn that alcohol is a drug, one that has been estimated to kill four times as many people in Ireland every year as all the other drugs combined.

Thats where we have to start. We have this black and white thinking that alcohol is legal so its okay whereas drugs are illegal so they are bad. All the evidence suggests otherwise. The very fact that there are 2,000 hospital beds taken up in Ireland every single night because of alcohol misuse should shock us into action. I would like to see things improve but I dont believe that will happen any time soon. In fact, I see things getting worse.

What happened in Dublin on Messy Monday highlights the dangers that are inherent in misrepresenting alcohol but the likelihood is that this will all be forgotten about by next Monday.

Meanwhile, lives in every town and village throughout country, continue to be destroyed, he concluded.
A Donegal man in his 70s has gone on trial charged with sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl in the county.

The man, who is not related to the alleged victim, has denied the offence which is alleged to have taken place at his home in 2013.

Letterkenny Circuit Court heard claims that the man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the alleged victim, drew pictures of genitalia in the girl's scrapbook.

He is then alleged to have put her hand on his genitals outside his trousers and put his hand in her underwear and kissed her on the lips.

Prosecution counsel Roisin Lacey (SC) told the court that the girl told her mother and she then made an allegation to gardai.

The child was interviewed and taken to the sexual assault treatment unit in Galway and the accused was arrested three days after the alleged incident.

A video recording of a Garda interview with the alleged victim, who is now aged eight-years-old, was shown to the jury.

In the interview, which was recorded at a garda station three days after the alleged offence, the girl said the man drew pictures on her scrapbook of his wee bum and her wee bum.

She told the garda interviewer that the accused kisses me and lets me touch his bum.

Its a man's thing where you wee. He made me touch it and he just touched mine, she said.

She said he kissed her on the lips and grabbed my hand and put it on his place where normal boys pee out of it.

She said the man, who she described as a nice old man, gave her lollipops.

Defence counsel Colm Smyth (SC) said the accused had denied that he touched her genitals or put his hand down her pants or drew in her scrapbook.

I say he didn't do those things and you are mistaken,  he said.

The girl became upset at this point and Judge Martin Nolan adjourned proceedings briefly.

When asked by prosecution counsel did the man do the things to her she said he did, she replied yes.

When asked did she tell the garda in the video the truth, she said yes.

Dr David Casey, a forensic scientist with Forensic Science Ireland, examined underwear taken from the child after the alleged incident.

The child was medically examined 21 hours after the alleged incident.

Dr Casey said an examination of a sample of skin cells taken from the girls underwear did not detect the accuseds DNA.

The DNA of an unidentified female was detected. He said the most likely explanation was the DNA belonged to the person who had been wearing the underwear.

He said if skin cells were present there was a small chance that they would yield a DNA profile.

The trial continues today.
ENTERPRISE -- The Enterprise Police Department has obtained an arrest warrant and charged a suspect with murder in the missing persons case of Ayanna Smith, according to Police Chief T.D. Jones.

Smith, 26, of Enterprise, has been missing since Jan. 21 and was reported missing on Jan. 23 by her mother.

Smiths boyfriend, Malcolm Theotis Hunter, 29, of Enterprise, has been charged with murder.

Smiths body has not been discovered but police believes Smith was the victim of murder.

During our investigation we have interviewed numerous individuals and collected physical evidence associated with the case, Jones said. We feel certain that Miss Smith was a victim of foul play.

Detectives executed an arrest warrant on Hunter at approximately 3:30 p.m. at Enterprise City Hall where Hunter was in court on the unassociated charge of Failure to Register as a Convicted Felon.

I want to say that our hearts and prayers are with the family of Ayanna Smith, Jones said. No family should have to suffer through the agony and heartbreak of not knowing where their loved one is located.

Jones could not speak on what evidence or information they have uncovered thus far as it is an active investigation.

According to Jones, the investigation is ongoing and police are actively seeking information from the public.

We are asking anyone with information on this case to come forward no matter how minute they think the information may be, Jones said. If Malcolm has spoken to anyone about any of this we need to talk to them.
HEADLAND  They invoked jobs. They invoked safety. They even invoked former Gov. Big Jim Folsom to convince residents that a three cents per gallon increase in the gasoline tax is worth it to pave some of the areas ailing rural roads.

Elected officials from Henry, Dale and Houston counties took their best shot Thursday during a public meeting in an attempt to convince residents to support the tax, which would fund a $1.2 billion bond issue to pave rural roads and city streets in need.

They said adequate roads are a prerequisite for economic development. They said poor roads lead to more accidents, which lead to more fatalities. They said paving rural roads would help complete the vision of former Gov. Folsom, who pushed a bond issue to build many farm-to-market roads. Now, those roads are falling apart.

Some were convinced.

Amanda Henderson directs the senior center in Haleburg. She said she cant drive on some county roads.

I need to make sure the roads are in good condition for our seniors, Henderson said during the meeting. I was on the fence for this tax because I was one that said I couldnt afford it. But we have to have this.

Some were not convinced.

Some residents were skeptical that a tax increase could spur economic development in the long run. One resident questioned the quality of the material used to surface roads, and predicted the roads targeted for resurfacing would need to be resurfaced again long before the $1.2 billion bond was repaid. Another resident questioned previous decisions made to move road and bridge funding to other areas at the state level.

Another resident questioned the proposals sunset provision, which calls for the tax to go away when the bond is retired.

I havent seen many taxes come off (the books), said one resident, who spoke in opposition to the proposal.

Most elected officials said paving needs far exceed available revenue.

Headland Mayor Ray Marler said the city has identified at least $360,000 in paving needs, but receives only about $50,000 annually from gas tax revenue.

Tell me how you are going to get 360 out of that? Marler said.

Legislators throughout Alabama are trying to gauge support  or lack of support  for the measure so it can be determined whether the legislative votes are there to pass the proposal.

Abbeville Mayor Billy Helms said residents mentioned the condition of city streets more than any other issue during his recent campaign. He said he told residents he would do what he could, until he assumed office and realized the city had almost no money for resurfacing.

Abbeville could receive around $700,000 for road repair and resurfacing needs if the proposal becomes law.

Maybe we can have some better roads and that might entice yall to come through a little more often, Helms said.

Around 100 attended the hour-long meeting.
Home Four wheelers 2017 Hyundai Xcent Facelift Spotted In Chennai; Will Feature New Engine oi-Sreejith

South Korean car giant Hyundai has commenced testing of the 2017 Xcent facelift. The carmaker is also ready to launch the 2017 Grand i10 facelift. The new Xcent will be launched by March in the country.

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Home Four wheelers 2017 World Car Of The Year Finalists Announced  An Indian Car Makes It To The List oi-Kennedy Paul

The finalists for the 2017 World Car of the Year Award have been announced. The award is considered reputable and esteemed by car manufacturers around the world to take top honours at the award ceremony.

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Maruti Suzuki has launched the Ignis which has been nominated for the 2017 World Urban Car, below is an extensive photo gallery of the hatchback, click to view.
A local man who was involved in a number of burglaries in the town, was bleeding quite heavily from an hand injury sustained in one of the break-ins, when he was found by gardai, Dundalk Circuit Court heard last week.

Aaron Rochford (20) with addresses at Slieve Foy Park and Garrybawn, Dundalk was jailed for a total of three years, for burglary, trespass, the possession of knives and the unlawful use of his grandmothers car on the 29th of May last year .

In the first burglary, the injured party heard a door bell ring and could hear someone moving about her house after a smash at the patio door.

She was terrified and locked herself into the bedroom and rang her son.

An attempt was made to steal a TV, and a Tesco Clubcard, which was later recovered, was taken.

A man was seen on the roof of another house in the estate around the same time, and roughly three hours later, the owner found the back door was unlocked, the back kitchen window was broken and there was blood on the door handle.

The occupant of an address on the Avenue Road, was woken by the door bell ringing around 7.30am and rapping at the door, which was rapid and urgent, but there was no-one there when he answered. The defendant had been arrested there and had no reason to be there.

Another witness who discovered previously closed blinds and curtains had been opened, heard her husband shouting. She looked outside and saw someone come around the back of her home, and he claimed to be at the wrong house when she challenged him.

The court was told the defendant had taken his grannys Ford Fiesta without her permission, and it was seized and returned to her, after gardai came upon him in the vicinity of it, under the influence of drugs as he was unfit to drive. The back driver side window was smashed.

Gardai recovered two knives after searching Aaron Rochford  one in his trouser waistband and another in a pocket, which he claimed he had for his protection. The court heard he had a white t-shirt wrapped around his hand, and his DNA was found at two of the properties.

The accused - who had 41 previous convictions, 25 since reaching adulthood, told gardai he was wearing his robbing clothes and had taken what he called Hulks which he believed were steroid tablets.

The Defence barrister said her clients offending was to supply and feed his tablet addiction, but he is now on a drug-free wing in custody. Judge Michael OShea imposed sentences totalling four years, but suspended the last 12 months.
A 31-year-old man brought a builder from Dublin who owed him money to a property in mid-Louth, where two masked men demanded payment in kind, Dundalk Circuit Court has heard.

Judge Michael OShea was told at the sentencing hearing last Friday that, when he was interviewed by gardai, Mark Finnegan  otherwise known as Michael Kearney, of Cuillenstown, Readypenny, denied that he had lured the victim to the address and said he himself was under duress.

The victim in the case - who at the time had owed the accused 6,000 for livestock since 2006 - told gardai the defendant claimed there was a woman in Louth Village interested in having him do building work for her, and he had met Mark Finnegan in Ardee, who drove him to the property at Ballyoran on the night of June 30th 2011.

Inside, two men, wearing black berets and dark coloured scarves over their faces, were sitting in a room.

They told the victim he owned the accused money, and after he agreed that he did, one punched him in the chest.

When he asked Whats this? he was told This is it now and they said they knew he didnt have any money but they wanted his jeep by the next day.

The smaller of the two men pushed what looked like a gun into his side and said Next time youll be getting this, and the pair claimed they knew where he lived.

The two took the victims phone and the keys to his Mercedes, and told him to wait there for half an hour.

Mark Finnegan then drove him to a pub in Killiney in Dublin, and this journey was captured along the route on CCTV.

The court heard the Mercedes was recovered five months later when a man, unconnected to the accused, tried to import it into the North in Newry.

Mark Finnegan had 55 previous convictions, the most recent from the previous week for blackmail/extortion for which he was jailed for 18 months by Monaghan Circuit Court, in addition to animal cruelty and obstruction authorised officers.

The Defence barrister, in addition to failing to make repayments for a loan of a quarter of a million euro for farm machinery, said he had got into difficulty with other persons, and she said the offending was not for personal gain but "to feed starving cattle".

She added he had made a catastrophic mistake which he deeply regrests and has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress and suffers from panic attacks.

The court heard 10,000 was available to show his contrition and he has not been in trouble since 2012.

The barrister said the accused was himself owed over 300,000 for machinery which was never paid.

Judge Michael OShea, who said he could only conclude the two men were in the house at Mark Finnegans request, sentenced him to five years with the last three year suspended for false imprisonment.
Siobhan Osgood, a local expert in GNRI (Great Northern Railway Ireland) buildings here in Dundalk, has expressed her fears for the preservation of historic buildings following the local council's announcement that they would be removing a shed thought to be built in the 1870s from the protected structures list.

Earlier this week The Democrat revealed that Louth County have given notice that they are to delete a railway carriage repair shed from the protected structures list.

In an email to the council, among others, Ms Osgood called on them to reconsider.

"Having completed research of this invaluable site of Irish railway engineering history, I am appalled and alarmed to learn that any part of the site is due for removal from a protected structures list. Rather, more ought to be added to it.

"The railway engineering works at Dundalk are of national historic, architectural, social, design, and technological importance, and their lack of protection from destruction is a huge insult to the identity of Dundalk, and to the enormous railway history of Ireland. I plead that this decision be reversed.

"The engineering works at Dundalk offer a wonderful site for redevelopment  sympathetic to the design and original use of the buildings. A transport or railway museum would be ideal, but even sympathetic housing conversions could use the site respectfully. What concerns me is that, free from protection, these buildings can be completely eradicated from history without any recompense. This would be an enormous disservice to Dundalk and to the national identity of Irish rail.

"In October 2017 I hope to begin a PhD researching the architecture across the GNRIs route. Many old stations, platforms, buildings and houses either do not remain or are in a state of utter disrepair precisely because they are not protected structures. I am seeking to research and record these buildings before they, along with their social significance, are lost forever.

Ms Osgood implored the local authorities to be the "custodians of history" locally.

"I therefore beg you to not remove the carriage sheds from the protected structures list, but rather add more of the GNRIs buildings to it. It is the responsibility of the local authority to protect and respect its heritage and preserve it for future generations, not demolish it completely.

"We are each the custodians of history and what we leave behind ought to be a better version of that which we inherited. Please conserve and protect these structures for future generations, and if they are to be redeveloped, please do so sympathetically and with as little damage to the structures as possible."
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SEAT Ireland has begun the year with a phenomenal increase in sales, putting the brand in a tremendous position as it looks forward to an exciting and busy 2017 introducing a range of new models to the market.

Overall SEAT registered close to 1,000 units (985) in January 2017 signifying an 18% increase in sales year on year.

The iconic SEAT Ibiza continues to be extremely popular with drivers, as its sales increased by 8% compared with January 2016. Meanwhile, the ever-popular SEAT Leon was another strong performer, soaring by 12.5% in sales year on year.

January has also seen the new SEAT Ateca take centre stage at our dealers with the new SUV accounting for 30% of the overall sales.

Niall Phillips, Brand Director at SEAT Ireland commented, Its fantastic to see such a great start to the year for SEAT and these results are testament to the hard work of our team at SEAT, our excellent and expanding dealer network and our consistent commitment to offering high quality products at affordable prices. This now puts us in an excellent position as we embark upon a busy and exciting 2017 within which we will introduce three new products to the Irish market. We will use this momentum as a platform for the rest of the year and ensure we build on this success.

SEAT have announced these excellent sales results in tandem with the announcement of a host of attractive offers as part of its upcoming Open Week which is taking place at SEAT dealers across Ireland from February 13th to 18th. As part of the Open Week, SEAT is offering customers a chance to enter a competition to win a two-night luxury stay in the Powerscourt Hotel and Spa plus dinner for anyone who test drives any new SEAT model

Offers during the SEAT Open Week also include a free three-year service plan worth 700 and 0% finance on selected Ibiza and Leon models. In addition, finance is available from as low 1.9% on the SEAT Ibiza Sport and SEAT Leon SE Select with a staggering 2.9% finance available on the all-new SEAT Ateca, SEATs first ever SUV model.

In addition to SEATs generous open week offers and attractive finance rates, a scrappage offer of up to 4,000 on the Leon range and up to 2,500 on the Ibiza range is also available.

The full 2017 range is now available to test drive and order at any of SEATs 23 strong dealer network. To book your test drive and to find a full list of dealers visit www.seat.ie.
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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.

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Each year, an estimated 15 billion trees are cut down worldwide to produce paper, timber and other consumables. Terrified by the statistics, Sydney-based entrepreneur, designer and self-proclaimed eco-warrior Ziah Lane launched 100% tree-free tissue brand NO ISSUES, eager to drive a consumer revolution that would help preserve the planet for future generations. Validation, both of Lanes business model and her mission, came in the form of major supermarket support: NO ISSUES was picked up by Harris Farm Markets and Woolworths in 2015 and by Coles the following year.

Lane, who also founded branding and design company Vive Creative, spoke to Dynamic Business about running an eco-friendly business and why going green isnt just a moral imperative for companies, it also makes good business sense.

Dynamic Business: What experiences led to the creation of NO ISSUES?

Lane: In 2011, I developed a tissue box prototype as part of my final project for a Masters in Design from The University of New South Wales School of Art and Design  then known as the College of Fine Arts. Inspired by my personal passion for environmental sustainability, the prototype gained industry attention for combining an underutilised renewable resource (bamboo) with a contemporary design (green doesnt have to be daggy!). This led me to start speaking to investors about bringing an environmentally-friendly tissue product range to market.

Landing investors and supermarkets was crucial but I also relied on my extensive brand and design background to bring NO ISSUES to life. I ran Vive Creative for ten years from 2001, working on retail brands sold in major supermarkets (for example, The Healthy Baker Flour). Gaining a strong understanding of the industry over this time, creating a retail brand of my own was a natural career progression.

Dynamic Business: What is the companys unique selling point?

Lane: NO ISSUES is the only premium, environmentally friendly tissue product available in Australia. Our range is 100% tree-free and made from bamboo  a type of grass that is sustainable, renewable, and grows practically back in front of your eyes (up to one metre a day!). Unlike trees, bamboo is among the most abundant plant resources on earth and one of the most rapidly renewable resources for pulp. Naturally soft, it can reach full height in just a few months without the need for pesticides, herbicides or fertilizers. Bamboo also removes CO2 from the atmosphere and produces over 30% more oxygen than an equivalent stand of trees. Our other USP is the fact that weve designed the packaging to be chic and modern, adding sophistication to your bedroom, lounge or workstation.

Dynamic Business: What have been the companys biggest wins to date?

Lane: Weve had so many over the past five years! In the early stages, our big win was landing investors, including Jason Ashton (CEO and co-founder, Big Air)  they understood we were addressing a gap in the market for eco-friendly products. Getting onto the shelves at Coles and Woolies was also a dream come true  it reflected the strength of our USP and the significant demand for green alternatives amongst Australian consumers.

Probably the biggest challenge for me has been learning to juggle cashflow with stock supply to ensure demand is met. In this regard, weve been incredibly lucky to work alongside suppliers and business partners that understand the unique challenges faced by start-ups.

Our biggest win, of course, has been the support weve had from grocery buyers, whore challenging products that impact the environment. Also, on a personal level, I was thrilled to win the Australian Womens Weekly/CPA Australia Women in Business Awards, last year. I felt that all the hard work and persistence had really been worth it and I was really doing something very positive.

Today, the NO ISSUES team consists of a warehouse and international shipping manager, an accountant and a bookkeeper. We also have a supermarket account manager and receive support from a graphic designer, a PR agency, and various mentors, all of whom have been instrumental in helping NO ISSUES grow!

Dynamic Business: Is there a business case for companies going green?

Lane: Absolutely. Companies that persist with practices that arent eco-friendly face a very high risk of losing customers. They need to respond to the fact that consumers are increasingly eco-conscious and want to play a part in preserving our planet through informed, sustainability-driven buying decisions. Also, lets face it, if companies continue to damage Earth, eventually there wont be a planet to do business on!

Of course, going green must involve raising awareness of critical issues so that people are empowered to make choices that help the environment. In our case, the issue we highlight is deforestation. Were not here to put down other brands, but we are here to say, hey, heres what you are contributing to when you purchase traditional toilet paper  theres an alternative if you prefer. Any movement starts with education and we want to take our customers on this journey with us.

Dynamic Business: How can consumers reduce their ecological footprint?

Lane: I encourage people to be mindful of the value of our forests, which may host threatened or endangered animals and ecosystems, and actively consider whether their buying decisions will adversely affect the environment.

To this end, its important to conduct research  know the product youre buying, check for any nasties. Im very conscious of what  and how  I consume on a day-to-day basis. For instance, I use organic products (I LOVE Dr Roebucks natural skin care!) and, where possible, I recycle and reuse bottles and other items to minimise waste.

Dynamic Business: Finally, what does the future hold for NO ISSUES?

Lane: Our immediate plans involve expanding the NO ISSUES range to include innovative products such as environmentally friendly wet wipes. In terms of the bigger picture, were looking to partner with airlines, petrol stations, independent retailers and hotels and break into overseas markets.

To support our growth strategy, we will be looking for new private investment and considering bank finance for large forward orders. We want every business and every consumer to join the green movement and switch to TREE FREE!
YEAH.....that's Spicer's story and it's a lie according to Colin Kahl, a national security official in the Obama administration. Kahl disputed Spicers description of the planning Thursday evening. Kahl, in tweets shared hundreds of times, said that the Defense Department worked up a general proposal that asked for the authorities to do raids in Yemen, but that the mission carried out Saturday was not specifically a part of that. Former president Barack Obama did not make any decisions because he thought it represented an expansion of the war in Yemen and believed the Trump administration should assess how to proceed, Kahl said.



Kahl also said that is totally false, and that no specific concept of operations for the raid was briefed to or approved by officials who met for an interagency meeting early last month.



But you go ahead and believe anything that Spicer and Trump say because they are so completely honest. Sarcasm.
Show homes set to open door to further sales in Cawston

Sales of new homes in Cawston near Rugby are already in double figures and with show homes opening soon Redrow is hoping to build on that success.

With a database of hundreds of potential purchasers, Redrow launched Cawston Meadows off plan in late 2016. To date, around a dozen properties have been snapped up by eager buyers, while others have identified particular house styles they want to purchase and some are keenly awaiting the show homes opening before committing to buy.

They will be rewarded for their patience on February 10 when the doors to two show homes  professionally styled and fully furnished examples of the four-bedroom detached Oxford and Sunningdale designs  are thrown open.

Pauline Turnbull, sales director for Redrow Homes (Midlands), said: Homes at Cawston Meadows are in high demand and are reserved almost as fast as we can release them on to the market. The properties are attracting a good mix of purchasers including some who are already living in Redrow homes at our previous development in the area and now want to climb the housing ladder, plus those looking to relocate from other parts of the country such as Hampshire because they want to get more house for their money.

Theyre all looking forward to being able to view the show homes. The Oxford appears to be particularly popular with a growing list of people expressing an interest in this style of home, even though we wont have one thats ready to move into until April 2018!

Both show homes will emphasise the traditional craftsmanship synonymous with the Arts & Crafts designs that inspired Redrows Heritage Collection.

The Oxford, with its feature bay windows and roofed porch, is typical of the Arts & Crafts era. It offers 1,301 sq ft of living space, with an open plan kitchen and dining room, with adjoining utility, at its heart. The lounge is at the front of the property; while a cloakroom completes the ground floor. Upstairs, there are four bedrooms, including master with en-suite, and the family bathroom.

The Sunningdale is the larger of the show homes, spanning 1,654 sq ft. To the ground floor is an inviting lounge, complemented by a snug, open plan kitchen and dining room with utility and cloakroom.

Upstairs, both the master and second bedroom have an en-suite, leaving the family bathroom to serve the remaining two bedrooms.

Cawston Meadows offers a choice of four and five-bedroom homes, with current prices from 464,995. The first properties will be ready to move into from the summer.

Set on the edge of Rugby, the homes are within easy reach of the M45, M6 and M1 and less than an hour from London by direct train, making it perfectly placed for commuting from. A choice of excellent schools is also on offer, including the well-known Rugby School making the site ideal for families.

The sales office at Cawston Meadows is open daily from 10am to 5.30pm with the show homes due to open from February 10.

For more information visit redrow.co.uk/developments/cawston-meadows-rugby.
Resolving Europes NPL burden: challenges and benefits

Keynote speech by Vitor Constancio, Vice-President of the ECB, at an event entitled "Tackling Europe's non-performing loans crisis: restructuring debt, reviving growth" organised by Bruegel, Brussels, 3 February 2017

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak on the important issue of NPLs in European banks at the invitation of Bruegel, a think-tank doing such significant work in shaping economic thinking in Europe. My remarks today will be on the euro area non-performing loan (NPL) problem and on the policy response that would be needed from a macroprudential perspective. I will first outline the size and scope of the NPL problem. I will then put the NPL problem into a microeconomic and structural context, focusing on the reasons why it has developed this way and what the impediments are to an exclusively market-based solution to the problem. With this in mind, I will move on to the range of necessary and feasible solutions, underlying in particular the role of securitization schemes and the creation of Asset Management Companies (AMC) to achieve an orderly and fast resolution of NPLs.

The NPL problem is one of the main reasons behind the low aggregate profitability of European banks. Let me recall here that the return on equity of euro area banks has hovered around 5%, which does not cover the estimated cost of equity. It is important to keep in mind that the issue is not about the robustness of balance sheets as capital and provisions have significantly increased since 2012. Indeed, whereas CET1 ratio was 7% in 2007, it reached 9% in 2012 and is now 14%. Including provisions and collateral, the NPL coverage ratio stands at 82% on average, both for the group of six countries with higher NPLs and for the euro area as a whole.

Asset quality issues have been brought to the fore by the global financial crisis. In the euro area, NPL ratios stood at low or manageable levels prior to the crisis. At the same time, the NPL problem has deep structural reasons that were further amplified with the start of the financial and economic crisis. In fact, the surge in NPLs further revealed the limited ability of large parts of the euro area banking system to deal with distressed debt.

Chart 1

In the euro area, the average NPL ratio peaked at 8% in 2013 (see Chart 1).[1] As the economic recovery took hold, GDP growth resumed and unemployment started to decline, this ratio started to fall. The reduction in NPLs has, however, been slow and heterogeneous. The ratio of NPLs is still at two digit level in six i euro area countries: Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal and Slovenia. Banks directly supervised by the ECB, still held 921 billion of such troubled loans at the end of September 2016, representing 6.4% of total loans and equivalent to nearly 9% of the euro area GDP.[2]

The NPL outlook is also very diverse across the euro area. In two countries, Cyprus and Greece, about one-half of total loans are not performing, accounting for about one-third of total bank assets. Four countries report NPL ratios of close to 20%. On the other end of the spectrum, many countries maintain NPL ratios of less than 3%. Despite this heterogeneity, NPLs are a problem with a clear European dimension, as even those countries where banks do not struggle with asset quality, are likely to be affected by spillovers, both financial and real.

The NPL problem has no comparable dimension in the U.S. for a number of reasons ranging from structural, to regulatory- and tax-related motives. In the U.S., Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs), and not the banks, account for the majority of mortgages in their balance sheets. Differently to Europe, regulatory requirements overlay accounting standards imposing the write-down of loans to their recoverable collateral value already after six months past-due, for example. The IAS 39 accounting standard (under the incurred loss approach) and the absence of guidance on write-off requirements tend to lengthen NPL write-offs in Europe.

The distribution of non-performing exposures by sectors is also quite mixed across countries. Taken together, about 60% of currently distressed loans were extended to non-financial companies, of which about a third is related to lending backed by commercial property. But lending to households also constitutes a significant part of troubled debt exposures, accounting for more than a half of the NPLs in some countries. The distribution of non-performing exposures of high-NPL countries (with NPL ratios in excess of 10%) broadly follows this pattern (see Chart 2).

Chart 2

Clearly, a sizeable part of the NPL stock is no longer a risk to bank balance sheets. Provisions, made under applicable accounting standards, amount to about 46% of the stock of NPLs. The remaining value of NPLs is supported by expected future recoveries. Collateral may be a major source of value in NPLs, covering a further 36% of the total exposure, bringing total coverage to 82% on average, for the euro area, broadly in line with the figures for the high-NPL countries (see Chart 3). However, it is very important to bear in mind that access to that collateral is often lengthy and costly, eroding its net present value.[3]

Chart 3

As I said earlier, one of the main reasons we are concerned about high NPLs, from a macroprudential perspective, is that they weigh on bank profitability. However, the resolution of NPLs should not be seen as the only challenge on the way towards restoring sustainable bank profitability and the banking sectors ability to lend to the real economy. Low returns on equity in the euro area are also the result of high costs or overbanking. Only a few EU countries have successfully managed these challenges. Sweden and other Scandinavian countries are a notable example of a banking sector that achieves high profitability while not being burdened with legacy credit quality issues or excessive cost inefficiency. Digitalisation, optimisation of human resources and branch networks, as well as reduction of overbanking also need to be addressed, drawing lessons from the Swedish and other case studies (see Chart 4).

Chart 4

That being noted, the resolution of NPLs alone could lift up the return on equity in several European countries significantly. ECB staff carried out some simulations to demonstrate the potential for increases in bank profitability. In these simple and stylised settings, the assumption was made that non-performing loans would be replaced by new, sound exposures. Interest income would be boosted as a result, as rates charged on new business would substitute for the lower earnings from non-performing loans. Our simulations suggest that a resolution of NPLs could improve the aggregate return on equity of euro area banks by at least 1 percentage point, with some sectors gaining 3 or 5 percentage points. These estimates do not account for the benefits of lower funding cost or lower capital requirements that would be forthcoming from a reduction of NPLs. And, this would provide even further upside to bank profitability. (See Chart 5)

Chart 5

The capital relief from the resolution of NPLs may further spur loan supply (see Chart 6). In the medium term, if the entire amount of capital currently tied up by NPLs is used to support new lending, total credit volume in the euro area may increase, in the most optimistic variant, by about 2.5% and up to 6% in the group of 6 countries with higher NPLs. These numbers would likely be higher if dynamic and confidence effects, that are not possible to account for, would be added. Clearly, countries with the highest NPL ratios and the least efficient debt enforcement frameworks would benefit the most.

Chart 6

Let me now look more closely at some of the reasons for the slow resolution of NPLs.

If financial markets were fully efficient, one would assume that NPLs would be priced in a way that would result in fast market clearance and their removal from banks books. Market transactions of loans are, however still insufficient, having attained nevertheless, about 200 billion of loan portfolio sales in the last three years  an amount that does not include necessarily only NPLs.[4]

The standard microeconomic concept of a market with asymmetric information (the problem of lemons or bad cars in the U.S.)[5] is helpful in explaining the lack of current activity in NPL markets. Consider that NPLs may come with a quality level that is unknown to the buyer, but can be discerned by the seller who originated and managed the loan. Asymmetry of information available to the seller and the buyer may then lead to an outcome where only low-quality assets, (lemons) are actively traded. The uninformed buyer would not be prepared to pay a higher price for higher-quality assets, given that they are not recognised as such. As a result they would be retained on the books of the seller.

There are many sources of asymmetric information in the NPL context. First, while even the banks do not know everything about their assets, they certainly have an advantage over the investors, coming from the previous relationship with the borrower. Presence of collateral further increases the asymmetry and the cost of investor due diligence. Furthermore, investors may fear that banks cherry-pick the best assets for themselves, thus reducing the quality of portfolios offered on sale.

Beyond market failures, regulatory and features of the judicial system, such as structural inefficiencies in debt and collateral enforcement, also contribute to the lack of market turnover. Legal procedures needed to collect a simple claim take too long and cost too much in many euro area countries. Some of these costs cannot be recognised in the values of NPL, but rather, according to accounting rules, are charged to the general expenses. This discrepancy between economic and book value of NPLs is yet another disincentive to increase supply, especially for those banks that are not sufficiently profitable or that have thin capital cushions (see Chart 7).

Chart 7

On the demand side, investors are also deterred by high uncertainty around recoveries and their timing. Moreover, barriers to entry such as licensing requirements further inhibit demand in some euro area countries.

The direct consequence of the conditions, under which the NPL market operates, is a wide gap between bid and ask prices. The data on the size of that gap is scant but it is thought to be very large. For instance, estimates suggest that, for a fully collateralised non-performing loan, the discount required by a private investor may exceed 40% solely due to the cost, time and uncertainty of the recoveries (see Chart 8).[6]

Chart 8

Most of the factors contributing to the discount would not be recognised in banks provisioning. Under IAS 39, the current accounting standard which is to be replaced by IFRS 9, provisions are made under the incurred loss approach.

Investors who have limited information would use a much higher discount rate (corresponding to the green bars in Chart 7) to reflect their uncertainty about the quality and thus the value of the loan. They would additionally account for the full expected cost of working out the loan (blue bars). This calculation produces a wide bid ask gap.

Structural reforms that would reduce all the impediments mentioned, would raise the net present value of the non-performing loans on bank balance sheets, thereby providing an important and welcome buffer to absorb further losses and increase the range of options available to resolve NPLs (see Chart 9).

Chart 9

It would not suffice, however, to develop and stimulate market-based solutions for the high stock of NPLs. Some assets may still not attract investor demand due to their intrinsic features and, in the case of some assets, banks may have an advantage over investors, making in-house work-out of NPL the preferred option, which in turn requires that they have sufficient capacity to restructure and cure troubled loans.

Comprehensive strategies are therefore needed to address the NPL problem. These strategies should include common elements. For these elements a harmonised approach at the European level is of utmost importance, complemented with country-specific elements in each high-NPL constituency in the euro area.

Generally speaking, NPL resolution strategies can deploy a broad range of options available to banks and policymakers. These options are usually complementary. Internal workout by the bank originally holding the impaired asset marks one end of the spectrum of options and should always feature highly in any broader resolution scheme. On the opposite end, direct sales to investors offer an opportunity to dispose of NPLs quickly. In between, there is a range of options such as asset protection schemes (APSs), securitisation and synthetic securitisation and the creation of asset management companies (AMCs), which in the past often involved state intervention (see Chart 10)

Chart 10

All of these options require a considerable push for structural reforms. To illustrate this point, let us consider an AMC which is not accompanied by improvements to the debt enforcement framework. As the AMC would be in an equally difficult legal position as the originating banks, the synergies it could reap would be very moderate. In turn, either the upfront impact of the AMC transfers on the solvency of the banks, or the likelihood of the AMC having to shoulder the losses would be unacceptably high.

It is therefore essential that, as part of the comprehensive strategy, governments take a range of actions related to debt enforcement and reduction of information asymmetries. In many countries, the menu of options available to creditors in insolvency should be expanded, with an objective of promoting early restructuring and survival of viable companies. At the same time, the liquidation of non-viable companies and access to collateral should be facilitated. Strong implementation of the necessary legal reforms is also crucial. This involves e.g. the provision of adequate capacity of the court system and well-functioning of out-of-court workout schemes.

Moving to information asymmetries, the quality, scope and accessibility of financial information should be improved, in particular with respect to corporate financial data and information on assets of distressed debtors. Finally, remaining obstacles to third-party investment in distressed loans should be reviewed and where possible removed.

On the supervisory side, NPL resolution has been designated as one of the top priorities of the Single Supervisory Mechanism. ECB Banking Supervision has prepared an extensive draft guidance document on NPL, expressing supervisory expectations with regard to governance, management, recognition and valuation of NPLs, which was discussed at length earlier today.

The powers of the banking supervisors in the EU are, however, legally limited. For instance, Accounting Standards, including on the imposition of provisions for non-performing assets, are not set by supervisors.[7]

Other elements are likely to be needed for a comprehensive solution. History has proven that asset management companies can swiftly clean up NPLs from bank balance sheets, and resolve them over a longer period of time. Acquisition of assets at their long-term economic value, instead of market value which is depressed by low liquidity and high uncertainty, minimises fire sale losses. For example Sweden, Korea, Germany, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia used these tools to manage banking crises, often with a focus on loans backed by real estate. While overall successful, the degree of success of such entities tends to be linked to strong governance. There is one common feature of this type of AMC: state support. Until now AMCs have rarely been established on a purely commercial basis. Governments had to step in to provide capital to banks weakened by the recognition of losses on NPLs transferred to the AMC, and to guarantee the funding of the AMC. Privately-led solutions would be clearly preferable but have thus far been hardly feasible.

Is there then a place for such AMCs under the current European regulatory framework which puts the burden of managing financial crises on private creditors and investors? There is scope for public sector involvement. It is possible to use government guarantees for funding purposes, as done recently in Italy in the context of bank funding and securitisations of NPLs, in full compliance with the rules and at a market-consistent price. The rules also allow for precautionary recapitalisation of banks by the public sector in cases of significant financial stability concerns, subject to strict conditions laid down in the BRRD (Art. 32, 4), covering hypothetical losses estimated under an adverse scenario of a stress test. Precautionary recapitalisations also have to respect State Aid rules that generally require bail-in of subordinated debt as stated in the European Commissions communication of July 2013, where possible exemptions are nevertheless foreseen (paragraph 45). [8]

The toolkit would be rounded off by two more instruments which facilitate sales of NPLs.

Clearinghouses can be established to reduce the information asymmetry. Standardised data on individual assets could be stored on a centralised platform at European level, which would combine exposures from multiple banks and vouch for quality of the data. This would allow investors to carry out a due diligence at low cost. Bespoke portfolios could be constructed in line with the mandates and objectives of individual investors.

Securitisation could complement outright NPL sales. One of its advantages is that the universe of distressed debt investors can be expanded. Thanks to the ratings given to senior tranches, a broader group of investors could acquire NPLs. Additionally, securitisation offers another way through which governments may jump-start the NPL market, for example by co-investing, together with private investors, in junior or mezzanine tranches. As with AMCs, of course, such investment would need to be compliant with state aid requirements.

Many of these measures should not be expected to yield fruit immediately. Only AMCs, to the extent that they are in compliance with the current rules and securitisation can offer a quick clean-up of bank balance sheets.

An AMC at European level would be a welcomed initiative, particularly because it would facilitate raising private funding in the market. A true European AMC faces however difficulties in the present environment. In more immediate terms, a way forward could be the creation of a European blueprint for AMCs to be used at national level. This European blueprint should clarify what is possible within a flexible approach to the existent regulation and encourage countries to adopt all necessary measures in a well-defined time frame.

At the same time, a European NPL-information platform should be implemented to enhance transparency and facilitate transactions.

In the medium term, the introduction of IFRS 9 and more forward-looking provisioning rules could be conducive to faster recognition of losses. Improvements to bank practices and to data quality and availability are also going to take time before progress becomes tangible.

Finally, insolvency law reforms tend to take a number of years, including the time needed to build capacity, develop practices and test the rules in courts.

The long horizon of many measures should not reduce the sense of urgency and necessity. All of these reforms are essential not only for the resolution of Europes NPL burden, and also as prevention of the renewed build-up of NPL in future cyclical downturns. Financial benefits of speedy action may surface more quickly too. If these measures become credible, investors will recognise the shift in policy and should price higher expected future returns into loan valuations.

Let me conclude. While NPLs are rightly seen as a problem, their resolution could unlock significant benefits to the European banking system and the European economy.

The benefits from resolving the NPL problem are unquestionable, but a great deal of hard work is clearly needed, on many fronts, to deliver them. Neither a partial solution, nor further waiting is an option. Acting only on the supply side of the NPL markets and forcing banks to sell may have serious financial stability consequences. The resulting transfer of value from banks to the investor community would put further pressure on bank profitability, instead of relieving it. For this reason, a comprehensive, co-ordinated effort on the part of several European and national authorities is now crucial.
Weapons specialists at the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) at China Lake, CA. have recently tested the capability of guided missile to defeat an unmanned aerial vehicle in flight. The Spike miniature, lightweight precision guided missile was used for the test performed in December 2016 at China Lake. Two of the small missiles demonstrated the capability of the Navy designed weapon to shoot down an Outlaw UAV with a single shot. In one engagement, the Spike performed with proximity fuse while the second verified contact activation with a direct hit.

To prepare for the demonstration the Spike launcher was mounted to a radar-queued gimbal, which maintained the target in the missiles field of view while the Spike operator acquired, tracked and engaged the target.

Preparing for a counter-UAV live fire exercise in 2013 the Spike project team collaborated with the U.S. Armys Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center. Following that 2013 demonstration, ARDEC requested the Spike teams participation in a transport convoy protection line of defense using a similar gimbal system. The Army provided a proximity fuse for integration into the missile and the incorporation of that fuse enabled the Spike missile to explode on contact or near the target. In December, the Spike team demonstrated the effectiveness of both activation modes, destroying two Outlaw UAVs.

Project engineers continue to make improvements to their fire control suite, processes for safer assembly as well as algorithm updates for better endgame performance and replacement verification tests that are cheaper, faster and equally as effective as the previous ones.

Known as the forward-firing miniature munition, Spike is under development by a small team of engineers at China Lake, seeking to provide a cost-effective weapon that could counter emerging threats with capabilities that other weapons cannot. One such area is the increasing threat of small boat swarms often referred to as the fast attack craft (FAC) and fast inshore attack craft (FIAC) threat. One strategy the enemy employs is to use multiple FACs/FIACs to go after a target. The Spike could be a good gap-filler in a layered defense against this tactic. Spike has recorded direct hits against moving FIAC threats in separate test events on the NAWCWD Point Mugu sea range.
DHAKA - The continued crackdown on Bangladeshi garment workers by its government and factory owners is calling into question the country's eligibility for trade preferences under the EU's GSP regime according to three of the world's leading trade unions. Valter Sanches, Industriall Global Union general secretary, Philip Jennings UNI Global Union general secretary and Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation have urged the EU to launch an investigation into Bangladesh's eligibility for GSP trading benefits. "Only the potential loss of market access will demonstrate to the government of Bangladesh that Europe is serious about workers' rights," says the statement, which also suggests that the Sustainability Compact, which was agreed between Bangladesh and the EU to improve labour rights in the garment industry, "is essentially dead."
The Swedish government announced new

climate change legislation Thursday that requires the country to phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, one of the most ambitious plans by any developed country.

Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin posted a

photograph on Twitter of her signing the bill surrounded by an all-female staff. Many people are comparing this photo to the viral photo of Donald Trump when he signed an executive order restricting access to abortion while surround by men.

https://twitter.com/climatemegan/status/827484481154084865

You can interpret it as you want, Lovins spokesperson told BuzzFeed News. Its more that Sweden is a feminist government and this is a very important law that we just decided on  And to make the Paris agreement happen we need climate leadership.

The legislation will bind all future governments to net zero emissions by 2045, Lovin said, and require Swedish governments to provide updates on climate change efforts and whether the country is on track to meet its target.

The new Swedish law was developed after agreement from seven out of the eight political parties in parliament. It takes effect on Jan. 1, 2018.

According to the

AP, Lovin said, Sweden wanted to set an example at a time when climate skeptics (are) really gaining power in the world again. She criticized climate skeptics within the new Trump Administration and said, the position we hear from the new administration is worrying, and warned that all countries need to step up and fulfill the Paris agreement.

Lovins concern is clearly warranted as news this week continued to show Trumps war on the environment.

Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee

suspended their panels rules Thursday to force through Scott Pruitts nomination to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/827232296063348737

On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate

confirmed former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State, revealing just how much fossil fuel industry money has corrupted Congress, as climate group 350.org put it.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/826947054815547392

And, on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) drafted a bill to

abolish the EPA and is seeking support from his colleagues for the measure.
Todays decision by the Republican-led U.S. Senate to overturn a rule designed to stop oil companies striking corrupt deals with foreign governments is a grave threat to U.S. national security and an astonishing gift to big oil. The news comes just two days after Rex Tillerson, a longstanding opponent of the law while CEO of ExxonMobil, was confirmed as Secretary of State and the day after the U.S. eased sanctions on Russia.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/826906699869069314

The oil industry is the most corrupt on the planet. Alongside a broader anti-regulatory push and President Trumps failure to address his conflicts of interest, this vote to roll back efforts to bring oil deals into the open is another sign of the rapid erosion of U.S. democracy in favor of big business.

The law, known as the Cardin-Lugar transparency provision, requires U.S.-listed extractive companies like Exxon, Chevron and several Chinese oil majors to publish details of the hundreds of billions of dollars they pay to governments across the world in return for rights to natural resources. Bringing shady oil deals to light should help ensure these vast public revenues benefit all instead of lining the pockets of corrupt elites. However, this week, Congress voted to rescind the implementing regulation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with the House of Representatives voting on Wednesday and the Senate voting earlier today.

As Exxon CEO, Rex Tillerson did everything in his power to gut this law, because it doesnt suit big oils corrupt business model, said Corinna Gilfillan, head of the U.S. office for Global Witness. Now hes Secretary of State Congress has immediately sanctioned corruption by green lighting secret deals between oil companies and despots. These deals deprive some of the worlds poorest people of oil wealth that is rightfully theirs. Given the Presidents massive conflicts of interest and his administrations broad attacks on regulation, it appears our institutions are increasingly being abused to further the business interests of a powerful few. This is how corrupt dictatorships start.

This move sets the U.S. in opposition to a broader global trend toward greater transparency and accountability in how oil, gas and mining revenues are managed. Thirty other major economies around the world, including the UK, Canada, Norway and all 27 members of the European Unionhave laws requiring their oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their payments to governments. Dozens of major European and Russian oil companies have already published their payments to governments. Claims made by the oil lobby that greater transparency will harm U.S. oil companies competitiveness has proven untrue.

Global Witness notes with concern the complete fabrication of facts by the Republican leadership in their presentations about the Cardin-Lugar transparency provision. They have relied on the American Petroleum Institutes facts, which have been discredited over the past six years in multiple fora, while being totally unwilling to hear an alternative view. This is evidenced by their absence during the actual debate, not to mention the fact that many in the leadership who have pushed this resolution receive vast sums from the oil and gas industry. In the absence of a better explanation, it is difficult not to conclude that big oil has just had its lackeys liberate them to be corrupt.

The U.S. has thrown away its global leadership on tackling corruption. Oil, gas and mining companies from other countries have already disclosed over $150 billion in payments under similar rules, meaning citizens can begin to hold their governments to account. If they can do it, you have to askwhat have the U.S. companies got to hide? said Gilfillan.

The law was finally implemented in 2016 after being passed in 2010 as part of the Dodd Frank reform act. It was implemented following a broad campaign from civil society groups, investors and community leaders all over the world.

Prior to the vote, Bishop Cantu, chairman of the Committee on International Justice and Peace at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said, Transparency in extractive industry payments to governments is important to us as leaders of the Catholic community of faith and institutions that are investors and consumers. We believe these principles, policies and rules can help protect the lives, dignity and rights of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. The rules have moral and human consequences as well as economic and political impact.
By Ben Jervey

Earlier this week, staffers at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) received their first official email from the new administration. Changes will likely come and when they do, we will work together to implement them, wrote Don Benton, a senior White House adviser who is now leading the so-called beachhead team for the EPAs transition, in the email published by E&E News.

DeSmog dives into what we know about the EPA beachhead team (including what it is and who is on it), whom its members are connected to and what the EPA should expect from the Trump team.

First, who is Don Benton and what is a beachhead team? Benton is a former Washington state legislator (with a history of endorsing conspiracy theories) and the beachhead team is the current incarnation of the EPA transition team, working at the agency to handle the transition until a new administrator is confirmed.

Agency transitions tend to be complicated and confusing and this one is particularly so. So lets take a quick step back and trace the brief but chaotic history of the transfer of power at the EPA. Before President Donald Trump officially took office, his EPA transition team was being lead by Myron Ebell, the notorious climate science denier from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

https://twitter.com/EcoWatch/status/826435638635409409 science should not be adjusted to fit policy. But rather than heed this advice, EPA has greatly increased its science manipulation.

On Inauguration Day, Ebell stepped down from Trumps EPA transition team (or was relieved of his dutiesits not entirely clear) and the new 10-member beachhead team was announced. This team is being led by Benton and Charles Munoz, a 27-year-old who led Trumps presidential campaign in Nevada, where he had also launched the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity.

The beachhead team members have 90 day contracts and traditionally such a teams role is to prepare the agency staff and bureaucracy for the arrival of the new administrator. As weve reported extensively on DeSmog, Trump nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to serve as EPA administrator and he faced a contentious confirmation hearing before the Senates Committee for Environment and Public Works.

Yesterday, Democratic senators on the committee boycotted the confirmation vote, demanding more information from Pruitts office about his unprecedented, secretive alliance with fossil fuel companies and calling out his offices refusal to comply with dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests from journalists and researchers from the Center for Media and Democracy. Today, Republicans on the committee suspended the rules to push through the Pruitt vote.

Thanks to a gag order and social media freeze ordered by the Trump Administration, theres little information making it out of the agency, either about what staff is working on or how the beachhead team is managing the transition.

read page 1

Last week, Doug Ericksen, communications director for Trumps EPA transition team, told NPR that the agency planned to review all of its scientists studies on a case by case basis prior to publication. Employees were also told to scrub EPAs climate change web pages, although the administration backed off that charge. Ericksen told Bloomberg BNA that the agency plans to restore full communications rights, including social media, as soon as possible.

Until we learn more, heres what we do know about the beachhead team and some notable affiliations, mapped out using the LittleSis platform.

Koch and Coal Connections

Charles Munoz is the White House liaison to the EPA landing team and was a top Trump organizer in his home state of Nevada. Munoz helped launch the Nevada chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group funded by the Kochs.

David Schnare, who has waged intimidation campaigns against climate scientists, worked for 33 years at the EPA before joining a number of Koch-affiliated entities.

Schnare is director of the the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic at George Mason University, which serves as the official attorney for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute. Both are funded extensively by Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust. Schnare is also an energy policy expert at the Heartland Institute.

David Kreutzer was a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a group funded by foundations controlled by Koch Industries

After working at the EPA during the George W. Bush Administration, George Sugiyama lobbied for the National Mining Association. Sugiyama also served as legal adviser to the Republican minority, led by Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, on the Senate environment committee. Inhofe is arguably the best-known climate science denier in Congress and famously declared climate change to be a hoax.

Washington States Worst on Climate

Two Washington state officials, described as the states most radical small government lawmakers, have been assigned key posts on the beachhead team. Don Benton, who once introduced legislation based on Agenda 21 conspiracy theories, is the Senior White House Advisor to the EPA transition. And Doug Ericksen is serving as communications director for the transition team.

Described by the Seattle Times as an ally of the fossil-fuel industry, Doug Ericksen was named by Washington Conservation Voters as among the states Dirty Dozen worst politicians.

Ericksen wants to make it a felony for oil-by-rail protests to block train tracks, describing it as economic terrorism, although the Seattle Times notes that Ericksens motive is punishing environmentalists, tribal activists and others who have illegally obstructed oil and coal trains, pipelines and similar projects. The Times notes, More than going after individual protesters, Ericksen said the legislations goal is to target wealthy, liberal donors, such as billionaires George Soros or Tom Steyer and organizations such as the Sierra Club, for sponsoring disruptive demonstrations. They could be held liable for damages under the bill.

Shannon Murphy, head of the Washington Conservation Voters, said, Sen. Ericksens and Bentons environmental records speak for themselves. They are both climate deniers who have consistently voted against protecting clean air and water for communities across the state.

The Rest of the Team

Patrick Davis ran Trumps campaign in Colorado and before that was accused of defrauding a wealthy super PAC by steering money to fake organizations run by Davis and his friends.

Layne Bangerter headed the Trump campaign in Idaho and most recently worked with Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID), whose website claims that the cause of changes to the Earths climate is ultimately not well-understood and is a matter of vigorous debate. Koch Industries donated $40,000 to Crapos campaign from 2013-2014.

Justin Schwab is serving as the main legal advisor and is currently an attorney at the corporate law firm Baker Hostetler in Washington, DC.

Holly Greaves is working on budget issues and was most recently a public accountant for KPMG, which works with a number of oil, gas and utility industry clients.

Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.
Thousands of U.S. military veterans and volunteers are readying their return to Standing Rock as President Donald Trump tries to move the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) forward and clashes between law enforcement and Water Protectors continue to break out.

We are committed to the people of Standing Rock, we are committed to nonviolence and we will do everything within our power to ensure that the environment and human life are respected. That pipeline will not get completed. Not on our watch, Anthony Diggs, a spokesman for Veterans Stand, told CNBC.

https://twitter.com/VeteransStand4/status/804934046018990081

In early December, Veterans Stand mobilized more than 2,000 veteran to descend upon Standing Rock, North Dakota. The vets volunteered to act as peaceful human shields for Water Protectors who were facing increasingly violent confrontations and mass arrests from heavily militarized police.

As it happened, their arrival coincided with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denying a key easement for the pipeline to travel under Lake Oahe. The corps decision temporarily halted pipeline construction to allow time for an Environmental Impact Study.

Veterans Arrive at Standing Rock to Act as 'Human Shields' for Water Protectors https://t.co/rAF6PLVv0d @ChiefTheresa @BoldNebraska  EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) December 5, 2016

However, with Trump now in office, the $3.7 billion project has found new legs. Last week, the president issued executive orders to review and approve the DAPL as well as the long-contested Keystone XL in an expedited manner. He also asked the corps to reconsider the environmental review.

To make matters worse for pipeline opponents, Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) and Rep. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) separately claimed that the final easement for the DAPL has already been granted even though the Standing Rock Sioux said they had not received notice that the easement was granted, calling the lawmakers claims premature.

In light of recent news, Veterans Stand launched a new crowdfunding campaign to continue their commitment of protecting their indigenous brothers and sisters and possibly mobilizing again.

The group has already raised more than $110,000 in less than a week from nearly 2,000 donors. The plan is to reach $500,000. Part of the money will go to basic transport of supplies and personnel, Diggs told CNBC.

We have had thousands of volunteers reconfirm their dedication to the cause, and readiness to help, the group said. The success of our fundraising campaign will ultimately dictate out overall potential for a boots-on-the-ground presence but our learnings from the first mission in December have allowed us to create the right infrastructure to move quickly.

https://twitter.com/VeteransStand4/status/826902898910978048

Just this week, police arrested 76 Water Protectors for allegedly trespassing on private property owned by the pipeline operator. Video footage showed several officers arriving to the scene in armored vehicles. Officers wore riot gear and some carried arms.

The demonstrators said they were peacefully assembling at the newly erected Last Child camp.

A lot of water protectors really felt that we needed to make some sort of stand as far as treaty rights, said Linda Black Elk, a member of the Catawba Nation told The Guardian. We basically started to see police mobilizing from all directions. Someone came along and told us we had about 15 minutes before the camp would get raided.

There were a lot of people who felt like the prospect of treaty rights was something worth getting arrested over, she added.

For months, Water Protectors have been trying to block the highly contested pipeline which they say violates sovereign treaty rights and the pipelines path could cross a vital source of drinking water.

As Veterans Stand said in their statement, Given the current news reports of escalations in timelines for the Environmental Impact Study (EIS) and increased security forces we are left asking, how can something good for America when it disregards due process of law, risking our civil liberties and essential natural resources?

We believe that human rights and the sustainability of the environment come before the opportunity to profit.

A report from The Free Thought Project suggests that officials from both the U.S. government and indigenous tribes have been emboldened by Trumps orders to push the pipeline forward.

On Thursday, officials from the ATF, Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Standing Rock division of Fish and Wildlife, tribal police, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reportedly showed up at the Camp of the Sacred Stonesthe original DAPL protest campsite. According to the report, the officials refused to offer a warrant or explanation for the sudden appearance.

Johnny Dangers, who has resided in the camps, captured the visit in a livestream video, calling it a raid.

https://www.facebook.com/johnnykdangers/videos/1879578468950597
Major/Minor:

Biology

Classification:

Senior

Hometown:

Raleigh, North Carolina

Hobbies/Interests:

Some of my hobbies include interior design. I enjoy shopping for furniture and searching for the latest trends in home decor.

Dream Job:

Genetic Counseling/ Human Genetics

Campus Events You Enjoyed Participating In and The Reason(s):

As a former member of Savage Dance Company I enjoyed participating in the Student Body Meetings, where our dance group would perform various skits and sketches. In addition I enjoy participating in yoga classes once a week.

Plans After Graduating From ECSU:

Attend medical and graduate school. Earn M.D. and PhD.

Plans For the Future:

Work with human genetics.

Your words to live by:

Live in the Present, Plan for the Future

Favorite place on campus



My favorite place on campus would be the Fine Arts Building, because its rich in arts, culture and creativity.

Professors who have influenced you



When I ponder the thought of which professor has had (and still having) the biggest influence on me would be none other than Dr. Margaret Young. This woman has been nothing short of a complete miracle when it pertains to my studies. The way Dr. Young instructs her class has proven to be innovative while at the same time creative. I would not be in this position Im in now if it wasn't for her guidance and mentoring. Thank you Dr. Young!

Advice for younger students



My advice to younger students would be to remain focused on the ultimate goal, which is to graduate with honors and to stay motivated. Students are often discouraged from their studies because they feel as if they are missing out on campus activities, however this isn't true. There will be plenty of opportunities for students to socialize and explore. My last piece of advice would be to have fun, college is supposed to be the best time of our lives so enjoy it while you can.
(UN Photo / David Ohana)On her first official visit to Myanmar from Dec. 3-7, 2012, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Valerie Amos, stopped at displacement camps in Myanmar's Rakhine State and saw first-hand the projects implemented by humanitarian partners in the region.

Gang-rapes, killings of babies and children, brutal beatings and disappearance of members of Myanmar's Muslim Rohingya group are detailed in a new United Nations report from the Buddhist-majority nation based on interviews with victims.

The serious human rights violations by Myanmar's security forces in a sealed-off area north of Maungdaw in northern Rakhine State are contained in the report based on interviews with victims across the border in Bangladesh.

In the past few months, security forces in Myanmar have accelerated efforts to clear the ethnic group from the country's borders  in a campaign of "area clearance operations"  to historic levels in terms of both scale and brutality, Foreign Policy reports.

"The 'area clearance operations' have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths and have led to an estimated 66,000 people fleeing into Bangladesh and 22,000 being internally displaced," the new U.N. report said.

The allegations in the damning report released Feb. 3 were compiled after interviews with more than 200 Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar, which is also sometimes called Burma, to neighboring Bangladesh.

One mother recounted how her five-year-old daughter was murdered while trying to protect her from rape.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein said, "The cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable - what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother's milk?

'NATIONAL SECURITY GOALS'

"And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by the very security forces who should be protecting her  what kind of 'clearance operation' is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?"

"I call on the international community, with all its strength, to join me in urging the leadership in Myanmar to bring such military operations to an end."

Of the 204 people individually interviewed by a team of U.N. human rights investigators, the vast majority reported witnessing killings, and almost half reported having a family member who was killed as well as family members who were missing.

Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported having suffered rape or other forms of sexual violence.

"Especially revolting were the accounts of children  including an eight-month old, a five-year-old and a six-year-old  who were slaughtered with knives.

"In another case, an eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers."

Zeid noted the report suggests the recent level of violence to be unprecedented.

The report noted that after the repeated failure of the Government of Myanmar to grant the U.N. Human Rights Office unfettered access to the worst-affected areas of northern Rakhine State, deployed a team of human rights officers to the Bangladeshi border with Myanmar.

There an estimated 66,000 Rohingya have fled since Oct. 9, 2016.

All the individuals interviewed by the team had fled Myanmar after the Oct. 9 attacks against three border guard posts, which had prompted intense military operations and a lockdown in north Maungdaw. The military indicated that it was conducting "area clearance operations" in the region.

The report notes that it cites consistent testimony indicating that hundreds of Rohingya houses, schools, markets, shops, madrasas and mosques were burned by the army, police and sometimes civilian mobs.

Witnesses also described the destruction of food and food sources, including paddy fields, and the confiscation of livestock.

"Numerous testimonies collected from people from different village tracts...confirmed that the army deliberately set fire to houses with families inside, and in other cases pushed Rohingyas into already burning houses," the report states.

"Testimonies were collected of several cases where the army or Rakhine villagers locked an entire family, including elderly and disabled people, inside a house and set it on fire, killing them all."

Myanmar's government and its de-factor leader Aung San Suu Kyi have previously dismissed claims of rights abuses and insisted that the security forces follow the rule of law.

Suu Kyi's spokesman told the BBC, however, that the latest allegations were extremely serious. The spokesman said officials would look into them immediately.

Of Myanmar's 87 million people, about 88 percent are Buddhist, Christians make up some 6.2 percent and Mulsims 4.3 percent.
New figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) have revealed good news for public schools and Indigenous education.The new data, released on Thursday, showed the proportion of Australian children enrolled in government schools increased slightly over the past year.2016 marks the second year in a row that public school enrolments have risen, bucking a downward trend that has troubled the sector for the last 40 years.ABS spokesperson, Michelle Marquardt, said that public schools now educated 65.4% of all Australian school students (2,483,802), rising slightly from 65.2% in 2015 and 65.1% in 2014.However, enrolments by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students spiked between 2006 and 2016, from 40.1% to 59.8%. In 2016 there were 207,852 students enrolled in Australian schools identifying as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander  an increase of 3.6% from 2015.The improved enrolment figures by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students is largely due to national reforms aimed at closing the nations disadvantage gap.As for private schools, the enrolment rate remained steady at 14.4%, bringing a halt to the steady increase seen over the last few years.Last year, the total proportion of students enrolled in Catholic schools fell slightly to 20.2%, down from 20.4% in 2015, while the figure for Independent schools remained steady at 14.4%.In a statement yesterday, Marquardt said the figures represented a reversal of the steady drift of students from public to private schools observed for much of the past 40 years.Marquardt also noted that 2016 saw a growing number of students staying at school to Year 12.The Apparent Retention Rate (ARR) of secondary students staying through to Year 12 was 84.3%, well up from the 75% reported in 2006. As in previous years, the 2016 rate was higher for females (87.8%) than for males (80.9%).With the largest growth in school numbers of any school sector, the Independent Schools Council of Australia (ISCA) said today that the ABS figures confirm the continued strong contribution of the Independent school sector.In a statement provided to The Educator, ISCA executive director, Colette Colman, said that in 2016 there was a net increase of 14 Independent schools in Australia, bringing the total to 1,042. Independent student numbers grew by more than 7,000 over the same period.In 2016 the Independent school sector recorded the largest growth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enrolments at 5.2%. This exceeds the national average of 3.7 per cent, and highlights the increasing diversity of the sector, she said.Independent schools reflect the social, economic and ethnic diversity of Australia. In fact, 90% of Australian Independent schools are low to medium fee establishments, with the median fee of an Independent school in 2015 being less than $4,900.
My problem with President Donald Trumps nomination of Betsy DeVos for U.S. secretary of education wasnt just that she never attended public school. Nor was it that she hasnt held public office. It was the long-term harm she and the entire DeVos family have inflicted on LGBTQ students and families.

And its why many Americans, myself included, will be watching DeVos closely if she is confirmedand will call out any policy decisions that could hurt students and their families.

As the mom of two young children with my wife, I simply cannot be silent. Despite assurances from DeVos advisers that she believes in equality, her own remarks and her relatives extremely close ties to anti-LGBTQ groups should alarm any educatoror Americanwho believes in fairness and equality.

In a 2006 speech to the Michigan Republican convention, Betsy DeVos called marriage equality part of the destruction of our traditions. Her in-laws and her mothers foundation strongly backed an effort to ban marriage equality in Michigan .

From 1999 to 2001, DeVos and her husbands own foundation gave $275,000 to Focus on the Family, according to reporting from the magazine Mother Jones . Focus on the Family still touts conversion therapy in its web series Leaving Homosexuality. These practices have been directly linked to youth suicides and condemned by virtually all mental-health professionals.

Betsy DeVos father, Edgar Prince, was a major funder who helped launch a separate group, the Family Research Council. That groups anti-LGBTQ agenda led the Southern Poverty Law Center to designate it a hate group. To this day, the Family Research Councils website refers to LGBTQ people as unnatural and pledges to oppose acceptance and equality in law, in the media, and in schools.

This ugliness is deeply hurtful to me and families like mineand to many educators and parents who advocate for young LGBTQ people. Its also an insult to the American institution of education, built to serve everyone equally.

In the hearing, DeVos denied her own involvement in anti-LGBTQ activities by her mothers foundation. But Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire, confronted DeVos in the hearing with tax documents that listed her as a longtime board member and the current vice president. DeVos blamed her appearance in those documents on a clerical error. The foundations website prominently congratulated DeVos on her Cabinet nomination, suggesting an ideological alignment.

DeVos' passion for school choice and vouchers should sound alarms for LGBTQ students, our families, and our supporters."

In what seemed like a promising twist, DeVos spokesperson told the news site BuzzFeed that DeVos supports marriage equality . He cited a generational difference of opinion with her older relatives. Another associate told The New York Times that her views on LGBTQ rights have evolved.

This response is also questionable. While public support for LGBTQ equality has indeed evolved, I know few families like DeVos that have focused so much time and money on hurting families like mine. Understanding and acceptance can take time, but actively trying to put loving couples and their children in danger is wrong.

It was wrong a generation ago, too.

If DeVos has changed her mind about marriage equality, Im delighted to hear it. But her record speaks louder than her recent words, and I, like many others, am skeptical of whether she would support equalityand oppose bigotrywhile in office.

How can DeVos be entrusted to protect our nations most vulnerable students when she decided to align herself with these organizations? With increased reports of school bullying in this divided political environment, would she support funding for anti-bullying programs under the new Every Student Succeeds Act ?

And what about protections for LGBTQ students? Some conservative leaders, including Vice President Mike Pence, blasted the Education Departments guidance for school districts on treating transgender students with basic fairness. Would DeVos rescind such guidance, put in place under President Barack Obama, and take other steps that show hostility for LGBTQ students and educators?

Such guidance isnt just ideological; its affecting the lives of real students. North Carolina has banned transgender people, including students, from using the restroom that aligns with their identity, and a third school district in Virginia has now voted down anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ students or employees . Would DeVos take a stand on these students behalf? Or would she allow even more schools to treat LGBTQ students differently from their peers?

Does DeVos support so-called religious liberty bills that would legalize discrimination against LGBTQ people and studentslike the one passed by the Michigan Senate in 2012 with financial support from her family, according to a recent article on the Daily Beast site ?

Most of all, DeVos passion for school choice and vouchers should sound alarms for LGBTQ students, our families, and our supporters. The state and local requirements barring discrimination against LGBTQ people are in many cases less stringent (or nonexistent) for voucher programs. This means an expansion of school vouchers could endorse discrimination against educatorsand students.

As Americans, we should ask how we should treat our children and families who need support the most. How can we protect our kids from discrimination and make sure they receive the education they need to thrive? These questions arent just about LGBTQ people. Theyre about equality for everyone under the law.

In the past, DeVos has stood with those who hurt LGBTQ students and families. Millions of fair-minded Americans and education advocates are watching now to see if shell truly support equality for every student. I have my doubts, but I hope she surprises us all.
President Donald Trumps sweeping order that halted residents of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States sent shock waves through some of the nations schools, leaving educators scrambling to assure frightened refugee and immigrant students that their schools should be safe places.

The effort to calm those fears comes as some educators grapple with uncertainty of their own: not knowing the next steps the White House will take on immigration and how it will affect their students. And that uncertainty had heightened even more over the weekend after a federal judge suspended Trumps order, allowing those who had been previously banned to enter. That decision was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.

"[There are] a lot of unknowns right now, said Elizabeth Demchak, the principal at Claremont International High School in New York City. Anytime youre talking about peoples status in the country, there will be fear. We have to try and give [students] as much stability as possible.

Based in the South Bronx, Demchaks school is home to hundreds of Spanish-, Arabic-, and Bengali-speaking students, along with a growing population of refugees from Yemen, whose citizens are banned from U.S. entry for now under Trumps executive order. The school is part of The Internationals Network for Public Schools, a nationwide nonprofit that serves about 9,000 newly arrived immigrant students.

Those students represent a sliver of those who may be gripped by fear and uncertainty. Trump has also signed executive orders to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, strip federal funding from sanctuary cities that shield undocumented immigrants, and establish new criteria to make more undocumented immigrants priorities for deportation.

Support for Immigration Orders

Even as many educators publicly express dismay at President Trump, a large number of Americans are supportive of the executive order restricting U.S. entry. In a poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos a few days after the Jan. 27 order, 49 percent of Americans said they agree with the ban; 41 percent said they oppose it.

Foreign-born students represent 6 percent of the population in American schools, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Influxes of immigrant studentswho may have large gaps in schooling and whose linguistic and cultural differences can present challenges for educatorshave at times caused friction in communities where some parents raised concerns that new arrivals negatively impact their childrens education.

The anxiety over Trumps order is particularly acute for students and educators in immigrant-rich communities like Minnesotas Somali strongholds, Californias heavily Latino communities, and blooming Syrian enclaves around the country.

English-Learners' Home Languages Trumps freeze on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countriesIran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemenis casting a shadow on immigrant students. Here are the top three home languages in 2013-14 spoken by English-learners with connections to those countries in U.S. public schools. Source: National Center for Education Statistics

The ban also hit home in places like Houston and Nashville, Tenn., both with a growing number of Islamic students. The districts also have large Kurdish communities, many of whom come from countries targeted in the immigration ban.

In Nashville, at least 1,000 students from affected countries are in the citys schools. While schools generally dont track the immigration status of students, they often collect data about students country of origin and home language if its not English.

The United States is supposed to be a country of opportunity and we believe that immigrants bring a richness to our country that we should maximize, Nashville Superintendent Shawn Joseph said. It starts with educating them.

The Trump administrations aggressive stance has made that job tougher, some educators say.

It certainly does strain the ability of young people and their families to trust institutions, said Roberto Gonzales, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. It behooves schools to take a much more active role in sowing these seeds of trust and really growing them.

As the daughter of Dominican immigrants, Principal Nedda de Castro relates to her students at the International School at Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. Like them, she learned English in school. She recalls school as where she explored what it means to be American.

But many of her students are constantly reminded that theyre not. And some are giving up on school.

Some of the students are assuming that theyre just going to be deported anyway and starting to talk about how theres really no point in coming to school anymore, de Castro said. Its a lot of lost potential.

Trumps order related to U.S. entry blocks citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from coming into the U.S. for 90 days. It bans refugees from any country for 120 days and bars refugees from Syria indefinitely.

Fate for Deferred Action

Nearly 39,000 Muslim refugees entered the United States in fiscal 2016, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. State Department data, and more than half hailed from Somalia and Syria. School districts from Southern California to Connecticut have seen a surge in Syrian enrollment in recent years. Somali refugees continue to flow to metro areas like Minneapolis and Seattle, where already established communities exist.

Minneapolis has more than 4,100 Somali students; many are refugees.

The district recognizes and shares the pain and fear many of them have felt after recent events, Minneapolis Superintendent Ed Graff wrote to Education Week.

Refugee students face similar obstacles common to some immigrant students new to the countryinterrupted education and learning a new language, along with adjusting to stigma tied to their race, religion, and skin color, said Gonzales, the Harvard professor.

Over the weekend, a federal district court judge in Seattle temporarily halted Trumps order to stop the flow of citizens from the Muslim-majority nations. Trump took to Twitter to lambaste the ruling and the judge who issued it. The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned.

Initially, however, Trumps effort to reverse the ruling failed, as a federal appeals court upheld the order of U.S. District Judge James L. Robart.

While Trumps executive orders play out, many are awaiting the fate of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, an Obama-administration policy that gave temporary deportation reprieves to more than 740,000 undocumented youth.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to repeal DACA. Hes also repeatedly said his administration will develop a plan for the young immigrants, but has yet to offer specifics. The uncertainty for DACA recipientsmany of them immigrants from Mexico and Central Americais reverberating broadly in Latino communities.

The fear ... is very present, not just for those who are undocumented, but those who are Latino, as well as their teachers and loved ones who have also felt maligned by the rhetoric used throughout the election and since Trump won, said Marisa Bono, a lawyer with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

A broad array of K-12 education leaders have called on the Trump administration to continue protections for undocumented immigrant youth brought to the U.S. as children, popularly known as DREAMers.

Richard Carranza, the superintendent in Houston, is one. So is Joseph, the Nashville schools chief. Both men joined more than 1,000 other education leaders in signing a petition calling for saving the DACA policy. The list of supporters also includes Teach For America, the American Federation of Teachers, and charter school organizations.

Its important to be proactive in reassuring the community that the district is here to educate children, anyone that shows up to our doors, Carranza said.

Federal Aid at Risk?

Trumps order to punish jurisdictions that dont cooperate with immigration authorities has put a target on cities that vow to protect their undocumented residents.

Los Angeles Unified is one district anticipating potential fallout for schools that pledge to shield their students. Its school board has been outspoken about its refusal to cooperate with any immigration enforcement efforts.

Slashing federal aid could deal a blow to any district. In L.A. Unified, roughly $700 million in federal funds flow into the districts coffers each year. Chicago and Clark County, Nev., may also be at risk for declaring their districts as sanctuary campuses.

Seattles mayor allotted $250,000 for undocumented students in the citys schools. The school board directed staff to ban immigration agents from school grounds unless they get permission from the superintendent or the districts lawyers.

Even with a range of leaders pledging support for immigrant youth, its hard to allay their fears, said Bono, the MALDEF lawyer.

We want to hope for the best, she said, but have to expect the worst.




GAA gearing up for larger presence at Boston seafood expo

The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) will be making its presence more felt at Seafood Expo North America (SENA) this year with a larger exhibit.

SENA, North America's largest seafood trade show, with more than 1,000 exhibiting companies from over 40 countries, takes place at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC) in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, from March 19 to 21.

GAA said it will exhibit at booth No. 481, which is the same as last year. However, the 400-square-foot exhibit is brand-new and double in size.

The GAA exhibit will have information on the Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) third-party certification programme, as well as information on GAA's pre-competitive activities including GAA membership, GOAL 2017 conference, Global Aquaculture Advocate website, Responsible Aquaculture Foundation e-learning program, MyGAA online community and GAA Films. Both MyGAA and GAA Films are new to the GAA family.

Among the events taking place are the GAA membership meeting and board of directors' meeting on March 18, BAP dialogue meeting on March 19 and premiere of GAA Films on March 19.

In addition to the exhibit, GAA has reserved Room 205C for meetings; the room is located at the west side of the BCEC, facing downtown Boston.

Following is the schedule of events released by GAA:

Saturday, March 18

10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.GAA membership meeting, Room 205C; open only to GAA members.

12:30 p.m.GAA board of directors' meeting and discussion, Room 205C; open only to GAA board members. Light lunch will be served at 12:30 p.m.

Sunday, March 19

10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.BAP dialogue meeting, Room 205C: GAA's annual update on the BAP third-party certification programme. Among the topics on the meeting agenda are new facility growth and development, iBAP programme, market development, biosecurity area management, programme integrity and the new online portal.

Monday, March 20

1p.m.-2 p.m.cooking demonstration featuring four-star BAP tilapia from China, Cooking Demonstration Theatre, Show Floor, 3300 Aisle. Chef Rut of Sunnyvale Seafood/Guangdong Gourmet Products will be preparing a variety of Asian-inspired dishes featuring four-star BAP tilapia from China. Learn more about sourcing tilapia from China, responsible aquaculture and the BAP third-party certification programme. The cooking demonstration is sponsored by the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance. Chef Rut (Panurat Poladitmontri) has 30 years of culinary experience as a restaurateur, cookbook author, developer of Thai food product lines and foodservice consultant. Together with Judy Lew, he penned "Thailand the Beautiful Cookbook" to commemorate the Queen of Thailand's 60th birthday. He owns Harbor Cafe in Seattle.

4p.m.-5 p.m.Premiere of GAA Films, GAA booth No. 481. Join GAA for the premiere of GAA Films' first short film. GAA Films is a short film initiative setting out to highlight the untold stories of the different stakeholders in aquaculture. This first film features the life of a second-generation, women-owned farm raising trout in rural Mexico. Complimentary beer and wine will be served.




To build the largest and most complete Amateur Radio community site on the Internet - a "portal" that hams think of as the first place to go for information, to exchange ideas, and be part of whats happening with ham radio on the Internet. eHam.net provides recognition and enjoyment to the people who use, contribute, and build the site. This project involves a management team of volunteers who each take a topic of interest and manage it with passion. The site will stand above all other ham radio sites by employing the latest technology and professional design/programming standards, developed by a team of community programmers who contribute their skills to the effort. The site will be something of which everyone involved can be proud to say they were a part. We welcome your comments. The eHam.net Team, Revision 07/2020.
The European Investment Bank today confirmed details of the first EIB support for forestry related investment in Ireland in 20 years. The new EUR 90 million long-term loan from the European Investment Bank will be used to finance the cost of planting, forest management and forest road construction and maintenance by Irelands state-owned, commercial forestry company Coillte over the next four years.

The new support was announced in Newtownmountkennedy prior to a visit to Coillte plantations in County Wicklow. Fergal Leamy, Coillte Chief Executive highlighted the importance of the new EIB support that was also welcomed by Andrew Doyle T.D., Minister of State for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Andrew McDowell European Investment Bank Vice President and Phil Hogan, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

Welcoming the new EIB support for forestry in Ireland Minister Doyle said This significant investment in Irelands forestry sector will underpin continued expansion and development across the industry. The most recent forecast of timber production on the island of Ireland highlights the maturing nature of this industry where much of the States investment in past decades is now ready to be harvested. This announcement today will help ensure that this economic potential is realised and most importantly that the social benefits of our forests are further developed.

Fergal Leamy, Chief Executive, Coillte said Coillte is on a path to becoming the best forestry and land solutions company in Europe. This funding received from EIB combined with the refinancing arrangements secured with our five syndicate banks will be key in enabling us to achieve our strategic ambitions. I would like to acknowledge the support of NewERA in facilitating this agreement with EIB and I look forward to working with Andrew and his team over the years to come.

Under the new investment more than 35 thousand hectares will be replanted in line with international best practice and more than 1,600 km of forest roads will be constructed and upgraded. The scheme will also improve maintenance of 1,000 km of publically accessible walking routes and mountain bike trails. Investment backed by the new EIB loan will take place in Coilltes 440,000 hectare estate at sites across the country.

Ireland has some of the best and fastest growing forests in the world and unlocking new investment in forestry is crucial for rural economy economic growth, employment and to support sustainable landscapes and renewable resources. The European Investment Bank is pleased to work with Coillte that will transform recreational access and strengthen management of forests across Ireland for generations to come. confirmed Andrew McDowell, European Investment Bank Vice President.

European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan said: "Forests help to keep our rural areas vibrant and sustainable, providing over three million jobs in the EU. They also play a major role in the protection of EU biodiversity and represent a key sector in the transition towards a low-carbon and climate friendly economy. Continued investment in the sector is therefore a win-win for our economy, for our local communities, and our environment. This strategic partnership with the European Investment Bank will help to achieve these objectives and support jobs and growth in rural Ireland."

The new backing for investment by Coillte was one of two new forest projects confirmed by the European Investment Bank Vice President during his visit. Andrew McDowell also confirmed that additional support for agriculture projects and forest schemes in Ireland was expected to be confirmed in the coming months.

The European Investment Bank is one of the worlds largest financiers for forests and has invested EUR 4.5 billion in forest related projects across Europe and worldwide over the last five years.

Since 1973 the European Investment Bank has provided more than EUR 15 billion for investment to improve public services, key infrastructure and unlock new opportunities for Irish companies across the country.
Johanna Katherine Vonruden, 29, of Albany, was arraigned Thursday in Linn County Circuit Court on charges of first-degree kidnapping, first-degree robbery, unlawful use of a weapon, and altering the identity of a firearm.

According to Albany police reports, Vonruden was the key suspect in a shots-fired call on Sunday. She was later reported to have abducted an unknown individual, forcing the person into her car.

Lebanon and Albany police caught up with Vonruden in the Costco parking lot in Albany, where she was taken into custody.

Judge Daniel Murphy ordered that she be held on a $50,000 security, and her next hearing is on Friday. The investigation is ongoing.
Beaver County preparing for robust Election Day turnout

As the Nov. 8 midterm election approaches, nearly 114,000 people are registered to vote in Beaver County.
At Infantry basic training at Fort Benning in the summer of 1990, Drill Sergeant Hadaad, an Israeli army sergeant on loan to the U.S. Army, got up on a stage dressed in a Bedouin Arab robe and headscarf and started shouting obscenities about America and vowing to kill American children.

The training exercise, known as Threat, has been used since the Second World War to put a face to the identified enemy of the time, and to elicit a visceral reaction from the new young soldiers.

It worked. Hadaad shouted and waved his arms, spitting hate and vitriol against Americans, and the 200 or so kids, who were maybe three weeks into their basic training experience, were absolutely filled with rage. Some jumped toward the stage while their buddies held them back, others shouted with tears in their eyes about how their grandfather fought in World War II. The mass of angry young American boys lunged toward the stage, waving their arms and screaming as Hadaad continued his tirade.

I sat with a guy named Morris, who had joined the army to earn the college fund to finish a psychology degree at Penn State. We were both amazed at how willing most of the other soldiers were to believe there really was an Arab on stage who was threatening the U.S. They had to know it was just Hadaad in a costume. But it was more like a kindergarten class being amazed when their teacher dresses up like Goofy: They want to believe it really is Goofy, and so the experience becomes real.

But while the exercise is on one level bizarre, such a lack of nuance is vital for the success of combat units. There is no room for introspection or varied ideologies when it comes to meeting violence with violence in order to defeat the enemy. And it didnt stop there. One day in the field, Drill Sergeant Mobley, noticing the green handkerchief on my head, which most guys placed under their helmet for added comfort in the Georgia humidity, shouted, Whats that towel on your head, Zawicki! Are you an Iraqi?!

No drill sergeant, I want to kill Iraqis! I shouted back. And then immediately in my head I wondered why in the hell I answered that way.

Those two memories shook loose while I was considering the new administrations travel ban on refugees and other travelers from seven Muslim countries. While I understand the importance of identifying and defeating an enemy, I also understand the importance of maintaining the principles of our nation. For this reason, I do not believe the travel ban is effective or logical, and with respect to those who do not agree with me, I will explain why:

The stated intent of the ban is to ensure the safety of Americans, because, as proponents argue, we cant take chances with refugee groups that could contain radicalized Islamists who want to harm us. But already the vetting process is so intense that it takes most refugees almost 2 years to be allowed in, and even then we can be sure theyre being watched. But by the same logic that says we need to keep Americans safe, the 3.3 million Muslims already living here should also be rounded up and deported. Of those 3.3 million, even if only ten become radicalized, they could kill Americans, or bomb something big. That solution is as absurd and fear-driven as the travel ban. Others point to president Carter's and President Obama's travel bans, saying the new one is no different. But those bans were specific and limited compared to the sweeping ban Trump has enacted. While the first two targeted specific potential bad actors from individual countries based on recent events, Trump's goes after a religion on the premise that it carries merely the potential for attack.

But its important to understand also that the vast majority of mass shootings in the U.S. are carried out by non-Muslim citizens, and there have been zero terrorist attacks carried out by refugees.

Another argument is that we need the ban until we can figure out whats going on and learn how these people get radicalized in the first place. The thing is, they get radicalized through websites and other interactions. In fact, since the 911 attacks, the real front line has been information. So its not a guy from Yemen getting off a plane in Boston, its an Egyptian kid on a bus in Newark, scrolling through Jihadi sites on his iPhone, who maybe doesnt have many friends, and is frustrated when he reads about things like travel bans.

And one way citizens get "radicalized" is when our nation sends a message that they and their families are not wanted here. But the larger implication, and the one that will be recorded as a historical event, is that the enemies of our nation have at last forced us to abandon our principles out of fear. Our leaders have officially declared, "We're scared of you. We're scared of all of you." So much so that we've rejected an entire people and an entire religion. And some might argue that the ban is temporary and that it only seeks to target radicals. But if on paper its temporary, whether its extended has yet to be seen, and the message is permanent. And the ban does not only target radicals, it labels Muslims. It assumes theres a fence, and on one side are Americans just minding their own business, and on the other are Muslim immigrants, some of which could mean us harm. So now we're building walls, both legal and tangible, which we can be certain will turn up in recruiting language for our enemies.

The ban will not make us safer, but it does establish an Us against Them posture, which will only create a larger divide. Its my guess that the architects of the ban have exactly that effect in mind.

But what do I know.

What I do know is that it is never as simple as a guy in an Arab costume shouting on a stage, and when we find ourselves shouting things we think people around us want to hear, we should take a breath and consider what were really doing.
MUA chairman to face renewable energy query



Ramsey MHK Alex Allinson is the chairman of the Manx Utilities Authority

The use of renewable energy on the Isle of Man will be discussed when the House of Keys sits next week.

Douglas North MHK David Ashford wants to know how much electricity is generated from renewable sources by Manx Utilities.

He's also seeking details about the amount of power that comes from the Energy from Waste Plant.

Manx Utilities chairman Alex Allinson will also be asked to reveal whether the Island is using enough renwable energy to meet the Government's Renewable Energy Target, which aimed to have 15% of the Island's electric coming from renewable sources by 2015.
Lebanon police detectives arrested three suspects after a traffic stop Thursday near the A&W restaurant on Highway 34 near Interstate 5, west of Lebanon.

Jacob Allen Carrier, 29, of Eugene; Kimberly Janette Wolf, 36, of Lebanon; and Nickolas Don White, 28, of Eugene, are suspected of arranging to sell a Chevrolet Tahoe, which had been reported stolen in Springfield. A fourth person, Jeremy Brian Buchanan, 29, of Albany, was also detained. He was cited and released for an unrelated Albany municipal warrant.

After the arrest, the Tahoe was recovered in a parking lot behind the A&W, along with two other vehicles.

White had unrelated felony warrants and was transported to the Linn County Jail. Carrier was suspected of being the driver of the stolen truck and was booked for first-degree theft, first-degree theft by receiving, and unlawful use of a motor vehicle. He was also booked on multiple unrelated felony warrants. Wolf was booked for first-degree theft and unlawful possession of methamphetamine.

The investigation is ongoing. Anyone with more information is encouraged to contact Detective Justin McCubbins at 541-451-1751, ext. 4346.
"Alien: Covenant" surely has a lot riding on its back as one of the successors within the "Alien" franchise. That being a said, a roundup of all the known information on the upcoming film is bound to come forth, at least the ones confirmed by the people within the project.

The first film of the "Alien" franchise came about back in 1979, wherein Hollywood legend Sigourney Weaver established her name as Ellen Ripley. She was the last remaining survivor in the gruesome attack in the Nostromo starship by a once unknown blood-thirsty creature now known as the Xenomorph. Discovering its origins is now the primary focus in "Alien: Covenant," following the "Prometheus" movie a number of years back.

According to Digital Trends, one of the most prominent factors in "Alien: Covenant" is the return of the original movie's director, Ridley Scott. This somewhat already ensures the same frights that the first film established, immediately making it a classic. In terms of the cast, Michael Fassbender is said to return as the android he was last seen of in "Prometheus," David. However, the actor disclosed that this is only half of his work, as he will also don another android of the same model, named Walter.

A new crew is also confirmed for "Alien: Covenant," with a plethora of new stars that were not seen at all from any of the past films. This includes comedian Danny McBride, "Fantastic Beasts" star Katherine Waterston and "Watchmen" actor Billy Crudup. Story-wise, it was revealed that contrary to "Prometheus," Xenomorphs will actually be seen in the film-with Fassbender even hinting a new species. Because of it, a massive amount of gore is also anticipated to surface, which many of their Twitter posts justified.

One feat for the 20th Century Fox film that also makes it appealing is how it stuck on with Scott's philosophy of practical effects to bring the creatures to life. It can be recalled that the original film won an Academy Award for the visual effects, which Scott may be looking to carry in "Alien: Covenant."

Fassbender has been fully booked as of late, with the likes of "Assassin's Creed" the movie that just concluded and another film entitled "The Snowman" underway, Slash Film reports. It is not yet confirmed if the actor will reprise his role as the android for the entire franchise after "Alien: Covenant" shows on May 19, 2017.
2016 was a a controversial and tumultuous time for Angelina Jolie as her divorce with Brad Pitt shocked fans all over the world. After the divorce, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have both been very evasive and selective with their media appearances. However, a new year might mean a new start, even if it only refers to Angelina Jolie's new movie, "First They Killed My Father."

According to People, "First They Killed My Father" is considered to be a long-term passion project of Angelina Jolie. The upcoming film is based on the autobiography of Cambodian human rights activist and friend of Angelie Jolie, Loung Ung. The film focuses on the true story and portrays what really happened in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge communist party in the 1970s.

The Khmer Rouge era was a dark time for Cambodia, with more than two million people killed during the purge, including Loung Ung's family. "The heart of it is Loung's story, it's the story of a war through the eyes of a child, but it is also the story of a country," Angelina Jolie said.

The sense of authenticity in "First They Killed My Father" is very imminent, with purely Cambodian actors chosen to work in the film. Further, the language used throughout the movie is the native Khmer. Jolie reportedly insisted that all the actors in the film must be survivors or children of survivors of the genocide.

While some would think that choosing actors who are actual survivors or relatives of survivors of the genocide might seem a bit harsh, "First They Killed My Father" producer, Rithy Panh, believes otherwise. "In order to mourn we must speak," said Panh. "It's the possibility of using creation to reconstruct ourselves. Telling a story is also mourning, it's also moving on," he added.

According to Ace Showbiz, "First They Killed My Father" will hold its world premiere in Cambodia in Feb. 18, 2017. The film will then be made available worldwide via Netfliz.

The rich culture and history of Cambodia enthralled Angelina Jolie after filming "Tomb Raider" in 2000. The 41-year old multi-awared actress returned to Cambodia soon after as a volunteer for the United Nations. In 2002, she adopted her first child, Maddox, from an orphanage in Battambang, Cambodia.
The intake of radiocesium by trees after the Fukushima disaster inspired a Japanese scientist to study in detail the mineral pathway in trees. Together with a team from Finland he was on ID21 last weekend to observe this uptake in real-life conditions.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, caused by the 2011 tsunami, contaminated the area surrounding the nuclear power plant. The absorption of radiocesium from the Fukushima plant into nature inspired Katsushi Kuroda, scientist from the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Japan, and currently a visiting scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland, to study the uptake of these radio elements by trees. He focused on the Japanese cedar tree, a very common species in Japan. The mineral he used in his experiments was stable isotope cesium, an element with chemical properties similar to potassium which is an essential mineral element for plants.

Kuroda had already used different techniques to study the uptake of cesium. His first challenge was to study the samples in natural conditions. In general, to analyse chemicals in trees, researchers subject the samples to dry conditions, which may alter the chemical distribution of the elements. Kuroda prepared the samples differently: he injected cesium into trunks of standing Japanese cedar trees. In living trees, water is always present, and many chemicals are water soluble. Since they easily change from their natural condition during sample collection, he freeze-fixed the tree trunk with liquid nitrogen for 30 minutes and then cut it down. The samples were kept frozen until the end of the experiments.

The experiment began by freezing a Japanese cedar tree to keep its natural conditions. Credits: K.Kuroada Katsushi Kuroada and Heikki Suhonen on ID21. Credits: C.Argoud.

A while back, Kuroda met Tuula Jyske, from Natural Resources Institute Finland, at the time a post-doctoral researcher specialised in phloem properties, in his laboratory in Tsukuba. Jyske had studied bark structures at the ESRF in the past, using tomography. They both started investigating what would be the best technique for this project. Together with Heikki Suhonen, from Helsinki University, and Jussi-Petteri Suuronen, from ESRF, they spent last weekend on ID21, where they hoped to track the pathway of cesium between the bark and the wood of the tree. They used Micro-X-ray fluorescence (-XRF) for the element mapping, and Micro-X-ray absorption near edge structures spectroscopy (-XANES), in order to detect whether cesium is movable or binding to the cell structure.

The data will give us a broader view of how mineral transportation happens in trees, Jyske explains. Kuroda continues: It will also reveal how the trees were contaminated by radiocesium after the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in Japan, and will help predict the future distribution of radiocesium in trees.

Text by Montserrat Capellas Espuny
Lebanon will become one of three new Blue Zones demonstration communities in Oregon, if enough funding is raised.

Sarah Foster, program manager with Oregon Healthiest State, and Aaron Patnode, Executive Director of Blue Zones Project Oregon, visited the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific-Northwest on Wednesday evening to gauge the financial commitment of Lebanon.

The program will cost $200,000 for the first year, and $300,000 for the next two years. The original application had asked for a financial commitment of $200,000 to $400,000 each year for all three years.

That money would be used to purchase a funded program. Through that program, Blue Zones Project Oregon would hire four to five people in the community, create a public relations and marketing campaign, and rent office space, Foster said. All those programs would be used to promote healthy living activities.

"We need a funding commitment to move forward," Patnode said.

Patnode said after much review, his group saw something in Lebanon, and the city clearly became a front runner. Lebanon was the the second site visit.

"After that visit in Lebanon, the bar was set," Patnode said. "This is a community that is already trying to improve itself."

Originally, only one Blue Zones demonstration community was going to be selected. That community was scheduled to be announced in December, but two other communities out of seven total, with strong applications, were selected to become three demonstration communities, Patnode said.

Members of the Lebanon leadership team along with several members of the community expressed concerns about the changing timelines and the financial commitment. However, many people still spoke about the great aspects the program could bring.

Robyn Dreibelbis, coordinator of the Lebanon Blue Zone project, said that the group will be working on a plan for where the funding will come from as a way to commit to the project.

Dreibelbis said she was still excited about the project. The leadership team has been meeting twice a week to work out these details.

"My guess is we'll move forward, and the community will get their socks knocked off," Dreibelbis said.

To donate to the Blue Zones project, contact Dreibelbis at 541-259-0205 or rdreibelbis@westernu.edu.
Lets think about the consequences of Indonesias decision to ban JPMorgan from its primary dealers list because a distant analyst downgraded his outlook on the countrys equity market.

First, lets be clear on what prompted Indonesias reaction. It was not a report on Indonesian sovereign bonds. It was not even a report specifically on Indonesia. It was an emerging market equity report issued on the back of the Trump election win, downgrading Indonesian, Turkish and Brazilian equities (while upgrading Malaysia) because of volatility in emerging markets and telling investors: We think you will get a better buying opportunity.

If that is really all that is required to be kicked off a primary dealer list, then the message that other primary dealers will take  including Citi, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Deutsche  is that a similarly harmless macro equity call will be sufficient to get them removed too.

Those banks have been extremely cagey about what has happened in Indonesia, but we know all of them were summoned to a meeting with the finance ministry on January 9 and told what was expected of them.

A summary of the new rules governing primary dealers appeared on the ministrys website later that week, saying they have the duty to safeguard the partnership with the Indonesian government based on professionalism, integrity, the avoidance of conflict of interest, and looking at the interests of the Republic of Indonesia.

Mulyani Indrawati

The finance minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, can revoke the appointment of a primary dealer at any time if it does not fulfil these vague conditions.

One dealer says that, while finding the treatment of JPMorgan absurd, it will probably have to play by the rules. The Indonesian sovereign and its many sovereign-backed businesses are just too valuable to lose, not just in terms of being a primary dealer on government bonds but because it is seen as very unlikely that anyone kicked off the dealer list would get underwriting work either.

But what does playing by the rules mean? Does it mean that a regional equity strategist at Citi, or Deutsche, or HSBC, can never downgrade the outlook for Indonesian equities again? That is implausible and ridiculous. If it happens, that banks research would be discarded; if enough banks research on Indonesia is considered unusable, then investors will be less inclined to go near Indonesia at all.

The most baffling part of the whole situation is that it is Mulyani who has done this. Mulyani, awarded by this publication for her outstanding contribution to finance in her previous term as finance minister; Mulyani, a former World Bank managing director associated with reform.

The ministry of finance declined an interview, so we can only assume Mulyani is making a point about banks that make money from volatility in the countrys debt and the inherent contradiction of a bank trying to sell a countrys securities while simultaneously telling investors to underweight the country. But none of this is unusual and one could argue that the fact that JPMorgan can downgrade Indonesian equities while selling the countrys debt demonstrates the banks Chinese walls are intact, not breached.

Now JPMorgan has reversed its call on Indonesia to neutral. And look what has happened: everyone is looking at the call with doubt, assuming that the bank is kowtowing to the Indonesian government. In fact, there was a reasonable premise both for the downgrade and the reversal; the Trump election made volatility spike in emerging markets and now that volatility has calmed down. But the fact that it looks like an appeasement helps no one. It does not help the bank and it does not help Indonesia either, because doubt has been sown in investors minds about the credibility of information about the country.

China's bond trends

China is so dominant in Asia-Pacific issuance these days that any change in the countrys policy can have a dramatic impact on the fate of investment banks in the region. The big trend to watch this year already appears to be the balance between Chinese issuers raising debt onshore and offshore.

Last year, as a rule, issuers opted for onshore capital raising where it was practical to do so and for good reasons: no currency mismatch, particularly as the renminbi came under pressure in the later part of the year; government encouragement; and the fact that it was considerably cheaper.

Yet 2017 has opened with a glut of dollar issuance from China, from quasi-sovereigns to high yield.

Why? Apparently because there is a belief that the onshore issuance was creating pressure on the currency.

So China has instead sought to calm domestic issuance, particularly from property developers, and made approvals easier to achieve overseas. That is good news for international banks, who now find that perhaps the biggest influence on their fee volume this year will be a single policy decision by the Chinese government.
Oct. 8, 1928  Jan. 31, 2017

Dana Henderson Storch, 88, a truly remarkable man, died in the early hours of Jan. 31, at home in Corvallis.

Dana was born in Evanston, Illinois, to Olive and Clemens Storch. He grew up in Kenilworth, Illinois, attending New Trier High School and Northwestern University. In 1950 he married Betty Jeffery and within a year welcomed their first child, Kathy. They moved to their new home in Wilmette, Illinois, and in 1953 their son, Bill, was born. Dana worked at Abbott Labs as a mechanical engineer, and later for Universal Oil Products, where he was granted a patent for the platinum reforming process, commonly used today. Dana retired from UOP in 1982 at age 54 so he and Betty could move west to be near Bill's young family.

Always willing to help with projects, build or repair things, Dana was a master machinist, a lifelong skill he practiced until his final days. In retirement, he built and flew his own RV-4 aircraft. Among other things, he and Betty enjoyed riding their BMW motorcycle, exploring the Columbia River and Puget Sound in their boat, and traveling, including visiting their daughters family in California.

Dana has always been a voracious reader. Of particular interest was political history as well as current political and social events. Dana maintained his wonderful sense of humor and light-hearted approach to life always, which made caring for him at home a pleasure and an honor. Although his physical world became very limited in the last few years, the people; friends, family, and special neighbors were most important to him. He will be missed.

Dana was preceded in death by his wife of 56 years, Betty.

He is survived by son, Bill (Joanne) Storch of Corvallis; daughter, Kathy (Bob) Harbaugh of Santa Barbara, California; grandchildren Trevor Storch (Katherine Eastlake), Keith (Holly) Pearen, Henry (Camille) Storch, Becca Cooper (Eric Wendt), Erin Harbaugh and Danica (Dan) Reynaud; and great-grandchildren Levi and Charlotte Storch, and Taylor and Indigo Reynaud.
Grace Lillian Brigham, 78, of Sodaville died Wednesday, Feb. 1. Viewing will be from 10 a.m. to noon Monday, Feb. 6, at Sweet Home Funeral Chapel. A funeral service will follow at 1 p.m., also at Sweet Home Funeral Chapel. Final Burial will be at Gilliland Cemetery. Sweet Home Funeral Chapel is handling arrangements.

Patricia Anne Dollar, 74, of Albany died Jan. 13, 2017. A memorial service will be at 1 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6, 2017, at the Willamette Memorial Park Chapel. Fisher Funeral Home is handling arrangements.

Duane Albert Drushella, 85, of Albany died Wednesday at his home. A funeral service will be at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 10, 2017, at Fisher Funeral Home.

Virginia O. Farmer, 94, died Thursday, Feb. 2, in Corvallis. A funeral service will be at 3 p.m. Friday, Feb. 3, at McHenry Funeral Home, 206 N.W. Fifth St., Corvallis. McHenry Funeral Home is handling arrangements.

Eunice Lee Lawrence, 93, of Sweet Home died Tuesday, Jan. 31. A viewing will be at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 7, at Freedom Hill Church, 2470 Main St., Sweet Home. A funeral Service will follow at 11 a.m. Sweet Home Funeral Chapel is handling arrangements.

Doris Lesley, 87, died Jan. 17. A celebration of life will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 8, at Knox Butte Baptist Church, 3615 Knox Butte Road, Albany. AAsum-Dufour Funeral Home is handling arrangements.
As debates about immigration and citizenship take centre stage around the world, new research has found that fewer people are concerned about where someone is born and language is regarded as the core of national identity.But there are differing views between younger and older generations and some believe more that religion is an important part of who a person is, according to the report from the Pew Research Centre in Washington, United States.  Unease over the cultural, economic and security ramifications of immigration helped to fuel the Brexit vote in the UK, added to support for Donald Trump becoming President in the United States and has broadened support for right-wing populist parties in France, Germany and the Netherlands.Debates over what it means to be a true American, Australian, German or other nationality have often highlighted the importance of a person being born in a particular country. But the research found that people generally place a relatively low premium on a persons birthplace.Only 13% of Australians, 21% of Canadians, 32% of Americans and a median of 33% of Europeans believe that it is very important for a person to be born in their country in order to be considered a true national. There are some exceptions, for example 52% in Hungary, 50% in Greece and 50% in Japan do think it is important but just 13% in Germany and Australia and 8% in Sweden make a strong connection between birth country and national identity.But people do think it is important to speak the language of a country that you make your home. Majorities in every country surveyed said so including 77% in Europe, 70% in Japan and the United States, 69% in Australia and 59% in Canada.Sharing national customs and traditions was also regarded as very important to many peoples sense of who they are. Some 54% in Canada, 50% in Australia and 48% in Europe linked the adoption of local culture to national identity.The survey also asked about the link between religious affiliation and national identity. Some 32% in the US said they believe it is very important to be Christian to be considered truly American. This contrasts with 54% of Greeks but only 7% of Swedes.Across the countries surveyed, there are significant differences in how the youngest and oldest generations view national identity. In the US people aged 50 and older are more likely than those ages 18 to 34 to say it is very important that a person be born in the country to be considered truly American.In Japan, the generational divide is even more pronounced. Older Japanese are more likely than their younger counterparts to link national identity to birthplace by a 59% to 29% margin. Generational differences, though generally more modest, are also evident in Australia and Canada and across most European countries surveyed.The generations differ even more sharply over the importance of national customs and traditions. In the US people aged 50 and older are far more likely than those ages 18 to 34 to say sharing such cultural elements is very important to being truly American. There is a similar generation gap in Canada, Australia and Japan.Despite the debate we have about immigration and birth right nationality, we hear it in Australia, we hear it in the United States, when you ask people a question about this, they don't put a high premium on it. This may make sense because we're all countries of immigration, said Bruce Stokes, director of Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Centre.
Linn County is accepting immigrants. But don't worry, these have undergone extreme vetting: by real veterinarians.

SafeHaven Humane Society just accepted an animal transfer from a new rescue organization, Fetch Fido a Flight, an Oklahoma-based nonprofit that sent the Albany no-kill shelter 64 animals on Jan. 29. That's the largest transport to date that SafeHaven has received.

Executive Director Chris Storm said the 20-some cats and kittens and some of the 50 or so dogs have been placed with foster families until they're old enough to come to SafeHaven.

As of Thursday, about two dozen of the other Oklahoman imports had already found new homes, and Storm said she figures the others won't take long.

"We had a line yesterday when we opened," she said.

The average stay for a dog at SafeHaven is seven days, Storm said; far less if it's a puppy and sometimes longer if it's an older dog, has a medical issue or is seen as a "bully breed."

The shelter isn't allowed by law to take in strays, but does accept animals surrendered by their owners and works with the Linn County Animal Shelter. Still, it often finds itself with room to spare, Storm said.

So SafeHaven works with a number of other shelters, both in and out of state, to keep the kennels occupied.

We like to be able to help and we like to be full, because thats a life that needs to be saved," she said.

The transport from Oklahoma is a first but likely not the last, Storm said. A partnership benefit: the founder of the Oklahoma group is a former mid-valley resident.

Vikki Smith, who founded Fetch Fido a Flight about a year ago, rescues animals from euthanizing shelters in Oklahoma. Until now, she'd been working with a nonprofit group called Wings of Rescue to get the pets to shelters and rescue groups in Seattle, Washington, and Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Those options filled up for January. So Smith, who has set a personal goal of rescuing at least one flight's worth of animals each month, began looking elsewhere: to her home county.

Smith, who was known as Vikki Darby when she lived in the mid-valley, grew up in Lebanon and graduated in 1981 from Lebanon High School. She worked for Hewlett-Packard in Corvallis, California and Texas before retiring in Oklahoma with her husband and their three dogs.

Smith had never volunteered with a humane society, rescue organization or shelter of any kind before moving to Oklahoma. But within days of the move, she noticed something about the state she'd never seen in her other residences: dogs alongside the roadsides. Multiple dogs  some dead, others running near the passing traffic  all along the Oklahoma freeways.

Smith said she was worried about all the seemingly lost animals and began to be active on Facebook, cross-sharing photos and stories on every lost and found site she could find.

She posted so much, in fact that Facebook eventually shut her down (the social media site will block users that appear to be spamming). Looking for something else she could do to help, Smith began researching Oklahoma's laws and practices on animal welfare.

What she found appalled her. Oklahoma law allows euthanasia by carbon monoxide chamber (for pets older than 16 weeks) as well as by denatured sodium pentobarbital. The drug can be administered by injection directly into the heart, although it's supposed to be done only on heavily sedated, anesthetized or comatose animals, and then only by a veterinarian or certified animal control officer or anesthesia technician.

However, any Oklahoma city with a population of fewer than 10,000 people is obliged only to euthanize animals "by an acceptable, humane method," according to Oklahoma state statue, without outlining what that method must entail.

But only 43 of Oklahoma's 499 municipalities have more than 10,000 residents, according to 2010 census records. In addition, a three-year study of Oklahoma's pets and livestock funded by the nonprofit Kirkpatrick Foundation found shelter agencies in many small towns kept no documents on the animals, including documentation of intake or monitoring of health.

Smith said she and other rescue groups have found that dog pounds in many small cities have no resources to keep or support animals for any length of time, so they euthanize via gas chambers, the so-called "heart sticks" or simply resort to gunshots, regardless of the animal's age or potential adoptability.

Legislation has been introduced from time to time to help combat these issues, but much more work is needed, Smith said.

"People are very apprehensive about change and don't want people to tell them what they can do with their animals," she said. "And (change) costs money."

Smith is one of the agents working for change, but in the meantime, she's out to rescue dogs and cats.

In the fall of 2015, she emailed Wings of Rescue the information she'd tracked down about the plight of animals in her state and asked for help. A month later, the agency said it would provide transport, but Smith had to make all the arrangements.

"I thought, OK, how hard can this be? I said, no problem, I'll do it all," Smith recalled. "They kind of laughed at me and said, 'OK.'"

The challenges were real, Smith discovered. She had just moved to Oklahoma a few months before and had no family, friends or support systems in place. Even her husband was skeptical, she said.

But Smith persisted. Potential donors were concerned that the money would stay in state, so she founded her own nonprofit, Fetch Fido a Flight, to ensure the local connection. Rescue organizations started signing on. By Feb. 13, a month before Wings of Rescue had planned to get back in touch, she had the cash to fund two planeloads.

"They were just absolutely blown away I could do that much that quick," she said. "When you've got dogs dying at that rate, you can't sit around and drag your feet."

With family still in Lebanon, she was aware of SafeHaven's no-kill status and its work with other shelters. So a few weeks ago, she called Storm.

In the past year, at a cost of $15,000 per plane, Smith has pulled together the travel funds to send 439 animals to shelters where they'll have a better chance at life. She finds donors through her network of contacts and her website, www.fetchfidoaflight.com, and Facebook page of the same name.

Neither SafeHaven nor any other receiving facility pays anything for the transport, although they take on the animals as their responsibility once they arrive.

The "vetting" really does take place, Smith and Storm said. The animals must have their basic shots before getting on a transport, including rabies, deworming and fleas. Smith also makes videos available of their interactions with people and other animals so shelters can evaluate their behavior and see whether they'll be a good match.

The most important consideration is whether the intake shelter has space, Smith said. "We never want to displace local dogs."

Storm said SafeHaven regularly adopts out dogs to families from all over the state, and sometimes from California. It's part of her mission, she said, to step forward when she can help ease the burden on other shelters.

Oregon is a good place for networking because it's come a long way in how it treats rescue animals, Storm said. While there's always room for improvement, "Dogs are not dying in Oregon shelters like they are in other shelters."
Citing a spike in interest for national political issues, State Sen. Sara Gelser wants her constituents to make it out to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden's 11 a.m. town hall meeting at Linn-Benton Community College on Saturday. Further, she encourages both red and blue voters to attend.

"People are incredibly engaged with federal issues," she said. "People who support (President) Trump are writing to me, and people who don't support him are writing to me. There's a general uneasiness that transcends partisan politics."

Gelser, who spoke at the Jan. 21 Women's March in Portland, said it's important to engage with Wyden because it's one of only a few opportunities to speak directly with the senator.

"We will still be there on Saturday morning to do our town hall," said Gelser, referring to the 10 a.m. League of Women Voters town hall at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, 645 N.W. Monroe Ave., Corvallis.

Gelser said meeting with Wyden is important in part because he sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Describing the current political climate in Washington D.C. as "fundamentally bizarre," Gelser said she finds herself addressing issues she "can't remember ever talking about."

"People are just showing up to things like never before," she said.
With Congress and the White House unified under the same party, radical corporate tax reform is coming our way very soon.

Although some reform is welcome, this is a column about the part of the reform that worries me the most, known by the non-mellifluous label destination-based cash flow tax with border adjustment.

Lets say you are a tax-policy maker in Washington and you wanted to address two problems at the same time with U.S. companies that do business overseas. The first problem might be that U.S. multinationals leave a big pile  an estimated $2 trillion  of profits overseas, which they do to avoid having to pay our relatively high 35 percent corporate tax rate.

The second problem might be that you want to create more jobs here by encouraging an America First approach to global trade. You would do that by giving U.S. corporations tools to export more stuff, and maybe import less, to encourage businesses to expand in the U.S., create jobs and help our trade balance.

The solution among tax nerds is this so-called destination-based cash flow tax with border adjustment. Its a mouthful, I know. The Twitterati have shortened it to #DBCFT for newspaper readers who want to follow along this debate, in real time, on Twitter.

But DBCFT is not just for tax nerds  its the core of House Speaker Paul Ryans A Better Way, the proposal that sets the blueprint for the major tax reform thats likely to pass with Donald Trump in the White House.

DBCFT says that U.S. companies would not get taxed on sales revenue generated outside of the country, only revenue made on sales inside of the country. It also says that U.S. companies would pay taxes on the full value of all their imports into the U.S., rather than deducting those costs as they do for other business expenses.

This reform would take care of the accumulated $2 trillion pile of cash, since U.S. multinationals would not pay U.S. taxes on revenues generated overseas. They could onshore future profits with no consequences. Presumably some tax amnesty plan would bring in the existing pile, and there would be no incentive to create a new pile offshore.

DBCFT also appears to offer a massive subsidy to exporters through tax breaks. Like, if Apple earns $1,000 in profit (to use numbers absurdly small and simple) from sales in Europe, it would owe Uncle Sam nothing, rather than the current corporate tax rate that would take up to 35 percent of that, or $350. Without that tax burden, big exporters such as Apple can turn around and sell stuff even more cheaply than foreign competitors.

Mission accomplished, right? Onshored profits and strengthened export businesses! Everythings good?

Actually, we dont know for sure.

A tax plan like this has never been implemented.

We have some economic theory about why everything will be fine  which Ill explain in a moment  but its also fair to say that a massive shift like this could have unpredictable consequences. DBCFT is untested in reality, and like a lot of whats happening in other policy areas, things could get weird.

Former Treasury Secretary and economist Larry Summers argues that DBFCT could have at least two big troubling consequences.

The first worry is that big exporting companies might generate negative tax bills in perpetuity  meaning a big tax refund every year  which seems super odd and maybe something the U.S. government wouldnt really allow.

The second troubling consequence is that companies that import a lot of stuff that they then sell inside the U.S. might have tax bills that are equal to, or bigger than, their entire amount of profits  also a weird result. It wouldnt feel good, or be financially sustainable, to pay more in taxes than you earned as a business.

This is scary and potentially highly disruptive for a company that depends on imports to produce its product.

Maybe a small-business example can help illustrate this problem for importing companies that sell only in the United States. I have a buddy in San Antonio whose online business delivers disposable cat litter boxes to households, based on an online monthly subscription plan. GoGoGato imports Chinese-manufactured litter boxes from Canada, and then ships them anywhere in the U.S. So, he has significant import costs and purely domestic sales.

Lets say each imported litter box cost him $5, which he retails for $25 each, and manages to eke out a $1 profit (remember, he has shipping, marketing, packaging and storage costs) on every box shipped.

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At a 20 percent corporate tax rate (the new rate proposed by Ryan) on his $1 in profit, hed owe 20 cents in taxes on every box he sold. But under DBCFT, the $5 cost of each box imported from Canada would not be tax deductible. Instead, suddenly GoGoGato would owe taxes on $6  thats the $5 import cost, plus his previous $1 profit. Instead of owing 20 cents in taxes per box, hed owe $1.20 in taxes per box, more than his entire profit per box. That would be a business killer for GoGoGato, litter-ally.

UC Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, an advocate for DBCFT, argues that the fears are overblown. The economists view is that the tax change would cause an immediate upward move in the value of the U.S. dollar compared with other currencies, which would leave importers and exporters equally well off.

How does that work? A strengthened U.S. dollar  the economic theory goes  boosts imports and suppresses exports, in roughly equal proportions to the tax benefits and costs caused by DBCFT. Thats the theory anyway, which Auerbach and other tax policy experts such as Kyle Pomerleau at the Tax Foundation say make fears about DBCFT overblown.

The fact that economists say, Dont worry! isnt stopping retailers, however, from heavily lobbying against the tax proposal.

With the example of even a small business like GoGoGato, it should not be surprising that big-importing retailers such as Walmart are gearing up to fight DBCFT.

Ready for one more potential problem with DBCFT? Summers further argues that if the U.S. dollar appreciates by 20 percent versus other currencies as a result of DBCFT, it might cause disruptive effects on world markets. Heavily indebted emerging market countries, for example, might see their debt costs to U.S. lenders rise 20 percent or more. Financial chaos could ensue.

In an America First! world we might not care about the potential devastation our tax policies cause. I would argue, however, that we brush off the risks of untested tax changes at our own great peril.

Michael Taylor is a former Goldman Sachs bond salesman and writes the Bankers-Anonymous.com finance blog.

michael@michaelthesmartmoney.com

@Michael_Taylor
Oil headed for a third weekly gain as the U.S. imposed fresh sanctions on Iran after a missile test and OPEC reached about 60 percent of its output-cut target.

Futures rose as much as 1.3 percent in New York as the new restrictions were announced. President Donald Trump is seeking to punish Tehran for its ballistic missile program after warning the Islamic Republic that it is playing with fire.

This is a knee-jerk reaction, said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts. Whenever there are headlines that have something to do with the Persian Gulf you will see a response in the market.

In addition, a Bloomberg survey indicated that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut output by 840,000 barrels a day last month.

After posting the biggest annual gain in seven years in 2016, oil has fluctuated in the mid-$50s in a tug of war between OPEC cuts and signs of recovering U.S. output. While producers from Saudi Arabia to Angola have implemented cuts and Russia says its ahead of schedule with its own reduction, wary investors are also considering signs that U.S. shale drillers are boosting activity.

West Texas Intermediate for March delivery was up about 20 cents, or 0.4 percent, in midday trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Total volume traded was about 26 percent below the 100-day average. Prices are up about 1.4 percent this week.

Brent for April settlement rose 44 cents, or 0.8 percent, to $57 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. The global benchmark traded at a $2.42 premium to April WTI.

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OPEC pumped 32.3 million barrels a day last month, according to the Bloomberg survey. The 10 members of the group that pledged to make cuts implemented 83 percent of those reductions on average, but their efforts were offset by gains from Iran, Nigeria and Libya.

Accounting for the members who raised output and the suspension of Indonesia, OPECs total production remains 550,000 barrels a day above the target set out in the Nov. 30 deal. That means the group as a whole is only about 60 percent of the way toward the level it deems necessary to eliminate the global surplus and boost prices.
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An activist investor that played a key role in pushing San Antonio-based CST Brands Inc. into a $4.4 billion sale last year is now taking aim at the parent company of fast food restaurant chains Taco Cabana and Pollo Tropical.

JCP Investment Management, an activist investor based in Houston, is trying to get three candidates on the board of Addison-based Fiesta Restaurant Group, the investor announced earlier this week. JCP is nominating Sbarro Chief Operating Officer John B. Morlock; James C. Pappas, managing member of JCP Investment Management; and private investor Joshua E. Schechter.

Fiestas decision to plug more than $70 million into efforts to expand the Pollo Tropical brand in Texas was misguided, JCP said in a statement Monday. JCP also disagrees with Fiesta about Taco Cabanas growth potential. The Houston-based investment fund cited concerns about the lack of a permanent chief executive after CEO Timothy Taft left the company in September as grounds for a board shakeup. It also noted that there were rumors that Fiesta could enter a strategic review process  generally indicating that its considering a sale.

JCP said it has tried to reach an amicable resolution with Fiestas current leadership about the boards makeup and governance issues, but the current board and leadership have refused to engage meaningfully with us, the firm said in a statement released Monday.

JCP is concerned by the massive decline in value that Fiesta stockholders have suffered over the past several years, the firm said.

The restaurant group responded to JCPs move in a statement Tuesday, Fiestas Board and management team are committed to acting in the best interests of all company stockholders and welcome their views in order to pursue a common goal of maximizing long-term stockholder value.

Fiesta Restaurant Group has had a rough few months. The company posted a third-quarter loss of $4.5 million, or 17 cents a share, the company said in November. Thats compared with a profit of $7.9 million during the same period last year.

That loss partially came from $18.5 million in impairment costs stemming from the closure of 10 Pollo Tropical Restaurants along with other one-time expenses. Fiesta Restaurant Group said in October it would close eight Pollo Tropical stores in Texas and two others in Atlanta and Nashville after halting expansion plans for the brand in Texas. The company said in November three of the restaurants would be converted to Taco Cabana locations.

The closed Pollo Tropical restaurants contributed $4.8 million in pre-tax operating losses in the third quarter, the company said.

But, Fiesta hasnt scrapped the Pollo Tropical brand. The company said in September it planned to add up to 17 new locations in Florida and Georgia next year along with 10 new Taco Cabana locations in Texas.

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.

Fiestas stock value has dropped more than 26 percent during the past 12 months. The companys stock closed at $26.75 a share Thursday, compared with $$36.39 a year ago. Fiestas shares have risen 2.2 percent since JCP announced its proxy fight Monday.

Along with activist investor Engine Capital, JCP successfully drove San Antonio-based CST Brands Inc., which operates the Corner Store chain of convenience stores, toward a $4.4 billion sale to Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., the Canadian parent company of Circle K, last year.

JCP had been eyeing Fiesta Restaurant Group since at least September, when it pointed out in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission a 6.2 percent ownership stake in the restaurant group and sees significant operational and strategic opportunities to enhance stockholder value.

jfechter@express-news.net

Twitter: @JFreports
Senior research analyst Marc Alban sat behind the wheel of a Lincoln MKZ hybrid as it smoothly made figure-eight loops while maneuvering through the Southwest Research Institutes cone test track.

Theres nothing all that unusual about the drive, except that the car is driving itself.

This one Ive crept through real slowly and not hit anything, said Alban as the vehicles steering wheel rolled back and forth, the car driving itself deftly through the narrow cone track at about 15 MPH.

The nonprofit research institute is one of the nations few proving grounds chosen by the U.S. Department of Transportation Jan. 24 to test autonomous vehicles. SwRI engineers have been working for more than a decade on the new technology. Automated vehicles are currently being tested on SwRIs campus while San Antonios VIA Metropolitan Transit authority will soon be testing some of the technology on buses running along its Primo route from Fredericksburg Road up to Medical Drive.

The DOT chose 10 different proving grounds  Texas being one of them  to collect data and help develop guidelines for integrating autonomous vehicles into the countrys transportation infrastructure.

An alliance of groups including SwRI, the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, the University of Texas at Austins Center for Transportation Research as well as 32 municipal and regional partners across Texas  including Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Austin and El Paso  will test and tweak advance autonomous vehicle technology in Texas.

Work on autonomous vehicles at SwRI started back in 2006, when the institute committed $5 million to jump start the research. To this day it is the most money SwRI has committed to any one specific research project, said Chris Mentzer, SwRIs manager for research and development of unmanned systems.

The program initially involved half of SwRIs 10 divisions, 15 employees and a Ford Explorer named MARTI, which stands for Mobile Autonomous Robotics Technology Initiative. Since then it has now grown to a work force of around 40 and 20 vehicles ranging from MARTI and the autonomous Lincoln MKZ hybrid to multiton military transport trucks and a red semi-trailer truck (without the trailer) that the engineers nicknamed Big Red.

Were really, at the end of the day, were an engineering-for-hire company, Mentzer said. SwRI is a nonprofit and doesnt mass produce its inventions for sale. Were not going to sell you products, so we have to be smart and quick and do things that they cant do on their own.

Project manager Mike Brown said SwRI has been working to create a South Central Texas research triangle between SwRI, UT and Texas A&M to combine their resources, and that the U.S. DOT Proving Ground designation will improve collaboration.

The entire SwRI campus  with more than seven miles of paved roads, dirt tracks and offroad areas  has been used as a test bed by the autonomous team over the last decade as they developed better ways for autonomous vehicles to navigate the environment.

The autonomous vehicles use LiDAR, a surveying system that maps the environment around an autonomous vehicle and detects objects it may collide with, as well as SwRIs in-house developed Ranger system for enhanced location detection.

The Ranger system uses a ground facing camera underneath the car and algorithms to provide the vehicle with location accuracy up to two centimeters. The SwRI researchers discovered that road surfaces are as unique as fingerprints, and the camera uses photographs of the road surface, to accurately locate where the vehicle is even in the absence of GPS.

While self-driving systems are still in development, many modern cars are equipped with preemptive braking, multiple collision sensors and other detection and avoidance systems. For the city of San Antonio, improving public transportation safety became a priority in 2015 when the city council passed its Vision Zero Initiative to eliminate vehicle-pedestrian fatalities.

The hotbed of testing for the city will be VIAs Primo bus route from Fredericksburg Road to Medical Drive, which was established in 2012 and uses communication technology between buses and traffic signals to improve travel times. If certain parameters are met, buses can change signals from red to green to expedite their travel said Jeffrey C. Arndt, president and CEO of VIA.

Safety is always our first priority, so to the extent that we would be jointly exploring measures that can improve the safety of the entire transportation system and how it interfaces with the public transportation system, we have a lot of interest in that, Arndt said.

In 2014 there were over 45,000 motor vehicle crashes in San Antonio, 138 which were fatal, according to the Vision Zero Initiative webpage. Fifty-four pedestrians were killed while walking while another was killed while biking. For Arndt, improving safety means integrating technology into VIA buses to better detect vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

If you think about it, you drive a car today that is giving you a whole lot more information about whats happening around it and around you that allow you to be a safer driver than a car that you bought five or 10 years ago, Arndt 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.

He looks forward to collaborating with technical experts from SwRI, UT and A&M and the testing work they can do off road at their facilities to ensure systems work properly before being applied to real-world situations.

The technology on the Primo buses and VIAs proliferation throughout the city meant tapping into their expertise was natural said the citys Leilah Powell.

VIA has been a real backbone to getting this moving forward, said Powell, the chief of policy in Mayor Ivy Taylors office. VIA has a fleet of vehicles that they already are using advanced technology. We have signal transponder technology on some of their bus routes already, so they have more experience in this area than almost any other partner that we could choose.

But while many tout the promise of autonomous vehicles, the technology is still experiencing growing pains. During the demonstrative drive SwRIs Alban had to take control of the Lincoln multiple times on the way to the test track as the autonomous system kept pulling right, at one moment seeming to rub the curb before it was brought back into the lane.

Theres something a little fishy with the Ranger, Alban joked from behind the wheel.

rdruzin@express-news.net

@druz_journo
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As gigs go, its not bad.

The six employees staffing artist Patty Ortizs installation at the University of Texas at San Antonios Terminal 136 are getting paid to lounge in twin beds and text. The uniform: baby blue satin pajamas.

Part of Ortizs ongoing Work Wont Kill You series, the piece is her half of Pillow Talk, a two-person show with Kimberly Aubuchon.

Now on view, the exhibition presents an installation by each artist inspired by the split screen sequences in the 1959 Doris Day-Rock Hudson wholesome sex comedy of the same title.

In the film, the two leads get crosswise when they are forced to share a telephone party line. For the show, both Ortiz and Aubuchon created works that explore communication technology and how it conveys  and shapes  human emotion.

As in the previous installments of her series, Ortiz is paying employees to punch the clock and perform tasks that require creativity.

In this case, the workers will be interacting anonymously with gallery visitors via text message. Visitors to the gallery are handed a card with three cell phone numbers.

As the exchanges take place, they will be projected onto a wall that has been papered over with an image of a cloud-filled sky punctuated by conversation bubbles filled with dollar bills.

The idea is for the workers to try to establish a connection with participants  within limits. They are not allowed to divulge personal information, and should anyone get outrageous  read: offensive or sexually explicit  the workers can end the conversation and block the texter. A pair of monitors are assigned to keep an eye on proceedings.

Pillow talk for me was the notion of intimacy, said Ortiz, a San Antonio native and former director of the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center. So it was like, How do we create intimacy in a cyber universe where were texting, where were emailing? All this information is so non-physical, and its in this kind of (intangible) cloud. So, thats what I wanted to study.

The installation also explores ideas about what is public and what is private and what is staged and what is real.

The workers will be on duty from noon to 6 p.m. Thursday through Saturday through the run of the exhibition. They will work in shifts, so a conversation that begins with one worker might be continued by another.

In addition, Ortiz is live-streaming the installation on Facebook and Instagram, so people can engage from afar.

Ortiz did two of the previous installments of the series during residencies at SaltQuarters in Syracuse, New York, and Art Produce in San Diego, California.

The idea was born out of one of her fathers truisms.

Hed say, Work wont kill you. Laziness will kill you, Ortiz said. So when I left the Guadalupe  because Id been an arts administrator for 15 years, but Id been an artist for 25 before that  it was like, I gotta work. I even told (my husband) what I wanted to do is hire people and have them do outrageous tasks, and really study the standard of work, the procedures that you have to work by versus the imagination that happens within those standards of work.

Pillow Talk was sparked by a conversation between the two artists.

Aubuchon, who creates whimsical drawings, paintings and hand-sewn felt installations, told Ortiz she had been thinking of making emoji pillows.

I just said, Pillow talk. Lets do a show called Pillow Talk, Ortiz said. When these ideas just pop into your head, youve got to grab em.

The two watched the movie together and had long conversations about how communication has changed since the rotary phone era.

Were reduced from actually not being able to wait until the phone rang to not wanting to be bothered to speak on the phone, said Aubuchon, former director of the now defunct Unit B gallery in Southtown. Sending a quick few words (by text) to get a point across is easier. Its more convenient.

Aubuchons take is very literal, obviously, she said. Ive always liked puns.

Her installation titled Do You Feel? is comprised of a tall pile of hand-sewn felt pillows of more than 60 distinct smiley face emojis from the most recent iPhone operating system update.

All of them are in what the artist describes as Simpsons yellow.

Puffy white clouds  also felt  are suspended overhead. The squeezable looking pieces cast shadows on the gallery walls and create a pleasing visual link to Ortizs installation.

When Patty and I started talking about the show, I couldnt stop thinking about building this kind of tower  a tower of communication, Aubuchon said. Not to necessarily compare it to the Tower of Babel, but you can think about that.

Though not a techie, Aubuchon said she has always been really infatuated with technology  just like a spectator watching it evolve.

A trip to the AT&T archives several years ago got her thinking about how she could contribute to the conversation about technology and communication.

I never never really did too much with it, (but) Ive always been interested in emojis and emoticons because its a form of expression, Aubuchon said.

Aubuchon focused on smiley faces because they are supposed to represent human emotion.

The show is the artists first exhibition in about two years. Since Aubuchon closed Unit B five years ago, she has dedicated much of her time to her job as a personal trainer and to competitive running.

Pillow Talk signals that we will be seeing more from her.

I want to keep going and keep being involved and keep looking and learning and contributing to the conversation, she said.

lsilva@express-news.net

Pillow Talk continues through Feb. 18 at UTSA Terminal 136, 136 Blue Star, 210-458-4391, art.utsa.edu.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump started talks with congressional leaders Thursday to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, consulting with Texas Republican Kevin Brady, chairman of a House panel that will be charged with shaping the contours of a new hemispheric deal with major implications for the Lone Star State.

We had a very constructive, very thoughtful discussion about the path forward, his desire to update and modernize NAFTA to make it not just free, but fair trade, Brady said after emerging from the White House meeting.

Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands, is a former Chamber of Commerce official and longtime free trade advocate. He said he is ready to work with Trump to fulfill one of the central promises of his presidential campaign, though he suggested a scope of reforms that may fall somewhat short of Trumps wholesale attacks on NAFTA.

It would seem to me he wants to build upon what works for America in NAFTA, improve what doesnt, and bring forward really the 21st century issues that just havent been addressed in that area, Brady said. All to the goal of creating more U.S. jobs.

Trump, in remarks to reporters before the meeting began, suggested more blanket changes to protect American workers, a signal marker of his campaign. Its been a catastrophe for our jobs and our country, Trump said. I want to change it and maybe we do it, and maybe we do a new NAFTA and we add an extra f in NAFTA ... for free and fair trade ... because its very unfair.

The meeting with Republican and Democratic leaders represented the first baby steps in what could be a long process of reopening the landmark 1994 trade deal between Mexico, the U.S. and Canada. It also was the first trip to the Trump White House for Brady, who will be instrumental in drafting major reforms on both trade and taxes.

The Capitol Hill delegation included Sen. Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, and Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, which Brady chairs. Neal suggested that Democrats and their labor allies would welcome some changes, though he said Trump offered no specifics.

The takeaway was clearly that we could all agree on better enforcement mechanisms on previously negotiated trade agreements, Neal said. At the same time, were all mindful of being careful not to create a situation where retaliation slows the American economy. So, all considered, I think its fair to say that after almost 25 years of NAFTA, a review is about to get underway.

Hatch was much less critical than Trump about the toll NAFTA may have taken on American jobs. It hasnt helped, Hatch said, but its better than nothing, but he is talking about making it far better.

The business community in Texas welcomed the development, particularly Bradys role in the talks.

We are very happy that hes at the table, said Chris Wallace, president of the Texas Association of Business, the states chamber of commerce.

Wallace noted that Texas is the nations top exporting state, with 40 percent of the states exports destined for Mexico. Any discussion of renegotiating trade deals with Mexico is very important to our state, he said.

Among the associations top concerns: We want to make sure that those businesses that do business with Mexico can continue to do business with Mexico, Wallace said.

Labor groups in Texas and across the nation long have sought to renegotiate NAFTA and similar multinational trade deals, making Trumps attacks on NAFTA and the recently scrapped Trans-Pacific Partnership an inflection point for blue collar workers who traditionally voted Democrat.

As historians study what happened in the election, certainly in the early going, it looks like Trump might have won on that issue in the Midwestern states, said Ed Sills of the Texas AFL-CIO. Certainly, the criticism of NAFTA coming from Trump has been well received by many people in the labor movement.

Some, however, also sounded a note of caution.

While we see renegotiation, hopefully, being a good thing, were concerned that many of the people in the Trump administration and cabinet have for the last 25 years been supportive of NAFTA-style free trade agreements, said Bob Cash of the Texas Fair Trade Coalition, which represents a mix of labor, environmental, religious, farm, immigration and human rights groups.

Cash also expressed reservations about a Trump spokesmans recent statement suggesting that trade and tax reform could be a mechanism for funding a border wall.

Were really concerned about wrapping the trade issue and NAFTA into his anti-immigration statements and support for the wall, Cash said.

Brady said the statement by White House spokesman Sean Spicer did not reflect the intention of House Republicans, who have been discussing a so-called border adjustment tax to favor exports over imports from all U.S. trading partners, not only Mexico.

Trump long has made clear that he plans to reopen the landmark trade deal, particularly as it pertains to Mexico, a low-wage nation with which the U.S. had a $58 billion trade deficit in 2015. The nations trade deficit with Canada was about $15 billion.

We will make great trade deals, he said to reporters as the meeting began. I dont care if its a renovation of NAFTA or a brand new NAFTA, but we do have to make it fair and its very unfair to the American worker and very, very unfair to companies.

Trump also gave a nod to Wall Street investor Wilbur Ross, who also was in the Roosevelt Room where the trade talks took place. He said Ross, a billionaire businessman like himself, will be representing us in negotiations.

The Mexican government already has signaled its intention to prepare for negotiations, starting a formal process in recent days to consult with the private sector. Canadian officials also have said publicly that they are prepared to discuss improvements to NAFTA.

Canada looks forward to working closely with the new U.S. administration, and with the United States Congress on issues of mutual interest, including trade and investment in various sectors, said Christine Constantin, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington.

kevin.diaz@chron.com
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Amid opponents concerns about private development on city land and parity for low-wage workers, the City Council unanimously approved Thursday a deal that will continue to spur the redevelopment of Hemisfair, ushering in a planned hotel and residential development.

The deal with Zachry Hospitality approved Thursday also slightly expands the dedicated parkland at Hemisfair, despite accusations from detractors that the city is selling off taxpayers property. Before redevelopment of the urban park began several years ago, there were about 6.5 acres of publicly accessible, usable space.

Now, officials say there will be some 19 acres of parkland for the public. The larger space  confined by Market Street, South Alamo Street, Cesar Chavez Boulevard and Interstate 37  includes parcels set aside for development. Plans call for apartments, a 200-room hotel and retail space, among other things.

Some 25 of the 35 people and groups who signed up to address the council spoke in favor of the project on 5 acres near the intersection of Market and South Alamo streets, where the hotel, apartments and mixed-use facilities will be constructed.

But opponents chastised the council for not looking out for San Antonians.

Carol Fisher, who has also been a loud, dissenting voice against ride-hailing here, berated the City Council for not representing San Antonians who couldnt be in council chambers because theyre working two jobs.

She belittled the deal that will bring 800 new parking spaces to Hemisfair  600 of which will be managed by the city. Fisher said Hemisfair would be a good place for a poverty date where they can cruise a park thats, frankly, not for them.

Danna Schneider, an organizing director for the UNITE HERE union, implored the council to protect hotel workers and ensure theyre fairly compensated. She voiced concerns about banquet servers not receiving gratuity charged on customers bills.

But council members said they did due diligence and found no indication that Zachrys hotel would act in bad faith. That includes Councilman Rey Saldana, who was applauded for standing up for service-industry workers.

Outside of the high priority that I have with the success of this park, what is not lost on me is that there is a local firm and a local operator that we interface with at Zachry. Weve all asked tough questions of the Zachry folks, and some of us have gone beyond and spoken to some of their employees, he said. There is not much evidence, if any, that is mounting up that these folks are bad operators and that theyre mistreating their folks. In fact, theres counter-evidence to that.
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The San Antonio Housing Authority is moving forward with plans to build more mixed-income apartments in the Victoria Commons area southeast of downtown, voting Thursday to accept $1.5 million from the city to fund utility and street improvements around the development.

Those funds are still subject to a vote by the City Council, which could happen later this year.

The proposed $40 million housing development, which will contain 215 apartments to be rented to families of diverse income levels, will stand on 3 acres at East Cesar E. Chavez Boulevard and Labor Street, across from the Institute of Texan Cultures. If approved, construction is projected to finish in 2019.

The plans are part of SAHAs longtime efforts to revitalize the neighborhood where the now-demolished Victoria Courts public housing project used to stand. That austere, government-style housing complex was built in 1940, but it eventually deteriorated and was torn down in 1999.

Since then, SAHA has developed and built two more modern apartment complexes in the same area: HemisView Village, which opened in 2010, and Refugio Place, which opened in 2004. Those properties, which rent apartments to tenants of various incomes, are managed by third parties. A new recreational area, Labor Street Park, also has been established where Victoria Courts used to stand.

Joan Carabin, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1992, said she has been pleased with the changes.

I would say there was a lot of uncertainty when Victoria Courts was still there  a lot of uncertainty in terms of public safety, perhaps, on our side, Carabin said this week. The people that lived there, I think they were deprived of any kind of an opportunity to see something different.

Once mixed-income apartments were built in the razed housing projects place, both sides, both groups of people, had a much better advantage, I think, Carabin said.

The $1.5 million that SAHA voted Thursday to accept is tax increment financing funding, which must be used for public improvements such as utilities, streets and sidewalks.

SAHA applied for those funds last summer, and one of the citys tax increment reinvestment zone boards approved that request in December. The City Council has the final say on whether to award the money.

The housing authority already owns 2 acres of the site where its planning to put the newest development and plans to acquire one more acre from the city, SAHA spokeswoman Rosario Neaves said.

Nearly two-thirds of the development  133 apartments  will be rented at market rates, according to the current proposal.

A quarter of the apartments  54 total  will be built with the help of tax credits and must be rented to families or individuals earning 60 percent or less of the areas median income, while 28 apartments will be designated as public housing and restricted to tenants earning 30 percent or less.

SAHA plans to build the development with a mix of public and private dollars, using some of its own funds along with the tax credit financing and a traditional mortgage.

The agency hopes to close on the financing within the next year, said Timothy Alcott, SAHAs development services and neighborhood revitalization officer.

The Lavaca Neighborhood Association is aware of the proposed development and is comfortable with SAHAs plans to rent that housing to tenants of various income levels, President Selsa Gonzalez said.

That strategy has worked well with other apartments that SAHA developed in the neighborhood since Victoria Courts was demolished, Gonzalez said.

I think its great now that its a mixed-income neighborhood, she said. Its really the great thing about Lavaca  theres a mix of everything, a mix of people.

pohare@express-news.net
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AUSTIN  Hundreds of people opposed to a so-called sanctuary cities bill descended on the Texas Senate Thursday, marking the first big clash of the 85th Legislature as Republican lawmakers attempt to fast-track one of Gov. Greg Abbotts priority measures.

More than 500 people signed up to speak on Senate Bill 4, including representatives of cities and law enforcement who said the proposed bill would strain relations with immigrant communities and jeopardize funding for criminal justice programs that have nothing to do with people in this country illegally.

Others recounted personal, sometimes emotional accounts of the bills potential impact on immigrant communities. Several times during the hearing, protesters shouted and broke into song in the Senate gallery before being escorted out of the chamber by Texas Department of Public Safety officers.

State Affairs Committee Chairman Joan Huffman, R-Houston, warned several times that she would clear the gallery if the disruptions continued, though she never did. Testimony continued into the evening.

At issue for GOP lawmakers and Abbott is whether local law enforcement should honor federal immigration detainers, which are requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold on to immigrants in the country illegally until federal officials give further instructions or take them into custody. As noted by several of the bills opponents, the decision to honor ICE detainers is voluntary.

City and county law enforcement officials who showed up in Austin largely opposed the measure, warning it would redirect local resources and strain community relations.

San Antonio is not a sanctuary city. However, I have some serious concerns with (the bill) and the impact itll have on our primary duty, said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, who was joined by interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley. This bill would require local law enforcement to verify immigration status. It would distract us from our primary mission.

SAPDs longstanding practice is to cooperate with federal law enforcement officers, including executing federal warrants and honoring detainer requests. But officers will not detain an individual based on actual or suspected immigration status, nor will they inquire about their citizenship status.

Ron Hickman, the former Harris County Sheriff, disagreed with McManus, saying SB 4 will help local police officers do their jobs more efficiently.

I dont see anything in Senate Bill 4 that provides new authority for peace officers in Texas to become an immigration officer, he said. The sheriffs of Texas need structure in order to do their jobs effectively and to protect the public.

The issue blew up earlier this month when the newly elected sheriff of Travis County announced she would implement a policy of not automatically honoring every immigration detainer her office receives. Sheriff Sally Hernandez had campaigned on such a promise and began implementation of the policy on Wednesday.

Abbott threatened to cut off grant funding to Travis County if Hernandez did not reverse her decision. She refused and he announced Wednesday that he had halted $1.5 million in grants bound for Travis County that go through his office. Abbott also has threatened to pursue legislation that would remove from office any elected official in violation of SB 4, should it become law.

The issue is playing out nationally, too, after President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order to withhold certain federal funds from municipalities that do not honor all ICE detainer requests, setting up a fight between his administration and Democratic-led cities and states. San Francisco already has sued the Trump administration and asked a federal court to overturn the order.

Against that backdrop, Abbott in his State of the State address to the full legislature on Tuesday made a ban on so-called sanctuary cities an emergency item, enabling lawmakers to vote on it within the first 60 days.

At Thursdays hearing, bill author Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, acknowledged the term sanctuary cities has no legal meaning.

The panels Republican majority is expected to pass the bill and send it to the full 31-member Senate next week, when Democrats have said they will offer amendments before a vote is taken.

Early Thursday, the committees two Democrats stated their opposition to Perrys proposal.

Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, said he was concerned about the bills penalties for jurisdictions that violate its provisions. In that case, the legislation would cut off state grant funding for local governments, a penalty that Democrats warn will hurt vulnerable communities in their districts.

Without those funds, things would fall apart, Lucio said, citing juvenile justice and domestic violence programs and veterans courts. We risk perpetuating far more dangerous criminal behavior.

They also warned that SB 4 would, in effect, allow police officers to use racial profiling and immigration status when deciding whether to stop or arrest a person.

In response, Perry repeated his contention that local officials must be held responsible for their actions.

The state did not remove those funds. The actions of the jurisdictions  their decision point to violate the law  precipitates having their funding removed, Perry said. If they choose to comply with SB 4, those funds are not in jeopardy.

Perry also said Thursday the law would apply to grant funding for university police departments, though not to other state funding to universities. He has said he included college campuses after reports of pressure mounting at universities around the state to declare their campuses as sanctuaries.

The safety of my family and all these people behind me who I deeply care about is in danger, said Carla Perez, an undocumented student. Its in danger thanks to anti-immigrant legislators like Gov. Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Charles Perry.

Emily Timm, deputy director of Austin-based labor rights group Workers Defense Project, recalled two stories of undocumented immigrants who were victims of assault, but who did not contact authorities because they feared a confrontation with immigration officials.

Without the trust and cooperation of the local community, law enforcement cannot do their jobs, and that makes us all less safe, Timm said. SB 4 will do that.
A new poll suggests that San Antonios 2017-22 bond program is on solid ground with local voters.

The poll of likely voters, conducted Jan. 20-23 by Pathfinder Opinion Research on behalf of the OneSA bond campaign, was obtained this week by the Express-News. OneSA used the poll to gauge support for the $850 million bond program and test the popularity of potential advocates for the bond.

The poll found the strongest support for Proposition 1, which, at $445 million, makes up more than half of the bonds total cost. Proposition 1 focuses on streets, bridges and sidewalks and has 89 percent popular support, according to the poll.

Proposition 2, dealing with drainage and flood control, is nearly as popular, with 87 percent approval.

The only two bond propositions that appear to be vulnerable are Proposition 3 (parks and recreation), which has 61 percent support, and Proposition 4 (libraries, museums and cultural art facilities), which is backed by 59 percent.

In a way, this is par for the course with bond programs. Perceived infrastructure necessities  such as streets and drainage  tend to command overwhelming support, whereas voters get a little squishier about spending for projects  such as cultural arts  that they view as luxuries.

In 2012, the last time San Antonio voters decided on a bond program, every proposition received at least 72 percent support, except for the two categories that are lagging behind this year. Parks and recreation won 64 percent approval in 2012, while libraries and cultural art facilities came in at 62 percent.

This year, there is the added controversy of a $13 million allocation for a land bridge connecting the two sides of Hardberger Park. The land-bridge funding is split between Propositions 1 and 3.

The strongest criticism of the bond, voiced by former District 10 Councilman Carlton Soules, is that too much money is going to citywide projects and the rest of the funds are not split proportionally among the districts.

The Hardberger Park land bridge is one of the items Soules has targeted, but he has reserved his harshest barbs for the $43 million Broadway improvement project between Houston Street and Hildebrand Avenue.

Is that the most critical project, for $43 million, that the city faces? Soules asked, making it clear that he considers the answer to be no.

One of the most striking revelations in the OneSA poll is the relatively low popularity of former Mayor Julian Castro, who left office halfway through his third term in 2014 to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The new poll finds that only 56 percent of local voters view Castro favorably, while 37 percent hold an unfavorable opinion of him. Castro was easily the least popular person/entity asked about in the poll. Mayor Ivy Taylor came off considerably better, with 68 percent approval and only 20 percent disapproval.

Questions about the land bridge havent done much damage to the reputation of its namesake, former Mayor Phil Hardberger, who had 66 percent favorability in the poll. And San Antonios police and fire unions showed no ill effects from their bruising collective-bargaining battles with the city: the San Antonio Police Officers Association has 76 percent approval, and the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association is viewed favorably by 73 percent.

Ella Austin debate heats up

District 2 Councilman Alan Warrick II has been trying to explain his position on the Ella Austin Center since last Friday, when this column looked at the East Side institutions uncertain future and its lack of funding in the bond.

Warrick told me Wednesday that the historic Ella Austin building is unsustainable and he believes it would be a poor use of city money to sink funds into a site with an estimated $15 million in deferred maintenance costs.

Warrick said hed like to see the city lease the Pine Street property to someone that has a little bit more financial reserves and move Ella Austins services to other locations.

That suggestion doesnt sit well with Brian Dillard, president of the Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association. Dillard argued Wednesday on Texas Public Radios The Source that the location of Ella Austin is crucial to low-income East Side residents, and he disputed Warricks contention that no one in the community pushed for bond money for Ella Austin.

Dillard said Warrick never informed his constituents that a portion of New Braunfels Avenue funding might be available for Ella Austin.

ggarcia@express-news.net

Twitter: @gilgamesh470
COLUMBUS  Stemming the dramatic increases in taxes on farmland and compiling data on the density of livestock in Ohios watersheds lead the Ohio Farmers Unions list of public policy priorities for the year.

Agricultural property tax increases are becoming an existential threat to family farmers and rural land owners in Ohio, said OFU President Joe Logan. In recent years, our farmers have suffered increases in CAUV of 300 to 600 percent, while ag commodities have plummeted.

CAUV, or Current Agricultural Use Valuation, is the formula used to value farmland for tax purposes in Ohio. While the Kasich Administration could change the formula administratively, OFU members are seeking the help of the Ohio General Assembly.

Logan said one issue that narrowly missed being passed by delegates was a proposed $0 tax value for Ohios woodlands.

The fact that we had a lengthy debate on our convention floor about zero tax values for woodlands should wake up policy makers in Columbus about the need to revamp CAUV, Logan said.

Water quality

Logan said OFU adopted a special order of business at its recent convention proposing further action in Lake Erie, Grand Lake St. Marys and other Ohio watersheds by the Ohio Department of Agriculture.

We need data on all the livestock operations in our watersheds, not just the animals raised by licensed CAFOs, Logan said.

OFU proposes the department make an accurate assessment of all livestock operations within each watershed.

They have access to this valuable data and the capacity to aggregate it in a way that would safeguard farmers proprietary information, while compiling it in a way that would be extremely useful in developing a comprehensive strategy to manage nutrient runoff, Logan added.

Its a common sense, next step in the policy-making process to clean up watersheds like the western basin of Lake Erie.

Other measures

Delegates to OFUs recent 83rd annual convention also approved five other special orders dealing with:

Maintaining the link between ag policy and public nutrition in the next federal farm bill;

Placing former Ohio Dept. of Corrections farmland into a community land trust to be used by young farmers of limited resources;

Ensuring that any replacement of the Affordable Care Act assures same or better coverage;

Reforming the nations dairy policy and pricing structure;

Reiterated a policy from last year calling on a moratorium on the use of Class II injection wells for wastewater disposal of fracking and other oil and gas operations  and the adoption of Class I standards for such injection wells.

Legislator honored

During the convention, state Sen. Joe Schiavoni, D-Boardman, was honored for his work on behalf of Ohios farmers, rural citizens and consumers.

Logan said Schiavoni was consistently on the side of farmers and consumers in his district with his support for CAUV reform and his fight to preserve Ohios renewable energy goals.
The Canadian Meat Council (CMC) has stated that it welcomes the release of the draft content of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations. The draft regulatory text was posted in Canada Gazette, Part 1

The Safe Food for Canadians Regulations is an essential building block in a modern food safety risk-based management system, said Canadian Meat Council President Troy Warren. Modern regulatory systems need to be underpinned by comprehensive and science-based food regulatory principles, with clear food safety objectives in mind, that are transparent and proactive in scope, added Warren.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has worked relentlessly  through extensive consultations with regulatory stakeholders  to devise an outcome-based food safety control and regulatory system that protects public health, domestic food markets and international trade capacity. Ensuring food safety is a fundamental priority for Canadas federally registered meat processors and every enhancement in food safety contributes to a further strengthening of this countrys world class food safety system, concluded Warren.

The Canadian meat industry is the largest component of this countrys food processing sector

The Safe Food for Canadians Act  which received Royal Assent on November 22, 2012- will come into force concurrently with the Safe Food for Canadian Regulations after they are completed in final form. For now, the formal consultation process on the draft regulatory text under Canada Gazette, Part 1 is open for public comment for the next 90 days.

Source : Canadian Meat Business
In an effort to reduce the lines at the Prince William landfill and compost facility, now that both are closed on Sundays, the county is encouraging residents who regularly visit such faciliti
Mark Sorrells will be the new president of FTCC next year

education
Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist

James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.

Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

Albert Einstein
Special Inspector General John SopkoThe Taliban may not be in control of Afghanistan, but thats only because nobody is really in control. After 15 years of U.S. and coalition fighting, the country  more accurately the failed state  is in terrible shape.

Afghanistan currently ranks 169 on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Thats important. A few years ago we wrote about the link between corruption and active wars. Most of the most corrupt countries, we found, were at war.

Today only Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea, South Sudan, and Somalia rank lower on the CPI than Afghanistan. All of those countries are at war except North Korea, and it apparently wants to be.

Three years ago we said,

If graft causes war, does it ever make sense to invest in corrupt regimes? Crooked leaders assure that war will follow war. So when peace is the objective, the CPI should guide decisions about going to war or regime change.

How much has the United States invested in Afghanistan? More than 150,000 lives have been lost in the Afghanistan war since 2001, including 26,000 civilians. About 3,500 coalition troops have been killed, including 2,400 Americans and 455 Britons.

U.S. troop levels peaked there in 2011 at more than 100,000. There are still about 9,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan but we might send more. The war has cost the United States at least $3.5 trillion.

This week John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, filed his quarterly report to Congress (pdf). NATOs mission in Afghanistan, he said, is now the largest and longest operation in the alliances history.

But were losing. The numbers of Afghan government forces are decreasing while their casualties are increasing, Sopko said.

Also increasing are the number of districts under insurgent control or influence. U.S. Forces Afghanistan reported that 57.2 percent of the countrys 407 districts were under Afghan government control or influence as of November 15, 2016, a 6.2 percent decrease from the prior quarter and a decrease of nearly 15 percent since November 2015.

There were 8,397 conflict-related civilian casualties between January 1 and September 30, 2016. Nearly a quarter of those (23 percent) were attributed to pro-government forces.

According to the UN, 583,000 people in Afghanistan fled their homes due to conflict in 2016  the highest number of displacements since record keeping started in 2008.

In a country of about 30 million people, only six million students are actually attending classes.

An Asia Foundation survey found that in 2016, less than a third of Afghans surveyed (29.3 percent) believed their country was moving in the right direction, down from 36.7 percent in 2015. It was the highest rate of pessimism since the survey began in 2004.

Why is everything going wrong in Afghanistan? The answer is still corruption.

Procurement accounts for nearly 50 percent of the Afghan national budget, Sopko said. Thats bad news because the Afghan govenrment doesnt handle procurement well.

From the standpoint of U.S. objectives, aid flowing through poor procurement processes risks inadequately funding security forces, strengthening corrupt networks, enriching insurgent sympathizers, and alienating U.S. public support for foreign-policy objectives, according to the Special Inspector Generals report.

A joint U.S./UK pilot study found that in Badakhshan Province, 69 percent of the top 100 government positions had been filled by patronage and not by merit or competence.

Afghan opium production rose 43 percent over 2015 levels, to an estimated 4,800 tons. Poppy eradication results in 2016 were the lowest this decade.

Some U.S. troops have joined in the local graft. Over the past five years, investigators for the Special Inspector General uncovered a widespread, intricate pattern of criminal activity that pervaded the Humanitarian Assistance Yard at Bagram Airfield.

There have been eight arrests tied to the Humanitarian Assistance Yard at Brgram, and seven guilty pleas, five by members of the U.S. military. The defendants were involved in bribery, fraud, kickbacks, and money laundering for years, the report said.

____

Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog.
Im terrified of spiders! There, Ive said it. No matter how tiny they may be, I always imagine theyve got a huge father and half a dozen big brothers lurking nearby, ready to jump out at any time. Eeeek!

Pam Howes

When I was a teenager, in the sixties, I harboured secret ambitions to become a record producer, working alongside the likes of George Martin at Abbey Road Studios. It never happened of course. Girls didnt do jobs like that in those days!

Nowadays, my secret ambition is to run a club similar to the type I used to go to. Live bands and a great DJ, a RocknSoul venue. I hold a reunion night once a year for my favourite club, The Manor Lounge, and its always well attended by people of a certain age. You cant keep a good Mod down.

Youll have gathered by now that music is my first love, almost. My large family really comes first; I have three adult daughters and seven assorted grandchildren who keep me feeling young and smiling.

I love to read crime/thriller stories, but could never write them. I dont know that I could murder anyone successfully enough to make a story, so Ill stick to my sagas.

Im involved in a campaign to get Blue Plaques erected on buildings around my hometown of Stockport for all the old music venues that are no longer open. Many famous acts performed in the clubs, including The Who and Rod Stewart. We have a strong musical heritage in the town, but so far only one music-linked Blue Plaque is in place and that is at the famous Strawberry Studios.

In 1980 my I emigrated to Canada with my then husband and the girls. The move wasnt a success and I suffered badly from being homesick and missing my friends and family. After the third freezing cold winter Id had enough and we came back to live in the UK. Never again.

Unlike others, I never had any early aspirations to become an author. I am creative by nature and ran a small interior design business before the writing bug took a hold of me.

My first book was supposed to be factual, about the music scene, but halfway through my partner suggested I write a fictional story about a young group of musicians getting a start in the business. I had a think about it, and thats how my fictional band The Raiders, that feature in my RocknRoll series were born. Once I created a life for them I couldnt stop and the series now stands at five books, so far.

Apart from being a busy mum, grandma and author, Im also a part-time roadie to my musician partner.
James McAvoy has donated 50,000 to a cancer-stricken teenager for pioneering treatment.

James McAvoy

The 37-year-old actor met 16-year-old Kelly Turner from Dover in Kent, South East England at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London earlier this week, and after posing for a selfie together he transferred the hefty sum of money to the young girl's JustGiving fundraising page, which her parents Linda and Martin setup to raise the 1 million required for her to undergo the specialist treatment in New York.

A message alongside the 'Split' star's generous donation read: "Great to meet you the other day Kelly. I hope this helps you achieve your goal sooner rather than later. Good luck luv James. (sic)"

Kelly's dad Martin was overwhelmed by the support of the Scottish star and how kind he was when he came into the hospital and visited other youngsters on the ward.

According to the MailOnline, he said: "He decided to come and visit everyone and spent a lot of time talking to Kelly and the others. She managed to grab a selfie with him, so that's another celebrity she's met."

Martin also posted on Twitter: "'Thank you James McAvoy, you're wonderful."

Kelly has desmoplastic round cell tumours - an aggressive form of tumour that typically begin in the abdomen or pelvis - and desperately needs the money to be treated at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in the Big Apple.

She has already exceeded the expectations of her doctors, who told her she would only have two years to live in October 2015.

However, the NHS has refused to continue treating her illness or pay for her to have it done in America.

The figure raised is now way beyond the initial 408,000 for the surgery but she needs the rest of the amount for follow-up immunotherapy which will also be carried out at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York.
Hugh Jackman is one of the most celebrated actors in the cinematic world of superheroes, but his time in the role of X-Men character Wolverine aka Logan is coming to an end. That is of course after his final outing in a titular, R-rated movie that will see Logan pushed to his limits more than ever before, as he goes from living a secluded lifestyle with Professor X to battling against evil forces who are seeking out one very talented and odd young girl.

Logan

The revealing new synopsis from Berlin Film Festival reads: In 2024 the mutant population has shrunk significantly and the X-Men have disbanded. Logan, whose power to self-heal is dwindling, has surrendered himself to alcohol and now earns a living as a chauffeur. He takes care of the ailing old Professor X whom he keeps hidden away.

One day, a female stranger asks Logan to drive a girl named Laura to the Canadian border. At first he refuses, but the Professor has been waiting for a long tie for her to appear. Laura possesses an extraordinary fighting prowess and is in many ways like Wolverine. She is pursued by sinister figures working for a powerful corporation; this is because her DNA contains the secret that connects her to Logan. A relentless pursuit begins

In this third cinematic outing featuring the Marvel comic book character Wolverine we see the superheroes beset by everyday problems. They are ageing, ailing and struggling to survive financially. A decrepit Logan is forced to ask himself if he can or even wants to put his remaining powers to good use. It would appear that in the near-future, the times in which they were able to put the world to rights with razor sharp claws and telepathic powers are now over.

Young Dafne Keen is the actress stepping into the role of the mysterious X-23, who comic book readers know as the result of a secret government experiment to create a female clone of Wolverine using some of his genetic material. Though its not clear if that exact backstory will be coming to the big screen in Logan, the mutant duo clearly share a deep bond if the clips and first look images weve been given to-date prove anything.

Logan comes to cinemas and theaters in the UK and USA on March 3.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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John Legend and Ariana Grande have today (February 2) dropped the stunningly beautiful duet theyve worked on  the title track for the upcoming Beauty and the Beast Disney live action movie.

As the first slice of music previewed from the adaptation of the Disney classic, the song sets a high precedent for the rest of the soundtrack, which is expected to be released on the same day as the film hits the big screen.

Starring Emma Watson and Dan Stevens opposite one another as the beautiful Belle and cursed Beast, those who go to see the flick will once more be able to follow Belles journey as she goes from Beasts prisoner to his love interest; all whilst interacting with the enchanted furniture and slaves of the Beasts castle.

With Gaston (Luke Evans) besotted by Belle and determined to claim her hand in marriage however, Belle and the Beast are going to face some tough challenges if their feelings for one another are going to reign supreme and stop the evils around them from taking hold.

Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Nathan Mack, Adrian Schiller and Hattie Morahan all also star.

Beauty and the Beast hits cinemas in the UK and theaters in the US on March 17, with the official movie soundtrack dropping on the same day.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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Netflix have this week released five brand new images of upcoming original series, Marvels Iron Fist, starring Finn Jones in the titular role as Danny Rand, alongside a supporting cast that includes Jessica Henwick, David Wenham, Tom Pelphrey and Jessica Stroup.

Credit: Netflix

The official synopsis for the upcoming series reads: Billionaire Danny Randy (Finn Jones) returns to New York City after being missing for years, trying to reconnect with his past and his family legacy. He fights against the criminal element corrupting New York City with his incredible kung-fu mastery and ability to summon the awesome power of the fiery Iron Fist.

Credit: Netflix

Credit: Netflix

Tamara Becher serves as a writer on the series, with each episode of the show named after a different kung-fu move and Jones showing off some of his best skills in one of the newly-released pictures.

The show is the fourth addition to the franchise, with Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage all coming to the streaming service throughout the past couple of years. Following on from Iron Fist will come Marvels The Defenders, which brings all four of the heroes together to battle the biggest threat to mankind theyll have ever seen.

Credit: Netflix

Credit: Netflix

A third season of Daredevil, second season of Jessica Jones and new series focusing on The Punisher have all also been confirmed, but no premiere dates have yet been given.

Marvels Iron Fist launches globally on Netflix on March 17.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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The readymade garment industry of Bangladesh boasts of 540 registered trade unions, according to M Mujibul Haque Chunnu, the state minister of labour and employment. He also said that a worker welfare foundation fund has been formed by the government and close to Taka 190 crore has already been deposited in it, which will be spent for workers welfare.

The present government of the country is worker-friendly and it has simplified the process of registering trade unions, said a Bangladeshi media news agency quoting Chunnu. The minister added that forming trade unions was workers fundamental right.

While addressing the Jatiya Sangsad or the House of the Nation, Chunnu said that his ministry has adopted various measures to ensure that workers at factories and mill get their due remuneration. The minimum wages of workers of 38 industries have also been fixed based on the recommendations of the Minimum Wage Board.

The readymade garment industry of Bangladesh boasts of 540 registered trade unions, according to M Mujibul Haque Chunnu, the state minister of labour and employment. He also said that a worker welfare foundation fund has been formed by the government and close to Taka 190 crore has already been deposited in it, which will be spent for workers' welfare.#

The minimum wage of RMG workers has been increased from Taka 3,000 to Taka 5,300 from December 1, 2013, informed the minister. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Imprima S.p.a., the first global holding company dedicated to textile printing and finishing sector, has opened in Italy. Imprima is funded by a pool of financial investors led by the Italian Private Equity Fund Wisequity IV, managed by Wise SGR, a company that has already supported the development of other successful companies in the textile supply chain.With the creative heritage of the brands acquired, clean and smart manufacturing, proximity to markets, outstanding quality, and sustainability, Imprima aims to establish itself as a preferred partner for brands and retailers in the world of fashion.

Imprima S.p.a., the first global holding company dedicated to textile printing and finishing sector, has opened in Italy. Imprima is funded by a pool of financial investors led by the Italian Private Equity Fund Wisequity IV, managed by Wise SGR, a company that has already supported the development of other successful companies in the textile supply chain.#

Thanks to the acquisition of 100 per cent of the German finishing and textile printing company KBC and 100 per cent of the Italian company Guarisco by WISE SGR, Imprima is enriched, already at this early stage of development, by an international outlook that makes it extremely competitive in the market, which will be reinforced in the coming months with additional acquisitions in Italy and abroad.Leading the new company will be Paolo Gramaglia and Chiaretto Calo, who share the role of Co-CEO of the Imprima group, assisted by vice president Gianluca Boni and CFO Giovanni Lorato. The management will act in coordination with Valentina Franceschini, partner of Wise SGR and president of IMPRIMA, and Luca Boni, director Wise SGR. The entrepreneur Marco Guarisco and associate Andrea Moretti will remain in all operational effects in their current positions. The CEO of KBC Henri Rowienski will also continue to lead the German company.Over 30 million are planned for investments in technology and an acquisitions program with some really excellent Italian styles will be a part of the company.Paolo Gramaglia said, We started with two milestones in the industry: KBC, a company with more than two and a half centuries of history that is characterised by a refined and distinctive design and creative heritage and positioning, and Guarisco, an Italian family company, dynamic, young, known for design that rapidly transposes the fashion factor to bring it to the world of fast fashion.Chiaretto Calo said, We are working to finalise other top level acquisitions in Italy and abroad. There are industrial solutions but their adoption on a global scale requires volumes, capital, human resources and management, which are in an advanced stage of the necessary learning curve. (GK)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
The department of trade and industry (DTI) in Bukidnon, Philippines has joined the technology mission organised by Northern Mindanao Technical Working Group (TWG), in an attempt to revitalise the Mindanao silk industry. The activity aims to learn more about the potentials of the industry and study the technologies needed to improve productivity.The partnership will also explore the possibility of forging a partnership between different agencies in Northern Mindanao, and leading silk manufacturers in the country.

The department of trade and industry (DTI) in Bukidnon, Philippines has joined the technology mission organised by Northern Mindanao Technical Working Group (TWG), in an attempt to revitalise the Mindanao silk industry. The activity aims to learn more about the potentials of the industry and study the technologies needed to improve productivity.#

The TWG team visited the sericulture project of the Organisation for Industrial, Spiritual and Cultural Advancement (OISCA) Bago Training Centre, which within its 26-hectare farmland produces 1.5 tons of silk yarn annually, accounting for 90 per cent of the countrys total production.Around 80 per cent of its silk products are sold to weavers in Aklan, and the remaining 20 percent to Manila based traders.Philippine fashion designer Melody Parrel-Pimentel, along with other key government agencies too are pushing for the revival of Mindanao silk. (AR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Owing to an increase in planted area, the world cotton production will rise by two per cent to 23.4 million tons, the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) has predicted in its first estimate of 2017-18 crop. After two seasons of contraction, cotton planted area is expected to grow by five per cent to 30.6 million tons for the 2017-18 crop.

The world average yield is projected to decline by two per cent to 764 kg/ha, after improving by 13 per cent to 781 kg/ha in 2016-17, the ICAC Secretariat said.

In 2016-17, the cotton area in India, the largest cotton-producing country, fell by 12 per cent to 10.5 million hectares due to competition from food crops. However, the average yield recovered by 16 per cent to 560 kg/ha, and production in 2016-17 is estimated to rise by 2 per cent to 5.9 million tons. In 2017-18, Indias area is forecast to recover by 7 per cent to 11.2 million hectares as firm domestic cotton prices and less attractive prices for competing crops attract more farmers to cotton. Assuming a national average yield of 530 kg/ha, production will increase by 1 per cent to 6 million tons.

Owing to an increase in planted area, the world cotton production will rise by two per cent to 23.4 million tons, the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) has predicted in its first estimate of 2017-18 crop. After two seasons of contraction, cotton planted area is expected to grow by five per cent to 30.6 million tons for the 2017-18 crop.#

Cotton area in China declined for five consecutive seasons, reaching 2.8 million hectares in 2016-17. However, output has not fallen as quickly due to the fact that the share of cotton grown in Xinjiang, which has higher yields than other producing regions in China, has increased considerably. Chinas cotton production in 2016-17 is estimated at 4.7 million tons. In 2017-18, its cotton area may expand by 3 per cent to 2.9 million hectares, and cotton output in China could reach 4.8 million tons in 2017-18.

Following a season of higher than expected yields and firm cotton prices, cotton area in the United States is expected to expand by 10 per cent to 4.2 million hectares in 2017-18. The average yield in the US improved by 12 per cent to 958 kg/ha in 2016-17, and production is estimated at 3.7 million tons. In 2017-18, production in the US is projected to rise by 7 per cent to 4 million tons, assuming an average yield of 935 kg/ha.

A significant drop in yields and poor returns in 2015-16 led to a 12 per cent decrease to 2.5 million hectares in Pakistans cotton area in 2016-17. The average yield recovered by 32 per cent to 699 kg/ha and output is estimated up by 17 per cent to 1.8 million tons. Pakistans cotton area is forecast to increase by 3 per cent to 2.6 million hectares, and assuming a yield of 739 kg/ha, Pakistans production could reach 1.9 million tons.



World cotton mill use is expected to remain stable at 24.1 million tons in 2016-17 as high cotton prices discouraged growth in demand. However, mill use may expand by 1 per cent to 24.3 million tons in 2017-18. Mill use in the top three consuming countries, China, India, and Pakistan, is expected to remain unchanged from 2016-17. However, mill use is forecast to grow in Turkey, Bangladesh, and Vietnam by 2 per cent to 1.5 million tons, by 5 per cent to 1.5 million tons, and by 7 per cent to 1.2 million tons, respectively.



Given the continued growth in mill use in countries that depend on imports, world cotton trade is projected to increase by 5 per cent to 8.2 million tons in 2017-18 from 7.8 million tons in 2016-17. Bangladesh is likely to maintain its position as the worlds largest importer of cotton with its volume forecast to rise by 5 per cent to 1.5 million tons. Vietnams import volume is projected to grow by 8 per cent to 1.3 million tons. Given the large exportable surplus and strong demand, exports from the US are anticipated to rise by 17 per cent to 3.2 million tons in 2017-18. Indias exports are forecast to fall by 7 per cent to 875,000 tons in 2017-18.



World cotton stocks are expected to decline by 6 per cent at the end of 2016-17 to 18.1 million tons as China reduces its stocks by 17 per cent to 9.3 million tons. However, stocks outside of China are projected to increase by 8 per cent to 8.8 million tons or 36 per cent of mill use in 2016-17. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
(7) Ratu Paula Halaiwalu (Member).

In accordance with section 75(7) of the Constitution of the Republic of Fiji (Constitution), the chairperson and members of the Commission are appointed by His Excellency the President on the advice of the Constitutional Offices Commission.Given that the term of the chairperson and members of the Electoral Commission expired on 9 January 2017, the Constitutional Offices Commission at its meeting today, agreed to advise His Excellency the President of the names of persons for appointment to the Electoral Commission.His Excellency the President, in accordance with section 75 of the Constitution, has today appointed the following persons to the Electoral Commission for a term of 3 years:(1) Mr Suresh Chandra as Chairperson;(2) Mr Simione Ratabacaca Naiduki (Member);(3) Ms Margot Marie Jenkins (Member);(4) Mr Graham Bruce Southwick (Member);(5) Mr Jawahar Lal (Member);(6) Ms Kavita Raniga (Member); and
Loghman Sawari was deported from Fiji to Papua New Guinea today after entering Fiji on a Papua New Guinean passport.



He is claiming to be a refugee but did not present himself as a refugee seeking asylum to immigration officials on arrival in Fiji. Nor, after ten days, did he lodge an application for asylum, personally or through his lawyer.



The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has advised Fiji that Sawari is not recognised as a refugee under the UNHCR mandate. It has further advised that he is a refugee recognised by Papua New Guinea under its national procedures. So Fiji has merely returned Sawari to his rightful place of residence.



Sawari eluded the authorities during his ten days in Fiji while posting photographs of himself on social media at various locations.



Under international law, anyone who is seeking political asylum is required to lodge an application without delay. In the case of Sawari, this did not happen. And his lawyer - who has been publicly advocating his position through the media - failed to facilitate a prompt application as required under international conventions pertaining to applications for refugee status.



The authorities in Fiji have been informed by their Papua New Guinean counterparts that Sawaris Papua New Guinea passport was obtained by fraudulent means.



On this basis, Sawari was also in breach of Fijian law which states that a person who knowingly misleads or attempts to mislead any immigration officer in relation to any matter material to the performance or exercise by any immigration officer of any duty, function, power or discretion...commits an offence.



The Government notes that Sawari is claiming that he feared for his life. This begs the question as to why for ten days he failed to file an application for asylum. Despite several attempts by the Immigration Department to engage with Sawari, these attempts were ignored.



Fiji remains fully committed to the Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, but we cannot tolerate a situation in which a person who is not an asylum seeker and who has already been granted refugee status in another country flagrantly violates the law.




Fans were thrilled to hear that Arjun Kapoor, Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan were going to star in a period drama titled Shiddat. But soon rumours spread that producer Karan Johar wasnt convinced about the script and so he decided to shelve it. But director Abhishek Verman has reworked the script and we hear that the film will go on floors soon. Sources reveal that the team will kick start the first schedule within a couple of months. Shiddat is set in Partition-era Lahore and will feature Arjun, Alia and Varun in a love triangle.


Evelyn Sharma attended the National Prayer Breakfast hosted by the US President Donald Trump in Washington D.C. The actress was in the US since more than a week and it's only come to light now that she was invited to the US by the Government. The prestigious event is held every year since 1953 and several members of the United States Congress were present during the prayer service.

So what exactly was Evelyn Sharma doing at Donald Trump's National Prayer Breakfast.



The actress represented the Christian faith and spoke about her beliefs and the importance of peace, love and unity. Her publicist revealed, "She will be representing the Christian faith. Evelyn has been keeping this trip under wraps under the garb of vacationing in Los Angeles, California from where she even posted some gorgeous beach pics on her Instagram. But the secret is, she has just taken a flight from LA to Washington DC where she will attend Donald Trump's National Prayer Breakfast."



Evelyn Sharma Speaks At The National Prayer Breakfast The gorgeous Evelyn Sharma speaks at Donald Trump's National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. Spreading Peace Evelyn Sharma stressed the need for love, peace and unity across the world and spoke about her own beliefs and faith. VIP Evelyn Sharma Evelyn Sharma was invited by the US Government to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. The Trump Card Evelyn Sharma is one lucky girl to be present at the prestigious National Prayer Breakfast which was attended by close to 3,500 guests. National Prayer Breakfast Evelyn Sharma represented the Christian faith at the National Prayer Breakfast held by Donald Trump in Washington D.C.

He further commented, "Evelyn shared the story of her own faith, urging the world for acceptance, unity and peace, which brought her a standing ovation by the thousands of guests present at the event. From a PR point of view, the Indian actress has bypassed many, by opting for an intellectual speech at an event for world unity of religions, instead of a flashy photo-op."

Wow! So it looks like apart from Manasvi Mamgai, Evelyn Sharma has got the Trump card and these are the only two Bollywood actresses, who have been invited by the US Government to attend their prestigious event. The National Prayer Breakfast was attended by close to 3,500 guests which includes diplomats, politicians, religious leaders and other world leaders and Evelyn Sharma gave a speech to the crowd about her beliefs and faith. Check out the video clip below!
Filmmaker duo Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK of 'Go Goa Gone' fame recently wrapped up their upcoming film Reload starring Sidharth Malhotra and Jacqueline Fernandez on on a sexy note, with Jackie resorting to pole-dancing to seduce her onscreen love interest in the last shoot.

Rangoon: Kangana Ranaut Lives It Up In Vishal Bhardwaj's Recreated Version Of Tippa!

A Mumbai Mirror report quoted a source saying, "The song, called "Chandralekha", was shot in Mumbai over three days on a set designed as a nightclub. Jackie took some classes in pole dancing before the shoot to look convincing onscreen. The song has been choreographed by Adil Shaikh, who recently won the Filmfare award for Best Choreography Filmfare for "Kar Gayi Chul" from Kapoor & Sons."

The shoot was followed up by a wrap up party and Sid later took to his Instagram page to post a couple of pictures...

#Reload n wrap ! @jacquelinef143 #best #team A photo posted by Sidharth Malhotra (@s1dofficial) on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:20am PST

It's a wrap ! Thank you #RELOAD team for making this experience fun n positive, big love @jacquelinef143 @roo_cha Raj n DK #August25 A photo posted by Sidharth Malhotra (@s1dofficial) on Feb 2, 2017 at 3:10am PST

Reload has Sid playing a fresh recruit, along with Darshan Kumar of Mary Kom and NH10 fame. Suniel Shetty plays an ex-colonel who is their mentor. On the other hand, Jacqueline plays Sidharth's lady love. The action flick is slated to release on 25th August, 2017.

Talking about other films, Sidharth will begin shooting for the Ittefaq remake later this month, with Sonakshi Sinha, while Jackie will move on to Drive, directed by Tarun Mansukhani which has her sharing screen space with Sushant Singh Rajput for the first time.
The Supreme Court has refused to put on hold, the screening of Jolly LLB 2 before a three-member panel appointed by the Bombay High Court. The bench of Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Ashok Bhushan asked the petitioner Fox Star Studios to approach the High Court and advance all its contentions before it.

The bench asked the High Court to hear the matter on February 6, 2017 and allowing film producer Fox Star Studios to come before it on February 7. The film is set for release on February 10.



"We are keeping it pending," the bench told senior counsel Kapil Sibal as he said that the film was cleared for release by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) and under law the screening of the film before the panel comprising two lawyers and a doctor could not be done. "Go and tell this to the High Court," Justice Gogoi told Sibal. "We will not say anything. We will keep it pending. Go to the High Court."



Also Read: How Does A Guy Feel In His 30s? Sidharth Malhotra Reveals!

As Sibal urged the bench to see the film, Justice Gogoi said "We will not see the film. We will tell you why we will not see the film. We don't have three hours' patience. Don't you think that three hours is too long." The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court set up the committee to see the film after a Nanded lawyer, Ajaykumar Waghmare, told the court that the film was an attempt to portray the country's legal profession and the judicial system in a poor light.

It is "an attempt to portray the Indian legal profession and judicial system as a laughing stock to society at large", Waghmare told the High Court. The High Court directed for the review of the film by the panel on February 1 and set the next hearing on February 3. The film is scheduled to be released on February 10, 2017.
'Bigg Boss' fame Sana Khan forayed into Bollywood with a fleeting role in Salman Khan's Jai Ho. Her next was the erotic thriller Wajah Tum Ho that despite of all the oomph failed to grab the eyeballs. Now, we hear that the actress has bagged her third film and this time, she is set to share screen space with Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar.

RUMOUR HAS IT: A 'Dwarf' Shahrukh Khan To Romance Sonam Kapoor In Aanand L.Rai's Next?

As per a Bombay Times report, director Shree Narayan Singh has casted her in his upcoming film Toilet: Ek Prem Khan which stars Akshay Kumar and 'Dum Laga Ke Haisha' actress Bhumi Pednekar.

Reportedly she will play Akshay's girlfriend in the film. The daily further quoted a source close to the film production saying, "It's a cameo extremely crucial to the plot. Sana shot her portions recently during a schedule. She will be seen in a completely desi avatar in the film."

Buzz is that Toilet: Ek Prem Katha is a satirical take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's project Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The project aims at cleaning the streets and roads and the film will portray the loopholes of how it has been taken.

The film is slated to release on 2nd June.

SMART MOVE: Karan Johar Will Release A Film On Eid Only If He Works With Salman Khan!
Jayasurya As Lukeman aka Lucky

Jayasurya has delivered a neat performance as Lukeman aka Lucky, the fraudster. But the actor has nothing much to do in the role, which lacks a character definition and strength.

Script & Direction: Siddique

Siddique fails to deliver a complete entertainer this time. The movie has some good comical situations which will make the audiences laugh their hearts out.

But the messy narrative and a few comical situations kill the overall entertainment factor. While the first half is a bit too lengthy, the second half looks messier. The climax sequences seems rushed, and the dialogues are overdramatic.

Siddique As Sulaiman Fukri

Siddique who has portrayed Sulaiman Fukri has stolen the show with his extraordinary performance. His exceptional looks and voice modulation deserve a special mention.

Lal As Ali Fukri

Lal, the senior actor-director delivers a power-packed performance as Ali Fukri. Even though he appears only in the second half, the actor has made a mark with his fabulous screen presence and dialogue delivery.

Prayaga Martin As Nafsi

Prayaga Martin who essays the role of Lucky's love interest Nafsi has perfectly fit into her character, even though she has nothing much to do in her minimal role.

Anu Sithara As Aaliya aka Mani Kutti

Anu Sithara plays Aaliya aka Mani Kutti in the movie, is just okay in her role. She couldn't make a mark, especially in emotional sequences, and definitely needs to brush up her skills.

Cinematography: Vijay Ulaganath

Vijay Ulaganath, the cinematographer scores with the exceptional visualisation. Especially, the song sequences are well-picturised and a treat to watch.
The textile and apparel markets in developed countries have been experiencing steady growth. Although the growth rates might not be as high as those in emerging markets, these developed markets, namely the US, the EU and the UK, still hold their positions as some of the world's largest textile and apparel importers or fashion retail markets. Facts and figures in the fashion markets in the US, the EU, and the UK are some of this week's featured stories on BizVibe. BizVibe is the world's smartest B2B marketplace and allows users to connect with over seven million companies around the globe.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170202006364/en/

Facts and figures for the US, EU, and UK textiles and apparel markets. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The textile and apparel industry in the US remains the largest in the world

The value of US textile and apparel shipments totalled an estimated USD 76 billion in 2015, while the exports of the US textile products increased 38%, reaching almost USD 27.8 billion in the same year, making it one the world's leading manufacturers and the world's 4th largest exporter for textile and apparel products.

Figures also show that although US apparel production is increasing, nearly 98% of apparel purchased in the US are imported. China remains the biggest apparel supplier to the US, accounting for almost half of the US apparel imports in terms of quantity and 39.1% in terms of value.

Connect with over 20,000 textiles companies in the US listed on BizVibe

The competitiveness of EU's textile and appeal industry improves

The textile and apparel industry in the EU is such a massive diverse sector that comprises over 185,000 companies, employing more than 1.7 million workers and contributing a total revenue of around EUR 170 billion (USD 183.4 billion) a year, according to the data from European Commission.

Recently, the textile and apparel industries in EU member countries have been transforming from the mass production of simple products, to a wider variety of high value-added products. In result, figures of turnovers, export values, and market shares have all been seen increasing in the sector.

Connect with nearly 35,000 fabrics and textiles companies listed on BizVibe

UK's fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to the economy

As one the world's most influential players in fashion designing, manufacturing, retailing and fashion education, UK's fashion industry directly contributed a significant 28 billion (USD 35.2 billion) to the nation's economy in 2015, with over 880,000 people employed by the industry in roles varying from manufacturing to retail.

Industrial figures also show that the menswear market is currently the fastest growing segment in the UK's fashion industry, while online shopping also scooped a massive 12.4 billion sales in 2015.

Connect with over 700 textiles companies in the UK listed on BizVibe

In addition to these segments, BizVibe is also home to 50,000+ apparel and textile companies across 190+ countries, covering all sectors. The BizVibe platform allows you to discover high quality leads and make meaningful connections in real time. Claim your company profile for free and let the business come to you.

About BizVibe

BizVibe is home to over seven million company profiles across 700+ industries. The single minded focus of BizVibe's platform is to make networking easier. Over the years, we've searched far and wide to figure out how businesses connect and enable trade. That first interaction is usually fraught with the uncertainty of finding a potential partner vs. a potential nightmare. With this in mind, we've designed a robust set of tools to help companies generate leads, shortlist prospects, network with businesses from around the world and trade seamlessly.

BizVibe is headquartered in Toronto, and has offices in London, Bangalore and Beijing. For more information on the BizVibe network, please contact us.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170202006364/en/

Contacts:

BizVibe Media Marketing Executive

Jesse Maida

media@bizvibe.com

www.bizvibe.com
KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 3, 2017 - (ACN Newswire) - Main Market-bound first hybrid community-centric retail Real Estate Investment Trust, KIP REIT recently held its balloting ceremony at Malaysian Issuing House Sdn. Bhd.(MIH) where its 10,200,000 Offer Unit made available to the Malaysian Public has been oversubscribed by 5.07 times. The Institutional Offering of 220,650,000 Offer Units have also been oversubscribed.PublicInvest and RHB Research have both issued IPO notes providing target prices of RM1.07 and RM1.09 respectively, paying particular attention to KIP REIT's relatively higher dividend yields and its potential asset injection pipeline. Key highlights of KIP REIT included its demographics of shoppers being low and middle income segments who shop at KiP Marts for daily provisions and necessities. This makes the tenancy base very resilient across all economic cycles.Commenting on the oversubscription results, Lim Han Gie, Chief Executive Officer of KIP REIT Management said, "I am pleased that our Offer Units were oversubscribed. The results are evident that the Malaysian public as well as institutional investors view us favourably. We are grateful that the investors understand the business space we operate in and the opportunities it has to offer our REIT."Through this IPO exercise, KIP REIT expects to raise approximately RM234.2 million to be used mainly for the acquisitions of the REIT's initial portfolio consisting of 5 KiP Marts located in Tampoi, Kota Tinggi, Masai, Senawang and Melaka as well as a neighbourhood retail centre known as KiP Mall located in Bangi. The portfolios are strategically located in growing catchment townships in the Southern and Central regions of Peninsular Malaysia. Many of its tenants offer daily needs and basic necessities of the shoppers. Hence, its business model alludes to foresight and strength especially in adverse economic conditions when consumers become more prudent in spending and actively source for value-for-money products or services that are commonly found in KiP Mart.Lim adds, "It is evident that our focus towards hybrid community-centric retail centres that cater to communities' need for fresh produce and daily essentials, coupled with our diversified tenant base and strategic geographical locations in growing catchment areas are what makes KIP REIT attractive. Helmed by a dedicated team of highly experienced board of directors, KIP REIT is committed to practice good corporate governance. We believe we will establish good, strong relationships with our new shareholders and receive continuous support from our tenants."KIP REIT's Gross Rental Income for the past 3 financial years have been growing steadily from RM48.30 million in 2014, RM51.63 million in 2015 and RM53.0 million in 2016. These growth are achieved through rental increment, organic growth and acquisitions.Upon Listing, KIP REIT's Debt to Asset Ratio will be approximately 14.8%, which is lower than that of the average Malaysian REIT, of approximately 32.0% as at 30 September 2016. This would allow KIP REIT the opportunity to undertake borrowings for future acquisitions or any asset enhancement that it intends to make.The Company has the First Rights of Refusal to potentially acquire five new KiP Marts or KiP Malls to be named eventually. These assets in the pipeline are located in Pahang, Kedah, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan. Of the five new properties, KiP Mall Kota Warisan is near completion.KIP REIT is expected to list on the Main Market of Bursa Malaysia Securities Berhad on 6th February 2017. CIMB Investment Bank Berhad is the appointed Principal Adviser, Sole Bookrunner for the Institutional Offering and Underwriter for the Retail Offering of this IPO exercise.About KIP REIT ( www.kipreit.com.my )KIP REIT is a hybrid community-centric retail Real Estate Investment Trust with a geographically diversified portfolio in Peninsular Malaysia. The nature of KIP REIT's investment is long term, with a period of at least five years. The initial portfolio comprises of six (6) income producing Real Estate retail properties - five hybrid community-centric retail centres, known as Kip Mart in Johor, Melaka and Negeri Sembilan and a neighbourhood retail mall known as Kip Mall in Selangor.The future prospects of KIP REIT could be achieved through the optimisation and asset enhancement by the management. The Manager have the 'right of first refusal' to expand KIP REIT in the future, through the acquisition of other KiP Marts in Johor, Pahang, Kedah, Selangor and Negeri Sembilan.About KiP MART ( www.kipmart.com.my )KiP Mart features hybrid community-centric retail centres offering fresh produce and daily essentials. Each Mart offers a unique retail mix of fresh market, supermarket, retail shops, car showrooms, F&B outlets and services.KiP Mart's nation-wide footprint includes presence in the Southern region in the state of Johor and Melaka, Central region around the state of Selangor and Negeri Sembilan with plans to add more outlets in central region and move upwards to Northern region in the state of Kedah and East Coast region in the state of Pahang.KIP Group develops, leases and manages all of its own KiP Marts.About KiP Mall (www.kipmart.com.my)KiP Mall Bangi is a five-storey shopping centre catering to communities within the low to medium income groups. The range of retailers and facilities in KiP Mall Bangi are similar to those of KiP Marts. KiP Mall Bangi also provides recreational facilities such as a bowling centre.For more information, please contact:RAPR Mileage Communications, appointed PR agency for KIP REITTel: +603 2282 2333MediaIrene Yeoh / Lennie OngHp: +6012 3868873 / + 60129703379Email: ireneyeoh@raprmileage.com / lennie@raprmileage.comSource: KIP REITCopyright 2017 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.
OSTERSUND, Sweden, Feb 03, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Skanska is investing USD 392M, about SEK 3.5 billion, in an office project in Seattle, USA. The construction contract is worth USD 228M, about SEK 2.0 billion, which will be included in the order bookings for Skanska USA Building for the first quarter of 2017.

Skanska will develop and build a new 38-story office tower in a prime downtown Seattle location with about 62,000 square meter of office space, 1,700 square meter of retail space and 2,200 square meter of covered, outdoor open space that will create a public urban village.

Skanska will begin construction in February 2017 and expects to complete construction in the second quarter of 2019.

Skanska USA Commercial Development has invested about USD 1.5 billion in projects since 2009 and has developed corporate headquarters for Brooks Sports, PwC and Tommy Bahama.

Skanska is one of the leading development and construction companies in USA, specialized in building construction, civil infrastructure and developing commercial properties in select U.S. markets. Skanska also offers services in public-private partnerships. Skanska USA had sales of SEK 59 billion in 2016 and had about 9,300 employees in its operations.

For further information please contact:

Beth Miller,

Communications, Skanska USA Commercial Development,

Tel +1(917)-438-45-23

Andreas Joons,

Press Officer, Skanska AB,

Tel +46 (0)10-449-04-94

Direct line for media, tel +46 (0)10-448-88-99

This and previous releases can also be found at www.skanska.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/skanska/r/skanska-invests-usd-392m--about-sek-3-5-billion-in-a-new-office-project-in-seattle--usa,c2179840

The following files are available for download:
OTTAWA (dpa-AFX) - Canadian lender Bank of Nova Scotia, called as Scotiabank, on Thursday said it plans to invest C$1.3 billion or about $1 billion over the next three years in digital technology. While providing Digital Banking update, Scotiabank said it would invest half of its C$2.6 billion or $2 billion technology budget for the next three years in digital technology. Scotiabank President and CEO Brian Porter, said, 'Our customers want to do more of their banking through digital channels.. We intend to be a digital leader in the financial services industry not only here in Canada, but also in our key Pacific Alliance markets of Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Chile.' With the additional efficiency improvements, the bank expects lower operating costs and to achieve stated medium-term financial objectives. These productivity gains should contribute to improved profitability over the medium term. The bank noted that it now expects an additional 100 basis point improvement beyond 2019 in productivity ratio. Previously, the company had said that its structural cost program, which is highly inter-connected with the Bank's Digital Transformation, would deliver a 200 - 250 basis point improvement in productivity ratio by 2019. The planned improvement reflects efforts to further digitize the Bank in response to far less transactions in branches and much more use of mobile banking apps. The bank already announced plans to cut 5 percent of branches in the next two years. Scotiabank's overall productivity ratio is expected to be approximately 50 percent for 2021. 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.
NEUSTADT AN DER AISCH, Germany, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Congratulations from technology partner Heidelberger

Onlineprinters starts the new year with news of success: Having expanded its clientele by 100,000 new customers in 2016, the company welcomed its 600,000th client in January 2017. "Last year, we defended our position as one of the market leaders in the European online printing sector, producing more than 2.1 billion printed products shipped to over 30 countries," says Dr. Michael Fries, CEO of Onlineprinters. Rainer Hundsdorfer, CEO of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, congratulated him on achieving this milestone. The manufacturer of offset printing presses is a long-term technology partner of Onlineprinters. Onlineprinters GmbH is the biggest print shop in Europe to process 3b sheet sizes. In the offset printing department, the company uses only printing presses from Heidelberger for its successful business model. For its in-house digital printing and LFP operations, the provider of online print services relies on technology made by HP and Durst.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/464410/Onlineprinters_600_000th_customer.jpg )



One-stop shopping experience: Around 80 new products

"Having offset printing, digital printing, LFP and processing under one roof allows us to introduce new products and services promptly when our customers want them," Fries emphasises and says that this allows his company to respond easily to market needs and win new customers.

In 2016, Onlineprinters added almost 80 new items to its range of products. "This has taken us another big step closer to our goal of offering a one-stop shopping experience to our customers," CEO Fries explains the corporate strategy. Onlineprinters is the only major European print shop to offer self-adhesive labels on rolls with optional same-day production. Moreover, new formats were introduced for various products. Brochures are now available in the handy 17x24cm pocket format, business cards can now be ordered in 5x5cm square size. Personalisable advertising tools include two ballpoint pen designs, sticky notes in various sizes and shapes with and without die punching. Since December 2016, customers have also been able to purchase exclusive letterpress-printed business cards.

More service for existing products

Also the service was further upgraded. "Labels on rolls are a good example of our ongoing efforts to improve our service. By investing into new technology, we have slashed production times by several days for this product," CEO Fries explains. The trend towards smaller print runs requires an increasing number of printed products to be available more quickly, because they are ordered on shorter notice. Onlineprinters has catered to this trend by expanding the same-day print option to standard folders and folders with matt lamination. This means that the folders are produced on the same day the order is received. Writing pads are another example of shorter delivery times.

Global expansion course is continued

After taking the two new investors Bregal Unternehmerkapital and Project A Ventures on board, the company's 2017 objectives include two-digit sales growth, profitability increase and the addition of new products. Dr. Michael Fries announces: "We will continue to push our international growth efforts. In January, our Czech web shop went online. 2017 will see even more activities to this end. We are already operating web shops in ten languages. We are now realising more than half of our turnover abroad; this trend will become stronger in the next years."

About Onlineprinters

Onlineprinters GmbH is one of Europe's leading online print providers. In line with the motto "Print simply online!" the company sells printed products to 600,000 customers in 30 European countries through its 16 web shops. Internationally, the company is known under the brand name "Onlineprinters"; in Germany it operates under the name "diedruckerei.de". The product range comprises 1,400 printed products from business cards, stationery and flyers to catalogues, brochures and large-format advertising systems. The formula to successfully produce customised prints in terms of Industry 4.0 rests on three pillars: online sales, fully integrated production from ordering to shipping and gang run printing. The latter uses so-called combined forms to collectively produce print jobs, therefore minimising costs and reducing the environmental impact. Selected products allow customers to choose the option of same day printing (produced on the same working day), overnight delivery, climate neutral production and custom size specification. Onlineprinters GmbH employs a staff of 650 and produces over two billion printings per year.

The video "A look behind the scenes of Onlineprinters":

https://youtu.be/1uIQE_QFYIs?list=PLEriQeICU0iuXDVlzuMg8mXs75QhR8tGa

Press contact:

Onlineprinters GmbH

Patrick Piecha

Head of Press & Public Relations

Rudolf-Diesel-Strae 10

91413 Neustadt an der Aisch

Germany

Phone:+49-9161-6209807

+49-174-3077250

press@onlineprinters.com

http://www.onlineprinters.com


BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - At 3:45 am ET Friday, Markit Economics is due to release its services PMI figures for Italy. PMI reports for France and Germany are due at 3:50 am ET and 3:55 am ET, respectively. The manufacturing PMI for the Eurozone is due 4:00 am ET. Ahead of the reports, the euro showed mixed trading against the other major currencies. While the euro rose against teh yen and the Swiss franc, it fell against the pound and the U.S. dollar. As of 3:40 am ET, the euro was trading at 0.8578 against the pound, 1.0685 against the Swiss franc, 1.0748 against the U.S. dollar and 121.68 against the yen. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
LONDON, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Linkfluence, leader of the Social Data Intelligence is accelerating the development of its international partnership programme with an open platform strategy and has announced a cooperation with US player Spredfast, a world leader in the social engagement market.

To view the Multimedia News Release, please click:

http://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8033251-linkfluence-technology-partnership-spredfast

Linkfluence is accelerating the development of its international partnership programme with an open platform strategy. The French company has now joined forces with Spredfast. The aim is to provide Spredfast users with data captured, indexed, analysed and enriched in real time by the Linkfluence technology.

"Linkfluence and Spredfast share strong technological standards and performance, a deep sense of customer service and a DNA where innovation is omnipresent. We are proud to be able to offer our customers access to our technology and innovations within one of the market's best engagement platforms," commented Herve Simonin, CEO of Linkfluence.

By directly activating Radarly from their Spredfast account, users can benefit from sophisticated social data intelligence tools combined with the advanced engagement and social media management tools offered by Spredfast.

Users will find Linkfluence's latest innovations, particularly for listening, analysis and the comprehension of topics of conversation or profiling of influencers and can create as many flows as they wish. This is a new service for users that will enable Social Media Managers to gain in productivity and performance within a single platform.

All this has been made possible by the power of the capture, real-time management and processing of millions of pieces of data obtained by Linkfluence.

"Our commitment to building an ecosystem of strong, global partners has never been stronger. We're dedicated to bringing together technologies that help our customer solve their own unique challenges. This latest partnership furthers our ability to connect our customer with the people they care about the most." - Rod Favaron, CEO of Spredfast.

About Linkfluence:

Linkfluence, the leading Social Data Intelligence company, offers unique solutions for the monitoring, analysis and activation of social media channels. Using its software suite Radarly and associated services, Linkfluence captures and analyses more than 150 million publications a day in order to help brands make better decisions. Founded in 2006, it is a very rapidly growing French company with more than 200 employees across France, Germany, theUnited Kingdom,China and Singapore. Linkfluence has over 300 clients worldwide, including Danone and McDonald's.http://www.linkfluence.com |@linkfluence.

Press contacts:

Pauline Bodin, Head of Communications,Linkfluence: pauline.bodin@linkfluence.com and +33-1-80-40-07-71

Enguerran Cottarel, IDENIUM, Premium Press Office: enguerran@idenium.com and +33-1-56-21-19-93

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/463847/Linkfluence_strategic_technology_partnership_Spredfast.jpg )



Video:

http://www.multivu.com/players/uk/8033251-linkfluence-technology-partnership-spredfast


SHANGHAI, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Reflecting the increasing importance of on-going collaboration between China and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) has signed agreements with five business schools across the CEE. The projects will be overseen by the newly launched Economic Research Institute of Central and Eastern Europe (ERICER). An initiative of CEIBS and the Sino-CEE Fund, ERICER falls under the umbrella of the highly regarded think tank, the CEIBS Lujiazui Institute of International Finance (CLIIF). The ERICER is in line with national-level initiatives, which saw the creation of the China-Central Eastern Europe fund (run by Sino-CEE Financial Holdings Ltd) in 2016.

The collaboration between CEIBS and the five schools will focus on research and teaching activities. Under the agreements, CEIBS will collaborate with:

- Corvinus Business School (CBS), Corvinus University of Budapest, in Hungary

- BMI Baltic Management Institute, in Lithuania

- Kozminski University, in Poland

- The Faculty of Economics Ljubljana University (FELU), in Slovenia and

- The Faculty of Business Administration (FBA) at the University of Economics, Prague, in the Czech Republic.

In late January, deans Zoltayne Paprika Zita and Metka Tekavcic, respectively from CBS and FELU, were in Shanghai to sign their agreements and attend a half-day seminar that sought to lay the groundwork for greater understanding. It included a briefing, by Executive Deputy Director of CLIIF and Counsellor to the People's Bank of China Dr. Sheng Songcheng, on China's current economic situation and outlook in which he provided insight on everything from the country's reform and opening up, the new normal, the latest economic data and a look ahead to the hot issues expected in 2017.

During the seminar, CEIBS Vice President & Co-Dean Professor Zhang Weijiong noted that in comparison with Western Europe, there had been limited information exchange between China and the CEE over the past decade and a half. It was time, he said, to change this. "It is time for us to share information, to work together, understand each other deeply so both our economies, as well as academia, governments, investors and entrepreneurs can work together. This collaboration is a very good framework on which to build," he said.

According to Dean Zita, the agreement with CEIBS is "extremely important" as this is the very first time for CBS' collaboration with a Chinese partner to have a research focus. Like CEIBS, which has been mandated by the municipal government to lead the development of the Shanghai MBA Case Development and Sharing Platform that focuses on management in the Chinese context, CBS is strong in research. Dean Zita anticipates that both schools can collaborate in a number of areas such as foreign direct investment (FDI), tourism, eastern versus western management practices, decision-making, and more. She notes, as well, that the collaboration between CEIBS and CBS is in sync with Hungary's national strategy. "This is fully in line with the initiatives of the Hungarian government. The current Prime Minister has a programme of opening to the East. The Hungarian diplomacy is working on the establishment of a very good cultural, economic and business relationship between the eastern countries, the oriental countries and Hungary," she explained.

Meanwhile, FELU Dean Tekavcic spoke of how collaboration between CEIBS and her university could enhance China's flagship One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project. The CEE is a vital plank in the OBOR, with the term "16+1" coined to refer to China plus the major CEE countries. Dean Tekavcic believes "the role of business education is to build mind-sets, skills and managerial know-how; and to do research, not only with academic rigour but also with business relevance and provide support to policy makers." She added, "Only 10% of China-EU business is between China and the CEE countries, so there is still a lot of room for collaboration between us. In all fields of the economy, there is potential for growth. And culturally, we have to do more to bridge the gaps in fighting against stereotypes. We need to inform our people about the real China." Like her counterpart from CBS, she anticipates collaborating with CEIBS to do research in the areas of FDI and tourism. She also added logistics & transportation, health tourism, event management, project management, global value chains, and more, as other potential research areas.

CEIBS' collaboration with the five business schools is the first major project overseen by the ERICER, which aims to leverage CEIBS' expertise and resources on finance, international economy and trade, carry out continuous studies into the economic, political, historical and cultural areas of Central and Eastern Europe, and generate intellectual support and policy suggestions for cooperation and communication between China and the CEE. The ERICER was launched at the CLIIF on January 23 during a ceremony attended by more than 70 Chinese and international representatives from the political, diplomatic, and academic fields as well as the business sector. Among them were Special Representative for China-CEE Cooperation Affairs of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Huo Yuzhen, who is former Chinese Ambassador to Romania and the Czech Republic; Division Director for EU Affairs of China's Ministry of Commerce, Yu Yuantang; and Chairman of CEFC China Energy Company Limited, Chen Qiutu.

Chairman of China-Central Eastern Europe Financial Holdings Ltd (Sino-CEE fund) Dr Jiang Jianqing, who is the former Chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and current Director of CLIIF, has been appointed Chairman of the Board of ERICER while CEIBS President Professor Li Mingjun has been appointed Vice-Chairman. Board members include: Yang Jiemian, Counsellor of Shanghai Municipal People's Government, who is also President Emeritus of Shanghai Institute of International Studies; Chen Qiutu, Chairman of CEFC China Energy Company Limited; Lv Jianzhong, Chairman of the Tang West Market Group; Executive Deputy Director of CLIIF and Counsellor to the People's Bank of China Dr. Sheng Songcheng; and Chen Jin, President (Europe) of the Sino-CEE fund.

About CEIBS

The China Europe International Business School (CEIBS, www.ceibs.edu) offers a unique combination of China Depth, Global Breadth, taking advantage of its position as a leading business school in Asia to train responsible leaders. CEIBS' vision is to become the most respected international business school by linking East and West in teaching, research, and business practice and by promoting China's social and economic development through high-impact knowledge creation and dissemination. The school's origins as a joint venture between the European Commission and the Chinese government have allowed CEIBS to develop a unique positioning in offering truly world-class business management education with proven China expertise. After 22 years of phenomenal growth CEIBS has an impressive alumni base of more than 19,000 graduates, the majority of whom are top-level decision makers.

CEIBS has campuses in Shanghai, Beijing and Zurich, along with operations in Shenzhen and Accra.
PUNE, India, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "District Cooling Market by Production Technique (Free Cooling, Absorption Cooling, Electric Chillers), Application (Commercial, Residential & Institutional), Region - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The market for district cooling is projected to grow from USD 5.14 Billion in 2016 to USD 9.54 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 13.19% from 2016 to 2021.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 )



Browse 98 market data Tables and 57 Figures spread through 171 Pages and in-depth TOC on"District Cooling Market"



http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/district-cooling-market-27186936.html

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Factors such as high temperature in the region, increased investments in infrastructure projects, and rapid urbanization are driving the market. Rising energy prices, growing environmental concerns, and rising demand for low cost and high-efficiency cooling systems are some of the other factors fueling the demand for district cooling.

The absorption cooling segment to be the fastest growing production technique in the district cooling market

The absorption cooling segment is estimated to be the most widely used production technique for meeting cooling demand as it utilizes waste energy. The absorption cooling segment accounted for the largest share in 2015 and is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period. Absorption cooling is an environment-friendly means of cooling. It helps reduce the use of electrically driven cooling in the energy system and also reduces carbon dioxide emissions.

The commercial segment to account for the largest share of the district cooling market

The commercial segment accounted for the largest market share in 2015, owing to increasing demand for energy efficient cooling technologies for commercial buildings. Concerns over impact on the environment and rising energy prices has made the use of energy-efficient district cooling system a favourable solution for cooling in commercial spaces.

Request for Sample PDF of the Report @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestsample.asp?id=27186936

The Middle East & Africa region to play a key role in the growth of the market for district cooling

On the basis of region, the district cooling market is segmented into the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. The Middle East & Africa is a key market for district cooling. Development in the economies and the investment on infrastructure projects in this region have led to the high growth of this market. Growing affluent population, hot weather, and climate change concerns are some of the factors driving the district cooling market in the region.

Major players operating in the district cooling market are National Central Cooling Company PJSC, Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation, and Emirates District Cooling LLC. These companies are adopting strategies such as expansions, contracts, and acquisitions to strengthen their market position, increase their production capacity, and widen their customer base. For instance, acquisition of Palm Utilities and Palm District Cooling by Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation, the largest acquisition in the district cooling industry.

Make an Inquiry @ http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=27186936

The following companies are the key players in the district cooling market:

Emirates Central Cooling System Corporation (UAE)

National Central Cooling Company PJSC (UAE)

Emirates District Cooling LLC (UAE)

Shinryo Corporation ( Japan )

) ADC Energy Systems LLC (UAE)

Keppel DCHS PTE LTD ( Singapore )

) LOGSTOTR A/S ( Denmark )

) Ramboll Group A/S ( Denmark )

) SIEMENS AG ( Germany )

) Stellar Energy (U.S.)

District Cooling Company LLC (UAE)

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Pretium Resources Inc. (TSX: PVG)(NYSE: PVG) ("Pretivm" or the "Company) is pleased to report the acceleration of commissioning of the Brucejack Mine with dry commissioning now scheduled to commence in March and wet commissioning scheduled to commence in early April. In addition, an updated forecast of the capital cost to complete construction of the Brucejack Mine has been completed. The capital cost, including working capital, is now estimated to be US$811.1 million, an increase of 16% from the February 2016 capital cost estimate.

Commissioning

Construction has advanced ahead of schedule and dry commissioning of the mill is now planned for March with wet commissioning expected in early April. (Commissioning was previously planned for mid-2017.)

Over 110,000 tonnes of ore has been stockpiled on surface and underground in preparation for mill commissioning. Underground development is well advanced with eleven stopes crosscut on two levels in preparation for long-hole drilling and cross cutting of a further four stopes in progress. Long-hole drills are being mobilized, with long-hole drilling expected to commence the second week of March.

Highlights of Capital Cost Forecast

The total project capital cost forecast (the "February 2017 Forecast") to complete construction of the Brucejack Mine, including contingencies, is US$811.1 million, an increase of 16% from the February 2016 capital cost estimate of US$696.8 million. The February 2017 Forecast includes US$68.8 million of working capital for the first three months of production, but does not take into account any revenue generated during this period.

Key areas of capital cost increases from the February 2016 capital cost estimate include: the transmission line (US$37.9 million); costs to accelerate commissioning (US$13.9 million); new scope items (US$21.7 million); construction overages (US$34.1 million); and Indirects/Owner's costs (US$31.4 million).

The updated capital cost forecast to complete construction of the Brucejack Mine, including contingencies, has been prepared on the basis of: 97% committed of the February 2017 Forecast excluding working capital (US$719.7 million of US$742.3 million), substantial completion of engineering; award of all major contracts and purchase orders; substantial completion of civil works; approximately 95% completion of project wide concrete installation; substantial completion of fabrication of structural steel; approximately 60% completion of erection of site-wide structural steel; approximately 75% completion of process tank installation; approximately 15% completion of mechanical and piping installation for the mill building and associated works; approximately 25% completion of electrical and instrumentation installation for the mill building and associated works, completion and energization of the Stewart to Knipple substation transmission line works; and approximately 90% completion of the Knipple substation to Brucejack Mine transmission line.

A summary of capital costs from the February 2017 Forecast in comparison with the February 2016 capital cost estimate is shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Capital Costs Summary Comparison(1)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- February 2017 Forecast February 2016 Estimate (US$ million) (US$ million) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mine underground 90.7 101.4 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mine site(2) 250.4 165.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Offsite Infrastructure(3) 108.8 81.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Direct Costs 449.9 347.7 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Indirect Costs 78.3 97.5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Owner's Costs 209.0 160.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contingency 5.1 35.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Capital Cost 742.3 640.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Working Capital 68.8 56.0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total Construction Cost 811.1 696.8 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) US$0.75:C$1 (2) Includes mine site, mine site process, mine site utilities, mine site facilities, tailings facilities, mine site temporary facilities and surface mobile equipment. (3) Includes transmission line.

Working Capital

With the remaining draw under the US$540 million construction financing and available cash on hand, we have sufficient cash to complete the construction of the Brucejack Mine and are assessing our working capital requirements during the first three months of production.

Project Construction

All major components have been delivered to site and installation and assembly is ongoing. Process tank installation is 75% complete. The shell and heads for the SAG and Ball mills have been installed. Electrical and instrumentation along with other mechanical and piping installation within the mill building is ongoing.

The 330-person camp which includes mine dry, offices, recreation facilities, dining hall and kitchen has been commissioned and is fully operational.

Construction continues on the Valley of the Kings portal building. External structural steel erection is substantially complete. The portal will serve as the primary access point to convey the gold ore from the underground crusher to the mill.

The transmission line construction is nearing completion. As previously reported, all of the towers are in place and the first 42 kilometers of the 57-kilometer transmission line is energized to the Knipple substation. The final 15-kilometer section of the transmission line is 90% complete and expected to be energized this quarter. An additional six 2-megawatt diesel generators are fully commissioned and, combined with our initial 5-megawatts of diesel power, can provide adequate power to maintain full mill and underground production in the event of any grid power interruption.

Underground Development

Underground development remains on schedule and contract mining crews have completed over 10,000 meters of underground development to date. Excavation of the major development infrastructure is now complete. The third and final exhaust vent raise has broken through to surface. Underground work is focused on continued ramp and level development. Construction of underground infrastructure, including the crusher, conveyor, and transfer tower continues.

Updated Project Economic Metrics

An updated summary of the Brucejack economic results by metal price is shown in Table 2 below. Based on the February 2017 Forecast, Project Economics Net Cash Flows and Net Present Values have decreased slightly and Internal Rates of Return and Payback have improved marginally in comparison to the Project Economics from February 2016.

Table 2: Summary of Brucejack Economic Results by Metal Price - February 2017 Update(4,5)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Low Case Base Case High Case ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gold Price (US$/ounce) $800 $1,100 $1,400 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Silver Price (US$/ounce) $10.00 $14.00 $18.00 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net Cash Flow (US$) $2.11 billion $4.22 billion $6.32 billion (pre-tax) (pre-tax) (pre-tax) $1.47 billion $2.82 billion $4.17 billion (post-tax) (post-tax) (post-tax) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Net Present $1.05 billion $2.34 billion $3.62 billion Value(6)(5.0% (pre-tax) (pre-tax) (pre-tax) discount) (US$) $0.69 billion $1.53 billion $2.36 billion (post-tax) (post-tax) (post-tax) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Internal Rate of 19.9% (pre-tax) 34.4% (pre-tax) 47.5%(pre-tax) Return 16.5% (post-tax) 28.5% (post-tax) 39.1% (post-tax) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Payback (from start of 5.0 years (pre- 3.3 years (pre- 2.5 years (pre- production period) tax) tax) tax) 5.2 years (post- 3.5 years (post- 2.7 years (post- tax) tax) tax) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Exchange Rate (US$:C$) 0.75 0.75 0.75 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (4) Includes impact from financing announced Sept 15, 2015. (5) Financing impact assumes repayment of debt facility at maturity, exercise of maximum buyout options for offtake and stream facilities at December 31, 2018. (6) NPV is discounted to December 31, 2015.

Lyle Morgenthaler, B.A.Sc., P.Eng., Chief Mining Engineer, Pretium Resources Inc. is the Qualified Person ("QP") responsible for Brucejack Project development and has reviewed and is responsible for the technical and scientific information in this news release.

About Pretivm

Pretivm is constructing the high-grade underground Brucejack gold mine in northern British Columbia with commercial production targeted for 2017.

(SEDAR filings: Pretium Resources Inc.)

Forward-Looking Statements

This News Release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward looking statements" within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. Statements contained herein that are not based on historical or current fact, including without limitation statements containing the words "anticipates," "believes," "may," "continues," "estimates," "expects," and "will" and words of similar import, constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking information may include, but is not limited to, information with respect to our planned exploration and development activities, the accuracy of our mineral resource estimates; capital and operating cost estimates; production and processing estimates; the results, the adequacy of Pretivm's financial resources, the estimation of mineral reserves and resources including the 2016 Valley of the Kings Mineral Resource estimate and the Brucejack Mineral Reserve estimate, realization of mineral reserve and resource estimates and timing of development of Pretivm's Brucejack Project, costs and timing of future exploration, results of future exploration and drilling, production and processing estimates, capital and operating cost estimates, timelines and similar statements relating to the economic viability of the Brucejack Project, timing and receipt of approvals, consents and permits under applicable legislation, Pretivm's executive compensation approach and practice, and adequacy of financial resources. Wherever possible, words such as "plans", "expects", "projects", "assumes", "budget", "strategy", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "targets" and similar expressions or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative forms of any of these terms and similar expressions, have been used to identify forward-looking statements and information. Statements concerning mineral reserve and resource estimates may also be deemed to constitute forward-looking information to the extent that they involve estimates of the mineralization that will be encountered if the property is developed.

Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking information, including, without limitation, those risks identified in Pretivm's Annual Information Form dated March 28, 2016 filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and in the United States on Form 40-F through EDGAR at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Forward-looking information is based on the expectations and opinions of Pretivm'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. We do not assume any obligation to update forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by applicable law. For the reasons set forth above, prospective investors should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Neither the TSX nor the NYSE has approved or disapproved of the information contained herein.

Contacts:

Pretium Resources Inc.

Joseph Ovsenek

President & CEO

(604) 558-1784 or (877) 558-1784

invest@pretivm.com



Pretium Resources Inc.

Troy Shultz

Manager, Investor Relations & Corporate Communications

(604) 558-1784 or (877) 558-1784

invest@pretivm.com




MANCHESTER, UK, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Barclays hosted a hackathon revolving around its PingIt app and the new Open Banking revolution that is sweeping across UK. The event was held in Cheshire on the 24th and 25th of January 2017. The hackathon was aptly themed New Year New Me, reiterating Barclays' commitment to its customers, and focused on how they will do things differently. The hackathon focused on improving impersonation checks, accessibility & inclusion, and even a surprise hack.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160714/813943 )

UST Global was proud to be associated with the Hackathon and sent a five member team.

Barclays has been fully committed to the recommendations of the Open Banking Working Group (OBWG) since it convened in 2015 at the request of HM Treasury to explore how data could help people to save, borrow, lend and invest their money in better ways. This hackathon is just one of the many programs that Barclays has launched in this regard.

Speaking about the potential of the Barclays hackathon project, Peter Josse Barclays UK Chief Information Officer said: "With more consumers engaging in digital banking, it's vital that the industry works to develop new solutions that streamline the experience and save time in their busy lives. This hackathon will help us to consider how we can use the emerging OBWG services to support our customers and communities"

Referring to the announcement of the hackathon, George Eapen, Chief Product Officer, UST Global said - "We are proud to be associated with Barclays for the NYNM Hackathon. UST Global has been able to successfully tap into innovation at the intersection of banking and retail, be it the retail approach to customer-centricity and customer experience, or the convenience through customer centric omni channels - all of which are the benefits that OBWG is working towards.

We live in a world that is going through a disruptive digital transformation. As one of the fastest growing digital & IT services company in the world, UST Global is at the forefront of innovation and digital disruption. Through our cutting-edge, consumer focused innovation, we deliver real-world solutions that enable our clients to profitably transform their businesses, and the lives of their customers.

Banking & Financial Services and Retail sectors contribute to more than half of our business. We are proud to be the key technology partners for 3 of the world's top 5 retailers and 3 of the top 5 American banks. We are excited to be working on solutions that will keep financial services industry at the forefront of technological innovation and UK as the FinTech capital of the world."

About UST Global

UST Global is a digital technology services company that provides next generation digital solutions for Global 1000 companies. Our mission is to 'Transform Lives' using the power of digital technologies. As we transform lives, we are focused on our customers and their consumers. Our design capabilities bridge the gap between insight and action through our digital levers like mobile, social, analytics, cloud, cyber security, and augmented intelligence. We take innovation to the market with speed and agility; thereby ensuring commercial viability and profitability.

With a business model of 'fewer CLIENTS, more ATTENTION', we strive for excellence in providing our clients with the best service and commitment to long-term client success. Headquartered in Aliso Viejo, California, today we are over 17,000 associates operating in 25 countries across four continents.

For more information please visit http://www.ust-global.com

About Barclays

Barclays is a transatlantic consumer, corporate and investment bank offering products and services across personal, corporate and investment banking, credit cards and wealth management, with a strong presence in our two home markets of the UK and the US.

With over 325 years of history and expertise in banking, Barclays operates in over 40 countries and employs approximately 130,000 people. Barclays moves, lends, invests and protects money for customers and clients worldwide.

For further information about Barclays, please visit our website http://www.home.barclays .



Contact:

Manoj M Mani

Manoj.Mattamana@ust-global.com

+91-9632000553

UST Global


Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Life Insurance in Hungary, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020" report to their offering.

The 'Life Insurance in Hungary Key, Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Hungarian life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Hungarian insurance industry with its regional counterparts.

It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, commissions and expenses, total assets and total investment income during the review period (2011-2015) and forecast period (2015-2020).

The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Hungarian economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.

The report brings together research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.

Summary:

The 'Life Insurance in Hungary, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Hungarian life insurance segment, including:

An overview of the Hungarian life insurance segment

The Hungarian life insurance segment's growth prospects by category

A comprehensive overview of the Hungarian economy and demographics

A comparison of the Hungarian life insurance segment with its regional counterparts

The various distribution channels in the Hungarian life insurance segment

Details of the competitive landscape in the Hungarian life insurance segment

Details of regulatory policy applicable to the Hungarian insurance industry

Key Topics Covered:

1 Key Facts and Highlights

2 Executive Summary

3 Economy and Demographics

4 Segment Outlook

5 Outlook by Category

6 Distribution Channel Outlook

7 Competitive Landscape

8 Governance, Risk and Compliance

9 Databook

10 Definitions and Methodology

11 About

Companies Mentioned

NN Biztosito Zrt

Magyar Posta Eletbiztosito Zrt

Groupama Garancia Biztosito Zrt

Generali-Providencia Biztosito Zrt

Aegon Magyarorszag Altalanos Biztosito Zrt

Allianz Hungaria Biztosito Zrt

Uniqa Biztosito Zartkoruen Mukodo Rt

K&H Biztosito Zrt

Erste Vienna Insurance Group Biztosito Zrt

Cig Pannonia Eletbiztosito Nyrt



For more information about this report visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/jk8bkq/life_insurance_in

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005240/en/

Contacts:

Research and Markets

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Related Topics: Life Insurance
Students will learn about the Sustainable Development Goals through the World's Largest Lesson

HONG KONG, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --UNICEF is challenging students at Nord Anglia Education (NYSE: NORD), the world's leading premium schools organisation, to raise awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to work with their local communities to create solutions for these global issues.

The challenge is part of the World's Largest Lesson, a global initiative aimed at bringing the SDGs to classrooms across the world through lesson plans, videos, comics and creative content. Nord Anglia students will focus on two goals:

Goal 2 - End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture

Goal 3 - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

Nord Anglia students will work directly with their communities to raise awareness of the SDGs while researching and designing practical solutions to build a more sustainable future.

UNICEF has also invited selected students from Nord Anglia schools around the world to present their ideas on the SDGs at an event during the United Nations High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development taking place from 10 to 19 July 2017 at UN Headquarters in New York City. This is a unique opportunity for Nord Anglia students to contribute to the discussion and influence policy at the highest level.

In total, there are 17 goals which were adopted by 193 countries in the UN General Assembly in September 2015. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved by 2030. In order to accomplish these goals, the UN has asked governments, private sector, civil society and citizens to participate.

"We are proud to collaborate with UNICEF and the World's Largest Lesson initiative to enable our students to take a leading role in the global discussion about key issues affecting our world," said Nord Anglia Education CEO Andrew Fitzmaurice. "The High Level Political Forum is central to the success of the Sustainable Development Goals and we are delighted that our students will give a voice to children's views on these key issues. There is no better opportunity for our students to practice diplomacy and leadership than at UN Headquarters with influential policymakers from around the world."

"If the Sustainable Development Goals do not resonate with children and young people around the world in a way that is meaningful and relevant to their own lives and experiences, they will not be achieved. Students are some of the most passionate activists and agents of change on the planet, and it is their passion and determination that will drive all of us towards a more just, equal and sustainable world by 2030," said UNICEF Agenda 2030 Partnerships Manager Shannon O'Shea.

AboutNord Anglia Education, Inc.

Nord Anglia Education(NYSE: NORD)is the world's leading operator of premium international schools, serving students from kindergarten through the end of secondary school (K-12). We teach over 37,000 students at our 43 premium schools inChina,Europe, theMiddle EastandSoutheast AsiaandNorth America.We are driven by one unifying philosophy-- we are ambitious for our students, our people and our family of schools. Our schools deliver a high quality education through a personalized approach enhanced with unique global opportunities to enable every student to succeed. Nord Anglia Educationis headquartered inHong Kong.Our website is www.nordangliaeducation.com.

For further information, please contact:



Sarah Doyle

Head of Brand-Nord Anglia Education

Tel: +852-3951-1144

Email: sarah.doyle@nordanglia.com

Connie Young

Communications Manager-Nord Anglia Education

Tel: +852-3951-1147

Email: connie.young@nordanglia.com
MADRID, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The best businesses from Spain were honoured at an exclusive event last night at the British Ambassador's Residence in Madrid, for The European Business Awards sponsored by RSM.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/464605/European_Business_Awards_Madrid.jpg )

The 34 firms were chosen by a panel of independent judges, including senior businesses and academic leaders, to be 'National Champions' in Europe's largest business competition.

At the event attendees had the chance to speak to leading businesses in their field and hear from guest speakers including Simon Manley, British Ambassador to Spain and Jose M Gasso and David Garcia, partners of RSM Spain.

Simon Manley, British Ambassador, said: "I was delighted to host this event for the European Business Awards. Congratulations to the companies that have been selected to represent Spain as National Champions, they play an important role in creating a stronger business community right across Europe."

Lead sponsor RSM, is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms worldwide, and has supported the European Business Awards since its inception.

Jose M Gasso and David Garcia, partners of RSM Spain said: "We are very impressed by the level of innovation and motivation of the Spanish companies participating this year, and are fully confident that these award winning companies will powerfully represent Spain's business strength in the next phase of the competition."

All the National Champions are also currently taking part in the Public Vote, which opened on 9 January at http://www.businessawardseurope.com. Category winners and the overall winner of the public vote will be announced at the Gala Final in May 2017.

The European Business Awards was set up to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe. This year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries.

Further information about the National Champions and the Awards can be found at http://www.businessawardseurope.com and http://www.rsm.global

About the European Business Awards:

The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe.

For all citizens of Europe, prosperity, social and healthcare systems are reliant on businesses creating an even stronger, more innovative, successful, international and ethical business community - one that forms the beating heart of an increasingly globalised economy.

The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways:

It celebrates and endorses individuals' and organisations' success

It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to

It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues

The European Business Awards is now in its 10th year. This year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries. Last year's public vote generated over 227,000 votes from across Europe. Sponsors and partners include RSM, ELITE and PR Newswire.

http://www.businessawardseurope.com.

About RSM:

RSM is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 760 offices and more than 38,000 people internationally. The network's total fee income is US$4.64 billion.

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base. http://www.rsm.global

About ELITE:

ELITE is a full-service programme designed to share best practice and increase growth opportunities for fast growing companies, with a focus on understanding the capital markets. ELITE is an innovative programme based on exclusive training and a tutorship model, supported by access to the business and financial community. Its aim is to prepare companies for their next stage of growth and investment.

For further information on the programme, companies and the full list of partners, please go to:

http://www.elite-growth.com

About PR Newswire:

PR Newswire is the leading global provider of PR and corporate communications tools that enable clients to distribute news and rich content. We distribute our client's content across traditional, digital and social media channels in real time with fully actionable reporting and monitoring.

Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimisation network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in Europe, Middle East, Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region.

For more information on PR Newswire please visit http://www.prnewswire.co.uk
SHANGHAI, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With a prime focus on "providing comprehensive solutions for the building and decorationindustry", The International Building & Construction Trade Fair 2017 ("CBD-IBCTF (Shanghai)") will return to the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai) from March 22 to 25, 2017 and is expected to receive more than 30,000 visitors.

Photo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/464594/CBD_IBCTF_Shanghai_Returns.jpg

CBD-IBCTF (Shanghai) 2017will be exhibiting products and solutions for the entire home building materials industry chain, crafting a comprehensive system for premium whole-home furnishing customization with environmental-friendly materials.

The fair will feature Custom Home Furnishing, Aluminum Doors & Windows, Doors & Windows Systems and Wall Decorations, demonstrating products from the emerging fields of Suspended Ceiling/Wall Integration, Wooden Doors and Whole-wood Decoration, Staircases, Smart Homes and Smart Clothes Racks.

Custom Home Furnishing

The integrated exhibition area for custom furnishing will gather top companies in custom furniture, wooden door/whole-wood furnishing and suspended ceiling/wall integration, including Suofeiya, Holike, Healthcare Co., Ltd, MTMT, Cimen, Youpon, Mellkit and Aupu.

Home Furnishing System

Renowned companies such as Technoform Bautec, Paiya, Phonpa and Hennissy will bring their latest products to showcase, includingwhole-house door and window solutions.

Smart Home

A leader in the field of smart homes, Ming-men will bring its latest noiseless door locks, smart locks and whole-house hardware product sets to the fair.

Environmental-friendly Materials

Leading international companies specializing in environmentally-friendly building materials including diatom ooze, art paint, integrated walls and fabrics will also present their newest products at the fair.

Mr. Li, president of the organizing committee, noted that the upcoming Shanghai fair will continue to build from CBD Fair (Guangzhou) to expand the premium custom whole-home remodeling platform for industrial members.

"With 20 years of experience and integrated resources, we strive to build the latest and most comprehensive platform for exhibition, communication and exchange," Li said. "This year's fair will also host almost 40 conferences and discussions on topics of architecture and interior design,smart homes and tradematching to better connect the exhibitors and visitors."

For more information, please visit: http://shfair-cbd.no4e.com/index.php?l=en

About CBD-IBCTF (Shanghai)

CBD-IBCTF (Shanghai) is hosted by the China Foreign Trade Guangzhou Exhibition General Corp. and the Worldwide Exhibition Service Co., Ltd. The Fair debuted in 2015 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in (Shanghai) and has attracted 60,000 exhibitors and buyers from around the world.
REDWOOD CITY, California, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Envestnet | Yodlee (NYSE: ENV) and Plaid Technologies, Inc. ("Plaid") are pleased to announce today that they have resolved the patent case brought by Envestnet | Yodlee in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, the counterclaims brought by Plaid in the District Court, and the inter partes and Covered Business Method review petitions brought by Plaid before the Patent Office.

As part of the agreement, Plaid will license Envestnet | Yodlee's worldwide patent portfolio, which currently numbers 78 issued patents.

"We are pleased to have reached an amicable outcome. The agreement will provide value to both parties as well as the financial technology ecosystem," said Zach Perret, CEO, Plaid.

"Our patent portfolio is the result of over 17 years of development and innovation, and this important settlement underscores the value of patents which have become a technological cornerstone within our industry," said Anil Arora, CEO, Envestnet | Yodlee.

About Envestnet

Envestnet, Inc. (NYSE: ENV) is a leading provider of intelligent systems for wealth management and financial wellness. Envestnet's unified technology enhances advisor productivity and strengthens the wealth management process, delivering unparalleled flexibility, accuracy, performance, and value.

Envestnet enables a transparent, independent, objective, and fiduciary standard of care, and empowers enterprises and advisors to more fully understand their clients and deliver better outcomes. Envestnet solutions enhance knowledge of the client, accelerate client on-boarding, improve client digital experiences, and help drive better outcomes for enterprises, advisors, and their clients.

Information provided should not be construed as legal or regulatory advice or guidance. For more information on Envestnet, please visit www.envestnet.com and follow @ENVintel .

About Plaid

Plaid is a technology company headquartered in San Francisco, California. Established in 2012, Plaid builds the software infrastructure that powers the financial technology ecosystem and is focused on democratizing financial services through technology. Plaid's suite of APIs has helped to shape the future of financial services by connecting consumers, their bank accounts, and third-party applications. Thousands of developers and businesses use Plaid to enable core functionalities that benefit tens of millions of people. For more information, visit www.plaid.com.

Logo - http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/460346/Envestnet_Logo.jpg

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/plaid-and-envestnet--yodlee-settle-patent-case-and-counterclaims-300401809.html
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Immunovaccine Inc. ("Immunovaccine" or the "Company") (TSX: IMV)(OTCQX: IMMVF), a clinical stage vaccine and immunotherapy company, today announced Pierre Labbe, CPA, CA, ICD, will join the Company as Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective February 20, 2017. In this role, Mr. Labbe will be responsible for leading the company's financial strategy and operations, with an emphasis on expanding financing and business development operations as the Company continues to advance its clinical program and expand its pipeline.

"We are entering a transformative period of growth at Immunovaccine, and are very pleased to have a financial veteran with Pierre's experience on our leadership team," said Frederic Ors, Immunovaccine's Chief Executive Officer. "His track record includes an ideal combination of financial, operational and strategic leadership, and a proven ability to identify growth opportunities in both life sciences and technology companies. He will be a great fit to lead our financial operations as we continue to advance our immuno-oncology product candidates through the clinic, and expand the applications of our DepoVax enabling technology on a global scale."

Mr. Labbe brings to Immunovaccine more than 15 years of experience in the role of chief financial officer, having served in that capacity with, among others, Medicago Inc. and Leddartech Inc. He was an integral part of the team that negotiated the acquisition of Medicago by Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma in 2013 for an enterprise value of $357 million Canadian dollars. He has also been responsible for numerous rounds of private and public financing, initial public offerings preparation and execution, and establishment of key strategic alliances.

"I am very pleased to join Immunovaccine as the Company moves in a forward trajectory," said Mr. Labbe. "I am excited about the opportunity to work with Fred and his team to bolster the financial and investor base as we continue the important work of improving treatment options for the many unmet medical needs in today's medical landscape."

Mr. Labbe currently serves on the Boards of Directors of several publicly traded, Canadian-based companies. He earned his Bachelor's degree from Universite Laval, and holds CA and ICD designations.

About Immunovaccine

Immunovaccine Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company dedicated to making immunotherapy more effective, more broadly applicable, and more widely available to people facing cancer and infectious diseases. Immunovaccine develops cancer immunotherapies and infectious disease vaccines based on the Company's DepoVax platform, a patented delivery agent that provides controlled and prolonged exposure of antigens and adjuvant to the immune system. Immunovaccine has advanced two T cell activation therapies for cancer through Phase 1 human clinical trials and is currently conducting a Phase 1/1b study with Incyte Corporation assessing lead cancer therapy, DPX-Survivac, as a combination therapy in ovarian cancer, as well as a Phase 2 study in recurrent lymphoma. The Company is also advancing an infectious disease pipeline including innovative vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and currently has clinical projects ongoing to assess the potential of DepoVax to address malaria and the Zika virus. Connect at www.imvaccine.com.

Immunovaccine Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information under applicable securities law. All information that addresses activities or developments that we expect to occur in the future is forward-looking information. Forward-looking statements are based on the estimates and opinions of management on the date the statements are made. However, they should not be regarded as a representation that any of the plans will be achieved. Actual results may differ materially from those set forth in this press release due to risks affecting the Company, including access to capital, the successful completion of clinical trials and receipt of all regulatory approvals. Immunovaccine Inc. assumes no responsibility to update forward-looking statements in this press release except as required by law.

Contacts:

Media

Sam Brown Inc.

Mike Beyer

(312) 961-2502

mikebeyer@sambrown.com



Investor Relations

Immunovaccine Inc.

Frederic Ors

Chief Executive Officer

(902) 492-1819

info@imvaccine.com




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Canadian Metals Inc. (the "Corporation" or "Canadian Metals") (CSE: CME)(CSE: CME.CN) has closed the first tranche of a non-brokered private placement with accredited investors, as well as with directors of Canadian Metals, by issuing 2,369,998 units at a price of $0.15 per unit, for total gross proceeds to Canadian Metals of $355,500. Each unit consists of one common share and one common share purchase warrant. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one additional common share of the corporation at a price of $0.20 for a period of 12 months from the closing date of the private placement.

The Company confirms that INNOVATION ET DEVELOPPEMENT MANICOUAGAN (IDM) has participated in this private placement for $340,000 through its development fund. The Company is pleased to welcome IDM as an important shareholder. IDM has demonstrated a clear support to the project from the local community and the Company and IDM will work together to develop and build the next silicon alloys producer, locate in Baie Comeau, to serve the world market.

Securities issued under the private placement will be subject to a four-month hold period ending March 4, 2017.

The proceeds of the placements shall be used for development work and for working capital, subject to regulatory and Canadian Securities Exchange final approval.

The insiders' participation is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements provided under Regulation 61-101 respecting protection of minority securityholders in special transactions, in accordance with sections 5.5(a) and 5.7(1)(a) of Regulation 61-101. The exemption is based on the fact that neither the fair market value of the private placement nor the consideration paid by such insiders exceeds 25 per cent of the market capitalization of the corporation. The corporation did not file a material change report at least 21 days prior to the completion of the private placement since the insiders' participation was not determined at that moment.

Following the first closing of the private placement, there are currently 44,810,080 common shares of Canadian Metals issued and outstanding.

About Canadian Metals

Canadian Metals is focused on the development of its Langis project, a high-purity silica deposit located in the province of Quebec. The Company is rapidly positioning itself as a supplier of high purity silica and silicon alloy in North America. Silicon based materials can be formulated to provide a broad range of products from more durable, faster building materials with smarter electronic devices, solar panels and more efficient wind turbines. We expect to become a global supplier for a number of industries and applications but without limitation: glass, ceramics, lighting, oil and gas, paint, plastic and rubber. We also want to become an integrated supplier to metallurgical industries including foundries, and participate in a wide range of civil, industrial, environmental and related applications. These target markets are an integral part of the lives of millions of people every day.

Cautionary Statements Regarding Forward Looking Information

Certain statements included herein may constitute "forward-looking statements". All statements included in this press release that address future events, conditions or results, including in connection with the pre-feasibility study, its financing, the hybrid flex project, job creation, the investments to complete the project and the potential performance, production and environmental footprint of the silicon plant, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may", "must", "plan", "believe", "expect", "estimate", "think", "continue", "should", "will", "could", "intend", "anticipate" or "future" or the negative forms thereof or similar variations. These forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by management in light of their experiences and their perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors they believe are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including those mentioned in the Corporation's continuous disclosure documents, which can be found under its profile on SEDAR (www.sedar.com). Many of such risks and uncertainties are outside the control of the Corporation and could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In making such forward-looking statements, management has relied upon a number of material factors and assumptions, on the basis of currently available information, for which there is no insurance that such information will prove accurate. All forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements set forth above. The Corporation is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable law.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Hubert Vallee

President and CEO

hvallee@canadianmetalsinc.com

www.canadianmetalsinc.com



Stephane Leblanc

Chief Investment Officer

sleblanc@canadianmetalsinc.com

www.canadianmetalsinc.com




TORONTO, ON -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Easton Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (OTC PINK: EAPH) announces after having received initial payment towards product purchase order from pharmaceutical multi-national Gedeon Richter's Plc subsidiary - Gedeon Richter Mexico S.A.P.I. de C.V., the first shipment of "Gynofit" bacterial vaginosis treatment has been shipped and received in Mexico in preparation of its product launch in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for February 16th.

Gedeon Richter will be showcasing the products as it launches its marketing and sales program with a steadily increasing marketing budget over the next 3 years. Easton / BMV will provide sales figures and projections sometime in the next quarter.

"Gynofit" is a natural product treatment for women diagnosed with BV (Bacterial Vaginosis), a condition that affects nearly all women at some point in their lives and is one of the most common reasons for gynecological visits by women. In addition, Gynofit will be promoted for help in maintenance of a healthy vaginal flora. As previously announced, the agreement with Gedeon Richter Mexico S.A.P.I de C.V. provides for annual minimums in return for granting exclusivity. Gedeon Richter Plc and Gedeon Richter Mexico S.A.P.I. de C.V. has committed to a strong marketing plan for Gynofit and its success, which Easton / BMV and Gedeon Richter believe will steadily drive sales in Mexico over the next three years and beyond.

Other News

Easton Pharmaceuticals continues to move forward with its due diligence for the acquisition of revenue generating iBliss Inc., as previously announced and expects to have the transaction completed sometime in the month of February once all terms of the agreement have been agreed to and finalized.

Easton is also confirming that it has entered into negotiations towards acquiring a second revenue generating company possessing strong international sales which could coincide with the closing of iBliss and BMV Medica S.A.

Easton is also in late stage negotiations towards 2 (two) agreements with two 2 (two) medical marijuana companies, one in Jamaica and the other in the US, both expecting to potentially add significant and near term sales to Easton. Updates are expected this month or as they materialize.

Easton also confirms that late stage negotiations are continuing towards Eastons / BMV Medica's other licensed products (VS-Sense, AL-Sense). Detailed updates expected very shortly

For More Detailed Information On iBliss Visit: https://iblissvapor.com

For More Detailed Information on Gedeon Richter Plc Visit:

http://www.richter.hu/en-US/Pages/default.aspx

About Easton Pharmaceuticals

Easton Pharmaceuticals is a diversified specialty pharmaceutical company involved in various pharmaceutical sectors and other growing industries. The Company previously developed and owned an FDA-approved wound-healing drug and currently owns topically delivered drugs to treat cancer and other therapeutic products to treat various conditions that are all in various stages of development and approval. Easton has partnered with BMV Medica SA de C.V. and together, own the exclusive distribution rights in Mexico and Latin America for patented women's diagnostic and preventative care products from CommonSense of Israel, along with two generic cancer drugs, Paclitaxel and Docetaxel from BioLyse Pharma of St. Catherine's Ontario, Canada.

For More Information Visit:

http://www.eastonpharmaceuticalsinc.com

http://www.bmvmedica.net

http://ecigmarkets.com

http://finance.yahoo.com/q's=eaph

https://twitter.com/eastonpharma

Safe Harbor

This news release may contain forward-looking statements or expressions within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (The "Act"). In particular, when certain words or phrases such as "hope", "positive", "anticipate," "pleased," "plan," "confident that," "believe," "expect," "possible" or "intent to" and similar conditional expressions are expressed, they are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Act and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Act. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any of the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, market conditions, general acceptance of the company's products and technologies, competitive factors, the ability to successfully complete additional or adequate financing, government approvals or changes to proposed laws and other risks and uncertainties further stated in the company's financial reports and filings.

Contact Information

Evan Karras

CEO

Tel: +1(416) 619-0291

Tel: +1(347) 284-0192

Email: info@eastonpharmaceuticalsinc.com




TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Great Lakes Graphite Inc. ("GLK" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: GLK)(OTC PINK: GLKIF)(FRANKFURT: 8GL) announces today that the Company has received a purchase order for 400 kilograms of micronized natural flake graphite from a large corporation headquartered in Western Europe with two production facilities in North America and a third production facility in the Middle East. The customer was provided with an initial sample of two kilograms of material for qualification testing and is now purchasing a larger quantity to conduct production-scale qualification tests.

The customer manufactures foams and chemicals that are used in a number of industries to make a wide range of products that include range from a wood substitute used in signage to cryogenic applications used in natural gas production processes. In this particular case, the customer is targeting improved performance for a particular set of products, which has been achieved by adding graphite.

Great Lakes Graphite Chief Executive Officer Paul Gorman said, "We are excited to be working with this customer for a number of reasons. The customer represents new markets for us, both geographically and also in terms of the targeted application set. We have been enjoying strong early success with our synthetic graphite products and are now gearing up marketing efforts for our natural flake graphite products. We are continuing to work through our partners to manage the production of these initial orders and are able to do so until such time as we are prepared to initiate and transition manufacturing operations to the Matheson facility."

Mike Coscia, GLK's Sr. Vice President of Sales said, "Product qualifications typically take several months. In this case we sent initial samples just before Christmas and the customer was able to put the material through their initial qualification protocol very quickly. Our sampling program is proving to be an effective means of attracting prospects and serves as an excellent entry point for beginning the conversion process of turning leads into customers."

Additional Purchase Orders Received From US Industrial

Great Lakes Graphite is pleased to announce that it has received an additional two purchase orders for a combined forty tons of synthetic graphite products from the large US-based industrial company who has purchased over four hundred and fifty tons of graphite from the Company to date.

Corporate Update - Board Chairman Appointed

The Company also wishes to announce that the Board of Directors has appointed Richard Lane as Chairman of the Board of Directors, effective immediately.

About Great Lakes Graphite: Great Lakes Graphite is an industrial minerals processing company working to supply customers with innovative, high quality value-added carbon products.

There is no significant graphite production in North America now. As pricing and demand continue to rise, Great Lakes Graphite is one of the first new domestic suppliers to a growing regional customer base. We continually work to ensure our products are of the very best quality and consistency and accompanied with outstanding customer service.

The Company is party to an agreement for shared use of a portion of an industrial facility located in Matheson, Ontario owned by Northfil Resources Limited, as well as for supply of high quality natural graphite concentrate (see news release dated 03/23/15), which have positioned Great Lakes Graphite to become an emerging domestic manufacturer and supplier of micronized products to a growing regional customer base where pricing and demand continue to rise.

Further information regarding Great Lakes can be found on the Company's website at: www.GreatLakesGraphite.com.

Great Lakes Graphite trades with symbol GLK on the TSX Venture Exchange and currently has 123,444,330 shares outstanding.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Caution Regarding Forward Looking Information: Certain statements in this press release may constitute "forward looking information" which involves known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward looking information. When used in this press release, such forward looking information may use such words as "may', "will', "expect', "believe', "plan' and other similar terminology. Forward looking information is provided for the purpose of presenting information about management's current expectations relating to the future events and the operating performance of the Company, and readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. The forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the ability of the Company to fulfill the orders and future orders, regulatory requirements, general economic, market or business conditions and future developments in the sectors of the economy in which the business of Great Lakes operates. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. Please see the Company's financial statements, MD&A and other documents available on www.sedar.com, for a more detailed description of the risk factors. The Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward looking information, whether a result of new information, future results or otherwise, except as required by law.

Contacts:

Paul Ferguson

Chief Marketing Officer

PFerguson@GreatLakesGraphite.com

1-800-754-4510 x106



Paul Gorman

Chief Executive Officer

PGorman@GreatLakesGraphite.com

1-800-754-4510 x109




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump has promised to 'totally destroy' the Johnson Amendment which deprives pastors who endorse candidates of their tax-exempt status. Under the 1954 legislation named after Lyndon Johnson, churches, charities and other non-profit organizations are prohibited from taking a position with respect to political candidates, and participating in any political campaign. Those who violate the rule will not be eligible for tax-exemption. Speaking at National Prayer Breakfast in Washington Hilton Thursday, the President said he will get rid of, and totally destroy, the Johnson Amendment and 'allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.' Trump doesn't have the power to abolish the amendment, which would require action by Congress. Trump, who received support from evangelical Christians for his White House win, declared that religious freedom is under threat in the United States. He vowed that his administration will do everything in its power to defend and protect religious liberty in the US. 'America must forever remain a tolerant society where all faiths are respected, and where all of our citizens can feel safe and secure,' he added. On a different note, Trump reminded that the world is under serious threat in so many different ways. 'We're going to straighten it out. When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. It's time we're going to be a little tough, folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen anymore,' he told the prayer meeting. 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) - The Labor Department releases U.S. non-farm payrolls data for January at 8:30 am ET Friday. The economy is expected to add 175,000 job jobs in January, following a gain of 156,000 jobs in December. The unemployment rate is expected to remain unchanged at 4.7 percent in January. Ahead of the data, the U.S. dollar rose against its most major counterparts. As of 8:25 am ET, the U.S. dollar was trading at 1.0735 against the euro, 1.2474 against the pound, 0.9966 against the Swiss franc and 113.16 against the yen. 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 YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Clean Power Concepts Inc (OTC PINK: CPOW ) CEO Michael Shenher announced that the company has entered in an agreement with a consultant to assist him in pursuing a forward acquisition of a private company in the medical marijuana and or hemp field.

The Company already has taken steps to enhance its public disclosure on OTC Markets by attempting to go from a limited information sign to back to current in its filing obligations. Corporately, Clean Power Concepts Inc. is in the process of amending its Articles of Incorporation and Corporate Bylaws to create a series of Anti-Dilutive, Convertible Preferred Shares. The Company believes these securities would be attractive as currency to acquire these kinds of opportunities because the evaluation is not based on market conditions.

Clean Power Concepts Inc. CEO said, "We were in previous talks and were working to consummate a deal with a Company in the medical marijuana business, but we just couldn't come to terms due to several factors, one of which was the common stock we were going to issue. Now with the Preferred Stock we can do a deal which makes sense for all parties."

He further stated, "We have a team of very qualified professionals & consultants who have just started having preliminary talks with medical marijuana and hemp companies, and we think the conditions are much better to consummate a deal with the right candidate. The Company will update its stockholders as soon as its warranted, in the meantime building equity and value and anticipating growth in emerging sectors are what has driven us to this decision."

Safe Harbor Statement: This release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E and or 27E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements as to the future performance of the company and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward-looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to raise necessary financing, retention of key personnel, timely delivery of inventory from the company's contract manufacturers, timely product development, product acceptance, and the impact of competitive services and products, in addition to general economic risks and uncertainties.

Contact:

Michael Shenher

michael.shenher@gmail.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- eShippers Management Ltd. ("eShippers" or the "Company") (NEX: EPX.H) announces that further to its press release dated February 1, 2017, it has received approval from the NEX for the 10:1 consolidation of its common shares (the "Consolidation"). The Consolidation will be effective as of Monday, February 6, 2017.

No fractional common shares will be issued, and no cash will be paid in lieu of fractional post-Consolidation common shares. Any resulting fractional share entitlement remaining after conversion that is less than one-half of a common share will be cancelled and each fractional common share that is at least one half of a common share will be changed to one whole common share.

Reader Advisory

Neither the NEX nor the Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

ESHIPPERS MANAGEMENT LTD.

Leo Berezan

(604) 882?5995

leoberezan@qualitymanagement.net




MOSCOW (dpa-AFX) - The new U.S. President warned that he doesn't rule out a military attack targeting Iran. Donald Trump's comment on Iran was before the meeting with Harley-Davidson Executives and Union Representatives at the White House Thursday. To a question, if a military action is off the table in Iran, he replied: Nothing is off the table. It comes a day after the United States put Iran 'on notice' for test-firing a ballistic missile and carrying out a deadly attack on a Saudi warship in the Red Sea. It consolidates a change of course by the new U.S. administration towards Tehran after an improvement in ties achieved by the Obama Government. And in a fresh tweet Friday, Trump followed up with another anti-Tehran rhetoric: 'Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!' Answering another question at the White House Thursday, Trump refuted reports that his government has eased sanctions against Russia. The question was raised by a reporter in an apparent reference to the Treasury Department statement that it has amended the previous government's recent sanctions to allow U.S. technology companies to export products to Russia. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - February 03, 2017) - Sarama Resources Ltd. (the "Company" or "Sarama") advises that pursuant to the Earn-In Agreement (the "Agreement") between Sarama and Acacia Mining plc ("Acacia") in respect of the South Hounde Project (the "Project") in Burkina Faso (refer News Release November 27, 2014), Acacia has achieved the minimum required expenditure of USD 7 million and met all conditions required to attain a 50% equity interest in the Project.

Under the terms of the Agreement, Acacia was required to sole-fund Project exploration and related expenditures of USD 7 million for the initial 2 years of the earn-in period in order to attain a 50% equity interest in the Project. Acacia has the option to sole-fund a further USD 7 million exploration and related expenditures through years 3 and 4 of the earn-in period to attain an additional 20% equity interest in the Project. If earn-in milestones are achieved within the required time-frames, Acacia then has the right to acquire an additional 5% interest by declaring a minimum mineral reserve of 1.6 million ounces of gold for the Project.

Acacia continues to see potential and has advised that it intends to continue funding exploration as per the terms of the Agreement and has approved an exploration budget of USD 4 million for the Project in 2017. Acacia's aim is to increase the current inferred mineral resource of 2.1Moz Au 1,2 by targeting depth extensions to high-grade shoots and discovery of other structurally-controlled mineralisation within the mineral resource area as well as satellite deposits in regional areas of the Project. Acacia's proposed exploration program includes 12,000 metres of diamond core, 10,000 metres of reverse circulation and 28,000 metres of aircore drilling.

Pursuant to the Agreement, Acacia has elected to take over management of the Project which will allow Sarama's team to focus exploration efforts on its 100% owned Bondi deposit (historical estimate of 282koz Au measured and indicated, and 150koz Au inferred) 5,6 and Koumandara Project, both of which overlie prospective greenstone terrane within the Hounde and Banforo Belts respectively.

Sarama's President and CEO, Andrew Dinning commented:

"We are pleased that following two years and USD 7 million in expenditure, Acacia still sees the potential to commit to significantly more work and is focused on further developing the high-grade and regional picture. Acacia taking over day-to-day management of the Project also frees up Sarama's team to focus on the newly acquired Bondi Deposit and our other regional projects."

ABOUT SARAMA RESOURCES LTD

Sarama Resources Ltd (TSX VENTURE: SWA) is a West African focused gold explorer with substantial landholdings in Burkina Faso. Sarama is focused on consolidating under-explored landholdings in Burkina Faso and other established mining jurisdictions.

Sarama's flagship properties are situated within the Company's South Hounde Project area in south-west Burkina Faso. Located within the prolific Hounde Greenstone Belt, Sarama's exploration programs have built on significant early success to deliver an inferred mineral resource estimate of 2.1 Moz gold 1,2 . Acacia Mining plc is earning up to a 70% interest in the South Hounde Project by satisfying certain conditions, including funding earn-in expenditures of up to US$14 million, over a 4-year earn-in period and may acquire an additional 5% interest, for an aggregate 75% interest in the Project, upon declaration of a minimum mineral reserve of 1.6 million ounces of gold.

Sarama holds a 31% participating interest in the Karankasso Project Joint Venture ("JV") 7 which is situated adjacent to the Company's South Hounde Project in Burkina Faso and is a JV between Sarama and Savary Gold Corp. ("Savary"). Savary is the operator of the JV and in October 2015, declared a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate of 671,000 ounces of contained gold 3,4 at the Karankasso Project JV.

Sarama has also agreed to acquire a 100% interest in the Bondi Deposit from Orezone Gold Corporation (refer news release May 24, 2016). Bondi has a historical estimate of mineral resources of 0.3Moz Au (measured and indicated) and 0.1Moz Au (inferred) 5,6 .

Together, the South Hounde Project, Bondi Deposit and the Karankasso Project form a cluster of advanced gold deposits, within trucking distance of one another, which potentially offers a development option for a multi-source fed central processing facility in the southern Hounde Belt region of Burkina Faso.

Incorporated in 2010, the Company's Board and management team have a proven track record in Africa and a strong history in the discovery and development of large-scale gold deposits. Sarama is well positioned to build on its current success with a sound exploration strategy across its property portfolio.

43.0 Mt @ 1.5 g/t Au (reported above cut-off grades ranging 0.3-2.2 g/t Au, reflecting the mining methods and processing flowsheets assumed to assess the likelihood of the inferred mineral resources having reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction)

The effective date of the Company's inferred mineral resource estimate is February 4, 2016. For further information regarding the mineral resource estimate please refer to the technical report titled "NI 43-101 Independent Technical Report South Hounde Project Update, Bougouriba and Ioba Provinces, Burkina Faso", dated March 31, 2016. The technical report is available under Sarama Resources Ltd.'s profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

9.2 Mt @ 2.3 g/t Au (at a 0.5 g/t Au cut-off)

The effective date of the Karankasso Project JV mineral resource estimate is October 7, 2015. For further information regarding the mineral resource estimate please refer to the technical report titled "Technical Report and Resource Estimate on the Karankasso Project, Burkina Faso", dated October 7, 2015. The technical report is available under Savary Gold Corp's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Sarama has not independently verified Savary's mineral resource estimate and takes no responsibility for its accuracy.

4.1Mt @ 2.1g/t Au for 282,000 oz Au (measured and indicated) and 2.5Mt @ 1.8g/t Au for 149,700 oz Au (inferred), reported at a 0.5 g/t Au cut-off

The effective date of the historical estimate of the Bondi Deposit mineral resource estimate is February 20, 2009. For further information regarding the mineral resource estimate please refer to the technical report titled "Technical Report on the Mineral Resource of the Bondigui Gold Project", dated February 20, 2009. The technical report is available under Orezone Gold Corporation's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current mineral resources and Sarama is not treating the historical estimate as a current mineral resource.

Sarama has 31% and Savary Gold has 69% ownership interests

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Information in this news release that is not a statement of historical fact constitutes forward-looking information. Such forward-looking information includes statements regarding the use of proceeds from the private placement, for drilling and geochemical and geophysical surveys at the South Hounde Project, the Earn-In Agreement with Acacia, including the amounts that may be spent on exploration and interests in the South Hounde Project that may be earned by Acacia upon making certain expenditures and estimating a minimum reserve, the potential to expand the present oxide component of the Company's existing estimated mineral resources, future exploration plans and the potential development of the Bondi, Karankasso and South Hounde Projects on a combined basis. Actual results, performance or achievements of the Company may vary from the results suggested by such forward-looking statements due to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors. Such factors include, among others, that the business of exploration for gold and other precious minerals involves a high degree of risk and is highly speculative in nature; Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves, they do not have demonstrated economic viability, and there is no certainty that they can be upgraded to Mineral Reserves through continued exploration; few properties that are explored are ultimately developed into producing mines; geological factors; the actual results of current and future exploration; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be evaluated, as well as those factors disclosed in the Company's publicly filed documents. There can be no assurance that any mineralisation that is discovered will be proven to be economic, or that future required regulatory licensing or approvals will be obtained. However, the Company believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in the forward-looking information are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things, Acacia's continued funding of exploration activities, the Company's ability to carry on its exploration activities, the sufficiency of funding, the timely receipt of required approvals, the price of gold and other precious metals, that the Company will not be affected by adverse political events, the ability of the Company to operate in a safe, efficient and effective manner and the ability of the Company to obtain further financing as and when required and on reasonable terms. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

Sarama does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except as required by applicable laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

QUALIFIED PERSONS' STATEMENT

Scientific or technical information in this news release that relates to the preparation of the Company's mineral resource estimate is based on information compiled or approved by Adrian Shepherd. Adrian Shepherd is an employee of Cube Consulting Pty Ltd and is considered to be independent of Sarama Resources Ltd. Adrian Shepherd is a Chartered Professional Member in good standing of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the commodity, style of mineralisation under consideration and activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. Adrian Shepherd consents to the inclusion in this news release of the information, in the form and context in which it appears.

Scientific or technical information in this news release that relates to the preparation of the Karankasso Project's mineral resource estimate is based on information compiled or approved by Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa. Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa are employees of P&E Mining Consultants Inc. and are considered to be independent of Savary Gold Corp. and Sarama Resources Ltd. Antoine Yassa is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec and Eugene Puritch is a member in good standing of Professional Engineers Ontario. Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa have sufficient experience which is relevant to the commodity, style of mineralisation under consideration and activity which they are undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. Eugene Puritch and Antoine Yassa consent to the inclusion in this news release of the information, in the form and context in which it appears. Sarama has not independently verified Savary's mineral resource estimate and takes no responsibility for its accuracy.

Scientific or technical information in this news release, in respect of the Bondi Deposit relating to mineral resource and exploration information drawn from the Technical Report prepared for Orezone on that deposit has been approved by Guy Scherrer. Guy Scherrer is an employee of Sarama Resources Ltd and is a member in good standing of the Ordre des Geologues du Quebec and has sufficient experience which is relevant to the commodity, style of mineralisation under consideration and activity which he is undertaking to qualify as a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. Guy Scherrer consents to the inclusion in this report of the information, in the form and context in which it appears.

For further information on the Company's activities, please contact:

Andrew Dinning or Paul Schmiede



e: info@saramaresources.com

t: +61 (0) 8 9363 7600
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.
A.M. Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of B++ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "bbb+" of Qatar Islamic Insurance Company Q.S.C. (QIIC) (Qatar). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) is stable.

The ratings reflect QIIC's track record of excellent operating performance, adequate combined risk-adjusted capitalisation (considering both shareholders' and policyholders' funds), and niche business profile as a successful takaful provider in the Qatar insurance market. Offsetting rating factors include limited enterprise risk management and a high concentration of illiquid assets within its investment portfolio.

QIIC adopts a combined takaful model, whereby the shareholders' fund charges the policyholders' fund a Wakala fee based on gross written premiums and a Muderaba fee based on investment income. QIIC's ability to accumulate surpluses within the policyholders' fund whilst regularly distributing surplus back to policyholders supports the sustainability of the takaful model.

The company's combined risk-adjusted capitalisation remains adequate. While the company benefits from moderate underwriting leverage, capital requirements are largely driven by asset risk relating to the company's concentrated portfolio, which is weighted towards domestic equities and real estate assets. The policyholders' fund is sufficiently capitalised on a standalone basis, supported by QAR 110 million (USD 30 million) of retained surplus as at 30 September 2016.

QIIC has a track record of strong operating and technical profitability, highlighted by a five-year average combined ratio of 80%. During the first nine months of 2016, the company generated a net profit of QAR 50 million (USD 14 million). There has generally been a good balance of earnings between technical and investment income. Although the company has sustained unrealised losses on its equity portfolio over the past five years, its five-year (2011-2015) average investment return (including gains and losses) has been reasonable at 5.5%.

QIIC has a niche position in its domestic insurance market as a provider of Shari'a compliant products, and a strong reputation that is somewhat attributable to the company's track record of distributing surpluses back to policyholders. QIIC's gross written premium grew by 2.5% to QAR 225 million (USD 62 million) during the first three quarters of 2016, in comparison to the same period in 2015.

QIIC's enterprise risk management is developing, and whilst the company's track record of technical profitability illustrates good underwriting controls, investment decisions are made at the board level, which has led to volatility in investment results.

This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on A.M. Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see A.M. Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Understanding Best's Credit Ratings

A.M. Best is the world's oldest and most authoritative insurance rating and information source. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

Copyright 2017 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170203005480/en/

Contacts:

A.M. Best

Thomas Bateman, +44-20-7397-0329

Associate Financial Analyst

thomas.bateman@ambest.com

or

Mahesh Mistry, +44-20-7397-0325

Senior Director, Analytics

mahesh.mistry@ambest.com

or

Christopher Sharkey, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5159

Manager, Public Relations

christopher.sharkey@ambest.com

or

Jim Peavy, +1-908-439-2200, ext. 5644

Director, Public Relations

james.peavy@ambest.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - President Donald Trump's nomination of charter school advocate and Republican mega-donor Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate on Friday. The Senate voted 52 to 48 to limit debate on DeVos' nomination, setting up a final vote on her confirmation on Monday. The vote came down strictly along party lines, with Senators Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, both voting in favor of the cloture motion despite indicating they intend to vote against DeVos' confirmation. Both Collins and Murkowski, who are seen as moderate Republicans, have expressed concerns about DeVos' support for school voucher programs. All of the other Senate Republicans after expected to vote in favor of DeVos, likely resulting in a 50-50 tie and requiring Vice President Mike Pence to vote to confirm her nomination. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., urged Republicans to reconsider their support for DeVos, calling her 'one of the worst nominees that has ever been brought before this body for a Cabinet position.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- The board of directors of NetDimensions ("Board") (AIM: NETD) (OTCQX: NETDY) notes the announcement made on 3 February 2017 ("Announcement") by Learning Technologies Group Plc ("LTG") and is pleased to confirm to NetDimensions shareholders that it has reached agreement on the terms of a proposed recommended all cash offer by LTG at 100 pence per share (the "Offer") for the entire issued and to be issued share capital of the Company.

The Offer represents a substantial premium of 118.6 per cent. to the closing mid-market price of 45.75 pence per share on 4 October 2016, being the day prior to the Board's announcement that it had received an unsolicited approach. The Board has since been engaged with interested parties regarding a potential transaction and is pleased to be moving forward with LTG, as reflected in the irrevocable undertakings to accept the Offer given by those directors who also hold shares in the Company. These undertakings, given in respect of a total of 8,964,027 shares and representing approximately 17.48 per cent. of the Company's issued share capital (as set out in the Announcement), demonstrate the strength of the commitment to and support for the Offer of the relevant directors in light of the premium referred to above.

The Offer is also well supported by certain other major shareholders of the Company, who have provided irrevocable undertakings to accept the Offer on the terms set out in the Announcement in respect of a further 20,027,480 shares in aggregate, representing approximately 39.06 per cent. of the Company's issued share capital.

Commenting on the Offer, Graham Higgins, Chairman of NetDimensions, said:

"The board of NetDimensions is very pleased to have reached agreement on the terms of a proposed recommended cash offer by LTG, a business we know well, having collaborated on customer assignments with them in the past. The Offer, once made, will present an opportunity to crystallise value and provide liquidity for our shareholders as a whole."

NetDimensions (Holdings) Limited Tel: +852 2122 4500 Jay Shaw Matthew Chaloner Panmure Gordon (UK) Limited (Financial Adviser, Nomad & Broker) Tel: +44 20 7886 2500 Andrew Godber / Peter Steel / James Greenwood / William Wickham (Corporate Finance) Erik Anderson (Corporate Broking) Walbrook PR Ltd (Financial Public Relations) Tel: +44 20 7933 8780 Paul Cornelius Or netdimensions@walbrookpr.com Sam Allen Nick Rome Helen Cresswell

Additional Information

The Announcement, which provides further details of the Offer, is available to view at www.ltgplc.com/. The Board confirms that it provided its unanimous consent to the issue of the Announcement.

The Board notes that The City Code on Takeovers and Mergers does not apply to the Company or to the Offer. The Board also notes that, as set out in the timetable in the Announcement, LTG expects to post the Offer document on 21 February 2017. Shareholders do not therefore need to take any action at this stage.

The Company will make further announcements as appropriate.

The information communicated in this announcement is inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014 ("MAR").

About NetDimensions

Established in 1999, NetDimensions (AIM: NETD) (OTCQX: NETDY) is a global provider of learning, knowledge and performance management solutions to highly regulated industries.

NetDimensions provides companies, government agencies and other organisations with talent management solutions to personalise learning, share knowledge, enhance performance, and manage compliance programmes for employees, customers, partners and suppliers.

NetDimensions' solutions also include custom content and learning portal development services, as well as off-the-shelf course libraries and regulatory compliance courseware developed by NetDimensions' subject matter experts and content partners.

NetDimensions' award-winning solutions have been chosen by leading organisations worldwide including ING, Cathay Pacific, Chicago Police Department, Geely Automotive, Fugro Group, Fresenius Medical Care, tesa SE, and DB Schenker.

NetDimensions is ISO 9001 certified and NetDimensions' Secure SaaS practices are ISO 27001 certified.

For more information, visit www.netdimensions.com or follow @netdimensions on Twitter.

RNS

Customer Services

0044-207797-4400

rns@londonstockexchange.com

http://www.rns.com




GATINEAU, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Government of Canada

The Government of Canada is committed to providing the women and men of the military with the equipment they need to fulfill their important role.

Following an open and transparent competition, the Honourable Judy M. Foote, Minister of Public Services and Procurement, and the Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan, Minister of National Defence, today announced the awarding of a contract of $45 million to StandardAero, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, for the maintenance of T56 engines for Canada's CP-140 Auroras and CC-130H Hercules aircraft, and a second contract of $45 million to Magellan Aerospace Corporation, of Mississauga, Ontario, for the maintenance of F404 engines for Canada's CF-18 Hornets.

The government recently announced the way forward in replacing its fleet of CF-18 fighter jets as well as its fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft. While work continues on securing these replacements, these investments will maintain existing aircraft.

These maintenance contracts are for an initial period of four years and three months. Services will include repair and overhaul of the aircraft engines, the management, coordination and integration of materials and information, as well as engineering work and the management of technical publications.

While these flexible, performance-based contracts have a preliminary value of $45 million, they have been designed to meet the varying needs of the Canadian Armed Forces by allowing for the total contract value to be adjusted each year based on past year expenditures, as well as anticipatory expenditures for the upcoming year.

Following the initial contract period, the companies have the potential to have their contracts extended until the fleets are retired.

These contracts are among the first that reflect a more flexible, cost-effective approach to equipment maintenance and support. Under a recently-established Sustainment Initiative, the government is ensuring that support contracts and programs are flexible enough to respond to changing operational needs, while at the same time delivering best value for money. Improving the cost-effectiveness of equipment support contracts was a principal theme of a recent Auditor General of Canada report tabled last November.

Under Canada's Industrial and Technological Benefits Policy, both companies are required to invest in the Canadian economy equal to the value of their respective contracts. These investments will include a high level of work performed directly in Canada on the engines and other research and development initiatives. This is expected to create and maintain high-value jobs and economic growth in Canada.

Quotes

"These contracts will not only help maintain the Royal Canadian Air Force's current fleet of aircraft, but will also help grow Canada's innovative and strong aerospace sector, while providing well-paying jobs for the middle class and those working hard to join it."

- The Honourable Judy M. Foote, Minister of Public Services and Procurement

"Today's announcement demonstrates our commitment to ensure that the Royal Canadian Air Force is ready to support the many operations and exercises that contribute to the safety and security of Canadians. These contracts help guarantee our CF-18 fighter jets and fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft can be kept in service while replacement fleets are being provided. They also take care of the maintenance of our long-range patrol aircraft. The contracts are structured to be flexible, performance-based and beneficial to Canada's economy. They will help the Royal Canadian Air Force meet its operational requirements and address recommendations made by the Auditor General of Canada last fall."

- The Honourable Harjit S. Sajjan, Minister of National Defence

"Through the Industrial and Technological Benefits Policy, Canada gets the economic benefits of investment from winning bidders on defence contracts. By ensuring that these companies put an amount equal of the contract values back into Canada, we are helping to create high-value jobs and giving Canadian aerospace companies great opportunities to grow."

- The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development

Quick Facts

-- The Royal Canadian Air Force employs various aircraft fleets to meet its operational requirements. These aircraft require service on a regular basis, as well as periodic repair and overhaul work. -- The CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft was acquired in the early 1980s, primarily for maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare, and its long endurance has made the aircraft ideal for an evolving variety of missions, from command and control, to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, including surveillance of the Canadian Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans for strike coordination, and search and rescue missions. It also provides vital support to other government agencies in combating illegal immigration, fishing, polluting or drug trafficking, as well as assisting with disaster relief. -- The CC-130H Hercules were purchased in 1996 and are four-engine fixed- wing turboprop aircraft that can carry up to 78 combat troops. Canada's Hercules aircraft are used for a wide range of missions, including troop transport, tactical "cargo" airlift search and rescue, and aircrew training. A small number of Canada's Hercules aircraft are also used for air-to-air refueling. -- Purchased in the 1980s, the CF-18 Hornet fleet is the Royal Canadian Air Force's frontline multi-role fighter. The CF-18 is used for air defence, air superiority, tactical support, training, aerobatic demonstration, and aerospace testing and evaluation. Ongoing modernization and upgrade programs are ensuring that the Canadian Armed Forces has an interoperable fighter fleet to deliver its missions.

Associated Links

Canadian Armed Forces to Receive New Search and Rescue Aircraft

Canada announces plan to replace fighter jet fleet

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Contacts:

Annie Trepanier

Office of the Honourable Judy M. Foote

819-997-5421



Media Relations

Public Services and Procurement Canada

819-420-5501

media@pwgsc-tpsgc.gc.ca




STOCKHOLM, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Func Food Group Oyj (the "Company") today announces the successful completion of the written procedure in relation to the Company's outstanding up to EUR 38,000,000 senior secured callable bond loan with ISIN SE0007186150 2015/2019 (the "Bonds"), regarding certain amendments to the terms and conditions of the Bonds (the "Proposal"). The amendments to the terms and conditions became effective immediately as of 3 February 2017.

A sufficient number of bondholders participated in the written procedure in order to form a quorum, and a qualified majority of the bondholders voted in favour to approve the Proposal.

As a condition for the amendments, the Company will arrange for an equity contribution in an amount of minimum EUR 2,000,000 and maximum EUR 3,000,000, of which EUR 500,000 was contributed on 20 December 2016, within two (2) months from 3 February 2017.

Pareto Securities has been retained as financial advisor in connection with the written procedure.

The amended terms and conditions of the Bonds are available on the Company's website (www.funcfood.com) and attached hereto.

For further information, please contact:

Tommi Virtanen, CFO

Telephone: +358 40 590 4040

Email: tommi.virtanen@funcfoodgroup.com

The information contained in this press release is such information that Func Food Group Oyj is required to publish in accordance with the Swedish Securities Market Act (2007:528) and/or the Swedish Financial Instruments Trading Act (1991:980). The information was submitted for publication on 3 February 2017 at 20:00 CET.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/func-food-group-oyj/r/func-food-group-oyj---approval-of-written-procedure-and-amendments-to-the-terms-and-conditions-of-th,c2180480

The following files are available for download:
SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(Marketwired - February 03, 2017) - TriStar Gold Inc. (TSX VENTURE: TSG) (the "Company" or "TriStar") has now received all assay results from the step-out holes in the Esperanca South and Esperanca Center areas of the Castelo de Sonhos gold project. These assays confirm that gold mineralization extends well beyond the resource area defined by the Company in 2014.

The significant intervals for all the drill holes completed in Esperanca South (all previously disclosed) are shown in Table 1, and for Esperanca Center (none previously disclosed) in Table 2. Not included in these tables are: CSH-16-148, which was abandoned at 78m with rods stuck in the hole and redrilled as CSH-16-150; and CSH-16-153 and CSH-16-155, which did not contain any significant intervals exceeding 0.6 g/t.

Mr. Nick Appleyard, TriStar's President and CEO, commented: "The recent drilling has supported our view that the deposit has a strike length considerably longer than was apparent at the time of the 2014 resource, and allows us to prioritize the Esperanca South extension as the first target for expanding the resource. We will begin RC drilling next week to fill in the gaps between these long step-out holes so that we can update the resource for the preliminary economic assessment later this year."

Thickness and gold Grade x Hole ID grade Downhole depth Thickness ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSH-16-144 3.10 m @ 3.90 g/t 121.80 - 124.90 m 12.1 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.90 m @ 0.70 g/t 12.70 - 16.60 m CSH-16-145 1.85 m @ 1.10 g/t 163.40 - 165.25 m 2.00 m @ 4.96 g/t 177.20 - 179.20 m ------------------------------------------------------- Total: 7.75m @ 1.89 g/t 14.7 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSH-16-146 2.10 m @ 7.51 g/t 144.90 - 147.00 m 15.8 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.80 m @ 0.63 g/t 65.10 - 66.90 m CSH-16-147 4.10 m @ 3.68 g/t 182.30 - 186.40 m ------------------------------------------------------- Total: 5.90m @ 2.75 g/t 16.2 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSH-16-149 1.85m @ 3.28 g/t 67.2 - 69.05 m 6.1 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSH-16-150 1.95m @ 1.95 g/t 21.85 - 23.80 m 3.8 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016 Southwestern extension average: 3.78 m @ 3.03 g/t 11.4 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2014 resource area average: 4.14 m @ 2.43 g/t 10.1 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSH-16-151 North end of Esperanca South 2.00 m @ 1.12 g/t 63.80 - 65.80 m (Figure 2) 2.00 m @ 0.71 g/t 214.35 - 216.35 m ------------------------------------------------------- Total: 4.00m @ 0.92 g/t 3.7 gm/t ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 1. Significant gold intervals from holes completed in Esperanca South in 2016. Drill holes were drilled towards an azimuth of 140 degrees (except Hole CSH-16-151, which has an azimuth of 90 degrees), with a dip of 55 degrees. The downhole intersections are approximately true width of the mineralization.

Thickness and gold Grade x Hole ID grade Downhole depth Thickness ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.00 m @ 0.67 g/t 158.60 - 162.60 m CSH-16-152 2.00 m @ 1.16 g/t 178.60 - 180.60 m -------------------------------------------------------- Total: 6.00m @ 0.83 g/t 5.0 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CSH-16-154 1.80m @ 0.73 g/t 90.3 - 92.1 m 1.3 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2016 Central extension average: 3.90 m @ 0.81 g/t 3.2 gm/t ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2014 Central resource area 4.82 m @ 1.98 g/t 9.5 gm/t average: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Table 2. Significant gold intervals from holes completed in Esperanca Center in 2016-2017. Drill holes were drilled perpendicular to mineralization, at a dip of 60 degrees, making the downhole intersections approximately the true width of mineralization. CSH-16-152 was drilled with an azimuth of 90, and CSH-16-154 with an azimuth of 25.

Locations of the drill holes are shown in Figures 1 and 2. The step-out holes on the southern extension of Esperanca South (Figure 1) all contain significant intervals and extend the strike length by a least two kilometers. On the northern extension of Esperanca Center (Figure 2), the furthest step-out hole contains one significant interval; but two other holes drilled on the footwall side of the conglomerate band show only weak gold mineralization, none of which reaches 0.6 g/t. Detailed definition of the edges of strong mineralization in this area will come from infill drilling.

Sample analysis procedures and QA/QC protocols

Sample preparation and analytical work for the Castelo de Sonhos drilling program were carried out by SGS Geosol in Parauapebas, Para State (sample preparation) and Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais (analysis), an ISO 9001:2008 and 14001:2004 certified laboratory. Analysis was by 50g fire assay. As part of TriStar's QA/QC protocol, standard samples and blanks were inserted into the sample processing stream at a rate of one per 10 samples. Duplicate and alternate laboratory check samples also form part of this sampling protocol.

TriStar's Vice-President, R. Mohan Srivastava (P.Geo.), is the QP for this press release and has prepared or supervised the preparation of the scientific or technical information in this press release and approves its publication.

About TriStar:

TriStar Gold is an exploration and development company focused on precious metals properties in the Americas that have potential to become significant producing mines. The Company's current flagship property is Castelo de Sonhos in Para State, Brazil. The Company's shares are listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol TSG. Further information is available at www.tristargold.com.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. No stock exchange, securities commission or other regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained herein.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements under Canadian securities legislation which are not historical facts and are made pursuant to the "safe harbour" provisions under the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "expects" or "it is expected", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "will" occur. Forward looking statements in this press release include, the scope and success of the planned exploration program at the Castelo de Sonhos project and the Company's opinion that it has clear title to the Castelo de Sonhos property Such forward-looking statements are based upon the Company's reasonable expectations and business plan at the date hereof, which are subject to change depending on economic, political and competitive circumstances and contingencies. Readers are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause a change in such assumptions and the actual outcomes and estimates to be materially different from those estimated or anticipated future results, achievements or position expressed or implied by those forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause the Company's plans to change include changes in demand for and price of gold and other commodities (such as fuel and electricity) and currencies; changes or disruptions in the securities markets; legislative, political or economic developments in Brazil; the need to obtain permits and comply with laws and regulations and other regulatory requirements; the possibility that actual results of work may differ from projections/expectations or may not realize the perceived potential of the Company's projects; risks of accidents, equipment breakdowns and labour disputes or other unanticipated difficulties or interruptions; the possibility of cost overruns or unanticipated expenses in development programs; operating or technical difficulties in connection with exploration, mining or development activities; the speculative nature of gold exploration and development, including the risks of diminishing quantities of grades of reserves and resources; and the risks involved in the exploration, development and mining business. Although management of the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements or forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.

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For further information, please contact:

TriStar Gold Inc.

Nick Appleyard

President and CEO

480-794-1244

info@tristargold.com
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Americans are sharply divided along party lines over President Donald Trump's recent ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries, according to the results of a new CBS News poll. Fifty-one percent of Americans said they disapprove of the travel ban announced last Friday, while 45 percent approve. The poll showed a stark partisan divide on the issue, as 85 percent of Republicans approve of the move but an identical 85 percent of Democrats disapprove. Trump has repeatedly defended the executive order as part of an effort to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the country. Thirty-six percent of Americans said the ban will make the U.S. safer from terrorism, although just as many said it makes the U.S. less safe from terrorism. Twenty-two percent said it will have no effect. The survey also found that 40 percent of Americans approve of Trump's performance as president thus far, while 48 percent disapprove. CBS News noted the percentage that approve is the lowest of any president just after his first inauguration since the Gallup began taking those measures in 1953. The poll of 1,019 adults was conducted February 1st and 2nd and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. (Photo: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Gold futures were flat Friday, preserving its best weekly gain since June. April gold settled up $1.40, or 0.1%, at $1,220.80 an ounce, for a weekly gain of about 2.6%. Geopolitical tensions including saber-rattling between the U.S. and Iran raised gold's safe haven appeal. In retaliation for a recent ballistic missile test, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed a new wave of sanctions against Iran. President Donald Trump indicated he would not be as kind to Iran as his predecessor. 'Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!' Trump said in a post on Twitter early Friday. An encouraging U.S. jobs report put a cap on gold's rally. The U.S. generated 227,000 new jobs in January to mark the biggest gain in four months, the Labor Department said this morning. The unemployment rate rose to 4.8% as more Americans were looking for work. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Kicking off an effort to roll back regulations enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Friday.



Trump signed an order calling for a review of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was enacted in 2010 in an effort to prevent another financial meltdown.



The order reportedly instructs the heads of regulatory agencies to provide input on changes to the law, which critics claim has stifled economic growth.



A second order Trump signed would reportedly halt the implementation of a rule requiring retirement account advisers to act in the best interests of their clients.



'Today we're signing core principles for regulating the United States financial system,' Trump said at the signing. 'It doesn't get much better than that, right?'



The signing of the executive orders came after Trump held a meeting with several top corporate executives, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan (JPM), Mary Barra of General Motors (GM), and Doug McMillon of Walmart (WMT).



In remarks ahead of the meeting, Trump said there was no one better to tell him about the Dodd-Frank Act than Dimon.



'We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank, because, frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine that have nice businesses that can't borrow money,' Trump said.



He added, 'They just can't get any money because the banks just won't let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank.'



However, Trump is likely to face substantial resistance from Democrats, and many of the proposed changes to Dodd-Frank will require congressional action.



'The President's attempts to repeal Wall Street reform will be met with a Democratic firewall in Congress,' said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.



Schumer also accused Trump of hypocrisy by looking to eliminate regulations after campaigning on a promise to rein in Wall Street.



(Photo: Michael Vadon)



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: INF) and Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. (NYSE: RA) (each, a "Fund," and collectively, the "Funds") today announced that their Boards of Directors declared their monthly distributions.

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1167 per share, payable on February 23, 2017 to stockholders of record on February 16, 2017. The ex-distribution date is February 14, 2017. Based on the NYSE closing price of $13.31 on February 2, 2017, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.52%.

Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. declared a monthly distribution of $0.1990 per share, payable on February 23, 2017 to stockholders of record on February 16, 2017. The ex-distribution date is February 14, 2017. Based on the NYSE closing price of $22.93 on February 2, 2017, the Fund's annualized distribution rate was 10.41%.

Shares purchased on or after the ex-distribution date will not receive the distribution discussed above. Please contact your financial advisor with any questions. Distributions may include net investment income, capital gains and/or return of capital. The distribution rate referenced above is calculated as the annualized amount of the most recent monthly distribution declared divided by the stated stock price. Any portion of the Fund's distributions that is a return of capital does not necessarily reflect the Fund's investment performance and should not be confused with "yield" or "income." The tax status of distributions will be determined at the end of the taxable year.

Brookfield Investment Management Inc. (the "Firm") is an SEC-registered investment adviser and represents the Public Securities platform of Brookfield Asset Management. The Firm provides global listed real assets strategies including real estate equities, infrastructure equities, real asset debt and diversified real assets. With more than $13 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2016, the Firm manages separate accounts, registered funds and opportunistic strategies for institutional and individual clients, including financial institutions, public and private pension plans, insurance companies, endowments and foundations, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors. The Firm is a wholly owned subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management, a leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $250 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2016. For more information, go to www.brookfield.com.

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc. and Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc. are managed by Brookfield Investment Management Inc. The Funds use their website as a channel of distribution of material company information. Financial and other material information regarding the Funds are routinely posted on and accessible at www.brookfield.com.

Contacts:

Brookfield Global Listed Infrastructure Income Fund Inc.

Brookfield Real Assets Income Fund Inc.



Brookfield Place

250 Vesey Street, 15th Floor

New York, NY 10281-1023

(855) 777-8001

funds@brookfield.com




MONTREAL, QUEBEC -- (Marketwired) -- 02/03/17 -- Dundee (CSE: DST)(CSE: DST.CN) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Geoff Morphy to its Board. Mr. Morphy, Vice-President, Corporate Development of Dundee Corporation, is an accomplished, results-driven financial services executive, former business owner and advisor with a range of experience and the ability to develop business, manage relationships and lead teams. Over the past thirty-two years, he has developed a record of entrepreneurial and strategic leadership and a reputation for generating top quartile results. Proven at adapting to new situations and adding value, he has significant cross-border and international commercial and corporate structuring and finance experience. Mr. Morphy is replacing Mr. David Whyte who resigned as director. Mr. Whyte served as director of DST since December 8, 2014 and the Board wishes to thank him for his contribution.

The Corporation also announces the grant of 3,600,000 stock options to the directors and 5,900,000 to officers including 1,950,000 to an officer who is also a director. The options vest immediately, expire in five years and are exercisable at $0.05.

About Dundee Sustainable Technologies, a company controlled by Dundee Corporation

The Corporation is engaged in the development and commercialization of environment-friendly technologies for the treatment of materials in the mining industry. Through the development of patented, proprietary processes, DST extracts precious and base metals from ores, concentrates and tailings, while stabilizing contaminants such as arsenic, which could not otherwise be extracted or stabilized with conventional processes because of metallurgical issues or environmental considerations.

DST has filed, published and was granted patents for these processes in several countries.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This press release contains forward-looking statements that address future events and conditions, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of numerous factors, some of which may be beyond the Corporation's control. These factors include: general market and industry conditions, risks related to continuous operations and to commercialization of new technologies and other risks disclosed in the Corporation's filings with Canadian Securities Regulators.

Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Corporation'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, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The Corporation expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contacts:

Brian Howlett

President and CEO

Dundee Sustainable Technologies

(514) 866-6001 # 239

Cell: (647) 227-3035

info@dundeetechnologies.com




Path, a Seattle, WA-based international nonprofit organization that focuses on improving health, raised $25m in funding.

Backers included Clarus and the Global Health Investment Fund.

The company intends to use the funds to increase its efforts to address intestinal worms.

Path develops vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, devices, and system and service innovations working alongside countries primarily in Africa and Asia,

The organization, together with a consortium of government, nonprofit, and commercial partners, intends to seek US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for tribendimidine (TrBD) as a treatment for hookworm infections. FDA approval is the initial step in a plan to incorporate TrBD in mass deworming campaigns in low-resource settings where soil-transmitted helminth (STH) infections cause significant morbidity.

To execute the project, PATH is leading a Tribendimidine Consortium that includes the National Institute of Parasitic Diseases at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is credited with the development of TrBD in China; TrBD manufacturer Shandong Xinhua Pharmaceutical Company; and Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute.

FinSMEs

02/02/2017
Aiming towards a smooth roll out of Goods and Services Tax (GST) from 1 July, the GST Council in its next meeting on 18 February will look into the three laws in GST.

The session by Secretaries Panel at Budget 2017 The Verdict of CNBC-TV 18-Mint at Hyatt Regency in New Delhi on Thursday evening discussed GST and its power to arrest disinvestment plan, merger & acquisition, proposal for a new financial year among others in detail.

Industry is looking forward to the laws and rules. Once they are finalised by the GST Council  itll pave way towards implementation of GST from 1 July. The agenda of the next meeting is to look into all the three laws. In the subsequent meetings well take up the rules. As far the rates are concerned, it is going to be a simplistic formula. The council has said that there would be four slabs of rates5%, 12%, 18% and 28%, said Revenue Secretary, Hasmukh Adhia.

After the announcement of Budget 2017 on 1 February, West Bengals finance minister, who also heads the empowerment panel on GST, sent 16 demands to finance ministry to look into, including the arrest clause. The arrest clause has been described as draconian by the West Bengal government.

Power to arrest the tax defaulters is already there in excise and service tax, and also under VAT law in some states. After an extensive debate, majority in the GST Council decided that no arrest would be made in the case of tax evasion up to Rs 2 crore. However, evader between Rs 2-5 crore will face arrest but get a bail. But above, Rs 5 crore, its non-bailable, he said.

Is there a new financial year on cards?

Economic Affairs secretary, Shaktikant Das said, The report to change the financial year is under consideration by the government. Were examining it, and once the decision is taken, it will be communicated.

On IDBI Banks disinvestment plan

The government announced in the Union Budget on 1 February that it hopes to raise Rs 72,500 crore in FY18 by divesting stakes in public sector firms. Compared to the revised estimate of Rs 45,500 crore for FY17, this is an increase of around 60 percent.

While discussing the disinvestment plan of the state-run IDBI Bank, Das said, The divestment of IDBI Bank is not off the table. The work is in progress. The share value of it in market doesnt reflect real estate it holds in Mumbai. The real estate valuation needs to be done carefully and transparent decision needs to be taken in this case.

Weve not derailed from the path of financial prudence. Today, our economy needs investment in certain sectors. As per the NK Singh panel, our fiscal deficit target is 3% and well improve it in 2017-18, added Das.

Priorities in 2017

Ashok Lavasa, Finance Secretary: To ensure that people pay tax and it should be a more a tax compliant society.

Shaktikant Das: Budget 2017 is very strong on reforms and our focus is on implementation.

Hasmukh Adhia: Roll out of GST from 1 July. Year 2017 will be the Year of GST.

Neeraj Gupta, Secretary, Department of Investment and Public Asset Management: Look for a stable and buoyant market.
It will not be easy for Indian Indian information technology services companies to overcome the difficulties they are likely to face once the proposed US Bill on H1-B visa restrictions becomes a law. Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy's suggestion that Indian companies should start hiring local hands as a solution may not be a workable one.

US president Donald Trump, in an attempt to fulfill his poll promise of providing more jobs to Americans, has proposed a Bill that increases the minimum salaries of H1-B employees to $130,000. The Bill is likely to increase the cost of the Indian IT firms, which derive 62 percent of their revenue from the US and send many Indian staff on this visa to the US for working offsite.

Murthy in an interview told NDTV that Indian software companies need to stop sending people on H1-B visas and focus on local hiring in the US.

"They (Indian software companies) must recruit American residents in the US, Canadians in Canada, British people in Britain etc. That's the only way, we can become a true multi-national company and in order to do that, we should stop using H1-B visas and sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services," he said.

"I think by and large, the Indian mindset is always to take the soft option. Becoming multi-cultural is a very, very hard option, it's not easy," he added.

Coming from the pioneer of the IT sector, the comments are significant. However, most experts Firstpost spoke to did not endorse his views. According to them, it is not right to say use of H1-B visas by Indian companies is a 'soft option'. One of them even felt that it is a bit ironical for Murthy to say this.

Indian companies including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys and Wipro Staff account for around 86,000 new H1-B workers in 2005-14, according to a Reuters report. The US currently issues close to that number of H1-B visas each year. These three firms have long used H1-B skilled worker visas to fly computer engineers to the US, their largest overseas market, temporarily to service clients.

What Trump is suggesting is an increase in minimum salaries and Indian companies can do that, says Dilkash Tasneem, Head, Global Mobility and Immigration, Thoughtworks India - a software delivery and design firm.

"When we do salary fitment at Thoughtworks in the US, we match it with the peer group in the US. We match whatever our locals US employees get paid with our Indian employees in the US in terms of experience and grade. And this is a policy we follow in any of the countries globally that we are located in," she said.

Need to hire Indians

What US President Trump is saying through a bill about hiring locals and raising salaries for hiring from outside is a problem which doesn't have an easy solution that can be effected through hiring locals. Local hiring will be good provided these skills exist in the first place, says Sanchit Vir Gogia - CEO, Greyhound Research.

The dependency of US organisations on H1-B is very high. You cannot call Indian companies names simply because the US companies too are benefitting from Indian companies and their Indian employees working on US soil, he said.

A Nasscom report says that the industry pays equal wages to US nationals as well as Indians on H1-B visas. For instance, in 2013, while a US citizen was paid about $81,447 a year, an H1-B visa holder was paid $81,022, with an additional $15,000 on visa and ticket costs for the individual and his spouse/family. US companies hire from India simply because a large number of job openings with requirement of STEM skills (science, technology, engineering and math) are not filled. The report states it is this talent shortage that makes the US companies hire from India.

One of the reasons Indian companies do not hire locally in the US is cultural. Indians are willing to work late hours and can be contacted on phone or the internet. In the US, the work culture is such that employees largely do not respond to calls or mails after office hours and weekends, too. The IT services companies in India are known for long working hours, much beyond the nine-hour shift. So they may find it difficult to adjust to the work culture of the US.

The time zones in which India and US work make it difficult for an Indian Vice President, for instance, to contact his US counterpart in the Indian time zone. It might be early dawn or a little later in the US when establishing contact through phone is not possible and also a time when a white American will not take that call but an Indian would. This renders co-ordination difficult.

These are issues not exclusive to Indian IT firms in the US but also other global IT firms which prefer to bring their own nationals to work there.

India churns out a large number of engineering graduates unlike the US where college education costs are very expensive. However, it is also true that most of our graduates are not employable and have to be trained which is what Infosys, Wipro and other IT firms in India do.

"Indian companies have the expertise to take raw material and make it useful. They have been doing this in India for Indian graduates and can do it in American soil too. That is no big challenge though that will incur costs, says Kris Laxmikanth, Chairman & Managing Director at The Head Hunters India; and visiting faculty, Institute of Management, Ranchi.

Make US rule beneficial to IT firms, too

Companies like Infosys, however, have been hiring locally in a 'small way, said Laxmikanth. What the US administration is suggesting now has to be mutually beneficial for the US and Indian IT firms too. The US cannot dictate to Indian firm through a rule of law to hire locally without mentioning the minimum number to be hired. Besides, they must also facilitate Indian companies with incentives for real estate to set up offices and with policies that make it win-win for both sides, he said.

The cost of change in rules in the US will affect bottomlines of Indian IT firms. IT services providers will face a slew of issues from an expected shaving off of margins anywhere in the range of 5-10 percent year-on-year with cost and complexity of doing business increasing, according to a joint research paper by Greyhound Research's Gogia and Anshoo Nandwaani - VP, Principal Analyst.

Given the increased pressure and scrutiny of US-headquartered organisations on outsourcing, the IT services providers can expect requests from clients to renegotiate existing contracts. This might well mean smaller and more expensive contracts (on the back of increased cost of delivery) here on. Besides the looming uncertainty in the US on regulations which will take the next few months to become a rule, IT firms can expect delayed decision-making and hence even longer sales cycles, the research paper said.

All this will mean re-evaluating the business model. Malay Shah, Senior Director with Alvarez & Marsal (professional services firm) says that Indian IT companies will need to evaluate changes to service delivery model, cost structure, and their investments to increase diversification into platforms, local hiring and markets."

The Indian IT story is not just about a few top IT firms in the US aggressive pushing the envelope. It requires government intervention, points out Gogia. It is the Brand India story that has to be emphasized and brought into focus in the US. It is time then for PM Modi to talk to President Trump and bring about a solution for Indian IT firms.
There is near consensus, excluding of course from major opposition parties, that the 2017-18 budget, fourth for Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, while doing no harm has done enough good. The rally Dalal Street On Wednesday was apparently a result of markets having factored in serious populist setbacks and responding euphorically at their absence. The Modi-Jaitley duo deserves our appreciation for not succumbing to electoral compulsions and instead producing a budget that is better than business as usual.

The budget has three firsts to its credit and each one of them will have positive long-term structural impact. First, by advancing the presentation date by nearly a month, it has laid the basis for doing away with the vote of account and all the inefficiencies tied to that archaic practice. The budget will henceforth be approved before the end of the current financial year. All ministries, agencies and schemes will receive their fully approved allocations in the first half of April. The first quarter financial constraint will thus be avoided and the governments working period extended. This implies more effective management of public expenditure and hopefully more bang for the buck. This is an important reform that must be continued by successive governments.

Second, the patently dysfunctional distinction between the plan and non-plan expenditure has been done away with making it possible henceforth to clearly distinguish and monitor the share and progress of capital and revenue expenditures. Third, the ninety-seven-year-old colonial legacy of a separate railway budget has been jettisoned. This would facilitate higher capital investment in railways as also signal a move towards uniformity across all government departments. The much needed shift to accrual accounting for railways from April 2018 is perhaps the first step in this regard. All three changes strengthen institutional capacity and refute the charge hurled by the opposition that the Modi government is unmindful of the need to build institutional capacity in the system.

The budget also has several very important positive features. I want to highlight those that have appealed to me, perhaps because I had suggested them in my pre-budget writings. First, capital expenditure has been ramped up by 24.5% to compensate for the weakness in and encourage crowding in by private investment. It is unfair to compare, as some have done, budget estimates (BE) for capital allocation to revised estimates (RE) for the same in 2016-17, which put the increase at less than half. It is standard practice to compare likes with likes.

Second, to try and give further impetus to private investment, a huge push has been given to the affordable housing sector, which has nearly 200 backward linkages with other industries. Affordable housing has been given infrastructure status that will enable it secure resources at lower costs and the criteria for affordable housing have also been liberalized. Third, in another attempt to boost investment, corporate tax for SMEs with turnover of up Rs 50 crore has been slashed to 25 percent from 30 percent. This will raise profitability of nearly 96 percent of total number of companies in the country and bring greater dynamism and employment generation potential to this key sector. Fourth, with an eye on encouraging FDI, the foreign investment promotion board (FIPB), which had come to represent an unnecessary hurdle, has been abolished.

Fifth, the finance minister persisted with efforts to improve the environment for doing business. Several micro but key measures were announced. These include: extending holding period for minimum alternate tax to 15 years; shortening the period for capital gains from immovable properties from three to two years and leaving capital gains tax untouched; advancing the base year for calculation of capital gains from 1981 to 2001, which will result in lower taxable gains; sparing foreign portfolio investors from indirect transfer provisions.

The question should necessarily be asked about why did the FM shy away from the logical step of pursuing his own promise of lowering corporation income tax for all companies, including the largest, to 25% along with removing all exemptions. This could be a result of either a commitment to maintaining fiscal balance or a fear of oppositions charge of being aligned with the super rich, specially ahead of critical elections.

On the fear of being chastised and lampooned as friends of capitalists, Mr Venkaiah Naidu let it slip in one of this TV interactions, that this indeed was the case that may have held them back from taking this desirable step to boost private investor confidence. This is indeed a pity on two counts. One, it seems impossible in our hyper-competitive and super-selfish democracy for political players from different parties to come on the same page to push the national economy forward. Such coming together does happen, but only and only in face of external threat. It is time that political leaderships recognize that a failure to generate sufficient number of jobs for want of required investment can also pose severe national security risks. It is time to pull together in this fragile situation, which can be and will be exploited by fundamentalists and others opposed to Indias progress as a market based pluralistic democracy.

Two, it is indeed a real pity that a coalition between the political class and domestic Indian business, as existed during the national movement, is simply not a possibility now. Is it that we are currently missing national business leaders like G D Birla, Kamalnayan Bajaj and Jamshydji Tata with whom the Mahatma could confer and discuss the national situation without the slightest fear of bear tagged as a crony capitalist? Should our present doyens of industry not introspect deeply about reasons for which they are not considered as pursuing national interests? It is time that our business leaders, formidable as they are, come up with ideas on how our political leaders could align with them without being perceived as a coalition of self-seekers and ranged against the common people of this country.

I should revert to the enumeration of the budgets positive features. Sixth, in order to try and bring consumption back on track, after the knock it has taken from demonetization, the FM announced a 50% percent reduction in the rate of personal income tax for the lowest income slab of up to Rs 5.00 lakh. This was reduced from 10 to 5% and will put greater disposal income in the hands of the salaried and lower echelons of the middle class.

This is good but perhaps not good enough. Investors currently regularly complain of an acute demand deficiency in the economy. This could well be a result of a sudden withdrawal of cash driven demand post demonetization. To make up for this palpable shortfall, the FM needed to extend this tax concession to upper income brackets as well. For example he should have raised the income level at which the highest income tax rate is levied to Rs 24 lakh as compared to Rs 10 lakh at present. This would surely have unleashed a much stronger demand for consumer durables and better quality housing. Both are much needed.

Clearly, the FM could not extend his cuts in corporation and personal income taxes for fear of slipping on the fiscal front. His reluctance to grasp the lifeline handed by the FRBM committee, which has permitted a 0.5% deviation in times of structural reforms, can only be explained by his fear of bring called a fiscal profligate by domestic and international fiscal hawks and unfavorably assessed by credit rating agencies. This premium on fiscal prudence, for which he has received bouquets by pink press commentators, is inexplicable in the face of a major demand slump and private investment having virtually turned turtle. With this unnecessary fiscal prudence, that only appeals to the ideologues, he may have taken a big risk.

A continued weakness in private investment could see him lose both the economic plot and also unfortunately the electoral game in 2019. This would be disastrous. Therefore, my appeal to him is to use the next phase of the budget session that conveniently starts after the state elections results have been announced, to introduce these tax cuts and ensure that both domestic consumption and investment are given the major boost required at this time.

I want to commend the Modi-Jaitley duo for their continued push on cleaning up the economy and exorcising the deeply entrenched and systemic cancer of illegal incomes and black money. Several steps have been taken already of which demonetization was the strongest as it helped to weaken the powerful coalition of the corrupt by effectively draining the swamp. The budget has announced some further steps as well in this regard apart from clearly signaling governments resolve to go after illegally deposited black cash by enumerating the number of bank accounts that have received large volumes of deposits between 9 November and 31 December.

Lowering of the limit for individual contribution to political parties from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000, as recommended by the Election Commission, is a major step on stemming political corruption. At the same time the introduction of electoral bonds, which can be bought and traded by corporates desirous of making political contributions, will further kill cash use in political campaigning. This should be reinforced by the Election Commission imposing a strict ceiling on the amount that can be collected through private individual and virtually anonymous contributions.

There are other steps as well to reduce the use of cash in the economy. These are, reducing the presumptive tax for small and medium tax payers from 8 to 6% receipts are by non-cash means; limiting cash expenditure allowed as deduction to Rs. 10,000; limiting cash donation received by charities to Rs. 2,000 from Rs. 10,000; and disallowing cash transactions above Rs. 3 lakh. These measures combined with the enforcement of the provision of benami properties transactions law and the law on illegal incomes have the potential to create a new normal in our society in which the dishonest will hopefully not rule the roost and be scared of flaunting their ill-gotten wealth. This would, to my mind, be the biggest structural reform, which if successful, could bring the Indian economy on to a new trajectory of higher, sustainable, cleaner and hence inclusive growth.

The writer is Founder Director Pahle India Foundatin and Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy Research
Alif is the story of a Muslim boy torn between tradition and evolution, the cliquishness of his own people and prejudice from the majority community.

The film kicks off in Varanasi where we discover that little Ali's dad had, decades earlier, forced his sister to go to Pakistan, fearing for her safety during the post-Partition riots. Zehra discovers on going there that the evil her family sought to save her from is no less in the new country. Much later when she returns to India as an older woman, she persuades her brother to pull Ali out of a madrasa and send him to a modern school where he will get a modern education.

What follows is an exploration of the brutal politics that kept her away from her motherland all these decades, and Ali's simultaneous struggles against a hate-filled teacher in his new school while his father is reviled by the local Muslim leadership who fear a loss of their hold over the community if others too are inspired to quit madrasas.

The basic storyline has the potential to be turned into a heart-wrenching film. Zehra's anguish, Ali's innocence and trauma, his father's pain  how can a viewer not be moved seeing it all? The story at the heart of the film certainly has emotional heft. It is ruined, however, by inept direction, inadequate writing, jerky editing, amateurish cinematography and pathetic quality all around.

Alif draws its title from the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. The name is an indicator of the films goal to promote education among Muslims and to build awareness about Muslims among the larger populace. Sadly, Alif does a disservice to its own aims with its low standards. At one point, for instance, it fails to explain the meaning of a religious pennant that gets confused with a flag of Pakistan at a crucial juncture in the narrative.

The redeeming factors in the film are the guileless conversations between Ali and his close friend played by Mohammad Saud and Ishaan Kaurav who seem to have acting potential that is worthy of being explored. Their sweetness and the poignancy that pervade their child-like chatter elicit smiles and the occasional tear. Neelima Azeem as Ali's aunt is wasted in the film  she tries, but her natural ease before the camera is overshadowed by the unsatisfactory writing. The rest of the cast is a mixed bag that includes some seriously lousy actors.

Alif is proof, if any were needed, that good intentions need good writing, good direction and good production values to be translated into a good film. This is an important story. It just needs to be told in a better film.
The new song of Deven Bhojani's action film Commando 2, titled 'Hare Krishna Hare Ram', is a far cry from the extremely gripping song that it is inspired from, Akshay Kumar's song from Priyadarshan's 2007 psychological thriller Bhool Bhulaiyaa.

While the lead star of Commando 2, Vidyut Jamawal, may dub this as his tribute to the action icon in Kumar, it is quite clear that the new song is just another one of those loosely inspired remixes that just bank on the popularity of the original hook line rather than presenting it in a contextual light.

Let's get the positives aside first. The art direction seems to be simple yet spot on with gold and black complementing each other in every frame of the song, particularly the beginning in which golden chains are seen dangling from the ceiling of an otherwise black set. Even the costumes of all the actors have been kept in tune with this combination.

Jammwal impresses with his swift moves though we prefer to watch him dish out some blows rather than these rather orchestrated dance steps. Esha Gupta looks stunning as her hazel brown hair complement her look. Adah Sharma, for some strange reason, looks dissatisfied though she is known for her screen presence and emotive face.

The choreography is good but not brilliant as the dance directors conveniently pick up the few steps that Kumar's song boasted of. The music by Gourav-Roshin might make this one a chart-buster but that is only because it is riding on the success of the original. It will gradually lose its recall value as it has momentary gratification written all over it. Even the brilliant vocals of Armaan Malik will be unable to save this one from going down the drain.

The revised lyrics by Kumaar add little depth or newness to the song which largely remains a rather convenient tool to grab eyeballs (or eardrums, in this case) so that the film gains traction towards its release. It is not just promotional, but a bad promotion at that.

Commando 2 is produced by Vipul Shah among others and is slated to release on 3 March. Read the review of the trailer here.
It was earlier reported that advocate Ajaykumar S Waghmare had filed a petition in Bombay High Court for dropping the word 'LLB' from the title of Subhash Kapoor's upcoming courtroom drama Jolly LLB 2. Now, the Supreme Court will hear the case on 7 February.

Bombay High Court had found prima facie case of contempt against Jolly LLB 2. The petition was ordered to be converted into a Public Interest Litigation and a three-member committee was formed to review the film and decide whether a case of contempt can be made against the film, given the fact that it is inspired by true events and has been projected as a satire on the judicial system of the country.

The Supreme Court has now directed Bombay High Court to hear the report of this three-member committee on 6 February. The apex court has also directed the High Court to hear the objections of the filmmakers on the same day. The Supreme Court will then hear the petition on the next day, i.e., 7 February.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the filmmakers, argued that there is nothing in the film that maligns the reputation of the legal profession, as alleged by Waghmare's petition. Waghmare had objected to some of the shots in the trailer of the film that shows lawyers playing cards (read: gambling) and engaging in other similar activities in the court premises that demean the prestigious profession as a whole.

Also, the Supreme Court has refused to stay the release of the film until it hears the petition on 7 February. The film, as of now, is still slated to release on 10 February.

Jolly LLB 2 is the sequel to Subhash Kapoor's 2013 National Award-winning film Jolly LLB. It stars Akshay Kumar, Huma Qureshi, Saurabh Shukla and Annu Kapoor. The film was cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification with a U/A certificate and no cuts.

Also read: Jolly LLB 2 quick review: Not one dull moment in Akshay Kumar's film
Martial arts superstar Jackie Chan and Indias very own Sonu Sood headline a film about a lost treasure of the ancient Magadh empire. Chan plays Jack, an archaeologist and kung fu expert in China who teams up with a young Indian professor (Disha Patani) and her assistant (Amyra Dastur) to locate the missing hoard in Kung Fu Yoga (KFY). Their quest is interrupted by the mercenary Randall (Sood), a descendant of the original owners of the treasure.

It takes immense talent to pull off this kind of action adventure where you want to stir myth, martial arts, humour and pop philosophy into the mix without looking stupid. Director-writer Stanley Tong  who has had great success with Chan in two Policy Story films and Rumble in the Bronx (1995)  does not manage to even lift KFY off the ground.

To be fair I must point out that I watched the Hindi version of this English film, and the dubbing was just passable. While this may have partly affected the viewing experience, the messy storyline, ludicrous cliches and middling action can hardly be blamed on sub-par dubbing.

Why is it called Kung Fu Yoga? Not because there is lots of kung fu and lots of yoga in the film. No maam! KFY has plenty of kung fu but almost no yoga, which suggests that the name was chosen because in the filmmakers view, kung fu epitomises China and yoga epitomises India. Maybe he can christen his next one Panda Maharaja or Curry Noodle to indicate once again that it brings together Indian and Chinese characters? The lazy titling is irritating.

If Hollywood had stereotyped Asians in this fashion in 2017, critics would have  justifiably  told them off. What do you say to one of your own though (Tong is from Hong Kong) doing much worse than any high-profile Hollywood director has done in years?

The level of stereotyping in Kung Fu Yoga is bizarre. Since Randall is Indian, he just happens to have lions wandering around his home. Jack just happens to find a lion in an SUV he steals from in front of a modern hotel in Dubai. The introduction to the Dubai visit must of course be through a prince showing his foreign guests a camel race. (For the record, the poor beasts foaming at the mouth in that scene are a disturbing sight.) A regular Indian bazaar  not a tourist resort, but a regular market  just happens to be filled with snake charmers, a rope-trick performer, a levitating mystic, fire eaters and sword eaters, which makes you wonder if this is the kind of exotica Tong actually expects to find on Janpath or in Sarojini Nagar. All this is apparently routine stuff for Asians, in the filmmakers book.

It is not easy to write and direct rubbish, and get an intelligent audience to laugh. As someone who refuses to brush aside David Dhawan and Rohit Shettys work, I can vouch for the fact Kung Fu Yoga is a pile of nothing.

It is a measure of Chans innate charm that he comes across as his usual warm likeable self despite being surrounded by zero content. His kung fu moves though, needed better choreography than this film offers. They are sadly unimpressive.

As for Sood, the Hindi film audience knows that hes equally good at handling gravitas and nonsense since we have seen him in films ranging from Jodhaa Akbar to Dabangg. Try as he might though, he fails to look convinced in this silly action adventure.

Patani (who drew attention in her debut Hindi film, MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, last year) and Dastur are wasted on the sidelines, though we do get a glimpse of their ability to throw punches well on screen. Maybe Indian cinema should seek them out for better quality action films.

Apart from the couple of laughs Chan manages to elicit and a somewhat interesting episode in which the younger cast try to escape a pack of hungry hyenas in Randalls abode, there is truly nothing to recommend Kung Fu Yoga.

This is the kind of film that sometimes gets funny simply because it is so poorly thought out. The mashed-up cherry on top of the half-baked cake is Tongs shot at doing a Bollywood-style song and dance number right at the end of the film. He is clearly not in tune with the changes in Hindi cinema, or he would have known that our better directors these days  unlike in the 1990 to 2005 period  try to ease their film into the song, if they choose to end with one. No such effort here. The characters are talking and fighting before a statue of Lord Shiva that Jack is trying to save from Randall, and then boom!  they all start dancing.

If you want to see a foreign production doing an excellent job of adapting Hindi cinemas fondness for concluding a film with a group song and dance, watch the thoroughly enjoyable finale of Tarsem Singhs Julia Roberts-starrer Mirror Mirror. That films smoothly executed climax was an intelligent homage to a tradition from another industry. Kung Fu Yogas effort at a bow to Bollywood is diluted by the trite notion of India that precedes it, in addition to the unmemorable tune and unimaginative moves. It does not help that Sood is terribly awkward in that number.

Still, the closing is not a complete washout. It is energetic, the cinematography is lavish, Patani is easy on the eye, and Chan truly seems to be having fun. For viewers who are nostalgic about him (I am one of them), perhaps that is something to hold on to in this otherwise clumsy, dated, impactless film.

Now excuse me while I go off to do some yoga in the company of my pet tiger, while my pet cobra watches over me in my palace courtyard. Nummusste!

Footnote: A 1-star rating is an act of kindness towards Kung Fu Yoga. Unfortunately, our software does not permit less than one, which is why you see the rating that you see at the start of this review. I meant to award a 0.5 star to the film.
" Bold anti-Trumpist" Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) confronted by "Resist Hate RI" constituents for his Yes vote for pro-torture CIA Director Mike Pompeo. (I've queued the clip to start when Whitehouse speaks. Feel free to start from the beginning.)

A pro-torture vote is a vote for torturing Muslims, at least so far.

Which Democrats Voted For Pro-Torture Pompeo?



The vote, 66-32, was quite lopsided. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate, 46 Democrats and two Independents (Sanders and Maine's Angus King). Only one Republican crossed the aisle to vote No  Rand Paul.



Fourteen Democrats (plus Angus King) put the stamp of approval on pro-torture Mike Pompeo, the new head of Donald Trump's CIA...

 Joe Donnelly (IN)

 Dianne Feinstein (CA)

 Maggie Hassan (NH)

 Heidi Heitkamp (ND)

 Tim Kaine (VA)

 Amy Klobuchar (MN)

 Joe Manchin (WV)

 Claire McCaskill (MO)

 Jack Reed (RI)

 Brian Schatz (HI)

 Jeanne Shaheen (NH)

 Mark Warner (VA)

 Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) ...including the Senate Minority Leader...

 Chuck Schumer (NY) The roll call also includes these names as "not voting":

 Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)

 Chris Murphy (D-CT) Unless these two were ill or incapacitated, this was a cowardly act. They are either anti-torture and afraid to show it, or pro-torture and afraid to show it. (Blumenthal did vote No on the motion to proceed three days earlier. Murphy voted Yes.)

 Chuck Schumer (NY)

 Tim Kaine (VA)

 Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)



 Chris Murphy (CT)

 Amy Klobuchar (MN)



 Brian Schatz (HI)

 Richard Blumenthal (CT)

The Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DD/CIA) is a statutory office (50 U.S.C.  3037) and the second-highest official of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DD/CIA assists the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) and is authorized to exercise the powers of the D/CIA when the Director's position is vacant or in the Director's absence or disability.



Under current law, the Deputy Director is appointed by the President and is not required to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

In May, 2013, the Washington Posts Greg Miller reported that the head of the CIAs clandestine service [Haspel] was being shifted out of that position as a result of a management shake-up by then-Director John Brennan. As Miller documented, this official  whom the paper did not name because she was a covert agent at the time  was centrally involved in the worst abuses of the CIAs Bush-era torture regime.



As Miller put it, she was directly involved in its controversial interrogation program and had an extensive role in torturing detainees. Even more troubling, she had run a secret prison in Thailand  part of the CIAs network of black sites  where two detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques. The Senate Intelligence Committees report on torture also detailed the central role she played in the particularly gruesome torture of detainee Abu Zubaydah.



Beyond all that, she played a vital role in the destruction of interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations. The concealment of those interrogation tapes, which violated both multiple court orders as well the demands of the 9/11 Commission and the advice of White House lawyers, was condemned as obstruction by Commission Chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane. A special prosecutor and Grand Jury investigated those actions but ultimately chose not to prosecute.



That CIA officials name whose torture activities the Post described is Gina Haspel. Today, as BuzzFeeds Jason Leopold noted, CIA Director Pompeo announced that Haspel was selected by Trump to be Deputy Director of the CIA.

As regular readers know, I've been looking at the group of mainstream Democrats relative to the "resistance" they presume to be leading (and occasionally are). In a great many cases, though, they're falling on their faces, or have been forced into stronger stands by a base that's way ahead of them in hating what's happening.(A bit of background: The same money that buys Republican politicians' votes buys Democratic politicians' votes. But maybe you already knew that. If so, consider this a reminder on the off chance that, as you read this pieces, you wonder, "Now why would Democrats do?" The obvious answer in many cases is, they can't afford to offend their real base, meaning their donors. In the case of torture, "their donors" includes the entire U.S. "defense" industry and the banks that finance it.)I'll have more to say in the future about how Democratic voters are ahead of "their" politicians in actually resisting what Trump is doing. The instance detailed below is just one example of that.As we noted here , Kansas Republican Mike Pompeo, newly confirmed CIA Director, is pro-torture. Read the piece at the link for some of the detail on that (the source for that detail, interestingly, is the lone anti-Pompeo Republican, Rand Paul).In that piece I listed the "pro-Resistance" Democrats who collaborated with Donald Trump to put pro-torture Mike Pompeo in charge of the CIA:Here's that reduced list of self-styled "strong anti-Trump resistance fighters" in a slightly different order. These people are branded, or self-branded, as "liberals," as among the "good" Democrats:is positioning himself as the bold face of Senate "resistance." He's all over the TV lately, looking and sounding tough.was Clinton's VP pick, so a foolish (or low information) voter might mistake him as a tough anti-Trumpist as well. good on some issues, especially climate, but not so good on a lot of others. (See the video above for what may have given him "religion" lately  his constituents, who seem to be way out in front of him, complaining about his vote. Too bad he didn't "get religion" in time to keep his fingerprints off of his pro-torture, and therefore anti-Muslim, vote. (Remember, a vote for torture is a, at least so far.)andget lots of face time on MSNBC, painted by the evening hosts as speaking for the so-called the left of the party. It's false cred, as you can see above (and there's more where that "false cred" charge comes from  Klobuchar, for example, is a reliable Monsanto vote , as is Al Franken, who's also getting some good "resistance" limelight lately).should not be voting this way. He's actually further left than this makes him appear. Andis bad on a lot of things, worse than many realize, but rarely makes the news outside of his home state.Note that none of their Yes votes (or abstentions) were needed. The final tally was 66-32-2 and only 51 votes were needed. Four, five or six fewer Yes votes would not have changed the result.To restate: The CIA director reports to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the president. The CIA runs the president's drone kill program . The CIA also runs many or most of the "war on terror" black sites at which torture and death are dealt to enemies designated by the president.Trump's new CIA chief, Mike Pompeo has hired Gina Haspel as his Deputy Director. Here's what the Deputy Director does:So, no Senate confirmation for Ms. Haspel. The Senate has had its last bite of the CIA-torture-drone kill apple.And here's who Gina Haspel is. Glenn Greenwald writes (my emphasis):who Mike Pompeo made his deputy  a woman who ran torture sites, personally ran a "secret prison in Thailand," was involved in the horrific torture of Abu Zubaydah, and who played a "vital role" in the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes in violation of multiple court orders.And that's who our "liberal" anti-Trump defenders  just affirmatively enabled. These are your bold, pro-torture "Resistance fighters."Remember their names. What Pompeo and Haspel do is on them. And if Trump, Pompeo and Haspel ever decide to take this presidential power "local"  the power to torture and kill  and use it on his enemies in the "homeland," that's on these senators as well.GP

Labels: CIA, Gaius Publius, Pompeo, Sheldon Whitehouse, torture, Trump, Vichy Democrats
The Great Wall is an odd film. On one hand its a great experiment. With China set to become the biggest movie industry in the world in a few years time, it was inevitable that Hollywood would invest towards that direction in some way. By casting Matt Damon in a film directed by Zhang Yimou it looked to be a step in the right direction. On the other hand this is not the blockbuster youd expect from these two powerhouses of talent  The Great Wall is in fact the worst movie of their respective careers  neither having a heart to make you care nor having some path breaking VFX to simply enjoy over popcorn.

The story is pretty simple. William, an Irish soldier (Damon) and a Spanish compatriot Tovar (Pedro Pascal) arrive in China only to discover its Great Wall is attacked by mythical creatures called Taotie. The white men stay back in China to defend the kingdom from the beasts and collaborate with the Chinese military officials to stage different modes of attack.

The film kind of works in fits and starts. There are some interesting sequences  like the showboating of the Chinese military and its tactics  which have such giant scale and tactical planning youll want to pick up a copy of Sun Tzus book after youre back home. Like most of Yimous films there is some ostentatious camerawork and production design, and if you like medieval costume dramas like Game of Thrones youll find much to appreciate in the look and feel of the film. Some of the action-ey bits in the end are also fairly engaging. Those familiar with Eastern cinema will also find much to like about superstar Andy Lau who plays a military honcho.

Its the stuff in between the action scenes that disappoints. At most times the film plays out like a tired soap opera that is far more serious than it needs to be. Damons unintentionally hilarious Irish accent only adds to the layer of cheesiness in the film that director Yimou never fully embraces. The monsters in the film are serviceable at best  in an era where you get Star Wars levels of special effects, anything less feels jarring and cheap. Strangely the dragons from 2002s similarly themed low budget Reign of Fire look more convincing and interesting than the creatures in this movie.

The truly frustrating aspect of the film is how it feels like a propaganda piece. The white men in the film have some layers to their personalities, but none of the Chinese characters in the film are real humans  they are robotically fatalist and patriotic and would in fact do anything for their country including giving up their lives. During one moment even defenseless women jump towards the monsters with open arms to sacrifice their blessed lives for their nation  and it is executed in a manner that expects its audience to stand up and loudly applaud while shedding horse sized tears. If this is the big revolution of Chinese-Western cinema then I foresee more hyper nationalist films that depict China as the greatest place in the universe and its people slavishly subservient to it. And more worryingly, more Hollywood talent would flock to the other side for a quick buck and little effort.
By Nidhi Verma and Promit Mukherjee

| NEW DELHI/MUMBAI

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI India plans to create a giant oil company by combining state-owned firms, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Wednesday, as the world's third largest oil consumer looks to better compete with global majors in acquiring foreign assets.New Delhi is struggling to raise local oil production and imports about 80 percent of its oil. Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015 set a goal of cutting that to 67 percent by 2020.India is replacing China as the driver of global oil demand growth and the International Energy Agency expects it to account for a quarter of global energy use by 2040."We propose to create an integrated public sector oil major which will be able to match the performance of international and domestic private sector oil and gas companies," Jaitley said in his budget speech. India has about a dozen state-run oil and gas companies - including Indian Oil Corp (IOC.NS), Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC.NS), Hindustan Petroleum Corp (HPCL.NS). But alone they do not have the financial power to rival global oil majors in bids for overseas oil assets. Combining them "will give them capacity to bear higher risks, avail economies of scale, take higher investment decisions and create more value for shareholders," Jaitley said. It was not clear if Jaitley was talking about combining all state-run oil companies or just some of them.

MULTIPLE MAJORS?

"India has capacity to create not only one, we may create two, three more companies," Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told television channel CNBC-TV18. "It will not be wise to put all eggs in one basket".He said the government had announced the policy but it would be up to companies to determine the details of any mergers.He said creation of oil giant would "de-risk" the firm and give it more leverage to go abroad as low oil prices hit revenue of producers and higher prices hurt fuel refiners.The combined market cap of India's key oil and gas companies -- Oil and Natural Gas Corp, Oil India Ltd (OILI.NS), IOC, HPCL, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL.NS) -- is around $106 billion.

While this is less than the top oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM.N), Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) or Chevron (CVX.N), it still gives India a formidable standing among companies such as Russia's Rosneft (ROSN.MM) with a market cap of around $70 billion or the UK's BP Plc (BP.L) which has a market cap of $115.57 billion.BIGGER NEGOTIATION POWER

Oil industry executives welcomed the plan.

"A much bigger entity will give us bigger negotiating power in almost all activities globally such as the purchase of crude, technology, R&D (research and development) expertise...and faster decision making," said D K Sarraf, chairman of ONGC said."A merged entity can give the benefit of a sheer size of resources which is so far not available to any of the oil and gas companies individually," said M K Surana, chairman of HPCL.However, analysts were a little wary as they felt the process could be lengthy and problematic."I think the motivation is right but the government has to be very careful in going ahead with the merger as that can take a lot of time in integrating cultures of various companies and the market conditions could also change," said Anish De, partner and head of oil and gas at KPMG in India.India planned a similar move in 2005 but the proposal was turned down by a government-appointed panel."(The) key challenge will be integration issues, especially on the human resources side," said K Ravichandran, group head, corporate sector ratings, at ICRA Ltd. (Editing by Elaine Hardcastle and Jason Neely)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Sankalp Phartiyal

| MUMBAI

MUMBAI Indian IT sector leaders will meet both U.S. lawmakers and officials from U.S. President Donald Trump's administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country's $150 billion industry.R. Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of India's big IT companies would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of Feb. 20.India's software services industry is concerned about a bill introduced in the U.S. Congress seeking to double the salary paid to H-1B visa holders which would dramatically increase the costs for the Indian companies employing them.Indian IT service companies use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the U.S., their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace U.S. jobs.Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a U.S. labour shortage in the tech sector.

Chandrashekhar told Reuters that the visit would also seek to emphasize the "the economic partnership that is being built between the two countries."India's IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS.NS), Infosys (INFY.NS) and Wipro (WIPR.NS), have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the U.S. presidential election.IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire U.S. firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.

"Immigration concerns were a risk item, always there, but they are more pronounced now," said a senior executive at L&T Technology Services (LTEH.NS), who declined to be named. Speculation that Trump may issue an executive order curbing the H-1B programme sent shares in IT companies tumbling this week.

An Indian consultant working for Infosys in the U.S. said many of his colleagues were "dejected," while another engineer working for Cisco (CSCO.O) in North Carolina said management had called in an immigration attorney to reassure employees. India's Ministry of External Affairs said it had expressed its concerns to the U.S. government."No executive order has been signed so far," Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for the ministry told reporters on Thursday. "Such bills have been introduced in the past too and such bills have to go through the full Congressional process. So let's not prejudge the outcome." (Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal; Editing by Euan Rocha. Editing by Jane Merriman)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Libby George and David Gaffen

| LONDON/NEW YORK

LONDON/NEW YORK Oil prices jumped on Friday after the United States on Friday imposed sanctions on some Iranian individuals and entities, days after the White House put Tehran "on notice" over a ballistic missile test. Front month U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures CLc1 climbed 24 cents to $53.78, after closing 34 cents down on Thursday, as of 12:22 p.m. ET (1722 GMT). The contract is up nearly 1 percent on the week. Brent crude futures LCOc1 were up 30 cents at $56.86 a barrel; it was on track for a more than 2 percent gain since Monday, its first significant weekly rise this year.Volume in U.S. crude futures was relatively low on Friday, with about 335,000 contracts changing hands by 12:15 p.m., on track to fall short of the 200-day moving average for 528,000 contracts.

This is the first move by the administration of President Donald Trump against Iran. It follows his vows during the 2016 campaign to get tough on Tehran.Under the sanctions, announced by the U.S. Treasury, 13 individuals and 12 entities cannot access the U.S. financial system or deal with U.S. companies. They are also subject to "secondary sanctions," which means foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them, or risk being blacklisted by the United States.A senior U.S. administration said Friday's sanctions were an "initial step" in response to Iran's "provocative behaviour," suggesting more could follow if Tehran does not curb its ballistic missile program and continues support for Houthi militia in Yemen.

The news added to volatility in what had already been a day of choppy trading. Analysts said the market is torn between promised cuts from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and fears over rising U.S. shale oil production."While the market is taking these actions in stride so far as unlikely to result in a larger military conflict that would put Persian Gulf crude oil supplies at risk, the odds of that scenario are certainly higher than a week ago," wrote Timothy Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures in New York.

Trump had warned on Twitter that "Iran is playing with fire" after its missile test. "The 'trumperament' of the new U.S. president is being tested by Iran and soon maybe also by Russia and China," said Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultancy PetroMatrix. "And that is adding some geopolitical support to crude oil." (Reporting by Libby George in London and David Gaffen in New York Editing by W Simon)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Jane Wardell and Roberta Rampton

| SYDNEY/WASHINGTON

SYDNEY/WASHINGTON U.S. ties with staunch ally Australia became strained on Thursday after details about an acrimonious phone call between its leaders emerged and U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal between the two nations on refugee resettlement was "dumb."During a 25-minute phone call last Saturday with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Trump accused Australia of trying to export the "next Boston bombers" under the agreement, the Washington Post reported.The Post, which cited unidentified senior U.S. officials, said that Trump abruptly ended the call and told Turnbull that it was the "worst call by far" he'd had with a foreign leader.The description of the call and a subsequent tweet from Trump promising to study what he called a "dumb deal" caused concern among lawmakers from Republican and Democratic parties."We always have reason to be concerned with respect to anytime our relationship with an ally might go sour. My hope is that it won't," Republican Senator Mike Lee told CNN."My hope is that we can achieve whatever objectives the president's willing to pursue in a way that won't damage the trade relationship or won't damage other aspects of our relationship," Lee said.Representative Steny Hoyer, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, urged Trump to apologise, while Republican Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he called Australia's U.S. ambassador to express his support.During former President Barack Obama's administration, the United States agreed to resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps on Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. In return, Australia would resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.The rift between Washington and Canberra that has developed over the resettlement deal could have serious repercussions. Australia and the United States are among five nations that make up the Five Eyes group, the world's leading intelligence-sharing network.Later on Thursday, Trump told reporters at the White House he would "respect" the refugee agreement with Australia.

But Trump made it clear he was not pleased, saying it was an example of countries taking advantage of the United States."Why are we doing this, what's the purpose? So, we'll see what happens," Trump said.REFUGEES AT ISSUE

The call between Trump and Turnbull came at the end of a day of widespread protests and confusion over Trump's order for a 120-day halt of the U.S. refugee program and a 90-day suspension on visits from people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

Many of the people being held in the Australian detention centres, which have drawn harsh criticism from the United Nations and human rights groups, fled violence in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump was "unbelievably disappointed" and "extremely, extremely upset" with the deal, but said it would go ahead.Spicer said all refugees presented to the United States would be subject to "extreme vetting" to ensure they do not pose security risks.Turnbull told reporters he was surprised and disappointed that details of the call with Trump had been leaked but gave few particulars other than to deny reports Trump had hung up on him."As far as the call is concerned, the report that the president hung up is not correct. The call ended courteously. And as far as the nature of the discussion, it was very frank and forthright," he told a Sydney radio station on Thursday.

UNPRECEDENTED ACRIMONY

Political analysts said the acrimony between the two countries was unprecedented, surpassing even the difficult relations between former U.S. President Richard Nixon and then-Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who withdrew the country's troops during the Vietnam War."Even that was always done in the language of foreign policy niceties," said Harry Phillips, a political analyst of 40 years experience at Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Perth. Australia, New Zealand and the United States have been allies under a formal security treaty since 1951. They co-operate on military matters in the Pacific region, although today the treaty is taken to relate to conflicts worldwide.The United States plans to send extra military aircraft to Australia's tropical north this year as part of a U.S. Marines deployment that will bolster its military presence close to the disputed South China Sea. Australia is also one of 10 U.S. allies purchasing Lockheed Martin's (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jet program. (Additional reporting by Eric Walsh, Susan Heavey and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington and Colin Packham in Sydney; Writing by Jane Wardell and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Paul Tait, Jeffrey Benkoe and Grant McCool)

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By Catherine Ngai and Florence Tan

| NEW YORK/SINGAPORE

NEW YORK/SINGAPORE Oil majors and trading houses are set to ship an unprecedented volume of U.S. crude oil to Asia in coming weeks, boosting already high flows to the region due to higher prices from OPEC production cuts.Traders have estimated that some 700,000 to 900,000 barrels per day is set to leave the United States in February, with the majority of the cargoes headed to Asia. That volume would be the highest monthly level on record, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, helping reduce an U.S. inventory glut that has pressured prices for two years.The flood could create a supply surplus in Asia, possibly pushing prices for regional grades lower, traders said, as local refiners are ill-equipped to process that flow.

The economics recently became favourable after Brent's premium over U.S. crude widened to the most in nearly a year. The widening differential for Middle East benchmark Dubai DUB-1M-A over U.S. crude also opened the arbitrage to the Far East. The U.S. crude cargoes, which will include both light and heavy grades, will reach China, Japan and Singapore, according to four trading sources and Reuters shipping data. Some exports are also headed to Europe and Latin America."It's a good time to buy U.S. crude because of the OPEC cut, but our spot room has limitations so we have to compare every cargo," said an official with a Japanese refiner, who declined to be named due to company policy.

Mercuria has booked the Front Balder, a Suezmax, to send crude from the U.S. Gulf to Qingdao, China, according to sources and vessel tracking data. It appears to have stopped in Colombia along the way. A company spokesperson could not be reached for comment.BP Plc (BP.L) is sending the Cap Guillaume, a Suezmax, from the U.S. Gulf to Singapore next week, according to sources and tracking data. It was not immediately clear if the cargo details would change; a company spokesperson could not be reached for comment.

Shell RDSA.L also booked the Gener8 Daphne, an Aframax, to Singapore. On Friday, it was docked outside of Texas City at the Teppco Seaways Crude Berth. A company spokesperson could not be reached for comment.BP and Trafigura [TRAFG.UL] are said to be marketing at least 3 million barrels of U.S. Eagle Ford crude in Asia, three traders said. Two very large crude carriers (VLCC), Awtad and Manifa, were booked to arrive in China and Singapore in February. (Reporting by Catherine Ngai in New York, Florence Tan in Singapore and Liz Hampton in Houston; Editing by Tom Brown)

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New Delhi: In a massive crackdown on unauthorised agencies offering Aadhaar-related services illegally and charging excessive money from the public, UIDAI has shut down 12 such websites and 12 mobile apps available on the Google Playstore. The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has further directed authorities for closure of another 26 such fraudulent and illegal websites and mobile applications.

"Some websites and mobile apps were luring citizens to share their basic information and Aadhaar number under the pretext of getting them Aadhaar card or offering other Aadhaar related services. We have taken strict action against them," UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey told PTI. Emphasising that UIDAI has a zero tolerance to such unauthorised websites and mobile applications, he said, "We will continue to keep our vigil on such websites and mobile applications and if something comes to our notice, we will take swift action including shutting them down, or go for other stricter measures," he said.

At present, any Aadhaar-related demographic information can only be shared following the procedures laid down in the Aadhaar Act, 2016. Any violation is punishable under Section 38 and Chapter VII of the Aadhaar Act that provides punishment for "Whoever, not being authorised by the Authority, intentionally accesses or secures, downloads, copies or extracts any data from the

Central Identities Data Repository or stored in any removable storage medium..."

In a statement, UIDAI said that these illegal websites and mobile applications (downloadable through Google Playstore) were providing unauthorised Aadhaar-related services such as downloading online Aadhaar card, providing status of Aadhaar generation, PVC (plastic) Aadhaar Card, to residents. In the process, these agencies were illegally obtaining the Aadhaar number and enrolment details from the residents.

"UIDAI has not authorised the owners of these mobile applications or websites to extend any Aadhaar-related services on its behalf," Pandey said in the statement. Warning websites and mobile applications providers against illegal use of Aadhaar logo in violation of Aadhaar Act and the Copyright Act, he said the authority is contemplating stern action against them. "As per Section 70 of the IT Act, the Government has declared the UIDAIs Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) facilities, Information assets, logistics infrastructure and dependencies installed at UIDAI locations to be critically protected system," he added.

www.uidai.gov.inis the only authorised website of UIDAI, the statement said adding that for Aadhaar related services, people should visit either the official website or authorised Common Service Centres or Aadhaar Permanent Enrolment Centres.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court will hear a plea later Friday that property belonging to former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanithi should not be released in the wake of their acquittal in the Aircel-Maxis case by the trial court.

The bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice NV Ramana and Justice DY Chandrachud said that they will hear the matter in the post lunch session at 2 pm, after Special Public Prosecutor Anand Grover mentioned the matter for an urgent hearing.

The CBI had alleged that Dayanidhi Maran, as minister in the UPA-I government, used his influence to help Malaysian businessman T.A. Ananda Krishnan buy Aircel by coercing its owner Sivasankaran to part with his stake.

Sivasankaran alleged that Maran favoured the Maxis Group in the takeover of his company. In return, he alleged, the company made investments through Astro Network in a company stated to be owned by the Maran family.
An army jawan in Kashmir was forced to trek through snow for over ten hours, with his mothers body on his shoulders. After the jawan failed to get help from the local army units, he was forced to cover on foot a distance of more than 50 kilometres through five to six inches of snow in inclement weather.

According to a report in India Today TV, to perform his mother's last rites, Muhammad Abbas, a 25-year-old jawan hailing from a remote village in Karnah, district near Kupwara had to wait for almost a week as the route leading to his native village was covered under deep snow.

Detailing the charade the army jawan had to go through in order to bury his mother, a report in India.com states that Abbas was posted in Pathankot, where he called his mother to stay with him to escape the biting cold in his village. However, his mother passed away on 28 January after suffering a cardiac arrest. He pleaded with his officials that the casket could be flown in via a chopper to his native place. But his request was rejected citing poor weather conditions.

Another report in The Asian Age states that Abbas then brought his mother's body to Army headquarters in Kupwara, hoping that he could either reach his village via road after the snow is cleared or a chopper would be arranged for him. Neither happened.

When no help arrived in over three days, Abbas after consulting few of his relatives, decided to cover the remaining stretch on foot, which is a dangerous trek and an avalanche prone zone. "The entire 52-km Chowkibal-Karnah road which passes through elevations of about 3,200 metre is avalanche-prone and an official warning against venturing out in the area stands valid for next 24 hours," The Asian Age article states.

However, ignoring the threat, Abbas, along with few of his relatives marched on through the treacherous journey to ensure a proper burial for his mother.

"It is very humiliating. I'm not able to give a decent burial to my mother. The administration kept us waiting with the body but they never sent the helicopter.. It was a dangerous trek. We were stomping through snow with my mother's body. It's an avalanche-prone zone that we were moving through," Abbas told NDTV.

"All these days we waited for the chopper. We kept calling the officers. They said it was coming but it never came...We have gone through hell all these days. The trek was dangerous and God knows how many times we thought we would not be able to make it," Nawaz, Abbas' cousin told The Telegraph.

Abbas finally reached his village on Thursday evening and performed his mother's last rites.

Meanwhile, the alleged administrative apathy brought to light stray acts of kindness from people of nearby villages who provided shelter and food to the soldier enroute the difficult trek. The villagers even helped carve out a path through the snow to help carry the casket of Abbas' mother, according to The Telegraph.

The shocking incident came to light after videos of the soldier's trek were aired on media channels. According to NDTV, while the army claimed that they had arranged for a chopper on Thursday, the family declined the facility stating as they were unsure about the weather conditions. The local administration also said that all efforts were on to remove the snow from their path.

However the family denies such claims as locals raise some pertinent questions.

Mufti Islah, a Kashmiri journalist questioned the delay in administrative help to the bereaved family in a Facebook post.

"Some 25 kilometres need to cleared of snow from Chowkibal to Sadhna top and downhill but for some strange reasons the Kupwara administration hasn't been able to do so. The body could have been easily lifted in a chopper but here too the officials have not been able to line help. The officials have now promised to fly the body to Karnah tomorrow (Thursday). The family is waiting. What else can they do," Islah writes.

Karnah gets cut off from other part of the Valley for several weeks after heavy snowfall, each year. A report in The Greater Kashmir states that another such incident was reported in January this year when the mortal remains of a former Naib Tehsildar could not be carried to his native village after the residents' pleas for airlifting the body went unheeded.
Dear friends,

I am under orders to proceed on leave for unspecified duration. I am extremely grateful for the support you have extended to me. I am sure you will keep up your good performance. My family joins me in thanking you all.

Good wishes to all of you.

This was the message that Chhattisgarh IGP SR Kalluri sent to a WhatsApp group a little past 2 pm on Thursday, announcing that he has been sidelined. This comes after a long spell of medical leave that he took to attend to heart and kidney ailments and did not even appear before the National Human Rights Commission on 30 November to explain allegations of hostility and abuse of power against civil liberties activists.

For those not familiar with the dynamics of Chhattisgarh's fight against the Maoists, Kalluri is both hero and villain, rolled into one. A local journalist saddened by Kalluri's exit from south Chhattisgarh said to me, "The national media was anti-Kalluri but the regional media saw him as a hero.''

He is a hero for many because his 'Mission 2016' that he announced to end insurgency in the heart of India's 'red corridor' captured the imagination of the locals, caught as they were in the crossfire between the Maoists and the state. At this point in time, the Maoist sarkaar takes over if you move 5 kilometres inside on either side of NH 30, the moment you enter Chhattisgarh from Andhra Pradesh.

Kalluri was lauded because he took on the "outsiders'' who were seen as defaming the state before the rest of India by talking of human rights violations. He wanted to launch a war without witnesses, where journalists, lawyers, civil liberties activists, independent-minded politicians won't find space in Chhattisgarh. Locals saw in Kalluri's war against Maoists as the roadmap to development and peace in their land.

The macho image is what defined this stocky 1994 batch IPS officer.

Reverse the mirror and you will find that all this was also wrong with Kalluri. Originally from Andhra Pradesh, Kalluri was known for his strong-arm tactics. A journalist was put behind bars for allegedly using a slang term for Kalluri on a WhatsApp group. The officer encouraged vigilante groups like Agni, Samajik Ekta Manch to put pressure on anyone seen to be questioning his methods, to force them to exit Chhattisgarh.

In Kalluri's book, anyone who questioned his methods was anti-India.

Look at how he reacted when a lawyer Pyoli Swatija reached out to him for help when a vigilante group was trying to hound a social scientist and human rights activist Bela Bhatia out of her residence near Jagdalpur on 24 January. Kalluri reportedly replied on SMS saying "naxals will be kicked out of bastar''. When asked to stop persecuting journalists, activists, Kalluri according to Swatija, replied with "F U". He also roundly abused others who appealed to him for help.

Mind-games were an important part of Kalluri's armoury and surrenders, the weapon.

Between April 2014 and October 2016, 1898 Maoists surrendered, lured by the offer of cash reward and promise of employment. But critics say the attempt only was to shore up numbers to impress the home ministry, with the cops picking up innocent tribals, getting them to admit that they were outlaws.

Kalluri also boasted of capturing 134 Maoists in 2016. The message that anyone should cross the line at their own peril, was not lost on anyone. Local journalists dared not criticise Kalluri and his methods. News reports were largely rose-tinted, no one asked the police about their methods. In Chhattisgarh, Kalluri was king.

Sexual violence is another serious charge at Kalluri's doorstep. Among many cases, the Chhattisgarh police are also accused of raping 16 tribal women in Bijapur, for which the NHRC issued a notice. Which also perhaps explains Kalluri's abusive language against activists who were instrumental in getting the NHRC to intervene.

Under his watch, the Bastar police did a first by burning effigies of human rights activists. Kalluri had made the battle very personal for the force.

Which is why those who oppose Kalluri's methods are heaving a sigh of relief. But they say only the first step has been taken. Officially, Kalluri is "on leave''. Which means the Raman Singh government is not saying anything about the inquiry into allegations of excesses committed under his watch. Human rights activists say it is hardly a dismissal, leave alone a honest one and that it only provides Kalluri with an honourable exit.

A few months ago, when Narendra Modi had come visiting, the pictures of the prime minister shaking hands with Kalluri went viral. It was interpreted as a pat on the officer's back. But with the NHRC coming down strongly on the Chhattisgarh government, the state seems to have decided Kalluri is like an albatross around its neck.

But has Raman Singh been too clever with this? It seems so because Kalluri's methods were no secret and Raipur knew what was happening in Bastar. He was only the executioner of the state's agenda. By sending him on long leave, the government has side-stepped questions on accountability.
How many suburban congressman besides Issa will live to regret backing Trump?



I have a part-time job-- congressional recruiting. It's voluntary and it's GRUELING. In between the time I wrote "congressional" and "recruiting" in the last sentence, I had a 30 minute conversation with a top recruit for a swing district. He's run before. He hates the DCCC. Everyone I talk to hates the DCCC. The DCCC screwed him over. He's already a pretty high-ranking state-level elected official and who didn't enjoy being consistently lied to and rat-fucked by Steve Israel and Kelly Ward and treated like a novice by the unaccomplished moron-children they assigned to deal with candidates. He has a family and a life and to go through another experience with the DCCC wouldn't be worth another run for Congress. Almost everyone who has ever experienced the DCCC feels the same way. I hear it all day long-- every day and from every part of the country. Madonna should forget about blowing up and the White House and imagine blowing up the DCCC instead. Unless today is the first day you're reading DWT, you know I'm the last person to be an effective defender of the DCCC. In fact, no one detests them more than I do.





That said, Israel and Kelly Ward are gone. That's a big deal-- but not nirvana. According to people I trust, this new executive director is supposed to be pretty good. We'll see. Rotgut Blue Dog (and Rahm Emanuel protegee) Cheri Bustos had a dominant voice on the recruiting committee last cycle and many people blame her-- and rightfully so-- for how horribly the Democrats did. This year, I'm hearing that people let her yammer on and try to ignore her determined stupidity and let others on the recruitment committee take the lead. That's also a big deal.









This week I was turned down by two superb prospective candidates who refuse to do anything with the DCCC until they've proven themselves to be free of the poison Steve Israel wrecked the place with. But I found another one who's more open to running. He'd be great and the Republican who represents the blue-leaning district could be a real victim of the toxic combination of Trump and Ryan.





But what I want us to look at today are the red-held seats where Hillary out-performed Obama (or even did about as well as Obama) and where the DCCC has been ineffective-- or nonexistent. A good example would be FL-27 (Miami), where Debbie Wasserman Schultz has worked for a decade to protect her corrupt Republican crony Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. In 2012 Obama beat Romney in FL-27 53.0% to 46.3%, a pretty strong performance. But Wasserman Schultz and Ros-Lehtinen worked together to make sure there would be no plausible Democratic opponent-- and Ros-Lehtinen coasted to reelection. This past cycle, Hillary did even better, beating Trump in the district 58.6% to 38.9%. Again, Ros-Lehtinen had a joke to run against instead of a real candidate. But even running against a nothing candidate with no DCCCC suppory-- and who spent just $869,383 to Ros-Lehtinen's $3,328,739-- she only managed to win with 54.9%. Against a credible, well-supported candidate... we could see Ros-Lehtinen go work for her old amigo Lincoln Diaz-Balart's campaign for President of Cuba.





These are the districts that need to be seriously looked at for 2018 targeting:





 AZ-02, Martha McSally's district, which Hillary won-- 49.6% to 44.7%, beating Obama's 2012 performance (48.4% to 49.9%) The Democrats had a weak candidate-- a New Dem-- who the DCCC didn't support and who raised just $1,571,901 to McSally's $8,261,616. McSally out-performed Trump massively. She won with 56.7% (compared to Trump's 44.7% loss).





The only other seat in Arizona worth looking at is David Schweikert's Scottsdale/ParadiseValley district-- although that would be a real long-shot and could only be won as part of a massive anti-Trump/anti-Ryan tsunami. Hillary lost 52.4- 42.4% but she did a lot better than Obama's 38.8% total in 2012. Schweikert hasn't had a viable opponent. Moving along to California, there are excellent opportunities for Democratic pickups. Trump and Republican polices are widely hated and 2018 should be golden for Democrats in the Golden State.





 CA-10, Jeff Denham's Central Valley (Modesto, Manteca, Tracy) seat is a minority white district. Hillary did slightly worse than Obama there but still beat Trump 48.5-45.5%. Obama had beaten Romney 50.6-47.0%. The DCCC backed Michael Eggman. Denham spent $4,174,467 to Engman's $1,551,905. The DCCC & Pelosi's House Majority PAC put in just over $3.8 million to Ryan's Congressional Leadership Fund's $3.3 million. Denham beat Eggman by around 10,000 votes-- 52.4% to 47.6%. It was a better performance than Engman's 44% in 2014 but the DCCC is talking about running his sister, Susan, an Assemblywoman, in 2018 instead.





 CA-21, David Valadao's Central Valley district is south of Denham's and is over 72% Latino. (Chew that over in your mind.) Obama beat Romney 54.6% to 43.5% and Hillary did even better-- besting Trump 55.2% to 39.7%. Emilio Huerta, Dolores Huerta's son ran, but got off to a bumpy start without much DCCC help when it was needed. Valadao beat him by around 11,000 votes (58-42%) in one of the lowest turn districts in California. And Valadao spent $2,765,981 to Emilio's $630,389.





 CA-25, Buck McKeon's old district in northeastern L.A. County (Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley) and Ventura (Simi Valley), is now represented by out-of-his-depth teabagger Steve Knight, a bad fit for a blue district. Romney beat Obama there 49.7-47.8% but Hillary beat Trump 50.3-43.6%. The DCCC recruited an especially unelectable piece of crap candidate from outside the district and wrecked any chance for the Democrats to win. Knight was reelected by almost 50,000 votes-- 50-40%, a landslide in a blue district. Thanks DCCC. It's a perfect example about why local Democrats hate them so much. (And Bustos tried to re-recruit him for 2018, something that went over badly on every level.)





 CA-39, Ed Royce's 32% white northern Orange County district is an odd place for a racist asshole like Royce... but the DCCC never backs Democrats against him. This year Hillary kicked ass there. Where Romney beat Obama 50.8- 47.1%, she beat Trump 51.5% to 42.9%. The DCCC refused to get behind Brett Murdock who was outspent $3,536,482 to $76,014 but still managed to take 42.3% of the vote against Royce, whose days are clearly numbered.





 CA-45, Mimi Walters central Orange County (Irvine) district is another one the DCCC reflexively ignored. Hillary outperformed Obama (who lost to Romney with 43.0%) and beat Trump 49.8-44.4%. Walters was comfortably reelected by 50,000 votes (59-41%), the DCCC completely ignoring Ron Varasteh, her opponent, who was outspent $1,643,696 to $42,761.





 CA-48, Dana Rohrabacher's Huntington Beach/Costa Mesa district, wasn't Trump territory either. Romney beat Obama there, 54.7-43.0%. Hillary took the district 47.9% to 46.2%. Again, the Democratic candidate, Sue Savary, was ignored by the DCCC and drastically outspent-- $609,952 by Rohrabacher to her $91,293. He beat her 58.5- 41.5%.





 CA-49, Darrell Issa's seat in northern San Diego/southern Orange County, was one of the tightest in the country. Doug Applegate nearly beat him-- just 6,000 votes separating them (51-49%), despite Issa outspending him $6,169,077 to $1,633,251. The DCCC jumped into the race way too late but did spend around $3.5 million eventually. Romney had beaten Obama there 52.4% to 45.7% but Hillary trounced Trump 50.7-43.2% in the highly educated middle class, mostly suburban district. Good news: Applegate is running again. (You can CA-49, Darrell Issa's seat in northern San Diego/southern Orange County, was one of the tightest in the country. Doug Applegate nearly beat him-- just 6,000 votes separating them (51-49%), despite Issa outspending him $6,169,077 to $1,633,251. The DCCC jumped into the race way too late but did spend around $3.5 million eventually. Romney had beaten Obama there 52.4% to 45.7% but Hillary trounced Trump 50.7-43.2% in the highly educated middle class, mostly suburban district. Good news: Applegate is running again. (You can contribute to his campaign here .)





 CO-06 is a suburban Denver district Democrats should win. Obama beat Romney 51.6% to 46.5% and, though Hillary didn't do as well, she still beat Trump 50.2% to 41.3%. The DCCC got behind a very strong candidate, Morgan Carroll, who pretty much kept up in the spending area but the NRCC and Ryan's PAC spent spent $6.3 million to the DCCC's and Pelosi's PAC's $5.0 million. Coffman won 51.3% to 42.4%.





 FL-25, FL-26, FL-27- The 3 Republican-held districts in Miami-Dade. Hillary won FL-26 (Carlos Curbelo) and FL-27 (Ros-Lehtinen) definitively and narrowly lost the redder FL-25 (Mario Diaz-Balart), out-performing Obama's 2012 scores in each. The DCCC ignored FL-25 and FL-27 and ran a ghastly campaign for a terrible, completely unelectable and notoriously corrupt candidate in FL-26. What a mess!





 GA-06 the Tom Price district in the suburbs north of Atlanta where a special election will soon determine if anti-Trump sentiment is growing or subsiding in a traditionally very red district that veered sharply towards Hillary in November. These well-off, well-educated suburbanites don't like Trump. They gave Romney a 60.8-37.5% victory over Obama. Four years later, the swing was mind boggling. without ever campaigning there or spending any money there, Hillary nearly won the district. Trump took it narrowly-- 48.3% to 46.8%. The primaries for both parties are going to be contentious but the likely Democratic candidate, GA-06 the Tom Price district in the suburbs north of Atlanta where a special election will soon determine if anti-Trump sentiment is growing or subsiding in a traditionally very red district that veered sharply towards Hillary in November. These well-off, well-educated suburbanites don't like Trump. They gave Romney a 60.8-37.5% victory over Obama. Four years later, the swing was mind boggling. without ever campaigning there or spending any money there, Hillary nearly won the district. Trump took it narrowly-- 48.3% to 46.8%. The primaries for both parties are going to be contentious but the likely Democratic candidate, Jon Ossoff , is just the kind of no-nonsense values-driven candidate who could claim this unlikely district for the Democrats.





 GA-07- Just east of Price's district is an equally red seat held by right-wing nut Bob Woodall, slightly more exurban than suburban. The swing towards Hillary was also strong though not quite as eye-popping as in GA-06. Romney beat Obama there 60.2-38.3% and Trump lost around 9 points from Romney's score to come out ahead of Hillary 51.1% to 44.8%. Woodall has won every race with over 60%-- although last November was his smallest majority (60..5%), despite-- once again-- not having a competitive opponent. The DCCC has entirely ignored both GA-07 and GA-06. Woodall raised $648,604 and his opponent, Rashid Malik didn't raise the $5,000 required for an FEC report.





 IL-06 is Pete Roskam's Chicagoland district (parts of DuPage, Henry, Lake, Cook and Kane counties). It's the only Republican-held district in Illinois where Hillary had a substantially better performance than Obama. He lost the district to Romney 53.3-45.1%. Hillary beat Trump there-- 50.2% to 43.2%. The DCCC has consistently allowed Roskam to slide into reelection without a fight. He hasn't had a fight since his first election in 2006 and generally wins with over 60%. This year he beat Amanda Howland, who got zero support from the DCCC, 59.5% to 40.5%. Roskam spent $3,331,980 on the race to her $98,179.





 KS-03 is the Kansas part of Kansas City (most of the city is in Missouri) and the district includes all of Johnson and Wyandotte counties and part of rural Miami County. The DCCC actually sensed something about the district, which is represented by weak backbencher Kevin Yoder. Hillary won the district, 47.2% to 46.0%. Romney had beaten Obama there 53.8-44.3%. The Democratic candidate against Yoder, Jay Sidie spent $563,363 to Yoder's $4,049,363. The DCCC threw in an additional $1,404,577, while Ryan's Congressional Leadership Fund spent $795,373. But Sidie wasn't a strong enough candidate and Yoder won by around 36,000 votes-- 51.3% to 40.6%. (A Libertarian took 8% of the vote.)





 MI-11 is the Dave Trott district in the Oakland and Wayne county suburbs west and northwest of Detroit. While the DCCC was working hard and wasting money on horrible, unelectable MI-11 is the Dave Trott district in the Oakland and Wayne county suburbs west and northwest of Detroit. While the DCCC was working hard and wasting money on horrible, unelectable Blue Dog garbage candidates in other parts of the state, they refused to work with progressive doctor Anil Kumar-- Steve Israel is a vicious Islamophobe and he blackballed Kumar-- who did better than any of their sad-sack Blue Dogs. Hillary did terribly in the Republican-held districts in Michigan but less terrible in MI-11. Romney had beaten Obama there 52.3- 46.9% but neither Trump nor Hillary did as well, Trump scraping by with a 49.7-45.3% win. Kumar, who managed to raise enough money to start competitive with Trott, spent $1,109,010 to Trott's $1,337,399. The DCCC and Pelosi's PAC wasted $2.3 million of pathetic Blue Dog and NRA proponent Lon Johnson and lost in MI-01 but would have taken MI-11 if they spent that money on Kumar instead. Trott won with just 52.9%. Hopefully the DCCC will remember in 2018.





 MN-03, Erik Paulson's seat, was the only Republican-held district in Minnesota where Clinton out-performed Obama. Obama beat Romney there 49.6% to 48.8% and Hillary beat Trump 50.8% to 41.4%. Again, the well educated suburbanites west and south of Minneapolis (Edna, Bloomington, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka) couldn't stomach voting for Trump-- but stuck with Paulsen in light of a weak Democratic opponent Terri Bonoff, who lost by around 50,000 votes, 56.9% to 43.1% despite nearly $4 million in independent expenditures from the DCCC.





 NE-02, the Omaha district with the single worst Blue Dog in Congress, "ex"-Republican Brad Ashford, who was defeated in November by Republican Don Bacon. Romney had beaten Obama there, 52.9-45.7% and Hillary did a little better than Obama and Trump did worse than Romney. The final tally there was a Trump win of 48.2% to 46.0%. The Blue Dog incumbent lost by almost 6,000 votes (49.4% to 47.3%) even though he outspent the Republican $2,515,416 to $1,454,019 and even though the DCCC and Pelosi's PAC wasted around $3.4 million, proving once again that if voters want a Republican, they vote for an actual Republican, not a Republican-lite Blue Dog.





 NJ-07 is Leonard Lance's suburban district in northern New Jersey that includes, primarily, chunks of Somerset, Union and Hunterdon counties. While Hillary underperformed Obama in the Republican-held New Jersey blue collar districts (NJ-02, NJ-03, NJ-04), she out-performed Obama in the better-off more suburban districts (NJ-07 and NJ-11). In 2012 Romney won NJ-07 52.5-46.3% but in November Hillary beat Trump 48.6-47.5%, again Trump underperforming Romney much more drastically than Hillary out-peforming Obama. The Democrats didn't run a candidate against Lance though, choosing to giving him a free ride to reelection again. He beat under-financed Berniecrat Peter Jacob by nearly 40,000 votes, 54.2% to 43.0%, after outspending him $1,276,330 to $305,073, while the DCCC looked on without batting an eye.





 NJ-11 was a similar situation. Rodney Frelinghuysen III or IV, treats the district (parts of Morris, Essex, Passaic and Sussex counties) as an hereditary familiar barony. He raised $1,991,920 while his Democratic opponent, Joe Wenzel, raised less than the $5,000 that would have triggered an FEC report. He won 58.2-38.7%, while Hillary out-performed Obama and virtually tied Trump. Romney had beaten Obama 52.4-46.6% in 2012. In November, Hillary had improved on Obama's performance slightly (to 47.9%) while Trump underperformed Romney significantly (48.8%).





 PA-06, PA-07 and PA-08 are the three blue-leaning suburban swing districts that surround Philly on 3 sides. The Democrats should have won all 3 but the DCCC botched up all three races and they are, once again, Republican-held. While Hillary was under-performing Obama in most Pennsylvania red districts, she held her own in these three, spending enormous energy and lots of money in the area. In 2012 Romney beat Obama in PA-06 50.6-48.1% but Hillary was maintaining Obama's numbers (48/2%), Trump was untenable for many Romney voters and only wound up with 47.6%, losing the district to Hillary. Mike Parrish, the worthless conservative Democrat who ran against Ryan Costello did far worse than Hillary and Costello beat him 57.3-42.7%. In PA-07, Pat Meehan's district, Hillary beat Trump 49.3% to 47.0%, primarily because Romney voters refused to vote for Trump. But the DCCC purposeless sabotaged the progressive Democratic candidate, Mary Ellen Balchunis, and Meehan was reelected 57.3% to 42.7%. The DCCC spent all their loot in PA-08, an open seat, that Hillary actually lost (narrowly) to Trump, 448.2-48.0% (an outcome almost identical to Romney's fractional win in 2012.) Steve Santarsiero, the Democrat ic candidate outspent the Brian Fitzpatrick, the GOP candidate, $2,778,029 to $2,009,177 and the DCCC (+ Pelosi'sPAC) spent another $7 million! Fitzpatrick still beat Santartsiero by around 35,000 votes, 54.5% to 45.5%.





 SC-01, disgraced former Governor Mark Sanford's district, isn't an area where the DCCC has any expectations but it's a relatively well-educated suburban district and easily the wealthiest in the state. It's the only district in South Carolina were Hillary out-performed Obama, albeit only slightly. Romney beat Obama 58.3% to 40.2%. Many of his supporters were repulsed by Trump, who only beat Clinton 53.5% to 40.4%. Democrat Dimitri Cherny didn't offer Sanford much of a challenge, raising just $27,562 to Sanford's $741,639. Sanford beat him by about 70,000 votes, 58.6% to 36.9%. I don't see a Democrat winning a seat like this in 2018... but the DCCC should start working the district now with an eye on the future. And that brings us to Texas.





Statewide Hillary out-performed Obama 2012 3,867,816 (43.4%) to 3,294,440 (41%). Where Romney took 57% of the Texas vote, though, Trump only managed 52.6%. But the statewide totals don't tell us much about the districts where Clinton really-- and unexpectedly-- excelled. There are 36 congressional districts in the state, 11 held by Democrats and 25 held by Republicans. Of the Republican-held seats, Hillary out-performed Obama in 17 and under-performed Obama in 6. There was virtually no difference between Obama and Hillary in 2 districts. Generally speaking, the better-off, better-educated suburban districts is where Hillary did so much better than Obama and in the much poorer, more rural districts she under-performed Obama. Her most significant increases over Obama were in these districts:

 TX-02 (Ted Poe-- Houston and northern suburbs), where Trump won 52.4% to 43.1%. Romney won the district 62.9% to 35.6%

 TX-03 (Sam Johnson-- northern Dallas suburbs), where Trump won 54.8% to 40.6%. Romney won the district 59.9% to 38.6%

 TX-07 (John Culberson-- Houston and Harris County suburbs), where Hillary won 48.5% to 47.1%. Romney won the district 62.9% to 35.6%

 TX-10 (Mike McCaul-- Austin-Houston corridor), where Trump won 52.3% to 43.2%. Romney won the district 59.1% to 38.8%

 TX-21 (Lamar Smith-- Austin-San Antonio corridor), where Trump won 52.5% to 42.5%. Romney won the district 59.8% to 37.9%

 TX-22 (Pete Olson-- southern Houston suburbs), where Trump won 52.1% to 44.2%. Romney won the district 62.1% to 36.7%

 TX-23 (Will Hurd-- San Antonio exurbs and west Texas borderlands; 71% Latino), where Hillary won 49.8% to 46.4%. Romney won the district 50.7% to 48.1%

 TX-24 (Kenny Marchant-- Ft. Worth suburbs), where Trump won 50.7% to 44.5%. Romney won the district 60.4% to 38.0%

 TX-32 (Pete Sessions-- northern Dallas and suburbs), where Hillary won 48.5% to 46.6%. Romney won the district 57.0% to 41.5%

The DCCC ignored all these districts except TX-23, where they ran an ultra-conservative sleazy Blue Dog who had already been rejected by the voters, Pete Gallego. They wasted $4.7 on independent expenditures for the worthless Gallego who always voted with Republicans when he was in Congress amassing a terrible voting record and ingratiating himself with crooked lobbyists all over DC. The DCCC should be looking for progressive Democrats to challenge Hurd, John Culberson, Lamar Smith, Mike McCaul, Pete Olson and Ted Poe.





 VA-10 is Barbara Comstock's blue northern Virginia district where Hillary beat Trump 52.2% to 42.2%, outperforming Obama's 49.2% in 2012, where he lost to Romney. Once again, the DCCC picked a crap unelectable candidate, LuAnn Bennett, and wasted over $6 million dollars on her., only to see her do far worse than Clinton, losing to the entirely unaccomplished Comstock by over 20,000 votes, 52.9% to 47.1%. The Democrats need to stop recruiting and wasting money on corrupt conservative candidates. With Israel gone, there's at least a chance , a small chance, this will begin to happen.





[Two notes: there are plenty of other districts Democrats can win in 2018, districts where Hillary didn't do better than Obama did-- like against Peter King (NY), Paul Ryan (WI), but that isn't the purview of this post. And the mirror image of this post-- about Democrats in districts Trump won-- will be up manana.] and by the way, you can contribute to the progressive candidates Blue America has endorsed for 2017 and 2018 races by tapping on the thermometer on the right.





The Atlantic and remarked on how Wednesday, Ron Brownstein covered the changing House outlook forand remarked on how Trump and Trumpism are sparking something of a realignment of some white non-urban blue collar areas in a redder direction, while better off, professional suburban areas are continuing to trend towards Democrats. "As the share of voters who split their tickets has steadily declined since the 1970s," he wrote, "each partys roster of seats in the House increasingly reflects its voting coalition in presidential elections. As a new Atlantic analysis has shown, the Republican House majority now relies predominantly on districts where whites exceed their share of the national population, that are located mostly outside of urban centers, and that contain fewer white college graduates than the national average. Democrats, in turn, rely on an upstairs-downstairs coalition of districts where minorities, college-educated whites, or both exceed their share of the population-- the vast majority of them in metropolitan areas."
Five days after two ships collided near Chennai, releasing tonnes of oil sludge into the ocean off the Tamil Nadu coast, the Coast Guard has said the damage might be much worse than what was originally feared.

Speaking to India Today, Coast Guard inspector general S Paramesh said the ships involved in the collision tried to minimise the scale of the spill. "The spill is 10 times than what was reported. Location of accident was two nautical miles from the coastline. A Coast Guard team has been divided into small groups. Eighty percent of cleaning work has been completed at Marina Beach stretch. By (Saturday) evening, the full stretch of Marina will be cleared," Paramesh said.

However, the rate at which the oil is spreading to other parts of the Chennai coast suggests that this claim may also be too premature. A report in The Times of India said the oil has spread 32 kilometres south of the point where the spill originally took place, and is likely to reach Uthandi, over an hour away, by Monday.

The oil spill trajectory prediction system employed by INCOIS works based on inputs like details of the oil spill, location, date and time of the spill, quantity and type of oil spilled, the report mentioned. The system is linked to the Ocean State Forecast System, that provides parameters like wind direction, speed and currents. The model will generate the trajectory and zones that are likely to be affected. INCOIS has found that about seven tonnes of oil will evaporate each day over the next one week. About 10 tonnes will be beached every day until next week.

That may be too late for damage control, however. A report in Hindustan Times said the delayed response by the authorities to the spill may hurt the fishermen the most.

"They didn't remove it immediately, and now it has spread across all beaches, including Marina. Now it's mixed with the sand to create this semi-solid substance, and has severely damaged the ocean," K Bharati, leader of the Fishermens Welfare Association in South India told the newspaper. "This could have been contained easily. Instead, you have Coast Guard officials who haven't been informed of the situation by the port, and who aren't working effectively with them."

Meanwhile, the crew and officials of the two ships involved in the accident have been asked to stay back at the port pending further inquiry into the incident.
An eery silence prevails over Nagaland that remains on edge as the as the bodies of two youths killed in police firing on Wednesday night were buried on Friday at 4 pm after the Governor PB Acharya assured the tribal bodies that appropiate action will be taken against the state government as per constitutional provision.

Dr. Vihusa Seley, the President of Angami Public Organisation told Firstpost, After much pursuasion from the civil society organisations, the volunteers carrying out the protest against municipal polls agreed to bury the bodies of the slain youths. He also said that though the bodies were finally buried at a public place in Kohima, it does not mean that agitation will come to rest

Indefinite bandh called by tribal bodies will be in force in Kohima until our demands are fulfilled, he said. He further informed that he does not yet know how the protest will be carried in the other districts of Nagaland.

Nagaland Tribes Action Committee on Thursday laid a three point demand charter for the Governor of the state.

The memorandum submitted by the committee demanded resignation of the Chief minister and his cabinet. The other two demands were: declare the ULB election process null and void and suspend the police officials involved in the firing that led to the death of the two youths .

Following this, the Chief Minister on Thursday issued a letter to the Kohima Youth Organisation stating that the election has been declared null and void and Commissioner of Police Dimapur and DCP Zone (1) Dimapur has been transferred immediately to "facilitate an impartial Judicial Inquiry which has already been ordered."

The irate mob went out of control as the letter did not mention anything about the resignation of the Chief Minister and his Cabinet and buildings of government offices were attacked.

The Nagaland Post reported, Rampaging mobs literally took over the streets in Kohima in the face of total breakdown of the law and order machinery. The state government machinery in the state capital was totally paralysed and the Assam Rifles had to be called in to aid the civil administration in containing further worsening of the situation.

The newspaper further mentioned that the office of the Kohima Municipal Council, which was also was known as Old Secretariat building, was set ablaze and many of the government office buildings were attacked by the frenzied mob.

Kohima burned when mobs torched the more than 50-year old complex which housed the office of the Kohima Municipal Council (KMC) and flames spread and engulfed the nearby Superintendent Excise Office and Regional Transport Office within no time. The mob stoned the DC office but were prevented from doing further damage due to intervention by some people. The crowd also stone pelted the PHED office.However, the State Information Office and Old secretariat were burned while NPF office was reportedly vandalised and set on fire, the report said.

The tribal groups had also decided not to hold the burial of the two people who were killed in police firing until the government resigned.

The slain youth identified as Khriesavizo Metha and Bendangnungsang Ao were killed on the streets of Dimapur on 1 February when they along with other volunteers of various tribal groups resisted holding of ULB election with 33% reservation for women, which the tribes believe to be against customary laws of the Nagas.

The latest incidents of unrest in Nagaland have several implications not only in the state itself but also in the neighbouring state of Manipur that is reeling under economic blockades imposed by United Naga Council.

Change in leadership ?

The unequivocal demand for resignation of the Chief Minister in a state that only recently saw itself on the verge of a constitutional crisis thrown by ruling dissident NPF MLAs, is seen as a sign of further political trouble.

Only last year the ruling NPF suspended its lone Member of Parliamment and former Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio for backing the dissidents, asreported in The Morung Express at the time.

Now, Rio has been issuing press statements criticising the recent stand off between state and the people.

In one of his recent statements, Rio criticised the state government for holding ULB election contravening customary. He said, Despite the advice of the apex tribal hohos and mass based civil societies, the state government went ahead and passed a resolution in the Assembly which was against customary practices and wishes of the people.

It remains to be seen whether or not the loss of public trust on Chief Minister TR Zeliang will stage a comeback for Rios

Constitutional Amendment?

The ULB election debate in Nagaland has raised a serious questions regarding its applicability in Nagaland. Though the tribal bodies have been repeatedly stating that 33% reservation for women is against the customary laws of Nagaland and infringement upon the rights of the Nagas conferred by the Article 371(A) of the Constitution, the Chief Minister states that it is a Constitutional obligation.

In a press statement the Chief Minister said, holding of elections to the Urban Local Bodies in Nagaland with 33% reservation for women is a constitutional obligation that the state government cannot escape from, since reservation for women in ULBs was not brought about by any enactment of the Parliament or the State Legislature but is a Constitutional Provision as provided by Article 243 T of the Constitution of India.

Despite the Chief Ministers repeated appeal the election of ULBs had to be declared null and void amidst tremendous public pressure.

If the state government faces continuous resistance to ULB election in the state, and it decides to buckle down to puublic pressure, then perhaps a new constitutional amendment will be required to exempt Nagaland from this Constitutional mandate of reserving 33% seats for women.

Smart Cities?

Kohima is selected as a prospective venue for building smart city by the Government of India. To lift the city to the status of a smart city, elected ULBs are a policy mandate. According to the guidelines of the smart city project, a city has to have an elected urban local body to implement the project. The guideline mandates that a Special Purpose Vehicle is to be formed in participation with the Urban Local Bodies.

"The implementation of the Mission at the City level will be done by a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) created for the purpose. The SPV will plan, appraise, approve, release funds, implement, manage, operate, monitor and evaluate the Smart City development projects. Each smart city will have a SPV which will be headed by a full time CEO and have nominees of Central Government, State Government and ULB on its Board," reads the project guidelines.

If this deadlock about the ULB elction continues, it remains uncertain how the government will implement the smart city project in Kohima.

Manipur Elections?

The stand off over ULB election in Nagaland has seen swelling of Naga nationalism which is likely to impact Manipur the neighboring state which is also reeling under crisis on account of economic blockade imposed by United Naga Council on demand of Naga unity in the state.

Professor Bimal Akoijam of Jawaharlal Nehru University told Firstpost that Assembly election slated on the 8th of March may not be held free and fair in the Naga inhabited areas in Manipur.

UNC is challenging the very concept of Manipur. It is likely that NSCN may throw challenge the 10 to 12 Naga dominated constituencies to the government in holding free and fair election, he said

Milan Shimray, a leader of the UNC told Firstpost, Election is not our priority, but the issue of Naga ancestral land is. What happened in Nagaland ULB election is prior indication to what could happen in Manipur in Assembly election
New Delhi: No member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has explicitly opposed Indias membership to the grouping while certain procedural and process-related issues have been raised by a few members, the government said on Thursday.

Minister of state for external affairs VK Singh also said Indias membership continues to be under NSGs consideration and the government remains engaged with all its members at the appropriate levels for an early decision on Indian bid.

Indias application for the NSG membership enjoys widespread support of the members of the group...While no member of the group has explicitly opposed Indias membership, certain procedural and process-related issues have been raised by a few members, Singh said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha.

Indias NSG bid was scuttled by China and a few other countries on the grounds that it is not a signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Replying to another question, Singh said Indias engagement with China was multifaceted and the two sides have agreed to continue with it at various levels to enhance mutual understanding and trust and to address outstanding issues in the spirit of showing mutual respect and sensitivity to each others interests, concerns and aspirations.

A new bilateral dialogue mechanism to discuss regional and international security issues has also been agreed to, he added.
Srinagar: At least six persons were injured today as clashes broke out between protesters and security forces in Nowhatta area of the city and Pulwama district in south Kashmir.

Clashes broke out in Nowhatta area soon after the Friday prayers concluded inside the historic Jamia Masjid here as groups of youth indulged in stone pelting on police personnel in the area, a police official said.

The security forces fired tear smoke shells and used batons to chase the miscreants, the official said. He said at least three persons were injured in the clashes which were going on till last reports came in.

Among the injured is chief photojournalist of PTI S. Irfan, who had gone to cover the incident."As the security forces were chasing away the protesters, I tried to take a safe position during which my safety helmet came off. As I turned to pick up the helmet, I was struck by a stone," Irfan said. The photojournalist said he was rushed to a hospital by his colleagues where he was discharged after first aid.

Clashes also broke out in Pulwama town in south Kashmir where youth pelted stones at security forces, who had launched a search operation, following information about presence of militants in the area, the police official said. He said three persons were injured in retaliatory action by security forces to chase the protesters away.

Meanwhile, normal life was affected across Kashmir due to the strike called by separatist groups in support of their demand for "right to self determination".

Shops and business establishments remained closed while public transport was mostly off the roads in the valley.

However, private vehicles were plying on all major roads of the valley despite the strike call.
Its a cold January day. You are sitting at your desk sipping tea and wondering what will happen in the next season of Game of Thrones. And in that moment you receive a letter from the HR informing you to submit proof for tax saving purposes. You squint at the letter and realise that much like Jon Snowyou know absolutely nothing. You havent made any investments apart from the Employee Provident Fund, which gets deducted from the salary in the first place.

After regaining your composure, you try to figure out which deduction can be claimed under which section of the Income Tax Act. The tedious tax affair turns into a terrifying nightmare. In a state of panic, you search online and look to your colleagues for advice. But, some of them invested in a prudent manner and hence the temptation is high to blindly follow that path. Nonetheless, everyones financial situation is not the same and each person has a set of different financial goals. It is not until later we realise that we have only added fuel to the fire.

According to a Turkish saying, The devil takes a hand in what is done in haste. Hence, investments should be a carefully planned decision. To add to our misery, companies are aware of our lethargy. The period between October-March is the flood season of the investment river. A plethora of products flood the market like; Mutual Funds, ELSS, PPF, NPS, and more. Every product has attractive bank rates and some of them even have a tax saving option. All these options leave us dazed and confused, and by the time you get around to deciding which investment scheme you want to put your money in, its too late. Theres no choice but to invest a lump sum amount in some equity scheme on a wing and a prayer.

According to the I-T act, individual tax payers can invest up to INR 1.5 lakh to obtain deductions under section 80C. And if you are salaried, a part of this limit is probably exhausted by your EPF contribution (not employer contribution). If you have a car or a home loan, the principal amount can also be claimed as a deduction.

The biggest casualty of arbitrary investment decisions is insurance. During the last few years, most people have grasped concept of insurance and have made substantial investments. Buying insurance is a sound decision as it safeguards home, car and other materials; health insurance helps meet the high costs of medical treatment. However, as the numbers reported by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), insurance companies have been suffering from low persistency ratios with many insurers unable to hold on to half the policies sold five years ago. This is a troubling sign for the customer, the companies and even the regulators. Since most insurance sold is front loaded, the customer ends up losing money when these policies lapse. The primary reason for the lapse of many of these policies is due inadequate planning by the customer and companies selling the wrong products to the wrong customer. Throw in lack of time for research and the pressure to share investment proofs at office, and you have a perfect setup for a bad investment decision.

A combination of these factors not only comprises the quality of investment but also neglect towards the benefits that are on offer. To give you an idea of the same, here are some of the tax benefits that can be availed from investing in insurance policies:

Life Insurance Plans: Under Section 80C, an individual tax payer can claim an investment deduction of up to INR 1, 50,000. There are numerous life insurance products like endowment plans, term plans, money back plans and unit-linked plans or ULIPs and others. Investment in any of these products is liable for tax benefits.

Annuity Plans: Annuity or pension plans are a lot different from life insurance plans. While insurance plans provide a safety cover to family in death or disability of the policy holder, annuity or pension plans provide financial cover during the retirement phase. Under Section 80CCC, the maximum deduction that an individual can claim is INR 100,000.

Health Insurance for Parents: Under section 80D, an individual is liable for a deduction of up to INR 25,000 a year for health policies on self, spouse, children and parents so long as the individual tax-payer is below 60 years. However, if your parents are senior citizens (above 60 years) then you can claim an additional benefit of INR 30,000 a year bringing the total tax cut off to INR 55,000 annually.

Buying Life Insurance Riders: Taking into consideration the fact that the Section 80D benefits are on premiums paid for health policies, it does restrict an individual tax-payer from claiming deductions on life insurance policy riders related to health. Hence, critical illnesses and medical insurance riders in a life insurance also qualify for deductions.

Health check-up Deductions: With an increase in lifestyle diseases, tax-payers can also avail deductions on preventive healthcare up to INR 5000, provided that the overall claim for 80D does not exceed INR 25,000 or INR 30,000 collectively. Thus, for instance, if you are below 60 years of age, and pay an annual premium of INR 20,000 on your health policy. You can further claim a deduction of INR 5,000, after undergoing tests.

In order to avoid bad investments decisions, do not wait for that letter from your HR department. Tax planning is a crucial activity and should be undertaken at the start of the financial year and not at the end. Having more time in your hands will not only help to plan your financials in the most optimized manner but also reduce your tax liabilities legally and reduce the chances of any unwanted litigation. You can find numerous products in the market to suit your needs. Research products, take advice from informed friends or colleagues and start early. To get started, use this calculator and begin your tax planning.

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Ever since he had to quit the Manmohan Singh cabinet in July 2011, Dayanidhi Maran, most believed was within kissing distance of the Tihar. He was an accused in the Aircel-Maxis case as well as the BSNL illegal exchange case in which he was accused of misusing ministerial powers by giving 323 phone connections to his family-owned Sun TV network. On 2 February, when the Special CBI court acquitted him and his brother Kalanidhi Maran in the Aircel-Maxis case, Dayanidhi must have felt a huge burden off his shoulder.

The 2G case, in which Karunanidhi's daughter Kanimozhi and DMK nominee in the cabinet, A Raja went to jail, played a huge part in ruining the DMK brand. It led to the party being described as 'Delhi Money for Karunanidhi' and contributed to the humiliating defeat in the 2011 Tamil Nadu Assembly election and 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The perception that gained ground was that the DMK leaders in Delhi were out to make a killing. The verdict, which though is now being challenged in the Supreme court by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), will be the first step towards repairing the image.

The verdict is a huge setback for the CBI and the ED, that had all along claimed it had a watertight case against Dayanidhi Maran. Its allegation was that Maran as Union Telecom minister arm-twisted the promoter of cellular service provider Aircel to sell out to Malaysian Telecom company Maxis, which in turn invested Rs 599 crore in Kalanidhi Maran's business. Aircel then got 14 spectrum licenses in 2006. The ED had alleged a scam of over Rs 700 crore.

But Judge OP Saini questioned the very premise of the argument by ruling that the minister was not responsible for delays on file movement. And that Maran raised questions only because he was of a suspicious bent of mind and not a conspiratorial one.

What will this mean for Dayanidhi Maran, who has been in the political wilderness for the last five years? He contested the 2014 elections from Chennai Central but lost. He had won from the same seat by handsome margins in 2004 and 2009.

It's not that the Marans are not used to turbulent weather. In 2007, after Dinakaran, a publication they owned, published a survey on who will be the DMK supremo after Karunanidhi and the results were unflattering to his elder son MK Alagiri, all hell broke loose. The fallout with the DMK patriarch led to the brothers being banished from his courts at CIT colony and Gopalapuram. Karunanidhi was so miffed with his grand nephews that he snatched the plum Telecom ministry portfolio from Dayanidhi and gave it to Raja and immediately executed a plan to launch a rival rising sun in Kalaignar TV. The bitter fruits of that rushed Kalaignar TV project led to Kanimozhi spending time inside Tihar jail.

It is to be noted that even when Maran was facing the heat, MK Stalin unlike his father, never gave up on the brothers. Unlike Alagiri, who had a tempestuous relationship with the Marans, Stalin made use of Kalanidhi Maran's impressive television production facilities to help rebrand himself ahead of the 2016 assembly polls. Stalin recognises the corporate style of functioning that the Marans bring to the table and the DMK working president likes to blend that with realpolitik on the ground. But a bigger role for Dayanidhi in the DMK perhaps will have to wait till he is out of the woods in the telephone exchange case.

Legally, the Karunanidhi family will hope that the 2G case follows the precedent set by this verdict. Stalin realises that the corruption taint remains a setback for the party, even if it is politically better placed after Jayalalithaa's demise.

Should Kanimozhi also get a legal reprieve, it could also result in a significant alteration of political dynamics in Tamil Nadu. The Congress for reasons best known to Rahul Gandhi is moving closer to the AIADMK under Sasikala even though the BJP is trying to remote control the government by having a direct line to chief minister O Panneerselvam. But if it looks like Stalin will do much better than the AIADMK in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls and the DMK first family gets a clean chit from the courts by then, the BJP could look to do business with Stalin to reap a rich harvest of seats from Tamil Nadu.
New Delhi: The newly-introduced system of sending postal ballots to service voters, including armed forces personnel, by electronic means will face its first major test in Goa and Punjab where it will be put to use in a total of 45 seats. Punjab and Goa will go for Assembly polls on 4 February. All the 40 seats in Goa will be covered by ETPBS (Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System). In Punjab, it will be used only in five out of 117 seats. These are: Atmanagar, Ludhiana East, Ludhiana North, Amritsar North and Jallandhar West, the Election Commission has said.

The new system, which came into force in October when election rules were amended, was used for the first time as a pilot project in Nellithope Assembly bypoll in Puducherry in 2015. Accepting a long-pending demand, the government has amended electoral rules to allow service voters, including Armed Forces personnel, to get their postal ballot through electronic means to save valuable time.

This would mean that service voters, including personnel from armed forces, can now download the blank post ballot sent to them electronically, mark their preference and post the filled-up ballot back to their respective returning officers. This would cut short the delay experienced in the present system of two-way transmission of ballot paper by the postal services.

Two-way electronic transmission has not been recommended by the Election Commission for security and secrecy reasons. The armed forces personnel serving in remote and border areas would be greatly benefited since the present system of two-way transmission of ballot paper by the postal services has not been able to meet the expectations of the service voters.

The government had approached the Election Commission to help mitigate the difficulties faced by service voters while exercising their franchise. The technical team of the Election Commission has developed a system whereby a blank postal ballot could be electronically transmitted to the voter. Service voters consist of armed police forces of the Centre, other forces subject to the provisions of the Army Act, armed forces of a state serving outside that state, and those employed under the Central government in a post outside India.

One-way electronic transmission of blank postal ballot would considerably cut short the delay in receipt of the marked postal ballot by the Returning Officers on or before the date fixed for counting of votes. The votes will be counted on 11 March for all the five states  Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Punjab and Goa  which will go for polls between 4 February and 8 March.
By Jane Wardell and Colin Packham

| SYDNEY

SYDNEY U.S. ties with ally Australia were strained on Thursday over a reported acrimonious phone call between their two leaders and U.S. President Donald Trump's assertion that an existing refugee swap deal was "dumb."Trump described the resettlement plan as "the worst deal ever," the Washington Post reported, and accused Australia of trying to export the "next Boston bombers."The call had been scheduled to last an hour but Trump cut it short after 25 minutes when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tried to turn to subjects such as Syria, according to the newspaper.The apparent breakdown between Washington and Canberra that has developed over the resettlement deal could have serious repercussions. Australia and the United States are among the five nations that make up the Five Eyes group, the world's leading intelligence-sharing network. Turnbull told reporters that he had been surprised and disappointed that details of the call with Trump had been leaked but gave few particulars other than to deny reports that Trump had hung up on him.As far as the call is concerned, the report that the president hung up is not correct. The call ended courteously. And as far as the nature of the discussion, it was very frank and forthright," he told a Sydney radio station on Thursday."I make Australias case as powerfully and persuasively as I can wherever I am, he said.Turnbull declined to confirm the Post report that Trump, who has spoken to world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, had angrily told him that the call was "the worst so far."Trump, attending a national prayer breakfast in Washington on Thursday, said the United States is being taken advantage of and that he was having "tough phone calls" as he addressed issues. Trump did not name Australia or its leader by name."We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore," he said, without naming any country.

Political analysts said such acrimony was unprecedented, surpassing even the difficult relations between former U.S. President Richard Nixon and then-Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who withdrew the country's troops during the Vietnam War."Even that was always done in the language of foreign policy niceties," said Harry Phillips, a political analyst of 40 years experience at Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Perth. As reports of the phone conversation made headlines on both sides of the world, Trump tweeted shortly before midnight in Washington: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal." The tweets threw more confusion about the status of the controversial deal that Australia made with former President Barack Obama late last year.The United States would resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps on Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. In return, Australia would resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

'LASTING DAMAGE' TO CLOSE ALLY?

The swap is at odds with Trump's executive order last week suspending the U.S. refugee programme and restricting entry to the United States for travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Syria.Many of the people being held in the Australian detention centres, which have drawn harsh criticism from the United Nations and rights groups, fled violence in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.White House spokesman Sean Spicer and the U.S. Embassy in Australia have both said Trump would honour the deal. In several media appearances after Trump's tweet, Turnbull reiterated that he believed the deal stood.

"He is saying that this is not a deal he would have made, but the question is will he honour that commitment? He has already given it," Turnbull said. "I make Australias case frankly, powerfully, forthrightly and hopefully persuasively when I deal with other leaders."Australia, New Zealand and the United States have been allies under a formal security treaty since 1951. They co-operate on military matters in the Pacific region, although today the treaty is taken to relate to conflicts worldwide.The United States plans to send extra military aircraft to Australia's tropical north this year as part of a U.S. Marines deployment that will bolster its military presence close to the disputed South China Sea. Australia is also one of 10 U.S. allies purchasing Lockheed Martin's F-35 fighter jet programme.The Post quoted unidentified senior U.S. officials briefed on the conversation between Trump and Turnbull. It also quoted the official read-out from the call, which emphasised "the enduring strength and closeness of the U.S.-Australia relationship that is critical for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region and globally".It also said Trump had boasted to Turnbull about the size of his election victory.Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, expressed concern about the conversation. "We can only hope he did no lasting damage to one of our closest alliances," he said in a statement. "Australia is one of the strongest friends we have, and our common interest in fighting terror and confronting Chinese aggression binds us ever closer." (Additional reporting by Tom Westbrook and Eric Walsh in Washington; Writing by Jane Wardell; Editing by Paul Tait and Jeffrey Benkoe)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Washington: The Trump administration is planning another controversial executive order which, if signed by the US President, will provide individuals and organisations the option to deny services, employment and other benefits to people based on religion, according to media reports. The draft order titled 'Establishing a Government-wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom' lays out many of the proposals that conservative Christians have been requesting for years, including legal protections for organisations that claim religious objections to providing a range of services, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"Such an order, if signed, would likely plunge Trump into a debate over religious freedom, gay rights and reproductive rights, which has churned through states and courts for years -- most recently with the disputes over transgender people's use of bathrooms," the report said. In another report, The Washington Post said the draft order "would provide individuals and organisations wide latitude in denying services, employment and other benefits on the basis of their religious beliefs."

White House Press secretary Sean Spicer, however, said the administration has no such plan to issue a directive on this issue. "There is right now no executive orders that are official or able to read out. We maintain that there is nothing new on that front," he said. "There are a lot of ideas that are being floated out. I mentioned this the last couple days. But that doesn't mean -- part of it is as the President does all the time, he asks for input, he asks for ideas, and on a variety of subjects, there are staffing procedures that go on where people have a thought or an idea and it goes through the process," he said.

"But until the President makes up his mind and gives feedback and decides that that's final, there's nothing to announce," Spicer said in response to a question. "We have freedom of religion in this country, and I think people should be able to practice their religion, express their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. And I think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way in the name of political correctness," Spicer told reporters at his daily news conference.

Trump had last week signed a controversial executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Sudan and Yemen, as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America.
The 2017 election season is here. Five states  Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa  will hold Assembly elections, which start on 4 February in Goa and Punjab.

Uttar Pradesh, the biggest state in the country, will be the most crucial battleground for all parties. The sheer scale of elections in UP, with all its complexities and unpredictabilities, can be mind-boggling for any Indian, let alone for a foreign observer like the BBC, which compared UP to the nation of Brazil.

Punjab, on the other hand, is all set to witness a three-cornered fight between the AAP, Congress and the ruling SAD-BJP alliance.

The tiny tourist haven of Goa  40 Assembly seats  also seems to be moving towards a three-way electoral contest between the ruling BJP, Congress and the newly formed MGP-led alliance.

Uttarakhand, which experienced a brief spell of political instability last year, will see a straight toss-up between Congress and BJP, while the volatile state of Manipur, which is witnessing a long-drawn economic blockade, will see Assembly polls marred by the traditional Meitei versus Naga rivalry.

While the run-up to the election itself will witness spectacular fireworks by rival political parties, the possible scenarios post the election results on 11 March can spring many surprises for political pundits and contenders alike.

Close contests:

Close contests in any election can be nerve-wracking for the candidates. Ask Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who just about crossed the finish line after a hard fought race against BJP's O Rajagopal in the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in the historic 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Historically, closely fought electoral bouts have sprung surprises too. Yashwant Deshmukh, noted psephologist and managing director of international polling agency C-Voter, recalled the unexpected thumping of Congress veteran CP Joshi by BJPs Kalyan Singh Chauhan in the 2008 Rajasthan Assembly election. The unexpected loss of the Congress' chief ministerial candidate was compounded by the fact that he had lost by a single vote! However, the story ended in an anti-climax, when the election was declared void by the Rajasthan high court.

Nevertheless, close contests are an integral part of democracy. Narrow margins of victory are seen commonly in the tiny constituencies of the North East states. In the opinion of former chief election commissioner SY Quraishi, who had notably presided over the 2012 cycle of the five-state elections, "narrow margins can make a big difference in smaller states".

Take this for example: In the last election to the Manipur Assembly, 20 out of 60 seats were won by a margin of fewer than 1,000 votes; seven were won by a margin of less than two percent votes, with the narrowest margin of victory recorded in Hiyanglam constituency: 17 votes!

"North Eastern constituencies are so small that margins of 1,000 to 2,000 votes seems large. Any victory with a margin of less than five percent can be considered close," Deshmukh told Firstpost.

Similarly, if one glances through states like Goa, one can witness that many seats have historically been won by a margin of less than five percent.

Possible reasons behind photo finishes:

In the outgoing 403-seat UP Assembly, 106 MLAs were elected by a margin of less than three percent votes. That is more than one-fourth of the total strength of the Assembly. If one includes legislators who won by a margin of less than five percent, the list gets longer.

There are often many reasons for constituencies turning into arenas for pitch battles between rivals.

The coalition era motivated major parties to form alliances with smaller parties to get the electoral combinations right. Especially in states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu, where religion and caste play a significant role in consolidating votes. If major parties fail to strike the right electoral chords, then the threat of losing crucial swing seats looms large.

Deshmukh adds another major reason for possible narrow margins: Strong rebel candidates in otherwise safe seats. Rebel candidates, he opines, can eat up the vote share, which can be detrimental to victory margins. This, he feels, makes electoral results shaky. The most common reason cited by experts for narrow victories is splitting of votes between more than two strong candidates.

N Gopalaswami, chief election commissioner between 2006 and 2009, said that in states like Bihar and UP, the splitting of votes may lead to narrow margin victories. "Look at a state like UP. Here, three parties may get 28, 26 and 20 percent votes respectively. So the 74 percent total votes get divided among them. The ultimate winner wins by a margin of just two percent," he opined.

The former bureaucrat added that in states like Gujarat and Kerala  places with a clear two-way fight  the vote may still be decisive (Congress versus BJP and Left front against the UDF, respectively).

However, Jagdeep Chhokar, head of the New Delhi-based NGO Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), felt it doesn't really matter whether there are more than two candidates in the fray. "If all the candidates are evenly poised, then victory margins will be low," he said.

With UP set to witness a multi-pronged fight between the ruling Samajwadi Party, principal opposition Bahujan Samaj Party, a Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress, Narayanaswamis statement may prove to true.

Low margin of victories: Rekindling debate on electoral reforms?

Proponents of the First Past The Poll (FPTP) system believe a win is a win, no matter if it is by one vote or several. "The winner takes all" motto is the underlying theme of the Westminster model of democracy.

Quraishi pointed out the ongoing debate among political scientists on introducing proportional representation. Such a system of democracy is seen in Israel and in the West. Quraishi highlighted the case of Bahujan Samaj Party in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. "BSP had recorded the third largest vote share across India. In UP, the party won 20 percent of the total votes polled, yet it could add no seat to its tally," noted the 1971 batch IAS officer.

However, notwithstanding the probable flaws with the system, Deshmukh felt that narrowly won constituencies represent a healthy side of democracy. He believed that even a victory achieved by a single vote must also be respected.

An efficient Election Commission:

While Quraishi pointed out that the Election Commission's efforts to educate the electorate have had a positive impact on voter turnout, he believes it might have played an independent but not necessarily direct role in increasing victory margins in constituencies.

Deshmukh too added that while the Election Commission must be applauded for being the most efficient and trustworthy election body in the world, there is no real correlation between high turnout and victory margins.

On the question whether rigging in elections could help trailing candidates to barely scrape through, the psephologist believed that the introduction of EVMs and strict action against booth capturing has reduced the threat significantly. Quraishi added that the policy of re-polling has also helped reduce irregularities in voting.

Around half to about two-thirds of the sitting MLAs and MPs have been losing in the last two decades, while in 90 percent of the elections, the ruling party failed to get itself re-elected, pointed out the C-Voter chief editor. If this trend continues in 2017, we are in for some interesting times.

Firstpost has examined the results of the 2012 Assembly Election in Uttarakhand, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Goa, and identified some of the low voter margin constituencies. They vary across states and so do the margins. Here's an interactive map to help you identify them:

Goa

The smallest state to go to polls this year, Goa had only had four seats which registered a victory margin of less than a thousand votes last election. But it's not the first time. History has been witness to several close contests in this state. You can read more about low victory margin constituencies in Goa here.

Punjab

The frontier state had 33 constituencies which were won by a margin of fewer than 4,000 votes and a percentage margin of less than three percent last year. The state can spring more surprises this year. To read more about how low victory margin constituencies played in Punjab in Punjab Assembly Election 2012, click here.

Uttar Pradesh

The most populous state in India with 403 constituencies can spring many electoral surprises. In 2012 elections, more than 100 seats were won by a margin of fewer than 6,000 votes or by a margin of fewer than three percentages. Read more here.

Uttarakhand

The hilly state with 70 constituencies, had 19 constituencies where candidates won by less than 2,000 votes or a margin of less than three percentage in the 2012 elections. Read more about close contests in the state here.

Manipur





Even though the northeastern state has small electorate size, Manipur is no different with about one-third of the seats witnessing victories by less than a 1,000 votes. The lowest victory margin in the state was 17 in the Hiyanglam constituency. Read more about the state here.
An almost centurian's vehicle to expound at nonspecific intervals on his opinions regarding politics-local to international, health care, life,society,and perhaps religion plus periodic vignettes about Plainfield N.J. In addition to "blowing off",I enjoyed my second career as an amateur public advocate.
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All roads in the Goa capital Panaji seemed to lead to just one place  Campal Ground, venue of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's only rally in the build up of 4 February polling to elect the new state legislative Assembly. So much so that even the conductor of a city bus was seen having fun.

Narendra Modi has arrived in Panaji for his only rally in Goa

The BJP's one-time ally MGP has left the ruling alliance to form its own with the Shiv Sena and Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM). The GSM is being led by Subhash Velingkar, the former Goa head of the RSS. Unhappiness over ticket distribution also adds to the list of woes for the party.

While the BJP is banking heavily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and defence minister and former chief minister of Goa Manohar Parrikar to deliver a consecutive victory for the saffron party, the party is facing multi-pronged issues.

His vision of governance is liberal in the economic sense  'hassle-free public services' obtained through 'non-dependence on MLAs'; he wants 'reduction of interface' with the government.

Modis formula for Goa is simple: Give boost to tourism and infrastructure development, which in turn will create more employment opportunities. Modi offered a bargain by promising to make Goa a comfortable state if the BJP returns to power with a comfortable majority.

Under the noise and clutter of the ongoing elections in Goa too, language lurks as an issue  not of ethnic but of religious identity. The chief issue over which RSS strongman Subhash Velingkar split from the BJP a few months ago was that the state government was subsidising schools in which languages other than Konkani and Marathi were the medium of instruction.

What is alarming for the party is that the Fatorda controversy suggests factionalism is very much prevalent in the partys central office since Faleiro was supposed to be in constant touch with a senior leader in New Delhi when partys Fatorda block president Joseph Silva filed his nomination and presented the mandatory Form B, duly signed by Faleiro, establishing his credentials as the official Congress party candidate from the constituency. Read more here.

"Most of our clients book online so it didn't affect the bookings much, but yes, there was a little drop which is quite usual with the cash crunch that occurred," he said.

He further added that five-star hotels in the region might get affected since there are a number of luxurious hotels coming up in North Goa, posing them a big threat.

He said, "The three-star hotels here earn their revenues majorly out of conferences and corporate bookings. We believe that we will retain our clients despite the construction of the new airport."

Bonny, general manager of three-star Sapphire Comfort Hotel in South Goa (Madgao) felt that their business wouldn't be affected much due to Mopa Airport.

Ali Hazrat and Joanita Cutinho say that Mopa airport will largely affect their business. They also speculate that apart from hoteliers, taxi and cab services will also be affected once the airport starts functioning.

The Hotel E Dalian Holiday Village is located on the border of north and south Goa. The manager says that demonetisation has affected business.

The most commonly noticeable pattern in a generally lacklustre round of elections is that very few Christians or Muslims appear to back the BJP this time, except those who are close to particular minority candidates. Read more.

Tourists have been feeling grumpy ever since the model code of conduct came into effect on 4 January. Wine shops, shacks, hotels and bars were strictly told that they must pull down the shutters by 10 pm. Those who opted to test efficiency of the authorities were penalised by over half a million rupees. Their business suffered in peak tourist season but they were left with no choice but to fall in line.

"It doesnt surprise me anymore. A lot has been done to bring AAP down but it is for the judiciary and silent voters of Goa to decide, and I have faith in them. Read more.

Yet BJP is confident of retaining the Calangute seat, thanks to its incumbent lawmaker Michael Lobo who won this seat for the first time ever for BJP in 2012 polls.

Goas ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is definitely not the first choice party of the Christian community despite taking the risk of not fulfilling its 2012 promise of stopping funding the Church-run English medium schools. The rival Congress party is their natural first choice.

Starting his career by washing dishes at a restaurant, he rose through ranks to become a manager and a subsequently a successful businessman. He presently owns half a dozen restaurants and a few resorts and has declared his assets worth Rs. 54 crore, making him the second richest candidate in Goa polls, though many feel he is worth much more. Apparently he has shared his riches with the needy that makes him popular and worked for people and his constituency.

Total turnout is 67%. Male is 67% and female 31%. In South, the turnout is 65%. male 65% and female 30%

Total turnout is 67%. Male is 67% and female 31%. In South, the turnout is 65%. male 65% and female 30%

Poll officials at Government Primary School, Dhuler of Mapusa said that they were witnessing smooth but heavy polling. There are four polling booths in this school and by 3.30 pm over 65 percent voters had exercised their right to franchise.

He later joined BJP and emerged as it's Christian face and won Mapusa seat in 2002, 2007 and 2012 when he was anointed deputy chief minister.

D'Souza's erstwhile Goa Su-Raj Party has also fielded it's candidate. D'Souza had won his first election as it's candidate in 1999 after a failed attempt in 1989 as an independent.

Among the six candidates in the fray includes Congress' Vijay Bikhe, AAP's Shradha Khalap and MGP's Vinod Phadke who is facing corruption charges for misappropriation of funds as an office bearer of Goa Cricket Association.

His 2014 controversial statement that India was a Hindu nation and that he was a Christian-Hindu may come handy in the Hindu majority Mapusa, North Goa's business hub.

Unlike Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar who is facing tough times in Mandrem, D'Souza may not encounter any major hiccup in wining Mapusa seat for the fifth consecutive term.

Kejriwal's remarks came in response to reports of people allegedly visiting polling booths with party symbols and other campaigning material, and also campaigning on social media and TV on polling day.

Many voters were holding their cards close to their chests - not revealing their preferences.

That Goa voter turnout will break last election's record is startling, given the lack of enthusiasm among voters until the last couple of days of the campaign. It could bring good news for AAP in some constituencies, given what I described as a `ripple of support (rather than a noticeable wave).

In any case, Goas 82 per cent turnout in 2012 had already been very high by most standards. But the voters seem to have obliged

The Election Commission apparently spent Rs 40 lakh to organize a session in Panjim on 25 January, on how to mobilize a larger turnout than in 2012. That day, it did not seem that they could have much success, since voters by and large did not seem very enthusiastic about the array of parties.

According to Goa Chief Electoral Officer Kunal, who released final figures last night, the overall polling percentage stood at 81. Out of the 11.10 lakh registered voters, 8,98,507 exercised their franchise.

Assembly constituencies located in the mining, tourism belts and rural areas of of Goa recorded a very high voter turnout, but the Catholic-dominated seats saw a comparatively lower polling, according to EC figures.

"The high vote percentage is against BJP's U-turns, corruption and taking people for granted," All India Congress Committee secretary Girish Chodankar said.

"The people came out in large numbers to vote for BJP. Voters have seen our good governance for last five years. They came out as they want BJP to continue in power," state BJP chief Vinay Tendulkar said reacting to the high polling percentage.

As Panaji: Goa transitions from the pleasant comforts of the mild winter sun into harsher tropical weather, the coastal state's political clime also appears to be following suit, with the state headed for crucial assembly elections on February 4.

As campaigning for the elections ended on Thursday, the mood of the state appears complex and difficult to comprehend considering a multi-corner battle between representatives of four national parties, six regional parties and heavy-weight Independent candidates. In all 251 candidates are vying for the 40 seats up for grabs on Saturday.

While the ruling BJP is contesting in 36 seats and supporting two Independent candidates, the Congress has fielded 37 candidates, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) 39 and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) 18. Former allies of the BJP, the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), former RSS leader Subhash Velingkar-mentored Goa Suraksha Manch and the Shiv Sena (SS) have fielded 26, five, and three candidates respectively as part of a 'Mahagatabandhan'.

While all major players have expressed confidence of winning a majority in the upcoming polls, leaders of nearly all the parties confirm off record that the state could be heading for a hung assembly with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress emerging with bigger chunk of votes.

"That is one of the reasons why there have been no bitter and serious allegations levelled against each other, because in a chaotic post-poll scenario, one doesn't know who will need support from which party or individual," a senior BJP leader told IANS on condition of anonymity.

The BJP officially claims that the party will win 26 seats, five more than their last tally, but Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Thursday set the bar higher for his party workers and voters.

"We are aiming and confident of winning a two-thirds majority. We are confident the work done by our government in Goa will help us get that number," the former Goa Chief Minister told a press conference on Thursday.

The BJP has promised to wipe out unemployment among youth in its election manifesto.

Some of the key issues which have been discussed in course of the campaign by various political parties includes corruption by the BJP government, scandals of former Congress ministers named in several multi-crore scams, AAP's choice of candidates and its 'non Goan' volunteers, the fissures between the BJP and the MGP, as well as the running feud between Velingkar and the state BJP leadership.

The AAP, which has promised to double existing government doles and reduce prices on a wide range of necessities ranging from fish to electricity tariff, has also claimed victory in 26 seats.

"Goans will sweep away the Congress and the BJP with a broom on February 4. We have had enough of corrupt and divisive politics by them," said Elvis Gomes, a former bureaucrat and AAP's chief ministerial candidate.

The Congress, which was reduced to an unprecedented nine assembly seats in the 2012 polls, expects to come to power a majority without any allies.

"The corruption of the Goa BJP and their misgovernance has shown the people of Goa that only the Congress can deliver inclusive and effective governance," Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh told IANS on Thursday.

The three-party alliance between the MGP, GVM and SS, which is targeting the majority Hindu vote, is also being watched keenly, because its collective performance could determine the winning chances of the BJP, which also benefitted from the consolidation of the majority vote-bank in the last polls.

Also while the Shiv Sena and the Manch have gone on record saying they would not ally with the BJP in a post-poll hung assembly scenario, the MGP has kept its options open.

"The MGP will work towards providing Goa a stable government," says the alliance's chief ministerial candidate Sudin Dhavalikar.

Velingkar, who has sacked from the RSS following ideological differences with the Goa BJP and Parrikar, has however vowed not to align with the saffron party.

"We will never ally with people who have betrayed Goa and its culture," Velingkar said.

Nearly 11.08 lakh voters are eligible to cast ballot in the 4 February polls in 1,649 polling booths across the state.
Panaji: After an acrimonious campaign, Goa is all set for the Assembly polls on 4 February which will witness a contest among ruling BJP, opposition Congress, new entrant Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the three-party alliance forged by MGP, GSM and Shiv Sena. Over 11 lakh voters in Goa are eligible to exercise their right to franchise to elect members for the 40-seat state Assembly. Voting across 1,642 polling booths in the state would begin tomorrow at 7 am and culminate at 5 pm.

The Chief Electoral Officer, working under the guidance of Election Commission of India (ECI), has deployed trained staff to conduct polling which would be provided security cover jointly by state police and paramilitary forces. The fate of five former chief ministers and present Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar will be decided in the election which is being contested by 250 candidates--131 in South Goa and 119 in North Goa. The counting of votes will be held on March 11.

There are speculations that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar might be sent back to Goa to be the next chief minister, if BJP retains power in the tourist state. BJP, Congress, AAP, and MGP and its allies are the major contenders this time. The Arvind Kejriwal-led party, which has for the first time forayed into Goa, is contesting on 39 seats. Congress is contesting on 38 seats and BJP on 37. BJP, which had pre-poll alliance during the 2012 Assembly polls, is going alone this time but is supporting independents in four constituencies.

The ruling party, which had projected Parrikar as the chief ministerial face in 2012, had then contested on 28 seats while Congress fought on 34 seats. The Parrikar-led party had in 2012 garnered 34.68 percent of vote share as against 30.78 percent of Congress.

Post the 2012 election, there were two bypolls in the state. First on 25 May, 2012, when the Cortalim Assembly seat fell vacant following the demise of sitting legislator and BJP minister Mathany Saldanha and the other on 16 February, 2015, when Parrikar was elevated to the Union Cabinet. In both the by-elections, the BJP candidates had won. The current election is being fought on the plank of "verdict for continuation of development" by BJP, while the Congress has focused its campaign over the alleged u-turn on the promises by the state government.

Congress is assuring a corruption-free government to the people of Goa. A majority of the candidates fielded by AAP are fresh faces. Its chief ministerial candidate Elvis Gomes has promised to put processes in place within 90 days to check corruption in the state. The election will also test the impact of rebel RSS leader Subhash Velingkar on the electorate. Velingkar's Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) has forged a pre-poll alliance with the MGP and Shiv Sena in the state.
Goa with 40 seats in the Assembly is set to go to polls on 4 February. Goa may be India's smallest state, but the multi-pronged electoral fight that is unfolding can hardly be described as minor. The BJP is fighting anti-incumbency, the Congress is hoping for a comeback, the breakaway RSS faction Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM) led by Subhash Velingkar has formed an alliance with traditional BJP allies Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) and Shiv Sena and there is the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) making its fray in Goa for the first time.

While the party is yet to declare a chief ministerial candidate in Punjab, the party has fielded former bureaucrat Elvis Gomes as the face of the Goa Assembly Election. With the campaign slogan 'zhaadu (broom) sweeping out BJP', AAP has already positioned itself as BJP's main challenger in the state. Gomes had resigned from the government service where he was serving as Inspector General of Prisons to join AAP. He will be contesting from Cuncolim constituency which is currently represented by BJP.

Only AAP is serious about government formation. We have fielded all 40 candidates. Zhaadu Sweeping Out BJP  Elvis Gomes (@ielvisgomes) January 21, 2017

The AAP's Goa manifesto unmistakably resembles the one for released for Delhi election campaign with an added stress on corruption. During one of the rallies, star campaigner and party supremo Arvind Kejriwal said, "We will die but will never compromise on corruption. There will be no compromise on corruption." He said that the party has fielded honest candidates and added, "We are against the people who are criminals, communal or with bad character. If you find any proof against our candidates, even a day before (the polls), we will drop the candidate."

Gomes even went on to say that if AAP comes to power, systems will be put in place

within 90 days to weed out corruption.

Here are some of the poll promises:

Vision For Goa pic.twitter.com/rPHuazjync  Aam Aadmi Party Goa (@AAPGoa) January 14, 2017

Vision For Goa pic.twitter.com/irKwQw0rmc  Aam Aadmi Party Goa (@AAPGoa) January 14, 2017

Free Health Insurance Scheme will be Launched Vision For Goa pic.twitter.com/OEE8wobG3x  Aam Aadmi Party Goa (@AAPGoa) January 14, 2017

400 Vaddo Clinica for Goans Vision For Goa pic.twitter.com/YmdMofOYNM  Aam Aadmi Party Goa (@AAPGoa) January 14, 2017

Free and Clean Water for every household up to 20,000 litres every month Vision For Goa pic.twitter.com/wbMzjlB5Rq  Aam Aadmi Party Goa (@AAPGoa) January 14, 2017

Vision For Goa pic.twitter.com/E2f7Af8IFB  Aam Aadmi Party Goa (@AAPGoa) January 14, 2017

According to the India Today, AAP wants to replicate the Delhi model with the party workers claiming that the people of Goa, tired of the Congress and BJP regimes, looks at AAP as an alternative. "Like in Delhi, AAP has prepared individual manifestos for each of the 40 seats in Goa. All the manifestos are based on the feedback that the party received from more than 350 'Goa Dialogues'," says the report.

A confident Kejriwal said what many in Goa are saying, "Congress does not have a credible face to be projected as chief minister of Goa. BJP has lost trust in Laxmikant Parsekar. They are now talking about bringing back Manohar Parrikar."

But it has not been a smooth ride for AAP. Gomes was summoned by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) of the Goa police in connection with a housing scam case. Gomes, along with Nilkanth Halarnkar, a former minister for housing in the erstwhile Congress-NCP government, were accused of scrapping official acquisition procedure for a piece of land measuring 30,256 sq metres in South Goa's Margao, and without following due procedure, giving an opportunity for vested interests to purchase the land subsequently.

Kejriwal's sudden flare ups too don't help matters. Recently, the Delhi chief minister took on the Election Commission and accused it of promoting bribery. After Kejriwal was accused of "deliberately and intentionally" instigating the public to take bribes for voting in the Goa Assembly election of 4 February, he wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi, stating, "My statement will reduce bribery. When parties distributing money will realise that people won't vote for them even after taking money, they will stop distributing money."

"By stopping me from making my statement, the Election Commission is promoting bribery instead of curbing it," he added.

With voting day just a few days away, it remains to be seen if AAP is able to replicate its Delhi success story and emerges as the alternative in Goa.

(With inputs from agencies)
The tiny coastal tourist haven that is Goa goes to poll on 4 February. The state has the second lowest Vidhan Sabha seats 40 in India (after Sikkim). With an electorate of just about 11 lakhs (based on the latest data), it is smaller than the total voters eligible to cast their vote in BMC elections on 21 February. However, smaller states make for interesting bits of data especially as electoral fights can go down the wire in some of the constituencies.

In a state where the average number of electorates in constituencies range anywhere between 20,000 and 30,000, close fight between the two parties  in Goas case between Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC)  can often swing a seat with just a few votes.

A study of the results of the 2012 Goa Assembly Election showed (check map represented above) that in four of the 40 assembly constituencies, candidates won by a margin of less than a thousand votes with the narrowest margin being less than 500 votes in the Sanguem constituency.

BJPs Subhash Upal Dessai defeated his nearest NCP rival Yuri Alemao (part of Congress alliance) by a margin of 483 votes. Yuri is the son of Joaquim Alemao, a former minister and the brother of former chief minister Churchill Alemao.

Another interesting example is that of five-time MLA Mauvin Godinho, who contested the election on an Indian National Congress ticket in 2012 and won the Dabolim seat by just 944 votes. However, after differences with his party, he joined the BJP last year and would now be contesting for the same seat on the saffron partys ticket.

The newly formed Porvorim constituency, however, sprung a surprise, as Independent candidate Rohan Khaunte won the seat by 901 votes whereas Milind Naik of BJP won the Mormugao constituency by 913 votes.

These four examples from the 2012 election aren't the sole examples, as a matter of fact, Goa has seen many prominent candidates winning and losing their seats with narrow margins.

In 2007 elections, when nine of the 40 constituencies saw victory margins of less than a thousand votes, BJPs Ramesh Tawadkar defeated Congress candidate Aleixinho Fernandes in the now defunct Poinguinim constituency, by just 200 votes.

Until January 2017, Tawadkar had been the minister for animal husbandry and agriculture in the Laxmikant Parsekar Cabinet.

If one goes further into Goas electoral history, in 2002 polls, three-time MLA from St Cruz, Victoria Fernandes, had narrowly won her seat by a margin of only 40 votes. In the same election, former chief minister Wilfred DSouza won the Saligao seat by 726 votes. D'Souza, in fact, had won the same seat by a narrow margin of just 464 votes in the 1999 election too.

In 2002 polls, the biggest upset was witnessed in Mormugao constituency, where veteran leader Shaikh Hassan Haroon lost to Congress candidate Giovanni Vaz by a mere 443 votes.

The incumbent chief minister too had won his first election from the Mandrem constituency by just under thousand votes  908 to be precise.

However, the political reality in Goa has changed 15 years. After a direct BJP versus Congress fight in the previous two Assembly elections, the 2017 polls would witness multi-pronged contests. For the first time since 2007, neither Congress nor BJP have gone in for an alliance with smaller parties. With multi-cornered battles looming large and the Aam Aadmi Party adding flavour to the polling season, it could indeed be anybodys game.

The results on 11 March may well throw some surprises.
In December 2016, Parrikar was seen telling media that BJP had nothing to promise to Goa voters, as all promises made in 2012 stand fulfilled. His statement was reiterated by Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar as well as BJP state president Vinay Tendulkar.

However, when a comparison between the manifesto promises of the party and their implementation after coming to power is made, there are some issues which were never really resolved. In the 2012 manifesto, Parrikar had promised to slash VAT on petrol within a month. But after initially reducing VAT, which led to petrol prices coming down to Rs 54, the government, later on, brought the prices to pre-2012 levels.

Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar (who replaced Parrikar after his promotion to the Union cabinet in November 2014) claimed that the 2012 decision to bring down VAT on petrol to 0.1% was only to bring down prices at a time when fuel prices were at an all-time high.

In March 2015, the government of Goa raised the VAT to 15 percent from 10 percent.

The BJP had also promised that it would support regional language schools through government funding. However, the party seemed to have not fulfilled its poll promise as prominent regional language activist Subhash Velingkar left BJP on unfulfillment of the issue.

Velingkar, the former Goa RSS chief, blamed the saffron party for doublespeak as Parrikar after coming to power allowed government funding to English medium schools run by Catholic institutions.

Another promise which the BJP seems to have not fulfilled is its stand on casinos.

In 2012, the party had promised to relocate casinos to "deep sea" but after coming to power, the then chief minister Manohar Parrikar insisted that he would relocate the casinos to deeper seas off Goa only after four years by 2016.

Goa chief minister Parsekar in January 2015 went a step ahead and insisted that doing away with casinos may not be such a good idea at all.
First the good news: No communal antagonism is evident in Goa. Nor have campaigns during the ongoing assembly elections been based on communal hatred, as has occasionally been visible in Uttar Pradesh. And yet, there is an uncanny predictability about the parties a voter is likely to choose from, depending on voter's religious affiliation.

Of course, in the fractured political scenario of Goa, and the scattered ballot in most constituencies, many voters are also considering choosing independent candidates (many of whom have a strong presence) and strong Goa-specific parties  with names like Goa Vikas Party, Goa Suraj Party, Goa Suraksha Manch and Goa Forward. And while the patterns, even for choices between major parties, are by no means absolute, they are common enough to be noticeable.

Minorities shift since 2012

The most commonly noticeable pattern in a generally lacklustre round of elections is that very few Christians or Muslims appear to back the BJP this time, except those who are close to particular minority candidates. Yes, that's an interesting sidelight: Almost one-third of the candidates BJP has fielded in Goa are Christians. In fact, chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar points out that the number of the BJP's Christian candidates is up from six in 2012 to eight in 2017.

However, that inclusive distribution of tickets does not seem to have cut much ice with most Christians. That's a great contrast with the 2012 elections, when it was widely believed that Christians  as much as others  were by and large so disgusted with the Congress' corruption that they decided to back the BJP. There was a pull factor too: BJP's chief minister designate (current Union Defence Minister) Manohar Parrikar had a clean image and was perceived as a doer.

Clearly, the overarching Parrikar compact, which brought together various communities last time, has gone. Asked about the change in the Church's attitude since the last elections, Parsekar said he wouldn't like to comment.

Nor do Christians back the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP), which is perceived as having a clearly pro-Hindu bias. For instance, it has taken a stand against state funding for schools that teach in English  widely seen as shorthand for diocesan schools run by the Catholic Church.

Traditional choices

On the other hand, very few Hindus appear to support Congress in many parts of Goa. Even though very many Hindus are disappointed with the BJP too, the anti-incumbency sentiment is not nearly as strong as it was against the Congress government last time. So, while many Hindus do not feel inspired by either of these two major parties, they are more often than not willing to carry on with the BJP, rather than go back to Congress.

For its part, MGP seems to get its support from Hindus alone, even more exclusively than the BJP does. To the extent that these patterns hold, traditional patterns of community affiliations might be said to be back in play.

New pattern for AAP

For the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), support appears to be be more common among Christians than Hindus. So much so that former chief minister and current president of the Goa Pradesh Congress Committee (GPCC) Luizinho Faleiro says "they will divide the secular vote". But he is quick to add that AAP remains only a marginal force  even though he acknowledges they have worked hard to establish their presence.

There is another way the electorate is sliced with regard to support for AAP: More of the traditionally less privileged castes  from among both Hindus and Christians  seem to be willing to back AAP. Elvis Gomes, the party's chief ministerial candidate alludes to this, saying, "We have given tickets to lower castes."

Dissatisfaction with ticket distribution

One factor that might favour the BJP marginally is that many voters complain that Congress and AAP have erred in choosing their candidates. Faleiro says he has brought new faces to the fore. That has led to a certain amount of dissension in the ranks, while it has not done much to nullify the Congress' lingering image as a corrupt and venal party.

On the other hand, people talk of AAP candidates as "rejects", those who could not get a ticket elsewhere. That is, however, not how the party sees things. "We are all professionals," says Dr Mariano Godinho, a physician who is AAP candidate from Nuvem constituency.

Gomes, the party's public face, envisions governance in which MLAs don't play middlemen. But voters by and large perceive their representatives as just that  middlemen who get will get them government largesse. And none of the doctors and other professionals leading AAP have a record of having got voters loans, admissions, benefits of government schemes, or even roads, bridges, drains, etc.
In the 2012 Assembly Election, it was Manohar Parrikar who was the face of the BJP in Goa. After his move to New Delhi as the Defence Minister of the Narendra Modi government, it was the incumbent chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar who was at the helm of affairs, however, the Opposition kept referring to Parrikar as 'super chief minister of Goa'. The 4 February election will be a true test for Parsekar to prove that he is out of the shadows of his predecessor. But his party might not have the same confidence in him.

According to the IANS, the BJP is not sure of fielding Parsekar as the chief ministerial candidate. While announcing the candidate list for Goa, BJP leader JP Nadda steered clear from naming the chief ministerial candidate. "This (choice of CM) is for the BJP's parliamentary board to decide," was his non-committal reply.

Though Parsekar is heading the state government in Goa, it is obvious that not just Modi, but Parrikar will also play a crucial role in the election campaign. In an interview with The Indian Express, even Parsekar in no uncertain terms stated: "All that is being done in Goa is because of the krupa of the Union government, Parrikar, Naik (Shripad Naik) and Modiji." Parsekar further stated that he won't feel side-lined if Parrikar becomes the centre-stage of the election campaign. When asked if he will continue to the chief minister of Goa, if the BJP comes to power, Parsekar left the decision up to the party.

Parrikar has attended more than 30 "vijay sankalp" rallies organised by the BJP across Goa. He is also fire-fighting the dissent from sitting legislators who have been denied tickets. Though, earlier he was reluctant to move to News Delhi and had expressed a desire to remain as the chief minister of Goa.

When asked if he wants to return to state politics, the former chief minister of Goa said that he "never said no to any request by the party".

On the same issue, BJP president Amit Shah said, "(Prime Minister) Narendrabhai (Modi) needs him (Parrikar) at the Centre as well. We will decide after elections where Parrikar will be working. But let me assure you that wherever Parrikar may be working, the Goa government will function under his leadership."

Congress' Digvijaya Singh, who is in-charge of Goa told IANS, "It is more of an election of Parrikar individually, rather than that of BJP or the RSS."

The BJP faces a tough challenge in Goa with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) making a fray in the state for the first time. Moreover, the BJP's former allies  Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, Shiv Sena and Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM)  have decided to contest the polls together. The GSM has been founded by Subhash Velingkar after he was ousted from the RSS.

Parrikar is known to have an appeal across all sections in Goa and is credited with the party's success in the last assembly polls. He has emerged as the most popular face of the party in the state in surveys done by the BJP.

Goa Assembly Election will be a test for Parsekar, who is fighting anti-incumbency, to lead his party to victory and come out of the shadows of Parrikar. The ride so far as not even easy for Parsekar with the Opposition accusing the incumbent government of corruption. The AAP has even made corruption as one its election slogans.

"(When) I took grip of affairs, development was our priority. What was neglected and I should have taken personal interest in was dealing with thieves and dacoits, those being probed by the SIT (Special Investigating team) or other probes. I did not pay special attention to it. I let it go by natural course," Parsekar had recently said.

Firstpost's Ajay Jha writes: Given the lacklustre performance of Parsekar and pollsters predicting that the BJP can, at the most, hope to emerge as the single largest party in a hung Assembly, the party has decided not to seek votes in the name of Modi, lest his image gets dented. It cant afford to seek votes in the name of an uninspiring Parsekar either.

With the BJP's development agenda, it remains to be seen has Parsekar been able to fill Parrikar's shoes.

(With inputs from IANS)
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At the same time, this place is also linked to the family of BJP's tallest leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

In fact, BR Ambedkar was the first one to realise the significance of this township where Dalit assertion manifested for the first time after Maharashtra before India's Independence. Since then Agra was symbolised with Dalit assertion. Ambedkar's influence on Agra's social and political life remains enduring till date.

BJP chief, instead, will meet family of businessman shot dead in the area on Thursday night.

Amit Shah cancels his foot march that was to be held in Meerut

The roadshow will then proceed towards Bhagwan Talkies , Deewani chauraha, Sur Sadan and then Wazirpur the only area dominated by Muslims the major factor responsible for a turnaround in UP poll results. From there it moves forward to Hari parvat , Chipitola and finally ending at Bijligarh Chauraha situated in the south of the city.

Dayalbagh also inhabits a large population of Satsanghis, who are followers of the RadhaSwami sect. The followers in general are taken to be mute supporter of the right wing party.

For example the Dayalbagh institute is an educational institution area located at Dayalbagh in the heart of the city. The institute has been given deemed university status by UGC and is one of the most sought out campus among students.

The road map which has been signalled by the district administration for this road show has an interesting mix of both communities, young and old voters and women in general.

Starting point of this roadshow will be Dayal Bagh Engineering college, passing through Bhagwan Talkies, Deewani Chauraha, Sur Sadan, Wazirpur, Hari Parvat Crossing, Chipitola and finally culminating at Bijligarh Chauraha located in the South of the City.

The roadshow will continue for approximately 3 hours and end around 6pm in the evening.

With the choice of their city and preference of safer and urban road map for this show, it seems as if both the leaders are keen to send a strong political message to the people of the state in minimal time. And make out for the losses incurred to their party because of the delay in forming this unprecedented and fresh alliance.

According to Firstpost reporters on the field, Akhilesh and Rahul have taken lessons from their earlier road show in Lucknow where they had a tough time facing the low hanging electric wires. Thus, confining the road show to areas which is comparatively more equipped in terms of basic infrastructure.

He talked of how despite facing difficulties people have supported demonetisation in national interest. The BJP leader targeted the Akhilesh Yadav Government over alleged corruption and mining mafia. He also said it was his party's strategy not to declare its chief ministerial face. "In the UPA government, it was said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is honest but the government is corrupt. Now Akhilesh Yadavji is also saying 'I am honest and removed one minister over allegations of corruption' but he reinstated him again after 15 days," Balyan said.

However, for the upcoming elections, the party seems to have adopted the much-publicised narrative of development. Western UP, where tension had prevailed during the 2014 Lok Sabha election too in the wake of riots, is calm and elections would be held peacefully with development being the major issue, Balyan told PTI.

The BJP had deployed local MP and minister of state for agriculture in Modi government, Sanjeev Balyan, MP Hukum Singh and MLA Suresh Rana for campaigning in February-2016 bypoll, the first after the communal riots. They were all named as accused in cases related to the 2013 riots which left at least 60 dead and thousands displaced.

In 2016, nearly two and a half years after the Muzaffarnagar riots, when bypoll was held in this constituency following the death of the then sitting SP MLA Chitranjan Swaroop, the BJP won the seat battling a sympathy wave in favour of the leader's son. Many analysts had then said the saffron party was able to exploit the communal faultlines through its campaign which was led by riot-accused BJP leaders.

"The family drama of SP is heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy," the senior BJP leader said at a press conference in Lucknow.

"The alliance between Congress and SP is opportunist and immoral. Akhilesh Yadav has made an alliance but did not give space to his father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) even on the carrier of the 'bicycle' (SP symbol) and gave its handle to Congress.

Terming Congress-Samajwadi Party alliance as "opportunist and immoral", Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said the family drama of ruling Samajwadi Party is "heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy".

During his roadshow in Meerut few hours earlier he had reeled out statistics on crime to point out that the law and order situation has gone from bad to worse under Akhilesh?

Kaam bolta hai  goes the campaign catch line for Akhilesh's Samajwadi Party. The SP chief would like to believe his government has done enough to receive a repeat mandate, but BJP president Amit Shah surely is not buying that.

Dil mile ya na mile, party toh mil gayi hai, is the current emotion running high in the ruling party of Uttar Pradesh. The mega road show in Agra is a clear message to parties that SP and Congress have decided to bulldoze into minority bastion and claim the Muslim votes.

An hour late from the scheduled time, UP ke ladke have started their road show in Agra. As TV footage showed, the two leaders stood atop the vehicle, instead of being holed up inside their bullet-proof vehicles, and waved to their supporters, giving the feel that everything is well in the recently-formed alliance.

Give it to the man, his claims may not be beyond suspicion, his confidence is.

With Netaji in kabhi haan kabhi naa mode and uncle Shivpal Yadav planning his own party after elections Akhilesh has reason to be worried. Father Mulayam is taking too many quick turns for his comfort. But atop the vehicle in a road show he is a picture of confidence and self-assuredness.

"This government has kept you (farmers) in darkness. The government has bought only 3 percent of its crops in the state," he said.

"Why does the government give opportunities to traders to loot farmers?" the prime minister further said.

"I want to ask Akhilesh ji's government: What is your connection with those from the sugar mills? Why doesn't the government provide money to the sugarcane farmers?" Modi said.

"Has it ever happened that the farmers of Uttar Pradesh got the money they deserve?" Modi said.

Why didn't Akhilesh govt do anything for farmers? says Modi

The Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance has got the buzz right and it's drowning out the BJP and the BSP. Speak to the young men at the venue and they quickly chant Akhilesh Bhai ko jitana hai (We have to ensure Akhilesh's victory). What's the big deal, you might ask. It's after all a Samajwadi Party rally. Step beyond the rather cramped space, the buzz refuses to disappear. Akhilesh has struck a chord, it might carry him all the way.

At Meerut's Nauchandi Chowk, amid batches of placard-carrying Congress and Samajwadi workers who keep streaming in for Akhilesh-Rahul joint rally, you feel the energy of the young.

Akhilesh-Rahul joint rally: The UP CM might have struck a chord with the youngsters

The reference, of course, is to Akhilesh and Rahul. Other placards say, "humko ye saath pasand hai," in a small variation of the alliance slogan "UP ko ye saath pasand hai". Ask the guy carrying the placard what he meant by the filmy comparison  Karan, Arjun are lead characters of a movie played by Shah Rukh Khan and Salman long ago  and he turns away. He is too busy for silly questions.

Of course, some went beyond this and said a victory for Akhilesh-Rahul would be the beginning of the end of Narendra Modi.

Bhaichaara was the word spoken often by the speakers on the dais. "UP had had enough of communal tension. It has suffered a lot. Now it's the time to put a stop to it. 2014 was a mistake. You put power in wrong hands. Let's not repeat it." This was the essence of their speeches.

Victory for Akhilesh-Rahul could be beginning of end for Narendra Modi?

Perhaps one of the negative consequences of the personality cult. There's none in the BJP to attack or discuss in Uttar Pradesh. A loss here, if it happens, would be a loss for Modi, none else.

"You fell for white lies in 2014. Where is the recovered black money in your bank accounts? Where are the jobs? What happened to all those tall promises you made? Liar, liar." The barbs were, of course, directed at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The election in Uttar Pradesh is a curious one. T he prime minister is in the direct line of attack in a state election.

"These elections are not about choosing the next government, it is not about which political party will win or not. These elections are about whether development, which has been sent to an exile for the past 14 years, will it come back?" Modi says in Ghaziabad.

The prime minister also lambasted Akhilesh for not generating employment as promised. "Standing today in Ghaziabad, I promise that youths won't have to run around for jobs anymore. And these are not election promises. This is my resolve."

Taking on the ruling Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi slammed Akhilesh and said that when he was elected as the chief minister everyone had great hopes from a young, educated leader. "Bachiyan school jaane se darrti hai. Aapki party (SP) ne gundon ko pal rakha hai or UP ka ye haal kar rakha hai (Girls are afraid to go to school because of the goons owned by you)."

Samajwadi Party is ruled by goons, the govt is making no attempts to enforce law and order

Narendra Modi says he will answer his detractors in 2019

I thought maybe, a young man (Akhilesh Yadav) will be ready in politics in five years. On another side, there was a politician in Congress, whose childish acts (you should see and find out the jokes on him) and manner of talking had kept Congress politicians away. The politician whose even the Congress leaders were running away from, Akhilesh Yadav has joined hands. That's when I began to doubt Akhilesh Yadav's intellegence.

When it comes to the security of women in Uttar Pradesh, they blame the media. Isn't the crime records in Uttar Pradesh a proof of the poor women security situation in Uttar Pradesh?

Why only one family from Safai with so many politicians: asks Narendra Modi

The only way to save Uttar Pradesh is keep these two families from coming back to power.

It's Akhilesh Yadav's government to give the money to sugar cane farmers. I had said, as soon as I come to power, we paid the money to 32 lakh farmers directly in their accounts. We will destroy the five-six mills hoarding your money.

'We started Fasal Bima Yojana for farmers. This scheme insures you even if you couldn't sow seeds till August. If your crop is destroyed by natural disaster, your loss be covered. But against the wishes of the sugarcane farmers, they put it under the insurance. A party which talks of making potatoes in factory, what would they know of farming. But at least Akhilesh Yadav should have known. His family's background is farming. Sugarcane is least affected by natural disasters. Even the richest farmer wouldn't insure sugar cane. But this anti-sugar cane farmers government in Uttar Pradesh.'

We will listen to farmers and decide on insurance: Narendra Modi

We are walking in the footsteps of Chaudhary Charan Singh: Narendra Modi

Citing unutilised funds allocated by the central government, Modi attacked Akhilesh Yadav government of failing the people of Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh has given up before election by joining Congress: Amit Shah

'Rahul Gandhi has been asking the BJP government of what we did. The first thing we did is gave a PM who can talk. The Manmohan government of corruption, we have given a government which even the opposition can't make a case of corruption. In your government, they used to behead soldiers. In our government, after they burn our soldiers, within ten days, we beat them in their home.'

BJP will select candidates for Class III and IV jobs on the basis of merit: Amit Shah

"In my tenure as chief minister, when a rape like this had happened, I got this done. Police officials told me that doing this was a violation of human rights. I replied that these 'danavs' (demons) do not have human rights. I also told the woman to watch the rapist being tortured through a lock-up window so that she could get some peace after listening to his screams and cries for help," the BJP leader said.

Addressing an election rally here yesterday, she claimed that during her tenure as chief minister when a rape incident happened, "I also told the woman to watch the rapist being tortured".

Rapists should be tortured "till their skin comes off", Union minister Uma Bharti has said and accused the Samajwadi Party government of failing to provide justice to the victims of the Bulandshahr gangrape case.

Uma Bharti claims to have 'tortured rapists' when she was CM

The BJP's stakes are high in the crucial state as they are being viewed as a mini-referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modis major decisions like demonetisation and the surgical strikes across the border in Pakistan. After a bitter family feud, incumbent Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's future is at stake as he eyes re-election.

The principal protagonists  Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP)  are hoping for a strong performance in the communally-charged western UP region, infamous for the murderous riots in 2013, so as to gather enough impetus for the later phases.

After months of campaigning, issues like communal polarisation to development and BJP government's decision to demonetise will be put to test as 73 403 assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh go to the polls today in the first of seven-phase elections. Polling has already begun and is expected to go on till about 5 pm on Saturday.

Amroha has a special significance for Muslims, for the simple reason that around 65 percent of the electorate in this Assembly constituency are Muslims. There couldnt be a better place for leaders and students of politics to understand the communitys political preference. Owaisi was making his political debut in Uttar Pradesh, and Amroha was the most important stopover for him.

Their body language clearly suggested that the sher they were referring to was their hero, both as a leader and as a rock star performer. The announcement that he had finally arrived resulted in a commotion, with everyone pushing, pulling, vying to catch a glimpse of the one man they were waiting for  Assaduddin Owaisi, Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP and chief of AIMIM.

Hours after the Shahi Imam of Delhi's Jama Masjid, Syed Ahmad Bukhari, blasted the Samajawadi Party-Congress coalition in Uttar Pradesh, and urged Muslims to vote for Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party instead, a mildly aggressive gathering of hundreds of young men from the community thundered, "Dekho dekho kaun aya, sher aaya, sher aaya (Oh, look who's here, the lion is here)."

Take for example, the current arrangement in both the Houses. The Modi government, enjoying a brute majority in Lok Sabha, has presented a curious and unprecedented tug-of-war between the ruling party and the Opposition. While the BJP-led NDA government can pass any law as it pleases in the Lower House, key legislation often get stuck in the Upper House  where the Congress enjoys a majority  due to Parliament logjams and political bickering. While for the BJP, UP polls will be one chance to wrest free the Rajya Sabha from the controls of the Opposition, ensuring that BJP's strength is limited in Rajya Sabha is the only respite Congress can hope for until the next Lok Sabha Elections.

Uttar Pradesh is called the king-maker state and it's not for nothing. The northern Indian state, with over 14,12,53,172 voters, sends the largest number of Members of Parliament to the Rajya Sabha, where both the ruling party and the Opposition vie to stake control.

Polling delayed in booth no.42 in Mathura's Govardhan, and in booth nos 119 and 120 in Baghpat as EVMs are not working

Thus, it is only natural that all eyes remain on the intense political drama unfolding in the state in these high-stake elections. So Firstpost sifted through the political pandemonium playing out in Uttar Pradesh, and brought together all that you need to know to track the humongous polling exercise.

The state elections also arguably set the precursor to the the 2019 Lok Sabha election as Uttar Pradesh was crucial in BJP's cleansweep in 2014 Lok Sabha elections  the saffron party's one-third parliamentarians come from the state that sends 80 MPs to the Lower House. Besides this, with the 2017 Presidential Election is in the offing, UP's strength will also play up in selecting the Constitutional head of the state.

Total 73 constituencies, including a larger chunk of the politically important, western Uttar Pradesh goes to polls on 11 February. Key constituencies include communally sensitive constituencies of Kairana, Muzaffarnagar, Dadri and Meerut, apart from Ghaziabad, Noida, Agra etc.

Ignoring the chill in the air, with the morning temperature being 11 degrees, the residents of Noida Sector 15 and 16, especially the senior citizens are heading towards polling booths. Many are taking a detour from their morning walk to cast their votes. But right now voters are very few in numbers, which is expected to pick up by 9 am.

The only bright point is that it has Hema Malini as MP. As voters start trickling in at booths the question is will BJP will do better this time?

The BJP's record in Mathura, the land of temples and mythology, is rather poor. In the birthplace of Krishna the party has not had its own lawmaker in the assembly for sometime now.

Mathura was in the spotlight last year over the incident at Jawahar Chowk that claimed 24 lives. Two policemen were also killed in attack by encroachers on government land. The BJP raked this issue up during its campaign, citing this as an example of failing law and order under Akhilesh's rule. Will the voters buy it this?

The Bahujan Samaj Party, meanwhile, has been working silently on the ground to regain control on the state by engineering a politically potent but unpredictable amalgamation of two communities, Dalits and Muslims. However, each party has its own Achilles heel to deal with; the nail biting competition can swing any way.

But in Lok Sabha elections 2014, the people of the state voted overwhelmingly in support of the BJP. The saffron party would like to repeat the winning streak for obvious reasons, as it will pave a smooth path for the party in Delhi. However, the current ruling party in state, SP, has barely emerged from a succession war and it is Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav's only opportunity to prove his mettle as a leader, after he overthrew his father from the party's helm.

The political scene in the state has been dominated by regional players (SP, BSP, RLD etc) since the 1990's and the so called national parties (BJP and Congress) have been pushed to the sidelines. If at all BJP and Congress managed to stake claim at the throne of Uttar Pradesh it was by cobbling up an alliance with the regional parties.

After overwhelming win in 2014 LS elections, BJP would want a repeat of the mandate in UP

The electoral battle in the state has grabbed all eyeballs, be it the electoral merger between the Congress and the Samajwadi Party or the infighting within the first family of this politically crucial state.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made for smooth polling, especially in sensitive areas of Shamli, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar, Mathura, Bulandshahr and Agra.

This gives the present BJP candidate Pankaj Singh, who is the son of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh an edge over others. But it's also challenging for him as he is a first timer. He has been given ticket by replacing Vimla Batham Sharma. Initially this led to some confusion and dissent among local party workers. But BJP leadership has ensured that the contesting candidate gets full support. It needs to be seen whether debutant Pankaj Singh is able retain the tradition of BJP of winning Noida seat this time.

After he became an MP, in the 2014 by poll, BJP's Vimla Batham Sharma got elected.

Noida, the assembly constituency was always a bjp stronghold. Mahesh Sharma of BJP held this seat, till the time he became an MP in 2014. In the by-election that followed, the bjp retained the seat.

Rajnath Singh's son Pankaj has edge over others in Noida, thanks to Mahesh Sharma

The Uttar Pradesh (UP) Assembly closes its term by May 2017. Elections to the Assembly are scheduled for February and counting will take place in April 2017. As candidates get ready to file their nominations with the Election Commission, we present our analysis of the current composition of the Assembly (2012-2017) and the participation of the members (MLAs).

As Aligarh goes to elections, appeals for vote consolidation intensify. Messages and appeals being circulated on social media and through word of mouth. To avoid any sort of chaotic situation and to provide more convenience to voters, this time Aligarh has increased the number of booths. To increase voter accessibility the numbers are limited to 1000 votes per booth.

As of 9 am, reports said that Agra recorded 12.8 percent; Muzaffarnagr recorded the highest at 15 percent; Aligarh recorded 9 percent and Ferozabad recorded 11 percent; Bulandshahr 12 percent.

Reports said that EVMs in two polling booths in Mathura malfunctioned. Meanwhile, police have detained Gagan Som, brother of BJP candidate Sangeet Som for carrying a pistol inside poll booth.

Akhilesh added that noone is better to run a state than two youths. "It will be a government of vision," added Rahul.

While announcing the common minimum programme, UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav says that many do not walk the talk, clearly taking a potshot at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Akhilesh says he is confident that the first vote cast in the first phase of Uttar Pradesh election was cast in the name of Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance.

Former BJP state president Lakshmikant Bajpai (Meerut), RJD chief Lalu Prasad's son-in-law Rahul Singh (SP) from Sikandarabad, and Sandeep Singh, grandson of Rajasthan Governor Kalyan Singh from Atrauli are among other key figures in this phase.

The first phase of polling will decide the electoral fortunes of Pankaj Singh (Noida seat), son of Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Congress Legislature Party leader Pradeep Mathur (Mathura) against whom BJP spokesman Srikant Sharma is in fray, Mriganka Singh (Kairana), daughter of BJP MP Hukum Singh and controversial BJP MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana -Sardhana and Thanabhawan respectively.

A total of 2.60 crore voters, including over 1.17 crore women and 1,508 belonging to third gender category are eligible to cast their ballots in 26,823 polling stations to decide the fate of 839 candidates..

Amid tight security, polling began for the first of the seven phases of the high-stake Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections with voters queueing up to cast their ballots in 73 constituencies spread over 15 districts of western Uttar Pradesgh.

When asked about Shahi Imam Bukhari supported Mayawati and dissed SP-Congress alliance, Akhilesh Yadav said, "Shahi Imam Bukhari saab is a very good and learned man and if you ask him in person he will always give us the blessing and support us."

The positive body language of Akhilesh Yadav during the presentation of SP-Congress vision document on Saturday gives an indication of his confidence in outcome. While tackling provocative questions from media, Akhilesh chose to play down the barbs, trying to drive a distinction between SP's development-oriented campaign and BJP's angry rhetoric. Akhilesh advised BJP to be less angry, his easy confidence rubbing on to even Rahul Gandhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's strategy is distraction. When he can't answer questions, then he starts distracting. Truth is that in two-and-a-half years, he has failed. He peeps into bathrooms and does nothing else. His threats are empty as well." When asked about seat-sharing issues between Samajwadi Party and Congress, Rahul said, "There are issues on six-seven seats, but these issues are insignificant, things will be worked out soon."

Modi has all the time to do insignificant things, in 2.5 years he has done nothing: Rahul Gandhi

"Modi loves to Google, peep into bathrooms, but he should be more concerned about development. Some clerics are resentful. But we believe they will finally support us. Modi is unable to answer on security, jobs, unemployment and that why he is distracting people," Rahul Gandhi.

"Modi loves to Google, peep into bathrooms, but he should be more concerned about development. Some clerics are resentful. But we believe they will finally support us. Modi is unable to answer on security, jobs, unemployment and that why he is distracting people," Rahul Gandhi.

The major issues of the burgeoning Assembly segment of Gautam Buddh Nagar district are regular supply of power and water, and the alarming crime rate.

This time Congress hasn't fielded any candidate due to its alliance with Samajwadi Party.

The sprawling industrial hub of Noida, which was the brainchild of one-time Congress stalwart and veteran leader ND Tiwari, seems to have nothing to do with the Congress anymore. Tiwari, as old-timers would remember, was the Chief Minister of undivided Uttar Pradesh thrice, and of Uttaranchal once that was carved out of Uttar Pradesh, is credited with substantial work for the development of the big and politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh. Tiwari held important portfolios as a minister at the Centre and also served as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission.

Noida, a brainchild of Congress' ND Tiwari, has nothing to do with the party anymore

BJP wins all three MLC seats in UP where elections were held: Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Bareilly

Besides, the EC has set up a police cell to keep a tab on messages received through social media so that trouble makers do not vitiate social harmony.

The excise department has set up checkposts at inter-state borders as well as along the border with Nepal to check distribution of liquor to voters during elections.

Around 6,000 paramilitary personnel have been deployed in all polling centres in Muzaffarnagar and neighbouring Shamli to instill a sense of security among voters, especially with focus on areas which had witnessed communal riots in 2013.

Elaborate security arrangements have been made in all districts for the polls which are being seen as a litmus test for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nearly three-year rule. Out of 887 polling centres in riot-scarred Muzaffarnagar, around 600 are sensitive where video cameras have been installed to maintain strict vigil.

Elderly voters waiting their turn at the booth at Dhouli Pyayu primary school in Mathura

80 percent voters of 76 vidhan sabha seats in shehar Aligarh belong to the Ansari community, mostly engaged in small scale lock industries. Rest of the 20 percent constitute of Qureshi community, darzi, dhobhi, naai, sabzi farosh, pheri wale etc. All are vouching for SP candidate Zafar Alam.

There are 26,822 polling centres for over two crore voters in the first phase of polling for 73 seats across 15 districts. Fate of 839 candidates will be sealed on Saturday. Prominent faces who cast their votes earlier included Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh who cast his vote in Sahibabad, Shrikant Sharma of BJP and Congress's Pradip Mathur in Mathura, Sangeet Som in Sardhana and Suresh Rana in Shamli.

An EC official informed IANS that these problems were being attended to on a priority basis and EVMs at some places were replaced. Long queues were seen in places like Mathura, Agra, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut (City), Sardhana, Shamli and Noida. The largest constituency in this phase, as per population, is Sahibabad in Ghaziabad and the smallest is Jalesar in Etah.

Voting picked up in the first phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections within hours of its start at 7 am, poll officials said on Saturday. Kasganj witnessed 13 percent polling in the first two hours, Muzaffarnagar 15, Meerut 10, Mathura 11, Noida seven and Greater Noida nine percent. Technical snags in the electronic voting machines (EVMs) were reported in the first hour in polling booths across Noida, Baghpat, Hathras and Mathura.

Aligarh is actually divided into two parts - old city Aligarh and new civil lines Aligarh. Old city side people feel that civil lines side voters are not fragmented and detached. They feel that civil lines area people might goof up the elections as they won't go for consolidated voting since they are divided among four major candidates - Vivek Bansal(congress), Ajju Ishaq (SP), Haji Aamirullah Khan(independent, previously SP candidate), Ram Kumar Sharma (BSP), Parvez Khan (AIMIM). These candidates are from Kol vidhan sabha (civil lines, Aligarh). BJP candidate from Kol is Anil Parashar.

This statement coming in the backdrop of the Supreme Court ruling directing political parties to refrain from communal or caste appeasement in poll campaigns can be called a remarkable shift.

He also insisted that there was no polarisation amid voters of Kairana.

"Exodus was never a communal matter, it was a law and order problem," Hukum Singh said. He however refused to say that the exodus was a non issue, while adding that it was coincidental that the goons behind rangdaari (extortion) and petty crimes belonged to a specific community.

BJP's MP from Kairana, Hukum Singh, on election did a U-turn on the exodus issue, first raked up by him last year. While Hukum Singh had always maintained that the Hindu community in Kairana district was being singled out and targetted, he told CNN-News18 on Friday that it was never a communal issue.

There are 26,822 polling centres for over two crore voters in the first phase of polling for 73 seats across 15 districts. Fate of 839 candidates will be sealed on Saturday. Prominent faces who cast their votes earlier included Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh who cast his vote in Sahibabad, Shrikant Sharma of BJP and Congress's Pradip Mathur in Mathura, Sangeet Som in Sardhana and Suresh Rana in Shamli.

Long queues were seen in places like Mathura, Agra, Muzaffarnagar, Meerut (City), Sardhana, Shamli and Noida. The largest constituency in this phase, as per population, is Sahibabad in Ghaziabad and the smallest is Jalesar in Etah.

Largest constituency in Phase one is Sahibabad and smallest is Jalesar

Though the Jat-dominated constituencies are witnessing a heavy turnout, their political conduct remains a mystery. Jats may not have numerical strength on many seats but their influence over political economy of the region can hardly be undermined. That is the reason why the BJP seems a little worried in the first phase.

In west UP, there is an impression that the government turned anti-jat after its victory in 2014. As a result MPs like Satypal Singh, former Mumbai police commissioner, who defeated Chaudhary Ajit Singh has also lost relevance in the constituency. Hence this move was planned to rope in Jats who are fence-sitters.

Just as Jat-dominated western UP was going to polls today, BJP president Amit Shah had a group of prominent jat leaders hosted by Union Minister Rao Virendra Singh, a jat leader from Haryana. The obvious reason was to neutralise the anger that Jats felt after their agitation in Haryana.

Most of Aligarh university votes are going to the Congress but a few votes of non-teaching staff are for Samajawadi Party as well. Samajwadi Party has strong appeal among the economically lower sections of the population.

"Badaun is one of those villages in India which are the most backward in India. Samajwadi and BSP have promised so much, delivered nothing."

There is hardly any wave in support of any party. Even at the time of polling, there is hardly signs of any wave.

Ajit Singh, his son Jayant Singh and his wife Charu Singh also attracted huge turnouts. How could one explain this? Asked leaders. Of course, given large population of the state, the turn outs are poor indicators to read political mood of the state. Yet there is no denying the fact that this election is the most deceptive electoral battle Uttar Pradesh had ever seen.

Apparently not only Prime Minister Narendra Modi attracted a good crowd in this region but there was a huge turnout also for Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah and even outsiders like Nitin Gadkari. Similarly Akhilesh, Rahul Gandhi and BSP chief Mayawati also drew good crowds.

As the first round of the polls is underway, there is one confusion that prevails among senior leaders of all parties. This confusion is about how to explain the large turn out at meetings of these leaders.

Modi addresses rally in Badaun which goes to polls on 15 February

But earnings from the auto were irregular, from Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 a month. So, Hussain is about to begin a job designing and fixing uppers (the upper part of a shoe that contains the tongue) at a shoe factory in NOIDA, located in UP but an extension of the metropolitan region of Delhi, Indias richest province, by per capita income.

In the 1990s, Kanpurs leather industry employed a million workers (there are no official data), according to IndiaSpends inquiries with the government and leather-industry representatives. With 176 of 400 leather tanning units shutting over 10 years, according to a joint secretarywho requested anonymity since he is not authorised to talk to the mediain UPs industries department, that number has halved.

According to Firstpost Hindi, voter turnout is heavy in western Uttar Pradesh. Till 1pm, Bulandshahr recorded polling percentage of 41.7 percent, Fatehpur Sikri recorded 45 percent, Aligarh 40 percent and Shamli recorded 43 percent.

The huge turnout in response to communal consolidation of one community in today's polls is indicative of this strategy.

An impression has gained ground here that most of these belong to a particular community. This assessment may not be correct. But the perception is stronger than reality. And the BJP's move has found resonance among voters who are divided on communal lines.

The BJP's promise of launching anti-Romeo squads to check eve-teasing in Western UP is calculated to strike resonance with Hindu constituency. Of late there have been reports of eve-teasing assuming a sociological menace in the entire region. Criminals ruling the roost in west UP in the past five year was nothing new. But criminalisation of governance is given a communal touch by a deft political move by the BJP.

Inputs from the field across western Uttar Pradesh from correspondents of ETV show polarisation trends, to the extent that channels showing Muslims in large numbers in front of polling booths since early morning also played on the minds of the voters. Observers believe that others are turning up now due to that influence. Voting percentage is likely to be very high and reports said that this polarisation helps BJP.

Yet the BJP's move to placate Jats runs the risk of triggering a counter-polarization of non-hat castes. This is a tricky political situation for not only the BJP but also for SP-Congress and the BSP.

"We are not short of fertilizer now as we get it aplenty" said one. They were least affected by demonetisation. What had hit them most is the brazen Yadavaisation of governance by Akhilesh Yadav and increasing criminalization. "We were the worst sufferer of this" said villagers who huddled in a corner to mourn the death of young boy in a road accident. Apparently the village distinctly displays a pro-BJP turn.

In Tappal area adjacent to Aligarh exists a village where non-jat castes live in large number. In a Baghel-caste dominated village not far from the Yamuna expressway, villagers have decided to vote for the BJP. The reason is obvious.

In Aligarh lies a non-Jat, pro-BJP pocket but saffron party runs the risk of losing the edge

Multi-phase polling gives politicians this opportunity  to move to areas which would come in later phases of polling and go out either to make high pitch campaigning or hold press conferences to make a last-ditch attempt to shape minds of voters in areas where voting was on. In this age of 24x7 news channels, social and digital media ensures that the message is communicated live.

It was a strategic decision Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi to hold a joint press conference and slam Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his remarks on their alliance in UP on Saturday morning when first phase of polling in the state was underway.

Voting slow in several booths in Mathura. Polling officials say footfall may increase later in the day. If it doesn't then the guessing game over results begins all over again. For parties the task right now would be to get their core voters to booths.

There was a feeling that momentum has been generated, from the point of view of crowd turn out in Lucknow, Agra and Kanpur for Congress-SP dynasts, needed to be maintained. Can that press conference influence voter mind who are going out to vote today?

There were also reports that on ground level the SP and Congress workers had their own issues and reservation against each other to join hands and fight for common cause. The seat sharing in some constituencies, even as Congress had been allotted 105 seats were there and people, even the party supporters were taking an adverse view. Rahul acknowledged that there were problems in 6-7 seats but underplayed it.

The decision to make Rahul and Akhilesh appear together, days after their joint presence in Kanpur, was guided by emerging circumstances because there was a feeling among sections of Samajwadi-Congress party leaders and supporters that Mayawati had lately become aggressive particularly pitching some influential Muslim religious leaders and groups urging minority community voters to trust and vote for BSP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's high decibel attack against Congress and Samajwadi Party.

Can UP ke ladke sway the voters of Western UP

First, the present election has become mechanical and appears more a contest between highly professional poll managers hired by all the political parties than the parties themselves. Second, the well-defined notion of vote-bank politics is in terminal decline. The social bases of all the political parties have been seriously challenged. Read the full article here

Interestingly, the pragmatism of electoral compulsions is seen in full swing when we find that all the parties moderated their competitive needs and entered into the political alignment beyond ideological lines and conventional hostilities. The saddest part is that the dramatic defragmentation of political parties has succeeded in misplacing the priorities of Uttar Pradeshs electorates.

The first phase of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election in the western region of the state, for 73 seats, is finally underway. The early trend of voting pattern shows that this election is shaping up to be one of the most unique, hyper-competitive, and potentially divisive elections in generations.

The SP-Congress combine is heavily banking in Muslim voters in the region seeing their combination as sole protector of their interests. This was the region which was affected in 2013 riots.

It is clear that a majority of Jats have shifted their preference from BJP to their very own Ajit Singh's RLD but then many of them are with the BJP. Ajit Singh's RLD is no winner (it can win few seats) but can play spoiler to the BJP's prospects. It thus becomes important for the BJP what percentage of Jats vote for RLD and what percentage of Jats vote for BJP. BSP and SP-Congress combine is talked here in context of a triangular or a quadrangular fight.

Common wisdom would suggest that people or a group or a community would vote to see what suits their interest, who protects their interest and who has the potential to deliver goods for the state and work for popular welfare. Jats are a hugely emotional community and more often than not emotions take priority over prudence. Fellow Jats from adjacent Haryana have been camping in this region to ensure that their brethrens in Western UP got disconnected from the BJP.

The 73 constituencies spread across 15 districts going to the polls in first phase, has an interesting mix of rural areas in western UP. While areas going to the polls includes, two most important cities Noida and Agra, but the centre of attention in this phase is how Jat heartland Shamli, Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Meerut, Hapur and Bulandshahar would vote.

From Kol tehsil (civil lines side of Aligarh) Haji Zamirullah, the independent candidate who was previously in Samajwadi Party and belonged to the Shivpal camp was seen as a strong contender till morning but now voting has shifted to the Congress and the SP among Muslims. From Kol seat, both the Congress and SP candidates are getting votes. Zamirullah is also a favourite among Muslims as they are of the view that when an independent Muslim candidate is available then why should Muslim votes go to political parties who only use their votes for vested interests.

As first phase of polling in western UP is underway, the stress in the media and at other chatter points have been on Jat factor, Jats slipping away from BJP and Muslims looking at Akhilesh Yadav-Rahul Gandhi combination with hope. The impression that Mayawati has capitulated is misleading. Her party candidates are strong on the ground and their campaign has been visible but while talking about BSP, we tend to talk only about Dalits and Muslim.

BJP seems to have faltered on their strength. Instead of presenting the electorate with a simple yet convincing narrative, they are desperately searching for a better story to trump the one told by Akhilesh. They have been reduced to making the same mistake which Modi's rivals did in 2014  run an anti-campaign."

Even BJP's early campaign script for 2017 Assembly polls promised to take off from where Modi had left in 2014.

"In 2014 Modi had a better narrative than his opponents. To the electorate, pushed against the wall by a non-performing government at the Centre, Modi's promise of 'better days' made more sense than apocalyptic fear of riots.

How Modi's campaign changed dramatically and what it says about BJP's chances

A total of 121 candidates are in the fray in Agra. Around 30 percent votes were polled till noon in 73 Assembly constituencies, PTI said

In twilight zone of their life them coming out to vote means that the hope that India would change is undying. Hope new rulers of Uttar Pradesh would consider their hopes and aspirations.

It was heartening to see so many senior citizens in their 70s and 80s, even 90s coming out, holding hands of younger members of their family members, some with walking sticks.

Standing in queue to honour my right to vote at a polling station in Kaushambi, Ghaziabad, I realised that polling day is perhaps one day which senior citizens relish the most. They don't complain of queue and hassled walk to polling booth but they like the way its an occasion when the world treats them with respect and dignity they deserve. Its also a day when their preference matters.

We go on talking about India as a young country and its youthful energy. Political leaders speeches and government programs are angled at wooing them.

In an election that's all about the youth, senior citizens inspire by exercising their franchise

The Election Commission has been coming out with unique ideas to encourage women to come out and vote. Earlier in Goa, that went to poll on 4 February, the poll panel gifted soft toys to first-time women voters. Now in Uttar Pradesh, the poll panel is gifting all women voters a red rose, according to The Financial Times

The party retained two of its traditional seat while it bagged another seat previously held by the Samajwadi Party.

Even as polling is underway for the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP won all three graduate MLC seats in Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Bareilly.

Incidentally, in Mathura the BJP has been battling a poll jinx for over fifteen years as it had failed to bag a significant win in this city of temples. Malini remains its only bright spot in this holy town of Western UP.

The actor turned politician had said, "Vrindavan widows have a bank balance, good income, nice beds, but they beg out of habit... There are 40,000 widows in Vrindavan. I think there is no more place in the city. A large population is coming from Bengal... that's not right. Why don't they stay in Bengal?," NDTV reported

BJP's MP Hema Malini ran into a controversy in 2014 when she commented that the aged widows were "unnecesirily crowding" her constituency.

According to Telegraph report, some 40,000 widows  about 25,000 from Bengal  are estimated to live in Vrindavan, Mathura region. They primarily live in various government-run homes and private quarters supported by Sulabh International.

Bengali widows, who have found shelter in large numbers in Mathura, exercised their franchise in the crucial elections in the state.

Whether the high voter turnout in key districts could swing the beeps on EVMs in favour of the BJP particularly in small non-Jat pockets would be known on 11 March. These isolated pockets have traditionally been against the Jat dominance and could appear as a saviour for the BJP.

Besides, the Jats could be the most politically dominating community in the region but their numbers aren't incredible enough to singlehandedly influence the voting pattern in an election.

The Jat leaders have advised the community to collectively defeat BJP, however, the appeal is unlikely to maneouvre a 100% swing against the BJP in a community that overwhelmingly voted for the BJP just two years ago. The undecided voter could still go with the saffron party.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is walking on a tightrope in the Jat majority areas, as the community has openly pledged to vote for a candidate most suited to defeat the saffron party.

Soon, all hell broke loose and the Samajwadi Party (SP) leader was gheraoed by an angry mob of BSP supporters after which police had to resort to cane charge to disperse the unruly crowd.

The incident happened at the Islamia Madarsa poling booth. When he was talking to the voters, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supporters outside took umbrage to his spending a long time inside.

The 61-year-old politician, who is the incumbent legislator from Kithaur constituency, was greeted with slogans and some people also pelted stones at him, after which he beat a hasty retreat, officials said.

Uttar Pradesh Labour and Employment Minister Shahid Manzoor faced a hostile crowd in Meerut's Kithaur constituency on Saturday when he visited a polling both.

Addressing a gathering in Budayun, a Yadav stronghold, the Prime Minister said time has come to reverse the caste and community-based policy making in the state and instead embrace the 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas' policies of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Prime Minister Narendra Modi renewed his attack on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday and charged him with presiding over chaos and lawlessness in the state in the past five years.

Firstpost spoke to voters coming out after voting in Aligarh to sense the mood on the ground. Our inputs suggest that Khatig (SC) caste from the region has primarily voted for the BJP while Koli, Kumhar castes are going to SP. Among Muslims Abassi community has favoured the BSP as the local candidate fielded by it belongs to the Abassi community. However, the BSP has managed to retain the Jatav votes.

As Firstpost spoke to the voters coming out of the booth, the mood remained inclined towards BJP, except for the Jatav votes which remained hitched to the BSP. However, other SC community voters have chosen to vote for BJP in Modi's name and not in the candidate's name. This area has negligible Muslim population.

At the Nahar Singh Inter College, quarsi polling booth around 60% polling was recoded till 4 pm. The officials their suggested that the peak time at this booth was between 11am to 2pm.

"Give BJP a chance. Within six months, I promise the law-and-order situation here will improve. The knife-wielding gangs will all be sent to jails within six months," says Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur district.

"Women in Uttar Pradesh can't even wear chains in public, because they are afraid it'll be snatched away. The largest state in India is in the hands of criminals," says Prime Minister Narendra Modi, addressing a rally in Lakhimpur.

"In her tenure, Mayawati gave electricity to 23 villages. In his tenure, Akhilesh gave electricity to just three more villages. But in just the last two years since I became Prime Minister, I have given electricity to 1,364 villages," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, while addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur district.

Modi attacks Mayawati, Akhilesh over UP villages still being without electricity

"The corrupt who I targeted with my demonetisation decision are still unable to sleep well. They stole money from the poor, but I am fighting them. And I will not rest. They are all joining hands against me, because they are afraid their ill-gotten wealth will go away from them," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Second phase of Uttar Pradesh began at 7 am. Join us for LIVE updates on everything that is happening on the ground in the 67 constituencies of India's most populous state.

Firstpost Hindi brings you a comprehensive explainer as Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand vote. For Uttar Pradesh, this is the second phase of voting.

While Bangli Hindus gradually found the area inhospitable and spread out to other parts while Sikh farmers developed large farmhouses across the area. At the height of Punjab terrorism, a large group of khalistani terrorists found this area as safe haven. But the lush green belt of the region and highly cultivable land is known as paradise for farmers and rice bowl of India.

Sikhs comprise a major population in Terai (Himalayan foothills) that border Nepal. Lakhimpur Kheri, Pilibhit, Bijnor are the core and buffer forest zones of Dudhwa and Jim Corbett forest ranges. After 1947, Sikhs farmers from Punjab and Bangladeshi hindus were settled in this barren land and given cultivable land.

Few know that the area going to polls in the second phase is known as mini Punjab in Uttar Pradesh.

The Ruhailkhand area which comprises Himalayan foothills and forest is socially a diverse land. But it is known for housing a liberal Islamic seminary- called Barelvi school of Islamic though. Adjacent to Deobandi school of Islamic thought that propagates fundamentalist variant of the religion, the Barelvi school is known for promoting a liberal value system among faithfuls. This seminary is quite influential among Muslims of the region. Though they avoid directly to be indulging in politics, their tacit support is critical for parties which vie for Muslim support. This time Ulemmas of the seminary are divided and let the voters take their choice.

In fact, Mulayam's fortune revived from Terai region where Sikhs came out in support of him. This is the precise reason that Samajwadi Party still enjoys considerable clout among sikhs of the area.

He had his legs fractured too. But Mulayam found his spirit soaring following using reception he got in wake of killings of 13 Sikhs in fake encounters by the police in Pilibhit.

Pakaria Gurudwara of Lakhimpur Kheri was the first place where Mulayam Singh Yadav visited after his electoral drubbing in 1991. When the BJP won the election, Mulayam was completely crushed in the election.

Considering Azams controversial, mostly acidic, statements that generate a lot of political heat frequently, one needs no proof. The senior Samajwadi Party leader is contesting from Rampur. Its not about Hindu or Muslim, anyone can be victim of his tongue, says Debendra.

"This man is incorrigible," says driver Debendra Singh, a resident of Etawah and a supporter of the Samajwadi Party, about Azam Khan. "He will do some good work but in the end say something so nasty that it will nullify all the goodwill he might have generated for himself. If only he knew how to control his tongue," he adds.

It's not about Hindu or Muslim, your words can hurt anyone: Voter on SP's Azam Khan

The BJP has none. While the first two are hoping to benefit from the support of minorities, the BJP is banking on reverse polarisation.

With their eyes on the demographic balance, every party has stepped into the fray with a different strategy. The BSP and SP alliance have 26 and 25 Muslim candidates.

The 67 seats that go to polls in Uttar Pradesh second phase are considered the pocket burrough of the Samajwadi Party. In most of the seats, Muslims are a third of the electorate and thus the decisive factor.

"It was a situation that was allowed to escalate and the party in power in the state needs some explaining to do. Making Azam a scapegoat wont work."

Not many in Muzaffarnagar believe Samajwadi Party's Azam Khan was behind the riots of 2013. "No, the perpetrators were other people. But the reputation of this man is such that people would buy anything said about him," says a Jat leader who plays an important role for farmers of the region and who saw the riots from close quarters.

'Azam Khan's reputation is such that anyone would buy theory that he was involved in Muzaffarnagar riots'

The police administration of the district was under pressure to trace the animals. It made national news too. The buffaloes were traced to Moradabad. We dont know what the thief went through after being caught, but the message conveyed was clear: nobody messes with Azam, or his buffaloes, in Rampur.

That Azam is a powerful man in the Samajwadi Party needs no overstating. So when cattle thieves stole seven of his buffaloes from his farm house two years ago, it was an act of great courage. Call it immense stupidity if you please. You cannot run away with Azam Khans buffaloes just like that.

This is one of the few constituencies where the election is principally between SP and BSP. But then candidature and claim of BJP's Lakshmi Saini can't be completely ruled out. In 2014 parliamentary poll pattern gives hope to BJP's supporters - Muslim votes got divided between Azam's candidate from SP Naseer Ahmad Khan and Nawab Kazim Ali Khan to pave victory way BJP's Nepal Singh.

What makes this Khan versus Khan battle even more interesting is the fact that this constituency has 60 percent Muslim population and the way members of the community vote here today could send signals elsewhere. Nawab Khan's family and SP's Azam Khan (who practically lords over this region) political rivalry dates is four decade old. But in this assembly election it has become sharper than ever.

A well educated and well groomed Nawab Kazim Ali Khan is four time MLA from this constituency. A traditional Congressman Nawab (belonging to a family which had been with Congress since Independence until about a year ago) is now BSP candidate. He now hopes that dailts and other sections on margins of social structure would add on to his personal social clout of a royalty. Pitted against him is a young Samajwadi candidate Abdullah Azam Khan. Though the young Khan is a political green horn but has support and legacy of his mighty father.

The battle of second phase is between the erstwhile Nawab of Rampur Nawab Kazim Ali Khan and modern day political Nawab of Rampur Azam Khan's son Abdullah Azam Khan.

UP Second phase battle is between two royalties

The BJP has picked up the topic of Triple Talaq ahead of Uttar Pradesh elections and asked its rivals SP and Congress to clarify their stand on gender justice. The women voters also feel that safety and security of women are of prime concern and they will vote for the party that can ensure it.

Speaking to CNN-News18, Muslim women of Rampur, one of the constituencies that will cast its ballot in the second phase, say Triple Talaq isn't an issue that political parties should discuss and is best left for the community to tackle.

Owasi's rally here drew enthusiastic crowd of under-30 youngsters. Can his AIMIM be a winner or spoiler for SP and BSP candidates? A triangular split in Muslim vote, if it happens, would generate hope for BJP candidate.

This constituency has over 65 percent Muslim electorate. So it's not surprising to find that 10 out of a total of 13 candidates in contention are from Muslim community - SP's candidate Mehboob Ali is a minister in Akhilesh Yadav government. He is facing a stiff challenge from BSP's Naushad Ali. The two were pitted against each other in 2012 also. Then there is AIMIM's Shamim Ahmed, RLD's Salim Khan, and Peace Party's Mohammad Rizwan and the list would go on. BJP's Kunwar Singh Saini is one of only three Hindu candidates from Amroha.

Amroha could be taken as a test case to understand Muslim voters polling preference  whether the Muslims were en-bloc with SP-Congress combine or Mayawati's BSP has own claims in the community and how far Assaduddin's Owaisi AIMIM has made inroads in the community.

In a crowded main bazaar of Amroha, one sees a hoarding "Tandoori Roti Rs 35 per kilo". Tandoori Roti or bread is cheaper than the price of raw atta that sells in any bigger cities. But when it comes to voting and understanding voting pattern, things are far more complicated.

It is precisely for this reason that BJP president Amit Shah said in a media conference that Mayawati's outfit is BJP's main rival in this phase. Shah hopes that BSP, which has given tickets to 99 Muslim candidates this time, would spoil SP's plan and help BJP.

Spread across 11 districts, the 67 constituencies that go to polls today in the second phase of Uttar Pradesh elections are dominated by the Muslim factor. While Muslims are known to vote tactically to keep the BJP away, the SP-Congress alliance would be hoping that the minority votes are not splintered between it and the BSP.

BJP strategises propping up BSP as party's main rival in the second phase so as to benefit from the splinter

Both quotes are attributed to Azam. Abdullah is the Samajwadi Party candidate from Suar. As part of the Rampur Lok Sabha constituency, it comes in the extended political catchment of his father. The latters prestige would as much at stake here as his.

Abdullah Azam, son of Azam Khan, is believed to be a suave man and a temperate speaker unlike his father. He won't certainly be caught saying something like, "RSS volunteers are homosexuals, thats why they never get married"; or "Mobile phones are responsible for the rape of minors."

States with the worst sex ratios have more women members of legislative assemblies (MLAs), as IndiaSpend reported in September 2015. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

The only exception was for the seats reserved for scheduled caste (SC) candidates. The proportion of women winning SC seats was more than double that of those winning general seats. All this happened over a period when women in Indias most populous state became healthier and better educated, reinforcing the point that there is no correlation between these indicators and better political representation of women.

Poor, populous Uttar Pradesh was the first Indian state to have a female chief minister  Sucheta Kriplani from 1963 to 1967but this pioneering effort has not improved prospects for women in elections. As voter turnout has risen, more competitors have stood against women candidates, fewer women have won and a growing number have lost their deposits, according to an IndiaSpend and Swaniti Initiative analysis of electoral data of the last three state elections in UP since 2002.

Age must give way to youth, says the veteran brass trader.

Some voters though are worried about the succession battle that affected the ruling party in this SP stronghold. One of them tells CNN-News 18 that Mulayam should have understood that he has reached retirement age and should have made it easier for son Akhilesh to succeed him, not tougher.

The brass industry of Moradabad has been hit by notebandi (demonetisation) and the predominantly Muslim electorate are in a mood to teach BJP a lesson.

Moradabad - Brass industry, which has been hit by demonetisation - in a mood to teach BJP a lesson?

Overall, the voter turnout stands at 10.96 percent in Uttar Pradesh. According to reports, Moradabad recorded 11 percent voter turnout till 9 am and Saharanpur recorded 12 percent.

Akhilesh Yadav and Narendra Modi urge voters to go out and cast their vote

In the end, the outcome may not be decided by issues that have been talked about during the campaign  development, demonetisation, dynasty and corruption. It may well boil down to whether a voter thinks of himself as a Muslim or a Hindu before pressing the button or looks dispassionately at the parties in the fray.

A lot had changed between 2012 and 2014. But a lot has changed from 2014 to 2017. So, neither of the two scenarios is an apt pointer to the trend. The outcome would ultimately depend on how the BJP manages to benefit from a possible split in Muslim votes (nearly 33 percent) and capitalises on counter-consolidation of Hindu votes.

There are two ways to look at polling in 67 constituencies of Uttar Pradesh. The first is to see it as a contest that could be shaped by the 2014 General Elections when the BJP polled nearly 42 percent votes and led in 49 seats in the region. The other is to go back to 2012 when the BJP polled just around 17 percent, winning 10 seats.

In 2nd phase, all depends on how BJP manages to split Muslim votes

Maximum voting was reported from Saharanpur and Bareilly at 11 per cent each, followed by Rampur (nine per cent) and Amroha (7.4 per cent).

Excited first time voters, newly weds, elderly, differently-abled and women queued up outside the polling stations to cast their votes at 7 a.m.

Brisk voting is reported in the first two hours of polling in the second phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections on Wednesday.

A confident Azam Khan, the SP minister, tells Aaj Tak in an interview that Muslims will be firmly behind his party. This phase is crucial for Samajwadi Party which won 34 of 67 seats in 2012 and is under pressure to do an encore. The BJP had got 10 seats during last assembly elections and BSP, 11. Till 9 am, 10.69 percent ballots have been cast in Uttar Pradesh.

Azam Khan invokes Gujarat while tackling Narendra Modi's charge that police stations in Rampur, his constituency, have become Samajwadi Party's offices.

Second phase: Tussle between BSP and SP-Congress alliance; Azam Khan confident Muslim voters will back him

Five, the BJP's performance this time wouldn't be as good as 2014. Well, these could be true of the whole of UP as well. In any case, these don't give you an idea on which the way voters are going to swing this time.

Four, local equations will override other considerations in the elections; and

One, Akhilesh Yadav is not someone who is disliked much, both as a person and a politician;

In Bijnor, you dont catch the election mood by speaking to a few people. Most are evasive when they sense a politically-inclined question. The ones who open up are most likely to be sympathisers of one party or the other. However, talking to a cross-section of people here you get to understand a few things:

Facts from Bijnor that holds true for the whole of Uttar Pradesh: SP-Congress alliance a good idea and demonetisation doesn't matter

"My battle is with Azam Khan and not his son. In terms of funding, the chief minister has sent crores worth of funds to the Mohammad Ali Jauhar University, which Azam Khan is the chancellor of. The money hasnt been used for the upliftment of the people of Rampur."

His success, whatever it be, votes or seats, means loss to SP. So far Muslim politics and Muslim voting preference in the state has so far been split between SP and BSP. The BSP has fielded 100 Muslim candidates with SP closely following that number but the fact remains that no party with Muslim leadership at the top, formed with purpose to cater Muslim interests has so far electorally succeeded. Can Owaisi make that exception? His speeches have been fiery, making the crowd lustily cheer for him but can he turn that personal appeal in votes?

For the first time Owasi is trying his luck here and has fielded 40 candidates from AIMIM symbol. Owaisi and erstwhile Congress ally in Andhra Pradesh and also at the centre during UPA regime had surprised all by opening account in Maharastra assembly election and making substantive gains in civic bodies polls. He, however, had failed in Bihar assembly elections because his party was seen as a vote spoiler. Uttar Pradesh is a big test for him. In his public rallies in Uttar Pradesh, he has pulled fierce punches on Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati. BJP is his favourite punching bag.

This round of election spread across electorally Muslim-dominated areas of Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Bijnor, Sambhal, Rampur, Amroha where community presence vary between 30 percent to 65 percent will decide whether Hyderabad based Assaduddin Owasi's AIMIM can spread its political influence outside of Telangana and make a mark in Hindi heartland.

Here is a look at the key electoral issues in Uttar Pradesh.

Is caste the standalone factor that swings the electoral outcome in Uttar Pradesh or the recent tune of development sung by SP-Congress combine and the BJP resonating with the voters.

With a Muslim electorate of over 65 percent all mainstream parties have chosen to field leader from the same community. SP's Iqbal Mehmood is sitting MLA and is considered a very strong candidate. He has for long been a challenger to Barq's dominance in the region. Presence of Mayawati's BSP candidate Rafatulla has further spiced up polls.

He has roped in a hugely influential a four-time MP Shafiqur Rehman Barq to his party. Barq is now 86 and has chosen his young grandson Ziaur Rahman Barq to be AIMIM candidate. If AIMIM has a chance to open an account in UP then Sambhal needs to be watched. It's a tough electoral battle.

Enter Sambhal and you will soon realise Asaduddin Owasi and his men mean business.

Key to Owaisi's expansion plans for UP is an 86-year-old in Sambhal

But that is not the case. The electoral chemistry of the national election is vastly different from the state assembly polls. In 2014 elections, Narendra Modi rode on a wave of high expectation and an outright rejection of a government perceived to be led by a weakest-ever prime minister. The groundswell of support transcended the caste-barriers in a decisive manner for Modi. READ FULL ARTICLE HERE

Not let us examine the reasons why this election is one of the rarest political event in the life of the country's most populous state. Conventional wisdom has it that the party which gets overwhelming mandate only two-and-a-half years back in 2014 Lok Sabha election should have edge over others. By this logic, the BJP should have been choice for the electorate in the state assembly election.

Conventional wisdom often guides elections. But rarely does an election turn conventional wisdom on its head. A cursory glance at the Uttar Pradesh Assembly election 2017 would leave no one in doubt that this election would fall into the category of 'rarest of rare' elections.

In 2002, women won 11 of 314 seats (3.5 percent) for general-category candidates, and 15 of 89 seats (16.9 percent) reserved for SCs. By 2012, women won 22 of 318 general seats (6.9 percent) and 13 of 85 reserved seats (15.3 percent). So, women contesting from scheduled-caste seats had a more than double chance of winning.

The BSP chief's move was to tell voters that such a thing will never be repeated in past. She has gone out of her way to attack BJP, calling the debate around triple talaq part of nefarious RSS agenda.

To counter her tactic of fielding an unprecedented 99 Muslim candidates, Akhilesh Yadav therefore has been going around telling voters that Mayawati can't be trusted since her party has allied with "communal" BJP three times in past.

In Kanpur on Tuesday BSP chief Mayawati was at pains to distance herself from BJP, insisting that she will never join hands with the "Dalit basher" party. Mayawati's predicament is understandable. To return to power she must ensure Dalit votes are consolidated and a sizeable portion of Muslim votes are weaned away from the Samajwadi Party.

Mayawati distancing herself from 'Dalit basher BJP': BSP chief's move is most obvious and necessary

Speaking to the media after casting his vote Duniyapur says the foundation of the Ram Rajya in Uttar Pradesh will be laid in Rampur. He adds that all parties in Uttar Pradesh are against the BJP. He is confident that the BJP will come to power in full majority in the state and that people will vote against poor governance and corruption.

Though Lucknow had familiarised itself with Iranian cultural traditions due to Shia's influence, Rampur borrowed its cultural traits from Mughals of Delhi. As this constituency goes for polls, the electorate gets divided on intense communal lines. However in reality Rampur has a rich cultural heritage which has much more to celebrate about than acrimony.

Historically Pathans from Afghanistan found a shelter in picturesque land of Ruhilkhand. Apar from Lucknow, Rampur emerged as another centre of excellence of Nawabi culture of Uttar Pradesh.

Rampur, a township known as bastion of Samajwadi Party's loudmouth Azam khan, is also known as land of khans.

The BJP is expecting benefits from counter pollination which may happen in the second half of the polls.

Similarly, voters registered a significant turnout in Saharanpur and Pilibhit. This round of polls seem to be going in favor of the SP because of demographic profile of the region that comprises Muslim-Yadav as significant social chunk. In certain pockets where scheduled caste voters are higher in number, Muslims are looking for BSP as an option. But that is very rare as the SP-Congress enjoys a solid support base.

Initial turnout in Budaun, Saharanpur, Bareilly and Shahjahanpur do indicate that Muslim voters have come out in large numbers in the morning. For instance in Budaun there are reports of 25 percent polls that suggest large turnout of Mulim-Yadav voters in support of the Samajwadi Party.

Initial turnout indicate Muslim voters have come out in large numbers

As Uttar Pradesh votes to choose its Legislative Assembly, BJP hopes to repeat its 2014 sweep victory riding on a Modi wave once again. The Akhilesh camp on the other hand managed to bag the majority in the 2012 Assembly polls. If a party's past performance tells us anythig, it's that in state elections swing votes ensure that its a close call between the key parties. Here is a look back at the previous performances of all the parties in UP.

UP Polls: A look at the previous performance of key players in the state

If the votes are divided then its advantage BJP, says Satish Prakash, Dalit activist. With as many as 34 of the 67 seats under its belt last time, the SP would expect a better show. It has the Congress votes with it now. The BSP, on the other hand, has announced its candidates much earlier and cultivated the constituencies well. The BJP would be happy if the alliance and the BSP shared the Muslim votes equally.

Which way will the Muslim votes swing? On this question rests the fate of parties in Uttar Pradesh. As voters in the Muslim heavy constituencies queue up at the booths today the suspense would be around whether they have voted for the Samajwadi Party-Congress alliance or the BSP.

Why the BJP would like Muslim votes to be shared equally by BSP and the SP-Cong alliance

Official sources said polling was dull initially but picked up as the day wore on. They said till midday there was no report of any untoward incident and polling was going on smoothly.

Over 25 percent of the electorate cast their votes till noon in the second phase polling in Uttar Pradesh. In the second of seven-phase election, 2.28 crore voters, including over 1.04 crore women, are eligible to cast their ballots in 14,771 polling centres and 23,693 polling stations.

It reminds the imams that it is their "special responsibility" to use mosques and make the millat (the global Muslim nation) aware of the current conditions and ensure that Muslims know that voting is a democratic right as well as a shar'i fareeza (Islamic religious duty). While the appeal does not say which party to vote against, it urges the imams and others to go to areas where Muslim candidates are in the fray against other Muslim candidates, and explain the situation to the voters to exercise their vote unitedly, presumably against the BJP.

On the second-phase polling in Uttar Pradesh, the Urdu-language daily Roznama Inquilab carries a frontpage appeal by some Muslims titled: "Respectful appeal to the imams of mosque." The two-column appeal reads: "The country's fascist forces, under their eternal projects, are conspiring to make Muslims second- and third-grade citizens, and are engaged in targeting the dear country's biggest minority by adopting new, new tactics. And surely, you are no less concerned about these situations."

One argument I have not understood but most experts say is that Indian Muslims are voting the BJP, which is correct to some extent within Gujarat but it's not proven elsewhere. Khalid feels that Muslims indeed are voting the BJP but he says that they do not proclaim it publicly. "Within the community, such BJP voters are shamed by clerics and elders and therefore they do not reveal. So, one cannot detect such votes publicly," he explains. Perhaps in times to come, Muslims will vote for the BJP, but the party has not given tickets to any Muslim candidate in UP elections.

A day before the first phase of UP polls on 11 February, Roznama Inquilab had carried a frontpage headline: "UP  First phase polling, Musalmanon ka Imtehan (Test for Muslims)." A few days ago in Aligarh, I asked Urdu journalist Hasan Khalid how will Muslims perceive if Hindi newspapers gave such a headline saying elections are a "test for Hindus." Khalid criticises such headlines in the Urdu media and argues that if one has to be so, it must only be: "voters ka Imtehan."

It also carries some reports expressing concern that the division of Muslim votes, notably in Pratapgarh region, could hurt secular forces. Roznama Sahafat, another Urdu daily, carries a whole front-page report in favour of Azam Khan, and it's not presented as kind of advert. Statements of Muslim elders such as Chaudhary Munawwar Saleem are given on the entire page to ensure Azam Khan's victory, but there have been occasions where his political rallies faced disruptions in Rampur.

To assure Muslims that the BSP will not support the BJP in UP after the elections, Mayawati's statement "Willing to sit in opposition but no alliance with BJP (after the elections)" is a front-page headline in Urdu daily Roznama Akhbar-e-Mashriq on 15 February, as the UP goes to second-phase polling.

Such pure rumours worked against the BJP in Bihar elections. Uttar Pradesh elections have seen mobilisation of Muslim voters against the BJP and in support of the SP-Congress alliance and to some extent for BSP.

During Bihar Assembly elections, I heard actual reports that even rumours played a consequential role in defeating the BJP. In rural areas, poor Muslim women were convinced by Islamic clerics and local opinion makers to offer prayers for the victory of Nitish Kumar. They were told that "Modi will demolish mosques."

Modi was effectively urging the voters to rise above caste, community and identity fault lines with a strong dose of nationalism arising out of the achievements of scientists.

Narendra Modi began his rally in Kannauj by congratulating Isro scientists for launching 104 satellites in one go earlier in the day. Constantly invoking their success during his speech, the Prime Minister asked the sizeable crowd to raise their voice to laud the scientists' effort in which 101 were foreign satellites were launched and only 3 were Indian.

Modi uses Isro success to punch in strong dose of nationalism in Kannauj rally

The sugar mills feel their business is unsustainable in view of falling sugar prices. Some have threatened to die but they cannot do so under the law. Akhilesh has just made things more difficult for them by increasing the State Advisory Price for sugarcane to Rs 305. The BJP promises a loan waiver and payment to farmers within 14 days of delivery. But on the ground, its not a big talking point. Interesting.

In the sugarcane zone of Uttar Pradesh theres not much talk on plight of cane farmers. Not all is hunky-dory with the sugarcane industry here. Farmers have been complaining about rising arrears in payment from the sugar mills.

Was it really a paradigm shift in voter behaviour? Was 2014 the year of enlightenment for Indian voters who suddenly realised that they had been taken for a merry ride by politicians in the name of caste and community equations? Were they eschewing identity politics and its trappings?

Writing for EPW, A K Verma analysed BJP's victory as "it is significant that the party made electoral gains across all castes and communities and across all regions in the state. This victory signalled a paradigm shift in voter behaviour, with a preference for good governance and development pushing out the identity politics of caste and community."

The result was stunning. In Uttar Pradesh alone, BJP won 71 out of 80 seats. Dalits abandoned Mayawati and voted in droves for BJP's PM candidate. AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal ran a campaign of anger. Modi defeated him in Varanasi by a huge margin.

It was a remarkable spectacle in 2014. While BJP's rivals, especially in the Hindi heartland, were busy slicing and dicing data on caste equations, PM-aspirant Narendra Modi was telling rally after rally of packed audiences how he will bring achhe din. The more his rivals asked the electorate not to trust him, the more Modi talked about development. The opposition called him a 'polarising figure who will usher in riots', Modi said he will usher in vikaas.

How Modi's campaign changed dramatically and what it says about BJP's chances

The underlying purpose behind the alliance between Akhilesh Yadav led Samajwadi Party and Sonia-Rahul Gandhi led Congress party was consolidation of Muslim votes for the combine. Akhilesh Yadav on several occasion has said there was a confusion among some people about Samajwadi's prospects to return to power but after a tie-up with Congress that confusion is gone. If SP-Congress has to come to power, it needs to sweep this phase. In 2012 elections SP had won 35 of 67 seats, Congress 3, BSP 18 and BJP had won 10, one seat had gone to Independent. The BJP is banking on some split in Muslim votes between SP-BSP and AIMIM. The BJP is also looking for a situation where aggressive polling by Muslim community members could consolidate Hindutava votes in its favor. Latent Hindutava sentiment is there in sections of Hindu voters but the key question is how much of that is translating into votes. The BSP has fielded some strong candidates on the ground. The party has also got a number of influential Muslim clerics and community groups to issue appeal in its favor. Despite Supreme Court order, Mayawati has been openly talking of importance of Muslim votes. Will that yield dividend to her. As it is she has solid backing of Dalits, particularly Jatavas. Polling by noon has shown that polling percentage could go up in this phase, at least as compared to phase one. There lies the catch for all three mainstream contenders SP-Congress, BJP and BSP.

This phase of election is supremely important for the SP-Congress combine as majority of the 67 seats where the polling process is underway has overwhelming Muslim population.

Sweeping phase two election crucial for SP to justify its alliance with Congerss

Picking up BJP's clean sweep in Uttar Pradesh where the party won all three seats of graduate MLC seats in Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Bareilly this month, Narendra Modi during his election rally in Kannauj on Wednesday taunted the SP-Congress alliance by asking, "UP ko yeh saath pasand kyon nahin aya"? (Why did the UP voters show thumbs down to SP-Congress alliance). The taunt was a spin on the alliance partners' campaign slogan. The PM also mentioned BJP's good result in Odisha panchayat polls and interpreted it as the poor endorsing demonetisation despite Opposition slander.

With elections for the 403-seat Uttar Pradesh assembly underway, even sale of liquor has fallen, partly because of strictures from the Election Commission.

The Excise Department, the cash cow, has also taken a beating in revenue collection. An official said that as against a target of Rs 1,443 crore in December, the collection was down at Rs 1,345 crore.

While it earned Rs 4,494 crore in tax in November, the collection slipped in December and is set to go down further in January and February due to engagement of employees and officials in election duty.

The Sales Tax Department, an official told IANS, has seen a drop in collections in the past three months.

Officials in the concerned departments fear that the revenue targets for the current fiscal might take a knock of 25-30 per cent.

Uttar Pradesh's revenue has taken a big hit  first due to demonetisation and now because most government employees are out on election duty.

Modi says those sitting in Delhi cannot gauge the extent of damage at Barabanki

The once powerful Shivpal Yadav is a pale shadow of himself after the knock-out blow from nephew Akhilesh. Patriarch Mulayam Singh is a much subdued man these days, preferring to be away from the limelight. Some other members of the family are still in the process of adjusting to the generational shift in the party. The Yadav community has stood by Mulayam for over two decades but this time its a bit confused after the coup by Akhilesh which many perceive as an insult to Mulayam.

In Uttar Pradeshs heartland, where the election enters phase three, the debate is not whether the Yadav dominance in their stronghold would continue, its how the bitter power struggle in the Yadav first family would impact the prospect of individual members in the fray.

Akhilesh Yadav. ReutersAkhilesh Yadav. Reuters In the 2012 Assembly polls, SP had won 55 of these 69 seats, while BSP, BJP and Congress secured just 6, 5 and 2 respectively. One seat went to an Independent.

Curtains will come down on Friday on the hectic campaign in 69 Assembly seats spread over 12 districts of Uttar Pradesh that will go to polls in the third phase on 19 February. The districts are Farrukhabad, Hardoi, Kannauj, Mainpuri, Etawah, Auraiya, Kanpur Dehat, Kanpur, Unnao, Lucknow, Barabanki and Sitapur.

Campaign for 3rd phase ends on Friday, 12 districts go to polls on 19 February

"Akhilesh says that their party has changed over the years but the goons are still there within the party. Three people have been engaged in spreading corruption in the country and now these people have tied up in an alliance to loot Uttar Pradesh."

"What has this family given you? There are problems for farmers while law and order machinery in the state has collapsed. There is acute shortage of water and medicines. What has this state government done for you?" he asked.

He asked the voters to shun dynastic and caste-based politics, noting that everything in the state veered around one family.

Two families have entered into an unholy alliance. Initially, people were affected by one shahzada (prince), now it is two. One shahzada is giving pain to his mother, the other to his father," he said, attacking Rahul and Akhilesh, who had a bitter feud with his father Mulayam Singh Yadav over the control over SP.

UP election is a way to end caste and family politics, says Shah at Amethi rally. Congress-SP alliance is immoral, he adds.

Sitting UP minister Vijay Mishra joins Mayawati's party dealing a fresh blow to Akhilesh. Vijay goes on to call Samajwadi Party Anti-Brahmin while Mayawati, all confident, says that Uttar Pradesh will punish Akhilesh for running goonda raj in state.

The killing spree started with the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi by RSS. We are Gandhians from the core of our heart and firm believer of non-violence," AICC General Secretary and in-charge of party affairs in Uttar Pradesh Ghulam Nabi Azad told a news conference here.

Congress on Thursday dismissed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charge that the party had made a bid on Mulayam Singh Yadav's life, saying the word 'murder' was synonymous with Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah. "The word 'murder' is synonymous with Modi and (Amit) Shah.

Irani had said on Thursday that Priyanka Gandhi was avoiding canvassing in Amethi because she was afraid of people's questions on their unfulfilled promises.

After Smriti Irani took on Priyanka Gandhi for not addressing a single rally in Amethi, Priyanka has finally entered the poll limelight as she appeared at a Congress rally in Raebareli, flanked by her brother Rahul Gandhi.

The apex court has also sought a status report from the UP police within a period of eight weeks.

The Supreme Court ordered the registration of an FIR against UP minister Gayatri Prajapati in a gang rape and sexual harassment case against him. The bench hearing the case observed that the state machinery could not go slow on a accused just because he was an influential leader in the state.

Poll panel officials said they hope that more and more people will come out to vote this time and that the previous turnout of 59.96 per cent in this region in 2012 will be bettered by the end of the day.

Voting for 69 seats in the third phase of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections began on Sunday amid tight security. Heavy security deployment has been made across the 12 districts where polling began. Sensitive polling stations marked by the Election Commission (EC) are being monitored online, an official said.

Officials hope third phase turnout will be better than the second phase's 59.96%

In this round, all eyes are on people from the Yadav clan, like Shivpal Singh Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav's cousin Anurag Yadav. The fate of BJP's Rita Bahuguna Joshi will also be decided in this round.

In all, there are 826 candidates in fray whose fate would be decided by 2.41 crore voters. Prominent districts where polling is underway include Lucknow, Kanpur, Etawah, Kannauj, Etah and Mainpuri.

BSP has fielded Yogesh Dixit, who is trying to woo voters by promising good governance by party supremo Mayawati.

The SP candidates include Mulayam Singh Yadav's daughter-in-law Aparna Yadav and three ministers, one of whom was recently sacked. BJP has preferred to field turncoats on two seats  Lucknow Central and Lucknow Cantt. Rita Bahuguna Joshi, who had won on Congress ticket last time, has been fielded by BJP from Cantt seat against Aparna.

Ruling Samajwadi Party is facing a tough battle as it tries to retain the seven Assembly seats it had won last time out of nine in Lucknow, while BJP and BSP queer the pitch. The two other seats were shared by BJP and Congress.

Lucknow Central is also witnessing a keen contest, where sitting SP MLA and cabinet minister Ravidas Mehrotra is facing an uphill task with Congress candidate Maroof Khan refusing to withdraw from the field despite a tie-up between the two parties. BJP has given ticket to former MP Brijesh Pathak, a fromer Lucknow University student union president, who switched from BSP.

However, this time the situation for SP is difficult with its MLA Sharda Prasad Shukla contesting on RLD ticket after being spurned by the party.

An interesting contest is on in Sarojini Nagar seat, where BJP's woman face and state women wing chief Swati Singh is in fray. BJP has never won the seat.

The driver gives it a thought, stifles a smile and nods in agreement.

Who would like to be seen in the vicinity of the clinic and be branded a naamard? Its a society where everyone knows everyone. And word spreads fast. Salacious words move faster. I doubt whether even other patients go to the clinic that day.

Do you think these doctors do any business on Tuesdays? I ask the driver, a native of Uttar Pradesh, adding, I dont think so. He is a bit perplexed: Why?

One wise doctor has fixed a weekday for each category of patients for consultation. Naamards on Mangalbar (impotents on Tuesday), reads the information on one wall. Somewhere else Thursday is the day for those with the problem of early ejaculation. Something strikes you as odd.

On the road through the Yadav zone in Uttar Pradesh which goes to polls today, theres no escaping gupt rog. On the ubiquitous long brick walls amid green fields on both sides you find the mention of gupt rog and the doctor in loud white. In fact, this crude advertisement easily outnumbers those of the candidates in the elections.

Most voters are unable to say with confidence which party might form the next government in Lucknow. Will this election result in a hung assembly? This too cannot be said with certainty, as a shift of just about three percent votes could result in a clear majority for a single party.

Except for the Jat voters, the BJP voters have largely stayed with the party. BJP might be enjoying some silent polarisation in its favour. However, talking to people in western UP, it didn't appear that there was any wave in favour of any party. This may change in eastern UP.

During the first two phases of polling which covered western Uttar Pradesh, some division was seen in the Muslim votes. While most Muslim votes went for the Samajwadi Party, the BSP too seems to have received a fair share of Muslim votes. There is effectively a three-cornered contest across Uttar Pradesh.

BJP might have enjoyed silent polarisation in western UP but that changes in eastern UP

The constituency comprises city area considered stronghold of BJP and in 2012 polls BJP's Bora lost by a narrow margin of 2,219 votes to Mishra.

Lucknow North is witnessing a contest between state minister and SP candidate Abhishek Mishra and BJP's Neeraj Bora, while BSP has fielded former NSUI leader Ajay Srivastava this time, making it a three-cornered fight.

The Urdu daily Roznama Inquilab on 17 February also carried a five-column report from Barabanki quoting several Islamic clerics and local elders saying that appeals made by Muslim leaders to vote for a certain party has confused Muslim voters. Muhammad Yunus Khan, who works for educational uplift of Muslims, is quoted in the report as saying that there is awareness among Muslims as to which party to vote for.

Haseeb Ahmad Nizami of the Lucknow-based social organisation Bharatiya Aqaliyat Mahasabha who criticised such appeals for Muslim votes says that Muslims are aware of which party to vote for or not to vote, according to a report in the Urdu daily Akhbar-e-Mashriq on 16 February.

Some resentment is being seen in the Muslim community against appeals made by various leaders for Muslim minority votes. This may not be consequential but there is a realisation that political leaders use Muslims at the time of elections and forget the community after the vote.

"I urge everyone to cast their important vote in the third phase of Uttar Pradesh voting. After the first two phases, I can confidently say that even in third phase BSP will lead all the parties as far as votes are concerned. In fact, in all the remaining phases as well BSP will come out as a winner. And I can positively say that BSP will form a government on its own, without anyone's assistance or any uncomfortable alliance. Uttar Pradesh needs change, it is looking for development. BJP has been tested and the same goes for Samajwadi Party  the voters have decided."

At another place close to Kanpur, you get ghanghor thandi beer. It does not surprise anymore.

Perhaps its a case of overdoing things. The owner of the shop wanted extra emphasis on the chill factor and came up with this adjective. Well, cannot say it does not attract attention. If it didnt, why would one be discussing it in the first place?

We know chilled beer. We can forgive the lapse on the sign board writers part when he mentions it as child beer. After all, beer is what matters in the end. But what, pray, is bhayankar thandi beer? On the road from Meerut to Kanpur one comes across this on a sign board and pauses for a few minutes to grasp the meaning of the words in combination. Thandi is for cold alright and beer needs no explaining. What is bhayankar doing here?

The polling percentage so far, with exception of Noida, has been very good. That is a clear indicator that voters in large numbers from all communities are coming out to vote. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE

An excessive reliance of the SP-Congress coalition to woo Muslims has given rise to latent Hindutva sentiments across the state. The strategists perhaps erred in calculating the Muslims vote but they are not the only ones who vote. Mayawati too has erred on the same count. Scratch a bit and Hindutva sentiments of non-Yadav and non-Jatav community would come out to the fore. The situation may not be that of 2014 but this factor is certainly there on the ground and that could significantly tilt the balance for BJP.

Its true that there are no obvious signs of anti-incumbency against Akhilesh Yadav but the endorsement sentiments to bring the incumbent back to power is clearly missing.

Winds of change could be blowing in Uttar Pradesh. Ahead of the third phase of polling in this most populous and politically crucial Hindi heartland state, there are signs on the ground that Samajwadi Party-Congress coalition, Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadavs pre-poll catchphrase UP ko ye saath pasand hai is not striking the desired cord among the numbers of voters required to catapult them to power.

Long queues have been seen in Lucknow, Kanpur and Etawah where people went early morning to cast their votes. Lucknow, which is generally less excited about exercising franchise, has also witnessed long queues outside polling stations.

The Modi-versus-Akhilesh debate has dominated the election scenario in Awadh, which could turn out to be a make-or-break region for both parties. Modi, who is the BJPs strongest vote-puller in a battle without a chief ministerial face, underlined the fact that he was an MP from the state and described himself as UPs adopted son.

Brisk voting has been reported from most of the 69 assembly seats which are going to polls on Sunday in the third phase of the Uttar Pradesh elections.

Awadh: With Modi vs Akhilesh debate dominating election talk, it could be a make-or-break region

Prominent persons who voted here included Rita Bahuguna Joshi, former state Congress President and currently the BJP candidate from Lucknow Cantt seat.

Large crowds swarmed polling stations in Indiranagar, Gomtinagar, Aliganj Chowk in the old city and Aashiana. Many voters were out early morning so that they do not have to wait in long queues later in the day.

In this region, the competition is between the father and the son. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest that Akhilesh Yadav is being seen as tanashah (dictator), as one person told me. However, it seems to be more of a social case. In Indian society, people generally favour the father in any clash with his son.

The third-phase polling today covers Etawah and nearby constituencies which are considered a stronghold of Mulayam Singh Yadav. However, the recent clash between Mulayam Singh and his son Akhilesh Yadav has caused resentment among the voters in this region.

The black patches could well be heartbreaks, externalised and painted in colour for public viewing. These frustrated aspiring candidates could damage the prospect of running candidates in the Samajwadi Party dominated region through silent sabotage acts.

Some of them had started campaigning already anticipating party tickets. The names had to be removed from the walls to avoid confusion among voters about the candidates.

The huge, ugly black patches on many walls in the fields on both sides of the road (from Meerut to Kanpur) tell you that someone has done a shoddy job. Look carefully, and try to find what the dark patches are trying to cover. You get the Congress' campaign theme before it entered into an alliance with the Samajwadi Party: '27 saal UP behaal' and you get names of Congress and Samajwadi Party aspirants who didn't finally get the ticket or lost out due to the alliance.

The Bhojpuri actor, who formally was a Congress candidate and contested election in Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur in 2014, is all set to join the BJP. The announcement was done by BJP MP Manoj Tiwari.

If rumours are anything to go by he would damage the prospect of the Samajwadi Party in some seats in the Yadav belt. He would ensure that the strike rate of the party goes down by several points. It was 80 percent  and 55 seats  last time. He would not mind playing the BJP's game. Mulayam Singh is still with him but his relationship with Akhilesh remains frosty. Wait for a new episode in the family drama after the results are out.

Never underestimate the man outdone in a power game. He could have been pushed to the fringes of the Samajwadi Party by Akhilesh and ploughing a lonely furrow in his Jaswant Nagar assembly constituency at the moment, but Shivpal Yadav remains a dangerous man for Akhilesh.

Akhilesh's alliance partner Rahul Gandhi's Congress has had no presence in the region. The only seat that Congress had won in 2012 was of Rita Bahuguna Joshi in Lucknow Cantt. But Joshi is now part of the BJP. Heavy voter turnout since morning in this phase could cut both ways, depending on voters mood  pro-incumbency, favouring incumbent or anti-incumbency favouring challenger.

The fact that in last five days Akhilesh Yadav had extensively campaigned in areas which are considered to be family stronghold is indicative of the fact that he can't be complacent about the outcome. His wife Dimple Yadav, after appearing to be a tentative campaigner and reluctant public speaker too is campaigning for the party.

But each election has its own different dynamics. In 2012, Akhilesh Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav and Shivpal Yadav were one force, in 2017 not so much. The schism within Yadav clan has resulted in emergence of multiple forces. Also, in 2012 Samajwadi Party was a challenger and in 2017 Samajwadi Party is ruling party.

Ideally, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav should have been sitting comfortably ahead of phase three polling which is currently underway in 69 constituencies of Uttar Pradesh. In 2012, Samajwadi Party had swept the polls, winning 54 seats in 12 districts spread over in Yadav bastion of Etawah, Mainpuri, Kannauj, Farrukhabad, Auraiah and so on.

But in 2012 Assembly elections, seven Samajwadi Party legislatures were elected of the nine assembly seats here. The young vote would be pivotal.

A crucial constituency where BJP and SP both see the potential to gain from here. Atal Bihari V
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The GDP is estimated to grow at 7.1% in 2016-17 as compared with 7.6% in 2015-16. However, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in December 2016 was 3.4% down from 5.6% in December 2015. Read the report here.

According to a report prepared by the New Delhi-based think tank PRS Legislative Research, which analysed President Mukherjee's address to Parliament on 23 February 2016, not all targets of increasing GDP and lowering inflation, fiscal deficit and current account deficit were achieved.

The President's address, a day before the Union Budget is presented, sets the tone for the upcoming Budget Session as the broad initiatives taken by the Union government and objectives for the coming year are listed out.

Three ordinances have been listed today for promulgation.

Once President Mukherjee's address to the joint session of the Parliament concludes, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will table the Economic Survey 2016-17. Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress has decided not to attend the Parliament for two days.

President also congratulated the government for fulfilling the four-decade old demand of One Rank One Pension.

President Mukherjee salutes the courage of soldiers who undertook the surgical strikes

The expectation is chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian will give some idea as to how the demonetisation has impacted the economy in the Economic Survey.

After the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from 9 November, the common man endured much pain hoping that the government's step will finally put an end to black money generation and the evaders will pay a price. However, the government is yet to come out with exact data on how much money has come into the system and what is the amount of black money it may have amassed.

This year's Economic Survey is nothing like the previous years'. The reason is the country has been witness to an unprecedented step - demonetisation.

Will Economic Survey clear the air about the impact of demonetisation?

Towards the budget, there has been demand for higher allocation for the social sector in order o get over the pain of demonetisation.

After the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, normalcy is yet to return to rural areas. The cash crunch induced by he note ban has resulted in job losses in the informal sector. As daily labourers returned to their villages, the demand for jobs under MGNREGA has spiked, media reports said.

The Economic Survey has realised the risk of the the demonetisation to the country's economic growth and noted the recovery from the negative impact will require policy support from the government.

The new estimate this year comes after the the Central Statistical Organisation projected a growth of 7.1 percent on 6 January.

The new estimate this year comes after the the Central Statistical Organisation projected a growth of 7.1 percent on 6 January.

The Economic Survey has sharply cut the GDP growth for 2016-17 to 6.5 percent, from 7.6 percent last financial year.

The Economic Survey has sharply cut the GDP growth for 2016-17 to 6.5 percent, from 7.6 percent last financial year.

The currency squeeze was less than perceived. It was higher in December than in November, contrary to the general perception, he said.

Demonetisation has affected different forms of money very differently, he said. It simultaneously reduced the supply of cash and by the same token it increased the bank deposits.

Caution has to be exercised in analysing the impact of demonetisation. It is an unusual monetary experiment. No real model exist. It is an unusual experiment in the monetary history, Subramanian said.

Currency squeeze after demonetisation was less than perceived

Based on a survey on misallocation of resources for the six largest Central Sector and Centrally Sponsored Sub-Schemes (except PDS and fertilizer subsidy) across districts, the Economic Survey points out that the districts where the needs are greatest are precisely the ones where State capacity is the weakest. This suggests that a more efficient way to help the poor would be to provide them resources directly, through a UBI.

The Mahatma as astute political observer, would have anxieties about UBI as being just another add-on Government programme, but on balance, he may have given the go-ahead to the UBI.

The UBI is a simple idea based on three principles - universality, unconditionality and agency, said Subramanian at the press conference.

The Economic Survey advocates the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI) as an alternative to the various social welfare schemes in an effort to reduce poverty. The survey juxtaposes the benefits and costs of the UBI scheme in the context of the philosophy of the Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma may have given go-ahead to Universal Basic Income as anti-poverty scheme

He ducked the question whether the government could have done something better.

On the RBI's likely interest rate action, Subramanian at the press conference said the market interest rates have already been trending down.

Explaining the rationale behind its 6.75-7.5% GDP growth estimate for the next financial year, the Economic Survey said cash will replenished by end March 2017 and the economy would revert to the normal after that.

"It says that bank deposits increased sharply through end-December, that they will decline and probably settle at a slightly higher level, it doesn't say how much was the deposit increase or when it is likely to become steady. So also about the RBI balance sheet. Did the CEA anlayse the note ban without any numbers in hand? If yes, it is surprising," Rajesh said.

Firstpost business editor Rajesh Pandathil noted that though there is detailed table on the impact of note ban, it has no numbers mentioned anywhere.

The Economic Survey, though as expected, had given an impact analysis of the demonetisation but has not given any numbers.

Detailed table on impact of demonetisation, but where are the numbers?

A Congress MP, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the government wanted to postpone the announcement of E Ahamed's passing. "They announced it at midnight after pressure from his family," the MP said.

"The budget should be delayed. Otherwise, it will be an inhuman act," he said. "There is a lot of time. The Budget can be presented tomorrow too."

"If they will not show respect, it won't be appropriate," said Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge. "The Budget which they had to present in March is being presented now," he added.

Arun Jaitley confirms Budget is on track at 11 am

House stands in silence for 2 minutes as a mark of respect to departed leader and sitting Congress MP E Ahamed.

"The House may go ahead with the presentation of the Budget," she said. "However, the House will not sit tomorrow."

"I would have adjourned the House for the day but today, the sitting has been fixed for the Budget, which is a constitutional obligation," said Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

But Sumitra Mahajan said that she has already given her ruling.

"As a mark of respect, the House should be adjourned today. Budget should be presented tomorrow," he said.

"E Ahamed is a senior leader. He was there for 45 years in the legislative affairs," said Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge in Lok Sabha.

Opposition leaders are now shouting in the House even as Arun Jaitley begins to speak.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley begins his fourth Union Budget speech. Wishes the country on the occasion of Vasant Panchami.

This could be a broad hint at the government's plans for these sectors, which have large unorganised constituency. Though labour laws have been a major impediment in increasing investment in the sector and it is for the states to breing in reforms in this area now, the Centre could announce sops to boost the sectors. It is also to be remembered that textile was one of the sectors that was hit hard by the demonetisation of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

The Survey adds that these sectors provide immense opportunities for creation of jobs for the weaker sections, especially for women, and can become vehicles for broader social transformation in the country.

"Apparel and Leather & Footwear sectors are eminently suitable for generating jobs that are formal and productive, providing bang-for-buck in terms of jobs created relative to investment and generating exports and growth," said the survey released yesterday.

The Economic Survey may have dropped borad hints at how the governmenet may be planning to push job creation.

"India's macroeconomic stability continues to be its fountainhead of its growth. CAD has declined by 1%," says Jaitley.

"Growth in a number of emerging economies is likely to recover in 2017 after a poor performance in 2016. Uncertain crude oil prices have had its implication on the emerging economies," says Jaitley.

"According to the IMF, India is going to be the one of the fastest growing economies. Inflation has been controlled. The government has launched a massive war on black money. India seen as an engine of global growth," says Jaitley.

India seen as an engine of global growth: Jaitley

"Demonetisation is the new normal. Demonetisation seeks to make our GDP bigger, cleaner." says Jaitley.

Jaitley resorts to poetry, asks all to embrace the new. This of course celebrates the new thrust towards a cashless economy.

"My overall approach while preparing this Budget has been to spend more in rural areas, poverty alleviation through fiscal prudence," says Jaitley.

The effects of demonetisation are not expected to spill over to the next year, says the finance minister. However, this goes against the indication in the Economic Survey that was released yesterday. The survey had given a GDP growth projection of 6.75-7.5 pecent for the next year. Experts have been of the opinion that the wide range could be an indication that there could be a spill over effect next year too.

Not seeing effects of the demonetisation spill over to next year

Not seeing effects of the demonetisation spill over to next year, The effects of demonetisation not expected to spill over to the next year, says the finance minister. However, this goes against the indication in the Economic Survey that was released yesterday. The survey had given a GDP growth projection of 6.75-7.5 pecent for the next year. Experts have been of the opinion that the wide range could be an indication that there could be a spill over effect next year too.

Use of Spring festival signals hope. Policy moves from favouritism to transparency and informal to formal. The finance minister is sending a macro message for foreign investors.

Increase in agriculture credit and its disbursal along with more coverage of crop insurance scheme is a good step and will be helpful to the farm sector hit by the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.

India, which was the 7th largest economy has now become the sixth largest in manufacturing. India Rise! The focus on fundamentals as regards rural sector is a good way to go

"Pace of construction of roads has increased to Rs 133 km/day in 2017," Says Jaitley.

Mudra Yojna gets special mention. Funds for housing to rural poor under Prime Minister Rural Poor Housing scheme, allocation for MGNREGA has been increased to highest ever with the rider that it will be used to create productive assets. Mark the word eastern India, it had loaded political connotation without Uttar Pradesh word used.

The political thrust of Modi government in union budget 2017 is clearly apparent from repeated reference to schemes beneficial to farmers, rural poor, infrastructure, dailts women, youth. Rs 10 lakh crore has been earmarked for credit to farmers in eastern Indian and Jammu and Kashmir.

MNREGA funds for asset creation, moving out of the old Dole regime. Housing allocation for rural housing grows 50 percent. The focus is on rural income and demand, and formalising rural economy.

Special effort for farmers to double income to be focused on Eastern States. A hint for UP elections?

India, which was the 7th largest economy, has now become the sixth largest in manufacturing. India Rise! The focus on fundamentals as regards rural sector is a good way to go.

Rural fundamentals in focus; It's a good way to go

The way Jaitley spoke of MGNREGA, about increased allocation and the way productive assets would be built including water ponds, is clearly an indicator that Modi government is keen to take political capital out of a scheme that was the shining armour of erstwhile UPA government.

Modi govt keen to take political capital out of MGNREGA

Gujarat, Jharkhand to get an AIIMS each

Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's speech is calculated to consolidate political constituencies for the Narendra Modi government. It begins with unambiguous thrust on agriculture, rural areas and addresses the concerns of women and youth. Obviously a cursory analysis of Jaitley's speech would leave no one in doubt that Modi's preparation for 2019 elections has begun with this budget.

Interest waiver, and not loan waiver. It a very good sign for prudential banking.

Overall rural allocation is 24 percent higher than last years. Computerisation of Nabard will allow tracking of funds for farmers. Micro irrigation and fertigation will ensure more crop per drop.

The additional sops for the farmers include increase in Fasal bima yojana coverage to 40 percent and crop insurance coverage by 50 percent, a Rs 5,000 crore micro irrigation fund and Rs 8,000 crore dairy processing fund. Further, the government will support NABARD to digitise 63,000 primary agri societies, the FM said. Rs 48,000 crore has been allocated to MNREGA from Rs 37,000 crore last year, Jaitley said. But, isnt also due more number of people moving from factory jobs to informal sector? The government has increased the allocation for rural agriculture and allied sectors by 24 per cent to Rs 1,87,223 crore, which should ideally help revival in rural sector post demonetisation impact. But are job losses factored in?

Jaitelys speech reaffirms the governments aggressive focus on the rural push, a key item in the governments agenda. Jaitley said this government wants to take one crore households out of poverty by 2019 and complete rural electrification by 1 May, 2018. The FM has almost started from where PM Modi stopped in his New year speech as far as governments big rural push is concerned. More sops were doled out for the farmers. As usual, the bank credit target for agriculture was further increased to Rs 10 lakh credit target this year. Whether the banking system have the capacity to take up the additional burden given the existing high level of bad loans from the segment is a question.

Innovation in 4,000 backward blocks will generate rural entrepreneurship. Mason training and skill India development clearly aimed at long-term formalisation of informal occupations.

Farmers, rural poor, youth, girls and women, artisans, unprivileged and their concerns of education, infrastructure, loan, jobs and social security were dwelt at length. PM Modi and FM Jaitley realise the burden of expectation that is there on them and it was good to see that FM addressed to that in the beginning.

Modi government has used the first half of the budget to address its core social constituency  farmers, rural poor, Dalits, women, youth. Remember, this is the third budget of the Modi government and thus most significant to send out a message to those who looked up to this government with certain hopes and aspirations.

Good going by the finance minister. He has focused on rural fundamentals  micro irrigation and dairy focus, contract farming, water harvesting and infrastructure. The FM has made Rs 1.87 lakh crore allocation for rural and agri sector. Bharat shining!

"Service charge for tickets booked through IRCTC to be withdrawn. Tariffs to be fixed as per competition and quality of service," said Jaitley.

"Coach Mitra facility to come up. All trains to have bio-toilets," Jaitley said.

"500 stations to be made differently-abled with lifts, escalators. Solar power to lit up more stations," he said.

"A Rail Raksha Sanraksha Koch with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh cr in the course of five years. Unmanned railway crossings to disappear by 2020. Railway lines of 3,500 km will be commissioned in 2017-18," says Jaitley.

"A pilot project with Aadhaar cards containing the health details of senior citizens will be started in 15 districts,"says Jaitley.

Concerns of medical students have been addressed for post-graduate education. It is interesting to see that that government decision to allow private hospitals to begin DNB medical courses found a place in the budget.

Re-emphasis on cashless economy would boost digital transactions leading to greater financial inclusion, transparency and economic growth: Mehul Turakhia, Director Finance, Directi

The finance minister said the government proposes to complete 1,00,00,000 houses by 2019 for houseless and those living in kaccha houses. Towards this, he increased allocation for PM Awas Yojana to Rs 23,000 crore.

Housing shares surge up to 11% after rise in housing allocation

Jaitleys announcement that affordable housing will be given infrastructure status is an important step. This is a big move that can, at one stroke, give a major push to the affordable housing sector since banks can now lend money to affordable housing projects under infrastructure category. This can also work to boost real estate and construction activities that has slowed in the recent months. Good move, Mr FM!

Launching of education portal is a good step. However, investment in schools and educational infrastructure in rural sector is the need of the hour.

"New Metro Rail Policy to be announced. It will open up new job possibilities.National Highway Allocation fixed at Rs 64,000 Crore. Airports Authority of India Act to be amended to enable monetisation of land," says Jaitley.

Safety deadlines a key deviation from previous Railway Budget. Throughput enhancement will reduce the need to keep increasing fares. Elimination of unmanned rail crossings by 2020 can reduce accidents by 40 %.

The fact that FM Jaitley referred to Railway after about 50 minutes of budget speech is an indicator that the government was keen to send out a strong political message that it cared for poor, underprivileged and concerns of youth. It was basically elaboration of what PM Modi had outlined in his 31 December 2016 address to the nation, the day his 50-day deadline for deposits of old demonetised notes had ended. It will depend on the ruling BJP as a party to reach out to electorate in UP, Punjab, Uttrakhand, Goa and Manipur with certain positives.

The government to take up second phase of solar power development for additional 20,000 MW. Over 250 proposals for electronics mfg received in last 2 yrs for Rs 1.26 lakh crore, says Jaitley.

Agriculture sector announcements are deeply disappointing. Like last year, farmers have got nice words but nothing else.

Service charge withdrawal on Railway tickets e-booking a way to encourage e transactions. This will also compel airlines.

The increase in railway expenditure focusing on infrastructure creation  steady going. National highway will have no speed breaker for smooth motoring. Implementation will be key. Affordable housing as infrastructure is an innovative idea to boost the sector.

"IRCON and IRFC to be listed on stock exchanges. There is a proposal to create an integrated PSU oil major. Listing of CPSE will increase accountability," says Jaitley.

Payment Board to come up in RBI

Specifics on cyber security steps missing. Interface with police and courts required. As many as 125 lakh people adopt BHIM app, but regulator for epayments missing.

Increasing target for agriculture credit to Rs 10 lakh crore is nothing but a routine announcement. From 9 to 9.5 to 10. In any case, this is given by the banks, not FM. What the FM could have announced was interest relief. This he is not done. Nor has he announced any measures to ensure that this credit reaches to small, tenant farmers. So net results ZERO.

Propose revised mechanism for time-bound listing of PSUs. Shift to digital platforms to benefit the common man, says Jaitley.

Defence personnel getting their concession tickets booked in railway through online processes without standing in queue at railways reservation counters with authorised concession warrants is a welcome step. It otherwise sounds a small step but gives great comfort to defence personnel. Modi government would hope to get their goodwill.

The finance minister has proposed to create an integrated PSU oil major. Is this the end of current PSU oil marketing companies?

The announcement from Jaitley that railway-related state-run companies like IRCON and IRCTC are to be listed on stock exchanges is a bumper move thatll enable the government to unlock the big value of these giants. This is a proposal that has been in the discussions for too long, but no definite decisions have been taken so far. Jaitleys move, in this context, is significant.

Total resources to be transferred to states and UTs estimated at Rs 4.11 lakh crore. Allocation of capital expenditure up 25% YoY. Peg fiscal deficit for 2017 at 3.2%, says Jaitley.

FM's loud silence on some of the key demands and expectations of farmers: Income security for farmers, higher MSP release of farmers from debt-trap, improvement in irrigation, electricity, fertilizer and seed subsidies. Very disappointed.

Rs 10,000 crores for banks recapitalisation is in line, but short of expectations.

"Tax-to-GDP ratio very low in India. We are largely a tax non-compliant society. When too many evades tax, the burden falls on those who are honest," says Jaitley.

Government decision to bring a law to attach properties of absconders is a significant move. It would enable the government to attach properties of the likes of Vijay Mallya, Lalit Modi and so on, who fled from country. Whether or not this would act as deterrent but would certainly send a strong signal that bhagodas family members wouldn't enjoy the assets and wealth with impunity.

Poetry time once again, this time on black money. Opposition, treasury benches join hands in complimenting poet Arun Jaitley.

Poetry time once again, this time on black money. Opposition , treasury benches join hands in complimenting poet Arun Jaitley.

With regard to fiscal deficit roadmap of 3 years, a long-term view has been maintained. This is consistent with promises made. However, it would require great effort to achieve it.

"The thrust of my tax proposal in this Budget is to bring relief to the middle class, boost affordable housing, transparent political funding. Net tax growth at 17% in the last 2 years," says Jaitley.

The push towards e-transactions through BHIM and Aadhar enabled payments puts India at the cusp of a digital revolution.

"Demonetisation deposits between Rs 2-80 lakh made In 1.09 crore accounts. Post demonetisation deposits above Rs 80 lakh in 1.48 lakh accounts," says Jaitley.

Consider this: Presently, state-run banks are severely undercapitalised. At least seven of the PSU banks have less than 8.5 percent Tier-I capital adequacy and one bank less than 8 percent. The problem is worsened with their non-performing assets (NPAs) hitting the roof (nearly Rs 6 lakh crore as on September, 2016 or nearly 8 percent of the total bank credit), and total chunk of stressed assets (bad loans and restructured loans together) jumping to 12-13 percent of the total bank credit. Jaitley should have allocated much more for weak state-run banks. Here, there is a bit of disappointment.

Arun Jaitley said government will infuse Rs 10,000 crore this year in public sector banks, which constitute 70 percent of the industry. This is part of the Indradhanush plan to infuse Rs 70,000 crore in PSU banks over five years. Given the mess the banking sector is in, the kind of bad loan problems, analysts were expecting much bigger capital infusion to equip public sector banks, beyond what is already planned. Though the FM has assured that government will make sure banks get additional capital, past evidence shows that capital is yet again going to be a major problem for the sarakari banks.

Funds for banks at Rs 10,000 cr: Another year of disappointment?

A new law proposed to enable lenders to confiscate assets of absconders living overseas. But existing laws permitted this. Remains to be seen how this new law is drafted and implemented.

'New law to confiscate absconders' overseas properties; need to see the details'

"Propose to cut 5% tax for those firms whose turnovers are below Rs 50 crore. 96% firms of the country would be benefitted," says Jaitley.

Government expenditure has increased substantially from Rs 5,500 crore proposed last year to Rs 13,200. But it seems to have gone in the pocket of private insurance companies. Share of farmers covered has increased from 21% to only 24%. Sum assured has gone up, not the numbers of farmers covered, nor the claim amount. Who is the government insuring exactly: farmers or companies?

PM Fasal Bima Yojana: Who is the government insuring exactly  farmers or companies?

Propose to make changes in capital gains tax for housing. Holding period for land and building will be reduced to 2 years from 3 years. Instead of build-up area, carpet area will be counted for affordable housing, says Jaitley.

Increase in MGNREGA funds is not the decision of the government. The government was forced to do so by Supreme Court. Already done in the supplementary entry budget. Actually capping MGNREGA at Rs 48,000 crore violates SC orders. FM has added only Rs 500 crores while the ministry has asked Rs 5,000 crores.

Lower holding period for coming under cpaital gains tax net and shift of year for indexation purpose will be helpful to the real estate sector.

'Changes in holding period for property good for realty'

"Up to Rs 2,000 can be donated in cash by anyone source to a political party. Political parties can receive donations through digital methods and cheques. Donors can buy RBI bonds and would be able to donate to a political party which can redeem within a specified time. The bond can be bought through cheque or by employing any digital method. Every political party has to file its returns as per Income Tax Act," says Jaitley.

Donation to political parties, no more than Rs 2,000 in cash

Corporate tax for most companies in the MSME sector reduced by 5 percent. This will give a boost to the MSME sector hit by demonetisation.

NO TRANSACTION OVER RS. 3 LAKH WILL BE PERMITTED IN CASH

Reducing cash limit for political funding from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000 is meaningless. Because there is no limit in number of persons.

"Reduce existing rate for income from Rs 2.5 lakh to 5 lakh to 5 % from 10%. 50% saving in income tax if a person is earning up to Rs 5 lakh. Tax forgone due to this step stands at Rs 15,500 crore. The government to levy surcharge of 10% on those who are earning between Rs 50 lakh to Rs 1 crore," says Jaitley.

Reduction of the existing rate of tax for low tax bracket individuals

Maximum cash donation a political party can accept from one source has been brought down to Rs 2,000. As per the current norms, any political funding less than Rs 20,000 didnt require to show source. This new change is a step in good direction and will hopefully bring down the flow of black money in political funding.

Reduction in corporate tax for SMEs and increased exemption of profits to 3/7 yrs a big boost to the small and 1st gen businessmen of the nation.

The popular pressure had grown after demonetisation. It was heartening to hear FM Jaitley talking of brining some amendments to take small but significant steps to cleanse political funding with the admission that political parties continue to accept through anonymous sources and donors fear to entail adverse consequences. The limit for anonymous cash donation has been brought down from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000.

Government has finally moved one step forward in cleaning a corrupt and non-transparent system of political funding. This was a long-pending demand from the public at large. Though Prime Minister Modi had been talking about it for some time and Election Commission had made certain suggestions to the government, there was a great deal of scepticism on whether or when the Government would actually make a move in this regard.

Sunny days ahead for the common man as individual tax rate reduced to 5% for the income bracket of 2.5-5 lakhs.

No major change in personal income tax except for change in reduction of rate from 10 percent to 5 percent for Rs 2.5-5 Lakh. Rationalisation of the complete tax structure as per Direct Tax code still seems to be a distant dream.

"In the first speech made by Narendra Modi, he talked about bullet trains. Did bullet trains come? No. Safety is the fundamental problem in railways. The safety record in railways is at the lowest," he said.

"Some big announcements should have been made for farmers," said Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi after the Union Budget 2017 was presented.

Prima facie, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has offered a fine blueprint to revive the economic growth momentum with proposals to push rural sector growth, encourage affordable housing and small companies with a slew of schemes, higher infrastructure spending and tax rebates. The budget also carried some signs of a bold, reformist agenda with steps to cleanse the political funding and proposal to unlock value in firms like IRCTC, even as it shied away from steep corporate tax rate cuts and much-needed funding for weak state-run banks. However, all in all, the budget hasnt failed to meet the general expectations and will aid Indias consumption story by putting more money into the hands of people.

The FM has reduced the holding period for land and building from 3 years to 2 years for long-term capital gains purpose. This would help improve invest ability in properties in comparison to shares and stocks where the period is 1 year.

By granting infrastructure status to affordable housing, the government acknowledges that affordable housing industry is an important driver of the economy. Affordable housing developers will now be eligible for several government incentives, subsidies, tax benefits and most importantly institutional funding. The status could also mean that the Government may release land specifically for affordable housing development in central locations of major urban centres in India.

"With the coming of the GST soon we are looking into a completely new way of looking into the economy," says Madhavan Narayanan.

GST will be a new way of looking into the economy: Narayanan

"Having one monolith oil organisation would be great. We are talking about a similar banking organisation and that would be great," says Bhaskar.

"The entire transport sector has integrated planning. Railways will be able to contribute more effectively now," he said.

"In this Budget, there were highways and Iways made. From railways to data speed, from education to health, steps have been taken to fulfill everyone's dream," said Modi. "For this historic budget, the finance minister and his team deserve congratulations," he added.

Modi praises 'historic' budget "This will give speed to development," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Excise duty on various lengths of cigarettes hiked by 2.5% to 6 %

Parts used for the manufacture of LED lights will attract basic customs duty of 5% and CVD of 6%.

"Railway budget has focused on railway safety fund," said the prime minister.

"This budget is an attempt to give pace to the speed with which the country is changing. This budget is our future," he said.

* Tax rates halved to 5% for income of Rs 2.5-5 lakh, tax slabs unchanged * 10% surcharge on people earning between Rs 50 lakh-1 cr * 15% surcharge on annual income above Rs 1 cr to continue * Cash transactions above Rs 3 lakh to banned * Corporate tax for SMEs with turnover up to Rs 50 cr cut to 25%; 96% companies to benefit * Customs duty of LNG halved to 2.5% * Fiscal deficit pegged at 3.2% next year, 3% in FY'19 * Political parties barred from accepting cash donation beyond Rs 2,000 per individual * They can receive donations via cheques, electronic mode; electoral bonds to be issued by RBI * Aadhaar-based health cards for senior citizens; a scheme for them to ensure 8 pc guaranteed returns * FIPB to be abolished; further FDI policy liberalisation * Government to have time-bound procedure for CPSE listing * Railway PSUs -- IRCTC, IRFC, IRCON to be listed * Payment Regulatory Board to be set up within RBI to regulate digital payments * Negotiable instruments Act to be amended to deal with cheque bounce cases * Legislative changes to confiscate of assets of economic offenders who flee country * Demonetisation bold, decisive measure; to help GDP growth, taxes mop up to rise * Effect of demonetisation not to spill over to next year * GST, demonetisation 'tectonic changes' for economy * Service charges on e-tickets booked via IRCTC waived * Capital expenditure of Railway fixed at Rs 1.31 lakh cr * Rail safety fund of Rs 1 lakh cr over 5 years, unmanned level crossing to be eliminated by 2020 * Budget based on 3 agenda -- Transform, Energise, Clean India (TECIndia). MORE PTI JD * 3 yr period for long-term capital gains tax on immovable property reduced to 2 years; base year indexation shifted from April 1, 1981 to April 1, 2001 * Disinvestment target at Rs 72,500 cr, up from 56,500 cr * Gross market borrowing pegged at Rs 6.05 lakh cr * Duty exempted on POS machines and Iris readers for encouraging digital payments * Tax benefits for Start ups to be for 3 out of 7 yrs * FPI to be exempt from indirect transfer provision * Integrated public sector oil major to be created to match global giants * Direct Tax collection growth 15.8%, indirect tax 8.3% * Total expenditure pegged at Rs 21.47 lakh crore * Capital expenditure up 24%; to have multiplier effect * Allocation to states hiked to Rs 4.11 cr * FRBM Committee suggests Debt-GDP ratio of 60% by 2020 * Retail inflation to remain within 2-6 pc * 2 new AIIMS to come up in Jharkhand, Gujarat * Highest ever allocation of Rs 48,000 cr to MNREGA * Farm sector to grow at 4.1% this fiscal, to double farm income in five years * Farm credit target for next fiscal at Rs 10 lakh crore * Fasal Bima yojana increased to 40% of crop area; raised to Rs 1.41 lakh crore in Kharif 2017 season * Infrastructure investment pegged at Rs 3.96 lakh cr * To double irrigation fund corpus to Rs 40,000 cr * Infrastructure status accorded affordable housing * Dairy processing fund with Rs 2000cr corpus to be set up * Rs 1.84 lakh cr allocated for women, child initiatives * Rs 1.87 lakh cr allocated to rural, agri, allied sectors * 1 crore houses by 2019 for homeless * PM Awas Yojana allocation up from Rs 15,000 cr to Rs 23,000 cr * 100% village electrification to be achieved by May 2018 * Rs 31,920 cr allocated for Scheduled Tribes, Rs 4,195 cr for nminority affairs, outcome based budgeting to start * Road sector allocation hiked to Rs 64,000 cr * Innovation Fund to be created for Secondary Education * Allocation of Rs 2.41 lakh crore rail, road, shipping to create jobs, spur economic activity * New metro rail policy to be announced * New crude oil reserves proposed at Odisha and Rajasthan; to take strategic reserve capacity to 15.33 mmt * India on cusp of digital revolution * FDI increased 35 pc to Rs 1.45 lakh crore in H1 FY'17.

"The onus lies on us. We should get together and pay the rightful taxes," says financial advisor Surya Bhatia.

Onus lies on us to pay right taxes: Surya Bhatia

"Benefit on the corporate side is for the real estate and housing sector. Borrowing cost has been reduced. A number of measures for the benefit of the sector. Holding period from three to two years," says Vishal J Shah, Partner, Direct tax, PwC India.

Real estate sector gains the most in this Budget: PwC India

"More clarity on demonetisation and black money was required," says financial advisor Surya Bhatia.

A great budget . Heartening to see the government encouraging the entrepreneurial spirit and bringing in financial inclusion through digital means.

"Modi government has finally resorted to Nehru-era welfarism but it has not picked on the Nehru era ambition. It has gone on to believe that alms to the poor would help them politically," says Madhavan Narayanan.

The trust of the budget is to enhance the tax base and move towards digitisation through several amendments in the act. No change in capital gains tax regime for listed stocks and clarification on non applicability of indirect transfer rules to FPIs and AIFs will be a big relief to the investors and could trigger an immediate rally on the stock markets. One can argue that the Budget could be more ambitious at the cost of fiscal prudence. However, in global macro economic backdrop, the calibration in the Indian economy post demonetisation and much awaited GST which is now on anvil, Budget 2017 is stable fine balancing act, with fiscal prudence, directional spending and no surprises on the taxation front which should lead the country to a sustainable growth path.

Budget 2017 sticks to fiscal prudence with a fiscal deficit of 3.2 percent whilst balancing enhanced spending in several socio economic schemes and different aspects of economic development. There is some cheer for individuals as tax rates for income between 2.5 lakhs to 5 lakhs has been reduced from 10 percent to 5 percent. However, an additional 10 percent surcharge has been introduced on income between 50 lakhs and 1 crore which is a dampener for high networth individuals. MSME with turnover up to Rs 50 crores will benefit from lower tax rate of 25 percent and there are some concessions to boost the real estate sector.

"Banks have got their punishment for the bad loans and bad assets," says commentator Rajesh Raparia.

The FM has given in to strong demands for lower taxes and offered a balm for demonetisation. Those who earn upto Rs 5lakhs will either pay no tax or their tax outgo will reduce to 50%. Our exemption limits have stayed put since a long time. Low income earners have been given relief. Reduction in slab rate to 5% for Rs 2.5L to Rs 5L is applicable to all resulting in minimum tax saving of Rs 12,500 for all. This is likely to boost consumption and put higher disposable income in the hands of taxpayers. This is important for a push post demonetisation and boosting growth.

The FM has announced massive reforms in tax rules, including audit and book keeping rules for small and medium businesses. This is bound to boost compliance amongst small taxpayers. Threshold for maintenance of books of accounts for individuals and HUFs turnover limit being increased from Rs 10 lakh to 25 lakh or income limit increase from Rs 1.2 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh. This is a positive step for ease of doing business. These limits have not been raised since a long time. Those companies with turnover under Rs 50 crores now have to pay 25 percent tax instead of 30 percent.

Political reform policy wise correct and will be politically correct in the long term

"By putting money in agriculture he is trying to stem the migration to urban areas. If farming becomes profitable that would stop migration and the challenge of job creation," says Bhaskar.

"We had promised transparency in 2014. The prime minister fulfilled that promise by introducing various schemes," said Amit Shah on the Union Budget 2017.

"However, the question remain is the fine print. We have to see where the cuts and gains have been. The expenditure has increased," Aiyar said.

"The direction of the Budget is craftsmanlike. It has dealt with intricate issues like demonetisation," he said.

"Good thing about the Budget that they tried to stay on course. This government is focussing on efficiency. The government has avoided the temptation of speaking to the voters in Uttar Pradesh or Punjab through the Budget," says Aiyar.

"On the economic slowdown, the finance minister has promised a lot of expenditure. I am not sure that in the next one month if the campaign would focus on the Budget. It would be largely local," says author and commentator Sanjaya Baru.

Amazing. How has Arun Jaitley fixed fiscal deficit at 3.2 percent of GDP for FY18 while raising capital expenditure by 25%? Sleight of hand?

How did Jaitley set fiscal deficit at 3.2%? Sleight of hand?

Considering the impetus being given to road infrastructure, manufacturing and affordable housing, the government has put in all the required ingredients to incentivise urban decongestion and the development of new industrial cities around our industrial transport corridors.

It is encouraging to see that government is moving forward on payment system regulation. We hope the setting up of a separate payment regulatory board will help in improving interoperability and innovation. The Finance Minister also announced digital infra related measures and we hope all these steps will help more and more people joining the digital ecosystem. As expected Finance Minister made a formal announcement on the launch of AadhaarPay in todays budget and I am confident that this will push digital payments to grassroots levels of the country.

FIPB to be abolished. Like NITI Ayog that replaced Planning Commisstion, this may be an act of repackaging passed off as abolition.

'Will FIPB end up as another repackaging, just like NITI Aayog?'

"On the economic slowdown, the finance minister has promised a lot of expenditure. I am not sure that in the next one month if the campaign would focus on the Budget. It would be largely local," says author and commentator Sanjaya Baru.

"Loan waivers destroy the fabric of loan and borrowing and destroy banks also," Bhaskar said.

Insiders admit that most of these parties which have collected ill-gotten monies through various commercial deals have created an army of people who create the list of their contributors in lakhs to turn their black money into white. Since political parties have any army of cadre , they can create this list to show as donors in large numbers.

Long before such provision came into existence, political parties have devised mechanism to bypass any scrutiny of their account by creating list of fictious donations. For instance, in Uttar Pradesh, regional parties are believed to have developed a skill in creating a fictitious list of contributors.

If union finance minister Arun Jaitley thinks that his move to reduce the individual's contribution to political parties from Rs 20,000 to Rs 2,000 would check influx of corrupt money into the political system, he may find himself pursuing a chimera.

"Budgetary allocations are just indicative. If the defence can speed up the procurement process, it would be given as much money as they want," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on only 6% hike in defence allocation to Doordarshan.

"FDI has become much easier at entry point. Only 10% of the FDI require intervention from the parent ministries. 90% of the FDI are immediately invested. FIPB goes through the same set of norms which the ministries go. So the FIPB is abolished to remove a hurdle," Jaitley on the abolition of FIPB.

It is a digital economy budget. Government has pushed the digital theme in every area of the budget. Every person from small shops to consumers are pushed towards the digital economy. Tax benefits, incentives to use digital payments and extending loans based on a digital footprint will create a larger merchant ecosystem for digital payments. Incentives for labour intensive sectors including housing, farming and dairy will help SMEs to create new jobs. Focus and attention to bank NPAs, as well as increasing bank capitalisation is a great step towards strengthening the financial system of the country. Finally, the income tax rate changes will encourage more people to report their incomes and create a larger tax net for the country. Overall, it is a great budget that will encourage people to move to the formal economy and derive benefits.

The strong emphasis laid on technology in almost all the development areas in the budget reaffirms that technology has been at the forefront of Indias recent economic growth and digital transformation. It has been recognised as an important enabler across initiatives ranging from agriculture to skill development to manufacturing and infrastructural development. The governments focus on making India a digital payment economy will definitely help companies like HP to contribute in technology adoption in rural and semi-urban areas, thereby bringing the Digital India vision closer to reality. We also welcome the finance ministers commitment to introduce and implement Goods and Services Tax (GST) as per schedule and start GST awareness programme from 1 April, 2017 for all stakeholders.

The Union Budget 2017-18 is extremely positive for the common man, farmers, small and medium businesses and would drive significant growth in the Indian economy. Governments commitment to make taxation rate reasonable, tax administration fair and expand the tax base are the steps taken in the right direction. The tax relief given by the government for the middle class tax payers will definitely boost the purchasing power, thereby aiding the overall growth of the economy. The major tax relief given to the MSMEs and SMEs with an annual turnover of Rs 50 crores, would enable them to invest in job creation, increase capital expenditure and explore their digital journey.

The Budget has failed to address the banking sector problem. Only keeping aside Rs 10,000 lakh crore is not sufficient. The banks already have Rs 6,000 lakh crore NPAs.

What we need is good policy implementation. Then India can move mountains.

"The Opposition was waiting eagerly for the people to oppose demonetisation. But nothing happened," said Union minister Mahesh Sharma in Lok Sabha.

The Opposition MPs didn't seem to like that joke as they began shouting.

"Finally the earthquake is here," he said. "I was thinking about how this earthquake came. There must be reason that dharti maa is so angry with us," he added.

"Yesterday, there was an earthquake," Modi said, after which some MPs laughed as they probably saw a pun on the word 'earthquake'.

"A lot of issues were raised in the debate on the motion of thanks and I am grateful to members of the House for raising these issue," he said.

"I thank the President for his address," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Lok Sabha.

"Mallikarjunji was saying that it was because of Congress that democracy had prevailed and I had become prime minister," Modi further said. "But the people are aware of the actual situation now," he added.

"I was thinking about how the earthquake came. When somebody sees seva in scam, even dharti maa becomes sad, and an earthquake thus follows," Modi said.

When someone sees seva in scam, dharti maa becomes sad: Modi

"But they (Opposition members) have never talked Veer Savarkar or Bhagat Singh fighting for independence. They think freedom was attained only due to one family," he said.

"I have earlier also said that earlier governments also contributed to the fight against poverty," Modi said.

"We should recognise the power of the people," he said. "No one wants harm for our nation. Everyone wants welfare for the poor," he added.

"An ordinary person like me had asked those who could afford it to let go of their gas subsidy," Modi said. "Over 1.2 crore people of this country came forward to sacrifice their gas subsidy," he added.

They think Independence was attained only due to one family: Modi in Lok Sabha

"For demonetisation, this was the perfect time because the economy was healthy," said Modi.

"You know that if there is a disease, and a doctor recommends operation, he talks about keeping the body healthy first," said the prime minister in Lok Sabha.

This was the perfect time for demonetisation: Modi in Lok Sabha

"Despite MNREGA being there for a long time, there have been 1,035 changes in it," Modi said. "What was the reason that you had to make 1,035 changes since you brought about MNREGA?" said the prime minister.

"You have no right to take pride in one of your programmes because since the time of kings, programmes for welfare of poor have been there. Just the names for the programmes have changed," he said.

"We also brought about the Income Tax Declaration scheme. We ended over 1,100 obsolete laws," Narendra Modi said in Lok Sabha.

According to Congress sources quoted by Times Now, the Opposition is set to push for adjournment following obituary messages. Will this come to fruition? We'll find out very soon.

What to expect from this session of Parliament?

"Kaun kitna kaam karta hai mujhe bhi maloom hai (I know who does how much work). I know it. Please chale jaiye (go away)," she tells a protesting MP.

"Saifullah was identified and the ATS surrounded him and attempted to arrest him, unfortunately, he refused to surrender and opened fire. After 12 hours of firing, the ATS made its way into his safehouse and killed him. Eight pistols, several cartridges, three mobile phones and a few walky-talkies were found in his possession," says Rajnath.

"Modi tweets about everything. Why is he so quiet about this? When visiting leaders come, he's hugging them. When someone from China comes, he sits with him on a swing. And now, why is he sitting silently?" rages Kharge.

Mallikarjun Kharge says, "The Central government has no strategy to secure its citizens or assure their safety abroad. Ever since Donald Trump came to power, such incidents have been increasing. We are told that the US is the most transparent and democratic on one hand, and that it's the most powerful country on the other hand. And in such a country  where so many of our citizens are students and employees, if our youths are being killed, why is the Narendra Modi government sitting quietly?"

BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab notes that the US recently put out a travel advisory for American travellers coming to South Asia. "Is the Government of India going to put out an advisory for NRIs stating which US states should be avoided?"

Reddy alludes to President Donald Trump's slogan of 'America for Americans' as a source of concern, and says, "When Srinivas' body was brought back to India, all of Telangana mourned. I want to know what we are discussing with the US. The external minister must clarify. A proper statement has to be given."

TRS MP AP Jithender Reddy says, "The American government has only condemned the crimes against Indians. It has done nothing to get justice or protect Indians... I request Government of India to provide all possible assistance to our fellow Indians living in other countries."

'I want to know what we are discussing with the US'

Rajnath Singh answers  Rajnath clarifies, "We have taken these incidents seriously. They are saddening and unfortunate incidents. And all steps will be taken by the Government of India to ensure that our citizens in the US are safe and secure. Since the external affairs minister is unwell at the moment, we will issue a full statement next week."

AIADMK MP P Venugopal says, "After the killing of the fishermen, we expect the government to act very strongly. Shooting incidents have increased over the years. Pertinent to point out that during peace talks in Chennai, a consensus was reached that Indian fishermen would not be fired upon but this is being violated all the time."

"Whether our country grows at 10 percent or not, we must translate this into the greater good of the bottom 10 percent, including our fishermen... We need training programmes to teach them different trades during the no-trawling season," says Tharoor.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor widens the scope of the discussion adding fishermen arrested by Pakistan and those detained by the British in Diego Garcia.

A two-minute silence was observed after which Ansari announced that the House would remain adjourned for the day.

Soon after the House met for the day after a month-long recess, Chairman Mohammad Hamid Ansari read out obituary references to former members Puttapaga Radhkrishna, P Shiv Shankar, Syed Shabuddin, Rabi Ray and sitting member Haji Abdul Salam.

He adds, "This is a new threat and the government must face it. It is a new chapter altogether and unless we discuss it in this house and unless the government focuses on the threat from Islamic State, we are looking at grave danger."

BJD MP Jay Panda says, "We've suffered cross-border and homegrown terrorism, but we've been quite resilient against transnational terrorism. But these twin attacks including the train blast that were carried out by Islamic State, indicate a shift. Over the past few months, the government has made 68 arrests, most of whom are educated."

Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants BJP MP Nishikant Dubey says, "While we're talking about employment being deprived to citizens of other countries, we should look at the illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who steal our jobs, food and amenities. The citizens of Bangladesh are not citizens of India, therefore, the government must implement measures including at the block-level to ascertain who is a Bangladeshi and who is an Indian. Jai Hind. Jai Bharat"

The government has set 1 July as the deadline. All eyes are on the amendments the Congress is going to move.

The biggest tax reform has to be rolled out before September, otherwise both the central and state governments will not have the right to collect the taxes.

As the Lok Sabha members gear up for the GST Bill debate, all are waiting with bated breath to see whether the supplementary legislations are going to be passed in the current session.

"We are going to have a different system from now on," he says explainings the Union, State & Concurrent lists and the Centre's jurisdiction.

The finance minister says the entire country will have one tax movement. The Centre and states will split the tax income.

The peak rate has been keenly awaited by many companies such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coca-Cola has actually urged the govenrment to reain the peak rate at 34 percent recently.

There are certain goods that are identified as sin goods and luxury items. The cess above 28 percent imposed on these will flow into compensation fund. \

The first tax slab is 0 percent. The next is 5 percent and then 12-18 percent. The fourth slab is 28 percent.

Arun Jaitley explains the various tax slabs and the rationale behind the peak rate of 40 percent of more on certain goods.

Arun Jaitley explains the various tax slabs; are Coca-Cola and others listening?

The peak rate has been keenly awaited by many companies such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Coca-Cola has actually urged the govenrment to reain the peak rate at 34 percent recently.

There are certain goods that are identified as sin goods and luxury items. The cess above 28 percent imposed on these will flow into compensation fund. \

The first tax slab is 0 percent. The next is 5 percent and then 12-18 percent. The fourth slab is 28 percent.

Arun Jaitley explains the various tax slabs and the rationale behind the peak rate of 40 percent of more on certain goods.

Arun Jaitley explains the various tax slabs; are Coca-Cola and others listening?

"The intentions can be good but you are bringing anarchy into the country. There will be turnf war between the states and the Centre," Moily says.

He points out that the common man will have to file multiple forms. He urged the finance minister to explain how the compliance can be simlified.

He wants the tax payers to be educated, made aware of the new system. "One tax one nation is a myth," he says.

According to Veerappa Moily, GST will be a technological nightmare. "Officials implementing it will suffer. No ad-hoc provision to make payment, give credit," he says.

Veerappa Moily terms the Bill a technological nightmare; one tax one nation is a myth

Will the commercial tax dept be made redundant by GST? What will happen to the staff in the department? Will they lose jobs?

"GST hinges on revenue neutral rate. These are now fixed at 0, 5, 12, 18 and 28 percent and above. We will know only after the first year if it's revenue neutral or not," Mahtab says.

Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Bju Janata Dal feels it will be illusory to expect too much from GST.

Bhartruhari Mahtab of BJD says expecting too much from Bill will be illusory

'We have a competition law in the country. Why is the anti profiteering provision necessary? What is the Competition law for?" he asks.

Bhartruhari Mahtab of the Bju Janata Dal is questioning the rational behind the anti-profiteering clause in the GST Bill.

Bhartruhari Mahtab asks what is need for anti-profiteering clause? What is competition law for?

The MP said that the Centre must look at the pathetic fiscal condition of AP, post the division of the state, and compensate it accordingly. He said that the Telegu state will lose as much as Rs 2000 Crore annually.

While lauding the overall GST tax regime, the TDP MP pointed out that the GST will benefit the consumer states, it will add to the agony of other states, including Andhra Pradesh.

As for kadva he points out there could be an increase in tax inspections. "This goes against PM's maximum governance, minimum government," he says.

According to him, tax compliant hospitals and builders may have a competitive disadvantage. "This can be bitter."

As for the meetha, the GST Bill is ushering in a new era.

He goes on to explain how the Bill has some positives and negatives of the reform.

"But it's healthy and wholesome," he says.

Konda Vishweshwar Reddy of Telengana Rashtra Samithi makes the best comparison of the GSt Bill - it is like ugadi pachadi- khatta, meetha and kadva.

He also urged the government to not levy higher cess on aerated drinks like Pepsi as this impacts even the common man.

He also wants the government to look at the additional cess on consumer durables as this will affect common man. According to him the total cess may even touch 48 percent.

Varaprasad Rao of the YSR Congress Party asks are there any plans to bring alcohol and petroleum products within the ambit of GST?

Varaprasad Rao urges govt to not impose high tax on drinks like Pepsi, consumer durables

She also said there are many hiccups in GST and also sought to know what could be exact impact of the reform on GDP and FDI?

"What are the steps you take to protect the data?" she asked reminding that any data theft will cost the country dearly.

Sule pointed out GSTN will possess all the data of the taxpayers.

GST Council is getting artbitrary powers, he said.

Also with the right to decide the tax rate being vested with the GST Council, the supremacy of Parliament in violation of Article 265.

He quoted from an article by renowned economist Prabhat Patnaik and asked whether we should sacfricice a basic feature of our federalisation for an uncertain gain?

According to him, the present GST Bill abrogates the powers of the state governments.

"The BJP, then principal opposition, opposed it only on political considerations," he said.

NK Premachandran of RSP accused the BJP of toppling UPA's efforts bring about the reform and taking advantage now to impelement them.

Jaitley also said that multiple window taxation system has ailed the economy since long and must be fixed in favour of the common man.

Jaitley started off by thanking the members of Opposition for engaging in a debate. He then pointed out that the debate was crucial as once the GST bill becomes an act, it will drastically change the tax regime in the region.

"There is no free flow of goods and services in the country. The objective of the new tax regime was to establish such a system that when goods and services flow across company, taxes are levied at a uniform rate and a single window," Jaitley said.

GST will aide free flow of goods and services across the country: Jaitley

Arun jaitley told the Lok Sabha that the new tax regime is designed in a way that larger impetus is placed on self assessment of tax for the people, barring limited cases of audits. He said this will not only simplify the tax filing process but do away with multiple layers of taxation for the common man.

Greater impetus will be on self assessment under GST: Jaitley

Arun Jaitley defends GST bill after Oppn arguments, says goods will slightly become cheaper after new tax law

INC leader Veerappa Moily, interrupts Jaitleys speaks, asks if GST council is supreme power, who will protect the funds

Congress questions the amount of power GST council will wield, says Parliament will no longer have power to debate/ amend taxation laws

However, the finance minister added that the Parliament will have the power to send back a suggestion for reconsideration. He also reassured the House that the power to form a legislation is plenary to the Parliament.

Jaitley said that the idea that we can deviate from GST council's recommendations is problematic and ill advised as the laws will keep changing depending on the colour of the political party in power. Therefore to protect the structure of federalism that the government is trying to implement it is imperative that the GST council has the power to decide on taxation issues.

Arun Jaitley responds to Congress' objection says parliament's right to form legislation plenary

Jaitley said that one commodity will have a single rate of tax across the country, but it is not necessary that two different commodities enjoy the same rate of GST.

For one commodity their will be one rate of tax in the country: Arun Jaitley

Jaitley said that the council introduced the provision of a compensation package only for the benefit of manufacturing states as we saw that the transition to GST would affect them adversely while it benefited the consuming state.

Compensation package was introduced only to bring on-board the manufacturing states: Jaitley

I didn't make this law, it was 7 Congress finance ministers who did: Arun Jaitley

Oppn alleges govt made GST bill a money bill only to override Rajya Sabha, where BJP does not enjoy majority

He said he was ready to sit and wait for the Opposition to point out even one precedent when a taxation bill has not been treated as a money bill.

"This law seeks to replace the Central Excise law, Service Tax law etc and consolidates them into one. So here is a taxation law that alters the tax regime and replaces existing tax laws then how come it wont be a money bill," Jaitley asked.

Arun Jaitley says no precedent of a taxation bill not being a money bill

Jaitley sought to reassure the Lok Sabha on the changing tax regime as far as foodgrains are concered. The finance minister said that Agriculture as and industry and foodgrain have always remained exempt from taxes and they always will.

"Council will be a permanent body with a political complexion that accommodates everyone and has representatives from every state. Therefore I request the House to pass the bill unanimously drafted by a representative council as is," Jaitley said.

Arun Jaitley said that the government has strived to ensure that the GST council is representatve of everybody's interest and the body debating the draft of the bill also included representatives from each state.

Jaitley concludes govt stand on new tax regime, requests House to pass it as is

Three of the four GST bills passed in the Parliament

After the man lynched in Alwar died on Wednesday, the Congress party asked for a discussion on the issue. Mallikarjun Kharge says that the Rajasthan Government failed to act on the issue. He added that this was the fifth such incident in Rajasthan.

Rajnath Singh says that the Rajasthan government has taken cognisance of the case and that a FIR has been filed on the issue and people have been arrested.

Gaikwad began by saying that the airline staff treated him badly. He also added that he must get justice from the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Gaikwad blames media for launching a trial against him.

Ravindra Gaikwad says that the Air India staff assaulted him. He says that the officials of the airline caught him by his collar and his reaction was in defence.

I apologise to the Parliament if I've caused any hurt, but not to the Air India official: Ravindra Gaikwad,Shiv Sena MP in Lok Sabha.

The scenes turned ugly in the Lok Sabha as Shiv Sena MPs tried to gherao the minister. However, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and other ministers came to Raju's rescue.

It is indeed sad that the conduct of this elected representative is just another passing news shower. Everyone seems happy that airlines have banned him from flying, a minor inconvenience that will melt away in a few days. In no way does it highlight the frequent high-handedness by VIPs in India where aviation is concerned  nobody said 'enough is enough now, put on your seatbelt and shut up!'

The Shiv Sena MP says Airlines imposing travel ban on him is like Mahatma Gandhi being thrown out of train in South Africa.

Speaking in the Rajya Sabha, Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi denied that any lynching had taken place in Rajasthan's Alwar. Reacting to this, Leader of Opposition, Ghulam Nabi Azad said that even the New York Times had carried a report on the lynching.

Naqvi was addressing the Rajya Sabha amid an uproar over the Alwar incident. As a united Opposition slammed the government for doing nothing against rogue groups thrashing people on the pretext of cow protection, Naqvi said, "This issue is a very sensitive issue. The message should not go from the House that we are supporting cow slaughter. Millions of peoples sentiments are involved in the issue."

Dismissing the version of events of the killing of a Muslim man by cow vigilante groups in Rajasthans Alwar amid growing uproar over the alleged murder, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi on Thursday said, "Jis tarah ki ghatna pesh ki ja rahi hai, us tarah ki ghatna zameen par hua nehi (The version of events presented didnt occur)."

Version of Alwar incident reported by media is untrue: Naqvi in Rajya Sabha

Hamare desh mein yeh message nahi jana chahiye ki hum yeh hatya ko samarthan kar raha hai issliye it is a very sensitive issue.. crore logo ke bhavnao se judha hua mudha hai.. hamara aisa koi message nahi jana chahiye ki hum hatiya ke samarthan mein khade hue hai (This issue is a very sensitive issue. There should be no indication or message that we are backing those who are violent. Its an emotional issue for crores of people.) Issliye jis particular state ki barein mein jo baat kar rahe hai, us tarah ki koi bhi ghatna, jis tarah ki ghatna pesh ki ja rahi hai, aise koi ghatna zameen par nahi hui hai. Jis media report ki barein mein bat ki ja rahi hai, us state ki sarkar ne pehle hi condemn kiya hai. (No such incident, as being reported, has taken place on the ground. The media report which are being cited, the concerned state government has already condemned.)"

Here's what Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said about the Alwar incident in Rajya Sabha

BJYM leader Yogesh Varshney told ANI, "Those who will cut and bring West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee head, I will give that person Rs.11 lakh. Mamata Banerjee never allows Saraswati Puja, fairs during Ram Navami and during Hanuman Jayanti procession, people were lathi charged and brutally beaten up. She organizes Iftar party and always supports Muslims."

The remark, which came shortly after a lathicharge which happened at Birbhum district to disperse a rally raising slogans of "Jai Sri Ram" on Hanuman Jayanti, recieved a lot of flak and criticism.

After a day of ruckus in Parliament over the "illegal" death penalty given to former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, MPs in Rajya Sabha were up in arms after a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) leader announced a reward of Rs 11 lakh to whoever who beheads West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and gets her head.

Actor and MP Jaya Bachchan, along with BJP leader from Bengal Rupa Ganguly, reacting sharply to the comments against Mamata

The second half of the budget session of Parliament, which ends on Wednesday, has been favourable to the ruling NDA, which not only managed to push its economic reforms agenda but also put up a united front. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday told the parliamentary party of the BJP that the session was a victory for the Union government.

Alleging that people were beaten up brutally by the police, Varshney described Mamata as a "demon" and said, "When I saw the video, I only had one thought... that if anyone gets me Mamata Banerjee's head I will give them 11 lakh."

BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi disowned Varshney's comment, saying: "I condemn this type of statement. The state government can take proper action." BJYM leader Varshney issued the outrageous threat while hitting out at Mamata over police action on a rally held on Sunday to mark Hanuman Jayanti in Birbhum district.

Scrapping a colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget at the end of February, for the first time in the history of Independent India, the Government presented the annual accounts on 1 February. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday described the Budget Session as a winner for the treasury benches. He said, the government was able to secure passage of many key bills in the Parliament.

Today is the last day of the Budget Session of Parliament. The first half of the session was held from 31 January to 9 February and after a month-long recess the second half of the session began on 9 March. During the session till now, the Lok Sabha has passed 21 bills and the Rajya Sabha 14 bills. They include the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, The Mental Health Care Bill, The Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Bill, The Payment of Wages (Amendment) Bill, 2017 and the crucial four supporting bills for the roll out of the Goods and Services Tax.

Last day of Budget Session - here's a quick recap of the session

TMC's Saugata Roy also strongly condemned the BJP leader's statement urging strong action against people who make such provocations. Meanwhile, BJP has distanced itslef from Varshney's comments, stating that the West Bengal state government is free to take action against him.

The matter echoed on in the Parliament on Wednesday as TMC leaders raised the issue in Rajya Sabha, which garnered support from other parties as well. Samajwadi Party Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bacchan expressed anguish on the BJP leader's remark, stating that the BJP was keen on protecting cows but not women.

The Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2017 is scheduled for consideration and passage in Lok Sabha today.

The first part of the Budget Session was very productive as Lok Sabha functioned 113 percent while Rajya Sabha 97 percent. The productivity in the second half of the budget session till now for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha has been 112 percent and 87 percent.

First leg of Budget Session productive: LS functioned for 113%, Rajya Sabha for 97%

Raising the issue soon after the House assembled to take up the day's business, TMC member Saugata Roy said a BJP youth wing leader had made the "announcement" of giving the reward for beheading Banerjee, after police resorted to lathicharge in Birbhum district to disperse a rally during Hanuman Jayanti. "Mamata Banerjee is not only an elected chief minister but a former member of this House too. It is a serious and alarming behaviour and the House must condemn it. She is a grassroot leader and government must take action on it," he said.

The Lok Sabha on Wednesday condemned a BJP youth wing leader's offer for a bounty of Rs 11 lakh to anyone who beheads West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

BJYM leader Yogesh Varshney told ANI, "Those who will cut and bring West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee head, I will give that person Rs.11 lakh. Mamata Banerjee never allows Saraswati Puja, fairs during Ram Navami and during Hanuman Jayanti procession, people were lathi charged and brutally beaten up. She organizes Iftar party and always supports Muslims."

The remark, which came shortly after a lathicharge which happened at Birbhum district to disperse a rally raising slogans of "Jai Sri Ram" on Hanuman Jayanti, recieved a lot of flak and criticism.

After a day of ruckus in Parliament over the "illegal" death penalty given to former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, MPs in Rajya Sabha were up in arms after a Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM) leader announced a reward of Rs 11 lakh to whoever who beheads West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and gets her head.

Must take steps for protection of women aggressively. You are protecting cows but atrocities being commited on women-Jaya Bachchan, SP in RS pic.twitter.com/ES3sx5AHhW

Actor and MP Jaya Bachchan, along with BJP leader from Bengal Rupa Ganguly, reacting sharply to the comments against Mamata

The second half of the budget session of Parliament, which ends on Wednesday, has been favourable to the ruling NDA, which not only managed to push its economic reforms agenda but also put up a united front. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday told the parliamentary party of the BJP that the session was a victory for the Union government.

Alleging that people were beaten up brutally by the police, Varshney described Mamata as a "demon" and said, "When I saw the video, I only had one thought... that if anyone gets me Mamata Banerjee's head I will give them 11 lakh."

BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi disowned Varshney's comment, saying: "I condemn this type of statement. The state government can take proper action." BJYM leader Varshney issued the outrageous threat while hitting out at Mamata over police action on a rally held on Sunday to mark Hanuman Jayanti in Birbhum district.

The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2017 also listed in LS for passage today.

The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2017 also listed in LS for passage today.

Scrapping a colonial-era tradition of presenting the Budget at the end of February, for the first time in the history of Independent India, the Government presented the annual accounts on 1 February. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday described the Budget Session as a winner for the treasury benches. He said, the government was able to secure passage of many key bills in the Parliament.

Today is the last day of the Budget Session of Parliament. The first half of the session was held from 31 January to 9 February and after a month-long recess the second half of the session began on 9 March. During the session till now, the Lok Sabha has passed 21 bills and the Rajya Sabha 14 bills. They include the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, The Mental Health Care Bill, The Maternity Benefits (Amendment) Bill, The Payment of Wages (Amendment) Bill, 2017 and the crucial four supporting bills for the roll out of the Goods and Services Tax.

Last day of Budget Session - here's a quick recap of the session

TMC's Saugata Roy also strongly condemned the BJP leader's statement urging strong action against people who make such provocations. Meanwhile, BJP has distanced itslef from Varshney's comments, stating that the West Bengal state government is free to take action against him.

The matter echoed on in the Parliament on Wednesday as TMC leaders raised the issue in Rajya Sabha, which garnered support from other parties as well. Samajwadi Party Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bacchan expressed anguish on the BJP leader's remark, stating that the BJP was keen on protecting cows but not women.

The Companies (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and The Repealing and Amending Bill, 2017 is scheduled for consideration and passage in Lok Sabha today.

The first part of the Budget Session was very productive as Lok Sabha functioned 113 percent while Rajya Sabha 97 percent. The productivity in the second half of the budget session till now for Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha has been 112 percent and 87 percent.

First leg of Budget Session productive: LS functioned for 113%, Rajya Sabha for 97%

Raising the issue soon after the House assembled to take up the day's business, TMC member Saugata Roy said a BJP youth wing leader had made the "announcement" of giving the reward for beheading Banerjee, after police resorted to lathicharge in Birbhum district to disperse a rally during Hanuman Jayanti. "Mamata Banerjee is not only an elected chief minister but a former member of this House too. It is a serious and alarming behaviour and the House must condemn it. She is a grassroot leader and government must take action on it," he said.

The Lok Sabha on Wednesday condemned a BJP youth wing leader's offer for a bounty of Rs 11 lakh to anyone who beheads West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.



Opposition parties on Wednesday slammed the Union Budget as a "damp squib", "pro-corporate" and "hopeless" while the ruling party leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, hailed it as "historic" and reflective of the government's aim to boost investment and employment.

The Congress, Samajwadi Party, Trinamool Congress, Janata Dal-United and Communist Party of India-Marxist were among the parties which criticised the budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Lok Sabha.

In his reaction to the budget, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that maximum emphasis has been given to farmers, villages, poor, dalit and the underprivileged sections of the society.

"This budget is associated with our aspirations, our dreams and in a way depicts our future. This is the future of our new generation, the future of our farmers. When I say future, it has a meaning in each of its letters," Modi said.

Expanding on the word "Future", he said `F' stands for the farmer, `U' for Underprivileged, `T' for Transparency and Technology Upgradation, `U' for Urban Rejuvenation, `R' for Rural Development and `E' for Employment, Entrepreneurship and Enhancement.

He said the budget will give new strength to the economy and reflects commitment to eliminate corruption and black money.

Modi said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his team deserve praise for the "historic budget."

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi told reporters outside Parliament that the budget did not address key issues like job creation and agrarian distress.

"We were expecting fireworks, instead got a damp squib. The budget lacked vision," Gandhi said.

"The shock that this government gave through demonetisation, the expectation was the government will do something for the poor, farmers the unemployed. But there is no clear vision. He (Jaitley) did a lot of sher-o-shayari, gave a good speech but there is no basis," Gandhi added.

West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee said the budget lacked any direction.

"The budget is clueless, useless, baseless, missionless, actionless and heartless. No roadmap for the country or the future from a government that has lost all its credibility," she said in a tweet.

"The budget is misleading, full of jugglery of numbers and hollow words which mean nothing," she added.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in Patna that the budget has disappointed the people.

"There is nothing in it that could speed up growth and development in the country. It is not going to help the common people, farmers and the youth," he said.

Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad said the budget was anti-poor, anti-farmer and anti-youth.

"Why has the central government failed to inform how much employment it provided to youth last year," he asked.

CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the budget will burden the common man.

"We are calling it a contractionary budget, as opposed to an expansionary budget as it is not expanding domestic demand. There is decline in revenue expenditure, no employment generation and it is seeking to hike indirect taxes, which will burden the common man," he said.

Communist Party of India said that Jaitley failed to present any proposal to recover Non-Performing Assets (NPAs).

"The Union Budget including the Railway Budget contains nothing concrete for the common people and its (the government's) real patrons, the corporate houses will be given all facilities and concessions," the party said in a statement.

Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agrawal said the budget will not help in curbing corruption.

"It's a hopeless budget. It has nothing for farmers. It does not talk about jobs for the unemployed," Agarwal told IANS.

Another party leader Dimple Yadav, who is wife of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, termed the budget as "directionless" and said that it neglected the farmers and women.

Lauding the budget, BJP president Amit Shah said Modi has fulfilled his promise of bringing in transparency in politics by reducing cash donation to political parties to Rs 2,000.

"Cash donation to political parties has been reduced to Rs 2,000 from Rs 20,000. This is the beginning of a new era," he said.

He said the budget was women-friendly and poor-friendly and had several measures for benefit of the farmers.

Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad and Suresh Prabhu were among those who hailed the union budget.
In 2012, former Lok Sabha deputy speaker and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leader Charanjit Singh Atwal survived a major electoral shock, after scrapping through a victory in the Payal Assembly constituency with just 630 votes. Atwal went on to be the speaker of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha. His constituency is one of the 34 reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates. Punjab has the highest percentage of Scheduled Caste population in all of India  32 percent.

In the 2012 polls, 12 out of the 34 SC reserved constituencies saw narrow margins of victories. In fact, the narrowest of the victories was witnessed in the reserved constituency of Phillaur, where Avinash Chander of the SAD won by a mere 31 votes!

Apart from these reserved constituencies, 21 other constituencies witnessed a close electoral battle. They were won by less than 4,000 votes which makes for less than three percent of the total votes polled.

Adesh Pratap Singh Kairon, a member of the Khairon political family and a minister in the SAD-BJP government, won his Patti seat by a whisker of a margin of 59 votes.

And Kairon was not the only minister who had to face a narrow victory. Janmeja Singh, the PWD minister in the outgoing cabinet won the Maur seat by 1,387 votes, while BJP's Surjit Kumar Jyani, who is the present health minister, defeated Independent candidate Jaswinder Singh aka "Rocky" by a margin of 1,692 votes.

"Rocky", a local don from Fazlika, was later killed by unidentified gunmen in May 2016.

Manoranjan Kalia, the industry minister between 2007 and 2012, who had also served as the Punjab BJP chief, too met with a similar fate. Kalia won his Jalandhar Central constituency by just 1,065 votes.

However, the last Assembly election also saw many opposition candidates winning in a similar fashion.

Take for example, former chief minister and senior Congress leader Rajinder Kaur Bhattal. Punjab"s only woman chief minister, Bhattal won her fifth consecutive term from Lehra constituency by a margin of 3,355 votes.

Another Congress candidate, Charanjit Singh Channi, fighting for the very first time won by a margin of just 3,659 votes. Channi's victory gains prominence as he later became the leader of the Congress Party in the legislative assembly.

Overall, out of the 33 seats which witnessed narrow victories, 17 were won by SAD-BJP MLAs, while 16 were won by Congress MLAs.

Punjab goes to polls on 4 February and it may turn out to be a cracker of a contest with the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party. Anti-incumbency factor may also hurt the Akali Dal-BJP alliance this election. Congress, on the other hand, is vying for a comeback in the state after 2007.

As noted by Congress leader Anand Sharma, the entry of AAP may cut the anti-incumbency vote in Punjab. Cutting the votes polled against the SAD-BJP alliance may help the ruling alliance to regain power while victory margins may be narrow in the forthcoming three-way contests. The coming election will see the AAP trying to make inroads into Punjab's Malwa region, which holds 69 of the 117 seats in the Assembly.

In this Congress versus AAP versus the SAD-BJP fight, Punjab is all set to see some interesting results on 11 March.
Investing in EU bonds is investing in the future. We are sowing the seeds today, so we can harvest growth, jobs, and prosperity tomorrow.
In every Bhagwant Mann rally, the joke is always on the Badals. And it always comes with a loud chorus.

Balancing himself atop an SUV  a challenge that makes you pray for a man known also as 'Pegwant Mann'  during a road show in Jalalabad, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader starts with a line that has now become a rage. "Kiklee kaleer di," he says. "Gapp Sukhbir di," the crowd roars back. And it is show time in Jalalabad, in a market falling over itself for a glimpse of the AAP leader.

Bhagwant: Chitta mere...

Crowd: Mere bhai da..

Bhagwant: Border te...

Crowd: Mangai da

Bhagwant: Dasso kitta chahi da

Crowd: Ghar-ghar pahunchai da

Bhagwant: Chitta sadda lahu hai

Crowd: Main Badalan di Bahu hai. Main Badalan di Bahu hai...

A loud applause, like the clattering of clouds, breaks out. Some dance, some scream. Others try to shake his hand. Almost everyone takes out a mobile phone to record the moment for posterity. And the caravan moves on, till the next kiklee stop.

Mann's kiklee, a variation of the rhyme young Punjabi girls sing while playing a game where they hold hands and dance in a circle, has become the theme of the AAP's campaign. With devastating humour, it conveys what Punjab is talking about at every corner: The menace of chitta (a synthetic drug called so because of its shiny white colour).

It's amusing to hear a man, who reportedly has a drink problem, talk of nashabandi. Every day, some hilarious anecdote of Mann either stumbling or being so daft as to just blow kisses at rallies for five minutes comes out in the local papers or goes viral on social media. Sometimes he just stares into emptiness with his big, button-type eyes, making you suppress a giggle at his comic face. But such is Mann's craze that people dream of drug-free Punjab every time he raises his fist and chants Inquilab.

Mann has become a veritable hero for the underclass, with his earthy, rustic demeanour and colorful lifestyle. In the minds of the electorate, he is cast in the mould of the Amitabh Bachchan of the 80s  a Coolie, a Mard tangewala...even, well, a Sharabi!

On the streets of Punjab, he is now the underdog taking on the establishment, making the once feared and revered Badals the butt of devastating rhymes. He has become a symbol of the ire of Punjab's Dalits and youth against the status-quo. Mann is no longer a stand-up comic; he has become the messenger of a revolution.

"Apne jaisa banda hai ji, mast hai," says a youth in Jalalabad. In the crowd, an ecstatic supporter claims Mann will win by a huge margin and his rival, deputy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal, will lose his zamanant (deposit). Among the bookies, he is the odds-on favourite to win the biggest battle of the Punjab elections.

You realise Mann has already won the war of rhymes, jokes and laughter, when his rivals pay him the ultimate compliment, that of reciting the kiklee, during Navjot Singh Sidhu's rally in far away Amritsar, albeit without giving him credit.

Mann's rallies and road shows are a rage, like a film that everyone wants to see repeatedly. So, Mann practically eats, drinks (hopefully) and lives just the election. He hits the road soon after dawn and zips around till dusk. In his trademark yellow turban, white kurta-pyjama and sneakers, he performs the same drill hour after hour: Stand atop his vehicle, crack jokes, recite the kiklee, and when the crowd demands, dance to the tune of jhadoo wala aa gaya, jhadoo wala chhaa gaya.

For many, it is cathartic to see Mann on the campaign trail. He soaks up the simmering anger in them, gives voice to their suppressed emotions, and then, with his humour, helps everyone laugh them away. At his rallies, the beaten, battered Punjabis, find a welcome release from the fire that has been raging inside them. Some are angry because of the be-adabi (disrespect) to the Guru Granth Saheb at various places, some are scared of the menace of drugs, and some are just fed up with the status-quo that allowed the Congress and Akali Dal to rule them by turn.

His backyard of Malwa, the region left of the Sutlej, has always been known as the cradle of the anti-establishment hero. It was once a cradle of a strong Leftist movement, producing leaders who fought for the rights of Dalits and peasants. Mann has tapped into both the region's history and hopes.

It is scary to see so much ride on just one man. It is scarier when the man leading a silent revolution is somebody known to be a bit cavalier and daft in public life. When you see Mann trying to balance himself on his SUV, it seems he is just one misstep away from a great fall, taking the hopes of his followers into a bottomless abyss.

For the moment, however, he is doing fine.

It is almost dusk now, and his hands and feet are still steady. And, he is still leading a revolution with just one line: kiklee kaleer di.
On 10 January, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, while addressing a public gathering at village Balongi in Mohali, had said, "You vote thinking that you are voting to make Arvind Kejriwal as the chief minister (of Punjab). Your vote is for Kejriwal."

"People were asking me who will be the Punjab Chief Minister. I want to say one thing here that you should believe that Arvind Kejriwal is going to be Punjab's CM," he had further said. "Whosoever will be the CM, it shall be the responsibility of Kejriwal to get all the promises honoured...I give you guarantee in this regard."

Sisodia's remarks created a political storm as politicians from other parties tried convincing people that this actually meant that Kejriwal was going to be the chief ministerial candidate of AAP for Punjab and that Kejriwal was going to relinquish his role as Delhi chief minister.

Cat is out of the bag. Recent events prove that Kejri wanted to be CM all along & was only fooling people with misleading statements.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) January 10, 2017

.@ArvindKejriwal is fond of U turns & lies. He earlier said that a Punjabi will be party CM candidate. Now he has jumped into fray himself.  Sukhbir Singh Badal (@officeofssbadal) January 10, 2017

#FinallyExposed @ArvindKejriwal wants to be CM of Punjab as confirmed by @msisodia , Anna ji was right - Kejriwal ji is greedy for power.  Manoj Tiwari (@ManojTiwariMP) January 10, 2017

After months of beating around the bush, truth of @ArvindKejriwal and his nefarious ambitions comes out! What a sneaky little fellow! https://t.co/XlJFTeTKNT  Capt.Amarinder Singh (@capt_amarinder) January 10, 2017

There were also some media reports with headlines like 'Vote to make Kejriwal Punjab CM: Sisodia', 'Arvind Kejriwal For Punjab Chief Minister? Sisodia Comment Fuels Speculation' and 'Vote for Arvind Kejriwal as Punjab's CM face, says Manish Sisodia' that really encouraged the rumour that Kejriwal was going to be the CM face for AAP in Punjab.

There were also media debates on prominent news channels like Times Now and NDTV on whether Kejriwal had plans to abandon Delhi.

"How else can this statement be construed other than the fact that Arvind Kejriwal intends to be the chief ministerial face of the Aam Aadmi Party in Punjab?" said one of the anchors on Times Now during the debate over Sisodia's remark.

There is, in fact, another way in which the statement can be construed. And if media channels and opposition parties had gone through what Sisodia had actually said, they would have found out that it was the only way to correctly interpret that statement. Any other interpretation was a twisted one.

Perhaps what Sisodia implied through his statement can be best described what an AAP leader had been quoted as saying by The Indian Express: "Sonia Gandhi has been far more powerful as the party chief than Dr Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister. So if AAP wins in Goa and Punjab, Kejriwal will have two CMs reporting to him. As the party goes to polls in both the states, Kejriwal is the undisputed face of the party."

What Sisodia was doing through his 10 January statement is something all political parties have done at some point: Using the image of a popular leader well-known throughout the country to get votes in a state election.

If one goes through what Sisodia had said, one will find that at no point of time did Sisodia ever say that Kejriwal was going to be the Punjab chief minister if AAP won. He had just implied that whoever would be the Punjab chief minister would be answerable to Kejriwal, just like Sonia Gandhi was often viewed as more powerful than Manmohan Singh during UPA rule. Sisodia had just used this implication to get votes by further telling people to vote for AAP as if (the significance of the words 'as if' cannot be overstated here) they were voting for Kejriwal because the Delhi chief minister is the main man in AAP.

And all the outrage on the media and mud-slinging by opposition parties took place desite the fact that Kejriwal had himself clarified that the chief ministerial candidate from AAP would onyl be from Punjab.

BJP is currently using the same strategy in Goa. BJP chief Amit Shah had said on 25 January that the next government in the state will "function under Parrikar's leadership, irrespective of his posting".

"(Prime Minister) Narendrabhai (Modi) needs him (Parrikar) at the Centre as well. We will decide after elections where Parrikar will be working. But let me assure you that wherever Parrikar may be working, the Goa government will function under his leadership," the BJP president had said.

In fact, on Thursday, Parrikar had called himself "the leader of the state".

When Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi or Prime Minister Narendra Modi campaign in a poll-bound state, there is hardly any speculation on whether either of them has chief ministerial ambitions, and there shouldn't be.
By Jane Wardell and Roberta Rampton

| SYDNEY/WASHINGTON

SYDNEY/WASHINGTON U.S. ties with staunch ally Australia turned strained on Thursday after reports of an acrimonious phone call between the two leaders emerged and U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal between the two nations on refugees was "dumb."Trump and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull spoke for about 25 minutes on Saturday, but the call ended abruptly after Trump panned a bilateral resettlement deal on refugees, the Washington Post reported. Trump accused Australia of trying to export the "next Boston bombers" and said the call was the worst he had had with world leaders thus far, according to the newspaper.The Post, citing unidentified senior U.S. officials, was first to report details of the weekend call, which came at the end of day of widespread protests and confusion over Trump's order for a 120-day halt of the U.S. refugee program and a 90-day suspension on visits from people from seven predominantly Muslim countries.The apparent breakdown between Washington and Canberra that has developed over the resettlement deal could have serious repercussions. Australia and the United States are among the five nations that make up the Five Eyes group, the world's leading intelligence-sharing network. Under the Australia deal set with former President Barack Obama last year, the United States agreed to resettle up to 1,250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps on Pacific islands in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. In return, Australia would resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.Many of the people being held in the Australian detention centres, which have drawn harsh criticism from the United Nations and rights groups, fled violence in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday that Trump was "unbelievably disappointed" and "extremely, extremely upset" with the deal, but said it would go ahead.Spicer said all the refugees presented to the United States would be subject to "extreme vetting" to ensure they do not pose security risks.

Turnbull told reporters he was surprised and disappointed that details of the call with Trump had been leaked but gave few particulars other than to deny reports Trump had hung up on him.As far as the call is concerned, the report that the president hung up is not correct. The call ended courteously. And as far as the nature of the discussion, it was very frank and forthright," he told a Sydney radio station on Thursday."I make Australias case as powerfully and persuasively as I can, wherever I am," he said.As reports of the phone conversation made headlines on both sides of the world, Trump tweeted shortly before midnight in Washington: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal."

UNPRECEDENTED ACRIMONY

Political analysts said the acrimony between the two countries was unprecedented, surpassing even the difficult relations between former U.S. President Richard Nixon and then-Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, who withdrew the country's troops during the Vietnam War."Even that was always done in the language of foreign policy niceties," said Harry Phillips, a political analyst of 40 years experience at Edith Cowan and Curtin universities in Perth. Australia, New Zealand and the United States have been allies under a formal security treaty since 1951. They co-operate on military matters in the Pacific region, although today the treaty is taken to relate to conflicts worldwide.

The United States plans to send extra military aircraft to Australia's tropical north this year as part of a U.S. Marines deployment that will bolster its military presence close to the disputed South China Sea. Australia is also one of 10 U.S. allies purchasing Lockheed Martin's (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jet programme.Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, said the conversation could damage the alliance. "Australia is one of the strongest friends we have, and our common interest in fighting terror and confronting Chinese aggression binds us ever closer."John McCain, the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he called Australia's U.S. ambassador on Thursday to express his unwavering support for the military alliance between the two nations.Trump, attending a national prayer breakfast in Washington on Thursday, said he was involved in "tough phone calls" on the immigration issue, though he did not name Australia or its leader by name."Believe me, when you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having - don't worry about it," Trump said. "We're going to be a little tough, folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually." (Additional reporting by Eric Walsh, Susan Heavey and Ayesha Rascoe in Washington and Colin Packham in Sydney; Writing by Jane Wardell and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Paul Tait and Jeffrey Benkoe)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
He was the most powerful minister in Uttar Pradesh after Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, and he kept that position for a little more than four years. His choice prevailed in the appointments made in the lower bureaucracy, state police and at least half a dozen departments. He was the name to reckon with when it came to getting things done.

This was Shivpal Yadav, the once-powerful politician of Samajwadi Party who represented whatever the party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav stood for. Shivpal was, and continues to be, the undisputed ally of Mulayam for decades. He was the second most powerful man in SP during the Mulayam era.

But this equation started changing in the summer of 2016. As Akhilesh Yadav started finding his own space and made tentative efforts to assert his position, Shivpal was the first to feel the impact. He was forced to comment at a public gathering in Etawah in July that he was unhappy with some elements in the Government who were indulging in anti-social and anti-party activities. And then started a series of events that culminated in the formal transition of the partys control into Akhileshs hands, and left Shivpal with nothing but a rueful recollection of what he had done for brother Mulayam, the party and nephew Akhilesh.

Sources in the family and the party say Shivpal was the one who shaped Akhileshs education and political career. Locals in Etawah and especially in Saifai remember that Mulayam used to keep awfully busy in the years of 70s and 80s. Akhilesh was very young when Mulayam's wife was struck with a serious ailment and rendered permanently unresponsive. That was the time when Shivpal came forward to take care of the little son. Shivpals wife Sarla Devi is known to have brought up Akhilesh like her own son and insiders say she used to give pocket money to Akhilesh till some years ago.

The credit for sending Akhilesh to study abroad is also given to Shivpal since Mulayam did not exactly like this idea. Likewise, Shivpal is also credited with facilitating Akhileshs marriage with Dimple. When a call was taken to introduce Akhilesh into mainstream politics, it was Shivpals suggestion to field him from Kannauj, thereafter Mulayam quit from there and Akhilesh won the subsequent by-election.

More recently, Shivpal is also said to have guided Akhilesh during the highly successful cycle yatra as part of 2012 Assembly election campaign. He was seen at every major stopover during the campaign, guiding the young workers and others who formed part of the rally.

Shivpal will turn 62 in coming April. He had done his early schooling in Mainpuri and graduated from a college in Etawah. He got married in 1981 and has two children - elder daughter Anubha Yadav is a medical practitioner by profession and son Aditya Yadav is the chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Cooperative Federation.

Shivpals initiation into UP politics was in the early 1980s when, guided by Mulayam, he used to follow him and assist him wherever and whenever required. Shivpal is known to old timers in the media and bureaucracy as always being in Mulayams shadow, following him wherever the latter went on political or social commitments. They recall that the responsibility of crowd management, travel arrangements and ensuring hospitality was usually given to Shivpal.

But Shivpal gathered his strength from being part of the cooperative movement in the state. Mulayams political career had started taking shape around 1967 after he came under the influence of Ram Manohar Lohia. In the years between 1967 and 1977 Mulayam led several agitations and campaigns favouring farmers and labourers, and called upon the people to get united to raise their demands. This is how his interest got focussed towards the cooperative movement.

In 1977 when Mulayam became a minister in Uttar Pradesh for the first time, he chose the portfolio of Cooperatives and later initiated several reforms in this sector. That was the time when Shivpal really got down to some serious work, organising people to constitute cooperative societies, hold elections, decide on office bearers and other related work. Initially this kind of work was confined to some districts around Etawah, but subsequently the movement spread all over the state. Shivpals contribution in strengthening the cooperative movement is what gave him the organisational skills to which Mulayam referred repeatedly during the recent intra-family dispute involving Shivpal and Akhilesh. These skills included identifying the right people with dependable loyalty, organizing such people at the district and village levels in the form of cooperative societies, taking care of dissidents and winning them over, getting such loyal people into the system especially at the block, tehsil and district levels, and settling disputes that arose during the course of such work. This helped Shivpal become a solid dependable ally to Mulayam. He too had started organizing rallies and protest gatherings and had frequent run-ins with the law.

In the years preceding the Emergency and during this period (1975-1977), Shivpal was the man who served as eyes and ears to Mulayam, as the latter got more deeply involved in the then anti-Congress politics in north India. Shivpals organizational skills helped him not only evade arrest in the pre-Emergency crackdown, but also shielded Mulayam on several occasions.

Gaining strength in the cooperative sector, it was easy for him to get elected as president of the Etawah district cooperative bank in 1988. Shivpal contested the Assembly election for the first time in 1996 from Jaswantnagar, the seat from where Mulayam had traditionally been contesting since 1967. Shivpal has won from the seat in the subsequent Assembly elections (2002, 2007 and 2012) as well.

In 2009, he was named president of the partys state unit and also appointed as the leader of the opposition. In 2012, when the Samajwadi Party formed the Government, Shivpal Yadav was appointed a cabinet minister for the departments of irrigation and PWD.

Not known to be very articulate in speeches or giving statements, he is widely regarded as a practical man who helped people get their work done. In Lucknow and elsewhere, there is no dearth of government employees, contractors, media persons, businessmen and so on who have been helped by Shivpal at crucial moments. For them he remains a symbol of old-school loyalty who never bothered about his image  whether it comes to batting for an alliance with Qaumi Ekta Dal or suggesting to engineers of his department that even while making money they should think about doing some work, or patronising people whose integrity was questioned by many.

Shivpals supporters are a frustrated lot now. Within few months, their leader not only lost his ministerial berth, he also lost the presidentship of the state unit of the Samajwadi Party, and all the powers these two positions brought with them. He now has no say in the government, in the party, in the selection of candidates, in the campaign management or even in putting forth the official views of the party. He has been given the party ticket to contest from Jaswantnagar even though he had shown his reluctance to contest this time.

As the SP moves ahead with the new alliance, the space for Shivpal has shrunk even more. But he is trying to reach out to the faithful in Etawah. As he said recently, it is a dharm yudh (crusade) in which truth will prevail in the end.
This post was originally written for Firstpost Hindi, read the article here

Mere weeks before the election in Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has re-ignited the combustible issue that was the Kairana exodus. In June 2016, BJP MP Hukum Singh released a list of Hindu families and alleged that there had been a mass exodus of Hindus from his constituency due to the crumbling law and order situation. In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost, Keshav Prasad Maurya, BJPs president in UP, said that after the party comes to power, a task force will be formed and migration from not just Kairana but also from other regions will be inquired into. Apart from this, inquiries will be ordered against those who are found guilty. Those who were forced to leave their hometowns because their lives or businesses were at risk will be sent home safely and dignifiedly, he noted.

In fact, it is to this accord that the BJP is being accused of practicing politics of polarisation in Western UP.

However, in our conversation with Maurya, he boldly and bluntly blamed Azam Khan, a senior minister in the Samajwadi Party, for the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots. There is violence in Western UP and people are leaving their homes in fear. If a senior leader of the SP is behind the violence and no action is taken against him, then there will be anger in the hearts of people. In such a scenario, not only Hindus but good Muslims will stand with our party and our point of view, he added.

The BJP has pledged to shut down slaughter houses in the area. Before one fishes out a communal flavour in this agenda, Maurya explains, We are here for the upliftment of the poor. If milk-yielding domestic animals are killed, then a constant source of income is also killed. If the SP-BSP think the shutting down of slaughter houses will negatively impact their vote bank, then that is their approach. We (the BJP) have no problem in going ahead with this plan, he asserted.

Will order inquiry into SP-BSPs corrupt ways

In its poll agenda, the BJP has given top priority to law and order. Quite specifically, the party is committing itself to investigating the instances where the SP-BSP has compromised on maintaining peace and stability in the state in the last 15 years. Maurya has clearly stated that a task force will be established to inquire into unsettled matters. How can there be progress in a place where this is no peace? asks Maurya, who feels that a Congress alliance wont make a difference to SPs chances of winning. He is confident that under any circumstance, the BJP will win 300 seats and come to power in UP. When asked about BJPs senior leader Vinay Katiyars controversial remark about Priyanka Gandhis looks as she entered the political battlefield, Maurya advised that leaders should refrain from making such statements.

Is Maurya BJPs Dark Horse?

An MP from Phulpur, Allahabad and the party president in the state, Maurya is at the centre of the BJPs struggle for the precious throne of UP. After Kalyan Singh, the BJP was searching for a candidate who hails from a lower caste (non-Yadav OBC) and Maurya has assumed that role. Should the BJP emerge victorious, one would be able to safely assume that Maurya was the partys dark horse all along.
Muzaffarnagar: In 2016, nearly two and a half years after the Muzaffarnagar riots, when bypoll was held in this constituency following the death of the then sitting SP MLA Chitranjan Swaroop, the BJP won the seat battling a sympathy wave in favour of the leader's son. Many analysts had then said the saffron party was able to exploit the communal faultlines through its campaign which was led by riot-accused BJP leaders.

The BJP had deployed local MP and minister of state for agriculture in Modi government, Sanjeev Balyan, MP Hukum Singh and MLA Suresh Rana for campaigning in February-2016 bypoll, the first after the communal riots. They were all named as accused in cases related to the 2013 riots which left at least 60 dead and thousands displaced.

However, for the upcoming elections, the party seems to have adopted the much-publicised narrative of development. Western UP, where tension had prevailed during the 2014 Lok Sabha election too in the wake of riots, is calm and elections would be held peacefully with development being the major issue, Balyan told PTI.

He talked of how despite facing difficulties people have supported demonetisation in national interest. The BJP leader targeted the Akhilesh Yadav Government over alleged corruption and mining mafia.

He also said it was his party's strategy not to declare its chief ministerial face. "In the UPA government, it was said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is honest but the government is corrupt. Now Akhilesh Yadavji is also saying 'I am honest and removed one minister over allegations of corruption' but he reinstated him again after 15 days," Balyan said.

"Now who is accountable? If there is corruption by the state government, it's the chief minister who is accountable," he said. He alleged mining mafia "continues to operate" in the state "as it did" during the previous BSP dispensation. "If there is no corruption how can mafia continue to operate?" he asked. Balyan also claimed that the state government waived Rs 2000 crore that sugar mills owed to farmers. "It was money of the farmers and the government had no right to waive it. If there was no corruption, then what was the reason to waive the money the sugar mills owed?" Balyan asked attacking the rival Samajwadi Party.The BJP is locked in a three-corned electoral fight in the state with SP-Congress combine and BSP.

Balyan also refuted rival parties' attack on the decision to demonetise the high-value notes. While people faced difficulties they had faith that the step had been in national interest, he said. "And because of the feeling that the step was taken in the larger interest of the country, people stayed calm," he added. He attacked BSP leader Mayawati for allegedly appealing for votes in the name of caste and religion despite a Supreme Court declaring the practise as illegal. "I wonder why there is no action against her as she is seeking votes in the name of caste and religion," he said. Asked if the reservation demand by the jats in Haryana would have any impact on the community in Western Uttar Pradesh, where they are in sizeable number, he said, "BJP had given reservation to Jats in UP, Delhi and Rajasthan."

"If other governments wanted to give them reservation, then why was it not given in Haryana? Last time the quota the Centre gave to Jats was without the recommendation of National Commission of Backward Castes. Everybody knew that it would be quashed by the court but it was done only to gain political mileage," he said. On RSS leader Manmohan Vaidya's remark advocating a rethink over reservation, he said BJP has already clarified it is not against the policy of reservation. Asked if not declaring the chief ministerial candidate could cost his party as SP-Congress and BSP have declared theirs, Balyan said the party has won several elections in the past without declaring a CM candidate but lost in Delhi when it had declared one. He said not declaring a chief ministerial candidate in UP is party strategy.
The recent developments involving conservative gay firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos, the senior editor of right-wing American news and commentary website Breitbart, has made to the periphery of the Indian news cycle. We are vaguely aware of someone getting stopped from delivering a lecture at a university somewhere in America because of some trouble, but that is where it stops.

And yet Indians should sit up and take notice of what happened on Wednesday night at the University of California, Berkley, in great detail because the way freedom of speech was butchered at the very place where the movement for it was born in 1964. It reflects the modus operandi of Leftists worldwide, who will stop at nothing and are ready to take recourse even to violence and thuggery to retain stifling control over academia, civil society and media space.

This is a subject that should concern us. Not the least because Leftists in India sneeze whenever their American counterparts catch a cold. But also because they use similar tactics to systematically muffle contrary voices in our universities, civil society and media. And this Leftist hegemony is perpetuated through an intricate system of networking, peer-vetting and tribalism that is painstakingly designed to keep dissenters at bay. But before we come to this, let us recount the Berkley details.

According to media reports, a 1,500-strong crowd of students and protestors opposing far-right speaker Yiannopoulos' planned appearance at the university threw smoke bombs and flares at the campus building where he was scheduled to speak. The gay conservative writer, a polarising figure who has often courted controversy for his views, was acting on an invitation from Berkeley College Republicans. This was the final leg of his college lecture tour.

Before he could start his speech, the crowd turned violent. They pelted stones, broke window panes, looted properties, destroyed a coffee shop, threw commercial grade fireworks and Molotov cocktail at police officers and created such mayhem that police determined at one point that they couldn't guarantee security. The event was cancelled and Yiannopoulos and his team were evacuated from the building, reported news agency AP.

Let it sink in.

This is not only campus rowdies expressing their dissent; this is open hooliganism organised and executed by the Left to muzzle a contrarian voice at the very birthplace of free-speech movement. The fact that the seat of violence was a university  a bastion of tolerance  makes the irony deeper and poignant.

As Brendan O'Neill points out in his column for British newspaper Spectator, "This is the university where, in 1964 and 1965, students agitated for freedom of speech. The Free Speech Movement staged sit-ins and protests demanding that university management lift restrictions on inviting outside political speakers and on students and staff advocating for political causes. Students fought for their right to invite to 'controversial' people, including Communists, and to express their political feelings. Now, in one of the saddest and most striking volte-faces of modern times, Berkeley students do the opposite: They fight, hard, to restrict freedom of speech."

The students and attackers indulged in arson, violence, carried placards against Yiannopoulos and accused him of promoting "hate speech". Ironically, the accusation reflects the fact that Left has become the very idea that it opposes. If universities are built to safeguard liberalism, then liberalism demands that free speech should be allowed in Universities. The Left need not agree with Yiannopoulos. But by attacking him and indulging in violence to stop him from speaking, it is admitting defeat. It should have engaged the far-right provocateur in a debate and asked uncomfortable questions. But by taking recourse to organised violence to stop him from speaking, it is acknowledging that it cannot fight the battle of ideas. Moreover, by targeting a gay, Jewish individual, the Left is sadly also displaying its intolerance for the "other".

Some of the reactions are disturbing. A Yiannopoulos backer who planned to attend the event was pepper sprayed while she was talking to a reporter.

Samara Halperin, a visiting assistant art professor at Mills College, told local newspaper Daily Californian, "I'm outraged that Milo (Yiannopoulos) has been given a platform at UC Berkeley, and there should be no place for him here. He should be scared that people aren't going to stand for this."

A Berkley history student, who declined to give his name, told The Guardian, "We wont put up with the violent rhetoric of Milo, Trump or the fascistic alt-right." According to the report, he was dressed in black and wore a face mask and carried a banner that read 'Queers bash back'. He said he identified with the 'antifa' (anti-fascist) movement and is willing "to resist by any means necessary".

If fascism implies intolerance for dissenting ideas, if fascism means forcible muzzling of contrarian voices, who's the fascist here?

The Left's actions justify Yiannopoulos, who took to Facebook to say "the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down".

Let's understand this: It wasn't an attack on Yiannopoulos per se, but on the ideas that he represents. The best way to tackle an idea is to punch holes in it and propose a better idea. But this forced imposition of censorship, which is what the Leftist students' protest was all about, is the very thing that they accuse the Right of doing.

This inversion of the liberal paradigm is a motif that we see repeatedly in India. One of the basic tenets of liberalism is tolerance. Yet the ideologues who profess to be on the side of liberalism are the ones whose actions run counter to its principles. In 2015, several authors at the Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF) withdrew from the event because they couldn't tolerate the "personal views" of BLF co-founder Vikram Sampath, author and historian who was ultimately forced to step down to save the event.

This year, Kerala CPI-M leader MA Baby and journalist-cum-author Raghu Karnad pulled out of the Jaipur Literature Festival because the organizers had included the names of two senior RSS ideologues in the list of speakers.

And we all recollect the ordeal filmmaker Vivek Agnihortri faced while screening his film Buddha In A Traffic Jam in India's different education institutions. While at one place authorities suddenly declared a holiday, permission at another venue was withdrawn, while at Kolkata's Jadavpur University, his film had to be screened at a makeshift open-air theatre and he came under physical attack from Leftist students  an experience he recounted in some detail in a piece for Firstpost.

These are just some of the instances of the way a set of ideologues, who claim to be "liberal", retain their absolute control over academia and media and use heavy-handed tactics to protect these bastions from "outsiders". And the UC Berkley event showed that this is a global phenomenon. Everywhere, the deeper the Left retreats into its last bastions of power, the wider its disconnect grows with people. No wonder it is taking recourse to violence and bidding goodbye to its claim over liberalism.
Washington: Donald Trump's administration appeared poised to levy fresh sanctions on Iran Thursday, the first concrete evidence of the new president's tougher stance.

Hours after Trump and his national security advisor put Iran "on notice" over missile tests and support for Yemeni rebels, sources familiar with White House deliberations said new sanctions are in the works.

The sanctions are likely to be levied on individuals or entities linked to Iran's missile program and will be taken under existing presidential powers.

The measures are likely to replicate actions taken by Barack Obama's administration, which targeted firms and the Revolutionary Guard's missile command after previous tests.

Any move toward broader economic sanctions could risk Iran bolting from a high stakes nuclear deal, which saw Tehran freeze its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

Trump has repeatedly trashed the agreement, but senior administration officials have indicated he will respect it, at least for now.

But Trump sounded a bellicose tone Thursday, refusing to rule out military action against Iran, saying "nothing is off the table."

Iran has rejected Trump's warnings as unfounded and "provocative".

The US recently raised alarm at the United Nations over Tehran's Sunday test-firing of a medium range missile.

The White House believes that is contravention of a UN Security Council resolution proscribing missiles that could carry a nuclear device.

Referring to the test, a senior administration official said "ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering a payload of at least 500 kilograms to a range of 300 kilometers are inherently capable of delivering nuclear weapons."

The latest sanctions are designed to show Iran a clean break from the Obama administration, which sought to limit friction.

As Iran has sought to wield its influence from Lebanon to Afghanistan, it has frequently butted up against US interests.

In Iraq, Syria and Yemen Iranian-backed militias have targeted US allies.

While the latest sanctions will not alter that dynamic, the White House is keen to put down a marker.

Aside from a desire for Trump to be seen as backing up his words with action, US officials are also concerned about future Iranian weapons tests.

Tehran is eyeing the development of a space launch vehicle, which, according to a senior administration official, "would be capable of an intercontinental ballistic missile range if it was configured in such a way."
Washington: Declaring that religious freedom is "under threat," President Donald Trump has vowed to repeal a rarely enforced IRS rule that says pastors who endorse candidates from the pulpit risk losing their tax-exempt status.

"I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution," Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday, a high-profile event bringing together faith leaders, politicians and dignitaries.

Trump's pledge was a nod to his evangelical Christian supporters, who helped power his White House win. So far he has not detailed his plans for doing away with the rule, which he has previously promised to rescind. Named after then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson, the regulation has been in place since 1954

for tax-exempt charities, including churches, though it is very rare for a church to actually be penalised.

Abolishing the amendment would require action by Congress, though Trump could direct the IRS to disregard the rule. The tax code does allow a wide range of political activity by houses of worship, including speaking out on social issues and organizing congregants to vote. But churches cannot endorse a candidate or engage in partisan advocacy.

Lloyd Mayer, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said an IRS move could prompt lawsuits, if the rule was repealed for churches but not other charities. Mayer also noted that a full repeal of the rule could open up churches to the possibility of spending their resources to openly try to influence elections -- and for donors to get tax breaks for political contributions.

While some conservative Christians would like to see the rule abolished, others, especially the younger generation, support a clear separation of church and political endorsements. Many liberal churches are also active on policy issues, and could potentially get more involved in partisan politics.
While growing up in Mumbai, the notions I had of the United States were fed mostly by conversations with relatives and family friends living there. This distant country, I was told, was a paradise for anyone who showed promise and willingness to work hard. There was rarely a mention of anything that wasnt right.

When I moved to the US in late 2014, Black Lives Matter was becoming a full blown national movement crying for attention, following the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. I began to realise how systemic racism played out in this country, and participated in demonstrations and protest marches. The absence of voices of fellow Indians (among those like me who had moved here in recent years) was glaring on the streets as well as on social media feeds.

More recently, the ascent of Donald Trump to the highest office showed the same variety of disinterest initially. Days after the election, my cousin who lived in California wondered why I was so distraught. Nothing he does is going to affect you, he had said. Is that any consolation? I snapped back.

Soon after the erratic nature of Trump became apparent, things started changing. Today, wariness has replaced my cousins confidence as he follows every move that the new president makes on immigration policy. He has slowly begun to speak out against the dangers of a Trump presidency.

In the wake of Trumps ban on people from seven Muslim countries entering the US, my friend who lives in Seattle said that as much as he felt for the people who were directly affected by this ban, he couldnt oppose it because he was not an American citizen. For me as an immigrant, being able to stay and work in the US is not a right; it is a privilege, a choice. Things are different for American citizens, and I applaud them for speaking out against the ban, he said.

What explains the proclivity of fellow Indians to largely remain silent in the face of grave failures in American society like racism, inequality, poverty?

Rohit Chopra, whose research and teaching at Santa Clara University focus on global media and cultural identity, explains that the stereotype of political apathy is truer for Indians from India; second-generation immigrants are more politically involved and engaged. Indians and Indian-Americans in the humanities and social sciences in grad schools in the US tend to be more politically engaged than their counterparts in the sciences, engineering and business, possibly because of the nature of the object of study... Because Indians in the US predominantly study and work in these tech and science fields overall, then, the level of political engagement is low.

Chopra further explains that the general lack of involvement stems from the middle-class anxieties and competitiveness that inform Indian life. It is how Indian generations are socialised. Getting into a US university, then a job, then green card are all seen as hitting one jackpot after another and there is a deep-seated fear it may be taken away and should not be jinxed. This translates into a kind of self-imposed political ghettoisation.

Of the nearly 3.2 million Indian Americans in the country, more than a third are recent arrivals (in the country for 10 years or fewer). They are also among the most highly educated racial or ethnic groups in the US, with about 40.6% having graduate or professional degrees (American Community Survey, 2013). Unsurprisingly, they are generally well-off. The Pew Research Centers findings (based on 2010 Census data and an extensive survey conducted in 2012) show that Indian Americans had the highest median annual household compared to other Asian counterparts, or even all US households. Only 9% of adult Indian Americans live in poverty.

In this context, Indians naturally underscore meritocracy and hard work as a ticket to success, a success they rightfully earn and deserve, no doubt. However, this tends to lead to unawareness about oppressive systems that ensure certain communities do not succeed. This elitism even tends to align with the anti-black, anti-poor, anti-Muslim rhetoric in the US, and extends to the anti-Dalit sentiment back home.

Development professional Amruta Byatnal says that Indians who dont speak out in the US are likely not to participate in India either. We literally come from one place of privilege to another. We are mainly upper caste people coming to the US in search of better opportunities, so feel no need to protest. We think that bad policies always affect others and not us. How many of us even think of ourselves as people of colour? she asks.

Srivi Ramasubramanian, associate dean of liberal arts at Texas A&M University, says Indians could make use of their privilege in the US. If you as an educated, well-to-do legal green-card holder or recent immigrant of this country are scared to speak up, then imagine those who don't have such privileges. If not for one or two factors that happened to be in your favour (caste, class, English education, etc), you could also have easily been a refugee or undocumented immigrant. We must not forget that Indians are the sixth largest undocumented immigrants in this nation.

This is why, it would benefit us Indians, to take a stand. Stanley Thangaraj, assistant professor of anthropology at the City College of New York addresses some of our concerns in a recent article. He points that even though Hindu Indians try to fit into white Americanness in the US, they face similar threats to their existence as their other brown counterparts. While South Asians might claim their class status, heterosexuality, and male bodies as a way to enter into Americanness, they can never fully occupy Christianity and whiteness. This, he says, was blatant when a Hindu grandfather, Sureshbhai Patel, was beaten up by police in Madison, Alabama, more than a year ago.

Trumps ban on Muslim nations and his devious immigration policies should serve as a wake-up call for us Indians. Now is our time to show up, speak out and donate. Our silence will only further authoritarianism. In trying to show were an ideal minority, we should not forget the truth in our hearts. We come from a nation built on civil disobedience and mass resistance movements. The struggle for freedom didnt and shouldn't end in 1947.

Lets battle where there is only one fight  the fight for equality and justice. Lets put our bodies and voices where our hearts are. Let us take pride in not only being successful engineers, doctors and bankers in this country, but also in being decent human beings.
Disclaimer

The views expressed on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Economics or the University of Oregon.
BERLIN Germany's government said on Friday it remained united on the need to stabilise the Greek economy despite indications of divergent views between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and their Social Democratic coalition partners.Spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer declined to comment on a newspaper report that Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel had criticised the government's handling of Greece in a letter to Merkel last month and had suggested easing a surplus requirement.Greece needs a new tranche of financial aid under its 86 billion euro bailout by the third quarter of the year or it faces the risk of defaulting on its debts. Germany's views on the deal are particularly closely watched as it contributes the most to the bailout.Demmer said Berlin's views remained unchanged. "The goal is to conclude the second programme review," she told a government news conference. But comments on Friday from Gabriel, a Social Democrat, and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a member of Merkel's Christian Democrats, suggested tensions remained.Schaeuble signalled growing impatience with the process and said Greece must meet its commitments, or end up in an impossible position.

"If Greece again and again does not do what it has committed to, eventually that will not work," Schaeuble told a business meeting in Saarbruecken in western Germany.Asked about possible difference within the ruling coalition, Gabriel told reporters in New York that Germany should work to keep the euro zone together. "I expect the finance minister to do that, and I am certain he will deliver," he said.Demmer declined to comment on a report in the Handelsblatt newspaper that Gabriel had suggested easing a requirement for Athens to keep a 3.5 percent budget surplus in the medium-term.

Reports of a rift within the German government come as the country gears up for a national election in September, with polls showing growing support for the Social Democrats, who have vowed to regain the leading role in the government.Gabriel told Merkel that the different perspectives of Schaeuble's ministry and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) appeared to make reaching an agreement on another rescue plan impossible, the newspaper reported.

Germany, Europe's largest economy, wants the IMF to have a stake in Greece's bailout to give the rescue plan greater credibility, but opposes granting Athens the significant debt relief that the IMF is demanding.Berlin has opposed large-scale debt relief unless Greece completes wide-ranging reforms and keeps running budget surpluses of 3.5 percent for the medium-term after the end of the bailout programme in 2018.Gabriel, who swapped into the foreign ministry from the economics ministry last week, had proposed that Greece only be required to keep a 3.5 percent budget surplus for three years, according to the newspaper. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Paul Carrel in Berlin, and Sabine Siebold in New York; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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By Scott Malone and Dan Levine

| BOSTON/SEATTLE

BOSTON/SEATTLE A federal judge in Virginia ordered the White House to provide a list of all people stopped from entering the United States by a travel ban imposed last week on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries by President Donald Trump.The ruling came on a day that attorneys from four states were in courts challenging the executive order. The Trump administration justified the action on national security grounds, but opponents labelled it an unconstitutional targeting of people based on the religious beliefs.The State Department said on Friday that less than 60,000 visas previously issued to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen had been invalidated as a result of the order. That disclosure followed media reports that government lawyers were citing a figure of 100,000.U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia ordered the federal government to give the state a list by Thursday of "all persons who have been denied entry to or removed from the United States."At Boston's Logan International Airport, at least four college students from Iran and Iraq who had previously been blocked from entering the United States by the order, arrived with new visas on Friday, according to a Reuters witness.The new Republican president's order signed on Jan. 27 triggered chaos at U.S. airports last weekend. Some travellers abroad were turned back from flights into the United States, crowds of hundreds of people packed into arrival areas to protest and legal objections were filed across the country.The order also temporarily stopped the entry of all refugees into the country and indefinitely halted the settlement of Syrian refugees.

The state of Hawaii on Friday joined the challenge to the order, with officials saying they were suing to block enforcement of the travel ban. Federal judges in Boston and Seattle also were weighing arguments.SKEPTICISM IN BOSTON

In Boston, a federal judge expressed skepticism about a civil rights group's claim that Trump's order represented religious discrimination.

Civil-rights advocates called on U.S. District Judge Nathan Gorton to extend a restraining order issued early on Sunday that for seven days blocks the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders, and legal permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries."Where does it say Muslim countries?" Gorton asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU.Segal responded, "If your honour's question is, 'Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?,' my answer is that it doesn't. But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out."Gorton shot back, "Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?"

Gorton asked U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joshua Press how the seven countries had been selected.Press said the list had come from a law passed in 2015 and amended early last year requiring that citizens of those countries apply for visas to enter the United States, "out of concern about the refugees that were coming, mainly from Syria at that time and terrorist events that were occurring in Europe."Trump has told a Christian broadcaster that Syrian Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status.In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota were together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive.Should the Seattle judge rule that Washington state and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration. (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York, Brian Snyder in Boston and Lawrence Hurley, Lesley Wroughton and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Jonathan Oatis)

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By Stephanie Nebehay

| GENEVA

GENEVA The top United Nations human rights official said Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi promised on Friday to investigate U.N. allegations of atrocities against Rohingya Muslims. Security forces and police have committed mass killings and gang rapes and burned villages in northern Rakhine state, a U.N. investigation published on Friday found. "I did speak to Aung San Suu Kyi about an hour and a half ago. I called upon her to use every means available to exert pressure on the military and the security services to end this operation," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said in an interview with Reuters in Geneva."She informed me that an investigation will be launched. She said that they would require further information."In Yangon, presidential spokesman Zaw Htay said: "These are extremely serious allegations, and we are deeply concerned. We will be immediately investigating these allegations through the investigation commission led by Vice-President U Myint Swe."Where there is clear evidence of abuses and violations, we will take all necessary action."Myanmar, a mostly Buddhist country, has previously denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses against Muslims in northern Rakhine and says a lawful counterinsurgency campaign is under way.Since it began on Oct. 9, about 69,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh. The U.N. report was based on accounts gathered in January from 220 of them.

Witnesses testified to "the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food". One woman described her baby's throat being slit. Another was raped by soldiers and saw her five-year-old daughter killed.The report said the actions by security forces probably amounted to crimes against humanity."HORRORS"

Zeid said the perpetrators of such "horrors" must be held to account. Possible avenues would be the establishment of an international commission of inquiry or the involvement of the International Criminal Court.The report described "area clearance operations" - gunfire and grenades dropped on villages from helicopters - which probably killed hundreds.Nearly half of those interviewed said a family member had been killed or disappeared while 101 women reported having been raped or subjected to sexual violence.Testimonies pointed to "a persecution on ethnic grounds which is similar to what has been, in other contexts, described as 'ethnic cleansing'," U.N. mission leader Linnea Arvidsson told a news briefing.

The investigators took evidence including photographs of bullet and knife wounds, burns, and injuries resulting from beatings with rifle butts or bamboo sticks.The plight of the stateless Rohingya, of whom some 1.1 million live in apartheid-like conditions in Rakhine, has long been a source of friction between Myanmar and Bangladesh.Many Rohingya had hoped that Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, would work to restore their rights once her civilian administration took power in March last year. But within weeks of the latest crisis erupting, diplomats and aid workers were privatedly expressing dismay at her lack of deeper involvement."I am not going to go now into the extent to which she should have done more or less," Zeid said. "There has to be some responsibility."Officials have so far denied observers and independent journalists access to the conflict area, while accusing Rohingya of fabricating stories and collaborating with insurgents who they say are terrorists with links to Islamists overseas. (Additional reporting by Wa Lone in Yangon; Editing by Tom Miles and Andrew Roche)

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Paris: A machete-wielding man shot and seriously wounded by a soldier near the Louvre museum in Paris shouted "Allahu Akbar" during the assault on Friday, the city's police chief said.

"I think this was an attack by an individual who obviously intended to cause harm," Michel Cadot said, saying the fact that the man shouted "Allahu Akbar" suggested a "terrorist nature" to the assault.

"Serious public security incident under way in Paris in the Louvre area," the interior ministry tweeted as streets in the area were cordoned off to traffic and pedestrians.

The ministry urged people not to spread false information and to follow government accounts for updates.

The shooting comes with France on its highest state of alert with thousands of troops patrolling the streets following a string of attacks in the last few years.

Soldiers in uniform carrying automatic rifles can be regularly seen walking in the area around the Louvre, which is one of the main tourist attractions in Paris, drawing millions of visitors every year.

The huge former royal palace in the heart of the city is home to the Mona Lisa and other world-famous works of art but also a shopping complex and numerous exhibition spaces.

The museum was already suffering from a fall in visitor numbers after recent attacks in France.

Last year, visitor numbers slumped 15 percent from 2015 to around 7.3 million.

Over the last two years, numbers are down about two million, casting doubt on the Louvre's claim to be the most visited museum in the world.

France has suffered a string of attacks, beginning in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen killed cartoonists and journalists at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris in revenge for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Another attacker went on to kill shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, killing a total of 17 people in three days of bloodshed.

Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State jihadist group attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people.

Last July, a Tunisian extremist rammed a lorry through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on France's south coast, crushing 86 people to death.

And in November, French police broke up an alleged jihadist terror ring which was allegedly planning to attack Paris.
By Lesley Wroughton

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for unity and understanding on his first day at the State Department amid internal dissent over policies of President Donald Trump, which have also antagonized a range of allies.Within hours of starting the job, Tillerson reached out by phone to counterparts from Mexico and Canada, and met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, department officials said.Hundreds of State Department officials greeted the former Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) CEO with applause as he entered the building. Louder cheers broke out when Tillerson thanked Acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon for standing in after the departure of John Kerry."Hi, I'm the new guy," said Tillerson, who was sworn in on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed him to his post despite concerns about his ties with Russia. Trump has called for closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.In remarks that did not touch on foreign policy specifics, Tillerson addressed the dissent within the department that emerged this week in a memo signed by more than 900 officials in protest against Trump's decision to suspend the U.S. refugee program and restrict most travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"One of the great challenges and thrills for the State Department staff is deciding how to confront changing conditions in every corner of the world," said Tillerson, "I encourage all of you to use your natural and well developed skills to adapt to changes here at home as well."I know this was a hotly contested election and we do not all feel the same way about the outcome, each of us is entitled to expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team," said Tillerson.He added: "Each of us is entitled to the expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team."

He also signalled he would impose changes to improve the functioning of the department and said the security of diplomats was a priority.There was no readout after his meeting with Gabriel at the State Department, although discussions were likely focused on the NATO alliance, the future of the Iran nuclear agreement and trade. His separate phone calls with foreign ministers from Canada and Mexico coincided with Trump saying Thursday that he wanted early talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he wants to either renegotiate or repeal.

Tillerson inherits a messy globe with war in Syria and Iraq, nuclear-armed North Korea threatening to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, and increased violence in eastern Ukraine.Over the past 48 hours more foreign policy challenges piled up as tensions erupted between the U.S. and ally Australia over an existing refugee swap, which Trump called a "dumb deal."Strains with Iran also increased after the White House said it was putting Tehran on notice for test-firing a ballistic missile and the new administration moved to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter. (Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; editing by Bernard Orr and Grant McCool)

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By Yeganeh Torbati

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 25 individuals and entities, ratcheting up pressure on Iran in what it said were just "initial steps" and said it would no longer turn a "blind eye" to Iran's hostile actions."The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Irans provocations that threaten our interests," National Security Advisor Michael Flynn said."The days of turning a blind eye to Irans hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over," Flynn said in a White House statement.A senior administration official said the latest sanctions were the initial steps in response to Iran's "provocative behaviour", suggesting more could follow if Tehran does not curb its ballistic missile programme and continues support in regional proxy conflicts. The administration was "undertaking a larger strategic review" of how it responds to Iran.Those affected cannot access the U.S. financial system or deal with U.S. companies and are subject to secondary sanctions, meaning foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them or risk being blacklisted by the United States.The White House said that while the sanctions, the first actions against Iran by the U.S. government since President Donald Trump took office, were a reaction to recent events, they had been under consideration before.They added that a landmark 2015 deal to curb Iran's nuclear programme was not in the best interest of the United States.Iran denounced the sanctions as illegal and said it would impose legal restrictions on American individuals and entities helping "regional terrorist groups", state TV quoted a Foreign Ministry statement as saying.Ahead of the announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted: "We will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defence".

The new designations stuck to areas that remain under sanctions even with the 2015 nuclear deal sealed between Iran and world powers in place, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite military body that is powerful in Iranian politics and the economy, and Iran's ballistic missile programme. Zarif led Iran's delegation at the nuclear negotiations in 2015.Among those affected by the sanctions were what it said was a Lebanon-based network run by the Revolutionary Guards.The sanctions' impact will be more symbolic than practical, especially as they do not affect the lifting of broader U.S. and international sanctions that took place under the nuclear deal.Also, few of the Iranian entities being targeted are likely to have U.S. assets that can be frozen, and U.S. companies, with few exceptions, are barred from doing business with Iran. Meanwhile, the U.S. moved a Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen to protect waterways from Houthi militia aligned with Iran.

DESIGNATIONS

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Friday expressed understanding over the sanctions, saying Iran's missile test last Sunday was a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.However, Gabriel warned against conflating Sunday's test with the nuclear deal. The White House said the sanctions made clear the nuclear deal was not in Washington's best interest.

The U.S. Treasury, which listed the individuals and entities affected on its website, said the sanctions were "fully consistent" with U.S. commitments under the nuclear deal.Some of the entities involved are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.Among those affected were companies, individuals and brokers the U.S. Treasury said support a trade network run by Iranian businessman Abdollah Asgharzadeh.Treasury said he supported Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which the United States has said is a subsidiary of an Iranian entity that runs Iran's ballistic missile programme.Hasan Dehghan Ebrahimi, a Beirut-based official with the Revolutionary Guard's Qods Force, which runs its operations abroad, was put under sanctions for acting on behalf of the Qods Force, Treasury said.Three Lebanese companies involved in waste collection, pharmaceuticals, and construction were also listed under the sanctions for being owned or controlled by Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat, one of Ebrahimi's employees.Treasury said he has facilitated millions of dollars in cash transfers to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Two of his employees and a company he manages were also sanctioned. Treasury said Ebrahimi and his employees used a Lebanon-based network to transfer funds, launder money, and conduct business. (Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Ankara and Roberta Rampton in Washington; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and Lesley Wroughton; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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By Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump, who is strongly backed by evangelical Christian voters, on Thursday promised to "totally destroy" a 1954 U.S. law barring churches and other religious institutions from political activity if they want to keep tax-exempt status.Trump made his comments about a measure called the Johnson Amendment during remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. "I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution. I will do that, remember," Trump told an audience including politicians, religious leaders and guests such as Jordan's King Abdullah.The Johnson Amendment prohibits tax-exempt organizations such as churches, charities and educational institutions from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign in favour or against a political candidate. It is named after Democratic former President Lyndon Johnson and is an important statutory barrier between politics and religion. Trump previously spoke out against the amendment during the campaign and won the support of evangelical Christian leaders including Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.A change in the law would require action in the Republican-led U.S. Congress. After Trump's remarks, Republican House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters he has "always supported" eliminating the Johnson Amendment.Critics including the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State expressed alarm."President Donald Trump and his allies in the religious right seek to turn America's houses of worship into miniature political action committees," said the group's executive director, Barry Lynn.

"It would also lead some houses of worship to focus on supporting candidates in exchange for financial and other aid. That would be a disaster for both churches and politics in America," Lynn said.Scrapping the Johnson Amendment has been a goal of Christian conservatives, who contend it violates free speech and religious freedom rights. The U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion and bars the government from establishing an official religion.'PRAY FOR ARNOLD'

During his remarks at an event that typically is a solemn affair, Trump also said virtually every other nation was taking advantage of the United States and derided actor and former politician Arnold Schwarzenegger over TV viewership ratings.

He said Schwarzenegger, the Republican former governor of California, had disastrous ratings for the NBC reality TV program "Celebrity Apprentice," which Trump previously starred in."They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out," Trump said."It's been a total disaster. ... And I want to just pray for Arnold if we can, for those ratings, OK?"Schwarzenegger, who endorsed Ohio Governor John Kasich over Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, shot back, alluding to the controversies of Trump's first two weeks in office.

"Hey Donald, I have a great idea," Schwarzenegger said in a video. "Why don't we switch jobs? You take over TV, because you're such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job. And then people can finally sleep comfortably again."White House spokesman Sean Spicer later called Trump's remarks "light-hearted" and part of an "absolutely beautiful" speech.A Trump executive order a week ago put a 120-day halt on the U.S. refugee program, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.Trump defended his directive on Thursday as crucial to ensuring religious freedom and tolerance in America, and said he wanted to prevent a "beachhead of intolerance" from spreading in the United States. He also called terrorism a fundamental threat to religious freedom."The world is in trouble, but we're going to straighten it out. OK? That's what I do. I fix things," Trump said."When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it," Trump added, apparently referring to telephone conversations including one with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull."It's time we're going to be a little tough folks. We're taking advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore," Trump said. (Reporting by Jeff Mason and Roberta Rampton; Writing by Will Dunham; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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UNITED NATIONS U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, blamed Russia on Thursday for the recent surge of violence in eastern Ukraine and warned Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Moscow returns Crimea to Kiev."I consider it unfortunate on the occasion of my first appearance here I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," Haley said, making her first public remarks inside the Security Council since being sworn in as the United States' representative to the United Nations last month."It shouldn't happen, or be that way. We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions." Her remarks came amid speculation over new U.S. President Donald Trump's intentions towards Moscow. Trump has praised Russia's President Vladimir Putin and expressed a wish for improved relations between the two countries. Haley made clear that tensions over the Ukraine would not end soon, including the matter of sanctions slapped on Russia related to the annexation of Crimea three years ago.

"Eastern Ukraine of course is not the only part of the country suffering because of Russias aggressive actions. The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," Haley said. "Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine."

The United States and other Western powers imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 over its annexation of the Crimea peninsula from Ukraine and its support for pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.Ukraine and Russia had blamed each other for a surge in fighting in recent days that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line.

The Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists accuse each other of launching offensives in the government-held industrial town of Avdiyivka and firing heavy artillery in defiance of the two-year-old Minsk ceasefire deal. (Reporting By Ned Parker; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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By Scott Malone and Dan Levine

| BOSTON/SEATTLE

BOSTON/SEATTLE A federal judge in Boston expressed skepticism on Friday about a civil rights group's claim that President Donald Trump's order banning citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States represented religious discrimination.The hearing was one of a series of legal challenges to the measure the new Republican president signed last week, which blocked people holding passports from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The order also temporarily stopped the entry of all refugees into the country and indefinitely halted the settlement of Syrian refugees.Federal judges in Seattle and Virginia on Friday were also weigh lawsuits filed by different states and advocacy groups challenging the order.More than 100,000 visas previously issued to citizens of the seven countries were revoked as a result of the order, a Justice Department attorney at the Virginia hearing said, according to media reports. Attorneys at the Boston hearing also said that visas had been revoked but did not cite a specific figure.Early on Sunday, a magistrate judge in Boston issued an injunction that for seven days blocked enforcement of the order, which the White House has contended is necessary for national security."Where does it say Muslim countries?" U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton on Friday asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union representing the plaintiffs in the Boston case.

"If your honour's question is, 'Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?,' my answer is that it doesn't," Segal said. "But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out."Gorton shot back, "Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?" Massachusetts anti-poverty group Oxfam and seven Iranian nationals have joined a lawsuit asking Gorton to extend the injunction forbidding the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders, and legal permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries.The initial ban on permanent residents, or green card holders, was one of the most confusing elements in the executive order signed on Jan. 27. But, following an outcry and legal challenges, the Department of Homeland Security said on Sunday that green card holders would be allowed on planes to the United States and would be assessed upon arrival.

Judge Gorton on Friday asked U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joshua Press how the seven countries had been selected.Press responded that the list had come from a law passed in 2015 and amended early last year requiring that citizens of the seven countries apply for visas to enter the United States, "out of concern about the refugees that were coming, mainly from Syria at that time and terrorist events that were occurring in Europe."The order caused chaos at U.S. airports last weekend, with some travellers abroad turned back from flights into the United States and crowds of hundreds of people packing into arrival areas to protest the policies.

Trump has told a Christian broadcaster that Syrian Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status in the United States.The challenges to his order focus on religion because the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from favouring one religion over another,In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota were together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive.Should the Seattle judge rule that Washington state and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration.During his campaign, Trump discussed the idea of temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country to protect against terrorist threats. On Thursday, he defended the restrictions as necessary to protect religious liberty. (Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Jonathan Oatis)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Andrew Chung and Lawrence Hurley

When gay former law clerk Joshua Goodbaum married his partner in 2014, he got effusive and emotional reassurance from his former boss, President Donald Trump's conservative U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.Goodbaum, now an attorney in Connecticut, recalled fondly their conversation on the week of the wedding: "He said, 'This is a wonderful thing. You'll see how your relationship grows.'"Goodbaum, who in 2009 served as a clerk for the Colorado federal appeals court judge, added: "I have never felt the least whiff from him of homophobia or intolerance toward gay people."As the U.S. Senate weighs whether to confirm the Republican president's nomination of Gorsuch for a lifetime seat on the nation's highest court, his views on social issues, such as gay rights, are under scrutiny by Democrats and Republicans alike.The Supreme Court periodically makes landmark civil rights decisions such as the 2015 ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide. In their current term, for instance, the justices will tackle a major transgender rights case.For a year, the court has had eight justices, not the requisite nine, because Republicans refused to consider Democratic former President Barack Obama's nomination of Merrick Garland. Democrats remain furious with the Republicans for that, and are scouring Gorsuch's record to build their case against his Senate confirmation.When he was named as a nominee by Trump on Tuesday, Gorsuch, 49, immediately came under attack from liberal groups that pounced on his social issues record, which is thin but offers clues on how he might behave as a justice, if confirmed.Like Goodbaum, friends and acquaintances of Gorsuch, many of them Democrats, said he is genial, tolerant and respectful. In some ways, he differs in style from the justice he was named to replace, the late Antonin Scalia, who was known for being combative and blunt on the bench.Gorsuch would not put politics before the law, these people said. But his conservative legal philosophy indicates he would likely vote with like-minded conservative justices on the closely divided court.He rejects the idea that liberals can press their social agenda in the courts.

That could signalled he may be less likely to side with Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who often casts the deciding vote in close cases.Kennedy has joined with liberal justices in backing gay marriage, abortion rights and, most recently, a limited form of racial preferences in college admissions. It remains an open question whether Gorsuch would vote for conservative agenda items such as expanding religious liberties in a way some critics say allows for discrimination against gays and others, restricting voting rights and lifting campaign finance restrictions.'ADDICTED TO THE COURTROOM'

In a 2005 article for conservative magazine National Review, Gorsuch said liberals "have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage to assisted suicide to the use of vouchers for private-school education."

Some liberal politicians and advocacy groups have labelled Gorsuch a conservative hardliner in part over his role in deciding a 2013 case involving the Christian owners of the arts-and-crafts retailer Hobby Lobby. The ruling allowed owners of private companies to object on religious grounds to a federal requirement that they provide insurance to employees that pays for women's birth control. It was affirmed by the Supreme Court. "We absolutely must not confirm a Supreme Court nominee who has ruled that the religious beliefs of employers can trump the law," said Rachel Tiven, chief executive of Lambda Legal, an advocacy group for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. On another issue, Gorsuch last October said his colleagues on the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should have reconsidered a ruling that prevented Utah Governor Gary Herbert from suspending funding to women's healthcare and abortion provider Planned Parenthood over videos purported to show its officials negotiating the sale of fetal tissue. In 2006, Gorsuch wrote a book arguing against legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia.After Trump nominated him, many social conservatives and religious groups, perhaps looking back at his book, said they hoped Gorsuch would vote on the court to roll back abortion rights. In the book, Gorsuch cited the "inviolability of human life," calling it a "basic good."

The Knights of Columbus, a Roman Catholic fraternal organization, said Gorsuch would uphold religious freedoms "and the right to life of every person."Former clerks said they do not know how Gorsuch, a member of the Episcopal church, would vote on gay marriage or abortion. But they said he never brought his religion into his work. "Hes not the kind of person to use his post to push an agenda," said Jason Murray, a Gorsuch clerk in 2011 who is a Democrat. "You could certainly say Judge Gorsuch is a conservative. But I dont see how his personality or record bears out that he is an extremist," Murray said. Some who know Gorsuch personally said his respect for legal precedent could prevent radical attempts to change the law."He's very sensitive to the importance of societal stability. So if he were to change Roe v. Wade significantly I would be surprised," added Tracy Ashmore, a Democratic lawyer from Denver, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion. (Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Will Dunham)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Joel Schectman and Dustin Volz

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON The U.S. Treasury Department on Thursday adjusted sanctions on Russian intelligence agency FSB, making limited exceptions to the measures put in place by former President Barack Obama over accusations Moscow tried to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election with cyber attacks on political organizations.The department said in a statement it would allow U.S. companies to make limited transactions with FSB that are needed to gain approval to import information technology products into Russia. At the White House, President Donald Trump responded to a reporter's question about whether he was easing sanctions on Russia, saying, "I'm not easing anything."Sanctions experts and former Obama administration officials stressed the exceptions do not signal a broader shift in Russia policy. They said the license was designed to fix an unintended consequence caused by December's sanctioning of the FSB.The exceptions were likely in progress before Trump took office on Jan. 20, said Peter Harrell, a sanctions expert and former senior U.S. State Department official.

Beyond its intelligence function, the FSB also regulates the importation of software and hardware that contains cryptography. Companies need FSB approval even to import broadly available commercial products such as cell phones and printers if they contain encryption.Harrell said tech companies had complained. "I don't think when they sanctioned FSB they were intending to complicate the sale of cell phones and tablets," Harrell said.

David Mortlock, a former National Security Council advisor for Obama said that before granting such exceptions, the administration would ask who a sanction was hurting and who it was benefiting. Mortlock, now an attorney, said "here it's a pretty easy calculus" because it was clear tech companies were the ones harmed by not being able to import software into Russia, not the spy agencies. U.S. intelligence agencies accused the FSB of involvement in hacking of Democratic Party organizations during the election to discredit Democrat Hillary Clinton and help Republican Trump.

The agencies and private cyber security experts concluded the FSB first broke into the Democratic National Committees computer system in the summer of 2015 and began monitoring email and chat conversations. They said FSB was one of two Russian spy agencies involved in a broad operation approved by top-ranking people in the Russian government. In December, Obama expelled 35 suspected Russian spies and sanctioned two spy agencies. He also sanctioned four Russian intelligence officers and three companies that he said provided support to the cyber operations. (Reporting by Joel Schectman and Dustin Volz; additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Jason Lange; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
BEIRUT The head of the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday that safe zones would not work inside Syria for people fleeing the country's nearly six-year-old war. U.S. President Donald Trump said last week he would "absolutely do safe zones in Syria" for refugees escaping violence and that Europe had made a mistake by admitting millions of refugees."Frankly, I don't see in Syria the conditions" to create successful safe zones, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said at a news conference in Beirut. "With the fragmentation, the number of actors, the presence of terrorist groups, it's not the right place to think of that solution," he added.In a meeting with Grandi on Friday, Lebanese President Michel Aoun said earlier that world powers must work with the Damascus government to create safe zones in Syria so refugees can return to their country.At least a million Syrians have fled since 2011 into Lebanon, which has an estimated total population of less than six million.The war has divided Syria into a patchwork of areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad, various rebel groups fighting to unseat him, Kurdish militia and Islamic State militants.

According to a document seen by Reuters, Trump is expected to order the Pentagon and the State Department to craft a plan for the safe zones, a move that could ratchet up U.S. military involvement in Syria.Trump has not provided details about the proposed zones, except to say he would have the Gulf states pay for them. Policing them could prove difficult in a war zone dotted with armed groups.The U.N. refugee chief, who had just completed a visit to Syria, said his agency had not been approached about the plans and there were no details on what would constitute a safe zone or how it would be enforced.

"Let's not waste time planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe enough for people to go back," Grandi said. "Let's concentrate on making peace so that everything becomes safe. That should be the investment."The Syrian government said on Monday that any attempt to create so-called safe zones for refugees without coordinating with Damascus would be "unsafe" and violate Syria's sovereignty.Rebel backers including Qatar have welcomed Trump's support for safe zones, and Turkey says it is waiting to see the outcome of the U.S. president's pledge.

The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands of people, made more than half of Syrians homeless and created the world's worst refugee crisis.Trump also signed an executive order last week that halted refugee arrivals for four months, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and temporarily banned citizens from seven mainly Muslim countries, including Syria.The UNHCR estimates that around 20,000 refugees worldwide would be affected by the hold on the U.S. resettlement program, Grandi said. "We are taking exception to discrimination," he said. "All people that are vulnerable, irrespective of their ethnic or religious affiliations, should be given a chance to benefit from this program." (Reporting by Ellen Francis; Editing by Dominic Evans)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Sony Corporation has reported its revenues for the second quarter of the financial year 2016 that ended September 30, 2016. Sales decreased by 7.1% to o 2,397.5 billion yen (US$ 20,668 million) compared to the same quarter last year. Operating income decreased 109.8 billion yen (US$ 796 million) mainly due to the 962 million U.S. dollars (112.1 billion yen) impairment charge of goodwill recorded in the Pictures segment.

Mobile communications division reported sales of 248.6 billion yen (US$ 2,143 million), down 35.3% year-on-year. This is mainly due to reduction in smartphone unit sales mainly in Europe, as well as in unprofitable regions where downsizing measures were implemented during the previous fiscal year, said the company.

In the MC segment, profitability improved significantly due to cost reductions resulting from the benefit of restructuring initiatives, improvement in product mix, the positive impact of foreign exchange rates and a decrease in restructuring charges, partially offset by a decrease in sales.

Last quarter Sony said that it expects to ship 17 million units in fiscal year 2016, compared to 24.9 million units in FY 2015, now it has further cut down its expectations to 15 million from 19 million it said last July. This is due to downward revision in Latin America and the Middle East, said Sony.

It shipped only 5.1 million smartphones in the quarter compared to 7.6 million the same quarter the previous year. It has shipped only 11.7 million smartphones in first three quarters of FY 2016.

It expected sales to be lower than the November forecast primarily due to a downward revision of smartphone unit sales outside of Japan. It said that the forecast for operating income remains unchanged from the November forecast despite the above-mentioned downward revision in sales, mainly due to the impact of further cost reductions as well as the sale of smartphones at higher-than-expected prices.
In a further sign of the United States determination to help the nations of the Middle East and Africa combat terrorism, millions of dollars in rewards are being offered for information on four key leaders of the terrorist group ISIL, or Daesh.

With roots in a 1990s jihadi group, ISIL has dramatically undermined stability in Iraq, Syria and the broader Middle East, posing a threat to international peace and security. It has recruited thousands from across the globe to fight in Iraq and Syria, committing gross, systematic human rights abuses, including mass executions, persecution of individuals and entire communities on their identity, killing and maiming children, rape and other atrocities. ISIL claims to be the true heir of Usama bin Ladins terrorist legacy.

The Rewards for Justice program is offering a reward of up to $7 million for information on Abd al-Rahman Mustafa al-Qaduli; up to $5 million each for information on Abu Mohammed al-Adnani and Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili; and up to $3 million for information on Tariq Bin-al-Tahar Bin al Falih al-Awni al-Harzi.

Al-Qaduli is a senior ISIL official who when released from prison in 2012 traveled to Syria join an ISIL network. As a member of al-Qaida in Iraq, or AQI, he served as its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawis deputy and as its emir of Mosul, Iraq.

Al-Adnani, whose birth name is Taha Sobhi Falaha, is a senior ISIL leader and its official spokesman, the main conduit for disseminating ISIL messages. He has repeatedly called for attacks against Westerners and has vowed defeat for the United States.

Batirashvili has served as a senior ISIL commander and Shura Council member. He has overseen an ISIL prison facility in al-Tabqa where ISIL possibly held foreign hostages, has worked closely with ISILs financial section, and has managed ISIL operations in the Manbij area of Syria.

Al-Harzi was one of the first terrorists to join ISIL and has served as an ISIL official operating in Syria. He has helped to raise funds from Gulf-based donors and has recruited and facilitated the travel of ISIL fighters. He was named its leader for the border region between Syria and Turkey. He also has served as chief of ISILs suicide bombers.

The United States guarantees that all reports will be investigated and the identity of all informants will be kept confidential. If appropriate, the United States is prepared to protect informants by relocating them. If you have such information, contact the nearest U.S. Embassy or Consulate, the tip line at www.rewardsforjustice.net, or e-mail information to info@rewardsforjustice.net.
Apple is finally all set to make iPhones in India in Bangalore. The government of Karnataka has welcomed the proposal of the company to begin initial manufacturing operations in the state.



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Apple has been in talks with the Indian government for several months about the possibilities of making iPhones in the country. The companys team met government officials on January 25 to discuss iPhone manufacturing in the country. Last month, it was reported that Apple has selected Taiwanese OEM maker, Wistron as the primary iPhone manufacturer. Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said last month that India would consider Apples request for incentives to invest in the country with an open mind.

In last May, Apple had announced setting up a design and development accelerator in the city to grow the iOS developer community. Apple shipped record 2.5 million iPhone units in India during 2016. The company topped Samsung as top smartphone vendor in Q4 2016 and shipped record 1.47 billion smartphones in 2016.

Via
Among Silicon Valleys top tech employers, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) could be the most vulnerable to U.S. President Donald Trumps expected crackdown on guest-worker visas, according to a Reuters analysis of U.S. Labor Department filings.

More than 15 percent of Facebook's U.S. employees in 2016 used a temporary work visa, giving the social media leader a legal classification as a H-1B dependent company. That is a higher proportion than Alphabet Inc's Google, Apple Inc , Amazon.com Inc or Microsoft Corp.

That could cause problems for Facebook if Trump or Congress decide to make the H-1B program more restrictive, as the president and some Republican lawmakers have threatened to do.

Both Trump and Attorney General nominee Senator Jeff Sessions have opposed the program in its current form. They have also indicated that they are open to reforming it to ensure the beneficiaries of the program are the best and the brightest, according to a draft executive order seen by Reuters. Reuters could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the draft.

The Trump administration has not proposed any new rules that would target companies with the H-1B "dependent" classification. But the fact that Facebook alone among major tech companies falls into that category suggests it is the most exposed in the industry to any changes in H-1B visa policy.

Facebook declined to comment on the matter.

Trump administration officials could not immediately be reached for comment. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday that Trump would target H-1B visas as part of a larger immigration reform effort through executive orders and Congressional action, but gave no details.

H-1B visas are intended for foreign nationals in "specialty" occupations that generally require higher education, which according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) includes, but is not limited to, scientists, engineers or computer programmers. The government awards 85,000 every year, chiefly through a lottery system.

Companies say they use them to recruit top talent. But a majority of the visas are awarded to outsourcing firms, sparking criticism by skeptics that those firms use the visas to fill lower-level information technology jobs. Critics also say the lottery system benefits outsourcing firms that flood the system with mass applications.

H-1B dependent status is mostly held by these outsourcing firms such as India's Tata Consultancy Services or Infosys. The status was introduced in the late 1990s in an effort to ensure that companies did not use the visas to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor. The status requires companies to prove they cannot find U.S. workers for the jobs.

Facebook listed itself as a dependent company in its applications for H-1B visas with the Labor Department last year.

Before he took office as president, Trump discussed changes to the H-1B visa program with top technology executives, including Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Those changes included possibly ending the lottery and replacing it with a system that would award the visas to the highest-paying jobs first, a move designed to reduce their issuance to outsourcing firms.

Such a move could soften the blow from any H-1B changes for Facebook and other major technology companies. The average salary offered for Facebook H-1B jobs was $145,550, according to its application filings last year. Tata, a traditional outsourcing firm, offered $67,950 on average, barely above the $60,000 floor set by law for the H-1B program.

The draft executive order did not mention specifics about the lottery. It did require the U.S. secretary of labor to provide the president with a report on the actual or potential injury to U.S. workers caused, directly or indirectly, by work performed by non-immigrant workers in the H-1B visa program.

We are hoping that the final draft will have more details, said Russell Harrison, director of government relations at IEEE-USA, a group that represents U.S. engineers and favors that H-1B reform.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Mica Rosenberg in New York; additional reporting by Andy Sullivan in Washington, D.C.; editing by Bill Rigby)
When Tom Marek visited his brother Roberts house after he died, he couldnt believe what he found. Nor did he have any idea what hed do with it.

It was the first time in more than a decade that Tom had been in the house, which his artist brother had filled with more than 5,000 hatchets, swords, knives, pikes, maces and spears. Most were fashioned by Robert himself, who succumbed to cancer in 2015 at the age of 55.

I was just overwhelmed, Tom Marek said. I had seen photographs, but only of one wall. I dont think I could have been prepared until I walked through that door.

The Marek family story is featured on the latest episode of Strange Inheritance with Jamie Colby. It airs Monday, February 6 at 9 p.m. on the FOX Business Network.

The Mareks grew up in a suburb of San Francisco. Tom became a financial planner and moved to Oregon. But Robert stayed local after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a double major in art and art history. He moved into the home that would double as his ever-expanding arsenal.

Neighbor Sara Wolf remembered when she and her husband were invited to dinner.

I was in shock because it was these beautiful wood walls, but floor to ceiling axes and knives. After we got in and the door closed, I kind of felt like we were never coming home, she said.

The FBI was similarly suspicious. Tom Marek said agents once interviewed his brother as part of the Unabomber investigation.

The Unabomber had an association with UC Berkley, was thought to be intelligent and worked with wood. My brother was an artist who went to UC Berkley, and worked with wood, he explained.

Tom Marek said the FBI quickly ruled Robert out as a suspect.

My brother was never terribly open about how the interview went, he was a little embarrassed by this episode, he said.

The craftsmanship of Robert Mareks weapons is world-class, said Francis Boyd, a renowned swordsmith who plies his trade at Klockars Blacksmithing in San Francisco. Probably only about forty or fifty knife-makers in the world, could produce a collection like Mareks, Boyd adds.

Greg Martin, an antique weapons expert working with Michaans Auctions in Alameda, California, believes Marek conducted extensive historical research into the design of ancient weapons to produce them with stunning accuracy.

You dont find collections like this, compiled by the maker and the collector rolled into one, Martin said.

Michaans began auctioning off the collection in September 2016. A handful of pieces sold for more than $10,000, suggesting Tom Mareks inheritance could be worth $250,000 or more.

Tom Marek believes his brother would be delighted that the market would put that kind of value on his work.

This was a lifelong passion. He put together an amazing collection, and he was proud of what he did, he said.
Canadian and European oil companies will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to their American rivals if U.S. lawmakers scrap tighter transparency requirements on the industry, as expected, according to company executives, legal experts and trade groups.

The U.S. Senate is poised to overturn the so-called "resource extraction rule", a regulation requiring U.S. natural resources companies to disclose taxes and other payments to foreign governments, in a vote that could come as early as Friday.

The rule is among a handful of regulations ushered in during the final months of Barack Obama's presidency that Republican lawmakers - who now control Congress - have targeted as being overly burdensome and bad for the U.S. economy. Democrats have no way to keep the law in place as Republicans need only a simple majority to kill the measure.

But overturning the regulation, set to take effect next year, would leave Canadian and European natural resource companies with the most-stringent reporting standards in the world for payments to foreign governments - as U.S. behemoths like Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp get a reprieve.

Certain details of contract negotiations and terms of bids to access reserves are currently required under regulations now in place in both Canada and Europe. Such information could reveal to competitors negotiating tactics and other metrics that many companies consider proprietary, observers say.

"It definitely could put Canada at a disadvantage because we are fairly stringent on our rules, both domestically and internationally, on how our companies operate," said Mark Salkeld, chief executive officer of the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, an industry trade group.

European oil company Royal Dutch Shell Plc, meanwhile, pointed out that a reversal in the United States would go against the broader global trend toward transparency in the notoriously murky industry.

"The trend that we have, with access to information, with bringing distant countries into our space all the time, we will have to live with that. I dont think any single political system can turn that around," CEO Ben van Beurden told reporters when asked about the proposed change in U.S. regulation.

"BANG FOR THEIR BUCK"

Required by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's extraction rule was finalized last summer.

Canadian and European regulations were modeled after the Dodd-Frank efforts.

But the rule was quickly targeted by Congressional Republicans after victories in the November election that brought President Donald Trump and his anti-regulation, pro-energy agenda into the White House.

Trump has signaled a sweeping reduction in regulation to bolster the American drilling and mining industries, including by undoing Obama's initiatives to combat climate change.

Vivek Warrier, a partner at Bennett Jones, a law firm in Calgary, said that could put Canadian companies at an even steeper disadvantage.

"When a potential investor comes in, they will look at the additional regulatory compliance costs that will impact Canadian companies and probably conclude there's better bang for their buck south of the border," he said.

Suncor Energy Inc, Canada's largest oil and gas producer, said reporting on payments to foreign governments is a minor administrative burden. "But generally speaking we support reporting payments to governments as it contributes to greater transparency," said Sneh Seetal, a Suncor spokeswoman.

Canadian Natural Resources Ltd and Cenovus Energy Inc, two Canadian oil producers, declined to comment.

American oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, meanwhile, say that the regulation had threatened to put them at a competitive disadvantage to huge state-controlled oil companies like Russia's Rosneft Ltd and China's CNOOC Ltd.

"As publicly traded companies, we have to compete globally with state-owned companies who hold a large majority of proved reserves and have no similar transparency or reporting obligations," Exxon spokesman William Holbrook said.

Stephen Comstock, director of tax policy for the American Petroleum Institute, said revoking the U.S. extraction rule is "a necessary step by Congress to establish sensible regulations that balance increasing transparency without diminishing our industry's competitive advantage."

Exxon and the API said they support an alternative scheme whereby a host country would report to its citizens at a regular interval how much money in total was generated from extractive industries, without breaking out company details.

The U.S. oil industry also said that the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act would still remain in effect, prohibiting bribery of foreign officials.

(Reporting by Ernest Scheyder in Houston and Nia Williams in Calgary; Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert and Sarah Lynch in Washington, D.C., Ron Bousso in London; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Lisa Shumaker)
Marijuana regulators in Alaska on Thursday narrowly rejected a proposal that would have made the state the first in the nation to allow marijuana consumers to use the pot that they buy at the retail stores selling it.

In a 3-2 vote, the Alaska Marijuana Control board decided not to allow it  prompting criticism from retailers who vowed to continue to press for some sort of allowable marijuana use at their stores.

The proposed new rules would have let people buy marijuana products in authorized stores and go into separate store areas to partake.

Board member Mark Springer, among those who voted to reject the measure, said he was worried how the new administration of President Donald Trump might view marijuana use at retail stores in Alaska.

It remains illegal at the federal level but has also been legalized in 7 other U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Another board member, Loren Jones, said he voted against the proposal after receiving many negative comments from the public.

The Alaska Marijuana Industry Association representing the state's new pot sector will continue to lobby for some way to allow marijuana consumers to use pot at the stores, said Cary Carrigan, the group's executive director

He predicted pandemonium could happen during Alaska's upcoming summer tourism season, the first when legal pot shops will be open in Alaska.

Industry players have previously said tourists, especially cruise ship passengers, will not have any legal place they can smoke marijuana after buying it because the legalization law only allows pot to be smoked on private property. Marijuana is off-limits on cruise ships.

They have said it would be better to allow Alaska tourists to smoke marijuana in the stores because prohibition will prompt users to smoke smoke in public places such as streets, parks and trails.

More than 2 million tourists visited Alaska last year, and just over half arrived on cruise ships.

A study conducted for the state estimated tourists from the 2014-15 season spent $1.9 billion in Alaska, mostly during the summer months.

Critics have said tourists will not come to Alaska only for its legal marijuana because other states have also legalized recreational pot.

The board's rejection of the measure came after Sara Chambers, the acting director of Alaska's Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, told board members the public notice for the onsite consumption proposal was improperly done.

The board then had the options of re-advertising the measure for another 30 days or deciding not to advance it, and they approved the latter option.

___

Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.
Image Source: Getty Images.

When Donald Trump was elected president in November, stocks rose as investor optimism grew that a united Republican government could deliver pro-business reforms like tax cuts and reductions in regulations.

However, in his first week in office, President Trump pushed forward the idea of a 20% tariff on goods imported from Mexico. Protectionism is generally anathema to Wall Street and the big business community, but seems to be a core component to Trump's economic policy. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said last Thursday that the president had discussed the border tax with Congressional allies and would soon put forth a proposal.

However, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle attacked the move, and Spicer stepped back from the idea, saying it was just one of many ways the country could make Mexico pay for the border wall Trump wants to build.

At this point, it's unclear if the tax will be implemented, but Trump seems intent on fulfilling many of his campaign promises, which seem to include a trade war with Mexico in the form of stricter border controls, import taxes, and pressure on American companies to not outsource jobs.

Even if the tax does not get enacted, the news has already had an effect as Mexicans have begun boycotting American companies and products.

Let's take a look at a few of the companies that could be most affected.

1. Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.(NYSE: CMG)

The nation's largest Mexican food chain may not have a direct relationship with Mexico, but it's still affected by economic policies around Mexico in one definitive way. Our southern neighbor is our biggest exporter of fruits and vegetables, accounting for nearly half of the fresh produce we import. Among popular fruits and vegetables that are widely imported from Mexico are mangoes, tomatoes, and, of course, avocados. Mexico is the world's biggest producer and exporter of avocados, and the U.S. imports two-thirds of the trendy fruit consumed here, almost all of which comes from Mexico.

Chipotle would be one of the businesses most affected by rising avocado prices, which are already high as demand has built for the fruit. The company does not break out components of its food costs, but it spends about a third of its revenue on food. While commodity prices for meat and dairy have mostly fallen recently, management has complained about rising avocado prices. In its preliminary earnings report, the company said avocado dented profits, and an import tax would likely do the same. Though it may only push up food costs by as much as 100 basis points, Chipotle needs all the help it can get at a time when it's still struggling to recover from the 2015 E. coli outbreak.

2. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.(NYSE: WMT)

Outside the U.S., no country is more important to Wal-Mart than Mexico. About one fifth of the company's stores are located south of the border, and Wal-Mart's imports rely on many products imported from Mexico. The company was the subject of bribery investigations in Mexico a few years ago, and seems to be a principal target of the boycott being pushed against some Mexican companies. With 2,379 stores, Wal-Mart is only the largest retail chain in Mexico, but animosity seemed to be building against it, as seen onTwitterunder the hashtag #Adios WalMart.

Groceries also make up the majority of Wal-Mart's sales, and agricultural trade across the border is strong. Mexico would likely implement a border tax, testing Wal-Mart's North American supply chain and causing higher prices.

3. Constellation Brands(NYSE: STZ):

Finally, the company that would most be affected by an import tariff isConstellation Brands, an alcohol distributor that owns the US rights to distribute Corona and Modelo beers, which are made in Mexico. Constellation Brands fell about 4% after Spicer announced the import tax, and the issue attracted attention from even Senator Lindsey Graham.

Before the Trump administration made that announcement last week, Constellation CEO Rob Sands had already put a plan in place so that the company wouldn't have to raise prices if an import tax passed. It's planning on buying more of its supplies in the US, such as natural gas and packaging, helping to offset the costs of the import tax. The company has even considered moving some production back to the US; those plans are critical now.

Corona and other beers imported from Mexico have been a fast-growing segment for the company, and make up more than half of its revenue. If the tax passes, Constellation shares could take a big hit.

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President Donald Trump will huddle with chief executives of major U.S. companies on Friday as the business community finds itself increasingly split over how to respond to his policies.

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick on Thursday quit the business leaders' group, a panel selected by Trump in December, under pressure from activists over Trump's week-old executive order halting travel to the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Executives from Ford and Tesla also criticized Trump's travel ban, but other advisory group members, including General Motors and JPMorgan Chase have not taken a position.

Trump previously met with executives from the U.S. pharmaceutical and auto industries as part of a push to step up U.S. job creation.

U.S. companies of all political stripes want Trump, a Republican, to fulfill a campaign pledge to slash corporate taxes, but a schism has developed over how to do it.

The splits highlight business leaders' struggles to navigate a divisive political environment and a new president who does not hesitate to use his platform against companies that vex him.

The businessman-turned-politician has threatened companies that manufacture in Mexico with a 20 percent tax on imports and needled pharmaceutical executives to make more drugs in the United States. On Thursday, he publicly cheered South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co for saying it might build a U.S. plant for its home appliances business.

Some investors want companies to speak up.

"I certainly don't think investors want people who run corporate America to be afraid of making smart business decisions," Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities, said in an interview on Thursday.

The sharpest outcry about Trump's travel restrictions, which caused chaos and protests at U.S. airports last weekend, came from tech companies, which have broad concerns about his immigration plans.

Uber criticized the ban but took heat from activists when its chief competitor, Lyft, appeared more vocal on the issue.

"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president," Kalanick said in a memo explaining why he left Trump's advisory panel.

Tesla's Elon Musk said in a tweet on Thursday: "In tomorrow's meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy."

The White House said in a statement on Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger."

SPLIT ON TAX REFORM

A more complicated division is developing over taxes. Boeing and General Electric on Thursday joined a group in support of a congressional plan to tax all imports. But that plan, which does not have universal support among Republicans, is opposed by many U.S. retailers, which say it could raise prices for consumers.

Republican leaders say tax reform is a top priority, but they have acknowledged it could take until the end of 2017 or longer to finish legislation.

"If I were a company, I'd be worried about tax reform," said Bernie Williams, chief investment officer at USAA Investment Solutions, in San Antonio.

The White House meeting with the group, which also includes leaders of the Cleveland Clinic, PepsiCo and IBM, is set to cover tax and trade, regulatory relief and infrastructure.

(Additional reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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On February 3, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that asks for a Labor Department review of the fiduciary rule, which will almost certainly delay its implementation beyond the currently-scheduled April 10, 2017 date. Here's what you need to know about the fiduciary rule, and why there is strong opposition to it within the financial industry.

What is a fiduciary?

In a financial context, a fiduciary is required to act in the best interest of the person or party whose assets they're managing. Many people mistakenly think that all financial industry professionals are bound to this standard, but that's not the case.

Image Source: Getty Images.

One of the biggest benefits to hiring a fiduciary to handle your investments and other assets is that a fiduciary must put his or her client's best interest ahead of their own profit. For example, investment professionals who are not bound to a fiduciary standard have been known to recommend investment products to their clients because they offer the highest commissions, and not because the products were actually in their clients' best interest.

If your investment advisor is a Registered Investment Advisor, they have a fiduciary responsibility and are required to act in your best interest. However, many brokers, insurance professionals, and others in the financial industry do not. Registered Investment Advisors are bound to a fiduciary standard that was part of the Investment Advisors Act of 1940, which essentially says that an advisor must put the client's interests over their own. In addition to the example of not selling high-commission investment products, advisors cannot make trades in client accounts for the sole purpose of generating higher commissions, and cannot buy securities for their own accounts prior to buying them for a client.

In addition to these examples, fiduciaries must:

Make sure all investment advice is accurate and complete, to the best of their knowledge.

Avoid and disclose all potential conflicts of interest.

Clearly disclose all fees and commissions.

Make investment recommendations that are consistent with the goals, objectives, and risk tolerance of their clients.

The fiduciary standard is much stricter than the "suitability standard" that applies to brokers, insurance agents, and other financial professionals. All the suitability standard requires is that as long as an investment objective meets a client's needs and objectives, it's appropriate to recommend to clients (essentially the last bullet point in the fiduciary list only).

What is the fiduciary rule and who does it affect?

In a nutshell, the fiduciary rule is designed to make all financial professionals who provide retirement planning advice or work with retirement plans accountable to the fiduciary standard, as opposed to the more relaxed suitability standard.

The point of the fiduciary rule is to ensure that retirement planners and other related professionals will be legally obligated to put their clients' best interest first -- not just to find investments that meets the clients' objectives. The rule would cover professionals who work with defined-contribution retirement plans like 401(k)s and 403(b)s, as well as defined-benefit plans (pensions) and IRAs.

The fiduciary rule was formally proposed by the Department of Labor in April 2016 and was passed shortly thereafter. The rule is currently scheduled to be phased in from April 10, 2017 through January 1, 2018.

Pros and cons

The fiduciary rule sounds great for investors. It would protect millions of investors from paying unnecessarily high commissions on investment products, and from buying investment products and making decisions that aren't in their best interest. In fact, a 2015 report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimates that conflicts of interests by brokers cost retirement investors up to $17 billion per year.

However, there is strong opposition from many people in the financial industry. For starters, many retirement planning professionals are obviously not big fans of the fiduciary rule. Many would rather be held to a suitability standard, as the fiduciary standard would cost them money, both in terms of commissions and the added cost of complying with the new regulations. In fact, it is estimated that the implementation of the fiduciary rule could cost the industry an estimated $2.4 billion per year.

One of the biggest arguments against the fiduciary rule is that it could unfairly impact smaller and independent retirement advisors, who might not have the ability to afford the costs of complying with the new regulations. The U.K. passed similar rules in 2011, and the number of financial advisors has since dropped by 22.5%. The fear is that a similar thing could happen here.

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The share price trends of Vale SA (NYSE: VALE), Rio Tinto (NYSE: RIO), and BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) did a virtual 180 last year. Vale shares led the trio of iron ore mining giants, posting a massive 130% gain. The outlook for the miners this year, however, isn't clear. Here's what you need to understand about what moved prices in 2016, why it matters for 2017 and beyond, and the factors that are likely to come into play next.

Steel industry employee in full gear. Image source: World Steel

The rebound

In early 2011, iron ore prices peaked at over $190 per metric ton. After that, it was all downhill for years, with prices reaching a nadir of around $40 per metric ton in early 2016. It should surprise no one that the shares of Vale, Rio, and BHP were hard hit over that span: Vale's shares, for example, fell more than 90% between 2011 and mid-January 2016.

Then things started to change. Iron ore prices roughly doubled between mid-January and December. Cue the rebound for this trio. Vale led the way, but Rio and BHP posted still-impressive gains of 32% and 38%, respectively.

The iron rally was driven by demand from China, which produces about as much steel as the rest of the world combined. Brazil-based Vale sent roughly 55% of the iron it produced in the third quarter to China, and Rio and BHP are similarly dependent on the country across their broad, though iron-focused, commodity portfolios.

Solid steel production in China was basically the main driver the iron ore price gains in 2016 -- and that's a potential problem.

Some negatives to watch

If you dig a little deeper, it turns out that all is not well in iron ore just because Chinese demand remained solid in 2016. Despite the good year, Rio Tinto warned in mid-2016: "Growth in China has stabilized, but it is on a long transition path of slower and less commodity-intensive growth." The country's massive growth has, indeed, begun to decelerate. And China is looking to shut down its least-efficient steel mills in an effort to curb pollution and industry overcapacity. These factors could lead to reduced demand ahead for iron ore.

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Image source: The World Bank

There are two additional complicating factors in play. Chinese steel mills built up their inventories ahead of that nation's New Year holiday, a week-long break for workers. That may have provided temporary support for iron ore prices by shifting some demand forward. And high metallurgical coal prices have led steelmakers to shift their purchases to the higher-quality iron ores provided by the major miners. These potentially temporary factors contributed to the higher prices of recent months.

Then there's the issue of supply. One of the big problems for miners during the long industry downturn was that production was outstripping demand. That imbalance appears to have largely faded away, but it could easily re-emerge. For example, Vale could increase its iron ore output by as much as 10% this year as it brings production up to speed at its low-cost S11D project site in Brazil. It expects to produce even more in the years ahead. BHP and Rio, meanwhile, are expecting to increase production in the low- to mid- single digit percentages during 2017. In other words, a supply/demand imbalance could still dog iron ore.

Vale production projections. Image source: Vale SA

Don't get too excited

Iron ore miners got a huge boost from broadly rising commodity prices in 2016. That's great news, but the supply and demand trends in the industry don't appear to have materially altered. Vale is the perfect example, as it brings the S11D project -- one of the world's largest and lowest-cost iron mines -- on line. It's not the only miner adding capacity. And while Chinese demand is key, the country's growth rate has been slowing -- suggesting that future demand from the world's most populous country may not be as robust as it has been in the recent past. Iron ore prices could keep rising, but after their strong rise last year, multiple factors contributing to a short-term surge in demand in early 2017, and less-than-supportive long-term industry trends, it's probably best for investors to enter 2017 with tempered enthusiasm for iron ore prices and iron ore miners.

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Reuben Brewer has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Companhia Vale. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Oil prices jumped on Friday after the United States on Friday imposed sanctions on some Iranian individuals and entities, days after the White House put Tehran "on notice" over a ballistic missile test.

Front month U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures climbed 24 cents to $53.78, after closing 34 cents down on Thursday, as of 12:22 p.m. ET (1722 GMT). The contract is up nearly 1 percent on the week.

Brent crude futures were up 30 cents at $56.86 a barrel; it was on track for a more than 2 percent gain since Monday, its first significant weekly rise this year.

Volume in U.S. crude futures was relatively low on Friday, with about 335,000 contracts changing hands by 12:15 p.m., on track to fall short of the 200-day moving average for 528,000 contracts.

This is the first move by the administration of President Donald Trump against Iran. It follows his vows during the 2016 campaign to get tough on Tehran.

Under the sanctions, announced by the U.S. Treasury, 13 individuals and 12 entities cannot access the U.S. financial system or deal with U.S. companies. They are also subject to "secondary sanctions," which means foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them, or risk being blacklisted by the United States.

A senior U.S. administration said Friday's sanctions were an "initial step" in response to Iran's "provocative behavior," suggesting more could follow if Tehran does not curb its ballistic missile program and continues support for Houthi militia in Yemen.

The news added to volatility in what had already been a day of choppy trading. Analysts said the market is torn between promised cuts from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and fears over rising U.S. shale oil production.

"While the market is taking these actions in stride so far as unlikely to result in a larger military conflict that would put Persian Gulf crude oil supplies at risk, the odds of that scenario are certainly higher than a week ago," wrote Timothy Evans, energy analyst at Citi Futures in New York.

Trump had warned on Twitter that "Iran is playing with fire" after its missile test.

"The 'trumperament' of the new U.S. president is being tested by Iran and soon maybe also by Russia and China," said Olivier Jakob, managing director of consultancy PetroMatrix. "And that is adding some geopolitical support to crude oil."

(Reporting by Libby George in London and David Gaffen in New York Editing by W Simon)
Wal-Mart Stores Inc Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said on Friday his meeting with President Donald Trump offered an important opportunity to discuss the economy and job creation.

Chief executives of major U.S. companies huddled at the White House, and some of them expressed concern about a travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries traveling to the United States.

McMillon described the dialog with the President as "constructive" and "candid."

"It's always better to be engaged in trying to shape solutions than sitting on the sidelines," the discount retail chain's CEO said in a statement.
Fatal violence continues to plague Chicago, an economic hub and home to big corporations like McDonald (NYSE:MCD) and Boeing (NYSE:BA). But one south side native says itas up to more than just law enforcement officials to usher in peace.

aMy comments around business being a part of the solution I just think itas morally incumbent upon all of us to participate in our communities that we live,a CME Group Chairman and CEO Terry Duffy told FOX Business Networkas Liz Claman. aI just think we all need to do our part.a

Duffy, who grew up in Chicago and now heads the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), says the American dream will be lost for todayas youth unless the underlying problems in violence-ridden cities across the U.S. are directly addressed.

aThese are problems that have occurred over a period of time and you are not going to fix them overnight, but if we donat start addressing them, they will eventually get to a point where they are unfixable,a he said.

On Wednesday, President Trump said the situation in Chicago is aout of controla after recent data recorded by the Chicago Police Department revealed 51 murders and 299 shootings during the month of January alone.

aIf theyare not going to solve the problem a and what youare doing is the right thing - then weare going to solve the problem for them, because weare going to have to do something about Chicago, because whatas happening in Chicago should not be happening in this country,a Trump said during a meeting with African-American leaders.

Duffy calls the killings and non-fatal shootings a global problem and said the CME is doing its part to help through the Chicago public school system.

aOne of the things I think needs to happen Liz is you have to give safe passage,a Duffy said. If you give children safe passage to and from school then they will be able to learn and move forward in society.a
Uber Technologies Inc Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's business advisory group after coming under criticism for taking part, the company said on Thursday.

The CEO of the ride hailing service had been under mounting pressure from activists who oppose the administration's immigration policies, including Uber drivers, many of whom are immigrants themselves.

"Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that," Kalanick, who had planned to attend a meeting of the group on Friday, said in an email to staff that was seen by Reuters.

Uber spokeswoman Chelsea Kohler later confirmed that he had left the group.

Social media campaigns had targeted Uber, urging users to delete accounts. The company this week has been emailing users who deleted their account to emphasize it shares concerns about the immigration orders and efforts to compensate drivers affected by the ban.

Kalanick said he spoke briefly to Trump about the immigration order "and its issues for our community" and told the president he would not join the economic council.

The CEO came under increasing pressure to leave the council after Trump issued an executive order temporarily barring people from seven majority-Muslim nations from entering the United States.

"There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that. The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America," he wrote in a note to employees. "Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there's a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants."

The move could put pressure on other CEOs expected to attend a meeting with Trump on Friday. General Motors Co said its chief executive will attend, while Walt Disney Co said earlier Thursday its chief executive would not attend because of a long-planned-board meeting.

Others expected to take part include the CEOs of JPMorgan Chase & Co, Blackstone Group LP, IBM Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Others that are part of the council include Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and Boston Consulting Group CEO Rich Lesser.

The White House did not immediately comment.

(Reporting by Heather Somerville in San Francisco, David Shepardson in Washington, Joe White in Detroit writing Peter Henderson; Editing by David Gregorio)
The Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin Corp announced on Friday an agreement worth about $8.5 billion for 90 F-35 jets, the lowest price to date for the Pentagon's most expensive program.

The deal for the tenth lot of the stealthy fighter aircraft brings the price per jet to below $95 million for the first time, compared to $102 million in the previous batch, a savings of $728 million.

This is more than the $600 million that U.S. President Donald Trump claimed on Monday he had been able to shave off from the F-35 program, which he had described as "out of control" in December.

Lockheed Martin said in a statement that "President Trump's personal involvement in the F-35 program accelerated the negotiations and sharpened our focus on driving down the price."

The price per jet has been steadily declining as production ramps up, and defense analysts have said the discount hailed by Trump was in line with what had been flagged by Lockheed and Pentagon officials for months.

"The increase in the number of aircraft in this agreement enables us to reduce costs by taking advantage of economies of scale and production efficiencies," Lockheed said.

Lockheed, the prime contractor, and its partners including Northrop Grumman Corp, United Technologies Corp's Pratt & Whitney and BAE Systems Plc have been working on building a more cost-effective supply chain to fuel the production line in Fort Worth, Texas.

Air Force Lieutenant General Chris Bogdan, who runs the F-35 program for the Pentagon, said on Dec. 19 the cost per plane should decrease about "6 to 7 percent" for the latest contract.

Friday's announcement said the cost of the F-35 A conventional takeoff and landing version of the jet had dropped 7.3 percent since the previous order.

Lockheed and its main partners have been developing and building F-35s for the U.S. military and 10 allies.

The F-35 comes in three configurations, the A-model for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. allies; a F-35 B-model which can handle short takeoffs and vertical landings for the Marine Corps and the British navy; and carrier-variant F-35C jets for the U.S. Navy.

The U.S. Defense Department expects to spend $391 billion in the coming decades to develop and buy 2,443 of the supersonic warplanes.

(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Soyoung Kim and Bernadette Baum)
Chief executives of major U.S. companies huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday as the business community is increasingly split over how to respond to his policies, especially a travel ban announced last week.

Trump kicked off the meeting with CEOs including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase & Co and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc , saying the group would discuss peeling back banking rules and declaring that companies would bring new jobs to the United States.

Chief executives including Elon Musk of Tesla Inc have said they planned to raise objections at the talks to Trump's week-old executive order halting travel to the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Business leaders have been divided in their approach on taxes and immigration, and some are wary of working with a president who uses his platform to attack companies that vex him, such as threatening penalties for manufacturing outside the United States.

The leaders, which also included Mary Barra of General Motors Co and Jim McNerney, formerly of Boeing Co, are part of a business advisory panel Trump announced in December. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit the group under pressure from activists over the order. Musk defended his own decision to participate, saying that going to the meeting did not mean he agreed with Trump's actions.

Tech companies, which have broad concerns about Trump's immigration plans, raised the sharpest outcry among firms at the travel ban.

The White House said in a statement on Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger."

Executives from Ford Motor Co also criticized the ban, but others, including General Motors and JPMorgan Chase have not taken a position.

On Friday, former General Electric Co leader Jack Welch said on his way into the White House that he expected immigration would come up.

SPLIT ON TAX REFORM

Trump has also met with executives from the U.S. pharmaceutical and auto industries as part of a push to step up U.S. job creation.

Division in the corporate world is also developing over taxes. Boeing Co and General Electric on Thursday joined a group in support of a congressional plan to tax all imports. But that plan, which does not have universal support among Republicans, is opposed by many U.S. retailers, which say it could raise prices for consumers.

Republican leaders say tax reform is a top priority, but they have acknowledged it could take until the end of 2017 or longer to finish legislation.

"If I were a company, I'd be worried about tax reform," said Bernie Williams, chief investment officer at USAA Investment Solutions, in San Antonio.

The White House meeting with the group is also set to cover trade, regulatory relief and infrastructure.

(Additional reporting by Ross Kerber in Boston; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alistair Bell)
It was in 2013 that Chevrolet tuner extraordinaire Callaway first previewed the design of a shooting brake based on the C7 Corvette. Since then, the company has been gauging market interest and further developing the design.

On Friday, Callaway finally unveiled its Corvette shooting brake and confirmed the vehicles debut at the 2017 Michelin NCM Bash, the annual get-together at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky which this year will run April 27-29.

Called the C21 AeroWagen, the conversion is only available for the Corvettes coupe body style and can be reversed should the owner desire. Carbon fiber is used for the panels while the rear piece is tempered safety glass that retains a defogger.

MORE AUTO NEWS FROM MOTOR AUTHORITY

The good news is that the design doesnt impinge on the cars removable roof panel. In fact, it uses the original hardware and latching mechanisms. The downside is that since no structural changes have been made there isnt space to squeeze in an extra pair of seats to form a 2+2 configuration. You still get extra storage in the trunk, however.

Since Callaway is a specialist constructor with close ties to OEMs, similar to Alpina (BMW), Mountune (Ford) and Ruf (Porsche), the conversion is to the same standard as the cars coming out of the factory. Pricing starts at $14,990.

Order books are currently open. Installation will be performed at Callaway workshops in Connecticut and California, as well as at authorized Callaway retailers.

----------

CHEVROLET CORVETTE GRAND SPORT TEST DRIVE:
Angelina Jolie spoke out against President Donald Trumps executive order that temporarily restricts citizens from seven countries from entering the United States.

Refugees are men, women and children caught in the fury of war, or the cross hairs of persecution. Far from being terrorists, they are often the victims of terrorism themselves, she wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times published on Thursday.

The 41-year-old actress is an active humanitarian and special envoy for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Jolie has worked with the United Nations since 2001 and has carried out over 50 missions for them.

Americans have shed blood to defend the idea that human rights transcend culture, geography, ethnicity and religion, Jolie wrote. The decision to suspend the resettlement of refuges to the United States and deny entry to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries has been met with shock by our friends around the world precisely because of this record.

While Jolie acknowledged that it is entirely justifiable for the United States to secure its borders from terrorism threats, she also insisted that every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities.

As the mother of six children, who were all born in foreign lands and are proud American citizens, I very much want our country to be safe for them, and all our nations children, she added.

But I also want to know that refugee children who qualify for asylum will always have the chance to plead their case to a compassionate America. And that we can manage our security without writing off citizens of entire countries  even babies  as unsafe to visit our country by virtue of geography or religion.

Trump has not responded to Jolie's open letter.
Ben & Jerrys is making chocolate lovers' dreams come true just ahead of Valentine's Day.

If you're craving some ice cream, but don't have the appetite to down a whole pint (and you're on the go) now you can just grab a slice of your favorite flavor.

The Vermont-based creamery just introduced a brand new version of an ice cream bar which they're calling Pint Slices. Similar to a Klondike bar, these dark chocolate covered ice cream squares are now available in four of Ben & Jerry's most popular flavors.

Americone Dream  A vanilla ice cream bar with caramel swirls and fudge covered waffle cone pieces all covered in a dark chocolate coating with more waffle cone pieces.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough  This vanilla ice cream bar has pieces of chocolate chip cookie dough and fudge flakes, covered in dark chocolate coating.

Meet Pint Slices. We thought there was no way to make Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough more delicious. We were wrong. https://t.co/Rb1PSvnVB9 pic.twitter.com/VzmWCIxrKb  Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) February 1, 2017

Chocolate Fudge Brownie  Chocolate, chocolate, and more chocolate  a chocolate ice cream bar with fudge brownies covered in a dark chocolate coating.

FOR THE LATEST FOOD FEATURES FOLLOW FOX LIFESTYLE ON FACEBOOK

Vanilla Peanut Butter Cup  A peanut butter lovers dream. This peanut butter ice cream bar includes peanut butter cups and is covered in a dark chocolate coating.

The pint slices are available in most Ben & Jerrys scoop shops and will be rolling out to grocery stores nationwide soon.
Retired Air Force Master Sgt. Mark Evans dedicates his life to sending Chicago deep dish pizzas to soldiers deployed in the Middle East.

Evans, who is based in the Chicago suburbs, is the force behind the non-profit Pizzas4Patriots, now in its ninth year. The group offers help to service members, veterans, and first responders by providing Americas favorite food while theyre far away from home."

Theres no better feeling than paying it forward, Evans told Fox News.

Evans explains that the idea started on July 4 eight years ago. He was eating pizza with his son while watching the news.

My son looked at the soldiers in Iraq on TV and he asked me what they were eating. I told him Meals Ready to Eat (MREs)-- not pizza," Evans recalled. "He asked me if we could send them some pizzas."

COFFEE COMPANY TAKES ON STARBUCKS' REFUGEE PLAN, PLEDGES TO HIRE 10,000 VETERANS

Evans, who made some important friends from his years in the military, decided to reach out to General David Petraeus. In an email, Evans explained to Petraeus that he wanted to send 2,000 pizzas to Iraq. From there, a cheesy partnership was born.

Evans has been sending pizzas to the troops every Independence Day and Super Bowl Sunday since. The pies are shipped half-baked and the troops come up with creative ways to reheat the food-- some even using the heat from Humvee engine. Since 2008, Evans says almost 170,000 pizzas have been shipped across the Atlantic.

I just like to see smiles on soldiers faces and the stories I hear are incredible, he says.

This year, eight hundred more Pizzeria Uno pies are headed to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan for Sundays big matchup between the New England Patriots and the Atlanta Falcons.

Thanks to donations that Evans raises throughout the year, the pizzas are flown to the troops via private helicopters.

FOR THE LATEST FOOD FEATURES FOLLOW FOX LIFESTYLE ON FACEBOOK

I raise money. I go on TV and beg for money. My wife calls me the show dog or the talker, Evans says. Evans also works at AT&T, which sponsors his nonprofit.

Additionally, the group provides pizzas to veterans hospitals around the country.

Some people do incredible things. Look at Trump. Look at Neil Armstrong. No one thought they could do what they said they were going to do, Evans says.

He added,Were very blessed."
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could stop

a pair of San Diego officers from helping to deliver a healthy baby in the

parking lot of the U.S. Post Office in Mira Mesa on Thursday. Officers Matt

Enderlin and Eric Hustad responded to a call from a husband who said he wife

was in labor in their car.

Mail wasn't the only thing getting delivered today at the Mira Mesa Post Office. @SanDiegoPD helped deliver this baby at @USPS pic.twitter.com/WiVJWV8YVr  FOX 5 San Diego (@fox5sandiego) February 2, 2017

Weve been partners for eight years now so its one of

things where weve gotten a lot of calls on this job, you expect the

unexpected, Enderlin told Fox 5 San Diego.

The officers found the couple in the parking lot at around

6:30 a.m., and helped to deliver the baby before medics arrived to transport

the family to Scripps Memorial Hospital.

Great job Officers Enderlin & Hustad and Mom on bringing

this beautiful baby into the word at the Mira Mesa Post Office no less, the

San Diego Police Department wrote in part on their Facebook page. Guess mails

not the only thing getting delivered today.
Candidate Donald Trump promised to bring jobs back to America, rebuild our military, and on trade get tough with China, which he said was raping our economy. President Trump may find his administration the victim of exactly the job-exporting policies he railed against and face the very real possibility that China could cut off U.S. access to 17 rare materials vital to our advanced aircraft and guided missile systems.

Among major U.S. military projects imperiled by a potential China squeeze play is a $340 billion Navy program to create new, Columbia-class nuclear submarines, and a new electro-magnetic aircraft launch (EMAL) system, which the Navy hopes to use for catapults that launch planes from aircraft carriers.

The 17 materials, known as rare earth elements (REE), are essential to the production of the high-performance permanent magnets used in both those systems, as well as in motors and missiles, GPS systems, satellite imaging, night vision goggles, and consumer products like smartphones and flat television screens. And for precisely the reasons Candidate Trump cited for the decline of American manufacturing and the loss of U.S. jobs, China is now in a position to cut off our supply of processed rare earth elements if it feels Trump is pushing too hard on trade and economic issuesor anything else.

Absolutely, China could cut off the supply, said Jeff Green, a defense industry analyst in Washington, D.C. Processing rare earths is the end of the hose. China controls the spigot the hose is attached to.

This dire situation came about largely as a result of a U.S. decision to rely on China, which is estimated to produce 90 percent of all processed rare earth elements sold to U.S. consumers, including the Pentagon. In 1995, the Clinton administration allowed two U.S. rare earth producers, in North Carolina and Indiana (the home state of Vice President Mike Pence) to go out of business. They transferred their production capacity to China, leaving it as the worlds only large-scale REE supplier.

The supply chain worked smoothly until 2010, when the Japanese navy detained a Chinese fishing boat as part of a territorial dispute. China promptly choked off REE sales to Japan, and imposed worldwide supply quotas. Almost overnight, the price of REEs soared 4,000 per cent worldwide, demonstrating Chinas ability to control the market at will.

Sensing an opportunity, a Colorado-based company called Molycorp tried to ramp up American REE production, using a mine and plant in southeastern California known as Mountain Pass. When China lost a World Trade Organization challenge and revoked its production quotas, the price of REEs tumbled and Molycorp found itself refining a product that could be made much more cheaply, and of higher quality, in China.

The Obama administration, determined to support renewable sources of energy, declined to bail out Molycorp, even while pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into a solar panel company known as Solyndra. Solar cells also use REEs. Solyndra ended up importing solar cells from China. The company went bankrupt, as did Molycorp in 2015.

It is unclear what the Trump administration can do to eliminate U.S. reliance on China for REEs, at least in the short term. Later this month, a court in Delaware is expected to authorize an auction to bring Molycorp out of bankruptcy, and, potentially revive REE processing in California.

The problem is that REE production technology was transferred to China during the Clinton administration, and the Chinese are now thought to have an insurmountable advantage.

In 1992, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, said, The Middle East has oil. China has rare earth.

The implications of that remark are now being felt. They may include profoundly challenging a U.S. president who came to power promising to bring China to heel.


If we really want to restore traditional values to our culture  we cant rely on the Republicans or the Democrats. Its going to be up to us  the folks Hillary Clinton called a basket of deplorables.

My new book, The Deplorables Guide to Making America Great Again, is a handbook to how we can reclaim our American heritage and how we can fight back against Social Justice Warriors and secular humanists.

Some of the nations top evangelical and conservative leaders have endorsed the book and the books message  including Franklin Graham and Mike Huckabee.

Todd Starnes has a pulse on todays culture and shines a discerning light on political correctness that has indoctrinated the minds of people from every walk of life, Graham said.

Yes. We elected Donald Trump. We saved the Supreme Court. And we're going to defend American sovereignty. But winning was just the beginning. My book offers practical advice on fighting and winning the war on traditional values.

Governor Mike Huckabee wrote: "The Deplorables' Guide to Making America Great Again" should be required reading for every high school student and every patriot in America.

Page after page Todd reminds us that every generation has a responsibility to defend our freedom, Huckabee said. Todd delivers a dose of deep-fried reality served up with a heaping helping of his signature Southern humor."

And that's how we're going to do it, America -- with the Bible in one hand and a hefty dose of humor in the other, I show you how we can be Happy Warriors!

The soft cover edition is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Three months ago, with the entire world watching, Donald Trump pulled off a political miracle. With America teetering on the precipice of mediocrity, wrestling with potential obscurity and up against unimaginable opposition, the master builder from New York pulled one out for mankind.

His election to the presidency on Nov. 8 secured our inoculation from a European existence and struck a blow to Islamist ambitions, granting us a reprieve that historians someday may say saved Western civilization itself. It very much recalled Winston Churchills affectionate jibe: America always does the right thing, after exhausting every other option.

But just five days after Trump made political history, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry quietly, and I believe vindictively, laid a land mine for the next president.

Two months earlier, in the dying days of Obamas administration, they had struck a backroom deal with Australias prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull  someone very much in their own political mold  to take 1,250 refugees who were being held in an Australian detention center. The people in question either hailed from Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia or Sudan, or they had been classified stateless.

With Trump the unexpected winner, Obama and Kerry quickly encouraged Turnbull to rush forward a press conference that had been planned for this year. On Nov. 13, he announced the agreement.

Turnbull, whose own political survival relied so heavily upon the deal going through, knew how hard Trump had campaigned against accepting refugees from the Middle East. He sensed an opportunity to trap Trump, and he obliged.

He and Obama had agreed to resettle the refugees Australia had refused to admit from countries of national security concern  two of which the State Department has designated as state sponsors of terrorism  in America, and he bet the house that Trump would honor the agreement

What was Turnbull thinking?

That President Trump, who prides himself on being a tough negotiator and whose raison detre is making good deals that put America first, would humiliate himself by breaking his own campaign promises?

This deal has zero upside for America.

It is no wonder that Trump reportedly embarrassed the prime minister personally, and undeniably devastated him politically, in a telephone conversation, the details of which were leaked to the Washington Post.

There is a special relationship between Australia and the United States  but it requires respect on both sides.

Trump has every right to be furious. This deal was designed to box him in with a fait accompli, a done deal that honors something he explicitly opposed with the expectation that he would submit to it to preserve the special relationship.

Putting America first is a bold approach that will test traditional ties and diplomacy, at least at first. But it is necessary action.

There is no better example of America being taken advantage of than this deal. Why should America take in undesired lawbreakers from Muslim-majority countries at a time of radical Islamic terrorism?

President Trump isn't protecting your feelings. He's protecting your family.

I came to the United States to make, not to take. To give, not to receive. To join it, not to change it. I came to promote American values, not to undermine them. We must demand the same from all who wish to call America home.

As an immigrant from Australia, I echo the words of the president to the Australian prime minister in his telephone call:

I dont want these people.
Just two weeks into the Trump administration, and the left has not only become completely unhinged, it has turned violent.

Out-of-control protesters rocked the campus of University of California Berkeley, capping a chaotic stretch of disruptive demonstrations. The school was forced to cancel a speech by Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos after anti-free speech rioters started smashing windows, launching Molotov cocktails at police and even setting part of the campus on fire.

In previous protests around the country, agitators called for violence against President Trump and the White House, including one person wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt at a protest that reportedly took place in Seattle.

We're all operating under white supremacy, just so you know, she shouted in a hate-filled diatribe caught on camera. And we need to start killing people. First off, we need to start killing the White House. The White House must die. The White House, your *&%$# White House, your *&%$# president, they must go!

Why has this person not been arrested?

Sadly, these protesters were just following the lead of many prominent public figures on the left who have been having a complete meltdown since Donald Trump's victory in November. These folks include celebrity snowflakes like Madonna and Ashley Judd, who delivered vulgar and disturbing remarks at the womens march in Washington, just one day after the president was sworn in.

Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House, Madonna said.

I am a nasty woman! Judd said. I'm not as nasty as a man who looks like he's bathes in Cheeto dust. I am not as nasty as your own daughter being your favorite sex symbol!

This type of language and behavior from the alt-radical left is not going away. It is only going to get worse.

And while protesters spew hate and threaten violence, Democrats in the U.S. Senate are preparing a stiff resistance to the confirmation of eminently qualified Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch. If history repeats itself, this obstruction could get very ugly.

Some of us remember when President Reagans Supreme Court nominee, Judge Robert Bork, was blocked by the U.S. Senate in 1987 after Democrats smeared him as sexist and racist based on nothing.

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, and school children could not be taught about evolution, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said on the Senate floor. Writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government.

Democrats were so proud of these underhanded tactics that we ended up with the term Borked, to describe the process of blocking a nominee with phony claims.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush nominated the great Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, and Democrats used similar dirty tactics. They had his former colleague Anita Hill testify and make unfounded sexual harassment claims against him in what Thomas would refer to as a "high-tech lynching."

From my standpoint as a black American, as far as I'm concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, said Thomas, who thankfully was confirmed. And it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.

Sad, but extremely powerful.

So as Democrats now gear up to smear Judge Gorsuch, and as protests continue to disrupt law and order all across the country, here's my question: Will the leaders of the Democratic Party call for an end to the violence, lies, smears and obstruction?

Dont hold your breath for a call for unity from former President Obama. He had this to say about the widespread protests after this election.

I would not advise people who feel strongly or are concerned about some of the issues that have been raised during the course of the campaign  to be silent, he said.

And the failed, Stronger Together" candidate, Hillary Clinton, has praised some of the recent protests on Twitter. Former President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Congressional Democratic leaders must be on notice that if they continue to willfully fan the flames of outrage, the violence and anarchy that follows will be on them.

They are supposed to act like leaders.

Adapted from Sean Hannity's monologue on "Hannity," Feb. 2, 2017
Tuesday night, President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the late Justice Antonin Scalias untimely passing. As the intellectual architect of the effort to restore the judiciary to its proper role under the Constitution, Justice Scalia was a singularly influential jurist. To say that he leaves big shoes to fill is an understatement. Any worthy successor to Justice Scalias legacy must not only be committed to continuing his lifes work, but also capable of delivering the sort of intellectual leadership that Justice Scalia provided for decades.

Of all of the potential candidates for this vacancy, Neil Gorsuch stands out as the one best positioned to fill this role. His resume can only be described as stellar: Columbia University, Oxford, Harvard Law School, clerkships on the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court, a distinguished career in private practice and in the Department of Justice, and more than a decade of service on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Even among his many talented colleagues on the federal bench, Judge Gorsuchs opinions consistently stand out for their clarity, thoughtfulness, and reasoning. In the words a colleague appointed by President Carter, Judge Gorsuch writes opinions in a unique style that has more verve and vitality than any other judge I study on a regular basis. That colleague continues: Judge Gorsuch listens well and decides justly. His dissents are instructive rather than vitriolic. In sum, I think he is an excellent judicial craftsman.

There can be no doubt that Judge Gorsuch has the credentials to be an effective member of the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, I have long held that no nominees resume aloneno matter how sterlingshould be considered sufficient to merit confirmation to the Supreme Court. Rather, we must also consider a nominees judicial philosophy.

On this count, Judge Gorsuchs opinions and writings reflect an understanding of the proper role of a judge under the Constitution. For example, in a lecture he delivered last year shortly after Justice Scalias passing, Judge Gorsuch affirmed his allegiance to the view that judges should strive . . . to apply the law as it is, . . . not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best.

In that same lecture, Judge Gorsuch also quoted Justice Scalias statement that a good judge will often reach outcomes he does not personally agree with as a matter of policy. Such a notion should be uncontroversial. Indeed, many of Justice Scalias greatest opinions came in cases in which I suspect he would have voted differently as a legislator.

Unfortunately, the idea that judges should decide cases based on law, not policy, might seem foreign to a casual observer of Supreme Court media coverage, in which cases are invariably discussed in terms of their politics. Decisions and justices are regularly described as liberal or conservative, with little attention paid to rationale and methodology, the matters properly at the core of a judges work.

This phenomenon reflects a regrettable dynamic Justice Scalia himself lamented. As the late Justice observed, when judges substitute their own policy preferences for the fixed and discernible meaning of the law, the selection of judgesand in particular, the selection of Supreme Court justicesbecomes a mini-plebiscite on the meaning of the Constitution. Put another way, if judges are empowered to rewrite the law as they please, the judicial appointment process becomes a matter of selecting life-tenured legislators largely immune from accountability.

If we buy into such a system, a system deeply at odds with the the Founders view of the judiciary, then we can easily see why judicial selection becomes a matter of litmus tests on hot-button policy issues.

This is a fundamentally misguided way to approach judicial selection. Such an approach undermines the Constitution and all of the crucial principles it enshrines, from the rule of law to the notion that governments legitimacy depends on the consent of the governed.

A good judge is not one we can depend on to produce particular policy outcomes. Rather, a good judge is one we can depend on to produce the outcomes the law and the Constitution prescribe. Neil Gorsuch is exactly that sort of judge, and deserves a smooth and speedy confirmation.
In an recent article in Foreign Policy magazine, author Trita Parsi wants us to believe that Irans proxy wars [are] a figment of Americas imagination. He brushes off the statements of newly minted Secretary of Defense James Mattisa career Marine, four star general and universally lauded military expertas hyperbole.

Interestingly, Parsi neglects to mention Irans long-held position as the leading state sponsor of terrorism. At a time when facts are at a premium, let's assess the stark realities of the Iranian regime and the severe threat it poses to global security.

Iran is responsible for the death of more than 1,000 U.S. service members, and the catastrophic injuries of countless more through its financial support, provision of weapons and training of terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and across the Gulf states.

A July 2012 U.S. court case confirmed Irans integral role in the 1983 Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut; the deadliest attack against Americans before 9/11, this truck bombing killed 241 Americans. This support has continued for decades.

Following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iran supported, trained, and funded Shiite insurgents to target American troops, supplying them with deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the top killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.

And in sworn testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2008, General David Petraeus said, Irans activities have been particularly harmful in Iraq, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories and Afghanistan. In each location, Tehran has, to varying degrees, fueled proxy wars in an effort to increase its influence and pursue its regional ambitions.

And just last year President Barack Obama echoed that sentiment saying, We remain steadfast in opposing Irans destabilizing behavior elsewhere, including its threats against Israel and our Gulf partners, and its support for violent proxies in places like Syria and Yemen.

In the wake of the nuclear deal, the Iranian economy has benefitted greatly from lifted sanctions. Unfortunately, recent reporting confirms that the biggest benefactor has not been the Iranian people but instead is the Iranian government, which is still controlled by the Ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a terrorist organization sanctioned by the U.S. and international community.

This infusion of cash, since the lifting of sanctions, has only further enabled and emboldened Iran in its hegemonic efforts.

Recent evidence shows that Iran is exploiting this opportunity to establish a Shi'ite crescent stretching from the Afghan border to the Mediterranean Sea.

Reuters reports that for the first time, Tehran could exert authority over a vast sweep of the Middle East and gain the upper hand over its Sunni rivals.

Further proof comes in the form of reports that in recent months Iran has increased the pace of weapons transfers to the Houthis in Yemen.

In October alone, the U.S. seized five weapons shipments at sea bound for Yemen from Iran. The U.S. military believes Iran supplied the cruise missiles the Houthis fired at U.S. naval vessels off the coast of Yemen that month in an unprecedented escalation of the conflict.

Perhaps the most glaring example of all, however, is Iranian support for Hezbollah. Hezbollahs founding manifesto openly pledges loyalty to Irans Ayatollah and just this past June, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah defiantly declared: We are open about the fact that Hezbollah's budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

There is no shortage of examples or evidence, no lack of statements from leading government officials. Iran is unabashedly encouraging proxy wars throughout the Middle East. And the current nuclear deal provides a terrorism slush fund to increase those actions.

Rather than attempt to deny the Iranian regimes transparent role in waging destructive proxy wars across the Middle East, or cast blame on other Gulf states, we must accept the facts and recommit ourselves to fight all terrorists and those who would support them.
President Trump is already set to move decisively on the economy than his predecessor, but he must scale huge hurdles to accomplish 3 to 4 percent economic growth. Why? Because radical policy changes will be required. And that's tough to do even in this era of aggressive executive orders.

House Republican leaders are working on a corporate tax reform plan that will close loopholes, lower rates to internationally competitive levels and shift part of the tax burden onto imports. Their plan has a decent chance of winning enough bipartisan support in the Senate but much more needs to be done.

Still many large businesses, and most small ones, are organized as limited liability corporations and pay taxes through the personal tax codeafter corporate tax reform they would be saddled with effective rates above 40 percent while their corporate rivals pay half that rate or less.

Congress only has so much tax writing bandwidth, and personal tax reform may be booted into next year. Also, Treasury Secretary-designate Steven Mnuchin has stated that upper income individuals will not see a reduction in their overall tax burden but that they pay more than 80 percent of the personal income taxes. Hence it remains a puzzle as to how taxes can be meaningfully cut to stimulate growth.

Whenever and whatever Congress ultimately decides, genuine tax relief will require bigger deficits. Those are an anathema to many Republicans and in any case dont guarantee growth.

President George W. Bush slashed personal income taxes, President Barack Obama expanded entitlements and both relied in some considerable measure on bigger deficits as opposed to pruning spending elsewhere. Yet, each presided over moribund recoveries.

Trade deficits with China and on oil directly subtract $500 billion annually from the demand for American made goods and services, kill millions of jobs, stifle R&D and tax growth.

Confronting China on trade with a 45 percent tariff alone wont get Beijing to stop undervaluing its currency, subsidizing exports and cease blocking market access for American-made goods and services. It can push back by harassing U.S. companies with operations in China and imposing new barriers on U.S. products, and more broadly by squeezing Taiwan, upping the ante on militarization of the South China Sea and further enabling North Korea.

Trump must gird for a broad crisis with China, deploy the full range of Americas geopolitical and economic assets and compel Beijing to reckon with the fact that their shaky economy cannot withstand an all front confrontation with the United States without risking the Communist Partys grip on power.

Energy and Interior Departments committed to opening up drilling in the eastern Gulf and off the Atlantic and Pacific Coastsand ending the endless federal harassment of shale producerscould make America energy independent. However, as with many other issues, the lack of 60 Republican votes in the Senate will require guerrilla warfare to accomplish the results American voters deserve for awarding Trump the presidency.

On the supply side, its a lot more expensive to start a business and make things in America than it was in the 1980s and 90s, because of the growth of the regulatory state. Just compliance with labor market, health care, financial, environmental regulations and the like require hundreds of thousands of employees and cost businesses billions of dollars.

Imposing an efficacy test on regulationsrequiring just what is absolutely needed to accomplish legitimate goals for protecting workers, the environment, consumers and financial stability, and then jettisoning the restshould be the overarching objective as Trumps cabinet goes to work at Labor, EPA, Treasury and elsewhere in the far flung federal regulatory apparatus.

A good deal of what Obama imposed was by fiatexecutive orders that can now be repealed. However, he also imposed overly aggressive and burdensome regulations established under statutes, and those are more difficult and time consuming to nix.

Just as the law required the Obama administration to publish and take public comment on proposed regulations before imposing new rulesand then endure legal challenges from businesses and Republican state officialsthe Trump administration will have to repeat those steps and face litigation from environmental groups, labor unions and Democratic governors.

All can be axed or reshaped by congress, but the Trump administration can expect a pitched battle from progressive Senate Democrats dedicated to remaking the American economy in the low-growth, high unemployment model of continental Europe.

After losing the presidential election, muffing the opportunity to capture the Senate and managing to hold only 16 state governorshipsnot to mention their minority standing in the House and most state legislatureswe likely wont be hearing Obama pontificating on the sidelines that elections have consequences. Instead, we can expect the only remaining consequential Democratsthose who can filibuster against the popular will in the Senateto rely on the 60 vote rule to try to run out the clock until the 2020 presidential elections.

In the end, Republicans in Congress may have to resort to a grand budget reconciliation billor for their senators to reluctantly vote to suspend the 60 vote ruleto push through a panoply of reforms, and Trump will have to marshal public support for radical measures to overcome a barrage of criticism and protests from liberal politicians and the media.

Bigger than his vision and knack for picking competent executives will be his salesmanship.

Americas first dealmaker is not a man inclined to small deeds, and these will be the measure of his presidency.
EXCLUSIVE: In his first television interview as Homeland Security secretary, retired four-star Marine Gen. John F. Kelly told Fox News he wants the U.S.-Mexico border wall finished in two years  setting an ambitious schedule for the project ordered last week by President Trump.

"The wall will be built where it's needed first, and then it will be filled in. That's the way I look at it," Kelly said. "I really hope to have it done within the next two years."

Fox News traveled with Kelly in McAllen, Texas, on Wednesday where he saw first-hand the challenges for Border Patrol agents. The Rio Grande Valley, known as the "RGV sector," is among the busiest. On any given day, Border Patrol agents pick up at least 600 people who have crossed the Mexican border, entering the U.S. illegally.

Those personnel, he explained, are all part of the broader plan for securing the border.

"Any discussion about the protection of our southwest border involves discussion of physical barriers but also of technological sensors, things like that, he said. But it's a layered approach, and its got to be backed up by great men and women who are going to make sure that the wall is intact."

But first, the department faces the tough task of funding  and then building  what would be the largest-ever construction project undertaken by the president who made his name in real estate.

Kelly, who was tasked by the presidents executive order with overseeing the planning and construction of the wall, echoed Trump in saying they already have the authority under existing law.

We're looking at the money aspect, he acknowledged. But he said the White House is working with Congress on the timetable.

I think the funding will come relatively quickly and like I said, we will build it where it's needed first as identified by the men and women who work the border," Kelly emphasized.

Kelly said it will be only a matter of months before construction begins.

Kelly also said he supported a "surge" of resources to the border so that processing those who cross illegally can happen in a matter of weeks, not "600 plus days."

"If we could surge the court proceedings -- immigration court proceedings on the border -- and within the law, do it very rapidly ... I think that alone would act as a huge deterrent for people who are considering making the trip up," he said.

As for hostility to the wall from Mexico, Kelly said the safety of Americans comes first, though he wants to build a partnership on shared border issues. "I'd really like to establish a relationship on this, on the other side. It would be a mutually beneficial relationship."

Kelly also defended his agents in the wake of last weeks controversial executive order suspending the refugee program and restricting travel from seven mostly Muslim countries. As his agency came under fire over the weekend, he said the department worked to verify reports of mistreatment, and could not. Kelly suggested critics had blown the issue out of proportion.

"Mr. Trump is not loved by everyone in America, and I think this very rapid succession of decisions, I don't think the American public is really all that used to people making decisions, he said. I really don't think they're used to people that say things on the campaign trail actually turning them into action."

Asked if the pace had come as a "shock" to the public, Kelly said: "Yes, I think so. But I will tell you the men and women of Homeland Security did a great job out on the front lines, in this case mostly at the airports. People were treated with dignity and respect."

Kelly knocked down media reports that he first learned of the executive order by watching television, the day it was signed, a story first reported by the New York Times: "As soon as I was confirmed which was on Friday a couple of weeks ago, inauguration day, I knew that they were being developed.

Asked if he was "blindsided by the order," Kelly said, "Not at all. I saw the initial couple of cuts on them probably on Tuesday maybe Thursday, knew it was coming soon and then it came. "

After more than 45 years of service, Kelly retired last year, and did not plan a return to Washington or full-time employment. He said it all changed with a cold call from the transition team when he and his wife Karen were relaxing.

Kelly was initially skeptical about the caller, who is now White House chief of staff.

"We were sitting on the couch when I got the original call on a Saturday afternoon and Reince Priebus called me, he said. I don't know him. Once he convinced me it was really Reince Priebus, he said, Would you come up and talk to Mr. Trump, he'd like to talk to you about a position in the administration. And I said, I can do that, I'll be up tomorrow.

He told his wife he thought the Trump administration was about to offer him a job.

She said, take it, your whole life, our whole life, the Kelly family is a life of service."
The Trump administration could soon declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, a move that would greatly restrict the controversial groups global reach and would come despite its insistence that it has peaceful intentions.

Trump himself was often critical of President Obamas outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood, and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has proposed a bill to call for declaring the Brotherhood a terror organization. In the past, it has been accused of supporting terrorist groups around the world, and several countries, including Muslim nations, have banned them.

If the U.S. declares the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, it would make it a criminal act for Americans to fund the group, ban banks from processing money for it, bar people with ties to the group from coming to the United States and make it easier to deport immigrants who have worked with the organization.

It is time to call this enemy by its name and speak with clarity and moral authority, Cruz said in a statement introducing the bill.

It is time to call this enemy by its name and speak with clarity and moral authority.  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas

The Brotherhoods critics include prominent Muslim leaders in the U.S. and around the world, with prominent sheikhs of both Shia and Sunni Muslim groups accusing it of engaging in terrorism.

President Trump must go ahead with his listing of the Brotherhood, Sheikh Mohammed el Hajj Hassan, founder of the American-Muslim Alliance, told Fox News. This group since its inception practiced killing crimes and terror attacks in the Arab world. In Egypt, Syria, Tunisia and other countries their clerics call for violence.

Lebanese Sunni Sheikh Hasan Moreib, in remarks to Fox News translated from Arabic, also praised an Egyptian crackdown against the Brotherhood because, "the people there realized the danger of the Muslim brotherhood, and noted that the Brotherhood had gone down a bloody path that offended the Islamic religion and community.

But the head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Mohammed Hikmat Walid, insisted that the Brotherhood is a peaceful organization and that Cruzs bill is unjust and not based on true facts.

The Muslim Brotherhood is an organization that preaches moderate Islam in peaceful means, he said. We stand firmly against extremism and terrorism and we share common values such as democracy, freedom and pluralism with the rest of the free world. Also, [the bill] will enhance extremism throughout the Islamic world.

Whatever its current posture, the Muslim Brotherhood has been steeped in controversy  and linked to violence  for decades. It was formed in Egypt in the 1920s with the stated goal of establishing a worldwide Islamic Caliphate, or empire ruled under Sharia law. The Brotherhoods motto reads in part: the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; death for the sake of Allah is our wish.

Perhaps most notably, it was militants from a Muslim Brotherhood spin-off that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, shortly after Sadat had sought peace with Israel.

The Palestinian terror group Hamas was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members and has been responsible for hundreds of terror acts in Israel that have claimed the lives of hundreds of civilians, including Americans.

Russia and the Syrian regime consider the Brotherhood a terror group. Cruzs bill notes that Syria banned it in 1980, following a wave of assassinations targeting government officials and the massacre of 83 [Syrian] military cadets in Aleppo.

Several U.S. allies  Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia  have also declared the Brotherhood a terror group.

Egypt declared it a terror group in 2013 after the government blamed it for a bombing of a police headquarters that killed 16. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood denied involvement and condemned the attack.

The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia declared it a terror group in 2014 as part of a broader push to contain radical Islam.

Asked about those designations, Walid said he hoped those countries would reconsider the ban on his group.

We think that the decision taken by those countries was hasty and unwise and we call upon them to reevaluate their decision. Every now and again, we hear unofficial leaks indicating that those countries are reconsidering this matter, he said.

Despite the Brotherhoods protestations, the Trump administration has signaled it is taking a hard line with the group.

In his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mentioned the group in the same breath as Al Qaeda, referring to agents of radical Islam like Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood and certain elements within Iran.

As far back as 2012, Trump condemned the Muslim Brotherhood, penning more than two dozen tweets critical of President Obamas friendly foreign policy toward the group.

This is a total disaster, Trump wrote in 2012 when news broke that the Obama administration would send 20 F-16s fighter planes to Egypt after Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, became president. Morsi had already begun rapidly consolidating power by imprisoning critics and replacing judges, leading critics to fear he was steering the powerful Arab nation toward Islamization.

Morsi was overthrown in a 2012 military coup and has been replaced by then-Army Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has imprisoned and executed Brotherhood leaders after they were found guilty, often in mass trials. Morsi himself was convicted of several crimes, including inciting violence and torturing protesters. His initial sentence of death was overturned, but he remains in prison awaiting a new trial.

Al-Sisi, a staunch critic of the Muslim Brotherhood who later stood for election and won, spoke with Trump by phone on Jan. 23.

Asked about Cruzs bill, the Brotherhood leader said, we will choose lawful ways to resist this bill and we believe the American constitution and system will defeat this unfair bill.

Several foreign policy experts interviewed by Fox News said labeling the whole Muslim Brotherhood terrorist would be a mistake.

A lot of the chapters are reasonably moderate You have to be very, very careful to make sure you dont call everybody in sight a terrorist, said Anthony Cordesman, who has served as a consultant for the State and Defense departments and is chair emeritus at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

While people and groups linked to the Brotherhood have been involved in terrorist activity for decades, Doug Bandow, a Cato Institute senior fellow and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, pointed out that the Brotherhood has never been accused of attempting to attack the United States.

Much of the Brotherhoods troubling activity has been focused in Egypt. Leading Muslim Brotherhood member Sayyid Qutb, for instance, studied in the United States where he became disgusted with what he perceived as loose morals. In the 1950s and 60s, he espoused spreading Sharia Law to guide societies worldwide, including the United States. He was later executed in Egypt for allegedly plotting the assassination of the relatively secular Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Walid and others bristle at the overall organization being defined by individual members like Qutb.

Sayyid Qutb is not the official thinker of the movement, Walid said. We highly regard the human values of the American Society although we dont agree on some of its moral practices. Our point of view regarding spreading Islam, it is only through peaceful means.

But the two American Muslim leaders interviewed  despite being on opposite sides of the Sunni-Shia rift tearing the Islamic world apart  view it differently.

Lebanese Sunni sheikh Moreib said that the Brotherhood had adopted the views of Qutb, and that this path is the mothership for all the radical groups that distort the real Islamic view.

He did not comment on whether the U.S. should label it a terror group, calling that the U.S. government's decision. But American Shiite Sheikh Mohammed el Hajj Hassan wrote a letter to Donald Trump calling for the group to be listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Terrorism is the enemy of the whole humanity, including Muslims; these Takfiri [apostate] terrorist organizations distort the real image of Islam and offen[d] Muslims - who want to live in peace and security with all segments of the society, he wrote.

Additional reporting for this article provided by the Fox News Investigative Unit
The swamp is finding ways to mire the new president in controversy.

A pair of leaks about Donald Trumps conversations with foreign leaders is extraordinary, because these are among the most closely held secrets in government. The information was furnished to the Washington Post and the AP in a clear effort to embarrass the president. And it worked.

Putting aside for a moment what Trump said to the leaders of Australia and Mexico, how can any president function if he cant hold confidential conversations with his counterparts on the world stage?

These stories were about the bureaucracy striking back. One or more people, in either the State Department or the White House, wanted to damage Trump by portraying him as a rampaging bull breaking the diplomatic china. And this was done by selectively providing excerpts of the private calls. We dont know much about the tone or the context.

Theyre hot news stories, of course, but the motivation of the leakers is pretty transparent.

Now its not that unusual for an administration to provide authorized leaks about a presidents encounters with foreign leaders to paint him in a positive light. But I cant recall another case in which unnamed sources tried to undermine a president by putting out such specifics.

Maybe thats why Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told employees yesterday that they need to put aside their personal political beliefs even if they wanted a different outcome in the election. And why the president, when he wasnt praying for Arnold Schwarzeneggers ratings, told the National Prayer Breakfast:

When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. They're tough. We have to be tough. It's time we we're going to be a little tough, folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually.

In one case, the Post reported:

President Trump blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win, according to senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it.

At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day  including Russian President Vladimir Putin  and that this was the worst call by far.Trump, who one day earlier had signed an executive order temporarily barring the admission of refugees, complained that he was going to get killed politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the next Boston bombers.



In the other, the AP actually obtained a document:

President Donald Trump warned in a phone call with his Mexican counterpart that he was ready to send U.S. troops to stop bad hombres down there unless the Mexican military does more to control them, according to an excerpt of a transcript of the conversation obtained by The Associated Press

The excerpt offers a rare and striking look at how the new president is conducting diplomacy behind closed doors. Trump's remarks suggest he is using the same tough and blunt talk with world leaders that he used to rally crowds on the campaign trail.

Now both accounts are jarring. And White House officials have scrambled to provide context. One source told CNN, for instance, that Trump was a bit fatigued by the time he got to the call with Turnbull. And the AP quoted a White House official in a followup piece as saying Trumps remarks about sending troops to Mexico was lighthearted.

That is one weakness of such stories, that we dont know what tone was taken.

But the Australia issue is serious. Trump tweeted Wednesday night: Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!

Trump is also getting flak from the unnamed sources at the Pentagon as well in the wake of the raid in Yemen, first planned by the Obama administration, that killed a Navy SEAL:

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.

We need to fully investigate what happened, of course, but its rather remarkable that military officials are using the press to second-guess the commander-in-chief.

All this underscores the fact that Trump, more so than most new presidents, has to deal with hostile elements within the governmenta situation that can prompt a White House to become more secretive. The challenge for Tillerson, Jim Mattis and other new Cabinet chiefs will be to instill a sense of loyalty among their troops.
It was 1986 and Los Angeles was desperate to curb the high recidivism rate of illegal immigrants in its jail who had been costing taxpayers millions every year.

A solution was devised for what one RAND study later called a revolving door for criminal aliens: have a federal agent work out of the nations largest jail to identify illegal immigrants and ensure repeat offenders, some of them violent felons, were placed on a bus bound for the border instead of released into the community.

For roughly 16 years, Los Angeles did exactly that, hosting federal immigration officers at the jail. This, combined with promises of more agents at the border, was supposed to tackle the illegal immigration problem.

It didn't work out that way. The all-but-forgotten Los Angeles program underscores a striking contrast with the level of cooperation today.

Thirty years later, policies have taken a 180-degree turn. Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned its jail office after 9/11 because of a redeployment to fight terrorism. A state measure passed by ballot vote in 1994 barring illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits was overturned by a federal court after intense lobbying by immigrants rights groups with increasing political clout. In 2015, Los Angeles County enacted an official policy to not ask people about immigration status, a policy the city technically had enacted in 1979.

A showdown with President Trump appears inevitable, as the sheriffs office maintains its dont ask approach.

We're not providing them any longer with any lists of individuals that are being released. It's up to ICE agents to vet through that process and they identify the inmates they are interested in, Assistant Sheriff Kelly Harrington declared following a recent meeting of the Board of Supervisors to discuss the formation of a new Office of Immigrant Affairs to aid immigrants in obtaining public services.

Sheriff Jim McDonnell added: My deputies will not initiate any police activity nor arrest anyone based solely on their immigration status. It's our promise, it's written in our department policy and it's the law.

No California law prohibits law enforcement from arresting a person for being in the state illegally, but a pair of laws enacted in 2013 and 2016 gives immigrants a right to refuse a police interview and law enforcement was given the discretion to cooperate with federal immigration officials by detaining an individual on the basis of an immigration hold after that individual becomes eligible for release from custody.

The earlier law was fueled by allegations of excessive wait times while the government received no federal compensation.

Los Angeles spent $26 million a year holding immigrants for ICE before 2012, said Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute. For the entire state, it was $65 million. The feds would drag their feet and had no reason to hurry and the state would be on the hook for the extra money. So the state decided they had enough of that.

The Sheriff's Department says it is doing its best to comply with all laws.

People believe we have this broad ability to enforce all these laws, but there is case law that says what we can and cannot do, said Sheriff's Capt. Jeff Scroggin. Federal case law says local law enforcement has no jurisdiction over a person's immigration status because it is a civil action of the U.S. government.

A Different Era

Tensions werent always so high. Former Los Angeles County Supervisor and reserve police officer Michael Antonovich, one of the creators of the system to put immigration agents at the jail, said law enforcement and local lawmakers years ago saw the impact illegal immigration had on the economy and safety.

We knew we had to work together to stop this because it wasn't fair to the taxpayers, he said. We were working cooperatively for one goal  to keep communities safe.

Deportable immigrants made up 11 percent of the jail population or 22,000 people in 1990, a figure that rose to 17 percent in 1995, according to the 2004 RAND study. In 2000, $2.3 million in federal funds were awarded for a computer and fingerprinting system to catalog illegal immigrants, focusing on previously deported felons. Within one year, 40 percent of the immigrants identified in 1990 and 1995 had been rearrested.

These findings gave credence to views that deportable aliens were imposing a substantial burden on the local criminal justice system, the study said.

Despite great optimism in Los Angeles for the program  which had spread nationwide  there were signs then that the state of California would not be a willing partner.

California has done little to help the INS streamline the Institutional Removal Program process beyond the initial program enhancements, according to a 2002 audit by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the predecessor to todays federal immigration agencies. As a result, INS agents must maintain an active presence at 11 intake facilities dispersed throughout the state over an area roughly 120,000 square miles in size.

Criticism also went to the INS, which did not effectively manage the program and pulled immigration agents away from their duties to work on other types of cases. A severe personnel shortage ensued resulting in the release of targeted immigrants, including aggravated felons.

Climate of Division

As California shifted more to the left, the already antiquated notion of cooperation among law enforcement, local lawmakers, the state Legislature and the U.S. government evaporated. The resistance has only deepened in recent years. Now, taxpayers will be funding a Los Angeles government agency that gives illegal immigrants access to free legal services to fight deportation. Law enforcement will be monitored to make sure they adhere to immigrant-friendly policies.

Police agencies across the state have put out the message that they are interested in solving crime and not acting as a deportation force.

We want everybody to come to us and help us with crime tips, thats why we dont care about immigration status, Scroggin said. We need the cooperation of the public in general. We have 4,000 miles to patrol.

Even though the ICE office space is long gone, ICE agents are welcome to come into the jail and access computers and printouts that reveal inmate release data. But the cooperation is limited.

Its up to ICE to decide if the person fits the bill to deport or detain, Scroggin said. We make the list available, but we arent federal immigration agents. We definitely want violent felons off the streets, but once the sentence is done and charges dropped, we have no other option to release them without suffering potential liability issues.

Liabilities could include excess medical costs or lawsuits if the inmate is harmed while waiting for ICE.

All of this is totally irresponsible, Antonovich countered. Law enforcement personnel take an oath to support the federal and state constitutions. Immigration is a federal policy. [California] is like Jefferson Davis where they are going to form their own Confederacy and rebel against the federal government. Trump is like Abraham Lincoln in trying to stop this.
Japan, which has a consistent trade surplus with the U.S., is putting the finishing touches on a package that it claims will create 700,000 jobs in the U.S. and help create a $450-billion market, Reuters reported, citing government sources familiar with the plans.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Trump are expected to meet on Feb. 10. Major Japanese newspapers cited a draft of the proposal that calls for cooperation on building high-speed trains in the U.S. northeast, Texas and California. The two sides would also jointly develop artificial intelligence, robotics, space and Internet technology.

The Japanese may use money from its foreign exchange reserves to fund the package, Reuters reported.

TRUMP WALKS BACK ON SUPPORT OF NEW ISRAEL SETTLEMENTS

On a broader basis, the two countries would cooperate in building liquefied natural gas facilities in Asia to help expand exports of U.S. natural gas and work together to expand nuclear energy-related sales.

The aim appears to be to turn what could potentially be a major crisis over trade friction into a business opportunity for both sides.

Abe's proposed public-private initiative is intended to create several hundred thousand jobs, the reports said Thursday, and involve $150 billion in new investment in U.S. infrastructure from Japanese government and private sources over the next decade.

Asked in parliament about his plans for talks with Trump, Abe said Japanese companies are making significant contributions to the U.S. economy.

TRUMP ADMINISTRAITION SET TO TAKE ON DODD-FRANK LAW

"Toyota has been making big investments in the U.S. It has built big factories, created jobs. If they make profits, their salaries increase and the benefits for Japan also grow. It's important for each of us to think that way," Abe said. "If the United States grows, without a doubt that benefits Japan."

Overall, the expectation is that the plan would generate $450 billion in new business.

The government pension fund may invest in the projects, the reports said. Such investments can raise controversy over risk management of funds relied upon by millions of people in their retirement.

Earlier this week, Abe and other officials rejected accusations by Trump that Japan is deliberately seeking to devalue the yen to help its export sector.

Abe has been grilled repeatedly in parliament over Trump's rejection of a regional trade initiative, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and over how he plans to handle friction over trade, saying he believed it was possible to strike a bilateral agreement with the Trump administration.

Trump's complaints over Japanese not buying many U.S.-made cars drew a stern response from Akio Toyoda, president of Toyota Motor Corp.

"We are already producing extremely large numbers of cars in the U.S. We are one of American manufacturers, aren't we? I hope President Trump understands that," he told reporters at an event Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
A Maryland judge has dismissed first lady Melania Trump's libel lawsuit against Britain's Daily Mail newspaper over an article that contained insinuations that she had worked as an escort.

Court records show that Montgomery County Circuit Judge Sharon Burrell ruled Thursday to dismiss the suit against Mail Media Inc., the corporation that publishes the Daily Mail's website. The Daily Mail's argument centered on whether the lawsuit should have been filed in Maryland and whether Trump was suing the correct corporate entity.

Trump also has filed a lawsuit against the paper in London.

The first lady's libel suit against blogger Webster Tarpley of Gaithersburg for reporting the escort rumors was allowed to move ahead last week.

She filed the lawsuit in Rockville in September, after both Tarpley and the Daily Mail issued retractions.
EXCLUSIVE: In its last year in office, the Obama Administration showered at least some $9.2 billion on the United Nations and its sprawling array of organizations, according to a document recently posted on the State Department website.

The total is gleaned from a document that summarizes U.S. government spending for international organizations, and is about 20 per cent higher than the $7.7 billion figure given out by State for 2010, before the Obama Administration abruptly quit providing any overall tally for its U.N. support.

The overall U.S. bill for international organizations of every stripe is just under $10.5 billion, meaning that U.N. organizations absorb about 88 per cent of such U.S. government spending.

The new tally includes nearly $360 million for the controversial United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, which is regularly accused of inculcating violent anti-Israel attitudes and even abetting terrorist attacks on Israel, which it strongly denies.

That is nearly a 50 per cent jump over the $238.3 million UNRWA got from the U.S. in 2010.

(Last week, the Trump Administration froze a last-minute, $221 million donation by the Obama Administration that was intended for the Palestinian Authority.)

The UNRWA numbers, along with all the rest of the U.N. donations, are likely to come under fierce scrutiny in the weeks ahead, both from the Trump Administration, which wants to take a tough look at aligning its U.N. spending with national interests, and from Congress, which is frustrated by U.N. bloat and inefficiency, and often maddened by its anti-Israel biases.

At the same time, U.N. appeals for funds, especially humanitarian money to deal with a swamp of international crises and conflicts, are still on the rise. On Jan. 31, for example, UNICEF announced a new, $3.4 billion appeal, including $1.4 billion slated for Syria and surrounding countries, that the agency says will target some 535 million children next year.

But from a U.S. point of view, there is a new sheriff in town, noted Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman from Florida and a U.N. supporter who testified on Feb. 1 , along with some sharp U.N. critics, before a subcommittee hearing of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

The hearing focused on the U.N.s anti-Israel biases, and specifically on UNRWA, whose recent alleged misdeeds were laid out in detail by Hillel Neuer, executive director of the Geneva-based U.N. Watch, who told the legislators that the U.S. Congress is the one reliable force that can hold the U.N. to account.

That is, if the figures they see can be believed. Critics are already noting that the State Department figures for U.N. support are less than the full story-- at least $500 million in contributions to the U.N.-sponsored Green Climate Fund, which Congress had opposed, are missingand State itself admits that not all Executive Branch agencies provided information for inclusion in this report.

With the Green Climate Fund money included, the 2016 figure would amount to a nearly 26 per cent hike in U.N. support over 2010 levels. (Another $500 million donation to the Green Climate Fund was also blocked at the last minute by the Trump Administration.)

This report was probably put together in hurried fashion, observes Brett Schaefer, an expert on U.N. funding at the conservative Heritage Foundation. He notes that its appearance was likely prompted by a congressional spending resolution last December that demanded such figures once again be made public.

The State Department website now includes similarly disorganized spending numbers for 2015when overall spending on international organizations hit $10.8 billionand links to more organized reports on spending that stretch back to 2007.

CLICK HERE FOR THE DOCUMENTS

Pulling exact totals out of the State Department paperwork is a daunting task, as it does not separate U.N. organizations and other international organizations that the U.S. voluntarily and involuntarily funds. In some cases, getting the numbers also involves analyzing ostensibly non-U.N. grants where the money is then returned, via partnerships, to U.N. organizations.

The tallies, however, are virtually guaranteed never to match with their U.N. equivalents. The State Department figures cover the governments fiscal year: October 1, 2015 to September 30, 2016. U.N. Secretariat biennial budgets run from January 1 to December 31 each year. U.N. annual peacekeeping budgets are prepared on a cycle from July 1 to June 30. Other U.N. organizations may also vary.

Thus, for 2014the latest year covered on a U.N. website for its top inter-agency coordinating bodytotal U.S. contributions to the U.N. alone are tallied at $10.067 billion.

The State Department report for fiscal 2014 lists total U.S. contributions to all international organizations at about $7.4 billion.

The U.S. spent about $2.6 billion on U.N. peacekeeping in fiscal 2016, according to the State Department. That would be 32.7 percent of the $7.9 billion U.N. peacekeeping budget for July 2016 to June 30 2017much more than the 28.57 per cent it is assessed for its peacekeeping dues, and which many U.S. legislators already consider greatly excessive.

(The same $2.6 billion would be 31 per cent of the previous 2015-2016 peacekeeping budget of $8.3 billion.)

Whatever the truth of the numbers, all of that money is likely to come under the skeptical microscope of the Trump Administration, which is contemplating a tough review of any U.N. spending that it deems outside the national interestincluding steep cuts to voluntary funding beyond U.S. dues-paying minimums.

UNRWA in particular may face harsh scrutiny. A foretaste was provided at the Feb. 1 subcommittee hearing, where UN Watch in particular singled out the agency in a 130-page report entitled Poisoning Palestinian Children.

The UN Watch document cites more than 40 Facebook pages that it claims were operated by school teachers, principals and other employees of UNRWA, which it charges incite to terrorism or anti-Semitism. UNRWA has vigorously denied such charges in the past.

UN Watch director Neuer claimed before the legislators that the UNRWA indictment was only part of a vast infrastructure the U.N. has constructed to demonize Israel.

There are plenty of other targets in the State Department tallies. To name one: $67.9 million was spent in 2016 for the United Nations Population Fund, which has become an automatic pinata when pro-life Republican Administrations are in power, and the opposite under Democrats.

In 2010, the Obama Administration gave the Population Fund $51.4 million, according to the State Department, which means the figure has been boosted by nearly a third.

But two years earlier, the number was zero. And in his first week in office, President Trump announced restoration of the so-called Mexico City Policy for global health assistance that cuts U.S. funding for non-government organizations that offer abortion counselling or advocate for abortion rights in foreign countries. Like most U.N. organizations, the Population Fund is dependent on local organizations to carry out its family planning work.

The fuel for many other impassioned battles can be seen in the State Department numbes. In 2010, for example, the International Organization for Migration, devoted to humane and orderly migration, got $272.8 million from the U.S.

In 2016, now a full-fledged U.N. agency, it got $477.2 million, much of it in response to the Syria crisisupheaval which, in turn, has helped prompt a rethinking of immigration policies by the Trump Administration.

George Russell is Editor-at-Large of Fox News. He is reachable on Twitter at @GeorgeRussell and on Facebook at Facebook.com/George.Russell
Vice President Mike Pence defended President Donald Trump's executive order halting immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries Thursday, telling Fox News' Sean Hannity that "any fair-minded person" would understand the directive's intent.

"What President Trump has done is essentially impose a pause on countries that have been compromised by terrorism so that we can evaluate the screening process and establish ... extreme vetting so that people coming in to this country dont represent a threat to our families and our communities," Pence said on "Hannity."

Pence added that the order was "clearly not a Muslim ban" and "not in any way associated with religion."

JUDGE ORDERS HALT TO TRUMP'S BAN FOR IMMIGRANT VISA HOLDERS

The vice president also defended the order's implementation, which led to dozens of travelers being detained at U.S. airports while thousands protested in major cities.

"On the very day the executive order was implemented ... there were hundreds of thousands of people [who] came in from countries all over the world into the United States and, I think, more than 100 were detained for addition questioning," Pence said. "That is a small price to pay for the security of the American people."

The vice president also addressed Trump's relationship with allied leaders, one day after reports surfaced that the president had harsh words for Australia Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over an agreement on refugees.

WHITE HOUSE BLASTS 'HORRIBLE' OBAMA-ERA REFUGEE DEAL WITH AUSTRALIA -- BUT MAY HONOR IT

Pence did not specifically address the call with Turnbull, but did say that Trump was "speaking the way he always does: respectfully, firmly, directly.

"Frankly," Pence added, "I think the world welcomes it."
Betsy DeVos cleared a major hurdle in the Senate Friday in her bid to become the next Education secretary  but likely will need Vice President Pences help getting over the finish line next week.

The billionaire Republican donor and school choice activist has emerged as one of President Trumps most controversial Cabinet nominees, with two Republican senators having announced they will join Democrats in opposition on the final vote.

Both those senators  Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska  went along with advancing her nomination early Friday morning by voting to end debate. The 52-48 vote was along party lines.

But multiple Senate sources tell Fox News they expect the final confirmation vote, coming as early as Monday, to split 50-50  with Collins, Murkowski and all 48 Democratic senators voting against DeVos.

This would put the pressure on Pence to cast a historic tie-breaking vote.

DeVos supporters indeed are expecting Pence to do so, giving the nominee the necessary 51 votes to win confirmation. If he does, it would mark the first time in history a vice president has voted to break a tie to confirm a Cabinet officer.

The procedural gymnastics come as the Trump Cabinet confirmation process gets increasingly tied up in a complex partisan battle, related not only to the nominees themselves but some of Trumps more controversial executive actions and simmering resentment over the way Republicans treated nominees under the Obama administration.

DeVos, though, has come under fierce criticism from labor unions, who accuse her of seeking to dismantle public education, given her history promoting charter schools.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York calls her "one of the worst nominees."

"Ms. Devos does not deserve to be secretary of education," he said.

At Tuesdays Senate education committee meeting on the nomination, Republican Chairman Lamar Alexander chided his Democratic colleagues.

I believe their concerns are misplaced, he said, arguing DeVos stance on the role of the federal government in local school systems aligns with what an overwhelming majority of senators voted for in replacing the controversial No Child Left Behind law in 2015.

The Tennessee senator urged colleagues to let the new president have his Cabinet choice.

A tie-breaking vote by the vice president would be rare on any matter, let alone a Cabinet pick.

The VP has not cast a tie-breaking vote at all in almost nine years. Then-Vice President Biden did not cast any such votes; then-Vice President Cheney was the last to break a tie, in a budget resolution vote in March 2008.

Fox News Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Rhode Island state lawmaker was fired from her job as a waitress after her employer said her political views hurt the restaurants reputation.

Raymond Burns, the owner of the Classic Cafe in Providence, said Thursday he warned Democratic Rep. Moira Walsh, of Providence, that her vocal political discussions during her shift was interfering with her work. He said the final straw was after the restaurant received a scathing online review.

Walsh maintains that she had never been told to stop talking politics with customers and said the negative review complained about her political beliefs, not her service. The review discouraged men from patronizing the Providence breakfast spot because of what it described as "anti-male" views she had expressed on the radio and on social media.

Walsh said she has worked at the Classic Cafe since she was a teenager and had been working there for eight years before she was fired.

His direct quote to me was, 'You know, we're very proud of everything that you're doing up at the State House, but your political views are affecting the business and we have to terminate your employment,'" she told WPRO-AM on Thursday.

According to the Providence Journal, Walsh said in a Facebook post: "See, since becoming a mouthpiece for those who are the voiceless, I've made a lot of enemies. I had a stranger write my first one star yelp review based not on my service, but on my political beliefs. I was fired ..."

Burns said in an email to the Associated Press it was not a case of political censorship or denial of her right to free speech," but he said her public comments were hurting business.

Walsh told the radio station that it all started with a posting she made on social media just before Christmas saying "all my holiday cheer is for women, femmes and trans. The rest of you boys can kick rocks."

Walsh took office last month after a surprising win over a longtime incumbent in last year's Democratic primary.

Her advocacy for raising the tipped minimum wage and her candid talk about her struggles as a waitress and 26-year-old single parent have attracted wide attention, including a profile on The Atlantic's website.

"Did my comments make men uncomfortable? Clearly," she said Thursday. "Social change comes at the price of comfort, and if you're agitated, it means it's working."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Trump administration imposed new sanctions Friday on nearly two-dozen individuals and companies in response to Irans recent missile tests, quickly moving to increase the pressure on the regime after putting Tehran on notice earlier this week.

The U.S. Navy also moved a destroyer into position off the coast of Yemen, amid deep concerns over Irans support for Shiite rebels there who recently attacked a Saudi naval vessel.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States," John E. Smith, the Treasury Department's acting sanctions chief, said in a statement.

The Treasury Department announced the additional sanction targets -- 13 individuals and 12 companies -- late Friday morning.

Those targeted include various agents, companies and associates involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. The named Iranian, Lebanese, Chinese and Emirati individuals and companies also are now blacklisted from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens.

The presidents national security team had previewed possible action earlier in the week, with National Security Adviser Michael Flynn saying Iran was on notice and Trump warning Friday morning on Twitter that Iran was playing with fire with its recent actions.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of Trump's term, reflect his administration's desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The move won praise from Republican allies in Congress.

This announcement makes clear that it is a new day in U.S.-Iran relations and that we will no longer tolerate Irans destabilizing behavior, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said in a statement. A coordinated, multi-faceted effort to pushback against a range of illicit Iranian behavior is long overdue.

Trumps team stepped up its approach toward Iran in the wake of ballistic missile tests and the recent attack on a Saudi naval vessel by Tehran-backed militants in Yemen.

Military officials told Fox News that Iran has conducted two recent missile tests, one on Dec. 6 and another this past Sunday.

Meanwhile, a defense official told Fox News that the USS Cole, the same warship attacked in Yemen in 2000, is now patrolling off the coast of that country in the Gulf of Aden.

A senior administration official said they are prepared for further sanctions against Iran.

None of the new sanctions announced Friday appear to reverse the Obama administration's suspension of sanctions as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, the action will almost surely increase tensions with Iran.

The Islamic republic has insisted that new sanctions violate the deal and that it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear program has been sharply curtailed. The U.S. and Western countries argue otherwise, noting that Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago. That agreement was concluded in parallel, but separately to the nuclear accord.

Shortly before Fridays announcement, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif defended his countrys actions, saying on Twitter: Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a critic of the Iran deal, praised Fridays announcement as a good start but warned the procurement networks targeted could be reconstituted.

The Trump administration should adopt ideas promoted by Congress that sanction key nodes of Iran's economy and the international companies involved in supporting Tehran's missile program. Unless the Iranian regime pays a severe price for its malign activities, they are unlikely to stop, he said in a statement.

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report
President Trump and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif sparred on Twitter early Friday as the president warned that the country is playing with fire in the wake of recent missile tests  and his administration prepares to announce new sanctions.

A White House source told Fox News the sanctions will be announced Friday morning.

After his administration put Iran on notice earlier this week, Trump fired his latest warning shot on Twitter, writing: Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!

Zarif swiftly posted a response, saying: Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense.

Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense. pic.twitter.com/TxlSEL8rjj  Javad Zarif (@JZarif) February 3, 2017

He also said Iran will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement.

We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement. pic.twitter.com/xwGquvqLvb  Javad Zarif (@JZarif) February 3, 2017

Under new sanctions, up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies reportedly could be penalized.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of Trump's term, reflect his administration's desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanction authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

Trumps team stepped up its rhetoric against Iran over ballistic missile tests and a recent attack on a Saudi naval vessel by Tehran-backed militants.

Military officials told Fox News that Iran actually has conducted two recent missile tests, one on Dec. 6 and another this past Sunday.

U.N. resolution 2231 calls on the Islamic Republic not to conduct such tests. The resolution bars Iran from conducting ballistic missile tests for eight years and went into effect on July 20, 2015, days after the landmark nuclear deal was agreed to in Vienna.

Fox News Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
President Trump met with top business leaders at the White House Friday on the heels of a positive monthly jobs reports, but also a still-simmering controversy surrounding his immigration executive order -- which has been criticized by some executives as harmful to their hiring practices.

The forum included CEOs from PepsiCo, SpaceX and General Motors, and was set up as part of an effort to give the private sector a greater voice in the new administration.

Were looking forward ... to discuss all the things that you think we can do to bring back our jobs, to get taxes even lower than were going to be cutting now  and to do what we have to do in terms of regulation, Trump said at the start of the meeting.

These are the biggest and best minds in the country and I really appreciate you being here, he said, adding that he hopes the group can meet on a monthly basis.

Trump also cited the latest monthly jobs report, which found the economy added 227,000 net new jobs last month, beating Wall Street estimates. The jobless rate ticked up from 4.7 percent to 4.8 percent as more people joined the workforce. Trump said at the meeting there is a "great spirit in the country right now." Trump said he was looking forward to discussing the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial regulation he intends to roll back.

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, who was chairing the group, said the forum had a full agenda, expected to cover economic strategy, women in the workforce, trade and infrastructure. Schwarzman also said that some of the immigration things would be discussed, but did not specify what he meant.

Its really important that we vocalize the non-governmental sector, and also importantly do it on a bipartisan basis  apparently a first in Washington, he said.

In a sign of the simmering tensions, though, one participant was missing.

The forum had been set to include Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. However, Kalanick stepped down from the forum Thursday, saying his participation had been misinterpreted as support for the administrations policies.

Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that, Kalanick said in a memo to employees.

Kalanick had come out forcefully against Trumps executive order restricting immigration from seven terror-prone countries last Friday. He said on Twitter that the order was against everything Uber stands for, and said it would affect thousands of drivers.

But a #DeleteUber push went viral on social media, after Uber stopped surge pricing near New York's JFK Airport as taxi cabs boycotted the airport to protest the order. Before he stepped down, Kalanick had said he would use his position on the council to try and change Trumps mind.

Axios reported that a phone call between Trump and Kalanick did not go well. A Trump source told the outlet that the view of Trumps inner circle was: If you want to cut off your access to the White House, f--- you.

Disney CEO Bob Igor also skipped the Friday meeting, according to The Hollywood Reporter. However, the reason given was a board meeting scheduled for months, not the controversy surrounding the executive order.

In a statement Thursday, the White House hailed the importance of an open dialogue with business leaders.

As a businessman himself, President Trump understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger, the White House said. The President looks forward to tomorrow's meeting with executives from some of our country's most successful companies and continuing an open line of communication with the business community to ensure more opportunities for all Americans."

But Trumps order has seen significant opposition from some in the business community, particularly traditionally liberal Silicon Valley companies. A group of Silicon Valley CEOs, including Uber, Alphabet (Google), Facebook, Microsoft and Apple, signed a draft letter earlier this week expressing concerns about the order.

We are concernedthat your recent executive order will affect many visa holders who work hard here in the United States and contribute to our countrys success, the letter said, according to a draft obtained by Recode. In a global economy, it is critical that we continue to attract the best and brightest from around the world.

Fox News Lesa Jansen contributed to this report.
President Trump on Thursday warned Israel that constructing new settlements may not be helpful to Middle East peace efforts despite--before taking office-- criticizing the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration also pulled back somewhat on its pledge to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

David Halperin, the executive director of the Israel Policy Forum, told the paper that Trumps move serves as a caution to Netanyahu.

Its a warning sign to the Israeli right that their celebration (of the new administration) may be premature, he said.

The New York Times called Trump's appeal to Israel a "startling shift." The Jerusalem Post called the statement "surprising."

An unnamed administration official told The Jerusalem Post that the White House was not consulted on Israels unprecedented announcement of 5,500 new settlement units.

Up until this point, the Trump administration was perceived to be sympathetic to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus settlements.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," the White House said in a statement.

The White House said the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when the two meet in Washington on Feb. 15.

The U.S. statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone Thursday with Netanyahu.

The prime minister's vow to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some cases subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

"This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two-state solution -- with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign -- much harder to achieve," said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Police initially said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.

On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

"The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance," police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

Fox News' Edmund DeMarche and The Associated Press contributed to this report
Vanity Fair, whose editor Graydon Carter has feuded with Donald Trump over the years, has decided to pull out of the White House Correspondents Dinner after-party it has co-hosted with Bloomberg LP since 2009, according to a spokeswoman for the magazine.

The after-party will still go on, just hosted by Bloomberg alone, a person familiar with the situation said, but Carter and the Vanity Fair crew will stay home. The two companies had hosted the party together since the beginning of the Obama administration.

It is one of Washingtons high-profile affairs and follows the annual event when the president tells jokes before a crowd of journalists and celebrities.

There had been some doubt that the main event would be held at all, given the Trump administrations battles with the White House press corps since taking office. Trumps chief strategist, Steve Bannon, referred to the media in a recent New York Times article as an opposition party, that ought to keep its mouth shut.

Click for more from The Wall Street Journal
His real name is Jim Parker, but you can call him Jimdiana Jones.

Parker, an archaeology volunteer with the National Trust in England, recently discovered two letters written on rag paper, a high-quality parchment, in the attics of the historic Knole house in Kent, England. Formerly a medieval archbishop's palace, the buildings of Knole House were remodeled in the 17th century and now offer a fascinating glimpse into the past.

The letters, along with a third found by a building contractor in a ceiling void, are nearly 400 years old.

HUMAN SKULL IN MUSEUM EXHIBIT STUNS RESEARCHERS

The discoveries were featured on the website of the National Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving special places throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

One of the letters, written in 1633, was an appeal for domestic items to be sent from London to Copt Hall in Essex. The writer, Robert Draper, is thought to have been a distinguished servant.

He wrote:

Mr Bilby, I pray p[ro]vide to be sent too morrow in ye Cart some Greenfish, The Lights from my Lady Cranfeild[es] Cham[ber] 2 dozen of Pewter spoon[es]: one greate fireshovell for ye nursery; and ye o[t]hers which were sent to be exchanged for some of a better fashion, a new frying pan together with a note of ye prises of such Commoditie for ye rest.

Your loving friend

Robert Draper

Octobre 1633

Copthall

Many large items, including trunks of linen and furniture, were moved from Copt Hall to Knole 300 years ago when the daughter of Copt Halls owner married the owner of Knole.

EXPERTS UNCOVER 38,000-YEAR-OLD ENGRAVINGS

I was very excited to see some pieces of paper hidden underneath some rush matting, said Parker. The first piece was folded and very dusty. We realized it was a letter and there was writing on it which looked like a seventeenth century hand. I was nicknamed Jimdiana Jones after that!

After the crumpled letters were photographed in their original state, they were cleaned with delicate brushes, rubber powders and archival document cleaners, then placed in a humidifying chamber to relax the paper fibers. Then they were smoothed in a paper press.

The biggest challenge was the significance of the letters, said Jan Cutajar, the objects conservator. I was conscious the work had to be of the highest quality. When you think that youre reading someones handwriting from 400 years ago, it sends chills down your spine.

A FARMERS STORY OF MOLES COULD HAVE LED TO LOST CITY

All three letters have been put on display at Knoles visitor center.
Israel poured up to 10,000 armored troops into south Lebanon Tuesday, and commandos raided a Hezbollah-run hospital and captured guerrillas during pitched battles deep in the eastern Bekaa Valley, a major escalation of the three-week-old war.

In the attack on the ancient city of Baalbek, about 80 miles north of Israel, commandos ferried in by helicopters fought Hezbollah guerrillas inside and around the hospital under cover of heavy airstrikes, witnesses said. At least seven people were killed in the city, they said. Israel said an unspecified number of guerrillas were captured and no soldiers were hurt.

 CountryWatch: Israel | Lebanon | Syria | Iran

The raid was the deepest ground attack on Lebanon since fighting started three weeks ago.

Hezbollah's rocket attacks into Israel, meanwhile, diminished. Hezbollah fired just 10 rockets across the border Tuesday and two early Wednesday, well below an average of about 100 a day since fighting began.

The ferocity of the battles in the Bekaa Valley and across southern Lebanon and the determination of the Israelis to keep fighting quelled expectations for an early cease-fire, although Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said an agreement on how to end the conflict was possible within days, not weeks.

Hezbollah's chief spokesman Hussein Rahal told The Associated Press early Wednesday that Israeli troops had landed near the Hezbollah-run Dar al-Hikma Hospital in Baalbek, about 10 miles from Lebanon's border with Syria.

Hezbollah guerrillas in the area shot automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades while Israeli jets fired missiles at the fighters, Rahal said.

 Visit FOXNews.com's Mideast Center for more in-depth coverage.

One airstrike hit the village of Al Jamaliyeh, about a half mile from the hospital. A missile hit the house of the village mayor, Hussein Jamaleddin, instantly killing his son, Ali, the mayor's brother, Awad, and five other relatives, witnesses said.

They said Jamaleddin -- who survived the raid -- and his relatives were political opponents of Hezbollah.

"Where is the press? Where is the media to see this massacre? Count our dead. Count our body parts," Jamaleddin told The Associated Press by telephone minutes after the missile strike.

Hezbollah said some people had been seized at the hospital, but denied they were fighters.

"Those who were taken prisoner are citizens. It will not be long before the (Israeli) enemy will discover that they are ordinary citizens," Hezbollah said in a statement broadcast on its Al-Manar television.

The fighting ended at about 4 a.m. after Israel jets pounded parts of the city in at least two air raids. Israeli warplanes later hit several infrastructure targets in the northern province of Akkar and in Nabatieyah, Lebanese security officials said.

Warplanes later fired on a Lebanese army base -- in Sarba, in south Lebanon -- killing three soldiers, a security official said on condition of anonymity.

Residents said the Dar al-Hikma hospital is financed by an Iranian charity, the Imam Khomeini Charitable Society, which is close to Hezbollah. The hospital is run by people close to the Shiite militant group, they said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Witnesses said the hospital was partially destroyed in the attack.

Baalbek is a city with spectacular Roman ruins as well as the barracks of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards when they trained Hezbollah guerrillas there in the 1980s.

The last time Israel forces were known to have gone that far on the ground into Lebanon was in 1994, when they abducted Lebanese guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani, hoping to use him to get information about missing Israeli airman Ron Arad. Dirani was released in a prisoner exchange 10 years later.

Meanwhile, in southern Lebanon, up to 10,000 Israeli troops in armored personnel carriers and backed by tanks were operating along the border zone, Israeli defense officials. Thousands more were gathering at staging areas on the Israeli side of the border, ready to join the battles. Israel called up 30,000 reservists over the weekend.

Israel had 100,000 troops in Lebanon at the height of its 1982 invasion of Lebanon that began an 18-year occupation of the south.

On Tuesday, the troops entered through four different points along the border and moved at least four miles inside Lebanon. Israeli officials said their soldiers were to go as far as the Litani River, as far as 18 miles into Lebanon, and hold the ground until an international peacekeeping force comes ashore.

But the army later said it had distributed leaflets northeast of the river at villages where Hezbollah was active. The leaflets told people to leave, suggesting that the new offensive could take Israeli soldiers even deeper into Lebanon.

At nightfall Tuesday, Israeli troops were fighting Hezbollah at several points along the border in intense ground battles. Reporters and Arab television reported especially heavy fighting and Israeli artillery bombardment at the village of Aita al-Shaab.

The Israeli army said late Tuesday that three Israeli soldiers died and 25 were slightly wounded by small arms fire and anti-tank rockets in Aita al-Shaab.

Hezbollah said in a statement that it had also attacked an Israeli army armored unit near the border Wednesday morning, destroying two tanks and leaving their crews dead or wounded.

The statement said the fight began when an armored unit attempted to advance on the Rub Thalatheen hill at Adaisseh, a border village on the central sector of the frontier.

Despite mounting civilian deaths, President Bush held fast to support for Israel and was pressing for a U.N. resolution linking a cease-fire with a broader plan for peace in the Middle East. Staking out a different approach, European Union foreign ministers called for an "immediate cessation of hostilities" followed by efforts to agree on a sustainable cease-fire.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he expects some action in the Security Council in the coming days, hopefully this week.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said it was not in Israel's interest to agree to an immediate cease-fire because every day of fighting weakens the guerrillas.

"Every additional day is a day that drains the strength of this cruel enemy," he said.

The army also hopes to push Hezbollah far enough north so that most of the guerrillas' rockets cannot reach the Jewish state.

Israeli Cabinet Minister Haim Ramon said the fighting to date had killed about 300 of Hezbollah's main force of 2,000 fighters, which does not include its less-well trained reserves. "That's a very hard blow," he said.

Hezbollah has said only 46 of its fighters were killed. Four were lost in battles with Israeli ground troops in Adaisse and Taibeh, near the Christian town of Marjayoun, about five miles from the border with Israel, Hezbollah said.

Polls in Israel show wall-to-wall support for Israel's fight against Hezbollah, even with Israeli civilians enduring a barrage of rocket fire and the army poised for a sweeping ground offensive that is sure to lead to more casualties. Hezbollah's capture of two Israeli soldiers in a July 12 cross-border raid triggered the offensive.

But the deaths of 56 Lebanese in the devastating weekend strike in Qana focused attention on civilian casualties.

Three more civilians were killed and three seriously wounded when Israeli warplanes hit a house in the southern Lebanese town of Lweizeh, Lebanese security officials said Tuesday.

Also, the Lebanese Red Cross said the bodies of 12 civilians were retrieved from the rubble of buildings destroyed in airstrikes on four villages in southern Lebanon and many more were believed still buried. It was not clear when the victims were killed.

At least 539 Lebanese have been killed, including 468 civilians and 25 Lebanese soldiers and at least 46 Hezbollah guerrillas. The health minister says the toll could be as high as 750, including those still buried in rubble or missing. Fifty-four Israelis have died -- 36 soldiers as well as 18 civilians killed in Hezbollah rocket attacks.

Complete coverage of the Mideast Meltdown is available in FOXNews.com's Mideast Center.
Twitters $1.6 million pledge to help fight the White Houses anti-terror immigration order is just the latest case of social media companies taking on Trump, but critics say the same companies are doing next to nothing to stop dangerous radicals from using their platforms to spread hate.

According to sources, radical social media accounts are using photos of Nawar al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki who was killed in the U.S.-led raid in Yemen on Sunday, to recruit members. Thats just the latest in a plethora of social media strategies and campaigns created by extremists to recruit and spread their jidhadi message.

Recruitment has many forms, and sharing the news of her death and her picture can be seen as a motivation to some to join the jihadi cause, a spokesperson for the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) told Fox News. MEMRIs Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor has observed many accounts, both jihadi and non-jihadi, discussing the killing of Nawar al-Awlaki and displaying her picture.

Companies like Twitter and Facebook have been hit with a slew of civil lawsuits the past year alleging that the companies are liable for the deaths of those killed in terror attacks by ISIS and organizations that have used social media platforms to spread their message. Among those suing are the families of the Pulse Nightclub victims, who filed a lawsuit against Twitter, Facebook and Google alleging the companies provided material support to ISIS and helped radicalize the shooter.

A Facebook spokesperson told Fox News that terrorist activity is not allowed on the platform.

MUSLIM TERRORIST KILLS FRENCH COP, WIFE WHILE LIVESTREAMING ON FACEBOOK

Facebook has zero tolerance for terrorists, terror propaganda, or the praising of terror activity, a spokesperson for Facebook told Fox News. We work aggressively to remove it as soon as we become aware of it.

But the social media giant relies heavily on the Facebook community, of almost 1.7 billion users, to report activity that violates community standards and shows any traces of extremism. Facebook, then, confirms the account of interest, immediately removes it from the platform, and then attempts to identify related material through accounts with associated activity.

But critics say this isnt a reliable way of tracking accounts of those individuals who have hijacked their profiles to promote propaganda.

Social media sites and applications have been propaganda multipliers, allowing them to connect with potential followers across countries, cultures and languages, House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul wrote in a counterterrorism strategy report released last fall. Social media companies are on the virtual frontlines of the fight and must be proactive in removing terrorist contentthey should ensure that their terms and conditions expressly prohibit such material and that takedowns are done quickly to prevent extremist messages from spreading.

Twitter officials, who did not respond to Fox News request for comment regarding its strategy, shut down hundreds of thousands of accounts for threatening or promoting terrorist attacks since mid-2015. Facebook said it has teams around the globe to review reported content 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But still, small technology companies feel there is more that could be done.

HISTORY WILL JUDGE TECH PHILANTHROPISTS IN FIGHT VS. CYBER JIHAD

Users dont know what theyre looking for you need to be schooled, Eric Feinberg, founding member of Global Intellectual Property Enforcement Center, told Fox News. Some of these things arent in English you cant rely on people who dont know what to look for.

Feinbergs firm uses a technology that scans for hashtags across social media platforms in different languages for communication that indicates terrorist planning.

But Christopher ORourke, CEO of Soteria, a cybersecurity firm based in Charleston, South Carolina, told Fox News that extremists are not as naive as people think.

Weve been following them for years. They use code words, they are covert, ORourke, who is a former U.S. government-sponsored cyberhacker who worked with the tailored access operations within the NSA, told Fox News. Its the silent, smart ones using technology to their benefit that are the most risk for causing problems. You wouldnt pick up on subtle nuances youd notice if someone threatened infidels, but the thing about terrorists is the smart ones know how to blend in and you cant really differentiate that.

ORourke criticized Facebook, saying that the company has data on how users interact on the platform, but the algorithms have failed them in the past, such as reports last year of Facebook not sharing certain partisan information, which the company blamed on an algorithm error.

At the end of the day, computers are not as intelligent as a proper analyst, ORourke told Fox News. Good, old fashioned man power and communication with law enforcement is what we need.
HENDERSON (AP)  A Nevada psychologist has been arrested in the death of his lawyer wife two years ago.

Henderson police said 54-year-old Gregory Brent Dennis was arrested Thursday morning following a lengthy investigation.

The January 2015 death of 48-year-old Susan Winters was initially ruled a suicide, but Henderson police say they reopened the case after getting unspecified new information and found evidence implicating her husband.

Dennis was booked on suspicion of an open count of murder with a deadly weapon.

His lawyer David Chesnoff says he is still learning details of the arrest and declined immediate comment.
It has been less than a month since the last recorded incident of tourists behaving badly, and yet here we are again: A baby dolphin in Argentina has died at the hands of selfie-taking beachgoers.

The Argentinian newspaper La Capital reports that on Sunday, it was pulled from the ocean by a hoard of tourists in San Bernando, 200 miles south of Buenos Aires. The small creature was still alive when it was taken from the water, and video footage posted on YouTube captures a group of people crowding and petting it, rather than releasing it back into the water.

According to the paper, the dolphin later died.

He was young and came to the shore. They could have returned him to the water  in fact, he was breathing, a bystander quoted in La Capital told local TV news station C5N on Sunday. But everyone started taking photos and touching him. They said he was already dead.

Its the second time in a year that this has occurred in Argentina alone: In February 2016, a rare La Plata baby dolphin died after tourists in the resort of Santa Teresita removed it from the water to pass around and take selfies with, eventually leaving it in the sand.

Vida Silvestre, a wildlife foundation in the country, has warned people against removing dolphins from the ocean in the past.

The trend of selfies-gone-wrong is, of course, not exclusive to dolphins. Last year, two peacocks at a zoo in China died from stress after visitors grabbed them for a selfie, and a woman in Yellowstone National Park was gored by a bison when she attempted to snap a photo in front of it.

Meanwhile, the waterfalls and forests of Croatias Plitvice Lakes National Park have suffered extensive damage due to tourists straying from trails for photo-ops, and several statues and artworks in Europe have been destroyed by people clambering to take a photo.

Its no surprise, then, that landmarks around the world have started to ban the ubiquitous social media menace, or, at the very least, clamp down on selfie sticks.

See 11 Places to Visit Before They're Lost to Climate Change
A British tourist has died on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef after swimming in an area suspected to be plagued by killer jellyfish.

The 63-year-old man, who has not been named, was killed during a snorkeling trip at Moore Reef-- 25 miles off the coastline of Cairns, in Queensland, Australia. He is believed to have been just feet away from the reef pontoon when he had a heart attack clinging to a safety ring.

A rescue helicopter was sent but emergency response crewmembers could not revive the man.

His death came the same day a 43-year-old woman was rushed to hospital by helicopter to Cairns Hospital in a critical condition after being pulled from the water off Green Island unconscious.

The incidents have heightened suspicions of attacks by Irukandji jellyfish in the area, one of the worlds most venomous creatures.

On Jan. 30, three children suffered suspected Irukandji stings off nearby Fitzroy Island, just under 20 miles from Moore Reef.

FOR THE LATEST TRAVEL FEATURES FOLLOW FOX LIFESTYLE ON FACEBOOK

Last month, several beaches in the area, including Three Cairns beach, were closed to the public following sightings of the jellyfish.

This is the fifth death in the last three months at the Great Barrier Reef.

In November, two French tourists died only minutes apart when they were snorkeling. Their deaths were followed by that of 60-year-old British scuba diver David Lowe from Sheffield, who was found on the ocean floor during a holiday with his wife.

At the time, cardiologist Dr. Ross Walker told ABC News, "I think it's highly likely they were stung by Irukandji. Irukandji are the size of your little fingernail, they're very small, you can't see them.

"Let's look at the fact and probability. It's highly unlikely that two people are going to die within minutes of each other just because they've got underlying medical conditions."

Professor Jamie Seymour said, "Because the water temperature has increased, it allows them to go further and further south."

This story originally appeared on The Sun.
In 1941, Ken Aderholt's grandfather built a single-story brick house along the banks of the Red River  a shallow and serene waterway serving as the boundary between Texas and Oklahoma  where the Aderholts have farmed wheat and raised cattle for generations.

The federal government is now claiming the land the house sits on is public. It declared hundreds of thousands of acres of private land along the 116-mile stretch of river that Oklahoma and Texas share as government property.

The sandy river has eroded and shifted  up to two miles in some places  over the last 100 years, and dry land where the river once flowed belongs to the government, according to the Bureau of Land Management.

That decision has the federal government in a tug-of-war with a handful of landowners over who rightfully owns thousands of acres of property along the Texas-Oklahoma border. The landowners believe this is a classic example of aggressive land grabbing by the federal government and government officials say they are just taking back what rightfully belongs to them.

Texas landowners claim the government's argument runs at odds with a 1923 Supreme Court ruling that sets the Texas-Oklahoma state boundary as following the meandering of the river.

"My grandfather bought this land and I have the deed for it," Aderholt, of Wilbarger County, Texas told Fox News. "Ive paid taxes on this property for decades."

The government, meanwhile, says its motive is not to force property owners from their land.

The Red River has served as a critical dividing line for centuries. It was the boundary between Spain and the United States before it divided Texas and the U.S. and later, Oklahoma and Texas.

Ownership of the river bottom is more complex.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1923 that the northern half of the river bottom was Oklahoma's and the southern half belonged to the government.

In 2007, during the Bush administration, officials from the Bureau of Land Management began surveying the river bottom to define Indian lands.

Pat Canan, of Clay County, who lives with his family on 2,000 acres abutting the river, said he allowed government surveyers onto his land in 2008.

"They told us they had been hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to look for old Indian allotments," Canan said of the government surveyors.

What happened next stunned Canan, whose family settled on the land in 1963.

Following their interpretation of the gradient boundary survey method, the BLM extended what it believes to be part of the riverbed, setting the boundary line more than a mile onto dry land into Texas.

The move affects an estimated 30,000 acres of federal land potentially coinciding with private land, according to the government. But lawyers for the land owners claim it impacts some 90,000 acres.

Canan said one day in 2008 he discovered a government monument in the middle of his pasture identifying the Texas-Oklahoma border. Based on the markers, the government claims roughly 1,400 of the 2,000 acres he has owned and paid taxes on for decades, he said.

"It's our belief that it's private property," Canan, a petroleum engineer and Texas game warden, told Fox News.

"That land was originally deeded by the state of Texas to the landowners. Theres never been any disagreement between the state of Texas and Oklahoma over who owns it," he said.

In 2015, Canan and other landowners as well as the three Texas counties affected  Wichita, Clay and Wilbarger  filed suit against the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Interior.

"The United States' ownership of property is limited to bottom-half of the sandy riverbed outside of Texas," the lawsuit states. "Nonetheless, BLM asserts that its boundary extends well past the riverbed into Texas and, in some instances, more than a mile outside of its lawful territory. In doing so, BLM has seized private property, infringed upon the sovereignty of the local county governments, and interfered with law enforcements ability to discharge its duties arising under Texas law.

Robert Henneke, a lawyer with the Texas Public Policy Foundation who represents the landowners, told Fox News there have been "no productive talks in terms of a settlement" and said a trial is set for July in a federal court in Wichita Falls. There is no word on whether the Trump administration will intervene.

"Without exaggeration, this is the Bureau of Land Management taking people's homes," Henneke said.

"In addition to the federal government unlawfully claiming title to private property owned by the Texas families living along the Red River, BLMs actions violate the landowners Fourth Amendment rights to be free of unreasonable seizure of their property," he said.

Texas Lawmakers, like Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Mac Thornberry, both Republicans, have sided with the landowners in the dispute. The two introduced a bill before Congress last month in an attempt to resolve the matter.

"With a long overdue survey of the land in question, this bill can finally end the baseless claims the federal government has made over privately owned property along the Red River," Cornyn said in a statement on Jan. 10.

"Texas families who have lived along the river for generations deserve to know theyre protected from a federal land grab, and this bill is a critical first step towards providing these folks certainty," he said.

The government notes there are decades of debate over how to correctly survey the land.

In 1867, an Indian reservation was created along the Red River for three Native American tribes through a treaty between the U.S. and the tribes. The reservation was later superseded by allotments, meaning Native Americans were permitted to own individual acres. The remainder of the land became homesteaded by non-Indians.

BLM officials say they have tried to make clear they have no intent to force current landowners from their properties. Instead, the government says landowners can purchase land belonging to the U.S. if it coincides with their deed.

But landowners say they shouldn't have to "buy back" property they believe theyve rightfully owned and diligently paid taxes on for decades. And their attorneys say the government has never made such a proposal.

"The U.S. Supreme court case is clear in that it established the boundary of federal territory at the south bank of the Red River," Henneke said. "Beyond that is my clients' private property and it is outrageous for the government to suggest they should have to buy back what they already own."
The Trump administration is preparing to levy sanctions on Iran after it test-fired a ballistic missile, according to U.S. officials and others with knowledge of the decision.

The sanctions are expected to be levied as early as Friday. Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized.

The sanctions come on the heels of the Trump administration's warning that it was putting Iran "on notice" after the missile test.

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says the U.S. has been consulting with allies in Europe and elsewhere on the matter. Dubowitz says he has been advising the administration and Congress on Iran issues.

The U.S. officials insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the upcoming sanctions.
Clambering through a snowy meadow with drifts up to the tree branches, California's water managers measured the state's vital Sierra Nevada snowpack Thursday at a drought-busting and welcome 173 percent of average.

Runoff from the overall Sierra snowpack, which provides arid California with a third of its water in a good year, stood at the highest level since 1995 for this point in the year, California's Department of Water Resources said.

State officials say Gov. Jerry Brown will wait until closer to the end of California's rain and snow season this spring to decide whether to lift an emergency declaration addressing the devastating five-year drought.

But Thursday's snowpack reading, which took place in a meadow that had been bare of snow at the height of the drought, was good news.

"It gives everything a much brighter outlook," said Frank Gehrke, the state's snow-survey chief, who conducts the snow surveys several times each winter.

Photographers and other journalists trailed Gehrke in a Groundhog Day-style ritual in the state, where water shortages from the drought and from overuse have often dominated the news.

Gehrke noted the snow plows rumbling and ski lifts humming up and down the mountain range when he poked a rod into the drifts at Phillips Station, about 90 miles east of Sacramento.

Gehrke had to change his route because the snow was so much higher than normal. At Phillips Station, his measurements showed snow at a level that would have melted down to 28.1 inches of water. That compares to 11.3 inches in an average year.

The state measures overall snowpack through more than 100 electronic sensors throughout the Sierra Nevada.

Statewide, snowpack stood at 173 percent of average for the date.

Back-to-back-to-back storms in January that each dropped a hurricane's worth of water have put the state at 108 percent of its normal rain and snow for the whole year, said Michael Dettinger, a hydrologist for the U.S. Geological Survey. That's with two months still left in the rainy season.

The storm systems, known as atmospheric rivers, "caught us all off-guard, how many came in so quickly, and turned everything around," Dettinger said.

January's storms have lifted the northern half of the state out of drought. On Thursday, 51 percent of the state remained in drought, compared to 95 percent at this time last year.

In January of 2014, Brown stood at Phillips Station to declare a drought emergency in California. Phillips Station at that point held no measurable snow, amid the state's driest three-year stretch in history.



In 2015, Brown ordered mandatory water conservation in cities and towns.



State water officials lifted the statewide mandate for a 25 percent reduction in water use as the drought eased. Some conservation orders remain in effect.

Given this year's wealth of rain and snow, some farmers and city governments are urging the state to provide them with more water. That would mean cutting back on water the state allows to flow to the Pacific Ocean, to benefit struggling native species whose numbers have dwindled in the drought.

Conservation groups, meanwhile, say the state hasn't gone far enough to cut agricultural and urban water use, especially as warming temperatures from climate change threatens the cycle of snowfall and melt.
The family of the New York City jogger raped and killed during a run last summer in Queens is calling on the state to employ the familial DNA matching system in the state, Fox5Ny.com reported.

The database is controversial because of privacy concerns, but would possibly lead to a match If the suspects relative is in the correctional system.

The genetic fingerprint didn't match any of the profiles from convicted criminals in the state's Combined DNA Index System. A check against the FBI's DNA database also came up empty.

So for now, investigators are relying on traditional investigative techniques to try to identity Karina Vetrano's killer, while the DNA sample joins 56,530 others on file with the state that have been lifted from crime scenes but have so far not been linked to a person.

"I would bet that in at least half of (DNA) cases, they get a suspect from analysis and their job becomes easy," said Dan Krane, a DNA expert at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. "But in the other half, they have to resort to old-fashioned detective work."

Vetrano's killing has been an object of tabloid fascination in New York ever since her father, a retired firefighter, discovered her badly beaten body in a marshy park not far from her home on Aug. 2. She normally ran a route through the area with her dad, but an injury kept him from joining her that evening.

Investigators have interviewed cyclists and runners who frequent the Spring Creek Park trails, combed through Vetrano's personal life for clues and even checked shoplifting and panhandling reports at a nearby mall as part of the hunt for the killer. They have also been examining convicted sex offenders who were imprisoned before the state DNA database was established in 1996, according to the police.

To preserve a path to prosecution, district attorneys in many states, including Ohio, Arkansas, Delaware and New York, have made a practice of securing criminal indictments in rape cases of "John Doe" defendants, who have been identified only by their DNA profiles.

That legal strategy was devised to stop the clock on statutes of limitation for sex crimes, but it also points to the frequency of instances where investigators have DNA but no suspect.

State and federal authorities regularly run comparisons against DNA databases to see if there are new hits.

There is no statute of limitation on murder  but the lack of a DNA hit makes Vetrano's case harder to solve.

"The bottom line is, unless there's other evidence that we don't know about, if it's just DNA, they're in trouble," Lawrence Kobilinsky, a DNA expert who chairs the science department at John Jay College for Criminal Justice said at the time. "They're going to have to wait until this guy makes a mistake."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Federal judges on opposite coasts are due Friday to hear legal arguments defending President Donald Trump's travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries. The ban is sure to reverberate through the courts on a likely path to an appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court. Here's a look at how the legal issues may play out:

___

Q: WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN COURTS TO CHALLENGE THE PRESIDENT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER?

A: The American Civil Liberties Union, several attorneys general and immigrant advocacy groups went to federal court to block Trump's action, which barred entry of refugees for four months and citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries  Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen  for three months and Syrians indefinitely.

Federal judges in Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Virginia, issued temporary restraining orders blocking at least parts of the order.

The Brooklyn judge on Thursday extended her order until Feb. 21, and a Justice Department lawyer said the government would ask her to throw out the case.

Further hearings are scheduled around the country to determine if temporary orders should be upheld and extended.

Because the emergency petitions were made ex parte, meaning the federal government had little or no time to respond, hearings Friday in Boston and Seattle will give the government a better opportunity to defend the president's order after the chaos that ensued last weekend when travelers were stranded at airports.

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Q: WHAT IMPACT HAVE THE TEMPORARY COURT ORDERS HAD?

A: Many of those detained at airports were released, some before court orders were issued and more afterward. In Boston, all the named plaintiffs detained at Logan International Airport were freed, said Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

In New York, two named plaintiffs from Iraq were released, though the judge anticipated the case could expand to a class action representing a broader array of people, including tourists, students and permanent legal residents with green cards.

In several cases, visitors with visas that were valid when issued arrived on U.S. soil to find the State Department had revoked those privileges. Some were turned around and, in some cases, deported.

The federal judge in Los Angeles ordered the U.S. government Tuesday not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S.

But the government has maintained that order and similar ones do not apply because the visas are no longer valid. The named plaintiffs in the L.A. case, a group of Yemenis still in Djibouti, were not allowed to board planes to the U.S.

Jayashri Srikantiah, a professor at Stanford Law School and director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic, said that while the court order appears to clear the way for entry, a more fundamental barrier exists.

"The first step is for them is whether they can obtain a valid boarding pass," Srikantiah said. "They need to be permitted to board so there can be a discussion at the border about what happens next."

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Q: WHAT ARE THE LEGAL ISSUES JUDGES NEED TO SORT OUT?

A: The main issues before the courts are whether Trump had the authority to issue the executive order and whether it was constitutional. The constitutional questions include whether the travelers were entitled to some kind of hearing before being barred and whether their religion played any role in their treatment.

On the issue of due process, a legal permanent resident will have firmer standing in court than someone on a tourist visa, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

The religion issue has played out publicly with advocates and protesters claiming Trump's action was intended to ban Muslims. The president tweeted that it was not a ban on Muslims and was not about religion.

However, several of the lawsuits point out Trump's campaign rhetoric about banning Muslims and statements about making exceptions for Christians from the seven countries.

"The government can't single out one religion for harsher treatment than another," Vladeck said.

That issue presents the strongest argument for those who have the weakest legal standing in U.S. courts, such as a refugee who's never set foot in the country, Vladeck said.

___

Q: WHAT WILL HAPPEN IF COURTS RULE INCONSISTENTLY?

A: With different challenges filed in so many courts, there is likely to be confusion going forward, legal experts said.

"You have the opportunity, frankly, for a dizzying array of judicial decisions trying to parse out how it applies to different groups of noncitizens," Vladeck said.

The Department of Justice is likely to take a case to a court of appeal to try to make sense of the many rulings, said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston.

Of course, those appellate courts could disagree, which has happened on many major issues including gay marriage and ultimately put the issue before the Supreme Court.

The high court would probably not hear the case until the fall. The orders, which could be extended, are due to expire long before that.

"This order will not be the final word on it," Blackman said.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday warned Israel that constructing new settlements "may not be helpful" to Middle East peace efforts, shifting toward a tougher line with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Still, the White House made clear that the Trump administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity," departing from previous administrations that have considered the settlements illegitimate.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements. Shortly before taking office, he vigorously criticized the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

But in a statement Thursday, the White House said, "While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House said the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington later this month. The two leaders are scheduled to meet at the White House on Feb. 15.

The U.S. statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

Netanyahu repeatedly clashed with President Barack Obama during the Democrat's eight years in office, and Trump has vowed to be a better partner for Israel. Following the U.N. vote, Trump tweeted, "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"  referring to the date of his inauguration.

Trump has already appeared to slow his promises to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a promise often made by presidential candidates, but never carried out in office because of fears the move would inflame tensions in the region.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone Thursday with Netanyahu.

The prime minister's vow to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside. Netanyahu's pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona, but Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

Speaking at a ceremony in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed "great pain" over the removal of Amona.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some cases subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

"This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two-state solution - with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign - much harder to achieve," said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Police initially said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.

On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

"The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance," police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

Slogans including "Death to Zionists" and a swastika comparing the Israeli police to Nazis were scrawled on the synagogue walls. The police later began dragging young protesters out of the building.

Speaking to Israel Radio from inside the synagogue, the rabbi of Amona said the protesters were peacefully resisting the uprooting of the outpost. He spoke above loud noises and shouting in the background. Earlier Thursday, police removed protesters holed up in a small home nearby.

Police said 24 officers were lightly injured throughout the evacuation, and 13 young protesters were arrested.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. It witnessed violent clashes 11 years ago when police demolished nine homes found to have been built on private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court last year determined that the entire outpost was built illegally and ordered it demolished.

_

Bernstein reported from Amona, West Bank.
A Muslim man accused of killing a transit officer in Denver had previously been investigated after members of mosques in Texas and Colorado contacted authorities about his behavior.



Investigators interviewed Joshua Cummings, 37, in December after members of a Denver-area mosque reported concerns about him to federal authorities, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official wasn't authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation. Before the Denver report, members of the Texas mosque from which Cummings was removed reported concerning behavior to the FBI, the official said.



Cummings is suspected of walking up behind guard Scott Von Lanken on a downtown corner Tuesday night as he spoke to two women, putting a gun to his neck and shooting him. Cummings is being held without bond on suspicion of murder and hasn't been charged yet. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday morning. It's not clear if he has a lawyer yet.



A lawyer for a Denver mosque said Thursday that the mosque notified authorities about Cummings in December but did not want to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. The mosque wrote an email on Dec. 24 to federal officials about alarming statements Cummings made, said attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai.



Mohamedbhai released a redacted version of the email, sent to a Department of Homeland Security address, in which a leader reported that a man identifying himself only as "Joshua" and as a convert to Islam made worrisome statements during a Dec. 24 lunch and at an earlier event, including that he said it was OK to fight to establish the rule of Islam here.



"He seems pretty advanced in his path of radicalization," the leader wrote.



At an open house earlier in December, Joshua publicly rebuked a speaker "as being soft" on Shariah law, the letter said.



"After talking to him for some time, he agreed to meet with some Imams to clarify his thoughts," the person wrote. "I am hoping to arrange a meeting of one of the stronger/more knowledgeable Imams with him to see if he can be mellowed a bit. But I doubt it would help. He is not listening to reason."



The writer attached photos and a video of the man.



Mohamedbhai said the report highlighted an ongoing working relationship between law enforcement and the region's Muslim community. Federal law enforcement, he said, "took this alert very seriously" but did not know what actions were taken after the report.



The FBI declined to comment and the Department of Homeland Security didn't respond to a request for comment.



Denver police have not revealed a possible motive for the shooting or commented on how his alleged radicalization may have played a role in the shooting. Officials have said they were looking into whether Von Lanken, who was armed and wearing a dark blue uniform similar to those worn by police, could have been targeted because he was a member of law enforcement.



Cummings, an Army veteran who served from 1997 to 2002, had social media posts that included both messages hostile to and supportive of law enforcement. Last July, he tweeted that an Arizona police officer accused of brutality should be put to death for treason, but he published a post in September 2015 in support of police and the military in response to the murder of a police officer in his home.



The manager of a motel in the Denver suburb of Englewood where Cummings had stayed recently and also part of last year said Cummings was "always a positive guy" who volunteered to pay the rent for any tenants strapped for cash. Gary Kim said Cummings told him he was Muslim during long talks at the front desk or the small lobby at the Holiday Motel, recalling that Cummings did not want to give any negative connotations to the faith.



"He would say everyone should have a right to practice their religion as long as that religion isn't imputing on someone else's life," Kim said.
Mail wasn't the only thing delivered at a San Diego post office Thursday.

San Diego police officers Matt Enderlin and Eric Hustad went to the US Post Office in Mira Mesa Thursday around 6:20 a.m. after receiving a call from a husband who said his wife was having a baby in their car.

The two officers found the couple in the parking lot of the post office at 9051 Mira Mesa Boulevard. Soon after, they helped deliver the baby.

"When you do this job, you have to be ready for anything, even delivering a baby! Great job Officers Enderlin & Hustad and Mom on bringing this beautiful baby into the world at the Mira Mesa Post Office no less. Guess mail's not the only thing getting delivered today," SDPD posted on their Facebook page.

Medics took the new mother, father and newborn baby to Scripps Memorial Hospital.

"We've been partners for 8 years now so it's one of those things where we've gotten a lot of calls on this job, you expect the unexpected," said Officer Matt Enderlin.

Click for more from FOX5SanDiego.com.
On the coldest morning of last December my pickup wouldnt start. It wasnt the battery, it turned over. I ground away at the starter, manipulating the manual choke (its 30 years old) until the battery began to weaken.

Installing my daughter behind the wheel and hooking up the jumper cables, I squirted jets of ether down the carburetors throat as my daughter ground the starter. Occasionally it would catch and a ball of flame would shoot from the two barrel!

I broke off and went to town for more ether. My daughter suggested it was outta gas. She switched the gas gauge from MAIN TANK to AUX, See, she said, its empty.

No, I explained, Youve just switched it wrong. See, the other tank is full.

I used another can of ether to no avail. I released my daughter, unhooked the cables and left my pickup for the wolves.

That night I lay in my bed plotting how to pull it to the mechanic in town when my unconscious mind finally spoke up, Dummy, switch yer tanks. Yer outta gas!

Which I was. I havent confessed to my daughter yet, so if she doesnt read this column Ill still retain my position as The Perfect Father. Unfortunately, Bruces whole family was there when Mr. Lanham diagnosed his mechanical problem.

Bruce was a recent arrival to northeast Missouri. As the new Extension Service man from California, he was making big waves. Because everyone knows that California produces people on the cutting edge of agricultural technology!

Bruces tractor was on the blink. Either the transmission or the linkage was fouled. Ive checked it thoroughly, he told his wife and kids, Id better call Mr. Lanham.

Mr. Lanham is to the age where he doesnt worry about coddling people. He asked a few questions over the phone. Bruce, a grad of Fresno State, became impatient explaining hed done all he could but the tractor still wouldnt start. Would Mr. Lanham please come and check it.

When Mr. Lanham arrived Bruce pointed to the shed, sat down to lunch and answered the phone.

Three minutes later Mr. Lanham appeared at the kitchen door.

Are you gonna have to haul it to town? asked Bruce.

Nope. Its fixed.

Great! What was wrong?

Hard to explain...

Okay, so how much do I owe ya?

Not sure.

I dont understand. Ya fixed it, right? So, how come you dont know?

Wull, ya had a wrench stickin outta yer tool box so the lid wouldnt close. The clutch pedal was hittin the lid so it wouldnt go down all the way. And Sonny, I never charged anyone to rearrange a toolbox before.
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U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in eastern Ukraine on Thursday and warned Moscow that U.S. sanctions imposed after its annexation of Crimea will remain until the peninsula is returned to Ukraine.

But the new American envoy tempered her criticism, saying it was "unfortunate" that she had to condemn Russia in her first appearance at the U.N. Security Council.

"We do want to better our relations with Russia," Haley said, echoing President Donald Trump who has also said he wants a better relationship with President Vladimir Putin.

Moscow has applauded Trump's promises to rebuild U.S.-Russian relations, which have been pushed to their worst level since the Cold War, and Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin reacted calmly to Haley's criticism saying he "detected quite a bit of change of tone."

"It was friendly enough, given the circumstances and given the subject we were discussing," he said of Hayley's statement at the council meeting called by Ukraine after a major escalation of violence. "I wouldn't want to call it friendly."

Churkin said the Trump administration is just in its early days and both countries are dealing with very difficult problems.

"We are thinking, how are things going to develop?" he said. "Our position is very obvious. ... If there is an opportunity for us to work better with the United States to deal with various international problems which are extremely complicated and acute then we should take this opportunity."

One of those complex and urgent issues is Ukraine, where there are definitely major differences.

Anti-government protests in Ukraine culminated in President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country in February 2014 to Russia. Later that year, Russia seized and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and Russian-speaking separatists in the country's east launched protests that escalated into a war that has killed more than 9,600 people.

The Minsk agreement in February 2015 aimed at ending the conflict helped to reduce fighting, but skirmishes have continued and there was a major escalation of violence in recent days.

Churkin blamed Ukrainian security forces for starting it and Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko blamed the Russian army and the separatists.

Haley made clear the Trump administration's strong support for Ukraine, despite the president's overtures to Russia.

"The United States stands with the people of Ukraine who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military interventions," she said. "Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity this crisis will continue."

Haley said the recent sudden increase in fighting in the east has trapped thousands of civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure  "and the crisis is spreading, endangering many more."

"The dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions," she said.

Haley called for an immediate end to fighting and "full and immediate implementation" of the Minsk agreement.

Churkin also called for an immediate cease-fire and swift de-escalation of the situation "to prevent disaster and to return the situation to the political track."

He expressed hope that the Trump administration "will play a more active role in making sure that the violence stops" than the Obama administration did, saying the U.S. should use its influence with Ukraine's government to push for implementation of the Minsk agreement "and putting an end to this conflict."

Russia's annexation of Crimea, however, remains a major obstacle.

Haley said "the United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end" to Russia's occupation.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine," she said. "Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."

Churkin, exercising his right of reply, pointed out that the U.S. Constitution starts with the words "we the people," and in Crimea the people voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia.

He also used the reply to welcome Haley, saying "from time to time we may have differences emerging on various issues, but your work will hold the key to whether the Security Council" can operate collectively and carry out its primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.

Later, Churkin told reporters: "We are going to be there to try to make that possible from our perspective."
A 15-year-old boy has pleaded guilty to killing a retired teacher at her East Tennessee home.

Media outlets report a Hawkins County judge sentenced Kyle Robert Wolfe to 25 years in prison without parole after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to second-degree murder in 79-year-old Margaret Sliger's May 2015 death. Wolfe was prosecuted as an adult.

Authorities say Wolfe was 14 when shot and stabbed Sliger. Her body was found in her yard.

The Kingsport Times News reports that Wolfe, who lived nearby, was suspected after investigators learned Sliger had confronted him for riding his four-wheeler in her pasture just before the slaying.

Sliger was a retired elementary school teacher and church organist. She raised chickens, cows and other animals on a family farm where she lived all her life.
Authorities in Washington said Wednesday a $4,000 reward was being offered for any information about a quadruple murder that took place last week.

This is obviously a tragic event that affects not just the family but the entire community, someone willing to kill an entire family like this, Kitsap County sheriffs Det. Lt. Earl Smith said.

Deputies received a panicked phone call last Friday at around 11:30 p.m. form a Seabeck home. When police arrived at the scene, the found a torched home with three bodies burning inside. Investigators say all three were the victims of homicidal violence.

Authorities identified the victims in the home as Hunter Scaap, 16, Jonathan Higgins, 16, and Christale Careaga, 37. John Careaga, 43, was found murdered in his burned-out Ford F150 pickup truck in Mason County the next day.

We`ve forensically processed that truck. Were taking evidence to the crime lab. We processed the residence where the three individuals were found murdered, Smith said.

According to the Kitsap Sun, investigators believe the fires were intentionally set. However, its unclear how the family members died.

Court documents say that Jonathan Higgins was the son of Christale Careaga. Hunter Higgs was the song of John Careaga. The Careagas owned Juanitos Taco Shop, according to Q13 Fox.

Investigators said they were still trying to put together a timeline of the deaths.

Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound offered the $4,000 reward and detectives hope it will lead to information to help solve the case.

We want to hear all the information. Not just the good. If there`s some good, great. If there`s some bad, great. If it`s just the information about these individuals, that`s what we want to hear about, Smith said.

Click for more from Q13 Fox.
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Attorneys for a white Chicago police officer charged with fatally shooting a black teen 16 times are again urging a judge to dismiss the case.

Jason Van Dyke's attorney on Friday filed a second motion seeking to throw out the first-degree murder charges in the 2014 death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The Chicago Tribune reports (http://trib.in/2l0E3nl ) attorney Daniel Herbert told a judge, "There was a rush to sacrifice Jason Van Dyke to the angry mob."

In a previous motion, Herbert said statements Van Dyke and other officers gave investigators helped build the case against Van Dyke even after the officers were assured they wouldn't be used against them.

The judge hasn't ruled on either motion.

McDonald's death prompted a Justice Department investigation that found Chicago police had violated people's constitutional rights.

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Information from: Chicago Tribune, http://www.chicagotribune.com
A former suburban Milwaukee police officer accused of killing two women and ditching their bodies in suitcases along a rural Wisconsin highway has pleaded guilty in the slaying of one of the women in Minnesota.

Fifty-five-year-old Steven Zelich of West Allis, Wisconsin, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Friday for killing a woman at a Rochester hotel in 2013. KTTC-TV (http://bit.ly/2kxO0Z3 ) reports Zelich was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Zelich said he accidentally choked 37-year-old Laura Simonson of Farmington, Minnesota, to death with a rope during sex.

Zelich has already been sentenced to 35 years in prison in Wisconsin in the 2012 death of 19-year-old Jenny Gamez, of Cottage Grove, Oregon. Authorities say he met both women online, choked them at hotels during sexual encounters and hid their bodies in suitcases. He will serve the Minnesota sentence after completing his Wisconsin sentence.

___

Information from: KTTC-TV, http://www.kttc.com
The National Park Service is investigating a small explosive device that was found at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada.

An employee cleaning an area near an overlook Saturday discovered a suspicious object the size of a ping-pong ball and notified park rangers, the Lake Mead Public Affairs Office said.

ONE HUMMINGBIRD NEST HALTS MASSIVE RENOVATION OF CALIFORNIA BRIDGE

That section of the park was cleared while the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Bomb Squad removed the explosive material. No other devices were found.

Christie Vanover, public information officer for Lake Mead, tells Fox News, There was no note, nothing alongside the device. ... The area is not a very popular overlook."

Similar incidents have happened in the past, she added.

Deputy rangers at the Park Service are leading the investigation. The Las Vegas Review Journal reports that no other threats have been made to Lake Mead in connection with the incident.

The scenic vantage point is about a 20-minute drive from the Hoover Dam.
A road rage incident ended up with one vehicle crushing another on a Florida road.

VIDEO: THIEF STEALS CAR WITH BABY STRAPPED IN BACK SEAT

Ocala police responded to the scene Wednesday and found a Toyota Camry underneath a Ford F-150, according to reports.

Pickup driver Zach Waring, 18, told cops said the incident began when he accused the Toyota driver, Adalberto Aponte, of driving recklessly and nearly causing accidents. As he sat in his pickup at a stoplight, Aponte got out of his car, walked up to him and started pummeling him through the window.

TEXAS POLICE OFFICER UNDER FIRE AFTER MESSAGE TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS GOES VIRAL

Waring said he then backed up his vehicle when Aponte ran back to the Toyota, saying that he was getting a gun.

He told officers he was afraid Aponte was going to kill him, his girlfriend and their infant child, WTSP-TV in St. Petersburg reported Thursday.

Police charged Aponte with burglary, battery, driving with a suspended license and criminal mischief.

Waring was not charged.



WTSP reports that Apontes drivers license was suspended in August for failure to pay child support.
Sgt. Steven Floyd, the guard held hostage by a mob of Delaware prison inmates, put his life on the line to save his fellow officers, shouting at them not to rescue him because his captors had set a trap, the head of the state corrections officers' union said Thursday.

MOSQUE WARNED FEDS ABOUT SUSPECT IN KILLING OF DENVER TRANSIT OFFICER

"Even in his last moments as the inmates attempted to take over the building, Sgt. Floyd told a couple of lieutenants to get out of the building," union President Geoffrey Klopp said.

Floyd, 47, was found dead early Thursday after police used a backhoe to smash through a barricade of foot lockers filled with water, ending a nearly 20-hour hostage standoff at the all-male, 2,500-prisoner James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. Crews rescued a second hostage, a female counselor, minutes after tactical teams forced their way into the prison's Building C.

MEXICAN DRUG LORD 'EL CHAPO' APPEARING IN NY COURT

Floyd radioed for help Wednesday after inmates staged a fight and then turned on him, forcing him into a closet, Klopp said.

The inmates later released two hostages and got prison officials to turn the water on, saying they needed it for drinking and washing. Instead, they filled up the foot lockers and built barricades.

During negotiations conducted via an officer's walkie-talkie -- which were broadcast online for more than an hour before officials blocked the transmission -- the mediator tried to coax an unidentified inmate into letting him talk to Floyd to make sure he was OK.

The inmate responded that the negotiator would only be able to talk to Floyd once the inmates got to talk to the governor. He told the negotiator the prisoners wanted a "formal apology" from Gov. John Carney for "decades of oppression."

Investigators did not immediately explain how Floyd died. They have said the inmates used "sharp instruments" to seize the building. The unnamed counselor and other hostages spoke to The News Journal of Wilmington over the phone during the standoff, listing the hostage-takers' demands.

Carney called the uprising a "torturous" ordeal. In a statement, he said authorities would hold accountable those responsible and "make whatever changes are necessary to ensure nothing like it ever happens again."



Floyd, a married father and 16-year veteran with the prison, was the first Delaware corrections officer to be killed, according to Klopp.

The union president described Floyd as a wonderful husband and correctional officer who went the "extra mile for any human being he could help." Last year, he received the warden's award for outstanding performance.

An AP reporter who visited Floyd's house earlier Thursday was told the family had been through a lot and did not want to speak.

Dave Dowty, a retired court-transportation worker for the Department of Correction, said he occasionally worked with Floyd.

"I just know he was a pretty good guy. He was quiet, professional," Dowty said in a telephone interview.

But former Vaughn Correctional Center inmate Kenneth Guinn, of Dover, had a low opinion of Floyd.

"He harassed inmates. He's been doing it for years," Guinn said in a telephone interview.

The others guards who were taken hostage were beaten severely by their captors and suffered broken bones, cuts and eye injuries, Klopp said. Authorities said their injuries were not life-threatening.

It wasn't immediately clear how many inmates took part in the uprising. About 120 were in the building when it began, but dozens were let out as the standoff dragged on. Authorities said all inmates who were in the building are being considered suspects.

One inmate told a local newspaper via phone that they were demanding better education and rehabilitation programs and were also upset over President Donald Trump and "all the things that he's doing now."

"We know that the institution is going to change for the worse," he told The News Journal.

Isaiah McCoy, a former death row inmate at the prison, told The Associated Press that several prisoners who were in Building C called him while the standoff was underway. McCoy said the inmates told him they are sick of what he called "inhumane" conditions at the facility.

The inmates have filed grievances and tried nonviolent protests but haven't gotten anyone's attention, McCoy said.

"Now this is world news. This is being broadcast all over the world," said McCoy, who was released from prison last month after being acquitted of all charges in a retrial for a drug-related killing.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Legal battles are playing out across the U.S. as opponents of President Donald Trump's travel ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim nations take their fight to the courtroom. Hearings were being held Friday in a few of the cases.

A look at some of the court challenges:

___

MASSACHUSETTS

A federal judge in Boston is hearing arguments Friday on a request to extend a temporary injunction against the travel restrictions.

A seven-day stoppage was granted Sunday in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two state university professors who were detained at Boston's airport as they returned home from an academic conference. Both are Muslims from Iran and lawful permanent U.S. residents.

___

WASHINGTON

A federal judge will hear arguments Friday from Washington state for a temporary restraining order that would bar enforcement of portions of the ban. The state attorney general filed a lawsuit on Monday arguing the order is unconstitutional. The state says the restraining order is needed to protect residents and businesses from suffering irreparable harm.

___

VIRGINIA

Also Friday, a judge in Alexandria will hear arguments on a lawsuit challenging aspects of Trump's ban.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, is seeking to join the lawsuit and broaden its scope. When it was first filed, it focused primarily on green-card holders who were affected by the ban. Herring's motion indicates he would seek protections for those on student and work visas and those with refugee status as well.

___

NEW YORK

A Brooklyn judge on Thursday extended a temporary restraining order to Feb. 21, but the Justice Department said it will ask her to throw out the case.

U.S. District Judge Carol Amon's ruling extended a stay that had been issued Saturday by a different judge and would have expired Feb. 11. Amon extended the order to give more time the government and civil liberties organizations to file paperwork.

___

MICHIGAN

A federal judge in Detroit says U.S. green-card holders shouldn't be affected by the order.

The Arab-American Civil Rights League argued in a suit filed this week in Detroit's U.S. District Court that the executive action is unconstitutional and targets immigrant communities.

A restraining order released Friday from U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts covers legal permanent residents, not some others that also are part of the lawsuit. She says lawyers for the government clarified to her that the ban doesn't apply to "lawful" permanent residents.
ELKO  Luke Bell and Doug Moreland and the Flying Armadillos left the crowd wanting more at Kicking Up Dust Wednesday night at the Elko Convention Center for the 33rd National Cowboy Poetry Gathering.

Concert-goers tapped their feet to the beats of new and old country songs and Texas swing rhythms throughout the evening, happily staying more than a half-hour later than scheduled.

Bell, a native of Wyoming now based in Nashville, said coming to Elko feels like stepping into the West.

When asked about Rolling Stone magazine calling him one of 2016s new country artists to watch, he said Its great. Theyve been really generous with their words.

Joining him on stage were Matt Kinman on fiddle and guitar, McKay Fleck on bass, and Heather Littlefield on drums.

For Bell, performing is his way of sharing traditions, values and cultures that I think are important with people.

Its keeping people having a good time and also being grounded with your roots.

The West Texas group, Doug Moreland and the Flying Armadillos, played songs from their new album Bring Back the Swing, and personal favorites by Roger Miller and Bob Wills.

Were trying to bring back swing music to peoples ears because it seems to make everybody happier, Moreland told the audience.

The Flying Armadillos performing on stage with Moreland were Randy Roberts on bass, Wes Holtsford on fiddle and mandolin, JD Pendley on guitar and Johnny Konya on drums.

Both Bell and Moreland and the Flying Armadillos will be performing throughout the Gathering and each headline the Friday and Saturday Night Dances held in the Silver Room at the Elko Convention Center beginning at 9:30 p.m.
Munther Alaskry and his family were just hours away from their dream as they boarded the final leg of a flight to the United States after waiting seven years for visas. But minutes after sitting down, they were yanked from the plane because President Donald Trump's immigration order banned Iraqis from entering America.

PENCE: 'ANY FAIR-MINDED PERSON' WOULD UNDERSTAND TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION ORDER

Alaskry's wife started to shake. Their son cried, and his 7-year-old daughter asked through tears: "Why the Americans don't want us?" The Iraqi engineer who bonded with Marines over a shared love of Metallica and cleared away roadside bombs for U.S. troops did not respond. He didn't know the answer.

"That moment our whole world broke down into pieces," Alaskry said. "It was devastating for us. We felt like we lost everything. We lost our dreams."

STATE SAYS FEWER THAN 60,000 VISAS REVOKED UNDER ORDER

On Friday, Alaskry and his family arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport after the Trump administration reversed course and said he and other interpreters who had supported the U.S. military could come to America. They spent nearly a week in limbo in Baghdad, thinking their hopes of starting a new life free from death threats had been shattered.

The family did paperwork for more than five hours after landing in New York, but Alaskry said they were treated well.

"I'm very blessed to be here," he said.

Alaskry is among nearly a dozen Iraqis interpreters who told The Associated Press they were taken off planes or were told their flights were cancelled after Trump's Jan. 27 order, which banned refugees from Syria and suspended travel into the U.S. from Iraq and six other Muslim-majority countries.

Initially included in the order were Iraqis who had received special immigrant visas because they worked for the U.S. government during the war. Among them were Alaskry and a 26-year-old man who had worked for the State Department vetting Iraqis contractors. After combat veterans, including members of Congress, criticized the decision, U.S. officials announced the former interpreters would be exempt from the ban.

"We can't accomplish our war effort without these people, which is why we need to protect them," said former Army Capt. Matthew Zeller, of the nonprofit No One Left Behind, an organization helping Alaskry and other interpreters resettle in the U.S.

Alaskry first started working for the U.S. military in 2003 after meeting Marines in the streets of Baghdad. He later translated for the Army and National Guard and then cleared away bombs. In 2005, he fled to Jordan after a threatening letter was left hanging from his car door.

He returned to Iraq and got a job with an Iraqi company that supported K-9 teams for the U.S. mission and later worked for a U.S. government-funded project that provided information on health care and trauma to Iraqis displaced by the fighting.

All the while, he waited for his visa to the U.S., hoping to raise his children in a safe place. He applied when his daughter was a year old, and was still waiting four years later when his son was born.

Meanwhile, he and his family limited their outings, afraid of the violence and crime.

After hundreds of emails, multiple interviews and medical exams, he got the call in December. The visas were ready. Alaskry promised his daughter that she would finally see Disneyland.

The 37-year-old engineer quit his job, sold his car and belongings and bought their plane tickets, spending $5,060.

They had a two-hour layover in Turkey on Jan. 28 before boarding a connecting flight to Houston. They were on the plane 15 minutes, with his children watching cartoons, when the Turkish authorities arrived and told them to get off.

"My daughter kept asking me, "Why the Americans don't want us in America? You promised me you will take me to Disneyland. Why can't you take me to Disneyland?" he said.

The family was sent to a special security area at the airport in Istanbul for people who have no visa to enter Turkey and are denied entry to their destination country.

Alaskry got online and bought four more tickets back to Baghdad, spending $460. The family spent 13 hours at the airport, sleeping in seats. They flew back to Baghdad the next morning, sitting in silence in a taxi as they went to his in-laws' home.

"I felt so alone," Alaskry said.

Then he turned on the TV and saw the protests at U.S. airports.

"Every time I see those people protesting on the news, I cry," Alaskry said. "It's touching to me. These people don't know me. They don't know my story, though there are hundreds like me who supported the American troops."

Alaskry said he was happy when Trump was elected because he believed he would help Iraq get rid of the Islamic State group.

"I just want to tell Mr. Trump, President Trump: 'We are your allies,'" he said. "Please let us be your friends. We want to be your friends. Don't let the Iraqi people down. We look to America like it is our big brother."

Alaskry got a call Wednesday from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad that he could now travel to the U.S. The person did not say if a mistake had been made or offer apologies. He bought four more tickets, spending a total of $8,000 on all the airfare.

He feels sad for his fellow Iraqis who are barred but is happy to get his family out.

"I'm excited to come to the States," he said. "I know American values. I work with brave American soldiers. I ride with them in Humvees. The American people are great people. I love them no matter what."
Panic erupted at a Southern California Cheesecake Factory on Thursday night after a man tossed in improvised explosive device, police said.

Pasadena police said the suspect was still at large.

Police Lt. Art Chute said the incident took place at around 6 p.m. He described the explosive as a homemade pyrotechnic device.

The restaurant was crowded with patrons settling down for dinner when a man opened the front doors and tossed the device. The device exploded, but no one was injured and there wasnt any significant damage.

Officers immediately entered the restaurant and evacuated customers and employees and located a detonated homemade pyrotechnic device, Pasadena police said in statement. The Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department Bomb squad responded to the scene and rendered the device safe.

The suspect was described as a Latino or Middle Eastern man, about 6-feet tall and sporting a heavy beard, according to the Orange County Register. He was seen wearing black clothing and a black beanie.

Authorities urged anyone with information to call the Pasadena police at 626-744-4241.

Click for more from the Orange County Register.
The Navy is investigating after one of its elite SEALs units was recorded on video flying a blue Trump flag from the back of a Humvee on a Kentucky highway.

ANTI-TRUMP GRAFFITI SPREE A SIGN OF EMERGING ALT-LEFT, LIBERAL ACTIVIST SAYS

The video was shot Sunday on I-65 near Louisville and shows the Trump flag flapping in the wind from the back of a Humvee that was in a convoy with seven other Humvees, according to local reports.

The unit is part of the Naval Special Warfare Group 2 assigned to Fort Knox, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported Thursday.

PENCE: 'ANY FAIR-MINDED PERSON' WOULD UNDERSTAND TRUMP'S IMMIGRATION ORDER

The Defense Department initially told the paper the convoy wasnt connected to an active military unit.

A spokeswoman for the SEALs unit , Lt. Jacqui Maxwell, told local media the flag violated Navy rules because of its political nature.

DOD and Navy regulations prescribe flags and pennants that may be displayed as well as the manner of display. The flag shown in the video was unauthorized, she said, according to The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va.

Maxwell described the investigation as a command inquiry that could lead to punishment if warranted. She also said it wasnt immediately clear if those involved were SEALs or support staff.

The Navy repeatedly warned personnel against appearing to endorse a candidate in an official capacity, the paper reported.

The Herald-Leader on Monday posted on its website video of the convoy on I-65 that was shot by a goat farmer from Shepherdsville, Ky.

I just thought it was just a bunch of military vehicles, Steve Thompson told the paper. I was surprised because I figured you wouldnt be able to fly anything on a Humvee other than an American flag.

The paper reported Thursday that a Kentucky-based anti-Trump group was one of the first to post video of the incident on its website, calling it a fascist tactic that is not acceptable. RESIST!!!

The paper also reported that many Trump supporters took to social media to say that nobody should be punished for showing their support for the nations commander-in-chief.
A decorated Massachusetts police officer charged with beating his girlfriend's 5-year-old son has resigned.

Revere police tell The Daily Item of Lynn (http://bit.ly/2kAOWv2 ) that Marcos Garcia resigned late last month. He had been placed on paid administrative leave after he was charged.

The 32-year-old Garcia, of Saugus, pleaded not guilty to assault and battery on a child causing injury and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Prosecutors say Garcia stripped, handcuffed, and beat the boy on Jan. 12 after he refused to eat dinner. Investigators say Garcia told the boy to lie if asked about the injuries.

His lawyer has not commented.

Garcia's girlfriend, also a Revere officer, has also been charged.

Garcia received a heroism award last year for saving two victims of a car crash.

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Information from: The (Lynn, Mass.) Daily Item, http://itemlive.com
Two children and two adults were found stabbed inside a suburban Dayton home early Thursday by police responding to a disturbance call.

Kettering police said all four were taken to hospitals, and that one man transported was considered the suspect. Police spokesman John Jung said initial indications were that the wounds weren't life-threatening. But, he said he hadn't received updates from the hospitals.

Jung said all four had wounds consistent with a knife. He said the suspect in custody is a 46-year-old man who had knife wounds. He said later the suspect would be held on felonious assault counts.

Also injured were children ages 8 and 11, and a 72-year-old man. Police arrived at the home around 4 a.m.

In an audio recording of the 911 call released Thursday, a man tells the dispatcher, "My son cut both of the kids." He said the man who did the stabbing had gone into the basement at the home.

"Please hurry," the man said. The dispatcher kept the man on the line until police arrived.

Jung said police are investigating what led to the stabbings. It wasn't clear how many people were in the home at the time of the stabbings.

"Inside the residence, it's an extensive crime scene," Jung said. "It's more than one room."

Jung said violence was out of the ordinary in the suburban city of some 56,000 people south of Dayton, in southwest Ohio.

"This isn't like a normal thing for us to have an incident like this," Jung said. "This is a violent scene."
Police say they plan to charge a woman in the death of a Metro Nashville police officer who slipped into the bitterly cold Cumberland River while trying to save her.

Police spokesman Don Aaron told news media outlets Friday that 40-year-old Juli Glisson will be charged with aggravated vehicular homicide once she is discharged from the hospital.

TEXAS POLICE OFFICER UNDER FIRE AFTER MESSAGE TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS GOES VIRAL

Aaron says an investigation found that Glisson put the car into gear as 44-year-old Eric Mumaw and another officer were trying to get her out of it and away from the water's edge. Police say she was legally drunk.

Glisson and Mumaw went into the river. Glisson was found on the riverbank and taken to the hospital. Mumaw's body was pulled from the water hours later.
Organizers of a road race that benefits a Connecticut refugee resettlement group are crediting President Donald Trump for a record enrollment  and record donations  in this year's event.

Registration for the 10th annual Run for Refugees in New Haven on Sunday more than doubled to the maximum 2,500 in the days after the Republican president signed an executive order Jan. 27 temporarily banning refugees and immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Donations have reached $152,000, more than what was raised in the nine previous races.

The 5K race benefits the New Haven-based Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services, or IRIS, which helped resettle 530 refugees in Connecticut last year. About 70 percent of the families were from Syria.

"It's just been amazing and it's a real boost for morale," said Chris George, executive director of IRIS. "These are people who were so infuriated by the executive order ... that they wanted to demonstrate their support for refugees. It's just terrific."

Since the 2,500-person limit was reached, about another 1,000 people were turned away, George said.

The nonprofit group, founded in 1982, has an annual budget of about $2 million, with about 60 percent coming from the federal government and 40 percent from private donations. It works to find homes for refugees and immigrants who have been vetted by the federal government, and connects them with health care, jobs and other services in their new communities.

The group has called the travel ban "un-American" and in "direct opposition to the core American value of welcoming persecuted people to the United States to start their lives again in safety and peace." Those who support the ban cite the need to prevent terrorists from entering the country.

This year's road race has become so popular that a march to the New Haven Green has been added after the race. Scheduled speakers at the march include Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal and refugee families from Syria and Iraq.

Amy Boratko signed up a couple weeks ago to run the race.

"It allows us to physically get out there and show our support for more families being resettled here," she told WVIT-TV. "Since the election, I've wanted to get more involved in activism, but specifically in New Haven. And I've long been an admirer of IRIS' work."
With time running short to find a nature filmmaker who disappeared while scuba diving off the Florida Keys, friends said Friday they are ramping up their all-out search -- and they need volunteers to operate boats and walk along nearby beaches.

BIZARRE DISAPPEARANCE OF CALIFORNIA MAN UNDER INVESTIGATION

Rob Stewart, 37, vanished Tuesday near Alligator Reef, off Lower Matecumbe Key. He is from Toronto, Canada.

Close friends said they have enlisted boats and a low-flying plane with night vision capabilities to search for Stewart, but they need more volunteers. Specifically needed are people who could serve as lookouts on boats and scour nearby beaches, Tyler MacLeod said.

MEXICAN POLICE FIND 6 KIDNAP VICTIMS DEAD ON ROADSIDE

Stewart may have passed out, environmental activist Paul Watson told the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, saying another diver with the filmmaker did pass out but was rescued.

Stewart was wearing a black diving suit and black mask, MacLeod said. The suit carried two small white air tanks.

The search area moved slightly north because currents may have pushed Stewart toward Miami, Christy Needler added.

She said Stewart was an experienced diver with an "incredible" ability to survive in the water for a long time. Supporters kept their hopes up.

A GoFundMe page set up to help in the search had raised around $160,000 by Friday afternoon.

Stewart is a wildlife photographer, filmmaker and conservationist. His films include "Sharkwater" and "Revolution," released in 2013. He's also written two books, "Sharkwater: An Odyssey to Save the Planet" and "Save the Humans."

Joseph Pickerill, a spokesman for Canada's foreign minister, said he couldn't confirm personal details but said Canadian consular officials "are in direct contact with the family and will support them during this difficult time."

Coast Guard officials said the Navy, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Monroe County Sheriff's Office were assisting in the search.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Texas police officer is under fire after posting an unauthorized video telling undocumented immigrants in his city that his department has not enforced immigration laws for many, many years.

Fort Worth Officer Daniel Segura posted a nearly 6-minute video on his Facebook page Wednesday morning, hoping to calm fears in the local Hispanic community following President Donald Trumps executive orders on immigration and the national debate over sanctuary cities.

WATCH: VIDEO OF CHICAGO COP GIVING MAN JACKET TO STAY WARM GOES VIRAL

He said his fellow police officers dont care about a persons immigration status and that they have the same rights as anyone else who lives in Fort Worth.

We are going to defend you. We are going to protect you, Segura said in Spanish.

SAN DIEGO POLICE HELP COUPLE DELIVER BABY AT POST OFFICE

It was Segura's talk about the enforcement of federal immigration laws that got him in the most trouble.

In the City of Fort Worth for many, many years, we have not enforced immigration laws. We are not federal officials that can enforce federal immigration laws. I want to make that very, very clear, he said. We, in Fort Worth, do not execute or enforce laws on immigration so that people that live in Fort Worth do not have the fear that we can possibly deport them. That is not true.

The video has gone viral with more than 1.1 million views.

The department then issued a statement saying it did enforce all laws  local and federal  to protect all citizens, and Fort Worth was not a sanctuary city, Fox 4 reported.

The video is not intended to represent the views of the City of Fort Worth on immigration or compliance with immigration policies, the statement said.

The department said Segura would not face any disciplinary action because of his video, however.

Segura, who is part of the departments public information team, is a longtime liaison with the Hispanic community in Fort Worth, Fox 4 News reported. It was not clear how long he has been with the department.

People know him, hes a good man. My goodness, lets get a hundred like him, Texas-based immigration attorney Francisco Hernandez told the channel, adding that Seguras video should be applauded.

In a subsequent comment on the video, Segura later clarified that Fort Worth is not a sanctuary city.

For more news, visit Fox 4.
Feb. 1

Chad E. Bleuler, 36, of Burns, Oregon was arrested on a warrant at the Elko County Jail for two counts of battery by a prisoner or person on probation. Bail: $20,000

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Cody G. Carroll, 25, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail for battery. Bail: $1,140

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Christian Collazo, 21, of West Wendover was arrested at 802 Willow St. for grand larceny of less than $3,500 and intent to utter a fictitious bill, note or check. Bail: $15,000

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Brian A. Doney, 25, of Elko as arrested at West Bullion Road on a warrant for failure to appear on a traffic citation. Bail: $375

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Ashley Funk, 31, of Elko was arrested at the Elko County Jail on a warrant for burglary. Bail: $20,000

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Joshua J. Gemberling, 33, of Elko was arrested at 1050 Idaho St. for failure as a convicted person to register and be fingerprinted when required; use or possession of drug paraphernalia; destroying or concealing evidence; and resisting a public officer. Bail: $4,920

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Kira L. Negrete, 34, of Spring Creek was arrested at the Samaritan House on a warrant for failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor crime. No bail listed.

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Justin L. Patterson, 42, of Kirtland, New Mexico was arrested on U.S. Highway 93 at mile marker 23 on a warrant for battery. Bail: $640

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Javier Rodriguez, 22, of West Wendover was arrested at 2074 Oquirrh St. on a warrant for three counts of failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor crime. Bail: $3,430

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Rigoberto Salazar Jr., 40, of Elko was arrested at 340 Commercial St. on a warrant for failure to appear after bail on a misdemeanor crime. Bail: $1,000
President Donald Trump is warning Israel that constructing new settlements "may not be helpful" to Middle East peace efforts, shifting toward a tougher line with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

Still, the White House made clear Thursday that the Trump administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity," departing from previous administrations that have considered the settlements illegitimate.

Trump has been perceived as sympathetic to the settlements. Shortly before taking office, he vigorously criticized the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

But in a statement Thursday, the White House said, "While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House said the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington later this month. The two leaders are scheduled to meet at the White House on Feb. 15.

The U.S. statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

Netanyahu repeatedly clashed with President Barack Obama during the Democrat's eight years in office, and Trump has vowed to be a better partner for Israel. Following the U.N. vote, Trump tweeted, "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!"  referring to the date of his inauguration.

Trump has already appeared to slow his promises to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a promise often made by presidential candidates, but never carried out in office because of fears the move would inflame tensions in the region.

Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone Thursday with Netanyahu.

The prime minister's vow to establish new West Bank settlements came as Israeli security forces were completing the evacuation of Amona, where they broke into a synagogue to remove dozens of Israeli protesters who had barricaded themselves inside. Netanyahu's pro-settler government had unsuccessfully tried to block the evacuation of Amona, but Israel's Supreme Court rejected all appeals after determining the outpost was built illegally two decades ago on private Palestinian land.

Speaking at a ceremony in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Netanyahu expressed "great pain" over the removal of Amona.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement watchdog Peace Now, Israel has not officially broken ground on a new settlement since 1992.

Since that time, however, it has greatly expanded its existing settlements and allowed dozens of unauthorized outposts to sprout up, in some cases subsequently legalizing them. In all, some 400,000 Israelis now live in West Bank settlements, in addition to 200,000 others living in east Jerusalem.

The Palestinians claim both areas, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as parts of a future independent state. The international community has opposed the settlements, built on occupied lands sought by the Palestinians, as obstacles to peace.

Britain and Germany, close Israeli allies, as well as the European Union criticized Netanyahu's approval this week of 3,000 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

"This spike in settlement activity undermines trust and makes a two-state solution - with an Israel that is safe from terrorism and a Palestinian state that is viable and sovereign - much harder to achieve," said Britain's minister for the Middle East, Tobias Ellwood.

Amona has emerged as a symbol of settler defiance. On Thursday, Israeli police completed the evacuation of the wind-swept community, where hundreds of Jewish activists joined residents in resisting the pullout.

Police began the evacuation Wednesday, but dozens of activists remained holed up in the synagogue. Police initially said 200 had barricaded themselves inside but later revised the number to about 100.

On Thursday, several hundred Israeli forces surrounded the building, and officers wearing goggles and wielding plastic shields broke through the doors and sprayed water to push back defiant protesters.

"The officers faced especially tough and violent resistance," police said in a statement. Protesters sprayed fire extinguishers at police and threw rocks, paint bottles and wooden planks, police said.

Slogans including "Death to Zionists" and a swastika comparing the Israeli police to Nazis were scrawled on the synagogue walls. The police later began dragging young protesters out of the building.

Speaking to Israel Radio from inside the synagogue, the rabbi of Amona said the protesters were peacefully resisting the uprooting of the outpost. He spoke above loud noises and shouting in the background. Earlier Thursday, police removed protesters holed up in a small home nearby.

Police said 24 officers were slightly injured throughout the evacuation, and 13 young protesters were arrested.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without formal permission but with tacit Israeli government support. It witnessed violent clashes 11 years ago when police demolished nine homes found to have been built on private Palestinian land.

The Supreme Court last year determined that the entire outpost was built illegally and ordered it demolished.

___

Bernstein reported from Amona, West Bank.
The nonprofit aid group founded by Hollywood star Sean Penn in the aftermath of Haiti's deadly 2010 earthquake demolition of the wrecked National Palace, the Haitian government said Tuesday.

Government spokesman Lucien Jura told The Associated Press that Penn's J/P HRO group will begin the demolition in the next 10 days. The group is not charging for the work, which is expected to take about two months, Jura said in an email.

"Amb. Penn mentioned that his organization (J/P HRO) could provide the engineers and equipment to do the demolition at no cost to the government," Jura wrote in an email, referring to the position that Penn holds as ambassador-at-large for Haiti.

The earthquake toppled hundreds of buildings in the capital of Port-au-Prince and in other cities to the south. The National Palace was among them, its white dome and the rest of the structure slowly falling into itself.

The collapse forced government officials to work from a tiny police station near the international airport after the earthquake, coordinating the arrival of aid. Authorities now conduct day-to-day operations from a cluster of pre-fabricated buildings on the grounds of the National Palace.

The crumbled National Palace has come to symbolize the level of devastation caused by the quake as well as government inertia.

But Penn's group hopes the demolition will mark a turning point for Haiti as it works with the government and a department in charge of preserving historical monuments. The effort will include both construction machines along with workers using their hands, said Ron Baldwin, the group's executive director.

"It's an important project, an important step for the government, for Haiti, for the people of Haiti to move on," Baldwin said by telephone.

Baldwin declined to give a value on the cost of the demolition, saying the budget was still being worked on.

It's still not clear what will follow the demolition. Government spokesman Jura said officials had not decided on how to replace the government building, which has had to be rebuilt before.

While still under construction, the Beaux Arts structure was burned by a mob that assassinated Haiti's president, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam. It was completed during the 1915-34 occupation by U.S. Marines that followed his death.
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In Chad, children in a camp for Muslim refugees who fled sectarian violence in neighboring Central African Republic learn the Quran the hard way.

About 30 young girls and boys, sitting on chairs on separate sides of the makeshift classroom, loudly recite verses of the Quran. The teacher, in his late teens, walks among the pupils, holding a leather whip by its wooden handle. The girls all wear head scarves.

A pupil who doesn't recite the holy words loud enough is punished by a lash. A mistake is punished by a lash. A moment of inattention gets a lash.

The devout parents send their children to the madrassa despite the corporal punishment. The madrassa, shaded from the blistering sun by the wall of a building and a concrete roof, is unofficial. A regular school under a white tarp has formally been set up elsewhere in the camp.

As an Associated Press journalist visited the madrassa on Wednesday, a small boy, sitting on the ground with others and too young to speak, was hit in the eye by a lash meant for an older girl. As he started crying and the loud singing continued, the teacher tenderly put his hand on the youngster's face.

Officials from UNICEF, which maintains a presence in the large camp, said they didn't know that the madrassa existed and would look into it.

Over a year ago, these refugees fled Central African Republic amid killings by anti-Balaka Christian militias. Chad is also hosting thousands of Nigerians who have fled attacks by Boko Haram, an extremist Islamic group in northeast Nigeria.

More than 5,000 Muslims of Chadian descent remain in this refugee camp that was built on the site of an unfinished resort complex near N'Djamena, Chad's capital.

Many of them, especially the younger people, are growing impatient. Most came via an air bridge that was established between Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, and N'Djamena. Some, like 40-year-old Amin Idris, traveled in trucks that often came under attack along the way.

"I am a marketing director of an import-export business in Bangui," Idris said. "We have been here for over a year now. I cannot go back until the situation in Bangui is safe."

The fact that their ancestors came from Chad provides little comfort to many of the refugees here.

"I am a civil engineer," said camp resident Oumarou Hussen. "My grandfather was born in Chad, but I do not have any family here. We are all from Bangui. How much longer can we stay here?"

It might be a while before it is safe to return. Many Muslims have been trapped in isolated communities across the impoverished country, threatened by the Christian fighters.

Central African Republic, a country of about 4.6 million, was plunged into sectarian conflict amid the violent rule of a Muslim rebel coalition that was forced from power by the Christian anti-Balaka fighters. Both sides committed human rights abuses.

A transitional government is to organize elections this year, but instability threatens that goal.
Trailed by an enormous delegation of economic advisors, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrived in Havana earlier this week to start a six-day swing through Latin America.

The trip to Cuba, in which Zarif met with various dignitaries including Cuban President Raul Castro, was billed by the foreign minister as one that would unite two countries with histories of resisting what he referred to as "atrocities" by the United States.

Its a very opportune moment to extend our relations, Zarif said at a press conference. We have always been on the side of the great Cuban people in the face of the atrocities and unjust sanctions they have faced, and vice-versa.

Foreign policy analysts say that Zarifs trip and his choice of words in Havana should not be taken lightly by Washington, especially as the Obama administration has worked hard in the last few years to improve the tense relations with both Havana and Tehran.

The U.S. should be very aware of this type of mission to Cuba and what Irans plans are, Leah Soibel, executive director of Fuente Latina, told Fox News Latino.

The U.S.  along with the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and Germany  brokered a controversial deal last year with Iran that would limit the Islamic republics nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

In a historic moment that ended decades of Cold War animosity, Cuba and the U.S. re-established diplomatic ties last year and have slowly worked to normalize issues like travel, money exchange and information sharing. The historic rapprochement, however, has still not brought an end to the U.S. embargo imposed on the communist island since 1962.

Cuba and Iran have had close relations ever since the Middle Eastern countrys 1979 Islamic revolution, which overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as the nations supreme leader. Following the revolution, the U.S. established economic sanctions against the country.

Since then, decades of mutual ideological enmity toward the U.S. have forged a strong bond between the two nations.

Both Cuba and Iran have reached a road map after years of sanctions which they should use to explore new economic opportunities and take advantage of each others capabilities, said Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment Malmierca Diaz, according to Iranian media.

Zarifs stop in Havana  before heading to Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela  is also seen as a symbolic move on the part of Iran to reach out to the sociopolitical leader of Latin Americas left-leaning nations. Since Fidel Castro took power in Cuba in 1959, socialist leaders like the Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Nicaraguas President Daniel Ortega have looked to Cuba as ideological guidepost.

Cuba is a very important player in regards to Irans relations with Latin America, Soibel said. If Cuba gives the greenlight, the rest of the nations will follow suit.

Of the other countries on Zarif's itinerary, Ecuador and Bolivia also have leaders in presidents Rafael Correa and Evo Morales who have enjoyed warm relations with the Castro regime.

Despite the fanfare of the visit, some experts argue that Iran doesnt have much to offer Cuba, and that leaders in Tehran are worried that the island's thaw in relations with the U.S. threatens to undermine what influence the Iranians have in the communist nation.

Theyre jockeying for Cubas favor, Chris Sabatini, a professor at Columbia Universitys School of International and Public Affairs, told FNL. Iran cant bail Cuba out of its economic crisis, and Cuba knows that.

Sabatini added that while it is important for the U.S. to monitor the visit, it shouldn't be as big a cause for concern as it would have been before the thaw.

The U.S. is becoming more and more of an influence  not just now in Cuba, but it will continue into the future, he said.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley condemned what she called Russia's "aggressive actions" in eastern Ukraine Thursday, as fighting between government troops and Moscow-backed separatist rebels continued for a fifth day.

"The dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions," Haley said in her maiden remarks to the U.N. Security Council. "Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, this crisis will continue."

Haley warned Moscow that U.S. sanctions imposed after its annexation of Crimea will remain until the peninsula is returned to Ukraine. She added that it was "unfortunate" that she had to condemn Russia in her first Security Council appearance, saying "we do want to better our relations with Russia."

At least 15 people have been reported killed since the fighting around the city of Avdiivka surged over the weekend. The Ukrainian government said Thursday that two troops were killed in overnight shelling and 10 others were wounded. The rebels said said one of their fighters was killed.

More than 9,700 people have been killed since the war with separatist rebels began in April 2014. An agreement reached nearly two years ago called for a cease-fire and a pullback of heavy weaponry by both sides, but skirmishes persist.

Ukraine's U.N. ambassador, Volodymyr Yelchenko, told the Security Council that the Russian army and Russian-backed separatists had started the latest escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine. Russia's U.N. ambassador, in turn, said that Ukraine had provoked the fighting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused Ukraine of starting the latest escalation to rally support from the new U.S. administration and other Western powers.

Ukraine is concerned that President Donald Trump could roll back some sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine, and that European Union members could follow suit.

"The Ukrainian leadership needs money, and the best way to get the EU, the U.S. and international organizations to pay is by posing as a victim of aggression," Putin said in Budapest after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Shelling over the weekend damaged water, heating and electricity supplies in Avdiivka amid a strong cold snap. Residents' nerves were raw.

"I was born in 1941. I was in a war at birth and now I see it again," said Valentina Pasternak, as she stood on her porch clutching two loaves of bread brought by aid workers. A shell had landed in her yard.

By Thursday, water and heat had been partly restored, but Avdiivka remained without electricity.

In Brussels, European Union President Donald Tusk urged Moscow to pressure the separatists to make sure the flare-up of fighting ends and a cease-fire is restored.

"Russia should use its influence to disengage the Russia-backed separatists," Tusk said.

U.N. Undersecretary-General Jeffrey Feltman called on international community to help revitalize peace negotiations between Ukraine's government and the separatists to prevent the current crisis from becoming "a catastrophe."

The United Nations' political chief told the Security Council that since Jan. 7, and especially in the last few days, there has been "a dangerous intensification of the conflict" between government and rebel forces in eastern Ukraine.

He said European monitors on Wednesday reported over 10,000 explosions in the eastern Donetsk region over 24 hours, the highest number ever recorded.

Feltman said the monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also registered frequent use of heavy weapons banned by the Minsk peace agreements.

He noted damage to houses and schools in populated areas of Avdiivka, which is a government-held town just north of Donetsk, the largest rebel-controlled city. He said the damage raises "serious concerns about possible violations of international humanitarian law by all sides."

Fox News' Jonathan Wachtel and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Negotiations to release Shakil Afridi  the hero doctor who helped the CIA pinpoint Usama Bin Laden  have gained momentum the past few weeks and he could be released as early as May, multiple sources told Fox News.

Afridi has been languishing in a Pakistani jail for five-and-a-half years. According to an Islamabad official, talks about Afridis possible release gained steam toward the end of last year and there has been a renewed willingness to figure out an appropriate time and means to have the doctor  who is said to be declining in health  discharged.

Another well-placed source, a U.S intelligence government contractor, told Fox News that there is a lot of backroom dealing between Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Pakistan Army on the matter. The two parties are negotiating concessions, with a release possible in around three to four months. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the newly-appointed ISI Chief, Naveed Mukhtar, are said to have both asked for immunity for Afridi. But before that could move forward it needs approval from the Army Chief of Operations, Gen. Waseem Ashraf.

The former military leader, Gen. Raheel Sharif, retired late last year and the power shift now to Ashraf has delayed the process.

Ultimately, Gen. Ashraf decides Afridis status, the source noted.

The widely-hailed doctor was arrested on treason charges just weeks after the spectacular May, 2011 raid in which Navy SEALs took out the world's most wanted man. He was later sentenced to 33 years for having militant group connections.

U.S. officials have repeatedly condemned Afridis imprisonment and expressed regret for exposing his identity by making details of the raid public. The State Department issued the same statement to Fox News that it did over a year ago, insisting that his imprisonment was "unjust" and that the matter continues to be raised "at the highest levels during discussions with Pakistan."

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., routinely called on the Obama administration to withhold billions in aid to Pakistan until Afridi was released. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a defense budget that would make $450 million in assistance contingent on the nation doing more to stop a militant terror network and called on the country to free the jailed doctor. But so far, all efforts have proven unsuccessful.

HOUSE TIES PAKISTANI AID TO FREEDOM FOR HERO DOCTOR WHO HELPED GET BIN LADEN



"Our government for the last five years has permitted this to go on, the fact that they (Pakistan) have been able to collect any type of military or non-military aid is a travesty and is a comment on our weakness as Americans," Rohrabacher told Fox News.

The Pakistan Embassy in D.C did not respond to a request for comment.

However, in December top Pakistani diplomat Tariq Fatemi told Voice of America that his country would be willing to discuss Afridis freedom with the U.S and also told local reporters that they were looking forward to working with the Trump administration. Afridis fate is expected to be at the forefront of President Donald Trumps dialogue with Pakistan. While on the campaign circuit last May, the then-GOP frontrunner insisted that, if elected, he would secure Afridis freedom in two minutes.

His words prompted Pakistan Interior Minister Nisar Ali Khan to repudiate such comments as highly misplaced and unwarranted, reiterating that Afridis fate is up to Pakistan, not the United States.

Another insider connected to Islamabad officials said that the Pakistan Army does want to free Afridi but the biggest concern is how to save face from the country.

As part of the elaborate CIA plot, Afridi obtained the Bin Laden familys DNA by orchestrating a fake immunization campaign. The U.S revelation of the plot ignited major backlash and many programs were then shut down, leading to a spread of polio in poor rural parts of the country. Many in Pakistan remain upset by the doctors work for a foreign entity and view him as a traitor, and are subsequently outraged by the damage it caused to vaccination programs in Pakistan.

A high-ranking Pentagon official previously involved in negotiations to have Afridi released told Fox News that exhaustive efforts were made to establish some kind of prisoner swap. However, it was ultimately rejected because Pakistani officials didnt want anything in return and did not want to appear weak by caving in to public pressure from the United States.

This left the CIA paralyzed, the insider said. But the ISI assured [the U.S.] that they would release him once the press about him calmed down.

If released, it remains unclear where Afridi and his family will reside since Pakistan is considered unsafe for them. Most of his immediate family remains in hiding and his former lawyer was shot dead in 2015 by a member of a Taliban faction.

FAMILY OF JAILED PAKISTANI DOC WHO HELPED NAIL BIN LADEN IN HIDING, LOSING HOPE

I assume he and his extended family will live and come here, the Pentagon source added. But it could also be a third country to save Pakistan from embarrassment.

Supna Zaidi, founder and executive director of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance, stressed that the U.S cannot forget Afridi and pointed out the broader implications his release would have on foreign policy.

By securing Afridi's release, she said, future cooperation from the international community is more likely because the U.S. will have maintained a reputation of not abandoning men and women, like Afridi, once a security issue is resolved.

Jamie Brennan contributed to this report.
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Strong shelling has hit both government- and rebel-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine, continuing an escalation of fighting this week. Ukraine says four soldiers had been killed over the past day.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday that several civilians were killed in the city of Donetsk, the main stronghold of Russian-backed separatist rebels, but did not give details.

Shelling from the rebel side has centered on the town of Avdiivka, just north of Donetsk city. A British photographer was wounded in the eye in shelling Thursday night, according to the Facebook page of Ukraine's anti-rebel military operation.

At least 15 people have been reported killed in the fighting this week. More than 9,700 people have died in the war between government troops and rebels that began in April 2014.
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A knife-wielding man shouting "Allahu akbar" attacked French soldiers on patrol near the Louvre Museum Friday in what officials described as a suspected terror attack. The soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker and then opened fire, shooting him five times.

The attack at an entrance to a shopping mall that extends beneath the museum sowed panic and again highlighted the threat French officials say hangs over the country, which was hit repeatedly by extremist attacks in 2015 and 2016.

A police union official said the attacker was carrying two backpacks and had two machetes. He said the man launched himself at the soldiers when they told him that he could not bring his bags into the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall underneath the world-famous museum where the "Mona Lisa" hangs.

"That's when he got the knife out and that's when he tried to stab the soldier," said the official, Yves Lefebvre.

The four soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker before opening fire, said Benoit Brulon, a spokesman for the military force that patrols Paris and its major tourist attractions.

The French interior ministry said anti-terrorism prosecutors are investigating. There were no immediate details about the identity of the attacker. "Allahu akbar" is the Arabic phrase for "God is great."

The patrols  numbering about 3,500 soldiers in the Paris area  were instituted following the January 2015 attacks on Paris' satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and reinforced after Nov. 13 suicide bomb and gun attacks that left 130 people dead at the city's Bataclan concert hall and other sites.

The attacker slightly injured one of the soldiers, in the scalp, officials said. Another soldier opened fire, gravely wounding the attacker.

"He is wounded in the stomach," said police chief Michel Cadot. "He is conscious and he was moving."

Checks of the man's two backpacks found they didn't contain any explosives, he said.

Cadot said a second person who was "acting suspiciously" also was arrested but appears not to have been linked to the attack.

Restaurant worker Sanae Hadraoui, 32, was waiting for breakfast at the Louvre's restaurant complex when she heard the first gunshot, followed by another and then a couple more.

"I hear a shot. Then a second shot. Then maybe two more. I hear people screaming, "Evacuate! Evacuate!"

"They told us to evacuate. I told my colleagues at the McDonalds. We went downstairs and then took the emergency exit."

Hadraoui, who has worked at the Louvre for seven years, said the evacuation was orderly. She was smoking a cigarette when her managers told her people were going back inside.

The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital's biggest tourist attractions. Police sealed off entrances around where the attack took place and closed the area to vehicles, snarling traffic in a busy part of central Paris. Officers shooed away confused tourists.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said about 1,000 people were inside the actual museum and were held inside in safe areas before the all-clear was given and they were allowed to move around as normal again.

Exterminator Olivier Majewski says he was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people running and screaming "there's been a terror attack." The 53-year-old says he hid for about 15 minutes before gingerly making his way upstairs.

"They were panicked," he said.
Glance through the headlines on any given day and its easy to conclude that cyber security is mostly a city problemhigh densities of people and their data create a virtual environment thats rich with opportunity for criminals seeking to exploit financial systems and the Internet of Things. On the high seas, in the worlds ports and at the margins of every coastline, cyber security in the maritime domain is just as complex.

CALLS MOUNT FOR TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO LABEL MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD 'TERRORIST ORGANIZATION'

Fixed and mobile assets cross multiple zones of jurisdiction and territory. Legacy infrastructures and communications systems with poor or no encryption are open to attack. With 90% of the worlds cargo transiting by sea, theres a huge part of the global economy that we dont regularly see but is vital to the national critical infrastructure of most countries.

Cyber security incidents in the maritime sector, as on land, include deliberate attacks on infrastructure and vessels, accidental security breaches, and exploits. The total attack surface can be viewed in terms of mobile assets (vessels, containers, offshore oil and gas platforms, unmanned undersea vehicles, drones), fixed assets (port infrastructure, navigation aids, undersea cables and pipelines), and communications systems (onshore, ship-to-shore, and satellite). Ship-to-shore communications and port industrial control systems (ICS) are particularly vulnerable; with no in-built signal encryption or authentication, AIS is a soft target (a feature that is exploited in the industry to transmit false location data). The data holdings of shipping firms and their service providers are a rich source of operational and financial information, crew and passenger data, and location and asset capabilities. Advances in unmanned vessels, drones, and remotely controlled systems increase the number of connected assets. The total cost of cyber attacks in the maritime sector is unknown, but annual costs to the oil and gas sector are indicative.

STATE DEPT: FEWER THAN 60,000 VISAS CANCELED BY TRUMP ORDER

In the past year, the maritime sector has conspicuously picked up the pace in the cyber security challenge. 2016 saw guidelines from the IMO (MSC.1/Circ. 1526), BIMCO, Lloyds Register, and the US Coast Guard (among others). Conferences dedicated to maritime cyber security are well attended by the worlds navies, CIOs, and lawyersfor example, NATOs first conference on maritime cyber security in October 2016 and the first major maritime cyber security conference in the US in March 2015. Shipping companies, offshore operators, and transportation companies are advised to adopt a cyber risk management approach, such as that advocated by the USCG.

Cyber security in the maritime domain is currently considered in the national security strategies of the UK and USA, among others, but strategy does not automatically generate solutions; maritime cyber, like other sectors, relies on a supply chain of risk managers, IT consultancies, and third-party providers all operating among flag states of varying security posture and quality. Companies and port authorities are advised to assess their particular circumstances. In the US, Executive Order 13636 (February 2013) concluded that the USCG has regulatory authority on cyber security. The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) may soon follow, affecting offshore operators and all 360 ports around the US coastline. US legislation on maritime cyber security is likely to take form in 2017.

International laws and conventions on maritime cyber security are more challenging. ICS views international regulation as unnecessary. Security of crew, passengers, and vessels on the high seas has a long history of international convention and protocol, with 180 flag states assuming responsibility for the physical security of crew and vessels sailing under their name. In 2004, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) further amended SOLAS to include port and ship security, while IMO III (requiring audit of safety compliance) entered into force in 2016. However, as is also the case in the US, IMO relies on voluntary reporting of cyber security incidents from among its member states.

Achieving a reasonable standard of cyber security in the maritime sector in as short a timeframe as possible calls upon an armada manned with expertise from: (i) critical infrastructure protection (particularly in the energy sector), (ii) supply chain risk analysis, and (iii) international law (particularly concerning UNCLOS).

Even acknowledging differences of opinion on the legal frameworks that enable freedom of navigation on the high seas, the founding principle is more than 400 years old and will likely hold good. The worlds energy and cargo supply chains cant (yet) operate without it. Defending access to sea lanes is a jurisdictional minefield negotiated on dry land. But with rapidly advancing cyber capabilities offshore, the threat landscape has fundamentally changed.

In July 2016, NATO affirmed cyberspace as a domain of operations in which international law applies. Arguably, preemptive cyber attack as an offensive defense strategy is already in play. It has yet to be tested at sea, but the opportunity may soon arise. Consider Chinas defense infrastructure on seven newly constructed artificial islands in the Bohai Seain firing range of one of the worlds busiest sea lanesand the response to the discovery of an underwater drone measuring salinity in the South China Seas.

In a different kind of warfare, maritime security, among the oldest traditions of all nations that have prospered on the high seas, has entered a new era.

Sally Daultrey is an OpsLens contributor and geopolitical analyst based in London, UK.
No!

The bubble burst. My fantasy died.

I wasnt a big Donald Trump backer  on TV I have called him a bully, a narcissist, etc.  but his first days were thrilling!

Finally, a president who meant it when he said hed cut red tape that kills growth, a man who mocks political correctness and sneers at leftist reporters. Finally, an executive choosing good people: Andy Puzder, Scott Pruitt, Betsy DeVos, Mick Mulvaney, Mike Pompeo...

These are not the political hacks Ive come to expect from D.C.  not the smug bureaucracy-lovers Hillary Clinton would have inflicted on us. These are people who understand the limits of government command and control, people eager to lift the web of opportunity-smothering rules.

Trump revived the Keystone Pipeline, froze federal hiring. Wow.

But then he broke my heart.

His immigrant ban is bad. I wont write about it until I know more. But even before that, he said hed impose a 20 percent tax on Mexican imports, and he trashed trade by insisting that we want the (Keystone) pipe to be manufactured here!

I know  he said stuff like that when campaigning, but I didnt think he meant it. His own businesses use overseas suppliers if they are cheaper or better. He must know that tariffs punish Americans, that a trade war helped create the Depression.

Protecting jobs with bans and tariffs is counterproductive.

You Trump fans will sneer at that, but please, hear me out.

Yes, some steelworkers jobs are saved by buy-American edicts, but more jobs will be lost. Its hard to recognize this because of a conflict economist Frederic Bastiat called the seen vs. the unseen.

We see the jobs at a steel plant. If it closes, our cameras record the moment. We interview the workers on their last day. Our hearts break at their disappointment. Many wont find other jobs, or jobs that pay as well. We want to do something to help.

What we dont as easily see, though, are the many jobs created if companies are free to use steel thats a little cheaper. We dont see the jobs created by the dynamism that results when people are free to buy and sell all over the world. Alternatively, we dont easily see the jobs that never get created because tariffs or buy American rules make ingredients more expensive.

The media never show those jobs, but they are very real nevertheless. History makes it clear: Where trade is free, prosperity follows. When it is restricted, stagnation follows.

Open societies are better than the alternative. In 1400, China led the world. They invented gunpowder, the compass, the clock, real paper and printing.

Then they walled themselves off. They burned the trading ships. The emperor wanted to protect the Chinese from outsiders.

The result was stagnation. By last century (before free market reforms), China was one of the poorest nations on earth.

In his inaugural speech, President Trump promised to take power from Washington and give it back to you, the people. America must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.?

At Cafe Hayek, economist Don Boudreaux writes, Overlook the absurd suggestion that foreigners who peacefully offer to sell to us attractive products at low prices are akin to invading armies ... Trumps incessant promise to raise trade barriers is a promise to reduce each Americans freedom to spend his or her money as he or she chooses ... a pledge to give to politicians and bureaucrats in the capital city more authority.

Still, I want to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

But historian Robert Higgs asks: Why do some libertarians cut Trump so much slack? ... (s)omeone who enjoys thumbing his nose at the political establishment (poses) his own brand of threat to your life, liberty, and property. Trump talks about many things. ... But ... there is one topic that he never mentions, and that is freedom.

Its true. I never hear Trump say the word.

I wish he knew what it really means.
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Syrians living in besieged towns are stripping their homes of doors, frames and other wood to burn for warmth as they endure yet another winter being blockaded in the civil war.

In the mountain resort town of Madaya  one of 16 areas where combatants are refusing to allow in regular supplies of international aid  residents are cutting the struts of their homes and raiding abandoned houses for any materials to use for fuel.

Wafiqa Hashem sent photos of the tinder frames she'd cleaved from her ceiling. "We cut every other one so that the roof doesn't fall in," she said by text message from the town.

The bitter and unremitting sieges have trapped nearly 1 million people despite an internationally brokered cease-fire reached Dec. 30 and subsequent high-level peace talks in Kazakhstan between the government and opposition.

The government is suffocating international relief efforts in a thicket of bureaucracy, U.N. Undersecretary-General Stephen O'Brien told the Security Council in January. Access by aid groups in December and January was the worst in a year, added U.N. humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland.

Following last month's talks that were sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran, those nations said they were pledging to work together to consolidate the cease-fire and ensure unhindered humanitarian access swiftly and smoothly.

Since then, there has been no movement to end the suffering that is killing civilians.

Hospitals and clinics are losing ground to normally preventable diseases, as government forces pick medical supplies off the few relief convoys they let through, Egeland has said.

In Madaya, 26 kilometers (16 miles) from the capital of Damascus, doctors are recording elevated rates of kidney failure; in Talbiseh, in the Homs countryside, which has been under siege by government forces since late 2012, there's an outbreak of tuberculosis, doctors and media activists say.

The U.N.'s 2017 Humanitarian Needs report said men, women and children in the 16 besieged areas "are particularly vulnerable to malnutrition and waterborne and communicable diseases."

"Throughout Syria, parties to the conflict, particularly the government of Syria, continue to use siege as a military tactic, inflicting indiscriminate and direct suffering on the civilian population," it said.

The Islamic State group has trapped about 94,000 civilians in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, the U.N. estimated. Rebels have blockaded several thousand more in the twin northern villages of Foua and Kefraya. The U.N. estimates that the rest  from 700,000 to 974,000 people  are being besieged by government troops.

The blockades are accompanied by a constant application of violence, which the besieging parties dial up or down depending on the urgency of their desired outcome.

Osama Abou Zeid, who is trapped in the al-Waer neighborhood of the central city of Homs, says he is accustomed to a certain level of mortar, artillery, and heavy machine gun fire from encircling government forces. Al-Waer is the holdout.

"When they use napalm and threaten to bomb us by air, that's when we say there is an escalation," he said.

Online video and local opposition members indicate that Syrian or Russian warplanes used incendiary bombs last year against besieged Daraya, outside the capital, and al-Waer. Human Rights Watch also said the joint Syrian-Russian military operation used those weapons.

Shortly thereafter, Daraya's 2,700 remaining residents, out of an original population of about 250,000, surrendered to the government and agreed to leave the Damascus suburb.

The U.N. likened the outcome to "forced displacement"  a crime under international law  but there is no end in sight to the tactic because it has worked all over Syria.

After Daraya, several other besieged areas around the capital fell to government control: Moadamiyeh, Qudsaya, Hammah, and Wadi Barada. In the north, the government recaptured the eastern part of Aleppo, Syria's former industrial capital.

Those who are still trapped in other sieges are largely demoralized. Some say privately they are ready to surrender if forced to endure one more battering assault.

"If defeat is on the horizon, then there won't be any solution but to give up. I'm just speaking realistically, I don't have any illusions," said an engineer in Talbiseh. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisal from the rebels who have outlawed such defeatist talk.

After last year's escalation in al-Waer, representatives abandoned an established condition for peace talks: information on nearly 7,000 residents who have disappeared in government prisons.

"We've nearly forgotten about the detainees," said Abou Zeid. "The regime tore up the old agreement and restarted negotiations from scratch."

There are constant shortages of food, according to those trapped in the sieges.

Rebels in eastern Ghouta, also outside Damascus, are gearing up for a battle for the control of the al-Marj farms, a steady and essential supply of food since the government largely cut off access to the outside world in 2013.

"There are 10 villages out of 26 still under (rebel) control," said Mazen al-Shami, the chief press officer for the rebels' military council and director of the opposition-run Qassioun News Agency.

A Red Crescent volunteer in Talbiseh, north of Homs, said bread was only available once every 7-10 days, and it costs 400 Syrian Liras (66 cents) for a family ration of three flat pita loaves. The volunteer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the relief organization, which coordinates closely with the government.

For fuel, they burn the rinds of the olives that have been pressed for oil, he said.

"It's a very unpleasant smell, but it's what we have," he said.
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A Polish organization that monitors racism and xenophobia says police raided its office in Warsaw and the private homes of some of its board members, seizing computers.

The Monitoring Center on Racist and Xenophobic Behavior said it considers the early morning raids on Friday an attempt to intimidate it and destroy evidence that is inconvenient for the authorities.

Lukasz Janyst, a spokesman for prosecutors, confirmed there were raids "at a number of locations in Warsaw" and said they were related to an investigation into fraud, the counterfeiting of documents and other wrongdoing.

The anti-racism group said on Facebook it operates legally and accused Poland of "turning into a police state."

Some civic rights advocates say they fear authorities are trying to silence non-governmental groups, as increasingly authoritarian Hungary has done.
The prosecutor in the retrial of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is asking for a five-year suspended sentence for the prominent foe of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny's initial conviction was overturned last year by the Supreme Court. Navalny has announced the start of his campaign to run against Putin in the 2018 elections, but would be barred from running if the conviction is reinstated.

The prosecutor at the trial in the city of Kirov said Friday that Navalny's guilt was fully proven. He is charged with embezzling timber worth about $500,000.

Navalny has repeatedly been arrested and sometimes jailed for participating in opposition gatherings. On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights said seven of those arrests were unlawful and ordered Russia to pay 63,000 euros ($67,600) in compensation.
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Romania's political crisis deepened Friday after two key government allies said an emergency decree that would dilute the government's anti-corruption fight was not constitutional.

Ombudsman Victor Ciorbea, who previously backed the government's ordinance, reversed his position Friday. He said he would tell the Constitutional Court that the decree passed overnight Wednesday to decriminalize official misconduct was "not justified," and the measure risked "taking out of the reach of criminal law almost all the public administration."

A parliamentary party which formally supports the government, the Union of Democratic Hungarians, also criticized the government Friday. It said legislation connected to the criminal law should not be modified through emergency decrees but through parliamentary debate.

In another setback for the government, the influential Romanian Orthodox Church said Friday that the anti-corruption fight should continue and those found guilty should be sanctioned. "Robbery and theft degrade society morally and materially," the church said.

Earlier, Justice Minister Florin Iordache said he stood by the law, defying strong criticism from home and abroad and days of massive protests.

Iordache, who had temporarily handed over his duties to a subordinate, told reporters Friday: "I take responsibility for this ordinance." The ruling center-left Social Democratic Party has defended the decree, which has sparked some of the biggest protests since the 1989 fall of communism

Romania's Constitutional Court will rule on the legality of the law on Tuesday, the last legal resort to stop it.

Speaking at a European Union summit in Malta on Friday, President Klaus Iohannis called the situation "very complicated."

"We have hundreds of thousands of my Romanians out on the streets, and I trust them. I trust my people," Iohannis said.

"I believe in Romania... European values have to prevail and this is what I believe will happen. "

U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. was "deeply concerned" about recent measures "that undermine rule of law and weaken accountability for financial and corruption-related crimes."

___

Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
A machete-wielding man shouting "Allahu akbar" three times attacked four French soldiers Friday inside a shopping mall beneath the Louvre Museum in Paris before one soldier shot him, investigators said.

VOLUNTEER FIGHTER REPORTEDLY KILLED HIMSELF SO ISIS COULDN'T CAPTURE HIM

French President Francois Hollande said it was "no doubt" an act of terror. One of the soldiers suffered minor injuries, and the attacker -- shot five times in the stomach -- was seriously wounded. A military spokesman said the soldiers tried to fight him off before opening fire.

Prosecutor Francois Molins said the attacker came to Paris on a tourist visa on Jan. 26 and bought two military machetes at a gun store in the city two days later.

FALLEN NAVY SEAL GETS POSTHUMOUS PROMOTION, RECALLED AS DEVOTED FAMILY MAN

Hours later, police launched several raids across the city, two French officials close to the investigation told The Associated Press without giving any precise locations. A police union official, Luc Poignant, said one of the raids took place on Rue de Ponthieu, a street near the Champs-Elysees Avenue, the city's famed boulevard. It was unclear how closely the raids were related to the attack near the Louvre.

The soldier who was slightly injured was not the one who shot the attacker, according to authorities. The museum went on lockdown for hours.

The attacker had two machetes and was carrying two backpacks -- but there was no sign the bags held explosives, a police union official said. He told reporters the man launched himself at the soldiers when they told him that he couldn't bring his bags into the Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall underneath the world-famous museum where the "Mona Lisa" hangs.

"That's when he got the knife out and that's when he tried to stab the soldier," said the official, Yves Lefebvre.

The four soldiers first tried to fight off the attacker before opening fire, said Benoit Brulon, a spokesman for the military force that patrols Paris and its major tourist attractions. President Francois Hollande praised the troops' "courage and determination."

Anti-terrorism prosecutors took charge of the investigation. There were no immediate details about the identity of the attacker. "Allahu akbar" is the Arabic phrase for "God is great."

It was believed the man acted alone. Cadot said a second person who was "acting suspiciously" also was arrested, but may not have been involved.

The museum in the center of Paris is one of the French capital's biggest tourist destinations, attracting more than 9 million people each year.

Over the last two years, France has beefed up its security measures in the wake of terror attacks that shocked the nation in the capital and the southern city of Nice.

The military patrols  numbering about 3,500 soldiers in the Paris area  were instituted following the January 2015 murders at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket and reinforced after the November 2015 suicide bomb and gun attacks that left 130 people dead at the city's Bataclan concert hall and other sites.

Seven months later, in the southern city of Nice, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel plowed a 19-ton truck into a mile-long crowd of revelers during Bastille Day festivities. At least 84 people were killed.

Bouhlel, a 31-year-old petty criminal of Tunisian nationality, was killed by police.

About 1,000 people were inside the Louvre museum and were kept in safe areas immediately after Friday's attack, Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said. The museum was set to reopen Saturday.

"We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident," Cadot said.

Olivier Majewski was just leaving his scooter in the parking lot beneath the Louvre when he saw a crush of people, 30 or 40, running and screaming "there's been a terror attack." The 53-year-old said he hid for about 15 minutes before gingerly making his way upstairs. He said people were clearly scared.

"They were panicked," he said.

The attack's timing was poor for Paris, coming just hours before the city was unveiling its completed bid for the 2024 Olympics. Paris is competing against Budapest and Los Angeles for the games, which it hasn't hosted since 1924. With the International Olympic Committee choosing the host in September, Friday's attack generated renewed questions about security in the City of Light.

Speaking outside the Louvre, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said terrorism threatens all of the world's big cities and "there is not a single one escaping that menace."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A nun in Spain has received death threats from angry Catholics after suggesting that Mary likely had sex with husband Joseph  much like any normal couple would.

Sister Lucia Caram  a self-described restless and disturbing nun on her Twitter profile that boasts more than 183,000 followers  seemingly contradicted Roman Catholic faith by suggesting that the Virgin Mary might not have been celibate after all during a television appearance in Spain on Sunday.

CHURCHGOER ACCUSED OF PASSING OUT THC-LACED COOKIES IS CHARGED

I think Mary was in love with Joseph and that they were a normal couple  and having sex is a normal thing, Caram told the Chester in Love Show, according to the Guardian. Its hard to believe and hard to take in. Weve ended up with the rules weve invented without getting to the true message.

Caram, who lives in a convent in Catalonia, said the church has long held a poor attitude on the subject and has swept it under the carpet, according to the Guardian.

It wasnt a taboo subject; it was more something that was considered dirty or hidden, Caram said. It was the denial of what I believe to be a blessing.

The remarks were denounced by the Bishop of Vic in Spain, who issued a reminder that Marys virginity was not in question and that statements to the contrary do not conform to the faith of the Catholic church. The statement also apologized for any confusion Carams statements may have caused.

Carams comments also prompted an online petition demanding that she be suspended from her order, the Guardian reports.

Click for more from the New York Post.
The Navy sent the USS Cole to the Gulf of Aden following an attack earlier this week on a Saudi warship off Yemen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a U.S. defense official told Fox News Friday.

DROPPING THE HAMMER: NEW SANCTIONS SLAPPED ON IRAN FOLLOWING MISSILE TESTS

The destroyer is the same warship that suffered heavy damage in an Al Qaeda bombing attack in Yemen in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

The Navy's move also came as the Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test.

TRUMP, IRANIAN OFFICIAL SQUARE OFF ON TWITTER

Trump tweeted Friday that "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how `kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"

The Cole has been sent to an area off Yemen where U.S. warships were attacked in October, resulting in a retaliatory Tomahawk cruise missile strike from a U.S. destroyer against Houthi radar installations in on Yemens coastline.

The Pentagon says the Houthis have placed mines in the water 45 miles north of the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait to protect the Yemen port city of Mocha.

Another reason the Cole is being sent to the area is to maintain freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and through the strait, Fox News reports.

President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said this week the administration was putting Iran "on notice" for its missile test Sunday and for supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Houthis targeted a Saudi frigate off the coast of Yemen Monday, but the attack may have been meant for an American warship, two defense officials told Fox News.

Two Saudi sailors were killed and three were wounded in the attack. At first the ship was thought to have been struck by a missile.

But based on new analysis of a video showing the attack, American intelligence officials now believe a suicide bomber in a small boat carried out the attack after ramming the side of the Saudi vessel.

In the audio heard on the video, a voice narrating the attack shouts in Arabic, "Allahu akbar [God is great], death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory for Islam."

U.S. defense analysts believe those behind the attack either thought the bomber was striking an American warship or that this was a dress rehearsal similar to the attack on the Cole, according to one official.

The attack on the Saudi ship came a day after Trump spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman to discuss setting up safe zones for refugees in Syria and Yemen. Senior U.S. defense officials who spoke with Fox News expressed concern over the attack but said they were confident American warships can defend themselves.

The United States has supported a Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen since 2015.

Last weekend, Navy SEALs teamed up with United Arab Emirates Special Forces to carry out a raid targeting senior Al Qaeda in Yemen leaders.

Navy Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens was killed and at least three other U.S. service members were wounded in the raid

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Aaron's and Progressive Leasing Provide 17th Keystone Makeover for Indiana Teens

ATLANTA - Feb. 2, 2017 // PRNewswire // - Aaron's, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a leading omnichannel provider of lease-purchase solutions, and its divisions Aaron's and Progressive Leasing, presented teens on Wednesday with a newly renovated Keystone Teen Center at the Parkview Boys & Girls Club of Huntington County in Indiana.

Associates from Aaron's, Inc., a leading omnichannel provider of lease-purchase solutions, and its divisions Aaron's and Progressive Leasing, unveiled the newly renovated Keystone Teen Center on Wednesday at the Parkview Boys & Girls Club of Huntington County. Keystone is Boys & Girls Clubs of America's premier teen leadership program, helping teens develop their character and leadership skills in hopes of helping them reach their potential and creative positive change in their community.

Through a partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) and input from the teen members, Aaron's and Progressive Leasing associates and Club officials worked last Monday painting, updating a gym, and decorating and furnishing the Teen Club Cafe and Lounge. On Wednesday, local Aaron's associates, Progressive Leasing associates and Club officials unveiled the newly-remodeled rooms now equipped with new technology, sectionals, tables and chairs, sound systems and fresh coats of paint. Teens chose the special Sherwin-Williams paint colors for the rooms: Deep Sea Blue; Lavish Lavender; Network Gray; and Chalkboard Paint.

"The Parkview Boys & Girls Club is committed to helping its teen members achieve academic success and provide opportunities to practice good citizenship, so it's essential that they have a state-of-the-art environment to help facilitate those goals," said John Robinson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aaron's, Inc. "Aaron's is thrilled to make this Club a place that teens can be proud of and help inspire them to work hard and own their futures."

Huntington Mayor Brooks Fetters attended the surprise unveiling and congratulated the teens. "I've spent most of my life in Huntington and the Club has always been a powerful resource for our community's youth," he said. "With this renovation, Aaron's and Progressive Leasing has helped improve this space and made it a location Huntington teens are excited to come to every single day."

In 2015, the Aaron's Foundation, Inc. announced a three-year, $5 million national partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America's Keystone Program, helping teens develop their character and leadership skills in hopes of helping them reach their potential and creating positive change in the community. Keystone Club teen centers provide members ages 14-18 an environment to plan and participate in activities that focus on community service, academic success, career preparation and teen outreach.

The 16 previous Keystone Club makeovers have included Boys & Girls Clubs in cities across the nation such as Los Angeles, San Antonio, Nashville, Buffalo, Dallas and Miami. The makeover at the Parkview Boys & Girls Club of Huntington County includes an additional in-kind retail donation valued at $28,000.

"Teens who attend Boys & Girls Clubs are shown to have improvements in grades, graduation rates and much more," said Mandy Reber, Executive Director of the Parkview Boys & Girls Club of Huntington County. "We serve hundreds of kids every day and thanks to Aaron's we're now well-equipped to provide them with a safe, modern space to help them become leaders in our community."

Aaron's partnership with BGCA's Keystone Program inspires teens to "Own It" by taking ownership of their choices to build the lives they deserve. The Aaron's and Keystone Club "Own Your Future" campaign supports three principles:

Own Your Path: No matter where you come from, the future is yours to decide.

Own Your Decisions: Making good choices opens more doors for your future.

Own Your Community: Use your talents to make an impact in your community.

To see photos of the Keystone Club remodel at the Parkview Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington, County, visit Aaron's on Facebook (www.facebook.com/aaronsinc), on Twitter (www.twitter.com/AaronsInc) and at www.AaronsGives.com.

About Aaron's, Inc.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Aaron's, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), a leading omnichannel provider of lease-purchase solutions was founded in 1955, has been publicly traded since 1982, and owns the Aaron's, Progressive Leasing and HELPcard brands. Aaron's engages in the sales and lease ownership and specialty retailing of furniture, consumer electronics, home appliances and accessories through its more than 1,860 Company-operated and franchised stores in 47 states and Canada as well as its e-commerce platform Aarons.com. Progressive Leasing, a virtual lease-to-own company, provides lease-purchase solutions through approximately 19,000 retail locations in 46 states. Dent-A-Med, Inc., d/b/a the HELPcard, provides a variety of second-look credit products that are originated through a federally insured bank. For more information, visit investor.aarons.com, Aarons.com, ProgLeasing.com, and HELPcard.com.

About Boys & Girls Clubs of America

For more than 100 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America (GreatFutures.org) has enabled young people most in need to achieve great futures as productive, caring, responsible citizens. Today, more than 4,100 Clubs serve nearly 4 million young people through Club membership and community outreach. Clubs are located in cities, towns, public housing and on Native lands throughout the country, and serve military families in BGCA-affiliated Youth Centers on U.S. military installations worldwide. They provide a safe place, caring adult mentors, fun and friendship, and high-impact youth development programs on a daily basis during critical non-school hours. Club programs promote academic success, good character and citizenship, and healthy lifestyles. In a Harris Survey of alumni, 54 percent said the Club saved their lives. National headquarters are located in Atlanta. Learn more at www.facebook.com/bgca.clubs and https://twitter.com/BGCA_Clubs.

Aaron's, Inc., a leading omnichannel provider of lease-purchase solutions, and its divisions Aaron's and Progressive Leasing, presented teens on Wednesday with a newly renovated Keystone Teen Center at the Parkview Boys & Girls Club of Huntington County in Indiana. Keystone is Boys & Girls Clubs of America's premier teen leadership program, helping teens develop their character and leadership skills in hopes of helping them reach their potential and creative positive change in their community.

SOURCE Aaron's, Inc.

Contact:

Garet Hayes

garet.hayes@aarons.com

678-402-3863

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Hyatt Announces Plans For First Hyatt Place Hotel In Aruba

Construction of new Hyatt Place Aruba Airport increases Hyatts brand presence in the Caribbean

February 03, 2017 // Franchising.com // CHICAGO  Hyatt Hotels Corporation (NYSE: H) announced that Hyatt has entered into a management agreement with Pelca Development V.B.A. for a Hyatt Place hotel within the Aruba Airport Business Center in Oranjestad, Aruba. The 116-room hotel will be the first Hyatt Place hotel in Aruba, adjacent to the Reina Beatrix International Airport (AUA), and will provide guests with a relaxing and uncomplicated place to pause before beginning the next leg of their journey.

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 be working with Pelca Development V.B.A. to bring the first Hyatt Place hotel to Aruba, said Camilo Bolanos, vice president of development and real estate  Latin America and Caribbean, Hyatt. Hyatt Place hotels combine style, innovation and 24/7 amenities to create a seamless stay with modern comforts. Ease of access and connectivity to Arubas business areas and tourist attractions, in addition to convenient proximity to the airport will help establish Hyatt Place Aruba Airport as a preferred lodging option for business and leisure travelers seeking convenience.

Hyatt Place Aruba Airport will be located on an approximate 2.1-acre mixed use development site that will contain 21,000 square feet of office space, as well as an 8,000-square foot food court, retail shops, a casual dining restaurant, and car rental facilities. Additionally, the hotel will feature a covered walkway that will provide direct pedestrian access between the hotel and Reina Beatrix International Airport, which currently serves more than two million passengers per year by more than 20 international carriers.

With construction expected to begin in early 2017, Hyatt Place Aruba Airport is projected to open in late 2018, and will join the already open Hyatt Regency Aruba Resort Spa and Casino. Additionally, this hotel will mark the fourth Hyatt Place hotel in the Caribbean, joining Hyatt Place Manati, Hyatt Place San Juan/Bayamon and Hyatt Place San Juan/City Center in Puerto Rico.

For more information on Hyatt Place hotels, 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 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.

Media Contacts:

Sian Martin

Hyatt

+1 312 780 5797

sian.martin@hyatt.com

Carla Santiago

Hyatt  Latin America & Caribbean

+1 305 779 2207

carla.santiago@hyatt.com

SOURCE Hyatt Hotels Corporation

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Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy conveyed to Theresa May on Friday that the United Kingdoms exit from the European Union  commonly known as Brexit  must happen quickly, and with a constructive and positive approach, according to government sources. Rajoys 25-minute meeting with the British prime minister took place on Friday morning at the request of the latter, ahead of an informal EU summit of heads of state or government that is taking place today in Valletta, Malta.

British PM Theresa May arrives at the EU summit in Valletta, Malta. Gregorio Borgia (AP)

May, who also met with other European leaders, explained to her interlocutors the details of the British position on Brexit, a stance that she explained last month in a speech and in a White Paper published on Thursday. She also explained the calendar ahead of the activation of Article 50 of the EU treaty, which will officially trigger Brexit and must happen before March.

According to sources consulted by EL PAIS, both the Spanish and British PM coincided on the need to not damage the interests of Spanish and British citizens residing in each others countries. More than 300,000 Britons  most of whom are retired  are currently living in Spain, while around 200,000 Spaniards  most of whom are young and highly qualified  live in the United Kingdom.

The two leaders agreed on the need to not damage the interests of citizens living in each others countries

It is in Spains interest for British citizens living in the country to remain comfortable post-Brexit, given that many claim pensions from the UK and invest plenty of capital in the purchase of properties  not to mention the 15.5 million Britons who visited the country in 2015, with UK tourists topping the list of nationalities that visit Spain.

Whats more, the United Kingdom is the second destination for Spanish investment abroad, while the trade balance is in Spains favor (7 billion in 2015). All of these factors account for Rajoys interest in the Brexit process involving the continuation of good relations between the United Kingdom and the EU, according to government sources.

The thorny issue of Gibraltar  the UK territory in southern Spain over which the Spanish government has long claimed sovereignty  was not discussed at Fridays meeting, according to the same sources. Nor was the position that Europe should take with regard to Donald Trump, despite the fact that Mrs May is the only European leader to have met with the new US president so far.

Rajoy and May first met on October 13 in Madrid. On this occasion there were no photographs of the meeting, on the request of the British delegation to preclude journalists from being granted access to the two leaders.

English version by Simon Hunter.
Thirteen years ago, Mark Zuckerberg was a student at Harvard known for his computer programming skills. After creating an application that connected up his fellow students with each other, he then decided to include every university in the United States, and ended up by spawning a global network with more than 1.8 billion users. Facebook has made him the youngest of the worlds 10 richest people.

Mark Zuckerberg at Menlo Park. Juan Pablo Rojas - Platzi

To celebrate the companys birthday, which Zuckerberg has dubbed Friends Day, he invited a small group of Facebook users, along with journalists from six media outlets, among them EL PAIS, to the companys headquarters at Menlo Park, in the San Francisco suburb of Palo Alto. The occasion was an opportunity to see the personal side of Mark. The six journalists were allowed to photograph and film the encounter, but not to ask questions or participate.

Zuckerberg has said his priority for 2017 will be to get to know the United States better, traveling to the 30 or so states he still hasnt visited. In all likelihood he wont set foot outside the country, and wont be kicking off his European tour by attending the Barcelona World Mobile Congress, as he usually does.

Without mentioning names, Zuckerberg referred to the current situation in the United States, saying: There is a division in society the like of which hasnt been seen for a long time. Not just in the United States, but in the whole world. That is why we want to generate community. On our 13th birthday, we want to bring families and friends together.

Zuckerberg listened with his mouth half open, blinked a lot, and allowed people to finish their sentences

Zuckerberg said he wanted to get closer to the people who use Facebook on a daily basis, saying that another focus of 2017 would be to provide provide more and better tools to strengthen contact between groups with shared interests.

Facebook is also celebrating its 13th birthday by offering members ready-made (but editable) videos featuring photos of their friends, plus some new Messenger GIFs with friendship themes.

This explains why Facebook users are increasingly coming across suggestions for groups they can join or an option to create their own, which are available in prefabricated form, making it easier than ever.

The sixth-richest man in the world continues to wear a gray t-shirt that doesnt suit him, worn-out jeans and sneakers. Zuckerberg says it means he doesnt waste time thinking about what to put on. By having a routine he is able to focus on what is really important. For an hour he was focused solely on his guests: no phone, no notepad. The conversation took place in a meeting space designed like a living room, complete with rug and armchairs. At times, the encounter was in danger of turning into a focus group, and all that was missing were analysts on the other side of a one-way mirror.

Or maybe they were Zuckerberg listened with his mouth half open, blinked a lot, and allowed people to finish their sentences. He then talked honestly. He recognized that he had a lot to learn from everybody else, that he didnt want to lose touch with reality and asked for suggestions on how to improve the service. Mike Garcia, a fishing aficionado from Austin, Texas, said he wanted a way to keep a group alive after a particular event has taken place.

Zuckerberg chats with his guests. Juan Pablo Rojas - Platzi

Shanya Gill-Gray and Aricka Westbrooks, from Chicago, explained their need for a way to sell tickets without using third parties. The pair also wanted to be able to make group video calls on Facebook, instead of having to use Skype.

Terrorism and natural disasters also came up in the conversation. Zuckerbergs guests said they appreciated the existence of a system within the social network to let friends and family know they are well, but said it needed to be more practical. I understand. You dont want to have to go from wall to wall checking, but instead just look within your group to see who is safe, he said.

At the end of the meeting, the guests were rewarded with a small gift from their host indicating how he sees the future of the company: each is given a 360-degree Ricoh Theta camera that can be used to created content for Oculus, Zuckerbergs virtual reality glasses.

When my daughter took her first steps, I recorded it like this. And then I sent it to my parents. This camera is how you really capture and relive a moment, he said before leaving to go back to his office, a glass cage in the middle of the building. Hes on view to everybody, something he accepts with humor: a sign reads, Dont feed the monkeys.

English version by Nick Lyne.
In the United States, 57 million people consider themselves Latino and 40 million speak Spanish , out of a total population of around 308 million. These facts highlight a historical constant: the ability of the Spanish language to resist an institutional environment that has been, and is currently acting, hostile . Laws attempting to eradicate bilingual education have systematically failed, because the use of a language depends on the people who speak it, and not on legislation.

An American flag has been placed over the word Mexico on this billboard in the US. GLENN KOENIG (GETTY IMAGES)

Data support faith in the vitality of Spanish in the United States, from its use in homes and communities, to its presence in the media, especially on television. Spanish also has considerable weight in American academia. Despite the fact that US President Donald Trump added an official Twitter account in Spanish, what does the news about the deletion of Spanish from the White Houses website mean?

To deny the importance of Spanish in the United States is as insane as denying climate change

In a video from 1960, which today seems rather poignant, Jacqueline Kennedy speaks Spanish, asking Latinos to vote for her husband John F. Kennedy, who at the time was a senator. This was not an isolated case. Throughout the more than half-a-century since then, the Spanish language has been used with certain regularity in the presidential milieu, by both Republicans and Democrats. Everyone remembers George W. Bushs attempt to engage with Spanish. Meanwhile, his successor, Barack Obama, thought it important that the official White House webpage do justice to the bilingual reality of the United States, integrating Spanish into its design. Spanish is not the only thing that has disappeared from the White Houses webpage: also deleted are allusions to Cuba, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal, among other things.

To deny the importance of Spanish in the United States is as insane as denying climate change  something that, incidentally, the new administration is doing with complete impunity. The historical, social, political, economic and cultural weight of Spanish in the United States is an unquestionable fact; the problem is that facts do not matter when it comes to a political agenda where reality is denied on a systematic basis.

In terms of the demographic force of the Latino community in the United States, Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez solemnly summed it up when he said: It was not us who came to the United States. It was the United States who came to us. And how did they do it? Through a simple operation of buying and selling. In 1848, after a military conflict, Mexico ceded half its territory to its northern neighbor for $15 million under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Overnight, a huge part of the Spanish-speaking population became part of the northern territory. A survey of place names serves as a silent witness to the trampling of this territory by the United States. Names such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nevada, Colorado, among many others, each have their own history. If geography is unequivocal, the same cannot be said about history, which Anglo-Americans have always told badly, prioritizing the vision of an expansive horizontal movement from coast to coast; heading west.

Despite what is usually argued through imprecise statistics, the use of Spanish does not decrease from one generation to another in a lineal way

The Hispanic vision, centered on an examination of a vertical South-North axis, has been emphasized by researchers such as Professor Fernandez Armesto in Our America (the title, as is well known, comes from Cuban national hero Jose Marti), but it is systematically ignored.

More data. California, which sometimes flirts with the dream of independence, is, besides being the richest state in the country, a pre-eminently Spanish-speaking territory. In Miami one can get by without speaking any English at all. Another fact worth underlining is that, despite what is usually argued through imprecise statistics, the use of Spanish does not decrease from one generation to another in a lineal way, given that the constant flow of new immigrants counteracts any such fall. Other languages such as Yiddish, over extended periods of time in places like New York, have disappeared without a trace: Spanish, in contrast, has not stopped growing, a trend that the new administration seems determined to halt. The ever-changing history of relations between Spanish-speakers in the US and their maternal language switched from being defined by an inferiority complex to a phase of assertion and pride. But now there is an additional element: fear. Speaking Spanish in public could be dangerous in the face of the threat of a massive wave of deportations.

Eduardo Lago is a writer and the former head of the Cervantes Institute in New York.

English version by Alyssa McMurtry.
No snow this weekend but temperatures will feel like February.

Sorry snow lovers...the potential storm that earlier this week looked like it might provide some white stuff in Fredericksburg on Sunday has fizzled out. The blame can be placed squarely on a stronger than expected tendency for the jet stream to maintain a west-to-east flow. The lack of a trough sagging southward into the Gulf of Mexico essentially blocks that moisture from moving northward into our area.

Thus as the main low pressure system scoots across the Great Lakes and up into Canada (see graphic) this weekend there wont be any secondary storm forming over the southern U.S. The result is a dry but cool period that will remind us that, indeed, February is on the calendar.

Today  Friday  will be mainly cloudy around Fredericksburg with light northerly winds as a weak surface low moves across the Carolinas. However by mid-afternoon there could be some peeks of sunshine after that system moves off the coast. Temperatures will max out in the lower 40s today but will plummet to 20 degrees overnight. Cooler spots could reach the upper teens by dawn tomorrow.

After that cold start Saturday wont warm up much despite bright sunshine as high pressure slides overhead. Thermometers tomorrow will struggle to reach the 40 degree mark amid the influence of true Canadian air. Light breezes will prevail so wind chill wont be a factor but itll feel cold given our recent warm stretch.

Overnight Saturday a weak upper level disturbance will create more cloud cover but no precipitation will occur in the Burg Sunday. Temperatures will climb into the upper 40s Sunday afternoon as milder air re-enters the area. This warming trend is a harbinger of even milder temperatures early next week.

So will it snow again this winter or are we rushing headlong toward spring? Just keep in mind that Fredericksburg has had several of its biggest snowstorms in February and March. Dont put away those snow shovels just yet!
The Peumansend Creek Regional Jail will close its doors in March, but without anyone locked inside.

The regional jail, a 336-bed facility on Fort A.P. Hill in Caroline County, has served as an overflow jail for numerous Northern Virginia jurisdictions since opening in 1999.

But there arent enough inmates to go around anymore.

The acting superintendent, Major Paul Perry, wrote in an email that the jail is closing because the member jurisdictions have had a reduction in their incarceration populations and withdrew from the PCJR Authority, which oversees the minimum security Peumansend jail.

Its disheartening to see a facility as young as this close. We have provided so many job skills and needed services to the inmates in our custody. This facility has been great for the surrounding community, Perry wrote. A large portion of our staff are Caroline County residents. This closing is going to take a toll on the county.

Perry said the plan is to have all inmates removed by March 31. The jail authority is scheduled to officially disband on June 30.

The jail is governed by authorities in Arlington, Caroline, Loudoun and Prince William counties, along with Alexandria and Richmond.

The sheriffs in those localities have been gradually taking back inmates from Peumansend, Perry said. There are now just more than 100 inmates at the jail.

The closure will cost 108 people their jobs.

Employees will receive a severance package upon termination, Perry said.

The jail has followed a unique approach in its nearly two decades of existence, offering inmates educational programs and job opportunities through Peumansend Creek Industries, which will close along with the jail.

The work program allowed inmates to learn work skills by producing embroidery, silk-screens and hygiene kits, which the jail sold. Inmates also resoled shoes and did printing and woodworking jobs. In 2004, the jail started a farming project, with inmates growing mainly potatoes, tomatoes, squash and green beans.
A teenager who killed a motorcyclist last summer while fleeing from police on State Route 3 in Stafford was convicted of felony murder Thursday in Stafford Circuit Court.

John Henry Ware III, 16, was also found guilty of felony eluding, grand larceny and hit and run. Judge Donald Haddock announced his decision about two seconds after defense attorney Jim Ilijevich wrapped up his closing argument.

Ware, who was tried as an adult, drove a stolen F-250 directly into 30-year-old Joshua Dombo of Fredericksburg on July 16. Ware was fleeing from King George deputies and driving east in the westbound lanes at the time of the crash.

According to the evidence put on by Commonwealths Attorney Eric Olsen, King George deputies went to a home of Wares grandparents in the Passapatanzy/Sealston area that morning at the request of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Ware was wanted in connection with a shooting in Washington that police initially reported as a homicide. The victim, Wares father, survived and Ware has since been charged in Washington with attempted murder.

After the deputies arrived, Ware took off in a truck that had been stolen from a Stafford Nissan dealership. The chase started on Passapatanzy Road and ended up on Route 3.

King George deputies Brian Woodring, Ryan Moneyhon and Sgt. Tim Lyons pursued the vehicle and all captured footage of the pursuit on their dashboard cameras. The videos played in court showed the truck go off the roadway several times and several vehicles veering out of its path to avoid collisions.

Just before the pursuit entered Stafford, the video showed the teen take a crossover and start heading west in the eastbound lanes. About a mile or two into Stafford, Ware came upon a cluster of vehicles heading in the proper direction and hit Dombo.

Kelly Miller testified that she was on her phone riding with her husband and another man when the truck driven by Ware came over a crest. She said her husband veered quickly to the left to avoid contact as she screamed, What the hell, oh my God!

A moment later, Dombo was struck. A number of people came to his aide immediately, including a nurse and rescue worker Vono Berry, but witnesses said Dombo had little to no pulse the entire time. A Ford emblem was embedded in his chest as the result of the collision.

Meanwhile, witnesses said, Ware got out of the truck and ran to the motorcycle and picked it up in an apparent effort to use it to continue his flight. But the bike was too damaged and by the time Ware returned to the truck, Lyons was there with his gun drawn.

Things happened so fast and poor Joshua Dombo had no place to go, Olsen said. [Ware] showed no concern for what he had done and no desire to help Mr. Dombo.

Ilijevich unsuccessfully tried to convince Judge Haddock to convict his client of involuntary manslaughter instead of felony murder. The manslaughter charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years, while felony murder carries up to 40.

Because Ware was a juvenile at the time of the offense, Haddock will have the option of sentencing him as a juvenile, as an adult or some combination of the two.
A row of rusty, hand-wrought iron nails found in a previously unknown Civil War trench at Riverfront Park was lined up neatly next to Michelle Salvatos laptop, along with her magnifying glass and digital scale.

Salvato, a GIS technician for Dovetail Cultural Resource Group, was entering each artifact into a database, along with the bits of bone, pieces of porcelain and slivers of glass found in a five-foot-long section of the trench that the firms archaeologists uncovered during a recent dig at the downtown Fredericksburg park. Once shes done, theyll be tagged, bagged and stored in case a future researcher wants to examine them.

Its the database itself that will then be of most interest to Joe Blondino, who oversaw the recently completed two-week dig. Hell use it to get an overall view of activity on land where the home of two Fredericksburg mayors, Absolom P. Rowe and Peter Goolrick, once stood. Looking at how the nails are distributed, for example, may show where long-vanished buildings had been, he said. They can also help determine the date of construction.

Dovetail, which has its office in the Battlefield Industrial Park, has done three digs at Riverfront Park for the city. This last one completed the archaeological excavations that it was asked to do after Prince Hall Lodge 61 at 609 Sophia St. was demolished in the fall of 2015 to make way for the park.

The earlier digs turned up the foundations of the RoweGoolrick house, its outbuildings and other artifacts, including bone fragments thought to be those of Union soldiers because an X-ray showed some of the buttons found near them bore the logo of the 14th Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry.

The bones were found in what may have been slave quarters of the RoweGoolrick house, along with pieces of a haversack and a vial of mercury mixed with turpentine and possibly animal fat. It was likely a patent medicine of the kind Civil War soldiers carried to treat such ailments as syphilis, smallpox and scurvy.

The goal of the January dig was to explore the buildings foundation in more depth, as well as its backyard. Dovetails staff also wanted to make sure that any additional human remains were removed. None were found, although plenty of bits of animal bonesincluding those of cows, pigs and possibly a chickenwere.

Researchers also found evidence of a Civil War trench that had angled to Sophia Street from a trench paralleling the Rappahannock River, as well as a wealth of 18th- and 19th-century objects. These included fragments of glass bottles and personal items such as pieces of clay pipes and shoe buckles. They also found three spent .54 caliber, brass cartridges for a Burnside carbine and one lid to a cast-iron Dutch ovenitems that were most likely used by Civil War soldiers.

Blondino said that the spent cartridges were found together in the trench, and were most likely used by the same Civil War soldier. They also have an interesting tie to the area.

Ambrose E. Burnside designed and patented the Burnside carbine, a lightweight, breech-loading rifle, and the cartridges for it, in the mid-1850s. It beat 17 other designs in a rifle competition at West Point in 1857, and went on to become the cavalry armament of choice during the Civil War. Records indicate that 43 Union cavalry regiments used it on a regular basis, and some Confederate cavalry units carried Burnside carbines, likely taken from their fallen foes.

The popularity of Burnsides invention is thought to have fueled his rise through the ranks in the Union Army, where he became a major general. President Abraham Lincoln urged him to head the U.S. Army of the Potomac despite his protests that he was not fit for the task.

His lack of leadership experience led to crushing defeats at both the Battle of Fredericksburg and the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, where his forces likely faced Confederates armed with Burnside carbines.

Dovetail will give a report of its findings about the dig to City Council once it wraps up its research. Kate Schwartz, the citys historic resources planner, is working on ways to make the citys collection of artifacts more accessible to the public, and some will go on display at the Fredericksburg Area Museum in the spring of 2018. She also hopes there will be an educational component for Riverfront Park as well.

Those plans, she said, are still very much in the works.
ITs mid-winter, with temperatures plunging to five degrees Fahrenheit, but Russias creeping war of aggression in eastern Ukraines Donbas region is heating up once again as Kremlin-supplied rebels attack Ukrainians defending the town of Avdiivka.

Despite the Minsk Protocol ceasefire of September 2014, the Kremlins Ukraine war has never ceased. It began in Spring 2014, an opportunistic follow-on to Russias February 2014 invasion of Ukraines Crimean peninsula.

Then Russia annexed Crimea. The onetwo punch of military aggression and territorial annexation by a major European power has a tragic historical record. The combination tends to produce continent-wide mass slaughter.

Creeping war is designed to avoid major war by creating the perception that aggression is incidental. Thus the Kremlin fights in flickers, keeping it on media backburners until the time comes for it to briefly flare.

During a flare phase, pro-Kremlin forces usually seize another neighborhood. This suggests that the rebels and their advisers were intended to conduct local offensive operations, taking little nibbles of terrain. The nibbles matter in Kiev and Warsaw and the Baltic nations, but elsewhere they dont rate sustained attention. If eyebrows rise, the fighting wanes and conveniently subsides.

A propaganda campaign based on plausible deniability and vicious counter-accusation accompanies flare-phase offensives. Propagandists are information warfare agents tasked with creating psychological fog and smoke screens to mask the creeping war.

One tried-and-true technique is accusing the other side of starting the firefight. Should cellphone video provided by a civilian caught in the crossfire later prove the rebels started the fracas, well, they now control their desired objective. It is a new fact on the battleground, soon to be fortified. Oh, yesthe aggressors now promise to respect the ceasefire they ignored. New negotiations are imminent!

The October 2016 surge in Donbas combat followed this script. After weeks of relative dormancy, international observers reported a surge in rebel violations of the Minsk ceasefire agreement. The rebels employed heavy weapons. By mid-November, defense analysts concluded that the number of rebel attacks launched in October was roughly twice the number launched in September.

The October surge occurred during a major media distraction: The hotly contested U.S. presidential election.

Following this script, Russias Ukraine adventure has remained below the headlines and off major media radar just the way Russian President Vladimir Putin wants it.

Armed opponents with guts and stamina can stop a creeping war, if they have courageous leaders who possess a clear understanding of the stakes. A creeping-war wager bets, however, he wont encounter such leaders, not in decadent western Europe and not in post-Iraq Washington.

So far, the Kremlins bet has paid off. After Crimea, the Obama administration imposed economic sanctions, sanctions which hurt Russia, but the Kremlin knew President Barack Obama was a feckless character.

At the moment, Avdiivka rates headlines. The rebels are shelling the town with Russian-type rockets. The latest surge in combat follows a highly touted phone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the new president of the United States, Donald Trump. Trump has said he respects Putin as a leader.

The Avdiivka attack certainly looks like the Kremlins first probe of the Trump administration. Putin wants to know if he can continue to wage slow war while reviving his economy.

Low oil prices have forced budget cuts. The Ukraine adventure has been costly, but Putin still appears to believe he will benefit if he can make the Donbas Russian.

Trump has proved to be a master of perception. If he can smile at Putinand avoid direct confrontationwhile making certain Russian aggression exacts stiff economic and political penalties, he will demonstrate he can handle the art of diplomacy as well as art of the deal.

Austin Bay is a columnist with Creators Syndicate.
DEL. BOBBY ORROCK knows the sting of partisan redrawing of legislative districts. In 1991, when Democrats ruled the Virginia General Assembly, they drew the freshman Republicans home in Caroline County right out of his district. He had to move to Spotsylvania to run for re-election.

That same year, those devious Dems plotted to extend Del. Bill Howells Stafford district into eastern Culpeper County. The only way he would be able to reach constituents there was to drive outside his district and cross the Rappahannock River to get to them.

The Democrats overplayed their hand with such ruthless redistricting plans. But both Orrock and Howell survived gerrymandered districts, as did many other members of their party. Republicans won a majority in the House in 1999 for the first time since Reconstruction. They hold a supermajority today, thanks partly to having a strong hand in how voting districts are drawn. The GOP controls a narrow majority in the state Senate and seven of Virginias 11 seats in Congress.

Lately, the GOP has run into legal problems by taking full advantage of their numbers when redesigning districts. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the redrawing of some congressional districts last year after finding that the legislature had illegally packed minorities in the 3rd District. The high court has a similar racial gerrymandering case before it now that involves 12 House of Delegates districts in the Richmond area and Hampton Roads. Theres a growing bipartisan effort to take the worst of the hardball politics out of how Virginia draws voting districts. Thats why it was discouraging earlier this week when a House subcommittee voted 43without debateto table five bills intended to end gerrymandering as its now practiced.

Of those measures, the one that had the most promise for finding a reasonable approach to drawing lines was HJ 763. The constitutional amendment introduced by Republican Del. Steven Landes of Augusta County would prohibit any electoral district from being drawn in order to favor or disfavor any political party, incumbent legislator, member of Congress or other individual entity.

Now theres a guideline that could discourage legislators from using powerful mapping computers to draw snakelike districts that split communities, pack minorities or carve out potential challengers from incumbents districts.

Since the subcommittee tabled the redistricting reform bills, some legislators and the nonpartisan reform group, OneVirginia2021, have called on House Speaker Bill Howell to revive them so that the issue can be debated.

House Republicans have sidelined every single redistricting amendment this session, including their own, House Minority Leader David Toscano of Charlottesville said after Mondays subcommittee vote. We call upon the speaker to revive these amendments for a full floor vote, as Virginians deserve to know where their leaders stand on this issue.

Thanks to bipartisan pressure, the redistricting reform measures are expected to get a hearing this morning before the House Privileges and Elections Committee. The surprise move announced Thursday would indicate that Republican House leaders have heard the complaints of voters around the commonwealth. The committee, chaired by Spotsylvania Republican Del. Mark R. Cole, has routinely rejected such reforms. Cole, in fact, is a member of the subcommittee that voted to kill the redistricting bills and others in the bloc early Monday morning.

Colewho was elected in 2002, four years after Republicans took control of the Househas never known the sting of redistricting like his colleagues Orrock and Howell.

However, theres a chance now that the legislature will debate redistricting reforms and vote on the measures so Virginians can see where our legislators stand on gerrymandering. If HJ 763 or similar measures like it are approved this year and next, it will go to Virginia voters as a constitutional amendment.

Virginia needs legislative districts that best represent voters and their interests, not that protect politicians and their careers. We hope Coles committee, and the General Assembly as a whole, will give these bills serious consideration and approve legislation that will end gerrymandering and promote democracy.
Iraqi engineers deserve better from the U.S.

On Christmas Eve 2007, I arrived in Iraq to begin a six-month tour of duty as the officer in charge of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers construction office. My office was responsible for contract management and oversight of more than $300 million of reconstruction and infrastructure projects in western Baghdad. We had a staff of about 30 engineers. Over two-thirds of them were what we termed local nationals, i.e. citizens of Iraq.

The Iraqi engineers in the office were a diverse lot. Some were former military. Some were Christians, others Muslims. Most were men, but a number (a surprising number for an Arab country) were female. Many had been educated overseas, in England or the United States.

But all had a few things in common. All were proficient in English. All were educated and experienced engineers. And all were dedicated to reconstructing their country. Dedicated enough, in fact, that they literally put their lives on the line by agreeing to work with the U.S. military.

Now the Iraqi engineers that I used to work with have another thing in common. All these brave men and women have been denied entry to the United States by last weeks executive order from President Trump.

Under a law passed in 2008, the U.S. granted special immigrant visas to Iraqi nationals who were employed by the American military. Now that program is suspended, and America has reneged on her obligation to help those who helped us in a time of war. The Iraqi engineers in my office proved their value and loyalty. In short, they were exactly the type or immigrants our nation should be working to attract. Instead, our president is turning them away.

Chuck Smith Falmouth
This four-year grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is co-led by two experts in the emerging field of gene therapy: Dr. Hans-Peter Kiem of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Dr. Andrew Scharenberg of Seattle Childrens Hospital.

One reason this project is exciting, Kiem said, is that it holds promise for huge numbers of people.

Approximately 300,000 children are born with sickle cell disease every year worldwide and there are about 100,000 affected patients in the United States  a large patient population that could benefit from this treatment, said Kiem, the Fred Hutch Endowed Chair for Cell and Gene Therapy.

This project aims to use a type of gene editing called CRISPR to modify the DNA regulatory sequence that turns down the production of fetal hemoglobin, a variant of the oxygen-carrying molecule that is found at high levels in fetuses and newborns but at low levels in most adults. Research has shown that people with sickle cell disease who happen to have unusually elevated levels of fetal hemoglobin have much milder sickle cell symptoms than other people with the disease. This approach to boost the production of fetal hemoglobin, the researchers hope, will make up for the inborn problems in the adult form of hemoglobin.
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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
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
Story Highlights 36% think media has been too tough, 28% say not tough enough

Nearly three-quarters of Republicans say media has been too tough on Trump

Democrats divided between saying coverage about right, not tough enough

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In the wake of several contentious encounters between President Donald Trump's White House and the national press corps, Americans disagree on the news media's coverage of the new president and his administration. Just over a third of Americans (36%) think the media has been too tough on Trump, while just under a third (31%) think it has been about right and 28% say it has not been tough enough. Republicans overwhelmingly believe the media has been too tough on Trump.

Americans' Views on Media Treatment of Trump Administration In its coverage of Donald Trump and his administration so far, do you think the news media has been too tough, about right or not tough enough? Too tough About right Not tough enough No opinion % % % % U.S. adults 36 31 28 5 Republicans 74 17 6 3 Independents 37 31 26 7 Democrats 9 40 49 2 Gallup Daily, Jan. 30-31, 2017

Trump's team has battled some media estimates of the size of his inauguration crowd, media descriptions of Trump's executive order on immigration and refugees as a "Muslim ban," and one reporter's assertion that Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. from the Oval Office, which the White House refuted. Meanwhile, Trump has been on the defensive for his team's reliance on "alternative facts" and his assertions of voter fraud in the November election, which The New York Times deemed a "lie."

It is against this backdrop that nearly three in four Republicans (74%) say the media has been too tough on Trump. Democrats, on the other hand, are more divided, with 49% saying the media has not been tough enough and 40% saying its coverage has been about right.

The public's mood, according to this late January poll, differs from that in January 2009, when only 11% of Americans thought the news media had been too tough on newly elected President Barack Obama. Nearly half (48%) thought the media was about right in its coverage of Obama and his administration, while 38% said it was not tough enough.

As is the case today, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to be unhappy with the media: In 2009, 65% of Republicans thought the media was not tough enough on Obama, while 66% of Democrats thought it was about right.

Americans' Views on Media Treatment of Obama Administration in 2009 In its coverage of Barack Obama and his administration so far, do you think the news media has been too tough, about right or not tough enough? Too tough About right Not tough enough No opinion % % % % U.S. adults 11 48 38 3 Republicans 3 27 65 5 Independents 10 45 43 2 Democrats 18 66 13 3 USA Today/Gallup, Jan. 30-Feb. 1, 2009

The divergence between Republicans' and Democrats' views on media coverage of the president reflects the broader skepticism rank-and-file Republicans have of the news media. Gallup trends have long shown fewer Republicans than Democrats expressing high levels of confidence in the press to report the news "fully, accurately and fairly." This deficit swelled in 2016 as GOP confidence in the press plummeted to 14%, down from 32% in 2015.

Bottom Line

Americans as a whole are split in their assessments of whether the news media is covering the Trump administration fairly. However, this masks broad disapproval among Republicans, who mostly believe the media -- which Trump has declared "the opposition party" -- is being too hard on the new Republican president. Meanwhile, about half of Democrats think the media should be tougher on Trump.

These data are available in Gallup Analytics.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans' initial reaction to President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court is more positive than negative -- 45% say the Senate should vote to confirm Gorsuch while 32% say it should not. However, support for confirming Gorsuch is lower than what Gallup has found for most recent Supreme Court nominees in the first days after presidents announced their selection.

Initial Support for Confirmation of Recent Supreme Court Nominees Would you like to see the Senate vote in favor of [name of nominee] serving on the Supreme Court, or not? Date of poll Vote in favor Not vote in favor No opinion % % % Neil Gorsuch 2017 Feb 1-2 45 32 23 Merrick Garland 2016 Mar 18-19 52 29 19 Elena Kagan 2010 May 24-25 46 32 22 Sonia Sotomayor 2009 May 29-31 54 28 19 Samuel Alito 2005 Nov 7-10 50 25 25 Harriet Miers 2005 Oct 13-16 44 36 20 John Roberts 2005 Jul 22-24 59 22 19 Ruth Bader Ginsburg 1993 Jun 18-21 53 14 33 Clarence Thomas 1991 Jul 11-14 52 17 31 Average for all nominees 51 26 23 Note: Data are based on first Gallup survey conducted after nomination made. No measure for Stephen Breyer. Gallup

Gallup has gauged initial public support for all recent Supreme Court nominees since 1991 except current Justice Stephen Breyer. While a substantial proportion of Americans -- typically about one in four -- do not have an opinion, most express one. The average level of support for recent nominees has been 51%.

Current Chief Justice John Roberts had the highest initial support of recent nominees, at 59%. Harriet Miers, whose nomination President George W. Bush ultimately withdrew, had the lowest support at 44%. Current Justice Elena Kagan also had below-average support, at 46%.

Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy Gorsuch is now slated to fill, had higher support (52%) than Gorsuch does. Republicans in the Senate refused to consider Garland's nomination, arguing that presidents in their final year should not get to fill court vacancies. Democrats in the Senate are now pondering whether to obstruct Gorsuch's nomination.

Gallup trends show that most nominees continue to enjoy more public support than opposition during the process leading to confirmation. The average for the nominees in Gallup's final reading has been 53%, just slightly higher than the average 51% initial support. Meanwhile, as the percentage with no opinion decreases, opposition usually increases, from an average of 26% initially to 34% in Gallup's final measures.

Of the two nominees whose initial ratings were most similar to Gorsuch's -- Kagan and Miers -- Kagan's support held steady through her confirmation process and she was confirmed, while Miers' support fell and she was derailed. Thus, Gorsuch's fate could partly depend on whether public opposition to his being confirmed rises in the coming months.

Final Support for Confirmation of Recent Supreme Court Nominees Date of poll Vote in favor Not vote in favor No opinion % % % Elena Kagan 2010 Jul 27-Aug 1 46 36 18 Sonia Sotomayor 2009 Jul 17-19 55 36 9 Samuel Alito 2006 Jan 20-22 54 30 16 Harriet Miers 2005 Oct 21-23 42 43 15 John Roberts 2005 Sep 16-18 60 26 14 Clarence Thomas 1991 Oct 14 58 30 12 Average for all nominees 53 34 14 Gallup did only an initial measure on Ginsburg and Garland. No measures for Breyer. Gallup

One sign that Gorsuch's nomination could become seriously imperiled is if Americans become divided as to whether the Senate should confirm him. That has happened for only two recent nominees -- Miers and Robert Bork -- and neither was ultimately confirmed. Gallup did not poll on Bork's July 1987 nomination until much later in the process when it became controversial. Prior to the Senate vote that denied Bork a seat on the court, 38% of Americans were in favor of his confirmation and 35% opposed.

Democrats Show Record-Low Support for Gorsuch

The poll finds 74% of Republicans, 44% of independents and 21% of Democrats in favor of Gorsuch being confirmed to the Supreme Court. A majority of Democrats (57%) oppose his confirmation.

Initial opinion on Obama's nominees was similarly divided along party lines. As with Democrats' opposition to Gorsuch, a majority of Republicans opposed each of Obama's nominees. Meanwhile, an average of 73% of Democrats favored each of Obama's nominees.

Nominees prior to 2009 also typically enjoyed strong support among those who identified with the president's party. But majority opposition from the other party has been a more recent development, likely resulting from the growing political divide in evaluating presidents and their actions.

Only Miers engendered majority opposition by any party group among the 1991 through 2005 court nominees. At least initially, more Democrats supported than opposed both Roberts' and Thomas' confirmations, and more Republicans favored than opposed seating Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.

The 57% of Democrats opposed to Gorsuch's nomination ties Republicans' opposition to Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 as the highest in Gallup's records. Gorsuch's 21% support among Democrats is the lowest Gallup has measured for a nominee among a party group to date.

Initial Support for Supreme Court Nominees, by Political Party Vote in favor Not vote in favor No opinion % % % Republicans Gorsuch 74 8 17 Garland 33 51 16 Kagan 26 51 22 Sotomayor 24 57 20 Alito 73 11 16 Miers 73 16 11 Roberts 82 5 13 Ginsburg 41 25 34 Thomas 63 10 27 Democrats Gorsuch 21 57 22 Garland 76 11 14 Kagan 68 12 20 Sotomayor 76 6 17 Alito 35 40 25 Miers 27 53 20 Roberts 42 35 23 Ginsburg 65 6 29 Thomas 45 25 31 Independents Gorsuch 44 31 25 Garland 44 31 25 Kagan 43 33 25 Sotomayor 54 27 19 Alito 43 26 31 Miers 39 34 27 Roberts 54 24 22 Ginsburg 52 12 36 Thomas 48 17 35 Gorsuch, Alito, Miers, Roberts and Thomas nominated by Republican presidents; Garland, Kagan, Sotomayor and Ginsburg nominated by Democratic presidents Gallup

Independents have been more likely to favor than oppose the confirmation of presidents' Supreme Court nominees, with Miers showing the narrowest margin. Notably, independents' support for Gorsuch exactly matches their support for Garland.

Implications

The quest to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's Supreme Court seat after his February 2016 death will continue to play out. Senate Democrats may elect to filibuster during the debate on Gorsuch's nomination, thus blocking a confirmation vote. Such an action would likely please Democratic Party supporters, a majority of whom oppose Gorsuch's nomination. But despite Democrats' opposition, Americans overall are more likely to favor than oppose Gorsuch's nomination.

Democratic officials opposed to seating Gorsuch on the court may get some political cover if public opinion turns against him, as it did for Miers and Bork. But Americans' greater support than opposition to Garland's nomination didn't help convince Republicans to act on it, so public opinion may not be enough to save Gorsuch if Democrats are intent on blocking him. Senate Republicans could, however, vote to change long-standing Senate rules to require a simple majority vote to end debate on Supreme Court nominations, the so-called "nuclear option," allowing them to hold a final vote on Gorsuch.
How can we speak about conflict settlement if they shoot on the border? (video)

During the four-day April war in Karabakh, everyone saw that Azerbaijan refused to accept that it had lost a large number of soldiers, trying to avoid the problem of identification or problems related to the return of bodies, Armenian lawmaker Karen Bekaryan said today in reply to the statement of the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry according to which the man taken hostage by the Artsakh Defense Army is not an Azerbaijani soldier. He says Azerbaijan does not want to be helpful to its soldier and is not concerned about his fate. A short time later, we saw [on the Internet] the address of the captives mother. There is something tragic in the Ministrys statement and in the mothers address. The mothers address appeared on the Internet quite accidently. A question arises here: what might happen to the soldiers family? he said. Mr Bekaryan says the co-chairs might make new calls in the near future but I doubt if those statements will be clearly targeted. When the co-chairs do not address any of the parties in their statements, they encourage Azerbaijan, he said. Commenting on the statement of Russian Co-Chair, according to which the international mediators are ready to arrange a meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani FMs in Munich in mid February, the lawmaker said he did not doubt that the meeting would take place; he doubted whether it would produce results. "I am very skeptical because recently we became convinced that Azerbaijan does not intend to implement the agreements reached in Vienna before each meeting, negotiation and consultation. The so-called peace process is completely illogical in this context. How can we sit down and talk about a political settlement if they shoot on the border? How can we speak about confidence-building measures when they kill on the border? Mr Bekaryan.
The Trump Administrations travel ban generated considerable shock, fear, and confusion for citizens, legal residents, and refugees alike. It has also raised concerns for game studios and publishers that employ the people affected by the Executive Order (EO). While many are discussing the outrage and constitutionality of the EO, lawyers and immigration professionals have limited information on the future of the ban for those employers who desperately want to protect their non-citizen employees.

There is a good reason for this. The Executive Order is vague and broad in its scope and reach. There has certainly been some confused mishandling in its execution. Although there are still quite a few indefinites, heres what we do know:

Affected Parties. The EO applies to all nationals from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. This includes nationals with existing visitor visas (B-1/B-2) and work visas (e.g. H-1B, L-1, O-1). For purposes of the EO it is best to assume that those visas are provisionally suspended until the ban is lifted. Although there has been confusion to what extent the travel ban applies to legal permanent residents (LPRs, e.g. green card holders), the ban does not apply to naturalized citizens of the U.S. who originated from the referenced countries.



Additionally, all refugee applications by nationals of the referenced countries are suspended for 120 days following the EO, and Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely. The currently available information indicates that affected parties holding dual citizenship with another country are also included in the ban. However, so far (according to reports from the UK and Canada), this only seems to apply if the entrant is traveling from a referenced country.

Effect of the Executive Order. The EO has a few notable functions. First, it imposes a 90-day ban on admission from all ports of entry into the United States for all Affected Parties, excluding LPRs, who may be subject to secondary screening. This means non-LPR nationals of the 7 referenced countries seeking entry into the U.S. will either be detained or sent back, regardless of whether they have a valid visa or not.



But theres morethe EO requires that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and State Department request information concerning individuals seeking entry from the referenced countries. If the referenced countries refuse to provide that information, the ban may become permanent. The EO also orders the USCIS to immediately suspend processing for all immigration benefit applications filed by or on behalf of nationals from the seven referenced counties. This includes work visas renewals, petitions for asylum, green card applications, adjustment of status and naturalization.

Finally, order also suspends the Visa Interview Waiver program, which allows eligible foreign nationals wishing to renew a nonimmigrant visa to request a waiver to the in-person interview requirement.

Ongoing Concerns. As mentioned above, there is a likelihood that the ban may become permanent for those countries that do not comply with the DHS information requests. Additionally, there is a draft Executive Order circulating that may target legal immigration. Specifically, the order would require DHS to perform site visits to employers of L-1 nonimmigrant workers. Suits have been filed in several jurisdictions challenging the validity, constitutionality, and enforcement of the EO. One or more of these suits may impact short term and long term ramifications of the EO.

For all practical purposes, that summarizes as much as we know about the breadth and scope of this travel ban. The confusion and fear is mostly the result of the unknown ramifications of the order. This bears particular impact on our industry for a few reasons: 1) studio work environments are often fluidthis allows studios to employ or contract foreign nationals who may telecommute from their countries of origin and only come to the U.S. for limited periods of time under a temporary work visa or visitor visa; 2) GDC is on the horizon and falls squarely in the middle of the ban period; and 3) we want to recruit the best and brightest minds regardless of their country of origin. The travel ban creates a more than inconvenient barrier to these objectives. So how can you, as a game studio, prepare yourself for whats ahead?

Step 1. Cancelling Travel Plans

If you employ non-LPRs from one of the referenced countries that are here on a work or visitors visa, you should cancel any international business travel plans on behalf of those individuals. Simply put, they wont be allowed back in the country at this time, and there is no telling how long the ban will actually be in place. You cant force them to stay, as courts tend to frown on excessive corporate paternalism over employees, but to the extent you can control the situation you should strive to do so.

For LPRs from the referenced countries, international travel may be incredibly inconvenient right now, but should still be possible if proper measures are taken. As mentioned above, LPRs with a valid green card are to a certain extent excluded from the ban. However, Although the administration as confirmed that LPRs should still be able to travel, the fact remains that LPRs have in fact been detained.

If an LPR from the referenced country must travel for business, they should prepare for secondary inspection upon re-entry subject to enhanced screening. They will be asked about their religious beliefs, political views, and social media accounts. They may also be pressured by CBP agents to sign form I-407, Record of Abandonment of Lawful Permanent Resident Status. First and most obviously, they shouldnt sign I-407. Additionally, LPRs departing from the US should a) consult with an immigration attorney and company counsel prior to departure and obtain both a signed form G-28 (Notice of Entry of Appearance as Attorney or Accredited Representative) and a legal opinion letter specifying the basis for re-entry; and b) remain respectful but silent concerning their religious beliefs, political views, etc.

Its also important to advise those affected employees against personal international travel. Inform them of the risks involved (namely, not being allowed back in the country) and the threat to their personal safety and physical assets in the US if they leave right now. Once again, you cannot force them to stay if they choose to go, but they should be made aware of the consequences.

Unfortunately, this includes those employees or contractors working abroad who planned to attend DICE or GDC. If you have employees or contractors who are nationals of the referenced countries that intend to travel to San Francisco or Vegas for these events, you should contact an immigration attorney immediately to discuss your options.

Step 2. Reviewing Documentation

If you havent done so recently, now would be a good time to perform an I-9, Visa, and immigration benefits documentation audit for any employee that may be impacted by the ban. Additionally, you should determine the status of any applicable outstanding work visas, and any pending requests for immigration benefits on behalf of affected employees, including renewals. However, if any such benefits/visas are set to expire during the ban period, those employees should be advised of the risks of over-staying their validity period. Applications and immigration benefit matters for adjudication submitted during the ban may be returned or rejected.

Step 3. Consulting an Immigration Attorney

Now is the time to consult a specialist if you have employees that are affected by the ban. Unfortunately, contacting the USCIS, CBP or ICE right now isnt likely to give you the specialized information you need for your studio. An immigration attorney with specialized knowledge in the area of immigration benefits and nonimmigrant work and travel visas will be able to give you an idea of the potential outcomes of the ban and how it will impact your current and future employees and contractors.

Step 4. Setting Aside or Finding Alternative Placement Solutions for Future Affected Employees

If you want to hire from the referenced countries in the future, you need to be mindful of the possibility that this ban may become permanent, unless its overruled by the Courts or Congress. That being said, if you offer a flexible work environment that does not require your contractor or employee to reside in the US, you should still consider retaining these individuals. As stated previously, our industry seeks out the best and brightest minds regardless of religion, race, gender, or country of origin, and I hope that is a practice we continue.

Step 5. Preparing for Delays

Remember that your studio is not the only one impacted by the ban. Your publishers, investors, distributors, and third party licensors may also experience significant burdens and set-backs because of the Executive Order. We may also face retaliation from the referenced countries, which not only may impose similar bans, but may make trade with the US prohibitive. Expect considerable delays and keep an eye on your force majeure clauses. Any ongoing negotiations should take the ban and future ramifications into consideration. Any future deals should include force majeure events reflecting the current unsettled environment.

Our industry strives for inclusiveness. I would be remiss if I didnt emphasize this point. If you are minded to continue doing business with individuals and businesses based in the 7 referenced countries, I do not want this ban to discourage your determination. However, doing so will require some vigilance and safeguarding on your part. We are not yet aware of the full reach of this EO or the intent of the Administration in pursuing such action.
'Kingdom Hearts III' Tweets Homage To 'Final Fantasy VII'

With Final Fantasy XV being released last year, Square Enix has reportedly shifted its focus on its next big titles. Reports claim fans are eager to get their hands on "Final Fantasy VII Remake" and "Kingdom Hearts III." Several promotion videos and demos have already been released for the two games, but a definite release date still remains unknown. However, the company surprised fans by tweeting an image of the Disney collaboration emulating the other RPG.

The Japanese publisher posted an image in Twitter, which shows Sora holding a Keyblade in a familiar pose. He can be seen standing right up front of a tower, reports Game Rant, Sources claim the image is a very subtle tribute to "Final Fantasy VII," which is considered by most as one of the most iconic RPGs released for the original Playstation console.

The photo's framing and the character pose is surely recognizable to fans waiting for Square Enix's "Final Fantasy VII Remake" to come out. For gamers who are having a hard time understanding the image, just replace the "Kingdom Hearts III" protagonist with Cloud and the tower with the Shinra building. Fans should realize by now the picture is a tribute to the original game's box art, where Cloud is shown facing the towering Shinra structure.

In a report from Polygon, the tweet was probably meant to commemorate the 20th anniversary of "Final Fantasy VII" and its release in Japan. The company also released another image showing the characters Cloud and Sephiroth in their remastered form. They referred to the photo as a "key visual" from the remake.

Square Enix apparently also celebrated the 30th anniversary of its "Final Fantasy" franchise. Several announcements were also made about other games like the release date of "Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age." The release dates of the story DLC content for "Final Fantasy XV" was also made public. It seems like fans still need to patiently wait for the launch dates of "Kingdom Hearts III" and "Final Fantasy VII Remake."
Nintendo Reveals Online Service Price For The Nintendo Switch

During the official Nintendo Switch reveal, fans were reportedly surprised by Nintendo's announcement of their paid online service. That time, the only information released what its tentative launch date in 2017. Gamers using the Switch are required to subscribe in order to access online multiplayer functions as well as a free game each month. However, the latest reports speculate that gamers will find the fee somehow affordable.

It has been reportedly revealed that the service will range between 3,000 yen and 2,000 yen in Japan, according to Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima. Given the current exchange rate, the cost should translate into an estimated $27 to $18 for a one year subscription. Game Rant notes that the annual service fee will help the company "support online features," says Kimishima. It remains to be seen if the gaming giant will also offer a monthly option.

The final North American price for Nintendo's online service fee for the Nintendo Switch has not yet been officially confirmed. However, if the price stays in the same range as the Japanese service, it would make the yearly service cheaper than Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold and Sony's PSN Plus. According to The Verge, it seems like the online service offered by the Japanese company lacks some features compared to the competition.

Meanwhile, most consumers appear to be waiting for the Nintendo to elaborate more about its paid online service. Other reports are wondering about the mechanics involved with the free games subscribers get every month. The company confirmed that these classic games are only playable for a month and becomes unplayable afterwards.

Several consumers are already worried about Nintendo's decisions to delegate some features to a separate smartphone app. Ever since the company confirmed that the Nintendo Switch will rely on the app for matchmaking, users reportedly find it troublesome to navigate two devices when the feature could have just been integrated in the first place. Fans are hoping the company will address some of these concerns before their online service goes live.
A mid-valley real estate brokerage has agreed to pay $180,000 to settle claims by federal regulators that it accepted thousands of dollars in illegal kickbacks as part of a widespread scheme to funnel business to a California mortgage lender.

In an enforcement action announced this week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Keller Williams Mid-Willamette was named as one of more than 100 real estate brokerages that accepted illegal payoffs to steer homebuyers to Prospect Mortgage of Sherman Oaks, California.

Headquartered at 1121 N.W. Ninth St. in Corvallis, Keller Williams Mid-Willamette has about 130 real estate brokers and operates satellite offices in Albany, Lebanon and Sweet Home.

Under consent orders signed with the CFPB, Prospect Mortgage has agreed to pay $3.5 million in civil penalties to settle the case, and three other companies, including Keller Williams Mid-Willamette, will pay a combined $495,000 in consumer relief, repayment of ill-gotten gains, and penalties, the agency announced. ReMax Gold Coast of Ventura, California, will pay $50,000 and Planet Home Lending of Meriden, Connecticut, will pay $265,000.

None of the companies formally admitted any wrongdoing, but all agreed not to engage in the alleged illegal practices in the future.

Federal law is very clear: Youre not allowed to make or receive payments for referrals, Sam Gilford, a spokesman for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told the Gazette-Times.

Those kinds of kickbacks, he said, can skew the real estate market and can result in consumers paying higher prices for mortgages and other services. They also take advantage of vulnerable individuals making one of the most important financial decisions of their lives.

Consumers who are in the home-buying process often rely on a real estate professional or a lender or another service provider for advice, Gilford said.

Sue Long, the owner of Keller Williams Mid-Willamette, declined to talk about the consent order. Instead, she provided a short prepared statement that said the company was awaiting the outcome of a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals that involves closely related matters. Long declined to identify the case in question.

According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Prospect used a variety of illegal business arrangements to pay real estate brokers to send potential customers its way in violation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.

The agency lays out its case against Keller-Williams Mid-Willamette in a 22-page consent order. The document makes a number of allegations regarding the Corvallis firm, including:

 Starting in July 2011, Prospect paid Keller Williams Mid-Willamette $4,250 a month through a marketing services agreement to promote its mortgage services. Rather than legitimate marketing services, however, Prospect was actually paying the brokerage for referrals of prospective mortgage customers.

 In December 2011, the marketing agreement was replaced with a lead agreement. Under this arrangement, Prospect paid Keller Williams Mid-Willamette $20-$30 for leads about consumers selling their homes and $240-$360 for leads on consumers in the market to purchase a home. The amounts changed over time, but the deal also contained an exclusivity clause requiring Keller Williams Mid-Willamette brokers not to share information on those leads with any of Prospects competitors or refer their clients to any other lenders.

 Beginning around September 2013, Keller Williams Mid-Willamette began paying brokers each time they referred one of their clients to Prospect Mortgage. The payments took the form of credits against the monthly fees the brokers paid the firm for various services. Credits ranged from $20 to $50 per lead, with some agents taking in more than $500 per month for their referrals.

 Through arrangements called desk license agreements, Keller Williams Mid-Willamette would provide space in its offices for one or more Prospect Mortgage loan officers. The local firm also agreed to promote Prospect as a preferred mortgage lender and endorse the California company to its employees, brokers, clients and the public.

 Finally, Keller Williams Mid-Willamette allowed Prospects loan officers to attend and make presentations at meetings with its real estate brokers while denying similar access to other mortgage lenders.

The consent order specifies that Keller Williams Mid-Willamette must pay the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau $145,000 as disgorgement of the improper payments it received from Prospect Mortgage. In addition, the company must pay a $35,000 civil penalty.

Oregon Real Estate Commissioner Gene Bentley said he had not yet studied the details of the consent order between Keller Williams Mid-Willamette and the bureau. Bentley said he didnt know whether the Oregon Real Estate Agency would do an investigation of the Corvallis firm and added that such investigations are not generally disclosed to the public unless they result in disciplinary action.
Oct. 5, 1971  Feb. 1, 2017

Alan, 45, was born in Salem to Alan Al and Linda (Allen) Burnett. He passed away in Lebanon due to complications from diabetes. He joined his dad; grandparents Warren Shorty and Virginia Burnett, William W. Bill and Dorothy Allen; and his two furever friends, Licorice, a miniature schnauzer, and Brutus Bob, a rottweiler, rescued from Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah, while he was working at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

He graduated from Sprague High School in 1989 and went on to pursue his love for cars or anything with two, three or four wheels in various fields of the automotive industry. At one point in his short life he started the Elusive Mini Truck Club with chapters in Salem and Newport. Although he never got to realize his lifes dream of having a Rottweiler Rescue Facility, his love of the breed was never ending.

Alan is survived by his mother, Linda Burnett of Jefferson; his loyal rottie, Mya of Jefferson; uncle and aunt Rick and Karen Burnett of Salem; great-aunt and uncle Nancy and Ken ODell of San Antonio, Texas; several cousins and many friends.

In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made in his name to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, 5001 Angel Canyon Road, Kanab, Utah 84741-5000.

A graveside service will be at 1 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017, at City View Cemetery under the direction of City View Funeral Home.
Aug. 15, 1948  Jan. 19, 2017

Allen passed away Jan. 19, 2017 in Walla Walla, Washington after battling complications from COPD.

Allen was born in Corvallis, the fourth son of George and Elizabeth Scott. He graduated from Corvallis High School and proceeded to serve four years in the United States Air Force.

He returned to Corvallis where he worked for Pacific Power & Light in several positions including meter reader and truck driver. He worked in Corvallis, Junction City, Albany, and Bend. In 1985, he transferred to Walla Walla, Washington where he worked as a substation wireman then foreman until he retired in 2010 after 40 years.

Allen had a fun, loving spirit and loved to be surrounded by his family and friends. He loved to laugh and had an infectious smile. He often enjoyed instigating a good razz that brought a playful twinkle to his eyes. He had a love of music, traveling, and was a car enthusiast. He was a dedicated worker and provider for his family. His love for ice cream was something he shared with all of his family, especially the young ones! He will be remembered as a loving husband, father, uncle, grandfather, and friend to many. His wife, Diane and daughters, Lesley and Melissa were the center of his world.

Allen is survived by his wife Diane Scott; daughters Lesley (Steve) Kinzner and Melissa (Brandon) Martin; brothers Richard (Lory) Scott and Robert (Barbara) Scott and sister-in-law Judy Scott; stephildren Amy (Buck) OKorn, Jeff Smith and Brian Smith; grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other extended family and friends.

He was preceded in life by his parents and his oldest brother, John E. Scott.

A celebration of life will be held on February 18, 2017 in Walla Walla, Washington and on July 22, 2017 at his daughter, Lesley's home in Oakville, Washington. Please contact family for details.
A 28-year-old California man accused of raping a local 17-year-old girl in a Philomath alleyway was arrested Jan. 18 and is scheduled to go to trial Feb. 13 in Benton County Circuit Court.

The Philomath Police Department originally arrested Dominique Elliot Thornton, 28, of Spring Valley, California, on charges of second-degree sexual abuse, a felony, and contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor. Additional evidence led to more charges filed Jan. 27  rape, sodomy and unlawful sexual penetration, all felonies.

The alleged incident occurred on the evening of Jan. 16, according to a probable cause affidavit prepared by Philomath police. The victim told police that the man, who called himself Indigo Dom, had claimed to be a rapper and invited himself to come along on a short walk from a friends house to her own home.

The victim told police that she did not want to go into the back of an alleyway with him, but he allegedly grabbed her around the waist and forced her there. The alleged crimes followed, according to the affidavit.

The incident was reported to police the following afternoon, and police began an investigation that included identification of the man as Thornton.

In a police interview, Thornton gave a different representation of what happened and denied having sex with the girl, and further explained that nothing even close to that happened, the affidavit reports. The arrest followed and he was transported to the Benton County Jail.
This log includes incidents in which there might have been a public disturbance or a risk to the public. Information comes from the Corvallis Police Department, the Benton County Sheriffs Office and Oregon State Police. It does not include all calls for service. The status of incidents might change after further investigation. Locations are approximate. People arrested or suspected in crimes are considered innocent until proven otherwise.

Benton County Sheriff's Office

TUESDAY, JAN. 31

METH: 9:51 p.m., Shady Oak Drive and Orchard Tract Road, Monroe. A deputy responded to a report of a suspicious person and contacted David George Urbach, 34, of Monroe. The deputy reported performing a pat down and finding a white crystalline substance, which later tested positive for methamphetamine. Urbach was cited with possession of methamphetamine.

THURSDAY, JAN. 26

HEROIN: 11:31 a.m., 3000 block Northwest Satinwood Street. A deputy responded to assist a parole officer and arrested three people. Christopher T. Sangiovanni, 53, of Corvallis was arrested and charged with a probation violation. He was booked into the Benton County Jail. Karen Loraine Sangiovanni, 52, of Corvallis was cited with hindering prosecution. Lauren Nicole Sangiovanni, 22, of Corvallis was cited with possession of heroin.
Before Ta-Nehisi Coates began his speech about how important facts are in understanding race in America, Coates said he wanted to talk to the standing-room-only crowd at Oregon State Universitys LaSells Stewart Center about some lies.

Coates, the author of the National Book Award winning book Between the World and Me and national correspondent for The Atlantic, told the 1,200 people packed into the OSU auditorium and dozens more watching video of the speech in overflow rooms that the past week had become a great time to talk about lies.

Coates then referred to the executive order issued by President Donald Trump last Friday that closed U.S. borders to entry by any refugees for the next 120 days and to immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim nations for 90 days.

Im going to call it what it is. Im going to call it a Muslim ban, Coates said. When you look at the countries that were banned, they dont match up to the actual terrorists. Thats a clue that something is a little off.

Moments later he added, even if it did match up, I would still oppose it.

Coates said the executive order and its defense echoed statements and questions about former President Barack Obamas nationality and religious beliefs.

Folks called the former president a Muslim, Coates said. The point theyre trying to make is that person is a stranger. Black folks know all about that.

Coates speech, titled Race in America, centered on ideas presented in Between the World and Me, which also garnered national praise as a No. 1 New York Times bestseller and as a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. The book, written as a letter to his teenage son, focuses on the idea that race in America has been manufactured as a matter of hierarchy and that Americans believe race is an indubitable feature of the natural world.

But race is the child of racism, not the father, Coates said, quoting a passage from his book. Difference in hue and hair is old. But the belief in the preeminence of hue and hair, the notion that these factors can correctly organize a society and that they signify deeper attributes, which are indelible  this is the new idea at the heart of these new people who have been brought up hopelessly, tragically, deceitfully, to believe that they are white.

Coates said that race and racism have no consistent definition because they were manufactured. He added that the definition of race often changes based on not just where someone lives, but by when and who is in power.

Here in Corvallis, Oregon, Im black. And Im proud to be black, he said. But if I was in Brazil, I might be called something else.

Coates said he wanted the audience to be aware that Americas history was intertwined with race and racism.

You cannot imagine America without slavery, he said. Slavery is not a bump in the road. Slavery is the road.  Slave owning powered the country. And slave owning poisoned the country.

He later acknowledged that the problem isnt purely American.

I dont think America is uniquely evil, he said. But I also dont think America is uniquely good.

Coates said he wasnt trying sound alarmist, but noted that he saw many parallels of the rise of slavery in America to recent events involving attitudes toward Arab-Americans.

Im afraid of it happening again, he said, before referring again to the executive order that suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. In the single stroke of a pen, I think weve become the most Islamophobic country in the West.

Coates offered a message to all people negatively affected by the executive order.

I dont know if this means much, but Im with you, he said.

He then offered a message to every American citizen.

I dont want to scare you. I want to inspire you, he said. I want to tell you that your vote matters a lot.

Prior to the speech, which was co-sponsored by the OSU office of the provost and Phi Beta Kappa, Coates was awarded as a Foundation Member of OSUs Phi Beta Kappa chapter.

After the speech, Coates sat down with Christopher Nichols, director of OSUs Center for the Humanities, for a question and answer session. Here are a few of Coates' thoughts:

 On his method for coping and how he responds to current events and actions he disagrees with:

I talk to people like this. This is my resistance.  Violence is so ingrained in the U.S. Non-violence is all we have.

 On trying to convince people who dont agree with him:

Im not trying to convince anyone.

 On what people can do to address the issues surrounding race and racism:

Start building from the ground up. Thats not particularly romantic.

 On whether his thoughts about the country have changed with the election of Trump:

It hasnt shifted much. Its not too surprising.

 On where he sees the world five or 25 years in the future:

I have no idea, he said, shaking his head. I really dont.

 On advice for young or aspiring writers:

Keep writing. If you go into another career, and you find yourself writing anyway, you might be a writer.
Time for a survey

To the Editor: Its time for a St. Paul survey One of the mistakes of the past with respect to deciding on the future of St. Pauls is that previous...

Election for St. Pauls

To the Editor: Perhaps someday there will be an election where some folks decide about St.Pauls. If the election is conducted in the most popular way, the outcome might not...

Proposal on the ballot

To the Editor: On the bottom of your ballot you will be asked to vote yes or no on creating a state bond which will amount to $4.2 billion. Subject coverage should be...

Botched RFP process

To the Editor: During the last several weeks, village officials sent out RFPs (requests for proposals) seeking candidate firms to provide them with comparative analysis and cost estimates -- ...
Levon Ter-Petrosyan's resignation: 19 years later (video)

On February 3, 1998, Levon Ter-Petrosyan stepped down as President of Armenia. Earlier, speaking about one of the well-known pro-government figures, he said jokingly, Do you know the Lord's Prayer?  No, I do not.  When I say you are not an Armenia, you do not believe me.  I am an Albanian. Levon Ter-Petrosyan worked with the second figure a bit longer. He was not in the mood to joke about him, especially after the deadly clashes of March 1, 2008. Serzh Sargsyan is a sadist Speaking about former Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, the first president said no one is worth even his little finger. After the October 27 parliamentary carnage, Levon Ter-Petrosyan said, After killing him [Vazgen] they glorified him. I cannot imagine a much greater sacrilege. Imagine Vazgen Sargsyan were alive, what would the Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) do today? Levon Ter-Petrosyan was forced to step down in February 1998 after advocating additional concessions over the Karabakh issue. The first president used to say that Artsakh was only an excuse. I only requested to take a step back in the Artsakh issue and to freeze the situation. The prime minister and two ministers did not accept the phased settlement of Karabakh conflict proposed by Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Thanks to their efforts, Karabakh was left out of the negotiations. We think it is necessary to involve Nagorno Karabakh in the talks. The conflict was not resolved during the presidency of Robert Kocharyan. Karabakh was not returned to the negotiating table. The Madrid principles and the Key West document became the topic of discussions. In 2008, Robert Kocharyan transferred power to his successor Serzh Sargsyan at the expense of ten victims. The day after tomorrow, I shall vote for Serzh Sargsyan because I know him better There has been breakthrough in the long-standing dispute over Nagorno Karabakh in the past nine years when the country has been governed by Serzh Sargsyan. In the result, a four-day war took place in Karabakh last April and Karabakh lost 800 hectares of land in the hostilities which were announced to be of no strategic and tactical importance. Yesterday, Serzh Sargsyan spoke about the courage of political figures, saying that he would not make any concessions in the Karabakh issue under pressure.
Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN! Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2021.
Handbook Germany : Information for a good life in Germany

Bonn On Wednesday, a website called Handbook Germany was introduced. Aimed at refugees, it answers questions about life in Germany. It follows on the footsteps of a similar Telekom operated portal. Both of them are a useful resource for anyone new to Germany.

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It sounds quite inviting and lacks the bureaucratic flavor that many encounter when they first come to Germany. Live: Information for a good life in Germany. Its not a guide to the best schnitzel restaurants or scenic spots in Germany, but instead a helpful how-to Germany. The Handbook Germany is a wealth of practical information aimed at refugees but it also contains useful tips for anyone navigating their way through every day life in Germany. One could view it as a friendly integration tool. The portal is in four languages: English, Arabic, Dari and German.

Handbook Germany is a project from Neue Deutsche Medienmacher (New German Media Makers), a group of multilingual media producers coming from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Their online portal addresses issues specifically related to refugees: Can I have my family join me in Germany? or Am I allowed to work in Germany? It also offers guidance on health care for asylum seekers, a medical phrasebook, and information about accommodations.

However, there is some information that might be helpful for any newcomer. For example, what and when are the Ruhezeiten? Answer: These are quiet times when residents must keep noise levels down - weekdays from 1 - 3 pm and 10 pm - 6 am. And dont forget Sundays. There is a checklist with information a renter should know before signing a tenancy agreement. One can also learn about the German school system, find out if qualifications earned back home are recognized in Germany and find advice about how to get a job.

But if you dont find what youre looking for in that handbook, theres also Welcome to Germany! which is the eye-catching headline of the Telekom information portal for refugees and migrants. This portal was put up in 2015 and its featured in nine different languages, including English, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Dari and more. This page is meant to help you get your bearings more quickly and feel at home in Germany, it says. And it also offers a wealth of practical information.

Like Handbook Germany, it has topics aimed specifically at refugees. For example, it explains a program which pays asylum applicants to return to their home countries and it offers news stories directly impacting refugees. It also offers advice for refugees, or those working with refugees about making refugees fit for job applications.

For those who are not refugees but ponder some of the same questions: Can I work here? or Where can I learn German?, there are lots of good tips. If youre looking for a job, theres an overview of whats required to get a work permit and how to go about getting a job. When it comes to education, one can find out about language courses, schooling, child care, job training and more. For newcomers who are baffled by German bureaucracy, its a helpful resource, as is the Handbook Germany..
Foreign ministers in Bonn : Protests forming against G20 meeting

Bonn Police have been preparing for the two-day meeting of G20 foreign ministers since December. Security measures also affect WCCB neighbors such as the Deutsche Post. Those critical of the meeting, are planning protests.

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28 delegations are expected in Bonn for the G20 workgroup meetings on February 16 and 17. Foreign ministers are here for only two days. Efforts to make sure it all runs without a hitch already started for police back in December of 2016.

The 20 most important industrialized and emerging economies will meet at the World Congress Center Bonn (WCCB) to prepare for the G20 summit in Hamburg in July. When they meet in Bonn, the focus will not only be on security efforts of police, but also on the respect for democratic rights of every citizen.

A broad alliance of groups has already announced protests against the G20 meeting: the Netzwerk Friedenskooperative (Peace Cooperation Network), the Bonn Jugendbewegung (Bonn Youth Movement), the Erwerbslosenforum Deutschland (Unemployment Forum Germany) and the Linke (Left party). Attac, a group critical of globalization, also wants to participate. The start of the demonstration is on Thursday, February 16 at 5 pm. The participants want to meet at the Haus der Geschichte (History Museum) and go from there to the WCCB.

Martin Behrsing of the Unemployment Forum says a reason for the protest is the political tendencies of participating countries. In this context, he describes the new U.S. president Donald Trump as a racist and says Russia, China and Turkey are authoritarian governments. Bonn police spokesperson Robert Scholten says in terms of the protests, We are confident that we will find a good solution. In preparation, the police in Bonn are working together with a special staff in Cologne which specializes in major events.

Neighboring firms affected

Large firms such as Deutsche Post and Deutsche Welle are in close proximity to the convention center so they will be affected. Authorities have held talks with the GOP Variety Theater that is right next door to the WCCB. Local residents will receive a handout with information from police. During the two days of the G20 meeting, there will be a special phone number for residents to call with their questions, and information will be provided to the public on social media.

Scholten could not say how many officers will be on the ground, but state and federal police will be a part of the security efforts. Day and night, they will be on duty, also securing hotels like the Marriott, Hilton and the Kameha Grand.
Parking in the city : Renovations on Uni-garage are delayed once again

Bonn The university underground parking garage has been closed since 2013 - for renovations that have never begun. Finally, they were to start in March but the never-ending story of delays continues.

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Renovations on the university parking garage are once again delayed. Rector Michael Hoch of the University of Bonn and Holger Gottschalk, head of administration, informed employees that they had received notice of yet another setback concerning renovation work. The news came from the NRW state real estate holding company (BLB) that manages the property. In their written notice to emplyees, Rector Hoch and Mr. Gottschalk said they had received information that BLB would not begin before the third quarter of 2017 with the renovations.

The leadership of the university said the information came as a big surprise, especially since they had taken measures to make sure planned events would not interfere with the construction work. A university fest planned for this year in the interior courtyard, had to be moved to the Telekom Dome because of the construction which was to begin in March.

University spokesperson Andreas Archut said this decision can no longer be reversed. In 2018, the University of Bonn celebrates its 200th Anniversary and they are figuring that they will just have to celebrate alongside a construction zone.
WTF! Nigerian Woman Was Deported From USA With 5 Years Ban Just For Flying Qatar Airways

kacylee at 3-02-2017 08:25 PM (5 years ago) (f)



My friends niece arrived yesterday February 2, 2017 at JFK Airport in New York. She is a Nigerian with a valid 2 year visa. She was held by US Immigration for over 12 hours and then deported with a 5 year ban.

My friends niece arrived yesterday February 2, 2017 at JFK Airport in New York. She is a Nigerian with a valid 2 year visa. She was held by US Immigration for over 12 hours and then deported with a 5 year ban.

Her crime was that she flew Qatar Airline. That was the red flag. The ignorant immigration officials wanted to know why she would fly from Nigeria to Qatar instead of through Europe.



They wanted to know her contacts in Qatar. She said it was due to cheap ticket price. They searched her phones, looked at all her contacts and even called her job in Nigeria.



After all the humiliation they said she had two choices, she could either go back to Nigeria or be put in detention in the US while they continue with extreme vetting. This all happened yesterday in our New United States. Please when traveling check your phones, your messages, your internet. Don't take unknown packages or letters for people and if you can avoid certain airlines please.



I am not trying to alarm you JFK is now like a war zone with lawyers and protesters on standby. If you have a Green Card, you better apply for citizenship as the GREEN CARD is almost worthless now. Her crime was that she flew Qatar Airline. That was the red flag. The ignorant immigration officials wanted to know why she would fly from Nigeria to Qatar instead of through Europe.They wanted to know her contacts in Qatar. She said it was due to cheap ticket price. They searched her phones, looked at all her contacts and even called her job in Nigeria.After all the humiliation they said she had two choices, she could either go back to Nigeria or be put in detention in the US while they continue with extreme vetting. This all happened yesterday in our New United States. Please when traveling check your phones, your messages, your internet. Don't take unknown packages or letters for people and if you can avoid certain airlines please.I am not trying to alarm you JFK is now like a war zone with lawyers and protesters on standby. If you have a Green Card, you better apply for citizenship as the GREEN CARD is almost worthless now.

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 3-02-2017 08:25 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero

concentrate at 3-02-2017 08:34 PM (5 years ago)

(m) very good. they should make it a permanent ban. Posted: at 3-02-2017 08:34 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac very good. they should make it a permanent ban. Reply

beneno at 3-02-2017 08:35 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Posted: at 3-02-2017 08:35 PM (5 years ago) | Addicted Hero Reply

chukkychukky at 3-02-2017 09:19 PM (5 years ago)

(m) make america great again(MAGA) Joramentity aka chukkychukky Posted: at 3-02-2017 09:19 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac make america great again(MAGA) Reply

jeroba1 at 3-02-2017 09:35 PM (5 years ago)

(m) America against Arab. (ASA) Posted: at 3-02-2017 09:35 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac America against Arab. (ASA) Reply

ajanni at 3-02-2017 09:53 PM (5 years ago)

(m) New United State indeed Posted: at 3-02-2017 09:53 PM (5 years ago) | Grande Master New United State indeed Reply

Dramaking at 3-02-2017 10:27 PM (5 years ago)

(m) Smh... Time 4 us 2 come and lets make 9ja great again.. Posted: at 3-02-2017 10:27 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Smh... Time 4 us 2 come and lets make 9ja great again.. Reply

Mykie010 at 3-02-2017 10:29 PM (5 years ago)

(m) I am loving this Posted: at 3-02-2017 10:29 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac I am loving this Reply

Otikadinje at 3-02-2017 10:37 PM (5 years ago)

(m) No nonsense man am begining to like you more each day. Oscardeejay Posted: at 3-02-2017 10:37 PM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac No nonsense man am begining to like you more each day. Reply

chriseyo1 at 3-02-2017 11:08 PM (5 years ago)

(m) I am finding this story hard to believe. In the first place was the woman the only Nigerian on the flight. Secondly why was she given 5yrs ban if they only needed to send her back to Nigeria. It just doesn't add up. The woman must have done some else besides just arriving on Qatar airways Posted: at 3-02-2017 11:08 PM (5 years ago) | Newbie I am finding this story hard to believe. In the first place was the woman the only Nigerian on the flight. Secondly why was she given 5yrs ban if they only needed to send her back to Nigeria. It just doesn't add up. The woman must have done some else besides just arriving on Qatar airways Reply

akinmanchy at 3-02-2017 11:25 PM (5 years ago)

(m) US don turn something else these days Life na jeje so just try to take am softly Posted: at 3-02-2017 11:25 PM (5 years ago) | Hero US don turn something else these days Reply

james987 at 3-02-2017 11:46 PM (5 years ago)

(m) OK na.. maybe they say fishy stuffs on her phone or something Posted: at 3-02-2017 11:46 PM (5 years ago) | Hero OK na..maybe they say fishy stuffs on her phone or something Reply

tommy70 at 4-02-2017 12:38 AM (5 years ago)

(m) Posted: at 4-02-2017 12:38 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Reply

Nottingham at 4-02-2017 01:03 AM (5 years ago)

(m) You love trump more? It surprises me to see many happy whenever someone is hurt. She would have been detained If they found something. 2yrs is always for tourist. Nigeria and Qatar are not in the ban list. Anyway This might be make up story Posted: at 4-02-2017 01:03 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming You love trump more? It surprises me to see many happy whenever someone is hurt. She would have been detained If they found something. 2yrs is always for tourist. Nigeria and Qatar are not in the ban list. Anyway This might be make up story Reply

tankNZ at 4-02-2017 01:51 AM (5 years ago)

(m) Quote from: Nottingham on 4-02-2017 01:03 AM You love trump more? It surprises me to see many happy whenever someone is hurt. She would have been detained If they found something. 2yrs is always for tourist. Nigeria and Qatar are not in the ban list. Anyway This might be make up story



Interesting point Posted: at 4-02-2017 01:51 AM (5 years ago) | Upcoming Interesting point Reply

dleg at 4-02-2017 05:17 AM (5 years ago)

(m) Could it have been the only Nigerian travelling on board of Qatar Airways? I know that many Nigerian fly it bcos it is very cheap.

They must be acting on intelligent report that was traced to her.



Perhaps, there is something that is not being said here. Posted: at 4-02-2017 05:17 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac Could it have been the only Nigerian travelling on board of Qatar Airways? I know that many Nigerian fly it bcos it is very cheap.They must be acting on intelligent report that was traced to her.Perhaps, there is something that is not being said here. Reply

Chericoco at 4-02-2017 07:08 AM (5 years ago)

(f) Quote from: concentrate on 3-02-2017 08:34 PM very good. they should make it a permanent ban.

People like you that can't never enter a plan will say something like that. Na poor man talk be that. Posted: at 4-02-2017 07:08 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac People like you that can't never enter a plan will say something like that. Na poor man talk be that. Reply

Chericoco at 4-02-2017 07:10 AM (5 years ago)

(f) Quote from: chukkychukky on 3-02-2017 09:19 PM make america great again(MAGA)

No! Make white people great again. Posted: at 4-02-2017 07:10 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac No! Make white people great again. Reply

Chericoco at 4-02-2017 07:13 AM (5 years ago)

(f) America haven't seen anything yet. Trump started were Hitler ended. Posted: at 4-02-2017 07:13 AM (5 years ago) | Gistmaniac America haven't seen anything yet. Trump started were Hitler ended. Reply
Ransomware

Ransomware is basically a type of malware that encrypts your files and demands a ransom to be paid off to re-gain access back to your files.

An example of ransomware would be an app called Simplocker. Simplocker is basically a Trojan malware that disguises itself as an app suitable for adults only. If Simplocker is downloaded and as it enters your smartphone it scans your smartphone's SD card for documents, images and videos. After the scan is complete it encrypts those files using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Then it displays a fake FBI message in Russian that accuses the victim of downloading and viewing child pornography on their device. And to get the files back, Simplocker demands some amount to be paid within 24 hrs. It claims that failing to pay the ransom will result in removing all of the files that it has encrypted. However, it has been said that the app doesn't have the functionality to do so.

If you are infected with Simplocker, you can download Simplocker Decryptor that was created by ESET.

Another type of ransomware which has gained lot notoriety is the "svpeng", which combines ransomware with credit card theft. Svpeng works by presenting a screen to input credit card details every time a user accesses Google Play Store, which then sends the credit card details to the criminal behind this malware. Moreover, once spveng is on your smartphone, it would check to see whether you have a banking app installed.

The good news is the Russian police arrested the creator of spveng in April after he stole more than 50 million rubles ($930, 000) and infected more than 350, 000 Android devices.

Mobile Shutting Down

Android/PowerOffHijack discovered by AVG, is a type of malware that takes control of the process responsible for shutting down your smartphone. With this malware, your phone appears to be off when in fact it's on and functioning. Interestingly, the malware even plays the shutdown animation to show that your device is really turning off.

And what this power off hijack really does is it secretly takes pictures, makes calls, and sends messages while you think that your phone is turned off. On the bright side, this type of malware only affects Android versions under 5.0, requires root access and has been found only on apps outside of Google Play Store.

SEE ALSO: 8 tips and tricks you need to change on your new Asus Zenfone 3S Max running Android Nougat

Hijacking Malware

This malware has currently created a fear among Android users worldwide. According to experts, "HummingBad" has already attacked more than 10 million Android devices worldwide. Dangerously, this malware has the power to take control of devices; it forces users to click advertisements and download apps by using a multistage attack chain.

Moreover, the malware tries to gain access to your device through certain websites and infect it. Once it gets through the device it then tries to gain root access to the device by running software. If it succeeds to get the root access, the attackers will gain full access to your mobile. In case if the malware fails to gain root access, it uses a fake system through which it sends an update notification to your mobile to get system-level permission.

Viking Horde

This virus can be pretty devastating and harmful for your device. Why we say that is because "Viking Horde" has been created for Google Play Store apps. Through these apps, the virus creates a place in Android devices. Moreover, the virus can infect both rooted and non-rooted devices. So, whenever a user downloads an infected app from Google Play Store, the device gets infected by the malware. The risks of rooted devices are bigger compared to non-rooted devices.

In rooted devices, "Viking Horde" installs software and executes code remotely to get access to the mobile data. If it does, then the data of your mobile is at risk. The reason behind launching this app is for conducting ad clicks, spam messages, and others.

SEE ALSO: Google Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 will not get Android Nougat 7.1.2 update

Phishing Apps

While mobile browsing of the internet is growing with smartphone and tablet penetration, fraudsters and cyber criminals are now creating mobile phishing sites that look similar to a legitimate service. And with the existence of such sites these attackers are stealing users' credentials or worse.

The fact that mobile devices come with smaller screen is making malicious phishing techniques easier to hide from users. As such it is less sophisticated on mobile devices than PCs. Moreover, phishing schemes use rogue mobile apps, programs which can be considered "trojanized", while hiding their true intent as a system update, marketing offer or game. Some of these malware infect legitimate apps also with malicious code which can be only discovered after installing.

Malware Symptoms

Having looked at the different types of mobile malware, you might have an idea on how they spread and infect devices. While the do come in various ways, they all can produce similar symptoms. Well, signs of a malware infection can include unwanted behaviors and degradation of device performance. Stability issues such as frozen apps, failure to reboot and difficulty connecting to the network are also common.

In addition, mobile malware can drain your battery or processing power, hijack the browser, send unauthorized SMS messages, freeze or spoil the device entirely.

SEE ALSO: Google rolls out Android Nougat 7.1.2 Developer Preview for Pixel and Nexus phones

How to be Safe?

So if you are wondering how you can avoid and be safe from such malware then there are several best practices that all mobile users should follow to prevent Android malware infections. In essence, some malware cases may require special prevention and treatment methods, but following these recommendations will greatly increase a user's protection from a wide range of mobile malware.

#1 Download apps only from official app stores like Apple's App Store or Google Play. The vast majority of malicious apps are found on unofficial app stores or websites, many based in China or Russia.

#2 Do some research on the developer and their reputation. Read user ratings, paying special attention to reviews from disgruntled users, and seek out app recommendations from reputable sources.

#3 Think twice before granting "permissions" when installing new apps for the first time. Often, malicious app developers are counting on that level of carelessness to sneak malware onto your device. Always make sure to carefully read the end user agreement before clicking to understand exactly what permissions the app is asking for.
Moto G5 Plus wallpaper and default ringtones leak, download them on your phone News oi -Abhinaya Prabhu Moto G5 Plus leaks again.

Moto G5 and Moto G5 Plus are appearing in leaks and speculations almost every day. Today, the Moto G5 Plus is in the headlines for a different kind of leak. The earlier leaks revealed the possible looks and specifications of the smartphone, but the latest one will let you get the Moto G5 Plus experience on your current phone itself.

We say so as the Moto G5 Plus' ringtones and wallpaper have been leaked and these can be downloaded on your phone to make it look and feel like the upcoming smartphone without actually buying it. Lenovo is expected to announce the Moto G5 and G5 Plus at the Mobile World Congress 2017 later this month and release these phones soon after their launch.

What if Motorola launches Moto G5 Plus with these rumored specs?

If you can't wait to know what Lenovo has to roll out its sleeves at the upcoming major tech event, you can get the alleged stock wallpaper and a couple of the stock ringtones those have hit the web. Notably, the wallpapers of the Moto G5 Plus seems to be a close-up shot of feathers and the ringtones are of "Hello" and "Moto" titles.

To remind of you the rumored specs, the Moto G5 Plus is likely to feature a 5.5-inch display with FHD 1080p resolution and use a 2GHz Snapdragon 625 processor paired with 4GB RAM. The recently leaked photos of the alleged smartphone make us believe that the Moto G5 Plus might flaunt a design that is similar to that of the Moto Z Force.

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Best Mobiles in India

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Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro (2017) spotted on Geekbench; Key specs leaked News oi -Sneha Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro (2017) key specs leaked.

Mobile World Congress has become the talk of the town in the tech world today. However, with all the rumors surfacing the web these days, it can be already predicted that MWC 2017 will be very different as compared to the past few years.

Yes, MWC 2017 will witness a range of changes this year, as Xiaomi and HTC plan to skip the event, and Samsung takes a back step from launching its flagship device. However, it has always been like a protocol for the South Korean to launch its flagship at the MWC every year.

To recall, Samsung launched the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge at the MWC 2016. However, the MWC 2017 will prove to be a little different from the previous years, as Samsung will not announce the upcoming flagship Galaxy S8, however, will showcase a minute long teaser of the smartphone, revealing its first-look.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy S8's battery will be supplied by a Japanese company

Well, the reason behind the delay of the Galaxy S8 is that the smartphone is expected to come with the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 chipset, which is due in March. Hence, the South Korean smartphone manufacturer plans to unveil Galaxy S8 on March 29. However, there has been no confirmation issued by Samsung on this.

Amidst all the buzz about Samsung's plan for the upcoming MWC 2017, alongside showcasing Galaxy S8 teaser, the South Korean smartphone vendor might unveil a new smartphone - Samsung SM-G615F is spotted on Geekbench. The leaked SM-G615F device is also called the Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro (2017). The leaked listing of the device - SM-G615F is expected to run on the latest Android 7.0 Nougat, along with 24GB storage capability.

In terms of specifications, the upcoming Samsung Galaxy On7 Pro (2017) or SM-G615F will sport a 5.7-inch display along with at least 5 fingerprint gesture support. Further, as per the optics, the smartphone will come packed with a 12MP rear-view camera, along with features like - autofocus, face detection, LED flash, HDR photo, and touch focus.

Well, it should be noted that these are just rumors and Samsung hasn't confirmed any of it yet. Also, whether the smartphone will be unveiled at the MWC 2017 or not remains a mystery.

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Samsung Galaxy S8's battery will be supplied by a Japanese company News oi -Samden Sherpa Samsung Galaxy S8 could come with 3250 mAh and 3750 mAh capacities.

Samsung doesn't want to repeat the Galaxy Note 7 debacle again in 2017. The South Korean tech giant is being extra cautious in bringing a new device that will once again revive the trust it had lost.

And it wouldn't be any surprise if the company were to make some changes for the upcoming Galaxy S8.

Likewise, Samsung had earlier disclosed the result of the Galaxy Note 7 explosion and that it was due to a battery issue. Following that, Samsung is now looking to approach a new supplier from Japan.

Samsung Galaxy S8 teaser video will be featured at MWC 2017

As per the report, it says that the company is planning to replace its previous battery supplier Amperex Technology (China) with Murata Manufacturing (Japan). Amperex supplied battery for the Galaxy Note 7 and Samsung had accused the company for delivering faulty batteries. However, the main battery supplier will remain Samsung SDI the report said.

In addition, another report from phonearena indicates that the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus could be powered by 3000 mAh and 3500 mAh capacity batteries, respectively. Also, earlier we had reported that according to Korean media the device could come with 3250 mAh and 3750 mAh capacities. Both variants could be powered by energy-efficient 10nm processors.

Samsung Galaxy S8 alleged to use a 3,250mAh battery

Samsung will release the first official video of the Samsung Galaxy S8 at MWC 2017 and we are hoping that many new details about the device will emerge.

Source

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Xiaomi is setting up experience booth for Redmi Note 4 at select cities News oi -Samden Sherpa Now you get to experience Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 hands-on.

Xiaomi has just launched the Redmi Note 4 and is already setting records with the number of sales that it is generating. While the smartphone has been made available online only, users cannot experience the device first hand.

However, Xiaomi is now giving a chance to the users to experience the device up-close. The Chinese smartphone manufacturer is organizing "MI Home Pop-up" event and has announced in its twitter handle that it will be visiting certain cities where it will set up booths and actually allow users to get a first-hand look and feel of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4.

Xiaomi Mi 5c to come with Snapdragon 625 SoC

As per the twitter feed, Xiaomi will be visiting Hyderabad on 3, 4, 5 February at Inorbit Mall, Chennai on 10, 11, 12, February at Express Avenue Mall and finally Bangalore on 18 and 19 February at Garuda Mall. Mumbai's event seem to be already over.

UPDATE: As mentioned earlier in the image and in the article the venue for Hyderabad was Inorbit Mall. However, the venue has been changed and the event will now take place at GVK One Mall from 11 am onwards.

Now you can save these dates if you are in these cities and get to the destination to check out the Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 for yourself.

Power Has A New Look: Want to experience #RedmiNote4 and get first-hand look & feel? Were heading to these cities below in coming weeks. pic.twitter.com/pz4mYa2qle  Redmi India (@RedmiIndia) January 19, 2017

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Twitter employees donate $1.59m to ACLU to fight against Trump's traval ban News oi -GizBot Bureau Twitter's 1,000 employees donated the hefty amount to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to fight Trump's executive order on temporary travel ban.

Despite US President Donald Trump being a prolific Twitter user, the employees of the micro-blogging site donated $1.59 million to an organisation to fight Trump, a media report said.

According to a report in TechCrunch on Thursday, nearly 1,000 employees donated the hefty amount to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to fight Trump's executive order on temporary travel ban.

CEO Jack Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani also contributed.

SEE ALSO: Twitter to get harassment fixes this week, assures VP

"Our work is far from done. In the coming months we'll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements," Vijaya Gadde, General Counsel, Twitter was quoted as saying.

"But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I am proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people," Gadde said.

Apart from Twitter's donations, ACLU has raised over $24 million within a few days, six-times more than it did in the entire 2016.

"In a further sign of support from Silicon Valley, the ACLU entered Y Combinator's accelerator programme earlier this week where it will receive mentorship and guidance around areas like hiring, the use of technology and more," the report noted.

IANS

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Overall, dont let the bhoot mislead you, nothing bhootiya about this story. Had the makers tried to push the envelope, the idea could have been outstanding for a bhootiya comedy.
DoD Investigation Clears Central Command Intelligence Leaders

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2017  An exhaustive Defense Department Inspector General investigation into allegations that U.S. Central Command officials falsified or distorted intelligence found nothing to support such allegations, according to a DoD IG report issued yesterday.

Still, the investigators did find ways to improve the command's intelligence directorate, and made several recommendations.

"While the allegations were unsubstantiated, the DoD IG's report did provide thoughtful and helpful recommendations on ways to make improvements within the command and we are taking those and others' recommendations to heart and acting on them," said Army Gen. Joseph L. Votel, Centcom's commander.

The investigation covered the period between May 2014 and September 2015, when now-retired Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III was in command. The allegations centered on charges that intelligence leaders at Centcom were falsifying or skewing intelligence to make the campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant look more successful than it was.

No Evidence of False Reporting

"In sum  we did not substantiate the most serious allegation, which was that intelligence was falsified," the report says. "Only a few witnesses described intelligence assessments as false, and they did not provide specific examples that supported the allegation. Specifically, they did not point out, and we did not find, specific intelligence products that contained false -- untrue -- facts or analysis."

The investigators also did not find attempts to skew the intelligence to present a rosier picture, according to the report. "It is important to note that we did find  some basis for the analysts' perception of distortion, and we understand how they arrived at this perception," the report states.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he will let the record of the investigation stand on its own, and indicated that Centcom leaders will examine and implement the recommendations as warranted. "I want to take the opportunity to thank the men and women of the Centcom for their extraordinary commitment, hard work and competence," Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford said in a statement. "They have led the fight against [ISIL] and it is due to their efforts that we have the momentum in the fight and the opportunity to move even more aggressively in the months ahead. I particularly want to thank our intelligence professionals at Centcom for their contributions."

The chairman said he has complete confidence in the leadership of the crucial command. "General Lloyd Austin is one of the finest leaders I have ever served with," Dunford said. "He is a man of integrity and rock-solid character. On his watch, we began to turn the tide against [ISIL]. General Joe Votel has picked up where General Austin left off and has taken the campaign to the next level."

The investigators did identify specific weaknesses and flaws in Centcom's intelligence management processes for creating intelligence products. They believed these weaknesses contributed to the perception that senior leaders were distorting intelligence.

The report lists ineffective communication and guidance, lack of adequate feedback, ambiguity and uncertainty about certain policies and the ambiguous status of Defense Intelligence Agency analysts assigned to Centcom as among the problems the command can fix.

"Overall, the report confirmed what I have witnessed firsthand since joining the Central Command team," Votel said. "Like my predecessor Centcom commanders, I enjoy tremendous support from our intelligence professionals. Their efforts greatly enhance our effectiveness and are critical to our success. Centcom is a world-class organization, and our greatest asset is our people. We will continue to support and empower them while always striving to further improve our systems and processes for the betterment of the command and our ability to protect our national interests."

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Germany Refuses to Share Intelligence With Turkey, Fearing Its Use Against Kurds

Sputnik News

22:30 02.02.2017(updated 00:46 03.02.2017)

The German Defense Ministry has announced that it will decline to share recently-collected intelligence with Turkey, for fear that Ankara will use the information in its military campaign against the Kurds.

Berlin's military jets, operating out of Turkey's Incirlik air base, gathered reconnaissance photos as part of a global coalition fighting Daesh. Though Ankara is a member of this coalition, Germany has refused them unfiltered access to the images.

Germany's military follows strict protocol with handling intelligence making sure it is only given "solely to the anti-Islamic State coalition" and that it is not being used for other purposes.

Spiegel Online reported that the Turkish military has threatened German diplomats that Ankara will not approve improvements at Incirlik until they are given full access to the high-definition images.

This tension comes amid already-strained relations between Turkey and Germany, an issue that came to the surface after the German parliament voted to recognize the Armenian Genocide in June 2016, a sore subject for the administration of Turkish President Recip Erdogan.

Ankara recalled its ambassador to Germany as a result, and Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the time that "There is a lot that binds Germany to Turkey and even if we have a difference of opinion on an individual matter, the breadth of our links, our friendship, our strategic ties, is great."

Edward Nalbandian, the Armenian Foreign Minister, praised the Bundestag's decision, saying "Germany's valuable contribution not only to the international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, but also to the universal fight for the prevention of genocides [and] crimes against humanity."

Germany, in considering moving the reconnaissance jets from the Turkish base late last year, saw its relationship with Ankara grew testy.

Berlin has also been very critical of Turkey's crackdown on dissidents following the failed coup in July 2016, and Ankara has accused Germany of housing Kurdish militants.

On Tuesday Merkel and Erdogan for the first time since the coup attempting to try to help the countries' relationship, and discuss the importance of working together against terrorism.

Merkel told reporters, "With the (attempted) putsch, we saw how the Turkish people stood up for democracy and for the rules of democracy," speaking on the issue of press freedom she added, "In such a time of profound political upheaval, everything must be done to continue to protect the separation of powers and above all freedom of opinion and the diversity of society."

 Sputnik

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Iraqi Forces Liberate 60 Percent of Mosul From ISIL Fighters

By Terri Moon Cronk DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1, 2017  The U.S.-led coalition to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has liberated about 60 percent of ISIL-held territory in Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, the Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman told Pentagon reporters today.

In a teleconferenced briefing from Baghdad, Air Force Col. John L. Dorrian said that even though ISIL is losing ground, the enemy continues to use barbaric population-control measures on Mosul residents in its attempt to complicate the advance of Iraqi security forces.

"ISIL remains on the back foot in Mosul," the colonel said. "Its leaders are accusing citizens of spying, and tragically, they are executing people who don't cooperate with them in some cases." ISIL also has lost trust in some of its fighters and has executed some of them, he added.

ISIL's Losses No Surprise

Although ISIL has fought hard to maintain control of territory in Mosul, their difficulty in maintaining control is no surprise, Dorrian said. "The coalition has made a concerted effort to degrade the ISIL leadership network in Mosul in preparation for the battle," he said.

"Even before the battle ensued between August and October 2016, 18 ISIL leaders in and around Mosul were killed by coalition airstrikes," he continued. "These ISIL leaders were involved in Mosul's security, law enforcement and the perverted control of local civilians and attack plots away from the city."

Since the battle started more than 100 days ago, the U.S.-led coalition killed an additional 15 ISIL leaders in Mosul, including Abu Abbas, a terrorist fighter leader killed Jan. 12, and Abu Taha, who was ISIL's jailer and also responsible for the implementation of population control measures in the city. He was killed Oct. 31, Dorrian said.

A Less-Experienced ISIL in West Mosul

"What this means is that ISIL leaders who are trying to defend their territory in west Mosul are less experienced and less effective than the leaders that they replaced," the colonel explained. "We expect them to continue fighting hard and for the rest of the west side of Mosul to be difficult, but they do not have enough capability remaining to stop the [Iraqi forces'] advance."

For now, the Iraqi army continues back-clearing areas in the east and north of Mosul and clearing areas in the north to set conditions for operations on the west side, Dorrian said.

"Coalition forces are working with the [Iraqi forces] on planning how we can support [them] with advice and assistance; strikes; and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. And we continue training hold forces for once Mosul is liberated," he said.

The terrain in west Mosul is challenging to clear, Dorrian noted, and the narrowness of the roads and the density of the buildings sets conditions for close fighting.

SDF Back-Clearing Near Tabqa Dam

In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces with their affiliated Syrian-Arab Coalition fighters continue to back-clear and strengthen defensive positions 2 to 3 miles west of Tabqa Dam, the spokesman said.

"As local Arab tribes join the ranks, the coalition will continue to bolster these fighters' abilities with training, weapons and equipment as we have already done for more than 3,000 members of the SAC," he said.

And recently, he added, the coalition provided several Guardian armored vehicles to give the Syrian-Arab coalition increased survivability from ISIL's small arms and homemade bomb threats.

"We continue to deconflict strikes, air operations and, more recently, ground operations  and sharing targeting information," Dorrian said of the fight in Syria. "We believe the coalition is more lethal against ISIL due to these unified efforts."

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Military Strikes Target ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Feb. 2, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber and fighter aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 16 strikes in 19 engagements in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, four strikes destroyed four oil wellheads, two oil storage tanks and an oil pumpjack.

-- Near Bab, a strike destroyed four ISIL-held buildings.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, four strikes destroyed two oil pump jacks, an oil tanker truck and an oil wellhead.

-- Near Raqqa, seven strikes destroyed an oil storage tank, an oil barrel, an oil inlet manifold, an oil separation tank, a vehicle bomb, a tunnel and a weapons storage facility; and damaged a supply route.

Strikes in Iraq

Bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted five strikes in 19 engagements in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Kisik, a strike engaged an ISIL staging area.

 Near Mosul, four strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units and an ISIL staging area; destroyed three fighting positions, two vehicles, two vehicle bomb factories, a tunnel entrance, a supply cache and a weapons cache; and damaged a supply route.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

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Mattis Describes Overseas Trip as Opportunity to Listen to Allies' Concerns

By Jim Garamone DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2, 2017  Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will listen to the concerns of South Korean and Japanese leaders during his first trip overseas in his new position.

The secretary arrived today in Seoul, South Korea's capital, and he spoke with reporters during the 20-hour flight from Washington. He also will visit Japan during the trip.

Mattis said he wants to view the situation from the perspective of America's strong allies in Northeast Asia, saying the situation in the region is a priority for President Donald J. Trump's administration. South Korea and Japan are treaty allies of the United States, and "together we confront the North Korean situation," he said.

"I want to listen to them, engage with their political leaders, listen to some of their briefs, [and] get an understanding of their view of the situation," the secretary said.

Mattis told reporters he served in Korea as a young Marine officer in 1972. "But I've been not back out here in a long, long time," he added.

North Korean Threat

The secretary said he intends to listen to South Korean and Japanese leaders' take on the threats posed by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's regime. North Korea has exploded nuclear devices and is attempting to build intercontinental ballistic missile. The North Korean leader has also invested his nation's limited wealth in cyber capabilities, special operations units and the rest of the military. The North Korean People's Army has about 1 million personnel on active duty and is one of the few well-fed segments of North Korean society.

North Korea has often acted in a provocative way, Mattis said, and Kim has absolute power and is unpredictable. "It's hard to anticipate what they do," he said. "One of the reasons I want to come out and talk to the leadership out here, [is that] they live in the neighborhood. They watch this as an existential threat to them, and I need to get some data from them. I need to get their appreciation of the situation before I start making statements on where I stand on it."

Committed to Defense System

Still, he said, the nuclear missile effort is the immediate threat to the region and the United States, and the United States is committed to fielding the terminal high-altitude area defense system in South Korea.

"That THAAD is for defense of our allies' people [and] of our troops who are committed to their defense," the secretary said. "And were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea, we would have no need for THAAD out here. There's no other nation that needs to be concerned about THAAD other than North Korea."

Mattis said he wants to go beyond the current strategy in the region.

"Strategies are games of give and take, and I have to see their view of it, and [ask] have we maintained what passes for peace so far?" he said. "To a degree we have, but we're not trying to just look at today. We're looking at today and we're looking at tomorrow, and I need to see where they view this going right now."

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Secretary General: NATO is committed to peace and stability in the Western Balkans

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

02 Feb. 2017

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg commended Bosnia and Herzegovina for its contributions to Euro-Atlantic security during a visit to Sarajevo on Thursday (2 February 2017). Meeting with Mladen Ivanic, Chairman of the Tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the other members of Presidency, the Secretary General welcomed Bosnia's reforms in the defence and security sector. He also welcomed the adoption of the Defence Review and the implementation plan as signs of "real progress and real commitment." Mr. Stoltenberg stressed that NATO stands ready to activate the Membership Action Plan once all immovable defence properties have been registered to the state.

Accompanied by Defence Minister Marina Pendes, the Secretary General visited the troops of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He thanked them for their service and, in particular, their contributions to NATO's mission in Afghanistan. The Secretary General also met with personnel of the NATO Headquarters in Sarajevo, commanded by Brigadier General Giselle Wilz. He thanked them for their efforts to bring peace, security and stability to the Western Balkans, and underlined NATO's continued commitment to the region.

Addressing high-school and university students in Sarajevo, the Secretary General outlined NATO's close partnership with Bosnia and Herzegovina. He underlined that this partnership is fundamentally about improving the everyday lives of people in the country. He encouraged Bosnia and Herzegovina to continue to fight corruption and ensure that defence institutions are under democratic control.

During his visit, the Secretary General also met with the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Mr. Denis Zvizdic, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Igor Crnadak, the Minister of Security Dragan Mektic, and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Josip Brkic, as well as leading members of the Parliamentary Assembly and representatives of the international community.

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E-2D Advanced Hawkeye Arrives in Japan

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170202-07

Release Date: 2/2/2017 10:23:00 AM

From Commander, Naval Forces Japan

IWAKUNI, Japan (NNS) -- Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron (VAW) 125 arrived at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Iwakuni, Feb. 2.

The "Tigertails" of VAW-125 are relieving the "Liberty Bells" of VAW-115 as the early-warning squadron of the U.S. Navy's Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5, supporting the Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) Carrier Strike Group.

"We are excited to join the forward-deployed naval forces at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in the amazing city of Iwakuni," said Cmdr. Daniel Prochazka, VAW-125's commanding officer. "I would like to thank the city for its hospitality and for warmly welcoming us to this incredible place. This is my second time in the forward-deployed naval forces. My fond memories make me personally very thrilled to be back."

VAW-125's arrival also brings enhanced capabilities to the region, as the squadron's five E2-D Advanced Hawkeye aircraft provide substantial upgrades over the E2-C Hawkeye platform. VAW-125 is the U.S. Navy's first operational fleet squadron to utilize the E2-D.

"VAW-125 is the first and most experienced E-2D squadron in the U.S. Navy," Prochazka said. "This aircraft has the most advanced airborne radar in the world, and the people who fix and fly it are the best in the U.S. Navy."

Among the improvements in the E2-D are an all-new electronics suite, enhanced turboprop engines, modernized communications, and upgrade potential for mid-air refueling capabilities. The U.S. Navy first took delivery of the E2-D July 2010, and began a phased replacement of the venerable E2-C aircraft which has served the fleet since 1973.

Prochazka added the forward deployment of VAW-125 to MCAS Iwakuni is in accordance with the U.S. Navy's strategic vision for rebalance to the Indo-Asia-Pacific region, putting the most advanced and capable units forward in order to support the United States' commitment to the defense of Japan and the security and stability of the region.

"I am proud to bring the E2-D Advanced Hawkeye to Japan and to help strengthen the alliance between our two great nations," he said. "I am confident that our people and equipment will continue to build upon the vital relationship between our two countries."

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Indonesia, Australia agree to 'choke off' terror funding

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 5:28PM

Indonesia and Australia have reached an agreement to fight terrorist groups by blocking their financial resources amid concerns in both countries that supporters of Daesh may be planning new terror attacks there.

During a Thursday meeting in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, senior officials from the two countries vowed to halt the flow of money used to fund terror attacks and inked an agreement in that regard.

"We know that one of the most effective ways to combat the surge of terrorism is to attack the funding and the movement of money," Australian Attorney-General George Brandis told reporters after holding talks with Indonesian Chief Security Minister Wiranto.

Wiranto, for his part, said the two officials' discussions had focused on "how we can choke off funding routes" to terrorists.

The neighboring countries have been hit by a series of terrorist attacks. Both have also foiled plans inspired by the Daesh Takfiri group, which is mainly active in Iraq and Syria.

Some of the Daesh militants, especially those hailing from Indonesia, are suspected of sending money home to finance terrorist activities.

Meanwhile, there have been indications that money to fund terrorist activities has been flowing between Indonesia and Australia.

In 2015, Indonesia's financial intelligence agency said it suspected that $450,000 linked to terrorism had been transferred between the two countries.

Last month, Indonesian police arrested 17 of the country's nationals upon their return from Syria on suspicion of being members of Daesh and thus involved in terrorist activities.

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UAE summons Iranian charge d'affaires over Yemen

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 3:0PM

The Emirati Foreign Ministry has summoned the Iranian charge d'affaires in protest at what Abu Dhabi claims to be Tehran's "provision of weapons" to Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah fighters, an allegation the Islamic Republic has repeatedly dismissed as unfounded.

Abdul Rahim al-Awadi, the United Arab Emirates' assistant minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation for legal affairs, handed the Iranian envoy a note of protest, the official Emirates News Agency reported on Thursday.

Awadi said Iran's alleged provision of arms to the Houthis violates a number of United Nations Security Council resolutions, which prohibit such arms supplies.

Iranian officials have not made any comment on the report yet.

The United Arab Emirates is a key Saudi ally in its deadly aggression against Yemen that was launched in March 2015 in a bid to reinstall the ex-Yemeni government and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Riyadh regime and its regional and Western partners, including the US, have on numerous occasions accused Iran of shipping arms to Yemen's Ansarullah fighters. Tehran has strongly rejected the claims as baseless and unsubstantiated.

The anti-Iran accusations have surfaced again as the Saudi-led coalition and its mercenaries have been suffering major blows on the battleground at the hands of Yemen's Houthi fighters and allied armed forces, who are defending the civilian population against Riyadh's offensive.

Political analysts believe that such allegation raised by the so-called Saudi-led coalition is aimed at covering up failure of the government in Riyadh and its allies to achieve their goals in the impoverished Arab country. The coalition's frustration at the failure of its bloody aggression against defenseless Yemenis has caused Saudi rulers and their allies to resort to such blame game in order to deflect the world's public opinion from the disastrous situation in Yemen.

The military aggression has destroyed much of Yemen's infrastructure. It has also claimed the lives of over 11,400 Yemenis, including women and children, according to the latest tally by a Yemeni monitoring group.

Britain and the US have largely contributed to the Saudi campaign by providing huge amounts of weapons and military training to Riyadh's military.

Washington and London have turned a deaf ear to repeated calls by major international rights groups to drop their support for the deadly Saudi campaign.

Late last month, the US went as far as carrying out a series of ground and air raids against a village in the Yemeni province of Bayda, killing dozens of people, among them civilians.

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Yemeni forces kill Saudi trooper in border firefight

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 2:41PM

The Yemeni army, backed by fighters from allied Popular Committees, has killed a Saudi trooper in the kingdom's southwestern border region of Jizan, in a retaliatory assault against Riyadh's military aggression.

The Saudi Interior Ministry said on Thursday that the trooper had been killed in a gunfight between Houthi Ansarullah fighters and Saudi forces in Jizan Province.

He lost his life when the Saudi army stepped in to back up a border guard post after it came under heavy Yemeni fire on Wednesday.

The development came two days after Yemeni army forces targeted a Saudi military vessel in a missile attack off the coast of Yemen's western province of Hudaydah on Monday, killing two Saudi sailors. The warship had reportedly mounted missile attacks against Yemen's western coasts, cities and fishermen.

Such attacks are part of a drive by Yemen's Houthi Ansarullah movement and their allies to avenge Saudi Arabia's military aggression against the impoverished country which was launched nearly two years ago.

The Riyadh regime has been incessantly pounding Yemen in a bid to bring back to power the country's former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a devoted ally of Saudi Arabia, and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Saudi military aggression has claimed the lives of over 11,400 Yemenis, including women and children, according to the latest tally by a Yemeni monitoring group.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said recently that the military aggression against Yemen had killed nearly 1,400 Yemeni kids, injuring hundreds more.

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Gunmen kill five on Nigeria-Cameroon border

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 10:55AM

Unidentified gunmen have killed five people, including three nationals from Nigeria and one from Cameroon, after raiding a United Nations (UN) team on the border between the two countries, the UN has announced.

The deadly raid occurred in the Hosere Jongbi area near Kontcha in northern Cameroon on Tuesday, according to a Wednesday evening statement by the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).

"An unknown armed group attacked the UN team and killed five persons and injured several others," read the statement, which also identified the victims as "one UN independent contractor, three Nigerian nationals and one Cameroonian national."

The UN's special representative for West Africa and the Sahel, Mohamed Ibn Chambas, censured the armed assault.

The statement, which did not mention the nationality of the UN contractor killed in the attack, further explained that the team was working to demarcate the nearly 2,000-kilometer land border dividing Nigeria and Cameroon.

The area has reportedly been a source of tension between the two countries in the past.

The Nigeria-based Takfiri terrorist group of Boko Haram, whose terror campaign has ruined wide areas of northeast Nigeria since 2009, also remains active in the far-north region of Cameroon.

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Romania minister quits amid widespread protests

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 11:20AM

A Romanian cabinet minister has resigned amid mounting protests against a decision by the government to decriminalize certain graft offences.

The Thursday resignation of Florin Jianu, Romania's minister of business, trade and entrepreneurship, came in the wake of a mass protest that saw more than 250,000 Romanians take to the streets of the capital, Bucharest, late on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the newly-elected government adopted a decree to decriminalize graft cases totaling less than 38,000 euros (40,000 dollars).

The decision, introduced in an emergency law, bypasses the parliament and is opposed by the country's president.

Jianu announced his resignation on Facebook, saying it was "ethical to do, not for my professional honesty, my conscience is clean on that front, but for my child."

"How am I going to look him in the eye and what am I going to tell him over the years?" he wrote. "Am I going to tell him his father was a coward and supported actions he does not believe in, or that he chose to walk away from a story that isn't his?"

The government decision has also sparked international concern, with the European Commission's head, Jean-Claude Juncker, warning on Wednesday that Romania's anti-corruption war "needs to be advanced, not undone."

Romanians were due to stage more protests in Bucharest and other cities across the country on Thursday.

The emergency decree will take effect in 10 days unless a constitutional court challenge filed by Romania's top judicial watchdog is accepted.

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday that he had also filed a court challenge to the government decision. He urged the government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu to annul the controversial decree.

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Philippines president wants military to join war on drugs

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 8:47AM

The Philippines' president has said he plans to issue an executive order that would allow the involvement of the military in his anti-drug campaign in the wake of a scandal gripping the police force.

President Rodrigo Duterte also stressed on Thursday that there was no need to impose martial law to fight drugs, which he described as a national security threat.

He had repeatedly threatened to declare martial law if he saw it necessary for the crackdown on illegal drugs.

The Philippines' police, the force that had until now been carrying out Duterte's war on drugs, faces allegations of corruption amid a scandal involving the kidnapping and killing of a South Korean businessman by officers.

On Monday, the police chief in the country suspended all operations in the anti-narcotics campaign until its ranks were cleansed of rogue officers.

President Duterte had said he was "embarrassed" that anti-drugs officers had abused their power to engage in kidnapping, leading to the death by strangulation of the businessman on the grounds of the national police headquarters.

An anti-drugs agency has been placed in charge of the campaign by Duterte, who now wants the military to help.

Duterte's signature anti-drug campaign has itself been a source of alarm. Rights groups accuse Duterte of turning a blind eye to a wave of alleged extrajudicial killings by police, mostly of low-level peddlers. Police denies carrying out such killings.

Thousands of people have been killed in the campaign against drugs since it started on June 30 last year. According to police figures, about 2,000 drug suspects have been killed in security operations, while nearly 4,000 others have died in unexplained circumstances linked to the crackdown, according to media.

During his presidential election campaign in mid-2016, Duterte ran mainly on a platform of fighting drugs and crime.

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US 'likely' killed Yemeni civilians, kids in recent Qaeda raid

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 2:2AM

A recent US attack on al-Qaeda terrorists in impoverished Yemen "likely" left civilians dead, says the United States Central Command.

In a statement on Wednesday, CENTCOM added that the January 29 raid casualties also included children.

"A team designated by the operational task force commander has concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed in the midst of a firefight during a raid in Yemen January 29. Casualties may include children," CENTCOM said.

US officials maintain that their commandos killed 14 members of the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the civilian deaths occurred when US aircraft were called for help.

"The known possible civilian casualties appear to have been potentially caught up in aerial gunfire that was called in to assist US forces in contact against a determined enemy that included armed women firing from prepared fighting positions, and US special operations members receiving fire from all sides to include houses and other buildings," the statement read.

CENTCOM spokesman Colonel John Thomas suggested that the civilian casualties could have been caused by the Takfiris' use of civilians as shields.

"Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has a horrifying history of hiding women and children within militant operating areas and terrorist camps, and continuously shows a callous disregard for innocent lives," he said. "That's what makes cases like these so especially tragic."

According to White House spokesman Sean Spicer, the raid snagged "an unbelievable amount of intelligence that will prevent the potential deaths or attacks on American soil."

The attack also took the life of US Navy SEAL Team Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens and left three other American troops wounded.

"You never want to call something a success 100 percent when someone's hurt or killed," Spicer told reporters.

The al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has taken advantage of the chaos and the breakdown of security in Yemen to tighten its grip on the southeast parts of the impoverished crisis-stricken country.

The majority of the Yemeni population is in dire need of food, water and other humanitarian aid as a Saudi military campaign continues against the Arab world's poorest country.

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Protests Resume In Romania; President To Challenge Decree

RFE/RL February 02, 2017

Romanians took to the streets to resume protests against moves by the government that critics say would weaken anticorruption legislation, and President Klaus Iohannis said he would challenge the government's emergency decree in the Constitutional Court.

Hundreds gathered again on February 2 outside the government building, a day after more than 300,000 people protested in some 50 cities in the largest antigovernment demonstrations since the fall of communism in 1989.

More than 150,000 people attended the protest in Bucharest on February 1. Clashes between riot police and smaller groups of protesters broke out toward the end of the demonstrations, and authorities said several police officers and protesters were injured.

The protests came after the new government abruptly adopted an emergency decree on January 31 decriminalizing some official misconduct, barely a month since the Social Democrat-led government of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu took power.

Center-right President Iohannis, who has been at odds with the new leftist coalition formed after a December parliamentary election, sharply criticized the government's moves. He participated in antigovernment protests in Bucharest last month.

Iohannis told a news conference on February 2 that he would challenge the decree in the Constitutional Court and demanded the resignation of Interior Minister Carmen Daniela Dan, saying she had failed to ensure the safety of peaceful protesters.

Dan rejected the accusations, saying there had been no prior indications of possible violence during the protest. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Florin Iordache, who formally proposed the decree, said he was handing over his duties to his deputy until February 7.

Romania's top judicial watchdog has already filed a Constitutional Court challenge to the decree, which will take effect in 10 days unless blocked by a court ruling.

The country's anticorruption body, the DNA, says it has opened an investigation into the legality of the emergency decree.

The government's move came despite widespread domestic and international warnings that the decree would be a huge setback for Romania's anticorruption fight and would free dozens of officials jailed for corruption in the European Union member country.

One of the top beneficiaries of the decree would be Liviu Dragnea, the leader of the governing Social Democrats, who has been convicted of abuse of office and is under investigation in a separate case. If the decree comes into force, Dragnea's conviction would be quashed, which would allow him to legally become prime minister.

In a related development on February 2, cabinet minister Florin Jianu resigned in protest over the government's moves. Jianu, who is minister of business, trade and entrepreneurship, announced his resignation on Facebook, saying it was the "ethical [thing] to do."

With reporting by Digi24HD, AFP, Reuters, and AP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/romania- protests-decriminalizing-official- misconduct/28274479.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US Raid in Yemen 'Successful Operation' by All Standards - White House

Sputnik News

22:00 02.02.2017

The US raid against al-Qaeda militants in Yemen on Sunday was a successful military operation by any standard, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  US Special Operations Forces killed 14 al-Qaeda militants in the course of the operation, according to the White House. During the operation, the terrorists killed US Navy SEAL William Owens and injured several other servicemen.

"It's hard to ever call something a complete success when you have a loss of life or people injured," Spicer said. "But, I think when you look at the totality of what was gained to prevent the future loss of life here in America and against our people and our institutions, and probably throughout the world, in terms of what some of these individuals could have done, I think it is a successful operation by all standards."

Spicer also noted that the operation was a ''very well-thought out and executed effort."

The raid was the first such operation authorized by President Donald Trump.

The US media reported earlier that Nawar al-Awlaki, an 8-year-old daughter of previously assassinated al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed during Sunday's raid. The girl was a US citizen, according to media reports.

The US Central Command acknowledged in a press release on Wednesday that civilians, including children, may have been killed during the operation.

 Sputnik

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Spanish, Canadian Frigates Heading to Romanian Black Sea Port Amid NATO Drills

Sputnik News

21:23 02.02.2017(updated 21:33 02.02.2017)

Spanish and Canadian frigates Almirante Juan de Borbon and St. John's, taking part in maritime drills by seven NATO countries and Ukraine, are heading to Romania's Black Sea port Constanta, a military-diplomatic source told Sputnik on Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Wednesday, the Sea Shield 2017 maritime drills kicked off in the Black Sea, with 16 warships and ten aircraft participating in the exercises.

"At the moment, the Spanish and Canadian frigates are heading to Constanta, where participants of the Sea Shield-2017 [drills] are gathering and where a planning conference will take place," the source said.

According to the source, the warships will then head to the Black Sea's eastern part to participate in NATO's standard procedures of countering aerial, maritime and submarine threats.

The drills will take place on the territory of 80,000 square kilometers (49,700 square miles). Approximately 2,800 personnel from Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, the United States, Canada, Spain and Ukraine will participate in the 10-day exercises.

 Sputnik

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NATO Monitoring Reports About Increased Russian Influence in Balkan States

Sputnik News

21:15 02.02.2017

NATO has been following the situation around the reports of growing Russian influence in the Western Balkan states, such as Montenegro, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  He added that the best way to resist foreign influence was to ensure that the democratic institutions of the regional countries were strong and able to stay unaffected by attempts to influence the processes in such states.

"We have seen several reports about increased Russian influence and presence in the Western Balkans and we've also seen the reports about both from Montenegro but also from Serbia about Russian intervention in the political process in Montenegro before the elections there last year. And of course this is something we are following very closely," Stoltenberg said, as quoted by NATO's press service, answering a question about the impact of Russia and the United States in the region.

In October 2016, Montenegro held parliamentary elections. On the same date, local authorities detained 20 people and arrested several of them for alleged coup attempt. In November, a Montenegrin prosecutor was quoted by the media as alleging that "nationalists from Russia" planned to overthrow a government. Moscow has refuted the allegations.

 Sputnik

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Marching towards peace, FARC-EP begins turning in arms - UN Mission in Colombia

2 February 2017  More than 200 men and women of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) marched today to demobilization camps, two months after a peace deal that ended the Western Hemisphere's longest running conflict, United Nations monitors coordinating the process reported.

The UN Mission in Colombia reported that the Transitional Point of Normalization of Pondores, department of La Guajira, in northern Colombia, according to figures from tripartite Monitoring and Verification Mechanism, composed of the Government, the FARC-EP and coordinated by the UN Mission.

Members of the FARC-EP  some of them pregnant or breastfeeding  walked about nine kilometres from four pre-grouping points near to the Pondores transitional point, where the FARC-EP camp will be located and where the separation of forces will take place, a task which the UN Mission will verify.

"As a UN Mission, this moment is crucial because it means we will continue to verify the ceasefire and cessation of hostilities through our participation in the Tripartite Mechanism, and we will be able to begin the operational part of the verification of the laying down of arms," explained the Deputy Head of Observers of the Mission, Jose Mauricio Villacorta.

According to the Mission, the women and men marching today join more than 6,300 FARC-EP members who began mobilizing on Saturday, 28 January, to zones and points using 36 travel routes in 14 departments of the country, according to preliminary figures from the Colombian Government's High Commissioner for Peace, on one of the country's largest logistics operations.

FARC-EP members were received today at the Pondores site by High Commissioner for Peace Sergio Jaramillo, FARC-EP leader Ivan Marquez, Colombian authorities and Mr. Mauricio Villacorta, in a symbolic act to highlight the parties' commitment and the imminent start of the laying down of arms, which the UN Mission will verify, to enable the transition to civilian life.

"This shows that we are bringing the agreement to reality," said Mr. Jaramillo, who added: "This is a moment of joy."

Ivan Marquez, who headed the FARC-EP negotiating team in Havana, Cuba, where four years of negotiations on the eventual peace accord took place, stated: "Something good is happening in Colombia: it's peace [] This peace is irrepressible, unstoppable; let us go forward."

"To date, we have focused on the planning and preparation phase so that the Mission can carry out the tasks of registering and storing weapons," said Mr. Mauricio Villacorta.

Once FARC-EP members are in the camps the first step for the laying down of arms is the registration of arms and weapons. Unstable armaments  such as gunpowder, grenades and anti-personnel mines  will be destroyed in site. After 180 days, the UN Mission in Colombia is set to remove all the weapons from the camp.

In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the Government and the FARC-EP. That deal led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November.

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Afghan Provincial Governor Confident US Marines Will Help Contain Taliban

By Ayaz Gul February 02, 2017

The United States is readying a group of roughly 300 Marines to deploy to Afghanistan's southern Helmand province this spring to assist local forces retake several districts lost to the Taliban during the past year and defend the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, seen as the gateway to the rest of the country.

The city has come under repeated Taliban offensive in recent months, but Afghan forces have been able to prevent the fall of Lashkar Gah.

Helmand, the largest poppy-growing Afghan province, has been the scene of intense fighting throughout 2016. Clashes are ongoing in parts of the province, particularly in and around a key district center, Sangin. Wednesday, missiles fired by Taliban insurgents landed in the center of Lashkar Gah, killing a civilian and wounding several others.

But newly installed provincial governor, Hayatullah Hayyat, appears confident Afghan forces with the help of American marines will prevail in the battlefield during this fighting season.

"We hope that we will expand the area and we will reach those people who are actually taken by the Taliban [and using them] as a human shields. We will be able inshallah [God willing] to extend our freedom and peace to their location," he told VOA by telephone from Lashkar Gah.

'A great step'

Hayyat welcomed the planned deployment of U.S. soldiers to Helmand, insisting their role will be limited to advising, mentoring and training Afghan forces.

"Sending additional number of advisors and soldiers to assist our guys in training and advisory role that is excellent because we need to develop our forces, their knowledge, their training and to equip our security forces. So, I think it is a great step and I am quite sure together we will achieve more in this insecure situation," Hayyat said.

The U.S. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in his report this week said that eight out of 14 districts of Helmand are under insurgent control or influence.

Governor Hayyat says Afghan forces have gained enough battlefield experience during the past two years and are better prepared to tackle Taliban insurgents in the coming warmer months when fighting is expected to pick up in Helmand and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

But Hayyat urged the Taliban to cease violence in favor of finding a negotiated solution to the war.

"The doors are open for them [Taliban]. I think the only way is that we should discuss and we should come to the table of negotiations, that is the only way which can take us to a prosperous country and also to a stable situation," the governor added.

Helmand is the largest of all 34 Afghan provinces and shares borders with Pakistan and Iran. Afghan authorities accuse both neighbors of interference in their country and supporting the Taliban.

Calling on Pakistan, Iran

Governor Hayyat called on Pakistan and Iran to use their influence with the insurgents to help Afghanistan bring an end to the conflict before it engulfs their territories.

"I would like to call on these people [Pakistan and Iran] that if they like peace, the Afghans also deserve that. So, I think the only way [for the two countries] is to push or use their influence on the Taliban and other insurgents to come and talk [to the Afghan government]," the Afghan governor maintained.

Hayyat dismissed assertions Taliban leaders and commanders have returned to Helmand from their sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan.

"I think, based on our intelligence information and investigative proofs that we have, they [Taliban] don't have a safe place here to live," the Afghan governor claimed.

He suggested Iran's link to the Taliban could be aimed at fueling the insurgency in order to obstruct construction of dams in Helmand and neighboring provinces of Nimrozz and Farha, which share a border with Iran.

"I think Iran is keen that we should not stop this water," the governor said.

Pakistan and Iran deny allegations of supporting the insurgent violence in Afghanistan and maintain they are making all possible efforts to promote peace and reconciliation between the warring sides.

Hayyat says he hopes President Donald Trump's new administration will continue U.S. assistance for Afghan military and civilian reconstruction programs.

There are about 8,400 U.S troops stationed in Afghanistan as part of NATO's Resolute Support mission, conducting training, 'advise and assist' missions, and counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida remnants and loyalists of Islamic State in Afghanistan.

U.S. officials say the 300 Marines deployed to Helmand will be the largest number of Marines operating in the country since 2014, when most American combats troops left Afghanistan.

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Israeli Forces Work to Clear West Bank Settlement

By VOA News February 02, 2017

Israeli security forces continued working Thursday to clear the last remaining people from an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank.

The operation to clear the Amona outpost began Wednesday with police confronting hundreds of residents and protesters who set up barricades and threw stones at officers.

Angry protesters and settlers yelled at the police that "Jews don't expel Jews." About 20 officers were hurt.

By Thursday, the focus was on the synagogue in Amona where remaining settlers had planted themselves inside.

Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the Amona settlement was built on private Palestinian land and would have to be demolished by February 8. Ultra-conservative Israeli officials fought to reverse the ruling.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved 3,000 new homes for the evacuated settlers and others elsewhere in the West Bank.

As Amona's uprooted residents and their supporters bemoaned their fate, Arabs in a neighboring Palestinian village clapped and shook hands. Ibrahim Yakoob, 56, a Palestinian farmer who is part owner of the land that Amona occupied, told reporters: "It feels great to see settlers being taken off my land and their caravans removed. The court has done a good thing, although it has taken a long time."

Israel's Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that the Amona settlement had been built on private Palestinian land and would have to be demolished, over the objections of ultraconservative Israeli officials who fought to reverse the ruling.

Amona is the largest of about 100 unauthorized outposts erected in the West Bank without permission but  until now  generally tolerated by the Israeli government. Built in the 1990s, Amona stretches out over a rugged, grassy hilltop and looks out across a valley onto Palestinian villages.

Palestinians say Jewish settlements on land they want as part of a future state are a major impediment to peace. Israel says the Palestinians' refusal to recognize the Jewish state is blocking Mideast peace.

Israel was furious when the United States, under former President Barack Obama, abstained instead of vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution in December calling the settlements illegal and demanding that Israel stop building them.

The new Trump White House has so far been silent on Israeli settlement construction, but Jewish settlers told reporters Wednesday that they expected the new U.S. administration would not stand in the way of a new wave of settlements in the West Bank.

"After eight years of Obama, who didn't let us build, now we'll say, 'We will build and build,' " said Shilo Adler, who heads the Yesha Council, which represents Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

"Now is history-making time," Adler told a reporter for The Washington Post. He said the settlers were seeking 100,000 new homes  which would at least double the Jewish population in the West Bank  on land the Palestinians seek for a future nation.

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Europe Processing Donald Trump Challenge

By Luis Ramirez February 02, 2017

When European Council President Donald Tusk put out an open letter this week describing the Trump administration as a "threat" to Europe, his message was clear: Europe must unite or fall prey to threats from Russia. But European governments are far from united in their approach to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Some governments, like that of Britain's Theresa May, see their interests better served by engaging and aligning with the new U.S. administration. Others, like Germany and France, have chosen to confront.

The differing approaches show the challenges that European leaders face in adapting to Trump, whom they can love or loathe, but cannot ignore.

"Europe is not adapting very well at the moment," said John Ryan, a professor of political economy at the London School of Economics. "I think there's a degree of shock at the election result, and also I don't think that European politicians or media really followed closely enough what Donald Trump was saying on the campaign trail."

Among Trump's campaign promises that have jarred Europeans were his plans to restrict travel from some majority-Muslim countries and his pledge to demand more contributions to NATO from member countries that he says are not paying their share.

Britain's alignment

Britain has chosen the path of alignment, observers say, as a political necessity.

"One of the things politically that our government has to show is that post Brexit, Britain is not isolated, we have friends and we have allies. And if that friend and that ally happens to be the most powerful country on earth, so much the better," said Anand Menon, Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College London.

The EU's calls for unity have been blunt in their characterization of Trump's policies.

In his letter this week, Tusk named "worrying declarations by the new American administration" among a list of external threats on par with Russia, China, and radical Islam. Those threats, he wrote, "all make our future highly unpredictable."

The language was striking, reflecting a growing nervousness among the EU leadership.

"In Brussels there is a degree of concern that pillars of the traditional transatlantic relationship are starting to look a bit wobblier than people would have liked, and that Europe needs to start preemptively talking about that," said Menon.

Merkel's challenge

American and European media have sometimes touted Germany's Angela Merkel as the new leader of the free world and some observers, as well as some leaders, expect some governments in Europe to rally around the German leader to present a united front.

Quiet anxiety about the Trump administration turned into open criticism this week following the implementation of an executive order that temporarily barred entry into the United States for citizens of seven mainly Muslim countries.U.S. officials say the measure, supported by roughly one-half of Americans, is not aimed specifically at Muslims and was necessary "to safeguard the American people, our homeland, our values" against terrorism.

The American action has been welcomed by a few far-right parties and governments in Europe, including the leaders of Hungary and Poland. But Merkel has emerged as the prospective leader of what media are characterizing as a continent-wide rebellion against Trump's policy.

"I have made it clear once again that the fight against terrorism does not justify a general advance against certain countries," she has said.

Also critical has been French President Francois Hollande, who recently accused the new U.S. administration of "encouraging populism, and even extremism."

Neither leader is on secure ground as their countries prepare for national elections this year.

Merkel, while riding high in the polls, has been weakened by the migrant crisis, which saw her country absorb 1.1 million migrants last year alone, and a rising far-right, anti-immigration movement.

Hollande, with popularity ratings sinking to 4 percent at the end of 2016, will not run for re-election, and a strong push is under way from the right to elect anti-immigration candidate Marine Le Pen  or at the very least a center-right candidate with views that are more sympathetic to Trump.

"You're talking really about whether Paris and Berlin and London could do something for European unity and that is very, very difficult with Britain on its way out [of the EU], and Paris and Berlin being under pressure from populist movements that are anti-European Union," said Ryan.

Transatlantic relationship

Observers note it is still early, and European leaders are waiting for more clarity on exactly what Trump's strongly stated positions will mean for the longer-term Transatlantic relationship.

They are nervous, though, and how they adapt will depend on whether Trump follows through on his promises, as well as what the political landscape in Europe looks like after elections in France and Germany.

"This uncertainty could not have come at a worse time for Europe," wrote Hans Kundnani, a Europe researcher at the Transatlantic Academy. "There have been many calls for Europeans to pull together  and, as usual, some hopes that a crisis might force further integration."

The U.S. president continues to be the subject of ridicule in some European newspapers and comedy shows. A newspaper in Britain on Thursday quoted Sir Bernard Ingham, a former spokesman for the late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as saying "Trump's narrowed eyes and belligerent posture" make him appear like Italy's World War II leader "Benito Mussolini with a wig."

At some point, observers say Europeans will have no choice but to adapt and deal with the new administration.

"British media were certainly giving a free pass to Hillary Clinton, and really hoping or thinking that Hillary Clinton would win the election and really just cast Donald Trump in sort of a parody, and never really looked closely enough at his policy and now he's in power," said Ryan.

"There is a case for Donald Trump to moderate his stance, but at the same time, you have to ask the Europeans to moderate their statements when they don't like what they're hearing," Ryan said.

"Of course we can't ignore the president of the United States. We have to take him at his word, and from a European perspective, there has to be less talk and more getting on with things," he said.

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US, Mexico Deny Trump Threatened to Send Troops Across Border

By VOA News February 02, 2017

The United States and Mexico are both denying that U.S. President Donald Trump warned he was ready to send American troops into Mexico.

The Associated Press and a Mexican journalist in Washington both reported that Trump told Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto during a phone call last week that he would deploy U.S. forces to deal with the "bad hombres down there" unless Mexico did more to control them.

The AP account was based on a partial transcript of the call that it was given on the condition of anonymity by a person who had access to the official transcript. The AP noted it was not possible to determine the tone of Trump's remark.

The New York Times said a senior administration official told the newspaper Wednesday night that Trump's comments were made in jest, and represented a standing offer to aid Mexico in fighting drug gangs and controlling the border.

Mexican presidential spokesman Eduardo Sanchez said it is "absolutely false" that Trump suggested he would send U.S. troops to Mexico. Sanchez said Trump and Pena Nieto acknowledged their differences on various subjects, but expressed a desire to maintain dialogue to reach agreement between the two countries.

One of Trump's first acts as president was to sign an executive order for the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. He promised throughout his campaign to build the wall and have Mexico pay for it.

Pena Nieto has made it clear his government will not pay for the wall, and he canceled a planned visit to the U.S. after Trump signed the order. Their telephone call was intended to patch up relations.

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Thai Military Seeks Political Reconciliation Ahead of National Elections

By Ron Corben February 02, 2017

The Thai military government is making a new bid at political reconciliation ahead of general elections likely in 2018.

The latest effort to advance "the road map to democracy" through cross-party talks is being led by Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Prawit Wongsuan.

Prawit said the aim is to establish among the divided parties common ground and solicit ideas on a range of issues, including politics, social development, the environment, foreign affairs and mass media.

A political adviser to Prawit, Panitan Wattanaygorn, said the military is seeking a smooth transition of power back to a civilian administration.

National reforms proposed

The new initiative is part of national reforms the military sees as key, with the government setting up four committees geared to helping the steps along the political roadmap.

Panitan said the government wants to listen to politicians' concerns and register their ideas in the process.

"Some public contract could be constructed, but we're not going to force anyone to sign anything if they don't want to and certainly making peace and reconciliation cannot be forced," Panitan said, adding progress will rest in the future elected government.

A military-backed constitution, passed in an August referendum, provides added powers to the military in a future elected government, especially through an appointed 250-member Senate.

New king

Analysts say Thailand's new king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, may also be an influence in the process after the 70-year reign of his father, Bhumipol Adulyadej, who passed away in October.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University, in a commentary in the Singapore-based Straits Times, said the new king's reign "will likely spell changes to Thailand's political configurations and dynamics."

"The reign may also bring about a more level-playing field in Thai politics in the near term," Thitinan said.

As Crown Prince, Vajiralongkorn had close ties with former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who lives in exile after fleeing the country in 2008 following corruption charges.

Thaksin's political parties, including Pheu Thai, succeeded at several general elections since 2006 despite efforts by the military to promote the pro-establishment Democrat Party.

In Thailand's color-coded politics, "red shirt" supporters came under pro-Thaksin United Democratic Front for Democracy (UDD), with "yellow shirts" linked to the urban middle class Peoples Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC).

But PDRC spokesman Akanat Promphan said the process must be genuine, promoting the rule of law and economic opportunity to succeed in the long term.

"If you do [promote the rule of law and economic opportunity] in the end that's what will bring unity back to our society, not just a superficial process of reconciliation where different groups come and sit in the same table for photo opportunities," Akanat said.

Return to normal

Kraisak Choonhavan, a Democrat Party member, said members from the major parties have been in informal talks for some time.

"We've come to the conclusion that our national reconciliation is a prerequisite towards normalcy in politics in Thailand, a return towards elections and parliamentary rule," Kraisak told VOA.

But the new draft constitution makes "a return to normalcy very difficult."

The military-backed draft, now with the king pending amendments, calls for a 250-member appointed Senate and a 500-member House of Representatives. The draft allows the Senate to vote in the selection of a prime minister, leaving the way open for a non-elected government leader.

Bipartisan efforts undermined

Kraisak said the current constitution, with the 250-member non-elected Senate, undermines the current bipartisan efforts at reconciliation.

"So even if we have a national reconciliation politically, the present constitution has thrown us into a maze of conflict in the future," he said.

"It's too late you see because the military, the junta, claim that they have national consensus through the non-transparent referendum that they made," he said.

A senior member of the Pheu Thai Party, Somarn Lertwongrath, expressed doubts about the military's reconciliation policy, despite both major political parties agreeing to reconcile.

"If the military regime really wants reconciliation it can be done. But I don't think they are ready to reconcile at all. They don't have any preparations [for it]," Somarn said.

"The military try to keep everything under their power  they will not reconcile with the political parties, that's the problem. I only hope that the military understands the fact that they are losing, they are not winning," he added.

There have been calls for reconciliation throughout Thailand's turbulent political history. But few of the recommendations have been taken up by authorities.

Political scientist at Ubon Ratchathani University, Titipol Phakdeewanich, said despite calls for reconciliation, the people in the northeast, largely backers of Pheu Thai, "still don't trust the military" amid a climate of tight control over political debate.

"When we look at reconciliation, then the best way to reconcile the country is to go back to democracy and return power to the people and set the rules of law and accept the result of the election  that would be the best way to actually help the reconciliation," Titipol said.

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DRC Opposition at Crucial Impasse as Leader Dies

By William Clowes February 02, 2017

Leading Congolese opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi died Wednesday in Brussels of an undisclosed illness, bringing to an end a political career which spanned six tumultuous decades. His passing comes at a crucial time for the opposition as it fights to dislodge President Joseph Kabila.

Etienne Tshisekedi founded the UDPS, the DRC's oldest and largest opposition party, in 1982 to fight the dictatorial regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. He had broken with his former boss and would remain the country's most prominent opposition politician for the rest of his life.

He battled Mobutu's successors  first Laurent Kabila and then his son Joseph, despite Tshisekedi's poor health later in life. He boycotted the DRC's first multi-party elections in four decades in 2006, and then ran and lost in 2011, although he said the polls were rigged and declared himself the rightful winner.

On October 4, Etienne Tshisekedi addressed his supporters in person for the final time. The 84-year-old was visibly frail. His speech lasted only several minutes, yet was received rapturously.

Tshisekedi told his supporters that they would soon show President Kabila a red card and remove him from power.

Tshisekedi had returned to the country from Brussels in July of last year to lead the charge against Joseph Kabila who, having served his constitutional limit of two terms in office, was due to step down in December; but, elections were delayed.

Tshisekedi's passing leaves the opposition at a crucial impasse.

Albert Moleka, Tshisekedi's former chief of staff, said to VOA, "who said that no other individual can match Tshisekedi's charisma or capacity to mobilize the Congolese population for a struggle. Moleka believes, however, that the Rassemblement coalition and the UDPS have people capable of coordinating the different trends and ambitions within the movements. If they fail, Moleka says, the danger of breaking up is always there."

Last year saw violent, deadly protests against Kabila. On New Year's Eve, the Rassemblement signed a deal with the ruling alliance to hold elections this year. The agreement leaves Kabila in office for the interim.

Tshisekedi, as president of the Rassemblement, was to lead the monitoring committee tasked with applying the deal.

His former chief of staff Moleka said for some in the president's alliance, Tshisekedi's death will be like a weight lifted from their backs since he was the central element of the agreement and the person who frightened them.

Talking to local media, a government spokesman offered his condolences to Tshisekedi's family and party.

Late Wednesday and early Thursday, as news of Tshisekedi's death spread, police fired tear gas to disperse supporters trying to gather outside his home in the Limete district of the capital.

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Analysts Cast Doubt on DRC Accord After Opposition Leader's Death

By Salem Solomon February 02, 2017

Analysts say the death of Congolese opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi could undermine a recent accord aimed at ending the country's political crisis.

Tshisekedi, who died Wednesday in Belgium at age 84, is remembered as a steady and honest dissenting voice during years of violence and political turmoil in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and its predecessor, Zaire.

Gerard Prunier, an author and historian specializing in Africa's Great Lakes region, said during the long rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, Tshisekedi refused to compromise on his beliefs or accept a highly-paid position as a minister in Mobutu's government.

"He was honest, he was steadfast and he even was big-headed, you could say, but at least he didn't change every morning and go for the money and the benefits," Prunier told VOA Thursday. "His character was strong, but very difficult, which is why he survived all that long in opposition. He never tarnished his name."

Tshisekedi's death leaves a vacuum at the top of the party he led, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), and in the DRC political opposition at a particularly important moment.

New Year's accord

In December, DRC political leaders reached a deal for an election to be held before the end of 2017 and for current President Joseph Kabila to step down early the following year. Kabila's efforts to stay in office past his mandated two terms have sparked widespread protests and drawn condemnation from around the world.

Albert Moleka, Tshisekedi's former chief of staff, said progress was made recently in implementing the accord, negotiated with the help of the National Episcopal Conference of the Congo (CENCO) and DRC's Catholic bishops. The accord calls for a prime minister to be selected from the opposition and for additional power-sharing.

Moleka said Tshisekedi's death "is a challenge both for the negotiations and for the political situation overall," adding that it's too early to know how events will play out.

"Let's see how the people will react and I think the political priorities will come later," he said.

Bruno Tshibala, assistant secretary general of the UDPS, said work remains to be done to finalize the agreement and Tshisekedi's death has added uncertainty to the process.

"The death of a great leader of the character of president Tshisekedi couldn't help but have a great impact on the negotiations to finalize the accord of December 31, 2016 and on the future of the country," Tshibala told VOA's French to Africa service.

UDPS Future

Prunier is pessimistic about the immediate future of the opposition party and said Tshisekedi was the only thing that held it together.

"UDPS still existed because of him. His son will try to pick up the pieces as he can," Pruniersaid speaking of Felix Tshisekedi, who some hope can fill his father's shoes.

"Given the extraordinary disparity of the Congolese political landscape, nobody will manage to keep the UDPS in one piece. It will explode and go in various directions," Prunier predicted.

Tshisekedi had also succeeded in unifying disparate opposition leaders including Moise Katumbi, the governor of Katanga, to form a unified front against the Kabila government.

Tshisekedi was born in Limete, located near the capital Kinshasa. He founded the UDPS in 1982 and was the runner-up in the 2011 election which Kabila won.

He had traveled to Belgium this week for treatment when his condition quickly worsened. Radio France Internationale reported he died of a pulmonary embolism.

"The initial exams were good, but in a surprising manner he succumbed," said Tshibala.

Eddie Isango and James Butty contributed to this report.

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Counter-ISIL Strikes Continue in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, Feb. 3, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists in Syria and Iraq yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

Attack, bomber and fighter aircraft conducted 31 strikes in 40 engagements in Syria:

-- Near Abu Kamal, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a vehicle and an oil inlet manifold.

-- Near Bab, four strikes engaged three ISIL tactical units; destroyed two fighting positions; and damaged a command-and-control node.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, three strikes destroyed three oil wellheads and two oil tanker trucks.

-- Near Raqqa, 21 strikes engaged four ISIL tactical units; destroyed 53 oil barrels, 39 oil storage tanks, four oil wellheads, four tunnel entrances, two tunnels, two vehicles, two unmanned aerial vehicles, a fighting position and a tank; and damaged eight supply routes.

-- Near Shadaddi, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit.

Strikes in Iraq

Bomber, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 10 strikes in 24 engagements in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government:

-- Near Kirkuk, a strike engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed a supply cache and an ISIL-held building.

-- Near Kisik, two strikes engaged an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two vehicles, a supply cache, a fighting position and a tunnel.

-- Near Mosul, four strikes engaged two ISIL tactical units; destroyed an artillery system, a checkpoint and a bunker; and damaged three supply routes.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed two fuel storage tanks and a vehicle bomb facility.

-- Near Tal Afar, two strikes destroyed a vehicle, a tactical vehicle and a vehicle bomb.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target. Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

The strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the ISIL terrorist group and the threat they pose to Iraq, Syria, and the wider international community. The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said.

Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Syria include the United States, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, France, Jordan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

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Strength of Alliance Highlights Meeting Between Mattis, Japan's Prime Minister

DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017  In a Tokyo meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reaffirmed the strength of the U.S.- Japanese alliance, Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross said.

Mattis arrived in Japan today from South Korea on his first overseas trip since taking office last month.

In a statement summarizing the meeting, Ross said the secretary noted that this trip emphasizes the priority the new administration places on the Asia-Pacific region and the importance of the long-term U.S. alliance with Japan.

Common Threats

"He also underscored that the United States remains steadfast in its commitment to defend Japan in the face of common threats, such as those posed by North Korea," the spokesman said.

Mattis also confirmed the long-standing U.S. position on Japan's territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands: to apply the U.S.-Japan security treaty to all areas under Japanese administration and to continue strong opposition to any unilateral coercive action that seeks to undermine Japan's administrative control of the islands, Ross said. The secretary also thanked Abe for Japan's noteworthy contributions to regional and global security and to the U.S.-Japan alliance, he added.

The secretary also thanked Japan for hosting 54,000 U.S. troops and their family members to support the alliance, the spokesman said, as well as for Japan's continued support to U.S. force realignment plans in Japan.

Mattis also reaffirmed the alliance's unwavering commitment to the replacement facility for the Marine Corps' Futenma air station as part of a realignment of U.S. forces on the Japanese island of Okinawa, Ross said.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-044-17 February 03, 2017

Readout of Secretary Mattis' Meetings with ROK Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-Se and Minister of National Defense Han Min-Koo?

Secretary of Defense Spokesperson Cmdr. Gary Ross provided the following readout:

Secretary of Defense James Mattis held separate meetings with Republic of Korea (ROK) Minister of Foreign Affairs Yun Byung-Se, and ROK Minister of National Defense Han Min-Koo today in Seoul, South Korea.

Secretary Mattis noted that his first trip as secretary of defense to the ROK underscored the priority the Trump Administration places on the Asia-Pacific region, and on strengthening the U.S.-ROK alliance. Secretary Mattis said that the United States remains steadfast in its commitment to the defense of the ROK people. He further emphasized that any attack on the United States, or its allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming.

During both meetings, Secretary Mattis and his ROK counterparts discussed the regional security environment, including the evolving threats posed by North Korea, and determined the need to continue to consult and cooperate closely together. Secretary Mattis and Minister Han further resolved to move forward with critical defensive measures, such as deploying a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery to the ROK, enhancing alliance readiness, and taking steps to improve trilateral cooperation with Japan.

Secretary Mattis concluded both meetings by reiterating that he looked forward to working closely with Minister Yun and Minister Han to further strengthen the U.S.-ROK alliance.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1070027/

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-045-17 February 03, 2017

Readout of Secretary Mattis' Meetings with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe?

Secretary of Defense Spokesperson Cmdr. Gary Ross provided the following readout:

Secretary Mattis met with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe today in Tokyo, Japan to reaffirm the strength of the U.S.- Japan alliance.

During the meeting, the secretary emphasized the priority the new administration places on the Asia-Pacific by visiting the region during his first overseas trip and specifically on our long-term alliance with Japan. He also underscored that the United States remains steadfast in its commitment to defend Japan in the face of common threats, such as those posed by North Korea.

Secretary Mattis confirmed the long-standing U.S. position on the Senkaku Islands and thanked Prime Minister Abe for Japan's noteworthy contributions to regional and global security and to the U.S.- Japan alliance. He also thanked Japan for hosting 54,000 U.S. troops and their dependents to support the alliance. Finally, Secretary Mattis thanked Prime Minister Abe for Japan's continued support to U.S. force realignment plans in Japan, and reaffirmed the alliance's unwavering commitment to the Futenma Replacement Facility in Okinawa.

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1070036/

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Transcript

Presenter: Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis; South Korean Defense Minister Han Min Koo February 03, 2017

Remarks by Secretary Mattis and Defense Minister Han in Seoul, Republic of Korea

DEFENSE MINISTER HAN MIN KOO (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Good morning everyone.

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Secretary Mattis and his delegation for crossing the Pacific Ocean to come all the way here to visit Republic of Korea Ministry of National Defense, despite his very busy schedule at the beginning of his tenure.

I believe that U.S. President Trump and ROK Acting President Hwang's phone call at the beginning of this week, and Secretary Mattis' decision to visit Republic of Korea as his first destination abroad in his position as secretary of defense, clearly shows the United States commitment to the defense of Republic of Korea and the ROK-U.S. alliance.

North Korea's Kim Jong-un, continues to blatantly threaten the international community. He has boasted enhanced nuclear and missile capabilities and has stated that ICBMs can be launched at any given time and place.

Faced with the current severe security situation, Secretary Mattis' visit to Korea and participation in ROK-U.S. Defense Ministerial Meeting not only represents the ROK-U.S. alliance is resolute well to respond to the North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, but also communicates the strongest warning to North Korea.

I have no doubts that today's meeting will be an opportunity to reaffirm the strength of the alliance and the close cooperative relationship between the ROK Ministry of National Defense and U.S. Department of Defense will serve as the foundation upon which ROK-U.S. strategic partnership continues to develop.

In today's meeting we will discuss important issues to -- to the alliance, such as the following, security environments on the Korean Peninsula and developing the firm ROK-U.S. alliance, U.S.'s commitment to defense of Republic of Korea and strengthening the implementation capabilities of extended deterrents and deployments of THAAD in USFK.

We already had a conversation on the phone at the beginning of this week. Yesterday evening, we shared a meal together and now we are here to work together in a meeting. We're able to form a close relationship in such a short period of time. I believe this was possible because we both served as an active duty serviceman for 40-plus years and there is the ROK-U.S. alliance, a strong thread that binds us together.

As Secretary Mattis has said during his conformation hearing, nations with strong allies thrive and those without wither. As Republic of Korea and United States have stood side-by-side for the last 60 years on the bedrock of shared values and trust, today will mark yet another day our alliance reaffirms its firm will and strength to remain unwavering against all challenges and adversaries.

Thank you.

SECRETARY OF DEFENSE JIM MATTIS: Well, good morning everyone. And thank you, Minister Han, for your warm welcome.

I first visited your valiant country as a 21-year-old lieutenant many years ago and it's good to be back. I appreciate you hosting me and sharing your assessments of the situation we face today.

As you noted, Minister Han, this is my first overseas trip as secretary of defense and I'm here to underscore America's priority commitment to our bilateral alliance and to make clear the administration's full commitment to the United Nations mission in defense of your democracy.

I look forward to working closely together with you and sharing our perspectives is essential to strengthening our already strong teamwork. Yesterday and this morning, I met with acting President Hwang, National Security Adviser Kim and Foreign Minister Yun. From those meetings, I gained a deeper sense of the trusted bonds between our countries built on shared interests and values.

The United States stands by its commitments and we stand with our ally, the South Korean people. Our alliance is a testament to mutual commitment and respect and it is a linchpin of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

In cooperation with all our allies and partners, the United States seeks to ensure a peaceful, secure and free Asia-Pacific region. Our warm, respectful and mutual supporting relationship shows what democracies can accomplish when guided by a spirit of collaboration in defense of peace and prosperity.

North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior. We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region. America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad. Any attack on the United States or on our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with the response that would be effective and overwhelming.

Due to North Korea's threatening rhetoric and destabilizing behavior, we are taking defensive steps, like deploying the highly effective THAAD antimissile unit to the Republic of Korea, to protect its people and our troops that stand beside our ally. We are also committed to expanding trilateral venues of cooperation with Japan where the mutual defense of our nations is best served through teamwork.

Today, Minister Han and I will discuss other ways to make certain our militaries are always ready to protect this republic.

Minister Han, it is a privilege to meet with you today. I look forward to our partnership as we work to find common ground for deeper collaboration and to strengthen our strategic alliance. Together, and with a spirit of collaboration, I'm confident we'll continue to provide for the security and prosperity of our nations and the region.



http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Transcripts/Transcript-View/Article/1070902/

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Al-Qaeda overruns 3 Yemeni towns after US raid

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 11:15AM

Al-Qaeda in Yemen has overrun three southern towns just days after a US raid which killed at least 16 civilians, officials have said.

The terrorist group's entry into the Abyan province towns of Loder, Shaqra and Ahwar came as the White House defended Sunday's raid on a purportedly al-Qaeda compound as a "success" even though multiple civilians and a Navy SEAL were killed.

Local sources said the captures were helped by a pullout by forces loyal to the Saudi-backed former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, angry over the late payment of their wages.

Another source said al-Qaeda militants later withdrew from Loder and Shaqra after protest demonstrations by residents who threatened to take arms against the Takfiri group.

Al-Qaeda has taken advantage of nearly two years of a Saudi military campaign targeting the Yemeni army and Houthi fighters, which has left more than 10,000 people dead.

Yemeni forces have been fighting the Saudi invaders back including by launching retaliatory measures along the Saudi border or inside Saudi Arabia.

On Thursday, the Saudi Interior Ministry said a border guard of the kingdom was killed after a mine blast in southwestern province of Jizan on the border with Yemen.

The Saudi soldier died at the hospital as a result of severe injuries sustained in the mine blast, the ministry said.

Many Saudis forces have been killed along the Yemeni border since Saudi Arabia launched military intervention against Yemen two years ago.

Footage has recently emerged showing Yemeni forces attacking and destroying Saudi Arabia's al-Moqran military base in Jizan.

US accusations against Iran

On Thursday, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning Washington's efforts to link Yemen's military actions to Iran.

The statement said that the destruction of the Saudi warship had enraged the Saudi-led forces, prompting them to make baseless allegations against Iran.

It came after US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn accused Iran of a "destabilizing behavior across the Middle East." He also pointed to a Monday attack by Yemen's Ansarullah fighters on a Saudi warship near the port city of Hudaydah.

The Yemeni forces attacked the warship in Yemen's territorial waters as an act of self-defense in response to the Saudi war on Yemen and Riyadh's dispatching of terrorists and mercenaries to the country, the statement read.

The ministry stressed that the Saudi war in Yemen will fail, and that security and stability will be restored to the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait once Saudi Arabia ends the aggression, lifts the blockade on Yemen, and starts looking for a political solution that maintains the dignity of the Yemeni people.

The anti-Iran accusations have surfaced again as Saudi Arabia and its mercenaries have been suffering major blows on the battleground at the hands of Yemen's Houthi fighters and allied armed forces.

Political analysts believe that such allegations are aimed at covering up the failure of the government in Riyadh and its allies to achieve their goals in the impoverished Arab country.

The Riyadh regime and its regional and Western partners, including the US, have accused Iran of shipping arms to Yemen's Ansarullah fighters, who have been allied with the Yemeni military against Saudi Arabia. Tehran has strongly rejected the claim as baseless.

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Palestinian urges UN action against Israel's settlement projects

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 7:49AM

The Palestinian envoy to the UN has lashed out at Israel for an "extreme barrage of illegal behavior" over the last 10 days, urging the Security Council to take action against the regime's settlement expansion.

Speaking to reporters at the UN headquarters, Riyad Mansour denounced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for approving the construction of some 6,000 settlement units in the past few weeks in an "unprecedented" move.

The Palestinian diplomat also warned that Tel Aviv is "destroying the two-state solution by the continuation of this illegal behavior."

The Palestinian official made the statements following a meeting with Ukraine's UN ambassador, Volodymyr Yelchenko, the current council president, to protest Israel's new settlement plans and demand the Security Council implement its latest resolution against Israel's settlement constructions on Palestinian land.

In response, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon slammed Mansour's statements as Palestine's "repeated attempts to spread lies about Israel."

In December 2016, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334 that denounced the Israeli settlements as a "flagrant violation of international law."

Emboldened by the all-out support of the new US administration, Israel has in recent weeks defied Resolution 2334, approving plans for the construction of some 5,500 settler units in the West Bank and around 500 others in East Jerusalem al-Quds.

However, Israel's Jerusalem Post reported Thursday that the administration of US President Donald Trump had warned Tel Aviv to stop announcing settlement plans, which are "unilateral" and "undermining" what it called Trump's efforts to forge Middle East peace.

In an interview with the daily, a US administration official underlined Trump's commitment to a "two-state solution" to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict.

The official told the Post that the White House had not consulted on Israel's plans

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer also said that Washington's "desire for peace" between Israel and Palestine has not changed.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," he added.

Over 230 settlements have been constructed since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

All settlements in Jerusalem al-Quds and West Bank are viewed by the international community as illegal and subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid constructions on occupied territory.

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US Sends Navy Destroyer to Patrol Off Yemen Amid Iran Tensions

By Carla Babb February 03, 2017

A U.S. Navy destroyer is patrolling off the coast of Yemen to protect international waterways from Houthi militia aligned with Iran, a U.S. defense official told VOA on Friday.

The USS Cole arrived Friday in the vicinity of the Bab al-Mandab Strait off southwestern Yemen to conduct "presence operations," which will include escorting duties, to help protect vessels passing through the strait, the official told VOA on the condition of anonymity.

The USS Cole provides anti-surface and anti-air defense capabilities, allowing the ship to better "reach out and touch" potential enemy attackers, according to the defense official, who added that the ship had not fired into Yemen since its arrival.

The U.S. military had a plan "in the works" to move a cruiser or a destroyer into the Bab al-Mandab Strait soon, but the timeline was accelerated due to a Houthi suicide attack on a Saudi frigate in the Red Sea on Monday that killed two crew members.

Two amphibious ships, the USS Comstock and the USS Makin Island, are nearby in the Gulf of Aden.

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Trump Defense Chief Assures Japan, S. Korea of US Commitment to Asia

By VOA News February 03, 2017

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Tokyo Friday the U.S. stands "firmly, 100 percent, shoulder to shoulder" with Japan.

Mattis, on his first trip since becoming the Pentagon chief, made the comment during a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Earlier Friday in South Korea, Mattis said any nuclear attack by North Korea on the U.S. or any of its allies would be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response.

His trip to South Korea and Japan is to reassure the two Asian allies of Washington's enduring alliance with them.

U.S. President Donald Trump threatened during his campaign to withdraw American forces from South Korea and Japan if they did not pay more for the military support they received from the U.S. South Korea has 28,500 U.S. troops stationed there, while 47,000 U.S. troops are based in Japan.

Mattis also visited Seoul's National Cemetery Friday where he and his South Korean counterpart Han Minkoo participated in a wreath-laying ceremony to pay tribute to the soldiers who died in the Korean War.

On Thursday, Mattis said the Trump administration is committed to strengthening relations with South Korea in the face of what he called the "provocations" Seoul faces from North Korea.

"Right now we have to address the reality of the threat that your country and my country faces, and we intend to be shoulder-to-shoulder with you as we face this together," he said.

Mattis spoke alongside South Korean Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn at the start of Mattis' first overseas trip as Pentagon chief.

Hwang said he looks forward to further consultations on the U.S.-South Korea alliance and "responding to North Korea's nuclear issue."

Before landing in South Korea, Mattis told reporters traveling with him that one topic of conversation during his visit will be the THAAD missile defense system, which the U.S. and South Korea want to deploy this year over the objections of China.

"Were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea, we would have no need for THAAD out here," Mattis said. "There is no other nation that needs to be concerned about THAAD other than North Korea if they are engaged in something that is offensive."

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Report: Suspected Taliban Loyalist Kills 8 Afghan Policemen

By Ayaz Gul February 03, 2017

Officials in northwestern Afghanistan say a suspected Taliban insurgent has killed at least eight police personnel just days after surrendering and joining the force.

The overnight massacre took place at a security outpost in the Almar district in the province of Faryab.

Insurgent took weapons

Area police spokesman Karim Yorosh told VOA Friday the gunman took all the weapons and ammunition before fleeing the post. The victims mostly belonged to the same family, he added.

The Taliban fighter reportedly had surrendered to the local police force 15 days ago and returned to the insurgent ranks after carrying out the attack.

District Governor Mohammad Saleh Saleh told TOLO TV the killer poisoned the security men before shooting them.

An insurgent who surrenders and promises to quit violence before a local tribal council, or jirga, is allowed to stay in his village or work for security forces. Kabul's official reconciliation policy also encourages insurgents to quit violence and become part of national politics and institutions.

Taliban active nearby

The Taliban is active in several districts of Faryab and recently launched a major assault on the provincial capital, Maimana, to try to capture it. But Afghan security forces defeated the attempt, forcing insurgents to retreat to their nearby sanctuaries.

Afghan security forces suffered a record number of casualties while battling the Taliban last year. They lost around 7,000 personnel while more than 11,000 were wounded, according to the U.S. military.

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Angolan President to Step Down

By Joad Jose Santarita February 03, 2017

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos said Friday that he will not seek re-election, signaling the end of his nearly four decades in power.

Dos Santos told a conference of the ruling MPLA party in Luanda that Defense Minister Joao Lourenco will stand as the party's number-one candidate in the next election, scheduled for August.

Dos Santos, 74, had previously indicated he would step down as head of Africa's second-largest oil producer. He has ruled Angola since September 1979, making him the continent's second-longest serving leader, behind Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea.

Under Dos Santos' rule, Angola reaped huge oil revenues and saw the end of a long, destructive civil war. But human rights groups have criticized him for secrecy, corruption and allowing most Angolans to live in deep poverty.

Last month, Forbes magazine listed the president's daughter, state oil company chief Isabel dos Santos, as Africa's richest woman with a fortune of $3.2 billion.

In contrast, ordinary Angolans suffer some of the highest child and maternal mortality rates in the world and an average life expectancy of only 51 years.

Opposition skeptical

In Angola, the person who heads each party's list of candidates for parliamentary elections also stands as the party's presidential nominee.

The MPLA tapped Lourenco last year as the likely candidate to succeed dos Santos. Lourenco told the state-run Angola Press agency that Friday's announcement is confirmation of something that party leaders have "taken for granted."

But dos Santos is not slipping into retirement. The longtime president is number three on the MPLA candidate list. His wife, Ana Paula Cristovao de Lemos dos Santos, is number 17.

For that reason, opposition parties are expressing doubt that dos Santos will truly give up power.

The parliamentary head of the main opposition party, UNITA, Adalberto da Costa Jr, told VOA's Portuguese to Africa service that the top leadership of MPLA has not changed "and therefore its essence has not changed."

Lindo Bernardo Tito, vice president of the CASA-CE party, told VOA that the announced change is "cosmetic."

"The MPLA is the same, the people that they are submitting to the election are those that have always been at the top of the ruling party," he said.

"These are the people who have also been named as corrupt, these are the ones who helped Jose Eduardo dos Santos and therefore there is no change," he added.

Lourenco himself said Friday that his main challenges will be "the consolidation of democracy and strengthening the economy."

He said his main priority now is to win the elections.

"I am prepared to face this challenge and will do everything to honor the trust that people have given me," he said.

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Evidence of Terror Group Chief's Part in Mumbai Attack 'Available in Pakistan'

Sputnik News

17:25 02.02.2017

In reply to Pakistan's demand for concrete evidence against Hafiz Saeed, a leader of the Jamat-ud-Dawa terror group, India has said that all the evidence to implicate the mastermind of Mumbai terror attack is already available in Pakistan.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik)  Earlier on Wednesday, Pakistan asked India to give concrete evidence against the Jamat-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed regarding the allegations against him.

"Let's be very clear that the entire conspiracy in the Mumbai terror attack case was hatched in Pakistan. All the terrorists came from Pakistan. All the planning was done in Pakistan. All the support was rendered from Pakistan. So all the evidence to implicate the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attack is already available in Pakistan," Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Vikas Swarup told media on Thursday.

Vikas Swarup further added that, "In fact, Hafiz Saeed has himself confessed to mastermind multiple acts of terror directed at India. So the so called concrete evidence that Pakistani establishment is looking for is already available in Pakistan. All they need is to find the requisite political will."

Hafiz Saeed and other 37 others who are affiliated with the Jamat-ud-Dawa or Lashkar-e-Taiba have been put on the Exit Control List. Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation and Jamat-ud-Dawa were also put on the Watch List as per the UNSC 1267 Sanctions.

India has claimed time and again that Hafiz Saeed is the mastermind of the Mumbai terror attack and asked Pakistan to take credible and concrete actions against him.

On 26 November, 2008, terrorists attacked India's financial city Mumbai and killed 166 peoples.

 Sputnik

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Norway Suspects Russian Intelligence Involved In Hacking Attempts

February 03, 2017

Norway's security service says civil-servant e-mail accounts have been targeted by hackers believed to be associated with Russian intelligence.

The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) said on February 3 that no classified information had been taken when nine personal civil-servant e-mail accounts were targeted in "spear-phishing" attacks.

PST spokesman Martin Bernsen said the agency was warned earlier this year by an unnamed foreign agency about "targeted attacks" against the security service, Norway's Labor Party, the military, and government agencies.

"The attacks had a signature that indicates those behind the hacking can be identified as APT29," Bernsen said. "They can be traced back to Russia."

He said APT29 was an another term for Cozy Bear, a hacker group that last year broke into U.S. Democratic Party computers and some U.S. government accounts.

"Spear-phishing" attacks involve emails that appear to be from known entities. If opened, hackers can launch malicious software onto the computer network of the recipient.

On January 31, the Czech government reported that dozens of e-mail accounts at its Foreign Ministry had been breached in a similar attack. Czech officials said they beleive the attack was "conducted by a foreign country," but did not name it.

Based on reporting by AP, CTK, and dpa

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/norway-russian- intelligence-hacking/28277945.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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French Soldier Shoots Machete-Wielding Man At The Louvre

RFE/RL February 03, 2017

A French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete who was trying to enter the Louvre museum in Paris in what the government said appeared to have been a terrorist attack.

Police said the man shouted "God is greatest" in Arabic and lashed out at police and soldiers before being shot near the museum's shopping mall in the February 3 incident.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said during a visit to Bayeux in Normandy, "It appears to be an attempted attack of a terrorist nature."

Police chief Michel Cadot said the suspected attacker was shot five times and was seriously wounded. He said another soldier was slightly wounded.

Cadot said the suspect was also carrying two backpacks, which were later found not to contain any explosives.

A terrorism inquiry has been opened, the public prosecutor said in a statement.

The suspect was believed to have acted alone but a second person was detained after displaying "suspicious behavior," he said.

Authorities said there were about 1,250 visitors in the museum at the time of the incident but there was no panic. The museum was closed following the incident and authorities did not say when it would reopen.

The attack came as Paris prepared to submit its official bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics with a launch show at the Eiffel Tower later in the afternoon on February 3 .

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said the identity and nationality of the attacker remain unknown. Interior Minister Bruno le Roux abandoned a trip to the Dordogne region to return to Paris.

The museum in central Paris is one of France's biggest tourist attractions, receiving 7.3 million visitors last year.

Reacting to the incident, U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter that the United States must "get smart."

Trump said the attacker was a "radical Islamic terrorist," using a term he has used previously to describe such attackers.

"A new radical Islamic terrorist has just attacked in Louvre Museum in Paris. Tourists were locked down. France on edge again. GET SMART U.S.," Trump tweeted.

France is less than three months away from a presidential election in which security and fears of terrorism are among the key issues.

Patrolling soldiers have become a common sight around Paris since a state of emergency was declared across France in November 2015.

France has suffered a string of attacks beginning in January 2015, when gunmen killed 17 people in a spree that included attacks on the Paris offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and a Jewish supermarket in the capital.

On November 13, 2015, gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State militant group attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall, and the national stadium in Paris, killing 130 people.

In July, a Tunisian extremist rammed a lorry through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on France's south coast, killing 86 people.

And in November, French police broke up an alleged jihadist terror ring that was allegedly planning to attack Paris.

With reporting by Reuters, AFP, BBC, and RTL

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/paris-louvre-man- knife-france/28276960.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Pyongyang's 'Provocations' Reason for THAAD Deployment in S Korea - Pentagon

Sputnik News

13:01 02.02.2017(updated 13:09 02.02.2017)

North Korea's provocative behavior is the only reason behind the US deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on the South Korean territory, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Thursday on his first official overseas trip, reiterating that the defense of Seoul is the purpose of deployment.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In July 2016, Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the THAAD system in South Korea's Seongju County amid growing tensions in the region spurred by North Korea's ballistic and nuclear tests. The proposed deployment has been met with objection and criticism from Beijing.

"THAAD is for defense of our allies' people, of our troops who are committed to their defense and were it not for the provocative behavior of North Korea we would have no need for THAAD out here  there is no other nation that needs to be concerned about THAAD other than North Korea," Mattis said after arriving at the Osan Air Base outside Seoul as quoted by the CNN broadcaster.

Mattis clarified that the deployment is in no way an affront on China, saying that the "only reason" this matter under discussion is "North Korea's activities."

When asked what strategy the Trump administration will take on the North Korea issue, Mattis made clear that his first visit will focus on speaking with South Korean leaders, so that he may gather their "appreciation of the situation" before any formal statement scan be made on the subject.

Mattis' visit to South Korea marks his first overseas as Secretary of Defense, and comes amid brewing tensions in the Korean Peninsula over the recent months.

Pyongyang has successfully conducted five nuclear tests, including two last year, and has frequently made statements about the advancement of its nuclear program. In January, the North Korean Foreign Ministry announced that the country was ready to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) "anytime and anywhere."

 Sputnik

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US, South Korea agree to deploy THAAD this year: Seoul

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 7:37AM

The US and South Korea have agreed to deploy an advanced American missile system on Korean territory this year, South Korea's Defense Ministry says.

US Defense Secretary James Mattis and South Korea's Defense Minister Han Min-koo, agreed during a meeting in Seoul "to deploy and operate Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system within this year as planned, which is a defense system solely against North Korea's missile threat," the South Korean ministry said on Friday.

Mattis arrived in Soul for a two-day visit on Thursday, when underscored "America's priority commitment to our bilateral alliance" and show Washington's "full commitment" to defending South Korea against perceived threats from North Korea.

US warns North Korea

On a first overseas tour by a senior member of US President Donald Trump's administration, Mattis also threatened North Korea with an "effective and overwhelming" response to any use of its nuclear weapons.

"Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," he said in Seoul.

The American defense secretary also met the acting-President of South Korea Hwang Kyo-ahn.

"Right now we have to address the reality of the threat that your country and my country faces and we intend to be shoulder-to-shoulder with you as we face this together," he told Hwang.

During a telephone conversation between Trump and Hwang back on Sunday, Trump had "reiterated our ironclad commitment to defend (South Korea)."

The controversial plan to deploy THAAD on South Korea's soil has infuriated not only the neighboring North, but China, which has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilizing regional security.

Beijing sees the move as an effort by Washington to extend its military alliance network from Japan all the way down to the South China Sea. It has slapped a series of measures seen by Seoul as economic retaliation.

Mattis, however, claimed that no other country than North Korea "needs to be concerned" about THAAD, which has purportedly been designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range, medium-range, and some intermediate-range ballistic missiles in flight.

China resolutely opposes THAAD

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang reacted to the announcement of the planned deployment on Friday, saying Beijing resolutely opposed the deployment of the American missile system.

North Korea, which is under international sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missiles activities, has repeatedly announced that it will stop those activities when Washington ends its hostile posture toward Pyongyang.

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said earlier in January that his country was in the "final stages" of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is said to be capable of reaching the US mainland.

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Lukashenka Accuses Russia Of 'Grabbing Belarus By The Throat'

RFE/RL's Belarus Service February 03, 2017

MINSK  Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has lashed out at Russia, accusing his powerful neighbor of violating treaties and using its role as an energy supplier to "grab us by the throat."

Speaking to journalists in Minsk on February 3, Lukashenka harshly criticized Moscow's recent decision to establish a "security zone" with border controls along the two countries' shared border.

Russia made the move to secure the previously open border after Minsk announced it was granting visa-free entry to Belarus to short-term visitors from some 80 countries as of February 9.

At his press conference, Lukashenka said Russia had "crossed out" existing treaties with Belarus "with the stroke of a pen."

The Belarusian president also accused Russia of trying to bolster its influence over Belarus by pushing to control its energy pipelines and using oil and gas supplies as a lever of power.

"Russia has often grabbed the oil and gas pipeline. It is happening now as well," he said. He added that "after such conflicts they have always told me, 'We went a bit too far.' But why grab the vital thing? Why grab us by the throat?"

Lukashenka said that "independence cannot be compared with oil" and that his country, which has long relied on subsidized Russian energy supplies, will find other energy suppliers if necessary.

However, Lukashenka denied recent speculation that Belarus might quit the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and said his country has no plans to join NATO.

'Unequal' Conditions

In addition, the president said Belarus does not plan to quit the Eurasian Economic Union (EES), of which Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan are members.

He complained, however, that his country has lost $15 billion due to the "unequal" conditions of many agreements within the group that started officially functioning in January 2015.

In the wide-ranging press conference, Lukashenka -- an authoritarian leader who has ruled Belarus since 1994 -- alluded to "forces that want to push Belarus into chaos and conflict."

"We have managed to preserve peace and stability," he said, despite a challenging geopolitical environment.

"We have to be friends with all our neighbors," Lukashenka said. "Neither Ukraine, nor Russia, nor Poland is alien to us. They are our neighbors; they were given to us by God."

Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and its active military, economic, and political support for separatists in eastern Ukraine have alarmed many countries in the region, prompting fears about Moscow's intentions.

Lukashenka also said that he had called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to lower his expectations regarding U.S. President Donald Trump.

He said that he told Putin to remember Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again" and asked him what place he thinks Trump will assign to Russia.

"They will put it in the 20th place because Russia's economy is the 20th in the world," Lukashenka said he told Putin.

The Belarusian president also compared Trump to himself.

"Trump is not that bad as you think," Lukashenka said. "He is inexperienced. I went through similar things as someone not from the elite moving upward... But there are many reasonable people there The nation is not stupid. They will explain things to him and help him."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/belarus-lukashenka-chaos-and -conflict-press-conference/28276919.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Beijing to Deploy Aircraft Carrier in South China Sea Amid Tensions With US

Sputnik News

17:13 02.02.2017(updated 18:50 02.02.2017)

The decision to station the Shandong aircraft carrier, currently under construction in Dalian, in close vicinity of a Chinese nuclear submarine base on Hainan Island in the South China Sea is fully in line with the original purpose of this particular type of ships, military expert Vasily Kashin told Sputnik.

China's first homemade aircraft carrier, the Shandong picks up where Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier left off with its designers adapting the ship to the needs of the Chinese Navy and correcting some of the shortfalls of its Russian prototype.

It will join China's other carrier, the Liaoning, a refurbished Soviet vessel brought over from Ukraine in 1998.

"The Shandong and its accompanying flotilla of support ships will ensure protection of Chinese ballistic missile nuclear submarines based on Hainan Island amid rising tensions in the South China Sea where Beijing has been fortifying artificial islands, a source of tension with Washington," Vasily Kashin said.

He added that even though it lacks the Admiral Kuznetsov's powerful arsenal of offensive weapons, the Shandong perfectly suits its current mission and will considerably enhance the Chinese Navy's ability to respond to any crisis that might arise in the South China Sea.

It can also be used as a carrier of rescue helicopters during international operations during natural disasters happening in the South China Sea.

"Unlike their Western counterparts, designed to project military power in faraway parts of the world oceans, Russia's Admiral Kuznetsov and other Project 1143.5 ships were built to protect nuclear-powered missile submarines in a particular section of the ocean," Kashin continued.

He added that a squadron of Su-33 heavy fighters based on the aircraft carrier was being used to keep enemy warplanes and antisubmarine helicopters out of the designated area, while its own fleet of submarine-busting helicopters was on the lookout for US subs lurking nearby.

"The planes and helicopters on board the carrier could also be used to provide target acquisition for the carrier's battery of 12 Granit heavy antisubmarine cruise missiles," Vasily Kashin noted.

The idea behind Beijing's decision to deploy its first home-made aircraft carrier in the disputed waters of the South China Sea was to boost the country's military potential and its ability to respond to what it describes as "complicated situations."

Beijing claims the entire territory of the sea, rich in mineral resources and crossed by important trade routes. China's claims have been contested by Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan, as well as Brunei.

The Shandong's planned deployment in the South China Sea is also seen as a signal to Taiwan following the Trump Administration's statements questioning Beijing's "One-China" policy.

 Sputnik

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India Unveils Measure to Clean Up Political Funding

By Anjana Pasricha February 02, 2017

In India, where illicit cash is the lifeblood of political parties, the government has slashed the limit on cash donations in a bid to clean up political funding. But analysts say much more needs to be done to tackle a problem that they say lies at the heart of corruption that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to eliminate.

In the annual budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced that the cap on cash donations to political parties would be lowered from about $300 to $30.

He said that the reform "will bring about greater transparency and accountability in political funding, while preventing future generations of black money."

He also announced a plan in which donors could buy "election bonds" from banks to give political parties, ostensibly making them easier to track.

The measures came as Prime Minister Modi faced public pressure to overhaul political financing following his drastic move last November of banning high denomination notes to flush out illicit cash.

Critics pointed out that "black money" or untaxed wealth cannot not be eliminated until political parties become transparent about where they collect millions of dollars in cash.

Announced days before five Indian states head to the polls, political analysts said the move is meant to reassure voters that Modi is serious about rooting out "black money", a key pledge that helped catapult him to power in 2014 in a country fed up with corruption.

But merely lowering the limit on cash donations will make little impact in cleaning up political funding, according to Jagdish Chhokar, a founding member of the New-Delhi based watchdog, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR). "I think this is more of a smokescreen."

He points out that the government has launched a massive drive for ordinary people to adopt digital modes of payment as part of its high profile campaign to clean up the economy, "I just find this very, very surprising that a person who is selling groceries, the government expects that grocer to accept payment not by cash, but they leave a window of Rs. 2000 ($30) for political parties. It is completely beyond my comprehension," says Chhokar.

Opaque political funding

The opaque funding of political parties has become a growing source of concern in the world's largest democracy, where there is no federal election funding and where campaigns have become increasingly expensive. Massive rallies, candidates hopping across states in helicopters and wooing voters with gifts or cash hardly raise eyebrows.

For watchdogs like ADR the unanswered question is: where does the money come from? Does it come from the hoard of illegal cash in the hands of individuals and businesses that the government set out to target in its demonetization drive?

A recent report by ADR said that a whopping 70 percent of the $1.7 billion dollars collected by political parties between 2004 and 2015 came from unknown sources. The report said that the source of two thirds of the income of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party was not disclosed, while that figure was as high as 83 percent for the opposition Congress Party.

N. Bhaskara Rao, chairman of the Center for Media Studies in New Delhi which tracks election funding, says lack of transparency in political funding is a big worry. "The very basics of democracy are being eaten into because of this lack of transparency, black money aspect. This is the mother of all corruption, election time corruption," says Rao.

But he calls the latest move to cap cash donations at $30 the start of a process that will tackle a difficult problem. "It's a good beginning. One may argue this is not enough, but then there is enough to have a beginning."

Others also expressed optimism. Senior political commentator Pratap Bhanu Mehta said in the Indian Express newspaper that while it may be said that lowering the threshold of cash donations will only require more ingenuity on the part of accountants, "it signals that political financing will be a subject that parties will not find easy to evade."

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Iran's missile tests not in contradiction with UNSC Resolution 2231

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Feb 2, IRNA -- Foreign Ministry Spokesman, Bahram Qasemi, says Iran's missile tests are not in contradiction with the UN Security Council resolution 2231.

Qasemi made the remark on Thursday in reaction to the anti-Iran claims of the US President's National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn.

He said Iran's legitimate defense policy is consistent with the international laws and regulations and is not negotiable under any condition.

He called the US official's claims as "baseless, repeated and provocative," saying that none of the missiles is designed to carry nuclear warheads.

The spokesman said the claims are raised under conditions when Iran's efforts to fight terrorist groups in the Middle East are not hidden to anybody as the groups are directly or indirectly provided with the financial, logistic and intelligence support of the US and its allies.

Qasemi went on to say that had it not been for Iran's sincere cooperation with the legal governments of the region and the brave armed forces and popular resistance forces of the country to fight such terrorist groups as Daesh -- as the US president claims were formed and trained by the country's statesmen- several capitals of the regional states would have been dominated by the terrorists and international campaign against terrorism would have come across with more complexities.

The Foreign Ministry Spokesman deplored that instead of appreciating Iranian nation for ceaseless campaign against terrorism, the US government repeats baseless claims and adopts unwise policies, thus helping terrorist groups in practice.

Qasemi referred to recent decision of the US government to impose travel ban on citizens of certain Muslim countries and said such an unwise and discriminatory decision, which has been criticized by governments and nations in the four corners of the world, including the US, once again reveals inattention of the US statesmen to the international laws and regulations.

"How can arrest and handcuffing of a five-year-old child, confirmed by White House, can be considered an instance of campaign against terrorism? How can long-term keeping of the old people in the US airports be in conformity with the human rights laws, as the US claims to respect them?"

Elsewhere in his remarks, Qasemi said Iran's regional policies are fully transparent and clear. "We seek friendly relations with all countries of the region based on good neighborliness, mutual respect and non-intervention in countries' internal affairs."

He said such baseless and null anti-Iran claims serve to divide regional states and find more markets for the US' lethal arms. "Instead of making discord, the US is advised to distance itself from the war criminal measures, adopted by its allies in Yemen by its allies."

The Islamic Republic of Iran has warned against the measures that are in contradiction with regional and international commitments of the US, emphasizing that resort to any threat is not only in contradiction with the mandatory international laws but is also a proof of its failure in the face of the endeavor and resistance of the great Iranian nation before many US administrations, Qasemi concluded.

1391**1420

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Velayati: Iran powerfully continues defense activities

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Feb 2, IRNA -- Head of the Strategic Research Center of the Expediency Council, Ali-Akbar Velayati, says the Islamic Republic of Iran is to powerfully continue its defense activities and has never sought any country's permission to do so.

Speaking to reporters after his meeting with visiting Armenian Defense Minister, Vigen Sargsyan, on Thursday, Velayati said it is not for the first time that a naive person from the US poses threats to Iran.

In the course of time, the US President, Donald Trump, will find out that baseless ranting against Iran only defame them in public opinion, he said, adding that the measures of the new US administration will be very harmful to the US people and their national interests.

The US will be the final loser, he said, adding that the Americans themselves are dissatisfied with the extremist measures of Trump and of his associates.

The new US president or those lacking sufficient experience in administrating a government should take lessons from their predecessors and avoid ranting in order not to be misused by other countries or the world public opinion, Velayati said.

Anyone who poses threats to Iran or any Muslim country should ask from his predecessors how the Americans were defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, Velayati continued.

The Iranian official said Astana conference, held by Iran, Russia and Turkey, proved that problem with Syria can be resolved without presence of the US or other western countries.

Iran never gets permission from any country to defend itself and all test fired Iranian missiles are for defense purposes, he said.

The Americans have experienced defeats in the countries with much less power, Velayati said, adding that the Islamic Republic of Iran as the first regional power with high defense capabilities never burdens and also never receives permission from any country or anyone in defending itself.

All test-fired missiles were defensive and Iran is to continue its defense activities with full strength, he said.

On recent allegations levelled by the US Advisor for Defense Security about Iran, he said the person is an inexperienced guy who has made an illogical claim and Iran never heeds to such claims as the Americans failed to take any positive measure in the region in connection with Iran.

Former US administration was disloyal to implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), he said, adding that the US is indebted to Iran and should fulfill its pledges.

The Americans should avoid such measures, Velayati said.

He opined that Iran will prove in action that the Americans are unable to overcome Islamic nations inspired by Islamic awakenings.

1430**1420

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US House Speaker says he backs more sanctions against Iran

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 5:24PM

The Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan says he would support additional sanctions on Iran over Tehran's recent missile tests.

"I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran," Ryan told reporters on Thursday at a weekly press conference.

"We need to have a tough-on-Iran policy ... We should stop appeasing Iran."

US President Donald Trump has stepped up rhetoric against Iran, saying the White House has formally put Tehran on notice over its latest ballistic missile test.

Trump wrote on his twitter account on Thursday that Iran should have been "thankful" for what he called the terrible deal the US made with it.

"Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the US made with them!" Trump wrote, echoing his national security adviser's comments a day earlier.

Trump's threats came a day after US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn criticized Iran over its missile test.

"We are officially putting Iran on notice," Flynn said in a statement on Wednesday.

Flynn repeated the US claims that ballistic missile tests violate a UN Security Council resolution that endorsed Iran's nuclear deal with the world powers, including Washington.

UN Security Council Resolution 2231 calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

Iranian officials have condemned the recent provocative comments by American officials on the latest missile tests as "baseless" and "provocative," saying Tehran does not wait for permission from any foreign state to defend itself.

Iran's defensive ballistic missile program has been a bone of contention with the West. Tehran says its missile tests do not breach UN resolutions because they are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Arms control experts have also said that Iran's missile tests are not banned under the nuclear agreement and the Security Council resolution, because Iran's missiles are not meant to deliver nuclear warheads.

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US claims on Iran missile tests baseless, provocative: Foreign Ministry

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 4:38PM

Iran has censured recent claims by a top adviser to US President Donald Trump about the Islamic Republic's missile program as "baseless," "repetitive," and "provocative."

In a statement released on Wednesday, White House national security adviser, Michael Flynn, claimed that Iran's recent missile tests breached UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted in July 2015 to endorse a nuclear agreement between Tehran and the P5+1 group of countries.

Flynn added that Washington was "officially putting Iran on notice."

Resolution 2231 urges Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi rejected Flynn's claims as "baseless, repetitive and provocative," and said "none of the missiles have been designed to carry nuclear warheads."

The Iranian official further emphasized that Iran's missile tests are not in contradiction to Resolution 2231, adding that the country's "legitimate defense policy complies with international regulations, and is under no circumstances negotiable."

He added that such remarks "come while the Islamic Republic of Iran's efforts to fight terror groups in the Middle East are not hidden to anyone; groups which enjoy direct or indirect financial, logistical and intelligence support of the US and its allies."

Qassemi further expressed regret that instead of expressing gratitude for the Iranian nation's continued anti-terror struggles, the US administration keeps leveling groundless accusations and adopting unwise policies, which practically promote terrorist groups.

Had it not been for Iran's sincere cooperation with legitimate governments and nations in the region in their battles against terror groups such as Daesh, some capital cities in regional states would have fallen to terrorists, he added.

The official further slammed as "inappropriate and discriminatory" Washington's recent ban on the entry of travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations as well as refugees into the US

Such a move "proves once again the US officials' disregard for international laws, rules and norms," he said.

On January 27, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order, which blocked the entry of citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen into the United States for 90 days. It also suspended entry of all refugees for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian official stressed that the Islamic Republic's regional policies are transparent, expressing Tehran's keenness to have friendly ties with all regional states based on mutual respect and non-interference in their domestic affairs.

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'Iran has been formally put on notice' over missile test: Trump

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 4:32PM

US President Donald Trump has stepped up rhetoric against Iran, saying the White House has formally put Tehran on notice over its recent ballistic missile test.

Trump wrote on his twitter account on Thursday that Iran should have been "thankful" for what he called the terrible deal the US made with it.

"Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!" Trump wrote, echoing his national security adviser's comments a day earlier.

In another tweet, Trump called the nuclear accord "a life-line" Washington granted to Tehran.

"Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the U.S. came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion," Trump claimed, without providing any evidence that Iran really gained such financial benefits from the nuclear agreement.

Trump may have been referring to Iran's oil sales worth about $100 billion that were frozen by the US and its allies via illegal sanctions imposed upon the Islamic Republic.

The assets were steadily released following the implementation of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P+1 group of countries.

Trump's threats came a day after US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn criticized Iran over its missile test.

"We are officially putting Iran on notice," Flynn said in a statement on Wednesday.

Flynn repeated the US claims that ballistic missile tests violate a UN Security Council resolution that endorsed Iran's nuclear deal with the world powers, including Washington.

UN Security Council Resolution 2231 calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

Iran's defensive ballistic missile program has been a bone of contention with the West. Tehran says its missile tests do not breach UN resolutions because they are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Arms control experts have also said that Iran's missile tests are not banned under the nuclear agreement and the Security Council resolution, because Iran's missiles are not meant to deliver nuclear warheads.

A spokesman for the EU foreign policy chief has also confirmed that Iran's ballistic missile program is defensive in nature and does not violate the nuclear deal.

Resolution 2231 was adopted in July 2015 to endorse a nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, also including the UK, Russia, Germany, China and France.

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Iran requires no one's permission to defend itself: Leader's aide

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 2:9PM

A senior Iranian official has played down the warmongering rhetoric and threats by US authorities against the Islamic Republic, emphasizing that the Islamic Republic does not wait for permission from any foreign state to defend itself.

In a Thursday presser, Ali Akbar Velayati, the senior adviser to Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei on international affairs, praised Iran as the "foremost regional power," which enjoys extensive political and economic capacities.

"Iran does not seek permission from any country to defend itself," and will remain indifferent to Washington's threats, added the Iranian official.

Reacting to the recent provocative comments by American officials on Tehran's latest missile tests, Velayati said "the missiles, which were put to test were defensive," adding that the Islamic Republic will continue its missile work with full strength.

In recent days, new officials in the White House have been raising Cain about Iran's domestic defense program by making provocative statements on Tehran's latest missile test.

Iranian officials have slammed such statements as foreign meddling in the country's domestic defense agenda, saying that such missile tests were the nation's inalienable right to self-defense.

Velayati further said "the new US administration will also understand that threatening Iran would not be effective, and that it should end its groundless ranting."

Touching on a myriad of controversial measures taken by the administration of US President Donald Trump since he took office last month, the Iranian official said such moves "would be to the detriment" of the American nation.

"We witness that the American people are also not satisfied with Trump's extremism," he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Velayati referred to the latest round of the Syria peace talks held in Kazakhstan's capital city of Astana and emphasized that the event showed that Iran, Russia, and Turkey could resolve their problems without the presence of the US and western countries.

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Iran's ballistic missile test successful: Defense minister

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 11:24AM

Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan says Iran's recent ballistic missile test has been "successful."

"This missile test was successful," the Iranian minister said as quoted by Tasnim News Agency, emphasizing that "Iran's missile tests are not, and have never been, in violation of the JCPOA (Iran's nuclear deal with six world powers) or [UN Security Council] Resolution 2231."

Dehqan confirmed on Wednesday that the country had conducted a missile test within the framework of its defense program, saying the Islamic Republic does not allow any foreign meddling in its domestic defensive affairs.

The comments come days after the United States called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting to discuss the launch of what it described as a "medium-range" missile by Iran. The meeting ended without reaching any conclusive result.

Iranian defense minister's remarks apparently came in reaction to media reports quoting some US officials as claiming that the test had failed as the missile flew some 600 miles before exploding.

Resolution 2231 was adopted by the UN Security Council in July 2015, days after Iran and the P5+1 group of countries, namely Russia, China, the US, the UK, and France plus Germany, signed the JCPOA, an acronym for the deal called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The resolution, which turned the JCPOA into an international document, calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

Iran's defensive ballistic missile program has been a bone of contention with the West. Tehran says its missile tests do not breach UN resolutions because they are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Arms control experts have also said that Iran's missile tests are not banned under the nuclear agreement and the UNSC resolution, because Iran's missiles are not meant to deliver nuclear warheads.

Iranian officials have in recent days joined voices to support the country's defense program in the face of the latest provocative remarks by officials of the new US administration on Tehran's domestic defense agenda.

In a Tuesday statement, 220 Iranian lawmakers expressed all-out support for Iran's Armed Forces, saying "the reinforcement of the defense capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran in line with deterrence strategy" is an absolute necessity to ensure the country's national security.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry has also described missile tests as an "inalienable and absolute" right of the nation, emphasizing that no country or international body can have any say in this regard.

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Iran says Trump cannot kill Boeing deal

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 10:53AM

Iran has rejected speculations that the deteriorating rhetoric by US President Donald Trump against the country could lead to the cancelation of a major plane purchase agreement with the American aviation giant Boeing.

Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi told the domestic media that a deal which Iran has sealed with Boeing was "a commercial one" and could not be therefore cancelled through an order by the US president.

"This cannot happen," Akhoundi emphasized in response to a question on whether Trump could order to kill the deal with Boeing. "This is a commercial deal."

Boeing announced a $16.6 billion agreement with the national carrier Iran Air in December, saying the orders were on course to support nearly 100,000 new jobs in the United States.

The deal, however, has already run into opposition in the Republican-run Congress and Trump's travel ban further makes it impossible for pilots, cabin staff and maintenance crews to enter the US for training.

US media earlier this week highlighted concerns that Iran's deal with Boeing to buy 80 passenger planes had been thrown into doubt following President Trump's executive order barring travel by Iranians to the US.

Meanwhile, Iran's Deputy Transport Minister Asghar Fakhrieh-Kashan has warned that Iran would seek return of "prepayments with interest" if the Boeing deal were thwarted by Trump's administration.

The aircraft have to be delivered over 10 years, beginning in 2018. The agreement includes orders for 50 narrow-body 737 passenger jets and 30 wide-body 777 aircraft. Boeing has said the deal was reached under the conditions of a US government license issued in September.

Iran has also signed a deal with the European plane maker Airbus to purchase 100 planes. It delivered the first plane in January with more deliveries coming up over the next few months.

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Trump: 'Nothing Off the Table' On Iran

Sputnik News

21:35 02.02.2017(updated 23:52 02.02.2017)

US President Donald Trump declared in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test that no option including the military is "off the table."

Trump was asked by reporters Thursday what he might do after recent Iranian missile tests and the sea-strike by Houthi rebels against a Saudi ship in the Red Sea. While Flynn did not specify what exactly was entailed by the warning to "put Iran on notice," Trump confirmed Thursday that anything is possible. "Nothing is off the table," the President said when pressed on whether a military option hasn't been considered.

Retired Gen. Flynn called out Iran for its "destabilizing behavior" and said that Trump has "severely criticized" the Obama's nuclear arms deal with Tehran. The National Security adviser hinted that "Iran is now feeling emboldened" due to "weak and ineffective" negotiations with Iran. Trump is contemplating "a whole range of options," including harsher economic sanctions, an administration official said.

A top Ayatollah aide slammed the "inexperienced" US President over "useless" threats issued by National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Wednesday. Flynn made a highly unusual appearance at the White House media briefing to "put the Iran on notice."

"This is not the first time an inexperienced person has threatened Iran," said Ali Akbar Velayati, senior adviser to Grand Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Tehran has continued testing nuclear-capable missiles despite the nuclear arms deal signed between Iran and the US, China, France, the UK, Russia, and Germany.

German newspaper, Die Welt, wrote on Thursday that Iran tested another cruise missile, the "Sumar," in addition to a medium-range cruise missile tested on Sunday. Die Welt received the details from undisclosed Germany intelligence operatives. A US official has confirmed that Sunday's missile launch traveled some 630 miles before exploding. Iranian defense officials said the test was a success.

Tehran does not need a license from "any country to defend itself," Velayati said. "The American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless," he noted.

On January 20, the White House updated its website to indicate that a "state-of-the-art" missile defense system for adversaries Iran and North Korea would be a top priority for the Trump administration. As part of Trump's promise to put "America first," the US will "pursue the highest level of military readiness," the White House said. America will need "every asset at its disposal" to fulfill Trump's vow that "We cannot allow other nations to surpass our military capability."

 Sputnik

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Iran Vows to Continue Missile Tests, Says Trump's Warnings 'Bluff'

Sputnik News

20:27 02.02.2017(updated 20:29 02.02.2017)

Tehran will continue missile tests in accordance with its defense program despite recent warnings issued against Iran by the US national security adviser and President Donald Trump, the Iranian supreme leader's top aide said Thursday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Wednesday, Michael Flynn, the US national security adviser, announced that the While House had issued an unprecedented notice as a result of missile tests.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump confirmed Flynn's remarks, saying that Tehran was "formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile."

"The missiles tested by Iran are for defense purposes and the country will continue its missile activities forcefully," Ali Akbar Velayati was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

With regard to the warnings made by the Trump administration, Velayati said that the United States was "merely bluffing."

After much criticism and speculation over alleged missile tests in Iran earlier in the week, the nation's Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan confirmed on Wednesday that the nation had conducted test missile launches in line with their defense programs.

Dehqan also underlined the fact that these tests violated neither the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nor UN Resolution 2231.

On July 14, 2015, Iran, the European Union, and the P5+1 group of countries signed the JCPOA to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program. Under this agreement, Iran pledged to refrain from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed against Iran. A UN resolution was passed shortly afterwards, reaffirming the nuclear agreement.

 Sputnik

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US Should Impose Additional Sanctions on Iran - House Speaker

Sputnik News

20:08 02.02.2017(updated 21:04 02.02.2017)

According to the House of Representatives speaker, the US should impose additional sanctions against Iran.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  The United States should place additional sanctions on Iran in the light of Tehran's recent activities that endanger peace, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters on Thursday.

"I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran," Ryan stated. "This is not a friendly country that has global peace or a national security peace in their mind. So, I think, we have to be tough on Iran policy."

Ryan added that former President Barack Obama's administration appeased Iran far too much. The House speaker stressed that Iran continues to be among the largest sponsors of terrorism in the world.

On Wednesday, US National Security Advisor Michael Flynn issued a statement putting Iran on notice for allegedly violating a UN Security Council resolution.

Flynn's comments came a day after Tehran launched a ballistic missile near the city of Semnan, the latest in a series of tests, which began shortly after implementation of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

The accord between Iran, the United States and five other nations aimed to limit Iran's development of nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.

 Sputnik

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Iranian Defense Minister Insists Tehran's Missile Test Not a Violation

Sputnik News

15:43 02.02.2017(updated 15:44 02.02.2017)

Tehran's recent cruise missile test was successful and was not in violation of the country's commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran's Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehqan said Thursday.

MOSCOW, February 2 (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, media reported that Iran had carried out its first test of a cruise missile of Sumar type, capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The missile, launched on January 29, covered some 600 kilometers (370 miles), German Welt newspaper said, citing German intelligence services.

Dehqan said in an interview with the Tasnim news agency that Iran's missile test did not violate neither the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 nor the JCPOA.

Under the JCPOA, signed by Iran, the European Union and the P5+1 group of countries, Tehran pledged to not seek to develop or acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed on Iran. The UNSC resolution was passed shortly afterwards, reaffirming the nuclear agreement.

On Wednesday, the Iranian Defense Minister confirmed that Iran carried out a new missile test. He also said that the missile test did not violate the nuclear agreement between Tehran and P5+1 group of world powers or the UN Security Council resolution.

On Monday, the United States has issued an unprecedented warning to Iran after Tehran carried out a medium-range ballistic missile test on Sunday.

 Sputnik

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Trump: Nothing 'Off the Table' in Responding to Iran's Missile Launch

By Cindy Saine, Mary Alice Salinas, Jeff Seldin February 02, 2017

President Donald Trump said Thursday that Iran had been "formally put on notice" for its ballistic missile launch and warned that "nothing is off the table" in dealing with Tehran.

In a series of tweets Thursday morning, Trump also continued his condemnation of the agreement that the U.S. and five other world powers reached to curb Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Trump said Iran should be "thankful" for the agreement, and that the country was "ready to collapse" before the billions of dollars were unfrozen.

Later, at a White house meeting with Harley-Davidson executives and union members, Trump said "nothing is off the table" in response to a reporter who asked whether military action against Iran was an option.

The nuclear deal required Iran to limit its enrichment of uranium and convert several of its nuclear facilities to other uses.

On Wednesday, it was Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who condemned the missile launch, declaring it "just the latest in a series of incidents" in which Iran has threatened the U.S. and its regional allies over the past six months.

He said leaders in Tehran had been emboldened to take such action now because the nuclear agreement was "weak and ineffective," and because the other nations involved in the agreement failed to rein in Iran's military ambitions.

During a briefing at the White House, Flynn accused former President Barack Obama and other members of his administration of not being tough enough on Tehran.

"The Obama administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran's malign actions  including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms," Flynn said. "The Trump administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk."

Flynn added, "As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice." He did not explain his comment further or threaten any specific action against Tehran.

Iran, Yemen

Late Wednesday, senior White House officials said Iran's ballistic missile launch and its support for Houthi rebels in Yemen were provocative, were destabilizing the region and were threatening multiple countries, including U.S. allies. The officials said the United States would respond "appropriately."

Asked what kind of action the U.S. might take, the officials would say only that they had a large range of options available. However, senior White House officials said the Iranian missile launch and a possible U.S. response were separate from the Iran nuclear deal, and that the White House was not accusing Iran of violating the original agreement.

Ian Lustick, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told VOA that the U.S. has to be careful in dealing with Iran's actions, citing as an example that Iran could make things worse for the 6,000 U.S. soldiers who are in Iraq.

"The majority of the population in Iraq is Shia and sympathetic in one way or another to Iran," Lustick said. "There are very large and powerful militias in Iraq that are commanded by and trained by the Iranians. Those are some of the best fighting units that have had success against ISIS."

A U.S. advocacy group, United Against Nuclear Iran, said international businesses were confused and uncertain about Iran's behavior and the American government's reaction.

David Ibsen, UANI's president, said it had discouraged its contacts from trying to establish new deals with Iran.

In an interview with VOA Persian, Ibsen said companies were asking whether Iranian missile tests would result in a reimposition of financial sanctions on Tehran.

"They also ask, if a company has dual-national citizens [in Iran], will they be kidnapped or held incommunicado by the Iranian regime? Will they be doing business with front entities for the regime or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps? All these risks are very real, and companies have taken our warnings to heart," Ibsen said.

Consultations

Wednesday's pronouncement from the White House came after lengthy consultations with key U.S. officials, through what is often described as the interagency process. Some officials with knowledge of the discussions described Iran's actions as provocative, but still largely in line with Tehran's behavior over the past several months.

"It is hard to know what the administration has in mind," said a former senior official in the Obama administration familiar with the Iran nuclear deal negotiations.

"Of course we should be concerned about Iran's missile activity," the official said. "The U.S. has robust bilateral sanctions that are missile-related, which we should absolutely enforce."

Iran confirmed Wednesday that it carried out a missile launch Sunday, but said this did not violate the nuclear agreement by six world powers and Tehran in 2015. U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, adopted after the nuclear deal was reached, called on Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles, but it did not specifically ban such activity.

Shahir Shahidsaless, an Iranian-Canadian political analyst, told VOA Persian on Wednesday that the resolution's lack of an explicit ban on ballistic missile activity was problematic for Washington.

"The United States cannot rely on this resolution to condemn Iran at the U.N. Security Council, and for the same reason, Russia and China will not cooperate with the U.S. on this," Shahidsaless said.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, denounced Iran's missile launch as "absolutely unacceptable" during a Security Council meeting Tuesday, and said the Trump administration would not turn a "blind eye" to such actions.

Britain's U.N. envoy, Matthew Rycroft, echoed Haley's concerns, saying, "There was very significant concern about the ballistic missile launch." He said the January 29 launch was "inconsistent" with Resolution 2231.

Iran's U.N. mission issued a statement reiterating Tehran's position that "Security Council Resolution 2231 does not prohibit legitimate and conventional missile activities."

VOA Persian NewsHour host Guita Aryan, Victor Beattie and Wayne Lee contributed to this report.

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US Treasury imposes new sanctions against Iran

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:27PM

The administration of US President Donald Trump has imposed new sanctions on multiple Iranian individuals and entities to ratchet up pressure on Iran over its missile defense program.

The US Treasury Department said in a statement on Friday that it has published a list of 13 Iranian figures and 12 entities facing new sanctions.

According to the statement, the entities include companies based in Tehran, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.

Senior US administration officials told Reuters that sanctions imposed against Iran were only the "initial steps in response to Iranian provocative behavior."

"Today's action is part of Treasury's ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA," the Treasury said in the statement, referring to the Iran nuclear deal reached between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group of countries, including Washington, in 2015.

Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the United States, Britain, Russia, China, France as well as Germany  reached a landmark nuclear agreement last year, under which Tehran agreed to limit some aspects of its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions. The two sides began implementing the deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), on January 16.

The new sanctions came a day after President Trump said "nothing is off the table" in terms of a response to Iran's latest ballistic missile test.

Trump also said on Thursday that the White House has formally put Tehran "on notice" over its missile test.

"Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!" Trump tweeted, echoing his national security adviser's comments a day earlier.

On Friday morning, Trump accused Iran of "playing with fire."

"Iran is playing with fire -- they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!," Trump tweeted.

In response, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Tehran is "unmoved" by the Trump administration's threats and only relies on its own defense means.

"Iran is unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif said in a post on his Twitter account on Friday.

"We will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense," the foreign minister pointed out.

Washington has said Sunday's ballistic missile test was in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

Tehran insists its missile tests do not breach any UN resolution because they are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Arms control experts have also said that Iran's missile tests are not banned under the nuclear agreement and the Security Council resolution, because Iran's missiles are not meant to deliver nuclear warheads.

'New sanctions in pipeline before Trump'

The White House said on Friday that the Iran sanctions were "in the pipeline" before Trump was sworn in as president on January 20, but were activated in light of recent events,

"These kinds of sanctions don't happen quickly but I think the timing of them was clearly in reaction to what we've seen over the last couple days," White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.

We knew we had these options available to us because they had been worked through the process ... They were in the pipeline," he added.

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Iran unmoved by US threats, relies on own defense means: Zarif

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 12:55PM

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says Tehran is "unmoved" by the United States' threats and only relies on its own defense means amid hostile rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, including hints of military aggression, emanating from Washington.

"Iran is unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif said in a post on his Twitter account on Friday.

"We will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense," the Iranian minister pointed out.

In another tweet, published minutes later, Zarif challenged Iran's enemies to verifiably and sincerely declare the defensive nature of their military program.

"We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defense. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement," he said.

Zarif's tweets also contained a video of him responding to reporters on Iran's defensive missile program during a conference in Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2016.

Referring to Iraq's eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s, Zarif said during the conference, "We are entitled to the rudimentary means of defense which we need in order to prevent another [executed Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein around the corner [from] attacking us with chemical weapons because the international community has failed miserably in protecting the Iranian people, in safeguarding international humanitarian law."

The Iranian minister's tweets came after US President Donald Trump tweeted early on Friday that "Iran is playing with fire."

Trump added that Tehran does not "appreciate how kind [former US] President [Barack] Obama was to them. Not me!"

Just days earlier, the US president threatened Iran that military options are "not off the table" in response to the country's missile test.

The US claims that a recent missile test by Iran violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group of countries, including Washington.

Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said on Thursday that Iran's "successful" recent ballistic missile test had neither breached the deal nor the resolution.

"Iran's missile tests are not, and have never been, in violation of the JCPOA or Resolution 2231," Dehqan added.

Resolution 2231 was adopted by Security Council in July 2015, days after Iran and P5+1 group of countries  United States, Britain, France, China and Russia  plus Germany signed the JCPOA.

The resolution, which turned the JCPOA into an international document, calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology." Tehran says its missile tests do not breach UN resolutions because they are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi on January 31 said the missile tests are an "inalienable and absolute" right of the Islamic Republic in order to defend its security and national interests. He reaffirmed the "defensive nature" of Iran's missile programs.

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Several US senators seek additional sanctions against Iran

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 12:38PM

A number of US senators have backed additional sanctions against Iran over the country's missile program, arguing that Tehran "must feel sufficient pressure."

Twenty-two senators, including Bob Corker (a Republican from Tennessee) and Ben Cardin (a senior Democrat from Maryland) pronounced their support in a letter they sent to US President Donald Trump on Thursday. Corker is the chairman of the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

"Full enforcement of existing sanctions and the imposition of additional sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile program are necessary," the senators wrote.

They added that "we look forward to supporting your Administration's efforts to hold Iran accountable."

The Reuters news agency reported on Thursday that the Trump administration is expected to announce new sanctions against Iran on Friday to ratchet up pressure on the Islamic Republic.

This is while the US president said on Thursday that "nothing is off the table" in terms of a response to Iran's latest ballistic missile test.

Hours earlier, Trump said the White House has formally put Tehran on notice over its recent ballistic missile test.

"Iran has been formally PUT ON NOTICE for firing a ballistic missile. Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the U.S. made with them!" Trump tweeted, echoing his national security adviser's comments a day earlier.

'Iran Non-Nuclear Sanctions Act of 2017'

Also on Thursday, a group of Republicans in the US House of Representatives introduced a bill for new sanctions on Iran as the Trump administration is mulling anti-Iran measures.

The measure, called the Iran Non-Nuclear Sanctions Act of 2017, seeks sanctions against Tehran for "supporting terrorism, abusing human rights, and testing ballistic missiles."

It was presented by New York Representative Lee Zeldin, Illinois Representative Peter Roskam, New Jersey Representative Leonard Lance and Colorado Representative Doug Lamborn.

The proposed legislation comes after US House Speaker Paul Ryan said he would support imposing additional sanctions on Iran over its recent missile test.

"I would be in favor of additional sanctions on Iran," Ryan told reporters on Thursday at a weekly press conference.

"We need to have a tough-on-Iran policy ... We should stop appeasing Iran," he said.

Washington has said Sunday's ballistic missile test was in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries.

Tehran insists its missile tests do not breach any UN resolution because they are solely for defense purposes and not designed to carry nuclear warheads.

Arms control experts have also said that Iran's missile tests are not banned under the nuclear agreement and the Security Council resolution, because Iran's missiles are not meant to deliver nuclear warheads.

Resolution 2231 calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology."

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U.S. Treasury Department Announces New Sanctions Against Iran

RFE/RL February 03, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The United States on February 3 imposed new sanctions against Iran, a move that comes days after Tehran conducted a ballistic-missile test and amid an escalating war of words between the two governments.

The U.S. Treasury Department on February 2 added 13 individuals and 12 entities with ties to Iran to its sanctions list, targeting Iranians and at least one Chinese national.

A Treasury Department press release said the sanctions target individuals and entities "involved in procuring technology and/or materials to support Iran's ballistic-missile program" or "acting for or on behalf of, or providing support to, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF)."

The newly sanctioned entities and companies are based in Lebanon, China, and the United Arab Emirates.

Treasury Department official John Smith was quoted as saying Iran's "continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic-missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States."

At a White House press briefing, spokesman Sean Spicer said that the sanctions have been in preparation since before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, but that the timing "was clearly in reaction to what we've seen over the last couple days."

A senior U.S. administration official told reporters that, under Trump, Washington has been conducting a "larger strategic review" of its approach to Iran and that Tehran's January 29 test of a medium-range ballistic missile was the "triggering event" for the new sanctions.

"We have consistently said that we will continue to counter Iran's support for terrorism, destabilizing activities in the region, human-rights abuses, and its ballistic-missile program, including through sanctions where appropriate," the official said.

The official stressed, however, that the United States abides by its commitments made under a deal between Tehran and major international powers that restricted Iran's nuclear program in exchange for some sanctions relief.

A second senior U.S. administration official told reporters that the sanctioned individuals and entities have "touch points to the United States" that would be affected by the punitive measures.

"For example, they procure U.S.-origin goods, or they may have transactions that hit the U.S. financial system. And that would be blocked by this action," the second official said.

The move followed stern warnings by the White House earlier this week that Tehran was being "put on notice" over the missile test and other activities.

Iran's Defense Minister General Hossein Dehghan on February 1 confirmed that Tehran had conducted a test, but did not say when it occurred or what kind of missile it was.

U.S. officials, however, were quoted as saying said it was a medium-range ballistic missile and the test on January 29 ended with a failed re-entry into the atmosphere.

'Playing With Fire'

The standoff escalated just hours before the new sanctions were made public, when U.S. President Donald Trump warned in a tweet that Iran is "playing with fire."

Trump, who has previously vowed to tear up or renegotiate the deal between Iran and major world powers restricting Tehran's nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of sanctions, also tweeted on February 3 that Iran didn't appreciate how "kind" Washington had been.

U.S. Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, lauded the Trump administration for "taking long-overdue steps to hold the regime accountable."

"Iran's dangerous and provocative acts are a direct threat to the United States and our allies," the California Republican said in a statement.

His Democratic counterpart on the committee, Representative Eliot Engel of New York, also welcomed the new sanctions, saying Washington must continue "to confront Iran's malign activities."

Earlier on February 3, Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif downplayed the U.S. "threats" and said Tehran would never initiate war.

"Iran [is] unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense," Zarif wrote on Twitter.

Trump campaigned on promises to take a much tougher stance on Iran than his predecessor, Barack Obama, in response to Iranian actions such as threats against Israel and involvement in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

The first senior administration official told reporters that Washington "will work positively with Iran when [Tehran] abides by its international commitments, while underscoring our commitment to aggressively counter Iran's destabilizing activities, including its support for terrorist and militants groups."

The official declined to comment on the U.S. administration's communications with Iran since Trump took office on January 20.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Carl Schreck and Mike Eckel, Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/iran-us-new-sanctions- treasury-missile-test/28277671.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Trump Administration Issues New Sanctions on Iran

By VOA News February 03, 2017

The U.S. Treasury Department has announced new sanctions on Iran in response to the country's recent missile test launch. Thirteen individuals and 12 entities were sanctioned. Some are based in China, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

The announcement follows a warning earlier Friday from U.S. President Donald Trump to Iran after the country's foreign minister dismissed U.S. threats in response to the test launch.

"Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!," Trump tweeted.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif also took to Twitter Friday, saying Iran remains undeterred by U.S. threats. "Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif wrote.

The sanctions are the administration's first punitive action against Iran since it put the country "on notice" this week after it test-fired a ballistic missile. They reflect the Trump administration's desire to adopt a tougher position against Iran.

National Security

Before the president leaves the White House for his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida Friday, he will have lunch with National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Flynn had a telephone call Friday with China's top diplomat, Yang Jiechi.

In a statement after the call, the foreign minister told Flynn China hopes to work with the U.S. to manage disputes and said the two countries have common interests.

Meeting with economic group

Trump met Friday with his economic advisory group. In addition to health care and taxes, the administration's ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries is expected to be among the topics of discussion.

A federal judge in the midwestern city of Detroit issued an order Friday that temporarily restrains the Trump administration from carrying out the travel ban. The order, issued on behalf of the Arab-American Civil Rights League, reaffirms the ban does not apply to legal permanent U.S. residents, including those with green cards.

The 90-day entry ban on citizens of the seven countries is supported by roughly one-half of all Americans, according to polls, and is consistent with repeated promises made by Trump during his election campaign. While unpopular overseas, U.S. Homeland Security chief John Kelly said that the ban is not aimed at Muslims, adding that his agency's mission "is to safeguard the American people, our homeland, our values."

Executive orders

Trump will sign executive orders Friday to review a law designed to reform Wall Street after the Great Recession. The order is a step toward fulfilling Trump's campaign promise to dismantle the law, commonly referred to as Dodd-Frank. Trump will also sign an order to stop a Labor Department rule that aims to restrict potential conflicts among brokers who provide retirement advice.

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UN: 382 civilians killed in Iraq violence in January

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 5:44AM

Latest figures released by the United Nations show that terrorist acts, violence and armed conflicts took the lives of some 400 civilians and left hundreds of others wounded in Iraq last month.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said in a statement on Wednesday that a total of 382 Iraqis lost their lives in the month of January, while 908 others were injured.

The UN mission said the number of casualties does not include security members after Iraqi military authorities in December criticized UNAMI for figures about the deaths of police personnel announced for November.

January casualty figures were also not available from the embattled western province of Anbar as health officials were unable to monitor the area due to the volatility of the situation on the ground and the disruption of services.

"Daesh terrorists have focused their bombing attacks on markets and residential neighborhoods. They have cowardly targeted civilians - women, children and the elderly, who were going about their business or shopping," Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Iraq Jan Kubis said.

"Daesh's goal of breaking the will of the people has however collapsed in the face of the Iraqi people's resilience, despite all difficulties and hardship, and the steady advances of the Iraqi security forces in the operation to liberate Mosul from the terrorists," Kubis added.

On Wednesday, Iraqi security and medical sources said a civilian was killed and five others were wounded when an improvised explosive device went off near an outdoor market in Boub al-Sham neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Baghdad.

A bomb also went off near the Diyala Bridge in southeastern Baghdad, leaving a civilian dead and four others injured.

Additionally, a bomb attack struck a commercial area in the Shaab neighborhood of southeastern Baghdad, wounding two people.

The northern and western parts of Iraq have been plagued by violence ever since Daesh terrorists began an offensive in Iraqi territory in June 2014.

Iraqi army soldiers, Hashd al-Sha'abi volunteers and Kurdish forces launched a joint operation on October 17, 2016 to retake the strategic northern city of Mosul from Daesh terrorists.

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Days of ISIL are numbered, says UN envoy as nation prepares for unified Iraq

2 February 2017  The military campaign to oust Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da'esh) terrorists from Iraq is nearly won, but the humanitarian crisis is expected to continue for months, if not years, the United Nations top official for the country said today.

"Three months after the Mosul military operation started, combat operations in the eastern part of Mosul have come to an end," the Secretary-General's Special Representative for Iraq, Jan Kubis, told the UN Security Council during a briefing.

He said that the Iraqi forces, with significant support from its international partners, especially the United States, will remain engaged in complex urban operations, in particular inside the old city in western Mosul.

"Yet, in the rather short foreseeable future, the liberation operations in Iraq are coming to an end - the days of the so-called ISIL in Iraq are counted," added Mr. Kubis, who is also the head of the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

According to an advance summary of the 2017 Humanitarian Response Plan submitted by relief aid partners in December, at least $985 million is required this year to reach the 5.8 million most vulnerable Iraqis. Of this, $331 million is being sought specifically for the Mosul response.

Already a lot is being done. Over 1.4 million displaced Iraqis have returned to their homes, including one million in the past 12 months.

In the post-Da'esh period, Iraq will need continuous, substantial and sustainable support and assistance from the international community, including its regional partners, he stressed, warning that any abrupt scaling-down of engagement or support would mean repeating mistakes of the past  mistakes that have had grave consequences for stability and security, well beyond the borders of Iraq, even globally.

The protection of civilians, the avoidance of steps that could incite sectarian tensions, and the prevention of looting and revenge attacks in Mosul and other liberated areas of the country "constitute first steps in the process of national and community-based reconciliation, in building a new and truly unified Iraq," he said.

Since 2003, Iraq has lost more than half of its ethnic and religious minority population. Special attention should therefore be paid to arrangements that address the specific security and other concerns of minorities to enable returns to their homes.

The National Alliance Initiative, submitted to UNAMI by the largest parliamentarian bloc, on the way forward in post-Da'esh Iraq is a good starting point in the Iraqi-owned and led, but UN-facilitated, process of national settlement and reconciliation, he said.

UNAMI is currently working with various groups, including the Sunni and Turkmen components, Kurdistan region of Iraq, civil society, minority communities, tribal leaders, and youth and women groups with the aim of soliciting their views and vision on how to build a post-ISIL united Iraq, based on the principles of equality and citizenship.

He emphasized that "for national reconciliation to succeed, it must be supported by grassroots initiatives."

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Rights Group: Iraqi Shi'ites Detaining Sunni Men Fleeing Mosul

By Jamie Dettmer February 02, 2017

A rights group is warning that militias within the Iraqi military are holding men fleeing Mosul in unidentified detention centers where they are cut off from contact with the outside world.

In a report published Thursday, Human Rights Watch warns of a heightened risk of abuse of detainees who, after an initial screening by militias with the Shi'ite Popular Mobilization Forces (known as Hashd al-Sha'abi), are being held incommunicado and with no details being provided to their families about their location or why they are being held.

"In case after case, relatives are telling us that their male family members are being stopped by PMF fighters and disappearing," said Lama Fakih, the rights group's deputy Middle East director. "While we cannot know exactly what has happened to the men detained, the lack of transparency, particularly for their families as to their whereabouts, is cause for real concern."

PMF media spokesmen did not respond to a VOA request for comment on the HRW report.

Families who fled eastern Mosul and passed through a processing site two kilometers south of the city told HRW researchers a similar story  that they went through a screening process overnight and that men and boys over 15 years of age were separated from the women and other children. The military checked each of those males' IDs against lists of people wanted by various Iraqi authorities for suspected affiliation with the Islamic State terror group. Two families said that at least eight men screened with them were detained after the ID check.

But families also said they saw PMF fighters there, distinguishable by their badges.

Additional accusations

And on January 10, a soldier from Iraq's 9th division working at another screening site told HRW researchers that he had been stationed there for several weeks and that every night, PMF fighters from the area would arrive and seize men who were not included on the government's wanted lists.

Rights researchers also interviewed families from the village of Nzara, 40 kilometers west of Mosul, who said that more than 100 fighters with the PMF's Badr militia had taken 260 families to a town 25 kilometers away for 15 days in November 2016, then sent them on to refugee camps. But five men who had left the village to sell their sheep never returned and later were seen presented on a local Iraqi television channel associated with the Badr group as captured jihadists.

The men's families have tried to locate the detained men through negotiations led by tribal leaders, but to no avail.

Another man who had left to sell his sheep described being attacked and detained by PMF fighters and eventually reunited with his family, but three men who had been with him in the car have yet to reappear.

'Vanishing into the night'

PMF militias do not have an official mandate to carry out screenings. In addition, Human Rights Watch says that as far as it has been able to determine, PMF groups have not been trained to carry out screening, raising concerns about possible ill-treatment.

"Iraqi authorities should only allow bodies with a screening mandate to screen people and ensure that anyone detained is held in a recognized detention center accessible to independent monitors and granted their due process rights enshrined in international and Iraqi law," said Human Rights Watch.

Iraqi law requires that authorities bring detainees before an investigative judge within 48 hours of their detention.

"Some men appear to be vanishing into the night even after official screenings by Iraqi security forces confirmed they were not on their wanted lists," Fakih said. "It is crucial for the authorities to take all measures to ensure that their whereabouts are known and the scale of detention is documented."

About 40 Iran-influenced militias make up the Popular Mobilization Forces. Shi'ite politicians led by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose sectarian policies are blamed by some for the rise of the Islamic State group, have pushed for PMF fighters to be deployed inside Mosul in the battle to oust the jihadists from the city.

The Shi'ite militias are concentrated mainly to the west of the city, and Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi pledged before the campaign to retake Mosul was launched that they would not be used in the fighting inside Sunni Arab city.

In late November, al-Abadi's supporters in Iraq's parliament voted to put the PMF on the government payroll and incorporate the militias in the national armed forces, ostensibly subordinated to the Iraqi military hierarchy.

Rights groups have accused the PMF in the past of atrocities, torture and forced displacements of Sunnis.

Report: Young boys tortured

Human Rights Watch's report on the detention of Sunni males fleeing Mosul comes just days after the rights group accused the Asayish, the Kurdistan Regional Government's security forces, of detaining boys as young as 11 years old and torturing them in an effort to get them to confess to being Islamic State members.

More than 180 Iraqi boys, most of them Sunni Arabs who had lived in Islamic State-held areas, are being held by the Asayish in two KRG juvenile detention centers, according to HRW.

"These children were victimized twice  first by the Islamic State, which they said was constantly trying to enlist them as fighters, and then by members of Asayish," said HRW's Letta Tayler, who interviewed some of the detained boys. "While we can't speak to the guilt or innocence of these boys, we have no doubt they have been severely traumatized."

KRG officials have denied their security forces have subjected any detained children to abuse.

"KRG authorities have established policies against acts of torture, which strongly prohibits physical and psychological torture of inmates," said Dindar Zebari, head of a KRG committee tasked with evaluating international reports.

"The use of torture and physical punishment against prisoners including boys ages 11-17 is strictly prohibited. In Kurdistan region the rights of detainees are protected by the existing amended legislations and practices within the region," he added in a statement.

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Japan hopes for 'unwavering alliance' with US under Trump

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 3:25PM

Japan's prime minister says Tokyo is committed to boosting ties with Washington, highlighting hopes of the creation of an "unwavering alliance" with the United States under the administration of President Donald Trump.

Shinzo Abe's call for stronger relations with Washington came during a meeting with the visiting US Defense Secretary James Mattis in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on Friday.

Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted the premier as saying, "We are sure and hope that we will be able to show steadfastness of the Japan-US alliance under the new administration of Trump."

Mattis, who is on his first overseas official tour under the Trump administration, hailed the importance of security alliance between Japan and the United States. "We stand firmly, 100 percent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and the Japanese people," Mattis told Abe.

"I wanted to make certain that Article Five of our mutual defense treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago and it will be a year and 10 years from now," the US secretary of defense said in remarks at the start of his meeting with Japanese officials.

Mattis' trip to the region comes amid heightening tensions between the United States and China especially over the issue of the South China Sea.

Abe was among several heads of state whom Trump phoned after his victory in the US presidential election. However, he agitated China with his remarks on the South China Sea and his phone conversation with the Taiwanese president as well as negating the so-called one-China policy.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida had a separate meeting with Mattis.

Trump and Abe agreed to meet in Washington on February 10, according to the Japanese prime minister. "I hope to have a frank, meaningful exchange of opinions with him on a broad range of issues from the economy to security," Abe said.

Before his visit to Japan, Mattis visited South Korea, where he met top officials to discuss issues related to North Korea and the planned deployment of an advanced US missile system, known as the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, in South Korea.

Mattis said Washington was committed to the security of its Asian allies. The comments were apparently made to allay South Korea and Japan's concerns about the new US administration's policies.

During his presidential campaign, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces from both Japan and South Korea unless they paid more to cover the costs of stationing US forces.

The United States shares nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea and another 47,000 in Japan.

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Migrant Deal With Libya Within Reach

By Marthe van der Wolf February 02, 2017

A migrant deal between the European Union and Libya seems closer after leaders of the EU institutions met with the Libyan prime minister on Thursday. Details of the deal, proposed by the EU last week, were discussed ahead of Friday's informal EU summit in Malta.

The main discussion point at the summit will be how to control migration from North Africa into Europe, before spring approaches, when the numbers are expected to increase.

The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, will propose "additional concrete and operational measures" to EU heads of states on Friday to stop the trafficking and smuggling networks. Tusk says a deal between the EU and Libya is within reach.

"Now it is time to close down the route from Libya to Italy. []This is not sustainable for Europe or for Libya, as the smugglers let people drown and undermine the authority of the Libyan state for their own profit."

The EU migrant proposal sets aside $214 million to train the Libyan coast guard, invest in local communities and financially support international refugee and migrant agencies. In exchange, the Libyan authorities are to stop the thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

The prime minister of the Government of National Accord of Libya, Fayez al-Sarraj, says cooperation on migration issues is also in Libya's interest.

"This will lead us to solve the problem and to save the lives of the irregular migration and return them to the countries of origin, where they should hopefully find some jobs and some growth in order not to think of leaving and migrating at the risk of their lives."

The migrants using the central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy are mostly from African countries. Last year, 181,000 migrants arrived, and around 5,000 drowned during the crossing.

Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights have all criticized Libya's human rights record. Libya has been dealing with political instability, terrorism and economic stagnation since 2011. The authority of Prime Minister al-Sarraj does not cover the entire Libyan territory, but the EU backs his government.

The EU also selected five African countries  Niger, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Senegal and Mali  which will all receive financial support to create jobs. In exchange, the countries have to cooperate by halting migrants who aim to travel to Europe illegally.

While supporting EU migrant deals, members of the European Parliament condemned the U.S. travel ban during a debate on Wednesday. An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump last week temporarily denied entry to citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Barbara Spinelli, an Italian Member of the European Parliament, says that the condemnation by the EU of the U.S. is hypocritical.

"I wonder if the EU institutions are aware of the worthlessness of their protests against Trump while at the same time developing operations that violate the Geneva Convention and ignore the clear recommendation made by the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights," she noted, " who said that the return of refugees and migrants to Libya should be avoided because those who try to escape face serious risks: torture in detention camps, sexual violence against women and executions."

Despite the outcry by some about the treatment of migrants and refugees, there is heavy political pressure to control migrant flows. Right wing politicians in Europe who speak tough words on closing borders are ranking high in polls for upcoming elections in The Netherlands, France and Germany.

A migrant deal between Turkey and the EU in March 2016 significantly reduced the flow along the eastern Mediterranean route, after more than a million migrants and refugees entered into Europe in 2015. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Turkey Thursday to strengthen ties. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened several times to quit the deal over disagreements between Turkey and the EU over a range of issues.

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EU Leaders Agree Plan To Curb Mass Migration From Libya

RFE/RL February 03, 2017

European Union leaders meeting in Malta have agreed on new steps to curb the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean Sea.

The February 3 summit in the island nation also aimed at shoring up unity in the face of the upcoming Brexit negotiations.

The meeting was shadowed by concerns about relations with the United States under President Donald Trump, who French President Francois Hollande said has put "unacceptable" pressure on the EU.

The leaders of the 28 EU nations endorsed a plan to stem mass migration from Libya that includes more funding for the country's UN-backed government, help in fighting smuggling gangs, and improving conditions for migrants on the ground.

Concrete projects include training, equipment, and support for the Libyan coastguard to stop boats heading to Italy, helping the country better protect its borders, upgrading camps for migrants in Libya, and supporting voluntary repatriation for those willing to return to their countries of origin.

The bloc vowed to respect human rights and international law in dealing with migration, saying it would seek close engagement with UN refugee and migration agencies.

The EU says that most of the 181,000 people who came via Libya in 2016 were illegal economic migrants, unlike the asylum seekers arriving in Greece from Syria.

Advocates for migrants have decried inhumane camp conditions in the largely lawless North African country and raised concern that they could be endangered if repatriated to their homelands.

During the summit in Malta's capital, Valetta, 27 heads of state and government were also holding evening talks focusing on the bloc's future after Britain's exit from the European Union -- known as Brexit.

British Prime Minister Theresa May attended the summit but was not expected to participate in Brexit-related talks.

May did brief her counterparts over lunch on her visit last week with Trump, who has caused concern in Europe by voicing strong approval for Brexit and questioning the effectiveness of the NATO military alliance.

The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper said May urged other leaders "to work patiently and constructively" with the United States.

But the report added they rebuffed her efforts to act as a liaison between Trump and Europe.

The Guardian said a scheduled meeting between May and Merkel was called off. A Downing Street source denied it was a snub, insisting they had covered everything they wanted during an informal "walkabout," the report added.

On January 31, European Council President Donald Tusk urged unity in dealing with challenges he said are "more dangerous than ever before" in the history of the bloc and said "worrying declarations" by Trump were part of a welter of external threats that also included an assertive China, an aggressive Russia, and "terror and anarchy in the Middle East and in Africa, with radical Islam playing a major role."

Asked in Malta if he felt threatened by Trump, Tusk said, "No, I don't feel threatened, but think there is room for explanations."

"Sometimes, I have an impression that the new administration does not know the EU in detail -- but in Europe, details matter," he added.

Upon arrival at the summit, Hollande criticized what he said was pressure on the EU from Trump, who has predicted a breakup of the bloc.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be," Hollande told reporters.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the best way for the EU to deal with the new U.S. administration is to push forward with its own plans.

"I [have] already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands," Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.

Trump has faced criticism inside and outside the United States for suspending the entire U.S. refugee program for 120 days, indefinitely shutting the door on Syrian refugees, and barring citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries  Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen -- from entering the United States for 90 days.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern suggested that U.S. foreign policy had contributed to immigration.

"America has a shared responsibility for the flow of migrants through the way military intervention was carried out," he said, without elaborating.

Still, Trump did have at least one defender. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the EU should focus on its own matters instead of criticizing Trump's border policies.

"I am watching with surprise the neurotic European reactions to the decision of the United States," Orban said. "The United States is not part of the European Union. It's an independent state -- and as an independent state, it has the right to define its border policy, its foreign policy, and its migrant policy."

With reporting by Reuters, dpa, and AFP

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/eu-summit-libya- migrant-route-europe-brexit/28276849.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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UN rights chief urges end to rights violations against Rohingya Muslims

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 11:32AM

A report by the UN human rights office says Myanmar's months-long crackdown on its Rohingya Muslims has likely killed hundreds of people, in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity and "ethnic cleansing."

In a statement on Friday, Zeid bin Ra'ad al-Hussein said security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Muslims and burned their villages since the October campaign.

Investigators said they have chronicled new accounts of crimes including beatings, disappearances, gang rapes and brutal killings of children as young as 8 months old by Myanmar security forces.

"The government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people, instead of continuing to deny they have occurred," Hussein said.

The UN official commissioned the report after Myanmar denied the world body access to the Rakhine state. The report cites evidence from more than 200 of the Muslims, who have fled the violence to Bangladesh.

According to the UN report, witnesses had testified to "the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food."

The report further said hundreds have likely been killed in the crackdown, including an eight-month-old infant, who was slain while his mother was being gang-raped by security officers, and three children aged six or younger, who were "slaughtered with knives."

"The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable," Hussein said.

"What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother's milk?" he said.

Rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani cited "especially revolting" accounts of children being "slaughtered with knives" and said one 8-month-old infant was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers.

Around 66,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Myanmar's military launched a security operation in October 2016, according to the UN report.

The report added that the operations "have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths," some of them through helicopters shooting at villages and dropping grenades on them.

The 1.1 million-strong Rohingya community, which the government brands as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, has been suffering widely-reported systematic aggression for years.

The violence fueled by Buddhist extremists has been interpreted as an attempt to force them out of the country's demographic configuration. Hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands forced from their homes as a result.

Last month, Malaysia hosted a meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), during which the participants called on the United Nations to intervene in Rakhine State, stressing that the escalation of violence against Rohingya Muslims there could lead to "genocide."

Myanmar's government later slammed Manila for holding the talks on the situation of Rohingya Muslims.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, an outspoken critic of the Myanmarese government, on Friday dispatched a ship carrying food and emergency supplies to Rohingya Muslims, saying their suffering would not be ignored.

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New UN Report Highlights Harsh Abuses Against Myanmar Rohingya

By Lisa Schlein February 03, 2017

Thousands of Rohingya children, women, and men are victims of mass gang rapes, killings, beatings, disappearances and other acts of cruelty at the hands of Myanmar's police and security forces, says a new U.N. report.

The report, released Friday by the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, documents testimony from 204 women and men among 66,000 Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar's northern Rakhine State since October 9.

"For me personally, I have not ever encountered a situation in which you have interviewed so many people in such a short period of time, who have undergone such serious violations," said Linnea Arvidsson, mission leader of a four-member team of U.N. human rights investigators.

Arvidsson told VOA that she was "on the verge of breaking down" on the first day after having interviewed an endless stream of women who recounted horrific tales.

"Mothers who would say, 'I was raped and my baby was crying and they slit the throat of my baby while I was being raped.' I mean, it was horrendous."

"Frankly, it was absolutely, unbearable to do the interviews," said Arvidsson. "I cannot imagine what they have gone through when they lived through that."

Of the 101 women interviewed, more than half reported they had been raped or suffered other forms of sexual violence.

'Devastating cruelty'

In commenting on this report, High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said, "The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable.

"What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mother's milk?" he asked.

The Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group, have been denied citizenship by subsequent governments despite having lived in Myanmar for generations. The United Nations has referred to them as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.

The investigators conducted their interviews between January 8 and 23 in the Bangladeshi city of Cox's Bazar, near the Myanmar border.

All the witnesses described the perpetrators as being members of the Myanmar army, border guards and part of the regular police forces.

Many also said that the security forces were accompanied by villagers they knew, who had taken part in the raids and in the reported violations committed against the Rohingya inhabitants of Rakhine State.

Arvidsson called the level of abuse meted out to the Rohingya "unprecedented." She said one of the most striking features of the document was the number of violations that were reported to the investigators.

"I must say we did not meet a single person out of the 204 that had not experienced some type of violation. Either their house had been burned or looted or a family member had disappeared or a family member had been killed.

"Basically, we did not encounter anyone that had not suffered any type of violation, which is extremely rare," she said.

The report cites cases of hundreds of houses, schools, markets, shops, madrasas and mosques that had been burned by the army.

Stories were collected from people from villages in Rakhine State of houses being set alight while the inhabitants were inside, including elderly and disabled people; of indiscriminate killings, and of people being denied access to emergency medical care.

Many witnesses and victims described "being taunted while they were being beaten, raped or rounded up."

'Crimes against humanity' not ruled out

High Commissioner Zeid, who as a Jordanian prince goes by his first name, said the perpetrators of the violations, and those who ordered them, must be held accountable.

"The government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people  and ensure that victims have access to justice, reparations and safety."

Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the high commissioner, said "the government of Myanmar has been denying that these violations have been taking place so, we said, OK, give us access, we will go, independently assess for ourselves what has happened to them."

She said access was denied, so her office deployed a team to the border to do its own investigation.

"The results are even more terrible than we had expected."

The investigators have concluded that Myanmar may possibly be guilty of crimes against humanity. The government was given an advance copy of the report, but so far has not responded.

Shamdasani said High Commissioner Zeid may call upon the U.N. Security Council or the Human Rights Council to take follow-up action based on the report.

"What is clear is that something needs to be done and the government of Myanmar has the primary responsibility to halt these military operations."

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U.S. Treasury Eases License Sanctions On Russia's FSB

Mike Eckel, Carl Schreck February 02, 2017

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Treasury Department has eased some financial sanctions imposed on Russia's lead domestic security agency, a move experts said appeared to be aimed at helping U.S. technology companies.

The directive, issued on February 2 by the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, comes as the agency, the Federal Security Service (FSB), is under close scrutiny for its alleged interference in last year's U.S. presidential election.

Speaking to reporters the day the directive was published, White House spokesman Sean Spicer denied the order amounted to an easing of sanctions. He said it was a "carve-out," which is common practice for the Treasury Department when clarifying the implementation of sanctions.

It's a "regular course of action that Treasury does quite often when there are sanctions imposed," Spicer said.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in a report last month that Moscow sought to influence the election won by Republican Donald Trump by breaching computer servers and political-party e-mail accounts, as well as through propaganda.

Eight days prior to the report's release, then-President Barack Obama announced new sanctions against the agency, along with Russia's military intelligence agency (GRU) and several related entities, in retaliation for the alleged hacking.

But experts said that Obama's executive order, announced on December 29, was overly broad and hampered the ability of technology companies to do business in Russia because the FSB, in addition to conducting counterespionage and surveillance, also oversees licensing for some technology products that utilize encryption tools, like mobile phones or laptops.

The new Treasury order authorizes IT companies looking to import, distribute, or use certain information technologies in Russia to pay up to $5,000 in a calendar year for licenses that might be issued by the FSB.

'Preventing A De Facto Embargo'

Sam Cutler, a sanctions expert with the New York-based consultancy Horizon Client Access, told RFE/RL the move appeared aimed mainly at aiding U.S. companies.

The FSB's "designation inadvertently caused compliance problems for U.S. companies exporting certain goods to Russia," said Erich Ferrari, a Washington-based lawyer who specializes in Treasury sanctions. "This general license was necessary to prevent a de facto embargo of certain goods reaching non-designated parties in Russia -- which is the majority of Russia."

The directive also explicitly states that it "does not authorize the exportation, re-exportation, or provision of goods or technology to or on behalf" of the FSB.

Adam Smith, who was a senior official with the Office of Foreign Assets Control until August 2015, said there were at least three other examples in the past 18 months of sanctions being rolled out.

"But then the collateral consequences were significant, or even dire potentially, so then they pared them back, and that hopefully allows for greater targeting of nefarious activity," he said.

Still, the decision comes at a time of heightened scrutiny about the FSB, the GRU, and other Russian security agencies and their purported activities in the United States.

The new administration also faces persistent concerns over Trump's past statements that he wants to improve relations with Moscow that were badly strained over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

Kyiv, in particular, fears that a warmer relationship between Trump and the Kremlin will result in the lifting of U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

However, the February 2 order also explicitly stipulates that the exemption does not apply to products being shipped to the "Crimea region of Ukraine."

In Moscow, there was no immediate official response to the announcement, but Nikolai Kovalyov, a lawmaker and former FSB director, said it was an indication that the Trump administration wanted to work more closely with Russia on fighting terrorism and other matters.

"This shows that actual joint work on establishing an antiterrorism coalition is about to begin," Kovalyov was quoted by TASS as saying. "This is the first step on the way leading to cooperation in the war on terror."

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/u-s-eases-sanction- fsb-russia/28275715.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Hungarian Leader Calls For Improved EU-Russia Ties During Putin Visit

RFE/RL February 02, 2017

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says he hopes relations between the European Union and Russia will improve in the near future and encouraged all parties to increase cooperation.

In comments on February 2 following talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, Orban said: "We hope that in the very near future, we will be welcoming new, good relations between Russia and the European Union."

He added that "anti-Russian" policies have become "very fashionable" in Western Europe, making economic cooperation more difficult, but that he sees a shift in attitudes.

"The changes currently taking place are creating more favorable conditions for European-Russian, and in particular Hungarian-Russian, cooperation. I am looking with hope upon future years and think the main conditions for peace in Europe are well-balanced contacts between Russia and the EU," Orban said.

Talks between the two leaders come at time of heightened worries within the EU about the views of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has expressed disdain for the bloc and a desire for closer relations with Moscow.

The visit marked one of the few times Putin has received an invitation to visit an EU country since Moscow's illegal 2014 takeover of Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula and the introduction of EU sanctions against Moscow over its interference in Ukraine.

Also speaking in Budapest on February 2, Putin addressed the renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine, saying he hoped "sober-minded" authorities in Ukraine will prevent the situation from deteriorating further.

"I hope very much the sober-minded forces in Ukraine and the people interested in the solution of such issues by political means will not let the situation in southeastern Ukraine develop along the worst-case scenario and, on the contrary, will focus attention and efforts on fulfilling the Minsk accords," he said.

Germany and France both insist that sanctions against Russia should not be lifted without progress by Moscow on implementing the Minsk agreements, which are aimed at bringing an end to the war between Kyiv and Russia-backed separatists.

Over the past several days, fighting between government forces and the separatists has flared, with Ukrainian officials reporting the deaths of seven soldiers.

With reporting by Interfax and TASS

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/hungary-orban-putin -improved-russia-ties/28275730.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Kremlin Critic Hospitalized With Similar Symptoms To 2015 Poison Scare

Carl Schreck February 02, 2017

A Kremlin critic whose sudden and severe illness in 2015 led to suspicions that he had been poisoned is on life support in a Moscow hospital with similar symptoms, his wife told RFE/RL.

Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr., was hospitalized early on February 2 and placed in an intensive-care unit "with symptoms similar to those he had two years ago," Yevgenia Kara-Murza said in a Facebook message.

"His doctors describe his condition as critical," she said. "He has low blood pressure [and] respiratory insufficiency, and the reason for this is yet again unclear."

She said later on February 2 that Kara-Murza suffered kidney failure and was on life support after being placed in an induced coma.

"The clinical picture, according to his doctors, is the same as last time," she said.

Kara-Murza abruptly fell ill in Moscow on May 26, 2015, and was in critical condition for several days. He spent about two months in hospitals in the Russian capital and outside Washington, D.C.

Kara-Murza believes he was deliberately poisoned with a sophisticated toxin and that he was targeted for his political activities.

Kara-Murza is a coordinator for former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky's nongovernmental organization, Open Russia. He has also been a spokesman for the Russian political opposition in Washington, where he has advocated for sanctions against Russian officials and media executives before U.S. lawmakers.

Senior Democratic U.S. lawmakers on February 2 expressed support for the activist and urged action from the new administration of President Donald Trump.

"Possible poisoning of Russian human rights leader Vladimir Kara-Murza needs investigating. Let's put #RussiaOnNotice," Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a former chairman and current member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote on Twitter.

His tweet referenced the Trump administration's announcement a day earlier that it was putting Iran "on notice" over its recent medium-range ballistic-missile test.

Senator Benjamin Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that, while the details of Kara-Murza's illness remain unclear, "it appears to be part of an alarming trend where Russian political opposition are targeted for their work."

"His hospitalization is a test for the Trump administration," Cardin said in a statement, adding that he urges Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to "speak out" on Kara-Murza's behalf "and stand up for the principles that we have always championed as a country."

A dual Russian-British citizen, Kara-Murza splits his time between Russia and Centreville, Virginia, a Washington suburb where he resides with his wife and three children.

Other Suspected Poisonings

The precise cause of his 2015 illness remains under dispute, but it raised parallels with the cases of several Kremlin antagonists who have died or become violently ill in suspected poisonings during President Vladimir Putin's 16 years in power.

Most notably, former Russian security services officer Aleksandr Litvinenko died in November 2006 after he was poisoned with the radioactive isotope polonium-210 in London. British authorities accused former Federal Security Service officer and current Russian lawmaker Andrei Lugovoi of delivering the poison over tea at a London hotel, an allegation Lugovoi denies.

The medical team that treated Kara-Murza in 2015 initially concluded that his illness may have been linked to his use of a prescription antidepressant and a possible reaction with an allergy medication he was taking.

Independent experts told RFE/RL, however, that such a severe reaction -- including the failure of major organs -- to the drug Citalopram would be highly unusual.

Kara-Murza and his family dismiss this theory. An independent analysis of his blood and tissue samples by a prominent French forensic and toxicology expert led to no firm conclusions.

Yevgenia Kara-Murza told RFE/RL on February 2 that her husband had been traveling around Russia in recent weeks, conducting screenings of a documentary about former Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead outside the Kremlin in February 2015, and working with Open Russia representatives.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/kremlin- critic-russia-kara-murza- hospitalized/28274832.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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John McCain Calls Trump Easing of Sanctions on Russia's FSB 'Technical Fix'

Sputnik News

22:53 02.02.2017

The announcement the Trump administration will relax certain sanctions against Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) appears to be a "technical fix" rather than a change in US policy toward Russia, US Senator John McCain told reporters.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  McCain stepped out with a statement after the White House announced the Treasury Department had issued a license permitting certain transactions with the FSB, which has been sanctioned over alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

"Initially, it looks like it's a technical fix," McCain stated on Thursday.

The license authorized transactions for information technology products with the specification that permits and licenses not exceed $5,000 annually. The Treasury Department also authorized transactions and activities necessary to comply with law enforcement actions or investigations involving the FSB.

McCain, who chairs the US Senate Armed Services Committee, acknowledged his view of the change was based only on a cursory review of the announcement.

"I have not fully explored it but that's the initial impression I have of what it is," McCain said. "We're looking at it more carefully."

The senator also noted he was not sure when a bill that he is sponsoring to restrict the Trump administration's ability to fully lift sanctions imposed on Russia, would be introduced.

McCain is sponsoring the legislation with fellow Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham as well as Democratic Sens. Ben Cardin and Chuck Schumer.

 Sputnik

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Slight Change to Russia Sanctions Puts Many on Edge

By Jeff Seldin February 02, 2017

Efforts to fix an unintended consequence of recent sanctions against Russia nearly set off a new controversy for the Trump administration, underscoring the high level of anxiety present in relations between Washington and Moscow.

The Treasury Department on Thursday issued a general order titled "Authorizing Certain Transactions with the Federal Security Service," which at first glance appeared to suggest officials were easing sanctions on one of the Russian intelligence agencies thought to be behind efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election.

Adding to the confusion was a series of reports in Russian media, including one from the Russian news agency TASS with the headline "US eases sanctions against Russian Federal Security Service."

"All transactions and activities" with participation of the Russian Federal Security Service  also known by the English initialism FSB  are now authorized, the article said.

Another TASS article quoted former FSB director Nikolai Kovalyov as saying the move "is the first step on the way leading to cooperation in the war on terror" between Russia and the U.S.

Long-planned move

In reality, the move had been in the works for weeks, according to a senior Treasury Department official, aimed at allowing U.S. companies to legally resume exports of cellphones, tablets and software with low-level encryption. Those exports were unintentionally banned when then-President Barack Obama sanctioned the FSB in December.

In addition to its role as an intelligence agency, the FSB also regulates the sale of certain software and hardware. But because of the sanctions, U.S. companies were prohibited from paying the necessary fees.

"These were goods that had already passed muster under this export control regime," said Eric Lorber, a senior associate at the Financial Integrity Network, a strategic advisory firm.

"The only reason that they're being held up in this case was the designation of the FSB," Lorber said, noting there were few other changes to the sanctions.

The order issued Thursday "does not allow U.S. persons to send those goods to the FSB, and generally speaking, it doesn't allow for many other transactions with the FSB, either," he added.

The Treasury Department order caps the amount of fees any one company can pay the FSB at $5,000 a year. But with President Donald Trump having said repeatedly that he would like U.S. relations with Russia to improve, questions remained.

'Not easing anything'

"We're not easing sanctions," White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters during Thursday's briefing, defending the move as a "fairly common practice."

A short while later, Trump reiterated the message, telling a group of reporters he was "not easing anything" related to sanctions against Russia.

U.S. intelligence agencies have accused Russia, and the FSB in particular, of hacking computers connected to the Democratic Party as part of a wide-ranging campaign.

"Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate [former] Secretary [of State Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability," according to a declassified report released last month.

Before taking office, Trump repeatedly questioned the intelligence community's findings. Those criticisms have since eased. Still, the president has continued to say publicly that he is open to better relations with Moscow.

Trump and Russian President Vladmir Putin spoke by phone Saturday in what the White House described as "a significant start to improving the relationship between the United States and Russia that is in need of repair."

Still, many in the U.S. remain suspicious of Russia.

Lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism announced Thursday that they were launching an investigation into Russia's efforts to interfere with the U.S. election, as well as elections in other democratic countries.

"To the fullest extent possible we want to shine a light on Russian activities to undermine democracy," Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said in a joint statement.

Allies watching

A number of U.S. allies also remain wary.

"We still give them some time to see what they will do with Russia," a Western diplomatic official told VOA on condition of anonymity, noting that how the U.S. handles the sanctions in place against Russia is of utmost concern.

"We remain vigilant," the official added. "The sanctions are actually the only leverage we have with Russia."

Some close to the Trump administration urge everyone to be patient and to tune out some of the views about closer ties between the U.S. and Russia that have been coming out of Moscow.

"I think the Russians are a bit overly optimistic," said Tony Shaffer, a retired intelligence officer who worked with Trump's national security adviser, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn.

"I'm not sure if the White House has had sufficient time to develop a cohesive strategy," he said, but he cautioned that U.S. military exercises and other operations were sending a strong signal that the Trump administration will be tough.

"You do actually see that there are a number of global operations ongoing that are designed to essentially send strategic messages to the Russians," he said.

VOA White House Correspondent Cindy Saine contributed to this report.

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Navalny Denounces 'Putin's Band' As Retrial Draws To Close

RFE/RL's Russian Service February 03, 2017

KIROV, Russia -- Prosecutors have asked a Russian judge to convict Kremlin opponent Aleksei Navalny and hand him a suspended five-year sentence in a retrial he says is aimed at barring him from running for president in 2018.

The state prosecutor made the request on February 3 as the politically charged trial of Navalny, an anticorruption crusader and fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, drew to a close at a court in the provincial city of Kirov.

The judge said he would issue the verdict on February 8.

In a defiant final statement, Navalny accused "Putin's band" of stealing Russia's wealth from its people and vowed to continue his political activities regardless of the trial's outcome.

He promised the judge and court staff that he would serve them and all other Russian citizens if elected president.

When the judge ordered him to speak only about issues related to his case, Navalny said that everything he says is related to the case because the case is "politically motivated."

"Unfortunately, in modern Russia a courtroom is the only platform where honest people, including me, are able to openly and freely express their political views," Navalny said.

Ban On Holding Office

A key leader of large antigovernment protests in 2011-2012, Navalny also leads an organization that has published several reports alleging corruption among allies of Putin. He was convicted in 2013 of large-scale theft in a trial he said was Kremlin-orchestrated retribution for his opposition activity.

The Supreme Court threw out the verdict last year and ordered a retrial -- a move he and his supporters say removed a prohibition on running for office. Navalny announced in December that he would run for president in a March 2018 election, in which Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 1999, is widely expected to seek a new six-year Kremlin term

A five-year suspended sentence, the same as the one he was handed at the initial trial, would reinstate the prohibition on holding office but would keep him out of prison -- an outcome opposition activists say the Kremlin favors because he could become a political martyr behind bars.

At the February 3 session of the Lenin District court in Kirov, some 800 kilometers northeast of Moscow, Navalny asked for an acquittal, saying he is not guilty, and promised the judge, the court secretary, and a bailiff in the courtroom that he would "improve their lives" if elected president.

Travel Restriction Dropped

Acquittals are rare in Russian courts, which government opponents and rights activists say do the bidding of the Kremlin and local authorities, and Navalny has predicted he will be convicted.

The prosecutor asked the court to hand Navalny's co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov a four-year suspended sentence and fine them 500,000 thousand rubles ($8,350) each.

Navalny was convicted of fraud in a separate case in 2014 and given a 3 1/2-year suspended sentence.

At he end of the court session on February 3, Judge Aleksei Vtyurin adjourned the trial and said he would pronounce the verdict on February 8.

The judge said that both Navalny and Ofitserov are free to leave Kirov until then, dropping a previous order in which he had said they must stay in the city until the verdict and sentence are announced.

Navalny had refused to sign a pledge to abide by the order, saying he would not abandon plans to attend the opening of a campaign office in St. Petersburg, Putin's hometown, on February 4.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/navalny- trial-kirov-/28277445.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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US Supplies First Armored Vehicles to Syrian Fighters

By Carla Babb February 01, 2017

The United States has provided Syrian fighters battling the Islamic State group with armored vehicles for the first time, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command told VOA.

Guardian armored security vehicles were delivered to the Syrian Arab Coalition, Major Michael Meyers said. The SAC is an Arab fighting force within the multi-ethnic, but predominantly Kurdish, Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

A U.S. military spokesman, Colonel John Dorrian, said via teleconference from Baghdad Wednesday that the Guardians - fully armored, highly maneuverable and capable of carrying 10 soldiers each - will help SAC forces better "withstand explosive devices and small-arms fire."

"The Syrian Arab Coalition is getting ready to continue their operations to isolate Raqqa," Dorrian said. "As they approach the city and get into tough fighting, this capability is going to increase their survivability."

A VOA reporter in Kobani confirmed the vehicles, also known as M117s, were delivered on Tuesday. Each Guardian is equipped with machine guns and a grenade launcher.

Multiple U.S. defense officials said the delivery had "been in the works for months" and was carried out under authority granted during the Obama administration.

"There is no change to current policy by providing support to the Syrian Arab coalition," Meyer said.

Washington has supplied the SDF with light weapons and special-forces advisers in the past and has provided air support against Islamic State fighters.

An estimated 20,000 SDF fighters are connected to the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which Turkey considers a terrorist group. Even though the U.S. insists it only delivers military aid to the Arab fighters of the SDF, the assistance nonetheless has angered U.S. ally Turkey.

"Recognizing terror organizations as interlocutors and delivering arms to them through various ways will help terror gain strength and spread it," the Turkish National Security Council said in a statement issued after a meeting Wednesday chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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Syria writes to UN condemns Turkey's attacks near al-Bab

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 6:0PM

Syria has strongly denounced Turkey's recent attacks near the flashpoint town of al-Bab, calling on the United Nations to assume its responsibilities and put an end to the violation of the Arab country's sovereignty.

The Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry made the request in two letters addressed to the UN Secretary General and the president of the Security Council on Thursday.

The letters condemned the Turkish troops' incursion into Syria over the past few days and their occupation of some Syrian villages in their push to capture al-Bab.

The Turkish attacks pose a threat to the international peace and security, the letters added.

The ministry further accused the government in Ankara of providing military, material and logistic support to terrorist organizations, facilitating the entry of foreign militants into Syria and setting up training camps for militants on Turkish soil.

Almost 250 civilians lost their lives and more than a thousand others were injured between November 13 last year and January 15 this year in Turkish attacks in Syria, according to the latest figures released by the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Turkish warplanes regularly carry out airstrikes in support of their ground incursion into Syria.

Back in August, Turkish special forces, tanks and jets, backed by planes from the US-led coalition, launched their first coordinated offensive in Syria in an alleged bid to battle terror groups such as Daesh and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), a US-backed Kurdish group based in Syria. Damascus said the intervention was a breach of its sovereignty.

Syrians gain more ground in Aleppo Province

Separately on Thursday, the Syrian army said it had recently managed to purge Daesh terrorists from dozens of areas in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo Province.

In a statement carried by Syria's official SANA news agency, the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said it had established control over 32 towns and farms in Aleppo Province with a total area of 250 square kilometers.

The gains came as part of an anti-Daesh "large-scale military operation" launched by the Syrian "army units in cooperation with the supporting forces and the allies" some 20 days ago, the statement read.

The Syrian forces also wrested control over a 16-kilometer-long highway connecting al-Bab and the city of Aleppo, it added.

The statement further noted that during the operation, the Syrian army units stormed Daesh fortifications, defused hundreds of explosives and destroyed tens of tunnels, inflicting heavy losses upon the Takfiri group.

The latest achievements constitute a platform for improving the military operations against Daesh and expanding the government-held areas, it added.

The statement also reaffirmed the army's commitment to its constitutional duties in protecting civilians and preserving the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic.

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Trump Proposal for Safe Zones in Syria Should Be Coordinated With Syrian Gov't

Sputnik News

20:52 02.02.2017

US President Donald Trump's recent proposal on creating safe zones for civilians in Syria should be coordinated with the Syrian government directly or through Moscow, which coordinates its actions on the Syrian territory with Damascus, member of the Syrian parliament Mohammed Kheir Jasim Nadir told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  In a phone conversation with King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud on Sunday, Trump requested the king's support for the idea of creating safe zones in Syria and Yemen to help refugees displaced by the ongoing conflicts.

"Any proposal should be approved by and coordinated with the Syrian government as it is the first and final decision maker. According to the UNSC resolution 2254, the Syrian authorities are responsible for protecting its people. If Trump wants to succeed in any proposal, he must first knock on the right door, coordinating it directly with Damascus or via Moscow, which coordinates fully with Damascus. The Syrian government is the exclusive administrator for its people and its geography," Nadir said.

The lawmaker also stressed that the idea of safe zones was an example of a gross violation of the international law that guarantees sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.

"The topic of safe zone was discussed between the United States and Saudi Arabia. My question is the following: will these safe zones be created on the territories of those two countries?! What a blatant violation of principles of the international law and relevant UN resolutions, which 'emphasize strong commitment to Syria's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity'!" Nadir underlined.

According to the lawmaker, the Syrian leadership has proven that it is open to a dialogue on the Syrian crisis settlement through participation in the negotiation process.

"It also has proved its credibility and commitment to achieve two things: to protect the Syrian people and to eliminate terrorism completely," Nadir concluded.

The idea of safe zones has not taken shape yet, so it is still unclear who, according to the US proposal, should be policing the proposed safe zones and investing funds in their creation. According to Trump's administration, it can be the way to stem the tide of Syrian refugees to Europe and elsewhere.

Following Trump's conversation with the Saudi king, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that any creation of security zones in Syria would require a practical agreement with the Syrian authorities. Russia intends to clarify the issue in a conversation with the United States, the minister added.

 Sputnik

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Syrian Army Conducts 'Lightning Military Operation' Against Daesh Near Palmyra

Sputnik News

16:52 02.02.2017(updated 18:12 02.02.2017)

The field commander of the Syrian Army announced on Wednesday that the army has liberated new territories in the eastern part of Homs province.

"Units of the Syrian army and allied forces conducted a lightning military operation in the south and south-west of Tifur airport, west of Palmyra towards Mazraa-Fedda, Bir-Fedda and the ruins of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi castle. The offensive was conducted with the support of artillery and aircraft," the source said.

The source also stressed that as a result of the operation, the army took back control of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, Mazraa-Fedda and Bir-Fedda.

In the course of the operation dozens of terrorists were injured and killed. Their vehicles were also heavily damaged.

However, the Syrian Army did not suffer any losses.

Earlier, Syrian Arab Army soldiers launched an operation targeting militant-controlled areas in the southeast of Tiyas (T4) Airbase in Homs Governorate near the city of Palmyra.

The government forces pushed back the terrorists some 20 kilometers from the airbase.

According to the source, after Bir al Fukar area and the mountain range in Al-Sharife region are retaken, the situation around the T-4 base will stabilize.

In December 2016, the Syrian government's forces had to abandon Palmyra after Daesh stormed the city. The terrorists then moved for approximately 90 kilometers toward the city of Homs, taking key heights and several villages near Palmyra.

They attempted to storm the T-4 airbase as well, which is the main obstacle on their way to Homs, but were stopped by government forces.

 Sputnik

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Germany urges Turkey to protect separation of powers in new system

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 6:38PM

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called on Turkey to ensure that its constitutional principle of separation of powers will be protected as the country is to shift to a new presidential system.

Merkel said after talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara on Thursday that Turkey needed to heed concerns about proposed constitutional changes that would strengthen powers of the president as the country grapples with a sensitive time following a coup attempt in July last year.

"In such a time of profound political upheaval, everything must be done to continue to protect the separation of powers," said Merkel during a news conference with Erdogan, adding that Ankara must do more to respect "freedom of opinion and the diversity of society" amid a crackdown on those believed to have played a role in the coup attempt.

Turkey has jailed more than 40,000 people on suspicion of having links to a US-based cleric, whom Turkey blames for the coup attempt of July 15, 2016. More than 100,000 people have also been discharged from their jobs over the same suspicions.

Turkey's crackdown has faced increasing international criticism. Germany has been highly critical of Germany, with officials in Berlin fearing that the Turkish president is using the coup attempt as a pretext to curtail dissent.

Turkey's planned constitutional changes, expected to be put to a referendum in April, have also sparked concerns among opponents who say that the measure could push Turkey into authoritarianism.

Erdogan responded to Merkel's concerns over transition to the presidential system and said that he would approve the constitutional reform bill as soon as he receives it.

"It is out of the question for the separation of powers to be abolished," Erdogan said, adding that the proposed constitutional changes would give the executive branch more opportunity to "work more swiftly."

Erdogan said that Turkey's Judiciary would retain its power and function as usual in the new system.

Germany and Turkey have also been at odds over Berlin's alleged support for Turkey's Kurdish militants. Turkey has also called on Germany to extradite a group of high-ranking military officers who have reportedly ceased to work at NATO facilities in Germany and have requested asylum.

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Turkey's Erdogan 'Saddened' By Merkel Comments On 'Islamist Terrorism'

RFE/RL February 02, 2017

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took German Chancellor Angela Merkel to task for using the phrase "Islamist terrorism," creating an uncomfortable moment during her visit to Ankara.

In comments after their meeting on February 2, Merkel spoke of the need for Turkey and Germany to cooperate further in the fight against extremists, including "Islamist terrorism" and Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants.

Erdogan, sitting next to her, remained grim-faced as he listened, reports said.

Many Muslims argue the phrase "Islamist terrorism" amounts to equating Islam and terror. They say those who commit such acts have nothing to do with the religion despite their stated goals.

"This expression 'Islamist terror' seriously saddens us Muslims," Erdogan said as he glanced at Merkel.

"Such an expression is not correct because Islam and terror cannot be associated. The meaning of Islam is peace," Erdogan said.

"Please, let's not use it. As long as it is used, we need to stand against it. As a Muslim president, personally I cannot accept that," he added.

Contentious Press Conference

In other comments during the contentious press conference, Merkel stressed the importance of freedom of opinion and a free press in a democratic society.

Germany and other EU countries have expressed concern that Erdogan is undermining the rule of law and freedom of expression in Turkey with a massive, long-running crackdown following last year's failed coup attempt against the government.

Merkel was asked about the proposed changes in the Turkish constitution that would strengthen Erdogan's powers, a move his opponents say would lead to authoritarian rule.

"In such a time of profound political upheaval, everything must be done to continue to protect the separation of powers and above all freedom of opinion and the diversity of society," Merkel said.

The constitutional reform bill was submitted to Erdogan later on February 2, Reuters reported. Once he approves it, a date will be set for a referendum, most likely in April.

The German chancellor suggested that the referendum could be monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) "so that what the people want is guaranteed."

But Erdogan denied there would be any end to the separation of powers under the new system.

"The legislative is still there. So is the executive and the judiciary. Their dissolution... is out of the question," he said.

With reporting by AFP and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/merkel-erdogan-t alks/28275120.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Merkel Sits Down With Erdogan to Talk EU-Turkey 'Press Release' Migrant Deal

Sputnik News

19:07 02.02.2017(updated 19:14 02.02.2017)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is in Turkey for meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss developments in Syria and Iraq and talk about topics ranging from press freedom, terrorism and the refugee crisis.

Angela Merkel, who is in Ankara for a one-day only visit has reportedly agreed to pay three billion euros to Turkey as soon as possible, as part of the refugee deal agreed between Brussels and Ankara.

"If anyone can move this deal along it's Angela Merkel," Ariel Ricker director of Advocates Abroad, an NGO that provides free legal advice to refugees in Greece, told Sputnik.

"But many of us don't agree with the basis of the deal  it's not legally binding, it's basically a press release," she said.

Since March 2016, any migrant, asylum seeker or refugee arriving in Greece illegally is supposed to be sent back to Turkey where they must apply for asylum. For every refugee that Turkey resettled, the European Union pledged to resettle a Syrian refugee.

However the deal has been met with caution  and is not seen as a solution to the refugee crisis by some members of the European Parliament, or indeed many NGO's and volunteers like Ariel Ricker.

"You can't say how much this deal has succeeded. There are contradictions that have life changing effects on these refugees and it's surprising to those of us working in the legal field that someone can have different legal options purely based on the day they arrive in Greece.

"I'm concerned that idea of it being a success takes attention away from the crisis as hundreds of people arrive every week," Ariel Ricker told Sputnik.

Despite the announcement that the EU will pay the three billion euros to Ankara as part of the agreement, Ariel Ricker remains skeptical about the deal's progression.

"I don't want there to be more progress made on the deal. I'm unsure the deal is useful for refugees and advocates working abroad," Ricker said.

This is the first time Merkel has made a trip to Turkey following the failed military coup in July 2016.

Freedom of expression, and press freedom remained high on Merkel's agenda as she told a news conference that she had also discussed Syria and Iraq with President Erdogan, who agreed on closer cooperation to tackle terrorism.

 Sputnik

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Royal Marines Future "Secure" in Scotland

2 February 2017

The Defence Secretary said today that the future of the Royal Marines in Scotland is secure.

Sir Michael's announcement came as he watched a battle demonstration at Arbroath as 45 Commando begin training to play a lead role in NATO's Very High Readiness Group from 2018. This will see them working and training with allies, and place them at the forefront of an international emergency should any arise.

Defence Secretary, Sir Michael Fallon said:

"Our Royal Marines are at the heart of Britain's global role as we do more to support our NATO allies. Their future in Scotland is secure, with those based at Arbroath deployed on ships all around the world as well as working with our European partners to tackle illegal immigration in the Mediterranean, which helps save lives and keep our United Kingdom safer and more secure."

On the visit, Sir Michael Fallon awarded two Royal Navy ranks serving with 45 Commando their Long Service and Good Conduct Medals (LSGC). Petty Officer (Chef) Ian Dixon and Petty Officer (Medical Assistant) Jamie Jackson received their medals in recognition of having maintained perfect military records for 15 years. The men are originally from Lancashire and Derbyshire.

Earlier this month 45 Commando led 400 of their fellow commandos from the Royal Marines' three main fighting units into the snow and sub-zero temperatures of the Scottish Highlands as they honed winter warfare skills ahead of deploying to northern Norway. In Scandinavia, the Marines can expect temperatures as low as -30C, much colder than the -12C experiences on the slopes of the Highlands.

The other Royal Marine presence in Scotland is 43 Commando who are based at Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde where they protect the UK's independent nuclear deterrent. Both units are part of the Royal Navy's elite amphibious infantry who are ready to deploy at short notice both at home and overseas.

45 Commando

In addition to 650 commandos, 45 Commando employs 30 MOD civilians.

The unit moved to Arbroath and RM Condor in 1971 after spending much of the 1950s and 60s deployed.

Their 1982 Falklands Campaign saw major action with the capture of Two Sisters Mountain, which shaped modern Commando, mountain and cold weather warfare.

The Unit deployed to Iraq in 2003 on Operation TELIC 1, and to Afghanistan on various Operation HERRICK deployments in 2006, 2008, 2011 in Sangin, Nad Ali and Helmand Province.

Defence Budget

The UK is investing 178bn in a decade long equipment programme.

The UK Defence budget has a "double lock" which ensures that it will rise every year by at least 0.5% annually, above inflation and always exceed 2% of GDP.

UK

The UK Government is firmly committed to the future of Defence in Scotland and its continued vital role in Defence.

Scotland is home to military bases that provide essential capabilities for the Defence of the UK as a whole.

By 2020, Scotland will be home to all of the Royal Navy's submarines, one of the Army's engagement and resilience Infantry Brigades, one of three RAF fast jet main operating bases and new P8 Poseidon Maritime Patrol Aircraft.

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Putin says Ukraine escalating conflict to shore up US support

Iran Press TV

Thu Feb 2, 2017 10:4PM

Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the Ukrainian authorities of escalating the fresh bout of violence in the eastern part of the country, saying the Kiev government has resorted to such a ploy in order to rally support from the administration of US President Donald Trump and other Western powers.

"Ukrainian leadership today needs money, and the best way to squeeze out money from the European Union and certain countries of the European Union and the United States as well as international financial institutions is to present themselves as a victim of aggression," Putin told reporters in Budapest on Thursday after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

"Now they need to arrange their relations with the current (US) administration and it always works better through the conflict... It is easier to drag the current administration into solving Ukraine's problems and to arrange some dialogue this way," he added, noting that the current Ukrainian leadership took a one-sided position during the US presidential election, and supported Democratic candidate and Trump's rival Hillary Clinton.

The Russian leader went on to say that Kiev provoked flare-up in the country's east to deviate public opinion from the conspicuous failures in economy and social policies, muffle the opposition and mobilize the population around the incumbent government.

"I think that the current Ukrainian leadership is not ready to implement the Minsk agreements and is seeking for a cause not to fulfill them. The development of the conflict would also contribute to that. I truly hope that the forces of reason in Ukraine and also those who are interested in resolving these issues through political means will not allow for the situation in eastern Ukraine to develop in the worst scenario, but on the contrary will use all their powers to implement the Minsk agreements," Putin said.

Nearly two dozen people have lost their lives since fighting broke out between Ukrainian government troops and Russia-backed forces in eastern Ukraine over the weekend.

Two Ukrainian troops were killed and 10 others wounded early on Thursday, while pro-Moscow forces said one of their fighters was killed.

Ukraine's Donbass region, where the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk are located, has witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since April 2014, when Kiev launched military operations to crush pro-Moscow protests there.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine and the March 2014 reintegration of the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula into the Russian Federation have pushed relations between Moscow and the West to their lowest level since the Cold War as the latter supports Kiev.

Despite the original Minsk agreement, which was reached in September 2014, as well as another deal also struck in the Belarusian capital in February 2015, the Ukrainian government and the pro-Russians have continued to trade fire along front lines.

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EU's Tusk Says Fighting Must Stop In Ukraine, Points To 'Russia's Aggression'

RFE/RL February 02, 2017

European Council President Donald Tusk is calling on Russia to use its influence with separatists in eastern Ukraine to end an upsurge of fighting that has caused many casualties and aggravated the humanitarian situation.

"We are reminded again of the continued challenge posed by Russia's aggression in eastern Ukraine," Tusk said on February 2. "The fighting must stop immediately. The cease-fire must be honored."

Ukraine says two of its servicemen were killed and 10 others wounded in the country's east in the previous 24 hours as heavy fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists entered its fifth day.

Ukrainian officials had earlier reported the deaths of eight soldiers in the past few days, the highest toll in weeks, and casualties among civilians and separatist fighters were also reported.

Kyiv's police chief in the Donetsk province, Vyacheslav Abroskin, said one woman was killed and three men wounded in a shelling attack.

The separatists said one of their fighters was killed and another was wounded in the past 24 hours.

The sides traded blame for the surge in hostilities that are concentrated around the government-controlled city of Avdiyivka, where shelling left many residents without electricity, water supplies, and heating in temperatures well below freezing.

By February 2, the water supply and heating in the town north of the separatist-held provincial capital of Donetsk had been partially restored, the Associated Press reported.

The news agency said sounds of shelling were heard in Avdiyivka in the early afternoon, adding that fighting appeared to be less intense than in previous days.

Army officers have set up seven camps for civilians and were distributing gruel and tea in makeshift street kitchens, AFP reported.

A deal signed in Minsk in February 2015 called for a cease-fire and steps to end the conflict that has killed more than 9,750 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014.

Meeting in the Belarusian capital on February 1, the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), which is attempting to regulate the conflict, urged both sides to adhere scrupulously to the Minsk agreements and to withdraw heavy weaponry away from the contact line as previously agreed.

The TCG, which includes Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), also called for "safe and secure access" for OSCE monitors and the "facilitation of humanitarian efforts" aimed at restoring water and electricity supplies.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the renewed fighting "the most serious spike in violence in a long time," adding that the humanitarian situation for civilians in Avdiyivka is "dire, with 20,000 people facing freezing temperatures without heat, electricity, and water."

Stoltenberg also called on Russia "to use its considerable influence over the separatists to bring the violence to an end."

The UN Security Council on January 31 expressed "grave concern" over the "dangerous deterioration" in eastern Ukraine and called for a halt to the violence.

Kyiv and Moscow are accusing each other of being responsible for the latest flare-up of hostilities in eastern Ukraine, with the Kremlin saying the escalation shows the need for a resumption in dialogue between the United States and Russia.

Russian-U.S. relations are badly strained over Moscow's aggression in Ukraine, its actions in Syria, and what U.S. intelligence agencies say was state-directed interference in the U.S. presidential election.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for improved relations with Russia, and both the White House and the Kremlin said a conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on January 28 was a positive sign.

Despite substantial evidence, Russia denies claims by Kyiv, NATO, and Western governments that it stirred up separatism in the region and has sent troops and weapons to Ukraine to support the separatists.

The European Union, United States, and other states have imposed sanctions on Russia over the conflict, as well as for its annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014.

Earlier this week in Berlin, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the West should extend and strengthen sanctions against Russia if there is no progress in implementing the Minsk agreements on resolving the conflict.

In an interview published on February 2, Poroshenko said Russia was paying "a high price for its aggression" thanks to the sanctions.

"The standard of living has fallen considerably, the Russian currency is losing its value," he told the Berliner Morgenpost newspaper. "It is the sanctions that will keep Putin at the negotiating table and will force him to fully implement the Minsk peace agreement."

The president also said he does not expect military aid from Europe.

"We have our own army and we can fight for our independence on our own," Poroshenko said. "If you ask me, what kind of support I need most from the European Union, I have a simple answer: unity."

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and UNIAN

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/eu-tusk-russia-ukraine- aggression-fighting-must-stop/28274932.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Ukraine's NATO Referendum 'Marketing' Move Designed to Impress West - DPR

Sputnik News

21:47 02.02.2017(updated 22:00 02.02.2017)

A referendum on Ukraine's accession to NATO is a "marketing" move of Kiev aimed at making an impression on its western partners, Natalya Nikonorova, the acting foreign minister of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk (DPR) told Sputnik on Friday.

DONETSK (Sputnik)  Earlier in the day, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he intended to hold a referendum on the country's accession to NATO.

"The issue of NATO membership has been repeatedly raised by Kiev, but every time it was an action in the sphere of marketing directed at western partners, because the very fact of Ukraine's referendum on NATO accession would mean an official refusal of Donbas," Nikonorova said.

She added that the residents of the Donbass' self-proclaimed republics would not be able to participate in such the vote and the NATO Charter involved a provision that a country, which could not control its borders, could not join the alliance.

Ukraine has cooperated with the Alliance for years. Kiev has intensified its efforts to join NATO following the shift of power in 2014 and has already canceled its non-aligned status.

 Sputnik

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McCain Calls on Trump to Provide Ukraine With Lethal Weapons

Sputnik News

20:12 02.02.2017(updated 22:34 02.02.2017)

The United States should provide Kiev with defensive lethal assistance amid the spike of violence in eastern Ukraine, US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said in a letter to President Donald Trump released on Thursday.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  McCain has repeatedly called on Washington to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons.

"In light of the latest Russian attacks and the prospect of future aggression against Ukraine, I urge you to exercise the authority given to you by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 to provide defensive lethal assistance to Ukraine," McCain said in the letter.

The senator has also urged the US president to maintain and further expand sanctions on Russia.

"And based on Russia's attempted interference in our elections, I urge you to expand current sanctions against Russia," McCain added.

The situation in southeastern Ukraine, namely in the industrial towns of Avdiivka and Yasynuvata, became aggravated this weekend when both towns were bombarded with shells, which resulted in heavy losses on both sides. The Ukrainian forces and Donbass militia are trading blames for the escalation of fighting.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday that Moscow had reliable data that the Ukrainian independent armed groups, supported by the Ukrainian Armed Forces' artillery, were behind the attack on Avdiivka.

 Sputnik

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US ambassador to UN condemns Russia's 'aggressive actions' in Ukraine

Iran Press TV

Fri Feb 3, 2017 12:43AM

The new US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has strongly condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in Ukraine even as the administration of US President Donald Trump seeks to improve ties with Moscow.

In her first public remarks at the UN Security Council on Thursday, Haley said that all US sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Russia returns control of the Crimea peninsula to Ukraine. Crimea rejoined Russia following a referendum in 2014.

"I consider it unfortunate on the occasion of my first appearance here I must condemn the aggressive actions of Russia," Haley said.

"We do want to better our relations with Russia. However, the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions," she said.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine."

Haley, who lacks foreign policy and diplomatic experience, was speaking at an emergency UN meeting about a sudden upsurge in violence in eastern Ukraine.

"Eastern Ukraine of course is not the only part of the country suffering because of Russia's aggressive actions. The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," Haley said.

Nearly two dozen people have lost their lives since fighting broke out between Ukrainian government troops and Russia-backed forces in eastern Ukraine over the weekend. Ukraine and Russia had blamed each other for a surge in fighting.

Haley's rhetoric was in stark contrast to Trump's, who has praised Russia's President Vladimir Putin and has called for closer ties between Washington and Moscow.

Relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated during the Obama administration over the conflict in eastern Ukraine and the crisis in Syria.

Washington and its allies had levied broad economic sanctions against Russia over its alleged support for pro-Russia separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and reunification with Crimea in 2014.

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Monitors Sound Warning As Eastern Ukraine Fighting Continues To Surge

RFE/RL, Christopher Miller February 03, 2017

AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine -- International monitors in Ukraine have warned of "an incredible amount of cease-fire violations" by both sides six days into an uptick of hostilities between pro-Kyiv forces and Russia-backed separatists.

The warning comes amid fresh reports of an intensification of shelling in and around residential areas in war-torn eastern Ukraine, where dozens of people have been killed, including civilians, and scores injured since January 29.

Lamberto Zannier, secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), issued a statement on February 3 calling on both sides to "consider the fate of the trapped civilians and to prioritize their safety." He called for an immediate halt to the fighting and strict observance of the cease-fire conditions.

In Avdiyivka, a government-held city of around 22,000 residents near the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, locals told RFE/RL that the shelling overnight on February 2-3 was the worst they had seen in the current flare-up. They talked of spending the night in cellars under "nonstop" bombardment.

Early on February 3, at least six Ukrainian tanks were spotted on the move in Avdiyivka.

And several apartment buildings appeared to have been damaged overnight by artillery fire, including one whose fifth floor took a direct hit.

At the city's School No. 2, where volunteers were distributing aid, Andriy, a 25-year-old psychologist with Ukraine's emergency services, told RFE/RL that he had been busy speaking with bereaved residents.

He said he had noticed recently -- even when shelling was heaviest -- that locals "don't react" to the violence or losses of life anymore.

"It has become normal for them after three years. But it is not normal," he said. "They don't want to show their weakness."

"Everyone should be afraid," he added. "The man who is not afraid is a stupid man."

Like 'Early Days' Of Conflict

Speaking to reporters in the center of Avdiyivka on February 3 with artillery blasts punctuating his statement, Alexander Hug, head of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, said the fighting was reminiscent of "the early days" of the nearly 3-year-old conflict.

"The sound we hear back is from weapons that should not be here," Hug said. "They should be long that way and the other way locked up, at least 15 kilometers behind the contact line, where the first withdrawal line stops; for larger caliber weapons, that is even further back."

Other Ukrainian regions and international aid groups are shipping humanitarian supplies to the region, where the fresh fighting has prompted major evacuation and aid efforts. Many areas are without heat or electricity in subzero temperatures.

The UN, EU, and other international players have issued urgent pleas for negotiations to avoid a "catastrophe" in a conflict that has killed more than 9,750 people since April 2014 despite a shaky, internationally brokered cease-fire.

"Deescalation is only possible, in the long run and sustainably, if weapons are withdrawn and if the distance between the fighting position is increased so that the tensions there can be reduced," the OSCE's Hug said. "Temporarily, a cease-fire must be agreed immediately so that people here in Avdiyivka can go back to normal life, that infrastructure can be repaired. These people have been without heating, without electricity...for the vast part of this week, since Sunday morning [January 29]."

"This is not normal," he added, "and it is only due to the fact that these guns are here that should have long been withdrawn."

Moscow Urged To Use Influence

On February 3, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he had urged Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to use Moscow's influence to end the recent escalation in Ukraine.

Earlier on February 3, Kyiv blamed the escalation of fighting on "Russian occupational forces."

Deputy Ukrainian Prime Minister Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze's office cited 114 instances of shelling and said enemy forces were "attacking throughout" the so-called line of contact and in areas near the cities of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Mariupol. The statement said shelling damaged a school that was being used to provide heating for civilians in Avdiyivka.

Separatists have accused the pro-Kyiv side of thousands of bombardments over the past week.

On February 2, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley blamed "aggressive actions" by Russia for the fresh hostilities and reiterated Washington's commitment to keeping Western sanctions against Moscow in place.

Russia, which denies military involvement despite mounting evidence of its military and economic support for the separatists, has blamed Kyiv for the latest fighting.

The OSCE's Hug, however, accused both sides of violating the cease-fire agreements.

"We have seen on both sides an incredible amount of cease-fire violations," he said. "Cease-fire violations require guns; guns require personnel."

With contributions from Brussels and Prague

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine- fighting-escalation-russia- death-toll/28277282.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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U.S. Ambassador To UN Says No Lifting Of Russia Sanctions Until Crimea Returned

RFE/RL February 03, 2017

The new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has expressed "strong condemnation of Russia's actions" in eastern Ukraine and warned that Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia will not be lifted until Crimea is returned to Kyiv.

"Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine," she said on February 2 in her first public remarks before the Security Council since being sworn into office.

"Eastern Ukraine, of course, is not the only part of the country suffering because of Russia's aggressive actions. The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," Haley said.

The new American envoy said it was "unfortunate" that she had to condemn Russia in her first appearance before the council.

"We do want to better our relations with Russia," she said, but "the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions."

Russia took control of Crimea in March 2014 after sending in troops and staging a referendum condemned by Ukraine and 99 other countries in the UN as illegitimate.

More than 9,750 people have been killed since the conflict between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists erupted in the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces the following month.

Fighting has flared in the past week in the country's east, with heavy fighting between government forces and Russia-backed separatists entering its fifth day.

Ukrainian officials had earlier reported the deaths of eight soldiers in the past few days, a significant spike in casualties, and separatist fighters and civilians have also been killed and injured.

Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for the increase in violence. Russia's UN ambassador said observers have blamed the escalation on Ukrainian forces and he accused Ukraine of "desperately, frantically" trying to achieve a military victory.

Vitaly Churkin, echoing comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier in the day, told the UN council late on February 2 that Kyiv needs money which it "can swindle out of the European Union, certain European countries, and from the United States and from international financial institutions by pretending to be the victims of aggression."

He called for a cease-fire and return to implementation of the Minsk peace agreement.

But U.S. Senator John McCain said Russia is testing President Donald Trump by escalating the violence in Ukraine. He dismissed Putin's accusations that Kyiv is fomenting the latest fighting in an effort to gain support from the new U.S. administration.

McCain, a senior Republican senator from Arizona and a regular critic of Trump as well as Russia, sent a letter to the president in which he urged him to provide lethal aid to Kyiv.

"That this surge of attacks began the day after [Putin] talked with you by phone is a clear indication that Vladimir Putin is moving quickly to test you as commander in chief. America's response will have lasting consequences," McCain said in the letter released by his office.

Putin, speaking in Budapest after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, claimed "the Ukrainian leadership needs money, and the best way to get the EU, the U.S., and international organizations to pay is by posing as a victim of aggression."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued a statement urging the international community to "more actively put pressure on Russia in order to end the shelling."

Ukraine has expressed concerns that Trump could roll back some sanctions imposed on Russia after its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea region and in retaliation for Moscow's military, economic, and political support for separatist militants in eastern Ukraine.

Trump has repeatedly expressed hope for improved relations with Moscow.

In Brussels, EU President Donald Tusk urged Russia to use its influence to "disengage the Russia-backed separatists" and to restore a cease-fire.

The Ukrainian military reported two soldiers killed overnight on February 2 and 10 wounded in shelling in the government-held town of Avdiyivka, just north of the separatist stronghold of Donetsk. The separatists said one of their fighters was killed.

"Moscow was putting Avdiyivka on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe," Poroshenko's statement said.

At least 15 people have been reported killed in the Avdiyivka area over the last five days.

More than 9,750 people have been killed since the conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in April 2014.

With reporting by AP, TASS, and Reuters

Source: http://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine- un-ambassador-haley-condemns -russia/28275953.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Dozens of dead, injured and living turkeys flocked in a front yard along U.S. 220 in Bassett Forks Thursday morning, after the third turkey-truck accident along that highway in four years.

The turkey truck overturned on US 220 northbound, just north of Tower Road, at around 2:40 a.m. Thursday, according to Sgt. Lane of the Virginia State Police. He said that Tooper B. Loatch was the initial officer to respond to the scene.

There were a lot of turkeys on the truck when it wrecked, he said. It was a full truck, and we had probably about 50 (turkeys) running around. There were a lot that died as a result of the accident.

The driver, Leroy Geter of Salisbury, North Carolina, was cited with reckless driving, Lane said. He was transported to Memorial Hospital in Martinsville with non- life-threatening injuries.

A representative from VDOT said that VDOT was called at around 3 a.m. and arrived on the scene to close the right lane of the highway.

Lane said that the dead turkeys were taken away by another truck in the wee hours of the morning.

By 8 a.m., many of the remaining few dozens of turkeys had visible injuries, and a few appeared to be dead. The wrecked truck had been hauled off by then, and workers from the wrecker company out of Salem were standing around in the yard, watching turkeys. Whenever a turkey would wander away from the flock, a man from the wrecker company or VDOT would walk over to it and guide it back to its group.

A man in dark blue overalls, who said he was the supervisor from the turkey company, declined to give his name or comment on the accident. The turkey truck waiting at the scene was from Circle S Ranch in Monroe, North Carolina, the same company whose turkeys were being transported in trucks which wrecked along that highway in 2013 and 2012.

Joe Grogan, a volunteer with the Martinsville-Henry County SPCA and an SPCA board member for 16 years, arrived at about 8:30 a.m. He asked the supervisor if he could transport the injured turkeys to Veterinary Services for treatment, and the supervisor declined.

The second time Grogan asked the supervisor, the supervisor said that turkeys would be euthanized, and weve got a process for doing that.

About a dozen Circle S Ranch workers arrived by about 8:45 a.m. They heaved several turkeys over the slatted rails of a large flatbed pickup truck. They put other turkeys into cages at the bottom level of cages of the waiting turkey truck.

Complaints leveled

Grogan said that he was upset with how the turkeys were treated, and he called in a report to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). This is the second time PETAs attention has been drawn to turkey truck accidents in Henry County; the first was after the 2012 accident just a few miles north of Thursdays wreck.

It is very sad to me that this happened and the turkeys suffered so much, and so many have died, he said. I saw a couple of workers who threw them in a rough manner in the little, small areas of the truck. When they were thrown in, their heads and the sides and tops of their bodies would hit the metal of the cages.

Regarding the flatbed truck with rails, two or three guys did handle them in a rough manner and threw them on the truck, he said.

What really concerns me is that there are no laws protecting the injured so they could be transported to a veterinarian and humanely treated or euthanized, Grogan added.

Looking back

In April 2013, a tractor-trailer crashed along U.S. 220 in April 2013, killing hundreds of turkeys, just a couple of miles south of Thursdays accident, according to Bulletin reports.

The truck in that accident was hauling 960 turkeys, also from Circle S Ranch in Monroe.

In June 2012, according to Bulletin reports, a company driver was hauling about 600 turkeys for Circle S Ranch when it overturned on U.S. 220 in Ridgeway.

After that accident, SPCA employees and volunteers and People for the Ethical Treatment of animals made allegations of cruel treatment of the turkeys as they were being rounded up after the wreck.

Henry Commonwealths Attorney Bob Bushnell decided not to file charges in connection with the treatment of the turkeys after he reviewed a Virginia State Police investigation into the accident, according to Bulletin reports.

Bushnell had asked for the investigation allegations of mistreatment after he received a letter about the incident from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), a national animal rights organization. In his explanation of not filing charges, he wrote, the question is not whether the crew handled the turkeys as gently as possible but whether there is evidence that would establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the crew or any individual member thereof engaged in criminal animal cruelty, according to Bulletin reports.

The truck driver from the 2013 accident, Mark Nepsa of Gerald Clountz Trucking of Midland, N.C., talked to Bulletin reporters about that situation.

Driving in heavy traffic, he had to swerve to avoid a car which drove in front of his truck, he had said. His truck ran off the left-hand side of the road.

He had said that he estimated the birds were stacked 12 to 13 feet high on the back of his truck. He said that he did not know how much weight was being carried.

In the poultry industry, Nepsa had said, feed tankers and turkey wagons are the easiest to turn over because of the weight and height.
Goodyear expects to begin collective bargaining discussions with its employees union by early summer, said a company spokeswoman.

The goal for Goodyear and the United Steelworkers is to have a new contract agreement by July 29, when the current agreement is set to expire, said Barbara Hatala, communications manager with Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio.

She declined to provide details about the upcoming negotiations.

Until negotiations are completed, we cant comment further, Hatala said.

Goodyears Danville facility covers 50 acres and employs about 2,200 workers. The plant manufactures aviation and specialty tires, and operates on three shifts. Employees at the plant are represented by Local 831 of the United Steelworkers of America.

Local 831 represents about 2,000 employees at the Goodyear plant in Danville. USW has a total of about 800,000 members.

Jeff Dixon, vice president of Local 831, said the talks will include discussion of wages, benefits, pensions and 401(k). The current agreement is a four-year contract, Dixon said.

There will be talks between the company and the union in Cincinnati, Ohio, as well as separate discussions between the Goodyear Danville plant and Local 831 at a different time, Dixon said. He said he did not know when the latter discussions would take place.

Mike Wright, director of health, safety and environment for the United Steelworkers Union in Pittsburgh, said the union does not comment on contract negotiations.

We dont negotiate in the press, Wright said.
VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - February 03, 2017) - Camrova Resources Inc. (formerly Baja Mining Corp.) ("Camrova" or the "Company") (TSX VENTURE: CAV) (OTCQB: BAJFF) is pleased to announce that it has executed a binding letter of intent, dated February 1, 2017 (the "Letter of Intent") pursuant to which Camrova will provide funding to Mr. Gubier Marambio, Gubier Marambio H. SpA ("GMH") and Metalex Ltda ("Metalex") to restart an existing copper processing plant comprised of equipment and mining rights owned by GMH and Metalex located in CopiapA, Chile (the "Virginia Project" or "Project") that has operated only intermittently. The Virginia Project is a heap leach operation with access to a supply of purchased ore mined locally.

It is the intention of the parties to bring the plant back on stream and to achieve continuous production of copper sulphate and cathode copper by providing working capital and investment for equipment purchases and equipment upgrades. Copper sulphate has many applications in agriculture and the copper content in copper sulphate attracts a premium over the market price of cathode copper. The Virginia Project is expected to generate near-term cash flow for the Company as described below.

Pursuant to the Letter of Intent, Camrova will make an initial investment of US$304,000 structured as a loan, with the option to make further advances to fund the Project for a total investment of up to US$1,206,000, which at Camrova's option may be converted for a 40% equity interest in the Virginia Project. As incentive for Camrova to participate in an investment in the Virginia Project, Camrova will receive a fee equal to 5% of all revenues from product sales (the "5% Fee") in addition to certain rights of repayment or profit sharing as described below.

The parties contemplate the staged development of the Project will proceed as follows:

Stage 1: Monthly production and sale of 12.5 tonnes of copper in copper sulphate;

Stage 2: Monthly production and sale of 12.5 tonnes of copper in copper sulphate and 12.5 tonnes of copper cathode; and

Stage 3: Monthly production of 25.0 tonnes of copper in copper sulphate and 25.0 tonnes of copper cathode

The initial loan of US$304,000 will be used for start-up working capital and equipment purchases required to commence continuous operations (the "Stage 1 Loan"). A first instalment of US$50,000 was paid by Camrova upon the signing of the Letter of Intent, and the remaining Stage 1 Loan instalments will be funded by July 31, 2017, commencing on the date of the execution of a formal investment agreement (the "Investment Agreement"). The Stage 1 Loan will be non-interest bearing and will be secured by a shareholding in GMH equal to 10% of the company's shares. Camrova is entitled to receive monthly loan repayments equal to 20% of the monthly profits generated by the Virginia Project. The parties anticipate that Stage 1 production will commence within 60 days of executing the Investment Agreement and sustainable Stage 1 production will be achieved by the end of July 2017.

Camrova will have the option to invest a further US$190,000 in the Project to fund additional equipment purchases, plant improvements and incremental working capital required to support Stage 2 production (the "Stage 2 Loan"), or to continue to receive repayments of its Stage 1 Loan. If Camrova elects to advance the Stage 2 Loan, it will reinvest in the Project any amounts of the Stage 1 Loan repaid to it previously. In this case, in addition to the 5% Fee, Camrova will be entitled to receive a share equal to 15% of the Stage 2 monthly profits.

Subsequently, Camrova will have the option to invest an additional US$712,000 in the Project to double the production capacity (the "Stage 3 Investment"). If Camrova elects to continue with the Stage 3 Investment, all Camrova advances and loans relating to the Project (amounting to US$1,206,000) will be converted to an equity ownership position that grants Camrova the right to receive 40% of the profits generated by Stage 3, and the 5% Fee will be extinguished.

"We are excited to have agreed a framework to work together with our new partners in Chile for the development of the Virginia Project as a small-scale, copper producer," stated Tom Ogryzlo, Interim CEO of Camrova. "The Virginia Project represents an ideal first-step investment opportunity for Camrova -- manageable risk and capital requirements, consistent with our technical expertise, and having the potential for near-term generation of cash flow or value creation. We look forward to working with Mr. Gubier Marambio, a highly regarded metallurgist, and Mr. Alejandro Lillo, a recognized leader in electrowinning process technology, in building a successful platform for growth."

The Letter of Intent is binding upon the parties who will negotiate in good faith the terms and conditions of an Investment Agreement, which shall supersede the Letter of Intent. Camrova shall be entitled to complete due diligence with respect to the Project. The Letter of Intent shall terminate in the event that (i) Camrova is not satisfied with the results of its due diligence review, (ii) if required, TSX Venture Exchange or any applicable regulatory authority approval is not received, or (iii) the Investment Agreement is not executed by February 28, 2017.

About Camrova Resources Inc. (formerly Baja Mining Corp.)

Camrova is a Canadian mining company. Camrova, through Minera y Metalurgica del Boleo S.A.P.I. de C.V. (MMB), currently owns a 10% interest in the Boleo copper-cobalt-zinc-manganese project located in Baja California Sur, Mexico. In 2017, the Boleo Project is projected to produce 30,000 metric tonnes of copper, 700 metric tonnes of cobalt and 10,500 metric tonnes of zinc sulfate. The commissioning phase of the processing plant has been declared completed and MMB is actively seeking solutions to improve cash flow. Camrova is working to identify and evaluate alternative project opportunities that are consistent with its technical expertise and have the potential for near-term generation of cash flow or value creation.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This press release contains forward-looking statements or forward-looking information (forward-looking statements). These statements can be identified by expressions of belief, expectation or intention, as well as those statements that are not historical fact. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are based on our current estimates, expectations and projections, which the Company believes are reasonable as of the current date. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements and as a result undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. Additional risks and uncertainties can be found in the Company's (formerly "Baja Mining Corp.") reporting documents filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com), including its Management Discussion and Analysis. Forward-looking statements are given only as at the date of this press release and the Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
VANCOUVER, February 3, 2017 - MGX Minerals Inc. ("MGX" or the "Company") (CSE: XMG / FKT: 1MG / OTC: MGXMF) provides further details on the previously announced acquisition of the Lisbon Valley petro lithium project (see press release dated February 2, 2017).Per terms of the Agreement, the Company has the right to purchase a 100% interest in 888 placer mineral claims for US$75,000 upon execution (paid), $25,000 within 90 days, and the issuance of 200,000 common shares of the Company. Additionally, the Agreement provides the Vendor with a 2% underlying net smelter royalty (NSR), which the Company may buy back at any time for $1 million.The Company also wishes to clarify that placer claims in the state of Utah include certain subsurface minerals and are not limited only to surface rights.MGX Minerals (CSE: XMG) is a diversified Canadian mining company engaged in the development of large-scale industrial mineral portfolios in western Canada and the United States. The Company operates lithium, magnesium and silicon projects throughout British Columbia and Alberta as well as petro lithium exploration in Utah. MGX recently released a maiden N.I. 43-101 compliant mineral resource estimate for its Driftwood Creek magnesium project, which outlined 8.3 million tonnes grading 43.31% magnesium oxide. In January the Company received a 20-year Mining Lease for Driftwood Creek. Additionally, the Company is the largest lithium brine land holder in Canada, controlling nearly 487,000 hectares of land representing over one million barrels of brine production per day. For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.mgxminerals.com.Jared Lazerson, Chief Executive OfficerTelephone: 1.604.681.7735Email: jared@mgxminerals.comNeither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains forward-looking information or forward-looking statements including the completion of the rights offering (collectively "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information is typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "potentially" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking information provided by the Company is not a guarantee of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking information as a result of various factors. The reader is referred to the Company's public filings for a more complete discussion of such risk factors and their potential effects which may be accessed through the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.Copyright (c) 2017 TheNewswire - All rights reserved.
Drama in the House

'Our phones are blowing up'

Opening the scab

Switching parties

Republicans in the Hawaii House of Representatives on Wednesday ousted minority leader Rep. Beth Fukumoto over her criticism of President Donald Trump, including calling him a bully at last month's Women's March in Honolulu.Fukumoto, 33, has been described as a rising star in Hawaii's Republican Party, which holds only six seats in the 76-member Legislature. But Fukumoto is now considering switching over to the Democratic Party following this week's actions by her Republican colleagues, which would further deplete the party of young leadership.Fukumoto (R, Mililani-Mililani Mauka-Waipio Acres) said she had been told by a faction of her Republican colleagues that if she didn't commit to not criticizing Trump for the rest of his term, they would oust her as minority leader.She said she refused."I believe it is our job as Americans and as leaders of this body to criticize power when power is wrong," she said during Wednesday's House floor session.The previous day, during a closed-door session, House Republicans voted 3-2 to remove her from leadership. Voting in favor of the leadership reorganization were Reps. Gene Ward, Bob McDermott and Andria Tupola. Reps. Cynthia Thielen and Fukumoto voted against it and Rep. Lauren Matsumoto abstained.The leadership changes were made official during Wednesday's House floor session. Tupola is now minority leader and Ward minority floor leader.The decision to oust Fukumoto caused friction on the House floor Wednesday with Matsumoto -- who played a critical role in Fukumoto's ouster by abstaining from the vote during Tuesday's caucus -- walking off the floor before debate began on the issue.She told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser afterward that she chose to abstain and left the floor session to register her frustration over what she described as constant fighting among Republican House members over who would be the party's leader."My main point of everything is that all we have done is fight for four years and to me that is not productive," she said.Matsumoto wouldn't say whether she had wanted Fukumoto to retain her position.When the session resumed, Thielen gave an emotional speech about why Fukumoto should remain minority leader.She said the caucus vote was flawed because House members are not allowed to abstain from a leadership vote and lamented that the Republican Party, which she joined as a freshman at Stanford University in 1951, had been overtaken by people intolerant on social issues.Thielen noted that she too participated in the Women's March."I proudly spoke at the Women's March, I proudly marched in the Women's March -- for women's rights, for equality, for human rights, for tolerance," she said. "We did that together. Now (Fukumoto) is being punished by three and a half of our members for participating in a democratic process.""Let me just tell you a couple of reasons we were marching and speaking at the Women's March," she continued.But before she could say more, McDermott jumped to his feet, interrupting her. "This has nothing to do with the Women's March. This is a motion on leadership. I don't see Women's March anywhere in here and I don't want to waste my time listening to this," he said.House Vice Speaker John Mizuno permitted Thielen to continue.After speaking of the struggles that women face in gaining equality with men, Thielen praised Fukumoto."She is what I hoped the face of the Republican Party would be. ... I have been so proud of watching her and seeing her be a leader, not just in Hawaii, but nationally," Thielen said. "She is intelligent, she is inclusive, she is tolerant -- all of the things that I had hoped my Republican Party could go back to because it has been captured by a very right-wing, fundamentalist, narrow-minded group."McDermott said Fukumoto wasn't being punished for speaking out, but for a "pattern of self-loathing comments directed at Republicans."He further elaborated in an interview with the Star-Advertiser that her speech at the Women's March criticizing Trump triggered the latest dispute."You have to understand that as elected Republicans, our phones are blowing up," said McDermott (R, Ewa Beach-Iroquois Point). "We're getting emails from constituents and party activists, saying, 'Why is she your leader?'"He added: "We all kept quiet, we wanted to settle it in house, we wanted to give her a chance to say, 'Hey, I made a mistake, I won't do it again.' But she didn't; she says, 'I'm glad I did it, and I'll do it again.'"McDermott suggested that Fukumoto would fit in better with the Democrats."The Democrats like having her because she's very accommodating, she doesn't critique them, she doesn't criticize them," he said. "She criticizes the Republicans, calls us sexist and racist, yet not a peep as the minority leader when Democrats are doing things that are foolish or just way out of line. Not a word."Ward also said that Fukumoto's removal was about her criticism of Trump and not her participation in the Women's March, per se."It goes back to the fight she picked in the convention, which was last year. She opened the scab when she did her speech at the rally," he said. "We are all for women. We are not against women."In May, when Trump was well on his way to securing the Republican Party nomination for president, Fukumoto told Republicans gathered at the Hawaii State Republican Convention in Waipahu that some of Trump's statements were sexist and racist and that she didn't want him to become president. The comments triggered an uproar among the crowd of nearly 300 delegates, including an onslaught of boos and catcalls.She criticized Trump further during her speech at the Women's March, saying that it was a challenge to explain to her 8-year-old niece how Trump had become president."We explained that sometimes people are bullies, but that you should insist that they treat people with respect. We told her that you always stand up to bullies no matter who they are," she said. "Then she watched a bully win the presidency of the United States."Fukumoto encouraged the crowd to push back against Trump."A man won the White House with anger and hate, and our kids watched it happen," she said. "Now, it's our jobs to make sure they watch us fight back."Fukumoto sent a letter to constituents in her district prior to Wednesday's floor session telling them that she would like to leave the Republican Party, but said she wanted to get their feedback first."This week, Republicans in the state Legislature and in the party leadership sought to censure me for raising concerns about the treatment of women and minorities by politicians in power," she said in her letter. "They have also insisted that I stop working across the aisle and focus more on partisan politics. For these reasons, I am considering leaving the Republican Party and pursuing membership in the Democratic Party."House Majority Leader Scott Saiki suggested that House Democrats are open to it.Fukumoto's political moves aren't going over as well with Hawaii's Republican Party. Fritz Rohlfing, the party's chairman, urged her to remain in the party, but said if she decided to switch parties three months after being re-elected, then she should resign her seat in the Legislature."Moreover, I echo the sentiments of Congresswoman Pat Saiki when she said: 'It takes courage to stand up to the political machine that has dominated island politics since statehood,'" Rohlfing said in a statement. "I and tens of thousands of other Hawaii Republicans intend to remain the loyal opposition and keep fighting for a better future for our state."
Gov. Kate Brown on Thursday issued an executive order that forbids all state agencies and employees from helping federal immigration officials locate or apprehend undocumented immigrants."We will not retreat," she said.The move comes nearly a week after President Donald Trump issued his own executive order banning most travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the U.S.Though Oregon law already forbids state and local law enforcement agencies from using public resources to find or arrest those whose only crime is being in the country without proper documentation, Brown's order goes a step further in solidifying the state's sanctuary status by expanding the law to all agencies.The governor's order also makes it illegal for state agencies to discriminate based on immigration status, and forbids state agencies from using public resources to help create a religious registry."We have heard threats of a Muslim registry at the federal level," Brown said. "I don't know how sincere these threats are, but I want to be absolutely clear: We will not participate."But each provision of Brown's order included a caveat: No state employee should break state or federal law to comply with her order."This Executive Order is intended to be consistent with the state's obligations under federal and state law," it says. It also says the order "shall be interpreted as to not violate any requirement of federal or state law."Senate Republican leader Ted Ferrioli said the executive order is an attempt by Brown to distract from the problems facing the state; namely the $1.8 billion budget gap."It's a sad but typical sign of failure," he said. "That's what's wrong with Oregon. We're not willing to solve our own problems."Brown also asked Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum to "explore legal remedies" available to "resist" Trump's travel ban in court.If Oregon heads to court, it could become the sixth state to file a lawsuit against the White House, joining Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington. Washington, which filed its suit on Monday, was the first to seek a stay on the ban.Oregon Deputy Attorney General Fred Boss said Trump's travel ban is illegal, and the state would announce its legal plan next week.States suing the White House is nothing new. Starting in 2010, dozens of states sued the Obama administration over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law in a 2012 decision, and again in a 2015 decision on the legality of subsidies.While the nod to obeying federal law might seem to undermine Brown's executive order, Pacific University politics professor Jim Moore said it still prevents state employees from taking it upon themselves to contact Immigration and Customs Enforcement with information about a person living in the U.S. illegally.Employees such as those who administer welfare benefits to low-income families or issue drivers licenses track the citizenship status of Oregon residents because only citizens and permanent legal residents can receive welfare or drivers licenses.An executive order signed by Trump last week set new priorities for deportation. Under Obama, these priorities included undocumented immigrants convicted of a felony, serious misdemeanor or multiple misdemeanors.Trump's priorities for deportation also include undocumented immigrants who abuse public benefits or are considered "a risk to public safety or national security" by an immigration officer.Brown's announcement she doesn't want the state to help with those deportations in any way follows an email from her campaign that called on supporters to join her "social action team" and resist Trump.Last month, Oregon was left off an early list of priority infrastructure projects to receive federal funding.Trump has threatened to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities and states. When asked multiple times if she was willing to give up that funding, Brown said the state's funding isn't currently at risk."I am willing to do what's right to make sure we protect Oregonians, we protect our culture and we protect our economy," she said.Moore says Brown likely feels politically safer signing the order in light of the aggressive stances against Trump taken by neighbors Washington and California."This fits into the West Coast ethos," he said. "It's not like Oregon is the 'weird state out' in any of this."
Description

GIS  3 February 2017: The Cambridge Higher School Certificate (HSC) 2016 results, with a pass rate of 75.46%, have been made public today.

The Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, signed this morning at the Treasury Building in Port Louis the official document relating to the designation of the HSC laureates, following which the names of the 45 laureates were released.

In his address on that occasion, Mr Jugnauth while congratulating all laureates on their achievement, stated that this successful crowning comes after a long journey of discipline, sacrifice and considerable efforts that they have put in, and, after having demonstrated a level of excellence, are reaping the fruits today.

The Prime Minister also acknowledged the hard work put in by all other students having sat for the HSC exams and who have secured very good results. While commending parents for providing the necessary support to students, he stressed that education starts first at home, that is, within the environment where children evolve. Mr Jugnauth wished students undertaking further studies good luck and appealed to them to that once they complete their studies, to put themselves at the service of their country and become examples in contributing to the development, progress and advancement of our country.

For her part, the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, observed that there are star students rather than star schools since it is students who make of their institutions star colleges. There are colleges which have demonstrated their capabilities to produce laureates but it is important to highlight that it is the efforts put in by children that finally show the progress of the school, she stated. The Minister wished students to work with the same fervor and enthusiasm in their further studies.

HSC 2016 Results

A total of 9 285 candidates sat for the 2016 HSC examinations that is, 9 022 for Mauritius and 263 for Rodrigues, with 2 313 students (1 323 girls and 990 boys) competing for the State Scholarships. The pass rate for girls this year stands at 78.72%, whereas for boys, the pass rate is 70.87%.

Three colleges produced laureates for the first time and they are namely: DOHA Secondary School, Pamplemousses State College, G.M.D. Atchia State College

Rodrigues College has produced four laureates for Rodrigues (two girls and two boys) under the Rodrigues Open Scholarships.

It is recalled that Government offers 68 scholarships each year based on the HSC examinations. A scholarship is also offered by the Mauritius Commercial Bank (MCB) under the MCB Foundation Scholarship.

Forty-five scholarships are offered purely on the basis of performance and merit. Twenty-four additional scholarships are allocated later on an academic, merit and social criteria basis. This list is proclaimed after a selection exercise by the Ministry of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research and the Ministry of Social Security. The list for 2016 will be made public once the exercise is completed.

In the coming days, the Ministry Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research will launch a call for applications for those eligible for the 24 scholarships.
Description

GIS - 03 Feb, 2017: The Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, expressed firm commitment to give every youth access to education so that in turn they can contribute to the development of the country. The Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, expressed firm commitment to give every youth access to education so that in turn they can contribute to the development of the country.

He was speaking yesterday at the New Treasury Building in Port Louis during the award ceremony of scholarships to five students under the learners with disabilities scheme launched in the 2016/2017 budget. The scheme provides for five students with disabilities to pursue tertiary studies locally.

Addressing the students and their parents, Prime Minister Jugnauth reaffirmed his commitment vis-a-vis the youth which he said are the future of the country. He encouraged each and every one to take advantage of the incentives provided by Government to give access to education to one and all irrespective of their disabilities or other prejudices.

The Prime Minister is upbeat that his Government will leave no stone unturned in giving a special attention to the vulnerable students so as to help them integrate mainstream society. He expressed conviction that being a disabled person is not a barrier towards achieving ones goal. On this score, he lauded the five disabled students for their dedication and perseverance in the quest for education as well as their parents for encouraging their children in this endeavour.

He appealed for a concerted effort on behalf of the population as a whole, the civil society and the NGOs to work together towards helping the Government achieve its set objectives so as to help the country prosper.

For her part, the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education

and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, congratulated the five students for their efforts and merit in obtaining the scholarships. She also enumerated the measures adopted by the Government with regards children with special educational needs and disabilities whereby she highlighted that the budget for the education sector has been increased to Rs 143 million in the 2016-2017 budget to cater for the educational needs at every segment of the society.

Learners with disabilities Scholarship scheme

The scheme, launched in budget 2016-2017, is in line with the measure enunciated in the Government Program 2015-2019 stipulating that with a view to providing higher learning opportunities for those in need of fostering greater equity in the system, Government will encourage access to tertiary education for students from low income families and students with disabilities.

Under this scheme, five scholarships are awarded to learners with disabilities with a view to providing them with higher learning opportunities and encouraging them to achieve their higher education aspirations in the fields of undergraduate courses, or professional courses; or Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) courses.

Students should not be more than 30 years old and the scholarships are opened for enrollment on either a fully-accredited fulltime, or part-time, or again a distance learning programme in a recognised tertiary education institution or local training institution in Mauritius. The scholarship covers costs of all tuition/training fees, and also a monthly stipend amounting to Rs 5,000 for Mauritian beneficiaries.

As for beneficiaries from Rodrigues and the outer islands, they would receive, in addition to university tuition fees, a monthly stipend of Rs 8,000 and a return airfare/ship travel (economy) from their place of residence to Mauritius once per academic year.
Activism Sites, Apps on the Rise Under President Trump

Marin County, Calif., Shares New Data Portal, Plans Hackathon

How About Some Data with that Morning Donut?

Amid Pittsburgh Flush and Boil Advisory, Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center Creates Water Map

Efforts to encourage political involvement through tech have begun popping up amid the polarizing early days of Donald Trumps presidency.A number of new apps and websites seek to simplify, focus and facilitate opposition to the presidents agenda. Their functions range from providing mobile alerts suggesting daily topics to bring up in phone calls with senators to aggregate job listings for tech-sector talent interested in working directly against Trump.Previously, some involved with the tech sector, specifically Code for America founder Jennifer Pahlka, have suggested technologists consider continuing to serve the federal government with work that helps the masses, politics aside. President Trumps federal chief digital officer, Gerrit Lansing, has also voiced support on Twitter for tech initiatives begun under President Obama, including the United States Digital Service and 18F Still, the tech sector has been largely wary of Trump, and that wariness is now manifesting itself in oppositional sites and apps. One such effort is phonecongress.com , which prompts users to enter addresses before choosing from a list of topics to phone Congress about. Afterward, the site returns contact information for relevant representatives along with customized scripts and counsel.Another site, dailyaction.org , provides mobile alerts via text each workday about one issue organizers determine to be urgent in the region where the respondent lives. Recipients need only tap a phone number within the text to connect to a senator or member of Congress, a process the site estimates to be brief, promising that in 90 seconds, you can conscientiously object and be done with it.To make online information available to residents, California's Marin County has a new portal for analytics and reports, with data that includes emergency medical response rates, food safety inspection results, kindergarten immunizations and more.The new portal for this information, dubbed Marin County Open Data , aims to share data with residents in order to bolster conversation and analysis, ultimately fostering discussions of potential solutions for challenges in the county, located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The portal was created by the countys department of information services and technology.Were excited about this because weve been working to enhance access to information and self-service by sharing data with the public," said Rwena Holaday, assistant director of the department, in a press release. "Were making non-personal public information broadly accessible. Were eager to provide a means to engage with the local software developer community about the most effective ways to use this information.To build on the effort, the county will host a hackathon for students on April 1, wherein participants will use Marin County Open Data to create technical solutions for local health challenges.Marin County Open Data was developed with Seattle-based Socrata . With its launch, Marin joins the open data movement, which includes neighbors such as the city and county of San Francisco, San Mateo County, and Alameda County. Marin has previously committed to better governance through technology as part of its Five-Year Business Plan.A group of government and civic tech organizations have launched a morning speaker series in Los Angeles, seeking to connect those who are involved in their respective sectors with each other  and donuts.The series, dubbed Data + Donuts, held its first event Thursday at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. This series is a joint effort between Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles, as well as volunteers from Los Angeles civic tech community. The speaker for the first event was Ted Ross, the general manager and chief information officer for the city of Los Angeles.Plans call for future speakers to address a range of topics, including big data, platform as service, open data, analytics and visualization, community engagement, civic technology, and more. The presentation portion of this event will be followed by a networking session. No date for the next iteration has been announced.Perhaps most importantly, however, the name and signage indicate that donuts are a veritable guarantee.A civic tech group in Pittsburgh this week used simple information and a basic map to convey the location of potable water distribution areas during a precautionary flush and boil advisory in the city.While there was no evidence of bacteria in the system, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority issued a precautionary flush and boil advisory Tuesday, Jan. 31, for certain areas of the city, impacting an estimated 100,000 residents. As part of the warning, 2,500-gallon water buffalo tanks were made available at 11 locations. The civic tech group  the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center  then took the locations and built a simple map for residents seeking out the water tanks. The warning has since been lifted.The Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, which is managed by the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban and Social Research in collaboration with Allegheny County and the city of Pittsburgh, is that regions first open data platform. When it was launched in 2015, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto described it as just the beginning of open data collaboration between municipalities, universities and nonprofit groups in the area.
After several months in its beta phase , the state of Washingtons Privacy Modeling Tool officially launches on Friday, Feb. 3.State officials plan to make the announcement during the Start with Privacy conference at the University of Washington, an event sponsored by the Office of Privacy and Data Protection and the universitys School of Law Technology Policy Lab. The one-day conference will focus on security, data policy and protections.Chief Privacy Officer Alex Alben toldthat the tool has undergone some refinements since its beta launch in late 2016, but is now largely ready to stand on its own.When the Web-based application launched last year, Alben said at the time that the modeling resource was not so much an end-all legal authority for agencies as it was a starting point for the larger conversation around data use and constituent protections.And while the platform may have changed here and there, his hope that agencies embrace privacy by design remain unaltered.We start people along a path of thinking about the whole lifecycle of data, when they are designing a new service that uses citizens personal information, he said.The application is built around a four-step process, which requires an organization to select its reasons for using data (i.e., law enforcement, etc.), the types of information being leveraged (i.e., Social Security, gender, etc.) and the intended uses before being given results. The results tell the user where the program might run affront of state or federal laws.The state is never going to have 50 people working in the privacy office, so how do you scale a few people and their expertise across state government? You can only do that if you put the tools in the hands of people to do their own privacy work, he said. The first step of that is to understand what the privacy laws are that relate to whatever kind of service you are trying to create.To develop what Alben said he believes to be a first-of-its-kind government application, he employed the services of law students, who compiled a database of pertinent state laws.Initial interest from other states and jurisdictions kicked off conversation about how to make the modeling platform available to those outside of Washington. To that end, Alben said the framework will eventually be open source and available to other organizations to build the privacy laws that apply to their states.
(TNS) -- Cameras in high crime areas add to village arsenalOfficials seek additional cameras from Nassau CountyThe Hempstead Village board of trustees votes Tuesday on a plan to purchase license plate reader cameras for the police department, part of the villages effort to crack down on crime, Mayor Wayne Hall Sr. said.Twelve cameras are to be installed on utility poles in seven high-crime areas across the village, police and village officials said in interviews this week. Hall said he hopes the cameras will be functional by the end of the month, ahead of the typical spike in crime during the spring and summer.Plans for these cameras have been in the works for about a year, officials said.We need to send a message to all the bad people, Hall said. Hempstead is not the place to come.Police Chief Michael McGowan said he wants to double the number of locations covered by the cameras within a year. While the department is starting with crime hot spots, he said, eventually cameras would be installed at entrances and exits to the village.Officials declined to release the exact locations where the cameras will be installed, saying criminals might avoid those areas if the information was public.Theyre going to take another road if they know where the cameras are, Deputy Mayor Luis Figueroa said.Hempstead police reported 1,120 crimes in the village in 2015, including 403 violent crimes, according to annual crime data compiled by Newsday.The cameras, made by Brewster, New York-based Elsag North America, cost about $10,000 each, according to Lt. Kevin Colgan, the police departments IT supervisor. Most locations need two cameras  one to cover each lane of traffic.Hall said the village will pay about $200,000 for the cameras and installations out of its contingency funds. Village officials said theyre hopeful theyll get about 16 additional cameras from the county.The license plate readers take pictures of vehicles and their license plates, and alert police of traffic violations such as expired registration, as well as criminal offenses such as a stolen vehicle or an incident that may have launched an Amber Alert, Colgan said.Police can also use the cameras for investigations by tracking a suspects vehicle after an incident such as a drive-by shooting, Colgan said.Its going to be a tremendous investigative tool, he said.Hempstead police already have three mobile license plate readers installed on patrol cars, as well as a ShotSpotter camera system with sensors that almost instantaneously detect where gunshots are fired.Youve got to use the technology to try and keep people safe, Hall said.Several Nassau County villages are using license plate readers, while officials in other communities are considering adding them. Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy has attributed a decrease in crime and dozens of arrests in part to its license plate readers, installed in 2015.Susan Gottehrer, director of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the organization is always concerned about surveillance technologies and hopes residents have input on the decision.Information is being accessed by the government without warrants or probable cause or even wrongdoing, she said. This is incredibly invasive.CRACKING DOWN ON CRIMEHempstead Village is the latest Long Island community to consider adding automatic license plate readers to its crime-fighting arsenal.
(TNS) -- A North Alabama nonprofit is the recipient of a $77,680 federal grant to study strategies to develop an advanced energy economy with an emphasis on coal-impacted communities.Energy Alabama, founded in 2014 by CEO Daniel Tait, will use the technical assistance grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission to identify the advanced energy industry of the coal-impacted areas and jobs within that industry. The organization will also seek workforce training resources from local community colleges and career placement to assist unemployed workers in the advanced energy sector."The project will also support stakeholder engagement to explore and harness additional careers in sectors such as aerospace, advanced manufacturing, entrepreneurship, healthcare and information technology," the nonprofit said in a statement.Energy Alabama, formerly known as the Alabama Center for Sustainable Energy, works with policy makers, public and civic organizations, governments, educational institutions, utility companies and businesses to achieve 100-percent clean, sustainable energy throughout the state. The nonprofit is a partner on West Alabama Works' $1.5 million ARC grant, which is being used to develop plans to speed the adoption of sustainable energy in the state's automotive industry.Energy Alabama will host a free Energy Benchmarking event Feb. 7 at Avion Solutions on Research Drive in Huntsville to help local religious organizations save money on their utility bills. Businesses will also be able to identify potential projects that are eligible for Energy Star certification.
The city of Miami has launched the first draft of a new website, one officials hope will be an aesthetic upgrade as well as an evolution of online municipal services it provides residents.The city is currently seeking public feedback on an alpha version of this new site, which went live for perusal in January. The new design is hip, featuring a splash of graffiti from Miamis fashionable Wynwood neighborhood as a background, plus a tropical color palette for major page elements  creating a look that is quintessential Miami. Its also a stark contrast from the current site, a utilitarian affair packed with browns, blues, text, disparate visual elements and cluttered tangles of links.These differences might seem surface level at first, but Miami Chief Innovation Officer Mike Sarasti says the redesign process is creating a unique opportunity to assess how the citys site can make local government more accessible and efficient, potentially saving time and energy for residents.A comprehensive user study is underway, and Sarasti said one of the key takeaways is that plenty of folks end up inside government buildings because they cant make sense of services on the current site. This common scenario is why user-readiness has come to the forefront of the redesign. Sarasti is meeting with departments throughout the local government to solicit feedback on how to best focus their services in the digital arena.The idea, ultimately, is that city services that once involved several steps at city hall, as well as return visits for residents who came unprepared, will soon be performed entirely online, meaning residents will only come in person for essential functions.This is our 24-hour city hall, Sarasti said of the site. Were paying attention to that, because if we dont, its a waste.To maximize efficiency for both the government and the public, a governmental culture shift must take place. Sarasti is stressing this in internal presentations about the site. Often, Sarasti will incorporate an all red slide sporting only the words "USERS FIRST," and hell flash it, almost subliminally, at his audiences.Other improvements are nice. Things like being mobile-oriented and responsive are great, but the content and the features must then be created with mobile in mind. Content creation and maintenance is an ongoing concern.Ultimately, were still going to have to write our own content, Sarasti said. Were going to have to maintain this thing. The public can sense if the city is paying someone to maintain content.While the alpha has been up for a few weeks, the plan is to continue collecting feedback, learn which design touches are favorable and which dont entirely gel with a city website. Then, a new design will be generated, one that provides all the content and functions of the previous site, as well as the improved design and user-first features that have been developed as a result of the alpha.
Pennsylvania Treasurer Joe Torsella announced on Feb. 2 a new website dedicated to publishing state financial records and promoting transparency.The new portal allows citizens to track the health of the states general fund and compare historical expenditures and information.I promised to bring transparency to our state government, and this new feature provides taxpayers with a dynamic look at how the state is spending their money," Torsella said in a press release . "Knowledge is power, and by providing access to this information, we can help taxpayers and policymakers see and understand the budget challenges the commonwealth faces."The website will be updated daily with the states most current financial information, and historical financial records will extend back to the 2014-15 fiscal year, according to the release."This is only the first phase and we will continue to add more detailed data on how the state spends taxpayer dollars," Torsella said. "My goal is to make it possible for Pennsylvanians to review the states finances as easily as they can their own."Similar portals have been launched in states like Ohio, Florida and Rhode Island. Though none of the websites seem to function exactly alike, spending and comparability between agencies and fiscal years is a common theme.The Ohio Checkbook allows constituents to dive into state spending back to 2008 in an easily digestible form, while Transparency Florida provides a wealth of spending information in less visual, data-rich form. Rhode Islands overall transparency site offers a mix of both visual and data-rich financial information.
The proposal

Legislative battle?

North Texas tragedy

(TNS)  Some lawmakers say 2017 is their best chance yet to finally pass a law preventing Texans from texting while driving  a law already in place in all but four states.On Thursday, they launched their latest effort to keep roads safe at the state Capitol before more than a dozen Texans who have lost loved ones in crashes that involved distracted drivers.This is what drinking and driving was to previous generations, said state Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, one of several co-authors of a bill to ban texting while driving, during a press conference on the issue. I dont even think or assume when I see someone swerving that its alcohol related. I immediately assume its because they are distracted, because they are on their phones.We will finish the fight. We will reach that finish line.State Rep. Eddie Lucio III, D-Brownsville, says of the bills prospects this yearWe will finish the fight, he promised. We will reach that finish line.But not all lawmakers are supportive, including Tarrant County Republican Sen. Konni Burton, who considers it unenforceable.North Richland Hills Dee Davila-Estelle was among those listening to Lucio and his allies as they laid out their legislative battle plan.She and her husband, Kevin, lost two of their three children in a deadly 2015 accident, when their familys 2011 Ford Fusion was hit from behind on Interstate-35 by a driver they were told was distracted by his phone while driving.We went from a family of five to a family of three in the blink of an eye, Davila-Estelle said. It has been so hard. Our family motto used to be live, laugh, love. Our new motto is one step, one breath, repeat.We couldnt breathe, we couldnt move. We didnt know how to function as half a family any more.She and others say its past time for lawmakers to pass a law taking cell phones out of the hands of Texas drivers.This is the fourth session in a row that state Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, has filed a bill banning texting while driving. Several House members, including Lucio and state Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, signed on as co-authors.State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, filed an identical bill in the Senate.Davila-Estelle said she will do whatever she can to help make this proposal law in Texas.When I saw my kids for the first time after the accident, which was at the funeral home, I promised them I was going to make it right so no family has to feel like this again, she said. If the bill doesnt pass this year, they better get used to my face.Ill be back at the Capitol until it does.At issue is House Bill 62 , a measure banning texting while driving known as the Alex Brown Memorial Act, which is named for a 17-year-old Terry County high school student killed in 2009 when she crashed her truck. She was texting at the time.Craddick has long said Texas needs a ban because many of the estimated 3,500 fatalities on Texas roads could be prevented.There are state laws preventing texting in school zones and keeping both bus drivers with minor passengers and drivers younger than 18 from texting while driving.Dozens of Texas cities from Arlington to San Antonio have already outlawed texting while driving. And while there are state laws preventing texting in school zones and keeping both bus drivers with minor passengers and drivers younger than 18 from texting while driving, there is no overall statewide ban.HB 62, and its companion Senate Bill 31 , would make it a criminal offense if someone uses a wireless communication device while driving to read, write or send an electronic message while operating a motor vehicle unless the vehicle is stopped.Violations would be a misdemeanor crime, punishable by a fine between $25 and $99, unless the person already has been convicted of such an offense. Multiple offenses would draw fines between $100 and $200, according to the bill.If approved by lawmakers, and signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, this measure could become law by Sept. 1, 2017.State Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, said this is the third time he has signed on as a co-author of this bill.Im getting pissed, he said. This is outrageous. Its outrageous our state cannot do something as simple as dealing with distracted drivers.Our roads are already dangerous enough.Under the bill, Texas motorists would still be able to talk on the phone while driving, if motorists have a hands-free device that only requires them to briefly touch the phone or car to begin or end a call.It also would not be a violation for a Texas motorist to summon emergency help, report illegal activity, read a text a driver reasonably believed concerned an emergency or communicate with a dispatcher while behind the wheel.Critics say this isnt the best way to address texting while driving. They say such a proposal would be hard to enforce  and would encroach on individual liberties.Texas is among four states  as well as Arizona, Missouri and Montana  that dont have statewide bans on texting while driving, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures Statistics show 14 percent, or 483, of the 3,534 deaths from traffic crashes in Texas in 2014 involved a distracted driver.In Fort Worth, distracted driving factored in to 14, or 16.45 percent, of the citys 85 fatalities, in 2015, records show.We must stop these tragedies from occurring, said Jennifer Smith, executive director of the StopDistractions.org advocacy group. Its no longer a question of whether this will happen to someone you love. Its when, if it hasnt happened already.Last session, Sen. Burton, of Colleyville, was among those preventing a bill banning texting while driving from reaching the Senate floor for debate.Concerns ranged from the bill violating the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, to the micromanagement of Texas adults. She and others refused to green light the bill in 2015.Burton said this week that she still doesnt support a measure.I continue to be against any bill that bans texting while driving, Burton said this week. It would be a wholly unenforceable law because an officer cannot reliably distinguish between a person texting on their phone or simply looking at a map, etc.However, I am for what Texas current has on the books  these laws already provide police ample reason to pull a driver over based on observable actions.Texting while driving bans have been proposed through the years and one passed the Legislature in 2011. But then-Gov. Rick Perry vetoed the proposal, saying it was a way to micromanage the behavior of adults.Davila-Estelle said something must be done to prevent distracted drivers from claiming more lives in Texas.She and her family  husband Kevin and their three children, Alex, 23, Gabbi, 19, and Zac, 18  were all last together Dec. 21, 2015, when they went to The Texas Motor Speedway to see Christmas lights.As they headed home, they found themselves in a situation many North Texans have experienced: stuck in a traffic jam on Interstate-35 near Heritage Trace.We were just having a good time, listening to Christmas music, laughing, Davila-Estelle said. All of a sudden, it was like an 18-wheeler was pushing us forward.I couldnt breathe, she said. It was just out-of-control chaos. I didnt understand what was going on and then everything went black.When she woke up  after her familys vehicle was propelled about 380 feet, from the outside lane to the inside lane, by a vehicle she was told had been traveling at least 65 mph  she heard her youngest son say he was ok.She saw her daughter laying face down between the driver and passenger seat and couldnt see her oldest son.When she heard an emergency responder say that someone in the back of the car was DOA, she said she started screaming.In the accident, Davila-Estelle fractured every rib in her body. Her husband cracked his back and broke ribs. And her youngest son, who was the farthest away from the impact, had various bumps and bruises.Their physical injuries healed.But the family will never get over the loss of the two oldest children, Alex and Gabbi.After a year, it didnt get any better, Davila-Estelle said. It got worse because we realized theyre not coming back.My daughter was my best friend. Ill never see her grow up, or get married or have children, she said. My son will never grow up and have a child.Every day I pray that (a plan to outlaw texting while driving) becomes a law.
(TNS)  A former U.S. Attorney who made a name for himself by going after cyber criminals from his office in Pittsburgh said it's time to stop debating who hacked the 2016 election  a swipe at President Donald J. Trump's hesitance to agree it was Russia  and start talking about prevention.David Hickton, who stepped down from his post as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania less than week after the November election, moderated a panel on Russian hacking in his new role as head of the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security.It does not help us for the commander in chief to question the attribution, Hickton said, referring to U.S. intelligence agencies attributing the hacking to the Russian government. We can do this, and we've proven it. ... What else could we do?The election was marked by Democratic National Committee emails that were hacked and leaked and accusations of meddling by high levels of the Russian government. Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher opened the discussion by saying the hacking posed questions about the integrity of the political process and about what is true.Those questions are still with us today, and it's the catalyst of today's panel, Gallagher said.Thursday's discussion was the first event held by the institute. More than 400 people registered for the talk held in the Teplitz Memorial Moot Courtroom at Pitt's School of Law.Hickton was joined by Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and security services expert; Ellen Nakashima, national security reporter for The Washington Post; Luke Dembosky, a former deputy assistant attorney general for national security and former Department of Justice representative at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and now a cyber security attorney in Washington; and Keith Mularski, supervisory special agent with the FBI in Pittsburgh and a lead investigator of several cyber crimes.Hickton, a former federal prosecutor who brought an indictment against five Chinese People's Liberation Army officials for commercial espionage attacks against U.S. Steel, Alcoa, Westinghouse and other businesses, said it is important to have consequences for hackers. The People's Liberation Army indictment caused a significant drop in commercial espionage attacks on the U.S., Mularski said.A similar indictment against those who ordered the DNC hack and meddled in the election might not be possible, the panel said.An indictment on whoever hacked the DNC, who did this, I'd love it see it, Nakashima said. When are you going to do it?Soldatov said proving who performed or directed the attack could be impossible. The Russian government relies on informal actors, non-governmental officials, to carry out hacking attacks. It distances itself from the attacks and allows the attacks to happen outside the slow wheels of the Russian bureaucracy.That makes the situation extremely hard, and you cannot actually see the whole picture, Soldatov said. It's a problem of attribution.The panel seemed to agree the current sanctions on Russia imposed by President Barack Obama haven't stemmed cyber attacks by the country. Hickton, however, did not think the U.S. should throw out the sanctions.What are you going to do as the Fourth Estate if our president drops the sanctions, Hickton asked Nakashima.We're going to report the hell out of it, Nakashima replied.The panelists stopped short of saying the United States is in a cyber war with Russia. Nakashima said the U.S. is in a constant state of cyber aggression with criminals. Dembosky said cyber attacks could pave the way to war through inroads into a country's infrastructure or financial system.Mularski said war is not the right word; categorizing cyber attacks as war doesn't do either justice. Cyber attacks could be even more frightening, he said.
Kevin Magnussen thinks the 2017 rules will be good for formula one -- and for him.

The Danish driver, who has switched from Renault to the small Ferrari-linked American team Haas, argues that the bigger tyres and more downforce is exactly what the sport needed.

"It's great," he told the Danish newspaper BT.

"I love the idea that in 2017 we are likely to drive the fastest formula one cars ever," Magnussen, 24, said.

"And I think the new regulations were needed," he explained. "We need tyres that are more durable. And if the cars have more grip, it means we can push them more.

"It will fit well to my driving style. I have had a tendency to push the cars we've had in recent years too much, and it has usually only caused problems.

"The cars will fit my aggressive style much better," Magnussen said.

Magnussen was speaking after spending time getting to know his new team, after previously having worked for the much bigger outfits McLaren and Renault.

"It is a group of nice people, and it's very cool to get to know them in such a short time. It's only been possible because it's a small team," he said.

He has visited Haas' Banbury setup in the UK, the team's main headquarters in North Carolina (USA), and even stopped in at team partner Ferrari's fabled Maranello base.

"It was a special experience to go and see it (Maranello)," said Magnussen. "But we are of course Haas and we improve our car and get the best out of our car ourselves.

"The new car will be fast," he added, "but how fast compared to the other teams is a little hard to guess. But I'm pretty sure that all the cars will be much faster this year.

"I've prepared myself as best I can and trained hard. I don't feel that I could have done more."

(GMM)
Grab 4 Indonesia covers a range of programs that aim to provide all Indonesians an opportunity to move into the digital economy, including opening a Grab R&D center in Jakarta to develop technology innovations for the Indonesian market; launching a social impact fund to invest in companies focused on deepening financial inclusion; and increasing access to mobile payments and financing opportunities across the country.

Grab, the leading ride-hailing platform in Southeast Asia, launched its Grab 4 Indonesia 2020 master plan, endorsed by Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal (BKPM), the Government of Indonesias Investment Coordinating Board. Under the plan, Grab will invest US$700 million in Indonesia over the next four years to support Indonesias goal of becoming Southeast Asias largest digital economy by 2020.

The Grab 4 Indonesia 2020 master plan follows a strong year of growth in Indonesia for Grab, with its GrabCar and GrabBike businesses each growing more than 600% over the course of 2016. Following its 2016 expansion to several new cities, Grab now brings the convenience and affordability of its multi-modal services to more cities in Indonesia than any of its competitors, including Jakarta, Bali, Bandung, Padang, Makassar, Medan, Surabaya and Yogyakarta. In addition, Grab continues to see highly active user engagement and stickiness across its multi-service platform, with one in three of Grabs Indonesian passengers using more than one Grab service.

Grabs driver partners were a key pillar of the companys robust growth. Grab drivers earn 40-70% more per hour than the average transport or delivery driver in Indonesia, and Grab has generated more than US$260 million of income for its driver partners in Indonesia.

Grabs master plan for Indonesia has three major pillars:

Create new information technology jobs and upskill Indonesias human capital. Grab will open an R&D center in Jakarta and target hiring 150 engineers over the next two years. The R&D centre will focus on developing innovations specific to Indonesia by building on the success of Grabs existing localized solutions, including algorithms to address new road regulations in Jakarta and GrabHitch (Nebeng), a bike-pooling service that caters to nearly 1.4 million commuters in greater Jakarta. To equip Indonesian engineers with globally competitive skills, Grab will provide training opportunities at its R&D centers in Singapore, Beijing and Seattle. Fresh graduates with curious minds and a passion to improve lives in Indonesia are welcome to apply, and Grab will select potential engineers through on-campus interviews and partnerships with leading state and engineering universities.

Invest in technopreneurship for social good. Grab will start the Grab 4 Indonesia social impact investment fund to finance companies focused on deepening financial inclusion across all cities and income levels in Indonesia. Grab will invest up to US$100 million in startups or aspiring technopreneurs to grow the next wave of Indonesian companies with social aspirations to bring more Indonesians into the digital economy. The fund will focus on the mobile and financial services industries, with a particular emphasis on serving smaller cities and communities who have yet to benefit from the digital economy. The Grab 4 Indonesia social impact investment fund will help selected startups accelerate their products to market with both capital investment and technical assistance from Grab. In support of the 1,000 Digital Startups National Movement initiated by the Government of Indonesia, Grab will also organize a series of entrepreneurship programs in collaboration with selected partners including educational institutions and entrepreneurship organisations. This will include seminars for aspiring technopreneurs and mentorship from Grab executives on developing sustainable business plans with social purpose.

Expand access to mobile payments and financing opportunities. Grab will continue to launch and enhance mobile services to increase Indonesians access to mobile payments and financing opportunities. Grab will expand its mobile payment solutions in Indonesia through GrabPay Credits, its cashless stored value option, and existing partnerships with Mandiri and their e-Cash solution, while also continuing to develop a shared e-money payments platform with Lippo Group and Nobu Bank to enable all Indonesians to use Grab to pay for services and goods at Lippos retail partners. In addition, Grab will provide its driver partners with access to more financing opportunities to purchase their own smartphones and automotive vehicles, giving them the opportunity to build sustainable livelihoods and become micro-entrepreneurs. Grab will continue to work with its banking partners, including Nobu Bank, to extend financing opportunities to all Indonesian consumers.

Indonesia is Grabs largest market in Southeast Asia. Grab will continue to expand to more cities in Indonesia, grow its transport services, and invest in GrabPay as a mobile payments platform. Since its launch in 2012, Grab has evolved from a simple app for booking a taxi into the largest ground transportation app in Southeast Asia. To date, the company has more than 630,000 drivers and 33 million downloads across the region.
The US rig count has been rising , while OPEC seems unfazed by the resurgence in North American shale activity and is trying to convince the market (and itself) and prove that it would be mostly adhering to the promise to curtail supply in an effort to boost prices and bring markets back to balance. In the next couple of months, official production figures will point to who's winning this round of the oil wars.

Its been a month now that investors and analysts have been closely watching two main drivers for oil prices: how OPEC is doing with the supply-cut deal, and how US shale is responding to fifty-plus-dollar oil with rebounding drilling activity. Those two main factors are largely neutralizing each other, and are putting a floor and a cap to a price range of between $50 and $60.

The Oil War Is Only Just Getting Started

This would be the short-term game between low-cost producers and higher-cost producers.

In the longer run, the latest energy outlook by supermajor BP points to another looming battle for market share, where low-cost producers may try to boost market shares before oil demand peaks.

BPs Energy Outlook 2017 estimates that there is an abundance of oil resources, and known resources today dwarf the worlds likely consumption of oil out to 2050 and beyond.

In a world where theres an abundance of potential oil reserves and supply, what we may see is low-cost producers producing ever-increasing amounts of that oil and higher-cost producers getting gradually crowded out, Spencer Dale, BP group chief economist said.

In BPs definition of low-cost producers, the majority of the lowest-cost resources sit in large, conventional onshore oilfields, particularly in the Middle East and Russia.

Although this view that low-cost producers would try to seize more market share comes from an oil major with significant interests in Russia and Iraq, for example, BP may not be wrong in predicting that the abundance of oil resources would prompt the lowest-cost producers to pump the most out of low-cost barrels before the world starts to unwind from too much reliance on oil.

Oil demand growth is expected to slow down in the years to come. BP pegs the cumulative oil demand until 2035 at around 700 billion barrels, significantly less than recoverable oil in the Middle East alone.

Middle East OPEC production growth would account for all OPEC output growth by 2035, BP reckons, noting that other OPEC production typically has a higher cost base and its market share would drop.

The US liquids production is expected to rise by 4 million bpd to 19 million bpd by 2035, with growth mostly in the first half of the period, driven by tight oil and NGL output.

So, both OPECs Middle East members and the US are seen increasing oil and liquids production in the next two decades.

However, OPECespecially Saudi Arabiahas the recent bitter experience of its pump-at-will policy for market share backfiring on its economy when oil prices crashed.

Another market-share war would involve too many unknowns, including supply-demand basics, leaner and meaner non-OPEC producers, oil price effects on oil-revenue-dependent economies, or rationale for investments in higher-cost areas.

OPECs decision to deliberately cut supply and abandon the strategy of pursuing market share at all costs is currently benefiting the cartels competitor, US shale.

Commenting on OPECs current and future relevance and influence on the oil markets, Wood Mackenzie said in an analysis last week:

The group may still be able to control oil prices to a limited degree, but the benefits of that control will accrue to parties outside the cartel. If OPEC remains a functional entity by the end of 2017, its greatest hits will surely be in the past.

Five or ten years from now, a possible market share oil war would take place on a totally different battleground, and some regiments or battalions may lack essential armory to wage such war.

Tsvetana Paraskova is a writer for the US-based Divergente LLC consulting firm with more than a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews.

Link to original article: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Oil-War-Is-Only-Just-Getting-Started.html
She cited the same nonexistent attack in separate interviews with two other outlets  Cosmopolitan magazine and TMZ.
Members of the Supreme Courts conservative majority are questioning the continued use of affirmative action in higher education. In lengthy arguments Monday, the justices wrestled with persistent, difficult questions of race. The justices heard from six different lawyers in challenges to policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard. Those policies consider race among many factors in evaluating applications for admission. One conservative justice likened affirmative action to giving some college applicants a head start in a footrace. But a liberal justice said universities are the pipelines to leadership in our society and suggested that without affirmative action minority enrollment will drop.
I had resolved I'd take a break from writing about the Trump administration today, but who was I trying to kid? It's impossible.

I mean, when a top adviser to President Donald Trump, the ubiquitous Kellyanne Conway, fabricates a terrorist "massacre" to justify the Muslim travel ban, what's to be done?

This, of course, is the same Kellyanne who added the term "alternative facts" to our national vocabulary.

I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," Conway said in an MSNBC interview last night.

Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered.

This came as quite a surprise to the Bowling Green (Ky.) Daily News, which scrambled to publish a story this morning  and a good one.

"In a nationally televised interview Thursday, presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway referenced a nonexistent terrorist 'massacre' in Bowling Green that 'didn't get covered' in an effort to defend President Donald Trump's travel ban involving seven majority-Muslim countries," Daniel Pike, the paper's managing editor, reported.

Pike recounted the real facts: how two Iraqi men were resettled in Bowling Green in 2009 through the refugee program; how they were caught trying to funnel guns and money to terrorists in Iraq; how it was learned they had been involved in attacks against American troops in Iraq; how they were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison  one for life and the other 40 years.

"Both men had been involved in operations against American troops in Iraq before coming to the United States, but no attack of any type was carried out in Bowling Green," Pike wrote.

As opposed to not being covered, as Conway said, all this "received extensive coverage by local and state media outlets  including, to date, nearly 100 stories published by the Daily News  and drew national attention," Pike wrote.

Incredibly, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) reinforced Conway's alternative facts, referring in a separate interview to the attempted bombing in Bowling Green, where I live. There was no attempted bombing in Bowling Green.

The question is whether this false belief is shared by Trump and whether it informed, or misinformed, his decision to impose a temporary ban on refugees entering the country  which, by the way, is not what then-President Obama did in 2011. He ordered additional vetting of refugees from Iraq, which slowed entry from that country, but at no time was entry halted.

We know we have a president who makes up his own reality, and then accuses the media of being dishonest when it reports the truth. We know Conway is a proponent of alternative facts.

But to invent a "massacre" is just astounding. Heaven help us. You can't take a day off from this stuff.

Update: Conway says she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists." If that's true, she was still wrong that the story wasn't covered and wrong about the Obama policy.
For 16-year-old Trey Moore, Jan. 20 is a day he will never forget. Moore, who has been interested in politics since he was small, had attended the inauguration of the United States 45th president, Donald Trump.

The moment he was sworn in, thats probably the most memorable to me, Moore said of Trump.

An 11th-grader who is home-schooled with dual enrollment in classes through Guilford Technical Community College, Moore became active in politics in the 2012 election as a 12-year-old volunteer at the Guilford County Republican Partys headquarters. In 2014, he volunteered for Mark Walker as he campaigned for a seat in Congress, and Moore volunteered this past year to held with Trumps presidential campaign an again for Walker, who was running for re-election to the 6th Congressional District seat.

Im concerned about the future of the U.S., Moore said. I wanted a person elected who would bring Christian values back to Washington.

Moores maturity and affinity for politics are evident in the way he carries himself and confidently shares his views.

I believe Trump is going to keep his campaign promise and make America great again, he said.

Moore applied to attend the inauguration through a lottery system on Walkers website and learned toward the end of December that he had been chosen to receive three free tickets.

Moore and his parents, Jerry and Lisa Moore, arrived in Washington the Thursday before the inauguration and attended an open house that Walker hosted.

We had the opportunity to personally thank him for our tickets, Moore said. I am very thankful to Congressman Walker for making it possible for me and my parents to attend the inauguration.

The family stayed in College Park, Md., and arose about 4:30 a.m. Friday, dressed for the chilly, damp weather and began their trek to the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

Our Uber driver got us within a mile, and we walked the rest of the way, Moore said.

The familys tickets were for an assigned section in the courtyard area.

We could see quite a bit, and they had speakers and video boards, Moore said. I was very excited to be there.

The weather was chilly, and it sprinkled rain a few times, but not enough to dampen Moores mood.

The whole experience was neat all the way around, he said.

After the inauguration, Moore and his parents got a front-row spot on Pennsylvania Avenue to view the inaugural parade.

The neatest moment was seeing the president drive by, wave and give the thumbs up, Moore said. It was the best parade Ive ever been to, and I also really enjoyed the military bands.

Before heading home, Moore visited an aviation museum in College Park.

Flying is one of his favorite pastimes. Moore, who took his first flying lesson when he was 11, has soloed and holds a student pilot certificate.

He plans to obtain his private pilot license when he turns 17 in March. He and his family recently purchased a small, four-seater airplane, an Aero Commander Lark, which Moore keeps at Piedmont Triad International Airport and flies once or twice a week.

I used to think I wanted to be an astronaut, but now I want to be an airline pilot, he said. I love the feeling of flying.

Moore also enjoys playing the fiddle and church activities, but no matter how busy he gets, he said, he sees himself always volunteering in politics.

If the airline industry ever tanked, I might consider becoming a politician, he said with a laugh.
Virginia Causey was a senior at Greensboro High School in 1940 when her mother died. Her father moved to Raleigh, but she stayed with an aunt and uncle until she graduated. She worked with Blue Bell/Globe Manufacturing Company, and later transferred with the company to New York City.

Then came Dec. 7, 1941.

Virginias brother would eventually join the Navy, and her sister, Mary, would marry a soldier. Virginia was already in love with a Greensboro City employee, Jim Cudworth.

Marriage came up early in our three-year courtship, she recalls. We knew we were meant for each other, but also knew he would be leaving for the service. Both his brothers joined the Marine Corps. Jim and I thought we should wait until after the war to marry.

Jim Cudworth enlisted in the Army Air Forces as an aviation cadet in 1942 and was commissioned as a B-17 bombardier in January 1943. On March 9, 1943, the waiting to marry ended. Virginia Causey left Greensboro for Ephrata, Wash.  it was her first train ride. Six days later, she became Mrs. Jim Cudworth.

A honeymoon furlough was scheduled for June 1943, but on May 20, the new couple received a wire  all furloughs were canceled.

Jim and his B-17 crew were off to England for duty with the 8th Air Force. He promised his new bride he would be home for Christmas.

I should have asked him WHICH Christmas he was talking about! Virginia added.

Jims B-17 was one of 30 U.S. aircraft shot down over Bremen, Germany, on Oct. 8, 1943. He was on his 10th mission. Wounded in the eye by enemy anti-aircraft fire and captured, Cudworth spent the rest of the war as a POW. After the war, he elected not to have the flak removed for fear his vision would be lost.

After a week in a German interrogation center, Jim was imprisoned in Stalag Luft III, made infamous by The Great Escape. He wrote his wife, I am allowed a 10-pound package and $50 in cash each 60 days  please send dried fruit and oatmeal. Give the $50 to the Red Cross, they are doing a great job for us.

I sent him packages every two months, although I knew he wasnt getting all of them, Cudworth recalls. She kept a record of each package. One list reads: Shorts, socks, tooth powder and paste, candies, playing cards, Gillette blades, saccharin, gums, coffee and soap.

It didnt bother me that he wasnt receiving all of them, she says. I just hoped and prayed that some of them would reach him, especially the package he requested with dried dates, peaches, apples, books and Lucky Strikes. I caught streetcars, but nearly walked my legs off, finding everything he needed  there were no stores that carried everything like we have now.

Notwithstanding that Jim was a prisoner of war, the Army Air Forces saw to it that he was awarded his first Air Medal. Virginia accepted the award at Basic Training Command #10 in Greensboro.

At a later date, she was picked up at her home by Army personnel and taken to Drill Field #5, BTC #10, where she reviewed the troops and accepted her husbands cluster device, representing a subsequent Air Medal.

Jim was eventually moved by railcar and force-marches  under frigid and inhumane conditions  to severely overcrowded Stalag VII-A, near Moosburg.

When liberated by Gen. George S. Patton, our troops brought in the largest American flag I had ever seen. I stood so close to Patton that our arms brushed each other, Jim told his wife.

Post-war, the Cudworth family resumed a more normal life. He returned to his job with the City of Greensboro. She worked with A. M. Pullen & Co. They were members of Muirs Chapel Methodist Church and among the early volunteers to serve at Potters House. They raised two sons, James Richard Dick Cudworth and Garry Wayne Cudworth.

The Cudworths interest in assisting other former prisoners of war led them to form the Greensboro Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoners of War Association. Jim served several terms as Greensboro commander, and three years as state commander.

Jim retired from the City of Greensboro after 35 years of service. He died Sept. 16, 2008, at 87. He and Virginia, now 94, were married 65 years.

Virginia remains active in the Greensboro Chapter of the American Ex-Prisoner of War Association. She deflects all credit for supporting her POW husband.

My mother-in-law did more, she said. She wrote each of her three sons a letter every Thursday they were away in the war.
GREENSBORO  Darla Lee is determined to prove her brother is innocent.

In 2012, Guilford County sheriffs deputies arrested Jeremy Daniel Lee, then 21, on charges hed had a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Later that year, he entered an Alford plea in the case, maintaining his innocence but accepting that the prosecution had enough evidence for a conviction.

Darla Lee of Greensboro hopes a symposium she organized for today  the culmination of years of fighting for her brother  will help others in such situations. It will feature a panel of representatives from the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, Duke Law Center for Criminal Justice and exonerated former inmate Howard Dudley.

This has been a long, hard-fought battle, she said. This is something weve never done before. Its one of those one-time things.

Darla Lee and other organizers hope the symposium will inform people about what a conviction does to a persons reputation, how it affects their credit and what it does to their career. The Guilford College Adult Student Government Association, a sponsor for the event, wants people to come away from the symposium with an understanding of the difficulty in getting a conviction overturned and the time it takes to get a record expunged.

In Jeremy Lees case, the Innocence Project told him his best hope is that the victim retracts her statements, he said.

In an interview with the News and Record earlier this week, Lee said he had known the girl hes accused of raping since she was 12. They worked together as actors at Woods of Terror.

She was just a friendly girl, he said.

Deputies accused him of having sex with the girl on four dates, arrest warrants show.

Court documents include testimony from the victim and witnesses and a handwritten confession.

Assistant Public Defender David Clark said all that taken together led him to advise Lee to take a plea deal on lesser charges. Clark would only speak with the newspaper after receiving written permission to do so from Lee.

They said seven to 10 years basically is the best you could get, Lee said.

If he went to trial and lost, the best sentence he might hope for was 40 years.

Its important for me to get the client to understand how deep the water is, Clark said. So when they sign the plea agreement, they are content with it.

He said clients arent necessarily happy about the outcome.

On July 17, 2012, Lee signed a plea agreement on charges of attempted statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with a child. A judge sentenced him to between seven years, 10 months and 10 years, two months in prison.

Now 27, Lee is housed at the Harnett Correctional Institute, about 90 minutes southeast of Greensboro on U.S. 421. He is scheduled for release on Nov. 5, 2019.

Darla Lee thinks the plea agreement was not in her brothers best interests.

In 2015, she filed a motion in Superior Court to overturn the conviction, stating that Jeremy Lee suffered from ineffective counsel and was not aware of the consequences of the plea agreement.

The Lees contend that the defense would have been helped if prosecutors had collected DNA evidence, which they didnt do.

Superior Court Judge Patrice Hinnant denied the motion.

These are the types of experiences Darla Lee hopes to share at the symposium, along with how to seek help from places such as the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence.

Chris Mumma, executive director of the Durham-based center, said shell discuss the centers work and state policy reforms. The center, which coordinates the Innocence Projects at several North Carolina law schools, investigates claims of innocence by unrepresented inmates.

Another speaker, 60-year-old Howard Dudley of Kinston, spent more than 24 years in prison for a crime that never happened. He was wrongly convicted of raping his 8-year-old daughter. After being exonerated, Dudley was released nearly a year ago, in March 2016.

In overturning the conviction, a Superior Court judge said Dudleys daughter lied in testimony. The judge said Dudley never received records showing his daughters inconsistent versions of the rape. The judge also said his attorney was ill-prepared and never spoke with witnesses.

Faith kept him sane, Dudley said.

I kept my faith alive, he said. I could be bitter, but Im not bitter.

In recent years, North Carolina has been proactive in preventing wrongful convictions, said Howard Neumann, Guilfords chief assistant district attorney.

He said the state has stringent laws on discovery, which is compulsory disclosure. It has implemented laws that require police investigators to record confessions. In 2007, it passed the Eyewitness Identification Act, which gives specific procedures for holding police lineups.

Neumann said wrongful convictions are always a concern because you dont want to convict somebody of a crime they didnt commit.

We seem to be proactive in trying to put additional safeguards into the system to prevent wrongful convictions, he said.

Dudleys conviction happened long before many of the safeguards were put in place. He said hes concerned with the people who passed judgment on him.

When youre a judge or a jury, youve got a life in your hand, he said. I want people to know that there are innocent people locked up. I want them to know that there are people like Howard Dudley.
GREENSBORO  People owe the city of Greensboro $2.7 million in unpaid parking tickets, a reality thats true in a lot of other North Carolina cities.

Thats why the City Council wants the state Division of Motor Vehicles to collect any unpaid fees from traffic ticket scofflaws before issuing their annual vehicle registrations.

The issue is one of the items council members discussed Thursday with state House and Senate members who represent Guilford County.

The meeting is an annual get-together where local leaders lobby legislators about laws they hope to get passed. The City Council hasnt approved its final legislative agenda, opting this year to talk it over with members of the local delegation first.

The two sets of leaders also discussed a new law impacting who can see footage from the cameras police officers wear.

Until last year, Greensboro was one of the few cities in the state with a policy on the matter. It let the city manager decide who could view such footage and how much they could see.

But the states law, co-sponsored by local Republican Rep. John Faircloth, made access to such footage more restrictive. A person who appears in the video can ask a law enforcement agency to view the recording. But the agency can say no, citing concerns about safety, reputation or an ongoing investigation. If that happens, then a judge would decide whether the person can watch.

Faircloth, who attended the meeting, said he thinks the law offers a practical solution to the issue, but said he is open to discussion on changing parts of it.

State Sen. Gladys Robinson, a Democrat from Greensboro, said shes heard from many of her constituents that the law doesnt offer enough transparency for regular citizens.

This is a very volatile situation, she said.

The group didnt have substantial discussion on legislative decisions with substantial impact on Greensboro: House Bill 2, the so-called bathroom bill, and City Council redistricting.

The city is suing over the redistricting changes. The bench trial starts Monday in U.S. Middle District Court in Greensboro.
We are a nation of immigrants ... but we are a nation of laws. ... Our nation is rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. ... Illegal immigrants take jobs from citizens or legal immigrants, they impose burdens on our taxpayers. ... That is why we are doubling the number of border guards, deporting more illegal immigrants than ever before, cracking down on illegal hiring, barring benefits to illegal aliens, and we will do more to speed the deportation of illegal immigrants arrest for crimes. ... It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws that has occurred in the last few years ... and we must do more to stop it.
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DERBY  As Kasia Konefal prepared for the celebration that would follow her daughters first communion, she realized she was tired of the usual food options available.

I was thinking of the food I wanted and it hit me: I think I would really like to open my own restaurant, Konefal said. I like to cook and usually cater all of our family parties. I finally got the courage to say out loud that this is what I want to do.

For years, Konefals husband had encouraged her to open her own business, and this realization was the push she needed. As a Polish family, Konefal said opening a Polish restaurant was the perfect idea.

And after living in Derby nearly 10 years, Konefal said the area felt like home to her.

It is also home to many other members of the Polish community. According to the last U.S. Census estimates, from the 2006-2010 American Community Survey, more than 10 percent of the nearly 13,000 people who call Derby home identified as Polish. In neighboring Ansonia and Shelton, another nearly 7,000 people identified as Polish.

In fact, their presence has become even more apparent in the Valley in the last six months, with the September opening of Warszawa Restaurant in Ansonia preceding the opening of Konefals Kasia Eatery & Catering at 143 Main St. in Derby.

Konefal said when planning her restaurant she wanted a small place that had dine-in, take-out and catering options. As the main chef, Konefal said she is able to experiment with the foods she makes. She finds inspiration in other dishes she doesnt typically make and adds her own flair to the dish.

The food available at the restaurant is made fresh, in house every day by Konefal and her aunt.

For the time being, Konefal said business is not busy enough where a large staff is necessary. But this can also be attributed to the cafeteria-style setting of the restaurant.

Its a cozy atmosphere, Konefal said. All the food is set out in a buffet-style steam table thats covered. Everybody can see what is there and pick from what they want.

Customers are able to browse the food available to them, fill a plate, pay for the meal and enjoy it in the dining area provided.

Though customers can expect to see freshly made pierogies and stuffed cabbage at the restaurant, Konefal said there are other options. We cater to everybody, she said. Its not just Polish food. Theres some Italian (food)  a little bit of everything.

Konefal said the most popular item during the week is usually the chicken cutlet. But she said the stuffed cabbage is a big seller, as well.

Looking ahead, Konefal said she would like to make her own products to sell to customers and she would like to expand. She said she likes the restaurants current location, and directly above her restaurant is a large hall that Konefal said she would love to someday take over.

And Konefal had some words of encouragement for those on the fence about whether to give the place a try.

It doesnt hurt to try new things, Konefal said. Its not just stuffed cabbage and sauerkraut and pierogies. If you come down and see the variety of foods we have in our steam table case, Im sure you will find something you might just love.
The legal marijuana industry continues to wait to see what direction President Donald Trump will take with legal marijuana. His position on the issue, based on his past statements, remains unclear.

However, his nomination of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general has sent a clear signal to the legalized marijuana community that there could be troubled times ahead. Sessions is a long-time opponent to the legal cannabis movement.

Related: The Many Ways the Cannabis Industry Lacks Traditional Marketing Expertise

This month, during his nomination process with the United States Senate, everyone had their first chance to read Sessions own words on the issue. After his nomination hearing, he wrote responses to specific questions from senators.

Even so, much remains open to interpretation, but Sessions made it clear that he is not ruling out prosecuting people who violate federal law, even if they are in compliance with their states laws in regard to medical marijuana.

Medical Marijuana Users

In response to a question asking if he would consider arresting and prosecuting patients who follow their state medical marijuana laws, Sessions wrote:

I will not commit to never enforcing federal law. Whether an arrest and investigation of an individual who may be violating the law is appropriate is a determination made in individual cases based on the sometimes unique circumstances surrounding those cases, as well as the resources available at the time.

During his confirmation hearing, Sessions did say that taking such action is absolutely a problem of resources given limited federal funds. Medical marijuana is now legal in 28 states and the District of Columbia.

Medical Marijuana Businesses

In 2014, Congress approved language in an appropriations bill that prohibits the Drug Enforcement Agency from raiding medical marijuana dispensaries that are compliant with state marijuana laws. In a recent court case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of Justice is prohibited from using federal funds to prosecute businesses who operate within state laws regarding medical marijuana.

Asked if he agreed with this, Sessions said he was not familiar how other courts have interpreted the 9th Circuits ruling or the congressional prohibition. He continued, As an emerging issue, that is one that will need to be closely evaluated in light of all relevant law and facts. If I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as Attorney General, I will conduct such a review. Of course, medical marijuana use is a small part of the growing commercial marijuana industry.

Cole Memo

The Cole Memo, written in 2013, outlines the Department of Justices approach on marijuana laws. Essentially, the memo makes it clear that while marijuana is illegal at the federal level, the U.S. government will rely on states where cannabis is legal to enact tough laws. As long as states regulate the industry and enforce laws, the department would not challenge the state marijuana laws.

Asked if he agreed with the memo, Sessions wrote:

While I am generally familiar with the Cole memorandum, I am not privy to any internal Department of Justice data regarding the effectiveness of the policies contained within that memorandum. If I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as Attorney General, I will certainly review and evaluate those policies, including the original justifications for the memorandum, as well as any relevant data and how circumstances may have changed or how they may change in the future.

"Good people dont smoke marijuana."

Sessions famously -- or infamously, depending on your point of view -- said that good people dont smoke marijuana during a hearing on the impact of state marijuana legalization laws. Asked about that quote, Sessions wrote:

My words have been grossly mischaracterized and taken out of contextI was discussing the value of treating people for using dangerous and illegal drugs like marijuana, and the context in which treatment is successful.

Related: How Cannabis Ecommerce Challenges Are Driving Web Innovation

In the quote provided by Sessions himself, he does not mention treatment, but instead offers the opinion that the drug prevention movement was really so positive. In that same testimony, Sessions said the Just Say No program started by Nancy Reagan in the 1980s got many kids not to try drugs.

All of Sessions comments during that hearing can be seen on YouTube. Sessions questions and comments begin around the 34:30 mark. Among other comments, Sessions said he believes one of President Barack Obamas great failures was being lax on marijuana.

Follow dispensaries.com on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest cannabis news.

Related:

Jeff Sessions Offers Cannabis Industry No Reassurance

4 Cannabis Business Ideas from the Frontier of the Legal Weed Industry

Luxury 'Bong' Maker Faces Unique Trademark Infringement Dilemma



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
There's a growing popularity among startups for building large internal teams to handle everything from product quality assurance to complex advertising analytics. But not at Tinsli. CEO Zain Dhanani told me that his policy is strict adherence to intense specialization, and he said that that policy has contributed significantly to his success in multiple -- crowded -- industries.

Related: 10 Ways Competition Helps You Win in Business

Before founding Tinsli, an Atlanta-based investment and advisory firm, Dhanani built a ecommerce startup into a multi-million dollar company in just three years without any outside funding. The company was acquired in 2015, and while such a growth rate is unheard of, even among VC-funded companies, Dhanani said he is seeing similar results with the companies he and his team work with at Tinsli.

According to him, the key to taking market share from any competitor, large or small, is perfect clarity on a companys unique specialty and an unshakable dedication to focusing on that specialty.

Todays tech companies are severely overactive, yet underdeveloped, Dhanani said. The easy access to venture capital results in startups doing a lot, at the expense of doing nothing well, and nothing in particular. This dynamic creates a company culture of multifaceted mediocrity instead of singular excellence.

Dhanani listed three solutions to simplify a companys agenda and operations so it can focus on the one thing it does best.

1. Look beyond products and services.

Dhanani said he believes companies need to see past their surface-level transactions to identify their specialty. Amazon is a perfect example of a company thats affiliated with one specialty, while it quietly focuses on another, Dhanani said. They are perceived as a retail specialist, when they are in fact a logistics specialist.

"Amazon has the most intricate fulfillment infrastructure in the world, and they leverage it to transport products across the globe with more speed, precision and efficiency than anyone else. While their competitors make futile and expensive attempts at challenging them online, Amazon doubles down on distribution centers and delivery systems and consistently comes out ahead.

Dhananis analysis is backed by facts. According to BusinessInsider, Amazons market capitalization in 2010 was approximately 70 percent lower than Walmarts. Five years later, Amazons market capitalization was larger than Walmarts, even though Walmart spends about $10 billion a year on its digital efforts to complement its 11,000 stores.

Related: How to Specialize Without Locking Your Startup Out of the Market

2. Develop strategic partnerships with other specialists.

Once youve identified your specialty, Dhanani recommends handling your non-specialty departments by partnering with hyper-compatible companies that solve one problem exceptionally well. The biggest black hole of business spending is speculative, non-strategic advertising, he explained. Yet most companies try to handle customer acquisition entirely in-house.

"This method rarely works and takes precious resources and energy away from their specialties. The better approach is to partner with the hundreds of content and community companies that have engaged, loyal users that arent being properly monetized. Striking creative and complementary strategic partnerships with these high-traffic companies is an efficient and scalable way to tap into deep reservoirs of potential customers.

Sprint, for example, spends more than $300 to acquire each new customer. Startups, according to Dhanani, need to find untraditional and creative ways to reach prospects in order to compete with these formidable marketing budgets.

3. Integrate your specialty into your brand.

Once youve singled out what your company does best, weave it into every aspect of your brand. This is a critical aspect of making specialization work, Dhanani elaborated. Once resources have been freed up from non-essential tasks, they have to be refocused on intensely leveraging your specialty as a competitive advantage.

"If delivery speed is your specialty, market it to convert prospective customers. If its product affordability, remind customers of the incredible deal they got as soon as they receive it. If it's design uniqueness, enable and encourage users to brag about their eclectic discovery on any and every outlet.

From Amazons dash-button ordering to Apples peerless Genius Bar, brands are optimizing their user experience to highlight their strengths; early stage companies must do the same to remain attractive.

Related: How Trump Won Using Strategic Branding, and What Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Him

Bottom line

Dhanani said he strongly believes that the next corporate behemoths will be todays young companies that implement specialization in every way possible. Immerse your brand, team, process, priorities and customers in your unique specialty," he said, "and you will stand out, from a crowd of unrecognizable generalists, as an irreplaceable leader.

Related:

Tech Entrepreneur Zain Dhanani Explains the Importance of Intense Specialization

How Innovation Can Spur Efficiency & Competitiveness Set to be Dissected

Gerard Adams and Gary Vaynerchuk Discuss 'Real' Entrepreneurship



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
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On Thursday, Kellyanne Conway unknowingly gave the internet another chew toy.

While defending Trump's majority-Muslim immigration ban in an MSNBC interview, the counselor to the president cited "the Bowling Green massacre," a tragedy the internet has been satirically mourning because, well, it never happened.

CHELSEA CLINTON: 'Please Don't Make Up Attacks'

For Conway, who less than two weeks ago nearly broke the internet with the phrase "alternative facts," the fictitious calamity only invited the wrath of social media.

But interestingly enough, the internet seems to have changed its tune. Instead of worrying about "post-truth politics" or an Orwellian future where truth and lies are blurred, the internet is playing along.

Twitter is filled with phrases like "never forget" or "where were you when the pins fell?"

With surprising quickness and less than a day after Conway's blurb, a fake victim fund has already sprung up at bowlinggreenmassacrefund.com.

"We all still carry the vivid memories of what horrors occurred at Bowling Green, but some still relive those moments everyday as they work to rebuild a community torn apart," writes the website, asking users to donate before redirecting them to American Civil Liberties Union donation page.

ALT-FACTS THROUGH HISTORY: 9 other historical events that never happened

Conway made the gaffe on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on MSNBC, where she said:

"I bet it's brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

In truth, two Iraqi men were arrested in Bowling Green in 2011 for trying to send weapons to al-Qaida. They also admitted to being involved in attacks on American troops while in Iraq, but not in America.

According to The Washington Post, despite Conway's claims, the arrests were covered by roughly 90 news stories, not including TV coverage.

After waking up to a Twitter storm on Friday Conway defended herself by explaining she misspoke.

LIMELIGHT: After 4 years of Super Bowl prep, Houston watches Trump steal its thunder

Click through above to see the internet's best "Bowling Green massacre" memes.

Check out the video above to see more info about Conway's mishap.
Andres, who has a new restaurant and an ongoing legal fight with Donald Trump. Photo: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images

Three years ago, chef Jose Andres began work on restaurants in two long-anticipated Washington, D.C., hotels: Fish by Jose Andres at the MGM National Harbor and a Spanish passion project slated to open in the Trump International Hotel at the Old Post Office Pavilion. The first one opened in December, but the second project famously led to an ongoing legal battle with Trumps company. Earlier this week, Grub sat down with Andres at Fish to discuss the firebrand chefs thoughts on the politics of our current food culture, why hes determined to win his legal fight, and to get his take on President Trumps first weeks in office.

The restaurant you were planning for the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., was rumored to be called Topo Atrio, serving a meaty take on Spanish cuisine. Do you still hope to pursue that idea elsewhere?

Topo Atrio was never the name of the restaurant. We had a few names, but that was the name of the LLC. The restaurant was going to be a Spanish restaurant with glimpses and touches of what if Spain and Japan met? The little tempura bar, the Maryland fry bar here, is a glimpse of what was going to be there.

When the Trump restaurant project was no longer on the table, did this project speed up? Around the time the hotel opened, you opened this restaurant and Bazaar Mar in Miami.

They were supposed to open a year apart. Some open earlier, some open later, but the other project goes back to 1993 to 1994. I still remember having conversations with [the late New York Senator Daniel] Patrick Moynihan that one day I will have a restaurant inside the Old Post Office building. I said, One day I think it could be a hotel. I used to walk those streets, those corridors. I know that place very well so I dreamed of one day having a restaurant there, of having a little table on top of the tower. I cant believe I was so close to that. Every time I dream of something, [my dreams] have a tendency of happening because Im very persistent. I repeat I want to do this so much that at the end it better happen or Ill shoot myself. I said to myself one day I want to open at the Old Post Office and it was within my fingertips. At the same time that I had the opportunity, I didnt think it was possible anymore, it was not a smart business decision anymore.

Speaking of business decisions, you give away a lot of free food. A day after the election, you tweeted out an offer of free tacos at Oyamel to unite Democrats and Republicans, and just last week  in the wake of the presidents immigration ban  you gave free dishes to anyone dining at Zaytinya that mentioned zhug, a Yemeni hot sauce.

It brings people together. People who know me know I do these things sincerely, and plenty come in sincerely. Im still surprised today because I didnt think people remembered when the government shut down for a few days because the budget was not approved and public employees were sent home. But yesterday a group of six people came in and thanked me, because when that happened I was offering free sandwiches to anyone who could prove they are a public employee, and they are still so thankful. Did I do it for a business opportunity? Those who know me know that when I have a restaurant I dont want to give anything for free, but there was a sincere way to say Im with you, and what this Congress is doing is wrong  that at every level nobody can find consensus and shut down the government. I said were not going to shut down the city, we are going to keep the city alive. So thats what we did.

Last week David Chang tweeted he was studying the cuisines of countries affected by the immigration ban. Do you think food is one of the best or easiest ways to bridge a cultural gap, to ease xenophobia?

Its kind of complex. Anything we can do to expose people to other cultures, I think, is good. For me, Im proud and happy I could bring Greece and Turkey together in a restaurant, to have the Greek and Turkish ambassadors eating at the same time in my restaurant is a fun moment. But I think doing a menu, it doesnt stop there. Its the tip of the iceberg. Giving refugees a way to express themselves through pop-ups, through restaurants. We need to bring forward these people, to show they are like you and me. We in America have embraced food from the Middle East like no other country in the world, so even in those areas where they feel they may not be welcome I think they are welcome. But we go through these moments. In Spain, the economy is bad. The people are struggling and they are second-guessing why we have immigrants. We have them because we need them to grow, but people have a quickness to forget the past.

How do you keep someone from forgetting? How do you keep them from being apathetic? Do you instill an activism in your own children?

Yes, we do. We do in many ways. But I never told my daughters they needed to go to a soup kitchen. But they do it. They do it on their own without being pushed, and sometimes I think they do it too much! Its good, because they live a very good life, but they decide to give part of their life. They could be going to a concert, a game, but they spend four hours, six hours, feeding the homeless. I think its a parents role to expose their children to this, to do community service. I believe you have to follow the words of Kennedy, ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, and you have to transform those words into a plan. I did military service, and it was obligatory, but it was the best experience of my life. I dont believe the government should mandate service, but for young people to volunteer to spend six months or a year working for their community.

You supported President Obama. Was it frustrating he didnt lead a more active call to community service when he entered the White House?

No, I still believe he will do something. But I dont want the government to dictate to young people because I believe in free will. But I believe every single young person will gain a lot of respect for our country and community and we can improve the lives of others if we choose to commit to do this, because then one day if you become president of the United States at least we will know you gave one year of your life to others, whereas now we have a president who we know has never given a year of his life to anything. And worse, [President Trump] got away from service in a war when others fought for all of us.

People like this would criticize everyone working for their community, everyone being equal, and say it makes us lose our identities. But I think the true way to have an identity, and to be secure in who you are, is to embrace others who are not like you. The best way to find your identity is to mix with others, the best way to understand your whiteness, your blackness, your Jewishness, your Catholicism, is to be with others who are not like you. That will make you more secure.

You wear an I am an immigrant T-shirt, you use the hashtag #IAmAMuslim on social media. Do you think during Trumps first two weeks in office, he realized his attacks on Mexico are untenable and the Muslim community is more endangered?

This is McCarthyism in the 21st century. Are we stupid or are we not? Why do we need an enemy to be who we are? Why do we need to create enemies to cover up weaknesses of who we are? We are in a moment when we dont need enemies  we need bridges. This is so 20th century and its so unfortunate we are going to go back to fighting the wars of the 20th century.

The chef, inside his new restaurant, Fish by Jose Andres. Photo: Adam Robb

For many reasons, I assume Election Night was disheartening for you. How did you spend the night?

I was at the Washington Post with [executive editor] Marty Baron. I was cooking at the paper. They are my friends and it is the newspaper of my city, but I went home early. We knew early that it was Houston we have a problem for the Democratic ticket.

This election, I went to speak for Hillary Clinton. I wish I did more. I wish I did more in the areas I could do more, but who knew that we had to? I hope we all learned that its true we are talking about immigrants and refugees, but there are many Americans affected. I know this through the soup kitchens I am part of, and I see there are hardworking blue-collar Americans that are not part of the American Dream. I read J.D. Vances Hillbilly Elegy, and it is a simple, humble book that tells you exactly what is happening in the other America that is not far away from where we live. I came from a mining town in Spain. I dont mean I know what miners in America feel, but I know their lifestyle. I had family that worked as miners as well as engineers. I saw the jobs being lost.

Was it easy to wake up the next morning and accept the results of the election? Were you hopeful for a recount?

No, no, no. The election talks. Numbers talk. But its funny we are listening now how there are 3 million illegal votes. I dont understand how this is not news. Republicans and Democrats are saying that this is truly nonsense, but then I hear some senators saying that maybe this is true. I hope these senators and their families will be ashamed, because we know this is not true, and because America has fought to embrace the meaning of democracy and that every vote counts.

Following Trumps election, and your ongoing litigation, do you think that youre now at odds with the president of the United States  that you went from being a friend of the previous administration to an enemy of the State?

I thought that [Donald Trump] is the Art of the Deal, that he was a deal-maker! When you write the book, and you brag about the book, and you become the president, and you are the president of everything in America, I guess the art of the deal must mean not making deals. This is so against the book he is happy to publicize, that he will not settle with me. People thought I was trying to compromise from a position of weakness when I was offering to settle, but I wasnt. If were going to do this, Im going to win this case. Is this David versus Goliath? I dont see it that way. I could be doing every single television station on the day he was deposed, but I decided not to do that on purpose. I dont want to be seen as a hero. Everybody in the Democratic Party, and on the left, they see me as a hero, as a chef taking a stand against Trump. Im very happy; Im proud Im doing this. But I did this as a business decision, and Im going to win in the end.

Winning has never been about destroying others. Its about bringing everybody along with you. Thats the humanity and the society that I want to be a part of. Its unbelievable that we put in charge one person who values everybody as winners and losers. This is not the leader we need. These are the leaders of 3,000 years ago. These are not the leaders of the 21st century. Were going to miss Obama, not because he was black or a Democrat, but because he was a good human being with decency, who tried to move everybody forward. When you are not doing that, you may be in office for four years, you may be the most important person in the world for eight years, but history will not be good to you.
Protesters gathered at Brooklyn Borough Hall following a citywide bodega strike. Photo: Andres Kudacki

Bodegas are de facto community centers in New York, and yesterdays citywide shutdown of more than 1,000 delis, grocers, and other small businesses was a humble but powerful reminder that the Trump administrations new immigration policies have affected large swaths of New Yorkers. As word of the shutdown spread, so did interest in the rally, which was held yesterday at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Thousands showed up: Muslims, Americans with roots in other Middle Eastern nations, and people just generally opposed to the new policies.

Men clambered on bus shelters drinking coffee and smoking to catch a view of speakers; groups of elderly bodega owners yelled and waved American flags; children climbed on their parents shoulders holding neon signs to show their support for Muslims across America. A pair of Brooklyn high-school teachers wearing North Face jackets came at the insistence of their Yemeni students, many of whom have parents who work in bodegas.

In the wake of Trumps executive order on immigration, the rally was meant to express both unity and resistance, as well as show the world exactly whos affected: neighbors, friends  everyone. This wasnt a calm, docile protest. The crowd was, for good reason, fired up and impassioned, talkative, greeting and hugging friends. Chants of U.S.A! U.S.A! frequently broke out.

Photo: Andres Kudacki

Photo: Andres Kudacki

Following a call to prayer, a string of speakers was introduced, including organizers Rabyaah Althaibani and Summer Nasser, who introduced herself as the daughter of two great Yemeni immigrants and most importantly  the daughter of deli owners. Nasser talked about her experience being stuck in Yemen when the civil war broke out. Althaibani spoke directly of how the ban had affected her, sharing her story of marrying a Yemeni national in Goa, India, and now being unsure of what will happen, despite his immigration having been approved last November.

Eighteen-year-old Abduelah Mohamed, a contractor, showed up despite being exhausted after spending the weekend at JFK, where his aunt was detained by immigration. Mohamed moved to New York from Yemen when he was a toddler, and has many relatives who have just been told their long-awaited visa interviews have been canceled  indefinitely: This is the first time Ive seen an action like this and its scary, he said. There are children who are separated from their family because their parents have green cards and they dont  thats frightening and cruel. He had come to the rally with some Yemeni friends for support: People are already wary of me and they will look at me with even more suspicion now. Theres going to be a big problem if this continues.

We came here to be united and to be seen, said Ishraq Almontaser, a 20-year-old Yemeni-American makeup artist from Brooklyn. She still has family in Yemen, and Trumps actions have shaken her identity. This is all about basic humanity. We were born and raised here. We are American and yet we are called terrorists. We pay our taxes. We go to school. We work. We are the future and we want him to see that we wont put up with this. When Almontaser heard about the strike, she immediately tweeted and put it on Instagram. I wanted Trump to see as many of the young generation as he can, because we will not stand for this.

Althaibani, one of the rallys organizers, discussed her own family: I have an uncle who is in Jordan; he and his family escaped the war. Hes been a refugee there for almost two years  He was cleared to resettle in Michigan, but what happened the night Donald Trump signed the executive order? My uncle called me and said, Rabyaah, this is not the America you told me about. He was so heartbroken.

Photo: Andres Kudacki

Photo: Andres Kudacki

Originally from Yemen, Fateh Sharhan works in New Jersey and has been in the United States for 35 years. The ban has fractured his family. My kids, I just got them a month ago. Whats going on back home, with the war, they had to travel to three different countries, spent four months getting their visas. But I still have my wife back home, he explained. This situation is really hurting everybody. I have a lot of relatives in countries all over. Were suffering, were suffering. I dont have any problems. No issues with police. I came out here to say Im not okay with this, were not okay with this.

Yasmeen Alnajar, a second-generation Yemeni-American from Brooklyn, said she was astonished by the executive order and explicitly referenced the presidents registry rhetoric. She was at the protest with her mother, Amal Mohammed, carrying a sign that expressed the cruel irony of a ban on refugees from a country that American backed forces are bombing. Still, the sense of belonging  of being Americans, proud if threatened  reverberated through the protest.

Weve always been proud to be American, Alnajars mother added. And this is just horrifying. To me, it feels like were unwanted or hated or banned.
One of the unique selling points for Google's Pixel and Pixel XL has so far been the integrated Google Assistant. The more conversational virtual assistant offers a more polished experience when talking to it compared to past iterations that weren't called Assistant. Despite that, the Assistant's capabilities are still more limited in certain areas than what Google Now used to provide, but that doesn't mean people don't want it on their non-Pixel Android devices.

The LG G6 may be the first such smartphone to get the Google Assistant built-in, but apparently it won't be the last. A new rumor says the Huawei Nexus 6P and LG Nexus 5X will finally receive the Assistant alongside the next "major" Android update that will hit these devices.

No other, less vague details have been shared unfortunately. However, the use of the word "major" implies that the Google Assistant won't land on the last Nexuses with the currently-in-beta Android 7.1.2 release, since that's clearly very far from being "major". So it may be that owners of the Nexus 6P and 5X will have to wait until later in the year, when Android O drops.

Source
Over the course of its lifetime the HTC One A9 has seen its fair share of deals, as you'd expect. At one point it was even sold for as low as $299, while in November of last year it briefly went for only $275. Those are obviously very good prices for a handset that launched costing $499, but today Newegg has decided to offer up the best deal ever for the One A9.

If you order one from the retailer in the next few hours (since this is a one-day only type of thing), you will have to pay just $249.99. That's essentially half of the phone's initial price, so you're saving a huge amount.

Obviously you are getting an unlocked unit, though do note that it doesn't support CDMA-based carriers such as Verizon and Sprint. You'll have to use it on AT&T, T-Mobile, or MVNOs operating on their networks.

The HTC One A9 has already been updated to Android Nougat, and it comes with a 5-inch 1080p touchscreen, the Snapdragon 617 SoC, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of expandable storage, a 13 MP main camera, a 4 MP selfie shooter, and a 2,150 mAh battery.

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Sony has announced its Q4 2016 financial results, and things aren't looking good as far the Japanese company's phone division is concerned.

The results reveal the company shipped a total of 5.1 million Xperia phones in the quarter, which is down by around 33% when compared to the number of units the firm shipped in the same quarter of 2015.

The firm's mobile revenue for the quarter stood at JPY 249 billion, which translates into a decrease of 35%. Lower than expected sales in Europe is being blamed for the overall decrease in revenue.

The company has also again lowered its forecast for the fiscal year (which ends in March), this time from 17 million units to 15 million units. Forecast revisions in Latin America and Middle East is said to be the main reason behind this.

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Haiti - Security : Brazil withdraws from Minustah, Ambassador bring clarifications





Following our article published Tuesday on the withdrawal of Brazil from the Minustah, https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19968-haiti-security-brazil-withdraws-from-minustah.html the Ambassador of Brazil to Haiti Fernando Vidal wanted to bring clarifications, that his country had not begun to withdraw its military contingent from the Minustah "[...] no decision in this regard has been taken by the Brazilian Government. The Brazilian military contingent of the Minustah is fully operational and continues to perform its functions in accordance with the mandate given to the mission by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).



The Brazilian government remains fully committed to the objectives of the Minustah, and is awaiting the decision of the Security Council regarding the future of the mission after the end of the current mandate, which expires on April 15th. In this regard, the Brazilian Ministry of Defense has already begun the preparation of the next military contingent that will eventually be sent to Haiti, if necessary."



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping politics...





Investiture : Several Presidents already confirmed

Presidents Nicolas Maduro (Venezuela), Danilo Medina (Dominican Republic), Raphael Corea (Ecuador) and Anthony Carmona (Trinidad and Tobago) have already confirmed their presence at the investiture ceremony of the elected President of Haiti Jovenel Moses Tuesday, February 7. However, some 60 invitations have been sent to Heads of State and governments having diplomatic relations with Haiti to participate in the investiture "We are waiting for further confirmations," said Lucien Jura Spokesman of the Joint Commission on the handover of powers, pointing out that other countries responded through their Chancery like Mexico, France, China (Taiwan), Bahamas, Antigua



Passport, good news

Anik Francois Joseph, Minister of the Interior, said that the applicants for passports from Cap-Haitien and Les Cayes would be served without moving to Port-au-Prince. In addition they denounced a network between racketeers travel agencies and immigration officials...



The CEP launches an investigation...

The CEP has launched a survey to determine the reasons why 0.25% of the Minutes are not yet collected. According to Robenson Cherilus, the Director of the Voting Tabulation Center, acts of vandalism on Voting Centers could be the cause.



Note that the preliminary results of the complementary senatorial elections and 1 deputy, are always expected for this Friday, unless last minute notice of the CEP...



The World Bank in the Senate

On Tuesday, a delegation of the World Bank, after meeting with parliamentarians from the various commissions economies and finances in parliament, as part of this cooperation, met with Senator Yuri Latortue, President of the Senate on the question of Haiti's budget. Joseph Denis, Financial Management Specialist at the World Bank who led this delegation promised the Senators to put at their disposal all the tools necessary for an effective control of the government action.



Evaluation of the digital TV project

Wednesday, Jean Marie Altema, the Director General of the National Council of Telecommunications (CONATEL) met the Steering Committee of the experimental digital television channel for an evaluation of the project, a month after its launch https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-19603-haiti-technology-first-digital-tv-test-succeeds-in-haiti.html



See also :

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-19603-haiti-technology-first-digital-tv-test-succeeds-in-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-19454-haiti-technology-experimental-digital-tv-channel-late.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-18963-haiti-technology-soon-a-digital-tv-pilot-channel.html



Investiture : Not yet former Presidents or candidates confirmed

Until now, no former Presidents of Haiti invited to the inauguration of Jovenel Moise on February 7, nor any candidates for the Presidency in the last elections, has yet confirmed their participation in the ceremony...



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Published on 2017/02/02

Yoo Ah-in's military enlistment is coming up, but he may get one more project in before he goes, as the lead in tvN's upcoming drama, "Chicago Typewriter".

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Details of the fantasy romantic comedy are sketchy, but the last name to come up in connection with "Chicago Typewriter" was Park Shin-hye, when rumours surfaced that she had been offered the lead role in mid-December. Her management was quick to deny it, but given that tvN has been putting its prestige projects into the Friday-Saturday time slot, it may not have been such a far-fetched story. The last show to air on the network in that time slot was ratings monster, "Guardian: The Lonely and Great God", starring Gong Yoo and Kim Go-eun.

"Chicago Typewriter" will be written by Jin Soo-wan, of "Kill Me, Heal Me" and "The Moon Embracing the Sun". The plot seems a bit bonkers but fun, featuring writers from the 1930s who are reincarnated in the present as a best-selling writer in a slump, an anti-fan, and a ghostwriter. Yoo Ah-in's profile has been rising steadily in the past couple of years, and having a hit drama with Park Shin-hye certainly won't hurt as he leaves for his army service. Yoo Ah-in's last drama was 2015's "Six Flying Dragons", and it's been a while since he's been in a romantic comedy on tv, so if he confirms, it'll give me another excuse not to go out on Friday and Saturday nights.

"Chicago Typewriter" is set to air on tvN at the end of March, on Fridays and Saturdays following "Tomorrow With You".

Love,

Only of Noonas Over Forks
The event will be held by the Bulgarian Embassy in Vietnam, in coordination with Vietnam - Bulgaria Friendship Association.

Diverse activities such as street rose festival, rose queen competition, parade by Vietnamese and Bulgarian artists, lantern release festival and Bulgarian gastronomy show will be organized.

Photo for illustration (Source: An ninh Thu do Newspaper)

The highlight of the festival will be 300 distinct species of foreign roses planted in Vietnam.The Park will be also decorated with 300 roses from around the world, thus creating an opportunity for cultural exchange among lovers of Vietnamese and Bulgarian cultures./.
Hawaii Bill Would Legalize Recreational Marijuana, Nullify Federal Prohibition in Practice

From Tenth Amendment Center

HONOLULU, Hawaii. (Feb. 2, 2016)  A bill introduced in the Hawaii Senate would legalize marijuana for recreational use. Passage would also take a big step toward nullifying federal cannabis prohibition in practice in the Aloha State.

Sen. Kalani English (D-East Maui), along with nine co-sponsors, introduced Senate Bill 548 (SB548) to accomplish the following:

(1) Decriminalize and regulate small amounts of marijuana for personal use;

(2) Establish a licensing scheme for the cultivation, sale, and use of small amounts of marijuana for personal use;

(3) Tax marijuana sales in the same manner as state excise taxes; and

(4) Subject income derived from marijuana sales to state income taxes.

I dont think people were quite ready to move it forward in the past, mainly because other states hadnt legalized it and the social policy wasnt established in the U.S., Sen. English said in a KHON2 report. Right now more than half the states have legalized or decriminalized some form of marijuana.

SB548 would permit individuals 21-or-above to possess, grow, process or transport not more than six marijuana plants, with three or fewer being mature, flowering plants, and possession of the marijuana produced by the plants on the premises where the plants are grown shall not be subject to criminal prosecution as long as it takes place in an enclosed, locked location away from public view. Additionally, individuals would be able to sell or transfer up to one ounce of marijuana without prosecution.

Retail marijuana shops would be permitted as long as they are licensed and regulated by the state department of taxation. The medical marijuana laws currently on the books would stay intact, and wouldnt be impacted whatsoever by SB548. Marijuana sold at licensed establishments would be subject to income and excise taxes under the legislation as well.

If SB548 is successful during next years legislative session, Hawaii would be the first state to legalize recreational marijuana through the state legislature rather than the ballot initiative process. Despite the federal prohibition on marijuana, measures such as SB548 remain perfectly constitutional, and the feds can do little if anything to stop them in practice.

LEGALITY

The federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) passed in 1970 prohibits all of this behavior. Of course, the federal government lacks any constitutional authority to ban or regulate marijuana within the borders of a state, despite the opinion of the politically connected lawyers on the Supreme Court. If you doubt this, ask yourself why it took a constitutional amendment to institute federal alcohol prohibition.

Legalization of marijuana in Hawaii would remove a layer of laws prohibiting the possession and use of marijuana, but federal prohibition will remain on the books.

FBI statistics show that law enforcement makes approximately 99 of 100 marijuana arrests under state, not federal law. By mostly ending state prohibition, Hawaii essentially sweeps away most of the basis for 99 percent of marijuana arrests.

Furthermore, figures indicate it would take 40 percent of the DEAs yearly-budget just to investigate and raid all of the dispensaries in Los Angeles  a single city in a single state. That doesnt include the cost of prosecution. The lesson? The feds lack the resources to enforce marijuana prohibition without state assistance.

A GROWING MOVEMENT

Hawaii could join a growing number of states simply ignoring federal prohibition, and nullifying it in practice. Colorado, Washington state, Oregon and Alaska have already legalized recreational cannabis with California, Nevada, Maine, and Massachusetts set to join them after ballot initiatives in favor of legalization were passed in those states earlier this month.

With more than two-dozen states allowing cannabis for medical use as well, the feds find themselves in a position where they simply cant enforce prohibition any more.

The lesson here is pretty straight forward. When enough people say, No! to the federal government, and enough states pass laws backing those people up, theres not much the feds can do to shove their so-called laws, regulations or mandates down our throats, Tenth Amendment Center founder and executive director Michael Boldin said.

WHATS NEXT?

SB548 will need to pass the Senate Committee on Commerce, Consumer Protection, and Health before it can be considered by the full Senate. Stay in touch with our Tenther Blog and our Tracking and Action Center for the latest updates.
Philippines furniture factory fire injures more than one hundred workers, with six missing

A major fire at a Philippine factory complex which broke out on February 1 has injured at least 126 workers, according to Cavite province Governor Jesus Crispin Remulla, with a further six unaccounted for. The six hectare site in General Trias town, south of Manila, was still ablaze two days later but firefighters said they hoped to have dowsed the flames by nightfall.

Stock image

PThe fire apparently started when a machine malfunctioned and triggered small explosions in a section with combustible materials as two shifts of workers of about 3,500 each were coming in and going out, Remulla said.

Firefighters and police investigators were waiting outside the gutted three-story building for the last embers to die and would start an inspection once it was safe for them to enter, he said.

The Japanese-owned House Technology Industries (HTI) plant has a total workforce of 13,000 making pre-fabricated house parts for export to Japan and is the largest employer in Cavite province.

There are two patients in critical condition, and 25 other patients in hospital. Cavite Economic Zone Administrator Norma Tanag said 15 more victims are at the General Trias Hospital. Two Japanese supervisors were among the injured and some reports speak of line leaders suffering the most serious burns after trying to shepherd their subordinates away from the blaze.

According to CNN, unions staged a protest at the Labor Department office in Intramuros, Manila, urging the government to investigate the fire.

Records show it was the first fire at the Cavite Export Processing Zone, which was built in 1980.

Tanag said the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA), which manages the country's export processing zones, conducted its annual inspection in HTI last June 2016 and that the company was compliant with PEZA's safety requirements.



In 2015, a fire that rapidly spread in a rubber slipper factory in a northern Manila suburb killed 72 people, prompting then President Benigno Aquino III to order a thorough inspection of some 300,000 factories in metropolitan Manila alone. He ordered charges to be filed against the owners of the Kentex Manufacturing Corp. and local officials, who he said ignored the factory's failure to meet safety requirements.


With an always-on lifestyle because of smartphones and emails, some employees are feeling more exhausted and stressed like never before.



It is called burnout, and a recent study by Kronos Incorporated revealed that it is one of the challenges in the workplace in 2017. Ninety-five percent of the 614 HR leaders surveyed in the United States said employee burnout is sabotaging workforce retention.



Employment or occupational burnout is characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion or stress extending for longer periods.



Management pressure, work shifts, workloads and even the lack of staff in the workplace are some factors that could be contributing to this stress, said a 2016 study by Coleman Parkes and the Workforce Institute by Kronos.



Because of workplace stress, one in five Canadian respondents has taken a leave of absence, according to the Staples Business Advantage Workplace Index involving more than 3,000 respondents from the US and Canada.



The Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace said that while burnout is not a mental health illness, it is still a mental health issue that may affect the health and performance of employees across all levels of the organization.



If not properly addressed, burnout can result in companies losing their valuable employees, said a 2016 report by Aptitude Research Partners.



Some companies, and even France, have taken steps to address burnout.



A newly minted French law that came into effect this year has now made it legal for employees to disconnect from work by ignoring text messages or emails from work during their off hours.



Other companies, such as Volkswagen and Goldman Sachs, are now reportedly addressing the issue with policies such as mandatory time off away from the desk or from the office altogether.



On its website, Workplace Strategies for Mental Health offers several strategies to manage burnout in the workplace, including ongoing employee training, working with employees to manage expectations and enforcing reasonable work hours.



For Kronos Canada, eliminating stress and burnout in the workplace starts from the top.



We strive to foster a motivating, enriching culture that helps reduce or even eliminate some of the key contributors to stress and burnout. These include policies and practices like flexible hours, paid time off for community time and family support situations, and financial support for childcare, said Spiros Paleologos, vice president and general manager, Kronos Canadian Systems.


Chinese tourists in Ho Chi Minh city (Photo: Thanh Nien News)

Major markets sending tourists to the country saw strong growth, in which holidaymakers from China accounted for one fourth with 247,600; up over 67% over a year earlier.

Specifically, Chinese visitors to Vietnam in January increased 2.7 fold compared to visitors from America and equalled to those from Europe and Oceania.

This month also marked the growth recovery of Cambodian travellers after reductions in the previous few months, ranking third at 34% compared to the same period last year.

Visa waivers for citizens from the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain continued to contribute to attracting a large number of tourists from Western Europe, with growth of 4%-27%.

The country also served 5.7 million domestic tourists, including 2.8 million staying overnight. Total tourism revenue reached an estimated VND38.6 trillion, up 28.5% over a year earlier.

Last year, Vietnam greeted more than 10 million foreign tourists, in which 2.7 million were Chinese travellers, marking a record growth from the market./.
Lieutenant Colonel Petteri Soini revealed to the public broadcaster yesterday that conscripts participating in an orientation session last month had been informed that dual citizens will not be accepted to drone pilot training for security-related reasons.

The recent controversy over the treatment of dual citizenship holders appears to have been sparked by instructions issued at the Kainuu Brigade in January, reports YLE.

The instructor in question has received feedback from me and will rectify his actions. It was a mistake. We've now instructed people not to make the same mistake again. No one is disqualified for any of our position based on nationality, Soini stated to YLE.

The Finnish Defence Forces, however, continues to stand by its demands that YLE retract a report published on Tuesday on its treatment of dual Finnish-Russian citizens. The public broadcasting company's earlier coverage of the issue is erroneous, reiterated Captain Jan Engstrom, the director of public information at the Defence Forces.

YLE on Tuesday reported that the Defence Forces has introduced restrictions to prevent Finnish-Russian citizens from advancing to positions with access to classified or sensitive security information. Jussi Niinisto (PS), the Minister of Defence, rejected the allegations and lashed out at the public broadcaster for damaging the public image of Finland.

The Defence Forces has similarly estimated that the report has damaged its reputation.

Helsingin Sanomat reported yesterday morning that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs recently back-tracked on its decision to an applicant with a dual Finnish-Russian citizenship on grounds that the applicant may be vulnerable to possible attempts to influence by Russia. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs promptly issued a press release to assure that its recruitment procedures are lawful and that each candidate is considered individually.

Dual or multiple nationality is not a problem as such, but vulnerability to pressure from foreign contacts is, it clarified.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Kimmo Rauatmaa  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Niinisto estimated in his New Year's address that the European Union should assume a more active geopolitical role specifically because its fundamental values of democracy, equality and human rights are being challenged also within its borders.

President Sauli Niinisto has reiterated his conviction that the European Union is currently more relevant than it has been in decades.

It has now become clear that the voice of Europe is also needed in championing western values, he stated in his address at the opening ceremony of the new parliamentary session on Thursday.

Finland, he also reiterated, remains firmly committed to western values also in foreign policy-making. The West, however, is continuing its re-alignment in a manner that raises questions about its very definition.

From Finland, the sun traces an arc westwards to the land of Brexit and onwards to Trump Tower, he elaborated.

Niinisto reminded that although globalisation has promoted well-being both domestically and worldwide, it has also contributed to the aggravation of socio-economic inequalities. The possible re-emergence of protectionism, he added, would be paradoxical as the challenge would no longer be competitiveness but whether or not it can be utilised to one's benefit.

The closure of economic or other borders is not a cure for the imbalance of globalisation. No nation can flourish by forgetting the rest, he said.

Finland must step up its efforts to combat inequality, not only at the national but also at the individual level, added Niinisto: Each and every Finn has the duty to help those who are in need, to encourage those who need encouragement, but also to prod those who choose to be inactive.

The President also reminded that the four pillars of security policy-making in Finland  national defence and security, western integration, bilateral relations with Russia and the international system  are not static but develop constantly.

Finland's relations with Russia are neighbourly, he described. They respond to our invitations as we do to theirs, talking very frankly, as good neighbours tend to do. We know each other very well, he said.

The rules-based international order established around the United Nations, on the other hand, is faced with challenges, according to Niinisto.

Will a few big fish cruise past the hundreds of minnows? he asked. We are on the side of the little fish, but not against the big ones. An effective and just international order is ultimately in everyone's interests.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Martti Kainulainen  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover the
Father Ted star and comedian Ardal O'Hanlon has landed a major role in BBC drama Death In Paradise.

He has been drafted in to replace Kris Marshall, who has quit the Caribbean-based detective show, saying he missed his family.

The show is filmed on the island of Guadeloupe and O'Hanlon (51) was delighted to bag the role.

He will replace Marshall's character, DI Humphrey Goodman, when the series - which has attracted more than nine-million viewers - returns to the Caribbean.

"I am delighted to be joining Death In Paradise and exploring what's made Mooney up and leave London for a life in the Caribbean," O'Hanlon said.

Dimension

"I've already had a taste of filming in Guadeloupe and can't wait to get back."

Executive producer Tim Key said O'Hanlon was "comedy royalty" and that he would bring "a brand-new dimension to the show when he arrives on the island".

Marshall has been tipped to take on the role of Doctor Who, after Scottish actor Peter Capaldi quit the show.

He insisted however that his reasons for leaving the show were personal.

"We had a daughter this time last year and so bringing her and my son - he's about to start school - it all became a bit of a juggling mission," he said.
New laws requiring parents to pay au pairs the minimum wage are putting families under financial strain and are "not a good idea", according to a leading parenting website.

Laura Erskine, spokeswoman for Mummypages.ie, said the legislation, introduced on January 1, means parents are finding it harder to employ the workers.

The new laws mean au pairs can work no more than 30 hours a week and requires they are paid at least 9.15 an hour. Ms Erskine told the Herald she is against the legislation.

"It's not a good idea at all and it puts an awful lot of our mums in a very difficult position," she said.

"The new legislation was introduced simply because a few people exploited the system. There are some that expect au pairs to work 12 hours a day without suitable accommodation or sleeping arrangements. This is definitely exploitation.

Worker

"Having said this, an au pair is not a worker in the same way as a maid or a cleaner. They're living with the family and benefiting from learning English. They're also seeing places of cultural interest and getting their bus fare, their room, meals, internet all paid for.

"This is what the original programme was about - they would get all this in exchange for doing a small number of hours to help with the housework and/or the childminding."

The legislation was brought in after several cases of childminders taking families to court for paying far below the minimum wage. Recently, an au pair paid less than 5.65 per hour was awarded more than 2,250 due to the family being found in breach of the Minimum Wage Act, the Organisation of Working Time Act and the Terms of Employment (Information) Act.

Ms Erskine went on to say that many parents won't be able to afford childcare since the minimum wage rule for au pairs came into play.

"Now that you have to pay them a minimum wage for the hours they work, it doesn't actually equate to the amount of money that a family is spending on housing the au pair," she said. "Our mums are struggling, especially those who have to work shifts. Having an au pair that lives with them is really their only option. Many parents are now finding it a lot harder to afford people to look after their children.

"I accept there are some parents who take advantage of au pairs, but I really think they're in the minority. It's now cheaper to avail of childcare places or a professional nanny. These girls who come over to work for us are not qualified in childcare and it's not as if they would have much experience in this area that would justify them being paid minimum wage.

"The legislation has not been thought through at all and the au pairs themselves aren't in favour of it. They don't want to be thought of as a worker coming to Ireland."

Ms Erskine said since the 9.15 legislation was enforced, she now charges her own au pair living expenses.
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has wasted no time in ordering crimelord John Gilligan and his family to get out of the homes they bought with the proceeds of crime.

Only hours after the Gilligans lost their Supreme Court appeal against the seizure of the properties, CAB sent letters to the family's solicitors seeking vacant possession of the homes.

Gilligan's wife, Geraldine, and daughter, Tracey, live in a bungalow beside the already-seized Jessbrook Equestrian Centre in Kildare, while his son, Darren, lives in a house in Corduff Avenue, Blanchardstown.

A third property owned by the Gilligans, in Willsbrook View, Lucan, has been in the control of CAB and is rented out on a long-term basis.

The court ruling means CAB can seize all three properties and sell them.

It also means the Gilligans are technically homeless after a battle with CAB that has lasted more than 20 years and been dragged through nearly every court in the land.

John and Geraldine Gilligan bought the Jessbrook property in 1987. In 1996, they bought the Corduff Avenue house for 7,000 from the local authority after renting it since1977.

In 1995, Gilligan bought the Willsbrook View house for 73,000 and registered it in his daughter's name.

"Letters were issued to Gilligan's solicitors within hours of the ruling," a CAB source told the Herald. "The process of getting those properties is now under way and we are looking for vacant possession now."

CAB is now awaiting a response from the Gilligans.

"We can finally see the end of this long drawn-out matter," said the source.

The Herald can also reveal that CAB has received several queries from interested parties in relation to the Jessbrook property.

There was no sign of activity yesterday at the bungalow near Enfield.

The property is hidden at the top of a tree-lined avenue beside the equestrian centre that was seized and sold by CAB.

The bungalow was bought by the Gilligans before they bought the adjoining land and built the centre.

CAB has different options available to it in relation to the three homes.

While the Blanchardstown and Lucan houses will most likely be valued and sold on the open market, the Jessbrook property could be treated diff- erently.

Demolish

It is unclear what the planning status of the bungalow is because there certain additions were made to the building in the past.

Depending on planning permission, some of these structures may be subject to applications for retention.

If there are difficulties, the Department of Public Enterprise and Reform, which becomes the new owners after the seizures occur, could have to apply for permission to demolish the property if a buyer cannot be found.

In Italy, where many businesses and properties are seized from Mafia gangs, the Italian equivalent of CAB often puts the buildings in trust for use by local communities.

This is seen as a way of giving a benefit back to the public, and if such a move was to be arranged with the bungalow it could become a refuge or a centre for a local charitable cause.
Stephen Donnelly got tongue-tied on radio as he was probed over stinging criticism he has previously aimed at Fianna Fail.

The TD was immediately on the defensive over his decision to join Fianna Fail as he was questioned over the move on RTE's Drivetime.

The former Social Democrats co-leader has been consistently critical of the party in the past, but leader Micheal Martin welcomed him as "new talent" who can "broaden the attractiveness of the party".

Shortly after the TD for Wicklow and East Carlow was paraded at Leinster House, Mr Donnelly struggled when asked by broadcaster Mary Wilson about an article in which he wrote that the culture associated with Fianna Fail was one "of jobs for the boys, bonuses for the boys, lack of accountability and two fingers to the Dail".

"I don't know where you're quoting it from," said Mr Donnelly. "That's certainly not my language. I don't believe I wrote those words. It doesn't sound like the kind of language I use."

The article in question appeared in the Sunday Independent in January 2014.

In the article, he wrote the "jobs for the boys" description came from a seasoned political observer, but he appeared to agree with the assessment - adding: "I hate it when the cynics are right."

Nonetheless, Fianna Fail believes the recruitment marks a milestone in its campaign to rebuild the party's image with the electorate.

Unsettled

The move has unsettled some of the party's frontbench, who suspect the Wicklow and East Carlow TD merely sees Fianna Fail as "a fast-track to Cabinet" after the next election.

His immediate appointment as the party's spokesman on Brexit has led to speculation that he has done a further deal with Mr Martin on potential roles in the next government should Fianna Fail win power.

However, Mr Donnelly denied this, saying: "No not at all. The cynical approach would be to stay on the opposition benches, keep the head down, see what the numbers are like next time out and see what I could do then."

Asked about his previous attacks on Fianna Fail, he said: "I'm not going to retract various statements I made over mistakes made leading up to the crash.

"What is important is what's happening to Ireland today. Brexit is happening today. American protectionism is happening today. The rise of extremism in Europe is happening today."

Mr Donnelly also claimed there were very few differences between the policies of the Social Democrats, which he quit last September, and Fianna Fail.

Speaking to the Herald last night, his ex-colleague Roisin Shortall said: "I don't know how he can make a claim like that."

She cited her party's position on the USC, the baptism barrier, repealing of the Eighth Amendment and the establishment of an anti-corruption agency as some examples where the parties differ.

Mr Martin said Fianna Fail's sitting TD in Wicklow, Pat Casey, had welcomed the new recruit.
A Dutch man arrested in Dublin during a garda swoop on an alleged Kinahan gang property has been ordered by the High Court to surrender to Amsterdam authorities.

Naoufal Fassih (36), a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin, is being sought in the Netherlands to face allegations of attempted murder, assault, possession of false documents and money laundering as well as for an alleged money laundering offence here.

The Amsterdam Public Prosecutor issued three European Arrest Warrants in respect of Mr Fassih on various dates in 2016.

He was arrested by gardai at an apartment alleged to belong to the international Kinahan crime gang on Dublin's Baggot Street in April last year. High Court extradition proceedings have been ongoing since then.

In the High Court yesterday, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly ordered the surrender of Mr Fassih to Dutch authorities on each of the three warrants.

Rejected

Ms Justice Donnelly said she had considered all of the points of objection raised by Mr Fassih's lawyers and was "quite satisfied to reject them all".

Mr Kennedy, for the State, said the first alleged offence relates to a violent assault at a Dutch nightclub on October 5, 2012.

The second charge relates to more than 10,000 in cash that Mr Fassih had on him when he was arrested in 2012. Mr Fassih was on social welfare at the time and refused to explain to the Amsterdam police how he could be in possession of such a sum.

The third charge alleges that he was in possession of a false passport.

The warrant for the attempted murder charge was issued last September and relates to a botched assassination on November 5, 2015. Dutch authorities allege that he paid 8,000 to the would-be assassin.

Another warrant was issued after Mr Fassih's arrest in Dublin. Mr Kennedy said Fassih was in possession of watches worth over 40,000, cash, mobile phones and "other items that can be linked to criminality".
Emergency crews work to make safe a roof after it was blown on to Matt The Thresher pub

A roof was ripped off a building and blown on to a pub as high winds whipped through Dublin city centre yesterday.

It was not the only damage in the capital as there were reports of fallen trees on the south side.

Photos show the roof structure on top of the Matt The Thresher pub on Lower Pembroke Street.

The business was temporarily shut due to the incident yesterday, with a sign on the door reading "building closed due to storm damage".

"I just heard a wicked gust of wind and an almighty crash," said one eyewitness.

"Some roof got ripped up and landed on top of Matt The Thresher."

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Dublin Fire Brigade released an image of a motorist who had a lucky escape after a tree toppled on to their vehicle in Rathfarnham.

A status yellow weather warning was in place for the country yesterday, according to Met Eireann.

Forecasters had predicted a windy day with gusts of up to 100kph and spells of rain, expected to be heavy at times.

Motorists and householders have been warned about the risk of flooding in southern and eastern areas due to high spring tides. The greatest risk is in Cork today.

Blustery

With the blustery conditions set to continue, the RNLI and Coast Guard issued a warning for people in coastal areas to take care.

Gareth Morrison, RNLI community lifesaving delivery manager, said: "Irish weather can be unpredictable at the best of times, and our lifeboat crews have answered many call-outs where people have been caught out by the weather unexpectedly taking a turn for the worse.

"We urge everyone to respect the water at all times and to keep safe, and remind people not to underestimate the distance waves can travel up the beach or harbour wall.

"If you plan on going out walking after a storm or high winds, be very wary.

"Storms and high winds can change our landscape through coastal erosion, so pay attention to warning signs and don't leave designated paths to look over the edge of clifftops."
Washington County football: Wildcats, Warriors open playoffs with victories

Williamsport and Boonsboro will play in the second round of the Class 2A-1A West playoffs after victories Friday night.
Almost 80% of assets of banks under liquidation exist only in paper

Almost 80% of the cost of assets of banks under liquidation exist only in paper, according to reports of independent appraisers, the Individuals Deposit Guarantee Fund has reported.

"Assets of 70 banks under liquidation, where the revision of the assets that can be sold is finished, were appraised by independent experts at only UAH 94 billion, while in paper their cost exceeded UAH 418 billion," the fund said, adding that appraisers first paid attention to the quality and the market price of collateral for credits.

The share of credits of total insolvent banks' assets is 80%. Almost entire credit portfolio of insolvent banks (90%) is bad and it is not serviced. The fund said that less than 5% of borrowers continue meeting its commitments to banks after they are declared insolvent.

"Almost a half of the credit portfolio of all insolvent banks (almost UAH 180 billion) were issued to 600 large business groups, and a half of them are persons affiliated with bank who do not carry out their commitments," the fund said.

The fund said that some borrower and facilities used as collateral at banks are located in Crimea and ATO zone. Assets worth over UAH 50 billion are located in the areas not under control of the Ukrainian government.

In addition, over 10% of the total credit portfolio of banks (UAH 37 billion) is credits where junk securities were used as collateral.

Hryvnia devaluation also affects the quality of assets, as well as artificial bankruptcy of borrowers, removal of funds via placing them at correspondent accounts in foreign banks, poor protection of rights of creditors and imperfect judicial system.

The fund said that only at seven banks, in particular, Tavrika, VAB, Delta Bank, bank Forum and Finance and Credit Bank, borrowers with credits of almost UAH 40 billion became bankrupt. Some $748 million and EUR 75 million (near UAH 21 billion) were removed from 14 banks via placing the money on the correspondent accounts at Meinl Bank AG (Austria), Bank Frick and Co.AG (Lichtenstein), East-West United S.A. and Bank Winter & Co.AC.

The fund as of early 2017 had submitted 3,651 applications to law enforcement agencies reporting crimes committed at banks seeking to collect UAH 277 billion, including 396 applications against owners and heads of banks (UAH 178 billion).

Over UAH 3 billion was received from selling banks' assets last year. Since February 2016 sales of all assets of insolvent banks were transferred to the ProZorro.Sales system.
OSWIECIM, Poland (JTA)I did a shameful thing on my first visit 20 years ago to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In a guestbook outside an Auschwitz museum exhibit featuring information on 70,000 Polish non-Jews who were murdered here, I downplayed the significance of their deaths by writing: Your pain is no credential here, its just the shadow of my wound.

Those wordsa quote from a Leonard Cohen song that I abused as a high school student from Israel while touring the camp that my grandmother had survivedresurfaced in my consciousness last month on my latest visit to the site, this time to attend a five-day journalists seminar.

Like eight other colleagues from publications such as The New York Times, Agence-France Presse and Britains Press Association, I signed up for the seminar to finally gain a truly structured understanding, based on observation and deliberate study, of the sprawling site that I had visited at least a dozen times on brief assignments.

We got what we came forand more. During the seminar, the first-ever designed for journalists by the museum, we saw a dozen restorers carefully polishing some of the 3,800 suitcases of Holocaust victims.

Its drudgery, but when the faded name once again appears on the leather, its like giving a headstone to a person without a grave, Maria Swieton, a 30-year-old restorer at the lab told me. In addition to suitcases, the museum also has 110,000 shoes and 4,500 artworks.

Our tour was the first time media were allowed access to a pilot preservation program that will cost tens of millions of dollars aimed at restoring Auschwitz barracks. Implemented for the time being on just two of the some 450 structures on the museums grounds, the program involves encasing them in huge tents, replacing unsalvageable parts with material fashioned to match the originals, then taking apart and cataloguing the barracks furnishings before reassembling the buildings and reinforcing the foundations.

It was an inspiring demonstration of the dedication of Polish authorities and the international donors to the Auschwitz memorial fund, whose goal is to not let the world forget what happened here and educate approximately 2 million people who visit the museum each year.

Yet as the chill of the place worked its way to my bonesboth metaphorically and physically, as again I had come without sufficient winter gearmy mind kept drifting back to my grandmother who survived Auschwitz, my relatives who perished here and that Cohen lyric. I wondered what made me write itand if the ugly sentiment was connected to the aggressive attempts by Polish authorities to control public discourse about the Holocaust.

I broke from the group early one night and walked a lonely half-mile through the icy paths of the Auschwitz I complex. Long after the closing hours of the now deserted museum, I shivered under the yellow lights of lamps that the Nazis had Polish slave laborers install here.

The quote came back to me as I passed the gallows of Auschwitz Ithe first part of the death camp that the Germans initially built in 1941 for Polish and Soviet prisoners. Eighteen months later it became a slaughterhouse for 1.1 million Jews, 25,000 Roma and 15,000 prisoners of war.

I specifically recalled the story of Janusz Pogonowski, a fighter for the Home Army underground, who in 1943 stood with 11 other non-Jews at those gallows while camp commander Rudolf Hoss read out the sham verdict for plotting to escape. Instead of waiting to be executed, Pogonowski kicked the stool from under his own feet as a last act of resistance.

In addition to killing 3 million Polish Jews, the Nazis also killed 3 million Polish non-Jews, mostly civilians. I saw hundreds of their portraitshaunting mugshots of men and boys with extinguished eyes and striped uniformsalongside photos of Jewish inmates on the walls of Blocks 5 and 6.

What could have possessed me, then, to write that callous and disrespectful sentence 20 years ago?

With hindsight, I was able to see that my competitive attitude to grief was an unwanted inheritance from my grandparents and parents, all of them Polish speakers. More than a teenagers outburst, the gesture was rooted in a troubled, bloody legacy of shared grief, grudges, nuances and caveats that continue to bedevil Polish-Jewish relations to this day.

Like many Polish leaders before him, President Anderzj Duda says the Holocaust and World War II were tragedies that underscore the shared destiny of Jews and Poles. He also likes to highlight the actions of more than 6,500 Poles who saved Jews during the Holocaustthe highest number of any country in the world.

In line with this viewthat Poles and Jews are united by the devastation caused by the NazisDudas right-wing government last year passed a bill that criminalizes terms like Polish death camps instead of Nazi death camps. And the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum insists that journalists use the term German-occupied Poland when referring to the country during the Holocaust.

But my Poland-born grandmother did not think of Polish non-Jews as fellow victims as she was marched by retreating Nazis from Auschwitz into Germany. Severely emaciated and exhausted, she also feared being caught by Pogonowskis Home Army. Its fighters, in addition to recruiting and helping to save some Jews, also participated in anti-Jewish pogroms that made some Jews fear the partisans more than the Nazis.

During the Nazi occupation, thousands of Jews were murdered by Poles in at least 20 towns and cities, including Jedwabne, where hundreds were butchered in 1941 without German interference.

Ironically, my grandmother and her dying friend decided they would escape the march only in Germany, where a German farmer and a soldierperhaps a defectorsaved her friends life and saved my grandmothers badly infected arm from amputation. After the war and living in Lodz, her husband, my grandfather, taught my father how to fight children who called him a dirty Jew. Then they were let out of the country, but stripped of the Polish nationality, in 1957 during a period of relative liberalization following the death of Joseph Stalin.

Like countless other Jews of Polish descent, such stories formed the background of my understanding of Poland and colored it with a bias.

I know Im not the only one.

Last year Rabbi Zev Friedman, dean of Rambam Mesivta High School in New York, rallied with his pupils outside the Polish consulate to protest Warsaws curbing of free speech. They complained about the opening last year of a criminal probe in Poland against a Jewish historian who said Poles killed more Jews during World War II than Poles killed Germans. The historian was suspected of insulting the honor of the Polish nation, which is an offense according to the countrys penal code.

Historians agree that collaboration in Poland was immensely less prevalent than in nearly all the countries in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania and Hungary. Poles are responsible only for a tiny fraction of the victims of the Holocaust.

Yet Friedman also wrote in a statement about the rally that Poland is trying to rewrite history and deny the significant role that Polish citizens had in perpetrating the Holocaust. He added: Ive heard many survivors speak of the glee that their Polish neighbors had when Jews were being mercilessly persecuted.

Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland, has heard those claims, too. And while he acknowledges that some Poles perpetrated atrocities against Jews during the Holocaust, he called testimonies saying this was prevalent not historical accounts but reflections of the horror experienced by people who survived the Holocaust in Poland.

I got a window seat on the plane bound for my home in the Netherlandsa country which, unlike Poland, had during World II a quisling Nazi proclaimed as its leader by Adolf Hitler. The sun was setting on the homes of ordinary and honest people who, 75 years after the Nazis turned their land into a cemetery for Jews and other undesirables, are still struggling to come to terms with their nations tormented legacy.
Several years ago Stewart Bloom would drive his son, Andrew, who at the time was preparing for his bar mitzvah, to the monthly musicals at Brookdale Lake Orienta in Altamonte Springs. Andrew would make delicious brownies and was always so anxious to serve them to the residents.

As time went on, Bloom still delivered the brownies every month, even after Andrew got older and could no longer dedicate his time. Bloom not only has become a regular and welcome face, but a resident favorite.

Once a year, he replaces his famous brownies for a guitar and takes center stage, and on Feb. 12 at 1p.m., Bloom will delight the audience once again. He entertains with crowd favorites, mostly folk songs, and his audience often sings along.

All are welcome and encouraged to attend this exciting performance, which is sponsored by the Jewish Pavilion. The Jewish Pavilion enhances the lives of residents at assisted living and nursing homes throughout Central Florida. For more information please call 407-678-9363.
Delayed Bar Mitzvah celebration...

I read this recently and think you will enjoy reading it as well:

"YISRAEL KRISTAL, II3 years old, a survivor of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau who is believed to be the world's oldest man, recently celebrated the Bar Mitzvah that he missed because of World War I.

His daughter, SHULAMIT KRISTAL KUPERSTOCH, told all that about 100 family members gathered to mark the rite.

Kristal was officially recognized as the world's oldest man last March. He (at 13) missed his Bar Mitzvah because his father served in the Russian army during World War I and his mother had died three years earlier, Kuperstoch said.

Born in Zarnow, Poland, Kristal moved to Lodz to work in his family's candy business. He continued operating the business even after the Nazis forced the city's Jews into a ghetto, where his two children died.

In 1944, he was deported to Auschwitz together with his wife, who was murdered. In 1950, he moved to Haifa, Israel, with his second wife and their son, working again as a confectioner. In addition to his son and daughter, Kristal has many grandchildren and great-grandchildren."

(Congratulations, Yisrael, on your Bar Mitzvah and your longevity.)

About security...

ANDREW BRENNAN, is the new security director at the JCC in Maitland. He brings to this position many years of experience and we are so lucky to have him. Besides his background with the Orlando Police Department and providing security to our airport, Andy holds a BS from the University of Florida, Gainesville, and an MBA in Public Administration from Troy University and many other certifications.

A reminder...

Andrew Brennan

The next Congregation Ohev Shalom Seniors group meeting is this Sunday, Feb. 5th at 2 pm.

"Bits and Pieces" Productions presents Prof. Mental, a musical magical comedy. Refreshments will follow.

For further information, contact Berny Raff at 407-767-6763.

One for the road...

Three friends were at the bar talking, and after many rounds of beer, one of them suggests that everyone admit something they have never admitted to anyone.

Okay," says Peter, "I've never told anybody I'm gay!"

John confesses, "I'm having an affair with my boss's wife."

Moishe begins, "I don't know how to tell you..."

"Don't be shy," said Peter and John.

"Well," says Moishe, "I can't keep secrets."
The defunct mill in Karczew, where there once was a Nazi forced-labor camp.

(JTA)-Growing up, I had always heard the names Otwock and Karczew. Both are neighboring towns near Warsaw.

Before the Holocaust, Otwock was home to some 14,000 Jews. Karczew had about 500 Jewish residents and became home to a Nazi forced-labor camp during World War II.

While both places may have little name recognition around the world, in my family the names loomed large. They were as common to all of us as the names of Poppy and Grandma's murdered siblings.

My grandparents had grown up in Otwock. They fled to the Warsaw Ghetto following the summer of 1942, when they were teenagers, after the Nazis had murdered 12,000 of the 14,000 Jews living in their town.

Years later, having survived the war and immigrating to the United States, my grandparents had children. They raised their two kids as best they could, often falling back on their Holocaust stories. But because of these grim bedtime tales, my father slept with a packed suitcase beneath his bed. The Nazis, he assumed, would inevitably storm his Brooklyn apartment. My aunt developed an eating disorder. Nightmares were constant.

But Poppy and Grandma learned from their mistakes-by the time the grandchildren were around, their Holocaust stories were reduced to whispers. Discussions about Otwock, Karczew, the ghettos and the camps were off the table. Though I constantly pressed them for stories, they kept silent.

In 2004, however, I traveled to Otwock. I discovered the four synagogues had been dismantled, the town hall had no records, Grandma's street had vanished from the map, the supposed "Jewish Center" had no Jews.

While the trip was disappointing, my visit broke Grandma's silence. For the next six years, Grandma shared her stories. I also interviewed other survivors, pored through texts, wrote to tracing services, begged for records and watched my grandparents' Shoah Foundation testimonies.

The research left me with questions unanswered-there were, I realized, concentration camps without records and histories that vanished without a trace.

Karczew was among those mysteries. In April 1942, 400 Jewish boys from Otwock were sent to a labor camp set up in Karczew. The "Karczew Boys," as they were known-Poppy, my grandmother's father and two brothers, among them-dug irrigation channels.

But once the murders happened-4,000 Jews were massacred in Otwock's forest, in addition to the 8,000 who were rounded up and sent to Treblinka's gas chambers-they received new orders: Bury the dead.

My grandparents eventually escaped Otwock, ending up in the Warsaw Ghetto. They nearly died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and were later persecuted in Auschwitz and Majdanek.

But at least these places had museums or memorials. Even Otwock, a town that forgot its Jews, was mentioned in American Holocaust museums and in literature documenting the Nazis' crimes.

Facts on Karczew, however, seemed nonexistent.

In 2000, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum tasked researchers with creating an encyclopedia that would be the most comprehensive, single-source record to document the thousands of Nazi-established persecution sites. At the time, they estimated 5,000 sites existed, including forced labor camps, military brothels, ghettos, POW camps and concentration camps.

But by 2001, their estimate doubled. When all seven volumes are published, the "Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945" will contain more than 42,500 sites that the Nazis had used to persecute, exploit and murder their victims.

"Quite frankly," Geoffrey Megargee, the project leader told me, "you could put it much higher than that."

According to a 2013 New York Times article on the project, "The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, 'Germanizing' prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers."

Two volumes have been published, totaling nearly 4,000 pages and more than 2,200 camps and ghettos.

These discoveries shocked me. Last year, I started writing an article about the project. For the story, I would travel to Germany and visit some sites. Since only two of the seven volumes have been published, I asked to preview forthcoming entries. I asked for Karczew, which will be part of Volume 6, slated for publication in 2020.

The entry was shocking. Poppy's name-Leon Lederman-appeared in the text. I changed my itinerary to include Poland. I had to stand in the horrifying place where my grandfather, barely out of boyhood, worked past exhaustion as a gravedigger.

I stood along the fence at the locked Karczew cemetery, staring at the assemblage of Jewish tombstones atop the hill. I was grateful it was protected but saddened I couldn't visit the graves. (I was told the key had gone missing.) By contrast, the Jewish cemetery in Otwock, hidden deep in a red pine forest, where tipped tombstones were accompanied by smashed beer bottles and deserted campfires, had no gate.

Since my first visit 12 years before, Otwock had made some changes. A stone was placed to remember the site of one synagogue, now a shopping mall; another stone memorialized 2,000 Jews killed at one location in the forest. There was also a small museum with a modest exhibit about the local Jews. (It had actually existed in 2004, but none of the residents or employees at town hall, where the museum had originally been housed, knew about it.)

This time, I met with the curator, Sebastian Rakowski. He showed me a photograph of the Karczew Boys. Somewhere in that roll call, I knew, stood Poppy.

Rakowski showed me a book he had written about the persecution of Jews in Otwock during the war. It contained a photograph of an old mill-when I reached this mill, he said, I'd be standing on the site of the Karczew camp.

I headed there by car immediately. The mill was defunct: windows smashed, concrete chipped, grass overgrown. Grapes grew in the shade like smoothed amethysts. Next to the mill was a scrap-metal yard with everything crushed beyond recognition. Fences and climbing plants hid homes, as if no one wanted a reminder.

Standing there, my family's Karczew stories came flooding back to me: Grandma, who had hidden in the boys' camp after her mother was murdered, once told me about the time the Nazis came searching the barracks. A small boy hid in the bunks. Grandma begged him to follow her, but he wouldn't.

"They killed him," she said.

I thought of Poppy's escape from the Karczew camp during the liquidation of Otwock. He was attempting to save his family but ended up on a train to Treblinka. Using a wire he hid around his waist, however, he sawed through the bars of the cattle car, survived the fall and the Nazi gunners, and watched his friends and family journey to their deaths. He ran back to Karczew and was put to work digging graves. Until the grim task was complete, the camp was one of the last places in Otwock or Karczew where a Jew could survive.

I looked around Karczew. The barracks and irrigation channels were gone, but this time I knew the record-however small-remained. I pulled up the encyclopedia entry on my phone.

"The 400 Jewish forced laborers," it read, "were put to work digging drainage channels along the Jagodzianka River."

I felt chills. Poppy-an unnamed fighter in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a Jewish teen who stuck a pitchfork through a Nazi's neck-was no longer overlooked.

"According to Leon Lederman," the text said, "those working in the camp were watched mainly by around 30 members of the Jewish police from Otwock."

I tried to picture the Karczew Boys.

"Leon Lederman also recalls that when his own family was deported to Treblinka from the Otwock ghetto, a group of Jews from the Karczew camp was taken there to dig a mass grave for the Jews killed locally during the Aktion."

I tried to imagine the horrors of that task.

"Leon Lederman also noted that [in the fall of 1942] around 300 of the remaining inmates of the Karczew camp 'were sent to the Warsaw ghetto,' although he says he went into hiding first for a while and then went to the ghetto."

Noah Lederman The Jewish cemetery in Otwock.

To read these words reminded me that Poppy mattered, and that Karczew mattered. Every single one of these encyclopedia entries-chronicling the tens of thousands of places like Karczew-all matter. They will paint a picture of what was lost-and encourage remembering by all of us.

Noah Lederman is the author of the memoir "A World Erased: A Grandson's Search for His Family's Holocaust Secrets," published Feb. 7 by Rowman & Littlefield. His articles have been featured in the Economist, the Boston Globe, the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, Slate, Salon, the New Republic, Tablet Magazine, the Jerusalem Post Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He writes the travel blog Somewhere Or Bust and tweets @NoahLederman.
The National Bank of Ukraine on February 1 sent an electronic letter to banks with a proposal to the banks and their clients to decide on the volumes of transactions to return dividends for 2016 to foreign investors.

According to a posting on the central bank's website, the NBU is monitoring the potential volume of dividend repatriation for 2016 to decide on the revoking of a ban to pay them.

The cumulative information on these transactions is to be provided before February 15, 2017.

The NBU will be able to assess the potential volume of dividend repatriation for 2016 and approve the repatriation rules.

The central bank recalled that similar steps were made last year.

As reported, the NBU early June 2016 permitted repatriation of dividends to foreign investors accrued for 2014-2015.

The NBU said that in June-November 2016 dividends of some $599 million were repatriated from Ukraine.
Celebrate Tu BShevat and Shabbat with the synagogue that feels like family. Rabbi Karen Allen will begin the observance on Friday evening, Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m. with a Tu BShevat Seder. This is a short seder celebrating the New Year of the Trees. The seder plate involves the fruits of the treenuts with shells and fruits with peels. Four shades of wine are also part of the ritual. The Shabbat service will follow at 7 pm. An Oneg Shabbat will follow the service.

The Interfaith Lake County forum will join with the monthly Rabbis Roundtable of Congregation Beth Sholom on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 7 p.m. at the synagogue. The topic for the evening is The Golden Rule: A common theme of world religions. Clergy from Muslim and Christian houses of worship will join Rabbi Karen Allen in an interactive discussion about this thought provoking and universal subject. The public is invited to attend and participate in the conversation.

Saturday, Feb. 25: Shabbat Morning Service led by Rabbi Karen Allen, at 10 a.m. A Kiddush will follow the service.

The synagogue is located at 315 North 13th St. in Leesburg, with the entrance on Center Street. We collect food for the Leesburg Food Bank at all our activities.

More information is available on the synagogue website: http://bethsholomflorida.org/ or by calling the synagogue at 352-326-3692.
Long before there was Earth Day, there was Tu B'Shevat, the Jewish New Year for Trees. This celebratory observance marks the beginning of the growing season in Israel when trees are planted. Customs include planting trees and eating fruits and various nuts, especially those native to Israel.

Congregation Ohev Shalom fifth-grade students will present a Tu B'Shevat Seder at Brookdale Island Lake in Longwood on Sunday, Feb. 12 at 10:30 a.m. The seniors and youngsters will participate in an intergenerational interaction centered around this beautiful holiday. Planting and decorating flower pots allows for connecting and sharing with new relationships. Coordinating such programs between Jewish Pavilion and Ohev Shalom is an ongoing partnership. Soon after TuB'Shevat the religious school children will be presenting Passover Sederim at several senior living communities in Orange and Seminole counties.

For more information on how to become involved with Jewish Pavilion and the hundreds of elders in our community call 407-678-9363.
From left to right: Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women; Rabbi Tamara Cohen, chief of innovation at Moving Traditions, and Debbie Hoffmann, NCJW's board president, at the National Mall for the Women's March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017.

(JTA)-One Jewish group that joined the Women's March on Washington has seen its online donations double since the election of Donald Trump as president. Another has twice as many guests as usual attending its annual conference. A third has seen its social media engagement skyrocket.

And after bringing thousands of Jews to the streets on Saturday, they're all asking the same question: What now?

A range of liberal Jewish groups took part in the Women's March, which drew more than 3 million people to streets across the country to protest Trump's policies and advocate for women's rights and civil rights. And like the organizers of the march, Jewish groups who shared its agenda face the challenge of making sure the demonstration wasn't a one-off venting of frustration, but a catalyst for sustained political activism.

"There's so many things to fight for and there are so many things to fight against right now," said Lori Weinstein, CEO of Jewish Women's International, part of a coalition of Jewish groups that took part in the protest. "The Women's March was a place for everyone to gather. It was a place for everyone to be lifted up and catapulted forward."

Groups like Weinstein's have spent decades advocating for causes like health care or immigrant rights. They see the march not as a starting point but as a validation of the goals they have long pursued. For them, the question isn't what to do. It's how to get people to keep supporting what they are already doing.

"This isn't new," said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center, the Reform movement's legislative advocacy arm, which hosted a day of programming around the march. "We're building on growing competency we have. What we're trying to do is build these movements of justice that will live on after these peak moments."

With the march acting as a clearinghouse for liberal activists of many stripes, covering everything from reproductive rights to environmentalist activism, its momentum could spread thin over a variety of campaigns. Jewish organizations, hoping to capitalize on the rally's energy, mentioned fighting the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, protecting voter rights, advocating for immigrants, opposing gun violence, pushing for paid family leave and other progressive causes.

But Rabbi Jill Jacobs, executive director of T'ruah, a rabbis' human rights group, said working on a range of issues isn't a problem because so many people came to the protest.

"All the people mobilized for the Women's March, they're not all going to be focused on one issue," she said. "They're not all going to be working on health care, they're not all going to be working on immigration. But if there's a big chunk of people that are going to be working on health care, on immigration, that's going to be huge."

Some organizations, while pursuing several disparate goals, are concentrating their energies on the local scene rather than the national government. Jews United for Justice, a social justice advocacy group in Washington, D.C., will be centered on ensuring funding in the district's budget for paid family leave, as well as building a network of synagogues willing to offer sanctuary to undocumented immigrants.

"We know one of the most productive things we can do is advocacy around the D.C. budget," said Rabbi Elizabeth Richman, deputy director of Jews United for Justice. "It centers on the people who are going to be most vulnerable under the Trump administration-low-income employees and people of color."

Jewish organizations have seen gains since Trump's election. Jewish Women's International's online donations have doubled, and an April conference hosted by the Religious Action Center, which drew a crowd of 400 last year, is on track to register at least 700 this year. But in a political environment where major policies are announced via Twitter, it's unclear whether the Women's March or its Jewish contingent will be able to claim people's attention and energy in the weeks and months to come.

"There's something about the public quality of the social media we use to coordinate protests that does a really good job getting people out into the street and feeling united on a mass level," said Gal Beckerman, author of "When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone," a book on the movement to free Soviet Jewry. "But [it] does a poor job helping people figure out the kind of organizing, building unified ideologies, sets of demands-all these things that movements need to move to the the next level in terms of effectiveness."

Beckerman said that staying focused might be especially tough for the Jewish community, which was divided over Trump. While most Jews voted for the Democrat Hillary Clinton, a few Jewish organizations, representing a vocal but now ascendant minority of American Jewry, have thrown their support behind the newly inaugurated president.

"There's a lot of division right now in the American Jewish world over Trump," he said. "What was different in the Soviet Jewry movement, what made that movement so effective, is that it did bring together all the different sides of the Jewish community-particularly the side that thinks in terms of universal rights and the side that's more particularist."

For Nancy Kaufman, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, which fought for voting rights in the 1910s and civil rights in the 1960s, the march was one more protest in a long line of activism. To make it effective, she said, the participants must understand that no one demonstration will create change-no matter how many people it mobilized.

"The most important thing is to understand that despair is not a strategy, and we can't stop," Kaufman said. "The most important thing is we coordinate, collaborate, not spin our wheels and figure out where we can have some wins because it's going to be a tough road."
(JTA)President Donald Trump can appoint his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner as a White House senior adviser, the Justice Department concluded.

In a 14-page opinion issued Friday, the departments Office of Legal Counsel said that a federal anti-nepotism law passed in 1967 does not bar this appointment because of the Presidents special hiring authority. The opinion, written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Daniel Koffsky, is based on a 1978 law that allows the president to appoint White House officials, overriding the nepotism law.

The anti-nepotism law reportedly was put in place after President John F. Kennedy named his brother, Robert, the nations attorney general, aiming to prevent a president from nominating or appointing close family, including in-laws, to administration positions.

Kushner, an Orthodox Jew who married Trumps eldest daughter, Ivanka, was named by the president a senior White House adviser, his transition team announced earlier this month. Kushner, a wealthy businessman and real estate developer, served as a top confidante to Trump during the campaign. He reportedly will not take money for his work.

It is possible for Kushners appointment to be challenged in court, though it would have to be by someone who can show they were harmed by the appointment, according to Politico. The Justice Departments opinion does not have standing in court.

Trump said in recent interviews that Kushner would work to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and expressed confidence that he would be successful.

Trumps endorsement of Kushner for Middle East peace negotiator follows a series of statements in which Trump expressed confidence in Kushners abilities in that capacity.

Jared is such a good kid and hell make a deal with Israel that no one else canyou know hes a natural, hes a great deal, hes a naturalyou know what I was talking about, naturalhes a natural dealmakereveryone likes him, Trump said in an interview earlier this month in The Times of London and Bild.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump reportedly will be moving to a home in Washington, D.C., in the tony Kalorama neighborhood.
A new, cutting-edge Hebrew reading crash course is taking the Jewish world by storm. The flashcard based language course developed by the Jewish Learning Institute, promises users that they can learn to read Hebrew in only five weeks if they follow the program. Beginning Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 7:30 p.m., Akiva Anderson will conduct the five sessions of the new course, Read it in Hebrew, at Nates Shul, 1701 Markham Woods Rd. in Longwood.

Many people feel lost in synagogue, because they dont know how to read Hebrew, explains Rabbi Levi Kaplan of JLIs headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y. We have found that learning how to read Hebrew strengthens ones feeling of connection to Judaism in a powerful way. Read it in Hebrew fills a tremendous need.

Already a hit with communities around the world, Read it in Hebrew has been tried successfully in over 150 Chabad Houses, camps, and schools enabling over 1,000 students to read Hebrew.

The first two lessons of Read it in Hebrew focus on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet while the last three lessons introduce vowels and teach students how to read words. With flashcards portraying the letters alongside catchy mnemonics that make the information memorable and easy to digest, Read it in Hebrew allows students to absorb information quickly and efficiently.

Read it in Hebrew utilizes a timeless teaching method espoused by the Jewish sages for generations. In addition to reading skills, students get a glimpse into the holiness and depth of the Hebrew language, including brief kabalistic explanations of the Hebrew letters.

Finally, a fun and easy-to-use program that teaches Jews how to read in the language their ancestors, exclaims Rabbi Yanky Majesky of Chabad North Orlando, the sponsor of this course. If you want to participate in synagogue but find it hard to follow whats going on, this is for you. Language no longer needs to be a barrier between Jewish people and their heritage.

Read it in Hebrew is designed to appeal to people at all levels of Jewish knowledge, including those without any prior experience or background in Jewish learning. The course is open to the public, and attendees need not be affiliated with a particular synagogue, temple, or other house of worship. The cost for the course is $85 and it includes a set of flash cards.
Michael Dewitz, 34, walked around on the University of Florida campus dressed in black and wearing a swastika armband. On Jan. 26, he stopped by the potato statue on Turlington Plaza and stood there for about three hours. He immediately received attention from angry and offended students, and by noon a crowd of about 100 people had gathered around him.

Emotions and opinions were mixed-while some students shouted expletives at Dewitz or held posters of protest, other defended his right to free speech and yet others, in an effort to diffuse the anger, sang "I love you" repeatedly. One student stood beside Dewitz and showed him her tattoo of the Star of David on her wrist.

University police and UF officials watched from the sidelines.

Dewitz told the campus newspaper, The Alligator, his presence was a "social experiment meant to prompt discussion."

"I am upset that (the protesters) are upset," he said, "because they don't understand my intentions."

However, earlier in the week, Dewitz saw a student wearing a kippah and gave the student a Nazi salute. Dewitz also intimidated a UF Jewish studies senior on his way to minyan. The student, Jacob Zieper, told The Alligator that he knew Dewitz meant to intimidate him. "You can't fight hate with hate," he said. "You just have got to drown it out with pride and love."

Rabbi Berl Goldman of Chabad told The Alligator that although Dewitz has a right to free speech, his actions incited hatred.

"He's antagonistic," Goldman told an Alligator reporter. "He's wearing a symbol of hate and intolerance. There should be thousands of people shouting him down."

Sid Dobrin, chair of the UF Department of English, agreed with Goldman, telling the Alligator that he doesn't believe the freedom of speech encompasses hate rhetoric. "By walking outside with that symbol, he is an aggression."

This was the fourth anti-Semitic incident at UF in the past two months. Rabbi Adam Grossman, CEO of UF Hillel, is concerned. "Now, more than ever, it is vital that we come together to stop this hate from affecting and infecting our students and community," he stated in an email sent to many UF alumni and Jewish newspapers in Florida.

Grossman is taking the initiative, in addition to working on campus to educate and activate the community against anti-Semitism, he plans to travel around Florida to educate and help arm Jewish communities "so that together we can guard against these abhorrent actions."
Shown here (l-r): at Hebrew University's Truman Institute Jan. 17: Syrian opposition member Issam Zeitoun, who lives in the village of Bet Jan near the border with Israel; Sirwan Kajjo, a Syrian-Kurdish author; and Member of Knesset Ksenia Svetlova (Zionist Union).

"You are living in a paradise in comparison to the Syrian people. Shame on you. We are being killed," said Issam Zeitoun, who lives in the Syrian portion of the Golan Heights, in response to Arab-Israeli students who accused him of being a traitor because he was speaking in Israel.

Zeitoun was one of two Syrian opposition figures who addressed Israelis Jan. 17 at Hebrew University's Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace in Jerusalem. The Syrians shared their plight and vision, and overcame an attempt to disrupt their message. A third Syrian opposition member gave remarks in a video message.

Moderated by Member of Knesset Ksenia Svetlova (Zionist Union), the event featured Sirwan Kajjo, a Syrian-Kurdish author and journalist from the city of Qamishily in northeastern Syria, where his family still resides, and Zeitoun, who is from the village of Bet Jan, which is situated minutes from the border with Israel.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war about six years ago, Zeitoun has served as a liaison between rebel groups (such as the Free Syrian Army) and international players, including Israel. He maintains daily contact with rebel commanders in southern Syria.

Zeitoun's address was interrupted by four Arab-Israeli students who were sitting in the audience and began protesting the willingness of the Syrians to visit Israel and address the public here. They heckled Zeitoun and shouted slogans against "the Israeli occupation" of the Golan Heights.

MK Svetlova attempted to restore order, telling the hecklers, "You are welcome to protest outside the event. If you wish to remain, you are welcome to do so if you are silent and let our guests finish the session."

The Kurdish perspective

Kajjo, who is a refugee living in the U.S. but regularly visits Syria illegally, is wanted by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. He was in Syria as recently as last July, and maintains regular contact with Kurdish armed groups such as the YPG, which is on the frontline in the war against Islamic State.

Speaking to JNS.org after the event, Kajjo said he is in touch with a network of activists in the northeast Kurdish area of Syria, and that he is keen to tell the Israeli people about what is happening in his homeland.

The Kurds have succeeded in securing most of their areas and ridding them of Islamic State, he said, and are currently trying to push into the de facto Islamic State capital of Al-Raqqah. "This is important strategically, to capture Raqqah with Arab partners, and to ensure that there is no threat to the Kurdish areas," he said. Kurdish fighters, backed by the U.S. and the international coalition against Islamic State, have been extremely effective in beating back the jihadist terror group, Kajjo said.

"This fight will only continue, because the Kurds are determined to eliminate ISIS (Islamic State). It's true that the Kurds are Muslims, but moderate Muslims. This is a different form of Islam-completely different from what exists in other parts of Syria. It is very important to keep ISIS and its ideology out of Kurdish areas," he stated.

The Kurdish people have a natural affinity with Israel, Kajjo said, noting that "many Iraqi Kurds have an established relationship with Israel. It's important to understand that. There is a pro-Israel tendency among Kurds in Syria as well."

What should Israel do about the Syrian war?

Asked about his views on Israel's best course of action in the bloody Syrian arena, Kajjo said it is in Israel's national interest to "make more friends in Syria."

"Also, it's the right thing to do in this chaotic environment," he said. "It's really hard to find friends in Syria-a country that for 50 years has been told that Israel is the only enemy and needs to be defeated. And now, to find people who are open to maintaining a relationship with Israel, is interesting."

The recent victory by the Assad regime and his Iranian Shi'a backers in Aleppo spells bad news for Israel and for the region, Kajjo warned.

"Iran is expanding. Their goal is to open a highway between Tehran and Beirut," the author said, referring to the Iranian-dominated regional crescent that is taking form. "And it's happening, unfortunately, in Syria. The Iranian ambition is crystallizing."

Meanwhile, Assad is calling up more Hezbollah forces from Lebanon. And more Shi'a elements continue to enter Syria from other areas, such as Iraq. The Iranian-led axis is "showing Israel that it is at your doorstep," he said.

"Israel needs to act on the fact that this going to be existential threat to the country. Many opposition groups believe Israel needs to get involved to create safe zone in southern Syria for its own security," Kajjo added.

A vision for Syrian-Israeli relations

A third Syrian opposition member, Fahed Al Masri, sent a video address to the conference.

Al Masri, the chairman of National Salvation Front in Syria, is on the leadership team of the ETILAF, the main coalition of Syrian opposition groups. He offered a vision of Syrian-Israeli relations that could only be possible if moderate rebels would take control of Syria.

"Our goal is for the new Syria to be outside of any international crisis, and to focus on reconstruction and building a culture of peace," Al Mari said.

"We drew up a road map for peace between Syria and Israel," he said. "The new Syria will not be hostile in any way to the state of Israel, nor to any state in the region or internationally. The new Syrian state will not provide any facility for any groups or [foreign] military, nor for any acts of sabotage targeting the security and safety of Israel, or any other neighboring country. The security of Israel is necessarily linked to the departure of Assad and his regime."
On Feb.15 and 16, the Israeli Soldiers Tour will come to the ROTC at University High School (5 classes) and the University of Central Florida.

Similar to other tours, two reserve duty Israeli soldiers relate their personal experiences serving in the IDF upholding the strict moral code, discuss their backgrounds, life in Israel and answer questions. These never-before-heard stories are from the front lines, not the headlines. The two soldiers, Ilan and Mark-their last names are withheld for security purposes-look forward to sharing their IDF experiences with the students.

Mark

Ilan was born in Venezuela and moved to Israel in 2010. Ilan's father is a Christian Venezuelan and his mother is the daughter of a Holocaust refugee. His home, education and life have always been an example of multiculturalism and coexistence. Ilan served in the Humanitarian and Civil Affairs Unit in the IDF, also known as COGAT. During his service, Ilan worked with Palestinian civilians and representatives in projects focused on improving the life of Palestinian families. He lives with his wife in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

Mark, 27, is studying government in the school of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. Originally from Russia, Mark immigrated to Israel with his parents when he was five years old. After high school, he joined the Israel Defense Forces and served as a combat medic in an elite reconnaissance unit of the Golani Brigade for three years. After military service, Mark worked as a security officer in the Israeli Airport Authority.
Netanyahu and Trump to meet Feb. 15

WASHINGTON (JTA)President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel will meet in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 15.

Trump looks forward to discussing strategic technological military and intelligence cooperation with the prime minister, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday at the daily briefing for reporters.

Our relationship with the only democracy in the Middle East is crucial to the security of both our nations, Spicer said.

Netanyahu confirmed and welcomed the invitation.

I deeply appreciate President Trumps kind invitation to come to Washington and the warm words about Israel, he said in a statement. I look forward to discussing with him the areas of cooperation between us that are so vital to the security and well-being of our two countries.

Trump and Netanyahu are expected to discuss a range of issues where Israel and the Obama administration had strong disagreement, including the Iran nuclear deal, settlements policy and moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

This weekend, Trump suggested he was less enthusiastic about moving the embassy than he was during the campaign, when he pledged to do so, or even in the days leading up to his Jan. 20 inauguration, when he repeated the pledge.

Im looking at it, were studying it, as you know weve discussed this before, Trump told the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview broadcast Saturday. Were studying it very long and hard. You know its a very big decision because every president for the last number of presidents, large number, theyve come in and they were going to do it and then all of a sudden they decide they dont want to get involved.

Trump and his spokesman have said since the inauguration that they are at the early stages of deciding on when to move, but Trumps CBN interview was the clearest sign yet he is reconsidering the idea.

Ive always liked the concept of doing it, Ill tell you that. Ill have a decision in the not-too-distant future, Trump said. Theres certainly a chance of it, absolutely, but were doing very detailed studies on that and well come out very soon.

Vice President Mike Pence, meeting with Jordans King Abdullah in Washington, discussed the embassy issue and told the king that discussion was still in its early stages, Spicer said at the news briefing.

Trumps nominated ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, one of Trumps longtime lawyers, has said he would prefer working from Jerusalem.

Congress recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital in 1995, but presidents have since then exercised a waiver should the move pose a risk to national security.

Netanyahu wants to reverse the sanctions relief for nuclear rollback deal reached last year between Iran and six major powers. Trump has said it is a bad agreement but has not indicated he will pull out of it.

Last week, Netanyahu announced major building launches in the settlements and in eastern Jerusalem, shortly after the Obama administration in its final month allowed through a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning settlements.

Sean Spicer: Complaints about omitting Jews from Holocaust statement pathetic

WASHINGTON (JTA) President Donald Trumps spokesman said complaints about the presidents omission of Jews from a Holocaust commemoration statement weres pathetic and disappointing.

Sean Spicer, speaking Monday at the White House briefing for reporters, was asked about the complaints about the statement Friday marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which did not mention Jews.

By and large hes been praised for it, Spicer said, although only the World Jewish Congress appears to have praised it, while a broad range of others raised concerns.

Reporters asked specifically about complaints from two groups otherwise supportive of the Trump presidency, the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Zionist Organization of America.

In response, Spicer noted the tensions between Israels government and the Obama administration, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus praise for Trump.

Theres been no better friend than Donald Trump, especially after the last eight years, the tremendous respect hes shown Israel, the Jewish people, and to suggest anything otherwise frankly is a little disappointing, he said.

The president went out of his way to recognize the Holocaust and the suffering that went through it, and to make sure America never forgets the people that were affected by it and the loss of life.

Spicer listed Jews and Roma, gays, the disabled and priests as victims of the Holocaust.

To suggest that remembering the Holocaust and acknowledging all of the peopleJewish, gypsies, priests, disabled, gays and lesbiansI mean it is pathetic that people are picking on a statement, he said.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, without mentioning Trump, weighed in on the controversy on Monday afternoon.

Millions of other innocent civilians were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, but the elimination of Jews was central to Nazi policy, the statement said.

As Elie Wiesel said, Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims, it said. The Holocaust teaches us profound truths about human societies and our capacity for evil. An accurate understanding of this history is critical if we are to learn its lessons and honor its victims.

Spicer said critics were nitpicking a statement.

He said the statement was written with the help of an individual who is both Jewish and the descendants of Holocaust survivors. Asked if it was Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and a leading adviser, Spicer refused to say.

Since the United Nations launched the remembrance day in 2005, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama have noted in their statements that the principal aim of the Holocaust was the genocide of the Jews.

Jewish critics have said that omitting Jews from Holocaust commemoration statements, wittingly or not, plays into the agenda of groups that seek to diminish the Nazi genocide of the Jews.

While the Nazis persecuted an array of groups because of their ethnic origins, professions, political beliefs and sexual orientation, scholars say only Jews and Roma were targeted for genocide. (There is some dispute about whether to class the mass murder of Roma as a genocide because, unlike with Jews, Nazi policies on Roma varied between regions.)

Since the controversy erupted, Trump administration spokesmen, including his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, have doubled down on the argument that it is better not to single out Jews in order to be inclusive.

Socialist primary winner in France had backing of prominent anti-Semites

(JTA)A left-wing politician in France who was endorsed by the founders of the countrys Anti-Zionist Party handily defeated Prime Minister Manuel Valls in the Socialist presidential primaries.

Benoit Hamon, who supports dramatically expanding welfare payments and has called for his party to support Palestinian causes to increase its appeal to Muslim voters, beat his hard-line challenger Sunday with 58 percent of the vote in the second and final round of the balloting.

Last week, the comedian Dieudonne Mbala Mbala and the far-right author Alain Soralwho along with founding the Anti-Zionist Party both have multiple convictions for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred against Jewsendorsed Hamon publicly. Hamon disavowed Soral and Dieudonne.

Soral wrote on his website that voting for Hamon was necessary to knock Valls out of the race because he is a candidate who swore allegiance to the CRIF and to Israel be it through policy, media exposure, judicial means or by deploying the police. CRIF is the umbrella group of French Jewish communities.

Soral and Dieudonne cited Valls commitment to defending Jews against anti-Semitic violence. Valls is married to Anne Gravoin, a Jewish musician. In 2011 he said his marriage connected him in an eternal way to Israel and the Jewish people. He is also the only French prime minister who has said publicly that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.

Hamon will contend in the presidential elections in May against the hard-line candidate Francois Fillon of The Republicans party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy, the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron, a centrist independent.

The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism called on Hamon to react to the endorsement, prompting Hamon to publish a statement about it two days later. Hamon said he opposes the deceit of the far-right and the conspiratorial and anti-Semitic streams the two represent.

Hamon supports giving every French adult, including those who are able to work but do not do so, a basic monthly salary. He and Valls clashed repeatedly on the issue and on bans on wearing Muslim garb in public spaces, which Valls supports. Valls has accused Hamon of having an accommodating approach to radical Islam. They also have clashed about Israel.

Both Hamon and Valls have expressed their opposition to attempts to boycott the Jewish state, which are illegal in France.

Hamon in a televised interview last month called the establishment of a Palestinian state the best way of ensuring Israel is not attacked by its neighbors. But in a 2014 interview, he said that supporting the establishment of such a state was the Socialist Partys best way to recuperate our electorate in the suburbs and the neighborhoodscode for Muslim voterswho did not support the pro-Israeli position taken by President Francois Hollande.

Hamon had criticized Valls, too, for giving in to Israel.

In rare unity, Orthodox and liberal denominations are critical of Trump refugee ban

(JTA)Two large groups representing Orthodox Jews responded to President Donald Trumps executive order barring migrants from seven mostly Muslim countries and refugees from around the world by warning against policies that would place any limits on immigration based on religion.

With the combined statement by the Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America, all four major American Jewish denominations have criticized the executive order in some form. The Reconstructionist movement condemned the statement ahead of its signing Friday, while the Reform and Conservative movements condemned it on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.

The Orthodox statement came Sunday night. It was first issued in December 2015 after Trump called for banning the entry of Muslims into the United States --

It is extremely rare for all four movements, which have split on everything from LGBT rights to Israel policy, to unite in opposing a presidential action.

While the Orthodox organizations said they recognize the need for protections against terrorists, they urged the administration to protect religious freedom.

We call on all Americans to reaffirm that discrimination against any group based solely upon religion is wrong and anathema to the great traditions of religious and personal freedoms upon which this country was founded, the statement says, and calls on the United States government to recognize the threats posed by radical Islamists, while preserving and protecting the rights of all people who seek peace, no matter how they worship God.

Trump has denied that Fridays executive order is a ban on Muslims, although the statements by the Reform and Conservative movements both assert that the policy is tantamount to a religious test for refugees, travelers and migrants. The executive order prohibits for 120 days all refugees from entering the country, with an indefinite ban on those from Syria. Citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, are barred from entry for 90 days.

A range of Jewish groups have opposed the order, and Jews joined protesters at airports across the country on Saturday to protest the ban.

The Zionist Organization of America appears to be the only major Jewish group to unreservedly support the executive order.

Canadian Jewish groups, others condemn deadly attack on Quebec mosque

MONTREAL (JTA)The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Quebec and the World Jewish Congress were among the Jewish and non-Jewish groups who condemned the attack on a Quebec mosque during a prayer service that left six dead and eight wounded.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the Sunday night attack on the Quebec City Islamic Cultural Centre, in which gunmen fired on the some 40 people inside, a terrorist attack on Muslims, Reuters reported.

Two suspectsreportedly students at Laval University in the citywere arrested following the attack in the Quebec City suburb of Ste-Foy, although the specific reasons behind the shootings remained unclear.

The building, called the Grand Mosque, has experienced several isolated incidents of vandalism since its founding five years ago, including a pigs head left on its property last June during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

One of the victims on Sunday reportedly was a convenience store owner and father of four who has stopped by the mosque for evening prayers.

We condemn this terrorist attack on Muslims in a center of worship and refuge, Trudeau said in a statement. Muslim-Canadians are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities and country.

Rabbi Reuben Poupko, co-chair of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, said the Jewish community is horrified by the murderous shooting.

Nothing justifies the murder of innocent civilians assembled in a place of worship, he said.

WJC President Ronald Lauder in a statement issued early Monday morning called it a horrific attack and called for those who perpetrated this abhorrent act of mass murder to be brought to justice.

Echoing previous statements, Lauder said: We must not be intimidated by terrorism, but cherish our freedom, including the freedom to worship. We must defend each other, and we must look after one another: one religious community after the other, one country after the other. The scourge of terrorism wont be defeated unless we are united in our resolve to defeat it.

The American Jewish Committee in a statement said it was appalled by the fatal attack.

This was an attack on Canada, not only on one mosque, said Robert Silverman, the groups director of Muslim-Jewish relations. Indeed, it was an attack on any democratic society founded on religious pluralism that today faces threats against its Muslim populations. Our thoughts are with the families of the worshippers senselessly murdered, and with the injured, who are in need of our prayers.

President Reuven Rivlin of Israel joined other world leaders in condemning the attack, first tweeting: Thoughts & prayers with the Canadian people, @GGDavidJohnston, PM @JustinTrudeau, after the horrific attack on a house of prayer in #Quebec.

British Board of Deputies President Jonathan Arkush, who is traveling the country to promote Jewish-Muslim relations, also condemned the attack.

There can be no justification whatsoever for the wanton slaughter of innocents, he said. We pray for the victims and their families, and call on all communities to redouble efforts to defeat the evils of bigotry and terrorism for good.

Jewish CEO of Starbucks says company will hire 10,000 refugees

(JTA)Howard Schultz, the Jewish billionaire CEO of Starbucks, said his company plans to hire 10,000 refugees over five years in a letter to employees addressing President Donald Trumps executive order temporarily banning refugees from entering the United States.

We have all been witness to the confusion, surprise and opposition to the Executive Order that President Trump issued on Friday, effectively banning people from several predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, including refugees fleeing wars, Schultz wrote in a message sent Sunday titled Living Our Values in Uncertain Times.

I can assure you that our Partner Resources team has been in direct contact with the partners who are impacted by this immigration ban, and we are doing everything possible to support and help them to navigate through this confusing period.

Schultz wrote that the conscience of our country, and the promise of the American Dream are being called into question. He added: I am hearing the alarm you all are sounding that the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack.

Schultz said the efforts to hire refugees will begin in the United States and focus on refugees who served with U.S. troops as interpreters and support personnel in foreign countries. He said refugees over the five years will come from 75 countries.

Other areas in which Schultz said he will help employees includes support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or Dreamers program, including paying the biennial fee that his employees must pay to stay in the program; continuing to assist and buy from coffee farmers in Mexico, and to continue to offer access to health care through Starbucks.

List of Auschwitz commanders and guards posted online

WARSAW, Poland (JTA)A list of the names of Nazi SS commanders and guards who served at the Auschwitz concentration camp was published online.

The list, believed to be the most complete ever, went online Monday at the website http://en.truthaboutcamps.eu/. The list was prepared by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance in cooperation with the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.

A presentation on the project was offered Monday during a conference in Krakow. Among those on hand were Jaroslaw Szarek, director of the Institute of National Remembrance, and Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz museum.

The database also provides the SS staff members personal data, including date and place of birth, service number, date of arrival to and departure from the camp, education and citizenship. Photographs of some of the SS officers are shown and, in the case of those who were tried in courts after the war, their court records.

Cywinski said the database is the result of a several-generations-long investigation started immediately after the war by the commissions prosecuting criminals, and then continued in the Auschwitz Museum. The Germans before escaping the camp exported and burned the camp administration records. They destroyed most of the documents.

Szarek called the posting of the list a historic day

This base is the beginning of a large project, he said at the conference. We start with Auschwitz, but we are planning to expand this list also to other German Nazi concentration camps.

In 1941, the SS garrison in Auschwitz had about 700 members, in June 1942 about 2,000, in April 1944 about 3,000, and in August 1944 about 3,300. In mid-January 1945, in connection with the final evacuation of Auschwitz, there were 4,480 SS members and 71 SS female overseers.

The database does not include personal data of Wehrmacht staff used in some subcamps and external commandos as support staff and sentries of the Ukrainian military company. There also is no data of nurses of the German Red Cross who were not SS members.

This month, the Auschwitz museum appealed to Germans and Austrians for personal SS documents, photographs, personal letters or any other materials relating to the staff of the camp.
Obamas strength is a capacity to speak, and excite many of us. Sometimes in support of what he says. Sometimes in frustration about his slippery superficiality. Sometimes with greater enmity. That he is also black adds to the appeal for many, and the antipathy of others.

We should not expect that hell go quietly to the place where other politicians retire. His last days in office provide much to applaud or ridicule.

Israelis and our friends have expressed enough, or may just be getting started about his last act with respect to the UN Security Council, backed up by what we can hope is the last ponderous speech by the former secretary of state. Alas, pictures of Kerry in a protest march against Trump indicate that we havent heard the last from him.

In his last press conference as president, Obama expressed the mantra of the fashionable left, threatening that Israel will have to cope with an Apartheid One State if it cant find a way to agree with the flaccid Palestinians about Two States, and urging Trump to avoid anything one sided, like moving of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.

We can expect to hear from those who ask if his own recent actions have not been one sided for the sake of Palestine. Its more fashionable to blame Israelis than to give up on the Palestinians. And it plays better on account of the Jews in the chorus.

Palestine does not occupy all of Obamas time. Hes also made a pitch for the transgender vote by curtailing the punishment of Chelsea (Bradley) Manning. Israels friends are expressing what Varda asked when she heard the news, What about Pollard?

Its not easy comparing the degree of criminality or the damage to U.S. critical interests associated with Pollard and Bradley. However, the disproportion in their punishments, with Pollards continuing after his release from prison, justifies the question.

We, the Chosen, may be understood for focusing on Obamas legacy with respect to Israel. However, the worldly among us recognize that his presidency, his final remarks as president, and most likely his post-presidential pronouncements, extend more widely.

Obama must accept at least a bit of the damnation for what has happened in the Middle East since his 2009 Cairo speech insisting on equality and democracy across this largely Muslim region, where both equality and democracy challenge the theology and culture. He added to the damage by a 2013 speech that both condemned and accepted chemical weapons in Syria, and served to grant Russia primacy in that country. Historians and other commentators will be quarreling for years about how many of the millions of dead and more millions of refugees should be assigned to the responsibility of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, or the Muslims themselves.

We can expect that Americans will be worrying more about the benefits and problems associated with the Affordable Care Act, whose moniker Obamacare will mark his presidency as much as anything.

Comments about complexities or sloppiness may begin with the 2,200 pages of legislation, and the failure of the president to enlist Republicans of the House and Senate in what he created.

Likewise, the lack of demonstrable progress for African Americans, and continued tension with police. Its easy to understand black votes for a black president, both in terms of community identity and the misery of African-American history, but its also possible to question the communitys accomplishments since 2008.

Lots of Americans and those of us dependent on the U.S. are trembling at the onset of a Trump presidency. Massive demonstrations against him, as well as a substantial numbers of Democratic lawmakers boycotting the Inauguration do not portend well for political expectations. Accepting loss is one of the cardinal traits of democratic politics, and lots of Americans have not been following those rules. If extremists of the left arouse extremists of the right, well all suffer from American chaos.

The new mans Inaugural speech sounded like the tweets of his campaign, and still leaves us wondering. Analyses of the speech have been longer than the speech itself, reflecting problems of interpretation and projection. Parts of his speech and some initial actions have generated applause and condemnation.

Explaining Trumps victory isnt easy, or likely to pass without quarrel. However, just as Obamas naivete contributed something to the chaos and carnage roiling the Middle East outside of Israel, so his well-spoken superficiality and his version of political correctness had something to do with the success of the Trump campaign.

Early news is that those applauding Barack and Hillary, and supporting Keith Ellison as chairman of the Democratic Party, are already beginning to promote Michelle for president in 2020.

Its tempting to bet on political disaster for Democrats obsessed with the view that driving well to the left of center is the way to go.

Wish us all well. The sentiment guarantees nothing, but its not likely to hurt.

Comments expected. Irashark@gmail.com
Public joint-stock company Ukrzaliznytsia has proposed to business to sign the company long-term price policy agreement, Ukrzaliznytsia Board Chairman Wojciech Balczun said when discussing a draft order of the Infrastructure Ministry to increase freight transportation tariffs by 25% at the State Regulatory Service on Thursday.

"We propose to sit and sign the agreement on the long-term price policy at Ukrzaliznytsia. The market would be able to plan. I absolutely support the expansion of our prospects for more than one year. Ukrzaliznytsia has never had a long-term strategy. The financial plans are drawn up only for one year. We can sign contracts only for one year. Tell this to Germans who sign contracts for 15 years Now we should hold a tender to buy rolling stock during three years as we did it in Poland. I cannot do this, as even the financial plan for 2017 has not yet been approved," he said.

Business representatives criticized the draft order to increase the tariffs during the discussion. The decision would affect both Ukrzaliznytsia due to a fall in the volume of transportation and the Ukrainian economy. They voiced support to strengthening transparency in spending the funds of the company, increasing efficiency of its operations and rational use of funds.

After the discussion the State Regulatory Service refused to approve the draft order and decided to create a working group jointly with business to set a compromise tariff.
By Dr. Yvette Alt Miller

Aish Hatorah Resources

No headline seems too far-fetched when it comes to spreading false news stories about Israel.

Fake news about Israel went mainstream recently when a member of Britains House of Lords re-posted a news item on her Facebook page that came from an extremist, conspiracy website.

Baroness Jenny Tonge has a long history of hostility to the Jewish state. On January 21, 2017, she posted an article with the shocking revelation: the President of Israel called his own country sick said that Israel was waging a Holocaust against Palestinians, and termed Israelis worse than Nazis. Above a picture of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, the Baroness wrote this article shows that there are people, very important people, in Israel who are appalled by the Zionist policies and actions. All power to them and linked to the article.

Her link was shared by scores of people, spreading its poison even more widely. One commentator wrote that shed heard this post was fake and Baroness Tonge dismissed that concern, insisting Well that comment s (sic) just too silly. Perhaps someone can find the actua (sic) article the piece was based on.

The Baroness is wrong. This damaging article is entirely false, churned out by a bizarre Dubai-based site called AWD News (the initials stand for Another Western Dawn). The internet fact-checking website Snopes describes AWD News as a site that doesnt have more than a nodding acquaintance with facts, instead playing on nationalistic fantasy and conspiracy theory to create alarming (and thus clickable and shareable) stories. Recent AWD News articles have claimed Israelis orchestrated Ukraines unrest (June 6, 2016), Israeli intelligence is (aiding) ISIS to capture... Baghdad (August 30, 2016) and Mossad has close ties with ISIS (August 31, 2016).

On December 20, 2016, AWD posted a completely fabricated story, reporting that Israels Defense Minister (they even got his name wrong, citing the previous Defense Minister instead) supposedly threatened to bomb Pakistan with nuclear missiles if Pakistan joined the fight against ISIS in Syria. The fabricated report soon had real-world consequences.

Instead of checking out the false report (or even noticing the name of his Israeli equivalent was incorrect) Pakistans Defense Minister Khawaja Asif tweeted a combative message about the fake story: Israeli (defense minister) threatens nuclear retaliation presuming (Pakistan) role in Syria against Daesh (ISIS). Israel forgets Pakistan is a Nuclear State too. It was only after Israels Government pointed out the story was totally fictitious that Minister Asif backed down, acknowledging the story was false, and issuing a more peaceable tweet instead, assuring Israelis We desire to coexist in peace, both in our region and beyond.

Fake news about the Jewish state has a long history. One of the most pernicious lies is that Israel, not Arab terrorists, was behind the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. In 2011, the ADL wrote In the ten years since the... attacks... conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks have become an entrenched propaganda industry.

Also in 2011 a Pew Poll noted that the vast majority to respondents in majority-Muslim nations they surveyed believed in the conspiracy theories blaming Israel for the attack. Fewer than a third believed that Arab terrorists conducted the assault, and the number of people inclined to believe conspiracy theories, often blaming Jews and Israel, had grown in the previous five years.

Other bizarre fake stories about Israel have flourished online in Muslim countries. In 2011, when a series of deadly shark attacks off Egypts coast left one woman dead and several injured, South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha suggested Israel might be behind the attacks, in order to harm Egyptian tourism. A few months later, Saudi officials caught a vulture that was tagged with a leg bracelet identifying it as part of a Tel Aviv University study of bird migration patterns. Saudi officials refused to release the vulture; local media speculated the tracking bracelet might be part of a Zionist plot.

In Arab and other Middle Eastern media, Israel in recent years has been accused of orchestrating the 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, of poisoning wells, of plotting to divide up Egypt, of helping to found ISIS. In 2013 The Economist magazine noted conspiracy theorists have grown ever more strident since the coup in Egypt in July of that year.

Its unclear if Americans and Europeans are better equipped than consumers of news in the Muslim world to tell real news from fake stories when it comes to Israel. One 2016 study by Stanford University found that three quarters of American high schoolers were unable to distinguish between real and fake news posts on Facebook. Over 30% of students argued that high-quality graphics meant an article was likely to be true. In 2015, the European Union felt the need to establish a disinformation task force which scours the internet for fake news and distributes regular newsletters debunking fake stories. In early January 2017, the European Parliament voted to increase its funding.

With the proliferation of fake news, its up to all of us to be extra vigilant in insisting on responsible reporting, especially when it comes to Israel, the object of so many false stories. Insist on fact checking. Dont assume that unfamiliar websites are reliable. Keep in mind that professional-looking graphics dont mean a story is reliable. Double-check news items and encourage others to do the same.

With countless media sources dedicated to denigrating the Jewish state, were all on the front line in the battle to ensure reliable coverage.

Yvette Alt Miller earned her B.A. at Harvard University. She completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Jewish Studies at Oxford University, and has a Ph.D. In International Relations from the London School of Economics. She lives with her family in Chicago, and has lectured internationally on Jewish topics.
Ahead of this years marking of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Jan. 27, new details have been revealed concerning how much the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration knew about the Nazis euthanasia policy, and why the U.S. failed to respond.

German historian Thorsten Noack, writing in the latest issue of the scholarly journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies, describes how famed journalist William Shirer first publicly exposed the Nazis systematic execution of individuals with physical or mental disabilities. In the pages of Life magazine and Readers Digest in early 1941, Shirer revealed horrifying details of the program that would serve as a prototype for the mass-murder techniques of the Holocaust.

At the time of Shirers articles, tens of thousands of Germans with physical disabilities had been executed by the Hitler regime. Altogether, an estimated 200,000 unfit individuals were gassed as part of the Aktion T-4 program, as it was called.

Building on research undertaken in 1999 by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Noack traced Shirers drafts and notes in order to identify, for the first time, the source of the ghastly news that he shared with the American public. Noack concludes it is highly probable that the information was leaked to Shirer by Jacob Beam, who served as third secretary at the U.S. embassy in Berlin.

Beam (1908-1993) was one of a handful of American diplomats in Germany who were tipped off by German anti-Nazi dissidents about the euthanasia program. He and his colleagues forwarded at least 10 reports on the topic to the State Department between March 1940 and March 1941. Beam was the only official who, according to archival sources, is known to have pressed for a State Department reaction to the Nazi euthanasia killings, Noack writes.

The State Department ignored Beams pleas to publicly condemn the mass murder. This stance was consistent with President Franklin D. Roosevelts pre-war strategy of generally refraining from explicitly criticizing Hitlers policies, in order to preserve Americas diplomatic and economic relations with Nazi Germany.

Roosevelt went to considerable lengths to avoid offending the Nazis during those years. For example, he asked his ambassador in Berlin, William Dodd, to pressure Dodds Jewish acquaintances in Chicago to cancel plans, in 1934, for a public mock trial of Hitler. In 1938, FDR made Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes remove references to Hitler and Nazism from a speech Ickes planned to give about the suffering of Jews in Europe. The administration blocked congressional resolutions criticizing the Nazis, and even apologized to the Fuhrer when New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia called him a fanatic who is threatening the peace of the world.

The Roosevelt administration not only opposed American Jewish groups boycott of German products in the 1930s, but went further. It quietly permitted goods to be labeled as having been made in a particular German city or province rather than requiring that they be stamped Made in Germany, in the hope of fooling consumers about their origin. It was only after Jewish leaders threatened to sue that the administration halted that subterfuge.

Perhaps the most egregious example of the administrations approach occurred after furious German and Vichy French officials complained to Washington in late 1940 that U.S. journalist Varian Fry was smuggling Jewish refugees out of France.

Secretary of State Cordell Hull warned Fry to stop evading the laws of countries with which the United States maintains friendly relations. When Fry ignored the warning, the administration refused to renew Frys passport, forcing him to leave France and end his rescue mission.

One could say that the sabotage of Frys rescue work, like the U.S. silence regarding the euthanasia program, in some ways foreshadowed the Roosevelt administrations response to the Holocaust itself.

Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and author or editor of 16 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust.
(JTA)In the run-up to his swearing-in on Friday, President Donald Trump made a series of big promises to Israel. Aside from his oft-repeated pledge to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he has talked about reviving the peace process with the Palestinians, with a goal of achieving a deal before he leaves the White House.

Undeterred by the failure of past presidents to achieve this dream, Trump has already tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with the challenge of brokering the agreement.

Kushner inherits this charge at a time when trust between the parties is at an all-time low. Trust is an essential ingredient for closing any deal that requires some degree of risk. Therefore, the incoming president would be wise to look back to some old plays and also to make some small bets as a way to build trust between the parties and lay the groundwork for real progress.

We have seen that even when you have a White House intent on reaching an agreement on this conflict, it all depends on the parties willingness to compromise on the most difficult issues. No solution can be imposed from the outside. At the same time, reaching any Israeli-Palestinian accord will require renewed trust between Israel and the United States.

Trump is looking for ways to reassure Israel that he has its back. It is understandable, therefore, that the new administration has indicated its desire to move the embassy to Jerusalem. ADL long has believed in the case for relocating our embassy to Israels capital, even though it is controversial and could have significant reactions in the region.

Whatever he decides on the embassy, there are measures that Trump can support on day one that may not solve the whole crisis but can demonstrate strong support for the Jewish state and foster trust between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This would require a mix of reviving old arrangements even as it allows for some new approaches.

First, Trump would be well served to dust off a policy approach that has been shelved in recent years but possesses real urgency. In 2005, President George W. Bush sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon prior to Israels withdrawal from Gaza. The correspondence was important because it contained two elements that never had been articulated previously by a U.S. president around settlements and refugees.

Written in the context of Israels unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, the letter recognized the reality of settlements. Since 1967, population growth and demographic shifts irrevocably had altered realities on the ground. It was therefore unrealistic to expect Israel to uproot the largest civilian areas located near the Green Line, known as the settlement blocs.

In light of new realities on the ground, President Bush wrote, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.

Israel is struggling now to find a formula that will allow it to continue building housing units in the settlements most likely to be included in Israel in any peace agreement while limiting construction in the most problematic areas that pose the greatest obstacle to territorial compromise. This could be achieved by invoking the existing Bush letter rather than contriving a new formula.

Moreover, by returning to this notion of treating the settlement blocs near the Green Line differently, Trump would be making a clear and powerful statement to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the world that contrary to UN Resolution 2334, there is an arrangement for Israels settlement policy that is consistent with a two-state vision.

The resolution was only the latest example of the Palestinian preference for international forums over the hard work of the negotiating room. The U.S. abstention on 2334 reinforced that tendency. President Trump should make clear that the path of incitement, delegitimization, demonization and violent terror will not yield any progress for Palestinian aspirations, while the route of negotiation will yield dividends for all.

Meanwhile, the 2005 letter also provides a smarter approach on refugees. It offers official recognition that any resolution to the Palestinian refugee issue will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.

This is crucial because the United States, the Middle East Quartet, the United Nations and other actors all acknowledge that the so-called right of return cannot be a pretext to flood Israel with Palestinian refugees and demographically overwhelm the Jewish state. This is unrealistic and unreasonable. By reviving the Bush position, the U.S. can reinsert a more reasonable position into the process, one that can facilitate the return of both Israel and the Palestinians to the negotiating table.

Trump also can encourage Israel to take small but pragmatic steps to meet some of the urgent needs of Palestinian civilians. This could include freeing up areas of the West Bank for Palestinian economic activity and building consistent with Israels security needs. It also might entail taking measures to foster additional investment and growth in the Palestinian economy and reducing the frustration and tension that can undergird violence.

As a successful businessman, Trump surely will appreciate the constructive role of commerce in bringing people together and creating mutual interests in stability and growth.

Indeed, just this week, an Israels coordinator of government activities in the territories, Gen. Yoav Mordechai, and his Palestinian counterpart, Civil Affairs Minister Hussein al-Sheikh, announced that they had reached a water deal that promises to improve the quality of life for Palestinians. This is the fourth such agreement reached over the past year and a half.

While reaching compromises on discrete issues like mail delivery, water sharing, electricity and cellular connectivity is not a substitute for solving the toughest political issues, they show a pathway toward rebuilding absent trust and improving quality of life.

Trump has promised big new things around the world, including in the Middle East. But reviving an old arrangementeven while seeking small, achievable improvements on the groundcould be the best route to a better long-term future.

Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Ukraine in February 2017 does not plan to resume electricity exports to the CIS (Belarus, Moldova, Russia), despite the surplus of electricity projected earlier, as repair of three reactors of Ukrainian nuclear power plants (NPPs) will be finished.

According to the forecast balance of Ukrainian power grid for February 2017 posted on the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry's website, exports of electricity to Eastern Europe is planned at 450 million kWh (24% up on February 2016, 363 million kWh).

The ministry anticipates that electricity generation in February 2017 would increase by 5.1% or 680 million kWh compared to February 2015, to 14.108 billion kWh. Some 7.35 billion kWh would be generated by NPPs (52.1% of total generation), 4.201 billion kWh by thermal power plants (TPPs, 29.78%), 1.473 billion kWh by combined heat and power plants (CHPP, 10.44%), 698 million kWh by hydroelectric power plants (4.95%), 139 million kWh by hydroelectric pumped storage power plants (0.99%), 117 million kWh by isolated power plants (0.83%) and 130 million kWh by non-conventional sources (wind farms, solar stations, biomass, 0.92%).
Donald Trump is turning out to be quite the rampaging Rottweiler at home and abroad, hell bent on unsettling longstanding norms, relationships and institutions. The latest instance of his unpredictability is his outburst at Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, during a phone call on January 28.

The Washington Post reported that Trump blasted Turnbull when the latter brought up the issue of honouring the Obama administrations undertaking to take in 1,250 refugees who are in Australias offshore detention centres. Trump reportedly informed Turnbull that he was the fifth world leader he was speaking to that day and that it was the worst call by far. Trump abruptly ended the call after 25 minutes; CNN reported that each of his other calls that day with the leaders of Japan, Russia, France and Germany lasted close to an hour. Trump tweeted calling the refugee arrangement a dumb deal  and then at a national prayer breakfast referred to tough phone calls and said we have to be tough, folkswere taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually.

He has since tried to make amends by saying he loves Australia but the country will not easily be mollified. The issue has dominated its media and headlines. Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald, the newspapers chief political correspondent Mark Kenny called Trump the Mad King: volatile, vainglorious, and untrustworthy  terms normally reserved for contemptible dictators, not US presidents. Paul McGeough wrote in The Age that the leak of this unflattering exchange showed that Trump and his team will throw anyone under the bus to make the new president look good.

David Crowe in The Australian said the nightmare of dealing with Donald Trump has been made plain to the Australian government and its citizens with extraordinary shifts... in the US Presidents official position on a refugee deal that is barely three months old. Historian James Curran felt this kind of treatment of an ally and the abusive tweet that followed it should send a shudder down the spine of politicians and policymakers in Canberra.

The reason the outburst rankles is because Australia is a major alliance partner of the US; it has joined America in every major war over the last century, and it is a member of the US-led Five Eyes intelligence sharing network, along with the UK, Canada and New Zealand. Also, Australia has chosen to stick with the US despite conflicting pulls in the region. It belongs in a neighbourhood that is dominated by China, its own two-way trade with China is worth $670 billion and it sees the latter as a big part of its economic future, even though the US is the biggest investor in Oz. It seeks to avoid confrontation but is very wary of Beijings assertion in the South China Sea and thus wants to, as its 2016 Defence white paper puts it, deepen its partnership with the United States, including enhancing our already high levels of military integration and interoperability, cooperation in intelligence sharingand participating in United States-led operations against shared challenges such as terrorism.

Trump has advertised his keenness to scale back USs commitments abroad but powers like Australia Japan and South Korea would nonetheless be pressing him for assurances that Washington will stick to treaty commitments on security and remain engaged on challenges in the continent, particularly pertaining to an assertive China and North Koreas nuclear programme.

What they see instead is Trumps rant, which will liven up the debate in Australia about its own outlook towards the US and China. Australias former foreign minister Bob Carr said the call dispelled notions of a special relationship with America and would lead to Canberras reassessing its ties to Washington. Carr made three compelling points in his remarks: that the outburst forces Australia to drop romantic notions of the alliance and now be more realistic; it liberates leaders to say no to Washington if it seeks to recruit [us] for any reckless adventure and that America has taken a nationalist direction and wont be returning to global leadership as weve understood it.

Other experts have expressed concerns:

This is a very disturbing way for President Trump to start his relationship with the leader of America's most reliable ally. https://t.co/vm3RiQogpX  Michael Fullilove (@mfullilove) February 2, 2017

If this is Trump's attitude to Australia, then we are at no risk of getting too close  Rory Medcalf (@Rory_Medcalf) February 2, 2017

And the discussion has immediately moved to implications for the US-Australia alliance.

Trump has just done China a big favour in its efforts to weaken the US-Australia alliance - and thus harmed US strategic interests https://t.co/w3jx3xoTDD  Rory Medcalf (@Rory_Medcalf) February 2, 2017

The prospect of undermining a longstanding alliance has prompted strong reactions from the American policy community:

#Australia may be the single most effective+loyal ally of the U.S. This is no way to treat a true friend. https://t.co/2hfmKTOx1G  Nicholas Burns (@RNicholasBurns) February 2, 2017

Senator John McCain called the Australian ambassador to the US to express his unwavering support for the alliance:

#Australia is 1 of US's oldest friends & allies - called Aus Amb to US to express my unwavering support for alliance https://t.co/ODQeEpoA3H  John McCain (@SenJohnMcCain) February 2, 2017

Some, however, do not foresee an operational impact from this incident since senior officials in the Trump administration want closer ties with Australia, including National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. A writer has argued that the US needs Australia, not just the other way round  because of the 2,500 US marines stationed in Darwin and also owing to Australias promixity to flashpoints of Asia which will be useful as China and others develop long-range ballistic missile capabilities.

The dust may settle soon but policymakers in Australia and Asia will be aware of the chilling effect a figure like Trump has on bureaucratic outreach. They will perhaps come to assume unpredictability as the default stance of the Trump administration, owing to his need to posture abroad for burnishing his domestic credentials. This episode will, however, reinforce doubts about Trumps temperament and those around him like Steve Bannon, who is now in the National Security Council. Curran has been quoted as saying If you have this sort of tension this early in the life of the administration over relatively small beer, what will happen in the event of a major crisis?

Embassies around the world will continue to wonder if Trump and his team understand the gravity of the office they hold, the effect their actions have on world politics and the state of strategic play in Asia at the moment. And if they conclude that the former do not have that understanding and that Trump is resolute about rolling back globalisation (which countries benefited from), then we may see subtle but significant shifts in relationships across Asia.

Authors twitter handle is @SushilAaron

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Mallika Dua is a bona fide millennial star: she found fame on Snapchat and became a social media celebrity in just one year. Now, she wants to make it as a mainstream actor.

There are books tucked away wherever you look in actor Mallika Duas (27) Andheri residence. She is currently reading two novels at once, she says. One in Mumbai (Chitra Banerjee Divakarunis Oleander Girl). One in her hometown, Delhi (Girl Online, by Zoe Sugg). I dont like depressing books. I wish Anuja Chauhan would keep writing forever. Dua moved to the city last August for work, but keeps going back to Delhi for some TLC.

Dua has previously lived on her own as a theatre student in Pennsylvania, USA. Its important to get your ass kicked. But Mumbai, she finds, is an easy city to transition into. I have a close friend from college here, but shes in south Mumbai. We didnt realise how much of a problem that would be. We meet as often as traffic permits, she laughs.

READ MORE: Being Hoezaay: From popular RJ to social media sensation

In most of her showreel so far, she has portrayed the exaggerated stereotype of the Delhi girl: loud, acerbic, with an affected English accent. In person, shes quite the opposite  soft-spoken, unassuming, and mild-mannered. People keep saying, Oh, you do the act so well. But there are so many types of Delhi girls, she says. To drive the point home, Dua created and acted in a sketch for a lifestyle website, which parodied the various types of women in Delhi.

The video went viral (a little over 1 million views). And Dua was suddenly a name to know. This was in January, 2016, when she was still working as a copywriter. In a matter of months, she garnered a following for her Dubsmash videos and Snapchat video series (Makeup Didi), quit her job, and moved to Mumbai.

Luckily, I shifted cities at a time when I had enough work lined up. A big part of an actors life is just waiting, and loaded with insecurity, she says, adding, I like my own space. So now, my pet joke is that, every time I throw a tantrum or Im being unreasonable, I tell my boyfriend, Youre dating an artist.

Talking shop

Recently, Dua was a part of comedy troupe, AIBs sketch Flirty Messaging League, and also a part of the main cast of a web show, The Trip, in which her character provided the comic relief. Its surprising, then, that she hasnt tried her hand at stand-up comedy yet. Everyones been nagging me about it. They think Ill be brilliant at it. But I dont observe the world like a stand-up comic. Ill try it this year, though, she promises.

READ MORE: TVF Pitcherss Naveen Kasturia is just like his character: candid and naive

For now, her main focus remains acting. A part of me is scared Ill be typecast as the funny Delhi girl, she admits. I would love to do Bollywood. And I want mainstream roles, not that of the heroines friend. Dua has a gripe about the way the industry only casts conventionally beautiful actors as protagonists. Id be happy to lose weight if the role demands it, but why cant we accept a slightly chubby actor in the lead as long as theyre good performers? Im comfortable in my own skin. I am OK with people not jerking off to me.

In the genes

Dua is the daughter of veteran television journalist Vinod Dua. Growing up, she was conscious of the respect her fathers work commanded. He might be dignified and serious on television, but in her Dubsmash videos, the Padma Shri awardee reveals what a sport he can be. Growing up, my biggest influence, comedy-wise, was my father. Hes funny and irreverent. Sometimes we just start talking like two typical auntyjis who gossip. He also likes Make up Didi and gives me suggestions. Then I explain that Snapchat needs to release such a filter for me to be able to implement his idea, she chuckles. He doesnt even call himself a journalist. He says, Im a communicator. I say, Youre a hipster.

When you get your hands on papaji's karakul and shervani. Ghabraaiye nahin #dubsmash #dubsmashindia #sunday #losers #paanparag#mallikadua A video posted by Mallika Dua (@mallikadua) on Jan 3, 2016 at 8:06am PST

Dua did briefly consider taking up journalism, but her interest always veered towards being on stage. In school, I loved being a part of debates, public speaking, and acting. She was popular for imitating teachers. She was also a day-dreamer. In kindergarten, my teacher nicknamed me Sotu Ram (sleepyhead), and my first grade teacher called me Gawachi Ga, which is Punjabi for lost cow. My head was always somewhere else.

For now, Dua is working on some non-comedy stuff that she cant talk about just yet. She says shes someone who never gives up when she wants something. And I want this pretty bad.

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An Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) worker was injured in firing in Rampura Phul on Thursday night allegedly by SAD workers.

AAP youth leader Roby Brar suffered an injury in his leg and is admitted in Adesh hospital, Buhcho. AAP candidate from Rampura Phul assembly segment Manjit Singh Sidhu blamed SAD workers for opening fire at Brar.

Delhi chief minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal also blamed SAD for the attack and blamed Punjab police DGP Suresh Arora for not taking action.

Punjab DGP Arora still taking orders from Sukhbir Badal. Deliberately allowing Badals goondas free run, said Kejriwal.

Punjab DGP Arora still taking orders from Sukhbir Badal. Deliberately allowing Badal's goondas free run https://t.co/hDHnmMpIOX  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) February 3, 2017

Also read | Two Congmen hospitalised after attack in Patti; SAD sarpanch booked

The incident happened Thursday midnight when Brar was reportedly chasing some SAD workers on apprehension of them resorting to distribute money among the voters. A scuffle ensued in which Brar was shot at.

Rampura Phul city police were in process of registering a case in this regard.
National joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy has published information about the contracts for over UAH 1 million signed in 2016 mentioning the bonuses paid to independent members of its supervisory board.

British MarcusRichards, Charles Proctor and Paul Warwick signed contracts for the period from May 11, 2016 until March 23, 2020 for EUR 860,000, former head of the Energy and Coal Industry Ministry Volodymyr Demchyshyn signed a contract for the period from September 22, 2016 until April 20, 2020 for $645,000.

Thus monthly bonuses to members from Britain will be around EUR 18,700 and $15,000 to Demchyshyn.

There is no contract signed with the fifth member of the supervisory board  Yulia Kovaliv  in the list of contracts signed in 2016.
Saturday is not just another voting day, one that will seal the fate of electoral contests in 157 legislative assembly seats in Punjab and Goa. It will also decide on the ambition of the Aam Aadmi Party and its chief Arvind Kejriwal to become a national force.

Punjab and Goa go to the polls in the first phase of a five-state election process that will end with the results on March 11. And these two are the only states where AAP is seen as a serious contender.

The party finished with an impressive tally of four out of 13 seats in Punjab in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, even as it drew a naught in the rest of the country.

AAPs advent on Punjabs political scene in 2014 also ended the bipolarity of the states politics which was shuffling between the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine that has now ruled for 10 years.

Months ago, around September 2016, the partys political affairs committee took the decision to focus on Punjab and Goa among the five states.

A good show will mean AAPs expansion out of Delhi, where it won 67 out of 70 seats in February 2015. A failure could dent the partys hopes including its chances in the Gujarat polls later this year, where it will fight the ruling BJP and the challenger Congress.

The Punjab election will provide the necessary impetus to the winner and decide who will be the main challenger to the BJP in Prime Minister Narendra Modis home turf.

Our aim is not to become a national party but that elections are fought on the issue of anti-corruption, education and health, Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who campaigned in both states to pitch the Delhi model of governance, told HT on Friday.

Read | AAP, Congress are in for a rude shock, SAD will do better than 2012: CM Parkash Singh Badal

We will take this agenda to other states after Punjab and Goa where we are going to form the government.

AAP in Punjab is up against a resurgent Congress led by former chief minister Amarinder Singh and the well-oiled election machinery of the SAD-BJP. However, many polls have shown the Congress, and not AAP, in the lead.

A victory in Punjab will give a much-needed boost to the Congress which now rules in seven states -- Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry.

Since December 2013, it has lost Rajasthan, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh (and Telangana), Maharashtra, Haryana, Kerala, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, the last due to defections, besides Jharkhand and Jammu and Kashmir as an alliance partner. In UP, the Congress is a junior alliance partner of the Samajwadi Party but a win in Punjab would be its solo.

The party suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and is desperately seeking revival of its political fortunes in the ongoing elections.

Click here for full coverage on Goa election

On the eve of polling, the party is sounding upbeat. The Congress is forming the government in Punjab. But to bring real change and smiles back on faces of people of Punjab lets aim for two-thirds majority, Amarinder said.

In Goa, AAP is fighting a BJP hoping to return to power based on a split of the opposition vote. The Congress is in coalition with the Goa Forward and the United Goa Party. A fourth coalition of an RSS-splinter group, Shiv Sena and Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party has thrown up an unpredictable set of possibilities.
Its easy to read meaning into the white flags of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) fluttering atop a house opposite Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singhs ancestral home at Khatkar Kalan village. You are about to make your inference when youngsters flying kites in the park across the road tell you they are proud Akalis. The flags, they claim, have been put up on the instructions of the owners well-heeled NRI relatives.

Be it the AAPs Bhagwant Mann, who claims his yellow turban and inquilab zindabad (long live revolution)  are a tribute to the martyr; or the Shiromani Akali Dal, which is building a bigger and fancier museum in his memory; or Congress CM candidate Capt Amarinder Singh, who wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking him to name the international airport at Chandigarh after Bhagat Singh  there is no political party in the state which hasnt tried to claim the legacy of Shaheed-e-Azam. Yet, his village defies any political stereotype.

Sukhjinder Singh, 19, with just a shadow of a beard, boasts that the entire village will vote for the Akali Dal as Parkinder Singh, son of the villages Akali sarpanch Sukhwinder Singh, nods. A little away, Sandeep Singh, a painter, tells you how the park used to be a dirty pond until the Akalis got it filled up. All blue card holders (food subsidy beneficiaries) here will vote for them, he adds.

Thanks to the martyr, the village is a model of development with smooth roads, uninterrupted power supply, a solar plant, gym, library, an Adarsh school, and a landscaped park. Chitta (smack), a much used term in the present polls, finds no mention here. Thankfully, our youngsters have never taken to it. We have the best of both worlds, rural and urban, smiles Amandeep Dosanjh, a school teacher. But, unlike the youngsters, she doesnt see any single partys wave in the village.

I am confused, a Whatsapp message I got today showed some Akalis manhandling Prem Singh Chandumajra (the Akali MP from Anandpur Sahib). No wonder people are talking of change, he says. Later in the day, Kuljinder Singh at Mahalon village tells you it was an old clip.

Mehnga Singh, a welder, says people are quiet because a third party is in the fray.

Amarjit Singh of Ranjit Book Depot in the dusty town of Banga says the contest in this SC-reserved constituency is between the AAP and Akalis as the Congress divided its votes by fielding Satnam Singh Kainth instead of sitting MLA Tarlochan Soondh. Now the contest is between AAPs Harjot Kaur and SADBJPs Sukhwinder Sukhi, an ENT specialist.

At Guru Nanak College for Women, the votes get divided further with a female student rooting for the batsman, symbol of the Aapna Punjab Party. But her friend says she will go with the AAP even as two others hesitate before saying they are Akalis. All first-time voters, they are students of BCom-final but admit family loyalties will determine their votes.

At Sikh National College, Banga, Gurinder Singh, a senior lecturer whos been teaching here since 1986, beams as he says both Congress and Akali candidates are alumni of the college. The youth, he admits, are clamouring for change but he hopes it will be a positive one. Some blame the Akalis for breeding idleness by giving people free atta-dal. But he doesnt see the AAP as a solution. They are trying to colonise Punjab.

Manveer Singh, 19, of Shivpur Bagh village in Nawanshahr constituency, doesnt think so. The first-time voter, sore with the ruling combine after his rejection in the police recruitment last year, says AAPs Bhagwant Mann understands his angst. I will vote for the jhadoo (broom, the AAP symbol), because Kejriwal has promised us jobs. Amardeep Singh, who is here from Bahrain, claims the fight is between the Congress and AAP. Its ditto in Balachaur, claims Bishwinder Sharma, a shopkeeper at Garhi Kanugon village. His logic is simplistic: Akali-BJP candidate Nand Lal is facing anti-incumbency as hes won the seat four times. Now the fight is between Congress Darshan Lal and AAPs Brig Raj Kumar.

While the freebieshave a fan following, what hurts is lack of jobs. Malwinder Singh, a railway employee at Malpur Akran village of Nawanshahr, speaks for many when he says: We dont need free atta-dal or bijli (power), if we can get jobs for our youngsters. That assurance is sure to generate votes.
Arvind Kejriwal on Friday mounted a stinging offensive against Prime Minister Narendra Modi ahead of voting in Punjab and Goa assembly polls, calling him a shameless dictator and alleged that he was trying to get Aam Aadmi Party deregistered.

Questioning the timing of a reported move by the Income Tax department to recommend to the Election Commission to cancel Aam Aadmi Partys political party status, the Delhi chief minister claimed that it is a dirty trick that the Prime Minister has used to avert the BJPs drubbing in the two states, which go to polls tomorrow.

Modijis dirty tricks. Losing badly in Goa n Punjab, he tries to de-register the winning party 24 hrs before elections. Shameless dictator (sic), the AAPs national convener said on twitter.

The AAP is fancying its chances in Punjab, where it is faced with a triangular contest with Congress and incumbent SAD-BJP. In Goa too, the AAP is hopeful of disturbing the ruling BJPs prospects.

According to media reports, the income tax department had on Friday asked the Election Commission to cancel AAPs status of a political party and a trust for allegedly filing false and fabricated audit reports on donations of more than Rs 27 crore.
Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav will campaign for his brother Shivpal Yadav first and then go to seek votes for candidates announced by his son and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

The former three-time chief minister told reporters that on February 9, he will go to Jaswant Nagar in Etawah and seek peoples support for Shivpal.

Mulayam and Shivpal were locked in a six-month family feud with Akhilesh over control of the party. Akhilesh eventually emerged the winner and took over as the partys national president, dislodging his father from the post.

Mulayam had also expressed unhappiness when Akhilesh sewed up an alliance with the Congress for the polls.

He declared in Delhi last week that not only he did not support the alliance but will also ask the party cadre to contest against all the 105 Congress candidates in the state.

However, within two days, Mulayam took a U-turn and said, Akhilesh has my blessings, I will campaign for him.

Akhilesh had sacked Shivpal as the partys state chief on January 1, the same day when the chief minister took over the party, but he still gave his uncle the ticket to contest from his Jaswant Nagar constituency.

Meanwhile, Shivpal has been canvassing alone.

Not even on the day of his nomination did he have any big politician with him. Mulayam, thus, took the decision to go to Jaswant Nagar and campaign for him.
Punjab is set for a three-cornered tussle with the Congress vying with Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to dethrone the incumbent Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (SAD-BJP) combine that is in power since March 2007.

Despite a visible anti-SAD wave sweeping across Punjab no party seems surefooted.

The fate of the Congress race for power after 10 years of political exile and the determined bid of the AAP to rule Punjab after Delhi will be decided by near 2 crore voters of the border state on Saturday.

There are 1,145 candidates, including independents, in the fray.

The Election Commission (EC) has put in place elaborate security arrangements across 22,600 polling stations where voting will begin at 8am and end at 5pm. The polling will be held under the vigil of about 500 companies or 36,000 soldiers of paramilitary forces and over 60,000 Punjab police personnel.

It is for the first time that Punjabs politics is witnessing a three-horse race that officially began on January 4 after the EC announced a single-phase election for the 117 assembly seats in this border state.

There are indications that a tough contest is on the cards among Congress, AAP and SAD-BJP in the 69 seats of Malwa region. The fight in 23 seats of Doaba and 25 segments of Majha is between Congress and SAD-BJP, barring a few seats where AAP is in the reckoning.

In the 2012 assembly elections, the Congress vote share was 40.09%, SAD fetched 34.73% votes, while BJP 7.18% and the rest went to others. Congress won 9 seats in Majha, SAD 11 and BJP 5, while in Doaba Congress won 6, SAD 11, BJP 5 and independent 1. In Malwa, Congress tally was 31 seats, SAD 34, BJP 2 and independent 2.

In the outgoing House, the SAD had 60 MLAs, Congress 42, BJP 12, and three independents.

Political pundits say the AAP and the nearly 10 key Congress rebels, who will eat into the anti-incumbency vote, are a major problem for the Congress in its bid to form the government.

Aam Aadmi Party national convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal during a rally at Shahkot in Jalandhar for the Punjab assembly elections on Wednesday (PTI )

During the four-week election campaign, political parties used all management tricks to shore up the fortunes of their respective candidates.

The SAD-BJP pulled out all the stops much before the code of conduct came into force by opening its coffers to dole out sops to every section of voters and blunt the anti-incumbency tone with the elusive hope to score a hat-trick.

The Congress and AAP tried to give SAD-BJP run for its money in the populism game and announced a plethora of freebies.

Palpable anti-incumbency, Panthic anger over incidents of sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, business interests, and dynastic politic were the key issues the Congress and AAP raised to the hilt to demolish the SAD. And the SADs much-touted development plank failed to take off.

While the Congress led by Captain Amarinder Singh launched a high-octane campaign, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal spearheaded his brooms assault.

Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal addressing an election rally at Grain Market Budhlada on Tuesday. (PTI)

SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal led the partys campaign with dogged determination and the tireless party patron Parkash Singh Badal, who also came under a shoe attack, were the prime vote catchers for the party.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi also campaigned aggressively. The campaigning saw all players getting locked in a spiteful verbal duel and sparing no opportunity to trade charges and counter-charges.

The nagging suspense - or the question who will be next Punjab CM - will be clear on March 11, the day the verdict will be declared.

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BJP president Amit Shah cancelled his padyatra or foot march in Uttar Pradeshs Meerut on Friday to protest the murder of a trader who was allegedly shot dead by robbers a day ago, and attacked the Samajwadi Party government over the deteriorating law and order situation in the poll-bound state.

Shahs padyatra was scheduled in the old city area and was to move through Sharda Road before reaching out to the traders community in Kabari Bazar, Sarrafa, Valley Bazar and other adjoining markets. Businessmen are considered to be the traditional voters of the Bharatiya Janata Party but were unhappy because of the Centres demonetisation that affected their trade.

Meerut is in the crucial and communally sensitive region of western UP where the party had fared well in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. The politically crucial state will vote in a seven-phase election for 403 assembly seats from February 11 to March 8. Polling in Meerut will be held in the first phase.

Calling chief minister Akhilesh Yadav and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi shahzades or princes, Shah said: The two shahzades will jointly address a press conference in the afternoon and I demand their reply on the killing of a young trader.

Development cant take place where traders were killed, he said while addressing a gathering of supporters at the Kabari Bazar crossing.

As Shah called upon BJP workers to work hard to uproot the Samajwadi Party government, he claimed 24 incidents of rape, 21 of attempt to rape and 13 murders take place in the state every day.

UP had witnessed more than 500 incidents of communal clashes in past five years, he said while claiming that only the BJP can provide good governance in the state.

Shah recounted the sops for farmers, youths, women, traders and other sections of the society announced by the BJP in its manifesto.

He also asked the gathering to keep a two-minute silence to pay tribute to 21-year-old Abhishek Verma.

Abhishek, the son of a gutka distributor Sushil Verma, was killed after some men attacked and robbed them at their office on Sharda Road. Four other traders, including Sushil, sustained bullet injuries in the firing by the fleeing men.

Angry traders blocked roads after his death and shouted slogans against police for failing to reign in criminals. They also demanded the suspension of the station house officer and circle officer of the area.

No politics

Abhisheks grieving family refused to meet the BJP president after the partys MP from Meerut Rajendra Agarwal, traders leader Vashistha and other BJP leaders approached them with Shahs message.

We dont want politics over the murder of our beloved Abhishek, a jittery family member said.

Shah, who was told about the familys decision, returned to the hotel where he is staying.

Agarwal told Hindustan Times that the family was reluctant to meet people and they decided to respect their feelings at the time of grief. He added he will try to arrange for a conversation over the phone between Shah and Abhisheks family.

Shah will address rallies in Dholana of Hapur district and Khurja in Bulandshahar district in the evening.
With Punjab slated to go to polls on Saturday, the focus of the 2017 assembly elections has shifted to Uttar Pradesh with all the big players taking centre stage on Friday.

Seventy-three constituencies of western UP will go to polls in the first phase on February 11 followed by 67 in the second phase on February 15.

In popular perception, the SP-Congress alliance is pitted against the BJP with the BSP being the dark horse.

Western UP, rocked by Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013, may set the tone for the other rounds of voting.

Making it a blockbuster day on the poll front, BJP chief Amit Shah, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, who is also the Samajwadi Party (SP) national president, and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati were all in west UP on the same day, albeit in different cities.

Shah cancelled his Friday padytra to protest the killing of a trader in Meerut on Thursday night. He attacked the Akhilesh Yadav government over the law and order situation. Shah said the chief minister must give a reply on killing of a young trader.

Calling Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi as Shahzade, Shah said: The two Shahzade will jointly address the press in the afternoon and I demand their reply on killing of a young trader.

The incident took place on Shahs padyatra route, forcing him to cancel the same and instead show solidarity with the aggrieved family.

He claimed 24 incidents of rape, 21 of attempt to rape and 13 murders takes place in the state every day.

His comment came hours before Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav held a joint 12-kilometre road show in Agra on Friday.

Amidst loud cheers from supporters and a victory song blaring on loudspeakers, Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav held UP Vijay Rath yatra in Agra on Friday evening.

The roads how began from Dayalbagh, famous for the Radhasaomisect, almost an hour behind schedule because of the delayed arrival of Rahul Gandhi from Delhi by air. Rahul Gandhi could reach Dayalbagh at 4.20 pm. Within minutes, the yatra began. Both Akhilesh and Rahul stood atop the white campaign vehicle and waved at the crowd as the rath began moving. This is the first joint poll campaign by Rahul-Akhilesh in western UP. The road show culminated at Agra Fort.

Akhilesh took part in the road show after addressing three rallies in Firozabad. In one of the rallies, he took a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modis demonetisation drive where people were standing in long queues outside bank ATMs. He said the voters in the state election will stand in line to oust the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP).

Akhilesh also took potshots at the BJP for making promise of providing Rs 15 lakh out of black money to be brought back from foreign banks abroad.

Nobody is left with currency of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 denomination. Now you (Modi Government) have all the money and at least give Rs 15,000 to people instead of 15 lakh, he added.

Earlier on January 29, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh in their maiden joint road show in Lucknow shared tight hugs and warm handshake besides donning same coloured jackets.

If the PM was targeteted by Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati lost no time on training guns on the Akhilesh government, accusing it of failing to provide adequate security in the state. She alleged that this led to a big exodus from UP.

Addressing a gathering at exhibition ground in Muzaffarnagar, Mayawati said due to the poor law and order situation in the state, there was anarchy and riots, communal tension, loot, kidnapping and land grabbing had increased.

She also hit out the BJP-led central government on demonetisation.

With the parties revving up their campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address a rally in Aligarh on February 5.

(with inputs from Vashistha Bhardwaj in Muzaffarnagar and agencies)
One riot can devastate a party.

As Jayant Chaudhary -- Charan Singhs grandson, Ajit Singhs son -- arrives in Kairana, the town where BJP has claimed Hindus live in insecurity and fled from, the crowd cheers on.

But the normalcy of the rally conceals the fact that the Rashtriya Lok Dal -- once a key player in west UP -- is today fighting an election for man, swabhiman, honour, but also its very survival.

To win, RLDs objective is simple -- turn the Jat who became Hindu in 2014 back to being a Jat and stop BJP. And in a sign that the generational transition is not just underway in SP, the man who has to deliver on this mission is Jayant Chaudhary.

The breakdown of the coalition

The Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 destroyed the carefully constructed Jat-Muslim social coalition of Charan Singh. BJP emerged as the champion of Jats, and their Hindu religious identity trumped every other identity. RLD, in 2014, failed to win a single seat.

Chaudhary told HT, It was a traumatic, emotional moment for people here. BJP took advantage of this. It became difficult to counter their propaganda. And we lost the most politically.

Read | For UP elections, Ajit Singhs RLD mulls over an informal tie-up with BJP

The political outcome was a result of the breakdown in social relations. As Pankaj Kumar, a Jat farmer in Shamlis Khedi Karmu village, said, The SP administration was one-sided. The BJP was completely with us. If they were not there, Jats would have got badly affected. Ajit Singh did not even come. BJP backed us during riots; we backed them during the elections.

For RLD, if the 2014 trend lasts, it will mark the end of its politics. And that is why if its first priority in this election is to win seats in west UP - it either won or came second in 22 seats last time and is eyeing those - an equally important objective is to ensure that Jats return, and BJP does not win. Ajit Singh is known to have allied with all forces, but Chaudhary says even in a post-poll context, any deal with BJP is a complete no-go.

Be our pride, not BJPs tail

As Jats get disillusioned with the centre, RLD smells an opportunity.

Kumar - the BJP voter of 2014 - now says he will return to RLD. Why? He is unhappy with the central government over delay in cane payments.

Read | Former dacoit Malkhan Singh joins Ajit Singhs RLD, may campaign for UP polls

A group of younger Jats around him express other grievances -- look at how Modi treated us in Haryana; where is reservation for us; where are the jobs; notebandi shows this government is anti-kisan and that perennial question, where are the achhe din?

Chaudhary also hopes to tap on something more intangible. In a message aimed for Jats, Chaudhary taunts them in the rally: You got fooled repeatedly. Become wise now. Recognise your own. They think you have become weak. Have your pride. RLDs slogan captures this message - instead of becoming the BJPs tail (pooch), it is better to become RLDs pride (mooch).

Read | Modi and a tricky caste arithmetic: BJPs one-and-a-half dishes on offer in UP

At the same time, it wants to send a signal to Muslims as well. RLD has given close to 20% tickets to Muslims, including two in Muzaffanagar. This begs two questions. Will RLDs Jat supporters return? And even if they return, will they vote for Muslims? Chaudhary admits this is a big test, and adds it applies to Muslim voters as well in seats with other candidates.

A party worker sums up the RLD challenge of 2017: BJP made Jats Hindu, we have to make them Jats again. If it succeeds, the party could well be the swing force in west UP.

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Amid loud cheers from supporters and a victory song blaring on loudspeakers, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav held the UP Vijay Rath yatra here on Friday evening.

The roadshow began from Dayalbagh, famous for the Radhasoami sect, almost an hour behind schedule because of the delayed arrival of Rahul Gandhi from Delhi by air. The yatra began within minutes of his reaching Dayalbagh at 4.20 pm.

Both leaders waved from atop the campaign vehicle that travelled past large crowds of supporters.

Interestingly, some BJP supporters shouted pro-Modi slogans as the rally began from Dayalbagh, which is part of the Agra North constituency represented by BJP.

The rath had images of the Congresss hand, SPs bicycle, Rahul-Akhilesh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and SP patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, symbolizing the Congress-SP alliance.

This is the first joint poll campaign by Rahul-Akhilesh in western UP that goes to poll in the first phase on February 11.

Read: Alliance with SP suggests that Congress will remain a C team player than regain its lost glory

Dayal Bagh is famous because of its association with Radhasoami sect of believers. UP Congress committee chief Raj Babbar -- a two-time MP from Agra on the SP ticket -- had credited his victory to the Radhasaomi sect. Dayalbagh also has an educational institute (DEI) that is quite popular among youths.

After the start, the rath headed for Bhagwan Talkies crossing, a busy intersection on NH-2 part of Kanpur-Delhi highway. Bhagwan Talkies has been among the oldest cinema halls of the city. Then it went to Deewani Chauraha, civil court area and Sur Sadan, covering 12 kilometres. The rally also passed through Wazirpur, a Muslim-dominated locality, Hari Parvat, Agras busiest crossing, Chipitola, the oldest scrap market in the city and Bijligarh crossing. The road show concluded at Agra fort.

Supporters welcomed the leaders with flower petals and selfies.

The road show had been planned so as to cover three urban constituencies: Agra North, Agra South and Agra Cantonment. Of the nine assembly constituencies in the district, six are rural and three urban.

BSP dominates Agra as it has six of the total nine seats, while BJP holds two urban seats. SP has only one seat which Aridaman Singh had won in 2012. But this time, he has defected to the BJP and his wife Pakshalika Singh is contesting the seat. The Congress has none.

Read: UP polls: Women wonder how a cooker promised by Akhilesh will change their lives

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Congress poster boy, chief minister Harish Rawat aka Harda, is leading a one-man show in poll-bound Uttarakhand. Harda is confident that he will be able to form the next government as there is no anti-incumbency wave in the hill state. In an interview to Anupam Trivedi, Rawat claimed that the corruption charges levelled against him by opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are generic in nature. Asserting that Congress is facing no back-stabbing, he says all black sheep are in the BJP. Excerpts:

What is your take on the corruption allegations by BJP?

The allegations against me are generic. BJP says I was involved in mining scam, liquor scam, etc. But do they have any proof? My predecessors and others who are now in BJP rather faced specific corruption charges, which are on record.

Why didnt you act then?

I was forced to ignore them as I had a bigger task at hand of rebuilding Kedarnath town. I am proud of completing it in time.

You were purportedly seen on a sting video, talking about ways to save the government...

I dont deny my presence in the so-called sting video. As I said, I ignored trouble creators to save the government, otherwise the bigger task of rebuilding Kedarnath town would have got derailed.

11 MLAs left Congress to join BJP. Do you see it as a loss?

It is always a loss but I feel the loss has been for good. In the previous polls, Congress witnessed a lot of back-stabbing but this time, there is no such thing. In fact, BJP could face trouble as the over-ambitious turncoats are with them. Congress is relaxed.

What about Congress rebels contesting in some 10 seats?

The rebellion is much less than in BJP. Some of them may change mind and campaign for Congress. After all, we are returning to power.

What makes you confident?

I believe voters are with Congress for three reasons. First, I led Uttarakhand-oriented agenda of development, which was not the case with former governments. Secondly, people saw the reality behind how the BJP tried to snatch power by imposing Presidents rule in the state. Third is I brought Uttarakhands tourism industry and pilgrimage back on track after the 2013 flash floods .

How many seats will you win?

In 42-plus seats, we are ahead of other parties. I am confident of forming the next government as I am contesting to protect Uttarakhandiyat (self-respect of state).

Is it Modi versus Harda?

I dont compare myself with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is, in fact, BJPs failure if they have made these polls Modi versus Harish Rawat. BJP has no local face and they are therefore fighting on Modis brand image. Does BJP have any work carried out by Modi government specifically for Uttarakhand to project? Well, I have something to show. I have several development schemes, jobs for 20,000-odd youths, rebuilding Kedarnath valley. There is a long list.

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Former owner of banks VAB and Financial Initiative Oleh Bakhmatiuk accuses the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) of double standards and confirms his readiness to restructure his debt and the debt of companies affiliated with him to the NBU and the Individuals Deposit Guarantee Fund at the tougher conditions for himself compared to those announced on Thursday regarding the restructuring of the debt of ex-shareholders of PrivatBank.

"Let Valeriya Gontareva [NBU Governor] comment why it is possible to give six months to restructure the dent and 10 years to pay it to former shareholders of Privat, while it is impossible to give seven years to Bakhmatiuk. Why she has such double approaches?" he told Interfax-Ukraine.

The businessman said that the conditions of restructuring of the UAH 155 billion credit portfolio announced by PrivatBank Board Chairman Oleksandr Shlapak are right, as they allow retaining businesses and return the debt to the bank.

Bakhmatiuk denied words of Gontareva she said in the interview with the Liga publication that he allegedly did not try to restructure his debt and submitted no official offer and that the option of the partial nationalization of VAB Bank was never discussed.

The businessman said that in 2014 a protocol to return VAB Bank from the critical state via an additional capitalization approved by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, her First Deputy Oleksandr Pysaruk and Finance Minister Shlapak was drawn up and signed. Bakhmatiuk guaranteed investment of $200 million. However, the implementation of this step-by-step plan was frustrated using a letter from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

He also said that around four months ago at a meeting with Head of the Deposit Guarantee Fund Kostinatyn Vorushylin, Head of the National Investment Council Borys Lozhkin in the presence of the president he handed proposals to restructure his debt to Gontareva. The businessman said that at present the NBU head avoids contacts with him and his representatives.

Bakhmatiuk also said that statements of Gontareva that the state is to inject UAH 3 billion to capital of Ukreximbank and Oschadbank to cover reserves the banks formed for UAH 6.2 billion credits issued to companies affiliated with him are nonsense.

"Soon I would be guilty for all credits issued by these banks," he said.

He also said that information presented by Gontareva about the UAH 28.2 billion affiliated credits is untrue.

"There is a conclusion after the inspection conducted before temporary administration was introduced to VAB Bank signed by the NBU headed then by Gontareva. According to these documents, the bank had some UAH 4.8 billion of affiliated credits," he said.

He also said that he is in active dialog with the Deposit Guarantee Fund and paid around UAH 1 billion of the debt to the fund.
In her memoir, A Gift of Goddess Lakshmi, Manobi Bandyopadhyay, the first transgender principal of a womens college, writes of the harassment she faced at first teaching job in a college.

When I finally reached the college, after crossing the deep sal forests, its remoteness struck me. It was far away from the city and even from the nearest village. There was no public transport to the college and once the bus dropped you off at the nearest point, which was quite a distance away, you had to walk.

Soon I realized that though the college seemed like an innocent place in a romantic setting, it was actually quite unfriendly and definitely very different from anything I had known in the past. In an instant, it was clear to the principal, teachers and students that though my name read Somnath Bandyopadhyay, I was not male in every sense of the word. They found me odd and made no effort to hide their surprise. My femininity was quite pronounced in my mannerisms and though I did not wear womens clothes, my unisex attire, make-up, sunglasses and hairstyle made my sexual preference quite apparent.

While in the city, I had managed to go about my affairs unhindered within my known circle; in a rural setting, I was a complete novelty and there was shock and awe writ large on the communitys face. They stood around gaping at me as I made my way with my father to the principals office to formally sign in. A few people, ignoring the decorum expected within the college, started catcalling.

Arre dekho, dekho! Beta na beti, e ke go bote? [Look, look! Whos this, a man or a woman?] The college was quite some distance from the bus stand and, as my father and I had walked that stretch, I had heard similar giggles and comments. Their tone and the rustic Bengali they spoke was very different from what we were used to in Kolkata, and the teasing sounded like the lashes of a whip to my ears. I felt very nervous. The romantic feeling that had started spreading its magical web around me on the train gradually disappeared and I knew I was trapped again. I saw teachers and students peeping from all corners and heard their gleeful laughter. Suddenly, I wanted to turn back and run away.

Soon my father became the butt of their jokes. Why has this old man come with you? Are you a schoolboyer girl? a lady teacher sniggered. My father was stunned. He was used to facing insults whenever he was out with me and hence avoided it as much as he could. He had agreed to come only because this was a remote place, far away from home. But he had not bargained for this!

A short-tempered man, he asked me to leave with him. I stood there, confused and scared, not knowing what to do. Finally, my father had no choice but to leave me to my fate. Unnerved, I found myself walking into the room of the principal, Ajoy De.

I later found out that the lady who had teased my father was not a teacher but the librarian at the college; she was the leader of a political party and had two professors of English and history, Surya Sengupta* and Shashanka Kar,* as her accomplices. They too were prominent leftist party leaders and ran the college teachers union quite successfully. It is difficult to imagine today the terror that these political leaders unleashed on educational campuses in those days.

Surya and Chandresh were two such uncrowned kings on campus and everyone sucked up to them. They were naturally stunned by my presence and openly declared war against me, threatening to ruin my career since no hijra had the right to become a professor! The principal tried his best to stay away from their politics and was silenced by the duo and their accomplices like the librarianlets call her Menoka.* I later found out that she was a sadist who had scared away her husband; she boasted about this all the time, calling herself a feminist and an upholder of womens rights.

Manobi Bandyopadhyay at the Kolkata Literary Festival in January. (Facebook)

When I met the principal, I looked him squarely in the eye and asked how safe it was for me to teach in such an atmosphere? He took his time to reply but what he said made sense. He explained that my department was in dire need of a lecturer because the only other one was pregnant and was away on leave. So, even if my colleagues didnt, my students would welcome me with open arms. Moreover, what seemed so suffocating in that instant might ease with time as the teachers got to know me better and so, for the sake of my career, I should give it a try. I agreed gingerly but something deep inside me warned me that all was not going to go well.

Life in college was a mixed bag. While I found it exceedingly difficult to cope with the hostility of the teachers around, it was somewhat offset by the love and eagerness that I found in my students. Surya and Chandresh had managed to convince the other teachers that I was an aberration and that they collectively needed to force me out of the college. No one as lowly as a hijra should be allowed to teach in a college, share the same staffroom, toilet and facilities. Initially they thought that if they made me feel miserable, I would leave of my own volition. But when they realized that I wont give in so easily, they got together to assault me every now and then.

They would lurk in every nook and corner and pull my hair and clothes, saying they wanted to see if my hair was real or if I was wearing a wig. Once, two of them pinned me to the wall and groped me, trying to find out what was beneath my clothes. They hissed at me and warned me to keep my mouth shut while they did this. They pressed my nipples so hard that I screamed out loud. Keep shut, you hijra, dont act smart. We will find out exactly where you stand. We will open your pants and take a look. Stand with your legs apart and let us see your size, Chandresh said.

Gradually things became so bad that I would avoid going up the staircase or walking down passages alone for fear that they would catch me. The way Chandresh and Surya treated meconstantly threatening to rape mewas nothing short of a hate crime. I dreaded the day when they would strip me naked to prove their point. I knew that no one would come to my rescue. One day, they caught hold of me and started hitting me in the chest with a paperweight till I was so badly bruised that I fell unconscious from the pain.

My students were my only relief. Hungry and ill-clad, they would sit in my class and patiently hear me lecture them on Tagore and his influence on contemporary literature. I realized that their level of education was very poor despite the fact that they all had passed their senior secondary exams to take admission in a college. You just cannot compare the college students in Kolkata to the ones you have to teach in a village. They are constantly fighting adversity and do not get enough time to study and reflect. As a society, we should rethink traditional higher education. Instead, if we give such students vocational training, they will be able to finally do better in life and wont remain unemployed.

I was grateful to God that despite the torture that I had to undergo, I still got the opportunity to read and discuss the philosophy behind Tagores poems and songs and compare him with modern poets like Bishnu De and Samar Sen. I wanted these classes to go on and on so that I could impress upon my students why Bengali literature would be incomplete without the influence of Tagore and why modern poets like Jibanananda Das and Buddhadeb Basu, who otherwise stood out, could not wriggle out of Tagores shadow. I tried to explain to them how ones understanding of Western literature opens up by reading Tagore. The West influenced him in a big way and he was able to absorb its spirit of culture and creativity and synthesize it with the essence of everything indigenous.

My biggest success was that I was able to kindle a flicker of interest in my students, who, despite coming from extremely challenged circumstances, still wanted to study so that they could fight poverty and find jobs. That urge was pure. They just needed a push and I tried to give them that push, ignoring my personal struggle against all-round hostility.

Pages: 187, Price: Rs 399

They would look at me aghast as I would explain to them that Binodini, the anti-heroine of Tagores Chokher Bali, was not as villainous as society made her to be, and that there was nothing great about being a doormat the way the heroine, Ashalata, portrayed herself to be. Coming from a rural background, these students were not able to believe that even loveless marriages were virtuous and a wife should take it in her stride if her husband cheats on her. Hence, Ashalata was the image of the quintessential good woman, whereas Binodini, the young widow, had no right to any physical urges and should not have enticed Mahendra, Ashalatas husband, into a raunchy relationship.

That Mahendra was equally to be blamed was something that had never crossed their minds. In their society, men were born with the right to philander, whereas women were born to bear the brunt of mens fancies. And why only blame rural society? I think even our so-called urban intellectual spaces are no different. It is fashionable to say that men and women are equal, but how many actually believe and practise it?

My students would listen to me intently, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that some of them would compare their texts with the notes that they had taken in class lectures and return to me with their arguments. I was relieved that at least on this score, I was on the right track. My efforts were paying off. One of the students, Paritosh Mahato, a very poor boy and the brightest in my class, even came first in the university exam and everyone was stunned. He was a good writer and I had tutored him separately. I expected him to do well but, honestly, I too was happily surprised when he topped his batch in the university; no mean feat for a boy who couldnt even afford two square meals a day and dreamt of a schoolteachers job. Suddenly all eyes were on Paritosh and on the teacher who had made this impossibility a success. The other teachers at the college even quietened down for a while, though they continued plotting behind my back.

There were a few interludes that kept me going at Jhargram despite so many difficulties. One of these were my periodic visits to Hijli College, which is part of the IIT Kharagpur campus. The college often held cultural programmes and I would give dance lessons to the students. It was during this time that I met some brilliant IIT professors who not only treated me as an equal, but also offered me their homes to spend the night. They had loving families who shared their meals with me and I wondered why the rest of the world was not as illuminated as them.

Excerpted with permission from A Gift of Goddess Lakshmi: A Candid Biography of Indias first transgender principal, Manobi Bandyopadhyay with Jhimli Mukherjee Pandey, Penguin Books.

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Remember that friend youve been avoiding since his breakup many months ago? The one who is still obsessing over his ex-girlfriend, clearly unable to move on? The one youre beginning to think will be healed only by Doctor Time. Now imagine being trapped inside his head.

T, the narrator, in Tanuj Solankis debut novel Neon Noon is struggling to get over his French ex-girlfriend, Anne-Marie. Though, unlike your whiny friend, T is not gunning for your sympathy or even trying to get you to like him as he bares his soul  warts and all  while thrashing about in the dark for closure. T is also an aspiring writer and hopes to compress his painful reality into sentences and create literature out of his misery. If youve been in that unhappy place too, you might empathise with T regardless of whether you share his unchecked neurosis of love and literature.

Neon Noon has a terrific opening that effortlessly sucks the reader into the story. It begins with the first-person narrative of S, a copy editor at a publishing house in Mumbai and an aspiring poet, whose two rather strange meetings with a writer/MBA guy  T  result in the book. The chapters that follow seem to be the pieces T sends her in response to her enquiries about his life and the short story she emails him (a riveting account of the two unusual dates).

To forget Anne-Marie, T decides to go on a solo trip to Thailand where he hopes to write a masterpiece on the miseries of love in our century besides, of course, distracting himself with sex. In Pattaya, he meets, among other sex workers, Noon  a nurse-turned-prostitute  who has a female presence that reminds a man of some good in the world.

Girls and ladyboys on Walking Street in Pattaya. (Getty Images)

Except for the first chapter, the entire book is narrated by T. Reading it  given Ts chronic over-thinking and fixation in love  creates the effect of being trapped inside his head. With all his unhappy, morbid, obsessive ruminations, recollections of happier times with Anne-Marie, grief for the son he wished for and will never have with her, accounts of visits to a shrink, of a near meltdown in his bosss cabin, and his dull work life that T describes with as little emotion as possible. Not only does this get a bit much at times, it also makes the reader wish to read the story from Anne-Marie and Noons point of views.

There also is a lot of meta-commentary about writing that is part of the narrative. T is constantly reflecting on what makes and defines literature, wrestling with self-doubts about his skills as a storyteller, and constantly drawing the readers attention to the fact that he is writing this story and is not always satisfied with his output. Heres a sampling of some self-flagellation:

The introduction of the new girl [Noon] in the section above shames me as a writer, or as someone who needs to pretend to be one. How devoid it is of any presentiment, or even postsentiment. (page 105)

At one point, T draws the readers attention to the fidelity of his narrative: Am I projecting my projections through Noon? Am I making a collage of twice-projected images and feelings, all to make it a story?(page 143)

There is rain at the end of the novel (a therapeutic one and obviously more significant than just water falling from the sky), which brings some relief. T breaks through his shell of self-absorption as he realizes thatNoons was a story more painful than mine. And there was no Pattaya for her to go to (page 204). Like the narrator, the reader, too, experiences the sense that a long-running high fever has finally broken.

This is not an easy book to read (or review for that matter) and certainly not for everyone. But if an experimental narrative style interests you as does an unusual story, go ahead. You might like it.

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Indian IT sector leaders will meet both US lawmakers and officials from US President Donald Trumps administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the countrys $150 billion industry.

R. Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of Indias big IT companies would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of Feb. 20.

Indias software services industry is concerned about a bill introduced in the US Congress seeking to double the salary paid to H-1B visa holders which would dramatically increase the costs for the Indian companies employing them.

Read: Trumps immigration ban: Apples Tim Cook considers legal action

Indian IT service companies use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the US, their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace US jobs.

Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a US labour shortage in the tech sector.

Chandrashekhar told Reuters that the visit would also seek to emphasize the the economic partnership that is being built between the two countries.

Indias IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the US presidential election.

IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire US firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.

Read: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quits Trumps business advisory group amid boycott calls

Immigration concerns were a risk item, always there, but they are more pronounced now, said a senior executive at L&T Technology Services, who declined to be named.

Speculation that Trump may issue an executive order curbing the H-1B programme sent shares in IT companies tumbling this week.

An Indian consultant working for Infosys in the US said many of his colleagues were dejected, while another engineer working for Cisco in North Carolina said management had called in an immigration attorney to reassure employees.

Read: Googles Sundar Pichai slams Trumps Muslim ban, recalls employees back to US

The ministry of external affairs said it had expressed its concerns to the US government.

No executive order has been signed so far, Vikas Swarup, a spokesman for the ministry told reporters on Thursday. Such bills have been introduced in the past too and such bills have to go through the full Congressional process. So lets not prejudge the outcome.
Introduction of legislation in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday mandating that the minimum salary of H1B visa holders be doubled to $1,30,000, has sent jitters to Indian information technology sector with the fear of large-scale job losses.

However, the development is not likely to affect the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry as companies here are involved in off-shore jobs - not on-shore, the experts said. India has about 12 lakh employees working with BPOs.

A large number of Indian professionals hired by Indian companies and deputed in the US locations are likely to lose jobs if the Lofgren Bill is passed.

IT sector watchdog NASSCOM said that it was keeping a close watch on the development and the bill will need to go through several legislative discussions at the US Congress and Senate before this can become a law.

India makes most of the H-1B visa quota in US and has about one lakh Indian professionals working there on this visa.

However Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) has cautioned that the Lofgren Bill contains provisions that may prove challenging for the Indian IT sector and will also leave loopholes that will nullify the objective of saving American jobs.

Read| H-1B visa: The proposed changes and how they will affect Indians

Nasscom said it would attempt to apprise the US administration and legislators to highlight the value contribution of Indias IT sector as a net creator of jobs in the US where it has helped American businesses by providing high-skilled IT solutions in order to innovate, open new markets, and expand operations  creating thousands of jobs for Americans.

R. Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM said Since the rationale for the Administration and the Legislative wing is to protect job opportunities for Americans, our strong suggestion is that they should carefully calibrate the conditions keeping in mind the skill shortage in the US. Once that is done, they should not leave any loopholes in the rules being framed that leave some channels open for circumventing the limits.

Raising wage levels for dependent companies alone will defeat the basic objective as non-dependent companies can continue to bring in skilled workers at lower wage levels, thereby nullifying the objective of protecting job opportunities for American nationals Nasscom president said.

IT industry leaders like Manas Fuloria, the co-founder and CEO of Nagarro Software said that the bill might have limited impact the companies with a major chuck of employees with H1B visas. The companies like ours with less than 10% employees with H-1B visas, wont be impacted said Fuloria

Raman Roy, founder of Quatrro ,said the BPO industry would not get impacted because of the development on H1B visa. We are not to be affected as we do off-shore jobs, not on-shore, and our people go there for transition Roy said.

On what if Trump administration moves against the BPO industry asking the US companies to not to set up BPOs outside their soil, Roy said that US did not have the required skill-sets, nor the required number of talent pool.

Read| How US President Donald Trumps worldview affects India
The Chandigarh international airport may have started international operations, but its facilities remain piecemeal and incomplete as yet.

This fact hit home on Wednesday late evening when a chartered flight from the USA with six people on board was sent to Delhi after a four-hour wait with the airport not having the facility to digitally verify the visas of passengers. In technical parlance, the facility is called e-immigration check facility.

The plane was carrying a US delegation that was to participate in a programme at the Institute of Microbiology Technology, Chandigarh (IMTECH), Sector 39, on Thursday. Executive vice-president and chief scientific officer of Johnson & Johnson, USA, Dr Paul Stoffels, who was leading the group, was to deliver a lecture at IMTECH. The programme stood cancelled.

The flight, chartered from New Jersey in the USA, had landed at the airport at 6.45pm and left for Delhi at 10.35 pm.

Airport police post in-charge Harsimran Singh Bal confirmed the development and said, After a wait of four hours, the delegation left for Delhi as the airport does not offer e-immigration service.

Sanjeev Kumar, head of immigration, at the airport refused to comment and disconnected the phone.

IMTECH director Dr Anil Koul said, One of the members of the delegation had an e-visa. But, the airport does not offer the e-immigration check facility. So, the group went back. Following this, we cancelled the lecture.

Interestingly, even though two international flights were started from the airport in September last year, basic facilities at the airport are still in the works. The issue of e-immigration clearance is a major issue that could create such issues in the future too.

Other facilities that are missing at the airport are Wi-Fi (internet facilities), money exchange, additional ATMs and duty-free shops. Recently, the Punjab and Haryana HC has also questioned the workability and sustainability of the airport to host international flights.

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Five years is an eternity in Indian politics. As Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav beamed beatifically into the cameras last weekend, the mind was thrown back to 2012 when just ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections, Gandhi had delivered a solo performance, stressing that the Congress was in UP for the long haul, and would fight the region-based caste parties like the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party. The Congress doesnt look at a single election, we have a 10 year plan, he had boldly claimed then.

Five years on, Gandhi has finally realised that in Indian politics short-term gain is preferable to long-term pain. The bravado of 2012 has been replaced by the chilling pragmatism of 2017. Then, the Congress was part of the ruling alliance at the Centre and could afford to indulge in romantic fantasies of a glorious return to power in the Hindi heartland.

Read | Akhilesh confident of winning over 300 seats, says he has Netajis blessings

Now, the Congress has been reduced to a 44-MP rump at the Centre and has shrunk even further in subsequent state elections. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and while the Congress will try and spin the Congress-SP alliance as a grand sangam of the Ganga and Yamuna, the truth is that the coming together has been forced by the political urgency of somehow stopping the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah juggernaut from claiming Indias most prized state.

Ironically, only four months ago, the Congress was engaging in similar bluster while threatening to contest all 403 seats in UP. As Gandhi embarked on a kisan yatra, the partys political managers boldly pronounced that the young dynast had electrified the state. It was enough for the Congress to audaciously (or rather foolishly) wheel out a 78-year-old Sheila Dikshit from retirement as the partys chief ministerial nominee.

It hasnt taken long since for the swagger to be replaced by the stark reality that the Congress is increasingly irrelevant to the political discourse in UP. Rather than face a lingering, tortuous death, the Congress has chosen to offer temporary relief by aligning with the Samajwadi Party, which its local leadership has often dismissively referred to as a party of thugs.

Read | Budget 2017 a betrayal: SP ups ante against Modi-led NDA ahead of UP elections

It is after all almost three decades now since the Congress last tasted power in UP. The year that the Congress lost power in UP was when Sachin Tendulkar was making his test debut and Virat Kohli was just a year old: Yes, it is that long!

Since then, UP politics has undergone a tectonic change: The mandir and mandal movements of the 1990s completely destroyed the Congress edifice, reducing it to a marginal status in the state. In 1996, then prime minister PV Narasimha Rao appeared to acknowledge the Congress subordinate position when he allied with the BSP under Kanshi Ram. The alliance didnt quite work for the Congress: While the BSP became a central player in UP politics, the Congress shrank further.

Will the Congress under Rahul Gandhi succeed where Rao failed by sowing up another opportunistic alliance? In pure arithmetic terms, the Congress-SP alliance has a real chance: In the 2012 assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party garnered 29% of the vote, and the Congress had 11%. Even if the two forces together were to get over 30% of the vote, they would have a realistic shot at power in a triangular contest. More importantly, the alliance has a chance of consolidating the 18% plus Muslim vote in the state.

Read | Mayawati fine-tunes strategy to counter SP-Cong alliance

But electoral politics is sometimes about chemistry as much as it is about hard number crunching. Do Akhilesh and Rahul represent the new young face of UP politics, or are they weighed down by the baggage of the past? Akhilesh has chosen to project himself as a freshly-minted leader by cutting the umbilical cord with the Samajwadi Party old guard represented by father and uncle. Gandhi is attempting a similar re-invention by showcasing himself as a more combative politician. The truth is, neither can Akhilesh entirely sever his links with his partys past (a number of Samajwadi Party candidates have criminal records) nor can Gandhi suddenly transform himself into a charismatic neta who can challenge Modi.

Which is why this strategic alliance can only be seen as a stop-gap arrangement for now. If it does succeed, it will offer a template for a potential mahagatbandhan in 2019 as the only option to another Modi-led government in Delhi. But alliance politics cannot mask the reality that the Congress has been unable to revive itself after the debacle in 2014. Rather than energising its rank and file with new ideas and leaders, the party has chosen political expediency over rebuilding the organisation. The alliance with Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad in Bihar, for example, may have won an election but has consigned the Congress to becoming the C team in the state forever.

Read | Its Cong vs SP at these seats!

In a sense, UP is no different. The Congress may gain a few seats by cementing an alliance but it has effectively accepted that it does not have the manpower to fight an election in the countrys most populous state on its own  thereby placing a big question mark on its credentials as a pan-Indian party. The Ganga-Yamuna sangam metaphor used by Gandhi does make for a nice sound bite as long as it comes with the candid acceptance that in the Indo-Gangetic plains, the Congress is now a minor tributary to the mighty rivers that flow through the region.

Post-script: It isnt just Rahul Gandhi who has changed in five years. In 2012, Narendra Modi refused to campaign in UP protesting against his long-time RSS rival Sanjay Joshi being given a prominent position. Clearly, nothing is permanent in the topsy-turvy world of Indian politics.

Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and an author

The views expressed are personal

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After former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the AAP governments mohalla clinics have got praise from former director general of World Health Organisation Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland.

Heres why Delhis mohalla clinics are drawing international praise:

1. The mohalla (neighbourhood) clinics were started by the AAP government in their first year in office to take diagnostics and treatment of simple ailments to peoples doorstep and reduce the footfall in tertiary care hospitals.

2. In Delhi, 110 clinics have treated 1.5 million people between April and December, shows latest available data. This indicates the huge unmet need for free universal health care. The health care reforms being undertaken in Delhi strike me as an excellent strategy, said Dr Brundtland.

3. The AAP plans to open 1,000 such clinics by March 2017. Once all the clinics start running, most people will have a clinic within a 5km radius from their home.

4. The clinics offer 110 essential drugs and 212 diagnostic tests to people absolutely free. This draws a lot of people into the system who would otherwise go to unqualified quacks, said a government official.

Read: Mohalla Clinics: Kofi Annan praise fine, but will Delhi govt fix these 4 issues?

5. By treating minor ailments outside hospitals, mohalla clinics are expected to free up doctors at tertiary care hospitals to focus on complicated diseases and surgeries. After the project started, the government realised that minor ailments such as fever, headache, simple infections, skin rash etc. accounted for 90 - 95% of ailments, which could be easily treated at the out-patient clinics.

6. Four clinics at night shelters is helping screen the homeless and marginalized, who often get left out of social benefits. These clinics are for people in shelters who often find it difficult to receive treatment because they are alone with no support, said Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain.

7. The existing dispensaries do not provide dental care, so people go to multi-specialty hospitals even for tooth fillings and simple extractions. AAP plans to provide dental care at community level with 100 dental clinics based on the model of mohalla clinics.

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What the Britishers built stood tall and fine for decades. But, it is now collapsing in the matter of years after being refurbished.

Constructed in 1933, Connaught Place was named after Duke of Connaught (Arthur, son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) to honour him on his visit to Delhi. In 2007, the CP redevelopment was kicked off as a pilot project with the facade restoration of C Block. It was scheduled for completion ahead of the Commonwealth Games in October, 2010. However, it could be finished only in 2013, after missing a series of deadlines and escalation of cost from Rs 76 crore to Rs 671 crore.

The incident of roof and wall collapse on Wednesday raises serious doubt over the work done as part of this redevelopment bid.

Read | Car-fee Connaught Place plan runs into opposition, will take two more weeks

NDMC officials blame lack of maintenance by the owners of these old structures.

In 2009, during the redevelopment bid, only the front facades, pillars and windows were repaired and refurbished. The roof is the individual owners responsibility as these are private properties. The whole area was developed, not the roofs, a council official, who wished not to be named, said.

Officials say prima facie it looks like too much load on the roof and lack of repair work resulted in the mishap.

We have asked experts from IIT Delhi to conduct a probe. Our structural engineers are also looking into it. At present, it looks like the collapse took place due to overloading on the roof with structures like water tanks and generators. There are also unconfirmed reports of construction work going on at the particular shop, an engineering department official said.

Surprisingly, no safety inspections are conducted at this Central Delhi hub for around 500,000 visitors daily. The individual owners have been asked to get experts for their respective properties and conduct regular repairs, the official said.

Read | Delhis oldest watch shop in Connaught Place burgled, over 600 watches worth Rs 1.35 crore gone

Traders, too, say safety is more or less left to the person who owns or has taken a particular space on rent. Some people have taken expert help from architects and structural engineers, while others themselves go ahead and do unplanned construction work, a shopowner, who runs a food joint near the collapse site, said.

They, however, blame the NDMC for not allowing us to maintain our shops.

The property owners are not allowed to maintain their shops. They have to go through multiple processes. Under the Delhi bylaws 6.4.1, every shopowner can maintain his premises, conduct repairs if required, Atul Bhargava of the New Delhi Traders Association said.

The NDMC has put a stop to it. They say get clearance from the Heritage Conservation Committee. The committee says matters related to the outside structures only should be referred to them. This process needs to be simplified, Bhargav said.

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An eight-year-old boy, who went to see a Saraswati immersion procession in south west Delhis village Kakrolas Raju Extension, was crushed to death by a tempo carrying the idol on Thursday, while his 14-year-old sister witnessed the incident.

Ankush Kumar, a Class 1 student at MBD Arya Model School, was on his way back from the market when he heard the songs playing on the speaker. He rushed towards the park in Bharat Vihar, where a procession of over 30 people was celebrating Saraswati idol immersion. His elder sister, Aarti, tried to stop him as it was 9pm and he had to get up in time for school the next day. Realising that he wont stop, she raced towards him.

Read more: Minor raped, strangled and dumped in Gurgaon

Ankush pushed through the crowd to stand alongside the park railing. Suddenly, the tempo reversed and hit Ankush.

The impact was such that the boy was crushed to death on the spot. A song kept blaring from the loudspeaker and it took some time for the crowd to realise what had happened.

Aarti, who witnessed the accident, said that the onlookers watched mutely for a whole minute until a man came forward, stopped the music and told her to inform her parents.

Read more: Delhi: NRI woman killed as car crashes into street pole near AIIMS

Sister breaks the news

Aartis mother, Usha Devi, and three other neighbours were at the doorstep, when Aarti arrived. After a neighbor asked about Ankushs whereabouts, Aarti broke down and screamed, Gaadi wale ne mere bhai ko maar daala (A tempo driver has killed my brother).

Devi, a factory worker, did not believe it at first, nor did her husband Kishore Poddar, who is a driver.

Ankush had eaten paratha and kheer (his favourite sweet dish) around 7pm. Later, both children had gone to a local market to buy a notebook. It was on their way back from the market that the incident happened.

Read more: Four-year-old girl kidnapped from Gurgaons Sushant Lok rescued from Agra, two held

Devi had finished cooking rice and dal for her children and husband, when Aarti informed her about Ankushs death. When HT visited the family on Friday, the food was lying in the kitchen untouched.

He did not like to study. But he always did his homework on time and kept his school bag in order. After returning from school on Thursday, Ankush realised that his note book for Environment Studies was nearly over and he had to buy a new one, Aarti said.

Anksuh loved to dance

Deepak Kumar, Ankushs friend, said that the latter liked to participate in celebrations, especially weddings and processions, where he got to dance and enjoy.

Ankush had gone to a neighbours wedding on February 1. That was the last time I saw him dance to his hearts content. The night he was killed, Ankush must have got excited and followed the Saraswati immersion procession. There was no way he could have been stopped, Deepak said.

Driver arrested

After the accident, the tempo driver had fled from the spot with the vehicle. A case was registered at Dwarka North police station. Eyewitnesses told police that the tempo was orange in colour and had the Saraswati idol in it.

We began scanning the CCTV footages of the area. Constables on patrolling duty were given description of the tempo. The vehicle was finally spotted on Old Palam road. The driver was held and identified as Hari Prasad. Further investigation is underway, said a senior police officer.

Read more: Pune murder shakes up Delhis working women

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Ukrzaliznytsia Board Chairman Wojciech Balczun has criticized and denied some statements and information in mass media about him and his job performance.

At a press conference devoted to Ukrzaliznytsia in Kyiv on Thursday he said that from the beginning of his work in Ukraine his goal was to settle serious problems Ukrzaliznytsia really has, without any plans to join any conflicts and political disputes.

"A week ago I promised that I would not comment on the statements pouring the mass media. I live well, as I do not have time to read them thoroughly. However, my team read them attentively and I would have to react to them today," he said.

Balczun recalled that he won the tender to select Ukrzaliznytsia head and heard in the past six months that the only person who really believed in him was Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan.

"In the past week I learnt that it was in a different way," he said.

He said that his salary arouses many emotions  UAH 463,000 a month.

In a presentation spread by Balczun at the press conference it was said that salary of Ukrzaliznytsia head is regulated by government resolution No. 859 of May 1999.

He said that he and Ukrzaliznytsia board members live in Poland.

"We have our families, children there. I fly to Ukraine on Monday morning and leave for Poland late on Friday... It is normal and usual work," he said.

He also criticized questions about his concerts in Chemia rock group.

"The issue of arguments about my concerts is lower than any acceptable standards. Do I ask anyone what he is doing in his spare time? Someone goes fishing to have a rest on Saturday, another one collects postage stamps, anther one is running, while I am playing and not going to quit," he said.
Director General of Police (UP), Javeed Ahmed, on Friday said an Special Investigation Team (SIT) will be set up to probe the Rs 3,726 crore Noida online scam.

In a tweet posted on social media on Friday, Ahmed congratulated the STF for busting the cheating racket which targeted people from across North India and announced the formation of an SIT.

Kudos STF for busting Rs 3700 crore internet-based cheating racket across North India. Will set up SIT for comprehensive investigation(sic), tweeted Ahmed.

Read: Noida online trading scam: How a company duped nearly 7 lakh people of Rs 3,700 crore

On Thursday, a team of STF raided the office of Ablaze Info Solutions Private Limited (AIS) at Noida Sector 63 and arrested Anubhav Mittal, managing director, Sreedhar Prasad, chief executive officer and Mahesh Dayal, technical head. The trio were charged under IPC sections 420 and 406 for duping 7 lakh investors of Rs 3,726 crore rupees by running a Ponzi scheme under the guise of social media penetration.

They used to ask one time investment from people and in return, a certain number of links per day were provided by them to each investor. The investor were paid Rs 5 per like on the particular facebook link and this way the money circulation was carried by the company, said Raj Kumar Mishra, deputy superintendent of Police, Special Task Force.

On Friday, the trio were produced before the magistrate and sent to 14 day judicial custody for further interrogation.

We have also informed Reserve Bank of India, Income Tax department and The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), said Mishra.

The trio were arrested after two investors lodged a complaint against the founder of the company for duping them in January this year. The STF also received information that the company had deposited huge sums of money in different bank accounts in a short span of time.

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Days after the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) extended the closure of the Badarpur power station, the state power department said the plant must be allowed to run in summers to avoid blackouts in parts of South Delhi.

In a meeting convened by the Environment Pollution (prevention and control) authority (EPCA) to review implementation of the Graded Response Action Plan on Friday, power secretary Varsha Joshi said that the 705MW coal-based plant needs to operate till the Tughlaqabad sub-station is commissioned to meet the power demand of south Delhi areas.

Read more| Pollution control authority bans registration of all vehicles with Bharat III engines

Peak demand has already begun to increase and is now around 3900MW. In summers, we cannot function if Badarpur is not made operational. We request that shutting the plant be considered only when pollution levels reach severe or emergency category, Joshi said.

A representative of NTPC  that runs the plant  also stated that emission control measures taken by it and particulate matter emissions were brought under control. On January 31, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) had extended the closure of the Badarpur plant till further orders.

Refusing to put it in a different category, EPCA member and director general of CSE, Sunita Narain said that the plant could run during summers, but only on conditional basis. We will allow the plant to run during summers only if we get a monthly update on the progress of the upcoming sub-station. However, in case air quality worsens it will still have to shut, she said.

Read more| 21-month-old moves green tribunal against noisy neighbourhood school in Ashok Vihar

The Supreme Court mandated body also stated that the graded response plans severe to very poor category will remain enforced for the rest of the winter season. It also directed the UP and Haryana to issue an order banning all brick kilns in their territories which do not adopt to zig-zag technology within eight months. Uttar Pradesh claimed that out 687 brick kilns across Ghaziabad, Hapur and Gautam Budh Nagar districts, only four were operating after GRAP (measures when air quality is poor) was enforced in NCR.

Officials from Delhis transport department also informed it has impounded around 3,978 visibly polluting vehicles in January, while 891 were found violating PUC norms. EPCA expressed displeasure over the Haryana governments inability to contain the menace of dust in Gurgaon. The situation is such that clear skies cannot be seen anywhere between Delhi and Alwar. Dust control has to be top agenda of Haryana government, Bhure Lal, chairman of EPCA, said.
Cleaning up an oil spill is extremely difficult even with the best of technology available as seen from countless examples from all over the world. It is particularly tough in India, which lacks a quick response mechanism and the technology to tackle this as the situation in Chennai shows. Over five days after the spill, the coast guard aided by fisherman and local residents are battling to contain it. This brings back memories of how a similar spill threatened the delicate ecosystem of the Sunderbans a couple of years ago. The oil film blocks sunlight leading to the death of many marine creatures, in Chennai turtles have been among the worst affected.

In Pics: Indian Coast Guard cleans up the Chennai oil spill

Once sea creatures are covered in oil, they tend to catch a cold, drown or are blinded. The oil also destroys vegetation on the coastline and poses a threat to fishermen. The oil coats the roots of plants and when coastal vegetation dies, the coast becomes vulnerable to greater erosion. In Chennai, those who are engaged in cleaning operations are themselves at risk if they dont have the right protective clothing. There are three ways in which a spill can be cleaned up, through burning but this causes enormous atmospheric pollution, through skimming using plastic floats though this is not very effective if a large area is affected and by using chemicals to break the oil.

However, the dispersants themselves can be toxic. With an increase in maritime transportation of hazardous substances and given Indias vast coastline, the Chennai disaster should prompt the setting up an effective response machinery and the need to train people in how to deal with this scientifically.

Read: Chennai oil spill could severely impact marine life, environmentalists say

There is a great deal of technology available in other countries which India should acquire. When such disasters take place, there should also be a good dissemination system in place to inform people about how and if they can help.

People, often in a well meaning way, harm the animals affected through improper handling. The spill has now reached the shores of Mumbai, which has promptly alerted people on the dangers of eating contaminated seafood.

A mechanism to deal with oil spills should be made a part of our national disaster management policy without delay so that if this happens again, the danger and damage can be contained much faster and more effectively.
When I was 10, I was asked, Kitna leti hai?.

The venue is set up like a proscenium theatre; chairs all facing one direction, fabric hanging in long rectangles, like curtains. From behind this a group of girls emerges, sometimes together, sometimes one at a time, telling stories of life in Mumbais red light area, Kamathipura.

But this isnt just any performance. This is a night of exceptions. For, the girls are children of sex workers, sharing first-hand experiences. The oldest ones are teenagers; the youngest actor just 12.

And, this is the unlikeliest of stages. It is safe to say that Lakme Fashion Week has never seen a show like this.

Mumbai NGO, Kranti provided sex workers from Mumbais Kamathipura a stage at the Lakme Fashion Week 2017 to share first-hand experiences. (Prodip Guha/HT Photo)

Fashion, globally, has discovered its conscience like never before. It has embraced the plus-size and the transgender model, made statements against racism and skin-tone bias. But while it no longer is that industry which just sends fair, skinny models down the ramp in whimsical clothes, a fashion show continues to remain the same: models walking silently down a ramp, with a steely expression that must not acknowledge the rows of people looking at them. Even the designer, and the showstopper celebrity walk in silence, though they are allowed to wave and smile, and break the invisible wall separating them and the crowd.

But can a fashion show be more? Can a model reach out beyond the stage and connect with its audience? Can it use the ramp to tell a story? At a time when fashion is trying to get more real, wearable, and tell stories of weavers and craftsmen and lost traditions, why cant the ramp evolve too? On the night of February 2, 2017, it briefly did.

Delhi-based designer Mandeep Nagi teamed up with Kranti for the Lakme Fashion Week 2017. (Prodip Guha/HT Photo)

Delhi-based designer Mandeep Nagi teamed up with Kranti, a Mumbai-based NGO that works to empower girls from red light areas. But, instead of just getting the girls to model her clothes, she got them to perform a skit, an abridged version of a larger piece theyve performed in India and abroad. We did a shorter piece because of the time constraint. And also because some of the girls are in the US right now, Bani Das, one of the co-founders of Kranti told me later.

And so it began. When you think of sex workers, you think, Bechara, said Robin Chaurasaiya, one of the other co-founders. Theyre here to tell you what they think.

Girls from Mumbai red-light area took turns to tell their stories at the Lakme Fashion Week 2017 in Bandra-Kurla Complex on February 2. (Prodip Guha/HT Photo)

With the chorus of lal batti, the girls walked on to stage. And then they took turns to tell their stories, and those of their mothers. These are stories of being married off early, of being sold into the flesh by their husbands, of being forced to have unprotected sex, of being exploited by the powerful  cops, politicians, businessmen. And of NGOs that teach them skills like weaving and making papad, but discourages them from aiming grander aspirations.

The stories are chilling, because these arent just actors relaying second-hand stories. But as they comically shout papad belo-ing, papad belo-ing, the crowd laughs along. And, in the end, when they share their personal success stories  of world travel, of going to boarding school in Nainital, of some, in turn, taking up volunteering work  the crowd cheers them. In the end, beyond their origins in Kamathipura, and undeniable hardships, their stories and aspirations are, for the lack of a better word, normal.

Watch: From Mumbais red-light area to Lakme Fashion Week ramp

At one point, mid-performance, the girls walk into the audience with a mic and ask the audience to share their stories from when they were 10 years old. There, the wall is well and truly broken. Perhaps the larger fashion fraternity needs to think about doing it too.

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The Qutab Enclave RWA of DLF Phase-1 approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court on Wednesday questioning the legitimacy of the municipal corporations wards delimitation order that led to the demarcation process.

The move comes two days after an ex-councilor filed a petition with the HC against the proposed demarcation of wards.

Last year in March, citing the 2011 census figures, a delimitation order was issued by the directorate of urban local bodies for a rejig of wards under the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG). As per the order, cities with population of less than 10 lakh or over 8 lakh are to be allotted 32 wards. The total number of wards under the MCG was then trimmed from 35 to 32.

The order said that during the first municipal elections in 2011, an MCG survey found the citys population to be 11.53 lakh. However, as per the 2011 census figure that was released later, the population was pegged at 9.1 lakh.

Following the order, a three member adhoc committee was formed by the state government to oversee the delimitation of wards and their demarcation before the municipal elections. The panel included the then Gurgaon deputy commissioner TL Satyaprakash, director of urban local bodies Shekhar Vidyarthi and the MCG commissioner or a representative chosen by him. Satyaparakash was then the MCG commissioner as well.

Besides questioning the delimitation of wards, the RWA claimed only BJP leaders were part of the adhoc committees consulting members who were tasked with initiating the demarcation process.

As per the petition filed in the HC, the RWA has stated, As per the ward delimitation rules under section 4(2) of the Haryana Municipal Corporation Act 1994, an adhoc committee is supposed to be constituted with less than five members belonging to various areas of interest and expertise. However, this committee was formed with six members, all from BJP.

The RWA also questioned the population figures listed in the delimitation order.

As per the Municipal Corporation Act 1994 Section3 (1), fixation of seats should have been taken from the latest census figures as listed in 2011 by the Central government. Instead, the Census figures of 2010 was mentioned in the delimitation order. Hence, it is fairly evident that the delimitation was done solely with a political motive, Sumit Bhaskar, general secretary of Qutab Enclave RWA, said.

Bhaskar said the demarcation of wards, too, was done to serve a particular political agenda. He said as per section 5(2) of Municipal Corporation Act 1994, the number of voters per ward should be similar. However, post demarcation, four wards have thrown up a significantly high or low voter count.

On Monday, Rishi Raj Rana, former councillor of ward 1 and Indian National Lok Dal leader filed a petition in the HC, questioning the motive behind having only BJP leaders as consulting members in the committee. He also voiced doubt about the population figure of ward 1 and questioned the decision to not reserve seats for Scheduled Caste or Other Backward Class candidates in ward 1 despite it being home to a sizeable contingent of SC and OBC candidates.

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The residents of Gwal Pahari are yet to receive eviction notices from the Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) that may displace them from their properties.

They remain unfazed by the consequences of the notice and are adamant that life will continue as usual.

The residents claimed that their lands have been at the centre of disputes over three decades and they have managed to stave off any government or judicial intervention.

They said that 80 eviction notices that the MCG started issuing from Thursday is nothing but a minor deterrent and would not have any impact on their way of life whatsoever.

Read I MCG sends eviction notices to individuals to reclaim Gwal Pahari land

Ram Kishan was the sarpanch of the local panchayat before the area fell within the ambit of the MCGs jurisdiction. The panchayat was disbanded after the MCG was founded in 2010.

Kishan claimed that the land which is at the heart of the dispute currently belongs to the panchayat and part of a larger tract of land that was bifurcated way back in the seventies.

The barren land was divided into two parts  75% of it came to be in the possession of landowners and farmers and the rest remained with the panchayat.

This bifurcation of the land threw up further complications when the state government divested the panchayat land for the setting up of The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI) and National Institute of Solar Energy.

Kishan claimed that in 1980s, the government wanted to encroach on the panchayat land further and residents took the matter to the local court and secured a stay order. Since then, legal disputes between the residents and district administration had been a routine affair. The situation worsened from the time there was significant rise in the number of big realty projects in the NCR and MCG areas.

Kishan claimed land issues were further aggravated when residents signed sale-agreements with private colonisers and builders from the turn of the 21st century. Since then, the government has been trying to displace those who refused to be lured into such agreements.

Ever since the land prices went through the roof and there was a noticeable realty boom in these areas, the authorities have been trying to displace landowners and claim it as their property. Despite repeated notices and attempts, they have been unsuccessful in their attempts. The residents either moved the local court seeking injunctions or got the support of ruling politicians. Hence, this time too, we dont see them being successful in their ploy. We feel that status quo will never change, Kishan said.

Other residents who received notices from the MCG six months back also echoed Kishans sentiments.

As they got the notices, the residents took up the matter with Gurgaon MLA Umesh Aggarwal. The matter died down and the MCG had to retreat after he directed them to back off and retract its claims on ownership of these lands. If, a notice is served again, we will go the same route, Rajesh Kumar Mahendra, a resident of a farmhouse in the area, said.

Gwal Pahari is located on the foothills of the Aravalli range and is territorially a part of Gurgaon. It shares its borders with New Delhi and Faridabad.

Owing to its proximity to the three cities, land here is widely sought after by developers and realtors. Several individuals, real estate developers and farmhouse-owners hold properties in the area.

Last week, the Haryana government blocked the mutation order for 464 acres of MCG land by TL Satyaprakash, former Gurugram district collector and the then MCG commissioner.

Since then, the MCG has been looking to assert its claim over these lands and take possession. It has even compiled a list of 178 people who they claim are illegal settlers on their lands.

As per MCG officials, 80 notices were sent on Thursday and the remaining will be sent by the next week. The officials said that once the land is vacated, they will demolish all structures and fence off the area.

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The Haryana Commission for Women (HCW) has asked the Gurgaon police to ensure a speedier investigation of the Pataudi gangrape case and arrest those involved in the heinous crime. The commission will also write to the district administration, asking them to provide compensation to the victims.

A week ago, a gang of eight men had robbed valuables, including cash, of the workers and raped two women living on the premises of a factory in Mandpura village of Pataudi.

Suman Dahiya, vice-president, women commission, met senior police officials in Gurgaon and later met the families at Pataudi. She said frequent crimes against women were putting a question mark on the law and order situation. This is a serious challenge to the authorities and this case must be solved at the earliest. I had a meeting with police officials who told me that this could be the handiwork of criminals from outside the state. But, whatever it is, there is a need to stop them, Suman said.

She, however, appreciated the fact that police are tightening security and surveillance in border areas of the state to prevent recurrence of similar crimes. I also met the families who are shattered after the brutal incident. The commission will write to the district administration to provide them compensation and relief, Suman said.

During the commissions visit to Mandpura village, one of the women asked her to leave them alone as they could not give answers to so many people every day. It was only after she was consoled that the victim broke down in tears and spoke of her ordeal in detail.

The women commission, however, was critical of the fact that despite the factory being at a remote location in Mandpura, no measures were taken to provide security to the workers. There were no guards or CCTV cameras installed at the site, the commission noted.

The Gurgaon police said it was working on different leads to solve the case and nab the culprits. Sandeep Khirwar, Gurgaon police commissioner said his teams were collecting details on similar incidents and criminals who were involved in such cases. Police teams from UP, Rajasthan and Haryana will meet tomorrow and discuss the case in detail. This is a challenging case but we will catch the criminals, Khairwar said.

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If you take delight in winged wonders, then Delhi-NCR is the place to be this Sunday morning.

The Big Bird Day, an annual event which witnesses an assembly of bird lovers to do a head count of some common species in the region and across the country, is likely to see visitors flocking in this year as well.

As many as 12 teams from Delhi-NCR will participate with a view to getting an understanding of some common species of fowls and the parts of the region that they inhabit or are native to. Each team will comprise 15

members.

The data collated during the event will help bird enthusiasts understand the trends with regard to bird life and ecology, bird experts said.

The participants will record their count of certain common bird species for the day and upload the list to e-bird, a website where a detailed list on ecology and the evolving trend on some species of birds will be compiled by different teams through the day, Nikhil Devasar, a member of Delhi bird group, said.

The bird count will start from 7 am and continue till 8 pm. The areas where the birds will be sighted and data collated include Sultanpur, Basai, Najafgarh, Mangar, the bank of the

Yamuna and all wetlands in

the region.

During this nationwide exercise, bird watchers pan out to forests, rural, semi-urban and urban areas to record sightings. The results of the findings will be declared on Monday.

These events give a perspective about the trends and help us explain the impact on environment because of growing urbanisation and poor air quality, Shyam Sunder Kaushik, divisional forest officer (wildlife), Gurgoan, said.

Pankaj Gupta, a bird lover, said, This time, I am planning to visit Mangar for this bird counting event.

Last year, 228 species of birds were spotted during the event. However, the number was short of the 239 sighted in 2015. The inaugural edition of the event was held on February 22, 2004 and 236 species of birds were recorded across the capital.

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Hollywood star and human rights advocate Angelina Jolie said US President Donald Trumps executive order barring travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries hurts vulnerable refugees and could fuel extremism.

Without directly naming Trump, Jolie, who has served as a special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said in a New York Times opinion piece, published on Thursday, that discriminating based on religion was playing with fire.

The Oscar-winning actress added that as the mother of six children, all born in foreign lands and ... proud American citizens, she believed in the need for the nations safety, but said decisions should be based on facts, not fear.

I also want to know that refugee children who qualify for asylum will always have a chance to plead their case to a compassionate America. And that we can manage our security without writing off citizens of entire countries - even babies - as unsafe to visit our country by virtue of geography or religion, she wrote.

Trumps executive order bans citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen from entering the United States for 90 days. Refugee admissions were suspended for 120 days while Syrian refugees were barred indefinitely.

The move has not only caused consternation for the nations involved but among other Muslim-majority countries, allies such as Germany and Britain and career State Department officials.

Hollywoods celebrities have also been using their spotlight to slam the presidents ban.

Jolie, 41, has received an honorary Oscar for her humanitarian work. Last year, she visited refugee camps in Lebanon and Greece, meeting with families fleeing war in the Middle East.

The actress warned that by implying Muslims are less worthy of protection, we fuel extremism abroad.

Jolies op-ed is the first comment she has made publicly since filing for divorce in September from her husband, actor Brad Pitt. The former couple share three adopted children from Cambodia, Vietnam and Ethiopia, and three biological children, who were born in France and Namibia.

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Actor Dakota Johnson has paid tribute to her mother Melanie Griffith in her upcoming movie Fifty Shades Darker.

Johnson, 27, who will reprise the role of Anastasia Steele in the erotic romance drama, has revealed that the new film will feature a surprise tribute to her 59-year-old mother, reported Femalefirst.

There is a moment, a little surprise moment especially for my mom in this movie. Maybe shell see this one specific little clip, Johnson said.

Jamie Dornan, left, and Dakota Johnson arrive at the Los Angeles premiere of Fifty Shades Darker at The Theatre at Ace Hotel. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

When asked if movie-watchers will notice the subtle tribute, the actor said, I hope so. I think so.

The second movie in the Fifty Shades film series is the sequel to 2015 film Fifty Shades of Grey.

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One of the largest low-cost airlines Ryanair may soon announce its plans to launch flights to Ukraine, the company's chief legal and regulatory officer, Juliusz Komorek, has said.

"I think so and we will soon make an announcement on this matter," he said in an interview with the Polish newspaper Fly4free when asked when the airline planned to start flights to Lviv and other Ukrainian cities.

He also stressed that Ukraine is a large market with a very attractive transport network and unpredictable situations on the border.

"I cannot say when we will enter the Ukrainian market  this winter season or the next summer season. Naturally, we are studying the routes from Ukraine to Poland, but also to other European countries," Komorek said.

Ukraine's Infrastructure Ministry earlier confirmed the talks between Kyiv and Lviv airports with one of the largest low cost airlines Ryanair about flights to Ukraine.

Ryanair Chief Commercial Officer David O'Brien said in May 2016 that Ryanair is holding talks with Lviv on the flights to the city.

"I dont think that we will discuss flights to Odesa. Ukraine today can be considered only as am additional route to our key markets. They are Italy, Spain, Britain, Ireland and Germany where there are many popular routes closer than Ukraine. Broadly speaking, our business model is that each additional flight increases our production cost per passenger and we expects that this investment is returned. There is demand in Ukraine on flights to many countries. These are mostly flights to the east and north where Ryanair does not have the right to fly," he said in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.
Keanu Reeves action thriller sequel John Wick 2 has been locked for release in India on February 17.

PVR Pictures announced the release date via a statement.

Directed by Chad Stahelski and written by Derek Kolstad, the movie features Laurence Fishburne and Ruby Rose in key roles.

The story revolves around the legendary hitman John Wick (played by Reeves) who is forced back out of retirement by a former associate plotting to seize control of a shadowy international assassins guild. Bound by a blood oath to help him, John travels to Rome, where he squares off against some of the worlds deadliest killers.

The first film gained a cult following and earned $86 million on a $20 million budget in 2014.

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Economies around the world are buzzing with the idea of a basic income, given to all citizens irrespective of their employment status. Switzerland voted it down, Finland is currently experimenting with it, and India is talking about it. The economic survey 2016-17, released Tuesday, dedicated an entire chapter to it, entitled, provocatively, Universal Basic Income: A Conversation With and Within the Mahatma.

Prefaced with Mahatma Gandhis ideas on social welfare and fruits of earned labour, the chapter is an exploration of universal basic income as it could potentially take shape in India. While the survey doesnt pin down a particular basic income amount, it could be anything between a little over Rs.3000 to 12,000 per year.

So what are the arguments against and in favour?

PRO: The robots are taking over

Proponents say that with increasing automation in the economy, many people find themselves out of work because their skills are outdated. In fact, as per a Manpower report released at World Economic Forum in Davos recently, Indian workers too will be significantly impacted by automation in the near future. To help such workers sustain themselves at the most basic level, it might help in the future to give everyone a basic income.

CON: But it will disincentivise work

Opponents, however, are worried that such a dole will make people lazy, and they will opt out of work instead supporting themselves on the basic income.

PRO: Universal welfare works because it is given to everyone

The latest economic survey reports that 40% and 65% of the targeted populations never received the benefits of food subsidy and employment guarantee, MGNREGA, respectively. The problem of misallocation also leads to the poorest areas of country getting a lower share of government benefits as compared to their richer counterparts, as per the report. However, with a basic income that is given to all (or at least 75% of Indias population), that problem can be significantly avoided since it need not be claimed. It will simply reflect in the persons bank account.

CON: But what if the government decides to roll it out selectively?

At the same time, the survey also proposes to roll out the UBI on a selective basis at first. The UBI will be rolled out for vulnerable groups like pregnant women, widows, senior citizens and those who are physically or mentally weaker. But this undermines one of the strongest arguments in favour of universal welfare: it works because it is given to everyone. Rolling it out selectively and in phases could create misallocation issues which could then make it difficult for the government to push forward with the UBI for all.

PRO: Relief from the middle mans exploitation

Because the implementation will be done through the JAM (Jan Dhan accounts-Aadhar cards-Mobile) ecosystem, it will ensure a direct and hassle free transfer of the benefit to the people.

CON: But do we have the infrastructure to support electronic transfer of basic income?

Only one in five Indians has a Jhan Dhan account, as per the survey report. Further, of these, less than 60% of them are linked with Aadhar. This poses a considerable challenge to the idea of universal basic income in India.

PRO: Use your money as you like

Delivered as a direct cash transfer, the UBI will empower the people insofar as it will allow them to decide what they want to do with the money. In such a scenario, some say there is a risk that the money will be used on alcohol and tobacco, known as temptation expenditure. Yet a field experiment in Madhya Pradesh seemed to disprove that theory: villagers who received the basic income spent more on health care, entrepreneurial ventures, and children.

CON: But what if people dont even get the money?

On the other hand, as noted by the economic survey report, evidence from Chandigarh and Pondicherry raises questions. Last year, in lieu of the food public distribution system, people were given cash or direct benefit transfers. Yet almost half the residents claimed they never received the money at all, according to a study undertaken by Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab.

PRO: Just another dole or one dole replaces all?

The Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, after presenting the budget on February 1, in an interview to DD News remarked that clubbing all subsidies together and giving the poor one basic income cheque sounds wonderful.

CON: But are our politicians prepared to let that happen soon?

In the same interview, Jaitley also said that Indias politics isnt yet mature enough to allow for phasing out of all other doles in favour of this new dole. The economic survey report too considers it an impossibility in the short term.
The Supreme Court on Friday made it clear that Malaysian billionaire and Maxis Group owner, T Ananda Krishnan, against whom summons were issued in Aircel-Maxis case, must appear before a trial court failing which 50% of Aircels shares would be auctioned. The apex court also said that it would not tolerate absconders evading Indias judicial process.

Maxis has major stakes in Aircel, Indias leading providers of telecom services, and an adverse court order could jeopardise a proposed merger between the company and Reliance Communication. Fifty percent shares of Aircel, valued at Rs 20,000 crore, will be transferred to Reliance Communication.

He (Ananda Krishnan) doesnt care for the law or the Supreme Court of this country, and yet you people stand up to defend him? One must subject himself to the process of law. We will not allow merger of Reliance Communication wireless with Aircel, unless Rs 20,000 crore debt of nationalised banks is liquidated. We will adopt any means to ensure his presence, Chief Justice JS Khehars bench told senior advocate AM Singhvi, appearing for Aircel.

Singhvi told the court it cannot use Aircel to procure Krishnans presence. According to him the merger between the two companies was only through transfer of shares and there is no outflow of money or sale.

On January 6, the top court had asked the Centre to issue advertisements in two newspapers in Malaysia requiring Ananda Krishnans presence in the court. The government said the needful had been done. However, there was no response to the ads.

The CJI refused to accept Aircels plea that Ananda Krishnan was not under its control. It perused the share holdings and pointed out the he controlled the company.

In an apparent reference to industrialist Vijay Mallya, the CJI also observed people who are defaulters are running away from law. We will not allow that to happen. He has to submit himself to the jurisdiction of this court.

It asked the company to submit more documents in support of their arguments till next Friday.

In a related development, the special public prosecutor in the 2G cases, Anand Grover requested the top court to put on hold the trial court order that released the properties of Dayanidhi Maran and his brother Kalanithi Maran after discharging them in the corruption case. He also said the special court should be directed to accept bail bonds from Maran brothers even though they have been discharged from the case.
Assam assembly speaker Hitendra Nath Goswami on Monday suspended All India United Democratic Front MLA Aminul Islam for three days for live streaming his assembly speech on Facebook last week.

Islam admitted breaking the rules to take his speech to a wider audience, but said the laws related to telecast of assembly proceedings should be amended in the interest of the people.

His speech was about the contentious illegal-migrants issue.

Goswami had asked the Houses ethics committee, of which Islam is a member, to submit a report on Monday after parliamentary affairs minister Chandra Mohan Patowary lodged a complaint immediately after the video went viral on Friday.

The committee recommended suspension of the member for a specific period for the gross misconduct, Goswami said.

I am convinced that the action of the MLA is a clear case of breach of model code of conduct to be observed by members while in the house and sensing the gravity of the situation I had decided to take a suo motu case and directed the chairman of the ethics committee to submit a report on February 6, the speaker said.

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A 32-year-old man was arrested here on Thursday for allegedly killing his live-in partner and hiding the body at his home by building a marbled platform, police said.

Police arrested Udyan Das from near his home in Saket Nagar late in the night. They broke the concrete structure and recovered the body after he confessed to the crime. He killed Akanksha Sharma, alias Shweta , on December 27, police said.

The murder came to light when a team of West Bengal Police came to Bhopal looking for Sharma , whose parents lodged a complaint in December.

The platform built by the accused to hide Akanksha Sharmas body. (HT Photo)

Uday has confessed his crime but he is changing his statements. We are trying to verify the facts and get answers to many unanswered questions, sub-inspector Ramesh Rai said on Friday.

Das told police they fought often as Sharma used to talk to her ex-boyfriend. On December 27, they again had an argument and he strangled her.

He stuffed the body in a wooden box and poured cement on it. Das waited for the cement to dry up before building a concrete platform and fixing marble tiles over it.

According to police, Sharma , a resident of Bankura in West Bengal, met Das on a social media site in 2007 and left her home in June last, telling her parents she had got a job in New York.

But, she came to Bhopal and started living with Das, who owns two luxury cars. Police are investigating the source of Dass income as he doesnt have a job but maintains a lavish lifestyle.

For a month, the woman remained in touch with her family, telling them she was in New York.

But after July, her family didnt hear from her. Her parents lodged a police complaint while her brother traced the location of his sisters cellphone to Bhopal, police said.

Das was evasive about his relationship with Sharma . He told police they got married in New York but changed the statement later to say the ceremony was held in a local temple.

Das told police his father used to work for BHEL and his mother retired as a deputy superintendent of police. He also claimed to be an IIT-Delhi passout. But, police are cross-checking his claims as he changed statements repeatedly.

Some neighbours told police that Das had locked his house and used to enter it through a window.

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The news of Akanksha Sharmas murder allegedly by her live-in partner in Madhya Pradesh has come as a shock to her family, friends and neighbours, who were under the impression that the 28-year-old was working in New York.

Akanksha left home saying she had got a job. We cannot understand why she suppressed facts and what prompted her to go to Bhopal...we are ruined, said Akankshas mother.

Akankshas father, Shivendra Kumar Sharma, a manager with a nationalised bank here, left for Bhopal on Friday, a day after police arrested Udyan Das for his daughters murder.

Akanksha, said police in Bhopal, was living in with Das. He murdered her on December 27, dumped the body in a wooden box and built a marbled platform on it in his first-floor home in Bhopal.

The body was recovered late on Thursday after police broke the structure.

Last June, Akanksha told her parents she had got a job in New York and left. She kept up the pretence when she exchanged messages with her family though she spent some time in Delhi before shifting to Bhopal after meeting Das on social media.

Sharma lodged a missing persons complaint with Bankura police who started tracking the number from which Akanksha used to message her parents. They traced the number to Saket Nagar area of Bhopal, where Das lived.
The BJPs national president Amit Shah might either cancel or change the route of his padyatra in Uttar Pradeshs Meerut on Friday after a traders son was allegedly murdered by a gang of robbers on Thursday night, a party official said.

Shahs padyatra was scheduled in the old city area and was to move through Sharda Road before reaching out to the traders community in Kabari Bazar, Sarrafa, Valley Bazar and other adjoining markets.

Businessmen are considered to be the traditional voters of the Bharatiya Janata Party but were unhappy because of the Centres demonetisation that affected their trade.

Meerut is in the crucial and communally sensitive region of western Uttar Pradesh where the party had fared well in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

In the wake of unfortunate incident, we are left with two options either to cancel the padyatra or to change its route. It all depends on the decision of the national president who will arrive here at 9.30am, partys city unit president Karunesh Nanndan Garg said.

Garg said that Shah may cancel the padyatra after visiting the grieving family and could also attend the funeral procession depending on its time. The other option is to change the route by skipping Sharda Road where the incident occurred, he added.

We would brief him about the situation so that he could take his decision, Garg said.

Sushil Verma, a distributor of a famous gutka brand, was finalising the account of days sale along with his son Abhishek at his office on Sharda Road on Thursday night. His agent Rohit also came there to deposit some money from sale.

Three men allegedly followed him and entered the office while their two aides kept guard outside the office.

They looted cash worth Rs 3 lakh and jewellery after taking them on gun point and downed the shutter before fleeing. The trapped traders somehow lifted the shutter and chased criminals and caught one of them.

One of the fleeing men opened fire and the bullet hit 21-year-old Abhishek on his chest and Verma also sustained injury on his hand while two other shopkeepers Umesh and Akhil, who dared to chase the criminals, also received bullet injuries.

The injured were taken to a hospital where doctors declared Abhishek dead.

Angry traders blocked the road and shouted slogans against police for failing to reign in criminals. Naveen Gupta, president of Sanyukt Vyaapar Sangh, and other traders demanded the suspension of the station house officer and circle officer of the area.

Senior superintendant of police J Ravindra Gaur and other senior officials also rushed to the area and four teams of police have been formed to identify and arrest the criminals involved in the incident.

Uttar Pradesh will vote in a seven-phase election for its 403 assembly seats from February 11 to March 8. Polling in Meerut will be held in the first phase.
A Border Security Force (BSF) sentry, who was posted on the Bangladesh border in Meghalaya, allegedly shot himself with his service weapon on Friday after going into depression.

Constable Kamlesh Kumar Gujar, 27, was with the BSFs 26th battalion based at Praharinagar outside Tura. Hailing from Haryana, he was posted at Kalaichar in Meghalayas South Garo Hills district.

BSF officials said that while on camp duty at the border outpost, Gujar shot himself around 10am with his INSAS rifle because of family issues.

His body was later taken to the Tura Civil Hospital for post-mortem examination. An official team has reached the spot to investigate the death.
Cash transfers were introduced in Chandigarh, Puducherry, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli as a substitute for the Public Distribution System (PDS) on a pilot basis in 2015. A programme evaluation study found glaring results, as significant proportion of the amount disbursed via Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) was not reaching to the beneficiaries.

Less than 60% cash is getting into the hands of beneficiaries. This difference between disbursement and in-hand receipt represents weak implementation, the report concludes.

This official study was conducted by J-PAL and was submitted by to the Department of Food, Government of India and NITI Ayog in August 2016. The findings are crucial as the discussion around provisioning a Universal Basic Income in lieu of schemes such as PDS is doing the rounds in India.

The evaluation was conducted in two phases: the first one ran from September 2015 to February 2016 and the second one from June to July 2016. In the second phase, the situation improved slightly. There has been a reduction in the proportion of beneficiaries receiving nothing or less than full entitlement in Chandigarh and Puducherry.

Subsidy amount, not enough

Subsidy amounts may not reflect the additional time and monetary burden on beneficiaries. For instance, beneficiaries incur average travel and opportunity costs of extra Rs 84 per month in accessing cash via DBT in comparison with equivalent PDS entitlement. This is why 75% of beneficiaries think subsidy amount is insufficient and expect it to be higher.

However, the sample study found that with cash transfers, respondents conveyed that they were able to buy a higher quality of grain from the market than they were getting at the PDS.

PDS preferred over DBT

The majority of beneficiaries in Chandigarh and Puducherry continue to prefer the PDS over cash transfer. The opposite was the case in Dadra and Nagar Haveli, where, after only four months of implementation, 56% of beneficiaries expressed a preference for DBT over PDS. Beneficiaries were more favourable towards DBT over time as implementation improves and exposure increases.

Implementation remains a key concern. The study recommends that reconciling payment and receipt records should be given top priority.
Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces after Friday prayers here, the police said.

Unidentified youths threw a petrol bomb at a CRPF contingent deployed in Nowhatta area which was followed by heavy stone pelting.

A trooper was injured in the incident. Security forces used batons and tear smoke to disperse the protesters.

Clashes also broke out in north Kashmirs Sopore town.

Separatists have called for post Friday prayer protests against a West Bengal courts decision to sentence to death Muzaffar Ahmad from Kulgam in south Kashmir.

Authorities placed separatist leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq under house arrest in a bid to foil mass protests.
The state-run enterprise Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority in 2017 is scheduled to hold dredging works at sea ports at the total area of about 20 million cubic meters, including capital dredging.

Newly appointed acting head of the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority Raivis Veckagans announced this during a meeting with dredging companies in the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine on Friday.

According to him, dredging projects at the Yuzhny and Chornomorsk seaports covering the total area of 10.9 million cubic meters, including 4.4 million cubic meters in the Yuzhny seaport alone, are planned for this year. The Sea Port Authority also plans to hold dredging works at 8.7 million cubic meters using its own fleet.
The Congress is caught in a dilemma whether to embarrass the Modi government yet again by getting passed the opposition amendments to the motion of thanks to the Presidents address or focus on the ongoing assembly elections in five states.

To ensure full attendance by its members in the Rajya Sabha, the main opposition party will have to issue a three-line whip for Monday when amendments to the motion will be taken up for voting. Defying a party whip invites expulsion from a House.

With a majority in the Upper House, the Congress holds the key to the passage of any opposition amendment to the Presidents speech. The party is in a catch-22 situation as some of its members are busy campaigning in poll-bound states.

Two Congress members  T Subbarami Reddy and Chhaya Verma  have moved the amendments and the party will take a call on Monday whether to press for these. CPM leaders Sitaram Yechury and Ritabrata Banerjee, CPIs D Raja, Derek OBrien of the Trinamool Congress and Samajwadi Party leader Kiranmoy Nanda are among the other members who have moved the amendments. Out of the total 651 amendments being moved, 359 are by Samajwadi Partys Sanjay Seth, while 19 are on demonetisation. For the past two years,the NDA government had to face embarrassment in the Rajya Sabha after the opposition managed to pass its amendments to the Presidents address.

Last year, Leader of the Opposition Ghulam Nabi Azad had moved an amendment, expressing regret that the Presidents address did not pledge support to rights of all citizens to contest panchayat elections in Haryana. When Azad pressed for the amendment, 94 voted in favour of it and 61 against.

Prior to that, an amendment moved by Yechury and others in the Upper House in 2015 that the Presidents address did not mention the failure of the Modi government to curb high-level corruption and to bring back black money was passed with 118 voting for and 57 against.
Opposition parties Friday demanded a discussion in parliament as well as probe into the manner in which the government handled the death of former union minister E Ahamed.

Senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad alleged Ahamed had passed away much earlier than declared so by the RML hospital but the government wanted to keep the body there until the Union budget was presented.

Azad said Congress has information that former Union minister Ahamed had passed away much earlier than it was formally declared, he told reporters.

Raising the issue during the Zero Hour, Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) said there were varied allegations and various information that I have got that some doctors say he was declared dead when he was taken to the hospital.

I want a proper and thorough investigation in the manner in which the death of one of our senior colleagues of Parliament and a former Cabinet Minister E Ahamed was handled and the way in which the news of his death was sought to be suppressed, he said.

Ahamed, 79, the Indian Union Muslim League leader died at RML hospital where he was admitted on January 31 and put on artificial life support.

There has been interference, thats what I hear, from the highest authorities in the country, from the PMO, and this is something which cannot be accepted, he said.

When the Lok Sabha reassembled at noon, the Opposition forced adjournment for the second time, barely minutes after the House resumed, with members, cutting across party lines, especially from Kerala, rushing into the Well raising the issue of the death of Ahamed.

Read: E Ahamed, consummate politician, skilled negotiator and football fan

Speaker Sumitra Mahajan wanted the house to take up the discussion on the Presidents address to the joint sitting of Parliament.

But several opposition members, including Revolutionary Socialist Partys N K Premachandran, Congress MP KC Venugopal and CPI (M)s P Karunakaran, trooped into the Well.

On the other hand, TMC members again raised the issue of the CBI targeting its MPs. The partys Lok Sabha leader Sudeep Bandyopadhyay.

The government, however, urged the Opposition Congress to not politicise sudden demise of Ahamed and sought cooperation of all parties in smooth conduct of Parliament.

Read: Ahamed served the country with great diligence, says PM Modi

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said the RML Hospitals Superintendent has already given a detailed statement on the sudden death of the leader.

The Minister was responding to Congress general secretary and Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azads allegation that Ahamed had passed away much earlier than declared by RML hospital.

I urge Congress party to not politicise the death of Ahamed sahab...and I also urge them to cooperate in running both Houses, Kumar said.
Women in Lucknow have reacted with shock to a Hindustan Times article that reported of mobile recharge outlets across Uttar Pradesh selling cellphone numbers of unsuspecting female customers to potential stalkers at price tags dependant on their looks.

Students of a prestigious girls college in Lucknow said they never knew men in Uttar Pradesh could stoop to this level. Many of them frequent mobile recharge outlets to top up their prepaid phone connections.

I am horrified. We never imagined that recharge shops would sell our numbers to stalkers for a price. Now we have no choice but to recharge our phones online. Thats the only solution in sight, said a BA first-year student on the condition of anonymity.

Her friend, a fellow-student, expressed incredulity. We have been taking due precautions while using the social media by not posting our photographs or sharing too many personal details, she said. Little did we know what was happening every time we visited a mobile recharge outlet.

Social activists in the state also expressed shock at the revelation. All India Democratic Womens Association president Madhu Garg said harassing women over the phone was an emerging trend in the state. We recently dealt with two cases where girls were being blackmailed over the phone. Police have nabbed a youngster in this connection, Garg said.

Upma Chaturvedi, principal of the Avadh Girls Degree College in Lucknow, expressed helplessness over the situation. We will now tell our students to recharge their cellphones online. But not everybody has a computer. The police must come up with a solution, she told HT.

A senior police officer said a drive will be launched soon to check incidents of the kind, and sensitise recharge outlet owners against indulging in such activities.

The day also saw Twitter react with horror to the article, which was carried on the front page of Hindustan Times Friday edition. While a few expressed bewilderment, others called on law enforcement agencies to resolve the problem at the earliest.

Good morning, exclaimed a Twitter user identified only as Genderlog. Beginning the day with how womens phone numbers (are being) sold from recharge counters for Rs 50-500.

Anshul, another Twitter user, expressed shock over police claims that mobile numbers being sold to stalkers does not make for a crime.

Others like Susmita Chakraborty chose to give the story a political twist. This is @yadavakhileshs UP. Girls personal details r sold openly in recharge shops... she tweeted.

However, most telecom operators professed inability on their part to prevent roadside retailers from indulging in such activities. We hire distributors to sell recharge coupons. They give the coupons to retailers, who pass them on to vendors. Such malpractices can be carried out not only while recharging phones, but also when girls apply for new SIM cards at these places, said an official with a private mobile operator.

The onus of preventing the misuse of phone numbers is on law enforcement agencies, he added.
Program officer of Ford Foundation connived with director of Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Limited (SCPPL) for granting around $ 2.9 lakh foreign donations in violation of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), a CBI charge sheet says.

The document, which was filed by the central agency last month against social activist Teesta Setalvad, her husband Javed Anand and Sabrang, the publishing company run by them, for alleged violation of foreign funding rules, was given to the accused on Friday.

According to the charge sheet, Sushma Raman, program officer of Ford Foundation, received the first proposal from Sabrang for receipt of grant in 2004.

Investigations revealed that Raman was aware that Sabrang was not eligible to receive funds since it was not in accordance with the provisions of FCR Act. She had communicated with Javed at that time of processing of the proposal for the grant. To circumvent the compliance requirements Raman connived with Anand who was trying to project the grant as consultancy charges, the charge sheet mentions.

It also said that Sabrang was a private limited company engaged in publications which is not entrusted to receive foreign contributions under any circumstances. Still if the company thought otherwise they could have applied for proper permission before accepting the foreign grant by not doing so they have violated FCRA, the charge sheet said.

As per project modules submitted to foreign donor it is mentioned that Sabrang as part of its public campaign would lobby with government in public sphere to deepen and broaden the concept of minority/minorities. Lobbying with political parties is not allowed as per the provision of FCRA, the charge sheet reads, adding, that it mixed foreign contributions with their domestic ones.

The charge sheet also said they did not maintain exclusive books of account for receipt of foreign contribution and Sabrang could not produce segregated books of accounts for checking.

It said Sabrang could not produce minutes book to the inspection team for scrutiny and also the records prior to FY 2009.

Sabrang had been publishing a monthly periodical and two of its directors have been writing columns and articles in leading newspapers and as per FCRA they are totally prohibited to receive foreign contribution, the charge sheet said.

The agreement was signed on September 2006 between Sabrang and Ford Foundation and under the clause it is mentioned that the funds may be expended only for charitable, scientific, literacy or educational purpose.

As it has been clearly stated in the agreement that the funds have been given for charitable, scientific, literary or education purpose, thus this fund could not be treated as amount provided for propose of rendering any service, the charge sheet mentions.

The probe agency had in July 2015 registered a case against Setalvad, who was at the forefront of campaign for 2002 Gujarat riot victims, and others for alleged violation of FCRA in receiving funds from abroad without taking prior permission from the home ministry.

The charge sheet has been filed under Section 120 B of Indian Penal Code (criminal conspiracy) along with FCRA 2010 and FCRA 1976.
Former CBI Director Joginder Singh died in New Delhi on Friday after a prolonged illness. He was 77.

Singh, who was selected for the Indian Police Service at the age of 20, served as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief between 1996 and 1997.

The cremation will be held on Saturday afternoon at the Lodhi Crematorium in New Delhi.

Before joining the CBI, he served as superintendent of police in Bihar, deputy inspector general and inspector general in Karnataka, director of youth services in Karnataka, special home secretary to the government of Karnataka, director in ministry of commerce, director general in Narcotics Control Bureau, director general in Indo-Tibetan Border Police and special secretary in the home ministry among other postings.

He also served as inspector general in the Central Reserve Police Force, and led a number of delegations to the UK, USA, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Iran, UAE, Hong Kong and Switzerland on behalf of the government.

Singh also authored books like Make a Way Where There is None, 50 Days to Top, Inside CBI, Some Untold Tales, Without Fear and Favour and Inside India.

Singh wrote articles, features and columns on terrorism, corruption, good governance etc. in national dailies in different languages.
The Gujarat government may have reserved 50% seats in its local bodies for women, but the actual beneficiaries of the seemingly progressive scheme may be none other than their husbands.

Dhirubhai Solanki is not an elected member of the Gir-Somnath district panchayat, and he doesnt hold any official position either. But the BJP leader calls the shots on the district education committees affairs just because his wife, Manjula, happens to be its chairperson.

Dhirubhai chaired the committee meeting on Thursday, and even gave specific instructions to district education officer (DEO) NM Dafda. A video of the proceedings showed Manjula and other committee members  all BJP members  keeping silent through most of the meeting.

Dont go ahead with the proceedings I will get this proposal cleared by the planning co-ordination committee (of the district BJP), Dhirubhai was heard telling Dafda at the meeting, even as his wife bore mute witness.

Read | BJP sweeps local body polls in Gujarat, PM salutes people for continued trust

However, the BJP leader doesnt believe theres anything wrong in providing some moral support to his wife. I made some suggestions before the DEO as Manjulas representative. She feels confident in my presence, he told HT.

Dafda does not agree. Dhirubhai is not authorised to attend the meeting. Manjula should have been chairing it, he said.

The move to increase reservation for women from 33% to 50% was conceived by Narendra Modi during his tenure as the state chief minister, and inserted as a clause into the Gujarat Local Authorities (Amendment) Act-2009 by his successor Anandiben Patel. However, worthy as the move may seem on paper, it has failed to yield the desired results.

Read | How BJP regained lost ground in Gujarat a year after Patidar agitation

The new clause came into effect during the local bodies polls held in November 2015. However, as incidents like this portray, the elected members husbands (most hailing from the ruling party) may actually be the ones reaping the benefits of the move.

A BJP function to felicitate newly elected sarpanchs in January was also indicative of such a political trend. During a felicitation function held by the BJP at Palitana in Bhavnagar district recently, agriculture minister VV Vaghasiya honoured nearly 50 men while their wives  the actual village sarpanchs  stayed away.

The BJP played down the issue, stating that it was committed to properly implementing reservation for women across the state. This is an issue thats both social and political, said Bharat Pandya, the party spokesperson for Gujarat. As the BJP wants women to take charge, it plans to conduct training sessions for newly elected members. We will strive to create awareness among women, and encourage them to take decisions on their own.

Read | With political competition, reservation architecture expands

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Several agencies, coordinated by the Indian Coast Guard, continued their fight for the seventh day on Friday against a giant oil slick that is spreading far and wide along the Chennai coast.

According to experts, the oil slick has spread across the coastline from Ennore to beyond Thiruvanmiyur, a distance of over 30 km.

Members of the pollution response team of the Indian Coast Guard clean the oil spill from boulders along the Ennore coast in Chennai. (HT/ V Srinivasulu)

Coast Guard and naval personnel, fire department and water supply and sewage department workers and hundreds of volunteers (most of them in orange tracksuits) worked from dawn on Friday to clear the slush.

The oil slick, which started after a leak due to the collision between two ships, carried with it bodies of marine species.

Members of the pollution response team of the Indian Coast Guard clean the oil spill from boulders along the Ennore coast in Chennai. (HT/ V Srinivasulu)

The people cleaning the slush stood in queues, scooping up sludge with their hands and putting them in buckets and passing them on to the others to ferry it further away to be filled in big vats and containers.

Many complained of the strong stench of mud, dead fish and prawns.

Coast Guard inspector general S Paramesh said 72 tonnes of thick, dark muddy and oily sludge have so far been removed from the sea.

Emergency workers clean oil from the shoreline of Ennore port. (REUTERS)

He said the work was only half done, as the overall estimate of the sludge  a combination of oil, marine debris and water - was put at 116 tonnes.

The Coast Guard official said the actual oil leak was ten times more than what was originally reported and said the preliminary responsibility for tackling it was that of the Kamarajar port.

An emergency worker walks amidst boulders as he cleans oil from the shoreline of Ennore port in Chennai. (REUTERS)

According to the Coast Guard, initial information from the management of Kamarajar port at Ennore said just 2 tonnes of oil had leaked after the collision between the two ships  MT Maple and MT Dawn Kanchipuram on January 28.

MT Maple had offloaded its LPG consignment in the port and was leaving when it collided with MT Dawn Kanchipuram that coming into the port, loaded with petrol and lubricants.

MT Maple, one of the vessels, involved in the collision with another cargo ship that led to the oil spill, now anchored in the deep sea in Bay of Bengal. (PTI)

Both the ships have been detained and secured at Kamarajar port and an inquiry is on, said port chairman cum managing director MA Bhaskarachar.

The captains of both the ships too have been detained along with the crew members, he said.

The ships and crew would not be allowed to leave the port till the probe is over.

An Indian Coast Guard helicopter carries an Oil Spill Disperser (OSD) off the coastguard ship Varad during a sortie over the waters off the coast of Chennai. (AFP)

The port official, however, denied that there was any delay in response or action from the port.

There was no oil spillage inside the port and this is my jurisdiction and I can speak only for the port area. Outside the port area, it is the responsibility of other agencies, Bhaskarachar told a television channel.

Officials said 90% of the damage by the oil slick was limited to the north Chennai area of the coast, which is closer to the port at Ennore.

Indian Coast Guard cadets sprinkle Oil Spill Dispersant (OSD) onto a thick oily tide on the waters off the coast of Chennai. (AFP)

Fishermen close to the port area in north Chennai said the accident took place around 4am on Saturday (January 28) and instantly, oil started gushing out as if being pumped.

Coast Guard officials, meanwhile, denied that there was any delay in launching operations after assessment of the situation and said that the major damage was limited to just one km near the port in north Chennai.

Ecological damage would not be very much, a Coast Guard official said.

Coast Guard and navy personnel, volunteers and fishermen work together to remove the oil slick along the coast in Chennai. (PTI)

Oil spill dispersants are being sprayed in the sea by the authorities to minimise damage to the marine eco system.

Coast Guard helicopters are carrying out regular sorties for continuous monitoring of the oil slick at sea and near the coast. During sorties, stagnated thick oil slick about 100 metres wide near Ennore chimney and a 50x50-metre patch was observed near Kasimedu harbour, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

Coast Guard and navy personnel, volunteers and fishermen work together to remove the oil slick along the coast in Chennai. The oil is being put in buckets and filled in big vats and containers. (PTI)

The Coast Guard has sent ICGS Varad along with an integrated helicopter with pollution control equipment to clear the oil slick, it said.

The cleanup operations could be carry on for another two days, said an official on the spot.

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It was with bleary eyes that Lakshmi Dolui, 38, recalled how her 16-year-old son, Ratan, had to abandon his studies and take up a wage labourers job to keep the home fires burning.

Her husband Putibar  the sole breadwinner of the family  was killed by a tiger on December 3, 2016, when the 50-year-old man entered the Sunderban forests to catch fish. My husband didnt have the forest departments permission. We didnt lodge a complaint with the police or inform the forest department for fear of harassment. We never received any compensation, said Lakshmi, wiping her tears as she stood on the edge of the river embankment of Kumirmari Island  one of the remotest villages in the delta.

Consequently, the government remains unaware of his death. The other members of his fishing team failed to even recover Putibars body because the beast had dragged it deep into the mangrove.

Dozens of villagers disappear in similar circumstances every year in the Sunderbans, without their deaths being brought to the notice of the authorities. They remain alive on paper.

The Sunderbans is the worlds largest delta, formed by three great rivers  the Ganga, Brahmaputra and Meghna  and spread over India and Bangladesh.

My husband was killed by a tiger a few years ago...I informed the police and forest department, but as the body could not be recovered, I didnt receive any compensation.

The Indian portion of the Sunderbans encompasses an area of 9,600 sq km, comprising 102 islands. Of these, 54 islands  including Kumirmari, which derives its name from the word Kumir (Bengali term for crocodile)  have human settlements. The rest are thick mangrove forests  home to the Royal Bengal Tiger and some of the worlds deadliest snakes. They accommodate a national park, a tiger reserve and three wildlife sanctuaries. The rivers and creeks that crisscross the delta are infested with crocodiles and sharks.

Thousands of villagers from these islands enter the forest to fish, catch crabs and collect honey every year. However, a majority do not have permits issued by the forest department. When these illegal entrants are killed by tigers and crocodiles, the families rarely inform the authorities out of fear, said a senior official of the Sunderbans Tiger Reserve.

In the winter session, the Lok Sabha was told that only six people were killed by tigers in the Sunderbans through 2013-14. In 2014-15, the death toll was quoted as 10. An estimate provided by the forest department claims that 410 people were attacked by tigers between 1985 and 2010, leaving just 95 survivors.

Shark and crocodile attacks are also common. Around 12 people were killed by crocodiles between 1999 and 2009. These attacks usually occur when women and children from villages in the region wade through waist and chest-deep water along the banks of the rivers to catch tiger shrimp seeds.

However, this is just a fraction of the actual death toll. Of the 70,000-80,000 people who enter the forest to fish, only around 13,000-15,000 hold valid permits and documents. Most of the illegal fishermen do not report tiger attacks, even when somebody is killed. This gives an idea on how many deaths go unreported, said Pradip Chatterjee, president of the Dakshin Banga Matsyajibi Samity (South Bengal Fisherfolks Forum).

Around 7,500 sq km of the Sunderbans falling in Indian territory is open for fishing, leaving just 2,100 sq km of the core area unavailable. However, villagers do not restrict themselves to permitted zones.

Read | Tigers, rivers and now long queues: Cash crunch makes life harder in Sunderbans

Unbridled fishing over the decades has dwindled the fish, crab and shrimp population in the buffer zones. Villagers often enter the core zone illegally in search of a good catch, getting killed in the process. As these casualties are not reported, the government remains in the dark, said Niranjan Modol, head of the Kumirmari panchayat.

Besides this, there are honey collectors  locally known as Moulis  who enter the forest both legally and illegally between March and June every year, when the mangroves flower and attract bees. Woodcutters also enter the forest in violation of the rules.

Villagers catching crabs in the Sunderbans.These villagers often stray into interiors without permit and fall prey to tigers and crocodiles. (Subhankar Chakraborty/HT Photo)

It is mostly fishermen (75%) who get killed by tigers, followed by honey collectors (17%), woodcutters (6%) and forest staffers (2%). Honey collectors are very vulnerable because they follow the bees deep into tiger territory, without any inkling of what lies ahead, said PK Vyas, chief wildlife warden of West Bengal.

The villagers woes, however, do not end here. There have been several instances of locals getting killed or mauled by tigers even if they remain within the permitted zones. Complications occur when the bodies are not found.

Read | Seven years after Cyclone Aila, Sundarbans stares at a grim tomorrow

My husband was killed by a tiger a few years ago. This was despite him having a valid permit, and being well within the buffer area  where fishing is allowed. I informed the police and the forest department, but didnt receive any compensation because the body could not be recovered. The tiger had dragged the body deep into the forest. The authorities told me that I would have to wait for a few years more, said a disconsolate Astami Mondol, who now has to raise her school-going son all by herself.

Astami Mondal, who lost her husband Srinibas Mondal to a tiger attack in 2014. (Subhankar Chakraborty/HT Photo)

Man-animal conflicts are an age-old problem in the Sunderbans, and one finds a widow in nearly every family that resides in the villages dotting the fringes of the forest. This has given root to the concept of bidhoba grams (widow villages) in the Sunderbans. These villages are located on the fringes of the Sunderban Tiger Reserve, from where people used to enter the forest regularly in the years gone by. Some families in these villages have more than one widow, said Jayanta Naskar, MLA of Goasaba constituency.

There have also been instances of tigers and crocodiles entering the villages here, though they are not known to attack then. The beasts are not killed either. However, crocodile attacks are common in rivers near the villages, where they often come to lay eggs.

Read | Rescuers scramble to save animals in flooded wildlife parks of Bihar, Assam

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Indian-American hotelier, Chandubhai Patel, has been convicted in a scheme to underpay workers at two of his establishments, a federal prosecutor said.

The hotelier, who also uses the name Mike Patel, admitted before federal magistrate Judge Ellen Carmody in Grand Rapids, Michigan state, that he lied to the labour department investigators about wages paid to his staff, acting federal prosecutor for Western Michigan Andrew Birge said on Thursday.

The labour department found in 2014 that he had paid his employees at hotels in Battle Creek and Coldwater in Michigan less than the legally prescribed minimum wages and he signed an agreement with the department to pay his workers the amount he had underpaid them, the prosecution said.

Patel, 31, sent the labour department checks showing he had made the payments, but he had made the staff give him back the amount, leading to charges of him lying to the department.

If sentenced, Patel could be asked to pay his workers and sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison.
The issue of reservation in the private sector has surfaced again in Karnataka, with a panel headed by SG Siddaramaiah, the chairman of the Kannada Development Authority, suggesting 100% reservation for locals.

However, unlike an earlier proposal sent by the state labour minister in December, the current proposal also calls for the inclusion of the information technology and bio-technology (IT-BT) sectors under the ambit of reservation.

On Wednesday, the five-member expert panel submitted a report that revisited a 30-year-old report on the issue to chief minister Siddaramaiah in which it recommended 100% reservation in blue collar jobs in the private sector for Kannadigas, who were either born in the state or have lived here for 15 years.

The report also calls for 80% reservation for locals in clerical jobs, and 65% reservation in high-skilled or category 'A' jobs. The chief minister said on Wednesday that he would bring a legislation based on the recommendations of the panel.

SG Siddaramaiah, the chief of the panel, told HT: The need for the new report arose because 30 years ago, the IT-BT sector did not exist. These companies enjoy utilities provided by the government at subsidised rates and its time they gave back to the state that has helped them earn world-wide recognition.

Siddaramaiah said the campuses where these firms have set up were built on agricultural land. They should have given employment to those who gave up their land, but that never happened, he said.

They keep threatening us saying they will move away if the government intervenes in their functioning. Siddaramaiah said the companies should be called on their bluff as they received many facilities here and also enjoyed the pleasant weather in the state.

However, according to data by the Department of Economics and Statistics, the sector formed 18-19% of the states gross domestic product between 2013-14 and 2015-16.

The states labour minister Santosh Lad also welcomed the panels recommendation. Although it was not submitted to me, I welcome their report.

Lad said he had recommended a phased implementation of reservation, unlike the commission. We had recommended that the decision to include the IT-BT sector be taken judging the response of other sectors, he added.

However, others were not very impressed by the proposals. CS Dwarkanath, former chairman of the states Backward Classes Commission and an advocate, said such a move would stand in court.

Even if they do bring in a law, courts will strike it down, he said. The Mayawati government had passed a government order in Uttar Pradesh mandating caste-based reservation in the private sector, which was struck down, he said.

A law that mandates reservation for locals will stand no chance Dwarkanath said. The government is bringing up this issue because the elections to the state assembly is only a year away. It knows courts will strike it down, but it will be able to tell people that it was willing to pass a law but was thwarted by the courts, he added.

R Chandrashekhar, president of NASSCOM, the IT sector body, said he did not wish to comment on the report. We will take a call if the government plans to draft such a law, he added.

However, industry sources said such a move would be retrograde and adversely impact the state.

Dwarkanath, too, questioned the report. What is the basis of the report? There is no data to back the recommendations, he said.

When asked, SG Siddaramaiah confirmed that the panel did not have any such data. Our mandate was to safeguard the interest of Kannada and Kannadigas and our recommendations are based on this, he said.

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Ukrainian positions in Donbas were shelled 114 times in the past day, resulting into four killed in action (KIA) and 17 wounded in action (WIA), the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) has said.

"Four of our servicemen have died, seventeen have been wounded," ATO HQ wrote on Facebook on Friday.

Illegal armed formations in the Donetsk sector used proscribed weapons, namely Grad multiple rocket launchers to shell the town of Avdiyivka, the villages of Pisky, Kamyanka and Opytne. Main battle tanks, mortars of various calibers, grenade launchers and small arms were also engaged by the enemy during the whole day in this sector. The villages of Hranitne and Luhanske came under 122mm artillery fire. Mortars of various calibers were fired on the villages of Luhanske, Novhorodske, Troyitske, Verkhniotoretske, Vodiane, Pisky, and the town of Maryinka.

The sector named after the nearby Ukrainian-controlled strategic port city of Mariupol also countered attacks with the use of heavy weapons, which are banned by the Minsk peace agreements on Donbas. In particular, Grad BM-21 multiple rocket launchers shelled Ukrainian positions in the villages of Shyrokyne, Novohryhorivka and Starohnativka, while 122mm artillery systems, and 120mm and 82 mm were used to fire on the villages of Vodiane, Bohdanivka, Hranitne, Shyrokyne, Opytne, Chermalyk, and the towns of Krasnohorivka and Maryinka. The villages of Berezove, Pavlopil, Hnutove, and Vodiane came under fire from grenade launchers, anti-aircraft weapons, and small arms. Further, antitank guided missile launchers were fired on Chermalyk, while Ukrainian troops stationed near Maryinka and Pavlopil were under sniper fire.

In the Luhansk sector, the occupiers used 152mm artillery systems to attack the village of Novozvanivka and mortars to fire on the villages of Krymske and Syze. Grenade launchers and small arms were used to shell on the villages of Novozvanivka and Novo-Oleksandrivka.
An Army Major was booked on Friday for raping and abetting the suicide of a female colleague in industrial town of Bari-Brahmana in Samba district in December last year. The former husband of the woman was also booked on charges of blackmailing. No arrests have been made so far.

Major Anita Kumari, 36, who served the Army Supply Corps at Bari-Brahmana in Samba district, 15km from Jammu, was found dead at her official residence on December 15 last year.

Samba police registered an FIR under sections 306 (abetment to suicide) and 376 (rape) of the Ranbir Penal Code against Army Major Anup Kumar. He was last posted at Rajouri.

The police had recovered three suicide notes from the crime scene. In the notes, Anita Kumari had alleged claimed that she was harassed by Major Anup Kumar and held him responsible for taking the extreme step.
A senior opposition member in Rajya Sabha on Friday sought a probe into the manner in which the death of former Union minister E Ahamed was handled, alleging he had died soon after being rushed to the hospital but his demise was announced much later.

Raising the issue during the zero hour, Sitaram Yechury (CPI-M) said there were varied allegations and various information that I have got that some doctors say he was declared dead when he was taken to the hospital.

Some say Ahamed died subsequently in the ICU, Yechury said, adding that later the IUML leader was shifted to the trauma centre as there were better facilities there.

Read: Former Union minister E Ahamed dies after cardiac arrest in Parliament

I want a proper and thorough investigation in the manner in which the death of one of our senior colleagues of the Parliament and a former cabinet minister E Ahamed was handled and the way in which the news of his death was sought to be suppressed, he said.

The 78-year old Indian Union Muslim League leader died at RML hospital where he was admitted on January 31 and put on artificial life support.

There has been interference, thats what I hear, from the highest authorities in the country, from the PMO, and this is something which cannot be accepted. This is shameful...I want this issue to be thoroughly investigated. I wish my information is not correct, what I heard. But if it is correct, then they must be made accountable and action must be taken against those who have behaved in this manner, Yechury said.

He said other senior leaders were not allowed to see Ahamed in the hosptial and even his own children were not allowed to see him initially.

Read: Budget 2017: Congress demands budget be deferred by a day after E Ahameds death

The CPI(M) leader also argued that a person cannot be put on life support without the permission of the nearest relative and wanted to know how and why was the announcement of his death delayed.

In the Lok Sabha when some Opposition members, particularly those from Kerala, raised the matter, there was a heated exchange between TMC MP Saugata Roy and some BJP members, forcing speaker Sumitra Mahajan to adjourn the House for the day.
Paramilitary and police patrolled two major towns in Nagaland on Friday and mobile internet service remained cut as the northeast state bristled with tension a day after violent mobs burnt down government buildings to protest municipal elections. The bodies of two protesters killed in police firing on Tuesday were buried on Friday after a meeting between tribal organisations and the governor.

The protesters were killed in the states economic hub Dimapur earlier in the week, sparking Thursdays violence in capital Kohima, a scenic hill town close to Khonoma village, considered the birthplace of Indias longest running insurgency spearheaded by the NSCN.

Tribal organisations in the Christian-majority state are opposed to the urban local body polls, saying they infringe upon on the states laws and traditions that bar women from participating in politics. The polls were scheduled for February 1.

The situation is under control. No violent incidents were reported from anywhere, said Nagaland director general of police LL Doungel, adding that curfew was lifted from some places in Kohima but continued in Dimapur.

Representatives of tribal bodies headed by the Nagaland Tribes Action Committee (NTAC) met governor PB Acharya seeking the resignation of chief minister TR Zeliang and his cabinet.

The regional Nagaland Peoples Front  allied with the BJP-led NDA  is in power in the state.

Following assurances from the governor that no wrong doer would be spared, the last rites of the two youths killed in Dimapur were performed, said K Sechi, vice president of a youth organisation of the Angami tribe.

Nagaland is home to at least 16 major Naga tribes besides several sub-tribes spread over the state.

NTAC had earlier vowed not to bury the bodies till their demands seeking Zeliangs removal, cancelling the polls and action against policemen involved in the firing incident, were fulfilled.

But following their meeting with Acharya, the tribal organisations decided to lift a ban on movement of private vehicles in Kohima. Restrictions on movement of government vehicles would, however, continue.

The government has already declared the polls null and void, ordered a judicial inquiry into the firing and transferred two senior police officers from Dimapur.

But the CM refused to step down terming the demands as unreasonable and unconstitutional since the government enjoyed unquestionable majority and support of the entire assembly.

We understand the peoples sentiments, but they cant demand resignation of the entire cabinet, union minister of state Kiren Rijiju told journalists in New Delhi on Friday.

Stating that the situation in Nagaland was under control, the minister said he has instructed the director general of Assam Rifles to protect government buildings and ensure safety of the chief minister.

The Kohima Municipal Council office was set ablaze by protesters during their violent protest, in Kohima. (PTI)

Assam Rifles troopers were deployed in Kohima after mobs burnt down the municipal council, offices of the deputy commissioner, excise superintendant and transport department.

On Monday, the state government had signed a deal with the tribal bodies to postpone elections by two months.

After the Gauhati high court directed the state government on Tuesday to hold the polls, the state government decided to go ahead with voting in 12 of the 32 municipal bodies.

This angered the tribal bodies and protesters spilled out to the streets.

Neiphiu Rio, the lone Lok Sabha MP from the state and former chief minister, blamed the state government with misusing their power against the wishes of the people.

No elected government should go against the wishes and voice of the people, PTI quoted him as saying.

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis upcoming visit to Israel will reflect the tremendous growth in diplomatic relations that were established 25 years ago and could serve as a catalyst for finalising a long-pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA), Israeli envoy Daniel Carmon said on Thursday.

Such visits should become part of the routine as the two sides move closer because of shared values and common challenges, especially terrorism, Carmon said in a wide-ranging interview with Hindustan Times.

The growth in India-Israel ties reflected changes in the architecture of world politics and the rebalance in Indias relations with the Arab world and Israel, he said. For India the relations were either with the Arab countries or with Israel. This is not the case anymore, now it is with the Arab countries and with Israel.

He described defence cooperation as a key element in the ties but said Israel could be a source of cutting edge technology in areas such as agriculture, water management and irrigation.

Carmon also referred to Israels concerns about Iran, a key energy supplier for India, and said his country would not be satisfied till the last perpetrator responsible for a 2012 attack on Israeli diplomatic staff in New Delhi is brought to justice. Israel blamed the attack, which injured an embassy staffer, on Iran.

A visit to Israel by President Pranab Mukherjee was followed by a return visit by President Reuven Rivlin to New Delhi last year but no Indian premier has visited Israel since diplomatic ties were established in January 1992. The only Israeli premier to visit India was Ariel Sharon in 2003.

Read: Israeli prez in India: 5 things you should know about the bilateral relations

Referring to Modis planned visit, Carmon said: The message that will be sent to the worldis a very strong message where without saying so, we will be saying where we were 25 years ago and where we are now.

No dates have been announced for the visit though Modi is expected to travel to Israel in June or July.

Carmon described the proposed FTA as an important ingredient in bilateral ties for which some nine rounds of negotiations had already been held. Its long overdue, the political will is there. I hope it will happen soon I hope the Prime Ministers visit will be a good catalyst to bring some processes into fruition, including the FTA, he added.

Bilateral trade has hovered around the $5-billion mark for the past few years and Israel is banking on technologies in fields such as drip irrigation, water management, desalination of sea water and horticulture to boost trade. Israeli firms have already established desalination units for eight industrial plants in India, including a nuclear power plant, he said.

Israeli firms have also made offers for the Clean Ganga campaign after analysing part of the challenges in rejuvenating the river, and 40 centres of excellence for horticulture and agriculture are being established, of which 15 are operational, he said.

The Make in India campaign has also been embraced by Israeli defence firms, which already have about half a dozen projects that are in the pipeline or operational, he added.

Carmon said Israelis concerns regarding Iran as a negative influence on our region, its use of proxies such as the Hezbollah and its nuclear programme had already been conveyed to India. Irans recent cruise missile test may not have violated its nuclear deal with Western powers but it breached the spirit of the agreement, he said.

The 25th anniversary of India-Israel ties coincides with the death of Carmons wife in a terror attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that was blamed by Tel Aviv on Iran. Describing terrorism as a global plague, he referred to the 2012 attack on Israeli diplomatic staff in New Delhi and said bringing to justice perpetrators of such assaults would be an effective deterrence.

We know it takes time (but we) can never be satisfied till the last perpetrator is brought to justice, he said.

Carmon also ruled out any possible role for India in talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. We have a very clear policywe have come a long time ago to the conclusion that our differences with our close neighboursthe discussions should be between both sides around one table, anywhere, not in New York, Geneva or at the UN, (or) in Paris but in our regionand it should be bilateral, he said.

India can contribute indirectly by having good relations with both sides... Anything that is not bilateral would defer the solution we all want which is real, viable peace between us and our Palestinian neighbours.
The government currently has no proposal to link Aadhaar numbers with railway passes, railway minister Suresh Prabhu informed Parliament on Friday.

At present, there is no such proposal to link Aadhaar with railway passes, Prabhu said in Rajya Sabha during Question Hour while responding to a query on the issue by TMC member Vivek Gupta.

The government is in the process of putting in place an Human Resources Management System (HRMS) to ensure that employees and pensioners of Railways are able to book tickets online through any portal, he said.

Stating that railway pass holders at present do not have online facility to book tickets, the Minister said we have started the job. We are working on Human Resources Management System (HRMS). Once this is ready, pass holders will be able to book tickets online.

There are 16,360 officers in Group A and B categories and 13,12,449 officers in Group C and D categories in the Railways. Passes are issued based on the basic pay.

Gazetted railway officers are given six sets of privilege passes in a year and the non-gazetted railway employees get one set of privilege pass up to end of fifth year of railway service and thereafter three sets a year, he said.

Employees of non-railway departments appointed on deputation to posts on Indian Railways and officers and staff of Railway Audit Department are also provided privilege passes compared to the railway employees of equal status, he added.

To a supplementary by Ripun Bora (INC) on delay in getting reimbursement after a train is cancelled, Prabhu said there is a procedure already put in place for this purpose.

To another query about providing the same facilities to both pass holders and those who buy tickets from the counters, the Minister said the two issues are different.

He said that monthly seasonal tickets can be purchased through four ways -- online, over the counter, ticket vending machines and mobile apps. This facility is for everyone.

He also said it was not feasible to quantify the overall cost incurred on issuing of tickets through Passenger Reservation System counters and through the online mode.
The office of the Attorney General of India (AGI) does not come under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act as it is not a public authority, the Delhi high court ruled on Friday.

The verdict by a bench of chief justice G Rohini and justice Jayant Nath came on the appeals by the Centre challenging the decision of a single judge who had held that the office of the AGI is a public authority falling under the ambit of the RTI Act.

It cannot be ignored that the predominant function of the AGI is to give advice upon legal matters, to appear in court as stated, i.e perform duties akin to an advocate/senior advocate...

Essentially, the function being that akin to an advocate of the Government of India (GoI), he is in a fiduciary relationship with the GoI and cannot put in the public domain his opinions or the materials forwarded to him.

We are unable to agree with the conclusion of the single judge that the office of the AGI falls within description of public authority, the bench said and set aside the single judges order.

The Law Ministry had filed the appeals against the March 10, 2015 order of the single judge bench bringing the AGIs office under the ambit of the RTI Act on the grounds the top law officer performed public functions and his appointment was governed by the Constitution.

In its order, the single judge bench had declared the AGIs office as a public authority, saying he performs the functions as are required by virtue of Article 76(2) of the Constitution and had set aside the December 2012 CIC order that the AGI is not a public authority.

During the arguments in the appeals, Additional Solicitor General Sanjay Jain had argued that the office of the AGI does not come under the RTI as the top law officer is in a fiduciary relationship with the government.

Agreeing with the ASGs argument, the bench said, The AGI is not a functionary reposed with any administrative or other authority which effects the rights or liabilities of persons, and disposed of the appeals.
Pakistan has blamed India in writing for the weak prosecution and slow progress in the ongoing 2008 Mumbai attacks trial in Islamabad, even suggesting Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi got bail because New Delhi couldnt provide incriminating evidence.

In July 2015, foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan exchanged letters after a meeting between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif in Ufa, Russia.

The contents of the letter from Pakistani foreign secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry  a copy of which is with HT  havent been previously revealed and the tone and substance suggests that Islamabad isnt seriously pursuing the trial.

Chaudhrys letter dated September 8, 2015 accepts that the meeting between Modi and Sharif provided us a direction to move forward. It points out that the government of Pakistan has assigned a dedicated high level team of experts to closely monitor the developments in the case.

Read | Pakistan puts Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed under house arrest

But the letter goes on to add: So far the prosecution evidence remains weak and incomplete due to the failure on the part of the Indian authorities to provide incriminating evidence that they claimed was in their possession.

The document puts the responsibility of providing evidence on New Delhi.

It is neither reasonable nor acceptable to blame Pakistan for the slow pace or lack of progress. It was Indian authorities responsibility to provide all the material evidence which has not been done.

The trials sluggish pace and lack of convictions has been a thorn in bilateral relations and India has maintained that crucial evidence was to be found in Pakistan, the site of training and plotting of the 26/11 strikes that killed 166 people.

Despite repeated provocation and obfuscation by Pakistan, we continue to cooperate. Their judicial commission has been here twice, a government official said. It is preposterous to blame us for Lakhvis bail when it is well known that he even sired a son while in custody. He was a free man even while in jail.

Chaudhrys letter goes on allege that India delayed the Pakistani judicial commissions Mumbai visit that set back crucial gathering of proof such as recording the statements of prosecution witnesses, including the chief metropolitan magistrate who recorded the statement of the lone surviving terrorist, Ajmal Kasab.

(it had been) emphasised that further delay in facilitating the commissions visitcould weaken the prosecutions case against the principal accused Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, resulting in bail, lesser sentence or acquittal, the document read.

Foreign secretary S Jaishankar replied to Chaudhry a year later, saying India would be glad to consider the requirement for material evidence by deputing a Pakistani judicial commission.

It is neither reasonable nor acceptable to blame Pakistan for the slow pace or lack of progress. It was Indian authorities responsibility to provide all the material evidence which has not been done.

-- Pak foreign secy Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry

He underlined, however, that this cooperation can only be supplementary to the full investigation in Pakistan of the entire period of the conspiracy and of all relevant places and actors.

Pakistan is still to reply to Jaishankars letter of September 6, 2016.

A Pakistani official, on the condition of anonymity, said that they too would reply in a years time.

But why did India take a year to respond to Chaudhry? Defending the delay, an Indian official said the early conclusion of the trial was discussed at a bilateral meeting of foreign ministers and the national security advisers in December 2015.

India is now closing developments relating to the house arrest of Mumbai attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed and waiting to see if perceived American pressure adds speed to not just the 26/11 trial but also a probe into the attack on an air force base in Pathankot in January 2016.

While responding to the house arrest, the MEA spokesperson had referred to the ongoing Mumbai trial, saying, Only a credible crack down on the mastermind of the Mumbai terrorist attack and terrorist organisations involved in cross-border terrorism would be proof of Pakistans sincerity.

When asked specifically about Pakistan blaming India, a government official said, Pakistan will be judged by the actions it takes to ensure that there exists no scope for terrorists to use its territory for violence against India and Indian interests.

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Photographs showing senior policemen allegedly interacting with a killed Maoist-turned-extortionist have surfaced on social media, weeks after the Telangana government told the Hyderabad high court there was no proof of their nexus with the dreaded gangster.

Mohammad Nayeemuddin alias Nayeem, involved in over 100 criminal cases, including the murder of a former Indian Police Service officer, was killed in a shootout with security forces in Telanganas Mahbubnagar district in August last year.

One of the photographs shows Maddipati Srinivas Rao, currently an additional superintendent of police with the Crime Investigation Department (CID), drinking with Nayeem. In another picture, additional SP (counter intelligence) Chandrasekhar and inspector Saidulu are seen eating with the gangster.

Similarly, Sangareddy deputy superintendent of police Tirupathanna is seen along with Nayeem at a Ganesh pandal, supposedly at Bhongir where the gangster regularly held the Ganesh Chavithi festivities in the late 2000s. Tirupathanna was then an inspector with Bhongir police station.

In another photograph, senior cop Venkat Reddy is seen with Nayeem at a function.

Telangana home secretary Rajiv Trivedi categorically declared that there was no evidence whatsoever to prove that the police had been actively using the services of Nayeem and that they were hand in glove with him. He made the declaration in his counter-affidavit submitted to the high court in December last year.

Trivedi denied the allegation that the police officers benefitted from Nayeem, saying there was no evidence to prove it. He also claimed reports that the police had paid money to Nayeem to obtain information about the Maoist movement were false.

The home secretarys affidavit was contrary to the claims of senior retired IPS officers like former director general of police V Dinesh Reddy and former special intelligence bureau chief Sriram Tiwari. They said that the police department had used Nayeem as a police informer to gather vital information about the Maoists.

When contacted, inspector general of police Y Nagi Reddy, admitted that the photographs in circulation could be genuine and have been sent to the forensic department for verification.

Based on the forensic report, we would carry out further investigation, Reddy, who heads the special investigation team of the Telangana police that is probing the Nayeem encounter case, told Hindustan Times.

He said several photographs had been seized from the dens of Nayeem after the encounter and all of them had been submitted to the court.

The SIT has questioned as many as 11 police officials on the suspicion of their alleged nexus with Nayeem, but nothing concrete has emerged. We will question some more officials. These photographs could be part of the evidence and not the only evidence to prove the nexus between the police officials concerned and Nayeem, Reddy added.

We need to gather more evidence. A lot of people have given us complaints against Nayeem and we need to dig deep into them to get the actual picture, he said.

Nayeem, who belonged to Bhongir town in Nalgonda district, worked for the Peoples War Group in the late 1980s.

He was allegedly involved in the killing of IPS officer KS Vyas on January 27, 1993. He was arrested for the murder but got bail.

He was also involved in 20 murder cases, including that of surrendered Maoist Sambasivudu, his brother Ramulu, another ex-Maoist Patlolla Goverdhan Reddy and civil liberties leader Purushottam.

He and his gang were involved in land settlements, real estate dealings, illegal arms supply and extortions.

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PMK leader and Lok Sabha member Anbumani Ramadoss was on Friday admitted to a private hospital Bengaluru with complaints of mild chest pain and giddiness.

Ramadoss, 48, a former union health minister, was admitted to Narayana Hrudalaya Hospital on Friday night after being rushed from Dharmapuri, his Lok Sabha constituency, in neighbouring Tamil Nadu.

Anbumani Ramadoss has been admitted in our hospital. He came with compliants of giddiness and mild chest pain, senior consultant cardiologist of the hospital Dr Kannan told PTI.

He was undergoing diagnosis and several cardio tests, but there was no cause of worry, he said.

We are conducting tests and diagnosis. So far, everything is fine. There is nothing to worry, Dr Kannan said.

Ramadoss, son of party founder S Ramadoss, had a meeting in Hosur in Dharmapuri District, bordering Karnataka when he complained of chest pain and giddiness, he said.
Following the murder of a woman employee at the premises of Infosys in Pune, the IT giant on Friday said it was carrying out a complete review of security procedures by an expert third party consultant.

At Infosys, we have always been focused and committed to the safety of our employees. The unfortunate incident on January 29, however, is a reminder that nothing can be taken for granted and no security measure is fool proof, the company said in a statement issued here.

Rasila Raju OP, 23, who belonged to Kozhikode in Kerala, was found dead in a conference room on the 9th floor of the Infosys building at Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park in Hinjewadi on Sunday evening. A security guard was later arrested in connection with the murder.

We are therefore taking some additional steps with immediate effect to further strengthen the security at our all campuses to ensure a safer working environment for all our employees, it said.

Read: Pune Infosys techie murder: Here are 10 things we know so far

The statement, citing security measures being undertaken, stated that rosters are being re-looked, especially where single team members are required and also trying to ensure that no employee works alone on a shift.

In unavoidable situations, we are looking at additional security (including female security guards) being deployed, as well as increasing the frequency of floor walks by security personnel, it said.

The company said they were immediately carrying out a complete review of security procedures at the campuses by an expert third party consultant.

We are also collaborating with local police across our development centres and seeking their advice on additional security measures that we can implement, the statement read.

In addition, we have already invited all our employees to share any recommendation that can help us improve the safety of their work environments and have received several suggestion that are being reviewed by our security teams, it said.

The firm said that they undertake periodic mail communication to all employees on safety and have several programmes aimed to help employees by providing personal safety tips and self-defence programme/sessions and have increased deployment of panic buttons across buildings as well as rapid response teams to take immediate action.

Read: Infosys to pay Rs 1 crore compensation to victims family

Infosys said it was providing police all the support required in the investigation into the alleged murder case and also applauded the police for prompt action in apprehending the accused.

The security guard Bhabhen Saikia (27) was arrested from CST station in Mumbai. In the past, he was reprimanded by Rasila for staring at her.
Ukrainian armored vehicles are not engaged in battles along the contact line in Donbas and are kept as the Ukrainian army's tactical reserves should the enemy attempt to breach the defenses, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry has said in a statement on its website.

"In connection with the dissemination by some Internet portals of information about alleged deployment of tanks at the contact line, the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation Headquarters informs that the said armored vehicles are kept as the Ukrainian troops' tactical reserves to properly respond in case the enemy attempts to breach the Ukrainian army's defenses. Such tanks are not engaged in battles," the ministry said.
Software giant Infosys is reviewing security measures across its campuses and might deploy rapid response teams and women guards, the company said on Friday as it battled allegations of lapses after the murder of a 23-year-old techie.

Rasila Raju OP, a system engineer, was allegedly strangulated by a security guard near her workstation on the ninth floor of companys Hinjewadi campus near Pune. Police later arrested the guard, Bhaben Saikia from Assam, over the crime.

The company, with nearly 20 lakh employees, operates in 50 countries and has 85 sales and marketing offices and 114 development centres.

At Infosys, we have always been focused and committed to the safety of our employees. The unfortunate incident on January 29, however, is a reminder that nothing can be taken for granted and no security measure is fool proof, the company said in a statement.

The company said it is considering additional security measures on all its campuses such as female guards at the campus and a relook at rosters, especially where single team members are required.

The techie was reportedly alone when she was killed by the guard following an argument.

We are trying to ensure that no employee works alone on a shift. In unavoidable situations, we are looking at additional security (including female security guards) being deployed, as well as increasing the frequency of floor walks by security personnel, Infosys said.

The software giant said increase in deployment of panic buttons across buildings as well as rapid response teams to take immediate action were some of the other options being considered.

We are immediately carrying out a complete review of our security procedures by an expert third party consultant. We are also collaborating with local police across our development centres and seeking their advice on additional security measures that we can implement, it said.

Following the murder, Pune commissioner of police Rashmi Shukla wrote to Infosys an seeking explanation about the security lapse at its campus.

Why did Infosys not depute a female security staff when they knew that women engineer work alone on weekend. Infosys should also explain that why it called Rasila in the evening shift when there was no one during that period in her section, Shuklas letter said.

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A girl was allegedly drugged, abducted and gangraped repeatedly by two men for several days, in Punjab last month.

The minor victim said that on January 5 this year, a woman named Rani mixed a drug in her water at a kiln in Rohtaks Hassangarh village where she had been working for the past three months. Ranis brother Survez, along with his friend, then abducted her and took her to Punjabs Kharad, where she was repeatedly raped for 25 days.

The victim said that she managed to reach out to a labourer in Kharad and told him her story, who informed her parents about her location. Her parents then reached Punjab and rescued her.

The girls parents have alleged that police did not take any action when they went to file their daughters missing complaint. A case has now been registered.

The victims parents have filed a complaint against Rani and the two men and a case has been lodged under Sections 363 (kidnapping), 366A (procuration of minor girl), 328 (causing hurt by means of poison), 342 (wrongful confinement), 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), and Section 6 (punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act .

Sampla station house officer Rajbir Singh said they have lodged a case, although he refused to give more details.

This is the second incident of gangrape in the last one month. A girl from Sampla town in Rohtak was abducted and gangraped in Punjab earlier this year.

In another incident, a Muslim girl from Ludhiana who was visiting her uncle in Rohtak was allegedly abducted by her jilted lover who along with his friends took her to Jalandhar. The girl had alleged that she was raped by four men.
Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar on Friday moved a bill in the House to declare any country as state sponsor of terrorism and sever economic and trade relations with it, four months after 19 Indian soldiers were killed in the Uri terror strike.

The private member bill -- Declaration of Countries as Sponsor of Terrorism Bill, 2016 -- also seeks to impose legal and travel sanctions on citizens of such countries. It was discussed in the House.

Recounting last Septembers Uri strike, Chandrasekhar said it was part of a long series of Pakistan originated terrorist attacks against India.

That marked a turning point and I publicly promised that I would take on the important responsibility of calling Pakistan for what they are and have been for several years  a sponsor of terrorism.

He said India and other countries in the region had been victims of numerous terror attacks for decades from organisations and individuals based in and with support of elements in Pakistan.

And yet, for decades we have remained engaged with Pakistan in an attempt to draw it into the mainstream, he said.

He said the bill would help mount pressure on Pakistan to mend its ways and stop being a terror sponsor.

Pakistan has relied on this narrative of freedom fighters and jihadis since the time of its existence in 1947 and again in Kargil in 1999 and continues to do so year on year.

Initiating the discussion, Congress MP Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu described the bill as great and detailed. He said the bill should be taken seriously and pursued by the government.
All those accompanying late former minister E. Ahamed, including his family, were made to wait endlessly at the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital here with doctors giving no update on his health, Lok Sabha member E.T. Mohammed Basheer said on Friday.

The doctors were not allowing anyone inside the trauma centre where Ahamed was kept. No doctors were coming out of it either and there was no update about his health, Basheer told IANS.

Some of the opposition MPs alleged there was a deliberate attempt on the part of authorities to delay the announcement of Ahameds death as the Union Budget 2017-18 was to be presented in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

Basheer, the Indian Union Muslim League MP who accompanied E. Ahamed to hospital when the former minister suffered a massive heart attack during the Presidents address to the joint sitting of the both Houses of Parliament on Tuesday, said those accompanying him had a harrowing time at the hospital.

Ahamed was first admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the RML, but after a few hours he was shifted to the trauma centre. Basheer alleged that the doctors and the security staff were not behaving properly even with the visiting MPs and the family members of Ahamed.

Meanwhile, RML officials have denied that the hospital tried to suppress the news of senior Kerala Parliamentarian E. Ahameds death. It said the former Union Minister was alive when brought to the hospital, but died at 2.15 a.m. on Wednesday.

There was no political pressure on us. The protocol is to not allow any one in the ICU when the treatment is on. Ahamed was alive when brought to the hospital. He died at 2.15 a.m. I am hurt by the allegations, RML Medical Superintendent A.K. Gadpayle told CNN News.

Read: E Ahamed, consummate politician, skilled negotiator and football fan

According to Gadpayle, Ahameds daughter was shown the monitor and she was very much satisfied with the information given on her fathers condition.

We have given and shown the monitors and data and they were very much satisfied, said Gadpayle.

The clarifications come as the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Friday alleged attempts, including by the Prime Ministers Office, to suppress the news of the Ahameds death and demanded a probe.

The Opposition has been accusing the Narendra Modi government of deliberately keeping the news of Ahameds death under wraps to ensure the Union Budget was presented as scheduled on February 1.
Families of seven Gujarati sailors languishing in an Iranian jail for more than a year for allegedly smuggling oil have sought the Modi governments intervention to bring the seamen home.

The families of the sailors, who were on board a cargo ship and hail from the coastal town of Salaya in the western states Jamnagar district, have not heard from the men after they were jailed in January 2016.

The sailors are innocent and were forced to carry diesel by the ships Dubai-based owner, say the families, which have little information on when the men would be home. They have not had a court hearing even once.

My husband left for Sharjah and reached Tehran with the vessel captain Salim Sanghar and five crew in October 2015. Since then, they have not returned. They are said to be in a jail in Chabahar, said Fatima, wife of Aejaj Sanghar.

Chabahar is Irans only oceanic port. India has signed a deal to develop and operate the port, which will be of strategic and economic importance.

In November 2015, Salim and Aejaj along with Rashid Bhaya, Shabir Subhania, Sultan Sumbhania, Faruk Sanghar and Akbar Sanghar sailed from Chabahar on a cargo ship, Al Mustafa, and returned to the port town after transporting goods between Dubai and Somalia, Salaya Vessels Association president Adam Bhaya said.

The crew were again called for duty by the owner of Al Mustafa identified only as Mustak, a Somali national based in Dubia. He asked the men to escort another vessel, which was recently commissioned, as well.

The families do not know much about Mustak. He sent air tickets and arranged UAE visas for the men on the recommendation of another sailor.

According to the families, the new vessel was loaded with around 200 barrels of diesel. But before the two ships could cross Iranian waters, the countrys coast guard stopped them for inspection. As the crew didnt have the documents to carry diesel, they were captured and thrown into jail.

The worst part is the men have no idea how long they will remain imprisoned. So far, they have not been produced in a court, said Bhaya, who met the men in jail in September 2016.

They had written to external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and the families were hopeful of a positive outcome as Iran was a friendly nation, Bhaya said.

In the past, too, Gujarati sailors have landed in Iranian jails. While many have been released, some are still being held captive.

Sea trade between Gujarat and Iran and other Gulf countries goes back to the 16th century, with vessels and seamen from the Saurashtra peninsula transporting goods.

These days, two Salayas -- one in Kutch district and the other in Jamnagar  continue to be the centres for wooden ships and their crew. The seamen from these two towns are known for their skills and are frequently hired by ship owners based in the Gulf.

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The stage is set for yet another son-rise in Indian politics.

Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is expected to induct his only son Nara Lokesh into the state cabinet soon.

An indication to this effect was given by Naidu himself during an interaction with the party leaders from Telangana, who called on him at his Vijayawada residence on Thursday night.

Yes, the chief minister told us he is going to include his son in the ministry very soon. He, however, did not indicate when he is going to expand the cabinet to accommodate Lokesh, Telangana TDP president L Ramana told Hindustan Times.

Quoting Naidu, the TDP leader said Lokesh,34, had been striving hard to strengthen the party ever since he took a plunge into the active politics in 2013 as its youth wing president.

He has been handling the party affairs effectively. And there have been representations from various party district units to Naidu to induct him in the cabinent. Its time that Naidu entrust his son a bigger responsibility of a minister, Ramana said.

Party sources said the cabinet expansion might take place in a week or two. Apart from Lokesh, Naidu might induct at least five others, including a couple of MLAs who had defected from YSR Congress.

In any case, the cabinet expansion might take place before the commencement of the budget session of the state assembly slated for the last week of February, sources said.

Lokesh, who is presently the general secretary of the TDP, is not a member of either state legislative assembly or legislative council.

If he is included in the ministry, he will have to get elected either to the assembly or the council.

There are no impending by-polls to any assembly constituency, but elections to a few MLC seats are due in April, party sources said indicating Lokesh could take council-route for his ministerial debut.

The talks of Lokeshs induction into the state cabinet have been doing rounds in the party circles for quite some. It is learnt Lokesh, too, had been expressing his eagerness to join the cabinet on the lines of K T Rama Rao, son of Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

KTR, who joined the cabinet in 2014, has been holding key portfolios of IT and industries, and has been emerging as an heir apparent to his father.

However, Naidu had been dodging the issue stating that he would take a decision at an appropriate time.

Lokesh supporters have already started celebrating their leaders possible anointment. They burst crackers and distributed sweets in Nellore to celebrate Naidus decision.

It is a good sign for the party as well as the state. We are confident he will give a new direction to the state if hes made a minister, Nara Lokesh Seva Samithi president Pasam Srinivas said.

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Justice J Chelameswar, a member of the Supreme Court collegium that clears appointments to the higher judiciary, has questioned its decision not to elevate the highly competent Justice KM Joseph to the top court.

Justice Joseph, the Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court, was on the collegiums shortlist last year. But his name does not figure on the new line-up prepared by the panel headed by Justice JS Khehar who became the Chief Justice of India on January 1.

Sources privy to the development told HT that Justice Chelameswar recorded his dissent on a file containing the names of five high court judges picked by the collegium for the top court. The judge, who signed the file, has not objected to the proposed names, but, in a two-page note, conveyed his strong displeasure over the exclusion of Justice Joseph.

Justice Chelameswar has been pushing for transparency in the appointment of judges to high courts and the Supreme Court, and has refused to attend collegium meetings since August last year.

His dissent comes at a time when the government has been pushing to scrap the collegium and appoint another panel to decide on elevating judges. He had backed the governments proposal. The standoff over how to move forward has delayed the appointment of new judges to high courts and the top court. The Supreme Court is in desperate need for judges as it is short of seven and is battling a backlog of 60,000 cases.

Legal experts say Justice Chelameswars note has left the present CJI in a piquant situation. However, the chief justice can still recommend the names to the government.

Justice Chelameswar called Justice Joseph an outstanding and a highly competent judge, saying the collegium was setting an unhealthy precedent by not elevating him.

Justice Joseph had quashed Presidents Rule in Uttarakhand last year, leaving the NDA government embarrassed. The Centre has been sitting on the collegiums recommendation since April last year to transfer Justice Joseph from Uttarakhand to Andhra Pradesh.

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Kohima woke up to deserted streets as scores of paramilitary personnel marched through the town on Friday, hours after mobs burnt down government buildings and vandalised property against quotas for women in municipal polls.

There is still tension on the streets, but the situation is under control now, Nagaland director general of police LL Doungel told HT on Friday morning.

On Thursday evening, irate mobs set fire to offices of the Kohima municipal council, the deputy commissioner, excise superintendent and the local transport department.

Local reports say the state information office, the old secretariat and office of the ruling Naga Peoples Front (NPF) were also partially burned and vandalised.

Curfew was imposed and troops from Assam Regiment moved in to control the situation. Mobile internet services have also been discontinued to prevent spread of rumour and further violence.

Curfew was lifted in Kohima on Friday, but prohibitory orders continue in the states commercial hub Dimapur where two youths were killed and several others injured in police firing on Tuesday night.

Streets in Dimapur and Kohima were deserted due to a bandh called by tribal organisations seeking resignation of the Naga Peoples Front (NPF)-led government headed by chief minister TR Zeliang.

Despite growing demands for his ouster, the CM termed them as unreasonable and unconstitutional since the government enjoyed unquestionable majority and support of the entire assembly.

The CM is distressed by the unfortunate turn of events in the last few days and appeals to all not to indulge in senseless vandalism and arson, said a statement issued by Zeliangs media cell on Thursday night.

The state cabinet has already declared polling to the 12 urban local bodies (ULBs) held on Wednesday as null and void. But the newly formed Nagaland Tribes Action Committee (NTAC) isnt satisfied.

Naga tribal bodies are opposed to holding of ULBs with 33% reservation of women as they feel it will infringe on customary laws and also violate Article 371A of the constitution which grants special status to Nagaland.

Besides Zeliangs resignation, the umbrella organisation of the major Naga tribes wants action against policemen responsible for the deaths of the two youths on Tuesday night.

The bodies of the two youths were shifted from Dimapur to Kohima on Wednesday. Tribal bodies want fulfillment of their demands before funeral rites are performed.

Our agitation wont end till all our demands are met. We are willing to continue protests for days, weeks and months, if necessary, Kevichata Sechi, vice-president of Angami Youth Organisation (AYO), one of the constituents of NTAC told HT.

On Monday, the state government signed a deal with tribal bodies to postpone elections by two months.

But with Gauhati high court directing the state government on Tuesday to hold ULBs polls, the state government decided to go ahead with polling in 12 of the 32 municipal bodies.

This angered tribal bodies and they imposed a bandh and protesters spilled out to the streets.

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A meeting called by the Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry on Friday to consider whether India should be a signatory to the Hague convention on civil aspects of international child abduction remained inconclusive.

Signing the treaty will make inter-parental child abduction an offence punishable with one-year jail.

WCD minister Maneka Gandhi who chaired the meeting, however, said that a model legislation to safeguard not only the interests of the child but also of the parents, especially women, must be developed, irrespective of whether India signs the treaty or not.

The ministry had earlier refused to join the treaty saying it was against the interest of women. Some 90 countries have signed the Hague convention that protects children under the age of 16 from wrongful removal or retention by a parent and ensures their prompt return to the state of their habitual residence.

Following over an hour long discussion with all stakeholders, including officials from home and foreign affairs ministry, high court judges, affected parents among others, the WCD ministry has now asked the Chandigarh Judicial Academy and NRI Commission of Punjab to examine in detail the legal issues involved by taking all viewpoints into account, including those of suffering women. They will have to submit their report within four months.

They will give recommendations as to how the problems of parents and children involved in such situations can be addressed. They will also study the draft Protection of Children (Inter-Country Removal and Retention) Bill, 2016 prepared by the ministry, said a senior WCD ministry official.

Gandhi said that a large number of women married to Indians abroad are compelled to return to India with their children when they undergo violence in their marriages.

Expressing concern at the difficulties being faced by the affected parent, whether men or women and their children as a result of breakdown of marriages abroad, Gandhi said that a mechanism needed to be developed to address the plight of such parents.

Ministry officials said that the women who had suffered from violence in marriages abroad far exceed men. Last year, the ministry was nudged into drafting the civil aspects of international child abduction bill by the Punjab and Haryana high court and law commission. But the bill is yet to get the cabinet nod.

There has been a steady rise in parental abductions as more and more Indians go abroad to work or study. Children often bear the brunt of their parents marital disputes and are often forced to return to India by one of the quarreling parents. In most cases, it is the mother who returns with the child.

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Keeping intact its reputation of being a nursery of politicians and giving stalwart leaders to the country like former Prime Ministers VP Singh and Chandra Shekhar besides former chief ministers like ND Tiwari of UP and Madan Lal Khurana of Delhi to name just a few, Allahabad University (AU) once again has its student leaders in the election fray in the Hindi heartland.

Keeping an eye on youth vote bank, the Samajwadi Party (SP) has put its trust on AU student leaders in a big way. The former student leaders who have been fielded by SP include AUs first woman president of Allahabad University Students Union (AUSU) in post Independent India Richa Singh who has been fielded from Allahabad West seat. She served as AUSU president in 2015-16.

Another former AUSU president Hemant Kumar Tunnu has been given ticket from Manjhanpur (Kaushambi) while former vice president of AUSU Nirbhay Singh Patel has been fielded from Manikpur assembly seat (Chitrakoot). Hemant was elected AUSU president in 2004 while Nirbhay won AUSU election in 2003.

Similarly, ex-student leader of AU Devraj Gupta has been given ticket by Bundelkhand Congress Party from Banda. Though he contested for AUSU president's post in 2005, he had failed to succeed.

Read more: Former student leaders get set for poll vault

Besides these first timers, AU also has its former AUSU president and sitting Congress MLA from Allahabad North constituency Anugrah Narayan Singh again in the field to defend his seat. He was AUSU president in 1979 and is a four-time MLA.

Another seasoned politician and a former UP minister Rakesh Dhar Tripathi, who was AUSU president in 1981, is also expected to contest from his traditional seat of Handia. The banner under which he will contest was still undecided till Sunday, a day before the start of nomination process for the fourth phase of UP polls.

Others flying the AU flag high include Upendra Tiwari from Phephana seat of Ballia who is a sitting BJP MLA and again in the fight. He was an active student leader on AU campus between 2003 and 2005 and had also contested for the post of AUSU secretary but could not win. Sangram Singh, a former AUSU secretary of 2004, is also in poll fray from Phephana seat as joint candidate of SP and Congress.

Read more: Student union leaders among ticket seekers in Varanasi

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The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the General Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine have informed the ambassadors of the Group of Seven (G7) on the situation in Avdiyivka in Donetsk region, Political Director at Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Oleksii Makeiev.

"Speaking about #SaveAvdiivka on all platforms - the CoE [the Council of Europe], the OSCE. The General Staff and the Intelligence Department of Ukraine have just reported to G7 ambassadors and SC [the UN Security Council]," he tweeted on Thursday.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadavs dream project, the 302km-long Agra-Lucknow expressway, was thrown open to public some time back.

In a reality check from Lucknow to Agra, we found that the e-way offers a super-smooth ride to commuters for 228km, after which they are diverted towards Sirsaganj, from where they can reach Agra via Shikohabad, Firozabad and Tundla, covering 80kms on the NH-2. The entrance to expressway from Agra-side, near the by-pass road, is currently out of bounds for commuters.

The remaining 74-km stretch is being given final shape. An official of the UP Expressway Industrial Development Authority (UPEIDA) said, The 74-km stretch from Agra to Sirsaganj is not operational due to the railway over-bridge work at Firozabad.

Work is on at war footing so that we can start at least one side (of the remaining stretch of the e-way) by mid-February. We are hoping, commuters will be able to complete their journey on the expressway in three hours once it is fully operational.

CM Akhilesh Yadav had also posted a picture of the railway over-bridge at Bhadan (Firozabad, 67 kms from Agra). He had written: This bridge built on Agra Lucknow expressway is estimated to be perhaps the heaviest, widest and longest ever launched over railway tracks anywhere in India (sic).

A smooth, safe drive

Starting from Lucknow, from Sarosa Bharosa village in Kakori, off Mohan Road, commuters will get their first view of the unbelievably wide six-lane e-way, median fenced on divider and guarded by crash barriers on both sides. Each three-lane road has white and yellow surface markings. Once you accelerate, you wont need to change gears except for a few temporary diversions, where the traffic moves on one lane with clearly demarcated makeshift dividers in place. Throughout the stretch, at small intervals, there are dedicated jetted-out rest points.

We also spotted around 15 Dial-100 police vans, three ambulances and two recovery vehicles on the e-way.

Even though there are no street lights as of now, night driving on the e-way is a safe experience. This is due to the reflectors installed at crash barriers, median fences, dividers and surface markings, all of which provide ample light to commuters.

Carry your own food, water

As of now, there are no fuel stations, restaurants and shops on the expressway. So, before you climb on it, make sure you have drinking water, food, stepney (spare tire) and other necessary equipment handy.

At present, there no milestones and gantry boards too. Signboards can be seen only at entry-exit points, such as, Mohaan, Kanpur, Etawah, Kannauj and Mainpuri. From the Agra side, the current entry point is at Sirsaganj (Shikohabad). Other than these, the only signages that dot the stretch are those of speed limit (100 kmpl) and safe driving.

A UPEIDA official said, Illumination will be done on all major bridges and all the 12 inter-change points. Kilometre signage and gantry boards too will come up in the coming days. Four way-side amenities will also come up. These will have restaurants, petrol pumps and medical assistance.

Toll-free driving

The expressway is attracting no toll as of now. With the UP assembly election round the corner, it is unlikely that any charge will be levied in the next two months. So, for now, commuters can enjoy the expressway driving experience for free. The ride is especially smooth as no heavy vehicles are being allowed on the e-way for now.

Read more: Indian Air Force jets dazzle at Lucknow-Agra expressway inauguration
The citys first all-women mosque will now be powered by solar energy to contribute towards improving Lucknows air quality. Ambar Mosque on PGI Road will operate on 100% clean andrenewable energy.

We have decided to install solar panels to power the mosque to reduce its dependence on electricity produced from highly polluting sources such as coal. The focus will be on clean sources such as solar energy, said Shaista Ambar, founder president of All-India Muslim Women Personal Law Board.

In the last several years, Lucknow has been witnessing an increasingly degrading quality of air. Poor air quality is often caused by burning of coal, vehicular emissions, industrial activity and so on. While vehicular emission, industrial activities and crop burning are issues that need government intervention, reducing dependence on electricity is something that all of us can do something about, she said.

Ambar established this mosque in February 1997 in defiance against the alleged patriarchy existing within the community. She also started an All-India Muslim Womens Personal Law Board as a counter to the Muslim law board. The mosque helps women of the community to deal with things such as talaq, and helps educating the girl child, providing medicine and so on. Though it started as a womens mosque, men are also allowed to offer prayers, she said.

The foundation stone for Amber mosque was laid by famous Islamic scholar and prominent personality late Hazrat Ali Miyan Nadvi. Husband-wife couples are counselled by experts when they approach us for help. Marriages of poor girls are solemnised here every year and the mosque is also treated as a celebration ground for Eid and national occasions like Independence Day and Republic Day, said Amber.

A womens wing is attached to the mosque premises and women are encouraged to come and pray. On certain occasions, they are also invited to hear special lectures of the Imam. She said it is a beautiful campus where people from all sects of Muslim come and pray together. People from other religions are also welcome to know about Islam and understand the true message of universal brotherhood, added Amber.

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After failing to solicit a favourable response from main players like SP, BJP, BSP and the Congress, many heavyweight candidates, known for their money and muscle power, are turning to the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) to contest assembly election.

Latest to join the list is former BSP MP Umakant Yadav and his son Dinesh Kant Yadav. The duo joined the RLD in the presence of national president Ajit Singh in New Delhi on Thursday. While Umakant has been made the national general secretary of the party, his son Dinesh Yadav will contest from Shahganj assembly seat in Jaunpur district.

In May 2007, the then chief minister Mayawati had got Umakant arrested from the gate of her residence for grabbing the land of a farmer in Sarai Mir area of Azamgarh district.

Dinesh, who had contested assembly election on BSP ticket from Khuthan seat, was expelled from the party.

Accused in around 20 criminals cases, Umakants entry in RLD is likely to turn the electoral battle in East UP a fight between the bahubalis (muscle power).

While gangster-turn-politician Mukhtar Ansari has joined BSP, the likes of Durga Yadav and Abhay Singh are also contesting on SP ticket. BJP MP Ramakant Yadav, also known for muscle power, will lead the BJP campaign in Azamgarh and neighbouring districts.

Read more| UP elections: RLD plays on pride, aims to block BJPs Jat inroad

The RLD, meanwhile, has also fielded gangster-turned-politician Bhagwan Sharma alias Guddu Pandit from Bulandshahr assembly seat. His brother Mukesh Sharma has been given ticket on Shikarpur seat. Dinesh Prasad Mishra, a strongman from Bundelkhand region, has been fielded from Manikpur constituency in Chitrakoot district.

Former minister in SP government Sharda Prasad Shukla is contesting from Sarojni Nagar seat in Lucknow. Former bandit Malkhan Singh of Chambal had been made the member of the national executive of RLD.

Talking to HT state unit president of RLD, Masood Ahmed said, RLD has launched 15 parties alliance to contest the assembly election. Several sitting MLAs of other parties and aspirants are in contact for ticket. The winnablity of the candidate tops the priority when a ticket is given. The opinion of the alliance partner is also taken before finalizing the ticket, he said.

The RLD office located on Trilokinath Road that wore a deserted look a month back is humming with activities these days. The ticket aspirants and their supporters throng the office and wait for the finalization of the ticket. The list is forwarded to central office in New Delhi and after approval of the national president Ajit Singh, the list is released, said a RLD leader.

Candidates known for muscle power fielded by RLD include Ravindra Bhati from Dadari , Thakur Sunil Singh from Sayana, Swami Prawaktanand on Barkhera, Chaudhary Ravindra Pratap Singh from Sohratgarh, Mukesh Singh from Colonelganj assembly seat.

Read more: Former dacoit Malkhan Singh joins Ajit Singhs RLD, may campaign for UP polls

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Three young Samajwadi Party leaders, who joined mainstream politics after a successful innings in student unions, are among ticket seekers for two assembly constituencies in Varanasi.

One of the aspirants, Kishan Dixit, is among those who drafted their resignation letters in blood, declaring their loyalty to Akhilesh Yadav during the SP feud late last year.

Dixit was students union president of the Harishchandra Post Graduate College in 2006.

He wants a ticket for the Varanasi South assembly constituency. I have apprised party leadership about my wish to contest the polls. But I will contest only if the party gives me the ticket, and bhaiya (Akhilesh) promises to address at least a rally in Varanasi, Dixit said.

Dixit came in contact with Akhilesh in 2000. Later, Akhilesh administered him the oath of office after he was elected as students union president in 2006. Dixit camped in Lucknow during the SP feud.

Ashutosh Sinha, who was elected vice president of the Harishchandra College students union in 2006, wants the SP ticket for the Cantonment assembly seats.

I want a party ticket from Cantonment Assembly constituency. I have worked hard in the constituency. The caste equation also is in my favour, Sinha said.

Raju Yadav, who was students union president at Harishchandra College in 2005, too wants to contest the election from Varanasi South.

Yadav is in Lucknow for Akhileshs joint road show with Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, slated for Sunday. The student leaders said they would contest the polls only if they were fielded, otherwise they would work for the party and support the candidates.

However, their hopes may be dashed as the SP may leave these two seats in Varanasi for the Congress, insiders said.

Read more: AU student leaders keep the banner flying high this polls

Four student leaders in fray in Meerut, Baghpat

Political parties have reposed faith in student leaders, fielding them from different constituencies here for the assembly election.

At least four student leaders have got tickets in Meerut and Baghpat.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has fielded former Chaudhary Charan Singh (CCS) University students union president Somendra Tomar from Meerut South constituency. Somendra began his political career as an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) activist. He was elected the president of the CCS University Students Union in 2003. The party elevated him as national general secretary of its youth wing in 2015. It has now given him the ticket for the Meerut South seat.

Atul Pradhan, another student leader, has got the Samajwadi Party (SP) ticket for the Sardhana constituency. He was active in the CCS University student politics from 2002 to 2004. He was made state secretary of the SP Chatra Sabha in 2007 and elevated as its state president in 2013.

The Samajwadi Party (SP) has also fielded another student leader Kuldeep Ujjawal from Baghpat. Kuldeep was elected president of the CCS University students union in 2004. Before that, he worked as the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha national secretary.

The Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) has fielded Gyanendra Sharma, the senior-most among the four student leaders, from Meerut City constituency. Sharma belongs to a political family. His mother Shraddha Devi was elected MLA from Kithore constituency thrice in the 1950s. Sharma was elected president of NAS Degree College students union 1992. He also became president of the Sanyukt College Chatrasangh the same year.

The Congress appointed him the NSUI national vice-president in 1994 and he played an active role in the anti-Mandal commission movement. He then quit the Congress and joined the RLD, where he led the campaign for creation of a separate state of Harit Pradesh. The party appointed him president of its students wing in 2000.

Read more: Former student leaders get set for poll vault
THE GREAT WALL

Direction: Zhang Yimou

Actors: Matt Damon, Tian Jing, Pedro Pascal

Rating: 3 / 5

This film is by the same man who orchestrated the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics; and hes working off a budget of over $150 million  so its no surprise that Zhang Yimous The Great Wall is visually bewitching.

Blending a knack for spectacle and showmanship, the Chinese filmmaker pulls out all the stops in his first (predominantly) English-language movie.

Unfortunately, while adhering to the tried-and- true action movie template, the film often lacks dramatic depth. The first half is tediously inert, and it only fitfully gains momentum from then on.

Heres the plot: During the reign of an ancient dynasty, a couple of mercenaries (Matt Damon-Pedro Pascal) on the trail of a cache of gunpowder  then a valuable new invention  are captured and held hostage by an elite faction of the Chinese army.

As a mercenary and ace archer, Matt Damon displays characteristic agility.The Chilean-born Pedro Pascal, in the role of sidekick, strives to provide comic relief.

Barricaded behind the Great Wall, they join forces to ward off attacks from thousands of mythical beasts.

Lavish colour-coded costumes, impeccable production design and nifty special effects make it eminently watchable, thanks in part to cinematographers Zhao Xiaoding and Stuart-Dryburg and the New Zealand-based Weta Workshop.

There is a particularly poignant interlude involving hundreds of airborne white lanterns released in tribute to a fallen general.

As the ace archer, Damon displays characteristic agility. But the rest of the characters are thin.

The Chilean-born Pascal, in the role of sidekick, strives to provide comic relief. The Chinese cast members, including Tian Jing in the role of a skydiving commander and teen boy-band member Wang Junkai as the effete emperor, are saddled with superficial parts.

Overall, The Great Wall may not rank among Zhang Yimous emotionally weighty masterworks like To Live (1994) or The Road Home (1999), but as a visual extravaganza it nevertheless merits a viewing.

Watch the trailer for The Great Wall here

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As Mumbais civic polls near, political parties find themselves battling not just each other, but also a cash crunch the notes ban brought upon them.

The demonetisation of high-value notes, a crack down on unaccounted money and the governments push towards a cashless economy mean parties and their candidates are being turned down by long-standing financers.

But for the ruling parties, Shiv Sena and BJP, who want to retain power, cost-cutting doesnt seem to be an option. They have earmarked sizeable budgets for their campaigns, even though traditional funding resources have taken a backseat. While the State Election Commission has set a limit of Rs10 lakh on election expenditure by individual candidates, rough estimates peg spending amounts at more than Rs20 lakh per candidate in all major parties.

The expenditure is divided into two categories  on-record funding that is disclosed to the election commission and unofficial funding given by parties and raised by the individual candidates. Parties have set aside budgets for advertisements in newspapers, TV channels and outdoor hoardings. Besides the consolidated campaign, the parties also fund several candidates. Further, candidates raise funds on their own at the local level, said an office bearer of the BJP, not wihsing to be named.

Opposition parties Congress and Nationalist Congress Party, however have cut down their campaign budgets immensely. Besides bad market conditions, not being in power in the state and Centre has hit them further.

We have told candidates there will be no funding from the partys side. We will only provide campaign material such as banners, posters, manifesto and flags. We have cut short our budget by 40%, as compared to the 2012 election, said Sachin Ahir, Mumbai president of the NCP.

The Congress too is facing a financial crunch. Both Congress and NCP were in power during the 2012 BMC polls, and had given Rs10 lakh to every candidate at the time.

Not spending is not an option for the BJP and Sena that are fighting to gain control of the countrys richest civic body. Both parties have booked full-page advertisements in all leading newspapers for voting day and two days prior to it. They will have six full-page and 10 half-page advertisements and video advertisements on Marathi and national channels for the BMC election. Both of them have created ad films that will run on channels in the coming few days. They have engaged leading advertisement agencies, said an insider privy to campaign plans.

They are vying to control the a civic body with an annual budget of Rs37,000 crore. It is a battle for survival for Shiv Sena and a matter of pride for the BJP to rule the BMC. The parties may leave no stone unturned to emerge the single largest party, and may pump in more money than estimated, he added.

According to sources, the campaign budgets of BJP and Sena could go up to Rs30 crore to Rs 40 crore each. On the other hand, the Congress and NCP  who spent Rs22 crore and Rs10 crore respectively on media campaign in 2012, have cut short their budget to about Rs1 crore. The NCP has excluded print advertisements from its plan and has put the thrust only on TV, radio and social media.

More the chances of a candidate winning, more is the amount spent by the candidates and the party. Candidates used to collect money from local businessmen, builders and some illegal businesses, but most of them have expressed their inability this time for funding in cash. The candidates are now engaging them with the task of fulfilling the demands of voters. Right from pity works of tiling, painting in housing societies to distribution of mobiles and tabs among youth, these are trending this election season, said a BJP aspirant.

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Mumbai is all set for the crucial Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation elections scheduled on February 21 and so are the political parties for more rebellion as today is the last day for filing nominations.

All the major political parties mainly Shiv Sena and Congress are facing rebellion over distribution of election tickets. Sitting corporators, who were denied candidature, are turning to the rival parties and are entertained as well.

To minimize the damage, no party  Shiv Sena, BJP or Congress  declared its list of candidates till Thursday except Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) which does not have strong base in the city. The BJP released its first list early on Friday.

The first list of 115 candidates declared by Congress was later stayed over internal dispute.

No party has been left untouched from the rebellion. On Thursday, two senior Sena corporators Nana Ambole and Mahesh Panchal joined BJP over dispute on candidature. A former Sena corporator Prabhakar Shinde, who was leader of the House, too joined BJP.

A day before two MNS corporators  Chetan Kadam and Deepak Pawar, and Congress corporator, who was also leader of opposition, Devendra Amberkar, joined Sena. Amberkar is not alone, Congress corporators  Yogesh Bhoir too have shifted their loyalties to Sena recently.

On Thursday, another two Congress corporators Vakil Ahmed Shaikh and Neha Vinayak Patil joined NCP after denied candidature from the party. Waqarunnisa Ansari from Congress also recently joined AIMIM over dispute on candidature. Corporators Sandhya Doshi, Savita Pawar and Riddhi Khursange from NCP too had joined Sena in the past.

A senior BJP functionary admitted that this is the first time that political parties are keeping names of candidates so secret. Till 2012 Sena and BJP were in alliance for contesting BMC elections. Similarly, Congress-NCP also used to contest the polls together except in 2007. But the decision of all major parties to contest on their own has made the electoral battle too critical this time. This has also made available options for corporators to switch sides, a BJP leader.

So far, BJP has poached 11 corporators from different parties while Sena has incorporated 14 corporators in to its fold.

READ MORE

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In a first ever photo documentation of a rescue operation, two 20-day-old leopard cubs  a male and a female  were reunited with their mother on Wednesday night at sugarcane fields near Somatwadi village, near Pune. The entire operation was filmed.

Farmers spotted the cubs while working in the fields on Wednesday morning. Forest officials moved the cubs away from the area to avoid a situation where the mother could run into people while searching for her babies.

It is not uncommon to spot leopards in this area, as there are sugarcane fields that provide safe cover to the cats. But this also gives rise to conflict situations when farmers harvest the sugarcane, said Sanjay Gaikwad, forest officer from the area. We received a distress call from the village and a team was dispatched.

Forest officials rescue the cubs. (Wildlife SOS)

Forest officials, veterinarians form Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Centre (MLRC) and representatives from NGO Wildlife SOS reached the place to help the cubs. After conducting a meticulous veterinary examination for parasites and injuries, the cubs were found to be in good health and fit for release, said Dr Ajay Deshmukh, senior veterinarian, MLRC.

Forest officers were informed that an adult female leopard had been spotted in the vicinity. After they were sure that this was the mother, the team put the cubs in boxes and placed them in the field where the leopard was last seen. We also placed two remote controlled camera traps to document the cubs and the reunion, said Gaikwad.

Officials put the cubs in baskets and place them where the mother was last seen. (Wildlife SOS)

After a two-and-half-hour wait, the team heard the mothers calls as it looked for her cubs. After checking her cubs, she carefully carried them by the scruff of the neck and moved back into the forest, said Deshmukh. Over the past eight years, we have seen many rescue operations but for the first time, witnessing a leopard family being reunited was an emotional moment for us.

Over the past eight years, the state forest department has successfully reunited 60 leopard cubs with their mothers that were lost, injured or separated.

The leopard came looking for the cubs, picked them up by the scruffs and carried them off. (Wildlife SOS)

Forest officers added that female leopards find the tall and densely cultivated sugarcane fields good sites to give birth to and rear cubs. The issue is that when they go hunting, they leave their babies behind, said Gaikwad.

Past instances of leopard cubs being reunited with their mother

January 9, 2017 - A three-month-old female leopard cub was rescued from a sugarcane field at Nasik, Maharashtra. After several attempts by the forest department to reunite the cub with its mother went in vain, forest officials transferred the cub to the Manikdoh Leopard Rescue Center that currently houses 32 leopards.

November 14, 2016 - In a 13-hour rescue operation, three two-month-old leopard cubs were successfully reunited with their mother by forest officials on Sunday at a farm near Vadgaon Rasai village, in Shirur, almost 80 kilometres away from Pune.

September 17, 2016 - A one-and-half-month-old male leopard cub, separated from its mother, was rescued and reunited from a sugarcane field near Sangamner, Ahmednagar district, by forest officials.

July 5, 2015  Forest officials rescued a three-month-old leopard cub from a dry well at Vadgaon Anand village in Junnar taluka, Pune district and reunited it with the mother after a 10-hour rescue operation.

May 4, 2015 - Wildlife authorities at Narayangaon range in Junnar reunited four leopard cubs separated from their mother early, after treating them at a local rescue centre.

(Source: Maharashtra Forest Department)

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The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday obtained a Letter Rogatory to retrieve details on the properties and accounts held by Vijay Mallya in Switzerland. The agency suspects that Mallya has acquired some properties and parked some money in Switzerland.

The central agency had initiated investigation in the money laundering case after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered a case against M/s Kingfisher Airlines Ltd, for defaulting the loan amount taken it, on the basis of an investigation under PMLA . The ED revealed that loan was sanctioned against collateral security of Kingfisher brand, corporate guarantee of UBHL and personal guarantee of Mr Vijay Mallya; Rs 807 Crores remained unpaid.

In their on going probe, the agency had in last week of December approached the special PMLA court for Letters Rogatory (letters of request) to the court of Switzerland seeking information on the accounts and properties held by Mallya in the country.

The counsel for ED, Hiten Venegaokar, said, A special court accepted EDs request and issued LRs in respect to details, documents and evidence of properties held by Mallya in Switzerland. There is material to show that Mallya had bought properties there.

The agency had given a list of requirements from the court of Switzerland, which include the account held by Kingfisher, names of the account holders and their details, account statements, copies of agreements of immovable properties and its details.

The court, while granting the plea, observed that prima facie, it appears that the accused had directly attempted to indulge and knowingly assisted and also knowingly is a party and also actually involved in the process or activity connected with the proceeds of the crime for concealment, possession, acquisition and use of the tainted money as untainted property and therefore, thorough investigation of this crime is really required.

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Three people died after the septic tank of a common toilet collapsed in the slums of Mandala in Mankhurd. The incident took place around 7.40pm on Friday at Lohar Chawl in Indira Nagar at Mandala, Mankhurd.

The victims have been identified as Harish Tikedar, 42, Dinesh Shah, 40, and Mohammed Shabbir Ansari,45. Locals said that five others were also injured in the incident. They were discharged from Rajawadi by afternoon.

According to civic officials, the public toilet was constructed in 2007 by the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority (MHADA) and was being maintained by a local non-government organisation.

Officials from the disaster management department of BMC said that the victims were rushed to the civic-run Rajawadi hospital. Atique Ansari, a resident of Mandala who also works as a social worker, said that around 12-13 people who were stuck under the debris were rescued by the locals and the fire brigade.

Ansari said, Though there is a newly constructed public toilet nearby, it is closed. This is why people visit the toilet in the mornings. The situation was horrible. We saw people holding onto doors and the pipes to save themselves.

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Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has appointed former deputy defense minister for European integration Ihor Dolhov as Ukraine's ambassador to Georgia.

Executive order No. 25/2017 was signed by Poroshenko on Friday, the presidential website reported.

The day before, on Thursday, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers approved the resignation of Dolhov from his ministerial position and issued respective resolution No. 51.

Dolhov, 59-year old, had been deputy defense minister for European integration since May 14, 2015. His previous positions were head of the Mission of Ukraine to NATO and Ukraine's Ambassador to Belgium.
It took 48 hours for the police to get to the main accused in the killing of a minor at a baby shower in Ambernath.

Satyajit Naresh Gaikwad, the main accused, had remained absconding after the incident. He had accidentally shot Pratik Gaikwad,12, a Class 6 student, with a country-made gun.

The accused was picked up from a village at Ambernath-Ulhasnagar border.

According to the police, Satyajit had organised a party on Tuesday to celebrate a baby shower at his place at Gaikwada pada in Ambernath. The party went on until late night and it was around 2am when Satyajit, one of the boys relatives, got a gun and fired two rounds in the air. As he tried to fire a third time, it hit Pratik.

Gulabrao Patil, the investigating officer from Shivaji nagar police station, said, Initially, all four accused were confusing us but Satyajit confessed in the wee hours of Friday. He also told us that he had not intended to hit the boy. The others were arrested for destroying evidence, breaking the CCTV cameras and also hiding the gun.

The police have also come to know about the relative who had bought the gun to the ceremony. He will be called to the police station for questioning.

Patil further added, After the incident, everyone rushed the boy to a hospital and when the doctor declared him dead, three of the accused (other than Kabir) fled from the spot, but Kabir, a former corporator, waited till Pratiks family arrived. It was around 3am when the Pratik family approached the police station and we caught hold of Kabir.

The victims family, however, said that firing in ceremonies was a normal thing for them as it showed pride. They demanded capital punishment for the accused.

All our dreams have been shattered. We will be fine if these people are hanged till death, said Bhaskar Gaikwad, 35, Pratiks father.

Read: Minor killed at baby shower in Ambernath near Mumbai: Fourth suspect held

Kin of boy shot dead in Ambernath near Mumbai were preparing for birthday

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A three-day Marathi Literary Conference at Dombivli started with a colourful procession on Friday. More than 5,000 students of different schools and colleges participated in the procession that took off from Ganesh Mandir in Dombivli to the Savlaram Krida Sankul (sports complex)

Students in traditional attire carried banners and posters depicting the works of renowned Marathi writers and poets. More than 75 carriages were part of the procession , the carriages were designed with the pictures of poets, models of their writings and also the students depicting them.

Over a 100 students from our school participated in the literary meet. Most of them were wearing traditional attire . I am looking forward to visit the three-day meet with my family and have a look at the books kept at the exhibition, said Arti Kasara, 17, a student of Global College, Dombivli.

Followed by the procession, the dignitaries hoisted the flag and inaugurated the Ramachandra Chintaman Dere book exhibition, a set up with different stalls exhibiting Marathi books.

Present at the inauguration of the books exhibition were Akshay Kumar Kale, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Sahitya Sammelan ( ABMSS ) , Rajendra Devlekar, KDMC Mayor, Gulabrao Vaze, representative Agri Youth forum Dombivli. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray was also supposed to attend the ceremony but he was not present.

We are expecting a huge crowd at the exhibition as it promises an insight into the Marathi literature. More than 30 poets will go live in the evening on the first day of the conference. The book exhibition will help people get copies of the works of renowned writers. The first half of the conference already saw a huge crowd with majority of them being students and youngsters, said Kale.

The literary meet will be inaugurated in the evening at 4pm by the hands of chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. This will be followed by a poets meet at the Shankar Narayan Navare auditorium and cultural program by local artistes from 7 pm.

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Gulzar brings up intolerance at Marathi literary meet

Dalit writers forced to leave literary meet over Shivaji remarks

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The police on Friday arrested a mechanical engineer, along with three of his family members for abetment of the suicide of a 27-year-old woman in Andheri on Tuesday.

The accused have been booked for allegedly torturing the woman with demands of dowry. If convicted, the accused may be sentenced to life imprisonment.

This is the third dowry death that Hindustan Times has reported within a month.

According to the MIDC police, the incident took place on January 31 around 9am on the sixth floor of Jan Seva, a SRA building in Sainath Nagar in Andheri (east). The deceased, Kundan Sharma, although qualified to be a teacher, worked as a housewife. She lived with her husband Sanuj Sharma, 29, brother in law Sandeep, 23, an engineering student, father-in- law Chotelal Sharma, 53, and mother in law Anita, 47.

As per allegations in the FIR lodged by Kundans father Babulnath Sharma, his daughter got married to Sanuj on January 20 last year and he had given him gold and silver in dowry. They had also promised a bike to Sanuj.

Babulnath said, We bought the bike in Sanujs name and I was paying the EMI for it. My garment business was not doing well and so I was unable to pay the EMI for three months. This enraged them. A day before committing suicide, my daughter called me and begged for the EMI. I had asked her not to worry.

Babulnath said he has three daughters and two sons and was facing a financial crisis but Sanujs family did not pay heed and taunted Kundan over this. Kundan was also being harassed over domestic issues. She did not leave behind a suicide note.

She hung herself in the bedroom while her husband slept in the hall. Around 9.30am, her mother-in-law called her, but on getting no response, had the door broken open to find her hanging body.

Her father registered an FIR the same day and got them arrested. The accused have been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 304 B (dowry death), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 306 (abetment to suicide) and 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty). They have been remanded in police custody till February 4.

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Parents of ugly girls pay dowry, says HSC textbook
An elite Bandra school has left out localities like Kurla, Nehru Nagar from its admission list even though they are less than three kilometers away, complained parents.

A list of pin codes for applying to Vasudev C Wadhwa Arya Vidya Mandir School, Bandra East, put up on the AVM Group of Institutions website, doesnt include 400024, the pin code for areas in Kurla east, Kurla west and Nehru Nagar.

Areas further than Kurla such as Matunga, Dadar, Prabhadevi and even those far from the school like Santacruz, Vile Parle and Wadala, have been mentioned.

School authorities said that it was left out because school records showed they didnt get any student from these areas in the past. When fixing the pin codes, we studied the data available with us on where we have gotten our students from in the past few years. But we didnt find any applications coming from that area so it wasnt mentioned in the list, said Avinash Datta, honorary general secretary of the AVM society. It wasnt done for any other reason.

Adding that if a student from Kurla was interested in applying for admission, they can approach the school or drop a message on their website, Datta said, If parents have a problem they can write to us on our website.

But education activists called such practices attempts to exclude students whose family income levels or social groups dont match with others.

Jayant Jain, president of the Forum for Fairness in Education, said that under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, 2009, schools must admit children within a radius of 1.5 to three kilometers. If the school wants to treat all children equally, they shouldnt leave out any locality falling in their vicinity, said Jain. Whats the harm in mentioning a pin code? Its up to the parents whether or not to apply.

In July last year, Jia Dhulgaj, 8, whose parents work as janitors was turned away from 13 schools because of their profession, dress and inability to speak. She was later given admission in a Santacruz school after a widespread social media campaign by a well-wisher.

New birthday cut-offs likely to make school admissions in Maharashtra chaotic

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In a fitting reply to political parties' campaign for the civic polls, a citizen group has initiated a #DidYouKnow? series on Twitter to change and challenge the electoral narrative on multifarious civic issues.

Free A Billion, a citizen group, has been running a counter campaign to expose political parties, including the Shiv Sena, Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

For instance, as a retort to Sena's posters on starting virtual classrooms in Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools, the group tweeted with a visual attachment how enrollment in civic schools has dropped by 45% owing to lack of sanitation facilities.

The Senas poll campaign tagline is also Did You Know?. However, parties like Congress and NCP, had already started counter campaigns against Sena.

Punning on the Senas tagline, the NCPs BMC poll campaign punch line is You Should Know.

Saurabh Modi from Free A Billion said their campaign is aimed at all parties for providing an incomplete picture of civic issues. The Congress talks about the tablet scam as a rejoinder to Sena's claims on virtual classrooms, which is again not the right way to look at amenities, said Modi.

The group has also found faults with the BMC's budget.

Its tweet along with an infographic reads, The budget of #BMC is equal to the budget of 10 other big cities of India #DidYouKnow? There is so much more that can be done with the 37,000 crore.

On Sena's advertisement on constructing the ninth fastest dam in the world, the group has questioned how many Mumbaiikars still do not have access to clean water.

A newly formed citizen group, Free A Billion has been asking people to opt for None of The Above (NOTA) option this civic election.

The election to be held on February 21 will be the first civic election in Mumbai where citizens can also opt for the NOTA.

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BMC polls: BJP lays claim over Mumbaikar tag in campaign

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Sticking to its campaign strategy to make a play for the citys cosmopolitan vote bank, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has handed over nearly 73 tickets to non-Marathi candidates.

This includes eight tickets given to minorities, including six to Muslims and two to Christians. A majority of the partys contestants, however, will continue to be Marathi, with nearly 122 Marathi candidates zeroed in in the final list that dramatically got released on wee hours of Friday morning at 2.30am.

The party has also given precedence to women candidates (117), fielding them over and above the reserved 50% quota.

Sources told HT a majority of candidates were selected on the basis of a ward-wise survey done to identity winnable candidates. CM Devendra Fadnavis has scrutinized the list and in majority of cases, the results of the survey were taken into consideration before finalizing or even poaching a candidate, said a party functionary.

While the party finalized 195 candidates, it is likely that after seat-sharing with its allies, including Republican Party of India, gets finalized, the list may come to 192 candidates. The party will leave anything between 35 and 37 seats for allies, including RPI, Rashtriya Samaj Paksha and Shiv Sangram.

With the alliance, the BJP hopes to pocket Dalit votes, represented by RPI, besides Dhangar and Maratha votes in the city represented by the RSP and Shiv Sangram respectively, even if the candidates of these parties dont win any seats. The selection of candidates is in line with our overall party vision of being inclusive. We have given near equal number of seats to Gujarati and North Indian community, even as 120-odd seats have been kept for Marathi candidates. Those who were from outside our party were carefully selected for specific seats, said BJP city chief Ashish Shelar.

While nearly 20-odd candidates, who got tickets were borrowed from other parties, a similar number of candidates were among family members of party leaders or workers. For instance, the party handed over tickets to five tickets to Sena corporators and workers inducted this week. For instance Sena corporator Dinesh Panchal and his wife Anita Panchal, senior Sena leader Prabhakar Shinde, Yuva Sena worker Swapnil Yerunkar, Tejaswini Ambole (wife of Sena corporator Nana Ambole) all were given tickets in their strongholds.

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Parties criteria to award BMC tickets: Winnability over work

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It was chaos across the city as major political parties scrambled to placate rebels who threatened to contest against their official candidates on the last day of filing nomination forms for the February 21 Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections. At the same time, parties were also zeroing in on their winnable candidates  the ones they felt would win as idealogies took a back seat.

For the first time since its formation in 1966, the Shiv Sena faced a large-scale rebellion in the case of mayor Snehal Ambekar that forced its chief, Uddhav Thackeray, to personally intervene from his Bandra residence, Matoshree.

Ambekar delayed filing her nomination by about five hours as dissent built up against her. Ambekar was opposed by local Shiv Sena workers of Worli ward no. 198 on the grounds that she was an outsider and locals need to be considered.

However, Thackeray persuaded the workers to campaign for Ambekar. We were told that its a prestigious fight and we need to get the mayor elected again, said a Sena worker.

Ambekar, after filing her nomination, warned the rebels to fall in line. If the rebels do not improve, our Sainiks will deal with them in our style, said Ambekar.

In the neighbouring ward, another Sena candidate, Kishori Pednekar, also faced a rebellion. Even this was quelled successfully after the intervention of top Sena leaders.

Another former mayor, Shraddha Jadhav, was in for a huge shock in the Parel area as two active Sena workers filed forms as independent candidates.

Another Sena stronghold, the Dadar-Mahim belt, also faced rebellion. Former Sena strongman Mahesh Sawant filed his nomination from Prabhadevi and so did Rohita Thakur from Mahim. Both accused vested local interests of trying to harm the Sena by neglecting loyal workers.

The BJP also faced lot of issues as it tried to convince its rebels. Former BJP corporator Janak Sanghvi, once a close aide of MLA Raj Purohit, filed his nomination from Bhuleshwar on a Congress ticket against Purohits son Aakash. Despite Narendra Modis diktat, the BJP leaders are fielding their sons. I am protesting against it, said Sanghvi.

There were last-minute changes in their Goregaon list as former deputy mayor Dilip Patel was accommodated at the last minute in ward no. 58 from Goregaon. For this, BJP had to cancel the ticket given to former Congress corporator Samir Desai, who happens to be nephew of senior Congress leader Gurudas Kamat.

Samirs wife Rajul, who is also contesting, was adjusted to ward no 56. However, Megha Chavan whose name was announced earlier was according to sources, angered and hence, she filed as an independent. We are trying to convince her to withdraw, said Desai.

Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Raju Waghmares sister-in-law Suvarna Waghmare filed the form from Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) from Naiguam. I tried to convince her, but she was not ready to listen as she feels we are being ignored deliberately by the Congress for years despite being loyal workers said Waghmare.

Political experts point to growing aspirations among political workers as the main cause. It is no longer a case of my leader must take notice of me as everyone is in a hurry to grab power, said B Venkatesh Kumar, political expert. The cadre-based discipline is no longer a norm and workers are ready to break this discipline to grab power, he added.

Meanwhile, the BJP had to deal with ally trouble as the Ramdas Athawale-led Republican Party of India (RPI) filed forms for approximately 60 seats across the city. This was done as seat-adjustments talks were on till the last moment and concluded just two hours before the closing time.

Finally, RPI chief Athawale agreed to take 25 seats. According to Raju Mohite, secretary, RPI, the BJP has been insincere. Despite working so hard as an ally, the BJP takes us for granted, said Mohite. Mohites sister-in-law Pranali has filed her nomination from Naiguam. Apart from RPI, the BJP has left five seats for the Swabhimaan Shetkari Sanghatana and four for Shiv Sangram. To placate Athawale, BJP announced his party will be given the deputy mayors post if BJP comes to power in the BMC.

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BMC polls 2017: Bharatiya Janata Party fields most Marathi faces, gives precedence to women

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In a rare instance, sitting corporators have shifted their loyalties to rival parties in droves either because they were denied tickets or to give an impetus to their sagging political careers.

Surprisingly, candidates had no compunction in admitting that they switched sides only for tickets. This shows ideological differences have taken a backseat in the February 21 polls to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

All major political parties are facing rebellion over distribution of tickets. Sitting corporators whose candidature bid was turned down by their own parties received tickets from the rival camps.

For instance, senior corporator Devendra Amberkar, the outgoing leader of opposition, openly admitted that he has joined the BJP after he was not allowed to represent his own ward.

The former Congress leader criticised city unit president Sanjay Nirupam and North West district president Baldev Khosa for their autocratic behaviour.

They were forcing me to contest from another ward. There were attempts to demoralise Marathi-speaking people in the party, which forced me to switch sides, said Amberkar.

Corporator Dinesh Panchal left the Shiv Sena as it denied his wife a ticket. Sources said Senas Member of Parliament Rahul Shewale wanted the ticket from the same ward for his wife, Kamini.

The party was doing injustice with sitting corporators. Even party chief Uddhav Thackeray was misguided on the issue. As a result, I had no option but to leave the Sena, said Panchal.

However, the migration to the other side is not limited to denial of tickets.

Corporator Chetan Kadam, formerly with the MNS, jumped to the Sena bandwagon as he was worried about his future.

I got demoralised when senior MNS leader Bala Nandgaonkar made a statement to the media that the party was never in such a bad position. The remarks made me start thinking about my future and thus I decided to join the Sena which welcomed me with an open heart, said Kadam.

Both the Sena and BJP have poached the highest number of corporators. BJP spokesperson Madhav Bhandari said whosoever decides to join the party has to adopt its ideology.

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Mumbai civic polls: One-third of BJP candidates are non-Marathi

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Criminal cases have been filed against garages that removed silencers from two-wheelers making the vehicles flout noise norms. HT had reported that Mahim residents had complained about noisy bikes in the area.

The Mahim police has filed cases against garages that were doing modifications on the bikes. While cases have been filed against six such garages in Mahim, 35 others were warned against modifying vehicles this way.

HT was the first to report on December 28 that Mahim and Bandra residents had complained that they were kept awake by people racing noisy bikes at night. From January first week, in collaboration with the Mumbai traffic police, we began investigating, which garages are responsible for modifications to track down bikers, said Milind Idekar, senior police inspector, Mahim police station. We identified six garages carrying out such activities in violation of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1998. They have been warned with charges against them but FIRs were not filed. If these garages continue to entertain bikes and help modify them, we will ask the civic body to cancel their licenses and shut them down.

Idekar added that police spoke to the owners of 35 other garages and told them about noise rules, Environment Protection Act, 1972 and Motor Vehicles Act. We told all garage owners to check the authenticity of all bikes coming to them. They need to check whether they have proper licenses, registration papers or other identifications, he said adding, If there are any violators, the names, bike numbers and mobile numbers need to be taken down and the police needs to be informed for further action.

According to a detailed study carried out by an NGO Awaaz Foundation for noise generated from different vehicles in Mumbai, two-wheelers showed average noise levels up to 90dB while the maximum permissible level is 80dB. When silencers are removed, levels increase to 100 -110 dB, which is as loud as a discotheque.

Senior police officials said more bikers will be prosecuted for breaking noise norms. We have taken action at some garages in Kurla as well. We are targeting the garages and taking action against the list of bikers visiting them in conjugation with the civic body, said Paramjit Singh Dahiya, deputy commissioner of police, zone 5. It is very difficult to catch the bikers in the act so we decided to take action at the source.

In December, Mahim residents Irfan Machiwala and Farooque Dhala wrote to the Mumbai police asking them to take action against bikers removing silencers or installing shrill horns. We welcome the move by the police but there needs to be stringent action by setting examples where these bikers are arrested or the civic body seals such garages, said Dhala.

Authoritiesspeak

While action is being taken, we request Mumbaiites to record videos, take pictures and note down the number plate of vehicles violating noise rules. They should either inform the motor vehicles department or the local police station, said Pravin Gedam, transport commissioner.

Penalty for modifying bikes

Tampering with silencers is a violation of the Central Motor Vehicles Act 119 and 120, and invites a penalty of Rs1,000 for the first offence and Rs 2,000 for repeated offences.

Loud vehicles

If a vehicle emits over 80 decibels it is considered to be causing noise pollution. Bikes zipping past the western suburbs have been recorded to be as loud as 100-110 dB by residents and activists during the night time, which is as loud as a discotheque or pneumatic hammer.

Noise standards as laid down in Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules, 2000

Category of area Day time limit (in dB) (6.30am to 8.30pm) Night time limit (in dB) (8.30pm  6.30am)

Residential area 55 45

Silence zone 50 40

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Noisy bikes giving Mumbaiites sleepless nights

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Students regularly complain about delays in receiving their results from the University of Mumbai. This year, the delay seems to have worsened. Of the 402 exams held between October and November last year, the results of 255 are still to be announced. Whats worse is that the results of only 125 exams were declared within the stipulated period of 45 days after the exam, which is the maximum period within which results should be declared according to the law.

It is one thing to delay a few results, but this time, the university has broken records. Commerce students are the worst-affected as papers for most commerce courses are still in the process of being assessed, said the principal of a suburban college.

She said third-year Bachelors in Arts (BA) students received their results on time this year, which was good news. Not only were the TYBA exams held efficiently this year, but the results have also been declared on time. This is a big relief for thousands of students, she added.

Law students were also badly-hit this year. While the delay in declaring the results of law exams can be blamed the exams themselves being held late, the delay in receiving results of exams such as Bachelor in Commerce (B.Com) was termed unpardonable by students.

It has been more than 65 days since our exams ended, but the university is yet to declare results. This is nerve-wracking and we can barely focus on the current semester. We hope the results of the next semesters papers are not delayed too. We need our mark sheets to pursue higher education, said Sadiya Mallik, a TYBCom student.

As many as 601 exams were held between October and November last year, including more than 150 exams of first-year students that were held in their colleges. It also includes the exams held for repeater candidates, which were based on the old syllabi.

We are speeding up the process as much we can. We should declare the results within the next ten days, said an official from MUs examination department.

While the varsity is struggling to declare results this semester, colleges are sceptical of MUs decision to convert the assessment process onto a digital platform to conduct on-screen assessments for the April 2017 exams.

The pen-and-paper method itself creates excess work for MU. They are clearly not equipped to conduct this process digitally. We hope they arent biting off more than they can chew, said the principal of a south Mumbai college.

Soon, Mumbai University examiners will access answer sheets on computers

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British photographer Christopher Nunn and Lt. Col. Dmytro Treteykin of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service were wounded in an attack on Avdiyivka on Thursday night.

British photographer Christopher Nunn suffered an injury during an attack on Avdiyivka on February 2. "He was taken to the 66th military hospital with an injury to the left eye; he was examined and transferred to Mechnikov Regional Clinical Hospital in the city of Dnipro where he was given professional medical attention," the Ukrainian army press center said on Facebook.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian State Emergency Service head Mykola Chechetkin said on Facebook that Lt. Col. Treteykin, who was also wounded in the bombardment of the city, remained in grave condition following 3.5-hour surgery. A medical service aircraft will airlift him from Pokrovsk to a Dnipro hospital on Friday.
Citizens and environment groups cleaned up a trash-strewn stretch of mangroves in Bhandup on Thursday as part of observing World Wetlands Day.

Close to 120 school and college students, along with 50 representatives from environment protection groups, forest department officials and nature lovers, participated in a wetland clean-up drive and removed 5,000kg waste  plastic, discarded footwear and other trash  from mangroves near the Bhandup sewage pumping station along Thane creek.

World Wetlands Day is celebrated every year on February 2 to highlight the importance of ecosystems like lakes, ponds, estuaries and creeks that stabilise the coastline, control erosion and hosts plant and animal species. The day marks the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands in 1971, along the shores of the Caspian Sea.

Less than 10% of the garbage strewn at the Bhandup wetlands has been cleared through our efforts and a lot more has to be done. There is an estimated 500 tonnes of plastics and non-degradable waste, which is strewn there, said Stalin Dayanand, director, NGO Vanashakti. There needs to be an urgent treatment of waste entering the creek. Sewage and trash being dumped in the sea is washed ashore and gets stuck within the mangrove ecosystem.

Three colleges- Vidyalankar College, Wadala, VK Krishna Menon College of Commerce and Economics College, Bhandup and Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil College, Navi Mumbai and school students from Vidyadhiraja High School, Bhandup (East) participated in the programme.

Environmentalists said that marine life in creek areas can be devastated if wetlands are not protected. While there are many laws protecting wetlands, the negligence on the part of citizens and the government to protect them needs to increase. It was surprising to note that the younger generation is much more aware about the significance of wetlands, said Nandkumar Pawar, head, NGO Shree Ekvira Aai pratishthan.

Forest department officials said they were aghast by the amount of trash strewn at Bhandup. We will be writing to the municipal commissioners of both Navi Mumbai and Mumbai to install nets at all entry points to the creek where the trash can be accumulated and pulled out, said Sunil Limaye, chief conservator of forest, Thane, who participated in the clean-up. The matter is of serious concern as a lot of trash continues to choke mangroves there.

Meanwhile, about a hundred students and members of NGO Young Environmentalists Programme (YEP) celebrated World Wetlands day at the Airoli creek mangrove nursery, through a mangrove board walk and documented various species of mangroves. Climate change education is a must for the next generation to help protect our islands from flooding and destruction. There is a need to increase security in these areas too, said Elsie Gabriel, founder, YEP.

Why Wetlands matter

-Buffer zone between land and the sea

-Biggest carbon sink, larger than Amazonian rain forests. Mangrove vegetation absorbs hothouse gas carbon di oxide from the air and stores it.

-Protects coastal land from erosion

-Shields coasts against cyclones and tidal waves

-Breeding grounds for a variety of marine animals, thus making it vital for the fishing industry

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From fielding turncoats to old guards of the party and handing out tickets to family members, the list of final candidates of major political parties on Friday showed that winnability was the main criteria for making the cut for the BMC elections.

The last day of filing nominations for the crucial Mumbai civic polls saw chaos, with the three main parties in the mix  BJP, Shiv Sena and Congress  unable to release their list of candidates until late evening, much after the deadline for nominations had ended. The last-minute scramble was to ensure that a rebellion within the party was stymied, but political adjustments and intrigue are likely to continue over the weekend, until the last date to withdraw candidature.

The three main parties gave merit, grassroots cadre and loyalty a miss and went with community arithmetic, money and mobilisation power while zeroing in on their candidates. All three went with a majority of Marathi candidates. The Sena led the pack by fielding nearly 85% or 190-odd candidates from the community. The BJP gave tickets to 120-odd Marathi candidates while Congress has fielded 111 Marathi faces.

Going with its strategy to pocket the citys cosmopolitan vote, the BJP handed over nearly 72 or a little more than one-third of its seats to non-Marathi voters. This includes six tickets to Muslims and two to Christians. The Congress, which traditionally owns the non-Marathi votes in the city, kept 39 seats for Muslims and 57 seats for North Indians and Gujarati candidates.

All the parties got their old guard back into the high-stakes poll battle with the BJP getting former legislator Atul Shah to contest from ward number 220 in Mumbadevi, the Sena got several of its experienced hands back to the battle. For instance, the party decided to bring senior leaders Mangesh Satamkar and Ashish Chemburkar, both vibhag pramukhs who had moved on to contest Assembly elections for the party, back to the civic fray. Similarly, to reclaim its bastion of Dadar and Mahim, the party has given tickets to former mayors Vishakha Raut and Milind Vaidya. The expectation is that these names have recall value and experience of financing and running an election campaign.

The parties also fielded their newly inducted members from other parties, who were carefully wooed to make up for the partys lack of strength in certain areas.

For instance, the BJP fielded former Sena corporator Nana Amboles wife Tejaswini from ward no 202 in Shivdi and former Sena legislator Suresh Gambhirs daughter Sheetal Gambhir Desai from Mahim; both the areas where the party is weak.

Similarly, the Sena strategically gave a seat to Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) leader Prakash Patankars wife Seema to take on the Raj Thackeray-led party, which currently holds the seat. And the party fielded Mangal Bhanushali, the BJPs Gujarati cell head from Ghatkopars ward number 131 to put up a tough fight in the BJP stronghold.

The criteria for selection of candidates are simply whether the aspirant has any kind of weight or presence in his locality that will get traction in the ward over and above the party efforts. These elections can be won or lost with a few hundred votes. Its not necessarily just caste or community based calculation. We have given a ticket to a local, Pankaj Yadav, who runs popular classes in western suburbs, an activist from Bandra besides co-opting a citizen corporator. Even when we have given tickets to family members of our party leaders, their individual merit has been considered, said BJP legislator, Parag Alavani, also member of the selection committee of the party.

All parties indeed generously gave tickets to kin of partys senior leaders, putting the onus of getting those seats on the respective leaders. For instance, BJP MP Kirit Somaiyas son Neel, minister Vidya Thakurs son Dipak and legislator Raj Purohits son Akash got tickets. There are instances of two from the same family, including husband-wife, getting tickets like in the case of former Congress corporator Kesarben Patel and her husband getting tickets and Sena corporator Dinesh Panchal and his wife getting tickets.

Similarly, Senas MLA Rahul Shewales wife, Kamini Shewale, was fielded from Chemburs ward number 144, while his sister-in-law got a ticket from the neighbouring ward number 142. Dadar legislator Sada Sarvankars son, Samadhan, got the Senas candidature from ward number 194, while legislator Tukaram Kates daughter-in-law Samruddhi got candidature from Govandis ward number 146.

This has led to rebellion in the ranks across parties, but senior leaders say this kind of trouble is expected.

Read more:

BMC polls 2017: Human chains, street plays and more steps Election Commission plans to take to improve voter turnout
The Vile Parle police, who were looking at a number of possible suspects in the rape and murder of a 24-year-old physiotherapist in Vile Parle last December, singled out 27-year-old Debashish Dhara through a combination of grainy CCTV footage and Dharas sudden change in behaviour. Dhara was arrested from his village in West Bengal on January 31. According to the police, he told a friend there, I have done something very bad.

Though a CCTV installed at the entrance to the victims home had captured a man entering and leaving her house on the night she was killed, the images were too grainy to be conclusive and only gave the police an idea of the suspects age and height.

The breakthrough came when a team led by deputy commissioner of police Virendra Mishra started questioning people in the womans neighbourhood individually. When they questioned Dharas employer and coworkers, they learnt that he had become very silent over the past few months.

Dhara employer told the police that he kept to himself and rarely left his room. When his colleagues asked what was wrong, he said he was under stress as he had a property dispute in his village and had been looking after his mother and two sisters since his father died. According to the police, an eyewitness also identified Dhara as the person in the CCTV footage. On January 10, unaware that he was a possible suspect, Dhara left for West Bengal. By January 23, the police had zeroed-in on him as the man in the footage; they arrested him a week later.

Explaining how the police approached the case, a senior official said that a tree-chart was made with the victim at the top and three branches of suspects.

The official said, The first branch included all the people who may have liked her, the second had people who may have hated her for some reason, and the third included people from her neighbourhood and place of work. But none of these angles turned out to be correct as [Dhara] was not among the suspects. We then started picking up people from the area who had left the city soon after the incident. But that did not work either.

The official added that police teams also went to many states to follow up on leads but returned empty handed every time. The police also sent DNA samples of several suspects to the Forensic Science Laboratory at Kalina but they all came back negative. It was only when the police questioned individual suspects that the breakthrough came.

Police will ask state to fast-track case

The Mumbai police plan to write to the state government and ask that the rape and murder case of the 24-year-old Vile Parle physiotherapist be fast-tracked in court. Almost two months after the crime was committed, the police arrested a suspect, 27-year-old Debashish Dhara, on Tuesday. The police said they plan to file a charge sheet in 10 days.

Deven Bharti, joint commissioner of police, law and order, told HT, We will request the state government to fast-track the case and give us a special public prosecutor.

Deputy commissioner of police Virendra Mishra said, According to our investigation, the victim did not know the suspect. He added, After her friends left [on the night she was killed] he waited for her for around two hours. Unfortunately, the victim went to sleep leaving the door open. He went in and forced himself on her. She tried to fight back but he strangled her to death.

Senior inspector Laxman Chavan of Vile Parle police station said, We are awaiting the DNA report, which will give us concrete evidence.

Another officer said, The accused has confessed. It was a spur-of-the-moment crime, not preplanned.

READ MORE

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Suburban infrastructure projects connecting the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) have got a major boost in the budget announced on Thursday. The Union railway ministry has made a provision of Rs636 crore for the citys railway infrastructure projects, besides making giving its nod to the CST-Panvel elevated corridor and the Virar-Diva-Panvel quadrupling project, in the 2017-18 budget.

The Virar-Diva-Panvel quadrupling project will improve east-west connectivity in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), easing pressure on existing suburban corridors. The CST-Panvel elevated corridor, which is touted as a fast corridor for the harbour line, will provide suburban connectivity to the proposed Navi Mumbai airport.

Estimated to cost around Rs8,700 crore, the Vasai-Diva-Panvel quadrupling project, is the citys biggest railway project in terms of project cost, while the CST-Panvel corridor will prove to be an engineering challenge for railways. The ministry has made a token budgetary allocation of Rs10 lakh each for both the projects.

Although the Virar-Diva-Panvel project is awaiting approval from the Union cabinet and the CST-Panvel elevated corridor is still to get the NITI Aayogs approval, railway officials said once the budgetary allocation is made for any project, they consider it a sanctioned one.

They see this as a major boost for the citys railway infrastructure. The CST-Panvel elevated corridor and Virar-Panvel will be a centre- and state-funded project. The detailed project report (DPR) for both these projects is ready and awaiting sanction from the Union government, said Prabhat Sahai, managing director and chairman of MRVC.

In the railway budget copy, which was made public on Friday, Mumbai has received Rs639.50 crore for ongoing Metropolitan Transportation projects, including the Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP). MUTP-II and MUTP-III have been allotted Rs137 crore and Rs411.50 crore respectively. Apart from this, the Belapur-Seawood-Uran project got Rs66 crore.

MUTP-II, worth Rs7,300 crore, is partially complete and under it, the city has received 70 new locals, besides DC-AC conversion on the Central line and 12-car locals on the Harbour line. Under MUTP-III, new projects such as the 3rd and 4th line between Virar-Dahanu (63km), Airoli-Kalwa (4km), which will provide easier access for suburban commuters between Kalyan and Panvel and the doubling of Panvel-Karjat line (28km) are likely to kick-start soon.

The Kalyan-Kasara third line project, which is out of Metropolitan Transportation Projects list, received only Rs20 crore. The state government had sought Rs200 crore for it.

Mumbai also got fund allocation of Rs83 crore under passenger amenities, to both Central and Western railway, according to railway officials. The fund will be used for better facilities for suburban commuters at stations, which includes toilets, escalators, foot overbridges (fob), drinking water facility, cover-over-platform and platform raising.

The Central Railway (CR) Mumbai division has also received Rs24 lakh to raise and resurface 48 platforms at 33 stations. The CR has been also sanctioned Rs6.5crore towards various protection works on the Neral-Matheran narrow gauge line such as a boundary wall.

Railway activists, however, were disappointed with the budget. The railway budget is good for rail network expansion in Maharashtra, but it has been disappointing for Mumbai. Only two major infrastructure projects have received budgetary allocation. Priority should have been given to installing escalators, constructing FOBs on suburban stations, said Subhash Gupta, Zonal Railway Users Consultative Committee (ZRUCC) Central Railway (CR).

According to a railway official, Rs5,958 crore has been sanctioned for Maharashtra. Besides two rail infrastructure projects in Mumbai, four more railway line projects got approval, including Pune-Lonavla 3rd and 4th line. Other three projects include Jeur-Ashti, Phaltan to Pandharpur and Hatkanangale-Ichalkarangi railway lines.
Officials from Fortis Hiranandani Hospital said they obtained a status quo order from the Supreme Court against the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) order demanding that the hospital be shut. NMMC officials said they will present their case to the Supreme Court during the February 27 hearing.

Hiranandani Healthcare Private Ltd (HHPL) is a fully-owned subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare Limited. The public-private partnership agreement for a 150 bed-hospital was signed in January 2006 between NMMC and Hiranandani hospital at Vashi. The hospital was later called Fortis Hiranandani after a change in ownership.

In November last year, the NMMC issued a show-cause notice to HHPL, asking it why it should not terminate the agreement after alleged breaches. It also issued a show-cause notice to the hospital, seeking to take back the premises.

On January 18, the NMMC issued an order cancelling all agreements with HHPL. It asked it to vacate the hospital and transfer possession of it to the civic body within a month.It also ordered the hospital not to admit new patients.

Following the order, the hospital approached the Supreme Court for relief.

A statement issued by the hospital on Friday states, In response to HHPLs special leave petition and writ petition, following an NMMC order by dated January 18, the Supreme Court of India has granted HPPL status quo. Fortis Hiranandani Hospital, Vashi, remains operational. We continue to stand by our patients as strong, supportive and compassionate caregivers.

We strictly adhere to all medical and ethical codes of conduct, while complying with regulatory requirements in spirit as well as conduct. We continue to abide by our legal obligations and deny any non-compliance, it reads.

We will submit details of the all the HHPLs violations at the next hearing, said Ramesh Chavan, NMMC additional municipal commissioner.

The status quo is as of today and hence according to our order, the hospital is not permitted to admit new patients. Whether the hospital will hand over its premises to us depends on the courts order in future, said Tukaram Mundhe, municipal commissioner.
The 18-year-old from Patna with severe Tuberculosis (TB), who the Delhi high court recently permitted to access the new anti-TB drug Bedaquiline arrived in Mumbai on Friday. She was admitted to PD Hinduja Hospital, Mahim, under the observation of chest physician, Dr Zarir Udwadia, who will administer the drug to her.

Her parents and sister accompanied her and said they are hopeful the new drug will improve her condition.

Doctors evaluated her and said she is a little weak right now. They will start treatment from Monday onwards, once her condition improves a little, her sister, Neha Tripathi told HT.

Access to Bedaquiline in India is strictly regulated, with only six government centres  two in Delhi and one each in Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati and Chennai  providing the drug to local patients.

The girls father was forced to approach the court as his daughter was refused Bedaquiline at the Lala Ram Sarup TB Hospital on the grounds that she was not a Delhi resident.

On January 20, the court allowed the girl to access the drug and said she will be administered Bedaquiline at Mumbais Hinduja Hospital, under Dr Zarir Udwadias supervision. She had consulted Dr Udwadia previously and wanted him to treat her.

The court said the patients residence cannot be not a criterion for eligibility to receive Bedaquiline under the governments conditional access programme. I am happy with the hearing. The domicile rule no longer stands, said advocate Anand Grover from Lawyers Collective, the group which fought the girls case.

In Mumbai, 56 patients are on Bedaquiline as part of a government-run trial TB Hospital, Sewri. Doctors say most of them are doing well.

Read

Use of Bedaquiline: Doctors say Delhi HC order will help more TB patients

TB patient who is resistant to 12 out of 13 drugs could spread disease
Social activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband Javed Anand were granted bail by the special CBI magistrate court on Friday. The couple along with the other accused were summoned by the court after CBI filed chargesheet in the case.

The central agency had in last week of December 2016 filed a chargesheet running into around 23,000 pages against five accused including Setalvad, Anand their company Sabrang communications and publishing pvt ltd and also employees of Ford foundation from where the company received funds. The accused have been booked for violation of foreign funding laws.

The magistrate court had taken cognisance of it and issued summons to all the accused. Accordingly all the accused appeared before the court and surrendered as part of the legal procedure. The court later granted bail to all the accused on the surety of Rs 20,000. The accused were later given the copy of the chargesheet filed by the agency.

However, as part of the condition the court told the accused that they cannot leave the country without courts permission. Further, the court said the accused however can leave the city but will have to inform the agency in prior.

READ MORE

Govt cannot cite FCRA to stifle individuals, associations: HC

Teesta Setalvad spreading disharmony, generating ill will: HRD panel

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Seven minors including six girls, aged between 13 and 14 years, who were made to clean prawns in a couple of godowns at Sassoon Docks in Colaba, were rescued by the Special Juvenile Aid Protection Unit (SJAPU) of the Mumbai Crime Branch on Wednesday morning. An FIR was registered against two owners of these godowns and if convicted they may be get up to five years in jail for child labour.

The children, who must be sent to school under the Right to Education Act, were not going there. Instead, they were made to work from 6 am till 11 am. We have handed them over to the Child Welfare Committee (CWC), said deputy commissioner of police, enforcement, Pravinkumar Patil.

Acting on a tip off, a team of SJAPU led by API Sudhakar Deshmukh raided the place around 8.45 am and rescued the children. In the seven minors, a girl is aged 16 and another 13. The rest five include 14-year-old boys. All the minors are residents of Ambedkar Nagar slum in Cuffe Parade. Their parents also work as fish cleaners nearby.

As the children are aged 14 years and below, the police have booked the owners of the godowns under section 3 and 14 of the Child Labour Act and under section 75 and 79 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, in which they may be punished up to five years.

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Ahead of his performance, meet Mumbais only American bansuri player.

Seattle-born Nash Naubert first visited India in 1999 as a tourist. The music, the culture, and the natural beauty, especially of the Himalayas, drew him here. In 2003, he decided to move to Mumbai, and settled in Bandra.

What sets Naubert apart from the many foreigners whove chosen to call the city home, is that hes a professional bansuri player. He claims hes the only American living in Mumbai and playing at Indian classical concerts. A senior disciple of Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia, he will perform morning ragas this weekend at Pitaara  The Art Box. It will be a traditional Hindustani classical bansuri solo performance, and I will be accompanied by a tabla player. I have always been drawn to the sound of instruments made from bamboo. The bansuri has such a soothing quality to it, he says.

The vastness of Indian classical music is what appeals the most to Naubert. Ten years ago, I would have said that is what scared me the most. Now, I see the full potential of Indian classical music, and I want to help showcase it to the world.

READ MORE: Maati Baanis The Music Yantra features 50 musicians from 20 countries

He distinctly recalls the first time he met Chaurasia, and admits he was extremely nervous. I still am, he laughs, adding, Actually, he is a sweet and simple person. And he is always trying to become a better person and artist, even at his age. He is quite active and doesnt like to stay in one place for too long.

Naubert with Pt Hariprasad Chaurasia (Photo courtesy: nashnaubert.com)

Growing up, Naubert was always passionate about the arts, music and literature. He trained in vocals, and became interested in world music during his adolescence. He even practised playing the didgeridoo (a native Australian wind instrument) every day while in college. He learnt about many forms of music but Indian classical music intrigued him the most.

He also has a fusion band, Nash and Indrakali. I play Indian ragas but with a back track of electronic music to give it a western feel, he says.

Dont Miss

What: Nash Naubert will play at India Stages Bhor ke Swar on February 5, 8am

Where: Pitaara  The Art Box, near Apna Bazaar, Goregaon (W)

Tickets: Rs 300 on eventshigh.com

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Residents of an Indirapuram housing complex have helped hundreds of underprivileged people with clothes and other donations through a Wall of Kindness they have set up outside their society.

The Wall of Kindness or Neki ki Deewar is a concept in which hooks or hangers are put up on a wall designated for the purpose and people leave clothes for the needy. This model of donations is followed around the world and is fast gaining popularity in India.

Members of Helping Others, a philanthropic group of residents from Gaur Green City apartments in Vaibhav Khand, Indirapuram, set up the Wall of Kindness outside the societys gate number 2 on January 15. They have set up a small shed and four panels of hooks for the purpose.

We were thinking of starting such an initiative for more than a year but it materialised only in January. Residents, not only from our society but from across Indirapuram come and hang clothes or leave shoes that they might not need anymore. Within hours, these materials are taken by the domestic helps and daily wage workers, Nagendra Singh of Gaur Green City apartments and a member of Helping Others group, said.

In the last three weeks, the wall has gained popularity with residents of nearby localities as well. Singh said that the wall was initially placed inside the society but later moved out as it was not accessible to many. A majority of the clothes are donated on Sundays.

A year ago, one of the residents of the society had started a drive to collect unused and surplus clothes from residents and gave it to an NGO that deals with underprivileged people. After a few months, residents urged the woman to hold another such drive but it did not materialise. However, it showed us that a lot of clothes become surplus every year as children grow bigger and various other reasons, Singh said.

Hence, we thought of this idea to create the wall from through which clothes can be directly given to the needy without a mediator, he said.

According to the security in-charge of the society, who spends most of the day beside the Wall of Kindness, the clothes and other donations are mostly picked up by the poor in the morning and evening hours.

The domestic helps and the construction workers who pass by in tractors always stop at the wall to gather the clothes, bags and shoes they need, said Amit Singh, security in-charge at Gaur Green City apartments.

A domestic help who works in the society said that the wall has been a boon for her.

My employer would often donate clothes but these were always for my children and there was nothing for me. However, many women have donated their clothes and sweaters at the Wall, which have been very useful for me, Mithilesh of Makanpur village said.

Residents said that the Wall of Kindness has been a success.

We did not have to spread the word about the Wall; it has gained popularity because of the concept. We have also told residents that they should donate only those clothes that are fit to be worn and not give torn or spoiled ones, Prashant Nayyar, president of Gaur Green City apartment owners association, said.

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Lukashenko calls Russia's decision on border zone political, calls for it to be reversed

Russia's decision to establish a border zone is a political one and it cannot be implemented, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said.

"What kind of a border zone is 30 km? I believe it's a purely political decision," Lukashenko said while meeting with journalists in Minsk on Friday.

"All these mindless uncoordinated steps, which only worsen our relations, it should not be done! We need to go back," the president said.
The Ghaziabad district administration has decided to inform voters about their polling centres with the help of Google Maps, which will be printed on the back on the voters slip, for the upcoming UP assembly polls on February 11.

District election officer (DEO) Nidhi Kesarwani on Friday said that a total of 26,029,85 voters in six assembly segments of the district will be provided with a map of their nearest polling centre.

The map will be printed on the back of the voters slip and voters will get the location of the centre where they can go and vote. The printing of slips have been completed and their distribution will start by Saturday. Apart from the facility, we have also got a voters guide which will be given to a family by the respective booth level officers, she said.

The guide will primarily consist of instruction of dos and donts by the voters. A total of 52,1065 voters guides have been published for distribution ahead of the polling day.

Apart from facilitating the voters, the administration have also got printed the list of candidates which will be put outside the polling stations and the list is also printed in braille. So far, nearly 5,226 specially abled voters have been identified across 471 centres in the district.

This time, the polling booths have also been declared no-smoking zones as they also come under the category of public places. In this context, we also have directions from court and violators can also be penalised if found smoking in the premises, the DEO said.

For the peaceful conduct of elections, the officials have identified 170 polling booths as vulnerable and having nearly 470 voters. Such booth are identified as the voters there can be put into fear or can be lured for voting in favor of certain individuals. Nearly 272 suspected people have also been identified and bound down under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, officials said.

A total of nearly 257 polling booths, including all voters under, have been identified as critical. We have decided to deploy sufficient police and security personnel to check that anti social elements dont try to create any law and order issue, she added.

Such booths are identified on the basis of sensitivity related to law and order and also of any communal outburst. For such booths, a worry list can also be forwarded by the contesting candidates to the administration but none have submitted any list so far.
Soon after the news of Anubhav Mittals arrest spread, dozens of investors -- some of whom earned profit on their investment and some who lost their money -- gathered outside the Noida Sector 63 office of Ablaze Info Solutions Limited on Friday.

Investors of the firm include college students, traders, engineers, farmers and real estate agents from Delhi-NCR, Uttarakhand and as far as Gujarat.

Those who had made money blamed the media and the police for framing Mittal, who provided them employment with easy returns. Some of them even shouted slogans in support of the online Ponzi scheme, socialtrade.biz.

Read: Noida online trading scam: Three held for duping people of Rs 3,726 crore

I was able to buy a R60,000-iPhone because I earned handsome returns on my investment of R57,500. The company is being targeted by rivals who want to run similar business, said Vineet Kumar, a college student, who came from Delhi in support of the agency.

Rohit Jain and his brother Mohit, from Delhis Janakpuri, said they bought 12 IDs on the website with an investment of Rs 57,500 each.

We invested the money in October 2016 and got 85 per cent of our money back. The company provided employment to our family. I got investment made by my brother, mother, father and sister as it was a golden opportunity. Vested interests are trying to shut the company. We will lodge an FIR against the one who lodged the complaint against Anubhav Mittal, said Jain.

Officials of STF and IT department said those who were among the initial investors got their money back. Those who joined later, mostly lost their money.

In the long run investors will realise they have been duped. Many are still suffering as they did not get back the promised returns, said an STF official.

Read: Noida online trading scam: How a company duped nearly 7 lakh people of Rs 3,700 crore

Many real estate agents and farmers in Greater Noida are among those duped.

I invested Rs 8 lakh in the name of my family members. Initially, I got R1,000 per day in my accounts. But in December the daily payment stopped. The agency said payment stopped due to technical glitch in the server. But when I did not get money in January, I realized I have been fooled, said Jagat Singh, who runs a real estate agency and lives in Greater Noidas Dankaur.

I will lodge an FIR against the trader who recommended the firm to me. I used to wake up at 4 am to click and earn money. Greed got me, said Singh.

Rajesh Bhati from Jewar also lost his money.

I invested Rs 57,500 and started getting R1,000 daily. Later, I convinced my sister, nephew, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and other relatives to invest. I borrowed money and made investments of around R12 lakh on their behalf. I do not know what to do now? The government should do something so that we can get our money back, said Bhati, a farmer.

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Cash deposits of Rs six crore in a bank account set income tax sleuths on the trail of a Noida-based company and led to the busting of a Rs 3700-crore internet scam, investigators said on Friday.

Uttar Pradesh police, who had launched simultaneous investigations, on Thursday arrested three employees, including the CEO and director of Ablaze Info Solutions Limited that allegedly duped nearly seven lakh people who were promised handsome returns by clicking on web links.

The three accused -- companys director Anubhav Mittal, CEO Shridhar Prasad and technician Mahesh Dayal  are in jail on a 14-day remand.

Income Tax department officials said the company deposited the large amount in bank after the governments November 8 announcement recalling 500 and 1000-rupee notes.

The case is likely to bolster the BJP-led governments argument that the demonetisation exercise was aimed at sucking out illicit cash from the system. It is also likely to give ammunition to the BJP to target the ruling Samajwadi Party ahead of the seven-phase polls in the state. The SP has been critical of the demonetisation move.

Prime facie it seems the agency was not doing any sort of business. In the name of multi-layered promotions on social media it lured investors and kept rotating the investors money, said Praduman Kumar Singh, a deputy commissioner in the income tax department who is leading the probe.

Read | Noida online trading scam: A few investors come out in support of firm accused of fraud

Our investigation has just started it will take long time in concluding it.

Sources said a team on I-T sleuths led by Singh will analyse sheaves of documents and computer hard drive seized from the companys office Noidas Sector 63.

The company ran a website that promised would-be subscribers a chance to earn five rupees each time they clicked or liked web links sent to their mobile phones.

The unsuspecting investors each paid thousands of rupees into the companys bank accounts to join the scheme. Police said some of the investors even got some money which helped bring in more people into the racket.

The Enforcement Directorate  Indias financial crime probe agency -- is also likely to launch a separate probe as the companys director is believed to have laundered a part of the money he collected from the investors and kept in two accounts in Axis Bank and Canara Bank.

Post-demonetisation, that is by December-end, he stopped paying to many of his investors, who started lodging complaints. In mid-January, he had more than Rs 650 crore in his two bank accounts. But now he has Rs 524 crore because he laundered money. The ED will probe to verify how exactly he is involved in money laundering, an official of the UPs special task force said.

He added that documents including passports seized from the company office indicated Mittal was about to leave for Australia, the official added.

Police received one complaint on January 31 and another on February 1.

A police team tries to control the crowd outside Ablaze Info Solutions office in Sector 63 on Thursday. (Burhaan Kinu/HT Photo)

Officials said Mittal recently purchased a Rs 7-crore villa in Jaypee Greens, a posh residential address in Greater Noida. He has also spent money in buying luxury cars and real estate property.

Mittal, however, used to stay in his ancestral house at Pilkhuwa in UPs Hapur district, about 45km from Noida.

IT officials said his annual turnover jumped to of Rs 3,700 crore in 2016-17 from just Rs 26 crore a year earlier.

Papers show that in 2015-16, Mittal saw a turnover of Rs 48 crore but he showed only Rs 26 crore to I-T department. He has admitted to accepting investments in cash. He claims to provide technical solutions on its website. But in reality there was no business as he was rotating investors funds to dupe them, said IT official.

Mittal had rolled out a plan under which people could invest money under different slabs of Rs 5,750, Rs11,500, Rs 28,750 and Rs 57,500. For example, a daily return of Rs 625 was promised on an investment of Rs 57,500.

The investors were entitled to a daily return for one year based on the money deposited. They were promised a return of the principal amount at the end of one year.

The company reached out to people with its scheme through social networking websites and other web portals.

All members of the Social Trade scheme were sent 125 links every day that they were supposed to like to stay invested.

Registered members were promised a commission on bringing more members under the scheme.

The company used to return money for some days and later it would stop paying promising to pay at a later date, said.

No official from his company was available for comments. A posse of security personnel guarded the office of Ablaze Info Solutions Limited. But the signboard outside had a different name -- 3W Digital Private Limited. A testimony to the companys allegedly dubious identity.

(With agency inputs)

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A third FIR was lodged at the Indirapuram police station against the officials of Ablaze Info Solutions Private Limited under IPC sections of criminal intimidation and breach of trust.

Two FIRs were previously lodged at Noida Phase-3 and Surajpur police stations in Gautam Budh Nagar.

Sources in the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (UP-STF) said that more FIRs are very likely soon and they may receive complaints from foreign investors.

On Thursday, the STF had arrested Anubhav Mittal, 26, the companys managing director and a computer science graduate, and Shreedhar Prasad, the chief executive officer and an MBA graduate, and Mahesh, the companys technical head. They are alleged to have duped around 7 lakh investors of 3,726 crore in two years.

There were 12 servers used by the company through which they stored and redirected the data. For the purpose, they had hired a technical team of nearly 100 persons who have been identified. Action will also be taken against them if their involvement is established, Amit Pathak, senior superintendent of police, UP-STF, said.

The search and seizure of the electronic data and equipment were undertaken by forensic experts of Forensic Science Laboratory from Lucknow.

STF officials said that they are now preparing a major investigation plan as more agencies have joined the probe.

There is a major possibility that victims may surface from other countries as well. The data is related to nearly 6.5 lakh customers and the total amount involved is around 3,726 crore. The biggest violation by the accused is the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978, he said.

Sources in STF said that the officials of the company were in a hurry to close shop and leave the country over the last one and a half months when investors were started to feel aggrieved due to non-payment and started filing complaints.

Until their arrest, officials of the company had allegedly changed four different websites and migrated to four different domains, which were all in the name of Mittal. Sources said that despite the four domain changes, the customers could log on with their Ids that were registered earlier on www.socialtrade.biz.

Officials said that the modus operandi was simple as money was collected from a large number of customers and payment made to a few of them.

Officials also changed their accounts to four different banks as customers had started lodging complaints and had also mentioned the bank account numbers. They changed domains as well as bank accounts to avoid identification. All accounts and websites have been frozen, an STF official said.

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The Ansari brothers ---- famous for their familys contribution in countrys freedom movement and infamous for Mukhtar Ansaris tryst with crime ---- silently followed Mayawatis rigid household rules, walking barefoot at her official residence at the merger ceremony of Quami Ekta Dal with the BSP recently.

This was not the first time visitors walked barefoot before entering her home or office but Mayawati offered an explanation for the first time ever: My official residence is a sacred place, a memorial of BSP founder Kanshi Ram, which is revered by the Dalits. Ansaris have respected Indian traditions.

Read: Politics of compulsion: Why SP and Congress want a poll tie-up in Uttar Pradesh

Mayawati knew photographs of Ansaris walking barefoot would not go down well with the community she is trying to win over in polls, and hence the explanation. It all started in late 1990s when a Dalit temple that had life-size statues of BR Ambedkar, Mayawati, Kanshi Ram and other Dalit icons was thrown open to the public.

Mayawati was then the chief minister of the state. The visitors had taken off their shoes, walked on the marble steps in the June heat. Many of her supporters claimed their leader had partially won her battle in a state where even today many Dalit women are forced to take off their chappals while walking past upper caste villages. Mayawati too had suffered such social discrimination.

Read: Uttar Pradesh elections: All you need to know about Indias political heartland

Now upper caste leaders not only take off chappals but also touch her feet. The humiliation of Bahujan Samaj in a caste-conscious society had thus been avenged.

THE SOCIAL MISSION OF KANSHI RAM

Political empowerment became the key to their social uplift. But today the social mission that Kanshi Ram had converted into a political movement to empower Dalits in the mid 1980s is in a jeopardy.

Read: Why UP matters: Can Indias most populous state decide the fate of Delhi?

His party faces heaviest odds in a high-stake electoral battle for Uttar Pradesh. And while other stakeholders would be losing an election, the BSPs defeat will weaken the movement.

Read: Inside the BJP machine: The UP design

After the BSPs spectacular performance in 2007, many had then expected expansion of the party to other states as there was no other Dalit leader who could match Mayawatis stature and style.

She became a symbol of Dalit empowerment, unlike Jagjivan Rams daughter Meira Kumar, who never used her Dalit status to garner public support.

Kanshi Ram died in 2006. Along with that his mission also drifted as Mayawati could not handle power independently. Without her mentor she grew lonely as she initially kept her family members also away from her public life. Insecurity gripped her and she became inaccessible.

Read: Why rural UP, small towns are ready to give Modi a chance on demonetisation

In the process, Kanshi Rams mission of Dalit empowerment was diluted as she joined the race for power opening doors for Brahmins and Muslims. In the process, she started losing her support base of Dalits, reflected in her partys falling performance in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. In 2012, she lost UP .

The 2017 elections is an opportunity to Mayawati to reestablish the BSP in UP, as a party which may be down but not out. The state has preferred regional parties to national players in assembly polls.

But again in her desperation to win the elections, she has moved away from the slogan of Dalit empowerment to politics of communal polarisation. While she was eyeing the combined strength of Dalits and Muslims to propel her to power, the Congress-SP alliance threw a spanner in her strategy of mobilising the Muslims, who are determined to see the BJP out.

Mayawati knows it is now or never for her as well as the party she commands.

@overto
Is India a nation of heartless Indians? It is, however, bitter and blasphemous it may sound in present times marked by orchestrated patriotic fervor.

What else can explain passers-by filming themselves as a young cyclist in Karnataka lay bleeding on a road and cried for help after being hit by a speeding vehicle on Wednesday? None came forward to help and the boy died in hospital. Doctors said he died because of losing blood. Help given earlier could have possibly saved the boy.

The irony is a young life was lost to apathy at a time when we are trying to be better Indians. Though we are standing up to the national anthem in rapt attention these days, we have let our humanity slip.

The insensitivity on display in Karnataka was not an aberration. On the contrary, it actually was symptomatic of a deep malaise thats steadily eroding the values of Indianness.

I am still haunted by the images of a middle-aged man lying dead after suffering a heart attack while standing in a long queue in front of an ATM in West Bengal at the peak of last months cash crisis. Any sensible person would have been ashamed to be photographed in the queue, doing nothing for the fallen man. But the truth is none really cared, as laying hands on a few currency notes was seen to be more valuable than a human life.

There have been more public displays of our dehumanization in recent months: a young biker was cut into two by a speeding truck, but was miraculously alive for some time to plead for help. People did rush, but only to crowd around and take videos. This man too died an undignified death. Ditto with a police inspector struck down by a speeding vehicle in south India. He died unattended as people around busied themselves taking selfies.

Given our past experiences with police and courts, many of us think it is prudent to stay clear of trouble, including accident sites and victims. But the excuse is no more valid.

I wonder what explanation the gawking Indians could give for their inane inhumanity and total lack of empathy.

Given our past experiences with police and courts, many of us think it is prudent to stay clear of trouble, including accident sites and victims. But the excuse is no more valid. Last year, the Supreme Court approved the guidelines issued by the Centre for the protection of Good Samaritans at the hands of police or any other authority. Under the new law, people who volunteer to help victims can no more be harassed by the authorities.

Sadly though, the fine piece of law is being undone by our selfishness. The Law Commission of India states that 50% of those killed in road accidents could have been saved had timely assistance been rendered to them.

Since standing by and watching a person die is no less a crime, its perhaps time that the Good Samaritan law have punitive provisions for Bad Samaritans: people who do nothing to help a dying person.

A strong deterrent towards criminal apathy is what we need. An India that brooks no indignity will make us more proud when we stand up for the national anthem in the future.

Read| Woman held in Mumbai for killing unruly kids by spiking drink with poison

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The comptroller and auditor general (CAG) has detected financial loss of `11,676 crore to the state exchequer, major chunk of which was contributed by the Tata Steel and Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC), in its report tabled in Jharkhand Assembly on Thursday. The government of Jharkhand has accepted 99% of the objections raised by the CAG.

The CAG observed that Tata Steel and DVC had sub-leased in an unauthorised way, transferred and sold land, which were leased to them by the government. This caused a revenue loss of `4,400 crore.

Deputy accountant general Ajay Kumar Jha said, Tata Steel and DVC had sub-leased 469 acres of land to 1,279 individuals/industries etc. between June 25, 1970 and October 2009 without prior approval of the government.

He added that the offices of deputy collector of Tata Lease office and secretary of revenue and land reform department had information about the above irregularities but no action was taken.

The CAG further revealed that the government incurred `249 crore loss from 1,860 acres of land encroached by 86 bastis in Jamshedpur under Tata lease area and by Railways in Chaibasa.

It stated that Tata Steel had set up a cement plant in its leasehold area at Jojobera in Jamshedpur, but transferred the lease right of plant to Lafarge India Private Limited in November 1999 without prior approval of the state government. It pointed out that Tata Steel in contravention of the lease agreement and Bihar government estates (khas mahal) manual had transferred the lease right to Lafarge India Private Limited on payment of `550 crore.

The CAG report also revealed a further loss of `200 crore due to non-realisation of salami, rent and cess after Tata Steel land was sub-leased to 59 entities including XLRI, Tata Robins, Tata Blue Scope Steel and Fortune Hotel in Jamshedpur in 2012.

The report also indicated a loss of `3,964.94 crore due to nonrealisation of rent and interest from khas mahal leased land. It highlighted that 7,862 khas mahal land leases, measuring an area of 2,547.42 acres in Chaibasa and Garhwa, expired between 1934-35 and 2013-4 but were not renewed stalling the realisation of rent. The report particularly highlighted the case of Surbhi Apartment on Circular Road in Ranchi which got the khas mahal land in violation of laws.

The CAG also detected gross evasion of Value Added Tax (VAT) by 412 dealers incurring loss of `1,226 crore to state exchequer. The report revealed that two unregistered dealers - Guljar Ahmad at Jharia and Bhuneswar Nath at Deoghar had imported mobile phones with accessories and furniture worth `226 crore from 2012-13 evading VAT of `25 crore.

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The Indian army has opened out to the Indian industry to meet its day to day procurements, heading Prime Minister Narendra Modis Make in India drive.

The army is holding special interactive sessions with the academia and the industry to propel the indigenous manufacturing sector and simultaneously make technological advancements to meet the future battlefield scenarios.

In one such endeavor, on Thursday, the deputy chief of army staff (planning and system), Lieutenant General Subrata Saha flew down to Jharkhands biggest industrial hub in Adityapur and addressed a select gathering of academia and industry on the premises of Ram Krishan Forging Limited, which is Indias second largest forging industry with five manufacturing plants across Jharkhand and Bengal.

General Saha apprised the gathering that there is a huge potential for the Indian industry to widely participate in armys procurement and meet its present and future requirements.

The Indian armys strength is nearly 1.3 million. Hence the range, scope, width and depth of requirement from the industry are enormous. As part of our outreach programmes, we are travelling to the regional industrial hubs across the country conveying them on Indian armys modernization requirements and together we are exploring the capabilities of developing everything indigenously, he said.

Spread over 3500 acres of land, Adityapur is one of the largest and the oldest industrial belts of India. The average annual turnover of this industrial area is around Rs.3500 crore. A majority of companies here work in the sector of heavy machineries.

Speaking to HT, Saha said around 60% of the Indian armys requirement were being imported.

But as part of this whole Make in India exercise, we are targeting to drastically cut down the imports.

Two brigadiers accompanying him detailed the audience on the requirements of various units of the Indian army, specially the infantry, armoury, artillery, air defense and signals and stressed on how joint ventures with the academia and industries can help acquire cutting edge technology to cope with the battlefield requirements indigenously.

RK Forging chairman MP Jalan convinced the army officials that given an opportunity the Adityapur industries can deliver unmatched products they require at any point of time. He said the Indian army is like an ocean and there is tremendous scope for the Indian industries to associate with them.

Army officials said they have already tied up with IIT Mumbai and IIT Gandhinagar to open defense technology centres to develop future core technologies. They said the armys present policy is completely driven by Indianisation.
The Jharkhand assembly was suspended for indefinite period on Thursday as it failed to carry out the House business due to repeated impediments created by the JMM. The assembly also revoked the suspension of four suspended legislators during the speakers closing remarks.

Speaker Dinesh Oraon announced sine-die adjournment of the House after the passage of Jharkhand value added tax (amendment) bill, Jharkhand state university (amendment) bill, three other bills allowing permission to private universities to open branches in the state and annual budgetary provisions of the remaining departments through voice votes, amidst walk out by the JMM.

The indefinite suspension curtailed the budget session by four working days. The session was to conclude on February 7.

Legislators - Amit Mahto, Sashi Bhushan Samad, Paulus Surin (JMM) and Irfan Ansari (congress) - were debarred from attending the assembly for their misconduct during the winter session. They were suspended till March 31 and their pay and perks besides other benefits were withheld for the mentioned period on recommendations of the House disciplinary committee on January 19.

Lifting the expulsion order Oraon said the House was hardly in order due to continual roadblocks on questions raised unconstitutionally, diminishing honour and pride of the assembly.

Expressing displeasure over the situation, Oraon said the assembly received 1147 questions in total related to public issues, of which 146 were short notice questions, 771 starred questions and 127 un-starred. I am hurt and concerned about the waning dignity of the House; the law makers should think on how to re-establish it, he said.

Earlier, the House passed the Arka jain University Bill, 2017, YBN University Bill, 2017, Jharkhand state universities (amendment) bill, 2017 and Sarla Birla University Bill, 2017.

It also passed the Jharkhand settlement of accounts and Jharkhand value added tax (J-VAT) Bill, related to modifications of VAT on certain items.

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UK, U.S. envoys to UN say sanctions against Russia must remain in force until Crimea returned to Ukraine

Sanctions against the Russian Federation must remain until Moscow returns Crimea to Kyiv, UK and U.S. envoys to the United Nations, Matthew Rycroft and Nikki Haley, have said.

"The United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea," said Nikki Haley, President Donald Trump's envoy to the world body. "Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."

"We frequently hear from the Russian government, as we did today, that all the problems in eastern Ukraine are the consequence of actions by the Ukrainian government. This is simply not the case. It is an inversion of reality," Rycroft said.
The biggest theatre festival in the country is back. And its roster reflects an overwhelming interest in Indian epics. The National School of Dramas Bharat Rang Mahotsav packs in a variety of themes and theatre forms: non-verbal plays, solos, dance dramas, classics, originals, traditional folk theatre. But many of the plays, across languages, explore the anxieties of todays polarised world, using the Ramayana and the Mahabharata to comment on modern tales of patriarchy and resistance.

The annual theatre jamboree, now in its 19th year, kicked off on February 1 with veteran director, the late Kavalam Narayana Panikkars classic play, Uttara Rama Charitham, which charts the dilemna of a Ram torn between his duties and desires. This years theme: Whose theatre is it anyway?

A still from Bengal Repertorys anti-war play, Ashwatthama: The War Machine (Photo courtesy: Bengal Reportory )

The war machine

In the opening week, Katkatha Puppet Arts Trusts Mahabharata (Hindi/English/Kannada), explored the motives of 13 characters from the epic, emphasising those traits of theirs that led to the war. The back stories that people often do not know, as well as certain nuances of the characters is what we explore through 13 characters, says director Anurupa Roy. Like Yudhishthira couldnt help himself when he gambled, she adds. He didnt know when to say no or stop. Or Shakunis backstory. He wasnt just an evil man.His family had been killed off by Bhishma.

Theres a lot about war in the Mahabharata, says Roy, and thats what makes the story relevant through time. War is still relevant today, she adds. The world is constantly contemplating war and thats our recent reality.

The 21-day-long festival will feature 94 performances by theatre troupes from 16 states and 12 countries, including Russia, Italy, Israel, Afghanistan, Romania, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Around 30 plays will also travel to five cities  Kurukshetra, Agartala, Patna, Pune and Hyderabad  during the month.

Increasing violence across the world is also what led Suman Saha of Bengal Repertory to write and direct Ashwatthama: The War Machine (Bengali). The past decades have been cycles of repetitive violence be it in the name of religion or politics, he says. I was looking for a play that would reflect the present reality.

He found inspiration in Ashwathama s story in the sixth parva of the Mahabharata: the ghastly tale of how Ashwathama murders the sons of the Pandavas while they are asleep.

Sahas anti-war play also explores the modern psychology of violence. Here, Ashwathama is a pawn in a larger game, much like soldiers in modern wars. The blindness of Ashwathama is another theme, says Saha. In my play, he is not an individual but an instinct  that drives us to kill.

READ MORE: A puppet artist explores Indian mythology

Re-imagined resistance

An array of plays on the Mahabharata is rarely complete without a production on Karna, whose inner turmoil and resilience on the 16th day of the Kurukshetra war is the subject of the group Aesthetic4worlds play, Karn (Maharathi). Its performed in the Dashavtar theatre form, which involves an oral script and spontaneous dialogues.

A Varanasi-based theatre groups dance drama, Ram Ki Shakti Puja, based on Hindi poet Suryakant Tripathi Niralas poem, looks at an episode during the war in Ramayana to portray new ideas of resistance. When Ram finds out that Goddess Durga is fighting on Ravanas side, he becomes dejected, says director Vyomesh Shukla. Jambavan, the bear, then advises him Shakti ki karo maulic kalpana.

For Shukla, it is this re-imagining of power that makes Ram a contemporary man  like Mahatma Gandhi or Karl Marx  who takes on a system through his maulic kalpana (original idea). In a break from the traditional Ram lilas of Varanasi (where high-caste men play major parts including that of Sita), Shukla has cast women in the roles of Ram and Lakshman.

In a play about Ashwatthama, the director says of the doomed character: In my play, he is not an individual but an instinct  that drives us to kill. (Photo courtesy: Bengal Reportory )

READ MORE: A new book reinvents Draupadi as a party animal

Eternal tales

In Panchali Ki Shapath (Hindi), a musical drama by Rangprayog from Madhya Pradesh, Draupadis public humiliation becomes the lens for addressing violence against women. The play is adapted from poet-and-freedom fighter Subramania Bharatis poem, Panchali Sapatham. Weve added references of contemporary events to the narrative, be it what happened to Nirbhaya in Delhi or Thangjam Manorama in Manipur, says director Rajkumar Raikwar. The stories of Mahabharata will be relevant till the end of time, he says. Duryodhana exists even today, only his face has changed.

Chitra, a Manipuri warrior princess and a minor character in the Mahabharata, is the subject of two productions at the festival. The first, by the Udupi-based theatre group Nrityaniketana Kodavoor, is a Kannada adaptation of Rabindranath Tagores one-act play Chitra. The second is by Odissi exponent Ranjana Gauhar, whose dance production Chitrangada combines Tagores play with his dance drama on the same subject.

For Gauhar, Chitra is a woman of substance who asks Arjun to treat her as an equal when he asks for her hand in marriage. Her inner churning and constant questioning of herself makes her relevant to our times, says Gauhar. In his directors note about the play, Dr Shripad Bhat describes it as relevant in a time of ultra-nationalistic identity and popular acceptance of the aggressive masculine ideals of power. The subversion of the existing discourse is possible only if we can establish a dialogue with it.

What: Bharat Rang Mahotsav: International Theatre Festival of India

When: Until February 21, 2 pm onwards

Where: Multiple venues. Please check schedule for each play.

Book tickets here.

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There is something in the air. A clamour like never before, an appetite that seems insatiable, an interest that is growing more robust by the day  in Urdu! And no, its not the anaemic longing of a despairing lover nor the fretful cries of an impoverished poet, bemoaning a long-delayed inquilab that has caught peoples imagination. Instead, there is an exuberant curiosity about the many different facets of Urdu zubaan and tehzeeb: its prose and its poetry, its passions and its politics.

Gone are the popular tropes associated with Urdu  stereotyped in the Hindi film industrys Muslim socials of the 1960s and responsible, in large part, for perpetuating a cliched view of Urdu speakers as poets and nawabs steeped in nostalgia and pathos or, worse still, shervani-clad heroes and heroines in ghararas singing qawwalis. Partly due to a well-meaning but limited view and partly due to a deliberate othering, for far too long Urdu has been viewed through a monochromatic lens: as an exotic language, a sweet but useless vestige of a decadent feudal culture; or an outright alien, associated as it has been with one religious group: the Indian Muslims

Urdu literature, from the writings of Ismat Chughtai (L) to the poetry of Mirza Ghalib (R) has witnessed a renewed interest in the recent past. ((L) Babu Ram/ HT Photo )

From the margins...

When did this anomaly begin to correct itself? When did Urdu creep from the margins of our collective consciousness  for I do believe it never really died or went away after the partition nor was it ever the language of Indias Muslims alone  and regain its rightful place? When, and how, did this healthy interest in Urdu  not just in its poetry that can convey a million moods but in its prose, especially its full-bodied and flavoursome fiction  reveal itself?

While there can be no single event or precise turning point, there can be several reasons for what is evidently a growing interest in all things Urdu. The much-maligned Hindi film industry has been steadily and stoically doing its bit to ensure that Urdu words and phrases never go out of currency. Lyricists such as Gulzar, Sahir Ludhianvi, Kaifi Azmi and Javed Akhtar, guaranteed that mellifluous yet meaningful film songs, reached the nooks and crannies of popular imagination.

Fragments of songs lie embedded in peoples memories, like seeds waiting to germinate in a fertile soil. Politicians of all ilks deliver the inadvertent but highly effective booster shot when they resort to sher-o-shairi on the floor of the Parliament, in public rallies or in political discourse.

Then theres the inclusion of writers such as Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Rajinder Singh Bedi and Krishan Chandar in university syllabi and the increasing popularity of their translated works.

Lyricist and filmmaker Gulzar at his home in Mumbai. Lyricists like him are credited with keeping Urdu alive through Hindi films and music. (Satish Bate/ HT Photo)

...To the mainstream

But the single most significant cause for the dramatic flowering of Urdu in present times is its programming. The buzz around Urdu is not because of government initiatives or classroom teaching  for alas, the script languishes while the language blooms  but because of a flood of Urdu-related events: concerts, mushairas, dastangoi performances and specially-curated sessions in almost all the major literary festivals, book launches and panel discussions.

Good, bad, indifferent, patchy, uneven, excellent  there is a range of Urdu-inspired events crowding the cultural calendar of any big city; and almost all of them draw huge crowds. Delhi offers an embarrassment of riches: at least three mega mushairas with lavish pandals and corporate sponsors. a flood of dastangoi performances, numerous stand-alone events and the Urdu equivalent of the Jaipur Literature Festival, Jashn-e Rekhta, in its third year now.

Nizam Brothers perform a Qawwali in New Delhi in 2009. A regular array of Urdu-inspired events, from readings of fiction to Qawwali concerts, have kept Urdu from going out of currency. (Raj K Raj/ HT Photo )

An Urdu sampler

Hindustani Awaaz, which I set up in 2003, to create a space for Urdu in mainstream cultural hubs across Delhi, has done its bit to pull Urdu out of the thrall of ghettoes  the anjumans, academies and departments  who have, for far too long, been either benevolent despots or unimaginative plodders. Run with no resources except ingenuity and persistence, Hindustani Awaaz relies solely on the goodwill of a growing band of Urdu enthusiasts.

Its latest offering, Afreen, Afreen, has been conceptualised as a tasters menu, a sampler, a smorgasbord of the many flavours, voices, themes, tones and topics in Urdu. It will have day-long sessions  comprising readings and recitations but mercifully no panel discussions or paper readings  on themes as diverse as wit, humour and satire, dissent, erotica, piety and modernism.

The idea is to give young audiences a taste of the many delights contained within the literary culture of Urdu and to prove that there is always something for everyones taste in Urdus vast repertoire. As Urdus best-loved poet, Mirza Ghalib, put it:

Dekhna taqreer ki lazzat ke jo uss ne kaha

Maine yeh jaana ke goya yeh bhi mere dil mein hai

Look at the pleasure of speech for what she /he said

I began to feel that this, too, is in my heart

Rakhshanda Jalil is a writer, translator and literary historian. She is the founder of Hindustani Awaaz.

The programme for Afreen, Afreen includes performances of dastangoi and qawwali; and readings from the works of humourist Dilawar Figar, poet Parveen Shakir, short-story writer Naiyar Masud and revolutionary Mughal poet Mir JafarZatalli among others. Sohail Hashmi, a leading authority on Delhi, Jamia Milia Islamia professor Danish Iqbal, Pakistani poet Fahmida Riaz and other poets and writers will be reading acclaimed fiction and poetry.

What: Afreen, Afreen: A day-long celebration of Urdu

When: February 4, 11 am to 8.30 pm

Where: Oxford Bookstore, N-81, Connaught Circus

Nearest metro station: Barakhamba Road

Entry is free

RSVP 9953970829 or rsvp@oxforddel@apeejaygroup.com
An Afghan policeman turned his rifle on his colleagues in a northern province, killing eight, while a gunman in the countrys east fatally shot a cleric and his wife, officials said on Friday.

The policemen were killed while they were sleeping in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to the provincial police spokesperson, Abdul Karim Yuresh.

The attack happened on Thursday night and according to the spokesperson, a policeman who was on duty opened fire and killed his colleagues, then collected all their firearms and fled the scene  presumably to join the Taliban.

The Taliban made no official statement or claim about the attack but Afghanistan has seen several such incidents over the past years. There has been a growing number of cases in which Afghan troops or policemen  or Taliban militants dressed in Afghan uniforms  have turning their guns on their colleagues or US-led coalition partners.

Also on Thursday night, in the countrys eastern Paktika province, a gunman killed a cleric and his wife, said Mohammad Alias Wahdat, the provincial governor.

Wahdat said the gunman entered the clerics home in the Yusof Khail district and shot the cleric and his wife. Two of their children who were in the house survived.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the attack and no one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings.

In other violence, Gul Agha Roohani, the chief of police in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said Islamic State group militants stormed the security posts in the district of Kot early on Friday, killing at least one police officer.

Afghan security forces responded and killed 12 militants, he said.

Afghanistan has been facing major political and security challenges since the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014, leaving a smaller contingent of troops behind to focus on training and counterterrorism.

Also, President Ashraf Ghani has been dealing with a stepped-up insurgency by the Taliban seeking to topple the government as well as an affiliate of the Islamic State group, which emerged two years ago and has expanded its footprint, especially in the countrys east and in Nangarhar province.
Toshiba Corp plans to withdraw from its lead role in projects to build nuclear plants in Britain and India, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said, marking a retreat as it wrestles with an imminent multi-billion dollar writedown.

Such a move would leave Toshibas US-based Westinghouse focused on the much narrower field of nuclear reactors and services, rather than civil engineering for nuclear power plants, or their construction, the sources said.

But it would throw into question the future of a key plank in Britains plans to replace ageing nuclear reactors, and the future of Indias biggest nuclear project to date.

In India, Westinghouse has been in talks with state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India about a contract to build six AP1000s, a project strongly backed by both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former US president Barack Obama.

Three sources said that was now almost impossible.

The Indian government was happy to have one sole counterpart, but this cannot continue, the first source said, adding that either an Indian civil engineering group or a foreign, possibly American, group would have to step in to negotiate, oversee and eventually finance the project.

Westinghouse would instead just provide nuclear equipment, the source said.

Representatives for Indias state-run nuclear body and the ministry of external affairs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Toshiba became one of the nuclear sectors biggest players with the purchase of Westinghouse in 2006, the height of a short-lived boom. But the industry was left battered by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and Toshibas woes have only deepened  first with a 2015 accounting scandal and now damaging cost overruns at US projects.

Sources familiar with the matter have said the writedown on the US business  set to be detailed on February 14 when Toshiba reports earnings  could be around $6 billion, wiping out the groups shareholder equity.

Westinghouse has traditionally been a builder of nuclear reactors, not entire nuclear power plants including steam turbines, generators and transformers.

But as tightening safety regulations following Fukushima made building nuclear plants more expensive, nuclear reactor builders and their shareholders have been increasingly forced to take on the civil engineering side too.

A source said Westinghouse will return to its roots as a nuclear specialist, while Toshiba will stop taking on projects to build entire nuclear plants just so that Westinghouse can sell its AP1000 reactors.

Toshiba will withdraw from being a general contractor for nuclear plants, the source said.

NuGen, a Toshiba-led venture with French utility Engie, was set up to build three AP1000 nuclear reactors designed by the Japanese conglomerates Westinghouse unit at the Moorside site on the coast of Cumbria in the UK.

But the $15 billion-$20 billion investment is now an impossible financial burden for Toshiba to help shoulder, one of the sources said, adding it had not yet notified the UK government.

Two of the sources said Engie also wants to pull out of NuGen, as new chief executive Isabelle Kocher does not want to invest in new nuclear projects. Engie declined to comment.

That could leave Britain searching for new backers.

It has to be someone with a big cheque book. The real question for London is to what extent should this be a private sector venture anyway, said one veteran adviser.

One of the sources said Toshiba was considering a full exit from the NuGen project, in which it currently has a 60% stake, but would take a firm decision once it had completed the sale of a stake in its memory chips business. That sale was announced last month but started on Friday.

All three sources with knowledge of the matter declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak to the media.

A Toshiba spokesman said it was reviewing all its nuclear power business outside Japan. Nothing has been decided at this time, including the impact on our Moorside nuclear project.

NuGen declined to comment.
The uproar over President Donald Trumps travel ban has thrown the plight of immigrants into stark relief, but it also has engulfed skilled foreign workers.

In dramatic scenes over the past week, outraged demonstrators flocked to airports to support refugees and migrants trapped there or unable to board flights to the United States.

Major US tech companies that are highly dependent on foreign talent said hundreds of their employees could be affected, and joined in the opposition to the immigration limits, which initially swept up legal residents as well.

But Trump and his team have long expressed goals that extend far beyond Silicon Valley, signalling they planned to establish a general preference for US workers over migrant job seekers in their America First economic policy.

Since taking office, Trump has announced the ambitious goals of creating 25 million new jobs over the next 10 years and pushing economic growth to a torrid 4%, double the current rate.

Economists, however, say those goals will be difficult if not impossible to achieve without either delaying retirement for many older workers, admitting significant numbers of immigrants into the United States, or both.

Destroy our jobs

Some Trump advisors and associates have sought to frame the question of immigration as a fundamental contest over the nature of American society.

Chief White House advisor Stephen Bannon said in 2015 that the presence of Asians in Silicon Valley could undermine civic society -- views that have been hailed by the extreme right.

But Trump publicly has stuck to national security and economic arguments.

People hold up signs during a protest against US President Donald Trump's immigration rules at the Regan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia on February 1, 2017. (AFP Photo)

He pledged not only to prevent employers from outsourcing cheap labour by using the H-1B visa program for skilled workers, but also to institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program.

And in his inaugural address, he declared the country should protect itself from foreign countries seeking to destroy our jobs.

But under current economic and demographic trends, Trumps goal of doubling economic growth and adding 25 million jobs by 2027 is incompatible with a clampdown on immigrants, economists say.

The only way in which that statement really makes sense to an economist is if you increase the population, Jennifer Hunt, a former chief economist at the Labour Department, told AFP.

Hunt, now at Rutgers University, served on a National Academy of Sciences panel which found that over the longer term, immigration was a significant benefit to the US economy, with little to no negative effects on the employment levels or wages of native-born workers.

During the 1990s, immigrants resulted in a significant increase in per capita economic growth through innovation.

In 2000, GDP per capita from 1990 was between 1.5% and 2.5% higher than it would have been without the immigration since 1990, Hunt said.

Amid an overall surge in patent registrations between 1990 and 2000, immigrants accounted for one third of new patents, she said.

Wildly implausible

Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said Trumps goals were wildly implausible given the current size of the US labour force.

Theres just not the labour supply there to do it, he said, noting that employers already are finding it increasingly hard to fill vacancies, especially if Trump goes ahead with a massive infrastructure plan.

Demographics also are playing a role through the aging of the US workforce.

Ben Zipperer of the Economic Policy Institute agreed that increasing immigration is one of the only ways of meeting Trumps job creation goal, since about one in four Americans is expected to be 65 or older in the next 10 years.

The US would still fall short of Trumps goal by about nine million jobs even if each of five broad age groups matched their record employment levels from the last 50 years, he said in a blog post.

The current foreign-born labour force coincidentally numbers about 25 million people. Thats a sizeable part our economy, he told AFP.

Efforts to reduce that and change the trend in negative ways are almost certainly going to shrink the workforce.

Nevertheless, Trump has shown no sign of increasing immigration to meet the demand. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

On the contrary, with Trump in office barely two weeks, raucous protests have erupted over policies such as plans to erect a wall on the Mexican border, create a registry of crimes committed by immigrants, punish municipal governments that fail to enforce federal immigration laws, and ramp up certain deportations.
China on Friday said its foreign minister Wang Yi will visit Australia next week to cement political trust, just days after reports said US President Donald Trump berated Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull on phone over an Obama-era agreement to accept 1,250 refugees.

Wang will visit Australia and New Zealand from February 7-10, foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang told reporters in Beijing.

It will be Wangs first foreign visit following Chinese New Year and assumes significance as the Trump-Turnbull phone call, that was to last for an hour but abruptly disconnected by Trump after 25 minutes over disagreement on the dumb deal on accepting refugees, is likely to upend the US bilateral diplomatic landscape with a strong ally.

According to a report in The Washington Post, Trump called the conversation with Turnbull the worst by far of his calls with world leaders that day. American media reports say Trump insisted it was a very bad deal for the US to take refugees and that one of them was going to be the next Boston bomber.

Australias The Sydney Morning Herald has commented that Trumps behaviour came as a shock for many in Australia and overseas that Trump would publicly create waves with such a strong ally.

The verbal spat could provide China an opening in the important country surrounded by the Indian and Pacific oceans. Australia is already upset over Trump rescinding the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement reached by Obama keeping China out of the deal.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Wang will co-host the fourth China-Australia diplomatic and strategic dialogue with his Australian counterpart during the visit. He will also meet his New Zealand counterpart and other leaders.

We hope the visit will help cement political trust, expand cooperation and boost the China-Australia and China-New Zealand all-round strategic partnerships, Lu said.

Also, Australia has invited China amid reports that Beijing may try to take the leadership of the TPP vacated by the US.

China itself is bracing for a tense standoff with Trump over a host of issues, including the disputed South China Sea, trade tariffs and allegations of currency manipulation.
Chinese companies are in talks to snap up more businesses and land in Pakistan after sealing two major deals in recent months, a sign of deepening ties after Beijing vowed to plough $57 billion into a new trade route across the South Asian nation.

A dozen executives from some of Pakistans biggest firms told Reuters that Chinese companies were looking mainly at the cement, steel, energy and textile sectors, the backbone of Pakistans $270 billion economy.

Analysts say the interest shows Chinese firms are using Beijings One Belt, One Road project -- a global trade network of which Pakistan is a key part -- to help expand abroad at a time when growth has slowed at home.

A Chinese-led consortium recently took a strategic stake in the Pakistan Stock Exchange, and Shanghai Electric Power acquired one of Pakistans biggest energy producers, K-Electric, for $1.8 billion.

The Chinese have got deep pockets and they are looking for major investment in Pakistan, said Muhammad Ali Tabba, chief executive of two companies in the Yunus Brothers Group cement-to-chemicals conglomerate.

Read | Can China realise its One Belt, One Road dream?

Tabba said Yunus Brothers, partnering with a Chinese company, lost out in the battle for K-Electric, but the group is eyeing up other joint ventures as part of a $2 billion expansion plan over the coming years.

Mohammad Zubair, Pakistans privatisation minister until a few days ago, told Reuters that Chinas steel giant Baosteel Group is in talks over a 30-year lease for state-run Pakistan Steel Mills. Baosteel did not respond to a request for comment.

The negotiations come as Pakistani business sentiment turns, with companies betting that Beijings splurge on road, rail and energy infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will boost the economy.

The Chinese charge is in contrast to Western investors, who have largely avoided Pakistan in recent years despite fewer militant attacks and economic growth near 5%.

Read | From China to Pakistan: A well-thought-out 3,000km lifeline

It is welcomed by many in Pakistan: foreign direct investment was $1.9 billion in 2015/2016, far below the 2007/2008 peak of $5.4 billion.

At the stock exchange signing ceremony, Sun Weidong, Chinas ambassador to Pakistan, said the deal embodies the ongoing financial integration between Chinese and Pakistani markets.

This will facilitate more financial support for our enterprises, Sun said.

Reservations

CPEC will connect Chinas Western region with Pakistans Arabian Sea port of Gwadar through a network of rail, road and pipeline projects.

That will be funded by loans from China, and much of the business will go to Chinese enterprises.

The scale of Chinese corporate interest beyond that is difficult to gauge, but in Karachi, Pakistans financial centre, sharply-dressed Chinese appear to outnumber Westerners in hotels, restaurants and the citys airport.

Rising skyscrapers testify to a construction boom in the city, businesses are printing Chinese-language brochures and salaries demanded by Pakistanis who speak Chinese have shot up.

Read | India should consider the right road for Asian economies

Miftah Ismail, chairman of Pakistans Board of Investment, said Chinese companies were interested in investing in the telecoms and auto sectors, with FAW Group and Foton Motor Group planning to enter Pakistan.

FAW said the Pakistan project is going through internal approvals, but did not offer more details. Foton declined to comment.

But not everyone is excited by Chinas growing role in the Pakistan economy, including trade unions, who said Chinese companies alleged mistreatment of local workers in Africa in the past had alarmed them.

We have concern and reservations that the Chinese might use the same methods in Pakistan, said Nasir Mansoor, deputy general secretary of National Trade Union Federation, Pakistan, the national trade union body.

The Chinese government and Chinese companies have dismissed such accusations in the past.

And doing business may not be easy for newcomers. Security remains a concern despite a drop in Islamist militant violence, and in the World Banks ease of doing business index, Pakistan ranks 144 out of 190 countries.

Next phase

The Chinese interest comes as Islamabad and Beijing discuss the next phase of CPEC: how to build Pakistans industry with the help of Chinese state-owned industrial giants.

Pakistani officials are drafting plans for special economic zones which would offer tax breaks and other benefits to Chinese businesses.

But even before zones are established, Chinese investors are scoping out land deals.

Read | Accept Paks olive branch and join CPEC: Chinese media suggests to India

A lot of companies ... dont care about CPEC. They just want 500 acres of land to set up shop, said Naheed Memon, head of the Sindh provinces Board of Investment.

Faisal Aftab, manager of private investment firm Oxon Partners, said Oxon was in talks with two state-run Chinese companies and a wealthy Chinese businessman to purchase and develop land for high-end residential and commercial properties.

They are seeking land in prime markets such as Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad, Aftab said.

Yunus Brothers Tabba urged Western investors to overcome their phobia of Pakistan.

If they came here, they would see the momentum, the buzz of growth.

(Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi and Mehreen Zahra Malik in Islamabad)
A Bosnia-based international school said on Friday it would offer scholarships to refugees and students from seven nations affected by the immigration ban issued last week by U.S Presidents Donald Trump.

United World College (UWC) Mostar, one of 17 UWC schools worldwide that aim to bring together students from conflict zones, opened in 2005 with the goal of healing ethnic divisions after the Bosnian war of the 1990s.

We offer scholarships to U.S students, as well as to refugees and students from majority Muslim countries banned by the U.S. Executive order to send a signal for peace, said Valentina Mindoljevic, head of the UWC Mostar.

Trumps order bars the admission of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen and places an indefinite hold on Syrian refugees.

The school in 2011 extended a scholarship to Kim Han-sol, the grandson of former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, after Hong Kong refused him a visa to study there.
Lukashenko says Belarus can get by without Russian oil

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said his country can get by without Russian oil and will not sacrifice its freedom and independence for the sake of that oil.

"Why be so unsettling, why go for our throat? Clearly, we will get by without Russian oil. It will be very difficult for us," Lukashenko said at a meeting with journalists in Minsk.

But freedom and independence "cannot be valued by any amount of money, not any figures," he said.

"It is absolutely incompatible, to have independence on one side of the scale and Russian, Iranian, Azerbaijani or American oil on the other," he said.

"We will find a solution come what may. Unfortunately, this is not understood in Russia," Lukashenko said.
President Donald Trumps sister has decided to stop hearing cases on the federal appeals court in Philadelphia.

Senior US Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry has been on the court since 1999. She previously served as a district judge and federal prosecutor in New Jersey.

Chief 3rd Circuit Judge D Brooks Smith says Barry is giving up her staff and chambers with the decision to take inactive status this week.

The 79-year-old Barry had been scheduled to hear cases this year. Inactive judges can still serve on court committees or later return to active status.

Smith describes Barry as a talented judge with a knack for handling complex cases.

A Republican, she was nominated for a judgeship by GOP President Ronald Reagan and elevated to the circuit court by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
Irans supreme court has ruled that a woman must be blinded in one eye as punishment for an acid attack that left her victim sightless, using the principle of eye for an eye of Islamic Sharia law, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday.

Under Irans Sharia law, imposed since the 1979 Islamic revolution, qesas (retribution) is permitted in cases where bodily injuries are inflicted.

The convicted attacker, who was not identified, was found guilty of throwing acid in the face of her victim, identified as Sima, two years ago in the city of Dehdasht, Tasnim reported.

The sentence to blindness in one eye, payment of blood money (compensation), and seven years imprisonment have been confirmed by the highest court, Tasnim quoted head of judiciary Majid Karami in the province of Kohgiluyeh as saying.

Karami did not say when the sentence was scheduled to be carried out. Victims and their families have the final say and can prevent the punishment from being imposed, under the law.

Activist Mohammad Surizad in Tehran told Reuters that some activists had urged Simas family to show clemency and pardon the convicted woman.

Iranian officials, concerned about the increase in the rate of acid attacks, have endorsed retribution. However, the practice of carrying out an eye for an eye punishment, is very rare in Iran.

Several acid attacks have been reported in Iran in the past few years. In 2011, an Iranian woman blinded with acid by her suitor after she spurned his marriage offers spared him hours before surgeons prepared to blind the man with acid.

Rights group Amnesty International have urged Iran not to inflict the punishment.

The concept of qesas also applies to other crimes in Iran, such as murder. A victims family can demand the death of a convicted murderer or commute the sentence in return for financial compensation from the criminal.
A machete-wielding man who yelled Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) was shot and injured as he attacked security forces at the Louvre museum in Paris on Friday, police said.

One soldier was injured in the assault by the knifeman who was shot five times and is alive despite his serious injuries.

Two backpacks he was carrying did not contain explosives, city police chief Michel Cadot said.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve called the attack terrorist in nature after the incident which led streets around the world-famous museum to be sealed off.

The people who were in the museum -- there were about 250 of them -- were held at a distance and confined in secure areas of the Louvre.

The shooting comes with France on its highest state of alert with thousands of troops patrolling the capital following a string of attacks in the last few years.

Soldiers in uniform carrying automatic rifles are regularly seen walking in the area around the Louvre, which is one of the main tourist attractions in Paris, drawing millions of visitors every year.

The huge former royal palace in the heart of the city is home to the Mona Lisa and other renowned works of art but also a shopping complex and numerous exhibition spaces.

The people who were in the museum -- there were about 250 of them -- were held at a distance and confined in secure areas of the Louvre, Cadot said.

Hundreds of tourists had remained inside the museum during the incident, and some were brought into special safe rooms, according to a witness.

Staff members are returning to a shopping mall beneath the Louvre Museum and roadblocks have been cleared after a man was shot after trying to attack a soldier guarding the site. Tourists began streaming out of the Louvre after the roadblocks were cleared.

String of attacks

France has suffered a string of attacks in recent years, beginning in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen killed journalists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris in revenge for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

Another attacker went on to kill shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, with a total of 17 people dead in three days of bloodshed.

Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State jihadist group attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people.

And last July, a Tunisian extremist rammed a lorry through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on Frances south coast, crushing 86 people to death.

In November, French police broke up an alleged jihadist terror ring which was thought to be planning to attack Paris.

The Louvre was already suffering from a fall in visitor numbers after the series of attacks in France.

Over the last two years, numbers are down about two million, casting doubt on its claim to be the most visited museum in the world.

Last year, there was a 15% slump in visitors compared to 2015, to around 7.3 million.
Tens of thousands of visas were revoked under US President Donald Trumps travel ban affecting seven Muslim-majority countries, the state department said on Friday.

Fewer than 60,000 individuals visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the executive order, said William Cocks, a spokesman for consular affairs at the state department.

Earlier news reports, citing a government attorney at a federal court hearing, put the figure at more than 100,000 visas.

Cocks said the visas had been voided for now but may be restored without travellers needing to apply again once the ban is lifted.

A provisional revocation means the Department of State has invalidated a visa for use to travel to the United States and apply for entry, but may restore the visas validity at a subsequent time without requiring the traveller to submit a new visa application, he said.

We will communicate updates to affected travellers following the 90-day review, Cocks added.

The immigration executive order signed by Trump a week ago temporarily halted the US refugee program and imposed a 90-day suspension on people travelling from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Trump said the measures would help protect Americans from terrorist attacks.

Under President Barack Obama, Trumps predecessor, the United States added those seven countries as countries of concern under its visa waiver program, effectively toughening U.S. visa procedures for individuals who visited those places during the past five years.

Trumps executive order was at least in part informed by those restrictions. The new president, who took office on Jan 20, went further by temporarily barring passport holders from those seven countries.

Under Trumps order, people from the seven countries who hold dual citizenship would be allowed to enter the United States on the passport of a non-restricted nation.

The New America think thank says the largest majority of jihadist terrorists in the United States have been American citizens or legal residents. It added none of the deadly attackers since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks emigrated or came from a family that emigrated from one of these countries.

Foreigners on the visa waiver program killed no Americans in terrorist attacks in over 40 years, according to the CATO Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.
The Trump administration said on Thursday that Israels building of new settlements or expansion of existing ones in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements.

While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful, said White House spokesman Sean Spicer.

The statement is a break from President Donald Trumps previously full-throated defence of Israeli settlement building.

Since Trump came to office, Israel has approved a slew of new construction in existing settlements, the type of act that critics say risks making a two-state solution impossible.

Israel recently unveiled plans for 3,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, the fourth such announcement in the less than two weeks since Trump took office.

The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month, Spicer said.

Trump is scheduled to welcome Netanyahu to the White House on February 15.

The statement could disappoint Israels far-right, which had hoped Trump would give an unqualified green light on rapid settlement construction in the occupied areas Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

In the first Israeli reaction to the statement, Danny Danon, Israels ambassador to the UN, said it was too early to tell how it would affect future building.

Its still too early to tell ... I would not categorize this as a U-turn by the U.S. administration but the issue is clearly on their agenda ... the issue will be discussed when the prime minister (Netanyahu) meets the president in Washington, Danon told Israel Radio. We will not always agree on everything.

Settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem are viewed as illegal under international law and major stumbling blocks to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians want for their own state.

While former president Barack Obama grew frustrated with Israeli settlement building and declined to veto a December 23 UN Security Council resolution condemning settlements, Trump had called for the resolution to be vetoed.

The Republican president has moved quickly to befriend Israels prime minister, and the pair spoke by telephone on Sunday.

As the president has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region, Spicer said.

Trump has previously said his son-in-law Jared Kushner would play a role in trying to negotiate peace.

The idea of an Israeli and a Palestinian state coexisting has underpinned peace efforts for decades.

Trump has also said he plans to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem - a measure that the Palestinians have fiercely condemned.

If the US embassy is moved to Jerusalem, it would break decades of US policy and be at odds with the overwhelming majority of other nations, which believe the status of Jerusalem must be resolved through negotiation.

Trump has also come under fire for failing to specifically mention in his Holocaust remembrance statement on Friday the six million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide.
Any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an effective and overwhelming response, US Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Seoul Friday as he sought to reassure Washingtons Asian allies following President Donald Trumps inauguration.

Mattis was in the South Korean capital before going on to Tokyo, on the first overseas tour by a senior Trump administration official as concerns rise about the direction of US policy in the region under the protectionist and fiery leader.

South Korea has enjoyed US security protection since the 1950-53 Korean War, but on the campaign trail, Trump threatened to withdraw US forces from it and Japan if they do not step up their financial support.

Some 28,500 US troops are based in South Korea to defend it against the nuclear-armed North, and 47,000 in Japan.

Pyongyang was continuing to engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour, said Mattis, who first came to the South as a 21-year-old lieutenant in the US military.

South Korean Christians supporting US President Donald Trump wave flags during a rally to welcome the visit of the US Defense Secretary James Mattis in Seoul on February 2, 2017. (AFP Photo)

Any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming, Mattis told reporters ahead of a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-Koo.

He was in Seoul to underscore Americas priority commitment to our bilateral alliance and make clear the administrations full commitment to defending South Koreas democracy, he said.

Han added that the alliance reaffirms its firm will and strength to remain unwavering against all challenges and adversaries.

North Korea carried out two atomic tests and a series of missile launches last year, and casts a heavy security shadow over the region.

Leader Kim Jong-Un said in his closely-watched New Year speech that Pyongyang was in the final stages of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile, prompting Trump to tweet: It wont happen!

Top priority

On Thursday Mattis and South Korean prime minister Hwang Kyo-Ahn agreed to push through with the deployment of a US missile defence system strongly opposed by China.

The two confirmed that they will go ahead with the installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in the South this year as planned.

Beijing fears it will undermine its own ballistic capabilities, weakening its nuclear deterrent. It has repeatedly condemned the move as destabilising regional security, and imposed measures seen as economic retaliation in South Korea.

The dispute makes it harder to convince Beijing -- the Norths most important diplomatic protector and main provider of aid and trade -- to act against its neighbour, analysts say.

Deepening tensions between China and the US adds to the Norths strategic value in the eyes of China, Lee Ji-Yong, a professor at South Koreas government-financed Institute for Foreign Affairs and Security told AFP.

It will make more difficult for the US to persuade China to cooperate in pressuring the North to give up its nuclear arsenal.

A mock North Korea's Scud-B missile, center left, and South Korean missiles are displayed at Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea. (AP Photo)

Mattis visits to South Korea and Japan, he added, were a message that the Trump administration is giving top priority to ensuring security on the Korean peninsula against North Koreas nuclear sabre-rattling and the US is a reliable security partner in the region.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe -- who is scheduled to meet Trump next week in Washington -- told lawmakers he intends to press Mattis about the significance of the Japan-US alliance.

Mattis tour comes as relations between the US and other world powers such as Mexico and Australia get off to a rocky start.

The Washington Post reported late Wednesday that Trump ripped into his Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull during a call last week, with the US president apparently fuming at a refugee accord he called dumb and cutting the conversation short.

Australia is a close US ally, and one of the so-called Five Eyes countries with which the US routinely shares sensitive intelligence.

Trump has meanwhile angered Mexicans by ordering the construction of a massive border wall and vowing to make their country pay for it.
A gang of six paedophiles convicted of raping girls aged 11 and 13 years yelled Allahu Akbar as they were led out of a court in northern England following their sentencing totalling more than 81 years for the crimes.

The men in their 30s, believed to be of Pakistani-origin, were sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court on Thursday after they were found guilty of drugging and then abusing two girls between 1999 and 2001.

Basharat Dad was jailed for 20 years, his brother Nasar Dad for 14 years and six months and their uncle Tayab Dad for 10 years.

Matloob Hussain was sentenced to 13 years in prison, Mohammed Sadiq was given 13 years and Amjad Ali was given 11 years, according to The Yorkshire Post.

Judge Sarah Wright described how one of the girls was plied with alcohol and drugs and was having sex with a number of men from the age of 11 before she fell pregnant in 2001.

As a result of what happened to her, her childhood and adolescence was taken from her. She remarkably transformed her life from thereon, putting her own child first. Hers is a tale of the most astonishing dedication and bravery, the judge said.

Mark Langan from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the men were guilty of a catalogue of vile sex offences against the two young girls.

The girls were targeted by these men because they were naive and vulnerable. They were given alcohol and cannabis and intimidated into performing sexual acts. On one occasion one of the young girls was locked alone in a flat for hours without food, water or electricity, he said.

One of the victims, in a statement read to the court, said: Theres evil and truly evil people in the world. I feel my child was the product of pure evil.

The sentencing marks the end of a series of three major trials after the Jay Report on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham, northern England, in 2014.

Professor Alexis Jays report had found that more than 1,400 children had been groomed, trafficked and raped in the town over a 16-year period.

The three trials - based around two families and their associates - have resulted in 18 people being jailed for sentences totalling more than 280 years.
The massacre at a Quebec City mosque left Canada in shock but it has also unified the country in solidarity with the Muslim community, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the funeral for three of the six men killed in the attack.

Trudeau on Thursday addressed the thousands packed into Quebecs Maurice-Richard Arena in Arabic, saying, As-Salaam-alaikum, which means peace be unto you, drawing rounds of applause.

The Liberal Party leader stood before the caskets of Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi and Aboubaker Thabti, which were draped in flags of their homelands.

Read: 6 killed in Quebec City mosque shooting, Trudeau calls it cowardly attack

It is with a heavy heart that we come together this afternoon to grieve the loss of these innocent lives. But as a community and as a country, together we will rise from this darkness stronger and more unified than ever before. That is who we are, Trudeau told the crowd.

Thabti, 44, was a pharmacist of Tunisian origin who had three children. Belkacemi, a 60-year-old father of two, was from Algeria and was a professor at Universite Laval. Hassane, a 41-year-old also from Algeria, was a father of three and worked in information technology for the Quebec provincial government.

Trudeau called them devoted fathers who worked hard to ensure their families had a bright future -- a dream, he said, that Canadians have known and shared for generations.

Those men, along with three others, were killed when a gunman entered the mosque and opened fire during evening prayers. Nineteen more were wounded.

Funeral ceremony for three of the victims of the Quebec mosque attack, in Montreal, Quebec on Thursday. (AFP photo)

University student Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, has been charged with murder and attempted murder. He was arrested Sunday night following the attack. Bissonnette was a fan of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and US President Donald Trump, and acquaintances said he took extreme nationalist, pro-Le Pen positions at Laval University and on social media.

Read: Quebec shooting suspect a nerdy outcast, fan of Frances right-wing Le Pen

Quebec Mayor Denis Coderre, who was among the dignitaries at the funeral, said the attack was a blow to everyone.

I think that we are all suffering from the shooting, he said. Not just the Muslim community, its not just the people of Quebec. Everyone is suffering from this.

Philippe Couillard, premier of Quebec province, noted all six dead were fathers like him. They were sons and brothers and uncles, like me, like us. Friends, co-workers, like us. They were us. They were loved, appreciated, respected, and they always will be. We wont forget them.

I want to tell Muslim Quebecers: You are at home here. We are all Quebecers, Couillard said.

A funeral is expected in Quebec City on Friday for the three other victims: Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42; Ibrahima Barry, 39; and Azzedine Soufiane, 57.
Salvos of artillery shook eastern Ukraine on Thursday, the fifth day of escalated fighting between government troops and Russia-backed separatist rebels. Two Ukrainian troops were killed overnight and 10 others wounded, the government said, while rebels said one of their fighters was killed.

Reporters for The Associated Press heard Grad rocket launchers fired on both sides of the conflict during the night. In the afternoon, shelling was heard in the distance from Avdiivka, a government-held town just north of Donetsk, the largest rebel-controlled city.

In Donetsk, rebel authorities said two civilians were injured in shelling. At least 12 people have been reported killed since the fighting around Avdiivka surged over the weekend.

More than 9,700 people have been killed since the war with separatist rebels began in April 2014. An agreement reached nearly two years ago called for a cease-fire and a pullback of heavy weaponry by both sides, but skirmishes persist.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday accused Ukraine of starting the latest escalation to rally support from the new U.S. administration and other Western powers.

Ukraine is concerned that President Donald Trump could roll back some sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine, and that European Union members could follow suit.

The Ukrainian leadership needs money, and the best way to get the EU, the U.S. and international organizations to pay is by posing as a victim of aggression, Putin said in Budapest after a meeting with Hungarian President Viktor Orban.

Shelling over the weekend damaged water, heating and electricity supplies in Avdiivka amid a strong cold snap. Residents nerves were raw.

I was born in 1941. I was in a war at birth and now I see it again, said Valentina Pasternak, as she stood on her porch clutching two loaves of bread brought by aid workers. A shell had landed in her yard.

By Thursday, water and heat had been partly restored, but Avdiivka remained without electricity.

In Brussels, European Union President Donald Tusk urged Moscow to pressure the separatists to make sure the flare-up of fighting ends and a cease-fire is restored.

Russia should use its influence to disengage the Russia-backed separatists, Tusk said.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, maintained a low-key approach with a restrained tone that may reflect the start of a new U.S. approach to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The United States on Friday sanctioned 13 individuals and 12 entities under its Iran sanctions authority, days after the White House put Tehran on notice over a ballistic missile test and other activities.

In a statement on its website, the US Treasury listed the sanctioned individuals and entities, some of which are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.

The move is the first against Iran since U.S. President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20. The sanctions were similar to actions taken by the Obama administration targeting Irans ballistic missile network.

The new designations stuck to areas that remain under sanctions even with the 2015 nuclear deal in place, such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Irans ballistic missile program.

Todays action is part of Treasurys ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA, Treasury said, a reference to the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers.

Among those sanctioned on Friday were companies, individuals, and brokers the U.S. Treasury said support a trade network run by an Iranian businessman, Abdollah Asgharzadeh.

Treasury said he supported Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group, which the United States has said is a subsidiary of an Iranian entity that runs Irans ballistic missile program.

Treasury also sanctioned what it said was a Lebanon-based network run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military body that is also powerful in Iranian politics and the economy.
Three soldiers and emergency service worker killed, 18 soldiers and one rescuer wounded in Donbas in past day

Three Ukrainian servicemen and one official from the State Emergency Situations Service were killed and 18 military and one rescuer were wounded in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) zone in Donbas in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Defense Ministry official for ATO issues Oleksandr Motuzianyk said.

"Three Ukrainian servicemen and one official from the State Emergency Situations Service were killed were killed and 18 Ukrainian servicemen and one State Emergency Situations Service official were wounded in action in the past 24 hours," Motuzianyk told a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.
The new deputy director of the CIA is a career spymaster who once ran a CIA prison in Thailand where terror suspects were waterboarded  a harsh interrogation technique President Donald Trump has supported.

CIA director Mike Pompeo announced Thursday that he has selected Gina Haspel to be the first female career CIA officer to be named deputy director. She has extensive overseas experience, including several stints as chief of station at outposts abroad. In Washington, she has held several top senior leadership positions, including deputy director of the National Clandestine Service and deputy director of the National Clandestine Service for Foreign Intelligence and Covert Action.

She also had a role in the CIAs former covert program where suspected terrorists were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning. More than a decade after it was last used, the CIA is still haunted by the legacy of a tactic that the US government regarded as torture before the Bush administration authorized its use against terrorist suspects.

Its unclear if Pompeos pick signals an attempt to restart the harsh interrogation and detention program. Last week, news organizations obtained a copy of a draft executive order that would order up recommendations on whether the US should reopen CIA detention facilities outside the United States. It also orders a review of interrogation methods used on terror suspects and calls for suggested modifications that would not violate the US legal ban on torture.

Haspel briefly ran a secret CIA prison where accused terrorists Abu Zubayadah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke earlier to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. She also helped carry out an order that the CIA destroy its waterboarding videos. That order prompted a lengthy Justice Department investigation that ended without charges.

Trump, who has pushed for tougher interrogation techniques, said he would consult with Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis before authorizing any new policy. But he said he had asked top intelligence officials: Does torture work? And the answer was Yes, absolutely.

Christopher Anders, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Washington office, said he was gravely concerned about Pompeos decision to choose Haspel.

Pompeo must explain to the American people how his promotion of someone allegedly involved in running a torture site squares with his own sworn promises to Congress that he will reject all forms of torture and abuse.

Asked during his confirmation hearing whether he would restart the CIAs use of harsh interrogation techniques that fall outside what is lawful in the Army Field Manual, Pompeo said: Absolutely not. Moreover, I cant imagine that I would be asked that by the president.

But Pompeo also said hed consult with CIA and other government experts on whether current restrictions on interrogation were an impediment to gathering vital intelligence to protect the country or whether any rewrite of the Army Field Manual is needed.

In the CIAs announcement, Haspels career was lauded by veteran intelligence officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who recently retired.

It speaks well of him for picking a seasoned veteran of the agency who is widely and deeply respected by the workforce as well as those outside the agency, Clapper said in a statement. She has also been a strong proponent for integration, not only within CIA, but across the intelligence community.
A Singapore court sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to four strokes of a cane and more than 26 months in jail for molesting a young hotel intern while on holiday in the city state last year, the Straits Times newspaper said on Friday.

Bander Yahya A. Alzahrani, 39, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, the newspaper said.

Caning is legal for male offenders in Singapore. The judicial system can hand down the corporal punishment for offences such as drug and sexual abuse, vandalism and rioting, or to foreigners who overstay visas by more than 90 days.

The practice also occurs in Saudi Arabia.
Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to US President Donald Trump defended his controversial immigration ban by citing a fake terror attack, the media reported.

In an MSNBC interview on Thursday night, Conway blamed two Iraqi refugees for the fictional Bowling Green massacre.

Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered, Conway said.

However, there has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky, carried out either by Iraqi refugees or anyone else, the Washington Post reported.

Conway was likely referring to two Iraqi citizens living in Bowling Green who were arrested in 2011 and eventually sentenced to federal prison for attempting to send weapons and money to al Qaeda in Iraq for the purpose of killing US soldiers, according to a news release from the Department of Justice.

Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, was sentenced to life in federal prison, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 31, to 40 years in federal prison, followed by a life term of supervised release. Both men pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges.

Both men admitted having taken part in attacks against US troops in Iraq, not in Bowling Green.

In the interview, Conway also reiterated claims from Trump that his refugee policy is similar to what (former) President Barack Obama did in 2011 when he banned visas for refugees from Iraq for six months.

Conway said it was brand new information to people that Obama enacted a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee programme.

However, this was also untrue.

Former Obama administration officials told the Washington Post that there was never a point when Iraqi resettlement was stopped or banned.

In the aftermath of the arrests of the two Iraqis living in Bowling Green, Obama imposed more extensive background checks on Iraqi refugees, and the new screening procedures created a dramatic slowdown in visa approvals.
French President Francois Hollande on Friday criticised unacceptable pressure on the European Union from his US counterpart Donald Trump, who has predicted a break-up of the bloc.

It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be, Hollande told reporters at an EU summit in Malta.

Who really knows what the US president wants, particularly for the transatlantic alliance, and on the sharing of expenses that he calls a burden, Hollande added.

Asked what he thought of EU leaders, like those of Hungary and Poland, who were leaning towards Trump, Hollande said: Those who want to forge bilateral ties with the US are of course well understood by the public.

But they must understand that there is no future with Trump if it is not a common position. What matters is solidarity at the EU level. We must not imagine some sort of external protection. It exists through the Atlantic alliance, but it cannot be the only possible route, because who knows what the US president really wants, particularly in relation to the Atlantic alliance and burden-sharing?

We in France have a defence policy. We fear nothing  We must have a European conception of our future. If not, there will be  in my opinion  no Europe and not necessarily any way for each of the countries to be able to exert an influence in the world.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile said the best way for the 28-nation bloc to deal with a US administration that seems ambivalent to Europe is to push forward with its own plans.

I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands, Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.

And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations, she added.

That is why for me, talks about Europe are here in the foreground and not to deal with other parts of the world.

In Malta, the EU leaders are to discuss relations with Trump during the second half of the summit, after major talks about cutting illegal migration across the Mediterranean from Libya.

Trump has alarmed many in Europe by previously backing Britains decision to leave the EU, predicting that more countries will jump ship and calling the US-led NATO military alliance obsolete.

(With inputs from Guardian)
When war broke out in Syria and the kidnappings began, Reema Duhman used a three-hour curfew to slip out of the country in 2012 and made her way to Seattle.

Duhman became a permanent US resident and had almost completed the complicated process of securing a visa for her 16-year-old son, still trapped in the war-torn country, when President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order prohibiting anyone from Syria and six other countries from travelling to the US.

It just broke my heart, you know, when youre waiting for your son and you prepare his room, you know how many clothes I buy for him. Everything destroyed because of Trump, Duhman told The Associated Press in an interview I feel its unfair that he can see his son growing up but we cannot just because we are Muslims.

Duhman is a plaintiff in a federal class-action lawsuit filed in Seattle this week by the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project that claims Trumps order is unconstitutional and violates the Immigration and Nationality Act.

We are facing families being torn apart in blatant disregard of the Constitution, in blatant disregard of the immigration laws that say you should not, cannot discriminate based on national origin when you are issuing visas, said Matt Adams, a lawyer with the group. And all of this in the name of security? No. Thats a joke. This is all about him carrying forward on his promise to ban Muslims.

Read: Donald Trumps sister, a US appeals court judge, decides to stop hearing cases

The case is one of many being filed across the country seeking to lift the travel ban on constitutional grounds. A federal judge in Los Angeles on Tuesday granted a temporary restraining order in one of these cases, prohibiting officials from enforcing the order.

A federal judge in Seattle will hear arguments on Friday for a nationwide restraining order in a case filed by Washington state attorney general Bob Ferguson which claims the order is unconstitutional. Minnesota joined the case late on Wednesday.

Trumps order is causing irreparable harm to the states residents, businesses, and education system and will reduce the states tax revenue, Ferguson said in court documents filed on Wednesday detailing why the state has legal standing to file the lawsuit.

The White House has argued that Trumps immigration ban will make the country safer.

Read: Dont worry as I straighten out the world, says Trump

But Duhman said the only reason she came to the US was to escape the violence of the Syrian war and that she worried constantly about her sons safety.

All Syria is in a state of war even in places that are relatively safe, you never know, she said. Sometimes there are bombings. Sometimes there are kidnappings.

Duhman said her boy is like any other and likes music, guitar and computers. Hes so smart. Hes nice, she said.

But the war has forced him into hiding, she said. She declined to disclose where in Syria he is living to protect his safety. For three years he has not been able to go to school because he was too scared, she said.

Trumps travel ban is keeping her family apart and threatening her sons life, she added.

No justice system in heaven or earth can accept something like that; weare singled out just because were Muslims, she said. I am proud of being Muslim and we are not terrorists.
Myanmars military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims has likely killed hundreds of people, with children slaughtered and women raped in a campaign that may amount to ethnic cleansing, the UN said on Friday.

A report from the United Nations Human Rights office, based on interviews with 204 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, found it was very likely that crimes against humanity had been committed in Myanmar, echoing previous UN accusations.

The so-called area clearance operations launched by the military in northwest Rakhine state on October 10 have likely resulted in several hundred deaths, the report said.

Witnesses had testified to the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food, the report said.

One woman told UN investigators how her eight-month baby boy had had his throat slit. Another was raped by soldiers and saw her five-year-old daughter killed as she tried to stop them.

Rohingya refugees also recounted gruesome violations allegedly perpetrated civilian fighters working in collaboration with the military and police.

Three children aged six or younger were slaughtered with knives, according to the report.

What kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mothers milk, UN rights chief Zeid bin Raad Zeid al-Hussein said in the statement.

What kind of clearance operation is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?

A full 47% of those interviewed by the UN said they had a family member who had been killed in the operation, while 43% reported being raped.

Myanmars Rohingya crackdown . (PTI)

Ethnic cleansing?

Rights office spokesman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva that the kind of systematic and widespread violations that we have documented could be described as ethnic cleansing, but noted that was not a legally defined offence provable in court.

The report said the violence was the result of purposeful policy designed by one group to remove another group from an area through violent and terror-inspiring means.

The Rohingya Muslims are loathed by many among Myanmars Buddhist majority.

Myanmar refuses to recognise the Rohingya as one of the countrys ethnic minorities, instead describing them as Bengalis  or illegal immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh  even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

Witnesses told the UN they had been taunted while they were beaten and mocked over the failure of Allah to help.

The military crackdown in Rakhine, home to more than one million Rohingya, was triggered by October 9 attacks on border guard posts, which Myanmar and the International Crisis Group say were carried out by foreign-backed militants.

Nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled the ensuing crisis to Bangladesh.

The Myanmar governments own probe into the unrest denied that the security forces had carried out a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.

The government, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the allegations are invented and has resisted mounting international pressure to protect the minority.

But the UNs Zeid, who has previously urged Myanmar to act, hit back again on Friday demanding that impunity for such serious crimes had to stop.

The government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people, instead of continuing to deny they have occurred, he said.

Myanmar government spokesman Zaw Htay had no immediate comment as he had not seen the UN report.

Shamdasani, however, told reporters that the rights office had shared their findings with the government and was engaged with them in Geneva as well as in Myanmar.

Around 66,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Rakhine State to Bangladesh since Myanmars military launched the security operation. The UN humanitarian office recently put the figure at 69,000.

Four UN investigators gathered testimony last month from 220 Rohingya victims and witnesses who fled the lockdown area in Maungdaw in Rakhine for Coxs Bazar district in Bangladesh.

The investigators took evidence, including photographs of bullet and knife wounds, burns, and injuries resulting from beatings with rifle butts or bamboo sticks.

Bangladesh is determined to relocate Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Myanmar to an island in the Bay of Bengal, a Bangladeshi minister said on Wednesday. Critics say the island is uninhabitable. The minister said the move was temporary and Myanmar would ultimately have to take the Rohingya back.
A former Prime Minister of Norway was detained and questioned for an hour at the Dulles airport on Tuesday because his passport showed that he had visited Iran in 2014.

Kjell Magne Bondevik told ABC7 news that he was not allowed to leave after the customs agent spotted a visa to Iran stamped in his passport. He served as Prime Minister of Norway twice - from 1997 to 2000 and 2001 to 2005.

I was surprised and I was provoked. Of course I fully understand the fear of letting terrorists come into this country, said Bondevik, adding that it should have been obvious that he poses no threat as a terrorist to the United States. Even his passport says that he is the former PM of Norway, a US ally.

Bondevik was told that he was not being detained because of President Donald Trumps recently-imposed travel ban on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

A 2015 law signed by Obama places restrictions on citizens even from Norway, one of the countries that falls under the US Visa Waiver Program. However, exceptions are made to people who travelled to one of the seven countries on behalf of international organisations.

But he says this is not his first trip to the States since his visit to Iran and yet it was the first time he was subjected to questioning. Bondevik is president of a human rights organization called The Oslo Center and in 2014 he went to Iran to speak at a human rights conference there.

Bondevik also said that he had contacted the US Embassy in Oslo prior to his trip and was told that all he would need to enter the States is his passport and electronic travel authorization (called ESTA).

What reputation do you want to make of the US abroad, he told ABC7 news. He was visiting the US for the National Prayer Breakfast, an event attended by Trump.

This report comes a day after the terse phone conversation between Trump and Malcolm Turnbull, the Prime Minister of Australia, another staunch US ally. T he Washington Post reported that Trump blasted Turnbull when the latter brought up the issue of honouring the Obama administrations undertaking to take in 1,250 refugees who are in Australias offshore detention centres.
The Trump administration on Friday announced new sanctions against Iran, naming 25 entities and individuals connected to the countrys ballistic missiles programme and talked tough on Russia and Israel, veering its foreign policy closer to the mainstream than before.

The administration had put Iran on notice earlier, after it conducted a missile test, and President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter, Iran is playing with fire - they dont appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me!

Just hours later, his administration announced the new sanctions. This is mainstream US foreign policy, as is being tough on Russia, which the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, was in her maiden speech at the Security Council. The Crimea-related sanctions will remain till Russia backed out, she said.

The Trump White House also steered its West Asia policy closer to that of the position of all recent administrations, telling Israel on Thursday expanding the contentious settlements will not help in achieving the goal of peace.

US foreign policy shows signs of shift to constancy after 2 weeks of gobsmackers, Strobe Talbott, president of Brookings, a leading US think-tank, noted in a Tweet with a link to a news article making that same argument.

Trumps first two weeks in office were marked by exchange of unconditional love with leaders of Israel and Russia and angry phone calls with leaders of close allies Australia  he didnt hang up, his officials are insisting  and Mexico.

There was also the usual saber-rattling directed at China, starting with Trump  before he assumed office  accepting a congratulatory call from the president of Taiwan, upending Americas decades-long one-China policy.

The Thursday turnaround came the day Rex Tillerson took charge as secretary of state. Though it wasnt clear if he had anything to do with it, he and defense secretary James Mattis are expected to be a moderating influence on Trump.

Mattis, on his first trip since taking over the Pentagon, reaffirmed Americas commitment to its mutual defence treaty with Japan when he met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Friday. Earlier in the South Korean capital of Seoul, Mattis said any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an effective and overwhelming response as he sought to reassure Asian allies.

The White House statement on Israel said the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal (of peace).

Unlike past presidents, Trump doesnt see Israels settlements in occupied territories as an impediment to peace, and the statement made that point but also, very gently and very noticeably, asked Israel to refrain from fresh expansions.

Israel has announced thousands of new housing units in existing settlements since Trumps inauguration. But earlier this week, it spoke of plans to construct an altogether new settlement in West Bank, a first in decades, expanding the boundaries.

The White House statement said Trump will be discussing these and other issues with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had shared a publicly prickly relationship with former President Barack Obama, when they meet on February 15.

On Russia, the Trump administration was more forthright and plain. The United States continues to condemn and calls for an immediate end to the Russian occupation of Crimea, Haley said, adding, Crimea is a part of Ukraine. Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine. Hers were the harshest remarks yet from an administration widely seen as soft on Russia.

On Iran, the administration was predictably tougher, as Trump had himself vowed to be as a candidate. National Security Adviser Michael Flynn told reporters on Wednesday the US was putting Iran on notice after it conducted a missile test on January 29.

As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice, Flynn told reporters at the White House news briefing on Wednesday, without tying it to a specific reason. He had no spelt out the consequences for Iran for failing to abide by the notice.

Senior officials had indicated on background than an entire range of options were available and did not deny or confirm if they included the use of military. Sanctions, a tool used before by past administration, was certainly among them.
A brief video clip of Donald Trumps granddaughter singing in Chinese is circulating to strong approval on the internet in China, even while some criticised the US presidents failure to send greetings for the Lunar New Year.

The clip posted by Trumps daughter Ivanka shows 5-year-old Arabella Kushner singing best wishes for the holiday while playing with a traditional Chinese puppet.

On Wednesday, Ivanka and Arabella made a surprise visit to the Chinese Embassy in Washington to take part in the festivities, a photo of which landed on the front page of the official China Daily newspaper Friday. Arabella had already drawn considerable attention in China in November when a video clip of her reciting an ancient Chinese poem lit up the internet.

Arabella singing a song she learned for #ChineseNewYear. Wishing everyone an amazing year to come during these days of celebration.  A video posted by Ivanka Trump (@ivankatrump) on Feb 2, 2017 at 4:30am PST

While the Trump women received praise, the lack of a greeting from the president triggered heated discussion among the Chinese public over the possible ramifications for bilateral relations, the official newspaper Global Times said Friday.

The paper noted that Trumps most recent predecessors Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all delivered Lunar New Year greetings to Asians who celebrate this festival.

Some Chinese (internet) users felt Trump was being disrespectful by not sending a greeting, the paper said.

The Lunar New Year, which this year fell on last Saturday, is Chinas most important traditional holiday, a time for family gatherings, feasts and the exchange of greetings between relatives, friends and work colleagues. It is also celebrated in several other Asian countries and among Chinese communities worldwide.

Comments on the internet largely focused on what many Chinese view as a hawkish attitude by Trump and his administration toward China, with many saying the lack of a greeting should be seen as a deliberate snub.

Trump has accused Beijing of manipulating the value of its currency to gain an advantage in trade and threatened to impose a 45 percent tariff on imports from China. Hes also criticised Chinas military buildup in the South China Sea and accused Beijing of doing too little to pressure neighbour North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

China has rejected the accusations and has in fact been spending heavily from its pile of foreign currency reserves to prop up the value of its currency, which would make exports more, not less, expensive.

On the streets of Chinas financial hub of Shanghai, residents were full of praise for Ivanka and her daughter, while mixed on the significance of the lack of presidential greeting.

A bridge of friendship is needed between China and the US., said Chen Zhijun, 30, who works in gold sales. Not sending a New Year greeting, he added, definitely is not helping. Maybe it is because he is new and has too much to deal with.

Im glad to see his daughter and little granddaughter being friendship messengers ... it is a sign of being nice, Chen said.

A 35-year-old bank worker who gave only her surname, Yu, said Chinese needed to shrug off any perceived slight and doubted whether the lack of a greeting would have any substantive impact.

We should have the mentality of a major country and have the confidence not to be bothered about this, Yu said.
Decision on and date of referendum on NATO accession depends on Ukraine attaining bloc's standards

The decision to hold a referendum on acceding to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the date of the vote will depend on Ukraine fulfilling conditions and criteria for joining the political-military alliance, Deputy Presidential Administration head Kostiantyn Yeliseyev has said.

"Certain conditions must be met in order to hold the referendum. Of course, the decision and notional timetable for conducting the plebiscite depend on Ukraine attaining all conditions. And the key condition is reaching a high-enough level of NATO standards," he said in Kyiv on Friday.

Yeliseyev said Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's recent interview for a German publication confirmed the already well-known position that Ukrainians themselves must vote in favor of accession.

"Poroshenko's words should be understood in this context with regards to holding a referendum on joining NATO," he said.

As earlier reported, Poroshenko several days ago in an interview published by the Berliner Morgenpost said he would be ready to hold a referendum on Ukraine's accession to NATO.
The Treaty of Ghent, skillfully negotiated in 1814 by John Quincy Adams (center), ended the War of 1812 with Britain, preserved American rights and territories, and opened the West to expansion.

During the more than two decades of almost constant warfare in Europe that followed the French Revolution, Britain and France formed and realigned alliances, and the United States became entangled between them. Admiral Nelsons decisive victory over the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar in 1805 had forced Napoleon to abandon his dream of invading the British Isles,but the French emperor had retaliatedsetting out to destroy the British economy by cutting off its vital import-export trade with the Continent.

Britain also took action. Deploying its 900-ship navy, it cordoned off Europe with a blockade that severed France from its overseas empire. The United States, asserting the doctrine of neutral rights, developed the second largest merchant fleet in the world as it absorbed the French Caribbean trade. Between 1792 and 1807, the American carrying trade with both combatants expanded five fold.

It was helped along by the many seamen who deserted the Royal Navy, exchanging brutal, lifelong discipline for more lenient, limited tours of service at higher pay on U.S. ships.British naval historian Brian Arthur estimates that by 1807,of the 55,000 American sailors involved in overseas trade,fully 40 percent had been born in England and Ireland. The Royal Navy, seeking to maintain full complements aboard its blockading ships, stopped and searched some 400 American vessels, scouring them for deserters. Between 1796 and 1812the British impressed 9,991 American sailors.

The War of 1812 came on by decrees. After Napoleon achieved a brilliant military victory at Jena in 1806, he inaugurated his Continental System with the Berlin Decree, a blockade in reverse that closed all European ports to Britain and subjected all goods of British origin to French confiscation. After his victory at Friedland in 1807, he extended the system to include Russia and the Baltic states.

In January Britain had responded to Napoleon by issuing Orders in Council that expanded its own blockade. The first of 14 such orders in 1807, it allowed the Royal Navy to control the European coastal trade by banning direct neutral trading with the ports of Britains enemies. A subsequent order allowed neutral ships to call at British ports, unload for inspection, pay customs duties of 25 percent, and purchase a license before going on to enemy ports. Napoleon retaliated with his Milan Decree, extending to neutrals the embargo on goods destined for the ports of Britain and her allies, Spain and Portugal.He also ordered confiscation of any ship obeying Britains Orders in Council.

Britain insisted that it had no desire to stop all trade to the Continent but merely to recapture the lions share from the predominant neutral nation, the United States. But in tightening its blockade of Napoleon-controlled Europe, the British were seizing all ships bound to or from the Continent and destroying or seizing neutral ships on the Baltic and North Seas, including many Russian vessels.

President Thomas Jefferson believed he could coerce Britain and France into abandoning their arbitrary decrees without going to war. An American nonimportation act of 1806 had barely taken effect when he imposed the more drastic Embargo Act of 1807, prohibiting maritime commerce with foreign states.The embargo did not exactly bring London and Paris to their knees. Instead, in one year the act destroyed 80 percent of U.S.import-export trade and brought on the worst depression since the Revolution. The net tonnage of foreign vessels entering U.S. ports dropped by 50 percent. Jeffersons measure slashed imports from $144 million in 1807 to $58 million in 1808 and commensurately slashed customs duties, the main source of the governments revenues. A few days before Jeffersons presidency ended, Congress repealed the hated Embargo Act.

James Madison, Jeffersons protege and the architect of the embargo, succeeded him. Two days after his inauguration, Madison appointed the first American minister plenipotentiary to Russia. With his own ships affected by the European blockade, Tsar Alexander understood that his government had common interests with the Americans and had approached them to establish diplomatic relations. Madison chose the best-qualified American as minister to Russiathe 41-year-old John Quincy Adams. The second presidents son, Adams had spent nearly half his life as a diplomat to the courts of Europe or in the U.S. Congress, where he had distinguished himself for nonpartisan, independent thinking. Once in Russia, he worked carefully to cultivate relations with the extroverted young tsar and emerged as the dean of foreign diplomats. The scholarly Adams seemed able to open many doors, in part because of his relationship with Alexander; in St. Petersburg the two could be observed conversing, sometimes during long walks along the broad, tree-lined road to Tsarskoye Selo, the tsars country residence, sometimes as they rode together along the Neva River. At his first meeting with Adams, the tsar had praised the U.S. system as wise and just and criticized the obstinate adherence of England to a system of maritime pretensions which was neither liberal nor just.

By 1811 war fever was sweeping through the United States, brought on not only by incessant British impressment but by fear of Indian warfare on the western frontier. Native American leader and strategist Tecumseh, traveling widely, was winning over supporters to a tribal confederation aimed at stopping further white expansion westward. A deadly attack on Tippecanoe,his capital, had only driven Tecumseh closer to the British,who were arming the Indians.As panic swept the frontier, a war hawk faction swept off-year congressional elections, and its leading spokesman, Kentuckian Henry Clay, became speaker of the house. The upshot was a declaration of war against Britain on June 18, 1812; it passed the Senate 19 to 13, the closest war vote in American history, with Federalist New England dissenting. Meanwhile,in Britain, the Privy Council had rescinded its more odious Orders in Council. Hostilities had already broken out along the Canadian frontier by the time British Admiral John Borlase Warren sailed from London with the news of the Crowns about-face. Poor communications would dog American and British leaders throughout the war.

On September 21, 1812, with Napoleons victorious army in Moscow, Count Nikolai Rumiantsev, the Russian foreign minister, summoned Adams. Adams wrote in his diary that the tsar, who had made a recent alliance with Britain,was much concerned and disappointed that the whole benefit of his having made peace and reestablished relations with England was being lost by the new war between the United States and Britain.Alexander detected on both sides a reluctance at engaging and prosecuting this war, and thoughtperhaps an amicable arrangement of the differences could be accomplished by indirect rather than by a direct negotiation. Adams still had not received official communication of the declaration of war from Washington, but he assured the tsar that, in his opinion, America was acting with extreme reluctance. Adams also transmitted to Washington the tsars offer to mediate.

When Madison received the Russian offerfully five months laterhe accepted before ascertaining British concurrence to the negotiations. By then Napoleon had retreated from Moscow, his failure there portending a future British onslaught against the United States by veteran troops now freed from Europe to fight elsewhere. Madison hurriedly selected peace commissioners: Adams; Jonathan Russell, charge daffaires in London; and Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. A Swiss-born minor noble, Gallatin was intimately familiar with European trade, politics, and diplomacy. Madison also recruited Henry Clay, leader of the pro-war faction in Congress, and added Federalist senator James Bayard of Delaware to balance the delegation politically. The tsar had proposed Gothenberg, Sweden, as the site for the peace talks, but the British, wary of the tsars pro-American proclivities, refused.They insisted the Americans choose between London and Ghent, once the medieval capital of Flanders. The Americans would not negotiate in the enemys capital, so Ghent became the de facto choice.

The 19th-century realities of long-distance communication and travel by sea being what they were, the American delegates did not actually converge in Ghent until the summer of 1814,taking up close quarters in Lovendeghem, a rented mansion.Before they could hope to achieve peace with Britain, they had to make peace among themselves. After they dined together for the first time, Adams, head of the delegation, vowed to eat alone. They sit after dinner and drink bad wine and smoke cigars, which neither suits my habits nor my health, and absorbs time which I cannot spare. Adams preferred to write while his colleagues relaxed. After a few choice words of unsolicited advice from the gregarious Henry Clay, Adams consented to rejoin the group, but he refused to share their nightly excursions to the citys revelries. When the puritanical Adams arose at4:30 in the morning to study his Bible, Henry Clays all-night gambling parties in the next room were just breaking up.

On August 7, 1814, as a British invasion armada approached the North Carolina coast, the British negotiators finally arrived. They summoned the Americans to meet them at the Hotel des Pays-Bas, a former Carthusian monastery. Adams balked at this offensive pretension to superiority. He preferred a neutral location, but he nonetheless went along with his fellow commissioners to meet the British delegation.

The lead British negotiator, Lord James Gambier, was a former Lord of the Admiralty who had destroyed the Danishfleet and shelled Copenhagen in 1807, earning him the peerage. Henry Goulburn, a member of Parliament and career bureaucrat, had served as undersecretary of state for war and the colonies. The third delegate, Dr. William Adams, was an Oxford-educated admiralty lawyer. John Quincy Adams, no relation and a lawyer himself, considered the doctor a blunderbuss of the law.

The peace talks commenced to a drumbeat of dismal battlefield news for the Americans, from bloody stalemate on the Niagara frontier to British pillaging in the Chesapeake.Goulburn confidently announced British demands: American surrender of the Maine district of Massachusetts and creation of a 250,000-square-mile Indian buffer state in the Old Northwest that would encompass present-day Indiana,Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and much of Ohio and Minnesota; this was intended to block American settlement in the vast Louisiana Purchase. In addition, the British demanded the abrogation of American rights to dry codfish on Canadian shores, a privilege hard-won by John Adams in the 1783 Treaty of Paris and considered indispensable to New Englands vital cod fisheries.

Between carving out a vast Indian buffer state and dropping the international boundary line by at least 100 miles, these demands meant that the United States stood to lose about one-third of its land, a territory the size of Great Britain. For the British, the Indian reserve was a sine qua non in the treaty negotiations. Moreover, the British refused to discuss impressment yet insisted that the United States be open to British traders. Ten days later they also demanded demilitarizing the Great Lakes and gaining access to the Mississippi River.

Adams indignantly protested that the American delegation had not been instructed to discuss Indian territorial claims or fishing rights. And an Indian buffer zone, he argued, would impinge on United States sovereignty and dispossess 100,000settlers already living in the Old Northwest. Bayard objected as well, claiming that the British terms sounded like those of a conqueror to a conquered nation.

In secret communiques from emissaries in London and Paris, Secretary of State James Monroe had gained advance intelligence of even more extravagant British demands: U.S. renunciation of its fishing rights off Newfoundland, cession of Louisiana to Spain, abandonment of all trade with the British West Indies, and exclusion of all American shipping from the Great Lakes.

The negotiations were on the point of collapsing when instructions arrived from Madison: The commissioners had permission to omit any stipulation on impressment if it became absolutely necessary. Madison was now convinced that, since Napoleon had capitulated, the Royal Navy would no longer need to impress American seaman, and he was eager to speed the peace talks along by eliminating its thorniest issue. The major cause of the War of 1812 had disappeared.

On August 9, 1814, Adams laid out what remained of the American position: mutually agreed-upon definitions of blockade and neutral rights and compensation to individuals for captures and seizures before and during the war. Gallatin tried to counter the British demand for an Indian buffer zone by arguing that the United States already intended to negotiate treaties with warring Indians. And what was to be done with the Americans already settled in the Old Northwest? the U.S.commissioners asked again. British negotiator Adams retorted that undoubtedly they must shift for themselves. Bayard also inquired whether the British wanted to restrict the Indians from selling their lands. Goulburn countered that it was not to restrict the Indians from selling their lands but to restrict the United States from purchasing them. Even as the British commissioners transmitted the Americans answers to London,a 50-ship British armada was sailing into the Chesapeake Bay.

When the ministrys response to the negotiations came back in 10 days, it was obvious the British were becoming more confident that war news from the United States gave them greater leverage for a diplomatic victory. Thus, they insisted that if the United States did not agree to the Indian reserve and sign a provisional article, subject to ratification by Washington and London, the treaty talks would be suspended. They also accused the Americans of harboring the design of conquering Canada. The United States would have to agree to maintain no naval forces on the Great Lakes and tear down its forts and build no more. Further, the British reiterated their demand for a small corner of Maine for amere road from Halifax to Quebec. At this point, Quincy Adams demanded a written statement of the British agenda. It would be another month before the American commissioners read in a London newspaper that the British had routed the U.S. army and burned Washington.

Yet in London, that news had not been received with universal approval. Opposition leader Samuel Whitbread, a leading reformer, condemned British commanders for a deed that even the Goths refused to do at Rome. Apart from sullying the British name, the British commanders had accomplished nothing, in Whitbreads view. But it would be more weeks before the American diplomats heard that the war news was also unsettling the British administration. In early October they learned that the British attack on Baltimore had been repulsed after the futile, all-night shelling of Fort McHenry. At the same time, the main British army-navy invasion from Canada had been reversed by an American naval squadron on Lake Champlain. The British Army had turned back to Canada. The Duke of Wellington, asked to take over the American war, declined. Yet Lord Bathurst, secretary for war and the colonies, wrote to Goulburn that there was no change in the ministrys diplomatic posture. The treaty must be based on uti possidetis, keeping territory already taken.

Bathurst was not being completely candid. Public resistance in Britain was mounting over hated taxes to cover war expenses.In only two years the navys payroll had exploded from 145,000men to 207,000 men. And to the cost of blockading the entire American and European seacoasts had been added the cost of providing escort vessels for merchant ships forced to sail in convoys to ward off attacks by some 1,500 American privateers.

From Paris Wellington reported that crowds were cheering American victories while spitting on the restored King Louis XVIII and clamoring for the return of Napoleon from exile on Elba. The British prime minister, Lord Liverpool, writing to Lord Wellington and to foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh(in Vienna for a pan-European Congress), fretted that the tsar, half an American, was openly sympathizing with the United States and refusing to remove his armies from Poland.

Liverpool also sent off to Ghent a drastically reduced peace proposal. The members of the Privy Council, jettisoning their assurances to safeguard their Indian allies, were scrapping the insistence on an Indian buffer state,on demilitarizing the Great Lakes, and on holding occupied Maine; they would settle instead for a corridor to ease communications between Halifax and Quebec Province.

Adams was suspicious. The tone of the British note was arrogant, overbearing and offensive. He suspected they were stalling. Their mention of utipossidetis proved that, despite their military failures, they still intended to seize more territory to buttress their negotiating position. For five days, Adams, Clay, and Gallatin worked over an answer before rejecting the British call for uti possidetis,again stating that they were not authorized to cede any territory.

Incredulous, Goulburn dashed off a letter to the ministry:Did London want the talks to go on? A courier sped to London, carrying both the American response to the British and Goulburns query. Liverpool wondered whether the Americans were fully rational. He wrote to Castlereagh in Vienna that the war will probably now be of some duration. To Wellington,Goulburn complained bitterly of the Americans extravagant doctrinesthey would never cede any part of their dominions,even though they should have been conquered.

The British were not the only ones worrying about the cost of the war dragging on. Early in November 1814 the United States defaulted on its loans. The treasury was empty. Smugglers,after all, didnt pay customs duties, and between April and October, only 18 customs-paying ships from neutral nations had reached American customs houses.

Despite the good military news from Baltimore and Lake Champlain, the effects of the British blockade caused one Federalist to lament to the Massachusetts legislature, We are in a deplorable situation, our commerce dead; our revenue Gone; our ships rotting at the wharvesOur Treasury drainedwe are Bankrupts.

On October 31 the British delegation informed the American mission that unless they accepted British terms or proposed terms of their own, the war would continue. For the first time the Americans were allowed to put forth an agenda. Most of the original issues were already off the table: impressment,neutral rights, indemnities for seized ships and cargoes. The negotiations had come down to British refusal to honor American cod-drying rights off the Canadian Maritimes and free passage of British ships on the Mississippi.

Adamss father, John, had once deadlocked negotiations for American independence until New Englands mainstay fishing industry was protected. Clay, leader of the war hawks whose constituents had contributed the most troops to the conflict, now fulminated about British ships on western waters,pacing and cursing the notion of swapping the Mississippi fordrying fish. The British were still insisting on holding captured Moose Island, between Maine and New Brunswick.Adams objected to giving up any American territory whatsoever. Bayard favored giving up the island. Mr. Bayard,Adams asked, if it belonged to Delaware, would you? Bayard laughed and replied that Delaware couldnt afford to give up any territory. Gallatin worried that his fellow commissioners would sacrifice the interests of New England. Already the Massachusetts General Court had called a convention of all the New England states to consider forming a confederacy,seceding from the Union, and negotiating a separate peace.There was only one treaty clause over which there seemed no disagreement: Prisoners of war, including the more than 21,000luckless American privateers captured by the British, were to be released and repatriated.

By November 10 the American delegates, aware that their continued silence could be interpreted as tacit acceptance of British terms, were still divided. Adams, in an impassioned speech, suggested they ignore British demands and propose a peace treaty based on the principle of status quo ante bellumto return conditions to the way they were in the United States before the war and to resolve any unsettled questions by forming postwar commissions to negotiate them. Finally, Adams declared that he would cheerfully give [his] life for peace on this basis. Unmoved, Clay suggested that the war should go on. According to Adamss later memoir, Clay felt that three years more of war would make us a warlike people, and that then we should come out of the war with honor. Yet Clay finally agreed to decide later whether he would sign the actual treaty. That night the Americans sent their sixth diplomatic note in two months to the British legation. It arrived just as Wellington was warning that continued unrest in France made it impossible for him to meet the ministrys request to take command in the United States. If renewed warfare broke out in Europe, there is nobody but myself in whom either yourselves or the country, or your Allies, would feel any confidence, he wrote. A peace treaty might as well be signed now.

On December 1, for the first joint meeting since August 19, the Americans drove to the Hotel des Pays-Bas. For three hours the delegations sat across from each other at a great oval table, and, as servants stoked the fire, they debated the articles one by one. Ultimately, the treaty stipulated that peace would bring a return to the status quo ante bellum if both parties ratified the document within four months. Meanwhile,there would be no armistice, and the fighting could continue.After ratification, all places and property, public and private,would be restored to their prewar status. All POWs were to be repatriated as soon as they paid any debts. All unresolved issues would be mediated by postwar commissions composed of one representative of each nation with a friendly sovereign as mediator.Boundary disputes, including the question of Moose Island, would be mediated. (The Canadian-American border would later be extended from the southwest corner of the Lake of the Woods in present-day western Ontario, along the 49th parallel to the Stony Mountains, now Rocky Mountains.) Both nations were to restrain their Indian populations from further cross-border hostilities. With the treaty, the Indians became the greatest casualties of the war,any hint of an Indian reserve gone.

On Thursday, December 22, as he waited for the draft treaty to be approved in London, Adams paced the streets of Ghent.Turning the corner toward the Lovendeghem, he saw Bayard rushing toward him, waving his arms. The British had accepted! Adams sent a courier to Bordeaux to delay the dispatch ship Transit, so that it could carry a copy of the treaty to America.In Adamss chamber that evening, Clay still raged against signing the document, but when Gallatin called for a vote,Clay was outvoted. On December 23 each side accommodated petty changes in wording proposed by the other. After three hours, the commissioners agreed they should meet the next day, December 24, at the Hotel des Pays-Bas to sign the treaty.

At 4 in the afternoon of Christmas Eve, 1814, the five Americans climbed into their carriages, pulled up their lap robes,and rode off to the Hotel des Pays-Bas for the last time. In the great oval hall, both delegations made small corrections.

At 6, as the carillon of St. Bavos Cathedral tolled the Angelus, the eight diplomats signed the Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America. After five months of tempestuous negotiations,Gambier and Quincy Adams exchanged the signed copies.Gambier wished that the peace would be permanent; Adams wrote in his diary, I hoped it would be the last treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States. At 6:30 the peace commissioners of both nations climbed into their carriages and rode to a Te Deum Mass in the Gothic immensity of St.Bavo. To his wife, the future president John Quincy Adams wrote, I consider the day on which I signed [the treaty] as the happiest of my life, because it was the day on which I had my share in restoring peace to the world.

By midafternoon on December 26, British envoy Anthony Baker had reached London. Three days later the cabinet and the prince regent, the future King George IV, ratified the treaty. Henry Clays secretary, Henry Carroll, sailed for the United States with the treaty in hand on January 2, 1815, with Baker accompanying him. They reached New York City after a stormy 40-day crossing of the North Atlantic.

Just as the delegates had been signing the treaty in Ghent,an army composed of Wellingtons Invincibles had sailed from Bermuda. While Carroll was at sea, that army arrived off New Orleans. On January 8, 1815, Andrew Jacksons frontiersmen and pirates mowed down some 2,000 of them. Among the mounds of the dead was their commander, Wellingtons brother-in-law, Sir Edward Pakenham.

News of Jacksons stunning victory reached Washington before Carroll and Baker arrived in the capital on February17. Shortly before midnight, Baker and Monroe exchanged ratified copies. Madison proclaimed the nation at peace the next day. In Vienna, at the peace conference for all Europe,Castlereagh was ecstatic: He wrote Lord Liverpool, I wish you joy of being released from the millstone of an American war.

About two weeks later Napoleon landed in the south of France, bound for Waterloo and a rendezvous 100 days later with the Duke of Wellington.

Willard Sterne Randall has written biographies of Founding Fathers and major figures of the American Revolution. His most recent is Ethan Allen, His Life and Times. He teaches American history at Champlain College.

Originally published in the April 2015 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here.
After graduating from high school in 1940, George Clay Henry worked in the cotton fields of northern Louisiana. But the sight of training aircraft from nearby Barksdale Field wheeling overhead drew him to the U.S. Army Air Forces. Henry enlisted, eventually flying out of Grottaglie, Italy, with the 449th Bombardment Group of the Fifteenth Air Force. Technical Sergeant Henry went on to fly 50 combat missions as a flight engineer and top turret gunner in a B-24 Liberator, Devils Henchmen.

Describe your first mission.

On January 8, 1944, we bombed an enemy airfield near Mostar, Yugoslavia. During the mission, we saw a few bursts of flak but none of our B-24s suffered any real damage. This is a piece of cake, we naively thought. Nothing to it! Of course that didnt last long. But we had a great crew; 10 men from 10 statesvery unusual!

How was the view from the top turret? What was it like to be able to look upon the entire formation of hundreds of aircraft?

It was exciting. We were usually near the front of the formation, so I could see airplanes all over the sky. Not only our four squadrons, but many, many others as well.

How about firing the .50-caliber machine guns, inches from your head?

It was noisybut so was the airplane! My top turret was located right between four large engines. We had cut-offs to keep us from firing into parts of our own airplane, but I remember this one wire antennae, strung from just behind my turret to the top of one of the vertical stabilizers; I would keep shooting that thing off.

Our ball turret gunner, Donald Peterson, was a crack shot and destroyed at least five German fighters. But the confirmation process for crediting kills was so very complicated that after the first couple of times, he didnt even bother putting in claims.

Your bomb group received the Presidential Unit Citation for raids on Ploesti.

The Ploesti oil fields in Romania were huge, with fields and factories, and provided about 40 percent of the fuel for the Nazi war machine. The Germans were masterful at using smoke screens to obscure the terrain and the site was very well protected. We lost so many aircraft over that one target. I was over Ploesti on two occasions and can still remember the flak bursting all around us, and the thick smoke rising from the burning oil fields.

Tell me about the flak.

On February 17, we were sent to bomb German troop concentrations near Anzio to help take pressure off Allied army units struggling to push inland. On that day, the Germans moved their tanks into the hills, swung up their 88mm guns, and used them against our aerial formations. They put up the heaviest flak I ever saw in my 50 missions. It was really bad. Every airplane in our squadron was damaged to some extent, but by some miracle none were shot down. However, our left waist gunnerDonald J. Ameswas killed. Our B-24s hydraulic reservoir was shot by a direct hit and we lost all of the fluid. So when we got back to base, we couldnt lower our wing flaps and I had to hand-crank the landing gear down. Our pilot had one shot to land with functioning brakes, and he did a beautiful job. And our amazing ground crew had the B-24 ready to fly the very next day.

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Your flight engineer role put you in some dicey situations.

At some point headquarters put out an edict saying that if a B-24 carrying concussion bombs couldnt get its bomb doors open over the target, the bombardier was to drop the bombs through the doors. Well, that happened. One time our bomb doors opened only partway and got stuckso we dropped our bombs right through them. Of course that caused the bomb doors to flop around and the B-24 started buffeting. That forced us out of formation, which we hatedthere was safety in numbers and German fighters pounced on stragglers.

As flight engineer I used a four-foot-long stick to measure gasoline before we took off, and each of our bomb arming wires had a loop on the end of it. I rigged up one of those wires to the end of my gas stick and cautiously walked out onto the catwalk. I had an oxygen bottle but no parachutethere wasnt enough room. Other than the narrow metal beam, there was nothing but open sky beneath my feet. Fortunately, I was able to loop those bomb doors, pull them up, and secure them. So we were able to get back in formation. That was one of the hairiest missions.

German fighters often made head-on attacks against bombers. Did you observe that?

Yes. During one mission our bombardier accidentally knocked my intercom loose. So I didnt get any fighter warnings. I was looking toward the tail when the Germans attacked from the front, out of the sun. They went right through and shot down the B-24s on either side of us. Boy, I really screwed up there.

How were your fighter escorts?

Initially our little friends could escort us only partway, mainly for fuel reasons. Fortunately, they began using drop tanks to extend their range. Eventually the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group arrived in our area. Boy, were they good! They escorted us often, and we loved to have them on our side.

Did you and your Fifteenth Air Force comrades feel overshadowed by the Eighth Air Force?

Oh, yes. Before the B-24 really got into the war, the Eighth Air Forces B-17 squadrons were based in England, some not far from London. They got a lot of press attention. I understand how all that got started, but I would say the B-24 was the better airplane. It had a longer range and a heavier load.

Tell me about your last mission.

My 50th bombing mission was on June 11, 1944, just days after the Allied landings at Normandy. We flew all the way to the Black Sea to bomb oil facilities in Bulgaria. Our course required us to fly right by areas known for heavy German fighter activity. A lot of praying that day! We made it to the target, accurately dropped our bombs, and were not attacked by fighters. We lost one B-24 on the mission. After I made it back, my squadron commander recommended I rotate home for a year.

What was it like to be back?

The army first sent me to Mississippi to teach airmen about aircraft instruments. I was expecting to retrain on the B-32 bomber and go to the Pacific for another combat tour. But in the spring of 1945, the army began using a point system to relieve some of us to go home; I qualified. I was at a separation center when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; it delayed my getting home. That upset me.

When I was home, my mother noticed me having trouble holding a cup of coffee with both hands. She began to cryand that made me a nervous wreck! I was eager to get back to the routine of military life. I got an engineering degree and was in the Air Force Reserve. After a combat tour, coming back to an office job felt boring! I had wanted to go to pilot school, and after the war I became a private pilot. When I was recalled for Korea, they told me I was two years too old to become a pilot. I was 28!

When did you meet your wife, Lois?

Oh, I remember that very distinctly. In college, I was rooming with her brother. I was downtown one day, near the bank buildings clock, when Lois and my roommate came around the corner. Thats when I met her. They invited me out to their house, and things just took off from there.

And here you are.

And here we are. 

This interview was originally published in the March/April 2017 issue of World War II magazine. Subscribe here.
To turn around a famous Lincoln phrase, the Mississippi in 1862 was a vexed river. Union passage was blocked by the Southern fortress cities of Vicksburg and Port Hud- son, which in turn relied on standing armies covering both sides of the river for critical support. The Federal conquest of the Mississippi Valley scored one win in early March, when outnumbered U.S. forces managed a victory in northwest Arkansas at the Battle of Pea Ridge. That wrecked the principal Rebel army serving the state and Missouri and cleared the Mississippis west banks for Federal control. M The Confederate high command signaled its priorities when it quickly ordered the remnants of the defeated army to the rivers east side, to support what were deemed more critical operations. This would have closed the chapter and left Union planners with one less problem had it not been for a fanatical Confederate officer, who raised an army from the ashes and launched his own unsanctioned high-stakes campaign to restore Rebel control over the Arkansas-Missouri region, including the Mississippis west bank. Major General Thomas C. Hindman Jr., appointed in May 1862 to take charge of the District of the Trans-Mississippi (which covered Arkansas and Missouri), was a former U.S. Congressman who had served in the Mexican War and at the Battle of Shiloh. He was also an intense Southerner, who believed that in this war the ends justified the means. When he found, on his arrival in Arkansas, that the Confederate army had ceased to exist there, Hindman put the state on a total war footing: He declared martial law, promoted guerrilla operations, aggressively enforced the draft, and regulated the economy through price controls. Within two months, he had cobbled together a sizable military force from volunteers and conscripts and forged a rudimentary military supply system. He had also made a lot of enemies.

Confederate president Jefferson Davis reacted to complaints about Hindman by inserting an officer above him in overall command. Demonstrating once again his odd knack for putting the wrong people in important posts, Davis tagged his old friend Major General Theophilus H. Holmes as Hindmans superior. The bumbling, tentative Holmes surprised everyone by continuing many of Hindmans policies but toning down their enforcement. Hindman also surprised observers by finding ways to work with his new boss. Yet throughout the fall of 1862, his pugnacious posture provoked several minor engagements along the western Arkansas-Missouri border and caused Holmes, in Little Rock, to fret.

In late November Hindman and his 15,000-man Trans- Mississippi Army were head- quartered at Fort Smith, about 160 miles northwest of Little Rock. He was at the extreme end of the Confederate logistical pipeline and in constant need of all military essentials. Taking advantage of a moment when Union forces had pulled back, he sent Brigadier General John S. Marmadukes cavalry north 35 miles through the Boston Mountainsthe highest part of the Ozark Plateau and cut with deep gorgesto Cane Hill, a fertile farming territory not yet picked clean by marauders, making foraging still worthwhile. Marmaduke and Hindman anticipated a countering Union move from Kansas and realized that if the Yankees came far enough south, they would be dangerously isolated from their nearest reinforcements in Springfield, Missouri.

Three Union divisions, grouped as the Army of the Frontier, opposed Hindman. The western wing, supplied out of Fort Scott in eastern Kansas, was led by Brigadier General James G. Blunt, a medical man and grim abolitionist who had a natural affinity for things military. Despite his reputation for drinking and womanizing, he was a hard fighter who could think on his feet. His immediate superior was ill, leaving Blunt in charge of the entire Army of the Frontier. The armys eastern wing, under the temporary command of Brigadier General Francis J. Herron, contained two divisions staging out of Springfield, with their supply umbilical snaking back to St. Louis. Herron, a Pennsylvanian well liked by his men, was a fierce warrior whose determined leadership at Pea Ridge had helped stem the Rebel tide. His actions there merited a Medal of Honor for repeated acts of daring, until he himself was disabled and taken prisoner. The shared Federal focus was on breaking up any organized Confederate forces throughout the region.

In late November Blunt did the unexpected and marched his 5,000 soldiers directly toward the Rebel cavalry, causing Marmaduke to hustle his wagons south. Blunt snapped at Marmadukes rear guard, then, to Hindmans surprise and delight, settled in around Cane Hill instead of returning to Kansas. This gave Hindman the opportunity he had been hoping for. The Confederate plan called for Marmaduke to strike at Blunts force from the south, while Hindman attacked from the east and Native American allies blocked roads to the west. But getting Hindmans resource-challenged forces into marching order consumed several days, and even when the troops began moving on December 3, it was slow going for the men, animals, and rickety wagons. Hindman finally got into position late on December 6 and was preparing for the mornings fight when a courier brought startling information.

Blunt had been alert to the dangers of his exposed position and had made sure he had eyes on Fort Smith. On December 2 he had learned that the Rebels there were stirring, and he had sent orders to Springfield for the rest of the army to join him. It took a hard-riding courier less than a day to cover the 56 miles from Blunts headquarters at Cane Hill to the nearest telegraph operator at Elkhorn Tavern, then just hours for troops at Springfield to be dispatched. With the energetic Herron in charge, no time was lost as the men marched at a blistering pace and without tents or baggage, southwest through Fayetteville to Cane Hill. Incredibly, the Union divisions had been on the move even before Hindmans men had departed Fort Smith, and while the Confederates had been hard pressed to make 10 miles a day, Herrons column had covered 30. So the news delivered to the Confederate commander on the evening of December 6 was grim: A large Yankee column was within a days march on the Fayetteville Road.

Going after Blunt was now out, but after pondering his situation, Hindman favored an option offering an even greater opportunity. His forces would turn to smash this arriving enemy force, then hustle back to finish up with Blunt, clearing west-central Arkansas of Yankee soldiers and opening the door to Missouri. In crafting his new plan, though, he chose to ignore the fact that his men and equipment were ragged from slogging through the Boston Mountains and that his army carried just enough ammunition for one battle, not two. His suffering infantrymen were roused after midnight on December 7 and redirected to meet the new threat, with Marmadukes cavalry trotting ahead. A small force remained to keep Blunt occupied.

First blood went to Hindman soon after dawn, when Marmadukes troopers, having covered about eight miles, surprised several Union cavalry regiments on the Fayetteville Road just south of Prairie Grove Church and scattered them, killing, wounding, or capturing more than 300. A third Federal mounted regiment was engulfed in a panicked retreat that lasted until it reached Herrons main column five miles up the road, ending only after the Union officer in charge shot one cowardly whelp off his horse. Herron quickly forced Marmaduke to backtrack. It was a little after 9 a.m. when the retreating troops found their infantry support forming along an east-west Arkansas ridge some two miles long on forested tableland called Prairie Grove.

The Confederates held the high ground and generally faced north. Herrons column approached from the northeast via the Fayetteville Road, which crossed the rain-swollen Illinois River within cannon shot of the plateau. Prairie Grove itself was covered by a thicketed hardwood forest that concealed most of Hindmans strength, though it also caused him to put his cannons out front for a clear field of fire.

Up to this point Hindman had followed a bold course, but he began to have second thoughts. Instead of striking with all available force, he let his smallest division settle in along Prairie Grove Ridge and kept his largest well to the rear in case Blunt showed up. Perhaps it was the sight of his many stragglers, overcome with fatigue and sprawled along the roadside that gave him pause and made him surrender the initiative.

Herron saw the Rebel cavalry falling back to the timbered heights and believed he was facing a small delaying force. Worried that Blunt was struggling for his life not 10 miles away, Herron was determined to break through the enemy line. Perhaps he should have reconsidered when his initial effort at 10 a.m. to put a battery across the Fayetteville Road river crossing was blasted back by more numerous Confederate cannoneers. Herron was forced to use a ford farther north to safely cross his guns and some infantry support. It was a little before 2 p.m. when his gunners took on the Rebel batteries in what proved to be an unequal contest. The Confederates were constrained by their limited stock of munitions and the fact that nearly every tube was a smoothbore, less accurate than the Yankee rifled cannons.

Herron mounted his first infantry attack not long after 2:30 p.m., sending two regiments forward to capture the visible Rebel batteries. Some 790 members of the 20th Wisconsin and 19th Iowa advanced. The Southern artillerymen had positioned their guns a short distance back from the crest, creating a blind spot in front. Taking advantage of this, the Yankees sprinted up the slope, overran a battery posted near a farmhouse, and plunged into the thickets. The Wisconsin boys then encountered an Arkansas infantry brigade and were staggered, as were the Iowans when they came up to help. A Federal in that maelstrom remembered it as a perfect slaughter pen. After 10 or 15 minutes, half the Yankees had been killed or wounded, and the stunned survivors of the two regiments were in retreat.

More by impulse than intention, a couple of regiments, then most of the Arkansas brigade, flooded down the hill in a spontaneous counterattack. Their action was characteristic of Confederate problems with command and control that day. Hindman remained mostly hands off, leaving it to his division, brigade, and regimental commanders to prosecute the combat, often without reference to any larger scheme. The unsupported Arkansans were quickly targeted by Herrons cannons, which mashed their impromptu foray. It also alerted Herron to the fact that this was no small rearguard. Before he could fully digest that information, he watched the 26th Indiana and 37th Illinois push up the same hillside on orders 30 minutes old.

Their fate was no different from that of the first pair of regiments. When the Illinoisans reached an orchard where Confederates were waiting on two sides, the shot came in one continuous stream of fire, not unlike a severe hail storm, a Union officer recollected. Without waiting for orders from below, the Illinois commander, Lieutenant Colonel John Charles Black, ordered everybody back, saving many of his mens lives. (Blacks heroism throughout the day brought him Prairie Groves only Medal of Honor.)

Completing the days deadly pattern, the retreating Federals were followed by Rebels advancing without orders or support, who were again savaged by Union artillery and infantry. Still, in his effort to overrun what he first thought was a minor Rebel roadblock, Herron had exhausted four of his six available regiments (all at reduced strength because of the straggling) and now was clearly outnumbered. He needed a miracleor Blunts division.

James Blunt was a man in motion early on December 7 as he prepared his troops around Cane Hill for the anticipated Rebel attack. He remained convinced that the enemy was present in considerable force, yet when Union skirmishers pressed the Confederates, it seemed that they did not want to fight but was hard up for amusement, a Kansas soldier remarked. Further clouding the issue, scouts reported that the Fayetteville Road was blocked by Rebel cavalry. Then, around 10 in the morning cannon fire toward Fayetteville alerted Blunt that Hindman was actually fighting Herron.

Blunt fashioned a new plan to engage the Rebel army by pushing northeast along the Fayetteville Road. Some 400 Union cavalrymen plus a battery took the point and soon made contact. The Confederates covering the rear of Hindmans army responded with strength and the advance party withdrew, expecting to meet Yankee infantry but instead finding an open road. In the scramble, marching orders were either garbled or misunderstood, so when the head of the main Union column mistakenly turned off the Fayetteville Road and went northwest toward Rheas Mill (the armys supply depot), the men marching behind dutifully followed. By the time Blunt realized what was happening, most of his army seemed to be heading away from the fighting.

When Blunt reached Rheas Mill, he learned of a road from there that would take him over to the Fayetteville Road more directly than would back-tracking. It also neatly bypassed Hindmans rear guard, waiting on the Fayetteville Road, and had the added advantage of leading Blunt directly to his beleaguered subordinate.

Yet that initially seemed like a moot point, for when the column reached Rheas Mill around one in the afternoon, the soldier grapevine carried word of Herrons defeat and retreat. Blunt resisted the impulse to rush forward and instead dispatched scouts to provide him intelligence. After about an hour he had the information he needed, and his columns were marching at the double-quick, their course marked by a ragged line of discarded blankets and overcoats and footsore stragglers. The terrain was relatively open, so on their own initiative several of his regimental commanders took their men cross-lots to ease congestion on the single-track lane.

Blunt got to the battlefield about 3:15, arriving from the northwest. Within a few minutes he contacted Herron and began forming his Kansans to connect with the Missourians. Hindman had been puzzling over reports that Blunt was heading away from the fighting. Now his questions were answered. The troops hed kept back to watch the rear were now brought up, spreading the Confederate line westward. Two Rebel brigades advanced into the valley, targeting Blunts left flank in the only planned Rebel offensive of the battle. They collided in a spoiling attack.

The rattling of musketrywas terrific, Blunt reported.The contending armies swayed to and fro, each alternately advancing and retiring. At one point Federal officers screamed at their men to lie flat. Hardly had they done so when the line of cannons posted in their rear opened fire with shrapnel shells fused so short that the cannon blast and explosion were almost indistinguishable. The fighting was especially intense around one farmhouse, as the Yankees were slowly but inexorably shoved backward by superior numbers.

With Blunts command disorganized and vulnerable and Herrons little more than exhausted bystanders, the combat reached a tipping point. Still without any central controlling mind(Hindman remained in the rear),Confederate brigadier Mosby M.Parsons was the only officer to see the opportunity and attack.His Missourians, determined to continue the advance and eventually regain their homeland,pressed forward in the face of canister, shrapnel, and musketry until flesh and blood could take no more. Since most of the other Confederates along Prairie Grove Ridge didnt even know what was happening, the attack that could have finished Blunts Union force instead disintegrated.

By the time the combat ended,with positions unchanged, it was,recorded a soldier, so dark that the fire could be seen streaming from the guns at every discharge. Federal cannoneers shot incendiary rounds into distant haystacks to illuminate the field. Unknown to them, numbers of wounded had burrowed into them for succor, only to be incinerated. The cold night brought another horrorpacks of wild hogs, ravenous and determined.

Both commanders took stock. Blunts stragglers were refilling his ranks and there was sufficient ammunition for another days fight. Hindmans stragglers (many unwilling conscripts)were streaming south and his ammunition was virtually gone.Just hours after the fighting ended, the Rebel columns began tramping toward Fort Smith, surprising many in the ranks who felt they had been winning. Hindman covered his withdrawal the next day by convincing Blunt to accept a six-hour truce for both sides to tend the wounded. Blunt later condemned the ruse, but at the time he was probably happy to see the enemy depart, leaving him in possession of the battlefield, a traditional measure of victory. Confederate losses were 204 killed, 872wounded, 407 missing, most of the last deserters. The Federals counted 175 dead, 813 wounded, and 263 missing. By battles end some 8,000 Unionists had engaged 11,500 Confederates.

As to the main players, James Blunt remained Kansas-based and active during the war, dying in 1881 in a Washington, D.C.,asylum, some said from syphilis; Francis Herron fought in the Vicksburg campaign, then from behind a desk in Louisiana and Texas, ending his days in New York in 1902; Thomas Hindman was transferred east in 1863 to fight at Chickamauga and against Sherman in 1864. After the war he tried Mexican exile before returning to Arkansas, where reconstruction politics had become as deadly as combat. He was sitting quietly in his parlor one night in late September 1868, when a shotgun blast through a window ended his life. Some said it was pro-Republican night riders, others looked back to the enemies his harsh policies had made in 1862.

A last chance for the Arkansas-Missouri Confederates to reestablish control over the Mississippi River fizzled at Prairie Grove. Had Hindman succeeded in reaching the west bank, the course of the 1863 campaigns would have dramatically altered. Instead, the primary Rebel force tasked with holding those states was chewed up. Hindmans patched-together force would operate in the Trans-Mississippi throughout the war, and fighting on this front would continue. But it would be limited to raiding parties. The Confederate flag would continue to fly over parts of Arkansas, but Federal control of the Mississippi Rivers west bank in that area remained secure, giving Ulysses Grant the freedom to operate along both sides against Vicksburgwhich surrendered on July 4, 1863.

Noah Andre Trudeau, a producer and writer, is currently working on a book about Abraham Lincolns visit to the war front in March April 1865 and developing a multimedia work about Lincolns life.

Originally published in the April 2015 issue of Military History Quarterly. To subscribe, click here.
It was one of the seminal events of the Vietnam War. In the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 31, 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong attacked military bases, small towns, big cities and provincial capitals all across South Vietnam. The assaults occurred during a cease-fire to celebrate the Lunar New Year, a holiday known as Tet.

The North Vietnamese hoped the Tet Offensive would lead to a popular uprising against the South Vietnamese government and demoralize the American public. After several days of fighting, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces beat back the attackers, and the general uprising did not occur. But in the United States, the surprise and initial success of the attacks shocked people who had been led to believe the war was going well. Public support plummeted in the months that followed.

Thats the big picture. But its not the whole story. Perhaps the broad sweep of Tet is best illustrated through the individual stories of many people in many places. In this issue, we see how the Tet Offensive was woven into the lives of five men who saw the fighting from five different angles.

In our lead story, pg. 32, Jan Patronek, an American adviser with a South Vietnamese unit in the Mekong Delta, was awakened on January 31 and told that bursts of light in the skyinitially thought to be holiday fireworkswere probably signs of enemy attacks. A few days later, Patronek and the South Vietnamese troops were patrolling the streets of a nearby city and battling Viet Cong snipers hiding in the towns buildings.

Also awakened by noises in the early morning hours of January 31 was Robert Komer, working in Saigon as special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Before that night, Komer had been optimistic about LBJs pacification program, designed to repel the Communist threat through economic development initiatives and a military counterinsurgency strategy. The Tet attacks left the program in shambles (pg. 60).

Kyoichi Sawada, one of the preeminent photographers of the war, captured the intense fghting of Tet, particularly during the battle of Hue, in a series of explosive photographs. Several are featured in our portfolio of his work, which begins on pg. 40.

In late 1967, 1st Lt. John E. Gross led a mechanized infantry company helping to rebuild bridges destroyed by the war. Gross unit rarely ran into the Viet Cong and lost no one to enemy fire, as he notes in recollections of the operation starting on pg. 46. Gross later learned that the Viet Cong were trying to avoid firefights as they prepared for Tet.

In May 1968, newspaper reporter Nancy E. Lynch started a column that published letters from the troops. Helicopter pilot Michael Momcilovich Jr. wrote: Back home we hear about the Saigon warrior whose biggest day was the Tet Offensive. True, it was rough, but it wasnt year round. The soldier in the field has it all year round and he gets little thanks for it (pg. 52).

Even though much of the American public was ready to wind down the war after Tet, there were still four years of heavy casualties ahead. Momcilovich was one of them. He was killed one day after he wrote his letter to Lynch.

Originally published in the February 2015 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.
A phone call between Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull and US President Donald Trump related with the US-Australia refugee deal has taken place. Donald Trump called the conversation "the worst by far" of his calls with world leaders that day and he seems to be unhappy with the results.

Struck with the Obama administration, the deal would see up to 1,250 asylum seekers to Australia resettled in the US. Australia has refused to accept the refugees, most of whom are from Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq according to the BBC. Australia holds the refugees in offshore detention centres on the Pacific nations of Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

PM Turnbull was seeking clarification on the future of the refugee deal after Trump signed an executive order barring the entry into the US of refugees and people from seven Muslim-majority countries. The conversation had had to last an hour but was abruptly ended after 25 minutes by Trump.

Refugees are being held on Nauru and Manus Island

Australia announced in November 2016 that the US had agreed to a one-off deal to resettle refugees currently being held on Nauru and Manus Island, in Papua New Guinea. The majority of the refugees held on the detention island by Australia have been there for more than three years.

A total of 1,254 people were being held in the two camps, 871 on Manus Island and 383 in Nauru, as of 30 November 2016, according to The Guardian. Official figures show that 80% of those held on Manus Island and Nauru have been found to be genuine refugees.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, would oversee the deal and the "most vulnerable" would be prioritised. Turnbull was seeking assurances from Trump that the deal would be honoured but the US President said that accepting the refugees would be like accepting the next Boston bombers.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Initiative to deploy UN peacekeeping mission to Donbas still on the table

Ukraine remains an advocate of deploying a UN peacekeeping mission in Donbas, Presidential Administration Deputy Head Konstantin Yeliseyev has said.

"Since the proposal to send in an armed mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has stalled, we hope that perhaps debate will be resumed on the previous initiative of deploying a UN peacekeeping mission to Donbas," he said.

Yeliseyev said the option should be examined and that it would also "be a test for the Russian Federation, if it, in fact, as it declares, seeks to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine."

"If Russia vetoes the decision [at the UN Security Council], it will be an indication of [Russia's] actual position on the situation in Donbas," he said.
1 . EDUARDO PAOLOZZI

February 16 to May 14, Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, E1

If you love godfather of Pop Art Eduardo Paolozzis mosaics at Tottenham Court Road Tube, pictured, youll love Whitechapel Gallerys exhibition of his screenprints, fabrics, collage, tapestry and sculpture.

Scots-born Paolozzi (1926-2005) studied at St Martins and the Slade, worked in Paris in the late Forties, then returned to a studio in Chelsea.

Head of Invention, a huge head sculpted by Paolozzi and inspired by James Watt, was recently moved from the Design Museums old South Bank home to its new one in Kensington.

2. DONT MOVE, IMPROVE! DESIGN SURGERIES

February 25, 10.30am to 4.30pm, New London Architecture Galleries, The Building Centre, 26 Store Street, WC1

Get free advice and inspiration to extend and improve your home. Book a session with architects shortlisted in this years Dont Move, Improve! contest, consult interior designers, engineers, party wall surveyors and landscape architects  and bring the kids for drawing workshops.

3. EDIZIONI ITALIANE

Open until February 19, Heals, 196 Tottenham Court Road, W1 and 96 Bishops Bridge Rd, W2

Visit an Italian pop-up food market, do a Campari cocktail masterclass or join an Italian supper club for a five-course meal, and learn to make pasta. See the Heals website for the full programme and to book.

Ambassadors from big Italian designer furniture and lighting brands Moroso, Riva 1920, Porada, Zanotta, Kartell and Flos will share their expertise. And painting live in the window is graffiti artist Anna Laurini, pictured, originally from Milan but now an east Londoner. You can buy her prints in store.

4. SURFACE DESIGN SHOW

February 7-9, Business Design Centre, Upper Street, Islington, N1

Surfaces, for floors, walls, furniture and even ceilings are the sensory part of design: see them, touch them, and sometimes even smell or hear them.

This show has the latest trends from 170 exhibitors. Its for architects and designers, but readers can visit free on the last day from 11am-5pm. Just show a copy of Homes & Property at the door. Explore a magical blend of technology, art and craft, says colour forecaster Sally Angharad, who has curated a display.

See the award-winning green spectrum gelim flatweave rug, pictured, from 995.

5. SUPERLOCAL 0 MILES PRODUCTION TOUR

February 18, Goldfinger Factory, 13-15 Golborne Road, W10 (visit Design Museum to book)

Superlocal crafting requires locally sourced materials for local use, creating zero transport emissions. Its the ideal of Andrea de Chirico, a designer in residence at the Design Museum in Kensington.

Take this day-long tour, an intro to digital design and craft, making a stool as you go. Lunch at Goldfinger, walk to Portobello Road to choose your fabric, see a CNC machine cutting the stools plywood parts, and learn how to upholster at Kindred Studios in Notting Hill. Price 120 (90 for students).
P re-sale exhibition opens February 11 at Sothebys New Bond Street Galleries. The auction will be held on February 16.

Auction house Sothebys is holding its first ever sale of erotic art.

Erotic: Passion & Desire is an at-times very raunchy romp through the history of eroticism. As you wander the pre-sale exhibition of explicit paintings, photographs, sculptures and artefacts, it becomes clear there is little new on todays erotica menu.

For those seeking instruction, all manner of intimate acts are depicted on anything that can be designed, carved, embellished or viewed. Unsurprisingly, a great many items are listed anonymously as Property of a Gentleman with no further clue as to their sellers.

The lots date from the 1st century AD, with reserve prices starting at 200. Artists whose work can be seen include Antony Gormley, Ettore Sottsass, Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud and Picasso.

HEAD OVER HEELS

La Grande Nevrose (c1896), a sculpture so beloved by the artist, Jacques Loysel, that he refused all offers to sell it during his lifetime, has been in the same collection since 1925 and this is its first time on the market. The nevrose or neurosis of the title is likened to hysteria, or the loss of control  which was considered both consequence and punishment for the excesses of that time. Influenced by Rodin and carved by hand, the reserve for this sculpture starts at 120,000.

180,000: Akt (Nude), from 1917. Artist Egon Schiele died aged 27 a year later

Among works by Egon Schiele in the sale is Akt (Nude), estimated to fetch 180,000. This prime example of the great Austrian artists work was completed at the age of 27, only a year before his death in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

Also on view is a portfolio of nude studies by Aristide Maillol, with a reserve price of 8,000. Gently romantic  unlike many of the lots in this sale  the 43 sketches are in pencil, coloured crayon and watercolour, and the present of these, along with perhaps a trip to the Maillol museum in Paris, would make for a memorable Valentines Day.

Something to wear to surprise the in-laws would certainly be lot 70, a figural necklace, made up of amorous couples and certain parts of the anatomy. Winged Eros is holding a torch, while another figure is entwined with a mythical sea creature. From 5,000.

Or you could simply pull out one of a clutch of snuffboxes at Sunday lunch, with raunchy depictions from the mid-18th century  and reserve prices from 1,000.

ROWAN PELLING, who edited the Erotic Review, writes in her catalogue introduction to the show: Theres wit at play here, too: hence the pin-up and Pop Art in the sale, reminding us that its vital to laugh at what is most serious in life.

Do take a look at Mel Ramoss advertising lithographs (from 5,000 to 7,000) promoting tobacco, Coca-Cola, ketchup and spark plugs, and Zoe Mozerts Beauty by Night (reserve 1,500). One of the few female artists featured, Mozert often posed for her own work.

DONT MISS this copy of Catherine the Greats bedside table.

Reserve price 15,000: copy of Catherine the Greats bedside table

The original was destroyed in a fire, but photographs of it were taken in 1941 by Wehrmacht soldiers and still exist. According to some sources, the cabinet was placed in the Russian empresss private apartments at Gatchina Palace, while according to others, the table stood in one of the palaces of Tsarskoe Selo, on the outskirts of St Petersburg. The reserve price is 15,000.

If beds could talk, then le Lit de la Paiva would have tales to tell. Originally commissioned by one of the most talented and upwardly mobile of 19th-century French courtesans, this bateau-lit was never installed in her hotel particulier at 25 Champs-Elysees.

The self-styled Marquise de Paiva was not only a legendary grande horizontale, but noted art patron, whose parties were attended by Flaubert, Zola and Delacroix and who never actually entertained in this swan- and mermaid-encrusted bed. Rushing to leave France due to the Franco-Prussian war, the bed found its way to one of the most celebrated brothels of the time, La Fleur Blanche.

Paintings of the brothel exist due to Toulouse-Lautrec who set up his easel at the brothel (not a metaphor), and once brothels were declared illegal in France at the end of the Second World War, the bed was sold at auction.

Unusually made of Cuban mahogany, for the lavishness of the wood, the bed is considered the star lot of the sale, with the reserve starting at 500,000.

Pre-sale exhibition opens February 11 at Sothebys New Bond Street Galleries. The auction will be held on February 16.
News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Tuesday, October 25, 4:30  7 p.m.

Orr Area EMS Open House

Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798.

Orr Fire Hall

4540 Lake St., Orr

Tuesday, October 25, 12  6 p.m.

Essentia Health Job Fair

Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org.

901 9th St. N., Virginia
A month has passed since my initial conversation with Pizza Rossa founder and CEO Corrado Accardi. Since then, we have continued our exchange about the fast casual dining industry. Because I was keen to see him in action, Corrado and I met at his restaurant in the City of London and started going through our agenda items, which included, this time around, third-party delivery companies as well as marketing and social media. Naturally, we also had some time to share a couple of slices of his delicious, newly developed 100% organic pizza. However, as an important and large, last-minute order to cater a co-working space came in, Corrado decided to deliver it himself, and so we finished our conversation in a London black cab. Try to imagine 20 to 25 18-inchcartons of square pizzas stacked up in the back of a car, windows steaming from the heat of the freshly prepared goods and two guys talking shop whilst trying to direct the cab driver through the maze of London's East End That's what I call being a true hands-on entrepreneur!

Talking About Industry Disruptors

At a recent industry briefing, Peter Backman, Managing Director at Horizons, asked delegates to think about whether the industry considers third-party delivery companies its partners in crime or its competitors. What is your view on this?

In my opinion, third-party delivery companies have allowed restaurants to gain access to a much larger target audience  increasing potential billings by capitalising on a restaurant's (kitchen-)capacity without the requirement of increased square footage to accommodate these additional customers. In theory, restauranteurs are thus able to report higher revenues whilst incurring only marginally increased costs, resulting in higher profit margins. Additionally, it is important to keep in mind that by using such third parties, restaurants themselves do not have to invest the capital needed to setup their own delivery service  we actually tried this in the past but the monthly costs to hire a van, to employ drivers and to pay the unavoidable parking fines (and the congestion charges in London) were just crushing us. I therefore consider the Deliveroos, Amazon Restaurants and UberEats of this world as our partners.

Corrado, I understand your point of view, but we are in the back of a black cab delivering pizzas to one of your customers. You therefore seem to be selective in your use of the delivery companies and industry disruptors. Technology has opened up the 'home market' for us, the restauranteurs. So, Pizza Rossa is happy to do business with the delivery companies when it comes to gaining access to those customers  including, for smaller orders, which would otherwise require expensive logistics. As long as our business makes money from the customer after deducting our own costs and after paying the commission to the delivery firm, I welcome this incremental revenue. However, I obviously prefer that the larger corporate accounts within a relatively small radius around our premises not go through those third-party intermediaries. If that were the case, then our business would be leaving money on the table. We therefore are taking good care of our existing customers and paying special attention to potential clients in our neighbourhood. So far, this has paid off, because we are receiving most of our larger orders (from 80 to 2,000 people) direct. I might, however, also add that some companies have expressed concerns about 'big data' and who 'owns' the customers  for us, this is not (just yet) a big issue. Yet, I can see how this might be a concern for the 'bigger fish' out there  the larger companies that have a very strong high-street presence, well established brands and a loyal customer following. These firms have already invested a lot of resources into 'securing' and getting to know their customers. So, from their perspective, any firm that is trying to 'interfere' with their customers and might suddenly be regarded as a 'representative' or brand extension of the restaurant brand could be regarded as a threat.

Talking About Social Media

Mustafa Aslandag, founder and CEO of What's Beef, made the bold statement, "Brands don't belong to us; we own them together with our customers." He thus cautioned everyone not to forget that we are in the people business, and if we don't listen to our (internal and external) customers, it is them who can very easily tarnish our brand and bring down our business. What are your views on that? Consumer behaviour has definitely changed. You must educate your customers about who you are and what you stand for. And if you don't manage to get the message right, it is easy for the business to suffer from that. For our business, our brand is a promise of Italian quality, and we have noticed that word-of-mouth, especially driven by the Italian community working in the City, is incredibly valuable for us. Consumers talking to other potential consumers are generating a lot of 'buzz' on our behalf. From that point of view, it is really them who are your 'brand ambassadors.' No matter what your business' marketing campaign tries to communicate to the consumers, he consumers talk amongst themselves, and they will make their own judgement call as to whether they like your brand and if they would want to recommend it to their friends and family. So, yes, we as business owners may not be in full control of our brands, but we are in control of the promises we make. If customers are talking positively about you, it is worth a lot more than traditional marketing or even social media.

Corrado, what is your strategy, then, relating to social media, and how does it support your business plan going forward? We have just recently hired a social media consultancy firm because we decided it was the right time to restart investing in our social media presence  I will let you know how it goes! Initially, we were planning to have this expertise in-house through my business partner Luca Magnani,who has a marketing background. However, he could not dedicate sufficient time to this, so we decided to let the professionals handle it. The idea is for social media to be fully integrated into our business plan since our reach is starting to extend beyond the small radius around our venue. It will focus on engagement, lead generation and brand building. At the same time, we are planning to move deeper into the organic food sector and have invested heavily into developing the first 100% organic margherita pizza in London, for which it took us more than four months to source the right ingredients from Italian-certified suppliers. Hopefully, our already loyal customers are helping to spread the word! Lastly, we want to make sure that customers in general understand what we are all about  and going forward, this might slightly change. Pizza Rossa 2.0 will not only be a consumer brand but also a firm that moves into the catering business and concessions inside office buildings and public spaces. A push into supermarkets might be in the cards in the mid- to long-term future. It may sound a very long shot, but I believe that the versatility of our products will allow us, further down the line, to develop a quality offering, even from automatic self-service machines. Although, the market viability of this is to be proven: call it a gut feeling! Follow us on the various social platforms to stay tuned!

To contact Corrado Accardi, please connect with him at [email protected].

Thomas Mielke

Managing Director

+44 20 7065 1392

AETHOS Consulting Group

View source
Theft of confidential data by hackers is a major threat to businesses worldwide and the hotel industry is no exception, hoteliers remain vulnerable to hackers seeking confidential information such as guests' credit card data and employees' personal information.

Last year, at the Global Hospitality Group's Meet the Money Conference, I participated in a panel on Cybersecurity and we discussed how cybersecurity issues affect the hotel industry.

One of the comments was that hotels, more than most private industries, have to take into account the kind of physical harm that might be done by a hacker. We noted that not only are guest information systems targets, but also the life and safety systems  HVAC, elevators, electricity and so on.

We concluded that while financial theft could impact a hotel and its reputation, a hack of the physical structure of a business could put the hotel out of business.

Locked Out

Our discussion turned out to be prescient when, this week, Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt, in the Austrian Alps, had their systems frozen by hackers, which resulted in the complete shutdown of hotel computers.

The 111-year-old hotel had already been targeted by hackers twice. This time, however, the hackers breached the key card system, made it impossible for guests to enter their rooms and prevented the front desk from reprogramming cards.

The hackers demanded 1500 in Bitcoin, promising that control of the key card system and room locks would be returned. Management of the hotel, fully occupied at the beginning of the winter season, chose to pay the ransom, rather than attempt a solution that could have taken significant time and harmed their 180 guests.

The story could have been worse; once a hacker breaches a system, the system remains open until the vulnerability is eliminated. In this case, the hotel took the precaution of seeking and remediating a backdoor the hackers left (which they tried to exploit, almost immediately) and was able to secure their systems.

The Threat to Hotels

We have pointed out before that hotels are particular targets of hackers. During 2015 and 2016, every major hotel company was breached. In each case, however, hackers attacked hotel point of sale systems for the straightforward goal of obtaining personal information.

This, however, may be the first case where hackers threatened the safety of guests, something much more important. After all, guest safety is paramount, and threats to safety can overcome every other achievement.

Moreover, hotels are complex businesses with overlapping and interconnected systems. Thus, finding a way into one system can allow a bad actor to access other parts of the hotel, giving them the opportunity to demand payment for protection.

Hotel owners and operators should be aware that ransomware is increasingly popular because it provides for almost immediate return on a hacker's "investment." Rather than selling personal information, which rapidly loses value, the use of ransomware gains the hacker an immediate return.

Moreover, as with the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt, hackers will now know the hotel's vulnerability, or leave a backdoor, allowing them to shake down the same institution multiple times.

What Can Hotels Do

Hotels need to take the same steps that other business take to achieve data security:

Analyze risk.

Each business is different, and each business needs to identify the risks it is willing to take, and how it can neutralize the other risks. For a hotel, this can include decoupling systems  preventing, for example, the key card system from access through the hotel's website  or preparing for workarounds. In the case of the Romantik Seehotel Jaegerwirt, the decision has been made to include physical keys, allowing a manual override of the system.

Train Personnel.

Virtually every breach is the result of a human act, whether an error or malicious act. Training personnel to identify risks and avoid them is one of the most effective steps to reduce cyber risk.

Plan for the breach.

No matter what technical or personnel prevention is taken, every system capable of authorized access is vulnerable to unauthorized access. When that happens, it is too late to design the response playbook. Hotels, like other businesses, have to design, implement and test response plans, and update them regularly.
It is safe to say that social media and the marketing force that goes into it are here to stay. This is largely due to the space's ability to continuously evolve. Just 10 years ago Facebook morphed into a mainstream business tool, Twitter arrived, the iPhone exploded on the scene and Android phones followed closely behind. This series of events spurred social growth as platforms began to fulfill needs we didn't even know we had. Today, the number of major social platforms has reached a stable point but that doesn't mean that there will not be continued growth in 2017.

There are over 2.5 billion active social media users worldwide. The big four platforms make up the vast majority of these users consisting of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Considering their popularity, you have probably heard of at least one of them but if you are not a frequent user of each then there are numerous changes that have most likely occurred since the last time you logged in. These four social outlets have become a staple of everyday life so it is more important than ever that hoteliers familiarize themselves with these platforms to ensure that we continuously speak our guests' language. While they once individually filled niche roles in the social world, the features seen across each platform have begun to standardize; a trend we'll see continue into 2017. Let's take a look at how each platform has evolved this past year and what we can look forward to in 2017. We'll then explore some changes that will affect the entire social landscape.

Facebook

The eldest of the featured platforms, Facebook has been known to make significant changes to their product year to year. This past year brought us Facebook Reactions, an expansion on the popular "like" function that allows users to be more expressive with five emojis. Clever marketers have used this function to create polls by assigning certain criteria to each emoji. This promotes engagement with your guests and allows another forum for them to express their opinions. Along with Reactions, Facebook Live was an extremely important evolution to the platform. Video will continue to be king in 2017, especially when it comes to live content. The function allows you to speak directly to your guests and creates a sense of urgency due to it being live. Engagement is key for a successful Live strategy, so create content that promotes your guests to comment as you go.

In an effort to keep up with Snapchat, Facebook acquired a company called Masquerade. Masquerade allows users to record videos and edit them similarly to Snapchat's filter function. This augmented reality technology has become a huge focus of Facebook alongside their virtual reality efforts. Look for lenses and filters to become an everyday application within Facebook in the near future, furthering the homogenization of the platforms. While virtual reality is still the future, the everyday application for consumers is just not convenient yet which is why it had minimal impact last year. As Facebook continues to develop the technology it will be important for hotels to stay ahead of the curve by being early adopters.

Twitter

CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, recently shed some light on the future direction of the platform in a message to Twitter employees:

"Twitter is what's happening, and what everyone is talking about (literally!). News and talk. We're the people's news network. People choose us for news because we're the fastest. Fastest to get news, and fastest to share news with the whole world. Now let's strive to be the first. The first place people check to see what's happeningand the first place to break what's happening. In the moment LIVE, or a fast recap of what we know so farwhat matters."

In essence, Twitter is becoming a news product. The platform has seen a decline over the past few years but that in no way means it is dead. While publicly looking for a buyer, Twitter is still constantly evolving. They are the original big four platform to embrace live streaming video (with their purchase of Periscope) and continue to push this trend by entering broadcast partnerships with organizations like the NFL.

Taking a cue from the hospitality industry, Twitter focused greatly on improving their customer service for users and businesses. It would make sense that this trend continues with improved business tools to help stabilize the platform. One theory behind the recent decline is that the novel concept of the 140 character limits has worn off. Consumers today are looking for more in-depth content which is hard to do within Twitter. An evolution of the platform could potentially allow businesses the ability to expand past the normal 140-character limit and provide bigger, slower content like Facebook or Instagram.

Instagram

Facebook-owned Instagram continues to be one of the fastest evolving social media platforms with an exceedingly bright future. Instagram released its Stories feature this past year that appeared to be in direct response to Snapchat's success. The feature promotes content that will vanish in 24 hours. In another key move this past year, Instagram released Business Tools. This feature allows verified profiles access to analytics and the ability to create ads directly within the platform. These two features combined allow for adding "See More" links to Instagram Stories. This has simplified the process of driving traffic from Instagram that can be utilized for booking and other promotions for hotels.

As we look forward, it can be expected to see much more in depth business tools available for verified profiles. This has been an area of opportunity for the platform since inception so it only makes sense that it would be continually developed. In the theme of homogenization, we can also look to Instagram to enter the live video game realm and expand its direct messaging features. These two features are prevalent across all the major platforms and continue to be features looked for by users and businesses alike.

Snapchat

Snapchat is the most exciting of the big four platforms to watch. From the hotel side of things, it has been difficult to break into Snapchat with any meaningful impact (unless you have a very creative and dedicated marketing effort on property) but that will likely change as the young application continues to evolve. This past year brought about many exciting and innovative changes that have begun to open the door for businesses to actively participate. One of these was the release of sponsored geofilters. Geofilters allow any user to create a unique filter available within a targeted radius to anyone using Snapchat. While exciting for brands, the cost is still a bit steep for most to participate.

Spectacles marks Snap Inc's first venture into a physical product. They have done what other wearables have not by capturing the illusive "cool" factor. Spectacles are mainly targeted at Snapchat's teenage audience and have been marketed mostly by word of mouth as the product was not made available to media and is extremely hard to get. With the development of Spectacles, Snap Inc has pioneered 115-degree field of view video which is similar to that of the human eye. The importance of this technology is that it solves the age-old question of whether to film video landscape or portrait because the content will always fill a mobile screen. For reference, here is a demonstration of this technology: https://youtu.be/7-18SDeArE8

Organic Decline and Communications

Across all of the big four social media platforms, there has been a notable decline in organic visibility of content. This has brought about a pay to play ad renaissance of sorts as social media ad spend is up 33.5 percent to nearly $24 billion dollars annually. This evolution will continue because as the platforms are continually trying to improve user experience, they will decrease the visibility of business created content. This will also increase the importance of social media influencers (users with a large fan base that become product advocates). For hoteliers, these social influencers are travel bloggers that have smartly expanded into social media.

Communications has always been important across social media but all of the big four platforms have been improving their messaging features. The continued research into artificial intelligence and chatbots looks to support these efforts and a combination of chatbot based ads is likely in the near future. Nothing beats real-time engagement though, especially as the technology is being developed. This trend of an increase in communications exchanged between brands and consumers leads to expanded customization of guest experiences and good customer service for hotels. In addition, Facebook has entered the professional communication game with Workplace by creating a centralized, internal hub for communication and productivity. It will be interesting to see if the other platforms try to follow suit.

To be Continued - Evolution

Social media's evolution can be a lot to keep up with due to the speed at which change occurs but it does not have to be overwhelming. Hotels can benefit from all of the big four platforms but that does not mean they have to be on all of them. With homogenization prevalent there are no longer niche benefits to individual platforms. A focus should be placed on the platform that best speaks to your demographic to achieve continued success as the evolution of social media continues.

Heres to a great "social" 2017!

Robert A. Rauch

R. A. Rauch & Associates, Inc.

+1 858 720 9500

R. A. Rauch & Associates, Inc.

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The Ukrainian administration is currently not considering the issue of the introduction of martial law in the country, but the National Security and Defense Council will make decisions on the basis of its development due to the dynamically changing situation in Donbas, the Ukrainian presidential administration said.

"This option [the introduction of martial law] is currently not being discussed [...] You know that the situation on the front in Donbas is changeable, and therefore this decision will undoubtedly be made collectively, we have the NSDC, which will make a relevant decision," Kostiantyn Yeliseyev, the deputy head of the presidential administration, told a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.
TRYP by Wyndham, Wyndham Hotel Group's modern and trendsetting lifestyle hotel brand, has arrived on the shores of South East Asia with the opening of a new-construction hotel in Yangon, Myanmar. The 60-room TRYP Yangon is Wyndham's inaugural hotel to open in Myanmar.

TRYP by Wyndham celebrates the spirit of the urban traveller by offering an insider's look at a city. Hotels can be found in the heart of the world's most exciting cities  the ones on every travel bucket list  like Abu Dhabi, Brisbane, Barcelona, New York City, Paris, and Sao Paulo. The brand's urban flair energises travellers with an inimitable style and helps travellers find the best ways to tap directly into the pulse of the city.

"Myanmar is quickly becoming a must-see destination for international travellers with nearly eight million arrivals in 2015 thanks to an influx of foreign investment and Yangon's expanded international airport," said Mr. Barry Robinson, President and Managing Director of Wyndham Hotel Group South East Asia and Pacific Rim.

"The country's travel and tourism sector is primed to spike even higher as people seek out new business opportunities, setting the stage for increased hotel demand in Yangon. TRYP by Wyndham's unique urban flair will help visitors uncover the side of Yangon not in guidebooks, putting the city in a new light for visitors who want to experience it like a local."

Set in the heart of Yangon's lively Mayangone Township, TRYP Yangon offers a restaurant and a lounge bar for evening cocktails in a dynamic social setting, as well as free Wi-Fi for guests to stay connected with friends and family. Sixty design-driven guest rooms feature a mix of patterns, textures and unexpected contrasts inspired by Myanmar's longstanding culture and traditions. Art fixtures include kaleidoscopic landscapes of farmers toiling in farmlands and rice paddies, a nod to the country's agrarian heritage.

The hotel is operating under a franchise agreement with developer Dragon Mountain Holding Co. Ltd. and is managed by Kosmopolitan Hospitality, a hotel management company headquartered in Bangkok.

Spokesperson for Dragon Mountain Holding Co. Ltd., Mr. U Tin Maung, said, "I am thrilled to work with Wyndham Hotel Group to launch the vibrant TRYP by Wyndham brand in South East Asia. Wyndham Hotel Group has a growing track record in the region and we were impressed with their worldwide branding and distribution, as well as their commitment for providing excellent guest experiences."

Mr. Glenn DeSouza, Chief Executive Officer of Kosmopolitan Hospitality added, "The opening of TRYP Yangon will invigorate Yangon's hospitality landscape with its edgy concept and high-speed internet connectivity. Along with the exceptional service expected from one of the world's most renowned international brands, the hotel is poised to be a favourite among regional and international travellers."

TRYP Yangon is located less than five minutes from Myanmar Plaza, which offers upscale retail and dining options, and is a short stroll from many of the city's glittering golden temples, including the majestic 34-meter-high Kabar Aye Pagoda and the vast Inya Lake.

About Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts (NYSE: WH) is the world's largest hotel franchising company by the number of properties, with over 8,900 hotels across over 95 countries on six continents. Through its network of over 813,000 rooms appealing to the everyday traveler, Wyndham commands a leading presence in the economy and midscale segments of the lodging industry. The Company operates a portfolio of 22 hotel brands, including Super 8, Days Inn, Ramada, Microtel, La Quinta, Baymont, Wingate, AmericInn, Hawthorn Suites, Trademark Collection and Wyndham. The Company's award-winning Wyndham Rewards loyalty program offers approximately 94 million enrolled members the opportunity to redeem points at thousands of hotels, vacation club resorts and vacation rentals globally. For more information, visit www.wyndhamhotels.com.
H. Fisk Johnson '79, M.Eng. '80, M.S. '82, MBA '84, Ph.D. '86, and SC Johnson have committed $150 million for Cornell University's College of Business, which comprises the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, the School of Hotel Administration, and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management. It is the largest single gift to Cornell's Ithaca campus and the second largest gift to name a U.S. business school.

In recognition of this historic gift and the Johnson family's extraordinary, multigenerational legacy of leadership and philanthropy to Cornell, the Cornell University Board of Trustees has approved renaming the college the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.

"Cornell University has been a part of my family for more than 120 years," said Fisk Johnson, SC Johnson chairman and CEO, and a Cornell trustee emeritus. "I hope this gift will serve as a significant catalyst to help grow the reach and impact of Cornell's College of Business. The goal is to strengthen the College of Business overall, while enhancing its three individual schools and the qualities that make each exceptional."

"This generous gift will transform business education at Cornell, providing significant and ongoing support for the faculty, students and programs of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business," said Interim President Hunter R. Rawlings III. "The benefits and opportunities for students are exciting, the support for faculty at the three component schools is crucial, and the incentives for other donors are inspiring."

Two-thirds of the gift, $100 million, will be used to create a permanent endowment to support the college's highest ambitions. In the near term, the endowment will provide flexibility for faculty recruitment and retention in Ithaca and New York City; increase the college's competitiveness for top students through expanded scholarship resources; and develop and expand programs in and outside of Ithaca. These funds will enable new interdisciplinary research initiatives in areas that leverage and enhance the college's and Cornell's research strengths  particularly in the areas of sustainability and technology.

One new initiative the gift will support is the SC Johnson Scholars program, which will benefit a cohort of undergraduates in Dyson and the School of Hotel Administration. The program will create academic and experiential opportunities that enhance general coursework, including access to SC Johnson-sponsored immersion programs, mentoring and workshops; domestic and international internships; and shadowing opportunities.

The remaining $50 million of the gift will be used as a current-use challenge grant to leverage philanthropic support from others on a 1:3 basis, allowing the college to raise an additional $150 million in endowment and bring the total potential impact of the gift to $300 million. The challenge will have a special focus on faculty and student support, while also promoting innovative programs. Endowment gifts for the college's three schools or the college broadly will be eligible for the challenge.

Launched in July 2016, the College of Business' initial goal was to establish a comprehensive and collaborative business management program to benefit students at all academic stages.

"This extraordinary gift will further that goal by creating more diverse and rigorous learning and research opportunities for both faculty and students across the college's three accredited business programs," said Soumitra Dutta, dean of the college. "It also will help enhance the unique characteristics and strengths of each and support our mission to realize the full potential of Cornell's business programs."

Each of the three schools maintains its distinct identity and mission, Dutta said, while collectively benefiting from these substantial new resources.

The Dyson School is recognized across New York and around the world as a leader in agricultural, developmental, international, and environmental and resource economics and management.

The School of Hotel Administration is the top-ranked global hospitality program and leads the world in fostering deep business-focused understanding of the service and hospitality industries, real estate and entrepreneurial training.

Johnson is a globally recognized leader in graduate management education, with a portfolio of innovative programs in Ithaca, New York City, North and South America, and China, and a history of pioneering work in performance learning and integrated leadership approaches in business education.

Huge strides in college's first year

The gift comes just one year after the announcement of the formation of the College of Business and a new era of business education at Cornell. In just the past year, the college was established, academically and administratively; its leadership, including individual school deans, was appointed; and the college's career services staff and employer relations efforts were expanded. The college created an integrated admissions portal and cross-listed courses and coordinated scheduling to give students a broader range of classes and multidisciplinary courses across the partner schools. An advisory council was created this past fall.

New space was leased in midtown Manhattan, growing the college's presence in New York City, and, in Ithaca, a $25 million gift from Johnson alumnus David Breazzano, MBA '80, will create the Breazzano Family Center for Business Education in a new six-story building in Collegetown (expected to open this summer).

A new master's degree in accounting was announced at Johnson and a dual-degree MBA/M.S. program was launched between Johnson and Weill Cornell Medicine. The Cornell SC Johnson College of Business will also continue to partner with Cornell Tech, which will move to its permanent home on Roosevelt Island in New York City this summer.

Already, the college's combined faculty from the three partner schools gives it the third-largest business faculty in the country.

"Fisk Johnson and SC Johnson's historic gift reflects not only a confidence in the strides the college has made in this past year, but also the university's enduring commitment and mission to New York state," Rawlings said. "Fisk, like all of us who care about business education at Cornell, is deeply invested in seeing the three individual schools and their faculty, students and alumni thrive."

About the Cornell Nolan School of Hotel Administration

The Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration is the premier school for hospitality education in the world. As an integral part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, the school is leading the world in teaching and researching the business of hospitalitymarketing, finance, real estate, operations, and more, all applied to the worlds largest and most exciting industry. Top faculty, industry leaders, alumni, and students work together to generate new knowledge for the hospitality industry and form the premier network that shapes the industry every day.
More than 300 industry leaders are to gather next week at the inaugural Iran Hotel and Tourism Investment Conference (IHTIC). H.E. Dr. Zahra Ahmadipour, Vice President - Head of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), will open the conference alongside Ahmad Jamali, General Director for Foreign Investment at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. Two days of panel discussions and thought leadership presentations by leading industry experts will follow, along with a unique chance to hear political leaders' views first-hand and opportunities to network with prominent investors, developers and operators.

According to the latest Euromonitor report "Travel in Iran", Iran is, without a doubt, the new up-and-coming tourism destination, and is likely to become the leading tourism market in the MENA region, provided that the infrastructure is able to develop and cope with changes. President Hassan Rouhani is determined to boost tourism and encourage foreign investment and the Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organisation is working on this hand in hand with local municipalities to attract more investors.

An increasing number of investors are eyeing the opportunities in Iran, however, there are still regulatory and red tape hurdles in the process. Dr. Saeed Shirkavand, Deputy of Planning and Investment at Iran's Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO), will take to the stage next week to present investment opportunities in Iran.

The second day of the conference will be opened by Masoud Khansari, Chairman of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines & Agriculture and Mohsen Mehralizadeh, Chairman of the Tourism Committee at the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines & Agriculture. The opening session will be followed by "The Mayor's Den" in which Dr. Mehdi Jamalinejad, Mayor of Isfahan will discuss the role of Municipalities in the development process, with Dr. Mehdi Jahangiri, Chairman and CEO of Iran's Tourism Financial Group.

Jonathan Worsley, Chairman of Bench Events and founder of IHTIC commented "The conference is looking set to be one of the region's most influential gatherings at which the focus will be on challenges and opportunities facing the hotel and tourism industry. The conference will stimulate dialogue between the public and private sector; showcase project opportunities and how to access the market and do business in Iran."

The Iran Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference will take place on February 7-8 at the Parsian Evin Hotel in Tehran. For more information visit www.iranian-conference.com.

About IHTIC

Organiser: Bench Events Founder Sponsor: Incubeemea Patron Sponsor: Atiyaeh Saba Investment Company and Link Me Global Platinum Sponsors: AccorHotels, Azimzadeh Carpet Co., Deutsche Hospitality, Ilio Italian Restaurant, Melia Hotels International, Rastin Tours Gold Sponsors: DSA Architects International, Eye of Persia, Louvre Hotels Group, Parsian International Hotels Co., Rotana, Sarcheshmeh, Shaza Hotels, TRI Hospitality Consulting, ZAS Group of Companies Exhibitors: Servotel and Superfrost.Education Partner: Modul University Dubai. Supporters: Euromonitor International, Hospitality Asset Managers Association, Investors Group Iran, Pacific Asia Travel Association, Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture and Tehran International Tourism Exhibition.

About The Bench

The Benchhas established a legacy for delivering world-leading investment forums and conferences in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. The key principle behind these platforms has remained "dealmaking'. Transforming the way business connect, Bench has developed a reputation for creating innovative and high-impact meeting spaces for the industry.

For over two decades - government leaders, tourism ministries, global travel & tourism associations, the world's most influential hospitality brands, hotel owners & investors, renowned restaurant groups, airlines & aviation authorities, destination developers, asset managers, financial groups and consultants  have been participating in The Bench's events for their respective objectives. These include AHIC, AHIF, GRIF, FHS, AHF, IDEEA, AviaDev and RENEW where industry players showcase their brands, position themselves as thought leaders or innovators, and connect with the right opportunities and knowledge.

Learn more on thebench.com

About MEED

Launched on International Women's Day 1957, the Middle East Economic Digest, MEED, is a well-known and trusted brand used by governments and businesses operating in the region.

Encompassing a business intelligence service, digital media, publications and events MEED provides exclusive daily news, data and analysis. We are responsible for keeping our audiences of subscribers, registered users and event attendees informed, helping to facilitate decision making and connections.

Our marketing solutions team provides clients with access to our audiences. We partner with local and international companies who need to reach our high-value communities. In consultation with our clients we utilise tried and tested methods to target and engage decision makers to announce and explain, lead and grow and to contact and convert business leaders into customers.

MEED is wholly owned by data and intelligence company GlobalData Plc which means that our marketing solutions clients are also able to access a network of over 13m digital users per month across 18 different sectors.

Learn more on meed.com

Future Hospitality Summit (FHS)

Date: 19-21 September 2022

Location: Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai, UAE

Sponsors

Host Sponsor: Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts

Platinum Sponsors: Accor, Dur Hospitality, Hilton, Marjan, Millennium Hotels & Resorts and Radisson Hotel Group

Emerald Sponsors: Emaar Hospitality Group, IHG Hotels & Resorts, Marriott International, NEOM, Rotana, Royal Commission for AlUla, SMIT Morocco and Taiba Investments.

Gold Sponsors: Aleph Hospitality, CBRE, Colliers, Compass Project Consulting, Dentons, ELAF Group, ENVI Lodges, GG&Grace International, Hospitality Management Holding, HVS, The Indian Hotels Company, Insignia, Interior360, Ishraq Hospitality, IT Hospitality Group, Knight Frank, Louvre Hotels Group, LXA, Mapal Group, Minor Hotels, OBMI, PwC Middle East, QUO, SSH, STR, Valor Hospitality Partners and Voltere by egis.

Silver Sponsors: Deutsche Hospitality and Katch.

Supporters: The Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management, Hospitality Asset Managers Association (HAMA), Sustainable Hospitality Challenge, and Women in Hospitality (WiH).

Mala Patel

+44 (0)20 3318 5800

The Bench
BERLIN  NYX Hotels, the new lifestyle brand from the house of Leonardo, isn't just another group of hotels: places will be created where active and influential artists can exhibit their work to the public. The hotels will thus become an important part of local culture and a magnet not only for creative professionals, but also for tourists and locals who are always on the lookout for trendy city locales. To guarantee that this concept will be clearly evident in each of the future establishments, the hotel group is working with Iris Barak. Iris is already curator of one of Israel's most famous private art collections (the Dubi Shiff Art Collection) and will now ensure that the NYX hotels in each city become popular addresses for contemporary art. She will be assisted by experienced, local curators who are very familiar with the regional art scenes.

The key themes of the "NYX ART" concept will be Street Art and Video Art, created by emerging artists from the respective NYX locations. NYX Signature ART will be a recurring motif at all the hotels, wherever they are in the world: a local artist will combine two artwork chairs to create an extraordinary work which will welcome guests to the hotel reception areas. The main focus will not lie on pleasant or decorative elements: the curated works are designed to elicit an immediate reaction that lends each object an irresistible attraction.

The hotel group is working with Italy's leading street art artists for the NYX Milan, which will open in mid-February as the first NYX in Europe. Each artist will be offered a floor of the hotel on which to present his or her understanding of the city as a site-specific mural. The main part of the artistic design in Milan will be undertaken by the "EAD Crew", which has existed since the 90s and includes influential street artists such as Joy, Peeta, Yama, Orion and made514. For these artists, graffiti is much more than simply painting a wall: traditional lettering merges with a three-dimensional style to form a unique visual rhythm. Their captivating images, which are already drawing the attention of passers-by in Italy, New York, Hong Kong and Moscow, will soon also be inspiring visitors to the NYX Milan.

"The Italian Poster Biennial" is another potential collaborative partner for the NYX Milan. A collaboration is also planned with the "Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera"  the state university of fine arts in Milan. Artists will be given the opportunity to present their work to people all over the world. The hotel bars will become alternative art spaces which combine creativity with internationality, individuality and networking.

"Every NYX Hotel will be a unique work of art in itself. This will give rise to something absolutely fascinating and unmistakable that defies traditional hotel concepts and encourages guests to keep coming back," says Daniel Roger, Managing Director of Leonardo Hotels Europe.

In addition to Milan, this year will see two NYX hotels open their doors in Prague and Madrid. Together, these three European establishments will represent the start of the brand-new NYX Hotels lifestyle brand, and will attract individualists from around the world.

About Leonardo Hotels

LEONARDO HOTELS is the European division of Fattal Hotels Group, founded by David Fattal in Israel. The Leonardo Hotels are present in Israel and Europe with over 115 hotels in more than 50 destinations. With more than 75 hotels in more than 40 destinations Leonardo Hotels is active on the European market since 2006, established in the 3-4 star superior category as well as equal level. Currently spanning Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Spain, Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary as well as Italy, the hotel group with its 13,000+ rooms and over 22,000 m of conference space offers places of well-being, that are characterised by their own regional character, local flair and their own design identity, addressing all individual needs. All according to the company"s credo of feeling good, providing 100% guest satisfaction. The company management for Europe is based in Berlin. The Leonardo Hotels umbrella brand is complemented by the Leonardo Hotels, Leonardo Royal Hotels, Leonardo Boutique Hotels and NYX Hotels brands.

Anne Radies

PR Manager - Leonardo Hotels

Leonardo Hotels
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Donbas militants fired at the units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces near the town of Avdiyivka about 6,000 shells since Monday, January 30, ten servicemen were killed, 66 more wounded, Gen. Maj. Andriy Tsvetkov, the first deputy head of the Ukrainian united operational headquarters said.

"The situation in the Anti-Terrorist Operation zone near Avdiyivka escalated in the period from January 29 to February 3. Illegal armed units attempted to conduct offensives and drive the Ukrainian Armed Forces away from their positions," Tsvetkov said during a meeting of the state commission for man-made and environmental safety and emergency situations on the situation in Avdiyivka in Kyiv on Friday.

"The enemy failed to achieve success due to organized actions of our troops and suffered losses. As of today, the enemy continues to shell the strongholds of our units. The enemy has carried out about 40 long-lasting rounds of shelling of the positions and fired about 6,000 shells at the Ukrainian Armed Forces units," he said.
Hot Press headed Leeside for the official launch of the Music Cork Convention.

The speculation surrounding the upcoming MusicCork event in the southern capital was answered last night with its official announcement before members of the local music community at the Cork Opera House. Announced last week, the three-day industry event takes place May 10th-12th, at the city's Clayton Hotel, formerly the Clarion. Supplementary live events will take place across the city, including venues like Cork Opera House, Cyprus Avenue, Crane Lane Theatre and the Triskel Arts Centre.

Helmed by Indiependence Festival head Shane Dunne, with the assistance of Alexis Vokos (Delphi Label, We Cut Corners), Jim Lawless (artist management The Coronas, Fangclub) and eminent music barrister Willie Ryan, the event will gather three-hundred delegates from the label, booking agency and publishing spheres for a weekend of interaction with artists and professionals, both local and national.

Amid the initial twelve industry speakers announced yesterday were Geoff Meall, head of music UK at United Talent Agency, an agent with Muse among his clients; Ricardo F. Zambak of Red and Gold Management; Darcus Beese, president of major-label imprint Island Records; Sarah Casey of talent agency Leighton Pope; Steve Zapp of ITB, a booking agent with Biffy Clyro among others on the roster; and Adam Barker, director of business affairs at Universal Music UK.

Speaking at the launch, Dunne elaborated on the reasons for its creation: We go to South By Southwest, Eurosonic, and all these things, and we thought that there was a need to do something like that here, a curated music industry event, in Ireland. We thought, 'let's do it', and Cork for me was the obvious option.

Expounding on the event's goals, Dunne outlined his team's vision for MusicCork. We wanted to bring high-end music industry professionals from the UK and the States to Ireland, and showcase the Irish music industry. A small networking event where these people could network with each other, but also network with people that are coming into these events. If you're a promoter, or a new band, you're going to get to hear their stories, but you're also going to be doing so in an informal environment. You're going to be able to have a pint with these people, and that's invaluable.

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Among scheduled events unveiled so far are pub trails, keynote speeches, and a networking breakfast. Showcase gigs in the city's venues, curated by guests including Nialler9, will bring together artists from all over Ireland and place them before delegates and the public, for which advance tickets will be made available on a limited basis.

Speaking before the launch went underway, Alexis Vokos spoke with Hot Press on the creation of the event. We all go to international events, and you get a feel for what's useful about these events, and what's not, what makes them tick. We think Ireland is a great place and people want to come. We saw room to create a fun, useful, interesting event, and Cork is ideal for it. It's the right size, people are friendly, everything you want in a destination for a get-together.

When quizzed on the incoming line-up of speakers and artists on the bill, Jim Lawless was keen to place focus on the event's position as an upcoming industry convention. It's geared particularly to industry, y'know. Today, we're launching the names of people that are speaking, and that's why we're leading with the industry panels and keynote speakers, because that's really what the conference is about. Not that we're not showcasing, there is an element of that, but it's about the industry, and connecting people.

The full line-up of announced speakers, as well as an early schedule, is up on the convention's newly-launched website, corkmusic.com.
In Jeff Nichols film, Loving is both a verb and a noun. Joel Edgerton and Oscar-nominated Ruth Negga play Richard and Mildred Loving, the interracial couple at the centre of the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which ruled miscegenation laws of the time to be unconstitutional. After marrying, the couple were forced to leave Virginia and move to Washington, threatened with prison if they ever returned.

Far from a fist-pounding, message-spewing courtroom drama, Loving is an intimate portrait of two very ordinary people, notable not for their passionate political zeal, but rather their quiet humility.The two actors put in beautifully nuanced performances for characters who, by nature, say very little.

Edgerton taps into a specific expression of rural masculinity thats strong, but also so humble that hell never meet anyones eye. Meanwhile, Negga is beautiful in her unexpressed heartbreak, a quietly joyful woman who loses herself when torn from her family and friends. Mildreds love is expressed through acts of kindness, and a shy but radiant smile  a smile that disappears when the couple move to dismally grey Washington.
AUSTIN  Hundreds of people opposed to a so-called "sanctuary cities" bill descended on the Texas Senate Thursday, marking the first big clash of the 85th Legislature as Republican lawmakers attempt to fast-track one of Gov. Greg Abbott's priority measures.

At 12:47 a.m. Friday, after more than 16 hours of non-stop testimony, the Senate Committee on State Affairs approved Senate Bill 4 on a 7-2 party-line vote, with border Democrats casting the only no votes. The measure now heads to the full 31-member Senate, which is expected to consider it as early as next week.

More than 500 people signed up to speak on Senate Bill 4, including representatives of cities and law enforcement who said the proposed bill would strain relations with immigrant communities and jeopardize funding for criminal justice programs that have nothing to do with people in this country illegally.

Others recounted personal, sometimes emotional accounts of the bill's potential impact on immigrant communities. Several times during the hearing, protesters shouted and broke into song in the Senate gallery before being escorted out of the chamber by Texas Department of Public Safety officers. State Affairs Committee Chairman Joan Huffman, R-Houston, warned several times that she would clear the gallery if the disruptions continued, though she never did.

At issue for GOP lawmakers and Abbott is whether local law enforcement should honor federal immigration detainers, which are requests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold on to immigrants in the country illegally until federal officials give further instructions or take them into custody. As noted by several of the bill's opponents, the decision to honor ICE detainers is voluntary.

The issue blew up earlier this month when the newly elected sheriff of Travis County announced she would implement a policy of not automatically honoring every immigration detainer her office receives. Sheriff Sally Hernandez had campaigned on such a promise and began implementation of the policy on Wednesday.

Abbott threatened to cut off grant funding to Travis County if Hernandez did not reverse her decision. She refused and he announced Wednesday that he had halted $1.5 million in grants bound for Travis County that go through his office. Abbott also has threatened to pursue legislation that would remove from office any elected official in violation of SB 4, should it become law.

The issue is playing out nationally, too, after President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order to withhold certain federal funds from municipalities that do not honor all ICE detainer requests, setting up a fight between his administration and Democratic-led cities and states. San Francisco already has sued the Trump administration and asked a federal court to overturn the order.

Against that backdrop, Abbott in his State of the State address to the full legislature on Tuesday made a ban on so-called "sanctuary cities" an emergency item, enabling lawmakers to vote on it within the first 60 days.

At Thursday's hearing, bill author Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock, acknowledged the term "sanctuary cities" has no legal meaning.

The panel's Republican majority is expected to pass the bill and send it to the full 31-member Senate next week, when Democrats have said they will offer amendments before a vote is taken.

Early Thursday, the committee's two Democrats stated their opposition to Perry's proposal.

Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, said he was concerned about the bill's penalties for jurisdictions that violate its provisions. In that case, the legislation would cut off state grant funding for local governments, a penalty that Democrats warn will hurt vulnerable communities in their districts.

"Without those funds, things would fall apart," Lucio said, citing juvenile justice and domestic violence programs and veterans' courts. "We risk perpetuating far more dangerous criminal behavior."They also warned that SB 4 would, in effect, allow police officers to use racial profiling and immigration status when deciding whether to stop or arrest a person.

In response, Perry repeated his contention that local officials must be held responsible for their actions.

"The state did not remove those funds. The actions of the jurisdictions  their decision point to violate the law  precipitates having their funding removed," Perry said. "If they choose to comply with SB 4, those funds are not in jeopardy."Perry also said Thursday the law would apply to grant funding for university police departments, though not to other state funding to universities. He has said he included college campuses after reports of pressure mounting at universities around the state to declare their campuses as "sanctuaries."

"The safety of my family and all these people behind me who I deeply care about is in danger," said Carla Perez, an undocumented student. "It's in danger thanks to anti-immigrant legislators like Gov. Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Charles Perry."

Emily Timm, deputy director of Austin-based labor rights group Workers Defense Project, recalled two stories of undocumented immigrants who were victims of assault, but who did not contact authorities because they feared a confrontation with immigration officials.

"Without the trust and cooperation of the local community, law enforcement cannot do their jobs, and that makes us all less safe," Timm said. "SB 4 will do that."

City and county law enforcement officials who showed up in Austin largely opposed the measure, warning it would redirect local resources and strain community relations.

"San Antonio is not a sanctuary city. However, I have some serious concerns with (the bill) and the impact it'll have on our primary duty," said San Antonio Police Chief William McManus, who was joined by interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley. "This bill would require local law enforcement to verify immigration status. It would distract us from our primary mission."

Ron Hickman, the former Harris County Sheriff, disagreed, saying SB 4 will help local police officers do their jobs more efficiently. "I don't see anything in Senate Bill 4 that provides new authority for a peace officers in Texas to become an immigration officer," he said. "The sheriffs of Texas need structure in order to do their jobs effectively and to protect the public."
As opposition to fossil fuel pipeline projects continues to make news, let's remind ourselves about the benefits of fossil fuels. It is undeniable that the growth in fossil fuel use has led to more widespread access to affordable energy. In turn, that has afforded us better health, greater wealth, and an improved quality and length of life.

Worldwide, fossil fuel consumption grew 80 per-cent between 1980 and 2012. At the same time, life expectancy and income rose while malnutrition and infant mortality dropped. Malnutrition is being combated with fertilizers, pesticides and modern farming techniques - mostly based on or powered by fossil fuels. Medical outcomes have improved due to electrified and climate-controlled laboratories and hospitals, as well as the ability to rapidly move patients, donated organs and medicines to where they are needed - again, all of that dependent on fossil fuels. Billions of people now live fuller, freer and healthier lives, thanks in large part to fossil fuels.

Indeed, fossil fuels make modern life possible. They get us to work or to travel to see our families, and enable first responders to do their jobs. They heat and cool our homes, hospitals, schools and retirement homes. They are the building blocks for most of what we use and wear.

While there are a small number of people in the world's most prosperous nations "taking a stand" for keeping fossil fuels in the ground, their success would leave a billion people in desperate poverty. And ironically, blocking natural gas production would impede progress on the very objective they claim to seek - addressing global climate change.

Natural gas has been and remains critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Since 1993, the U.S. population increased by 60 million, real GDP rose 70 percent and overall electric power generation went up by 28 percent. But CO2 emissions are back to 1993 levels, mainly because natural gas-fired generation increased its share of the total from 13 percent to 33 percent, while coal dropped from 53 percent to 33 percent.

In addition to reducing emissions from the electricity sector, the natural gas value chain slashed its own emissions during an era of greatly enhanced production - mostly because we have a substantial economic incentive to keep it in our pipes. While domestic natural gas production grew 45 percent from 1990-2014, methane emissions actually declined 6 per-cent.

Here in Houston, industry in general has made dramatic improvements in air quality even as the economy boomed. The U.S. EPA recently found that in the Houston- Galveston-Brazoria area, "air trends show overall progress in reducing ozone concentrations over the past 15 years" - more than 20 percent lower over the last decade.

That is consistent with global experience during the last several decades, which has combined economic productivity based on fossil fuel use with a high quality of life and increasingly better health.

As for safety, the pipeline sector keeps improving, driven primarily by existing financial incentives and the need to maintain investor confidence. We are also overseen and permitted by dozens of agencies, and have been for decades. Thanks to better integrity technologies and processes, pipeline systems are actually getting safer as they age. The number of serious incidents per year dropped almost 40 percent in the last decade.

Sadly, the protesters trying to stop the construction of pipelines would only block the safest, most cost-effective and most environmentally sensitive way of delivering these vital products. If they were to succeed in their stated goal of "keeping it in the ground," millions would be denied better health, wealth and quality of life. But given the fundamental laws of supply and demand, they won't succeed; they will only cause fossil fuels to move less safely and with greater risk of environmental harm.

The laws of supply and demand are not the only laws we must respect. This great country was founded upon strict adherence to the rule of law. We have legislative and regulatory mechanisms to decide policies governing the production, transportation and consumption of fossil fuels. And we have political processes that govern those mechanisms.

We live in a free society, and we won't all agree on everything. But we can and should agree that where we have disagreements, we'll base our arguments on concrete facts rather than slogans; and that we will abide by the decisions made by the institutions of our free society rather than risk the kind of chaos we see in other parts of the world.

Let's all commit to active participation in political, legislative and regulatory processes. And then agree that once those processes have rendered a decision, we will all abide by it and respect our fellow citizens and the sanctity of the rule of law.
The hostilities in Avdiyivka are posing a threat of humanitarian and environmental catastrophe in the region, OSCE Special Monitoring Mission Principal Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug said.

The bets have been raised, and the threat of a potential humanitarian and environmental catastrophe is looming, Hug said via Skype from Avdiyivka on Friday.

Infrastructures and water, power and gas grids should be functioning irrespective of the line of contact between the Donbas warring sides, he said.

The OSCE observers have been recording exceptionally high rates of Donbas ceasefire violations since January 29, he said, adding that thousands of shelling incidents were registered daily. For instance, over 11,000 attacks were observed on Tuesday. This is unprecedented, Hug said.

He said he was particularly concerned by the use of rocket launchers on the Avdiyivka - Yasynuvata - Donetsk Airport line. The OSCE recorded artillery, mortar and rocket launcher attacks within residential areas and on their perimeter, he said.

The overnight attacks on Donetsk and Matiupol caused civilian casualties, he said, quoting tentative reports.

The mission employs 724 observers, including 588 stationed in the east. There are also 332 locals and 93 foreigners working for the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, Hug said.
A series of hate-related incidents in the Houston region this week has officials at the Anti-Defamation League worried the uptick may continue to swell if not addressed.

At least five examples of related cases have been reported in the region, according to the ADL.
It was a strange, crudely made little thing, a rough ceramic bar around 15 inches long that someone had formed with bits of clay, then poked with a thumb forming an uneven line of little potholes along the top. I wondered why my mother displayed it in the china cabinet in our Dallas home alongside her small treasures. "It's a menorah," she said. "Your grandfather made it." My father's father. My father's father was blind.

I never met him, but every inch of the piece bore the imprint of his touch. I was embarrassed by its crudeness, but then, I could see, no, close my eyes and feel his every dab, even his fingerprint ridges. How he must have concentrated holding the wet clay, useless eyes closed, breath slowed, trying to mimic with his fingers an image he still held behind his eyes.

Years after my grandfather had to leave three countries and made a life here, he made a menorah. He made a menorah, symbol of his roots, of himself, when everyone knows when you move to a new place, overtly or covertly that culture demands you be someone else. And he made a lamp to bear light he could no longer see.

JACOB MALLETT was born in Russia in 1888, and I don't know his real name. Family lore says he moved from Russia to Alsace-Lorraine with his brother. It's easy to surmise motivation: Russian Jews were used to being herded and restricted and attacked, but the tsarist government was in need of a scapegoat. Jewish life had become impossibly fraught. Jews were not, had never been deemed, Russians. They were Jews.

Because, since I wonder who we are right now, this is about identity. In Alsace-Lorraine, more than 1,000 miles from home, the brothers changed their name to Mallette, a French-Catholic name that might help them find jobs, but laughably with this surname, they spoke only Yiddish. Why this landlocked region? And how many family members left behind survived the revolution, or were swept along with the hundreds of thousands of Jews Stalin killed or sent to Siberia? What were their names?

I guess the name change didn't help, since the two went on to Glasgow. The city had long been a destination for European refugees, where Scottish shipping offered an opportunity to move on if they wanted. I imagine them thrilled to be near the ocean, among amiable people willing enough to make room for them. My uncle fell in love there, but before the year was out, she jilted him. That's the story, why he left to start over, this time in South Africa.

My grandfather chose not to follow. I don't know why. I do know that immersion in a new culture can shake your confidence. Everything you never gave any thought to before, gestures and habits, the way you speak, dress, and relate to people, your skills, values, religion, even the tunes you sing, are suddenly under siege. Family can be an anchor for that shaken identity, and now Jacob was alone. He could have followed his brother or gone back to Europe. Plenty of immigrants confront poverty or hostility in the new country or succumb to that shaken sense of self and they go home, even if home is a dangerous place. It takes resilience and determination to carry on. Maybe Jacob wrote his cousins in New York and they sent a ticket, but he went on to the U.S.

This is why I am not a Glaswegian.

There's always something that pushed an immigrant to leave the home country, but to come specifically here there also had to be a pull. Why did Jacob choose America? Certainly its reputation preceded it. Land of the free, the myth of gold in the streetsAmerica symbolized the freedom to earn money and live unhampered by prejudice, where economic freedom and personal freedom were backed by law. That explained the river, an ocean, of displaced people pouring into New York harbor to find the Symbol holding up her beacon of promise. Jacob came because of what he was led to believe about America. Those ideals became his new identity.

He was processed through Ellis Island, where apparently some clerk lopped off the final 'e' of his adopted name, and he became Jacob Mallett. To this day along the Gulf coast where there are still marks of a French past you can find Catholic families named Mallette, but along with that lopped 'e' went Jacob's pretext at being one of them. As to his original name, I don't think he ever told anyone what it was.

I imagine my grandfather a little dazed that day his boat docked, squinting in the sun at the waving handkerchiefs, shuffling crowd, the official welcome in white coats processing his entry. In my story, under the shadow of that statue Jacob decides not to look back at family and culture left behind. He will embrace the ideals he thinks is America, marry and graft his received notion onto his children. He will hold tight to the dream of the elevated society that that definition spins in the hearts of so many.

OF COURSE, that American identity, Land of Freedomof speech, of opportunity, of religiondidn't match what he found after he disembarked. The real America (not the Dream) seemed to see itself as solidly white and Christian, a uniform powerful majority protective of its status, plus a politely ignored, properly invisible multi-ethnic minority. As Jacob moved into life among Lower East Side immigrants, he encountered America's very white and Christian picture of itself in stark contrast in every newspaper, movie, book, and advertisement, in the leadership of every business or organization with any power, and of course throughout the government. A minority, by definition of that government, did not have a binding voice.

Jacob found myriad restrictions on Jews in polite society, and not a lot changed after he married Anna, or as they raised their children. Even as adults, my father and my aunt confronted universities, fraternities and sororities they could not join, business firms and professional practices in which they weren't welcome, myriad people who would not date or socialize with them, social clubs that excluded them, and entire areas of citiesthis includes Houstonwhere they legally could not buy property.

If this wasn't disconcerting enough, many Jewish immigrants took the overt oppression of black people they found here as a personal threat. They assumed if one minority can be beaten, disenfranchised, denied education, forced into poverty, and murdered without penalty, no minority is safe. As mainstream newspapers discreetly ignored news trickling north about lynchings, immigrant Yiddish newspapers bore screaming headlines in large Hebrew letters that deemed lynchings "pogroms."

No, Jacob's definition of America as Land of Equality didn't match the majority American identity long and fiercely held that said, "We are the true Americans because We Made America," that assumes "majority rules" means dominance as a moral right. In that American vision of itself, whiteness and government and religion and power/defense are intertwined. It all must have brought this gentle man up a bit short.

Santiago Lyon/Associated Press

But I think we have held both notions of what it is to be an American side-by-side for a long time, always tipping this way and that in a sort of half-buried schizophrenia.

Whether Land of the Free or Majority Rules, both identities hold up our form of government to prove its truth. One points to our system to justify or sanctify the voice and dominance of the majority. The other points to universal enfranchisement and freedom of speech, and uses this banner to hold the government accountable to protect minorities and the vulnerable. Each has tended to hold the other in check. Periodic agreement has brought both continued stability and increased freedom. Now the conflict is pulling us apart.

IN A way, the conflict between the two wasn't as bad back in my grandfather's time. That most of the millions who came when my grandfather did, Irish, German, Italian, Eastern European, etc., were white and Christian meant they could be gradually absorbed without transforming the base, so the majority never had to question itself. Even the Jews were white, sort of. Still, there was backlash. Alarmed, Congress established quotas, with severest restrictions on non-white, non-Christian groups. The flood turned into a trickle, and the conflict didn't lead to an identity crisis. The white majority could still say This Is Our Country while the rest held on to the Dream.

But really, everyone identified with America as a symbol of freedom. Everyone treasured their freedom. It's just that freedom had more than one definition. The split remained.

JACOB FOUND work seven days a week at a cleaners operating the press, up, down, steam billowing in his face, and stayed through all the years raising their two children. He never had time to learn English. Anna learned a little. And yet, they somehow pushed the kids through City College. My father and aunt became educated middle-class hyphenated Americanswhite enough for blind assumptions of privilege but lacking the majority's defiant or unconscious pride. They were formed carrying both Jacob's daily American reality and his notion of what beliefs one must hold to be an American.

As an adult, my father continued family migration and moved to Texas. Houston, city of immigrants where there is no majority, is my home. I don't think Jacob ever noticed in his children his legacy of family brokenness and lost identity, or that they inherited the nameless silhouettes that had followed him across the ocean. My father carried on the habit of silence about those left behind.

Like the father of Jacob who looked at an angel, my grandfather went blindfrom glaucoma. Years later, after my mother died, his blind statement of his identity, his menorah, was swept away as a thing without a name. It probably wound up in an incinerator.

"WHO AM I" would define the rest of my life. But I'm formed by this country, so my question is really, "Who are we?" Who are we now? Or, which are we?

If our identity is defined by the majority, given that immigration has already irrevocably transformed the color of our nation, who are we when that majority rumbles and shifts as it sees itself morphing into something different from what it has always been? The ground shakes beneath our feet. Of course the outcry goes up about immigration. The old white majority rising up to defend "Our" country is defending their very identity.

And if our American identity is defined by the expectation of equality, what happens when reality pries away at our grip on that dream? But there's nothing more galvanizing, more self-defining, than such a dream. When people who hold onto this identity wake up to "we aren't who we thought we were," the ground also shifts. They, too, will fight to defend their very identity against an existential threat.

The question remains. What is our name? Who are we?

I suppose when we finally become, perhaps only after the fact, we will know.

Leah Lax is the author of Uncovered: How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home. She lives in Houston.



Bookmark Gray Matters. To come specifically here there has to be a pull.


KINGWOOD - Robert "Bob" Black, 93, was born and raised in Chicago and enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II.

Returning home after serving three years (one in China), Bob attended Colorado School of Mines, and began an extensive career in oil and gas. Black worked "in the field" for Humble Oil, living in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and North Dakota before moving to California, and Australia. He retired in the early 1990s, and subsequently began volunteering for the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center and the Berkley Circle Civic Association.

Black moved to Kingwood in 2011 after his wife, Mary Margaret "Peggy" died, to be closer to family. He has five children, six grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

He has been volunteering at Kingwood Medical Center since 2012.

Each week you will find Black in Kingwood Medical Center's Day Surgery, where he meets patients and family members, and keeps them informed as to the status of their loved one's procedure. He provides a welcoming face and a good ear for families who are going through anxious times. In the afternoon, Black works at the Visitor Information desk in the west entrance.

"I like meeting new people and I'm lucky to be in good health," Black said.

After having a stroke three years ago, Black spent five days in Kingwood Medical Center. He has completely recovered and "every day I say a prayer and give thanks for my health. I am grateful that I can support others."

Volunteering leaves an impact not only on Kingwood Medical Center and patients, but also on the volunteers. If you ask volunteers to name their favorite or most rewarding part of working at the hospital, they pause, take a moment to think and then - with a big smile - tell their story.

"Most volunteers say there is nothing better than knowing they have helped someone in need. It doesn't matter if a volunteer commits to an hour or four hours; it makes a difference to the ones who are being helped," said Jim Wall, director of imaging services and volunteer services.

Kingwood Medical offers a wide range of volunteer opportunities in departments throughout the hospital. To learn more, visit http://kingwoodmedical.com/careers/volunteers.dot or contact Jim Wall at Jim.Wall@HCAHealthcare.com.
The discovery of fresh piles of dirt on Wednesday prompted Tammie West Wall to rush to a cemetery in Aldine where several family members are buried. She was looking for indications that the property was being prepared for development.

When I pulled up, Wall was standing next to her car, gazing at mounds of dirt at the rear of the five-acre site in a remote corner of northeast Harris County near the Hardy Toll Road and the Sam Houston Tollway. "There's 11 loads there now," she said, pointing with the glowing end of her cigarette. "There were just three or so the last time I checked. They're bringing it in from the back."

Seven weeks have passed since Wall and others with relatives buried at the cemetery discovered that workers with heavy equipment had cut down most of the trees and removed a number of headstones. Sheriff's deputies, summoned by a relative who'd happened by, ordered the work stopped until the situation could be sorted out. Wall's family's headstones are among the few still standing.

Since then, the families have made little progress in their effort to ensure that someone is held accountable for what they consider a wanton act of desecration. They don't even know where the missing headstones are, or if they are still intact. Al Seeliger, whose grandparents' headstones were among those removed, isn't optimistic.

"I have pictures here of pieces of stone that they broke up," he told me by phone from his home in North Texas. "I don't know whether it's my grandfather or not."

The Texas penal code states that anyone who "vandalizes, damages, or treats in an offensive manner the space in which a human corpse has been interred" is guilty of a misdemeanor. As I reported in my Dec. 16 column, experts said that even the property owner may not legally remove headstones without a court order.

The Harris County sheriff's office completed an investigation and presented its findings to the district attorney's office, spokesman Ryan Sullivan said. But prosecutors refused to accept charges, saying the episode should be handled as a civil matter, he said.

Statutes scrutinized

The prosecutor who reviewed the case determined there was "no evidence that the (property) owner does not have the legal authority" to remove the headstones, said Dane Schiller, a spokesman for the district attorney's office.

Glenn Van Slyke, an assistant Harris County attorney, prepared a legal analysis of the situation for Janet Wagner, the chairwoman of the county's historical commission, who has been trying to help the families. Van Slyke determined that most of the site has been owned since 1975 by Foresthaven Cemetery Corp. (Corwin Teltschik, a Sugar Land attorney listed as a contact for Foresthaven in online business records, has not returned my phone calls.)

According to Van Slyke's analysis, three criminal statutes potentially apply to the removal of the headstones. However, he writes, "Foresthaven has represented to a sheriff's investigator that this operation was part of its normal operation and maintenance." This explanation, Van Slyke writes, could make it difficult to prove criminal intent, as all three statutes require.

"If true, Foresthaven should be willing to return them to the graves with which they were associated," Van Slyke's memo concludes.

No markers have been returned. And the "normal operation and maintenance" explanation hardly seems credible. The family members, not the company, tended to the graves over the years. A jury would surely be skeptical that Foresthaven executives were seized by a sudden impulse to remove headstones for cleaning, without bothering to notify the families beforehand or to return them within seven weeks.

Explanation needed

In any event, the families are talking about engaging an attorney to sue the owner. But the potential expense is a concern.

"I've got to talk to all my kinfolks," Seeliger said. "They're worried about how much it's going to cost."

At the very least, these families deserve an explanation of what happened and the return of their relatives' grave markers - or, if the markers have been damaged or destroyed, compensation to buy new ones. And if the owner wants to develop the property - as those piles of dirt suggest - perhaps an attorney will come forward to help the families ensure that condos or shops don't rise over the remains of their loved ones.
A federal appeals panel ruled unanimously Friday in a high-profile voting rights case that Pasadena's upcoming May elections will proceed as planned using a 2011 system, as ordered by a lower court judge who declared the current system discriminatory against Hispanics.

The city had argued in Houston Wednesday in an expedited hearing before three judges at the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of the judge's order to revert to the previous system.

The elections will go forward with eight single-member district seats, a format that was last used in 2013, rather than using the updated format with six single-member and two at-large seats that longtime Mayor Johnny Isbell crafted and backed.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston found the 6-2 format was intentionally designed to diminish the strength of Hispanic votes.

"This means all Pasadena voters will have a fair election on May 6," said Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which filed suit on behalf of a group of Latino voters over the revision to the city charter.

"All voters of all races will have a fair opportunity to elect their preferred candidates," she said.

C. Robert Heath, who represents Isbell and the city, said he was disappointed with the ruling, although he noted that the court found he had one strong argument -- questioning whether a plan that produces proportional representation of all demographics in an election can be discriminatory.

Four out of eight seats went to Hispanic-preferred candidates in 2015 under the 6-2 plan, and he argued before the panel that Hispanics would only do better in future elections.

"The Hispanic population is steadily growing," he said. "It's just going to get better going forward."

As of Friday, 14 candidates have submitted their names for the eight city council positions. The mayor's seat is also on the May ballot; Isbell is facing term-limits and cannot seek re-election.
Houston police and private partners swiftly set up a cutting-edge surveillance system in and around the area of Super Bowl Live, with software that can automatically detect signs of terrorism or trouble.

Thirty-six new cameras now cover Discovery Green, from atop surrounding buildings or posted within, and feed footage live to three main command centers. At a smaller station inside Super Bowl Live on Friday, sixteen wide screens showed videos, statistics and web activity from the area. Green boxes honed in on every face that passed through one feed, and another showed thermal footage of an entry area.

Administrators of the system said it could send a notification if a backpack is left behind, screams erupt, or if someone stands in one place too long. Motion sensing thermal cameras and analytics can zero in on and track a nighttime intruder, or identify the source point of gunshots.

"The upside is we have all this capability," said Jack Hanagriff, an officer with the Mayor's Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security, who estimated that the job was the most advanced temporary surveillance effort ever organized in Houston. "The downside is we had four days to build it."

The mayor's office, Houston police and five private companies jointly designed the system as the structures at Super Bowl Live went up to achieve wide views and identify areas where threats could most likely arise.

City costs for Super Bowl security will be reimbursed by the event's local host committee, which draws its funds from public and private sponsors.

Swedish company Axis Communications provided the cameras at Discovery Green. PrefTech, a Houston-based company that installs security systems, helped lay out, mount and wire the cameras. Super high-frequency radio transmissions from Israeli company Siklu can bulldoze through the interference of thousands of smart phones on W-Fi. Virginia-based VidSys brought the myriad of devices together with analytics and software onto an integrated command center display.

Verizon runs the display through fiber optic cable and two onsite servers to a web address where agencies like the city police, Texas Department of Public Safety, state Department of Transportation, and the Harris County Sheriff's Office can access it live. The security command centers for the Super Bowl are in the George R. Brown Convention Center, NRG Stadium and the City of Houston Emergency Operations Center.

The surveillance system is part of a massive effort by federal, state and local law enforcement to enforce rules and ensure safety as Houston hosts the world's largest annual sporting event.
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GALVESTON - The three-member crew of Texans on the rowboat Anne had slogged 44 days through nearly 3,000 miles of the vast Atlantic Ocean when the freak wave struck from the side, nearly capsizing the vessel.

The wave hit when the crew was least prepared, just as it changed shifts, nearly tossing 32-year-old Michael Matson of Missouri City into the sea. Matson saved himself by grabbing the jackstay, but his foot caught a line and gave his ankle a savage twist.

The boat rolled 90 degrees, sending loose gear and provisions overboard before the crew counterbalanced it with their weight. The close call left Matson unable to row, shifting the burden of propelling the craft to Brian Krauskopf, 38, and David Alviar, 31, both of Houston.

Their hands chafed and raw, their backsides covered with sores from the constant rocking of the rowing motion, they despaired of catching the boat ahead in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. "It put a funk on the push and we kind of lost morale," Krauskopf said.

Then they saw whales.

"Five days to go and we saw those whales and it was just a special moment and it got our morale back up," Krauskopf said. "It helped us put things in perspective."

The Anne crossed the finish line at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, with Krauskopf and Alviar popping red flares and Matson holding the U.S. flag aloft. They had won the three-person crew division and become the first triple-crewed boat to complete the race.

They also became the first Texans to finish, having been dubbed admirals in the Texas Navy before the race by the Texas Navy Association.

The Anne completed the voyage in 49 days, 14 hours and 4 minutes, achieving the crew's goal of crossing in under 50 days.

The crew set out Dec. 14 from San Sebastian de La Gomera on the island of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, off the coast of North Africa.

Calling themselves the American Oarsmen, the crew ended their voyage at Nelson's Dockyard English Harbour, Antigua and Barbuda.

The Anne finished fourth out of 12 boats.

Matson, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate and crew captain, said the crew rowed in two-hour shifts. He rowed alone on one shift and the other two rowed and slept at the same time for the entire voyage.

The voyage was toughest on Krauskopf and Alviar because of their close proximity on the 22-foot craft, built for two.

"Eventually you are going to grind and find some friction point," Alviar said. Yet they always were able to put their differences aside. "It's just realizing you can always work through a problem," he said.

The other mental challenge was the tedium. "It was definitely one of the hardest things I've been through, not only as a physical challenge but just as much mental," Krauskopf said.

The Anne ran into a storm early on, but for Krauskopf and Alviar, the worst part of the trip was the misery from the unexpected cold. Even though they were in warm latitudes, they were soaked by intermittent rain, then chilled by the wind. At times it was so bad that Krauskopf and Alviar abandoned the oars and huddled toward the bow. "We had a few rainy nights and storms so cold and debilitating you would not be able to row," Alviar said.

Said Krauskopf, "You had your smoldering hot days followed by the darkest, coldest days you could imagine."

Matson spoke with his crewmates at shift changes, but spent most of the day alone. "I had waterproof headphones, podcasts and books on tape," he said.

At the end of each shift they were exhausted and sleep came easily.

I think the most difficult for all of us was just sitting," Matson said. "Sitting 12 hours a day, the bottom of your hip joint rubbing into the seat. You get sores on your backside. One of the toughest things was just getting out of bed and sitting."

The suffering was counterbalanced by the moments of beauty as they encountered giant sea turtles, dolphins and, on three occasions, whales.

The gazed in wonder at the sunrises and sunsets, coal-black nights filled with more stars than they had ever seen and a sea at times as placid as a pond. Once during a squall, the clouds cut off every beam of light.

"It was the blackest I've ever seen in my life," Matson said. "That was pretty amazing."

Krauskopf said there were so many moments of beauty he could not recall them all.

"It was amazing that we got to see the things we did," he said.

When the Anne finally hove into the dock at English Harbour, the three crewmates could barely walk as they struggled onto the dock.

Matson's wife, Sami, his daughter Morgan, 7, and his son Cooper, 6, were waiting for him. He wobbled up to Morgan like a drunken sailer and took her in his arms, fulfilling his promise to give her his first hug.

Alviar made his way unsteadily to his boyfriend, Stanley Lewis, dropped to one knee, and proposed. Then he slipped onto Lewis's finger a ring made of carbon fiber and silver, symbolizing the carbon fiber used in paddles and rowboats that are a part of both of their lives.

There was no one to greet Krauskopf and he tottered to a barricade holding back onlookers. One of them handed him a cold beer, a pleasure he had been fantasizing about during the entire voyage.

All three say they are glad they made the passage, but are unlikely to repeat the experience, at least not in the Atlantic.
A 29-year-old woman has been accused in the shooting death of her husband Thursday at a home in northwest Houston.

Tu Thien Huynh is charged with murder in the slaying that occurred about 4:10 p.m. in the 10400 block of Newpark Drive near Goodrum, according to the Houston Police Department.
WASHINGTON - Congress' rush to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, once seemingly unstoppable, is flagging badly as Republicans struggle to come up with a replacement and a key senator has declared that the effort is more a repair job than a demolition.

"It is more accurate to say 'repair Obamacare,'" Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Health Committee, said this week. "We can repair the individual market, and that is a good place to start."

The struggles and false starts have injected more uncertainty into insurance markets that thrive on stability. An aspirational deadline of Jan. 27 for repeal legislation has come and gone. The powerful retirees' lobby AARP is mobilizing to defend key elements of the Affordable Care Act. Republican leaders who once saw a health law repeal as a quick first strike in the Trump era now must at least consider a worst case: unable to move forward with comprehensive health legislation, even as the uncertainty that they helped foster rattles consumers and insurers.

Insurers are threatening to exit the Affordable Care Act's market unless the Trump administration and Congress can quickly clarify their intentions: Will they support the existing public marketplaces, encourage people to sign up and keep federal assistance flowing or not?

"We need some certainty around the rules," said Dr. J. Mario Molina, chief executive of Molina Healthcare, which has been a stalwart in the Affordable Care Act market and is making money under the system.

"We have a few months, but we don't have a lot of time," he said.

With the official end on Tuesday of what was supposed to be its final open enrollment season, the Affordable Care Act is looking more resilient than it seemed just a month ago. It will still be several days before final enrollment figures are released, and although a surge of last-minute sign-ups failed to have materialize amid talk of repeal, early indications did not point to a collapse.

But after waging and winning many elections with a promise to kill it, Republicans still have no agreement on how to replace it. They will, they say, pursue a piecemeal approach because they have no desire to supplant the giant 2010 health law with a single comprehensive Republican plan cooked up in Washington.

When Congress convened this year, Republicans immediately introduced a budget resolution clearing the way for legislation to gut the health law, with strong support from Trump, who took office 17 days later. But Trump's rocky start has slowed the momentum.

Insurers say Republicans' mixed messages and slowing pace could send premiums soaring next year while making the market much less stable. The deadline to file rates for 2018 is this spring, and insurers say they need time to decide what kinds of plans to offer and to set prices.

"We need stability and predictability," said Marilyn Tavenner, the chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for the industry.

Unless Congress continues cost-sharing subsidies, to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income people, and a reinsurance program, to help pay large claims, she said, more insurers will pull out of the market.

Insurers are also concerned about signs that the Trump administration may not enforce the so-called individual mandate, which requires people to have insurance or face a tax penalty. The penalty, or some way to encourage more participation, is seen as central to having enough young and healthy people sign up to keep premiums low.

The end game is perhaps predictable. In the Senate, Republicans will need help from Democrats to replace the health law because they hold 52 seats but will need 60 votes. Several Republican senators, like Susan Collins of Maine and Bob Corker of Tennessee, say they will not vote to repeal the law unless they have a clear picture of what will replace it. And Democrats will not support any replacement unless Republicans scrap the idea of an outright repeal, which conservatives have been demanding for years.

"We can't repair the roof while Republicans and the president are burning the house down," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
Military engagements [between combined Russia and separatist forces and Ukrainian troops] have erupted along the entire line of demarcation, a development not seen since 2014," Ukrainian Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk has said.

"I can say with certainty that military operations are taking place along the entire front, something that hasn't happened since 2014," he said during a briefing on Friday in Kyiv.

Motuzianyk said the number of enemy attacks exceeded 100 for the first time since April 2016. He said battles were held around the clock, with Russian occupying forces using grenade launchers, artillery and multiple-rocket launching systems (GRAD).

"More than 2,000 attacks on the flanks of Ukrainian forces were carried out using heavy weapons. There are casualties among the civilian populations. One local woman died, another was wounded. A foreign journalist photographer received an eye injury," the ATO spokesman said.

He said the enemy continued to threaten ATO troops near Shata Butovka, Opytne and Pisky.

"The village of Spartak and Donetsk International Airport have been hit with grenade launchers, other weapons, tanks and rockets, which were fired at Ukrainian soldiers day and night. Our troops returned fire," Motuzianyk said, adding that the enemy also was active in the Svitlodarsk bulge and near Horlivka.

He said in the Mariupol sector the number of barrages increased dramatically, from 35 to 72. The enemy used multiple-rocket launchers against Starohnativka and Novohryhorivka. Heavy artillery barrages targeted Chermalyke, Hnutove, and Russian irregulars also fired rockets at Shyrokyne from GRAD-P systems. The enemy continues to shell areas in Maryinka region. A woman there was wounded by shell shrapnel and four houses were damaged. There is no electricity and two modules manned by Ukrainian Border Service troops were damaged.

In the Luhansk sector there has also been heavy shelling, which resumed in Popasniansky district. Battles began around 10.00 in the morning and continued late through the night. The enemy used grenade launchers and artillery, firing more than 50 salvos. Russian troops and Russian irregulars also fired at Syze, Stanychno-Luhansky district in Krymsky Novoaidarsky district. At total of 15 enemy salvos were recorded, including eight from heavy weapons.
The Pentagon and White House on Thursday defended the planning and execution of a U.S. Special Operations raid in Yemen that killed civilians along with a Navy SEAL, saying there was sufficient intelligence to carry it out and that it had been planned for months.

Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said the civilians were killed Saturday by gunfire from aircraft needed to support the SEALs after they came under heavy gunfire by militants, among them women who ran to planned fighting positions. The SEALs, he said, were "in extremis," a term the U.S. military uses to define situations in which service members or partner forces are under immediate threat. The dead are said to include the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric and a propagandist with al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike.

"The enemy had gone to a building and taken up fighting positions in that building to fire on our troops who were on the ground conducting this operation," Davis said. "The enemy put potentially the civilians at risk in doing so."

The operation was launched under cover of darkness in the village of Yaklaa, a stronghold of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that was defended with land mines and guarded by heavily armed militants. A fierce firefight erupted. Wounded SEALs were evacuated for pickup by Marines flying on MV-22 Osprey aircraft from the USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship. One of the Ospreys was damaged badly enough in the rescue operation that U.S. military officials elected to destroy it.

Davis and White House press secretary Sean Spicer disputed allegations, reported by Reuters and the New York Times, that the mission was poorly planned and had lost the element of surprise. The Times reported that the SEALs learned that their mission had been compromised after intercepting a transmission that showed the militants were preparing for their arrival.

"We have nothing to suggest that this was compromised," Davis said, adding that report "does not match with reality."

Spicer said that the plan for the mission was first submitted by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations across the Middle East, to the Defense Department on Nov. 7, one day before the presidential election. A plan was approved by the Pentagon on Dec. 19 and turned over to the White House. Obama administration officials approved a plan fduring an interagency meeting Jan. 6, and decided it would be best to carry it out in the dark of a "moonless night," Spicer said. That meant waiting until after Trump took office.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reviewed a memorandum on the plan Jan. 24, and Trump was briefed on it by national security adviser Michael Flynn the following day, Spicer said. Trump met with Mattis and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and then authorized the mission one day later.

Spicer defended the mission as a "successful operations by all standards," despite the loss of life, saying the intelligence gathered would ultimately protect American lives. Trump traveled Wednesday to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to view the arrival of the remains of the fallen SEAL, Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens, 36.

"It's hard to ever call something a complete success when you have the loss of life or people injured," Spicer said. "But I think (it was) when you look at the totality of what was gained to prevent the future loss of life, here in America, and against our people and our institutions and probably throughout the world, in terms of what some of these individuals could have done."

Spicer identified the moonless night as the reason for the raid's timing after other U.S. officials were against doing so, citing the operational security of potential future missions.

Davis, asked by reporters Thursday morning whether the lunar cycle played a role in the raid, declined to answer directly. "This was an operation that for reasons of the calendar had a date when it was most optimally conducted," he said.

Spicer did not respond to questions about why he mentioned the lack of moonlight on the operation.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump vowed Thursday to "totally destroy" a measure that bars houses of worship from endorsing political candidates, and eager Capitol Hill conservatives are ready to fight for him.

But they're unlikely to get the votes they need.

Trump called for an end to the so-called Johnson Amendment, a 1954 measure authored by then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson that prevents tax-exempt entities such as churches, mosques and synagogues from participating in political activities such as endorsing or opposing particular candidates.

"I will do that, remember," Trump told the National Prayer Breakfast, a bipartisan event attended by approximately 3,000 people.

Trump has a big hurdle. He'll need 60 Senate votes to overcome a filibuster. Democrats control 48 of the Senate's 100 seats, and 41 votes are needed to cut off debate. And Republicans have bigger priorities.

"We're in this heated environment that if anyone from one party says it's a good idea, then it's immediately a bad idea to the other party," said Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla.

Abolishing the amendment has been a priority for years among religious leaders - especially those with conservative leanings - who say their houses of worship live in fear of having their tax-exempt status yanked by the Internal Revenue Service for politicking from the pulpit.

Courting evangelicals

Trump made repealing the amendment a centerpiece of his pitch to evangelical voters during his presidential campaign. Republicans made scuttling the amendment part of the party's platform at their convention in Cleveland last July.

For years, a handful of congressional lawmakers have been trying to do away with the amendment and gotten nowhere. Thanks to Trump's support, repeal supporters are energized.

"I think this is the best opportunity we've had since I've been involved in this," said Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican who's been introducing repeal legislation since 2001.

Advocates for the separation of church and state fear that Trump's focus on getting rid of the Johnson Amendment might prompt lawmakers to give it more serious consideration than it's ever received in Congress.

"It clearly has ramped up the threat level," said Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary near Charlotte, N.C., said the political environment created the perfect storm to repeal the amendment: Trump is in the White House, Republicans control both chambers of Congress, and there are 10 incumbent Senate Democrats who'll seek re-election in 2018 in states Trump won last November.

"You have a significant number of Democratic senators who are up for re-election in 2018 in states that Mr. Trump carried with significant margins," said Land, a member of Trump's 25-person Evangelical Faith Advisory Board. "My guess is their constituencies want the Johnson Amendment killed. Of course, when they're up for re-election, that has a way of sharpening their attention."

Fundamental principle

Anthony Pinn, American religion scholar and Rice University's Agnes Cullen Arnold professor of humanities, said, "What it cuts at - what it comprises - is the separation of church and state and that is fundamental to our democratic process."

"If the president  lifts the ban against nonprofits being partisan, he should know that will cut both ways, for him and against him," said Ralph Douglas West Sr., pastor of The Church Without Walls in Houston.

Americans have mixed views about houses of worship delving into politics. A 2014 Pew Research poll found that almost 60 percent of Republicans think churches should be able to express their political views; 42 percent of Democrats agreed.

But 38 percent of Republicans and 28 percent of Democrats thought houses of worship should endorse candidates.

Chronicle reporter Cindy George contributed to the story.
VALLETTA, Malta - European Union leaders Friday vowed to remain united and defiant in the face of an onslaught of criticism from the new American president that has started to undermine the once-solid trans-Atlantic relationship.

And they hit back in an increasing battle of words, underscoring how they fear Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric will be turned into policy and further tear apart their troubled bloc.

EU chief Donald Tusk this week moved the U.S. into a "threat" category for the EU, following several negative comments about the 28-nation bloc.

"Maybe the best evidence that we are together in this context was the fact that some of my colleagues have used a new nickname for me, spontaneously, which is 'our Donald,' " Tusk said Friday at an EU summit in Malta.

French President Francois Hollande said "it cannot be acceptable" that Trump could put pressure on the EU through his declarations on Twitter. And he warned that Trump should not send any envoy to the EU that has criticized the bloc, which one potential candidate has done.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite pointed out that it was almost impossible to build a bridge with Trump because "today we're communicating with the United States mainly on Twitter."

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said "Trump must be judged by his actions and not by his rhetoric and his election campaign. But now he has delivered enough actions that are worrying." He said the United States was partly responsible for the strong refugee flows toward Europe because of its Mideast policies.

"What has happened in the last few days are really not the values I'm fighting for," Kern's Luxembourg counterpart, Xavier Bettel, said, referring to Trump's ban on refugees.

Trump has questioned the NATO alliance linking North America and Europe, calling it "obsolete." In addition, hopes for a major EU-U.S. trade deal have taken a deep dive amid worries of new U.S. protectionism under the Trump slogan "America first."On Friday, the Portuguese parliament voted to condemn Trump's U.S. travel ban on Muslims and highlighted the U.S. role in promoting tolerance and human rights around the world.

In Sweden, a photo said it all. Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin posted on Facebook a photo of her signing the country's new climate change law while surrounded by seven female staff members. Swedish media noted it resembled photos of Trump in the Oval Office signing decrees surrounded by only male advisers.
As we watch President Donald Trump lurch from one controversy to another, let us focus on one that is close to home - his disastrous beginnings with Mexico, our neighbor, friend and trading partner for whom he appears to have zero regard.

It is bad enough that our new leader wants to build a useless $25 billion wall between our two countries and insults Mexico by insisting our southern neighbor will pay for it.

But it is equally disturbing that he thinks the landmark North American Free Trade Agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada is a giant rip-off of the United States.

Trump has pointed to the $58 billion trade deficit the U.S. had with Mexico last year as an example of NAFTA's treachery. He misses two important points.

One is that we also have a deficit with Canada that dropped to $9.1 billion last year - but even with that has averaged $46 billion annually since 2000.

The other is that, according to the U.S. Trade Representative's website, our deficits are not the result of a trade imbalance, but rather, our thirst for oil, which we buy from Canada and Mexico.

"The largest factor affecting the trade balance with NAFTA countries is the importation of fossil fuels and their byproducts. If those products are excluded, there is no deficit. In fact, the United States has a large and growing trade surplus in goods, including agriculture and manufactured goods, as well as in services," the site says.

It is true, as NAFTA critics charge, that jobs in some sectors have been lost to lower-wage labor in Mexico. But the large increase in trade with the two countries under the pact also has created many new jobs in the U.S. - an estimated 5 million of them, many here in Texas.

So, if Trump wants to renegotiate NAFTA as he says, that's fine. It has been in place since 1994 and could probably use some updating.

But if he wants changes that threaten the trade pact's future or decides to pull out, he needs to know he will cause significant disruption to economies that have become closely integrated.

Texas would not escape unharmed because Mexico is our biggest trading partner, with $95 billion in commerce in 2015, the last year for which figures are available.

But Trump's other problem with Mexico is not about money; it's about his imperious, insulting attitude toward the country.

He and President Enrique Pena Nieto have had several conflicts already, the latest in a phone call last week that was supposed to have cooled things down.

It turns out, according to the Associated Press, that Trump threatened to send U.S. troops into Mexico to eradicate drug cartels, because he said the Mexican army was afraid to fight them.

And according to a report in the Mexican press, he told Pena Nieto he didn't need Mexico and the Mexican people.

That might sound unlikely, but the Wall Street Journal revealed in a recent editorial that when Trump visited the newspaper last November and was asked about U.S. policy toward Mexico, he responded, "I don't care about Mexico, honestly, I really don't care about Mexico."

Unfortunately, his lack of knowledge and concern for Mexico has become painfully apparent.

Quite simply, we would urge President Trump to take the time to learn more about Mexico, Canada, NAFTA and our interconnected economies. He could start by reading his own trade representative's web page. Texas' senators and our congressional delegation also should take the lead.

As things stand now, Trump's apparent lack of understanding makes it hard to take him seriously. When it comes to U.S.-Mexico policy, he does not speak for our country's best interests.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The First Amendment provides sufficient justification for the thousands of protesters who will take to Houston's streets, parks and sidewalks over Super Bowl weekend.

They have the right to peacefully assemble - and that should be enough, at least under the law of the land. However, it might not be enough for onlookers left scratching their heads and wondering what, exactly, people are trying to do.

Plenty of Houstonians will likely join in with raised eyebrows. The geographic sprawl of our swampy city doesn't lend itself to mass protests, as Leah Binkovitz, staff writer for the Rice University's Kinder Institute, wrote in Gray Matters.

Nor does Houston have an extensive history of protest action. That might be changing. Organizers of the nationally coordinated Women's March expected about 3,000 at the downtown protest after the presidential inauguration. The actual number was closer to 22,000. Who knows how many will show up in the Galleria area on Friday? Or City Hall on Saturday? Or Hermann Park, Discovery Green and even outside NRG Stadium on game day?

But what are people protesting? And what are they hoping to accomplish?

The groups organizing for this weekend represent heterogeneous interests, but the unifying theme is opposition to President Donald J. Trump. There's plenty of ways protests help further that goal.

Collective action can have an actual legal or physical effect. Volunteer lawyers continue to hold vigil at George Bush Intercontinental Airport to provide representation and advocacy for permanent residents being detained in the wake of an executive order that targeted many Muslim travelers. And who can forget when shouting protesters essentially shut down the Texas Senate in the final moments of state Sen. Wendy Davis' 2013 filibuster against an anti-abortion bill?

Protests also help draw a national spotlight to ignored issues. Lawyers weren't the only ones assembling at airports. Americans flocked by the thousands to bring attention to the plight of legal immigrants being held under an executive order that has now been blocked by four federal courts. Under massive pressure and media attention, the White House even said that it rolled back the order's application to permanent residents.

We celebrate this sort of protest on every Martin Luther King Jr. Day, commemorating how his Selma to Montgomery marches focused news cameras on the disenfranchisement and violence faced by African-Americans.

Organized protests also serve as a show of force to elected officials and lay the foundation for further political organization. Tea party protests in 2009 successfully galvanized opposition to President Obama's agenda. Here in Houston, Congress members John Culberson and Kevin Brady had to confront people at town hall meetings last month worried about losing health insurance. You can see the effect as the Republican Party changes its tune on Obamacare from "repeal and replace" to "repair."

Solidarity is another goal of mass protests. The Women's March united millions of people across the nation and shifted the tone of Trump opposition from despondence toward hope. And in New York City on Thursday, thousands of Yemeni bodega owners shut down their businesses in an act of support with their friends, families and loved ones stranded in airports or overseas. Fighting for a cause can be an exhausting endeavor, and protests help people feel like they're not alone.

Finally, protests can help shatter an image of a placid society. Even as the city ramps up to celebrate the Super Bowl, crowds outside Discovery Green last weekend showed visitors that plenty of Houstonians have something on their minds besides pigskin and wings.

From the Boston Tea Party onward, protest has long been part of the American tradition. So when the flags wave and the jets fly over NRG Stadium, just remember that the crowds holding signs across the city are celebrating patriotism, too.
Gorsuch: the right choice

Regarding "Supreme Court nominee echoes Scalia" (Page A1, Wednesday), Donald Trump told us that the person who was to be nominated for this seat would be very conservative and be in the mold of Antonin Scalia. That Trump promise has been fulfilled.

I therefore see us as fortunate to have Neil M. Gorsuch as the nominee put forth by President Trump.

All of the justices have been Jews or Catholics for many years.An interesting fact to me is that Gorsuch is an Episcopalian, a faith with little emphasis on doctrine and much emphasis on getting the procedure right.

I wish Gorsuch and the Supreme Court well. The Democratic senators should pick a different fight than one over Gorsuch's confirmation.

Neil Gorsuch can be, and I predict will be, a justice liberals and conservatives can admire for decades.

Sterling A. Minor, Houston

Energy and jobs

Regarding "Oil, gas jobs rise again in Texas" (Page B1, Jan. 26), at the end of 2016, Texas' oil and gas industry added jobs for the first time in two years, a welcome sign for many Texans in the energy industry. Yet a lot of people may not be aware of the jobs that clean energy resources - like wind and solar power, as well as energy efficiency - have been consistently adding to the Lone Star State.

A new report from Environmental Defense Fund details America's growing clean energy workforce and shows how, as the economy becomes more sustainable and energy-efficient, a new market for clean energy and sustainability jobs is created. Moreover, according to the Department of Energy, wind and solar power generation now employs more than four times as many Texans as fossil-fuel electricity.

Texas likely will always be America's oil and gas capital. By embracing our abundant clean energy assets, state leaders could help us become the nation's clean energy capital too, while creating thousands of local, well-paid jobs.

John Hall, Texas State Director, Clean Energy for Environmental Defense Fund, Austin

Adjust the ban

Regarding "Amid confusion, Trump defends refugee ban" (Page A1, Monday), millions of people are in a high dudgeon over President Trump's temporary travel ban affecting seven countries. As expected, demonstrations have formed all over and sign-waving individuals are expressing their disagreement and dismay. That's OK. That's their right. But what dismays me is the apparent inactivity in Washington D.C., where our elected officials appear to be doing nothing. Instead of running to the nearest microphone and lamenting the executive order, they should be working to correct the situation.

The operative word here is temporary, and a quick cure could be the answer to all of the objections. The appropriate Senate and House committees, plus Homeland Security, should be hard at work devising a workable vetting process, one that provides swift approval for all legitimate refugees, visitors and immigrants. The same system should provide systems whereby those only interested in coming here to cause trouble or do us harm, be denied entry - permanently.

Kent Marshall, Missouri City

Pull Astrodome plug

Regarding "Dome Dilemma" (Page C4, Sunday), residents need a dose of reality albeit painful. Nobody who moved to Houston since 2000 cares one bit for the old Astrodome. We moved from places that had domed stadiums so they are no big deal. Besides older Houston residents who remember fondly the Astrodome, the only other people who really care about the place are the commissioners who get paid to keep the hulk alive.

Our TV personalities and local political types like to say nice things about the Astrodome because, to say otherwise, would hurt their image. However, these people aren't footing the bill for keeping the old place going - taxpayers are! Every pipe dream to date about fixing up the old place ends up costing more taxpayer money. It's time to face reality. It's time to pull the plug and save a few million dollars of taxpayer money.

Curt Anderson, The Woodlands
WASHINGTON - There are many people to thank for the coming accession of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump for winning the election. Hillary Clinton for losing it. Mitch McConnell for holding open the high court seat through 2016, resolute and immovable against furious (and hypocritical) opposition from Democrats and media. And, of course, Harry Reid.

God bless Harry Reid. It's because of him that Gorsuch is guaranteed elevation to the court. In 2013, as then-Senate majority leader, Reid blew up the joint. He abolished the filibuster for federal appointments both executive (such as Cabinet) and judicial, for all district and circuit court judgeships (excluding only the Supreme Court). Thus unencumbered, the Democratic-controlled Senate packed the lower courts with Obama nominees.

Reid was warned that the day would come when Republicans would be in the majority and would exploit the new rules to equal and opposite effect. That day is here.

The result is striking. Trump's Cabinet appointments are essentially unstoppable because Republicans need only 51 votes and they have 52. They have no need to reach 60, the number required to overcome a filibuster. Democrats are powerless to stop anyone on their own.

And equally powerless to stop Gorsuch. But isn't the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees still standing? Yes, but if the Democrats dare try it, everyone knows that Majority Leader McConnell will do exactly what Reid did and invoke the nuclear option - filibuster abolition - for the Supreme Court, too.

Reid never fully appreciated the magnitude of his crime against the Senate. As I wrote at the time, the offense was not abolishing the filibuster - you can argue that issue either way - but that he did it by simple majority. In a serious body, a serious rule change requires a serious supermajority. (Amending the U.S. Constitution, for example, requires two-thirds of both houses plus three-quarters of all the states.) Otherwise you have rendered the place lawless. If in any given session you can summon up the day's majority to change the institution's fundamental rules, there are no rules.

McConnell can at any moment finish Reid's work by extending filibuster abolition to the Supreme Court. But he hasn't. He has neither invoked the nuclear option nor even threatened to. And he's been asked often enough. His simple and unwavering response is that Gorsuch will be confirmed. Translation: If necessary, he will drop the big one.

It's obvious that he prefers not to. No one wants to again devalue and destabilize the Senate by changing a major norm by simple majority vote. But Reid set the precedent.

Note that the issue is not the filibuster itself. There's nothing sacred about it. Its routine use is a modern development - with effects both contradictory and unpredictable. The need for 60 votes can contribute to moderation and compromise because to achieve a supermajority you need to get a buy-in from at least some of the opposition. On the other hand, in a hyper-partisan atmosphere (like today's), a 60-vote threshold can ensure that everything gets stopped and nothing gets done.

Filibuster abolition is good for conservatives today. It will be good for liberals tomorrow when they have regained power. There's no great principle at stake, though as a practical matter, in this era of widespread frustration with congressional gridlock, the new norm may be salutary.

What is not salutary is the Reid precedent of changing the old norm using something so transient and capricious as the majority of the day. As I argued in 2015, eventually the two parties will need to work out a permanent arrangement under which major rule changes will require a supermajority (say, of two-thirds) to ensure substantial bipartisan support.

There are conflicting schools of thought as to whether even such a grand bargain could not itself be overturned by some future Congress - by simple majority led by the next Harry Reid. Nonetheless, even a problematic entente is better than the free-for-all that governs today.

The operative word, however, is "eventually." Such an agreement is for the future. Not yet, not today. Republicans are no fools. They are not about to forfeit the advantage bequeathed to them by Harry Reid's shortsighted willfulness. They will zealously retain the nuclear option for Supreme Court nominees through the current Republican tenure of Congress and the presidency.

After which, they should be ready to parlay and press the reset button. But only then. As the young Augustine famously beseeched the Lord, "Give me chastity and continency, only not yet."

Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
The political backlash over President Donald Trump's refugee/immigrant "ban" has gone beyond knee-jerk partisanship. The furor has abandoned reason.

It's not clear if that's because Trump's opponents have not yet figured out that he is not going to kowtow to their cherished conventional wisdom, or because they have figured it out.

Whichever is the case, they should prepare themselves for more of the same.

Two years ago, President Barack Obama designated seven countries as a security threat for U.S. travelers. Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen were cited, based on the threat of terrorism there.

The global situation has not improved, and Trump is not convinced U.S. border security is up to the task. So he directed that individuals from the terrorist-sponsoring countries not be admitted until they can be fully vetted.

Trump's order is temporary, with security policies being reviewed and updated over the next 90 days.

More could - and is likely to - follow. What that is will be determined by the outcome of the review.

But rather than wait and see what evolves, the opposition went immediately into full panic mode.

Could the new administration - in its whirlwind of executive orders, initiatives and appointments  have done a better job implementing the order? Certainly. More clarity on the status of green-card holders would have helped.

But Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Tuesday denied news reports that he was blindsided by Trump's order (which, by the way, is consistently identified as "controversial" in media accounts, a word never applied to Medicaid, for example, which has been just as controversial and for a lot longer).

"We did know the executive order was coming," Kelly said. "We had people involved in the general drafting of it. Clearly this whole approach was part of what then-candidate Trump talked about for a year or two. So we knew all this was coming."

Kelly may as well have been talking to the wind. The false narrative that the president cut corners gave his opponents all the ammunition they needed to blast the policy and point to fictional fissures inside the new administration.

Let's be clear. Amid their reactionary harangues, left-wing ideologues - including an increasingly desperate Democratic Party that was left by the November elections without a seat at either the executive or legislative tables - have demonstrated no firm allegiance to national security. They may not wish America ill when they mouth the glib diversity-is-our-strength mantra, but their agenda sows disunity and disrespect in this country, where we all bleed red.

Trump's robust brand of nationalism also chafes global businesses, which see international travel as a borderless right. But entering the United States is a privilege, and the executive branch has a legal duty to safeguard this country.

While the global economy has opened new opportunities for economic growth and prosperity, we live in an era in which commercial worship of that global economy has also opened the gates to global terror and made the world a more dangerous place.

In the irony of ironies, a businessman with global connections challenges the conventional wisdom that open borders are an inevitable good. Battered by a loss of jobs and growing insecurity, Americans elected Trump to break America's dysfunctional political duopoly.

The country wants prosperity and safety. Trump is working for both those objectives. His detractors offer only shrill objections.

Ward is a Texas bureau reporter for Watchdog.org, a nonprofit journalism project of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has reiterated that Ukraine invariably calls for ceasefire in Donbas.

"The Ukrainian side has done all it could to repel these attacks started at the end of January [in Avdiyivka]. And the whole time it has been underscoring the need for ceasefire," the president said during a videoconference with the leader of the Donetsk regional military-civilian administration, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, the president's press office said.
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A discussion of the timeframe for convening and conducting a meeting of the leaders of the "Normandy format" nations (Ukraine, Germany, France, Russia) must be preceded by a ceasefire in Donbas, the Ukrainian presidential administration said.

"As regards the 'Normandy format' at the level of heads of state and government, this matter is being discussed but the timeframe of its convocation and conduct depends on key factors: a ceasefire must be put in place," deputy head of the administration Kostiantyn Yeliseyev said at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

The "Normandy format" operates in various formats, including on the level of experts, he said.

"Even last week 'Normandy-format' consultations were held precisely at the level of experts. So, work continues," the deputy head of the administration said.

Today "the situation in Avdiyivka is key and there has to be a ceasefire," he said. "Only then we can talk about some political matters," he said.
Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch's campaign manager stepped down Thursday evening, saying he has become a "distraction" from her bid.

Nick Kouvalis, who has been embroiled in numerous controversies recently, announced his decision in a Facebook post.

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"When a member of a campaign team becomes the focus of media coverage, the time comes to resign," he wrote. Kouvalis said the high-stress role was not healthy for his "personal wellbeing."

The political aide most recently caused a stir last week, after using a racial slur against a constitutional expert who criticized Leitch's policies.

He also admitted to spreading fake news on Twitter against Justin Trudeau's government.

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In December 2016, Kouvalis tweeted a list of "billions'' of dollars the Liberal government had supposedly given to international aid organizations in the last year, including $351 million for the designated terrorist group Hamas.

He later admitted the information was false, telling Maclean's magazine that he posted it "to make the left go nuts.''

Kouvalis, who has struggled with alcoholism since 2011, was also arrested on impaired driving charges in April 2016.

Following the incident, Kouvalis apologized on Twitter saying it was a "wake up call" for him on his "journey to permanent sobriety."

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In Thursday's Facebook statement, the campaign manager thanked Leitch for her support.

"It has been a privilege to be part of this campaign, and I thank everyone for their support, confidence and friendship," he wrote.

With files from The Canadian Press.

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A feminist, a historian, a DJ, a vegan, a Ukrainian-American, a chef and an accountant. All of these people have one thing in common  they voted for U.S. President Donald Trump, and they regret it.

"I voted for you. Where are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon & Saudi Arabia on your ban? We don't care about your investments!," tweeted Twitter user Kristie.

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"@realDonaldTrump U lying sack of shit. I voted 4 u. Hiring freeze a the VA? My daddy needs care. You promised to help," tweeted another user named Bobby.

Both tweets were shared by "Trump Regrets," a Twitter account that has been retweeting the stories of angry Americans.

@realDonaldTrump@samsung@axios I voted for you but Devos is a disgrace. A terrible choice for our kids. Your first yuge mistake.  Stay Frosty (@oscarmike442) February 2, 2017

The account is run by Erica Baguma, a Halifax university student who told The Huffington Post Canada with a laugh that she definitely wouldn't have voted for Trump.

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Baguma came up with the concept for the account after she heard Trump wouldn't be pursuing any charges against Hillary Clinton  something he had made a lot of noise about on the campaign trail.

"I was curious how his base felt about that," Baguma said.

What she found was a lot of people who felt betrayed. Not just about Clinton, but about a lot of Trump's actions  including some stuff he had said he would do during his campaign.

One of Trump's big promises was that he intended to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

"A lot of people thought that a lot of what he was saying was just rhetoric, you know, trying to fire people up but didnt actually expect him to follow through."

But, after Trump signed an executive order to begin construction, one voter tweeted, "please rethink the wall, i voted for you but the wall I dont agree with, please appeal to the needs of the greater Nation."

"Ive definitely found that a lot of his voters really werent informed on his positions on a lot of things. A lot of them seemed to be really single-issue voters, so they were surprised by his major campaign pledges," Baguma explained.

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"A lot of people thought that a lot of what he was saying was just rhetoric, you know, trying to fire people up but didnt actually expect him to follow through."

She says having the account and reading people's perspectives has warmed her to Trump supporters. She's been surprised by two things: how diverse Trump voters are, and how many of them were well-intentioned.

@realDonaldTrump I supported you, BUT they aren't illegal immigrants, they are refugees!! There is a difference.  Shannon Johnson (@SjSrwillis06) February 2, 2017

She says the tweets might hold some insight for Canadian voters.

"Its always important to do your homework, to understand and to stay informed. Its easy for us to kind of laugh and say we could never elect somebody like Trump, but we definitely could if we arent careful."

The social anthropology student says there's also a big lesson she's learned from the account that she can relate back to her studies.

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"You can't really generalize a culture, ever. A culture isn't homogenous, and that's something I've definitely been learning is that there are so many nuances in a population," Baguma explained.

She didn't expect the account would gain so much attention, but once she saw it was bringing some people comfort she decided to keep it up.

"Ill probably keep going as long as people are interested and people are still regretting," she said.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said that clear and concerted actions by military and authorities have not given the possibility to the Russian Federation to destabilize the situation in Avdiyivka and across the front line.

"One can only imagine how residents of Avdiyivka have been living in those days without light, with a limited supply of heat, limited water supply, because the Russian side tried to turn their lives into hell. And only well-coordinated actions of mine, the Ukrainian government, services, glorious Ukrainian military - all together have done everything possible to prevent the Russian Federation to destabilize the situation in Avdiyivka and across the front line," the president said during a video conference with the head of the Donetsk regional military and civil administration Pavlo Zhebrivsky, the presidential press service said.
It took two years for Ibtesam Alkarnake and her family to finally get to Canada to begin their new life. And a mere 10 hours after landing, they did receive a new life... in the form of a healthy baby boy.

Travelling from a refugee camp in Amman, Jordan, to Frankfurt, Germany, and then onto Calgary, where they spent a few hours before boarding an Air Canada flight to Fort McMurray, the family of six (with another on the way) finally made it north on Tuesday evening.

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Somewhere along the 24-hour journey, Alkarnake's water broke  and she didn't tell anyone, not even her husband. Instead, she sat quietly for hours in pain and discomfort, all for the hope that she could have her baby born in Canada.

After finally landing, Fort City Church, who sponsored the family that fled Syria five years ago, and a handful of residents, greeted the family. They escorted the new Fort McMurray residents to their apartment, and it was then when the mother revealed she was going to give birth.

The mom was taken to a local hospital, where her son, Eyad, was born a few hours later. He weighed just over six pounds.

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'Brute determination': Syrian refugee mom gives birth hours after reaching new home https://t.co/uyAzD6fjtwpic.twitter.com/CYWQ3CxGTI  CBC Edmonton (@CBCEdmonton) February 1, 2017

"Brute determination on the mom's part to have the baby in Canada," Fort City Church Pastor Doug Doyle told CBC.

The church, which raised $70,000 for the family's integration into Canadian society, shared a photo of the family with their newest addition on Facebook, with the caption, "The first family photo of the Alkanakre's [sic] with their newborn son, not yet 24 hours in Fort McMurray. #WelcomeToCanada #NewCanadianCitizen."

The comment section was filled with well wishes.

"That is amazing! Lots of transitions in store for this family. Thanks for sharing," one user wrote.

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"God love you all. Welcome all of you to Canada," another wrote.

One woman even asked how she could donate "to this amazing mom."

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley called Ibtesam's strength and determination "incredible."

With much attention being placed on U.S. President Donald Trump's ban on refugees from Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries, this story is a heartwarming reminder that these people are just like any of us  in need of a home to raise a family.

In the words of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: "Canadians will welcome you."

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Co-written by Aaron Binder and Nicholas Tsergas

The world has changed much in recent years and perhaps none more so than this year on January 20, the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump. During the recent American election cycle, many Canadians observed from the sidelines -- at first with chuckles when Donald Trump entered the Republican primary. Chuckles soon turned to nervous laughter, and in the election's closing days finally devolved into shrill cries of "But don't they know about Rob Ford?!"

The Trump situation takes place within its unique American context and many Canadians are assured that We The North are immune from the ideological virus of radical right-wing populism. Yet the savvy political observer can easily detect the toxic symptoms of this aggressive strain of New Republicanism creeping north into dinner-table conversations, Facebook fights and the shaky belief structures of our collective angry uncle populace.

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Canada has done relatively well with its political discourse for quite some time, and regardless of political leanings most Canadians would be hard-pressed to say we've ever had a truly horrendous prime minister. Yet, as radical populism runs amok in America, similar sentiments threaten to gain a foothold in Canada while, infuriatingly, the same people that chuckled before at Rob Ford and then Donald Trump are now chuckling again -- having clearly learned nothing and taking comfort in a smug sense of intellectual superiority over those who sympathize with the much-derided alt-right. In their infinite arrogance, the Chuckling Left are presently resting assured that radical populist politics will not gain traction here in Canada.

Enter the Conservative Party of Canada, currently in the throes of a leadership race punctuated by one-dimensional stabs at relevance from Kellie Leitch, a Where's Waldo search for half the candidates, and the recent addition of a half-American, half-shark business person. It may not seem as farcical as the American election, but by Canadian standards this stuff is worthy of the Chicken Cannon.

As the leadership race begins to enter mainstream Canadian consciousness, it is easy to tell which candidates have toured the country, hearing the concerns of diverse communities across Canada, and which candidates have not. Michael Chong and Maxime Bernier have both gained traction as strong candidates in polling, social media discourse and fundraising. Both men have also distanced themselves from the toxic politics of religious conservatives and instead have decided to run on platforms embracing economic conservatism, revitalized taxation policy and next-generation leadership.

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While both of these candidates should be lauded for eschewing the rhetoric-based campaign styles of their competitors, unfortunately Chong has run a campaign far too Ontario-centric to garner the Canada-wide support necessary to be a truly viable candidate.

If radical populism in the Conservative Party is left unchecked, it threatens to overtake meaningful and nuanced candidates.

If this were a regular leadership race, it probably would come down to these two, but this election is more than simply choosing the next Conservative Party leader -- it represents a potentially massive shift in the party's policies and core platform due to the power vacuum still evident in the post-Harper era, and could reflect a similar ideological shift across the country if Conservatives can successfully depose Justin Trudeau in 2019.

The threat of radical populism has also shown its ugly face during this leadership race, and that face is the dual-headed hydra of Kellie Leitch and Kevin O'Leary. The concern is that if radical populism in the Conservative Party is left unchecked, it threatens to overtake meaningful and nuanced candidates like Bernier and Chong. Which is why not just long-time card-carrying Conservatives -- but all Canadians bound by a sense of civic duty -- need to concern themselves with the process of choosing the next Conservative leader, regardless of personal political stances and beliefs.

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Policy substance in political discussions and debates needs to be considered, covered, and valued far, far above sloganized rhetoric, empty promises and the illusion of simple solutions to complex social problems. Bernier alone has been loud and clear in spreading his message to keep Canadian cultural values intact while invigorating the country's fiscal outlook with policies that will affect Canadians from all walks of life.

This past week, Bernier released a speech targeted directly at the controversial equalization payments that have been a contentious point among residents of all provinces since their implementation in the 1950s. This represents a direct attack on business-as-usual in Ottawa with a level of policy substance not seen from most other candidates, creating an important distinction between Bernier and other candidates who focus on religious hot-points, their bald egos, and defending their roles and activities in the good ol' Harper glory days.

As evidenced by the decline of the Liberal party after Jean Chretien's departure from the prime minister's office, weak competition in Canadian politics leads to a decline in the overall quality of our leaders, our parliamentary discourse, and our country. Harper and his cabinet certainly led the country well in some respects, but eventually became far too paranoid (and Americanized in their rhetoric) to exhibit true leadership for all Canadians, instead adopting the disappointing political practices of actively working to divide the population against itself, and implementing boutique tax credits to strategically target bases that could help them stay in power -- for power's sake.

To continue Canada's tradition of positive political competition, Conservatives need to leave Harper's brand of pick-and-choose politics in the past where it belongs, reject new-right radical populism and focus on a Canada inclusive of all, something that few candidates seeking the Conservative leadership seem to understand. Honesty and straight-shooting have become the defining characteristics of recent elections to the point where people would rather have a wolf telling them he's going to eat them than a sheep they just don't trust for some ambiguous reason.

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We risk the wholesale surrender of Canada to idiot-appeasing slogans and the same fearful, divisive politics that have gripped the throat of America.

The old-school politician is a dying breed, and now is the time to adapt and fight the risks posed by the alt-right and Chuckling Left with substantive policy positions, actual solutions to real problems, and true honesty rather than a sunny-ways mirage. It is now more important than perhaps ever to ensure that political disagreements do not devolve to personal ones, and to build a truly great country through collaboration and evidence-informed leadership.

If we do not elevate candidates who exemplify these values, we risk the wholesale surrender of Canada to idiot-appeasing slogans and the same fearful, divisive politics that have gripped the throat of America. No matter where Canadians happen to fall on the political spectrum, we need to remain undivided in our resolve to stand together in a world gripped by fear.

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Colin and Justin take design inspiration from everything that surrounds them. Here they travel to Quebec for a history lesson and a chilly adventure in ice...

As Europeans in Canada, we sometimes miss the easy access to mainland Europe we enjoyed whilst billeted in the UK, and the ease with which we could visit cities like Paris or Bordeaux at the drop of a stylistic hat.

But we shouldn't worry: as committed Francophiles, we've just learned we can enjoy authentic French flair just ninety minutes from our base in Toronto. Quelle surprise! Last week, to this end, we spent several days in Quebec City, a destination that -- after ten years in Canada -- we still hadn't visited.

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Ah, Quebec. Historic, beautiful Quebec. And getting there couldn't have been easier: we literally walked to the airport from our downtown Toronto condo (tugging our wheely bags behind us took all of ten minutes) to Billy Bishop where we jumped aboard a Porter Air flight that felt for all the world like business travel even though the carriers pricing is set at one class.

Founded in 1608 by French explorer Samuel De Champlain, Quebec City is the veritable cradle of French civilization in North America. Popular with design aficionados, history buffs and architecture fans, it boasts a plethora of boutique hotels although, on recommendation from friends, we booked The Auberge Saint Antoine. Nestled in the city's Old Port, opposite the St Lawrence River, it's a luxurious retreat with an aesthetic that fuses new build and lovingly restored ancient construction.

Prior to being a hotel, the property was used as a wharf, later a cannon battery and then by British merchants when Quebec City was one of North America's biggest ports. Now re versioned, the outpost is spectacular. Bedrooms are luxuriosly appointed, there's an awesome cocktail bar and Panache, a post and beam vaulted ceiling restaurant.

Widening our net to capture further inspiration, we booked dinner at Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, a grand hotel built in the 1890's for The Canadian Pacific Railway Company. The subject of a recent $75m refurb', the Chateau (voted, by Conde Nast Traveller, amongst the world's Top Ten Most Iconic Hotels) more than retains its Quebecois heritage.

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Dining at Le Sam, and overlooking the ice crusted St Lawrence River, we enjoyed a Jurassic scaled charcuterie board and the pinkest, plumpest lamb chops ever. The eatery's interior is a dramatic fusion of black and cream, richly accented with shots of gold and stone finishes. Visit Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac to see more. We fully expect to infuse future C&J schemes with whispers of the elegant environment.

It's fair to report we fell in love with Vieux Quebec and its UNESCO World Heritage site fortified walls. At every opportunity we pounded the cobbled streets, tempting cafes and boutiques, somewhat blindsided by the old town's architectural beauty and at all times reminded of our formative years in Europe.

With an afternoon spare, we made the short half hour drive to Quebec's famous Hotel De Glace, a magical crystal white frozen palace which is currently entering its 17th (short but frigid) season. Find out more at http://www.hoteldeglace-canada.com and prepare for polar orbit at The Valcartier Vacation Village structure that's as much art installation as it is a cool (if you'll excuse the pun) destination.

But come on: a hotel made from ice? Yes. But re building it, annually, is no mean feat. Each year's frozen fantasy depends upon sub-zero temperatures during construction and operation. All walls and fittings are made of ice and compacted snow, held together using 'snice', a medium that takes the place of mortar in traditional brick-built structures. It takes fifty people six weeks to build, using approximately thirty thousand tons of snow and five hundred tons of ice.

'Northern Perspectives' is this year's theme. Cue hand sculpted 3D friezes depicting polar owls, whales and dolphins and an eerie silence due to walls that are up to four feet deep. With its scintillating carved ice chandeliers, vast frozen hallways and ever-popular Ice Bar (which serves cocktails in sparkling ice vessels) the hotel is mesmerizing.

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In total there are forty-four themed rooms and suites and even a chapel. It truly is an exercise in aesthetics, a world where frozen beauty meets hot urban style. Can we say awe inspiring? Can we say jaw dropping? The avoidance of hyperbole, to be honest, is tricky being that the destination is so undeniably spellbinding.

All beds are made of ice, but worry not -- they're dressed with mattresses. As night beckons, sleeping bags and pillows are delivered to enhance comfort. Some bedrooms, incredibly, have roaring fires (contained in glass hearths) but these are designed to dispatch heat through chimneys rather than amplify ambient temperatures. Only minimal warmth emanates -- they're more aesthetic -- but boy, are they atmospheric.

So visit while you can: ephemeral magic like this doesn't last forever. On the 26th of March, before the fairy-tale melts due to climatic shift, the entire structure will be safely dismantled in just a few short days. And the planning for next year's architectural butterfly will begin in chilly earnest.

Boy, we had a stellar time during our little vacay. Little wonder, then, we're currently hatching plans: walking from our condo to our Porter flight, flying, then cabbing it to Vieux-Port takes less time than driving from Toronto to our Haliburton cottage. Approximately three hours versus 3.5: we clock watched to be sure. As aspiring hoteliers, a run down gite upon which to imprint the C&J stamp would be fun. Seriously: we're plotting. So watch this space...

For further information, visit http://www.quebecregion.com It's fair to describe Quebec City, and The Ice Hotel, as utterly inspiring. The former is an exercise in European magic that will remain with us forever, whilst the icy vision of the latter, as we see it certainly, brings clear thinking decor to a whole new level. So take a tip: make the trip -- we guarantee you'll chill out...

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Cool kids Colin & Justin

The ethereal peaks of The Ice Hotel - photo by Dany Vachon

Fire meets ice - a stunning combination - photo by Philippe Renaud

You'll have a whale of a time in this aquatic themed room - photo by Philippe Renaud

Delicious dining at the Panache restaurant - Auberge St Antoine

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Step back in time for some olde worlde inspiration - breathtaking...

The uber stylish Le Sam lounge at Le Chateau Frontenac
Growing up, there was an unspoken absence in Zainib Abdullah's life.

In Richmond Hill, Ontario, far from the home her family left in Iraq, she pieced together the story of her uncle. He had been unjustly arrested and disappeared years earlier by Saddam Hussein's government, without a trial or a chance to say goodbye to his loved ones.

Now she puts pen to paper, writing letters on behalf of people unfairly imprisoned around the world.

"I wasn't able to write to my uncle, but this is a way I can help others," she says, lifting her pen from a letter at Amnesty International's annual Write for Rights event in Toronto. "There is definitely a healing element."

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The pen holds power and letters can change lives.

More intimate than an email, more impactful than a tweet, the personal touch of a letter can reach prisoners of conscience hidden away in the world's darkest corners and remind those in power they can't act with impunity.

Journalist Khadija Ismayilova spent nearly two years in prison on trumped-up charges of tax evasion after she exposed corruption in Azerbaijan's government. Malek Adly called on people to protest human rights abuses in Egypt and ended up in jail. Both of them walked free this year after massive global letter writing campaigns.

Letters and petitions were among our first actions as young activists.

When Kailash Satyarthi was arrested in 1995 for raiding carpet factories to fight child labour, we wrote an impassioned letter to the Indian Prime Minister and included 3,000 signatures on a petition for his release. We put both in a shoebox and mailed them to New Delhi.

A year later, when Satyarthi came to Canada to speak, he remembered the shoebox brimming with names. "It was one of the most powerful actions taken on my behalf," he said.

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We hear a lot about clicktivism--about tweets unleashing global awareness campaigns and social media causes going viral. While it's easier than ever to mobilize huge numbers and support, the low barrier to entry can mean that many worthy causes fade into white noise.

That is why we believe in meeting with your MP (that's why they have offices) and in marches of protest. And when your feet can't carry you far enough and meetings aren't an option, write a letter or pick up the phone. This was a major theme at the recent Women's March on Washington because politicians pay attention when people raise their voice.

When Canadian computer programmer Hamid Ghassemi-Shall was arrested in Iran in 2008 and baselessly accused of espionage, Abdullah immediately got involved with his case. At one event she attended, his wife Antonella Mega played a voicemail she'd received from prison.

"We listened to him saying how much he loves her and it was beautiful. Antonella was beaming," Abdullah recalls. "I remember thinking, 'what if he's never released'."

Finally free after five years in prison, Ghassemi-Shall told supporters at an Amnesty International event how their letters gave him the energy to keep fighting, and Abdullah couldn't help but reflect on her own uncle.

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"I think about him sometimes, about what it would have been like for him to get a letter."

That's what keeps her writing.

Craig and Marc Kielburger are the co-founders of the WE movement, which includes WE Charity, ME to WE Social Enterprise and WE Day.
Pool via Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 30: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order surrounded by small business leaders in the Oval Office of the White House January 30, 2017 in Washington, DC. Trump said he will 'dramatically' reduce regulations overall with this executive action as it requires that for every new federal regulation implemented, two must be rescinded. (Photo by Andrew Harrer - Pool/Getty Images)

It will come as no surprise to anyone who regularly reads my blogs to hear that I am not a fan of Donald Trump.

In my opinion, he's a despicable human being. As a businessman he is totally lacking in ethics and integrity. I don't think he is competent -- intellectually or mentally -- to be president; and I certainly don't agree with his beliefs, his policies, his methods or his plans for the country. And, were I an American, I would never have voted for him.

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But having said that, I am not surprised in the slightest that he wasted no time in taking the preliminary steps to get rid of Obamacare, to build the wall along the Mexico - U.S. Border and to ban Muslims. It's exactly what he said he'd do throughout his entire campaign. In fact, I would have been shocked if he'd backed away from any of it, or even waited for the Obama's plane to take off for Palm Springs before getting started.

He couldn't wait to start signing those executive orders and hold them up -- like trophies -- for all the world to see.

I don't have to like it; and, in fact, I don't. But he was elected. Done deal.

The sane among us wish that Congress would at least try to stop him. But alas the democrats have zero power -- and even if they had some they are shell-shocked from their massive defeat, have no leadership and, from what I can see, no ideas or strategy either.

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Whatever energy they can muster, which is limited at best, is spent holding up the confirmation process of Trump's cabinet picks -- an exercise in futility because the Republicans have a congressional majority and Trump has all the support he needs -- with or without them.

There are some Republicans who don't agree with what he's doing or the way he's doing it but they're wimps and are afraid to oppose him. The only two who speak up regularly are John McCain and Lindsey Graham, but two out of 292 is hardly enough.

And the rest, like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence to name a few, are as morally bankrupt as he is. So no one should expect them to come to America's rescue any time soon.

And there we have it.

What does have me literally gasping for breath, however, is how blatantly President Trump is attempting to eliminate potential opposition and/or interference, control what Americans are told, what they read, what they can say and how he is systematically going after -- attacking and silencing -- all those who criticize him:

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He signed a presidential memorandum removing the nation's top military and intelligence advisers as regular attended of the National Security Council and added his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as a regular attendee

He's banned employees of the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and the Department of Agriculture to speak to reports or provide updates on social media

He briefly suspended the social media privileges of the Department of the Interior, after an employee at the National Park Service tweeted a photo of his inauguration crowd compared to Barack Obama's

Department of Transportation employees were instructed not to publish news releases or engage on the department's social media accounts

Officials at sub-agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services have been told not to send "any correspondence to public officials"

Spokespeople and surrogates are currently banned from appearing on CNN

Wants senate rules to be changed if necessary to push through the confirmation of his supreme court nominee

"Surely, this can't go on."

All of this has sparked a childhood memory involving very close, lifelong friends of my parents. The husband did business with several eastern bloc countries and travelled there often. I remember the stories he told when he'd return home.

Stories about how he'd receive briefings from Canadian government officials before he left on what he could and could not say or do while there, how diligent and careful he had to be. Stories about how, once, there, his every move was monitored -- even while in meetings. Stories about how his hotel rooms were bugged. Stories about how terrified people were to say or do anything that could result in their arrest, in their being jailed or even being killed. Stories about how absolutely no news from the west was permitted anywhere, at any time.

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As each new Trump order and directive is issued, it feels more and more like this is where he's headed.

Surely, this can't go on.

If you enjoyed this story click on "become a fan" at the top of the article right next to my name. You'll be notified every time I post.

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True, the prime minister's affection for going Goldilocks on Canadians isn't as severe as leaning into the microphone and saying "wrong." But it belittles the Canadian public all the same.

Just as importantly, American politics presently demonstrates how quickly the slippery transition goes from rhetorical tactics to embracing techniques of propaganda.

But let's back up a bit and explain something about our Mr. Trudeau and his Goldilocks syndrome.

Philosophers have identified over three hundred of these mischievous rhetorical habits.

When I used to teach critical thinking courses in university, we'd spend some time listing and discussing fallacies, otherwise known as irrational and illegitimate ways of arguing one's point.

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While some philosophers have identified over three hundred of these mischievous rhetorical habits, we'd normally only cover the more popular, such as: ad hominem ("attacking the person"), non sequitur ("it does not follow"), and begging the question ("assuming what needs to be demonstrated").

Fallacies, I explained to students, all attempt to divert the argument away from sound reasoning to some unconnected and irrelevant side-issue. I was always sure to add that we should avoid their use, not exploit their power.

Why the warning?

Like some dark power newly obtained, learning about fallacies and their emotionally persuasive, but illegitimate force, can be quite a temptation when arguing with the uninformed.

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And while it might not be noticed at first glance, proper arguing has a moral component to it: One shouldn't convince people with tricks of language.

This apparently wasn't a lesson learned by our prime minister during his university days. In fact, it's now quite obvious Mr. Trudeau thinks he's quite within his rights as prime minister to use fallacious reasoning to prop his decisions and policies in Parliament, and in front of the cameras.

His emerging favourite? The "Goldilocks fallacy."

Despite its rather benign name, it carries as much deceit as the other fallacies, especially because it's being done to obscure significant matters of national policies and legislation. It's an attempt to avoid real political debate and justification.

Make no mistake: It's an assault on democracy.

"Mr. Trudeau's rhetorical strategy isn't benign. It belies the notion that his policy decisions cannot be described to Canadians; that facts are not within the ability for us to grasp or argue through."

Just like the three bears' porridge, Mr. Trudeau's modus operandi goes like this: "Well, the NDP have one suggestion that's too cold. As for the Conservatives, theirs is too hot! Mercy me, what to do?! I guess we have no choice but to chose the one that's just right. Mine."

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It shouldn't go unnoticed that Mr. Trudeau is clever enough to always add how much he respects everyone's right to their opinion. Nice in itself, but in the midst of a rhetorical ploy, it's not nice at all. It only adds insult to injury.

So pleased with the rhetorical success of the Goldilocks fallacy, he tried it out again when he approved the tarsands pipelines: "One side of the House wants us to approve everything and ignore indigenous communities and environmental responsibilities . . . the other side of the House does not care about the jobs or the economic growth that comes with getting our resources to market."

This sort of tactic -- especially in the hands of a powerful politician -- usually gets worse before it gets better. So now, a rhetorical tactic has turned into a growing dependence on subterfuge, this time to justify breaking a promise made to Canadians about electoral reform.

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Couched once more in the prefatory mention of "respect for all points of view," our prime minister proclaims, "But there is no consensus, there is no sense of how to do this. And, quite frankly, a divisive referendum, an augmentation of extremist voices in this House is not what is in the best interests of Canada."

Mr. Trudeau's rhetorical strategy isn't benign. It belies the notion that his policy decisions cannot be described to Canadians; that facts are not within the ability for us to grasp or argue through.

It is an affront to the high standard of accountability and transparency a prime minister should respect, not denigrate.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said that full responsibility for the shelling of residential areas and the loss of population of Avdiyivka, Donetsk region, lies on the Russians and militants it supports.

As reported on Friday, the press service of the president of Ukraine, during a video conference with the head of the Donetsk regional military and civil administration Pavlo Zhebrivsky, Poroshenko said that during the current harsh aggravation of the situation around Avdiyivka industrial zone, the shelling of civilian neighborhoods and deaths of civilians, injured journalists, death of Ukrainian military responsibility lies with Russia and the militants, whom it supports.

"I emphasize that the offensive against the Ukrainian troops were organized by the Russian troops and the militants, which they controlled. The Ukrainian side has done everything possible to fight off these attacks, which were launched at the end of January," Poroshenko said on the video, which was circulated by the press service of the president of Ukraine.

The president also noted that the thesis of the Russian Federation, that it does not control, the militants is absolutely wrong, because each division has Russian military personnel, which follow orders of the Russian Federation.
By Patience Nyoni, edited by Alysha Baratta

My story begins in the dark. Although I lived in South Africa, I was in the same position as one in five people living with HIV in Canada: I had the virus and didn't know it. I knew it was possible I had HIV, but I did not want to get tested to confirm it. I wanted to continue living in the realm of denial, wishing my ignorance would make my HIV vanish. Then, when I applied to come to Canada as a government-assisted refugee, I found out testing was compulsory. My fear of HIV was so deep-rooted that I even had a moment of hesitation and thought, "maybe Canada isn't for me after all..." I realized it was time to face my greatest fear. I got tested.

After coming to Canada in 2007 I was in shock and traumatized by my diagnosis. I was comforted to know that I would have access to healthcare and all the medication necessary to keep this virus at bay. Even with access to care, I saw the Afro-Canadian positive community around me failing to receive the care they need. Refugees face many challenges -- being a newcomer, being alone, dealing with trauma. In addition, the shame of having HIV was profound; merely walking into an HIV clinic caused widespread gossip and shaming within the community.

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I started the Afro-Canadian Positive Network of BC to address these issues and have been working in my community for nine years. Still, we lost two dear members from our organization in 2016 from complications of HIV/AIDS. It was not due to a lack of access to medical care. It was not due to a lack of education (one of them had a Master's degree). It was the social repercussions of living with this disease and stigma surrounding it that kept them from living.

Stigma prevents people from getting tested and on the right track to a healthy positive lifestyle.

The HIV virus is no longer a death sentence. Stigma is.

How can it be that in the face of medical advancements, the desire to stay hidden and avoid social shaming overcomes the need to be healthy? We now have empirical knowledge about HIV, so why are we letting shame hold us back? Devoted scientists are doing their part by researching an end to HIV/AIDS -- we must do our part by talking about its existence.

Stigma against people living with HIV causes more than just hurt feelings -- it isolates people and ultimately has serious public health repercussions. In our members' cases, we saw stigma act as a barrier. Stigma prevents people from getting tested and on the right track to a healthy positive lifestyle.

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I have come out of the darkness and I show my face -- the real face of a healthy, positive lifestyle. By sharing my story, I hope to end the stigma and bring hope to the hopeless.

Patience Nyoni is a mother of three and has been living with HIV for 16 years. She is the founder of the Afro-Canadian Positive Network of BC. She serves as a board member for the Pacific AIDS Network and CTAC, and sits on a number of committees across Canada including CHABAC.

The Canadian HIV/AIDS Black, African and Caribbean Network (CHABAC) is a national network of organizations, individuals and other stakeholders who are dedicated to responding to issues related to HIV and AIDS in Canada's African, Caribbean and Black communities.

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Marcos Brindicci / Reuters Men surf on Saint Claire beach, as White Island is seen in the back, on the coast of Dunedin, September 7, 2011. REUTERS/Marcos Brindicci (NEW ZEALAND - Tags: ENVIRONMENT TRAVEL)

(Photo credit: Lisa Jackson)

Have you heard about the hidden hangout on New Zealand's west coast?

Decades ago, Raglan was considered an "old backwater town." Now, crowds flock to this tiny surfing town, known as Whaingaroa by the local Maori. It's teeming with environmentalists, surfers, hipsters, and creative types who thrive in this arty and environmentally-conscious community. It's no wonder: National Geographic named Raglan as one of the "Best Surf Towns in the World."

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"Seriously - everyone is moving here," a New Zealander tells me.

(Photo credit: Paul Abbitt/Tourism New Zealand)

Of course, catching a wave is just one of the many activities to be had in this whimsical destination. Before you go, add these six fabulous experiences to your "must do" list when visiting Raglan, New Zealand.

Go Back to (Surfing) School

(Photo credit: Paul Abbitt/Tourism New Zealand)

Two decades ago, Charlie Young went on holiday to Raglan and never left.

"I was following the waves," he says.

In southern California, Young juggled a demanding career as a negotiator and his love of surfing. But arriving in Raglan for a "surf-cation," everything changed. Captivated by the destination's incredible left-hand wave breaks and laid-back surfer culture ("Relax - you're on Raglan time!"), he promptly quit his "real job," liquidated his assets, and opened New Zealand's first surfing school. The Raglan Surfing School instantly attracted surfers from all over the world.

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"A lot of people try surfing when they visit and get hooked," Young said. "I had a German student whose parents dragged him home two years later!"

(Above: Charlie Young, founder of Raglan Surfing School; Photo credit: Lisa Jackson)

Private and group retreats range from one to five days, with some opting to stay at Young's lodge. Classes start in an old barn, where students listen and "learn the ocean" before hitting the waves at the nearby beach. But Young's program also involves more than mastering the sport.

"Part of the school is learning the surfing culture," he says. "It's about being immersed in the environment and giving back to people. We tell everyone who works for us, 'Just be yourself!'"

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(Photo credit: Paul Abbitt/Tourism New Zealand)

When in Raglan, grab a surf board and catch a wave. The scenery is not only amazing, but it's an epic experience. Many people believe that Manu Bay on this coast has the longest, most accessible and consistent left-hand break in the world. For pros, it's even possible to catch a wave and cruise for up to two kilometres.

Fill your Face

(Photo credit: Lisa Jackson)

Raglan may be small, but the food scene is mighty. This seaside town features boutique eateries and bars serving hearty, organic fare and marine delicacies (often freshly plucked from the nearby ocean).

Start your day at The Shack - a breakfast and lunch joint that draws hungry hordes for its "honest, local, and good food." Imagine free-range eggs and meats, homemade granola, "shack smoked" salmon, and hearty veggie bowls, all made in-house from local produce. If you've got an ambitious appetite, go for the Smashed Avocado on Toast or the Cinnamon Waffles, heaped with blueberries, pecans, and apple jam.

For dinner, go for the Snapper in a Dill Crumb from The Wharf Kitchen and Bar, or head to any of the local fish n' chips shacks.

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Get an Art Immersion

Raglan may be a surfer's haven, but it's also a hot spot for musicians and artists. Visit during one of the many festivals during the year, such as the Raglan Arts Weekend and Little Food Festival, Raglan Film Festival, or Sound Splash - a three day summer festival of music, freedom and expression. To listen to tunes any time of year, mosey over to the Yot Club to see touring bands and DJs.

Stay in an Eco-Resort

(Photo credit: Solscape)

Six kilometres outside town, a coiled highway leads to Solscape, a quirky eco-lodge perched high above the ocean that offers green accommodation options.

"Everything we do is based on promoting eco-friendly principles," explains co-owner, Phil McCabe. "We use a framework for living with a low footprint, and permanent sustainable living."

From the lodge's deck, get a million dollar view of the world famous Manu Bay, where the wild surf churns and froths like a cauldron. It's not unusual to see sheep grazing in the nearby farm fields...as well as bearded hipsters traipsing around the property or barefooted yogis headed to the onsite Yoga Centre.

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"It's like a little village," says the concierge.

(Photo credit: Lisa Jackson)

The stellar views and raw beauty aren't the only draws: it's also the quirky lodgings. Solscape's guests can stay in upcycled rail cabooses, "Earth Dome" silos, or upscale "eco-baches" (self-catered cottages).

(Photo credit: Solscape)

For something really off-the-grid, go "glamping" in Indigenous-inspired tipis. Each tent is equipped with a bed and solar-powered LED lighting, and steps away, there are solar-powered hot showers, compostable toilets, and an open-air kitchen with an outdoor earth pizza oven.

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(Photo credit: Solscape)

When night falls, open up the tipi's smoke flaps and star-gaze into the evening.

Grab a Cuppa

(Photo credit: Lisa Jackson)

Craving a caffeine fix? In Raglan, coffee culture thrives, and the epicentre is Raglan Roast Cafe, a community-based coffee roasting company that uses fair trade beans. Just follow the stream of cyclists and surfers down Volcom Lane to find this hidden hole-in-the-wall.

Take a Sunset Cruise

You haven't seen Raglan until you've sailed the 122 kilometres of coastline with Raglan Boat Charters. On a sunset cruise, watch for marine life and "pancake rocks" (ancient limestone rock formations), while listening to Maori legends in the shadow of extinct volcano Mount Karioi. As the sun melts into the horizon, sip on Kiwi beers and wines and feast on fish and chips so fresh "it's still swimming."

IF YOU GO:

Raglan is a 2 hour drive from Auckland, with bus transfers to/from various Kiwi cities across the North Island.

A member of the Star Alliance, Air New Zealand features non-stop, overnight flights from Vancouver to Auckland, and connects to most major Canadian cities.

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For more travel inspiration and advice, mosey on over to Eat Drink Travel Magazine. Get more ideas for planning your Kiwi adventure at Tourism New Zealand.
LDProd via Getty Images Female's hand using smartphone to find her car in a parking outside

Have you noticed how most people don't carry as many things as they used to while traveling? Things like flashlights, cameras, maps, memory sticks, newspapers, magazines, games and books. These items and others have all been replaced by smart phones and devices. While they make our lives more convenient and easier, they also collect information about us.

Convenience in exchange for privacy

Corporations have pioneered innovation and technology that makes people's everyday lives easier and more convenient. The growth in the app market, Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, drones, AI and robotics all require that companies collect data about users to improve products and services.

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Most customers, if asked would accept giving away some of their privacy in exchange for convenience and better products and services. Every company has their terms of service agreement that a user agrees to (whether they read it or not) before registering for a website service, an app or using a gadget. Regarding free Web applications, like Facebook, Whatsapp, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Lyft or Uber, most users do understand that companies may sell their information to advertisers.

How much is too much surveillance?

When it comes to corporate surveillance, where do we draw the line for organizations that may act in a nefarious and unethical way? How much is too much surveillance and control?

For example, the "Brightest Flashlight" is a simple free Android app created by a one-person company GodenShores Technologies, LLC. 50 million people downloaded the app a few years ago. The company's privacy policy did not highlight in their terms of service the app would "stalk" people by collecting, selling and transmitting users' real-time locations to ad networks and other third parties. In 2012, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) in the US discovered the company's deceptive practices and forced it to delete the data collected about millions of its users. Since the app was free, no fine was imposed, even though the company likely sold customer information to advertisers.

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According to Catalyst Canada, the average Canadian has 18 apps on their mobile device ranging from social sharing, shopping, news, games and fitness. CBC's Marketplace is a recent TV episode, followed several Canadians, who agreed to test and install a free app called My Daily Horoscope. The app was built in one day with guidance from a San Francisco firm, Appthority, and available for Android phones. It was designed to spy on user behavior and like most apps, had a lengthy terms of service agreement.

By accepting the terms of service agreement, users gave the horoscope app permission to access the phone's microphone, contacts, call logs, text messages, camera and location. The app had the ability to track the phone's location, download photos and text messages. More alarming, the app could activate the camera and turn on the microphone.

The CBC's Marketplace accessed data only to show users, who agreed to be testers the privacy and personal information they gave away to use the free app. After the experiment, all information was deleted and the app was discontinued. As might be expected, the test users did not read the terms of service agreement properly. Most were shocked at the level of control and access the free app had to their privacy and personal information.

In an interview with CBC, Daniel Therrien, Canada's privacy commissioner, says his organization can only give warnings to companies that violate privacy legislation. The US Federal Trade Commission goes further by imposing fines as high as $800,000 US for privacy violations. Therrien says his organization is investing complaints about the sharing economy from companies like Uber and Airbnb that may violate privacy legislation in Canada. Ride-sharing apps can track a customer's movement such as your home, workplace, where you shop and the places you frequent regularly. This plus credit card and age information could be a serious risk if the information is hacked and stolen.

Protecting data from government requests

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF), an organization that defends civil liberties in the digital world published their annual "Who Has Your Back" report. The 2016 report evaluated the policies and practices of the gig economy and discovered that on average, gig economy companies (e.g. - home rental services, on-demand labor or car sharing) lag behind in safeguarding users data from unwarranted government access requests.

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The report showed that half the companies reviewed didn't require a warrant before turning over customer data to law enforcement. Most companies did not create transparency reports showing the number of government requests. At the same time, ride-sharing companies like Lyft and Uber earned the highest rating for transfer and how they handle requests for user data.

A bigger concern and trend is that software companies increasingly are tracking location information about their customers, even when they don't use the app. In December 2016, Uber released a new app update that removed the "While using" option, which limits location tracking of its customers. The current version gives users two choices of "Always" or "Never" with respect to location tracking. Uber says that when a customer selects "Always", the company will only track their location for five minutes after leaving the vehicle to improve customer service.

Summary

Mobile devices and wireless gadgets are here to stay. Users of these products want them. Privacy, surveillance and access to personal user data by corporations and governments will remain hot topics. Customers and users of these products and services need to be vigilant about what and how much of their personal information and privacy they give away. They need to be informed and configure their devices to be as secure as possible.
Last year, Health Canada commissioned a study into consumer perceptions of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Health Canada intends to use the findings to more effectively communicate to the public how food products derived from biotechnology is regulated.

The research found that many people still don't know much about genetically modified foods. Some fail to understand why they are needed and are confused when it comes to knowing which information to believe. About 61 per cent of the people surveyed said the term "genetic modification" is negative. Only 26 per cent of respondents said they would be comfortable eating GMO foods but even fewer (22 per cent) supported their development and sale in Canada.

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The study says almost 50 per cent fail to understand why GMO foods are necessary in the first place and that consumers don't believe the argument that GM will produce more affordable, sustainable food or ensure food supply. Over half believe GMOs are just a way for corporations to increase their profits. They aren't wrong.

According to the findings, 78 per cent want their GMO food labelled so they can choose for themselves: if consumers had a choice, 62 per cent would choose to buy a non-GM food item.

The report states that significant efforts to inform and educate Canadians would be required to shift views in a more positive direction. The message is that governments, agriculture and academics have not communicated the technology well. In other words, public concerns about GMOs are based on ignorance, fuelled by the failure of government, scientists and the industry to convey a positive message about genetic modification of our food.

The report stated that the "massive anti-GMO movement" and accompanying volume of information presents a significant challenge for Health Canada, as there would be a strong likelihood that any decisions or announcements would be received through a "conditioned lens."

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The public is not buying in to the "conditioned lens" of the industry.

On a similar note, Monsanto Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley recently argued that Monsanto made a mistake in not reaching out to the public about GMOs when they first appeared on the market over 20 years ago. He said the crop science industry and academics have been more proactive with genome editing, which he argues can precisely delete and insert genes in an organism's DNA. Fraley says the industry and universities currently involved in rolling out genome editing technology have done a much more extensive communication to both the public and key regulatory and policy makers.

The report commissioned by Health Canada and the statements of Fraley seem to rest on the mistaken assertion that genetic modification is a legitimate tool for improving food production and consumers are being unduly swayed by an anti-GMO movement which plays on their fears.

Robb Fraley's approach is more ideological than scientific. His message is that gene editing is precise and therefore presents no risks. This might sound impressive to the layperson, politicians or journalists with no training in the area, but plant biologist Jonathan Latham argues the technology is error prone, the effects of editing are not controllable and there is no simple pathway between gene and trait. What Fraley really means when he talks about "reaching out" and having a "dialogue" is to get everyone to buy in to the industry playbook. But the GMO biotech cartel is getting nervous and glyphosate is on the ropes. The public is not buying in to the "conditioned lens" of the industry.

Most people who have misgivings about GMOs are concerned with regulators not properly testing the technology, institutions being co-opted by the industry and science being distorted to suit vested interests (see this about Cornell University too). They are also concerned about being denied choice because of the industry's outright resistance to the mandatory labelling of GMO food products. So, we need to get something straight: people with genuine concerns about GM technology are first and foremost pro-transparency and pro-democracy; they are not "anti-GMO."

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GMOs have the potential to irreversibly alter the genetic core of the food supply. In this respect, it is very worrying that Health Canada seems more concerned about jumping on the industry bandwagon by trying to convince the unwilling public about the perceived benefits of GMOs than actually carrying out its own safety studies.

During an interview with Global News in 2015, the then Canadian Health Minister Rona Ambrose stated, "right now there is no scientific evidence that conclusively says that in any way genetically modified foods are unhealthy for Canadians." The minister also said that they would gladly label GMOs if proven unsafe. Therefore, wouldn't this study alone be sufficient proof?

We should not be relying on industry studies and propaganda to set the agenda. The onus should not be on those from outside the industry to prove that GMOs are not safe or necessary. We require proper long-term independent testing and epidemiological studies on food products that involve GMOs. And we require Health Canada to hold the industry to account over its baseless claims.

Instead, we get public relations exercises aimed at farmers and students and the promotion of industry science and propaganda on social media to unwilling innocent consumers. Perhaps that's the reason why after 20 years the public still reject GMOs.

Perhaps the public aren't as gullible as some like to think.

Instead of acting as product promoters for the industry and finding out how to put a positive "spin" on GMOs, public officials should be carrying out or facilitating genuinely independent studies and demanding conclusive proof that GMOs are necessary as well as immediately labelling GMOs until proven safe.

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The public is already convinced: we've been asking for GMO labelling for way too long. It is our basic human right. As Pierre Elliott Trudeau once said, "Canadians have a right to know what is in their food when they buy it, not when they take it home and eat it." We can no longer be just another statistic about citizens who want labelling.

In the study mentioned at the start, 50 per cent of respondents failed to understand why GMO foods are necessary, and over half believe GMOs are a way for chemical corporations to boost profit. Perhaps the public aren't as gullible as some like to think.

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Poor Sean Spicer. He must have been on top of the world on inauguration day. He had landed the highest profile media relations job on earth and was about to become one of the most famous faces in Washington. But within 24 hours and the space of five minutes and 31 seconds, the new White House Spokesman's reputation was in ruins, his credibility shot, his performance the butt of online ridicule.

As reported by the Washington Post and others, Spicer's boss, President Donald Trump was in high dudgeon over the reporting of crowd sizes at the inauguration. While Trump regularly trashes CNN, the New York Times and other leading news organizations, he also watches them incessantly and repeatedly demonstrates a thin skin to the slightest hint of criticism.

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Never mind the small matter of taking over leadership of the free world, the new POTUS was seething at the widespread posting of pictures showing his crowds as being far smaller than Barack Obama's and ordered his mouthpiece into the press room to debunk the truth.

We can only wonder what went through Spicer's mind in the face of this assignment. Had he drunk fully and deeply of the Trumpist Kool-Ade? Did he truly believe in his heart that the 2017 inauguration crowds were the biggest ever, all evidence to the contrary? Or did he wrestle with an existential moral dilemma: to follow the president's orders and spout what he knew to be bald-faced lies, or take a stand, refuse and likely be fired on the spot?

Stephen Harper's former top communications advisor commented on twitter (in response to a tweet from George W. Bush's former spokesman) that he would have refused.

Folks, I can honestly say I would have quit if asked to debase myself like @PressSec just did... https://t.co/GbpzdsH0UZ  Andrew MacDougall (@AGMacDougall) January 21, 2017

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Spicer chose to do the boss's bidding. In that five minute, 31 second rambling rant, he may have surpassed Richard Nixon's spokesman Ron Ziegler in the presidential mouthpiece hall of infamy. Ziegler, at the height of the Watergate scandal, memorably told reporters that Nixon's previous, false statements were "inoperative".

But Ziegler never had to undergo the kind of twitter onslaught that swept over Spicer. Within seconds, his steaming pile of falsehoods was called out on social media, even by conservative commentators.

Categorically, demonstrably false. The new WH press secretary opens his time with a lie & takes no questions? https://t.co/WfqyBmKb92  Stephen Hayes (@stephenfhayes) January 21, 2017

Inevitably, he became a hashtag.

Trump's counsellor Kellyanne Conway creatively compounded Spicer's misery by describing his assertions as "alternative facts", thus launching another memorable hashtag--one that has already entered the political lexicon.

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#AlternativeFacts#spicerfacts Not only did the Trump Inauguration have more people than Obama's but this actually happened.@jimmyfallonpic.twitter.com/jwKQrbDCLH  Paul Lander (@paul_lander) January 23, 2017

In the world of crisis communications, we counsel to always tell the truth, and if you cannot, just shut up. Lies inevitably will be exposed. Reputations that are already damaged will be shattered beyond repair.

I dealt with dozens of politicians' media advisors in my reporting days and while it was common to stretch credibility, not a single one ever looked me in the face to deliver a blatant falsehood. While aides and reporters must maintain a certain mutual tension and skepticism, trust is essential -- even if you despise each other.

All the president's men and women will keep lying and keep claiming victimhood and many will believe them.

But as we well know, Trump and his team have broken all the rules of media relations and gotten away with it -- so far. Spicer took a bullet for the boss and far from backing down, continues to tell howlers on a daily basis. Clearly, they do not care. Trump's unprecedented torrent of lies, ably documented by the Toronto Star's Daniel Dale and others, did not stop him from winning the White House.

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The Orwellian interpretation is that it is part of a campaign to undercut the legitimacy of the so-called "mainstream media." Trump's acolytes already believe the New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post and others are out to get their man and that nothing they print or broadcast should be trusted. Reporting presidential lies as lies, no matter how obvious, only feeds the narrative.

All the president's men and women will keep lying and keep claiming victimhood and many will believe them. It is no coincidence that sales of George Orwell's 1984 are spiking.

History will not likely be kind to Sean Spicer. But weep not for him. He still has his job. Save your tears for the late, lamented truth.

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LuckyBusiness via Getty Images Unit and concord in multiethnic team, all hands together

A dream is a wish from the heart. As children, we dream because imagination has no bounds and anything is possible, but as we grow older, we realize that the power of a dream is only as great as its pursuit. We set ambitious goals for ourselves and work tirelessly to achieve them. We dream because we believe there is potential for more. We dream because we recognize that together, we have the ability to make a difference.

World Cancer Day is on February 4 and the global theme is "We can. I can" -- a reminder that collectively, we can impact and reduce the limits of cancer. With the many research studies that have been completed over the years, it is evident that maintaining a balanced lifestyle is essential to our wellbeing.

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In preparation for the Rexall OneWalk to Conquer Cancer benefiting Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, I am committed to training and fundraising with my team, Finelli's Tumorators, named after my father's oncologist. Notwithstanding the unpredictability of winter weather, we will train, raise awareness and funds for a cause very dear to our hearts because we believe that cancer can be eradicated in our lifetime.

The Walk in Toronto has distance options for every type of walker. There is the option to walk 15, 25 or 40-kilometres, all with the opportunity to hear so many stories of hope along the way. No matter the distance, every participant can designate their fundraising dollars to a type of cancer research that means the most to them.

On September 9th, Finelli's Tumorators will continue their commitment to creating a world without cancer by challenging ourselves to complete the 40-kilometre route. While this may seem like a great distance, l will feel exhilarated when I reach the finish line knowing that this small commitment will be making a difference in someone's life battling the disease. The minor aches and pain at the end of the route will be a tribute to my late father, whose courage was remarkable through his suffering and to those who continue to battle this disease.

In 2015, I signed up for OneWalk as a birthday gift to my hero. I knew that this would be the most unforgettable gift a daughter could give -- the gift of hope. To say my father was honoured would be an understatement. Dr. Tony Finelli from Princess Margaret Cancer Centre was a blessing for my entire family.

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Dr. Finelli's unwavering commitment and positive attitude gave my father the strength, courage and hope to keep fighting. My father's cancer was unexpected and unforgiving. He promised to walk with me in 2016 -- I had no idea at that time that my father would be joining me from heaven.

Cancer affects no two people the same way. Sadly, for my father, the cancer was aggressive and unexplainable. Happily, thanks to the commitment of Finelli's Tumorators, we will continue to advocate for genitourinary cancer research with the confidence that we will change the course of this disease to give each person a better fighting chance. No one should experience the pain and suffering my father did.

Our dreams are only as great as their pursuit. I dream of a world without cancer, and I am committed to creating one. I will forever honour my father by giving the gift of life to others.

This World Cancer Day, please join me in making my dream -- one that I know is shared amongst many -- a reality. Together, "We Can. I Can."

Visit onewalk.ca for more.
The five things you need to know on Friday, February 3

1) A BRIDGE TOO FAR?

Theresa May joins her EU colleagues in Malta today for a quick sit-rep on her success in getting Donald Trump to back Nato 100%. She then flies out and lets the 27 nations get on with their own thing. Welcome to the future folks. On the Today programme, deputy Swedish PM Margot Wallstrom didn't sound too keen on Brexit, saying the UK must 'take the consequences' of its decision.

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Still, May is keen on acting as a bridge between the US and the EU. Our heft as a nuclear power, a permanent UN Security Council member, a provider of defence spending and intelligence expertise means she has a strong case. No.10 sources say that already the Nordics and Baltics have passed on thanks for getting the 100% Trump backing for Nato.

But some in Europe are already pushing back at the notion that they need the UK to act as a go-between with the White House. In fact, they dont look keen at all on building any bridges with Trumpton, as Washington must surely be dubbed sooner or later. The Guardian has a cross-party letter from the European Parliament to the European Commission, urging the blocking of Trumps pick for EU ambassador, Ted Malloch. Mallochs "outrageous malevolence" towards "the values that define" the EU was the reason. Sadly, we may not get to hear Mays view on all this, as no press conference is planned.

Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon reminded both Washington and Brussels that the real enemy was Russia, not least given its cyberattacks and post-truth propaganda campaigns. Fallons speech last night suggesting Putin was targeting the German elections was significant indeed. As for Trump, unconfirmed reports in the States claim the White House turned off recording equipment during his hour-long call to Putin last weekend. If true (and surely it can't be?), that would be an extraordinary breach of protocol. The source seems to be a Turkish journalist, so make of that what you will.

Still, No10 and the Foreign Office are quietly pleased that the US is showing it wont be pushed over by the Ruskies. At her first security council session, Trumps new UN ambassador Nikki Haley (one to watch, people) yesterday read the riot act to Moscow over its aggressive actions in Ukraine - and said sanctions would remain as long as Crimea was annexed. Just as May had insisted in the Oval Office.

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2) PAPER TIGERS

The Governments White Paper on Brexit got a few people excited yesterday because it had a typo suggesting we would all get 14 weeks paid holiday in the nirvana that is post-EU Britain. As it happens, the most interesting thing in the entire document was a hint that there could be a "phased process of implementation" of immigration curbs.

It also suggested for the first time that there will be individual Commons votes on migration and trade: We expect to bring forward separate bills on immigration and customs [arrangements]. In the Commons, David Davis tried to calm a Tory rebellion on EU citizens rights, saying I will not be throwing people out of Britain.

But the heat and noise centred mainly on Labours own agonies over Brexit, not least John Manns scathing attack on Diane Abbott for not turning up to vote on Wednesday. As I pointed out in the WZ yesterday, Abbotts team said she had a severe migraine. But Mann told the BBC: We have some very, very ill people who turned up to parliament to vote yesterday who are so sick they cannot carry on with their work as MPs.

Mann was referring to Grahame Morris and Ronnie Campbell, both of whom are being treated for cancer. Campbell tells the Sun he had travelled down from his north east constituency in order to vote. I had a big operation just after New Year, I am getting over it and came back to work this week. I saw Diane Abbott in the tearoom before the vote - I held the door open for her.

The Guardian points out that just before the vote Abbott told friends she had received thousands of letters from constituents asking her to vote against article 50 - and told friends she understood that shadow cabinet ministers could not rebel and stay in position. The Times has confirmed the New Statesman intel that 7,000 Labour members have this week quit in protest at Corbyns backing for Article 50.

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The Mirror reports that Corbyn is thinking of offering Ed Miliband the Shadow Business brief if Clive Lewis quits next week over Article 50. Progress has published a new pamphlet on The Corbynite Ideology, an attempt to grapple with Jezs philosophy. It argues that Corbyns instincts for open borders and a closed shop economy are exactly the opposite of what Brexit voters want: tighter borders as well as free trade.

3) OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH

Jeremy Corbyns favourite weathervane for his partys progress - council by-elections - spun both ways last night. In Rotherham in Yorkshire, Labour lost one seat heavily to the Lib Dems, but won one council seat from UKIP. In Brinsworth and Catliffe ward, the yellow peril came from fourth to win with a massive 50% increase in their vote, while Labour plunged by 26% to second. Proof that the Lib Dems are not just a threat to Labour in the South.

But in Dinnington ward, Team Corbyn beat Paul Nuttalls party, a result that capped a bad day for UKIPs leader. Nuttall faces a police investigation after Channel 4 News found he was not actually living at the address he claimed as a candidate for the Stoke-on-Trent by-election. The Kippers are nonchalant, thinking its all a storm in a teacup, but it wasnt a good look to pose for Guido on a mattress on the floor of his flat. It brought a whole new meaning to the phrase carpet-bagger.

George Osbornes Northern Powerhouse Partnership think tank has declared that schools in the region need urgent attention. Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner points out Osborne was in charge of cuts to budgets, teacher shortages and a lack of places. And today Barnsley MP Dan Jarvis has a Private Members Bill aiming to restore child poverty targets and measures. Lots of Labour MPs are in Stoke campaigning today, and the bill is 3rd on the Order Paper, so it will get only about an hour of time. But Jarviss child poverty video certainly didnt go unnoticed in Corbyns office.

BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Watch a woman on BBC Question Time reveal she switched from Remain to Leave because she went to the supermarket and found a straight banana. I am. Not. Making. This. Up.

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4) EATING YOUR GREENS

The Waitrose-going classes were mocked last week when it emerged that aubergines and courgettes were in short supply because of the disastrous snow-hit Spanish harvests. Today, the Mail splashes on the news that humble broccoli and iceberg lettuce is now being rationed by Morrisons (three per customer) and even Tesco. Bananas are one thing, but you threaten our brassicas and its snow joke.

Speaking of green stuff, No.10 has denied tensions between Communities Secretary Sajid Javid and the PM over speculation that he could eat away at the Green Belt in his housing White Paper next week. Some Government sources have indicated May has made plain the last thing she needs right now is a Tory revolt in her heartlands. But later today, we will report on another rebellion brewing.

And continuing the green theme, the Telegraph reports that a scrappage scheme for diesel cars could be introduced within months as part of plan to cut air pollution. Officials at the Department of Transport and Defra are working on a plan to offer a cashback or discount on low-emission cars if people trade in their polluting diesels. Chris Graylings hint on this on Today yesterday was notable, and the Tel says he suggested the scrappage plan was a runner at a private meeting earlier this month.

5) TRUMP UBER ALLIES

Overnight, the hot news among anti-Trumpers was that theyd forced the CEO of taxi service Uber to quit the Presidents advisory council. Travis Kalanick was already facing a serious consumer revolt thanks to the #DeleteUber campaign that claimed his firm was profiting from cabbies on strike at JFK airport in protest at the travel ban. Links to the Prez had made it worse - and threatened business.

In a company memo (obtained by HuffPost US), Kalanick made plain he was now distancing himself from the President: Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that. SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk, another critic of the immigration policy, still remains on the advisory council.

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Meanwhile, the impact of the crackdown continues to be felt. A former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was detained at Washington Dulles airport for an hour - because he had once been to Iran. Bondevik, whose passport made clear he had been PM, said: "That should be enough for them to understand that I don't represent any problem or threat to this country and [to] let me go immediately, but they didn't."

In other news, US military officials are briefing that Trump approved a botched covert raid on Al Qaeda in Yemen, without enough backup or intelligence. It seems unfair to blame the President for going ahead with a plan drafted by others, but what is more damaging is that he was not in the situation room for his very first military operation. Some suggest the Prez was in his pyjamas. Trump aides blamed his fatigue for being snippy with the Australian PM last week, so its no wonder Donalds stamina is being questioned.

Oh, and thanks to the brilliant Mike Allen (ex-Politico, now Axios), we learn that Trump likes to hire women who dress like a woman - and expects men to wear suits in bold colours, with wide ties, preferably Armani. His chief strategist Steve Bannon is exempt from the dress code. Of course he is.

COMMONS PEOPLE

Shadow housing minister Andy Slaughter is one of the 13 Labour frontbenchers who rebelled on the Article 50 vote. He talks to our CommonsPeople podcast about why hes still in post - for now. We also cover what its like being in the same room as Donald Trump. And theres an ace quiz on which Trump protest signs are from which parts of the UK. Listen HERE.

If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox.
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The NHS is facing a 'humanitarian crisis'. This was the message from the Red Cross as we entered the New Year. It may have sounded a bit dramatic, but reports from across the country certainly suggest that services are facing significant pressures.

As a result, we are seeing growing calls from doctors, NHS bosses and local councils to inject further funding into the system, with campaigning groups, and some in the Labour Party, arguing that recently published local reform plans - so-called Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) - are a way of avoiding this reality and driving through dangerous cuts instead. Last year, in this publication, the then Shadow Health Secretary, Diane Abbott called them 'a dagger pointed at the heart of the NHS', and claimed they should be resisted at all costs.

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This view was fueled by NHS boss Simon Stevens' original decision to ask local leaders to not discuss the plans until they were finished. The resulting vacuum in public knowledge was quickly filled by leaked documents and speculation. This culminated in August, when campaigning group 38 Degrees pulled together all the publicly available information about STPs - including the leaked documents - and argued that they were secret plans to dismantle the NHS.

This is a powerful story, but it does not sit easily with the vision originally set out by Simon Stevens - that STPs would help local areas to reform services to better provide what local populations need. For Stevens, the STPs would provide an organised response to the problems faced by the health and care system, which range from growing demand and an ageing population, to rising costs and poor co-ordination between different parts of the system.

So which of these stories is true? Are STPs dangerous 'Secret Tory Plans', or can they help fix the crisis faced by our health and care system?

At IPPR we have looked at all 44 of the STPs to answer these questions. The plans are undoubtedly light on practical details and heavy on jargon, but the reality behind them is much more complex than many critics contend.

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Some of the arguments made by 38 Degrees and others ring true, particularly in relation to how the government has been knowingly underfunding the NHS. At IPPR we have long-argued this is the case and our analysis of the STPs confirms this - some local deficits could reach as high as 2 billion by 2020.

However, claims that the STPs are malicious plans devised by the government to privatise the NHS and prevent people accessing services are harder to justify.

Firstly, the government has been notable in its absence from the STP process, and has displayed a general lack of leadership and action on tackling the crisis hitting our health and social care services.

In addition, while our analysis identified that 45% of the STPs do clearly refer to closing hospitals or some of their services (and it is likely that other areas will also develop similar proposals), it does not necessarily follow that these changes are only motivated by money, and will automatically leave local people worse off.

In London, around 400 lives a year are being saved since stroke services were concentrated in fewer locations. This is because patients have access to highly trained, more experienced medical staff and the best equipment. There is growing evidence that services such as A&E and specialist surgery could also be improved in this way.

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Hospital closures are notoriously unpopular with the public, but the reality is that people prefer to receive treatment elsewhere when possible. For example, only 7% would prefer to die in hospital. Changes which could help people realise these preferences, such as bringing together GPs, mental health services, social care and diagnostic testing in local 'hubs' so that people can access services closer to home, have been widely overlooked by STP critics.

Few outside of the government continue to deny that the health and care system needs more funding. But funding alone won't be enough. The NHS needs to change in order to be fit for the 21st century. However, the case for reform is little understood or supported by the public. Now is the time for the government to stop blaming GPs, junior doctors and local councils for the problems of the health and care system, and ensure that along with a much needed cash injection, local STPs get the hearing they deserve.
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I was torn by the news this week about the transwoman who isn't going to be allowed to see her chlidren. As I have written elsewhere, I transitioned over 20 years ago. When I left, my ex took out a restraining order against me which forbade me to make any contact at all with my children until they turned 18. They were 3 and 1 when I left.

It was probably the most painful experience I have ever endured. It felt exquisitely unfair. I remained fully observant while transitioning, which is not the easiest thing in the world even today, let alone in the 1990s. I didn't feel as though I had left the Jewish community. But desiring empathy for myself, I felt it necessary to consider the other side of the equation.

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My ex got that restraining order because our divorce agreement allowed me the right to communicate freely with our children. And she wanted to remarry. And she was afraid that the specter of a transsexual ex would keep anyone from being willing to marry her. There are those, almost all of whom are outside of Orthodox Judaism and cannot understand its importance to us, who feel that if she was so afraid of that, she should have found a "more accepting" community. Looking back on these past decades, I am grateful that she didn't do that.

Dealing with issues like this is almost like walking a tightrope. On the one hand, Orthodox Judaism should not and cannot bend to transient social currents. Were that not the case, we would long ago have disappeared. "Jew" would be a term found mostly in history books, like "Goth" or "Saxon" or "Frank". But how can the Orthodox Jewish community know when something very different than what they are used to is a social fad or a genuine condition? It doesn't help that the vast majority of those who publicly identify with the "trans community" are also on the far left when it comes to social and political issues in general.

Would my ex have been unable to remarry had she not taken out a restraining order against me? There's no way of knowing. Her husband seems like someone who would have married her anyway, but would he have been able to stand against the disapproval of his own family had they found out? She did what she felt was necessary to protect herself and her family, and I cannot say that she was wrong, as terribly painful as it was to me at the time.

I know there are some in the Orthodox community who feel that had I taken my own life as a result of the pain of pretending to be male, the children would at least have had closure. And without the "shame" of a parent who did something so outrageous. And that wasn't even an ultra-Orthodox community. And that attitude probably seems utterly outrageous to someone coming from outside of Orthodox Judaism (and even some on the more liberal edge of Orthodoxy).

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Today, I have a family of my own, including a beautiful teenage daughter. Though not mine biologically, she could not be more my daughter if she were. We live in an Orthodox community, and she attends an Orthodox Jewish school. We don't advertise my past, which some might see as lying by omission, but which we see as both a matter of simple prudence, and as an act of consideration. There's no reason people should have to have ideas they aren't ready for thrown at them willy nilly.

I am not ashamed to have changed my anatomical sex. It was necessary for me to survive, and while not a majority view, there does exist rabbinic support for me being who I am now. I would love to live in a world where transitioning when necessary (and not as adolescent rebellion against societal gender norms) is accepted by my community. And perhaps that world will one day exist. But it doesn't now.

Which brings me back to the case in the news. I feel nothing but sadness and anger and shared pain for the woman in question. It seems utterly mad that simply acting to save one's self could be viewed as such a horrible crime that even one's own children could be set off limits. And losing a child, whether physically or otherwise, is the most painful experience anyone can go through. But until the community learns, slowly, over the years, that we do not do this to rebel against Judaism, but only to survive, we have to accept separation from our children until they become adults as a possible repercussion of transitioning.
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Thousands of miles from the chaos of Capitol Hill, on an eroded river bank in southern Bangladesh, sits Taslima.

She cradles her 18-month-old son and wonders how to feed him.

"When the storms come we huddle together and I pray it won't break our house again," said the mother of five.

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On the edge: Taslima, in Patuakhali, southern Bangladesh, with her son, Mohammed

Taslima, 32, lives in Bangladesh, a low-lying country which is one of the world's most vulnerable to climate change.

Her home has been destroyed by floods several times and now she lives on the only space available to her - a crumbling river embankment.

Like millions around the world, Taslima has been cast to the margins by climate change.

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Home: Taslima standing outside her tin and tarpaulin hut on a river embankment

She will probably never see the chaos that has descended upon Washington D.C. as the world's most powerful man issues edicts that fling multiple lives into disarray.

But the stance that United States President Donald Trump takes on climate change in the coming days will affect her nonetheless.

If Trump pulls out of a landmark Paris climate deal, as his former climate advisor predicted this week, it will deliver a sledgehammer blow to years of painstaking, collaborative work on curbing global warming.

Scientists have warned that if no action is taken then not only will small island states become uninhabitabl but more than 13 million Americans could be displaced by rising sea levels.

If the world is anxious about the refuges crisis now, a far greater humanitarian crisis could be in the offing.

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Yet this scenario can be avoided if global powers remain committed to tackling climate change.

Remarkable efforts are being made to mitigate its most devastating impacts.

In developing countries, such as Bangladesh, these efforts are being led by women.

Impact: Haoa examines the crumbling embankments that are supposed to protect her village from rising sea levels

When floods ruined her crops in 2009, Haoa couldn't feed her two children. It spurred her to take action.

"I joined a farmers' federation to work out ways in which we could grow crops in areas affected by salty water," said the 32-year-old from Bangladesh.

The federation, funded by non-governmental organisation ActionAid, has helped to build dikes in eight canals so fresh water can be preserved for agriculture.

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Other climate adaptation schemes being funded by ActionAid include raising villages on plinths so they are above the flood level and providing farmers with salt-tolerant rice seeds.

But these initiatives will be severely undermined if the US, one of the world's biggest carbon emitters, backtracks on its promises.

Precarious: homes in coastal Bangladesh

Shortly after gaining power the Trump administration deleted mentions of climate change from the White House website. Trump has previously called climate change a "hoax" and said he wants key oil industry figures to be at the heart of his government.

Amid this worrying landscape signs of hope have emerged on the streets.

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Defiant: Placards being carried at the Women's March in London on January 21st 2017

They came by way of various placards held during Women's Marches on January 21st which urged Trump to put the planet first.

No one knows what the coming days will hold.
On Monday, February, at 14.00, the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency's press center will host a press conference on the results of Committee of Ukrainian Voters study on "Rating of Governors' Activity for 2016." The rating is based on the indices of social and economic development of regions and a survey of 245 local experts (politicians, journalists, public figures and activists) on the activities of heads of regional state administrations. The participants will include Director General of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Oleksiy Koshel, an analyst of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine Denys Rybachok (8/5a Reitarska Street). Admission requires press accreditation.
With another Chinese New Year passed, the Chinese diaspora is once again highlighted with a sea of red celebrations across the UK.

It reminded me that when I grew up - the notion of 'who am I?' dogged my personality as a British Chinese for many years. I studied in various places in Europe, most of it in Milton Keynes and Bedford. I went to a school where I was one of the very few Chinese people there and I found myself really struggling with my identity. That became stronger when other friends began to date; it was so hard to ask girls out because I felt so 'different' which for a teenager, really killed my confidence. I thought having smaller eyes and a Chinese face was a disadvantage. I had few role models to tell me otherwise. It didn't help that between the age of 10 and 18 I didn't go to Hong Kong, where I was born, once. I remember even being harassed by the National Front, chased by punks wearing medieval chainmail with signs saying 'go back to China'. Ouch.

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I found the best way to escape my dilemma was to throw myself into sport, which didn't distinguish success through appearances or background. I trained hard for a singular goal and hoped by the end I could prove to myself that I was a 'somebody' - and not some stereotype Jackie Chan or book nerd that the media likes to depicts us as. The by-products of training forged strong friendships through meritocracy and gave me a leadership position that grew my confidence. Being the first Chinese Captain of Rowing and winning a national gold medal gave me a solid foundation but I still longed to understand my background. I resolved to find my cultural identity at university.

Before I joined Durham University, I shunned at the notion of being with a Chinese groupie, I wanted to be as integrated as possible. Yet the moment I arrived - I was really drawn to them. I am not sure if it was the language, an opportunity to improve my very rusty Cantonese, or the fact that I had few Chinese friends - but like a bee to a flower, I wanted to explore further. However this journey made me even more confused as I didn't quite fit in with the (small) international student community, maybe given how westernised I was, and I found the experience in my first year, without my close school support network and family, really hard. It got so bad that I felt rather depressed and considered leaving university early.

Yet somehow, beginning with my (non Chinese) university friends asking me whether I would be their housemate, I managed to get out of that box of being defined as the Chinese guy and to be content with just being me. I filled myself with interesting hobbies instead and felt more free. Things really improved when I moved to the big city of London to start my career. Compared to the North East, or even the Home Counties, London was in a different league in terms of diversity.

I suddenly worked virtually next to Chinatown. For once in my life, aside from my own father, I met inspiring figures and remembered spending hours on my video application for the Diaspora Leadership programme led by Lord Wei. To be part of that community, alongside the Conservative Friends of the Chinese, had a big impact on my life. There were many in our diaspora that faced exactly the same challenges as I did.

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In my career, I was still a somewhat novel figure but as I climbed up the ladder and especially when I started to run my own organisation, I noticed others seeking advice from me. It was a humble reminder of my responsibility as a role model for others going through similar identity questions.

I don't consciously feel burdened now by my heritage, indeed I am proud of it. I have friends who come from all walks of life and I love them equally. I joke a lot about being Chinese as I am now at ease with myself. I still, however, bristle strongly when I see UKIP being borderline/ totally racist or get frustrated when there are still so few British Chinese in politics, in the civil service, in the media and in the senior ranks of the military.

We are still not that visible, and we are certainly not taking advantage of our potential, just look at this Policy Exchange report on poor career progression for the Chinese. However, I know that with an increasingly strong community, we can ensure a British Chinese kid watching TV would see a successful person with a similar face to them and realise that if you just put your mind to it, regardless of background, you can make it.
While slurping my coffee and checking emails in the kitchen this morning I had BBC Breakfast on the TV and caught an item about a program due to air this evening on the behaviour of 5-year-old boys and girls and what they say about each other.

They had a couple of the little people on the red sofa, and I have to say, I totally fell in love with feisty little Eva. The 5-year-old totally nailed the whole male-female difference issue; one that social commentators and academics have been fighting about for years.

That average men and women have small innate differences in behaviour and aptitudes is obvious. It's shown by a multitude of studies demonstrating differences in infants before they've had a chance to be socialised. These small differences get amplified to a greater or lesser extent by our culture, and it seems in our society, it doesn't take long for the effects of cultural expectations to kick in. Just last week the news broke of heartbreaking research showing that already at age 6, young girls thought that they were less smart than boys.

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Girls believed that smart people were more likely to be male, and they were more reluctant to play games they'd been told are for really smart people. Other studies demonstrate that girls don't think of themselves clever enough to study "brainy" subjects like maths, even though both genders perform equally well in these. As a result, women are severely underrepresented in STEM careers.

Of course this is an outrageous state of affairs and we need to be drawing attention to better role models, and there are plenty, to show girls that they can do whatever they want. But this doesn't alter the fact that there are small sex differences ON AVERAGE in some areas. Of course, most of us aren't average. We know that men tend to be taller than women; that doesn't mean that all men are taller than all women - sure you get a lot of short men and tall women too, but no-one would dispute that there is an average difference between the sexes.

It's exactly the same when we look at behaviour and aptitudes - in spite of average differences you get the whole spectrum for both genders. It's not a case of men being from Mars and women being from Venus.

So on BBC Breakfast when little Eva was asked,

"Are boys stronger than girls?" she replied, po-faced, "Some boys are stronger than girls, but there are some strong girls.

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And then, "Do girls behave badly?"

Eva: "Some do and some don't. It's the same with boys."

Dead right Eva. It's obvious isn't it?

If you'd like me to deliver a talk or workshop, please contact me here.
Credit: Michela Chiappa

Food for Italians isn't a trend; it's a way of life. Italians live to eat and the importance of food in family life is absolutely paramount and engrained in everyday routines.

Children are part and parcel of foodie rituals in Italy and this is exactly what our new book Baby At The Table is all about. How to feed your baby and family the Italian way... we wanted to write a really simple guide that any parent can follow where they can take baby from the weaning stages to eating with the whole family by aged 1yr, just like the Italians. The baby weaning focuses on fuss-free recipes like Baby Brodino and No-Cook Purees, and then the family recipes are wholesome so all the family can enjoy them, have minimal ingredients can be prepped in under 15mins, saving you valuable time. Feeding the family, the Italian Way... One Family. One Meal.

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In Italy, kids are encouraged to be part of every social occasion that revolves around food - it's not about dividing the kids from the adults, giving them separate meals or putting them to bed early. The kids are part of the social activity of everyday life and they are encouraged to eat, smell, touch and experience new tastes day in day out.

Letting your kids experience food like an Italian will develop not just their palette but also their social skills, manners, teaching them new and mature ways to interact.

So here we have highlighted the top five Italian foodie rituals that are part of every child's upbringing. If you are planning a visit to Italy anytime soon, try and immerse your kids in these fun experiences of Italian life.... we even try to recreate them back home in Wales!

Morning caffe

One of the most celebrated Italian rituals is the morning caffe (coffee); you'll be hard pushed to find a bad coffee in Italy. Coffee shops and bars have customers streaming in and out of them each morning as the Italians get their daily dose and this wonderful morning ritual is just as much about the social setting as it is about the coffee. Locals chat, hang out, kids run up and down the streets and friends relax watching the world go by. Children are very much made to feel part of this experience and our children love coming with us when we are in Italy - just ask any barista for a "schiumetta" (little foam cup or babyccino as it's become known in the UK) accompanied by a cornetto alla crema! Our kids also enjoy continuing this ritual back in our own homes each morning when we all stop around 10am and enjoy "coffee and schiumetta" time together.

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Credit: Michela Chiappa

Aperitivi

Whilst the morning is all about coffee, pre-lunch or dinner it's all about the aperitivi; and a pre-meal drink is always accompanied by nibbles or snacks. Again, Italian city centres and piazza's are jam packed with locals who come out with their kids to enjoy this pre-dinner treat and children are encouraged to enjoy the array of snacks available - from nuts or foccaccine, to crostini covered with a range of toppings from local cheeses, to pickled fish, fresh vegetables, porcini, sliced lard or even cured prosciutto. This is a brilliant way to get your kids to try new flavours without the pressures of meal times.

Il Ristorante

Whatever time of day, you will always be encouraged to bring your children to a restaurant with you. It's not unusual to see children in restaurants with their parents at 10pm at night and most waiters love to chat and interact with the kids. Equally, kids' menus do not exist in Italian restaurants - kids are treated like the adults and if anything, they will just be offered smaller plates off the main menu. Our kids have always been encouraged to sit with us at the table when we eat out and they will devour a range of meals from a porcini risotto to tortelli di zucca. Equally, most restaurants will be happy to serve a plate of pasta al pomodoro, which few kids will say no to.

La Gelateria

Whatever the weather, 12 months of the year, the ice-cream parlours in Italy always turn over a huge trade. Families can be seen wrapped up with duffle coats, scarves and hats and yet they will still enjoy a large gelato for their "merenda" (afternoon snack). Again, it's not just about the food - the gelaterie are meeting points, places for the local community to hang out and most ice-cream parlours will have seating outside for families to perch, interact, catch up before heading off. You can't go to Italy without hanging outside one of the famous gelaterie and trying to feel like a local!

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Credit: Michela Chiappa

La Passeggiata

Traditionally la passeggiata (afternoon stroll) happens on a Sunday. Italians will often head to church on a Sunday morning, enjoy an aperitivo in a local bar before meandering off for a big afternoon lunch. This is usually followed by a small "riposo" (nap). Post lunch most cities can be quite deserted as everyone dines and rests, and yet by 4pm onwards the crowds start to emerge... one by one, families will spill out, the streets with liven up and everyone will begin their afternoon stroll to get fresh air and wander the streets of the town. Food can often accompany these walks, particularly as the Italian "street food" scene is becoming more and more popular. Each region has their own specialities and treats and also, different seasons will have traditional snacks to enjoy. For example, in Livorno, a favourite street food snack is fried polenta called " Scagliozzi" whereas in Milan, Luini serves the famous Panzerotti which always has queues out of the door (and sometimes even security men are brought in for crowd control). In Parma, Pepen's hole in the wall always has a queue around the corner at lunchtime serving utterly divine local sandwiches! These snack points are often holes in the wall, but definitely worth finding them as they have local delicacies you won't taste anywhere else (just be prepared to queue... )

Follow us on Instagram @TheChiappas and our YouTube Channel is www.youtube.com/TheChiappaSisters
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A few weeks ago, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid gave a powerful speech to the house building industry. He said the market needs to start working for everyone, not just the privileged few.

In those words, the answer to his own challenge may lie in his previous cabinet post at the Business department, because 'the few' absolutely describes the current state of the house building, housing association and housing finance industries.

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Successive independent expert reports for government, including the recent Elphicke-House Report, have highlighted significant competition challenges in spite of strong consumer demand for housing. Put simply, a few big companies dominate the private house building market and a few big housing associations, mortgage providers and construction companies dominate their sectors.

In financial services, the top ten mortgage lenders account for more than 80 per cent of all mortgage lending. Last year, two-thirds of all new mortgages were lent by just six financial institutions.

Discussions around new institutional investors are perceived to be around underwriting the needs and wants of half a dozen global behemoths. Many other fund and asset managers who are keen to invest in housing feel that they barely receive any attention. Yet many of these other funds and assets managers are by no means small. They successfully manage billions of pounds of infrastructure related funding and many have strong track records of using parallel skills spanning two decades or more. Despite this, many investment funds have found that securing market participation in housing markets in the UK is extremely difficult.

In the housing association sector, the picture is similar. Nationally, 20 per cent of housing associations account for 95 per cent of all registered housing stock.

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The top housing associations - the G15 - dominate the London property scene. They build one in four of all new homes in the capital (more than half in some London Boroughs) and house 10 per cent of London's population. That's 10 per cent of all homes - not just the rental market.

The top 10 per cent of housing associations will also pocket four-fifths of the 2 billion or so profits made from developing homes for market sale.

It is well known that the number of smaller house builders has fallen. However, smaller house building as an industry has been in structural decline for three decades. In the 1980s, it was responsible for around two-thirds of homes being built. Latest research suggests that small builders now produce just 12 per cent of the homes being built each year.

This structural decline in market share has recently occurred in mid-market banks and building societies. Market concentration in the housing association market has accelerated over the last decade, providing a similar result.

It is not a co-incidence that a few big players are at the top of every related industry in housing and housing finance. This is the inevitable result of decades of law, regulation and government policy which favours the big, the large and the status quo.

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It is a pervasive problem at the heart of British business culture. Britain has institutionalised an anti-competitive business world, and that needs to change.

It makes Britain less resilient to global market changes as each of these sectors is characterised by businesses that are too big to fail without causing significant harm to British people.

If government policy is designed to be for everyone, then policy for business needs to be for everyone, not just for the few. That means putting competition at the heart of government's objectives.

Competition does not just mean the ability of Business A to bid for the same work or the same pot of money as Business B. It means recognising that government policy does not impact equally on different housing markets around the country.

A government policy that works for London and Manchester may not work for Newcastle or Hastings or in rural Cornwall.

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It means understanding and recognising how different tax and regulatory regimes, including planning and local taxes, impact on different business types. Financial cross-subsidy models work in high value locations for mainstream developers and housing associations, but different financing and investment solutions may be required in different locations or on smaller or specialist sites.

That's why a lack of full market competitiveness within the housing industries is so important. Without a Housing Business Review, the big will simply get bigger and the rest will be left scratching around at the edges.

The smaller builder and the small community housing association, the retiree investor and the young person wanting to get their own home at a decent price cannot and will not thrive again until the housing and finance industries are part of ordinary everyday community and investment life.

Reversing institutional anti-competitiveness will not be easy. It needs to be done without killing the golden geese who are developing, building and financing homes at present. However, solving it can unlock a structural step-change in housing and housing finance that will put the UK in the competitive position it needs to be for long-term success.

Post-Brexit, we can address institutionalised anti-competitiveness, as EU restrictions and practices that constrain domestic competition will be lifted, such as procurement and state aid.

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If we don't, then the current big business dominance will be supplemented by big states, such as China and Russia, who have factories and experience of delivering volume factory-supported construction.

An 'end-to-end' Housing Business Review would scrutinise what can be done to reduce complexity, increase flexibility and encourage broader participation in housing and housing finance. In particular, it would address the relative impact of government policy on different participant groups and in different housing markets across the country.

The upcoming Housing White Paper provides a real opportunity to make some of these changes so as to ensure that each and every part of the country has the opportunity to develop and secure investment in the homes that are needed.
I read a thoughtful and persuasive article the other day, headlined "Nobody dreams of being homeless". It was about aspiration versus reality; the things that people grow up hoping for, as against the bleak actuality that all too many are faced with as the gap widens between the haves and the have-nots. We may as children, this well-written piece muses, have dreamed of being astronauts, or fire-fighters, or movie stars. But we didn't aspire to an existence without a roof over our heads, and quite right too - but, sadly, childhood dreams shatter when reality bites.

The thing is, in a literal sense, the headline is wrong. Whatever our dreams may have been made up of in our childhood slumbers, it's the nightmares making people afraid to sleep here and now that truly matter. These bad dreams reflect real and present dangers for the millions threatened by the impact of ongoing austerity and its squeezing effect on the poorest in society. It's a very real problem that's having a measurable effect on the nation's health; many thousands of people as yet materially unaffected are literally living in fear of what our own government may be about to do to them. In that context, it can be seen that for many people, negative dreams of being homeless are a very real factor in their everyday lives. Dreams are the sleeping mind's way of working out the problems that preoccupy us during waking hours. If the problems are acute - if there's a threat to a person's security and safety, even to the basics of food and shelter, and if these threats are significant, then the dreams will be invasive and upsetting as the subconscious struggles with such inimical possibilities.

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There's very little hope or comfort out there, either. Most of the national press continues to demonise the poor, disabled and vulnerable - and those politicians who wish to speak out for that unfortunate sector of society are scorned and despised. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence for this sad state of affairs if you care to look for it - it's depressingly easy to find people so bowed down by the stress and worry of what the "powers that be" might do to them, that it's negatively affecting their already poor health. I have a friend who is confined to a wheelchair, with myriad disabling health and self-care problems. He has been losing sleep and fretting his remaining strength away, worrying about a forthcoming disability benefits assessment, when it's plainly obvious that he qualifies for all the help available. But the money seemingly wasted in such an overly inclusive process can apparently be justified by the savings made in denying help to many who are not quite so severely affected - but who still realistically need and rely upon state support. In terms of reducing the budget, it's a sprat to catch a mackerel - but in the quest for savings on a macro level, it's individuals who stress and worry, before suffering financial loss that many of them are simply helpless to combat.

Ultimately, it's false economy. Those denied benefits that actually need them don't, for the most part, just go away (although the death toll caused by austerity is now a real public issue). The hapless victims of benefits cuts must simply take their problems elsewhere, and thus they ultimately become yet more of a strain on the health and social care budget. Because you can't just legislate or wish those issues under the carpet; somebody has to pick up the pieces when thoughtless short-termism shatters dreams of safety and security - and that, too, costs money.
Abandoned buildings are everywhere. You may be sitting in one right now. That's quite unlikely. But you may be closer to one than you think, especially if you are reading this in London.

By 'abandoned buildings', I don't mean when people leave their homes unoccupied to go to work; I mean officially abandoned, vacant and derelict buildings. Nobody ever goes in, nobody ever comes out. And none of them are filled with chocolate, presidential-looking dwarves and a recently deceased cinema icon (RIP Gene Wilder). One estimate says that permanently empty commercial property in London could be replaced by up to 420,000 homes.

The abandoned buildings of London are documented on blogs like Derelict London, which host haunting images of these buildings trapped in time. Many urban explorers have followed suit, seeking out undiscovered vacant properties to take eerie photographs of their own.

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But in a city of constant renovation, how do these buildings become abandoned? And why have they been left unoccupied long enough for Instagram-addicted hipsters to come along and snap them in the first place?

They are unnecessary

In years gone by, well-meaning developers have overstepped the mark, erecting new buildings for absolutely no reason. More frequently, buildings simply lose their purpose--no wonder millennials can relate.

This is what happened with North End Station, which was nearly finished in the 1950s until the developers decided it was too close to Golders Green and abandoned its construction. It now sits unloved and unaccessible to all but the most ardent urban explorers. I am not ardent enough to have visited.

There is also the huge sailmakers loft in Limehouse, active from 1889 to 1972, when people realised there wasn't a huge market for sails anymore.Buildings like these lost their use and never gained a new purpose, thus becoming the abandoned structures we know today.

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They are of historical interest, preserved but not generally open to the public

Some buildings become abandoned, but are kept in good condition for reasons of historical conservation.

Much like North End Station above, Down Street Station opened in 1907 but closed in 1932 because people were happy to walk to Hyde Park Corner or Green Park, which were both very close to it. During WWII Winston Churchill (of meaty 5 note fame) used the station as a shelter. The site is preserved so the public can visit on guided tours, and presumably so Theresa May has somewhere to hide out if things go south with the whole Trump thing.

Another historically-preserved-but-still-abandoned building in London is the Strand Union Workhouse, which was recently given Grade II listing because, as Paul Talling explains on Derelict London, it is thought to be "the best preserved Georgian-era workhouse in London." This means the building's historical significance has to be taken into account if it is renovated, and that the owner now needs to ensure the building is secure.

As Talling told the Express, "Sometimes people do break into these old buildings, listed buildings or places which have historical value, spraying graffiti and that sort of thing." Yet, while specialists Oaksure Property Protection explain that steel screens, boarding up and manned guarding are some of the most effective ways to ensure vacant buildings are safe from intruders, it is the imperative of the very people who have left these buildings empty to provide protective measures for their safety.

They are sitting there as investments

What about the buildings that are not that historically significant? The derelict schools that could become new schools, or flats. The derelict police stations that could become new police stations, or flats. Not to mention the old, derelict flats that could definitely become flats. Why are these still abandoned? That question can be answered with one word: Money.

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Many abandoned buildings are essentially squatted by their owners who are just waiting for their value to increase before selling them on. This is nowhere more evident than on one of London's most expensive but emptiest streets: The Bishop's Avenue, aka Billionaires Row.

Billionaires Row is home to the biggest luxury mansions in the city, which are valued up to 16,000,000 each. Further examination of the price figures shows that their values have increased significantly in recent years. House number 38, for example, was sold for 3,750,000 in 1998. It is now worth an estimated 16,310,000. That's an increase of 400% in just 18 years. But as revealed in a Guardian report from 2014, most of these mansions are as run down as the creepiest locations on the Derelict London blog, some unoccupied for decades.
When I held up a sign behind Nigel Farage on Wednesday it, to my shock, went viral. Less shocking was the torrent of abuse and hate that followed online. A lot of the accounts that targeted me called me childish - sure, it wasn't the most sophisticated act I've undertaken in politics. Some accused me of bullying the former-Ukip leader - undermining their argument somewhat by going on to call me a whole host of horrible names. A small number threatened my life.

Quite a few, more understandably, asked me what Nigel Farage had done to deserve having a crudely, off the cuff note held up behind his head. For those people, here's a handy list of just five fibs Nigel Farage told that day and over the past decade. Small disclaimer, this list could have been much, much longer.

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1. The lies in Farage's speech this week

Not one lie, but several. He said that Barack Obama had enacted extreme vetting on immigration during his presidency. He didn't. Obama did review the vetting procedures applied to citizens of a single country (Iraq) and then only to refugees and applicants for Special Immigrant Visas, unlike Trump who has ordered a ban on people from seven countries with a population of more than 130million, including tourists and business travellers.

Farage also said Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain refused to take a single refugee or displaced person from Syria, when in fact there are actually 2-3million Syrians in the Gulf countries, many of whom arrived when the war began and are no therefore included in UNHCR statistics. The Saudi government has, since the conflict began in 2011, hosted 2.5million refugees and has given permanent residency to hundreds of thousands of Syrians.

2. Immigrants

When people try to have a sensible, grown up debate about immigration and acknowledge that immigration has been massively important in contributing not just to our society but to the health of our economy and public services - they are dismissed as 'metropolitan elites', that they don't understand. It's a dangerous lie when you start constructing so-called solutions to the problems we face day in day on lies, you end up building an entire machinery of deceit. Nigel Farage has been front and centre of these efforts and should be held to account.

3. The EU is unelected

In his speech, Farage accused the European Commission of being the sole arbiter of legislation in the European Union. He's got form on this, a lot of it. In reality the Commission takes it priorities from elected member state governments (the Council) and performs a role more akin to the British civil service. The third institution, the European Parliament, is made up of directly elected MEPs. Farage should know this by now, he's been one for over 10 years.

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4. The majority of our laws are made by the EU

Farage and his ilk have been getting away with this one for too long. He claims that 70% of the laws in the UK are made by the EU. The real number is difficult to quantify, but the independent House of Commons library put it at just 13.2%.

5. The EU costs Britain 55million a day

Every time I hear this I'm immediately transported back to the referendum campaign and it makes me want to put my head through a wall. Let's be clear, the EU does not cost 55million every day. This is double the real number and does not account for the benefits we get back. And before you ask, no, 350million extra a week will not be given to the NHS when we leave. Nigel Farage and every other leading figure who backed leave distanced themselves the morning after the vote.
A horrific, abhorrent gun attack on the Quebec City Islamic Centre that took place late Sunday evening compounds the fear that exists within Muslim communities who feel increasingly threatened and targeted because of their faith.

The attack saw six people die and a further eight people taken to hospital with injuries when gunmen stormed the main building during evening prayers and set upon the 50 or so worshippers that were inside. The attack has been condemned by the Canadian Prime Minister as a "terrorist attack on Muslims" and while the motives are yet unconfirmed it comes at a time of increasing Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred made worse by incendiary political rhetoric.

The attack on the Quebec Mosque is unfortunately not an isolated incident. It is one of a long line of recent attacks that have taken place on Mosques and Islamic Centres across North America and Europe in recent months. On Saturday, only a few hours after Trump's 'Muslim Ban' came into effect, The Islamic Centre of Victoria in Texas was burned to the ground. In December, several attacks on Mosques were reported which included racist graffiti on a Mosque in Scotland, the burning down of an Islamic centre in the Netherlands and a shooting at an Islamic Centre in Switzerland.

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For the Muslim community in the West, these recent attacks reiterate the vulnerability of Islamic institutions. With the exponential rise of Anti-Muslim sentiment across the world, notably through the political rhetoric of far-right politicians, the safety and security of Islamic faith institutions is something that needs to be taken very seriously. In this vein, the British Government's recent announcement of a grant of 2.5m to help install security and safety equipment in places of worship has to be welcomed. Mosques have been particularly encouraged to apply following the efforts of the cross Government working group on Anti Muslim Hatred at Department of Communities and Local Government.

The Mosque remains the central pillar of Muslim communities across the world. Aside from being a place for congregational prayer, Mosques have in general, served a specific purpose of providing a range of services for its adherents and committed to being an open and welcoming place for non-Muslims to visit and learn about the religion of Islam. The continued vilification and demonisation of an entire community provides legitimacy for extremists on both sides, be they far right or Daesh inspired, to commit atrocities on places of worship and will only continue to divide communities further.

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In my role as chief executive of Faith Associates, I have had the privilege of seeing firsthand the positive contributions Mosques make to communities across the UK, USA and Europe through charity and cohesion efforts. I have also understood the vulnerability of these institutions and the need for management, staff and trustees to remain vigilant and be equipped with the knowledge and tools required to ensure their Mosques and Islamic Centers are prepared to deal with crises. Through consultation work with a range of faith leaders, local authorities and religious institutions, Faith Associates has developed several publications aimed at providing this support. These include a range of management guides for faith establishments, safety and security in Mosques and general Open Day guides.
You have the opportunity to enroll right now. We start on the 6 of February. Currently we are conducting course registration and testing . You can pass the test provided by our web-site. Greenwich is a school of special and extraordinary classes, where student speaks 80% of the time. All classes are given exceptionally in a foreign language leaving aside your native one. In our studies Interactive exercises are widely presented, recording N8 2 and video materials. On top of that, Greenwich school invites you to various clubs and workshops that suit any taste.Apart from the main classes you can attend business trainings, grammar workshops, speaking clubs with native speakers or entertaining sitcom club that would help you to pick up modern English slang from the TV series. German learners are welcomed to grammar and speaking clubs. All clubs and trainings are free for the students of our school. Each school has a cozy coffee-bar for every student. Within the educational term we also throw many parties in English. Greenwich school has a great location: Zoloti Vorota, Bessarabka, Podil,
It comes from an interview given by John Lennon in the late 1960s: We Are The Government. Lennon was the king of the slogan. War Is Over. Imagine. Give Peace A Chance. Power To The People. Millions of people do not tweet and share these slogans every time his birthday or the anniversary of his passing come around because he was a pop star that rattled off casual sound bites. The popularity of these slogans endure because they were founded on his study of human rights and his ability to approach politics and spirituality together, as one. He was impeccable in his word. To be impeccable in your word is one of The Four Agreements written by the Mexican author Don Miguel Ruiz in his book on ancient Toltec Wisdom. Positive and uplifting words that unite us can only do good for each other and our world.

Lennon was a spiritual warrior, and arguably one of the first people to utilise his celebrity to promote spiritual and political beliefs for the benefit of the many, for which we must thank Yoko Ono, who was surely the catalyst for that groundbreaking, artistic delivery of social activism . During this sad and divisive time in our country and across the world, it is disappointing and retrogressive that contemporary celebrities are doing nowhere near as much work as Lennon did 50 years ago, and, that the one politician whom Lennon would be supporting today has been discredited to such a damaging degree, that those of us who truly believe in a world of equality and social justice cannot see whom we should support in order to get it.

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You cannot admire John Lennon if you discredit Jeremy Corbyn.

The fact that Lennon is no longer with us means that we haven't been able to see him protesting with us, marching with us, speaking for us or, supporting Corbyn - which he would almost certainly be doing.

If like me, the political landscape today resembles a sight of devastation and hopelessness, it is because there is no melding of that politics with our innate spirituality. Jeremy Corbyn does not lead with an ambition rooted in protocols, he leads from the conviction of his spirit, much the same as Justin Trudeau.

The current and previous governments in our country have led with the conviction of ignoring this country's people. Whether it be the protest against our involvement in the Iraq War (which I proudly marched at), the protest against Brexit, or the 1.5 million signatures on the recent petition to prevent Trump from making an official state visit to the united Kingdom, nobody in power is listening to you or I.

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The system is less for the people than it ever has been in our history.

Speaking at the LGBT History month this week, Corbyn gave a beautiful and rousing speech about the importance of inclusivity in our society for gay and lesbian individuals. He also highlighted the importance of foreign LGBT individuals in the UK who cannot return to their own countries for fear of persecution. And yet articles in the media have appeared within 24 hours, lambasting his speech just because he said people 'chose to be gay'. Granted, an unfortunate phrase to end a brilliant speech on. My own mother, a lesbian, has always said she did not choose to be gay, that is how she was born. And my own extended family, many of whom are gay state exactly the same as her.

However, based on followers of almost all ancient religions all over the world strongly believing that people chose to be born into their lives before their birth, I would say Corbyn was profoundly accurate in his remarks. If we understand it from a spiritual point of view.

Paul Church, a conservative councilor for Westminster described Corbyn's comments as retrogressive and offensive. I know Paul and I like him very much. He plays a strong supportive role for the Soho community in Central London, and his voice in that sector has great value. But in this instant, he has not been impeccable in his word, whilst Corbyn was utterly impeccable in all his words at the launch of the LGBT History Month.

Councillor Church's comments on Corbyn's turn of phrase were taken vastly out of context, and as such, can fan the flames of division. Taking a quick glance at social media, they have done exactly that. Many of the very people whom Corbyn is both experienced and qualified to support are turning against him.

This is one of the greatest injustices I have ever witnessed. This is a man who actually does speak for the people. Theresa May's speech writer for her first public address as Prime Minister wrote a Corbyn speech for her. And yet she has just ignored the people who elected her. Sorry, the people who didn't elect her.

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As for Trump's 'special relationship' with this country, he has succeeded in provoking protests against May from the British people. If we as a country are now losing faith in her and already decided that Corbyn is a non starter, perhaps we will be left with Trump's favourite British politician, Nigel Farage?

We,the people, need to get our house in order. The word coup has been used in reference to Trump's administration by both The Independent and The New York Times. If that is true, the shock doctrine of Trump's rise to power will be motivated by the same reasons all shock doctrines have been instigated in recent American history: war.

Trump has been diagnosed by countless experts in the medical profession as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder. But it our own narcissism that his position of power relies on and it is our own narcissism that helped put him where he is today. He has nothing valuable to offer the world and yet he is the most well known public figure IN the world. Trump is the patron saint of mediocrity and speaks for everyone who craves celebrity and delivers nothing that can enrich our lives. And sadly, that is a lot of people,

He is the leader for any of us who have spent more time promoting ourselves than caring about each other and our communities. If we spend a large portion of our lives filtering photographs of ourselves to share with everyone we know just to advertise and publicise an idea of who we are instead of the truth, without realising it, this is the kind of leader we have asked for. Like any narcissist, Trump suffers from low self esteem and illusions of grandeur. He may be past the point of no return, but I believe we can get better. We can become better. And by becoming better, we will be able to expect, demand and receive better.

Social media gave us the one thing that we never actually asked for: the ability to make comment instantly. Without thought or responsibility, and no accountability for the repercussions.

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By doing so, we are gilding the iron bars of our own prison cell. We are losing the promise in our hearts by abusing the power we have to make comment.

We don't have to agree with Corbyn's politics. Party politics can no longer answer hopes for a better world. That's not what this is about.

We have to know the man's actions and the heart that compels him to make those actions. Surely that is what must motivate our support for a leader?

If we dig deep enough within ourselves, we will only find that most of us share the same hopes for the world as Jeremy Corbyn and others like him. Why do we all feel afraid to be idealistic? Don't we think it's time to trust that? How is it that so many are reluctant to...imagine?

From Gandhi to JFK and Martin Luther King, great men who stood up for our rights as human beings were all assassinated. Today, Jeremy Corbyn is assassinated on a daily basis. It may be the media that has taken the role of the rifle, but it is us that have the power to pull the trigger, or put the weapon down.

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The Dominican Republics Ministry of Culture is defending its decision to approve a group wearing Ku Klux Klan costumes during the countrys annual Carnival parade in the capital of Santo Domingo on Sunday, El Caribe reports.

Images of participants in the carnival dressed as KKK members sparked criticism of the Ministry of Culture, which is charged with approving the groups who request to join the parade.

KKK en el malecon, Santo Domingo!

Que le paso en la cabeza del Ministro de la cultura? pic.twitter.com/2xISnXvuHl  Baguidy-Gilbert Serg (@sbg55) March 3, 2014

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In a series of tweets posted Monday, the government ministry said the group was part of a segment of the parade dedicated to commemorating historical events.

Every group is free to choose their themes, whether using elements of the Dominican identity or universal culture in their costumes, the ministry tweeted. Another tweet noted that the Dominican Republic is a free country where people are at liberty to express their creativity.

In a later statement, the Ministry of Culture said the groups KKK costumes were intended as a criticism of the U.S. white supremacist organization that has often used racially motivated violence.

The ministrys explanation didnt convince everyone.

If the point was to demonstrate the obscurantism of a historical period, the message didnt come through! said Twitter user Nieves Peguero.

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@LucienneCarlo @MinculturaRD @sergiocarlo Si el punto era demostrar el oscurantismo de una epoca historica determinada, el mensaje no llego!  Nieves Peguero (@NievesPeguero) March 4, 2014

Blog Latino Rebels, which picked up on the story shortly after it broke in the Dominican press on Monday, also took a critical tone.

If the KKK procession was meant to be humorous or satirical, it obviously failed, Iris Estrada wrote.

The Dominican Republic has made news for race issues recently.

A Supreme Court ruling issued last year required the elimination of birthright citizenship to be applied retroactively, jeopardizing the legal status of thousands of Haitian immigrants and their Dominican-born children -- the vast majority of whom are black.

Human rights groups estimate the ruling could strip more than 200,000 people of citizenship, while the Dominican government says the figure is lower.
By Scott Donaton, Chief Content Officer, Head of Digitas Studios, DigitasLBI



The gun is loaded and its on the table.

I had just asked the CEO of one of the worlds largest digital media companies about the trend of publishers masquerading as ad agencies, and the tensions it creates between people who do what he does for a living and people who do what I do for a living.

His point (with which I agree): this is not an issue we can ignore.

From the perspective of agencies, media companies were long viewed as vendors. Then they were partners. Now theyre also rivals.

Lets discuss.

As media companies launch and expand brand studiosunits dedicated to developing custom content for advertisersthey are increasingly encroaching on roles traditionally played by agencies.

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Their motivation seems to be less about the needs of their brand partners and more about a search for new revenue streams as their legacy ad models buckle. As one head of a media companys brand studio told The Wall Street Journal: Advertisers dont need publishers audiences the way they used to; they can get that anywhere.

Fair enough. These companies have every right to diversify their business models. And theres no need for agencies to be defensive about that, even if it could cause for some tense meetings as ad shops and media companies collaborate one day and compete the next.

The key for agencies is to ensure their role is clearly defined and the unique benefits they provide to clients confidently articulated.

It all comes down to business models.

As Ive said before, media organizations are designed to understand their own audiences and assetsnot those of brands. Other than sales, all resources are devoted to building affinity for the media brand. That's not a knock; it's how it should be. It's how those brands create value.

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Agencies, on the other hand, are tasked with finding the intersection between brand truth and culture, and with protecting the brands voice. Agencies assemble talent and build expertise that understands the nuance of brand strategy and how creative solutions can drive positive outcomes.

Which is why collaboration trumps competition when it comes to whats best for brands.

The creation of brand studios is actually a good thing for agencies. It puts content experts on both sides of the table who speak the same language, similar to the dynamic between media sellers and buyers. It elevates the importance of custom content and paves the way for relationships to move beyond transactional.

The push by some publishers to play the role of both media partner and agency complicates that scenario. While brand studios are eager to have direct access to clientsand to tap new revenue streamstheyre worried at the same time how it will impact their relationships with agencies.

For agencies, neither a defensive crouch nor a punitive stance are appropriate responses. Instead, agencies have to be sure the value they add is clear and, uh, valued.

Agencies help brands uncover the stories that are worthy of people's time, and help them craft and share those stories. Agencies build content ecosystems to work across multiple partners. They have a deep understanding of brands business objectives and insights into human behavior. They gather audiences around brands rather than channels.

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Long-term, many publishers may find they dont want to be in the agency business. Theyre simply not built to engage with brands at a high-touch level on a continuous basis, which is the primary purpose of agencies.

Frenemies are nothing new. The word itself dates back to the 1950s, and it came into broad use in the ad business a decade ago, often in reference to Google. In this kiss-and-punch reality, as long as each partner delivers value, each will have a role.

No one needs another distraction from the focus on operating in clients best interests. If agencies and media companies trade blows over whos the better content partner, theyll both wind up weakened. If they come together to create better solutions, theyll deliver a more powerful punch.
Paul M. Rand, President and CEO, Zocalo Group

Brands and Politics, The White House Goes Live, and The Dysfunctional State of Online Advertising

DO BRANDS AND POLITICS NOW MIX?

Speaking out about your brands political view used to be unheard of, but today, brands like Starbucks, Dove, Google and Facebook are jumping into the political conversation. As brands gain more awareness of their social media audiences, they can discern what consumers expectand are taking a firm stance to ensure theyre aligned. 70% of Millennials say theyll spend more with brands that support causes they care about, and smart brands are willing to take the boycott bullet from their consumers opposition. Even saying nothing can say a lot (just ask Uber). Brands need to know where their audience stands and be willing to put up with a little bit of negative backlash.

AUGMENT THIS: SNAPCHAT AND FACEBOOK TAKE ON REALITY

News of Snapchats potential new augmented reality tools and Facebooks reported animated selfie-masks tells us one thing: AR is coming fast. ARs growth has been steady over the last year, but the next six months seem poised to deliver a wide range of awesome new toysand brands have an opportunity to be the first to use these tools effectively. Interactive media content is always a high driver of engagement, and these new tools will be so popular that engagement is almost guaranteed. If youre not thinking about how to integrate AR into your marketing campaigns, youre not living in the reality of Augmented Reality.

P&G SAYS ONLINE ADVERTISING IS BROKEN AND INEFFECTIVE

Recently, the Chief Brand Officer at P&G, Marc Pritchard, called out what he feels is a dysfunctional relationship in the world of online advertising. He wants sweeping changes, and hes not the only one. P&G will no longer pay for any digital ads, technology or agency services that dont measure up. Pritchards five-point plan is getting tons of attentionand for a good reason: the company spends more than $7 billion a year on marketing. Like others, well be keeping a close eye on P&G. The changes Pritchard is requesting will impact and reshape the industry.

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DO YOU NOW NEED A MARKETING BUDGET FOR YOUR MARKETING BUDGET?

In todays social media obsessed world, its not enough to run one big ad during a big event, like the Super Bowl. To truly stand out among the fray, marketers must supplement their main ad with additional content on social and then promote that content so people see it. Campaigns need to be 360, inclusive of multi-screen viewing and engaging on all fronts. As soon as you commit to doing all that, youve spent two marketing budgets instead of one. Given that social content is less expensive and more versatile, we cant blame the brands that are stepping away from advertising during the big game this year.

WANT ANY MORE PROOF THAT FACEBOOK IS A NOW A MEDIA CHANNEL?

Due to his issues with the media, President Trump recently turned to a surprising platform to announce his Supreme count nominee: Facebook Live. Whether or not you agree with his media is the opposition party slogan, your brand can learn something from this approach: brands no longer have to rely on traditional media channels. Live social media content has given everyone a direct, unfiltered connection to the massesand we expect this trend to continue to grow.

About the Author
Most of us associate bullying with children and schools. Rarely do we think of adults at a professional workplace. However, approximately 27 percent of American adults have past or current experience with bullying in the workplace. The actual numbers are most likely significantly higher. Due to its psychological nature, bullying is often difficult to detect and can easily be confused with workplace conflict. Moreover, the lack of legal protections along with lack of proper policies and procedures in organizations discourages reporting this form of abuse, particularly because consequences, if any, are uncertain. Subsequently, victims are suffering in silence and perpetrators are safely and legally continuing the abuse.



What Is Workplace Bullying?

Bullying is a new concept. Organizational scholars use this term only since the 1990's to describe phenomena of repeated workplace aggression by individuals to harm others with whom they work.

Workplace bullying is repeated, health-harming mistreatment of one or more persons, the targets, by one or more perpetrators. Bullying in the workplace rarely appears in the form of physical abuse, but rather in less obvious, harmful behavior toward the target, such as withholding of information or resources, excessive monitoring of work, glaring in a hostile manner, treating the victim in a disrespectful way, interfering with work activities, giving little or no feedback about performance, not giving praise when praise is due, delaying actions on matters of importance to the worker, lying, preventing from expressing self, and/or devaluing subject's work. Bullying can also appear in the form of discrimination, exclusion, social isolation, and intimidation.

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It is important to note that single incidents of misbehavior toward a co-worker do not constitute bullying. Bullying only occurs when the mistreatment forms a pattern of repetitive harassment toward a particular target. It is also important to note that bullying is not a workplace conflict. Bulling is about power, control, and dominance over another person. It is also a form of workplace violence that 72 percent of employers deny, discount, encourage, rationalize, or defend.

Consequences For The Target And The Organization

Bullying is a particularly hideous form of emotional assault, humiliation, and infringement on an individual's civil rights that destroys morale, erodes trust, cripples initiative and results in dysfunction, absenteeism, resignations, guilt, negative feelings, and marginal production in the workplace. The list of health implications for the target is long. It includes depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, gastrointestinal disorders, forgetfulness, or even change in appearance.

The majority of victims of bullying deal with the situation by minimization or conflict avoidance. Instead of turning to their supervisors or human resources managers to discuss the abuse, the victims generally turn to their social networks such as friends and peers. They rarely ever confront the perpetrator(s), and only 1-6 percent of affected employees file a complaint.



Current Status--Insufficient Protection Of American Workers

Bullying is officially acknowledged as workplace violence. The federal government's Office of Personnel Management (OPM) addressed the topic in its guide for Federal agencies in 1998. In 2013, the Interagency Security Committee, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), published an update to the OPM guide in which the Committee emphasizes that developing and implementing reporting procedures for workplace bullying are just as important as establishing procedures for reporting physical violence. Even the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) stresses the need for including bullying in an organization's workplace violence policy.

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The effects of lacking proper policies are magnified by the fact that there are no proper legislations that address workplace bullying. Currently, there are no federal laws that protect employees. Some state laws and regulations were passed recently, however, only in a few states, such as Tennessee, Utah, Minnesota, and California. Although none of them provide effective protection against bullies in the workplace, they at least acknowledge the existence of abusive, disrespectful, or unprofessional behavior that has no room in the workplace. However, the Minnesota and Tennessee laws and regulations apply only to some public sector employers. Utah and California only require training on prevention of abusive workplace conduct, and California law is the only one that applies to public sector, as well as private sector, employees with 50 or more employees.

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Legislators Must Act To Protect American Workers

As the shortcomings in many taxpayer funded organizations show, employers must better prevent and respond to workplace violence. For this, they not only need appropriate policies in which they specifically address bullying, intimidation, and other threatening and demeaning behaviors in the workplace, but also proper enforcement channels and legislations.
Let me first say that I think Donald Trump's presidency is on a dangerous collision course which threatens our Democracy and the freedoms on which it's built. These are very scary times. Which is exactly why I believe it's an incredibly significant moment in history for our children.

Growing up in the 1960's and '70's in middle class Queens, NY I held the belief, like most other Americans at that tumultuous time, that I'd never live to see the day that a black man would become President of the United States. Thankfully, Barack Obama proved us all wrong. America is a very different place than it was back then. When it comes to racial, sexual and gender equality, my 13-year-old daughter is experiencing what I could only dream of at her age in 1972.

But that's precisely the problem. Our nation's young have been lulled into a false sense of progress. Children today only know of an America with a black president. And how awesome is that? But the sad truth is, the 'post-racial' America that Obama's victory allegedly ushered in never quite materialized. We've actually gone backward. It feels more like the 1950's. Civil rights, McCarthyism, misogyny, homophobia and a palpable intolerance are once again shockingly en vogue. And how quickly it occurred.

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Trump's ascension has served to normalize this intolerance and bigotry. A white supremacist is his top advisor. A racially insensitive former general is now Secretary of Defense, and another is about to become Attorney General. The racists are empowered and now have a leader sitting in the Oval Office. They have cultish hats. And transparent code language. They conflate "Making America Great Again" with making it white and male again. During a CNN segment this week, an older white man in Wisconsin sat across from the reporter, Jason Carroll, and unabashedly and with a smile on his face admitted his prejudice against people of color. Hatred is now out in the open, and seemingly acceptable to at least half the nation.

Trump's victory should scare the bajesus out of our young folks. It should teach them the very valuable lesson that they cannot take our progress to-date for granted. That America isn't just lollypops, ponies and Obama. That it can be, and currently is, an ugly place. A place where ignorance, anger and fear can quickly consume and bury for a long time whatever progress we've made and set us back decades.

Trump's victory is a wake-up call. Our children hopefully will grow to know the importance of being engaged. Of knowing that eight years of hope and change can so quickly devolve into darkness and despair. Maybe as they grow they'll be more realistic and respectful of the power they have in their votes than their slightly older 2016 counterparts; the naive, misguided #NeverHillary Bernie Bro's who were so wrapped up in their fantastical Brexit-like 'revolution' that they de facto supported an ignorant sexist, racist tyrant instead of the most qualified candidate in history who voted with Sanders 92% of the time and shared almost all of his, and their, progressive views.

Maybe now America's young will appreciate that in a Democracy a vote means everything. It's the difference between having healthcare or not. Between cherishing the planet or defiling it. Between being protected from Wall Street corruption or fueling it. Between improving public education or dismantling it. Between corporate regulations or unchecked greed. Between welcoming immigrants or banning them. Between diplomacy or hate-Tweets. Between transparency or secrecy. Between real progress or regression. Sadly, not enough of our young voters ran this very simple cost-benefit analysis last year. They were too caught up in registering their protest votes. And now they're protesting.

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The LGBT movement faced its first big test of the Trump presidency this past week, and fortunately passed.

The administration floated, and rescinded, attacks on LGBT protections in federal employment and federal contractors. The administration then floated, and rescinded, attacks on a broad range of LGBT rights using "religious liberty" as the mask for its bigoted actions.

Fortunately, LGBT activists around the country reconnected with each other and pre-emptively made plans for immediate response protests to mobilize our community and allies, taking inspiration from the large women's marches, immigrant and refugee rights airport actions, and other anti-Trump protests.

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Fortunately some - though still too few - brought LGBT presences to those "other" issues, showing solidarity before LGBTs per se were attacked. This sent an important message that large sections of our community are not the stereotypical white gay middle-aged male - narrowly concerned only for our rights, and the hell with everyone else -- and could perhaps thus enlist the support of non-LGBTs if/when we're under the gun.

We'll probably never know for sure, but these preparatory actions by our community probably were critical to preventing these anti-LGBT proposals from becoming Trump's latest Executive Order atrocities. Rather than toss a risk-free bone to his bigoted base, Trump had to contend with an enlarged backlash at a time when he's already taking heat from newly re-energized immigrant, Muslim, Arab American and women's rights activists. So we owe a debt to the activists in these "other" movements for preparing the ground for LGBTs.

Confronting the on-again, off-again Trump anti-LGBT measures, some activists complained of the seemingly endless "head fakes" and "trial balloons" coming out of this administration. But these are a staple of every administration, Democratic and Republican. And however frustrating they are to deal with as organizers, these head fakes are in fact a good sign for us.

The frequency of these head fakes suggests a regime that is insecure and cognizant of how deeply unpopular it is. After all, the purpose of a trial balloon is to test the waters to see if a new policy is politically viable. That this government has had to expend political capital floating several of them, just to be shot down, is a sign of weakness. The repeated retractions raise doubts in their political base while giving confidence to their opponents.

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Our own LGBT history shows the disastrous consequence of not adequately responding to these trial balloons, by energetically organizing for the worst while hoping for the best.

In 1993 the Clinton administration swept into office in part on the promise of equal employment rights for Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals in the military. As a bigoted, bipartisan congressional attack mounted against the incoming administration, LGBT non-profits and "friend of Bill" Clinton gay activist David Mixner counseled calm, and asked us to withhold criticism of Clinton.

Then a month before the huge 1993 March on Washington, Clinton floated the idea of segregating gays in the military as a condition of letting us in. This utterly repulsive proposal got only muted push-back, if any, from the LGBT non-profits, including at the then-largest ever LGBT march - a tremendous missed opportunity.

The result was an historic defeat for our community -- the infamous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was introduced by gay Congressman Barney Frank and passed a few months later.

Fast-forwarding to today, while we won round #1 vs. the current administration, their weak disavowals of these anti-LGBT measures should give us no cause for complacency: "We do not have plans to sign anything at this time [concerning anti-LGBT "religious freedom" executive orders] but will let you know when we have any updates," said a White House spokesperson. (emphasis mine)

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Not, "We would never dream of signing such a reactionary piece of garbage," just no plans at this time.

So some LGBTs have caught a break for now. But Arabs, Muslims, refugees, Native Americans, immigrants especially from the global South, and others - many of them also LGBT - remain in the direct line of fire.

It is not good enough for those of us who are not part of these communities to simply verbally denounce the bigotry of the Trump administration's actions. We must show up and respectfully participate in the defense activities organized by groups more marginalized and under the gun than we currently are.

This includes groups, such as Muslims and Arabs, whom many white gays hold revolting stereotypes about as being universally sexist and homophobic....so as to excuse their own Islamophobia. As with many people in the past who held homophobic attitudes, these Islamophobic attitudes are typically held most fervently by those who have never known a person of the Muslim faith.

As an activist who has had steady contact with Arab and Muslim activists in the decade and a half since 9/11, I can tell you that yes, homophobic attitudes do indeed exist in the Arab American and Muslim American communities - as they do in all communities, since no community is monolithic in its social and political opinions.

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More hopefully, I can tell you that in each and every instance where I as an openly gay activist encountered homophobia from one or more persons in these communities, other members of those communities forcefully stood up in my defense against the homophobes, and prevailed in each instance with my doing little more.

In the fight against bigotry of all kinds, someone has to take the first step. Using one's latent Islamophobia as an excuse to not stand up and take action against Trump's bigotry against Arabs and Muslim is unforgiveable when today they are the foremost targets of his scapegoating.

To paraphrase Pastor Martin Neimoller from Nazi Germany, "First they came for the Arabs and Muslims, and I didn't speak up..." White LGBTs have caught a break...for now...but that could change if others are defeated under Trump's onslaught.
[The picture of Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai was taken on Jan. 24./ Source: AFP, Yonhap News]

By AsiaToday reporter Jina Koh - Dubai has joined the global battle to become a FinTech hub. With decades of growth, the city has developed its infrastructure to become a key business center and is now placing its focus on FinTech sector. The Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) has launched a new FinTech accelerator program in Dubai last month in collaboration with global consulting firm Accenture.

The new initiative, called FinTech Hive, aims to provide mentorship to startup entrepreneurs to support their innovative development. It also includes a plan to transform DIFC into a global FinTech hub. Currently, seven to 10 startups have confirmed their participation. Through a 12-week accelerator program, entrepreneurs will compete and work together to address the needs of the FinTech industry.

Its partner Accenture has a positive view on Dubai's capability to become a FinTech hub. "DIFC is uniquely positioned to become the regional hub for FinTech," said Sushil Saluja, Accenture's senior managing director for Financial Services, Europe, Africa, Middle East and Latin America region, in a statement. The reason behind such program is also related to the growth of local startups, like Uber-like local player Careem, mobile payment provider Beam Wallet and online shopping mall Souq.com.

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In particular, Careem has grown remarkably fast in the region. According to Careem co-founder Magnus Olsson, the company has grown fast since its foundation in 2012. At present, it is seeing monthly revenue growth of 25 to 30%. It has about 6 million users, 150,000 drivers, and services in 52 cities across 11 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Turkey. In an interview with the Arabian Business on Jan. 27, Olsson revealed that the company is targeting a presence in between 70 and 80 cities in total by the end of this year.

Dubai's "Smart City" is ready as well. NEDAA, a Dubai-government-owned telecommunications corporation, is planning to utilize the city's Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem through a strategic partnership with Nokia. Last December, the two companies established the Innovation and Creativity Lab, with a purpose of providing solutions that aid in government and mission-critical services across various business areas, including education, healthcare, public facilities and transportation.

The Dubai government has launched the "Smart Dubai Initiative" in 1999, when global internet penetration was less than 5%. According to Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, the initiative has continued to grow since then and Dubai now boasts 545 smart services and initiatives from a variety of partners and government entities.

Experts are responding positively to Dubai's plan for a FinTech hub. David Horton, head of innovation at Synechron, told PYMNTS that, Dubai is easily giving cities like London, New York and Singapore a run for their money as a thriving FinTech center.

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Most of the immediate and impassioned responses to President Trump's un-American, immoral, and likely illegal Executive Orders on immigration and refugees have understandably focused on those elements that have produced such drastic effects: the Muslim Ban by another name and the 90-day ban on all refugee arrivals, to name the two most prominent. These policies have indeed been the source of most of the current and unfolding chaos--the detentions, the deportations, the denials of entry, even the deaths--and deserve our full attention, resistance, and condemnation.

Yet when the 90-day refugee ban ends, Trump's Executive Order will set in motion another shocking and troubling proposal: that Christian refugees will be given priority over those of other religions (most notably, of course, Muslims). The Trump administration has tried to defend this proposal by arguing that Christians have been particularly mistreated in Syria, but whatever the specific factors, I believe such a proposal would not be possible, and certainly would be receiving far more nationwide and sustained criticism, were it not for the still widely shared notion that America originated as a "Christian nation."

That notion, to be clear, is distinct from other controversial arguments. For example, while some Americans, including minister and pseudo-historian David Barton, have argued that the Framers did not intend for any separation of church and state in the Constitution and government, that originating national concept remains widely recognized. Similarly, while white nationalists such as David Duke and Steve Bannon would argue that 21st century America is still fundamentally Christian, most of us are aware of the nation's genuine contemporary diversity on matters of faith (as all others). Yet I believe that even many of those Americans would agree with the idea that in its originating and early periods America was centrally defined by Christianity.

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The "Christian nation" myth starts in large part because of an emphasis on the New England Puritans as a foundational American community. Yet by the time the Puritans first landed off Cape Cod in 1620, there were already numerous existing communities of European arrivals, each practicing distinct religious faiths and many (like the Jamestown colonists in Virginia or the French traders in what would become the upper Midwest) united and motivated by goals far distinct from spiritual ones. In most cases, including in Puritan New England, the settlers soon began importing African slaves, who brought numerous religious faiths (including Islam) with them to America. And in each and every case, these European arrivals encountered native peoples, communities with even more disparate religious beliefs and practices. All of these communities, from the Spanish in St. Augustine to the African slaves in Jamestown to the Wampanoag on Cape Cod, contributed to the development of the United States and have endured to the present (as have many many others, such as the mid-18th century Filipino villagers in Louisiana who after the Louisiana Purchase would fight for their new nation at the 1814 Battle of New Orleans). And a recognition of all their presences makes it far more difficult to see America's origins as linked to or unified by any particular religious faith.

Then there's the Revolution and the Founders. It's certainly true that many of the Founders shared and practiced a Christian faith, although it took widely varying forms (including the Deism of figures like Tom Paine, George Washington, and Ben Franklin and the skepticism of Thomas Jefferson). But it's also and more importantly the case that the Founders crafted a Constitution in which religion was stunningly absent: in an era when every equivalent nation featured a state religion (such as England's Anglican Church and France's Catholicism), the body of the U.S. Constitution includes but one mention of religion, the clause in Article VI which states that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (A clause, I've argued elsewhere, that through Framer Charles Pinckney very well might have been tied to the period's well-known Moroccan "Moorish" [Muslim] community in South Carolina.) Although the Constitution was a pioneering document in many regards, I believe none were as groundbreaking as this entire absence of religion from it and from the government it created.

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If the Constitution's explicit division of the new government and nation from any sense of a founding religion was not clear enough, a decade later that new government had occasion to express the separation even more overtly still. As part of the complex international entanglement with North African pirates and nations that came to be known as the First Barbary War, the U.S. sent envoys John Jay and Joel Barlow to negotiate a peace treaty. The resulting November 1796 "Treaty of Peace and Friendship," better known as the "Treaty of Tripoli," includes in its Article 11 the following phrase (as a rejoinder to any notion that the United States was at war with these Muslim states due to religion): "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion." Early in 1797 the treaty was unanimously approved by the Senate and signed by new President John Adams, one of the first official actions of the new U.S. government on the international stage and as direct a rebuttal to the "Christian nation" myth as it's possible to find.
Most days, I drive to work. It's just a three mile distance, but Connecticut Avenue at rush hour provides countless outlets for spasms of misanthropy. Within the metal confines of my car, I have bellowed all manner of expletives at my fellow travelers. The last minute, left-turn signal engager who makes me miss the light. The beer delivery guy commandeering an entire lane of 19th Street to unload his truck. The Metro bus driver who can't be bothered to look left before cutting back out into the stream of traffic. Some days I've leaned on the horn. Other days I've idled in the standstill, knocking my forehead lightly against the steering wheel. It is rare that I keep front of mind that we are all just trying to get where we need to go, to work our day and get back home again.

From time to time, my husband needs the car, and I commute via bus and Metro. This of course means closer contact with whatever portion of humanity happens to board these transports at the precise moment that I do. There's plenty here to irk one into a foul temper, too. The woman reading her paper who won't move to the center of the train so more passengers can board. The guy who pretends no one else might want the seat occupied by his bag. Most of the time, we don't bother speaking up about it. We avoid eye contact and position for a modest amount of personal space.

But on occasion, the train stops short without warning, lurches, and bodies are thrown against one another. And in the moment in time that follows that jolt, we apologize to the person behind us who just took a backpack to the face. We ask the woman who fell because she hadn't held on to the metal pole if she's all right. We vent to other nodding heads about how Metro needs to get its damn act together.

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When the train begins to move again, by any objective measure we are the same miniscule subset of the species that began the trip. But not quite the same. Amidst the shared experience of a force that stood to harm us all, we are not exactly the same.

I rode one of the last Metro trains that ran on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the morning of the day that an entire nation was stopped short. I had been scheduled to attend a conference at a Capitol Hill hotel, but when I entered the lobby it was packed with heads craning up at television screens. I don't remember who told me I should probably leave, but I took the advice and - without even thinking about it - descended back into the Metro station. The ride was smooth, while high above bodies hurled on bodies, a mighty skyline was laid low, a landmark synonymous with our might was battered, and for that day and many days to follow we all forged a new relationship with fear.

But in spite of - perhaps because of - that fear, millions of us lived and gave and received and retold countless acts of love and selflessness. Blood banks had to turn away donors who arrived by the thousands. In New York, strangers pulled each other through smoke and ash, or took in the shellshocked who had no way to get back home. Here in Washington, as people emptied out of office buildings and walked shoulder to shoulder, unsure even where we should go, I knew I would never leave this city.

But lest we forget, it was not just Americans who took care of our own that day.

When the FAA shuttered American air space, there were dozens of aircraft already making their way toward our shores. Many of them were rerouted to Gander, Newfoundland, to an airport that began operating in 1938, and in its heyday had been the primary staging point for the deployment of Allied aircraft to Europe during World War II. But Gander International Airport had quieted over the succeeding decades. The jet age made it unnecessary to stop to refuel, so the major carriers bypassed Gander altogether.

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Not so on this day, when 38 aircraft holding 7,000 bewildered souls touched down, one after the other.

Gander's entire population was 10,000.

What happened next has gained some modest renown, inspiring a book called The Day the World Came To Town and even an offbeat musical, Come From Away, the term that Newfoundlanders apparently use to refer to, well, everyone from everywhere else.

Gander had no hotels to speak of, and so churches, schools, and community centers were repurposed into hostels for unexpected refugees who quite literally had descended upon the native citizenry. They became known as the "plane people." Many were American, but in a telling snapshot of who is bound for this country on any given weekday in September, the plane people hailed from 100 different nations.

The stories from Gander have been playing over and over in my mind these last few days. When my kids are tucked in to sleep, I've watched the You Tube videos, some made in real time in 2001, and others capturing the reunion of the "plane people" with their hosts a decade later.

An American couple who had been bound for their honeymoon in Las Vegas recalled how an older couple from Gander insisted that sleeping in a church pew would simply not do for two newlyweds. They opened their home and gave them their bed.

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Another American recalled the women of this tiny hamlet arriving with fresh linens, and collecting laundry to wash, and how in that moment the comfort of a clean towel meant more than she could have imagined.

Another couple would learn that their son, a firefighter, perished that day.

Imagine being in a foreign land and in the hands of strangers when you are living the unimaginable. What would it mean to be comforted? What would it mean to be the one giving comfort?

Sixteen years later, it is hard to grasp how in those first hours and days we had no notion of when life might return to normal, now that normal would always be a little worse. But I do remember feeling sorrow for Americans who couldn't get home, even if just to absorb the reality, mourn, and cling tightly to family and friends.

Some of those people had become Gander's Come From Away's.

By all accounts, the people of Gander didn't consider what they did to be in any way extraordinary. Not a one would accept a dollar for the food, shelter, clothing, blankets they gave freely to 7,000 strangers.

I can't stop wondering, what really happened here?

Did centuries of peaceful friendship on a shared continent make it more compelling to answer the call for help?

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Was the sheer excitement of an overnight flashmob immigration wave enough to spur everyone to leave their homes and take all of it in?

Do they simply make better people in Newfoundland?

Maybe. But I'm guessing that even the Ganderites fume and curse and resent and cower from time to time, just like I do from inside my car. But for that span of days, because these living and breathing bodies were cast upon them, some light we each carry within us compelled the people of Gander to make sure they were all right.

In her book Love Warrior, Glennon Doyle Mellon reflects on the word "crisis," and how the Greek root of the word is "to sift." She offers: "That's what crises do. They shake things up until we are forced to hold on to only what matters most. The rest falls away."

To compare the relatively short displacement of those 7,000 people to the refugee tragedy playing out on a global scale would take reductionism to a grotesque extreme. Last year, our spinning planet reached a grim milestone, as the UN High Commission on Refugees announced that there were more forcibly displaced people around the world than at any time since World War II: enough mothers and fathers, grandparents, teenagers and toddlers, infants and newborns to comprise the entire population of the United Kingdom. The scale of the suffering and need is so daunting that it risks crushing the spirit. The desire to look away is almost irrepressible.

For two centuries, though no one would say we've done it perfectly, we have not looked away.

It is a fluke of our geography that our nation borders only two countries, but it was the animating spirit of what formed us into a people that drew millions of fellow riders on the storm, from virtually every corner of the globe, here. Many made the decision freely, though leaving family and all that was known to them is no less displacing. Many have the choice forced on them, that simplest of analyses - life or death - hurtling them toward the hope of what we so proudly call America.

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Last Saturday, a Syrian family who had survived against all odds, passed every screening, and had a new chapter within their sights instead found themselves detained at Dulles Airport. They were headed to Ohio. Somewhere in the heartland, a community stood ready to be Gander, choosing to share the ride on the train and stop shouting from the car.

And yet, consider that Gander welcomed 7,000 - no screening, no background checks - and a country of nearly 320 million has given refuge to just 15,000 Syrians trying to escape nearly certain devastation or slaughter.

Beneath that number, and in the bewilderment of this moment, lies not just the shame of failing to save as many souls as we can. Far worse is an extension of the Good Samaritan story, where the high priest asked, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" The Good Samaritan famously flipped the question, and asked "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"

This moment confronts us with the third question, perhaps the defining one: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"

Who will we be when it all falls away, when the sifting is done?
Conservatives often claim that any news that doesn't support their narrative is "fake news" yet many of these same people are oblivious to how fictitious the information they report as news really is. A recent article by Fox News contributor Todd Starnes in response to the protests at the University of California Berkeley offer an excellent example of this hypocrisy.



The concern from Starnes and other conservatives is that a speech by an alt-right author was shut down by protesters that felt the author, who had been kicked off Twitter for incessantly harassing and bullying SNL star Leslie Jones with racist comments, should not be allowed to speak on campus. To Starnes these protests show that "the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech".



It seems that the irony of this statement is lost on many conservatives. The students that are protesting are simply exercising their right to free speech. They were not protesting him as a person or his right to speak. They were protesting his hate speech. The reality is the speaker was not physically prevented from speaking by the protesters. He could just as easily have taken his act to another venue. His right to free speech was in no way infringed upon by these students.



The first amendment doesn't protect everyone's right to say whatever they want whenever and wherever they choose. Just as Congress doesn't have to allow a person who wants to extol the virtues of Sharia Law a forum to speak, the school has no obligation to allow every person who wants to hold an event to do so. Many of these same conservatives certainly had no qualms with protesting the Duke University decision to allow Muslims to use the university's chapel bell tower for Friday prayers. Notre Dame Students and alumni didn't have any problems protesting President Obama due to his views on abortion. And it seems few conservatives argued for free speech when Bill Ayers was disinvited to speak by multiple colleges and universities.



In fact while Fox News, and Starnes in particular, would have you believe that there is an epidemic of schools censoring conservative speakers, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) keeps records on such occurrences and has found that less than 60% of speakers who were the targets of disinvitation protests came from the left. There may be a rash of speaker protests sweeping the country, but the political leanings of the protesters is far more evenly divided then conservatives would have you believe.



Of course part of Starnes' issue is the fact that the UC Berkeley protests resulted in damage to the student union and a few physical confrontations. While the vast majority of liberals will tell you there is no place for these sorts of actions in a protest, the focus on violence and destruction from conservatives is again very self-serving. Many of the same people that claimed the protests against Donald Trump late last year were stocked with hired professional protesters only seem to hold that view when the protests are peaceful. As soon as things turn violent these conservative talking heads suggest this is par for the course with liberal protests. Either these protests represent liberals/Democrats or they don't. Picking and choosing which events contain the true liberals/Democrats based on how it fits your personal or political narrative exposes a bias and hypocrisy that makes it difficult to take these talking heads seriously.



Having said that, many of these same conservatives didn't seem to have a problem with citizens pointing guns at federal agents during a dispute over grazing fees or the armed takeover of public lands in Oregon. They also don't seem very concerned about the racist and pro-Trump property damage and vandalism at universities and other locations across the country. And while physical violence is clearly a problem in what should be peaceful disagreements, you'll notice that for people like Todd Starnes, conservatives attacked by liberals are victims yet liberals attacked by conservatives are agitators that got what they deserved.



But perhaps the most disturbing idea that Starnes seems to support is removing federal funding for any "public universities that want to silence conservative voices". You'll notice he didn't say for public universities that want to stop free speech. He said for those who want to silence conservative voices. Perhaps this is because he is so ill informed on the breakdown of who is being protested at college campuses; but more likely it's because he truly feels anyone who identifies as conservative should be given carte blanche over all public spaces.



This is an extraordinarily dangerous opinion which Starnes should be embarrassed to hold. Protecting every American's right to free speech and forcing public institutions to provide a forum for hate speech are two totally different things. Should Neo-Nazis be free to argue that there is a master race and that other races should be exterminated? Absolutely. Should all public universities be forced to provide a venue for this sort of speech? Absolutely not.



The problem here is that conservatives like Starnes are clueless on the duplicity of their positions, so they are fine with putting a gag order on government agencies that disagree with their beliefs, but letting public entities determine what qualifies as educational is unpatriotic and unconstitutional.



Of course few liberals would disagree with Starnes assessment that these aggressively racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic speakers trolling college campuses epitomize the views of conservative Republicans. If only he had the same sort of clarity on what qualifies as a restriction on free speech.
Over 53 million Millennials now work in the US today. Which means that more than one third of the gainfully employed is between 20 and 36 years old. By 2025, Millennials will represent a massive 75% of the American workforce. As a demographic, they clearly have significant purchasing power -- and they know how they like to spend their cash.

Having grown up in a world of globalization and economic disruption, Gen-Y holds a different worldview from their predecessors. They seek meaning, look for authenticity and like to rally around important causes.



The rise of social responsibility

Companies that support causes are gaining traction with the Millennial customer. But, social responsibility is not just about what they buy. A study from the Stanford Graduate School of Business revealed that 90% of MBAs from business schools in Europe and North America prefer working for organizations committed to social responsibility. Ethics and integrity, it seems, win out over financial reward.

With social awareness firmly stamped into the psyche of this powerful market segment, companies need to change the way they do business to keep up with the trend. Millennials are used to convenience and authenticity, but they don't like companies who choose profit over purpose.

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Running their lives from their smartphones, Millennials are highly connected. They have direct access to global problems, like finite resources, human rights, gender inequality and climate change. They're also quick to share what they care about through social media platforms.

Online stores with a purpose, a new way to do business

While larger companies and multinationals are catching on to the importance of social responsibility, a new type of business is gaining market share. Small online stores with a specific purpose to do good. Take Bottle 4 Bottle, an Australian family-owned business that invites customers to shop for a cause. Each time they sell a bottle of lotion or spray tan solution, they donate a bottle of premium formula to an orphaned or abandoned child in need.

Thirty One Bits, a company that uses 100% recycled materials for their necklaces and accessories made by women in Uganda. They develop a five-year program and provide health care, financial advice and social support to help women to start their own businesses. Instead of direct profit sharing, they ensure that Ugandan women can make a sustainable income to live well and to raise their children.

Warby Parker is another business that revolves around social responsibility. For every pair of glasses they sell in their stores, they donate a pair to somebody in need. As part of their program, they also train men and women in developing countries to perform basic eye exams and sell glasses.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands of small business, supporting various causes in different parts of the world. With a solid marketing strategy and strong social media presence, they can make themselves heard and appreciated - and sell products.

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It's about making a positive social impact

Millennials support companies that do good, making social entrepreneurship a smart business model to follow. 70% of millennials are willing to pay more for a product that makes an impact on issues they care about.
With higher education increasingly viewed as the runway to the job market, certain disciplines and endeavors seem poised to be downgraded in favor of those fields of study deemed to deliver greater returns. What of student engagement with the world beyond the classroom? How does that kind of activity square with the university's evolving mission?



Woodbury University's recent recognition in the 2015 President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll suggests that civic and community engagement are alive and well on our campus, and on others across the country. Indeed, these activities are thriving, as they must if the university is to deliver a transformative educational experience. We achieve academic excellence by focusing on purposeful student engagement; establishing community partnerships; and cultivating a personal, interactive learning environment that focuses on innovative, practice-based education.

The Honor Roll program cited Woodbury's activities in both general community service and education, calling out:

the university's 2014 Civic Engagement Symposium

the expanded mandate of the ACE (Agency for Civic Engagement) Center

the Service Learning Initiative within the School of Business

Woodbury's summer youth camps

the university's Initial Credit Summer School (ICSS) program

our college awareness initiatives in partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District

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But it isn't simply the diversity of our institution's civic engagement efforts that garnered the attention of the White House. It was the breadth and depth of the Woodbury community's involvement - that is, in time and, if you will, sweat equity - that makes this story so powerful an example. Fully 30 percent of students, faculty and staff participated in civic engagement and community service projects during the 2013/2014 school year, volunteering approximately 100,000 hours.

(By the way, that 100,000 hours translates to more than 4,100 days, or 11 years.)

Our main thrust for further expanding our volunteer and community service will occur through ACE, which already works with disadvantaged communities, including Skid Row Housing and the Watts section of Los Angeles.

Woodbury students are empowered to lead lives of influence and improve society. Our students are mentored while being given opportunities in which they can make a difference. They get involved in meaningful community projects to expand their connections and create possibilities - and in so doing, they develop a sense of belonging and gain a deeper understanding of involved citizenship. The university's commitment to community service includes not only the guided contributions of students but extends as well to the generous work of the faculty and staff. The university embraces and promotes a truly communal effort in aiding the greater community and assisting under-served populations.
Paying credit card for purchases

As my mother's Alzheimer's progressed, I learned that it's often the little things that make a big difference. I remember a cashier at a chain store being patient with my Mom while she proudly purchased some festive socks versus a few rather rude shoppers who nearly toppled the tiny lady who shuffled slowly down the aisle. On many days, I felt lonely and isolated as Alzheimer's tightened its grip on my mother's life -- and mine.

I recently heard about a dementia-friendly resolution passed by the city of Azusa, California in partnership with Silverado Sierra Vista Memory Care Community. I wanted to know if my community could follow this practical, innovative blueprint since many of my friends are Alzheimer's caregivers. Among them is Pat who cares for her husband Bob. Her greatest challenge today is helping him negotiate the outside world:

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When Bob was still driving, he was shopping in the Brewster Bookstore and suddenly forgot how to pay. He told the clerk he was having difficulty remembering what to do next, and he handed her his wallet. She took the credit card out and helped him purchase a book for me.

This small act of kindness and understanding did a world of good.

The basic human impulse to offer a helping hand is the message behind Azusa's dementia friendly resolution. Ed Blomendahl, Senior Community Ambassador at Silverado, assembled a community task force whose mission includes educating the community and encouraging respect for people living with memory impairment. For Ed, it's personal. He watched his own family struggle in the early 1980's to find resources for his grandmother who was battling Alzheimer's: "No one could explain what it was or what it meant."

Barbara, a caregiver for her husband David, attended Azusa dementia education classes which are held at Silverado. They are free and open to the public. For Barbara:

There is nothing more difficult than being out in 'the real world' with a family member who has cognitive impairment. You're constantly worried about them wandering, saying something inappropriate, or having episodes that are aggressive, physical or loud.

The stress of the simplest excursions can easily tip one way or the other. "Whenever my daughter and I take David somewhere where the staff is gentle and understanding, it is great for the person with dementia," comments Barbara, "but even better for the family members who are so used to seeing faces of fear or even disgust." She spoke about one gentle gesture that was extended with great dignity: "We used to take David to a little restaurant where the maitre d' remembered us. He was always so courteous to my husband and would ask me quietly (so David couldn't hear) whether or not he should bring his meal pre-cut to make it easier to eat."

The "real world" can be a frightening place for someone struggling with dementia, but thankfully there are folks who strive to make our communities easier to navigate. Kat, a server at Marie Callender's, attended dementia training and made small adjustments for her memory-impaired customers: "I learned that too many options might be confusing and cause the guest to become flustered or embarrassed. Instead of asking 'Do you want to add soup or salad with your meal today?' I'll ask 'Do you want to try our potato cheese soup?'" Kat has found reward in a new approach: "The training at Silverado made me realize how important body language and eye contact are when interacting with someone who has dementia. They may not understand completely what I'm saying but the feeling they get from my body language is important. I might stand at a table and take an order looking at my notepad for one table but at a table with someone who has dementia I will kneel down to their level so I'm not intimidating."

Many studies have suggested that exercise is good for the brain and can help ease certain Alzheimer's symptoms. Since exercise can be a both a joy and a challenge for the memory-impaired, Tori, a fitness specialist for Azusa's Triad Gym, also participated in the Silverado training. Her motivation for educating herself had everything to do with the mind-body connection: "We have elderly clients who enjoy the many benefits of being in the gym and being with other people. If trainers know how to communicate with someone who has dementia, they can create a more inclusive environment."

To promote the theme of inclusion, Azusa businesses display purple flower decals in their windows once they've completed dementia training. These decals welcome customers with dementia and signal support for their caregivers. As Ed Blomendahl put it: "We're trying to eliminate the stigma associated with this disease. We're encouraging people to come out and we let them know they are still valuable, contributing citizens."

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Among the myriad executive orders that President Trump has inherited from the Obama administration is one essentially lifting sanctions on the regime in Khartoum, Sudan. During his last week in office Obama declared there had been sufficient "positive action over the past six months" by the very regime the former president had repeatedly accused of genocide--both before and after taking office. Obama used his UN ambassador, Samantha Power, to make the case in detail: during her last press conference, Power declared, falsely, that a "sea change" in improved humanitarian access throughout Sudan justified the administration's decision . She cited one unrepresentative example, even as every humanitarian and human rights organization that has spoken about Power's claim denies its validity. Human Rights Watch declared Obama's decision simply "inexplicable ." So it falls to the conspicuously dysfunctional Trump administration to decide whether during the upcoming six-month "testing period" Khartoum deserves to see a finalizing of this lifting of sanctions. It can choose to ignore realities on the ground, as the Obama administration did in its assessment of the past six months; or it can take a hard look at what is widely reported from those on the ground and in the Sudanese diaspora. Humanitarian embargoes, imposed by Khartoum, continue to affect many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the long-marginalized regions of Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile. The "sea change" Ambassador Power spoke of is certainly not visible in South Kordofan, where an experienced and highly informed humanitarian wrote to me, declaring:

Despite the declaration today (Sudan Tribune, February 3, 2017) by President al-Bashir that the Obama administration lifted sanctions on Sudan because of their "futility," the truth is that their efficacy has not been tested: BNP Paribas saw to that during their long tenure as "central bank" for al-Bashir and his genocidal regime. Those in the world of Washington-based pundits who proclaim their agreement with al-Bashir only reveal their ignorance of the potency of the U.S. financial sanctions that BNP Paribas so effectively undermined. The regime in Khartoum has not changed in the 27 years since it seized power in a military coup as the "National Islamic Front." It continues to wage genocidal counter-insurgencies against the marginalized regions of the country in order to maintain a monopoly on national wealth and power. And the regime has assessed with uncanny skill the willingness--or lack thereof--by the international community to confront the regime over these multiple genocidal assaults--in what is now South Sudan, in the Nuba Mountains during the 1990s, in Darfur beginning in 2003, and now South Kordofan and Blue Nile. If it believes that refusing to acknowledge a cholera epidemic in these regions serves its purposes, it will deny--until facts become so overwhelming as to compel acknowledge of this vast threat to hundreds of thousands of civilians, especially in the eastern regions of Sudan. The Trump administration looks at once badly confused--and dismayingly indifferent to all but major geopolitical events--and here Sudan clearly does not qualify except as a resource for counter-terrorism intelligence, "red meat" for the wolves in the intelligence community that increasingly dominates U.S. foreign policy. Moreover, the odds-on favorite to become Trump's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Peter Pham, has put himself decisively on record--even before Obama's Executive Order--as strongly favoring the lifting of sanctions against Khartoum. Congress, which once took Sudan seriously on a bipartisan basis, is presently nowhere to be found in responding to the Executive Order. It was not always so: in July 2004 every member of Congress--in both houses and from both parties--declared that Khartoum was committing "genocide" in Darfur. But the present wait-and-see Congressional attitude only makes more likely a de facto lifting of sanctions (without another Executive Order they will disappear on July 13)--or encourages the Trump administration to believe it can not only lift sanctions but proceed apace with the rapprochement the U.S. intelligence community strongly favors--a supremely callous trade-off in which U.S. favors are given to Khartoum in return for counter-terrorism intelligence--in many cases about the very terrorists previously supported by the regime, which hosted Osama bin Laden during the formative years of al-Qaeda (1992 - 1996). Just this week Sudanese intelligence General Hanafi Abdallah boasted of Khartoum's important to American counter-terrorism intelligence: "There is communication between the two bodies and regular meetings. The CIA office in Khartoum is the largest office in the Middle East. Because the United States is aware of the Sudan strategic importance in the region, it has established one of the largest diplomatic missions in the region, even they had to expand their buildings," said Hanafi in an interview with the Khartoum based Al-Sudani newspaper published on Tuesday. (Sudan Tribune, January 31, 2017) Although the regime lies shamelessly, there is on this occasion little reason to doubt the truth of this statement, which has not been denied by the U.S. State Department. For a long time the Khartoum regime held hostage the opening of CIA operations in the new building and embassy in Khartoum, knowing how desperate the agency was to gain access to what was designed to be the premier listening post in North Africa. The date of the Obama administration's gaining operational permission from Khartoum was never publicized, but clearly--whenever the final terms of the quid pro quo were settled upon--things are humming for the CIA in Khartoum now, and this more than any other factor governs any future decision by the Trump administration concerning reinstating sanctions and Sudan policy generally. And it will be a decision only nominally made by the State Department. It is hard to be optimistic, with Washington-based pundits lauding Obama's Executive Order, and an incomprehensibly thoughtless Trump administration that gives no sign of heeding Sudan's agony as it pushes for "America First." This may well be Sudan's darkest hour. [Eric Reeves has written extensively on Sudan for almost two decades; he is a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights]
When a Cro Magnon rib cage can bring $500-5000 at an archaeological antiquities auction, or an inflatable orange plastic dog sells to major collector for $58 million, the value of art's capacity to restore the soul comes into question. Many of the today's master collectors--e.g. LA real estate entrepreneur Eli Broad, globalists Donald and Mera Rubell, hedge fund mogul Stephen Cohen, equity manipulator Leon Black among them--seem truly touched by the power of art, but their commercial counselors are never far away from the checkbook.

Those considerations, among others, are at the core of two surprising exhibitions at Bordeaux's always provocative Museum of Contemporary Art, or CAPC. Video artist Ali Cherri, considers a series of living, dead and modeled heads, drawing us to confront the nature of how we see our primordial and displaced predecessors, the actual people inside those museum heads, the sort whom ex-British Prime David Cameron warned were a "swarm of migrants" crashing at England's gates--a soft spoken version of America's latest fart into the face of immigrant souls.



That's the top floor of the CAPC. Descend one floor and you find yourself surrounded by another sort of populist rebellion from another time that resisted the nexus of art and money. It flourished half a century ago in hippy art collectives of Southwest England, gathered together by a collaborative printing commune that called itself the Beau Geste Press. Surviving frugally outside the cash economy, they specialized in silkscreen pamphlets, posters and hand made books, passionately defiant of that era's slick commercial magazine world.

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Both shows lure us to reflect about what art objects mean to us personally, how they have come to made and whether art for the soul can truly be separated from how it is made and how we have come to discover it. The silkscreens of the 70s dared to be naughty in journals like Schmuck (in street Yiddish "dickhead) that celebrated actual erotic bodies as rebel flowers exploding the banal limits of respectable mass-market decoration. For artists like Martha Hellion, that brief window half a century ago may have seemed, from today's market obsessed atmosphere, may seem naively exuberant in its aim to liberate the unity unity of body and soul.

A Mexican architect by trade and training, Martha Hellion drifted into so-called "underground" publishing through working on the archetypal "underground" silkscreen paper Oracle. "We never went out to do our work. We are living our work. Making papers and books: It was to make productions that allow us to create and develop our work without being inside the trendy wave of the art market. We were making our own productions, our own books, sometimes without any money, and distributing them by hand and through the post office. It was a very intense time."

One of the founders of Beau Geste Press, Hellion came to Bordeaux for the opening to join hands and inky gloves with a new generation of artist collectives in the Aquitaine region of southwest France who continue to produce both new silkscreen papers and to fashion contemporary sculpture that recalls the technology of pre-computer collectivist art.



Back upstairs Ali Cherri's collection of primordial skulls gather themselves together to stare back with piercing blind eyes at those of us who come to visit, gaze, and often, to pity their stylish primitivism. Both in the collection of stone and bone heads Cherri picked up at auction markets, and in his dream-sequence film in the next room, he takes us into the eyes, the noses, the ears the brows and the teethless mouths of those beings. He bids us to free them from their static imprisonment in the sterile glass cases of Paris's grand museums (or of the Smithsonian), to confront both their lives and ours as visitors, to engage with them outside the archaeological collectors markets that have ossified their stories and rendered them safe.



Produced jointly with Paris's Jeu de Paume museum, Cherri calls his work Somniculus, using a museum visitor as a sleeping voyager whose eyes are closed not so tightly as death requires but more lightly as during the fluttering dreams that guide us to explore both the living and the lost lives of our world.

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The fact that Voice of America chose to prominently report on the money laundering and drug related charges against Haiti President-elect Jovenel Moise speaks volumes, or maybe not. In an election plagued by low turnout, suspicions about vote buying and vote stealing, Moise is on very shaky ground with the courts, the electorate, and the Haiti Diaspora. Haiti's Central Unit of Financial Intelligence (UCREF) concluded in a report there were indications Moise had laundered money through a personal account.

Moise denies the allegation.

In a twist that demonstrates how the proverbial apple does not fall from the tree, Moise's close associate and Senator-elect Guy Philippe was arrested in Haiti and extradited to Miami where he faces charges of cocaine smuggling and money laundering. Philippe was captured January 5 in Haiti and handed over to U.S. drug enforcement agents under a 2005 warrant. This raised some complaints in Haiti about a Senator-elect being removed by a foreign power and one has to wonder if the arrest of Philippe was a trial balloon to test reaction to possible U.S. intervention against Moise.

Nothing is ever as it seems with US/Haiti relations. More intervention by a foreign power, however good intentioned, would probably be viewed badly. Haiti is damned either way it seems.

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The clock is ticking and unless there is intervention on the form of the Divine, the Haitian courts, or some kind of statement of opposition from the U.S. State Department, and/or President Trump, Moise will be sworn in on February 7. If he does take office, it will be an extension of the rule of the Bald Head Party of Haiti's fraudulently elected President Michel Martelly. For those not up to speed on the 2010/11 Haiti Election, the Hillary Clinton State Department altered the vote count. You can read the Clinton emails or read this report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

The end result was that Martelly ruled by decree, and the new elections were supervised by the same person, former Ambassador Ken Merten, who was Ambassador when Martelly was "elected." The official voter turnout on November 20, 2016 was 21.7 percent; hardly a mandate. Even more troubling, and an indication that the Clinton's refuse to let go of their grip on Haiti, former Obama ambassador to Haiti and Obama Haiti Special Coordinator Merten, wrote an oped in the Miami Herald after Trump's inauguration on Jan 26, 2017, saying the U.S. welcomes Jovenel Moise as president.

Merten certainly did not have that authority.

This is all shorthand, and Haitian scholars will squawk about lack of depth, but it is a timeline that helps to explain the angst among Haitian Americans as the countdown moves to a February 7 inauguration of a criminal President in Haiti. There will be no celebrations as the hammer is dropped once again on the tiny island nation.

Today, Moise Jean Charles and Jude Celestin (candidates in the run-off) issued a joint press release rejecting the Jovenel Moise installation, which they term an "Electoral Coup."

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Their message can be summarized as follows:

We launch a clear appeal for a total rejection of the electoral coup that occurred on November 20th, 2016;We denounce the Provisional Electoral Council as a direct accomplice of this masquerade;We totally reject the result of the presidential elections as well as the so-called winner;We will never recognize the president who has emerged from this electoral farce;We condemn the use of drug monies and other illicit means to win electoral votes;We deplore the process of making Haiti a narco-state

President Trump might well want to consider the ramifications for Florida and the eastern seaboard with the amount of drugs already flowing into the U.S. from Haiti via the Bahamas. In June 2016 more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine were found on a ship docked in Miami. The "Lisanne" was boarded and DEA agents found cocaine powder on drill bits used to penetrate what were supposed to be empty cargo containers.

Haiti's narco-state is invading south Florida and President Trump's anti-drug stance will hopefully come into play here.
What might originalists learn from an old painting? What might they learn from "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," a work often attributed to Bruegel? Viewed on its face alone, the work is a hodgepodge of images such as those of a man with his horse and plow, of more people, of furrows, of sheep, of a tree, of rocks, of a sailboat, of a leg sticking out of the water, and of a sun diffused by clouds and sea. What is fascinating about all that? How could that odd medley have inspired such great poetry as Auden's "Musee Des Beaux Arts"? The painting must have "spoken" to Auden in profound ways but how do we find the message? (Yes, people speak with images as well as words. Images as signs can convey meaning symbolically like words and can also convey meaning through resemblance with what they represent.)

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Do we find the message by looking up dictionary definitions from Bruegel's time of "man," "horse," "plow," "furrows," "sheep," "other people," "tree," "rocks," "sailboat," "leg," "diffuse sun," "clouds," and "sea"? Of course not. That would just leave us with a disconnected list of of multiple possible definitions for each such term. Additionally, the definition lists would vary by dictionaries consulted. If we were interpreting a similar modern painting, for example, the current fourth edition of the American Heritage College Dictionary has no fewer than 15 definitions of "man" as a noun. So many choices across terms facilitates rather than limits interpretive "activism." The conservative interpreter can pick the definitions that fit the conservative interpreter's worldview, ignore conflicting alternative definitions of terms, and yet still claim to follow the "original" sense of the terms defined. The liberal interpreter can do the same and reach a conflicting result that also claim to follow the "original" sense of the terms. It's hard to see how this can be a serious interpretive philosophy. In any case, it encourages rather than discourages interpretive "activism."

That said, to seek the artist's meaning, we must of course consider the images. However, we must also look at all the available evidence of the artist's meaning when we interpret those images. The title tells us the painting is about the fall of Icarus. This points us to a conceptual and literary context that supplements, for example, the plowman focusing on his plowing. Now and only now can we see the likely "literal" subject of the painting: a world focused on its own pursuits while missing the exuberant rise and tragic fall of a boy who briefly flew. Thus, the painting has no "literal" meaning in itself. We have to go out and reconstruct what the painter meant. Nor does the painting in itself simply give us a likely deeper meaning intended by the artist. To find that deeper meaning, we must further contextualize the images. As moral yet ephemeral agents, how should we react to what we know is the ignored tragedy of Icarus? Morally, shouldn't the plowman regret his indifferent behavior? Additionally, having only brief and fragile lives, shouldn't we be horrified, chilled, and humbled by what happened to Icarus? If the world doesn't give a damn about a child who amazingly flew and then streaked down the sky, how can it give a damn about us? Isn't there therefore a deeper message that we should notice the suffering of others, that we should help them to the extent we can (an ability which of course can change as eras progress), and that this is in our own self-interest lest we, too, be left to drown?

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Although the media trashed Donald Trump's inaugural address as radical and scary to the United States and the world, his views on American security policy nevertheless may be closest to that of the nation's founders than those of any U.S. president since the early 1800s.

In his speech, the new president pledged that, "We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example for everyone to follow." After George W. Bush's disastrous invasion of Iraq for no good reason and Barack Obama's military overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, which also resulted in chaos and an increase in terrorism, U.S. re-adoption of its long abandoned foreign policy of being a "shining city on a hill," if put into practice, would be a refreshing return to the founders' vision.

Thus, Trump seemed to pledge less U.S. military intervention abroad while still defending the United States. He noted that "we've defended other nation's borders while refusing to defend our own." And he complained that the United States has "spent trillions of dollars overseas," including on the armies of other countries, "while America's infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay."

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All of this factually true. For example, the United States alone accounts for 75 percent of the defense spending of the 28 mostly well-to-do countries of NATO, making it a very one-way street in terms of alliance costs and benefits. Yet as the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the U.S. military--which has been geared to be an offensive force to project American power overseas to police the world rather than to be a force to defend the United States--scrambled jets and sent them ineffectually out over the ocean. In contrast, Trump promised to focus on eradicating the genuine threat to the United States of radical Islamic terrorism.

Because the founders wanted to avoid the militarism of Europe's monarchs, who continuously waged war with the costs in blood and treasure falling on their people, the U.S. Constitution authorizes the government only to "provide for the common defence." The founders correctly believed that unneeded overseas martial adventures undermined the republic at home, something our post-World War II interventionist foreign policy establishment has forgotten.

So maybe Trump's inaugural address failed to unify the Western alliance and even scared the United States' wealthy free-loading allies. So be it; the platitude of invoking the need to "unify" is often a way to beat back uncomfortable but necessary threats to reform the status quo. Trump was correct when he earlier labeled NATO "obsolete," because it wasn't a very effective vehicle for addressing terrorism, and when he accused allied nations of not paying their fair share for Western security.
By Jerry Zezima

It may come as a shock to you that I can't get pregnant. The reason, of course, is that I am too old. But that did not stop a doctor from sending me for a sonogram.

This procedure, which is often performed on pregnant women, was done on me recently, not because I was expecting a baby, unlikely since I am still infantile myself, but because I had a kidney stone.

Unfortunately, it wasn't my first. It was my fifth. Or sixth. I have lost count, mostly under the influence of painkilling drugs, but I do know that I am a human quarry who manufactures these things at an alarming rate. If I could outsource this manufacturing to another person, I would. But I can't, so I continue to have kidney stones.

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The first time I had one, a nurse told me it was the male equivalent of childbirth. I told her that at least I wouldn't have to put the stone through college.

This time, my urologist, Dr. Albert Kim, who has a practice in the appropriately named New York hamlet of Stony Brook, ordered a sonogram because I'd already had enough X-rays from my previous kidney stones to glow in the dark, which at least would reduce my electric bills.

When I arrived at Zwanger-Pesiri Radiology, I spoke with Amy, one of the nice people who work at the front desk.

"I've been here so often that I should have my own parking space," I told her.

"Even I can't get one," Amy said with a smile. Then she handed me paperwork whose sheer volume rivaled that of "War and Peace" and asked me to fill it out.

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"I've had to do this so many times that my right hand should be X-rayed," I said.

Amy nodded sympathetically and replied, "You can keep the pen."

Then I was called in by a nice technologist named Erin, who asked if I had been drinking.

"No," I replied, "but I could go for a beer."

"I mean water," Erin said. "You have to have at least 24 ounces before we can do a sonogram."

"I had a bottle on the way over," I told her.

"Good," said Erin, who asked me to lift my shirt so she could rub some jelly on my belly and watch it on the telly.

"Am I pregnant?" I asked.

"Sorry," she responded, "but no."

"Do you see my kidney stone?" I wondered.

"I'm not a doctor," Erin explained, "so I'm not allowed to say."

But she did say that a report would be sent to Dr. Kim, with whom I had an appointment the next day. That evening, however, someone from the radiology center called me at home to say I had to come back because part of the sonogram was blurred.

The next morning, I returned for another one. While I was waiting, I had a kidney stone attack. Fortunately, it was no worse than having hot tar injected into my right side. When the pain subsided, I had a second sonogram and then went to see Dr. Kim, who said the stone was probably dropping and that this, too, shall pass.

Sure enough, at home later that afternoon, it did. Dr. Kim ordered an X-ray, which I tried to avoid in the first place.

I had one a couple of days later from another nice technologist named Jenn, who said I could keep the blue paper pants I had to wear for the procedure. She also gave me a copy of the X-ray, which I had to bring to Dr. Kim a few days later.

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I also brought him the stone, which looked to be the size of a bocce ball but was actually, according to Dr. Kim, five or six millimeters.

"It's fairly big," he said. "Did you have a tough time passing it?"

"It wasn't pleasant, but it could have been worse," I replied. "At least I didn't have a baby."



Stamford Advocate humor columnist Jerry Zezima is the author of three books. Visit his blog at www.jerryzezima.blogspot.com. Email: JerryZ111@optonline.net.
(Global Times) 08:32, February 03, 2017

Chinese Ambassador to the US Cui Tiankai talks with Ivanka Trump during the Chinese New Year reception at the Chinese embassyin WashingtonD.C. on Feb 2, 2017. [Photo by Zhao Huanxin/China Daily]

US first daughter Ivanka Trump and her daughter came to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC on Wednesday night to attend a Spring Festivalcelebration. Her appearance attracted wide attention.

Customarily, American presidents usually send greetings at lunar new year, but this time US President Donald Trumpbroke with tradition, letting his acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon do the job instead. Whether US presidents send greetings at Chinese lunar new year does not impact the festival mood among Chinese, except perhaps those in the US.

Trump's lack of a new year greeting has been interpreted as maintaining a hard-line stance toward China. Ivanka Trump's attendance at the Chinese new year celebration sent an opposing message, which was seen as balancing Trump's harsh posture.

Among the recent first families of the US, Ivanka Trump is regarded as the most influential first daughter, whose words and deeds are also believed to carry more weight. Her appearance at the Chinese Embassy, with a certain political and diplomatic significance, could be invigorating to the China-US relationship.

Since his official swearing-in on January 20, Trump has hit out on different fronts, lashing out at Germany, Japan and Mexico and issuing a ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. However, despite his stern rhetoric about China, Trump hasn't taken any action so far, preferring to remain in a seemingly psychological war with Beijing.

Trump's policies have a sense of proportion. For instance, the travel ban was not applied to Saudi Arab and Egypt, two countries that are still important to the US. Trump is at odds with American traditional media, but is at peace with new media, which does not necessarily favor him.

Trump is clear that China will certainly take retaliatory measures against his provocations, and is calculating the difficulties and costs of going up against China.

During the first weeks of his presidency, Trump has further split US society and rocked the world as he worked to fulfill his campaign promises, such as abolishing healthcare reform, withdrawing from the TPP free trade deal, proposing a US-Mexico wall and issuing the travel ban. The intensified support and opposition Trump received have reached a fragile balance during the early days of his tenure. Hitting out against China will be a risky move, for which Trump needs to find a good reason and be certain about the benefits.

The excuses that Trump made to cause a deterioration in the Sino-US relationship have been weighed up by US society and cannot spur Americans. Meanwhile, Trump is clear his toughness against Chinese will incur equally tough reactions from China.

If clashes break out between Beijing and Washington under Trump, which side the Western mainstream public opinion would support is hard to predict.

China cherishes peace, but is also well-prepared to fight for peace. While Beijing fully respects Trump, his team and his family, we should resolutely fight against his provocations.

Ivanka Trump attends the Chinese New Year reception at the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C. on Feb 2, 2017. [Photo by Zhao Huanxin/China Daily]

>>> RELATED: Trump's failure to send Lunar New Year greetings prompts worries about Sino-US ties
In the three months since I last wrote anything here, the world has changed. And while nothing good has or will come of the putsch that threatens our democracy and makes the world a more fragile place, the focus of this piece is on Los Angeles rather than on the decline of American civilization. After all, all politics is local and only if we are strong and smart and united will we successfully defeat the senseless hate that is currently emanating from Washington.

On March 7th, when Los Angeles voters go to the polls we get the chance to reelect a proven, caring, hard-working and smart mayor and public servant named Eric Garcetti. In March, Angelenos should also vote No on S, rejecting a misguided effort to turn back the clock on L.A.'s sprint toward sensible, transit-oriented development, and Yes on H, showing that we care about the tens of thousands of homeless who have nowhere to live but on our streets.

Given the tangible ways in which life in Los Angeles has improved for most Angelenos on Eric's watch, I am optimistic that voters will do the right thing in March.

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Eric Garcetti has earned our support for a second term through his tireless, thoughtful advocacy of a vision of Los Angeles as an inclusive city that strives to serve all of its residents. Working with the City Council and the County Board of Supervisors, Mayor Garcetti has been a champion of action on our affordable housing and homeless crises, a national leader in the sanctuary cities movement, and an advocate for doing away with needless bureaucracy so that it is easier for businesses to start up or relocate here, and expand. A self-proclaimed tech geek, Mayor Garcetti has pushed the City to invest in technology and tapped experienced urban planning, business and philanthropic leaders like Bloomberg Associates, to help us troubleshoot, fix and improve difficult governance challenges like sidewalk repair and street services.

With Eric in office, Los Angeles has become a more sustainable city that is taking action to reduce its carbon footprint and is committed to renewable energy, stormwater capture and to creating a welcoming L.A. River with open space for all. He has helped coax Angelenos out of their cars with his full-throated endorsement of a more transit-oriented Los Angeles with pedestrian and biking improvements that make that first mile/last mile trip to the train station or bus stop less onerous. The opening of Phase 2 of the Expo Line has happened while Eric has been in office and before we know it the Crenshaw Line will be whisking travelers from downtown L.A. to Leimert Park and LAX. The Mayor's fierce support for Measure M gets two thumbs up from this transit rider, biker and pedestrian.

Before the November election, the Mayor was everywhere in the County, not just the City, patiently explaining why Measure M is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to making Los Angeles the public transportation mecca that its climate, and traffic, confirm it must be.

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Bike share in downtown L.A., a construction boom, thriving walkable and bikeable neighborhoods like the Historic Core and Arts District, an improving LAX, a cleaner port and a livable wage are changes that have happened and will continue to happen with Mayor Garcetti at the helm. He has helped poorer parts of Los Angeles with new pocket parks and street tree planting and has brought back to the table community organizations, charitable foundations and business leaders who had previously lost faith in government. Are we done? Of course not, but Mayor Garcetti is the best choice for the hard work that lies ahead.

Los Angeles wins with Mayor Garcetti because he is a leader who does his homework when confronting a challenge or pursuing an opportunity. Be it on trade missions to Asia or Latin America or visiting neighborhoods around the city where he addresses the crowd in English and Spanish, Eric Garcetti does so with a smile and with a command of the issues that comes from having done the heavy lifting to understand what he is talking about. Where others scowl and insult their constituents, and adversaries, Mayor Garcetti makes people feel like he is listening and cares about their concerns because in fact he does.

For all of these reasons, I will be voting again for Eric Garcetti in March. And I will also be voting Yes on H to help the homeless and No on S, which would put the kibosh on our sensible transit-oriented growth and development.

L.A. deserves Mayor Eric Garcetti. Join me in voting for him on March 7th!


Nothing is more boring than the Federal notice-and-comment rulemaking process under the Federal Administrative Procedures Act (APA). It is dry, obscure, and complex. Trust me, I teach seminars on it, and even the perkiest student on my most entertaining day needs heroic amounts of coffee to bear up.

But being so dense and foreign to most Americans has made Federal rulemaking traditionally perfect for exploitation by politicians. Private businesses can always find rules to complain about, and examples of pointless, over-reaching rules can always be found to support the comPlaints . But one thing is clear: Specific bad rules aside, whenever politicians get their hands on the APA itself, they always manage to make it worse.

And now the latest: President Donald Trump, on January 30, 2017, his tenth day in office, has issued a new Executive Order titled "Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs" (see full text), designed, in his words, to help business. "We're cutting regulations massively for small business -- and for large business," he explained. "But for small business, and that's what this is about today."

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The solution? Instead of identifying a single needless regulation hurting small business, the new Executive Order goes straight to the process. For each new rule, delete two old ones. Sound logical and direct? What could possibly go wrong with this concept?

Well, actually, plenty. First some context. Federal rulemaking, beyond being awesomely complex, is also awesomely important to how the United States government functions. Over six hundred major and minor rules were adopted in 2016 alone. Stereotypes aside, few of these rules reflect the whim or caprice of obscure rogue agency bureaucrats. Rather, most are written to implement broadly-drafted acts of Congress or respond to demands of stakeholders: businesses, utilities, farmers, Congressmen, health providers, and yes, consumers, the environment, and the public. Businesses actually like many of the rules agencies adopt, especially those that create certainty, open opportunities, encourage customers, and provide a level playing field.

These rules govern everything from keeping airplanes flying, mines from collapsing, stock markets from being cheated, not to mention safe food, safe factories, solvent banks, clean air, and truthful advertising. When regulations malfunction - either by doing too much or too little - people feel the impact directly.

And more, promulgating a major new Federal rule is hardly easy. The process literally takes years in most cases. Beyond the basic Federal Register notice and comment required by Federal law since 1935, modern statutes require a blizzard of technical and economic reviews (most prominently the economic cost-benefit analysis and the Environmental Impact Statement) and stakeholder consultations. Controversial new rules can draw tens of thousands of public comments (including organized "Click here to comment" form letters), each requiring public written response, and can be blocked at multiple points along the way: internal agency sign-offs, review by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), challenges by members of Congress, and finally the multiple avenues for review by the Federal courts.



Agencies have spent years developing ways to avoid the headaches of APA rulemaking by strategies such as issuing less-formal "interpretations," "no action letters," "guidance documents," "bulletins," or other materials exempt from the APA. Otherwise, they'd be handcuffed trying to respond quickly to routine public demands.

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President Trump's new Executive Order, by tinkering with process instead of substance (not identifying any regulations to eliminate), threatens to gum up the works ever further for years to come. The new system has two basic elements:

a.First, for each new rule an agency issues, it must publicly identify two existing rules to eliminate. That actually is the easier part.

b.Then, for each year, the agency must calculate (i) the total implementation costs imposed on private businesses from all the new rules it adopts, as well as (ii) the total savings in costs from all the rules it repeals, and (c) the net total, which must be zero or less. In future years, the net total would have to fit an annual budget of allowable new costs, which could be a negative number.

Strikingly, all this cost accounting totally ignores the potential benefits of new rules -- clean air, reductions in work hours lost to injury or illness, safe financial markets, business opportunities, so on - a sharp departure from the cost/benefit approach taken by earlier reforms and making it far less "public interest" friendly.

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Finally, to direct the new process, the Executive Order mandates the creation of a vast and complicated system of rules and procedures for calculating costs, keeping score on offsetting rules and repeals across months and years, filing reports, and deciding disputes, all under the control of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) which manages Federal rulemaking for the White House. The OMB Director enjoys full discretion to grant waivers and exceptions as he and his boss, the President, see fit.

So what's wrong with the new system? Put aside its obvious anti-regulatory bias. And put aside also some obvious legal impediments to applying it government wide, since (a) Executive Orders like this generally don't apply to independent commissions like the SEC, the FCC, the Federal Reserve, and others protected by statute from White House control and (b) most regulations, in varying degrees of specificity, are mandated by statute and cannot simply be repealed.

More important is that the new process simply fails to fix the problem it complains about. Yes, there is too much government regulation - or at least the bad kind that hampers private business in America. But President Trump's Executive Order fails to identify or remove a single bad rule. Instead, it leaves this job to the very bureaucrats it distrusts. The winners under the Executive Order won't be private American businesses, but instead will be the legions of work-for-hire special-interest lawyers, economists, consultants, and bureaucratic infighters destined to make millions of dollars haggling over the complicated new procedures on behalf of deep-pocket clients. It creates a brand new swamp.

And the losers will be all the businesses and stakeholders who play by the rules and depend on Federal agencies to do their jobs, make decisions in a timely way, and enjoy the certainty of an orderly regulatory process.

Here's the bottom line. Fixing over-regulation is hard work. Someone has to take the time to scour the rulebooks, identify the bad ones, and follow the tedious legal steps to remove them. For example: If you don't like parts of Dodd-Frank, then repeal those parts of Dodd-Frank.

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Intuit forecasts that approximately 7.6 million Americans will be involved as providers into so-called "gig" economy by 2020, which means that the current total of 3.2 million will be more than doubled. On-demand business model is constantly escalating in importance and popularity. Small and mid-sized businesses have to reckon with this fact in order not to fall behind.

You as an owner of a home renovation business may face this challenge soon as well. The earlier you get things under control, the more advantages of a new business model you can get. Dozens of online marketplaces were launched in the last few years. Some of them are widely used by people looking for quality renovation, remodeling and construction services. So, obviously getting more new clients is the first reason why you should submit your business to a marketplace (or even to a couple of them).

Second, you don't have to look for work to do yourself, in most cases platform's AI assistants find clients for you. So you can save time to focus on other tasks. Third, appointment scheduling is easy. Your calendar and working schedule can be integrated to some of the websites or their mobile apps, so your customers can check when you are available. And you can access the list of your upcoming appointments to make sure you don't miss anything important.

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The general principle of how marketplaces operate is quite simple. Users submit requests and the platform matches them with particular service providers. It may be the other way round as well - businesses list their services and users can request quotes (multiple quotes to compare prices, availability, etc.) from providers they are interested in.

So, if you are in the renovation business and want to bring it to the next level, here are some marketplace platforms that are worth to be listed on.

Smith matches you with potential customers. If a customer accepts your quote, you will have to pay an appointment fee to view his or her contact info.

On Porch you need to purchase leads based on location and the type of service you provide. Then, leads are delivered to you via email or text message and you choose the ones that satisfy your business' needs.

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Users describe the type of work that needs to be done, and the website provides the best matches to them so that they could select a professional they liked most.

Create an impressive portfolio on Houzz to showcase your business with creative photos, client reviews and community interaction. Users can reach you directly. If you have any products (for the entire home) for sale, you can effectively market them on Houzz as well.

A nice solution for your marketing team. You simply create a profile on Building pros (free for 6 months) and it helps you get promoted on Google. Leads will follow right away.

AMAZON Home & Business Services

Register and set up your account to start getting project offers from customers. Depending on the type of service you provide and the final cost, there is a revenue share for all the completed projects.

Pro Referral finds suitable job requests and provides customers' contact info to you in order to discuss details. Each job request costs some points that you earn for every dollar you spend shopping in-store.

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The resource works two ways. You can register your business and send offers to potential customers that are looking for home improvement services or accept requests from homeowners.

Customers will be able to find your profile here and view your ratings. They can contact you leaving the message (with pictures of your project) through the website and get your estimates.

After you create your profile on Yelp, users will be able to view your ratings, pics of your recent projects and find all the essential info about your business. They can contact you directly or press Request a Quote button (if available) to get your estimates.
Dear Representative Roskam:

You haven't met me, yet, but not for my lack of trying. I am one of your constituents from the 6th Congressional District and I just can't seem to get a hold of you. I thought I'd try a more public forum to see if I could catch your ear.

There is nothing to fear about me, Peter. Wait, I can call you Peter, right? It just seems friendly, somehow. Please, call me Lynn. I feel like I know you already because of how many times you've called me. No one really calls my landline anymore, except for you. And you call a lot. In fact, every time the landline rings, I just assume it's you. Even my 86-year old Dad knows to call my cell phone, but whatever, it's okay. I'm happy you're calling, and I love hearing your nasally Chicago accent rasping, "Hi, it's Peter Rooooskam," when I pick up, or when you leave all those messages on my answering machine.

My only complaint with these calls is that, that's as far as it ever goes: I only hear from your robocalls but never you, live. I just want to talk to you. Maybe ask you a few questions. I'd love to hear your voice when it hasn't been pre-recorded. I'd love to see you live and in person.

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So, you can imagine how excited I am to hear that the League of Women Voters has invited you to a Constituents Meeting being held in your honor on February 23rd, right here in your hometown of Glen Ellyn. They're even going so far as to offer you three dates to choose from, so you can fit it into your busy and demanding schedule. Finally! At last! Your constituents will get to see you in the flesh and hear your non-robocall voice! You see, some of us were starting to get a serious Weekend At Bernie's vibe about you; we are actually concerned about you. We need this "Proof of Life" meeting to make sure you're okay.

You don't have to be scared of us, Peter. We won't hurt you! We don't bite, not even if you ask us nicely. We just want to talk. Calmly. Rationally. This won't be a rally, like your friend Donald Trump so enjoys. There will be no chanting, no mean-spirited signs, no bullying. It's a Safe Space for you, truly.

You don't want this reputation of being an Absentee Landlord, my friend. The type of landlord whose tenants have been complaining of a burst pipe and a bad smell coming from the cellar for months but, you haven't even sent in a plumber let alone come to check out the place yourself? No one wants that reputation politically, right? You can contribute to your very own political narrative here, Peter!

If you don't show up for this meeting, some people (I'm not saying me, personally) might think this type of avoidance behavior as rather...squirrely. You don't want to be known as Squirrely Roskam! People can be so mean with their nicknames, sometimes. Like "Crooked Hillary." Or "Poodle Ryan," which is what everyone (okay, just me) is calling Paul Ryan since he's such a lapdog to Donald Trump and the NRA. And now, #PoodleRyan is everywhere (okay, just my Twitter feed so far, but I think we can make it happen). You don't want #SquirrelyRoskam to start trending, that would be awful.

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I'm simply looking out for your best interests here. All you have to do is show up, in person and talk to us. No big deal! You can do it, honey. We have faith in you.

And for the record, don't call me, I'll call you.

Your friend and constituent,
Not all businesses have the chance to decide where they should found their company, but it is generally agreed that some areas are more supportive than others for businesses. If you could start your business anywhere, which cities would be best for you?

New Zealand

While the World Economic Forum didn't specify their preferred cities in New Zealand, they listed the country as one of the best for business in several categories for 2017.

New Zealand was ranked as having the best economy in which to start a business in the coming year, and also got top marks for the ease of starting a business in the country. Hopeful entrepreneurs can often start a business in the country within a single day.



Sweden

For the first time, Sweden topped the Forbes list of the best cities in the world to do business in 2017. With a rapidly growing economy and low public debt, the country is home to some of the most well-known brands in the world.

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This includes Volvo, H&M, Skype, among others. With such a strong economy and so much government support, companies that open in Sweden often have the tools they need to do well over the long term.

Salt Lake City, Utah

While Silicon Valley may be the most familiar entrepreneurial hotspot in the United States, Salt Lake City is working hard to give the Palo Alto area a run for its money. With a number of angel investors, a much more business-friendly climate, and an increasing number of tech startups, the Utah city is getting a reputation as a tech hub.

CNBC listed Salt Lake on its top 20 cities to start a business, noting the city's unemployment rate of less than four percent at the time.

Vancouver, Canada

There are many reasons why employees and employers alike love Vancouver. From the diverse urban setting to the beautiful natural landscape, the city is a gorgeous place to be. Employees love the area, which means that talent pools are deep and diverse.

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The city is also considered the gateway to Asia Pacific, meaning that companies there have dynamic connections to foreign markets. Vancouver also offers easy access to the United States, giving the city a variety of trade options. The city's climate is mild, and more than 6 million tourists visit the city each year.



Austin, Texas

With a population of more than two million, a vibrant music scene, and a busy tech industry, Austin regularly turns up on lists of great places to start tech related businesses. With the University of Texas located right in town, there's a young and enthusiastic workforce available, and the economic climate is considered very friendly to small businesses.

The state also does not have individual or corporate income taxes, which makes it easier to survive those first few years. Office rents are increasing in Austin, which is something potential CEOs should consider when deciding whether or not to make an investment in the area.

Denver, Colorado

When looking specifically at business climates in the United States, Forbes gave the number one place to Denver. The city's location is relatively central to the American West, making it a convenient distribution hub.

It also already supports a number of growing industries in the technology and telecommunication fields. Mining and energy operations are already common in Denver and are continuing to grow.



Portland, Oregon

While many big startups are tech based, Portland, Oregon, has made a name for itself with companies that trend in the other direction. Micro-distilleries, micro-breweries, and a passion for green cities has put this area on the business culture map.

While the most cutting edge tech businesses might be located in the south and the west, as well as the classic San Francisco Bay area, green businesses thrive in the Pacific Northwest.



Wherever You Are Right Now

With Internet access slowly stretching to reach every Main Street in the United States, hopeful entrepreneurs have less need than ever to move to a big city in order to make their mark. Companies can be, and are, founded in living rooms, garages, and offices all around the country and the world.

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Wherever someone has an Internet connection and a laptop, they have access to the vast majority of tools that they need to get their business idea up and running. From freelancing to crowd-funding technology to creating an influencer presence based on a personal brand, many business ideas can absolutely be implemented from the comfort of your own home.

No matter where you want to go to start your business, it's important to do your research. Be sure that you understand local regulations and restrictions on working, as well as what sort of permits you might need and regulations you will need to conform to, before you pull up stakes and relocate.
Let's face it, no one wants to place their loved one with Alzheimer's in a nursing facility. But sometimes that's the best (or only) alternative, especially for those in the late-stages of the disease.

It takes a large team to care for people in these stages. They need a doctor on call 24 hours a day. They need a nurse available at all times. They need aides, a social worker, activity professionals, cooks and laundresses. And they need to be around other people for social stimulation. They need 24/7 supervision and they need to be in a safe, secure environment. Providing for all these needs can be done but it's a full-time job.

In many cases the primary caregiver has to work full-time and thus can't provide adequate care. People with Alzheimer's (as well as most people without it) who have a clear and compelling need to be in a long-term care facility typically want to remain in their own homes. Often they are unaware that their condition is such that nursing home placement would be best for them.

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Family members are sometimes adamantly opposed to the idea as well. Some view putting their loved one in a facility as a criminal act. In many cases it's even more difficult because the patient's staunch objections usually make the family member(s) feel incredibly guilty.

The decision to place a loved one in a care facility can be agonizing, but caregivers need to consider the following: 1) Long-term care placement can be the most loving choice for their loved one and 2) Caring for the loved one at home is probably seriously affecting their own physical and mental health and well-being. People can't be good caregivers if they are exhausted and burned out all the time.

"I often work to convince reluctant spouses to change from being a 'caregiver' to being a 'care advocate,'" William G. Hammond, founder of the Elder and Disability law firm in Overland Park, Kansas, told me. "They can then be vigilant to ensure their loved one is receiving appropriate treatment in the facility while preserving their own health."

Many people with Alzheimer's, however, flat out refuse to go. In such cases you can try to convince them that it's best for their own health and well-being. If that doesn't work you may enlist the help of another family member or even the person's physician or attorney to talk with them. People with Alzheimer's will sometimes pay more attention to the advice of a person other than their primary caregiver. You may also obtain the services of a geriatric care manager, who can guide you through the process.

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Another approach is to use what is referred to as "compassionate deception." You can convince the person to go for a limited period of time, such as a week. Then you stretch it out to two weeks, then three, and eventually they will probably adjust to being there full time. Loved ones who are significantly impaired may even forget they were supposed to go back home. Or they may not be aware they aren't at home.

You may also take the person to a facility, saying you're going to visit someone there or you have dinner reservations there (or some other reason for visiting). Then when you leave don't take them with you. You will probably feel terribly guilty, but the person will almost certainly adjust.



If none of these suggestions work and you have power of attorney, you may have to enlist the help of law enforcement. According to Hammond, "You should do this only as a last resort. It's only for the most severely impaired people and the most dire circumstances - such as if the person becomes a danger to him or herself or others." Law enforcement typically takes the person to a hospital geriatric psychiatry unit for evaluation and treatment, from where they may be released to a nursing home.

"If all else fails and you don't have power of attorney," says Hammond, "you may face costly court action in order to be appointed the person's guardian or conservator. You can then make all decisions for them about where they will live."
ROME, ITALY - FEBRUARY 02: A woman holds banner, reading '#NoMuslimBan' during a protest against US President Donald Trump and his policies outside the US Embassy in Rome, Italy on February 02, 2017. Protesters came out to demonstrate against a recent ban on travel, transit and immigration by people hailing from seven predominantly Muslim countries, enacted through an executive order by U.S. President Donald Trump. (Photo by Alvaro Padilla Bengola/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Proposals from the Trump Administration to change the countering violent extremism (CVE) program started under President Obama to a one focused solely on "Islamic Extremism" or "Radical Islamic Extremism" would be counterproductive and discriminatory.

First, it would shift attention away from averting terrorism and violence perpetrated by non-Muslim violent extremist groups, a growing threat in the United States. People are motivated to carry out acts of violence and terrorism by a variety of hate-filled ideologies. These may have a racial, nationalist, anti-Semitic, or religious basis. They are all potentially lethal, and present the government and law enforcement with the challenge of identifying and restraining a small minority of dangerous people within the general population.

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Unfortunately, there will always be individuals who perpetrate acts of terrorism for unfathomable reasons, who don't fit into the patterns of extremist behavior, but that does not mean that there is nothing to be done to prevent and minimize incidents of violent extremism.

Islamist violent extremist groups like ISIS believe in the power of propaganda and use social media and the Internet skillfully both to fuel a sense of grievance among their supporters and to encourage and incite acts of violence. Far-right white nationalists have their own grievances and their own Internet and social media sites to demonize targets of their hatred and to incite violence against them.

The common methodologies of violent extremists, especially their boundless global reach attributable to the ubiquity of social media and the Internet, point to the importance of developing effective methods to counter all kinds of violent extremist propaganda through counter-messaging, monitoring, cooperation with Internet and social media companies, and, where appropriate, prosecution.

Too often violent hate groups fuel each other's extremism, creating a vicious cycle where an act of violence against one group is exploited to incite violent revenge from within the target group. This makes it essential to break the cycle of polarization or risk an escalation of reciprocal violent incidents. Highlighting extremist violence from one source while overlooking or de-prioritizing attacks against the group the extremist claims to be protecting or avenging is a recipe for more violence.

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As research has shown: in France, "Islamophobia--a response to cultural difference--has encouraged Muslim immigrants to withdraw from French society, which then feeds back into French Islamophobia, thus further exacerbating Muslims' alienation, and so on." The situation in the United States has been better, with Muslim communities relatively well integrated into America's increasingly diverse society.
Advisor to the President Kellyanne Conway stands next to U.S. President Donald Trump during a swearing in ceremony for senior staff at the White House in Washington, DC January 22, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Lest we forget the Bowling Green massacre.

1. Kellyanne Conway made up a fake terrorist attack which resulted in the internet setting up the Bowling Green massacre fund. All donations go to the ACLU. More here.

2. Denver-area mosque had contacted the Federal government about the radicalization of recent Islam convert, Joshua Cummings. More here.

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3. Nancy Pelosi called Steve Bannon a white supremacist twice in her most recent news conference. This is good. We need to keep calling a spade a spade. More here.

4. Scientists in Canada will boycott US conferences as a protest to Trump's Muslim ban. More here.


Pollution in China via Junjira Saetae on Wikimedia



China is on a collision course with disaster as the country's growing environmental challenges with water resources continue to mount. The recent fatal red mud slide associated with aluminium production at Sanmenxia - one of many to plague a nation of 1.4 billion people - is an example of how ruthless, profit-driven corporations abetted by irresponsible Chinese authorities are failing their citizens.

Yet they're not just failing their own citizens, who account for one of every five people on earth. They're poisoning that earth as well, and placing the planet and its population in peril with each new violation.

A 2016 report from China's National Audit Office found that RMB17.62 billion, or USD$2.56 billion, that was allocated to preventing water pollution in 2015 had not been used effectively. To be fair, the data drawn from 883 projects in 18 cities and provinces reflected some improvements in water quality overall - but some discouraging findings demonstrated the risks that Chinese officials fail to manage.

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In fact, Chinese authorities have punished 3,229 of those officials for fiscal violations uncovered during the auditing process, the Xinhua news agency reports. Nearly a third of all projects were not started or completed on time, and 13 percent of water pollution prevention works had failed to deliver expected benefits. Efforts to remediate the problems were undertaken, but often not before damage was done.

In areas spot-checked along the Yangtze River, 12 percent of the raw sewage from 23 sites drained directly into the water without treatment - a total of 400 million tons. When auditors looked at 373 ports, they found nearly all of them (96 percent) had no collection points for trash from their ships, and 70 percent of them had no emergency pollution treatment equipment.

Worse still were the numbers on safe drinking water in 89 Chinese communities, where 53 percent of the sources failed to meet the water quality monitoring standard. Much of the pollution is being caused by unregulated industry; in just three of the provinces audited, there were 53 enterprises found to have "secretly, excessively, or even directly drained away sewage into rivers." That problem extended to poor agribusiness practices, too, with nearly 1,800 farms failing to adequately treat or manage their runoff.

The impact is even greater on underground wells, because more than 80 percent of those resources used primarily in China's rural regions are tainted and unfit for either drinking or bathing, a study said. In many cases, the groundwater sources are poisoned with heavy metals as well as agricultural chemicals.

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Those aren't just numbers, because they represent the tragic disregard for protecting China's water resources - resources that are already under significant pressure, with 85 percent of all water used by either agriculture or industry nationwide. According to the China Water Crisis organization, by 2030, China will not be able to meet its demand for water if it continues its practices. Failure to do so will compromise power generation, economic output, global trade, political stability - and human lives.

So Chinese officials committed RMB4 trillion to be spent on water infrastructure in the decade ending in 2020. Much of that critical time frame has already passed, however, and the government efforts continue to be marked by inept mismanagement. The 2016 audit findings revealed that RMB14.36 billion was never appropriated to the units in charge of water pollution projects and instead stayed in local coffers, some of it for more than two years. A significant RMB269 million was wasted or entirely lost to poor planning in five of the provinces. In six of them, RMB65 million was lost to corruption: false materials charging, and reporting that included situations where local authorities completed small-scale projects but claimed bigger ones.

China's difficulty in enforcing compliance is glaring enough within its internal agencies and processes, but the inability to control corporations who are destroying precious resources - whether through negligence or willful corruption - is just as big a problem. The East Hope Sanmenxia Aluminum Company so far has not been held responsible for its gross negligence in December's red mud incident. There's been no indication that even a minimal fine has been imposed on the firm, despite the fact that it has a history of violations and was shut down in 2011 for building additional production capacity beyond its permitted approval. In that case, East Hope Sanmenxia paid RMB100,000, a laughable USD$14,539 fine.

Since that 2011 violation, the China's Water Ten Plan has been put into effect with stiffer penalties that make violation prohibitive, eliminating the corporate preference for just paying the fine as a cost of doing business and continuing without conscience to foul the water resources people and wildlife need to survive. Yet the Water Ten Plan implemented in 2015 is only as good as the consistency of Chinese regulatory authorities who are charged with enforcing it, and the latest audit casts a cloud on that.

By the end of 2016, small factories in 10 different industries as diverse as paper, textiles and oil refineries were required to comply with the stricter regulations or be forced to shut down. The plan calls for water quality monitoring from source to tap by local governments, a performance that will then be reviewed by the central government and made public - but there are no reports yet on enforcement. Larger companies are targeted for technical upgrades, emissions controls and other requirements.

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Some experts say China is serious about addressing its water resource crisis, simply because it has no choice in the face of growing populations and demand, within the context of its climate accord goals. That's likely true, and the Nature Conservancy is among the more optimistic organizations when it comes to China's "water pressure."
Photo by Nuchhe Man Dangol

Recently, I visited Kathmandu, Nepal and New Delhi, India. As I am from a Hindu background, I went to Temple. But this time I saw these temples in a new light. I began to wonder why I saw an erotic art in the temple. This is a holy place, but there are so many pictures of people in sexual poses. Why?"When I asked with people about it, they said that this art is called "Tudal."

Hinduism is not open about sex, and yet the holy places practically worship Tudal. How could this be? Kathmandu is the capital of Nepal. Kathmandu is a city of full of temples, hence why it is also called a "city of temples." I had so many questions in my mind. When you visit Kathmandu you can see so much nude and erotic art in the temples.

The city is itself rich with different cultural influences. In ancient time, this city was ruled by the Malla dynasty. When you visit the Kathmandu valley you can see the influences. It makes you feel something different. There are so many old ancient temples and tastes of history there.

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Photo by Nuchhe Man Dangol

Hinduism considers sex to be only between husband and wife. Premarital sex is considered a sin. It was very strictly prohibited in the ancient period of time. Travel writer Sanjok Acharya says, it helps to promote tourism industry all over the world as well as improves the economic condition of Nepal.Tudal has so many scientific meanings. There are many reasons for its existence in temple art. Some people believe it's for karma. According to Hinduism, karma is the sum of a person's previous state of existence. Actually, in Hinduism it is Mokshya, which means salvation, freedom from materialistic things. After seeing these images, people can feel normal.

According to others, when nude art is on the wall, negative sprits can't enter the temple.Some people believe that it gives married couples sex education and how to have proper sex in a non-embarrassing, sacred way.

People also believe that if Tudal is there in the temple, it helps to protect from lightning strikes.Some priests say, in ancient times there were so many people that chose to be saints, and they used to prefer the single life. But if everybody followed the single lifestyle, it would go against Nature and no babies would be born, so with Tudal in the temples, people would feel desire and want to continue a natural lifestyle.

There is one ancient story. Around the 15th century in Kathmandu, one MALLA king vanished from his city, people searched him all over the city but people couldn't find him. He vanished for so long time. After that, There was messed up in the Royal palace. After that in between Queens and army, slaves and their relatives began a sexual relationship. Continually happened this process for a long time. They started new sexual pose which is called Karma Sutra. India played a great role in the history of sex. After that they discuss in the royal place how to solve this problem. Their artist decided to art those things to make aware public.

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Photo by Nuchhe Man Dangol

In so many countries, their natural heritages are in museums, but sadly, in Nepal, the heritage is decaying because of the carelessness of the government. Fortunately, the temples remain as a part of our heritage. In a way, our temples are like sex museums, providing insight into the sexual background of Nepali culture.

Nowadays there are so many sex museums in the world like the Netherlands, Thailand, Russia, China, USA, etc. In my opinion, sex museums are an integral part of the culture. They give many ideas and educate people about sex. Sex is very essential for all human beings. It is better not to be shy because we are all born because of sex. It's a beginning point of our life and our duty is to know it as a fact. Therefore, sex education is important. It creates more fun. It gives proper guidelines. The world is facing nightmare sexual diseases because lack of sexual education. If people know their facts, they can enjoy sex more, and sex becomes safer.
(Xinhua) 09:00, February 03, 2017

Passengers enter the Nanchang West Railway Station in Nanchang, capital of east China's Jiangxi Province, Feb. 1, 2017. After the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Nanchang West Railway Station witnessed a travel peak on Wednesday as people started to travel to other cities for school and work. (Xinhua/Peng Zhaozhi)

BEIJING, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- China is set for the first working day of the Year of the Rooster as the week-long Spring Festival holiday ends Thursday.

It will be an energetic start for people and their families to achieve their dreams, and the nation will take a step closer towards the dream of creating "quanmian xiaokang," a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way by 2020.

However, this year's steps are set to be challenging, particularly for the Communist Party of China, which was founded in the Year of the Rooster, 1921 to be precise.

The Party will convene its 19th national congress this year, and it needs to accomplish several missions so that the Year of the Rooster is one of good luck.

After lifting more than 700 million people out of poverty in the past 38 years, the country still has about 45 million people living in poor conditions.

Poverty relief is high on the agenda for governments at all levels. Not a single family living in poverty will be left behind, but the closer the country gets to fully eliminating poverty, the more difficult the final steps become.

China's 13th Five-Year Plan outlines priorities for national development from 2016-2020 and proposes support for poor villages to develop signature products and services. Guidelines were also issued calling for enhanced collaboration between developed eastern regions and under-developed western regions to meet poverty-reduction targets.

These efforts have been translated into encouraging signs. At least a further 10 million people will become members of the well-off society this year.

This year is also a crucial year for pushing forward reform across the board.

Hundreds of measures were designed and released during the past four years to address issues such as urbanization, innovation and the market's role in resource allocation. Now the roadmap has taken shape and the focus for the coming years will be on delivery.

Supply-side structural reform will continue to be an economic goal for 2017, including cutting excess capacity, implementing agricultural reforms, boosting the real economy and nurturing new growth.

The restructuring of China's economy and the upgrading of industry is expected to generate huge new demand.

Time is of the essence for reforms in state-owned enterprises as well as in finance and social security. Such sectors concern the development of the country, whose GDPgrowth stood at 6.7 percent in 2016, a three-decade low, but outpacing most other major economies.

In major political reform, China will establish a national supervisory commission and create a law on national supervision.

Amid efforts to build a clean CPC, the fight against corruption has gained "crushing momentum," netting both "tigers" and "flies," with no letup expected in the future.

On the global stage, China will stick to its commitment to encourage globalization and cooperation, despite difficulties.

In troubled times with a sluggish world economy and a changing geopolitical order, the wise choice is to move forward together.

China is preparing for a host of events of global significance this year, including a Belt and Road forum for international cooperation in Beijing in May, and the ninth BRICS leaders' summit, in southeast China's coastal city of Xiamen in September.

The attitude of openness, inclusivity and sharing is in sharp contrast to the retreat into protectionism and isolation from certain western countries.

This year will be a test of the wisdom needed to maintain sustained, stable and better growth in China-U.S. relations. Although the Trump administration has yet to formulate its China policy, the general trend of cooperation is irreversible and the only right choice for both countries.

Any conflict or trade war could deal a blow to the development of the world's two largest economies. The bottom-line is respecting each other's core interests.

Believing in a shared destiny for mankind, China will continue to expand its circle of friends.

As Michael Moller, head of the United NationsOffice at Geneva, put it: "If things go well for China and the Chinese people, the chances are it's going to go well for a lot of other people around the planet."

Coincidentally, the first working day of the Chinese new year is "lichun," or the beginning of spring, the first of the 24 solar terms in the Chinese ancient calendar.

As we wave goodbye to winter, China stands with the world in wishing for a great spring.

Related:

Spotlight: Celebration of Chinese New Year abroad highlights China's growing soft power

BEIJING, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- The far-flung celebrations of the Chinese Lunar New Year around the world offer people beyond the country an opportunity to feel the charm of China's traditions and culture, and also testify to its increasing soft power.

A growing number of people around the world are now celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year, or Chinese Spring Festival, which lasts several days. The holiday, which is about reunion and togetherness, has become a highly anticipated annual event not only for the Chinese. Full story
"Numerous foreign-born individuals have been convicted or implicated in terrorism-related crimes since September 11, 2001."

As Donald Trump sets out to "protect America," I dedicate the words of his explosively controversial proclamation banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, to one of his supporters: Alexandre Bissonnette, the white nationalist Canadian who shot up a mosque in Quebec City a few days ago, murdering six people and injuring eight others.

Bissonnette is the latest native-born lost soul who figured out how to combine a simmering hatred for a preselected "enemy" with guns and ammo and set out to save the world. He won't be the last. He's part of a burgeoning North American tradition of mass murder that is fed by racism, war, fear and guns -- a tradition the American government happily exploits but is clueless on how to address effectively.

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"Deteriorating conditions in certain countries due to war, strife, disaster, and civil unrest increase the likelihood that terrorists will use any means possible to enter the United States," Trump's executive order continues. "The United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those approved for admission do not intend to harm Americans and that they have no ties to terrorism."

Trump's executive order, though unprecedentedly reckless (this, of course, is the Trump brand), is nevertheless in sync with the behavior of past administrations, which in various ways have set about "protecting" the country by edict, force and moral righteousness. That is to say, they have refused to look inward, instead blaming the country's problems on "the enemy."

In its shoddy recklessness, the Trump ban has generated unprecedented defiance from the U.S. judicial system and protests from concerned citizens across the country. Hallelujah for that. I continue to believe that the hope this new, non-elected administration offers to the country and the future is its ongoing, unintentional exposure of what we have always done wrong. Awareness is the precondition for change.

And the executive order has been subjected to devastating critiques: "The order is a priceless recruiting tool for ISIS and similar movements, because it so easily fits their narrative that the United States is the enemy of all Muslims," David A. Martin writes at Vox. Trump has set about to create consequences that are the opposite of what he says he's doing.

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Furthermore, foreign-born terrorists are, in any case, virtually the least of America's security problems. The killings that permeate the country are almost entirely domestic in nature. Focusing on an outside enemy is sheer, blatant avoidance of reality. And the seven countries whose residents have been banned -- Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen -- have not been the home to anyone implicated in a terrorist act on U.S. soil.

As the New York Times reports, most of the 9/11 hijackers "were from Saudi Arabia. The rest were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. None of those countries are on Mr. Trump's visa ban list." However, as a number of observers have pointed out, either Trump himself or members of his administration have business ties to many of the exempted countries. What a coincidence.

So the Trump presidency will be one of testosterone-spewing righteousness, perhaps quietly comingled with business interests. Outrageous as this is, what bothers me the most about his actions so far, with the Muslim ban being perhaps the most blatant, is their same old, same old quality. Trump is just another powerful fool declaring to his people who the enemy of the moment is.

And finally it comes down to this: When you create enemies, you create hell.

To wit: "Of the victims, he said, 'They prayed beside us and they were shot in the back because they prayed.'"

This is a co-founder of the Quebec City mosque, quoted in the New York Times. Why am I suddenly reminded of Dylann Roof, who two years ago murdered nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., after having sat for an hour with his victims in prayer? Indeed, they had welcomed him into the church that evening.

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American mass murders have increased exponentially since the 1960s (and have now, apparently, crossed the border into Canada). If, as has been the case on a few occasions, the killer has an Arab name, the crime is quickly labeled an act of terrorism and the killer's possible ties to nefarious organizations are hunted down. But if the killer is just an ordinary American (most likely, a white guy), he's gauged to be a loner, acting on his own, utterly free of context.

But this is never the case: The motive for mass murder -- the killing of strangers en masse -- is always the same as the motive for war: to get rid of symbolic representatives of "the enemy," whether the enemy is the personal concoction of a troubled mind or the collective creation of a racist society. The enemy is always, conveniently, "not me," and therefore easy to dehumanize. And the solution always amounts to taking the enemy out, i.e., waging war. And doing so always leaves consequences in its wake that become grounds for the next war.

How do we create a governing structure that understands this? This is the task at hand. It's bigger than defeating Trump.

- - -

Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound is available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
Dental insurance is as hot a topic as ever. While seemingly quite important, the lack of coverage and phenomenally high costs make it difficult to get the treatments needed. In fact, not taking care of your teeth can cause significantly detrimental and expensive problems down the road. As more and more companies seem to be failing their employees by failing to provide dental insurance, more people are looking into dental tourism.

As Thailand is known for high quality services and dramatically low prices, it is becoming a top destination for dental tourism. If you've never considered it before, here are just a few reasons why dental tourism in Thailand could be beneficial for your teeth.

Low Costs

I couldn't start this list without low costs being at the top now could I? The foremost perk of traveling to Thailand to get dental work done is that it is significantly cheaper than what you will get at home. While one root canal without insurance could put you thousands of dollars in the hole at home, the same procedure can be easily paid for out of pocket in Thailand. With savings of around 50%, you can get implants, crowns, dentures and cleanings that are actually affordable. While something like dental veneers can run about $1,800 in the U.S, prices can drop to around $250 in Thailand, according to a recent survey.

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Quality Care & Safety

OK, while you might be thinking that prices are so low because quality is poor, think again. The cost of living in Thailand is much lower than other westernized countries and while the prices of dental care may seem shockingly low for you, it is actually on par with living standards in Thailand. Medical tourism has been going on in Thailand for years and since it attracts so many visitors and their money, the Thai government works closely with public health organizations to make sure that everything is up to standards. The dentists, especially in Bangkok, are highly qualified, often times have studied abroad and are frequently affiliated with both national and international dental organizations.



A Variety of Dental Treatments

Getting dental cleanings may not be a good enough reason to head to Thailand twice a year. However, the dental facilities there offer a wide array of procedures which are notoriously pricey in western countries. Their advancements in their procedures are on par with the rest of the world and travelers can make their way to the country for dental implants, veneers, oral surgery, and realignment for teeth. Contacting a reputable dental center, like Thantakit International, can help you determine what you need and what is involved. Plus, the quality of the actual materials is just as good as if not better than the ones found in westernized countries.

Patient Friendly Centers

The dental tourism industry in Thailand, is just that; a combination of Dentistry and Tourism. While dental facilities in your own country may solely focus on the dental business, the facilities in Thailand are doubly working to provide a welcoming and pleasant experience for tourists. Most dental clinics in Thailand will try to provide the best experience for their patients by making the process hassle free and providing plenty of English speaking staff.

A Chance For Vacation
I once asked a retired public school teacher friend what was the biggest change during his thirty years of teaching, from the sixties to the nineties. Without even taking time to reflect he answered: "The language people use - both students and teachers." He went on to tell me that when he started, one almost never heard a swear word but when he retired, one heard profanity everywhere, including in the teacher's lounge.

We are awash in a sea of profanity. But it's not just ugly words, it's ugly ideas, expressed in crude and even violent language. People call the president of the United States - not just the current one but also his recent predecessors - by vulgar names. Pop stars talk about blowing up the White House, and it seems like everyone peppers their language with expletives.

What's going on? Do people think that a large dose of profanity will make them seem more grown up? Maybe they think that using vulgar and violent language is the only way to get people to listen to what they have to say.

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When I was younger, even the most foul-mouthed people were careful to refrain from using profanity in certain situations. A man (and I say "man" because it was mostly men who swore) would never curse in front of a child--or a woman, or a preacher, or in school. But now, it's the children (and women, and even preachers) who are doing the swearing.

Of course, many people think, "So what?" A growing number of professed Christians, especially millennials, consider profanity harmless. They say it is just a word, a combination of voiced or unvoiced sounds produced by the vocal tract as we exhale. Yes, that is all it is. And a bullet is just a small piece of lead, adhering to a brass casing with a little black powder in it. But aim either of those at a person, or just fire them at random, and terrible things are going to happen.

It is no coincidence that the current breakdown in civil discourse has occurred at the same time we've seen a rise in the use of profanity. The two go together. The same impulse that give rise to one gives rise to the other. In fact, they often occur - uncivil discourse and profanity - in the same conversation.

Profanity not only betrays the presence of anger in the speaker, it is designed to produce anger in the hearer. Profanity, along with contempt (its constant companion), are to anger what nouns and verbs are to English. A person who constantly uses profanity is a person who chronically deals with anger.

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The trouble with profanity and the language of contempt is not primarily that it comes out of our mouths but that it has taken up residence in our hearts. With scalpel-like precision, Jesus exposes this truth: "What you say flows from what is in your heart." Rudeness and vulgarity don't come out of nowhere. They come out of us.

We don't want to face this awkward truth. We excuse our rudeness because we are tired. That expletive was a slip, the unkind remark a regrettable mistake. That's like calling a baby an accident. Maybe we didn't intend to produce it, but it didn't fall from the sky and the stork didn't bring it. We did.

Anger is a witches' brew, and woe to the person who drinks it. Yet influential people in our society are serving a cocktail of anger and contempt, and urging us to drink it. They tell us that if we are not angry there is something wrong with us. They believe that anger alone can produce the energy necessary to end the injustices that characterize our social order.

Anger doesn't end injustice. It merely replaces old injustices with new ones. This is what St. James knew when he wrote, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because man's anger does not produce the righteous life that God desires."
Would you think that, as a woman, your best professional experience would occur in Saudi Arabia? I didn't...and I was wrong.

I always liked living and working abroad. I was used to discovering a different foreign country every year since I graduated. When I joined global professional services company Accenture, I worked in the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey. When I met my husband, I wanted to spend my time in Belgium to give us time to start a family.

Six years and one son later, the call of living abroad became irresistible. My husband and I estimated our one-and-a-half-year-old son was old enough to start discovering the world. I shared my wish for an out-of-town assignment with my leadership at work. There was one condition--my family should be able to come with me.

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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States - November 19, 2016: Protesters carry signs during ongoing Anti-Trump protests, with more then a thousand participating, on Nov. 19, 2016, in Center City Philadelphia, PA.

The contradictions and polarisation vividly on display today are neither recent nor surface skin, but have deep roots in two opposite tendencies within western intellectual and political history. These have long competed over the hearts and minds of men and women in Europe and across the Atlantic.

The trend spearheaded by Trump and resurgent far right populist parties trace their origins in a closed conception of national identity obsessed with mythical notions of racial and cultural purity.

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This has had numerous manifestations in modern European history, from the rampant military expansionism of the 18th and 19th centuries and its grand slogans of "exporting civilization to the backward," in Nazism with its frenzied belief in the superiority of the Aryan race, or in fascism with its radical authoritarian nationalism, which came to prominence in early 20th-century Europe.

But in parallel with this exclusionist racist current and in direct opposition to it, another trend has been accumulating in western societies. This traces its origins back to the enlightenment tradition: to the values of equality, freedom and humanity, and the ideals of pluralism and coexistence in the framework of what the British-Austrian philosopher Karl Popper called the "open society."

Of course, these two broad streams within European intellectual heritage have not always been wholly separate. Aspects of one have often seeped into the other, resulting in a strange mixture of emancipatory humanitarian ideals with arrogant aggressive notions of cultural superiority.

The clearest representation of this strange hybrid is found in French radical secularism, for instance, particularly in its relation to the Muslim other, reflected, for example, in the dispute over the "burkini," or the wearing of the Islamic headdress in the public space.

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A resurgent far right

The defeat of Nazism and fascism after World War II enabled the socialist and liberal trends descended from the Enlightenment tradition to tame the right, curbing its inherent egotistic nativist and authoritarian tendencies. This they did through strong political parties and a ring of institutions active within civil society which acted as guardians of the socialist and liberal models.

This enabled ethnic and religious minorities and protest groups, including those beyond the mainstream, to find a foothold in pluralistic inclusive western societies, with a few exceptions such as the McCarthy anti-Communist era during the Cold War.

In its different shades and tones, the right has been the greatest beneficiary from today's climate of fear: fear of terrorism, fear of Islam, fear of immigration, fear of foreigners, fear of economic recession and loss of livelihood.

The post-9/11 world of tension, insecurity and suspicion has created the ideal environment for the resurrection and flourishing of the right in all its different manifestations, from the mainstream to the extreme, often blurring the boundaries between the two.

The latest wave of xenophobia and nativism feeds on a cocktail of anxieties and insecurities, fueled by economic crises, terrorism, and the sense of loss of identity resulting from globalisation, mass communication and immigration, and the resulting reality of overlapping borders, nationalities, and races.

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The rise of Brexit, Trump and the extreme right with their isolationist slogans of "America first," "Britain first," or "France first" are symptoms of this great western malaise.

Here, we are faced with an astonishing paradox: The vaster, more diverse and more interconnected our world has got, culturally and economically, the narrower, more closed and more fanatical it seems to have grown.

Islamophobia: hatred repackaged

The last two decades have seen the emergence of a new type of hatred, where religion and culture overlap with race and ethnicity. The climate generated by the war on terror has allowed the far-right to redirect its poison of exclusionism from specific racial minorities to specific religio-racial minorities: from the black and Asian, to the Muslim black and Asian.

The far-right was thus able to remobilize and redirect its terrifying energy of exclusionism towards Muslims. Its endemic racism and antisemitism have been repackaged as Islamophobia, the last remaining legitimate species of hatred of "aliens" and "foreigners."

Within these politics of fear and demonization, The Muslim problem became a substitute for the Jewish problem. Muslims turned into a legitimate object for the racist discourse that had in the past been targeted at Jews and black people.

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Under the impact of the horrors of the Holocaust, these prejudices have increasingly been forced into the shadows. The energy of hatred was reactivated against the Muslim "other" under the guise of promoting national security and combating terrorism and Islamo-fascism.

A resistance movement

But although the rise of extreme right wing politics and discourse are an undeniable reality today, so too are the progressive currents rooted in Kantian enlightenment morality, with its commitment to the values of equality, tolerance and freedom.

Energized by Brexit and Trump's election, they have been reinvigorated, spurred into action, forced to mobilise their ranks, reorganise themselves and seek to build cross sectional alliances around the need to protect society from resurgent authoritarianism and xenophobia.

Trump's executive order banning immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries was met by huge defiant protests in airports across the U.S., mounting lawsuits, even insurrections amongst government officials. A State Department dissent cable asserting that the ban would not make the nation safer, traveled like a viral video attracting roughly 1000 signatures in a matter of hours.

Donations to humanitarian and rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union soared, with the A.C.L.U. raising more than $24 million in online donations on Saturday, the first full day of the immigration ban, that is nearly seven times as much as the amount raised online throughout 2015, roughly $3.5 million. The donations came from at least 356,306 individual donors, two-thirds of whom first-time donors.

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Ironically enough, Trump's politics and discourse, intended to demonise, stigmatize and isolate the Muslim community, thus capitalizing on manufactured fear and hatred, appears to be achieving the exact reverse. It is generating awareness of the pernicious reality of mounting islamophobia and the grave perils it poses, not to Muslims alone, but to society as a whole and fundamental rights and liberties at its core.

To the eyes of millions across the Muslim world, this growing resistance movement, which has penetrated through all echelons of American society, from judges blocking the Muslim ban and lawyers stationed in airports to defend detainees, down to federal workers tasked with implementing the order and striking taxi drivers, has unveiled another USA, different from that of Trump and his white supremacist administration.
On November 9th, 2016, on a cold, fog-covered, rainy New York day, I hesitantly walked through Washington Square Park to attend an NYU course called Social Justice and Rights Movements: Let Them Lead the Way. Hillary Clinton had, only hours previously, phoned Donald Trump to concede the 2016 presidential election and I expected a classroom almost empty of students, with those in attendance sad and speechless.

One of the fears of a Trump Presidency is a feeling that, now, nothing can be done to protect social justice and the environment. That the President will build his wall, stop providing asylum to refugees, cut humanitarian aid spending, take away women's fundamental rights, and facilitate the revival of a divided, violent, racist, society. While the next four years are likely to be full of shocking moves by the President, what I found on that day was not an impending sense of doom.

In contrast, I entered a classroom with group of twenty year olds who, for the first time in their lives, understood the need to mobilize and take action; to get in the streets and make their voices heard. Faced with a tyrant, there was a sense of unity, a willingness to cooperate, and a desire to collaborate to affect positive change.

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All across the country there are active young people and individuals who are leading meaningful initiatives that are having a real impact. Students I know are effectively raising awareness about sexual assault, battling gender discrimination in banking, brining attention to the negative impacts of volunteer tourism, tutoring Syrian refugees online, designing innovative air filtration devices that fit discreetly in a nasal passage, and fighting for divestment from fossil fuels. We cannot forget the ability that each person has to take on problems--to develop solutions--and now, more than ever, people need to be aware of what they can do to contribute to a better world.

On February 24th, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, two of the journalists of Suddeutsche Zeitung that investigated the Panama Papers alongside 107 other media outlets wrote in The Guardian. Their message was to journalists across America, to "unite, share, and collaborate." When the media works together, as they did to unveil the swathes of corruption across the elite classes, they can make a real and sustained impact.

This is why, on April 10th, 30 student newspapers from across the United States, and around the world, will share stories about students at their universities with innovative solutions to problems as part of Impact Journalism Day Universities. This event, which aims to shed light on the concrete steps that young people can take to address pressing issues in society, their communities, and their campuses, will also bring attention to the important work of student journalists.
Let's take a breath and step back from our circus-like introduction to the Trump era.

A few weeks ago, we were trying to decode voters' messages in the US and UK. Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and millions of voters said we have lost trust in the way we've managed globalization. Brexit and the US presidential campaigns broke the spell we had been under during 20 years of neoliberal free trade orthodoxy. Even before the election, growing public opposition had worn away support for TPP, the 12-country trade deal. TPP failed because our free trade approach to globalization is exhausted.

Decades of neoliberal market fundamentalism had conditioned us to accept millions of lost jobs, reduced bargaining power for workers, deindustrialization, stagnant wages, and unchecked climate change.

We are ready for a new approach that would balance trade and share the gains from globalization. Labor, environment, and other civil society groups have specific goals - deal with inequality, climate change, access to medicine, food security, internet freedom, and other non-economic issues at home and abroad.

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Donald Trump openly endorses industrial policy. To me, "industrial policy" means intervening in markets to prevent or correct market failures. For decades, it was the policy that could not be named in Washington DC. Industrial policy is the conceptual opposite of neoliberal free market - free trade orthodoxy.

Industrial policies can be good or bad. Good ones can serve legitimate national interests and bad ones cause grief - just like good or bad policies for health care, banking, infrastructure, and education. Good industrial policies can help us manage globalization better.

China, Japan, Korea, Germany and other countries have very effective well-designed industrial policies that serve their national interests. Japan, Korea and other countries made extraordinary progress from third-world to first-world status using industrial policies. America industrialized under Alexander Hamilton's industrial policies. The New Deal was a collection of industrial policies.

Buy American is an industrial policy that makes perfect sense to workers and voters. California buys steel to build the Bay Bridge. Why would we buy unfairly subsidized steel from China and accept the headaches from bad welds and cost overruns?

Dean Baker describes a great way to lower prescription costs. We could fund and manage clinical trials as a public program. In addition, we could retain more public control over how new drug patents are commercialized. This industrial policy would bring drugs to the market based on public health criteria, rather than profit. Taxpayers pay directly for prescriptions through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration. We could pay ourselves back in lower drug costs, and focus on medical outcomes, not marketing goals.

Publicly funded R&D is an industrial policy. We should modify current practice, to retain greater control of licensing for publicly-owned patents. We can specify a nominal licensing fee when a patent is commercialized in the US, and a higher fee if production goes offshore.

Large companies can entice states into bidding wars for a new facility. Instead of bidding wars, states could establish economic development funds. Washington State and California have billion-dollar initiatives targeted at biotech. Washington's fund solicits bids from all companies for a portion of the development fund. Each bid is scored according to measures of public good, such as the number of family-wage jobs with benefits, or investment in plant and equipment. We could also require a commitment (subject to clawbacks) to maintain employment for a minimum period of time. This industrial policy reverses the power relationship between states and companies. Now, states have a scarce resource - access to the fund - and companies bid against each other for the scarce public resource.

Companies should state in their annual tax filings how many workers they employ in the US and how many in other countries.

We can create a global institution for labor and environment. Investors and global companies already have 3 global financial institutions - the World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. Civil society needs its own global institution with powers and authority comparable to the WTO, IMF, and World Bank.

The Sierra Club proposed a border adjustment mechanism for future trade deals. Countries have made environmental commitments under previous trade deals. If they meet those obligations, products from their country can have access to our markets with low tariffs. Countries who fail to meet their obligations will see a border adjustment on all their products. This gives them a market incentive to meet their commitments.

That idea can be generalized. Countries have also made commitments about improving labor rights, and controlling human trafficking. A similar border adjustment can apply when countries fall short of their commitments for labor rights and human trafficking. The same mechanism can enforce commitments to investors, such as currency manipulation, unfair subsidies, and unjust expropriation of property.

The Export-Import Bank is a remnant of the New Deal. The Export-Import Bank guarantees loans for exports. This is an industrial policy because of a requirement for 85% domestic content. The product must be made, mostly, in the US.

Many states subsidize residential solar panels, electric vehicles or wind generators, with special preferences for locally produced materials. This is an obvious industrial strategy - one of many required to control climate change.

These and many other industrial policies would be in direct conflict with neoliberal free trade orthodoxy. It makes no sense to allow free trade orthodoxy to block policies that express our values as a country. Effective well-designed industrial policies should drive our trade policy, not the other way around.

Said differently, we cannot tweak TPP. We need to rethink our approach to globalization.

Design criteria for our industrial policies should include balanced trade, keeping capital investment flows roughly in balance, and most importantly balancing public interests with investor interests.

Effective industrial policies drive upward spirals in our domestic manufacturing capacity, employment in family-wage jobs, labor rights, human rights, and environmental protections at home and abroad. We can choose policies that share the gains of globalization more broadly. Public policies are necessary to address the two biggest market failures in human history - inequality and climate change.
Eugene Viktorovich Koonin

Eugene Koonin is a consummate scientist, Leader of the Evolutionary Genomics Group at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, NIH, who sees science scandals and controversy as unproductive. He prefers the lab to the battlefield and is regarded as one of the most qualitative and prolific thinkers in science today (H-index 177; author of more than 600 scientific papers).

But his numbers as a road runner are not bad either, per his Chevy Chase Turkey Chase stats.

Eugene Koonin: #660 (photo by Antonio Estrada)

In our interview that follows, Koonin sorts out any confusion over his recent statements about the importance of population genetics -- part of the Modern Synthesis -- and his 2009 statement: "Not to mince words the Modern Synthesis is gone." He agrees with Richard Lewontin that the term natural selection is metaphorical and goes further noting, "No one in the mainstream community now takes selection literally." And he also agrees with the Woese-Goldenfeld perspective about biology as "the new condensed matter physics," although Koonin thinks biology is still en route there.

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I spoke by phone with Eugene Koonin at his lab in Bethesda, Maryland.

Suzan Mazur: Do you have any thoughts about the recent Royal Society meeting on new trends in evolutionary biology?

Eugene Koonin: Yes. Perhaps there is a need to make some comment. I was quite unhappy reading at and around this public evolutionary meeting at the Royal Society. Frankly, I think that the less sensationalism, the less controversy brought into these discussions the better. It's really important that we try at all costs to do normal science rather than some sort of scandalous activity. I was happy about one thing, though -- that I was not there and was not directly involved.

Suzan Mazur: Why is it so difficult to pull together the most compelling ideas in evolutionary biology and come up with an approximate understanding of how it all works? Michael Lynch once told me it was because reaching out to other fields is a "daunting task." But if scientists across the board won't come together to give us a coherent understanding of how it all works -- however approximate -- the public will lose confidence in the science establishment's ability to deliver. This is already beginning to happen. Would you comment?

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Eugene Koonin: First of all, I think the public may not have much to lose in terms of confidence in the scientific establishment in this case because the public is already extremely skeptical about the value and the scientific nature of evolutionary biology. It's not quite that way about science in general but I think largely so when it comes to the study of evolution. Much of the public is poorly informed about it, poorly understands it and is highly skeptical for various reasons. So I would frame the discussion a little differently, in the sense that evolutionary science may not be doing the best possible job to convince the public of the true importance of evolutionary biology. That said, I do believe that a coherent understanding of "how it works" is slowly but steadily emerging in evolutionary biology. However, one has to face the facts: first, it is a slow process, and we are still far from the goal; second, the emerging picture is highly complex and, furthermore, makes little sense without mathematical theory. Thus, communicating modern evolutionary biology (as opposed to deceptively simple antiquated ideas) is indeed a daunting task.

Suzan Mazur: If you were organizing a public evolution summit, what discoveries in biology would you showcase?

Eugene Koonin: I would try to focus on two aspects. One is genomics, and in particular, comparative genomics and metagenomics discoveries -- all this comes under the wide umbrella of genomics. That's one. The other is the existence of solid theory in evolutionary biology. I'll elaborate on both aspects.

The first aspect, genomics, has in roughly the last 25 years completely transformed the ability to investigate, assess and measure evolutionary processes. All our conclusions on the course of evolution until the advent of genomics had been indirect. It's remarkable how many of these conclusions and findings remain relevant, but the fact is that all our ways to peer into the evolutionary process and evolutionary past had previously been indirect.

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Genomics now provides us windows into the evolutionary past by which we can compare directly the DNA and protein sequences from a rapidly widening range of organisms and thereby make solid conclusions about evolution.

Suzan Mazur: Are you saying this is the top discovery in evolutionary biology in the last 50 years?

Eugene Koonin: The word "discovery" may not apply quite directly here. It's a transformation of the whole science, which is based on a variety of discoveries. The very approach to evolutionary studies has changed completely. Not only the fact of evolution itself but the existence of deep evolutionary connections between different domains of life -- to be concrete -- evolutionary connections between, let us say, mammals, such as humans, and prokaryotes, bacteria and archaea, have become indisputable. These findings make questioning not only the reality of evolution but the evolutionary unity of all life on earth completely ridiculous and outside of the field of rational discourse.

Then to be more specific, I would probably showcase the advances of metagenomics -- you know, the genomic revolution continues in the sense that now through metagenomics scientists are able to obtain a less and less biased picture of the diversity and evolution of life on Earth. It's becoming not so unrealistic to think about something approaching a complete picture of the evolutionary history of life.

And then I would showcase something very specific. That is the latest discovery of the particular group of archaea that was the direct ancestor of eukaryotes. And in this case, "discovery" is the right word.



There is a necessity to bring to the broader audience of biologists and lay public Mike Lynch's reformulation of the principles of genomics in terms of population genetics. Paraphrasing the famous pronouncement of Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the Founding Fathers of the Modern Synthesis ["Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."], Lynch wrote in one of his papers: "Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the sense of population genetics." That is absolutely true. The details of population genetic theory are difficult to explain even to biologists who are not specially trained, yet we have to communicate these ideas to a broader audience, including the lay public, and in qualitative terms.

Suzan Mazur: How much of the research in your lab is bench experiments and how much is computer modeling?

Eugene Koonin: That's easy, 100% of the research in my lab is computational, not necessarily modeling, but 100% is done by computer and 0% is done experimentally. Of course, we constantly collaborate with experimental laboratories.

Suzan Mazur: In a 2009 paper of yours commenting on the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species you make the following statement: "So, not to mince words, the Modern Synthesis is gone."

Yet in your recent BioMed Central paper you write that it's time for biologists to start paying attention to population genetics because of advances in functional genomes. But population biology IS part of the Modern Synthesis. So your current position has some in the science community confused. Would you talk about the evolution of your thinking about evolution and begin by how you define "gene" and "genome"?

Eugene Koonin: Such confusion makes one wish, at least for a moment, they never made such general statements aimed at a mass audience, yet I think such generalizations are necessary. There isn't really much change in my thinking. There isn't any dramatic change let alone a turn-around in my thinking. Population genetics is a mathematical framework that is essential for building evolutionary theory but it is not the theory itself. The Modern Synthesis does employ that framework and is a correct theory but only for a narrow range of evolutionary processes in certain groups of organisms. It is quite a typical situation in science, actually.

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Suzan Mazur: There's also a lot of confusion in the evolutionary biology community about what a gene is. For instance, Jim Shapiro says he doesn't think in terms of genes as entities. He thinks in terms of systems all the way down.

Eugene Koonin: This is a completely different level of discussion. Let's try to separate it, whatever. I know exactly what Jim Shapiro said and a lot of people say. It's just a translation into a different language, from a somewhat different viewpoint. I do not disagree, genomes are dynamic systems evolving in space and time not static collections of genes. But it is also OK to view them as entities, information storage devices. These viewpoints are complementary.

Coming back to the evolution of my thinking from 2009 to 2016, which really hasn't been much. Quite frankly, if I were writing what I wrote back in 2009, I would have been even more cautious and non-combative than I was then. I don't think I was ever really bombastic. But I would have been even less demonstrative and maybe I would not have written that the Modern Synthesis is gone.

Suzan Mazur: I think your paper in 2009 does sort of leave the door open for the paper that you just published in BioMed Central.

Eugene Koonin: Absolutely, all the doors were open. I would not say that it's [Modern Synthesis] gone just like that. It has to be understood in context. I think now any actively working scientist in evolutionary biology probably realizes that the Modern Synthesis or neo-Darwinism, or whatever the name is, is insufficient in the post-genomic era. This is a set of concepts that is insufficient for understanding the entirety of evolution. It doesn't mean it's wrong. It's only becoming wrong if someone claims that they need nothing past the concepts in the Modern Synthesis.

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Suzan Mazur: Again, there are complaints in the evolution science community that nothing ever seems to get solved. You've commented in the BMC paper that there continues to be a parade of just-so narratives and that "if biology is to evolve into a "hard" science with a solid theoretical core, it must be based on null models, no other path is known." You note further that null models are standard in physics but not in biology. Would you say more, beginning with your definition of "null model."

Eugene Koonin: Sure. In any field, null model is the simplest explanation of the available data that does not violate physical laws. Good and sensible scientific practice in physics but also in other sciences. Scientists first come up with the simplest rational explanation of the available data and then see if anything in the data refutes that explanation and requires a more complex model. And so on and so forth.

Suzan Mazur: Nigel Goldenfeld in recent years referred to biology as the "new condensed matter physics."

Eugene Koonin: Yes. He wrote a paper with the late Carl Woese where they expressed this, and I agree. Maybe with a caveat. I would rather say biology has to become the new condensed matter physics.

Suzan Mazur: At the November Royal Society public evolution meeting mentioned above, Sir Pat Bateson cautioned about the overuse of the metaphor of natural selection. And Richard Lewontin has famously said in the New York Review of Books that Darwin never meant the metaphorical term to be taken literally by generations of scientists. You keep natural selection in your most recent BMC paper and identify a family of selection terms: "weak selection," "purifying selection," "positive selection," "local selection," and "global selection." Aren't these all metaphorical as well and contrary to your interest in seeing biology "evolve into a 'hard' science"?

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Eugene Koonin: Well. Yes, these are metaphorical. From Darwin to this day. I also agree with Lewontin, Darwin did not mean natural selection to be taken literally. But we have to be, I guess, a little more specific about what it means to take natural selection or any kind of selection literally. It means, one would assume, the existence of a selecting agent. Perhaps making all these parallels between natural selection and artificial selection, the way Darwin does in his book, could be somewhat dangerous because in artificial selection there is someone who is selecting, even if unconsciously. In that respect, the evolutionary process is very different in nature where nothing is there to actually select. Darwin certainly realized this and wrote more precisely of "survival of the fittest." In modern evolutionary biology, it is sometimes "random survival" but the key point remains the same: organisms survive and leave progeny differentially. I think it is quite alright to denote some forms of differential survival selection, metaphorically. And there is no confusion here, within mainstream thinking. No one in the mainstream scientific community now takes selection literally.

Suzan Mazur: You also say in the BMC paper: "Counterintuitive as this might seem, evolutionary reconstruction in my laboratory clearly indicates that the ancestral state in most major groups of eukaryotes and apparently the last common eukaryotic ancestor had an intron density close to that in extant animals." You note that introns persist in eukaryotes because introns invaded their genomes as mobile elements early on and that selection was too weak to get rid of them. You also say "the substantial majority" of introns harbor no detectable gene.

What is the significance of this observation? And would you define, in this case, what you mean by intron because you cite two groups of introns in your October table of defined virus terms. Thank you for that paper, by the way -- it's very useful -- the paper in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C.

Eugene Koonin: Thank you. I appreciate that. What was said there in the virus paper?

Suzan Mazur: You provide an extensive table of defined virus terms, and you identify two groups of introns: Group I and Group II.

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Eugene Koonin: We are going into technicalities here, so just very briefly. Prokaryotes also have genetic elements that are called introns but they're very, very different from eukaryotic introns. Prokaryotic introns are more like mobile elements, self-splicing introns, unlike the eukaryotic introns that just sit there and wait to be excised by the spliceosome.

Prokaryotic introns are active. They have the machinery to excise themselves and even to move to a different location. There are two classes of such self-splicing introns, Group I and Group II, but the distinctions between these groups are important only for those who study these things.

The point for the general reader is that the eukaryotic introns evolved from the Group II self-splicing introns, which invaded the genomes of early eukaryotes and then lost their mobility.

Suzan Mazur: Would you touch on the possible importance of stem-loop RNA in origin and evolution of life?

Eugene Koonin: It's a bit of an unexpected turn. All RNAs contain stems and loops, all RNAs that exist in life forms, in organisms are stem and loop structures.

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Suzan Mazur: Luis Villarreal is very keen on this idea.

Eugene Koonin: I cannot right now comment on the specific statements of Luis. I simply don't remember them. Sounds very generic as long as one believes in the primordial RNA world, in some form. Yes, within the RNA world model, stem and loop structures are essential. But random stems and loops do not form the right structure, they cannot have ribozyme activity let alone complex ribozyme activity. So they are only starting material for pre-biological evolution, they do not solve any problems by themselves

Suzan Mazur: In a presentation last year in Tokyo at ELSI (Earth-Life Science Institute) on the emergence of the biosphere, Uppsala University scientist Ajith Harish pointed out that "advances in our understanding of protein evolution indicate that tertiary structures of proteins are the molecular fossils of evolution while coding sequences are transients."

Harish also says the Universal Common Ancestor of the contemporary Tree of Life (TOL) "is distinct from any specific modern descendant, that the Universal Common Ancestor was not the first cell lineage and that the modern TOL is the crown of a "recently" rerooted tree, that "bottlenecked survivors of an environmental collapse, which preceded the flourishing of the modern crown, seeded the current phylogenetic tree."

Harish concludes that the "new data raises questions about traditional hypotheses based on sequence-based gene trees as well as divergence time estimates based on limited information in gene sequences," noting further that "there are so far no identifiable 'universal' viral genes that are common to viruses such as the ubiquitous cellular genes."

Would you like to comment on this?

Eugene Koonin: The short answer is no, I do not want to comment on that, because it's impossible to make any responsible comment on a long and complex quote like this unless I've heard the lecture (or much better yet, read the paper). There are a variety of things on which I would agree (for example, that protein structures are more conserved than sequences which is common knowledge) and a variety of things on which I cannot immediately agree. But the bottom line is I did not hear the lecture.

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Suzan Mazur: At the same ELSI meeting, Hiromi Saito from Osaka University questioned whether the common ancestor of bacteria had a cell wall noting, "many bacteria can transform themselves to a cell-wall-deficient state" called an "L-form." Do you have any thoughts about that?

Eugene Koonin: I know very well what L-forms are, in particular with respect to their simple cell division mechanism. And this is an interesting possibility when we think about early evolution of cells. The modern L-forms obviously are derived, and comparative genomics tells us that the last common ancestor of bacteria probably did have a cell wall. Wall-less forms might have been important in evolution of cells but at an even earlier stage.

Suzan Mazur: Would you like to make a final point?

Eugene Koonin: Yes. I would like to come back to this issue of the Modern Synthesis, population genetics theory and the like because it is true that population genetics theory is part of the Modern Synthesis. And that is great. That is part of the power of the concept and why it remains quite relevant in explanations of microevolution but also an important part of the new evolutionary biology. That's what I wanted to convey in the BMC paper, that population genetics theory (in its modernized form because it too has not remained static over 50 years) has to be systematically applied in evolutionary genomics, which is the new mainstream of evolutionary biology. Indeed, it's changed dramatically over the last 25 years, and as previously mentioned, has completely transformed the ability to investigate, assess and measure evolutionary processes. The modern version of population genetics theory (it too has not remained static over 50 years) has to be actively, constantly and systematically applied to our understanding of genome evolution. That is too often not the case.


Then-crown prince Maha Vajiralongkorn attends an event commemorating the death of his father King Bhumibol. Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

Since the death of King Bhumibol on October 13 2016, his son King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun or Rama X has disregarded the provisions of the Thai constitution and its conventions to an extent unprecedented in the modern history of the nation.

First, he declined to accede to the throne immediately at the death of his father, asking for some time to grieve. As a result, Thailand had no king for 47 days.

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In the meantime, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the military dictator who seized power in a coup in 2014, ruled by decree using article 44 of the 2014 interim constitution granting him all legislative, executive and judicial power.

Vajiralongkorn has also refused to put into effect the new constitution adopted by referendum on August 7 2016. It replaces the 2014 interim constitution granting all powers to the head of the military.

This move might have been welcomed by pro-democracy supporters, who rejected the draft as empowering the army and the constitutional court at the expense of the rights of the Thai people. But the articles the king didn't like do not, in the words of the prime minister, "involve people's rights and freedom at all", rather they are about "His Majesty's authority".

The new king has interfered in the constitution-making process to demand changes aimed at expanding his own powers in three key areas.

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First, he insisted on reforming the provisions on regency to allow him to spend time abroad without appointing a regent to represent him pro tempore (in his absence). This would allow him to reign from Munich in Germany, where he's been living for the last couple of years.

The change was approved on January 13 by the junta-appointed National Legislative Assembly in an unanimous vote.

Second, he asked to end the need for a countersignature on all royal acts. Details are not yet known but this means that the king alone will be able - in specific matters - to sign executive orders and decrees. The move is reminiscent of absolute monarchy, and a ten-member panel has been appointed to make the requested change.

Finally, Vajiralongkorn wants to recover royal crisis powers that the current constitutional draft had transferred away from the king to the constitutional court (article five). The junta-appointed officials who drafted the 2016 constitution to allow this transfer did so because they feared the erratic and improper use of nominal powers granted by the constitution by the new king. These include executive and legislative veto powers and the right to dissolve the legislative assembly.

It is also highly likely that they feared that the use of the crisis powers themselves would lead to further crises. Indeed, crisis powers as defined in article five are indefinite and uncircumscribed; they are founded on customary law, a reasonable interpretation of which is the only limit to the scope of powers granted to "solve a crisis".

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They were exercised rarely and with caution by King Bhumibol during his 70-year reign, allowing the monarch to build his own reputation through major political crises.

In 1973, 1976, and 1992, he put an end to confrontations between protesters and security forces and appointed prime ministers of his choice. But nothing suggested - at the time of the drafting of the 2016 constitution - that the new king would act as carefully as his father had in the past.

For these reasons, the constitutional court was endowed with general powers to manage crises instead of the king. Now the king wants these powers back, most likely through the addition of privy councillors to the crisis committee, so that they can participate in the selection of a "neutral" non-elected prime minister in case the crisis procedure is triggered.

By directly requesting specific articles of the constitution to be removed or modified - or both - and going way beyond his constitutional role, King Rama X shows that the fears that had guided the drafting of the 2016 constitution were well founded.

Royal meddling in the constitution

In Thailand, constitution-drafting has always been a negotiating process involving the king. But this process is hidden behind a facade of consensus, as Thai constitutions are said in their preambles to have been "benevolently granted by the King to the Thai people".

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In 1951, one of the first actions of the young Bhumibol to reassert the role of the monarchy against a rising military was to refuse royal assent to the new constitution and send his "recommendations" to the prime minister on the drafting of a new document. In 1974, he even demanded a revision of the constitution after its promulgation. Both requests were acceded to.

It's natural that someone who has a legislative or constitutional veto is involved, albeit secretly, in the legislative or constitutional decision-making process. And when it remains secret - as it was under King Bhumipol - the king wears the clothes of "constitutional monarchy". But Thailand has almost never been a functioning constitutional monarchy as most of its political history is that of military rule.

After the promulgation of the 1997 constitution, the country appeared to have finally become a perfect constitutional monarchy. All acts of the monarch were to be countersigned by the prime minister; legislative veto was never used (or so it seemed); the judiciary showed strong independence; and the army was seemingly under civilian control.

The Thai monarch was then seen as little more powerful than the British queen, mainly due to informal characteristics, such as his personal charisma. The only apparent difference with the British parliamentary monarchy was the existence of a powerful privy council whose access was denied to cabinet members and the prime minister.

But if Rama X's demand that his royal acts be valid without a countersignature by the prime minister, a minister or the president of parliament is met, the Thai constitutional framework will have nothing left in common with constitutional monarchy or the Westminster model. The new king will be able to reign and govern through his personal privy council.

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As Vajiralongkorn transforms the nominal powers granted by the constitution into real powers to be exercised at his own discretion - something article five was precisely designed to avert - a restoration of a hybrid form of monarchical rule is now underway in the Land of Smiles.


A family of Programa Atitude beneficiaries in short-term housing provided by the programme. Lianne Milton/Panos for the Open Society Foundations

In Brazil, a drug programme in the northeastern state of Pernambuco has provided some 7,000 marginalised, often homeless crack-cocaine users with housing, health care, psychological support, and job training since 2011 -- without requiring that they stop using drugs.

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From 2015 to 2016, using both qualitative and quantitative methods (from interviews to data analysis), we undertook an evaluation of Programa Atitude, the state's five-year-old social outreach programme. The study was led by Jose Luis Ratton, of the Federal University of Pernambuco.

Our study found that the programme has both increased health and well-being among Pernambuco's most vulnerable drug users and reduced violence within this at-risk population -- and thus in the state as a whole.

In our opinion, these results support the government's controversial strategy -- which the political right has several times threatened to repeal - to go beyond just arresting people who use drugs to actually help them.

As one drug user in the programme said, "We don't need more prisons. We need aid."

The results also provide lessons for other cities, both in Brazil and elsewhere, that are struggling to deal effectively with open drug-use scenes.

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In Brazil, as across the Americas, people who use drugs openly on the street are often among the poorest, most marginalised in society. This profile holds true in Pernambuco, where our research found that stimulant users are largely poor (84%), black or mixed-race (78.5%) and male (80%), with a little education. They are often homeless, and nearly always unemployed (90%).

This population also faces serious health risks. Among Atitude beneficiaries, HIV is 17 times higher than the Brazilian average (6.7%, versus 0.4%), and 12.8% have syphilis.

Beyond the health harms posed by homelessness and drug use, this population is also highly exposed to violence. Around 96% of Atitude beneficiaries have suffered some kind of violence and 65% had their lives threatened in last six months. Women were five times more likely to have been abused emotionally or physically.

Reexamining the drugs-violence connection

The programme emerged late in the first decade of the 2000s, as Brazil was seeing a sharp uptick in crack consumption - particularly among poor black men.

Other cities, such as Sao Paulo, responded with New York City-style violent police crackdowns in communities where drugs were openly consumed.

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Many cities here still respond to any narcotics activity with intense law enforcement. for example, Rio de Janeiro's SWAT-style Police Pacification programme has heavily armed officers essentially occupying favelas and arresting, sometimes killing, people they identify as "traffickers".

Pernambuco was not a total exception. One Atitude beneficiary told us that the police "would grab us in the river bed and beat us for no reason, only because we were drug users."

But in Pernambuco, a pioneer in mental health reforms, policymakers also understood that given the nature of illicit markets and the profile of crack users, arrests alone could not solve the problem.

By 2007, Pernambuco's murder rate was double the Brazilian average, at 54 per 100,000, and Recife had become Brazil's third-most dangerous capital.

So in 2007 the state launched the Pact for Life, a violence-prevention initiative, that incorporated elements of Boston's successful Operation Ceasefire. That helped homicides decrease 40% from 2007 to 2013, back to 1980s levels.

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Pernambuco next recognised that a considerable portion of its murder victims were also drug users, killed by dealers to whom they owed money or victims of generalised gang-related street violence in poor neighbourhoods.

In other words, drug users were part of the state's homicide epidemic. So in 2010 the government added USD$1.5 million to Pact for Life for a one-year pilot programme to protect this vulnerable community.

Harm reduction is violence reduction

According to our evaluation, 77.2% of beneficiaries spoke about feeling safer in the programme, which can provide them with temporary housing safely removed from their own risky neighbourhoods if necessary.

This finding, while not conclusive, suggests that some crime in violent communities can be prevented not by aggressive policing -- a strategy that's caused resentment in both New York and Brazil -- but with social services.









Lianne Milton/Panos for the Open Society Foundations





Another useful finding is that after completing Programa Atitude, people tended to smoke less crack. The number of people who smoked 15 or more rocks at a time decreased from 57% to 24.8%. Daily consumption dropped from 82.1% to 22.1%. And 35.6% claimed to have stopped using drugs entirely.

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Our findings support a growing body of research from cities across the Americas that have sought to deal with violence and drug use in more humane ways, which shows that stability, health and connectivity can make people feel less need to get high.

By supporting people to get a job, rebuild family ties, stick with therapy, and update legal documents, social-inclusion programmes help drug users do the basic things necessary for a satisfying, sustainable life.

"I was very skinny," one participant told us. "I began to gain weight. I ate. [I began] to sleep well."

This outcome demonstrates why policymakers must move beyond the binary of seeing drugs as either a criminal problem or a health issue. Drug use is a complex phenomenon that requires complex responses.

Considering the social determinants of health (income, employment, race and gender, among other things), and not insisting on abstinence as a prerequisite for getting help is the foundation of other harm-reduction initiatives.

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New York's Pathways Housing First, for example, provides housing to homeless drug users on the basis that stability -- a mailing address, a bed -- is a necessary first step for people to make other positive changes, such as finding employment.

More recently, under its previous mayor, Sao Paulo implemented the Programa De Bracos Abertos - "Open Arms" -- which provides housing, employment, food, and social services to homeless drug users in the city's so-called "Crackland".

Brazil's conservative backlash

But harm-reduction programmes, among other social policies, are endangered by Brazil's rightward tilt and economic crisis.









Lianne Milton/Panos for the Open Society Foundations





Conservatives in power seek to replace the harm-reduction initiatives now operating in Brazil with outdated models that have been proven ineffective.

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Drug treatment in Brazil -- and indeed in many Latin American countries -- often consists of compulsory hospitalisation or lengthy interments in faith-based "therapeutic communities".

Evidence shows that coerced, abstinence-based rehab rarely helps addiction, and may actually violate users' human rights.

As one person who'd been through religious "treatment" asserted, "I don't want to become evangelical, I want to get rid of the addiction."

However, this approach to addiction continues to be pushed in Brazil.

The Atitude programme is not perfect. Our study found insufficient follow-up with programme graduates, uneven coordination among the government entities that operate it and chronic under-funding. Some of these problems are locally rooted, and others are endemic to Brazilian government programmes. Many are fixable.

And even in a challenging place like Brazil today -- with its economic and political crises -- human-centred programmes are a relatively affordable and proven effective way to help society's most vulnerable people, keep them safe and, as a result, improve overall community well-being.

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Will Brazilian leaders pay attention to the evidence?
(Xinhua) 09:55, February 03, 2017

U.S. Ambassador to China nominee Terry Branstad speaks during a news conference held after "Happy Chinese New Year Concert In Muscatine", in Muscatine, Iowa, the United States, Feb. 1, 2017. Terry Branstad said Wednesday that he would play a constructive role in enhancing China-U.S. relationship during a news conference held in Muscatine, Iowa. (Xinhua/Wang Ping)

MUSCATINE, Iowa, Feb. 2 -- U.S. Ambassador to China nominee Terry Branstad said Wednesday that he would play a constructive role in enhancing China-U.S. relationship during a news conference held in Muscatine, Iowa.

"I am very honored and very proud to have been chosen to be the ambassador to China," Branstad said in an interview with Xinhua. "We want to continue to enhance the relationship and to increase trade between our two countries."

With China as the largest developing country while U.S. as the largest developed country in the world, if the two countries can further improve their relationship, continue to build friendship and trade, Branstad believed that can benefit the entire world.

Branstad accepted U.S. President Donald Trump's nomination for the post of U.S. Ambassador to China in December 2016. He will continue to serve as the governor of Iowa before his nomination is confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with confirmation hearings likely to be held in late February or early March.

When asked about the potential challenges he may face in his new position, Branstad said the relationship between China and United Statesis critically important to both countries and the world as well.

He said there were ups and downs in China- U.S.ties and many challenges remain today, but he will play a constructive role to work out many of the differences with his experience as a long-time friend of China.

"I hope... that I can play a constructive role trying to work out many of these differences in a way that makes it a win-win. It is beneficial to both of our countries, and also benefits the rest of the world" , Branstad said.

Branstad also said he would welcome more Chinese investment in the United States.

"I think we have seen just the tip of the iceberg of the potential investments here," he said, "now we are seeing companies...that have been here for some time, doing business in America. And I think many more Chinese companies will want to do that."

Branstad, 70, is the longest-serving governor in the Unite States, who also has long nurtured a close relationship with China and has visited China multiple times. He served as the governor of Iowa in 1983-1999, and again since 2011.
For the past week, many lawyers, including myself, organized by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and International Refugee Assistance Project, descended in significant numbers to airports like Washington Dulles International and John F. Kennedy International to help those detained pursuant to Trump's un-American immigration ban.

A friend at Dulles last weekend posted a clip of protestors chanting "Thank you lawyers!" The Atlantic, and other outlets, posted stories like "An Army of Attorneys Descends on Dulles: They fought to gain access to travelers being detained, as hundreds of protesters cheered each new arrival." A friend started a Twitter hashtag #helpthelawyers as a resource for those wishing to support volunteer lawyers who were donating their time at airports around the country.

This leads me to wonder if this represents a new day for lawyers. Before I get all teary-eyed about it, let me say that I fully acknowledge that lawyers, as a group, have done just fine compared to, say, many of the thousands who lost jobs in the Great Recession and have not yet recovered. It is also true that lawyers on the right side of the political spectrum have over the past decades done very well at building legal social movement through organizations like the Federalist Society and Judicial Watch. Maybe it is because standing up for corporations and the well connected, judicial restraint, or a strong executive branch do not quite fit into the mold of Atticus Finch that these movements have failed to capture the public imagination.

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Even my conservative friends will likely acknowledge that attorneys have, for the most part, fallen from their perch of being seen as the champion of the little guy. Matlock gave way to LA Law. During the dotcom boom, law firm salaries rocketed up, along with required billable hours. As some lawyers got rich, many became less happy. As law firm sizes grew and jury trials largely dried up, lawyers spent less time talking to "real" people and more time in front of computer screens.

The profession was then whipsawed by the Great Recession with the formerly unassailable big law shedding attorneys out into the street, many of them finding work as contract attorneys where they became a less glamorous, and less well compensated, cog in a big corporate wheel. As one management consultant put it, "The Industrial Revolution has finally discovered the legal profession." And so many lawyers stayed in front a screen, just a commodity, trapped under six-figure student loan debt.

But when I walked to baggage claim 15 last weekend at Dulles Airport, there was a decidedly different vibe. Young lawyers clustered on the floor doing research to support a lawsuit on behalf of those detained. A long card table set up with snack-food piled high, legal pads and name tags. Lines of lawyers held signs asking anyone who had information about detainees to come talk. Lawyers joined the call and response: "What does America look like? This is what American looks like!" And "real" people stopped by to bring snacks, fruit and water.

Left or right, conservative or liberal, I think this is why most people went to law school--I know it's why I did. To charge into the area, to make the deal, to do things that require expertise and skill, that above all, matter.

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When I served as prosecutor, I elected to spend most of my time on domestic violence and sex assault cases. And when I started my own firm, I focused on representing employees who lacked the resources and often the knowledge to fight back against a hostile work environment, wrongful termination or corporate wrongdoing. Both involved fighting the good fight for people victimized by bullies.

Actions by the Trump Administration raise many unsettling, foundational questions about our democracy. As foundations crack and shift, there will be opportunity for acts of selfless heroism by lawyers. A chance for attorneys to replace the brass ring of partnership with a resume more like Justices Thurgood Marshall, William Rehnquist or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A chance to matter.
Of the many resolutions that have come my way in the early days of 2017, one thing is obvious. Change. You can almost say that the common denominator is change. The lady down the street wants to change the way she styles her hair and learn to cook so she can be more appealing to a certain man and possible be married this year. The CEO up in his penthouse wants to restructure a bit to accommodate his growing vision while weeding out staff who are not keying into the corporate goal.

Change somehow is the ribbon that ties it all, coloured by an innate desire to see better results when 2017 rolls out. After all, it is said that insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. So change indeed, is a good lead to sanity.

In the bid to feel better in your work-space which in turn will subliminally affect your output, it may just be necessary to remodel your work space. This doesn't apply to every work-space but if you've experienced any of these points below in the past year, then that change may just be knocking on your door.

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1.Lack of creativity and inspiration- There's a surge of creativity that comes with coming into a work-space that aesthetically appeals to the eye. It calms your inner being and gives you a relaxing room to achieve more. If you have too many files scattered all over the place, you'll most likely be as clogged up mentally as you are physically. A work-space remodel is very much needed.

2.No team communication- Did you notice in the past year that it was difficult for your team members to communicate efficiently while in the office? Were they excited to leave and dull most of the time they were in the office? Did you notice a certain monotonous way to working and a creative void that you couldn't really explain? Maybe a remodel could bring back the spark.



3.No brand alignment- Your work-space should ideally be an extension of what your brand identity is. It's possible that down the line, after 5 years of catering to customers, your work-space gradually lost the connection to your brand image. Now is as good a time as any to get it back. It will inspire your clients/customers to walk in gleefully when a meeting is fixed. It will inspire you to keep your goals connected to the world around you.

How then can you remodel without creating a dent in your wallet this time of the year?



PhotoCredit



1.Clean where you can- This should arguably be the first step to remodeling your work-space. Cleaning gives a fresh disposition to a work-space especially when it's intense cleaning. Throwing out the trash, dusting out shelves, changing the blinds and scrubbing out carpet stains will most definitely effect a new positive reception of your work-space.

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2.Sell what you can- This could be a subtle way to raise operational revenue in your business. Look through your work-space and take stock of the things you genuinely don't need. Someone in the next building may just appreciate that extra projector screen that's lying fallow. Sell off the things you don't need and create more clean space for yourself.

3.Use what you have- Just before you spend thousands of dollars buying new stuff to birth the mental picture you have, take a good look at your building/work-space and see what you can use to achieve that. Take away hanging ceilings if you must, get a circular saw and divide an otherwise huge desk in two, to accommodate more staff and engender bonding and team communication. Look within and see what you can make off the things you have.

4.Equip your work-space- It's always best to draft out a work sheet that'll highlight all the changes you desire to make, as well as the cost implications. In the same line, outline the equipment you and your staff will need to function optimally and get them strategically placed in your work-space. Barter or buy second hand if you must to cut cost but by all means, equip your work-space this 2017.

5.Creatively decorate- This will highly depend on the kind of business you run. However, a little decor never did any harm. Simplicity is king so get some simple art work, or designs that speak your brand message and infuse them into your work-space. It'll go a mile in creating that inspiring work-space for yourself and your staff.
"I can't stand for something that's racist. Advance Australia Fair, when it's really Advance Australia White." Said Anthony Mundine, ahead of his fight against arch-enemy Danny Green. Mundine is Aboriginal Green is White Australian.

The fight is billed as "The Man vs The Machine."

There couldn't be a better title to depict Australia. Mundine, the Aboriginal from Sydney is the man, Green the white man from Perth is the machine. Mundine and Green, come from two different worlds inside the same country, a country divided by skin colour and race. A country where apartheid is well alive, you just have to walk down Newtown's King St to experience it. While black fellas are busking and begging, white fellas own the businesses, eat in the restaurants and drink in the pubs. On any given Friday night, there are loads of drunken white people behaving badly, yet the police typically focus on arresting the lonely drunk black fella.

Aboriginals make up 3% of Australia's entire population, yet they make up 27% of Australia's prison population. That statistic alone should propel a state of emergency, yet this is Australia mate, "we'll have another inquiry," says the white politician in power, meanwhile there is no justice for the 400 aboriginal people who've died in custody since 1988.

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The latest aboriginal man killed in custody was 29 year old Wayne Morrison, a father and an artist who'd never been in trouble with police, "My brother was brutalized by prison officers in custody and didn't receive health care from the beginning of his 6 days in remand despite requesting it, he was assaulted by white people before he was arrested!" said Latoya Rule, Morrison's sister. No worries mate, this is the Australian way, the authorities will hold another coronial inquiry. Despite the many government inquiries, no policeman has ever gone to prison for a single aboriginal death in custody. An aboriginal man is 13 times more likely to be arrested than his white Australian counterpart, if this is not apartheid mate, please tell me what it is.

I know many white Australians including my husband, who grew up without having any contact with aboriginal people, except the odd aboriginal kid at school who was 'adopted' by white parents. "The majority of Aboriginals live in the outback" is their answer, however the fact is that 66% of Aboriginal people live in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.

There are 400% more Aboriginal children taken from their families today than during the so-called Stolen Generation (the term used in Australia to describe how Aboriginal children were kidnapped by the state). "The police just came and stole them." Said a Kukulangi grandmother who is currently fighting a legal battle to recover her grandchildren. In NSW alone, 1 in 10 aboriginal children are placed in 'Out Of Home Care Adoptions', mostly with non-aboriginal families. In 2015, more than 150 aboriginal people died by suicide. Young Aboriginal Australians have one of the highest suicide rates in the world.

The constitution of Australia is a document based on white supremacy and racial superiority; article 25 of part III discriminates on the basis of race against Aboriginal people. Racial discrimination remains legally possible under the Australian Constitution.

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Australians don't have a bill of rights. In 2007 Australia was one of the few countries that voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. However the UN General Assembly adopted the declaration and in 2009 Australia had no choice but to support it.

Estimates calculate that before the white man invaded Australia in 1788, there were 750,000 aboriginal people living here and more than 700 languages were spoken. Australia has been inhabited by the different Aboriginal nations for almost 80,000 years and sovereignty was never ceded to the white Australians. Hundreds of thousands of Aboriginal Australians were killed defending their land and for years fought against the invaders. Aboriginal people still own 30% of Western Australia.

So, I ask you, how can someone in their right mind question Anthony Mundine's decision to not stand for a national anthem that embodies hatred, exclusion and racism? An anthem that erases the genocide endured by the oldest living culture in the world, the Aboriginal people, an anthem that misleadingly calls Australia a young, free and fair nation.

While white Australians, from the Prime Minister down, criticized and bullied Mundine's decision, trying to silence his democratic right to stand up for his beliefs, or in this case to simply not stand up, is more proof of the apartheid Aboriginal people live in today.

Let me ask you a question. Would you expect a Jewish person to stand during the German national anthem after the Second World War?

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"There is a Chinese curse which says, 'May you live in interesting times.'" Robert F. Kennedy

(Note: There is no such curse, but let's not get distracted.)

If his intention is to further a state of incipient chaos in the world, the moves that President Donald Trump is making with his government by executive order, avoidance of experts, steamrolling of the Cabinet, and new version of the National Security Council make sense. A constant sense of crisis demands authoritarian leadership, right? So what if the crisis is self-generated? In fact, perhaps, so much the better.

But if his intention is to engage actors and events in such a way as to promote American interests without having things spiral out of control, his moves make little sense. Because he and his little pirate crew don't have the feel or experience to take things to the brink without screwing up. This is not a real estate deal. Except, inevitably, in the old soldier sense of the term, referring to a small plot of ground.

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Are we surprised that the first big special operations raid of the Trump presidency went decidedly south, big time?

Emphasizing speed, precision, and overwhelming force, such missions are supposed to be the exact opposite of a fair fight. They should be a ruthless walkover. Operators should be come and gone before the echo of the shots -- if any -- fades.

Trump's first raid was anything but that. Immediately running into unexpected heavy resistance, precision maneuvers swiftly devolved into a desperate brawl with automatic weapons, with heavy air support embarrassingly required to bail out the elite Navy SEAL team. One American was killed, three were wounded, a very expensive aircraft went down and was destroyed, and, oh yes, dozens of civilians were killed, including children.

What we did get for all the trouble, which has just begun to unfold?

Well, the new Trump White House operation ain't saying, beyond the boilerplate of "important intelligence" and multiple bad guys killed. The raid was in Yemen, not at all incidentally, where we've been backing Saudi Arabia in a misfiring, confused war against a variety of players, the most important of whom was our ally for decades. The Saudis like to see the war as part of their regional struggle against Iran, though that is an oversimplification. Trump has also very much picked up the pace of our bombing and naval shelling in Yemen, where a great many civilians have been killed by the Saudi side.

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Coincidentally, of course, the Saudi oil minister praised Trump the other day. "We want the same things!," he exulted in remarks to the BBC, referring to Trump's vow to ramp up our fossil fuel dependency again.

The fact that Saudi Arabia, home of all but a few of the 9/11 attackers, whose wealthy citizens are a principal source of funding for jihadists even now, was left off the list of travel ban nations selected for "extreme vetting" was certainly a plus for the Saudis, too.

What is Trump getting from the Saudis? Well, he is proving to be just as, if not more so, secretive as the Obama administration in the secret strike version of our post-9/11 long war.

If this were just one more messed-up raid, it would be one thing. The reality of conflict is that shit happens, Any little thing can lead to a chaotic result. Even a slight misstep can alert an opponent. Like, say, lowering the altitude of the orbiting drones, as happened in this case. Oops.

But the bigger problem here, as the unnamed military officials told various press organs, was that the opposition was much more formidable than anticipated. Hence the desperation call for heavy air support, which the Pentagon says caused the heavy loss of civilian life.

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And of course the raid itself, and the suddenly expanded bombardment of Yemen, is just part of a big, rapidly emerging pattern of chaotic activity fitfully ordered by a notoriously ADD president spurred on by red hot ideologue advisors with little real feel for what they are doing.

Let's see. There is the collapsed Mexico summit, Trump's ugly-American threat in a phone call with the country's president to send US armed forces into Mexico, the ludicrously conceived and executed travel ban which at first deliberately shut out both US green card holders and, among many such others, the four-star Iraqi general working closely with us in the battle against Isis. And let's not forget Trump's insulting of Australia's prime minister, the controversial pledge to move the US embassy in Israel to disputed territory, several instances of oddly conceived anti-China saber rattling, various moves to confront Iran, etc., etc.

You know, I remember this guy running as the anti-interventionist candidate.

The one who, unlike Hillary Clinton -- with her foolishly bear-baiting new cold war with Russia and moves to get in the middle of the losing Syrian civil war -- would help avoid new wars.

Where did that guy go?

Instead, we have this guy. The one who on Thursday emphasized his authoritarian religious nationalist side, vowing to destroy the historic separation of church and state by setting loose full church involvement in politics. Trump even perversely quoted Enlightenment giant Thomas Jefferson, a legendarily staunch foe of religious dogma, in favor of Trump's dogmatic Christian fundamentalist agenda. (Bizarre though Trump's personal role as champion of evangelical Christians is. More to follow on all that.)

This is the Trump who reversed historic presidential practice by placing his chief political strategist, ex-Breitbart News propaganda chief Steve Bannon, at the apex of national security decision-making, the Principals Committee of the National Security Council. And in the process, Trump removed the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence. (Then, a few days later, he put the CIA director on the NSC principals committee, even though CIA, for all its fame, is just one island in the intelligence archipelago. Because Trump likes him.)

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Bannon, who said on his radio show that "We're already at war" on a global basis, now gets to pursue his prediction to make it a truism. He's a very apocalyptic sort of fellow. Maybe Trump, who never reads books and got his national security ideas by watching cable news and Hollywood movies -- 'Air Force One', yay! -- mistakes apocalypticism for gravitas.

It's not that Bannon and his fellow ex-Santa Monican (!) acolyte Steve Miller are talking about nothing; it's that Bannon's default position is to overreact. He's like these religionists who spout about end times, only with the added feature of being in position to push an approach that will precipitate end times.

It's also not that Bannon is not a very talented and a capable political advisor. In fact, that is why I praised Trump's selection of Bannon as a good move for his campaign last August.

That was when most everyone else said, wait for it, that it was just the latest sign that Trump could never win. Heh.

But clever politics is just smart gamesmanship. It's not wise statecraft. That's why Barack Obama only allowed David Axelrod to sometimes visit the NSC, why George W. Bush actually barred Karl Rove.

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The only political advisor who has previously played this sort of role, not counting FDR's Harry Hopkins, who served when there was no NSC and who functionally was Roosevelt's national security advisor, was my late Hart for President friend Ted Sorensen. And that was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The legendary JFK speechwriter and intellectual soulmate joined the president and a host of generals and admirals and diplomats in the ad hoc government known as ExComm, the hastily devised executive committee of the National Security Council. And Sorensen was there as a counselor, not the shot-caller than Bannon is.

As you can see from his archive of columns, there is nothing in Bannon's writing over the past five years that places him on an intellectual par with Sorensen. Even more to the point, Bannon's writing demonstrates no real-time acumen in geopolitics. Or non-real time, for that matter. It's all a bunch of ideological jeering and cheering.

Yes, Bannon was a naval officer, as Trump flack Sean Spicer, also a naval reserve officer, dutifully stated when there were widespread gasps about Bannon's NSC role. But he was only a lieutenant, outranked by, er, quite a few people. And he spent all his time out on a ship or in the Pentagon as an admiral's aide. His personal familiarity with the dynamics of conflict, much less actual combat situations, was non-existent. He never backpacked, say, through Afghanistan not long before the Soviet invasion or Iran before the Islamic revolution. Bannon's view of such things is entirely ideological.

Thus our new National Insecurity Council is perfectly positioned to turn challenging situations into chaotic situations through its unique brew of hotheadedness, inexperience, and ignorance.

What else can go wrong? Quite obviously, this will be the continuing question, and ongoing series.
By Joshua Rosenblum, ZEALnyc Contributing Writer, February 3, 2017

Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin are performing all nine Bruckner symphonies over the course of nine evenings at Carnegie Hall, coupling each symphony with a Mozart piano concerto, led by Barenboim from the piano. Night six (January 25) of this historic Bruckner cycle--unprecedented in this country--meant Symphony No. 6 in A major, plus Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major.

The Sixth is rarely performed--the last three are the most popular. Some have even referred to it as the "ugly duckling" of Bruckner symphonies, but I doubt a single person in attendance Wednesday night would have agreed. Under Barenboim's leadership, at least, the piece was thrilling and consistently gorgeous. The shapely themes just kept unfolding. The first movement opens with a characteristically Brucknerian triplet accompaniment (reverently appropriated from Beethoven's Seventh) that sets up a broad, foreboding melody in the lower strings. Within about twenty-four bars, it flowers into a shattering fortissimo delivery of that theme by the brass. Sharp, breathtaking contrasts in dynamics were a hallmark of the performance; Barenboim is brilliant in his ability to shape phrases and control dynamics almost by willing it. He rarely beats time conventionally--it's more like a mind-meld with the orchestra, in whom he obviously has complete confidence. He makes fluid, floating movements with his arms, with occasional sharp gestures for syncopated figures or accents. At times he seemed to be just reveling in the sound and offering the occasional pro tip: hey folks, something really great will happen if you lean into this note and give it an accent. Yet his supreme control over the proceedings was never in doubt, and it yielded sumptuous beauty, grand soaring melodies, surging climaxes, and seamless transitions from one section to the next.

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The rapturous but lengthy second movement can seem static or even (dare one say it) boring in the wrong hands, but one could see that Barenboim had an overview of the whole vast terrain in his head the entire time; the result was a reading with a stately tempo but inexorable momentum and profound beauty. This movement in particular showed off the deep richness of the Staatskapelle's silky, perfectly integrated strings and the glowing, crystalline woodwind playing. The haunting third theme of this movement sounds distinctly Mahlerian, but the piece, completed in 1881, predates Mahler's First Symphony by seven years. (Interestingly, Mahler himself conducted the premiere of this work.)

The third movement scherzo features two very contrasting sections that almost sound like they're from different pieces, but Barenboim managed to integrate them coherently, with an authority that seemed to will their fusion into one movement. The fourth movement searchingly traverses several remote key areas, but the home key of A major asserts itself suddenly and unmistakably in the coda. The brass, here and in the first movement, formed a cathedral-like edifice of sound, gratifyingly monumental, but stopping just short of harshness. It was as if, even at fortissimo, no one dared make a sound that wasn't impeccably beautiful in the presence of the maestro.

The first half of the program consisted of the Mozart concerto. Barenboim faced the orchestra, standing in front of the piano to lead the orchestral exposition of the first movement, then sitting down for the solo piano entrance. His remarkable ability to elicit maximum musical results from the orchestra with minimal physical movement served him brilliantly in his role as pianist/conductor. While trading musical figures with the first violins, he merely had to glance at them sideways to create a fully engaged musical dialogue. After his solo cadenza, Barenboim simply shot his left hand high in the air, and the orchestra came thundering in with synchronous perfection on the cadential downbeat. Barenboim's playing in general featured impressive multi-timbral shadings and an impeccable technical mastery that enabled him to treat all the passagework as lyrically expressive statements and not just virtuosic fireworks. Both in his playing and conducting, he seemed to be defining before our eyes the highest standards of not just Mozart performance practice but beauty itself. The langorous slow movement had the feel of a sacred ritual led by an exalted master. In the last movement, Barenboim seemed to be asking a multipart question with each two bar phrase of the opening theme and then answering it with the cadence. Sometimes he changed the timbre of the orchestra just by looking at them. It's obviously an extraordinary relationship between conductor and orchestra, and the captive audiences this week are the beneficiaries.

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Staatskapelle Berlin in concert at Carnegie Hall, Wednesday, January 25, 2017. Daniel Barenboim, Music Director, Conductor, and piano

MOZART Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482

BRUCKNER Symphony No. 6

Cover: Daniel Barenboim and Staatskapelle Berlin at Carnegie Hall; photo: Steve J. Sherman

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Joshua Rosenblum, a Contributing Writer for ZEALnyc, writes on classical music performance, theater, and related topics.

For more ZEALnyc features, read:
(Xinhua) 09:57, February 03, 2017

SEOUL, Feb. 2 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reaffirmed U.S. commitment to the defense of South Koreahere on Thursday, including its extended deterrence.

The Pentagon chief said the Trump administration will deal with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s nuclear threats as top priority among security issues.

Mattis, who arrived here earlier in the day, met with Kim Kwan-jin, senior security advisor to impeached President Park Geun-hye, in the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.

During the talks, Kim said it was very timely for Mattis to pick South Korea as his first overseas trip destination given the stern security situations, caused by the DPRK's nuclear and missile threats.

Concerns were deepened recently about the DPRK's test-launch of a long-range ballistic rocket as top DPRK leader Kim Jong Unsaid in his New Year's Day address that his country had entered a final stage to prepare for such launch.

Mattis and Kim agreed to push for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment in South Korea.

Seoul and Washington abruptly announced the agreement in July last year to install one THAAD battery in South Korean soil by the end of this year. Local media speculated the installation could be completed between May and July.

It sparked strong objections from China and Russiaas its X-band radar can peer into territories of the two nations, destabilizing security balance and boosting arms race in the region.

Major presidential contenders in the South Korean opposition bloc have demanded the cancellation or the delay of the decision to the next government, which is forecast to be launched as early as April.

President Park was impeached in December over a corruption scandal, and the constitutional court is expected to permanently remove Park from office before the middle of March. A presidential election must be held in 60 days after the court's final ruling.

The Pentagon chief and the senior South Korean security official shared views on the need to strengthen the U.S.-South Korea alliance, promising to closely communicate with each other to respond to the DPRK's rising threats.

Meanwhile, Mattis paid a courtesy call to Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is serving as acting South Korean president, according to local media reports.

During the meeting, the U.S. defense minister said the two allies should go shoulder-to-shoulder in tackling the DPRK threats, promising to further strengthen their bilateral relations under situations that South Korea is facing the DPRK provocations.

U.S. President Donald Trump, Mattis said, made it clear for him to place a priority on the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

Hwang told Mattis that it was meaningful for Mattis to select South Korea as his first foreign trip destination, given the importance of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and its future development.

The prime minister recently emerged as one of powerful presidential hopefuls in the conservative bloc as former UN chief Ban Ki-moonabruptly pulled out of the presidential race on Wednesday.

The meeting was attended by senior presidential secretary for security and foreign affairs, defense minister and the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on the South Korean side as well as the USFK commander and the acting U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

Mattis will hold talks with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo on Friday morning in the South Korean defense ministry's headquarters in Seoul, before traveling to Japanfor another two-day trip.

Related:

Pentagon chief arrives in S.Korea on 1st official overseas trip

SEOUL, Feb. 2 -- U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis arrived in South Korea on Thursday afternoon on his first overseas trip since he took office about two weeks earlier.

Mattis first went to the headquarters of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in central Seoul, where he was briefed by USFK commander Vincent Brooks on security situations on the Korean Peninsula, including the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s possible launch of a long-range ballistic rocket, according to local media reports.
Early morning fire heavily damages southeast Hutchinson home

Hutchinson resident and his four dogs escaped the home without injury. The cause remains under investigation, fire officials reported.
UPDATE: 400 Indie Artists, Labels Join Bandcamp, Will Donate Share Of Todays Profits To ACLU To Fight Trump Anti-Immigration Actions

Buy something on Bandcamp today! 200 400 indie labels have teamed with Bandcamp to protest Trump's actions against immigrants. Today, Friday, Bandcamp and these artists and labels will donate a share of sales to the ACLU.

__________________________________________

Today, Friday, February 3rd, starting at 12:01am Pacific Time, Bandcamp, along with 200 400 indie labels and artists, will donate a share of today's sales to the American Civil Liberties Union as a protest against the Trump administration's recent anti-immigration actions. Bandcamp will donate 100% of their share of the proceeds of every sale, and the 200 artists and labels will add a share of their sales.

Indie labels participating include Ant-, Epitaph, Merge, Kill Rock Stars and Tompkins Square. The ACLU is fighting to combat The Trump administrations discriminatory and unconstitutional actions.

"Like 98% of U.S. citizens (including the President), I am the descendant of immigrants  my great-grandparents came to America from Russia and Lithuania as teenagers and worked in sweatshops until they were able to afford to bring the rest of their families over," wrote Bandcamp co-founder Ethan Diamond. "Most everyone you speak to in this country has a similar story to tell, because we are, in fact, a nation of immigrants, bound together by a shared belief in justice, equality, and the freedom to pursue a better life. In this context, last weeks Executive Order barring immigrants and refugees from seven Middle Eastern countries from entering the United States is not simply immoral, it violates the very spirit and foundation of America."

"This is not who we are, and it is not what we believe in," he concluded. "We at Bandcamp oppose the ban wholeheartedly, and extend our support to those whose lives have been upended."

To show solidarity with the immigrants and refugees from the seven banned countries, as well as those impacted by the construction of the Mexican border wall, Bandcamp also compiled a list of albums made by artists from the affected countries.

Support the ACLU and indie music by buying something on Bandcamp today!

Here is a list of supporting artists and labels:

Aaron Tap

Abbot Kinney

Advance Base

Al Baker

Alanna McArdle (ex Joanna Gruesome) (Donating to Right to Remain)

Alex Rose

All That Noise For Feeling

American Residue Records

Amplifer

Andy D

Andrew Tuttle

Anti-

Animal Style Records

Anthology Records

Arctic Flowers

Auralgami Sounds

Ba Da Bing Records (Donating to the Nigerian Muslim Association of New York)

Barsuk Records (Proceeds from their compilation Sad! will benefit the ACLU)

Batillus

Blissesb

Blood Music (Donating all revenue from digital sales)

Bloodshot Records

Boilerman

Bones Hamilton

Boogarins (Will donate 10% of their sales of Desvio Onirico)

Broken20

Carbon 7

Casiotone For the Painfully Alone

Champion Lover

Chasing Morgan

Cherub Records

Chin Up!

Chris Polcyn

Cody Yantis

Colleen Raney

Common Ground Records

Conan Neutron and the Secret Friends

Cory J Brewer

Cougar on a Meth Binge

Court Hoang

Crocodile Deathspin

Daylight Robbery

DCTV (Will be donating to the ACLU for the entire month of February)

Dead Lizard Grin

Deathwish, Inc.

Den Miller

Digisaurus

Doll Factory

Dont Stop Now

Duke Buzzy

Epitaph

Eric Peter Schwartz

Esper Scout

Extinction AD

Fact Pattern

Fake Limbs

Father/Daughter Records

Fire Talk Records (Will donate 10% of their sales)

Flannelgraph Records

Fluff and Gravy Records (Will donate 10% of their profits)

Four Tet

Franck Martin

Full Spectrum Records

Further Records (Will donate 100% of digital sales, 50% of physical)

Future of the Left

Gap Tooth

Germany Germany

Get Party Records

Gezzelig Records (All proceeds from Is There Another Language will be donated)

Gidim

Glass House

Golden Halos

Head 2 Wall Records

Her Name is Calla

High Aurad

Hip Kid Records

Hit City U.S.A.

Hop on Pop

Hopeful Monster

Hyperdub

Infinite Best

Interbella

Jameson Elder

Jesse Dangerously

John Heart Jackie

Jonas Newhouse

Jorge Velez

Kaptur

Ken Reid (Will donate 50% of sales to the ACLU)

Kill Rock Stars

Killer Tofu Records

Knuckle Puck

Laura K

Le Barons

Ligature

Lonely Child

Lonely Voyage Records

Loop Crew

Los Campesinos!

Lubec

Luciernaga

Luke Sweeney

Lushlife&#

0160;(Donating all proceeds from My Idols Are Dead mixtape)

Lykanthea (Donating all proceeds on 2/3 to CAIR)

Major Grizz

Mandy Troxel

Marc with a C (Donating all proceeds from digital sales)

Marking

MD Dunn

Melissa Dunphy

Merge Records (Making a donation to the ACLU matching 100% of proceeds from Bandcamp purchases)

Mexican Summer

Midnite Snaxxx

Minks Miracle Medicine

Mint Records

Miracle of Sound

Modern Huge

Mogi Grumbles

Mojave Nomads

Molly Bauckhman

Mothertapes

Mythstery Records

Naal

National Tattler

Negative Fun Records

Nerd Ferguson

Nesh Complex

Night Orchid

Norwegian Arms

Obfusc

Pandafan

Pelican (Donating all sales to Doctors Without Borders)

Pinegrove (Donating all sales to Southern Poverty Law Center)

Planet Creep

Porkys Groove Machine

Post War Glamour Girls

Psychic Troubles Tapes

Quarter Tonality

Rafiq Bhatia

researcher

Reunions

Rhymesayers

Riognach Robinson

Ripped From the Roots

River Whyless

Robot Needs Home

Robert M. Jones

Rock Plaza Central

Rock, Paper, Cynic

Roofhare (Will donate 100% of sales from their newest EP)

Run for Cover

Running Red Lights

Sad13

Sam Moss

Scientific American (Matching every pay more donation)

Screen Vinyl Image (Donating 100% all February to the ACLU)

Sean + Ur Not

Silver Torches

Sloth Hands

Software

Socotra Soundscapes (All proceeds go to Solidarios Sin Fronteras, a Barcelona-based NGO working to rebuild homes and communities on Socotra after the main island was devastated by hurricanes)

Son Lux (All proceeds from At War With Walls and Mazes will be donated to the ACLU for the next four years)

Speedy Ortiz

Spencer Robinson

Split Feet

Still Here Records

Storm Clouds

Sub Pop

Subsquare

Sumeau

Swanning

Swoon Records (Will donate 10% of digital sales)

Tape Waves

Tax Brandywine

The Big Bend

The Big Ups

The Bryan Adams

The Envlps

The Fog Signals

The Foul English

The Riftshifters

The Sound of the Ladies

This is Hell

This Soil is Diseased (Donating $100 plus any other revenue to the ACLU)

Tompkins Square

Tribal Realites

Ultrakylstron

Up & Go

Versus the World

War Records

Washer (Donating to the Council on Islamic Relations)

Weird At Last

Whimsically Macabre

Wild Wild Wets

William Selman

Willy Porter

Xiu Xiu (Donating 100% of revenue from Bandcamp sales for the next four years to the ACLU)

Zulu Panda

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It was results day for specialist insurer and underwriter, Beazley  and one that it has been able to celebrate with a good performance across the board.The company, which is based in London but has a US arm, reported profits before tax of $293.2 million in 2016. This represented an increase from $284.0 million during the previous year. Its gross written premiums also climbed  reaching $2,195.6 million, up from $2,080.9 million.Our strong broker relationships and established position in a diverse range of business lines and geographies enable us to pivot toward more profitable opportunities as margins come under pressure in certain areas, explained chief executive Andrew Horton.The pattern we have seen in recent years continued in 2016: large risk, catastrophe exposed business, which we mainly underwrite out of London, saw further rate declines, whereas rates for smaller liability business held firm. Our locally underwritten US business - mainly comprising small professional liability, management liability and cyber risks - accordingly grew strongly, by 20% to $695.7 million.Its combined ratio did slip from 87% to 89%, but chairman Dennis Holt was pleased to remain below 90% given the market turmoil of the last year.Beazley has weathered multiple underwriting cycles in three decades and, at this juncture, our focus is on maintaining underwriting discipline across the business classes that have seen rates continue to fall, he said in a statement. We have accordingly further trimmed our exposures to energy risks, large scale commercial property, and reinsurance.Going forward, Holt believes there are many opportunities for Beazley amid the challenges, highlighting that the companys specialty lines has grown strongly with gross premiums $1,159.8m in 2016 (2015: $1,015.2m), 14% up on the previous year. This business, he said, was buoyed by the relatively attractive premium rates for small scale risks that our mature US operations are now well equipped to handle.In addition, he pointed to a willingness to partner with other insurers or reinsurers to exploit attractive growth opportunities as an area of potential growth, pointing to the partnership forged in 2016 with Munich Re to underwrite large scale cyber risks. Indeed the cyber market itself is also seen as an opportunity.
Philippine President RodrigoDuterte on Tuesday asks China to patrol southern international waters leading to the Malacca Strait and the Sulu Sea, with the aim of stopping the expansion of extremism and piracy in the area.

"I also asked China if it can patrol the international waters without necessarily intruding into the territorial waters of countries," Duterte said in a speech to Filipino generals, Japan's Kyodo News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Duterte said he would like China to dispatch a fleet like it did when it sent naval convoy to the Gulf of Aden to protect Chinese ships from Somali pirates.

Chinese government data shows the country has taken an active role in protecting vessels against pirate attacks and combating piracy since 2009, and has sent more than 20 naval fleets to the Gulf of Aden and waters off Somalia.

Maritime kidnappings in the Sulu Sea is "especially worrisome," with waters off the southern Philippines becoming increasingly dangerous, according to the International Maritime Bureau earlier this month.
The Chubb family is in mourning after the passing of industry leader John Cox at the age of 84.Cox was the founding chairman and first employee of ACE Limited, which acquired the Chubb Corporation last year and adopted its name. Described in a company statement as a giant in the property and casualty insurance industry, Cox was considered one of the most accomplished and respected industry leaders of his generation.What John put in motion more than 30 years ago in helping to found, lead and shape ACE in its formative years is a noteworthy legacy, and we honor his vision and achievements, said Evan Greenberg, chairman and chief executive officer of Chubb. Those who knew and worked with John remember him giving generously of his time in order to share his industry knowledge, and of fostering a dynamic environment where people could learn and grow. He will be missed by colleagues and friends. Our thoughts are with his family.Cox was described as a forward thinking pioneer who created an insurance company during an availability crisis in the US market. ACE was formed with founding sponsors from 34 blue chip companies across a range of industries.However, Coxs insurance career spans back much further. He entered the industry in 1959 as an accounting clerk at AIG , before joining the Insurance Company of North America, becoming president and, in 1981, taking on the role of senior executive vice president and chief operating officer for its parent company, INA. INA later merged with the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company to create Cigna, for which Cox was executive vice president for property and casualty insurance operations.Cox grew up in Boston, Massachusetts and also served in the Marine Corps during the Korean War.
The company considered to be the largest reinsurer in the world may purchase big businesses outside its sector if prices go down, a top executive has hinted. Munich Re CFO Jorg Schneider told German newspaper Handelsblatt that the industry giant is interested in making large acquisitions in the primary insurance sector. However, the company is being held back by potential costs.Schneider said acquisitions are too expensive and do not reflect the increasing global uncertainty. He doubted that prices may come down soon.We are open to large acquisitions but the prices simply havent been right in recent years, Handelsblatt quoted Schneider as saying.If we were to make an acquisition, however, then it wouldnt be in traditional reinsurance, he added.Schneider said the ideal acquisition partners would be the primary insurance companies with specialisations that can grow Munich Res expertise.The report on Munich Res acquisitions comes amid the continuing saga on the possible merger or sale of Generali to other insurance giants, including Germanys Allianz and Frances AXA Last week, Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo, another company circling Generali, confirmed that it was examining potential industrial combinations with the insurer.
Page Content

Montreal, 02 February 2017  Representatives of 25 countries gathered in Antigua and Barbuda this week for the latest ICAO Traveller Identification Programme (TRIP) Strategy Seminar.



Hosted by the Ministry of Public Utilities, Civil Aviation and Transportation of Antigua and Barbuda, the events primary goal was to improve identity management and travel document security systems and processes.



ICAO Council President Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu delivered the opening address to the 180 government and industry seminar participants in attendance, acknowledging that global implementation of ICAOs related Security and Facilitation provisions must be augmented.



The ICAO TRIP strategy is designed to assist States in enhancing the fight against terrorism, reducing cross-border crime, and combating various threats to international civil aviation, he highlighted. It supports efforts relating to the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions 2178 and 2309, as well as State capacities relating to the establishment, protection, and management of citizen identity to permit more dependably secure travel document production and border control systems.



With on-site support from ICAO technical experts, delegates to the Antigua and Barbuda TRIP Seminar learned to improve their identification management systems by establishing robust evidence of identity and citizenship processes. These in turn help to strengthen passport issuance processes in compliance with ICAOs related standards and specifications.



Participants also gained new insights into how to improve the throughput of their border control systems by increasing the number of Automated Border Control (ABC) gates, and learned how ePassport features in conjunction with Advanced Passenger Information (API) can greatly aid in combating terrorism and trans-border crime.



President Aliu also drew attention to the benefits of ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD) membership in his address, emphasizing that it is essential if States wish to capitalize on the full security and facilitation benefits that ePassports are meant to deliver. PKD membership enables States to fully benefit from ePassport chip-based security features, and are key to hindering the movements of international terrorists.



Going forward, more intensified advocacy efforts are needed to underscore the role of the PKD as a fundamental contributor to effective border integrity, he stressed.



The ICAO Seminar was arranged to be conducted back-to-back with an ICAO TRIP Workshop on Border Control Management in the Caribbean Region, where officials from 13 States will be on hand. Supported by the Government of Canada, the Workshop will be conducted in partnership with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), and with the collaboration of additional international organizations.



These cooperative efforts are fully in-line with ICAOs No Country Left Behind objectives, President Aliu highlighted, referencing ICAOs ongoing global effort to provide comprehensive assistance and capacity-building to States in aid of the more effective implementation of the UN agencys global Standards and policies.



Mr. Jean-Paul Laborde, UN CTED Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director, added that the Executive Directorate fully supports the ICAO TRIP Strategy and its aim to develop a holistic and systematic model for traveller-identification management. This ensures that all States have the capacity to verify the identity of individuals prior to the issuance of secure travel documents, compliant with international standards.

Resources for Editors

ICAO Security and Facilitation programmes and policies

The ICAO Public Key Directory (PKD)

ICAO API Guidelines

ICAO TRIP Seminar on machine readable travel documents and traveller identification management

ICAOs and Aviations Contributions to the UN SDGs

About ICAO



A specialized agency of the United Nations, ICAO was created in 1944 to promote the safe and orderly development of international civil aviation throughout the world. It sets standards and regulations necessary for aviation safety, security, efficiency, capacity and environmental protection, amongst many other priorities. The Organization serves as the forum for cooperation in all fields of civil aviation among its 191 Member States.

Contacts

Anthony Philbin

Chief, Communications

aphilbin@icao.int

+1 514-954-8220

+1 438-402-8886 (mobile)

Twitter: @ICAO

William Raillant-Clark

Communications Officer

wraillantclark@icao.int

+1 514-954-6705

+1 514-409-0705 (mobile)

Twitter: @wraillantclark
We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector

We work towards an equitable,

gender-just, self-reliant and

sustainable fisheries,

particularly in the small-scale,

artisanal sector
Ten thousand pounds per month. That's the money the Japanese Embassy in London has been paying to a British think tank for its work to hype up China threat and propagate against China-UK relations, said a Sunday Times report.

As an official representative of a sovereign country in Britain, the Japanese Embassy's act, if proved to be true, is surprising and despicable.

In this alleged diplomatic scandal, the embassy has hired the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a right-wing think tank, to encourage high-level British politicians and journalists to "voice opposition to Chinese foreign policy."

A recent example is an article published in August 2016 questioning China's involvement in Britain's Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. Former British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has confirmed that he had been approached by the HJS to put his name to the article.

Fear over China's rapid development and its sound relations with Britain has been seen as a major motive behind the Japanese Embassy's indecent campaign against its neighbor.

But such a trick will neither help Japan, whose economy is struggling, nor deter China's growing ties with Western countries. It only reveals a serious deficiency in Tokyo's self-confidence.

Meanwhile, one cannot help wondering if there are other Japanese embassies that are working on similar projects to tarnish the image of China.

Since the disclosure of the allegations, the Japanese government and media as well as the embassy in London have chosen to remain silent.

Silence is by no means gold in this case. It probably means embarrassment.

The trick carried out by the HJS did not work. The British government gave the green light to the Hinkley Point C project. It is a sign of bilateral confidence in and mutual commitment to a "golden era" of Britain's post-Brexitrelations with China.

For the HJS, which poses as "a policy shaping force fighting for the principles of free society," its involvement in this money-driven trick is a slap on its own face.
The Chinese proverb "the weasel pays respect to the hen without the best of intentions" became all too real with the arrival of the Year of the Rooster. Recently, a picture of a "Siberian weasel" paying New Year respects to a hen went viral during the Chinese New Year holiday. However, the "Siberian weasel" in the picture was not Siberian, said an expert.

"The animal in the picture is not a Siberian weasel. It's a least weasel," said Dr. Zhang Jinshuo, who works at the Institute of Zoology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, adding that Siberian weasels are larger than least weasels. According to Zhang, the main difference between the two is that Siberian weasels have a pale back and belly and a black face.

Zhang also noted the proverb and pointed out that weasels do not usually eat chickens. Typically, they eat other small animals like rats. He said weasels only attack chickens and other domestic fowl when they are starving and no other food source can be found.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 10 times violated the ceasefire in various directions along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry told Trend Feb. 3.

The Azerbaijani army positions located on the nameless heights of Azerbaijans Gazakh district underwent fire from the Armenian army positions located on the nameless heights of the Noyemberyan district of Armenia.

Moreover, the Azerbaijani army positions were shelled from the Armenian positions located on the nameless heights of the Armenian-occupied Goranboy and Fuzuli districts of Azerbaijan.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

The Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs of Pakistans National Assembly has passed a resolution condemning the occupation of Azerbaijani territories by Armenia, said a message posted on the Pakistani TV channels website khybernews.tv.

The resolution was passed during the meeting of the Committee held in Islamabad on Feb. 3. The resolution also condemned the genocide committed by Armenian armed forces in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly on February 26, 1992, against civilian population.

The Committee re-affirmed the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders.

The Committee demanded implementation of resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly on immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and called upon the international community and international organizations to urge Armenia for the implementation of these decisions.

The Committee supported the efforts of the Republic of Azerbaijan to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by peaceful means.

On February 25-26, 1992, the Armenian armed forces, together with the 366th infantry regiment of Soviet troops, stationed in Khankendi, committed an act of genocide against the population of the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly. As many as 613 people, including 63 children, 106 women and 70 old people were killed as a result of the massacre. Eight families were totally exterminated, 130 children lost one parent and 25 children lost both. A total of 487 civilians became disabled as a result of the onslaught. Some 1,275 innocent residents were taken hostage, while the fate of 150 people still remains unknown.

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.
The Fellowship to Host Baptist Leaders in Israel

The Fellowship | February 3, 2017 The Fellowship to Host Baptist Leaders in Israel

One of The Fellowships missions has always been to build bridges of faith between Christians and Jews. This outreach will be on display this month, reports The San Diego Jewish World, when we host a group of American Baptist leaders on their trip to the Holy Land:

Fourteen American Baptist leaders will visit Israel from Feb. 13-20 with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship), to learn firsthand about the Jewish state while strengthening Christian support for Israel and Christian-Jewish alliances.

The six-day trip will bring 14 Baptist leaders to Israels Christian and Jewish holy sites such as the Wailing Wall and Old City of Jerusalem, Masada and the Sea of Galilee, and biblical sites such as Caesarea, Muhraka (Horn of Carmel) and Megido. The group will also visit Israels Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.

Thanks to The Fellowship, this trip will help us build bridges with the Jewish people while helping us to serve our congregations and in turn to serve G-d, said Rev. Samuel Tolbert, a trip leader and president of the National Baptist Convention of America (NBCA).

The Baptist leaders are the most recent major Christian group to visit Israel with The Fellowship. In the summer of 2015, The Fellowship hosted 21 top ministers of the Detroit-based Pentecostal group the Church of God In Christ, while in in January 2016, it brought 22 top clergy of the Washington, D.C.-based Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC), the movement of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., to Israel. In May of last year, 26 leaders of the second-largest African-American Baptist group in the U.S., the NBCA, came to Israel with The Fellowship, and last September The Fellowship brought 22 leaders from the Bahamas-based Global United Fellowship (GUF) to Israel.

We are honored to welcome these outstanding Baptist leaders in Israel, said Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of The Fellowship. This important mission will not only strengthen the powerful connection between Christians and Jews, but will remind Israel and the Jewish people of the unconditional love and support we receive from our Christian friends.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

Russia welcomes any public initiative aimed at peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, said the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

She made the remarks Feb. 3 while commenting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace, created in Azerbaijan, according to a message on the Russian Foreign Ministrys website.

We highly appreciate the role of public diplomacy in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Zakharova said. Raising awareness within social circles about the need to peacefully seek mutually acceptable compromise solution to the conflict is the most important mission.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a direct threat to the security and stability of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zakharova added.

For the purposes of contributing to peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Armenia-Azerbaijan Platform for Peace was established on Dec. 6, 2016. The Platform is an initiative of the citizens of Azerbaijan and Armenia who wish to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

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.




This Isnt Our Last Love Letter



Dear Don Don,

Way back in 92



I walked into the room and knew



Never felt this way before



I shook your hand while gazing into your eyes



And the feeling grew



As I took a seat I knew



A love that would have my heart



Forever



I knew



Way back in 92





They say love at first sight doesnt always last or isnt true



We were the exception to that rule



Our love had no where to hide



A spark set fire



As if this is how the universe started





I never doubted our love or what we could do



Together we grew



Forming a bond everlasting



That became our glue



My euphoria was YOU



Im eternally grateful for the love and life we shared



For how fortunate we were :



to have and to hold

through sickness and in health

Til death do us part



Until we are together again



This isnt our last love letter



I love you with all my heart and soul



Yours forever,



Deirdre (Mrs. Hank Snow)





Im fortunate to have fallen in love with, marry and make a life with the sharpest, coolest, funniest, most rare, bad ass, tender loving, loyal man on the planet, my husband Don Imus.









A True American Hero

I dont know why it has been so hard for me to write about my dear friend Don Imus.



I certainly know what he meant to me, my family, my charity, my hospital and the millions of fans that listened and loved him for so many years.



I keep reading all the beautiful condolences that people are writing about how much a part of their lives were effected by listening to him over the years.

But what most people dont talk enough about is what he did for all of us.

In every sense of the word, he was an American Hero. His work with children with so many different illnesses and his dedication to their future was unmatched by anyone I have ever known or heard about.



Besides raising over $100,000,000 for so many causes, he took care of young people for over 20 years in a state where he could not breathe. Along with his incredible wife Deirdre, he created a world where children were not defined by their disease. That was a miracle! He was a miracle.

I will miss him ever day for the rest of my life.

I was blessed to be a part of his and Deirdes life.

No one will ever do what he did.

I love you Don Imus - A TRUE AMERICAN HERO





David Jurist

IMUS IN THE MORNING

FIRST DAY BACK!
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3



By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:



The Armenian leadership is infamous for its fascist statements, Vahid Bayramov, a representative of the Israel-Azerbaijan International Association in Azerbaijan, told Trend Feb. 3.



Bayramov was commenting on the attempt of the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) to compare a phrase about the Armenian diaspora parasitizing on the US with a quote related to Jews, from Adolf

Hitlers book.



ANCA attempted to distort the phrases brought by Trend Agencys author in an article dealing with the rapidly worsening situation of the Armenian diaspora in the US.



Bayramov said that words about the Armenian diaspora parasitizing on the US have no relation to the Armenian people, and refer specifically to the Armenian diaspora.



Let me remind you that it was the ex-president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan who said that Armenians and Azerbaijanis are genetically incompatible. Such phrases refer directly to Alfred Rosenberg, who was engaged in studying and measuring human skulls, thus identifying people as Aryans and non-Aryans, Bayramov said.



The Armenian diaspora, and in particular its leaders, are a bunch of people trying to push through their own interests, and some get fooled by it, Bayramov added.



He noted that its natural for the government of Armenia and its diaspora to engage in provocations and distortions of this kind.



They like to call things by different names, making provocative statements, Bayramov said. Namely their actions can be compared to the policy of the Third Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.



The phrase The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed is widely attributed to Goebbels, Bayramov added.
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

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Tim Steiner has a work of art inked on him, but hes only the temporary frame.

He was tattooed a decade ago by Belgian artist Wim Delvoye - know for his controversial work on pigs - the design on his back he volunteered to be the canvas for involving a haloed Madonna, a Mexican-style skull, swallows, rose, joe fish and children frolicking among lotus flowers and taking 40 hours to complete.

In 2008, the work, entitled TIM, was sold to German art collector Rik Reinking, with Steiner getting a third of the sum.

He currently exhibits the work in art galleries (and anywhere he has his shirt off, presumably), but the exhibitions wont stop when he dies.

As part of the deal, Steiner has agreed to be skinned after his death, with his skin being permanently framed and residing in Reinkings art collection.

A previous Delvoye exhibition involved seven stuffed and tattooed pigs (Photo: Getty) (AFP/Getty Images)

"The work of art is on my back, I'm just the guy carrying it around," 40-year-old Steiner, from Zurich, told the BBC.

Recommended Sharing bad tattoos with renowned artist Scott Campbell

"My skin belongs to Rik Reinking now," he says. "My back is the canvas, I am the temporary frame."

Some may find this gruesome, but Steiner doesnt see it that way.

"Gruesome is relative," he countered.

"It's an old concept - in Japanese tattoo history it's been done many, many times. If it's framed nicely and looks good, I think it's not such a bad idea.

"Tattooers are incredible artists who've never really been accepted in the contemporary art world. Painting on canvas is one thing, painting on skin with needles is a whole other story."
Sign up to Roisin OConnors free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice Thanks for signing up to the

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Everything started when I was doing the DJ-Kicks, and we started these tracks with my favourite people in the world. And Axel was on that list.

Spanish producer John Talabot is explaining his upcoming album The Night Land with Swedish artist Axel Boman, released under their moniker Talaboman.

The pair met at a festival years ago and became friends after performing a back-to-back DJ set (10 hours long). Remixing one anothers work led to their first proper track together.

Axel came here for some days in Barcelona and we thought we should do another EP, and that turned into two EPs, and that became an album... Talabot explains.

It took two years to get to the point where they felt ready to release the full album, partly because they travelled between Stockholm and Barcelona to record, rather than sending one another music over the internet.

Listening to the new record, you can tell that they were in the same room while they were working, The Night Land has a warm, coherent sound that is full of colour, and with a sense of fun that shines through.

We have a similar sense of humour, we laugh a lot, we can be completely silly, Boman says.

Even the name, Talaboman sounds a bit stupid, Talabot adds. We were really having fun in the studio together. It was so easy, I really enjoy working with him and not on my own it felt like a proper thing we wanted to do, not for any particular reason.

Boman (left) and Talabot learnt to trust one anothers instinct (supplied) (Supplied)

Scheisse. Boman utters the Swedish expletive before his end of the Skype conversation cuts out.

I think we lost him, Talabot says mournfully, then continues. Its always that funny, with us. Its cool to travel with him. At least its more exciting than just going on your own, this pair of geeks.

It was a really important part of the process also. We have fun playing together and we wanted to continue doing that. Its a way to escape from the routine. And things get more relaxed when youre not on your own because not everything is under your control. You cant have everything your way... you have to find the place where both are comfortable.

Enjoy unlimited access to 70 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up

Recommended Bonobo talks new album Migration and the UK music community in LA

Boman returns to the conversation. Well, that wasnt frustrating at all. What did I miss?

The interviews finished, Talabot jokes, and they both laugh.

Usually when youre in a band situation theres a hierarchy, Boman picks up. You take care of the drums, youre on the synths, etc.

But with us its always been a very floating process. We have good and bad qualities on everything, and we can switch roles as soon as someone gets a little bit bored of it. The more barriers there are to break in the studio, the better music it makes.

Both of them sound pretty devoid of ego  Talabot says they learned how to trust one anothers instinct so there were few, if any, tantrums in the studio.

The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Show all 20 1 /20 The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Beyonce The Demands: 1 Large table for catering dressed with white tablecloths. Dressing room should be 78 degrees 4 Brand New White Towels in bathroom (2 face & 2 body) Hot Food: Juicy Baked Chicken: Legs, Wings & Breast only (Please season with fresh garlic, season salt, black pepper, and Cayenne pepper HEAVILY SEASONED!!) Steamed Garlic Broccoli Lightly Seasoned Green Beans Lightly Seasoned Steamed Spinach Beyonce can only have Pepsi products. 1 Case of Aquafina water (half cold, half room temperature) 1 Hot Tea Set up (Please have NEW Coffee Pot) Sliced Lemons Wedges Rose scented candles Lighter for candles CD player Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Adele The Demands: 12 Small bottles still (non-carbonated) spring water (at room temperature) 1 Electric kettle for BOILING water 6 Large mugs for tea. All mugs should be new, washed and dried. 6 metal teaspoons 2 Squeezy bottles clear honey (not organic) 1 Bottle very best quality red wine (Italian, French or Spanish) 1 Assortment of chewing gum 1 Pack Marlboro Light plus 1 disposable cigarette lighter 1 Small selection fresh fruit, to include bananas, apples, grapes, fresh berries NO CITRUS FRUIT! 1 Small plate of assorted freshly made, individually wrapped sandwiches, to include chicken salad. Sandwiches must NOT contain tomatoes, vinegar, chili or citrus fruit PA The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Kanye West The Demands: 1 Tub Plain Yogurt for dipping 4 small Yoplait Yogurt 1 Bowl of assorted nuts 1 Bowl of Sunkist Salted Pistachio Nuts (No Red Coloring) 2 Packs of Extra Chewing Gum 1 Bottle of Hot Sauce (Tabasco, Caribbean Type) 1 Box of Toothpicks 1 750 ml bottle of Hennessey Liquor 1 750 ml bottle of SKY or Absolut Vodka 1 Bottle of Patron Silver Tequila 4 Six Packs of Heineken Beer Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty, David Parsons/iStock The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Rihanna The Demands: 5 AC power outlets Adequate lighting for a relaxed atmosphere White drapes to cover lockers and/or brick 1 Humidifier 1 Large throw rug  plush and animal print (Cheetah, Leopard)  must be CLEAN, as she will walk on it barefoot. Pipe and Drape the room in Dark Blue or Black drapes with Icy Blue Chiffon draped nicely on top 6 Candles  Archipelago Black Forest (if you can't get these, please let me know ASAP as we have a 2nd choice of candle for Ri). 4 Small, clear, square vases with White Tulips, no foliage (2nd choice: White Casablanca Lilies no foliage, 3rd choice: White Freesia, no foliage) The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Katy Perry The Demands: Arrangement of pink fresh flowers. White and purple hydrangeas, pink & white roses and peonies. If not available, seasonal white flowers to include white orchidsABSOLUTELY NO CARNATIONS. A box of Huggies baby nature care wipes 6 Vitamin waters zero, assorted flavors Bowl of whole fresh organic grown fruit (apples, bananas, oranges and grapes) Plate of fresh-cut Crudites (to include cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, snap peas, celery) w/ ranch dip Snyder's of Hanover Honey Mustard & Onion Pretzel Jar of Salsa Baked (blue corn if possible) Tortilla Chips Freeze dried strawberries 2 bottles of Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio Throat coat, Twinnings Chamomile PG tips and Mint medley tea. Fuze slenderize assorted flavors A jar of quality honey Plastic drinking straws AFP/Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Paul McCartney The Demands: All lamps must be halogen floor lamps with dimmer switch. Only animal free materials (cottons, denims, velour, etc.) Do not provide furniture made of any animal skin or print. Do not provide artificial versions of animal skin or print either. No leather seating is allowed in the black stretch limousine either. Arrange for a dry cleaner before arrival. 6 Full and leafy floor plants, but no trees. We want plants that are just as full on the bottom as the top such as palm, bamboo, peace lilies, etc. No tree trunks! $50.00 - One large arrangement of white Casablanca lilies with lots of foliage. $40.00 - One long stemmed arrangement of pale pink and white roses with lots of foliage. $35 One arrangement of freesia. It comes in various colors so please mix them up. Freesia is a favorite. 20 dozen clean towels outside of the production office AP The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Mariah Carey The Demands: Each room must be draped. Black drapes are fine. The entry door should open into the living room space, not the dressing room. Temperature should be about 75 degrees. 1 Three Seat Couch  Plain Color, no busy patterns; black, dark grey, cream, dark pink are fine 12 1 Liters of Fiji Water 3 Bottles Chardonnay  Chilled 12 Coke 12 Diet Coke 12 Vanilla Protein Drinks 6 Sparkling Water (Pellegrino) 12 Melon Flavor Gatorade 6 Red Wine Glasses 6 White Wine Glasses 4 Joe Malone Vanilla Candles 2 Vases White Roses Fried Chicken (warm) 12 Small Bottles water (room temperature) 3 Whole lemons and honey Sugarless gum Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Eminem The Demands: 25 pound dumbbells 24-Diet Coke 16oz plastic bottles 12 Diet Coke 12oz cans 6 Verner ginger ale soda (or Schweppes) 48 Daisani, Poland Spring 12oz bottles NO Evian 1 Loaf white bread 1 Loaf wheat bread 6 Lunchables snacks (3 turkeys & 3 ham with cheese) 6 Cans Red Bull 16 Cans Sugar-Free Red Bull Large fresh jumbo shrimps with cocktail sauce and plenty of lemons 1 Jar of banana pepper rings Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Grace Jones The Demands: 6 Bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne 3 Bottles of French Vintage red wine (e.g. St Emilion, Medoc, Bordeaux) 3 Bottles of French Vintage white wine (e.g. Sancerre, Pouilly Fuisse) 2 Dozen Findeclare or Colchester Oysters on ice (unopened)(Grace does her own shucking.) 2 Sashimi and Sushi platters for 8 people 6 Fresh lemons 1 Bottle of Tabasco sauce 1 Fresh fruit platter for 8 people 6 Bottles of Coca Cola 12 Bottles of still and sparkling water 12 Bottles of fresh fruit juices Wine glasses, champagne flutes, tumblers (all glass, no plastic) Cutlery and sharp knife 1 Oyster knife 1 Make up mirror (no neon strip lighting, only opaque white bulbs) Fresh towels, clothes hangers, clothes rail 3-4 Bunches of flowersprefer lilys and orchids Sofa and arm chairs Andy Sturmey The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Drake The Demands: Four dozen natural-scented incense sticks Dr. Bronners peppermint soap Pork-free food E-Z Wider rolling papers and a pack of Dutch Master President cigars Pinot Grigio Heineken Bottles of Jack Daniels Patron Silver tequila Nivea chapstick A bottle of Hennesey or Courvoisier Grey Goose Andis T-Outliner trimmers Extra sets of speakers champagnepapi/Instagram The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Jack White The Demands: 1 dozen chicken wings (buffalo, teryaki, suprise us) 1 bowl of FRESH HOME-MADE GUACAMOLE 8 champagne flutes (real glass) 8 wine glasses (real glass) 8 highball glasses (real glass) 1 hummus & pita chips iPod player with sufficient volume control NO fluorescent lighting PLEASE NOTE: This is a NO BANANA TOUR. (Seriously) Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Madonna The Demands: 200-person entourage 2o international phone lines Her backstage room must look exactly like her own home (that means she ships around her furniture) Special flower-scented fabric Actual flowers Personal chef who prepares only vegan foods Her own dry-cleaning service AP The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Alicia Keys Alicia Keys performs at the UEFA Champions League Final Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Jay Z The Demands: 7 sets of metal silverware 1 Lighter 3 Glade Candles (French Vanilla, Rain shower, Wild Berry, Tangerine Ginger) 3 Cans of Chunk White Tuna 10 Nutri-Grain Bars (Blueberry, Cherry, Apple, Strawberry) 6 Individual Packets of Quaker Oats Instant Oatmeal (Brown Sugar and Apple Cinnamon) 1 Assorted Fruit Platter with strawberries, seedless red grapes, bananas, mango, blueberries, cantaloupe and raspberries 2 Cases of beer (one imported and one domestic; brands preferred: Amstel Light, Corona, Bud, Bud Light or local beer) 3 menus for local seafood and Italian restaurants to order meals for Alicia Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Mary J. Blige The Demands: 2 Humidifiers 10 medium prewashed bath sized towels NO DAIRY OR PORK OF ANY KIND!! 10 1.5 liter bottles of FIJI water (absolutely, positively must be FIJI) 6 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper 6 cans of Schweeps Ginger Ale 2 packs of Mentos  cinnamon fresh only 6 cans of Red Bull energy drink 6 bottles of Black Cherry Propells in sports bottle 8 sets of silverware 24 napkins 1 tub of clean ice Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Lady Gaga The Demands: 2 Bottles of white wine with wine opener  Kendall Jackson or Robert Mondavi preferred 1 Pack of Straws 1 Cushioned office style chair TV with cable and a DVD player 1 Rolling clothing rack 4 Unscented candles Cool-mist humidifier 3 fans Tea kettle, organic ginger and lemongrass tea and honey are very important. 1 4 pack of Red Bull Light (on ice) 2 Bottles of Green Tea 1 Container of Guacamole Hot dogs (Yves veggie dogs eaten with toothpicks) A smoothie station (with frozen berries, fuze and whey protein or non-fat Greek yogurt) Blender needed 1 Plate of cheese (non-smelly, non-sweaty on ice) with whole wheat/healthy crackers A mix of assorted fresh fruit (cut and must have edible skin OR edible seeds OR citrus) Getty The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Cher The Demands: 1 Wig Room 1 Room for Dr. Stacey 1 bottle of fine red wine (No Kendall Jackson) 1 bottle of fine white wine (No Kendall Jackson) 4 Cokes 4 Diet Cokes 1 coffee table 1 end table for the phone to be placed on TV with VCR with a cable Hook up. Please make sure we can get the following channels: Turner Classic Movies or AMC The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Taylor Swift The Demands: If arriving before 11 a.m., the following from Starbucks: 1 Grande ICED Caramel Latte w/ 2 sweet-n-lows 1 Grande ICED Americano w/ 2 sweet-n-lows with soy milk 1 slice pumpkin loaf 1 Stick Butter 3 Boxes Kraft Macaroni/Cheese 2 Four Packs of Red Bull 1 12 Pack Corona Beer 1 12 Pack New Castle Beer 1 Bottle Welch's Grape Juice 1 Avocado 1 Bag of Twizzlers red licorice 1 Case of Smart Water 1 Pint Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream 1 Pint Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Brownie Frozen Yogurt The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Iggy Pop The Demands: A copy of USA Today that's got a story about morbidly obese people in it 6 bottles of Grolsch or decent local beer F loads of good red wines 6 large bottles of good quality sparkling water 3 cases x 12 oz bottles of still mineral water 6 bottles of alcohol free beer 1 case of big bottles of good, premium beer A bottle of vodka Cauliflower/broccoli, cut into individual florets and thrown immediately into the garbage. I f hate that Getty Images The 20 most ridiculous things superstar musicians have demanded at their concerts Van Halen The Demands: Nuts Pretzels M&MS (WARNING: ABSOLUTELY NO BROWN ONES) 1 large tube of KY jelly 3 packs of Marlboro cigarettes (box) Herring in sour cream 2 gallons non-carbonated, bottled spring water 3 fifths Jack Daniels Black Label bourbon 2 fifths Stolichnaya vodka 1 pint Southern Comfort 2 bottles Blue Nun white wine Getty Images

Its like an exercise for us, sort of therapy, Talabot says. Its really funny because you get to places you wouldnt get to on your own.

While some of each artists solo work brings in a lo-fi, outdoors kind of sound  Bomans in particular uses noises from nature  The Night Land is more introspective, exploring a universe that still maintains these multiple layers and tempos, but somehow that has more of an indoors feel.

I think Axel is really good with the samples he picked for his tracks, Talabot says. We both like this emotional side to sampling, things that remind you of a tiny moment, where you can totally tell in Axels album [Family Vacation], the way he samples is super emotional.

The way we use this material on Talaboman, we didnt sample so much as when we work on our own, we recorded way more. It was a really exciting process for our nerdy side, having all the gear to play with.

I like that some music can sound outdoors and indoors, Boman adds. I can understand how someone could feel that. John has always worked in a more introspective way. A lot of music you can close your eyes and drift away...

I like to cry, Talabot chips in.

You can cry to pop songs also though, Axel says laughing. The tears are accessed both ways. This record was more inwards-turned than most of the music that I usually do.

You define the sound palate of the project quite early, Talabot says. So somehow it was easier. Taloboman is this world of bleeping things, delays, synths, crazy samples it was fun.

The cool thing is that everything was recorded audio. Every time I was travelling to Axels studio I didnt want to travel with plug-ins and stuff. So at the end, using this process made every track different, but it has some workflow that unifies it. If you take everything it sounds coherent. Its strange, it just happened.

Boman reminds Talabot that not all of the recording process was smooth-sailing.

Trying to get a Scandinavian work ethic with a Catalan work ethic... He breathes out dramatically. Theres a big difference.

I want to get to the studio at 10 in the morning and work until 8pm, then have a beer and get drunk until midnight. John wants to sleep until 10, check his mail until midday, have a sandwich, check his mail again. Then at 2 oclock hell have a Catalan lunch, and that lasts for around two hours...

Thats totally exaggerated, Talabot interrupts in protest.

Its not, Boman says. Then hell come to the studio around 5. Then he wants to sit until 3 or 4 in the morning. It f**ks up my beer routine.

This is where all the tension and unspoken grudges from the great working relationship come out, then?

I think Axel loved these nice breakfasts that we were having, he was pushing me to go, Talabot insists.

I did... but I also enjoy those days where you get up early, do a full day in the studio, and then look back and watch a movie and not feel guilty about anything, Boman says playfully.

Thats some Christian morality, it doesnt work here in Barcelona.

I love it, Boman reassures him. I loved that freedom of not having schedules.

The duos album is released next month

Both artists have done well to get their music heard outside of their respective countries, perhaps more so for Talabot, who still feels that Spain has a problem with getting artists to find international success.

Maybe because were not so good with English, he muses, then: But we have Julio Iglesias, so its not so bad.

Not as good as Enrique [Iglesias], my friend, Axel says.

Sometimes where you try to bring things up from Spain, people dont pay attention... sometimes you need people from outside countries, Talabot says.

Hes speaking from experience. Sunshine, a sort of space-disco track that effortlessly fused house, Krautrock, and Spiritualized influences, was picked up by the likes of The Guardian and Pitchfork, the latter of whom rather famously named it among their Top 100 Tracks in 2009.

That was a really weird situation, Talabot says. It was just a sample thing, and then it went big, and I thought maybe it shouldnt have been so big. But you dont get to choose that kind of thing. If Id have planned it, it wouldnt have happened. And Im pretty sure my album was some kind of response to Sunshine, to show that my music was more than that one track.

I really hope that this album can create the same expectation musically as what the recording represents, Talabot says. So we could play even weirder and slower and trippier music to what youd expect in a club night. It could be a nice gateway to experience something different.

I kind of hate myself for agreeing to be called Talaboman, Boman says suddenly. Because some bands can be called Godspeed You! Black Emperor and were called Talaboman. But I think anything you say a thousand times will stick. Its fine.

The Night Land, the album by Talaboman (John Talabot and Axel Boman) is released on 3 March 2017 via R&S Records  pre-order here
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Radio stations across Republican heartland states keep getting their signals hacked to broadcast rapper YG and Nipsey Hussles anti-Trump anthem Fuck Donald Trump.

The past two weeks has seen stations in South Carolina, Indiana, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky all fall victim to unexpected plays of FDT, according to The Verge and several other sources.

Crescent Hill Radio in Kentucky - which usually plays all local music had to go off the air completely in order to fix the recurring problem, with 100.5 KCGF-LP in Texas, El Jefe 96.7 in Tennessee and Catholic station Mother of the Redeemer (which can be seen posted about Trump below) in Indiana also affected.

Our internet has been HACKED at our transmitter site and the station has played anti-Trump songs. This is NOT our broadcast! WFBS-FM in South Carolina wrote on its Facebook page.

It seems hackers gained access through Barix Estreamer devices that many stations use.

Other stations that it happened to have contacted me, and we all used the same device, and none of us had set a password to the device, Kathy Weisbach, founder and president of Crescent Hill, told HeatStreet. My bad, as I had done other security measures at the tower and the studio but failed to password protect this device. You can bet it is now.HeatStreet. My bad, as I had done other security measures at the tower and the studio but failed to password protect this device. You can bet it is now.
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Republican politicians have scrapped a rule that stopped coal mining companies dumping their debris into people's drinking water.

The decision came alongside the scrapping of another rule that enforced extended background checks for gun purchases by some Social Security recipients with mental disabilities.

Donald Trump supports both measures and will sign both of them, the White House said.

The coal mining rule was introduced in December by the Interior Department, which said that it would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests, preventing coal mining debris from being dumped into nearby waters. But Republican politicians in Congress claimed that it would also do away with thousands of coal-related jobs and was unnecessary, and so decided to scrap it.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The vote was the first in a series of actions Republicans are expected to take in coming weeks to reverse years of what they call excessive regulation during President Barack Obama's tenure. Rules on fracking, federal contracting and other issues also are in the cross-hairs as the GOP moves to void a host of regulations finalized during Obama's last months in office.

Recommended Wind power overtakes coal in the UK for the first time

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell called the stream rule "an attack against coal miners and their families" and said it would have threatened coal jobs and caused major damage to communities in Kentucky and other coal-producing states.

"The legislation we passed today will help stop this disastrous rule and bring relief to coal miners and their families," McConnell said.

Democrats called the vote an attack on clean water and a clear win for big coal-mining companies and other polluters.

Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, said the stream rule had nothing to do with the decline of coal, which faces stiff competition from cheap natural gas.

Republicans are employing a rarely used tool to roll back some of the rules issued in the final months of Obama's tenure. The Congressional Review Act provides a temporary window for a simple majority of both chambers to invalidate a rule. The president has to sign the disapproval measure for the regulation to be deemed invalid.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
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Introduced in the Fifties and put on the fashion map by Audrey Hepburn (and more recently by our current Prime Minister), the kitten heel, that dinky, slender  whisper it  mumsy shoe has made an unlikely comeback and is a must-have style in 2017.

It makes sense really: a heel that gives you a little bit of a lift but is comfortable enough to actually wear from the office to the bar to the dance floor.

Designers from Prada to Dior have revamped them, and so has the high-street. Weve found a whole range of modern twists on the classic look  from shoeboots to thigh-highs  as well as some more classic-looking options.

Heres our round-up for all kitten-heel budgets.

1. Zara High Heel Shoes With Mesh: 45,99, Zara

This is a winning style from Zaras younger (and cheaper) line, Trafaluc. Its a low-cut, zip-up ankle boot and a stiletto shoe neatly combined with a delicate black mesh. We love the geometric shape of the heel that lends a modern twist.

Buy now

2. H&M Patent Slingbacks: 24.99, H&M

If youre on a budget, this faux leather pair will instantly update your wardrobe. The grey shade will go with just about everything and the patent texture will add an on-trend bit of shine to your outfit. You cant adjust the strap, but the elastic does its job.

Buy now

3. J.Crew Mirror Metallic Kitten Heel Sandals: 188, J.Crew

Had a pedicure? Show it off in this pair of silver sandals from one of Michelle Obamas favourite brands. When the weather perks up, theyll take you from day to night seamlessly and the metallic shade will dress up any outfit. Leather lined with a very wearable two inch heel, these also come in gold.

Buy now

4. Uterque Suede Mules: 85, Uterque

Uterque is Zaras big sister, known for making designer-esque styles for purse-friendly prices. It hasnt got a physical shop in the UK yet, but you can get all the new collection online, from which we picked these super-feminine black leather mules. Theyre lined with leather and the backless style is a simple but very effective way to update your wardrobe for spring.

Buy now

5. Asos Sloany Heeled Mules: 25, Asos

Hermes and Chanel signalled that white is back for spring 2017. We like the slightly-chunkier-than-average heel on these leather look ones. Theyre super-comfy and will keep you on-trend from now until summer. Available in sizes 2-9.

Buy now

6. Kurt Geiger Autobann: 120, Carvela by Kurt Geiger

Zebra print is more versatile than you think, while making a bit of a statement. These also stand out for being higher cut than your average court, so you get an almost shoe-boot feel. The heels 70mm and if animal print isnt your thing, they come in black leather and fuchsia suede.

Buy now

7. Boden Joan Slingback Heels: 110, Boden

Boden continues its quest to make the fashion world sit up and take notice. These new red suede slingbacks are a classic style, yet the bold colour and the gold hammered disk on the toe make them stand out from the pack. They are the quality you would expect from Boden: leather lined and with a leather sole  and comfy enough for the dance floor. They also come in navy and a spotted ivory version.

Buy now

8. Shoe The Bear Leni Ankle Boots: 134,99, Zalando

We discovered this Danish brand on Zalando and were sold on its distinctive Scandi-cool vibe thats big on quality and comfort. While lots in the collection are quite minimalist in style, these more stand-out cream and blue suede ankle boots with a bow detail caught our eye.With a 2.5-inch heel, they also come in grey.

Buy now

9. Other Stories Kitten Heel Over the Knee boot: 245, & Other Stories

Obsessed with the over-the-knee boots? We are, and the Swedish brand has combined the look with this seasons on-trend heel. Made from soft suede, these are thigh-high and tight-fitting (and admittedly probably a pair for those blessed with longer legs). Wear them now with jeans and in spring with mini-skirts.

Buy now

10. Marks and Spencer Wide Fit Kitten Heel Strap Court Shoes: 25, M&S

M&S is good to us and makes a range of wide-fit shoes, featuring its podiatrist-approved Insolia soles that keep things comfortable all day. This patent monochrome pair with a buckle fastening comes in half sizes and a red and black leather combo.

Buy now

11. Russell & Bromley Twiggy Kitten Heel Court: 225, Russell & Bromley

Russell & Bromley has always done a good line in kitten heels  Theresa Mays a fan  and the Twiggy line is part of its collaboration with American shoe label Stuart Weitzman. The elegant take on the kitten heeled court comes in six colours and finishes. Our pick of the lot is this navy snake print in patent leather. Theres also a clutch and shoulder bag, if you want accessories to match. Comes in half sizes.

Buy now

12. Manolo Blahnik Hangisi 50 Satin Pump: 745, Harrods

Want to go designer? Well, if you ever watched HBOs Sex and The City, youll recognise these shoes, made famous by Sarah Jessica Parkers Carrie Bradshaw, who wore the blue satin pumps in the series. If you want to invest in the originals, these silk satin beauties with a bejewelled brooch feel special every time you put them on. Handmade in Italy, they are leather lined with a leather sole. We picked the lower heel (two inches), but they also come in a three-inch version.

Buy now

13. Dior ribbon-detail kitten heels: Prices start from 645, Dior

From Maria Grazia Chiuris debut collection for the luxe French fashion house, these slingbacks are some of this seasons most-wanted footwear  theyve been spotted on Jennifer Lawrence and countless editorial shoots. They were initially showcased in a black ribbed fabric, but weve picked this nude patent leather for spring. Available at New Bond Street shop from 18th February and online end of February.

Buy now

The Verdict: Kitten heels

Zaras black ankle boot is a fresh-feeling take on the kitten heel and uses a popular fabric for this spring: mesh. Were also pretty much in love with Diors new stilettos - if you can afford them.
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Citizens of the small, post-Soviet republic of Moldova are the world's biggest drinkers, knocking back the equivalent of more than 18 litres of pure alcohol per year, according to a report released by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Moldovans drink nearly three times the global average of 6.1 litres per person per year.

Much of their consumption was made up by the "unrecorded" drinking of bootleg alcohol, according to the report, which is a study of drinking habits in over 100 countries spanning several decades, up to 2004.

Alcohol causes an estimated 2.5 million deaths every year globally, the report estimates, including 320,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 29. Alcohol is the third-leading risk factor for poor health in the world. And drinking accounts for more deaths than either Aids or tuberculosis. The WHO called on governments across the world to do more to combat alcoholism and binge drinking.

Moldova, sandwiched between Romania and Ukraine, is one of the poorest countries in Europe. It is split between ethnic Moldovans, who speak a language almost identical to Romanian, and ethnic Russians. The country is a major wine producer, with many people drinking cheap homemade wine, vodka and other spirits.

Other post-Soviet nations were also identified as culprits when it comes to drinking. While globally, only 6.2 per cent of male deaths and 1.1 per cent of female deaths were linked to alcohol, among Russian men this rises to a staggering 20 per cent and is one of the main reasons why male life expectancy in Russia hovers around 60. Among Russian women, six per cent of deaths are alcohol related.

Countries like Russia and Ukraine have traditionally been big vodka drinkers, but in the 20 years since the collapse of Communism beer has been added into the mix. It was only recently that beer was classified as an alcoholic drink in Russia.

Russia has a long history of alcohol problems and mixed attempts to fight them. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to ban vodka sales except for during a short window in the day, which led to him becoming hugely unpopular and to Russians taking to brewing moonshine.

Already in recent years, many Russian regions, including Moscow, have banned the sale of spirits during nighttime hours. And the head of the local parliament in the Ulyanovsk region recently suggested banning the sale of alcohol for the whole weekend.

This week, the head of Russia's supreme court said that of the 12,000 murders prosecuted in the country in 2010, 75 per cent of them were carried out under the influence of alcohol.

Britain was not that far behind the leaders of the pack, coming in at 13.4 litres of pure alcohol per year, compared with 18.1 litres for Moldovans and 16.5 litres for Czechs, who came in second place. Brits drank more beer than any other kind of alcohol, while Russians drank mostly spirits. The Moldovan intake was made up roughly equally of wine, spirits and beer.

While Moldovans drink more than anyone else, the WHO report confirmed that Russia and Ukraine were home to the most "risky" drinking. They were the only two countries to receive the top "five out of five" risk score, which was calculated for each country based on how people drink as well as how much.

Mediterranean countries came out as the least risky drinkers of all, despite consuming a large amount of alcohol. Britain was given a three out of five score, meaning that drinking was moderately risky.

Heaviest drinking countries

Estimated total alcohol consumption per person in litres:

Republic of Moldova 18.22

Czech Republic 16.45

Hungary 16.27

Russia 15.76

Ukraine 15.6

Estonia 15.57

Andorra 15.48

Romania 15.3

Slovenia 15.19

Belarus 15.13

UK 13.37
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As Tessa Torrente said her vows to her husband a cat appeared from nowhere and attacked the tulle on her dress. The little cat was playful, but wouldnt stop eating the tulle on my dress and eventually threw up a small amount onto the dress itself, she recalls.

But she just laughed it off. This ceremony outside a castle in Rothenburg, Germany, wasnt her and her husbands only wedding. Considering that what is called the average wedding in the US costs $30,000, the couple ditched that idea to travel the world. Instead, they had mini-ceremonies in nine different countries, and are now helping other couples to do the same. The pair from New York are among couples who would rather spend a few thousand dollars travelling the world, rather than having what is essentially an enormous, albeit lovely, party on one day.

Writer Tessa, 27, was working as a bartender in Nashville, Tennessee, when her then-trainee lawyer boyfriend Matt, a 26-year-old lawyer, was offered an internship in Switzerland. But travelling the world still isn't cheap, and their trip didn't come without sacrifices.

I decided to work as hard as I could and make as much money as possible to enable me to quit my job and go to Switzerland with him. We also sold as many of our possessions as we could to make the internship possible, including Matt's car.

The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Show all 16 1 /16 The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah Platt and Rhian Woodyard in Las Vegas The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian by the Sydney Opera House The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian in Chiang Mai, Thailand The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian in Bangkok The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian at the Ajanta cave in India The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian in Nairobi, Kenya The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian in Giza, Egypt The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Cheetah and Rhian in Giza, Egypt The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Montreux, Switzerland The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Madrid The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Norway The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Rothenburg The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Rothenburg The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt by the Matterhorn The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Madrid The couples who travel instead of having a wedding - In pictures Tessa and Matt in Ireland

To remember their trip, they balled up their wedding clothes in their backpacks, and set up their tripods at beauty spots in countries including Ireland, Morocco, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.

A lot of the times it was changing in back alleys or in the back of our rental car. I still wonder how my dress looks so nice in pictures, Tessa says.

As well as a cat throwing up on her dress, Tessa fondly recalls how she and Matt set up a tripod outside their Airbnb to capture the northern lights in Norway in -26C as their camera struggled to stay on in the freezing weather.

The shutter had to stay open for 20 full seconds to capture the northern lights, so during those 20 seconds we couldnt move or even shiver. It sounds like torture but it was honestly so much fun.

And she looks back on how they woke up early in the morning in Zermatt, Switzerland, and had to rush into their wedding garments one hour into a three hour hike when the clouds parted to reveal the top of the Matterhorn.

In the picture, I am still wearing my jeans and snow boots under my dress. We only got a chance to take five pictures before the clouds surrounded the top for the rest of the day.

Acrobats and business owners Cheetah Platt and Rhiann Woodyard from Las Vegas, meanwhile visited to 13 countries, 6 continents, for $3,000 each.

While Cheetah was well-travelled, Rhiann had not been more than 600 miles from where she was born.

As of today we have married each other 58 times and held ceremonies in the USA, Colombia, Spain, Ireland, Morocco, Egypt, Kenya, India, Thailand, Singapore, Australia, Fiji, Canada, and Mexico, Cheetah told The Independent.

In two months we are leaving on our next around the world wedding trip and will be getting married in: Japan, Maldives, Bali, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Czech Republic, Dubai, France, Scotland, Italy, England, Iceland, and Canada.

We plan to hold our 100th wedding ceremony in front of the Washington Monument on the 4th of July this year. But we don't really make strict plans, so we'll see what happens.

The pair also have some arguably more interesting stories than the usual fare of family tiffs and awkward speeches as memories for their wedding.

We hold our weddings with the camera and tripod as our witnesses to every ceremony, Rhiann half-jokes.

In Thailand at the Elephant Sanctuary when we were trying to hold a beautiful wedding with elephants in the background of was so hilarious and wonderful to see my handsome husband running in circles trying to set up the shot with these giant, majestic creatures who revised to hold all of stay where he wanted them. It was magically funny to spend the afternoon with enormous animals, sharing their space, sharing our love, and laughing as they constantly knocked over the tripod checking of the camera and kept 'photobombing' in front of the lens. It was a perfectly romantic disaster.

The couples are keen to stress that, although they are lucky to travel extensively, they arent rich or self-indulgent millennials who are so rich they are throwing lavish weddings all around the world," as Cheetah says.

We are saving so much ninety by getting married this way. We are not rich. We are average Americans who save their money all year and decide to spend it on travel instead of clothes and fancy food, he adds.

Every single photo holds days of memories. Laughter, worry, joy, fear, romance, stress, beauty, happiness, exultation and love. I know many people think that these are just photos of our wedding ceremony, but they need to remember that the fantastic photo getting married on top of the island mountain in Fiji for example, doesn't show the incredible hike to the top, the gruelling mountain trek, the sweat and the sore muscles, the views and the sounds of the birds we had never heard before. The way the water tasted once we'd reached the top, the sheer and utter joy of reaching the summit and the crosstalk of dropping and cracking the cell phone at the top. Every single photo contains hundreds of amazing memories for us.

Both couples are now happily fielding requests from others interested in replicating their story.
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Apple will begin assembling iPhones in India by the end of April, a regional minister says, heightening its focus on the worlds fastest-growing major smartphone market as growth slows elsewhere.

The US company has tapped Taiwans Wistron to put together its phones in the tech capital of Bangalore in Karnataka, said Priyank Kharge, the states information technology minister.

Apple executives met with him in January and confirmed the timeline, he said in an interview.

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The start of iPhone assembly in India comes after months of speculation on Apples plan for the market, which is led by rival Samsung. It signals a renewed focus on the country, where it just scrapes into the top 10, as growth begins to slow in China and other more mature markets. The Cupertino, California-based company is said to have put forward a long list of demands in negotiations with Indias federal government, including a 15-year tax holiday to import components and equipment.

Apples iPhones will be made in Bangalore and all devices will be targeted at the domestic market, said Mr Kharge, IT minister for Karnataka, of which Bangalore is the capital. Mr Kharge said the state will help Apple if it decides to turn to other contract manufacturers in the region. We did not discuss any other incentives, he said.

Apple didnt respond to an e-mailed request for comment.

The worlds most valuable brands Show all 10 1 /10 The worlds most valuable brands The worlds most valuable brands 1st - Google Google replaced Apple as the worlds most valuable brand, with a brand value of $109.5bn, according to Brand Finance The worlds most valuable brands 2nd - Apple Apples brand value declined from $145.9bn to $107.1bn in 2016 The worlds most valuable brands 3rd - Amazon Amazon's brand value rose from $69.6bn to $106.4bn in 2016 Amazon The worlds most valuable brands 4th - At&t Of the 40 telecoms brands in the ranking, AT&T in 2016 overtook Verizon as the most valuable brand rising to $87bn from $59.9bn the year before The worlds most valuable brands 5th - Microsoft Microsoft's brand value rose marginally from $67.3bn to $76.3bn in 2016 The worlds most valuable brands 6th - Samsung Amazon's brand value rose from $58.6bn to $66.2bn The worlds most valuable brands 7th - Verizon Verizon's brand value inched up from $63.1bn to $65.9bn The worlds most valuable brands 8th - Walmart Walmart's brand value rose from $53.6bn to $62.5bn The worlds most valuable brands 9th - Facebook Facebook's brand value increased sharply from $34bn to just shy of $62bn The worlds most valuable brands 10th - ICBC ICBC saw its brand value rise to $47.8bn from $36.3bn. It was the most valuabe financial brand in the world in 2016 replacing Wells Fargo

Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said on an earnings call this week that India is the place to be. He visited the country for the first time last May as he sought government approval for Apple to open its own stores  a step the company deems critical to growing the iPhone user base across the country. Over the long run however, Apple needs to meet requirements that single-brand retailers source 30 percent of components from within India. Manufacturing locally will help with that.

Bloomberg
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Our excellent review of Denial, the film about the libel case brought by David Irving, the Holocaust-denying historian, concluded by saying: Any victory over Holocaust deniers is likely to be pyrrhic unless the deniers change their beliefs.

Pyrrhus was the Greek guy (above) who won victories against the Roman republic, but who suffered heavy casualties. If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined, he said. Hence a pyrrhic victory is not the same as an empty victory, which is how we were using it here, but a victory won at too great a cost.

Sober document: We briefly had a headline on Thursday saying MPs to pour over White Paper. The usual spelling of the word meaning to read or study something intently is to pore over. The Oxford Dictionary says it is Middle English and thinks it may be related to peer. Anyway, thats the spelling we wanted, unless, as Richard George wrote, we meant that MPs are going to soak the Brexit White Paper in whisky, which seemed slightly plausible as we illustrated the story with a photo of Kenneth Clarke.

Department for Exiting Euro-Pedantry: I was going to advise our writers not to call it the European Court of Justice, as we did in a news story this week. It changed its name to the Court of Justice of the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the same treaty that gave us Article 50. Which, while we are here, is not Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty but of the Treaty on European Union, which is a consolidated text created by the Lisbon Treaty. And, while we are still here, the Treaty on European Union is not the Treaty of, or the Treaty of the, but the Treaty on. But those are different Euro-pedantries.

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This Euro-pedantry is that the Court is now called the CJEU, not the the ECJ. It is one level up from the entry-level pedantry of knowing the difference between the CJEU, based in Luxembourg, and the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, which is, of course, not an EU institution at all.

But it gets more complicated. The CJEU is not a single court but two. The higher court is called the Court of Justice, and the other is called the General Court (it used to be called the Court of the First Instance). So if we mean the Court of Justice rather than the two courts together, what are we supposed to call it? People seem to call it the European Court of Justice, which is what the two-court system used to be called.

At this point, I gave up. I am reminded of the response of my former colleague Jeremy Warner, when he was business editor of The Independent, to a complaint from Aviva, the insurance company formerly known as Norwich Union. He had called it Arriva, confusing it with the bus company, but he was  to my surprise and admiration  quite unapologetic. The company shouldnt have chosen such a stupid name, he said, and it was entirely its fault if journalists got it wrong.

I feel the same about the European Court of Justice. If it changes its name for the sake of it and has a confusing structure, people will call it what they will. The ECJ is a more familiar abbreviation than the CJEU. On the other hand I suppose The Independent has to have a style, in which case it ought to be the CJEU, because we are almost always referring to both courts as a single entity. In the end, though, as there is almost always no ambiguity, I dont think it really matters which name we use.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

The mastery of the Armenian lobby in the US in fabricating lies goes beyond the limits. The main media outlets of the Armenian diaspora in America repeatedly attack Trend Agencys authors, who, using facts, reveal details about the diasporas activities in the US.

Turning a blind eye to a recent attack against Trend Agency is possible, but Armenian nationalists have reached a new stage of ingenuity. They have distorted the main points in the article Trump puts end to Armenian lobby's influence on US  which highlights the severely bad situation of the Armenian diaspora in the US  and tried to attack the Azerbaijan-Israel friendship.

The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), by comparing remarks from Trends article with a quote from Adolf Hitlers book, unsuccessfully attempted to reduce the devastating effect of the article.

Once again, members of the Armenian lobby, using incorrect methods tried to distort the remarks in the Trend article, which said that the Armenian diaspora is parasitizing in the US, and compared the comments to Hitlers claims against the Jewish people.

It is quite obvious that sincere and friendly relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, especially military cooperation between the two countries, cannot but cause irritation in Armenia, which explains the information hysteria of the Armenian lobby.

Apparently, it was the successful long-term Azerbaijan-Israel military cooperation that caused Yerevans desire to start military and technical cooperation with Israels main antagonist, Iran.

Armenias new defense minister attempted to arrange such a military and technical cooperation during his recent visit to Tehran.

Moreover, Armenians cannot but be concerned about the fact that Israel highly appreciates the role of modern Azerbaijans leadership in the warm and sincere attitude towards the Jewish community of 20,000 people, while there are no Jews in the mono-ethnic Armenia.

Unfortunately, Armenian nationalists are well known for having no morality, they know no sensitive topics. But for the Azerbaijani people, the issue of fascism and the Jewish peoples terrible tragedy are not the issues that can be used for own interests.

Azerbaijan, which faced the Khojaly genocide that Armenian bandit groups committed 25 years ago, has never forgotten about the terrible page in the history of the Jewish people  the Holocaust.

Azerbaijans Trend Agency has published a number of articles where it reveals that the Armenian authorities glorify fascism, one example being the erection of a monument to fascist and anti-Semite General Garegin Nzhdeh, and participation of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan in the ceremony to open the monument.

Suffice it to recall that the Armenian Legion led by General Nzhdeh was carrying out raids and exterminating the Jews and the other disliked for the Nazi Germanys army, the Wehrmacht.

Obviously the Armenian nationalists, who consider themselves heirs of the Armenian fascist and anti-Semite Nzhdeh, still juggle with historical facts and the lies of their own device, trying to undermine the relations between the Azerbaijani and Israeli people.

However, the Armenian nationalists will not be able to mislead the Israeli people who have long ago figured out who their true friend is.

---

Elmira Tariverdiyeva is the head of Trend Agency's Russian News Service
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In the evolutionary arms-race between deadly bacteria and the antibiotics used by doctors to kill them, the bugs have very definitely been gaining the upper hand in recent years.

But, amid growing reports of bacteria resistant to even the last resort antibiotics, comes the news that scientists have found a new way that some existing drugs can still be effective.

Normally antibiotics must bind to a bacteria cell in order to kill it, like putting a key in a locked door.

But the researchers found that one drug exerted such a strong physical force on the bacteria that it tore the door off its hinges.

The hunt is now on for other antibiotics with similar properties to create a new generation of drugs capable of defeating even the most resistant superbugs.

Last year, growing concern about antibiotic resistance prompted then Prime Minister David Cameron to warn of "catastrophic consequences" if the problem was not dealt with across the world. The UK was instrumental in organising a meeting at the United Nations to discuss the issue.

One of the researchers, Dr Joseph Ndieyira, of University College London, said: Antibiotics work in different ways, but they all need to bind to bacterial cells in order to kill them.

Antibiotics have keys that fit locks on bacterial cell surfaces, allowing them to latch on.

When a bacterium becomes resistant to a drug, it effectively changes the locks so the key wont fit any more.

Incredibly, we found that certain antibiotics can still force the lock, allowing them to bind to and kill resistant bacteria because they are able to push hard enough.

In fact, some of them were so strong they tore the door off its hinges, killing the bacteria instantly.

Science news in pictures Show all 20 1 /20 Science news in pictures Science news in pictures Pluto has 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen Pluto has a 'beating heart' of frozen nitrogen that is doing strange things to its surface, Nasa has found. The mysterious core seems to be the cause of features on its surface that have fascinated scientists since they were spotted by Nasa's New Horizons mission. "Before New Horizons, everyone thought Pluto was going to be a netball - completely flat, almost no diversity," said Tanguy Bertrand, an astrophysicist and planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center and the lead author on the new study. "But it's completely different. It has a lot of different landscapes and we are trying to understand what's going on there." Getty Science news in pictures Over 400 species discovered this year by Natural History Museum The ancient invertabrate worm-like species rhenopyrgus viviani (pictured) is one of over 400 species previously unknown to science that were discovered by experts at the Natural History Museum this year PA Science news in pictures Jackdaws can identify 'dangerous' humans Jackdaws can identify dangerous humans from listening to each others warning calls, scientists say. The highly social birds will also remember that person if they come near their nests again, according to researchers from the University of Exeter. In the study, a person unknown to the wild jackdaws approached their nest. At the same time scientists played a recording of a warning call (threatening) or contact calls (non-threatening). The next time jackdaws saw this same person, the birds that had previously heard the warning call were defensive and returned to their nests more than twice as quickly on average. Getty Science news in pictures Turtle embryos influence sex by shaking The sex of the turtle is determined by the temperatures at which they are incubated. Warm temperatures favour females. But by wiggling around the egg, embryos can find the Goldilocks Zone which means they are able to shield themselves against extreme thermal conditions and produce a balanced sex ratio, according to the new study published in Current Biology journal Ye et al/Current Biology Science news in pictures Elephant poaching rates drop in Africa African elephant poaching rates have dropped by 60 per cent in six years, an international study has found. It is thought the decline could be associated with the ivory trade ban introduced in China in 2017. Reuters Science news in pictures Ancient four-legged whale discovered in Peru Scientists have identified a four-legged creature with webbed feet to be an ancestor of the whale. Fossils unearthed in Peru have led scientists to conclude that the enormous creatures that traverse the planets oceans today are descended from small hoofed ancestors that lived in south Asia 50 million years ago A. Gennari Science news in pictures Animal with transient anus discovered A scientist has stumbled upon a creature with a transient anus that appears only when it is needed, before vanishing completely. Dr Sidney Tamm of the Marine Biological Laboratory could not initially find any trace of an anus on the species. However, as the animal gets full, a pore opens up to dispose of waste Steven G Johnson Science news in pictures Giant bee spotted Feared extinct, the Wallace's Giant bee has been spotted for the first time in nearly 40 years. An international team of conservationists spotted the bee, that is four times the size of a typical honeybee, on an expedition to a group of Indonesian Islands Clay Bolt Science news in pictures New mammal species found inside crocodile Fossilised bones digested by crocodiles have revealed the existence of three new mammal species that roamed the Cayman Islands 300 years ago. The bones belonged to two large rodent species and a small shrew-like animal New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science news in pictures Fabric that changes according to temperature created Scientists at the University of Maryland have created a fabric that adapts to heat, expanding to allow more heat to escape the body when warm and compacting to retain more heat when cold Faye Levine, University of Maryland Science news in pictures Baby mice tears could be used in pest control A study from the University of Tokyo has found that the tears of baby mice cause female mice to be less interested in the sexual advances of males Getty Science news in pictures Final warning to limit "climate catastrophe" The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a report which projects the impact of a rise in global temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius and warns against a higher increase Getty Science news in pictures Nobel prize for evolution chemists The nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to three chemists working with evolution. Frances Smith is being awarded the prize for her work on directing the evolution of enzymes, while Gregory Winter and George Smith take the prize for their work on phage display of peptides and antibodies Getty/AFP Science news in pictures Nobel prize for laser physicists The nobel prize for physics has been awarded to three physicists working with lasers. Arthur Ashkin (L) was awarded for his "optical tweezers" which use lasers to grab particles, atoms, viruses and other living cells. Donna Strickland and Gerard Mourou were jointly awarded the prize for developing chirped-pulse amplification of lasers Reuters/AP Science news in pictures Discovery of a new species of dinosaur The Ledumahadi Mafube roamed around 200 million years ago in what is now South Africa. Recently discovered by a team of international scientists, it was the largest land animal of its time, weighing 12 tons and standing at 13 feet. In Sesotho, the South African language of the region in which the dinosaur was discovered, its name means "a giant thunderclap at dawn" Viktor Radermacher / SWNS Science news in pictures Birth of a planet Scientists have witnessed the birth of a planet for the first time ever. This spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope is the first clear image of a planet caught in the very act of formation around the dwarf star PDS 70. The planet stands clearly out, visible as a bright point to the right of the center of the image, which is blacked out by the coronagraph mask used to block the blinding light of the central star. ESO/A. Muller et al Science news in pictures New human organ discovered that was previously missed by scientists Layers long thought to be dense, connective tissue are actually a series of fluid-filled compartments researchers have termed the interstitium. These compartments are found beneath the skin, as well as lining the gut, lungs, blood vessels and muscles, and join together to form a network supported by a mesh of strong, flexible proteins Getty Science news in pictures Previously unknown society lived in Amazon rainforest before Europeans arrived, say archaeologists Working in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, a team led by archaeologists at the University of Exeter unearthed hundreds of villages hidden in the depths of the rainforest. These excavations included evidence of fortifications and mysterious earthworks called geoglyphs Jose Iriarte Science news in pictures One in 10 people have traces of cocaine or heroin on fingerprints, study finds More than one in 10 people were found to have traces of class A drugs on their fingers by scientists developing a new fingerprint-based drug test. Using sensitive analysis of the chemical composition of sweat, researchers were able to tell the difference between those who had been directly exposed to heroin and cocaine, and those who had encountered it indirectly. Getty Science news in pictures Nasa releases stunning images of Jupiter's great red spot The storm bigger than the Earth, has been swhirling for 350 years. The image's colours have been enhanced after it was sent back to Earth. Pictures by: Tom Momary

The study tested a powerful antibiotic called vancomycin, used as a last-resort treatment for infections like MRSA, and another called oritavancin, used to treat skin infections.

We found that oritavancin pressed into resistant bacteria with a force 11,000 times stronger than vancomycin, says Dr Ndieyira.

Even though it has the same key as vancomycin, oritavancin was still highly effective at killing resistant bacteria.

Until now it wasnt clear how oritavancin killed bacteria, but our study suggests that the forces it generates can actually tear holes in the bacteria and rip them apart.

This way of killing bacteria has not been seen before.

Oritavancin molecules are good at sticking together to form clusters, which fundamentally changes how they kill bacteria, Dr Ndieyira said.

When two clusters dig into a bacterial surface they push apart from each other, tearing the surface and killing the bacteria.

Remarkably, we found that conditions at the bacterial surface actually encourage clustering which makes antibiotics even more effective.

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

The researchers have now developed a mathematical model that could be used to screen for new antibiotics that have the same brute force approach.

Our findings will help us not only to design new antibiotics but also to modify existing ones to overcome resistance, Dr Ndieyira said.

Oritavancin is just a modified version of vancomycin, and now we know how these modifications work we can do similar things with other antibiotics.

This will help us to create a new generation of antibiotics to tackle multi-drug resistant bacterial infections, now recognized as one of the greatest global threats in modern healthcare.

The growth of antibiotic resistance has been driven partly by over-prescription of the drugs for conditions like the common cold, which is a virus, not a bacterium, and is therefore unaffected.

Antibiotics have also been used in agriculture to boost the growth of livestock.

The researchers' findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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Sweden has committed to completely phase out greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and called for all countries - including the US - to step up and fulfil the Paris Agreement.

In one of the most ambitious emissions plans published by a developed nation, the Swedish government has reaffirmed the urgency of tackling climate change, ignoring uncertainties about global policies under Donald Trumps administration.

"Our target is to be an entirely fossil-fuel-free welfare state," said Climate Minister Isabella Lovin.

 Sweden is amazing at recycling

"We see that the advantages of a climate-smart society are so huge, both when it comes to health, job creation and also security. Being dependent on fossil fuels and gas from Russia is not what we need now, she added.

All parties but the far-right Sweden Democrats party agreed to pass the law in the coming month, which will oblige the government to set tougher goals to cut fossil fuel emissions every four years until the 2045 cut-off date.

Plans also include a 70 per cent cut to emissions in the domestic transport sector by 2030.

The Government said the target would require domestic emissions to be cut by at least 85 per cent and the remaining emissions would be offset by planting trees or by sustainable investments abroad.

The law is expected to enter into force as early as 2018.

Britain has committed to cut its emissions by 57 per cent by 2032 but so far, the government is nowhere near on track to meet its goal and the latest report predicts the target would be missed by the equivalent of all the greenhouse gases currently produced by industry.

The image of Ms Lovin signing the emissions order appeared to be a reference to this image of Mr Trump, surrounded by men, signing an executive order hitting foreign NGOs that help women have abortions (Getty)

The Independent previously revealed the Governments Emissions Reduction Plan, which was supposed to be published in March after being delayed twice, will no longer be made public by that deadline.

Activist group Client Earth is now considering legal action against the Government over its failure to come up with a plan to dramatically reduced fossil fuels and meet its target.

Meanwhile, Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven criticised climate sceptics inside the Trump administration as worrying, since the US greenhouse gas emissions would affect everyone. He warned all countries need to "step up and fulfil the Paris Agreement."

Mr Trump previously called climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, and there are suggestions he will pull out of the legally-binding Paris Agreement.

10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Show all 10 1 /10 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica Kira Morris 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break. Climate change can also increase rainfall in some areas, while bringing drought to others. Hira Ali 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Smoke  filled with the carbon that is driving climate change  drifts across a field in Colombia. Sandra Rondon 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050. Probal Rashid 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals, says the photographer. Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. Crops are very difficult to grow. Rizwan Dharejo 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent. Tom Schifanella 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures. Abrar Hossain 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature. Riddhima Singh Bhati 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organisation has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a public health emergency. Leung Ka Wa 10 photographs to show to anyone who doesn't believe in climate change Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions. Mahtuf Ikhsan

Climate minister Ms Lovin urged European countries to take the lead in tackling climate change now the US is not there anymore to lead".

She warned climate sceptics were really gaining power in the world and that Sweden wanted to set an example of continued action to its international pledges.

Last year in Paris, nearly 200 countries agreed to limit temperature rise above 1990s industrial levels by 2C and work towards a 1.5C target.

The EU has set a target of an 80 to 95 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Meanwhile, China is "investing billions and billions of dollars in solar (...) it's a game changer. Those that are still wanting to invest in fossil fuels will be ultimately the losers, Ms Lovin warned.
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Thousands of refugees and asylum seekers are being left penniless after they arrive in the UK, according to a new report from the Red Cross, which said the figure has risen by 10 per cent in the space of a year.

Its clear that our asylum system can leave anyone destitute, including individuals who the Home Office has deemed in need of international protection, said the charitys chief executive Mike Adamson. No one should be left homeless after fleeing the devastating conflict in Syria or persecution in Eritrea.

He added: Instead of creating a more hostile system which puts even more people at risk of living hand to mouth, we want to work with the government to address this largely hidden crisis.

The report from the charity, which has centres in more than 50 British towns and cities and is the largest provider of services to asylum seekers and refugees in the UK, said it had helped 14,909 people who had been left penniless last year  a 10 per cent increase from 2015.

It said: Destitute refugees and asylum seekers are found across the UK, with the Red Cross seeing people most frequently in Leicester, London and Cardiff.

The most common reasons for them becoming destitute were problems with asylum support payments, or support being stopped or suspended when an asylum claim is refused, it added.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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

New refugees were frequently affected, it said.

At least 21 per cent of the people helped by the charity had refugee status, and therefore a legal right to protection and to remain in the UK, but 46 per cent were asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their initial application to remain in the UK, and who were entitled to housing and approximately 36 a week to cover basic living costs known as Section 95 support.

A Home Office spokesperson said: Asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute are supported by the Home Office. The UK has a proud history of granting asylum to those who need our protection, but those who are refused asylum and have exhausted their appeal rights are expected to leave the UK.
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Four days of strikes affecting London's Underground network have been called off, it has been announced.

A proposed walk-out by more than 3,000 station staff - members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) union - in protest over job cuts that had threatened to grind the tube network to a standstill.

Strikes had been due to take place on for various lengths of time - including during peak periods - starting on Sunday evening across most of Zone One, prompting outrage among commuters.

Recommended Everything you need to know about the Tube strike

But after an emergency meeting held by the RMT on Friday morning, it was decided the strike would be called off  marking an upturn in relations in a long-running and often bitter dispute between the union and London Underground management.

RMT general secretary Mike Cash said the union had received assurances that nearly 60 per cent of jobs, previously cut, would be reinstated.

According to the union boss, station employees had been cut by almost 1,000 under the leadership of former London Mayor Boris Johnson, but 533 jobs would now be reinstated.

"That is a tremendous victory and a reflection of the resilience and determination of our reps," Mr Cash said.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 5 November 2022 Demonstrators with placards calling for a General Election march near the Houses of Parliament AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 4 November 2022 A peacock is seen in the early winter sunshine in the Dutch Gardens in Holland Park AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 3 November 2022 A villager cooks roti bread at the site of the annual Camel Fair in Pushkar, in India's desert state of Rajasthan AFP via Getty Images UK news in pictures 2 November 2022 A red squirrel gathers nuts in Pitlochry, Scotland Reuters UK news in pictures 1 November 2022 Englands Tara-Jane Stanley scores their sides seventh try against Brazil during the Womens Rugby League World Cup group A match at Headingley Stadium, Leeds PA UK news in pictures 31 October 2022 GBs James Hall competes during the mens parallel bars qualification at the World Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 October 2022 People dressed in Halloween costumes paddle board along the river Avon in Christchurch, Dorset PA UK news in pictures 29 October 2022 Members of the public take pictures as police officers remove activists from a road during a Just Stop Oil protest, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 28 October 2022 A cosplayer attends the MCM Comic Con London 2022 at the ExCel Centre in London Reuters UK news in pictures 27 October 2022 98-year-old D-Day Veteran Bernard Morgan, whose story is among those featured on the giant poppy wall, during the launch of The Royal British Legion 2022 Poppy Appeal, at Hay's Galleria in central London PA UK news in pictures 26 October 2022 A meerkat explores a pumpkin in the enclosure at Wild Place, Bristol, where some of the animals are having pumpkin treats as part of their environmental enrichment PA UK news in pictures 25 October 2022 King Charles III welcomes Rishi Sunak during an audience at Buckingham Palace, where he invited the newly elected leader of the Conservative Party to become Prime Minister and form a new government PA UK news in pictures 24 October 2022 Rishi Sunak celebrates with Tory MPs outside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters after becoming the new leader of the Conservative Party Reuters UK news in pictures 23 October 2022 The Green Man at October Plenty, Borough Market's annual Autumn Harvest festival, in London, which returns for the first time post pandemic PA UK news in pictures 21 October 2022 Sculptor Peter McKenna puts the finishing touches to a pumpkin that will form part of the Planet A Hebden Bridge Pumpkin Trail in the West Yorkshire town PA UK news in pictures 20 October 2022 Britains Prime Minister Liz Truss delivers a speech outside of 10 Downing Street in central London to announce her resignation AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 19 October 2022 Salmon leap up Stainforth Force on the River Ribble in the Yorkshire Dales as they swim upriver to their spawning grounds during the annual Salmon migration PA UK news in pictures 18 October 2022 Just Stop Oil protesters continue their protest for a second day on the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, which links Kent and Essex and which remains closed for traffic, after it was scaled by two climbers from the group PA UK news in pictures 17 October 2022 Hundreds of students take part in the traditional Raisin Monday foam fight on St Salvator's Lower College Lawn at the University of St Andrews in Fife PA UK news in pictures 16 October 2022 A protester holds a placard during a march into central London at a demonstration by the climate change protest group Extinction Rebellion AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 October 2022 A member of the public drags an activist who is blocking the road during a "Just Stop Oil" protest, in London, Britain REUTERS UK news in pictures 14 October 2022 Germanys Womens double skulls during day one of the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals at Saundersfoot beach, Pembrokeshire PA UK news in pictures 13 October 2022 Family and mourners arrive at St Michael's Church, in Creeslough, for the funeral mass of 49-year-old mother of four Martina Martin, who died following an explosion at the Applegreen service station in the village of Creeslough in Co Donegal on Friday PA UK news in pictures 12 October 2022 Motorists in Coventry pass trees showing autumnal colour PA UK news in pictures 11 October 2022 A woman and her dog in the the North Sea at Tynemouth Longsands beach before sunrise PA UK news in pictures 10 October 2022 Police officers remove a campaigner from a Just Stop Oil protest on The Mall, near Buckingham Palace, London PA UK news in pictures 9 October 2022 A drummer plays during the Diwali on the Square celebration, in Trafalgar Square, London PA UK news in pictures 8 October 2022 Timothee Chalamet attending the UK premiere of Bones and All during the BFI London Film Festival 2022 at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, London PA UK news in pictures 7 October 2022 Two young male fallow deer lock antlers in Dublins Phoenix park as rutting season begins PA UK news in pictures 6 October 2022 The Princess of Wales during a cocktail making competition during a visit to Trademarket, a new outdoor street-food and retail market situated in Belfast city centre, as part of the royal visit to Northern Ireland PA UK news in pictures 5 October 2022 Greenpeace protesters interrupt Prime Minister Liz Truss as she delivers her keynote speech to the Conservative Party annual conference PA UK news in pictures 4 October 2022 Prime Minister Liz Truss and Britains Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng wearing hard hats and hi-vis jackets, visit a construction site for a medical innovation campus in Birmingham AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 3 October 2022 British artist Sam Cox, aka Mr Doodle, reveals the Doodle House, a twelve-room mansion at Tenterden, in Kent, which has been covered, inside and out in the artist's trademark monochrome, cartoonish hand-drawn doodles PA UK news in pictures 2 October 2022 Erling Haaland celebrates after scoring Manchester City's second goal against Manchester United at Etihad Stadium. Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. 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Another union had previously called off strikes after it reached an agreement with Tube bosses.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a statement he was "delighted that we have been able to get the tube strikes suspended - it shows what we can achieve by talking and engaging with staff".

He added: "This is an excellent deal that will ensure commuters get the service they need at underground stations, and it will fix the mess created by the previous mayor [Mr Johnson]"

In January a 24-hour strike by RMT staff and members of the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association forced almost all central London stations to shut, causing heavy traffic congestion and delays across the rest of the transport network.
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Angela Merkel has hit back at Theresa Mays threat to slash taxes to undercut the EU if it blocks a Brexit deal, warning taxes are the price paid for a just society.

The German Chancellor insisted her country had no intention of joining a race to the bottom, by following in the footsteps of Britain and Donald Trump.

We have a tax system in Germany that has weathered challenges well. I see no reason for entering a race for who has the lowest corporation tax, she said.

We need tax revenues, we need a fair tax system, in order to make necessary investments in our society.

Her rebuke came as EU leaders, angered by the new US President's outright hostility to the bloc, made clear that the Prime Minister's pitch to be a bridge to Trump  particularly over bolstering Nato  was not welcome.

The controversy over tax blew up at the EU summit in Malta after the Prime Minister said she would change the basis of Britains economic model if she failed to get her way in the withdrawal negotiations.

The comment was widely seen as a threat to turn the UK into an offshore rival to the EU, slashing taxes and regulations in order to lure reluctant foreign investment.

But the UKs corporate tax rate is already set to fall to 17 per cent  below the EU average  raising accusations that it would have to become a fully-fledged tax haven to offset the damage from Brexit.

Revenues would plunge, critics say, at a time when the NHS is already in crisis and schools are facing spending cuts.

At a press conference in Malta, Ms Merkel was asked if Germany would follow suit if Britain and America carried on cutting business taxes  making clear it would not.

 MPs vote in favour of the Government's Brexit bill

Ms Merkel did not answer when asked if Ms May had become too close to Mr Trump, after visiting the White House within one week of his inauguration.

The two leaders had not discussed the US President, she said  despite chatting on a lengthy walkabout during a break in the summit talks.

Downing Street was forced to deny a snub after formal post-lunch talks between the pair  tipped to be a highlight of the summit  were mysteriously cancelled, insisting all issues were covered in their short walkabout.

Ms Merkel said she was gratified that the Prime Minister had said she wanted to see a strong EU, even after Britain had left.

And she backed Ms Mays call for EU countries to spend more on defence, in return for what the Prime Minister has claimed is Mr Trumps 100 per cent commitment to Nato.

We need to invest more in our defensive capabilities, Ms Merkel said.

There was a very clear commitment around the table towards Nato  and the American administration, meanwhile, has also come out with this commitment.

Downing Street said the Prime Minister had, over lunch in Malta, raised her recent talks with Mr Trump, urging other EU leaders to work patiently and constructively with a friend and ally.

A spokeswoman said: She said that the alternative  division and confrontation  would only embolden those who would do us harm, wherever they may be.

Earlier in the day, other EU leaders had rebuffed the Prime Minister's offer to be a bridge to the President, with French President Francois Hollande saying: It is not about asking one particular country, be it the UK or any other, to represent Europe in its relationship with the United States.

 Angela Merkel's senior economic adviser says May's Brexit plan is impossible

Meanwhile, Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian President, gave a sarcastic verdict, saying: I don't think there is a necessity for a bridge  we communicate with the Americans on Twitter.

However, European Council President Donald Tusk was conciliatory about Mr Trump, saying: What we need is as strong transatlantic friendship and relations as possible, and the UK can, inside Europe or outside Europe, the EU not Europe, can be very helpful.

Ms Mays hopes for an early deal on the rights of British citizens living in the EU after Brexit were also given a boost, when Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy agreed one was needed.

Nevertheless, Ms Mays strategy to go to the summit brandishing her coup in meeting Mr Trump first  apparently hoping to strengthen her hand in the Brexit talks  appeared to have backfired.

She carried the message from the new President that Europe must increase its defence spending in return for his 100 per cent commitment to Nato.

But other EU leaders view the American leader with horror because of his hostility to the EU, his protectionism and controversial policies such as the travel ban from seven mainly Muslim countries.

Mr Hollande openly dismissed the idea of Britain as a bridge, pointing to Mr Trumps welcoming of Brexit and insisting he should not get involved.

He said: He may have his own views, but it is up to Europe to decide how many members there should be, and who should leave.

And Joseph Muscat, the Prime Minister of Malta  which holds the six-month presidency of the European Council  said it was time for the EU to lead at a global level.

We cannot stay silent where there are principles involved. As in any good relationship, we will speak very clearly where we think that those principles are being trampled on, he said.

Tim Farron, the Liberal Democrat leader, ridiculed Downing Streets insistence that Ms May and Ms Merkel had discussed all they needed to.

I cannot imagine Theresa May seriously thinks a bit of polite chit-chat through the streets of Valletta replaces a serious bilateral meeting, he said.

To add to the sense of her isolation  and in a signpost to the future  Ms May left the Maltese capital early, leaving the other leaders to continue the summit without her.
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Thousands of protestors are once again expected to descend on London this weekend, to demonstrate against Donald Trumps immigration ban and his scheduled visit to the UK.

Protest group, Stand Up To Racism said tens of thousands of people, including shadow home secretary Dianne Abbott, will join Saturday's march from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square to Downing Street.

It follows more than last month's London Womens March which was attended by more than 100,000 people and an estimated 30,000 strong march on Downing Street earlier this week.

 Protest outside Downing Street sees tens of thousands demonstrate against Trump's immigration ban

There will be another massive show of opposition to Mr Trump in London with campaigners, including Muslim organisations, coming to central London to send a clear message to Theresa May that Trumps not welcome here, said Sabby Dhalu, from Stand Up To Racism.

The organisation has called the US Presidents travel ban as an appalling attack on human rights and said that it is unacceptable that Theresa May has not come out and condemned this.

Recommended 40 per cent of Americans want to impeach Trump

Mr Trump's executive order suspended refugee resettlement in the US for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely. It also barred travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries - Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.

Theresa May initially stopped short of criticising the executive order, but later called it divisive and wrong".

An online petition entitled "Prevent Donald Trump from making a State Visit to the United Kingdom" has also garnered more than 1.8 million signatures.

This weekend's march will be followed by a #StandUpToTrump summit in the capital later this month and demonstrations in London, Glasgow and Cardiff are also planned for 18 March.
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US president Donald Trump is pursuing a realist policy when it comes to relations with Russia, Britains Defence Secretary has said.

Sir Michael Fallon said Mr Trump was right to engage with Russia and that the UK needed to do so as well.

He made the comments in a speech at St Andrews University on Thursday. His comments come days after Theresa May told US Republicans in a visit that it was important to engage but beware with the country.

Recommended UK minister refuses to criticise Donald Trump over groping comments

Since Mr Trumps election the British government has struck a more conciliatory public tone over Russia. The end of David Camerons administration was marked by condemnation of alleged atrocities by the countrys forces in Syria.

On President Trump's approach to Vladimir Putin, Sir Michael said: President Trump has spoken about the need for engagement with Russia. He's right.

Great nations like the US and Russia will talk. Indeed, they must talk to preserve the rules-based information system underpinning our security and prosperity. The UK too needs to engage with Russia, including military to military.

Yet President Trump is a realist. He knows engagement is an equation of risk versus reward, with the outcome decided by a nation's deeds, not its words.

During the US presidential election Sir Michael refused to condemn Mr Trump's comments about groping women, suggesting that to do so would be to intervene in a foreign election. This was in marked contrast to other British cabinet ministers, who did condemn them.

Sir Michael however also warned that Russia had been weaponising information to destabilise the West. Russia has been accused by US authorities of intervening in the US presidential election on the side of Mr Trump.

He accused the Russian state of "routinely lying" and engaging in a persistent pattern of behaviour.

Michael Fallon speaking in the House of Commons (PA)

Today we see a country that in weaponising misinformation has created what we might now see as the post-truth age. Part of that is the use of cyber-weaponry to disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery, he said in the speech.

Russia is clearly testing NATO and the West. It is seeking to expand its sphere of influence, destabilise countries and weaken the alliance.

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It is undermining national security for many allies and the international rules-based system.

Therefore it is in our interest and Europe's to keep NATO strong and to deter and dissuade Russia from this course.
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The local council in Gateshead has voted to withhold "any council resources" from being used to support Donald Trump's state visit to the UK.

A motion calling Mr Trump's Muslim travel ban "extreme and discriminatory" was passed unanimously in the Tyne and Wear town on Thursday night.

The proposer, 53-year-old councillor Jonathan Wallace, told The Independent his aim was to "achieve a situation in which local government isn't paying for this visit". "It's nothing to do with us," he added.

 Thousands join London protests against Donald Trump travel ban

Prime Minister Theresa May has said she will be "very happy" to host Mr Trump later this year despite a petition, signed by some 1.8 million people, calling for the US President to be barred from meeting the Queen in case it embarrasses her.

Cllr Wallace added: "Local government is under enough pressure as it is. We should not have to pay anything towards a state visit."

Asked whether that was likely, he said that Mr Trump may be taken to visit buildings or other sites owned by local authorities, for which they should not be billed.

Gateshead Council will now write to the Local Government Association "to encourage all councils to take a similar stand".

During the meeting Cllr Wallace told colleagues: "This guy is a bully, he's a misogynist, he's a racist, he's Islamophobic, xenophobic, Europhobic. He described an entire nation's men as 'rapists' at the same time as bragging about sexually assaulting women."
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EU leaders appeared to rebuff Theresa Mays offer to be a bridge to Donald Trump within hours of her arriving at an informal summit in Malta.

Both German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, the French President, will debrief other EU leaders today with their own impressions of the new US President, it was announced.

The move immediately downplayed Ms Mays role in formulating an EU response to the Trump phenomenon  a role she hoped to take on, as the only leader to have met him face-to-face.

The Prime Minister believes her talks with Mr Trump  in particular, extracting his commitment to be 100 per cent behind Nato  can strengthen her hand in the looming Brexit negotiations.

Meanwhile, Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian President, told the BBC: I dont think there is a necessity for a bridge  we communicate with the Americans on Twitter.

Mr Hollande summed up EU suspicion of Mr Trump as he arrived at the informal summit in Valletta, saying: What is at stake is the very destiny of the European Union.

It is unacceptable that there be, through a certain number of statements by the President of the United States, a pressure on what Europe must be or what it must not be, because that is what he seeks.

There is also the need to ensure our own defence within the framework of the Atlantic Alliance. We must protect our commercial interests when they are threatened.

Ms May arrived in the Maltese capital carrying the message from Mr Trump that Europe must increase its defence spending in return for his 100 per cent commitment to Nato.

But other EU leaders view the American leader with horror because of his hostility to the EU, his protectionism and controversial policies, such as the travel ban from seven mainly Muslim countries.

The European parliaments main political parties have called for Mr Trumps likely choice as ambassador to the EU to be blocked from its buildings after he said the EU needed taming.

And, earlier this week, Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, included the US President as a threat facing the bloc, along with China, Russia and radical Islam.

Ms May is only attending the first part of the summit in Malta, which has seen the EU debating the ongoing migration crisis affecting the continent.

Later today, they will discuss Brexit, but  in a signpost to the future  without the UK Prime Minister, who will head home early.

 Trump and May hold hands outside the White House

However, Downing Street said her Brexit speech last month had been welcomed by Spains leader, Mariano Rajoy, who told her it had clarified many things and provided greater certainty.

They agreed that it was important to think about the future relationship as well as the detailed exit arrangement, so that we can give greater certainty for people and businesses who want to live and work in each other's countries, a spokeswoman said.

The two leaders also agreed an early deal on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and Britons in the rest of Europe was desirable.

Ms May is also holding talks with Ms Merkel, Austrias Chancellor Christian Kern and her Maltese counterpart Joseph Muscat, on the margins of the one-day summit.

However, the Prime Minister did not speak to reporters as she arrived at the Grandmasters Palace in Valletta  and will leave without staging a press conference.
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Refugees heading to Europe will be urged to settle in Asia and Latin America instead, under a new 30m British aid package.

Theresa May announced the scheme at an EU summit in Malta, arguing it showed the Government is stepping up its support for the most vulnerable refugees.

The package will see Britain provide lifesaving supplies for people facing freezing conditions across Eastern Europe and Greece, including warm clothing, shelter and medical care.

However, it will also pay for better infrastructure in far-flung countries willing to take refugees who had hoped to settle in Europe.

The move builds on an existing scheme run by The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), but it is the first time Britains aid budget has been used to bolster it.

It risks adding to criticism that the Prime Minister is unwilling for the UK to accept a reasonable share of the refugees and migrants fleeing Syria and other war zones.

Only a few thousand Syrian refugees have been resettled in Britain  and the Government has refused to take part in an EU-wide programme to co-ordinate the continents response to the crisis.

Government sources stressed that people would only be diverted to countries in Asia and Latin America if they were willing to be resettled there.

The Department for International Development is expected to release a list of interested countries later.

In Malta the Prime Minister insisted the focus of the 30m programme was helping migrants return home rather than risk their lives continuing perilous journeys to Europe.

It would provide assistance to refugees and migrants across Greece, the Balkans, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Sudan.

Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, said: Conflict, drought and political upheaval have fuelled protracted crises and driven mass migration. We cannot ignore these challenges.

This latest support from the UK will help those who decide they want to return home to do so safely, protect men, women and children from exploitation, and ensure that those caught in freezing conditions get the basic help they need to survive.

The package will be delivered by UNHCR, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and NGO collective Start Network. Its aim is to:

* provide 22,400 life-saving relief items including tents, blankets, winter clothes such as hats and gloves and hygiene kits including mother and baby products

* help more than 60,000 people with emergency medical care, legal support and frontline workers to identify those at risk of violence and trafficking

* allow up to 22,000 people to reunite with family members they have become separated from

* help countries in Asia and Latin America that might be able to resettle refugees put the infrastructure and systems in place to do so

* provide more than 1,500 refugees in Egypt, including those fleeing Syria and other conflicts, with urgent health assistance and educational grants for students to go back to school

* provide a migrant centre in Sudan to enable voluntary returns home when safe, replicating a successful scheme in Niger.

According to the Government, the package will bring UK humanitarian support in response to the migrant crisis to more than 100m since October 2015.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

Third parties cannot spoil the Israel-Azerbaijan relations, Alex Wexler, former adviser to Israel's internal security minister, told Trend Feb. 3.

He added that the Israel-Azerbaijan relations are based on deep strategic interests.

"I can say with confidence that Israel and Azerbaijan will continue to strengthen close cooperation," the expert added.

According to the Azerbaijani State Customs Committee, trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Israel amounted to almost $679.74 million in January-December 2016.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Anahanum
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A former Government health adviser has joined a US firm involved in NHS privatisation  a move campaigners say demonstrates the wafer-thin partition between Tory policy makers and the private health industry.

Nick Seddon, who was David Camerons Special Adviser for Health, became Executive Vice President of Optum just four months after he left his political role in July last year, reported Vice.

On Wednesday, Theresa May told Parliament the NHS is not for sale and it never will be in response to concerns the health service could form part of a post-Brexit trade deal between America and Britain.

Labour had warned a rushed trade deal between the UK and US could become a Trojan horse for NHS privatisation, with insurers and private health companies given the opportunity to provide NHS services.

For-profit health management company Optum is part of multinational insurance firm UnitedHealth Group, which made more than $8.4bn (6.7bn) in 2015, according to The Guardian.

The head of NHS England, Simon Stevens, is also a former UnitedHealth executive.

Optum already provides 156 NHS organisations, which it calls its partners, services such as contract negotiations and medication management.

The outsourcing of hospital support services in this way is highly contentious. Supporters of privatisation believe it saves money and improves efficiency, while critics say it can lower standards of care and goes against the founding principles of the NHS.

 May refuses to rule out private US firms taking over NHS services

A policy change made by David Camerons government in 2014 meant Mr Seddons move to the private sector did not need to be vetted for conflicts of interest by a semi-independent advisory committee, as was previously the case.

Instead his new appointment was approved by the Cabinet Office, which did so on the condition he did not lobby the UK Government on behalf of Optum in his first two years in the role or draw on privileged information available to him as a Crown servant.

International trade secretary Liam Fox has also ruled out the inclusion of access to the NHS in future negotiations. It is never part of our approach in these multilateral agreements to sacrifice the right of governments to regulate public services, he said.

Recommended One very important thing was missing from the Brexit White Paper

But Alan Taman, of campaigning groups Keep Our NHS Public and Doctors for the NHS, said Ms Mays comments were about as convincing as her predecessors remarks that the NHS was safe in Tory hands.

Ms May, the Americans are already here. Private healthcare USA already has eyes on the NHS. And your government is hastening its demise, he told The Independent.

Mr Taman said Mr Seddons new role showed "the wafer-thin partition between the previous and this governments closest advisers on health and the private healthcare industry, with its overriding desire to cherry-pick the NHS.

Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Show all 27 1 /27 Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Andrea Leadsom Andrea Leadsom has been appointed Secretary for Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Priti Patel Priti Patel has been appointed International Development Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Alun Cairns Alun Cairns will stay on as Welsh Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Karen Bradley Karen Bradley is now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Rex Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Greg Clark Greg Clark has been appointed Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? James Brokenshire James Brokenshire has been appointed as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Stephen Crabb Stephen Crabb has resigned as Work and Pensions Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Theresa Villiers Theresa Villiers will not return as Northern Ireland Secretary. She was reportedly offered a role by Theresa May, but turned it down, saying it was not one she felt could take on Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Chris Grayling Chris Grayling has been appointed Transport Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Damien Green Damien Green has been appointed Work and Pensions Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Liz Truss Liz Truss has been appointed Justice Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Patrick McLoughlin Patrick McLoughlin who was Transport Secretary has been appointed Tory Party chairman and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Justine Greening Justine Greening has been appointed as Education Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Gavin Williamson Gavin Williamson is to become the new Government Chief Whip Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Jeremy Hunt Jeremy Hunt will continue as Health Secretary Getty Images Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Nicky Morgan Nicky Morgan lost her job as Education Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Michael Gove Michael Gove has been sacked as Justice Secretary Reuters Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? John Whittingdale John Whittingdale left his job as Culture Secretary EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Oliver Letwin Oliver Letwin, the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, has been sacked from his role in the cabinet PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Philip Hammond The former Foreign Secretary has been made Chancellor EPA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Boris Johnson Leading Brexit campaigner is given the role of Foreign Secretary Getty Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Amber Rudd Leading Remain campaigner takes Theresa May's old job of Home Secretary PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Michael Fallon Stays as Defence Secretary AP Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? Liam Fox The former Defence Secretary is named as head of new Department for International Trade PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? David Davis The former shadow Home Secretary and leadership rival to David Cameron is named Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union - aka Brexit minister PA Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? George Osborne Gone as Chancellor - and fails to secure any new role in May's government GETTY Theresa May's Cabinet: Who's in  and who's out? David Mundell The Conservative Party's only Scottish MP retains his role as Scottish Secretary Getty Images

The links between private healthcare firms and this governments callous disregard of the growing chorus of anger and alarm over the state of the NHS should be as glaringly obvious as they are blatantly wrong to anyone, he added.

Mr Seddon, who was Mr Camerons health adviser from 2013, was formerly head of communications at Circle Health, which became the first private healthcare company to run an NHS hospital, Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire, in 2011.

However, the hospital was handed back to the health service in March 2015 after it was branded inadequate by the Care Quality Commission.
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Ukip leader Paul Nuttall is being investigated by police after reports of an allegation of election fraud relating to his upcoming bid to win the Stoke Central by-election.

The controversial politician, who succeeded Nigel Farage as the party's leader, registered his home address on nomination papers as a house in the Staffordshire city.

But in a series of tweets, Channel 4 News political correspondent Michael Crick, published images of the empty property, without any furniture inside.

Legally, an election candidate does not have to live in their prospective constituency, but under the Criminal Administration Act 2006, it is an offence to supply false information to the Electoral Registration Officer.

Defendants can also be fined or jailed for up to 51 weeks for providing false information on a nomination paper, under the Representation of the People Act 1983.

A Staffordshire Police spokesman told The Independent: "We have received a report of an allegation of election fraud relating to the Stoke Central byelection on Thursday 23 February 2017.

"Officers will be investigating the circumstances."

In the list of the 10 people running for the Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency, the Ukip leader's home address is given as 65 Oxford Street, in Penkhull, Stoke.

The Independent understands that the address was still available to rent at Wednesday lunchtime, from agency Whittaker & Biggs for 675 a month, and had been on the market since November.

Derby city Conservative councillor Richard Smalley was jailed for two months after pleading guilty to providing a false address in the run-up to local elections last May.

He filled in an electoral registration form claiming he lived in Allestree - which would have made him eligible to stand for Derby City Council - when his real address was in Borrowash, outside the boundary.

A Ukip spokesman said: We are entirely happy that all rules have been complied with. If and when the police decide to talk to us we will be happy to help them.

Fiona Ledden, acting returning officer at Stoke-on-Trent City council, said: It is clear from this that, as acting returning officer, I am required to take the nomination document provided to me at face value and I am not in a position to investigate what appears on the form.

There was an opportunity to object to any nomination papers and no objections were received. We understand the police are due to investigate and we will be co-operating fully as we would in any other matter.

Mr Nuttall yesterday tweeted: "A candidate being attacked for being prepared to move to his constituency must be a first..."

The Ukip leader, elected in November after Diane James quit 18 days into her tenure and after Nigel Farage stood down for a third time.

He said last week that he would "probably be OK" with waterboarding torture.
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Britain has been accused of abandoning a Foreign Office employee who says he was tortured by the Uzbek authorities and accused of spying for London.

Kayum Ortikov, 44, a married father of four who worked for the British government as a security guard, ended up in a dungeon in Tashkent after being arrested on charges of "human trafficking". It appears the extent of his "crime" was trying to help arrange visas for some relatives to work in Russia.

Mr Ortikov claims that his refusal to become an informant for Uzbekistan's secret police led to torture sessions in which he was accused of spying for the British.

In the months after his arrest in December 2008, he says he was hung from the ceiling and beaten, left naked in a freezing room, and burnt on his genitals with a newspaper which had been set alight. He remained in prison for another two years, during which time, he says, he did not receive a single visit from British officials.

He said: "Military intelligence and the SNB [National Security Service] tried hard to get employees of the British embassy to work for them as spies... I said, 'I'm not going to do this'." He recalls being warned that he would "pay" for his refusal.

In October 2009, his wife, Mohira, 40, was finally allowed to visit him. Shocked, and barely recognising the shell of the man who was her husband, she spoke to human rights campaigners. She claims it was only then that British embassy staff agreed to meet her  a year after her husband's arrest. "They were very warm and really seemed like they wanted to help, but then I didn't hear from them for a year and a half," she said.

In 2011, The Independent on Sunday interviewed Mr Ortikov's wife in Uzbekistan. Several weeks later, in May, the Uzbek authorities released her husband. The family managed to flee Uzbekistan last year and are living in a three-room flat in Ukraine. Their case is being dealt with by the UN's refugee agency, the UNHCR.

Fears for the safety of his family and concern that going public could affect their chances of resettling in Britain have prevented Mr Ortikov from speaking out until now.

"I was not a British spy  they should have proven this to the Uzbek government. Why did they wait so long? Why were they silent so long?"

He accuses embassy officials of washing their hands of him. "They didn't want to damage their relations with the Uzbek government because of me and my case. On 2 February [2009] they sent in the mail a letter to my home informing my family and I that I was no longer an employee and after that I think they just didn't care what happened to me. They threw me away."

The autocratic republic, which has a border with Afghanistan and is considered by the West a bulwark against Islamic extremism, is logistically valuable but its human rights record makes it an embarrassing ally. It was condemned after government forces killed hundreds of protesters  most unarmed  in 2005.

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, described the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's treatment of Mr Ortikov as "absolutely appalling" and accused the Government of "overlooking and ignoring" human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, a country on which it is reliant to get billions of pounds worth of military equipment out of Afghanistan. An FCO spokeswoman insisted that embassy staff "repeatedly intervened" on behalf of the former security guard.

The Ortikovs are now appealing directly to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, to allow the family to come to Britain. In a letter seen by the IoS, Mr Ortikov's wife outlines the "humiliations and inhumane treatment" her husband endured but the family has yet to receive a response.

In a statement, a spokesperson for No 10 said: "We were deeply concerned at reports that Kayum Ortikov was subject to torture while in detention. The British embassy in Tashkent repeatedly intervened with the Uzbek authorities on behalf of Mr Ortikov. Embassy staff were in contact with his family during and after the detention period, and subsequently with Mr Ortikov."

The Uzbek embassy in London said in a statement: "Mr Ortikov was arrested on purely criminal charges of human trafficking. Attempts to present him as 'a torture victim' or relate his case to political issues are totally false and may represent another example of abuse of the British immigration system to obtain a status of 'political refugee' and subsequent benefits paid by the British taxpayer."

Human Rights Watch has investigated the case and says Mr Ortikov's account is credible and consistent with patterns of torture in Uzbekistan. People associated with Western embassies "are treated as saboteurs, spies, and enemies of the state", according to Steve Swerdlow, a Central Asia researcher with the organisation.

A Human Rights Watch case worker speaks

Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch

I vividly remember the day I first met Mohira, three years ago. She had been waiting patiently for several hours to speak with me at the home of a human rights activist in a neighborhood on the outer reaches of Tashkent, Uzbekistans capital. I was there to interview relatives of the victims of police torture - a phenomenon that United Nations bodies have determined is systematic and widespread in that Central Asian nation.

Our meeting might have never happened. On the morning of the day we were to meet agents from Uzbekistans notorious security services  known by their acronym, the SNB  called the human rights activist just before I was to arrive, threatening consequences if a meeting was arranged with Human Rights Watch. When the activist called to say I shouldnt come over, I understood immediately what had happened.

A few days later we tried again. We took extra precautions, avoiding all phone communication. I took three taxis to the activists house to avoid being followed. By the time I got there, eight families were waiting to tell their stories. Mohira was second to last.

Soft-spoken, but with a steady voice, Mohira recounted the horror her family had endured, Her husband, Kayum, a security guard for the British embassy from 2004 until 2008, was arrested on false charges and accused of spying for the British government. The SNB held him in a jail cell for nine months, subjecting him to gruesome torture.

The British government stayed largely silent during the ordeal, she told me, as it deepened its military cooperation with Uzbekistans authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, because of the countrys geo-strategic importance as a transit route to Afghanistan. While Mohiras husband was brutally beaten and rotted in SNB custody, she said, no British diplomats even tried to visit him.

What made meeting Mohira and the other seven families unusual, however, wasnt the brutal treatment they described. It was their courage to speak out, fully aware that the SNB could have been  and probably was  listening to our every word. What Mohira and the others did was far from common in a country that in 2005 witnessed a brutal massacre in which government forces killed hundreds of mainly unarmed protesters. It was a courage rarely seen in a society where all forms of dissent are immediately crushed and dozens of civil society activists who did dare to speak out languish behind bars.

Indeed, it was Mohiras determination to speak out  the impulse that sits deep inside every human rights defender - that made all the difference, and led to her husbands release the next year.

But the British government, along with the United States and the European Union, has continued to sit largely silent as an atrocious situation in Uzbekistan gets worse. Rather than publicly discussing accountability, including potential sanctions, for Uzbek officials who engage in torture and other abuses, London has preferred to seek a conciliatory tone, raising human rights in quarterly reports to Parliament and in private with a president who has become only more defiant over the course of his 23 years in power.

Two months ago, the Uzbek government succeeded in interfering with the work of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to the extent that it felt compelled to terminate its visits to prisons. The director-general of the ICRC said visits under Uzbek government terms would be pointless and so the government has prevented the last truly independent observer in the country from monitoring treatment of prisoners, lest they witness more torture.

London, Washington, Brussels, and other key actors could use a little more of the courage Mohira exhibited in their policies toward Uzbekistan. They should have the courage, like she did, to speak out publicly, and to articulate that absent demonstrable progress on issues such as ending torture Uzbek officials will have to face real policy consequences.

Mohiras courage should inspire all of us to act. After all, if Mohira can come forward, why cant we?
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A Danish aid worker who rescued a young boy who had been ostracised by his community in Nigeria says he has just completed his first week at school.

Anja Ringgren Loven marked the landmark in three-year-old Hope's life by recreating the image of her, encouraging him to drink from a bottle of water, which was shared around the world one year ago.

Ms Loven and her husband, David Emmanuel Umem, run an orphanage in south-east Nigeria for children who have been abandoned by their families as a result of superstitious beliefs, called the African Childrens Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF).

They took on and named then-two-year-old Hope on 30 January 2016, after he had been accused of being a witch. Hope was emaciated, riddled with worms and suffering hypospadias, an inborn condition in which one has an incomplete developed urethra, she says.

Writing on Facebook at the start of this week, Ms Loven said: "On the 30 January 2016, I went on a rescue mission with David Emmanuel Umem, Nsidibe Orok and our Nigerian team.

"A rescue mission that went viral, and today it's exactly 1 year ago the world came to know a young little boy called Hope.

"This week Hope will start school."

 400,000 children at risk from Nigeria famine

The post, contrasting the old and new images, has been shared more than 27,000 times.

Ms Loven was named "the most inspiring person of the year 2016" by Germany's Ooom Magazine at the end of last year, beating the likes of Pope Francis and Barack Obama to the title.

Georg Kindel, OOOMs editor-in-chief, who led the jury that chose the list, said: When she saw the starving child, she acted like a human being and became an inspiration for millions. Her sustained efforts to help the abandoned children of Nigeria gives us hope and encourages us to follow suit.
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Two-fifths of American voters want to impeach President Donald Trump, a poll has claimed.

The Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found a full 40 per cent in favour of ousting the new president just two weeks into his first term. Forty-eight per cent did not favour impeachment and 12 per cent were unsure.

Pollsters also found that most Americans52 per centwanted former President Barack Obama back in the White House.

More than 600,000 people have also signed up to a petition by campaign group Impeach Trump Now on the basis that he has not taken a far enough step away from his real estate empire whilst in government.

Mr Trump, despite winning the electoral college, lost the popular vote by close to three million votes and already has the lowest popularity ratings in contemporary American history.

The low numbers appeared to come down to opposition to his policies.

Only a quarter of Americans, or 26 per cent, were in favour of his 'Muslim ban', the executive order which barred nearly all travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries for at least 90 days.

The findings came after a Texas congressman joined calls for Donald Trump to be impeached for allegedly exceeding his constitutional authority with a temporary ban on refugees and immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries. He is one of a number of Democrats calling for Congress to investigate whether Mr Trump intentionally exceeded his constitutional authority to implement the temporary ban, which has sparked global protests.

Many demonstrators have called for Mr Trump to be impeached, but the prospect looks almost impossible with his Republican Party in control of both the House of Representatives and Senate.

Both houses would have to vote on the move, with the US Constitution requiring a simple majority in the House to impeach a President for treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanours.
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The Russian ultra-nationalist dubbed Putins Rasputin by Breitbart News when it was run by President Donald Trumps chief strategist, Steve Bannon, has emerged as an unlikely foreign-policy fixer for the Kremlin.

Alexander Dugin, whose bushy beard gives him a passing resemblance to the Siberian mystic who bewitched the last czars family, says he played a key but largely clandestine role in patching up Russias relations with Turkey, an account confirmed by a senior figure in Ankara. And with people he calls ideological allies now in the White House, Dugin says hes bullish on better ties with the US, too.

After Turkey shot down a Russian warplane along the Syrian border in 2015, prompting World War III to trend on Twitter, the firebrand philosopher used his contacts in both countries to form a backchannel that helped Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan end an increasingly dangerous feud, according to a retired Turkish general who flew to Moscow for secret talks.

The rapprochement allowed Putin to outmaneuver the Obama administration and turn the tide in Syrias civil war on behalf of Bashar al-Assad. For Dugin, whose views on the evils of liberalism have been cited by Bannon and other far-right leaders, it also moved Russia a step closer to fulfilling his vision of unwinding the US-led global order, in part by luring Turkey away from NATO and creating a Russo-Islamic pact that includes Iran.

Dugin, the son of a Soviet military-intelligence official, said being independent makes him an effective go-between in matters of state. The 55-year-old rabble-rouser, blacklisted by the US for aiding the insurgency in Ukraine, has no official post. But he has advised a member of Putins inner circle and written a textbook on geopolitics thats been used by the military.

I can talk to people like an official cant, Dugin said in his Moscow office at Tsargrad TV, where hes a commentator and chief editor. A diplomat says what hes told. What does a military man say? Even less. And an intelligence officer? Nothing at all. You dont understand where the truth lies. I speak from the perspective of geopolitics. Thats why the Turks started to trust me.

The Russian Su-24 jet was downed by Turkish forces (EPA)

Dugin, whos been described as everything from an occult fascist to a mystical imperialist, lost his prestigious job running the sociology department at Moscow State University in 2014 after activists accused him of encouraging genocide. Thousands of people signed a petition calling for his removal after a rant in support of separatists in Ukraine in which he said, kill, kill, kill.

The Kremlin, which gave the prolific polemicist prominent airtime on the biggest networks to cheerlead during the annexation of Crimea in 2014, has kept him at arms length since he criticised Putin for not taking more of Ukraine. When asked if Dugin played a role in the detente with Turkey, Putins spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said, No.

Hes seen as a brilliant philosopher, but brilliance and madness are very close to each other, said Sergei Markov, a political consultant to Putins staff. Even though Dugins not an official envoy, Markov said, he appears to have given the Turks some very good advice.

Dugin made everyone happy by organizing a November visit to Crimea by a Turkish delegation that included one of Erdogans cousins, a few weeks after meeting Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in Ankara, Markov said. The trip was a major fillip for Russias efforts to gain recognition for Putins annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, which provoked US and European sanctions.

Incredibly beautifulone of the best moments of my life, Dugin said after Trumps inauguration.

Dugins writings, in dozens of books and countless blogs, have made him an influential thinker not only in Turkey, but also Iran, wheres hes a frequent visitor, and among anti-establishment parties that are on the rise throughout the West, a trend that is welcomed by Russias leadership.

Apart from Turkey only two countries really pay attention to meIran and the US, Dugin said.

The foreword to one of his books was written by a retired US.professor, Paul Gottfried, a Trump supporter who was among the first political philosophers to use the term alternative right to describe the radical conservative movement. In July 2016, a month before he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon described Breitbart as the platform for the alt-right.

In a video address to a Vatican conference in 2014, Bannon, whose White House role has been elevated to include a seat on Trumps National Security Council, defended the traditionalist views espoused by Dugin and other nationalists who want sovereignty for their country. Dugin said hes never met Bannon.

Dugins role in resolving the crisis with Erdogan over the jet incident was confirmed by Ismail Hakki Pekin, a former head of Turkish military intelligence. He was one of five members of the Patriotic Party, including a fellow retired general and a retired admiral, who flew to Moscow in December 2015 for four days of meetings that Dugin arranged with current and retired Russian officers.

During the visit, Dugin took the Turkish delegation to a secret room in a special place to meet his benefactor, Konstantin Malofeev, a multimillionaire with ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, Pekin said in an interview in Ankara.

Dugin and Malofeev, whos also under US sanctions for supporting the revolt in Ukraine, started Tsargrad, an old name for Constantinople, in 2015 and the TV channel now has some 20 million viewers. It was the only major station to carry a speech former Trump adviser Carter Page gave in Moscow last year.

Pekin said Dugin introduced Malofeev as Putins right-hand man, and the Turks came to learn the financier really can knock on Putins door.

Thats how the trip became effective, Pekin said. We knew what we said went directly to Putin.

And what they said was that Erdogan had nothing to do with downing the bomber the previous month. Pekin said he and his colleagues were successful in convincing the Russians they spoke with, including two plainclothes generals, that rogue elements in the military were responsible for the shootdown.

Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Show all 5 1 /5 Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Russian aircraft goes down in Kizildag region of Turkey's Hatay province, close to the Syrian border Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Russian aircraft goes down in Kizildag region of Turkey's Hatay province, close to the Syrian border Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Russian aircraft goes down in Kizildag region of Turkey's Hatay province, close to the Syrian border Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Russian aircraft goes down in Kizildag region of Turkey's Hatay province, close to the Syrian border Russian plane shot down by Turkish jets Russian aircraft goes down in Kizildag region of Turkey's Hatay province, close to the Syrian border

It was a conspiracy involving followers of Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive cleric based in Pennsylvania, and US and NATO officials who wanted to drive a wedge between Russia and Turkey, said Pekin, who briefed senior diplomats and military officials in Ankara after the Moscow trip.

Pekin said Dugin had sought out the two retired Turkish generals and former admiral specifically because they all had a history opposing Erdogan and spent time in jail for alleged plots to overthrow the government, which made them more credible in the eyes of their Russian interlocutors.

In March, with tensions between Putin and Erdogan still simmering, Dugin flew to Ankara for a follow up visit that included talks with relatives of Erdogan and other influential figures.

Vladimir Putin and Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan in October. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

Dugin said he told the Turks that arresting the person accused of shooting dead one of the Russian pilots as he tried to parachute to safety would go along way toward re-establishing relations. The next day, on March 30, the suspect was taken into custody in the eastern city of Izmir.

They said they were carrying out an investigation and that Erdogan would apologize, said Dugin, who passed on the information to Russian officials.

Three months later, on June 27, with Turkeys economy squeezed by the trade curbs Russia introduced after the shootdown, Erdogan finally expressed regret for the incident, paving the way for a resumption of ties.

But less than three weeks later, on July 15, something Malofeev and Dugin warned about back in that secret room came truean attempted coup by disgruntled members of the military, according to Pekin.

Malofeev dismissed the assertion hes Putin's right-hand man as a flattering exaggeration. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, denied the financier played a role in the rapprochement with Turkey.

Dugin, a dissident in the 1980s who co-founded the National Bolshevik party after communism ended, was in Ankara at the time of the military revolt. He gave a series of TV interviews in support of the Turkish leaders decision to mend ties with Russia, the last of which, at state-run TRT Haber, concluded just 2 1/2 hours before the coup plotters seized the station.

Erdogan blamed Gulen and his U.S. benefactors for the putsch, responding with a sweeping crackdown of suspected Gulenists that has upended society and driven Turkey and Russia closer together. The re-energized partnership was put to the test in December, when Russias ambassador to Turkey was assassinated by a police officer in Ankara.

That was the last attempt by the outgoing US administration and the globalists to disrupt Russias rapprochement with Turkey, Dugin said.

Dugin has delighted in watching Russia and Turkey take the reins in resolving the Syrian crisis, elbowing the US aside.

Erdogan, with Putins blessing, sent troops into Syria in August to fight Islamic State and US-supplied Syrian Kurdish YPG forces, which Turkey views as terrorists for their links to autonomy-seeking PKK rebels. In return, Turkey blocked rebel supplies into Aleppo, enabling Assads forces, backed by Russian firepower, to capture the former commercial capital in December. In January, the two leaders started joint air strikes against Islamic State targets.

Dugin, who has long predicted the demise of the Wests liberal hegemony, said the election of Trump has been a watershed development that promises to change the course of world history.

Incredibly beautifulone of the best moments of my life, he said after Trumps inauguration.

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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

After decades of railing against Washington for seeking the Westernization of all of humanity, Trumps elevation has led to a Damascene conversion for Dugin, who declared anti-Americanism over.

America not only isnt an opponent, its a potential ally under Trump, he said.

Now Dugins focusing on Europe, where hes been cultivating ties with anti-establishment parties that threaten a political and military union seven decades in the making.

With key elections in France, Germany and the Netherlands this year, the Russian polemicist has a new mantra for Europe thats ripped straight out of Trumps campaign playbook:

Drain the swamp.

 2017 Bloomberg L.P
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Angelina Jolie has criticised Donald Trump's ban on refugees from seven Muslim-majority nations entering the US.

"Refugees are men, women and children caught in the fury of war, or the cross hairs of persecution," Jolie writes in The New York Times. "Far from being terrorists, they are often the victims of terrorism themselves."

Responding to Mr Trump's assertation that the executive order would stop terrorists from entering the US, Jolie says: "The global refugee crisis and the threat from terrorism make it entirely justifiable that we consider how best to secure our borders.

"Every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear."

 Vocal protests at US airports attack Donald Trump's executive action

The UN refugee agency's special envoy adds: "As the mother of six children, who were all born in foreign lands and are proud American citizens, I very much want our country to be safe for them, and all our nations children."

Jolie notes refugees are subject to "the highest level of screenings of any category of traveller" to the US, which includes "months of interviews, and security checks carried out by the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Centre, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department."

"Furthermore," she adds, "only the most vulnerable people are put forward for resettlement in the first place: survivors of torture, and women and children at risk or who might not survive without urgent, specialised medical assistance."

Refugee crisis - in pictures Show all 27 1 /27 Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugee crisis - in pictures A child looks through the fence at the Moria detention camp for migrants and refugees at the island of Lesbos on May 24, 2016. AFP/Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Ahmad Zarour, 32, from Syria, reacts after his rescue by MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) while attempting to reach the Greek island of Agathonisi, Dodecanese, southeastern Agean Sea Refugee crisis - in pictures Syrian migrants holding life vests gather onto a pebble beach in the Yesil liman district of Canakkale, northwestern Turkey, after being stopped by Turkish police in their attempt to reach the Greek island of Lesbos on 29 January 2016. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees flash the 'V for victory' sign during a demonstration as they block the Greek-Macedonian border Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants have been braving sub zero temperatures as they cross the border from Macedonia into Serbia. Refugee crisis - in pictures A sinking boat is seen behind a Turkish gendarme off the coast of Canakkale's Bademli district on January 30, 2016. At least 33 migrants drowned on January 30 when their boat sank in the Aegean Sea while trying to cross from Turkey to Greece. Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A general view of a shelter for migrants inside a hangar of the former Tempelhof airport in Berlin, Germany Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees protest behind a fence against restrictions limiting passage at the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Since last week, Macedonia has restricted passage to northern Europe to only Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans who are considered war refugees. All other nationalities are deemed economic migrants and told to turn back. Macedonia has finished building a fence on its frontier with Greece becoming the latest country in Europe to build a border barrier aimed at checking the flow of refugees Refugee crisis - in pictures A father and his child wait after being caught by Turkish gendarme on 27 January 2016 at Canakkale's Kucukkuyu district Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants make hand signals as they arrive into the southern Spanish port of Malaga on 27 January, 2016 after an inflatable boat carrying 55 Africans, seven of them women and six chidren, was rescued by the Spanish coast guard off the Spanish coast. Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee holds two children as dozens arrive on an overcrowded boat on the Greek island of Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures A child, covered by emergency blankets, reacts as she arrives, with other refugees and migrants, on the Greek island of Lesbos, At least five migrants including three children, died after four boats sank between Turkey and Greece, as rescue workers searched the sea for dozens more, the Greek coastguard said Refugee crisis - in pictures Migrants wait under outside the Moria registration camp on the Lesbos. Over 400,000 people have landed on Greek islands from neighbouring Turkey since the beginning of the year Refugee crisis - in pictures The bodies of Christian refugees are buried separately from Muslim refugees at the Agios Panteleimonas cemetery in Mytilene, Lesbos Refugee crisis - in pictures Macedonian police officers control a crowd of refugees as they prepare to enter a camp after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A refugee tries to force the entry to a camp as Macedonian police officers control a crowd after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees are seen aboard a Turkish fishing boat as they arrive on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing a part of the Aegean Sea from the Turkish coast to Lesbos Reuters Refugee crisis - in pictures An elderly woman sings a lullaby to baby on a beach after arriving with other refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A man collapses as refugees make land from an overloaded rubber dinghy after crossing the Aegean see from Turkey, at the island of Lesbos EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures A girl reacts as refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees make a show of hands as they queue after crossing the Greek border into Macedonia near Gevgelija Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures People help a wheelchair user board a train with others, heading towards Serbia, at the transit camp for refugees near the southern Macedonian town of Gevgelija AP Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees board a train, after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija. Macedonia is a key transit country in the Balkans migration route into the EU, with thousands of asylum seekers - many of them from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia - entering the country every day Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures An aerial picture shows the "New Jungle" refugee camp where some 3,500 people live while they attempt to enter Britain, near the port of Calais, northern France Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures A Syrian girl reacts as she helped by a volunteer upon her arrival from Turkey on the Greek island of Lesbos, after having crossed the Aegean Sea EPA Refugee crisis - in pictures Refugees arrive by boat on the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey Getty Images Refugee crisis - in pictures Beds ready for use for migrants and refugees are prepared at a processing center on January 27, 2016 in Passau, Germany. The flow of migrants arriving in Passau has dropped to between 500 and 1,000 per day, down significantly from last November, when in the same region up to 6,000 migrants were arriving daily.

Jolie warns: "If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire.

"We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against."

She concludes: "Shutting our door to refugees or discriminating among them is not our way, and does not make us safer. Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength."
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A pregnant woman's husband will have the power to stop her from having an abortion, even in cases of spousal rape, under a new law introduced in the US state of Arkansas.

Most second trimester abortions will also be banned by Act 45 - the Unborn Child Protection From Dismemberment Abortion Act - which will make it possible for husbands to sue doctors who carry out abortions for civil damages, or get an injunction to block the termination.

The pro-life law, which was pushed through in just two months by the state's Republican government, prohibits all dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedures, in which the physician removes the foetus from the womb with surgical tools.

 Barack Obama moves to protect funding for abortion clinics from attack by Donald Trump's Republicans

D&E procedures are the safest way for women to end their pregnancies after 14 weeks of gestation, according to the American Medical Association.

But the medical procedure will now become a felony in the southern state, punishable by a $10,000 fine or six years in prison.

This is despite 683 of Arkansas's 3,771 abortions being D&E in 2015, according to the state's health department.

A clause in the legislation also states the husband of a woman seeking an abortion, if he is presumed to be the baby's father, can file a civil lawsuit against the physician for monetary damages or "injunctive relief"  a court order that would prevent the doctor from going ahead with the procedure.

The womans parents or legal guardians can also sue to stop the abortion, if she is a minor.

Although a husband cannot win money in cases of criminal conduct against his wife  namely, spousal rape  he could still sue to block her from having the abortion.

State Representative Andy Mayberry, who co-sponsored the bill, called D&E a gruesome, barbaric procedure, adding that the routine procedure is one that no civilised society should embrace.

Mr Mayberry is also the president of Arkansas Right to Life, a subsidiary of America's largest pro-life organisation, the National Right to Life Committee.

Karen Musick, co-founder of Arkansas Abortion Support Network, told The Daily Beast she could not fathom how the bill had become law.

Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Show all 23 1 /23 Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of an expected ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions An abortion rights activist holds placards outside of the US Supreme Court before the Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Texas law placing a raft of restrictions on abortion clinics, handing a major victory to the "pro-choice" camp in the country's most important ruling on the divisive issue in a generation. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Pro-life activists pray on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Texas abortion provider Amy Hagstrom-Miller looks on as Nancy Northup, President of The Center for Reproductive Rights speaks to the media outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions An abortion rights activist holds placards outside of the US Supreme Court before the Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Texas law placing a raft of restrictions on abortion clinics, handing a major victory to the "pro-choice" camp in the country's most important ruling on the divisive issue in a generation. Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Texas abortion provider Amy Hagstrom-Miller wipes a tear as she walks down the steps of the United States Supreme Court with Nancy Northup, President of The Center for Reproductive Rights on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Abortion rights activists Morgan Hopkins of Boston, left, and Alison Turkos of New York City, celebrate on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 27: Abortion rights activists Morgan Hopkins of Boston, left, and Alison Turkos of New York City, celebrate on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. (Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images) Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activist Morgan Hopkins of Boston, celebrates on the steps of the United States Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a 5-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down one of the nation's toughest restrictions on abortion, a Texas law that women's groups said would have forced more than three-quarters of the state's clinics to close. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists embrace after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of a ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. / AFP / MANDEL NGAN (Photo credit should read MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images) AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists embrace after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Pro-choice activist, Alissa Manzoeillo, of Washington, D.C. waits for rulings in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. A ruling is expected in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, a Texas case the places restrictions on abortion clinics, as well as rulings in the former Virginia Governor's corruption case and a gun rights case. Pete Marovich/Getty Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists cheer after the US Supreme Court struck down a Texas law placing restrictions on abortion clinics, outside of the Supreme Court on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. In a case with far-reaching implications for millions of women across the United States, the court ruled 5-3 to strike down measures which activists say have forced more than half of Texas's abortion clinics to close. Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of an expected ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. AFP/Getty Images Supreme Court strikes down abortion restrictions Abortion rights activists hold placards outside of the US Supreme Court ahead of an expected ruling on abortion clinic restrictions on June 27, 2016 in Washington, DC. AFP/Getty Images

There is zero part of me that understands why a rapist or someone who got someone pregnant against their will, maybe incest, would have any right in that decision, she said. I cannot wrap my brain around the fact that there would be anyone who thinks otherwise.

Holly Dickson, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, told the Huffington Post the bill might not be constitutional.

They created a whole new right  the right of a husband or family member to sue a doctor on behalf of an adult patient, she said. I cannot begin to tell you what the intent was, but we have raised concerns about that provision and the entire rest of the bill, which is unconstitutional.

The ACLU of Arkansas has said it plans to challenge the abortion law in court before it goes into effect later this year.

Six other states have passed nearly identical laws, and in all four states where the law was challenged  Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia  it was struck down by the courts.

The Supreme Courts 1973 decision in Roe versus Wade protects a womans right to have an abortion up until the foetus would be viable outside the womb, around 22 weeks of pregnancy.

Update. The headline and sub-headline of this story have been revised. While the originals (noted below) were entirely accurate, we have updated them to make explicit reference to the type of abortion dealt with by the legislation, and to focus on the role of husbands as plaintiffs in attempts to seek injunctive relief in cases involving rape. Both points were explained in full in the original text of the article, which has not been amended. 28/5/19

Original headline - "Arkansas passes law allowing rapists to prevent victims who want an abortion"

Original sub-headline - "Activists say states blanket ban on the safest form of second trimester abortion could be ruled unconstitutional"
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US Senator Bernie Sanders has asked Donald Trumps billionaire education secretary whether she would have got the job if her family had not donated $200m to the Republican party.

Mr Sanders put a series of tough questions to Betsy DeVos during her confirmation hearing as a new member of the new Presidents administration.

He grilled Ms DeVos about the amount of money her family donated to the Republican party over the years, a figure that stands at around $200m according to Mr Sanders and is "possible" according to Ms DeVos.

In footage of the exchange, Mr Sanders asks the new education secretary: My question is, and I dont want to be rude, but do you think if you were not a multi-billionaire, if your family had not made hundreds of millions of dollars of contributions to the Republican party that you would be sitting here today?

She responds: "Senator, as a matter of fact, I do think there would be that possibility. I've worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years."

Mr Sanders then asked Ms DeVos whether she would "work with him to make colleges and universities tuition free".

She replies: "Senator I think that's a very interesting idea and it's really great thinking about, but I think we also have to consider the fact that there is nothing in life that is truly free, somebody is going to pay for it."

But Mr Sanders said the Senate had been presented with a law to substantially lower tax breaks for millionaires while "low income young people could not afford to go to college".

Do you think that makes sense?, he asked her.

Ms DeVos replies:"Senator I think if your question is really around how can we help college and high education be more affordable for young people...."

But Ms Sanders interrupts, to say: "That was not my question. My question is should we make make public colleges and universities tuition free for every family in America, regardless of their income, to be able to give their children higher education."

She replies: "Senator, I think we can work together and we can work hard in making sure that college and high education in some form is affordable for all young people who would like to pursue it."

A billionaire philanthropist and businesswoman, Ms DeVos is a former Michigan Republican party chairwoman. Her husband, Dick, was the Republicans nominee to be Governor of Michigan in 2006.

Ms DeVos has strong ties to the Christian Reformed community in Michigan and is known for her controversial push for private school voucher programmes.

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. 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Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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She is the daughter of Edgar Prince, a billionaire industrialist and founder of the automobile parts supplier Prince Corp.

The DeVos family is one of the wealthiest in Michigan and heirs to the health and beauty company Amway Copr. They are major donors to the Republican party.

In the hearing, Mr Sanders continued to grill Ms DeVos by asking her: "What are your proposals in making child care universal for working families. Do you agree with that?"

"How do we help somebody who is making eight or nine bucks an hour when we can't raise the minimum wage here because of Republican opposition. How do we make sure those mums can get quality child care that they can afford?"

Ms DeVos replied: "Well I'll be looking forward to helping that mum getting quality education for that child or her children so they can look forward to a bright and colourful future."
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Donald Trumps pick for education secretary is one big step closer to being appointed to the cabinet after the Senate committee gathered unusually early to vote in her favour.

They voted 52 to 48 along party lines.

Betsy DeVos - a billionaire philanthropist and anti-public school lobbyist - still has to be approved by the final confirmation vote on Monday.

The vote comes despite opposition from Democrats and two Republican senators due to her positions on public and charter schools, as well as her apparent lack of basic knowledge on education laws and teaching methods during her senate confirmation hearing.

Vice President Mike Pence will be in the chamber on Monday to help usher in Ms DeVos by achieving a 50-50 tied vote, despite her losing support from Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

Democratic senator and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer implored his colleagues to "look into their conscience" and that Ms DeVos, the former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman, was "one of the worst nominees that has ever been" considered for the job.

She is known for her controversial push for private school voucher programmes, consequently diverting money from free public schools which the majority of low-income children attend, and she has strong ties to the Christian Reformed community.

 Betsy DeVos blames 'clerical error' for years as VP of anti-LGBT foundation

The Republican chairman of the education committee, Senator Lamar Alexander, said he would be "pleased to support her".

Other Republicans have accused the Democrats of their stalling tactics, arguing their pro-teaching unions stance has influenced them politically, and that they have also delayed other cabinet picks.

Democrats in turn have accused Republicans of rushing through cabinet picks without proper vetting or background checks.

 The Best of Bernie Sanders' grilling of Betsy DeVos in her Senate nomination hearing for Education Secretary

During her senate confirmation hearing in January, Ms DeVos was asked by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders whether she would have got the job if her family had not donated $200 million to the Republican Party.

"Senator, as a matter of fact, I do think there would be that possibility. I've worked very hard on behalf of parents and children for the last almost 30 years," she responded.

She also appeared to struggle when questioned on other Education Department issues including the private schools voucher scheme, student debt and the bedrock federal law guaranteeing an education to students with disabilities.

If she is appointed, she will lead the agency for policies affecting public schools, and will be in charge of executing Mr Trumps promise to use $20 billion in federal funds to create school choice programmes.

She will also decide what state-level requirements schools should abide by.
Details added (first version posted on 19:10)

Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

Armenia pushes foreign citizens to visiting Azerbaijans occupied territories by fraud and other ways, and later tries to turn these people into a tool in its propagandist political games, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry, told Trend Feb. 3.

He was commenting on the extradition of blogger Alexander Lapshin.

Alexander Lapshin, despite special warning by the foreign ministries of countries, the citizen of which he is, visited the occupied territories of Azerbaijan by violating the countrys state border, Hajiyev said. Then, knowing that he is in the blacklist of Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry, which barred him from visiting the country, Lapshin again entered Azerbaijan using the ID issued by another country.

He himself admitted that he had committed these actions deliberately, Hajiyev added. A criminal case was initiated under the Criminal Code of Azerbaijan against Lapshin, and he was put on the Interpol international wanted list.

Hajiyev said that being a blogger or a journalist is not a reason for immunity or violation of the laws.

Therefore, the attempts to politicize this issue or treat it as violation of freedom of expression are absolutely wrong, he noted. Unreasonable fuss and discussions created around this purely legal issue are not clear. Azerbaijan has taken appropriate legal steps for the extradition of Alexander Lapshin detained in Belarus within the framework of the Kishinev Convention on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Matters signed Oct. 7, 2002 by the CIS countries.

Armenias unjustified activity, which causes laughter in this issue, and the countrys attempts to politicize it, expose the dirty goals pursued by Yerevan, Hajiyev said.

Alexander Lapshin is a citizen of several countries and has had a criminal conspiracy with Armenians living in the occupied Azerbaijani territories. He also illegally visited these territories.

Lapshin is accused of violating Azerbaijani laws on state border in April 2011 and October 2012.

In order to promote the illegal regime created in the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia, Lapshin presented Azerbaijans Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state on his social media account, and supporting the independence of the unrecognized regime he made public incitements aimed at violating Azerbaijans territorial integrity on April 6 and June 29, 2016.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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Donald Trump, who has spoken of his wish to reintroduce torture, has selected an intelligence agent who ran a notorious black site prison in Thailand to be deputy head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Gina Haspel, who served as an undercover agent for decades years, will be the number two to CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

[She] is an exemplary intelligence officer with an uncanny ability to get things done, Mr Pompeo said in a statement.

Mike Pompeo criticised Barack Obama from prohibiting the use of waterboarding and other harsh techniques after he assumed office in 2009 (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

We are fortunate that someone of her intellect, skill, and experience will be our deputy director.

But there are concerns that the appointment of Ms Haspel could be another indication that Mr Trump is preparing to restore the use of waterboarding and other methods of torture.

The Associated Press said that Ms Haspel, the first female career CIA officer to be named deputy director, has extensive overseas experience, including several stints as chief of station at outposts abroad.

 Trump tells National Prayer Breakfast to 'pray for Arnold's ratings'

In Washington, she has held several top senior leadership positions, including deputy director of the National Clandestine Service and deputy director of the National Clandestine Service for Foreign Intelligence and Covert Action.

But the role for which she has attracted the most attention was as a senior member of the CIAs team involved in interrogation. One report from 2013, that did not name Ms Haspel because she was still undercover, said she had an extensive role in torturing detainees.

She also ran the CIAs secret prison in Thailand where terror suspects were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques.

Politico said that two Democratic senators, Ron Wyden and Martin Heinrich, had written a classified letter to Mr Rrump expressing their concerns about Ms Haspel.

In an unclassified version of the letter, also sent to the White House, they wrote: Her background makes her unsuitable for the position.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, also voiced concerns.

I want some reassurance from her that she intends to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law, he said. I plan to meet with her as soon as possible to secure that commitment from her.

Mr Trump has often spoken of his belief that torture works and that the US should be willing to make use of techniques such as waterboarding in its efforts against militant groups such as Isis.

However, last month, at a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Mr Trump said he would leave the decision on whether or not to use it, up to his Defence Secretary, Mr Mattis, whom he described as a generals general.

He has stated publicly that he does not necessarily believe in torture or waterboarding, or however you want to define it I dont necessarily agree, said Mr Trump.
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Donald Trump is to conduct a "full review" of America's foreign policy towards Cuba, White House press secretary Sean Spicer has announced.

He said the President planned to look at "all" aspects of how the US deals with its historic enemy, which lies just 90 miles south of Florida.

Human rights would be a key part of Mr Trump's revised policy towards Cuba, the press secretary said.

During the final years of the Obama administration, the US softened its stance towards its communist neighbour.

Obama in Cuba Show all 6 1 /6 Obama in Cuba Obama in Cuba U.S. President Barack Obama makes a face towards a group of children in the audience as he stand on stage with first lady Michelle Obama as he is introduced by Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis Charge d'Affaires to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba Obama in Cuba President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez upon arrival to the airport in Havana, Cuba Obama in Cuba U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle approach Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez as they arrive at Havana's international airport Obama in Cuba US President Barack Obama waves after his arrival on Jose Marti Airport in Havana, Cuba Obama in Cuba US President Barack Obama carries an umbrella as he is followed by First Lady Michelle Obama after their arrival on Jose Marti Airport in Havana, Cuba Obama in Cuba The 'Air Force One' jet carrying US President Barack Obama touches down at the Jose Marti Airport in Havana, Cuba

Recommended American Airlines opens office in Cuba despite Trump uncertainty

Mr Spicer's comments suggest Washington may take a harder line with Cuba, raising the possibility of new trade embargoes and the cancellation of commercial flights from the US, which were only recently introduced.

Under Barack Obama, the US ended a policy that allowed any Cuban who made it to American soil to stay and become a legal resident.

Ending the so-called wet foot, dry foot rule was welcomed by Havana as an important step in advancing relations.

 First US commercial flight in decades lands in Cuba

Mr Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro established full diplomatic ties and opened embassies in their capitals in 2015. The former US President visited Havana last March.

But Mr Trump has threatened to end the period of improving relations.

In November he tweeted: 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.
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President Donald Trump has accused Iran of "playing with fire" as part of a diplomatic spat over Iran's latest ballistic missile test.

Referring to the previous administration of Barack Obama, Mr Trump added that the Iranian government didn't appreciate how "kind" that the US had been to them - a potential reference to the nuclear deal struck with the US and other world powers in 2015 where Iran's nuclear capability was reduced in return for a loosening of sanctions. Mr Trump said that he would not follow a similar path.

Shortly after My Trump's tweet Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said via the same platform that the his country is unmoved by US threats following its missile test launch and Tehran will never initiate war.

Iran unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. Will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defence, Mr Zarif tweeted

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The episode follows a tweet from President Trump a day previously that he had put Iran on notice over a the missile test that could be in contravention of a UN resolution. He added that Tehran in that should have been thankful for the nuclear deal as the country was on its last legs.

The warnings appear as an early manifestation of Mr Trump's promise of a tougher American approach to Iran, but the Thursday tweet received an angry response in Tehran - which may have prompted the latest outburst. Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi was quoted by state TV as saying: Instead of thanking Iran for its continued fight against terrorism ... the American government is practically helping the terrorists by claims about Iran that are baseless, repetitive and provocative.

The missile test occurred at a well-known site outside Semnan, about 140 miles east of Tehran. The Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding, in a failed test of a reentry vehicle, US officials said.

Iran said it had successfully test-fired the ballistic missile that the US said had exploded early, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

The missile test on Sunday was successful ... the test was not a violation of a nuclear deal with world powers or any UN resolution, defence minister Hossein Dehghan told Tasnim.

A top adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran will not yield to US threats over a recent ballistic missile test that was aimed at limiting its defence capabilities.

This is not the first time that an inexperienced person [US President Donald Trump] has threatened Iran ... the American government will understand that threatening Iran is useless, Ali Akbar Velayati was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars News Agency.

Iran does not need permission from any country to defend itself.

The warning from the US could foreshadow more aggressive economic and diplomatic measures against Iran.

Three senior US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters a range of options, including economic sanctions, were being considered and that a broad review was being conducted of the US posture toward Iran.

We are in the process of evaluating the strategic options and the framework for how we want to approach these issues, the official said. We do not want to be premature or rash or take any action that would foreclose options or unnecessarily contribute to a negative response.

Our sincere hope is that the Iranians will heed this notice today and will change their behaviour.

Iran has test-fired several ballistic missiles since the nuclear deal in 2015, but the latest test was the first since Mr Trump became President.
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Campaigners have denounced Donald Trumps vow to repeal a law that stops religious groups endorsing or campaigning for political candidates  claiming it would damage both Americas democracy and its houses of worship.

Speaking at a National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC, the US President said he would totally destroy the Johnson Amendment, a piece of legislation dating from 1954. The provision threatens churches and other religious institutions with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they campaign from the pulpit.

I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution, said Mr Trump.

 Trump pledges to destroy Johnson amendment

He added: Jefferson asked, Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God. Among those freedoms is the right to worship according to our own beliefs.

But activists fighting to retain Americas separation between church and state, have condemned the remarks, saying the move would open the way to a flood of money entering politics through unregulated, tax free churches. They also claim polls show an overwhelming majority of people  along with members of the clergy  do not want the law repealed.

If the law is repealed, it would lead to the funnelling of money into political campaigns with no way to check, Rob Boston, Director of Communications for the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, told The Independent.

Mr Boston said polls showed most Americans did not support repealing the law. He cited a surgery carried out last year by LifeWay Research, which found that 79 per cent of people thought pastors should not endorse candidates during a church service.

He said he believed the move had had been pushed on Mr Trump by members of the religious right, including Jerry Falwell Jr, the president of the largest Christian college in the world and a key supporter of the New York tycoon. He said Mr Falwells father, a major religious leader, had fallen foul of the law during the 1980s.

Mr Boston said he believed the move could also detrimentally affect Americas houses of worship. There are a number of reasons why people go to a place of worship. But rarely are they looking for guidance on who to vote for, he said.

Steve Benen, a political writer and blogger, wrote on MSNBC: Why does Trump want to change this? Basically because the religious right told him to. But why does the religious right want this? Because some on the right still dream of creating a church-based political machine.

Rabbi Jack Moline, President of the Washington-based Interfaith Alliance, said that Mr Trumps claim that the clergy were too afraid to speak openly, was a lie that has been advanced for years by the religious right.

President Trump's attack on the Johnson Amendment, if successful, would undermine religious freedom by plunging houses of worship into partisan politics and inviting the rewards and punishments of patronage, he said.

Whats more, houses of worships would become conduits for unregulated dark money in elections, with no restrictions or disclosure requirements.

At the gathering of religious leaders in the nations capital, Mr Trump also joked about the poor ratings of Arnold Schwarzenegger since he took over as host of The Apprentice.

He also defended his recent executive order on immigration, decrying generous immigration policies and arguing that there were people who sought to enter the country for the purpose of spreading violence or oppressing other people based upon their faith.

According to the Associated Press, he said: In the coming days we will develop a system to help ensure that those admitted into our country fully embrace our values of religious and personal liberty and that they reject any form of oppression and discrimination.
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Non-profit groups are rejecting federal grant money to combat violent extremism because of what they described as President Donald Trump's actions against the Muslim and Arab community.

The Obama administration in its final days awarded 31 grants through the Homeland Security Department worth a total of about $10 million. Those agreements haven't been signed, and no money has been distributed.

Now, two groups are rejecting the money they already had been offered, while others have objected to Trump's plans.

Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities in Dearborn, Michigan, said it was turning down $500,000 for youth development and public health programmes because of the current political climate.

Ka Joog, a leading Somali non-profit in Minneapolis, rejected nearly $500,000 for its youth programmes. Our nation's new administration and their policies which promote hate, fear, uncertainty and even worse; an unofficial war on Muslim-Americans and immigrants, the group said in a statement.

The Homeland Security Department did not immediately respond to email and phone requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Trump has endorsed extreme vetting and ordered a temporary ban on refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Charities that already have worked with US government agencies, including the CIA, Justice Department and Homeland Security Department, said they were reacting to discussions within the Trump administration to exclusively target radical Islamic terrorists under a US programme to counter violent extremism, known as CVE.

A US official with knowledge of the discussions said the Trump administration has been discussing changing the Obama administration programme's name, established as a presidential strategy in 2011, to some iteration of countering Islamic extremism. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorised to speak publicly.

Most of the 31 federal grants were promised to municipalities, but some were directed to non-profit groups such as Life After Hate Inc. in Chicago, which received $400,000 for its work with former white supremacists - a large portion of which will also go to a partner group to work with individuals inspired by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group.

The US official said it was unclear whether a group such as Life After Hate would continue to receive funding or be included in any future programme.

Christian Picciolini, the co-founder of Life After Hate and a former white supremacist, said such a change would be troubling and sends a message that white extremism does not exist, or is not a priority in our country, when in fact it is a statistically larger and more present terror threat than any by foreign or other domestic actors.

White supremacist groups saw renewed interest during the presidential campaign, which many credited to Trump's candidacy. Picciolini said that since his group had not received its funding yet, I suppose it's possible it could be rescinded altogether.

The non-profit Washington-based Muslim Public Affairs Council had encouraged the Muslim community to give the programme countering violent extremism a chance.

Council President Salam Al-Marayati said Thursday, If there's a policy change that basically in effect tells us we have to fight our own religion, then this is a fundamental violation of our constitutional rights and we will consider all possible actions for redress.

Still, Al-Marayati said there is such disarray throughout federal agencies that nobody knows where this is going.

With this toxic vitriol coming out of the White House... this administration may undermine everything we've been working on for the last 10 years, Al-Marayati said.

Since 2014, when pilot programmes under CVE were announced by the Obama administration, US officials have worked to convince the American Muslim community that the programme was not just about them.

Suehaila Amen, a director for Leaders Advancing and Helping Communities, said its members voted unanimously January 26 to reject the funds and were influenced by recent discussions of a possible name change.

What's most important is we protect our community and their needs and concerns, she said. Our patriotism isn't tied to a grant, and at the end of the day we need to continue to serve our community (and) ensure transparency and trust, and we're not willing to compromise that.

Amen, who worked with the Bush and Obama administrations to help build outreach to minority groups, said she told US officials this past week that she will no longer be participating in discussions around countering violent extremism with the Trump administration.

Jihad Turk, the founding president of the Islamic graduate school Bayan Claremont in California, said its board would review the language of its $800,000 award before accepting to make sure it doesn't place additional restrictions or impositions on them.

Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Show all 20 1 /20 Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-1 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-2 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-3 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 28: Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against a ban on Muslim immigration at San Francisco International Airport on January 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely suspends the entries of all Syrian refugees, as well as barring entries from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering for 90 days. Stephen Lam/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-5 A crowd of protesters gathers outside of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as a judge hears a challenge against President Donald Trump's executive ban on immigration from several Muslim countries, on January 28, 2017 in Brooklyn. The judge issued an emergency stay on part of Trump's executive order, ruling that sending refugees stopped at U.S. airports back to their countries would be harmful. Yana Paskova/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-6 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-7 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-8 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-9 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-10 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-11 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-12 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-13 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-14 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-15 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-16 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-17 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-18 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-19 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-20 Passengers wait in line to check in at the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport August 10, 2006 in the Queens borough of New York City. British authorities arrested 21 people and halted a anallegedly terrorist plot to use liquid explosives concealed in carry-on luggage to blow up airliners traveling between Britain and the U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said that the plot appeared to be directed at U.S. carriers flying out of Heathrow. such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines. Stephen Chernin/Getty

He said the problem with making the programme focus on Islamic extremism is that there's nothing illegal about an extreme interpretation of your religion.

What's illegal is terrorism, he said, and that's why the word violent is key.

John Cohen, a former DHS official who helped write the CVE strategy and led its implementation, said it specifically didn't target extremists inspired by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, because local law enforcement said white supremacist and other extremist groups were more problematic and targeted communities and police.

He criticised the programme for focusing too much on Muslim and Arab communities since he left in 2014, and called on Trump to dump his campaign language from any re-imagining of CVE or risk driving an even greater wedge between those responsible for stopping violent attacks and those within the community who are critical partners in effectively doing that.

AP
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Everyone has seen it in the movies.

A secret military operation is underway in a faraway land, and as the grainy images stream in, the President  surrounded by his or her top advisors  sits and watches grim-faced in the White House Situation Room.

Yet when Donald Trump ordered his first military operation as US President, a Navy Seal strike on a suspected Al-Qaeda camp in Yemens Bayda province that resulted in the deaths of one member of the US special forces team and up to 30 Yemeni civilians, among them an eight-year-old girl, that is not quite how things played out.

Members of Barack Obama's national security team in the Situation Room during the operation that killed Osama bin Laden (White House)

Amid claims that Mr Trump ordered the operation in the early hours of Sunday morning without sufficient intelligence, ground support or back-up, it has emerged that the President was not in the Situation Room at all.

The President was here in the residence. He was kept in touch with his national security staff, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.

Secretary Mattis and others kept him updated on both the raid and the death of Chief Owens as well as the four other individuals that were injured. So he was kept apprised of the situation.

It has also been pointed out that in the morning after the attack, one of the first things Mr Trump did was tweet angrily about the New York Times, writing:

Experts suggest different presidents have taken a different approach on how hands on they want to be in such situations. But as questions have emerged about who is leading Americas national security policy  Steve Bannon, Mr Trumps white nationalist political advisor, has been made a member of the national security councils so-called principals committee  US media has seized on the Presidents absence.

 Trump supporter tells journalist to 'get out of their country'

Usually, a President goes down to the Situation Room and is presented with what they call a full package for the attack. Theres a legal assessment of the legal authorities under which theyre doing these, David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times, told PBS.

Theres a risk assessment to the commandos who would be doing it. There is a risk assessment of what could happen to civilians who are in the area.

He added: It looks like President Trump got briefed on it, by and large, at a dinner, not in the Situation Room, not with legal advisers around.

Mr Sanger said that present along with Mr Trump were Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, Vice President Mike Pence, and Mr Bannon.

I think one of the questions, given how many things have gone wrong, is: would it have been different if he had been in the Situation Room and perhaps had a different set of briefings, said Mr Sanger.

The White House has insisted the operation was a success, despite the death of Chief Petty Officer Ryan Owens, a member of the Navy Seal team.

Yet reports have suggested the operation went ahead with insufficient planning. One report said that the Seal team was dropped into a reinforced Al-Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists. Mr Trump travelled to Dover Air Force base in Delaware as Mr Owens body was returned to the US.

The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters

Colonel John Thomas, a spokesman for US Central Command spokesman, said: Centcom asks for operations we believe have a good chance for success and when we ask for authorisation we certainly believe there is a chance of successful operations based on our planning.

Trevor McCrisken, associate professor of politics and international studies at the University of Warwick, told The Independent: Some presidents are very hands-on and very keen to be present in the Situation Room as major operations are being carried out. Obama and Bush were fairly regular there.

He added: My sense is that some presidents have been less enamoured with the idea of always being there.
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Donald Trumps ambassador to the United Nations has condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in eastern Ukraine.

Nikki Haley, Americas new envoy, used her first appearance at the UN Security Council to lambaste Moscows actions in the region, despite a promise by the US President to repair East-West relations.

She said it was "unfortunate" she had to criticise Vladimir Putin but added the dire situation in Ukraine demanded clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.

The crisis is spreading, endangering many more, Ms Haley said, as she called for the Minsk peace agreement to be implemented immediately.

During a phone conversation between Mr Trump and his Russian counterpart at the weekend, both men agreed to work as partners on a variety of issues from Ukraine to Iran and violence in the Middle East.

 Russian company minting coins bearing Donald Trump's face

And Ms Haleys critical comments will surprise some observers as the billionaire property tycoon repeatedly called for closer ties with Russia during his election campaign.

Earlier this month he said only stupid people would oppose the US forging a new bond with the Kremlin.

The UN envoys comments came as influential Republican senator John McCain warned Americas commander-in-chief that Russia was attempting to test Mr Trump with a surge of violence in Ukraine.

Fighting flared this week between Moscow-backed rebels and Ukraine government forces, causing the highest casualty rate since mid-December and cutting off power and water to thousands of civilians.

In a letter to President, Mr McCain wrote: That this surge of attacks began the day after he talked with you by phone is a clear indication that Vladimir Putin is moving quickly to test you as commander in chief. America's response will have lasting consequences.

"Vladimir Putin's violent campaign to destabilise and dismember the sovereign nation of Ukraine will not stop unless and until he meets a strong and determined response," he added.
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Donald Trumps choice for Supreme Court Justice allegedly founded a group called the Fascism Forever Club when he was a student.

Neil Gorsuch reportedly set up the club to rebel against left-wing staff members at the Georgetown Preparatory school, near Washington DC, when he studied there in the 1980s.

The 49-year-old served as president of the group until he graduated from the prestigious instituion in 1985, the Mail Online reported. It now costs $30,000-a-year to attend.

His final yearbook said that Mr Gorsuchs tireless organisation happily jerked its knees against the increasingly left-wing tendencies of the faculty.

He also founded two conservative publications - The Morningside Review and The Federalist - to counter what he considered to be anti right-wing bias at the school.

The Georgetown Preparatory school website states that Mr Gorsuch was also president of the schools student body and took part in international relations clubs.

 Donald Trump tells Republicans to 'go nuclear' to stop Democrats blocking Supreme Court nomination

The judge faces a tough confirmation battle with Democrats in the Senate after Republicans blocked Barack Obamas choice, Merrick Garland, last year.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has vowed to object to his appointment. She said he was chosen by far right activist groups that were financed by big business interests.

But Mr Trump has urged Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to go nuclear if they refuse to confirm his nominee.

Invoking the nuclear option, as it is called on Capitol Hill, would end the need for Supreme Court nominees to receive 60 votes. Instead a simple majority of 51 would be required.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Both Republicans and Democrats have long resisted doing so as it would change the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominees in the future as well.

Mr Gorsuch previously served in President George W Bushs Justice Department, and his mother, Anne, ran President Ronald Reagans Environmental Protection Agency.

The Supreme Court seat became available following the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016.
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Tens of thousands of visas have been revoked from travellers heading to the US under Donald Trump's travel ban, according to a US Department of Justice lawyer. The State Department confirmed "fewer than 60,000 individuals' visas were provisionally revoked".

The number came during a Virginia court hearing for a lawsuit filed by two Yemeni brothers who had flown in to Dulles International Airport last Friday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia.

"The gasp was audible in the room," Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center, who represents the brothers, told The Independent.

The higher number from the Justice Department included diplomatic and other visas that were actually exempt from the travel ban, as well as expired visas, they said.

President Donald Trump's order bans travel for people from the majority-Muslim countries Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen.

It is not yet clear who has been affected or what countries they came from, but Mr Sandoval-Moshenberg said the thousands of revoked documents includes immigrant and non-immigrant visas.

"I think this number is going up daily. We know someone in Iran who had an appointment at the US Embassy tomorrow to get his visa and it's been cancelled," he said.

His clients, brothers Tareq and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, have agreed a deal with the government to come back to the US. The Legal Aid Justice Center represents nine individuals - two families - who have been affected by the ban and it appears the US government will have to work out legal reprieve on a case-by-case basis.

Erez Reuveni of the Office of Immigration Litigation at the Civil Division of the Justice Department also said no returning legal permanent residents have been denied entry, and it is not clear whether the 60,000 number includes refugees, which are the smallest category of people affected.

The executive order, signed by President Trump last Friday, indefinitely suspended Syrian refugees, and barred nearly all travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries - Iran, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Sudan - for 90 days and blocked refugees for 120 days.

Within hours of the order being signed, there was widespread confusion around the country, including in neighbouring countries such as Canada and Mexico.

Hundreds of people who had flown to the US from the seven nations while the order was being signed were detained and placed in handcuffs at airports, questioned for hours, and many of them sent back on a return flight. No clear guidance had been sent to airports or airlines; there were also questions of dual citizenship and no exceptions laid out for people who lived and worked in the US or who were travelling to receive emergency medical treatment.

The ban also entangled US university students from abroad, and tore families apart who, within hours, became stranded by the signing of Mr Trump's pen.

Thanks to massive protests at airports around the country like at John F Kennedy Airport in New York, several detainees were freed, including an Iraqi man who had worked as a translator for many years for the US military and whose family lived in the US.

Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Show all 20 1 /20 Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-1 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-2 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-3 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 28: Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against a ban on Muslim immigration at San Francisco International Airport on January 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely suspends the entries of all Syrian refugees, as well as barring entries from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering for 90 days. Stephen Lam/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-5 A crowd of protesters gathers outside of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as a judge hears a challenge against President Donald Trump's executive ban on immigration from several Muslim countries, on January 28, 2017 in Brooklyn. The judge issued an emergency stay on part of Trump's executive order, ruling that sending refugees stopped at U.S. airports back to their countries would be harmful. Yana Paskova/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-6 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-7 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-8 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-9 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-10 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-11 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-12 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-13 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-14 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-15 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-16 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-17 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-18 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-19 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-20 Passengers wait in line to check in at the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport August 10, 2006 in the Queens borough of New York City. British authorities arrested 21 people and halted a anallegedly terrorist plot to use liquid explosives concealed in carry-on luggage to blow up airliners traveling between Britain and the U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said that the plot appeared to be directed at U.S. carriers flying out of Heathrow. such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines. Stephen Chernin/Getty

Civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations were outraged at the order, which they deemed unconstitutional and targeting the most vulnerable sectors of society.

At least four states filed lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of the executive order. In California and Michigan, federal judges ruled that the order could not ban lawful, permanent US residents or green card holders.

Steve Bannon, Mr Trump's chief strategist, was said to be behind the green card mandate, and he had overruled the Department of Homeland Security's objections. Mr Bannon, the unelected right-hand man to the President, is now a permanent member of the National Security Council.

Once the refugee resettlement programme is resumed, the US has vowed to only take in 50,000 people in one fiscal year.

Mr Trump has consistently defended the ban, saying it would prevent "bad people" with "bad intent" from coming to the US.

House Speaker Paul Ryan also defended the ban, saying it made sense for the US to take a pause and review its vetting procedures, but said the roll-out of the order was done poorly and the confusion it caused was "regrettable".

A report from the Cato Institute found that there had been no Syrian-related terrorist event in more than four decades on US soil. Countries such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt, from where terrorists came to the US to carry out large-scale attacks, were not featured on Mr Trump's hit list.
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During the election campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly denounced the official unemployment rate of five per cent as false.

The five per cent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in American modern politics, he said in a speech in the summer of 2016.

But that was then Mr Trump was a candidate. On Friday, Mr Trump the president said he was very happy with official figures that put the unemployment rate at 4.8 per cent and revealed that 227,000 jobs had been added last month.

Were very happy with that, Mr Trump said of the figures. Were going to create more jobs. I think were going to have some really exciting times ahead.

Januarys job gain was the best since September, and it exceeded last years average monthly gain of 187,000, according to the Labour Department.

Mr Trump had repeatedly mocked the official unemployment and suggested it may be even be as high as 40 per cent.

Dont believe these phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 per cent unemployment, Mr. Trump said in his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary a year ago.

The numbers probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 per cent.

 Donald Trump has a barney with Arnie

Many economists called Mr Trump out over his claims during the campaign. Politifact headlined one report - Donald Trump repeats Pants on Fire claim that unemployment rate could be 42 per cent.

The Bureau of Labour Statistics, a federal agency, uses surveys and statistical sampling to calculate how many Americans do or dont work, it said.

To calculate the unemployment rate, the agency divides the number of people who are out of work (counting only those who have recently looked for work) by the sum of the job-seeking and job-holding population.

It added: While economists say that there are other, more expansive calculations of unemployment or under-employment, none of the official ones are currently higher than 9.9 per cent, and the highest credible number we could calculate was 15.6 percent. Thats far, far lower than 42 per cent  or even 28 per cent. We rate the claim Pants on Fire.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

Trend:

A delegation of professors and teaching staff are being sent to Turkey to expand UNECs cooperation with the worlds most prestigious universities. The trip is also targeted in enhancing the scientific capacity of the teaching staff and benefitting from the experience of foreign universities.

The delegation consisting of 18 members is represented by the deans and heads of departments. They will be on business in groups of 6 people at the Uludagh, Sakarya and Suleyman Demirel Universities of Turkey. Getting closer acquainted with the higher education system of the universities they were sent to, the academic staff will conduct exchange of experiences. At the same time they will become familiar with the major disciplines, syllabuses, textbooks, exams, laboratories and library system of the universities. They will make discussions on conducting scientific researches, writing joint scientific articles and development of the relevant textbooks with their Turkish colleagues.

Meeting with the delegation, UNEC Rector, Professor Adalat Muradov stressed the role of exchange of experiences in teachers capacity- building. Bringing to attention the fact when 15 UNEC professors benefited from the experience of the most prestigious Turkish Universities last year, Rector expressed confidence for this visit to be significant and made recommendations to the delegation.

UNEC is the brand of Azerbaijan State University of Economics. The brand of UNEC has been registered and patented by the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patent on January 21 2016.
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German airline Lufthansa has said it will continue to fly passengers to Boston who are banned from the US under President Donald Trumps travel restrictions .

The airline announced the decision after a Massachusetts court granted an emergency restraining order against the measure, which prevents people from seven majority Muslim countries entering the country.

Due to a decision (Temporary Restraint Order) by the district court in Massachusetts, the order is suspended on flights to BOS for the time being until 5 February 2017, the airline said on its travel information page.

All passengers with valid travel documents are eligible to board on LH-flights to BOS.

 Donald Trump announces a ban on refugees and all visitors from Muslim-majority countries

The rapid roll-out of an executive order signed by Mr Trump last week caused travel chaos and protests at American airports, with pre-approved refugees, students and workers with visas and residency green cards barred from flights to the US.

Civil liberties groups and lawyers representing US immigrants have filed lawsuits in opposition to the rule in federal courts across the US, including in Washington, New York and Los Angeles, but the case in Boston is reportedly one of the more advanced.

On Friday, a court in the capital was set to decide whether to extend the ban's temporary suspension.

The American Civil Liberties Union in Massachusetts on Wednesday added six plaintiffs to the Boston case including three Iranians who are lawful permanent residents and two who were on student visas.

Boston-based Aid organisation Oxfam has also joined, arguing that it has been unable to bring partners to their headquarters.

The charity condemned the executive order, claiming that it is illegal, unconstitutional, and dangerous.

Many immigrants who have lawful visas say they cannot now leave the country because they would not be able to return.

Massachusetts' Democrat Attorney General Maura Healey announced on Tuesday her office was joining the collective motion and also filing its own lawsuit seeking to have the ban thrown out.

During his campaign, President Trump called for a 'complete shutdown on Muslims entering the US', On Friday he acted to make good on that promise, Ms Healey told reporters.

Over the past three days my office has closely reviewed the language of the order and its many impacts [...] the executive order is harmful, discriminatory and unconstitutional. It discriminates on the basis of religion and national origin.

Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Show all 20 1 /20 Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-1 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-2 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-3 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 28: Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against a ban on Muslim immigration at San Francisco International Airport on January 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely suspends the entries of all Syrian refugees, as well as barring entries from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering for 90 days. Stephen Lam/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-5 A crowd of protesters gathers outside of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as a judge hears a challenge against President Donald Trump's executive ban on immigration from several Muslim countries, on January 28, 2017 in Brooklyn. The judge issued an emergency stay on part of Trump's executive order, ruling that sending refugees stopped at U.S. airports back to their countries would be harmful. Yana Paskova/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-6 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-7 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-8 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-9 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-10 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-11 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-12 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-13 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-14 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-15 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-16 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-17 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-18 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-19 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-20 Passengers wait in line to check in at the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport August 10, 2006 in the Queens borough of New York City. British authorities arrested 21 people and halted a anallegedly terrorist plot to use liquid explosives concealed in carry-on luggage to blow up airliners traveling between Britain and the U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said that the plot appeared to be directed at U.S. carriers flying out of Heathrow. such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines. Stephen Chernin/Getty

Emirates airline is reportedly changing its pilots and cabin crews on flights to the United States following Mr Trump's executive order banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries.
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Donald Trump is going to build his border wall but some parts of it might be invisible, according to the man tasked with building it.

Despite Mr Trump's repeated promises to build an actual wall, it might actually rely on surveillance technology and not actually be made using any physical structure, according to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.

Kelly said the wall will take a multi-layered approach, Fox News reporter Catherine Herridge said. There will be the physical wall and then parts of the wall that you can actually see through because it will rely on sensors and other technology.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

It might also not actually stretch right across the border, at least initially. It will initially target areas where it is most required, he said.

It will be built where it's needed first, and then it will be filled in, Mr Kelly said in an interview with Fox. That's how Im looking at it.

The President has repeatedly stated both before and after the election that he would build a "big, beautiful wall" all the way across the US-Mexico border, and force the latter country to pay for it. But Mexico has said that it will refuse to pay for any wall  the costs of which are expected to be in the tens of billions  and Mr Trump has suggested that the country might be pursued for the cost of the wall after it is actually built.

Mr Kelly said that getting funding for the project won't be an issue. I think the funding will come relatively quickly and like I said, we will build it where it's needed first as identified by the men and women who work the border," he said.

The barrier between the US and Mexico already relies heavily on such technology. At the moment, it is not one continuous wall but a series of short physical ones with "virtual fences"  sensors and cameras that are watched by the US Border Patrol to identify anyone attempting to cross  between them.
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Donald Trump's new White House administration reportedly blocked an official International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that mentioned Jewish victims of Nazi massacres.

The State Department's office of the special envoy on Holocaust issues had drafted a statement for the new President that commemorated the millions of Jews murdered by the Hitler regime.

But this was blocked by the Trump administration, according to the Politico website. Another statement was then released on behalf of the US leader.

The three-paragraphs made reference to "victims, survivors" and "those who died", but it made no mention of the Jewish victims.

This statement was heavily criticised for the omission. Some 6 million Jews, including one-and-a-half-million children, are estimated to have died in the genocide.

The President's statement also failed to mention Roma, gay people, the disabled or any specific group that was killed in the Holocaust.

Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defmation League, called the speech "puzzling and troubling".

But a White House official told Politico that Mr Trump's representatives had not seen the State Department's draft before publishing its own and had advised it not to release the second statement late in the day.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer defended the statement released by Mr Trump. He said it had been written with the help of a Jewish person descended from Holocaust survivors.

Mr Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, also backed the speech.

"Everyone's suffering in the Holocaust, including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something that can never be forgotten," he told NBC's Meet the Press.

It is not the first such statement to omit explicit mention of Jews. The State Department's 2013 release on behalf of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also failed to include them.

Mr Trump's statement in full:

"It is with a heavy heart and sombre mind that we remember and honour the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

"Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.

"In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world."
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Two weeks might have passed since Donald Trumps inauguration but the White House is still not open for tours.

The Trump administration has yet to appoint anyone to oversee the White House Visitors Office, breaking with decades of tradition.

Previous administrations ensured someone was appointed to run the visitors centre by this point and the doors were open to the public. Some even commenced open house tours a day after inauguration.

The Trump White House is currently not able to accommodate public tours due to staffing issues in the White House Visitors Office, a message on the White House website reads. This situation should be resolved in the coming weeks. See below for information on how to submit a tour request.

The decision not to immediately appoint someone to oversee the centre could either be seen as testimony of the Trump administrations broader rejection of the White Houses so-called rulebook or as mere incompetence.

The billionaire property mogul was sworn into office with a skeletal governmental team. What's more, not only is Mr Trump the first person to be elected as US President with zero government or military experience, much of his Cabinet and senior staff have never served in government.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The head of the White House Visitors Office, which is located in the East Wing, is a key position which Melania Trump is in charge of filling. In recent administrations it had been filled by someone who knows both the President and the First Lady personally.

Ms Trump, who has been in New York with their 10-year-old son Barron for the last week or so as planned, has yet to hire her full staff for the White House. Hours after CNN reported no formal hires had been announced for the office, it was announced Ms Trump was hiring Lindsay Reynolds as chief of staff to the First Lady and assistant to the President on Wednesday.
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Elon Musk has said he will voice his objections to Donald Trumps hard-line immigration ban during a meeting at the White House on Friday.

The SpaceX and Teslar founder, who sits on the Presidents business advisory council, defended his decision to participate just hours after Uber CEO, Travis Kalanick, announced he was pulling out. Kalanick was forced to quit the board after mounting pressure from activists and employees, many of whom are immigrants, who oppose Mr Trumps Muslim ban.

Musk said he was keen to engage directly with the Trump administration and argued sitting on the advisory body was in no way equivalent to being in agreement with the governments policies.

I agreed to join the Presidential Advisory Forum to provide feedback on issues that I think are important for our country and the world,  Musk said in a statement posted on Twitter late on Thursday.

In tomorrows meeting, I and others will express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy.

I understand the perspective of those who object to my attending this meeting, he added. But I believe at this time that engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good.

Musk said his main goals were centred on accelerating the global transition to sustainable energy and making humanity a multi-planet civilisation.

It is of course not clear what type of response the criticism of the executive order, which has temporarily banned travellers from seven majority-Muslim nations, could elicit from the fiery President.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The Friday meeting is the business advisory councils first. The board included 19 business leaders before the Uber CEO dropped out after the the #DeleteUber campaign gained increasing traction on social media.

Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that, Kalanick said in an email to staff.

Musk, a South African-born tech billionaire whose electric car, aerospace, and solar power businesses are directly affected by federal policies, has already criticised the Muslim ban.

The blanket entry ban on citizens from certain primarily Muslim countries is not the best way to address the countrys challenges, he tweeted two days after the controversial executive order was signed.

The tech titan, who backed Hillary Clinton during the presidential election, recently stoked controversy after he suggested Mr Trumps government might be good at tackling climate change. Musk tweeted his support for Rex Tillerson, the Presidents controversial secretary of state pick, and in later updates wrote: Rex is an exceptionally competent executive, understands geopolitics and knows how to win for his team. His team is now the USA.

Musk was previously a firm opponent of Mr Trump, dismissing the billionaire property mogul as not the right man for the job shortly before he won the election. However, since then he has indicated a willingness to work with Mr Trump.

Last week, the President signed an executive order suspending the entire US refugee admissions system for 120 days, halting the Syrian refugee programme indefinitely, and banning entry for people from seven majority-Muslim countries. People have been blocked from boarding US-bound flights and detained in US airports.
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A former Norwegian prime minister was stopped and questioned for around an hour at an American airport because his diplomatic passport showed that he visited Iran.

Kjell Magne Bondevik  who lead Norway's government for two terms between 1997 and 2005  said he flew into Washington DCs Dulles Airport from Europe to attend the National Prayer Breakfast.

The high profile series of meetings, luncheons, and dinners attended by hundreds of guests from dozens of countries around the world, along with US President Donald Trump.

But after Mr Bondevik touched down he was questioned by a customs agent who noticed an Iranian visit in his passport.

Despite the document indicating that he is the former prime minister of Norway, he was placed in a room with travellers from the Middle East and Africa who were also facing extra scrutiny.

He said he had to sit and wait for about 40 minutes and then he was questioned for about 20 minutes.

They started asking me why I had been in Iran and why I was coming to the United States, Mr Bondevik told Norwegian broadcaster TV2. There should be no reason to fear a former prime minister who has been on official visits to the country several times before.

His current role as president of a human rights organisation called The Oslo Centre, had led him to speak at a 2014 conference in Iran.

US President Donald Trump recently approved an executive order stopping travellers from seven predominantly Muslim countries  including Iran  entering the US.

The rapid roll-out of the measure at the end of January caused travel chaos and protests, with pre-approved refugees, students and workers with visas and residency green cards stopped from entering the country.

Mr Bondevik said the Iranian border stamp had never been an issue to US border control before the travel ban.

He told the broadcaster that, while he understood the terrorist threat to the US, "one should not treat entire ethnic groups in such a way".

Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Show all 20 1 /20 Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-1 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-2 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-3 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 28: Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against a ban on Muslim immigration at San Francisco International Airport on January 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely suspends the entries of all Syrian refugees, as well as barring entries from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering for 90 days. Stephen Lam/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-5 A crowd of protesters gathers outside of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as a judge hears a challenge against President Donald Trump's executive ban on immigration from several Muslim countries, on January 28, 2017 in Brooklyn. The judge issued an emergency stay on part of Trump's executive order, ruling that sending refugees stopped at U.S. airports back to their countries would be harmful. Yana Paskova/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-6 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-7 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-8 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-9 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-10 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-11 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-12 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-13 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-14 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-15 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-16 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-17 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-18 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-19 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-20 Passengers wait in line to check in at the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport August 10, 2006 in the Queens borough of New York City. British authorities arrested 21 people and halted a anallegedly terrorist plot to use liquid explosives concealed in carry-on luggage to blow up airliners traveling between Britain and the U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said that the plot appeared to be directed at U.S. carriers flying out of Heathrow. such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines. Stephen Chernin/Getty

He added: "I must admit that I fear the future. There has been a lot of progress over the last ten years, but this gives great cause for concern, in line with the authoritarian leaders we see controlling other major countries."

In a separate interview with US broadcaster ABC7, he said that officials at the airport told him that the questioning was not to do with the recent "Muslim ban", and was instead related to a 2015 law signed by President Barack Obama following the Paris terrorist attacks.

The law subjects travellers from 38 countries, including Norway, to greater scrutiny if they have visited seven Muslim majority countries  the same nations targeted by Mr Trump's recent executive order.

A spokesperson for US Customs and Border Protection said they were not allowed legally to provide any more details about a person's accessibility review.
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Lawmakers have struck down an Obama administration rule that attempts to keep guns out of the hands of people who suffer from mental illness.

The Republican-controlled House voted 235-180 on Thursday in an apparent effort to improve gun ownership under President Trump. The rule affected nearly 75,000 Social Security recipients diagnosed with mental health conditions who are deemed incapable of managing their own affairs.

The legislation will now head to the Senate where it needs the simple majority to pass.

In his final months in office, President Barack Obama issued the regulation that requires the Social Security Administration to relay names of individuals into a database of citizens who are ineligible to purchase a firearm. These individuals suffer from severe mental disorders such as extreme anxiety and schizophrenia.

Republicans and gun-rights activists have argued that the rule stigmatises those with mental health issues and unfairly strips them of their Second Amendment rights.

The Obama administration's rule is discriminatory and deprives law-abiding Americans of their constitutional rights, House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte said in a statement, echoing a nearly identical statement from Chris Cox, the National Rifle Associations top lobbyist.

Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC Show all 12 1 /12 Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC Protesters hold up signs and flags to show solidarity with House Democrats after they staged a sit in over gun-control laws on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on June 23. 2016. Andrew Caballero/AFP/Getty Images Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC A lone protester wears tape printed with the U.S. flag on her mouth while attending an open hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence where intelligence chiefs, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, testified at the U.S. Capitol February 25, 2016 in Washington, DC. Clapper said that the group known as the Islamic State, or ISIS, has become a greater global threat than al-Qaida ever was. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) waves to supporters along with House Democrats after their sit-in over gun-control law on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC Supporters of House Democrats taking part in a sit-in on the House Chamber shout encouragement from outside the U.S. Capitol on June 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) Democrats, have maintained control of the House chamber since this morning demanding a vote on gun control legislation. Pete Marovich/Getty Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC U.S. House Democrats walk out on the East Front on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., after their sit-in over gun-control law, June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC A poster for the gun-control law support is left on the ground on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (R) applauds as Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) (L) waves to supporters along with House Democrats after their sit-in over gun-control law on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC Supporters of House Democrats taking part in a sit-in on the House Chamber shout encouragement from outside the U.S. Capitol on June 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Led by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) Democrats have maintained control of the House chamber since this morning demanding a vote on gun control legislation. Pete Marovich/Getty Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (R) and Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) (L) walk out with House Democrats on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., after their sit-in over gun-control law, June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC U.S. House Democrats walk out on the East Front on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., after their sit-in over gun-control law, June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC U.S. House Democrats walk out on the East Front on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., after their sit-in over gun-control law, June 23, 2016. Yuri Gripas/Reuters Protests call for stricter gun-control laws in Washington DC Protesters hold up signs and flags to show solidarity with House Democrats after they staged a sit in over gun-control laws on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC on June 23. 2016. Andrew Caballero/AFP/Getty Images



Those in favor of the rule argue that it simply prevents a small group of people with severe mental illnesses from potentially causing harm to themselves and others.

Plain and simple, today's move downgrades a system built to enforce existing laws that keep guns out of hands that shouldn't have them, Erika Soto Lamb, the chief communications officer for Everytown for Gun Safety, told The Independent.

Our background check system is only as good as the records it contains and this vote re-opened the door for people prohibited from firearm ownership to illegally pass checks, buy and possess guns. Our public safety has been put at risk because of todays gun lobby-backed manoeuvre to advance their agenda of more guns for anyone, no questions asked.
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Senior Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway faced ridicule on Friday after she used a TV interview to invent a terrorist attack that never happened, before criticising the media for failing to cover it.

Ms Conway, who coined the term "alternative facts" last month, was defending Mr Trump's Muslim travel ban to MSNBC interviewer Chris Matthews on the basis that Barack Obama had previously blocked refugees from Iraq after two men became "radicalised" and carried out the "Bowling Green massacre".

She described the pair as "the masterminds behind" the supposed Kentucky attack and added: "Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered."

Such a massacre never took place and the Obama administration did not place a six-month ban on Iraqi refugees, as Ms Conway also claimed.

A more stringent screening process was imposed after Mohanad Shareef Hammadi and Waad Ramadan Alwan were arrested for trying to send money to al-Qaeda in 2011. They were later jailed for life and for 40 years, respectively. They had been living in Bowling Green and admitted to participating in IED attacks against soldiers in their home country.

Ms Conway faced a derisive social media reaction on Friday.

One Twitter user mocked the President's counsellor by posting a GIF of a man being struck between the legs by a bowling ball and saying: "I found evidence of the Bowling Green Massacre!"

And author Saladin Ahmed said: "Wow Kellyanne Conway is now on Fox News blaming Muslim immigrants for a nonexistent trilogy of films set before STAR WARS."

Another Twitter user said: "RT if you died in the Bowling Green Massacre."
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In a puzzling interview with MSNBCs Chris Matthews, Kellyanne Conway, President Trumps top counselor, said that two Iraqi refugees were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre, without citing any evidence of her findings because the fictional terror attack doesnt exist.

"President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," she said. "Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered."

Unfortunately, viewers tuning into Hardball who are unfamiliar with the third-most populous city in Kentucky likely have no idea the event never happened because Matthews didnt question Conway about her story.

The Daily Beast points out that Conway was likely referencing the 2011 incident where two Iraqi nationals were arrested for allegedly having ties to an improvised explosive device used against US troops in Iraq.

According to a 2013 news release from the Department of Justice, 25-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi was sentenced to life in a federal prison while 31-year-old Waad Ramadan Alwan received 40-years. Both men were living in Bowling Green and admitted to using the devices against soldiers in Iraq, in addition to sending weapons and money to Al-Qaeda.

Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Show all 20 1 /20 Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-1 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-2 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-3 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 28: Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against a ban on Muslim immigration at San Francisco International Airport on January 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely suspends the entries of all Syrian refugees, as well as barring entries from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering for 90 days. Stephen Lam/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-5 A crowd of protesters gathers outside of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as a judge hears a challenge against President Donald Trump's executive ban on immigration from several Muslim countries, on January 28, 2017 in Brooklyn. The judge issued an emergency stay on part of Trump's executive order, ruling that sending refugees stopped at U.S. airports back to their countries would be harmful. Yana Paskova/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-6 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-7 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-8 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-9 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-10 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-11 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-12 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-13 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-14 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-15 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-16 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-17 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-18 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-19 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-20 Passengers wait in line to check in at the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport August 10, 2006 in the Queens borough of New York City. British authorities arrested 21 people and halted a anallegedly terrorist plot to use liquid explosives concealed in carry-on luggage to blow up airliners traveling between Britain and the U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said that the plot appeared to be directed at U.S. carriers flying out of Heathrow. such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines. Stephen Chernin/Getty

Still, theres currently no evidence of either men carrying out any violent acts in western Kentucky.

In the interview, Conway defends the Trump administrations recent immigration order that recently banned travel to and from seven majority Muslim countries. She provides a superficial comparison to former President Obamas actions following the 2011 indictments. In reality, the Obama administration never banned refugees but pledged a new, extensive vetting process for Iraqi refugees while reviewing 58,000 visas of immigrants who were already settled in the country.
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Donald Trump faces resistance not only from protesters and Democrat supporters, but also from wealthy conservatives with Republican purse strings in their hands.

Speaking to 550 donors who give more than $100,000 (80,000) a year to right-wing political and policy groups backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, industrialist Charles Koch warned the US was facing a moment of tremendous danger  although he did not mention Mr Trump by name.

The Koch network, one of the most powerful conservative groups in America, plans to spend up to $400m (320m) on campaigns exerting political influence over the next two years, up from $250m (200m) during the 2016 elections.

But the free-market billionaire and his team are set to clash with the President on issues including the introduction of border taxes, hints of a massive new infrastructure program, and his controversial ban on refugees and immigrants from seven mainly Muslim countries, according to Time magazine.

During the presidential campaign, Mr Koch likened Mr Trumps plan to ban Muslim immigrants to something Adolf Hitler would have done in Nazi Germany.

But at the event in Palm Springs in California, Mr Kochs team offered a more delicate response to the policy, describing it as the wrong approach that violated their dedication to free and open societies.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

The Kochs refused to support Mr Trump's candidacy last fall, but they now see an opportunity to influence the White House and the Republican-controlled Congress.

A number of prominent members of the Trump administration have ties to the Koch network, including Vice President Mike Pence, Environmental Protection Agency leader nominee Scott Pruitt, and Marc Short, the Presidents director of legislative affairs.

Were principled, and if we cant get comfortable with the policies that are in place, then were not going to support them, said Mark Holden, Koch Industriess top lawyer, according to the Washington Post.

Congress members, many of whom owe their election victories to campaign money, activist groups and ballot data systems provided by Mr Koch and his allies, could come under pressure to align themselves with the group over Mr Trump in key policy battles.

Mr Holden said this accountability play was the Koch networks secret sauce, so to speak.

Americans for Prosperity, a grassroots Republican group backed by Mr Koch with millions of activists in 36 states, could also play a role in the wealthy conservative resistance to Mr Trumps policy decisions.

Corey Lewandowski, an outside adviser to Mr Trump who was his first campaign manager, once ran a branch of Americans for Prosperity in the US state of New Hampshire.

 Jon Stewart mocks Donald Trump with a new set of executive orders

Like Mr Trump, the Kochs favour efforts to cut government regulation and replace the federal health-care system.

Koch Industries, run by Mr Koch and his brother David Koch, is the second-largest privately held company by revenue in the US, according to Forbes.

Originally involved in oil refining and chemicals, the businesses now produce materials and brands including Lycra, Stainmaster carpet and disposable paper cups.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

President Nursultan Nazarbayev has urged Kazakhstans weak banks to merge, RIA Novosti reports.

Nazarbayev noted that four banks of the country possess 80 percent of the total bank assets and other banks are weak.

The economy does not need these banks. They should merge or their shareholders should invest their own money if they want to save the banks. There is no other way to keep these banks, he said.

The president ordered Head of the National Bank Daniyar Akishev to act boldly in the issue with weak banks.

Thirty-four banks were operating in Kazakhstan as of Jan. 1, 2017.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
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Melania Trumps $150m (120m) defamation lawsuit against the Daily Mail has been dismissed by a US county judge.

The First Lady kick-started legal action against the UK newspaper, along with its website MailOnline, after it published claims she once worked for a high-end escort business.

But a judge in Maryland, where the lawsuit was filed, has reportedly rejected the attempt because the court lacks jurisdiction to hear a case involving a foreign company.

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Buzzfeed News reports that Ms Trumps attorneys tried to prove there was a direct connection because the website receives 4,600 article views per hour and 72,600 unique browsers per day in the state.

Mail attorneys however argued the British media company, based in Kensington, west London, had no ties to Maryland.

Ms Melanias legal team reportedly plan to re-file the case in New York, where the MailOnline has an office.

Its lawsuit against Tarpley.net however, a website by political blogger Griffin Tarpley based in Maryland which also published the claims, is scheduled for a trial.

 Melania Trump caught plagiarising again  this time from one of Donald Trump's ex-wives

The Mail retracted its story, and published a full statement, after Ms Trump announced legal action.

The article cited a Slovenian magazines report and in the print tabloid version the headline read: Racy photos, and troubling questions about his wifes past that could derail Trump.

An attorney for the 46-year-old, who was born in Slovenia, moved to the US to work as a model in the 1990s, and married the 70-year-old property tycoon in 2005, said the statements were 100% false.

The Independent has contacted the White House, Mr Tarpley and the Mail for further comment.
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After heated protests resulted in the cancellation of a Milo Yiannopoulos speaking event at a California university, the infamous far-right Internet troll warned higher learning institutions that President Donald Trump is watching.

About 1,500 demonstrators gathered on the University of California, Berkeley, campus ahead of Yiannopoulos scheduled visit. A small group of anti-fascist agitators vandalised a segment of the campus, causing police to shut down the event.

The President responded to the events of the evening on Twitter, and appeared to threaten Berkeley  a university with a strong history of activist presence  with pulling federal funding.

If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS? he wrote.

Yiannopoulos, who publicly outed and harassed a transgender woman at his last public speaking engagement, accused the protesters of trying to quash free speech that did not match their ideals.

American universities should be on notice, he told Business Insider. The president is watching. The days you could silence conservative and libertarian voices on campus and still expect to collect their tax money are coming to an end.

Yiannopoulos rose to notoriety as a columnist for Breitbart, the website run by Trump adviser Stephen Bannon. The site has been hailed as a platform for the white supremacist alt-right group, which has risen into mainstream politics in the wake of Mr Trumps victory. Much of the content written by Yiannopoulos is overtly anti-woman, anti-Muslim, and racist.

When Yiannopoulos appeared at the University of Washington in Seattle, it also drew protesters. One anti-fascist activist was shot in the stomach. The alleged shooter, who identified himself to local police as a 29-year-old former UW student, has not been charged with a crime.

The Seattle Times said he had sent Yiannopoulos a Facebook message before the event.

Hey Milo, the man wrote. Im outside in line to your UW event. I got sucker punched (he was a bit limp wristed) and someone jacked my [Make America Great Again] hat.

Any way for me to get a replacement signed by you?

Yiannopoulos did not respond.
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Donald Trump does not have the authority to follow up his threat to cut federal funding from the University of California at Berkeley, analysts say.

The President took to Twitter to angrily accuse the famed university of not allowing free speech and practicing violence on innocent people with a different point of view after violent protests against a Breitbart News editor, adding: NO FEDERAL FUNDS?

Federal funding contributed an estimated $200m (160m) in student financial aid and generated $400m (320m) in revenue from research contracts and grants in the 2015/16 financial year, the UC Berkeley said.

Students protest at UC Berkeley (Elijah Nouvelage/Getty)

Some of the money can be withheld in very specific circumstances, such as the publication of fraudulent research or the refusal of a university to comply with anti-gender discrimination law.

But adding Mr Trumps definition of free speech to the list of offences would need a new law to be passed by Congress.

There is nothing in current legislation that would allow President Trump to do that, Don Heller, a provost at the University of San Francisco, told Reuters.

And even if such a law were passed, Berkeley's situation would be highly unlikely to be affected as the university had attempted to allow the speech.

Police said agitators hurled smoke bombs and Molotov cocktails at police, started fires and smashed windows after 1,500 people joined an initially peaceful protest ahead of Milo Yiannopoulos scheduled visit on Wednesday.

In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President-elect Donald Trump acknowledges guests as he arrives on the platform at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Melania Trump looks on during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice John Roberts after taking the oath at inauguration ceremonies swearing in Trump as the 45th president of the United States Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump raises his fists after his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets outgoing President Barack Obama before Trump is inaugurated during ceremonies on the Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump resident-elect Donald Trump arrives on the platform of the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Attendees partake in the inauguration ceremonies to swear in Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States at the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump US President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address during ceremonies at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President Donald Trump waves with wife Melania during the Inaugural Parade in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters registered their rage against the new president Friday in a chaotic confrontation with police who used pepper spray and stun grenades in a melee just blocks from Donald Trump's inaugural parade route. 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Bush and First Lady Laura Bush arrive for the Presidential Inauguration at the US Capitol Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden share an umbrella as President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address at the inauguration in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. Vice President Mike Pence takes the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Advisors to President-elect Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon depart from services at St. John's Church during the Presidential Inauguration in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump take cover as they are hit by pepper spray by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump An activist demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump is helped after being hit by pepper spray on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer tries to tackle a protester demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump Reuters/Adrees Latif In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Police arrest and detain a protester in the street in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer falls to the ground as another shoots pepper spray at protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters

As officers decided that could not guarantee Mr Yiannopoulos security, they cancelled the event and removed him from the building. There were no immediate reports of arrests or serious injuries.

Breitbart, described as alt-right supported the President throughout his campaign and has been accused of propagating fake news with its vehemently anti-immigration agenda.

Mr Yiannopoulos is a senior editor of the website, whose former executive chair Steve Bannon has been appointed as Mr Trumps chief strategist.

His comments have been criticised as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist. A harassment campaign against Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones led to him being banned from Twitter last year.

Berkeley University said it did not endorse his ideas but was committed to free speech and rejected calls to cancel the event, which was sponsored by the campus Republican club.

 Milo Yiannopoulos defends Breitbart headlines as 'satire'

Dan Mogulof, the assistant vice chancellor in the universitys communications office, told The Independent: UC Berkeley condemns in the strongest possible terms the actions of individuals who invaded the campus, infiltrated a crowd of peaceful students, and used violent tactics to close down the event.

Recommended Both sides of the Trump debate are resorting to violence

"We deeply regret that the violence unleashed by this group undermined the First Amendment rights of the speaker as well as those who came to lawfully assemble and protest his presence."

He said the university went to extraordinary lengths to facilitate Mr Yiannopoulos talk, for which dozens of police officers were brought in after protests and a shooting at his previous appearances.

While we have made clear our belief that the inflaming rhetoric and provocations of Mr Yiannopoulos were in marked opposition to the basic values of the university, we respected his right to come to campus and speak once he was invited, Mr Mogulof added. The violence was an attack on the fundamental values of the university.

The commentator has since claimed that American universities should be on notice because the President is watching.

The days you could silence conservative and libertarian voices on campus and still expect to collect their tax money are coming to an end, he added.


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Relations between the US and Iran have soured sharply, as Donald Trump announced new sanctions and Tehran said it was imposing its own against America.

In a move designed to punish Iran for testing its ballistic missile programme, the US Treasury Department said it had published a list of 13 people and 12 entities facing new sanctions. The move signalled a marked escalation of tensions between the two countries and comes just hours after the President said Tehran was "playing with fire".

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism and engages in, and supports, violent activities that destabilise the Middle East," said US National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

"That behaviour seems continuous despite the very favourable deal given to Iran by the Obama administration. These sanctions target those behaviours."

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn claimed Iran was the world's leading sponsor of terrorism (EPA)

In retaliation, Iran announced a new set of sanctions against the US, declaring that Mr Trump had violated the US's legal commitments and a UN resolution underpinning the international nuclear deal.

Mr Trump told reporters on Thursday, when asked if military action was off the table in terms of Iran, that "nothing is off the table".

Some of the individuals and entities involved in the US sanctions are based in the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and China.

"This action reflects the United States commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile programme and destabilising activities in the region and is fully consistent with the United States commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action," the US Treasury statement said.

Under the sanctions, those involved cannot access the US financial system or deal with US companies. They are also subject to "secondary sanctions", which means foreign companies and individuals are prohibited from dealing with them, or risk being blacklisted by the United States.

The measures are similar to actions taken by the Obama administration targeting Irans ballistic missile network, but senior Trump administration officials said the action was just the opening shot in plans to go after Tehran.

A senior US official told Reuters the sanctions were an initial step in response to Irans provocative behaviour, suggesting more could follow if Tehran does not curb its ballistic missile program and continues support for Houthi militia in Yemen.

The US moved a Navy destroyer, the USS Cole, close to the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen to protect waterways.

In retaliation Iran has curtailed visas for all Americans and the Central Bank refused to use the US dollar for official statistics or financial reporting.

Mr Trump promised to be "tough on Iran" throughout his presidential campaign and repeatedly called the Iran nuclear deal, signed in 2015 under former President Barack Obama a "disaster".

The UN has not yet determined whether the missile test, which enraged Irans enemy and US ally Israel, has broken the 2015 accord.

The US keeps a separate sanctions list that is not nuclear-related. Mr Obama imposed sanctions throughout his two terms on two dozen Iranian individuals and entities, which Mr Trump said was weak.

 Michael Flynn: We're officially putting Iran on notice

It is unclear how effective President Trumps move will prove in halting Irans missile development. The new sanctions dont affect Iran Air, a big Iranian bank or a major government entity, and appear to be a warning shot across the bow by the new administration.

This is part of a much broader strategy and merely a sign of coming attractions, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, who is advising the administration and Congress on Iran-related issues, told AP. The focus is clearly on missile procurement networks and represents a first step in the administrations escalation against Irans missile program support for terrorism and other malign activities.

Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said before the announcement of new US sanctions that Iran would be unmoved by threats.

We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defence.

Ali-Akbar Velayati, the foreign adviser of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, predicted this week that the US will be the final loser.

It is not for the first time that a naive person from the US poses threats to Iran, he told state media.

Our missile drills are a show of our might, added Tehran Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami. We are living in a world of wolves  wolves such as the arrogant government of America. In this world of wolves, should we remain unarmed and they do whatever damn things they want? No way! This will never happen!

Iran says it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear programme has been sharply curtailed. The US and Western countries argue otherwise, noting that Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago. That agreement was codified in a UN Security Council resolution passed in parallel, but separately, to the nuclear accord.

The sanctions come after Mr Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation for Iran testing a ballistic missile and supporting Shia rebels in Yemen, known as the Houthis. The rebels this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemens internationally-recognised government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

On Wednesday, Mr Trumps national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said: We are officially putting Iran on notice.

Mr Trump followed that up with a tweet on Friday morning that accused Iran of playing with fire as part of a diplomatic spat over the ballistic missile test, before his comments on the possibility of military action in the afternoon.

Referring to the previous administration of Mr Obama, Mr Trump added that the Iranian government did not appreciate how kind that the US had been to them  a potential reference to the nuclear deal where Irans nuclear capability was reduced in return for a loosening of sanctions. Mr Trump said that he would not follow a similar path.

In Washington, top legislators who have sought a sterner policy toward Iran applauded Mr Trumps decision over the sanctions.

It is a new day in US-Iran relations, said Senator Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committees Republican chairman.

House Speaker Paul Ryan said the swift and decisive response proves that our new administration is serious about holding the Iranian regime accountable for its illicit behaviour.
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Every year the White House Correspondents Dinner and the parties surrounding it, are considered among the most important events on the Washington social calendar.

In recent years, there's been a rise in the number of A-list celebrities from Hollywood, the music industry and the business world attending, giving the event the same media attention and anticipation that has typically been reserved for the Oscars or the Emmys. It is often jokingly referred to as the Nerd Prom.

But that may be changing in the era of Donald Trump.

 Remembering when Obama destroyed Trump at the 2011 White House correspondents dinner

The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, two well-respected, left leaning publications, are both cancelling their parties associated with the event. Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who has long fought with Mr Trump for decades, told the New York Times that the new president was the reason they were not taking part in the festivities this year.

Weve taken a break from the dinner in the past, Mr Carter wrote, adding that he instead planned to spend the weekend fishing in Connecticut.

Vanity Fairs after-party, most recently held at the French Ambassadors residence, is a star-studded affair, often considered the creme de la creme of the dinner's soirees, and one of the most exclusive events of the weekend.

Natalie Raabe, a spokeswoman for the New Yorker, said it was is cancelling its kick-off party that it usually holds at the W Hotel before the Correspondents Dinner. Ms Raabe did not say why they were cancelling their party.

Instead, comedian Samantha Bee and others on the left will be holding an alternative event called Not the White House Correspondents Dinner on the same night as the dinner, scheduled for April 29th.

All these moves suggest that Mr Trumps arrival in Washington is turning off Hollywood and the New York elite, the same people who showed up in droves to see President Obama at the event in the past. They also represent the bubbling tension between news organisations and an administration that has been obviously and outwardly unfriendly to the press.

The dinner itself is hosted annually by the White House Correspondents Association under the guise of celebrating press freedoms, to give scholarships to aspiring journalists and to pass out awards to certain reporters.

What the event is really about is an evening of jovial banter between politicians and the media.

The sitting president usually attends, (its on Mr Trumps calendar at the moment but he has not publicly committed to attending) and the dinner features a comedian who roasts the press, politicians in the room and of course the president himself. The president is also given a chance to speak at the dinner and tell jokes of his own.
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The new US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, has received a ringing endorsement from a former Russian energy minister.

Speaking to The Independent, Igor Yusufov said his experience of working with Mr Tillerson, former chief executive of oil giant ExxonMobil, had been fantastic, adding that he had the best qualities of a senior manager.

His remarks come amid concern in some quarters about the closeness of the Trump administration to Vladimir Putin and US intelligence agency reports that Russian agents interfered in the US election to help the Republican billionaire beat Hillary Clinton.

Mr Tillerson made his name in Russia by helping turn a technically difficult project to drill for oil off Sakhalin Island into a success, earning billions of dollars in tax revenue for Moscow. Fortune magazine even suggested Mr Putin might have a man crush on the new Secretary of State.

The project went ahead despite the presence of a population of grey whales with Mr Yusufov saying Mr Tillerson had helped ensure the whales were not harmed.

But one conservationist suggested the associated noise might disturb the critically endangered marine mammals and warned there was a risk of oil spills.

Mr Yusufov, who founded the fossil-fuel-focused investment company Fund Energy, was clearly keen to sing Mr Tillersons praises  The Independent was one of a number of media outlets contacted by his staff.

Mr Tillerson is a person of business and is a very bottom-line person. Mr Tillerson was excellent company, he said through an interpreter.

He started as a simple employee and then he became the manager of the top level  he proved he is a successful business person.

In general he has the best qualities of the top managers. He keeps his faith  and hes quite successful in his work.

One of his principal qualities is he can listen and he can hear his business partners. Its really important in the diplomatic work to understand the position of his partner and  to balance the decision.

Mr Tillersons handling of the Sakhalin Island oil wells was a prime example of his qualities, he said.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

It was a technically difficult project because they had a difficult ecological situation. Thanks to Mr Tillerson the project became top level, Mr Yusufov said.

It was a place inhabited by big fish [the grey whales]. They were living there and it was really dangerous. There was no harm because such good ecological conditions were [maintained].

Working with Mr Tillerson for me  was a fantastic experience because he demonstrated, at the top level, his competence, Mr Yusufov added.

A joint project between Exxon and Russian oil giant Rosneft to explore for oil in the Arctic was also going well, he said.

He managed to drill the wells in the north of Russia and it was quite a difficult ecological situation there because there are many icebergs, but Mr Tillerson managed to make his commitments and to do his work successfully, Mr Yusufov said.

Women go on strike against Donald Trump Show all 7 1 /7 Women go on strike against Donald Trump Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump Protestors march during a demonstration against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump near Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City, December 12, 2016. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Women go on strike against Donald Trump Protestors march during a demonstration against U.S. President-elect Donald Trump near Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City, December 12, 2016. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images Women go on strike against Donald Trump People rally as part of a nationwide protest against US President-elect Donald Trump outside of Trump Tower on December 12, 2016 in New York. Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Despite concerns about the Trump administrations views on climate change, the former Russian minister said: In my opinion I dont think that the US will change its commitment and its implementation.

As far as I understand, the new American administration has taken a time out, just to review this problem.

I think the US has a choice between the balance of its economic requirements, the development of the US economy, and the possibility of reducing the fossil fuel emissions.

And he claimed  despite environmentalists concerns about Mr Tillersons stance on the issue  that the new Secretary of State would help convince Donald Trump not to abandon the United States part in the international attempts to limit global warming.

As I know Mr Tillerson, he is a person of wide education and he recognises the ecological situation, Mr Yusufov said.

He will study this problem in the same way he has solved many ecological problems, I think.

He will play a key role in the discussions on this issue.

Commenting on Mr Tillersons role in the Sakhalin island oil project, Erich Hoyt, a research fellow at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, said: Tillerson may well call it a well-managed operation from the oil company point of view.

But those last few grey whales from the western population may not be so excited about the oil companies coming into their feeding habitat, making noise that, even if the company operations are somewhat separated from the feeding zone, carries underwater.

And there is always the threat of oil spills  not something you want to have anywhere near a feeding habitat for a critically endangered population, according to the IUCN Red List.
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When President Donald Trump ordered the government to withhold federal funding from "sanctuary cities", Adriana Guzman felt the fear travel to her bones. She thought she and her two girls were safe. No more. We dont know what is going to happen now, she says, fighting tears.

Sanctuary cities, excoriated by the President as inimical to crime-fighting, are one of the few comforts for those among Americas 11 million undocumented people who live in them. Officers on the beat are prohibited from querying their immigration status in day-to-day encounters, like traffic stops. In some cases they bar their jails from holding undocumented arrestees for longer than their alleged crime would normally warrant only so federal agents from ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can take them into custody for potential deportation.

Mr Trump wants the sanctuary system undone and means to force compliance with financial blackmail. To its defenders, especially in California, which has the greatest number of such municipalities, it is not just cruel but wrong-headed, drawing on disproved  and, they insist, racist  notions that illegal immigrants disproportionately commit crimes and take jobs from legal residents.

Moreover, it risks having the opposite of the desired effect, they argue. In cities where there is no separation of law and immigration enforcement, the undocumented are fearful of any contact with the police or any body of authority. Crimes go unreported. These areas, studies show, have higher rates of crime, not lower, and show poorer economic performance as well.

Nor, as Mr Trump might imagine, is it a neat matter of one legal household there and one illegal household there. In case after case encountered by The Independent in northern California this week, illegal residents who now feel at renewed risk belonged to families with both documented and undocumented members under one roof. Some fear being ripped apart, kin from kin.

Ms Guzman, 35, is among those caught in the muddled brew that American immigration policy has become. A decade after she entered the country from Mexico, she is finally in the process of getting legal papers. But of her two daughters, 10 and 13, one was born here and is a US citizen, the other, who came with her across the border as a toddler, remains undocumented.

She has felt protected because she lives in San Francisco, one of the largest American cities with sanctuary ordinances, alongside Los Angeles, Boston and New York. She volunteers in neighbouring San Mateo  not a sanctuary city  to help illegal aliens with legal troubles. One family that recently received an unannounced visit from ICE felt so traumatised they moved out of their house to live in their car. ICE had the wrong address and werent even looking for them.

 US Sanctuary Cities: We in California have a responsibility to say 'no'

In San Mateo, people are afraid to go even to church. Children are afraid their parents are not going to be there to pick them up from school, she said. If she did not have the protection of a sanctuary city she would consider returning to Guadalajara.

Rosalind Garcia, 47, who cleans office buildings at night in Sacramento, also wonders now about returning to Mexico. She is afraid because her daughter is legal but her son, now 30, is not. But that may not be an option either. The father of her children was abducted in Mexico by drug gangs last year and hasnt been seen since. I am not mad, but I feel depressed, she said of Trumps order. We have shown that we are good human beings and we have followed the rules. My son is not a drug dealer or a rapist like he says we are as immigrants, my son is a professional.

Many families have already been sundered. Victor Alvarez recalled his father coming to collect him at his job at Krispy Kreme doughnuts in Long Beach one night last February only to be stopped by officers on the curb outside for a broken headlight. Within hours he had been bundled away and shipped off to Tijuana, across the border, where he remains still.

Victor, who is 21, has papers  he was born in the US  but his father did not. Suddenly the head of his family, he was forced to drop out of California State University. What stuns him still is that the officers who stopped his father were not even with the city force, but were campus police.

Mr Trump proclaims himself incensed by those jurisdictions that will not hold undocumented individuals in jail long enough for ICE to collect them for potential deportation. He repeatedly cites the case of Kate Steinle, a San Francisco woman who was shot and killed in 2015 by an illegal Mexican who had been deported five times. He had been arrested shortly before the killing but released when an ICE detainer request was refused.

 US Sanctuary Cities: It's not Trump I'm scared of, it's the white power behind him

Cities like San Francisco have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our republic, his executive order, demanding the withholding of federal funding from them, declares. Only funding for law enforcement would be unaffected.

San Francisco, which gets more than $1.2bn (960m) a year in federal funding and risks losing a portion of that, this week filed a suit to thwart Mr Trump, calling the order an unconstitutional infringement on its own sovereignty as a city. The mayors of Los Angeles, Boston and New York may follow suit.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the California state legislature are also fighting back. They have hired Eric Holder, the first US Attorney General under former President Barack Obama, to advise on strategy. A bill that would have the effect of extending sanctuary status across the whole state was approved by the Senates Public Safety Committee after a brief hearing on Tuesday, and appears set for passage by both chambers before this month is out.

Californians need to stand up in a very clear and strong way to say that what is happening in this country is both terrifying and unacceptable, State Senator Scott Wiener said after Tuesdays hearing. If California is not going to stand up and push back and say no this administration, I dont know who will. When you are dealing with a bully, you dont capitulate.

Supporters of the bill had travelled by bus, many overnight, to be there. Among them was Juan Cuandon, who helps organise a day-labour centre in Graton, in the Sonoma Valley. It attracts up to 80 men a day, mostly undocumented Mexican immigrants, looking for casual work in construction and in the fields. Everyone is afraid, he said of Mr Trump. He is putting all of us under a single umbrella saying that all of us are criminals, that everyone is a felon.

Like so many others, Francisco Aviles Pino, 21, an undocumented student from Santa Ana, believes Mr Trump has unfairly criminalised the debate over sanctuary cities. The term sanctuary for other people means safety, it means love, he said. It has faith origins and a lot of people who supported Trump were people of faith. He came in and gave them their sanctuary. Its the wall. Its the same thing.

Mr Alvarez, who is no longer at Krispy Kreme, travelled to Sacramento all the way from Long Beach to support the California bill because he doesnt want other families to go through what his has. If this was around when my dad was here it would have helped him very much. He would probably still be here.
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Donald Trumps press secretary Sean Spicer falsely accused Iran of attacking a United States naval vessel, an incident which - if it had really happened - could constitute an act of war.

Mr Spicer made the remarks during a press briefing called to explain a White House announcement that Iran had been officially "put on notice, following a ballistic missile test and an attack on a Saudi naval vessel by suspected Houthi rebels off the coast of Yemen.

The President's spokesman appeared to both conflate Iran with the Houthis, a militia fighting the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, and confuse the US with Saudi Arabia in his comments.

I think General Flynn was really clear yesterday that Iran has violated the Joint Resolution, that Irans additional hostile actions that it took against our Navy vessel are ones that we are very clear are not going to sit by and take, he said.

Major Garrett, Chief White House Correspondent with CBS News, can then be heard in video of the briefing quietly correcting him  a Saudi vessel  to which Mr Spicer responded: Sorry, thank you, yes a Saudi vessel. Yes, thats right.

The press secretary did not correct the allegation that the Iranian government carried out the attack.

Fox News had initially reported  incorrectly  that a US vessel was the target of the attack, which may have contributed to Mr Spicer's apparent confusion, but the Pentagon later confirmed it was a Saudi ship attacked by a group speculatively identified as Houthi.

The Intercept noted that although Mr Spicer's mix up is easy to ridicule, it could have grave consequences  in the past alleged attacks on US forces that did not actually happen have resulted in military retaliation, including during the Vietnam war.

The US has had ships in the Gulf area since former President Barack Obama's administration dispatched vessels to the Bab-el Mandeb strait off the coast of Yemen in October, to reinforce a Saudi-led naval blockade that contributed to the country's ongoing food crisis.

Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images Show all 18 1 /18 Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348501.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348502.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348503.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348504.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348505.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348506.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348507.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348508.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348509.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348510.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348512.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348513.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348514.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348515.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348516.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348517.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348518.bin Amnesty International Charity reveals 'scorched earth' Yemen images 348519.bin Amnesty International

Iran also has a presence in the area, were it is backing the Houthi insurgency, including by supplying the group with weapons.

Last weekend, Mr Trump authorised a raid on a branch of al-Qaeda in Yemen  his first military operation as commander in chief  in which medics at the scene said about 30 people, including 10 women and children, were killed.

Navy SEAL William Ryan Owens also died in the raid in al Bayda province, along with 14 militants, according to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon has said it is investigating the civilian deaths.
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Here are a few leaks that have come out of the Trump administration in just the last 24 hours:

* President Trump abruptly ended a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after condemning a refugee deal with the country and telling Turnbull "this was the worst call by far" he has had with a world leader.

* Trump threatened -- his administration insisted it was "light-hearted" -- Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto with sending American troops into his country.

* The White House asked Judge Thomas Hardiman to drive toward D.C. to amp up the drama in advance of Trump's Supreme Court pick on Tuesday night. (Hardiman was passed over in favor of Colorado federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch.)

I wrote recently that not only was this the leakiest White House I'd ever seen but also that the leaks -- whether purposely or not -- seemed to cast the president as a child who badly needs to be managed. What's truly remarkable is that the leaking appears to be growing even more frequent and even more deleterious to President Trump's image within just the last few days.

The first two leaks are of partial transcripts of phone calls between Trump and other world leaders. How many people have access to those transcripts? And who working for Trump could possibly think it's a good idea to leak out transcripts that show Trump attempting to bully two staunch allies? This explanation, making the rounds on Twitter Thursday morning, doesn't exactly help Trump, either.

The third leak is, to me, perhaps the most baffling. White House press secretary Sean Spicer spent a decent chunk of his briefing on Wednesday disputing media reports that Hardiman and Gorsuch had both been encouraged to come to Washington in a sort of "Cannonball Run"-like competition to fill the vacant seat on the highest court in the country. Which makes this sentence -- and its sourcing -- from Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush all the more amazing:

Three administration officials who did not want to be identified said Judge Hardiman hit the road to Washington to help them maintain the illusion that the selection process was still competitive.

Three. Administration. Officials. These are not people opposed to Trump. This is not the loyal opposition. These are people who work within Trump's administration, people he and his team hired to help him run the country. And this trio of people are confirming information that makes it very clear the president wanted to run his Supreme Court announcement like a cliffhanger episode of reality TV.

Why all the leaking? I've got two theories:

1. Trump only really listens to things once they are presented to him via the media. Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway acknowledged in the campaign that the best way to get through to him was often to talk on cable TV or to other reporters. There's no indication that Trump has changed his voracious media consumption habits since he formally entered the White House. So it's uniquely possible that these leaks are aimed at reining him in, showing him that when he acts like this with, say, world leaders, it makes him look bad.

2. There are people at senior levels within the administration who have major concerns about Trump and his fitness for office. In the long tradition of whistleblowers, they are using selective leaks to make sure that people know what is really going on inside the White House.

Presumably the incessant leaks out of this White House are pleas for help.

Neither theory is a good thing for Trump. He is someone who has made very clear -- both in the business world and in his brief stint in politics -- that he expects unflinching loyalty from his staff. He's not getting anything close to that right now -- and I have to assume, knowing what we know about him, it's driving him crazy.

I'd say any sort of staff purge is unlikely this early in a presidency. But that would be based on the old rules governing how you do politics. And if President Trump has proven anything, it's that he doesn't play by those rules.

Washington Post
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The Trump administration on Thursday told Israel to stop constructing new settlements because it may not help bring peace with Palestinians.

In the past, President Trump has suggested that he would break away from Obama-era foreign policy to form better relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly surprised the White House by announcing the construction of 5,500 new housing units in the West Bank last week.

The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years, the White House statement reads. While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Show all 20 1 /20 Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-1 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-2 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-3 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-4 SAN FRANCISCO, CA - JANUARY 28: Demonstrators hold signs during a rally against a ban on Muslim immigration at San Francisco International Airport on January 28, 2017 in San Francisco, California. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday that suspends entry of all refugees for 120 days, indefinitely suspends the entries of all Syrian refugees, as well as barring entries from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering for 90 days. Stephen Lam/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-5 A crowd of protesters gathers outside of the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse as a judge hears a challenge against President Donald Trump's executive ban on immigration from several Muslim countries, on January 28, 2017 in Brooklyn. The judge issued an emergency stay on part of Trump's executive order, ruling that sending refugees stopped at U.S. airports back to their countries would be harmful. Yana Paskova/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-6 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-7 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-8 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the new immigration ban issued by President Donald Trump at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-9 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-10 Getty Images Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-11 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-12 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-13 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-14 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-15 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-16 Protestors rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump signed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-17 NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 28: Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-18 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-19 Protestors rally during a protest against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on January 28, 2017 in New York City. President Trump singed the controversial executive order that halted refugees and residents from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. Stephanie Keith/Getty Protestors rally at JFK Airport against Muslim immigration ban jfk-protest-muslim-ban-20 Passengers wait in line to check in at the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport August 10, 2006 in the Queens borough of New York City. British authorities arrested 21 people and halted a anallegedly terrorist plot to use liquid explosives concealed in carry-on luggage to blow up airliners traveling between Britain and the U.S. Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff said that the plot appeared to be directed at U.S. carriers flying out of Heathrow. such as United Airlines, American Airlines, Continental Airlines. Stephen Chernin/Getty

As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region, the statement adds. The Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions, including with Prime Minister Netanyahu when he visits with President Trump later this month.

In an interview with the CBS program 60 Minutes, former President Obama discussed his decision to abstain from the United Nations vote to condemn the construction of Israeli settlements.

"Because of our investment in the region, and because we care so deeply about Israel, I think [the US] has a legitimate interest in saying to a friend, 'This is a problem,'" he explained. "It would have long-term consequences for peace and security in the region, and the United States."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR loaded 152 tankers in 2016 at its Black Sea oil terminal in Georgias Kulevi that is by 26.6 percent less than in 2015 (207 tankers), according to the statistical data posted on the terminals website.

According to the data, 42 tankers were loaded at the terminal in the 1Q2016, 39 tankers  in 2Q2016, 31 tankers  in the 3Q2016 and 40 tankers  in the 4Q2016. These indicators were 52, 46, 53 and 56 tankers, respectively, in 2015.

The terminal in Georgias Kulevi was commissioned in May 2008 and oil products transshipment started in June of the same year. The total capacity of the terminal is 10 million tons of bulk-oil cargo per year, three million tons of oil, three million tons of diesel fuel and four million tons of fuel oil. Total capacity of the terminals tank farm is 380,000 cubic meters.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @MaksimTsurkov
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Milo Yiannopoulos reportedly planned to publicly name undocumented students at his cancelled Berkeley University event.

The Breitbart senior editor, who was one of Twitters most notorious trolls until the site permanently banned him in July, was due to speak at the university on Wednesday but the event was called off due to heated protests.

Demonstrators threw smoke bombs, started fires and smashed windows.

Berkeley University officials warned Mr Yiannopoulos, an outspoken Donald Trump supporter, was planning to use the talk to target students who do not have documentation to live in the US.

We are deeply concerned for all students safety and ability to pursue their education here at Cal beyond Milos speech, the universitys Office of Student Affairs said in a letter sent to Berkeley College Republicans, the students hosting the event, on Tuesday.

Milos event may be used to target individuals, either in the audience or by using their personal information in a way that causes them to become human targets to serve a political agenda.

Mr Yiannopoulos told The Independent that suggestions he would use the event to name undocumented migrants were "a total fabrication" and categorically denied the reports.

George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor at Drexel University, claimed reliable sources believed Mr Yiannopoulos was planning on outing undocumented students.

Reliable sources say Milo planned to publicly name undocumented students @UCBerkeley. Debate over: shutting him down was necessary & good, he wrote on Twitter.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Kumars Salehi, a Berkeley PHD student, claimed Mr Yiannopoulos was planning to broadcast the talk in an online live stream.

Far-right news site Breitbart published an article a day before the event, saying Mr Yiannopoulos would use the Berkeley talk to claim US universities have become sanctuary campuses that shelter illegal immigrants from being deported.

Backed by the Freedom Center (Mr Yiannopoulos) will call for the withdrawal of federal grants and the prosecution of university officials who endanger their students with their policies, starting with UC President and former Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano and Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, reads the article.

Since the talk was cancelled, Mr Yiannopoulos has claimed he was planning to discuss cultural appropriation in a full Native American headdress at the event.

President Trump responded to the protests against Mr Yiannopoulos by appearing to threaten to withdraw Berkeley's federal funding.

If UC Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view - NO FEDERAL FUNDS? he wrote on Twitter.

Mr Yiannopoulos was permanently suspended from Twitter in July following claims he had aggravated and helped lead the Twitter abuse of Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones. He has been dubbed a spokesperson for the so-called alt-right movement - a political movement which has been accused of racism, antisemitism, misogyny, and of sharing an ideology with far-right parties such as the French National Front.

During a recent talk at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Mr Yiannopoulos publicly named and mocked a transgender student for filing a Title IX complaint about bathroom access.
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Donald Trumps so-called "Muslim ban" received its largest blow to date, when a federal judge issued an emergency order against his bar on citizens from seven predominantly Islamic countries from entering the US.

Los Angeles district judge Andre Birotte's temporary ruling states that immigrants who had already been cleared for legal residency in the US should be allowed into the country - a direct contravention to Mr Trump's executive order which also suspended refugee resettlement in the US for 120 days and barred Syrian refugees indefinitely.

Judge Birotte also ruled that validly obtained immigrant visas could not be cancelled, including those issued anyone from the seven barred countries - Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia - trying to enter the US.

His ruling came after at least four other US states moved to limit Mr Trump's executive order which he issued last week.

Judge Birotte ordered US officials to refrain from removing, detaining or blocking the entry of complainants or any other person [] with a valid immigrant visa or cancelling validly obtained and issued immigrant visas of anyone who arrives from one of the seven nations barred from entering the US by Mr Trump's order.

It followed a lawsuit filed on behalf of 28 Yemeni-born people, consisting of US citizens who lived in America and their family members who remained in Yemen but had received immigrant visas to come to the country, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Finding that the plaintiffs were likely to suffer irreparable harm if he didnt act, Mr Birotte instructed that they should be allowed entry in the country.

He added that his ruling be applied to anyone trying to enter the US on a valid immigrant visa from the seven countries included in the ban.

The strength and impact of Mr Birotte's ruling is yet to be known. Several federal judges elsewhere in the country have already issued rulings blocking aspects of the executive order, but it is unclear whether they have been followed.

Despite three other judges ruling against the order over the course of the weekend, there were concerns that border officers were not complying with their instructions and had continued to detain people.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

In one ruling, a New York judge ordered a halt to deportations of travellers who arrived at airports with valid visas to enter the US, but reports later surfaced of people being turned back.

The state of Virginia also filed a lawsuit accusing Mr Trump of ignoring a court order to halt the travel ban and asked judges to demand the President show why he should not be held in contempt.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also announced that the travel ban would be reviewed. It said it would look actions taken after the US President issued the controversial order after several people alleged they were unlawfully detained by US Customs and Border officers, who began enforcing the travel ban as soon as it was announced.
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A federal judge in Michigan has halted Donald Trumps executive order to ban all travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

US District Judge Victoria Roberts in Detroit clarified that the order does not apply to lawful permanent residents of the US, including green card holders.

The lawsuit was brought by the Arab-American Civil Rights League, which argued that the ban on refugees and immigrants was unconstitutional.

It represented about six legal, permanent residents, some of whom had been turned away from planes that were heading to the US.

The plaintiffs lawyer, Nabih Ayad, said she congratulated the judge for her courage to address the vulnerable sector of the community.

...This permanent injunction is the first and only order enjoining the president and the Department of Homeland Security and US Customs and Border Protection from preventing legal permanent residents from returning to the United States, she told Detroit News.

Although there has been a clarification from the White House, it was still unclear and could have been changed at any time.

More briefings and a hearing are expected to continue next week.

Mr Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon was said to be a key architect of banning green card holders, overruling the Department of Homeland Security.

 Protests across American airports in response to Trump's immigration ban

The court ruling in Michigan follows a similar legal battle in California, where Los Angeles District Judge Andre Birotte found that those who had already been cleared for legal residency should be allowed into the US.

Mr Birotte also ruled that valid immigrant visas could not be cancelled, including those issued from the seven barred countries - Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Sudan and Somalia.

The executive order, signed last Friday, led to US Customs and Border officials immediately detaining anyone from those countries at an airport if they landed in the US, prompting massive protests around the country and entangling lawful residents, and even US officials and translators.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations also filed lawsuits to challenge the order.

A New York judge ordered a halt to deportations of travellers who arrived at airports with valid visas to enter the US, but it was later reported that people had still been turned away.

The state of Virginia also filed a lawsuit accusing the President of ignoring a court order to halt the travel ban. It asked judges to demand for the President to show why he should not be held in contempt.

Mr Trump has remained defiant about the ban, insisting it would stop bad people with bad intentions from coming to the US.

The order has indefinitely suspended Syrian refugees, and vows to take in only 50,000 refugees from around the world per fiscal year once the settlement programme is resumed.
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Donald Trump's defence secretary has warned North Korea of an effective and overwhelming response if Pyongyang uses nuclear weapons.

Jim Mattis made the comments in Seoul, where he reassured South Korea of steadfast US support at the end of a two-day visit.

Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming, he said, speaking at the country's defence ministry.

Mr Mattis remarks come amid concern that North Korea could be preparing to test a new ballistic missile, posing an early challenge to Mr Trumps administration.

North Korea regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and its main ally the United States. The pariah country conducted more than 20 missile tests last year, as well as two nuclear tests, in defiance of UN resolutions and sanctions.

The North appears to have restarted operation of a reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear facility that produces plutonium that can be used for its nuclear weapons programme, according to US think tank 38 North.

North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour, Mr Mattis said.

The United States and South Korea recently agreed to work together to bolster their defences. A US missile defence system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD), is expected to be deployed in South Korea later this year.

China, however, has objected to THAAD, saying it will destabilise the regional security balance, leading to calls from some South Korean opposition leaders to delay or cancel it.

But Mr Mattis and his South Korean counterpart reconfirmed their commitment to the project on Friday.

South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo said Mr Mattis' visit to Seoul  his first trip abroad as defence secretary  sent a clear message of strong US support.

Faced with a current severe security situation, Secretary Mattis' visit to Korea ... also communicates the strongest warning to North Korea, Mr Han said.

North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone Show all 13 1 /13 North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP North Korea trading despite nuclear sanctions - Inside the country's special economic zone AP

Once fully developed, a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) could threaten the United States, which is about 5,500 miles from North Korea. ICBMs have a minimum range of about 3,400 miles, but some are designed to travel 6,200 miles or more.

Former US officials and other experts have said the United States essentially has two options when it comes to trying to curb North Korea's fast-expanding nuclear and missile programmes - negotiate or take military action.

Neither path offers certain success and the military option is fraught with huge dangers, especially for Japan and South Korea, US allies in close proximity to North Korea.

Mr Mattis is scheduled to depart later on Friday for Japan.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Babies and children have been slaughtered with knives during a military campaign on Rohingya Muslims in Burma, according to a series of accounts in a disturbing UN report.

An eight-month-old, a five-year-old and a six-year-old were all reportedly stabbed to death in their own homes during so-called area clearance operations by Burmese security services, which are reported to have killed hundreds of people since 9 October, in a Rohingya-dominated area in northwest Rakhine State.

The chilling accounts, described by the UN as revolting, are outlined in a flash report from the United Nations Human Rights office. The report, which has been released early because of its alarming nature, is based on interviews with more than 200 Rohingya refugees who have recently entered Bangladesh after fleeing from violence they faced in Rakhine.

One mother recounted in the report how her five-year-old daughter was trying to protect her from rape when a man took out a long knife and killed her by slitting her throat, while in another case an eight-month-old baby was reportedly killed while his mother was gang-raped by five security officers.

A 14-year-old girl also told of how, after being raped by soldiers, she saw her mother beaten to death and her two sisters, aged eight and 10, killed with knives.

The Burmese Government has repeatedly denied allegations of persecution against the Rohingya minority, rejecting any evidence as propaganda and arguing that police beatings were ordinary in many countries.

During the crackdown in Rakhine, armed members of Burmas security services are said to have rounded up Rohingya men and taken them away in vehicles, before then going from house to house gang-raping or sexually harassing women, and sometimes killing children who cried or tried to protect their mothers.

In another case, recounted by a number of refugees in separate interviews, the army of Rakhine villagers locked an entire family, including elderly and disabled people, inside a house and set it on fire, killing them all.

Boys stand among debris after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine (Reuters)

Many witnesses and victims also described being taunted while they were being beaten, raped or rounded up, such as being told you are Bangladeshis and you should go back or what can your Allah do for you? See what we can do?

Other attacks against Rohingya Muslims by Burmas security services include brutal beatings and disappearances. The vast majority of those interviewed said they had witnessed killings, and almost half reported having a family member who was killed, as well as family members who were missing.

More than half of the 101 women interviewed said they had been victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence.

Linnea Arvidsson, one of the four UN workers who interviewed Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and drew up the report, told The Independent she had never encountered such a shocking situation.

Its shocking. Ive never encountered a situation like this, where you do 204 interviews and every single person you speak with has a traumatic story, whether their house was burnt, theyve been raped or a relative was killed or taken away, said Ms Arvidsson.

In many cases we were the first people, other than their close family, who these people had spoken to. They would break down. Women and even grown men would be crying.

The women cried when they spoke of being raped, or seeing their children being killed. Men cried when they related how their houses had been burnt, and their concerns over how they would now be able to support their families.

Its very rare for there to be such a high prevalence of violence. And when you think we spoke to just 204 people of a total of 88,000 who have fled the area, its really scary to think of the total numbers.

The attacks on Rohingya in Rakhine were triggered last October when nine police officers were killed in attacks on posts along the border with Bangladesh, and the security services launched an intense crackdown on the Rohingya population to track down the insurgents behind the incident.

But the violence follows a long-standing pattern of violations and abuses, systematic discrimination and policies of exclusion and marginalisation against the Rohingya that have been in place for decades in northern Rakhine.

 Video shows Burmese police beating Rohingya muslims

Ms Arvidsson added that the violent attacks against men, women and children were more than systematic operations in the search to find the insurgents responsible for the police killings in October, inferring that ethnic discrimination was also behind the slaughter of babies.

To say these are area clearance operations looking for insurgents who killed police officers doesnt make any sense. To kill babies, toddlers and young children and rape women when you are trying to find insurgents doesnt make sense," she told The Independent.

The testimonies we gathered pointed at two intents as the motivation of this persecution: the collective punishment following humiliation over the attacks against police officers in October, and the ethnic and racial element  the disdain for this minority.

You dont slaughter eight-month-old babies because a police officer was attacked. Its because you just dont consider the child as human.

Recommended UN human rights envoy visits Burma as genocide concerns mount

The UNs High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, described the devastating cruelty against Rohingya children as unbearable, saying the allegations of babies being stabbed beg a reaction from the international community.

The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable  what kind of hatred could make a man stab a baby crying out for his mothers milk, he said.

And for the mother to witness this murder while she is being gang-raped by the very security forces who should be protecting her  what kind of clearance operation is this? What national security goals could possibly be served by this?

I call on the international community, with all its strength, to join me in urging the leadership in Myanmar to bring such military operations to an end. The gravity and scale of these allegations begs the robust reaction of the international community.

Mr al-Hussein also urged the authorities in Burma to bring an immediate end to the grave human rights violations against its people, saying: The Government of Myanmar must immediately halt these grave human rights violations against its own people, instead of continuing to deny they have occurred, and accepts the responsibility to ensure that victims have access to justice, reparations and safety.
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Iran's supreme court has ruled that a woman must be blinded in one eye as punishment for an acid attack that left her victim sightless, using the principle of eye for an eye of Islamic Sharia law, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported on Thursday.

Under Iran's Sharia law, imposed since the 1979 Islamic revolution, qesas (retribution) is permitted in cases where bodily injuries are inflicted.

The convicted attacker, who was not identified, was found guilty of throwing acid in the face of her victim, identified as Sima, two years ago in the city of Dehdasht, Tasnim reported.

The sentence to blindness in one eye, payment of blood money (compensation), and seven years imprisonment have been confirmed by the highest court, Tasnim quoted head of judiciary Majid Karami in the province of Kohgiluyeh as saying.

Mr Karami did not say when the sentence was scheduled to be carried out. Victims and their families have the final say and can prevent the punishment from being imposed, under the law.

Activist Mohammad Surizad in Tehran told Reuters some activists had urged Sima's family to show clemency and pardon the convicted woman".

Iranian officials, concerned about the increase in the rate of acid attacks, have endorsed retribution. However, the practise of carrying out an eye for an eye punishment is very rare in Iran.

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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. 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Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. 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Several acid attacks have been reported in Iran in the past few years. In 2011, an Iranian woman blinded with acid by her suitor after she spurned his marriage offers spared him hours before surgeons prepared to blind the man with acid.

Rights group Amnesty International have urged Iran not to inflict the punishment.

The concept of qesas also applies to other crimes in Iran, such as murder. A victim's family can demand the death of a convicted murderer or commute the sentence in return for financial compensation from the criminal.

Reuters
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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has sacked his spy chief following accusations of abuse of power, corruption and torture, a South Korean news agency has said.

Yonhap reported Kim Won Hong, a hardliner who was previously seen as close to the ruling family, was purged from the party late last year after an audit found he had been dismissed from his post but did not elaborate on the charges.

Kim Won Hong has been demoted from general to lieutenant general but could possibly face stronger punishment as the investigation continues, the spokesman for South Koreas Unification Ministry Jeong Joon Hee said.

Mr Jeong warned that the demotion may create greater instability within the ruling elite as it fears persecution but did not say how the South Korean government acquired the intelligence.

South Korea has a spotty record of tracking developments in North Korea as information about the secretive, authoritarian state is often impossible to confirm.

Since taking power on the death of his father in 2011, Kim Jong-un has executed or purged a number of high-level government officials including his own uncle Jang Song Thaek.

Jang was once considered the second most powerful man in the secretive country but was denounced as despicable human scum by the regime and executed  probably by firing squad.

North Korea Prison Camps Show all 7 1 /7 North Korea Prison Camps North Korea Prison Camps An overview of Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps The administration area of Camp 15 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps A water treatment system in Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps Crop fields and, inset, prisoners in Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps The reported crematorium in Camp 25 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps A possible mine Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe North Korea Prison Camps A walled compound in Camp 15 Amnesty International/DigitalGlobe

Kim Won Hong, who was appointed to head the spy agency in April 2012, is believed to have had a key role in Jangs downfall.

It is not clear if Kim Won Hong's alleged sacking means he has been permanently removed from North Korea's leadership circle.

Choe Ryong Hae, a close aide to Kim Jong-un, was believed to have been briefly banished to a rural collective farm for re-education in 2015, but he regained his political footing during a rare congress of the North's ruling Workers' Party last year.

Additional reporting by AP
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A heartbroken mother has spoken out against bullying after her 15-year-old daughter took her own life, following years of abuse which culminated in a gang rape.

Linda Trevan said Cassidy's tormentors vandalised their family home, slapped her across the face, repeatedly insulted her in person and on social media, and followed around her local shops.

The bullying continued despite attempts to resettle her daughter in two new schools, she said.

They had moved house after two "older boys that Cass didn't know" had raped her, she added.

Recommended Teenager kills herself in front of parents after cyber bullying

Throughout the attack she said that two girls "sat and waited" while the pair "shared her and timed each other" as another "boy stood guarding the front door.

Ms Trevan, from Melbourne, Australia, shared her daughter's ordeal in a 500-word Facebook post.

"I had to watch my baby suffer for the next 22 months from these demons," she wrote. "She worried you would find her and get her again, she went through continued bullying from some of you who managed to get to her by phone or social media, via others, even after what you'd done to her."

She added that her daughter had "suffered flash backs of the crime, nightmares, insomnia, separation anxiety, panic attacks, PTSD and subsequent worsening mental illness."

In a separate interview with Australia's 9 News, Ms Trevan said a fence at their home had been defaced with graffiti and a banana peel was placed on the door mat.

Cassidy missed her entire fourth term at school in late 2013, but returned the for two days a week the following February at the age of 13, having completed a recovery programme, she added.

At that point the bullies apologised, she said, and they invited her daughter to join them at a festival.

It was then that the rape took place.

Cassidy reported the attack to police and spoke to detectives several times. But Ms Trevan said she was "scared to make a formal statement for fear of retaliation from the gang, and she also was worried reliving it would push her over the edge'.

Detectives from Victoria Police's Sexual Offence and Child Abuse Investigation Team (SOCIT) said there were "at least 20 interactions between" officers and the family.

During those conversations the SOCIT detectives explained options, put protections in place and ensured the victim was receiving assistance from support services, a Victoria Police spokesperson told The Independent. They encouraged the victim in each interaction to make a statement.

"Throughout this time period the SOCIT followed up some other investigative leads. The victim declined at each stage to proceed with the matter. No charges were laid.

Ms Trevan said that "she went to the school but was told it was a police matter."

A Department of Education and Training spokesman said: The death of any young person is an absolute tragedy and our sympathies are with Cassidys family.

Schools have a range of ways to help students who may be experiencing bullying or mental health issues, including by providing qualified counsellors. School staff work hard to identify and support students who need support and we would encourage any students who need help to talk to staff at their school.

Cassidy took her own life in December 2015.

In Her Facebook post, Ms Trevan said: "I helplessly watched my precious child wither away before my eyes, mentally & physically, until she rarely got out of bed, until she could no longer take the pain and torment you caused her. Cassy was my world, she still is and she always will be. But now I have nothing, and I'm still trying to find a reason to go on without her.

She added: I want the bullies out there to know that its not just a game. It costs lives.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

In the UK, NSPCC statistics from last year show it conducted 25,700 childline counselling sessions because of bullying.

Around half of British LGBT young people experience homophobic bullying at school and around 78,000 young people are absent from UK schools each year because of bullying.

Anyone worried about a child in the UK can contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 500.
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It took just three simple words on Twitter for Christopher Nunn to tell the world he was safe: I am alive.

But it said nothing about the photojournalists traumatic past 24 hours as he was caught up in sudden fighting between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists.

The 33-year-old Briton was photographing from a house in the frontline town of Avdiivka on Thursday when a shell exploded immediately outside.

Initial media reports out of Ukraine claimed shrapnel penetrated his left eye, and wounded his right eyelid, and that doctors were fighting to save his vision.

But speaking to The Independent from hospital, his translator and fixer Vladimir Subotovsky said it was fake news and that there was no threat of losing his vision.

One woman said you can visit me to take pictures of the neighbourhood, said the 25-year-old Ukrainian, speaking from Mechnikov hospital in the more central Dnipro city.

We were in the kitchen when shelling started exploding in the neighbourhood. I was going to another room but he stayed in the kitchen and the shell exploded nearby and it blasted the window.

There was broken glass and plastic hit his face.

He has a little problem with his left eye. I read in the news that he lost his left eye but its not true, its fake news.

He had a little operation on the left eye and an injection and he is now asleep.

Ukrainian servicemen distribute hot food and tea to local citizens in Avdiivka (EPA)

It was small pieces from the window  a few small bits of plastic that have been removed.

Mr Subotovsky said the shelling came from Donetsk nine miles south, which unlike Avdiivka, is an anti-government Kremlin-backed stronghold.

We have no idea why they were shelling the town, he added.

Mr Subotovsky also said the woman in the house was badly injured in last nights fighting, which reportedly killed two civilians in government-held territory, and two civilians in Donetsk.

 Inside Story - Is the conflict in Ukraine about to escalate?

He said Mr Nunn, who is expected to stay in hospital for another week, has already been visited by his Ukrainian girlfriend and spoken to his dad via Whatsapp.

The Bradford University photography graduate, from Huddersfield, who is believed to have moved to the Donbass area in winter 2014 before war started, has been honoured at a series of UK galleries and exhibitions.

Recent clients, according to his website, include The New Yorker, the Financial Times' Weekend Magazine, Le Monde, Morgenbladet and The Daily Telegraph.

The ceasefire violations on Thursday killed about 15 people including soldiers, the worst fighting in weeks, and more than 9,700 have died in the three-year conflict.
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French president Francois Hollande has said Donald Trump is putting unacceptable levels of pressure on the EU.

The French Socialist Party leader said the US President was putting strain on what Europe should or should not be, adding that there appears to be an element of uncertainty as to what Mr Trump really wants.

Speaking to reporters at a summit of EU leaders in Malta on Friday, Mr Hollande said: It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be.

Who really knows what the US President wants, particularly for the transatlantic alliance, and on the sharing of expenses that he calls a burden.

The US President has questioned the foundations of transatlantic relations and openly rooted for the dissolution of the EU, as well as repeatedly disregarding NATO as obsolete.

In an interview with the Sunday Times and Germanys Bild, Mr Trump disparaged the EU, saying, I dont really care whether its separate or together, to me it doesnt matter, adding that the bloc was basically a vehicle for Germany.

It is not the first time Mr Hollande has expressed concern about Mr Trump's presidency and disdain towards the billionaire businessman as an individual.

World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Show all 29 1 /29 World reaction to President Trump: In pictures World reaction to President Trump: In pictures London, England AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures London, England Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines Getty Images World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mosul , Iraq Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Manila, Philippines AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures New Delhi, India Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Karachi, Pakistan EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jakarta, Indonesia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Lagos, Nigeria AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Kabul, Afghanistan AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jerusalem. Israel Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Moscow, Russia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Seoul, South Korea AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Lagos, Nigeria AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Peshawar, Pakistan EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jakarta, Indonesia Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Hyderabad, India AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Kolkata, India AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Sydney, Australia Getty World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Sydney, Australia AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Aleppo, Syria Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mexico City, Mexico AP World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago Reuters World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Jerusalem, Israel EPA World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Baghdad, Iraq Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Gaza Strip, Palestinian Territories Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Tokyo, Japan Rex World reaction to President Trump: In pictures Mexico City, Mexico Getty

Following the US election last November, the French President said the shock result opened a period of uncertainty that must be met with lucidity and clarity, and prior to the Republican's election victory he said Mr Trump made him want to retch.

Mr Hollande's latest remarks echo warnings from leaders within the EU, who have also warned of the threat the new US President poses to the bloc. European Council president Donald tusk warned in an open letter to EU leaders on Tuesday that worrying declarations by the new American administration put the future of Europe in jeopardy.

The EU Parliaments chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt meanwhile warned EU leaders that putting the future organisation of Europe on nationalist ideas adopted by Mr Trump was the "most stupid thing" they could do.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.3

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Hungary is interested in receiving Russian gas via the Turkish Stream pipeline, said the countrys Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The prime minister said his country is also interested in receiving gas from the north if it doesnt get gas from other sources, Russian media reported.

Earlier, Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov said that Hungary can join the Nord Stream and Turkish Stream gas pipeline projects in the future.

Ushakov pointed out that Russia accounts for over 75 percent of oil and 60 percent of gas consumption in Hungary.

Russia and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement October 10 on the implementation of the Turkish Stream project.

The agreement involves construction of two branches of the main gas pipeline under the Black Sea, the power of each branch being 15.75 billion cubic meters of gas.

One branch is provided to supply gas directly to the Turkish market, the other for the supply of gas by transit through Turkey to Europe. The intergovernmental agreement also stipulates that these two offshore branches should be built by December 2019.

Nord Stream is an export gas pipeline running from Russia to Europe across the Baltic Sea. As it bypasses transit countries, Nord Stream provides Gazprom with direct access to European consumers.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
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The European Union has been warned against stranding thousands of refugees in concentration camp-like prisons by making a controversial deal with Libya to stem the flow of migrants over the Mediterranean.

The country is the main launching point for hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed to Europe fleeing war, persecution and the dire conditions in Libya itself.

Authorities and militias stand accused of killing, shooting, torturing, detaining and exploiting asylum seekers amid the bloody chaos of the continuing civil war.

The national coastguard, being trained by Britain and other European nations, has also attacked rescue vessels run by humanitarian groups, causing 25 people to drown in one incident.

But the EU is expected to hand Libyan authorities more responsibility for refugee operations, potentially allowing the forced return of boats, following a summit in Malta today.

Theresa May and Angela Merkel are among the leaders to attend talks chaired by European Council president Donald Tusk, which come amid heightened tensions over Brexit and differing reactions to Donald Trumps policies.

As politicians gathered in Valletta on Friday morning, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) rescue teams said an absolute nightmare was unfolding in the Mediterranean, with their ships at full capacity as multiple rescues were still underway.

"There are not enough search and rescue vessels," MSF project coordinator Ed Taylor said. "There is no coastguard vessel in the area, there are no navy vessels...we've asked for backup and [Italian authorities] can't send anything."

Unicef said that after the deadliest ever winter for refugees, seeing at least 190 children drown in the past three months, the lives of thousands were at stake.

Justin Forsyth, the agencys deputy executive director, said: The decisions taken at Fridays summit could literally mean the difference between life and death for thousands of children transiting or stranded in Libya. They need urgent action now.

In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Show all 7 1 /7 In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby being taken on to MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A refugee boat carrying 101 people being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos all images by Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A baby among refugees on a boat carrying 185 people off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea Migrants and refugees sleeping after being rescued by MSF's Bourbon Argos ship Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A crew from MSF's Bourbon Argos ship rescuing a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya, at sunrise Lizzie Dearden In pictures: A day of refugee rescues in the Mediterranean Sea A woman in a stretcher being lifted onto MSF's Bourbon Argos ship from a boat carrying 130 migrants and refugees off the coast of Libya Lizzie Dearden

Unicef called for the UK and other countries to safely resettle refugees and warned against violating a 1951 convention by sending them back to Libya without a proper plan to protect them.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and International Organisation for Migration (IOM), said Libya was not a safe third country.

Recommended Living in limbo in Libya

We believe that, given the current context, it is not appropriate to consider Libya a safe third country nor to establish extraterritorial processing of asylum-seekers in North Africa, a joint statement said, urging European leaders to find humane solutions.

MSF, which staffs two rescue boats in the Mediterranean as well as providing medical care in Libya, said the EU needs a reality check if it is considering allowing migrants to be returned.

Libya is not a safe place and blocking people in the country or returning them to Libya makes a mockery of the EUs so-called fundamental values of human dignity and rule of law, said Arjan Hehenkamp, MSFs general director.

He described visits to dangerously overcrowded detention centres with no natural light or ventilation, where infections and disease are rife and inmates are starved.

Save the Children, which also runs rescue operations, said boys and girls were being beaten and raped as part of widespread abuses at the hands of smugglers and armed factions in Libya.

A Libyan coastguard boat filming a rescue by MSF's Bourbon Argos ship on 4 November 2016 (Lizzie Dearden ) (Lizzie Dearden)

Simply pushing desperate children back to a country which many describe as hell is not a solution, said Ester Asin, the charitys EU advocacy office director.

The EU is yet again outsourcing its responsibility to protect the rights of migrants and refugees with no guarantees about what will happen to the many men, women and children after they have been returned to Libya.

The route from Libya into the Central Mediterranean has become the main passage to Europe after a controversial agreement struck with Turkey last year, which dramatically reduced the number of boats crossing the Aegean Sea by seeing everyone arriving on Greek islands detained under threat of deportation.

A repeat of the EU-Turkey deal has been mooted but is considered impossible in light of the continuing conflict in Libya, where the new Government of National Accord is struggling to stop battles between a plethora of warring militias including Islamists and Isis.

Migrants are a profitable business for gangs who detain them in makeshift prisons, either holding them for ransom or forcing them into labour or prostitution amid widespread lawlessness following the British-backed ousting of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

A leaked report by German diplomats described the horrific conditions like concentration camps, where survivors described daily executions to make room for new arrivals.

The asylum seekers who manage to escape are more likely to die attempting the treacherous journey across the Mediterranean than ever before, with more than 5,000 drowning, suffocating or freezing to death in overloaded smugglers boats last year alone.

Sub-Saharan refugees sit on the deck of the Golfo Azzurro after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea on 27 January (AP)

The number of people dying in the passage between Libya and Italy, the deadliest sea crossing in the world, is now 13 times higher than during the same period last year.

More than 1,300 migrants were rescued on Wednesday alone, with babies and young children among those found on 12 overloaded boats.

Recommended Aid workers recount Libyan coastguard attacks on refugee rescue boats

They are among more than 5,000 people who have arrived in Europe from Libya so far this year, mainly from Nigeria, Eritrea, Guinea and other African countries.

A damning report by the Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis (Medmig) found the EU partly responsible for a spike in disasters as smugglers switched from wooden boats to flimsy dinghies in a bit to lower costs and avoid detection.

European naval ships and vessels from the Frontex border agency are already patrolling Libyas coast to track movement, and new measures could include bolstering Libyas military and coastguard to carry out return operations.

As well as trying to disrupt smuggling gangs, the EU aims to deport more failed asylum seekers from Italy, using its cash to overcome resistance among African states to taking people back.

Mr Tusk said the summits main goal was to stem the flow of irregular migration from Libya to Europe in cooperation with Prime Minister Mustafa al-Sarrajs government.

It is the latest part of the Migration Partnership Framework, which was adopted by the EU last year despite opposition from more than 100 human rights organisations.
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Francois Fillon clung to his place as Frances conservative presidential candidate on Friday amid worsening opinion poll ratings and speculation about his ability to carry on after accusations his wife got public money for work she did not do.

Police carried out searches at the Senate in connection with the fake job allegations on Friday, looking in particular for information concerning payments there to Charles and Marie, two of Fillons children, the public prosecutor said.

Senate President Gerard Larcher, named by some politicians as a desirable substitute if Fillon bowed out, took to Twitter to deny a report in news publication LObs that he was about to withdraw his support for the current presidential contender.

People in his own camp discussed other options as a second poll in two days showed a large majority of voters believed the former prime minister should pull out of the election, a two-round contest that opens on 23 April.

The 62-year-old vowed at a Thursday night rally in northeast France to fight what he called a demolition exercise, telling a crowd of around 1,000: People are not seeking justice. They are seeking to destroy me, and beyond me to destroy the Right and steal an election.

Recommended Journalist attacked by security guards after asking Le Pen question

Until the scandal over payments to his wife and two of his children surfaced last week, Fillon was enjoying what looked like a nearly unassailable lead over other presidential contenders, ahead of far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron.

An Odoxa poll for franceinfo radio showed 61 per cent believe Fillon is now wrong to persevere in his presidential bid.

Sniping from his own right-wing political camp continued, primarily from politicians connected to party grandees he beat to win the presidential ticket of the Republicans party.

A million euros is no small sum, said Rachida Dati, who was justice minister under Nicolas Sarkozy, president from 2007 to 2012 but third-place loser in the contest that handed Fillon the Republicans presidential ticket.

She dismissed two other names cited as possible replacements if Fillon pulled out  Alain Juppe and Sarkozy.

They were both also-rans in the primary that Fillon won last November. But Juppe has the handicap of a court conviction more than 10 years ago for misusing political funds to finance phantom jobs for political friends. Sarkozy is being pursued by investigators on suspicion of illicit campaign financing.

Fillon has denied any wrongdoing since Le Canard enchaine, a muckraking satirical weekly, last week accused him of paying his British wife, Penelope, hundreds of thousands of euros for work as an assistant that she appeared not to have done.

That scandal, subject of an official inquiry, has broadened since then with further reports by the newspaper of payments 10 years ago to children Marie and Charles, who are now lawyers in their thirties. On Thursday, a prime-time TV programme broadcast a decade-old interview in which Fillons wife appeared to say she had no role as an employed assistant.

I have never actually been his assistant or anything like that. I dont deal with his communication, she said in that interview with The Daily Telegraph.

Fillon had presented himself as a clean-cut, clean-living candidate. Welsh-born Penelope has long shunned the limelight for what, in rare comments to the media, she calls a country life as mother of four at the family manor an hour or two by car west of Paris.

Opinion polls have shown Fillon stumbling to level with rival Macron. Whichever of the two makes it to the 7 May runoff round is expected to face Le Pen, and beat her convincingly.

Should he bow out, other names that politicians have shared with journalists as replacement contenders are Senate president Larcher, publicly proposed by right-winger Christine Boutin on Thursday, and ex-ministers Xavier Bertrand and Francois Baroin.

Reuters
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The German government has budgeted more than 40 million (35 million) to pay asylum seekers to voluntarily return to their home countries.

Migrants will be offered financial incentives of up to 1,200 (1,000) each to leave Germany and withdraw their application for protection, with a lower amount of 800 (700) if they choose to depart after being refused asylum.

The German interior ministry is running the StarthilfePlus programme with the UNs International Organisation of Migration (IOM), mirroring similar initiatives run in other European countries since the start of the refugee crisis.

It is open to destitute citizens of some of the worlds top refugee producing countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Iraq and Nigeria, while Russians, Turks, Ukrainians and other nationalities will be excluded from support after the programmes transitional stage.

 Germany approves new integration law for refugees

In order to receive the money, returnees must sign a formal declaration to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) pledging to withdraw the asylum application and the legal remedies already applied and refrain from any further appeals.

Thomas de Maiziere, the German interior minister, said StarthilfePlus was intended for those with very poor chances of success under the countrys asylum laws.

I appeal to understanding and reason: For all those who have no prospect of staying in Germany, voluntarily departure represents a better way than deportation, he added.

If the possibility of a voluntary return is not used, only the instrument of deportation remains. Only with the consistent application of the law can the functionality of our asylum system be ensured.

The IOM said the funding, including extra family assistance grants, is paid out in two stages  one half in Germany before departure and the remainder within eight months of their proven arrival in the country of origin. Children under 12 receive half the adult amount.

The programme was launched as civil servants continue to battle a backlog of around 400,000 asylum claims created by the unprecedented number of refugees who arrived in Germany in 2015.

Refugees settle in Germany Show all 12 1 /12 Refugees settle in Germany Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, plays with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, in the one room they and Mohamed's wife Laloosh call home at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany A refugee child Amnat Musayeva points to a star with her photo and name that decorates the door to her classroom as teacher Martina Fischer looks on at the local kindergarten Amnat and her siblings attend on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The children live with their family at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian asylum-applicant Mohamed Ali Hussein (R), 19, and fellow applicant Autur, from Latvia, load benches onto a truckbed while performing community service, for which they receive a small allowance, in Wilhelmsaue village on October 9, 2015 near Letschin, Germany. Mohamed and Autur live at an asylum-applicants' shelter in nearby Vossberg village. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Ali Hussein ((L), 19, and his cousin Sinjar Hussein, 34, sweep leaves at a cemetery in Gieshof village, for which they receive a small allowance, near Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat, a refugee from Syria, looks among donated clothing in the basement of the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to Mohamed, his wife Laloosh and their daughter Ranim as residents' laundry dries behind in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. The Zayats arrived approximately two months ago after trekking through Turkey, Greece and the Balkans and are now waiting for local authorities to process their asylum application, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asya Sugaipova (L), Mohza Mukayeva and Khadra Zhukova prepare food in the communal kitchen at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Efrah Abdullahi Ahmed looks down from the communal kitchen window at her daughter Sumaya, 10, who had just returned from school, at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is their home in Vossberg Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Asylum-applicants, including Syrians Mohamed Ali Hussein (C-R, in black jacket) and Fadi Almasalmeh (C), return from grocery shopping with other refugees to the asylum-applicants' shelter that is their home in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Mohamed Zayat (2nd from L), a refugee from Syria, smokes a cigarette after shopping for groceries with his daughter Ranim, who is nearly 3, and fellow-Syrian refugees Mohamed Ali Hussein (C) and Fadi Almasalmeh (L) at a local supermarket on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. All of them live at an asylum-seekers' shelter in nearby Vossberg village and are waiting for local authorities to process their asylum applications, after which they will be allowed to live independently and settle elsewhere in Germany 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Kurdish Syrian refugees Leila, 9, carries her sister Avin, 1, in the backyard at the asylum-seekers' shelter that is home to them and their family in Vossberg village in Letschin Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany Somali refugees and husband and wife Said Ahmed Gure (R) and Ayaan Gure pose with their infant son Muzammili, who was born in Germany, in the room they share at an asylum-seekers' shelter in Vossberg village on October 9, 2015 in Letschin, Germany. Approximately 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Syria, Chechnya and Somalia, live at the Vossberg shelter, which is run by the Arbeiter-Samariter Bund (ASB) charity, and are waiting for authorities to process their application for asylum 2015 Getty Images Refugees settle in Germany Germany German Chancellor Angela Merkel pauses for a selfie with a refugee after she visited the AWO Refugium Askanierring shelter for refugees in Berlin Getty Images

The number of new applications plummeted by more than 600,000 last year, standing at less than a third of those at the height of the crisis, when Angela Merkel opened Germanys borders to Syrian refugees amid a series of boat disasters in the Mediterranean and Aegean seas.

Her policy sparked the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers in Germany, many of whom are still housed in temporary accommodation while awaiting a government decision.

Anti-immigration and far-right groups have criticised the decision, blaming the Chancellor for a series of Isis-inspired terror attacks carried out by migrants in Germany last year, including the Berlin Christmas market massacre.

A man linked to the dead suspect was extradited to Tunisia on Wednesday, following outrage over revelations the Berlin attacker and a known Isis recruiter were not deported to the country because of delays with paperwork.

Germany is the latest European country to boost voluntary return programmes amid growing anti-immigration sentiment across the continent.

Denmarks initiative, also run with the IOM, caused 532 asylum seekers to voluntarily leave the country last year - a record number.

Many cited long waiting times in Danish asylum centres, ill family members in their home countries and false expectations as the primary reasons for leaving.
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Germanys faith in the US has taken a nosedive since the election of Donald Trump with the country viewing their longtime ally as trustworthy as Russia, a new poll has found.

Just 22 per cent of respondents trusted the US under its new leader  compared with 59 per cent just before the November election.

The sample of just over just 1,000 voters also found Germanys trust in Russia had declined four points between November and February to just 21 per cent. However, this is up from a low of 15 per cent in March 2015 following the downing of MH17 and the annexation of the Crimea.

The results, gathered by Cologne-based radio station WDR, found that only 26 per cent of believe it is good that Mr Trump is following through on his campaign promises to ramp up protectionism, build a wall on the Mexican border and ban people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

A further 69 per cent disapproved of his policies, but 80 per cent still believed the European Union must cooperate closely with him.

The survey was part of a wider trend report polling Germans on politics ahead of the federal elections later this year.

It also found 90 per cent of Germans were worried about the state of democracy in Turkey.

Eighty-three per cent of respondents believed the government should be more opposed to the Turkish governments crackdown on dissent but 50 per cent still believe Chancellor Angela Merkel should do everything she can to save the refugee agreement agreed in March last year.

In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President-elect Donald Trump acknowledges guests as he arrives on the platform at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States by Chief Justice John Roberts as Melania Trump looks on during the 58th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice John Roberts after taking the oath at inauguration ceremonies swearing in Trump as the 45th president of the United States Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump President Donald Trump raises his fists after his inauguration on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President-elect Donald Trump greets outgoing President Barack Obama before Trump is inaugurated during ceremonies on the Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump resident-elect Donald Trump arrives on the platform of the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Attendees partake in the inauguration ceremonies to swear in Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States at the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump US President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address during ceremonies at the US Capitol in Washington DC Getty In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. President Donald Trump waves with wife Melania during the Inaugural Parade in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters registered their rage against the new president Friday in a chaotic confrontation with police who used pepper spray and stun grenades in a melee just blocks from Donald Trump's inaugural parade route. Scores were arrested for trashing property and attacking officers AP In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators protest against US President Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A woman holds a sign before the start of the Presidential Inauguration of Donald Trump at Freedom Plaza in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Anti-Trump protesters prepare banners for a protest against the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, in Berlin REUTERS In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators shout slogans against US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators march, block foot traffic and clash with U.S. Capitol Police at the entry checkpoints for the Inauguration of Donald Trump Alamy Live News In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators display a banner as people arrive for US President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A man displays a placard as people lineup to get into the National Mall for the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump in Washington DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump raise their hands as they are surrounded by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A demonstrator wearing a mask depicting Donald Trump protests outside the US Embassy in London Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Demonstrators hold placards as they protest outside the US Embassy in London Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former US President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush arrive for the Presidential Inauguration at the US Capitol Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden share an umbrella as President Donald Trump delivers his inaugural address at the inauguration in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton arrive on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump U.S. Vice President Mike Pence takes the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC Getty Images In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Advisors to President-elect Donald Trump, Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon depart from services at St. John's Church during the Presidential Inauguration in Washington Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump take cover as they are hit by pepper spray by police on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump An activist demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump is helped after being hit by pepper spray on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer tries to tackle a protester demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump Reuters/Adrees Latif In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump Police arrest and detain a protester in the street in Washington DC Rex In pictures: Protests, pomp and Donald Trump A police officer falls to the ground as another shoots pepper spray at protesters demonstrating against U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the inauguration in Washington DC Reuters

The poll comes as one Germanys leading political magazines, Der Spiegel, depicted Mr Trump as an American Pyscho on its front cover holding the severed head of the Statute of Liberty with the headline: America First.

Germany, along with many other European countries, reacted with dismay to Mr Trumps executive order banning all citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries coming to the US last week.

In a recent phone call Ms Merkel reportedly explained the Geneva Convention to her American counterpart.

A statement issued by her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said: The Chancellor regrets the US governments entry ban against refugees and citizens of certain countries.

She is convinced that even the necessary, resolute fight against terrorism doesnt justify putting people of a particular origin or particular faith under general suspicion.

The Geneva Refugee Convention requires the international community to take in refugees from war on humanitarian grounds. All signatory states are expected to do so. The Chancellor explained this policy to the US President in their call yesterday.

The German government will now examine what consequences the measure of the US government will have for German citizens with double citizenship and will represent their interests, if necessary, before our American partners.
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A man who attacked soldiers with a machete near the Louvre art gallery in Paris has been identified as Egyptian national Abdullah Reda al-Hamamy.

The 29-year-old was shot and wounded by police after he launched an attack on a soldier who was guarding the entrance to the Carrousel du Louvre shopping centre. The four-man patrol had told him he could not enter with his bags.

Michel Cadot, the head of Paris police, said the man was shouting "Allahu Akbar" and injured the soldier's scalp before being shot five times.

He confirmed that the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident but they were still trying to determine whether he was acting alone or under instruction.

Al-Hamamy is said to be in a life-threatening condition in hospital following the incident at 10am local time (9am GMT).

Mr Cadot said: We are dealing with an attack from an individual who was clearly aggressive and represented a direct threat, and whose comments lead us to believe that he wished to carry out a terrorist incident.

There was also a second individual who was behaving suspiciously, who has also been detained, but for now there does not appear to be a link between that individual and the attack."

In a press conference on Friday evening, Paris prosecutor Francois Molins said the man was an Egyptian national who had entered the country on a one-month tourist visa issued in Dubai on 26 January.

 Soldier shoots 'attacker' outside Louvre museum in Paris

This was later confirmed by the Egyptian interior ministry in Cairo.

One witness, Olivier Majewski, described leaving his scooter in the parking area beneath Le Louvre after he saw around 30 people fleeing the scene shouting that "there had been a terror attack".

He said he then hid for 15 minutes before going upstairs and people were "panicking" around him.

Hundreds of people were evacuated and around 250 people inside were held in "safe areas" by police who moved tourists away from the windows and pulled shutters down.

Following the attack, US President Donald Trump cited it as justification for his controversial ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries entering the US  but neither Egypt or Dubai are on Mr Trump's list of banned countries.

Nor is there any evidence the man had claimed or intended to claim asylum in France.

It comes as the country is on high alert following a succession of terror attacks over the past two years.

Last month, the Louvre reported a two million drop in visitors, resulting in a lost of almost 10m (8.6m), which it said was due to increased anxiety about terrorism.

Although the number of French and American visitors has remained stable 2016 saw 61 per cent fewer Japanese visitors, 53 per cent fewer Russians, 47 per cent fewer Brazilians, and 31 per cent fewer Chinese people.

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

Twelve people were killed at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 and 130 people were killed in a string of coordinated attacks around the city in November that year.

A further 84 people were killed by a driver who rammed his lorry into the Bastille Day crowds in Nice in July 2016, killing 84 people.

The far-right political party, Front National (FN), looks set to make it into the second round of the presidential run-off in April after the party played on fears about Muslim refugees arriving in the country from Syria and Iraq.

FN leader Marine Le Pen has denounced the country's "crazy immigration policies" and said France "must deport illegals back where they came from and control our national borders, if not the camps will reconstruct themselves".

Additional reporting by agencies
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Russia is "weaponising misinformation" to create a "post-truth age" in a sustained campaign of destabilisation against Nato and the West, the defence secretary has warned.

Speaking at St Andrews University, Sir Michael Fallon accused Russia of using cyber attacks to "disrupt critical infrastructure and disable democratic machinery."

Sir Michael referred to warnings of Kremlin interference in the coming elections in Germany, as well as the disruption of elections in Montenegro and the Dutch referendum on an EU-Ukraine treaty.

He warned such actions could not be regarded as "business as usual" and said Russian President Vladimir Putin had chosen to be come a "strategic competitor" to the West.

 White House suggests Trump benefited from Russia hacking

Pointing to a "persistent pattern of behaviour" by Moscow, Sir Michael highlighted a series of cyber attacks which had been linked to Russia.

They included the taking off air of rance's TV5Monde station in April 2015 and the shutdown of the German parliament's network months later.

"Today we see a country that in weaponising misinformation has created what we might now see as the post-truth age," he said.

"Russia is clearly testing Nato and the West. It is seeking to expand its sphere of influence, destabilise countries and weaken the alliance.

"It is undermining national security for many allies and the international rules-based system.

"Therefore it is in our interest and Europe's to keep Nato strong and to deter and dissuade Russia from this course."

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

Sir Michael said the West needs to do more to "call out" the messengers such as the Kremlin-backed RT television station and Sputnik news agency, which he said were responsible for spreading "Soviet-style misinformation".

He also suggested Britain and its allies could carry out their own cyber attacks against Russia, pointing to the UK's almost-doubling of investment in defence and offensive cyber capabilities to 1.9bn.

Additional reporting by PA
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The Yemeni branch of al-Qaeda took over three towns in the south of the country before being forced to withdraw from two of them on Friday, officials have said.

The Thursday attacks on Loder, Shaqra and Ahwa came just days after a US raid on a jihadist base in central Yemen which left one Navy Seal and up to 30 civilians dead.

The province of Abyan where the towns are located was mostly liberated from al-Qaeda forces last summer with the help of Saudi-led coalition air strikes.

However, a security official said that the jihadis were able to take advantage of the fact government troops had deserted their posts in protest over unpaid wages.

Our forces are also angry that they have not been provided with the weapons and other equipment to confront the extremists, who have been stepping up their armed attacks, the official told AFP.

Fighters set up roadblocks and blew up two buildings in the surprise attacks, he continued.

However, air strikes on Loder and Shaqra overnight as well as protest demonstrations from local residents threatening to take up arms managed to dislodge the fighters.

Al-Qaeda has gained a significant foothold in Yemen, flourishing in the chaos of the countrys civil war, which has pitted Shia Houthi rebels against the internationally recognised exiled government.

 The world has forgotten the Yemen war, says senior UN humanitarian official

US drone strikes have continually targeted al-Qaeda bases and supply lines in the country but have not succeeded in dampening the groups activity.

Thursdays attacks follow the first military operation carried out by US President Donald Trump, a raid on an alleged al-Qaeda base in central Yemen which has been criticised for allegedly causing the deaths of up to 30 civilians.

Almost everything went wrong, a US official told NBC News on background.

As well as the unconfirmed reported civilian casualties and the death of 36-year-old Navy Seal Owen Williams, the MV-22 Osprey involved apparently landed hard, injuring those on board, and later had to be destroyed by a remotely dropped bomb.

The situation in Yemen Show all 14 1 /14 The situation in Yemen The situation in Yemen Houthi supporters trample on a US flag during a gathering mobilizing more fighters into several Yemeni battlefronts, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen People carry the coffins of men, who were killed in the recent Saudi-led airstrikes during their funeral, in the Old City of Sanaa, Yemen AP The situation in Yemen Pro-government fighters give food to Yemeni children on the road leading to the southwestern port city of Mokha. Yemeni rebels are putting up fierce resistance in a key Red Sea port city where they are encircled by pro-government force Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni stands in front of a graffiti protesting US military operations in war-affected Yemen, in Sana'a, Yemen. According to reports, US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen US Special Forces troops allegedly disembarked from US helicopters in the Yemeni town of Yakla and attacked several houses belonging to members of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, killing three high-ranking Al-Qaeda members and nine civilians, six women and three children. One American serviceman has been killed and three injured in the attack EPA The situation in Yemen A Yemeni female fighter supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, takes part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen Yemeni female fighters supporting the Shiite Huthi rebels, and carrying weapons used for ceremonial purposes, take part in an anti-Saudi rally in the capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A boy shouts slogans next to pro-Houthi fighters, who have been injured during recent fighting, during a rally held to honour those injured or maimed while fighting in Houthi ranks in Sanaa, Yemen Reuters The situation in Yemen Balls of fire and smoke rise from a Houthi-held military camp following alleged Saudi-led airstrikes, in Sana'a, Yemen EPA The situation in Yemen Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty Images The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy looks on as Yemenis search under the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa Getty The situation in Yemen A Yemeni boy sits amidst the rubble of damaged houses following reported Saudi-led coalition air strikes on the outskirts of the Yemeni capital Sanaa AFP/Getty The situation in Yemen Marine One with US President Donald Trump flies with a decoy and support helicopters to Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Delaware, for the dignified transfer of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer William 'Ryan' Owens who was killed in Yemen Getty Images The situation in Yemen US President Donald Trump aboard the Marine One to greet the remains of a US military commando killed during a raid on the al Qaeda militant group in southern Yemen on Sunday, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, US Reuters

The mission had originally been intended to capture intelligence and computer equipment, which this week the White House defended as a success.

Knowing that we killed an estimated 14 [Al-Qaeda] members and that we gathered an unbelievable amount of intelligence that will prevent the potential deaths or attacks on American soil  is something that I think most service members understand, that thats why they joined the service, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters.

Eight-year-old American citizen Nawar al-Awlaki, daughter of infamous al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who died in Yemen in 2011, was reportedly among those killed in the weekends botched mission.

Since the introduction of Mr Trumps so-called Muslim ban travel restrictions for citizens of certain countries, Jihadist-friendly social media channels have suggested that Anwar al-Awlakis prediction that the West would eventually turn against its Muslim citizens was coming true.

The death of his young daughter could be fuel to the extremist anti-Western narrative, observers say.
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The US government is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran in what is widely being viewed as a punitive measure since Tehran tested a mid-range ballistic missile last week, US officials have said.

Donald Trumps administration said that Iran was on notice after what Tehran eventually said was a non-nuclear ballistic missile test, which took place last Sunday.

The move, which reflects Mr Trumps desire to fulfil his campaign promise about being tough on Iran, is expected to come as early as Friday.

The White House and the State Department have so far declined to comment on the rumoured measures, which US officials leaked to the Associated Press.

The reported decision comes after Mr Trump signed a far-reaching executive order temporarily banning citizens of Iran and six other Muslim countries - even those with green cards or residency visas - from entering the US.

In retaliation, Iran has curtailed all travel visas for Americans for an indefinite amount of time, and the Central Bank announced the country will no longer use the US dollar for official statistics or financial reporting.

The timing of the missile test - which enraged Iranian foe and US ally Israel, although the UN has not yet determined if it broke 2015s nuclear accord - is also thought to be related to Mr Trumps Muslim ban.

 Michael Flynn: We're officially putting Iran on notice

International sanctions which have crippled Irans economy for decades were lifted as part of the historic 2015 nuclear agreement, in which Tehran agreed to curbs on its nuclear weapons programme.

The US maintains a separate sanctions list mainly for terror-related offences, which is unrelated to nuclear issues.

Under President Barack Obama the US imposed sanctions on two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and government agencies, which Mr Trump criticised for being weak.

It is unclear which entities will be penalised under the proposed new sanctions.

Both Democrat and Republican politicians on the Senates Foreign Relations Committee urged that the US should not let Irans missile test - one of several in the last 18 months - go unpunished.

 Iranian mother reunited with 5-year-old son after he was detained at Dulles Airport

Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilising activities, the committee said in a statement this week.

Iran, meanwhile, has dismissed the threats of retaliation.

Ali-Akbar Velayati, the foreign adviser of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, predicted this week that the US will be the final loser.

It is not for the first time that a naive person from the US poses threats to Iran, he told state media.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
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US President Donald Trump has reportedly thrown out the existing plans drawn up under his predecessor Barack Obama on how to oust Isis from their de facto capital of Raqqa in Syria.

A detailed roadmap on how to proceed in the conflict, which is expected to be a gruelling fight lasting several months, was handed over to the new administration when Mr Trump took office last month, The Washington Post reported.

However, the plans were dismissed by Mr Trumps team, which worried the framework was poor staff work with huge information gaps and no plan B.

It was also dissatisfied that the possibility of working with Russia and Turkey, two other major proxy players in Syrias complex war, was not adequately addressed.

The report was too incremental and risk-averse, the new administration allegedly found. The Washington Post noted that Mr Obamas plan, which was worked on for the better part of a year, contained advisories on minimising civilian casualties and troop numbers.

It advocated providing further training and arms for the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which are currently making gains on the city.

The new president said on the campaign trail he would defeat Isis quickly after taking office, in the past referencing a top secret plan.

 Donald Trump open to working with Moscow to fight Isis in Syria

Last week it emerged that Mr Trumps administration had asked the US militarys chiefs of staff to draw up new strategies for defeating the group, as well as the possibility of establishing safe zones for civilians in Syria.

A senior official who served in the Obama administration countered the Trump teams criticism, telling the post that the the former president had been well aware of his plans shortcomings, and that further arming the Kurds was a plan B option after it became clear Turkish forces could not be used to carry out the operation.

Meanwhile, in Raqqa, US-led coalition aircraft destroyed the main water pipeline supplying the city, as well as two bridges, amid heavy fighting on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

The US and its allies, as well as Russia and the Syrian government, have been fighting to remove Isis from their territory in Syria and Iraq since the group blitzed across the region in the summer of 2014.
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The first criminal case in a Western court against members of Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government began with a WhatsApp message.

Amal was alone in her hairdresser shop in a working-class neighbourhood of Madrid when she clicked on the link. The face of her long-lost brother, Abdul, popped up on her smartphone.

Amal and her younger brother, Abdul, were inseparable growing up in an upper-class home in a village in Idlib province in northwestern Syria. Amal left Syria at the age of 19, following her fiance, a medical student, to Spain and later she became a Spanish citizen.

Before the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Amal would fly home to visit Abdul and her family at least once a year. They kept in touch on WhatsApp, and spoke on the phone about once every 10 days - until a January afternoon in 2013 when Abdul, at age 43, disappeared.

Amal was not sure what had happened to her brother - until that moment in 2015 when she stared down at Abduls lifeless, dirt-covered face, half in shadow. There was a piece of white tape on his forehead with illegible markings on it. The picture had been found on the Facebook page of a human rights group and forwarded to Amal by a relative.

Once Amal had recovered from the shock of seeing her dead brother, she sent a message to the Facebook page in which she provided Abduls full name, along with her contact information. She included a photo of Abdul from before his arrest by Syrian forces.

Amal did not realise it at the time, but her response had opened a legal pathway which international war crimes investigators had long been waiting for.

As a Spanish national, Amal could bring a case on her brothers behalf.

In a complaint filed on Wednesday with the Spanish National Court in Madrid, she was identified as the indirect victim of the crimes which were allegedly committed against her brother.

In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Show all 30 1 /30 In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian family arrives at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian woman, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, reacts as she stands with her children in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past resident fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood , after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-regime fighters, gesture as they drive past residents fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood, after regime troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian residents, fleeing violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, arrive in Aleppo's Fardos neighbourhood Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-regime fighter speaks with a child, as residents flee violence in the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood. Syrian rebels withdrew from six more neighbourhoods in their one-time bastion of east Aleppo in the face of advancing government troops AFP/Getty Images In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Smoke rises as seen from a governement-held area of Aleppo, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers targeting rebels-held areas in the eastern neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria. According to media reports, the army is now holding on 99 percent of Aleppois eastern neighborhoods EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian pro-government forces patrol Aleppo's eastern al-Salihin neighbourhood after troops retook the area from rebel fighters Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian soldiers rest following the battle at al-Sheik Saeed neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria EPA In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian pro-government fighter walking past closed shops in the Bab al-Nasr district of Aleppo's Old City. Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The crucial battle for Aleppo entered its 'final phase' after Syrian rebels retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The retreat leaves opposition fighters confined to just a handful of neighbourhoods in southeast Aleppo, the largest of them Sukkari and Mashhad Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilans arrive at a checkpoint, manned by pro-government forces, at the al-Hawoz street roundabout, after leaving Aleppo's eastern neighbourhoods. Syria's government has retaken at least 85 percent of east Aleppo, which fell to rebels in 2012, since beginning its operation Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian civilians flee the Sukkari neighbourhood towards safer rebel-held areas in southeastern Aleppo Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrians celebrate in the government-held Mogambo neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, after rebel fighters retreated into a small pocket of their former bastion in the face of new army advances. The fall of Aleppo would be the worst rebel defeat since Syria's conflict began in 2011, and leave the government in control of the country's five major cities Getty In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee Aliya inside the tent where she lives with her husband and ten children in a camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Syrian refugee women and children outside the entrance to their tents in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA Wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A Syrian refugee woman outside the entrance to the tent where her family live, in the refugee camp in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, close to the Syrian border PA wire In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria A vehicle drives past a mosque at night in Idlib, Syria. Picture taken with a long exposure Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria The night sky is seen through damaged windows in the rebel-controlled town of Binnish in Idlib province, Syria Reuters In Pictures: The crisis unfolding in Syria Damaged buildings stand in the rebel-controlled area of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, Syria Reuters

The 95-page complaint singled out nine Syrian individuals as those responsible for Abduls death. They ranged from senior officers at the intelligence branch, where he was tortured and killed in 2013, to the leaders of the Syrian intelligence and security services who oversaw his detention and thousands of others.

The complaint accuses the nine defendants of state-sponsored terrorism. Stephen Rapp, who led the US State Departments Office of Global Criminal Justice until August 2015, said the grounds were similar to those brought in Cold War-era cases against Latin American leaders.

The complaint was filed by a legal team led by Almudena Bernabeu, a San Francisco-based lawyer who brought a similar case in Madrid in November 2008 that resulted in a Spanish court order for the extradition of El Salvadors former vice defence minister for alleged war crimes.

Many of the details about the criminal complaint have not been made public, including the full names of the victim and his sister, to protect their family members still in Syria. Spanish prosecutors asked Amals legal team not to disclose the names of the nine defendants, in hope that they could be caught unawares outside of Syria and apprehended.

Country code 34

The Spanish case emerged from a grim trove of more than 50,000 postmortem photographs which were taken at Syrian military hospitals between 2011 and mid-2013 and then smuggled out of Syria by a military police photographer later code-named Caesar. From the 50,000 photos, 6,700 individual corpses were identified.

Activists working with Caesar started to post many of the images on a Facebook page in March 2015, in hopes that family members in Syria and around the world would come forward to provide information about their loved ones. The goal was to identify the victims and create a database that could be used to bring war crimes charges against members of the Assad government.

The photos posted on the Facebook page were cropped to show just faces and exclude gruesome details about how the victims were tortured and starved.

Soon after the photos were posted on Facebook, Abduls eldest son spotted his fathers face on the website. He showed the image to his mother, who was not convinced that it was him. Abduls family in Syria sent the picture to a niece in Egypt, who, in turn, sent the link to Amal.

The three-seat hairdresser shop, located in the Chapinero neighbourhood, was empty when Amal saw the image. It was lunchtime, and she had no customers. She said her body started to shake.

The Facebook page was managed by a group called the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees, which had an office in Istanbul and took the lead in analysing the Caesar photos. The FBI had reviewed the trove and concluded that they were authentic.

 Donald Trump open to working with Moscow to fight Isis in Syria

On April 28, Rapp visited the groups Istanbul office and was given a printout listing the names, phone numbers and email addresses of victims families willing to cooperate in any future legal proceedings.

One of the numbers on the list jumped out at Rapp. It started with the country code 34  the one for Spain. Eureka, Rapp said he thought. The printout also listed a hotmail.es email address for Amal.

Rapp knew that Spanish prosecutors had a tradition of going after high-level international actors.

Spanish law would allow the first prosecution targeting members of the Assad regime in the West - but only if the family member in question was a Spanish national.

Exciting possibility in Spain, Rapp wrote on May 5 to Bernabeu and Zakariya Sallan, of the Syrian Association for Missing and Conscience Detainees.

On May 6, Sallan wrote to Rapp and Bernabeu after talking to Amal by phone.

She has important information, Sallan told them. Not only was she a Spanish national, he said, but she is the victims sister and ready to work with [Bernabeu].

This is great news! Rapp said in response.

Bernabeu met with Amal at her hairdresser shop in July.

Amal asked to see a full-body photograph of her brothers corpse.

Bernabeu pulled out her laptop and brought up one of the photos. It showed Abduls emaciated body strewn on a dirt floor. His hands were clenched and covered in dust. He wore brown-colored underwear and nothing else. Burn marks were visible on his neck and body. Markings on and next to his body identified him as a detainee and indicated which intelligence branch was holding him.

Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them Show all 13 1 /13 Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office Syrian children hold Pokemon Go pictures in the hope people will find them and save them RFS Media Office

Amal told Bernabeu that her brother was the one who everybody in her large family admired the most. He dropped out of school at the end of the ninth grade. He went from driving a bus to having his own taxi. Later, he got a van and became a delivery driver.

He drove a 60 mile daily route resupplying small shops that sold soft drinks, snacks and other supplies. Investigators think government forces may have thought he was providing supplies to besieged areas. Amal said he was not politically active. Nobody understands how and why he was picked up, she said in an interview.

Amal provided Bernabeus legal team with pictures of Abdul from before his abduction. One showed him wearing a loosefitting, short-sleeve, V-neck shirt and sitting on his living-room couch. He looked healthy and happy.

The before shot was labelled as exhibit #9 and submitted to the Spanish National Court on Wednesday along with 3,600 pages of evidence.

This story originally appeared on The Washington Post
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

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A week after President Donald Trumps inauguration, George Orwells 1984 is the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about their present moment.

Orwell set his story in Oceania, one of three blocs or mega-states fighting over the globe in 1984. There has been a nuclear exchange, and the blocs seem to have agreed to perpetual conventional war, probably because constant warfare serves their shared interests in domestic control.

Oceania demands total subservience. It is a police state, with helicopters monitoring peoples activities, even watching through their windows. But Orwell emphasises it is the ThinkPol, the Thought Police, who really monitor the Proles, the lowest 85 per cent of the population outside the party elite. The ThinkPol move invisibly among society seeking out, even encouraging, thoughtcrimes so they can make the perpetrators disappear for reprogramming.

The other main way the party elite, symbolised in the moustached figurehead Big Brother, encourage and police correct thought is through the technology of the Telescreen. These metal plaques transmit things like frightening video of enemy armies and of course the wisdom of Big Brother. But the Telescreen can see you, too. During mandatory morning exercise, the Telescreen not only shows a young, wiry trainer leading cardio, it can see if you are keeping up. Telescreens are everywhere: They are in every room of peoples homes. At the office, people use them to do their jobs.

The story revolves around Winston Smith and Julia, who try to resist their governments overwhelming control over facts. Their act of rebellion? Trying to discover the unofficial truth about the past, and recording unauthorised information in a diary. Winston works at the colossal Ministry of Truth, on which is emblazoned IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. His job is to erase politically inconvenient data from the public record. A party member falls out of favour? She never existed. Big Brother made a promise he could not fulfil? It never happened.

A wall painting in Dusseldorf, Germany, on 4 January, 1984 (AP)

Because his job calls on him to research old newspapers and other records for the facts he has to unfact, Winston is especially adept at doublethink. Winston calls it being conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies consciously to induce unconsciousness.

Oceania: The product of Orwells experience

Orwells setting in 1984 is inspired by the way he foresaw the Cold War  a phrase he coined in 1945  playing out. He wrote it just a few years after watching Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin carve up the world at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. The book is remarkably prescient about aspects of the Stalinist Soviet Union, East Germany and Maoist China.

Orwell was a socialist. 1984 in part describes his fear that the democratic socialism in which he believed would be hijacked by authoritarian Stalinism. The novel grew out of his sharp observations of his world and the fact that Stalinists tried to kill him.

In 1936, a fascist-supported military coup threatened the democratically elected socialist majority in Spain. Orwell and other committed socialists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, volunteered to fight against the rightist rebels. Meanwhile, Hitler lent the rightists his air power while Stalin tried to take over the leftist Republican resistance. When Orwell and other volunteers defied these Stalinists, they moved to crush the opposition. Hunted, Orwell and his wife had to flee for their lives from Spain in 1937.

Orwell described the BBC as being half-way between a girls school and a lunatic asylum (BBC)

Back in London during World War II, Orwell saw for himself how a liberal democracy and individuals committed to freedom could find themselves on a path toward Big Brother. He worked for the BBC writing what can only be described as propaganda aimed at an Indian audience. What he wrote was not exactly doublethink, but it was news and commentary with a slant to serve a political purpose. Orwell sought to convince Indians that their sons and resources were serving the greater good in the war. Having written things he believed were untrue, he quit the job after two years, disgusted with himself.

Imperialism itself disgusted him. As a young man in the 1920s, Orwell had served as a colonial police officer in Burma. In a distant foreshadowing of Big Brothers world, Orwell reviled the arbitrary and brutish role he took on in a colonial system. I hated it bitterly, he wrote. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts

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Oceania was a prescient product of a particular biography and particular moment when the Cold War was beginning. Naturally, then, todays world of alternative facts is quite different in ways that Orwell could not have imagined.

Big Brother not required

Orwell described a single-party system in which a tiny core of oligarchs, Oceanias inner party, control all information. This is their chief means of controlling power. In the US today, information is wide open to those who can access the internet, at least 84 per cent of Americans. And while the US arguably might be an oligarchy, power exists somewhere in a scrum including the electorate, constitution, the courts, bureaucracies and, inevitably, money. In other words, unlike in Oceania, both information and power are diffuse in 2017 America.

Those who study the decline in standards of evidence and reasoning in the US electorate chiefly blame politicians concerted efforts from the 1970s to discredit expertise, degrade trust in Congress and its members, even question the legitimacy of government itself. With those leaders, institutions and expertise delegitimised, the strategy has been to replace them with alternative authorities and realities.

In 2004, a senior White House adviser suggested a reporter belonged to the reality-based community, a sort of quaint minority of people who believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. Thats not the way the world really works anymore.

Orwell could not have imagined the internet and its role in distributing alternative facts, nor that people would carry around Telescreens in their pockets in the form of smartphones. There is no Ministry of Truth distributing and policing information, and in a way everyone is Big Brother.

It seems less a situation that people are incapable of seeing through Big Brothers big lies, than they embrace alternative facts. Some researchers have found that when some people begin with a certain worldview  for example, that scientific experts and public officials are untrustworthy  they believe their misperceptions more strongly when given accurate conflicting information.

In other words, arguing with facts can backfire. Having already decided what is more essentially true than the facts reported by experts or journalists, they seek confirmation in alternative facts and distribute them themselves via Facebook, no Big Brother required.

In Orwells Oceania, there is no freedom to speak facts except those that are official. In 2017 America, at least among many of the powerful minority who selected its president, the more official the fact, the more dubious. For Winston, Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. For this powerful minority, freedom is the freedom to say two plus two make five.

John Broich, associate professor, Case Western Reserve University. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)
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The airport increased its passenger numbers by 10 per cent last year, with an average of 50 people arriving or departing every minute, 24 hours a day, throughout the year.

The budget airline Norwegian gets lots of publicity for its transatlantic routes from Gatwick. Yet last year Thomas Cook Airlines from Manchester created more capacity to the US. You can now reach many more destinations from Manchester than you can from Heathrow. And this summer, both Thomas Cook and Virgin Atlantic will start services to San Francisco.

To complete the good news, this week BA put out a press release that began: British Airways is to launch seven new routes from Manchester Airport this summer.

Goodness, I thought: no more will people living outside the capital be able to assert that BA should really be called London Airways. It is almost a decade since the airline axed all its services from Manchester that did not go to the capital, and four years since even the Gatwick route was cut  leaving British Airways travellers from Manchester with exactly one destination: Heathrow.

Would these seven new routes actually be relaunches to Rome and Venice? New York and Los Angeles? Or Dubai, Bangkok and Hong Kong?

Well, two of them are revivals: the links from Manchester to Nice and Malaga. The other four overseas destinations are Alicante, Ibiza and Palma in Spain, and the Greek island of Mykonos. And to complete the magnificent seven: a new (to BA) service, connecting Manchester with London City.

Lets look more closely at that last route. Its not exactly high-frequency. You can fly southbound to the Docklands airport any time you like, so long as its Sunday evening. And going north, if you miss the Thursday tea-time flight youll have to wait a week for the next.

The same applies to almost all the Mediterranean flights: one round trip a week. The exception is Ibiza. The Balearic island is a uniquely enticing destination for airlines, because many passengers seem oblivious to the fact that their plane is departing at silly oclock in the morning. Or maybe theyre just generally oblivious.

So the Manchester-Ibiza schedule sees a Thursday night and Saturday night round trip, with an extra return trip on Sunday afternoon, for clubbers like me who dont believe a Saturday evening really gets going until breakfast time on Sunday.

In between, one single Embraer 190 plane will be working ferociously hard. Barely is it home from Ibiza in the early hours of Friday morning than its sets off for Malaga. Back at lunchtime, the next rotation is to Mykonos. The Saturday schedule is Alicante and back, Nice and back, Ibiza and back. And theres even time on Sunday morning to fly to the other big Balearic destination, Palma, before that final hurrah to Ibiza and back.

Lord help us if the plane goes tech on Thursday afternoon: thats 18 sectors that need covering. But there should be plenty of back-up. This entire, seven-new-route network is basically a solution to the problem that BAs London City airport operation has with weekends. Demand is strongest from Monday morning to Thursday night, and the Docklands airport is required by law to close for 24 hours from Saturday lunchtime.

So rather than leave the fleet parked on the Tarmac all weekend, BA likes to send the planes hither and thither on charters, with jets also popping across to Stansted for a weekend escape to Europe.

The new operation helps to keep some very expensive metal in the air, and provides a bit of extra capacity for travellers in the northern half of Britain. But I think it stops some way short of BA kissing and making up with Manchester.
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President Trump is adding further venom to the raging sectarian hatreds tearing apart Iraq and Syria by his latest ill-judged tweets. These have far greater explosive potential than his better known clashes with countries like Australia and Mexico, because in the Middle East he is dealing with matters of war and peace. In this complex region, the US will have to pay a high price for switching to a vaguely belligerent policy which pays so little regard to the real situation on the ground.

In one tweet this week, Trump says that Iran is rapidly taking over more and more of Iraq even after the US has squandered three trillion dollars there. Obvious long ago! In fact, it is not obvious at all because it is not true. Iran was in a stronger position in Iraq before June 2014 when the Isis offensive captured Mosul, defeated the Iraqi army and provoked the fall of the government of Nouri al-Maliki who was close to Iran.

The victories of Isis at that time led to a return of US influence in Iraq as President Obama created a US-led air coalition which has launched thousands of air strikes against Isis. He sent at least 5,000 US military personnel backed by thousands of American contractors who handle training and logistics for the current Iraqi army assault on Mosul. The attack is very much a joint US-Iraqi joint operation and has turned into the hardest fought battle in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

But Trump is not the only person saying that Iraq is increasingly controlled by Iran. Isis continually maintains that the majority Iraqi Shia community, which makes up about two thirds of the 33 million Iraqi population, is not really Iraqi but Iranian. Isis has always demonised the Iraqi Shia as religious heretics and Safavids, called after the Iranian dynasty, and said they are not real Muslims and deserve to die. Saudi Arabia, with whose rulers Trump recently had a long conversation, holds somewhat similar views about equating Shia Islam with Iran and the need to combat both.

Trumps claim about growing Iranian control of Iraq might be dismissed as nonsense without long term consequences. But there are other arrows pointing in the same direction: Iraqis, Iranians and others in the region are pointing to the bizarre make-up of the list of seven states whose citizens have been temporarily banned from entering the US. This is supposedly directed against al-Qaeda and Isis, drawing on lessons learned after 9/11. But none of the states from which the hijackers came  Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon  are subject to the ban as are Iraq and Iran. The list looks like its intent is basically anti-Shia, says one observer in Baghdad and the governments of Saudi Arabia and Turkey seem to think the same thing, since they have either supported or failed to condemn the US action, though it is more or less openly directed against Muslims.

The Trump administration seems to think in tweets and slogans, so it is probably wrong to speak of a coherent change in policy. But in its first weeks in office, it has been far more vocal about confronting a supposed Iranian threat than it has about eliminating Isis. This came across clearly on Wednesday when the national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, once head of the Defence Intelligence Agency until sacked by Obama, accused Iran of conducing a provocative nuclear missile test in breach of a UN Security Council resolution and helping Houthi rebels in Yemen, saying as of today we are putting Iran on notice. The phrase about Iran was repeated in a tweet by Trump, indicating a greater concern in the White House about Iran than Isis and little interest in the titanic battle being waged for control of Mosul. In some secret location in that city, the self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, may be pondering the same question that is absorbing other world leaders: how much of what Trump says is just bombast and how far will it turn into reality on the ground? It is a little early to say, but the signs are not encouraging.

 Amber Rudd: Donald Trump's travel ban a 'propaganda opportunity' for terrorists

In any case, bombast alone is capable of reshaping the political landscape. Paradoxically, White House actions in the Middle East are creating the very conditions for Iran to displace US influence in Iraq in a way that Trump wrongly imagines has already happened. Responding to the travel ban, the Iraqi parliament declared that US citizens proposing to enter Iraq over the next 90 days should be subjected to the same restrictions. The Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi refused to go along with this, saying it was more important to keep cooperation with the US while the battle for Mosul is still going on.

But the matter is not likely to rest there, because the US relationship with Iran in Iraq has always been a curious mixture of open rivalry and rather more covert cooperation, since they share a common enemy in Isis and, previously, in al-Qaida in Iraq. American power in Iraq has grown since 2014 because it is Iraqs main military ally. Without US and coalition air strikes, the Iraqi army could not defeat Isis or even hold its own against it. But the US political position in Iraq is weaker than its military one and, thanks to the US travel ban and Trumps escalating attacks on Iran, its going to get weaker still. The ban is a golden opportunity for Iran to push back against the US, said a former senior Iraqi official. Iraqis are very worried, said Kamran Karadaghi, an Iraqi commentator and former chief of staff to the Iraqi presidency. If anything bad happens to Iran because of Trump, it will be bad for Iraqis.

In pursuit of an anti-Iranian line, the Trump administration is making the same mistake as that made by Western governments after the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world. They tended to think in terms of nationalism, nationalities and the nation state, but in the Middle East these count for less as communal bonds than religious identity. Thus, what was essentially a Sunni Arab uprising in Syria six years ago changed the balance of power between Sunni and Shia in Iraq and restarted the civil war there. The threat to President Bashar al-Assad and his Alawite dominated government was bound to lead to the Shia in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon rallying to his support to prevent his overthrow, because they felt that was an existential threat to themselves.

The Trump administration has not made any disastrous missteps in the Middle East yet, but, going by its actions over the last week, it may soon do so. There is the same mixture of wishful thinking, misinformation and arrogance in Washington as led to the US disaster in Lebanon in 1982-83 and in Iraq after 2003. Trumps tub-thumping in quarrels with Australia and Mexico may not have very dire effects in the long term because no blood is being spilt. But in the Middle East, a zone of wars, Trumps angry amateurism is more likely to produce a thoroughgoing disaster.
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Donald Trump is finding it tough to talk on the telephone when he cant get his own way. Twitter is a preferable medium for the President  he can simply post an inflammatory statement and then move on, ignoring the inevitable tsunami of comment. Free speech in Trump world is one way, conducted in very short simple sentences  basically a series of placards  telling us ordinary folk hes getting important stuff done.

Im all in favour of plain speaking  Ive made a decent television career out of exactly that, but I am no politician, or someone who can decide who can travel to my country and expect a welcome or a wall topped with razor wire. Ive just spent seven weeks in Australia, a country I know well, having worked there and visited regularly over the past 25 years. You couldnt accuse Aussies of ever mincing their words, but Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull met his match when he took a phone call from tough-talking Trump.

The President, far from being thrilled that a key partner in the so-called war against radical Islam and a key strategic ally for the US in the South Pacific was offering congratulations, took umbrage when told that he would have to honour an agreement brokered by past President Obama to offer a home to just 1,250 refugees currently languishing in appalling conditions on remote Pacific Islands. These refugees (from South East Asia, Iran and Iraq) would have been vetted before being allowed to enter the US, but that was one Muslim too many for Trump, who abruptly terminated the call  which was meant to last an hour  after just 25 minutes.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

To compound matters, Trump then bragged about his lack of courtesy on Twitter, saying can you believe it? I will study this dumb deal. He even called it the worst call of his day and promised to flex his muscle. Being tough in diplomatic terms does not always get the result you want.

Now, bully-boy Trump has had to send two of his key henchmen to butter up the Australian ambassador to Washington, who has been inundated with expressions of support from powerful US senators, including John McCain and Paul Ryan. Ironically, Australia is no push-over for refugees seeking asylum, or even those seeking to emigrate who do not possess the requisite skills.

Theresa May is a fan of the Aussie points system and is keen to adopt a similar scheme post-Brexit. Australia also has its own problems with radical Islamists who frequent mosques in the poorer inner city areas and who have committed some appalling acts of brutality on innocent citizens. To treat Australia as an enemy rather that a country which has a lot of the same problems as you do seems rather short-sighted to say the least.

 Donald Trump has a barney with Arnie

As for Trumps travel ban, that is being watered down every single day  it was the ultimate in gesture politics. Every highly developed country in the world needs workers with specialised skills. From surgeons to software engineers and programmers. In the UK for example, we need agricultural workers and hotel and hospitality staff, nurses and doctors. This week, the key players in the US technology industry  Apple, Alphabet, Facebook and Uber  wrote to President Trump saying his new curbs on immigration will have a disastrous effect, and they need to recruit the best people from all over the world, no matter what their faith or their birthplace. Other business leaders have echoed these sentiments.

In Britain, the Brexit vote revealed that a substantial number of voters fear that immigration is bad for Britain, when key industries (and the NHS) could not function without foreign workers. Ironically, patriotic Brits rely on others to welcome us, should we decide to leave the UK and make our homes elsewhere. We lead the developed world in one area  emigration.

Figures issued by the UN last week show that more British citizens choose to live abroad than any other Western country. Almost five million people had migrated overseas by the end of 2015  the most popular destinations being the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Bangladesh. Thats far more Brits living overseas than Poles living here, by the way, although their figure of 4.4 million emigrants is about 11 per cent of the population. See immigration in this context, and Trumps travel ban appears a jackbooted attempt to pull up the drawbridge, the knee jerk politics of retreat in an age of global movement.
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America has always been a land divided. Its a land in which bristly, conflicting ideologies are constantly at odds with one another  threatening to tear Americas diverse patchwork quilt apart at its very seams. Compromise is often excruciatingly difficult to achieve, and unity has become an increasingly arbitrary concept that few Americans are truly capable of understanding.

Yet against all odds, we press on. Thanks to our set of core, unbending principles and our collective faith in democracy, personal freedoms and the American dream, this country always seems to pull through. After all, theres a hell of a lot more holding us together than there is trying to tear us apart, right?

It certainly felt that way until about 12 days ago. But after a mere fortnight in power, Donald Trump has knowingly and expertly driven a deep wedge directly through Americas beating heart. Without the slightest hint of subtlety or regret, that cherished sense of unity we all recognise has rapidly begun to dissipate  and as a gaggle of increasingly fanatical voices emerge to fill previously non-existent voids, it feels like this country may have finally reached its tipping point.

All across America, hastily planted seeds of discord have already started to bloom.

The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Show all 9 1 /9 The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the media White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer takes questions during the daily press briefing Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Union leaders applaud US President Donald Trump for signing an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington DC. Mr Trump issued a presidential memorandum in January announcing that the US would withdraw from the trade deal Getty The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Mexico wall A US Border Patrol vehicle sits waiting for illegal immigrants at a fence opening near the US-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas. The number of incoming immigrants has surged ahead of the upcoming Presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the US-Mexico border. A signature campaign promise, Mr Trump outlined his intention to build a border wall on the US-Mexico border days after taking office Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and abortion US President Donald Trump signs an executive order as Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks on in the Oval Office of the White House. Mr Trump reinstated a ban on American financial aide being granted to non-governmental organizations that provide abortion counseling, provide abortion referrals, or advocate for abortion access outside of the United States Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the Dakota Access pipeline Opponents of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines hold a rally as they protest US President Donald Trump's executive orders advancing their construction, at Columbus Circle in New York. US President Donald Trump signed executive orders reviving the construction of two controversial oil pipelines, but said the projects would be subject to renegotiation Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and 'Obamacare' Nancy Pelosi who is the minority leader of the House of Representatives speaks beside House Democrats at an event to protect the Affordable Care Act in Los Angeles, California. US President Donald Trump's effort to make good on his campaign promise to repeal and replace the healthcare law failed when Republicans failed to get enough votes. Mr Trump has promised to revisit the matter Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Donald Trump and 'sanctuary cities' US President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January threatening to pull funding for so-called "sanctuary cities" if they do not comply with federal immigration law AP The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and the travel ban US President Donald Trump has attempted twice to restrict travel into the United States from several predominantly Muslim countries. The first attempt, in February, was met with swift opposition from protesters who flocked to airports around the country. That travel ban was later blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The second ban was blocked by a federal judge a day before it was scheduled to be implemented in mid-March SANDY HUFFAKER/AFP/Getty Images The controversial orders Donald Trump has already issued Trump and climate change US President Donald Trump sought to dismantle several of his predecessor's actions on climate change in March. His order instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to reevaluate the Clean Power Plan, which would cap power plant emissions Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Weve seen plenty of muted civil disobedience since Trump was sworn in on inauguration day. Hundreds of protesters have been arrested, police officers have been pelted with rocks and tear gas has been fired with gusto. But last night, all that tension boiled over into staggering violence as demonstrators hurled smoke bombs, raised fires and smashed windows at the University of California, Berkeley.

What began as a peaceful demonstration in response to the scheduled campus appearance of conservative news editor and undeniable bigot Milo Yiannopoulos rapidly devolved into violent pandemonium. For those who dont know, Yiannopoulos is one of the fastest-rising stars at the fiercely right wing Breitbart News outlet, and was permanently banned from Twitter last year for inciting racism, sexism and unapologetic hate speech.

Around 1,500 protesters took to the streets Wednesday night to speak out against Yiannopoulos  but the frustration and anger lurking subtly in the shadows didnt take long to rear their ugly heads. Those attempting to block city streets were run over by a speeding car. A young girl was hit in the head by a pole, people were pepper sprayed and videos have since flooded the web of strangers and demonstrators striking one another in earnest. At least six people were hurt, and it was described as impossible to maintain order given the level of threat, disruption, and violence.

At face value, this might seem like just your typical, run-of-the-mill demonstration that slipped into a brief, but inconsequential, spell of riotous anarchy. The chaos ultimately pushed Berkeley into cancelling Yiannopoulos, and Donald Trumps predictably catty response was to threaten to withdraw federal funds from the university. But the truth is, last nights unsettling back-and-forth is only the latest in an ever-increasing wave of serious unrest.

 Trump tells National Prayer Breakfast to 'pray for Arnold's ratings'

Those liberal, tree-hugging hippies, conservative diehards and right-wing talk show hosts we love to joke about dont seem quite as funny now. The threat of impending violence from what we all like to pretend is a peaceful and sensible progressive left has become all too real  and can you honestly feign surprise?

Donald Trump has only been in power a few days, and already hes done his best to separate friends and family with a hateful policy agenda. Hes spat on half Americas allies, and attempted to deny American citizens some of their most basic rights.

And for their part, a previously silent and chillingly right wing collective of Trump supporters have poured from the woodwork to express their unabashed love for the sour smell of intolerance now emerging from Washington. That basket of deplorables Hillary Clinton warned us about has pounced upon Donald Trumps shock election victory as some sort of twisted validation of their gruesome views, and are now celebrating accordingly.

Over here on the ground, it feels like things are going to get a hell of a lot worse before they get any better. Theres a tension in the air you could cut with a knife, and its creating a sense of quiet confusion and mass anxiety that one could only imagine ordinary Germans might have felt as they watched their communities slowly fall under the iron fist of fascism in the 1930s.

No matter where you stand on the political spectrum, this mood is bad for everybody. Those stark divisions of gender, race, religion and creed that make America so unique are finally tumbling into open acts of political violence. This is Donald Trumps America  and unless our feckless new leader offers up some faint glimmer of hope soon, it's going to be a very dark place indeed.
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As the new Gambian President Adama Barrow settles in, regional organisations are being lauded for playing a key role in ensuring a democratic and peaceful transition.

The Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and the African Union (AU), in coalition with external actors such as the European Union (EU) have indeed been essential in making sure that his predecessor Yahya Jammeh stepped down after losing the elections. But caution is warranted in assuming this heralds regional organisations fostering a continental trend of ending dictatorships.

Ecowas and the AU were keen to condemn Jammehs refusal to relinquish power after losing the presidential elections in December 2016. They even openly threatened military action in the country to remove him. The reasons for such assertiveness, which is unusual given the many undemocratic moves in Africa, are manifold. Regional organisations on the continent are still predominantly governed by summits of heads of state. Jammeh was not able to count on key allies that would shield him from the military actions of his countrys neighbours.

In addition, the small and impoverished countrys army of less than 1 000 soldiers would not have been able to resist a concerted regional intervention. Finally, regional organisations have a strong preference for stability. Governments in power are often perceived as guaranteeing such stability whereas contenders risk producing upheaval.

Ex-President Yahya Jammeh waves to a crowd of supporters before leaving the country on 21 January, 2017 (Getty)

But in this particular case Jammeh was considered a source of fragility for the entire region. In other words, The Gambia provided favourable conditions for Ecowas and the AU to flex their muscles. Cautious optimism should be the order of the day before assuming this resolve will be repeated elsewhere when needed.

What sets the African Union apart

Unlike some other regional organisations, such as the EU or the Common Market of the Southern Cone of South America (Mercosur), democracy is not a precondition for membership in the AU. The AUs membership comprises the whole gamut of regime types. These include democracies, absolute monarchies, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships.

Numerous heads of states on the continent have been in power for 20 or more years. Its not surprising that no country needs to fear being suspended from the continental organisation because of its domestic political system.

African Heads of State pose for a group photo ahead of the start of the 28th African Union summit in Addis Ababa on 30 January, 2017 (AFP)

Nevertheless, the AU has tried to foster democratic standards and frowns on unconstitutional changes of government. These are broadly understood as the forceful replacement of a democratically elected government. But this constellation requires free and fair elections in the first place. This fixation on constitutional change exempts countries where political power is governed by non-democratic constitutions or political practices.

The AU seems to be increasingly willing to interpret its mandate in broader terms when the conditions are favourable. But in many countries with massive democratic deficits the AU can be expected to continue a policy of waving through elections that are not free or fair. Governments that oppress democratic movements include the AUs host country Ethiopia or Jammehs new home Equatorial Guinea.

The role of Europe

The EU and its member states have also played a supportive role in increasing the pressure on Jammeh and slimming down his chances of staying in power. Whether we can see this pattern reproducing elsewhere remains questionable. This is because Europes current dominant interest in Africa doesnt always favour regime change.

With more European governments succumbing to populist demands, cooperation with Africa is increasingly framed around reducing the number of refugees crossing the Mediterranean. The Gambia is home to less than two million people. Yet, it accounts for around 5% of African refugees getting on a boat to Europe. Many of these people were fleeing Jammehs despotic rule. The post-election turmoil further fuelled this exodus.

The MV Aquarius search and rescue vessel operated by MSF and SOS Mediterranee picked up 183 male and 10 female migrants, thought to have originated from African countries including Nigeria, Gambia and Senegal (AP)

Barrows return and a successful transition to democracy is a favourable outcome for Europe.

Africa Rising - in pictures Show all 12 1 /12 Africa Rising - in pictures Africa Rising - in pictures Men using the natural Bogolan dyeing technique, which is an ancient craft tradition in the Niger River, particularly Mali. By Le Ndomo / Boubacar Doumbia. Photography by Adriaan Louw / Design Network Africa Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures An art piece by South African-born artists Athi-Patra Ruga. Photography by Adam McConnachie, Courtesy of Athi-Patra Ruga and WHATIFTHEWORLD Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures An image from C-Stunners by Nairobi-based artist Cyrus Kabiru. The phrames were made using scraps of disused technology. Photography by SMAC Gallery, South Africa Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Photography by Flurina Rothenberger published in the magazine 'I love to dress like I am coming from somewhere and I have a place to go'. Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures From the photographic series Proud Women of Africa: Rainbow Girls, which captures the lesbians of South African townships of Gugulethu and Khayelitsha who have been disowned by their families. Photography by : Magic Group Media, Amsterdam, NL Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Babylonstoren, where guests partake in curated dining experiences. Most of the food is planted and cultivated on the farm. Photography by Babylonstoren Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Work by The Nest Collective which spans film, music, fashion and visual arts. Photography by Phyllis Galembo Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Photography by Phyllis Galembo, who documented the clothing of people across Nigeria, Benin, and Burkina Faso. Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Architecture by Kunle Adeyemi / NLE Photography by Reze Bonna. In collaboration with Makoko Waterfront Community, Blok Kats van Veen architecten, Dykstra Naval Architects, Thieu Besselink, Roel Bosch architecten, Urhahn + Borra, Pieters Bouwtechniek, Ikeyi & Arifayan, Matrix Design & Works Nig Ltd., Solarmate Engineering Nig Ltd. Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures A collaboration between Amandine David and Marie Douel, inspired by Burkina Faso. Photography by Emile Barret / Hors Pistes Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Photography by Hector Mediavilla, whose photo series the SAPE Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People captures the dandies of Congo. Gestalten 2016 Africa Rising - in pictures Fantasma, a 'superband' formed in 2014 by producer and rapper Spoek Mathambo who recruited members from acros South Africa. Photography by Fantasma Gestalten 2016

But the situation may be different in African countries where dictators are not perceived as a reason for emigration to Europe but rather seem effective in oppressing the movement of people. Here, the EU and its member states might be less likely to play an assertive role in supporting democratic overthrows.

The main driver of political change: the people

Intergovernmental organisations, be they African or external, cannot be expected to always be the saviours of democracy. The good news is that it might be enough if they play second fiddle. There has been a lot of attention on the role of Ecowas and the AU in supporting the transition in The Gambia. We easily forget who remains the main driver for political change. Its the Gambians who overcame their fears and reclaimed their dignity by ousting a dictator. If Barrow doesnt live up to expectations of democracy, he too is likely to face popular resistance.

Supporters of President-elect Adama Barrow celebrate his victory in Banjul (Reuters)

In many other countries the established networks of patronage and the oppression of opposition voices are still firmly in place. Six years after the Arab Spring a political coming-of-age of the sub-Saharan African youth is not yet within grasp but events such as those in The Gambia can bring the continent closer to democracy, one transition at a time. In some cases, regional organisations might be allies from the start and in other cases they will have to be won over.

This article was originally published on The Conversation (www.conversation.com) Frank Mattheis is a Senior Researcher in Global Studies at the University of Pretoria
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They werent impressed by her offer to act as the bridge. Theresa May told the other European Union leaders at the summit in Malta that she had just seen the President at the White House and she had a message from him for them. He was totally supportive of Nato, but it would just clinch the deal if they could spend a bit more money on defence.

Yes, we saw that on TV, said Francois Hollande, under his breath. Who knows what President Trump wants on Nato? he said, out loud.

I think that there is no necessity of bridges, said Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian President. Today we are communicating with the US mainly on Twitter.

Tony Blair thought he could act as the bridge. We know how that worked out. He threw away the advantage of speaking French and of being, unlike his successors, genuinely keen on EU membership. He even wanted Britain to adopt the euro, and admired the EU so much he wanted to be its first president. But the Iraq war divided the Union between old and new, with Britain on the side of the new members who joined in 2004.

How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Show all 8 1 /8 How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Weetabix Chief executive of Weetabix Giles Turrell has warned that the price of one of the nations favourite breakfast are likely to go up this year by low-single digits in percentage terms. Reuters How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Nescafe The cost of a 100g jar of Nescafe Original at Sainsburys has gone up 40p from 2.75 to 3.15  a 14 per cent risesince the Brexit vote. PA How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Freddo When contacted by The Independent this month, a Mondelez spokesperson declined to discuss specific brands but confirmed that there would be "selective" price increases across its range despite the American multi-national confectionery giant reporting profits of $548m (450m) in its last three-month financial period. Mondelez, which bought Cadbury in 2010, said rising commodity costs combined with the slump in the value of the pound had made its products more expensive to make. Cadbury How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Mr Kipling cakes Premier Foods, the maker of Mr Kipling and Bisto gravy, said that it was considering price rises on a case-by-case basis Reuters How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Walkers Crisps Walkers, owned by US giant PepsiCo, said "the weakened value of the pound" is affecting the import cost of some of its materials. A Walkers spokesman told the Press Association that a 32g standard bag was set to increase from 50p to 55p, and the larger grab bag from 75p to 80p. Getty How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Marmite Tesco removed Marmite and other Unilever household brand from its website last October, after the manufacturer tried to raise its prices by about 10 per cent owing to sterlings slump. Tesco and Unilever resolved their argument, but the price of Marmite has increased in UK supermarkets with the grocer reporting a 250g jar of Marmite will now cost Morrisons customers 2.64 - an increase of 12.5 per cent. Rex How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Toblerone Toblerone came under fire in November after it increased the space between the distinctive triangles of its bars. Mondelez International, the company which makes the product, said the change was made due to price rises in recent months. Pixabay How Brexit affected Britain's favourite foods from Weetabix to Marmite Maltesers Maltesers, billed as the lighter way to enjoy chocolate, have also shrunk in size. Mars, which owns the brand, has reduced its pouch weight by 15 per cent. Mars said rising costs mean it had to make the unenviable decision between increasing its prices or reducing the weight of its Malteser packs. iStockphoto

Gordon Brown didnt pretend. He turned up late at the Lisbon Treaty signing in 2007, made his impatience with Euro summits clear and devoted his efforts to the global G20 effort to deal with the financial crisis. In that effort, the European Central Banks struggle to prop up the euro was an important, but non-British, subplot.

Then came David Cameron, who thought of himself as a Eurosceptic, but didnt mean that kind of Eurosceptic  he just meant he had his doubts about some of the ways the EU did things. He thought he got on well with Barack Obama. He also thought he had a very good relationship with Angela Merkel, so he thought he could negotiate an emergency brake on immigration. That would win the referendum he had been forced to concede to people in his own party who really were Eurosceptics.

No one can remember what happened to him, but it probably didnt end well.

 Question Time audience member changed Brexit vote 'because of bananas'

Now Theresa May thinks she can be a bridge. The simultaneous translation in the summit headphones might have been: I dont get on with Donald Trump as well as Nigel Farage does, but youd rather I was your go-between than him.

It wasnt an offer they couldnt refuse. It was an offer they couldnt understand. Why would they need the British Prime Minister, who is already excluded from the meetings in which they really decide things, to act as a communication channel with a US President who is fantastically unpopular with their voters? Just as they couldnt understand Mays speech to Congressional Republicans in Pennsylvania. It was a generous speech about the US, honouring its history, its values and its global role and yet she still hasnt made any equivalent gesture to the peoples of Europe.

That is not the complaint of some lefty Remoaner, but of Tim Montgomerie, the Conservative commentator. Montgomerie was one of Mays early cheerleaders. I cannot remember who coined the term Mayniacs, but it referred to people such as him back in the olden days when George Osborne was the leading contender to succeed Cameron.

But today he has written a furious blast demanding to know why May has been so tactically inept as to rush to see Trump and further alienate fellow European leaders. After all, our negotiations with Europe are much more important to us, at least in the shortish term, than likely trade negotiations with Washington.

It is a good question. I can understand the pragmatic argument for holding Trumps hand. What is harder to grasp is why she hasnt tried harder to hold out the hand of friendship  not so much to Europes leaders, who are understandably bruised by the rejection of their Euro-idealism  but to the peoples of the EU. Our national interest outside the EU depends on their friendship.
Ireland and the UK are described as "inescapably intertwined" in the British government's newly published Brexit plan.

The White Paper on Brexit says the "unique relationship" shared by the two countries warrants special recognition in the forthcoming negotiations between the UK and the Europe Union.

A detailed section arguing for the retention of "as seamless and frictionless a border" as possible will give a boost to the Irish Government, which is coming under increasing pressure to reveal the detail of its own Brexit strategy.

The British document states the Common Travel Area should be retained on the basis that it is linked back to the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.

Read more: Dublin is 'eating into Ireland' - and Government is 'not geared' to combat growth right now

It also notes that Irish citizens have had a special place in Britain long before both countries joined the EU in 1973.

"Since well before the establishment of the EU, Irish citizens have had a special status within the UK, rooted in the Ireland Act 1949 and reflected in the British Nationality Acts.

"This status provides Irish citizens in the UK with additional rights beyond those associated with common membership of the EU," the White Paper said.

According to the 77-page document there are "hundreds of thousands of Irish nationals residing in the UK and of UK nationals residing in Ireland".

"There are also close ties and family connections, particularly across the Border between Northern Ireland and Ireland."

Citing the historic visit of Queen Elizabeth to Ireland in 2011 and President Michael D Higgins's reciprocal visit to the UK in 2014, the paper added: "The relationship between the two countries has never been better or more settled than today, thanks to the strong political commitment from both governments to deepen and broaden our modern partnership."

On the potential for customs posts between Northern Ireland and the Republic, the White Paper stated that cross-border movement "is an important part of this economic integration".

"Over 14,000 people regularly commute across the Border between Northern Ireland and Ireland for work or study," it said.

The paper says that both the British and Irish governments have already agreed on a desire to protect the "reciprocal treatment of each other's nationals once the UK has left the EU".

"In particular, in recognition of their importance in the Belfast Agreement, the people of Northern Ireland will continue to be able to identify themselves as British or Irish, or both, and to hold citizenship accordingly," the White Paper said.

Asked about the effectiveness of the Irish response yesterday, Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald said the Government is "under absolutely no illusion about the nature and scale of the Brexit challenge and it has a clear and comprehensive plan".

Fianna Fail's Marc MacSharry told the Dail the Government was offering "constant platitudes" but needed to publish a plan about how bilateral negotiations with Britain and the EU will go.

Read more: 'Hard Brexit' border controls 'will wreck' the North's fragile peace - Dail hears

"Brexit has the potential to wreck the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement and to impact seriously on Border communities which are already struggling in the context of damaged trade," he said.

Ms Fitzgerald responded: "To continue to talk about a lack of preparation is not the approach that the main Opposition party should take, from a reputational point of view as far as Ireland is concerned.

"It is very clear that the Government has done deep analysis across all areas of the Brexit network."

She again rejected calls for a 'Brexit minister', saying the Taoiseach was in charge.
Last year was a year of two halves for Irish exports, according to Bord Bia's CEO Tara McCarthy, but the real story is about the euro exchange rate and the volatility in exchange rates.

Speaking at the Irish Farmers Journal/AIB Navigating Global Trade conference last week, McCarthy said that Donald Trump and Theresa May are going to have a big impact on everything we do.

Exports to the UK were down 8pc in 2016 - driven by sterling, she said, although a lot of the decline was before the Brexit vote.

Growth for Irish agri-food exports was primarily in international markets, which saw exports up 13pc in 2016. This, she said, was mainly driven by meat, dairy and prepared foods and Ireland saw a six-fold increase in exports to China in 2016.

The EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan told the conference that trade deals cannot be negotiated until the UK's exit is negotiated

"Trade details cannot be negotiated until the exit is negotiation and if we don't reach an agreement we fall back onto the WTO agreement," he said.

He said that the growth of our agri-food exports is contributing enormously to rural communities across Ireland, but while 43pc of total Irish ag production goes to the UK, it will have to look elsewhere for new markets.

"I will help ensure we get the best possible access around the world but we cannot have all our eggs in the one basket."

He also said that he hoped there would be "transitional arrangements", and that there would be a sensible arrangement on trade between the EU and the UK as both sides are very dependant on it.

Commissioner Hogan said he stood ready to protect European farmers, and that Irish farmers are in Europe.

"I am anxious to see how we can protect all of our European farmers in the context of Brexit," he said.

The General Secretary of the Department of Agriculture Aidan O'Driscoll told the conference that Ireland can only prosper by trading successfully with the rest of the world.

"No one owes us a living, we have to earn it on EU and world markets and to do that we have to be competitive. We export high quality food and drink to 180 countries worldwide. They buy that product because it's competitive on price and quality and food safety standards and in its sustainable production systems. All of those aspects are part of our competitiveness."
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Feb. 3

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistans Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov met with Qatars Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador Khalifa Bin Ahmad bin Muhammad Al-Suwaidi.

During the meeting, held in Ashgabat, the sides touched upon the issues related to preparation of an official visit of Turkmen president to Qatar, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message.

The sides noted that the open and friendly dialogue between the two countries is the main factor in development of bilateral relations and emphasized the importance of the official visit of Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani to Turkmenistan in March 2016.

Turkmenistan and Qatar are discussing the expansion of partnership in such directions as the fuel and energy industry, financial and banking sphere, trade and transportation.

Diplomatic relations between Qatar and Turkmenistan were established in 1996.

In April 2016, Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov invited the Qatari businessmen to participate in the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipelines construction. According to Berdimuhamedov, the new energy route is meant to ensure the long-term supply of natural gas to big states of Southeastern Asia, helping to solve the regions economic problems.

A groundbreaking ceremony for TAPIs Turkmen section was held in mid-December 2015. The annual capacity of the gas pipeline will reach 33 billion cubic meters.
The Government have been under pressure from farm organisations to provide a new 200/cow suckler payment which they is essential for the survival of the beef sector.

However, in the Dail this week the Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed poured cold water on the idea stating that the annual cost of such a measure would exceed 200m.

He said the introduction of a specific coupled payment for suckler cows would involve a redistribution of funds allocated to farmers.

This he said would necessitate a linear cut across payment to all basic payment scheme beneficiaries.

Even if a revised scheme were approved, any increase in the level of payment would inevitably result in additional actions being required to be carried out by farmers, he said

Creed said the beef data and genomics programme is the current main support to the suckler sector and provides farmers with some 300 million of funding over the next six years.

The provision of support for the suckler sector is critically important.

The range of supports as currently configured represents a balance between direct income support for the sector and rural development measures designed to improve its competitiveness and sustainability.

It is entirely appropriate to maintain this balance of developmental and income supports into the future, he said.

However, according to Fianna Fails Agriculture Spokesperson Charlie McConalogue there is scope for funding the payment through Irelands Rural Development Programme which he says the Government are underutilising.

It is time the Minister stopped bluffing farmers about the Government's approach to the rural development programme.

I have stated on several occasions that the Department is significantly underspending the allocation for the rural development programme.

As matters stand, the Department is on course to record an underspend of 400 million in GLAS by the end of 2020.

That figure is based on information provided by the Minister in a written answer. If he does the maths, he will see it is correct, McConalogue said.

Defending his Departments performance Minister Creed said as with all such programmes, there are inevitably issues of timing around the scheduling of payments.

Savings in one year do not necessarily imply savings over the lifetime of the programme, he stressed.
The tradition of Herefords grazing the lands at Clonleam in Co Westmeath goes back to long before Willie Branagan was old enough to walk the fields.

"My father, Harry, had a few Herefords here back in the 1930s, but I never knew anything much about them or what became of them - and I don't think he made a lot of money out of them at that time," says Willie.

The present Clonleam Hereford herd was established more than 60 years ago, making it one of the oldest in the country; it has also become one of the most successful, with regular demand for all the breeding stock produced.

"In 1956, my mother, Aileen, got a present of a Hereford heifer calf from her brother, Paddy Barry in Dunboyne and the present herd mainly descends from that heifer. There is still some of that breeding in the herd," says Willie.

The Clonleam pedigree herd comprises 40 cows on the family farm near Delvin. In addition to the foundation stock, the herd has been supplemented over the years by some bought-in breeding stock.

Several prize-winning cattle have been exhibited at shows and sales over the years, with the Clonleam Delightful cow family in particular producing many successful progeny.

Expand Close Niall O' Mahony (second from left), chairperson of Irish Hereford Prime, making a presentation to Willie Branagan on his retirement as secretary of the society. Also pictured are Ivor Deverel and Michael Cleary, directors with Irish Hereford Prime. Photo: Edward Dooley / Facebook

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Whatsapp Niall O' Mahony (second from left), chairperson of Irish Hereford Prime, making a presentation to Willie Branagan on his retirement as secretary of the society. Also pictured are Ivor Deverel and Michael Cleary, directors with Irish Hereford Prime. Photo: Edward Dooley

Progeny from the herd have rarely been seen in the judging rings at the shows in recent years "because the demand is very good and they are all being sold off the farm", says Willie.

He has recently retired as secretary of the specialist beef producer group Irish Hereford Prime Ltd, after 15 years, and has been honoured by the society with a presentation in recognition of his contribution to the success of Irish Hereford Prime.

"Kathleen Tynan was chairperson at the time and she rang me and asked if I would take on the job of secretary, although I was not a member of the board at that time, which was probably a good thing, rather than having a board member in the position," he says.

He attributes a lot of the success that breeders are currently enjoying to the scheme.

"When I started, the company had requirements for less than nine or 10 cattle per week, and they were being exclusively sent to one butcher. At that time the Irish market had not been properly broken into at all. It was shortly afterwards that it was started through Pallas Foods in Newcastle West distributing to the Irish market, and it rocketed from that."

The growing demand for Hereford beef has been one of the industry's success stories in recent years. Irish Hereford Prime is now supplying 33,000 cattle per year from a pool of more than 2,500 members - all of which qualify for a premium.

In addition, Slaney Foods and ABP also pay a premium to producers for cross-bred Herefords.

"The Hereford Prime schemes have been absolutely essential to the success of the Hereford because there is so much demand for the cross-bred, and the quality of the Hereford steak is now recognised," says Willie.

"The value of the Hereford calf is driving the demand in recent years, because he is making a premium at the marts - and all that has benefited the breeders. If there were no commercial market for the animals, it would be very hard for the breeders to keep going," he added.

He points out that the trials conducted by Teagasc at Johnstown Castle showed the capability of the breed for early maturing beef when cross-bred with the dairy herd.

"Some of the dairymen are our best customers for the bulls, because they need a good calf that will return them a bit extra, and they need an easy calving bull that produces a good calf for sale. They are getting that from the Hereford - a good dead calf is not much use to any farmer," said Willie.

He has no doubt that the launch of Hereford Prime by the society in 1997 has been key to the breed's current success.

"Absolutely. We were convinced that we had a superior product and, naturally enough, the meat was of a higher quality than what was on offer in the standard steak in the supermarkets at that time. The taste of the Irish was for a traditional-type steak and that was why it was started. We were not getting the message to the consumer," he said.

Willie believes that there is still a lot of scope for further expansion of the market. The product is being exported to markets in Europe, "and they tell us that they could sell a lot more of it if they could get it".

He is now chairman of the Irish Hereford Breed Society. While he says he enjoyed the Irish Hereford Prime job, at times juggling it with his own farming commitments was demanding.

At the society AGM, Irish Hereford Prime chairperson Niall O'Mahony paid tribute to Willie on his retirement and acknowledged his efforts and central role in driving the company forward to its current market-leading position.

"William was instrumental in several key initiatives undertaken by Irish Hereford Prime over the years, most notably presiding over the introduction of the highly successful 'Calf to Beef' competition that ran in 2014, as well as bringing the work of Irish Hereford Prime to a wider audience through mart promotions, farm tours and school competitions," he said.
Cork city and county have provided the largest quantum of residential zoned land sold by Nama so far, with over 1,500 acres disposed of since the agency's formation.

In a written Dail reply to TD Ruth Coppinger, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan confirmed that 5,601 acres have been sold by Nama either through debtor sales or disposal of loan portfolios secured by Nama throughout the country.

Minister Noonan said that the second highest county is Dublin city and county, where sales of Nama residential zoned land totals 1,099 acres.

Minister Noonan said that Nama's advice is that "some of the lands were not zoned, some had been de-zoned by local authorities and many had a mixture of zonings including amenity, commercial, retail, community, educational and green space".

"In some cases, development of the sold lands remains unviable for commercial, planning and infrastructural reasons," he said.

Meath ranked third in terms of the sale of Nama residential zoned land, with 931 acres disposed of.

The next highest sales were in Kildare, where 370 acres have been disposed of, and Wicklow where 353 acres have been sold.

The figures show that Waterford is ranked 6th overall, with 333 acres sold.

Minister Noonan confirmed that in Galway city and county, 192 acres of Nama residential zoned land have been disposed of, with 266 acres disposed of in Limerick city and county.

The lowest amount of Nama residential zoned land sold on are in Sligo and Leitrim (10 acres), Clare (12) and Kerry (15).

Separately, Minister Noonan confirmed to Deputy Coppinger in another Dail reply that Nama achieved the sale of 3,383 residential units last year through assets sales by debtors or receivers.

He said that, in addition, the sale of 1,772 resident units was achieved last year through loan portfolio sales by the agency.

However, the figures are down sharply on the sale of Nama-related residential units achieved in 2014. In 2014, Minister Noonan said that Nama completed the sale of 4,734 residential units through asset sales by debtors and receivers.

During the same year, Nama completed the sale of 1,772 residential homes through the sale of loan portfolios.

Minister Noonan confirmed since Nama's establishment it has sold 14,246 residential units through asset sales by debtors and receivers and an additional 6,195 in residential units through the sale of loan portfolios.

He said that a number of multi-unit portfolio sales are included in the figures, namely the Orange portfolio, Rockbrook, the Plum portfolio, Tallaght Cross West and St Edmunds.

"Nama advise that properties which were sold as part of these portfolios were typically already tenanted and vacant possession was not sought prior to the sales.

"Such portfolios are typically acquired by investors seeking long-term rental streams and, therefore, existing tenancy arrangements tend not to be affected by such sales," he said.
Fine Gael luminaries and their independent partners in government chose the library in Ballymahon, Co Longford, to unveil the latest regeneration plan for rural Ireland.

The veil was pulled to reveal a 276-point programme - surely something for everybody in the audience, and more besides. Alas, instead of a menu of novel and innovative measures, all we got was a stale, reheated old mash. Parts of the plan are as dated as the vintage car Enda Kenny was perched in for the all-important publicity shots.

At best, the plan is a compilation of activities and programmes already happening in rural Ireland. Of the 276 'actions', more than 100 are described in the document as 'ongoing', while many of the rest are provided for in other plans and programmes.

In popular-music parlance, this is a retrospective album dressed up and presented as new and original material. It is a blatant attempt to fool the people into thinking something new is happening.

Parts of the plan are downright laughable. For instance, action point 135 tells us that the Department of Social Protection, its officers and offices will continue to support rural jobseekers. Phew! That is reassuring.

The funding for the plan is derisory - 60m for 600 towns and villages over three years. This equates to a 641 per community per week.

Rural Ireland is in continuous decline primarily because of an absence of vision, imagination, political will and guts. Dublin has been allowed to expand beyond its capacity, thanks to decades of economic expedience and political laziness.

There is gridlock on the M50, working young people will never be able to afford housing in the capital, and what hope is there for the thousands of homeless people?

Meanwhile, those commuting longer and longer distances are paying a huge cost in terms of transport charges and quality of life.

How often do the politicians have to be told? Rural areas need access to broadband, roads and decent services. In other words, they need a share of the wealth that is swilling around the rapidly expanding capital.

The last thing the people of rural Ireland need is yet another anaemic plan designed to placate the masses and purchase for their current political masters another season in power.

Are courage, sincerity, decent strategic thinking and political will too much to ask for?
Bank of Ireland is to establish a new holding company to issue bonds and shares at a remove from ordinary savers, following a recommendation from regulators.

The Euro areas Single Resolution Board and the Bank of England, working together, reached a joint decision on a new structure and have advised the bank of their preferred plan. Bank of Ireland operates here and in the UK.

The new structure would mean that in the event of a financial crisis at the bank bondholders of a new holding company could be burned with no negative implications for savers.

The changes are not expected to affect the banks most important capital levels. Any changes will have to be approved by shareholders.
Cairn's portfolio includes 29 separate development sites which will accommodate more than 12,000 units, 90pc of which will be in Dublin.

Builder Cairn Homes has been granted planning permission for a large project in west Dublin that will see the construction of 267 dwellings.

The scheme is the first element of a much larger development that is planned by Cairn at the site in Adamstown.

Cairn has received permission to build 199 houses, 60 apartments and eight duplex units at the first phase of the new development.

The company is currently building on a number of sites in the greater Dublin region, including its extensive Parkside development on the Malahide Road.

The five sites on which it was active as of last year are expected to yield a total of more than 1,150 homes. Another five sites it plans to build on this year will deliver an additional 2,750 homes.

Cairn Homes, whose ceo is Michael Stanley, floated on the stock market in June 2015, raising over 440m. In December 2015, it subsequently raised an additional 52m. In 2016, it raised 167m.

In a November trading update, Cairn Homes said that it was on track to complete 100 house sales in 2016 across its active sites, and meet its medium-term objective of delivering 1,200 housing units a year by 2019.

Cairn's portfolio includes 29 separate development sites which will accommodate more than 12,000 units, 90pc of which will be in Dublin.

Cairn Homes was founded by Mr Stanley and the company's chief operating officer, Kevin Stanley. Another founding investor is director Alan McIntosh. Mr McIntosh is the founder of London-based private equity group Emerald Investment Partners.

Mr McIntosh is also a co-founder of pub chain Punch Taverns - the second-largest in the UK. Emerald retreated this week from a battle with Heineken to buy Punch, with the chain expected to be valued at 410m (477m).
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Feb. 3

By Huseyn Hasanov Trend:

The next meeting of the joint Turkmen-UAE intergovernmental commission will be held in the first half of 2017, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message Feb. 3.

According to the message, the issue was raised during the meeting of Turkmen Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov and UAE Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador Hassan Abdullah Al Adhab.

Particular attention was paid to the strengthening of the political and diplomatic cooperation, intensification of the trade and economic relations and expansion of cultural and humanitarian contacts between Turkmenistan and UAE, the ministry said.

In this regard, the need for improving the effectiveness of bilateral cooperation mechanisms, in particular, joint intergovernmental commission, was stressed, the ministry said.

According to the message, Turkmenistan and UAE will consider the possibility of preparing the cooperation program between the foreign ministries soon.

Diplomatic relations between Turkmenistan and the UAE were established in October 1995. The UAE companies successfully operate in the local energy market. One of such companies - Dragon Oil has been operating in the Turkmen sector of Caspian Sea since 1999 as part of the Production Sharing Agreement (PSA). The company is one of the largest foreign investors in Turkmenistan.
Michael Noonan said "politics" was a factor in the European Commission's ruling that Ireland gave Apple a sweetheart tax deal. Photo: PA

Finance Minister Michael Noonan has accused Brussels of being politically motivated when it found against Ireland's tax system in a landmark case last year.

"Politics" was a factor in the European Commission's ruling that Ireland gave Apple a sweetheart tax deal, he told the Oireachtas Finance Committee yesterday.

The decision that the American multinational technology company must pay about 13bn in back taxes is part of an attempt by the Brussels-based body to extend its power and remit, the minister claimed.

Mr Noonan was answering questions on the case, which has set him at loggerheads with EU Competition Commissioner Margarethe Vestager.

She ruled last August that Ireland must collect 13bn plus interest from Apple for taxes that were unpaid over a decade as a result of a tax treatment that amounted to illegal State Aid to the company. The Government and Apple have appealed against the decision.

"There's a mix of tax law and politics being operated here," Mr Noonan told TDs and Senators.

He said he didn't believe the Commission was targeting Ireland in particular over the Apple decision, but that there was political input because the Commission is also a political forum.

"I think that a lot of decisions in Europe are a mix of technical data and a mix of politics and I think there was some political input here. That's not to say they're wrong. The court will test that," Mr Noonan said.

"I don't like to attribute motives to the Commission but there is a general move in the Commission as a whole to extend their power, to extend their remit, and I see this as part of that."

He argued that Ireland's entitlement to the money, in the face of competing claims from some other EU countries, remains uncertain, even though Ms Vestager said earlier this week that the bulk of the back taxes would remain with Ireland.

Her offer to other states to seek a share of the funds has been controversial, raising the question of how Ireland could be owed tax also owed elsewhere.

The minister suggested this was a move designed to isolate Ireland within Europe.

"It suited the Commission that other countries would come in and start demanding extra tax, because that meant that Ireland was left for few friends when other people around the table thought there was a windfall due to them," he told the committee.

Spain and Austria have raised the possibility of seeking some of the Apple tax, while Germany and France are not planning to make claims, he said.

"From a public relations point of view, the Commission was very clever in the presentation, and it seems to me that they're rowing back from that decision, but what they wrote is what they wrote, and what they put in their report is what they put in the report."

Earlier this week Ms Vestager said she expects "the majority" of the money to come to Ireland.

Mr Noonan said that, in general, due to the mismatch of rules, multinational companies are not paying the amount of tax they should be paying, including Apple.

"The argument is the tax liability was not in Ireland. The tax liability was where the economic activity occurred," the minister said.

The minister said the Commission was "attempting to rewrite Irish corporation tax legislation" and that its actions were "unprecedented and unjustified".

He said the final amount due from the technology giant is still being estimated and signalled it could be a number of months before that part of the process is completed.

The minister claimed the money would be put into an escrow account which would be established via a commercial contract with Apple.

While he said he didn't have an exact figure that needs to be paid, he added it would be around 13bn.
Irish drug development firm Opsona Therapeutics has received 4.2m in backing from existing investors, including the venture capital arm of drug giant Novartis.

Filings at the Companies Registration Office reveal that the company secured the additional funding just before Christmas.

Novartis Bioventures contributed the single biggest slice - 14m - of the latest fundraising round.

Roche Finance, an investment arm of the Swiss drug giant, stumped up 986,000.

The Seroba Kernel Lifesciences Fund II injected 222,000, while the 75m Fountain Healthcare Partners Fund 1, which is backed by the European Investment Fund and managed by Dublin-based Fountain Healthcare, invested 906,000.

In 2013, Opsona Therapeutics raised 33m that was earmarked to advance a treatment designed to block the rejection of kidneys in transplant patients. The treatment - still undergoing trials - is called OPN-305.

The company recently received orphan drug designation for OPN-305 from the US Food and Drug Administration for so-called myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a disease where bone marrow doesn't produce enough healthy red blood cells, white blood cells and/or platelets.

Orphan designation means a firm can avail of tax breaks for a drug's development.

The company was founded in 2004 by three immunologists at Trinity College, including Luke O'Neill.

It has raised over 60m since then.
Virgin Media has announced it is to add 120 new jobs to its customer service centre in Limerick. The additional employees will bring the total headcount at the Limerick site to 400.

The new positions will be filled immediately and will be full time roles handling customer billing, sales, as well as a number of back office finance positions.

This is a very welcome development for Limerick and it underpins the city's track record as a hub that can deliver strong results for high tech multinational companies like Virgin Media. Virgin Media has consistently been one of the biggest employers in Limerick and I commend them for this jobs decision and their continuing investments in the Mid-West" said Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan.

The company said it has plans to improve broadband facilities to 10,000 homes in the mid-west.

This is great news for Limerick and continues our proud history of investment in the Mid-West region. Our customers have been telling us they love dealing with our Limerick based team, so were thrilled to be growing our Irish-based service capability to ensure we deliver the best possible Virgin customer experience, said Virgin Media ceo Tony Hanway.
Snapchat owner Snap shot the opening salvo in its 2.7bn ($3bn) initial public offering on Thursday, outlining aggressive expansion plans but offering new investors no say on how the company is run and no promise of profits.

Snap's publication on Thursday of its IPO registration document sets the stage for its upcoming marketing campaign to convince investors to look past its widening losses and the firm grip of its founders, and focus on its rapid growth of active users.

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The number of Snap's daily active users grew to an average of 158 million at the end of December, up 48pc year-on-year, Snap revealed. However, its net loss widened to $514.6m in 2016 from $372.9m the year before.

While Snap will have time to polish its marketing pitch in the run-up to the IPO planned for March, some analysts were taken aback that the company was just beginning to reap cash from its product.

"What surprises me the most is that it is still very early days when it comes to Snap making money," said Rohit Kulkarni, managing director at private securities investment firm SharesPost.

Snap had confidentially registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO late last year. It kept the filing under such tight wraps, even some of its IPO underwriters had not seen it prior to publication on Thursday, sources familiar with the matter previously told Reuters.

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Snap said in the IPO registration document published on Thursday it would become the first U.S. company to go public with shares on offer not granting voting rights to stock market investors. Its founders, Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, will keep control of the company.

Snap could be valued at between $20bn to $25bn, according to sources familiar with the situation who asked not to be named because the matter is confidential. That would give the company the richest valuation in a US technology IPO since Facebook Inc.

Snap, which launched itself in 2012 with an app that sends disappearing messages, rebranded itself last year as a camera company and started selling $130 video camera glasses. It generates the majority of its revenue from advertising, seeking to challenge the dominance of internet giants such as Facebook and Alphabet Google.

"The industry has been crying out for new advertising units" says Ian Schafer, founder and chairman of ad agency Deep Focus, referring to the tight hold Facebook and Google have on the digital advertising marketplace.

In its IPO registration document, Snap cited Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook and its photo-sharing platform Instagram as its competitors.

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TIGHT CONTROL

Spiegel, the 26-year-old Snap co-founder, last year earned $503,205 in salary, with a $1 m bonus. Imran Khan, Snapchat's chief strategy officer whom it hired from investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG in 2014, earned $241,539 last year with a $5.2m bonus. In 2015, Khan also received $145.3m worth of Snap shares as a sign-up bonus.

Spiegel and Murphy will maintain tight control over Snap's stock through a unique three-share class structure. The structure will give Spiegel and Murphy the right of 10 votes for every share. Existing investors will have one vote for each of their shares, while new investors will have no voting rights.

Snap said it couldn't predict if the structure would "result in a lower trading price or greater fluctuations" in the stock.

Keeping tight control is common in companies closely associated with their founders, who often prefer to grow their business without being questioned by a broad array of investors. Still, offering a class of stock with no votes in an IPO is unprecedented.

Though the structure has drawn some criticism for not giving stock market investors the opportunity to have input, some people close to the company have argued that investors can "vote with their feet" by not buying into the IPO if they are not comfortable with the arrangements.

"Investors have to decide, am I going to avail myself of the opportunity to buy the stock, and forget about the fact that somewhere down the road they are likely going to run into trouble?" said James McRitchie, an independent corporate governance activist who has pressed for more equal voting rights at companies including Facebook.

PAYING GOOGLE

Snap had $404.5m in sales in 2016, up from $58.7m in 2015. However, it had adjusted losses before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization last year of $459 million, compared with $292.9 million in 2015.

Snap's biggest losses stem from "hosting fees" which it pays to cloud computing companies such as Google to use their infrastructure for its data. It will pay Google $2bn over the next five years to use its cloud computing services.

Because Snapchat users rely heavily on data-heavy pictures and video, the cost of these service is high. Still, the proportion of the company's costs to its revenue has been declining. Its strategy has been to bargain for better hosting rates as its growing number of users buoys its negotiating leverage.

"They are adding infrastructure ahead of growth, and that is why you have some front-loading of losses," said SharesPost's Kulkarni.

Some companies such as Facebook have their own hosting platforms, though this model can be more costly.

Facebook's Instagram, which recently introduced disappearing video content similar to Snapchat, had 600 million users as of late last year. Like Snapchat, Instagram sells advertising on its platform.

Snap's aggressive expansion is reflected in its staff numbers. By the end of last year, it had increased its number of employees to 1,859 from 600 in 2015.

Snap said it would use the proceeds from its IPO for general purposes, including working capital, operating expenses and capital expenditures.

Snap said it will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SNAP. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Deutsche Bank are leading the offering as underwriters.
Drug maker Pfizer is one of 25 major companies that has signed up to an alliance calling for a tax on all imports into the United States.

The 'American Made Coalition' want a 20pc tax to be imposed on all imports into the country and are campaigning for the US corporation tax to be reduced from 35pc down to 20pc.

Pfizer currently has major manufacturing operations in Ringaskiddy and Little Island in Cork, making Pfizer one of the largest employers in the south west. The company also has three facilities in Dublin and one in Kildare. In total, Pfizer has 3,300 employees working in Ireland.

In a statement to the Irish Independent, Pfizer said:

"We look forward to working with the new administration to advance patient care and access to innovative medicines. Ireland has long been a strategic location for Pfizer. There is intense global competition for life science investment and the countries that will succeed are those that closely link creating a positive environment for innovation to thrive with rewarding innovation."

The move by the American Made Coalition could also have major implications for Irelands prospects of attracting Foreign Direct Investment. The proposed tax reform would severely lessen Irelands tax advantage over the US, albeit Ireland's rate would still be lower at 12.5pc.

Other companies that have signed up to the coalition include airplane manufacturer Boeing, General Electric and tech company Oracle.

The American Made Coalition launch underscored a growing division in corporate America over the House Republican proposal that would cut corporate income tax to 20 pc from 35pct, exclude export revenue from taxable income and impose the 20pc tax on imports.

President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about border taxes and the House proposal could face difficulties in the US Senate where some Republicans question whether it would unduly raise prices for US consumers and businesses.

Additional reporting by Reuters
Suddenly Ruth Negga, a reluctant conscript to Hollywood, is everywhere. Until just a few months ago, she was best known to most of us as Darren Treacy's girlfriend Rosie in Love/Hate, or for her roles in Misfits and Breakfast on Pluto.

And then, seemingly all at once, there she was - on the cover of American Vogue, stunningly shot by Mario Testino. Co-starring with her real-life partner Dominic Cooper in the hit Amazon series Preacher. Storming the red carpet at the Golden Globes, in shimmering Louis Vuitton - and getting name-checked by Meryl Streep in her show-stopping, Trump-skewering speech later that night.

The Limerick actress has finally made her name - and the awards circuit - with the movie Loving.

Loving, the story of real-life Virginia couple Richard (played by Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving (Negga), whose 1967 Supreme Court case legalised interracial marriage in the US, has catapulted the Irish-Ethiopian actress into a dizzying new direction.

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The role has brought her plenty of industry nods, nominated for a whole host of awards from critics' circles to the BAFTAs and the Golden Globes, and, at the end of the month, we'll find out if Negga will become an Oscar-winning actress. Her newfound fame has also seen her land the covers of W magazine (puckering up for a kiss with fellow Oscar-nominated actress Natalie Portman) and Vanity Fair's Hollywood issue, to name a few.

The Oscar buzz has pulled Loving's centre of gravity towards Negga but fame isn't something that sits comfortably with her. For a notoriously shy and private actress, all this noise must be deafening. "It's surreal," she says, when we meet in the Westbury, a few weeks ahead of the movie's Irish release. Her words delivered in a neutral-non accent that would be impossible to place if it wasn't for the occasional Limerick lilt. "I'm a talker but I've never talked this much, ever."

The 35-year-old possesses a steely shyness which prevents her from talking freely. In person, her answers are careful and considered, with a genuine earnestness for "the art". Questions directed at her personal life (or her long-term relationship with Cooper, with whom she has lived in London since 2010) are politely and gently eschewed but when it comes to her work, she lights up, albeit slowly... finding a space where she feels comfortable, beaming with luminosity.

"I love this couple," she says of the Lovings. "I fell in love with them the first time I saw the documentary, Loving Story. And I fell even more deeply in love with them when we were filming. When we were wrapping up the movie, with just 10 days to go of filming, I felt this feeling in the pit of my stomach. This sense of loss. She adds: "Joel had the same feeling. It was because we were going to have to part ways with these people. And I realised how much of a privilege it was for us to play them. They made us better people."

As Mildred Loving, Negga brings so little ego to her role, so little of herself, that you believe in her character all the more. Her performance has a quietness that is devastating. It's hard not to marvel at how, as an actress, Negga can deliver so much with a simple look, a quiet persistence. It's that sobering intensity that has made her the talk of Hollywood. But while Negga was able to allow her emotions to gently simmer on screen, the injustice she felt for the Lovings bubbled over into anger and frustration in real life.

"Even to this day when I see it, my response is very emotional, a bit teary because it's a sort of angry sadness. This couple were robbed of nine years of living in their home, without looking over their shoulder, without fear. I feel angry on their behalf. What's good about that anger, I think, is when it's translated into some sort of movement, it can be a really good thing," she says.

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The Lovings' battle changed America but they weren't political. They were a regular couple who understood that the situation they were in was wrong, and that innate sense of injustice is what pushed them to fight.

Sentimentality and melodrama were pushed aside for a soft-spoken message that ultimately yielded tremendous power.

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While the segregation laws described in the film may seem archaic to modern viewers, its exploration of racial tensions is eerily relevant. Watching Loving feels immediate and deeply personal. At a time when thousands of people are taking to the streets to protest, appalled and terrified by the current political and social unrest, perhaps they might find relevance in the Lovings' battle? The couple's real-life heroism is something that Negga hopes inspires audiences.

"I think (Richard and Mildred Loving) remind us that we equally have as much as a right to own the space that we're in as the next person - and that's not always what I think we're led to believe by people who wield power," she says as her voice gathers speed.

"I'm glad people are feeling angry because maybe that gives them impetus to do something. To speak. To use their voice. To search for the humanity in every one of us, rather than try to distance one another through differences, or perceived differences.

"You have a right to use your voice. People have always been loathe to do that because it can be quite intimidating. I think people who may feel that they're not articulate enough but how articulate do you have to be to say 'I don't agree with that and that's wrong'?

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"I really do believe that and I think this might inspire confidence in people to become part of something."
Conor Adams (L) and Lar Kaye from All Tvvins Photographed by Ruth Medjber www.ruthlessimagery.com

One half of Irish indie-pop group All Tvvins, Conor Adams is optimistic about the future of Irish music for aspiring artists.

All Tvvins released their debut album IIVV in 2016, reaching second place on the Irish charts - a major success for a band that was founded just two years earlier.

Adams met Lar Kaye, the other half of the duo, at a gig in 2014 when they were both members of other bands.

"At one gig, we said lets jam together and here we are. That was three years ago - we just clicked," he told Independent.ie.

Before forming All Tvvins, Adams, who used to work in St Vincent's Hospital, was performing with The Cast of Cheers and moved to London with the band.

"I took a big pay cut to work in music. The Cast of Cheers were signed to an English label and moved to London. It definitely wasnt for the money. I followed my heart and I never looked back."

Having sold out the Olympia in October 2016, Adams says "it's a really good time" for Irish music.

"Selling out the Olympia was a dream come true. I grew up seeing gigs there, so to have our own show was mind-blowing."

"Its a really good time for Irish music. Even in the last five years its just gotten better and better. Otherkin are great, James Vincent McMorrow's album was my favourite of last year," he said.

All Tvvins will perform at GamerCon, Convention Centre Dublin, on 18 and 19 of March. Tickets are available from gamer-con.com.
Can't Cope Won't Cope got better as it went on

Seana Kerslake and Amy Huberman in Can't Cope Won't Cope

Amy Hubermans future on Cant Cope Wont Cope is up in the air despite the show renewing for another series.

The RTE comedy-drama, centred on two women in their 20s living in Dublin, will be back, but show creator Stefanie Preissner could not confirm if Huberman, who played the boss of Seana Kerslakes character Aisling, would be returning.

An insider told Independent.ie that the second series could interfere with other projects the mother-of-two has lined up.

Viewers saw Aisling sacked from her job in the final episode of the first series.

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That suggests Amys character Kate may be unlikely to return.

The series is set to go international in the coming months as it has been acquired by BBC3 to air online.

Preissner admitted she never thought the series would go abroad.

I wrote it because I didnt see young Irish women represented on screen, she said.

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I think with Netflix and Hulu and Amazon we run the risk of never hearing Irish accents on TV.

That doesnt sit right with me. I want young Irish people to feel heard, counted and valued. This is a step in that direction.

The Cork woman is confident British viewers will take to Cant Cope Wont Cope.

Aisling and Danielle are just girls at the end of the day, girls who make bad decisions sometimes, she said.

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I think theyre highly relatable. We all have been Aisling or Danielle at some stage.
Dancing with the Stars judge Julian Benson has pulled out of his scheduled appearance on The Late Late Show due to illness.

The Dancing with the Stars judge was set to appear on tonight's Late Late Show, alongside fellow judges Loraine Barry and Brian Redmond.

The trio were expected to give viewers the lowdown on the celebrities who have impressed them the most throughout the series so far and school Tubridy with a few key dance moves.

However, a source revealed to Independent.ie that Julian has been forced to pull out of The Late Late Show "due to illness".

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His fellow judges will join Ryan Tubridy tonight.

Speculation is growing as to whether Julian will be well enough to take to the panel on Sunday night's broadcast of Dancing with the Stars.

A source close to that show says it is hoped Julian will be well enough to appear on Sunday's programme.

Julian aside, two dancers have also fallen ill.

Ryan who is the dance partner to show favourite, actress Denise McCormack, was brought to A&E earlier this week for a bout of severe tonsillitis.

Kai who is partner to comedian Katherine Lynch is also sick and is visiting the doctor today.

A show insider said: "We are hoping that Julian will feel well enough on Sunday. To be honest, a lot of people have fallen sick this week. Poor Ryan had to go to A&E and Kai is also sick. Whatever it is, everyone else is trying to steer well clear of it."

Julian has been a popular fixture on the RTE show.

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The Dubliner has a wealth of experience in the industry and has worked as a choreographer, producer, director and talent agent.

He has said in the past that he is the "people's judge" of the popular RTE show.

"My fellow judges would be a lot more technically-minded," he said.

"I'm going to be the peoples' judge. I'll be looking for the three P's - passion, performance and personality."
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, Feb. 3

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmenistan and Saudi Arabia exchanged views on a wide range of issues of bilateral cooperation, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message Feb. 3.

The discussions were held during the meeting of Turkmenistans Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov with Saudi Ambassador Khalid bin Faisal Al-Sehli.

During the meeting, the sides noted the importance of Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedovs visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2016.

The sides confirmed that the negotiations held at high level and the documents signed create a solid political and legal base for strengthening the cooperation in energy sector, transportation, financial and banking spheres and several other directions.

Earlier, the energy sector was set as a priority in trade and economic cooperation. In particular, the Saudi Fund for Development expressed interest in financing the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline.

During the bilateral negotiations in Riyadh in May 2016, the parties spoke about the participation of Saudi companies in the construction of oil and gas refining enterprises in Turkmenistan, production of finished goods and their sale in foreign markets.

The sides also noted the existing conditions for cooperation in industry and production of construction materials, in particular, cement, as well as in textile industry.

Saudi Arabia established diplomatic relations with Turkmenistan on Feb. 22, 1992.
The announcement of the indefinite strike by unions representing Bus Eireann came on the same day the semi-state company celebrated its 30th anniversary yesterday. (Stock picture)

Around 110,000 Bus Eireann passengers could be left without a service indefinitely after unions announced an all-out strike will take place from February 20 that could ultimately spread to Irish Rail and Dublin Bus.

The announcement of the indefinite strike by unions representing Bus Eireann came on the same day the semi-state company celebrated its 30th anniversary yesterday.

Siptu's transport sector organiser Willie Noone said the strike would go ahead unless Bus Eireann's CEO Ray Hernan confirmed the company would hold talks without "preconditions". Those conditions include the company's controversial plans to cut premium payments and overtime rates from the same date.

Unless that happens, all Bus Eireann intercity, regional and Expressway services will grind to a halt - affecting 2,600 staff and approximately 110,000 passengers nationwide who rely on the service each day.

However, school bus services will be exempt from the action.

Mr Noone also warned that other transport companies belonging to CIE - including Irish Rail and Dublin Bus - could join the action at a later date.

Expand Close All-out strike warning: Siptu official Willie Noone. Photo: Arthur Carron/Collins / Facebook

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Whatsapp All-out strike warning: Siptu official Willie Noone. Photo: Arthur Carron/Collins

"There are disputes bubbling under the surface at other CIE companies," he said. "They're aghast at what happened to their colleagues at Bus Eireann. They've put huge pressure on us to actually convene a meeting to discuss with them manners and ways they can support their colleagues."

"This dispute at Bus Eireann has really raised the bar and it may well now spread and have contagion to other CIE companies," he warned.

He also didn't rule out school bus drivers "getting dragged into it very quickly".

Read more: 'A strike will be very damaging' - Minister responds as Bus Eireann workers confirm action

But Dermot O'Leary, general secretary of the National Bus and Railworkers Union (NBRU), said a reprieve was possible over the next fortnight if Bus Eireann's acting CEO agreed to drop the contentious cuts.

"All he has to do is write a letter to the trade unions and request a meeting without preconditions," he said. "That would solve it."

Willie Quigley, regional officer for the Unite union, last night accused the company and Transport Minister Shane Ross of "holding the country to ransom" by refusing to convene a forum of all stakeholders.

He also asked that all relevant information be published, and that Bus Eireann should "withdraw threatened cuts so that meaningful talks could take place".

Bus Eireann management refused to rule out cuts to pay and overtime. However, Mr Hernan said he was "more than willing to hear any alternative proposals they (the unions) have for achieving savings of 30m."

"Bus Eireann will not put preconditions on any talks that will assist in addressing the current financial crisis to ensure the long-term viability of the company," he said.

But he stressed "necessary efficiencies must be found within the company because it is a long-term solution and not a short-term fix, which is required".

Mr Ross urged both sides to get back to the table "without any preconditions to address the serious problems stemming from its commercial Expressway services", which is expected to lose 6m this year.

He added he was disappointed by the unions' intention to strike but insisted he would not intervene directly.
Paul Mills, who was killed it a car crash involving former PSNI officer Eilish McSherry

An off-duty police officer who killed a father-of-two in a crash has been jailed for nine years at Dungannon Crown Court.

Eilish MacSherry (41) of Brookmount Heights, Omagh, admitted causing the death of Paul Mills by dangerous and drunk driving in October in 2015.

She was found to be twice over the legal alcohol limit.

Paul Mills widow Ann, children and other family members were in court for the sentencing of the former police officer.

The 49-year-old was killed in the crash on the outskirts of Omagh on October 10 last year.

MacSherry was off-duty at the time of the incident. The judge found she was drunk that day, having taken a high level of alcohol and prescription drugs.

She was less than two miles from her home when the fatal collision occurred.

The judge said it was a persistent course of bad driving with grossly excessive speed by a woman who should not have been behind the wheel of a car given the level of alcohol and drugs in her blood.

The 41-year-old collided with one car, drove on at high speed, and then crashed into Mr Mills car.

The judge added that all witnesses described that impact as like an explosion.

The ex-police officer refused an initial breath test to police at the scene.

Her defence team told the court she had no recollection of what happened that day, but did offer the most sincere apology she can for what happened.

The judge repeated the words of Mrs Mills, who said that telling her two children that their father had died was the hardest thing she had to do.

She said she would never forget the screams of one, and quiet sobs of another.

Mrs Mills said their idyllic childhood had been brought to an abrupt end by someone who should not have been driving that night.

The judge said he took into account the number of years the defendant had spent as a public servant.

But as a serving police officer you should have known the consequence of this sort of irresponsible behaviour, he added.

The defendant was sentenced to nine years, with half of this to be served on licence.

She was also banned from driving for 15 years.
A young garda who survived a holiday shooting in the United States was accused of punching two young women in a row over a 15 fee for a lift home.

Garda Brian Hanrahan (34) appeared before Nenagh District Court accused of assaulting two women - who sobbed as they testified about how he had punched and kicked them near an isolated north Tipperary graveyard.

Judge Elizabeth MacGrath reserved judgement until February 10, after hearing the evidence.

She said she wanted to take time to consider the matter.

The garda, who was off duty, insisted he only acted in self-defence after he claimed one of the women launched herself at him in a row over the lift fee.

She (Emer Kelly) got out of the car and attacked me. She wanted me to pay 50. The last thing I wanted or desired was an altercation of any description after what had happened in New Orleans (shooting), Mr Hanrahan said.

I am sorry she sustained an injury - but if I am attacked I am going to defend myself.

Michelle OConnell, for the State, said Gardai became aware of an incident in Nenagh at 4am on March 6.

Emer Kelly was out with friends Aisling King and Ellen Nyhill. Mr Hanrahan approached and said hed pay 15 for a lift to his Ballintotty, Nenagh home.

He was very rude. He said that Nenagh was full of scumbags, Ms Kelly said.

Mr Hanrahan also allegedly described Nenagh as a shit hole and a kip.

When one of the young women joked that Nenagh men would not like to hear such derogatory comments, Ms Kelly said that Mr Hanrahan replied that he would fight anyone who took him on.

The women then asked Mr Hanrahan to get out of their car.

Aisling went to drive off but I said I will ask him for the money. I didnt want her to leave without him giving her something, Ms Kelly said.

The door was between me and Brian. He pulled my hair and beat me to the ground, Ms Kelly sobbed.

He kicked me in the face while I was on the ground.

Ms Kelly, who is 5 ft in height, rejected defence claims that she had attacked Mr Hanrahan who is 6ft.

Aisling King said she was punched when she tried to help Ms Kelly.

A passing motorist, Eddie Ryan, said: I saw Mr Hanrahan holding her (a young woman) by the hair.

Mr Hanrahan denied two assaults contrary to Section 3 of the Non Fatal Offences Against the Persons Act.
The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) has served notice on criminal John Gilligan and members of his family to vacate their homes that were bought with the proceeds of crime.

Just hours after the Gilligans' appeal against the seizure of their homes failed, letters were issued by the CAB to the drug trafficker's solicitors seeking vacant possession of the properties.

Gilligan's wife Geraldine and daughter Tracey live in the bungalow beside the already-seized Jessbrook equestrian centre in Kildare and his son Darren lives in a house in Corduff Avenue in Blanchardstown, Dublin.

A third property, at Willsbrook View in Lucan, which is owned by the Gilligans but has been under the control of the CAB, is rented out on a long-term basis.

Wednesday's ruling of the Supreme Court now means that the CAB can seize these three properties and sell them on to the benefit of the State.
An English priest who molested a 12-year-old boy after bringing the child and his brother on holiday to Ireland over 40 years ago has been jailed for nine months.

Michael Dunn (67), who pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault, intends to appeal the sentence, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard today.

Dunn knew the boy and his family as the child served as an altar server. The victim was bullied at school and Dunn became his trusted confidant, the court heard.

The victim told the court that Dunn groomed him to comply and he said he felt helpless to escape. I was imprisoned in what was supposed to be a holiday and 100 miles from home, he said.

Garda Karen Doherty told John Fitzgerald BL, prosecuting, that the victim told gardai that while in Dublin, Dunn got him to share his bed every night. The abuse started with Dunn touching him while he pretended to be asleep and progressed to the man forcing him to perform a sex act on him him and open mouth kissing.

The now 53-year-old victim said in his garda statement that he felt he loved Dunn as he was a father figure and friend. He was the only person who showed him physical affection and he later felt bad for letting it happen.

Dunn, with an address in Lawrence Street, York, England, pleaded guilty to three charges of sexual assault in August 1975 when he was 26 years old. He was jailed for 18 months in England in March 2005 after he was convicted of sexual assaulting another young boy in the 1970s.

Judge Melanie Greally said Dunn's offending had deeply affected his victim in all aspects of his life. The actions of the accused had a profoundly negative effect on a young male in the vital, formative years of his life, she said.

She noted Dunn entered the priesthood at a very young age, when he was ill-prepared for the challenges of priesthood, both sexually and socially. She took into account mitigating factors including his plea of guilty and the fact he had lived an irreproachable life ever since.

Defence counsel Bernard Condon SC indicated Dunn would be appealing the sentence and asked that he be granted bail pending the outcome. Judge Greally denied the bail application.

The man read his victim impact statement in court which was later described by counsel, as a powerful, deeply moving, testimony.

He said he was at an early stage of his sexual and emotional development a the time. I cannot say the abuse made me gay but it normalised in my psyche an attraction to men, he continued.

He said as a married man and father, he led a dual existence describing a secret life of alcohol and infidelity with other men.

The man said his long term suppression of the truth caused him internal turmoil and he carried the memories for 40 years. He said for much of that time, he kept the abuse a secret to protect those that I love from suffering.

He said his greatest sadness was the pain this process had caused his wife and children, who he said suffered seeing him unable to cope with life. He described life with him as intolerable, two of his older children left home and his marriage had broken down.

He said he had completed 60 hours of therapy and had finally started a process of coming to terms with what happened to him as a child. I hope to live a normal, honest and fulfilled life from now, he concluded in his statement.

Mr Condon said his client apologised and regretted his behaviour. He said he recognised the impact the abuse had on the man and is full of remorse, horror and shame,

He asked Judge Greally to take into account the fact that his client had not committed any further crimes in the last 40 years.

Dunn entered the priesthood at 16, when Mr Condon said he was immature and had not identified his own sexuality. He said this did not justify his client's behaviour towards the victim.

Counsel said Dunn continued to live a life of prayer and reflection but did not practice publicly. He accepted he had abused a position of trust.
A witness has admitted that he lied to a murder trial by failing to mention that the deceased had a hatchet in his hand when he entered the row that led to his death.

Wayne Casserly was giving evidence at the Central Criminal Court in the trial of Wayne Cluskey (25), and Josh Turner (24), both of Mooretown, Ratoath, Co Meath. The two men have pleaded not guilty to the murder of 27-year-old Christopher Nevin at Tailteann Road, Navan on November 19, 2015.

The trial has heard that Mr Turner lent a male chihuahua to the deceased to breed with his three females. When only one of the chihuahuas got pregnant a dispute arose, ending in the fatal fight.

Under cross examination from Mr Turner's defence counsel, Patrick Marrinan SC, Mr Casserly said Mr Nevin took a hatchet with him when he went out to confront the two men about the chihuahua. He agreed that this was not what he said during his evidence to prosecuting counsel Michael O'Higgins SC, and added: "That is the only lie I told."

Mr Casserly agreed that Josh Turner backed away with his arms up when Mr Nevin emerged with the hatchet. He also agreed that it was only after Mr Nevin emerged with the hatchet that Wayne Cluskey took an axe from his car and ran at Christopher Nevin. He said he seemed to barge into Mr Nevin with his shoulder.

Mr Marrinan said that as this was happening, his client Josh Turner, went inside Mr Casserly's house and shouted for someone to "come and stop this". Mr Marrinan said he further accepts that he then struck Mr Nevin several times. "He regretted what he had done and had to be taken from the scene," he said.

Mr Marrinan asked Mr Casserly if he had also lied when he said that after the incident Josh Turner told him, "keep your mouth shut". Mr Casserly replied: "I know what you are saying but that is what he said to me."

Wayne Cluskey's mother Caroline Vaughan told Mr O'Higgins that her son and the other accused man lived together at the family home in Ratoath. On November 19, 2015 she called to the house at about 5pm and found Josh "covered in blood". Wayne also had a "bit of blood" on him. She said Wayne was shouting at Josh: "There was no need for that. You shouldn't have done it."

She thought they had been fighting one another so she took Josh away in her car and asked him what had happened. He told her: "I was fighting with Nevs." She said he was upset, crying and told her he had hit "Nevs" once on the head. He asked her to take him to a police station but she instead took him back home.

The following day she received a phone call from her son, Wayne, who was crying and told her "Nevs is dead". He said he was going to call a garda in Navan and she told him that was the best thing to do.

Mr Cluskey's girlfriend Alex O'Driscoll told Mr O'Higgins that Wayne was "in bits" that evening. She said he told her that Mr Nevin had hit him with the hatchet and that he was frightened.

She said both men were crying and that she overheard Josh say that he would take the blame.

The trial continues on Monday in front of Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of nine men and three women.
The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin has promised to work with Education Minister Richard Bruton on his plans for the handover of Catholic primary schools to other patron bodies.

Dr Diarmuid Martin said he would be "willing to co-operate on pilot projects" to see how it would work in reality.

Mr Bruton has announced moves to revitalise the process to divest some of the 90pc of primary schools under the control of the Catholic Church, in order to offer parents more choice.

The minister is suggesting grassroots talks in areas where demand for change is identified, with a view to leasing an existing school property from the church if agreement is reached on transfer to a new patron.

Speaking to RTE's Sean O'Rourke, Dr Martin admitted the divestment process had been "far too slow", and said there was a need for new approach.

He said that while "you can have all these ideas at an intellectual level", there was a need to talk to the community to see how it could work.

Archbishop Martin said the approach taken in the consultation with parents under the original process, "was wrong" and "the right information" had not been gathered.

"I am hoping the minister will get it right. He should be asking community what they really want," said Dr Martin, who supports the plan to survey parents of pre-school children, rather than parent of existing pupils. "If I consult with parents in a school, they are the wrong people, I should be talking to parents of children aged 2-3."

Dr Martin also referred to the emerging option of community national schools which, in many cases, will be rivalling the more familiar Educate Together school model, to take over patronage of Catholic schools. He thought the community national school model offered "a solution".

Community national schools differ from Educate Together in that they offer formal religious instruction - to all faiths - during the school day. Educate Together provides a general education about religions.

Dr Martin said it wasn't only about pupils, adding: "I don't think a teacher should be obliged to teach a religion if they don't believe."
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, June 17

By Demir Azizov- Trend:

Uzbek President Islam Karimov met with counterpart of the Republic of South Korea Park Geun-Hye at the international airport in Tashkent, the Uzbek presidential press-service reported on June 16.

The main events of the Korean leader's first state visit are scheduled for June 17, according to the program of the visit.

It was reported that Presidents Karimov and Park Geun-Hye intend to discuss the priority directions of expanding the multifaceted bilateral cooperation in the long term, relevant regional and international issues.

The presidents plan to pass a joint declaration on the further development and intensification of the strategic partnership following the visit. A package of inter-state and inter-ministerial documents on various areas of cooperation is also expected to be signed.

Currently, a legal base of bilateral cooperation regulates more than 300 documents. As of late 2013, the bilateral trade turnover amounted to $2.12 billion. The total amount of investments drawn from the Republic of Korea in the Uzbek economy during the independence period, exceeded $6 billion. Some 412 enterprises with South Korean investments operate in the country.

edited by CN
ASTI president Ed Byrne reveals the result of the unions vote to reject the Government offer. Photo: Arthur Carron

Some 250,000 second-level students in 500 schools face deep uncertainty after their teachers rejected the latest proposals on pay and junior cycle reform.

The most immediate threat is to about 35,000 third years who are at risk of losing 10pc of marks in their Junior Cert English exam.

A tight 52.5pc-47.5pc No vote by the 18,000-strong Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland (ASTI) means continued non-cooperation by members on a range of duties.

As well as refusing to conduct classroom-based assessments for third-year students of English, it also means thousands of parents will not be invited to meetings with teachers.

While work stoppages are not contemplated at the moment, ASTI president Ed Byrne warned his members would "respond in kind" to any "aggressive" action by the Department of Education.

This was a reference to a threat to withdraw protection against redundancy from any teacher surplus to requirements next September. This could arise from a school closure or a fall in enrolments. Schools will be working through their teacher needs for September in coming weeks, so that could become a reality soon.

Expand Close Education Minister Richard Bruton says he is disappointed. Photo: Tom Burke / Facebook

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Whatsapp Education Minister Richard Bruton says he is disappointed. Photo: Tom Burke

Mr Byrne said the union would have "due cognisance of the impact of any industrial action on students and their families". However, uncertainty alone, and the real threat to exam marks for English, is enough to unsettle schools and students.

The ASTI is isolated as the only public service union not to sign up for the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA) and other pay deals that flowed from it.

It means its members are not benefiting from a range of post-austerity pay restoration measures and improvements in conditions. Apart from protection against redundancy, these include general salary rises and quicker access to full-time posts for new teachers.

One particularly painful sanction will affect about 10,000 members who will now forego their annual increment for 2016/17.

All other unions have moved on from the LRA and are focused on its successor, negotiations on which will begin after the Public Service Pay Commission reports in April.

Education Minister Richard Burton, who reacted with "disappointment", is maintaining a hardline position.

He said the interests, rights and well-being of students must be paramount and noted that schools had been notified of a further opportunity for students to do the classroom-based English assessment.

"It is regrettable that many ASTI members will now suffer permanent financial losses and loss of other benefits as a result of this choice," he said.

Mr Bruton insisted "there will be no further offer made to ASTI", adding that the Government was committed to continuing to work with unions inside the LRA on pay and conditions.

The Joint Managerial Body, representing managements in about 380 schools, said it was facing a period of uncertainty and asked all parties to carefully reflect on the implications of the decision.

Some 75pc or 13,781 ASTI members voted. In light of the narrow 681-vote margin in favour, Fianna Fail Education spokesperson Thomas Byrne asked the union to say how the vote broke down between working teachers and its 1,300 retired members.
Tallaght Hospital, which is currently fighting a superbug, was trying to cope with trolley gridlock with 57 patients waiting for a bed.

A 94-year-old patient had to endure hours on a trolley as a hospital grappled with its worst level of overcrowding in nearly six years.

The woman was among several elderly patients waiting in crisis-stricken Tallaght Hospital in Dublin. There were 517 patients on trolleys across the country yesterday - 73 of whom were waiting for a bed for more than 24 hours.

Tallaght Hospital, which is currently fighting a superbug, was trying to cope with trolley gridlock with 57 patients waiting for a bed.

It follows a fresh warning by emergency consultants that up to 350 patients across the country will die this year because of the trolley crisis.

Sligo consultant Fergal Hickey said he had witnessed patients dying before his eyes.

It can be "impossible for emergency staff to provide care for patients in an overcrowded environment", he said.

Doctors can miss a cardiac arrest or fail to treat pneumonia, meningitis or sepsis.

Dr James Gray, emergency consultant at Tallaght Hospital, told the Irish Independent that overcrowding there was the worst since 2011 when a patient died in the corridor.

Read more: Publican had to share trolley with handcuffed prisoner because overcrowding was so bad in hospital

"At 3pm there were 15 admitted patients on trolleys languishing for over 24 hours as well as patients over 70 years of age, including a 94-year-old," he said.

He said earlier this week a patient waiting more than eight hours with chest pain was subsequently diagnosed with a heart attack and had to be placed in coronary care.

Another patient who was delayed for two-and-a-half hours suffered a seizure in the waiting room in full view of the patients and relatives. There were difficulties getting the patient inside the emergency department because of the overcrowding.

Overworked staff had to do their best in a "dangerous environment", he said.

"Many patients left the waiting room after witnessing this patient seizing and self-discharged. We have no way of knowing what those patients have wrong with them in many cases."

He said the "situation is like an aeroplane full to capacity with all the seats full, all the aisles, exits and conduits full of passengers. The pilots are reluctant and have grave concerns to fly the plane while traffic control are insisting the plane takes off."

A hospital spokeswoman said the emergency department was experiencing a very high number of attendances requiring admission.

"They are prioritised and seen according to clinical need, which regrettably has resulted in longer patient waiting times and the postponement of six elective surgeries due to increased pressure on bed capacity," she said.

Meanwhile, it was confirmed yesterday the problem recruiting full-time consultants is forcing up to 50 cancer patients in Donegal to endure a gruelling journey to Galway for chemotherapy.
A waitress jailed for life for murdering her co-worker has broken her silence to claim she is innocent.

Marta Herda (29) was found guilty last year of murdering Csaba Orsos (31) by driving her Volkswagen Passat through crash barriers and into the harbour in Arklow, Co Wicklow, before 6am on March 26, 2013.

Her trial heard she was a good swimmer and knew her passenger could not swim.

In a letter from prison, she has broken her silence and claimed that she was afraid of Mr Orsos after refusing his advances.

Writing from her cell in the Dochas Prison on Dublin's North Circular Road, Herda admits she is still in shock, six months after her conviction for murder.

Read more: 'He was shouting that I ruined his last hope... suddenly a big bang' - Marta Herda breaks her silence in exclusive prison letter

She claims that on her way to the shore she passed by Mr Orsos's home, where she saw him in a distressed state.

"He suddenly ran out and got into my car. He told me he was finally going to explain everything," she writes.

"He was so angry, his face was purple. He was shouting that I ruined his last hope and that nothing makes sense. He told me he did not want to live without me.

"Suddenly a big bang. Bang. We hit something very hard and then we hit the water.

"Everything was black, I could not see. After some time, a wave threw me to the surface, but only for a moment."

Herda was brought to hospital and then questioned by gardai. Her trial heard that during these interviews she told gardai: "I feel I have enough of this . . . I drive to water. I cannot take this any more."

She now insists that this was a mis-translation and that Mr Orsos's death was an accident.

Herda went on trial last summer. The jury of eight men and four women began deliberating on Monday, July 25, and three days later they delivered a guilty verdict.
The man also faces similar accusations of attacking a friend of his wife in 2009. Stock picture

A young Irish au pair was allegedly drugged and raped by her employer in France.

A man (40) from a town to the west of Paris was arrested by police and remanded in custody while investigations into the case are under way.

The 20-year-old Irishwoman made a complaint to French police and said on the night of the alleged attack her employer gave her a glass of vodka.

After drinking it, she felt dizzy and said she remembered him kissing her before going on to rape her. She said she was aware but was unable to do anything to try to prevent the attack.

The incident happened on a holiday last summer which she had been brought on to look after the man's two-year-old son.

The man also faces similar accusations of attacking a friend of his wife in 2009.

The man was brought before a court where evidence was given that police had discovered coca leaves and traces of a plant extract, which they suspect were used to drug the women, according to a report in the 'Le Parisien' newspaper.

His wife also told police that she had separated from the man when she learned he had drugged and raped her best friend previously. Her friend spoke to the police and alleged that she was also given vodka before being raped by the man.

The alleged attacker denies all the charges.

Professionals working in the au pair sector declared yesterday they were horrified by the reports of the alleged rape.

Cormac Maher, who assists in the placement of au pairs with mainly Irish families and some families based abroad, such as Italy, through aupairireland.ie, said he found the reports "quite disturbing".

Vetting

He said au pairs will in many cases have police clearance - but families themselves do not usually undergo any police vetting procedure. It was best to take whatever precautions where possible before accepting a job with a family.

"We recommend that a woman would ask a family if they have previously hired an au pair and if they would mind giving that au pair's details for a reference.

"You have to take these precautions if you are going to live with somebody you've never met before. It would be common sense as you are interviewing them as much as them interviewing you," he said.

Many families who advertise for au pairs state they have employed them in the past and that they are happy to share their information with candidates for reference purposes so that previous au pairs can be contacted, he said.

The applicant is advised to talk with the family and see them at home, and to "trust your intuition", he said.

"Au pairs, as grown adults, need to be aware of dangers in their day-to-day lives. The fact that they are going to live with somebody does not necessarily mean they are going to be nice people. As an au pair, you have to investigate or interview them as much as they interview you," he said.

A spokesman for findaupair.com advised that would-be au pairs seek references from families. "A young woman might be excited with an offer but she should take common sense steps to check. It's always better to speak on Skype and see the family and their home rather than relying on a phone call. Trust your gut inclination," he said.
Gardai celebrate after the passing out ceremony of probationer gardai at the Garda College in Templemore yesterday. Photo: Steve Humphreys

The strength of An Garda Siochana has increased for the first time since recruitment resumed last year.

Up to now, the extra personnel being taken into the Garda College in Templemore have accounted only for the numbers leaving through retirements and resignations.

This was a result of the Government and Garda authorities trying to play "catch-up" following the five-year ban on recruitment imposed in 2009.

A programme to increase civilianisation and free up more gardai to work on the streets also got under way yesterday.

An initial batch of 140 recruits is being taken in by the summer and will be deployed in the national specialist units as well as in desk duties, which will allow an estimated 50 extra gardai to be released from offices.

The move is part of an overall plan to double the number of civilians in the force from the current 2,000 with a target date of 2021. In the same time frame, the authorities are planning to increase Garda strength from 12,900 to 15,000 and the reserve force to 2,000.

Deputy Garda Commissioner John Twomey said the aim was to ensure that "every corner of the country" would benefit from the extra numbers.

He was speaking during a passing out ceremony for 149 recruits yesterday at the Garda College in Templemore, Co Tipperary.

Mr Twomey said that for the first time since recruitment resumed last year, following the five-year moratorium, Garda numbers had gone up.

The strength has increased from 12,800 to 12,900 and it will continue to rise as it is planning to recruit 800 new members a year, compared with about 300 leaving annually.

The head of the civilian staff, chief administrative officer Joe Nugent, said it was a "great day" for the force.

The new staff would also introduce a range of skills and disciplines into the organisation, he added, while freeing up gardai.

Around half of the probationers passing out yesterday have been allocated to stations in the six divisions in the Dublin metropolitan region.

Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan told the probationers that the values and code of ethics for the force were grounded in the reality that they could not do their job without the assistance, support or trust of the public they served.

"This trust cannot be, and should not be, taken for granted in your new careers," she said.
At first, Greg comes across as your typical student. The 22-year-old attends his lectures, shares a home with a friend and makes the most of his downtime. He enjoys life in Belfast, mingles with other young people and harbours dreams of a successful career after graduation.

But any sense of ordinariness belies Greg's horror backstory. It fails to reveal a tale of such revulsion that you involuntarily wince just listening to it.

It's a story of grooming, of exploitation, of repeated rape, of systematic and persistent sexual abuse of a young boy mercilessly and brutally robbed of the childhood that so many of us take for granted.

It's a cautionary account of someone who was targeted by a vile, violent paedophile who not only used an innocent adolescent for his own gratification, but pimped him out to countless others.

Yet, despite the violence, the mental and physical violation, the seemingly never-ending nightmare and the psychological scars, Greg wants his story to be heard.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing of all, however, is that he's still around to tell it.

He's a survivor. And he has chosen this week - Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week, organised by the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland - to share with us how he clawed his way back from a darkness that, thankfully, most of us will never encounter but, sadly, some of us still do.

It all started a decade ago, when Greg (not his real name) was just 12. His mum and dad had separated, his two older sisters had flown the nest and he lived with his builder dad, who was in his mid-40s and drank heavily.

School life for the already troubled youngster was never wonderful, but after Greg came out prior to turning 13, things took a terrible turn for the worse.

That was when he made the fateful decision to go online, where he would make contact with Jason - a 26-year-old paedophile who called himself a businessman.

After two weeks of virtual chatting, Greg and Jason agreed to meet up, and just three weeks later they spent the night together.

"We stayed in a hotel and got intimate... it was my first time," recalls Greg. "I felt very loved. I felt that, above all, Jason was my friend. I was quite happy to just be friends, but he appeared to want a loving, intimate relationship, which I went along with.

"When someone buys you stuff and listens to your problems and tells you it's not your fault - which is what you think - it's very powerful... it swallowed me up. I bought into it".

Greg saw Jason as a route away from his troubled life, and Jason took full advantage.

"I was living with my dad, but we argued constantly and he drank a lot because of stresses at work," says Greg, who was living in London at the time.

"I just remember feeling that no one understood me. Then I came out as gay at school and immediately lost all my friends. I thought they'd understand... they were all I had.

"I suffered quite significant homophobic bullying in school and constant emotional abuse.

"The day I came out, a teacher took me aside and told me to report any problems, but I wasn't going to grass. I thought it would just make it worse."

In Greg's mind, the time had come to find new friends.

"I discovered a site that let young people join and I met Jason, who told me he was 18," says Greg.

"I could see from his pictures that he was clearly older, but I didn't mind because here was someone who was actually interested in me and what I had to say.

"Social services never listened to me. They came to assess me and I told them how unhappy I was with my dad and how we were always arguing, but they said it was my behaviour and nothing to do with my dad.

"It's no surprise that after chatting online every day for a couple of weeks I met up with Jason.

"He turned me away from everyone. He said the friends who deserted me after I came out were cowards. He said everything I wanted to hear.

"The first thing I thought when I met him was that he wasn't 18. About a month later, I confronted him about it and he admitted he was 26. But I went along with it because I felt important and I felt valued."

Jason showered Greg with gifts including new clothes, mobile phones, alcohol, drugs and more - and won him over.

"When I first met him it was lovely," he recalls.

"My dad had stopped giving me money and Jason bought me a new pair of trainers that I wanted.

"I was bunking off school and meeting him every day at that point.

"Less than a month after we met, he began taking me to a flat. It was sparsely furnished. There was so much food ground into the living room carpet that if you scraped it up you could have made a meal out of it. It was revolting.

"That's where some of the 'parties' were held. The others were in cheap hotels.

"There would be one or two other boys (aged 14 or 15) and six or seven grown men.

"The first time Jason asked me to do him a favour, it was to get intimate with a man in his late 40s.

"I didn't like the man and I didn't feel very comfortable with it, so I said, 'No, I'd rather not'. Then Jason slapped me across the face and said, 'Do you feel any more comfortable now?' That was three months down the line..."

Soon, being intimate with Jason's 'friends' became commonplace, as did the psychological conditioning.

"I sort of learned to not enjoy it, but not see it as a bad thing," Gregg says, at this point visibly struggling to speak as some of the more lurid memories flooded back into his mind.

"It became my new normal and I just took drugs to block everything out."

Greg explains that all he had wanted, as a troubled youngster who had just come out, was to be part of a world of like-minded people - and that's what Jason had promised to get him into.

"He took me to a bar when I was only 13 and I just felt so grown up," he remembers.

"He'd buy me drinks, then we'd go to a hotel or the flat and I'd go missing for two or three days."

Eight months after meeting Jason, Greg lied to a suspicious social worker that his new friend was 18.

"I thought if I said he was 26, she'd call the police," he says.

"Sexual exploitation was suspected, but no call was made to Barnardo's (the UK's largest charity for vulnerable children) at this stage."

Social services did, however, inform his family - and his father repeatedly punched him in the face until he gave up his mobile phone, which contained indecent images of him and Jason.

The phone was handed over to the police, but the abuse continued for another year.

"Without a statement from me, they couldn't do anything with the phone," says Greg, admitting he has never given that statement.

"Despite everything, I still felt that these people were my friends."

But it wasn't long before the child abuse and rape got a lot worse.

"Soon, all Jason needed me for was to have sex with other people," Gregg says.

"Men paid him - and he mostly paid me in the form of drugs, which I was now dependent on. I was on crack, heroin, ecstasy, a lot of ketamine, everything. I felt worthless; someone who was only good for having sex with.

"Not only was I going to the flat, but I was being taxied around the country to be with men... sometimes many of them at a time.

"The abuse then got more sadistic. My hands were tied with a scarf to a headboard and I was left there for hours.

"I had marks on my wrists for days afterwards. I was so terrified I didn't even try to free myself."

Things came to a head on Greg's 14th birthday, in May 2008.

"I was in foster care at that time and I hated my foster carer," he explains. "I hadn't been at school for months and I kept going missing for days at a time.

"The whole point of putting me into care was to safeguard me, but it just made it worse.

"It was as if, as soon as Jason found out I was in care, he upped the ante.

"He promised me we'd do something special together to celebrate my 14th birthday, but instead I got severely beaten up and raped that day.

"Finally, in the early hours of the morning, he unlocked the flat door and let me out. I made my way to A&E.

"I told the nurse I'd been in a fight - just like I had before - but she didn't believe me.

"She was different - she was warm and open. I finally broke down, told her that I'd been beaten and raped and social services were informed.

"I was taken to hospital, spoke to a counsellor there and then I was sectioned for three months."

Effectively, the nightmare was over, although the physical and psychological scars would be much harder to erase.

Greg had, after all, spent a year-and-a-half being horrifically abused by at least 100 different men, many of whom had got together at times to 'share' their vulnerable prey.

The young survivor believes social services must take some of the blame for this unthinkable ordeal. "They failed me monstrously," he says.

"I begged them to put me in care when they first started working with me before the exploitation started, but they wouldn't.

"I should have been referred to Barnardo's from the moment I disclosed I had met an 18-year-old, but no one did anything.

"It was that one nurse in A&E who showed a little bit of interest that changed everything.

"The exploitation stopped because while I was in hospital I had no access to a phone and I wasn't allowed out for three months.

"But the second I came out of hospital I would have gone straight back into the exploitation cycle if I hadn't been referred (by social services) to Barnardo's in August 2008. It was them who saved my life."

Greg was eventually discharged and put into a foster home.

He was still in the throes of drug addiction, something he wouldn't fully escape from until a 28-day spell in rehab when he was 16.

"I was in the foster system until I got my own place," he explains

"By the time I was 18 I'd been through therapy, got a job and a flat and was paying my own rent.

"I did it all by myself. I was free of professionals and I could stand on my own two feet.

"I felt a sense of accomplishment and pride. It felt good doing that."

A tale of redemption in the end, but with one note of caution that resonates even more during this particular week.

Jason - like so many other monsters - is still out there.

Drive to highlight signs and protect vulnerable kids

Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness Week is aimed at broadening the awareness of an increasingly important issue.

All week, members of the Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland  including Barnardos, the PSNI, local health trusts and the NSPCC  have been escalating their social media activity to highlight the threat faced by Northern Ireland children and increase awareness of the danger signs.

Barnardos NI has a service  called Safe Choices  which is dedicated to supporting young girls and boys who are, or are at risk of, being sexually exploited. It has been operating for 17 years.
Neil Reilly was described as having a "heart of gold" at the funeral service

The family of murder victim Neil Reilly declared a special thanks at his funeral today for the "compassionate help of the Garda Siochana".

Neil Reilly's mother also praised her son for his "heart of gold" in a moving eulogy.

His mother Marian addressed the large congregation at Saint Patrick's Church in Esker, Lucan, as his fiancee Gina McAney stood near her.

Neil Reilly (36) was found lying on a roadway at Esker Glebe Estate in Lucan at 4am on January 18, not far from his home at Saint Finian's Close.

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He had been beaten, stabbed and run over by a car.

Among the items brought to the altar at the beginning of the Requiem Mass were a toy car, to symbolise the new motor garage that the victim, a mechanic, had opened in December.

A pair of jump leads was carried to the altar in recognition of "his willingness to drop everything to help anyone". Photographs of his fiancee and children were brought to the altar along with a dog lead to symbolise his love for his dogs Sarah and Gary.

He was praised for being a loving father and four names of his children were read out on the altar. A poignant floral bouquet depicting the word 'Dad' was brought in the hearse to the church.

The victim's mother Marian, speaking at the end of the Mass, said the Mass was a commemoration of his life.

"He has shown nothing but determination, dedication, respect and love," she said, naming his four children and his fiancee Gina.

"Neil was very happy and content in himself. Neil and Gina got engaged on Christmas Day and we were all so happy for both of them."

She said Neil and his son were "buddies and best friends" who had a lot of fun together and he had "a super relationship" with his daughters who were "his princesses."

She will always treasure her memories of him, she said.

"His senseless, brutal murder makes no sense to any of us at all," she said.

She asked the congregation to remember "the Neil who was full of life, the Neil who always had a brilliant sense of humour, the Neil who loved life and had great determination and strength."

He was so looking forward to his new life with Gina and his children and the new garage business he had just opened, she said.

She declared "We loved you Neil, so much, and that love will not be taken from us.

And Neil's motto was "thumbs up, a big hearty laugh, thumbs up, and we'll get sorted, forward, not back."

She gave a thumbs up as a sign as applause filled the church at the end of her speech.
A father who claims his 12-year-old daughter broke her neck while riding the Cu Chulainn rollercoaster in Tayto Park has called for an overhaul of the regulations overseeing theme parks and funfairs.

Eoin Moran told RTE Prime Time programme that his daughter initially believed she had suffered whiplash after a ride on the rollercoaster last August.

However after four weeks in pain she had an x-ray which revealed that her neck was broken.

Tayto Park says it was notified of the extent of the alleged incident four weeks after it occurred, and they carried out a full investigation. They confirmed that this is now the subject of legal proceedings which they will be rigorously defending.

Expand Close Eoin Moran told RTE Prime Time programme that his daughter had a broken neck after riding the rollercoaster / Facebook

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Whatsapp Eoin Moran told RTE Prime Time programme that his daughter had a broken neck after riding the rollercoaster

Eoin Moran told RTE Prime Time that he "counts his blessings" that his daughter is alive.

"When she was x-rayed in Crumlin the medical team reacted immediately that this was an emergency situation and she was in surgery twice over the next couple of days.

"The medical team has made it clear to us that this is a very serious injury that she is very lucky to be breathing, that she is very lucky not to be paralysed she is lucky to be alive.

"So while what she has gone through is very serious and has been very difficult for her and us we do count our blessings that that child is alive and will recover for the most part."

Mr Moran spoke on the show to highlight a gap in legislation which means that no statutory body has the responsibility or authority to investigate health and safety incidents in theme parks and funfairs.

"We were shocked when we realised our child has a broken neck but we are shocked again to find that no statutory body is responsible, that no one is looking after the health of our children, that there is no oversight."

Fairground rides and equipment have been subject to strict annual inspections by independent engineers since 2003.

Tayto Park said that its health and safety standards are subject to constant review to meet the highest standards. However no state body has the power to investigate reports of accidents or injuries on such sites.

RTE Prime Time programme revealed that no state authority has investigated the stairs collapse in the House of Horrors attraction in Tayto Park last October when nine people were taken to hospital.

Tayto Park told RTE Prime Time a Health and Safety Authority official had visited the site and told them to have a replacement stairs evaluated by two engineering companies which they did.

"We considered that we had co-operated with a HSA investigation but they may have another descriptor for this interaction with the incident."

The HSA said the legislation it operates under does not stretch to the investigation of such incidents.

"We have to be able to make the link between the place of work and a work activity. In that circumstance we determined that it wasnt a matter for the authority. We did not investigate that."

HSA Assistant Chief Executive Brian Higgisson told the programme: "To my knowledge there is no other statutory body that would have a role to investigate in relation to a public safety incident in a fairground or funfair."

Housing, Planning and Local Government Minister Simon Coveney told the family that his Department is currently reviewing issues in relation to safety at funfairs, theme parks and community events.

"The issues of legislative change and updated guidance will be considered in light of this review," Mr Coveney said.

A similar review was ordered by then Minister Mary Harney 18 years ago had never been acted on.

Tayto Park management said in a statement that it is aware of an allegation of an injury on the Cu Chulainn Coaster. "We have carried out a full investigation utilising CCTV footage, staff interviews etc and as a result of this Tayto Park will be defending this action rigorously.

"Tayto Park is very proud of its Health and Safety standards. Tayto Park has not received any other complaints from over 850,000 customers who have enjoyed the Cu Chulainn Coaster."

Eoin Moran said his family have been on an "emotional journey".

"We have been on quite an emotional journey over the last few months. We were shocked that our child, a happy go lucky healthy 12-year-old kid could go to her local theme park for a day out and come back with her neck broken, that shocked us and that has made us angry...but when we raised the issue and our concerns that this could happen to someone else and find that no one is responsible, that no one is looking after the health of our children, that there is no oversight, to find that neither the Health and Safety Authority or no other body is overseeing the health and safety, protecting our children.

"That has been quite a shock to us and this is something that needs to be dealt with."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept.23

By Aygun Badalova - Trend:

Uzbek president's daughter Gulnara Karimova appears in the materials of criminal cases on fraud, said the statement posted on the website of the General Prosecutor's Office of Uzbekistan.

The statement said that the subject of careful and painstaking investigation of the law enforcement agencies of Uzbekistan is the alleged illegal activity of organized group, including R.Madumarov, G. Avakyan, N. Sodikova and others, which operated in the country.

The matter rests in the acquisition of state-owned assets at artificially low prices, their misappropriation and embezzlement as well as commitment of other economic and financial fraud, which caused considerable economic damage to Uzbekistan, the statement notes.

"The state assets and property in the total amount of 457 billion soums were returned to the government for repayment of damages so far," the statement said.

"The daughter of Uzbek President Gulnara Karimova and others who could use administrative levers and provide conditions favorable for corruption to the members of an organized group R. Madumarov and N. Sodikova appear in the proceedings of criminal cases," according to the statement.

One of the criminal cases against R.Madumarov, G.Avakyan and others, which has passed the preliminary investigation, will be forwarded for consideration by the judicial authorities in the coming days. The investigation of the other criminal cases continues, the statement said.

The statement emphasizes that the daughter of Gulnara Karimova, Iman, has nothing to do with the criminal cases under investigation.
Dr Martin said Mr Trumps recent executive order, affecting immigrants from seven mainly Muslim countries, was the most serious matter for Enda Kenny during his St Patricks Day visit to the White House. Photo: Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images

Catholic Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin has called on the Taoiseach to be "courageous" when visiting US President Donald Trump in response to his ban on refugees.

Dr Martin said Mr Trump's recent executive order, affecting immigrants from seven mainly Muslim countries, was the most serious matter for Enda Kenny during his St Patrick's Day visit to the White House.

"I hope he will be as courageous and as frank (as when he visited Rome) when he visits President Trump and that he brings with him the concerns of people here," he said.

Dr Martin said he would like Mr Kenny "to express the concerns that are present among the people of Ireland about some of the decisions he's making, particularly about refugees."

Speaking on RTE Radio's Sean O'Rourke Show, he said: "Putting a ban on refugees, it's in complete disagreement with not just the specifics of international law but the culture of the Irish."

Amnesty International's Colm O'Gorman also said: "It is a grave violation under international law.

"I think he (Mr Kenny) could communicate the concerns of the Irish people. He could also present bows of the shamrock at the leading synagogue and the leading mosque in Washington."
Stephen Donnelly is introduced by Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin as Mayo TD Lisa Chambers looks on at Leinster House. Photo: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Stephen Donnelly was immediately on the back foot over his decision to join Fianna Fail, as he was confronted by the stinging criticism he had previously aimed at the party.

Despite Mr Donnelly's consistent attacks on the party over recent years, Micheal Martin welcomed him as "new talent" who could "broaden the attractiveness of the party".

But shortly after being paraded at Leinster House, Mr Donnelly struggled when asked on RTE's 'Drivetime' about an article in which he wrote that the culture associated with Fianna Fail was one "of jobs for the boys, bonuses for the boys, lack of accountability and two fingers to the Dail".

"I don't know where you're quoting it from. That's certainly not my language. I don't believe I wrote those words. It doesn't sound like the kind of language I use," he said.

The article in question appeared in the 'Sunday Independent' in January 2014. In the article, he wrote the "jobs for the boys" description came from a seasoned political observer, but he appeared to agree with the assessment - adding: "I hate it when the cynics are right."

Nonetheless, Fianna Fail believes the recruitment marks a milestone in its campaign to rebuild the party's image.

The move has unsettled some of the party's front bench, who suspect the Wicklow/East Carlow TD merely sees Fianna Fail as "a fast-track to cabinet" after the next election.

Read more: Stephen Donnelly gets tongue tied as he denies writing Sunday Independent column

His immediate appointment as the party's spokesman on Brexit has led to speculation that he has done a further deal with Mr Martin on potential roles in the next government should Fianna Fail win power.

However, Mr Donnelly denied this, saying: "No, not at all. The cynical approach would be to stay on the Opposition benches, keep the head down, see what the numbers are like next time out and see what I could do then."

Asked about his previous attacks on Fianna Fail, the former Social Democrats co-leader said: "I'm not going to retract various statements I made over mistakes made back leading up to the crash.

"What is important is what's happening to Ireland today. Brexit is happening today. American protectionism is happening today.

"The rise of extremism in Europe is happening today."

Mr Donnelly also claimed there were very few differences between the policies of the Social Democrats, which he quit last September, and Fianna Fail.

Speaking to the Irish Independent last night, his former colleague Roisin Shortall said: "I don't know how he can make a claim like that."

She cited her party's position on the USC, the baptism barrier, repealing of the Eighth Amendment and the establishment of an anti-corruption agency as some examples where the parties differed.

Mr Martin said Fianna Fail's sitting TD in Wicklow, Pat Casey, had welcomed the new recruit and that the party intended to retain two seats in the constituency at the next election.

What Donnelly said about his new party in the past . . .

February 2016

"We must challenge the stale cartel of Irish Civil War politics."

January 2016

"To a point, it's hard to blame them - the pre-election, tax-cutting doctrine worked a treat for FF. To a point. But when it comes to running a country, increasing longer-term risks to satisfy short-term gains will, ultimately, catch up with you."

October 2015

"Eroding the tax base is exactly what Fianna Fail did during the bubble. It felt pretty good at the time, but it had disastrous consequences."

December 2013

"I don't think FF has coherent policies...it is still recovering from what's happened."

November 2012

"Fianna Fail presided over lucky-dip budgets with a surprise for everyone in the audience. On budget day they would grin into the cameras, and FG and Labour would be in the background, shouting that they would have had less taxes, spent even more. These budgets, prepared in secrecy, laid the groundwork for the collapse - the property Ponzi scheme was super-charged, a stable tax base was replaced with stamp duty, expenditure soared."
A protest group calling themselves the Cork Street Names Campaign has used black paint to cover the word Victoria on a number of street signs in the city.

The group say that the action was designed to remove the name of "the Famine Queen who committed genocide" against the Irish people.

Diarmaid O Cadhla, the spokesperson for the group, has defended the move as "civil disobedience, saying the move was designed to remove Victorias name in order to respect the memory of the millions who were starved and were dispossessed under her reign".

In a statement the group said they particularly condemn "the association of Tomas Mac Curtain's name with Victoria, as in the efforts to establish a 'Victoria Quarter' in Cork".

Correcting a wrong! Vulgar Victoria's name is removed in #Cork The Famine Queen committed genocide against #Irish & many other peoples. pic.twitter.com/c5odN1mOkC  Diarmaid O CADHLA (@GraTire) February 2, 2017

Speaking to Independent.ie Mr O Cadhla said the defacing of the signs amounted to civil disobedience because "an offense has been removed from public view".

The action was done openly and participants "take full responsibility" he said. He criticised claims that the protest was "wanton vandalism" as "utter nonsense".

However, Corks Lord Mayor Des Cahill condemned the protest.

"It was a criminal act of damage and my understanding that City Hall will be notifying gardai," he said.

2Its ludicrous... they dont represent anyone.... Its appalling what they did. No one is in favour of it."

Mr Cahill told Independent.ie that the list of names which the group wish to see changed has nothing to do with the Mayors office and should be brought to the attention of the road traffic department.

However the group have repeated calls for the Mayor to look at the document they have prepared.
RTE staff will undergo 'inclusion and diversity training' from an outside company in a move which the broadcaster hopes will help it fully reflect Irish society.

A tender published by the state broadcaster this week requests expressions of interest from companies in a position to provide such 'diversity and inclusion awareness training' to staff and management.

The tender reads: "RTE seeks to engage an organisational training company to work over a finite time period to design and deliver diversity and inclusion awareness training to its staff and management."

RTE did not respond when asked how much has been allocated to cover the cost of the training.

A spokesman said that the broadcaster is "seeking a proposal which is both innovative and offers value for money".

"RTE recognises that it is in the privileged position of reflecting and shaping our understanding of our society and culture. Few organisations are as influential in Ireland or require greater trust than RTE," the spokesman added.

It is hoped that the training will ensure RTE "reflects the lives, experiences and stories of all the communities on the island and support management and staff to enable them to carry out their daily responsibilities".

"This type of training has been successfully used by other broadcasters who are leaders in this area," RTE said.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has commented for the first time about US President Donald Trumps use of social media, describing his late night tweets as unusual to put it mildly.

Mr Kenny described Mr Trump as a different personality but insisted once again that he will visit the controversial figure in the White House during St Patricks week.

Speaking in Malta on Friday, the Fine Gael leader admitted that he will consider inviting Mr Trump over to Ireland for a return visit.

Asked about Mr Trumps use of twitter to raise issues on international relations, Mr Kenny replied: Well its unusual to put it mildly.

He added that Mr Trump is issuing executive orders based on pledges he made during the Presidential election campaign.

Thats his way of operating as President, Mr Kenny told reporters.

On the issue of whether he will invite Mr Trump to Ireland, Mr Kenny indicated that he will consider such a move ahead of the White House visit.

Mr Kenny made the comments during a break in an informal EU summit in Malta. He said it was his first time in the country.

He said that the sentiment in the room was not personalised towards Mr Trump.

I have to say most of the contributions were not anti American and were not personalised towards the President, the Mayo politician said.

But we're looking at the question of how you have a unified approach of the European Council to working with the American administration taking into account the standard and credibility and relationship it has had with the United States over many years. I pointed out the particular long association we have had ourselves over many years.

The first session was attended by British Prime Minister Theresa May, who briefed the EU heads of state about her visit to meet Mr Trump in Washington.

Mr Kenny said that the issue of the border was raised during discussions between him and other EU heads of state in light of Brexit.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was spotted having a meeting in a Supermacs fast food restaurant in Co Longford.

The Supermacs, which is part of a petrol station, was the official place of business for the Taoiseach on April 29 2016.

Twitter user @infinityonhi shared the image with Independent.ie, saying her brother was shocked to see the Government officials at the restaurant.

"This is why Ireland is the greatest country in the world," one user said.

While another wrote: "He's just an ordinary man of the people."
A large number of mourners are expected at the funerals next week of a beloved priest and former GAA star who passed away while on holiday in South Africa.

Fr Tom Colreavy, a native of Gortletteragh, Co Leitrim, died suddenly early last Monday while on holiday in Cape Town.

Such was the level of esteem that he was held in both his adopted home in north Dublin and his native parish in Co Leitrim that separate funerals will be held in each parish.

His death came as a shock to his family, friends and fellow parishioners at St Pauls Church in Ayrfield, Dublin, where he celebrated his Golden Jubilee as a priest in 2013 following 50 years in the priesthood.

"This has come as a shock to his family and friends, we keep them all in our thoughts and prayers at this time," the church said in a statement.

Fr Tom was also highly regarded by GAA supporters in his home county where he was an integral part of the "great Leitrim teams of the late 1950s," according to Leitrim GAA which paid tribute to him following the announcement of his death.

The former fullback who played in the Connacht finals in 1957-59 was described as "the first familiar face you would recognise at many gatherings that have occurred in almost six decades that have passed subsequently".

"A staunch Leitrim supporter, Fr Tom had an avid interest in the fortunes of all Leitrim teams over the years in addition to those of his native Gortletteragh. He was essentially a great people person and, despite his pastoral workload in a busy Dublin parish, you would never be surprised to see him at events, be they happy or sad, in his native county, such were the network of contacts and friendships that he had built up over many, many years."

The St Laurence OTooles GAA club in Dublin also paid tribute to him as a great patron of the club "who was greatly loved within the parish. He will be deeply missed by all who had the pleasure of meeting him".

Fr Tom is survived by his sister Kathleen, brothers Hugh, Michael, Jack and Seamus and extended family.

He will repose at his home at Ard na Greine, Ayrfield from 2pm to 6pm on Sunday followed by removal to St Pauls Church, Ayrfield, for Requiem Mass at noon on Monday.

He will then make his final journal to his home town of Gortletteragh, Co Leitrim where Requiem Mass will be held at noon on Tuesday at St Marys Church, followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery.
More than two-thirds of Irelands 3,700 prisoners have drug or alcohol addiction problems. Stock Image

More than two-thirds of Ireland's 3,700 prisoners have drug or alcohol addiction problems, TDs have been told.

Irish Prison Service director general Michael Donnellan revealed the extraordinary figure at the Dail's Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

He said the Prison Service ran treatment and detox programmes and there were 500 prisoners who were on methadone.

Separately, he said that at any one time up to 30 prisoners - who could be described as "psychotic" - were waiting for places in acute mental health facilities.

"Our prisons - people would say - are our new asylums because we get so many people who have got acute mental health problems," he said.

The PAC also heard that an "annualised hours" system of pay that replaced overtime for prison officers in 2005 did not result in 31m a year savings as estimated. Instead 5.5m a year was saved and this was reduced further due to lump sums paid to officers to secure their agreement for the new arrangement. The system is being reviewed.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 2

By Fatih Karimov  Trend:

Mutual trade turnover between Iran and Denmark has increased by 60 percent in the current fiscal year (started March 2016), Mohammad Reza Bakhtiari, Tehran Chamber of Commerce deputy head for international affairs, said.

He made the remarks while commenting on the ongoing visit of a delegation from the chamber to the European country, Mehr news agency reported Feb. 2.

The trade turnover has increased from $120 million to $190 million in the current fiscal year, following the removal of the international sanctions against Tehran in January 2016, he said.

Bakhtiari further said that Denmarks Danske Bank was the first European bank to start cooperation with Iran in post-sanctions era, adding that the bank has allocated a credit of 7.5 billion euros to finance the projects carried out by Danish companies in Iran.

He said the Iranian delegation will negotiate boosting trade ties with Denmark during the visit.

Bakhtiari forecast that Iranian firms will sign documents for cooperation in pharmaceutical and medical equipment industry as well as food sector.

Denmarks exports to Iran stood at $141.8 million in the first nine months of Irans current fiscal year (March 20-Dec. 20, 2016), while it imported $6.64 million worth of goods from Iran in the period.

Iran mainly imports medicines and medical equipment from the European country and exports various types of flooring and carpets, as well as food industry products.
The Bayview estate, near the scene of the attack

Gardai near the Bayview Estate in Killiney. Photo: Mark Condren

Gardai near the Bayview Estate in Killiney. Photo: Mark Condren

Gardai investigating the sexual assault of a woman in south Dublin are confident they will apprehend the attacker.

A woman in her 40s was attacked at 5.45pm on Monday at the Bayview housing estate in Killiney.

She managed to fight her attacker off but was understood to be shaken.

Fifty concerned residents turned up at a neighbourhood watch meeting in Shankill last night, with several saying they were afraid to walk around the estate at night.

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One resident said her daughters frequently took the same route from the Dart station as the woman who was attacked.

Insp Tom Condon, of Dun Laoghaire Garda Station, told the meeting that gardai are in the early stages of the investigation but have a large amount of CCTV footage to examine.

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We will apprehend this guy, I can tell you that, were very confident, he said.

Residents are calling for CCTV to be mounted at all entrances to the estate.

Gardai are trying to establish if the attacker followed the woman a short distance before the attack or if she was targeted as she walked in his direction.

The man has been described as tall and thin. He was wearing white running shoes.

It is understood he fled the scene on foot, running off in the direction of the Killiney Hill Road.

A possible link between this weeks attack and a spate of similar incidents in Shankill last year has been ruled out.
A second phase of three- and four-bedroom family houses has been released at Churchfields, a development beside the town centre in Ashbourne that's catering to demand in the Greater Dublin commuter belt. The Co Meath town (population 14,000) is just 20km north of Dublin city centre.

Some 45 homes at Churchfields were sold after the scheme launched after October Budget Day, when the Government introduced a help-to-buy scheme for first-time buyers that will give a tax rebate of 5pc of the purchase value of a new home. Built by Cairn Homes, the stock-exchange-listed builder, the development will have 300 homes when complete. In the newest phase, 20 homes will be available to buy.

There are four main house types available in the upcoming release, with plans to build four- and five-bed detached styles in a later phase. Prices start at 272,000 for the three-bed, plan H two-storey homes, which measure 1,160 sq ft, and at 295,000 for plan D, 1,258-sq ft version. The four-bed, semi- detached two-storey homes that belong to plan C cost from 340,000 and extend over 1,463 sq ft, while a three-storey version of the four-bed, from plan C1 spanning 1,883 sq ft, costs from 380,000.

High-performance windows are designed lower to the floor to maximise the light streaming into each house. The interior features that come as standard at Churchfields include contemporary kitchens with gloss doors, an island or peninsula unit, underfloor heating, and separate utility rooms. From the ground floor, which has 9ft ceilings, there is a staircase with a hardwood handrail. There are solid-timber painted doors and contemporary grooved architrave and skirting throughout.

The main bathroom, downstairs WC and ensuites will have tiling to the wet areas, fitted showers, sanitary ware and natural Skytube lights. All the plans, except for type H, will have a convertible attic space: the roof trusses have been designed for future conversion, with a pull-down attic ladder.

The homes at Churchfields have an A3 building energy rating and come with roof-mounted PV panels, a high-efficiency gas-fired boiler, a demand- control ventilation system that ensures an automatic supply of fresh air without letting heat escape, and an insulated airtight design. Running costs for households at Churchfields are less than 2 a day for heating, hot water, lighting and ventilation, according to guidelines on standardised occupancy by the Sustainable Energy Association of Ireland.

The showhouses are open from 2.30pm to 4pm tomorrow and Sunday.

Enquiries to: Hooke & MacDonald (01) 6318402 or REA T&J Gavigan (046) 9023232
The location of Royal Canal Park, on the banks of the eponymous canal, has been a selling point for the three- and four-bed homes in the previous four phases of the development.

The latest phase of 22 homes being released this weekend goes one better - most directly overlook the canal. The scheme is in Pelletstown, an area between Ashtown and Cabra that has been earmarked by Dublin City Council as holding potential for future residential growth in the capital. It is close to the 123ac Tolka Valley Park, Ashtown train station and the Navan Road.

Royal Canal Park was launched in November 2015 and will eventually have 152 homes in all. Seventy families have since moved into the scheme, being built by Ballymore.

There are two main house types on offer at Royal Canal Park. The three-beds vary in size, with between 1,302 sq ft and 1,314 sq ft of space, including an extended kitchen that can accommodate a multimedia wall. These are priced from 345,000. The four-beds, which measure 1,677 sq ft to 1,744 sq ft, depending on the style, cost from 410,000. The four-beds are laid out over three floors, with the master bedroom and its dramatic double-height ceiling on the top floor. Residents moving from older properties will be able to reduce their utility bills at the A-rated houses, courtesy of energy-efficient features such as an air-to-water heat-pump system that feeds the wall-mounted radiators and provides domestic hot water.

Ballymore says planning permission has been sought for a train station at the development itself. The area is also served by the 120 bus to O'Connell Street, a 14-minute drive by car.

The show homes at Royal Canal Park can be viewed from 2pm to 4pm tomorrow and Sunday, or by appointment.

Enquiries to: Sherry FitzGerald (New Homes) (01) 6671888
The last batch of homes have gone on sale at Wilkins View, a development of three- and four-bed homes in Walkinstown aimed at mid-market house hunters in southwest Dublin.

The residential estate, situated in a quiet cul-de-sac off Temple Manor, Limekiln Avenue, was first released to the market in September. The final phase, launching this weekend, consists of 13 three-bed terraced homes and four-bed semi-detached and end-of-terrace properties. The development is being built by Jackie Greene Construction. To date, purchasers of the three-beds have mostly been first-timers or older buyers trading down, while the four-beds have appealed to trader-uppers.

Prices in the latest tranche start at 445,000 to 450,000 for the B1 type, a three-bed mid-terrace dwelling with 1,280 sq ft of accommodation. The B2 end-of-terrace variety spans 1,330 sq ft with a starting price range of 460,000 to 465,000.

Also on offer is the A type, a four-bed end-of-terrace overlooking a large green; this 1,935-sq ft unit is priced from 550,000 to 555,000. The final type for sale is the A1, a four-bed semi-detached home with 1,960 sq ft of space and price-tags ranging from 565,000 to 575,000.

The houses, which have gas-fired central heating, were designed to have a building energy rating of A3. The east side of the scheme is beside playing fields, with St Paul's Secondary School to the west. The villages of Templeogue and Terenure are close by, while Dublin city centre is 8km away. The area is served by the Luas red line and bus routes 18, 56A, 77, and 77A.

The showhouses at Wilkins View will be open from 2pm to 4pm tomorrow.

Enquiries to: Sherry FitzGerald (New Homes) (01) 6671888
The dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, seen through the famous keyhole at the the gate of the Priory of the Knights of Malta on Aventino Hill. Photo: Deposit

An Ireland supporter celebrates Ireland victory close to the final whistle at the Stadio Olimpico (Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE)

Heading to Rome for the Six Nations? Pin these pubs and pit-stops for your Italian rugby weekend!

Italy v Ireland; February 24, 4pm GMT

Rome is the furthest the Irish rugby fan has to travel in the Six Nations (our sympathies... NOT), but there's no shortage of incentives.

Spring is a great time to see Rome. The weather is pleasant, hordes of summer tourists have yet to materialise, and even the Vespas - freed up from the business of dodging foreigners - seem kind of cute.

Where to drink...

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Rome has no shortage of Irish bars, and given the occasion, it would be rude not to wet your beak in at least a couple.

The Fiddlers Elbow (Via dell'Olmata, 43; thefiddlerselbow.com) and Finnegans (Via Leonina 66; finneganpub.com) should get you started.

Close to the pretty Piazza Navona, the Abbey Theatre (Via del Gioverno Vecchio 51; abbey-rome.com) does food, sports... and shots.

Irish bars aren't the only fruit, of course. The Highlander Pub (Vicolo di San Biagio 9; highlanderrome.com) will allow you to celebrate Scottish-style - there's a food menu, and it's roughly a 30-minute walk from the stadium.

As you get closer to the Stadio Olimpico, swing by the Pink Panter (Via Luigi Poletti 10; pinkpanter.it). It's small, but very close to the action and a nifty pit-stop particularly if the weather's good and you can stand out in the sun.

Salute!

Get to the stadium...

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To get to Stadio Olimpico, take Tramline 2 to Piazza Mancini. The stop is a 15-minute walk from the stadium - just follow the hordes. The route crosses over the River Tiber, and you'll approach from the southeastern corner.

NB: It's worth buying a return or day ticket to avoid queues.

What to do (besides the rugby)...

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Of all the Six Nations cities (bar Paris, perhaps), Rome is best suited to a non-rugby fan or travel partner. It is, after all, home to the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum and, oh, one or two nice pieces of art.

Even if you dont agree on the rugby, everyone agrees on the food. Take a stroll over the river to Trastevere, where the real Romans claim to live, and youll find a host of cheap trattorias along the tight-knit alleyways and streets.

Think 5 for a basic Margherita pizza, washed down with a cool glass of Peroni and ice-cream fresh from a hole-in-the-wall gelateria yum.

Speaking of gelatos... this is the sunniest of the Six Nations cities, so fill your belly with ice-cream while you can. For a traditional treat. Try Il Gelato di San Crispino (ilgelatodisancrispino.com) made famous by Eat, Pray, Love.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

In the coming 2-3 days, some Iranian cities may face gas pressure fall, the head of National Iranian Gas Company Hamid Reza Araqi said Feb.3.

Currently, about 28 of 31 Iranian provinces have snowy cold weather and the gas consumption in the housing sector reached 530 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d), compared to 160 mcm/d in spring and summer.

Iran produces 700 mcm of sweet gas a day. Soaring gas use in the countrys housing sector led to gas shortage in power and industrial sectors.

Meanwhile, Turkmenistan cut gas deliveries to Iran due to a 9-year delay in payments of $1.8 billion worth of debts in the beginning of the year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven speak to the press after their meeting last week in Stockholm, Sweden. Both countries have had to dramatically rethink their generous immigration policies. Photo: Reuters

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the borders of Germany to all refugees in 2015, initially I thought it was a great idea. I've amended that opinion now, in light of the fact the policy was very badly thought out.

For a long time, I supported the West accepting as many Christian refugees as possible from Syria and elsewhere. Why? Because they are a particularly persecuted group. Yes, it's true that it's mainly Muslims being killed in Syria and Iraq, but that's because they are overwhelmingly Muslim countries. But within those countries, Christians, like the Yazidis in Iraq, are particularly vulnerable.

I've now changed my mind about accepting as many Christian refugees as possible because I've spoken to Christian leaders from the region. They don't want the Christian presence in the Middle East, which is older than the presence of Islam, to disappear completely.

What I'm saying here is that these things are complicated and don't allow easy, knee-jerk answers.

I don't agree with US President Donald Trump's decision to temporarily stop refugees from certain Muslim-majority countries entering America. I'm all for properly vetting refugees, but I think he could have reviewed the current vetting procedure without ordering the temporary halt.

At the same time, the reaction of his critics has been wholly disproportionate. To listen to them, you would think he had ordered the rounding up and expulsion of all American Muslims.

The grandstanding by our Government is absurd and hypocritical. Government ministers are delivering lectures on human rights to the Trump administration, but they didn't deliver similar lectures to Chinese President Xi Jinping when he was here, or to the Saudis when a trade delegation visited there recently.

Nothing Mr Trump has done or will do remotely compares to the type of human rights abuses that routinely take place in countries like China and Saudi Arabia. China and Saudi Arabia are rich, so we will talk about their human rights record in only a very muted way.

But we expect higher standards of America, I hear you say? No, when it comes to human rights we must demand the same standards of everyone. What must a political dissident in China think of the outrage Mr Trump's temporary banning order has caused compared to the lack of outrage at much worse abuses perpetrated by the Chinese government?

A country's refugee policy must balance many considerations. Two of the chief ones are care for refugees and the security of your own citizens. Both concerns are entirely worthy. When Ms Merkel threw open Germany's borders, she was thinking almost entirely of care for refugees. When Mr Trump ordered his temporary ban, he was thinking almost entirely of the security of American citizens.

I don't think either of these concerns is intrinsically more moral than the other. I think both Mr Trump and Mrs Merkel have struck the wrong balance. I think Mrs Merkel was paying too little attention to security and Mr Trump is paying too much attention to it.

Mrs Merkel's policy, which caused continent-wide chaos, has barely come in for criticism in this country, and neither has Sweden's similar policy for that matter. The great and the good here regard German and Swedish policies as very generous, and that is that.

Both Germany and Sweden ended up dramatically applying the brakes to their very generous policies. This wasn't simply because of pressure from 'xenophobes' and 'Islamophobes'. It's also because their policies were having bad effects on the ground.

In Sweden, for example, they found lots of unaccompanied minors entering the country only for many to disappear, with the very real possibility they were disappearing into sex slavery.

In both Germany and Sweden, there has been an increase in sex crimes related to immigration. In Germany, refugees, illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers are responsible for about twice as many sex crimes as their numbers in the population would suggest.

In Sweden, according to journalist Tove Lifvendahl: "There have been reports of Isil recruitment drives, not just in public places, but inside Swedish government programmes."

This is exactly the kind of thing Mr Trump is concerned about, and this is without even mentioning truck attacks, bombings and shootings in various countries.

In fact, for six months in 2011 Barack Obama brought a near total halt to processing refugees from Iraq because a number of jihadists had managed to get into America disguised as refugees.

This decision by Mr Obama didn't cause so much as a ripple. That's because the media watchdogs were practically asleep when Mr Obama was in the White House. They are barking madly now, as they always do when a Republican is in residence.

As for Mr Obama, to my mind even his policy towards refugees erred too much on the side of security. From 2011 to 2014 he allowed barely 200 Syrian refugees into the US. This increased to 1,682 in 2015 and about 13,000 last year. That's a drop in the ocean compared with Germany or Sweden, which are at the opposite extreme.

So, a good refugee policy is morally obliged to strike the right balance between competing goods. Mrs Merkel's policy threw Europe, never mind Germany, into chaos and gave no thought to security. Mr Trump is making the opposite mistake.

But there is absolutely nothing wrong in itself with being concerned about the security of your own people. The reaction to Mr Trump's decision pays no attention to this perfectly legitimate consideration. In fact, any leader who pays no attention to the security of their own country's citizens is so irresponsible they deserve to lose power.
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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 ASTI leadership needs to set out to their members where they are going with this dispute (Stock picture)

Hiroo Onoda is viewed as the last Japanese soldier to surrender after World War II. The Imperial Japanese Army officer spent 29 years holding out in the Philippines, until his former commander travelled from Japan to personally issue orders relieving him from duty in 1974.

Presumably, the ASTI leadership takes some inspiration from Onoda's actions. The war is over but the secondary school teacher's union just hasn't realised it yet.

The latest development in the ongoing dispute over pay and Junior Cycle reform is a rejection of the latest proposals.

The 52.5pc-47.5pc No vote by the 18,000-strong union means continued non-cooperation by members on a range of duties.

The most immediate threat is to about 35,000 third years, who are at risk of losing 10pc of marks in their Junior Cert English exam. The dispute means many ASTI members will now suffer permanent financial losses and loss of other benefits as a result of this choice.

Reacting with "disappointment", Education Minister Richard Burton is maintaining a hardline position and insists "there will be no further offer made to ASTI".

He says the Government is committed to continuing to work with unions on pay and conditions.

The union has run out of ground and the rest of the trade union movement have moved on to the next pay deal.

The ASTI can claim some credit for helping to improve some elements of the existing public sector pay agreement.

The Junior Cycle row is now going on for four years.

It's time to end the war.

The ASTI leadership needs to set out to their members where they are going with this dispute.

Nobody else can see an end.

Martin wins with new TD, but Donnelly has work to do

Whenever a TD joins a party, it's a major boost for the leader.

And so Micheal Martin is right to bask in the glory of the signing of Independent TD Stephen Donnelly.

To those within the beltway of Leinster House, the move won't have come as a dramatic shock, as it was rumoured.

Immediately following his departure from the fledgling Social Democrats last August, there was talk in Fianna Fail in Wicklow of him joining the party.

The arrival fits the party's goals in the constituency quite well, as he is from the suburbanite Dublin commuter belt area in the north of the county, while sitting TD Pat Casey is based in the more rural south.

Mr Donnelly's arrival in Fianna Fail has not upset existing frontbench members either, as he has been slotted in as the party's Brexit spokesman, therein showing Mr Martin is taking the challenge posed by Britain's departure from the European Union quite seriously.

This is contrasted with Taoiseach Enda Kenny's continued refusal to appoint a Brexit minister at Cabinet, insisting instead that he will handle the issue himself, despite his overloaded agenda.

A win-win all round for Mr Martin, then, but what of Mr Donnelly himself? He has proven to be a skilled media performer but some of his commentary has often been overly simplistic. After flip-flopping in his previous party alignment, he now has a point to prove.
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Is your SME ready to export in to more markets?

Irish exporters now have an opportunity to trade more effectively and efficiently on the global stage.

While the very large multinational players are well-serviced by existing providers, many SMEs across Ireland have previously faced barriers when looking to access a comprehensive nationwide network for exports and have been traditionally underserved by existing transport and logistics providers.

While there has been a small decline in the number of SMEs exporting to the UK in the period since the Brexit vote, the general consensus is that in the medium to long term, the best way to mitigate the risk that Brexit represents for Irish exporters to the UK is to diversify exports to new markets outside of the UK.

This positivity, coupled with the launch of an innovative, first-of-a-kind new logistics service from An Post, Post Logistics, means that it is an opportune time for SMEs to consider their export needs for 2017 and beyond.

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Ease of access to export services had previously been very limited in Ireland, depending where companies were located in Ireland, especially when it came to exporting to Continental Europe.

From reliability and simplicity to speed and value, here is a 6 step guide for companies currently exporting or considering expanding their export network in to new markets:

1. Which new markets work best for your business?

An Post has surveyed companies around Ireland, asking SMEs what markets they want to move in to. The countries specified include France, Germany, Holland, Denmark and Italy.

We want to simplify the process for them. SMEs in Ireland do have ambition to export to more markets and our aim is to support them with one-stop-shop service, with everything they need, explains Liam OSullivan, Mails Operations Director, An Post.

An Post has launched a new logistics service offering SMEs pallet delivery, freight forwarding and groupage services from Ireland, to Britain and Europe. Theres now a high-quality, reliable, standardised, freight forwarding and groupage service available for SMEs exporting to the UK and Europe.

2. Trust and simplicity

Trust and simplicity are always front of mind with businesses when considering exporting. An Post has teamed up with DB Schenker, the second largest transportation and logistics services provider in the world, to provide a daily door-to-door pallet delivery service designed to make exporting more accessible and easier for SMEs.

Offering a first-of-its-kind service in the Irish market, Post Logistics will operate as the logistics division of Irelands national postal delivery service.

We are utilising our extensive ground forwarding network for groupage and less than truckload (LTT) shipping. We have designed a dedicated and convenient pallet delivery service for Irish SMEs looking to export up to seven pallets at highly competitive rates, says Liam OSullivan.

3. Consider cost and traceability

Price is always a priority when thinking about volumes around exporting. Also, in a lot of cases, SMEs can struggle to specify the date of collection as the process can be quite fragmented. If a company, for example in the West of Ireland is sending a shipment to Milan, it has to travel through a number of carriers along the way. If that company needs to know where their shipment is, it will involve a lot of calls and emails.

The new daily pallet collection and delivery service will now provide an efficient and reliable door-to-door collection service from any location in Ireland with delivery to Britain and Europe. It will combine An Posts nationwide network with DB Schenkers ground forwarding service for pallet shipments to Britain and across Europe. The An Post network means guaranteed next working day pallet collection throughout the Republic of Ireland for all orders placed up to midnight.

4. Speed and meeting deadlines

Using the existing An Post fleet and network services, Post Logistics will transport pallet freight from SME customers nationwide to a central Dublin depot from where it will be shipped onwards by global freight carriers DB Schenker.

With 720 branches in 36 European countries, DB Schenker Land Transport possesses a ground freight forwarding network with extensive coverage and high density.

DB Schenker has a local presence in all European countries with the densest network in Europe which enables fast deliveries to customers. Customers do not require a forklift for order collection as they are loaded by the driver using a hand pallet jack. Pallets are collected by local An Post drivers and then transported and tracked throughout the journey.

The An Post nationwide network means guaranteed next working day pallet collection throughout the Republic of Ireland for all orders placed up to midnight.

5. Customs clearance and insurance

Customs clearance is only required for orders destined for Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. In these cases, orders will be passed on to DB Schenker, who will contact customers directly to arrange clearance.

In Europe, liability of road transportation service providers is limited by governing regulations regarding loss, damage or material delay. However, according to Liam O'Sullivan of An Post, these limitations are often not representative of the actual value of the goods.

"When we researched this, we found that the standard price for insurance protection when you're moving freight abroad is 400 per shipment. When people are exporting high-value goods, that figure seems very low considering the value of what they are exporting. We looked at how we could make the process easier, so we have agreed a deal with DB Schenker, backed by AIG, which allows customers to get their location and pay for their quotation. It's a one-stop-shop."

6. Technology and tracking

Our existing national network, logistics capacity and customer service is world-class and it is fully supported by the latest technology. Mails distribution is mainly an evening, overnight and early morning business so during the day we can devote our capacity to servicing the freight forwarding needs of Irish SMEs., says Liam OSullivan.

Post Logistics guarantees unrivalled reach, excellent value, know-how and the peace of mind of dealing with one of Irelands most trusted companies. We put all these strengths to work for our SME clients.

If your SME is interested in making exporting more accessible and easier, go to Post Logistics for more information or to get a quick quote. If your company would like further information email post.logistics@anpost.ie or telephone 01 4620810.

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Angelina Jolie said in the New York Times that Donald Trump's executive order risked fuelling extremism abroad

Angelina Jolie has warned US President Donald Trump he is "playing with fire" by implementing his controversial travel ban.

The actress and UN ambassador fiercely criticised the decision to prevent refugees from entering America, saying the move would not make the country safer.

Writing in the New York Times, Jolie, 41, said Mr Trump's executive order - which blocked entry to the US for nationals from seven Muslim majority countries - risked fuelling extremism abroad and creating "more instability, hatred and violence".

"Refugees are men, women and children caught in the fury of war, or the cross hairs of persecution," she said.

"Far from being terrorists, they are often the victims of terrorism themselves.

"Every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear."

Jolie, whose father Jon Voight has been a vocal supporter of Mr Trump, referred to her six children, who she said were "all born in foreign lands and are proud American citizens".

"If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire," she added.

"We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against."

Jolie, who has recently avoided the spotlight following her divorce from Brad Pitt, said the world was witnessing "the worst refugee crisis since World War Two" and some countries in Africa and the Middle East were "bursting at the seams with refugees".

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She quoted f ormer US president Ronald Reagan as she said that "shutting our door to refugees or discriminating among them is not our way, and does not make us safer".

Jolie said: "If we create a tier of second-class refugees, implying Muslims are less worthy of protection, we fuel extremism abroad, and at home we undermine the ideal of diversity cherished by Democrats and Republicans alike - ' America is committed to the world because so much of the world is inside America' in the words of Ronald Reagan.

"If we divide people beyond our borders, we divide ourselves."
Dakota Blue Richards said she thought children who wanted to be film stars "were in the same category as those that wanted to be princesses"

Endeavour star Dakota Blue Richards has said she still feels close to her character in The Golden Compass and it will break her heart to see another actress play the role in the new BBC series.

Richards, who now plays Constable Shirley Trewlove in the Inspector Morse prequel, said she credits Lyra, her role in the big screen adaptation of Philip Pullman's book, for her current success in the ITV series.

She had never acted professionally before she starred opposite Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in the big-budget film at the age of 13 in 2007 and now is part of a cast that includes Shaun Evans and Roger Allam.

She told the Press Association: "I didn't have aspirations to be an actress before I got the film. I didn't think it was possible so didn't consider it.

"I thought kids who wanted to be film stars were in the same category as those that wanted to be princesses and I was so happy to get that part because I loved that character in the books. It wasn't really about the acting.

"Part of me thinks I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I hadn't pursued acting after the film. It's a tough industry and you have to be resilient.

"It's only since I got Endeavour that I have been working on one job and knowing what my next will be."

The BBC have announced they are planning to adapt Pullman's trilogy of books and Richards said it will be painful to see someone else take on Lyra.

She said: "Part of me feels like it will break my heart a little bit. It feels like so much mine, even now. She is like a friend I have carried along on this journey.

"Every job I do i'm reminded she is the reason I'm here and without Lyra there would be not acting career at all. She was the inspiration. I keep talking about her like she is a real person.

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"But I wasn't the first person to play her and there is no reason I should be the last."

Richards, 22, said she now feels settled in win the cast and crew of Endeavour and is looking forward to learning more about her character.

She said: "She is not being introduced any more, but we still don't know much about her. It's rare to see anything outside work, but I definitely have a sense of who she is and what her family might be like.

"I get the sense that maybe she lost somebody who is quite close to her.

"She is so ambitious when women weren't supposed to be and so she might have been brought up in a pioneering household, not to be restricted because she's female. Maybe she is trying to make somebody proud."

Series 4 of Endeavour is available now on DVD and from iTunes.
Nick Rhodes, Simon Le Bon and Roger Taylor, as they left the Rolls Building in central London after attending a US copyright hearing

Members of pop group Duran Duran are to renew their legal battle over US rights to some of their most famous songs.

In December, they failed to fight off a bid by major publishers Gloucester Place Music, ultimately owned by US business Sony/ATV, to prevent them terminating copyright agreements related to their first three albums.

Mr Justice Arnold in the High Court ruled English laws of contract barred them from seeking to reclaim rights over their own works.

On Friday, the same judge gave permission for an appeal against h is decision.

No date has yet been set for the hearing.

The group said they were particularly pleased to get the go-ahead as the ruling had an impact on the wider creative community and particularly their songwriting peers around the world.

Founding member and keyboardist Nick Rhodes said: "It was enormously disappointing that Sony/ATV decided to mount this aggressive and unexpected action against us to try to prevent the simple principles and rights afforded to all artists in America regarding their copyrights after 35 years.

"We are relieved and grateful that we have been given the opportunity to appeal this case because the consequences are wide reaching and profound for us and all other artists.

"In his judgment Mr Justice Arnold stated that his decision was not made without hesitation; we were heartened by this sentiment because we felt it was an acknowledgement that something was truly flawed about the premise and reality of what is at stake.

"We remain hopeful that the ultimate outcome will be fair and measured to take into account and support our case and all artists' rights."
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

US President Donald Trump has continued tweet attacks on Iran since Feb. 2.

Iran is playing with fire  they don't appreciate how "kind" President Obama was to them. Not me!, Trump tweeted Feb. 3.

He also harshly criticized on Feb. 2 the nuclear deal that was reached between Iran and the world powers in 2015, adding that the accord has prevented the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

The officials from Iran and the US over the past couple of days have exchanged sharp criticism amid reports on the Islamic Republics recent missile tests.

Iran in response has said it will not allow foreigners to interfere in its missile activities as they follow strictly defensive purposes.

Iran and the world powers in 2015 reached a historic deal on the country's nuclear program removing sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for curbing the country's nuclear program.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reacted to Trumps tweets Feb. 3, tweeting, Iran [is] unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people. We'll never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defense.
British small screen hits Luther and Sherlock have seen UK television exports rise by 10% in the last year.

The latest UK Television Exports Report from the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (Pact) has shown that sales to international markets in 2015/16 rose to 1,326 million, a 10% increase from 1,205 million in 2014/15.

Popular programmes for BBC Worldwide also include Happy Valley, Doctor Foster and War And Peace, which have all gained dedicated overseas audiences.

Growth in international TV sales has been boosted by the Chinese market, which is up 40% on 2014/15 and could rise further thanks to a co-production treaty between the UK and China which was signed in December 2016.

The USA remains the UK's largest export market, where sales increased by 16% in 2015/16 to 497 million, and Australia is the second largest market, with sales of 106 million.

Mark Garnier, a minister at the Department for International Trade (DIT) and author of the report's foreword, said: "From The Night Manager to Downton Abbey, UK TV exports continue to go from strength to strength and UK programmes are some of the most recognisable and eagerly anticipated in the world.

"British innovation and creativity are considered among the greatest assets of the sector and this report shows that there is important future growth potential supported, in part, by funding from the Department for International Trade.

"From small creative digital and animation companies to major production houses, the UK leads the world in television production and I look forward to continuing to work with the sector to grow UK exports."

However, political uncertainty was cited as a possible obstacle to growth going forward.

Pact chief executive John McVay said: "UK television content continues to be highly sought after around the world.

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"The impressive level of year-on-year growth demonstrates that the sector is embracing the challenges of the global marketplace and is adept at exploiting new opportunities.

"However, with Brexit on the horizon continued support from the Government will be crucial if we are to ensure that UK companies can carry on punching above their weight on the world stage."
Michael Palin was given the lifetime prize for his "outstanding contribution" at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards

Writer, presenter and actor Michael Palin has said it is a "great honour" to be awarded for his "outstanding contribution" to travel writing.

Formerly a Monty Python star, Palin's work as a keen explorer, including his book and television series Around The World In 80 Days, launched him to the high table of British adventurers.

Since the book's first release in 1989, his successes include Pole To Pole (1992), Full Circle (1997), New Europe (2007) and his BBC documentary series Himalaya and Brazil.

Palin, 73, was presented with the lifetime prize by TV adventurer and photographer Levison Wood at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards on Thursday.

"To be given an outstanding contribution award for travel writing is a great honour," he said.

"To be presented with it by an outstanding writer and adventurer like Levison Wood is the icing on the cake.

"The cake itself is that the award comes from Stanfords, the first port of call on all my travels, and one of the few truly indispensable shops in the world."

Meanwhile, Wood's Walking The Himalayas account earned him the Wanderlust prize for adventure travel book of the year.

Dedicating his exploring passion to the star's 20-year travel career, he said: "Michael Palin was one of my childhood heroes, a real inspiration that led me to want to explore the world with the same enthusiasm and curiosity."

Travel book of the year was claimed by Julian Sayarer's Interstate: Hitchhiking Through the State of a Nation, which he dedicated to "the immigrants".

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Judges described his "post-modern" report of his travels from New York to San Francisco towards the end of the Obama administration as loaded with "passion and anger".

Madeleine Thien beat previous Man Booker prize winners Julian Barnes and Yann Martel in the shortlist to secure the travel fiction award with her "epic and powerful" novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

Other award-winners included Lauren Williams for her blog The Enjoyable Rut, while Tessa Kiros's Provence to Pondicherry: Recipes From France And Faraway was named best food and travel book.

Edward Stanford Ltd boss, Tony Maher, said of the writers: "They show us the world beyond our own horizons, taking us with them on their journeys.

"Their words let us see, smell, touch and hear from our own armchair as they explore every inch of this incredible planet.

"They are an inspiration."

All winners were presented with an antique globe trophy at the ceremony in London's Olympia.
A new British stage adaptation of George Orwell's chilling novel 1984 is heading to an America where issues of "newspeak" and surveillance are increasingly relevant.

Producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Rudin said that the play will open in June at the Hudson Theatre.

It was created by Robert Icke and Duncan MacMillan and nominated by an Olivier Award. No Broadway casting was revealed.

First published in 1949, Orwell's classic tale of a society run by Big Brother in which facts are distorted and suppressed in a cloud of "newspeak" has topped the Amazon.com best-seller lists.

The renewed interest comes on the heels of the Trump administration's unfounded allegation that millions of illegal votes were cast against him last autumn and an adviser coining the phrase "alternative facts".

AP
Hope with care worker Anja Ringgren Loven, on 30 January 2016 (left) and one year later (right), on his first day of school Anja Ringgren Loven/Facebook

A Danish aid worker who rescued a young boy who had been ostracised by his community in Nigeria says he has just completed his first week at school.

Anja Ringgren Loven marked the landmark in three-year-old Hope's life by recreating the image of her, encouraging him to drink from a bottle of water, which was shared around the world one year ago.

Ms Loven and her husband, David Emmanuel Umem, run an orphanage in south-east Nigeria for children who have been abandoned by their families as a result of superstitious beliefs, called the African Childrens Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF).

They took on and named then-two-year-old Hope on 30 January 2016, after he had been accused of being a witch. Hope was emaciated, riddled with worms and suffering hypospadias, an inborn condition in which one has an incomplete developed urethra, she says.

Writing on Facebook at the start of this week, Ms Loven said: "On the 30 January 2016, I went on a rescue mission with David Emmanuel Umem, Nsidibe Orok and our Nigerian team.

"A rescue mission that went viral, and today it's exactly one year ago the world came to know a young little boy called Hope.

"This week Hope will start school."

The post, contrasting the old and new images, has been shared more than 27,000 times.

Ms Loven was named "the most inspiring person of the year 2016" by Germany's Ooom Magazine at the end of last year, beating the likes of Pope Francis and Barack Obama to the title.

Georg Kindel, OOOMs editor-in-chief, who led the jury that chose the list, said: When she saw the starving child, she acted like a human being and became an inspiration for millions. Her sustained efforts to help the abandoned children of Nigeria gives us hope and encourages us to follow suit.
Eight policemen have been shot dead by a colleague in Afghanistan (PA/MoD)

An Afghan policeman has turned his rifle on his colleagues in a northern province, killing eight while they slept on Thursday night, officials said.

The attack came on the same night a gunman in the country's east fatally shot a cleric and his wife.

The policemen were killed in an outpost in the district of Almar in northern Faryab province, according to provincial police spokesman Abdul Karim Yuresh.

After the attack, the policeman collected the firearms of his dead colleagues and fled the scene - presumably to join the Taliban.

The Taliban made no official statement or claim about the attack but Afghanistan has seen several such incidents over the past years.

There has been a growing number of cases in which Afghan troops or policemen - or Taliban militants dressed in Afghan uniforms - have turned their guns on their colleagues or US-led coalition partners.

Also on Thursday night, in the country's eastern Paktika province, a gunman killed a cleric and his wife, said Mohammad Alias Wahdat, the provincial governor.

Mr Wahdat said the gunman entered the cleric's home in the Yusof Khail district and shot the cleric and his wife. Two of their children who were in the house survived.

Police said it was not clear who was behind the attack and no-one immediately claimed responsibility for the killings.

In other violence, Gul Agha Roohani, chief of police in eastern Nangarhar province, which borders Pakistan, said Islamic State group militants stormed the security posts in the district of Kot early on Friday, killing at least one police officer.

Afghan security forces responded and killed 12 militants, he said.

Afghanistan has been facing major political and security challenges since the withdrawal of international combat troops at the end of 2014, leaving a smaller contingent of troops behind to focus on training and counter-terrorism.

President Ashraf Ghani has been dealing with a stepped-up insurgency by the Taliban seeking to topple the government as well as an affiliate of the Islamic State group, which emerged two years ago and has expanded its footprint, especially in the country's east and Nangarhar province.

AP
Police dubbed him the "bungling burglar" after he got stuck in the window of a house during his crime

Pictures taken by amused officers from Greater Manchester Police last December, show Sean Crawshaw with his head wedged in a small bathroom window of the property, around 15 feet above the ground.

The 47-year-old was found by the home's owner, a 60-year-old woman, when she returned to the property in Radcliffe.

The fire brigade had to be called out to free the failed thief  an operation that reportedly took around 20 minutes - injuring Mr Crawshaw's ear in the process.

Mr Crawshaw, who also comes from Radcliffe, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison at a court hearing in January. Greater Manchester Police told The Independent he wasn't known to police previously.

The force posted a photograph of the incident on Twitter on Thursday, in which Mr Crawshaw can be dangling from the upstairs window, accompanied by the caption: Burglar sentenced after he was framed.

Norman Taylor, the community support officer who posted the image, told The Independent: The homeowner came home  a woman in her sixties and found this guy dangling 15 feet off the ground with his head stuck in the bathroom window, so she called the police.

Officers arrived and the fire brigade had to come and get him out. It took 20 minutes, during which he injured his ear.

Its the first time weve seen this happen. Burglars have got stuck in windows before, but they usually manage to free themselves. We call this guy the bungling burglar.

Mr Taylor added that the police force decided to share the photo in part for a laugh, but also to serve as a warning to the public about burglars in the area.

We get a bit of fun out of it, but it also serves as a warning. People think that if there are no ladders, burglars cant get up," Mr Taylor said.

"But burglaries are common in this area, and the reality is that they often go for the drain pipes  which is what this one appears to have done.
Cancer rates in women will rise at six times the rate of that in men as the obesity timebomb hits females harder, new forecasts show.

Data published by Cancer Research UK shows that unhealthy lifestyles are contributing to a rise in cancer cases among both sexes, with women bearing the brunt of the increase.

The charity urged women to "cut out the treats" in a bid to reduce their risk of disease, warning that obesity is second only to smoking as the biggest preventable cause of cancer.

In the next 20 years, cancer rates will climb nearly six times faster in women than in men, its research shows. Rates will rise by around 0.5pc for men and 3pc for women.

The trend is the result of soaring rates of obesity, with two thirds of all British adults now overweight or obese.

While obesity rates are even higher among men than women, many of the cancers most closely linked to weight are primarily or exclusively female diseases - including breast, womb and ovarian cancer.

The rise in cancer rates among women is also being fuelled by an increase in female smoking in recent decades and by female alcohol consumption, the charity said.

Although smoking rates are now falling across the UK, lung cancer is continuing to rise, reflecting the number of women who took up smoking in the 1960s, when the habit was already popular among men.

Prof Peter Johnson, Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, said: "After smoking, being overweight is the single biggest preventable cause of cancer, and has been linked to 13 different types. Ovarian, womb and post-menopausal breast cancer all happen more often to people carrying too much weight."

He urged lifestyle changes to reduce the chance of cancer.

"Taking regular exercise and avoiding too many treats is a good way to reduce your risk. We all know it's not always easy to maintain a healthy weight, but even small steps can help," he said.

More than eight million people die from cancer each year globally - more than Aids, malaria and tuberculosis put together, the charity warned.

Breast, prostate, lung and bowel cancer are the most common cancers, accounting for more than half of new cases each year in the UK.

Currently around 18,000 Britons a year develop cancer because they are overweight, a figure which is predicted to reach 56,000 people a year by 2035.

Spiralling rates of obesity meant that cancer was now increasingly being diagnosed up to two decades earlier than in the past, doctors have warned, with people "eating their way towards an early death". ( Daily Telegraph London)
A top spokeswoman for US president Donald Trump has said she misspoke when she referred to a 2011 "massacre" in Kentucky that never happened.

A day earlier, during an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Kellyanne Conway defended Mr Trump's temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations by saying that former president Barack Obama had instituted a similar policy for Iraqi refugees in 2011.

"President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee programme after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre," Ms Conway said.

"Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered."

The incident she referred to never took place.

Ms Conway tweeted on Friday morning that she meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" during the interview.

Her description of the 2011 Obama administration policy as a ban was also a mischaracterisation, which she did not correct.

Mr Obama never banned Iraqi refugees or other Iraqi travellers from coming to the United States. His administration did slow down the processing for Iraqis seeking special immigrant visas, which are given to translators and interpreters who worked with the US in that country.

The slowdown was prompted by the May 2011 arrest of two men in Kentucky charged with plotting to send weapons and money to al-Qaida operatives abroad. Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were mistakenly admitted to the US as Iraqi refugees in 2009 and resettled in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Alwan and Hammadi are in prison after pleading guilty to plotting attacks inside the US.

According to US state department data, 9,388 Iraqi refugees were admitted to America during the 2011 budget year. The data also show that Iraqi refugees were admitted every month during the 2011 calendar year.

In addition, more than 7,800 Iraqis were allowed into the United States on non-immigrant visas, including tourists, during the 2011 budget year.
US Democrats have accused US president Donald Trump of rewarding "thugs" in the Russian intelligence service by lifting certain sanctions - but the facts do not back this up.

The Trump administration revised sanctions on the FSB to correct an unintended consequence of broader penalties placed on Russia by former president Barack Obama.

This prompted a hair-trigger response from Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, and others.

Ms Pelosi said: "Less than two weeks after walking into the White House, President Trump lifts sanctions on the Russian Security Service.

"Vladimir Putin's thugs meddle with an American election, and President Trump gives them a thank-you present. "

Democratic representative Eric Swalwell said: "Russia attacked our democracy. It should be punished. Instead, President Trump is easing sanctions against its team of hackers, the FSB."

Mr Trump said: "I haven't eased anything," while his press secretary Sean Spicer said the move marked a "regular course of action".

The facts support Mr Trump and his spokesman.

The December 29 sanctions imposed by the Obama administration were not intended to ban the US sale of mobile phones, tablets and other consumer electronics to Russia.

But they had that effect, by barring US firms from getting the permits needed from the FSB to sell in Russia. The FSB has regulatory as well as intelligence responsibilities.

Mr Trump's change does not materially benefit the FSB, except in a minuscule way. It allows US firms to pay the FSB a required fee of up to 5,000 dollars (4,000) per year to export encryption-capable consumer electronics to that country.

It is of more benefit to the US sellers and Russian buyers of those devices. It is not unusual to fine-tune sanctions to permit certain transactions.

Now, the Treasury Department will allow "certain transactions" with the FSB "that are necessary and ordinarily incident to requesting certain licenses and authorisations for the importation, distribution, or use of certain information technology products in the Russian Federation".

Democrats in particular are incensed at alleged Russian hacking of their party's communications in the campaign.

Members of both parties have been watching for a sign that Mr Trump will try to ease Barack Obama's Russian sanctions in a consequential way, given his cosy rhetoric about Mr Putin during and after the campaign. This, however, is not it.

Republican Senator John McCain, who has been notably strong on Russian sanctions, shrugged off the revision as an apparent "technical fix".

The same thought was voiced by Democrat Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton, who said in a televised interview that former Obama administration officials viewed Mr Trump's move as "a technical correction".

AP
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Many Armenian diaspora organizations parasitize, and in particular, they parasitize the Armenian people, Lev Spivak, director general of the Israel-Azerbaijan International Association, told Trend Feb. 3.

"At least, here in Israel, I see that Armenian diaspora organizations often make much ado about nothing, though everyone knows that they will achieve nothing."

Spivak says Zehava Gal-On, a member of the Knesset, Israeli parliament, can be shown as an example.

Zehava Gal-On yells in support of various Armenian ideas and, in particular, the so-called Armenian genocide, although she is well aware that everything is in vain, he said.

"Many representatives of the Armenians and their lobbyists also support various Armenian ideas, he said. I am very sorry for their sponsors and people whom they really parasitize."

Earlier, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) attempted to distort the phrases brought by Trend Agencys author in an article dealing with the strongly worsening situation of the Armenian diaspora in the US.

Citing a paragraph from the article titled Trump puts end to Armenian lobby's influence on US on its official Twitter account, the ANCA twitted a quote from Adolf Hitlers book.

By comparing these two absolutely different quotes the ANCA tried to reduce the devastating effect of the article.

"I do not even think that the author of the article had some anti-Semitic intent, Spivak added. I was born and brought up in Baku. I visit Azerbaijan three times a year. I have a lot of friends in Azerbaijan and I have never encountered anti-Semitism there."

People have lived in harmony in Azerbaijan for centuries regardless of ethnicity or religion, he said. It was important that you are my neighbor, rather than the way you pray.

Spivak also appreciates that the Azerbaijani government is promoting multiculturalism at the state level today.

"The promotion of Azerbaijani tolerance in the world shows the world that it is possible to live in harmony, he added.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
A soldier has shot an attacker outside the Louvre in Paris

Police officers patrol at the pyramid outside the Louvre in Paris (AP/Thibault Camus)

The man who attacked soldiers in front of the Louvre Museum in Paris is believed to be an Egyptian, French authorities have said.

The 29-year-old, who was living in the United Arab Emirates, is in a life-threatening condition in hospital after being shot, prosecutor Francois Molins said.

He said the man's identity has not been formally confirmed but the French soldiers' quick reactions put an end to "a terror attack" at one of Paris' most iconic tourist attractions.

He said "everything shows that the assailant was very determined".

French president Francois Hollande told reporters at an EU summit in Malta that there was "no doubt" the attack was of a "terrorist nature".

He said the situation around the landmark museum is "totally under control" but the overall threat to France remains. Mr Hollande said he expects the assailant to be questioned "when it is possible to do so".

US president Donald Trump claimed that a "new radical Islamic terrorist" was behind the attack. Mr Trump tweeted early on Friday that the US needs to "get smart" in light of the incident.

Police said the man, who was carrying two backpacks and had two machetes, reacted when soldiers told him he could not enter a shopping area below the museum with his bags.

The man tried to attack the soldiers after yelling "Allahu akbar", the Arabic phrase for "God is great". A soldier opened fire and the man was struck five times, including once in the stomach, Paris police chief Michel Cadot said.

The backpacks did not contain any explosives, he added. One of the soldiers was slightly wounded on the scalp.

Mr Molins said the attacker had no identity papers but investigators used his mobile phone to find out that he was a resident in the United Arab Emirates and came to Paris on a tourist visa on January 26.

Two days later he is said to have bought two military machetes at a gun shop in Paris.

Several police raids are said to have happened in the French capital, two French officials close to the investigation said.

A police union official, Luc Poignant, said one of the raids took place on Rue de Ponthieu, a street near the Champs-Elysees Avenue.

The Louvre will stay closed for the rest of Friday but will reopen on Saturday, culture minister Audrey Azoulay said. She visited soldiers guarding the famed museum as part of heightened security measures.

Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said that a second person was also arrested but it is unclear whether they were linked to the attack.

He added about 1,000 people were inside the museum and held inside in safe areas.

Olivier Majewski was in the parking area beneath the Louvre when he saw about 30 or 40 people running and screaming "there's been a terror attack".

The 53-year-old said he hid for about 15 minutes before making his way upstairs. He said people were clearly scared.

Other witnesses who were waiting to leave the Louvre said they heard gunfire and could smell smoke.

Students Mei Xiayou and Ying Zhang said all the visitors were led to a safe area, which was packed with people.

The attack took place only hours before leaders of Paris's bid for the 2024 Olympics unveil their final candidate files.

AP
The Trump administration said on Thursday that Israel's building of new settlements or expansion of existing ones in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements.

In a statement issued two weeks before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to visit US President Donald Trump, the White House said the administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity."

Trump, a Republican, has signaled he could be more accommodating toward settlement projects than his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. The latest statement reflects slightly more nuanced language on how the new administration views settlement activity.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," the White House said in a statement.

Expand Close Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: AP / Facebook

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Whatsapp Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: AP

The statement could disappoint Israel's far-right, which had hoped Trump would give an unqualified green light on rapid settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem - areas Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson spoke by phone with Netanyahu on Thursday, the State Department said. It did not say whether they discussed the White House statement.

Obama routinely criticised settlement construction plans and his administration often described settlement activity as lacking legitimacy and impeding peace.

The White House statement came as Israel has ratcheted up settlement activity. On Wednesday, it said it would establish a new settlement in the occupied West Bank, the first since the late 1990s. It also announced plans for 3,000 more settlement homes in the West Bank, the third such declaration in less than two weeks since Trump took office.

An announcement a week ago by Israel that it would build some 2,500 more dwellings in the West Bank, where Palestinians now seek statehood, drew rebukes from the Palestinians and the European Union.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, shakes hands with South Korea's acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn, prior their meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul, South Korea. Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. (Song Kyung-seol/Pool Photo via AP)

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis walks off an aircraft upon his arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis walks off an aircraft upon his arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (L) shakes hands with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo (R) before their meeting at the headquarters of the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Min-Hee/Pool

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis speaks before meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo at the headquarters of the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Min-Hee/Pool

Any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea will be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response, US defence minister Jim Mattis has said.

He made the warning in Seoul during an appearance with his South Korean counterpart, Han Min Koo.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons programme, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour," Mr Mattis said.

"We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region.

Expand Close U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (L) shakes hands with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo (R) before their meeting at the headquarters of the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Min-Hee/Pool / Facebook

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Whatsapp U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (L) shakes hands with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-Koo (R) before their meeting at the headquarters of the Defense Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Min-Hee/Pool

"America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad.

"Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming."

Expand Close U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis walks off an aircraft upon his arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai / Facebook

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Whatsapp U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis walks off an aircraft upon his arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

US defence secretaries have long offered assurances to South Korea and Japan that its nuclear "umbrella" will protect them.

But the comments by Mr Mattis were tougher than usual and showed why he chose South Korea for his first visit overseas since becoming defence secretary on January 20.

Expand Close U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis walks off an aircraft upon his arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai / Facebook

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Whatsapp U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis walks off an aircraft upon his arrival at Yokota Air Base on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, February 3, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

He sought to reassure South Koreans of the long-standing US commitment to a defence treaty that President Donald Trump suggested during the campaign was a bad deal for America.

Mr Trump has complained the treaty disadvantaged the US and he would not rule out abandoning signatories if they refuse to pay more for their defence.

Expand Close U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, shakes hands with South Korea's acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn, prior their meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul, South Korea. Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. (Song Kyung-seol/Pool Photo via AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, left, shakes hands with South Korea's acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn, prior their meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul, South Korea. Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017. (Song Kyung-seol/Pool Photo via AP)

He also said that South Korea and Japan, which are already within the range of North Korean missiles, might acquire their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on US deterrence.

Last month, Mr Trump fuelled speculation of possible US military action to pre-empt North Korea's weapons development.

In response to threats by North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, the president tweeted: "It won't happen!"

Mr Mattis also discussed with the South Koreans a timetable for deploying an advanced US missile defence system called the Theatre High-Altitude Area Defence, or THAAAD.

It is meant to improve protection of South Korea and Japan - as well as US troops stationed in both countries - against a North Korean missile attack.

Speaking to reporters as he travelled to South Korea, Mr Mattis said he would ask South Korean and Japan whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programmes was adequate.

North Korea has said it is nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

The current caretaker South Korean government has said it supports THAAAD deployment, but the decision is in doubt because of approaching national elections.

Mr Han said North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes "blatantly threaten" the international community and have created a "severe security situation" on the Korean peninsula.

He described the visit by Mr Mattis so early in his tenure as a warning to North Korea.

After a series of meetings in Seoul, Mr Mattis was scheduled to fly to Tokyo on Friday for further consultations.

The US has 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan.
President Donald Trump is considering how to allow Americans to opt out of complying with federal policies and regulations on the grounds of religion, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said yesterday, a move that critics said could open the door to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender or gender identity.

"There's clearly a lot of evidence in the last couple of years of the government coming in with regulations and policies that have, frankly, denied people the ability to live according to their faith," Mr Spicer said during his daily briefing.

"People should be able to practice their religion, express their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. I think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way, in the name of political correctness."

Mr Spicer's comments, which came on the same day Mr Trump told the audience at the National Prayer Breakfast that his administration "will do everything possible to defend and protect religious liberty in our land," could signal a sea change in how the federal government balances protections for gay, transgender and reproductive rights against individuals' religious objections.

Administration officials are considering a proposed executive order that would provide individuals and organisations wide latitude in denying services, employment and other benefits on the basis of their religious beliefs, though Mr Spicer emphasised that Mr Trump had no immediate plans to issue a directive on the issue.

"There are a lot of ideas that are being floated out," he said.

The proposal, titled 'Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom', is one of several dozen draft directives written on a range of topics by people within the administration, on the transition team or working for outside groups.

Mr Trump did not discuss any specific actions he might take at the National Prayer Breakfast, but said: "Freedom of religion is a sacred right, but it is also a right under threat all around us." In the event that the order is actually issued, multiple groups are already preparing to challenge it on the grounds that it effectively sanctions discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, women and minorities.

While the draft document does not mention Christianity by name, it specifically outlines views held by conservative Christians - including opposition to abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the idea that a person's gender can differ from their anatomy - as beliefs deserving protection.

"It reads like a wishlist from some of the most radical anti-equality activists," Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said.

However, earlier this week, the White House issued a statement saying it would uphold a 2014 executive order barring discrimination against federal workers and employees of federal contractors on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity after a different draft directive circulated that would have reversed the policy.
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 3

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

The Turkish Armed Forces plan to upgrade its border security with unmanned bubbled surveillance systems dubbed mini zeppelins, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Developed by the countrys leading defense manufacturer ASELSAN, the surveillance system enables immobile facilities such as small units and posts to monitor local security and give early warnings. The system will also be used for maintaining the security of border posts.

The 16-meter long ASELSAN airships can climb to an altitude of 1,000 meters.

Meanwhile, reportedly, the construction of a wall along the Turkish-Syrian border is also being continued in order to prevent illegal crossing.

The 367-kilometer long part of the planned 825-kilometer long wall is ready.

The wall is being built with concrete blocks of a height of three meters in the Turkish border provinces of Ardahan, Kars and Igdir.

The aim of building the wall is the fight against terrorism, smuggling and prevention of illegal border crossing.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @o_quluzade
The company behind Snapchat, a social network famous for its quickly disappearing messages, is making what could be one of the largest tech market moves in years.

Snap Inc said it is seeking up to three billion US dollars (2.4bn) in an initial public offering (IPO), a figure that could shift based on investor demand.

That demand will help determine the price per share sought by Snap in the upcoming weeks.

Snapchat has millions of users, particularly among teenagers, and Snap has built a thriving ad business on it.

But the company has also made a lot of money - nearly 900 million US dollars (719m) - disappear in the past two years.

The fast-growing social network for the younger set boasts 158 million daily users.

It lets people send photos, videos and messages that disappear a few seconds after viewing.

It was created in 2012 by Evan Spiegel, who dropped out of Stanford University just three classes shy of graduation to focus on the app.

Mr Spiegel, 26, is poised to become a multi-billionaire, along with his former fraternity brother at Stanford, Robert Murphy, 28, who is also a company co-founder.

Each man owns 227 million shares of Snap stock, which was valued at 30.72 dollars per share nine months ago when the company raised 700 million dollars (560m) from a group of investors, according to its IPO documents filed on Thursday.

If Snap can fetch the same price in its IPO, Mr Spiegel and Mr Murphy each will be worth seven billion US dollars.

Snapchat could have died a quick death as a "sexting app", but Mr Spiegel showed a knack for adapting to users' whims and demands, just as Facebook has over the years.

This, as both companies have discovered, is key to outlasting social media fads.

Snapchat is no longer just about disappearing messages.

Over the years, it has added a Discover section where a diverse group of publishers - including People, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Vice and Food Network - post video-heavy stories aimed at millennials.

Another feature, Stories, lets people create a narrative from messages, videos and photos from the past 24 hours.

It is so popular that Facebook's Instagram now has a version of it, too.

And then there's Lenses, which lets people add animated overlays to photos and videos - animals, for example, or flower crowns and sparkly eyes.

The company came under fire a couple of times for adding filters many saw as racist.

One had slanted eyes and buck teeth commonly associated with negative Asian caricatures; another, which Snap called a Bob Marley filter, darkened people's skin. Snap later got rid of the offending filters.

The company looks set to adopt a model designed to give final say to the company founders.

It would be similar to set-ups at Facebook, where chief executive Mark Zuckerberg holds all the power, and Google parent Alphabet, where Larry Page and fellow co-founder Sergey Brin can override all other shareholders.

AP
Donald Trump warned Iran that it is 'playing with fire' (AP)

The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on 13 people and 12 firms in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test.

The move increases pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with Iran.

Those targeted by the Treasury Department's action include various agents, companies and associates involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran.

Iranians, Lebanese, Chinese and Emirati individuals and companies are also now blacklisted from doing any business in the US or with American citizens.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile programme poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States," John E. Smith, the Treasury Department's acting sanctions chief, said in a statement.

"We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behaviour," Mr Smith said.

The sanctions are the first against Iran in Donald Trump's new presidency, reflecting his desire to take a tougher stance toward Tehran.

Throughout his campaign, Mr Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

In a tweet on Friday morning, Mr Trump said: "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me."

None of the new sanctions appear to reverse the Obama administration's suspension of sanctions as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, the action will almost surely increase tensions with Iran.

The Islamic republic has insisted that new sanctions violate the deal and it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear programme has been sharply curtailed.

The US and western countries argue otherwise, noting that Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago.

That agreement was concluded in parallel, but separately to the nuclear accord.

"This is fully consistent with the Obama administration's commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions," said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline US position on Iran.

The sanctions come after Mr Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Tehran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis.

The US accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemen's internationally recognised government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

AP
Jim Mattis said any attack by North Korea on the United States or its allies would be defeated (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

Any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea will be met with an "effective and overwhelming" response, US defence minister Jim Mattis has said.

He made the warning in Seoul during an appearance with his South Korean counterpart, Han Min Koo.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons programme, and engage in threatening rhetoric and behaviour," Mr Mattis said.

"We stand with our peace-loving Republic of Korea ally to maintain stability on the peninsula and in the region.

"America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad.

"Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming."

US defence secretaries have long offered assurances to South Korea and Japan that its nuclear "umbrella" will protect them.

But the comments by Mr Mattis were tougher than usual and s howed why he chose South Korea for his first visit overseas since becoming defence secretary on January 20.

He sought to reassure South Koreans of the long-standing US commitment to a defence treaty that President Donald Trump suggested during the campaign was a bad deal for America.

Mr Trump has complained the treaty disadvantaged the US and he would not rule out abandoning signatories if they refuse to pay more for their defence.

He also said that South Korea and Japan, which are already within the range of North Korean missiles, might acquire their own nuclear weapons rather than rely on US deterrence.

Last month, Mr Trump fuelled speculation of possible US military action to pre-empt North Korea's weapons development.

In response to threats by North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, the president tweeted: "It won't happen!"

Mr Mattis also discussed with the South Koreans a timetable for deploying an advanced US missile defence system called the Theatre High-Altitude Area Defence, or THAAAD.

It is meant to improve protection of South Korea and Japan - as well as US troops stationed in both countries - against a North Korean missile attack.

Speaking to reporters as he travelled to South Korea, Mr Mattis said he would ask South Korean and Japan whether the current strategy for getting the North to curtail or eliminate its nuclear and missile programmes was adequate.

North Korea has said it is nearly ready to test-launch a ballistic missile of intercontinental range, meaning it could theoretically threat the United States.

The current caretaker South Korean government has said it supports THAAAD deployment, but the decision is in doubt because of approaching national elections.

Mr Han said North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes "blatantly threaten" the international community and have created a "severe security situation" on the Korean peninsula.

He described the visit by Mr Mattis so early in his tenure as a warning to North Korea.

After a series of meetings in Seoul, Mr Mattis was scheduled to fly to Tokyo on Friday for further consultations.

The US has 28,500 troops permanently based in South Korea and about 50,000 in Japan.

AP
Brazilian President Michel Temer elevated his infrastructure investment secretary to a ministry-level position on Thursday, underscoring the importance of proposed privatizations in his agenda to spur economic growth, Sputnik reports.

Wellington Moreira Franco, a close adviser to the president, will also be responsible for communications and ceremonies, the presidential spokesman told journalists. He will retain his infrastructure role at Cabinet level.

The promotion highlighted Temer's confidence in Moreira Franco, who, according to a source, had drafted a resignation letter in December after plea bargain testimony in a major graft probe implicated him in illegal campaign fundraising.

Franco denied any wrongdoing or intentions to quit. His new position in Temer's Cabinet means any case against him must be tried by the Supreme Court, which has a long backlog of cases.

Temer's spokesman also said the president was appointing lawmaker Antonio Imbassahy as his minister in charge of relations with Congress, replacing Geddel Vieira Lima, who stepped down in November amid allegations of influence peddling.

The appointment of Imbassahy, the fourth minister from the Brazilian Social Democracy Party, or PSDB, in Temer's Cabinet, reflects the president's growing dependence on the allied party to pass economic reforms aimed at closing a huge budget deficit.

The PSDB has pledged to support the government through 2018, when both they and Temer's own Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, plan to field their own presidential candidates.

Given the tensions in some corners of the two parties, Temer waited to announce Imbassahy's appointment until an ideological ally of his was confirmed as speaker of the lower house of Congress earlier on Thursday.

Temer's spokesman also said the president was recreating a Ministry of Human Rights, reversing his decision last year to shutter the ministry and pass its responsibilities to his justice minister.

Temer appointed as human rights minister Luislinda Valois, the first black woman to serve as a judge in Brazil.
A poster celebrating diversity in the Winston-Salem/ Forsyth County Schools system has struck a nerve within its schools and beyond, catching fire in local social media posts.

The poster started popping up in schools last week, with it being put on doors, along hallways and in classrooms. It reads, We Welcome You, and it extends that to all religions, all colors, all cultures, all sizes, all ages, all genders, all types. Under a multicolored abstract graphic, the poster also declares, All are safe here.

School officials say the poster was designed in August 2016 and rolled out last week as part of a preplanned schedule.

The poster comes amid nationwide protests over the Trump administrations travel ban on seven majority Muslim countries and in the wake of North Carolinas controversial House Bill 2, which excludes gender identity and sexual orientation from statewide anti-discrimination protections.

The political moment in which it would be received, likely helping spark the outpouring of response online, was not considered, said Alex Hoskins, the school systems chief of staff.

All the feedback has been positive, Hoskins said.

We didnt have those conversations, she said. It was about the work we are asking schools to do around our core values.

Over the summer, the school system developed a set of six core values: student-centered, accountability, collaboration, equity, high expectations and integrity. Each has been the focus during one of the six early release days built into the school calendar for staff development.

The early release day on Feb. 8 will focus on equity, and the poster was designed in-house to dovetail with those conversations, Hoskins said.

Virginia Browne, a teacher at Glenn High School, said she was proud to hang the poster in her classroom.

Its pretty simple, Browne said. At Glenn, were a really diverse school. We really believe our strength lies in our diversity.

Dana Jones, the head of the school board, was one of the first people to suggest equity as a core value. Jones said she saw the poster for the first time on social media last week.

Probably the timing of this coming out makes it look much more political in nature, but that was not the intention, she said. Its a poster, but I think the most important thing we do is model and demonstrate, as adults, that we value all of our children.

Political or not, the poster has caught fire on social media, with one post from a school employee shared more than 170 times.

I love this poster, Amy Farmer, the parent of a junior at Reagan High School, posted on Twitter. Thanks, @wsfcs for reminding us that we are all welcome here.

People from outside the school system are seeing the image online and requesting copies. Among them was Kristi Marion, the publicity and marketing manager for the RiverRun International Film Festival.

As an international film festival, which also brings films into our local classrooms with our Films with Class program, RiverRun celebrates all types of diversity, Marion said. Our mission is to foster a greater appreciation of cinema and a deeper understanding of the many people, cultures and perspectives of our world through interaction with great films and filmmakers.

We would love to show that support by displaying such a timely and graphically stunning poster, she said.

However, the school system wont be making the poster available to outside individuals or groups, Hoskins said.

That wasnt the intention of the poster, she said. It has our logo on it. Its for internal use, to celebrate our core values.

The posters are expected to be on display in all schools throughout the system for the foreseeable future.
Three Reynolds High School students were arrested last week in connection with the serious assault of a homeless man, the Winston-Salem Police Department said Wednesday. The victim remains hospitalized in intensive care, police said.

All three students  Tremayne Butler, 18, Treshawn Plater, 17, and Decorus Roundtree, 16  have been charged with felony assault inflicting serious bodily injury. They were arrested at the high school Jan. 25.

Police responded to a disturbance reported near the 1400 block of Glade Street just after 4 a.m. on Jan. 16. They found Arthur Bloxham badly beaten, with a shattered orbital bone and a punctured lung.

Police allege that the three students and at least one other individual, a juvenile whose name is not being released, beat Bloxham, 59, while he was sleeping under the Glade Street bridge, next to Hanes Park.

Police said Bloxham is homeless and sometimes sleeps under the bridge, which crosses Peters Creek.

Reynolds Principal Leslie Alexander sent a message to parents on Jan. 25.

I want to make you aware that an incident that occurred off campus on a non-school day led to the arrest of three of our students, Alexander said.

Since the arrests occurred at school, I wanted to give you a courtesy notification of the situation. We are working with law enforcement on the investigation, and we will follow our discipline procedures as appropriate.

Butler and Roundtree were released on bonds of $6,000 each. Platers bond status was unclear, but recors didnt show him at the Forsyth County jail Wednesday night.

This is not Platers first assault charge. He is currently on probation for a previous assault, having been sentenced to 18 months of supervised probation last year for the 2015 assault of James Phillips-Crews.

According to police reports, Plater punched Phillips-Crews twice in the head and repeatedly kicked him in the head and stomach.

Phillips-Crews was taken to a hospital with a concussion, blood on the brain and fluid in his abdomen.

Phillips-Crews mother, Shelia Phillips, said she has been troubled by Platers behavior since her sons attack.

Phillips said her son and Plater grew up like cousins. She and Platers mother were close friends and the teens grew up together  her son, Plater and Butler, who she said is Platers older brother.

Then, Plater and his friends jumped, or attacked, her son, she said.

Phillips-Crews was 15; Plater had just turned 16.

My son spent four days in the hospital, she said.

The rules of Platers probation include that he not to have contact with Phillips family or come to their home. He also has a curfew from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Phillips said Plater and his friends have come to the house a number of times.

Its too much, she said. My son cant even be outside at his own home. Theyre not supposed to be over here.

Officials with Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools would not say how long the three students have been at Reynolds and its unclear what discipline they may face from the school system.

Student privacy laws prohibit the release of specific disciplinary information. Under the student code of conduct, assault resulting in serious injury is considered a Level VIII offense and may be punishable by expulsion.

The three suspects in the assault on Bloxham have court dates Thursday.
Court records filed in connection with the seizure of $300,000 worth of marijuana last week show that officers arrested a man after observing what they believed was a drug deal in the parking lot of a home improvement store.

A search warrant provides additional details of the case that began Jan. 27 in the parking lot of the Lowes store at 1450 Lumber Lane, off Peters Creek Parkway.

At the time, officers were taking part in a citywide narcotics operation that targeted illegal drug deals in heavily populated parking lots in Winston-Salem.

Police Lt. Bart Stone said Wednesday that drug dealers often use parking lots throughout the city to sell illegal drugs.

Weve made drug arrests in that parking lot in the past, Stone said.

The man charged in the case, Antonio Larey Settle, 41, was being held Wednesday in the Forsyth County Jail with his bond set at $1 million, according to the Forsyth County Sheriffs Office. Officers said they seized about 90 pounds of marijuana, along with other items, from his car and home.

At the Lowes on Lumber Lane last week, officers noticed a silver colored Mitsubishi Lancer pull into a parking space in the center of the lot, according to the search warrant. A short time later, a red Acura passenger car pulled up next to the Lancer.

The driver of the Acura and a man in the passenger side of the Lancer got out, shook hands and spoke briefly to each other.

The man from the Lancer then retrieved a cardboard box from that vehicle and gave it the driver of the Acura, according to the search warrant. The Acura driver then put that box into that vehicles trunk. The man from the Lancer then put another package in the trunk of the Acura.

Both men returned to their vehicles and left the scene, the warrant said. An investigator followed the Acura, and later stopped the vehicle after it traveled 60 mph in a 45 mph zone on Friedberg Church Road near Alice Court. Another officer identified that driver as Settle, the warrant said.

During the traffic stop, a warrant says, Settle sped away and headed west on Friedberg Church Road. Officers then went to Settles home in the 400 block of Quick Silver Drive. Shortly before he arrived there, Settle stopped his car, got out and ran. Officers chased Settle and arrested him.

An investigator brought a police dog to the scene, and the dog then detected marijuana in the boxes in the truck of Settles car, the warrant said.

Police seized 28 pounds of marijuana from the car. Investigators later obtained a search warrant to search Settles home.

At the home, police then seized an additional 64 pounds of marijuana, 2.62 ounces of cocaine, three guns, two boxes of ammunition, about $9,000 in cash, two cell phones, two laptop computers, documents and miscellaneous drug paraphernalia, according to the search warrant.

Settle, who also gave authorities an address on Brassfield Drive, was charged with two counts of felony trafficking in marijuana, one felony count of trafficking in cocaine, several other drug offenses, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, three arrest warrants say.

He is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 17.

James Quander of Winston-Salem, Settles attorney, declined to comment on the charges against his client because of the ongoing police investigation of the case.

However, it is imperative that there is no rush to judgment before all of the facts are thoroughly investigated and properly presented, Quander said.

Mr. Settle looks forward to this matter being resolved and being back with his family.
U.S. President Donald Trump's defense secretary warned North Korea on Friday of an "effective and overwhelming" response if Pyongyang chose to use nuclear weapons, as he reassured Seoul of steadfast U.S. support at the end of a two-day visit, Reuters reported.

"Any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said at South Korea's defense ministry.

Mattis' remarks come amid concern that North Korea could be readying to test a new ballistic missile, in what could be an early challenge for Trump's administration.

North Korea, which regularly threatens to destroy South Korea and its main ally, the United States, conducted more than 20 missile tests last year, as well as two nuclear tests, in defiance of U.N. resolutions and sanctions.

The North appears to have also restarted operation of a reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear facility that produces plutonium that can be used for its nuclear weapons program, according to U.S. think tank 38 North.

"North Korea continues to launch missiles, develop its nuclear weapons program and engage in threatening rhetoric and behavior," Mattis said.

North Korea's actions have prompted the United States and South Korea to respond by bolstering defenses, including the expected deployment of a U.S. missile defense system, known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), in South Korea later this year.

Once fully developed, a North Korean ICBM could threaten the continental United States, which is about 9,000 km (5,500 miles) from North Korea. ICBMs have a minimum range of about 5,500 km (3,400 miles), but some are designed to travel 10,000 km (6,200 miles) or more.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said that the Russian Embassy in Damascus came under mortar fire on February 2 and 3. The ministry said that the embassy was attacked from the area controlled by terrorists, Sputnik reported.

The Foreign Ministry said that the first attacks on the Russian embassy since the start of the latest ceasefire regime in Syria is aimed to undermine the truce and derail the Syrian peace process.

"We strongly condemn the new terrorist attack against the Russian diplomatic mission in Damascus. Vile attacks on our [Russian] embassy are taking place amid truce and with an evident aim to disrupt the regime of the cessation of hostilities and derail efforts in the Syrian political process."

Russia and Turkey are guarantors of a nationwide Syrian ceasefire that came into force on December 30, and has been holding up in general, despite continued reports of violations. The UN Security Council passed a resolution in December supporting the effort.

"Such a crime cannot be left unpunished," the ministry said, adding that Russia will continue fighting terrorists in Syria.

Moscow called on the international community to react to the "dangerous provocation by terrorists."

Russia called for joint efforts in the fight against the "terrorist hotbed" represented by Daesh, al-Nusra Front and their accomplices in Syria and the region.

The minisitry added that the anti-terrorist resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council should be implemented so that terrorists stopped receiving arms and money.

"One of the mines exploded on the territory of the embassy complex and the other  20 meters from the main entrance to the embassy."

The attacks have resulted in no casualties.
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US President Donald Trumps administration is reviewing policies on Cuba introduced by former President Barack Obama, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said on Friday, Sputnik reported.

"We are in the midst of a full of review of all US policies towards Cuba," Spicer told reporters.

In December 2014, former US president Barack Obama announced that the United States would normalize relations with Cuba after more than 50 years of non-engagement and hostilities.

However, Trump has threatened to undo any deal Washington made with Havana if Cuba fails to take steps to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
JMC Projects India secures new orders of Rs2,277 crore; Stock gains 2.6% JMC Projects (India) Limited (JMC), a leading Civil Engineering and EPC Company has secured new orders of Rs2,277 crores. The details are as follows: Water Projects in India of... November 04, 2022 | 04-11-2022 2:08 pm

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Porcelain making in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi Province, China. (Photo : YouTube/Julie Han)

For several centuries, the town of Jingdezhen's workshops were renowned to be the cradle of the best and most coveted china in the world. Today, these workshops are slowly being revived by young artisans in a bid to keep the ancient porcelain arts alive.



Made of clay and fired in the hottest kilns, Jingdezhen's china were transported all across the globe, landing on the hands of wealthy Persians, Mongols, and Frenchmen, according to an article by The New York Times.



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However, the porcelain arts came to a halt when the Qing dynasty fell. Wars and revolutions served fatal blows, until the ancient art was only used for the production of Communist statues.



In an interesting turn of events, young artisans and craftsmen are moving to the river town of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi Province to learn porcelain-making.



"I like the atmosphere very much," said 27-year-old Fang Xin in an interview with The New York Times.



Fang came all the way the Guangxi region to become a "jingpiao" or Jingdezhen drifter. The "jingpiao" are the young people who have come to the town to learn how to make china, and in the process, earn a decent profit from the skill. After all, the middle-class boom in China has created a demand for porcelain.



"A lot of people with dreams come here," shared Fang. "There is a variety of teachers, and they teach all kinds of skills and ideas."



Fang worked and studied the craft at the Pottery Workshop, an education center opened by Caroline Cheng and Takeshi Yasuda in 2005. The center was one of the main proponents of the revived Jingdezhen ceramics scene.



The Pottery Workshop's students are mostly Chinese, although some of the instructions and administrators come from more diverse backgrounds. The center also organizes a market where students can proudly sell their wares.


Priyanka Chopra is not just our Desi Girl now. PC is a full-throttle global brand in herself. Be it her American show Quantico or Baywatch, that is all set to hit the silver screen in May, PC's journey as an entertainer has just seen ups.

PC was recently appointed as a global UNICEF ambassador and this one was a well-deserved feat for her. PC, who was really fond of Obama was really sad when Donald Trump replaced him as the next president of the US. And now that Trump announced his decision of putting a 90-day ban on immigrants, PC as a global citizen seems really upset.

The call me mellow yellow... @byrdiebeauty  A photo posted by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Nov 7, 2016 at 6:38am PST

Priyanka Chopra took to her Linkedin account to express her displeasure on the same. In a hard-hitting post against the ban, she wrote,

"The images have been adding up over the weekend. A young boy at an airport desperately clinging to his mother with fear in his eyes after being detained for hours at Dulles International airport in Washington DC, unable to fathom the chaos of being stopped entry into what he knew as his home.

Kristeligt Dagblad

The US has always acknowledged that it is a country built by immigrants. The anger, frustration, and helplessness that followed US State Departments 90-day ban of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen from entering the US is justified.

As a global citizen, this has deeply affected me.

Magical visit at Kamakhya temple in Guwahati... something so powerful in belief....... #DiscoveringAssam A photo posted by Priyanka Chopra (@priyankachopra) on Dec 24, 2016 at 12:04am PST

Getting ready to post this blog, I was grounded by the news. All of the banned countries are places where a lot of UNICEF work is going on, where children are suffering the most. What can I add that people across professions and age groups have not already said? But adding your voice will definitely make a difference.

And make a difference we must. Please join me in making our voice stronger so that globally, our children are not discriminated against on the basis of their religion and do not have to bear the brunt of a political witch hunt.
Apples no longer the most valuable brand in the world anymore, Google just overtook it for the very first time. And how!

After knocking on the door for half a decade, Google finally crashed through the gate. The Sundar Pichai-led companys brand value increased by 24% to US $109.5 billion last year, according to a report from Brand Finance -- which estimates the value of global companies looking at various parameters. Apples value diminished from US $145.9 billion to $107.1 billion during the same period.

Apples position has slipped recently because it hasnt over-innovated to maintain an edge over rivals, claims David Haigh, chief executive officer of Brand Finance. New iterations of the iPhone have delivered diminishing returns and there are signs that the company has reached a saturation point for its brand, he said, adding, Google remains largely unchallenged in its core search business, which is the mainstay of its advertising income.

Two reasons why this may have happened...

While this may look at odds with Apples record iPhone sales and revenue last quarter, several international reports had indicated as much throughout November last year, that consumers werent warming up to the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in record numbers -- short of everyones expectations. The reduced consumer interest in Apples iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus was pegged on several things -- lack of revolutionary tech, compelling features and no clear cut wow factor.

2) Googles investing in getting more people online, the bread and butter of its business

In December last year, exactly eleven months after flagging off its ambitious plan to bring free Wi-Fi at 400 railway stations in the country, Google finished installing free high-speed RailTel (RailWire) Wi-Fi at the 100th railway station in India. Through all the 100 railway stations where Google free Wi-Fi is live right now, its helping over 1 crore passengers stream HD videos, and not just check their emails and messaging apps.

So, where Apple seems to be slipping in its perception, Googles capitalizing and strengthening its position. How long Google holds onto its most valued brand title before Apple reclaims lost ground, or Amazon beats both of them (chasing the pack at #3 currently), is anybodys guess.

A fascinating contest, nonetheless.
In a rare sign of preventive action, the government through its UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) arm proactively asked Google Play Store to takedown 12 Android applications, to safeguard citizens privacy.

For violating the Aadhaar Act, 2016, the government had the illegal and fraudulent entities shut down. These included 12 websites, 12 smartphone apps and 26 more such "fraudulent and illegal" websites/applications, according to reports.

What was their crime? These websites and apps claimed to provide Aadhaar-related services illegally and without permission, by charging excessive money from the public, for frivolous tasks like downloading Aadhaar card, relaying Aadhaar generation status, etc to users and thereby getting hold of their sensitive Aadhaar number and enrolment details.

"UIDAI has not authorised the owners of these mobile applications or websites to extend any Aadhaar related services on its behalf", said Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI.

Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey, CEO, UIDAI

Mr Pandey further warned against the unauthorised use of Aadhaar logo by the illegal websites and apps, which is again a breach of the Aadhaar Act and the Copyright Act.

He cautioned people to stay vigilant against such dodgy entities that are trying to provide unauthorised Aadhaar related services, because ultimately its their privacy thats at stake.
The next Olympics just became a whole lot special. On Wednesday, 2020 Tokyo Olympics Organisers asked the public to donate old smartphones and electronic gadgets for a novel cause -- theyll use metal extracted from the gadgets to make Olympics medals! The organisers made the original announcement in November but now gave further details about how the process will be implemented.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics officials are doing this to not only make the Paralympics and Summer Olympics more environment friendly, but also rein in spiralling costs of the biggest sporting event on earth.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games organisers aim to collect eight tonnes of metal in total during the electronic gadget donation drive. Out of this, they expect to collect at least 40 kg of gold, 2,920 kg of silver and 2,994 kg of bronze, all thanks to outdated mobile phones, kitchen and household appliances donated by people from all over Japan.

Consumers will be able to discard and donate e-waste such as smartphones, digital cameras, laptops, TVs and games units at special collection boxes which will be installed in more than 2,000 stores Olympic sponsor NTT Docomo -- Japanese telco. Across Japan, people will be able to donate gadgets in collection boxes from April 2017 onwards.

After collecting all that metal from electronic gadgets, the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games organisers will forge around 5,000 medals in total for both the Summer and Special Olympics.

This isnt the first time something like this is attempted, though. About 30% of silver and bronze medals awarded at last years Rio 2016 Olympic Games were made from recycled metal. But this is the first time ever that 100% of all the Olympic medals will be made from recycled metal.

What a great idea to get rid of electronic waste, save the planet, and make the public at large an integral part of the Olympic Games!

ALSO READ: DragonBall Z Fans Can Rejoice As Tokyo 2020 Unveils Son Goku As Olympics Ambassador
Just a couple of days after Bengaluru outlawed carpooling service by app-based cab aggregators like Uber and Ola another city has followed suit.

Reuters

The highly popular service has now been banned in Chennai too, as it violates the state's law dealing with contract carriages.

According to Tamil Nadu Motor Vehicle Act, 1989, contract carriages are only allowed to pick up passengers from one point and drop them at another. The act does not permit contract carriages to pick up or drop passengers during a trip.

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Meanwhile, Uber said its ride-sharing service was within the Motor Vehicle Act and will continue the service despite the ban in Bengaluru.

"Tamil Nadu Motor Vehicle Act, 1989, contract carriages (omni buses, auto rickshaws and cabs) are only allowed to pick up passengers from one point and drop them at another. The act does not permit contract carriages to pick up or drop passengers during a trip", Uber's general manager for Bengaluru, Christian Freese said.

UberPOOL is available in six Indian cities: New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

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The service is said to be illegal in Kerala and Odisha too.

Many people, however, have questioned the logic of banning cab pooling using archaic laws. Residents have pointed out that cab pooling will help in reducing the traffic congestion, and in the long run will also reduce the carbon emissions.
The oil slick floating along the Chennai coast, since two ships collided off the Ennore port last Saturday has travelled 32km south and entered the Palavakkam beach on the East Coast Road.

It is likely to travel further south and reach Uthandi by Monday. Nearly 70 tonnes of oil sludge accumulated on the Ennore shore at Ramakrishna Nagar Kuppam beach has been removed by the Indian Coast Guard so far.

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Also Read:Authorities Struggle To Contain Oil Spill Three Days After Two Vessels Collide Off Chennai Coast

The environment ministry has deployed a team of officials to visit Chennai on Friday to assess the damage to the environment.

Commandant Pradeep B Mandal who has been heading the clean-up operation said, "There may be 10-15 tonnes oil still left on the Ramakrishna Nagar beach.We will mop it up by Friday evening."

After the coast is cleared, the pollution response team of the coast guard will go to work on the sea walls (groynes). The rocks on the shore that are coated with thick oil sludge will be cleaned using steamers.

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The oil spill is predicted to affect another 15km of the coastline until Kanathur by Monday, according to the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS), Hyderabad.

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The output generated will be sent to fishermen and posted online INCOIS has found that about 7 tonnes of oil will evaporate each day over the next one week. About 10 tonnes will be beached every day until next week. Meanwhile, an aerial survey by the coast guard has shown that there is no trace of oil in the mid-sea.

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On Thursday, the coast guard removed 21.5 tonnes oil using buckets. The super sucker which had been employed over the previous two days could not be operated on Thursday. More than 750 workers and volunteers from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB), marine institutes and NGOs took part in the clean-up.
Europe will focus on China's travel and tourism industry on ITB China 2017 trade show. (Photo : Getty Images)

Europe is China's ultimate destination for ITB China 2017, a travel trade fair, which will run for three days, commencing on May 10, 2017.



The travel trade show will exclusively concentrate on Chinese travel industry, targeting solely the Chinese travel market, ITB China posted on its website.



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An agreement on the three-day business-related travel trade has already been signed by ITB China's General Manager, David Axiotis, and European Travel Commission's Executive Director Eduardo Santander on Jan. 31, making Europe as ITB's official partner.



"We are delighted to announce Europe as the first ever partner destination for ITB China," said Axiotis as quoted by e-Turbo News.



"China is the driving force for growth in outbound trips, and Europe as a continent remains a dream destination for many Chinese tourists," the general manager added.



Europe, being ITB China's partner, is helpful in gaining better understanding of Chinese tourists' needs during the latter's visit in European Tourism Community, according to ITB. And this is especially true in light of the upcoming EU-China Tourism Year in 2018.



The Europe-China agreement for travel trade in May may spell potential for strengthened relations between the two countries, which have been partners in trade for a few years.



A report from Xinhua said that the European Union is the largest partner of China in trading, while China is the second largest partner of Europe.



"It is only through deeper cooperation with the Chinese authorities and the support and commitment of the European tourism sector to engage in joint public-private marketing initiatives, like this partnership with ITB China that Europe will succeed in fostering sustainable tourism growth from China," Santander said as reported.



The rapid economic growth in China reportedly works to Europe's advantage as it consequentially grows Europe's own economy as well.



Factors such as increased protectionism and bleak relations with other world leaders might weaken Europe's economy, a report said. But with stronger China-EU trade relations, Europe will reap massive benefits.


The chief executives of India's largest technology companies will head to Washington this month to argue against US President Donald Trump's envisioned tightening of visa programmes.

The CEOs would meet officials and lawmakers on February 20 to try and dissuade the president from raising requirements under the H-1B visa programme, said R Chandrashekhar, Nasscom chief.

Reuters

TCS and Infosys depend on the system to insert foreign talent on the ground to work with US clients.

Visa restrictions can transform the way US firms like Apple and Indian corporations such as Wipro recruit, to offset a dearth of homegrown US engineering talent. Businesses will then have to try to hire American first and if they opt for foreign workers, priority will be given to the most highly paid, making hiring more expensive.

Reuters

Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat, introduced a bill last week to tighten requirements for the H-1B work visa programme. Senior executives are putting together contingency plans in the event they can't get enough workers into the US to work with their clients.
Amid rising concerns over the impact of Indian techies under the new US administration Infosys co-founder, N R Narayana Murthy, has suggested that Indian software companies need to stop sending people on H-1B visas and focus on local hiring in the US.

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Stating that by and large Indian mindset is always to take the "soft option", Murthy said becoming multi- cultural is not easy and is a "very, very hard option".

Also Read: Donald Trump, Oracle Lawsuit And H-1B Visa, Woes For Indian IT Companies In US Are Only Growing

"They (Indian software companies) must recruit American residents in the US, Canadians in Canada, British people in Britain etc. That's the only way, we can become a true multi-national company and in order to do that, we should stop using H1-B visas and sending a large number of Indians to those countries to deliver services."

He added that recruitment from colleges should be done and local people be trained to add value to Indian companies.

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The proposed overhaul of popular H-1B visa regime by US President Donald Trump has raised concerns among the Indian IT firms.

Also Read: Indian Passport Lets You Visit 46 Countries Without Visa, Is 81st Most Powerful In The World!

Also, the recent introduction of a US bill (Lofgren Bill) that proposes doubling of the minimum wages of H-1B visa holders to $130,000 from $60,000 has made the industry worried.

Any changes in the visa regime may result in higher operational costs and the shortage of skilled workers for the $110 billion Indian outsourcing industry.

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The US contributes nearly 62 per cent of the exports. Analysts are of the opinion that Indian tech companies could easily witness around 60-70 per cent rise in salaries of H-1B visa dependent workforce, leading to a 5-10 per cent hit on the margins, depending on the total base of employees currently on H-1B visas.

Also Read: India Expresses Concern After H-1B Visa Bill Is Introduced In The US Senate

Murthy said Indian companies will have to learn to work with non-Indian professionals and become more multi-cultural.

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"I think by and large, the Indian mindset is always to take the soft option. Becoming multi-cultural is a very, very hard option, it's not easy. Our managers will have to learn with non-Indian professionals, how to get the best out of them, how to work in teams that are multi-cultural, how to make sure that we understand the rules of crossing cultures," he said.

Also Read: Here Is Everything You Need To Know About The H1-B Visa And How The New Regulation Could Devastate The Indian IT Sector
Union textiles minister, Smriti Irani, on Friday urged Rajya Sabha Chairman to delete the name of a non-parliamentarian from its records.

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Irani's plea came as a response to a comment made by Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Derek O'Brien claiming that "twenty six Twitter handles that give out rape threats, communal threats are followed by the Prime Minister of India.Two of these handles have been suspended by Twitter".

He also went on to name @Bhak_sala, a right-wing twitter account used by Rahul Raj, and Mahiviram.

O'Brien claimed that some of them were invited to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's house for a social digital party, adding that these were paid handles.

Smriti, however, said the name of the individual should be removed from the Parliamentary records as the individual cannot defend himself in the house.

As the convention of this house, I am beseeching you, kindly expunge the name of an individual as youve done on many occasions so the individual who cannot defend himself do so.

This is not the first time the handles Modi follows on Twitter has come under scrutiny.

In July last year, Modi had hosted a group of 150 social media influencers at his official residence, most of them, known abusive rightwing trolls.

The main opposition, Congress had last month accused Modi of being the first leader in the free world to run an army of trolls.

It is unprecedented that Prime Minister of the country follows, meets and actively encourages such trolls, Congress spokesman Ajoy Kumar had then said.
The US has once again expressed its concerns over the Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Contrary to the expectations, US President Donald Trump has warned Israel that constructing new settlements "may not be helpful" to Middle East peace efforts.

Trump is expected to be as sympathetic to the settlements, which are considered illegal by most of the international community. Shortly before taking office, he vigorously criticized the Obama administration for not vetoing a United Nations Security Council measure condemning settlements.

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But in a statement Thursday, the White House said, "While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House said the administration "has not taken an official position on settlement activity" and the president would discuss the issue with Netanyahu when he travels to Washington later this month. The two leaders are scheduled to meet at the White House on February 15.

The US statement came hours after Netanyahu vowed to establish the first new West Bank settlement in over two decades "as soon as possible," promising to make up for the court-ordered demolition of an illegal settler outpost. It was his latest step to expand Israeli settlement construction in the wake of Trump's inauguration.

AP

Netanyahu repeatedly clashed with President Barack Obama during the Democrat's eight years in office, and Trump has vowed to be a better partner for Israel. Following the U.N. vote, Trump tweeted, "Stay strong Israel, January 20th is fast approaching!" referring to the date of his inauguration.
At least 10 refugees crossed over to Canada from America following the US President Donald Trumps travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Reuters

According to analysts, the number of people crossing the border is increasing.

Rita Chahal of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council told CTV, To have this sudden surge that we have experienced, and we expect that that will continue, is quite overwhelming.

Reuters

As per Trumps ban, citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Yemen and Sudan have been temporarily banned from entering America, while Syrians have been indefinitely barred. One of the asylum seekers was an East African man. He crossed from Americas Minnesota to Canadas Manitoba on Saturday fearing the new policy.

Reuters

The man from Djibouti said: I heard the rumours about U.S. President Donald Trump -- that theyll send people back where they came from. Thats why people flee to Canada.

According to data collected by the Canada Border Services Agencies, border crossings from America to Canada increasing from 4,407 to 7,022 in 2015-2016.
Three women were sunbathing topless on a beach in Argentina when 20 police officers ask them to leave. This incident has led to a protest movement in the country where women are saying, Our breasts should not be censored.

youtube/elfederal online

Summer is underway in Necochea, 500 kms south of Argentinian capital Buenos Aires. Three Argentines decided to take full advantage of the naturally available vitamin D and decided to sunbathe topless.

Soon after local police arrived to tell them they were breaking public decency laws.

youtube/elfederal online

The women argued they were doing nothing wrong -- leading to an escalating row that drew in police reinforcements and a giant crowd of onlookers, some yelling at the women to get off the beach, others shouting their support.

Eventually, the women decided to leave what one of them called the "fascist beach."

youtube/elfederal online

A video of the standoff has now gone viral online -- stoking outrage among women's rights activists in a country known for machismo and high levels of violence against women.

Activists have called a topless women's march in support of the three women for Tuesday in the capital. They are calling the protest the "tetazo," which roughly translates as "breast smack."

youtube/elfederal online

A judge meanwhile dismissed the charges against the three women brought by a male beachgoer.

"A woman baring her breasts does not constitute an act that harms others, and is therefore outside the authority of the courts," local criminal court judge Mario Juliano ruled Wednesday.

He called on the police to be more "prudent."

With inputs from AFP
Search Continues for Missing in Boat Accident in Malaysia as Survivors Recount Tragedy

China is calling for the resumption of search efforts for the missing tourists and a fair investigation into the tragedy. (Photo : Getty Images)

Malaysian authorities announced on Tuesday that it would continue its search for the five missing Chinese tourists and a crewman from a tour boat that sank in rough waters near Sabah on Saturday night.



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Ahmad Puzi Ab Kahar, director general of Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency, said the operation will cover approximately 3,000 square nautical miles using planes and ships from the agency as well as those from Malaysian navy and air force.



The neighboring kingdom of Brunei also sent two aircraft to help in the search effort, he added.



The catamaran, which carried 28 Chinese tourists and three crew members, lost contact with maritime authorities after it left Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah, for the resort island of Pulau Mengalum 60 kilometers to the west on Saturday.



Officials said the boat was brought down by heavy waves and the tourists, tied together in life jackets, were swept away by the current. They were found by Malaysian tugboats and fishing vessels after being afloat for over 30 hours.



Aside from the six missing, three tourists were confirmed dead on Sunday while 22 people, including the boat's skipper and another crew member, were rescued.



The survivors were flown to Kota Kinabalu for medical treatment. All were sunburned and dehydrated but in stable condition, according to media reports.



One of the rescued tourists, Fan Lixia, said she and other passengers held onto the body of a dead friend while treading in cold water.



"If we were found any later, I don't think I would have survived," she told reporters at a hospital in Kota Kinabalu.



"My friend died. We dragged his body around for half a day, but we couldn't manage any more so we had to let it go."



Another survivor, Yang Yaoru, said their collective will kept them alive.



Yang, who was with her mother, said the survivors huddled together for warmth, shared what little food they had, and urged one other to stay alive.



"If I had died, my mother couldn't have survived by herself ... I must bring my mother home," the 24-year-old Yang told Chinese broadcaster CCTV.



Thousands of Chinese flock to the Mengalum island resort during the Chinese New Year. China is one of Malaysia's main sources of tourists.



China's Foreign Ministry on Monday urged the Malaysian government to continue its search and rescue efforts and conduct a probe on the incident.



"China hopes the Malaysian side will carry out a fair and objective investigation to find out the truth as early as possible, said ministry spokesman Geng Shuang.



The catamaran's owner and the two rescued crew members have been detained on accusations of negligence, according to Sabah police.



Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has also called for a detailed investigation into the cause of the sinking.


A battle of "communiques" erupted late this week between the government and the center-right main opposition, with the latter on Friday charging that it was Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who "was begging for the IMF's assistance" back in the summer of 2015.
The object of the Lecture is to supply the participants with the basics of the SAMREC and SAMVAL Codes. The purpose of the 3-hour lecture is to supply young professionals with the opportunity to broaden their mining knowledge of general mining issues.

The lecture intends to provide the professional with a better understanding and appreciation of the South African reporting codes. Sufficient detail will also enable the mining engineer to benefit from this lecture as real issue are raised during the course of the 3 hour lecture. The lecture will be broken into four (4) - 30 minute sessions structured to comprise of a basic introduction of the Codes and key definitions and principles. The second and third session will introduce the SAMREC and SAMVAL Codes and their application in Public Reporting. The final session will provide a number of case studies thereby enabling participants to fully benefit from the sessions.
Military vehicles carrying DF-26 ballistic missiles drive past the Tiananmen Gate during a military parade on Sept. 3, 2015 in Beijing, China. (Photo : Getty Images)

China has successfully launched a new type of long-range missile that can hold nuclear warheads, a move that U.S. defense officials say represents a dramatic shift in Beijing's strategic nuclear stance.



The test of the DF-5C intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which carried 10 multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV), was conducted earlier this month, according to a report published on Tuesday by The Washington Free Beacon, a political news website that regularly posts news on China's ballistic missile development.



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The missile, whose warheads were inert, was fired at the Taiyuan Space Launch Center in central China and flew into the "western Chinese desert," the report said, citing two officials familiar with the test under the condition of anonymity.



The report noted that the test held "significant" implications as it suggests that Beijing is increasing its stockpile of warheads.



It is estimated that China currently has 250 nuclear warheads in its military inventory, according to The Epoch Times.



In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Gary Ross said Washington routinely monitors Chinese military developments and takes its capabilities in their defense plans.



Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the incoming chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, expressed concern on China's growing nuclear arsenal.



"I am fully aware that China continues to modernize its nuclear missile force and is striving for a secure second-strike capability," Hyten told the Senate Armed Services Committee in September.



"Although it continues to profess a 'no first use' doctrine, China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple nuclear warheads and continues to develop and test hyper-glide vehicle technologies," he added.



Also known as the Dongfeng 5, the DF-5C missile has an estimated range of 7,500-9,500 miles. It is scheduled to be replaced by the DF-41 ICBM, which China tested in April last year.



In 2015, The Diplomat reported that an earlier version of the DF-5C ICBM was displayed at a military parade that included the widely-publicized DF-26 "Guam Killer" ballistic missile.


President Donald Trump wants to isolate the U.S. (Photo : Getty Images)

Former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev recently observed that the atmosphere for World War III seems already prevalent, echoing an earlier statement from Pope Francis that nations are deep into WW3 and two world leaders are to blame - U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.



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In a piece he penned for Time, Gorbachev said "the world is preparing for war," and pointed to the situation in Europe where NATO and Russia appear ready to clash at any given time. "More troops, tanks and armored personnel carriers are being brought to Europe. NATO and Russian forces and weapons that used to be deployed at a distance are now placed closer to each other, as if to shoot point-blank," the former Soviet Union leader said.



Fearing that the conflicts involving the great powers could soon escalate into shooting wars - such as the U.S. and its European allies warring with Russia over Ukraine, the U.S. and Russia graduating from the proxy war in Syria to an actual showdown and the U.S. getting into a slugfest with China over the latter's dominant posturing in Asia - Gorbachev sounded alarms and called for political dialogues.



But the Gorbachev call may prove too late by now, according to a report published by the Lombardi Letter. "The WW3 machine has already set its gears in motion," the report said.



That was the case when the Cold War between America and Russia was reignited. It became Cold War version 2.0 when Moscow moved against Ukraine and former U.S. President Barack Obama responded by mustering European support to pressure Russian presence out of the country. The showdown only continued as the two great powers got involved in the Syrian civil war and the U.S. actively challenging China's creeping dominance in the East and South China seas.



In the latter, it appears that Beijing is counting on support coming from the Kremlin, and Putin seems only too happy to oblige.



But really the next Great War is likely to be triggered by the current internal situation in the United States, the Lombardi Letter report said, pointing to Donald Trump as the possible cause, direct and indirect, of the global conflict. "World War 3 could take the form of a regime change or downright revolution ... It could contain the very seeds of destruction that might launch WW3," the report said.



So while WW3 is raging and the American house seems caught in utter disarray, such a situation will only further tilt in favor of one man - Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader, according to the Lombardi Letter, has already scored victories in the initial skirmishes and well on his way in winning the war.


In his first fortnight in office, President Trump has shown himself willing to upend precedents and protocols. He may also have shredded the basis for a data-sharing framework that U.S. businesses -- particularly tech companies -- rely on to facilitate transatlantic digital services worth $260 billion per year.

Among the executive orders that newly inaugurated Trump signed in a flurry of activity was Enhancing Public Safety, primarily aimed at setting deportation priorities and punishing sanctuary cities. But buried in the order is a section that threatens to torpedo the EU-U.S. data-sharing agreement known as Privacy Shield, as well as the U.S.-EU Umbrella Agreement, which covers exchanges of personal data for the purposes of preventing and investigating crime and terrorism.

Section 14 of the order specifically strips all people who are not U.S. citizens of privacy protections:

Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.

That clause was enough to throw E.U. officials into a panic, with the European Parliament's rapporteur on data protection, Jan Philipp Albrecht, tweeting: "If this is true @EU_Commission has to immediately suspend #PrivacyShield & sanction the US for breaking EU-US umbrella agreement."

A primer in data sharing

The Privacy Shield framework "greases the wheels of digital commerce." It enables companies to transfer the personal data of Europeans to the United States, while ensuring compliance with Europe's stringent privacy laws. It effectively enforces EU privacy standards, regardless of whether the data is "sitting on a server in Paris, France or Paris, Texas," says Engadget.

More than 1,500 U.S. companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft, have voluntarily agreed to abide by Privacy Shield. They do so not out of an altruistic respect for data privacy, but because without that authorization framework they would be operating in a legal gray zone. There are other mechanisms for transatlantic data transfers, but they are more complex and costly to comply with, and their legality has been called into question.

A previous data-sharing agreement, known as Safe Harbor, had been in effect for 15 years before it was struck down by European Courts in the wake of revelations about NSA spying on transatlantic communications. Privacy Shield was rapidly crafted to fill that void.

During negotiations on the agreement, then-President Obama gave the EU written assurances in the form of a presidential policy directive that ruled out the indiscriminate mass surveillance of Europeans' data by U.S. national security agencies. "Obama's extension of privacy protections to non-U.S. citizens was lauded as a very positive step by EU officials during the Privacy Shield negotiations," noted TechCrunch. "The arrival of Trump could really put the cat among the Commission's pigeons."

In the room where it happens

It's unclear whether Trump's administration was even aware of the ramifications of the privacy clause. Two people familiar with the situation told Politico that Trump aides didn't consult with agency officials who had hashed out the data-sharing agreements before he signed the executive order.

"It's just a stick they're beating foreigners with, without giving any thought to the diplomatic repercussions," said a federal official who requested anonymity because the Trump administration has prohibited talking to journalists. "If agencies and Congress had been consulted or even given a heads-up, we would've been able to deal with this proactively, and it wouldn't have been an issue that ginned up the Europeans."

Regardless of intent, an order that could strip away Europeans' privacy rights strikes at the very heart of Privacy Shield's protections. At a privacy conference in Brussels, EU officials reiterated that if adequate protection for EU citizen's personal data could no longer be guaranteed, then the framework would have to be suspended.

Fuel for the fire

Privacy Shield is already being challenged in European courts with claims that it insufficiently protects the privacy of Europeans' data. But the EC had said it was satisfied with Obama's assurances that access to personal data would be "limited to what is necessary and proportionate." Now Trump, with a hastily drafted and seemingly ill-thought-out order, has thrown fuel on the fire and given ammunition to Privacy Shield and Umbrella Agreement opponents.

In an effort to calm the situation, the European Commission rushed to put out a statement, saying, "We are aware of the executive order on public safety. [But] the U.S. Privacy Act has never offered data protection rights to Europeans." Rather, a spokeswoman for the European Commission told TechCrunch, Privacy Shield is protected by the JRA (Judicial Redress Act), adopted by the U.S. Congress last year, which extended the benefits of the Privacy Act to Europeans and gives them access to U.S. courts.

U.S. government officials are also scrambling to reassure companies and European allies. Amid the confusion, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who sponsored the JRA, attempted damage control. "I urge our European allies to be patient as we transition into the new Administration. In particular, I think the reaction to President Trump's new executive order is overblown," Sensenbrenner said in a statement to Politico. "It would take an act of Congress to repeal [the JRA] and there is no effort I'm aware of in either Congress or the Administration to do so.... The Privacy Shield and the Umbrella Agreement are important pillars supporting the transatlantic relationship. I am prepared to defend them if they're challenged."

(One disquieting sidebar to that assurance: The only vote against the Judicial Redress Act in the Senate Judiciary Committee came from Jeff Sessions, Trump's pick for attorney general.)

While the order may not remove any rights directly afforded by Privacy Shield, it adds unnecessary uncertainty around the deal, which is up for a scheduled review by the EC this spring. "Even the suggestion that the administration is cutting back privacy protections for Europeans could be damaging in the ongoing litigation over Privacy Shield's validity," says Lawfare.

What happens if the privacy shield shatters?

Many U.S. businesses found their activities hamstrung after the demise of Safe Harbor, and they clamored for a new deal to be approved. If "America first" crushes Privacy Shield, it would mean a return to legal uncertainty for American businesses.

"U.S. companies will need to comply with individual European countries, [each EU country has its own data privacy czar to enforce laws] rather than engage in uniform compliance for entering the European market," Four Oh Four writes. "Companies already established will have a headache but with a significant legal budget they can engage in this kind of compliance work. New companies and startups likely won't enter the European markets as easily."

On the same day that Trump signed the executive order, Brookings reposted a Lawfare blog in defense of Privacy Shield, "because it is vital to transatlantic digital trade and ecommerce." According to the blog's authors:

Digital trade and the information economy are subject to rampant protectionism and increasing balkanization. There is a growing array of regulatory barriers to digital services and the flow of data across all sectors. Data localization measures that require data to be kept inside the country of origin and other restrictions on the flow of information across borders amount to virtual tariffs that threaten U.S. trade and commerce. U.S. information technology and internet companies are hardest hit. The new administration should take care not also to discard the Privacy Shield framework.

Perhaps it could also take care to consider some of the long-reaching effects of executive orders before they are signed.
The concept of an accelerated Python is relatively new, and its made Python worth another look for Big Data and High Performance Computing (HPC) applications.

Thanks to some Python aficionados at Intel, who have utilized the well-known Intel Math Kernel Library (MKL) under the covers, we can all use an accelerated Python that yields big returns for Python performance without requiring that we change our Python code!

Sure, Python is amazing. But Python is relatively slow because its an interpreted (not a compiled) language. We can learn and explore interactivelyincluding doing a Hello, World! program interactively:

% python

>>> print("Hello, World.")

Hello, World.

>>> import matplotlib.pyplot as myplt

>>> myplt.plot([3,14,15,92])

>>> myplt.ylabel('hello numbers')

>>> myplt.show()

reinders

Why It Works

The reason an accelerated Python can be so effective comes from a combination of three factors:

Python has mature and widely used packages and libraries

Computation in Big Data and HPC applications is focused in small parts of the code

MKL is fast

Python has mature and widely used packages and libraries: These libraries can be accelerated, without needing to change our Python code at all. All we have to do is install an accelerated Python. Under the covers, Intel has accelerated NumPy, SciPy, pandas, scikit-learn, Jupyter, matplotlib, and mpi4py. NumPy is a library of routines for operating on N-dimensional arrays. SciPy is a library of fundamental routines for scientific computing, including numerical integration and optimization. Libraries pandas, scikit-learn, and Jupyter provide key routines for Big Data and Machine Learning. Library matplotlib provides data plotting, and mpi4py provides MPI usage.

Computation in Big Data and HPC applications is focused in small parts of the code: Big Data and High Performance Computing (HPC) generally focus most work in a few key algorithms, which have been widely studied and supported in libraries  notably NumPy, SciPy, pandas, scikit-learn, Jupyter, matplotlib, and mpi4py.

MKL is fast: Intels Math Kernel Library is highly tuned for math, and perfect to accelerate NumPy, SciPy, and other libraries that are already used by many Python applications. Additional capabilities for acceleration come from the Intel Data Analytics Acceleration Library (DAAL) and Intel Threading Building Blocks (TBB).

Eat Our Cake and Have It Too

Python is a simple language with a straightforward syntax. Its known for its expressiveness, easy-to-read syntax, large community of users, and an impressive range of libraries. It encourages innovative and incremental programming, which makes it a natural for the sort of trailblazing that new work entails. Data scientists seeking to squeeze information from Big Data have found Python a perfect fit as a result. Now we can have high performance too.

When thinking of the user-friendly nature of Python, we have to ask, Does user friendly always mean slow? It turns outbecause we most often focus our heavy computations into forms (like matrix algebra) that use high-speed libraries (compiled code that our Python code utilizes)we can have the best of both worlds: easy to use and fast. Acceleration is a big step forward, and its automatic when we install the accelerated distributions from Intel or the Anaconda Cloud. Look for big speedups in scikit-learn and basic operations in NumPy already, and if you stay current with the updates, expect the opportunity for very large speedups (10X or more) for NumPy universal functions (elementwise operations), more in scikit-learn, big speedups (10X or more) for FFT, optimized memory operations for NumPy, caffe, and theano deep learning packages by March 2017. There will be even more as time goes on.

Free and Easy Downloads

You can learn more about, and download, the Intel distribution for Python at https://software.intel.com/intel-distribution-for-python. Its free (but not completely open source), and it has gained considerable popularity with Python users because of its speed. The Intel packages for accelerating Python performance are also available on the Anaconda Cloud, where the unique packages in the Intel channel on Anaconda Cloud are: distarray, tbb, pydaal (see https://www.continuum.io/sites/default/files/AnacondaIntelFAQFINAL.pdf).

Click here to download free trial software
Power blackouts across Ukraine amid Russian shelling AP - Sat Nov 5, 8:06AM CDT Ukraines state electricity operator has announced regular scheduled blackouts in Kyiv and seven other regions of the country in the aftermath of Russias devastating strikes on energy infrastructure... $SPX : 3,770.55 (+1.36%) $DOWI : 32,403.22 (+1.26%) $IUXX : 10,857.03 (+1.56%)

Climate activists block private jets at Amsterdam airport AP - Sat Nov 5, 7:48AM CDT Hundreds of climate protesters have blocked private jets from leaving Amsterdams Schiphol Airport in a demonstration on the eve of the COP27 United Nations climate meeting in Egypt $SPX : 3,770.55 (+1.36%) $DOWI : 32,403.22 (+1.26%) $IUXX : 10,857.03 (+1.56%)

Should Investors Sweat the 2022 Midterm Elections? Young & The Invested - Sat Nov 5, 6:00AM CDT Election Day is right around the corner. And while there's plenty to be anxious about, Wall Street strategists say your portfolio shouldn't be one of them.

Cotton Closes with another Triple Digit Gain Barchart - Fri Nov 4, 4:46PM CDT Front month cotton futures added triple digits to the climb on Friday. Dec cotton closed up by another 4.73%, for a weekly gain of 20.5%. The December to December spread is now an 8.56 cent premium for... CTZ22 : 86.93s (+4.73%) CTH23 : 85.67s (+4.26%) CTK23 : 84.63s (+3.21%)

Cattle Markets Fade into Weekend Barchart - Fri Nov 4, 4:46PM CDT Live cattle futures ended the Friday session 10 to 50 weaker in the front months. For the week, Dec fats faded by $1.35. The weeks cash price was mostly near $150 in the South and mostly near $153 in... LEZ22 : 151.650s (-0.20%) LEG23 : 154.375s (-0.32%) LEJ23 : 158.000s (-0.19%) GFX22 : 177.825s (-0.10%) GFF23 : 179.625s (+0.11%)

Mixed Close for Hog Futures Barchart - Fri Nov 4, 4:46PM CDT Hogs went into the weekend mixed but mostly lower with 15 to 40 cent losses in the nearbys and 5 to 20 cent gains in the deferred contracts. For the week, December hogs ended with a $13.13 loss, while... HEZ22 : 82.975s (-0.48%) HEJ23 : 92.400s (-0.16%) KMZ22 : 93.875s (-0.13%)
Faraday Future's Electric Vehicle (Photo : Getty Images)

Faraday Future, an electric vehicle (EV) startup affiliated with Beijing-based Leshi Internet Information and Technology Corp, has cut back on its plans to build vehicles in the U.S., as part of efforts to challenge Tesla, according to company and public officials.



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Reuters cited two sources with direct knowledge of the plans, as saying that the company also plans to reduce its products portfolio from seven to two vehicles.



The company's change of plan came after Jia received $2 billion infusion from Sunac China Holdings for his properties, which include sister company LeEco, the sources said.



Meanwhile, a Las Vegas city official said on Tuesday, Jan. 31, that the company will instead build a much smaller vehicle assembly facility than originally planned, which will be located in North Las Vegas.



According to North Las Vegas city manager Qiong Liu, the company will start building a 650,000-square-foot (60,390-square-meter) facility later this year, on the original site of a plant that was planned to take up 3 million square feet.



Faraday's move is seen as a confirmation that the company's operations were overextended, as Jia Yueting, the company's founder, had previously said.



Some company officials also claimed that the company is having cash flow issues, adding that at least a dozen key U.S. executives have left the company in the last nine months.



Commitment to Plan



Faraday, however, said in a statement that it will still continue with plans to build a larger plant, but gave no definite timetable for it.



And even without the date set for the plant's completion, the company was reportedly hiring contractors to building the factory shell, the sources said.



"We remain committed to the State of Nevada and are continuing our $1-billion investment in the region over the next few years," according to the statement.



In December last year, Faraday announced plans to build its first auto factory in Nevada, which has annual capacity of 150,000. The company plans to open it in late 2017. The company has invested about $1.3 billion for the plant, documents submitted to the state showed.



Documents made by Faraday's finance team in early 2016 further showed that the company has allocated $1 billion convertible bond offering, to produce seven electric vehicles, ranging from an ultra-luxury car to a tiny commuter vehicle.



According to sources, Faraday has now reduced its initial portfolio to just two models: the FF91 flagship, which will be unveiled in early January, and the FF81, a smaller, less expensive car to match Tesla Model X.



The smaller Nevada plant can build not more than 10,000 cars a year and will open not until 2019, the sources added.



Future Plans



Most Faraday vehicles and other LeSee models will be produced in Zhejiang Province, which agreed to subsidize the building of a new assembly plant, which has a capacity of 450,000 vehicles. It is set to open in 2019.



Work at the Nevada plant stopped last fall as Faraday failed to issue the required $75 million performance bond for infrastructure development at the factory site, Nevada state treasurer Dan Schwartz told Reuters.



The company was also sued for non-payment by several supplies, including Futuris, a seat supplier, and media company Mill Group.



According to the documents, the company's convertible bond offering in China in 2016 will be followed by a Series A venture capital round in 2017. After that, it will turn to U.S. investors for debt financing in 2018.



As its ultimate goal, the company will make its initial public offering in 2020, at a time when it is expected to be building a million vehicles a year in the U.S. and China, with a projected market value about three times Tesla's current size.


Live Oak Bank, which includes a self-storage lending division, recently donated $250,000 to the New Hanover Regional Medical Center (NHRMC) Foundation in Wilmington, N.C. The funds will support patients and their families as well as physicians and staff at the NHRMC Betty H. Cameron Womens and Childrens Hospital, according to a foundation press release.

The hospitals birthing center has been named in Live Oaks honor.

We are honored and grateful to Live Oak Bank for this extremely generous gift. It is a testament to their philanthropic support of our community and to the hospital team [thats] dedicated to providing quality care to the women and children in our region, said Schorr Davis, the foundations executive director and vice president of development. Our patients, their parents and loved ones will benefit from this gift for many years to come.

The foundation raises and oversees funds for NHRMC, a network of hospitals, outpatient centers, emergency services and physicians in Southeast North Carolina.

Founded in 2008, Live Oak originally focused on lending to veterinarians before expanding to other healthcare-related industries and specialty areas such as self-storage. The bank provides small-business loans for acquisitions, new construction, refinancing and other real estate loans. It was voted Best Finance Company by readers of Inside Self-Storage, a trade publication for the self-storage industry, as part of its 2016 Best of Business poll.
War vs North Korea Might Go Nuclear, says Chairman of US Joint Chiefs

Launch of a Hwasong-10 (Musudan) mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM). (Photo : Getty Images)

A war pitting the United States and its ally South Korea against North Korea won't be contained to the Korean peninsula, and might go nuclear as North Korea struggles to stave-off defeat.



Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Dunford, the highest ranking officer in the Armed Forces of the United States, asserts this war against the north will also threaten American allies and the U.S. homeland.



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"There was a time, not long ago, when we planned for a conflict that might be contained to the peninsula," wrote Gen. Dunford in Joint Forces Quarterly, a publication of the National Defense University.



"But today, North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile, cyber, and space capabilities could quickly threaten the homeland and our allies in the Asia-Pacific region."



North Korea began 2017 with its deranged leader, Kim Jong-un, saying his country was making final preparations to conduct its first test of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) this year. North Korea has never designed and flown an ICBM.



The announcement means North Korea will soon have the means to attack American allies in Asia and the American homeland next with nuclear ICBMs.



From 2006 to 2016, North Korea conducted five nuclear tests and more than 20 ballistic missile tests in 2016 alone.



"We have reached the final stage in preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket," Kim said in an address to the North Korean people on Jan. 1. "Research and development of cutting edge arms equipment is actively progressing."



Also of concern to the U.S. is North Korea cyber warfare specialists and a fledgling space program being used to deliver weapons from space.



"Those capability developments, combined with an unpredictable and an irresponsible regime, certainly have our attention," said Gen. Dunford.



"A conflict breaking out on the Korean Peninsula likely would expand beyond that region. Missile technology would immediately threaten neighboring nations and cyber capabilities could threaten the globe."



"Deterring and, if necessary, defeating a threat from North Korea requires the Joint Force to be capable of nearly instant integration across regions, domains, and functions," argued Gen. Dunford.



"This means more than just fielding cutting-edge technologies that ensure a competitive advantage across all domains -- something we must continue to do. Keeping pace with the speed of war means changing the way we approach challenges, build strategy, make decisions, and develop leaders."


Kevin Parker's Sustainable Insight Capital Management must persuade critics that it can do what so many others have failed at: doing well by doing good.

Kevin Parkers career as a biodynamic winemaker did not get off to a promising start. Shortly after he purchased Chateau Maris, in Frances Languedoc region, in 1997, local vineyard owners, fearful that grapes grown without chemical agents would hurt their own crops, nailed a bloody sheeps head to his door and made threatening phone calls.

Undeterred, the American sought advice from industry legend Anne-Claude Leflaive, a biodynamic pioneer in the vaunted Burgundy region. Today most of the best Bordeaux and Burgundies are biodynamically farmed  a little-known fact outside the world of winemaking, Parker explains.

A longtime equity derivatives trader and asset management executive who spent years at Deutsche Bank before co-founding his own equity investment firm, Sustainable Insight Capital Management, Parker has faced similar, albeit less bloody, obstacles in his day job. Like biodynamic winemaking, so-called ESG investing  the practice of making investments that adhere to environmental, social responsibility, and corporate governance principles  is often met with skepticism.

The conventional wisdom in the asset management world is that you must give up returns in order to invest sustainably and responsibly, says Parker. The wine world shares much the same view  that you give up taste and quality by buying organic wine. It turns out that both of these notions are generally wrong.

I arrived at Sustainable Insights offices, on the 12th floor of an office building in Manhattans Flatiron neighborhood, on a chilly evening a few days before Christmas, just as the last of the dim winter sunlight was flickering out. The firms 14 employees had left for the day, and Parker was preparing a tasting of wines from Chateau Maris, which he co-owns with Robert Eden, a nephew of former British prime minister Anthony Eden.

Tall, with graying hair, Parker, 57, has the air of a Wall Street financier but the business-casual attire one would expect of a sustainable-investment executive. That winter day he sported a blue-checked button-down shirt, a brown plaid wool jacket, and khaki slacks. As he prepared to share his wines, lined up on a high-top table adjacent to the small kitchen in his whitewashed, open-plan workspace, he described the course of his career.

Parker got his start in equity derivatives during a seven-year stint at Morgan Stanleys Tokyo office. In 1993, at the request of the firms then-president, John Mack, Parker took a detour to serve as chief information officer back in the U.S., where he rolled out distributed computing and all of the firms global trading applications. We were the first firm in the world to have a fully functional global intranet operating, he says proudly of his days in IT. Despite that accomplishment, Parker yearned to return to his roots.It was a fun time, but by 97 I wanted to get back to the business side.

He began running Deutsche Banks equity derivatives business in 1997  the same year he bought Chateau Maris  building out the banks prime brokerage and proprietary trading businesses. He rose to global head of institutional equities in 2000. Four years later he was named global head of Deutsche Asset Management.

That same year Chateau Maris was certified chemical-free. Parker had spent years converting the property from a traditional vineyard  in France such vineyards are permitted to use 65 different chemicals  to a biodynamic one.

At our December tasting the first wine is a 2010 Oeuf Neuf (egg nine), made from Grenache grapes. The cement fermentation tanks that hold the wine are egg-shaped, and the wine is aged for 999 days. Parker, who enjoys numbers, tells me that he made 999 bottles of this wine.

Were putting all of our wines in the eggs now for some period of time because of the effect its having on the wines, he says. I am delighted by the rich, Rhone-like quality of the Oeuf Neuf, with notes of red cherry and dark chocolate. Parker is clearly pleased. If you want to make a wine that has universal appeal, he says, you search for elegance in the glass and that soft, subtle feel in the mouth.

Parkers work as a biodynamic winemaker spurred his interest in sustainable investing; he launched DB Climate Change Advisors at Deutsche Asset Management in 2006, appointing Mark Fulton as global head of climate change investment research and Bruce Kahn as director and senior investment analyst.

In 2013 they opened their own shop, with seed capital from Capricorn investment Group, the family office of Jeff Skoll, who was the second employee at eBay. (Skolls movie company, Participant Media, produced Al Gores documentary on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth.) Sustainable Insight Capital has since attracted an investment from the Kresge Foundation, whose CIO, Robert Manilla, sits on its board.

The second wine of the evening, a 2012 Les Planels, is made mostly from Syrah grapes, which along with Grenache are the two leading grapes of the Languedoc region. It has the spicy, peppery flavor typical of the grape but feels softer in the mouth than most Syrahs. With a 93-point rating, its a bargain at $25 retail.

Not unlike the challenges he encountered when starting a biodynamic vineyard, Parker is facing major headwinds in growing his investment firm, which manages $330 million in assets. Not only does his firm have to contend with the stigma surrounding the return potential of ESG investments, it is an active manager at a time when passive management is king.

I honestly believed we were going to have more assets on the platform by now, Parker admits, acknowledging the mass migration to passive investing. ESG or no ESG, the world doesnt need another long-only asset manager who cant add value. We must have something that we know is going in the bottle, that over the long term is going to differentiate us. Otherwise wed be crazy.

Theres a lot going on in our final bottle of the evening, a 2011 Les Amandiers. The well-balanced wine is aged in new oak barrels and sold in a heavy bottle that befits its top-of-the-line status. Its a dark, rich wine, still young; despite its eminent potability this evening, it could benefit from five more years in the bottle to integrate the oakiness.

As he packs up samples for me to take home, Parker says he is very confident of his firms position. Perhaps that confidence stems in part from his success in overcoming the early trials of Chateau Maris. Its hard to imagine a more stubborn group than French grape farmers, but ten years later all those hostile neighbors have converted their own vineyards to biodynamic farming. And the investors wines have won accolades. Wine Spectator magazine in 2005 named us the 59th best wine in the world, Parker notes.
President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders today that called for overhauling the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act and delaying by 180 days a rule that would have required advisors on retirement accounts to act in the best interests of their clients and had been set to take effect in April.

Both measures reflect Trumps earlier pledge to aggressively pare back regulation of Wall Street. In addition to rolling back Dodd-Frank, the orders take aim at the so-called fiduciary rule, created by the Department of Labor (DoL) last year protect retirement plan participants from conflicts of interest that can arise when high-commission financial products are sold to investors by stockbrokers and insurance salespeople. The executive order also calls for a legal and economic review of the rule.

While todays executive order calls for the dismantling of Dodd-Frank, Fitch does not believe that the Dodd-Frank Act will be repealed in full; however, select provisions are potentially subject to substantial revision, wrote Joo-Yung Lee, head of North American financial institutions for Fitch Ratings, in a note following the announcement. Any changes in rules that reduce capital and liquidity requirements could have negative rating implications if banks respond to such rules with weaker capital and liquidity positions.

Administration executives said the moves were designed to loosen regulations in hopes of spurring innovation and broadening choice. Americans are going to have better choices and Americans are going to have better products because were not going to burden the banks with literally hundreds of billions of dollars of regulatory costs every year, White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn told the Wall Street Journal in an interview on Thursday.

The fiduciary rule had come under heavy fire from members of the financial community and provoked seven separate lawsuits against the DoL by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (on behalf of small broker-dealers and insurance agents) and six other industry players and trade organizations. Federal judges shot down two of the suits in November.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled  Your 401(k) Doesnt Need a Federal Babysitter, Anthony Scaramucci, the SkyBridge Capital founder-turned-Trump booster, warned that the rule might have unintended consequences, such as forcing investors to pile into passively managed index funds. AQR Capital Management founder Cliff Asness echoed that sentiment in an essay published on AQRs website. There are no easy answers here, Asness wrote. But there are issues to consider beyond the superficial hey, its great to make people legally promise to act nice!
Emerging-markets equities kicked off the year with a bang: As of Tuesdays close, the MSCI Emerging Markets index had gained 5.5 percent overall  a record for the month of January and the highest level since last March. Going into this year, many market observers were worried that President Donald Trumps protectionist rhetoric would limit emerging markets, which have already had a rough few months, but early indications suggest thats not going to be the case.

The question now is, Where to invest? Brazil and Russia have rebounded significantly, and now fund managers and investors are starting to look past the bigger emerging economies. Beyond the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), Vietnam has a small but mighty economy that is fast becoming an investing hot spot.

Earlier in January, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said in an interview with Bloomberg Television that he wanted to make Vietnam one of the top four investor-friendly economies in the Southeast Asia region. His comments followed an earlier statement that he would be opening more of the countrys industry to foreign direct investment. The statements were quickly hailed by those who have been eyeing Vietnams positive demographics and growing economy, looking for a way in.

Vietnams GDP grew by 6.2 percent in 2016, according to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam. That number was well within expected forecasts, and the pace of growth is largely expected to continue. But despite such robust growth, foreign investing in Vietnam has historically been difficult. The government limits how much outside money can be part of any one company, and the stock market is still relatively undeveloped compared with other countries in the region. Foreign direct investment could add liquidity and depth to the stock market and local enterprise, but only recently has the government indicated that it would be willing to let outside money come in.

In September of last year, markets got the test case they were hoping for. Vietnam Dairy Products Corp.  or Vinamilk, as it is known locally  became a core part of the MSCI Vietnam index. The company now represents more than half of the benchmark for Vietnams stock market, and its success led to a flurry of IPOs listing on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Index, Vietnams stock market. Vinamilk and these IPOs added some $13 billion to Vietnams market cap in just a few months. In December, the government went further on liberalization, inviting foreign banks to bid for its stakes in Saigon Beer Alcohol Beverage Corp., or Sabeco, a $6 billion market-cap company and a well-known brand in Vietnam.

We are very bullish on the overall case for Vietnam, says Adam Choppin, analyst at Philadelphia-based FIS Group, a $5 billion investment firm. FIS Group released a research note on Wednesday highlighting Vietnam as one of its key emerging Asia economies.

In our conversations with boutique managers that trade emerging markets, many of them are making material changes to the structure of their businesses in order to invest more in Vietnam, now that liberalization is taking place, he says.

Those material changes including hiring local Vietnamese analysts and altering fund mandates to allow for greater investment into the country. Rarely have I seen such a unified view on one country, he adds. Vietnam is widely considered to be the next Thailand.

FIS Group typically works with boutique managers to further its investments in listed equities throughout emerging and frontier markets. According to Choppin, he has been surprised to see how significant the interest is in the country, given that Vietnam still has many of the problems of other, more developed economies, including governance concerns and corruption. I think investors who look closely at Vietnam can see that China, Russia, Brazil  many emerging economies  have the same concerns, and the investment opportunities are still strong.

Aaron Batten, country economist at the Asian Development Banks Vietnam resident mission, agrees. In an interview, he said that the government has made a significant effort to attract investment and also to clean up lingering issues with its banking and financial system.

Vietnamese banks have historically been plagued with nonperforming loans to state-owned enterprises as well as other credit excesses. But the State Bank of Vietnam is now working to implement Basel II standards. The Prime Minister has also said he would be willing to sell off government-owned failing banks entirely, including to foreign buyers.

If that comes to pass, Japan, an important strategic partner for Vietnam, could play a leading role. Japan is already the second-largest foreign direct investor in the country, but additional funds could accelerate improvements to Vietnams financial system and move the country forward in its quest to be a regional hub for the global supply chain.

Vietnams lending practices and underdeveloped stock market have led to problems before, but I think the country has largely learned the lessons of the past. It will take time and continued governance improvements to fully develop, but Vietnam is fundamentally trying to create an open investment environment, Batten said.

Both Batten and FIS Groups Choppin add that investments in Vietnam through foreign private equity funds and foreign banks have also ratcheted up in the past few years, with the country acting as an important diversifier to pan-Asian funds and portfolio exposures. On a relative basis, Vietnam looks strong compared to both emerging Asia and other frontier markets in general, Choppin says. We think its an area investors should consider.
"I was a bit surprised by that," says expert
Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy says his two-year state budget proposal will reduce taxes for Connecticuts insurance industry.

The Democrat said Monday he wants to lower the tax rate that insurers pay on premiums from 1.75 percent to 1.5 percent. Malloy is scheduled to unveil his new budget on February 8.

A total of 49 states and Washington, D.C. have some form of a premium tax. Connecticut-based insurers pay the rate in the state where they are doing business or Connecticuts rate, whichever is higher.

By lowering Connecticuts rate to 1.5 percent, Malloy says the tax liability for Connecticut-based insurers conducting business in states with lower tax rates will be significantly reduced.

Malloy says restructuring and lowering Connecticuts premium tax will help the insurance industry and save them millions in taxes.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Market Connecticut
The lasting effects of Superstorm Sandy continue to wash across New Jersey, evident on a century-old railroad bridge that nearly became a casualty of the ferocious October 2012 onslaught.

The storm surge from the Atlantic Ocean up into the Raritan Bay pushed a barge into the bridge, dislodging the deck and moving several steel girders that weigh several tons apiece.

In what may qualify as a small bit of irony, it may have been the best thing to happen to the Raritan River Drawbridge.

With about $450 million in funding already secured from the Federal Transit Administration, NJ Transit is pushing ahead with a project to replace the 109-year-old span. It could wind up taking less time to complete than a higher-profile project to replace its northern counterpart, the much-maligned Portal Bridge over the Hackensack River, which wasnt affected by Sandy.

In a strange way, Sandy helped us, said Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club in New Jersey.

The Portal Bridge, a regular source of delays on the heavily traveled Northeast Corridor rail line between Washington and Boston, is included in the Gateway project that also includes the building of new rail tunnels under the Hudson River and expanding New Yorks Penn Station.

Environmental and engineering work has taken about eight years to complete, New Jersey Transit Executive Steven Santoro said last week. The Portal Bridge needs about $1 billion for construction that would take an estimated additional four to five years.

That the Raritan bridge remained standing after Sandy was something of a marvel. Its deck moved about 18 inches from the storm surge and the blow from the barge.

If it had moved 24 inches, it might have gone down and wed be standing here wondering how people are going to get to work, Santoro said.

That question was answered during the three weeks crews spent repairing the bridge. Buses were jammed and commutes lengthened by hours in some cases as the roughly 10,000 people who take trains from shore areas to Newark or New York sought other modes of transportation.

Santoro said environmental studies on the bridge project should be completed within a few months, and NJ Transits board is then expected to vote on a final design. Construction is tentatively set to begin in 2019 and take roughly four years.

Unlike the existing bridge  and the Portal Bridge  the new Raritan Bridge will lift up its center section to allow boats to pass under, rather than swing open. That will make the opening higher and wider, and could require fewer openings for smaller recreational boats.

Currently the bridge is opened between 10 and 15 times per day during the summer and four or five times per day in the offseason, according to R.J. Palladino, a senior program manager for NJ Transit.

More important, the bridge will be designed to withstand a Sandy-like storm should another one visit New Jersey, something scientists say is likely.

This is more vulnerable to another storm, and so we felt it was prudent to put in an application to get funding to make this bridge more resilient, Santoro said. People depend on it to get to their jobs, and its certainly a critical bridge for tourism in the summer, which is related to the economics of New Jersey. So when you look at the big picture, you can see why the federal government allowed this project to be funded.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics New Jersey
Henderson Brothers Inc., an independent broker headquartered in Pittsburgh, Penn., has hired Scott Martinelli as a life/disability/worksite leader and business development consultant in the Employee Benefits Department.

In his new role, Martinelli will use his seven years of industry experience to assist clients with rounding out product offerings and answering questions relating to life and disability insurances.

He earned his bachelors degree in finance from John Carroll.

Founded in 1893, Henderson Brothers serves the insurance, employee benefits and financial services industries. With a team of more than 140, it serves a global client base. Henderson Brothers product offerings include: property and casualty insurance, employee benefits, retirement planning, wealth management, fiduciary services, captive management, enterprise risk management, loss control, claims management, strategic planning, succession planning, and personal lines.

Source: Henderson Brothers Inc.

Topics Pennsylvania
Ascot Underwriting Ltd. announced that Ian Thompson, Nick Williamson, and Justin Keith will be joining Ascot on March 1 to underwrite healthcare, casualty treaty, and specialty reinsurance business, based in Ascots office in Bermuda. The appointments are subject to regulatory and immigration approval.

Ian Thompson is the global healthcare practice leader for Hiscox Group and head of casualty for Hiscox Re. He has 22 years insurance experience and began his insurance career as a professional lines broker before moving to underwriting in 1997.

Nick Williamson is vice president healthcare for Hiscox Re (Bermuda). He has 20 years insurance experience and began his career as an actuarial analyst.

Justin Keith is vice president underwriting for Hiscox Re (Bermuda). He has 18 years insurance experience and began his career underwriting hospital professional liability before moving to healthcare.

Andrew Brooks, chief executive officer of Ascot Underwriting Ltd. said, I am delighted to welcome Ian, Nick, and Justin to Ascot. Their extensive experience in healthcare insurance will enable Ascot to offer our clients valuable expertise in this class of business.

Ian Thompson said, The team is very excited to be joining Ascot, where we will look to develop innovative and high quality products for clients and brokers that know us well.

Source: Ascot Underwriting

Topics Underwriting
Fire departments in nearly every pocket of Iowa have members who were awarded nationally-recognized certifications by the state fire academy despite failing their tests, according to documents released.

The Fire Service Training Bureau has sent letters to 560 departments, a majority of those in the state, to notify them that one or more firefighters on your department may have been erroneously granted certificates in recent years and will be expected to undergo retesting. The letters show the far-reaching impact of a scandal that has undermined confidence in firefighter training and threatens to add to a shortage in the mostly volunteer force that responds to fires and emergency calls.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety announced last week that the bureau granted 1,706 firefighters and emergency responders a total of 2,278 improper certifications between 2012 and 2016, or nearly a quarter of those issued. The certifications covered areas such as basic firefighting knowledge, hazardous materials and operating and driving firetrucks.

The announcement came the same day that the bureaus former accreditation manager, John McPhee, was arrested and charged with misconduct in public office and tampering with records. A complaint accuses McPhee of failing to grade tests and simply assigning random scores. He pleaded not guilty last week.

The department rejected an open records request by The Associated Press seeking the names of the firefighters impacted, citing an exemption for law enforcement qualification tests administered by or on behalf of a government body. Instead, it released copies of the notification letters sent to fire chiefs and training officers across the state, from Albert City to Yarmouth. They were advised to call or email the bureau if they needed to know which of their personnel were affected.

Those individuals will be required to retake the tests before June 30 or be faced with starting the certification process over from scratch. The bureau is offering free refresher courses and retests at several locations across the state starting Feb. 11. The courses will last 12 hours over two days, with retesting occurring on the second day of class.

Those affected passed hands-on skill tests but didnt score at least 70 percent on their written exams as required to achieve certification. Bureau officials identified the improper certifications after rescoring tests for which the exams and answer keys were still available. An undetermined number of other tests could not be rescored.

The certificates are not mandated by Iowa law but many departments require them to be hired or promoted. Fire departments worry that some volunteers will choose not to go through the testing again and quit.

Carrying the seals of the International Fire Service Accreditation Congress and the National Board on Fire Service Professional Qualifications, the credentials are also recognized by departments in other states and used as prerequisites for more advanced training.

The bureau has lost accreditation from the national qualifications group, which is known as the ProBoard, after McPhee allegedly failed to schedule a site visit by the end of 2015. The bureau hopes to achieve reaccreditation after the group conducts a site visit later this month.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Training Development Iowa
Wholesale insurance broker Gemini Risk Partners, based in Chicago, has appointed Yosha DeLong as managing director.

Prior to joining Gemini Risk Partners, DeLong was most recently the London regional executive for Ironshore Europe Limited, overseeing all IronPro product lines, the companys professional liability division. She joined Ironshore in 2009 as vice president and Midwest manager of IronPro and from 2011 to 2013 she was the Midwest regional executive, overseeing all property/casualty product lines for Ironshore Midwest.

DeLong has over 19 years experience in the insurance industry, having worked as both an underwriter and broker. She started her career in Seattle as an EPLI underwriter for Professional Risk Corporation (PRC).

Gemini Risk focuses on all lines of professional liability, with specializations in lawyers professional liability, architects and engineers, and accountants professional liability. Gemini Risk is an independently owned and managed division of Chicago-based Oswald Companies

Source: Gemini Risk Partners

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions Talent Human Resources
Bikes have grown in popularity in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou due to the convenience it offers commuters. (Photo : Getty Images)

Shanghai lawmakers and policy advisers have called on bike-sharing startups, cyclists, and the government to provide a concrete plan on how to deal with illegal bike parking in the city, China Daily reported.



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Bike-sharing operators should take the initiative to discuss with local government authorities where the bikes can be parked and where they cant, said Wang Rulu, a member of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, in one of the annual sessions held last Jan. 15.



Moreover, users must register with real names when using the bikes and those who violate parking regulations must be punished.



Bikes have grown in popularity in major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou due to the convenience it offers commuters. However, what the bike-sharing startups failed to foresee is the illegal parking dilemma it has created. Designated areas for parking easily become full, causing commuters to park on the pavement or motor vehicle lanes.



Their illegal parking has caused inconvenience for pedestrians and hindered traffic safety, said Wang.



Although certain suggestions have been put forward by involved parties, the solutions tend to be short-term. Ideal regulations should be for the long-term, according to Wang, who also works as the chief engineer at Shanghai Metro Maintenance and Support Co.



We need a solution sometime soon as the number of hired bikes will continue to increase in the near future.



For now, bike-sharing operators such as Mobike, Bluegogo, and Ofo are collaborating with the relevant authorities to come up with solutions to solve illegal bike parking, not just in Shanghai, but in other cities affected. This includes adding illegal parking violations in the credit records of offenders.



Every user must obey the public transport regulations, said Jiang Xiaoqing, a municipal legislator and deputy director of Shanghai Media Group, a radio news center.


Donald Trump has said he wants to roll back many of Barack Obamas regulations linked to climate change but there may be one exception: a federal disaster proposal aimed at getting states to prepare for the more intense storms forecast to come their way.

The regulation, proposed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency a week before Trump took office, would impose on states a disaster deductible  a requirement that they shoulder some of the recovery costs up front, before receiving federal dollars. The deductible would be reduced for states that pass stricter building codes or take other steps to reduce their residents exposure to disasters.

The federal government has paid out $357 billion in the past decade after disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires, and the risk of bigger storms and greater losses looms. Keeping those costs in check is something the Trump administration may be interested in, as well.

If youre a good-government person, theres a lot of common sense in this, said James Carafano, the head of Trumps transition team for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes FEMA. The deductible idea is fiscally responsible and politically feasible, he said.

I dont think its dead, because its a reasonable idea, Carafano, vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said in an interview Jan. 26, less than a week after his work with the transition team ended.

A spokeswoman for FEMA declined to comment.

Whether the administration pursues the disaster deductible could signal its broader approach to policies aimed at adapting to climate change. While Trump campaigned against programs to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, such as the 2015 Paris agreement and the Clean Power Plan, his position isnt clear on initiatives designed to help Americans cope with the consequences of emissions: heat waves, sea-level rise, and more frequent and intense hurricanes, floods and wildfires.

Flood-Prone States

That relative silence may reflect the fact that unlike the climate debate, which according to opinion polls increasingly falls along ideological lines, protecting Americans against extreme weather remains largely bipartisan. Some of the states most exposed to hurricanes and floods are led by Republicans, who have become increasingly aggressive about responding to those threats.

The push to adapt to climate change still has divisions. When FEMA released an outline of its deductible proposal last year, property and casualty insurers supported the idea. Meanwhile, homebuilders, whose costs would increase if houses had to meet stricter safety standards, opposed it. The National Association of Home Builders, a trade group, called the idea a back-door way to impose federal building code requirements.

The fight over disaster-policy reform has highlighted another fault line: Between state and local governments, for whom any restrictions on development mean less tax revenue, and the federal government, which now pays all or most of the cost when houses, roads, bridges and other property gets damaged by storms.

Extreme Weather

Under the current rules, the federal and state governments have a cost-sharing arrangement for emergencies, but the president can waive the state share. The deductible would put states on the hook for the initial payouts, before most federal aid begins.

Craig Fugate, Obamas FEMA director, said in an interview with Bloomberg in December that states may prefer the federal governments current approach to disaster recovery, which imposes no penalty on states that fail to address risks from extreme weather. But he said Congress wont keep spending more money for disaster recovery forever.

You may not like what Im proposing, but whats your alternative? Fugate recalled telling state officials. The Government Accountability Office and the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General have both continued to say that the threshold for disaster declarations for public assistance is too low, and it should be increased.

Carafano, the former transition head, said that while Fugate was the driving force behind the deductible concept, that didnt mean it was a partisan issue. Its associated with a FEMA director who everybody liked and respected, Carafano said. Its not like its an Obama idea.

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.
Federal authorities have charged 104 people with numerous identity theft and fraud offenses in the latest South Florida crackdown on a rampant problem involving tens of thousands of stolen personal identities.

The charges involve fraud ranging from filing false tax returns to takeovers of bank and credit card accounts to skimmers used to steal information at gas pumps, said Miami U.S. Attorney Wifredo Ferrer.

The 81 cases announced Tuesday involve intended theft of more than $60 million.

These ID thieves are stealing the blueprints of our lives, Ferrer said. The schemes are varied. These fraudsters have no shame.

In one of the largest cases, an employee at Miamis Jackson Health System is accused of stealing identities from 24,000 people using hospital computer databases. Court documents show Evelina Sophia Reid, 35, is charged in a 14-count indictment for an alleged scheme that ran over five years. No attorney is listed for Reid in court documents.

Another case highlighted Tuesday involved Andre Oakley Wellington, 37, who authorities said conspired with others to impersonate Internal Revenue Service agents who falsely told people in telephone calls they owed money to the government. The group allegedly stole more than $550,000 from one victim.

Wellingtons attorney did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Federal officials say South Florida remains the nations epicenter for fraud linked to identity theft. Since 2012, Ferrer said more than 600 people have been charged with such crimes while trying to steal some $600 million from individual accounts, government programs such as Social Security or unemployment benefits and personal credit cards.

The penalties can be steep. A conviction for aggravated identity theft carries a required minimum two-year prison term for each count plus up to 10 years on top of that.

It is a strong reminder that we are not backing down, Ferrer said.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Florida Fraud
Alliant Insurance Services, a nationwide specialty insurance brokerage firm, has added Griff Moody to its Construction Services Group as senior vice president. Moody will provide insurance and surety risk advisory services to construction clients across the country. He will be based in the Alpharetta, Ga., office, servicing the greater Atlanta area.

Moody has more than 30 years of risk management experience as an established risk advisor for construction clients, as well as extensive experience in underwriting, management, and brokering of some of the largest and most complex surety and insurance programs.

Prior to joining Alliant, Moody was a managing director at a global broker and had responsibility for surety, contractor default insurance, and practice programs for property and casualty lines, as well as controlled insurance programs.

Moody holds a bachelors degree in risk management from the University of Georgia and is a member of the Associated General Contractors (AGC), Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), and Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA).

Headquartered in Newport Beach, CA, Alliant Insurance Services, Inc. provides property and casualty, workers compensation, employee benefits, surety, and financial products and services to clients nationwide, including public entities, tribal nations, healthcare, energy, law firms, real estate, construction, and other industry groups.

Topics Georgia Construction Alliant
The insurance industry has an image problem. That is probably not really breaking news to anyone reading this, but its an important topic to discuss and one the industry can address and, believe it or not, an issue that can be resolved.

The Florida Chamber of Commerces 2017 Florida Insurance Summit held in Miami this week included a panel with journalists who cover Florida. The discussion was robust and important and offered insight into one of the big reasons the insurance industry has an image problem: they wont talk to the media.

Now rather than getting defensive and calling the media the opposition party, the industry might consider the job the media tries to do.

The panelists, including this Insurance Journal reporter; Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau chief for the Miami-Herald and co-bureau chief, Tampa Bay Times, who covers legislative issues; and Todd Ulrich investigative reporter for Orlando television station WFTV-9 agreed one of the big reasons for the insurance industrys typically negative image is access.

There are plenty examples of bad coverage the industry has gotten over the years, and it isnt always deserved. But if the industry wont talk to the media, wont tell their side of the story, it wont be reported on.

Covering the insurance industry means interviewing and having relationships with insurance professionals and executives, as well as many state regulators, and other industry stakeholders and contributors. It is obvious the industry cares about its clients and works hard for those clients. Whether it is helping them after a catastrophe, negotiating with a carrier on their clients behalf, or the charitable efforts that an entire agency pitches in to support, there are a lot of stories for the industry to tell.

There are also times when things happen that paint the industry in an unflattering light. Its no secret that most consumers dont understand how insurance works  why their rates go up when they havent had a claim or why insurance companies say they have to raise rates when they made millions of dollars the previous year.

As a reputable insurance news organization, not a publication just there to promote the industrys interests, Insurance Journal reports on stories that may not always make the industry look good. The industry should be held accountable when something that isnt right is going on. At the same time, Insurance Journal goes straight to the source when a negative story about the industry is reported.

A trade publication like Insurance Journal does have an advantage over other media outlets because of its focus on the industry and understanding of what it does. The relationships formed with those in the industry are invaluable to getting honest answers and being able to report on the industry in a fair manner when questions about its integrity arise. Insurance Journal will give the industry credit where credit is due, but that cant be done if nobody will talk.

When insurance companies put up roadblocks on important issues it can be nearly impossible to break through. That was the main topic discussed on the reporter panel at the Florida Chamber of Commerce Insurance Summit.

Take the issue of assignment of benefits abuse that is currently rampant in Florida. The problem is leading to increased rates statewide, and carriers pulling out of certain regions of the state and refusing to renew or write new business in areas where the abuse has been especially bad. Floridas state-run insurer, Citizens, is anticipating its policy count will grow over the next several years after years of depopulation efforts and reaching its lowest policy count in over a decade just last year.

This is a big deal, and its a big deal for the industrys clients. Klas and Ulrich said as journalists in the Florida media, they have reported on the topic but not to the extent they would like. Ulrich has done many hidden camera investigations in Orlando documenting the abuse by unscrupulous contractors. He has seen first-hand how consumers are completely in the dark about what is going on and how this abuse will eventually affect them.

Ulrich thinks and believes the industry that this is a big problem, but in reporting on these stories he gets radio silence from carriers directly affected by the abuse.

The industry needs to tell these stories. The industry needs to give the media hard evidence of how this abuse is affecting their companies and most importantly their clients. This can be through financial data or e-mailed statements, but it could and should go a step further  the companys own experience with this abuse either targeted to its clients, agents, or adjusters.

Floridapolitics.com reported that CFO Jeff Atwater, who gave the keynote speech at Thursdays event, said after his talk that the industry has helped to perpetuate its negative image.

Im not crying crocodile tears for anybody in here, he said. The industry has created its own perceptions  slow walking, not getting a repair done on time, lowballing with a contractor. Over a long period of time, this created conditions where theres a tremendous suspicion of what could really be the motivations of the insurance industry.

Insurers use the defense that they are a regulated industry, that claims data is sensitive and private information and this data cannot be disclosed. They also dont want to alarm stockholders by discussing trends that could negatively impact results. In the case of AOB, there is also the issue of quantifying the abuse  insurers have just started to break out and really analyze that data.

Thats all understandable, but if the industry wants to combat this problem, if the industry wants to change the perception of why rates are going to increase for years to come and why legislation needs to be passed, the information as to why must be accessible and provided in a way that makes sense for those who are affected by this abuse.

The media is stretched thin. There are fewer reporters covering more than they ever have before. If the insurance industry wants their side of the story told, they need to help with telling it.

Topics Carriers Florida Market
EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants has acquired Benefit Compass Insurance Services LLC, a specialist in employee benefits brokerage and consulting services in Irvine, Calif.

Benefit Compass provides employee benefit solutions, human resource consulting and employee engagement strategies.

The firm has a particular focus on the needs of auto dealers.

EPIC is a retail property/casualty and employee benefits insurance brokerage and consulting firm.

Topics Mergers & Acquisitions California
(Bloomberg) -- Indias largest technology companies plan a trip to Washington this month to argue against President Donald Trumps envisioned tightening of visa programs that Silicon Valley and their own industry rely on to attract talent.

The chief executives of the countrys biggest IT services companies will meet with administration officials and lawmakers from Feb. 20 to try and dissuade Trumps team from raising requirements under the H-1B visa program, said R Chandrashekhar, the president of industry group Nasscom. Indias largest IT services corporations, including Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys Ltd., depend on the system to insert foreign talent on the ground to work with U.S. clients.

Trumps administration is drafting an executive order aimed at overhauling the work-visa programs used to hire tens of thousands of employees each year, while Congress develops its own proposals. Restrictions could transform the way American companies like Apple Inc. and Indian corporations such as Wipro Ltd. recruit, to offset a dearth of homegrown U.S. engineering talent. Businesses would have to try to hire American first and if they opt for foreign workers, priority would be given to the most highly paid -- making hiring more expensive.

We want to put across to the new administration and the lawmakers what would be lost by America closing those doors, said Chandrashekhar, who will join the delegation on a four-day visit to the U.S. capital. Nasscom has already shared its concerns with its own government. We have talked to the government which will do what it needs to do, but we are parallelly pursuing our own course of action.

Its not clear how much force an executive order would carry if its signed by the president. Congress is also working on visa reforms and the parties will have to cooperate to pass new laws. Zoe Lofgren, a Democratic congresswoman from California, introduced a bill last week to tighten requirements for the H-1B work visa program.

News of the draft executive order has sent Indian IT stocks reeling this week and fueled a sharp rise in inquiries to local placement firms from current H-1B visa holders exploring options back home. Senior executives are putting together contingency plans in the event they cant get enough workers into the U.S. to work with their clients, which include many of Americas top banks and corporations. The topic may well come up during a conversation between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump slated for June, Chandrashekhar said.

Nasscom encompasses nearly 2,400 technology companies across the country but Chandrashekhar said the CEO delegation will comprise mainly chief executives of companies that are the biggest users of H-1B visas. He declined to name them but data shows the heaviest employers include Tata Consultancy, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra and Mindtree. Infosys, Wipro and TCS didnt respond to requests for comment.

We want to help the officials and lawmakers understand the gains for the U.S. economy and the benefits to Americans because of businesses using Indian IT services, said Chandrashekhar. It is not merely what appears on the surface, the reality is far more complex than making changes to the 85,000 H-1B visa program.
With over twenty years' experience in the international financial services industry, Perry specialises in advising on the tax aspects of capital markets, funds and aviation finance. He has acted for a wide range of industry participants, including asset managers, financial institutions, trustees, private equity providers, aviation lessors and fund administrators.

Perry has been a key participant in advising clients on international tax and regulatory regimes including FATCA/CRS, BEPS, AIFMD, UCITS, MiFID II and Solvency II. He has also participated in the tax committees of numerous industry bodies including Irish Funds and the Irish Debt Securities Association and is an active member of the Irish Debt Securities Association Tax Committee.
Un ottobre da sogno per Antonio Conte: lex ct della Nazionale italiana, attualmente alla guida del Chelsea, nelle ultime quattro gare di Premier League ha collezionato solo successi, conditi da 11 reti segnate e addirittura nessuna incassata. Numeri da record che non sono certo passati inosservati alla Federazione inglese, la quale ha conferito al tecnico leccese lambito premio di Manager del mese.

Unavventura oltremanica iniziata in sordina, quella di Conte, pur a fronte di tre vittorie nelle prime tre gare di campionato. A far vacillare, anche se solo per un momento, le certezze del patron del club londinese, Roman Abramovich, i risultati conseguiti tra la 4a e la 6a giornata, coincisi con un pareggio sul campo dello Swansea City e, soprattutto, con le due pesanti sconfitte subite dal Liverpool, sul terreno casalingo di Stamford Bridge, e dallArsenal. In particolare, la debacle interna coi Reds, aveva irritato non poco il numero uno russo, poiche occorsa proprio nel giorno della sua 250esima partita da presidente della societa.

Come detto, solo un momento. Dopo lincontro dellEmirates, il tecnico salentino cambia modulo, adottando un piu equilibrato 3-4-3 e inserendo elementi di corsa come lo spagnolo Pedro. Una svolta totale perche, di li in poi, il Chelsea inanellera solo e soltanto vittorie: 2 gol allHull City e al Southampton in trasferta, 3 ai campioni dInghilterra del Leicester e 4 allo United in casa, con un meraviglioso numero zero nella casella delle reti subite. Un fantastico poker, ottenuto tra l1 e il 29 ottobre. Un cambio di marcia sbalorditivo, confermato dal 5 a 0 rifilato ai toffees dellEverton nel primo match di novembre, e una scalata che, man mano, ha portato i blues al secondo posto in classifica, a soli 2 punti dal Liverpool capolista.

E allora, non poteva mancare il riconoscimento di migliore allenatore del mese, ottenuto surclassando tecnici del calibro di Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool), Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) e Mark Hughes (Southampton). Tanta, ovviamente, la soddisfazione: E un grande onore e voglio condividerlo con i giocatori e con la societa  ha dichiarato Conte sul sito ufficiale della Premier League -. E la prima volta che lavoro in un altro Paese, con una cultura diversa, e portare la propria filosofia non e facile, ma ora sono contento di questa scelta.

A completare la festa, la premiazione del fantasista belga, Eden Hazard, come miglior giocatore di ottobre. Due risultati importanti per il club, ottimo incentivo per la rincorsa al trono dei campioni, occupato dal Leicester di Ranieri. Il prossimo appuntamento per l11 di Conte sara al Riverside Stadium, tana del Middlesborough neopromosso. Il tempo di festeggiare e gia finito.
'How to Get Away With Murder' Season 3 spoilers: Annalise faces more charges in episode 12 Go Cry Somewhere Else [VIDEO]

In "How to Get Away with Murder," Viola Davis plays Annalise Keating, a law professor at the Philadelphia university, who was involved in a murder plot along with the Keating 5. (Photo : YouTube/ Television Promos)

"How to Get Away With Murder" Season 3 episode 11 ended with more surprises after things have escalated following Wes Gibbins' (Alfred Enoch) death. Annalise Keating (Viola Davis) is having a hard time behind bars as police officers are attempting to restrain her.



It was a shocking scene when Frank Delfino (Charlie Weber) admitted to killing Wes in "How to Get Away With Murder" Season 3 episode 11. It led to speculations that he may be doing it to save Annalise and get her out of prison. Laurel Castillo (Karla Souza) was so convinced that Frank killed Wes.



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"The question is, is Frank telling the truth," creator Pete Nowalk told TV Line about Frank's confession. "You're skeptical as an audience member, and the police would be as well. But there is a chance he's not lying."



"How to Get Away With Murder" Season 3 episode 11 also seen Bonnie Winterbottom (Liza Weil) visiting Annalise to reassure her that she is working to get her out of jail. Annalise was surprised about Bonnie's gesture because she knows that she could not even release her on a bail. Bonnie informed the Keating four that the District Attorney has found enough evidence that could free the imprisoned attorney.



Nate went to investigate on Laurel and asked details about her pregnancy. Frank confessed that he murdered Wes because he discovered that the latter was the father of Laurel's baby. The coroner revealed that Wes' cause of death was homicide.



Annalise would be facing more charges that created tension in the courtroom in "How to Get Away With Murder" Season 3 episode 12 titled "Go Cry Somewhere Else," Netflix DPM Cinema has learned. Nate's innocence would be in question after Oliver Hampton (Conrad Ricamora) was called by the detectives for questioning.



However, a new shocking twist revealed that the medical examiner found out that Wes died of suffocation when the fire broke. Nowalk teased that it could cause more confusion as it obviously looks suspicious that somebody wants Annalise to be in deep trouble.



"How to Get Away With Murder" Season 3 episode 12 will air on Feb. 9, Thursday at 10 p.m. on ABC. Watch the teaser promo of the next episode below:






Several famous names from the financial world embody enough power that inspires awe, respect and, sometime even fear. They also happen to be the most successful businessmen and investors in the world. Here are five intimidating business wizards:

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is best known for being one of the richest men on the planet and the founder of tech company giant Microsoft. What helped him and his company establish a near-perfect dominance over the market was not only a superior level of technology. It was also Gates' business acumen and cutthroat competitiveness. When Microsoft exploded onto the scene with MS-DOS, Excel, Word and then Windows, many investors wondered why the profits weren't being paid out in juicy dividends. It soon became apparent that Bill Gates was building a massive war chest.

Investors who would usually try to sway the board of directors to disperse the profits were unusually silent as Gates plotted a course for Microsoft that would make it one of the largest companies in the world. Microsoft now has billions of dollars held in reserve that can be used as a weapon or a shield, depending on what the situation calls for. Whether it is facing down anti-trust lawsuits or carving out new markets for his company, Bill Gates and his 800-pound gorilla are very intimidating.

George Soros

George Soros has been described as a pirate and is despised in locations as various as Thailand, Britain and Malaysia. This famous currency speculator has made a fortune breaking currencies. In breaking the Bank of England, Soros became a figure to be feared by countries trying to protect fragile currencies.

Soros is far from a numbers-only speculator. He looks in-depth at a country and tries to spot errors in valuation. Political policies in particular draw his interest. Active in philanthropy focused on bringing about political change, Soros also uses his currency positions to "punish" countries whose policies are ignored in favor of positive economic data by most speculators.

By pressuring these governments financially, Soros can force political changes that might never come about otherwise. Governments may fear him, but the citizens of these countries may ultimately thank him. (See also: The Christmas Saints Of Wall Street.)

Carl Icahn

Carl Icahn is a one-time raider who can be credited with prompting more Securities and Exchanges Commission regulation than any other individual.

Icahn was the creator of greenmailing and one of the primary reasons that disclosure rules are so strict once stock holdings creep to the level of a toehold purchase. Icahn did everything from stripping assets and forcing stock buybacks, to personally dressing down CEOs and board members.

Now, hemmed out of raiding by the SEC, Icahn buys controlling or even minority interests in companies that he considers to be undervalued. He then outlines his plan for creating value  ranging from spinning off profitable units, buying back stock, or simply cutting down excess overhead costs. He threatens a proxy war if his "advice" is not followed.

With his reputation, a company may even see a jump in price just by calling down the wrath of Icahn on its slumping stock. Icahn works to create value for the shareholders now, rather than stealing it from them, but a meeting with him is still enough to make underperforming and overpaid CEOs quiver.

John D. Rockefeller

John D. Rockefeller may be the most terrifying figure in finance. He was the richest man in the world and still ranks as the richest man in modern history. His company Standard Oil controlled 90% of the American oil industry and was infamous for forcing competitors to bankruptcy and then buying their assets from their creditors.

But the thing that made Rockefeller truly terrifying was his absolute belief in what he was doing. He saw cutthroat competition as a ruinous practice that benefited the consumers much less than it ultimately hurt business. Rockefeller saw greater profits and greater benefits could be achieved by the practice of "combination," now called "economies of scale."

Rockefeller is remembered for his hardball practices of using the immense wealth of Standard Oil to cause train and barrel shortages that ruined his competitors and forced them to come to his side. But he should also be remembered for emphasizing research and development, reducing harmful waste and passing savings onto consumers. There is no doubt that his driving sense of purpose and the means he employed to achieve his ends were not all good, but there is as much to admire about Rockefeller as there is to fear.

J.P. Morgan

J.P. Morgan was a wealthy man, but not near the scale of a Rockefeller or even a Gates. What J.P. Morgan had more of than any other person on this list was pure power.

During his lifetime it was said that God owned men's souls and J.P. Morgan owned the rest. The power that Morgan wielded owes as much to timing as to his personal attributes. Morgan was the primary banker for Wall Street, underwriting companies like General Electric and International Harvester at a time when the American economy was getting ready to explode. At the time, a bank's reputation decided whether an issue would sell rather than the strength of the company's financials. And Morgan's reputation was gold.

The moment when Morgan was at his most powerful and terrifying, however, came during the Bank Panic of 1907. Morgan personally gathered all the financial and political movers at his mansion and forced them into locked-door negotiations to resolve the crisis. The idea that the entire American economy relied on one aging banker to keep it afloat scared the government so badly that the Federal Reserve Bank was created to prevent a similar situation from ever happening again.
What Are Hedge Funds?

Hedge funds are alternative investments. Just like mutual funds, they use pooled capital to make investments in liquid assets. Hedge fund managers typically identify market opportunities to generate returns for their investors using highly aggressive investment strategies. This makes these funds far riskier than mutual funds and other traditional investment vehicles.

Their significant minimum investment levels and outrageous fees weed out all but the wealthiest clientele. This means they're only open to accredited investors, including institutional investors and those with a high net worth.

The very first hedge fund was launched by A.W. Jones & Company in 1949 when sociologist A.W. Jones raised $100,000. He used the money by holding long-term stock positions while short-selling others. As such, Jones became the first money manager to develop a partnership with investors to mix short selling while using leverage and shared risk.

These investments gained popularity in the 1990s after a number of mutual fund managers moved off on their own to mimic Jones' success. Despite a number of failures, the industry has grown. But when the financial crisis hit, hedge funds were among those hardest hit by the fallout. But were they a victim of the crisis or did they help cause it? That remains a matter for debate. This article looks at how the financial crisis impacted the hedge fund industry and where it stands after the

Key Takeaways Hedge funds are alternative investments meant for accredited investors.

Once the darlings of Wall Street, they attracted billions of dollars and boasted stellar returns.

The financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed put a damper on hedge fund returns.

Some experts claim that the industry was, in part, to blame for the crisis because it pushed risky investments like mortgage-backed securities.

Although hedge funds are recovering, the industry has changed, with record volumes of outflows and changes to fee structures.

The Financial Crisis and Hedge Funds

The financial crisis didn't happen overnight. It was the result of years of cheap credit, loose lending standards, and risky ventures by investment managers and investors hungry for returns after the dot-com bubble burst. Coupled with the low-interest-rate environment and lax lending environment, low home prices encouraged high-risk borrowers to become homeowners. Banks and fund managers bundled, packaged, and sold their subprime loans into mortgage-backed securities (MBSs) as investments.

When home prices started to rise, interest rates followed. Subprime borrowers who were no longer able to afford their homes walked away from their loans rather than refinance. These massive defaults created a domino effect in the market, causing the global interbank market to freeze and the stock market to crash. Credit dried up and some of the world's largest banks and investment firms, including hedge funds, failed because of their role in these risky investments.

Some supporters argue that hedge funds weren't the only ones to blame for the crisis. But others put them squarely at the root of the crisis, blaming them for responding to the demands of return-hungry investors by taking part in these high-risk investments. They cited warning signs, including:

the pending explosion of the housing bubble

increased risk of exotic investments like MBSs

losses due to investment in illiquid assets

And they may not have been mistaken. The first three quarters of 2008 saw roughly 7% of the hedge fund industry shutter its doors and more than three-quarters of the industry either liquidated their holdings or put restrictions on redemptions.

Hedge fund firms generally require that an investor's net worth exceed $1 million.

Large-Scale Shifts

The crisis caused waves in the market and hedge funds were not immune. Although many markets have recovered significantly, due, in part, to government stimulus. But the same hasn't applied to this industry. In fact, the vast majority of these firms haven't been able to produce returns even close to where they were before the crisis.

The overall industry has struggled compared to other markets. Values dropped following the financial crisis and didn't show signs of recovery until at least 2013-2014. The third quarter of 2015 saw the largest plunge in net outflows since 2008, to the tune of $95 billion. Research shows that the industry grew 6.27%, on average, between 2015 and 2019. Returns during the first quarter of 2021 were the best since 2006, up just under 1% to 4.8%.

Another shift comes through fee structures. These funds historically adhered to the two and twenty model, charging 2% of their total assets and 20% of their gains. This was acceptable before the crisis because funds typically produced double-digit annual returns. But less-than-stellar returns since then aren't justifying these high fees.

Many funds are struggling to match the returns of the S&P 500, causing certain funds to change their fee structure. Some experts predict that firms will have to rethink their fees to keep and attract new investors. This could mean a drop to a 1% management fee and a performance fee of 15%, something some funds are already working toward.

The hedge fund industry grew to 8,832 operating businesses in the U.S., with a total value of $103 billion by November 2021.

Where Does That Leave Us?

Regulatory changes swept through the financial industry after the crisis. Lawmakers introduced legislation that would increase accountability and transparency in this industry, which was largely unregulated until then. Portions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was passed in the U.S. in 2010, restricted how banks could invest and trade on a speculative basis. Banks were also prohibited from any involvement with hedge funds under the Volcker Rule.

Despite all the doom and gloom, this doesn't mean that the hedge fund industry is dead. Many investors still focus their attention on major names in the space and quarterly filings by some of the biggest names in money management never fail to draw interest among investors of all types. The top five funds as of September 20, 2021, were:

Bridgewater Associates ($105.7 billion)

Man Group ($76.8 billion)

Renaissance Technologies ($58 billion)

Millennium Management ($52.3 billion)

TCI Fund Management ($40 billion)

According to research, the first six months of 2017 were strong for the industry. A portion of the hedge fund industry may have been able to generate strong profits by going short on metals before commodities were hit hard by trade tensions involving the U.S. Prominent money managers, like Citadel's Ken Griffin, have maintained their outstanding returns even through the post-crisis phase.

Some analysts believe this represents hope for the industry or that this is a sign that hedge funds are making a comeback. As investors grow increasingly interested in low-cost, often more stable types of investment, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index funds, hedge funds have lost some of the position of prominence that they enjoyed prior to 2008, perhaps never to get it back.

The Bottom Line

No matter what role hedge funds played in the financial crisis, there's no doubt that the industry was greatly affected by the fallout. Investors pulled out their money due to losses as a result of the aggressive and risky strategies taken by fund managers.

Once darlings of the industry for their record-beating returns, these alternative investments have struggled to get back to their previous levels. But changes, including lower fee structures and more transparency, may be stirring renewed interest from investors.
A finance or business degree is a prerequisite for most jobs in the financial industry, but what if you don't possess one and want to work in this field? While it is more difficult for someone with a non-finance degree to secure a job in finance, there's still hope.

Every employer wants smart, committed, and motivated employees who can do the job well. A finance degree will impart skills such as financial modeling and analysis, but may not do much to provide other skills required for success in almost any profession, such as communication, problem-solving, and time management.

The following are 10 ways to demonstrate to potential employers that you possess the skills they desire in an employee, as well as the passion necessary for a successful career in finance.

We will rate each of these by the degree of difficulty to achieve (for example, signing up for a financial course is easier than obtaining an internship) as well as the positive impact it may have on your objective of embarking on a career in the finance industry.

Key Takeaways It is possible to have a successful career in the finance industry without an MBA or having been a finance major.

Taking relevant courses in finance or economics will help your endeavor.

An internship with a reputable company will often improve your resume.

You may also want to consider non-finance degrees that are in-demand on Wall Street, such as information technology, mathematics, and platform development.

1:37 Get a Finance Career Without a Finance Degree

1. Learn the Lingo

Difficulty: Low

Low Impact: Low

If you are interested in a career in finance, there's no excuse for not knowing Wall Street lingo. If you don't know the difference between dilution and dividend, or between NPV and DCF, consider learning financial terms and concepts by browsing the extensive dictionary of terms at sites like Investopedia or by reading The Wall Street Journal.

Not knowing the financial language may make it almost impossible to pass the preliminary interview stage for a non-finance graduate. An interviewer will generally assume that an applicant for a finance position is knowledgeable about finance, regardless of his or her educational background.

2. Round Off Your Education

Difficulty: Low to Moderate

Low to Moderate Impact: High

What if you graduated with a degree in a subject other than finance? You can always redress the situation by taking relevant courses with an emphasis on finance or business at the undergraduate or post-graduate level.

At the undergraduate level, courses in economics, accounting, or financial analysis are great options. Many post-graduates go for an MBA since its substantial finance component serves to level the playing field between finance and non-finance graduates.

If the MBA's stiff cost is a deterrent, other options such as enrolling in the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program are certainly worth exploring. The CFA is awarded after passing a series of three rigorous exams that test a graduate-level of financial theory and practical knowledge on one's own time.

3. Enroll in a Financial Boot Camp

Difficulty: Moderate

Moderate Impact: Moderate

Intensive courses by firms like Wall Street Prep and Training the Street can teach you valuable skills that are essential for a career in finance, such as advanced spreadsheet techniques and financial modeling.

These crash courses are quite expensive, typically a few thousand dollars, but have the advantage of not requiring a long-term time commitment since they are typically conducted over a few days. One drawback is that, due to these programs' intensity, you may need to be already familiar with basic financial concepts to derive the maximum benefit.

4. Expand Your Knowledge Base

Difficulty: Moderate

Moderate Impact: High

Relevant knowledge is not obtained only through a college degree. There are plenty of resources available, either through your local library or online, to deepen your financial knowledge. These resources may be free or available on a paid basis from course providers.

Being self-taught in a difficult field like finance demonstrates a number of desirable attributes to an employer, such as initiative, passion, and drive.

5. Use a Trading Simulator

Difficulty: Moderate

Moderate Impact: Low

A number of websitesincluding Investopediahave trading simulators that can be used to construct mock portfolios. Using a trading simulator will force you to track the markets and keep abreast of market developments. This is a great way to impress a potential employer with your trading prowess, or at least your market knowledge, with very little investment on your part aside from a time commitment.

6. Complete Industry Courses

Difficulty: High

High Impact: High

Completing a relevant industry licensing course, such as that offered by the Canadian Securities Institute, not only demonstrates your commitment to a career in finance but also gives you an edge on the competition in terms of job readiness.

This option may not be available in all jurisdictions, of course; for instance, in the United States, one has to be sponsored by a member firm or a self-regulatory organization to take most licensing exams.

However, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has created a new test called the Securities Industry Essentials Exam (SIE), which can be taken without sponsorship.

7. Maintain a Financial Blog

Difficulty: High

High Impact: Moderate

Starting and maintaining a financial blog is a great way to communicate your investment ideas to the world. It is an opportunity to convey to a potential employer a favorable impression of your diverse skill set, including financial acumen, communication skills, and technological dexterity. This mode of self-marketing is most suitable for those who already possess a measure of these skills.

Increasingly, individuals looking to promote financial concepts and investment ideas are using social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok to become "finfluencers".

8. Link Up With a Mentor

Difficulty: High

High Impact: Moderate

Linking up with a mentor is another way of jump-starting a financial career. A mentor can be anyone in a position of influence who thinks highly of your capabilities and is willing to help you achieve your goals. Possible mentors include your favorite college professor, a family friend or relation with a successful career in finance, or someone you know in a professional capacity, such as a supervisor during a previous internship. Don't hesitate to approach a contact whom you think could help you in your job search.

9. Score an Internship

Difficulty: Very high

Very high Impact: Very high

Scoring a summer internship still remains one of the best ways to lock in a prestigious full-time job in finance, as many Wall Street firms pick their new hires from the ranks of their summer interns. At the best business schools, an estimated one-third to one-half of MBA students go to work for their summer employer after graduation.

Since obtaining a paid internship in finance is likely to be very difficult for a non-finance graduate, one must consider other options, such as an unpaid internship or volunteer work with a broker. The opportunity cost that arises from doing unpaid internships or volunteer work may be offset in due course by the higher earning potential of a finance career.

10. Do Your Best to Get Your Foot in the Door

Difficulty: Very high

Very high Impact: Very high

Target HR departments for resumes, expand your job search to other locations, and use your network to check for openingsin short, do everything you can to get your foot in the door of a financial institution. Scoring an entry-level position with a financial company, even in a non-finance role, may open doors to other career paths in finance down the line.

Can You Earn a CFA Charter Without Holding a College Degree? No. The CFA Institute requires that charter holders have at least an accredited bachelors degree (in any field). However, you can apply as a candidate and begin the CFA program when you are still an undergraduate student, provided that you will successfully graduate within 11 months.

What Are the Top College Majors for Financial Professionals? According to a recent survey, the top college majors among global financial professionals were: Finance (23%)

Business/Management (19%)

Economics (14%)

Accounting (11%)

Mathematics (7%) Together, these five majors accounted for nearly 75% of all financial professionals.

How Many Banking Interns End Up Getting Hired? According to industry research, roughly 70% of banking interns who fulfill all of their requisite duties will be offered a job. That may seem like a favorable statistics, but keep in mind that just landing an (often unpaid) internship at a financial firm is highly competitive. In 2022, investment bank Goldman Sachs had a record 236,000 people apply for student internships globally, including 79,000 in the Americas. Only around 35,000 (~15%) are accepted.

The Bottom Line

Some non-finance degrees are certainly in demand on Wall Street for specific tasks, including:

Physics and mathematics for structured products, derivatives, and quantitative trading

Information technology for algorithmic trading and platform development

Engineering, mining, and sciences for sector-specific research analysis and investment banking

However, for the vast majority of non-finance degree holders, securing a job in finance is likely to pose a significant challenge. This is more so because thousands of positions were eliminated by banks and financial institutions in the aftermath of the 2008 global recession. Using a combination of the tips discussed above should enable a non-finance graduate to substantially improve his or her chances of launching a career in finance.
What Is a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Loan?

A Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan is a type of financing available to make energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy improvements at a commercial or residential property.

PACE programs are overseen by the U.S. Department of Energy, and more than $3.4 billion in energy efficiency projects on commercial properties have been financed in over 38 states plus the District of Columbia.

However, the residential component has been slower to gain traction, with financing programs for residential property available in just California, Florida, and Missouri. As of December 2021, more than 323,000 homeowners have availed themselves of loans to make energy efficiency and other improvements.

Key Takeaways PACE programs can be used for residential or commercial properties.

A PACE loan is attached to the property versus a building or home.

PACE loans are paid during tax assessments and are considered a tax lien.

It can be difficult to sell a home with a PACE loan attached because it stays with the property and transfers over to the next owner.

Some mortgage lenders will not give a mortgage to someone who wants to buy a home with a PACE loan attached.

How a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Loan Works

PACE loan financing can be used for several energy-efficient improvements, including seismic retrofitting for homes, commercial buildings, or industrial properties located in earthquake-prone areas; hurricane preparedness measures; installation of solar panels or boilers; energy-efficient roofing; and LED lighting upgrades.

With this type of financing, the property serves as collateral, and the debt is tied directly to the property rather than its owner. Any remaining balance on a PACE loan remains intact when ownership of the property changes hands.

Unlike a traditional mortgage loan, PACE financing does not require an upfront down payment. PACE loans also lack a regular monthly payment. Instead, these loans are repaid through property assessments as an addition to the owners regular property taxes. These assessments are spread out over a specific time frame, typically 10 to 20 years, based on the amount of financing involved. Property owners who fail to pay the assessments regularly are generally subject to the same penalties as they would be for non-payment of any other property tax bill.

PACE financing typically does not involve the same underwriting process as a traditional mortgage. Property owners can finance 100% of the cost of energy-related improvements, and creditworthiness is not a significant component of the approval process. Individual PACE programs are administered by state and local government agencies, which have a certain amount of discretion in setting approval guidelines.

In terms of size, the residential PACE loan market (R-PACE) is estimated at $7.7 billionthat is, a cumulative $7.3 billion worth of loans have been issued for 323,000 home upgrades from 2010 to December 2021. It has established itself as the fastest growing segment of the U.S. lending industry. The size of the commercial market for PACE financing (C-PACE) is a little over $3.4 billion for 2,760 projects.

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Federal Home Loan banks do not give mortgages on homes with a PACE loan attached to them so if you take out one, it is important to recognize that it may be difficult to sell your home.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Loan

Property assessed clean energy loans can improve cash flow for owners, spreading repayment over many years versus one large, upfront payment. These loans tap into sources of private capital, and these loans can help property owners deduct payments from their income tax liability at tax time. In addition, PACE loans allow cities and towns to create energy efficiency and renewable energy options on properties.

However, disadvantages exist. These types of loans are only available to those who own property. You may require large sums of cash to pay for legal and administrative setups. You cannot finance portable items like kitchen appliances, and there may be complications if you want to sell your property with a PACE lien attached.

Pros Can improve cash flow

No down payment necessary

Creates energy efficient properties

Interest payments could be tax deductible

Depending on the project, you can save money on your energy bills Cons Upfront fees for setup may be costly

Only available to property owners

Can make things complicated when you go to sell your home

Interest rates can be higher than average

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Loan Process

Similar to a mortgage or refinance, a PACE loan and your eligibility for one is based on a range of factors, including the equity you have in your home, your payment history on your mortgage, and your ability to repay the property assessment.

Once you are approved for a PACE loan, you must find a contractor who will agree to work with one. Contractors are frequently paid for their work in installments, but with a PACE loan, the contractor is paid once the project is complete. When the project is done, you will be responsible for paying back the loan when you pay your property taxes.

Like any loan, it is usually good to shop around for loan alternatives to PACE. If you decide to take out a PACE loan, make sure to review the terms and find out if you qualify for tax credits and have money on hand to pay any fees. A PACE loan is usually 100% financed, but because property assessments are paid annually (or twice a year), the cost of the loan may be higher than a monthly payment.

PACE Securitization

State-based residential Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) bond programs are growing in popularity among investors. An illustration is Ygrene Energy Fund, an issuer of securities backed by PACE bonds and assessments, which announced in 2020 that it closed on its GoodGreen 2020-1 securitization with the issuance of $318 million of investment-grade debt securities.

According to a statement from the company, "building on the more than $525 million the Company securitized in 2019, as of December 2021, the company completed 10 securitization transactions totaling $2 billion and remains the only PACE originator with a successful and continuous track record of securitizing both residential PACE and commercial (C-PACE) assets."

Issued by local government entities, PACE bonds are taxable munis. They finance energy improvement upgrades to residential homeowners or commercial property owners and are often unrated and structured as limited obligation, special assessment bonds. The reason is that they are paid back by property assessment payments, and they do add a tax lien to any property with a PACE loan.



Example of a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Loan

December 2018 saw the issuance of a $24.9 million commercial property PACE loan, the largest single C-PACE financing of the year. Awarded to Shamrock Development, Inc., a Nebraska-based developer, the loan is slated to help finance an urban renewal project for two blocks of downtown Omaha.

The developer used the funds to upgrade and implement energy-efficient measures for a Marriott hotel, an apartment building, and 90,000 square feet worth of retail space. The City of Omaha administered the C-PACE financing for the Eastern Nebraska Clean Energy Assessment District. As of 2021, parts of the development are finished, and construction continues in other parts of the neighborhood.

Special Considerations

This relatively easy access to financing has been compared to the residential housing market's lending atmosphere during the subprime crisis.

In July 2016, the Federal Housing Administration announced that it would begin insuring mortgages that carry liens connected to the PACE loan program. PACE loan payments will be escrowed with regular property taxes. Those who purchase a home through the FHA program that has a PACE loan in place will be responsible for any unpaid balance remaining on the loan.

Where Does PACE Funding Come From? Pace loans are typically funded through municipal bonds.

Can You Pay Off a PACE Loan Early? Yes, you can pay off a PACE loan early by paying the assessment in full versus the terms of the loan. This is called a payoff, and it means you remove the tax assessment from your property.

Can You Sell a House With a PACE Loan? Yes. You can sell a house with a PACE loan because this type of loan is attached to the property rather than the home itself, even if the money was used for something that is part of the home. The loan is tied to the property assessment so buyers will inherit the loan from the sellers.
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Fast patrol craft of the Revolutionary Guards Navy. (Photo : NEDSA)

The U.S. Navy and the navies of three of its closest allies on Feb. 1 began a three-day maritime exercise in international waters perilously close to the territorial waters of Iran in the Persian Gulf.



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The exercise involving the U.S. Navy; the Royal Navy; the Royal Australian Navy and the French Navy (Marine Nationale) is intended to enhance mutual capabilities, improve tactical proficiency and strengthen partnerships in ensuring the free flow of commerce and freedom of navigation in the gulf and the adjoining Arabian Sea.



The exercise named Unified Trident is being led by the Royal Navy.



This exercise in the gulf will bring the allied fleet close to bases of the Navy of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution (NEDSA) that has control over Iranian maritime operations in the Persian Gulf. NEDSA is also known to the west as the Revolutionary Guards Navy.



NEDSA has been responsible for the 35 incidents involving run-ins with U.S. Navy warships in the first half of 2016, said the Pentagon. This January the USS Mahan (DDG-72), an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer fired flares and warning shots at four NEDSA attack boats as they approached the destroyer.



Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, warns against any incursion of the participating ships into Iranian territorial waters.



"We don't care what is said by whom or what they do. For us, it is important to be so ready in our defensive capabilities to stand any threat at anywhere," said Admiral Sayyari.



"Anybody who wishes to stage a war game within the limits of the free waters should follow the international law, and we do not allow anybody to get close to our waters and this is our red line."



U.S. officials have said there is no plan to enter Iranian territorial waters, which is internationally recognized as the area extending 12 nautical miles from a nation's shoreline.



The exercise, however, appears ill-timed as tensions between Iran and the U.S. have rapidly risen following an ill-advised and racist ban by U.S. president Donald Trump on citizens from six mostly Muslim nations -- including Iran -- from entering the U.S.



Iran retaliated yesterday by saying it will enact a reciprocal ban on American travel to the country, adding it will "retaliate" against the U.S.


Its been a long-time coming, but Snap, the company behind the mega-popular social network, Snapchat, has finally filed for its IPO.

Today, Snap officially filed its initial public offering (IPO) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), at $3 billion. Snap, for its part, has not laid out its specific terms for the IPO at this point, but a report from The Wall Street Journal outlines several key elements, including that the valuation for Snap Inc., could be between $20 million and $25 million.

One important reveal from the IPO is that Snap apparently made $404.5 million through 2016  which is a huge increase from the $58.7 million it made in 2015. At the same time, Snapchat sees a $515 million loss  while all the while having 158 million users.

Its also interesting that Snap lists Apple as the first company listed as a major competitor. Moreover, Snap reveals that there is strikingly higher engagement with the app on iPhones than there is on Android phones.

How often do you use Snapchat?

[via The Wall Street Journal
Labour's Joan Burton has raised concerns about the future of the famous Luggala Estate in County Wicklow.

The Guinness Family ancestral home has been put on the market with a suggested price-tag of 28m.
Police in Germany have arrested a 21-year-old Romanian man at Frankfurt airport on suspicion he was preparing an attack motivated by Islamic extremism.

The man, who was not named, is suspected of engaging in online discussions with others about an attack in Germany.
Massive anti-Government protests have continued in Romania overnight.

Around 200,000 people took to the streets of the capital Bucharest for the third time in a row to oppose plans to free dozens of officials jailed for corruption.

The Prime Minister claims he is simply trying to ease overcrowding in prisons with the move.

These people say they want the law changed back.
As a country with a large economic output, China is poised to shine brighter on the world stage. (Photo : Getty Images)

A compilation of Chinese President Xi Jinping's exclusive remarks was published in 2014 and is expected to become a bestseller this year. The first volume already sold half a million copies and was translated into English and Hangul (South Korea) languages.



The book, titled "Xi Jinping: Wit and Vision (Military Volume)," has also been re-printed a dozen times and it comes with analysis of President Xi's quotes. The first volume has 62 quotes with a brief analysis each.



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President Xi just came from the recently concluded World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he talked about the inevitable globalization and his government's determination in fighting off protectionism. When he gave his speech, state-run media said China's leader was able to charm the audience.



"Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from," President Xi said as quoted.



The book's chief editor, Liu Zhihui, claimed professors from National Defense University's People's Liberation Army were the ones who edited the contents of the book to ensure authoritativeness and accuracy.



"Xi's language is witty and charming with comparisons, metaphors and references to Chinese classics," said Liu as quoted by China Daily.



"They are easy to comprehend and memorize," he continued, hinting that the team endeavored to bring out every entry's spiritual significance, while including additional military background for layman's understanding.



President Xi assumed the highest position in the Chinese government in Nov. 2012. He climbed onto the political leadership from serving as a Fujian governor from 1999 to 2002, and then from being a party secretary in Zhejiang Province from 2002 to 2007. In 2008, he became the vice president.



Xi's administration concentrates on legitimizing the authority exercised by the Communist Party of China. He is known for his staunch fight against corruption, resulting in the dismissal of hundreds of officials.


Speaking to more than 700 guests at the Chartered Accountants Ireland annual dinner in Dublin, Chartered Accountants Ireland president Liam Lynch said: We simply cannot have a closed border on this island for either trade or for people.

Mr Lynch, a tax partner and head of insurance at KPMG Ireland, said a hard Brexit would be extremely challenging to Ireland and that chartered accountants needed to make their voices heard.

We appear to be headed towards a hard Brexit, with the UK out of the free trade area and out of the customs union, he said. This will be extremely challenging for the island of Ireland. We need to work now to establish how the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland will work and how it can cause the least amount of economic disruption.:

Mr Lynch said that there had to be early and significant consultation between governments and business on what might be possible, saying maintaining and strengthening Irelands position within the EU was vital because it was where the countrys future lay.

As business leaders we know the issues that need to be addressed, he said. We need to bring these issues to the table ahead of Article 50 being invoked. We need to take a lead position with the other 27 EU states, the EU Commission and the EU Parliament to represent the concerns and opportunities of Irish business.

As a professional body we will continue to work at these levels to ensure the best possible conditions for business and society on this island.

The event at the Convention Centre Dublin was also addressed by world affairs and US foreign policy analyst and commentator James Rubin, who recently served as media adviser to Hillary Clintons presidential campaign.

Chartered Accountants Ireland is Irelands largest and longest established professional body of accountants.

It was founded in 1888 and represents 25,000 members around the world.
The Irish Aviation Authority (IAA) has branded as a success recent remote management trials at Cork, Shannon, and Dublin airports and said that while the concept and relevant technology is still at the early stage, they are likely to play a future role in Irelands aviation sector.

Following these trials, we firmly believe that tower services at multiple airports can be safely provided by a single air traffic controller remotely, said Peter Kearney, IAA director of air traffic management operations
At a UCC Commerce Conference yesterday, the commissioner for Dublin start-up companies, Niamh Bushnell told attendees that much more had to be done to spread information on the tech innovation and entrepreneurial happening in Ireland.

A Cork native, Ms Bushnell founded and invested in companies in New York City before being headhunted by Dublin Chamber and Dublin City Council in 2014 to become Dublins first start-up commissioner. Her task to promote Dublin as a start-up city has been a massive challenge so far, she said.

Regarding the reputation of Dublin as an international innovation city, nobody knows about Ireland and innovation outside of here, she said. If you think that people know there is great product being built here by multinationals and by start-up companies, they dont.

Everywhere I go I see that and particularly all the years I lived in the US, they think of Ireland as a service-based economy. They think of Ireland as green fields and a lot of dairy. They think of Ireland as a place for multinationals to do good business but not necessarily of innovation business.

Ms Bushnell called for more support to be given to Irish entrepreneurs, saying the tax system was punitive to innovators.

She also highlighted what she described as a dearth of data and computer scientists that needed bridging if Ireland was to maximise its potential.

There has been a slow change in policy that has been detrimental and it remains a concern, she said.

Also speaking at the conference, which was partnered by the Irish Examiner, was vice president of EMC Dells Europe, Middle East and Asias centres of excellence, Bob Savage.

Mr Savage said much of the impact of Brexit had happened already with the changes in currency values, adding Ireland had to engage with the new US administration of Donald Trump.

We will take our seat at the table. Ive seen it for 30 years, we have done it with many different administrations, he said.

Mr Savage, a former president of the American Chamber in Ireland, said there were many opportunities as well as challenges in the new political landscape facing the world.

He said that Corks importance in Dell EMC meant that it was set for continuous success in the future.
Competition in India has been ramped up by free offers from new entrant Reliance Jio Infocomm, but Vodafone plans to fight back by merging its Indian subsidiary with smaller rival Idea Cellular.

Vodafone is the worlds second-biggest mobile operator. Echoing a similar warning from BT last week, the company yesterday said that the rate of growth in its international business division had slowed. Reporting its third-quarter figures, Vodafone said it was seeing lower rates of growth in its global enterprise division and a marked slowdown in its international order book.

In Ireland, Vodafone said service revenue for its third quarter amounted to 235m, with underlying revenue rising 1.4% for the year.

We have had another strong quarter and continue to see positive momentum across our customer base, said Vodafone Ireland chief executive Anne OLeary.

Service revenue in Europe increased 0.7%, down from 1% in the second quarter.

In its emerging markets  including India, Africa, and Turkey  growth slowed to 3.9% from 7.1%. Shares in the company fell up to 3% in early trading, yesterday, before paring back to close just under 1% down.

Vodafone reported a 1.7% rise in overall organic service revenue for the quarter, broadly in line with analyst expectations.

The company reiterated its target to generate at least 4bn of free cashflow in the year to the end of March, but it said it now expects core earnings to come in at the lower end of a range of 3% to 6% growth.

These results are not surprising given the evidence of the deterioration in India but have few specific positives either, said Citi analysts. The effective cut to earnings befores interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation, guidance looks realistic but will raise questions about full-year 2018 trajectory.

Britain remained a tough market for the company in the third quarter, with service revenue down 3.2%.

It said this reflected increased competition in the business sector, an area of strength for the operator.

Finance director Nick Read said the company was seeing competition in corporate business from EE, now owned by BT, and from O2, owned by Telefonica.

Everyone is chasing growth and customers, he said.
Criticising Brussels, which ruled Apple owes the money, the company told the Oireachtas finance committee the EU had got it wrong and its attack on Irish sovereignty was dangerous.

While the finance committee previously asked Apple chief Tim Cook to appear before TDs and senators, it was agreed to again ask the company to come before members. The second refusal was received this week.

In a letter to the committee, Apple senior director for government, Claire Thwaites defended its tax arrangements, attacked the European Commission, and outlined its commitment to Ireland. Apple abides by the law and we pay all the taxes we owe wherever we do business. We believe Apple is the largest corporate income taxpayer in Ireland and we never asked for nor ever received, any special deal on the taxes we pay.

We believe Apple is subject to exactly the same laws as every other business in the country, and Irish Revenue has confirmed many times that they provided no special deal.

Brussels argues Ireland did not collect enough tax from Apple over a 10-year period and that the companys tax burden was reduced in what was an alleged breach of EU state aid rules.

The damning ruling against Ireland, originally made in August last, threw the Government into disarray and it was forced to quickly reject it and defend its decision to appeal the ruling, which is ongoing.

Ms Thwaites says that if the Brussels ruling its allowed stand, it would be like changing the rules of a game half-way through a match.

Taxes play an important role in our society and we believe in paying all the tax we owe on all that we earn.

However, the European Commission got it wrong, and its attack on Irish sovereignty is dangerous.

They took unilateral action and retroactively changed the rules, disregarding decades of Irish tax law, US tax law, as well as global consensus on tax policy, that everyone has relied on.

If the commissions opinion is allowed to stand, Apple would pay 40% of all the corporate income tax collected in Ireland  this is unprecedented and, far from levelling the playing field, selectively targets Apple, Ms Thwaites said.

Apple told the committee that the opinion by Brussels that the iPhone maker owed Ireland 13bn had no basis in fact or law and it was confident it would be overturned after a hearing of the facts.

But the finance committee heard yesterday that Irelands appeal on the EU case could take four years or more.

While there is no specific date, the Government still has to draw down the funds, as agreed with Brussels, and put them in a special holding account.

Apple told the committee in writing that it would continue to invest in Cork and around the country.

Up to 6,000 people are now employed in Ireland, it said The letter added: Ninety-three percent of our employees in Ireland are EU citizens and 44% are non-Irish nationals.

Our overall operations in Ireland support a total of 18,000 jobs, and last year we spent close to 200m with Irish companies.
The organisers behind the Music Cork conference say the event will create a unique opportunity in Ireland to listen to some of the best industry professionals talk about their work and experiences, see the best new talent perform and enjoy plenty of opportunities to network with speakers and delegates over three days of intimate social gatherings and shows.

The event, which will take place on May 10 to 20, will also showcase new Irish artists in a series of shows over two days.

Organisers say it will provide an opportunity for some of the best new Irish artists to be seen by the high calibre of international industry professionals attending.

Music Cork will be showcasing a small selection of new Irish artists in a series of shows over two days, said one of the organisers Jim Lawless.

Combining the newest talent and some of the great new acts already emerging from the Irish scene.

Were also very pleased that Niall Byrne (Nialler9.com) is already confirmed to curate one of the line-ups, he said.

We aim to provide an opportunity for some of the best new Irish artists to be seen by the high calibre of international industry professionals attending. It will also be a great opportunity to be showcased as part of an event that will be a new focus for the best of the Music Industry in Ireland, said Mr Lawless.

Fans will also be able to network with notable people within the music industry on the Music Cork Pub Crawls, at a networking breakfast and during a networking day trip. The first main speaker announced for Music Cork is Darcus Beese, president of Island Records.

Some other delegates to attend Music Cork will be Kodaline manager Ricardo Zambak; Adam Barker, director of business affairs for Universal Music UK; Rebecca Allen, managing director of Decca and Marc Robinson, managing director of Globe. n Ticket details will be revealed on musiccork.com.
Chinese Celebrate The Lunar New Year (Photo : Getty Images)

Most Chinese feel bad when the National Meteorological Center would issue orange or red alerts for smog. But not residents of Jiazhou, Shandong Province where the principal industry is the manufacture of face mask.



The capacity of the 300 factories in the village is about 20,000 a day, but when there are orders for more masks whenever an orange or red alert is out, they double the capacity, Gao Jian, the boss of a mask factory in Dadian said, China Daily reported. Jiazhou used to be a poor village, but the production of more than 1 billion face masks annually generates income of 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) for the village.



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Exported to U.S. & Japan



Because of its production, Jiazhou produces 80 percent of the standard face masks in China which are also exported to Japan and the U.S. In the 1990s, the situation was different when pollution was not that bad in the country.



Demand for face masks was not that high, so traders from Jiazhou must travel 36 hours by train to Lanzhou, Gansu Province to promote their masks. When Beijing was hit by a sandstorm in 2000, there was a large increase in demand for face masks made in the Shandong village.



SARS Too



After the sandstorm, China was hit by SARS in 2003, again boosting demand for face masks. Dadians 23 factories had to run 24 hours to meet orders earning for the village 20 million yuan that year. From only production, the entire industry chain from raw materials to textile processing to distribution is now present in the village, according to Jiang Xiubin, head of the Dadian Face Mask Manufacturers Association.



As a result of the villages progress, Jiang said that his family yearly income grew to 90,000 yuan in 2013 from 40,000 when he opened the factory from producing 300,000 masks, Asiaone reported.






Naoufal Fassih, a Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin, is being sought in the Netherlands to face allegations of attempted murder, assault, possession of false documents, and money laundering, as well as for an alleged money-laundering offence here in Ireland.

The Amsterdam Public Prosecutor issued three European Arrest Warrants in respect of Mr Fassih on various dates in 2016. He was arrested by gardai at an apartment believed to belong to the Kinahan crime gang on Dublins Baggott St last April. High Court extradition proceedings have been ongoing since.

In the High Court yesterday, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly ordered the surrender of Mr Fassih to Dutch authorities on each of the three European Arrest Warrants.

Ms Justice Donnelly said she had considered all of the points of objection raised by Mr Fassihs lawyers and was quite satisfied to reject them all. She awarded legal costs against Mr Fassih on foot of an application by Ronan Kennedy, counsel for the Minister for Justice.

Ms Justice Donnelly said the State should only be entitled to one days worth of costs because matters had been staggered for a period of time. Mr Fassih made no reaction when the judgment was delivered.

Mr Kennedy, for the State, said the first alleged offence related to a violent assault at a Dutch nightclub on October 5, 2012.

The prosecutor in Amsterdam said Mr Fassih is suspected of being involved in a fight that left several people injured, one seriously. The prosecutor wrote to the Irish authorities last month explaining a judge in Amsterdam had already discharged Mr Fassih on that charge due to a lack of evidence.

However, the prosecutor intends to appeal that judgment and wants Mr Fassih to be there for the appeal.

The second charge relates to over 10,000 in cash that Mr Fassih had on him when he was arrested in 2012. He was on social welfare at the time and refused to explain to Amsterdam police how he could be in possession of such a sum. The court heard he can be prosecuted under Dutch money laundering laws for failing to explain where the cash came from.

The third charge alleges he was in possession of a false passport.
Two of the four people arrested, believed to be significant players in the drug trafficking gang, have connections to Dublins north inner city and one has close links with the leaders of the Hutch outfit.

The development comes as a report being drafted for a government taskforce on the north inner city is set to call for an increase in visible and consistent policing and a strengthened focus on local drug enforcement.

The report, drafted by Kieran Mulvey, is calling for action to deal with drug- related intimidation and the development of alternative pathways from criminality for at-risk young people.

In a joint operation on Tuesday, the Garda Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau and Revenue uncovered 160kg of cannabis herb, worth an estimated 3.2m on the street.

It followed an interception operation on a number of cars in the Ashbourne area of Co Meath and a follow-up search at a nearby business premises.

Four men, aged between 25 and 61, were arrested.

One of those arrested is closely associated with a senior member of the Hutch grouping.

That individual, from the north inner city, lives in Co Meath and is currently facing a serious charge in the courts.

A second man arrested is also from the north inner city.

Garda sources said that while there were actively examining the Hutch connection, it was just one of a number of avenues being explored.

Gardai believe they have disrupted the importation pattern of this group.

It comes as gardai are on alert for further violence in the Kinahan-Hutch feud with the first anniversary of the Regency Hotel attack this Sunday.

David Byrne from Crumlin, a senior lieutenant in the Kinahan cartel, was shot dead in that assault, sparking a murderous campaign by the cartel, resulting in the death of eight people.

These guys are hell-bent on killing each other, said a Garda source, but we are doing all we can to stop them.

The Armed Support Unit, using high-visibility vehicles, and the Special Crime Task Force, travelling in unmarked cars, are conducting patrols in the north inner city (the Hutch base) and the south-west of the city (the Kinahan base).

Meanwhile, a report being drafted for a Government taskforce on the north inner city, which is being led by the Taoiseach, is set to recommend that a local garda station be transformed into a centre for community policing.

Giving an outline of his draft report to the community on Wednesday, Mr Mulvey said a key action would be to increase the levels of visible and consistent policing presence.

He also wanted a strengthened focus on local drug enforcement and a local asset profiling service feeding into the Criminal Assets Bureau.

He recommended making Fitzgibbon Street Garda Station a centre for community policing. He called for community measures to tackle intimidation and a public awareness campaign to promote the drug-related, intimidation-reporting programme.

Mr Mulvey also wants alternatives pathways from criminality for at-risk young people and a youth leadership programme.

Tony Duffin of the Ana Liffey Project commended Mr Mulveys approach that people have to be helped, not criminalised.

This is also consistent with the national policy position in the Programme for a Partnership Government which notes that the Government will support a health-led rather than criminal justice approach to drugs use, said Mr Duffin.

We will never end drug use, but we can manage it much, much better.

Treating people who use drugs from a health perspective rather than criminalising them for using is the correct approach.
Appearing before the Oireachtas Finance Committee, Mr Noonan said he believed the EU Apple case amounted to political input and undermined the certainty about business taxes here.

Committee senators and TDs quizzed the minister about why Ireland is appealing the EU case and what authorities knew here about stateless companies operating with little or no tax obligations.

Mr Noonan said the appeal could take four years. So far 1.8m has been spent on lawyers fees in the appeal but there is no idea what the final bill could be.

He told members there was political input in Europe into the Apple case but said this was because of the mismatch of tax rules between different jurisdictions, which is now being addressed.

He said he didnt think the European Commission were having a go at Ireland by taking the case, nonetheless, he said, I dont think Apple worldwide are paying sufficient tax.

However, the Apple ruling, released last August by Brussels, had undermined certainty here and corporation tax offerings here.

This would remain so until the case is decided as there will be uncertainty [for companies] about what their tax liabilities might be.

The case though had not affected investment here, he added.

Mr Noonan was repeatedly questioned by Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty about where the intellectual property rights of Apple existed or belonged.

The minister though refused to be drawn on this, saying it would form the cornerstone of Irelands appeal.

AAA-PBP TD Richard Boyd Barrett argued that it had never been credible to let the profits go to an office that did not essentially exist and Irish people wanted to know why we were not taking the 13bn and instead giving millions of euro to lawyers to fight the tax payment.

Mr Noonan insisted Ireland had got the right amount of taxes due to it from Apple.

He insisted Brussels had misused its state aid powers by taking the Apple case against Ireland. They [Apple] fully paid tax on profits generated in Ireland.

Meanwhile, the head of Revenue Niall Cody has refused to say when Ireland became aware that Apple was operating a so-called stateless company, saying this was because of tax confidentiality.

The European Commission this week told the committee it began investigating Apples tax affairs here after the firm told a US senate hearing in 2013 it had arrangements with Ireland.

Mr Cody declined to comment for tax confidentiality reasons, but he did say: The idea nobody knew in the US until the senate hearing is just not true.

Mr Doherty accused Revenue of turning a blind eye on the situation for many years and also suggested officials may have known about any special tax arrangements as early as the 1990s.
Mr FitzPatrick, aged 68, is on trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court accused of misleading auditors about multi-million euro loans in the years 2002 to 2007.

The jury has already heard that, in May 2015 Kevin OConnell, a lead investigator from the Office of Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE), shredded documents which were relevant to the investigation.

He told Bernard Condon SC, defending, that he panicked when he discovered the five pages in his office and made a wrong decision to destroy them. He admitted it was unethical and said he was ashamed of his actions.

He said he disclosed his actions to his boss, director of corporate enforcement Ian Drennan, three days later.

Yesterday, Mr Condon began a sixth day of cross-examining Mr OConnell. The witness agreed it was a criminal offence to destroy documents relevant to an investigation.

He also agreed that there had been no Garda investigation into his shredding of the documents.

He said that when he told Mr Drennan about his actions, he did so knowing it could have led to very serious outcomes, such as criminal investigations or disciplinary proceedings. He agreed with counsel that none of these things happened.

He said that, at the start of the current trial last October, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) offered Mr OConnell what counsel described as effective immunity from prosecution.

This offer came while Mr OConnell was giving evidence during legal argument and he indicated to the court that he may wish to rely on the privilege against self incrimination.

Mr Condon told the jury this was a legal right available here and is known in the US as pleading the fifth, where a person does not have to answer a question that may incriminate them.

On October 12, 2016, the chief prosecution solicitor for the DPP wrote to solicitors for Mr OConnell stating that no evidence given by him concerning the destruction of documents would be used in evidence in criminal proceedings against him.

The court heard that lawyers for the DPP have firmly rejected that the letter amounted to an immunity against prosecution.

Mr Condon submitted that it was a qualified but effective immunity.

Mr FitzPatrick, of Whitshed Rd, Greystones, Co Wicklow has pleaded not guilty to 27 offences under the 1990 Companies Act. These include 22 charges of making a misleading, false or deceptive statement to auditors and five charges of furnishing false information in the years 2002 to 2007.
Mr McNicholl had appendicitis symptoms but there was no trolley available when he arrived so he sat in agony on a plastic chair for eight hours. Speaking on C103s Cork Today Show, Mr McNicholl said he felt CUH staff, who were wonderful, were pushed beyond breaking point: My instinct was to leave. I was actually taking turns on a trolley with another young guy. I dont know what he was in the hospital for. The only thing I do know is he was a prisoner. He was handcuffed to somebody.

Mr McNicholl arrived at the hospital at 11pm but had to wait until 4pm the next day for surgery. He wrote about his experience on Facebook in appreciation for the hard work and kindness of hospital staff.
Ireland has one species of frog and while we have a very healthy population of the protected amphibian, people living in the northern half of Ireland are not recording as many sightings as people elsewhere.

If you draw a line from Galway to Dublin, there is a lot less recording from above that line. So there is not much reporting in the north-west and north-eastern midlands, said Liam Lysaght, National Biodiversity Data Centre director.
Members of the Cork Street Names Campaign took what spokesman, Diarmaid O Cadhla, described as direct action to remove the name of Victoria, the Famine Queen, from street name signs in Cork yesterday.

They daubed black paint over the name Victoria on several signs along Victoria Road and Victoria Cross arising out of a campaign launched last October to rename Cork streets which commemorate British aristocrats and war criminals after Irish heroes.

The group also spoke out earlier this week against the establishment of a Victorian Quarter to promote the citys MacCurtain Street area.

Lord Mayor Cllr Des Cahill led condemnation last night of the attack on the street signs: Its outrageous. Its criminal damage and they should be prosecuted.

Historian and Independent Cllr Kieran McCarthy described it as wanton vandalism and urged city officials to pursue those responsible to the full extent of the law: I am very open to different interpretations of history, and will listen to protesters on any topic but this is wanton vandalism.

They are defacing public property and erasing Cork history without informed democratic debate.

No petition has been sent to the city council within the proper channels from residents of these streets in support of this campaign and any potential renaming of streets. What I have heard is coming from concerned citizens about the whitewashing of history.

"Everyone is entitled to their opinion but not to engage in civil disobedience in damaging municipal property  it is a criminal offence and ultimately wasting taxpayers money as the signs will have to be cleaned up, he said.

But Mr O Cadhla defended the action as civil disobedience which he said is designed to remove Victorias name in order to respect the memory of the millions who starved and were dispossessed under her reign.

This year is the 170th anniversary of BLACK 47  the Famine was an act of genocide against the Irish people. It is intended that todays direct civil disobedience will continue. We are not hiding or skulking around at night time.

He said it is being done openly, and that participants take full responsibility for their actions, which he claimed is to serve the people and help to raise a sense of national self-respect and dignity. If someone wants to charge us, we will answer to that, he said.

He also said the group has prepared a comprehensive proposal to rename some 100 street and place names in Cork with British links, and they have asked the Lord Mayor to meet a delegation to consider it.

But Mr Cahill said it is a matter for the councils roads committee to discuss: Mr O Cadhla lives in a parallel universe. He runs unsuccessfully for election and when he doesnt get what he wants, he protests in an awkward manner. Its not our job to rewrite history, and its certainly not his job. I abhor what has been done here and those responsible should be prosecuted.

Council spokesman Paul Moynihan said they are taking an extremely serious view of the incident.

We are now trying to establish whether there was a breach of road traffic legislation and we will be exploring our legal options.
Irish prison service officials revealed the scale of the difficulties facing the system as they confirmed that almost 500 prison officers have been seriously assaulted since 2012.

Speaking at the latest meeting of the Dail public accounts committee, Irish prison service director general, Michael Donnellan, said the service is under-going a series of reforms which have been pushed through in recent years.

Citing a series of changes, Mr Donnellan said the practice of slopping-out at prisons has ended; new facilities are being built; and improved step-down services are being made available for those who have served their sentence.

However, despite the reforms, the prison service head confirmed there continues to be difficulties in the system. And in a clear sign of the issues facing both prison officers and the prison population, he said the facilities continue to face wide-scale drug problems and potential violence which is a threat to both staff and inmates.

Asked by unaligned Independent TD Catherine Connolly about the depth of prison drug addiction, Mr Donnellan said 70% of the 3,700 prisoners have serious drug problems.

He said that while traditional drug addictions are a problem, synthetic drugs are a growing factor and hundreds of prisoners are receiving methadone treatment: Theres no doubt drugs in prison is a serious problem.

"The overall prison population is 3,700. About 70% of that would have a drug addiction problem. Usually what has brought them into the prison is that problem.

Mr Donnellan said approximately 500 prisoners are currently receiving methadone treatment for their addictions and that the issue alongside mental health problems is increasingly receiving system attention.

However, despite the improvements, the director general said 30 people any week are psychotic and waiting to get into the mental hospital  an issue which is putting the individuals, fellow inmates and prison officers at potential risk.

Asked by Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy how frequently prison officers are assaulted, Department of Justice general secretary Noel Waters, who was also present, said almost 500 have been attacked in the last four years. He said 107 were assaulted in 2012; 147 in 2013; 151 in 2014; and 91 in 2015 (the latest figures available); with violence is becoming a feature of the system.

However, despite the situation, Mr Donnellan said the first prison officer recruitment campaign since 2008 received 7,000 applications and is likely to lead to 80 new officers.
The Anti-Austerity Alliance/ People Before Profit hit out at the claim after an email from the embassy to Irish-based US citizens said they should stay away from the Unite Against Racism protest against US president Donald Trump policy last night.

In an email to US citizens earlier this week, the embassy wrote: A protest in opposition to the US presidents executive order on protecting the nation from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals is planned for the evening of February 2. The exact number of participants is unknown, but may exceed 1,000.
As they watched the horror of the Syrian refugee crisis unfold, Niall McGuirk and Michael Murphy decided to do something.

It was just seeing the harrowing pictures from the Mediterranean, and when the two of us saw those pictures of people drowning at sea in an effort to attempt to have some sort of better life for themselves or to escape what they were escaping, we just felt we couldnt ignore it, explains McGuirk.

And the only things that were involved in is music so we felt that wed try and do some publication to try to raise some money and we reached out to our community, which would be the music community, to try and help in some small way the Syrian community.

Veterans of Dublins DIY music scene, McGuirk and Murphy reached out to their friends and contacts in the Irish and international music communities and posed a deceptively simple question.

We just said to people: tell me what your favourite gig is, says McGuirk.

The result is In Concert, a compilation of live music memories stretching back 50 years.

Its kind of a trace through the musical history of these people, says McGuirk. And most of the gigs were ones that happened in Ireland, which was nice as well.

Below are excerpts from some of the contributions.

Thin Lizzy Dublin, 1971

In February 1971, Thin Lizzy played a week of lunchtime gigs at the Peacock theatre. My school pals and I sneaked out of Colaiste Mhuire early each day (it was called going on the bounce) to see our favourite band

I remember the sensation of returning late to school (sneaking in through the bicycle shed) and being so high on rock and roll and deafened by Bells lead guitar and Lynotts thunderous bass and Downeys explosive drumming that I couldnt hear a word of the double science class. It was the most exciting afternoon of my teenage life.

Ferdia Macanna (Musician, author)

Leonard Cohen, Dublin, 1972

It was an evening in March 1972 at the National Stadium in Dublin.

That was the night Cohen sang Kevin Barry to the amazement and delight of the gathered throng. Ive had the pleasure of seeing and interviewing him many times since but theres nothing that beats that night for atmosphere and excitement. Then, I remind myself, those were the days when bands were slow to come to Ireland and seeing someone like Leonard Cohen had the possibility of being a once (or in that case, twice) in a lifetime experience.

John Mckenna (Broadcaster)

The Clash Dublin, 1977

Ground Zero was that night in Trinity; the big bright hall, jam packed with every type imaginable; students in duffel coats, punks in bin liners, shoe-gazing youths, skinheads, hippies.

They all had one thing in common; an absolute NEED to be in that hall and nowhere else on the planet that night, like Richard Dreyfuss getting to the mountain in Close Encounters, they simply had to be there.

As my girlfriend and I walked up the steps, out of a dark wet night, into the entrance foyer, the atmosphere hit me.

 All my senses were invaded; a kaleidoscope of colour, sound, and smell; that nauseating smell of dope.

...The Count Bishops were the warm up act though I doubt if they signed up for the full and fiery onslaught they received from the crowd that night. At first I thought it was some kind of new lighting effect, a kind of arc from the stage to the front quarter of the crowd. We winced on realising the rainbow effect was caused by the continuous spitting from the crowd at the band.

Jake Reilly (The Blades)

The Stranglers, Cork City Hall, 1977

The Stranglers in City Hall stands out as one of very heightened tension; it was 1977 and the band was at the height of their popularity. They exuded an air of menace, and the tension cranked up as the gig progressed where the audience were getting totally unmanageable with excitement and things could tip over into complete anarchy at any moment, but ultimately held together  those moments are pretty special.

Speaking to Hugh Cornwell in recent years, he remembered the gig well, and was surprised at how well they were known in Cork,

Elvera Butler (Promoter at the Arcadia in Cork, head of Reekus Records)

Tom Waits Dublin, 1981

My absolute favourite gig of all time was Tom Waits in the Olympia on the 27th March, 1981. There is one piece that stays with me to this day, as vivid as if it was yesterday, almost like a dream that you never forget. He stood there on stage singing a sea shanty, holding a broom handle with a light dangling from the end of it and as he was performing the piece he was swaying the light and as far as I was concerned he was really on a ship, so powerful was the performance.

Stano (Artist, musician)

The Smiths Dublin, 1983

The Blades did a great support slot and then on came The Smiths to unrestrained applause and general mayhem. Flowers were strewn everywhere and Morrissey launched into what became his signature swagger, but was at the time totally fresh and radical and enthralled me and made me a huge fan to this day. If Im honest it is difficult to remember actual songs from that night but the point is that it happened and I was there

Will Walsh (Musician)

Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Dun Laoghaire, 1991

I recall that Nirvana played to a less than half-full venue, maybe even 150 folks tops. I felt bad for them.

Everyone else was in the pub, but for those of us that were lucky enough to witness Kurt Cobain and his band mates, and their raw sound  wow it was electric  it was the first time I heard them and I was hooked. I think we all knew (who were actually there) we had witnessed the best gig ever  they were going to be legends in their own right!

Edwina Forkin (TCD Ents Officer 1989-1990, film producer)

Moby/Orbital/Aphex Twin, Chicago, 1993

Aphex Twin embraced the challenges of the venue and the stereotyping of electronic music performers. He was just twiddling knobs and he was trying to remain a faceless techno bollocks.

He set up his homemade electronic gear behind the drum riser Mobys percussionist would later use and literally sat on the stage floor. He was absolutely invisible from anywhere but the side stage hed snuck out from. Non-rhythmic beats and live experimental tweaks of abrasive dissonance segued into beautiful, ethereal ambiance that continually challenged the listener.

Kevin Martin (Promoter, fanzine editor)

Cathal Coughlan / Nine Wassies From Bainne, Cork, 1997

Cathal Coughlan hadnt played a gig in Ireland in just over three years when he announced two Cork gigs for October 1997. A gig in Corks Kino Cinema was to be preceded by a pub gig in Cobh. Cathal and pianist Dawn Kenny would be backed by Giordai Ua Laoighres Nine Wassies From Bainne the Rob Roy gig was essentially a live rehearsal for the following nights show.

The following nights Kino gig was good but the staid atmosphere of a cinema couldnt match the boiling back room of the Rob Roy.

Paul McDermott (DJ, promoter, fanzine editor)

Sufjan Stevens, Berlin, 2011

Sufjan was only playing songs from his new record The Age of Adz, an electro, beat-driven, futuristic sounding record which I had only just bought and listened to once. To be honest, I wasnt sure if I liked it so much on first listen.

So perhaps my expectations were low with the knowledge that he was only playing new material on this tour. Hearing it live though and experiencing the energy of the music along with the visuals was just mind-blowing. I simply got lost in the music from the first song.

Brian Crosby (Bell X1, producer)

In Concert is available online via hopecollectiveireland.com, 15
Actors Paul Wesley and Ian Somerhalder attend the 'The Vampire Diaries' panel during Comic-Con International 2016 at San Diego Convention Center on July 23, 2016 in San Diego, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Matt Winkelmeyer)

"The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 12 airs Feb. 10. The upcoming segment is titled "What are you?" and it will see Stefan in danger and Cade's next target. Here are a few spoilers for the next chapter of the series. Read on to find out what happens next.



[Spoiler alert! This article contains spoilers for "The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 12 "What Are You?" Do not read further if you don't wish to know more about it.]



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"The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 12 will see Damon's effort to protect his brother from the big bad, Cade. The network has released a synopsis for "What Are You?" and it teases a high-on-action episode.

According to Spoilers Guide's description of Season 8 episode 12, in an attempt to save his brother Damon plays with the fire. He puts everything on the line to protect Stefan's soul from Cade. He makes a dangerous deal with Cade to get him Maxwell journal which contains dark secrets. It may also contain the key to destroying Cade.



Damon approaches Alaric and Matt for the Maxwell journal. However, he is disappointed because the duo refuses to hand over the ancient book. They fear it may make Cade even more powerful.



Meanwhile, Cade has his own plan and it seems Caroline knows about it. She desperately tries to reach out to Stefan before Cade goes through with his plan.



Also, TV Fanatic has revealed some additional details from "The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 12. Along with some pictures from the upcoming episode, the website reveals that "What Are You?" will delve into Matt's family's past and why was it given the magical bell. In addition, viewers will see Nathalie Kelley's character Sybil return to the show. The photos published on the website teases flashbacks revealing more about Matt's ancestors.



"The Vampire Diaries" (TVD) Season 8 episode 12 airs Feb. 10 at 9:00 pm on The CW. Stay tuned for more spoilers and updates.


WHEN a Tokyo train company last year released a series of videos addressing modern manners, one in particular attracted the ire of women the world over.

Targeting female passengers who do their makeup on the train, the ad asked: Why cant you do that before leaving home?

The move to ban women from applying makeup on the train sparked a worldwide conversation, not just about the etiquette involved, but also about whether women should feel pressured to fit a makeup routine into their busy mornings in the first place.

Closer to home, a British survey by Ipsos MORI last August found applying makeup on public transport was socially unacceptable to 42% of women and 41% of men.

But with the same survey revealing 90% of women and 80% of men think women are under greater pressure than men to look well groomed, cant we cut each other some slack when it comes to making good use of that valuable commute time?

I dont wear a huge amount of makeup  I havent worn fake eyelashes since my debs, and the words contour palette bring me out in an anxiety rash.

However, I count myself lucky to be in a position to quite literally put on my best face before I face the world.

Whether you leave your house groomed to perfection or find yourself lashing on mascara in the carpark, theres no doubting most of us feel better when we look better.

Some women may feel undue pressure to be well groomed at work, but for others, makeup is their war paint, a confidence building tool that helps them through the day.

Ciara Conlon from Kinsale is mum to eight-year-old Jessica and five-year-old Tom, is an IT project manager.

Makeup helps me feel more polished and professional, she says.

Im not in favour of an over done look, but a little goes a long way.

In IT, the T-shirt is king and you could be as casual as you like, but I favour a smarter work wardrobe. It helps me get in the zone.

On a good day, Ciaras commute from home in Kinsale to work in Ballincollig, Co Cork, is 30 minutes, but her morning routine calls for an early start.

I get up at 6.30 to shower, get dressed and have my hair and makeup done before the kids wake, she says.

My hair can be a bit unruly, so if I have five minutes left for make-up, Im doing well.

Though she values the confidence a polished look instills, Ciara admits, putting on make-up has moved down the priority list with each child.

More often than I would like, Ill notice during the day that my make-up isnt applied well. Not a good look!

Makeup artist Martha Mulconry of MBM Beauty Bar, Blackrock, Cork, and model Ciara Conlon. Picture: Dan Linehan

For Dublin mum-of-three Suzanne OMeara, a consultant for Bluewave Technology, work is frequently on site with clients, with commutes of up to 50 minutes.

I do my base before I leave the house, as that can be messy, she says, but I do the rest of my makeup on the train.

Though her office has a smart dress code, she says, There is an expectation to look presentable for clients, but not necessarily to wear makeup. I wear it to look and feel better.

"I would never go to work without it, she says, adding that she spends more on time on her makeup now than before the children came along.

Im a little older, so I feel I need more to look better. Lashing on a bit of bronzer and lip gloss isnt enough anymore. Besides, makeup is more of a thing now. I use products that werent the norm 10 years ago, like highlighters and brow kits.

With so many new products on the market, Glanmire-based makeup artist Martha Mulconry admits makeup can be daunting for women these days.

Mum to three-year-old Thalie Rose and four-year-old Freya, she confesses that there are times when she might find herself stopped at traffic lights trying to get some makeup on, because some mornings thats all I have time for.

However, with a little preparation and a few key products, she believes a pulled-together makeup look can be easily achieved.

When youre getting out in the morning for the school or creche, look after your three basics: base, blush and brows, she advises.

Makeup artist Martha Mulconry of MBM Beauty Bar, Blackrock, Cork, and model Ciara Conlon. Picture: Dan Linehan

Ashbourne mum Aisling Ozdemir, a parenting blogger and weekend sales advisor, doesnt feel pressure to be made up at the school gates.

I have three boys to dress, schoolbags to get ready, all by 8.30am. Im lucky if Ive brushed my teeth, she laughs.

For work its a different story  she wouldnt dream of going to work barefaced.

I love makeup, she says, and I feel great with a full face. I once wore a nude lipstick instead of my signature red, and everyone kept asking if I was sick.

Its a reaction Martha can relate to.

When people see me without makeup theyll ask, Are you OK? You look ill

Thats why Ill always try to have a little bit of something on, just to add that freshness in the face.

Morning makeup routine: Marthas morning makeup routine starts with good skincare. Shes a fan of Declares Power Duo Oil and Serum Multi-Vitamin Regenerating Care.

You can use this as your moisturiser, and it has the added benefits of a serum, she says.

Its perfect for busy mornings because it dries so quickly.

Eye cream too, is essential, to depuff and rehydrate the eyes.

To help foundation go on quickly and smoothly, Martha recommends a pea-sized amount of primer, like Smashboxs Photo Finish, under a full coverage foundation like Lancomes Teint Idole.

For cheeks and eyes, the popular Pippa Palette is her go-to.

Dont be intimidated, just use the elements you have time for, she says.

Resist the temptation to skip your brows, as a filled-in arch will help you look like youve had a good nights sleep.

Add a slick of mascara and line your lips with a nude pencil.

Combine the liner with a bit of gloss, or for a stronger lip, Bitch Perfect by Charlotte Tilbury is beautiful, says Martha.

Then youre out the door, job done.

Five top products for your makeup bag

1. Pippa Palette, 34.99, ( www.blankcanvascosmetics.com )

Pippa OConnor knows the value of convenient, time- saving products, and makeup artist Martha Mulconry says this is a winner on both counts.

I love this because it has everything I need in it, she says.

2. Lancome Teint Idole Ultra 24H, 38

A no-budge, full coverage foundation Martha feels is worth the spend.

It saw me though labour, she says.

I put it on at 8 in the morning, went into labour with Freya, and still had it on at 8 that night.

3. Real Techniques Miracle Complexion Sponge, 7.99, Boots

Promising a pixel perfect, flawless base, this is a fabulous cheat for the cult beauty blender, shaped for perfect coverage and smooth, quick application.

4. Rimmel London Brow This Way, 5.49, Boots

If youre pressed for time, you may not feel inclined to prioritise your brows, but Martha urges: give it a try and youll see an instant difference. Brows immediately give you a lift on the eye.

5. LOreal Telescopic Mascara, 16.99, Boots

With a special flat-sided brush, just one coat of this lengthening mascara has an instant effect and a dramatic impact.

* See www.makeupbymartha.ie for details
The low numbers of girls taking up careers in the tech sector is a growing concern for educators and the tech industry  but a series of sell-out female-only science events and the launch of an inspirational video about young female entrepreneurs this month may signal the beginnings of change.

On Thursday and Friday, February 9 and 10, the first tranche of some 4,000 female students pour into Cork City Hall to attend the hugely successful I Wish Conferences, which inspire them to consider science, technology, engineering and maths as subjects at both second and third level.

The free events and activities which offer students hands-on practical information and access to talks and demonstrations by successful women working in the areas of science, technology engineering and maths (STEM) will be repeated in the RDS in Dublin on Monday and Tuesday, February 13 and 14.

Young attendees will get to listen to, meet and greet the likes of Aisling Keegan, vice president and general manager of Dell EMC Ireland who plans to tell them about the superb opportunities for women in the tech sector: I will be talking about how wonderful it is to work for an IT company  Dell EMC is one of the top employers in Ireland and is a fantastic company to join.

We really want to inspire and motivate young female students  we have a lot of senior female role models right across our sales, HR, talent acquisition and technical sectors, Keegan explains.

Our company philosophy has values around promoting a culture of diversity and inclusion and we as a company have been very supportive in promoting and finding alternative ways to influence young females and encourage them to pursue careers in the technology industry, she says, quipping that the tech sector is not exactly afloat with large numbers of women.

The figures bear out her comment. In 2005 nearly 50% of new entrants into science, maths and computing courses at university level were women. By 2013 that had fallen to 40%. That same year female students made up just 16% of overall student numbers in third-level computer science programmes.

Figures for the faculties of engineering, manufacturing and construction courses show male entrants outnumbering females by four to one in 2013.

And, out of around 120,000 people working in the STEM sector in Ireland, only about a quarter are women.

Keegan says Dell EMC is supporting I Wish in a bid to encourage second-level female students to consider studying STEM subjects for the Leaving Cert and beyond: About 60% of all third-level graduates in Ireland are women but that percentage drops when you restrict the comparison to the STEM sector.

The reasons why are complex, she says, but she believes theres a need to educate student role models and key-influencers who may not be in the tech sector themselves, but who are highly influential in terms of the choices female students make about their career.

I Wish originally began in Cork in 2014. The event, supported by Science Foundation Ireland, among others, has gone nationwide this year with events both in Cork and in Dublin.

Students will meet and engage directly with inspiring women working in a variety of STEM role  the speaker line-up includes award-winning game designer Brenda Romero; Nuritas Founder and CSO, Dr Nora Khaldi; scientist and entrepreneur Ciara Judge; Assistant Professor in Physics at Trinity College Dublin, Arlene ONeill; film producer and chairman of Atticus Education, David Puttnam; director of strategy and communications of Science Foundation Ireland, Dr Ruth Freeman, and Keegan of Dell EMC.

Its extremely important for young girls to see female role models and get to understand first-hand that many women are successfully carving out careers in the STEM sector, says Margie McCarthy, head of education and public engagement with Science Foundation Ireland, who will also be attending the conferences.

Research carried out by SFI, she says, shows that the main reason students choose a third-level course is because they feel it fits their perception of themselves.

The environment you grow up in is very important  I grew up in an environment where there were a lot of engineers, and I became one, explains McCarthy who adds that research shows that a driving factor in career choice for many teenage girls is that they want to make a difference  but dont see that STEM careers as offering that opportunity.

Meeting successful women in STEM careers that are clearly influential can change girls perceptions and help them to see that such careers may offer a fit for what they themselves want to do in life, she explains.

Being involved in I Wish shows girls that they can do it and that girls are good at it and that it can be beneficial to society, she explains.

Currently, she points out: In engineering there are four boys to every girl, and in computers it is three boys to every girl. If you cannot see that there are women who succeed in terms of tech and computers for example, its unlikely you will identify yourself with that career.

This is what I Wish does  it provides female role models that girls can identify with  quite often what girls see are the sea of men, but I Wish shows that women are there and are making a difference.

Its about breaking down stereotypes, breaking down that glass wall where girls simply dont see STEM subjects as something that could be in their future  due more to stereotyping than to reality.

Just a day before the I Wish conference kicks off in Cork comes the launch of an inspirational video which documents a fascinating initiative run by Irish entrepreneur Mary Carty and Anne Marie Imafidon. In 2015 the duo established a summer house, Outbox Incubator, for teenage girls, giving them the chance to carry out science projects and cut their entrepreneurial teeth.

Now a video of that incredible six weeks in London, during which 115 girls from nine countries  including 30 from Ireland  dived into a range of projects involving STEM, is to be launched in Dublin as part of a new campaign to encourage girls to set up similar cells in their schools and communities.

Carty, now executive director of the prestigious Blackstone Launchpad entrepreneur incubation centre at NUI Galway, set up Outbox Incubator in 2015 with her co-founder Anne Marie Imasidon because, she recalls simply, there was a need for an incubator for young women interested in STEM.

Initially based in London Outbox Incubator is due to move to Dublin next summer for the first time.

We set up Outbox to give young women aged 11 to 22 the opportunity to advance their ideas and grow their businesses and in the summer of 2015 we brought 115 girls together in a house in London from nine different countries  30 were from Ireland.

They learned about STEM and business, participated in field trips to companies in the STEM sector and attended talks by senior women in STEM, says Carty who recalls how the girls met role models such as investor Mary McKenna, IT scientist Sue Black, and Melissa Donato, VP of Salesforce, whose company funded the initiative.

The entire process was videoed.

The girls learned about marketing, finance networking and other issues, she says, adding that participants stayed in the house for periods ranging from one to six weeks coming up with a variety of ideas for apps, as well as in the marketing, tech, genetics engineering and music sectors.

Participants included Dublin teenager Martha Kinch who came up with a device to make the use of inhalers easier for asthmas sufferers, Aoife Kearins from Sligo, founder of the music app Mixtape, and Edel Browne from Galway who invented a wearable device to help Parkinsons sufferers shuffle less.

The 30-minute documentary covers the entire six weeks of the Outbox experience, from July 2015 to early September 2015.

Entitled Eat, Sleep STEM, Repeat, the documentary is to be launched on February 8, in Dublin and London in a bid to inspire two million girls in Ireland and worldwide to get involved with STEM and set up similar projects by 2020.

The idea is that people can apply to hold a screening of the documentary in their school or club.

The documentary will empower and inspire girls to start clubs and get more involved in STEM, notes Carty, who says that they had discovered that many of the girls who had participated in Outbox were setting up their own clubs.

It was a life-changing experience for all of us. The thing that came out strongest was the improvement in self-confidence, she says adding that the girls built up a formidable network of contacts with industry leaders and luminaries as well as their peers.
Aside from the implications of yesterdays ballot result for current Junior Certificate students, the decision of members of the Association of Secondary Teachers of Ireland to reject proposals on pay and conditions causes major uncertainty for schools, students, and parents.

As ballot papers were about to go out to schools late last month, the ASTIs standing committee and central executive council decided what actions would be taken in the event the proposals were rejected.

As well as continuing their lack of co-operation with junior cycle reforms and non-fulfillment of 33 extra hours a year which they say are no longer required since the lapse of the Haddington Road Agreement last summer  members may still be expected to resume strike action on restoring equal pay for all teachers.

The most disruptive element of the action begun by the union, before talks last November resulted in a deferral, was withdrawal from supervision and substitution (S&S) duties. Although the ASTI described the situation as a response to pay being withdrawn for that work and being paid to other teachers, this did not accurately reflect the situation.

Members of the Irish National Teachers Organisation and Teachers Union of Ireland have been awarded an increase to their salaries in two phases last September and next. As part of the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA), which ASTI rejected in 2015, the figure of around 1,700 matches what was previously paid for S&S.

However, from 2013, being rostered for those duties was made a core part of a teachers contracted work in addition to the 22 hours class time for those in full-time positions at second-level. Those teachers who opted not to do the work were paid 1,700 less than those who did, or 1,600 for those who started teaching after 2011, and that situation will continue.

In other words, all teachers were eligible for the phased increase, and the minority who do not provide S&S cover continue to be paid less than their colleagues.

As part of the proposals finalised in late November at the Teachers Conciliation Council, one of the few new concessions was the offer of a permanent opt-out from the work to ASTI or other teachers who had already signed up to it  but accompanied by the associated reduction in pay.

The reason the Department of Education withheld this pay increase was the ASTIs ban on members working the so-called Croke Park hours, which ASTI says they are no longer obliged to work. This arises from the unions non-acceptance of the LRA.

A difference of interpretation over the question of a continuing obligation ensued, and the use by Richard Brutons department of financial emergency law to withhold the pay increases infuriated ASTI members. However, a threatened court challenge to that legislation has never materialised, leaving the union to use industrial relations mechanisms instead to try and force a reversal.

Complications over who would recruit or roster external staff to do S&S were deepened by ASTIs insistence that members who were principals or deputy principals could not facilitate this. With this prospect, there was uncertainty how long secondary schools might remain closed when the S&S ban took effect on the return from the mid-term break at the start of November.

A belief among many ordinary members that the Government would offer some concession was dispelled three months ago. Instead, they found themselves outside the gates as school boards told students to stay home in the absence of workable supervision arrangements at more than 400 secondary schools staffed mostly by ASTI members.

Only the intervention of the Teachers Conciliation Council prevented the dispute  and the subsequent closures  becoming more prolonged.

With the proposals that emerged from those talks now rejected, the recurrence of such closures is far less likely as ASTI leaders are willing to allow members do the work for a period of time to ensure schools do not close. There is also a possibility of members in management roles being permitted, as they were to have been after the first enforced closure in November, to oversee external staffs involvement in the work.

The ASTIs one-day strikes in pursuit of equal pay for teachers hired after 2011 could also resume. However, the union intimates strongly ahead of formal decision next week, that such action is unlikely in the remainder of this school year ahead of state exams.

However, the ongoing threat around this topic may bring it to the fore in forthcoming public sector pay discussions between the Government and other unions. Although the INTO and TUI have secured some clawback for most members in that category, newer teachers still remain proportionately less well-off than most counterparts in the public service who saw salary scales reduced by 10% from those of longer-serving colleagues.

The increases in salaries agreed with those two unions for their more recent members last September only begin to make up for the loss of qualifications allowances which were imposed by previous governments. But some post-2011 teachers are still at a disadvantage.

Tanaiste Frances Fitzgeralds suggestion in the Dail earlier yesterday that three-quarters of the gap for new entrants would have been closed by the deal might be disputed; but other benefits have also now been foregone by ASTI members.

These include phased increases in salaries for post-2011 teachers, reaching 15% to 22% in time, and immediate backdated increases for all ASTI members of the payments linked to the S&S amounts. Other aspects to the deal included a restoration of salary increments, and increased flexibility in how teachers deliver the Croke Park hours, as already agreed for schools where INTO and TUI members work.

The Government may not readily admit it, but pressure to resolve the ASTI dispute has helped to accelerate talks with the wider public service unions on a replacement of the LRA. It may yet prove ironic if the ASTI does not reap any benefits from what emerges from that process in the months ahead.
Its interesting to note that as they meet for the third time to discuss the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution they are having their discussions in 2017, the year that marks the 50th anniversary of the UK Abortion Act.

There are surely few other pieces of legislation enacted in one country that have had such a profound effect on one gender in another country. The UK Act does not legalise abortion but allows a legal defence for carrying out the procedure.

It allows a termination to be carried out up to 24 weeks if two doctors agree there are medical grounds for it to take place.

At the last weekend meeting of the Citizens Assembly in January Dr Peter McParland, director of Fetal Maternal Medicine at the National Maternity Hospital Holles St, told the members there are 500 terminations in the UK every day, the vast majority of them less than 13 weeks.

Of the 185,824 abortions in 2015, UK figures show that 3,451 women gave Irish addresses.

Further details on the personal experience of those Irish women who travel to the UK for abortions, as well as the perspectives of those who provide them, will be heard by the Citizens Assembly because the citizens have made clear that this is information they want to hear.

The first two assembly weekends have progressed quite seamlessly and without any obvious rancour. The most interesting aspect came at the end of the last session after what the official timetable described as a roundtable brainstorming by members on what recommendations they may eventually put forward on the Eighth Amendment.

Its worth bearing in mind that the first weekend was more of a fact-finding one where the current state of the law was outlined without an examination of the perceived advantages or disadvantages of the current regime.

On the most recent weekend they heard from two hospital consultants on foetal abnormalities (FFA) and a further two speakers on the legal issues surrounding FFA.

A further session examined the moral status of the unborn/foetus where two very different ethical perspectives were offered. Finally there was a session on how laws are made and changed.

At the beginning of this brainstorming session a slide had been put up with the heading: Conversation Starters. There were three questions:

1. Do you think a right to life of the unborn child should continue to be constitutionally protected in the same way as now?

2. Do you think that the X case and the 2013 Act make abortion lawfully available in Ireland in too many circumstances?

3. Do you think that abortion should be lawfully available in Ireland in more circumstances than is currently he case?

It was quite clear that in the room where the citizens were divided into 14 round tables, and had a trained facilitator to guide their discussions, there was a strong inclination towards either appealing or amending the Eighth Amendment.

As assembly chair Judge Mary Laffoy went from table to table, 10 of the 14 facilitators, said No to question 1 and indicated the members at their table were in favour of liberalising our current regime. The two remaining tables did not clearly indicate a preference.

Question 2 referred to the 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act, which, acting on a 1992 Supreme Court decision in the X case, legally gives a woman access to an abortion where there is a real and substantial risk to her life, including risk of suicide.

In response to that seven tables said no and there was neither a yes or a no answer given by any remaining tables.

However listening to the conveners at five of those remaining seven tables they appeared to be passing on views which implied members felt circumstances where abortion is made available should be expanded.

The responses to Question 3 made it even clearer that the status quo is not acceptable to members  nine of the 14 tables said yes that abortion should be lawfully available in Ireland in more circumstances and no table said No.

A number of the surrounding comments are worth repeating. At one table it was felt there was a little too much dwelling on fatal foetal abnormalities and a desire to hear about wider, more normal cases. Contraception and education was mentioned elsewhere, as was a desire to see more support for women in difficult circumstances.

There was a view expressed that the matter should be between a woman and her medical practitioner but there wasnt unanimous agreement on that at the table in question.

At one table some members apparently felt it would be the correct thing to leave things as they are in the Constitution but increase the focus on maternal healthcare while another view was if there is to be change there would have to be a discussion of the circumstances in which it would be permissible, for example fatal foetal abnormalities, the health of mother, and rape. The rights of fathers was raised as an issue.

There were concerns about the availability of anti-natal screenings which can detect for Down Syndrome. These arose from the presentation made by Professor McParland, who had said there had been no baby born in Iceland with Down Syndrome in the last four years since screening was introduced.

Another convenor told the assembly there had been general agreement at their table there was a need for change but disagreement on the extent and level of that change.

Yet another said the citizens at his table had said the one thing they wish to say is they wanted to feel they left here and had done some good. So taken in the round the desire for change is clear among members but less clear is what sort of a legal regime would replace the Eighth Amendment.

Its again worth putting these views in the context that the assembly members have requested to hear personal stories, either from women who simply did not wish or felt unable to progress with a pregnancy, to those who received a diagnosis of FFA.

This makes the feedback all the more interesting as these stories are bound to have an influence. They have also yet to hear from the advocacy groups from the pro and anti side of the abortion argument.

So it wasnt altogether surprising to hear Judge Mary Laffoy say that owing to the large task ahead of them, and the long list of areas that the members wanted to explore, there would be an extra weekend needed to discuss the issue, making it a total of five weekends. As said previously the assembly members deserve a lot of credit from their fellow citizens.
Asia Pirates, Cyclones, and Mud: Bangladeshs Island Solution to Refugee Crisis

Bangladesh coast guards walk on Thengar Char island, Feb. 2, 2017. / Reuters

THENGAR CHAR, Bangladesh  The island is two hours by boat from the nearest settlement. There are no buildings, mobile phone reception, or people. During the monsoon it often floods and, when the seas are calm, pirates roam nearby waters hunting for fishermen to kidnap for ransom.

Welcome to Thengar Char, a muddy stain in the murky waters of the Bay of Bengal, identified by Bangladesh as a short-term solution to the humanitarian crisis unfolding on its border with Burma, across which some 70,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled.

Those refugees, escaping an army crackdown on insurgents that began in October, have joined more than 200,000 Rohingya already living in official and makeshift camps, straining resources in one of Asias poorest regions. Bangladesh says the refugees bring crime and a risk of disease.

The influx has prompted Dhaka to revive a planmuch criticized by humanitarian workers when it was first proposed in 2015to move thousands of people to this uninhabited island about 250 kilometers (150 miles) northwest of their border camps.

While most experts dismiss the scheme as impractical, a Bangladeshi minister told Reuters this week that it was determined to push ahead, adding authorities would provide shelters, other facilities, and livestock.

Local administrators, however, say they have not been informed, and when Reuters visited the island the only signs of activity were a few buffalo lazily grazing on the yellow grass along its shores.

We have only heard bad things about the Rohingya. If they work with the pirates and get involved in crime, we dont want them here, said Mizanur Rahman, 48, the administrator of Might Bangha village, the closest settlement to Thengar Char.

Rahman added, however, that if the Rohingya were good people, they should be helped on humanitarian grounds. Others from the village echoed that sentiment, saying they were fellow Muslims and deserved assistance.

Pirates and Machine Guns

It takes about two hours by boat from Rahmans village on the coast of Sandwipone of the largest islands in an archipelago in southern Bangladeshto Thengar Char.

Reuters journalists were escorted there by a fishing boat and a coastguard vessel carrying seven officers equipped with Chinese-made machine guns to stave off potential pirate attacks.

Villagers complain criminals roam the nearby waters, seizing vessels, stealing the catch and releasing fishermen only after receiving a ransom.

Thengar Char is flat and featureless, covered by bushes, grass, and windswept trees.

It emerged from the sea about 11 years ago, off Sandwips western coast, one of the myriad of shifting, unstable islands formed by sediment in the mouth of the mighty Meghna river.

While Thengar Char looked calm on a sunny winter afternoon, the main objection voiced by aid agencies to Bangladeshs plan is the areas unforgiving climate.

These areas are cyclone and flood-prone, said Quamrul Hassan, a meteorologist at the Bangladesh Weather Department, adding that the islands in the Bay of Bengal were especially risky to inhabit.

Average rainfall during the monsoon season in the coastal areas is more than double that of the other parts of the country.

Many people living on the islands are regularly evacuated during the cyclone season to shelters built on the coast, said local journalist Saleh Noman.

He thought the relocation plan wasnt realistic.

There is a similar island in the area and it took some 40 years for it to develop. Bet even now its all very basic, said Noman.

There are currently around 30,000 Rohingya living in camps run by the United Nations near the border with Burma, while tens of thousands more are crammed into slums that have grown up around them, without proper sanitation or healthcare.

The Rohingya from those settlements sometimes find employment, but most are sustained by local villagers and rations quietly distributed by international aid agencies.

We can operate here, but we cant really talk about it, said one aid worker based in the border region.

Rohingya refugees Reuters spoke to did not want to stay where they werebut neither did they want to be moved to Thengar Char.

We left everything in Burma, said Abu Salam from Kya Guang Taung, a village in northern Burma that was destroyed in the crackdown. He crossed the border in December.

Thats where our home is. If only we could get citizenship, we would like to go back.
News Burma Government to Review Critical UN Report on Arakan Crisis

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad Al Hussein speaks in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Feb. 6, 2016. / Reuters

GENEVA, Switzerland  Burma President Htin Kyaws spokesman said on Friday that the government had not yet seen a highly critical UN human rights report on Arakan State.

The UN human rights office issued a report on Friday that said Burmas security forces have committed mass killings and gang rapes of Muslims and burned their villages since October in a campaign that probably amounts to crimes against humanity and possibly ethnic cleansing.

We will review the report from the UN and we will respond, either in an official statement or in an individual response (to questions), the presidents office spokesman U Zaw Htay said.

Burma has denied almost all allegations of human rights abuses in northern Arakan and says a lawful counterinsurgency campaign is under way.

Government officials have accused Rohingya residents and refugees of fabricating stories of killings, beatings, mass rape and arson in collaboration with insurgents who they say are Rohingya terrorists with links to Islamists overseas.

The UN report said that witnesses had testified to the killing of babies, toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food.

One woman told UN investigators how her eight-month baby boy had had his throat slit. Another was raped by soldiers and saw her five-year-old daughter killed as she tried to stop them.

The devastating cruelty to which these Rohingya children have been subjected is unbearable, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Raad al Hussein said in a statement.

Around 66,000 people have fled from the Muslim-majority northern part of Arakan State to Bangladesh since Burmas military launched a security operation in response to attacks on police border posts on Oct. 9, the UN report said. The UN humanitarian office has recently put the figure at 69,000.

The area clearance operations have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths, some of them through helicopters shooting at villages and dropping grenades on them, the UN report said.

Four UN investigators gathered testimony last month from 220 Rohingya victims and witnesses who fled the lockdown area in Maungdaw in Arakan State for the Coxs Bazar district in Bangladesh.

Nearly half reported a family member had been killed or disappeared while 101 women reported having been raped or subjected to sexual violence, it said.

The investigators took evidence including photographs of bullet and knife wounds, burns, and injuries resulting from beatings with rifle butts or bamboo sticks.

Zeid called for a robust reaction from the international community and said Burma must accept responsibility for committing grave human rights violations against its own people.

The report said the attacks on the Rohingya seem to have been widespread as well as systematic, indicating the very likely commission of crimes against humanity.

Bangladesh is determined to relocate Rohingya Muslims fleeing violence in Burma to an island in the Bay of Bengal, a Bangladeshi minister said on Wednesday. Critics say the island is uninhabitable. The minister said the move was temporary and Burma would ultimately have to take the Rohingya back.
Burma Arakan State Advisory Commission Member Describes Inhumane Conditions for Refugees in Bangladesh

Rohingya women and childrendisplaced from Dar Gyee Zar villagewatch as authorities carry out relief efforts near Abujara village in northern Maungdaw Township. / Moe Myint / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  An Arakan State Advisory Commission delegate who participated in a three-day trip to Bangladesh, Al Haj U Aye Lwin, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that the living conditions for Muslim refugees on the Bangladeshi border were inappropriate even for animals.

Commission members, U Win Mraof the Myanmar National Human Rights Commissionand Al Haj U Aye Lwinco-founder of Religions for Peace Myanmaras well as the former UN Special Advisor to the Secretary General, Ghassan Salame, visited Bangladesh at the end of January and arrived back in Rangoon on Wednesday.

The advisory commission made an official announcement on Thursday that three delegates had traveled to Dhaka to explore Bangladeshi perspectives on the various challenges facing Arakan State. During the visit, they held meetings with Bangladeshs Foreign Affairs Minister, the Minister of Home Affairs, an advisor to the Prime Minister, former Bangladeshi diplomats of Bangladesh, as well as non-profit organizations, according to U Aye Lwin.

Bangladeshi authorities led the three commission delegates to the sites of several Rohingya camps in Teknaf, Coxs Bazar, said U Aye Lwin. He added that, currently, the Bangladeshi officials had identified three categories of refugee housing: registered camps, makeshift camps and camps for new arrivals who fled the Maungdaw border region as a consequence of the Burmese armed forces clearance operations and manhunt for assailants who attacked three border outposts on Oct. 9, killing nine policemen.

International rights groups have accused the Burma Army of committing right abuses in the conflict zone; the Burmese government has rejected the allegations.

Al Haj U Aye Lwin told The Irrawaddy that the new arrivals were living in inhumane conditions.

The place where they live is inappropriate even for animals, not to mention humans. When I asked a child if he had eaten, he just cried instantly.

According to statistics released by the UNs Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Burma, the latest report on Feb. 2 states that a total 92,000 people have been displaced since the October 2016 attacks on police posts in northern Arakan State; among them 69,000 people have sought shelter in Bangladesh.

Speaking to reporters from The Daily Star after meeting with representatives from Bangladeshs Institute of International and Strategic Studies on Jan. 31, commission delegate Ghassan Salame said that granting Burmese citizenship to Muslims in Arakan State was key to creating a better situation and halting the flow of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh.

In a meeting with Bangladeshi police, U Aye Lwin said he questioned officials about whether insurgents had come across the Maungdaw border for the purpose of recruitmentclaims which have not been substantiated. The deputy commissioner of the police in Coxs Bazar reportedly answered that they would not allow security in the border areas to be compromised.

U Aye Lwin said that local Bangladeshis had disapproved of how the Rohingya refugees had cut down trees in the area in order to build makeshift shelters. They said they were also worried about job competition with the incoming population.

While the recent wave of Rohingya refugees are facing difficulties accessing food and healthcare, a government notice from Dhaka expressed concern about law and order issues and said that the country plans to relocate refugees to the Bangladeshi island of Thengar Char temporarily, to be returned to Burma eventually.
Burma Burmas Lower House Issues Letter Bomb Warning

Security forces check a car entering the Parliament compound. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYIDAW  Burmas Lower House issued a warning on Thursday to be on the lookout for letter bombs.

Following the assassination on Sunday of U Ko Ni, the prominent National League for Democracy (NLD) legal advisor, the Lower House said that a heightened security posture was warranted.

Given the current circumstances, we should be on high alert. This is what todays warning is about. We must ensure the security of the Parliament because high-ranking officials and ministers are going in and out there, explained U Ko Ko Naing, head of the Lower House information and public relations department.

The warning also explained the general composition of a letter bomb, how it looks, and how it works.

There are many letters delivered to the parliament in different forms. So, through this warning, we want to raise awareness among Parliament staff, U Ko Ko Naing told The Irrawaddy.

Dr. Hla Moe, secretary of the Lower Houses Rights Committee, has welcomed the tightened security, calling it a must for the highest authority of the country.

Security measures were quite loose in the past in the Parliament. So it is only now that we are tightening security again, Dr. Hla Moe told The Irrawaddy.

Lawmakers are not subjected to a body search in our country, but even lawmakers have to undergo a body search when traveling internationally, said Dr. Hla Moe.

The Presidential Residence in Naypyidaw is adjacent to the Parliament compound, so police have tightened the security in both locations.
Burma Burmas Probe of Lawyers Killing Beset by Leaks, Confusion

Supporters carry the coffin of Ko Ni on Jan. 30, a prominent member of Burmas Muslim minority and legal adviser for the ruling National League for Democracy, after he was shot dead, in Rangoon the previous day. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

RANGOON  Burmas national police chief has taken personal charge of an investigation into the killing of a prominent lawyer and adviser to Aung San Suu Kyis ruling party, police sources said, after leaks and conflicting comments by officers about its progress.

The killing of Muslim advocate U Ko Ni, 63shot in the head on Sunday in front of onlookers while he held his grandson outside Rangoons international airporthas rocked the commercial capital, where acts of political violence are rare.

It comes amid heightened religious and communal tensions in the Buddhist-majority country, with a report from the United Nations human rights office on Friday saying a military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in the northwest in recent months very likely amounted to crimes against humanity.

Tens of thousands turned out for Ko Nis funeral, and the public is closely watching how authorities investigate a killing the civilian Presidents Office has called an attempt to destabilize the state.

Colleagues have told Reuters Ko Ni was working on amendments to Burmas military-drafted constitution to help the National League for Democracy-led government rule effectively in a system that keeps soldiers in control of key ministries.

Maj-Gen Zaw Win, chief of Burmas police force, arrived in Rangoon from the capital, Naypyidaw, on Thursday to oversee the probe, which is being led by the polices criminal investigation department, two police officials told Reuters.

The official, who like other police spoke about the investigation on condition of anonymity, said the militarys domestic intelligence agency was also involved in the probe.

A military intelligence agent told Reuters he was instructed to monitor Ko Ni in the months before the lawyers death.

The intelligence agency was primarily concerned with finding out how the suspect obtained a firearm, ownership of which is tightly controlled in Burma, the official said.

Citizen Investigators

The suspected shooternamed by police as Kyi Linn, 53was arrested after a group of taxi drivers chased the him down. One of the drivers was himself shot and killed.

Despite a ban on police talking publicly about the case, photographs showing parts of a report on Kyi Linns interrogation have spread widely online. Officials believe the images were leaked after police used the messaging app Viber to share them with colleagues.

The leak sparked a race on social mediause of which has rocketed in Burma since recent telecommunications reformsto identify a man who, according to the document, Kyi Linn said enticed him to shoot U Ko Ni.

Facebook users posted photos of purported suspects, and analysed CCTV footage from the airport to devise often far-fetched conspiracy theories. Many in Burma distrust the police, who are under the remit of the military.

Police themselves have made contradictory statements.

A police official in Karen State said the alleged mastermind had been detained near Burmas border with Thailand on Monday. Other officials in the same police department later denied the arrest had taken place. An official in Rangoon said there was an arrest, but that they got the wrong man.

The Presidents Office announced in a statement on Friday evening that a conspirator reportedly involved in U Ko Nis killing had been arrested on Monday at Thanlwin Bridge in Karen State after he fled Rangoon, and identified him as 46-year-old Aung Win Zaw.

Two police sources said another suspect was arrested Thursday after a reporter with news agency Myanmar Now tracked down a man who spent time in prison with Kyi Linn. The witness allegedly said the new suspect, who also knew Kyi Linn, had attempted to recruit him as an assassin last year.

Police said Kyi Linnwho is charged with murderhas been jailed twice in the past for trafficking Buddhist artifacts, but was released in a 2014 amnesty granted by then-President Thein Sein.

Another former cell mate told Reuters he thought Kyi Linn would do anything for his business and money, adding: I dont think he is related to any political and religious issues.

In his home village of Sai Lyar, members of Kyi Linns family were shocked by the news, carried by police and reporters who have visited their farming community in rural Sagaing Division since Sunday.

I am sure my brother would not kill someone on his own, Kyi Linns younger sister, Win Kyi, told Reuters. There must be someone behind him.
Burma Disability Federation Criticizes Education Ministry for Discrimination

The federation denounced the education ministry for its failure to recognize the fundamental rights and capacities of people with disabilities. / Reuters

RANGOON  The Burma Federation of Persons with Disabilities has criticized the Ministry of Education for its discriminatory practices.

The federation held a press conference on Wednesday in Rangoon, where it released a statement that said people with disabilities were having their rights violated.

People with disabilities are losing their fundamental rights and citizens rights. We hope concerned government authorities will be aware of this and prevent it in the future, said federation chairman U Aung Ko Myint.

The federation released the statement in response to an advertisement issued by the education ministry inviting applicants to apply to education colleges as well as a teaching preparatory diploma course organized by the ministry.

The advertisement said that people would not be selected if they were found to have disabilities, be transgender, or lack the typical attributes of a teacher.

Meanwhile, disabled studentsspecifically those with paralysis and congenital malformationsare barred from applying to education colleges.

The advertisement went viral last month, angering the disabled community.

The federation has denounced the education ministry for its failure to recognize the fundamental rights and capacities of people with disabilities, calling its advertisement active discrimination.

Ma Moh Moh, who once applied to attend an education college, told The Irrawaddy, After I passed the matriculation examination in 2007, I applied to attend the education college. I passed the written test, but I was not chosen because I have polydactyly.

U Aung Ko Myint said the federation would hold a legal workshop in cooperation with the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement to ensure the advertisements of other ministries do not discriminate against people with disabilities.

The federation said the policy and procedures of the education ministry violate the UN Human Rights Declaration, UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the Constitution of Burma.

It pointed out that persons with disabilities would continue to lose opportunities to learn as well as job opportunities if the ministry continued its practices.

Burmas disabled population is estimated to be about 2.3 million, or about 4.6 percent of the population.
Bald males seen as more confident, dominant than men with hair

Saitama went bald training in the One Punch Man anime series. (Photo : YouTube / 60fpstation)

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have found out that bald men have a lot more going for them despite the lack of hair. Men usually fear hair loss when they age but it would seem to be a good thing after all.



The study found that people do view bald men slightly less attractive than their haired counterparts. However, the positive traits that were perceived outweigh the cons after all.



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Researchers from the university conducted three different experiments which involved participants rating photos and descriptions of bald men. There were also different traits that acted as factors for the study.



Dr. Frank Muscarella told Mail Online that he hypothesized that the male pattern baldness trait evolve because it signaled "non-threatening dominance. The participants in the study that he led rated the photos and descriptions in different scales which included social status, aggressiveness, honesty, maturity and more. Bald men were rated more in the positive areas compared to men with hair.



"It could be speculated that although the characteristic of baldness decreases a man's perceived physical attractiveness, it increases his perceived social dominance," said Muscarella. "There is a large body of literature that shows that although women like physically attractive men, they are also very attracted to signs of high social dominance."



Men with hair were preferred by the participants in terms of physical looks as bald men were generally perceived as older, USA Today reported. Another possible explanation for the added dominance in bald men is because shaving one's head is generally known as an expression.



In addition, the researchers found in their study that bald men generally do well in negotiations. Part of the explanation is because of the added dominance an air of confidence.



Being bald can be a choice for men but it can also be the work of inherited traits and genes. The added positive traits can immensely help in the overall appeal.



Fin out who are the top bald men below:






Burma Judge Accused of Corruption Goes on the Run

Transparency Internationals corruption index ranked Burma #136 out of 176 countries in 2016. / Transparency International

RANGOON  A judge from Upper Burmas Magwe Division has gone on the run from authorities after she was accused of taking bribes, the Anti-Corruption Commission told The Irrawaddy on Friday.

Judge Daw Inzali Mya Shein of Pwintbyu Township was charged with accepting bribes last year in exchange for favorable rulings on two criminal cases. According to the commission, she accepted payments of 500,000 kyats (US$368) in each of the casesone for an unlicensed liquor shop and another for illegal gambling.

The Anti-Corruption Commission will declare the judge a fugitive and will turn the case over to the Ministry of Home Affairs, which can issue an arrest warrant, commission member U Thin Maung told The Irrawaddy.

Daw Inzali Mya Shein has been charged under Article 56 of the 2013 anti-corruption law, which could lead to a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. The commission said this was the fifth case brought against a high-level public servant in the judiciary sector since the anti-graft law was enacted.

In all five cases, the perpetrators have yet to be arrested.

Commission member Dr. Ny Nyi Tun told The Irrawaddy that an investigation of the judge began in early November.

He stressed the need to give the anti-corruption commission more authority and to cut bureaucratic procedures in order to speed up investigations.

The commission received 2,661 complaints from its formation in March 2014 to the end of 2016, U Thin Maung said. According to the commissions statistics, Rangoon Division ranked at the top for most complaints generated, followed by Mandalay and Bago.

Observers have cited several drivers of corruption and bribery in Burma, including low pay for government employees and a complex bureaucracy. This creates an abundance of opportunities for bribery and other forms of corruption.

Judicial grievances were ranked as the top problem for the Upper House of Parliaments Public Complaints Committee. The committee received 4,071 letters in 2016, and more than 2,000 of them expressed grievances with court decisions, corruption by judicial workers, and the slow judicial process.

According to a recent report by Berlin-based graft watchdog Transparency International, Burma ranked 136th out of 176 nations for its level of corruption in 2016.
Burma Malaysian PM Sends Off Aid Ship Bound for Burma

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak appears on Sep. 9, 2016. / Reuters

KUALA LUMPUR  Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak on Friday sent off a ship carrying tons of food and emergency supplies to Muslim communities in Arakan State, saying their suffering would not be ignored.

Najib has been an outspoken critic of the treatment of predominantly Buddhist Burmas Muslim Rohingya minority, calling on the government to stop attacks.

The Burmese government has denied the accusations, saying many reports of violence against Muslims are fabricated. It insists strife in Arakan State is an internal matter.

This is a historic moment  a noble effort that shows that all the pain and suffering of Rohingya in Burma will not go ignored, Najib said in a speech at a port near the capital of mostly Muslim Malaysia.

We hear their pain, those who have been raped, murdered and burned alive.

Burma security forces launched a crackdown in the north of Arakan State, on the border with Bangladesh, in October after nine policemen were killed in militant attacks on border posts.

At least 86 people have been killed and about 66,000 have fled into Bangladesh since then to escape what refugees, residents, and human rights groups say have been abuses by Burma forces including summary executions and rape.

The aid shipment, bound for Rangoon, has been organized by Malaysian Muslim groups, as well as domestic and foreign aid groups.

The ship is expected to arrive in Rangoon on Feb. 9 where it will unload 550 tons of supplies, organizers said.

It will then embark on a three-day journey to Teknaf port in Bangladesh.

Political Agenda

Burma has not allowed the ship to sail to Sittwe, the capital of Arakan State, as organizers had hoped. Burma has also insisted that the aid to be distributed equally to both Buddhist and Muslim communities.

We are still hoping with all our hearts that they will eventually allow us to visit Sittwe and distribute the aid ourselves, said the mission chief, Abdul Azeez Abdul.

Malaysia has urged the Association of South East Asian Nations to coordinate aid and investigate alleged atrocities committed against the Rohingya, breaking the 10-nation groups long-standing tradition of non-interference in each others internal affairs.

Burma, in turn, has accused Malaysia of exploiting the crisis to promote a certain political agenda.
Burma Meinmahla Kyun Wetlands Receive International Recognition

Meinmahla Kyun was added to the list of Ramsar sites on World Wetlands Day. / Pyay Kyaw / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON  Meinmahla Kyun in Irrawaddy Divisions Bogale Township was added to the list of Wetlands of International Importance under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands on World Wetlands Day, which fell on Thursday.

Burmas Forest Department and the Norwegian Environment Agency (NEA) observed World Wetlands Day at Moe Yun Gyi Wildlife Sanctuary during which the Ramsar Secretariat announced the designation, director U Zaw Lun of the marine and wetlands area conservation program told The Irrawaddy.

The designation means the world has recognized of Meinmahla Kyun as an important place for biodiversity. Some think that no extraction can be done in a place when it is designated as a conservation area. It is not like that. We will systematically govern the area, and utilize resources sustainably in cooperation with locals, he said.

However, Meinmahla Kyun estuary is not the first Ramsar site in Burma: Moeyungyi Wildlife Sanctuary in Pegu was designated as a Ramsar site in 2004, followed by Indawgyi Lake in Kachin States Mohnyin Township in 2016.

Meinmahla Kyun is home to mangroves, mudflats, and turtle nesting beaches. The reserve was established in 1986.

The new Ramsar Site will not only protect the Irrawaddy Deltas last remaining important mangrove estuary, which hosts Burmas largest crocodile population, but will also protect the delta from storm surges caused by cyclones, said Dr. U Nyi Nyi Kyaw, the director-general of the Forest Department, as well as the head of the Ramsar Administrative Authority of Burma.

The Ramsar Convention Secretariat prioritizes habitats of endangered species in designating Ramsar sites, U Zaw Lun explained.

We have to collect comprehensive data for at least three years. Besides this, we have to thoroughly study how to govern the area as well as [consider] the feedback of locals. Only after that, can we submit the application, he said, regarding the process of submitting application for Ramsar site status.

According to Fauna and Flora International (FFI), Meinmahla Kyun hosts the worlds largest number of critically endangered mangrove plant species, and more than 20 species of threatened fauna, including the critically endangered mangrove terrapin, an endangered wild dog, the Irrawaddy dolphin and the lesser adjutant stork.

Threatened migratory bird species found in the area include the critically endangered spoon-billed sandpiper and the endangered Nordmanns greenshank, which makes the Ramsar Site important for shorebird conservation along the Australasian flyway, said FFI.

FFI provided technical assistance and funds for the nomination of Meinmahla Kyun for international recognition as a Ramsar site, said U Zaw Lun.

World Wetlands Day is celebrated annually on Feb. 2, marking the date of the adoption of the Convention on Wetlands on Feb. 2, 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
Politics Govt Asks to Spend Reserve Funds on Arakan State Development

A boy unloads fish from a boat at Ngapali Beach, a popular tourist site, in the Thandwe Township, Arakan State, on October 5, 2013. / Soe Zeya Tun / Reuters

NAYPYIDAW  The government sought the approval of the Union Parliament on Friday to spend nearly 3.7 billion kyats (US$2.7 million) of reserved funds to implement 18 road and bridge construction projects in 16 Arakan State townships.

Deputy minister for Planning and Finance U Maung Maung Win and the deputy minister for Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation U Hla Kyaw explained President U Htin Kyaws proposal to spend the specified amount in line with Union Budget Law for Arakan States socioeconomic development.

The government had 100 billion kyats in reserved funds for the 2016-17 fiscal year, and had allowed the spending of 55.97 billion kyats by the end of January, with just over 44 billion kyats therefore remaining, said U Maung Maung Win.

Well spend from reserved funds for implementing 18 regional development projects in 16 townships, said deputy minister U Maung Maung Win. Reserved funds are money reserved in the Union budget for emergency and unexpected cases, he explained.

The Central Committee on the Implementation of Peace, Stability and Development of Arakan State has decided to prioritize development works in Arakan State, citing it as critical for the peace and stability of the country, said U Hla Kyaw.

The 27-member committee was formed last May and is chaired by State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation will take responsibility for the implementation of the 18 projects, said deputy minister U Hla Kyaw.

Arakanese ethnic lawmaker U Pe Than from the Arakan National Party (ANP) said he was thankful for the allocation, but that the amount was not enough to lay sound foundations for the socioeconomic development of Arakan State.

It would be better if a separate fund is allocated for peace and development of Arakan State or if the State Counselors Office sets up a separate fund. Without spending huge funds, it is difficult for Arakan State to develop, Im afraid, said U Pe Than, who represents Myebon Township in Lower House.

Arakan State has resources. It is rich in natural gas, but is in poverty because of political turmoil. Arakanese people are just demanding to share the profits from those resources. And Arakanese people [] are kept busy solving conflicts, U Pe Than lamented.

The Parliament accepted a debate of the governments funding request for Arakan State.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
Heres the Firepower the US Army has brought to Russias Front Door in Poland

Waiting for Ivan (Photo : US Army)

It might not appear like much, but the firepower brought to Russia's front door by the newly deployed U.S. Army 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, U.S. 4th Infantry Division (3-4 ABCT) from Fort Carson, Colorado now in Poland diminishes the likelihood Russia will push through with its threat to invade NATO.



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The deployment of 3-4 ABCT, also known as the "Iron Brigade," also means any European war might well become World War III, an outcome Russia is incapable of winning on the battlefield.



3-4 ABCT is one of the best trained frontline units in the U.S. Army. Over the next few months, 3,500 men of 3-4 ABCT; 87 M1A2SEPv2 Abrams main battle tanks (the latest version); 144 M2A3 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles (IFVs), 18 M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers and 2,500 other vehicles will be deployed to Poland.



The move of the U.S. Army to Russia's very doorstep seeks to deter wanton Russian aggression in Eastern Europe as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve. The deployment of 3-4 ABCT is the largest U.S. military deployment in Europe since the end of the Cold War in 1991.



Most of the men and equipment of 3-4 ABCT will be deployed across Poland. Others will go to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary to train with local troops.



Armed with a 120 mm gun, the M1A2 SEPv2 is also protected by improved front and side depleted uranium armor. It comes with a Tank Urban Survival Kit (TUSK) and a Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station (CROWS) with an M2 .50-caliber remote-controlled machine gun as standard.



The tank is powered by a 1500 horsepower turbine engine and now has an upgraded transmission for better durability.



The M2A3 Bradley IFV, which is an upgraded version of the original M2 Bradley, is totally digital and improves target acquisition and fire control and situational awareness. The survivability of the M2A3 has been upgraded with a number of armor improvements, both passive and reactive.



The M2A3 is armed with a 30 mm Bushmaster autocannon and two TOW anti-tank missiles in the ready position, It can carry seven infantrymen.



3-4 ABCT's Bradleys have the new Commander's Independent Thermal Viewer (CITV) that's a thermal viewer separate from the gunner's. CITV allows the commander to search for threats, and maintain situational awareness while the gunner engages targets.



The M109A6 Paladin supports armored and mechanized infantry forces with indirect fire from its huge 155 mm L39 howitzer. This Paladin is an upgrade with new armor to protect its crew of six and an inertial navigation system that allows the crew to travel to a new firing location and be ready to fire within 30 seconds.


The mobile operating system (OS) world has evolved into a near duopoly, with Apples iOS and Googles Android dominating. Smaller OSes, such as Microsofts Windows Phone and the BlackBerry OS, have faded. Indeed, BlackBerry has pretty much moved over to Android.

But the marginal OSes soldier on. There were four pieces of news during the past couple of weeks. The first is not earth shattering: Last month, Softpedia reported that Cerulean Mobile is close to releasing a Windows 10 Mobile device, which will likely have 3GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage and a 13-megapixel camera.

More importantly, there are reports that Samsung, a big user of Android, is about to introduce a phone that uses the Tizen OS. The OS, according to Digital Trends, was developed by the hardware company for use on its wearables. The internal name of the phone is Pride, the first to run Tizen 3.0. Its first release site will be India and it might also be available in parts of Asia. At this point, a U.S. release is not expected.

It may be that Pride, which will be an entry-level device, is some sort of dry run. If Samsung decided to move more aggressively to use Tizen in its phones, the effect on the OS sector  and by extension, the smartphone business  would be significant.

A third sign of that expansion is the launch of a global Tizen App Development program. Developers, according to Gadget, can submit mobile apps and vie for a $10,000 prize.

The mobile world may get some answers soon. The fourth piece of news is that Tizen 4.0 is on the way. PCWorld suggests that there are a couple of agendas: Keeping its options open and enabling communications between devices:

Most of Samsungs smartphones have Android today, but it is maintaining Tizen, as it doesnt want to put all its eggs in one basket. Samsung is developing technology so its Android mobile devices, Windows PCs and Tizen devices can easily communicate with one another.

The depth of Samsungs move into the smartphone OS market remains to be seen. The industry went through a period when there was quite a bit of support for a robust third player. The feeling was that a trio of smartphone OSes would be healthier than a duo, from the business and technical perspectives. Now, years after the industry resigned itself to two strong players and a bunch of wannabees, the third player may be arriving.

Carl Weinschenk covers telecom for IT Business Edge. He writes about wireless technology, disaster recovery/business continuity, cellular services, the Internet of Things, machine-to-machine communications and other emerging technologies and platforms. He also covers net neutrality and related regulatory issues. Weinschenk has written about the phone companies, cable operators and related companies for decades and is senior editor of Broadband Technology Report. He can be reached at [email protected] and via twitter at @DailyMusicBrk.
Of every single Chinese smartphone that is about to be released, the Xiaomi Mi 6 is definitely one of the most expected, given the fact that this is the mobile device that will represent the companys biggest bet this year. Fortunately, even when many rumors suggest that this mobile device will be quite outstanding, new reports reveal that it would be greater than we expect. Or maybe not.

The Xiaomi Mi 6 Wont Be That Faster

Believe it or not, the information suggests that the Xiaomi Mi 6 will sport an underclocked Snapdragon 835 processor, which means that even when it will use the greatest chipset ever made, this, in particular, will be less powerful than those that some of its rivals flagships are going to use.

The reason for this controversial move is that the Chinese company dont want to take a longer time to equip its flagship with the original Snapdragon 835 processor, which seem as a risky move which result might be unpredictable, considering that even when it will mean great news for the customers in the short term, in the long run it will definitely be quite harmful. Of course, this is because its main competitors will be using the original chipset, and will be greater than the Xiaomi Mi 6. Nevertheless, the only detail that would end up determining this situation is that this flagship wont compete in the global market, which means that only a few mobile devices in China will have the original Snapdragon 835 processor in long term.

As you might already know, this whole picture comes because of Samsungs move of hoard the first batch of Snapdragon 835 processors for its flagship Galaxy S8, which has created a true mayhem in which other manufacturers are forced to wait or supply to pick before they can finally release its mobile devices based on the SD 835.

Xiaomi Already Have Experience In This Kind Of Move

In short, considering that the South Korean giant is the one that is manufacturing the processor for Qualcomm, everyone that wants to use the Snapdragon 835 processor are totally depending on Samsung, which makes a lot of people to believe that this situation is something that this company made on purpose in order to keep its flagship as the first to use this groundbreaking chip.

Naturally, if theres any flagship that doesn't want to wait longer and see the light in a shorter time, its forced to use a previous processor or look for another alternative. Of course, this is exactly what happened with the LG G6, which is going to use the Snapdragon 821 processor, and this is whats happening with the Xiaomi Mi 6 and its underclocked 835 processor.

Although this is not exactly a dream situation for Xiaomi and its Mi 6, the truth is that this company already have some experience in avoiding any kind of delay on its flagship and release it with a weaker processor, since this is exactly what happened with the MI 5, which was launched wearing a clocked down Snapdragon 820 chipset at 1.8GHz.
TAI ANKA UAV. (Photo : Turkish Air Force)

Unconfirmed reports claim Turkey's new TAI ANKA-S Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) will be transformed into a UCAV (unmanned combat aerial vehicle) after the first deliveries of this drone are made to the Turkish Air Force this year.



ANKA-S is the serial production variant of the ANKA UAV and became operational with the air force in February 2016. The UAV is being made by Tusas Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI).



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This UAV is a day-and-night intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) weapon equipped with a high-definition (HD) electro-optical/infrared (EO/IR) sensor turret that includes laser designator and laser range finding capabilities



It's given birth to other variants, one of which is ANKA+A, a High Altitude Long Endurance UCAV. First broached in 2012, ANKA+A was to have carried the Roketsan Cirit laser-guided, air-to-surface anti-armor rocket system. Nothing has been heard of this variant since then, however.



The Turkish Undersecretariat for Defense Industry (SSM) ordered 10 ANKA-S UAVs and 12 ground control stations. The UAVs will be delivered in three batches with the first by March 2017. The air force will receive six ANKA-S UAVs this year.



ANKA-S began flight tests in the last quarter of 2016. The drone is currently undergoing a tough qualification process.



It's unclear if the UCAV version of ANKA-S will be the discontinued ANKA+A or a new variant altogether.



ANKA-S can lift a payload of 200 kilograms to a maximum altitude of 30,000 feet and remain on station for 24 hours. The satcom-compatible ANKA-S features a high-definition day and night vision camera.



The Turkish Air Force considers ANKA-S a strategic asset, especially in the Turkish military's fight against Kurdish militants deployed largely in southeast Turkey and in neighboring Iraq and Syria.



It said it urgently needed UCAVs to increase its intelligence capabilities in its asymmetrical warfare against Kurdish militants. What it needs are both medium-altitude, long-endurance or high-altitude, long-endurance models.


A delegation of Russian aviation safety experts arrived in Egypt on Friday to inspect Cairo International Airport, a source at the airport told Russia state agency TASS on Thursday.

"A delegation of ten high-ranking Russian experts has arrived in Cairo from Moscow," TASS reprted the source as saying.

"They are scheduled to stay for three days but perhaps they will fulfill their mission in just one day. This matter is under consideration now, the final decision will be made on Friday, the source added.

On Monday, Al-Ahram Arabic news website reported that a delegation of Russian security experts were bound to arrive Egypt for what is expected to be the final security check of Egyptian airports before the resumption of Russian flights to Egypt.

The Russian team will inspect new biometric equipment recently installed in Egyptian airports.

Biometric equipment, which has been asked for by Russian experts, has already been installed at staff gates at Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada airports.

The equipment has also been installed at Cairo International Airports Terminal 2.

The delegation will review security measures at Cairo airport as well as the international airports in the two resort cities, all of which recently saw security upgrades.

The Russian experts will also review CCTV camera footage of recordings from the past 30 days to assess the security procedures put in place, as well as luggage inspection and handling

Sources in the civil aviation ministry say the resumption of Russian flights to Egypt should start at Cairo International Airport through the airlines EgyptAir and Russias Aeroflot, with flights to Hurghada and Sharm El-Sheikh to follow.

The visit by the Russian delegation will be the second in less than one month, as a team of Russian experts conducted a security inspection of the Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada airports in January.

Egypt has been implementing tighter security measures at its airports since a Russian passenger flight crashed shortly after taking off from Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport in October 2015, killing all on board.

Russia suspended passenger flights to Egypt shortly after the crash, and since then it has dispatched its experts for several inspections of Egyptian airport security measures in preparation for the resumption of flights.

A number of European countries that also suspended flights to Sharm El-Sheikh following the 2015 crash have recently reinstated direct flights to the South Sinai tourist hotspot.

Egyptian tourism, a pillar of the country's economy and a key source of hard currency, has taken a blow since the passenger plane crash. Sharm El-Sheikh's economy is believed to have suffered the most.

Egypts revenues from tourism dropped from $6.1 billion in 2015 to $3.4 billion in 2016, according to statements by the Central Bank of Egypts governor Tarek Amer in January.

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On April 1, the U.S. will use a lottery to distribute the annual allotment of H-1B visas. If history is a guide, a major portion of those visas will go to offshore outsourcing firms that move IT work overseas. Meanwhile, non-outsourcing firms -- especially those firms that may be hiring only one or two visa workers -- stand a good chance of losing the lottery.

President Donald Trump can change the system to favor smaller users of the visa, say critics of the program, but only if he acts quickly.

Trump has been critical of the visa program, and his administration is considering an H-1B visa distribution system that favors the "best and brightest." Although Trump's administration hasn't detailed how this might work, it would favor a random visa lottery distribution that gives priority to firms paying high wages, workers with advanced degrees and certain skills.

Although it's not yet clear what the new administration is planning, Trump has promised fast action. In November he said action on work visas would be a "day one" action by his administration.

The Trump administration "committed themselves to an H-1B reform plan," said Russ Harrison, director of government relations at the IEEE-USA. "I don't know if Mr. Trump is backing away from his commitment, but he made a promise to American workers to fix the H-1B system on his first day in office."

Harrison said his group didn't take the day one promise literally, but if Trump doesn't act soon he will miss the opportunity to change the lottery by April 1. That means that a major share of the annual visas will go to firms that offshore IT work.

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's H-1B and IT Outsourcing Facebook group. ]

"If the lottery goes off as it always does, he'll be letting down the American worker," said Harrison.

The random nature of the lottery encourages large offshore outsourcing firms to file as many petitions as possible. There are two H-1B caps. The U.S. sets 20,000 H-1B visas aside for advanced-degree graduates of U.S. schools, and the remaining 65,000 are available under what's called the base cap.

In 2013, a Computerworld analysis of H-1B data showed that offshore outsourcing firms received more than 50% of the visas allocated under the 65,000 base H-1B cap. That is almost certain to repeat in the 2018 visa allocation, which is decided in the first week of April.

This random lottery allocation system has created a lot of frustration, especially among small businesses seeking limited numbers of workers on a visa. For instance, Tenrec, a web development firm, filed an H-1B petition for lead developer who is a citizen of the Ukraine. The company didn't win and is part of a lawsuit seeking a change in how the visa distribution is run.

To change the system, the Trump administration can direct its agencies to develop new H-1B lottery regulations.

Creating a new regulation can be a lengthy process, but Bruce Morrison, a lawyer and former Democratic congressman from Connecticut who represents the IEEE-USA, believes that the administration can issue an interim rule. This would be an expedited process that can be accomplished in 30 days, with a comment period after.

The Trump administration may not be able to do everything its wants to with the H-1B visa program through administrative action. But Morrison believes that existing law does give the administration some latitude.

For instance, the law already sets a classification system for types of visa users. There are dependent firms (which have more than 15% of their workforce on a visa) and non-dependent firms, which have less than that percentage.

Morrison said that preferring non-dependent firms to dependent firms in a visa distribution "is something the [rule-writing] agency clearly could do."

Giving non-dependent firms priority would put the offshore outsourcing firms -- which are all H-1B-dependent firms -- at a disadvantage in the visa distribution.

There are differences of opinion about the extent of latitude that Trump has with changing the lottery. It is believed that anything the Trump administration does with the lottery will be subject to an immediate court challenge.

William Stock, an immigration attorney and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, believes that any change of the lottery will require statutory authorization, meaning legislation by Congress. If the Trump administration attempts to change the allocation method to something other than a lottery, he believes it will be thrown out of court.

But to be clear, it's not just the small firms that stand to gain from a system that favors non-dependent visa users. Most of the large IT suppliers, such as Microsoft and Google, hire large numbers of visa workers but are still considered non-dependent.

This opens up potentially another problem, say some critics who believe the biggest threat facing IT workers from the H-1B visa program is age discrimination. If large IT firms have more access to H-1B visas they may prefer hiring the younger workers, who are also somewhat dependent on their employers if they wish to remain in the U.S.

[ To comment on this story, visit Computerworld's Facebook page. ]
Cairo and Riyadh have enjoyed a deep relationship throughout history, Egyptian Culture Minister Helmy El-Namnam said on Thursday in a speech to Saudi Arabias Al-Janadriyah 31 Festival.

In statements reported by MENA agency, El-Namnam said the despite some whirlwinds that occur every once and then, relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia are deep-rooted in history and bonded throughout geographical, religious, and human ties that are inextricable and could never be shaken by anyone.

Egypt is the guest of honour at the festival, which celebrates Saudi heritage and culture.

We are in front of a major festival that is rooted and develops every year for the better, where Saudi Arabia celebrates the cultural and creative aspects of its country and Gulf countries. We are delighted as the Egyptian culture ministry to receive an invitation from King Salman to be the guest of honour at this years round as it reflects the depth of relations between the two countries, El-Namnam said.

The Egyptian culture minister added that the archaeological excavations and historical studies conducted by researchers from around the world affirm that the connection has existed between Egypt and the Arab Peninsula throughout history.

When Saudi Arabia was founded, the relations were connected through a brotherly bond between the kingdom and Egypt, especially during the reign of founder King Abdel Aziz and Egypts King Fouad I. The relationship continues between the two countries today, to form together a balancing force in our disturbed Arab world. People in our region rely on this relationship to bring them to the safe haven of the presence of leaders President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and King Salman, El-Namnam said.

The relationship between Egypt and Saudi, a major ally and source of financial support, has seen rocky periods in the last year.

A bilateral maritime borders agreement that placed two Red Sea islands under the sovereignty of Saudi Arabia caused controversy in Egypt when it was announced last April. The deal has stalled in the face of court challenges, and last month the High Administrative Court affirmed Egyptian sovereignty over the two islands, rejecting a government appeal.

The Egyptian parliament will still have the final say on the controversial agreement, according to parliament speaker Ali Abdel-Aal.

In November, Saudi national oil company Aramco informed Egypt that it has suspended its oil shipments until further notice for no reason, according to Egyptian Petroleum Minister Tarek El-Molla.

Saudi Arabia has supported Cairo with billions of dollars in loans, grants, oil products and cash deposits since the toppling of president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.

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Craft beer has enjoyed a surge in popularity in Japan in recent years with the tipple now more available nationwide than ever before. Young compared to that of countries like the US and its beer-obsessed European cousins, the Japanese craft beer scene was born in the mid-1990s, when stringent brewing laws that allowed only large-scale brewing were relaxed; opening the door for smaller breweries to start brewing their own brands of beer. This series combines beer and travel, exploring the craft beer scenes in the cities and towns that have become major players in the nationwide movement.

This first report explores the craft beer scene in Osaka, the economic powerhouse of Kansai and an old merchant city with a big appetite. Historically dubbed Kuidaoremachi, literally "eat until you drop town", this city immediately appealed to my taste buds and seemed as appropriate a place as any to begin my craft beer adventure.

Arriving in the early evening and with a growling stomach, I was keen to make my first stop somewhere with hearty food to compliment a cool tipple. Luckily, Kamikaze in Osaka's Kitahorie district is renowned for its wide selection of beers from all over Japan and its delicious fare. For the first of many beers, I ordered an IPA by Minoh, Osaka's premier local craft brewery. For grub I got a pasta concoction with tomatoes and tripe. The beer and the dish were both delectable and reasonably priced, leaving me feeling full, slightly merry, and excited about what lay ahead.

Another bar that blends beer and food particularly well is Craft Beer Spot Hathor in Kyobashi. A ten-minute jaunt from Kyobashi Station will land you at this cozy nook, wherein one can choose from any of 16 taps serving Japanese and international craft beer, and from a menu serving some great bar food. Following high recommendations, I opted to accompany my local beer with Hathor's signature dish, a whopping Chicago-style deep dish pizza. It was as filling as it was mouthwatering and left me with little doubt that in this town, food and beer are taken very seriously.

Good vibes and afternoon drinking

I arose on my first full day in Osaka and immediately made my way to the quaint town of Minoh at the foot of northern Osaka's undulating mountains. Picturesque streets and beautiful nature aside, this town is revered as the home of Minoh Beer, Osaka's best-known craft beer brewery. I arrived at Minoh Beer Warehouse, Minoh's own bar and cafe just a stone's throw from the brewery, for a fresh pint and a chat with Oshita Kaori and Yahata Mayuko, the sisters legendary in the Japanese craft beer world who run the brewery.

"We're celebrating our twentieth anniversary this year, and over the years we've seen a lot of change in Osaka's craft beer scene", Kaori-san tells me as I glance over at the wall to my right, on which are hung numerous awards taken at various international beer competitions. "In the last five years especially, lots of craft beer bars, bottle shops and brewpubs that produce their own beer have been popping up all over. The craft beer scene in Osaka is thriving, and it's great because everyone really supports each other; it's really great to be a part of it."

Mayuko-san continued, revealing a little about Minoh Beer. "Our aim is to continue to make beer to the highest standard possible for our customers. One of the things that makes our beer special is the local water that we use for brewing. The nature in general is pristine up here. We have great water, great air and great fruit, not to mention monkeys that we use in our logo! We also brew a beer using the famous local yuzu." Needless to say, I tried the yuzu brew and am pleased to report that it was delectable; soft with subtle citrusy notes and an ideal partnership with the food served here.

The chat in Minoh left me eager to visit one of the brewpubs that have sprung up around Osaka in recent times. After some asking around, I was directed to Beer Belly in Tosabori in the center of the city. Beer Belly is something of an institution of the Osaka craft beer scene, being one of the pioneering craft beer bars in the city.

Since the summer of 2016, Beer Belly has been selling its own beer brewed on the premises. The bar's owner, Hachio-san, told me, "Brewing our own beer is difficult. It takes a lot of time, but it is worth it when we end up with great beer for our customers to drink". And great beer it was, added to a warm atmosphere that makes this bar well worth a visit if in town.

It was time to visit another institution of the Osaka craft beer world, Craft Beer Base. Operated by Tani Ai, an ex-beer taster who studied beer at the Japan Craft Beer Association, this place is a true corner stone of the city's craft beer scene. The establishment serves as a bar and a bottle shop, with an extensive selection that Ai-san ships in from Japan and all over the world. Of course, there's the prized local stuff, too. I was lucky enough to be able to have a chat with Ai-san on my visit, and she told me her about craft beer and the scene in Osaka.

"I think that it is important for people to realize just how much wonderful beer is out there. That has been my mission, to help people discover a beer that they love and that suits them, rather than everyone just drinking the same beers because they are the most available. The craft beer scene in Osaka is great. There is a real sense of community among everyone involved and we all support each other. I hope that craft beer's popularity will continue to increase, and that more and more places will start to serve it for their customers".

Tani Ai is certainly taking steps to ensure the craft beer world becomes more accessible to those not yet initiated, with Craft Beer Base having set up shop in Hanshin, one of Osaka's premier department stores. Craft Beer Base Seed is a bottle shop that serves a wide selection of Japanese and international craft beers. More than merely a convenient place to pick up a bottle of beer not found at the convenience store though, this shop highlights the extent to which craft beer has grown in this city; to the point where it is now being seen and bought by people from all walks of life.

Another of Osaka's highly-recommended bars that brews its own beer is Marca; an ultra-stylish tavern nestled amongst the fashion boutiques and cafes of Kitahorie. I sat down on one of the stools and ordered a glass of their brew, which, like the bar itself, turned out to be clean, cool and full of flavor. Looking towards the back of the room, I could see the brewing apparatus which, metallic and shiny, could pass as part of the sleek decor.

The final place on my Osaka craft beer adventure, and one not to be missed when in these parts, was TNT in Taisho, in the west of the city. Foreign-owned, this bar and bottle shop fuses delicious Japanese and international craft beer with rock music and great bar food.
Air strikes killed at least 12 Islamist rebel fighters in Idlib province in northwestern Syria on Friday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Unidentified warplanes struck positions for the hardline jihadist Jund al-Aqsa group southeast of Idlib city, near the village of Sarmin, the Observatory, a British-based war monitoring group, said.

It was unclear if the fighters killed were from Jund al-Aqsa or other Islamist rebel groups, it said.

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Links to our top local news stories of the day, Monday through Saturday.
Turkish authorities have released a veteran Kurdish politician and mayor in the southeastern province of Mardin held for more than two months as part of a terrorism investigation, sources in his party said on Friday.

Ahmet Turk, 74, was detained on Nov. 21 in a crackdown which saw dozens of elected mayors removed from municipalities in the largely Kurdish southeast over suspected militant links and replaced with state-appointed administrators.

Turk, who was first elected in 1973 to represent Mardin in the national parliament and served as a lawmaker until 2015, is one of the best-known figures in the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and his detention drew widespread criticism.

Sources in his Democratic Regions' Party (DBP) said he had been released because of deteriorating health. There was no immediate comment from the Turkish authorities.

Turkey has been fighting an insurgency by the Kurdish PKK militant group in the southeast for more than three decades.

President Tayyip Erdogan accuses members of the DBP and the larger pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) of links to the PKK, deemed a terrorist organization by the European Union and United States.

The arrest last November of the co-leaders of the HDP, parliament's second-biggest opposition party, along with thousands of its members drew international condemnation.

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A renewed assault on Islamic State (IS) militants in the Iraqi city of Mosul could force 250,000 civilians to flee, if they can find a way out, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.

Such an exodus would be on top of roughly 162,000 people already displaced by Iraqi government efforts to retake the city since October. Such numbers, although high, remain well below UNHCR's initial contingency plans, which anticipated a million people or more fleeing from the city.

"As many as 250,000 Iraqis could be displaced from their homes with the anticipated escalation of conflict in densely-populated western Mosul," UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said.

An expected intensification of fighting around Hawija, 130 km southeast of Mosul, could displace another 114,000, adding to the 82,000 who have fled since August, risking ambushes and death.

In Iraq's biggest military operation since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, government forces have seized most of east Mosul. But they have yet to cross the Tigris river, leaving the western half in the hands of the Islamist militants , who declared a caliphate there two-and-a-half years ago.

U.N. Special Representative for Iraq Jan Kubis told the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that retaking western Mosul would be a massive challenge, with complex urban operations.

"There is no question that civilians will be at extreme risk when the fighting starts in the western sections of Mosul," he said.

"Humanitarian partners are bracing for a variety of possible scenarios in the western sections, including a possible mass exodus, prolonged siege-like conditions, or a sequenced and managed evacuation by the Iraqi Security Forces.

He praised Iraqi forces, including the Popular Mobilisation Forces, for prioritizing the protection of civilians after learning from mistakes in previous battles to wrest control of cities from IS.

"I however express my concern over disturbing reports of looting and destruction of civilian property, and looting of humanitarian aid by armed groups operating in support of the Iraqi Security Forces, in particular by some local resistance groups."

Hundreds of civilians allegedly disappeared in a previous battle, for the city of Fallujah, and the Iraqi authorities have still not published heir findings into what happened there, he said.

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During college I spent a semester in Paris. It was my first time out of the United States, and I figured out after about five minutes in France that I was totally out of my element. Three years of high-school French had ill-prepared me for even the simplest tasks. I ordered food by pointing, like an overgrown toddler. The exchange rate was a mathematical nightmare. I couldnt find public toilets, spent most of my time on the subway system feeling lost and cried a lot at night, achingly lonely for the comforts of home. I felt like a child in an adult world, like Id lost 50 IQ points somewhere over the ocean.

While most of my experiences with French people were positive, one experience stands out as a painful memory. On the bus with friends, we laughed and talked in English, likely about boys or bands or what we might have for lunch. Typical American 20-year-olds. As the bus neared our stop I overheard one man say to his seatmate, Tous les Americains sont Translated: All Americans are loud, obnoxious, stupid, annoying. His litany went on and on. He had no idea we could understand him. My face burned with shame as I stepped off the bus.

Ive never forgotten that mans harsh stereotyping and Ive never forgotten how insignificant and lost I felt for four months as I struggled to acculturate in a city so different from home. Ive never done anything harder in my life than living abroad.

My experience in Paris lit in my heart a deep empathy for immigrants and visitors to the United States. I have volunteered as a reading tutor for refugees from around the world, including most of the countries on the current ban list (Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya). I can attest to the kindness, humility and incredible work ethic of each and every person I ever tutored. They want to be here, not to light bombs, but to contribute their gifts and talents to their communities.

For just a moment though, Ill put aside arguments to convince skeptics of the value of these fellow humans. What I fear most is what our policies of walls and bans and arrests will do to us. If we are the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, what is free or brave about cutting ourselves off from the rest of the world in fear? How does succumbing to terror fight terrorism?

Throughout history, fear has led to the building of walls both literal and figurative. However, the Berlin Wall no longer exists. The Great Wall of China can be seen from outer space but aside from attracting tourists serves no purpose. Notice how no one ever remembers the ones who built those walls, but we do remember those who tore them down.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy proclaimed Ich bin ein Berliner; I am a Berliner. In 1987, Ronald Reagan demanded, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. True security isnt built with stone, but with right action and a brave heart.

Building walls, barring immigrants, refusing refugees who have been carefully vetted: these acts of coldness diminish us. Not just our reputation in the world, but our very spirits. We lower ourselves in our own estimation when we turn our faces away from those who most need our compassion.

I think at the end of our lives, we all want to look back and feel we lived courageously, honorably. I see no courage nor honor in sealing ourselves off from the world out of fear and self-interest. I would rather risk death by terrorists than live a dim half-life locked behind walls.
Republican President Trump has nominated an intellectual jurist and a good man to succeed the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Senate Democrats would do well to drop their opposition. Theyre within their rights. But they, and the country, could do a lot worse than Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

Some Senate Democrats note that their Republican counterparts would not even consider Judge Merrick Garland to replace Scalia, who died last February. Their lack of consideration was wrong. But, as Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said this week, two wrongs dont make a right.

We need to move forward. And Gorsuch would likely make a fine justice. He is indeed a conservative and an originalist on constitutional interpretation in the tradition of Scalia. But he is also, by most accounts, a strong and fair thinker, eminently qualified, probably more fair than the rest on Trumps list.

Gorsuch was overwhelmingly approved by the Senate for his current seat on the court of appeals, including by then-Sen. Obama. Gorsuch was educated at Columbia University, Harvard Law School and Oxford University. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, worked for the Justice Department for a year and spent 10 years in private practice.

As Robert P. George, a Princeton professor and friend of Gorsuch, noted in a Washington Post column that we ran Thursday:

Gorsuchs opinions are marked by analytical depth and precision and remarkably lucid writing. In selecting Gorsuch, President Trump has without question fulfilled his pledge to appoint a justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia  a conservative intellectual leader.. But one respect in which Gorsuch is unlike Scalia is that he is not fiery or pugnacious 

Of course, most people are interested above all in how he is likely to vote on hot-button issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, campaign finance reform and religious freedom. In the confirmation hearings, he will no doubt do what another friend of mine, Justice Elena Kagan, did and basically refuse to discuss these issues on the grounds that they are likely to come before him. I expect what just about everyone else expects: Gorsuch, who greatly admired Scalia, thinks about the constitutional issues in these areas pretty much the same way Scalia did  But he is not dogmatic 

If Democrats are looking for a point of vulnerability in either Gorsuchs integrity or impartiality, they wont find it. He is basically a Boy Scout. Hes  a man of probity who holds himself to the highest ethical standards and he will bring religious diversity to a Court that is entirely Catholic and Jewish: Hes an Episcopalian.

This judge, if confirmed for our lands highest court, might just pleasantly surprise both Democrats and Republicans. We urge Senate Democrats to fairly hear him out.
Today

Overcast with rain showers at times. High 72F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.

Tonight

Rain. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%. Rainfall around a half an inch.

Tomorrow

A steady rain in the morning. Showers continuing in the afternoon. High 72F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
The Competition is the main section of the Berlinale film festival, in which the selected features compete for the Golden and Silver Bear awards.

This year, the international jury deciding which of the 18 nominees will receive the awards consists of Dutch director and screenwriter Paul Verhoeven who is serving as jury president; Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, American actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, German actress Julia Jentsch, Mexican actor and director Diego Luna, Chinese director and screenwriter Wang Quanan, and Tunisian producer Dora Bouchoucha Fourati.



Dora Bouchoucha Fourati is an eminent figure in the Arab and international film world. After studying English literature, she went on to work as a teacher and translator of screenplays.

Fourati founded her own production company, Nomadis Images, in 1995. She has since produced and co-produced a large number of prominent award-winning films such as Raja Amaris Satin Rouge in 2002, Buried Secrets in 2009, and Foreign Body, which is taking part in this years Berlinale; Djamila Sahraouis Barakat! that was screened at the festival last year; Mohamed Ben Attias full lenghth debut Heidi, which won the Best First Feature Award and Silver Bear for Best Actor last year; as well as all of the directors own films.



Throughout her career, Fourati has contributed greatly to the Arab and African film industries. She launched the Carthage Film Festival Projects Workshop initiative in 1992, to help Arabs and Africans develop their scripts. The follow-up project, Takmil, which aims to support post-production, was launched in 2014. She also founded the screenwriting workshop SUD ECRITURE for Arab and African scripts in 1997, an initiative that launched many award-winning films.

Fourati was festival director of the Carthage Film Festival in 2008, 2010 and 2014. She also presided over both the Fonds Sud Cinema of the CNC in 2010, and the follow-up institution, Aide aux Cinemas du Monde, in 2014.

For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at@AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture.



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The Berkeley County Sheriff's Office (BCSO) is conducting an investigation of a reported Nov. 2 shooting in Summerville that has left one person injured, according to local authorities. Read moreOne injured in Summerville shooting
Eight university students were killed and 43 were injured Friday in a bus accident on the Nuweiba international road in Egypt's South Sinai governorate, Ahram Arabic website reported.

SIx of the killed students were identified, while two bodies remain unidentified.

The bus was carrying pharmacy students from Alexandria University, heading to spend their mid-year vacation in a resort in Nuweiba, a coastal city in South Sinai.

Injured students were transferred to the central hospital of Nuweiba and Dahab hospital. Twenty-three of them are in severe condition, while the other 20 sustained minor injuries.

Initial inspection of the accident showed that the bus driver was driving at a high speed, on a winding road surrounded by mountains and cliffs in the area of Saeda, when he lost control and the bus careened off the road down a hillside.

The identities of all injured and killed students are currently being checked at both hospitals.

The general persecution was notified to investigate the accident.

Deadly road accidents take place on a near-daily basis in Egypt, which is notorious for poor road-safety conditions, badly maintained infrastructure and loosely enforced traffic regulations.

According to a study published by the state's official statistics body CAPMAS in August 2016, Egypt saw 25,500 road fatalities in the previous year, while the total number of car accidents was 14,500.

According to a global status report on road safety in 2015 published by the World Health Organisation, Egypt ranked 16th for road fatalities among Arab countries and 109th globally out of 180 countries.

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By William D. Hartung | ( Tomdispatch.com ) |  

At over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds. If President Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers. He and his team are now promising that spending on defense and homeland security will increase dramatically in the years to come, even as domestic programs are slashed and entire civilian agencies shuttered.

The new administration is reportedly considering a plan  modeled on proposals from the military-industrial-complex-backed Heritage Foundation  that would cut a staggering $10.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. The Departments of Energy, Commerce, Transportation, and State might see their budgets slashed to the bone; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized; and (though the money involved would amount to chicken feed) the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities would be eliminated altogether. In the meantime, the ranks of the Army and Marines would be expanded, a huge naval buildup would be launched, and a new Star Wars-style missile defense system would be developed  all at a combined cost of up to $1 trillion beyond the already munificent current Pentagon plans for that same decade.

The specifics wont be known until Trumps first budget becomes public in perhaps April or May, but as we wait for it, Republican Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain has just taken the unusual step of releasing his own spending blueprint for the military. It suggests that a key senator and the president and his team are on the same page when it comes to military funding. At an extra $430 billion over the next five years, the numbers in McCains plan are similar to the potential Trump buildup.

One thing is already clear: this drastic tilt toward yet more Pentagon spending and away from investment in diplomacy abroad and civilian needs at home will only further militarize American society, accelerate inequality, and distort the countrys already highly questionable foreign policy. After all, if your military is the only well-funded, well-stocked arm of the government, its obvious whom youre going to turn to in any crisis.

This process was already visibly underway even before Donald Trump took the oath of office. His gut decision to entrust national security policymaking only to military figures was particularly troubling. From National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Secretary of Defense James Mattis to head of the Department of Homeland Security John Kelly, retired generals and other ex-military types now abound in his administration. Defense analyst and former White House budget official Gordon Adams summed up the risks of this approach recently in this way:

Putting military officers in charge of the entire architecture of national security reinforces the trend toward militarizing policy and risks cementing in place the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of. To borrow the psychologist Abraham H. Maslows words, if all the men around President Trump are hammers, the temptation will be to treat everything as if it were a nail.

How the Military Came to Dominate Foreign Policy

President Trump wont, of course, be starting from scratch in his urge to further elevate the military in foreign and domestic affairs. Hes building on a process thats already well under way. In the Obama years, for instance, there were a record number of drone strikes, especially outside official U.S. war zones  10 times the number launched by the Bush administration. Similarly, the Obama administration paved the way for various Trumpian urges by waging wars on multiple fronts and instituting a historic crackdown on whistleblowers in the military and the intelligence communities. It also approved record levels of U.S. arms sales abroad, $278 billion worth of them, or more than double those of the Bush years. (In Trumpian terms: jobs!)

In addition, as part of his pledge to avoid large, boots-on-the-ground conflicts like the Bush administrations 2003 invasion of Iraq, President Obama oversaw a sharp increase in the size of the U.S. Special Operations forces, sending them abroad to arm, train, and fight alongside militaries in 138 countries in 2016. Think of this approach  having a lighter footprint while expanding the number of conflicts the United States is involved in  as a case of what Ive called politically sustainable warfare. It seems cheaper, is far less visible, and involves fewer U.S. casualties than full-scale invasions and occupations.

In these years, the Pentagon has also continued to encroach on turf previously occupied by the State Department and the Agency for International Development, including funding its own arms and training programs and engaging in economic development projects. Under the euphemistic term building partner capacity, the Pentagon now has the authority to arm and train foreign military forces through no less than 70 separate programs.

To be fair, the drift toward military dominance of foreign policy began well before Barack Obama took office. In her 2003 book The Mission, Dana Priest of the Washington Post described the increasing role of regional combatant commanders in shaping policymaking in Washington. They could leverage their greater resources and close connections to foreign leaders to outstrip U.S. ambassadors in power and influence. And their growing role was just a symptom of a larger problem that Priest described at the time and that has only become more obvious in the years since: the urge of American leaders to turn to the military for solutions to problems that are often, at their root, political and economic. As retired General Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command, noted for instance, There is no military solution to terrorism. Thats a conclusion shared by other American military leaders, but one that has had little effect on U.S. efforts to use force as the primary tool for combatting terrorism in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, a process that has only led to more failed and failing states and the further spread of terror groups.

Donald Trump may indeed gut the diplomatic corps, but dont forget that State Department funding was long ago overwhelmed by the largesse available to what the new president regularly refers to as our depleted military. The Pentagons budget is today more than 12 times as large as the State Departments, a disparity sure to grow in the years to come. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted some years ago, there are more military personnel stationed on one aircraft carrier task force than trained diplomats in the U.S. Foreign Service. And keep in mind that the United States currently has 10 active aircraft carriers, which themselves will be just a small part of the Trump administrations proposed 350-ship Navy.

Even the intelligence community is likely to be further militarized in the Trump years. While he was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), National Security Advisor Michael Flynn tried to increase its influence at the expense of the CIA. Expect him to attempt to seize control of the nations intelligence apparatus and put it in service to his own distorted view of the world. From failing to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union to allowing itself to be used to put forward misleading information about Saddam Husseins alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction, the U.S. Intelligence Community has hardly covered itself in glory. Still, it does contain a cadre of professional analysts who can provide sitting presidents with actual information contradicting prevailing prejudices. This was even true in the case of Iraq, where a number of analysts dissented from the claim that Iraq had nuclear weapons, while others only acquiesced after being browbeaten by Vice President Dick Cheney and the band of neoconservatives in his office.

In the years to come, expect the Cheney model of intelligence manufacturing to be replicated, especially by Flynn, whose extreme views include a belief that Islam is not a real religion, that Iran is the linchpin of a global anti-American coalition of enemies extending from Cuba and Venezuela to North Korea, China, and Russia, and that Islamic Sharia law is actually being imposed in parts of our country. Flynns views on Islam would have been beyond the pale for a top adviser in any prior administration. Now, however, hes positioned to regularly press his views on Donald Trump, who doesnt read and seems inclined to believe the last person he talks to.

A Military-First Administration

To imagine how Flynn might wield his new power, consider his attempt, while still at the DIA, to get subordinates to prove that Iran was the hidden hand behind the 2012 attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stephens. As the New York Times reported, Like many other investigations into Benghazi, theirs found no evidence of any links, and the generals stubborn insistence reminded some officials at the agency of how the Bush administration had once relentlessly sought to connect Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Trump and his men now seem poised to purge the CIA and other intelligence agencies of analysts who might have opinions contrary to their own fantasy view of the world. Expect Flynn, in particular, to try to shape the intelligence communitys products towards his ends while serving as interpreter of last resort for the president. Getting Trump to swallow intelligence assessments skewed toward his particular set of prejudices and inclinations should be an easy feat, given that he cant even acknowledge the size of the crowd at his own inauguration or let go of the demonstrably false claim that millions of undocumented immigrants voted illegally in the 2016 election.

The only likely obstacle to Flynns ambitions to impose his twisted view of the world on Trump is the other big league Islamophobe in the administration, White House counselor Steve Bannon. As a recent New York Times account noted, Bannon has already attempted to outmaneuver Flynn in the battle for access to the president on foreign policy issues and his elevation to the National Security Council at the expense of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence is just the latest indication of how influential hes likely to be in shaping Trumps foreign policy agenda. This is hardly good news, as on certain issues he may be even more extreme than Flynn, if thats possible.

Trumps predictably militarized approach to policymaking could have serious impacts on the domestic front as well. On his fifth day in office, for example, he threatened by tweet to send in the Feds to Chicago if the city government didnt take steps to end the carnage there. It was unclear whether he meant federal law enforcement personnel or federal troops, a vagueness troubling in its own right. And dont forget that his pledge to build a wall ensures a significant jump in funding for the further militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border, already being patrolled by unarmed drones and growing numbers of armed federal agents. After all, it took him just days after his inauguration to announce a plan to add 5,000 personnel to the Border Patrol and 10,000 agents to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

As in all matters Trumpian, some will say we shouldnt take him at his word, or that we should wait for his first budget proposal and other such documents to see what hes really going to do. But the evidence is already abundant that the Trump administration is on a path toward undermining our democracy by pouring taxpayer dollars galore into the U.S. military. This will happen despite the fact that, 15 years after 9/11, that military has won nothing and settled no conflicts to Washingtons advantage, even as terror groups have spread across the Greater Middle East and Africa. Its a decade-and-a-half-long record that should lead to almost any other set of plans than the ones the Trump administration clearly has in mind. But dont tell them. They could care less.

Frightening as it may be, its important to recognize that Trumps impulse to further militarize American society is by no means a done deal. Democrats in the Senate are in a position to stop him by voting as a bloc against any proposal to dramatically ratchet up spending on the Pentagon, which would deprive Republicans of the 60 votes they need to move forward on a spending proposal. In addition, the new presidents plans to pump up the Pentagon, dramatically slash taxes, invest in expensive new programs like the border wall, and create a trillion dollar infrastructure plan could set the stage for massive deficits that will undoubtedly unnerve constituencies ranging from fiscal conservatives to important sectors of the business community.

And keep in mind that significant numbers of military and intelligence professionals truly believe in civilian control of the military and dont want to take on tasks unrelated to traditional military missions. In addition, Trump has already pledged to target overpriced weapons systems like the F-35 and force the Pentagon to get its books in order so it can at last pass an audit. Whether or not he follows through on these promises, he will have put them on the public agenda, reinforcing one reality: the way so much of the money currently going to the Pentagon has more to do with lining the pockets of contractors than with defending the United States and its allies.

The military-first direction in which Trump is going to take his administration will predictably lead to yet more militarized policies in the world. Its that hammer and nail again. He should take a lesson from history by listening to the speeches of the former Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, a military man who also rose to the pinnacle of power in Washington. As president, Eisenhower not only spoke out against the dangers of the military-industrial complex but also stressed that Americas power is ultimately rooted in the strength of its economy and the health of its citizens, not in seeking magical military solutions or in overspending on the Pentagon. Unfortunately, Donald Trump is no Dwight D. Eisenhower.

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He is the author of Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Feffers dystopian novel Splinterlands, as well as Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 William D. Hartung

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Special Correspondent | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) |  

In eastern Mosul, Iraqi pro-government forces are organizing themselves to begin to fight against the so-called Islamic State [group] [IS]. In western Mosul, civilians do their best to survive a siege and extremists step up their propaganda.

On the western side of the city of Mosul, the extremist organization IS is readying itself for battle. Over several months of fighting, the IS group has lost most of the eastern side of the northern city to Iraqi pro-government forces. Although many of the IS fighters have been killed or have fled the city, the leaders who remain continue to try and convince the local populace of their invincibility. News has arrived that the north-eastern side of the city, often referred to by locals as the Left Bank, has been cleared of the IS group but it seems to many still in the western side, that the extremist organisation doesnt want to accept that reality.

For example, an IS member recently asked a member of staff at Mosuls General Hospital why there were not as many doctors and nurses anymore. Incredulous at the question, the staff member told the fighter that many doctors and nurses had lived on the other side of the city and they could no longer cross the Tigris river to come to work.

We have started to burn the furniture for cooking. Weve already gone through the chairs, closets and beds.

Every week the IS group sends written instructions to their clerics to tell them what the subject of the weekly sermon should be, as well as any messages the extremists want relayed by the church. This weeks instructions indicated that the sermon should be particularly enthusiastic about the fighting to come.

So last Friday, at sermons in Mosuls mosques on the western side of the city, clerics asked local families to send their sons to fight with the IS group. And according to an attendee at one mosque, the preacher scolded locals for not doing so.

A young man ascended to the pulpit and began to tell us off, the eye witness, whose name and location cannot be revealed due to security concerns, told NIQASH. He began shouting, saying that if you think the infidels [meaning the pro-government forces] are going to reach the right side of the city, youre dreaming. I swear to you that God will help us win this battle, and that it will be a miracle  in the same way that God supported the Prophet Mohammed and his companions at the Battle of the Trench 1,400 years ago, when he sent violent winds into the infidels camps.

But the IS group is clearly not relying on God alone, other locals say. Dozens of both Arab and foreign fighters are being stationed in the medical complex beside the Tigris river. Snipers occupy the higher floors of the hospital.

The same kind of thing is happening in other neighbourhoods near the river and on the southern outskirts of the city, which is where the pro-government forces are expected to come in from. IS fighters are taking control of taller buildings and making sure they can move easily between and through them. In the Ghazalani neighbourhood, one resident says suicide bombers have been lining up behind IS leaders and chanting to display their courage: Either victory or martyrdom, they shout.

Locals in the western part of the city can actually see the Iraqi national flag flying on the other side of the city, while the black flag of the IS group still hangs over their own heads. Desperate for news, they discuss every overheard snatch of conversation.

In terms of daily life, the besieged parts of the city havent had any deliveries of fresh food for weeks. What is available is being sold at extremely high prices and it seems likely that any stores still open will have to close soon. There is no fuel coming in either and some parts of the city are almost empty of vehicles.

Theres no gas for cooking or heating and locals share stories of how everyone is surviving in these conditions.

We have started to use the furniture for cooking  weve already gone through the chairs, closets and beds, one woman told NIQASH in a phone interview; throughout the interview she was coughing because of all the smoke in her house, she said. Now we are onto the wooden doors. In the near future we are going to have to start burning our clothes, if the Iraqi army doesnt come soon. Its like we are living in a different era. Thanks to the Caliph [which is what the leader of the IS group likes to call himself] everything in here is black with smoke: The walls, our faces and everything else.

Via Niqash.org

-

Related video added by Juan Cole:

The Guardian (Ghaith Abdul-Ahad): Battle For Mosul
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By Daniel Martin Varisco | ( MENA Tidningen ) |  

In 1886, slightly more than a century after the birth of the United States of America, the government of France gave a gift to my country: the iconic Statue of Liberty in New York Citys busy harbor. Less than a decade later my great grandfather saw that shining symbol of freedom on his way from Sicily to make a better life in this great new democratic experiment. Since then millions of immigrants have been welcomed and millions of tourists have witnessed its historic importance. Had the torch on that statue been extinguished, I would not be here, nor would millions of others who are proud to be American.

Today the Statue of Liberty has been branded with a No Trespassing sign by a statute against liberty signed by executive disorder from the pen of President Donald J. Trump. If you are coming from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia or Yemen, you are now a suspected terrorist by default. You are also assumed to be a terrorist by merely being a Muslim from these countries, although the major terrorist attack on American soil on 9/11 was carried out by extremists from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Lebanon; none of these countries are on the list. The attacks in Paris in November, 2015 and Brussels in March, 2016 were done by men with European passports. Omar Mateen, the disturbed Florida security guard, killed 49 and wounded as many in a nightclub shooting, but he was an American citizen of Afghan descent. The important variable is not where someone is from or the mere fact that person is a Muslim, but how and why some individuals in all societies engage in terrorism. Dylaan Roof, who murdered nine members of a black church is as much a terrorist as Omar Mateen. In both cases it was hatred and racism that led to slaughter.

As might be expected, every human rights organization has been quick to condemn this act of vengeance diplomacy. Trumps latest executive order is likely to hurt the people most in need: those fleeing violence and terrorism  and on Holocaust Remembrance Day, no less, noted Grace Meng of Human Rights Watch. Trumps tone deafness to human rights is not only in curbing immigration of people fleeing terrorism and tyranny, but doing so on a day in which he commemorated the Holocaust in a tweet without mentioning Jews or anti-Semitism.

By singling out Muslims as targets and claiming that Christians from the region will be welcomed, Trump and his alt-right cronies ignore the fact that the vast number of terrorist attacks are by Muslims killing fellow Muslims. ISIS has killed thousands of fellow Muslims who happen to be Shia; the war in Syria pits Sunni jihadi groups against the minority Alawis and President Asad; the proxy war led by Saudi Arabias bombing campaign in Yemen has resulted in thousands more, including women and children. Terrorism is global and cannot be stopped by draconian visa requirements, just as building a not-so-great-wall-of-Mexico will not prevent illegal immigration into the United States. Billions of dollars will be wasted on boondoggles rather than invested in the aid and diplomacy needed to undo the damage inflicted in the Middle East by years of foreign intervention and support for ruthless dictators.

There is no little irony in the propagandic hyperbole of this order. We read that In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including honor killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation. Yet it is precisely those Americans who routinely engage in acts of bigotry or hatred, especially against race (African Americans), gender (women) and sexual orientation (LGBT) that filled the basket of deplorables voting for Trump. Nationality no more defines bigotry than ethnicity or so-called race.

The founding fathers, who fought against tyranny, fought for a country where liberty would be paramount. We would do well to remember the words of Thomas Paine, who advocated an age of reason: O! ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose not only tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the Old World is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

Daniel Martin Varisco is an anthropologist and historian with 40 years of experience researching and working in Yemen. Current President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, Research Professor of Social Sciences at Qatar University and expert advisor to MENA Tidningen.

Reprinted from MENA Tidningen with the authors permission.
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

So I was watching Chris Matthews Hardball on MSNBC Thursday evening and Matthews had Kellyanne Conway on to defend Trumps disastrous first two weeks. For some reason, Matthews declines to challenge her when she flat-out lies, although he is quick to get in the face of most other guests. He used to turn his show over to Trump, with no commentary or fact-checking, most nights at 7:30 pm during the presidential campaign, so bears some responsibility for our president catastrophe (though to be fair no doubt his bosses instructed him to do this).

In the course of defending Trumps 7-nation Muslim ban, Conway alleged that President Obama stopped refugees from Iraq from entering the US for 6 months in response to two Iraqi terrorists who struck in Bowling Green.

Whaaat?

Chris Matthews Pushes Kellyanne Conway On Use Of Executive Power | Hardball | MSNBC

There was no attack on Bowling Green and none was ever planned. There was an arrest of two Iraqi Sunnis there who were charged with supporting Daesh abroad. That arrest did not account for Obamas refugee stop. Moreover, Obama did not stop visas for Iraqis, unlike Trump, who has canceled even valid visas for citizens of 7 countries. Conways attempt to compare Trumps/ Bannons actions to those of Obama would be laughable if the dark racism of her fantasies were not so dangerous.

By the way, did actually arrest a domestic terrorist in Bowling Green, a convicted felon and white supremacist who illegally stockpiled an arsenal of guns and 40,000 rounds of ammunition and who planned to kill Jews and African-Americans. Schmidt is a German name, so I presume Ms. Conway will be announcing a German ban next? And, make note that the GOP Congress just repealed an Obama regulation requiring background checks before gun purchases. It is a little amusing that the FBI professed itself puzzled as to how Schmidt got all those guns.

Conway also alleged that the countries were chosen because their governments were known to train and dispatch terrorists.

This is not true. No one thinks the Iraqi government sends out terrorists on missions, (much less to its American ally in the fight against ISIL!) Libya has more than one government but Im pretty sure were allied with at least one of them, and it is Libyans who defeated Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) at Sirte. Likewise, the Syrian government may be authoritarian and brutal but it has never targeted the US for terrorism. There havent been any Sudanese terrorist attacks on the US to my knowledge, and certainly not any time in the past two decades.

Heres an interview with the elected president of Somalia in which he says, We have made progress in our foreign relations. We have almost 30 foreign embassies working in Somalia; the United States, our biggest ally formally recognized the government of Somalia . . ..

If you wanted to ban Somalis because the al-Shabab group is based there, at least that would not be based on a falsehood, though it would be ridiculous to keep out women and children refugees (the vast majority) because there are al-Shabab in the country. We have a Ku Klux Klan, too. But banning Somalis because you think your ally President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud is a terrorist is just ca-r-ra- a- zy.

Then White House public liar, I mean, chief spokesman, Sean Spicer, said that Gen. Flynn had put Iran on notice because it had attacked an American vessel in the Red Sea.

The Houthi militia that controls northern Yemen hit a Saudi vessel with a missile earlier this weak. Saudi Arabia blames Iran, since it sees the Houthis as cats paws of Iran. But that view is propaganda. There is no evidence at all of significant arms flows or strategic advice going from Iran to the Houthis. Most Houthi weapons are American, delivered to them by the elements of the Yemeni army loyal to deposed president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has allied with the Houthis. The latter movement comes out of Zaydi Shiism, which accounts for a third of Yemenis and is localized in northern Yemeni tribes. These Zaydis are angry that the Saudis tried to proselytize them into becoming Wahhabis (and who wouldnt be). They are a nativist movement resenting foreign influence, not proxies for Iran (they have a different branch of Shiism).

So there is no reason to think that Iran was behind the shelling of the Saudi vessel. Saudi Arabia has committed numerous war crimes in Yemen with indiscriminate bombing and has targeted civilian infrastructure, so however regrettable violence might be, no one can be surprised that the scrappy Yemenis fight back.

Spicer, like Conway, just makes things up.

The evidence is, moreover, that millions of people lap up this steaming crock they serve, and no doubt most Americans will believe them rather than believing people who know what they are talking about.

This detachment from reality and extreme violence to the facts will eventually come back around to bite America on the ass. There is every reason to think, moreover, that President Bannon will use the very violence he provoked to steal our rights from us.

Me, Im going to go watch the recording I made of The Expanse on Syfy. The tale of an Earth-Martian conflict in which the colonists of the asteroid belt get caught up, it is much more plausible than Trumps spokespeople.
JURIST Guest Columnist Benjamin G. Davis of University of Toledo College of Law discusses the recent turmoil over the changes in the Trump administration

With the recent turmoil of the Monday Night Massacre (firing of the Acting Attorney General Sally Yates and the firing of the Acting ICE Director Daniel Ragsdale) coupled with the dissent by members of the Foreign Service to the Trump Muslim Ban Executive Order, the response of the current Administration is to tell those bureaucrats to quit or get on the one team.

In addition to the plight of said bureaucrats one can think about the plight of top officials who are being portrayed in two ways: either as having been out of the loop ( Secretary of Defense Mattis, Secretary of Homeland Security Kelly, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Pompeo, and the nominee for Secretary of State Tillerson) or being overruled (at least for a period of time) by a couple of Presidential assistants (Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon). Either way these top officials are put in the unenviable position of being humiliated as being mere figureheads in their offices, rather than as engaged senior leaders of the Trump Administration.

For those who disagree with a policy and/or the manner in which they are being treated, should they resign in protest?

History suggests that if you ever want to work again at a high level in Washington, DC, one better not resign in protest. This view is based on a wonderful somewhat dated book done by the late New York University Professor Thomas Franck and Director of International Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at the State University of New York at Binghamton Edward Weisband entitled Resignation in protest: Political and ethical choices between loyalty to team and loyalty to conscience in American public life (Grossman Publishers 1975).

The authors examined cases of individuals at the breaking point: protest resignations compelled by unbearable misgivings as well as top officials who disagree profoundly with key government policies but who keep silent, placing loyalty to the team or careerism ahead of loyalty to principle and to the public. It is a reflection on the costs of a system based above all on the value of team play.

The authors noted that The person who sacrifices team loyalty in order to pursue a competing value, such as integrity, is likely to have brought to bear against him the coercive weight of that societys historically conditioned sense of self-preservation. Societies, groups, organizations systematize the process of making value-judgments. Indeed, they systematize the very process of perceiving reality.

After a review of a number of cases spanning the 20th century up to that point, they conclude that the historic record indicates that ostracism, rather than respectability, is the probable reward for ethical autonomy.

Given that ostracism, it appears fairly obvious that calls for resignations in protest in our governmental culture are calls to ask people to commit the equivalent of political suicide without any assurance that they will be rewarded for their ethical autonomy. Our system does not tolerate such acts of rebellion.

On the other hand, if one feels compelled to resign, the more quiet resignation with some anodyne statement (for health reasons, to spend more time with ones family) and  most importantly no hint of dispute  is the acceptable route. The power of the resignation seems to come in what is unsaid rather than what is said.

The authors recipe is that we should as a polity lower the costs the ordinarily ambitious political aspirant must pay to have, and to manifest, a healthy amount of ethical autonomy. And these costs would certainly be less if the public were to decide to lower them: by respecting the dissident, the man or woman who refuses to subordinate his conscience or his duty to the public, and by weighing thoughtfully what he has to say, rewarding or punishing in accordance with the social importance and the political validity of his or her dissent.

Vietnam and Watergate: the names are synonymous with insufficiently fettered Presidential discretion. If America is ever to construct a working system of checks and balances within the executive branch, it will have to revise its judgment of those who exercise their option to exit with voice. It will have to excuse, and even reward, that disloyalty to a President which bespeaks a higher loyalty to the democratic system. The authors contrasted us with the British approach and found us wanting.

So how do we free our minds?

One path to that way of thinking is to stop the confusion in our culture between the individual serving as President and the Presidency. When I was working on a project for the late Vincent Bugliosi on the possibility of a prosecution in California State Courts of former President George Bush for murder and conspiracy to commit murder with respect to taking us to War in Iraq on false pretenses, one of the first things I found I needed to do was to unlearn the received wisdom that the Presidents and the Presidencys powers are coterminous. The hypothetical I used to open my mind was to imagine that the President of the United States was selling crack cocaine out of the Oval Office for what he/she said was national security reasons. Would such a President be immune to prosecution for such actions? Back to President Fords pardon of Richard Nixon we can see that the individual elected President could incur criminal liability for those acts done while President that were beyond the pale of the Presidents constitutional or statutory powers.

Contrast the quiet resignation, the resignation in protest, with the kind of spectacular firing that we have seen this week. In particular let us think of the case of Acting Attorney General Sally Yates who no doubt knew that once she had decided to make public her memo she was going to be fired. Her memo remains part of the work of a person in the role rather than some after the fact statement. The authors suggest that as a culture her going public is not rewarded.

On the other hand, whether rewarded or not, a firing can be a badge of honor (Archibald Cox by President Richard Nixon who went back to academia) or of shame (Scooter Libby , Michael D. Heckuva job Brownie Brown by President George Bush). Firings are about causing violence to a person and asserting control over a polity through this act of violence. Time will tell how the Sally Yates and Daniel Ragsdale firings will be perceived.

So at least based on Franck and Weisband, top officials and/or bureaucrats should not resign in protest because we do not as a culture tolerate that kind of activity. They should resign quietly for anodyne reasons, make their disagreements private as opposed to public, and suffer the consequences of being fired for their passionate internal dissent.

They should not quit in protest. I am not underestimating the difficulty of their position, but maybe persons should remember what my late father (a Foreign Service Officer) once said to me, I have served six Presidents. Meaning, at least for the bureaucrats if not the top officials, these folks too shall pass.

Just sayin.

Benjamin G. Davis, professor of law, is a former member of the American Bar Association (ABA) Standing Committee on Law and National Security. He is a Founder of Advocates for U.S. Torture Prosecutions. Davis led the adoption of the 2006 American Society of International Law Centennial Resolution on Laws of War and Detainee Treatment. Davis is an international expert on topics such as cyber dispute resolution, drones, detainee treatment, military commissions, torture and international law. He is a graduate of Harvard College (BA), and Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School (JD/MBA).

Suggested citation: Benjamin G. Davis, Muslim Ban or otherwise: Should a bureaucrat resign in protest?, JURIST  Academic Commentary, Feb. 2, 2017, http://jurist.org/forum/2017/02/Benjamin-Davis-bureaucrat-resignation.php
[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [official website] rejected [order, PDF] on Thursday requests to intervene and defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [official website]. Sixteen states, two lawmakers and several nonprofit consumer groups filed motions out of concern that the Trump administration would fire Richard Cordray [official profile], the agencys director who was appointed by former president Barack Obama. Last October the same court ruled that the structure of the agency was unconstitutional [JURIST report]. Lawsuits against the agency are ongoing, and these parties wished to be allowed to join in the case to defend the agency in case the Trump administration fails to defend it in court. The court did not give a reason for their denial.

Many different groups and individuals have filed lawsuits in the wake of newly-elected president Trumps swift and numerous executive actions. Earlier this week the City of San Francisco filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against the Trump administration over the executive order to withhold federal funding from designated sanctuary cities. In January the Council on American-Islamic Relations [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST] in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia challenging the constitutionality of the Trump administrations executive order restricting immigration from several Muslim-majority nations. Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson also sued [JURIST report] President Donald Trump over the temporary immigration ban. A journalist and a graduate student at MIT filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] last month against eight federal agencies for records on attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions [official profile]. Also in January the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York claiming President Donald Trumps continued business dealings violate the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] on Thursday unanimously upheld [judgment] a German courts ruling allowing the preventative detention of a 28- year-old man. Daniel Ilnseher was convicted of strangling a woman to death in 1997. In 2008 he had served the 10-year sentence, as prescribed by law for juveniles, but was not released and instead kept in preventive detention. In 2013 Germany adopted legislation that allowed preventive detention for people with mental disorders deemed a risk to society after the court found previous rules unconstitutional [JURIST report]. Ilnseher took his appeal to the ECHR claiming that his detention breached the European Convention on Human Rights [text, PDF], specifically the right to liberty. The court found that Ilnsehers mental condition allowed Germany to keep him in detention. The court did, however, award Ilnseher 12,500 as a compensatory payment, due to the unsuitable conditions in which he was kept from May 2011 through June 2013.

Countries around this world today still struggle to come to a uniform understanding of what constitutes legal, safe and appropriate forms of detention. Last week in the US a federal judge ruled that the state of Rhode Island and immigration officials violated the rights [JURIST report] of a detained citizen after the citizen was arrested without probable cause and held 24 hours after a judge had ordered her release. The day before a court in South Korea ordered the government to pay funds in compensation for its illegal detention [JURIST report] of prostitutes in the 60s and 70s. Also in January the long standing issue of Guantanamo Bay once again came up into the news, as a federal judge declined to intervene [JURIST report] in the release of a prisoner, who feared that he would have no chance of being removed from the prison during the Trump administration. Also last month a US appeals court ruled that a Minnesota program that keeps sex offenders confined to secure facilities after they complete their prison sentences is constitutional and necessary [JURIST report] to protect citizens from dangerous predators.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) [official website] on Thursday ordered [judgment] Russia to pay more than 63,000 euros for arresting Alexander Navalny multiple times between March 2012 and February 2014. The Court held that Russia repeatedly and unjustifiably violated Navalnys right to freedom of peaceful assembly under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms [text, PDF].

Russias human rights record has been the subject of widespread international criticism. In January the US sanctioned [JURIST report] five Russian officials for human rights abuses. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced [JURIST report] in November 2016 that Russia would leave the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website], expressing disdain over the ICCs investigation into potential human rights abuses by Russian forces in South Ossetia in 2008. In May 2015 Russian President Vladmir Putin signed a law that allows for foreign undesirable NGOs or firms to be sanctioned and banned from operating in the country, drawing criticism from human rights groups.
[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Central District of California [official website] on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order [text] on President Donald Trumps immigration executive order [text], which dictates that officials cannot bar valid immigrant visa-holders from entering the US. In the order, Judge Andre Birotte Jr. [official profile] also prohibited officials from detaining or blocking people from the seven countries identified by the executive order if they have US visas. The ruling does not apply to non-visa holders such as business persons, tourists or students. The White House earlier this week clarified [JURIST report] that the executive order does not apply to individuals with green cards, meaning those admitted for permanent US residence.

Many different groups and individuals have filed lawsuits in the wake of newly-elected president Trumps swift and numerous executive actions. Earlier this week the City of San Francisco filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against the Trump administration over the executive order to withhold federal funding from designated sanctuary cities. In January the Council on American-Islamic Relations [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST] in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia challenging the constitutionality of the Trump administrations executive order restricting immigration from several Muslim-majority nations. Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson also sued [JURIST report] President Donald Trump over the temporary immigration ban, and several other states have since followed suit. A journalist and a graduate student at MIT filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] last month against eight federal agencies for records on attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions [official profile]. Also in January the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York claiming President Donald Trumps continued business dealings violate the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution.
Missouri lawmakers [official website] on Thursday sent a right to work proposal [SB 19 materials] to Governor Eric Greitens [official website], who is expected to sign the measure into law. The bill will prevent unions from requiring workers to pay dues [St. Louis Post-Dispatch report] as a condition of employment. Supporters expect the measure to help with job growth. Others believe it is simply being implemented to weaken union influence. The measure had been previously passed [JURIST report] but was vetoed by former governor Jay Nixon. Once the measure is signed into law, Missouri will become the twenty-eighth right-to-work state [St. Louis Post-Dispatch report].

Right-to-work laws have become more prevalent across the country in recent years. Earlier this month the Kentucky House of Representatives advanced a bill [JURIST report] that would allow workers to avoid paying dues at union workplaces. The West Virginia legislature passed the WV Workplace Freedom Act in February 2016 [JURIST report], overruling a veto by the Democratic Governor Earl Ray Tomblin the day before. West Virginia became the twenty-sixth state in the country with a right-to-work law, a law that bars employers from requiring that their employees pay union fees. In May the Wisconsin Court of Appeals stayed [JURIST report] a lower courts decision striking down Wisconsins right to work law, thus reinstating it at least for the time being.
UN human rights experts on Thursday urged [press release] the government of Iran to stop the execution of Hamid Ahmadi, a 17 year old with a death sentence stemming from Ahmadi fatally stabbing another Iranian youth. The office of the UN High Commisioner for Human Rights (OCHR) [official website] said the execution is scheduled to go forward on Saturday. Ahmadi was granted [JURIST report] a retrial in 2014, but was sentenced to death again in 2015. The OCHR experts said Iran must observe its international obligations by putting an end to the execution of juvenile offenders once and for all. Ahmadi has been scheduled for execution twice before, but both dates were delayed at the penultimate moment.

Irans use of the death penalty on juveniles has been a cause of serious concern for the UN and other human rights groups. The UN also called on Iran to stop juvenile executions [JURIST report] in October 2015 after Fatemeh Salbehi, a 16 year old, was executed for the murder of her husband. Saman Naseem, sentenced to death at age 17, was executed [JURIST report] in February 2015. Human rights experts were outraged [JURIST report] in June 2014 when Iran executed Razieh Ebrahimi after she killed her husband at age 17.
PepsiCo has added to its Sunbites range on sale in Australia with the launch of Grainy Funbites, a line targeted at children as they return to school after the summer holidays.

The baked snacks come in three varieties: cheese; pizza; and sour cream and chives.

Tami Cunningham, the marketing director for PepsiCos operations in Australia and New Zealand, said: Sunbites Grainy Funbites reflect PepsiCo ANZs commitment to developing innovative products that make lunchbox shopping easy for mums.

The snacks are available at Woolworths Ltd stores and independent grocery outlets. PepsiCo said the launch of Grainy Funbites marks the first phase in an exciting year of growth for Sunbites but did not provide further details.

Last year, PepsiCo closed a snacks plant in Australia after a review of its manufacturing network in the country. The US food giant shut its manufacturing facility at Canning Vale in the state of Western Australia.
Photos Credit: Shutterstock

The pearl of the Adriatic (as Dubrovnik is called), was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1970. Tourism has recently picked up in Croatias capital city, thanks largely to the popular TV series Game of Thrones, some parts of which have been shot in Dubrovnik. Here are some of the best ways to soak in everything that this gorgeous seaside city has to offer:

Stay at the Villa Dubrovnik

This five star resort, which is located on a rocky outcrop that overlooks the Old Town, is the perfect hotel for a romantic staycation. The rooms are fitted with the finest Egyptian cotton, and come with balconies that overlook both the Old Town as well as the sea. The Bar Giardino, the hotel bar, has some of the best views in the city, and serves up excellent Mediterranean cocktails.

Spot your Favourite Beach

The city beach is very popular and has activities such as jet skis and inflatables available for kids. However, there is a quieter option a little farther away. Beyond the quiet, leafy streets of Vlaha Bukovca is Sveti Jakov, a favourite among locals. The beach, which is partially strewn with pebbles, provides the most beautiful views of the Old Town. In the evening, there are even bars and restaurants along the beachside where you can hang out with friends.

Eat a Meal at Nautika

Nautika is the snazziest restaruant in town, widely popular with many high-profile visitors to Dubrovnik. Get ready for a formal evening complete with starched white linens and dinner on a terrace overlooking the city. There is even a sea-view table, which might just be the highlight of your holiday. Be sure to try the seafood, which is as fresh as youll ever taste it. Some of the must-try dishes are the cream of scampi soup with black truffles and the traditional lopud brodet.

Stroll Through the City Walls

Dubrovnik is a fortified city with walls that surround it from all sides. These walls, which were built in the Middle Ages, are still intact and are approximately 6,365 feet long. A walk along the walls is a good way to get an elevated perspective of the city. These walls, which were built to protect the city from invaders, are now popular with tourists. The walls also have ladders that lead into the waters, where you can now climb down and jump in for a quick dip in the Adriatic. However, this is recommended only for those with strong swimming skills.

Walk Through Old Town

Spend an afternoon walking through the market place in Old Town, which is a beautiful baroque square. Here, you will find the freshest fruits and vegetables as well as dried fruits. Saturday, however, is the day when the market comes alivethere are artisans selling cheese, Mediterranean spices, olives, saffron and other exotic delights that also make for excellent souvenirs. A quirky tradition in the market is that at noon, as the stalls wind up, an official comes with a bucket of corn kernels which are thrown to the pigeons waiting close by. This is a sight to behold, as hundreds of birds fill the sky.
22 February 2017, 20.45 CET, Estadio do Dragao, Porto.

The Champions League is back in just under three weeks time and as ever, Juventus will be offering a pair of Bianconeri supporters the chance to travel with the team to Portugal for their crunch UCL encounter with Porto.

If you are a J1897 or Premium Member  or if you become one before 12 February  you will be automatically entered into the draw that will produce one lucky winner. Top prize offers a place on the plane alongside Massimiliano Allegris men, top-class accommodation in Porto and of course tickets for the match, all with a travelling partner of your choice.

The second prize is not too shabby either: a signed official Adidas match jersey, again only available to J-Members.

This once in a lifetime opportunity marks the latest in a treasure trove of benefits provided by our Membership programs. From exclusive first refusal on Juventus Stadium tickets and access to special post-match content to a year round 10 per cent discount at Juvestore.com, there has never been a better time to join our black and white family. Just make its before 12 February!
Officials say a teenager was unable to save her 5-year-old sister from their burning apartment following an apparent cooking accident.

Baton Rouge Fire Department spokesman Curt Monte told news outlets that firefighters battling the Tuesday night blaze found the body of Treasure Garner.

Authorities believe the fire started after Garner's 18-year-old sister left a pot of grease on the stove and went outside. She was forced out of the home by heavy smoke and couldn't retrieve her sister.
Ann McElhinney insists, you cant unlearn, referring to what she and her husband, Phelim McAleer, write about in their new book, Gosnell: The Untold Story of Americas Most Prolific Serial Killer.

In April 2013, the investigative journalists focused their attention on the trial of Philadelphia abortionist Kermit Gosnell, who was charged with, and later found guilty of, murdering three infants who were born alive in his squalid clinic. The evidence that was shown in court was grisly. As McElhinney puts it: The humanity in all the pictures is unmistakable, the pictures of the babies that were shown as evidence in the Gosnell trial were first-, second- and third-trimester babies, in all their innocence and perfection.

Coinciding with this months 44th anniversary of the Supreme Courts Roe v. Wade decision, the book is a precursor to a movie starring Dean Cain, currently in need of a distributor.

McElhinneys interest in the trial was not ideological. She wasnt pro-life, and she really didnt like being shown images of abortions. But Gosnell changed things for McElhinney. I got an education on abortion because of researching and investigating this story, she tells me. In the case of Gosnell, shes focused not just on the unborn children who died and the infants born alive and killed, but two vulnerable women who died there, one a young African American and one a refugee, she says.

Gosnells clinic was emblematic of what Pope Francis has called a throwaway society. People are cast aside and treated shoddily, because they are poor and desperate, and no one cares to pay attention. It can be easier and more ideologically convenient to look away. When pro-life legislation aims at regulating abortion clinics, its not a stealth strategy to make abortion illegal, but an attempt at some oversight and to ensure that women are not being forced into an abortion, psychologically coerced by circumstances and a culture that seems to encourage and expect it in certain circumstances.

I can always see ... the babies he killed, McElhinney tells me. But its also a privilege to know them, to witness for their lives. Its what journalism is all about, or at least what it should be about. To speak for the powerless who cannot speak for themselves. In this case, that is as true as it gets; those children deserved journalists to tell their stories. They were betrayed by The New York Times, (the) Washington Post and so many others.

When I ask McElhinney to point to something encouraging she encountered, she names Detective Jim Wood, describing him as a public servant doing all he can every day to bring justice, to defend and to protect. That he exists makes me hopeful.

About the movie, McElhinney says, We have to independently distribute it, and asks: Investors please be in touch  the movie needs to come out this year. Audiences who have seen it say its the best movie ever made about abortion.

When asked for her advice to the media about how to cover abortion and any God have mercy  future Gosnells, she says: Just be honest; stop being ideological and report the news, even when it makes a lie of (your) personal beliefs. People think they know what goes on  I thought I knew. The details are important: what Gosnell did, how he got away with it. Never again, she says, must be the response.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.
KEARNEY  Construction of Nebraskas largest solar energy array will begin in about one month, as will work on a building to house the new $4 million executive briefing center the Xpanxion software development and testing company plans nearby.

Officials with Chicago-based SoCore Energy, Nebraska Public Power District and the city of Kearney formally entered agreements on Thursday to build a 5.8 megawatt $11 million solar array on 53 acres at Kearneys Tech oNE Crossing tech park. In addition, Xpanxion said it plans to build a facility to house 100 employees and where it can be host to customers of the high-tech firm. Xpanxions plans call for a 20,000-square-foot structure to be built by Chief Construction. Xpanxion has an option for another 20,000 square feet when needed.

The sun is shining on Kearney today. Its time to get to work, Kearney City Council Vice President Randy Buschkoetter said. He signed documents for the city. Company President Rob Schuermann signed for SoCore, and Pat Pope, president of Nebraska Public Power District, signed for the energy supplier.

As officials added their names to documents, at least one person in the crowd of 50 at the signing ceremony was considering the possibility of becoming a solar energy customer when the facility goes online in the fall.

As energy costs rise, this is a great investment, Jon Watts, vice chancellor of finance at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, said.

He said the solar energy would cost a little more in the beginning, but that could change over time and make it a bargain as standard coal-fired energy becomes more expensive.

The chancellors cabinet has discussed it (solar energy), and were interested to see how this project could fit in our long-term sustainability goals, Watts added.

The 25-year agreement signed Thursday freezes solar energy rates through the term of the contract.

The 5.8 megawatts the solar array will generate on perfect sunny days equals about 5 percent of the 115 megawatt hours of power Kearney consumes on summer days. Kearney Mayor Stan Clouse said power from the solar array will be available for local residential, commercial and institutional consumers, and that a portion of the energy would be set aside for high-tech firms recruited to Tech oNE Crossing.

A system to allocate the available solar energy among interested consumers hasnt been drafted yet, but Clouse said there wont be a problem finding customers. The problem he said, could be more demand than there is power to supply it.

Darren Robinson, president of The Economic Development Council of Buffalo County, said the presence of the SoCore solar panels and Xpanxion center will supercharge development of Tech oNE Crossing.

With the help of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development, weve recruited some amazing companies to visit our tech park, Robinson said. Companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Hewlett Packard have all stepped foot on Tech oNE dirt. And even though the tech park is a great piece of property with all of the right infrastructure, it was all speculative  until today.

Robinson said when prospects visit the tech park in the future, theyll see an amazing solar energy project that spans over 50 acres.

Schuermann said his company has constructed or is building 200 solar facilities in 17 states, and the interest is growing rapidly for good, clean, reliable cost-effective power.

Pope said NPPD leaders believe community projects such as Kearneys are cost effective and good for consumers. NPPD gets about 12 percent of its electricity from renewable sources.

Under the agreements, SoCore will sell its electricity to NPPD, which will market it to local consumers. The city of Kearney will pay NPPD the difference between the utilitys standard base rate and the solar energy, which is a bit higher.

Clouse estimated the citys differential costs could be about $50,000 to $60,000 per year, but SoCore is leasing the solar array site for $300 per acre, or $15,900 for the first year. Annual rental increases of 1.5 percent and other factors will reduce the citys costs, but council members and the city staff believe the benefits of having Nebraskas largest solar project outweigh the risks, especially in how it will help market the tech park.

Several years ago, Kearney narrowly missed landing a $1 billion Facebook data center, even with significantly reduced electrical rates. Instead of Kearney, the company opted for a site in Iowa where wind energy was available.

The Facebooks of the world like renewable energy, Clouse said.
British Columbia NDP leader John Horgan pauses while answering questions after releasing the party's climate action plan, during a news conference in Vancouver, B.C., on Thursday February 2, 2017. A provincial election will be held on May 9. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
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People pray at a funeral service for three of the six victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting at the Quebec City convention centre Friday, February 3, 2017. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
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I recently reported on Stephanie Waggel, the doctor fired by a prestigious U.S. hospital for getting cancer (story also the Washington Post). In a transcription of her whistleblower video, Stephanie describes how she nearly died due to obstruction of medical care:

It started during my intern year of residency. Which, bizarrely, was the happiest year of my life. And all my friends are like, Youre an intern, youre not supposed to be happy, something is clearly wrong with you. But, Im like, Im out! Im doing psychiatry. This is what Ive always wanted to do. I absolutely loved it. I had so much energy, and I planned my outfits weeks in advance and had themes. And I had all these lectures for the medical students, and it was just everything that I always wanted, and it was completely delightful. I started having this pain, and it was waking me up from my sleep. And I really didnt have time (because I was an intern) to get it worked up. But it was getting really, really bad. I was feeling really sick a lot and something had to be wrong so I really had to push to go to these appointments.

For example, one time I went to get an MRI, but the MRI machine broke and then I had to go again the next day. And then when I told my team and my attending the MRI machine broke, they made some joke about my weight. And I was like, No its actually cause theres some helium tank in it that broke. They were not letting me go. It was awful, and Im like, No, I need to find out whats wrong with me. So I pushed and pushed and pushed and after wrong diagnosis, and everything, they finally found out that I had renal cell carcinoma. And I said, Well, thats going to be a lot more doctors appointments.

So I went, and I had a partial nephrectomy [kidney removal] and I thought that everything could be set up because there are people having babies and things like that. So I would send my schedule, like when my appointments were, and say, Oh I have this appointment, like, three Tuesdays from now. That Tuesday would come, and everybody would be like, Oh, were slammed today. Youre going to have to reschedule that appointment. And Id be like, Okay. And then, Id reschedule it and then that day would come and theyd be like, Oh, were really busy. I would never be able to get to go to my appointments. So, eventually, I was just like, Im going, I need to go. And my oncologist said that had I not gone, I would have died within at least a year or two. And, when he said that to me, I was like, Well, Im really glad that I went, because had I listened to everyone around me, I would be dead in a year or two.

And I distinctly remember this attending that I had, on the day that I was diagnosed with cancer, told me to pick between being a doctor and being a patient. And up until that point, I never really thought about, What if Im a patient and a doctor? But then, the entire year was just a struggle to be both.

So I went to my chief for help, Im like, I need to go to these appointments, like follow-up, cause I needed genetic testing because what twenty-eight-year-old female gets kidney cancer? And he was just saying, Ugh, were going to have to re-do the call schedule. And Im like, Im so sorry to inconvenience you, but I have cancer. Then I went to governing bodies (that I wont mention) and they were telling me, This really isnt our problem, it sounds like an institutional kind of thing. So then I went to people in my program, I went to attendings, I went to the dean, I went to the hospital ombudsperson (who cried when I told her what was going on). She seemed to care a lot, but she basically said there is nothing I can do for you.

After that, I saw her in the hallway at work and she had this look like, Im so sorry that I cant help you. And she came over and handed me a piece of paper and hugged me and walked away. And I looked at the paper and it was the telephone number to a lawyer, and Im like, This is all just so bizarre. So then, I really didnt want to get the legal system involved, but theres got to be somebody that can help me. So then I started writing to the university president and he didnt reply to me either.

So I just got to this place where I decided to just fix everything on my own. So I made it a QI [Quality Improvement] project to create a system that I call PWP (which is physician wellness program). So that if anybody else has a chronic illness, or even needs to go to therapy every week or something, that they dont go through all these hurdles that I was going through. And I spent a lot of time and research and effort into this and thats how I found out about the National Day of Solidarity to Prevent Physician Suicide, which I worked on with Pamela. Once my department found out that I was doing this, theyre like, You need to stop. And I said, But, you told me to do research and Im doing research. And they said, You cant have days about suicide. And Im like, Why not?

So then, I did finally get a lawyer and I filed a claim to the EEOC and then when they found out I filed the claim to the EEOC, they voted to terminate my residency. And, I appealed that cause my evaluations from my attendings, I had maybe two average and the rest were above average. And it just didnt make sense so I figured that maybe theyd look my appeal and wonder, Why are we firing her? But then, when Care 2 published a little paragraph about why I got involved in the Day of Solidarity, and I spoke about how I had cancer and was having a really tough time getting off work to go. That is the day that they chose to send me a letter stating theyre terminating my salary and my health insurance, knowing that I still had more follow-up. So I just thought this is definite retaliation, the vote to fire me was after I filed with the EEOC and then the letter I got terminating all my benefits was the same day as my paragraph for the Care 2 page came up.

So, now I am unemployed, so I am full-time working on PWP. So if anybody has any connections to residency programs that theyd like to implement a wellness program into, Im your gal.

Stephanie Waggel is a psychiatrist and can be reached at Improve Medical Culture. Pamela Wible pioneered the community-designed ideal medical clinic and blogs at Ideal Medical Care. She is the author of Physician Suicide Letters  Answered and Pet Goats and Pap Smears. Watch her TEDx talk, How to Get Naked with Your Doctor. She hosts the physician retreat, Live Your Dream, to help her colleagues heal from grief and reclaim their lives and careers.

Image credit: Pamela Wible
Effective April 1, garbage collection services will no longer be provided for free to residents of Webb County. Residents must prepay for the services on a monthly basis.

According to the county, you have until March 1 to sign a contract and pay for the service to continue after April 1.

Please be advised monthly service fees are due by the 1st of each month, and must be paid at least a month in advance in order for service to be provided.

Existing residential customers who establish accounts on or before March 1 shall also receive a one-time, 50 percent discount for equipment and setup.
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Apple will stat iPhone production facility in Bengaluru



It is now official: Apple is taking the 'Make in India' route with its iPhones, and Bengaluru is where this will be taking place. The government of Karnataka issued a press release "welcoming the move'. Apple's proposal is to commence initial manufacturing operations in Karnataka.



The press statement reads, "Apple's representatives led by Ms. Priya Balasubramaniam, VP iPhone operations, Mr. Ali Khanafer (Head, Government Affairs), Mr.Dheeraj Chugh (Director, iphone operations) and Mr. Priyesh Povanna (Country Counsel) met with Ministers and officials of Government of Karnataka and had positive discussions about the initiatives in manufacturing and possible collaborations with state Government in other areas." So far Apple has yet to issue a comment on the same.



"Apple's intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru will foster cutting edge technology ecosystem and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally. The Government of Karnataka is committed to new initiatives in any sector for manufacturing and will provide a conducive environment for investment," adds the statement.



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The communities of Graignamanagh and Bagenalstown have started the New Year with an exciting community based book festival.

A One Book One Community Reading Festival is underway in both towns with the community reading projects going from strength to strength since they were launched in late January.

The One Book One Community initiatives are being led by ETB schools in both towns  Duiske College in Graignamanagh and Muine Bheag Vocational School in Bagenalstown in partnership with local primary schools and the public libraries of Graignamanagh and Bagenalstown. In total eleven schools are participating.

Home School Community Liaison Coordinator in Duiske College and Muine Bheag Vocational School Brenda Foskin told the Kilkenny People that she was thrilled with the launches in both towns and also with the manner in which the festivals are progressing to date.

I really believe that our chosen book Spirit of the Titanic by Nicola Pierce is an excellent choice for a community reading initiative  it is interesting and appeals to young and old alike with great scope for cross curricular learning in our schools, she said.

The story of Spirit of the Titanic is fictional but is based on true events.

The first victim of Titanic was fifteen year old Samuel Joseph Scott who died on April 20th 1910 when he fell from the scaffolding at the Harland and Wolff shipyard while the Titanic ship was being built.

Nicola Pierce very cleverly tells the Titanic story by allowing the ghost of Samuel Scott to travel with Titanic when she left Belfast two years after his death, Brenda said

The launches of One Book One Community in both Graignamanagh and Bagenalstown were fine examples of partnership between home school and community with staff and students from all participating schools joining with parents and families and many members of the wider community.

In Graignamanagh library Duiske College Choir opened proceedings with a beautiful, harmonised version of Celine Dions My heart will go on.

This was followed by speeches from Patricia Nolan, Manager of Graignamanagh Library, Brenda Foskin, HSCL Duiske College and Helena Lambert and Kate Freyne, Teachers in the local primary schools.

All speeches reflected the aims of promoting literacy and reading and the building up of community spirit which are at the heart of One Book One Community.

The author of the book, Nicola Pierce was the guest speaker at the launch. Her enthusiasm and passion for her story really rubbed off on the huge audience.

Brenda went on to explain another moving feature of the day Graignamanagh Brass Band rekindled a memory from their past by playing the Dead March.

In 1912 when news reached Graig thaht Titanic was sinking the band came together and played the Dead March through the main street of the town.

We hope, over the course of our initiative to find other stories of local interest relating to Titanic, Brenda said.
A total of 395 .ie domains were registered in Kilkenny in 2016, according to the latest dot ie Domain Profile Report, published by the IE Domain Registry (IEDR), the company responsible for managing and maintaining Ireland's country code domain name extension - .ie.

The figure is a 16% decrease on registrations in Kilkenny in comparison to 2015 . Overall our .ie domain registrations in Leinster in 2016 numbered 21,739, a 3.5% decrease on the same period last year.

A total of, 34,615 .ie domains were registered last year, the second highest year for new registrations since 2011. That broken down to approximately 94 new .ie registrations every day in 2016. 72% of all new registrations in 2016 were made by businesses (corporate bodies and sole traders).

A total of 221,871 .ie domains are now registered in Ireland and around the world.

David Curtin, Chief Executive of IEDR, said:

2016 was one of the best years for the .ie domain in the last five years. More than 90 domains were registered every day, and the majority of registrations were by Irish businesses. This indicates that many companies and sole traders understand the importance of having a website and the value of .ies Identifiably Irish brand, which helps to tell the world that theyre Irish.

However, the decrease in registrations in Kilkenny suggests problems with Irelands internet infrastructure and SMEs understanding of e-commerce, particularly in rural areas.

The quality and availability of broadband remains an insurmountable barrier for many SMEs located outside the big cities and major towns. On a positive note, ongoing e-commerce mentoring from business associations and government is beginning to help rural SMEs attempts to trade online and improve their digital skills.

Irelands share of the digital marketplace is worth over 9 billion and growing. The Irish internet industry, business groups and leaders, and government representatives must continue to work together to make sure that the benefits of e-commerce and the wider digital economy are enjoyed equally across the country.
Just like an airplane circling the airport, global Central Banks are in a holding pattern as they wait and assess the effect of policy implementation and the leadership style of President Donald Trump.

Both Mario Draghi and Janet Yellen have indicated that the most prudent move is patience. The uncertainty factor has been growing as Americas new administration begins to address campaign promises and commitments while implementing policies to bring these ideas to fruition.

As such, Central Banks are waiting to gain more insight and a tangible understanding of the economic repercussions that will emerge from Americas dramatic upcoming policy changes.

Be Careful What You Wish For

One of the recent statements made by President Trump was that he would be a president that does what he promises. Based upon his first few weeks in office, it is clear that he intends to do just that. Americans has waited a long time for a leader that would follow-through with their campaign promises.

The Uncertainty Factor Continues to Ramp-Up Exponentially

As we have said before regarding Americas new leadership, the only thing for certain is uncertainty. The fact of the matter is that very little time has past since Donald Trump became our 45th president. Even within this short period of time, there are factors that are absolutely evident and, for the most part, certain. The first certainty is that Donald Trump is our president, and his success is our success.

The second certainty is that these new policies will continue to deepen the divide that exists between political factions unless he unifies our country. A third certainty is that the Central Banks will proceed cautiously and not rush to change existing monetary policies without gaining a clearer understanding of the economic impact of Americas new administration. Lastly, the existing level of uncertainty will be a supportive factor for safe haven assets such as gold.

For those who would like a deeper analysis, I invite you to sign up for a free trial. Simply use the link at the bottom of this report to view this weeks report, or to sign up for a free trial.

Wishing you as always, good trading,

Gary Wagner

Thegoldforecast.com
A lot of the companies have moved out, they dont make the drugs in our country anymore. A lot of it has to do with regulation, a lot of it has to do with other countries taking advantage of us with their money and their money supply and devaluation. Our country has been run so badly, we know nothing about devaluation; every other country lives on devaluation. You look at what Chinas doing, you look at what Japan has done over the years, they played the money market, they played the devaluation market and we sit there like a bunch of dummies, so you have to get your companies back here.  President Donald Trump, January 31, 2017

If you were on the fence about whether to invest in the precious metal miner sector, or add to your miner position, just cut this quote out and tape it to your computer monitor.

Gold made a monthly close above $1200 per oz. soon after this statement. I believe this level will hold on a monthly basis going forward as this new gold bull could heat up with the Trump Era currency war just beginning.

While the above quote is directed at the Yen and the Yuan, the Trump administration is also going after Germany, as Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro this week stated the "grossly undervalued" euro served as a currency for Germany alone, allowing the country to "exploit" the United States and others.

After just two weeks in office, Donald Trump has already shaken up the global landscape with an Executive Order on Interior Immigration Enforcement. While the liberal US media continues to stir the pot of dissention among the American citizenry, we even have former President Obama effectively setting up a shadow government declaring he now supports all the protests against Trump.

As the political landscape becomes more uncertain, the safe haven trade should continue to benefit the precious metals sector while the ongoing currency wars will likely add more fuel to the new precious metal bull market.

While the US Dollar is too strong rhetoric continues from the new US Administration, the record long hedge fund position from last month in the US Dollar continues to unwind. This is bringing more longs into bullion as the very important 100 level on the USD Cash Settle Index has now been broken, even before a dovish Fed voted 10-0 to leave rates un-changed this week. Uptrend line support is at 97 on the index and could possibly get there on this move down, which began on the very first trading day of the year.

I am now looking for gold to hit the $1250-$1270 area on this move with the GDX possibly hitting 28-30 before a correction of 15-20% in the index takes place. Sentiment in the sector has remained weak as the miners continue to climb a wall of worry, while leading the gold price higher. Many of the quality miners have been breaking out of individual consolidation patterns as well during this rebound off of strong support in the GDX at $22.50. As mentioned a few weeks ago in this column, I believe $1225 gold should get the GDX to the $25 region. A weekly close above the $25-$26 level in the GDX and $1225 in gold will further solidify the case for a major bottom being in place for the sector.

By the time this missive is posted, we will have the results of the first Non-Farms Payroll Report (NFP) of the year, published at 8:30am EST, an hour before the market opens on February 3rd. The NFP often has an oversized impact on the precious metals as traders try to price in the timing of the next Fed rate hike based on the information from the jobs created in January. The ADP number, released on Feb. 1, was very strong so chances are we could get an equally strong NFP as well. If so, after the dust settles from the computer algorithm based trades, I believe weakness should be bought in your favorite precious metal miners. The Chinese market also comes back over the weekend after being closed this week for the Chinese New Year festivities.

If you concentrate on investing in the quality miners which own or control large deposits with district scale land packages and are economic at $1200 gold, you should do very well going forward into the next decade.

By David Erfle Contributor to Kitco News

newsfeedback@kitco.com

Follow @KitcoNewsNOW

David Erfle is a 52 year old self-taught mining sector investor. He stumbled upon the mining sector in 2003 as he was looking to invest into a growing sector of the market. After researching the gains made from the 2001 bottom in the tiny gold and silver sector he became fascinated with this niche market. So much so that in 2005 he decided to sell his home and invest the entire proceeds from the sale into junior mining companies. When his account had tripled by September, 2007, he decided to quit his job as the Telecommunications Equipment Buyer at UCLA and make investing in this sector his full time job. He personally survived two bear markets, witnessed incredible sector changes and had to alter his investment philosophy numerous times in order to adapt to changing market conditions."
By Jeff Thomas, Feature Writer for Doug Caseys International Man and Strategic Wealth Preservation

In 1956, Soviet Premiere Nikita Krushchev gave a speech in Moscow to Western ambassadors and famously said, We will bury you.

A more complete version of his statement was, "About the capitalist states, it doesn't depend on you whether or not we exist. If you don't like us, don't accept our invitations, and don't invite us to come to see you. Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you!" As a consequence of his speech, the representatives of twelve NATO nations and Israel walked out of the room.

At the time, many Americans saw the statement as a nuclear threat, but its unlikely that this was the intent. In 1963 in Yugoslavia, Mister Krushchev referred to his 1956 statement, saying, I once said, We will bury you, and I got into a lot of trouble with it. Of course, we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you.

Hows that workin for ya?

Its a truism that governments tend to be both arrogant and presumptuous. They come up with changes that will benefit them, then concoct flimsy excuses as to why the changes are good for all concerned. The public swallow the pill, so the government assumes that the public believed the flimsy excuse. Over time, the government becomes convinced that their powers of persuasion are greater than they are, since they continue to get away with changes that do not benefit all.

Eventually, though, the public are stripped of their freedoms to such a degree that they lose patience with the flimsy excuses. It turns out that a significant percentage of them never fully believed them, but swallowed each pill in order to get along. In addition, eventually the publics standard of living and quality of life are also stripped away to a great enough degree that they lose patience.

Each of these is an important factor in an underlying disaffection that grows until it becomes a major force that may well be unstoppable if it blows. Amongst the people, it tends to be felt rather than seen and, of course, is felt less by those who created it, due to their ever-increasing arrogance and presumptuousness.

This is the stuff that makes revolutions. Whether they be armed conflicts or simply a refusal to vote for the status quo, as has been observed recently in the UK (Brexit), the US (the presidential election), and Italy (the referendum), governments tend to scratch their heads in disbelief when an outcome that they thought was assured, proves incorrect.

Historically, when this happens, most leaders fail to see the warning signs for what they are. They instead double-down their efforts to push through their program of freedom and wealth removal, under the assumption that the warning signs were an anomaly  a one-off glitch that wont be repeated.

When the wheels start to come off

This is the point at which divergence between a government and its people becomes manifest. In the early stages, the symptoms that the public demonstrate are not dramatic. Although there may be violent outbursts by small groups (either spontaneous or organized) the real danger is demonstrated less obviously. The average person  the housewife, the gas station attendant, the hair stylist  begins to perform small acts of civil disobedience. Whilst they may continue to pay lip service to God and country and the powers that be, they increasingly disobey laws in small ways, which increases contempt for government that may eventually turn to hatred.

Were witnessing this development in its formative stages in both the EU and the US. Each government is charging ahead at full steam with its manipulative programs, even as the people themselves have begun to dig in their heels and are voting for a reversal of events. Typically, in such instances, governments regard their people as gnats to be swatted  again going under the assumption that they are once again observing an anomaly. The people then dig in harder. In the next stage, the government redoubles its controls over those who protest and the divide increases.

The question then becomes dependent upon whether major events occur. If the government backs off a bit, the majority of people tend to do the same, but if there are major events in play, such as warfare, economic instability, food shortages, etc., they may well be the spark point that sets off the already warm powder.

In the present-day situation, we can observe the EU and US governments trying to force situations regarding loss of freedoms, diminished income, unwanted immigration and warfare upon peoples whose objections have been growing louder. It would be at this point that Mister Krushchevs prediction that, Your own working class will bury you, may begin to come to pass. If so, we can anticipate that, once the EU and US have provided the shovel, Russia and China will assist in the burial.

Most of us have not personally lived through a revolution (violent or otherwise). We tend to imagine revolution as an entire nation of people leaving their homes and workplaces and taking up arms against their government. We understandably say to ourselves, That couldnt possibly happen here, and wed be correct. However, historically, thats not the way revolutions manifest themselves. In actual fact, those who are active in any revolution tend to be small in number, often less than 5% of the population. Predictably, they tend to be young, with little to lose.

So, how has revolution been successful in so many cases where the government was better armed, better organized and had control of the supply chain?

They key lies, again, in Mister Krushchevs statement.

In 1917, the Russians that joined the riots in Petrograd were only a tiny minority of the Russian population. Their success would not have been possible, except that they had the advantage of public support, including many in the military. The average Russian believed that the rioters were right and quietly provided assistance as needed.

In 1958, a ragtag group of Cuban guerillas marched from the Sierra Maestra to Havana. On their way, they met government resistance, but, due to the support they received from the average Cuban (and some in the military), they overcame any opposition as they proceeded to the Capital. By the time they reached Santa Clara, President Batista realized that the jig was up and hightailed it out of Cuba. The small group of rebels came into Havana unopposed, to the cheers of the populace.

Twas ever thus

Of course, there are other revolutions that take far longer to resolve, such as the American revolution, but again, In each case the success of the revolution would have been highly unlikely were it not for the quiet support from the average person whose only motivation was that he was fed up with the repeated removals of freedom and wealth. (The minuteman, on his own, could achieve little, but he gained power through the backup support provided by his neighbours.)

We cannot say what the fate will be for the EU and US  whether their respective governments will find the means to ride out the building storm of disaffection by their peoples, or whether they will ultimately crumble. But, if the latter, it is likely that they will do so as a result of disaffection from within, rather than attack from without.

Jeff Thomas

International Man and Strategic Wealth Preservation

jeff.thomas1066@gmail.com
SYDNEY, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Australian new vehicle sales edged higher in January, maintaining the momentum of last year's record pace as buyers continued to flock to sport utility vehicles.

The Australian Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries' VFACTS report out on Friday showed 84,910 new vehicles were sold in January, up 0.6 percent on the same month last year. Some 1.178 million vehicles were sold in 2016, an all-time high.

Private buyers returned to the market in force, taking 7.7 percent more SUVs than in January last year, as businesses and government sales pulled back.

"Coming off the back of another record sales year, we're pleased to see a modest gain, with private buyers active in the market," said FCAI chief executive, Tony Weber.

Total sales of SUVs were up 3.2 percent on last year, while passenger cars dipped 0.8 percent continuing a long-running switch between the two.

Sales of light commercial vehicles dipped 3.9 percent after a run of strong months, while sales in the heavy vehicle market jumped 20.9 percent.

Toyota Motor Corp retained first place on the sales ladder but with a reduced share of 14.8 percent. In contrast, Mazda Motor Corp had a barnstorming month to take 11.9 percent of the market.

The Holden unit of General Motors took third spot with 8.5 percent, topping Hyundai Motor at 7.9 percent. Ford followed with 7.0 percent of the market.

(Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Eric Meijer)
China's finance ministry sells 3-month bills at 2.5921 pct - traders



SHANGHAI, Feb 3 (Reuters) - China's Ministry of Finance auctioned 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) of three-month bills in the interbank market on Friday at an average yield of 2.5921 percent, traders said. The auction yield for the three-month bills came in above the previous benchmark secondary market yield of 2.4821 percent for three-month government bills . For stories on Chinese debt issues, click on . ($1 = 6.8699 Chinese yuan)

(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)

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
HANOI, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Here's a snapshot of Vietnamese dong exchange rates in the official market and indicative SJC gold prices in Hanoi at 0140 GMT.

Feb 3 Feb 2 USD/VND mid-point 22,198 22,199

USD/VND interbank 22,640/22,645 22,635/22,640 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 37.58/38.00 37.35/37.77

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; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)
HANOI, Feb 3 (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 0409 GMT.

Feb 3 Feb 2 USD/VND mid-point 22,198 22,199 USD/VND interbank 22,625/22,630 22,635/22,640 USD/VND unofficial 23,080/23,180 22,930/22,970 SJC gold (mln dong/tael) 37.45/37.87 37.35/37.77

Interbank offered rates Overnight 4.3-4.7 4.5-5.2

1 week 4.4-5.0 4.5-5.3

1 month 4.7-5.2 4.8-5.5

3 months 4.8-5.5 5.0-5.5

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)
* 25 MidEast cargoes still to be fixed -broker

* VLCC rates fall to 4-month low

* Tanker deliveries reached a record high in Jan -BIMCO

By Keith Wallis

SINGAPORE, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Freight rates for very large crude carriers (VLCCs), which hit a four-month low on Thursday, are likely to hold around current levels or nudge higher as charterers fix the final charters in February's loading programme from the Middle East.

Brokers however said an oversupply of tonnage from a raft of new vessel deliveries and older tonnage coming free after being used for floating storage are expected to cap any gains in rates.

Around 25 VLCC cargoes from the Middle East have yet to be fixed, said Ashok Sharma, managing director of ship broker BRS Baxi in Singapore.

"That will make for a busy week next week. The potential for rates to firm is there, but there is a long list of available tonnage," he told Reuters on Friday.

Activity has increased in the last two days, with more enquiry from potential charterers improving sentiment, said a second Singapore supertanker broker, who declined to be identified because he wasn't authorised to speak to the media.

"There has been a breath of fresh air compared to the doom and gloom previously. As for rates, I think they've possibly bottomed out for the time being but I don't see much to suggest rates increasing particularly," the second broker said.

VLCC rates from the Middle East to Japan fell to around $29,671 per day on Thursday, the lowest since Oct. 4, chartering data on the Reuters Eikon terminal showed.

That is down from $69,468 per day on Dec. 20 which was an eight-month high.

"Rates have been brought down by newbuilds and ships coming out of storage plays," Sharma of BRS Baxi said.

Tanker deliveries reached a record high in January, with at least 12 new VLCCs hitting the water, said shipping industry lobby group BIMCO.

The 12 vessels totalled 3.68 million deadweight tonnes (DWT), around half the amount in tonnage terms delivered in the whole of 2014 and 2015, said BIMCO's chief shipping analyst Peter Sand in a note on Thursday.

"This record-high crude oil tanker delivery growth is troubling, and worsens the balance between supply and demand instantly due to sluggish demolition in this segment," he said.

Refinery maintenance in the Middle East and Asia - with up to 900,000 barrels per day of capacity offline in China - in the first half of this year could add to the oversupply of tonnage, according to brokers and research houses including Energy Aspects.

VLCC rates on the Middle East to Japan route dropped to around 66.50 on the Worldscale measure on Thursday from W78.25 last week.

Rates on the West Africa-to-China route fell to around W71 on Thursday against W76.75 the week earlier.

Charter rates for an 80,000-dwt Aframax tanker from Southeast Asia to East Coast Australia fell to around W105.25 on Thursday, equivalent to $10,120 per day, from about W110.50 the same day last week.

(Reporting by Keith Wallis; Editing by Biju Dwarakanath)
MILAN/FRANKFURT, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Germany's Uniper has hired Goldman Sachs to sell its stake in a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Italy, a deal that could value the whole business at 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion), three people familiar with the deal told Reuters.

Books have been opened for due diligence on OLT Offshore LNG Toscana's business and a deal could materialise in the first half of 2017, the people said, also adding that there was no guarantee that a sale would take place.

Energy firm Uniper holds a 48.24 percent stake in the OLT terminal, while Italian utility group Iren owns 49.07 percent. The remaining 2.69 percent stake is held by U.S.-based shipping group Golar LNG .

Uniper, Goldman Sachs, OLT and Iren declined to comment. Golar LNG was not immediately available for comment. ($1 = 0.9247 euros)

(Reporting by Stephen Jewkes, Christoph Steitz, Arno Schuetze, Tom Kaeckenhoff and Alexander Huebner)
LONDON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Mozambique's finance ministry said on Friday it had not approached the Paris Club of wealthy creditor nations for debt relief, the country's finance ministry said in a statement.

"The Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Mozambique wishes to deny recent rumors in the media erroneously reporting that the Republic has approached the Paris Club for debt relief," the statement said, without giving any further details.

The southern African country, one of the world's poorest said in January it would not make a coupon payment to holders of its 2023 dollar-bond. Mozambique, whose foreign obligations are roughly equivalent to its GDP, said its financial difficulties made its ability to repay debt this year "extremely limited". (Reporting by Karin Strohecker, editing by Sujata Rao)
The planned closure of 23 Philippine mines, mostly nickel producers, and the suspension of five others will affect about 1.2 million people, miners said, as some vowed to take legal action to contest the decision.

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Regina Lopez ordered the closures and suspensions on Thursday as she announced the results of a months-long audit on the country's 41 mines aimed at halting mining operations judged to have harmed the environment.

Artemio Disini, chairman of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, told a briefing that the first option for affected miners would be to appeal to President Rodrigo Duterte "before going to the courts".

"We have a total 1.2 million people affected including family members," Disini said.

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez said on Friday he would meet shortly with other cabinet members to check if they have "emergency employment programs" that could absorb workers who will lose jobs.

"My next concern is the impact on local government finances because (miners) pay a lot of taxes to local governments," Dominguez told reporters.

Enrique Fernandez, president of suspended nickel miner Eramen Minerals Inc, which has now been ordered to close, said staff levels had already fallen to 150 from more than 1,000 previously and more workers could go by the end of the month.

"The problem is the relationship between the government and the industry. The government is more of a regulator rather than a partner in development," Fernandez told Reutres.

TRADING HALT

Still largely unexplored, the Philippines is the world's top nickel ore supplier, but the mining sector contributes less than 1 percent to the overall economy.

Only 3 percent of 9 million hectares (22 million acres)identified by the state as having high mineral reserves is currently being mined, according to government data.

Ronald Recidoro from the Chamber of Mines said on Thursday that affected miners would "definitely" seek legal action if President Rodrigo Duterte denied their appeal to overturn Lopez's orders.

Duterte, who last year said the Philippines could survive without a mining industry, on Thursday threw his support behind Lopez's latest action.

Lopez "took it upon herself to be the judge and the executioner of the mining industry," said Vicente Lao who owns chromite producer Mt. Sinai Mining Exploration and Development Corp, which has also been ordered to close.

Most of the miners say they have yet to receive any official instruction from Lopez's agency.

"Accordingly, our mining operations continue," gold miner Lepanto Consolidated Mining Co, which was ordered suspended, told the stock exchange. Lepanto said it "has not violated any environmental laws."

BenguetCorp Nickel Mines Inc, a unit of Benguet Corp, said it would use "various legal options available to it to nullify the baseless closure order upon its receipt."

The Philippine Stock Exchange halted trading for one hour on Friday on shares of five miners which were either ordered shut or suspended, or their subsidiaries, including major nickel ore producers Nickel Asia Corp and Marcventures Holdings Inc.

(Reporting by Enrico dela Cruz and Manolo Serapio Jr.; Editing by Richard Pullin)
COLOMBO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The Sri Lankan rupee edged down on Friday due to dollar demand from importers and banks as foreign investors continued to sell government securities, dealers said.

Rupee forwards were active, with two-week forwards trading at 151.10/15, weaker from Thursday's close of 151.02/10.

"The rupee continues to be under pressure with import demand and foreigners exiting from bonds," a currency dealer said, requesting anonymity.

The Sri Lankan central bank's first monetary policy review for 2017 is scheduled on Tuesday.

The rupee has been under pressure due to rising imports and net selling of government securities by foreign investors, while the central bank has said defending the currency was not sensible. The central bank revised the spot rupee reference rate to a record-low of 150.50 from 150.25 earlier this week.

Foreign investors net sold 21.1 billion rupees ($140.6 million) worth of government securities in the three weeks to Jan. 25, according to latest central bank data.

Sri Lankan shares were up 0.1 percent at 6,134.38, as of 0620 GMT. Turnover stood at 234.6 million rupees ($1.56 million).

($1 = 150.5000 Sri Lankan rupees)

(Reporting by Ranga Sirilal; Editing by Shihar Aneez and Amrutha Gayathri)
(Adds details)

ZAGREB, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Croatia issued two domestic bonds, jointly worth 8.5 billion kuna ($1.23 billion), to refinance a 10-year bond maturing on Feb. 8 worth 5.5 billion kuna, one of the arrangers said on Friday.

The finance ministry priced the 3-billion-kuna 5-year bond at 99.812, yielding 2.29 percent with a coupon of 2.25 percent.

The 5.5-billion-kuna 11-year bond, was priced at 98.008, yielding 3.09 percent with a coupon of 2.875 percent.

The maturing bond has a coupon of 4.75 percent.

Demand for the fresh issues was strong with bids amounting to more than 20 billion kuna, the arranger said.

This year Croatia plans to tap the local and foreign markets with bonds worth some 30 billion kuna in order to refinance outstanding obligations and finance a budget gap of some 1.6 percent of gross domestic product.

In a recent comment the finance ministry said it was eyeing an international issue in the first quarter, probably at the end of February or early March, worth around 1.5 billion euros.

Zagreb must refinance a foreign bond worth $1.5 billion maturing in late April.

(Reporting by Igor Ilic; Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
(Adds approval of capital increases)

PARIS, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Two Japanese firms agreed to buy a combined 10 percent stake in the new company being split off from Areva for 500 million euros ($538 million) on Friday, helping a state-backed rescue of the French nuclear group.

Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) will take stakes in NewCo and Areva, whose equity has been wiped out by years of losses, said NewCo remains open to other investors.

Areva has held talks about China's National Nuclear Corporation taking a stake in NewCo, but the two sides could not agree on terms. Also on Friday, two mainly state-funded capital increases of 2 and 3 billion euros were approved by shareholders of Areva and NewCo, respectively.

Areva said NewCo's planned 3 billion capital increase will be conducted in two stages. The state will first subscribe to a reserved capital increase of 2.5 billion euros once two pre-conditions set by the European Commission have been met.

These include European Union antitrust authorities' approval for the planned sale of Areva's reactor business to fellow state-owned utility EDF , as well as a positive conclusion of nuclear regulator ASN's safety tests on an Areva-designed reactor under construction for utility EDF in Flamanville, France. In a second stage, once majority control of Areva's reactor business has been ceded to EDF, the Japanese firms will subscribe to a second capital increase of 500 million euros.

Areva SA, the legacy parent company that will remain after NewCo is split off and the reactor unit is sold, will receive a two billion euro capital increase from the French state.

Areva SA will remain responsible for the long-delayed reactor project in Olkiluoto, Finland, over which Areva and its Finnish customer TVO are suing each other for billions of euros.

It will also remain liable for any charges related to falsifications discovered in components made by its Creusot Forge foundry unit. Shareholders granted the Areva board the authority to carry out the capital increase within a period of eighteen months.

The ASN has said it will rule on Flamanville before the summer. Closure of the EDF-Areva deal is expected in the second half of 2017. ($1 = 0.9295 euros)

(Reporting by Geert De Clercq; Editing by Jane Merriman and Elaine Hardcastle)
Stephen Jacobi writes:

In Asia, there is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), a complex trade negotiation involving 16 economies, including Australia and New Zealand. RCEP also includes China but is not led by China, (as some commentators insist on believing) but by ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations). RCEP has been underway for a number of years and is grinding on at a slow place. Whether that quickens as a result of TPPs demise remains to be seen. India is a reluctant participant and the current level ambition in the negotiations is not high. RCEP at present is not an alternative to TPP, but is a useful initiative nonetheless  and could be particularly so for New Zealand if it delivers better access to Japan and India which we currently lack.

RCEP is useful but the benefits will be less than TPP.

Then there is the TPP(11) option. As of today Japan, a key player, has said TPP is meaningless without the United States, while other players including Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have expressed interest in exploring the options. Japanese reticence needs to be seen in the context of their critical security relationship with the United States. On the other hand, Japan, like New Zealand, has already ratified TPP. We need to let some quiet diplomacy proceed to see if the remaining 11 parties, or a sub-set of them, see merit in amending TPP to take account of US withdrawal. This should include deciding whether or not to strip out of the agreement those things that were essentially US demands. Its too early to jump to conclusions; the TPP ratification process has in any case another year to run.

A lot of what is in there is due to the US so stripping out their demands would not be a quick process. And will Japan and Canada concede much on tariffs without incraesed access to the US to match? I see little chance or value in TPP less the US  but again better than nothing.

New Zealand has been seeking to obtain a bilateral FTA with the United States since the turn of the century. Two problems have bedevilled that effort: first, a poor political and security relationship, which has now been fixed, thanks to efforts over years by certain politicians and diplomats on both sides, supported by leaders from business and the wider community. And second, on the economic front, the small size of the New Zealand economy and the perceived  if highly exaggerated  risk which our agricultural sector poses to American farmers. This will make it difficult for New Zealand to get ahead in the queue and may make a purely bilateral agreement ultimately no easier to negotiate than TPP. While we simply do not know the detail of the new Presidents trade policy, he is not likely to do us favours on agriculture and may seek to go beyond the TPP outcomes on issues like investment and intellectual property. Nor is likely to be any more flexible on allowing professionals to work temporarily in the US as many services exporters especially in the tech sector would wish. There is much irony here  TPPs lengthy negotiation was in part because the other 11 partners were seeking to counter the full extent of American ambition across a range of issues as well as a wider framework of trade rules for the region. This was largely achieved: the final TPP text was a carefully structured consensus, which represented a balance of interests of all parties. For New Zealand TPP delivered substantial benefits with little change to existing policies, even if we did not achieve all we hoped.

This is key. TPP allowed us to resist most of the US demands and the final agreement meant relatively minor changes to our existing laws and policies. In a bilateral we would have very little ability to do this, and I doubt a bilateral would be of net benefit to NZ.

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Starting Monday, Korean nationals can travel to the United States without a visa for stays of up to 90 days. Those who wish to travel to the U.S. via the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) must possess an electronic passport, and apply for permission to travel online -- at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov -- prior to the trip.

Those who wish to enter the U.S. for reasons other than travel, such as study or work, are still bound to applying for the relevant visas from the U.S. Embassy.

Further information on traveling to the U.S. without a visa can be found in the guide website created by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade -- vwpkorea.go.kr.

In a reciprocal agreement, U.S. citizens who wish to travel to Korea can stay without visas for up to 90 days, up from the current 30 days, the Ministry of Justice said.
Corker shows support for Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch

FEBRUARY 2, 2017 at 6:36 p.m.





U.S. Senator Bob Corker met with Judge Neil Gorsuch today in his Capitol Hill office. Image courtesy of Bob Corker.





WASHINGTON  Following a meeting with Judge Neil Gorsuch today in his Capitol Hill office, U.S. Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) announced his support for President Donald J. Trumps nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court.



I could not be more impressed with Judge Gorsuch and enthusiastically support his nomination, said Corker. He is an outstanding choice, and after meeting with him today, it is very clear why the Senate unanimously confirmed him to the federal bench in 2006. Our next Supreme Court justice will have a lasting impact on the direction of our country, and I have full confidence in Judge Gorsuchs dedication to upholding the Constitution and applying the rule of law in a fair and independent manner. I am pleased that President Trump has nominated such a well-respected and qualified individual, and I look forward to voting to confirm Judge Gorsuch as our next U.S. Supreme Court justice. Published February 2, 2017


















Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday he would issue an executive order for military support in his fight against illicit drugs, which he said was a national security threat and he would "kill more" people if he had to.

The mercurial leader ruled out declaring martial law and said he did not need extra powers, but wanted to bring the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) into his drugs war because he could no longer trust law enforcement agencies.

All police operations in the drug crackdown were suspended on Monday due to deep-rooted corruption. Duterte has placed an anti-drugs agency in charge of the campaign and has said he wants the armed forces to play a supportive role.

"I still have to write the, whether it is a proclamation or an executive order, but I've taken in the AFP and raised the issue of drugs as a national security threat, so that I can call on the armed forces to assist," he said in a speech in Davao.

"I have limited warm bodies but so many wars to fight," he said.

The former city mayor said the police and the justice ministry-run National Bureau of Investigation could not be relied upon and promised "a cleansing, a purge".

Duterte did not say what the remit of the military would be in the drugs campaign, or give any indication of the number of troops that would be involved, but said they were necessary.


French presidential candidate Francois Fillon attempted to fight back on Thursday as pressure mounted on him to quit the race with some lawmakers from his own side urging him to drop his scandal-tainted bid to save the conservatives from defeat.

With opinion polls showing the conservatives that their candidate may be fatally damaged, some senior members of The Republicans urged him to pull out now to give the party time to find a replacement who can save them from defeat.Fillon, 62, denied wrongdoing after Le Canard Enchaine newspaper reported the former prime minister had paid his wife hundreds of thousands of euros for work she may not have done.

Falling poll ratings since then will benefit far right leader Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron, a former investment banker running as an independent.

A daily IFOP poll of voting intentions for the April 23 first round showed Fillon down one percentage point since Wednesday to be level with Macron. Either candidate would comfortably beat Le Pen in the May 7 runoff, the poll suggests.

"I think our candidate must stop," Alain Houpert, a senator close to Fillon's former rival for the conservative ticket, Nicolas Sarkozy, told Public Senat television on Wednesday.

France 2 television said it would broadcast later on Thursday extracts of a 2007 interview of Fillon's Welsh-born wife Penelope telling Britain's Daily Telegraph that she had never worked as his assistant.

"I have never been actually his assistant or anything like that. I don't deal with his communication," the newspaper reported on Thursday citing the Penelope interview.

She added that she had done "bits and pieces" for him in his home constituency without specifying.
Lee Young-ae doubles as modern-day art history instructor Seo Ji-yoon and the Joseon-era artist Saimdang in "Saimdang, Memoir of Colors." / Courtesy of SBS



By Park Jin-hai

The new SBS period drama "Saimdang, Memoir of Colors" had to wait two years to air since the first shooting took place in 2015.

The show fell victim to the chilly Korea-Sino relationship following the Korean government's announcement that it would deploy the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on its territory to protect the country from North Korean provocations.

The drama starring Lee Young-ae, heroine of the 2003 drama "Dae Jang Geum," which had global success, is the actress's comeback project after a 14-year hiatus, drawing much anticipation from Asian fans. The soap opera is said to be the next "Dae Jang Geum."

But after some initial hype and much publicity, the drama has fast been losing its appeal.

The initial two episodes posted relatively good viewership of 15.5 percent and 16.3 percent, topping viewership among dramas in the same time slot by a large margin.

However, the third episode slipped to 13 percent and then its fourth episode to 12.3 percent, overtaken by KBS's workplace comedy "Good Manager."

It is still too early to talk about whether the drama will be a flop or not, but the 20 billion won production seems to lack fresh elements to lure viewers.

From the onset, the drama  the story of Shin Saimdang, a Joseon-era artist and writer  looked like it was about actress Lee, by Lee, and for Lee.

When the drama had its premiere, the actress looked as beautiful as her earlier days on screen. But the drama seems outdated.

Its main time-slip element, which could have been fresh if it was aired last year, looks too familiar, after recent dramas like "Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo" and "Guardian: The Lonely and Great God."

Apart from product placements spotted here and there from the first episode, including a juice mixer and a restaurant, its story leans too much on fortunate events lacking reasonable explanations.

Lee plays a double role of a modern art history instructor So Ji-yoon and the Joseon-era artist Saimdang herself.

Modern-day So, who has done all the chores of her academic adviser to land a professorial position at university, loses favor and her adviser kicks her out of an art forum in Italy.

But she happens to receive an old book from a street vendor. Then, while on her way to find a place referred to in the book, she finds a mirror.

The mirror suddenly breaks and reveals a chest. Inside she finds a painting of a woman who looks like her and what is believed to be Saimdang's diary. The host gives her the painting and the book, saying they are meant to belong to her.

While she is having a hard time interpreting the old script in the book, a neighbor who teaches Chinese writing comes to help her. Although it is fantasy, the way it was presented has left viewers at a loss.

Lee's acting did not help. The actress, who debuted in the 1993 drama "How's Your Husband?" has never been a particularly good actress. Even in the mega hit "Dae Jang Geum" which lifted her to pan-Asian stardom, her acting was not particularly good.

"Saimdang" seems to be leaning on star power only, but this is not enough. Her performance fails to engage viewers in her character.

Lee's other role, as the Joseon-era Saimdang, did not prove compelling, either.

Because the series was completed before its premiere, making it impossible for changes to reflect viewers' opinions, the future looks distinctly gloomy.
By Nam Hyun-woo



Shinhan Financial Group is facing a setback in its bid to fill the top post at its banking unit, as favored candidate Wi Sung-ho was involved in an intra-group legal dispute seven years ago, a fiasco the group wants to forget.



According to sources, Friday, Shinhan Financial Group is paying attention to an accusation filed by Financial Justice Solidarity (FJS) against Wi, who is now the CEO of Shinhan Card, over perjury regarding the Shinhan debacle _ a feud between former Shinhan Group Chairman Ra Eung-chan and group CEO Shin Sang-hoon.



In its complaint filed with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' office, the civic group claimed that Wi gave false testimony regarding the appointment of a lawyer who defended Ra during a bribery scandal involving the latter and Park Yeon-cha.



The FJS also said that "Wi tried to cover up Ra's payment of 300 million won ($265,000) bribe to Lee Sang-deuk, former President Lee Myung-bak's elder brother," adding that "Wi should not become chief of Shinhan Bank."



The legal case erupted when Shinhan Bank took Shin to court over embezzlement charges in 2010. In an interview, however, Shin said Ra was also involved and a dispute between the two exposed a series of corruption allegations.



Back then, Wi was serving as the vice president of the group, a close aide to Ra. Wi last month was nominated as a candidate to become the chairman of the group, but withdrew saying "Shinhan Bank CEO Cho Yong-byoung should become the group's chairman." As Cho became the sole candidate for the group chairman, suspicions rose that Wi was seeking the Bank CEO post and now he is seen as the most prominent candidate to succeed Cho.



The group's chairman recommendation committee already dropped hints regarding the CEO appointment that Shinhan believes following its hierarchy is "stable" for the group, meaning the group's No. 3 Shinhan Card chief should become the No. 2 Shinhan Bank CEO.



Observers said that they are not sure how the accusation will affect Wi; but they are certain that outgoing Group Chairman Han Dong-woo is not happy about it.



During his tenure, Han, who has been neutral over the dispute, exerted his utmost efforts to contain fallout from the fiasco. Current Bank CEO Cho's nomination was also attributable to his neutral stance during the fight.



Shinhan Group is trying to distance itself from the accusation. "The civic group's claim is a revival of an outdated row and we have found that the claims were groundless as the plaintiffs were acquitted by a court," an official at Shinhan Group said.



"Wi has already gone through verification during the race for group chairman appointment. The question is why the civic group came up with the claims now, stating 'Wi should not be Shinhan Bank CEO,' not 'Wi should take responsibility for illegalities,'" he said.



The group will hold a committee meeting to appoint the new Shinhan Bank CEO this month.




Jongno Books is located in the basement of Jongno Tower connected to Jonggak Station. / Courtesy of Jongno Books



By Kwon Mee-yoo

Jongno Books has returned.

Located in the basement of Jongno Tower connected to Jonggak station on subway line 1, the bookstore made people nostalgic about the iconic six-floor Chongno Book Center which was originally situated in the heart of Jongno and served as a cultural gathering place in Seoul decades ago.

The brand-new bookstore adopted a "retailtainment" style to embrace the younger generation. About half of the area is taken by coffee shops and bakeries and the bookshelves take up a rather smaller portion of the store.

Jongno Books has about 100,000 books, which is about one fourth of the 430,000 books of nearby Youngpoong Bookstore. It displays best-selling books in more prominent positions while less popular genres such as humanities and classics take up small bookcases.

The highlight of the bookstore would be its long reading table and five individual reading nooks, where people can comfortably read books before check out.

"I like the reading space, but there are only five of them and I had to wait a while until it became vacant," Kim Ji-won, a 31-year-old office worker, said. "There are cafes in the bookstore, so I can spend hours here, browsing books and having drinks."





Chongno Book Center was a popular meet-up in the 1990s in downtown Seoul. / Korea Times file



Controversy of legitimacy

Though their English name is different, the two bookstores' Korean names are the same, "Jongno Seojeok," and it sparked controversy over the new bookstore's legitimacy.

Jang Deok-yeon, president of the original Chongno Book Center, released a statement in January, soon after the opening of Jongno Books. He claimed that the new bookstore stole the name and history of the Chongno Book Center, the oldest bookstore with a 95-year history.

The Chongno Book Center was founded in 1907 by the Korean Religious Tract Society during the late Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910). It was one of the major bookstores in Korea and had become a popular meeting point in downtown Seoul in the 1980s and '90s. However, the rise of modern bookstore chains such as Kyobo Book Center and Youngpoong Bookstore and change of the book sales market amid the growth of the internet made the old-fashioned Chongno Book Center fall behind competition. The bookshop went out of business in 2002.

"The authentic Chongno Book Center has a long history with the pride of serving the country's publishing and reading culture," Jang said. "Jongno Books is deceiving the public as if it inherited the Chongno Book Center, appropriating the name, the logo and even the phone number. In fact, it has nothing to do with the historical store that people remember."

Seo Bun-do, the CEO of Jongno Books, is a former executive from the Youngpoong Bookstore. He said the new Jongno Books is restored to create the cultural sympathy bonded by books. "I didn't say we have a history of 95 years and tried to clarify that we are different from the original one," Seo said.
A photograph of a multi-course temple food set, Hee, available at the Balwoo Gongyang restaurant in downtown Seoul.

/ Courtesy of Balwoo Gongyang



By Kim Ji-soo

Chef Kim Ji-young of Balwoo Gongyang, who learned temple food from Ven. Sunjae.

/ Courtesy of Balwoo Gongyang





Although temple food is respected and loved within Korea, its broader popularity is another question. But after Balwoo Gongyang received one Michelin star in the first Michelin Seoul Guide released last year, it is safe to say temple food may be on its way to becoming the next big thing. The restaurant, located across the street from Jogye Temple in downtown Seoul, has been fully booked since the Michelin Guide's first Seoul edition was published last November, making short-notice reservations next to impossible.

"There was a sharp increase in reservations the month after the Michelin Guide Seoul was published, but reservations are back to normal, maybe slightly higher," said Eugene Kim, chief manager of the temple food restaurant.

The restaurant is operated by the largest Buddhist sect in the country, the Jogye Order's Cultural Corps of Korean Buddhism. This means the restaurant is less concerned with financial returns than with retaining the essence of temple food. The restaurant has 11 private rooms for groups. All in all, the restaurant has a capacity of 58 customers.

The restaurant offers four multi-course meals  the Seon, the Won, the Maeum and the Hee  which changes according to the four seasons. The Seon, priced at 30,000 won and available at lunch, features 20 dishes. The Won, priced at 45,000 won, features 21 dishes. And the Maeum, priced at 65,000 won, features 22 dishes. The Hee course, for 95,000 won, is available only through reservation and must be paid in advance; cancellations and refunds are not available for this meal.

All these multi-course meals start with porridge, move onto starters, then the main meal of rice wrapped in a lotus leaf with soybean paste soup, and dessert.

Meanwhile, the cold noodle dish  one of the most popular dishes at the restaurant and a favorite of the current leader of the Jogye Order, Ven. Jaseungis also included in the Won, Maeum and Hee options. As a course set menu, the Won starts with millet porridge and vegetables with cilantro, deep-fried mushrooms in chili pepper paste among appetizers. Following the starters is the signature cold noodle dish whose sauce is made by sauteeing shiitake mushrooms in perilla seed oil, ground chili pepper and soy sauce and then adding pureed Korean pears, mustard and vinegar. Then the course ensues with sticky rice wrapped in a lotus leaf with soybean paste soup and concludes with desserts of rice cakes and tea. It seems like a lot of food, but is not heavy on the stomach.





The interior of the restaurant. / Courtesy of Balwoo Gongyang



The restaurant uses local organic ingredients as much as it can; for instance, it uses shiitake mushrooms from Geoje Island for the cold noodles, as well as tofu from Tongdo Temple in Yangsan, South Gyeongsang Province, and buckwheat noodles from Bongpyeong, Gangwon Province, in various dishes.

Chef Kim Ji-young works with the other chefs in preparing the temple food. Kim, 44, studied for a long time under Ven. Sunjae, a designated temple food master and culinary teacher.

"I think one of the restaurant's appeals is that people who come here can taste food that is made the same way as in the old days," Kim said. "We had this 20-something American visitor from Tennessee who told us our food tasted like the food cooked by his grandmother," she recalled.

She said she is happy about the Michelin star as it may contribute to popularizing temple food. Eugene Kim, chief manager of the temple food restaurant, agreed that the Michelin recognition will enhance attention and understanding on temple food but that there are some concerns that the Michelin recognition may shift focus to gastronomy rather than the essence of temple food. Temple food focuses on eating at the right time, eating seasonal food, eating proportionately and avoiding meat. Ven. Sunjae, chef Kim's teacher, has said that temple food is to purify the body through eating healthy natural ingredients so the eater may also purify the mind and gain wisdom and compassion and its principle applies to both the practitioner and the lay person alike. The name of the restaurant, Balwoo Gongyang, refers to an alms bowl meal or the practice of eating Buddhist meals. The word "balwoo" is a bowl with a moderate amount of rice and vegetables, and "gongyang" refers to eating.

After opening in 2009, the restaurant went through a renewal in 2016. In the same year, the restaurant received two awards in addition to the Michelin star  a Muslim-friendly restaurant recognition by the Korea Tourism Organization in August and the Good Design Award at the Chicago Design Awards in December.

Temple food in Korea does not use meat or any of the five ingredients commonly used in Korean dishes: garlic, green onions, leeks, wild chives and Chinese squill. Thus, some diners may find the cuisine at Balwoo Gongyang milder-flavored than other Korean dishes, which are often hot and spicy.

"We use traditional pastes, including soybean paste and red chili pepper paste, as well as soybean sauce, rice honey and vinegar, along with seasonal ingredients," Kim said. When told that her shiitake cold noodles tasted fantastic, she attributed the taste to winter Korean pears. Asked why the cold noodle dish is not available a la carte but rather as part of multi-course meals, both the chef and the chief manager said the rooms-only structure of the restaurant and how the chief chef Kim is able to produce the standardized fantastic taste remain challenges.

Chef Kim prepares the dishes based largely on Ven. Sunjae's recipes; she follows the ingredients and steps in the recipes but usually determines the cooking time or method herself.

"I too used to follow the standardized recipes when I cooked, but now I watch the ingredients cook to see how much more time is needed for them to, say, stew or fry. It is actually paying attention to the ingredients, being one with the ingredients and the food I am making," Kim said.

The most important lesson she learned from her teacher, Ven. Sunjae, is that food is about the care and energy given to the ingredients, which is retained and delivered to the eater. "It is like the ingredients and I are not two but one," Kim said.
Cheong Wa Dae said Kim vowed to continue as agreed with the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery here and to maintain a close relationship to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat.

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis arrived in South Korea, Thursday on his first overseas trip since taking office less than two weeks ago.

In his meeting with acting president Hwang Kyo-ahn, Mattis delivered a message from U.S. President Donald Trump. "I talked to President Trump and he wanted to make a very clear statement about the priority that we place on the alliance between our two nations," he said. "Our new administration inherits a very strong, prestigious relationship between our two countries. And it's our commitment to make it even stronger, especially in the face of provocations that you face from the North."

Hwang said there is a need to change North Korea's "strategic calculus" through international sanctions and pressure. "No one will be able to drive a wedge between the Seoul-Washington alliance and that the U.S. will always be with South Korea," Mattis replied.

The last time a U.S. defense secretary made South Korea his first destination was when William Cohen was appointed in 1997. Most have chosen the Middle East or Europe.

Mattis told reporters shortly before landing in South Korea that the Trump administration considers South Korea and Japan longstanding allies in the Asian region and a top priority.


Acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn, right, and U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis shake hands during a meeting at the Government Complex in Seoul, Thursday. / Joint press corps



U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis sees his ongoing visit to South Korea as a "listening trip" aimed at having a chance to learn what its allies think and say on key issues of mutual concerns, a diplomatic source said Friday.

Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, arrived in South Korea on Thursday for a two-day stay. This is his first overseas trip since taking office, and he plans to leave for Japan after completing his itinerary here.

"We heard that he told his aides and Korean counterparts that his visit to Korea this time is a listening trip. He came here not to talk but to listen," the source close to the matter told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.

"We were also asked by his side to minimize press events or media exposure, while he is here in accordance with the nature of the visit, which is to listen to what allies have to say," he added.

Upon his arrival in Seoul on Thursday, Mattis held meetings with South Korea's Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn and National Security Adviser Kim Kwan-jin. During the meetings, Mattis is said to have emphasized that "alliance will continue to take defensive measures" in response to North Korean threats.












The cast of the 6th annual Rocky Horror shadowcast performance, which was produced by Seoul Players, are on stage after their final show at Club Freebird near Hongik University, western Seoul, Oct. 30 last year.

/ Courtesy of Seoul Players



By Celeste Kriel

Seoul Players have chosen two plays by local writers for the second round of their One Act Play Project after they made an open call for various kinds of storytellers from playwrights to poets who wanted to see their stories adapted to the stage, and are now seeking talented actors and actresses to audition for the selected plays.

The English-language theater company, based in Seoul, was looking to expand its pool of writers, performers and storytellers this year to better represent the diverse experiences and stories of the expat community.

Kim Schroeder, a Seoul-based actress and recent addition to the Seoul Players board, stressed their push for diversity this year.

"We were really trying to get people from different groups who have unique stories to share, maybe people who are writers but just don't know how to access these sorts of opportunities," Schroeder said.

Board member Kevin Lambert highlighted the collaborative process as one of the key differences in the production of this year's plays.

"We have so much creativity as expat thespians. We also wanted to work with short-story writers who have maybe toyed with the idea of adapting their stories to the play format but have had cold feet about making it into a play. That is where the collaborative process will be valuable," he said.

Seoul Players said both plays will be workshopped midway through the rehearsal process and performed late May. Auditions will be on Saturday and Sunday, February 4 and 5 at Sinabros Dance Place near Sadang Station from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both days. "We are looking for actors of all ages, races, nationalities, genders, physical types, and experience levels."

The Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast production, produced by Seoul Players last Halloween, is an example of the caliber of productions and casting the company is striving for.

"It was one of the most socially, racially and sexually diverse casts we've ever had the pleasure of performing and I think it showed through the performance," said Christopher Zaczek, a Seoul-based actor and board member of Seoul Players.

"I think for the audience it was gratifying to see that diversity represented on stage. Rocky is all about the breaking down of social mores and the ability to express freedom from judgment, freedom of expression and freedom of choice."

Visit facebook.com/SeoulPlayers to get involved in the Seoul Players expat thespian community behind the scenes or for more information on auditioning for the One Act Play Project which take place this weekend.
Reporters in front of the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in central Seoul wait for special investigators who arrived this morning to execute a search warrant to gather evidence on the influence-peddling scandal involving President Park Geun-hye, Friday. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul





By Kim Bo-eun

The special prosecution team investigating the influence-peddling scandal involving President Park Geun-hye failed to search Cheong Wa Dae, Friday, after officials refused to allow them access to the premises.

The independent counsel's investigators presented a search warrant at the presidential office's reception area at 10 a.m., but officials denied them entry, saying the areas were national security zones.

The law states that in order to conduct a search of a place that contains military secrets, investigators need permission from officials in charge of it.

Special investigators arrive at Cheong Wa Dae on Friday morning. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

The investigators left at around 3 p.m., five hours after confronting the officials, who said they would instead submit documents requested by the counsel team.

"We regret that Cheong Wa Dae did not allow the search," counsel team spokesman Lee Kyu-chul said at a press briefing.

He added that the team will send a request to acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, asking for cooperation with the search.

"Under current laws, we have no way to enforce a search of Cheong Wa Dae if it refuses to cooperate," Lee said.

It remains to be seen if the counsel team will attempt a search again, or accept documents submitted by the presidential office.

This is because there is a contentious clause in the law which states that if the search is not considered harmful to the national interest, it cannot be refused.

The counsel team and Cheong Wa Dae will likely clash over whether the search can be considered "harmful to the national interest."

"The document from Cheong Wa Dae objecting to the search did not state exactly how searching the presidential quarters undermines the national interest," Lee said.

Although a search warrant is usually valid for a week, the counsel received court approval for the warrant to be valid through the end of the month, considering the likelihood of Cheong Wa Dae refusing to comply with the search.

Special investigators arrive at Cheong Wa Dae on Friday morning. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

The team wanted to look for evidence of suspicions involving Park, including her alleged acceptance of bribes from conglomerates and her whereabouts on the day of the Sewol ferry sinking in April 2014.

They also sought to check on medical treatment she allegedly received at the presidential office from the doctor of her confidant Choi Soon-sil. The team had aimed to secure evidence before questioning Park face-to-face next week.

In applying for the search warrant, investigators stated President Park is suspected of having taken bribes. This is in addition to the charges of abuse of power and extortion she already faces.

Park is suspected of having ordered Samsung and other conglomerates to provide large amounts of funds to Choi in exchange for business favors.

Whether Park shared financial gains with Choi or not, she can still face bribery charges _ as even if she did not take any of the money, third-party bribery charges can be applied.

"The counsel team attempting a search with a warrant stating the President as a suspect goes against the Constitution, as the impeachment ruling has yet to be made. Therefore it is regrettable," Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Jung Youn-kuk said in a statement after the investigators left.

"The team said it would minimize the number of places subject to the search, but it presented 10 warrants _ which included most of the quarters within the presidential office, including those containing military secrets," he added.

Last October, the prosecution's special investigation team looking into the scandal also made a failed attempt to search Cheong Wa Dae, as the presidential office refused to allow it, submitting requested documents instead.
By Kim Bo-eun

The weekly candlelit protests demanding President Park Geun-hye to resign over her involvement in the influence-peddling scandal will resume today, after a break last week due to the Lunar New Year holiday.

Protestors will call on the Constitutional Court to make a ruling on Park's impeachment within this month, amid attempts by her lawyers to delay it.

Park's defense attorneys have continued to request the court summon large numbers of witnesses, and have also threatened to give up defense, as a means to extend the impeachment trial.

Participants will gather at 2 p.m. in front of the Seoul Central District Court in Seocho-dong, southern Seoul and march to the adjacent Samsung Electronics headquarters, demanding the arrest of Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong.

Last month, the independent counsel investigating the scandal requested an arrest warrant for Lee, over allegations that Samsung Group provided bribes for Choi in return for business favors, but the court denied approval.

At 5 p.m. the rally will move to Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul, where some participants will deliver speeches urging a swift ruling by the Constitutional Court, the arrest of heads of conglomerates embroiled in the scandal and the resignation of Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who is acting president.

Afterward, groups of protestors will march towards Cheong Wa Dae, the Constitutional Court and Hwang's residence, which are all nearby.

"This week's rally, which is the first one after the Lunar New Year holiday, will be the starting point of calling for the impeachment to take place in February," organizers of the rally said Thursday.

"If the impeachment is not concluded within this month, we plan to hold a nationwide rally Feb. 25, which marks the fourth year since Park took office."

This will be the 14th rally since the weekly Saturday protests began Oct. 29, after the scandal erupted.

Meanwhile, a pro-Park rally will also take place at City Hall at 2 p.m.

"Both rallies will take place at a similar time and adjacent location," police said, requesting the parties to "respect each other's freedom of expression and hold a peaceful rally."

Police warned against illegal acts such as violence or damaging property.
Hwang Kyo-ahn



By Kim Hyo-jin



The sudden withdrawal of former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from the presidential race has left the conservative bloc adrift with no outstanding candidate in opinion polls.



While acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn is the only potential contender garnering double-digit support among conservative presidential hopefuls, he has remained silent over whether he will join the race, and this uncertainty is making minor candidates vie to expand their shares.



The ruling Saenuri Party, which has been an underdog in the burgeoning race due to the fallout of the presidential corruption scandal, is actively wooing Hwang to join the party.





Yoo Seong-min



In Myung-jin, the party leader said Thursday, "We'd like him to become our candidate if he is up for the race." Rep. Hong Moon-jong said Friday, "Once he makes up his mind, his approval ratings will jump twice."



At the same time, criticism is rising toward Hwang's ambiguous attitude. Cho Jin-man, a political science professor at Duksung Women's University, forecast that the longer he stays unclear, the worse influence it will have on the conservative bloc.



"If he sticks to so-called strategic ambiguity, it will deprive other conservative runners of a chance to gain momentum," he said.



Rep. Yoo Seong-min, a presidential hopeful from the conservative Bareun Party, urged Hwang to clarify his intention, saying, "The public wants to go through a sufficient verification process for a candidate. He should quit the prime minister post now if he hopes to join the race."





Kim Moo-sung



Yoo, who has the second-highest support rating among potential conservative contenders, said he would agree on a single conservative candidate with a Saenuri Party hopeful, if it comes up with one, to unite the conservative bloc.



Meanwhile, Ban dropping out also shed light on Rep. Kim Moo-sung and former Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon of the Bareun Party, who earlier announced their intention not to run in the election.



"There are opinions in the party that Kim and Oh might have to reconsider their decision," Rep. Joo Ho-young, the party's floor leader, said. "For them, it might not be easy to overturn their earlier decision but their positions can be flexible if public calls grow."





Oh Se-hoon



Kim, former Saenuri Party chairman, pulled out of the presidential race last year, saying he will take responsibility for the crisis in the conservative bloc triggered by President Park Geun-hye's corruption scandal. Oh gave up his bid in January, noting he was not ready for the top elected position.



The idea of Kim and Oh coming back came out of concerns that the party's primary may fail to draw public attention and boost its presidential candidate. The Bareun Party had sought to either have Ban involved in the primary or join hands with him later.



Amid growing speculation, Kim confirmed his decision not to run in the race in a message sent to reporters.



"It has been reported that I might join the race, quoting my close aide. But I'd like to make sure such a remark is not based on consultation with me and there's no change in my decision."
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis and Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo salute during an honor guard in front of the defense ministry building in central Seoul, Friday, before having talks over the two countries' joint efforts to counter North Korea's nuclear threats. / Korea Times photo by Hong In-kee



By Jun Ji-hye

Defense chiefs of South Korea and the United States reaffirmed Friday their determination to strengthen joint deterrence measures against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

During their first-ever talks since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump, Defense Minister Han Min-koo and his U.S. counterpart James Mattis agreed to continue to improve the Seoul-Washington alliance with the latter vowing to continue providing South Korea with extended deterrence.

The talks took place at the Ministry of National Defense in central Seoul. Mattis visited Seoul for two days in his first overseas trip since taking office less than two weeks ago, and left for Japan Friday afternoon.

Extended deterrence refers to Washington's stated commitment to defend its ally by mobilizing all military capabilities  nuclear and conventional  to deal with the North's provocations.

Han and Mattis also reaffirmed the need to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here this year as planned despite protest from China and Russia.

"The two top defense officials jointly assessed North Korea's growing threats including its leader's claim that the country has entered the final stages for test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile," the ministry said in a press release. "The two exchanged various opinions on the security situation in North Korea and on the possibility of future provocations."

Kim made such a claim during his New Year address, raising military tension here.

Sharing the need to respond to any North Korean provocations effectively and overwhelmingly, Han and Mattis agreed to continue to discuss whether Washington will regularly deploy strategic assets, such as nuclear-capable bombers, to South Korea as part of measures to enhance its extended deterrence.












By Lee Kyung-min

Concern is growing over the short-lived momentum of a boycott movement business groups, Friday. This follows the steady sales increase of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser (ORB), the manufacturer of a deadly humidifier disinfectant. According to government statistics, 143 victims reportedly died due to its products but civic groups claim the death toll exceeded 1,000.

According to recent data from Gmarket, the largest e-commerce operator here, the online sales of home consumer goods, including ORB products, are on steady increase after hitting rock bottom in May, when public antipathy toward the Korean unit of the U.K.-based Reckitt Benckiser was at its peak.

The sales of home products in general increased 17 percent and that of detergent and fabric softener increased 8 and 5 percent, respectively.

Among them, ORB products are ranked among steady selling brands, according to the data. The specific sales figures have yet to be finalized, according to the operator.

The sales of the business bouncing back, is regrettable but is a repeated phenomenon, according to a consumer rights agency advocate group official.

"Ethical consumption is a growing social movement, with its significance ever increasing," an official of the Korea National Council of Consumer Organization, said.

"In the case of ORB, as well as others, consumers need to increase their sensitivity of empathy towards the victims. It is not only a warning to the businesses that fail to uphold certain moral standards but a lesson that we need to instill in ourselves as consumers," she added.
Mattis' visit indicates a full-court press on China



U.S. President Donald Trump's top defense official, James Mattis, made a two-day visit to Seoul, the first stop of his first overseas trip, and then continued to Japan. The retired Marines general did what had been expected  giving South Korea assurances in the form of extended deterrence guarantees against North Korea's nuclear threat and confirming the deployment of the U.S. missile interceptor, the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.



The U.S. secretary of defense's visit is worth a broader review in the context of Trump's policy toward Asia, which will surely be more assertive than that of his predecessor Barack Obama's meek Pivot to Asia initiative.



Before a meeting with his Korean counterpart Han Min-koo, Mattis dropped a hint of what is to come, when he said the U.S. intended to expand "trilateral venues of cooperation with Japan, where the mutual defense of the three countries is best served through teamwork."



The U.S. customarily emphasizes the importance of cooperation between the three countries (the U.S. serves as glue to link the two estranged neighbors) but has stopped short of openly vowing to increase such channels.



China, of course, is the target of Mattis' remark. Just how the U.S. proposes to increase the three countries' joint pressure tactic on Beijing remains to be seen, but one early result is cleart  greater U.S. tension.



As a result, the region could be in for a shakeup, worsening Korea-China relations. It is not necessarily all negative for Seoul  exports to Beijing, our biggest trading partner, may suffer, but a solution to its biggest security threat, the North's missile and nuclear weapons, may be found in the process.



Mattis made the U.S. position a bit clearer when he said, " we stand with our allies. Our alliance is a linchpin of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region." "Linchpin" was the key word that belied Washington's intention to raise the Korea-Japan relationship to an alliance and use this axis to turn the screws on China. It is an open question whether such an effort will bring reconciliation to the two countries whose relationship has dipped to a new low.



Trump has already served notice on China about a change to business as usual. During his campaign, he portrayed China as thriving by robbing Americans and threatened to slap heavy tariffs on its exports. After his election, he talked with the Taiwanese president and showed a willingness to stop respecting Beijing's sacrosanct one-China policy.



China and the U.S. will surely clash over a wide range of issues  freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, THAAD deployment, Taiwan, North Korea, Senkaku and others. Korea would find itself in the middle of some of these conflicts moving into unchartered waters to face big tsunami-like geopolitical challenges. For this voyage, it would be helpful to stick to some basic rules and skills  the rock-solid alliance with the U.S. and imaginative diplomacy.




Samsung Electronics' mobile business President Koh Dong-jin speaks during a press conference at the company's office in Seocho, southern Seoul, Jan. 23. / Courtesy of Samsung Electronics



By Kang Seung-woo

Samsung Electronics may opt for Japanese-made batteries for its upcoming flagship Galaxy S8 smartphones in the wake of the Galaxy Note 7 battery fiasco.

According to the world's largest smartphone maker, Friday, it is reviewing the possibility of using lithium-ion polymer batteries manufactured by Japan's Murata Manufacturing.

Last year, Murata acquired Sony Energy Devices Corp., a battery maker for smartphones, tablets and digital cameras.

Following the Note 7 disaster, in which the company scrapped the jumbo phones three months after its release due to a battery fire problem, the Korean tech giant has sought to add another battery supplier to avoid the risk of future failures.

Last month, Samsung blamed the poorly designed and manufactured batteries for the problem that caused some of the devices to catch fire. Its affiliate Samsung SDI and China's Amperex Technology rolled out the batteries. Some 80 percent came from the former and the rest from the latter.

However, Samsung said that it has not decided anything yet regarding whether it will source batteries from the Japanese company or exclude the Chinese manufacturer from its battery supplier list for the S8.

With the S8 expected to debut in late March or early April, it has been established that Samsung SDI will still remain a battery provider for the next-generation smartphone, according to market watchers.

In addition, there has been speculation that Samsung may use batteries made by LG Chem, a sister company of its rival LG Electronics, but it seems unlikely for the S8.

Industry observers pointed out that Samsung is expected to sign a supply deal with Murata, given that it has shown interest in Sony's lithium-ion batteries.

Plus, they said that no follow-up action from Amperex Technology after the Note 7's production termination may mean that Samsung will change its supplier _ a sharp contrast to Samsung SDI that promised to spend 150 billion won to improve its battery quality.

However, Samsung said last month that it had no plan to take legal action against the suppliers.

The Sony battery business also supplies its products to Apple and other Chinese smartphone companies.
President Park Geun-hye marked her 65th birthday with a bowl of noodles for lunch with such top aides as remain out of jail or hiding as she hunkered down at Cheong Wa Dae amid her impeachment trial. It was her first meal with her aides since Jan. 1, when she called an abrupt meeting with reporters.

Park still took the opportunity to publicize her opinions on current affairs, including the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense battery here.

She said U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis' choice of Korea as the first leg of his first overseas trip since he taking office less than two weeks ago was a "thoughtful" move by the Trump administration to underscore the importance of the Korea-U.S. alliance.

"It is very important that just some 10 days after the Trump administration was inaugurated, it sent its defense secretary to Korea first," she was quoted by an aide as saying. Park also said the decision to deploy an advanced U.S. missile defense system to Korea was "of great importance" for the alliance.

Cheong Wa Dae officials said Park's comments were mainly focused on foreign affairs and national security issues and added that she praised ministers' "meaningful progress" in those fields. She did not make any comments about domestic politics.

The luncheon lasted almost two hours. Some die-hard supporters and Saenuri Party lawmakers sent her flowers, while a fan club in China sent her a congratulatory card, Cheong Wa Dae said.

But Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had sent Park a birthday message for the past three years, did not send one.
A Pampers baby dry diaper marketed by Procter & Gamble (P&G). / Courtesy of P&G Korea



Gov't begins probe on Pampers Baby Dry

By Park Jae-hyuk

Procter & Gamble (P&G) Korea has recently been under fire for their imported diapers allegedly containing toxic chemicals. The diapers will be taken off large discount chain store shelves here, according to industry officials, Friday.

The nation's three largest discount chains  E-mart, Home plus and Lotte Mart  said they have decided to halt the sales of P&G Korea's Pampers baby dry diaper at both their nationwide stores and online outlets.

"The decision was made to relieve the growing concerns of our customers with babies," a Lotte Mart official said. "P&G Korea has yet to complain to us about the measures."

Last week, a French magazine 60 Million Consumers (60 Millions de Consommateurs) released a report discovering toxic chemicals in 10 diaper brands out of the 12 tested. It showed that Pampers baby dry diaper contains dioxin and insecticide, both of which are classified as deadly poisons in most countries.

As the report has gone viral among young Korean mothers via online communities, such as Momsholic Baby, consumers have continued to demand P&G Korea to refund their purchases and stop selling the product.

The Korean unit of the multinational manufacturer, however, has denied the allegations of toxicity, claiming that the amount of chemicals detected from Pampers diapers was small enough to use the product safely.

"The amount of detected chemicals was less than the safety limits of the European Unions," a P&G Korea official said. "We have tested the product to satisfy standards of global institutions."

The company also said it is not considering refunding purchases of its customers.

As the controversy over the product continues, the government said Friday that it began a safety probe on P&G diapers.

The Korean Agency for Technology and Standards said it will thoroughly investigate the product to find out whether it actually contains toxic chemicals and how dangerous they are. The agency said it will randomly take samples of the products being sold in the market.
After Dilemma's recent announcement that EXO will be heading to Mexico, My Music Taste (MMT) has teased with U.S. stops! Fans have long anticipated another world tour for the group.

With the words"Coming soon," MMT announced that EXO-Ls will get to see the record-breaking group up close and personal during April in Newark and Los Angeles. This means there are at least three stops in North America for the upcoming tour.

What other stops would you like to be added to the tour?

Which is your must-see performance from the boys?
Two former senior U.S. officials on Wednesday warned of the growing nuclear threat from North Korea.

One of them was Elaine Bunn, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, who warned that the North's nuclear weapons are not simply a bargaining chip. She said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un really wants to have weapons that can attack U.S. allies in Northeast Asia and the U.S. military on Guam and even the U.S. mainland.

She was speaking at a seminar hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

The same day, former deputy CIA director John McLaughlin told the House Armed Services Committee that the most pressing issue facing the Trump administration is North Korea.

He quoted analysis that the North has 12 to 20 nuclear warheads and could increase the number to 100 within five years.


U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis was in Seoul on Thursday and Friday to meet with National Security Adviser Kim Kwan-jin and Defense Minister Han Min-koo. It is rare for a newly-appointed U.S. defense secretary to choose South Korea as the destination of his first overseas visit.

Mattis apparently chose South Korea to assess the ability of U.S. troops to thwart a North Korean provocation and to inspect the readiness levels of South Korean and American forces. The Trump administration is concerned that North Korea could resort to a major provocation as seen in 2009, when the Obama administration was launched. Mattis warned in no uncertain terms of an "overwhelming response" if that happens. In 2009, North Korea abducted two U.S. journalists, tested a long-range missile and conducted a nuclear test.

The new U.S. administration is looking for a different approach to North Korea from the Obama administration. A military option may well be among those choices given the belligerent tones emerging from Trumps team. In Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearings held just after Trump took office, senators called for "overturning" the North Korean regime and asked whether it would be wise to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

The U.S. is sure to be monitoring the political situation in Seoul as President Park Geun-hye faces impeachment. One serious uncertainty is where the next president here will stand on the deployment of a THAAD missile defense battery here.

Former U.S. assistant secretary of defense Elaine Bunn was quoted as saying Washington needs to reassess the priorities of its allies and what its allies intend to do. And Mattis told reporters before arriving here that THAAD is purely a defensive system aimed at thwarting a North Korean provocation.

Seoul and Washington are scheduled to hold talks next year on sharing the costs of maintaining U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula. Trump has said several times during his campaign that South Korea is paying too little, but Mark Lippert, the outgoing ambassador, pointed out that South Korea covers 96 percent of the cost of building a new American military base in Pyeongtaek south of Seoul.

Both Seoul and Washington must avoid letting money problems overshadow the alliance. Fortunately, Trump has been avoiding prickly issues with Seoul so far. Wisdom and practicality must be observed by both sides at this important time.


A 19-year-old man is charged with killing another 19-year-old man this week at a home on West Hamilton Street. Greene County prosecutors on Thursday charged Chase Adams of Springfield with second-degree murder and armed criminal action.

Someone shot Zechariah Miles early Wednesday at a home in the 1500 block of West Hamilton, just east of Kansas Expressway and a couple of blocks south of Division Street. Police said a woman inside the home called 9-1-1 just after 2 a.m.

The first officer to arrive at the home found a bullet hole on the exterior of the home and found Miles' body on a large pool of blood in the home. Three other people were in the home. Officers found bullet holes on the interior walls and shell casings on the floor. An officer noticed "the living room had items which appeared to have been knocked over and the couches appeared out of place, indicating a possible struggle occurred," according to the probable cause statement used as the basis of the charges against Adams.

Two witnesses later told police about messages that Adams posted on online social media sites.

One message to the first witness at 10:06 a.m. said, "I'm the one that been shootn over there." Another message at 10:18 a.m. said, "Whatever ill be back thorough after the police gone."

A message to the second witness early on Wednesday, in response to a question about who did it, said, "Me and my buddy." That witness asked who actually shot Miles, and Adams replied, "Me," according to the probable cause statement. Adams talked to that second witness by phone at 2:03 p.m. and gave more information about the shooting.

Detectives learned about "a past disturbance" last December between Miles and a friend of Adams over a purchase of a handgun. The disagreement was about the amount of money that Miles paid the friend of Adams. Detectives learned Adams made threats to do a "drive by" at Miles' home. He sent a the first witness a photo of a handgun on social media on Jan. 7, according to the probable cause statement.

Police served a search warrant at Adams' home on Wednesday. They arrested him and took him to a police station for interviews. He told detectives that he knew Miles and was upset with him over the handgun transaction.

Adams at first denied killing Miles. When a detective confronted him with the messages on social media, however, he says Adams admitted doing the shooting and said he sent some of the messages. Adams denied sending "the guilt admission messages during the same conversation where he had replied to other questions," according to the probable cause statement.

While searching Adams' home, officers say they seized a cell phone that belonged to Adams. They found evidence on the phone that Adams may have tried to delete his old messages, but searchers were able to recover content "showing the social media account the two witnesses communicated with" on the phone, according to the probable cause statement.

Adams has been in the Greene County jail since early Thursday and was formally charged late in the evening. A judge set his bond at $500,000 after police and prosecutors said they found evidence on Adams' phone that he was looking for apartments in Canada on the morning of Feb. 1.

The shooting happened across the street from another deadly shooting last week. David Shockley, 19, was found in the carport of a home at 1437 W. Hamilton on Jan. 26 about 10:30 a.m. No one is charged for Shockley's death, but two women, Deshaunda Wells and Destiny Williams are charged with breaking into the home before the shooting.

If Adams is convicted of second-degree murder, he could get a life prison sentence, with possibility of parole. For armed criminal action, he could get a prison sentence of three or more years. He made his first court appearance on Friday morning. A judge set his preliminary hearing for March 22, although that date could be changed once he has an attorney.
The National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN), says it has mobilised no fewer than 15,000 Nigerian youths to welcome President Muhammadu Buhari at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport Abuja, from vacation.

Malam Gambo Jagindi, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President of NYCN, Murtala Gamji, made the disclosure in a statement made available to newsmen on Friday in Abuja. Jagindi said that time had come for Nigerian youths, who are the future leaders of the country to show love, solidarity and support for the President, who is their current leader.

 The National Youth Council of Nigeria (NYCN) has concluded arrangements to mobilise not less than 15,000 of its members to be at Abuja airport on Feb. 6, to welcome President Buhari from vacation. It is on record that integrity, discipline and honesty are gradually returning to our public life unlike in the past when impunity was the order of the day, the spokesman said.



He berated those spreading rumours of death about the President. He said: we all know that they do not have the interest of our country at heart and are only wishing to carry on with the looting of our treasury in the absence of our president.

Jagindi said that Buharis assignment for Nigeria was not yet over, adding that only God could determine who lived or died. He commended the presidents efforts to rid the country of what he termed, undesirable elements who did not mean well for Nigeria and Nigerians. He urged Buhari to continue with the good work as the youths of Nigeria were solidly behind him.

Vanguard

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GENEVA  A Lake Geneva man died on Thursday after he was shot by on-duty police, according to a joint press release from the Sheriffs Department and the Elkhorn Police Department.

Kris Kristl, 26, was shot on County Highway H near Petrie Road in the town of Geneva around 7:46 p.m.

A Walworth County deputy and an officer with the Elkhorn Police Department carried out the shooting and both have been put on administrative duty, which according to the press release is standard practice with these types of incidents.

Though the press release did not reveal the names of the officers involved in the shooting, it did indicate that the deputy had been working as member of law enforcement for six years, the two most recent years being with the Walworth County Sheriffs Department.

The Elkhorn officer has been working for the Elkhorn Police Department for about eight years, the press release said.

According to TMJ4, a television station out of Milwaukee, the two officers were not injured during the incident.

The press release stated that the Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation is taking over as the lead agency in this investigation.
WILLIAMS BAY  Winter can be a slow time for downtown businesses.

Luckily, the yearly Day in the Bay event offers a chance for local business owners to have their day in the spotlight during the slower months.

Jim DAlessandro, a member of the Williams Bay Business Association, which will host the 10th annual Day in the Bay event on Feb. 4, said that the Day in the Bay came out of a specific need in the community.

There used to be a winterfest in Williams Bay, DAlessandro said, but it ended around 15 years ago.

People were looking for something to do in the wintertime and the businesses were looking for people to come around in the downtown, so we started to do the Day in the Bay just to bring people out, he said.

According to the press release, attendees can pick up their passports at the Barrett Memorial Library, the Lions Field House or any business involved with Day in the Bay as early as 9 a.m.

They must then stop into these businesses to shop and enjoy any snacks or activities that might be available before getting their passport stamped and moving on to the next location.

Once they have completed their passports, attendees can enter them in a raffle that includes items such as an Apple Watch, Gage Marine boat cruise tickets and a free night at the Harbor View Motel.

Grand prize drawings will be selected at 5 p.m.

Along with checking out their favorite stores, DAlessandro said that the event especially helps some of the newer businesses in the area.

Its a really good way to expose the newer businesses, DAlessandro said.

It gives people an opportunity to go in and meet them.

Antony Winslow, the owner of Winslow Studio, said he hopes this will be the case for his business.

Its an opportunity for people to come in and see us, he said. Were a new business here, we just opened in August. Were a contemporary art and wood artistry (business).

Winslows store will be one of the featured open houses at the event, giving people a chance to really explore his new store.

Were going to have refreshments and kind of give them (customers) the story of what we have here available and what were trying to do with this area, Winslow said.

He said that a similar event, called the Walk in the Bay, brought in more customers around the holidays.

That brought a lot of people in, Winslow said. More than we expected in the slower season. It was nice, people were excited to see us here. They didnt realize there was something like this here in Williams Bay.

And theres a good chance this influx of customers could work again for Winslow at the Day in the Bay.

According to DAlessandro, the Day in the Bay often helps increase sales for the local businesses, something the Williams Bay Business Association has learned through data it collects after the event.

Its usually one of the biggest selling days for the businesses, he said.

And along with Bay residents, DAlessandro said that people come from throughout the Geneva Lakes area to experience a taste of downtown Williams Bay.

We want to expose them to it, he said. That yes, we do have businesses in the village of Williams Bay.

Stores also dont have to sell merchandise to participate.

The annual chili cook-off, which takes place at the Lions Field House during the Day in the Bay, allows attendees to buy chili samples from local restaurants and then rate the samples.

The cook-off will be run by the Williams Bay Womens Civic League and will take place from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

According to Laurie Clettenberg, one of the members of the Womens Civic League, the cook-off will feature samples from 11 local restaurants.

Clettenberg said she is optimistic that the cook-off helps the local restaurants bring in customers throughout the year.

We hope (it brings in customers), because we give them publicity before and after the cook-off, she said. Right now, we have posters all over the Bay with their names all over it.

And these restaurants certainly get their name out there.

According to Clettenberg, the event is always a full house.

Last year, we had quite a crowd, she said. In fact, we ran out of tickets.

Clettenberg said that the proceeds will go toward helping local children through donations to organizations such as the YMCA and the safety patrol.
This editorial appears in the February 3, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Why the U.S., Russia, China, India, and

Germany Must Overcome Geopolitics!

[Print version of this editorial]

Jan. 27The world is indeed out of joint. But one thing is certain: The current array of crises will not be resolved with old formulas, and certainly not with geopolitical gambits, color revolutions a la George Soros, or the Old Testament eye for an eye approach of the perhaps not-so-liberal publisher-editor of Die Zeit Josef Joffe. What is required instead is a higher level of reason, which identifies the common interests of all the worlds nations. Precisely this level of thinking was expressed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in his Jan. 25 speech before the Duma, in which he proposed an alliance among Washington, Moscow, and Beijing to find solutions for todays challenges.

In a variation on Schillers poem, The Commencement of the New Century, one is tempted to say: Two mighty systems strive for undivided mastery of the worldnamely, the old, war-inducing system of geopolitics, and the new, future-oriented paradigm of the common destiny of mankind. The representatives of the first of thesethe collapsing, formerly neoliberal order of globalization (laissez-faire economic liberalism)are reacting to their perceived loss of power with verbal outbursts appropriately diagnosed as clinical hysteria. But in this camp, there is apparently little honor among thieves, or various factions. The best example is British Prime Minister Theresa Mays visit to Washington, during which she tried to corral the new U.S. administration into the geometry of the British Empire. The new order, on the contrary, is guided by entirely opposite principles, based on the win-win cooperation of Chinas New Silk Road, which is rapidly expanding.

Lavrovs Proposal

In this respect, Sergei Lavrovs intervention was of the highest importance:

We believe that as Russia, the United States, and China build their relations, this triangle should not be closed or directed towards some projects that could worry other states. [They should be] open and fair. I am convinced that the economic structure of Russia, the United States, and China is such that there is a great deal of complementarity in the material and economic sphere.

These three nations can also splay an important role with respect to international security questions, he said. Russia and China are already cooperating well in this area, and they expect that President Donald Trump, who has already stated that the United States will no longer interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, will cooperate as well.

The spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, immediately supported the Russian proposal for trilateral cooperation among these three nations, which are leading global powers as well as permanent members of the UN Security Council. They have great responsibility for global peace, stability, and development, she said.

Should Donald Trump opt for close cooperation with Russia, China, and India, that would, in fact, spell the end of geopolitics. Fear of such an outcome obviously motivated British Prime Minister Mays visit to Trumpthe first foreign head of government to visitwhere she then endlessly rhapsodized about the wonderful relationship between Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan, which made the modern world. This Anglo-American special relationship must again assume leadership for the new century, she said.

The London Times suggested that May does not underestimate Trump, but should tap the spirit which led to Brexit, as the most important ideological bridge to Trumps White House. The Financial Times fantasized about an additional intention of Mays visit, namely, to exploit this special relationship in order to split Russia from China through various concessions and manipulations. The New York Times, for its part, titled its article, British Alignment with Trump Threatens European Order, alluding to Trumps negative attitude toward the European Union (EU).

The total denial of reality by the supporters of geopolitics is producing ludicrous effects. For example, Joffe argues against Trumps protectionist measures by saying that globalization has created fabulous wealth which supports the magnanimous social state and creates a cushion for the losers. Protectionism benefits favored industries, but allows the country to become poorerits weakest classes, first of all.

This is the classic laissez faire narrative, which says it is wonderful that the profiteers of the casino economy become fabulously rich, then bestow charity on the poor, and thus ennoble themselves. It is precisely that narrow-minded stupidity which the Brexit, Trumps election, and the no vote in the Italian constitutional referendum rejected.

Joffes conclusion that Europe must take over the role of the United States to save the liberal world order, is just as ludicrous as the question posed by the daily Die Welt: Will Chancellor Merkel Become the Counterpart to President Trump and the Leader of the Free West? Norbert Rottgen, chairman of the Bundestag Committee on Foreign Affairs, has similar ambitions for himself, and indulges in one media highlight after another. He wants to confront Trump with new social alliances and is apparently placing his hope in people like Sen. John McCain.

The Four Basic Economic Laws

There is only one sure way to overcome the strategic confusion outlined here: The common interests of all the worlds nations must be established on a higher planea plane at which the purported contradictions disappear. The four basic economic laws which Lyndon LaRouche has identified for overcoming the crisis, provide the basis for achieving it:

The first, indispensable measure must be to avert the threatened crash of the transatlantic financial systemwhich threatens to be worse than that of 2008by reinstating the Glass-Steagall banking separation law. Under the leadership of the LaRouche Political Action Committee (LPAC), many organizations in the United States are mobilizing to escalate the pressure on President Trump to keep this campaign promise, and re-introduce Glass-Steagall in the form of its 1933 original, in his Feb. 28 State of the Union address, at the latest.





Second, a National Bank in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton must be created, whose sole aim must be to finance infrastructure, industry, and basic scientific research according to the strict principles of physical economywhich means raising the productivity of labor and industrial capacity, and thus producing full employment.





Third, an international credit system must facilitate long-term international cooperation for the reconstruction of the world economy according to the same principles as above.





Fourth, there must be international cooperation on a crash program to achieve nuclear fusion, which would give mankind energy and raw materials security, and to establish through space exploration the future-oriented, higher plane, which is needed to create an actual order of peace among nations.

If Trump accepts Lavrovs offer and constructive cooperation among the United States, Russia, and China is implemented, such win-win cooperation is also within reach of all nations. The first contacts between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have already led to positive declarations of intent.

Under these circumstances, Germany must associate itself with this new strategic alliance. It is in our most fundamental interest to cooperate with the United States, Russia, China, India, and many other countries in the economic development of the Near and Middle East, and to take up the long neglected mission of industrializing Africa. Only in this way will the refugee crisis be resolved in a humane way and will we be able, at least partially, to make amends for having allowed ourselves to sit back and watch the aggressive wars of Bush, Obama, Blair, and Cameron in the Middle East without doing anythingor rather, for having allowed the European governments to indirectly or partially to support these wars.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was correct in his observation that, with Trumps election, the old order of the 20th Century is gone once and for all. And that is a very good thing. It is now up to us to ensure that the new order will respect the true identity of mankind as a creative speciesin that we concentrate on those great challenges which we are the only living species capable of meeting. Among these challenges are such questions as the discovery of the characteristic or nature of life itself, the role of human creativity in the universe, and the principle of development of the universe, which, according to our current understanding, consists of something like two trillion galaxies. And, last but not least, the question of realizing in the individual a beautiful character with the aid of aesthetic education.
This editorial appears in the February 3, 2017 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Pass Glass-Steagall Now!

[Print version of this editorial]

Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed a nationwide call of LaRouche PAC activists on Jan. 29. Her remarks have been edited.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: First of all, hello to everybody. I think everybody knows that with the election of Donald Trump, the world has completely changed. German Foreign Minister Steinmeier put a fine point on it, saying that the Trump election means the end of the entire order of the 20th Century.

It is very clear that the United States now has a choice: One is to continue with the special relationship with Great Britain, which was the basis for the unipolar world for the last 25 years, more or less, with a few exceptions of the Clinton years. And it is clear that the British would like to continue that, which is why Theresa May was the first foreign head of government to come and try to re-establish that special relationship, which would be very, very bad.

On the other side there is the clear perspective that the United States could enter the strategic alliance with Russiaand possibly China and Indiawhich would create the basis to really move world politics into a completely new paradigm of collaboration of major nations to solve urgent problems like the economic crisis, the terrorism problem, and many other such problems.

Now, it is extremely clear from the first week of Trumps being in office, that he intends to follow through on all of his election promises. From my standpoint it is very important thatgiven the fact that the problems are so manifoldthat people not get freaked out about this action and that action, but really concentrate on the two absolutely most crucial questions without which nothing else can be solved.

The first very, very crucial question is that Trump promised that he would improve the relationship with Russia, and that, for the sake of world peace, is the most important issue. Because if Hillary Clinton had carried out her policies in Syria, with the no-fly zones and the whole provocation against Russia in particular, we would have been on a short road to World War III.

So therefore, the fact that Donald Trump spoke yesterday with five world leadersamong them, President Putin of Russia, and that they apparently established a very good rapportis of the highest strategic importance. If you look at what the White House and the Kremlin issued afterwards, this is really important, because Trump asked to convey his wishes of happiness and prosperity to the Russian people, saying that the American people had warm feelings towards Russia and its citizens. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/ 53787

This is very, very important, and I think we should really understand that if the United States and Russia can fix their relations, then every other problem can potentially be tackled.

Obviously, the second most important issue is that Trump had also promised in the election campaign to reintroduce Glass-Steagall, because everybody knows that the world is still in absolute danger of a repetition of the crash of 2008, which this time would be much, much worse than even the collapse of Lehman Brothers and AIG in September 2008for the very simple reason that the banks which are too big to fail have grown by 40% or even more, the derivatives have grown, and all the so-called instruments of the central banks have been used up, including quantitative easing, including the whole question of interventions such as bank bail-outs and helicopter money, all of which are in discussion.

As a result, the danger of the collapse of the banking system is an absolute threat hanging over the whole world.

Now, it is very clear that Wall Street obviously does not want Glass-Steagall, because it would, to say the minimum, diminish their power greatlybut it is an absolute precondition for fixing the situation. And Mr. LaRouche has not only talked about Glass-Steagall, but he has defined, on a scientific basis, the four basic laws which are absolutely crucial to be implemented to get the world out of this crisis, which are:

 Glass-Steagall, exactly as Franklin D. Roosevelt implemented it in 1933;  A national bank in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton  A credit system  And then a crash program for high-technology fusion power and international space cooperation, as the absolutely necessary way to increase the productivity of the labor force which has collapsed.

Consider, in addition, that the life expectancy in the United States has gone down for the first timethis is the clearest indicator an economy has collapsedthat the life expectancy of the population is going down.

This is the purpose of this call, because unfortunately the designated Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, in a hearing with Maria Cantwell in the Senate, said he is not for Glass-Steagall in the form of FDRthis he said is a very old lawbut he wants to have a 21st century law because otherwise the markets would not have sufficient liquidity. That argument is wrong, because if you go to a National Bank in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, and a credit system in the tradition of the American System of economy, that is exactly the system which will provide credit for productive investment.

Therefore, his argument is not relevant, and that appointment could be the Achilles heel of the Trump Administration if its not corrected, because I think everybody has seen there is tremendous turmoil. There is a deployment by the very same British Empire which is trying to pin Trump down on the special relationship with Great Britain, but that does not prevent them from deploying Soros and the principle of color revolution,the same thing which was deployed against Ukraine in 2004 with the Orange Revolution, or Georgia, or the Arab Springusing essentially the same means of color revolution for regime change, this time against Trump.

So therefore, this is not a peaceful time; this is not a time when you can wait it out, but I think the fact that Trump has shown that he wants to carry out his election promises, is, indeed, very promising. But I think we need the kind of mobilization to make sure that this absolutely crucial flank of Glass-Steagall is not missed, because that could be the one thing which would really ruin the whole potential.

And let me just end with that. I think people in the United States have to be aware that the whole world looks at this Trump election with great hopenot the old laissez faire neo-liberals and the people who believe in confrontation with Russia and Chinabut a lot of people, in India, in Europe, are looking at the potential of the Trump Administration with great expectation and hope. This is a unique historical chance, so a lot depends on making it succeed.

The potential is there, with Chinas New Silk Road, which already is a new system of financial and economic cooperation on a win-win basis, in which over 70 nations are cooperating; the offer to the United States to have a Silk Road exactly fits with Trumps promise to invest $1 trillion into an infrastructure program in the United States and, therefore, launch a recovery. But it does require the original Glass-Steagall.

So I want to end it here, because this is really the gist of the situation, and I think we need all of you to really help and intervene.

Lyndon LaRouche: I emphasize this.
PRESS RELEASE

Beijing To Build and Co-Finance Philippine Infrastructure

Feb. 2, 2017 (EIRNS)Philippine Commerce Secretary Carlos Dominguez detailed the agreements reached during his trip to Beijing in January. He reported to the Business Mirror in Manila, that Chinese Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng agreed to seek co-financing with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and World Bank for the projects in the Philippines.

Three projects named were a $3 billion rail project, connecting Manila to the south to Legaspi City on the Bicol peninsula, and two water projects costing over $400 million.

Dominguez gave the Chinese a total of 40 large and small infrastructure projects for possible financing and assistance in conducting feasibility studies during the Jan. 23 and 24 mission, Business Mirror reported. Of the 40 projects, 15 were for loan financing, and 25 for feasibility-study support.

Nine other projects aim to interconnect the countrys three main island-groups; boost tourism; and construct a flood-control system in Mindanao and "ensure its stable power supply." Nuclear support has not come up as yet. The two countries will hold bilateral meetings to advance the projects.

"It makes more sense for us to be closer to our Asian neighbors than to our distant friends," Dominguez said. During Dutertes visit to Beijing last year, $24 billion worth of aid and investment pledges were agreed to by China, in soft loans totaling $9 billion and other economic deals amounting to about $15 billion.
PRESS RELEASE

Putin Explains the Kiev Regimes Escalation In the Donbass

Feb. 2, 2017 (EIRNS)Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Budapest, Hungary for meetings with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, explained the reasons behind the escalation of violence in southeast Ukraine, reports Sputnik.

"The first reason is that the Ukrainian leadership needs money. And it is better to ask the EU, European states, the U.S. and international institutes for money while presenting itself as a victim of aggression,"

Putin explained. Secondly, during the election campaign in the United States, the Kiev regime supported a "certain female candidate," but now,

"they need to mend ties with the current U.S. administration amid a conflict. Its always easier to drag the current [U.S.] administration into solving Ukrainian problems and establish a dialogue this way."

The third reason for the escalation is an internal one.

"Amid [Kievs] obvious failures in its social and economic policies, the [Ukrainian] opposition intensified its activity. They want to hush it up by mobilizing the population around the leadership. Its easier to achieve this goal amid the resuming of a conflict,"

Putin said.
PRESS RELEASE

The Trump Effect in Italy

Feb. 2, 2017 (EIRNS)A so-called "sovereign" front is being formed in Italy, with an eye to the possible early national elections and the idea of putting together all forces which are against the euro and for a return to national sovereignty. The name of the group is "Italia Sovrana" and it is a mixed bag, with populists such as the Lega Nord and Fratelli dItalia (FdI), but also a faction in Berlusconis Forza Italia (although Berlusconi is not yet convinced), and mavericks such as Giulio Tremonti on the sidelines. This group held a large rally in Rome on Jan. 28. Lega head Matteo Salvini is profiling himself as the candidate for Prime Minister.

A Jan. 31 event in Milan showed the potential for turning this populist coalition into something better than a populist revolt. Under the banner "Beyond the eurobecoming great again" (a play on Trumps slogan), the podium was shared by Lega head Matteo Salvini, economist Claudio Borghi (also Lega Nord), leftist economist Alberto Bagnai, and independent Member of the European Parliament Marco Zanni. Later on, journalist and blogger Marcello Foa was also invited to the podium.

Although the event was aimed at raising Salvinis profile, and the moderator was a shrill populist journalist, the intellectual leadership was de facto taken by Zanni, Bagnai, and Foa.

Among other things, Zanni listed four points: 1. Leaving the euro; 2. Bringing the Bank of Italy back under the Treasury; 3. Banking separation; 4. "A large public investment plan in industry, research and above all, with reference to all natural disasters we are living through in Italy, to improve the territory" with infrastructure. It is ridiculous that Italy has spent over 60 billion on the European Financial Stability Facility and the European Stability Mechanism for European Union bailouts, but is not allowed to spend a cent to save the lives of its citizens.
Donald Trump, who ran for office disguised as a friend of the working person, acted Friday to place that persons retirement savings again at the mercy of Wall Street sharks.

By executive order, Trump imposed a six-month delay on the so-called fiduciary rule implemented by the Obama Administrations Department of Labor and set to go into effect April 10. The idea ostensibly is to give policymakers time to review the rule and revise it if necessary. If you think the result of this process will be to make the rule more worker-friendly and less forgiving for banks, insurance companies and stockbrokers, then you dont know your Trump.

Rolling back conflict of interest protections...will take tens of billions of dollars a year from the pockets of hard-working Americans to enrich Wall Street.  Statement by consumer advocacy groups

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Put simply, the rule requires brokers and other financial agents to put the interests of their retirement-saving clients ahead of their own. This sounds like common sense, but the rule was vehemently opposed by the financial services industry and their mouthpieces in Congress. The reason for Wall Streets opposition should become obvious when one contemplates that conflicted advice cost customers an estimated $17 billion a year. Thats the haul from brokers and bankers steering customers to inappropriate retirement investments that generate more fees for themselves.

The estimate comes from a 2015 report by the Obama White Houses Council of Economic Advisors. The Trump administration buried the report deep in the White House website, but I managed to retrieve it from the memory hole and reproduce it here. As the Obama administration understood, protection for retirement investors from brokers conflicts had become immeasurably more important over recent decades. Thats the period in which the standard retirement plan shifted from defined-benefit pension funds managed by professional advisors, in which any shortfall had to be made up by the employers, to defined contribution plans managed by workers themselves, in which its almost impossible to make up any shortfall.

The delay of the fiduciary rule has been accompanied by a steaming helping of fatuous blather by Republicans and bankers about how the rule interfered with American workers freedom  presumably freedom to be ripped off. Heres House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), calling Trump wise for delaying the rule for further study: The rule, according to Ryan, would significantly raise the cost of seeking financial advice, making it even harder for families to plan their future and save for retirement.

Amusingly, thats exactly what Wall Street lobbyists say about the rule, almost word for word. As for giving it further study, the rule was the product of seven years of study by the Department of Labor, including several public hearings, hundreds of meetings with industry fronts and consumer advocates and invitations for public comments, of which thousands came in on both sides of the proposal. The only reason for further delay is to grease the skids for cancellation. Ryan knows this, so why doesnt he tell the truth about it?

Flanking Trump at a ceremony for the signing of the executive order was Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), who has fought the rule as a member of the House Financial Services Committee. She said at the event that the delay would help return to the American people the control of their own retirement savings. Thats a mendacious assertion: The problem the rule addresses is that Americans control of their retirement nest eggs is exactly whats threatened by their investment advisors undisclosed conflicts of interest.

The top three contributors to Wagners reelection campaign in 2015-16 were the insurance, securities and commercial bank industries, which provided her with more than $600,000 in donations. That should lend some color to her claim at the event that this is about Main Street.

These statements aim to distract listeners from the absurdity of Wall Streets claim that requiring honest disclosure of conflicts of interest will somehow bring the financial services edifice crashing down.

Until the Labor Department rule made its appearance, only registered investment advisors, a subset of the universe of people managing investments, were required to function as fiduciaries to their clients benefits. Investment and commercial bankers and insurance agents sedulously tried to fend off the same rule. At a hearing in 2010, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked a gaggle of current and former Goldman Sachs executives whether they had a duty to act in their clients, not their firms, interest: The best answer anyone could come up with was: Conceptually, it seems like an interesting idea.

On CNBC Friday, White House economic advisor Gary Cohn defended the delay by declaring that he didnt think you protect investors by limiting choices; you need to give them [investors] the proper sources to accumulate wealth. Cohn is a former Goldman Sachs investment banker. He collected a $285-million payout to leave the firm for the White House. Whose interest do you think hes got in mind?

Over the last couple of years the financial services industries attacked the Labor rule with ridiculous claims that it would prevent Americans from seeking advice from the advisors of their choice, make such advice more expensive and interfere with trusted relationships between customers and their advisors. The point of the rule, of course, was that millions of customers couldnt tell whether they should trust their advisors because the latters conflicts of interest often are well-hidden, the product of secret fees and kickbacks.

The voices being raised against Trumps actions come from labor unions and consumer advocates, not members of Congress in the pockets of Wall Street firms.

President Trump continues his streak of throwing middle-class Americans under the bus  the very people he promised to protect on the campaign trail. Rolling back conflict of interest protections  will take tens of billions of dollars a year from the pockets of hard-working Americans to enrich Wall Street, reads a statement issued jointly by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Americans for Financial Reform; the Consumer Federation of America and Wall Street gadfly Better Markets. Adds the AFL-CIO: Allowing financial advisers to scam retirees encourages the ugliest Wall Street behaviors that led to the financial crisis.

Trumps action prompts us to ask again which Americans he represents as president: the middle- and working-class Americans he claimed to be standing up for, or the bankers who were surrounding him Friday when he announced the fiduciary rule delay and plans to roll back the Dodd-Frank law, which put a leash on those same bankers after they crashed the economy in 2008?

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

Return to Michael Hiltziks blog.
SAG-AFTRA is stepping up pressure on video game companies to resolve a protracted strike against the makers of such blockbuster game series as Call of Duty and Madden NFL.

Hollywoods largest union on Thursday staged the biggest rally to date in the three-month strike. An estimated crowd of close to 500 protesters assembled in front of SAG-AFTRA headquarters and proceeded a short distance on Wilshire Boulevard toward an open field near the the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

It is the collective voice that keeps us strong, SAG-AFTRA President Gabrielle Carteris said at the rally. She said the unions existing contract with the gaming companies was not fair.

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The contract expired in 2014, but performers kept working under it as negotiations dragged on. The dispute focuses on disagreements over compensation and safety for actors who perform voice and motion-capture work.

SAG-AFTRA is seeking a new compensation structure that would allow actors to start receiving residual-like payments based on a games commercial success. It is also asking for improved safety conditions for voice and motion-capture work.

The video game companies have balked at the pay demand, arguing that their industry is fundamentally different from Hollywood, where residuals for actors are commonplace.

The strike, which began Oct. 21, targets 11 companies, including divisions of Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take Two, Insomniac Games, Warner Bros. and Disney.

The two sides havent budged from their respective positions since talks fell apart in the fall. SAG-AFTRA said Thursday that it has signed 12 other game companies to its proposal, but the union declined to reveal the names of those companies, describing them as small and independent.

The purpose of the rally was to get people refocused that the strike is happening, Ray Rodriguez, chief contracts officer at SAG-AFTRA, said in an interview. He said the union is showing its influence by signing with other companies. Theres plenty of leverage on both sides.

But the 11 companies that are the focus of the strike show no signs that they will compromise.

We remain disappointed that SAG-AFTRA leadership remains focused on outmoded ideas about how compensation is structured rather than the real dollars and cents that the video game companies put on the table, said Scott Witlin, chief negotiator for the companies and a partner at Barnes & Thornburg.

We offered more money than SAG-AFTRA demanded in an attempt to avoid this strike. The union leaders walked away from real gains in order to try to fit this business into an old mold, Witlin said.

SAG-AFTRA is asking for a bonus compensation structure that would allow actors to receive additional payments for every 2 million copies or downloads sold, with a cap at 8 million sales.

But the video game companies have refused, proposing instead a 9% wage increase, which would accelerate the 3% annual increase sought by SAG-AFTRA over a three-year period.

They were also offering additional upfront compensation of as much as $950 per game based on the number of sessions a performer works on a particular title.

Since declaring the strike in October, SAG-AFTRA has picketed Electronic Arts in Playa Vista and Warner Bros. in Burbank.

L.A. City Councilman David Ryu said that video game companies need to pay their fair share and told protesters that you should not give in.

david.ng@latimes.com

Twitter: @DavidNgLAT
Shares of Macys Inc. rose sharply Friday following a report of a potential takeover offer for the struggling department store chain.

The Cincinnati company has been approached by Toronto-based Hudsons Bay Co., which already owns the Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor brands in the U.S., about a possible acquisition, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

Discussions are in the early stages, and its possible no deal could be reached, the report said. The two sides also may consider other ways to collaborate, including selling Macys real estate, it said.

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Macys and Hudsons Bay declined to discuss the report, with Macys saying we do not comment on rumors and speculation.

Macys stock initially shot up more than 10% and there was a six-minute trading halt on the New York Stock Exchange due to the shares volatility. The stock then backed off its highs and finished with a gain of $1.97, or 6.4%, to $32.69 a share.

That gave Macys a total market value of about $9.4 billion. Hudsons Bay, whose stock trades on Canadian markets, has a market value of about 1.8 billion Canadian dollars, or $1.4 billion.

Like many other brick-and-mortar retailers, Macys has been struggling to keep up with changing consumer spending habits, mainly their increased shopping online at e-commerce retailers such as Amazon.com Inc.

Following a disappointing holiday season, Macys said last month that it would slash more than 10,000 jobs and go ahead with plans to close 68 stores that are among about 100 locations that Macys last August said it would eventually close.

Other retailers have struggled as well. Last month, the Limited said it would close all 250 of its stores and filed for bankruptcy. Teen retailer Wet Seal said it is closing all 171 of its shops. And American Apparel laid off about 2,400 employees after selling its brand to Canadian clothing maker Gildan Activewear.

The closures are a blow to dozens of shopping malls across the country, especially where Macys is one of the anchor stores that help draw consumers to the malls other tenants.

Macys stock has plunged after hitting a high of $72.31 in July 2015.

Last year, Macys longtime Chief Executive Terry Lundgren said he planned to step down in 2017. President Jeff Gennette was tapped to take over.

shan.li@latimes.com

Follow Shan on Twitter @ByShanLi

UPDATES:

2:45 p.m.: This article was updated with Macys closing stock price and additional analysis.

This article was originally published at 8:22 a.m.
President Trump took a first step toward relaxing financial regulations Friday, ordering agencies to review two key Obama-era measures that were designed to protect consumers and the nations financial system but have drawn the ire of Wall Street and Republican lawmakers.

In calling for a review of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act  as well as a separate rule that seeks to limit conflicts of interests by personal investment managers  the Trump administration is putting to the test whether it can meld the presidents populist message with moves cheered by Wall Street.

At a White House meeting with top corporate chief executives, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Trump vowed Friday that major reductions in financial regulations were coming  and signaled his intention to rely on Wall Street for advice on the matter.

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Theres nobody better to tell me about Dodd-Frank than Jamie, Trump said before the meeting began.

He added that we expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine that had nice businesses, they cant borrow money.

They just cant get any money because the banks just wont let them borrow it because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank, Trump said.

After the CEO meeting, Trump signed an executive order directing the Treasury secretary to consult with regulators about what needs to be done to fix the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and to report back. That report is due in four months.

Trumps nominee for Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. He could get a full Senate vote next week.

Jaret Seiberg, an analyst with brokerage and investment bank Cowen & Co., noted in a report Friday that the executive order may have little or no effect for some time.

What this means is that the White House today is setting the stage for actions later in its first term, Seiberg wrote. This is a process that could easily drag into 2019 before banks see material changes in the regulations.

Congressional Republicans and major financial firms have complained for years about Dodd-Frank.

Passed in 2010 in the wake of the financial crisis, the legislation toughened capital requirements for financial firms, set up a powerful panel of regulators to watch for signs of instability and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to oversee credit cards, mortgages and other financial products.

Trump has called Dodd-Frank a very negative force in the economy and vowed during the campaign to dismantle it. In particular, he has echoed industry complaints that rules aimed at curtailing risk have caused banks, especially smaller institutions, to cut back on lending.

The executive order does not call for any specific changes to Dodd-Frank, but rather says that the nations financial regulations should be based on several key principles.

The principles in the order call for financial regulators to focus on the health and vibrancy of the nations financial markets, not only on limiting risk and consumer harm, said Brian Knight, a research fellow at the free-market think tank Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

It doesnt lead with the notion of stability or protection, Knight said. It is a document that is moving away from the avoid risk first model toward a lets have a vibrant, dynamic economy model.

The executive order says regulations should prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts, foster economic growth, enable American companies to be competitive with foreign firms and advance U.S. interests in international financial regulatory matters.

Predictably, consumer groups called Fridays move a clear sign that Wall Street will now get to write its own rules, while industry groups  including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Assn. and the Financial Services Roundtable  said that the easing of financial regulations would make it easier for banks to lend.

Today marks the first step towards mending the dysfunctional regulation of the past and helping Main Street with the financing needed for growth and job creation, U.S. Chamber President Thomas Donohue said in a statement.

Laura MacCleery, vice president of consumer policy and mobilization for Consumer Reports, had an opposite take, saying rolling back elements of Dodd-Frank would have dire consequences for American families and the economy.

Dodd-Frank was put into place to raise standards for financial firms and ensure consumers are treated more fairly and honestly, she said in a statement. If we roll back these critical standards, we will once again be putting consumers and the economy at an intolerable risk.

Though written in broad terms, the order appears to target the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in particular. It says financial regulation should empower Americans to make independent financial decisions and restore public accountability within federal financial regulatory agencies.

Critics of the CFPB argue the bureau lacks proper accountability because it is run by an independent director without congressional oversight or control of its purse strings. They also contend that the bureau has sought to protect consumers by limiting their choices.

My primary problem with the CFPB is that they appear to view part of their mandate to be to protect people from themselves, Knight said.

Scott Pearson, a partner in the Century City office of law firm Ballard Spahr who focuses on financial regulatory issues, said that the executive order seems consistent with the deregulatory signals the administration has sent and that the consumer bureau is clearly one of the targets.

This is a shot across the bow of the CFPB; theres no doubt about that, he said.

The agency has been praised by Democrats and consumer advocates for cracking down on abuses by financial firms. It was a key player in the $185-million settlement that Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to pay last year for the creation of as many as 2 million accounts without customer authorization.

Trumps other focus on Friday was a rule set to take effect in April affecting retirement advisors. In a memo to the Labor Department, he called for a review of the rule. But its unlikely that review would be complete by April, meaning the rule could be suspended. Trumps Labor secretary nominee, Andy Puzder, has yet to have a confirmation hearing.

Known as the fiduciary rule, it requires investment brokers who handle retirement funds to put their clients interests ahead of other factors, such as their own compensation or company profits.

The Labor Department rule was designed to prevent consumers from being steered toward IRAs and other retirement investments with higher fees or lower returns that benefit the advisors recommending or selling them.

The Obama administration estimated that those conflicts of interest cost Americans $17 billion a year.

But opponents, including key players in the financial industry, say it would drive up the cost of investments by forcing asset management firms to spend money on implementation and make it more difficult for average Americans to get retirement advice.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer echoed those sentiments Friday, calling the rule a regulatory overreach by the Department of Labor.

The rules intent may be to have provided retirees and others with better financial advice, but in reality, its effect has been to limit the financial services that are available to them, Spicer said. President Trump does not intend to put unnecessary limits on economic opportunity.

Congress voted last spring to overturn the rule, but Obama vetoed the measure.

Barbara Roper, director of investor protection for the Consumer Federation of America, has said the rule would counter a toxic web of financial incentives for brokers, insurance agents and anyone else offering retirement investment services that often run counter to the consumers best interests.

Financial companies, including Wells Fargo & Co., recorded big stock gains on the announcement during a day when a positive January jobs report also boosted the market. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 187 points for its best performance in nearly two months.

Times staff reporter James Rufus Koren contributed to this article.

jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com

Follow @JimPuzzanghera on Twitter

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UPDATES:

3:10 p.m.: This article was updated with a comment from White House spokesman Sean Spicer and additional details about the fiduciary rule.

1:50 p.m. This article was updated to reflect that the language of the final order did not include the principle to make regulation efficient, effective and appropriately tailored.

1:35 p.m. This article was updated with comments from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Consumer Reports, attorney Scott Pearson and research fellow Brian Knight.

11 a.m.: This article was updated with comments from Trump.

10:30 a.m.: This article was updated to note that Trump has signed the order and memo.

This article was originally published at 2:30 a.m.
Supporters of healthcare reform may feel disheartened as President Trump and Republican lawmakers prepare to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with  well, something. They cant even agree among themselves on what the U.S. healthcare system should look like.

But theres reason for hope, albeit a long shot.

OK, a very long shot.

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) has introduced a bill that would expand Medicare to provide for comprehensive health insurance coverage for all United States residents.

In other words, it would build on the successful single-payer insurance program that already covers more than 55 million people and bring the United States in line with almost all other developed nations in providing taxpayer-funded health coverage for everyone.

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Needless to say, the legislation  HR 676  has no chance of passage by the Republican-controlled Congress.

However, the fact that such a bill exists serves as a reminder that there are some in positions of power who understand the pitfalls of the U.S.s private-sector-dominated health insurance system, and who are willing to place national interest ahead of corporate profits.

Also, some backers of the legislation think theres at least one prominent Republican who might come around to their way of thinking.

Taking 20 million people out of Obamacare is going to help our cause. Weve got all the arguments on our side.  Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.)

Donald Trump is a businessman, not a lifetime politician, said Dr. Carol Paris, head of Physicians for a National Health Program, which represents 20,000 doctors who support creation of a U.S. single-payer insurance system. HR 676 is a formula for good business. It makes good business sense.

Shell get no argument from me. A 2014 study by the Commonwealth Fund compared the U.S. healthcare system to those of 10 other developed countries, including Canada, Germany, France and Britain.

It found that the United States had by far the most expensive system in the world but trailed its peers in delivering bang for its healthcare bucks.

Administrative costs  paperwork, incompatible computer systems, interactions between doctors, hospitals and hundreds of insurers  eat up about 25% of U.S. healthcare spending.

Meanwhile, at an average of more than $10,000 per person, the United States pays more for healthcare annually than any other developed country without any significant improvement in outcome, such as longer life expectancy. The typical American can expect to live to 79, whereas citizens of other developed nations will live past 80, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

International experience shows that single-payer financing systems, like the one described in Rep. Conyers bill, are the fairest and most cost-effective way to assure that everyone gets high-quality care, Paris said.

Conyers, however, isnt holding his breath.

He told me he doesnt think Trump  whom he described as erratic  will suddenly embrace the common-sense advantages of Medicare for all. Nor does he think House Republicans will be flexible in their thinking.

This is not something that theyre going to buy into, Conyers said, even though countries with universal healthcare find that it costs less and is healthier for people. Were just too polarized right now.

Nevertheless, he said hes optimistic about the future. Conyers expects the Republicans replacement of Obamacare to be so troublesome that the public will grow increasingly receptive to new ideas. This will allow a case to be made for Medicare expansion.

Taking 20 million people out of Obamacare is going to help our cause, he said. Weve got all the arguments on our side.

His bill already has 51 co-sponsors, including Californias Judy Chu, Mark DeSaulnier, John Garamendi, Jared Huffman, Barbara Lee, Ted Lieu, Zoe Lofgren, Grace Napolitano, Lucille Roybal-Allard and Mark Takano. No Republicans have signed on.

Under HR 676, all individuals residing in the United States (including any territory of the United States) are covered under the Medicare For All Program, entitling them to a universal, best quality standard of care.

The bill would cover primary care, emergency care, prescription drugs, medical equipment, long-term care, mental health services, dental services, chiropractic services, basic vision care and other healthcare needs.

And try this on for size: No deductibles, copayments, coinsurance or other cost-sharing shall be imposed with respect to covered benefits. Instead, funding would be made primarily through payroll taxes, as is already the case with Medicare and Social Security.

A 2013 analysis of an earlier version of Conyers legislation by Gerald Friedman, a healthcare economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that progressive federal tax payments would cost less for 95% of households than the current system of deductibles, premiums and copayments.

He also concluded that because of huge administrative savings and greater negotiating strength with hospitals, doctors and drug companies, a Medicare-for-all system would make it possible to provide universal coverage and comprehensive benefits to future generations.

This isnt socialism and it isnt government-run healthcare. Doctors would still be free to practice medicine as they see fit.

Its simply a more effective and efficient way of managing healthcare risk for the entire population.

Private health insurers would battle ferociously to prevent such a change, but they wouldnt be put out of business. Rather than providing total coverage, theyd simply shift to offering supplemental plans, as they already do. A more competitive market for added coverage would only benefit Americans.

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Its widely believed that Republican replacements for the Affordable Care Act will include health savings accounts coupled with high-deductible plans from private insurers, as well as high-risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions that all but guarantee limited coverage and sky-high premiums.

Think about that. Now think about the broad coverage featured in Conyers bill being available for less than what you pay now.

Think about having the same coverage regardless of your job (or lack thereof). Think about the number of people without insurance dropping to zero.

Think about Americans finally enjoying the same healthcare benefits as the rest of the developed world.

Whats not to like?

David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.

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Actor Dan Bucatinskys Beverly Hills house is a decent approximation of a traditional Tuscan villa, with wrought-iron balconies, a courtyard and stone and tile detailing.

Bucatinsky and his partner, screenwriter and director Don Roos, bought the roughly 5,000-square-foot home nearly two decades ago  before Bucatinsky won an Emmy for his stint on Scandal and wrote his book Does This Baby Make Me Look Straight?

At the time, I had not been to Italy. It was just a big house with a beautiful kitchen  a big step up for us, Bucatinsky said. The kitchen is one of the main reasons we bought the house.

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The actor is currently filming the Fox show 24: Legacy and producing the series Who Do You Think You Are? with Lisa Kudrow. He and Roos have two children together.

Why do you love the kitchen so much?

Id have to call the kitchen the family room  its where the kids play their board games, where I make them pancakes every morning, where Don and I drink tea sitting in the corner chair. Theres a fireplace, an island, a dog bed. Theres everything in there except a bathroom.

Howd you decorate it?

None of my showbizzy stuff is in the kitchen. For years, we had a fridge with wood paneling on top of it, so we couldnt use magnets. But we had a big floor-to-ceiling mirror with a thick, beautiful wood frame standing against one of the walls. Wed put the kids artwork and New Years resolutions in the crack between the glass and the frame. Its a sweet thing to see when you walk in.

Theres a plate the kids made at Color Me Mine for our 20th anniversary, and another plate we bought as a memento in Vermont back in 2004 for our civil-union ceremony. And theres a framed caricature of the family that hangs in the kitchen as well.

Your dining table is very unique.

It used to be Dons table for him to write his movies on. There are desk drawers that come out of every side, filled with the kids stationery and a bunch of Nintendo games. Its definitely a table of a family with children.

And it has a bit of a farmhouse vibe, with the long bench on one side.

I love the farm ideal, even though theres nothing in my life history that would explain it  I grew up in Manhattan and now live in Beverly Hills. But now we even have three chickens.

So whats on the menu usually?

I have celiac disease, so I try all kinds of gluten-free recipes. Im shooting in Atlanta right now, but I cant have fried chicken and biscuits, so my most recent obsession is trying to make gluten-free fried chicken and biscuits.

Why the affinity for the Tuscan look?

We bought this as a spec house. There was a lot about it that was prefab. The fireplace looked like stone but felt hollow and cheap. Many corners had been cut. We put new molding and wood doors everywhere, finishing plaster on the walls, real mantles imported from Europe for the fireplaces.

A lot of celebs like to move around. Think youll be here a long time?

Don said, This is the house Im going to be buried in.

hotproperty@latimes.com

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Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick has quit a panel advising President Trump on economic issues, according to a memo sent to staff Thursday.

Kalanick faced mounting pressure from employees and customers to leave the council, especially after Trump signed an executive order Friday barring travelers and refugees from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States.

Earlier today, I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community, Kalanick wrote in the memo obtained by The Times. I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda, but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that.

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The criticism of Kalanick came to a head over the weekend when Uber customers began deleting the ride-hailing app from their phones in protest of Kalanicks cooperation with the Trump administration, prompting the hashtag #DeleteUber to trend on Twitter.

Kalanick on Saturday took to social media to defend his decision to remain on the council, saying in a Facebook post: We partner around the world optimistically in the belief that by speaking up and engaging we can make a difference I understand that many people internally and externally may not agree with that decision, and thats OK. Its the magic of living in America that people are free to disagree.

But by Thursday, he had changed his tune, slamming the presidents executive order in his memo and telling employees that the implicit assumption that Uber (or I) was somehow endorsing the Administrations agenda has created a perception-reality gap between who people think we are, and who we actually are.

The council of business executives was launched in early December to meet with the president frequently to share their specific experience and knowledge as the president implements his plan to bring back jobs and Make America Great Again, the initial announcement said.

Other members of the council include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, former GE chairman Jack Welch, General Motors CEO Mary Barra and Disney CEO Bob Iger  who said he wont attend the first meeting Friday because it overlaps with a company board meeting.

On Thursday afternoon, Musk said he and other council members would use the meeting to express our objections to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes.

Advisory councils simply provide advice and attending does not mean that I agree with actions by the Administration, Musk said in a statement. I understand the perspective of those who object to my attending this meeting, but I believe at this time that engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good.

The full text of Kalanicks memo to Uber staff can be read below.

------

Dear Team,

Earlier today I spoke briefly with the President about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community. I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that.

I spent a lot of time thinking about this and mapping it to our values. There are a couple that are particularly relevant:

Inside Out - The implicit assumption that Uber (or I) was somehow endorsing the Administrations agenda has created a perception-reality gap between who people think we are, and who we actually are.

Just Change - We must believe that the actions we take ultimately move the ball forward. There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that. The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America. Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and theres a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants.

Immigration and openness to refugees is an important part of our countrys success and quite honestly to Ubers. I am incredibly proud to work directly with people like Thuan and Emil, both of whom were refugees who came here to build a better life for themselves. I know it has been a tough week for many of you and your families, as well as many thousands of drivers whose stories are heartfelt and heart-wrenching.

Please know, your questions and stories on Tuesday, along with what I heard from drivers, have kept me resilient and reminded me of one of our most essential cultural values, Be Yourself. We will fight for the rights of immigrants in our communities so that each of us can be who we are with optimism and hope for the future.

Travis

tracey.lien@latimes.com

Twitter: @traceylien

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6:15 p.m.: This article was updated to include comment from Elon Musk.

This article was originally published at 2:40 p.m.
Is Denzel Washington now the front-runner for the lead actor Oscar? Should actors use their platforms to espouse their political views? And could Isabelle Huppert pull off a surprise Oscar win for lead actress?

Welcome to the Gold Standard, the newsletter from the Los Angeles Times that helps guide you through the ins and outs of the awards season leading up to the Oscars.

Im Glenn Whipp, The Times awards columnist and your newsletter host.

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SAG AWARDS WRAP: IS DENZEL NOW THE FRONT-RUNNER?

Casey Affleck had won countless critics prizes, along with a Golden Globe, for his aching, inward turn in Manchester by the Sea, making him the default favorite in the lead actor Oscar race.

Then at the SAG Awards, Denzel Washington took the lead actor prize for his towering, dialogue-devouring turn in Fences and, suddenly, the contest for that particular Oscar is up for grabs.

As I noted in my SAG Awards wrap and analysis, the last 12 actors to win SAGs lead honor went on to take the Oscar. (The exception: Johnny Depp for the original Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Sean Penn won the Oscar for Mystic River.) Its hard to argue against that kind of a streak, particularly when Washingtons showy performance (perfectly in step with the outsized character hes playing) is the kind of a turn that wins Oscars. (Hoo-ah!)

Other SAG Awards takeaways: Viola Davis (Fences) remains an Oscar lock, and Emma Stone (La La Land) and Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) arent too far behind. On the television side, first-year series The Crown and Stranger Things received early boosts heading into this years Emmys.

You can find complete Times coverage of the SAG Awards here, including backstage photos, interviews from the red carpet and press room reports.

The cast of Stranger Things is shown at the 2017 SAG Awards. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

THE POLITICAL SIDE OF AWARDS SEASON

Anyone tuning in to the SAG Awards on Sunday thinking they might be escaping news headlines for a couple of hours was quickly disabused of that notion as winner after winner used the platform to speak out against President Trumps immigration ban.

This immigrant ban is a blemish and is un-American, said Veeps Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the evenings first award recipient, getting the ball rolling.

Just about every SAG Awards winner had something to say, with the peak performance belonging to Stranger Things cast member David Harbour, who delivered a fiery, three-minute speech, ably assisted by co-star Winona Ryders grab bag of facial expressions.

Was it too much politics? I certainly heard from readers who thought so. Times film writer Josh Rottenberg and I wrote an article about this very thing, the tricky place A-listers find themselves in when it comes to talking about Trump. You can read that piece here.

Isabelle Huppert has been nominated for an Oscar for her role in Elle. (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)

ISABELLE HUPPERT FINALLY RECEIVES HER OSCAR CLOSE-UP

You cant say we havent been on board the Isabelle Huppert bandwagon from the beginning. The Times spoke to the French acting legend, who earned her first Oscar nomination for her provocative turn in Elle, at the Telluride Film Festival, then, a week later at the Toronto Film Festival. Times film writer Mark Olsen wrote a piece in November about the collaboration between Huppert and Elle director Paul Verhoeven, pegged to a tribute at the AFI Fest, and then revisited the actress work in this weeks Envelope cover story. The Times also hosted an evening with her as part of our Envelope Independent Screening Series.

So, yes, were fans. As my colleague, Mr. Olsen, writes: Huppert has long had a reputation as one of the most fearsome and fearless actresses in the world. There has always been something both steely and vulnerable about her screen presence, an ice queen willing to show her cracks.

Its wonderful that the Oscar nomination points new fans toward her outstanding body of work. You could spend years immersing yourself in it.

Feedback?

Id love to hear from you. Email me at glenn.whipp@latimes.com.

Cant get enough about awards season? Follow me on Twitter: @glennwhipp
Kim Kardashian has reportedly spent days testifying to French authorities about the October armed robbery in which she and her jewels were targeted and her life was threatened.

Investigators in the case paid a quasi-house call to the reality TV star Wednesday and Thursday, coming to America to meet her at a midtown hotel in New York City to debrief her further about the Paris crime, TMZ reported. Sources told the outlet that Kardashian was being tapped to identify two of the 17 suspects arrested in connection with the crime. Her testimony would wrap up Friday, the site said.

Its mentally exhausting for her to rehash all the details of that awful morning, but she wants the people responsible to get punished, a source told People. She met with a French judge and attorneys Wednesday morning and was glad that she didnt have to go to Paris for the case, the source said.

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Per French legal custom, victims dont have to testify in person or go through cross-examination, TMZ said. According to Peoples source, Kardashian was heading back to Los Angeles on Friday.

A Keeping Up With the Kardashians promo released this week shows a post-robbery Kardashian telling her sisters, We have to have a security guard outside of all of our homes, 24/7. So yes, that will be part of the upcoming season of the show, which premieres March 5.

Kardashian, sans hubby Kanye West, warmed up for the legal briefing with a four-day family vacation in Costa Rica that included Scott Disick drama. Kourtney Kardashians baby daddy and former boyfriend apparently disappeared from the family compound to spend time at a hotel with a woman an Us Weekly source said was someone he barely knows. He bailed out a day early.

While Kim was talking to legal types in New York, Scott was spotted cozied up with model types in Miami. Which would you rather?

cdz@latimes.com

@theCDZ

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James Baldwin got to the root of Americas persistent, racially tense sociopolitical climate nearly 55 years ago. In an interview on Henry Morgenthau IIIs The Negro and the American Promise, alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, he laid at the feet of white America the divisive language they once created to dehumanize black people, which set off centuries of division.

What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place, because Im not a nigger, he said. Im a man, but if you think Im a nigger, it means you need it If Im not a nigger and you invented him -- you, the white people, invented him -- then youve got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that, whether or not its able to ask that question.

That was in 1963 when, with cigarette smoke wafting around his head, Baldwin challenged, on public television, America to reckon with its responsibility for some of the problems that plagued the country. As the new documentary I Am Not Your Negro argues, if America had listened, perhaps our current uncertain political atmosphere might never have arrived. But its here, and still Baldwin has the answer.

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Thats the sentiment of documentarian Raoul Pecks film, which arrives in theaters Friday. And quite like Baldwin, the film is unadulterated, uncompromising and unapologetic.

Its practically saying to this country that the American Dream doesnt exist because we built it on the genocide of Native Americans and blacks, Peck said. Its saying if you dont fix your problem that you have  not me as a black person  my presence will wrack your dreams. Each minute of this film is a bomb. There is nothing innocent, no respite. Bomb. Bomb. Bomb. Bomb.

Peck first came to know of Baldwin and his incisive words through a couple of black gay friends with whom he lived in the same college dorm in Berlin. In fierce discussion with the two Americans about race in the United States, Peck, who was born in Haiti and raised in France, wanted them to be aware of a permanent anger they seemed to have about being black in America.

You dont wake up and say that you are black. You dont wake up and say that you are gay every morning, he recalled telling them. Its not something you check, [like a box]. When you wake up, youre just you.

But Peck realized that, coming from a different background, one where he learned very early on that I am not to be defined and nobody had the right to tell me [about me], his experience was fundamentally different. I was privileged to escape that kind of scrutiny, he said.

His two friends werent as lucky. They gifted him Baldwins The Fire Next Time and he was forever changed.

Since that first contact with Baldwin, I never left him, he said. I read everything. He was a constant reminder for me, a constant mentor, a constant companion.

When Peck began making films -- after being a New York City taxi driver and working as a journalist and photographer, and while he was Haitis minister of culture  he knew that one day I would tackle Baldwin, especially since he starts every screenplay he writes with a Baldwin quote to help sustain the whole writing process. He set out to do just that nearly 10 years ago.

In need of permission from the Baldwin estate  the writer died in 1987  Peck wrote them a letter despite everyone telling him they were notorious for refusing or ignoring requests. I have nothing to lose, he thought.

He received a written response within three days and an invitation to meet with Baldwins sister Gloria Karefa-Smart in Washington, D.C. By the end of their meeting, she, a fan of Pecks 2000 film Lumumba, had granted him unprecedented access to the entire estate.

She chose me, much more than me choosing Baldwin, he said.

Over the next four years, he ruffled through Baldwins many works, published and unpublished. In that time, he had written a number of scripts, for a narrative feature and a mixed narrative-documentary flick, but all that was not satisfying for me, he said.

Deep down what I wanted was how to do the ultimate Baldwin [film], the film that would be bold and nobody could shake up, that would stay forever and make everybody go back to Baldwin and the books, he said.

It was necessary for him to at least try to have the same impact Baldwin himself had on people and society with this film. But to be totally Baldwin, I knew I had to set myself back and leave the stage for him, his words.

The idea for I Am Not Your Negro would come only when Karefa-Smart was packing up the estate to send to the New York Public Library. She came across a 30-page collection of notes and that she sent to Peck believing that hed know what to do with them. The notes were of Baldwins unfinished book, Remember This House, and provided the open door Peck was longing for.

Remember This House, the foundation of the film, was Baldwins effort to tell the story of race in America through the assassinations of Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers. The filmmaker took the words from those pages and crafted a narrative, voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, that Peck hopes will endure and remain as relevant as Baldwin himself. And in contrast to how most modern documentaries are made, the now Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro has no talking heads. The only words are Baldwins.

I made sure every single word was pure Baldwin, he said. It was not about how creative I am. It was about how do I make sure it hits the people frontally, without any filter.

That aspect is what separates this documentary from any other done on Baldwin, said Charles Reese, an actor and artist known for his critically acclaimed off-Broadway performance in James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire. Hes since dedicated his life to discussing and keeping Baldwins memory alive.

I had to stand still and catch myself, he said about his first time watching the movie. (Hes now seen it four times.) I had to take stock. This piece really gives you Baldwin in a way weve never seen Baldwin [presented] before.

Such a presentation is necessary, he said, considering the divisions in this country that have been exacerbated with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the recent election of Donald Trump as president. Reese believes Baldwins work will be the work were going to have to utilize to get through this next phase.

Reese agreed with Pecks assessment, that the film is a bomb. It is a bomb that is a balm, and a tool for healing everyone, he said.

But everyone, particularly white America, must truly bring themselves to and into the film for it to have the desired effect. They must be willing to confront themselves, Peck said.

Im not playing games with people anymore, he said. If you dont get it, its your problem. Im not going to wait for you. Im not going to explain it to you much more than this film.

Get your life! Follow me on Twitter (@TrevellAnderson) or email me: trevell.anderson@latimes.com.
Movie recommendations from critics Kenneth Turan, Justin Chang and other reviewers. Click title for full review.

Arrival Amy Adams stars in this elegant, involving science-fiction drama that is simultaneously old and new, revisiting many alien-invasion conventions but with unexpected intelligence, visual style and heart. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.

The Eagle Huntress A portrait of a 13-year-old Kazakh girl from Mongolia who defies eons of tradition by learning to hunt with fierce golden eagles is a documentary so satisfying it makes you feel good about feeling good. (Kenneth Turan) G.

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Elle Paul Verhoevens brilliantly booby-trapped thriller starring Isabelle Huppert is a gripping whodunit, a tour de force of psychological suspense and a wickedly droll comedy of manners. (Justin Chang) R.

The Founder Michael Keaton gives a performance of ratty, reptilian brilliance as Ray Kroc, the American salesman who turned a California burger stand into the global fast-food behemoth that is McDonalds, in John Lee Hancocks shrewd and satisfyingly fat-free biopic. (Justin Chang) PG-13.

I Am Not Your Negro As directed by the gifted Raoul Peck, this documentary on James Baldwin uses the entire spectrum of movie effects, not only spoken language but also sound, music, editing and all manner of visuals, to create a cinematic essay that is powerful and painfully relevant. (Kenneth Turan) NR.

Jackie Star Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy and director Pablo Larrain brilliantly pull back the curtain on one of the most public of private lives. (Kenneth Turan) R.

La La Land Starring a well-paired Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, writer-director Damien Chazelles tuneful tribute to classic movie musicals is often stronger in concept than execution, but its lovely and transporting all the same. (Justin Chang) PG-13.

Loving Beautifully acted by Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton, this involving, socially conscious Jeff Nichols drama shows the personal lives of the interracial couple whose marriage led to the 1967 Supreme Court ruling that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional. (Kenneth Turan) PG-13.

Manchester by the Sea Powerful, emotional filmmaking that leaves a scar, Kenneth Lonergans drama starring Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams is both heartbreaking and heartening, a film that just wallops you with its honesty, its authenticity and its access to despair. (Kenneth Turan) R.

Moonlight Superb filmmaking and an exceptional level of emotional honesty universalize a very specific coming-of-age experience, that of a gay black man growing from child to adult starting in 1980s Miamis crack cocaine epidemic years. (Kenneth Turan) R.

Paterson Jim Jarmuschs wonderfully serene and beguiling movie is a portrait of a young artist refining his craft, drawing impressions from his everyday existence and coaxing them into a pleasing and provocative shape. (Justin Chang) R.

The Red Turtle A prize-winner at Cannes, this immersive, meditative, stunningly beautiful animated feature that is concerned with the rhythms of the natural world and the mysteries and wonders of ordinary life. (Kenneth Turan) PG.

Silence Martin Scorseses wrenching adaptation of Shusaku Endos 1966 novel, about 17th century Portuguese priests experiencing a crisis of faith in feudal Japan, ponders the dogmas and mysteries of Christian faith with astonishing rigor and seriousness. (Justin Chang) R.

Toni Erdmann Sandra Huller and Peter Simonischek give splendid performances as a high-strung businesswoman and her screw-loose dad in this magnificently unpredictable comedy from German writer-director Maren Ade. (Justin Chang) R.

20th Century Women Mike Mills lovingly fictionalized snapshot of his late-1970s adolescence belongs to Annette Bening and her marvelously suggestive and layered performance. (Justin Chang) R.

Wheeler In a perfect world, Stephen Dorff would compete in next years Oscar race for his poignant disappearing act in this terrific fictional tale given docudrama-like treatment by director Ryan Ross, who co-wrote with Dorff. (Gary Goldstein) PG.

See the most-read stories in Entertainment this hour 

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Miranda Kerrs power of positivity cant be restrained.Her decision to stitch tiny tags printed with affirmative phrases such as in joy and live for now on the inside seams of cropped navy sweatshirts, butterfly-embroidered shirts and the rest of her denim collaboration with Los Angeles-based Mother is influencing not only customers to snap up the pieces but also her stylists, Chloe and Marie-Lou Bartoli, and Disney star Peyton List to contemplate on Wednesday night what they would do with their own fashion line.

All the girls are constantly asking me, said List, who has amassed more than 14 million followers on social media through her gigs on Bunkd, Jessie and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Youre either dressing like a little girl or a woman. What is missing is something in the middle for teenagers and young women, she observed as waiters passed spicy chicken tacos and artfully rolled sushi at Catch L.A. in West Hollywood to guests including Louise Roe and Jessica Paster. You dont need to show every part of your body, she said. I want to show off my curves but still stay classy.

The high-waisted jeans from Kerrs collection, which benefits Australias Royal Hospital for Women, fit that need. Calling the model an icon of mine, the 18-year-old said in awe, Ive grown and shes not aged at all. Shes so perfect and beautiful. As she makes her way through Hollywood, List loves fashion as a form of self-expression. I just feel its a way of expressing yourself at the moment, she said. Its for me and not anyone else. People say, Guys like it when you dress down. I dont give a beep about what guys like.

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In the case of the Bartoli twins, they know exactly what they like from styling Kerr, Jared Leto, Poppy Delevingne and other celebrities. Hence theyre prepping to launch their own fashion line, named Bartoli. Were working with samples right now, said Marie-Lou Bartoli. Its hard to find good underwear and basics. Were doing supersleek, just great-fitting, comfortable basics.

All made in Los Angeles, the line would cost anywhere from $100 to $1,500. While Chloe Bartoli wanted to keep the rest of the details a secret, her sister revealed that they would sell it online and in stores.

Certainly the twins can swap tips with Kerr, who doesnt hide how much she likes designing, whether its jeans, bags for Samantha Thavasa, her home in Malibu or the packaging for her natural skin-care brand, Kora Organics. Shes directing the rebranding for Kora to a more elevated and refined look, just in time to start selling it as the first certified organic line at Sephora in May.

Its a fun process to create, she said, noting that she merged her two projects by wearing jeans from her Mother collection to a board meeting for Kora earlier that day. She said she could probably see herself giving up modeling to design full-time. For me, the modeling has always been a means to an end, she said. Its not something I ever aspired to do. Its something I was like, OK, Ill do that so it can be like a stepping stone to other things. And I can meet creative, interesting people, I can travel the world and now Ive been able to develop my business, Kora Organics. Thats really my passion.

Kerr was on a roll in making people feel good. As the party wound down, Paster swung by her booth to send her well wishes. Youve never looked better, Kerr told her.

Youre so sweet, Paster replied.

You look really good, Kerr continued.

But look at how fat my ass looks, Paster said, turning around to show off her denim-clad backside.

Its hot, Kerr said, before friends around them broke out in giggles.

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First Lady Melania Trump might still be spending her weekdays in New York but she is getting the Trump White House in ship-shape with the help of interior designer Tham Kannalikham.

Mrs. Trump has a deep appreciation for the historical aspects of the White House and with Thams traditional design and expertise, they are focusing on a seamless integration of elegance and comfort into where the President, the First Lady, and [their son] Barron will be spending their family time and calling their home, said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, senior adviser to the First Lady.

The Laotian-American designer got her start at Ralph Lauren Home in New York and now heads up her own firm as principal of Kannalikham Designs. While pundits and comedians have mused about the likelihood of an Oval Office adorned with gold and marble accents along the lines of the Louis XIV-inspired style that Angelo Donghia created for the Presidents penthouse in Trump Tower, their White House is likely to be more toned down given Kannalikhams ethos.

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With what was described as extensive experience working with private clients from around the world, her interest in traditional design, coupled with her past work, has led to a decade of extensive study in the fields of early American architecture and decorative arts. I am honored by the opportunity to be working with the First Lady to make the White House feel like home, Kannalikham said in a statement released Thursday.

While it was not immediately known how she and the First Lady met, the fact that Kannalikham keeps a relatively low profile may have been a selling point with FLOTUS. The designers web site has a private login for clients, and it does not feature any photographs or information beyond an e-mail contact. Her Instagram account is private. Her Ralph Lauren tie may have been another upside with the First Lady, who millions of inauguration watchers know wore a powder blue ensemble by Lauren for her husbands swearing-in ceremony last month. With the exception of Lauren, Trump gravitated toward lesser-known  and lowkey  designers for her inaugural weekend wardrobe.

The President wasted no time in hanging a portrait of Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office and the First Lady may also keep a fast pace with her White House redecorating. The Lincoln Bedroom, the Presidents Dining Room, the Truman Balcony, the Yellow Oval Room and the Treaty Room are all housed on the White Houses second floor, and are among the spaces that First Families generally rework to their taste.

During the Obama years, it was the Los Angeles-based designer Michael Smith who reimagined the private quarters at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with an array of 20th and 21st century art. The turnaround time was a mere two months, according to an Architectural Digest article. Smiths first priority was reportedly squaring away the bedrooms for Malia and Sasha. In terms of First Family decorating, that M.O. may remain intact given First Lady Melania Trumps devotion to her 10-year-old son.

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No one bowl of spaghetti has probably garnered as much attention as the spaghetti pomodoro from New York chef Scott Conant. The mound of perfectly twirled pasta with basil and tomato has followed Conant from restaurant to restaurant, and it has landed at his newest venture, an Italian restaurant called the Ponte that hes opening with Los Angeles restaurateur Stephane Bombet on Beverly Boulevard, just blocks from the Beverly Center.

The restaurant is named for the term pontes, or what the Italian immigrants from Pontelandolfo called themselves when they settled in Waterbury, Conn., where Conant grew up.

It means hes one of us, said Conant during a phone call. It kind of brings me back to that Italian American experience to a certain extent, but mostly to that sense of hospitality, that you really want to be around the table.

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The Ponte is in the space formerly occupied by Terrine, the California brasserie Bombet ran with chef Kris Morningstar that closed late last year. Currently under construction, the Ponte is scheduled to open by the end of the month.

Conant is no longer affiliated with the Scarpetta Italian restaurants  the Beverly Hills location at the Montage Hotel closed last spring but there are more locations across the country  and said he was looking for a new space in Los Angeles when Bombet, who also owns Hanjip Korean barbecue in Culver City and Faith and Flower in downtown L.A., contacted him.

Ive always loved Scarpetta and Scott, so when it went away, I thought it was such a pity for L.A. not having a chef like Scott doing modern Italian cuisine, Bombet said. When I made up my mind about Terrine, Scott was my first phone call.

The intention is to create something a little more casual than what Scarpetta was, but more importantly, to really have an environment for people to linger and a sense of conviviality, Conant said.

A frequent judge on Food Networks Chopped, Conant said he plans to make full use of the existing wood-burning oven in the back of the space, as well as produce from local markets. Hell also bring back some of the dishes hes known for  such as the spaghetti.

Its not going to be your traditional Italian American stuff. But I literally have, at least, on a daily basis someone reach out via social media saying, I really miss your spaghetti, he said. Were going to have a couple dishes that really resonated with people, and they were our bestselling dishes so I see no reason to change it.

Conant also promised to bring back his polenta with mushrooms. Other menu highlights include charcuterie, antipasti, pasta and pizza, along with roasted lamb neck with raisins and smoked eggplant; and prawns with celery root puree, salmoriglio and crispy sunchokes.

Bombet Hospitality Group bar program director Ryan Wainwright, who is also responsible for the libations at Faith & Flower and has previously worked at the Tasting Kitchen in Venice, will head the beverage program at the Ponte. The bar menu is to feature six classic and six house drinks.

Bombet said the back patio will remain, but the interior is undergoing a redesign by designer Marc Ange, including a new bar area and main dining room.

Although hes been to L.A. before (the Ponte will be Conants second L.A. restaurant and first not attached to a hotel), Conant is the latest in a growing list of high-profile chefs opening restaurants in Los Angeles in the next few years. Also included on that list are San Franciscos Charles Phan and Chad Robertson, as well as Phoenix pizzaiolo Chris Bianco.

With a wave of very famous chefs finally saying, Hey, we believe L.A. is the biggest food city in America and I want to be a part of it, thats very much why Scott and I connected, Bombet said.

And a bowl of spaghetti pomodoro and a sip of limoncello on a sunlit patio doesnt sound like a bad way to welcome spring.

8265 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. bombethospitalitygroup.com.

Jenn.Harris@latimes.com

Twitter: @Jenn_Harris_

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The day the Apple Pan opened, on April 11, 1947, a neighbor brought flowers to crown the U-shape counter of the Pico Boulevard burger joint. Martha Gamble, now 87, daughter of the restaurants founders, Ellen and Alan Baker, remembers the day vividly. She also remembers the neighborhood as it was then, long before the sprawling Westside Pavilion moved in across the street, when the draw of the neighborhood was pony rides, small independent shoe stores, the Picwood movie theater, and before that the Pico, the first drive-in movie theater in L.A.

Now celebrating its 70th year in business, the Apple Pan has never changed hands or accepted anything but cash. With a wait list built on memory and trust, and the motto Quality Forever, diners and employees take comfort in finding things just as they always were. Whether its that the recipes were timeless when the Bakers and their parents tested them in their home kitchens down the block or that Los Angeles relies on the living time capsule to preserve and serve time past isnt important. What matters is that if you ever leave Los Angeles for any amount of time, when you return, even if all else is unrecognizable, you can sit down at one of the 26 counter seats in a room of lacquered wood, brick and plaid, and order Alan Bakers quarter-pound burger with hickory sauce and his mothers apple pie.

The Bakers decided to build a small, very unpretentious little place, says Gamble, who now runs it with her daughter, Sunny Sherman, 61.

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My mother thought of the name and my dad said, Oh, I like that! That was it. Gambles grandmothers were in charge of making the pies and figuring out the recipes; her parents honed the sandwiches at home. On the enduring menu are two burgers  the Hickoryburger and Steakburger  and five sandwiches, including a tuna sandwich with sweet pickles and black olives, and an elegantly piled Southern Baked Ham.

The who, what and where of the original family recipes, dating back as early as 1881, are recorded on the two-sided laminated menu, and they reveal a collection of Midwestern culinary traditions  from Bakers and Gambles in Ohio, Missouri and Nebraska  that found a home on this corner in Southern California.

The modest restaurant is a temple of consistency, and the belief and devotion of diners and employees alike sustains it. Sherman recalls the time they tried making a slight modification  a single ingredient  to the secret sweet-and-smoky sauce that defines their hickoryburger. After two customers, actor John Lithgow and his wife, noticed, the recipe went back to the original.

A homemade apple pie cools on a rack at the Apple Pan on Pico Boulevard. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

We like what weve got and the way its been done and really for us the challenge is to keep it that way, says Sherman.

Regulars do their part to help the Apple Pan maintain its diligent charm. In his spare time, a customer whom Sherman describes as a bigwig in movies would search online for the increasingly hard-to-find vintage metal cups for paper soda cones and bring them in to make up for the dozens that had disappeared in the hands of sneaky diners.

A 66-year-old who gave her name only as Dru has been an Apple Pan customer and neighbor since age 5. In the early days, she remembers, the area was full of kids and the older ones would walk the younger ones to Pico and Glendon Avenue, where theyd be served hamburgers at the counter by men who knew their names. As a single person eating at the counter, she says, people share their lives with her. Once, a cartoonist eating beside her sketched a portrait of longtime server Gordon Teske on a paper napkin; she still has the image after all these years. Ive made friends and exchanged phone numbers with people Ive met at the counter here, she says.

Weve had some very, very good people working here, says Gamble. Thats important in a place like this  to have good camaraderie with each other  especially when they work as fast as they have to around here. And it was important to my mother and dad to pay them well.

The lunch crowd fills the counter at the Apple Pan. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Hector Morales, originally from Juarez, Mexico, has worked at the Apple Pan since 1976, when he was 22 years old. Bored at his job in a plastic factory in Santa Monica, he answered an ad he found in the Evening Outlook for a cooks helper at the Apple Pan. He initially declined the job offer because he didnt want to work the night shift, but Alan Baker was persistent  he offered Morales more money and to pay him while the restaurant was closed in July. Forty years later, hes one of the most veteran employees and a friend he recruited in 1979, Roberto Velasco, still works there too. Morales has had meals in Paris; Sydney, Australia; Bangkok, Thailand; and Madrid with people hes met at the counter. I feel that Ive learned so much from the customers that come here, he says. And year after year they are happy to see us.

Sit down at Morales side of the counter  each server works either the right or left side for his entire career  on a busy Saturday afternoon and you enter his stream of counter consciousness. He takes orders and refills coffee cups from the ancient urns with a rhythm thats both economical and generous. Since nothing has changed, theres nothing to explain.

Growing up in Mexico, Morales was never into hamburgers, but he grew to love them, of course, because theyre the best hamburgers! Even after all these years, he eats a Hickoryburger with cheese a couple of times a week. As day manager Lupe Gomez says about all things Apple Pan, Why change something that works?

Apple Pan, 10801 W. Pico Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 475-3585

food@latimes.com

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Two men have been charged in connection with a string of armed robberies that left two others dead in Los Angeles neighborhoods miles apart in the span of a single day last month.

Kayshon Moody, 25, has been charged with two counts of murder and two counts of second-degree robbery stemming from the killings of a 34-year-old man working at a Chevron station in Los Feliz and a 50-year-old man working at a marijuana dispensary in Mar Vista, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Los Angeles County district attorneys office.

In addition, Moody has been charged with robbing a fast-food restaurant in the Sawtelle neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 17, according to the complaint.

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James Eastman, 21, was charged with one count of murder and one count of second-degree robbery in connection with the dispensary slaying. Eastman also faces one count of second-degree robbery stemming from a separate crime in Glendale.

The violence began at 1:55 a.m. on Jan. 17, when a man walked into a Big Tomys restaurant in the 11200 block of West Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles and ordered a soda, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by the Times.

While the cashier was ringing him up, the customer pointed a gun at him, then left with the cash drawer, according to the affidavit.

About an hour and a half later, Mohammed Rahman was working at a gas station at Vermont Avenue and Los Feliz Boulevard in Los Feliz when a man walked in, grabbed several items and placed them on the counter.

The man handed the money to Rahman, then pulled out a gun and shot him. Rahman was a graduate business student who worked nights to pay for school, co-workers told The Times.

Police reviewed security camera recordings from the gas station and saw that the killer was driving a white Nissan Versa, according to a search warrant affidavit.

The next morning about 11:30 a.m., Ovik Oganesyan, 50, was shot and killed while working at the marijuana dispensary in the 12400 block of Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, police said. Security camera footage from the dispensary showed there were two attackers, who fired about 10 rounds, according to police.

That night at about 9:15 p.m., the American Market in the 1700 block of Lake Street in Glendale was robbed by a person with a gun who was wearing a hoodie over a white hat.

As the assailant was leaving, he accidentally dropped the hat.

Detectives from the L.A. and Glendale police departments noticed the similarities between the robberies and cooperated as they investigated, police said.

On Jan. 20, Glendale police said, DNA results came back showing that genetic material from the hat recovered at the scene of the robbery matched Moody.

That night, LAPD detectives found Moody driving a Nissan Versa and took him into custody, according to the search warrant. Eastman, who was with Moody in the car, was released from custody but later arrested when investigators linked him to some of the crimes, police said.

The men are scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 21, according to a district attorneys spokesman.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

Twitter: @nicolesantacruz

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno
An Emmy-winning producer was convicted Thursday of trying to kill a roommate who laughed at him when he said he wanted to win Oscars, authorities said.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Gregory Dohi found Andre Bautista, known as Andre Bauth, guilty of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon in the Sept. 8, 2015, stabbing, according to the Los Angeles County district attorneys office.

The 38-year-old Colombian actor and producer is scheduled to be sentenced March 22 in a Van Nuys courtroom. He faces 13 years in state prison.

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Authorities said laughter triggered the violent attack at the Studio City home where Bautista rented out rooms to the victim and others.

According to prosecutors, Bautista told his roommate that he would win five Oscars someday. The roommate laughed after Bautistas bold declaration.

Thats when, Los Angeles police said, Bautista grabbed a kitchen knife from inside the home in the 3100 block of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and stabbed his roommate in the chest.

Bautista fled after the attack.

The roommate, who identified himself as Clayton Haymes to KCBS-TV, said, when he said five Oscars, we all kind of laughed a little bit, and he got really upset.

Los Angeles police issued a warrant for Bautistas arrest on Sept. 10, 2015. He surrendered a week later at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

During the trial, prosecutors presented evidence indicating Bautista had written and starred in an independent movie with a plot twist similar to the charges he was facing.

The film portrayed a landlord who killed his tenants, prosecutors said.

Bautista won a daytime Emmy in 2015 as a producer for the online soap opera The Bay.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA

UPDATES:

5:15 p.m.: This article was updated with new details from the Los Angeles County district attorneys office, saying Bautista was found guilty by a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge.

This article was originally published at 4:20 p.m.
A man was killed by a deputy and a woman was seriously injured Wednesday night after they crashed a stolen car during a chase in a San Manuel Casino parking structure, authorities said.

The chaotic incident started at 7:53 p.m. near the intersection of Highland and Victoria avenues in Highland, when deputies received an alert of a stolen vehicle in the area, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department.

Deputies found the unoccupied stolen vehicle in the casino parking structure and decided to monitor it for suspicious activity. They later saw a man and woman enter the vehicle, the Sheriffs Department said in a statement.

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As deputies approached the vehicle, the man threw the car into reverse, authorities said. A deputy was struck and dragged by the vehicle, sheriffs officials said.

A deputy then fired at the vehicle, striking the man, according to the Sheriffs Department.

The man continued speeding through the parking structure until he crashed into two cars and a metal barrier.

The driver was identified as Michael Russo, 31, of Riverside. He was taken to a hospital, where he later died, sheriffs officials said.

An autopsy was being conducted by the Riverside County coroners office to determine his cause of death.

The woman was identified as Ath Pen, 44, of Fresno. She remained hospitalized Thursday and was being treated for major injuries to both legs.

The deputy who was dragged by the vehicle received minor injuries and was treated at the scene. The Sheriffs Specialized Investigations Division and homicide detail are investigating the shooting.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA
A couple living in a wealthy suburb of south Orange County has been charged with operating a brothel in several high-end apartments, according to prosecutors.

Investigators said they were looking for additional victims of brothel ringleader Fadi Boulos Chaiban, 53, and his partner, Tina Lorraine Saunders, 53, who lived in Ladera Ranch and allegedly went online to recruit women for their prostitution ring, which ran from April 2015 to this past January in Irvine, authorities said.

Chaiban was charged Tuesday with 29 counts of pandering, three counts of pimping and two counts of conspiracy to commit pandering. If convicted, he faces up to 45 years and four months in prison, officials said.

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Saunders is charged with conspiracy to commit pimping, conspiracy to commit pandering, and one count each of pimping and pandering. She faces up to six years in prison if convicted.

According to prosecutors, Chaiban recruited women for his prostitution ring through online advertisements and arranged rendezvous with clients by occasionally posing as a woman.

He took nude photos of some of the women and posted them online in advertisements for his brothel, authorities said. He also kept a detailed client list, officials said.

During a stakeout of one of the Irvine apartments, which Saunders rented, authorities witnessed men going in and coming out in 30- and 60-minute increments, prosecutors said. At the end of the day, Chaiban would arrive to collect cash from the victim and left only a fraction for her, authorities said.

Chaiban and Saunders were arrested leaving their home on Tuesday. Chaiban had more than $469,000 in cash in a storage locker when he was arrested, officials said.

At least 29 women were involved in the brothel but authorities fear there could be more victims. Anyone who believes they may have been a victim or a witness is asked to call the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force at (714) 765-1904.

The couple pleaded not guilty and are due back in court next week for pretrial hearings.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.

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An Irvine man accused of shooting his mother and brother to death inside the family home earlier this week has been charged with two counts of murder, prosecutors announced Thursday.

Nolan Pascal Pillay, 37, also faces sentencing enhancements for using a firearm and multiple killings. He is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 8, prosecutors said.

The shooting was reported about 1 p.m. Tuesday, police said.

Officers rushed to the home in the 14000 block of Crystal Circle, where they found Pillays mother, Gloria Pillay, 58, and his younger brother, Arlyn Pillay, 35, dead from gunshot wounds.

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The two brothers lived at the home with their father, Irvine police spokeswoman Kim Mohr said. Gloria Pillay did not live there but visited frequently, Mohr said. She declined to identify a possible motive for the killings.

Friends of the victims have taken to social media to express their grief.

Aryln Pillay was an artist with his own gallery in Tustin, according to his professional website, OGREshop.com. Friends have been posting remembrances at a GoFundMe page launched to help his family with funeral costs.

Arlyn, the whole art community is in mourning. You had such a bright spirit that shined through all you did, one message read. Your kindness and warm, welcoming personality are truly going to be missed. Thank you for sharing your work with the world, and thank you for being such a wonderful human. Rest In Peace, beautiful man.

The killings were the first homicides in Irvine this year.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.

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A California attorney generals investigation has failed to uncover evidence that would merit criminal charges against Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies for their handling of the disappearance and death of Mitrice Richardson, according to an official letter.

The 24-year-old woman went missing in 2009 after being released from the sheriffs Malibu/Lost Hills station in the middle of the night, even though she was without a phone, wallet or car. Nearly one year later, her decomposed body was found in a Malibu Canyon ravine, several miles from the sheriffs station.

To this day, the cause of Richardsons death remains undetermined, according to the coroners office.

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Richardsons family insists she was the victim of foul play and faults deputies for their treatment of the young woman. Deputies had arrested her for failing to pay an $89 tab at Geoffreys restaurant in Malibu, and then released her about 12:40 a.m. even though she showed signs of potential mental illness.

Her family has also blasted deputies for mishandling her remains. Coroners officials said deputies moved her body parts without permission, and months later, Richardsons mother was visiting the site and found a finger bone that belonged to her daughter.

The office of then-Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris balked at reviewing the case in 2015, saying there was no reasonable inference that deputies broke the law. But months later, in February 2016, the case appeared to gain new momentum after Harris agreed to review the matter at the request of Richardsons father, Michael Richardson.

That yearlong inquiry appears to have revealed no evidence of wrongdoing. A Dec. 31 letter from the attorney generals office to Richardsons father, which was released to The Times, briefly outlines why there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution for destruction, alteration or concealment of evidence.

The closure of the investigation was first reported by the Los Angeles Daily News.

The letter to Richardsons father also noted that the statute of limitations for concealment or tampering of evidence had passed more than two years ago.

Reached by phone on Thursday, Michael Richardson said he was disappointed in the findings of the attorney general and angered by the knowledge that a statute of limitations prevented prosecution. He maintains his daughter was murdered and that her killer remains at large.

Im a great deal upset, Richardson said. We have too many loopholes and too many unanswered questions.

Michael Richardson also accused Harris of taking interest in the case as part of an election-year bid for publicity, noting that the announcement in February 2016 that she would review the case coincided with her campaign for U.S. Senate. Harris was elected to the Senate in November.

Kamala Harris is a phony, Michael Richardson said. We dont need people like that leading us.

A spokesman for Harris did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its review, the attorney generals office looked at whether sheriffs officials had withheld video taken of Richardson while she was at the sheriffs station as well as whether the removal of her remains from the site where they were found before the coroners office arrived had violated the law.

In the letter, Senior Assistant Atty. Gen. Lance Winters acknowledged that sheriffs Capt. Tom Martin, the former station commander, did not immediately hand over videotape of Richardson to her family but noted that the video was preserved and eventually disclosed.

Los Angeles Police Department detectives, who were investigating Richardsons disappearance, were aware of the tape, so there was no apparent criminal aim to hide the video evidence, Winters said.

We also were unable to find any indication that the videotape had been altered or tampered with, nor did we find any evidence suggesting officer misconduct on the videotape, Winters added.

Jail records revealed no clues that evidence was concealed. Winters said that the station phone log did show Richardson made four phone calls to her grandmother, but AT&T phone records did not reflect those calls.

Although the calls could have been made, those calls were either not picked up or not made at all, Winters wrote.

The attorney generals office did conclude that sheriffs deputies removed Richardsons remains before the coroners office arrived, but said it was highly disputed whether the coroners office gave them permission to remove them.

That finding contrasts with what the coroners office said in 2010, when Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter publicly rebuked deputies for removing her remains without approval.

A detective at the time countered that investigators removed the body because they were concerned about approaching nightfall and the possibility that animals might disturb the remains in the rugged ravine.

There is no indication that any part of the discovered remains were destroyed or concealed, Winters wrote in his letter. Ample photographs were taken of the skeletal remains at the site before and after they were unearthed so that the whole recovery process was well documented.

Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a statement that he agreed with the findings, and noted that the case has been reviewed by the Sheriffs Department as well as the countys inspector general and the OIR Group, a police oversight consulting firm.

Each inquiry has produced the same results, McDonnell said. There is no evidence of concealment, tampering of evidence or criminal wrongdoing.

Richardsons parents, each received $450,000 from the county in a legal settlement.

Michael Richardson continues to maintain that his daughter was killed, and in a conversation Thursday night he asked deputies who may know more about her death to come forward.

These officers took an oath to protect and defend people, he said. You didnt take an oath to keep secrets.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno
A Santa Monica middle school was ordered closed Friday after nearly 200 students were potentially exposed to norovirus during a recent trip to Yosemite, officials said.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District said that students from John Adams Middle School were on a five-day trip to Yosemite last week when some participants showed signs of gastrointestinal illness.

Classes were canceled Friday, and no students or staff will be allowed on the campus, Principal Steve Richardson said in a statement. All activities on campus are canceled from Friday through Sunday, with the exception of field sports.

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A planned trip for eighth-graders to AstroCamp, a science camp in the San Jacinto Mountains near Idyllwild, has also been canceled, Richardson said. School officials are planning to provide refunds for the trip, which was supposed to take place this weekend, Richardson said.

Several teachers and parents were potentially exposed to the virus as well, according to a letter sent to parents and staff and published on the school districts website. Its unclear how many people were infected in total.

School officials notified parents of students at John Adams Middle School on Sunday, and officials at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health have helped trace the outbreak to the Yosemite trip.

About 190 seventh-graders were on the trip, along with the teachers and parents. The group returned Friday from Yosemite but did not step onto campus until classes resumed Monday morning, district officials said.

Officials believe the same illness spread to other students at the school who were not on the Yosemite trip, as well as to siblings who attend other schools within the district.

The challenge with this highly contagious illness is that a child or adult may still feel well when they are contagious, making containment difficult, according to the districts letter.

School officials said they were working with public health officials to prevent the spread of the illness. Classrooms and other facilities were being cleaned with special products recommended by public health officials.

Public health professionals anticipate that due to its highly contagious nature and the escalation in affected cases this week, this infections cycle could extend weeks at [John Adams Middle School] and spread to other campuses unless immediate measures are taken, Richardson said.

On the trip, students rode by bus to Yosemite and slept in tents in Curry Village and dormitories in Crane Flat. The trip was billed as a way to stay far away from any shiny screens and electronics, according to the schools website.

Norovirus is a contagious organism that can be spread through contaminated food or water and human interaction, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Between 19 million and 21 million illnesses are caused by norovirus each year, and it is considered the most common cause of food-borne disease outbreaks in the U.S.

Those infected typically experience inflammation of the stomach and intestines as well as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain.

matt.hamilton@latimes.com

Twitter: @MattHjourno

MORE LOCAL NEWS

I am not retired!: A new move for Barbara Boxer

UC would lose $9 billion for research, healthcare, education if Trump cut federal funds

UC Berkeley  home of the free speech movement  finds itself under fire from left, right and Trump

An assault on an elderly Korean woman that went viral on Facebook is not being investigated as hate crime

UPDATES:

7:55 a.m.: This article was updated with information about the school closing.

This article was originally published at 9:45 p.m. Thursday.
New treatments for genetic diseases. Advances in solar-based sustainable energy. Financial aid for needy students and medical assistance for the elderly.

All of that  and much more  is supported by the $9 billion in federal funds given annually to the University of California for research, education and healthcare. Those funds drew widespread public attention Thursday, when President Trump tweeted that UC Berkeleys federal funds might be at risk after campus officials cancelled an appearance by conservative firebrand Milo Yiannopoulos to safeguard the public from violent protesters.

If U.C. Berkeley does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view  NO FEDERAL FUNDS? Trump tweeted.

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Legal experts say presidents have no authority to cut off federal funds for alleged violations of the 1st Amendment. Even if they did, pulling funding from UC  the nations premier public research university system  would cripple myriad projects that richly benefit the nation, said Stuart Russell, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley and founding director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI.

For Trump to threaten federal funding, which by the way benefits the country in terms of the scientific research the campus does that helps our defense and helps our industries  seems like the act of a dictator, he said.

According to UC data, the $9 billion in annual federal funding includes:

$3 billion in research grants. Nearly four-fifths of the funds are awarded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. UC is the nations largest recipient of federal funding for research and related projects, with UC San Francisco, UC San Diego and UCLA receiving the largest grants.

$3.5 billion to UC medical centers for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

$1.6 billion in financial aid to UC students for federal Pell Grants, work-study awards, graduate fellowships and other grants and scholarships.

$800 million to operate the federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Even if Trump could not legally cut federal funding, Russell said, federal agencies might think twice before allocating funding to Berkeley because of presidential annoyance.

But Erwin Chemerinsky, a 1st Amendment expert and the dean of UC Irvine School of Law, said the 10th Amendment bars the federal government from using benefits such as funding to coerce state and local governments into desired action.

The government cant condition money to a campus on the condition that campus administrators not speak critically, he said. It would be unconstitutional.

UC Regent Norman Pattiz, who heads the regents committee on national laboratories, said Trumps tweet surprised him. He said UC researchers supported by federal funding have made enormous contributions  helping the missions to Mars, modernizing nuclear security, advancing alternative energy and discovering new medical treatments.

They really are tremendous resources to California, the nation and the world, Pattiz said.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

Twitter: @teresawatanabe

amina.khan@latimes.com

Twitter: @aminawrite

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Frank Pellegrino, known as Frankie No to those who were rebuffed again and again as they tried to get a table at his homey but impossibly exclusive New York City restaurant, has died at age 72.

As the owner of Raos, Pellegrino was part palace guard and part showman at the 10-table Italian restaurant. He sang to guests like Hillary Clinton and turned away would-be diners like Warren Buffett.

He also had a second career as an actor.

He was cast by Martin Scorsese  an occasional diner at Raos  as Johnny Dio in Goodfellas and landed an ongoing role as New Jersey FBI bureau chief Frank Cubitoso in The Sopranos.

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Success also drew Pellegrino west, where the family opened roomier restaurants in Las Vegas and Hollywood.

Pellegrino died Tuesday in New York of lung cancer, his publicist Ken Langdon told the Associated Press.

Raos was founded in 1896 and hasnt budged from its East Harlem neighborhood, though it did expand slightly after a suspicious fire in 1995. Ownership bounced down the family chain and eventually Pellegrino took over for his father and became a fixture at the restaurant  rubbing shoulders with regulars and celebs, sipping a drink at the bar, having a smoke out back.

The impossibility of getting a reservation at Raos became one of its trademarks, along with its fist-size meatballs, seafood salads and framed photos of Frankie Valli and Frank Sinatra.

Now-President Donald Trump ate here, and so did Jay Z, Billy Joel and Celine Dion. John Gotti ate here, but only once, Pellegrino said. And Leonardo DiCaprio ate here too when he filmed scenes for The Wolf of Wall Street in the snug Italian restaurant.

But for most, reservations are out of the question. Regulars all but own tables, and families are allowed to pass along their dining rights to family and friends. The restaurant reports it is booked  for example  through 2017.

Menus are available by request only, and bills are generally paid with cash or by check.

Pellegrino was born in New York on May 19, 1944. He is survived by his wife, a daughter and a son, who is a managing partner at the restaurants in Las Vegas and Hollywood.

steve.marble@latimes.com

twitter.com/stephenmarble
Matt Redman, a co-founder of one of the nations oldest AIDS service organizations and an early voice of activism in Los Angeles when the disease was first stoking fear and prejudice in America, has died. He was 67.

Redman and three others launched what would become AIDS Project Los Angeles in 1982 after attending an emergency meeting about something then known as Gay Related Immunodeficiency Disease, an early name for AIDS.

Armed with a single-page fact sheet, the four set up a hotline at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Center and took turns answering calls about the mysterious and deeply worrisome disease.

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In the early 1980s, the understanding and knowledge of AIDS was very limited, said Ervin Munro, one of the four. And much of the public viewed it strictly as a gay disease, so there was a negative and hostile attitude toward anything that had to do with establishing an agency about AIDS.

Convinced that an education campaign was needed to fill the void, the four gathered friends and held a Christmas benefit that raised about $7,000. It was the beginning of an organization that would advocate for healthcare equality and well-being in the LGBT community.

The group, and its services, grew at a rapid rate, much like the disease they confronted.

At the beginning of 1983, there were five clients. By the end of the year, there were 100. And then 200 midway through the next year. The organization distributed informational brochures in English and Spanish, printed safe-sex guides and launched a statewide awareness campaign  Fight the Fear With the Facts.

The groups signature fundraiser emerged in 1985  AIDS Walk Los Angeles. Organizers hoped to raise $100,000. Instead, the 4,500 walkers who participated raised nearly $700,000. The walk has since become a mainstay in L.A., raising roughly $80 million for Aids Project Los Angeles and other AIDS organization.

Redman was part of the groups original board of directors and served as its chairman for two years beginning in 1987. The group reorganized last summer as APLA Health and now operates health centers in Baldwin Hills and Long Beach.

Matt was one of the courageous few in Los Angeles who stepped up in the midst of the total devastation in the early days of the AIDS epidemic and demanded that we all do something, said Craig E. Thompson, chief executive officer of APLA Health.

Matthew Harold Redman was born Nov. 19, 1949, in Washington, D.C., and earned degrees at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. After moving to Los Angeles in 1975, he worked in banking, real estate and interior design.

He died Dec. 27 of cardiopulmonary arrest.

Friends said he never strayed far from the battle against HIV, whether on a community or a person level.

Matt was a warrior in his own health battles and in fighting for the welfare of the gay community in L.A., back when those in power wanted the whole AIDS thing just to go away, said his brother Brian.

steve.marble@latimes.com

twitter.com/stephenmarble

MORE OBITUARIES

Restaurateur Frank Pellegrino, who found steady work on The Sopranos, dies at 72

Mexican bakery king Lorenzo Servitje, who turned Bimbo Bread into international empire, dies at 98

Marta Becket, desert icon who made the Amargosa Opera House a destination, dies at 92
Since the days of George Washington, U.S. presidents have been issuing executive orders that do not require the assent of Congress.

Rarely, however, do they elicit the kind of outcry and legal pushback from opponents that have marked President Trumps first weeks in office.

Although the number of orders signed has left some observers breathless, such a flurry is not unusual in the opening weeks of a new administration. But the edicts dont usually have the immediate impact of Trumps order suspending refugee resettlement and temporarily blocking travel from seven majority-Muslim countries.

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There also is the political context to consider: He is just way more controversial as a political figure than anybody I can remember, said John Woolley, who co-directs the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.

With Donald Trump, youve got a guy who lost the popular vote. He has less public approval than any incoming, brand-new president that we have records for. And Democrats have been watching how Republicans fought Barack Obama, he said.

So a pushback was perhaps to be expected. It will be up to the courts to decide whether Trump has overstepped his authority.

Here is a look at how Trumps executive actions stack up against those of his predecessors:

What are executive orders?

Executive orders are one of a variety of written instruments presidents can use to exercise their authority. They typically contain instructions to federal agencies that presidents oversee on how they should discharge their responsibilities.

Although such orders are often viewed as carrying more legal weight than other kinds of presidential directives, experts say there is no substantive difference between them. As long as the directives conform to the Constitution and statutes, they carry the force of the law, but can be revoked by a future president with the stroke of a pen.

The exact number of these documents is not known, though estimates range into the tens of thousands. A requirement to number and publish executive orders and proclamations dates only to 1936 and does not apply to documents without general applicability and legal effect.

Are executive orders always this controversial?

Many executive orders are fairly mundane. George W. Bushs orders included instructions to his secretary of Health and Human Services to develop a national program to enhance physical activity and participation in sports. He also made adjustments to the pay scale and order of succession in government agencies.

But presidents also have used executive actions to make sweeping changes in national policy, whether in times of war or to get around an uncooperative Congress.

Some notable examples include:

Abraham Lincolns 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, which declared slaves free in rebel states during the Civil War.

Franklin D. Roosevelts 1942 order authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Harry S. Trumans 1948 order to integrate the armed forces.

How do Trumps orders compare to those of his predecessors?

In terms of quantity, the new presidents orders are not that different from other recent commanders-in-chief.

Barack Obama signed nine executive orders during his first two weeks in office in 2009, including ones to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year, shut down the CIAs network of secret overseas prisons and end the agencys use of interrogation techniques that critics describe as torture.

Trump has issued eight executive orders. In addition to the travel ban, they include instructions to begin construction of an expanded border wall with Mexico and threats to withhold federal funding from so-called sanctuary cities, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

The president who signed the most executive orders is Roosevelt, who put his name to 3,721, according to a count by the American Presidency Project. His longevity in office  three full terms and his election for a fourth  isnt the only reason for the unusually high total. He averaged 307 executive orders a year, more than any U.S. leader before or since.

The only U.S. president who didnt issue any executive orders was William Henry Harrison. Within weeks of his inauguration in 1841, he caught a cold that developed into pneumonia and died on his 32nd day in office.

Even James A. Garfield, who served as president for only 200 days, issued six executive orders before he was assassinated in 1881.

The number of executive orders signed during a presidency has declined markedly since the end of Roosevelts administration.

But numbers dont tell the whole story, Woolley said.

More recent orders have tended to include a greater proportion of substantively important actions than was the case in earlier decades, in part because of legal changes that shifted responsibilities away from the president to other parts of the government. For example, other members of the executive branch now can issue orders concerning public lands that once needed the action of the president.

What matters is whether the president and the executive branch are behaving in ways that are hugely controversial, Woolley said, either because of what their orders say or because the presidents authority to take the action is dubious.

Obamas 276 executive orders may pale in comparison to previous presidents. But the figure does not include some of the most contentious actions taken by his administration  including immigration reforms that offered deportation relief and work permits to people who were brought to the U.S. as children and stayed illegally.

What limitations are there?

Only Congress can change laws or appropriate new funds from the Treasury. Presidents are required to uphold those laws and work with the resources they are given.

When presidents overstep these limits  which arent always precisely defined  they can be blocked by the courts.

Already, a handful of federal judges have issued rulings blocking key aspects of Trumps travel ban.

More lawsuits are in the works. On Tuesday, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to challenge the order putting cities and counties on notice that they will lose federal funding if their law enforcement officials dont start cooperating with immigration agents.

Members of Congress also have tools they can use to block presidential orders, including passing laws or refusing to fund aspects they dont like.

And in four years, voters can elect a new president who will have the authority to revoke his predecessors orders.

alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

Twitter: @alexzavis

ALSO

Trumps first week: For many in Arizona, it doesnt get any better than this

No surprise: Way more Californians dislike Trumps immigration orders

Protests, firings and hirings: All the major events of Trumps second week as president

UPDATES:

4:35 p.m.: This article was updated with Trump issuing an eighth executive order.

This article was originally published at 10:40 a.m.
Public defenders representing Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin El Chapo Guzman presented a litany of challenges to the governments 17-count indictment on Friday, arguing that hes being held in overly restrictive conditions and that his extradition from Mexico may have been illegal.

Guzman, wearing a dark navy jumpsuit, stayed silent and still as the attorneys spoke, occasionally conferring with an interpreter.

He has pleaded not guilty to a wide swath of charges, including drug trafficking, conspiracy and murder. He is currently allowed a single hourlong exercise break a day and can only visit with a select team of defense attorneys.

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We arent even allowed to give Mr. Guzman a glass of water, defense attorney Michelle Gelernt told the court. Even Guzmans wife is unable to visit him  she saw him for the first time since his extradition in court on Friday, Gelernt said.

Judge Brian M. Cogan ruled that the famously elusive Guzman would continue to be kept under tight security at the discretion of law enforcement officials.

This may put defense counsel under burdens that are somewhat unusual, but the defendants public history is somewhat unusual, Cogan said, making reference to Guzmans celebrated prison escapes in Mexico in 2001 and 2015.

A police motorcade transporting Mexican drug lord Joaquin El Chapo Guzman crosses the Brooklyn Bridge headed back to Manhattan after his hearing at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn on Friday. (Justin Lane / EPA)

At the center of the hearing was an argument by Guzmans defense team challenging the Mexican extradition orders that sent Guzman to the United States in the middle of the night in January on the final evening of the Obama presidency.

The orders, defense attorneys argued, never contained the charges Guzman now faces in New York, which means he could be tried in another jurisdiction, such as Texas or California, or the extradition orders could be found illegal altogether. The attorneys argument was based on speculation, because they hadnt actually seen the orders. On Friday, Cogan ordered that the documents be released to Guzman and his defense team.

I dont care whether Mr. Guzman refuses them and they have to be dropped on the floor, Cogan said, ordering Mexican consulate officials to ensure Guzman and his legal team had access to the paperwork.

But Gelernt later told reporters that Guzman and his lawyers met with Mexican officials after the hearing. She said the officials once again refused to give them the papers without Guzman signing for the documents, which Cogan said Guzman was not required to do.

I cannot imagine any lawyer in this circumstance would allow Mr. Guzman to sign a document that he was not able to read or that we were not able to review and advise him on, Gelernt told reporters.

The circumstances of Guzmans legal representation also came up at the hearing. Prosecutors argued that Guzman had significant assets as a former billionaire drug trafficker and shouldnt have to rely on public defense attorneys in the first place.

Yet defense attorney Michael Schneider told reporters that Guzman was in no position to hire an attorney for himself.

We think its ridiculous that the government expects Mr. Guzman to choose a counsel when he is locked up 23 hours per day. If they want him to hire a lawyer, we believe he needs to be able to speak with his family and confer with them about his wishes for counsel.

Cogan allowed Guzman to retain his public defense team to get things moving in the run-up to trial, but said he would revisit the issue as needed.

Guzman is being held in Manhattans Metropolitan Correctional Center, which has been nicknamed the Guantanamo of New York for its isolated cells and foreboding atmosphere.

For court appearances, he is shuttled into Brooklyn via a convoy of law enforcement vehicles which often snarls morning traffic. On Friday, his motorcade was accompanied by police helicopters overhead.

Armed officers outside the federal courthouse in Brooklyn are among the extra security precautions in place for the legal proceedings against Joaquin El Chapo Guzman. (Justin Lane / EPA)

In a hearing earlier in the week without Guzman in attendance, Cogan ordered Guzman to appear in person Friday rather than by videoconference, agreeing with defense attorneys that he needed to be present throughout his trial.

But the security precautions havent stopped inmates in other facilities, awed by El Chapos legendary status, from pledging their loyalty to him and offering their help to set him free. A group of prisoners in a private prison in California even released a video swearing their allegiance to Guzman.

Hansen is a special correspondent.

ALSO

Murder, torture, drugs: Cartel kingpins wife says thats not the El Chapo she knows

Video shows California prisoners offering protection and escape help to drug lord El Chapo

El Chapo says hes depressed by prison life, complains of psychological torture

UPDATES:

12:10 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Michelle Galernt and background on the case against Joaquin El Chapo Guzman.

11 a.m.: This article was updated with more details from the court appearance.

This article was originally published at 8:15 a.m.
Good morning. Its Friday, Feb. 3, and heres whats happening across California:

TOP STORIES

Trump, Berkeley and outrage on all sides

UC Berkeley officials, who had worked hard to make room for free speech, found themselves squeezed between outrage on both the right and the left over the protests that canceled Milo Yiannopoulos talk. Also further inflamed was the already roiling UC debate about campus free speech  not just as it concerned Yiannopoulos but also a host of hot-button issues, including anti-Semitism, Palestinian rights, sexual harassment and racism. Then came the tweet from President Trump, which in an instant blurred the facts and exacerbated the tension. Los Angeles Times

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Plus: The Trump era has been a turning point for the anarchist movement in the Bay Area and beyond. New York Times

L.A.s biggest IPO?

Snapchat app maker Snap Inc. filed papers Thursday to move forward with whats expected to be the biggest initial public offering ever for a Los Angeles company and one of the highest valued in U.S. history. Conceived six years ago by Stanford University fraternity brothers to help peers send photos that would vanish after viewing, Snapchat roared through high schools and colleges starting in Orange County. When the app hit 40,000 users in months, its co-founders knew they held a treasure. Los Angeles Times

Plus: The inside story of the men who built L.A.s tech powerhouse. New York Times

Government transparency

The California Supreme Court appeared ready to rule that government business conducted on private telephones and computers must be made public. But the quandary expressed by justices was how to fashion a rule to protect the privacy of government employees and still ensure that public business was open to inspection. Los Angeles Times

L.A. STORIES

The return: An Iranian man who was barred from entering the United States under President Trumps travel ban returned to Los Angeles on Thursday, the first person allowed into the country after a legal challenge to the White Houses executive order. Los Angeles Times

New tube: Check out this cool video showing the new pedestrian tunnel connecting downtowns big subway station to a new shopping center on 7th Street. Curbed Los Angeles

No way: Porter Ranch residents have made it clear they dont want the Aliso Canyon gas facility relocated after a leak forced them to flee their homes. Daily News

Beach development: A massive $400-million seaside development was approved in Redondo Beach, but it still faces some major obstacles. Daily Breeze

POLITICS AND GOVERNMENT

Firefighter payouts: A new audit is raising questions about the hefty overtime some Sacramento firefighters are receiving. Two firefighters, the report found, got paid for working almost 70 percent of the time they are living and breathing. Sacramento Bee

Caring about Obamacare: In the conservative Central Valley, a new push to save the Affordable Care Act from people for whom it has become a lifeline. Los Angeles Times

Sanctuary debate: Fresnos mayor is clarifying his stance against becoming a sanctuary city in an effort to quell criticism. The only difference between Fresno and other cities who label themselves as sanctuary cities are only words with no clear definition. Fresno Bee

Getting ugly: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Trumps war over The Apprentice ratings and politics is getting personal. Los Angeles Times

Strange bedfellows: How Eli Broad and other charter forces have found themselves bedfellows with teachers unions in the fight over Betsy DeVos. Wall Street Journal

CRIME AND COURTS

Horrible crime: An 83-year-old Korean woman was assaulted in Koreatown on Wednesday afternoon in an attack that became the subject of a viral social media post, which claimed the assailant had yelled white power before fleeing. But none of the witnesses to the assault told investigators that they heard the suspect, who is now in custody, make racial remarks. Los Angeles Times

Big critic: An Emmy-winning producer was convicted Thursday of trying to kill a roommate who laughed at him when the producer said he was going to win Oscars. Los Angeles Times

Finding forgiveness: After three decades, a son learns what happened to his missing father. Sacramento Bee

DROUGHT AND CLIMATE

Droughts exit: Snowfall from a series of blizzard-like storms that blanketed the Sierra Nevada last month deposited the equivalent of more than 5.7 trillion gallons of water along the rugged mountain range  enough water to fill Californias largest reservoir more than four times. Los Angeles Times

Take a deep breath: The Clean Air Act could be an early environmental battleground for Trump and California. Los Angeles Times

CALIFORNIA CULTURE

Staying the course: Sony Corp. said Thursday that is has ruled out a sale of its struggling movie studio, just days after declaring a nearly $1-billion write-down on the film and television business. Los Angeles Times

Another battle: SeaWorld has another animal rights fight on its hands. This involves a 21-year-old female polar bear set to be shipped to the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium sometime in the near future for breeding. PETA objects. San Diego Union-Tribune

Zoot Suit redux: Today, at a vigorous 76, hair and mustache graying, Luis Valdez, author and director of the play Zoot Suit, flashes the same benevolent smile he flashed when his aptly named El Teatro Campesino, the Farmworkers Theater, was in its infancy in the 1960s. Los Angeles Times

Surf battle: Which Orange County city has the best surfers? This new contest is designed to find out. Orange County Register

Real estate hoax: It turns out the listing for Drakes Hidden Hills home was an elaborate hoax. The Real Deal

CALIFORNIA ALMANAC

Los Angeles area: Scattered showers with highs in the mid-60s. San Diego: Cloudy with highs in the upper 60s. San Francisco area: Showers with highs in the upper 50s. Sacramento: Rain with highs in the low 60s. More weather is here.

AND FINALLY

Todays California memory comes from Richard A. Sax:

My early childhood was spent in the Richmond District of San Francisco. The neighborhood was a wonderful combination of various cultures of the world. However, we all had one thing in common: If a kid had 5 cents, s/he would buy a candy bar. (Yes, Im that old!) However, if one had 15 cents, any or all of us would go to a Chinese bakery for baozi, a steamed bun with hoisin-sauce pork inside. On my most recent trip to San Francisco (my second oldest son lives and works in the Mission), I was able to find a very good baozi for 60 cents. Quite tasty!

If you have a memory or story about the Golden State, share it with us. Send us an email to let us know what you love or fondly remember about our state. (Please keep your story to 100 words.)

Please let us know what we can do to make this newsletter more useful to you. Send comments, complaints and ideas to Shelby Grad.
The arts breed compassion, and as Americans, we are at our best when we are compassionate. It is among our founding principles, an ideal inscribed onto the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor

As the chief executive of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it is the rare occasion that moves me to comment on the actions of our federal government. However, in less than two weeks, our new president has attempted to limit public discourse, diminish cultural exchange and bully our neighbors. The executive order that temporarily  for now at least  bars entry into the U.S. of individuals from seven Muslim-majority nations is a terrible thing for Americas creative community, in whose work we find our common humanity. I must step forward.

My perspective is that of a lifelong musician and orchestra administrator. Having toured with American musicians abroad and invited their foreign peers to our stages for more than 40 years, I have experienced the universality of music firsthand. Music transcends borders; it gives voice to artists and communicates with audiences regardless of their nationality, ethnicity or religion.

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The presidents executive order betrays our immigrant roots.

In Southern California, we have no desire to repeat historys mistakes: the shame of Japanese internment camps and of having turned our backs on many fleeing Europe during World War II. In fact, our own Los Angeles musical community was shaped by the emigres and exiles who escaped the threat of oppressive regimes in Germany, Austria and Russia: Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Erich Korngold, Miklos Rozsa, Franz Waxman, Ernst Toch, Max Steiner, Jascha Heifetz, Gregor Piatigorsky, Fritzi Massary and Sergei Rachmaninoff among others.

Together, these musicians and composers advanced American music, contributed to our film industry and taught the next generation of musical creators. Like many foreign artists who preceded and followed them, their contributions to American culture, from the Tin Pan Alley songbook to film scoring, have been so profound and lasting that we have come to think of those ideas as wholly indigenous, forgetting the far-flung origins of their creators. The presidents executive order betrays our immigrant roots.

Already, artists have had their work and their lives upended by the administrations actions. Kinan Azmeh, acclaimed Syrian clarinetist and member of Yo-Yo Mas Silk Road Ensemble, is uncertain as to whether he will be able to return to his Brooklyn home of 16 years when he concludes a concert tour in Beirut this week. Los Angeles-based concert promoter Shari Rezai, who specializes in contemporary Persian music and brings artists from Iran to the United States, has canceled six shows. Performers including London-based Kazakh violinist Aisha Orazbayeva and Berlin-based electronic musician Robert Henke have opted out of U.S. appearances in a show of solidarity with those trapped by the order.

Music animates our society, increases our capacity for empathy and nurtures the public discourse that is central to a healthy democracy. At a time when the world needs more, not less, mutual understanding, we must resist the presidents anti-intellectualism and disregard for the power of the arts.

I urge the administration to rescind the executive order and reestablish an open exchange between artists and audiences worldwide. National security concerns can be addressed while we continue to welcome people from beyond our borders.

Deborah Borda is president and CEO of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. and a visiting leader at the Harvard Kennedy Schools Center for Public Leadership.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
A Utah congressman on Thursday abandoned a bill that would have forced the federal government to sell off more than 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 states. Its good that he did, because the forced sales were an astoundingly bad idea and, thankfully, opposed by many of his constituents.

But that doesnt mean that Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz and the rest of the new generation of sagebrush rebels have given up on trying to wrest control of land that, to borrow a Woody Guthrie lyric, was made for you and me. They need to be firmly opposed.

Conservatives across the West have long sought to force the federal government to turn over some of the 640 million acres it owns (a little over a quarter of the country) to state control or private hands. The argument generally is that the states have the better perspective on how best to manage the lands, and so should be given the opportunity to do so.

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Thats one of those ideas that sounds fine in the abstract but dissolves when you realize that most of them simply want to open the land to further, and less regulated, development and exploitation than the federal government would allow (theyre also targeting some national parks).

And Congress made it easier last month to offload federal land with a little-noted change to House rules pushed by Utah Rep. Rob Bishop, one of the most persistent House Republicans in trying to convert federal land to state land. Formerly, the federal government had to consider the value of any land that it sought to get rid of, and compensate for it in the budget. With the new rule, the land is deemed essentially to have no budgetary impact, making it easier to sell or transfer.

As the Wilderness Societys Alan Rowsome said, the rule paves the way for a wholesale giveaway of our American hunting, fishing and camping lands that belong to us all. Make no mistake, the giveaway is for the benefit of the drilling and mining interests that have a lock-grip on Congress and the rest of Washington.

These efforts are just going to continue, and the opposition to them must be unwavering. Federal lands are our mutual heritage.

That new approach ignores the reality that federal lands intrinsically have value as real estate and, according to the National Wildlife Federation, bring in more than $2 billion in lease payments. Access to the land is a key component of the $646 billion outdoor recreation industry that generates $80 billion in taxes and supports 6.1 million jobs (three times the employment in the oil and gas industry).

And yes, opening the lands up for exploitation of oil and gas would create economic benefits, as the industry points out, but at the more disastrous cost of adding more fossil fuels to the fires that are increasing global temperatures, and spurring climate change.

Even though federal lands lie within states, the lands belong to the entire country. People who live in states with a lot of federal land (like Nevada, which is 85% federally owned, or here in California, which is 46% federally owned) do not have any more special claim to it than the rest of us. In fact, if anyone has a better claim to it than the federal government, it would be the native tribes from whom it was stolen, though to do so would be impractical. And even more than 60% of the people in the most-affected states believe the federal government should retain the lands rather than turn them over to states or private ownership.

That isnt to say that the federal government has done a bang-up job managing our land. Chronically underfunded by Congress, the Bureau of Land Management (responsible for 250 million acres of federal land) receives constant criticism from the right, which dislikes land-use restrictions, and the left, which condemns the government granting leases for oil, gas, timber, grazing and other private use.

But thats no reason to turn stewardship over to states (which dont have the budgets to properly manage it, either), or sell it off to private interests. If the Western conservatives were really interested in proper stewardship of the land, they would work in Congress to increase the budgets of the agencies most responsible for it, the BLM, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

In fact, the chronic underfunding leads to a lot of the land management shortcomings, which seems to be part of the Republican strategy to starve federal programs they dont like, then declare them failed.

These efforts are just going to continue, and the opposition to them must be unwavering. Federal lands are our mutual heritage.

Scott.Martelle@LATimes.com

Follow my posts and re-tweets at @smartelle on Twitter
Election Day 2016 awarded mixed fortunes for proponents of marijuana legalization. Pot measures passed in eight states, including California, bringing the number of states with access to some form of legal marijuana to 28. But the glee subsided as it became clear Donald Trump would be president, and fear set in that the progress gained for legalization during President Obamas eight years would be rolled back.

These fears quickly mounted when Trump tapped Sen. Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general, an outspoken drug reform opponent who, in the 1980s, famously joked about the Ku Klux Klan  I thought those guys were OK until I learned they smoked pot. During his confirmation hearings, Sessions didnt rule out reinstating federal enforcement on the national marijuana ban, departing from the Obama administrations position of staying out of states business.

Trump doesnt seem to have a problem differing with his cabinet appointees on a variety of issues, and marijuana may be no different. Its understood he nominated Sessions because they share a tough immigration stance, not necessarily Sessions views on drugs. Trump himself has been all over the board on pot, expressing support for medical marijuana but also concerns about Colorado, where its recreationally legal. He generally seems to favor leaving it up to the states to decide.

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If his inauguration speech was any indication, Trump is doubling down on populism  and legalizing pot is incredibly popular.

Sure, its hard to picture Trump as marijuanas champion. Unlike the last three presidents, Trump claims hes never toked. He doesnt drink, he orders his steak well-done and its unlikely anyone will ever pass a blunt to the self-described germaphobe.

But if legalizing marijuana federally isnt on Trumps legislative agenda, it should be. And a conservative Congress should back him. Its politically expedient, fits neatly into Trumps game plan and there are principled conservative arguments to be made on legalizations behalf.

Outside of his core issues, our new president is no ideologue, and instead seems to be fixated on  and can be swayed by  public opinion. If his inauguration speech was any indication, Trump is doubling down on populism  and legalizing pot is incredibly popular.

The latest Gallup poll shows 60% of Americans favoring legalization, including 77% of 18- to 34-year-olds. With some of the weakest approval ratings for an incoming president, he should be looking to capitalize on low-hanging-fruit policies like these.

Trump shouldnt worry too much about legalization alienating his base. The same Gallup poll shows that 42% of Republicans support legalization, up from 20% in 2005. And if anyone needs convincing, Trump can make the case.

He can appeal to the right by reminding us that the government isnt our mommy. Weve already learned the lesson that prohibition doesnt work from alcohol, a far more dangerous drug. Enforcement of prohibition is a pointless and wasteful priority. After all, why should the government work so hard to keep people from smoking weed when China is manipulating its currency and Islamic State is burning people alive in cages?

Perhaps most importantly, however, legalization makes sense fiscally.

If theres one issue Trump has been consistent on since he launched his presidential bid, its economic protectionism. Today, the American marijuana industry employs 100,000 to 150,000 people nationally. Marijuana spending is estimated at $30 billion annually, according to market-research firm the Cowen Group, but only a fifth of that is spent on legal products. If legalized, the market is expected to grow to $50 billion annually by 2026.

For the same reasons Trump believes we should be buying cars and air-conditioners manufactured domestically, it follows that he should be making every effort to ensure America dominates the global marijuana industry. Americans should be smoking American weed. This requires the governments ban be lifted so the market can flourish.

Legalization should be particularly attractive to Trump and his base, considering the main competitors to Americas pot industry are the very criminals and gangs he likes to target in his speeches. In 2008, nearly two-thirds of the pot consumed in the United States came from Mexico, according to the Rand Corp. Since then, Mexican drug cartels have had to compete with American pot farms operating in an increasingly legal landscape that produces a higher quality product and drives profits down.

Today, consumption of Mexican weed in America has been decreased to less than a third, according to an estimate by Alejandro Hope, a Mexico City based security and drug analyst. Full American legalization may put the nail in the coffin on cartel profits from weed. Trump knew this in 1990 when he said, Were losing badly the war on drugs. You have to legalize drugs to win that war. You have to take the profit away from these drug czars.

Finally, legalizing marijuana would allow Trump to make good on his campaign promise to help inner-cities. Instead of paying lip service to urban communities and insulting them with rhetoric describing them as crime-ridden, Trump could actually help those communities by legalizing pot, and making sure no one else has their life ruined because they got caught smoking a joint.

Trump could go even further by pushing criminal justice reforms, like those California is benefiting from in Proposition 64, which allowed nonviolent pot offenders to be resentenced or have their records cleared.

The policy benefits of legalization are many, and Trump shouldnt wait to capitalize on the political opportunity. Legalization would be a deal that allows the government to save on the costs of enforcing prohibition and fighting a failing drug war. Pot would become safer as it becomes controlled and regulated, and the government could do a better job at youth drug prevention. Taxation from legal pot sales will provide state and local governments a healthy revenue stream, at the expense of our trade competitors. Most importantly, it would shore up support for his presidency from demographics he needs, while growing the economy and jobs.

That would be a lot of winning.

Mark Stefanos is a Los Angeles-based writer and capitalist.

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To the editor: Harold Meyerson says that the president wants to punish states and cities that treat immigrants with respect. Meyerson is either being obtuse or is intentionally deceiving readers. (How California can fight the extreme provocations of Donald Trump, Opinion Feb. 1)

The presidents goal is to ensure that aliens who do not have legal status (that is not all immigrants, and Meyerson should know the difference) who have committed certain crimes be made known by local authorities to the Department of Homeland Security.

Federal law requires that those who have been convicted of certain crimes are to be removed from the U.S. via the immigration court system. The Obama administration made removing such aliens a priority in immigration enforcement.

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Trump wants the cities to follow the law  and Meyerson thinks this is simply a matter of disrespect? No wonder the Democrats lost.

Edward S. Reisman, Santa Monica

The writer is an attorney who worked for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1996-99.

..

To the editor: I would like Meyerson to be a little more clear on his fact that immigration decreases crime.

I have no doubt that an immigrant who goes through the complete and arduous process of legally obtaining citizenship or a proper visa would follow the laws of the land. Theres just that one word that our Californian lawmakers and writers like Meyerson seem to ignore: illegal, as in illegal immigrant.

Peter Welsh, La Crescenta

..

To the editor: Meyerson offers several ways for California to thwart the federal governments withholding of funds over sanctuary policies.

Any lower-court wins by the state would eventually work their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which would probably rule with the Trump administration. California would lose the federal funds, be out the legal fees it paid to former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holders law firm and would need to raise taxes on its residents even more.

Bob Guarrera, Laguna Niguel

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook
Here is the latest news from the Stock Exchange, a website youve probably never seen that tracks news of interest to cattlemen and ranchers: Tracy Brunner, president of the National Cattlemens Beef Assn. is worried that the Trump administrations protectionist trade policies are going to be a disaster for his industry.

Sparking a trade war with Canada, Mexico, and Asia will only lead to higher prices for American-produced beef in those markets and put our American producers at a much steeper competitive disadvantage, Brunner said in a news release. The fact remains that 96 percent of the worlds consumers live outside the United States, and expanding access to those consumers is the single best thing we can do to help American cattle-producing families be more successful.

Now, there are a couple of interesting observations to make about this bit of news.

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The first that comes to mind is the irony of all those ranchers and cowboys and small-town Westerners who decided to take a chance with Donald Trump and now face the possibility that their livelihoods will be wrecked by the new presidents naive, rant-driven policies.

The second is that even in an obscure, remote perch of the media world, Trump cannot be escaped. Trump-centered news is everywhere, all the time, with no pause.

Trump announces travel restrictions aimed at Muslims from seven different countries. His poorly conceived action creates chaos at the nations major airports and inspires thousands to turn out in protest.

Trump fires the acting attorney general after she says she cannot defend his Muslim ban because it violates the Constitution.

Trump nominates a staunch conservative to the Supreme Court and political war ensues on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and Republicans are already at each others throats over several controversial picks for Trumps Cabinet.

Trump incites a telephone spat with the prime minister of the nations most reliable ally, Australia, and hangs up on him.

1 / 51 la-1491523602-y7ephyarj1-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 51 la-1491368625-0bgh58ihw8-snap-image (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los angeles Times) 6 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 8 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 9 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 10 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 11 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 12 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 13 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 14 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 15 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 16 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 17 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 18 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 19 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 20 / 51 Trump inspires millions to take to the streets -- to oppose him. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 21 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 22 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 23 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 24 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 25 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 26 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 27 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 28 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 29 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 30 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 31 / 51 Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 32 / 51 Cartoon caption contest winner at the DENT conference in Sun Valley, Idaho: Jon Duval, executive director of the Ketchum Community Development Corporation. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 33 / 51 Old radicals and big media descend on Selma (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 34 / 51 Horsey imagined the creation of the Ann Coulter phenomenon in this cartoon from 2007. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 35 / 51 This David Horsey drawing is a reconfiguration of a cartoon he first published in 2006. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 36 / 51 Donald Sterling, owner of the L.A. Clippers, should give Cliven Bundy a call. After Sterling loses his NBA franchise and the deadbeat Nevada rancher loses his cattle, the two old racists will both need a buddy. Maybe they can team up together and open an all-white rodeo. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 37 / 51 Besides sending a chill up the spine of the international community, Vladimir Putin has accomplished one other thing by seizing Crimea and threatening the rest of Ukraine: Putin has brought back the bear. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 38 / 51 The right-wing insurrection at the Bundy ranch in Bunkerville, Nev., has taken another weird turn with new revelations about the family history of Cliven Bundy. (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 39 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 40 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 41 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 42 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 43 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 44 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 45 / 51 David Horsey / Los Angeles Times (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 46 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 47 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 48 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 49 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 50 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times) 51 / 51 See full story (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times)

Trump calls up the president of Mexico and, reportedly, threatens to send the U.S. military across the border to deal with bad hombres. The White House says it was just a joke.

Trump stands at the arrival of the casket bearing the body of a fallen Navy SEAL and makes news because his daughter is at his side rather than the first lady, who has been staying away from Washington.

Trump revives plans for two oil pipelines blocked by the Obama administration and reignites protests on the Standing Rock reservation.

Trump removes the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and director of national intelligence from their permanent seats on the National Security Council and installs his bomb-throwing political guru, Stephen Bannon, on the NSC.

This is just the shortlist of stories from the last few days and doesnt include early-morning tweets, sudden settlements of old lawsuits, constant fights with the media, wild statements from Trump surrogates or the latest valentine for Vladimir Putin (such as Thursdays relaxing of sanctions against Russia). Trump news comes so fast and thick, it is easy to forget the controversies of even last week, like the argument over the size of the inauguration crowd.

These days, cable TV news is nothing but talking heads talking about Trump 24/7. Network news shows consist of Trump-related stories and the latest bad weather. Newspapers are filled with Trump, much like newspapers in the 1940s were dominated by coverage of World War II.

Arguably, all the attention is justified because the country appears to be in a new war  a battle for the soul of America. But how long can we sustain this? Will we fail to give attention to serious news developments  like a bad trade policy that harms American ranchers  because we are drowning in a stream of provocative tweets? Will there be Trump news fatigue? Will people start to tune it out? Or, like a real war, will patriotism and fear for the future keep us engaged?

It is easy to be daunted by the prospect of this fireball of Trump news rolling on, day after day, for four years or more. A good citizen, though, dares not look away.

David.Horsey@latimes.com

Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
A top aide to President Trump has cited a 2011 massacre in Kentucky that never happened as a reason why the administrations temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations is necessary.

During an interview with MSNBCs Chris Matthews that aired Thursday, Kellyanne Conway defended Trumps executive order on immigration last week by saying that former President Obama instituted a similar policy for Iraqi refugees in 2011.

President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered, Conway said.

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Kellyanne Conway concedes error: Honest mistakes abound 

Conway is referring to a tightening of security checks for entry into the U.S. after the May 2011 arrest of two men on charges of plotting to send weapons and money to Al Qaeda operatives waging an insurgency in their native Iraq. Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi were mistakenly admitted to the U.S. as Iraqi refugees in 2009 and resettled in Bowling Green, Ky.

Calling the Obama administrations actions a ban on Iraqi refugees is misleading. A formal ban wasnt announced by that administration, though there was a dramatic decline in the number of Iraqis allowed to move to the U.S. in 2011. Officials at the time cited an enhanced security clearance process for delaying Iraqi visa applications.

Alwan and Hammadi are in prison after pleading guilty. They were never accused of plotting to launch attacks inside the U.S.

Conway tweeted Friday morning that she meant to say Bowling Green terrorists during the interview. She hasnt, however, corrected her characterization of Obamas 2011 policy.

Conways comments have made fodder for jokes among social media users. Bowling Green massacre quickly became a top trending topic on Twitter with a flurry of tweets mourning the nonexistent victims.

The website BowlingGreenMassacreFund.com appeared online Friday. A Make a donation link clicks through to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is fighting Trumps immigration order in court.

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Democrats and liberal activists face uphill battle against Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch

Australia doesnt want them. Trump doesnt either. Who are these refugees trapped in bleak island camps?

For victims of San Bernardino terrorist attack, conflicting views about Trump policy in their name

UPDATES:

7:25 a.m.: This article was updated with details about the online backlash to Conways comments, as well as her own attempt to explain them.

This article was originally published at 5:55 a.m.
One month after retiring from the U.S. Senate, Barbara Boxer has a new focus not far removed from her old one: electing like-minded Democrats.

Its not as though anyone expected the kinetic Boxer to sit home and knit after 10 years in the House and 24 in the Senate, often as a fire-bombing assailant of Republicans. But her plans show she has no intention of retiring at 76.

In addition to delivering speeches  she has a contract with a Hollywood talent agency  Boxer will be raising money through a newly formed super PAC based in Los Angeles. Donations will go to candidates, particularly for the U.S. Senate, and to issues of importance to Boxer and her fellow liberal Democrats.

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As with almost everything political these days, the impetus for her actions is President Trump.

An enthusiastic supporter of Hillary Clinton, Boxer said Trump has taken aim at American values  so she is taking aim at him.

The new fundraising vehicle will be a spin-off of Boxers campaign apparatus while in the Senate, called PAC for a Change. It will be run by members of Boxers political team, including her longtime campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynski.

In an interview, Boxer emphasized that she will not be paid by the super PAC.

I dont want people to get the misimpression that Im creating a job for myself, she said. This is my country, and Im going to stay out there.

Theres a symmetry to Boxers political involvement. She started in politics as Americans were taking to the streets to protest the Vietnam War and then-President Nixon. The current protests echo the tenor of the 1960s and 1970s, but theyre against Trump.

We are going to build on the outpouring of ordinary people after the election, to focus them on the 2018 elections, she said. We can march and march  and I still march, I started out that way  but we have to march to the polls.

Fundraising is a crowded field, but Boxer has assets that offer the potential of something beyond a vanity project. She was renowned while in office for her vast list of supporters and donors, which she hopes now to tap.

I realized that I dont want the Koch brothers to be the only ones out there to do this, she said of the billionaires whose spending benefits Republicans. She added wryly that I cant come anywhere close to their resources.

At least half a million supporters will be targeted through an initial fundraising letter, Boxer said, with later entreaties to another half-million. She also will try to maximize her social media accounts, which lately she has used to scour Trump for his refugee and immigration plans.

The only huddled masses Trump seems to care about are the ones who visit his Trump Hotel, she tweeted Tuesday to her 98,000 followers.

Enthusiasm is what shes counting on. Trumps presidency has unified Democrats, a fact made evident by the nightly protests against him  and against Democrats who appear in any way ready to work with him.

This month has marked the first time in more than three decades that Boxer hasnt split her time between coasts, taking weekly flights between Washington and her home in the Bay Area and, more recently, near Rancho Mirage.

She and her husband, Stewart, first came to California in 1965 to raise their family, and Boxer said leaving home to fly to Washington for all those years was difficult. But California now colors her animosity toward Trump.

Everything hes fighting runs up against what we in California cherish about our state, said Boxer, citing immigration, womens rights, environmental protections and the like.

Much of the super PAC fundraising will be based in California, but given its strongly Democratic tilt, its profits will go elsewhere.

Boxer was succeeded in January by another Democrat, Kamala Harris; the states other Senate seat has been held for 24 years by Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who has said she intends to run for another term in 2018. Were she to retire, its hard to imagine the replacement wouldnt also be a Democrat.

For more on politics 

But numerous Democrats elsewhere face tough fights in the midterm elections, in which Democratic turnout has historically fallen. Losses in 2018 could further erode their power in Washington, where they are a weakened minority in both houses.

Already Democratic organizations are trying to mobilize  and soon they will be joined by Boxers.

The former senator, meantime, seems relieved to be off the ballot herself.

I am not retired in any way, shape or form, she said. I am very busy, and the beauty of the situation is that Im in California.

She misses the collegiality of the Senate, she said. As she delivered her farewell speech last year, even Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky came by to praise her tenacity and to listen to Boxer attest to the noble profession they shared (even if theyd stopped talking for years after a dust-up).

But she doesnt feel distant from politics, either, given the tumult across the country these days.

I still feel Im in the middle of the fray because there isnt anyone in America who doesnt feel theyre in the middle of it, she said. It was a glancing reference to Trump, the man who will be her target.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

ALSO:

Trumps early missteps threaten air of competence

As an era closes, Barbara Boxer defends politics as a noble profession

Updates on California politics
Who had starts fight with Australia in the prediction pool for Week 2 of Donald Trumps presidency? Step up and take your prize.

As for the rest of us, we just have to admit, once more, that with the 45th president, truth really is less predictable than fiction.

Good afternoon, Im David Lauter, Washington bureau chief. Welcome to the Friday edition of our Essential Politics newsletter, in which we look at the events of the week in Washington and elsewhere in national politics and highlight some particularly insightful stories.

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THE REFUGEES DOWN UNDER

Trumps tiff with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull wont destroy a century of alliance stretching back to World War I. Indeed, given Turnbulls own restrictionist immigration policies and his support for close American ties, at a time when many in his country advocate a tighter relationship with China, the two leaders may yet forge a close bond.

Still, the telephone call last Saturday, in which Trump complained angrily about a U.S.-Australian deal on refugees before abruptly cutting short the conversation, matters because of what it reveals about the new president. His reactions encapsulated two of Trumps most striking beliefs  that Uncle Sam is a sucker being taken advantage of by all the world and that travelers from Muslim countries pose an outsize risk to national security.

For years, refugees from as far away as the Mideast and East Africa have sought asylum in Australia, with many crossing dangerous seas in rickety boats. Thousands drowned.

In part to stop the dangerous boat traffic and the human smugglers who profit from it, Australia announced in 2014 that it would not allow any boat refugees to enter the country. Instead, it paid Papua New Guinea and Nauru, a tiny island nation, to set up refugee camps.

That policy has largely stopped the boats, but it left several thousand Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis and others to languish in miserable conditions on the remote tropical islands, as Robyn Dixon wrote. Shocking cases, including one in which a despairing refugee set himself on fire, focused international condemnation on the detention camps.

In November, the Obama administration reached a deal with Turnbulls government: the U.S. would screen about 1,250 of the refugees and would accept those who passed security vetting. The Australians would accept some Central American refugees being detained in Costa Rica.

To Trump, that was a dumb deal  one that would require the U.S. to accept at least some refugees from the seven predominantly Muslim countries subject to his 90-day ban on U.S.-bound travel.

In the phone call, according to the Washington Post, which first disclosed the details, Trump fumed to Turnbull that he was going to get killed politically because of the deal and said the Australians were trying to send the U.S. the next Boston bombers.

On Thursday, Trump amplified his view. We have to be treated fairly, he told a group of steelworkers.

Were taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually, he said at the National Prayer Breakfast. Its not going to happen anymore.

A couple of days earlier, Trump had used almost the same words in talking about his dealings with Mexicos government.

Trumps image of the U.S. as an international patsy appears deeply embedded in how he sees the world.

To much of the rest of the world, almost the opposite is true. They see the United States as a global giant, deploying its massive military, huge economic power and pervasive surveillance networks to bend smaller countries to its will, sometimes crushing others hopes simply by inadvertence.

Trumps secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, had his first day on the job Thursday. As Noah Bierman and Tracy Wilkinson reported, the new secretary starts his job at a time when the president is rattling U.S. relationships around the world.

Tillerson has a lot on his plate. But bridging the gap between how the president sees the world and how the world sees the U.S. could prove the new top diplomats toughest job.

RESHAPING IMMIGRATION  STEP 1

The travel ban and the 120-day suspension of U.S. refugee admissions have generated huge controversy, with demonstrations at airports, court fights from Los Angeles to Boston and wrenching images of small children, elderly grandmothers and despairing families.

The announcement was Trumps second big move on immigration, following an earlier executive order that expanded the number of immigrants subject to deportation and threatened to take federal money away from so-called sanctuary cities. How many cities might feel the sting of that policy remains unknown: Trumps order has many legal vulnerabilities that Democrats believe would make it eligible for reversal in court, Evan Halper wrote.

Polls show the public sharply split on Trumps actions. Some surveys show a small majority in favor, others a small majority opposed, depending heavily on how the questions are asked.

Like nearly everything with Trump, his immigration order has polarized voters. Many of Trumps supporters are thrilled at what theyre seeing. Meanwhile, Democrats flock to protest. Trumps radical actions have radicalized the Democratic voting base, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) told Los Angeles Times reporters and editors in an interview this week.

The divided views extend to the families of victims of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Some support Trumps moves, others say they dont believe that restricting refugee admissions would do anything to stop future attacks.

The shooters in San Bernardino were a native-born American of Pakistani descent and his wife, who was born in Pakistan and entered the U.S. on a spousal visa. Pakistan is not one of the seven countries that so far have been subject to travel restrictions.

Even many leading Republicans who agreed with Trump on the substance of his policy criticized the hasty and chaotic process by which it was announced, which maximized confusion and disruption. That perception of chaos could hurt Trumps image of competence as a successful businessman, an important part of his appeal to supporters, Cathy Decker wrote.

Inside the White House, however, as Brian Bennett reported, Trumps top policy advisors feel the haste is necessary. They see themselves in a race to push through fundamental changes in U.S. government policy before their window for dramatic action closes.

Top aides Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country and to block a generation of people who, in their view, wont assimilate into American society, Bennett wrote. Last weeks executive order was just the first step in that much bigger effort.

Expect more turbulent times ahead.

GOODBYE GARLAND, ENTER GORSUCH

A year ago, on Feb. 13, 2016, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died. Democrats thought they were on the verge of having a liberal majority on the high court for the first time in more than 40 years.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky adopted an audacious strategy to try to head off that possibility  refusing to allow the Senate to consider President Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick Garland.

This week, McConnells gamble paid off as Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, a well regarded, consistently conservative federal appeals court judge to fill the vacancy. David Savages excellent profile of Gorsuch has everything you need to know about the nominee and how he might affect the court.

Democrats in the Senate face strong pressure from their voters to do everything they can to block Gorsuch, including mounting a filibuster. They face an extremely uphill fight, as Savage noted.

As Lisa Mascaro explained, partisanship is transforming the Senate, washing away the features that made it distinctive  and slower  and making it more like the House. Theres almost no doubt that if Democrats try to filibuster Gorsuch, McConnell will change the Senate rules to allow confirmation by a simple majority, much as his Democratic predecessor, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, did with lower-court judges when Democrats held the majority.

One way or the other, barring some unexpected development in the confirmation hearings, Gorsuch seems all but assured of confirmation.

CONFIRMATION BLUES

Some of Trumps selections for Cabinet positions, by contrast, have been facing a much tougher road. Betsy DeVos, the extremely wealthy conservative political activist and philanthropist from Michigan, is the prime example so far. She stumbled badly in the hearings for her nomination to be secretary of Education.

DeVos appeared ignorant of some basic federal education laws, including a couple that are of major interest to Republican senators. Teacher unions, which oppose her advocacy of giving tax money to families to pay for private schools, have rallied tens of thousands of people to flood Capitol Hill switchboards with calls.

All that cost DeVos the backing of two Republican senators, as Halper wrote. On Monday, the Senate is likely to vote to confirm her, but only with Vice President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote.

Gary Pruitt, Trumps choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, is also likely to win confirmation. On Thursday, he got the support of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. But any effort to roll back Californias power to set its own environmental standards, which he hinted at in his hearing, could be doomed in court, Halper reported.

Senate action on another nominee, Gary Puzder, Trumps choice to head the Labor Department, keeps being delayed because he has failed to complete his required financial disclosures. His chances remain up in the air.

SOME OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

Charlie Sykes, one of the countrys top conservative talk show hosts, took on Trump during the primaries and has remained a critic. The decision has transformed his life, as Mark Barabak showed in a terrific profile.

Democrats are already looking toward 2020, and California politicians, especially the newly elected Sen. Kamala Harris, are in the mix as potential candidates, Barabak wrote.

The marijuana industry may be too big to jail, even if some Trump administration officials, including Atty. Gen. designee Sen. Jeff Sessions, would like to try, Halper wrote.

Trump and congressional Republican leaders have been trying to get on the same page on a central GOP goal  tax cuts. So far, its been messy. Trump generated considerable confusion with a statement in which he suggested that a House GOP plan for a new way of calculating corporate taxes, which would penalize imports and boost exports, could be a way to pay for his proposed border wall with Mexico.

Meanwhile, Republicans on Capitol Hill are no closer to figuring out how to repeal Obamacare. Indeed, their divisions only appear to be deepening.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Sarah Wire will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

If you like this newsletter, tell your friends to sign up.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter
In San Francisco, tumult at the ballot box, with the Board of Supervisors and in the courtroom has defined the citys relationship with Airbnb and other short-term rental sites. In Los Angeles, regulating Airbnb is a top issue at City Hall. In New York last fall, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed one of the nations most restrictive laws penalizing Airbnb hosts who do not abide by limits on how frequently they can rent out their properties.

Yet in California, state lawmakers have done nothing major either to crack down on Airbnb or make it easier for short-term rentals to operate. The lack of action is in sharp contrast to the scores of regulations passed in cities and states across the country, but also to the way California legislators have responded with fervor in tackling other issues surrounding the so-called sharing economy, including Uber and Lyft and the booming ride-hailing industry.

The question of regulating short-term rentals is not going away, said Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg), who wrote multiple bills over the last two years to deal with the issue. And in fact the longer we ignore it, the more challenging it will be to resolve.

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Short-term rental legislation has failed in Sacramento for multiple reasons, those on all sides of the issue said, including cities reluctance to let the state involve itself in local tax collection and the relative political strengths of both Airbnb and labor unions, which are typically the industrys most powerful adversaries. Hotel-worker unions in particular are troubled by the effects short-term rentals could have on the hotel business and the livelihoods of workers.

The fight between the company and labor played out during debate over McGuires 2015 legislation. His bill would have required short-term rental companies to essentially police properties listed on their platforms, telling the companies to report addresses, usage and prices to cities, and also allowing cities to go after companies if hosts violated local rules. The hotel-workers union, Unite Here, led a group of labor, tourism, police and local government organizations to push the legislation.

Individual members did not want to be seen as bucking the sharing economy.  Sen. Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg)

But even though a large coalition was behind it, the bill died in a legislative committee. Airbnb worked hard to defeat it, sending their hosts in California an email with a button to click that would automatically generate a letter of opposition to legislators. Nearly 20,000 emails were sent to every state senator as a result, according to the company. The tactic is the same as one employed by Uber. Last year, when state officials tried to roll out a regulation the company didnt like, Uber emailed their drivers and customers telling them to oppose it. The response flooded regulators inboxes and the state backed down.

Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing companies have been successful in expanding their operations in the state while also defeating bills that would have led to deeper background checks or stricter work rules for their drivers. Lawmakers have said theyve supported pro-ride-hailing legislation because they want to back the tech industry, and McGuire said his 2015 short-term rental bill failed for the same reason.

Candidly, individual members did not want to be seen as bucking the sharing economy, McGuire said.

The next year, McGuire returned with more limited legislation, which was supported by Airbnb. The bill would have ensured local governments could collect hotel-room taxes from short-term rental hosts, and allowed state officials to audit the money. Airbnb liked the idea of having a statewide tax deal instead of working city by city. But cities balked at the state involving itself in collecting hotel-room taxes, which are solely local dollars. As in 2015, that measure also didnt make it out of a committee.

State legislators in New York acted last year in part because of existing laws. New York already had rules on the books designed to block short-term apartment rentals in an effort to prevent flophouses and other illegal hotels. The legislation signed by Cuomo simply revised that law to impose steep fines for those who violated the rules.

In California, the major fights have been local battles. Airbnb has gone to court over strict rules regulating the industry passed in Anaheim and Santa Monica. Last year, San Diegos then-City Council president proposed banning short-term rentals entirely, an effort that was voted down in favor of working on less-stringent regulations. Los Angeles city officials are expected to take up a proposal later this year that would limit how frequently hosts could make rooms available and force them to register with the city.

Nowhere in the state is the battle more pitched than in San Francisco, Airbnbs hometown. Voters in the city rejected a ballot measure in 2015 that would have made it a misdemeanor for Airbnb and other platforms to list rentals the city had deemed unlawful. Airbnb sued San Francisco over regulations passed last summer, which the company claims unfairly punish them if their hosts violate rules.

Even though major short-term rental legislation hasnt passed at the Capitol, Airbnb still has a large presence in state politics. Its global head of policy, Chris Lehane, a long-time Democratic strategist in California, joined the company in 2015 after running political operations for billionaire investor and environmental advocate Tom Steyer. Lehane is scheduled to speak on the 2016 election results at the Senate Democratic Caucus policy retreat next week. Airbnb spent nearly $250,000 on lobbying efforts in Sacramento during the last two years, and company executives, including Chief Executive Brian Chesky, have given more than $225,000 to Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsoms 2018 gubernatorial bid, according to state records.

McGuire said hes holding off on introducing new legislation this year while Airbnb and the League of California Cities discuss potential resolutions to the tax issue. No other lawmaker has sponsored a bill on the issue yet this year. The company remains interested in state action.

We certainly are still eager to figure out a statewide solution on the tax piece to simplify and streamline the process to make things easier for our host community, Airbnb spokesman Christopher Nulty said.

Still, legislators have not ruled out new rules that would go beyond taxation. A persistent argument used against short-term rentals is that they can take homes off the market, which opponents say could add to a housing shortage that has plunged the state into an affordability crisis. Recent academic research has showed that short-term rentals can have a modest effect on housing supply in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other popular cities, though the effects might be greater in desirable neighborhoods.

Sen. Jim Beall (D-San Jose), chairman of the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, said he wanted to see more research on short-term rentals influence on the housing market in San Francisco, but would consider taking action if he was convinced they displaced existing residents.

Id be concerned about that, Beall said. Id want some limits on dealing with that particular problem.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam

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As the healthcare vote looms, Trump sees opposition from conservatives, both on Capitol Hill and in the media By Kurtis Lee Its a really important vote in President Trumps fledgling first term. Will House Republicans pass a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act  a promise from Trump on the campaign trail  or reject it? (House Speaker Paul D. Ryan rushed to the White House on Friday morning for a last-minute meeting with Trump as both attempted to corral enough votes.) Trump spent much of the week trying to win support from members of the Freedom Caucus, among the most conservative lawmakers, some of whom are holdouts because they believe the bill does not go far enough. After seven horrible years of ObamaCare (skyrocketing premiums & deductibles, bad healthcare), this is finally your chance for a great plan! Trump tweeted Friday. But even some in conservative media arent all that thrilled about the bill. Here are some of Fridays headlines: Polls: Ryancare even more unpopular than Obamacare and Hillarycare (Breitbart) So, its been clear in recent weeks that the right-wing website Breitbart does not like the new healthcare proposal. The news site has dubbed the current bill Obamacare-lite or Ryancare  an homage of sorts to Ryan, who helped craft the legislation  and argued it does not go far enough in its overhaul. Most conservatives want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, nicknamed Obamacare, they just differ on what the replacement should look like. For example, some on the far right want to see so-called essential health benefits, such as maternity and newborn care, stripped from the bill.) This piece highlights several of the dismal polls the legislation has received. Among them: A recent Fox News survey that showed 54% oppose the bill, compared with 34% who support it. The article also references an analysis of polling and data by FiveThirtyEight.com, which shows the GOP legislation is more unpopular than Obamacare and President Bill Clintons healthcare reform bill were when they were first introduced. A modest immigration proposal (Weekly Standard) Trumps recent immigration orders have left many immigrants on edge. Through social media and pop-up legal clinics, immigrant rights groups have doled out around-the-clock assistance, as families fear being separated. In this piece, Irwin Stelzer notes that at some point, our border will be secure, resistance to deporting felons will collapse, and we will have accepted the fact that Dreamers will be allowed to stay in this country, probably on a path to citizenship. He lays out his views of immigration reform, citing, among other things, setting an annual immigration limit and adopting a system that has the effect of enriching our citizens by filling that annual quota with immigrants who are likely to increase the well-being of the existing citizenry. Jeff Sessions is Rip Van Winkle on drug policy (American Conservative) Its clear from polls that most Republicans oppose marijuana legalization, while Democrats support it. However, libertarian-leaning Republicans often tend to support legalization. This piece highlights Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions recent comments in opposition to states legalizing pot. The attorney general regurgitates simplistic cliches right out of the 1970s and 1980s about marijuana use. I dont think America is going to be a better place when people of all ages, and particularly young people, are smoking pot, Sessions told reporters on February 26, the author, Ted Galen Carpenter, writes. He adds, Such comments confirm that critics may be right when they label him a drug war dinosaur. He seems either oblivious or scornful about the trend in public opinion regarding marijuana. Facebook

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FCC Chairman Pai wants to halt Internet privacy rules before they begin taking effect this week By Jim Puzzanghera (Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images) The nations new top telecommunications regulator wants to halt tough Internet privacy rules before they begin taking effect this week, arguing they would unfairly impose tougher requirements on broadband providers than on websites and social networks. Privacy advocates and a key Senate Democrat vowed Monday to fight the move as well as a separate effort in Congress to overturn the regulations, which were approved in October on a party-line vote by the Federal Communications Commission when it was controlled by Democrats under President Obama. Following President Trumps inauguration, control of the commission passed to Republicans and Ajit Pai took over as chairman. All actors in the online space should be subject to the same rules, and the federal government shouldnt favor one set of companies over another, a spokesman for Pai said Friday. Read More Facebook

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Trump says Hollywoods obsession with him led to best picture Oscar gaffe By Michael A. Memoli (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) President Trump is often loath to accept responsibility when things go wrong, but in the case of Sundays Oscars broadcast, he made an exception. As he explained it Monday, it was Hollywoods obsession with attacking him that contributed to the botched best picture announcement, calling the embarrassing episode sad, of course. Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has apologized for the mix-up that led Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway to announce La La Land as the winner of the top Academy Award prize, instead of Moonlight. But in Trumps eyes, the blame falls more broadly on an entertainment industry so preoccupied with politics that they didnt get the act together, he told Breitbart News. It took away from the glamour of the Oscars, Trump told a reporter from the website, which was once led by his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon. It didnt feel like a very glamorous evening. Ive been to the Oscars. There was something very special missing, and then to end that way was sad, he added. The ceremony did contain a number of slights at Trump during its telecast, some more subtle than others. Host Jimmy Kimmel openly at one point begged the president to weigh in by tweeting at him. Trump spent part of Sunday night hosting a black-tie dinner at the White House honoring the nations governors, who were visiting Washington for their annual winter meeting. But it appears from excerpts of the Breitbart interview that he may have spent at least part of the evening watching. Facebook

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Justice Department shifts course in closely watched Texas voter ID case By Del Quentin Wilber The Trump administration has scaled back its assault on a strict Texas voter identification law that federal courts have ruled discriminated against minorities, portending a shift in how the Justice Department plans to pursue allegations of voter suppression. The government revealed its decision in court papers filed in federal court Monday, dealing a blow to civil rights advocates who have relied on federal support to help them knock down the controversial Texas statute. Its a very concerning signal to American voters about the Department of Justices commitment to enforcing the Voting Rights Act, said Danielle Lang, deputy director of the voting rights unit of the Campaign Legal Center, which is suing Texas in the case. The administrations partial retreat in the dispute highlights how Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, a conservative Republican who has championed voter identification measures, is expected to handle such cases. The Obama administration had joined civil rights groups in aggressively challenging the Texas law and other such measures around the country. At issue in the case was how the Justice Department would proceed in a federal lawsuit that alleged the Texas legislature discriminated against minority voters when it enacted the strict voter identification law in 2011. Known as SB 14, the measure requires voters to present a specific form of government-issued photo identification - such as a drivers license, military ID card, U.S. passport or citizenship certificate - to be permitted to cast a ballot. The Obama administration and civil rights groups argued the state pushed the law, in part, to suppress the power of the states minority voters, who frequently dont drive or have a passport. State officials and lawmakers countered that the law was aimed at preventing voter fraud, though there is scant evidence that the problem exists. The law was challenged in court by civil rights groups and the Justice Department under provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was intended to help overcome legal barriers erected at the local and state level to keep African-Americans from the polls. Last July, a federal appeals court ruled that the Texas law had a discriminatory impact on minority voters. It told U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos to craft a temporary remedy in time for the November elections. Ramos subsequently ordered Texas to permit voters to present other forms of documentation to verify their identities. The judges order is expected to remain in force until she imposes a permanent remedy or Texas addresses the judges concerns. According to the court papers filed Monday, the Justice Department will continue to work with civil rights groups to address those issues but will seek to withdraw from another important aspect of the suit. In the same decision that found the Texas law had a discriminatory impact, the appeals court reversed Ramos finding that Texas legislators had intended to harm minority voters. It ordered Ramos to reconsider the evidence of that finding. If the judge determines discriminatory intent in crafting the voter ID requirements, she could throw out the entire law. Civil rights groups will continue to press that claim. In its court filing, the Justice Department asked Ramos to permit it to withdraw its claim that Texas acted with intent, arguing that it is best to give the Texas legislature time to address the matter. With the loss of their key ally in court, civil rights groups will argue on their own in an effort to prove that Texas acted with a discriminatory purpose in passing the law. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Voting advocates complained that the Trump administration was backing away from a key safeguard of voting rights. The Justice Department decision defies rationality and stands diametrically opposed to positions they have taken at every stage of this litigation, Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. This reversal of position was taken despite years of work and effort that the government has invested in fighting the Texas Voter ID law, one of the most discriminatory voting restriction of its kind. Facebook

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House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes warns against witch hunt over Trump-Russia ties By Sarah D. Wire House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) talks to reporters about his committees Russia investigation. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes said on Monday he has seen no evidence from the intelligence community that there was contact between Russia and the Trump campaign. I want to be very careful, we cant just go on a witch hunt against Americans because they appear in a news story, said Nunes (R-Tulare). We still dont have any evidence of them talking to Russia. He said the committee has been briefed on the highlights of what the intelligence community has found, but is still collecting evidence. The committees ranking Democrat, Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), quickly responded, saying the committees investigation is in its infancy and its too soon to reach conclusions about the evidence. We havent obtained any of the evidence yet, so its premature for us to be saying weve reached any conclusion about the issue of collusion, Schiff said. The most that weve had are private conversations, the chair and I with intelligence officials. Thats not a substitute for an investigation. The House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees are conducting separate investigations into Russias reported attempts to influence voters in 2016 in an effort to curtail Hillary Clintons chances and boost Donald Trumps. A leaked U.S. intelligence report on the attempts did not look at whether the effort succeeded. The House committee has expanded a previous ongoing investigation of Russia cyberhacking to include a look at efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, Nunes told reporters Monday. Though it is still in its early stages  the leaders of the committee are still discussing the investigations scope  Nunes said he expects the findings to be made public. Schiff and Nunes spoke separately to reporters Monday. Schiff said the two agreed privately that they would jointly address reporters about the investigation going forward. Nunes, who served as a member of Trumps transition team, said he continues to be concerned about leaks of classified and sensitive information from the White House and intelligence communities. The leaks  one of which resulted in a report about the FBI investigating Trump campaign officials  will be part of the committees investigation. A government cant function with massive leaks at the highest level, Nunes said. Facebook

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Appeals court denies Justice Department request to put appeal of travel ban on hold By Jaweed Kaleem (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the

Justice Departments request to pause proceedings in an appeal of President Trumps travel ban. The court in a filing Monday said its schedule for the governments appeal of a lower courts halt on the travel ban will proceed, with the first brief due to the appeals court on March 10. In early February, the Justice Department appealed a Seattle-based federal district judges order blocking enforcement of Trumps executive action. which established a series of immigration and refugee restrictions aimed at preventing potential terrorists from entering the country. Last week, government lawyers asked the appeals court to stop proceedings in the case because the president planned to issue a new executive order and rescind the original one. A three-judge panel of the court previously denied a request from the government to reverse a nationwide stay on the travel ban. The same panel on Monday ruled that the appeal will proceed. Trump has said he will sign a new executive order tailored to deal with court decisions that have largely gone against him. On Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said he expected the order to be issued mid-week. Spicer has said Trump wants to fight for the current order while also issuing a new one, but the Justice Department has said in multiple court filings that the the current order will be undone after a new one is issued. The states of Washington and Minnesota, which brought the case in Seattle now under review, have pushed for courts to move forward on a review of the constitutional issues. Facebook

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No random ICE stops on streets of America, Homeland Security chief tells governor By Lisa Mascaro Gov holds closing media briefing on Capitol Hill to wrap up @NatlGovsAssoc Winter Meeting. pic.twitter.com/3mZMBA4S0o  Ralph Northam (@GovernorVA) February 27, 2017 President Trump received some unsolicited advice at dinner with the nations governors when Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe told him he needs to do a better job explaining his policies regarding deportations. McAuliffe, a Democrat and chairman of the National Governors Assn., told the president that there has been a chilling effect going on as businesses stay away from his state and as immigrants fear being rounded up. If theyre not going to be deported, we need to hear that from the president, McAuliffe said, recounting his conversation from the governors Sunday night dinner with Trump. What I told the president is these actions are hurting us. McAuliffe, a longtime ally of Hillary Clinton, said Trump agreed in large part. McAuliffe also met privately with Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, and said the secretary assured him during an hourlong talk that Trumps enforcement actions were only targeting criminals -- despite widespread reports of otherwise law-abiding immigrants being detained for being in the U.S. illegally. He assured me there will be no random ICE stops on the streets of the United States of America, McAuliffe said, referring to the raids being conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. If thats the case, McAuliffe said, Trumps policy does not sound much different than the operations under former President Obama, whose administration deported more immigrants than its predecessors. Obama, however, explicitly put a priority on deportations of criminals, a distinction the Trump administration has done away with as part of the presidents executive action. My advice to him was he needs to let the American public know what theyre doing, McAuliffe said. Facebook

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Trump: I havent called Russia in 10 years By Brian Bennett President Trump rejected calls for an independent investigation of his ties to Russia, telling a group of business leaders Monday that he hasnt called Russia in a decade. At the start of a White House meeting with healthcare executives, a reporter asked Trump whether a special prosecutor should be assigned to investigate allegations of Russian meddling during the election. In response, Trump mouthed the word no to the executives. As reporters were led out of the room, Trump said: I havent called Russia in 10 years. Democratic lawmakers have ramped up their calls for additional investigations into allegations that Trump allies had been in contact with Russian officials during the election and inappropriately discussed U.S. sanctions against the Moscow regime during the transition. White House officials have denied reports that Trump associates were frequently in touch with senior Russian intelligence officials during the election. U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last year that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had authorized an operation to damage Hillary Clintons campaign and tilt the 2016 election in Trumps favor. Facebook

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Trump: Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated By Michael A. Memoli View Twitter post President Trump promised the nations governors Monday that his yet-to-be-revealed replacement plan for the Affordable Care Act would give states greater flexibility and thanked some Republicans in the room who advised him on healthcare. Its an unbelievably complex subject, he said. Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated. The remark likely surprised state leaders; spending on Medicaid alone was the second-biggest driver of increased state general fund spending, according to the 2016 Fiscal Survey of States conducted by the National Assn. of State Budget Officers. And it was just eight years ago that Washington dove head-first into a raging debate over healthcare reform under President Obama, which simmered long after his signature health law was enacted. But the finer points of healthcare policy are likely new to Trump, who is immersed in discussions with Republican leaders and his senior staff on that and other subjects ahead of his high-profile address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress. Trump offered no hint as to the details. Republicans have vowed to repeal and replace Obamacare, but their effort has stalled as they debate how to do so and await word from the White House on what Trump wants to do. The president seemed keenly aware of the political ramifications of whatever steps he takes. As soon as we touch it, if we do the most minute thing, just a tiny little change, whats going to happen? Theyre going to say its the Republicans problem, Trump said after telling the governors the easiest thing for him to do would be nothing, and, in his view, watch Obamacare collapse. But we have to do whats right because Obamacare is a failed disaster. Facebook

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Trump wants to add $54 billion to defense budget while slashing domestic spending and foreign aid By Brian Bennett President Trump is proposing a massive increase in defense spending of $54 billion while cutting domestic spending and foreign aid by the same amount, the White House said Monday. Trumps spending blueprint previewed a major address that he will give Tuesday night to a joint session of Congress, laying out his vision for what he called a public safety and national security budget with a nearly 10% increase in defense spending. We never win a war. We never win. And we dont fight to win. We dont fight to win, Trump said Monday in remarks to the nations governors. So we either got to win or dont fight it at all. Trump noted that the U.S. has spent nearly $6 trillion on fighting wars since the Sept. 11 attacks but said that cutting military spending was not the answer. Instead, the increase he is proposing would be offset by cuts to unspecified domestic programs and to foreign aid, which would in turn be made up for in part by demanding that other countries pay more for security alliances that have historically been underwritten by the U.S. This budget expects the rest of the world to step up in some of the programs that this country has been so generous in funding in the past, an official from the Office of Management and Budget said, demanding anonymity to discuss the presidents spending plans. Foreign aid makes up about 1% of the budget. This budget speaks for itself, the official said. I dont think this budget has anything to do other than putting Americans first. Trumps call for deep cuts to spending at home is likely to set up major battles on Capitol Hill, where Democrats and even House Republicans will likely be reluctant to pass a spending bill that includes such major reductions in programs for their constituents. Facebook

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Trump says businesses cant borrow because of Dodd-Frank. The numbers tell another story By Jim Puzzanghera President Trump was preparing the first step in a key campaign promise  dismantling the 2010 DoddFrank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act  when he repeated a frequent criticism of the law. We expect to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank because, frankly, I have so many people, friends of mine that had nice businesses, they cant borrow money, Trump told leading corporate chief executives, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Larry Fink of money management giant BlackRock Inc., meeting at the White House earlier this month They just cant get any money because the banks just wont let them borrow it because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank, Trump said. Shortly afterward, he ordered a wholesale review of the landmark act, which was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But a main reason for dismantling Dodd-Frank often cited by Trump and critics of the law  that its slew of tougher financial regulations have significantly restricted bank lending  isnt borne out by the data. Read More Facebook

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Another Trump nominee withdraws nomination to top national security post due to business interests By W.J. Hennigan Philip M. Bilden, President Trumps pick for Navy secretary, withdrew from consideration late Sunday, becoming the second White House nominee to bail on a top Pentagon position due to problems untangling his financial investments. After an extensive review process, I have determined that I will not be able to satisfy the Office of Government Ethics requirements without undue disruption and materially adverse divestment of my familys private financial interests, Bilden said in a statement. He did not detail the issues but he said he fully supported the presidents agenda  to modernize and rebuild our Navy and Marine Corps. Bildens withdrawal comes after billionaire investor Vincent Viola dropped out from becoming Army secretary after he decided his extensive financial holdings would hamper his ability to win Senate confirmation. The White House shot down reports that surfaced two weeks ago that Bilden was considering stepping down. Just spoke with him and he is 100% commited [sic] to being the next SECNAV pending Senate confirm, White House spokesman Sean Spicer tweeted on Feb. 18. Bilden, a venture capitalist and Army veteran, was a surprise selection from Trump but had the backing of Defense Secretary James N. Mattis. This was a personal decision driven by privacy concerns and significant challenges he faced in separating himself from his business interests, Mattis said in a statement. While I am disappointed, I understand and his respect his decision, and know that he will continue to support our nation in other ways. Bilden served ten years in the U.S. Army Reserve as a military intelligence officer from 1986 to 1996. He then co-founded private equity firm HarbourVest Partners LLC and spent 25 years there, mainly in the companys Hong Kong headquarters. He also serves on the board of directors of the United States Naval Academy Foundation and the board of trustees of the Naval War College Foundation. Mattis said he intends on recommending a replacement nominee to Trump in the coming days. The withdrawal marks another setback for Trumps national security team, which has struggled to find its footing since the fledgling administration began. Earlier this month, National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was forced to resign after it became public that he held secret talks with a Russian ambassador and then misled Vice President Mike Pence about it. Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster took the job last week after Trumps first choice to replace Flynn, retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, passed on the opportunity. Facebook

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New DNC chairman Tom Perez ridicules Trump tweet over rigged vote By Laura King Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez was chosen to lead the Democratic Party over a congressman backed by the progressive wing. (Branden Camp / Associated Press) President Trump claimed Sunday that the race for Democratic National Committee chairman had been rigged -- drawing a quick riposte from Tom Perez, who narrowly won the partys leadership race. Trump insinuated that Perezs DNC victory on the second ballot at a party conference in Atlanta on Saturday was because Hillary Clinton had backed Perez, a former Labor secretary in the Obama administration who was seen as representing the partys establishment forces. Clinton did not make a formal endorsement, but Perezs rival, Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, was backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the partys more liberal wing. Bernies guy, like Bernie himself, never had a chance, Trump tweeted early Sunday morning. Clinton demanded Perez! Perez, appearing on CNNs State of the Union on Sunday, told host Jake Tapper that he and Ellison got a good kick out of that, adding: Donald Trump, up in the morning tweeting about us. Sanders, appearing on the same show, said Trump doesnt have a point about the DNC vote. Moments after Perez beat Ellison by 35 votes out of 435 cast, he named Ellison as the deputy chairman of the party, leading to widespread applause. Perez is the first Latino to lead the Democratic Party, and he faces the challenge of trying to rebuild a party that suffered devastating losses in the 2016 election. Republicans now control not only the White House and Congress, but 33 governorships and dozens of state legislatures. In his CNN interview, Perez sarcastically suggested that Trump should address questions about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign rather than concerning himself with the DNC leadership battle. Frankly, what we need to be looking at is whether this election was rigged by Donald Trump and his buddy Vladimir Putin, he said. Facebook

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White House again bats away call for special prosecutor on Russia By Laura King A White House spokeswoman said Sunday that it was too soon to say whether a special prosecutor should look into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, while President Trump again inveighed against coverage of Russia-related queries as FAKE NEWS. Calls have grown louder from Democrats in Congress for U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the issue because of his role as a prominent Trump supporter during the campaign, and to appoint an independent special prosecutor to carry out a Russia probe. A few Republicans have joined in that chorus  some reluctantly. Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, appearing on HBOs Real Time with Bill Maher, voiced support Friday for naming of a special prosecutor to probe the Russian connection, though he also said congressional intelligence committees should continue their work. He also said he considered Sessions a friend, but pointed to his role as a political appointee who had worked on the Trump campaign. Issa, who narrowly won reelection, was a vociferous critic of the Obama administration during his former tenure as head of the House Oversight Committee. In that post, he spearheaded an array of investigations on topics from Benghazi to bank bailouts. Some Republicans pushed back against the notion of Sessions needing to recuse himself. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said on NBCs Meet the Press that he had seen no credible information about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russians  and no allegations that rose to the level of criminal activity. If we get down that road, thats a decision that Attorney General Sessions can make at the time, said Cotton, who is a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russian intelligence agencies hacked Democratic Party computers and used other tactics last year to interfere with the election. The FBI is separately investigating whether anyone on Trumps campaign had improper contacts with Russian authorities during the campaign. On Sunday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said congressional investigations on Russia and the campaign should be allowed to go forward before a special prosecutor appointment was considered. I dont think were there yet, Sanders said on ABCs This Week. Lets work through this process. Echoing the previously stated White House stance, Sanders said the Trump campaign had not colluded in any Russian meddling. We had no involvement in this, she said. The president is known to keep a close eye on surrogates performances on the talk shows, and Sanders repeated a prime administration talking point: that questions about possible Trump campaign contacts with Russia amounted to Democratic excuses for losing the election. If Democrats want to continue to relive their loss every single day, by doing an investigation or review after review, thats fine by us, she said. We know why we won this race. Its because we had the better candidate with the better message. Trump himself underscored that notion with an afternoon tweet denouncing media coverage of the ongoing Russia investigations as FAKE NEWS put out by the Dems, and played up by the media, in order to mask the big election defeat and the illegal leaks! Facebook

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Whose news is fake? Heres the latest in Trumps war with the press By Kurtis Lee Every president since 1981 has attended the annual White House Correspondents Assn. dinner. That year, President Reagan missed out. The reason? He needed to recover after a would-be assassin fired a bullet into his chest a few weeks earlier. On Saturday, President Trump announced he will not be attending the annual dinner in April, long considered the premier social event of the Washington press corps and typically an evening of good-natured bantering between presidents and the Fourth Estate. Trumps announcement added to the ratcheting tensions between his administration and the media. Almost daily, in speeches or on Twitter, he calls particular news outlets fake, disgusting or dishonest  and news organizations have responded by digging in, standing united and devoting more resources to covering a president who has branded the press the enemy. Read More Facebook

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Crucial group of Americans like Trumps stands, not him, poll finds By David Lauter Trump still gets dismal ratings on temperament but is above water on economy, decision-making, promises of change. pic.twitter.com/Md0H096n9m  Carrie Dann (@CarrieNBCNews) February 26, 2017 With the public deeply split in its views of President Trump, one potentially key group stands out -- those who dislike the man, but approve of the direction in which hes moving. Thats a central finding of a new nationwide survey by NBC News and the Wall St. Journal. The new poll confirms what other major surveys have shown: Trump starts his administration with less support than any president in the seven decades of presidential polling. Asked if they approve or disapprove of the job Trump is doing, 44% approve, 48% disapprove. No previous president has begun his tenure with a net negative job approval. Trump has held onto the support of his ardent backers. At the other end of the spectrum, he gets almost no approval from Democrats. In the middle, the poll found, are many Americans -- just over a third of those polled -- who either voted for Trump with reservations, voted for a third party candidate or did not vote at all in 2016. Just over half of that group gives Trump positive marks, the poll found. Their support is enough, currently, to keep Trumps standing from collapsing, and holding them is likely key to his future. Just under one third of Americans say they like Trump and approve of his policies, the poll found. Another one in six approve of most of his policies even though they dislike him. Well over half, 59%, said they did not like him personally. On a separate question, only 43% of those surveyed have a positive view of Trump -- up from the low points of the campaign, but still far below the standing of most new presidents. By contrast, 86% agreed with one of the central lines of Trumps inaugural speech, that government insiders had reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost. On other issues, the public is more closely divided. The public splits evenly, for example, on Trumps proposed temporary ban on travel from seven mostly Muslim countries. Just over half of those surveyed, 52%, said that the problems Trump has encountered in his first month were unique to this administration and suggest real problems; 43% said they were growing pains similar to those other administrations have had. And by 51%-41%, the public thinks the press has been too hard on the new administration. The NBC/WSJ poll, run by a bipartisan team of two polling firms, was taken by phone, using cell phones and landlines, Feb. 18-22 among 1,000 American adults. It has a margin of error for the full sample of 3.1 percentage points in either direction. Facebook

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Trump appears to think Perez at head of Democratic National Committee is good news for Republicans By Evan Halper Congratulations to Thomas Perez, who has just been named Chairman of the DNC. I could not be happier for him, or for the Republican Party!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017 The Democratic Party put its faith in its old guard Saturday to guide it out of the political wilderness, choosing as its new leader an Obama-era Cabinet secretary over the charismatic congressman backed by the progressive wing of the party. Tom Perez, a former secretary of Labor with strong ties to unions, persuaded the spirited assembly of party delegates in Atlanta that he can best help harness a grass-roots outpouring of anti-Trump protest and anger into a Democratic resurgence at the ballot box. Read More Facebook

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Trump to Washington reporters: Not going to your dinner By Kurtis Lee I will not be attending the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner this year. Please wish everyone well and have a great evening!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017 The annual White House Correspondents Assn. dinner will be missing a key guest this year: President Trump. On Saturday, Trump tweeted he will not attend the April 29 dinner, considered the premier social event of the Washington press corps -- and typically an evening of good-natured bantering between presidents and reporters with a mix of celebrities watching. His announcement comes amid growing tensions between his administration and the media. Trump has decried stories he doesnt like as fake news, and described unnamed news groups as an enemy of the people. A day earlier, the White House barred reporters from several major news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CNN and Politico, from attending an off-camera press briefing. In a sign of the growing rift, several media organizations that traditionally sponsor lavish parties around the black-tie dinner had announced they would not do so this year. At the annual dinner, the president usually delivers self-deprecating jokes and often is roasted by a high-profile comedian. The president also greets students who win journalism scholarships and awards, a major part of the evening. Trump has been a frequent guest of media organizations at the dinner in the past, but he always sat at a table in the crowded ballroom, not up at the front dias. President Obama singled Trump out during the dinner several years ago, mocking Trump for raising doubts about whether Obama was born in the United States. This year, as we do every year, we will celebrate the First Amendment and the role an independent press plays in a healthy republic, the White House Correspondents Assn. said in a statement earlier this month about the upcoming dinner. Facebook

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Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez named Democratic Party leader By Evan Halper Newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez (Branden Camp/Associated Press) The Democratic Party put its faith in its old guard Saturday to guide it out of the political wilderness, choosing as its new leader an Obama-era Cabinet secretary over the charismatic congressman backed by the progressive wing of the party. Tom Perez, a former secretary of Labor with strong ties to labor unions, persuaded the spirited assembly of party delegates in Atlanta that he can best help harness a grass-roots outpouring of anti-Trump protest and anger into a Democratic resurgence at the ballot box. We are suffering from a crisis of confidence, a crisis of relevance, Perez told delegates before they chose him in a down-to-the-wire contest with Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, whom the Bernie Sanders wing of the party had rallied round. We need a chair who can not only take the fight to Donald Trump.  We also need a chair who can lead a turnaround and change the culture of the Democratic Party, Perez said. The ascendance of an establishment liberal is certain to renew tension between veteran party stalwarts and the unruly progressive movement aligned with Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, both of whom backed Ellison. Some Ellison supporters erupted in protest as the final vote was announced. Perez quickly sought to unite the party by naming Ellison his deputy chair, a move unanimously approved by the 435 assembled delegates, who had supported Perez 235-200. Read More Facebook

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Trump chastises media for not reporting minor dip in national debt By Del Quentin Wilber President Trump took to Twitter on Saturday morning to blast the news media for not highlighting a minor dip in the national debt. The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo., he tweeted at 8:19 a.m. The media has not reported that the National Debt in my first month went down by $12 billion vs a $200 billion increase in Obama first mo.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2017 Trumps tweet came shortly after Herman Cain, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, made a similar comment on Fox News. While the numbers are accurate, Trumps tweet suggests he deserves credit for something that is largely beyond his control, especially since he hasnt yet given Congress any proposals to change tax laws or the financial industry. Considering that Trump hasnt enacted any fiscal legislation, its a bit of a stretch for him to take credit for any changes in debt levels, Dan Mitchell, a libertarian economist at the Cato Institute, told the fact-checking website Politifact. President Obamas first month in office in 2009 was largely taken up with spending bills aimed at easing the massive recession that he had inherited. Trump inherited an economy with low inflation, low unemployment and a booming stock market. The national debt, which stands at just under $20 trillion, is expected to rise by more than $500 billion in the fiscal year ending in September. Facebook

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Mexico rejects U.S. plan to deport Central Americans to Mexico By Patrick J. McDonnell Mexico has informed the Trump administration that it cannot accept non-Mexican nationals whom U.S. authorities arrest along the border and seek to remove from U.S. territory, the nations internal security chief said Friday. Earlier this week, the Trump administration rolled out a broad immigration crackdown that included a proposal to send non-Mexican detainees apprehended along the U.S.-Mexico border back to Mexico while their immigration cases were pending in the United States. The vast majority of non-Mexican nationals detained along the U.S.-Mexico border are Central Americans. They often travel overland through Mexico to reach the United States. In a fact sheet released Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said that releasing detained, third-country nationals to the foreign contiguous territory from which they arrived would save on detention and adjudication resources. The idea would be to keep them out pending their hearings on deportation, the fact sheet said. However, Mexican authorities have reacted coolly from the outset to the notion. Now, they appear to have formally nixed the idea. On Friday, Mexicos interior secretary, Miguel Angel Osorio Chong, told a radio interviewer than Mexican authorities had informed a pair of visiting U.S. Cabinet officers  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly  that Mexico could not oblige the U.S. request. We told them that our legal framework doesnt allow this, Osorio Chong told Radio Formula, referring to the visit this week of the two Trump Cabinet officials.  We told them it is impossible. There is no way, legally, nor is there capacity. In recent years, non-Mexicans, mostly Central Americans, have become a larger proportion of illegal immigrants apprehended along the Southwest border as the relative number of Mexican nationals has declined. In fiscal year 2016, according to U.S. Border Patrol statistics, agents recorded apprehensions of almost 191,000 undocumented Mexican citizens along the Southwest frontier. In the same fiscal year, the Border Patrol said it registered 218,000 detentions of non-Mexican nationals, most of them Central Americans. Cecilia Sanchez of The Times Mexico City bureau contributed to this report. An earlier version of this blog post misspelled Miguel Angel Osorio Chongs name as Osorio Chung. Facebook

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Trump blasts FBI over Russia leaks after a brief Twitter hiatus By Kurtis Lee (Alex Wong / Getty Images ) After several days of relative silence on Twitter, President Trumps feed came alive Friday with a direct attack on the FBI. Yes, hes done this before. But recent news reports that suggest his administration pressed the FBI to quell claims that members of his campaign had contact with Russians throughout the 2016 election appear to have inspired a response. The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security leakers that have permeated our government for a long time, he tweeted. And conservative news was all over it. Here are some of todays headlines: Trump blasts FBI leakers (Fox News) Trump has assailed everyone from Democrats to intelligence officials for the leaks  which he often refers to as fake news  about his ties to Russia. Reports from several news outlets this week, citing anonymous sources, claim Trumps chief of staff, Reince Priebus, asked FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to publicly dispute media reports that Trumps campaign advisors frequently were in touch with Russian intelligence agents during the election. While some reports made it appear Priebus had contacted McCabe, this piece disputes that. Fox News has learned that McCabe indeed had initiated the conversation, asking to speak with Priebus for a few minutes at the end of an intelligence meeting last week, their article reports. Ed Schultz at CPAC: Trump promised Americas heartland a deal (Daily Caller) He was once among the top liberal voices in the country. Now, Ed Schultz, the former MSNBC anchor, is speaking glowingly about President Trump. Between covering high-profile speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference from Trump and his aides, the Daily Caller popped into a panel at which Schultz provided commentary. Shultz, who now works with the Russian government-funded RT television network, blasted the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, asserting that Trumps claim that it would cost U.S. jobs was a game changer in the 2016 election. Trump went into Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin and he took down the progressive firewall, because he talked to the American people about a deal, Schultz said. It was a Wall Street deal, it was not a Main Street deal, he said, referring to the TPP. Trump is about blowing up Washington as it exists (Rush Limbaugh) Remember when Trump talked about draining the swamp? Since he entered the White House, some conservatives have wondered if Trump means business. Many members of his cabinet  including Priebus and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions  are the ultimate Washington insiders. Still, Rush Limbaugh, one of the firebrand conservatives out there, is certain the president will blow up traditional Washington. Whats Trumps No. 1 obstacle? I have concluded that the media is the No. 1 obstacle because of the success they have, he said on his radio show this week. The people in Washington, media is every bit as big a part of the establishment as anybody else is. He added: The media is creating this narrative, if you will, and this picture  this series of pictures, this overall image  that Trump is stalled, that everybodys opposing him, that his agenda is backlogged. Facebook

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After Trump calls media an enemy of the people, White House bars many news outlets from briefing By Noah Bierman Fridays White House press briefing, normally an on-camera affair open to all reporters with press credentials, was turned into an exclusive event for certain outlets hand-picked by the administration. The action came after President Trump on Friday described the media and what he terms fake news as the enemy of the people."On the list were Trump-friendly outlets such as Breitbart News, the Washington Times and OANN, a conservative television network that employs former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski as a commentator. Off the list were some of Trumps favorite targets, including the New York Times and CNN. The Los Angeles Times was also excluded. The off-camera briefing with Sean Spicer, the press secretary, was not solely for conservative outlets. Several mainstream reporters were also allowed in, including the three major broadcast networks and wire services, such as Bloomberg News. Also allowed in were pool representatives who transmit news events to a far larger group of reporters. The Associated Press and Time magazine were also invited but declined to participate in solidarity with other news organizations that were denied entry. The White House Correspondents Assn. protested, as did editors at several of the organizations that were excluded. In a statement, Times editor Davan Maharaj said that it was unfortunate that the Los Angeles Times has been excluded from a White House press briefing today. The public has a right to know, and that means being informed by a variety of news sources, not just those filtered by the White House press office in hopes of getting friendly coverage, Maharaj said. Regardless of access, The Times will continue to report on the Trump administration without fear or favor, he added. 12:30 p.m.: This post was updated with a statement from Times editor Davan Maharaj. Facebook

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Its a Russian flag! Trickster strikes CPAC before Trumps speech By Matt Pearce Crowd at CPAC waving these little pro-Trump flags that look exactly like the Russian flag. Staffers quickly come around to confiscate them. pic.twitter.com/YhPpkwFCNc  Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) February 24, 2017 As the crowd waited to hear President Trump speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, little red-white-and-blue flags appeared without warning, handed down the aisles by a man with a green bag, according to a witness. The flags said Trump. They also happened to be the flag of the Russian Federation. He was dressed like any one of us, said Tyler Dever, 20, a student at the University of South Florida in Tampa, who was wearing a suit. He passed them to me and was like, Pass them down, pass them down.  Dever, caught up in the moment, passed them down, before someone sitting next to him said, Oh, its a Russian flag! CPAC staff quickly recollected the flags. If it was just a red-white-and-blue flag, I would have picked it out, Dever said. He said it was his first time attending an event like CPAC and was surprised to see a provocateur in the audience, especially beyond the cordon set up by the Secret Service. Someone tried to victimize me, Dever said. You have Secret Service out here, and Id expect it to be fully screened. ... Thank God someone noticed. Facebook

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Trump still loves the USC/L.A. Times poll: What it got right and what it got wrong By David Lauter Throughout the fall campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump and his allies loved the USC/L.A. Times Daybreak poll -- the only major survey that consistently showed him winning. A couple polls got it right. I must say Los Angeles Times did a great job, shocking because, you know, they did a great job, Trump declared in his speech this morning at CPAC, the annual gathering of conservative activists. But did the poll get it right? In the simplest terms, no, and after considerble analysis, we know why. Read More Facebook

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A celebration, and wake, for a campaign legend and a Republican Party that is no more By Mark Z. Barabak (Steve Lopez/Los Angeles Times) It was a cool and rainy day when elders of the Republican tribe recently gathered to honor one of their own. The honoree, Stuart K. Spencer, was unmistakable in his white duck pants and a lime-green sport coat so bright it almost hurt to see. A reformed chain-smoker, he snapped merrily away on a wad of chewing gum. The event marked Spencers 90th birthday, but the mood beneath the surface conviviality was unsettled and gray, like the clouds fringing the mountains outside. If the occasion was intended as a personal celebration, it also had the feel of a wake for a time in politics long passed. Along with former Vice President Dick Cheney and former California Gov. Pete Wilson, veterans of the Reagan years turned out in force. It was Spencer, more than anyone, who took a political long shot and washed-up B-movie actor and helped transform him into the Reagan of legend. Read More Facebook

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CPACs reaction to President Trumps speech: Two thumbs up By Matt Pearce Supporters cheer President Trump as he speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on Friday. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump loves CPAC, and CPAC loves Trump. As hundreds of Conservative Political Action Conference attendees spilled out into the hallways Friday after Trumps speech to the group, they had glowing reviews of the man who has been tormenting Democrats and the media and transforming the Republican Party. It was fantastic, unbelievable, absolute truth, said Shia L. Lome, 84, a retired Air Force colonel from Deerfield Beach, Fla., appraising Trumps remarks. If he carries through [his promises], this will be the greatest country ever. Lome added that there is no question about it, Trump is his own type of Republican. Whether its conservative or whatever you want to call it, Lome said he is happy as long as [Trump] causes the Democrats heartaches. Kayne Robinson, 73, a former chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, said Trump was simply taking the party in the direction that people want it to go. I think the party is every bit as united behind him as it was behind either of the Bushes, Robinson said. Trump led a revolution in the party, very much like Reagan. ... I think Trump is doing just fine. Frank March, a 50-year-old Army retiree from Fairfax County, Va., emerged from the ballroom at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center wearing a red Make America Great Again cap, which carried Trumps jagged signature on the bill. Marchs daughter had gotten the hat signed when she previously met Trump, and he proudly showed off photos of that event. I recognize the signature! a woman exclaimed as she saw the hat. March praised Trumps follow-through and his commitment to workers as incredible. Hes bringing in new people to the party, March said. The hope is, by his follow-through, doing what he said he was going to do, then the non-Republicans who voted for Trump will stick. Helping workers will be one of the ways Trump can make that happen, he said. In politics, youre supposed to help people, March said. Workers are the people. Theyre people who earn money to take care of their families. Republicans should support those people because theyre the ones who make America run. Facebook

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Donald Trump shows up at conservatives most prominent gathering and defines a new GOP By Noah Bierman  President Trump shows up at conservatives most prominent gathering and defines a new GOP. President Trump made one of his strongest pitches Friday to unite the Republican Party and the conservative movement behind a nationalist, anti-globalist ideology that until recently would have been unthinkable for many Republicans. There is no such thing as a global anthem, a global currency or a global flag, Trump said to great applause from thousands of conservatives. Im not representing the globe. Im representing your country. He echoed ideas he has espoused in the past -- denouncing trade deals as the antithesis of economic freedom, warning that the great cities of Europe have been ruined by mass immigration, denouncing intervention in the Middle East by both parties. But while many of the words were familiar, the venue and the passion made Fridays speech remarkable. The comments came at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, just outside of Washington, D.C., the most prominent gathering of right-leaning groups and activists in the country. Such a speech would have been shocking from a conservative, much less the president, at almost any other time in the conferences history. Trump has been popular at CPAC in the past. He credits a speech there with launching his political career. But he snubbed last years event amid a heated primary in which many conservatives rejected his tone and the direction he was trying to move the GOP. I would have come last year, but I was worried that I would be at that time too controversial, Trump said in his speech, which lasted nearly an hour. Trump, the first president since Ronald Reagan to address the group during his first year in office, made clear that he is moving those once controversial ideas to the movements center. In addition to his usual critiques of the media and frequent references to his electoral success, Trump spoke directly of his ambition for reshaping the Republican Party to attract blue-collar voters, the forgotten men and women who helped propel his electoral victory. Im here today to tell you what this movement means for the future of the Republican Party and for the future of America, Trump said. The core conviction of our movement is that we are a nation that [must] put and will put its own citizens first. Later, he added that the GOP will be from now on also the party of the American worker. While Trump tried to unite conservatives, the speech made little effort to bridge the countrys larger political divide. For example, Trump dismissed people who have shown up at town halls around the country to protest reversal of Obamacare. Theyre not you, he said. Theyre the side that lost. Facebook

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Justice Department rescinds order phasing out use of private prisons By Del Quentin Wilber Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has jettisoned an Obama administration order to phase out the use of private prisons to hold federal inmates. The new order reverses one issued by former Deputy Atty. Gen. Sally Yates in August that sought to eliminate the departments use of private for-profit prisons, which hold just over 10% of the current prison population. The Obama administration order changed long-standing policy and practice, and impaired the bureaus ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system, Sessions wrote Thursday to announce the reversal. Civil rights and prisoner rights groups decried the Sessions decision, saying private prisons are not as cost-effective or as safe as government-run facilities, citing numerous abuses in the past. The Bureau of Prisons houses about 21,000 of its 190,000 inmates in a dozen private prisons, including one near Bakersfield. Atty. Gen. Sessions has shown that he is not taking the mass incarceration crisis seriously, said Wade Henderson, who heads the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Continuing to rely on private prisons for federal inmates is neither humane nor budget conscious, Henderson added. We need a justice system that can work better for all people. Yates order did not affect facilities used to detain people in the country illegally. The use of private prisons is expected to surge under President Trumps promised crackdown on illegal immigration. Trump has signed an executive order calling for expansion of immigrant detention facilities and authorized the use of private contractors to construct, operate, or control facilities. Stocks in private prison companies have jumped on Wall Street since Trump won the presidential election, and they continued their rise on news of Sessions order. Facebook

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CPAC and conservative media prepare for Trump By Kurtis Lee The future path of the Republican Party is being debated in the halls of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland this week. Will it be the party of Donald Trump, an outsider of the GOP establishment, or House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, the definition of establishment? Or, perhaps, of Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader of the so-called alt-right movement? (Spencer was kicked out of CPAC on Thursday.) Trump is set to address the conference on Friday, and the conservative media are ready for the much-anticipated address. Tomorrow it will be TPAC when hes here, Kellyanne Conway, a senior advisor to Trump told reporters Thursday. Here are some of todays headlines: Go Big, Go Bold: Walker, at CPAC, pushes GOP to carry out agenda as party controls Congress, White House (Fox News) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, once a Trump foe, is urging conservatives to use the November election as a mandate. Do what you said you were going to do, Walker said to attendees. In the Fox News piece, which leads its website, it notes that leaders at the conference are hoping to use it to strategize about what they can accomplish and to better articulate their values at a time when the very definition of conservatism has seemed to waver. Sweden Democrats: Trump was right (Fox News) Remember last weekend when everyone  including many Swedish politicians  were really confused about Trumps comments at a recent rally? You look at whats happening last night in Sweden, Trump, at a rally in Florida on Saturday, said about the Scandinavian country that has accepted large numbers of refugees. Sweden. They took in large numbers. Theyre having problems like they never thought possible. Actually, not much happened in Sweden on Friday night. Trump said later that he had been referring to a broadcast on Fox News on that night. Still, recent riots in the country were covered extensively by conservative media. This post notes a recent op-ed penned by Jimmie Akesson and Mattias Karlsson, both leaders of the Sweden Democrats, in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday supporting Trumps characterization of a Muslim immigrant-led crime crisis in Sweden. In it they write, Trump did not exaggerate Swedens current problems.  If anything, he understated them. Trump Is Letting DREAMers Stay, And Rush Is Fine With That (Daily Caller) Hes an immigration hard liner, and, apparently, hes OK with Trump allowing DREAMERs to remain in the country. This piece highlights comments by Rush Limbaugh this week. A lot of people think that Trumps caving because if you allow the DREAMers to stay, were talking 750,000 DREAMers, kids, who each have two parents who could come in. Look, this is a-no-win, Limbaugh said this week. Nobodys gonna win anything by deporting a bunch of kids that we let in. Facebook

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Trump advisor Steve Bannon rails at corporatist, globalist media By Noah Bierman Steve Bannon to the #CPAC crowd: "If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight, you're sadly mistaken" pic.twitter.com/ryw7iO0Snr  POLITICO (@politico) February 23, 2017 The two men with the most heavily dissected relationship in President Trumps White House held a rare public appearance together Thursday and agreed on one common enemy: the media. Reince Priebus, the chief of staff who is often described as embattled, said he has grown conditioned to the media counting Trump out: during the presidential campaign, the transition and the first month of the presidency. The biggest misconception is everything that youre reading, Priebus said. Steve Bannon, Trumps chief strategist, framed his complaint as an ideological war. He consistently called the media the opposition party throughout a 20-minute joint interview on stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference just outside of Washington. Its not only not going to get better, it gets worse every day, Bannon said. Theyre corporatist, globalist media that are adamantly opposed to an economic nationalist agenda like Donald Trump has. If you think theyre going to give you your country back without a fight, he added. You are sadly mistaken. Bannon, former executive chairman of the far-right Breitbart News, seldom speaks in public. His nationalist rendering of Republican ideology is often seen in contrast to Priebus, the former chairman of the GOP, who is viewed as the more mainstream conservative advocate within the White House. The two men said the tension between them portrayed in the media is inaccurate. But as they praised each other, the men made clear that Bannon sees his role as dominant in shaping Trumps policy. Bannon praised Priebus for doggedly keeping the trains running -- one of the toughest jobs Ive ever seen in my life. Bannon talked about being in the first inning of shaping a new political order and beginning the deconstruction of the administrative state. Priebus used more prosaic language and spoke of Bannon as the one who pushes Trump to maintain his bold vision. He is very dogged in making sure that every day the promises that President Trump made are the promises were working on, Priebus said of Bannon. Facebook

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In Mexico, Homeland Security chief says there will be no mass deportations of people in U.S. illegally By Patrick J. McDonnell Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, left, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Mexico City on Thursday. (Ronaldo Schemidt / AFP/Getty Images) Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly, on a visit to Mexico, said Thursday that there will be no mass deportations of people living in the U.S. illegally. Kelly also said U.S. military forces would not be used in deportation efforts and that any deportation cases would go through the U.S. legal system. No. Repeat, no use of military force in immigration operations, Kelly said at a news conference at the Foreign Relations Ministry in Mexico City. None. Well approach this operation systematically, in an organized way, in a results-oriented way, in an operation and and in a human dignity way. Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are in Mexico City to discuss a wide variety of issues, including immigration and security, with Mexican government officials. Kellys remarks came the same day President Trump called recent raids in the U.S. an unprecedented enforcement effort. You see whats happening at the border. All of a sudden for the first time, were getting gang members out, he said. Were getting really bad dudes out of this country, and at a rate that nobodys ever seen before. Read More Facebook

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Mexico bracing for long battle with Trump administration, foreign minister tells lawmakers By Patrick J. McDonnell Mexico Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray (Brian Smialowski / AFP/Getty Images) Mexico is preparing for a long battle with the administration of President Trump, its foreign minister reportedly told lawmakers in private comments, adding that the country was prepared to retaliate with new tariffs if necessary. We are here preparing for a battle that is going to be long, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told federal deputies Wednesday, according to the newspaper La Jornada, which said it had obtained a copy of the comments. This is not going to be resolved in three days. In the reported remarks, Videgaray said Mexico was prepared to retaliate with new tariffs on U.S.-made goods should the Trump administration follow up on its threats to slap an export tax of 20% or more of goods imported from Mexico to the United States. There was no official response from the Mexican Foreign Ministry on Videgarays reported remarks. Videgaray was among the Mexican officials, including President Enrique Pena Nieto, who met this week with a pair of visiting White House Cabinet members, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly. The private remarks were apparently made on Wednesday, when the two Trump envoys were scheduled to arrive in Mexico City. Read More Facebook

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Homeland Security tried to downplay immigration raids as routine. Now Trump says theyre unprecedented By Michael A. Memoli (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) After nationwide immigration raids this month in which more than 680 people were arrested, the Department of Homeland Security issued a nothing-to-see-here statement downplaying the sweeps as strictly ordinary. ICE conducts these kind of targeted enforcement operations regularly and has for many years, the agency said last week, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But President Trump had a different take Thursday, labeling the raids an unprecedented enforcement effort. You see whats happening at the border. All of a sudden for the first time, were getting gang members out, he said before a roundtable on manufacturing. Were getting really bad dudes out of this country, and at a rate that nobodys ever seen before. Under President Obama, deportations peaked at 400,000 people in 2012, touching off widespread criticism from immigration advocates, which prompted Homeland Security to scale back deportations. Last year, deportations fell to 240,000 as the Obama administration focused on targets similar to what Trump described in the raids conducted under his authority: criminals, repeat immigration violators and recent arrivals. Trump also called the sweeps this month a military operation, even though no military resources were involved and the White House has pushed back aggressively on reports that the administration was considering seeking National Guard forces to assist in deportations. Homeland Security said the raids were conducted by ICE agents, U.S. marshals and state and local law enforcement agencies. What has been allowed to come into our country, when you see gang violence that youve read about like never before, and all of the things  much of that is people that are here illegally, Trump said. Theyre rough and theyre tough, but theyre not tough like our people. So were getting them out. Of the 680 arrests last week, 161 occurred in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. Three-quarters of those detained in the Los Angeles-area sweeps were from Mexico. Trump noted that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly traveled to Mexico this week on a tough trip. We have to be treated fairly by Mexico, Trump said. Facebook

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White nationalist leader Richard Spencer booted from Conservative Political Action Conference By Matt Pearce Reporters surround white supremacist Richard Spencer during the first day of the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 23, 2017. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) One of Americas most prominent white nationalists, Richard Spencer, was kicked out of the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday after conference organizers gave him credentials to attend and then wavered on whether to let him stay. Spencer, who coined the term alternative right to describe his far-right views on separating the races, came to CPAC to attend a speech that was critical of the alt-right. CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp took pains to distance CPAC from the fringe Spencer represents. The alt-right does not have a legitimate voice in the conservative movement, said Schlapp, adding that nobody from that movement is speaking at CPAC. Read More Just talked to CPAC organizer Matt Schlapp. Said he didn't endorse Richard Spencer's ideas but won't kick him out of the conference.  Matt Pearce  (@mattdpearce) February 23, 2017 Basically their line on this is, if they actually agreed with his ideas, they'd put him on stage, but they don't, and it's a free country.  Matt Pearce  (@mattdpearce) February 23, 2017 Change of plans. Richard Spencer just got kicked out of CPAC.  Matt Pearce  (@mattdpearce) February 23, 2017 Facebook

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Obamacare 101: Are health insurance marketplaces in a death spiral? By Noam N. Levey (Don Ryan / Associated Press) Its been a rocky few months for the health insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. Even if youre not one of the roughly 11 million Americans who rely on these online markets to get your health insurance, youve probably seen the headlines about rising premiums and insurance companies pulling out of the system. Last week, national insurance giant Humana announced it would stop selling plans on the marketplace. Aetnas chief executive claimed the marketplaces are in a death spiral. Republicans say the marketplaces are Exhibit A that Obamacare is collapsing. So whats the real story? Are these things really kaput or can they be fixed? Heres a rundown of where things stand. Read More Facebook

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Trump administration wants tax reform done by August, Mnuchin says By Jim Puzzanghera The Trump administration wants to overhaul the tax code by August, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday, laying out an aggressive timetable in his first significant public comments since taking office last week. Our economic agenda, the No. 1 issue is growth, and the first most important thing that will impact growth is a tax plan, Mnuchin said in an interview with CNBC. So we are committed to pass tax reform, he said. We want to get this done by the August recess. Read More Facebook

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Loud and angry, protesters turn congressional town halls into must-see political TV By Mark Z. Barabak (Bill Pugliano / Getty Images) They came by the hundreds, in big cities and rural hamlets, to heckle, plead, badger and, in some instances, to protest the protests themselves. Congress is in recess this week, and a citizenry suddenly spurred to action used the opportunity to let their returning lawmakers know just how they feel about the tempestuous last month in Washington. Winners make policy and losers go home, a taunting Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader, told an invitation-only gathering in his home state of Kentucky, as about 1,000 protesters gathered outside. Not exactly. The town hall meeting, a throwback to a time of more intimate connection, has become a political organizing tool in the social media age  a piece of performance theater and a worldwide stage. Obamacare, immigration, environmental regulation, Social Security, Russian meddling in the 2016 election and Trump, Trump, Trump  all poured forth this week in the form of questions, loudly and heatedly. Read More Facebook

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Trump administration rescinds guidelines on protections for transgender students By Michael A. Memoli The Trump administration rescinded an Obama-era directive Wednesday aimed at protecting transgender students rights, questioning its legal grounding. Under the guidelines, schools had been required to treat transgender students according to their stated gender identity, and either allow access to restrooms and locker rooms for the gender they identify with or provide private facilities if requested. The Obama administration had said that students gender identities were protected under Title IX requirements, which prohibit federally funded schools from discriminating on the basis of sex. But officials in the Education and Justice departments said that their predecessors failed to make their case, citing significant litigation spurred by the policy. Read More Facebook

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Americans in Mexico protest Trumps inflammatory rhetoric during Tillerson visit By Kate Linthicum A group of Americans living in Mexico is planning a protest Thursday to send a message to visiting U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Their gripe? President Trumps inflammatory rhetoric. Thats according to a draft of a letter that several groups organizing the protest hope to deliver to Tillerson, who is in town along with Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly for talks with top Mexican officials. The letter, which will be cosigned by the Mexican chapter of Democrats Abroad, as well as other groups, complains about Trumps hostile attitude toward Mexico, which it says is engendering nationalistic sentiments in Mexico. Among Trumps hostile acts, the letter says, is Trumps vow to build a border wall and force Mexico to pay for it. The idea of building a wall ... frames Mexico and Mexicans as foreign invaders, the letter says. It also criticizes Trump for pledging to renegotiate NAFTA, saying, The U.S. and Mexico are deeply connected economies and it is in the interest of the United States to strengthen the regional production network to boost manufacturing employment in the U.S. and ensure the long-run competitiveness of manufacturing in the region. There are more than a million U.S. citizens living in Mexico, and many have been vocal since Trumps election. Last month, thousands turned out for a womens march outside the American Embassy that saw crowds chanting anti-Trump slogans. Facebook

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Mexico will never accept unilateral American immigration rules, foreign secretary says By Patrick McDonnell Mexican Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray said defending the rights of Mexican immigrants is the first point in the agenda for talks with U.S. officials. (Christian Palma / Associated Press) Mexico will reject any unilateral effort from the United States to impose immigration or other policies on the Mexican government, the countrys foreign secretary said Wednesday. I want to make clear, in the most emphatic way, that the government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept measures that, in a unilateral way, one government wants to impose on another, Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray said in public comments. That we are not going to accept. He spoke a day after the Trump administration unveiled tough new measures to enforce immigration laws and deport people who are in the country illegally  proposals that were widely portrayed in the Mexican media as a prelude to massive deportations. On Wednesday, two top Trump administration cabinet members  Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly  were arriving in Mexico for talks with that nations officials, including Videgaray. Immigration, trade and law enforcement issues were expected to be discussed at a tense moment in U.S.-Mexican relations. In his reported comments, the Mexican secretary did not single out any specific U.S. proposal as objectionable. Mexican officials have acknowledged there is little they can do to counter U.S. immigration policies. Among other things, the Trump administration has proposed sending non-Mexican citizens detained along the U.S.-Mexico border back to Mexico. Mexican officials would presumably have to sign off on such a plan. Mexico already detains and deports thousands of Central Americans annually who cross Mexican territory with the hope of entering the United States illegally via the U.S.-Mexico border. U.S. authorities have worked with their Mexican counterparts to halt the Central American influx. The Mexican foreign secretary made it clear that immigration would be at the top of the list of items to be discussed during meetings with the U.S. Cabinet secretaries. Defending the rights of Mexican immigrants is the first point in the agenda, said Videgaray. He also said Mexico could take the issue of the rights of Mexican immigrants to the United Nations and other international agencies. Facebook

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Both in power and in turmoil, conservatives head to Conservative Political Action Conference to see whats next By Matt Pearce Josh Platillero (Matt Pearce / Los Angeles Times) The eyes of men in crisp blazers darted toward passing faces and identification badges, looking for a familiar face, a famous name. As Fox News host Sean Hannity prepared to broadcast a live show from a ballroom, a brief chant burst out from the audience: U-S-A! U-S-A! Its that time of year again: Hundreds of Republicans began arriving Wednesday at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., just south of Washington, for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC, as its best known, is a place for conservative political figures and activists to gather, schmooze, hammer out new ideas and audition for starring roles in the Republican Party. And this year, CPAC attendees have a lot to talk about. Their party is in control of Congress, the White House and dozens of state governments across America, and yet not at all at peace with itself. President Trump is expected to address the conference later in the week after winning on a platform of populist nationalism that some conservatives have accused of not being conservative at all. Breitbart News, the brash rising star of right-wing media, is one of the conferences top promoters, but one of its staffers, Milo Yiannopoulos, lost his speaking slot at CPAC and resigned from the news organization after video circulated showing him appearing to promote pedophilia. Some conservatives had backed Yiannopoulos and cried censorship when the provocateur offended liberals at college speaking events, but now they had become offended themselves. Still, as CPAC began on Wednesday, the mood was upbeat. This was a victorious movement, after all. Many new guests were greeted by the sight of Josh Platillero, 23, wearing a cartoonishly large stovepipe hat and a suit the colors of the American flag. I love networking, said Platillero, who recently lived in Knoxville, Tenn., before moving to the D.C. area to work with a conservative nonprofit, the Leadership Institute. Its his second year attending CPAC, and he was excited about the lineup of speakers, which include some of the White House staff. I think our new president is not perfect, but I think hes doing good things, he said. Ariel Kohane, 45, who came from the Upper West Side in Manhattan, stood in the lobby holding signs that read, Jews for Trump, in both English and Hebrew. I love the fact that I can get together with many of my fellow conservative friends and colleagues and we can all be very proud of ourselves with all our accomplishments and the fact that we get to strategize and plan ways to further expand conservatism across America and across the whole world, Kohane said. Facebook

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Pence condemns Jewish center bomb threats and visits desecrated cemetery in Missouri By Jaweed Kaleem (Michael Conroy / Associated Press) Visiting Fenton, Mo., on Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence condemned a string of bomb threats against Jewish community centers around the nation and the desecration of a St. Louis-area Jewish cemetery over the weekend. Speaking just yesterday, President Trump called this a horrible and painful act. And so it was. That along with other recent threats to the Jewish community centers around the country, said Pence, who was visiting the headquarters of the Fabick Cat machinery company. He declared it all a sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil. We condemn this vile act of vandalism and those who perpetuate it in the strongest possible terms. The vice president said it was inspiring how the people of Missouri have rallied around the Jewish community with compassion and support. Among those showing solidarity with the Jewish community is a group of Muslims who launched an online fundraising campaign to help repair the cemetery. Donors had pledged more than $90,000 by Wednesday afternoon. Pence later visited the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, Mo., where nearly 200 tombstones had been toppled over the weekend. Facebook

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Trumps move on transgender bathroom access sparks interest By Kurtis Lee (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) For President Trump, commenting on social issues  such as same-sex marriage and abortion  has never seemed much of a priority. Indeed, throughout the campaign, Trump hardly discussed the topics. When asked about transgender bathroom access at a town hall in April 2016, Trump said people should be able to use whichever bathroom they choose. He then moved on from the question, offering little else. Now it appears his administration is set to wade into the controversy. Its a topic the conservative media loves to explore. Here are some of todays headlines: Return to normalcy: Trump readies reversal of transgender bathroom lunacy in public schools (Daily Caller) What will the Trump administration do about transgender bathroom access? The Caller highlights White House Press Secretary Sean Spicers pronouncement on the issue: This is a states rights issue and not one for the federal government, Spicer told reporters. The lunacy referred to is the federal guidance President Obama issued prior to leaving office directing schools that receive federal funding to allow transgender students to use restrooms and other facilities that match their gender identities. Several states filed suit to overturn the directive, and a federal judge issued a temporary injunction barring its enforcement, which remains in place. Several states, following the lead of North Carolina, are seeking to implement legislation that bans transgender people from using the bathrooms of the gender with which they identify. 66 percent of Trump voters change the channel when awards shows get too political (Daily Caller) When Meryl Streep criticized President Trump last month in her Golden Globes speech, he replied quickly. Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesnt know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes, Trump tweeted. Well, Trump can probably expect more barbs as actors (in overwhelmingly liberal Hollywood) take the stage at the Oscars on Sunday. Lots of Trump voters can be expected to change the channel, according to this piece, which highlights a new poll on the subject. The Hollywood Reporter says that 66% of Trump voters said they have stopped watching an awards show because a celebrity started talking about politics while accepting an award. By contrast, only 19% of Hillary Clintons supporters have done so. Trump talks tolerance, decries anti-Semitism, but media remain skeptical (Fox News) Well, Trump finally did say something to condemn the anti-Semitic vandalism and threats that have taken place since his presidential victory. Anti-Semitism is horrible, Trump said in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday. In the Fox News piece, Howard Kurtz argues the media should give the president more credit for speaking out. I always think its unfair to blame a political leader for violence or vandalism carried out by people who support him, he writes. I felt the same way about critics who blamed Barack Obama for urban riots or shootings of police officers. Facebook

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Among Republicans, Trump is more popular than congressional leaders By David Lauter Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) walk together. (Matt Rourke / Associated Press) Amid strain between the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, the White House holds the high ground, a new survey indicates. Among Republicans, President Trump has greater popularity than the partys congressional leaders. Asked specifically who they would trust if the two sides disagreed, most Republicans chose Trump over their partys leadership. The findings, from a new survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center underscore Trumps continued sway with the Republican congressional majority. Although the president has historically low job approval ratings among the public at large, he remains highly popular among Republican partisans and in Republican districts. As for Democrats, theyre strongly in an oppositional mood. Asked if they were more worried that Democrats in Congress would go too far in opposing Trump or not go far enough, more than 70% of Democrats said they feared their party would not go far enough. Only 20% said they worried the party would go too far. Republicans in Congress have eyed Trump warily on several fronts. His positions on trade and entitlement reform break with years of the partys positions. His reluctance to criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin has generated tension. And the administrations lack of clarity on healthcare and tax policy have Republican leaders guessing which way to turn on major issues. But Republican partisans have fewer reservations than their elected representatives. Eighty-six percent to 13%, those who identify as Republicans or as independents who lean Republican have a favorable view of Trump, the Pew survey found. By comparison, 57% have a favorable view of Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, with 22% unfavorable and 21% having no opinion. House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin is slightly better known, with 65% of Republicans holding a favorable view, 23% an unfavorable view and 13% having no opinion. Asked who they would trust if the two sides disagreed, 52% of Republicans said they would side with Trump and 34% with the Republicans in Congress. Republicans younger than 40 were the only major exception; 52% to 36%, they said they would side with Congress. At the same time, Republican partisans now have a warmer opinion of their party leadership than they had during most of President Obamas tenure. Republicans' approval of their congressional leaders has more than doubled since 2015 https://t.co/KSo1hRMhJj pic.twitter.com/WHTHxCNEFq  Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) February 22, 2017 During the Obama years, GOP partisans tended to be frustrated that their side could not reverse the presidents initiatives, even with a majority in the House, starting in 2010, and then in the Senate for Obamas last two years. Their view of the GOP leadership has rebounded strongly since the election. Democrats view of their congressional leadership has been more stable. And both sides widely dislike the other partys leaders. Facebook

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Supreme Court rejects use of racial stereotypes in death penalty cases By David Savage The Supreme Court rejected the use of racial stereotypes in death penalty cases Wednesday, reopening the case of a black man in Texas who was sentenced to die after his jury was told African Americans are more likely than whites to commit crimes. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said this testimony had no place in a sentencing hearing and appealed to the racial stereotype that black men are prone to violence. Our laws punish people for what they do, not for who they are, the chief justice said in the courtroom. The 6-2 decision faults Texas authorities for refusing to give a new sentencing hearing to Duane Buck, a Houston man who was convicted of shooting and killing his ex-girlfriend and seriously injuring her new boyfriend in 1995. Buck was found guilty of murder, but when his jury was debating his fate, his court-appointed defense attorney put on the witness stand an expert who cited statistics showing blacks are more likely to commit future crimes than whites. After hearing this testimony, the jury decided to sentence Buck to death. Years later, Texas state attorneys set aside the death sentences for six other black defendants whose juries heard similar testimony, but they refused to reopen Bucks case. In Buck vs. Davis, the high court said that was a mistake. The jury was deciding the question of life or death, and this is no place for the introduction of a particularly noxious strain of racial prejudice, Roberts said. The court sent the case back to judges in Texas to reconsider the death sentence. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, along with Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Thomas said Buck was properly sentenced to die for a brutal murder, and he insisted the court should not have heard the case for procedural reasons. Having settled on a desired outcome, the court bulldozes procedural obstacles and misapplies settled law to justify it, he wrote. Facebook

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At Rep. Tony Cardenas town hall, Democrats worry about what Donald Trump may do By Kurtis Lee (Kurtis Lee/Los Angeles Times ) They arrived with soggy jackets, hats and umbrellas. The topic was supposed to be the Affordable Care Act. But many who attended Democratic Rep. Tony Cardenas town hall meeting Tuesday night in a crammed auditorium at the Cesar E. Chavez Learning Academies came with a question: What can we -- as Democrats -- do to help you? Show up and vote, said Cardenas, who represents a slice of the staunchly liberal San Fernando Valley. (Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump in this district by nearly 60-percentage points in the fall election.) Sign people up, get people involved, he said. At times the meeting had the feel of a therapy session for Democrats, wondering aloud how to function under a Trump administration. Where is the anger among Democrats? asked one man. I want to see more anger. Cardenas, standing at a lectern on an elevated stage, offered a stern look and nodded in agreement as rain could be heard splattering on the roof above. The complaints included Republicans efforts to repeal Obamacare and Trumps new immigration mandates. Trust me, Im pissed. Im upset, Cardenas said. But we have to act constructively. We have to be responsible. Last month, Trump signed executive orders directing the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize the removal of people in the U.S. illegally who have criminal convictions. In addition to speeding up the deportation of convicts, Trumps orders also call for quick removal of people in the country illegally who are charged with crimes and waiting for adjudication. And in recent days, a handful of people who have received protection under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents nationwide. Cardenas said that for him, the issue is personal. His parents were immigrants from Mexico, who lived in the San Fernando Valley for decades, raising 11 children, he said. Today his district is nearly 70% Latino. Im going to fight for you, he said. Im going to fight for the people who are my immigrant father. When a young man, a DACA recipient, asked him, via Twitter, if hell be safe in the weeks ahead, Cardenas seemed at a loss. I pray that [Trump] doesnt go after you, he said. Facebook

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Killing with kindness, GOPs McClintock faces down hostile questioners as town hall goes into overti
Three alleged gang members were arrested by Burbank police last Wednesday in connection with an armed robbery that occurred in late December, authorities said.

Carlos Ramirez, 25, of North Hollywood, along with two underage juveniles  one from Hollywood and the other from Los Angeles  were arrested on suspicion of robbing the Little Caesars Pizza at 1009 W. Alameda Ave. on Dec. 27.

One of the three reportedly had pointed a handgun at an employee as they forced their way into the store, according to Burbank police spokesman Lt. Claudio Losacco.

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Once inside, the suspects demanded money from the register, he said. Before leaving, the suspects also stole the employees purse, wallet and cellphone.

Shortly after the robbery, the three allegedly used the employees credit card at a convenience store in Sun Valley and, sometime on Jan. 5, one of them tried to use the workers personal information to purchase something in Glendale.

Local police were sent to the scene and discovered the employees ID and other related items in a car connected to the Jan. 5 incident, according to Losacco.

He said the car was also determined to be the getaway vehicle used in the robbery.

A warrant was then served at Ramirezs home, where police found clothing that matched those worn during the robbery. They also recovered a handgun, ammunition and methamphetamine, Losacco said.

The three were arrested on suspicion of armed robbery and identity theft.

Ramirez is currently out on bail as he awaits his next court appearance. The underage boys were sent to juvenile hall.

--

Andy Nguyen, andy.nguyen@latimes.com

Twitter: @Andy_Truc

MORE CRIME & PUBLIC SAFETY
For more than 30 years I have looked forward to reading the Forum page of the Burbank Leader and avidly followed columnists with delight.

To quote Ray Richmond, I never thought Id have to write that. I dont even want to open that page since he is writing for the Leader. He fuels the fires of despair and division every week and he just gets more depressing every time!

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Dr. Joe Puglia had a much more balanced perspective on our countrys issues and saved the day with a column titled Traveling through a divided nation.

Ive always felt Burbank was a haven from the madness of Hollywood until Ray Richmond invaded our Leader. Please put someone else in his place.

Helene Cob

Burbank

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Rays rhetoric is appropriate

Ray Richmonds observations on Trumps presidency are expressed with appropriately harsh rhetoric. The situation has gone from this has to be some kind of joke to we are all in grave danger. I agree that illegal immigration is a problem.

But by shutting down immigration and antagonizing leaders of countries who are allies in the war against terror, Trump is burning bridges and extinguishing the goodwill of other nations that it has taken legitimate and skilled statesmen and women decades to build. By fomenting hatred of our country there will be more incentive for extremists to conduct terrorist acts.

Do you remember an episode of The Twilight Zone with Billy Mumy playing a bad seed child who had the ability to wish into the cornfield anyone who didnt offer effusive praise for everything he did? Our bad seed president is attempting to strong-arm or black out any organization such as NPR, our scientific organizations and journalists who could provide evidence that could disprove his alternate facts or suggest that he is not the perfect leader.

Those who voted for Trump should be reminded that at this very moment, Russia has missiles armed with nuclear warheads set to the coordinates of every major city in America, ready to be fired at the touch of a button. They are not our friends! In the 60s my parents used to worry about such things as nuclear winter and mutually assured destruction. Now these incomprehensible scenarios are part of our consciousness again.

If Burbank becomes a puddle of molten glass due to the incompetency of Trump, will anyone even care? But then his supporters will find a way to blame Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

Jennifer Rabuchin

Burbank

Galvanized by the Womens March

Joined together in common purpose, millions marched in cities around the world to express alarm at the new Trump administration agenda. Dubbed the Womens March, protests erupted on all seven continents, drawing attention to the rights and dignity of women.

We were lucky to be in the massive throng that descended on Washington, D.C. Due to the snaking lines at the metro stops, we walked three miles into the city. We marveled at people marching down all streets as far as we could see to the National Mall.

Speakers articulated a variety of themes; however, the overarching one was a loud repudiation of racism, sexism and discrimination. Many also discussed concerns about womens healthcare policies and the importance of adhering to the rule of law. Others celebrated the diversity that creates the fabric of our nation.

The crowd greeted speakers with cheers and chants; we were crammed together peacefully exercising our cherished rights as Americans. Chants of this is what democracy looks like reverberated through the streets. The noted feminist Gloria Steinem said, This is an outpouring of energy and true democracy like I have never seen in my very long life. It is wide in age. It is deep in diversity.

The womens marches are only the beginning. Many participants feel empowered to act, galvanized by an insistence that womens rights are human rights. If you want to get involved, go to https://www.womensmarch.com/100/.

We left D.C. with a renewed belief in our great American experiment in democracy and with a determination to make our voices heard.

Diana Abasta, Burbank Teachers Assn. president

Sue Conway, Luther Middle School

Alice Holmes, BTA office manager

..

Women marched in Burbank too

Unless I missed it, the Burbank Leader completely ignored the roughly 500 people who supported the Womens March in D.C. by marching on Jan. 21 down the Chandler Bikeway. Burbank Police provided traffic assistance at key intersections as families with children peacefully marched, holding signs and chanting, in resistance to the hate spewed by the new president and his administration. The Womens March was the biggest protest in U.S. history, with millions of Americans and people worldwide taking to the streets. Shame on the Leader for not covering this historic event in our own backyard, while other local media, such as myburbank.com, covered it extensively. One wonders if the media blackout at the Leader was politically motivated.

Angela Machala

Burbank

..

Golonski to join BCC meeting

The next Burbank Coordinating Council meeting is on Monday, Feb. 6, from noon to 1:30 p.m., at Little White Chapel 1711 N. Avon St. We meet every first Monday of the month at the same time and place between October and May.

The featured speaker next week will be Dave Golonksi, past chairman of LOSSAN Rail Corridor Authority.

There will be lots of information about the councils Camperships and the Coins for Campers contest. Anyone wishing to learn more about our program is invited to visit our website, www.burbankcoordinatingcouncil.org or call (818) 842-6361.

Lunch is only $10 and everyone is welcome. Bring a friend or two!

Janet Diel

Burbank

The writer is president of the Burbank Coordinating Council.

..

A graduate thanks a teacher

My name is Ismael Lopez, Im 47 years old and Im writing to thank a very special Burbank teacher who has made a meaningful impact on my life, her students and our entire community. In 2012 Rebecca Mieliwocki won the prestigious National Teacher of the Year honor. She was introduced by President Obama and shined the national spotlight on BUSD.

Rebecca was given the opportunity of Teaching It Forward by the University of Phoenix. This program offers nominees the opportunity to award qualifying individuals with a full scholarship. Rebecca offered the scholarship to all BUSD employees, and she simply asked candidates to submit a letter describing why they deserved the prize.

I jumped on the opportunity to win this honor. I submitted my letter describing my propensity for hard work, commitment and eagerness to continue my education. I knew this opportunity would improve my life and the lives of my family. My entry resonated with Rebecca, and she selected me as the scholarship recipient.

In July of 2012 I began my classes to earn a bachelor of science degree in information technology. Im proud to say that as of Jan.16, 2017, I have completed my program and accomplished something I thought was completely out of reach. This was possible with the support of my wife Alyson, my family, friends, and the generosity of Rebecca.

I want to praise and thank her 1,000 times over. I feel all of this was possible because of the remarkable accomplishments and generosity of one amazing woman. Thank you Rebecca, I am grateful for the opportunity and proud of both or our accomplishments.

Ismael Lopez

Burbank
When Robert Wada returned to California from the Korean War, he faced another battle  this time against racism.

When I first got back, I went to try to get an apartment in downtown Los Angeles, he said. The lady manager said, Im sorry, I cant rent it. I said, Why? and she said, Well, I just cant rent it to you. Im sorry, its not me. Its the owners.

I said to her, I just got back from Korea. If you have a son, the next time we have a war youd better send him, because Im not going to risk my life for people like you. 

He said the discrimination continued, including years later when he tried to purchase a house.

Wada was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who had been interned during World War II. After his release, he joined the Marines and served in the Korean War, following in the footsteps of his four older brothers, who also served in the U.S. military.

Even though I was interned as a teenager, I really honestly feel that this is my country, said Wada, 86, a Buena Park resident and author of the memoir From Internment, to Korea, to Solitude.

The prejudice that Wada and other Japanese American veterans experienced after war are now being spotlighted in a traveling exhibit called What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home? It is on display at the Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum, on the grounds of the Cal State Fullerton Arboretum, until Feb. 12.

The exhibit was developed by Linda Tamura, author of Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence: Coming Home to Hood River, in 2013 for the Oregon Historical Society.

It has since traveled to several sites on the West Coast.

The exhibit is based on the work she did for her book and contains photos, letters, historical documents and personal accounts.

For Tamura, the exhibit  and her book  is a way to shed light on what she sees as a rarely discussed piece of American history. In Hood River, Ore., for example, the names of 16 Japanese American soldiers were removed from the communitys honor roll, a plaque on a war memorial that listed the names of residents who served the country. (Fifteen would eventually be restored.) The town also proposed an amendment to prevent Japanese American soldiers from returning home.

I wasnt aware of this when I grew up, said Tamura, who was raised in Hood River. It wasnt in my history books, it wasnt something that my family talked about, and it wasnt something that my teachers talked about. It was really a secret.

While the exhibit focuses on the specific challenges Japanese American soldiers faced after returning to Hood River after World War II, Tamura said she wants to engage visitors in a broader conversation about rights and what it means to be American.

I wanted to focus not just on what happened in the past, but also to make it as relevant as possible to the present, she said. How would you feel, what would you think, what would you do if you learned that the United States was at war with your parents homeland  if your community publicly discredited Americans?

The exhibit also features people in the white community who stood with Japanese Americans, even when that support brought recriminations.

For Tamura, who will deliver a closing keynote address at 1 p.m. Feb. 12, this piece of American history is not only important in its own right but also offers key lessons.

Were facing the same issues today, where just like Japanese Americans during World War II, Muslims may look like the enemy, but they also can be American citizens who are just as American as others, she said.

More than anything now, I think were called upon to weigh incidents we observe or read about and consider what we would do. What is our stand? What do we believe about the rights of others?

Wada will be featured in a panel discussion affiliated with the exhibit at 1 p.m. Sunday.

Here I had lost two close friends in the war, and this is what they died for? This is what I went over there and risked my life for? Wada said, recalling the treatment he experienced back home in the U.S. because of his ethnicity. "... It really upset me.

*

IF YOU GO

What: What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home?

Where: Cal State Fullerton Arboretums Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum, 1900 Associated Road, Fullerton

When: Museum hours are noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Cost: Admission to the arboretum is a $5 suggested donation

Information: (675) 278-3407

Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil is a contributor to Times Community News.
When the Mariners Christian School community came together to raise more than $18,000 last February to help build a middle school in Gulu, Uganda, little did the students know that the effort was just the beginning.

We wanted to do something that was not just about us giving but what we can do ... that will make a difference, Mariners Christian Middle School Principal Heather Harrison said.

Harrison then issued a challenge to middle school students to develop their own plans to help communities within or outside of Orange County.

As part of the Difference-Makers project, the Costa Mesa school set aside $500 to fund one idea from its middle school and one from its elementary school. Students will submit ideas for teachers and staff to select from.

As part of the project, guest speakers will be brought in for about the next month to encourage the students involvement in social issues, Harrison said.

Mariners Christian kicked off the Difference-Makers chapel series last month with a visit from Jake Harriman, founder of Nuru International, an organization that seeks to end poverty in rural areas around the world.

Harriman, a Bronze Star recipient, has been honored as a White House Champion of Change and a Dalai Lama Unsung Hero of Compassion, according to a news release.

He founded Nuru International in 2008 after witnessing the effect of extreme poverty in war-torn regions during four tours of duty in the Marine Corps.

When speaking to the middle school class last month, Harriman recalled seeing extremist groups coerce impoverished people and how it compelled him to found Nuru International, which focuses on addressing hunger, disease, education and the economy in districts of Kenya and Ethiopia.

We want to give people choices to fight poverty so they dont have to support extremist groups, Harriman told the middle schoolers. When making a difference, its important to do it with a humble attitude.

As of last week, Harrison said, seven Difference-Maker proposals had been submitted and she knew of more that would be coming in.

Submissions will be accepted until March 1, with selections made shortly after.

We may open it up to a second round and expand the program more than expected, Harrison said. We feel like if a student identifies a need, then we should support them, and we want to be able to provide to them so they can go out and do what they feel called to do.

alexandra.chan@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
The recent battle to sway public opinion for or against Museum House, a disputed 25-story luxury condominium tower planned in Newport Beach, now has a number illustrating the high-stakes spending behind those efforts: $527,344.

Of that amount, the vast majority was spent by Museum House developer Related California, whose 100-unit project is proposed to replace the Orange County Museum of Art at 850 San Clemente Drive in Newport Center. The museum is seeking to move to Costa Mesa.

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FOR THE RECORD

A previous version of this post gave an incorrect address for the Museum House project. It is at 850 San Clemente Drive.

-------------------------------------

According to the latest available campaign expenditure reports filed with the California secretary of states office, Related spent $435,699 by Dec. 31 to fight local activist group Line in the Sands petition seeking a referendum on the development, which was approved by the City Council in November.

The amount was 60% of the money Related spent on California politics in all of 2016.

The referendum effort, however, gathered nearly 14,000 signatures in about two weeks, and the petition was certified by the county registrar of voters office in January.

The matter is due back to the City Council on Feb. 14. The council may put Museum House to a public vote this year or in 2018, or rescind its approval of the project.

However, a lawsuit filed by the Orange County Museum of Art is contesting the petitions legality and compliance with state elections code.

The money that Related spent far exceeds the $91,645 allocated by Line in the Sand in November and December.

Line in the Sand spokesman Tim Stoaks said the group really appreciates all the support it received during the petition process.

Line in the Sand, the political arm of activist group Still Protecting Our Newport, was bolstered by a $46,506 in-kind donation from the political action committee Newport 1st.

Newport Beach resident Susan Skinner, treasurer of Newport 1st, said the aid the PAC gave to Line in the Sand paid for the petition.

Newport 1st received its money from Citizens Against High Rise Urban Towers, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit that also sponsors the PAC. The nonprofit gave $47,500 to Newport 1st on Dec. 16, according to Newport 1sts campaign filings.

Little is known about Citizens Against High Rise Urban Towers, other than that it was incorporated in October and its spokesman is Santa Ana-based attorney Mark Rosen.

Related California has repeatedly called Citizens a dark money group, since its backers have not been made public.

Rosen did not respond to messages seeking comment Thursday. He previously told the Daily Pilot that the nonprofit is funded primarily by Newport Beach residents who had signed other petitions against Museum House. He said he was unaware of the groups other financial backers.

Gino Canori, Related Californias executive vice president and a Newport Beach resident, said his company has been fully transparent in reporting its expenditures, down to the penny. Our spending report confirms that fact.

That transparency stands in stark contrast to the reports filed by the opponents of Museum House. Their reports raise more questions than answers, Canori said in an email.

He pointed to Citizens $47,500 donation to Newport 1st.

This donation and the way it is reported reveals the intent of the opponents to be secretive about the true source of the majority of the money used to fuel the petition process, Canori said. Clearly these reports are not a complete picture. We believe these reports raise significant questions about the money spent by opponents against Museum House.

He questioned the amount Citizens spent on television advertisements, mailers, lobbying and legal bills opposing the development.

Worst of all, the lack of disclosure means that Newport residents didnt know at the time of being asked to sign the petition and still dont know who provided the secret money against Museum House, Canori said. The secret money is behind Line in the Sand.

Skinner said Newport 1st accepted Citizens donation after an appropriate legal review.

Our collective effort to stop the Museum House could not have been successful without [Citizens] generous gift, Skinner said in an email. Volunteers working to qualify the referendum knew that gathering the 5,619 registered voter signatures needed to stop the Museum House from moving forward would be a Herculean task.

The largest chunk of Relateds spending  $200,000  went to Goco Consulting, a Sacramento-based campaign consultant.

A team from Goco was stationed throughout Newport Beach in December urging people not to sign Line in the Sands petition.

In early December, two men were suspected of circulating fake petitions before the real ones from Line in the Sand were out. The men declined to tell the Daily Pilot who they were working with.

Later that month, the Irvine Co. sued Related California, contending that Museum House supporters were creating a hostile environment for shoppers at Irvine Co. properties.

Among the $45,139 directly spent by Line in the Sand, it used $27,000 to hire Calabasas-based PCI Consultants to help its volunteers gather signatures, according to the groups filing with the Newport Beach city clerks office.

Both Line in the Sand and Related California spent money to advertise with the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Pilots parent company.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
Fountain Valley police are seeking the publics help in identifying a man suspected of stealing a guitar and case from a Guitar Center in January.

Surveillance footage shows a man entering the store at 18361 Euclid St. on Jan. 12 and selecting a Gibson guitar and a guitar case. The man remained in the store for about an hour before placing the guitar in the case and walking out, according to police.

The man was described as in his 20s, about 5-foot-10 and 165 pounds.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact Det. Ben Roddy at (714) 593-4465 or ben.roddy@fountainvalley.org.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
For as long as most people remember, the family-run Original Pizza near the Newport Pier served up simple slices, without the frills or trendiness of newer restaurants around them.

Then on Tuesday, following a big weekend party, Original Pizza closed for good after more than 50 years in business.

But as soon as the parlor closed, plans surfaced for its replacement: a Taco Bell.

But not just any Taco Bell, as the Irvine-based company specified this week  a Taco Bell Cantina.

A Taco Bell representative said Thursday that the new restaurant at 2121 W. Balboa Blvd. will feature a design, menu and alcoholic beverages similar to the two other Taco Bell Cantina locations in Las Vegas and Chicago.

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The company declined to provide other details, including an approximate timeline for the restaurants opening.

Chicagos Taco Bell Cantina opened in 2015.

The Vegas location, which is open 24 hours, began operations in November. It has a retail store with Taco Bell apparel, shareable appetizers, beer, wine and slush drinks infused with liquor.

In an online post written by Taco Bell titled 10 Reasons to Visit Taco Bells Flagship Restaurant in Las Vegas, the company boasted about the restaurants two stories, patio seating and open kitchen.

Now you can witness how your beautiful 7-Layer Burrito is created, the post says.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
UC Irvine nursing students put on their scrubs for class this week ready to practice their care and examination skills as scholars of the newly approved Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing.

After receiving approval from the University of California Board of Regents last week, UCIs 10-year-old nursing program has achieved school status, making it the fourth nursing school in the UC system.

A school level is just so much more prestigious, said the nursing schools founding dean, Adeline Adey Nyamathi. Well be able to move strongly on the vision we have for the school.

That vision involves expanding nurse-managed community clinics.

The campus has long desired to have our nursing program become a school, UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman said in a statement. A terrific combination of public and private support will ensure a top-quality education for many more talented students  and enable us to hire nursing field leaders to train them  to help fill the pipeline of prepared healthcare professionals.

Last year, the William and Sue Gross Family Foundation committed to giving $40 million toward establishing the UCI nursing school. The contribution was the largest gift in UCI history, according to a university news release.

It will make possible the construction of a state-of-the-art building to increase classroom size and research space, the university said. The school hopes to break ground on the building in the next two to three years, officials said. The location has not been announced.

Bill Gross, co-founder of Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co., or PIMCO, is a University of California alumnus who earned a masters in business administration from UCLA.

His wife, Sue, is president of the family foundation, which has donated to healthcare and educational institutions around the world.

UCI offers nursing students bachelors, masters and doctoral degrees.

Im the first person in my family to go into the medical field, said Katelyn Sonksen, a UCI student in her third year in nursing science. In high school, I volunteered at Saddleback [Memorial]  but Ive been able to get a lot of hands-on experience that I wouldnt get to do as a volunteer, like doing injections and IVs.

A classroom for nursing students at UCIs Berk Hall has multiple hospital beds filled with mannequins.

On Tuesday, a group of UCI juniors put on gloves to practice putting IVs in the mannequins rubber arms.

They moved on to practice checking one anothers temperature, blood pressure, breathing rate and pulse.

Theres a lot to do with learning how to interact with people  holding a conversation and establishing a connection, said David Bisares, a junior in nursing science. As a nurse, everything you do youre doing for the patient.

alexandra.chan@latimes.com

Twitter: @AlexandraChan10
Joshua Waring, son of former Real Housewives of Orange County star Lauri Peterson, wont face trial on charges of attempted murder for at least two weeks.

Warings trial had been scheduled to begin Thursday. But after about 20 minutes of debate Thursday morning involving Waring, his attorney and Orange County Superior Court Judge Sheila Hanson, Waring ultimately agreed to delay his trial until Feb. 16 to give him time to retain a private defense attorney.

Deputy Alternate Defender Ray Chen, who currently represents Waring, had filed a motion Monday to delay the trial for several months to give him time to prepare Warings defense.

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It would be a dereliction of my duty as an attorney to even contemplate answering ready today, Chen said Thursday.

Waring initially refused to go along with his attorneys request for a delay and instead asked Hanson to allow him to make a phone call so another attorney could represent him at trial Thursday. Hanson declined, saying it is not up to her or court staff to aid his search for alternative counsel.

Earlier in the morning, Waring had refused to leave his jail cell for court until guards allowed him to make a phone call. The purpose of the call was unclear.

Waring, 28, faces three counts of attempted murder in connection with a shooting in June outside a home in Costa Mesa. He also faces one count of unlawfully discharging a firearm at an inhabited dwelling, three counts of assault with a firearm, a count of vehicle theft, a count of shooting at another person from a motor vehicle and a count of evading police while driving recklessly, all felonies.

He also faces misdemeanor charges of hit-and-run with property damage, resisting an officer and battery, along with possible sentencing enhancements on allegations of personal use of a firearm and inflicting great bodily injury, according to the criminal complaint filed in Superior Court.

Waring could face multiple life sentences if convicted at trial.

He previously had chosen to represent himself, though Judge W. Michael Hayes cautioned him against it during his preliminary hearing in November.

These are long-term sentences, Hayes said at the time. So I caution you, think carefully about your future and about your decision.

On Thursday, Hanson sternly cautioned Waring that if he chose to move forward with his trial over his attorneys objection, you most likely [would] be conducting yourself in a manner which would cause the prosecution to be successful in their case and cause you to most likely spend the rest of your life in prison.

Chen said he does not believe Waring understands the fundamental issues in his case and would be unable to successfully represent himself. Chen was explaining his line of reasoning to Hanson when he was interrupted by Waring shouting from the holding cell in the courtroom.

Why are you giving the DA [expletive] ideas, dumbass? Waring said before turning to the judge. Hes crazy.

Waring was arrested June 20, hours after a man was seriously injured in a shooting at a house in the 2900 block of Babb Street in Costa Mesa. The house previously was a sober-living home.

Witnesses told police that Waring had left the house after a confrontation with a resident but returned around 2:30 a.m. in a BMW X3 belonging to his girlfriend, authorities said. Shots were fired at three people outside, authorities said.

About eight hours after the shooting, an Orange County Sheriffs Department helicopter crew saw the BMW, and police pursued it through Santa Ana before it crashed into another vehicle, police said.

Santa Ana police said Waring fled on foot and hid in the restroom of a nearby business before surrendering to officers. Waring told Hayes that he fled from police because he was heading to pick up drugs.

Waring has a criminal history in Orange County that includes convictions on felony drug charges and several misdemeanors, including hit-and-run in 2008, battery in 2009, possession of drug paraphernalia in 2009 and drug possession and resisting a peace officer in 2015.

He also has an open case related to felony drug and forgery charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.

Warings mother was a cast member of Bravos reality TV series The Real Housewives of Orange County from its debut in 2006 until 2008, when she left to deal with her sons problems, according to Bravo.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
I wasnt surprised that the Orange County Registrar of Voters notified the Newport city clerks office that it certified the required 5,619 signatures from Line in the Sands petition effort to bring the Museum House project to a referendum vote of the people.

Considering the group gathered almost 14,000 signatures, odds were this would be the outcome.

The big question now is what the controlling entity on the City Council, Team Newport, will do with this hot potato issue.

Will they rescind their prior approval of this project?

A move in this direction makes the most sense in my book, especially if these folks hold out any hope of saving their seats on the council come reelection in 2018.

And if they let the referendum move forward, I doubt voters would approve this project, considering all the negative press surrounding the efforts on behalf of Museum House supporters to block signature gathering and such.

With either option, the future for the Museum House project looks grim.

But high-density development isnt just a Newport issue.

In Los Angeles for example, theres the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, which seeks a two-year moratorium on developments that require zoning changes, which is headed to L.A. voters on the March 7 ballot. And Costa Mesa voters in November approved their own smart-growth initiative.

Last July, Museum House developer Bill Witte, chief executive of Related California, spoke about the issue at a real estate conference at downtown L.A.'s Omni Hotel.

An article in The Real Deal, a respected L.A.-based real estate magazine, states that Witte warned the audience against the typical default response from a developer of trying to get existing projects grandfathered in, sans restrictions  and waiting until the next cycle if its not possible. He also suggested avoiding the urge to rage against the machine.

Wittes advice to his audience was to encourage community discussions, as well as speaking with elected representatives.

I think it behooves all of us to really kind of step back from our entitlement and our financing and try to band together, to have neighborhood discussions, to try to resolve these matters, he said, according to the article.

He encouraged developers to accept that there are certain areas that are protected from dense development, and where it is ill-advised to try to build something out of scale, according to the article.

So I called Wittes office Thursday to talk about the article and other recent Museum House developments but was told he was traveling on business. I wasnt able to speak with him by my column deadline, but I do hope to speak to him soon and will report his perspective when I hear from him.

If we talk I would like to ask how a seemingly reasonable guy gives good advice on how to bring controversial building projects to success, yet winded up involved in the ugliest battle in Newports recent history over this Museum House?

In my opinion the Museum House referendum battle is one for the history books. Its the poster child for what not to do when dealing with a project facing fierce community opposition.

If so, whats happened in Newport should serve as a cautionary tale to other developers.

I believe this Museum House saga will create a shift in how developers proposing projects behave moving forward in Newport.

Are we already seeing this in Costa Mesa?

I was on the KOCI 101.5 FM show, Stu News Sunday with Tom Johnson this past weekend, as was newly elected Costa Mesa Councilman John Stephens.

We discussed the controversial project in his town to replace a College Park commercial center with a multistory housing development, and how developer Steve Sheldon withdrew his application ahead of the councils meeting.

Stephens praised Sheldons move here, as it was evident by residents concerns that more discussion was needed, which Stephens plans on having.

As Ive said before, its not enough to just listen to residents concerns; leaders need to actually hear whats being said and initiate compromise.

And that seems to be what Stephens is aiming for here  and not just when it comes to development. Fireworks are another subject hes tackling.

Tee up with John is what hes calling a meeting planned for 6 p.m. Thursday at the Costa Mesa Council Chambers.

Stephens explained he wants to start community a dialogue to explore ways of keeping illegal fireworks off Costa Mesa streets during Fourth of July, while preserving the safe and sane fireworks fundraising revenue stream for many local organizations.

We chatted about his ideas on how to balance this issue, and hes got some interesting solutions.

Seems in Costa Mesa at least, communication is becoming the pathway to good government.

BARBARA VENEZIA lives in Newport Beach. She can be reached at bvontv1@gmail.com.
I was inspired to read Diane Buckas piece calling on women to hold our representatives accountable (Commentary: Post-march, women should hold leaders accountable, Jan. 27). It hit the nail on the head. Two days after millions of us marched around the country, O.C.-area Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), Mimi Walters (R-Irvine) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa) voted in lockstep with their fellow Republicans to interfere with womens reproductive rights by supporting House Resolution 7, which imposes restrictions on health insurers regarding abortion coverage. My representative, Rohrabacher, has voted repeatedly over his career to restrict womens access to reproductive healthcare. My sense is that Rohrabachers voting record on womens issues says something about his own antipathy toward us. It is time for us to get representation for all of the 48th Districts residents.

Mona Lynch

Laguna Beach

Obamas GDP on par with Hoovers

Oh, the irony of it all. Shortly after I read Denny Freidenrichs letter to the editor congratulating our former president on the economy (Recognize the Obama economy, Jan. 23) and his ability to reduce unemployment to 3.5% in Orange County, I flip to the Business section of the L.A. Times and see our national economy grew by a tepid 1.9% in 2016, its lowest level of growth since 2011 (U.S. economic growth slowed to 1.9 percent rate in Q4; caps weakest year since 2011, Jan. 27). While were throwing around superlatives about our former commander-in-chief and his economic prowess, how about this one: He was the first President since Herbert Hoover to have failed to grow gross domestic product (GDP) by 3% or more annually for at least one year during his term in office, according to Politifact. We should be so proud.

Jerry Fitch

Newport Coast

Immigration made us great

Immigration has made us great. Americas now a mighty state. But, oh for heavens sake, Let us all eschew hate. Cause only love can mitigate fate. So show love now, before its too late.

Ben Miles

Huntington Beach
On Jan. 27, President Trump signed an executive order that indefinitely bars Syrian refugees from the United States and severely affects immigrants and travelers coming to us from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The executive order had an immediate impact on hundreds of individuals, including interpreters for U.S. troops in Iraq, scientists and students working in our educational system, and refugee families that had gone through years of process to obtain a visa.

But the order did more than just alter these peoples lives; it was also an affront to the values that Americans hold most dear.

Thanks to quick action by lawyers and nonprofits across the nation, on Saturday night, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Donnelly ordered that those detained should not be returned to their countries of origin. Further clarifications regarding the status of green card holders were eventually made.

This is a president intent on inciting fear of others and I, for one, will not tolerate it.

I am the daughter of a Nicaraguan immigrant on my mothers side, and the granddaughter of Navy veterans on my fathers side. I joined the Navy three months before Sept. 11 and deployed to the Persian Gulf three times in five years.

We are a far from perfect nation, but I proudly served my country because I believed and continue to believe that the American dream is alive  precisely because people like my mother, who moved here when she was 8 years old, are welcomed into the fabric of our diverse society.

This pluralism lies at the heart of what really makes America great. We are a stronger nation because of our diversity of thoughts and beliefs. We have tremendous challenges to face  from climate change to cyber threats  and we need all hands on deck if were going to be successful in the battles to come, no matter what form they may take. Pluralism is one of Americas great strategic assets; immigrants are responsible for a large part of Californias gross domestic product, and were the sixth largest economy in the world, according to Politifact.

Moreover, the idea that immigrants or refugees are dangerous is simply absurd. The U.S. already has a rigorous vetting process for refugees that can take up to two years and includes interviews, background checks, health screenings and biometric scans. It is overseen by multiple agencies including the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. It is exhaustive and comprehensive which is why, since 1975, there have been zero terrorism deaths caused by immigrants from the seven countries in the executive order.

Set aside the fact that those countries seem to have been either arbitrarily chosen or intentionally selected to avoid affecting Trumps business dealings, there simply does not exist a list of countries that we can consider safe or not safe. Categorizing them as such only serves to divide us. Moreover, it tells the world that we can be divided easily and without justification. It also tells would-be terrorists that the West has been warring with Islam all along.

We are better than that. We are a nation of ideals, of immigrants, of opportunity and of hope. My familys story is one of utmost patriotism, based on the idea that in America, everyone has a chance to succeed  immigrant or not. The presidents recent actions dangerously threaten those beliefs and values, which are American values.

ANDREA MARR is a U.S. Navy veteran, resident of Costa Mesa and a member of the Truman National Security Project.
Jon Curtis, an attorney and a principal at the Los Angeles-based California Golden Fund, first came to the city council in 2013 after serving five years on La Canadas Planning Commission. Since then, he has been involved in several local and regional efforts, including advocacy against a 710 Freeway tunnel and assisting the La Canada Sister Cities Assn. in its search for a international partner. Recently, Curtis, 57, helped negotiate the purchase of the former Sport Chalet headquarters building for a new City Hall location.

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Valley Sun: What do you consider to be the single most unaddressed issue facing the city today?

Curtis: An issue remaining undecided and not fully addressed today is whether to have multiple waste haulers or move to one or two. A poll was undertaken which showed a split in the city as to whether the city should move to a single-hauler system. Some citizens favored having a choice and thought competition was good. Others disagreed. The City Council will make a decision on this issue in the near future. I am in favor of having one hauler, whether citywide or in districts. By doing so, the traffic, air pollution and damage to our streets will be reduced. We can encourage competition through an RFQ/RFP (request for qualifications and proposals) to ensure quality service and the best possible pricing for citizens.

City officials have indicated a new City Hall would take up about half of the 27,881-square-foot former Sport Chalet headquarters building being purchased for $11.23 million. What would you prefer to do with the rest of the property, including the adjacent Montessori school?

The city has a tremendous opportunity for the space that will not be used for municipal functions. Initially, it should be recognized the new City Hall building is not being acquired to expand government, but to provide an efficient, modern and more customer friendly City Hall facility that can better serve the people. Options will be studied further; however, (i) a portion should be considered for multifunction space that can be used by the city, community groups and any other user of the excess space, and (ii) a portion should be considered for economic development purposes, including potentially small business office and/or an incubator focused on space. As to an incubator, it would be a natural as there are a number of small and emerging companies that want to be close to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Leasing the excess space would result in rent to the city to offset facility acquisition costs. Use of the space by emerging companies or an incubator could result in opportunities for students of our top notch public and private schools to intern or work for those companies.

Last year, the city confronted Southern California Edison about frequent power outages and were promised 9,000 feet of new underground cables and significant upgrades. The city is also considering seeking service from another utility provider. What course seems most promising to you, and what would you say to residents for whom outages are a recurring problem?

The city has the attention of SCE and is working closely with the utility now. The 9,000 feet of new underground cables was completed on an emergency basis. There are planned improvements that will commence in the second quarter of this year for new equipment and to create redundancy in service. The city is also hiring its own independent consultant so we can monitor and evaluate the system, as well as the planned improvements. So, currently, we are staying the course of working closely with SCE to address issues. It should be noted that the city technically has no jurisdiction over SCE, as it is a regulated utility overseen by the California Public Utilities Commission. As to outages, we are hopeful these actions will address the seemingly constant failures of electrical service, as reliable electrical service is critical to our businesses, schools and residents.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is expected to release its response to public comments on the environmental impact of the 710 Freeway Extension project, along with a potential preferred alternative from among five proposals. How should La Canada respond if the preference is not in alignment with what city officials have advocated for?

The city through its mayor, City Council and city staff continues to work on many fronts to oppose the potential 710 tunnel. We work individually and closely with other cities, including Pasadena, South Pasadena, Sierra Madre and Glendale. This includes a legal approach (5 City Alliance) and an educational approach (C3 Coalition) that there are better alternatives and that 710 tunnel would be an environmental disaster. We are also very fortunate to have the No On 710 group that is very active. We will continue the battle against the 710 tunnel, legally if necessary, but hopefully education of other elected officials, cities, Caltrans and Metro will prevail and the 710 tunnel proposal will be abandoned.

Elected and public safety officers have said for years they are working together to prevent residential burglaries by increasing patrols and educating the public about taking precautions to secure their property. What additional measures might the city take?

The city should continue to work with the sheriff to adjust our resources to address burglaries. Although burglaries are down over the last five years, no burglary is acceptable. We need to continue (i) extra sheriffs patrols and investigations, (ii) continue expansion of neighborhood watches  now up to over 25 from just a few, (iii) continue education of residents as to what to watch for as to suspicious individuals, (iv) continue volunteer patrols, (v) consider acquiring an additional license plate reader camera to identify suspicious and/or stolen vehicles, and (vi) continue to evaluate new best practices. One practice that was recently adopted by a city was to install motion activated cameras (like those used to track wildlife) in many public streets, so that if an incident does occur then the images can be downloaded and the perpetrators caught. It is a practice like this that we evaluate, but in doing so we must also consider competing interests such as privacy.

You are about to complete your first term on the City Council  what has been the most surprising challenge youve experienced in the role? Explain.

One constant challenge is the amount of time it takes to have good ideas and improvements completed. A city process can be a slow one, but it is also designed with commissions and the opportunity for public input to ensure that the right decision is being made. Other challenges include working with other governmental and quasi-governmental entities on local and regional issues that the city does not have direct control over, but the city is either impacted or must comply with mandates. This includes water distribution, electrical distribution, water quality, air quality, transportation improvements and funding of mandates. Another challenge can be to have citizens speak up when an issue or problem does arise, as the issue or problem cannot be addressed if it is not known  a quick call or email is always welcomed.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
In 2015, city officials told La Canada Imports owner Bill Kerimo theyd have to remove a pole sign for his business that had stood for 40 years in the public right of way.

Erected on part of the property that fell under the citys responsibility, the sign presented a liability, the La Canada Flintridge City Council decreed. It also wasnt in keeping with the overall aesthetic vision for Foothill Boulevard businesses, which indicate a preference for low-profile monument signs over their pole-mounted predecessors.

Kerimo claimed in a public hearing that losing the sign would harm his business and prevent new customers from seeing and patronizing his pizza shop and deli.

If you guys want to remove this pole sign, I dont know whats going to happen to my business, honestly, he said at a May 18, 2015, meeting.

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But the council voted 4-1 (Len Pieroni cast the dissenting vote) to have the sign removed. One year later, on June 16, 2016, a work crew demolished it and a small wall and hedge that surrounded it.

Last month, to help make up for what he says has been a perceivable dip in business, Kerimo applied to have a new monument sign installed at on the property at 1537 Foothill Blvd, owned along with the adjacent 7-Eleven by landlord Lacy Park Real Estate Investment.

Council members had encouraged Kerimo to collaborate with 7-Eleven about sharing their sign, grandfathered in by county officials in 1970, or building a new joint monument sign. The Imports owner said in a recent interview the space he was tentatively offered by his corporate neighbor was simply too small.

They gave me 10 inches, he said of 7-Elevens proposal. For 10 inches, theres no reason for me to do that, so I went to the city to get my own sign.

The overall design and lettering of Kerimos new monument sign was approved in a Jan. 19 meeting of the La Canada Flintridge Design Commission. City figures indicate the cost of submitting plans for a design review is about $780.

The next step for Kerimo is to submit plans to the citys Building and Safety division, which will consider the proposed signs placement and construction, according to deputy development director Susan Koleda. Submission costs vary, but Koleda said a recent permit cost the applicant $719. Exterior illumination could require another permit at an additional cost.

"(Then) theres a record of the permits and the process it went through, so 40 years from now when someone says, Is that in the public right of way? well know, Koleda said.

Once permits are issued, the installation process is left up to the business owner, although the final project wont be signed off until an inspection of the work is done to ensure compliance to city standards, she added.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine

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La Canada Unified School officials received a poignant reminder Tuesday of the connection between successful schools and a happy, supported teaching staff when members of the La Canada Teachers Assn. joined board members in recognizing several recent achievements.

In an unusual outpouring of support and appreciation, La Canada Unified teachers showed up at Tuesdays LCUSD school board meeting with signs of thanks to share their gratitude for what they called an inspiring school year so far.

The demonstration came halfway into a school year that followed intense and, at times, negative negotiations between the district and teachers union over salaries and other issues. Leslie Baldwin, an eighth-grade English teacher at La Canada High School 7/8, shared her experience at a recent meeting of the districts curriculum council.

It really stood in stark contrast to the strained and contentious discord of last year. It was, quite frankly, inspiring, Baldwin recalled, thanking LCUSD Supt. Wendy Sinnette for her leadership through difficult times. It does take a village to turn a corner.

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Speaking in a comment to board members about a successful new school year, LCTA President Many Redfern expressed her appreciation to the district and Sinnette.

Thank you for pushing all of us to be our best, and to stay focused on our students  and the work that we do, Redfern said to a tearful Sinnette. Your generosity, your grace, your kindness and your leadership are truly one of a kind.

Those in attendance at Tuesdays meeting also took a moment to applaud other school-related accomplishments brought to light in recent days.

LCUSD Board President Dan Jeffries announced a recently released survey of the 100 top-rated elementary schools throughout Greater Los Angeles for 2017  put out by Pittsburgh-based school analytics website k12.niche.com  that ranked Palm Crest Elementary the No. 1 school for academics, teaching and cultural diversity.

Second on the list was La Canadas Paradise Canyon Elementary, Jeffries said, while La Canada Elementary School ranked seventh among the top 100. The rankings, according to the website, were the result of survey data taken across a broad group of stakeholders.

They looked at ranking factors, including state test scores, student-teacher ratios, student diversity, teacher quality, grade scoring and the overall quality of the school districts, the board president said. Kudos to our elementary schools.

Later in Tuesdays meeting Sinnette announced La Canada High School 7/8 also recently received an important mark of distinction when it was named a California School to Watch by the California League of Middle Schools.

Each year, the program identifies middle schools that are academically excellent, developmentally responsive, socially equitable and structured for success. LCHS 7/8 was redesignated as a model middle school after being awarded the honor in 2014.

For them, this is the highest honor. Its equivalent to Californias Gold Ribbon School (award), Sinnette said of the middle school prize, adding that school officials will be presented with an award in Sacramento on Feb. 23.

--

Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine

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Wow, Canada: Toronto is on sale round trip from LAX for $359, including taxes and fees, on American and WestJet.

The fare, subject to availability, is for travel Tuesday and Wednesdays through Dec. 13. You must buy your ticket by Feb. 28.

Info: American, (800) 433-7300, www.aa.com; WestJet, (888) 937-8538, www.westjet.com

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Source: Airfarewatchdog.com

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travel@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimestravel
The European Union has been weathering plenty of disunity in recent months. But as they gathered Friday, the blocs leaders seemed to have found common ground in growing concerns over President Trumps unexpected new policies and unconventional mode of governance.

Mainstream European political figures  already worried about populist challenges and the specter of Russian interference in their own upcoming elections  have been rattled by a rapid-fire series of controversial presidential directives and combative behavior, including a getting-to-know-you call with Australias prime minister that reportedly ended abruptly when Trump became irritated over a refugee agreement.

In Valletta, the ancient fortress-capital of the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, leaders arriving for the EUs first gathering since Trumps inauguration had some sharp words for the 2-week-old U.S. administration  some centering on policy disagreements, and some on the presidents unorthodox style.

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Both before and after he took office, Trump has been vocal in his support of Britains vote last June to exit the European Union, and has made repeated and almost offhand references to the likelihood of the bloc breaking up. He has also called NATO obsolete, but in recent days has signaled at least a degree of support for the transatlantic alliance that most European nations regard as vital to their security.

Trumps remarks have been read by many in Europe as a sign that the new U.S. president has little regard for international institutions widely credited with underpinning decades of peace and economic progress. French President Francois Hollande, who spoke with Trump last weekend, was perhaps the most openly combative in his view of the U.S. leader.

It is unacceptable that there should be  through a certain number of statements by the President of the United States  pressure on what Europe should or should not be, the French news agency AFP quoted Hollande as saying as he arrived at the informal summit.

More criticism came from Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, who said tangible aspects of Trumps policies were setting off alarm bells in Europe, and from the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who suggested that the Trump administration had not shown itself to be very detail-oriented.

In the European Union, details matter, Juncker said.

One reported contender for the post of Trumps envoy to the EU, businessman Ted Malloch, has already stirred controversy. In a BBC interview last month, Malloch appeared to liken the EU to the former Soviet Union, suggesting that maybe theres another union that needs a little taming. He later said the comment had been tongue-in-cheek.

In Malta, even some who said they were willing to take a wait-and-see attitude about the new U.S. administration were hardly positive in their assessments. The prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, said the U.S. presidents values were not the values Im fighting for.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a characteristically cooler and more pragmatic tone, telling reporters as she arrived: I have already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands. Merkel had voiced that view after Trump seemed to waver in his backing of NATO.

Germany has been unhappy, however, with a senior Trump advisers talk of the European common currency, the euro, being artificially undervalued, and his suggestions that Merkels government was to blame. And Merkel has expressed reservations about the presidents suspension of the U.S. refugee program and his temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

At their gathering, the EU leaders held closed-door talks in which they hoped to forge a strategy for individual and collective dealings with Trump. Analysts said that would be no easy task.

Its a policy sea change for an American president to openly state that he supports additional countries leaving the European Union, said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

We just never had an approach to foreign policy like this  no one has a playbook, no one has a manual, she said.

Heading into the Malta meeting, EU President Donald Tusk had taken the unprecedented step of warning in a letter to European leaders that Trumps policies posed a potential threat to the bloc, listing that alongside other menaces including Russian aggression, jihadist attacks and a wave of populism.

The meeting was a somewhat awkward one for British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is moving to implement the so-called Brexit. May met with Trump in Washington last week and pressed European concerns about American support for NATO, but suffered intense blow-back at home, particularly after the travel ban was announced, less than 24 hours after her departure.

Mays offer to serve as a bridge between Trump and the EU drew a tart response from one of the leaders attending the Malta talks the president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, who also took a swipe at the U.S. presidents penchant for making foreign policy declarations by tweet.

I dont think there is a necessity for a bridge, the Lithuanian leader, whose Baltic states proximity to Russia renders it heavily dependent on the NATO security umbrella, told the BBC. We communicate with the Americans on Twitter.

The main goal of the gathering in Malta, on the front lines of the Mediterranean migrant crisis, was to try to find ways to stem seaborne arrivals from North Africa. The leaders endorsed a plan to provide Libyas coast guard with equipment, training and other support, and to cooperate with Libyas neighbors, including Tunisia and Egypt.

But rights groups expressed reservations about the plan, saying would-be asylum seekers could be either trapped in lawless Libya or sent back home and exposed to the same perils that caused them to flee.

Malta is itself experiencing direct repercussions from the suspension of the U.S. refugee program. Since 2007, more than 3,100 refugees arriving by boat from north Africa have been resettled in the United States, to help ease pressure on tiny Malta. Such resettlement is now on hold for four months, and there is no certainty the Malta element will be renewed.

laura.king@latimes.com

@laurakingLAT

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Several international aid organizations say they have been forced to make contingency plans in case staff members are barred from entering the United States under President Trumps new immigration rules.

Some are reassessing plans for staff scheduled to come to the country for briefings and meetings. Others are imposing travel restrictions on their diverse cadre of employees, even those who are U.S. nationals.

An executive order, part of a broader set of immigration directives, bars refugee arrivals for 120 days  indefinitely in the case of Syria  and suspends travel to the U.S. for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days. Trump signed the order on Jan. 27.

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Many of our member organizations would have nationals of these countries working for them and staff working in those countries, said Patricia McIlreavy, vice president of the humanitarian policy and practice team for InterAction, the largest U.S. alliance of nongovernmental international organizations, with more than 220 members and partners.

The international nonprofit CARE, which operates in five of the seven countries whose citizens are prohibited from coming to the United States, has banned its U.S.-based staff  including those who are American citizens  from traveling to the seven nations. (CARE does not operate in Libya or Iran.)

Officials of the Atlanta-based group said the move was essential because of the inconsistency with which the order was being carried out, and they did not want to imperil their staff.

They potentially could face trouble coming back into the U.S., said Nick Osborne, CAREs vice president of international programs. We dont want to take the risk of them facing trouble.

Iranian Ali Vayeghan, center, was sent back to Iran after arriving at LAX on the day Trumps travel ban was implemented. After a legal fight, he has been allowed to return to the U.S. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

Christy Delafield, a spokeswoman for Mercy Corps, said in an email that the organization has 5,000 team members around the world, including hundreds who are citizens of the nations named in the executive order.

The groups team members regularly travel to the U.S. for business purposes, such as meetings with administration officials and congressional offices, to brief them about whats happening in their countries and our work there, Delafield said.

A few such visits to the U.S. had been planned in the next 90 days. Now, those team members may need to postpone their travel as a result of the order, Delafield said.

Officials at Relief International, which has aid programs in six of the seven countries under the ban, faced a similar situation.

Three members of the organizations U.S.-based staff who are green card holders from Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Africa had trips planned to Iran, Somalia and Vietnam, according to Nancy Wilson, Relief Internationals chief executive.

Of those, only Iran and Somalia are on the list of restricted countries. Still, we just said dont go, Wilson said. What if they are outside the country and the list of seven countries gets longer? We just cant be taking the risk for them to be traveling outside and not be able to get back.

On Saturday, immigration officials at Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia detained two brothers from Yemen, coerced them to relinquish their green cards, and forced them to return to Ethiopia shortly after the executive order banning travel was signed, the Guardian newspaper reported, and it linked to a lawsuit filed on the brothers behalf.

But on Wednesday, the White House said it had issued new guidance that exempts green card holders from the travel restrictions. At a briefing, Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters that legal permanent residents no longer needed a waiver to enter the United States.

Its a huge step backwards for refugees, for our global workforce, and for our relationships beyond this countrys borders.  A statement from Oxfam

The order has other possible implications aside from the travel limitations, officials from various aid groups said.

There is widespread concern that the order could prohibit humanitarian agencies from effectively and safely delivering aid and hinder their ability to quickly respond to future humanitarian emergencies, officials said.

Our work overseas is very much based on the ability to be able to travel as and when required, said Osborne of CARE. If there is an emergency situation in one of the seven noted countries, that would restrict our ability to deploy our staff. Our ability to deploy technical staff to aid the response is going to be inhibited.

For example, there is a growing food crisis in Somalia, where some 5 million people  approximately 40% of the population  are suffering from a shortage of food, according to the United Nations World Food Program.

Osborne said the executive order could hamper CAREs relief efforts in Somalia if the group is unable to dispatch U.S.- based staff to respond to what the agency said could be a major humanitarian emergency.

Raymond Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America, warned of the possible impact of reciprocal measures in response to Trumps order. Iran has already canceled future visas for American citizens.

The order will prevent Oxfam from supporting local organizations that are on the front lines of meeting humanitarian need, the group said in a statement. It will also hinder the relay of critical analysis to U.S. policy makers on conditions in some of the worlds most vulnerable places directly from the people living and working on the ground, the group said. Its a huge step backwards for refugees, for our global workforce, and for our relationships beyond this countrys borders.

Dead goats are seen in December near Dhahar in northeastern Somalia. The countrys food shortage is likely to get worse as a result of the U.S. travel bans limitation on international aid agencies. (Mohamed Abdiwahab / AFP/Getty Images)

Fallout from the executive order was also taking an emotional toll on U.S. aid workers, said McIlreavy of InterAction.

Many in the network have refugee portfolios, McIlreavy said. They are seeing  families being separated communities uncertain of their future. And thats a lot of stress not just for the individuals but for staff who have worked with them for a long time.

There is also concern over how U.S. aid workers might be perceived and treated as they conduct operations in the seven nations subjected to the travel ban. The order might serve to erode confidence in U.S. aid groups, Wilson said. People might begin to question their motives and dependability.

Youre working in these countries and people ask you whats going on with your government  and will you really be around to do this work tomorrow? Wilson said.

Last September, President Obama convened a Leaders Summit on Refugees at the United Nations, where he pushed back against anti-refugee sentiment in some parts the country and called on nations to fulfill a moral obligation to help resolve the global refugee crisis.

There was a belief that the U.S. was going to continue to be a global leader on refugees, McIlreavy said. Now theres a certain level of concern that if we start already eroding those commitments  what else comes next?

Said Wilson: Does America first mean America only, or are we going to remain a leading humanitarian nation?

ann.simmons@latimes.com

For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter

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After a gunman killed six people and wounded 19 others at a Quebec City mosque, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was quick to condemn the killings as a terrorist attack on Muslims.

He went on to say that Muslim-Canadians are an important part of our national fabric, and these senseless acts have no place in our communities, cities and country. Candlelight vigils across Canada mourned the victims.

But that sentiment elides a more uncomfortable truth: the number of police-reported hate crimes against Muslim-Canadians more than doubled between 2012 and 2014, from 45 to 99.

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Amira Elghawaby, communications director at the National Council of Canadian Muslims, called the increase the most significant rise of any group in the country.

Experts say about two-thirds of hate crimes go unreported, so the numbers are undoubtedly larger.

The victims of the shooting Sunday night at the Islamic Cultural Center ranged from 39 to 60 years of age, and they were employed as civil servants, businessmen, and university professors. Most had young children.

Ilies Soufiane, 15-year-old son of victim Azzeddine Soufiane, is consoled during a ceremony Friday for three of the six victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting. (Paul Chiasson / Associated Press)

When the mosque reopened Wednesday to those who wished to pray, blood still stained the carpet and bullet holes pocked the walls.

Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27-year-old social sciences student at Laval University, has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder.

People are a little bit more fearful, said Elghawaby, adding, To have someone enter that space and wreak such havoc and take the lives of six innocent people, I think that has shattered many of us to our core.

The attack has left the entire country shaken.

Quebec City, with a population of just over 500,000, saw only one homicide last year. The last mass murder in the surrounding province of Quebec occurred in 2006, when a shooting in Montreal left two dead.

Recent studies have shown many Canadians being uncomfortable with Islam.

A 2015 survey commissioned by the Quebec Human Rights Commission found that while nearly half of respondents had a negative view of religion, only 5.5% said they were bothered by a public servant wearing a cross, compared with the 48.9% who expressed discomfort with being attended to by a woman wearing a hijab.

Nationwide, a Forum Poll survey released in December showed that 28% of respondents had unfavorable feelings about Muslims.

According to the newspaper La Presse, Bissonnette did nothing to conceal his hostility toward Muslims in interrogations conducted after his arrest.

Bissonnettes beliefs were likely informed by right-wing extremist groups online, says Barbara Perry, a global hate crime expert at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

These groups, says Perry, often attract outsiders and those who feel themselves to be disadvantaged. There are also those who are drawn through a broader sense of something being awry in the culture around them, in a changing world where they see a loss of white male privilege in particular, she says.

According to Perry, these far-right groups now operate with a certain legitimacy. Her 2015 research showed over 100 such organizations operating in Canada, with groups like La Meute (the wolf pack) and Soldiers of Odin gaining rapidly in membership and mainstream awareness.

Theyre enabled and emboldened now to come out of the shadows, she says.

Canada is generally a welcoming and inclusive society, but conservative politicians often have cast Muslims in a negative light, said Kamal al Solaylee, author of Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone).

Family members mourn at a memorial for three of the six victims of the Quebec City mosque shooting. (Paul Chiasson / Associated Press)

We started talking about Canadian values, said Al Solaylee, who points to several instances of dog-whistle political rhetoric leading up to the 2015 federal election. The 2013 Charter of Values was a bill that sought to prohibit public sector employees from displaying conspicuous religious symbols and targeted Muslim womens headscarves in particular.

The proposal died but the debate furthered rhetoric attacking multiculturalism.

For Al Solaylee, political rhetoric and online hate groups cross-pollinate. Its an ecosystem, he said. Politicians word things differently, less crudely, but they all swim in the same pool.

And the effects of this incitement can be disastrous, says Elghawaby. Often whenever there is a terrorist attack or [Islamophobic] political rhetoric, there is an uptick in the number of hate instances and hate crimes that are reported, she said.

Last year in Toronto a woman walking to go pick up her children from school was physically assaulted in the middle of the day. That was right after the Paris bombings.

Elghawaby believes that the Quebec City shooting may have occurred as a backlash against Trudeau tweeting #WelcomeToCanada in response to U.S. President Trumps order temporarily banning entry into the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

For far-right groups in Canada, immigration and refugee issues especially act as a rallying point. And according to Perry, it is in Quebec in particular that these issues are coming to a head.

There really is an important distinction between Islamophobia in Quebec, and the right-wing in Quebec, relative to that of other parts of the country, she says. Elsewhere there tends to be that traditional white nationalism  where the intent is to preserve the white race, to preserve white culture, and white Christian culture especially  whereas what we see in Quebec is much more akin to European nationalism.

Still, Al Solaylee is optimistic that the tragedy will act as a wake-up call.

I think Canada is a great country, but there is a sense that were better than the U.S. and that this sort of thing doesnt happen here, he said. I think its a moment for Canada to realize that words and rhetoric and this fever pitch discourse will have consequences on peoples lives.

Favreau is a special correspondent.

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Some Israeli officials Friday used an upbeat interpretation of a White House statement indicating that new settlements in the occupied West Bank may not help achieve peace with Palestinians, saying they look forward to working with the Trump administration.

Several officials said they were hopeful of a better relationship with President Trump than the tense one that existed between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Obama. Netanyahu is scheduled to meet Trump in Washington on Feb. 15.

The White House said Thursday that the Trump administration does not believe that settlements are an impediment to peace but that building new settlements or expanding existing ones may not be helpful in achieving that goal.

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Several officials said they did not necessarily see the White House statement as a warning.

No one can say that we want to hear these announcements, or welcome such statements, Danny Danon, Israels ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with Israel Radio.Danon on Friday. But if you read between the lines  you see that theres a difference, you see that theres a new administration and a new atmosphere.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said if settlements are not considered an impediment to peace by the Trump administration, continued building doesnt hurt the peace process

A spokesman for Netanyahu said Israels settlement policy would be on the agenda for discussion during the Washington trip.

The United Nations, the U.S. and European countries have warned that settlement expansion is endangering chances for peace through a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. The U.N. Security Council in December passed a resolution condemning the settlements as a flagrant violation of international law.

Husam Zomlot, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said the caution about settlements included in the White House statement was a step in the right direction but was not enough.

We need actions rather than words to stop the Israeli settlements expansion, which is violating the international law and killing the two-state solution, Zomlot said.

A few hours before the White House statement was issued Netanyahu promised to establish a new West Bank settlement as a consolation to supporters after Israel security forces acting on a Supreme Court order this week evicted settlers from an unauthorized outpost in Amona.

Since the Trump inauguration two weeks ago, Netanyahus government has announced plans for more than 5,000 homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israeli officials said the White Houses statement indicating that it doesnt consider existing settlements in the West Bank as an obstacle to peace marked a substantive shift from the Obama administrations criticism of the settlements.

Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and an occasional foreign policy adviser to Netanyahu, said the White House statement appeared to tolerate building within existing settlements.

Oded Revivi, the chief foreign envoy of the Yesha settlers council, said his group thanks the White House for asserting that our communities were never an impediment to peace, the Associated Press reported.

We look forward to working closely with our friends in the new Trump administration to build a brighter future for all, he said.

Mitnick is a special correspondent.

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All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced.  19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc.
A dangerous mosquito spreads out all over the United Kingdom. The treatment in the UK for "Malaria", is a combination of artemisinin drug called as artemether-lumefantrine. The patient who has "Malaria" will take a medicine for over 3 to 4 days.

According to BBC, the Malaria gives early signs, that is why the medicine was unable to save four patients who visited Africa. A team in London School said it too early to be panic. Malaria mosquitoes are spreading by bites from the other infected mosquitoes.

They warned that it could suddenly get worse and demands an appraisal of a resistant in drug levels in the Africa. It kills children who are 0-5 years old for every 2 minutes, between 2000 people are taking the medicine in the UK each year after they travel outside the country. Most are treated by Artemether-Lumefantrine.

The good news is in the study against "Malaria", including bed nets and Artemisinin treatment, the rates of transmitting "Malaria" in Africa over the last 15 years with all the cases around the world is getting lower including the deaths.

Kasu has learned that "Malaria" mosquitoes are already adept in the kind of drugs they used and it won't knock them out. The Artemisinin medication has slowly developed in Asia. Last 2015, the health officials in Britain came across a "Malaria" cases refused to surrender in Artemether-Lumefantrine. The patients that travel and returns from traveling to three different African countries are already treated with this medicine/drugs, every patient has cured already.

The patients who are residing in Britain with a "Malaria" case is treated with different drugs. None of them left the country after they were treated. When the "Malaria" arises again, the doctors already realize that the Artemisinin medicine was a failure.

Malaria is a life-threatening disease in the blood which is caused by parasites such as mosquitoes.
Samsung Electronics has recently declared another variant of their mobile system, which will offer payment services for all Android-powered cell phones called Samsung Pay Mini. The service will be launched within the first quarter, and accessible just in South Korea to start. The new application will likewise permit non-Samsung Android cell phones to utilize Samsung Pay Services such as membership, lifestyle, and transportation.

According to Phone Arena, those are interested in the versatile payment system should download an application on their Android phone to utilize it. Samsung Pay permits transactions to be made online through NFC, however, if the retailer does not support NFC, Samsung pay user can still make an offline credit or debit payment by utilizing Magnetic Secure Transmission. This is similar innovation stores use to swipe debit cards.

Samsung Pay Mini will only work just with MST, however, that still permits it to be utilized at most stores in South Korea and the world. As indicated by Android Headlines, Samsung said that it is taking a look at launching the application in different nations, despite nothing has been chosen. Samsung Pay Mini will work with fundamentally any Android-base handset as what stated earlier, as long as its display has at least HD resolution (1280 x 720) and Android 5.0 Lollipop or higher.

Samsung plans to have a pre-launch trial that will start on February 6 in South Korea. The company will utilize Samsung Card with a specific goal to try out their new service, and any individual who owns the card in South Korea will have the capacity to try out the application, as a test version of Samsung Pay Mini will be accessible through the Google Play Store. The giant tech will likewise update Samsung Pay and the new Samsung Pay Mini in South Korea with a feature called Shopping, which associates specifically with a famous local online shopping center that are joined forces with the company.
Today is the best time to purchase a PC. While some companies like Apple managed to apply firestorm in its MacBook by toning down its performance and stripping out ports, the Windows is also starting to advance its PCs into something attractive for users.

PC market has been in a continued slump for years, but Microsoft has a surprising and impressive plan to kick things up in gear this 2017. First, there's the release of Windows 10 which is considered as Microsoft's most robust and fleshed-out operating system for almost a decade.

According to TechRadar, Microsoft wants to urge manufacturers to focus on performance, cool designs, and pushing Window's unique features. Microsoft Company has already suggested several strategies for OEMs or device makers which were already presented at the WinHEC 2016 conference over in China last December.

One of the company's suggestions to OEMs or the device manufacturers is to focus on 2-in-1s and ultra-slim models. It was also highlighted the use of its Precision Touchpad as well as the OEM innovation when it comes to the elements like borderless displays and excellent hinge designs.

According to MS Power User, Windows 10 brings Braille support to the Narrator who is available as a beta and momentarily supports Braille displays from the 35 manufacturers with 40 languages and multiple braille variants. The Windows 10 Build 15025 also introduces new features like Collections in the Feedback Hub which can compile feedback for similar issues into a single item. Window Insiders can upvote collections and share those collections or comment on them.

With the new updates on PCs that Microsoft has introduced, PC vendors will be encouraged to focus on a more compelling and innovative hardware which will be sold in the market. The company also urges the use of at least two "hero features" which is drawn from Windows 10.
Feb 3, 2017, 11:05am ET

Audi warns dealers to prepare for a market dominated by EVs

\"Youre going to be looking at a marketplace ... where for 30 or 40 some brands their entire business is going to be battery-electric vehicles,\" Audi of America president Scott Keogh said at a recent summit.

Audi has warned dealers to begin preparing now for an automotive market dominated by electric vehicles.

Speaking to dealers gathered at a JD Power automotive summit ahead of the NADA convention in New Orleans, Audi of America president Scott Keogh said "the technology ... is moving at a staggering pace" and EVs will soon deliver 400-500 miles of range, eliminating range anxiety, according to quotes published by WardsAuto.

"You're going to be looking at a marketplace in the next seven, eight, nine, 10 years where for 30 or 40 some brands their entire business is going to be battery-electric vehicles," he added.

Echoing earlier warnings, Keogh said dealers will have to adapt to survive with less revenue from service as electric vehicles have fewer parts to repair or replace. The executive suggests dealers should start looking at alternative products and services, such as home charging hardware.

"These cars are going to have to be fixed less," he warned. "But you're going to have a host of opportunities around the battery and helping the customer in their home."

Recent reports suggest Audi is fighting to lead Volkswagen Group's electric development surge. The luxury division is also expected to place a third of its own research-and-development budget into EVs, autonomous systems and digital services.
Bethlehem Mayor Bob Donchez wants another four years leading the Christmas City.

Bethlehem Mayor Bob Donchez just announced he is running for re-election. (lehighvalleylive.com file photo)

The Democrat announced Friday afternoon that he plans to again run for mayor in the May 15, 2017, primary. No challengers have announced their candidacy.

"I believe that Bethlehem has made great progress under my administration," Donechez, 66, said in asking for the support of voters. "But, there is so much more to do to continue to keep moving our city forward."

City Council President J. William Reynolds, who lost his 2013 mayoral primary bid against Donchez, has already says he will not run against the mayor. In fact, Reynolds has said he plans to support Donchez's candidacy and focus on governing.

If re-elected, Donchez says he will continue to make fiscal responsibility, public safety, economic development and improving business districts his top priorities. He will prioritize strong neighborhoods, government transparency, improving recreational facilities and the city's repaving efforts.

Donchez touted the city's improved finances under his watch, pointing to its upgraded bond ratings and cash balance. City council enacted Donchez's zero tax increase budget for 2017, which focuses on city services.

"Bethlehem continues to be one of the safest cities in Pennsylvania," Donchez said in a news release. "The implementation of the beat officer, increased patrols, partnerships with Lehigh University, Moravian College and the Bethlehem Sands Casino have proven to be effective."

The city is currently in the midst of consolidating its 911 emergency center with Northampton County to comply with a state mandate.

As part of that the city is working on a text 911 implementation, he said. Donchez has directed the city's new 911 Director Robert Novatnack to study the feasibility of setting up a 311 system to report non-emergency issues in the city.

"This would improve efficiency, accountability and resident service," he said.

Throughout his tenure, Bethlehem's seen small business growth and the continued redevelopment of former Bethlehem Steel property at LVIP 7 and Majestic Realty, the mayor noted.

And development is finally underway in Bethlehem's CRIZ -- at Greenway Commons on Third Street and Dennis Benner's building at Third and New streets --after changes to the CRIZ law were enacted by state lawmakers.

He pledged to continue his hard stance against the owners of blighted properties, noting the 2017 budget includes $500,000 for the city to acquire blighted properties and rehab them.

Bethlehem was recently named conservator of the old Goodman Furniture building and an adjoining vacant lot, 30-32 E. Third St. The city has spent years trying to get the property's owner, Lehigh University professor Alvin Kanofsky, to clean up the site.

The designation allows the city to oversee the selection of a developer to rehab and redevelop the property without having to purchase it.

"The city will continue to be aggressive in citing property owners who let their property deteriorate," Donchez said.

His administration has sought to foster government openness by enacting a gifts policy that bans city employees from accepting free meals, gifts or tickets.

And Donchez hosts a monthly open door event where citizens can come to City Hall to discuss concerns with him.

"I am proud to say over 200 residents have taken advantage of this initiative," Donchez said. "In addition, I have conducted nine walking tours throughout our city, followed by neighborhood meetings."

Donchez noted that by partnering with city colleges, the Bethlehem Area School District, St. Luke's University Health Network and Lehigh Valley Health Network, the city's been able to bring new programs for residents.

He cited as examples the South Side Ambassadors, the mounted police unit, bike cops, school resource officers and housing inspector.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The Saucon Valley School District and Lehigh Valley Academy have agreed to a five-year charter extension without enrollment caps for the charter school.

Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School is located in Hanover Township, Northampton County.

Lehigh Valley Academy Regional Charter School's board voted to approve the new charter Tuesday night. Saucon's school board passed the new agreement without an enrollment cap at its Jan. 24 school board meeting.

And the charter school board unanimously voted to drop Saucon Valley from its lawsuit filed in Northampton County Court and with the state's Charter Appeals Board.

"The Board is appreciative that SVSD followed the law and approved a five-year charter document without enrollment caps," said Martin Smith, board president. "The school is dedicated to providing a high-quality education option to students in the Lehigh Valley and looks forward to strengthening the relationship with SVSD and working together in the future."

The Hanover Township, Northampton County, school is a regional charter school, which requires its charter to be approved by both Saucon Valley and Bethlehem Area school districts, and students from those districts get enrollment preference.

In December, the charter school sued Saucon Valley and the Bethlehem Area school districts after the Bethlehem school board in November passed a charter renewal that includes enrollment cap for its students.

The charter school argues the enrollment cap would force it to violate its charter's provision that its enrollment lottery give preference to the siblings of current students.

Bethlehem has taken the lead in the renewal process, putting the charter school through several hearings and pushing for an enrollment cap that it says would save $1 million in tuition annually.

When Saucon Valley voted last week to approve the charter, district Solicitor Mark Fitzgerald said he hoped it would resolve the legal disputes.

Saucon had sought a cap of 35 students, but chose to drop it, he said.

Currently, about 30 Saucon students attend the charter school and enrollment has never gone above 35.

About 1,013 of the school's 1,689 students are Bethlehem Area kids. Bethlehem wants to cap the enrollment of its own students at 60 percent, or 90 per grade.

Charter schools are independent public schools funded by taxpayer dollars funneled from an enrolled student's home district. The K-12 charter school is located in leased office space off of Valley Center Parkway in Hanover Township, Northampton County.

Sara K. Satullo may be reached at ssatullo@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @sarasatullo and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A former Lehigh County attorney is accused of stealing thousands of dollars from a client.

Glenn D. McGogney, 70, was charged Friday with theft, theft by failing to make required disposition of funds, and receiving stolen property.

McGogney, of the 6100 block of Woodledge Drive in Upper Macungie Township, was released on $50,000 unsecured bail.

Prosecutors alleged McGogney, who was disbarred in 2012, kept a check for inheritance taxes instead of paying it.

In 2009, McGogney represented Christopher and Tammy Cruz, executors of the estate of Charles Knautz. McGogney had an office in South Whitehall Township at the time.

In the fall of 2009, Christopher Cruz received a document drafted by McGogney, which showed $42,507 in inheritance taxes would be owed to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue.

A check for $50,049 was written from the estate and the Cruz's payable to McGogney for taxes and attorney fees, prosecutors said. The taxes were never paid, prosecutors allege.

By March 2012, McGogney was disbarred by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in part because he took a $25,000 loan from a client for Coyotes, a Bucks County strip club he owned at the time, according to media reports.

From 2011 to 2014, Christopher Cruz received several tax delinquency notices and McGogney reportedly assured Cruz he would handle the issue.

In 2014, Tammy Cruz learned the check was deposited into McGogney's account at National Penn Bank, but that the inheritance taxes were not paid.

Over two years, the Cruz's tried to resolve the issue with McGogney, according to prosecutors, but on Sept. 1, 2016, they filed a theft report.

South Whitehall Township police said they learned from the Lehigh County Register of Wills that the inheritance taxes were never paid, and that the money deposited into McGogney's account was never sent to the Register of Wills on behalf of the estate or the Cruz family.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Two Phillipsburg men face heroin charges following a two-week investigation into dealing that led to the execution of a search warrant Thursday night, town police said.

The Warren County Tactical Response Team along with members of the Phillipsburg Police Department Special Operations Division and Warren County Prosecutor's Office Narcotics Task Force executed the warrant about 8:45 p.m. on two apartments at 177 Mercer St., town police Capt. Michael Swick said.

Charles H. Dorn, 32, was found in Apt. 2 and taken into custody on charges of conspiracy to distribute heroin and possession of heroin, police said.

Tyrone Fowler, 42, was found in Apt. 1, where three children under age 18 were also present, according to police. He is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, unlawful distribution of heroin and heroin possession with intent to distribute.

Dorn and Fowler both lived in the apartments where they were arrested, police said.

Fowler was ordered held in Warren County jail by Judge Peter Tober. Dorn was issued a court summons and released.

Dorn was subsequently involved in a minor car crash Friday afternoon in Lopatcong Township, according to police. He crashed his vehicle at 2:38 p.m. into the rear of a car at Belvidere Road and Roseberry Street, Sgt. Jon Eriksen said. Damage was very minor, but Dorn was cited for careless driving and failure to produce insurance, police said.

In the Phillipsburg search, the counts against Dorn are third-degree charges, carrying a maximum penalty upon conviction of five years in a New Jersey State Prison. The endangerment count against Fowler, for allegedly distributing heroin in the presence of children, is a second-degree crime carrying a maximum penalty upon conviction of 10 years in state prison.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
The gunmen were fake, but the charges against the 18-year-old accused of falsely reporting them in three towns are very real.

Joseph Otto, 18, of White Township, is accused of calling 911 with false reports of gunmen in at least three Warren County municipalities. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Joseph Otto faces a third round of charges filed this week alleging he called 911 to say a man with a gun had entered a store, this time a QuickChek in Washington Township on Dec. 7.

Otto, of the 100 block of Windtryst Way in White Township, was previously charged in December with making similar calls at the Wal-Mart on Route 22 in Pohatcong Township and Skoogy's Deli in Belvidere.

Pohatcong police Sgt. Scott Robb previously said that Otto told them why he made the calls: "He said it was boredom."

"He would sit in his vehicle, make the phone call, observe the police activity," Robb said. "At no time was there a man with a gun, nor did he want there to be a man with a gun. He did it so he had something to do."

Authorities said a cellphone provider helped trace the calls back to Otto.

In the Washington Township case, Otto is charged with one count each of creating a false public alarm, making false reports to law enforcement and misuse of 911.

That's in addition to one count each of misuse of 911 and making a false report to law enforcement in the Belvidere case and four counts each of those charges, plus four counts of creating a false public alarm from Pohatcong.

The most serious charges carry a potential sentence of three to five years in prison.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Police response at Phillipsburg High School on Feb. 3, 2017

A Lopatcong Township police car blocks the entrance to Phillipsburg High School on Feb. 3, 2017. (Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com contributor)

Phillipsburg High School was ordered to shelter-in-place for a time around midday Friday as authorities investigated a bomb threat.

The threat was found to not be credible, like another instance from almost two months ago when a threatening message was scrawled on a bathroom wall. The exact nature or method of Friday's threat was not disclosed.

Police cars from both Phillipsburg and Lopatcong blocked the entrance to the school around 1 p.m. New Jersey State Police assisted at the scene.

A shelter-in-place order was lifted after authorities searched the building, Lopatcong police said in a news release about 2 p.m. Officers remained at the school as classes resumed on a regular schedule.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Educate Together and the Kildare and Wicklow Education and Training Board (KWETB) are back in talks on the provision of secondary school education in South Kildare.

Representatives of the two bodies met yesterday to discuss matters relating to the provision of secondary school education.

The meeting seems to have headed off a crisis that blew up earlier in the week, when members of the campaign group for an Educate Together secondary school in South Kildare (SKET) threatened to pull out of ongoing talks unless they got clarification of what was on the table.

SKET have long campaigned for a new Educate Together secondary school for the south of the county, particularly to cater for demand in the Newbridge area and surrounding towns.

Earlier this month, an initial meeting was held between SKET and KWETB to examine patronage partnership opportunities.

As reported by the Leinster Leader earlier this week, indications emerged that KWETB and local politicians favoured the proposal of amalgamating the Educate Together secondary proposal into the existing KWETB-run St Conleth's Community College in Newbridge. The Educate Together campaigners insisted this had never been discussed between the parties before it was revealed in the media, and threatened to pull out of talks.

SKET said they had agreed to a proposal to the Department of Education that a new school would be built on a greenfield site to meet local demand and operated by a joint patronage partnership.

A short statement jointly issued by Educate Together and KWETB late on Thursday evening said: "During the meeting KWETB outlined to Educate Together the principles of its offer. Educate Together outlined its obligation to meet the aspirations of its parents in South Kildare to avail of second level education.

"The two sides agreed to examine the proposal and meet again."
The voice of people power was heard loud and clear as an action group was formed at a public meeting in Naas tonight.

It will lobby Kildare County Council to revitalise the town centre.

The meeting was called by the Naas Against Authority Sabotage (NAAS), which was itself made up of two local women - Mary Burke-Spratt and Chris Wilson.

They held the meeting for the Town House Hotel to provide a forum for Naas residents to air their views about the closure of an estimated 60 retailers since 2012.

It was chaired by another Naas woman Tina OKelly and the attendance included most members of Kildare County Councils Naas Municipal District as well as TDs Catherine Murphy and James Lawless, who represent Kildare North.

It was called against the background of the closure of Ciaran Mattimoes Londis shop and opposition by Larry Swan of Swans on the Green and Pat Goulding (Gouldings Hardware) to a cycle lane at the town end of Kilcullen Road.

Since then two more businesses have announced closure plans - Top Drawer and The Foot Shop.

There were heated exchanges as speaker after speaker, residents and retailers, criticised Kildare County Council and some of the councillors for not doing enough to halt the decline of business in the town centre.

Ms. Burke Spratt told the estimated attendance of 250 that this was her first time to speak in public. Naas was once a thriving town and its now nearly a ghost town; you can hardly buy milk or bread between Mulveys Corner (Kalu) and Poplar Square.

Ms. Wilson estimated that the loss of all the car park spaces will ultimately cost Kildare County Council almost 770,000 a year and the shop owners will have to pay for this loss.

Cllr. Darren Scully said only three councillors had voted against the plan to pedestrianise Poplar Square and build cycle lanes along the Dublin Road.

He said this could be reversed and he also pledged to oppose cycles lanes on Kilcullen road.

The new committee is made up of Mary Burke Spratt, Mary English, Eoin OConnor, Robin Skelton, Kim Kelleher, Larry Swan, Tina OKelly, Chris Wilson and Cllr. Scully.

See Tuesdays Leinster Leader for more.
Speaking at an event in Carrick-on-Shannon last night with Martin Kenny TD, Sinn Fein Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty TD announced a major policy initiative aimed at clipping the wings of the vulture funds.

The Donegal TD said the key to the policy is the introduction of Dail legislation to ensure that vulture funds owners are regulated, fully reversing the disastrous government U-turn which saw only the middle-men regulated under the 2015 Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms Act.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Deputy Doherty said: The vulture funds have, sadly, been running rings around the Government and Central Bank for years. It is time they were stood up to. I am proposing here tonight a number of concrete steps to clip the wings of the vultures.

Next week, it is my intention in the Dail to introduce a Bill that will regulate the vulture funds once and for all; no loopholes, no exceptions. The rights of mortgage holders or farmers or businessmen who find themselves under the control of the vultures should be no less protected than the rights of their neighbours with a traditional bank.

The remaining tax loopholes must be closed and the behaviour of these funds and others engaged in property speculation must be monitored with reports made to the Minister with recommendations on required actions regularly.

The Government of this country must stop selling to unregulated vulture funds. AIB, Permanent TSB, and NAMA must not be offloading their loan books to the unscrupulous and unaccountable vultures. The Minister for Finance should let them know that.

Ireland must adopt an ethical approach based on our experience so that this country can never be used as a base for vultures to burden developing countries with odious debt. There are concrete proposals in this field from groups such as the Debt Development Coalition that I will look to bring forward.

We must stop giving the advantage to the vultures and instead give the homeowner, the small businessman, the farmer a level playing field. The vultures are not invincible. Concrete political and community action can clip their wings. Sinn Fein has no hesitation in doing just that," he said.
A public meeting has been organised in Aughavas Community Centre tonight (Friday, February 3) at 9pm in a battle to secure the future of the local post office.

Last week it emerged that the post office in Aughavas is facing possible closure after the current postmistress expressed a desire to retire.

An Post is now holding a public consultation to determine the fate of the post office which is located in a very rural area of south Leitrim.

People are asked to submit their views for consideration no later that February 17, 2017 to Peter Gillespie, Retail Operations Manager, An Post, Wine Street, Sligo.

As part of the consultation process, An Post will also look at the local postal network coverage needs, the level of business currently passing through the office, customer access to services elsewhere and the capacity of neighbouring offices to handle additional business if Aughavas Post Office closes.

Local county councillor, Sinn Fein's Caroline Mulvey, has said that "Aughavas Post Office must remain open no matter what. It is an essential part of the local community.

"This is not the first occasion of a rural post office being threatened with closure because it changed hands. It seems to be a policy of An Post to use these circumstances as an opportunity to close post offices.

"I have contacted An Post to request a meeting to find a solution to keep Aughavas Post Office open. They are willing to meet and I hope this will happen the coming days. The local community in Aughavas want to keep their post office and they are prepared to fight for it."

Sligo/Leitrim TD, Deputy Martin Kenny, who hails from the area, also raised the matter in the Dail last week, pointing out

"This post office has been in the community for over 100 years and ...at the drop of a hat it could go,"

Deputy Kenny said that if the Government were committed to making investments in rural Ireland, one of the first things they should do is make sure that the services that exist in rural Ireland, such as post offices, are not withdrawn.

Late last week Deputy Kenny also wrote to Minister of State for Regional Economic Development, Michael Ring TD, on the situation noting: This is a rural parish where the Pub and Shop with the Post Office has served the people through all times. That business has now been sold and the post mistress is of course stepping aside and the new owner expected to take over the Post Office and continue to run it as before, but An Post has informed him that it will probably not offer a new contract.

I know An Post is a commercial company and has to make business decisions and I also know that it has an obligation to public service and to the community everywhere. Aughavas Post Office must be kept open and the obligation to public service fulfilled, he continued urging Minister Ring to intervene and save the post office.

However Minister Ring said that operational matters and commercial strategies relating to individual post offices, such as Aughavas Post Office, are a matter for the management of the Board of An Post.

I have no statutory function in relation to An Post, nor do I have responsibility or control in relation to service delivery at individual Post Offices, pointed out Minister Ring.

He said he was actively working with An Post and his colleagues to ensure that the post office network that we all value has a sustainable future.

In the meantime An Post is undertaking the three week consultation with the local Aughavas community in a bid to determine whether the service is viable going forward. People are asked to write submissions and submit them to An Post no later than February 17, 2017.
When I think of the country that I would like my generation to give to our children, I think of a country that lives without fear, poverty and inequality, but we cannot build that world by turning our back on our neighbours, closing the door to our friends, turning a blind eye to tyranny or walking hand in hand with intolerance.

Sarah Olney has got the hang of making great speeches in the House of Commons pretty quickly. In the Article 50 debate, she spoke from the heart while revealing the obfuscation of the Government as they try to deny people the true information about the consequences of Brexit. Here is her speech in full:

In this country, we have settled, through a process of trial and error, on a system of parliamentary democracy as the most effective form of governance. The importance of Parliaments role was once again asserted by the Supreme Court last week. The responsibility of parliamentarians is clear: to take decisions in the best interests of the country with particular regard for the needs of their constituents. I believe that leaving the European Union will be hugely damaging for this country; the British people, through the referendum, narrowly expressed a different view. It is now up to Parliament to take account of the result of the referendum and decide what is in the best interests of the country.

There is no evidence, and none has been presented, that the best interests of the country will be served by the immediate triggering of article 50 and the pursuit of the hardest Brexit possible. It seems to me an abdication of responsibility to say that the only factor that can be considered in deciding whether to trigger article 50 is the result of the referendum. The will of the people cannot be tied down to one single point and be presumed never to change or waver. It should not be assumed that the decision of a narrow majority of people, willing and entitled to express a view on 23 June, should be the only thing to determine the fate of the whole population for now and many decades into the future. This is not the end of the debate; it is only the beginning.

Victoria Atkins (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)

The Conservative manifesto on which we won the election stated that we would hold a referendum and uphold its result. That is a promise made and a promise kept. Does the hon. Lady accept that?

Sarah Olney

There has been a lot of talk about the European Union Referendum Act 2015. I was not here. I did not vote for it. I am not bound by it. The Conservative partys 2015 manifesto also committed us to staying in the single market.

If, in three or eight years time, the people are not happy with the outcome of Brexit, who should they hold accountable? If they want the country to take a different course, how should they vote then? Will all their MPs step back and tell them that they merely implemented the will of the people and that the outcome of Brexit is not their responsibility? Denying the people the right to hold their representatives accountable would be truly undemocratic.

I asked the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union a question last week about what impact assessments had been done to estimate the loss of jobs and skills to the UK as a consequence of leaving the European Union. I was told that such information could not be released because it would weaken our negotiating hand. That is extremely worrying for two reasons. First, if the information existsthe Minister who responded did not confirm that such assessments have been carried outit is not available to the public to read and consider. Secondly, our countrys future prosperity, including our jobs and skilled workers, now depends so heavily on the outcome of a negotiation.

Far from taking back control, we are apparently dependent on what other countries will, or will not, allow. There is so much that we do not know about the consequences of leaving the European Union, either because the Government refuse to reveal it or because it depends on the outcome of negotiations. We have not been given sight of the Governments White Paper before being asked to consider the Bill. We are effectively being asked to jump out of an airplane without knowing whether we are securely attached to a parachute, and that is not a responsible approach to take to the security and prosperity of our citizens.

If we do make the decision to trigger article 50, our most immediate and pressing goal will be to advance negotiations with our European partners as quickly as possible to provide security and clarity for our citizens, but it is important that we do not just settle for whatever result we can get. We should make a further, active and informed decision that the new deal is a better alternative than remaining in the European Union. The choice should be between those two outcomes. Having held an initial referendum to ask the public to guide our decision making on the issue, we cannot exclude them from the final decision. There needs to be a referendum on the terms so that the people can decide for themselves.

The decisions that we make in this place over the coming days will shape our country for future generations, and we owe it to them to proceed with caution, thoughtfulness and care. My grandparents generation gifted us a country free from tyranny, and my parents generation gifted us a country of rising prosperity. When I think of the country that I would like my generation to give to our children, I think of a country that lives without fear, poverty and inequality, but we cannot build that world by turning our back on our neighbours, closing the door to our friends, turning a blind eye to tyranny or walking hand in hand with intolerance.

I will vote against the Bill tomorrow not just because I represent a pro-remain party in a pro-remain constituency, nor because I made this commitment to voters during my recent by-election campaign. Most of all, I will vote against the Bill because triggering article 50 is the wrong step for this country to take at this time.
There is a real sadness across Scotland today at the loss of a wonderful young man. Gordon Aikman was the Research Director of the Better Together campaign when he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease in the Summer of 2014. We all hoped that he would defy the odds and, like Stephen Hawking, still be there in his 70s. Sadly that was not to be as his death was announced this morning.

I only met him a few times. The first was at some reception organised by our Conference commercial people in Edinburgh a few months before he was diagnosed. He was very funny and friendly and someone who was very easy to get along with.

It says so much about him that his reaction to such a terrifying and horrific diagnosis was to do something to help those who came behind him. His Gordons Fightback appeal has, to date, raised almost 540,000. He did more than raise money, though. He put his research skills to good use and presented the First Minister with an irrefutable case for the provision of better care for MND sufferers, with more specialist nurses.

My heart goes out to his husband Joe Pike and his close friends including Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale.

All of Scotlands political leaders, and some others, paid tribute to him today.

Terribly sad. A generous, determined and gentle man. He has left a great legacy. https://t.co/Box1HPkBZn  Willie Rennie (@willie_rennie) February 3, 2017

In a statement, he added:

This is incredibly sad news. Gordon was a generous and determined gentleman. My thoughts go out to Joe, Gordons family and friends. His contribution during the independence referendum campaign was both intelligent and joyful. I have great memories of working with him. He has left a great legacy that no one will forget.

Labour Leader Kezia Dugdale is a close friend who has personally raised more than 20,000 for the appeal:

Gordon was a beautiful man who existed to do nothing but good in this world  just devastated pic.twitter.com/Nc3gw55IB1  Kezia Dugdale (@kezdugdale) February 3, 2017

In her statement she said:

I will miss Gordons smile, his laugh, his energy, his brilliant dance moves and terrible singing voice, and his positive outlook on life despite the hand he was dealt towards the end. I will miss his advice and I will miss campaigning with him to advance the causes dear to us. But most of all I will miss just spending time with my friend.

I'm so terribly sad to hear that @GordonAikman has died. He faced adversity with incredible courage and did so much good for others 1/3  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) February 3, 2017

Gordon's campaign to raise awareness of @MNDScotland and achieve better care and treatment for those diagnosed was inspirational. 2/3  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) February 3, 2017

We can honour @GordonAikman memory by donating here  https://t.co/msF8cA57CL

My thoughts are with @joepike and his loved ones. 3/3  Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) February 3, 2017

So very sorry to learn of @GordonAikman's death. A lovely man, who dedicated himself to making a difference with the time he had.  Patrick Harvie (@patrickharvie) February 3, 2017

So sad this morning to hear of the death of Gordon Aikman, a brave & beautiful man. My thoughts are with his husband @joepike & wider family  Ruth Davidson (@RuthDavidsonMSP) February 3, 2017

Another couple of tweets that touched me:

The news of @GordonAikman 'a passing is a real loss to Scottish politics and our society. His strength an inspiration to so many  Alex Cole-Hamilton (@agcolehamilton) February 3, 2017

When I grow up I want to be @GordonAikman. Absolute bloody hero. Rest in peace beautiful man. You made all of Scotland proud. X  Duncan Hothersall (@dhothersall) February 3, 2017

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
New Year Wishes 2017 from Japan

Source:english.eastday.com Date:2017-01-26

Hand-written New Year Wishes from Kazuyuki Katayama, Consul General of Japan in Shanghai

Consul General of Japan in Shanghai, Kazuyuki Katayama: The 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, promote these exchanges between Japan and China

"This year is the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China. Happy New Year and I hope everything goes well."Consul General of Japan in Shanghai, Kazuyuki Katayama wrote in a New Years message to Eastday.com.

Katayama told of his hopes for the New Year being that 2017 is the 45th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, and that 2018 will mark the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of the Japan-China Peace and Friendship Treaty. Shanghai is one of the largest Japanese communities both in business and culture in the world. There are so many Japan-China exchanges between both officials and people and we will promote these exchanges in 2017 and 2018.

Japanese column of "Connction of Hearts-Chinese and Foreign Friends Celebrating the Chinese New Year of Rooster"
9 Tips for Coping When Someones Words Insult Your Body

Weve been conditioned to judge other peoples bodies. Heres how to cope when you feel like someone is judging yours.
BISHOP Eamonn Casey has a further three weeks to file a defence against claims by a Limerick woman seeking damages in a personal injuries case at the High Court.

Mr Justice Kevin Cross, who presides over the High Court's personal injuries list, has allowed for more time for Bishop Casey's legal team to file a defence on his behalf.

Caseys representation has until mid-February to file a defence. Failing to do so could allow for a judgement to be entered against him, with a potential assessment of damages for the plaintiff.

Should a defence be filed, the case may not be listed for hearing for several months yet.

The proceedings against Bishop Casey, now 89, and believed to be living in a nursing home in county Clare, are listed among a number of civil proceedings against members of the clergy in the Limerick diocese, spanning several decades.

In Bishop Casey's case, a joint action is being taken by the woman, now aged in her 60s, against the current Bishop of Limerick, Dr Brendan Leahy, solely in his capacity as head of the Limerick diocese.

Bishop Leahy, who is being represented by Leahy & Partner solicitors in Limerick, has entered his defence in the case, but none has been entered to date for Bishop Casey, after High Court proceedings were first issued in February 2016.

The Limerick Leader understands that a number of witnesses may be called on behalf of the plaintiff, who is married and has a number of grown-up children, if it goes to trial.

She is being represented by Limerick solicitor Tommy Dalton, while the Killarney based legal firm Liam F. Coghlan & Co have come on record for Bishop Casey.

The firm was not available to comment when contacted by the Limerick Leader at the time of going to print.

Bishop Casey was based in Limerick from 1955 to 1960, when he served at St Johns Cathedral as curate.
PARENTS of quadruplets have 10,528 reasons to shop at Lidl after the supermarket gave them a six month supply of nappies.

Lisa Fenton and Wayne Downey change four-month-old Alex, Ashley, Max and Kayla around 40 a times a day at huge cost. But now Lidl has made a big difference to the couples pockets by donating 188 packs of the Toujours range.

With 56 nappies in each one a total of 10,528 have been delivered to their Ballyneety home. It will save the couple a whopping 1,032.

We are absolutely delighted! said Lisa.

We didnt expect that many. When the courier dropped them off he kept on going out to the van and coming back with more and more. It is a massive help. I would like to thank Lidl for their generosity.

The fab four were all 3lbs when they made history as the first set of quads born in Limerick in 50 years. Seventeen weeks on they are all thriving after receiving wonderful care in University Maternity Hospital Limericks neonatal unit. Max is the heaviest at 11lbs, closely followed by Alex at 10lbs and Ashley and Kayla at 9lbs.

They all have their own personalities and quirks. The girls are definitely going to be the bosses in the house, the boys are quite placid but the girls will let you know they are there! said Lisa. The quads are sleeping for around five an half hours every night to give mum and dad some badly needed shut-eye.

They are in a really good routine from UMHL and we are getting great support from family and friends, said Lisa.

A spokesperson for Lidl Ireland said they were delighted to donate a six month supply of Toujours nappies to Lisa and Wayne and their four-month-old quadruplets.

When we discovered the quadruplets were using over one packet of the Lidl Toujours nappies on a daily basis, we wanted to offer some assistance and hope this donation of over 10,500 nappies will make the endless nappy changes a little easier, they said.
A COUNTY Limerick restaurant was ordered to close after environmental health officers discovered a dry goods store was being used as a bedroom.

A Closure Order, under the provisions of the EC (Official Control of Foodstuffs) Regulations 2010, was served on the proprietor of Ali Baba, Bank Place, Rathkeale on December 8, last following an inspection of the premises.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show that HSE inspectors discovered a mattress complete with bed linen on the floor of the dry goods store.

According to the report, the bed was found on the floor where the shelving had been, along with a plugged-in electrical heater.

Other breaches of regulations included the presence of a large dirty greasy wheelie bin in the main food preparation area along with a potato peeler unit which should have been located in the chipping room.

Water was leaking through the ceiling of the main preparation area and ponding on the floor which resulted in dampness on the floor and walls in an area where food was being prepared.

According to the report, the walk-in coldroom was filthy while the walls and sides of the freezers in the dry goods store were covered in black mould from dampness.

Previously, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland confirmed the Closure Order was lifted on December 9, 2016.

Separately, a take away premises in Limerick city was ordered to close this week.

A Closure Order under the provisions of the FSAI Act 1998, was served on the proprietor of Hot Spot, Parnell Street on Monday.
THE FUNERAL arrangements have been announced for Pat OMalley, wife of Progressive Democrats founder Des OMalley, who passed away yesterday.

Patricia OMalley died peacefully on February 2, in the care of the staff at the Blackrock Clinic.

Requiem Mass will be held in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Donnybrook, Dublin, on Saturday morning at 11am followed by cremation at Mount Jerome Crematorium, Harolds Cross, Dublin 6W.

Born Patricia McAleer, the Omagh native met her husband while studying French and history at UCD.

The couple moved to Limerick after their marriage in 1965, and went on to have six children.

She is dearly missed by her husband Des and children Catherine, Hilary, Fiona, Desmond, Eoin and Maeve.

She is also survived by her thirteen grandchildren, and cherished by her daughters-in-law Ailbhe and Catherine and sons-in-law Tim, Niall and Didier.

In Des OMalleys memoir, the former minister paid tribute to his wife, writing: I could never have done what I did in politics without her wholehearted support. She put up with the absences and the threats.

Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin expressed his condolences on her passing.

I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pat OMalley, wife of former Minister Des OMalley, and mother of former TD and Senator, Fiona OMalley, he said.

Pat was a constant support to Des political campaigns since his first election to Dail Eireann in 1965.

During the 1970s, when Des was Minister for Justice, Pat suffered as a result of the campaign of intimidation resulting from her husbands stance on the Provisional IRA.

A proud Tyrone woman, Pat made Limerick her home, and was embedded in her community in Corbally until she and Des moved to Dublin in 2002.

On behalf of the Fianna Fail organisation, I want to express my deepest sympathies to Des, and her children Catherine, Hillary, Maeve, Fiona, Eoin and Des Junior, added Mr Martin.

Ar Dheis De go raibh a hanam dhilis.
PALLASKENRY Agricultural College student Stephanie Shine won her college round of the FRS memorial scholarship for outstanding leadership the day before there was a heated debate on Liveline about women in agriculture.

One caller said it is very unrealistic for a woman to run a farm and spoke of their inability to pull calves from a cow.

Stephanie, of the Shine family who run Samco in Adare, described his comments as irrational.

I believe what Im doing is meant for me and I always tell people if youre good at what you do it doesnt matter what gender you are. Being a woman working in the agricultural sector is hard but it only makes me more ambitious and work harder to prove to people that I am very competent, I get great satisfaction from doing this.

Many people think working at home for the family business was easy, in fact it was the hardest two and a half years of employment I will ever experience. After I came home from traveling I had to prove to my four older brothers and my dad that I had what it takes.

I was expected to know everything without things being explained or shown to me. I had to learn things quick and the hard way, it stands to me today. I had great support from my family but at the same time they pushed me to excel to the best of my abilities, said Stephanie, who is one of seven females in a class of 75.

They all come from different backgrounds but they have in common a keen interest in agriculture and are all highly talented.

Nowadays you see and hear of many more women working as relief milkers, vets, AI technicians, sole farmerettes and many more because they have been given the opportunity to learn, and have the voice to stand up to men and show them that women can be skilful, she says.

Yes, it goes without saying some women do not have the strength but I can assure you I have met women that would be stronger and smarter than some young men.

Historically the predecessor would leave the farm to the maybe capable male rather than the capable women if the male showed even the slightest interest in farming. That infuriates me and hopefully it will change in generations to come.

If I were to take on the journey of becoming a full time farmerette I would choose easy calving bulls so I would not need to be struggling whilst calving a cow, I would invest in machinery that could do the heavy lifting work, I would breed docile cows for safety purposes, said Stephanie, who is delighted to see so many women working in the industry.

I encourage all women thinking of having a career in any aspect of the agricultural industry to go with it, work hard, set yourself goals and dont ever underestimate or sell yourself short. Timely advice when CAO forms are being filled out.
Judgment has been reserved in the case of a Limerick-based garda who is accused of assaulting two women during a night out last year.

Garda Brian Hanrahan, who is attached to Newcastle West garda station, denies the charges which relate to an incident outside a take away in Nenagh on March 5, 2016.

During a district court hearing, which lasted for several hours this Friday, Judge Elizabeth MacGrath heard evidence from the garda who insisted he stuck the women in an effort to defend himself.

Garda Hanrahan, who was off-duty on the night, said the last thing he wanted was to be involved in an altercation - four months after he was shot and injured during an incident while he was on holidays in the US city of New Orleans.

Nenagh District Court was told one of the woman lost a tooth when she was kicked in the face by the defendant.

The woman had earlier told the court that she was in a car with friends when she saw Garda Hanrahan trying to flag down cars. She said they agreed to give him a lift home after he offered to pay 15.

However, the witness said when she asked him for the money he pulled her hair. She said he then punched her and kicked her up to eight times when she fell to the ground.

Another passenger in the car said Garda Hanrahan pushed her back and hit her in the face.

In his evidence, the defendant said one of the women got out of the car and attacked him.

While he admitted hitting her he insisted it was to fend her off and to defend himself.

I wasn't trying to hurt her. I was trying to stop her. I couldn't get away from her, he told the court.

Judge MacGrath reserved judgement indicating she will deliver her verdict on February 10, next.
IN a year that saw the Irish motoring market experience growth of 17.5% Toyota enjoyed 18.5 % year on year growth, becoming the best-selling car brand in Ireland with sales of 15,530 passenger vehicles and an overall market share of 10.6%.

Brian Geary Toyota, Raheen experienced a very strong demand right across its model range.

The best-selling Toyota passenger vehicles were the Corolla with sales of 3,751, followed closely by the Yaris with 3,727 sales, Auris with 2,854 sales, RAV4 with 2,349 sales and the Avensis with 1,663 sales.

In addition the range of Toyota hybrids available at Brian Geary Toyota, continues to be extremely popular with a total of 1,958 hybrids sold in 2016. This represents an overall year on year growth of 115% compared to 2015.

Commenting on the news, sales manager Denis OSullivan said: We believe that this trend will continue into 2017 with the launch of the critically acclaimed new 5 door SUV, the C-HR, expected to significantly contribute to the growth of hybrid as well as the imminent arrival of new Prius-Plug in Hybrid.

Brian Geary Toyota believes the success of Toyota in Limerick is down to competitive pricing, high levels of specification as well as consumer led offers as the key to its achievement.

Steve Tormey, chief executive, Toyota Ireland added; 2016 was a great year for Toyota and we are proud to have once again regained the status of best-selling car brand in Ireland.

Particularly pleasing was the continuing strong demand we experienced right across our range coupled with significantly increased consumer movement into hybrid vehicles.

We believe this trend will continue with our newest model, the C-HR as well as other new model introductions later this year.

Go to www.briangeary.ie for more information or contact a member of the sales team by calling 061-225225. Brian Geary Toyota, Where the Customer comes First
CARA OSullivan launches into a few bars of Percy Frenchs McBreen's Heifer to illustrate her point about music and operatic performance being fun.

The engaging Cork woman, a soprano and one of Irelands best known voices, comes to the UCH this Saturday for a concert, her first in these parts in some time.

I cant remember the last time I was there, it has been a while, she says of performing in Limerick. I sang with the Munster Rugby choir and I would have performed with the Limerick Choral Union. Over the years I would have performed with Barra O Tuama, his series of concerts, we used to go to UCH. I love singing in that space, I just love it. It is very accessible.

OSullivan, who has come to prominence lately for speaking about a brush with cancer 20 years ago, is one of the countrys leading sopranos, renowned as a superb interpreter of classic arias, with few performing a repertoire as wide.

She welcomes bass baritone John Molloy as her guest for the show, along with the duelling pianos of Ciara Moroney and John OBrien. Cara promises fun for her audience, eschewing the perhaps at times self-aware and serene nature of opera.

The soprano includes arias from Handel, songs by Rossini and Mozart  the aforementioned Percy French standard  and, in a special performance for Limerick, There Is An Isle.

I am saving it specially for Limerick, and really I would encourage those that are there to sing up with me. I love that, when people sing with me, it gives me a lift, it energises me. And during a performance, when I encourage people to sing  and they really sing  it just makes my night, Cara laughs.

It basically is a concert of light arias and nostalgic songs, so it is a nice mix of very popular songs and arias and airs and some fun tunes as well.

Asked about that sense of fun and it being important to her as a performer, she says: Absolutely, and to make sure that there is an appeal for the audience, a wide sense of appeal, that there will be a certain amount of opera, then there would be lighter opera, and then the Handel airs, which would be very well known.

It is mostly classical and operatic in the first half and then much lighter with a few fun songs in the second.

And I might even torture myself into signing McBreens Heifer. I sang it for the first time in LA  it is a great Percy French song. I was asking in LA if they knew what a heifer was? They call them steers! It was hysterical, she cackles.

- Cara O'Sullivan performs in the UCH this Saturday night. See www.uch.ie for details
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What its like to be a H1B visa wife even before Trumps curbs Even as the Trump administration proposes H1B visa restrictions, an excerpt from the book 'Visa Wives' reveals the enormous insecurities these visa holders and their families already deal with /news/talking-point/what-it-s-like-to-be-a-h1b-visa-wife-even-before-trump-s-curbs-111646907328100.html 111646907328100 story

You might have heard how work visas can get exploitative in the new country. But you truly understand the turmoil that work visa vulnerability puts you in only when you actually experience it. The tenure of a standard non-immigrant visa like H1B is six years. The permit for the individuals stay in the US is not granted for the entire period of six years at a stretch. If you are a skilled worker, you might get a valid visa for one year too, and would need to get it extended from time to time.

Not every on-site posting is one that might last over a year or two. Your spouse or you might be told by the company that this is the only project available. Take it. If things work out, you might be retained. Otherwise you can find other projects."

The on-site client company then plays god. You thought you could make it for nine months. Three months on, market compulsion", large-scale downsizing" and other such phrases can send you back home. My colleague was good at his job. But to terminate his services, they sent the security personnel to his desk, and escorted him out. They would not even let him collect his things."

Once a client company decides to terminate your role in the project, you will need to fall back on your India-based employer company to be assigned to another project. This is time-bound. Usually, companies allow their employees to stay on for a few weeks after termination. These weeks can be a drain, emotionally and practically.

Says Sailu Balakrishna, whose husband has made such moves five times in two years, When it happens the first time, you get tense. You do not know how the process works. By the second time, you get used to it. If you have made up your mind to go back to India after a while, you view this as a chance to live abroad. But if you want to stay on, your peace of mind is impacted. We are usually unhappy with the companies. They project some tenure which may be long and push us out too early. Sometimes, they stand by their word. It is all right if the tenure is shortened or extended by a month. But when they say they will keep him for eight months and turn him out in four and a half, we feel cheated. Usually, it is unlikely that you will get the next assignment in the same state. Even if another project is assigned, uncertainty looms ahead."...

What happens when you are given the pink slip from the client company? What does it do to not just the H1B visa holder, but also the woman who has left everything behind and joined him in the hope of a new life? Pink-slip fears and nightmares of H1B holders can affect families greatly.

Who gets to stay on and who doesnt? How do people fight their circumstances?

Kripakar Nath and his wife were both working on their respective H1B visas when her visa was rejected. The only option was to convert her visa to an H4 if she were to continue living in the same town. Misfortune played its cards. In the same week, Kripakars office laid him off. He was forced to make a decision on whether to stay on or move back to India.

A key factor for them was their five-year-old son and his schooling. Kripakar did not want to jeopardize his sons chance of staying on in the US, and so sent his wife and child to live in India for a while. Meanwhile, he vacated his home, put their furniture in storage and moved in with some bachelor colleagues.

He constantly tried looking out for other assignments through his Indian company, but also kept in touch with the boss who had given him the pink slip. It took him some months and efforts with his old boss to get back into the same office on a new assignment. It played havoc on their family life in the bargain. Kripakars wife continued working in India, and was dependent on her own parents for support in taking care of her child.

Visa Wives: Emigration Experiences of Indian Women in the US by Radhika M.B.

Should a new assignment be allotted in another state within the US, it is likely that families might choose to stay on in their locations for the sake of their childs schooling till such time as the spouse settles down in his new assignment. Such moves transform transcontinental nomads to intra-country nomads of the IT workforce. Such a life might make sense for those who are backpackers at heart. For the ones seeking stability and a sense of settling down, it is hell.

Consider this, a typical transition day for an H1B holder. Sailus husband, Anuj, was on the verge of finishing his current project in Texasthe project he was sent to the US for. With a whole two months of uncertainty, the two were very worried. Inside Sailus troubled head, a storm was brewing. Why is he not being aggressive? Why does he take anything anyone says at face value? Why does he trust people blindly?" She wanted the American dream to work. But was this really that dream?

Their future was hanging in the air. Here she was, having left her own job, to support him through the transition, hoping against hope that he would land a long-term assignment soon. And yet, her own sacrifice of her career seemed to be mocking her. She took tired steps into the kitchen to get breakfast readyand stared at the spartan plastic canisters with half-finished grocery supplies. Have to finish these before we move back to India."

She let out a loud sigh. Or not." It was obvious that she did not want to go back. Anuj did not want to go back either. Neither of them was sure how desperately the other wanted to stay on in the US. If things dont work out, come back. You can make money in India too," his mother had told him the previous night. From what he had said in response, Sailu was sure he sought solace in returning home, to the comforting proximity of his parents.

From the kitchen, she heard him talk to his boss. She knew his manager was giving him false assurances. The end of the project was days away. Anujs profile was up on the intranet site of his company in the resources available section. Calls that initially came in were for the northSeattle. He was keen on taking it up, though the thought of a harsh winter scared him.

Wait for a better project that does justice to your technical capabilities. This one is a diversion from your profile," suggested his manager. An entire week after Anuj heeded that piece of advice, they were left with conversations that ended with no return calls, possible client interviews" and no other project availability. Each time he responded to any calls, Sailu was immediately on the Internet searching out those placesMinnesota, Arizona, Tennessee.

Hurry up. Once Thanksgiving arrives, no one in your company will be in the mood to work or assign projects. Grab what you get," Anujs friend from Philadelphia told him. Anuj felt sandwiched between the go, get it now pressures of his near ones, and the non-committal attitude of his boss. What if its destiny for me to go back to India? What will these company guys think of me if I keep going after them for my work? Its not right to disturb people ..."

Sailu was enraged. She felt the urge to chat with his bosses directly and ask them what was happening. She had experience in IT too, and understanding of the way bosses and systems work. It was a game she knew like the back of her hand. She had grasped the jobs game in the US economy too very quickly.

Soon it was Thanksgiving, the holiday weekend when company bigwigs would be away with families feasting on turkey or shopping. We have a project in Arizona. You are a good fit, but the client will need to interview you," said an HR representative from his company. An interview with the client always takes some scheduling. The couple knew this would take a few days. They had to take a call on vacating their Houston apartment.

Sailu had taken pains to assimilate in their Houston neighbourhood. She made a bunch of friends among the Indians out there. For the first time in her life, she felt uninhibited about exercising in her neighbourhood gym.

Women would send their kids off to school and spend an hour or two at the gym every morning, giving them a break from the daily chores. They had even planned a trip together soonwith all the families. It had hardly been a few months. She had sacrificed her own careerfor what? This now here, now gone" situation?

Excerpted from Visa Wives: Emigration Experiences of Indian Women in the US by Radhika M.B. (Ebury Press, 320 pages, Rs399 ), with permission from Penguin Random House India.
Built between roughly A.D. 1113 and 1150, and encompassing an area of about 500 acres (200 hectares), Angkor Wat is one of the largest religious monuments ever constructed. Its name means "temple city."

Originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, it was converted into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century, and statues of Buddha were added to its already rich artwork. Sometime later it was turned into a military fortification. Today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that scientists are struggling to preserve.

Its 213-foot-tall (65 meters) central tower is surrounded by four smaller towers and a series of enclosure walls, a layout that recreates the image of Mount Meru, a legendary place in Hindu mythology that is said to lie beyond the Himalayas and be the home of the gods.

Within the largest city in the world

The city where the temple was built, Angkor, is located in modern-day Cambodia and was once the capital of the Khmer Empire. This city contains hundreds of temples. The population may have been over 1 million people. It was easily the largest city in the world until the Industrial Revolution.

Angkor had an urban core that could easily have held 500,000 people and a vast hinterland that had many more inhabitants airborne laser scanning (lidar) research has shown. Researchers have also identified a "lost" city called Mahendraparvata, which is located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Angkor Wat.

A moat, towers, spiral structure and hidden paintings

Angkor Wat itself is surrounded by a 650-foot-wide (200 m) moat that encompasses a perimeter of more than 3 miles (5 km). This moat is 13 feet deep (4 m) and would have helped stabilize the temple's foundation, preventing groundwater from rising too high or falling too low.

Angkor Wat's main entrance was to the west (a direction associated with Vishnu) across a stone causeway, with guardian lions marking the way. Recently, archaeologists found the remains of eight towers made of sandstone and laterite by the western gateway. These towers may be the remains of shrines that were in use before Angkor Wat was fully constructed. To the east of the temple was a second, more modest, entrance.

The heart of the temple was the central tower, entered by way of a steep staircase, a statue of Vishnu at top. This tower "was at once the symbolic center of the nation and the actual center where secular and sacred power joined forces," writes researcher Eleanor Mannikka in the book "Angkor: Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire" (Abbeville Press, 2002). "From that unparalleled space, Vishnu and the king ruled over the Khmer people."

Hidden paintings have been discovered in the central tower. One chamber in the tower has a scene showing a traditional Khmer ensemble of musical instruments known as the pinpeat, which is made up of different gongs, xylophones, wind instruments and other percussion instruments. In the same chamber, there's also an intricate scene featuring people riding horses between two structures, which might be temples. These two paintings are among 200 that have been discovered in Angkor Wat since 2010.

A mile long sand structure containing a variety of spiral designs was recently discovered beside Angkor Wat by archaeologists using lidar. It would have existed for a brief period during the mid-to-late 12th century. Archaeologists are not certain what it was used for, and it's possible that the structure was never completed.

The remains of homes and ponds used by workers who lived near Angkor Wat, and serviced the temple, were also found recently during lidar research.

Bas relief carving showing Hindu devas, or gods, pulling on the snake Vasuki in the Churning of the Sea of Milk creation story. (opens in new tab) Shutterstock.com (opens in new tab) ) (Image credit: BasPhoto

Vishnu and the king

The builder of Angkor Wat was a king named Suryavarman II. A usurper, he came to power in his teenage years by killing his great uncle, Dharanindravarman I, while he was riding an elephant. An inscription says that Suryavarman killed the man "as Garuda [a mythical bird] on a mountain ledge would kill a serpent."

Suryavarman's bloodlust would continue into his rule; he launched attacks into Vietnam in an effort to gain control over the territory. He also made peaceful diplomatic advances, re-opening relations with China.

He venerated the god Vishnu, a deity often depicted as a protector, and installed a statue of the god in Angkor Wat's central tower. This devotion can also be seen in one of the most remarkable reliefs at Angkor Wat, located in the southeast of the temple. The relief shows a chapter in the Hindu story of creation known as the "churning of the sea of milk."

As archaeologist Michael Coe writes, the relief "describes how the devas (gods) and the asuras (demons) churned the ocean under the aegis of Vishnu, to produce the divine elixir of immortality," ("Angkor and the Khmer Civilization," Thames & Hudson, 2003). Scholars consider this relief to be one of the finest art pieces at Angkor Wat.

Suryavarman's devotion to Vishnu is also shown in the posthumous name he was given, "Paramavishnuloka" which, according to researcher Helene Legendre-De Koninck, means "he who is in the supreme abode of Vishnu." ("Angkor Wat: A Royal Temple (opens in new tab)," VDG, 2001).

Construction techniques

Building Angkor Wat was an enormous undertaking that involved quarrying, careful artistic work and lots of digging. To create the moat around the temple, 1.5 million cubic meters (53 million cubic feet) of sand and silt were moved, a task that would have required thousands of people working at one time.

The buildings at Angkor Wat posed their own challenges. To support them a tough material called laterite was used, which in turn was encased with softer sandstone that was used for carving the reliefs. These sandstone blocks were quarried at the Kulen Hills, about 18 miles (30 km) to the north. A series of canals were used to transport the blocks to Angkor Wat, research shows.

Beneath the central tower was a shaft that leads to a chamber where, in 1934, archaeologists found "two pieces of crystal and two gold leaves far beneath where the Vishnu statue must have been," Coe writes, adding that deposits like these "spiritually 'energized' a temple, much as a battery will provide power to a portable electronic device."

A Ficus strangulosa tree grows over a doorway at Angkor Wat. (opens in new tab) Shutterstock.com (opens in new tab) ) (Image credit: David Davis

Purpose

Although Angkor Wat is dedicated to Vishnu, the full purpose of the temple is still debated. One question is whether the ashes of Suryavarman II were interred in the monument, perhaps in the same chamber where the deposits were found. If that were the case it would give the temple a funerary meaning.

Eleanor Mannikka has noted that Angkor Wat is located at 13.41 degrees north in latitude and that the north-south axis of the central tower's chamber is 13.43 cubits long. This, Mannikka believes, is not an accident. "In the central sanctuary, Vishnu is not only placed at the latitude of Angkor Wat, he is also placed along the axis of the earth," she writes, pointing out that the Khmer knew the Earth was round.

In addition, in her writing, Mannikka notes a dozen lunar alignments with Angkor Wat's towers, suggesting that it served an important astronomical role. "During the long and clear Cambodian nights, when the stars filled every inch of the black sky, the astronomer-priests stood on the long western causeway ... and recorded the movements of the moon against the towers in the top two galleries of the temple."

Additional resources
A battle is looming between one of South America's largest state-backed oil companies and an indigenous community of about 400 in the Ecuadorian rainforest.

The area is near Yasuni National Park, in eastern Ecuador, home to some of the richest variety of life on Earth. Studies have shown that a single hectare here contains a wider variety of life than in all of North America.

The state-backed company, Petroamazonas, has told the Kichwa tribe that they plan to begin prospecting for oil tomorrow (Jan. 15) in the area, the Guardian reported. But the tribesmen say they are ready to die fighting to protect their land, which covers some 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) of pristine rainforest, an area about four times the size of the District of Columbia.

The community secretary, Klider Gualinga, told the Guardian that more than 80 percent of the village opposes the oil deal, but that a small minority is pushing it through against their wishes and local rules.

"People think it is dishonest and the oil company is treating them like dogs. It does not respect the land or the planet. There is no deal, nothing is agreed. The people do not want the oil company," Gualinga said. "We have decided to fight to the end. Each landholder will defend their territory. We will help each other and stand shoulder to shoulder to prevent anyone from passing."

The community decided to reject an offer from the company late last year because they were concerned about the long-term environmental impact of mining, the Guardian reported. But the village recently learned that their chief signed a deal to allow the mining, despite not being granted approval.

Earlier offers of a brand-new school, guaranteed college education of children and improved healthcare were dropped in the document, which promises only $40 per hectare, the Guardian reported.

The villagers stand no chance against Petroamazonas, which is backed by the Ecuadorian military, according to news reports.

Members of the community have started a last-ditch legal effort stop the company, and are being helped by a British businesswoman who is married to the village shaman and who was recently made the head of a local eco lodge (a facility for tourists interested in ecologically-friendly travel), the Guardian noted.

Yasuni National Park, near the tribe's land, is also home to two of the world's last uncontacted tribes. Other tribes without exposure to the outside world likely exist elsewhere in the Amazon, researchers believe.

Reach Douglas Main at dmain@techmedianetwork.com. Follow him on Twitter @Douglas_Main. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We're also on Facebook and Google+.
More than 50 geoglyphs, including one shaped like a swastika, have been discovered in northern Kazakhstan.

More than 50 geoglyphs with various shapes and sizes, including a massive swastika, have been discovered across northern Kazakhstan in Central Asia, say archaeologists.

These sprawling structures, mostly earthen mounds, create the type of landscape art most famously seen in the Nazca region of Peru.

Discovered using Google Earth, the geoglyphs are designed in a variety of geometric shapes, including squares, rings, crosses and swastikas (the swastika is a design that was used in ancient times). Ranging from 90 to 400 meters (295 to 1,312 feet) in diameter, some of them are longer than a modern-day aircraft carrier. Researchers say that the geoglyphs are difficult to see on the ground, but can easily be seen from the sky. [See Photos of the Amazing Geoglyphs in Kazakhstan]

Over the past year, an archaeological expedition from Kazakhstan's Kostanay University, working in collaboration with Vilnius University in Lithuania, has been examining the geoglyphs. The team, which is conducting archaeological excavations, ground-penetrating radar surveys, aerial photography and dating, recently presented its initial results at the European Association of Archaeologists' annual meeting in Istanbul.

The geoglyphs were made of earthen mounds.

Archaeological excavations uncovered the remains of structures and hearths at the geoglyphs, suggesting that rituals took place there, said archaeologists Irina Shevnina and Andrew Logvin, of Kostanay University, in an email to Live Science. Ancient tribes may also have used the geoglyphs to mark ownership of the land, the researchers noted.

"As of today, we can say only one thing  the geoglyphs were built by ancient people. By whom and for what purpose, remains a mystery," said Shevnina and Logvin.

Why they're builders used geometric shapes is also a mystery, although the swastika is an ancient symbol found throughout Europe and Asia.

Geoglyphs around the world

While Peru's Nazca Lines are the world's most famous geoglyphs, archaeological research suggests that geoglyphs were constructed in numerous areas around the world by different cultures.

For instance, in the Middle East, archaeologists have found thousands of wheel-shaped structures that are easily visible from the sky, but hard to see on the ground. Also recently in Russia, archaeologists excavated a geoglyph shaped like an elk, which appears older than the Nazca Lines.

Ancient geoglyphs have also been reported in many other countries, including the United Kingdom, Brazil and even the Southwestern United States. The introduction of high-resolution Google Earth imagery over the last decade has helped both professional archaeologists and amateurs detect and study these enigmatic structures.

Editor's Note: This article was updated to reflect the fact that all of the geoglyphs were made of earthen mounds.

Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.
Dads are more involved in parenting these days than ever.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

On Jan. 21, in a collective demonstration of historic proportions, millions of women marched (opens in new tab) in Washington, D.C. and other cities around the world in support of key policy issues such as reproductive rights, equal pay for equal work and support for balancing work and family.

These marches demonstrated the empowerment of women and a widespread commitment to ensuring that women's rights are furthered  and not eroded  by policymakers. But policy is not the only arena that affects women's freedoms and well-being.

If equality begins at home, how much progress has been made toward equality in parenting?

The day after the march, The New York Times published an article that described a scene in Montclair, New Jersey, showing what happened when women were absent from town. The article narrated how women's absence resulted in empty yoga classes, Starbucks cafes populated by men and hapless fathers struggling to juggle children's weekend schedules.

In other words, as its critics pointed out, the article reinforced the outdated notion that mothers are the primary parents and fathers are (at best) mere helpers and incapable of caring for children independently.

My research focuses on the sharing of parenting between mothers and fathers in dual-earner couples  a group that is most likely to hold gender egalitarian beliefs. In this group, successfully balancing work and family makes some degree of shared parenting necessary.

My research and that of others shows that even though significant progress has been made toward gender equality in parenting, more subtle inequalities remain. Many fathers  even those in the households most likely to have progressive views on parenting  have not achieved equality with mothers in key areas.

Men's parenting time has increased, but women's has too

It is true that today's fathers are more involved in parenting children than ever before. Over the past half-century, fathers in America nearly tripled their child care time from 2.5 hours per week in 1965 to seven hours per week in 2011.

But, over this period, women's parenting time too has increased  from 10 hours per week in 1965 to 14 hours per week in 2011. This has resulted in a smaller but persistent gap in the time mothers and fathers spend on parenting.

This gap starts in the earliest months of parenthood. Using detailed daily records of new parents' activities, my team's research has shown that working mothers take on a greater share of the child care burden for a new baby than do fathers. In fact, new mothers allocated twice as much of their available time to routine child care activities than fathers.

When considering time spent in child care plus time spent in housework and working for pay, the birth of a baby increased mothers' total workload by 21 hours per week. In contrast, fathers' total workload increased by only 12.5 hours per week. This represents a 70 percent greater increase in workload for women compared to men.

These differences cannot be explained away by differences in paid work hours or breastfeeding.

Mothers face intense parenting pressure

So, the question remains, why hasn't fathers' greater involvement substituted for mothers' involvement, thus reducing the parenting burden on women?

What has happened is that middle-class families now follow the norm of "intensive parenting," which dictates that parenting should be child-centered, guided by expert advice and costly in terms of time, money and emotional investment in order to produce the most successful child possible.

Picture modern parents scouring bookstores for the latest parenting manual and preschool math workbooks, fretting over their toddler's picky eating habits and overloading their weekly schedules with children's activities and playdates. This pressure to parent intensively does not fall equally on middle-class mothers and fathers, however. Because motherhood remains an idealized role, it is mothers who experience the greatest pressure to meet these unrealistic parenting standards.

Mothers who feel intense pressure to invest heavily in their children may also be reluctant to give up control over parenting. What ends up happening is that fathers spend less time in sole charge of their children. Research on parenting time shows that women are in sole charge of their children for nearly one-third of their time whereas men only for about 8 percent of their time.

Thus, even fathers who are highly involved coparents may experience parenting primarily in the company of children's mothers and more rarely on their own.

Mothers do more multitasking

Another area in which subtle, persistent inequality exists is multitasking  especially doing several unpaid work activities (e.g., housework and child care) at the same time.

Mothers multitask more than fathers do. A recent study showed the size of this difference: mothers in dual-earner families spent 10 more hours per week multitasking than did fathers.

When fathers are parenting solo, they may be focusing on the basics: making sure children are fed, getting children to/from activities, etc. In contrast, when mothers are parenting solo, they may be taking care of the basics while also getting housework done and/or doing paid work.

Although multitasking may be efficient, frequent multitasking contributes to greater day-to-day stress for mothers compared to fathers. Mothers who did more multitasking at home felt more frustrated, irritated and anxious. They said they felt more often rushed or pressed for time.

Thus, if fathers are less likely to multitask child care and housework, some women may have returned from the march to weekend laundry or grocery shopping left undone, thus beginning the new work week with an additional burden.

Mothers do more managing and organizing

Intensive parenting requires strong dedication to managing children's activities, organizing schedules and making appointments  part of the so-called "worry work" of parenting.

This aspect of parenting is especially challenging to study, because much of this work takes place inside the parent's head. Research that has surveyed or interviewed parents about who takes responsibility for the managerial and organizational aspects of parenting indicates that mothers take greater responsibility than fathers.

In fact, fathers' involvement in this component of parenting has lagged behind gains in their direct involvement in caring for their children. In other words, mothers are more likely to make child care arrangements, schedule doctors' appointments and sign the permission slips. Mothers remember and mothers remind.

Perhaps some mothers who traveled to the D.C. march might want to recall, how many reminders and to-do lists for children and fathers did they need to leave behind? And how many text messages were exchanged with fathers about where to find a missing sport or dance class accessory?

The truth, as made evident through The New York Times article, is: We still have a way to go to achieve equality in parenting.

Sarah Schoppe-Sullivan, Professor of Human Sciences and Psychology; Faculty Associate of the Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy, The Ohio State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
The wire recorder that, once fixed, played the wire spool with the songs sung by Holocaust survivors in Henonville, France.

For the first time in decades, Yiddish and German songs sung by Holocaust victims can be heard, now that an old "wire recorder" has been repaired.

The recordings were completed by the late David Boder (1886-1961), a professor of psychology at the Illinois Institute of Technology. During the summer of 1946, Boder traveled to Europe and interviewed 130 Jewish Holocaust survivors.

Boder conducted the interviews in nine languages at refugee camps in France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. To record some of the first oral histories of camp survivors, he used a wire recorder, a novel instrument at the time. The device moves a wire across a recording head, a process that magnetizes points along the wire based on features of an electrical audio signal. [Photos: Escape Tunnel at Holocaust Death Site]

In all, Boder's recordings, including those of songs and religious services, took up 200 spools of steel wire.

Some of Boder's recorders were archived in 1967 at the Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology at The University of Akron (UA) in Ohio. During a recent effort to digitize the recordings, researchers stumbled across a spool with the Yiddish and German "Henonville Songs." The spool, long thought to be lost, had been sitting in a mislabeled canister, according to a UA statement.

"I think it is one of the most important discoveries from our collections in our 50-year history," David Baker, the executive director of the Cummings Center, said in the statement. "The songs were recorded at a refugee camp in Henonville, France. The Nazis made the prisoners sing some of these songs as they ran to their forced-labor sites and back each day."

Now, Baker and other historians can hear the more than 70-year-old recordings.

"That we could give the world the melody to a song sung by those sentenced to their death through forced labor during one of the most unspeakable horrorsof the 20th century is remarkable," Baker said.

eBay to the rescue

When researchers came upon the spool, none of the wire recorders at the Cummings Center were compatible with the recording, the university said.

After a yearlong search, Litsa Varonis, an instructional designer in Instructional Services at UA, found the right wire-recorder model on eBay. Varonis, who is now retired, bought the recorder and donated it to the center.

Her husband, Orestes Varonis, a retired electrical engineer, helped James Newhall, a senior multimedia producer in Instructional Services at UA, redesign the recorder so that it would work.

"There was a lot of time spent on research and experimentation," Newhall said in the statement. "The recorder no longer uses vacuum tubes or rubber tires, and is mostly built from new parts. It has a simpler, and more accurate, drive mechanism."

The wire recorder that, once fixed, played the wire spool with the songs sung by Holocaust survivors in Henonville, France. (Image credit: The University of Akron)

Once the machine was functional, Jon Endres, a multimedia producer/media specialist at the Cummings Center, digitized the recordings.

"It felt like I was helping in some way to bring these voices to the present, voices that had become somewhat lost to the historical record," Endres said. "The discovery of this single canister holding a lost recording means that these songs can be heard again, they can be studied and they can inform us in a new way about the experiences, the joys and the frustrations of these displaced persons." [Image Gallery: WWII Lard, Relics Revealed by Storms]

The Cummings Center shared the recordings with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., whose staff translated the songs. The museum also kept a digitized copy for its own collection.

News of the discovery has spread, with researchers worldwide saying they want to hear the recordings, Baker said.

"These songs, in the voices of those subjected to unspeakable cruelty, are a reminder of the power of memory, the value of history and the indomitable human spirit," Baker said. "Hearing them sing again after 70 years of silence gives the world a greater understanding of the circumstances and experiences of those who were witnesses to a dark chapter in human history."

Original article on Live Science.
De ce aviatia civila rusa nu mai poate fi salvata / O mie de piloti concediati de la aplicarea sanctiunilor
Why do otherwise healthy sea creatures end up stranded along coastal areas around the world? NASA scientists are searching for the answer.

Whales, dolphins and porpoises  known collectively as cetaceans  partially use magnetic-field sensing to navigate. According to NASA scientists, one explanation for these mysterious strandings could be that the animals' internal compasses become confused during severe solar storms, which affect Earths magnetic fields, and so they lose their way. To investigate this marine mystery, NASA has launched a study that will determine whether there is a link between solar storms and animal beachings.

Cetaceans become stranded around the world in groups as small as three or as large as several hundred per event. According to Katie Moore, a collaborator on the NASA study and director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare's Animal Rescue Program, the global phenomenon occurs most often in New Zealand, Australia and Cape Cod, Massachusetts. [Images: Sharks & Whales from Above]

Despite the prevalence of such beaching events, study leader Antti Pulkkinen, a heliophysicist (a person who studies the effects of the sun on the solar system) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said there has been very little quantitative research.

"We estimate that records on the order of hundreds of cetacean mass strandings will be available for study, thus making our analyses statistically significant," Pulkkinen said in a statement. "What were going to do is throw cold, hard data at this. It's a long-standing mystery and its important that we figure out whats going on."

Pulkkinen and his collaborators will work with the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the International Fund for Animal Welfare to sift through cetacean mass stranding reports, space-weather databases and field observations. The researchers expect to complete the study by the end of September.

The scientists said the results won't necessarily imply a link, but the study will be the first thorough research into whether a correlation exists between the solar storms and beaching events.

"If we understand the relationship between the two, we may be able to use observations of solar storms as an early warning for potential strandings to occur," Moore said. "This would allow stranding responders in global hotspots, and, really, around the world, to be better prepared to respond, thus having the opportunity to save more animals."

Original article on Live Science.
Viola M. Moore passed away on January 30, 2017 at the age of 87. She was a loving daughter, sister, wife, and mother. She will be greatly missed by all who knew her.

Viola Ileana Martinez Moore, better known as Viola Moore, had been a barrier breaker. Viola had been the perfect representative of the Hispanic woman who has no limitations, a goal- getter, a catcher of dreams, and the best example for our community as a whole. If there is a word to express her life, it is, excellent.

Mrs. Moore comes from a family of educators. Born in Zapata and a native of Laredo, Viola was a product of the Laredo Independent School District, attending Heights Elementary, Bruni Elementary, Christen Middle School, and finally Martin High School where she graduated 5th out of 300 classmates in 1947. Viola attended Laredo Junior college, obtaining an emergency teaching certificate from the State of Texas, and became an educator at the early age of 19. She began teaching at Zapata Independent School District and attending Texas A&I at Kingsville, now Texas A&M, on Saturdays.

Her senior year, she transferred to our Lady of the Lake in San Antonio where she received a BA in English, Math and Education in 1953. Teaching in Venezuela after receiving a MA in 1956 was only one of her many accomplishments. Obtaining a Bachelors Degree and a Masters Degree in the 1950s was a remarkable achievement for Mrs. Moore, given that a woman, especially a Hispanic woman, rarely did so at that time in history. Mrs. Moore became the first female administrator of a 5-A high school and then later became the first female Hispanic principal of a 5-A high school in Texas. Upon Retirement from Laredo Independent School District, she served as principal at Blessed Sacrament Elementary School and served two terms as a board member for Laredo I. S. D. Mrs. Moore has received several awards and recognitions throughout the years.

She had the new J. W. Nixon Band hall named after her. She was inducted into the Martin High School Tiger Legends Hall of Fame and received the TAMIU WAW Pathmaker/Abrecaminos award. She has inspired many members of the community and has become a vision of hope for those who have felt that choices are limited to create a better future for themselves. She has exhibited her undeniable dedication to the Laredo Community. Mrs. Moore has also served in several committees that award financial help to Laredo students in order to further their education and reward them for their accomplishments, feeding their desires to continue to make and reach their goals. She was a proud member of her parish San Martin De Porres Catholic Church and served in the Blessed Sacrament Altar Society.

She is preceded in death by her parents, Leobardo Martinez and Maria Del Refugio Uribe Martinez; sister, Hilda Martinez Flores; and by her husband, Phillip N. Moore, Jr.

Mrs. Moore is survived by her brother, Leobardo (Elma) Martinez; children, Christopher E. (P. J.) Moore, Diana Irene Moore (Richard) Dickenson, Mary Jo Moore; step-daughter, Phyllis Moore Gallagher. She is further survived by grandchildren, Jessica Ilene Moore, Alexandra Acevedo, Christopher E. Moore, Jr, Kimberly Michelle Moore, Iliana A. San Miguel, Carlos Patrick (Monica) Gallagher, Brett Anthony Gallagher; great granddaughter, Meagan Dunn, nieces, nephews and other relatives.

A rosary will be recited on Thursday, February 2, 2017 at 7:00 p.m. in the Hillside Funeral Home Chapel. A visitation will be held from 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

A funeral service will be held on Friday, February 3, 2017 at 9:40 a.m. from Hillside Funeral Home to San Martin de Porres Catholic Church. A communion service will be celebrated at 10:00 a.m.

Interment will follow at the family plot of the Calvary Catholic Cemetery.

Pallbearers will be Jose Maria Flores, Jaime Adalberto Flores, Jorge Flores, Javier Flores, Leobardo Martinez, Eduardo Martinez, Daniel Martinez, Ricardo Martinez and Christopher Moore.

Many thanks to Generous Hospice staff, Dr. Humberto Varela, Dr. Francisco Pena, Doctors Hospital, and her caregivers, Luisa, Lydia, and Fina.

If you would like to sign the guestbook or send private condolences, you may do so at www.hillsidefuneral.com.

Arrangements are under the direction of Hillside Funeral Home, 310 Hillside Road.
According to the Lexis Advance legal database, Judge Gorsuch authored 212 published opinions during his ten years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Decisions from cases in the Tenth Circuit in which Justice Gorsuch participated can be found on the website of the Court (select Search Opinions under Opinion drop-down and use Gorsuch as a search term). Cases are also available on Google Scholar External (On the Google Scholar homepage, select Case law and then click on Select courts. On the next page, select Court of Appeals under Tenth Circuit and click Done. On the search page, use Gorsuch as a search term.) Visitors to the Law Library of Congress and other law libraries can also use legal research databases such as Lexis Advance and Westlaw to perform more targeted searching for majority opinions by Judge Gorsuch, as well as his concurring and dissenting opinions.

Noteworthy Recent Opinions authored by Judge Gorsuch include the following:
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Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: February 03 2017

The Village of Hempstead hosted its annual Law Enforcement Appreciation Day to recognize the Hempstead Police Departments commitment to protecting the community.

Hempstead, NY - February 1, 2017 - The Village of Hempstead recently hosted its annual Law Enforcement Appreciation Day to recognize the Hempstead Police Departments unwavering commitment to protecting the community. During the program, Village of Hempstead Mayor Wayne J. Hall, Sr., joined elementary school students from both the Hempstead School District and Hempstead Charter Schools to present handmade Thank You cards to members of the Hempstead Police Department. The students gave a special performance acknowledging their appreciation for the officers service. In addition, a number of thankful residents shared emotional and heartfelt testimonials during the ceremony to highlight the powerful, positive impact the members of the Hempstead Police Department has had on the community.

The program is part of the national movement lead by the nonprofit organization Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S), which works to help rebuild the shattered lives of survivors and co-workers affected by line-of-duty deaths through establishing partnerships between law enforcement and the community. Representatives of the Metro New York division of C.O.P.S. and the Hempstead Chamber of Commerce were also in attendance to celebrate the great work of the Hempstead Police Department.

For more information, please call the Incorporated Village of Hempstead at 516.489.3400 or visit the website at www.villageofhempstead.org
Local News, Crime, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: February 03 2017

County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Acting Police Commissioner Thomas C. Krumpter are urging citizens to be vigilant when receiving telephone solicitations.

Nassau County, NY - February 2, 2017 - County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Acting Police Commissioner Thomas C. Krumpter are urging citizens to be vigilant when receiving telephone solicitations requesting payment via Green Dot cards or Western Union.



It has come to the attention of the Nassau County Police Department that individuals are receiving calls from persons claiming that they owe money for unpaid taxes or utility bills. In these cases individuals are contacted by scammers claiming that they are federal or utility company employees and that the individual called owes money. These victims are told they can avoid arrest, foreclosure or suspension/termination of services if they make payment to the caller using Green Dot cards or Western Union.



In another scam a caller states that an individual has missed jury duty, or a family member has been kidnapped, held hostage, or involved in an auto accident. The caller may claim to be a law enforcement officer. The victim is told to send money either through Western Union or via Green Dot card to keep from being arrested or to help the family member.



In addition to these, we have seen scams advising individuals that they have won large sums of money, phone calls or notifications, by mail or online, advising that individuals are approved for a loan or grant, or winners of a sweepstakes lottery. In some instances they even receive a partial bank check of the winnings that appears to be legitimate, but an up-front payment for processing fees are requested before funds can be claimed.



These scams cost honest citizens thousands of unrecoverable dollars.

This information is being provided to residents to make them aware of these ongoing scams. If you believe you may have been a victim of any of these scams, please call 911 immediately.



Anyone with information that could lead to the arrest of the individual(s) responsible are asked to contact Nassau County Crime Stoppers at 1-800- 244-TIPS (8477). All calls remain anonymous.
Local News, Crime, National & World News, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: February 03 2017

Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued a statement regarding recent threats to JCCs across New York and sever other states, as well as in Canada.

New York, NY - February 2, 2017 - Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman issued the following statement:

I am deeply troubled by reports that 14 Jewish community centers (JCCs) across New York and 9 other states, as well as one in Canada, were the target of bomb threats on Tuesday. This was the third wave of widespread bomb threats against JCCs in less than a month. As we commemorated the Holocaust only days ago, threats of violence against Jews cannot be assumed to be idle.

Violent extremism in all its many forms must be countered both by preventative efforts, as well as investigation and prosecution. The Department of Homeland Securitys Countering Violent Extremism program was created to address the root causes of both homegrown extremism and international terrorism by providing local communities with resources to build and sustain prevention efforts and promote counter-narratives to confront violent extremist messaging online.

Despite recent high-profile attacks carried out by white supremacist extremists, including the shootings at the Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, and the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre, the Trump Administration is reportedly planning to narrow the scope of the Countering Violent Extremism program to only focus on what the administration deems Islamic extremism. Abandoning efforts to counter violent white supremacist ideology is profoundly misguided and will endanger Americans.

I strongly urge President Trump to maintain the focus of the Countering Violent Extremism program on these, and all extremist threats, rather than allowing certain extremist ideologies to flourish unchallenged.

Regardless of federal policy, I would also renew my appeal to my colleagues in local law enforcement to aggressively investigate and prosecute all hate crimes. On November 16, 2016 my office provided guidance to local law enforcement on how to identify, investigate, and prosecute bias related crimes, and my office stands ready to assist in those matters in any way we can.
Three Woman Arrested During Massage Parlor Raid in Huntington Station

Crime, Press Releases

By Long Island News & PR Published: February 03 2017

Suffolk County Police today arrested three women during a massage parlor raid conducted in Huntington Station.

In response to numerous community complaints, Suffolk County Police Second Precinct Crime Section officers, Second Squad detectives, Suffolk County Police Criminal Intelligence Section detectives, Homeland Security officers, and Town of Huntington Code Enforcement officers, conducted an investigation into illegal activities at Ruby Spa in Huntington Station, NY.

Huntington Station, NY - February 2, 2017 - Suffolk County Police today arrested three women during a massage parlor raid conducted in Huntington Station today.

In response to numerous community complaints, Suffolk County Police Second Precinct Crime Section officers, Second Squad detectives, Suffolk County Police Criminal Intelligence Section detectives, Homeland Security officers, and Town of Huntington Code Enforcement officers, conducted an investigation into illegal activities at Ruby Spa, located at 332 East Jericho Turnpike.

The following women were arrested at approximately 2:20 p.m. and charged with Unauthorized Practice of a Profession, a Class E Felony under the NYS Education Law and Prostitution under the New York State Penal Law:

In Sun, 59, of Flushing

Bokim Cho, 61, of Flushing

Young Kim 64, of Flushing

An investigation by Town of Huntington Code Enforcement officers revealed numerous occupancy and town code violations. The investigation is continuing.

The women are scheduled to be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip on February 3.

A criminal charge is an accusation. A defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
The US military said that it believes two important al Qaeda operatives were killed and significant intelligence was seized during the controversial raid in central Yemen on Jan. 29 that killed 14 jihadists, more than 10 civilians, and one US Navy Seal. FDDs Long War Journal has previously identified Abdulrauf al Dhahab, one of the senior jihadist operatives killed in the raid, as a member of a family with strong ties to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

US Central Command, or CENTCOM, said that the raid, which was carried out by US Navy SEAL and other special operations forces, targeted a staging area, propaganda center, and logistics hub for AQAPs terrorist network. The raid took place in the province of Al Baydah, where US forces have targeted AQAP five times during the month of January.

Several of the previously announced 14 enemies killed were terrorist network leaders and facilitators, CENTCOM stated. Officials now believe that Sultan al Dhahab and Abd-al-Rauf [Abdulrauf] al Dhahab, two longstanding AQAP operational planners and weapons experts, were among the enemy killed at the scene.

FDDs Long War Journal reported the day the raid took place that Abdulrauf was killed, and he and three of his brothers, all who are now dead, played key leadership roles in AQAP. The US killed two of Abdulraufs brothers, Kaid and Nabil, both who served as AQAPs emir for Al Baydah province, in drone strikes. Another brother, Tariq, was killed by tribesmen after taking control of a town, raising al Qaedas flag, and swearing allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaedas emir. The brothers were also the brother-in-law of Anwar al Awlaki, the radical US cleric who inspired numerous attacks against the West and who also served as AQAPs external operations planner before the US killed him in 2011. [See Senior AQAP leader killed in US raid in central Yemen.]

CENTCOM upholds that the raid was an aggressive move to bring us closer to understanding, tracking, and eradicating AQAP, and vital intelligence was seized during the operations.

The US military has come under attack from some circles as civilians, including the eight year old daughter of Anwar al Awlaki, lost their lives during the raid. Press reports indicate that between 10 and 13 civlians may have been killed.

CENTCOM has maintained that civilians were killed after a heavy firefight ensued during the raid on the compound. In addition to the SEAL who was killed, four more members of the assault team were wounded and an Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft was destroyed.

The civilians who may have been killed appear to have been potentially caught up in aerial gunfire that was called in to assist US forces in contact, CENTCOM said on Feb. 1.

The SEALs came in contact against a determined enemy that included armed women firing from prepared fighting positions and the team took fire from all sides to include houses and other buildings.

This complex situation included small arms fire, hand grenades and close air support fire, CENTCOM continued.

The US has stepped up its targeting of AQAP in Al Baydah province, which has become a hub for AQAP. All five American strikes that have been reported against AQAP in Yemen this year have taken place in the province. Seven of the last nine strikes reported since the end of Nov. 2016 have occurred in Al Baydah. [See FDDs Long War Journal report, Charting the data for US airstrikes in Yemen, 2002  2017.]

The US military has justified strikes and raids against AQAP by stating that the group remains a significant threat to America and its allies and continues to establish safe havens in Yemen. AQAP has plotted multiple attacks against the US, including sophisticated attempts to blow up airliners using devices made by Ibrahim al Asiri, the groups master bomb maker.

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.
A drug which is highly effective at treating malaria and commonly used in the UK, failed to cure four patients who contracted the disease while visiting Africa, according to new research published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

The UK patients, who all recovered after receiving alternative treatment, were found to be infected with new strains of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. Although the researchers can't rule out other factors, they believe the treatment failure was due to these strains showing reduced susceptibility, a potential first sign of drug resistance, to Artemether-lumefantrine (AL), a type of Artemisinin Combination Therapy (ACT).

The World Health Organization recommends ACTs as the first-line treatment for uncomplicated Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Crucially, these are among the very first well-described cases of reduced susceptibility to ACT drugs used in Africa, an area of the world where most malaria cases and deaths occur.

The research team was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, with partners Public Health England (PHE), the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, the Hospital for Tropical Diseases and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

These are the first documented cases of AL failing to treat UK patients, and were all reported within a relatively short period of time - between October 2015 and February 2016. The team is concerned that this pattern may highlight a changing situation for malaria treatment in Africa, as well as in the UK. Crucially, none of the four cases could be explained by the 'slow clearance' artemisinin resistance found in the Greater Mekong Region. Instead, each patient was found to have a parasite with a mutation in at least one of the five drug resistance markers specifically investigated by the team.

Although malaria is not found in the UK, around 2,000 cases are diagnosed every year due to infected travellers returning from countries where the disease is endemic, mainly in Africa. This report describes four patients who were admitted to two UK hospitals after returning from Angola, Liberia or Uganda. After being diagnosed with malaria caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite they were given Artemether-lumefantrine.

Initially, all the patients recovered and were discharged within a week with complete or near complete clearance of detectable parasites in their blood. However, within six weeks of treatment each patient was readmitted with recurrent symptoms and increased levels of Plasmodium falciparum parasites in their blood. None of the patients had travelled to malaria endemic countries between the two hospital admissions.

Blood samples from each patient were sent to The PHE Malaria Reference Laboratory at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where genetic and parasitological investigations were carried out. For one patient, parasite genome sequencing was also conducted by the Sanger Institute.

Dr Colin Sutherland, Reader in Parasitology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who led the study, said: "Artemether-lumefantrine is the recommended treatment for non-life threatening cases of falciparum malaria in the UK. This strategy is considered to be working well, however our findings suggest that it might need reviewing - fortunately there are other effective drugs available. All the patients were identified by self-referral which suggests more cases of treatment failure in the UK may have occurred. Frontline doctors should be alert to the possibility of artemisinin-based drugs failing, and assist with the collection of detailed information about specific travel destinations.

"A concerted effort to monitor AL outcomes in UK malaria patients needs to be made. This will determine whether our frontline malaria treatment drug is under threat. The good news is that our collaborative infectious disease warning and testing systems which are in place, overseen by PHE, are highly effective."

Of particular concern to the researchers is that AL is also the most widely used ACT in Africa.

Dr Sutherland said: "These cases act as a warning for Africa. Drug resistance is one of the biggest threats we face in fighting malaria, and is already starting to occur in parasite strains prevalent in parts of South-East Asia. We need to understand why AL failed to clear these four cases of Plasmodium falciparum infection. Mutations were found in genes previously implicated in drug failure in Africa and these warrant further investigation as candidate genetic markers for AL susceptibility in Africa, a potential first sign of drug resistance."

Identifying potential problem parasite strains in countries where the disease is endemic can be difficult as residents face being bitten by mosquitoes every day. Therefore, the study of suspected treatment failure in travellers who contract malaria and return to countries where the disease is not found, means that health researchers and officials can confidently rule out a newly acquired malaria infection as the cause of recurring symptoms of the disease.

The report authors acknowledge their findings would have been strengthened by directly observing each treatment dose for all patients to ensure the full course of treatment was completed, and with measurement of post-treatment lumefantrine blood levels, to rule out any problems with malabsorption.

The work was supported by funding from Public Health England to the Malaria Reference Laboratory at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Genome sequencing was funded by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Publication

Colin J. Sutherland, Paul Lansdell, Mandy Sanders, Julian Muwanguzi, Donelly A. van Schalkwyk, Harparkash Kaur, Debbie Nolder, Julie Tucker, Hayley M. Bennett, Thomas D. Otto, Matthew Berriman, Trupti A. Patel, Roderick Lynn, Effrossyni Gkrania-Klotsas, Peter L. Chiodini. Pfk13-independent treatment failure in four imported cases of Plasmodium falciparum malaria given artemether-lumefantrine in the UK. Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. DOI:10.1128/AAC.02382-16
Helsinkis outlying islands are also seeing renewed development. A subway line is currently being built to Lauttasaari, an island just three kilometres to the west of the city center that is a popular recreational getaway. Its highest point, Mylly Rock, looks out over a range of forests, parks and marinas, and two beaches. A new subway station is also being built in Kulosaari, an island suburb to the east of downtown that Katter describes as a little like Brooklyn, complete with cultural offerings, views of the city, and easy proximity to downtown.

However, villas continue to be a popular choice for affluent buyers wanting a private retreat. Prices for villas within Greater Helsinki start at around USD 570,000, depending on the size and the neighbourhood. At the high end, prices range from one to two million euros (USD 1.13 million to USD 2.26 million), with some up to EUR 3.5 million (USD 3.96 million) and more.

Keneth Katter says he sees the greatest demand for large three and four-bedroom villas and for small investment properties that offer solid rental returns. While price growth tends to be slow in Helsinki, prices for owner-occupied housing in Helsinkis metropolitan area increased by 1.5% in 2015, according to Statistics Finland. In the rental market, which accounts for 48% of Helsinkis dwellings, yields of 6% to 8% and higher can be expected. The rental market is not regulated at all, Katter explains. However, there is support from the government for student housing, so this brings about unexpected rental levels.

The rental yields are a draw for many international buyers, including investors from Asia. Katter recently sold several units to a Chinese couple who plan to rent them out and receives regular enquiries from Korea and Singapore. With an eight-hour flight time from Beijing, Helsinki is easier to reach than destinations in southern Europe and some buyers are also choosing to relocate to the city. Finnair is using Helsinki as a hub for many Asian locations. There is increased interest and people are starting to settle here, Katter says. Given the citys clean air, laid back lifestyle and market stability, he expects demand will continue.

There are no restrictions for foreign property investors in Finland, but to ensure money laundering is not involved, funds from foreign buyers are tightly controlled and must be transferred by a Finnish Bank
Our Back Pages

Issue 110

Issue Date: Spring 1995

Editor: Derk Wynand

Assistant Editor: Marlene Cookshaw

Pages: 142

Number of contributors: 27

Buy Issue 110: Print Edition

This is an issue neatly divided into two parts. The first half of the journal is devoted to the winning entry in the first-ever Malahat Novella Prize. This prize still runs, alternating years with the Long Poem Prize. The 1995 winning piece is an accomplished, assured work of fiction from Sorayya Khan that unfolds in a tightly controlled and deeply emotional way.

In the Shadows of the Margalla Hills weaves together two storylines connected by loss. Anne Simon lives in Islamabad, where her husband has accepted a work posting. She inhabits the detached world of a certain type of expat, in a house that came with several servants and initially spending afternoons reclined on a chaise next to the swimming pool. Sadiq, a man from Lahore employed as a servant in Islamabad, welcomes his young son for a visit. The two storylines collide when Anne does irreparable damage to Sadiqs life, in a catastrophic event that both extinguishes and creates life, and which casts a shadow over the rest of the story. Khans writing maintains suspense while being lush and seductive and the interwoven storylines are gripping. The writing is evidently material that Khan worked over at length; the biographical info in this issue notes that the novella contains writing from a novel in progress, Five Queens Road (2005), while current information on Khan traces the Novella Prize-winning entry as finding its way into what became Khans novel City of Spies, published in 2015.

The second half of the issue contains exclusively poetry, including a piece from Lorna Crozier, then teaching at UVic, now Professor Emeritus. Patrick Friesen, now teaching at UVic, also has two poems included in this issue, as does Stephanie Bolster, who would go on to win the Malahat Long Poem Prize in 1997. There is really a wealth of work by Canadian poets in this issue: in addition to the above, we have two poems by Sina Queyras, then finishing her M.A. at Concordia, and now teaching there. There is also work by Brian Wickers and five poems from Don McKay, who had won his first Governor Generals award four years earlier and who would win his second five years later, in 2000.

There is an extensive reviews section, including P. K. Page writing on Idries Shahs The Commanding Self, and Carol Matthews (recently awarded the Order of British Columbia) considering four books by the wonderful Natalia Ginzburg.

Micaela Maftei

About Our Back Pages
Thiruvananthapuram: Raising a banner of protest over the partial payment of salaries, a section of KSRTC employees will stay away from work a day from Thursday midnight.

Though the Transport Minister AK Sasindran held talks with the representatives, the meeting ended with out reaching any consensus. Employees belonging to three unions, including

the one affiliated to the Left-leaning All India Trade Union Congress are also participating in the strike.
American Fracking Companies Keeping Their DUCs in a Row

OPEC producers are cutting production or so they say.



And in addition, several non-OPEC producers, like Russia, are also cutting production. If history is any guide we could do away with the titles and simply call the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the all rest, the Energy Liars Club.



They often say one thing and then do another.



Even Saudi Arabias Oil Minister noted that OPEC members have a history of lying to each other. I dont care how they treat each other. Im only interested in how their actions  not their words  affect the money in my pocket.





For all their dramatic statements and grand pronouncements of deals that I dont think will ever be honored, theyve actually already provided the United States a great service.In their quest to kill the American fracking industry, the Saudis have made the frackers stronger.When the competition didnt roll over and die, the OPEC members were forced to concede defeat and take a new line of attack (the recent production cuts). It wont work, and thats just fine for me, because it means cheap energy is here to stay.In 2014, oil cost about $100 per barrel. At the time, frackers were riding high. More than 1,000 rigs were at work in the U.S., breaking apart rock with hydraulic might to tap new sources of oil. Energy employment was surging, and home prices in North Dakota were rising too. The Saudis, who are the largest OPEC producers, werent happy.$100 oil was a good thing, but the insurgent American frackers had driven U.S. oil production above Saudi production, and the kings of oil werent interested in being displaced. So they ramped up production.As OPEC members opened the taps, and demand growth remained steady but sluggish, the imbalance between supply and demand took its toll. Oil prices started to slide, and the trend picked up speed in the second half of 2015. By early 2016, we hit the bottom, just under $30 per barrel.OPEC ministers must have been giddy. Their program caused widespread pain across the U.S. energy sector, resulting in massive layoffs by frackers, more than a few bankruptcies, and even falling land prices in energy-rich states.But then something happened that the Saudis didnt expect.Frackers got better. More specifically, frackers increased efficiency and survived.In 2014, fracking companies broke even at $60 per barrel. The cost of recovering oil includes the exploration and drilling process, which is expensive, as well as pumping it once its located, which costs a lot less.As oil prices dropped, frackers capped wells they hadnt completed yet, which are called drilled but uncompleted, or DUCs. They focused on the more profitable wells that were already producing. They used the down time to work on efficiency, and eventually dropped their break-even price to $45.Now American fracking companies have the best of both worlds  a bunch of DUCs already in hand (or, pardon the pun, in a row), located and ready for completion, and oil prices comfortably above their break-even price.So, as the Energy Liars Club pushes up the price of oil, theyll simply draw frackers back into production. In fact, this is already happening, as can be seen by the number of rigs in the U.S.After dropping to a low of 316 rigs last summer, the U.S. rig count in operation on land has rebounded to 529, or 13 more than there were this time last year. This is a long way from the top in 2014, when just over 1,600 rigs operated. But, hey, that just means we have a long way to go.





Right now, U.S. energy producers have a problem bigger than the price of oil, but one thats solvable.



When oil prices plummeted, companies had to idle production, put equipment in storage, and lay off their employees. Getting equipment back is easy, but getting people back is hard.



Skilled workers found other jobs, and are probably hesitant to go back to an industry that fired them the last time around. So frackers will have to entice back previous employees with higher pay, train new workers, or some combination of the two. This will take time.



Its possible oil prices will creep up a bit more as frackers slowly expand their operations, but eventually U.S. production will ramp up, and I expect oil prices will come down.



Members of the Energy Liars Club will break their production commitments to each other, adding even more supply to the system.



And frackers will get even more efficient putting a lower lid on prices for years to come. Thats at least one cost that should remain low for consumers businesses, making those higher medical care and education costs just a bit easier to stomach.

Rodney

Follow me on Twitter ;@RJHSDent

By Rodney Johnson, Senior Editor of Economy & Markets

http://economyandmarkets.com

Copyright  2017 Rodney Johnson - All Rights Reserved Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Rodney Johnson Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




Last October, my wife and I enjoyed our first trip to Beaufort, South Carolina. Part of our inspiration for this trip was to visit a place about which the author, Pat Conroy, had written extensively and where he had also lived.

While visiting the recently opened Pat Conroy Literary Center, we fell into conversation with a gentleman visiting the center by himself. We were to find out he had long been a friend of Conroy, and missed him greatly. We were also to find out this man, who lived in Beaufort, was also a writer; had recently published his latest novel. As we spoke with this gracious gentleman who wore an easy smile, we discovered he had spent time in Virginia and knew this state well; was familiar with those places the ministry has taken me.

Throughout the remainder of our time in Beaufort, and long after our return to Martinsville, we gratefully recalled our conversation with this author. We now have two copies of his latest novel: I bought a copy for my wife; my younger daughter bought a copy for me; each of us unaware we were making these purchases. We are keeping each copy.

We remember this conversation so well, that, upon returning home, I emailed this author, telling him of our fond remembrance of our visit with him. I asked him if he would sign a copy of his novel for us if we mailed it to him. I was stunned when he emailed me back that same evening. He recalled the conversation with us; found it engaging; would be happy to sign a copy of his book for us. He concluded his email with these words: I hope  if you return to Beaufort you will let me know. I give a great tour here for special people, and you and Paula are two.

I am so grateful for our visit and for his email because in all of this he demonstrates behavior at the heart of my faith: hospitality. The longer I serve as a local pastor, the more I see hospitality at the heart of the life of the church. So prominent is the importance of this gesture of hospitality to me, I am at the point in my faith where I almost see it as a sacrament of the church.

This is appropriate for this coming Sunday, as we welcome all to the table of the Lord. No questions asked; no qualifications to meet; no worth to prove  all are welcome at the table. A place is set for all; no one is refused.

It is timely for me and other persons of faith to remember this, as there is much in the news regarding who is and is not welcome in the United States. This is an ongoing debate in which there is intense disagreement. Regardless of the policy of the nation, the policy of the church is to be clear: all are welcome. No one is turned away.

Not that this is our idea, mind you  not at all. It is the idea of the God we worship and serve. This is the pervasive witness of Holy Scripture. It is a witness in which we are reminded we have all been wanderers, we have all been sojourners, we have all been strangers, we have all been exiles, we have all been estranged  from God  yet God continues to welcome us, heal us, and set a place at the table for us.

If this is the nature and behavior of the God we worship and serve, it seems we, as his people, are to behave in the same way. I am grateful for the table to be set before me this Sunday; a powerful and gracious witness to the hospitality of God.

The Reverend Keith Ritchie serves as pastor at the First United Methodist Church of Martinsville. The church is located at 146 E. Main Street.
On Saturday night, five contestants will compete for the title of Miss PHCC, one of the preliminaries leading up to the Miss Virginia Scholarship Pageant.

While preliminary rounds occur throughout the commonwealth, the event hosted by Patrick Henry Community College is only open to those who either currently attend or have attended the school in years past. As part of the competition, there will be a 10-minute interview for each girl, along with a talent performance. The competitors can sing, dance, juggle or give any type of performance for the judges. Then of course theres the evening gown and swimsuit portions of the contest.

As for the winner? Shell walk away with $20,000 in scholarships and will move on to the next level in the Miss Virginia competition.

In alphabetical order, the contestants include:

Kalayna Cassady, 23, completed her general studies degree at PHCC in 2015. She hopes to return next year to join PHCCs inaugural class of physical therapy assistants. Cassady will be singing Carrie Underwoods Dont Forget to Remember Me for her talent.

Tiffany Gilbert, 19, studied nursing at PHCC and plans to continue her education at the Jefferson College of Health Sciences. Gilbert will be performing a poem for her talent.

Jessica Hubbard, 23, completed her science degree at PHCC in 2014 and her bachelors in atmospheric science from Cornell University in 2015. She is currently pursuing her masters in science communication at George Mason University. Hubbard will be conducting a science presentation for her talent.

Mercedes Martin, 18, is completing her general studies degree at PHCC and hopes to transfer to James Madison University to pursue a degree in nursing. Martin will be performing I Dreamed a Dream from the musical Les Miserables for her talent.

Demi Richardson, 20, began studying at PHCC and performing with PHCCs theatre troupe in 2014. She is currently studying cosmetology at Leons Beauty School in North Carolina. Richardson will be performing Somewhere from the musical West Side Story for her talent.

Saturday nights event starts at 6 p.m. and for those who want to watch, the cost is $15 at the door or $10 in advance. You can buy tickets at the switchboard in PHCCs West Hall or at the New College Institutes Visitors Center.
MARTINSVILLE-Deb Prillaman retired at age 62 to take care of her 90-year-old father. The Martinsville resident has asthma and couldnt afford to keep her employers insurance after retiring, so she had to look elsewhere. The Affordable Care Act, she said, helped her find a plan that fit her needs. Now that it might be repealed, she wants to know what will replace it. More than that, she wants to know how shell be able to afford insurance without the ACA.

Right now, Ive got 18 months until Im 65, so that means I will wipe my savings account out in order to keep insurance, Prillaman said. But I guess Ill do it so my dad can stay in his home and not have to go to a nursing home.

Prillaman was one of 30 area residents who arrived at the New College Institute Thursday morning to voice their concerns with a member of 9th District Rep. Morgan Griffiths staff.

Every month, a staff member comes to NCI to hold office hours and listen to issues. On this day, however, there were several concerns raised

Affordable Care Act

Many of the protesters were part of the non-profit organization Virginia Organizing. Martha Woody of Virginia Organizing said that the main purpose of the organization attending the meeting was to raise concern regarding the potential repeal of the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. Because many area residents are on fixed incomes, there is a concern that those who rely on the ACA for their health insurance could suffer if it is repealed without a suitable replacement introduced.

Being a former healthcare worker, I know that health is a big worry, especially for the elderly and the chronically ill, said Betty Chew of Virginia Organizing. The major issue is how they will pay for their care if they dont have health insurance. Some will use their life savings.  Why not keep the ACA in place and make changes that will improve it?

Chew added that she shudders whenever she reads about the Remote Area Medical clinic, which visits Wise County every July and holds a health fair to provide medical care to Virginia residents who cannot otherwise afford it.

Many people gather at the fairgrounds under the tents in the hot sun for their yearly visit to see a doctor, Chew said. I relate this scenario to a third world country. In the 21st century, this should not happen in our rich country, Virginia being one of the richest states.

Several attendees at the meeting related stories of how they  or their friends or relatives  could not afford insurance prior to the ACA due to preexisting conditions.

I dont believe anything thats said here today, (the lawmakers) dont already know, said area resident Don Johnson. They know there are multitudes of people who cannot, without this program or one very much like it, (afford insurance). Are they just totally cynical and uncaring? Or is there somebody else theyre protecting  and they need those funds to get re-elected? The only thing that matters is getting re-elected, especially in the House. If you get elected, youve got to start running the next day.

Speaking with the Martinsville Bulletin later on Thursday, Griffith said he understands the concerns.

Theres going to be a transition period, he said. Theres nobody in Washington talking about repealing and having nothing sitting there while we go through the transition. During the transition period, everybodys going to be exactly where they are now until the replacement plan is implemented. Its going to take some tough votes  but Im not going to vote to leave people swinging in the breeze.

Griffith said he has also heard from plenty of constituents who saw their insurance premiums rise dramatically under the ACA, and that insurance rates nationally have gone up at least 25 percent in the last year.

When asked if repealing the ACA without first crafting a replacement was akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater, Griffith said he could see both sides of the argument.

Obviously, it does make people feel better if you already have the replacement, Griffith said. On the other side of the coin, weve been talking about reforming the tax code  and hopefully well get to that this year  but weve been talking about that for 20 years. Until you have definitely crossed the Rubicon and made the decision to go forward, theres always that thought that, Well, we dont really have to do this.

Overall, Griffith said, people across his district have largely supported the repeal of the ACA.

The Environment

A number of attendees at the meeting also expressed concern over the potential dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency and the repeal of a variety of environmental regulations.

In particular, attendees said they were concerned by a measure, approved by both the House and Senate, that dismantles the Stream Protection Rule. The repeal would again make it legal for coal companies to dump their waste in nearby streams. Griffith was among the House Republicans who voted to approve the measure, which now goes to the president for his signature.

They actually voted to lessen the regulations around coal ash in the rivers, Martinsville resident Lois Hairston said.

The Smith River used to run purple and green and burgundy and blue, said Naomi Hodge-Muse, chairperson of the Martinsville-Henry County NAACP. The Smith River ran different colors depending upon what (local factories) were making that day. In China, which has no environmental regulations, people are wearing respirators to walk downtown. This misguided idea that you can remove regulations and bring back industry, all youre doing is destroying health.

In his interview with the Bulletin, Griffith said that the Stream Protection Rule was not a good plan in that caused inordinate harm to jobs while providing relatively few benefits to the environment.

Thats the problem with several of these (regulations), he said. They either dont have legal authority, or the benefits to the environment are so small and the costs to the country are huge. You cant just regulate things without looking at the cost/benefit analysis.

Griffith contended that many EPA regulations inadvertently did more harm than good. For example, he alleged that additional environmental regulations caused several cement factories in Texas to close down and move across the border into Mexico, where they were subject to even fewer environmental regulations than they had been previously.

When you force people into Mexico or Asia, its not the intent, but the EPA, it can be argued, has actually made the environment worse during the Obama years than making it better because they paid no attention to the economic realities of the world, Griffith said.

The Holman Rule

Area resident Don Johnson raised concerns over the Holman Rule, a rule in the House that allows amendments to appropriations legislation that would reduce the salary of specific federal employees or cut specific programs. The rule was initially enacted in 1876 and rescinded in 1983.

It was re-enacted in January on a temporary basis at the behest of Griffith.

Johnson said the revival of the rule was one of the worst things he had heard about recently in the political realm, characterizing it as a way to clean house.

Joe Richards said that the Holman Rule could be used to have a chilling effect on federal employees who refuse to toe the party line of the new administration.

Griffith said the purpose of the rule is to allow members of Congress to make financial decisions that are on a broad-ranging scale when matters get to the floor.

Ive been working on this for a number of years, Griffith said. It is unfortunate that I finally convinced Congress to pass it at the same time Trump was coming into office, because a lot of reporters up here asked if I had any discussion with Trump about this. I had not had any discussion with Trump about this.

Griffith argued that before someones salary could be trimmed, that request would have to pass the House and Senate and be approved by the president. With that structure in place, he didnt see how one member of Congress could use it to their benefit.

Office Hours

Several attendees said that they have had difficulty contacting Griffith through his office or receiving substantive answers from his office.

Unfortunately, Martinsville/Henry County is like the red-headed stepchild for most of our representatives, whether state or federal, Martha Woody said. I would say in some instances, even on a local level, it is very hard to make your voice heard when we just seem to be discounted.  We just are ignored.

Woody and several other attendees said that they hope Griffith would consider holding a town hall meeting in Martinsville or Henry County.

There are other issues beside the Affordable Care Act that people are concerned about, she said. On the one hand, I feel an enormous responsibility to stand up for the things that I believe are fair and just and right, and on the other hand, I am equally committed to finding common ground anywhere I can find it.  There are enormously complex issues that require a lot of thought and a lot of cooperation to address. I will say, as a general rule, we Americans tend to be really good with black and white and not real good with the gray in between. How do we make progress on something even if we cant solve the whole problem?

Griffith told the Bulletin that people should not be having a difficult time getting in touch with his office, and he would like to be provided with specific examples of people having difficulty contacting him.

The constituents are entitled to get hold of my office, and we want to work on their problems and hear what they have to say, he said. We work really hard on that, and we get lots of communications. They may not like the answer they get, but they should get an answer.

The best way to contact him, he said, is through the contact page on his website, located at morgangriffith.house.gov.

Griffith did say that he spends a great deal of time in Washington D.C. and is not always available for in-person meetings, but he does his best to provide answers to peoples questions.

When asked if he would be willing to host a town hall meeting in the Martinsville or Henry County area, Griffith said that he is willing to sit down with clubs, individuals and small groups, but he is reluctant to hold a town hall meeting.

Its all part of the Democrat strategy: They want to have these meetings so they can bring in a bunch of protesters, he said. Theres a group, (Indivisible Guide), and theyre encouraging people to do these things, and theyre pushing everybody to do this so they can show up with big banners and have press. I want to solve problems. Im happy to make meetings with people who want to have meetings, who are constituents, and sit down and try to problem solve. But Im not interested in showing up at what they hope will end up being a media event for the lynching of the local congressman.

One attendee at the meeting, retiree Ellen Jessee, said that she has only recently become politically active.

Ive never paid that much attention to politics, but Im involved now, Jessee said. There are a lot of people like me, and were not going to sit back and let this stuff go on.
MARTINSVILLE  A public meeting is planned for area residents to voice their opinions on how the vacant second floor of the citys small business incubator could best be used.

Any local citizens or entrepreneurs who feel they have a valid idea are welcome to attend, said Amanda Witt, president of the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerce.

The meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 21 at the West Piedmont Business Development Center (WPBDC) at 22 E. Church St. uptown.

The WPBDC is owned by the city but managed by the chamber and its independent affiliate, the Chambers Partnership for Economic Growth (C-PEG). Tenants get advice from professionals on financial, managerial and business planning matters. By sharing resources such as clerical staff, utilities and major office equipment like copiers, they save on operating costs so they can spend more toward their growth and development.

Twenty businesses and service providers now occupy the WPBDC. Twenty-eight have graduated  left to make it on their own  since the incubator opened in 2002. Current and past tenants together have created 275 jobs, information on its website shows.

About 95 percent of the incubator is occupied. Witt, who also is C-PEGs executive director, said she expects a new tenant will sign a lease soon, bringing that amount up to 97 percent.

However, the roughly 3,000-square-foot second floor, designed to be light manufacturing or warehouse space, has been vacant since Solid Stone Fabrics, which makes and distributes stretch fabrics, moved out in 2008.

The space is a really unique aspect to have in an incubator, Witt said, because most small business incubators only have space for service and office-oriented businesses.

Its definitely set up for a different type of business than ones now in the WPBDC, she said of the floor, mentioning its dock doors as an example.

Basically, though, its too big for a startup and too small for an established business, Witt said.

We want to give the community some input into how it eventually is used, she added.

One idea already proposed is turning the floor into a cooperative where people interesting in becoming plumbers, electricians, carpenters and other types of skilled laborers can learn trades and get started in them, either by opening their own businesses or getting jobs with existing ones. That idea still is being investigated to see whether it would be viable for the community.

The floor also could be turned into more space for firms like the ones that the incubator now hosts. Witt believes more such space will be needed in the future after the incubator fills up.

But the floor should be put to a purpose that suits its uniqueness, she said.
SMITH

William Tyler

William Tyler Smith of Horsepasture, 29, departed this life on Thursday, January 26, 2017 and is now at peace and is part of God's Heavenly Kingdom. Tyler, a 2005 graduate of Magna Vista High School, attended Ferrum College and was an avid fisherman and hunter. He loved everything about the outdoors and had been living and working at Quiet Creek Farm in Irvine, Kentucky for almost two years. Quiet Creek was a good place for Tyler. It afforded him an environment enabling him to work, and be a part of nature as he thought about and worked through his personal challenges and the direction he wanted to go in overcoming them and using his talents.

Tyler loved his family, especially his mother who supported and loved him deeply every day of his life, and his son, Max. He also had a deep and abiding respect for his grandparents. Tyler is survived by his mother, Susan P. Smith, of Ridgeway; his son, William Maxwell Smith, of Stuart, Va.; his sister, L. Anna Sullivan and her husband Josh and son Tucker of Richmond, Va. He is also survived by aunts and uncles, Michael Prillaman of Rocky Mount, Va., Brady and Martha Anderson, Churchill and Lee Robison, both of Roanoke, Va., and Tom and Sue Hane of Raleigh, N.C.; and his cousins.

He was preceded in death by his father, William Clarence Smith III.

Funeral services will be held at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Febuary 1, 2017 at Horsepasture Christian Church, with Minister David Cuthbertson officiating, and visitation will be held one hour prior to the service from 12 to 1 p.m. Interment will be in the Burnette Prillaman Ross Family cemetery, Ferrum, Va.

The family would like to thank all those who truly cared for Tyler and worked with him and saw him as a child of God. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Horsepasture Christian Church, 1146 Horsepasture Price Rd., Ridgeway, VA. 24148 or Tackfully Teamed Riding Academy, 7975 Henry Road, Henry, VA 24102

Norris Funeral Services Inc. and Crematory Martinsville, Va., is serving the Smith family. Online Condolences may be made at www.NorrisFuenral.com.
green communities logo.jpg

The state's "Green Community" designation is not merely titular; it comes with a nearly $208,000 grant to further clean energy initiatives in Agawam.

(Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources)

AGAWAM -- The City of Agawam has been named a "Green Community," an honor that's not merely titular but an official designation that comes with a $208,000 grant to spend on clean-energy initiatives.

"This designation is quite an achievement and reflects the hard work and tireless efforts your community has exhibited in meeting the Green Communities Designation and Grant Program's five criteria," Joanne Bissetta, deputy director of the state's Green Communities Division, said in a Feb. 1 letter to Agawam Mayor Richard A. Cohen.

The goal of the Green Communities Division, which is under the auspices of the state Department of Energy Resources, is to help the commonwealth's cities and towns find clean-energy solutions that reduce long-term energy costs and strengthen local economies.

A condition of the $207,970 grant requires Agawam to submit a proposal on how the city plans to spend the money, which may be used for energy efficiency or renewable energy projects. Each Green Community receives a certificate confirming the designation and four 12-by-18-inch aluminum signs to display publicly.

On Thursday, Gov. Charlie Baker announced that Agawam and 29 other Massachusetts cities and towns had received the state designation by committing to an ambitious renewable energy agenda to reduce energy consumption and emissions.

Over half of the commonwealth's municipalities have now earned the Green Communities designation, according to Baker, saying the program is "an excellent example of how state and local governments can work together to save taxpayer money and promote responsible energy policies."

"The thirty new Green Communities named today will now have additional resources to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy, locking in energy savings for residents and reducing their carbon footprints," the Republican governor said Thursday.

The Green Communities Division provides technical assistance and financial support for municipal initiatives to improve energy efficiency and increase the use of renewable energy in public buildings, facilities and schools.
A protest has been planned in Sharm el-Sheikh, the venue of the summit.
Gov. Steve Bullock Thursday vetoed the bill funding the 2017 Legislature, saying he wouldnt accept a 14 percent increase in spending for lawmakers while other agencies are being asked to scale back.

"This is not the year to grow by such leaps and bounds," he told reporters at a Capitol news conference. "I cannot in good faith just mindlessly accept a bill that allows one branch a free pass while everyone else pulls their weight."

Bullock, a Democrat, slapped an amendatory veto on House Bill 1, sending it back to lawmakers with only a 1.4 percent increase  the overall increase in the two-year budget he proposed for all state agencies.

By Mike Dennison  MTN News

Full Story: http://www.kpax.com/story/34415175/bullock-vetoes-legislative-funding-bill
Montanas state Senate gave initial approval to bill that prevents judges from applying foreign laws in state courtrooms.

Senate Bill 97 passed 28-21 on Thursday. Four Republicans joined all 17 Democrats in opposing the measure. It will be voted on again before transmitting to the state House of Representatives.

The bill by Republican Sen. Keith Regier of Kalispell does not mention Sharia law, which is used in some parts of the Islamic world, but that has been the focus of debate on the proposal.

By Troy Carter Chronicle Staff Writer

Full Story: http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/news/mtleg/republican-senators-advance-ban-on-foreign-laws-in-montana/article_b0c95870-d6b5-5c5e-81bd-01a4915c7344.html
The African Development Banks Affirmative Finance Action for Women in Africa program, known as AFAWA, and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion introduced African Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors to a new partnership set to increase financial inclusion for women-led enterprises across the continent.

At a roundtable dinner held on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meetings on 12 October, the Bank and Alliance leadership presented the AFAWA-Alliance for Financial Inclusion partnership to more than 70 guests, including 50 representatives from Ministries of Finance and Central Banks, and 10 of whom are current ministers or governors. The $4-million program supports policymakers, regulators, and other stakeholders to create financial inclusion-friendly policies that benefit small and medium-sized businesses run by African women.

Through this project, we expect to yield improved data for policy decision-making and improved technical capacity among policymakers at the institutional, national and regional levels. These efforts will lead to an enhanced financial policy and regulatory environment for women in business in Africa, Bank Senior Vice President Swazi Tshabalala said in her opening remarks.

With financial inclusion high on the agenda of African countries, many nations are setting concrete targets for womens financial inclusion. When Africas women are unable to access finance, Africa will lose out an estimated $316 billion in GDP by 2025, according to a McKinsey study. However, evidence-based support from partnership institutions could help African governments establish an enabling environment.

Representing the Alliance for Financial Inclusions management unit, Mozambiques Central Bank Governor Rogerio Zamdemela said, We, as African Central Banks, are very pleased to see the deepened cooperation between the African Development Bank and Alliance for Financial Inclusion since signing a memorandum of understanding in 2017 in Abidjan.

I commend the leadership on the launch of the program, Zamdemela added.

Last year, the Bank, through the AFAWA-Alliance for Financial Inclusion partnership, identified countries with the most progressive policies to accelerate financial inclusion. The Alliance selected the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Zambia and Zimbabwe as case study countries. It based its selection on: having made significant progress towards the financial inclusion of women-led small and medium enterprises; best practices to inform the financial inclusion harmonization process; and providing policy guidance to accelerate this targeted access to finance. For example, in the last decade, Senegal has seen an impressive 900% increase in womens financial inclusion, with the Democratic Republic of the Congo realizing a 700% increase in the same period.

Representatives from the International Monetary Fund, which recently launched its first Gender Strategy, told event attendees that statistical research and collaboration would aid the new partnership achieve its goals.

We recognize that reducing gender disparities, especially with access to finance, leads to exponential economic growth. We encourage all countries to publish gender-disaggregated data and to find synergies with new emerging sectors, said Ratna Sahay, the International Monetary Funds Senior Advisor on Gender.

Also in support of the new partnership were: Dr. Beth Dunford, Bank Vice President for Agriculture, Human and Social Development; Malado Kaba, the Banks Director for Gender, Women and Civil Society; and Esther Dassanou, Manager of the AFAWA initiative.

AFAWA and the Alliance for Financial Inclusion will implement the joint program across 35 countries represented by Alliance member institutions in Africa, and with regional organizations Union economique et monetaire de lAfrique de lOuest and la Communaute economique et monetaire de lAfrique centrale.

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Air University hosted eight foreign-national officers training with the Naval Education Training Security Assistance Field Activities located in Pensacola, Florida, here Monday.

International officer students from the Czech Republic, Indonesia, Mauritius, Botswana, Georgia, Ukraine and Morocco received a tour and mission brief from various officer training facilities here as a part of their course.

The NETSAFA International Training Centers manpower, personnel, training and education course is a five week program designed to help develop the skills and knowledge to revamp manpower, personnel and training policies within their own militaries.

Guy Abbate, NETSAFA department head, said he hopes the students leave with a positive opinion of the U.S. and its military.

He also said its not the goal for the students to go back and emulate the U.S. in everything that they do, but gain another perspective and ideas from what they see here and from what they learn from their fellow classmates.

During the course students are taken to various training locations across the country including sites at Millington, Tenn.; Great Lakes, Ill..; Newport, R.I. and Washington, D.C.

The tours and visits gives the students the opportunity to witness firsthand how the DOD recruits and trains their personnel.

Abbate said what the students learn here often helps them make broadly impacting improvements within their own military.
A man injured in the Gateway Mountain log cabin fire remains hospitalized and family members are asking for help finding three dogs that fled the blaze.

At approximately 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, firefighters arrived to find a structure fire at 992 Evergreen Drive in the Gateway Mountain community. The house was owned by Scott Henry of Lantana, Fla.

Gateway Mountain is a private, gated community of about 200 homes and cabins seven miles east of Old Fort. According to a real estate website, the house, a secondary home to Henry, was earlier listed for sale at $495,000.

The cause of the fire was undetermined as of Friday.

Henry and his son were inside the house at the time, as well as their three dogs, according to Gateway Community spokesman Jay Hein.

As the fire broke out, Henry was trapped on the third floor section of the home while trying to save the dogs. In his attempt to escape, he jumped through a third-story window, suffering serious injuries that include multiple facial fractures, compound femur fractures and third-degree burns on 23 to 27 percent of his body.

Henry and was airlifted to Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem. Due to the severity of Henrys condition, his stay hospital is expected to be a minimum of one month.

Henrys son suffered minor injuries.

Family members are asking for help finding their dogs: a grand brown Yorkie named Holly, a black female Morkie (a hybrid of Maltese and Yorkshire terrier) named Abby, and a yellow and gold male Chihuahua named Charlie.

According to a release from the Gateway Mountains Property Owners Association, the pets were reportedly spotted on the day of the fire, Feb. 2, on Bat Cave Road near the Gateway Mountain entrance.

If anyone has information regarding the location or condition of the three dogs, please contact Christin Henry at (561) 352-7403.
On Saturday, Feb. 4, American Legion Post 56 will again host an oratorical contest which will feature high school students using their public speaking skills on subjects like the U.S. Constitution as they compete for scholarships.

Last year, the local post hosted the American Legions oratorical contest at the statewide level. At that time, high school students from across North Carolina came to Marion where they competed. The next step was the national level of the Legions contest.

This year, Post 56 will again host a part of the contest but this time it will be at the division level, which is a slightly lower level than what was done last year, according to Post Commander Alan Mainer.

On Saturday, Feb. 4, the oratorical contest for Division 5 will be held at the McDowell Senior Center in Marion. Division 5 of the American Legion covers western North Carolina, from Hickory to the Tennessee state line and northward to the Virginia state line, said Mainer.

Five young contestants will come to Marion and compete in this level of the oratorical contest. They are coming from Forest City, Hayesville, Lenoir, Hickory and Spruce Pine.

This event is free and open to the public. Mainer said he wants to see local residents come to the Senior Center and show their support for these high school students as they speak about our country and its values.

The contest will start at 1 p.m. sharp on Saturday, Feb. 4. The doors will open at 11:30 a.m. and finger foods and drinks will be provided before and after the competition. The contestants will need to arrive no later than noon.

The American Legion Oratorical Contest exists to develop deeper knowledge and appreciation for the U.S. Constitution among high school students, reads a Website about the contest. Since 1938, the program has presented participants with an academic speaking challenge that teaches important leadership qualities, the history of our nations laws, the ability to think and speak clearly, and an understanding of the duties, responsibilities, rights and privileges of American citizenship. The program has featured numerous politicians and prominent contestants over the years, including former president candidate Alan Keyes and CNN anchor Lou Dobbs.

North Carolina students begin their advance toward the national finals at their local high schools. After making it through the high school level, the students advance to the division level within the American Legions Department of North Carolina, which has five divisions across the state. This is what will happen at the Senior Center on Saturday, Feb. 4.

Speaking subjects must be on some aspect of the U.S. Constitution, with some emphasis on the duties and obligations of citizens to our government. Speeches are eight to 10 minutes long; three- to five-minute speeches on an assigned topic also are part of the contest.

A panel of judges will determine the winner. The judges will be County Attorney Fred Coats, former County Commissioner Jack Wood, former School Board member Phil Tate, Marine Corps veteran and instructor Bob Ramsey, attorney and Marion Mayor Steve Little. County Veteran Services Officer Doug Gouge will be an alternate judge.

Whoever wins at the division level contest will go to the American Legion's statewide contest, which will be held in March in Kings Mountain. The national level contest takes place in Indianapolis.

In case of bad weather, the division contest in Marion will be held Saturday, Feb. 11.

For more information, call Alan Mainer at 828-317-9518 or email alanmainer@gmail.com.

You can also get more information by going to http://nclegion.org/Oratorical/2017/OratoricalDeptChairmanGuide2017.pdf or http://nclegion.org/Oratorical/2017/Oratorical-Rules-Brochure2016-17.pdf.
Lucknow: Many fraud cases come into the spotlight and majority of which are reported to be online fraud. Click on Post company Ablaze Info Solutions Pvt. Ltd. caught red handed with the illegal money of 3,700 crore, which is looted by nearly 7 lakhs people.

The company was running fraud business on the name of 'digital marketing'. Company's CEO and Director Anubhav Mittal and Technical head Mahesh Dayal were arrested by Noida police.

After taking company's officials into the custody, personnel sealed director's bank account, which had Rs. 500 crore. The business was running through the web portal named trade.biz. The company clutched nearly 6.30 lakh innocent users into its fraud.

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Take a breath, America.

People are only freaking out because our new president is a Republican.

Today, most Americans agree Ronald Reagan was one of our greatest, most effective presidents. Back in the 1980's, the press ran editorials and quoted "experts" in news stories explaining why Reagan was sure to nuke the world.

Genesis had a hit song and video, "Land of Confusion," expressing and exploiting these same fears.

Instead, Reagan won the cold war and down came the Berlin wall.

Genesis broke up, Phil Collins went on to a financially rewarding solo career and songwriter Mike Rutherford went on to write arguably some of the best songs of his life. (Yeah, even though I disagree with their politics, you can't deny Mike's lyrical and musical brilliance or Phil's technical skills in developing a repetitive build to crescendo.)

America went on to job growth and economic expansion.

On January 20th, the Huffington Post filled their post-inauguration home page with a giant black font that filled the screen, shrieking, "Trump Gets Nuclear Codes!"

Time for a Genesis comeback?

Also predictable, which I did because I only make easy predictions, left-wingers are going nuts in the streets, on social media and in many other public places.

The party that demanded Trump "accept the outcome" of the election refuses to accept the outcome themselves, smashing windows, burning cars, assaulting police and marching in the street wearing costumes representing female genitalia.

Oddly, these costumes were featured in parades along with protesters demanding the U.S. become "gender neutral."

Thousands didn't get the memo.

An older woman was escorted from a plane this week because she was berating people who voted for Trump, asking the Baltimore travelers if they were there "to protest or celebrate."One of her verbal victims replied that he was in town to "celebrate democracy."

She, too, was troubled that his vote might have put the nuclear codes in the hands of a Republican.

Complaining that the presumed Trump voter sitting in his assigned seat next to her was "in my space," police came and asked her to leave.

Passengers applauded her removal from the plane.

She seemed genuinely surprised that she, the accoster, was escorted out instead of the man who destroyed her world by voting for the candidate she sincerely fears.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, wealthy liberals created a nationwide radio syndication they called, "Air America."

It was a propaganda machine, though they failed to draw enough listeners to keep it afloat.

They did, however, manage to draw the attention of the Secret Service by engaging in "Assassination Chic."

The star host of these segments was Randi Rhodes, who created radio skits with gunshot sound effects and crude comments directed at President Bush.

Recently, a Kentucky burlesque dancer who also worked for an insurance company thought it would be meaningful to request someone assassinate President Trump.

She lost both jobs, her talent agency representation and any possibility of an award for "best use of Twitter."

A writer for Saturday Night Live, Katie Rich, thought it would be fun to bully Trump's 10 year-old son, Barron, as a potential serial killer.

Rightfully and quite unexpectedly, SNL suspended Katie.

Good to know it's still outre for liberals to target a President's child.

Still, there is more violence from the left than has ever been performed by the Tea Party.

This is to be expected.Fear is rampant, funded and fueled by a number of left-wing organizations, over fifty of them funded by billionaire George Soros, per research by liberal feminist Asra Q. Nomani at the New York Times.

You can also expect to read "experts" predicting when Trump will nuke some feared country.

How do I know?

Flashback to Bush 43, when ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern toured the country, predicting exactly which month(s) Bush would nuke Iran.

He was a liberal star, baby.

Perhaps some are still fearfully waiting for his predictions to come true.

---------

 Copyright 2017 Rick Jensen, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rick Jensen is Delaware's award-winning conservative talk show host on WDEL, streaming live on WDEL.com from 1pm ---- 4pm EST. Contact Rick at rick@wdel.com, or follow him on Twitter @Jensen1150WDEL.
Kuwait: Kuwait government banned VISA issuance of five Muslim majority countries which includes Syria, Iraq, Pakistan Afghanistan and Iran. The big decision was taken to look after the security concern of the country.

Citizens from these 5 countries will not be allowed to enter in Kuwait. As per the reports, along with visas, Kuwait also restricted the trade between all the banned countries.

Recently, American President Donald Trump also enacted 'no immigration', which is been protested by American citizens. America restricted 7 Islamic state, from entering in the country.

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by Thom Forbes @tforbes, February 3, 2017

Responding to public and internal pressure, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick yesterday resigned from President Donald Trumps economic advisory council. In an email to employees, he said that joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that.

Many Uber customers were outraged when Uber lowered its prices while taxi drivers were on strike at New York City's JFK airport over Trumps executive order banning immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries last week, NPRs Laura Sydell reports. The price drop was perceived as a move to take advantage of the strike and draw business away from the taxis. Uber denies this was the case. But, it helped fuel a Dump Uber campaign.

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#DeleteUber encouraged people to delete the Uber app and their accounts with the company. According to people familiar with the matter, more than 200,000 Uber customers deleted their accounts this week  making a large statement, although not a crippling blow to the company's bottom line, reports Brian Solomon for Forbes.

Users who go to delete their accounts get a return email with a link to complete the process, reports Brett Molina for USA Today. Below the link is a statement pointing users to an email sent to Uber drivers from CEO Travis Kalanick, criticizing the immigration executive order.

We wanted to let you know that Uber shares your views on the immigration ban: it's unjust, wrong and against everything we stand for as a company, the email says.

As recently as Saturday, Mr. Kalanick had publicly said in a blog post that the best route forward was to have a seat at the table, writes Mike Isaac for the New York Times. He had added, We partner around the world optimistically in the belief that by speaking up and engaging, we can make a difference.

Indeed, the surprise move, which came as activists planned protests at Uber offices around the country, highlights the struggle Silicon Valley tech executives face as they try to balance working with the new president and his policies without alienating their customers or employees, writes Marisa Kendall for the San Jose Mercury News.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who also has experienced a backlash over his involvement with the Trump administration, on Thursday confirmed that he will keep his seat on Trumps advisory council. Musk promised to object to the administrations immigration order during Fridays scheduled meeting, Kendall reports.

I understand the perspective of those who object to my attending this meeting, Musk tweeted, but I believe at this time that engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good.

Nearly 50,000 Uber drivers in New York City had signed a petition calling for Kalanick to resign from the advisory council, Jessica Guynn reports for USA Today.

This is an important show of solidarity with the immigrant drivers who helped build Uber, said Jim Conigliaro, Jr., founder of The Independent Drivers Guild, which sponsored the petition, in a statement. We are heartened that Uber has listened to the drivers and the community on this important issue that is so integral to the promise of the American dream.

Reuters Heather Somerville and David Shepardson report that Kalanick spoke briefly to Trump about the immigration order and its issues for our community and told the president he would not join the economic council. There was no report of Trumps reaction.

The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America, Kalanick wrote in his note to employees. Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and theres a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants."

Vox Timothy B. Lee says that Ubers disabling of surge pricing was misconstrued but feels that the ride-sharing company has only itself to blame for the ensuing controversy.

In reality, disabling surge pricing likely meant that Uber carried fewer passengers from JFK (since drivers were less likely to go there) and they made less money on each ride, Lee points out.

But on another level, Uber deserved this. The specific rap against them was unfair, but the companys behavior has long been opportunistic. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has only himself to blame for the fact that so many Uber customers were ready to believe the worst about his company.

It appears that Uber needs a dedicated intentions translator on its corporate communications roster.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 3, 2017

Its safe to say this was probably not one of the uses Instagrams inventors had in mind when they launched the photo-sharing app back in 2010.

Public prosecutors in Detroit have revealed that drug-dealing gangs in the city have been using the app to create visual hit lists of their enemies, with deadly consequences, according to NBC affiliate WDIV Local 4.

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade told an interviewer that members of two rival gangs, the Seven Mile Bloods and 6 Mile Chedda Boys, were posting pictures on Instagram of people on the hit list, you know, shoot to kill on site.

And these were not idle threats or mere attempts to intimidate. Out of 10 people on one of the Instagram hit lists, seven were shot, four of these fatally.

The gang members were also using YouTube to record some of their illegal activities, leaving a trail of clues that helped police and prosecutors build the case against them. McQuade noted: In our trials, we've shown pictures of gang members holding guns and drugs with their gang colors, schemes on shirts.

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Gangs across the country have been quick to adopt social media to communicate, recruit new members, and intimidate rivals. Back in 2012 former New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly created a social media division within the force to track gangs online activities, resulting in busts with hundreds of gang members arrested.

In one operation the following year, for example, the NYPD arrested 63 members of three gangs for various crimes, including three murders, around three dozen shootings, and gun trafficking, after gang members boasted of their exploits on social media.

Even emojis can be dangerous.

In 2015, police arrested Osiris Aristy, a 17-year-old from Bushwick, Brooklyn, for posting emojis on his Facebook page that were interpreted as threatening violence against cops. They include one of a police officer, and another of a gun that appeared to be pointing at the police officer.
by Sara Guaglione , February 3, 2017

Companies from Lyft to T-Mobile are pulling ads from, the controversial far-right Web site formerly run by Stephen Bannon, joining the list of retailers, consumer brands and even governments following suit.

"One of Lyft's core values is to uplift and support one another in all that we do," Lyft's director of communications Adrian Durbin told CNET. "We strive to ensure that our advertisements appear only on sites that share this value."

According to a report from CNET, a secretive organization called Sleeping Giants is on a mission to shame companies and organizations advertising on Breitbart News.

Bannon, now a top White House adviser, has described Breitbart as a platform for the alt-right, a term commonly associated with racism, fascism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy.

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We are trying to stop racist Web sites by stopping their ad dollars. Many companies don't even know it's happening. It's time to tell them, Sleeping Giants tweeted in November.

Sleeping Giants claims about 820 companies have blacklisted Breitbart, including big consumer brands like Kelloggs, BMW and Visa, as well as retailer Warby Parker and insurance company Allstate. The list, available on a public Google Doc, continues to be updated.

In addition, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and Autodesk will no longer advertise on Breitbart.

An HP spokesperson told CNET: "Our vision is to create technology that makes life better for everyone, everywhere, and we have no intention of advertising on sites that don't align with our values as a company."

A Lenovo spokesperson added: "Following a recent article regarding women in science, tech, education and math (STEM), Breitbart has been blocked from all current Lenovo media campaigns. The rep was likely referring to a controversial story on Breitbart with the headline: Heres Why There Ought to Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths.

Other tech giants, like Uber, Amazon and AT&T, continue to display ads on the site.

Ads generally appear on Web sites through programmatic advertising, an automated process that often leaves marketers unaware of where ads are appearing. Ads are placed based on algorithms that target specific audiences.

Another interesting Breitbart boycotter? The Canadian government, which announced it was pulling Breitbart from its list of nearly 400 sites approved for federal advertising.

The Canadian government found the content of Breitbart.com did not align with the Governments Code of Value and Ethics, a spokesperson with Public Services and Procurement Canada, which oversees media buying for the federal government, told Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail.

The Government of Canada does not support advertising on Web sites that are deemed to incite racial hatred, discrimination or the subversion of Canadas democratic system of government, the spokesperson continued.

Breitbart editor Alexander Marlow told The Wall Street Journal there has been little to no impact on the sites advertising revenue as a result of the blacklisting. Marlow claims traffic to the site is currently at an all-time high.

Sleeping Giants isnt the only anonymous activist to fight against Breitbart.

The company has previously suggested plans to expand its content with the launch of a French-language site ahead of Frances 2017 presidential elections, which happens in April.

In response, a 22-year-old known only as Antonin has bought the domain names breitbart.fr, breitbartnews.fr and breitbartnewsnetwork.fr. in an attempt to limit Breitbarts expansion.

Antonin told The Verge that no one from Breitbart has contacted him about the domains. He added he would not sell them even if he was offered a substantial deal. However, Breitbart could make a URL extension for a French version of the site, as it has for its bureaus in Jerusalem and London, rather than give it a separate domain.

Separately,On Wednesday, University of California at Berkeley students protested an appearance by a BreitbartNews editor, Milo Yiannopoulos. The university canceled the address after violent protests broke out.
by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 3, 2017

Dont let the posh accents fool you: British politics and media are at least as cutthroat as the American versions, and backstabbing is considered a patriotic pastime.

Former Prime Minister David Cameron, far from respecting the independence of the free press, actively tried to get the editor of Britains biggest newspaper fired for his unwavering support for Brexit in the lead-up to the referendum in June 2016.

According to BBC Newsnight, which first reported the story, Cameron pressured the owner of the middle-market tabloid the Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere, to fire editor Paul Dacre, given the newspapers strident stance in favor of Britain leaving the European Union.

In the months preceding the referendum vote, Daily Mail published numerous stories and editorials purporting to document the various disadvantages of EU membership, often in lurid or exaggerated terms, including alleged spending outflows and the prospect of uncontrolled immigration.

Cameron first invited Dacre to meet him privately at the prime ministers residence in February, in hopes of persuading him to moderate the Daily Mails editorial stance by detailing concessions he had won from the EU. However, Dacre rebuffed him at the meeting, saying he had been opposed to EU membership for over two decades and wasnt prepared to reverse course.

In March, the prime minister tried a different tack, by asking Lord Rothermere to sack him. Lord Rothermere refused, but Dacre caught wind of Camerons request from an unnamed source and was reportedly furious, prompting him to redouble his efforts in favor of Brexit.

Daily Mails support for Brexit, along with a number of other newspapers, was widely viewed as a key factor in the victory of the Leave campaign in the June referendum.

In the immediate aftermath of the referendum, researchers at Britains Loughborough University conducted a study of 1,127 articles about the referendum and related issues from early May to mid-June. When the circulation of newspapers publishing articles is taken into account, UK newspapers favored Brexit by a whopping margin of 82% to 18%.

The huge skew was mostly the result of popular tabloids with large readerships  most notably The Sun, with a circulation of 1.7 million, Daily Mail, with a circulation of 1.5 million, and The Daily Telegraph, with a circ of half a million  declaring support for Leave.

A number of smaller circ papers, including the Daily Mirror, The Observer, The Guardian and the Financial Times, all backed Remain.
by Ray Schultz , Columnist, February 3, 2017

Good work -- youve got the sale. Now what? Do you drop the whole thing? No, thats just the start (or maybe the re-start). Youll need to do an email follow-up and maybe even pull the customer into your loyalty program. And while some firms have not yet learned the gentle art of re-engagement, many have.

Take Papa Murphys, a pizza chain with 1,500 outlets. Loyalty 360 reports today that the company is significantly increasing return visits and driving measurable results with tailored messages delivered in digital channels.

Working with Bridg, the company has targeted regular customers, largely on social media, who had begun to lapse in their regular buying patterns, PYMNTS.com elaborates. These customers were offered ads that featured a coupon for $4.25 off a pizza order, providing a one-week redemption window in-store or online.

The result? The campaign produced $3.58 in revenue for each $1.00 in ad and technology spend from lapsed customers and combined immediate revenue and incremental revenue in the year. In addition, some percent of customers who clicked on the ad signed up for Papa Murphys email database, which also added value, PYMNTS.com continues.

Then theres CoffeeForLess. As Business2Community repeated in a case study yesterday, it pulled in $500,000 in six months with data-driven lifecycle marketing. These emails had 66% higher open rates and 125% higher click rates compared to their average rates for the same time period.

Pharmacy chain Walgreens launched its Balance Rewards loyalty program in 2012, building it to 150 million members, including 85 million actives, according to a recent article in Medical Marketing & Media.

Data analysis enables Walgreens to identify high-value customers and to ultimately driving loyalty. Indeed, Walgreens targets members at each stage of their customer journey, such as through its acquisition, win-back, and loyalty and retention campaigns, Medical Marketing & Media writes.

These companies have learned that customers will respond when you offer them value. But that requires strong analytics, behavior-triggered email and personalization. And not all firms have those capabilities. As MediaPost recently reported, based on a study by Retail TouchPoints and Magnetic, 22% of all retailers send no triggered emails.

Whats holding them back? Some insights on this general problem may be found in a survey by MessageGears and Ascend2. Of the 78 executives who shared their views, 54% cited improving email personalization as a top priority. And 46% listed building customer retention. Those were the two major goals. But these are not the most difficult tasks. The top barrier to email success (cited by half) was enriching data quality. Second was improving email personalization. Increasing customer retention was far down the list.

The holdback, obviously, is data quality -- and personalization is tied to that. At the same time, behavior-triggered emails were rated the most effective personalization tactic, followed by individualized email messaging.

Whatever you do, dont overstay your welcome. Walgreens tries to avoid unsubscribes by sending direct mail pieces, not emails, to non-buyers, Medical Marketing & Media continues. Marketing Tech News warns today against standard batch and blast emails. And indiemark reminds its blog readers that 40% of the consumers in a survey would decide not to unsubscribe if only a brand would let them change the frequency of the emails theyre receiving.
Belgian scientists have discovered the key role of protein Taok3 in the development of type B immune cells known as MZB cells, which are responsible for making antibodies to fight diseases. Researchers are familiar with the functions of MZB cells, but the molecular processes involved in their development remained a mystery until an unrelated test revealed that Taok3 plays an essential role. Using these insights, a research team led by professor Bart Lambrecht (VIB-UGent/UZ Gent) demonstrated that mice genetically lacking in Taok3 did not develop MZB cells, and are more susceptible to bacterial infection. These insights also lead to potential new molecular therapies for genetic conditions, asthma and diabetes. The results of the study were published in leading academic journal Nature Immunology.

B cells are an important part of our immune system, as they are responsible for manufacturing antibodies that fight disease. However, not all B cells are the same. The research team of professors Bart Lambrecht and Hamida Hammad (VIB-UGent) zeroed in on the development of B cells located in the spleen, labeled MZB cells. Using an unexpected finding from another project that identified a protein, Taok3, as the trigger for the development of MZB cells, prof. Lambrecht and his team showed that mice without the genetic ability to make Taok3 developed other types of B cells, but not MZB cells. As a result, they were susceptible to pneumococcus infection, a major cause of respiratory illness.

Two types of B cells with different functions

A known population of B cells that makes antibodies effective against a wide range of pathogens resides in the spleen, an organ responsible for filtering bacteria and other harmful particles from the blood. Two types of B cells are formed in the spleen: MZB cells, named so because they are found in an area of the organ called the 'marginal zone', and follicular B cells. However, scientists knew little about the mechanisms governing why early B cells develop into MZB cells versus follicular B cells.

Hamida Hammad (VIB-UGent): "We had a 'eureka!' moment after discovering that a little-known protein, Taok3, brings a certain proteinase, ADAM10, to the surface of the immature B cell that triggers its development into an MBZ cell. Without that special event, immature B cells can only develop into follicular B cells."

Taok3's role in triggering B cell differentiation

In mouse strains, the team observed in vivo that without Taok3, immature B cells never 'committed' to becoming MZB cells. MZB cells generate antibodies against encapsulated bacteria such as pneumococcus when they enter the bloodstream.

Hamida Hammad (VIB-UGent): "With an abundance of only follicular B cells, Taok3-free mice are less capable of fighting these types of bacteria effectively."

Potential therapies for protein-related disease

Collaboration with other Belgian scientists revealed that proteins similar to ADAM10 were also affected in animals without Taok3, potentially contributing to the development of brain diseases characterized by too much ADAM10 activity, such as the genetic disorder fragile X syndrome, which can result in intellectual disability.

Bart Lambrecht (VIB-UGent/UZ Gent): "Even more, we also found connections between Taok3 and the development of diabetes and asthma. This research has generated insights that are very relevant to new therapies to a range of important diseases. It goes to show that basic science sometimes leads to unexpected -and important - applications."
Preliminary computerized imaging reveals the shape of the prostate and a compartment within the gland - called the transitional zone - consistently differ in men with prostate cancer than those without the disease, according to new research led by Case Western Reserve University.

The finding may provide a new avenue to diagnose the disease - perhaps even the cancer's aggressiveness.

The differences held up in comparisons of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of 70 patients. The scans came from three different medical institutions in Ohio and two in Sydney, Australia, on different makes and models of MRI's.

The research is published in Scientific Reports.

"Looking at shape is a fundamental shift from looking at the intensity of pixels in an image to predict if a patient has prostate cancer," said Anant Madabhushi, F. Alex Nason professor II of biomedical engineering and leader of the research. "Pixel intensities vary, but shape is resilient."

Variability in MRI scans can result in disagreement as to whether prostate cancer is present, in turn potentially resulting in unnecessary biopsies and treatments. The American College of Radiology and others are working to develop standards to eliminate inconsistencies in imaging.

"Here, we potentially have an image-based biomarker for prostate cancer, which is not greatly sensitive to the MRI parameters used by each institution, the maker of the MRI or the scanner itself, " Madabhushi said.

A new view

To find the differences in shapes, the researchers took images of 35 cancerous prostates, aligned them into a single frame and created a statistical shape atlas. They then took images of 35 healthy prostates, aligned them in one frame and created a second statistical shape atlas.

The researchers then aligned the two frames and controlled for size - tumors and a noncancerous condition, called benign prostatic hyperplasia (which some images in this study showed), increase the gland's volume.

Comparing cancerous and cancer-free prostates showed clear, statistically significant differences in both the shape of the transitional zone - which is in the central part of the gland--and the gland itself.

The researchers analyzed and compared the images from each of the five medical institutions and found that, no matter where the images were from, differences in shapes between cancerous and cancer-free prostates were consistent.

Madabhushi said that if shape proves to be a reliable marker of cancer, it could be combined with radiomics, which employs computer algorithms to extract differentiating features in cancerous and non-cancerous tissues.

Complementing strategy

In a paper published in the December issue of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Madabhushi and colleagues found they could accurately identify cancer by the microarchitecture and heterogeneity of the tumor in the prostate's peripheral zone, which is the area surrounding the transitional zone.

The researchers found that aspects of cancerous features in the peripheral zone differed from cancerous features found in the rest of the gland, leading them to identify tumors there.

As with shape, the peripheral zone features held up across the institutions in Tuku, Finland; Sydney, Australia and New York City that contributed MRI scans in this study.

As a follow-up, researchers are now working to identify radiomic features from the peripheral and transitional zones along with measurements derived from the prostate shape to use as predictors of whether a patient has cancer or not.

Further, they are trying to determine whether shape can also predict if the cancer is aggressive or slow-moving--a key in determining how the disease is treated.


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For Orlando hospitality industry icon Harris Rosen, charity may have begun at home, when he shocked the business world some 25 years ago by offering his employees a low-cost healthcare programlater building his own medical clinicand free college tuition for them and their families. But since then, his philanthropic heart has expanded through Orlando and beyond via an impressive number of humanitarian programs that have made a massive difference to those in need.

A veritable rags-to-riches story, Rosen started from humble beginnings, joining the Army and attending Cornell Universitys acclaimed hospitality school before angling into an entry-level job with New Yorks Waldorf Astoria hotel, where his youthful bravado talked him into a sales position and soon after entry into Hiltons management training program. An independent thinker and firebrand from his start in the hospitality industry, Rosen famously worked for Disney but soon found the corporate environment there a tad too stifling for his independent attitude.

After starting his ownership portfolio with a two-story Quality Innnow the Rosen Inn International, where his humble office occupies a former guest roomRosen Hotels & Resorts now counts seven major properties in Orlando, including two attached to the Orange County Convention Center.

But for a person with the integrity of Rosen, success comes with the responsibility to give back.

It really happened about 25 years ago when I was in the final stages of designing our fifth property and sixth property, and dreaming about a seventh property, which would be a resort, he said. It just occurred to me that it was really time for me to say, Thank you, God, for all of the blessings Ive received, and to start thinking about offering a helping hand to those that needed a helping hand. Its not something everyone can do, because if you have a family, thats your first priority, but if youve been blessed, why not do a lot?

Beginning with healthcare and free college tuition programs for his employees, whom he refers to as associatesWere not a company with an employer and employees. We are a family with associates.Rosen has since branched out to assisting underserved Orlando communities and providing relief to Haiti, where many of his associates hail from. (See Rosen Relief sidebar)

This high level of giving has translated into one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry, which Rosen feels is in part due to the benefits his company provides.

Management philosophy and philanthropic philosophy really coincide, he said.

But business sense aside, the real reason for his charitable efforts is much less complicated and much more pure.

We do it for very simple reasonsbecause its the right thing to do, and because we love America, said Rosen, whose mothers family came from Austria-Hungary and his dads from Ukraine. Ive had wonderful opportunities, and here I am today. We are so grateful and appreciative that all were trying to do is say, Thank you for being born here and all of the blessings over the years. Its really not that complicated.

His work helping the underserved Orlando communities of Tangelo Park and Parramore provides educational resources that give youth a critical first step on the ladder of success.

We hear a lot about income inequality, and it does exist, and its expected to exist in an entrepreneurial society, Rosen said. What we cannot, as a wonderful nation, tolerate is educational inequality, so in an underserved community, you have people that would do well in college but cant afford it. Thats unacceptable. And when they leave college they have no debt, and I would like to see that throughout America.

Rosen calculated that for every dollar his company has invested in Tangelo Park, the community gets back $7.

If we could find wealthy individuals throughout America that would be willing to create a Tangelo or Parramore program, he said, we could change America one underserved community at a time.
We all dream of travelling. Travelling to faraway lands, travelling solo, meeting strangers from different cultures, facing new adventures, and evolving with each experience. But it never happens. We never have enough money, enough time, enough determination to actually take that dream trip.

But some people do. They are not very different from you or me. They just decide to take that leap of faith. You just have to make it happen. One such person is Prashant Bhansali, a final year student at IIM Udaipur. He got a chance to go to France as part of an exchange programme, and the enterprising management student didnt let the opportunity go waste.

 Prashant Bhansali

He managed to visit 23 countries in the 105 days he could spare. Every year, more than 400 students from India visit Europe for similar student exchange programmes but what became was unique in my case was that I sneaked out time from my schedule and planned out some travel trips.

 Prashant Bhansali

Like with all beginnings, it wasnt easy. I always wanted to experience a solo trip but never had the courage to try it in India. So, I decided to undertake one while I was still in Europe. I packed my bags, booked the first flight to Portugal and left (literally, that was what happened). For the first few days, every day was quite haunting for me. I craved for human conversations. It was killing me to roam around alone for days without saying or talking to anyone.

 Prashant Bhansali

In these 105 days, I have experienced backpacker solo trips to random road trips, slept at airport floor to random street roads, experienced from 35C to -7C, travelled 15-22 Km almost every day on foot, hiked mountains, crossed oceans, hooped on scooters, lived life in some of the remotest villages to some of the world's most exotic islands, survived on bread and cheese and met unimaginable amount of crazy and smart people from all over the globe. Indeed, it was an experience which could only be lived and is really difficult to express. Great things happen when you have the least expectations. And, it did...

 Prashant Bhansali

From visiting the picture-perfect Corsica, where parts of Tamasha were shot, to stepping foot on Kings Landing from Game of Thrones in Dubrovnik, Croatia, it started like a dream. He managed to check off quite a lot many countries that are on our bucket-lists  Austria, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Sweden, The Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, among many others.

 Prashant Bhansali

 Prashant Bhansali

But nothing prepares you for life better than a trip. And Prashant had his share of tough experiences. In Norway, he, along with 2 other fellow exchange students, were stuck without any place to stay for the night and ended up sleeping on the streets. Undertaking a 22-km challenging trek in Norway, the three musketeers (fellow exchange students from my school in France) defied our physical abilities, fought against the worst of weather conditions to reach the most mesmerizing view of our life.

 Prashant Bhansali

 Prashant Bhansali

It was roller-coaster ride with interesting people, experiences and adventures, just like life is. I wanted to travel and explore the places in Europe like a local, so I mostly avoided hotels and hostels. I stayed with a lot of local people in most of the countries I visited. In Croatia, I was welcomed with an India curry and rice cooked by a Slovakian girl, a friend of two other Slovakian girls who hosted me for a night.

 Prashant Bhansali

You never return the same person from a trip. Having travelled solo for a good part of the trip, one thing Prashant learned was to be his own person. The adventures and the experiences gave him the strength to do his thing. It was there I realized that I couldn't see myself working for someone else [] The next few days were followed with discussions with my family; my mentor and my college seniors who helped me assess the pros and cons of the decision I was about to make for my life, and I finally decided to opt out of placements from my college and work on my dream startup.

He sums it up with a message that will inspire you to get up and go explore the world right now. No matter wherever youre, travel and meet people. We need not wait for the perfect moment and perfect time to start traveling. I, myself will start exploring the places I havent in our beautiful country.
Vietnamese "9x" excellent students at Harvard

VietNamNet Bridge - Students born in the 1990s brought fame to families and their homeland with their learning achievements and scholarships granted by prestigious international schools. Most of them chose to study at Harvard.









Nguyen Hoang Khanh









1. Born in 1992, Chau Thanh Vu, from Ninh Thuan province is among very few postgraduates who won full scholarship of $79,000 for 5-year training course at Harvard for a doctorate in economics.



Obtaining full scholarships from eight prestigious schools in the US, Vu has made his friends tip their hats to him.



When he was a third-year student, he received the title of the best student in Princeton Universitys economics department.



I plan to come back to Vietnam as soon as I can, he said.



I decided to study economics because I want to make my contribution to the countrys economic development, he explained.



2. Nguyen Hoang Khanh, 1993, is one of lucky students who got an 80 percent funded scholarship for the Juris Doctor program at Harvard Law School.



Prior to that, in 2011, Khanh received Presidential Scholarship, worth 100 percent of tuition to study at St. Johns in New York. After finishing the university study there with the grade point average of 3.93/4.0, he received an 100 percent scholarship for the business administration program, also at the school.





Students born in the 1990s brought fame to families and their homeland with their learning achievements and scholarships granted by prestigious international schools. Most of them chose to study at Harvard.



Khanh began learning about opportunities at Harvard law school four years ago. He believes that Harvards professors and graduates all over the world can help him a lot when he finishes study and returns to Vietnam.



In order to obtain the honorable scholarship, Khanh had to undergo LSAT (law school admission test) and interview, the two very challenging exams.



3. Ton Ha Anh and Ton Hien Anh are sisters at Harvard. Ha Anh, 24, is now a final year economics student. Five years ago, Anh, a former student of the Hanoi-Amsterdam High School for the Gifted, chose to study at Harvard because of quality and fame while five schools offered scholarships to her at that time.



Dr Carolynn Maltas, a lecturer, said Ha Anhs essays are always highly appreciated by professors thanks to sharp arguments and creative presentation.



In April 2016, Hien Anh, Ha Anhs sister, 18, also a former student of the Hanoi-Amsterdam High School, received a financial support package of $320,000 from Harvard for a 4-year course.



4. La Ho Minh Khue, 20, a math major at the Hanoi-Amsterdam High School two years ago received a $320,000 scholarship from Harvard to study psychology.



Khue is known not only for her great achievements, but also as the third prize winner at the international piano competition in South Korea in 2013.





Ha Vy
"I would like to thank you all and wish you a happy new year. The first month went well even without my wishes. I would like to thank you for your work and collaboration, and for the fact that we are holding the Ministry up high. I am proud of our Ministry, and despite any weaknesses, I believe that we are the best Ministry in the country and one of the best in Europe.

Our personnel are highly specialized, hard-working and collaborate well together. I want to thank you in particular. I want to thank all of the personnel, from all of our Ministry's branches, who stay with me here late at night -- or into the morning hours, if necessary -- for their self-sacrifice and their belief that the country must have a proactive, multidimensional foreign policy and that we need to be a step ahead of where our country is at any given time.

I would like to express my thanks because all of us defend international law, European law and the perception that our country's weapon on the international stage is legality.

And I want to thank all of those who, through hard work, uncover the exceptions that violate legality, whether in our country -- and I mean even at our Ministry -- or from the perspective of international law; that is, international legality.

We are a country that believes in peaceful coexistence and cooperation with our neighbours internationally and globally. We are a country that does not want needless friction with anyone, but also that will not back down under pressure from anyone.

I would like to reiterate that we are a country that believes in international law, in international institutions, in international processes, which we defend along with human rights for every person. We are a country that promotes good relations with its neighbours.

We developed the two trilateral cooperation platforms we already had -- Greece-Cyprus-Egypt, Greece-Cyprus-Israel -- into relations that are not just on the level of Foreign Ministries, but of all the ministries and on all levels, and we also extended our trilateral relations with Lebanon and Palestine and Jordan.

We set up a new structure -- and we will repeat this in the first week of June -- that our Arab friends call the spirit of Rhodes; that is, the Rhodes security and stability structure, the primary characteristic of which -- and I think this has to hold for all of the sectors of our foreign policy -- is its role in promoting a positive agenda. We need to have positive proposals, even at the most difficult time or during conflicts, to promote the potential for the development of networks and cooperation in all fields, from the economy to culture and research.

We have developed good neighbourly relations in the Balkans. We have two new cooperation platforms: the cooperation of the four EU member states -- Greece, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia - and we have built the cross-border cooperation with our three northern neighbours.

We have also established the international Conference for the protection of the religious and cultural communities of the Middle East, and this year, in the first week of November, we will be co-organizing it with Austria, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. Because our thinking and objective in these initiatives we have taken -- and there are 16 new structures and formats in all -- is to include third countries along the way, as these formats mature, and consolidate these cooperation platforms.

We are also moving ahead, as you know, with the re-establishment of the Analysis and Planning Centre -- today is the second debate of the draft law in Parliament -- and of the Scientific Council, while we are preparing the new Statute of the Ministry, which I hope will be ready in three or four months.

We are also opening, as you know, an Embassy in Singapore, in a city-state that brings together all of the new activities of emerging Asia, Southeast Asia. And we are also opening a Consulate General in Erbil. You are aware of the geostrategic role played by the region of Northern Iraq, otherwise known as Kurdistan.

We intend to become active again diplomatically in Libya -- where we went recently and saw our Embassy, which is in good condition -- and in Syria.

Greek diplomacy, Greek foreign policy, is paid much greater attention today than it was a few years ago. We have achieved this thanks to your work, the work of all the personnel of our Ministry, and thanks to the assistance of our Ministers, and I am pleased that we have with us here today Deputy Minister Terens Quick -- the others are abroad -- and thanks to our Secretaries General, Dimitrios Paraskevopoulos and Giorgos Tsipras.

Let's cut a piece for our Ministry, for our government. Let me also thank the President of the Republic, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who is very active in supporting and bolstering our foreign policy.

Let me thank the opposition parties, which, through their critical observations, often prompt us to reflect and to think.

And let me thank every Ministry employee who, whether orally or in writing, makes it possible -at meetings and in dialogue- for us to open up and enrich our thoughts with theirs. We want a Ministry that thinks and is bold, where each of us dreams and promotes one thought or another, rather than worrying just about one individual issue or another.

Thank you very much.
BAD AXE  Michelle R. Siev is a new associate recently hired at Salens & Salens, P.C. located at 125 N. Heisterman St. in Bad Axe.

The areas of law Siev practices include estate administration, family law (i.e. child custody matters, abuse and neglect, divorce), and criminal defense which includes drunk driving offenses, misdemeanors and felonies. Siev would like to encourage those seeking legal advice and/or representation to reach out to her at the firm.

Throughout her law school career, Siev interned at a small general-civil and criminal law firm in Auburn Hills, Michigan, as well as at the Legal Aid and Defender Association in the Public Benefits Department at their Detroit location. Siev also completed her externship as the court intern under Huron County Chief Judge David B. Herrington in the summer of 2015.

Siev graduated from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in September 2015 with a Juris Doctor degree. She was then admitted to the State Bar of Michigan and became licensed to practice law in November 2016.

Before Siev attended law school, she received her bachelor's degree in political science and international relations from Oakland University in 2012. She grew up in Bad Axe and is a graduate of Bad Axe High School (Class of 2008).

She always found balance with furthering her education as well as assisting her parents, Chun and Rachel Siev, with their family restaurant, Rachel's in Bad Axe. Family has always been a priority for Siev, which was the main reason for her decision to move back to the area.
Camp Lejeune Town Halls Aim to Help Those Exposed to Toxic Water. Heres How You Can Go.

Retired Marine Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger made it his mission to tell the world that if they lived or served on Camp Lejeune...
Pregnant Air Force reservists and guardsmen on active duty are now eligible to serve out their orders until they give birth, according to a recent policy change.

The change affects airmen in the reserve component serving in active-duty capacity, also known as Active Duty Operational Support (ADOS) orders.

"Prior to this change, Reserve and Guard members were taken off active-duty support orders in their 34th week of pregnancy regardless of whether or not they were medically able to serve," Air Force spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder told reporters Tuesday.

The order, authorized last month by then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs Gabe Camarillo, allows pregnant service members to serve through the end of their orders or the birth of their child -- "whichever comes first," Ryder said.

"This policy removes a perceived barrier that pregnancy is a limiting factor in retaining talent," Air Force spokeswoman Brooke Brzozowske said. "Air Force leadership reviewed an outdated policy and adjusted course in order to be more inclusive. This decision is another step toward a more diverse and inclusive culture, enabling airmen to make their greatest contribution to mission success."

The Air Force for first time granted 12 weeks of paid maternity leave to all active-duty and reservist female airmen on active orders for at least 12 months, per the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

How that applies to reservist airmen can vary, said Col. Pamela Powers, the mobilization assistant to the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs.

"The key is eligibility," Powers said. "A critical factor in obtaining non-chargeable maternity leave is a continuous ADOS order or multiple sets of orders.

"If a reservist goes off ADOS orders to participate or attend Inactive Duty Training or Unit Training Assembly periods, it constitutes a break in orders and negates the 12-month continuous period, which in turn, makes them ineligible for the 12 weeks of non-chargeable maternity leave," Powers said.

Airmen in the Guard or Reserve on shorter tours can serve until the original order termination date, or the date of birth "plus any accrued ordinary leave, whichever is earlier," according to an Air Force release.

In some cases, pregnant reservists can have their ADOS orders extended "past the 12-month pregnancy threshold if there is a valid requirement, funding is available and both their permanent unit and supported unit commanders approve," the release said.

"However, there are limitations and exceptions to serving throughout a pregnancy," Powers added.

"The supported commander will determine whether duty limitations would prevent the airman from performing her duties, whether she can be transferred to other duties or, if necessary, a curtailment of the orders," she said.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.
The Navy sent the USS Cole to the Gulf of Aden following an attack earlier this week on a Saudi warship off Yemen by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, a U.S. defense official told Fox News Friday.

The destroyer is the same warship that suffered heavy damage in an al-Qaida bombing attack in Yemen in 2000 that killed 17 sailors.

The Navy's move also came as the Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test.

Trump tweeted Friday that "Iran is playing with fire - they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!"

The Cole has been sent to an area off Yemen where U.S. warships were attacked in October, resulting in a retaliatory Tomahawk cruise missile strike from a U.S. destroyer against Houthi radar installations in on Yemens coastline.

The Pentagon says the Houthis have placed mines in the water near the entrance to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait.

Another reason the Cole is being sent to the area is to maintain freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and through the strait, Fox News reports.

President Donald Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said this week the administration was putting Iran "on notice" for its missile test Sunday and for supporting the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Houthis targeted a Saudi frigate off the coast of Yemen Monday, but the attack may have been meant for an American warship, two defense officials told Fox News.

Two Saudi sailors were killed and three were wounded in the attack. At first the ship was thought to have been struck by a missile.

But based on new analysis of a video showing the attack, American intelligence officials now believe a suicide bomber in a small boat carried out the attack after ramming the side of the Saudi vessel.

In the audio heard on the video, a voice narrating the attack shouts in Arabic, "Allahu akbar [God is great], death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews and victory for Islam."

U.S. defense analysts believe those behind the attack either thought the bomber was striking an American warship or that this was a dress rehearsal similar to the attack on the Cole, according to one official.

The attack on the Saudi ship came a day after Trump spoke by phone with Saudi King Salman to discuss setting up safe zones for refugees in Syria and Yemen. Senior U.S. defense officials who spoke with Fox News expressed concern over the attack but said they were confident American warships can defend themselves.

The United States has supported a Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen since 2015.

Last weekend, Navy SEALs teamed up with United Arab Emirates Special Forces to carry out a raid targeting senior al-Qaida in Yemen leaders.

Navy Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens was killed and at least three other U.S. service members were wounded in the raid.

Fox News' Jennifer Griffin, Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The White House denied Thursday that the Yemen raid in which a member of Navy SEAL Team 6 was killed may have been hastily planned and possibly compromised.

"This was a very well thought-out and executed effort," which had the recommendation and support of new Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said.

The Pentagon backed up Spicer's assessment on the action last Saturday against a compound of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula group that has planned terror attacks in Europe and the U.S.

"It's not true that the raid lost surprise," said Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. "We have no information to suggest that it was compromised."

In a statement Sunday, Trump called the raid "successful." He said that 14 militants were killed and that intelligence was seized "that will assist the U.S. in preventing terrorism against its citizens and people around the world."

"It's hard to ever call something a complete success, when you have the loss of life or people injured," Spicer said of the raid on the village of Yakla in a remote area of Yemen's interior.

"But I think when you look at the totality of what was gained to prevent the future loss of life -- it is a successful operation by all standards."

Navy Chief Special Warfare Operator William "Ryan" Owens, 36, was killed in raid and became the first known combat fatality of Trump's presidency. Three other service members were wounded in what the Defense Department has termed a "ferocious firefight" and two more were injured in the hard landing of an MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft.

The Osprey could not be flown out and was later destroyed by an AV-8B Harrier II jet flying off the amphibious assault ship Makin Island.

On Wednesday, Trump made an unannounced trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for the solemn ceremony marking the return of Owens' remains.

At his daily briefing, Spicer gave a detailed timeline on the decision-making process leading up to the raid. The planning began in early November during the administration of former President Barack Obama and recommendations for approval were proceeding, but Obama never signed off on launching the mission.

The process was delayed to await a moonless night in Yemen, and the first opportunity came after Trump's Jan. 20 inauguration, Spicer said. Trump's personal approval was required.

By law, the military has authority for operations in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Other operations require presidential approval.

The last mission personally authorized by Obama was the Jan. 18 airstrikes in Libya by B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flying out of Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri against targets of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

At his briefing, Spicer gave the "tick tock," or sequence of events, on how the plan developed and who was involved:

Nov. 7: U.S. Central Command submitted the plan to the Defense Department.

U.S. Central Command submitted the plan to the Defense Department. Dec. 19: DoD approved the plan and "recommended that it be moved ahead" to the White House National Security Council.

DoD approved the plan and "recommended that it be moved ahead" to the White House National Security Council. Jan. 6: Officials of several agencies met and recommended approval. "The conclusion was at that time to hold it for what they called a 'moonless night,' " which would not occur until after Trump was president.

Officials of several agencies met and recommended approval. "The conclusion was at that time to hold it for what they called a 'moonless night,' " which would not occur until after Trump was president. Jan. 24: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis studied the plan and recommended approval.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis studied the plan and recommended approval. Jan. 25: Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the White House national security adviser, briefed Trump on the plan and Mattis' recommendation.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the White House national security adviser, briefed Trump on the plan and Mattis' recommendation. Evening of Jan. 25: Trump asked to see Mattis and Dunford. He then had a dinner meeting on the plan with Mattis, Dunford, Flynn, Vice President Mike Pence, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump asked to see Mattis and Dunford. He then had a dinner meeting on the plan with Mattis, Dunford, Flynn, Vice President Mike Pence, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, and adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Jan. 26: "The president signed the memo authorizing the action."

As the raid was being carried out, Trump was at the White House and in contact with Mattis, the national security staff, and others who kept him updated on the progress and Owens' death, Spicer said.

Several news outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have cited official sources in reports that the mission was compromised almost from the outset. After dropping about five miles from the village, the raiders intercepted communications indicating that AQAP was aware of their presence, the reports said.

Yemeni officials and social media sites associated with AQAP have charged that the raid killed 30 to 40 civilians. The dead included the eight-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born AQAP leader and chief propagandist who was killed in a 2011 targeted drone strike in Yemen, according to Yemeni officials.

On Wednesday night, U.S. Central Command said in a statement that commanders have "concluded regrettably that civilian non-combatants were likely killed in the midst of a firefight during a raid in Yemen. Casualties may include children."

The statement said that a credibility assessment team is seeking to determine if there were additional civilian casualties in "the ferocious firefight" that also claimed the life of Owens.

"The known possible civilian casualties appear to have been potentially caught up in aerial gunfire that was called in to assist U.S. forces in contact against a determined enemy that included armed women firing from prepared fighting positions, and U.S. special operations members receiving fire from all sides to include houses and other buildings," the statement said.

AQAP "has a horrifying history of hiding women and children within militant operating areas and terrorist camps, and continuously shows a callous disregard for innocent lives," said Col. John J. Thomas, a CentCom spokesman. "That's what makes cases like these so especially tragic."

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
There are two sides. Neither listen. Both are determined they are right.

No, I'm not talking about politics or the tone in our country. I'm talking about marriage and military love. (But perhaps what I'm about to say could help both scenarios.)

Surely you've been there. You and your spouse are in a heated argument, and he's just not listening. Or maybe she just won't stop talking long enough to understand what you are trying to say.

You have a very good reason behind what you are feeling, but so does he. You had the best intentions, but she just can't see them.

Now there is just too much water under the bridge, too much to sort through, too much to resolve to have hope this will ever last.

And then someone says it: "Maybe this is it."

Hopelessness is one of the darkest feelings in the world -- but also one of the most deceptive.

In the midst of it, you feel there is no way through or around it. It deceives you into saying things that you would never say otherwise, but they come spilling out when you're backed into a corner with no way out.

If we could just remember in that moment that there is another way through the conflict, that there is something else more powerful than our hurt, our stance, and our feelings.

Love.

Before I completely lose you, read on. I'm not talking about the kind of military love where we just choose to accept the other person and everything they are about. That kind of love is really just "tolerance," a Band-Aid. I'm talking about a much deeper love that I'm not seeing much lately. It is a love that is real and, because of that, painful.

As a culture and generation, we avoid pain and would rather demand the instant gratification of being first in all things: first to talk, first to be right, first to have our feelings validated. But real love, deep love, is powerful because it costs you something. To choose love means we tap into self-control and sacrifice our own desire to be right or first.

Some of you reading this are already pushing back saying, "But what if it is an abusive relationship?" If you are unsure, please talk to a professional.

However, the majority of you reading this are not in that situation. More often than not, it is easy to conjure up "evidence" that the relationship is unhealthy in order to feel entitled to take your spot as first.

Real love will always cost something. I'm not suggesting you sacrifice your feelings and never bring them up again -- that's being a martyr and is just as destructive to you and the relationship.

But truly loving the other person means we love them beyond the level that we understand them as we temporarily push down and sacrifice our pride. It is painful to say, "I will be the first to listen and tend to your feelings. I will sacrifice what I want in the moment, to listen to what is important to you."

That moment you push yourself to sacrifice being first will feel painful, excruciating even. Something in you will feel it is dying. And guess what? It is. Immaturity, pride, self-centeredness and ugliness inside of you is dying. But that is why the real kind of love is so powerful.

Having faith in its effectiveness is crucial. Love will simultaneously shape your character while mending the heart of another person. That is why marriage is one of the strongest assets we will have in our lifetime. Marriage will cost you your selfishness on a daily basis in return for maturity.

Contrary to popular belief, maturity is not the loudest in the room. It is often the quietest.

Think of this quote from an episode of the Netflix series "The Crown," where Queen Mary is encouraging the new Queen Elizabeth on leadership: "To do nothing is the hardest job of all. To be impartial is not natural."

Everything in you will want to win, but when you serve instead of taking first, you win something else: your spouse's heart.

Love first, go second. Over time, your spouse will likely return the favor -- and hope will return.

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THURSDAY: The Reds have agreed to a minor-league deal with Arroyo, per MLB.coms Mark Sheldon (via Twitter). He has already passed his physical with the organization, though he still needs to formally sign his contract before itll be official.

MONDAY: It emerged recently that the Reds had taken a look at former rotation stalwart Bronson Arroyo. Though the level of the teams interest wasnt clear at the time, it seems now that the organization saw some promise in the veteran rightys workout. Indeed, Cincinnati has engaged Arroyo in contract talks that appear likely to result in a deal, according to a report from Chris Cotillo of SB Nation reporting (on Twitter).

Cincinnati has made clear that it isnt interested in handing out any more major-league deals this winter, so any arrangement with Arroyo would be of the minor-league variety. Thats unsurprising, as Arroyo is less than a month away from his fortieth birthday and over two-and-a-half years removed from his last MLB appearance.

In his most recent work in the bigs, Arroyo provided the Diamondbacks with 86 innings of 4.08 ERA pitching. He landed in Arizona on a two-year deal after an eight-year run with the Reds. Arroyo not only revived his career in Cincy, but established himself as a tireless workhorse who could be relied upon for solid innings even in his mid-thirties.

All told, Arroyo spun 1,690 1/3 frames of 4.05 ERA ball with the Reds. While the results were rarely spectacular, that 211-inning-per-year average was plenty valuable. Though he never threw harder than the upper eighties, compiling just 5.9 K/9 against 2.3 BB/9, Arroyo managed to suppress batting averages on balls in play with his crafty pitch mix.

That track record led the D-Backs to promise Arroyo $23.5MM in free agency. Unfortunately, he rather promptly broke down and hasnt returned to the majors since. Tommy John surgery kept him out for 2015. Though he returned to join the Nationals in spring camp in 2016, his return bid was thwarted by a torn tendon in his rotator cuff. While it seemed at one point as if Arroyo might not have another comeback bid in him, it seems hell give it another try.
Ford Motor Co. announced it is exporting the first United States-built F-Series truck to China in the 2017 F-150 Raptor.

It's the first time any of the U.S.-built best-selling F-Series has been sent to China for sale. The exported model is a four-door SuperCrew, which is the second generation of the F-150 Raptor, complete with a 3.5-liter EcoBoost and 10-speed automatic transmission.

The Ford F-Series sold 820,799 trucks stateside in 2016, which marked 40 consecutive years of the automaker's line taking America's top spot for best selling vehicle. The F-Series topped that number north of the border, with it serving as Canada's best-selling truck for 51 years.

The best-selling truck in Canada for 51 years #FordUndisputed pic.twitter.com/85WBVmr2Aj  Ford Canada (@FordCanada) February 3, 2017

"Ford is one of America's top exporters, and F-150 Raptor's appeal and unmatched off-road performance has earned the truck a loyal following around the globe," Joe Hinrichs, Ford president of The Americas, said in a news release. "Export to China enables us to bring a new group of enthusiasts into the Ford family."

While the F-150 Raptor is the first export to China for the F-Series, the Dearborn-based automaker currently exports its Focus RS and ST models, as well as the Fiesta ST.

The Raptor performance model, built at the Dearborn Truck plant, is one of the new vehicles promised by Ford by 2020.

In early January, Ford CEO Mark Fields they will invest $4.5 billion in new electric vehicles, and $700 million to "transform and expand" the Flat Rock Assembly Plant.

Fields said its hybrid Ford Mustang will arrive in 2020, and will feature V8 power and low-end torque that will make it "even more fun to drive." It will be built at the Flat Rock Assembly Plant and will first release in North America.

The hybrid F-150 pickup truck will also be available in 2020, and will be sold in North America and the Middle East for starters. The best-selling truck will be manufactured at the Dearborn Truck plant and will include more powerful towing and payload capacity, as well as the capability to operate as a mobile generator.

See below for a rundown of additional details on other vehicles:
SP.HANDWASH2.JPG

Some of the priority violations of Washtenaw County restaurants and establishments in December 2016 were related to employees improperly washing their hands.

(J. Scott Park | Jackson Citizen Patriot)

ANN ARBOR, MI - At least four priority violations during Washtenaw County Public Health Department's December 2016 restaurant inspections involved employees not washing their hands or handling food products with their bare hands.

Of the 106 restaurants and food service facilities inspected in December, 24 had two or more priority violations, which are the most serious violations that are most likely to lead to food-borne illness.

Six restaurants had three or more priority violations, and two restaurants had four priority violations.

For December, 39 restaurants had zero priority violations, and 14 restaurants and institutions had no violations at all.

Below is a searchable table of December 2016 inspection results. You can search by restaurant name or city, or you can click the search button without selecting either restaurant name or city to get a list of all results. Each of the columns in the table is sortable by clicking on the column header.

You can follow this link to search the Washtenaw County Public Health Department's restaurant inspection reports to see specific details about the violations noted by the inspectors. A description of the different types of violations can be found at the end of this post.

Here are excerpts from the December restaurant inspection reports, with a focus on the restaurants with the largest number of priority violations:

Guy Hollerin's at the Holiday Inn Near the University of Michigan (3600 Plymouth Rd., Ann Arbor) had four priority violations and a total of 11 violations overall.

Observed food debris on food contact and surrounding surfaces of slicer. Last used ~ 2 hours ago to slice ham. Per person in charge (PIC), policy is to take dismantled parts to dish machine and wipe other clean-in-place (CIP) parts with quat. No wash or rinse procedure is being completed for CIP procedure. To correct - wash, rinse and sanitize slicer after use or every 4 hours if in continuous use. CIP components must be washed, rinsed then sanitized. Train staff. * a follow-up will be held to evaluate correction.

Observed TCS (temperature control for safety) food holding 48-49*f inside 2-door reach-in cooler at pantry area. Most holding over 4 hours. Per PIC, no temperature check was completed. To correct - unit must be repaired to hold TCS food at 41*f or below. Monitor units daily. Temporary correction - TCS food held more than 4 hours was discarded. Lunch meat sliced less than 2 hours ago was placed inside walk-in cooler to cool and hold. * enforcement action is required concerning repeating violation.

Observed employee placing lemon wedge on drink using bare hands. Note: edible part of food was being touched during process. To correct - use utensils or gloved hand to handle ready-to-eat food at bar. * a follow-up will be held to evaluate correction.

Dishwasher is not washing hands between handling soiled equipment then cleaned equipment. To correct - hands must be cleaned after risk of contamination such as handling soiled equipment. Train staff. See educational handout. Corrected - PIC trained employee on hand washing requirements and agrees to monitor staff to ensure hands are being washed.

Totoro (215 S. State, Ann Arbor) had four priority violations and a total of 6 violations overall.

Kitchen staff is currently setting up 3-compartment sink improperly according to plumbing (wash and sanitize compartments are reversed). Current procedure is to sanitize in compartment that is directly connected to waste line where sewage could back up into final sanitizing step of warewashing. Sanitizer concentration was below 50 ppm. Corrected by educating PIC to change warewashing procedure so that sanitizing is in the right-most compartment that is air gapped to floor drain.

Irreversible hot water thermometer sticker did not register the dishes to achieve 160'f in mechanical dish machine. Two test strips were used and unit was run several times. PIC has called for unit to be serviced immediately to achieve 160'f minimum hot water sanitization. In the meantime, staff shall place utensils and wares into sanitizer compartment of 3-c sink after running through dishwasher. To correct, call health department when unit is working so that a follow up inspection can verify that proper sanitizing is occurring in dish machine.

Observed an employee use bare hands when plating ready-to-eat edamame, sushi rolls, and cooled fried chicken. Employees shall not handle ready-to-eat food without single-use gloves or utensils. Kitchen staff said it was a mistake due to disruption in service, gloves were readily available. Corrected at time of inspection by donning gloves.

Observed unapproved bleach being used for sanitizing dishes in the final step of manual warewashing (array brand 3.00% bleach without EPA reg. Nos). Pic corrected at time of inspection by providing approved bleach (with EPA reg no.)

Brookies Cafe LLC (1785 Washtenaw, Ypsilanti) had three priority violations and a total of 14 violations overall.

Food employee observed to wash and rinse utensils and bowl, but did not sanitize these items. Food contact surfaces must be washed, rinsed, and sanitized to minimize potential for bacterial growth. Food employee temporarily corrected by setting up 3-compartment sink correctly, and wash/rinse/sanitize dishes/utensils. To correct, re-train food employees on proper dishwashing procedures.

A flat of raw shell eggs were found in the kitchen upright cooler stored next to rolls, and above cheeses and sauces. Raw lamb chops were also found above cooked chicken and shrimp. Raw animal products must be stored below and away from ready to eat foods to minimize potential for contamination. PIC temporarily corrected by relocating raw shell eggs and raw lamb chops to area below ready to eat foods. To correct, re-train food employees on proper storage of raw animal products.

Food employee observed to not wash hands after washing soiled dishes and after removing gloves after handling raw chicken. Hands must be washed when contaminated and after handling raw meat. Temporarily corrected by food employee washing his hands. To correct, re-train food employees on when hand washing needs to be done.

Where can I see the inspection results?

Washtenaw County posts links to all inspection reports for restaurants, University of Michigan foodservice establishments and facilities inspected by the State of Michigan, such as grocery stores, food processing plants and convenience stores. These reports are available at http://foodsafety.ewashtenaw.org. Click here for access to all Washtenaw County food service inspections!

What do the violations in the reports mean?

Washtenaw County Public Health's Environmental Health Division is responsible for inspecting all food service establishment operations in Washtenaw County. These food service establishments are regulated under the State of Michigan's Food Law and Michigan Modified Food Code.

* Priority violations are the most serious. Correcting these eliminates or reduces a problem directly associated with foodborne illness. Examples include improper food temperatures and lack of hand washing.

* Priority Foundation violations are problems that can lead to a Priority violation. Correcting these problems may keep Priority violations from occurring. Examples include not having an appropriate food thermometer, not having soap or paper towel at a hand sink and not having test strips to determine if sanitizer is at an appropriate concentration.

* Core violations are related to general sanitation and facility maintenance. Examples include dirty floors and improper facility lighting.

Priority and Priority Foundation violations must be corrected immediately at the time of inspection or within 10 days. Core violations must be corrected within 90 days of the inspection.

How frequent are inspections?

Routine inspections take place twice per year (or once per year if the business is only open seasonally). Routine inspections are typically unannounced. Each inspection is a snapshot in time, and conditions found at the restaurant are not necessarily the conditions that could be found in the restaurant at other times.

Sanitarians (otherwise known as health inspectors) ask many questions about the menu, operations and procedures to get the best possible idea of the day-to-day conditions of the restaurant. Environmental Health conducts additional inspections if a foodborne illness or other complaint is reported.

What if I have a complaint?

Environmental Health responds to general restaurant complaints as well as foodborne illness complaints. Please call the office at 734-222-3800 to file a complaint or to report a suspected foodborne illness.

Washtenaw County Public Health promotes health and works to prevent disease and injury in our community. Visit the department online at http://publichealth.ewashtenaw.org.
ANN ARBOR, MI - A 41-year-old Jackson man had no words for the judge when he was sentenced up to 60 years for breaking into a 23-year-old woman's apartment and raping her last May.

Keith Akei Brown declined to comment when he was sentenced 22-66 years in prison by Judge Darlene O'Brien in the Washtenaw County Trial Court Thursday, Feb. 2.

A statement written by the woman was read aloud in court for both O'Brien and Brown to hear.

"The assault was the most terrifying experience of my life," she wrote. "I still don't feel comfortable with men, especially alone... I dream about the assault, and sometimes I'm afraid to go to sleep."

Brown, wearing a bright blue Michigan Department of Corrections coat over his shoulders, seemed unaffected by the statement. Both his hands and feet were shackled.

In her statement, the woman asked O'Brien to give Brown a long prison sentence considering it isn't his first sexual assault.

In 2004 in Jackson County, Brown was convicted of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and served 11 years in prison, according to Michigan Department of Corrections records. He was released on parole in July 2015.

On May 10, 2016, police say Brown forced his way into an apartment in the 4800 block of Washtenaw Avenue in Pittsfield Township, then struck and sexually assaulted a 23-year-old woman. He took money from the residence, police said.

The victim suffered a minor abrasion to her face in the assault.

Pittsfield Township police identified Brown as a person of interest and arrested him shortly after the incident on unrelated charges. Police conducted an in-depth investigation and recovered DNA from the incident. Police say testing at the Michigan State Police Forensic Science Laboratory identified Brown as the suspect.

Brown pleaded no contest Jan. 12 to two counts of first-degree criminal sexual assault, two counts of second-degree criminal sexual assault, first-degree home invasion and unarmed robbery.

Judge O'Brien gave Brown lesser, concurrent sentences on some of the other counts.
ANN ARBOR, MI - A woman who accused Ann Arbor teacher Kip Wilson of sexual assault has filed a civil lawsuit against him. Wilson was found not guilty of criminal charges after a trial in 2016.

The civil lawsuit, filed Jan. 3 in Washtenaw County Trial Court, seeks at least $25,000 in damages, the minimum amount for the case to be heard in circuit court.

Danita King, 40, of Ann Arbor alleged Wilson gave her a drugged margarita on a date in 2012 and then sexually assaulted her when she blacked out.

King's civil lawsuit seeks monetary damages for assault and battery, false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy.

She claims in her lawsuit that during a second date in July 2012, Wilson drugged a drink he dubbed a "killer margarita" with Xanax, and was "very persistent" in getting her to try it. He was also insistent on getting her into his bedroom, the lawsuit states.

On a third date on July 19, 2012, at his house, he gave her a margarita he had made and she sipped half of it, the lawsuit claims. He filled the drink up again, and then she blacked out and woke up naked, the lawsuit alleges.

She went to the hospital, and tests indicated she had Xanax in her system, according to the lawsuit.

King claims she suffered bruising on her inner thigh, mental anguish, humiliation, psychological distress, post-traumatic stress disorder, lost wages and damage to her reputation.

Wilson, a teacher at Pioneer High School, was acquitted in April 2016 of criminal charges of third-degree criminal sexual conduct involving an incapacitated victim.

During the trial, Wilson testified King initiated the sexual encounter and seemed perfectly coherent after having a margarita. She was confused when she woke up and asked if they had sex and whether or not he'd given her a date rape drug, he testified.

His attorney, Douglas Mullkoff, argued in court King made up the sexual assault claim.

Assistant Washtenaw County Prosecutor Dianna Collins argued Wilson lied about sexually assaulting King, and said King wouldn't have made up the claim because of the trauma involved in testifying.

Neither Wilson nor King's attorney could be reached for comment.
Steven J. Ingersoll sentenced to serve 41 months for tax evasion

Steven J. Ingersoll enters the federal courthouse in Downtown Bay City on the day of his sentencing, Dec. 15, 2016. Ingersoll was convicted of one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States and two charges of attempt to evade or defeat tax, and sentenced to serve 41 months in a federal prison.

(Jacob Hamilton | MLive)

BAY CITY, MI -- Disgraced charter school founder Steven J. Ingersoll will be spending his federal incarceration time at a Minnesota facility.

Ingersoll, 63, started his 41-month sentence at Federal Prison Camp Duluth on Thursday, Feb. 2, a prison employee confirmed. The prison is located about seven miles north of the Minnesota port city, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The minimum security camp is located on the former Duluth Air Force Base. It currently houses 503 male inmates.

Inmates' work hours are from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. during weekdays. Quiet hours are from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., with lights out at 10:30 p.m., according to the prison's handbook.

A complete list of inmates' rules and guidelines are available in the 51-page Admission & Orientation handbook, available here.

The website www.arrestrecords.com has listed the facility as number 43 on its list of "The 50 Most Comfortable Prisons in the World."

"Dream of becoming a rock star?" the website rhetorically asks. "Then get yourself sent to Duluth's prison camp, where you can refine your skills as a musician with a variety of rentable instruments, including guitars, drums and even a piano."

U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington on Dec. 15 sentenced Ingersoll to three concurrent terms of 41 months in prison, but gave him time to get his affairs in order before he had to report for his incarceration.

A month-long trial ended March 10, 2015, with a jury finding Ingersoll guilty on two counts of attempting to evade or defeat tax and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. The jury exonerated Ingersoll of three counts of fraud by wire, radio or television. The same jury found Roy C. Bradley Sr. guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

During proceedings, federal prosecutors alleged Ingersoll in January 2011 obtained a $1.8 million construction line-of-credit loan from Chemical Bank in Bay City for his endeavors with the academy, and then used the money for his own purposes. Ingersoll used $704,000 of this money to pay part of a $3.5 million debt he owed another charter school he founded, Grand Traverse Academy, in Grand Traverse County, but first had it bandied around the bank accounts of his other entities and those of several co-defendants, prosecutors alleged.

The jury found Gayle R. Ingersoll -- Steven Ingersoll's brother -- not guilty of conspiracy to defraud the United States and fraud by wire, radio or television. They found Bradley's wife, Tammy S. Bradley, not guilty of fraud by wire, radio or television.

Prior to the February-March 2015 trial, a separate federal jury in December 2014 found Bradley guilty of four counts of illegally distributing and handling asbestos, in violation of the Clean Air Act. Ingersoll in 2011 had hired Bradley to do renovations at the Madison Avenue church.

Ludington on March 12, 2015, sentenced Bradley to five years in prison on the asbestos-related convictions, but he is yet to start serving his time.

"I don't have a lot to say, but there are some things," Ingersoll said on the final day of his lengthy sentencing hearing. "It's been a four-year odyssey that is hard to characterize as a positive experience, but with all things, some good things still came of it."

He said he was thankful for a number of things, among them the "unconditional love of family, friends, colleagues and strangers. I was moved by that, irrespective of my misdeeds, which I acknowledge."

Ingersoll went on to say he owes apologies to a number of people involved with his vision, harmed by what he described as being overzealous and neglectful.

"I just didn't follow through ... nor did I correct account records I knew were incorrect," he said. He added that failures on his part caused difficulties for Bay City Academy, school staff and his family. For that, he is remorseful, he said.

In November, school officials announced the closure of the Madison Arts Campus of Bay City Academy -- its original site at 400 N. Madison Ave. Chemical Bank foreclosed on the building, which is owned by Ingersoll. He purchased the former Madison Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church in 2010 for $270,000.
TS.VillageSquareShooting.Feb3.JPG

A teen shot an 18-year-old man in the parking lot of Village Square Apartments, 902 N. Scheurmann Road in Hampton Township, at around 3 a.m., Friday, Feb. 3.

(Tori Schneider | MLive.com )

HAMPTON TOWNSHIP, MI -- A dispute in a Hampton Township parking lot ended with a teen being shot in the arm, and the bullet proceeding into his mouth.

About 3 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 3, Hampton Township police officers responded to a report of a gunshot victim at Village Square Apartments, 912 N. Scheurmann Road. Officers arrived to find an 18-year-old male lying in the parking lot, surrounded by people.

The teen told officers he had been shot in his arm, police report.

Officers questioned witnesses and developed a suspect, also an 18-year-old male.

Apparently, the victim was at the apartment complex visiting a friend. His ex-girlfriend arrived to drop off some of his belongings, bringing her 18-year-old cousin and a 19-year-old male along, according to Chief Bryan Benchley.

When an argument ensued, the woman's cousin pulled a .40-caliber Glock. The victim put his arm up and his head down as the gunman fired one round, Benchley said. The bullet hit the victim in the arm and proceeded up into his mouth, lodging in his face, Benchley said.

The assailant and his party then fled in a vehicle, Benchley said.

Bay City public safety officers located the suspect and his friend in Bay City. While the friend surrendered without incident, the alleged shooter engaged in a fight with police. The officers stunned him with a Taser, then subdued and arrested him.

The victim was initially transported to Covenant HealthCare hospital in Saginaw and later flown to University of Michigan, where he's listed in critical condition.

Both the victim and the alleged shooter are Bay City residents, police report.

The two suspects are lodged in the Bay County Jail and could be arraigned in Bay County District Court as early as Friday afternoon.

Bay County Sheriff's deputies and Michigan State Police troopers assisted Hampton Township and Bay City police.
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<

Stop HSR in South County

<

The first announcement I received about High Speed Rail coming down our South County valley and the proposed station in Gilroy was in 2011. We have been very involved since then, attending as many meetings and workshops as possible. We have organized and have many organizations, neighborhood groups, community leaders, and elected officials that are fighting this Legacy project.

<

Every time I leave a meeting I am more convinced that we must stop this at Diridon Station in San Jose and send it east over the Altamont Pass to the Central Valley.

<

We all know that this project was voted on in 2008 and was called Proposition 1A. At that time the estimate for the project was around $42 billion. As the years went by and the HSR dog and pony show traveled the state to sell the idea, the cost estimates began to grow and now sits at around $64 billion.

<

The LA Times recently published an article that states the 118-mile initial segment from Merced to Shafter could rise from the initial budget of $6.35 billion to a range of $9.5 to $10 billion. The report is based on a confidential study produced by the HSRs very own executives.

<

These executives in turn accused the LA Times of mischaracterizing its findings. In a letter to the California legislature dated Jan. 12, 2017, the HSR Authority said:

<

First with regard to cost the article ignores the fact that the original grant funding was for basic civil construction and did not include stations, electrification systems and other features necessary to achieve high speed rail operations. Those additional features are being funded with additional State funding as detailed in the funding plan approved by the Authoritys Board of Directors in December 2016.

<

This statement just made my jaw drop!! Who gets a loan to build a new house and leaves out the kitchen and the bathroom costs? What are they doing with our taxpayer money? Remember, Gov. Jerry Brown refers to this project as his legacy and vetoed a bill that would have provided public oversight of the spending going on at HSR.

<

To add to this insult, is the cost to taxpayers just for the first $9 billion bond. According to Assemblyman Jim Patterson (R-Fresno), the cost to pay off this bond will cost California taxpayers $19.5 billion over the next 30 years. Can you just imagine what the debt service on $64 billion is going to be?!

<

At a recent Gilroy City Council/Planning Commission meeting, the Authority admitted that HSR is NOT a commuter train, that it will not take a single car off U.S. 101. They admitted that Caltrain will still belch diesel exhaust in South County. They still have not presented noise examples and have long lengthy answers to simple questions that never give an answer.

<

At the meeting in Gilroy it was all about The Station, Gilroys answered prayers to finally developing their downtown. However, there were several on the council and planning commission that asked very good questions! We MUST continue to question this donnybrook of a plan! We must STOP HSR for all of the right reasons!

<

Swanee Edwards

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San Martin

Concerns about sewage spill

<

I am concerned about recurrent San Martin water contamination from Morgan Hill. Sewage flooding from Morgan Hill has contaminated San Martin on many occasions. In 2009, our family ranch (at Monterey Road and California Avenue) was contaminated with a large sewage spill. In 2015, the San Martin community was again victim to contamination. And most recently on Jan. 10, 2017, Morgan Hill reported to the state about the recent raw sewage contamination of Llagas Creek.

<

Given the fact that Morgan Hill has known about this likelihood of this recurring, why werent measures taken to prevent this? This is a hazard affecting San Martin public health. We are reliant on our residential wells for our water supply. Why havent Morgan Hill, the Santa Clara Valley Water district or Santa Clara County representatives reached out to us?

<

It is my opinion that every San Martin resident, solely dependant upon private wells in neighboring proximity to Llagas Creek, should have been immediately notified. The State Water Quality Control Board provided to me the reference Control #17-0341, and informed me that they have contacted County Public Health, County Department of Environmental Health, US Fish & Wildlife, Coast Guard, state parks, Toxic Substances, EPA, State Land Authorities. I left a message for Nicole Jorgeson with Public Health at (408) 918-3400 and (408) 299-5748. Should you be concerned, I urge you to call today.

<

Connie Ludewig

<

San Martin
As all investors know, past performance is no indicator of future returns. This holds true for assets which have recently rallied as much as it does for those stocks and funds which have not fared so well in the near past.

The Morningstar star-rating for funds is a purely quantitative measure, comparing funds performance against their category peers. As a result, this is no indicator of future returns. But the Morningstar Analyst Rating is a qualitative measure, using five pillars  process, people, price, parent and risk-adjusted performance  to determine whether a fund is likely to outperform its category peers.

The funds below are all rated Gold or Silver by Morningstar analysts, meaning that they consider them to the best in class, but they are also two- or three-star rated meaning that the units are cheaper now than in the past. It is up to you, the investor to decide whether you have conviction in these funds underlying exposure. But if you are bullish on corporate bonds, global equities or UK stocks these could be the funds for you.

Fidelity MoneyBuilder Income Morningstar has a high opinion of lead manager Ian Spreadbury and comanager Sajiv Vaid, given their backgrounds and long-term portfolio management experience, says fund analyst Carlos Lucar. Spreadbury has been at the helm since inception, and his presence underpins our conviction. He has gained valuable perspective through his long tenure at Fidelity, his 10 prior years at L&G, and his earlier actuarial career. Having built the team at Fidelity in the 1990s, he is able to get the most out of the analyst team. He also designed the investment process, which remains in place. Old Mutual UK Alpha Old Mutual UK Alpha continues to benefit from the stewardship of a talented UK equity manager, says Morningstar analyst Simon Dorricott.



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She considers the major strength of this fund is its management. Charles Richardson and Andrew Headley, who previously worked together at Newton, have been at the helm since the funds launch in 2006 and have run the institutional version since 2003. Richardson leads on this fund while Headley leads on Veritas Global Focus. They benefit from the support of an experienced team of six analysts, whose research is instrumental to the portfolio. The fund's standout characteristic is the extent to which the managers aim to deliver real returns to investors. They invest in companies with durable competitive advantages and strong, sustainable cash flows that can lead to dividend payments.
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.

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Thoughts on Fannie Turning Rentals Into MBS

Blackstone Group has disclosed that it has secured Fannie Mae's backing for a mortgage backed by some of the single-family homes it purchased, principally from bank-owned real estate inventories (REO), during the housing crisis. According to the Urban Institute (UI), which produced a Note on the transaction, the loan "marks the first time a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) has facilitated financing for a large institutional operator of SFR (single-family rental) properties."

Blackstone, a private equity company, operates Invitation Homes (IH), the largest single family rental operator in the U.S. which purchased an estimated 48,000 single-family homes across the country. However, UI was not alone. Frank Nothaft, Senior Economist at CoreLogic estimated recently that, of the approximately 6.3 million homes that were foreclosed during the financial crisis, three million were turned into rental properties. While many of the homes were turned into rentals by small investors, huge institutional investors like Blackstone also actively acquired them. UI puts current institutional ownership at 300,000 units.

The Blackstone/IH 10-year, $1 billion loan will be originated by Wells Fargo, securitized and sold to investors with the Fannie Mae Guarantee under what UI says is a pilot program. The UI says this development is noteworthy because it sends a signal the company is seriously considering entering this space.

They won't exactly be pioneers. Morgan Stanley says some of the large investors began to securitize their portfolios early on; by the fall of 2015 about 90,000 properties had been securitized for $12 billion. Some big investors assisted smaller investors to create pools of their properties then securitized them. Morgan Stanley says, with few exceptions these offerings have carried AAA ratings and have performed accordingly.

UI says the GSE role in the rental market has historically focused on multi-family properties or to a lesser extent, to properties owned by smaller investors defined as those owning ten or fewer homes. Fannie Mae has typically limited financing to small investors at 10 properties and Freddie Mac to six. Clearly, this doesn't work for institutional investors who own thousands.

The Note's authors, UI analysts Laurie Goodman and Karan Kaul, say that "It makes sense, policy-wise, for the GSEs to enter this space." But they also stress that a framework should be used for subsidizing single-family rental debt that includes some specific measures:

The benefits of a taxpayer guarantee are used in a manner similar to that in the GSE multifamily arena to increase availability of rental housing to those earning 100 percent of the area median income (AMI) or less, and

Allowances are made to allow non-institutional players such as small investors, community-based organizations, and mission nonprofits to compete effectively.

They say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), regulator and conservator of the GSEs, "should articulate a clear role for the GSEs in the SFR market and work to fulfill that role in a manner that attracts new investment while meeting the demand for workforce housing," the same case that justifies the GSEs existing role in financing multifamily housing.

UI says the GSEs financed about a third of all multifamily originations in 2015. While there are no explicit affordability requirements, 80 to 90 percent of this financing has always been for housing affordable to those earning 100 percent of area median income.

Multifamily buildings, (defined by the GSEs as buildings with five or more units) are a critical source of rental housing, but single-family homes composed 40 percent of the rental stock in 2015 per American Housing Survey data. An additional 17 percent is two-to-four unit structures, which are also classified as single-family. Thus, 57 percent of the US rental housing stock is single-family, and 43 percent is multifamily.

This is not new. One-unit structures have always been the largest component of the total rental housing stock, but as mentioned above, that increased by 67 percent between 2005 and 2015, to 17.5 million units. This reflects not only foreclosures, but the rapid increase of renter households.

Early on, these buyers used cash and then later both securitization and bank lending.

UI says that the homeownership rate is likely to decline over the next 15 years. As the bulk of net new households will be renters and given the acute shortage of rental homes and rapidly rising rents, investing in more rental housing is "a no-brainer." With single family homes being the largest and fastest growing segment of the housing market it offers the most promise in addressing the problem of rental affordability.

Thus, Goodman and Kaul say they are sure it makes sense for the GSEs to finance SFR properties. "Access to stable, long-term and nonfleeting financing-which allows institutional landlords (both for-profit and nonprofit) to purchase, hold, and stabilize the properties, and run the stabilized properties as a business, rather than flipping them- will be crucial in preserving their long-term commitment to this space."

This pilot is a good first step as it helps Fannie Mae understand the economics, opportunities, and risks of what is an entirely new market for the company and a pilot was necessary to understand the risks and challenges and gather robust property and rent data. The SRF market is very new and does not provide the large performance, borrower, and property level data sets with which the GSE's have familiarity and experience. As the largest operator in this space, IH had these datasets which allowed Fannie to conduct necessary due diligence. Additionally, since this was technically a refinance, there was no time pressure, allowing Fannie to vet the deal carefully.

Fannie Mae has imposed rigorous safeguards that require the borrower to retain a 5 percent first-loss position and the 95 percent guarantee is reinsured under a loss-sharing arrangement with Wells Fargo. While precise terms for this loan are not available, Fannie Mae's typical arrangement with multifamily lenders is for the lender to share one-third of the loss while Fannie absorbs the remaining two-thirds on a pari passu (equal footing) basis.

Fannie's risk is further lessened by the low loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of the loan which is refinancing earlier (2014) debt. At least one of the earlier loans had an original LTV of 75 percent and given appreciation over the last three years this could put the current LTV (without considering amortization) at 63 percent.

UI says this three-stage mitigation framework - 5 percent first loss, Wells Fargo risk sharing, and low LTV - should offer Fannie Mae and taxpayers greater loss protection than they receive on typical multifamily loans. The several safe guards are fully warranted given this is a first deal in the space. It is also the first time Fannie Mae has shared credit risk with an owner of rental properties instead of with approved and carefully monitored multifamily lenders.

The authors say their view that the GSEs should support the SFR market raises the question of how they should do so. This pilot transaction raises questions that should be addressed before going further.

1. What affordability criteria should be imposed on this type of financing? Clearly the GSE financing will reduce borrowing costs and improve funding stability for institutional investors which should stimulate further investment. But the mission of improving availability of rental housing to lower income renters could be increased by making such financing available to community and mission-based non-profits with the scale and skills but who lack capital. It should also be considered that institutional buyers compete with potential owner-occupants, especially first-time buyers. "This suggests that taxpayer-backed financing for institutional SFR owners should be accompanied by explicit affordable housing requirements." For example, requiring landlords to rent a certain percentage of units to renters earning 100 percent of the AMI or less or requiring them to accept Section 8 vouchers.

2. Should GSE financing be extended to the purchase of vacant or to-be-built SFR properties? The IH portfolio is currently 95 percent occupied with a well-established rental history, making the pilot a relatively low risk deal. There could, however be instances where it could take time to repair and rehabilitate properties before they can be rented out and financial and operating data will be limited, presenting more risk to the GSEs. At the same time, financing such properties would make it easier for smaller operators and nonprofits, many of whom are mission specialists in neighborhood stabilization but lack financing, to play a bigger role in this market.

3. What sale restrictions should be imposed on SFR homes receiving taxpayer backing? Over the normal course of business, institutional landlords may choose to sell some properties, especially those that are less profitable. It is also possible that landlords will come up with programs to sell properties to tenants. Should this activity be permitted and what restrictions should be put in place? At the very least, it seems that the use of land contracts or similar arrangements should be strictly prohibited.

(As an aside, Blackstone as well as Starwood - another big SFR investor - have previously announced their intention to liquidate about 5 percent of their portfolios each year and Blackstone/IH has initiated a program to sell units to its tenants saying it reduces their marketing time and costs.)

4. How should SFRs be treated in the context of housing goals and multifamily caps? If these properties are in underserved markets, should they count toward the GSEs multifamily housing goals? Similarly, should SFR properties that are affordable to renters at the 60 percent AMI level be exempt from the GSEs' multifamily caps?

5. To what eligibility and property maintenance criteria should SFR owners be held accountable? If more of these IH type transactions are drawn, the borrowers should be subject to standards that include transparent and clearly articulated property maintenance requirements.

UI says its views this pilot transaction as an important first step and assumes there will be more such deals in the future. If so, as they move from pilot to program, FHFA should work with stakeholders to evaluate the role GSEs should play in this market, how that role can increase the availability of rental housing, and ultimately construct a scalable program to do exactly that.
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But that could all change now that President Trump is in the White House. With observers seeing signs Trump will move to weaken the CFPB, the bill could now have a chance.

The agency is already fighting attempts to change its structure. Last year, a court of appeals ruled the structure of the CFPB unconstitutional, saying that the provision that the agencys head could only be fired for cause gave too little accountability to Director Richard Cordray. The CFPB is appealing the ruling, and congressional Democrats and state attorneys general are backing the agency up.

But even if the court rehears the case and rules in the CFPBs favor, the point could be rendered moot by Fischers bill, HousingWire reported.

If the bill were to become law, a five-member board  no more than three of whom could belong to the same political party  would be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Board members could be removed by the president for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, according to the bill.

My bill would prevent this misconduct by divesting the authority from one director to a five-member bipartisan board, Fischer said. This much-needed structural adjustment would bring accountability to the bureau and give more Americans a chance to build their own businesses and provide for their families.
OPEC cut output by 840,000 barrels a day last month, but has more work to do to fully comply with last years historic production deal.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pumped 32.3 million barrels a day in January, according to a Bloomberg News survey of analysts, oil companies and ship-tracking data. The 10 members of the group that pledged to make cuts in Vienna two months ago implemented 83 percent of those reductions on average, but their efforts were offset by increases from Iran, Nigeria and Libya that were permitted under the terms of the agreement.

Accounting for the members who raised output and the suspension of Indonesia, OPECs total output remains 550,000 barrels a day above the target set out in the Nov. 30 deal. That means the group as a whole is only about 60 percent of the way toward the production level it deems necessary to eliminate a global oversupply and boost prices.

Oil has fluctuated above $50 a barrel since OPEC joined with 11 non-members in December to trim supply by as much as 1.8 million barrels a day. While Middle Eastern producers from Saudi Arabia to Iraq have implemented cuts and Russia says its ahead of schedule with its own reduction, wary investors are also considering signs that U.S. drillers are taking advantage of higher prices to stage a comeback.

Saudi Arabia, OPECs largest producer, led the January cuts with a reduction of half a million barrels a day, going below 10 million for the first time in almost two years. Its allies the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait followed by cutting a combined 310,000 barrels a day.

Production in Iraq, which tried and failed to secure an exemption from the cuts, declined by 120,000 barrels a day to 4.51 million. The Bloomberg News survey may vary from the independent estimates compiled by OPEC known as the secondary sources, which are the basis of the accord.

At the same time, OPEC members not required to make cuts added 270,000 barrels a day in January.

Libya ramped up output to 690,000 barrels a day, the highest level in more than two years, as it reopened fields and export terminals that had been disrupted by conflict. Nigeria, also wracked by internal unrest, boosted production by 9.3 percent to 1.64 million barrels a day. Iran, which was allowed to continue restoring output to pre-sanctions levels, pumped 3.8 million barrels a day, the most since 2010.

OPECs agreement lasts for six months, with the goal of shrinking bloated oil inventories that are keeping a lid on prices. While the organization has the option to prolong the deal, some members, including de-facto leader Saudi Arabia, have said an extension may not be necessary.

The exempted countries spoiled partially the effectiveness of the aggressive Saudi cut, as well as the reductions from other Gulf countries, Giovanni Staunovo, analyst at UBS Group AG said by e-mail. The agreed cuts even if not fully enforced, are likely to trigger inventory draws in the first quarter and support oil prices from current levels.

OPEC is hoping to achieve 100 percent compliance with the pledged reductions, according to the Kuwaiti oil minister, who is chair of committee that monitors the agreement. In the last organized cuts in 2008, OPECs compliance rate stood at 70 percent, according to Hasan Qabazard, OPECs former head of research.

Brent futures traded at $56.57 as of 10:26 a.m. New York time. The global benchmark has rallied more than 20 percent since the Nov. 30 agreement.

Russia, the largest of the non-members participating in the deal, curbed production by 117,000 barrels a day last month, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said Wednesday. Russia pledged to gradually reduce supply by as much as 300,000 barrels a day, more than half the total non-OPEC pledge for a 558,000-barrel-a-day reduction.
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Flying over Smithville, Texas provides all the evidence you need that everything is bigger in the Lone Star State. Including signatures.

Yes, signatures.

Looking down on the vast Texas land below, the name "Luecke" is written out with trees in giant block letters and stretches about three miles on a plot of land near Buescher State Park outside of Smithville in Central Texas.

Bastrop County property records show Jimmie Luecke owns thousands of acres in the area, including the Luecke Farm, which is on the land where the giant wooded letters are located.

RELATED: Thousands flock to mysterious crop circle in Mexican field

Atlas Obscura reported that Luecke's signature is the world's largest signature, but mySA.com was unable to confirm the accolade.

A 2011 NASA blog post says the huge letters are used by astronauts "to estimate the maximum resolution of cameras aboard the space shuttle." The Texas-sized land art can easily be seen on Google Earth from high above.

Click through the slideshow to zoom in on the huge Texas signature, from space.

Luecke was sued for negligence by 22 families in 2015 after the Hidden Pines fire, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

The Statesman reported that the Texas A&M Forest Service ruled the fire, which burned through 4,600 acres of land and 64 structures, began on Luecke's property after a mower malfunctioned and a spark caught dry grass on fire.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

Photos from The White Shaman Mural by Caroline Boyd; Copyright  2016 by the University of Texas Press

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As an artist, Carolyn Boyd, who's also an author and archaeologist, has described being "overwhelmed by wonder" when she first saw the ancient rock paintings in canyons near the Texas-Mexico border.

The 1989 visit proved to be a life-changing moment for the young woman who at the time was working as a professional muralist and had a studio in north Houston, according to the Texas Observer.

She decided to study anthropology and archaeology for a deeper understanding of the art work that has become her career focus, the pictographs of the Lower Pecos Canyonlands.

The canyonlands are the area where the Pecos and Devils rivers converge with the Rio Grande, just west of Del Rio along the border.

RELATED MYSTERY: How did ancient people determine dates of solstice, equinox?

Boyd earned a doctorate in archaeology from Texas A&M University and in 1998 founded the Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center in Comstock, about 30 miles from Del Rio.

According to the Shumla center's website, the people of the canyonlands started painting stories on the limestone canyon walls about 4,000 years ago, providing "visual narratives that will rewrite the prehistory of North America."

In November, the University of Texas Press published Boyd's latest book, "The White Shaman Mural," which focuses on a single painting about 26 feet long and 13 feet high. After scrutinizing the work with a digital microscope, Boyd determined that the red, black, yellow and white paints in the mural were always applied in the same order.

MY STARS! Trump victory explained by astrology

Such systematic rigor was at odds with the prevailing image of the pictographs as random doodles that defied interpretation.

Because Boyd is an artist, she said she understood at first glance how complex the huge murals were and became convinced that each told a story. The White Shaman mural, she wrote, described the birth of the sun and the establishment of time.

"They had a language far richer than our own when it comes to describing the stars and the landscape around them," Boyd told the Texas Observer. "... Same brain that put a man on the moon. They were just as cognitively capable as you and I. ... At the end of the day, they are us."
Supplements Then & Now - "If It Tastes Like Crap, It Must Be Good!"

Written by Peter McGough

02 February 2017

Supplements: Then & Now

"If It Tastes Like Crap, It Must Be Good!"

In this modern age there are 1,000s of super duper supplements flying around the bodybuilding landscape: products for pre training, while training, post training, stuff to get up in the middle of the night for (good practice for when you and your prostate get older). Its all good and these supplements do enhance performance but such a cornucopia of goodies were not always available.

When I first started to go to bodybuilding shows in 1969 there would be a couple of tables in the foyer selling lifting belts or protein powder. It was in the days before mass production of supplements so the vendor selling protein powder would show up with the powder in primitive polythene bags maybe holding 20 pounds each. You would go up and order a couple of pounds worth and he would scoop it into a smaller polythene bag and you would walk off with your prize holding it like it contained goldfish. It was impossible to mix, tasted like crap, was probably full of sugar, but we lapped it up. In fact in later years my supplement test was If it tastes like crap, it must be good.

Living in Nottingham in the UK there was no GNC or any major supplement retailers around in those days. So for other supplements we used to go to the Little London Herbal Store in Trinity Square, which had some exotic wares plus some that could aid bodybuilding performance. One was Casilan a low calorie high protein powder that was designed for people convalescing from illness. I used to heap several spoonfuls into a pint glass of water then add six raw eggs, stir it all together, which took some time but was a helluva cardio workout. A couple of times I got a really bad cramps and my stomach swelled up so painfully and alarmingly that Id look down and try and decide whether to call the midwife or audition for the remake of Alien taking John Hurts gut busting role. Another favorite supplement of that time was desiccated liver tablets. Id take 20 or 30 at a time and your mouth felt like three incontinent parrots had been living in it for a month.

My tastes like crap, it must be good anthem was to the fore back in 2004 when FLEX magazine were investigating bringing out their own range of supplements. A group of us met in a conference room and the guy in charge of the project brought in different flavors of protein powders. There was vanilla, strawberry, chocolate and raspberry. We all tasted them and then announced our preference. My colleagues gushed over the taste of chocolate and vanilla. When it came to my turn I said, Raspberry is the best. They asked why and I replied (I think you know whats coming) Because if it tastes like crap it must be good.



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"After I left the last treatment center, I knew what made me happy," Selena explains, "and it was a connection." But on the advice of her doctor, Selena's planned philanthropic visit to Kenya to see the schools she was helping to raise
Sacramento Capitol Building View Photos

This week, a California Senate policy committee approved the California Values Act by Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) to prevent the use of state and local resources for federal immigration enforcement actions.

Fridays KVML Newsmaker of the Day was Senator de Leon.

This past week the President has confirmed some of our worst fears, said de Leon, referring to the Executive Order on immigration enforcement. President Trump will not focus on criminals, as he promised on the campaign trail. Instead his deportation policy will be a dragnet for thousands, if not millions of hardworking immigrants.

Senator de Leon said immigration enforcement has been politicized to the extent that makes Pete Wilson look like a choir boy compared to what is going on today, referring to the former California Governor who in 1994 championed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187.

The Senate Public Safety Committee approved SB 54, by a 5-2 vote after hearing moving testimony from a Southern California college student who was forced to drop out after his father was arrested by a state college police officer and ultimately deported.

Victor Alvarez said his father, Jose, was pulled over for having a headlight out by a California State University, Long Beach campus officer. The campus officer detained his father at the request of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Victor Alvarez said, and was promptly deported to Tijuana.

In his fathers absence, Victor Alvarez said he had to drop out of college and get a job to help support his family. The whole family is suffering. This has torn many families apart, he said.

Senator de Leon added that half my family would be deported under President Trumps Executive Order because it blurs the definition of what a serious criminal is by allowing deportation for petty crimes like having a false identification document.

Public safety will suffer if local law enforcement loses the trust of the immigrant community or uses its resources to enforce immigration laws instead of focusing on serious felonies, he warned.

State and local participation in immigration enforcement will come at a serious cost to California unless appropriate safeguards are put in place, he said.

For a detailed analysis of SB 54 see: http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billAnalysisClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB54

The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 on AM 1450 and FM 102.7 KVML.
Yosemite Main Entrance - Highway 120 View Photos

Yosemite, CA  School officials at a middle school in Santa Monica believe that a spike in gastrointestinal illness is tied to a five-day field trip to Yosemite.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District sent a letter to parents and staff yesterday, stating, We learned that 7th grade students from John Adams Middle School were potentially exposed to a gastrointestinal illness during a five-day Yosemite science trip last week, possibly Norovirus. The 190 students, along with the several teachers and parents, returned to Santa Monica on Friday, January 27.

The letter states that the Los Angeles Public Health Department is investigating the situation, and believes that it originated in Yosemite, as several students started reporting symptoms while at the park. The letter notes that other school districts took part in the field trip, so it may not be isolated to students in Santa Monica. Officials at the middle school are using special products to clean and disinfect classrooms and facilities, per the recommendation of health officials.

For more information about Norovirus, from the federal CDC, click here.
Sonora, CA  The Mother Lode regions Board of Equalization (BOE) member is arguing against the direction of Governor Jerry Brown when it comes to funding road repairs.

Its the topic of a new myMotherLode.com blog authored by BOE representative George Runner. He argues against the idea of increasing the gas tax and vehicle licensing fees, which has been proposed by the Governor, to fund road repairs. Some of Runners ideas are to audit the California Department of Transportation in hopes of finding savings, and to utilize cap-and-trade revenue to tackle maintenance needs.

You can read Runners entire blog, entitled, Taxes Not The Answer To Road Repairs, by clicking here.
The St. Petersburg Police Department is reopening a 35-year-old cold case and Brinks is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

A 22-year military veteran and a Brinks employee was shot and killed 35 years ago.

St. Petersburg police reopen 35-year-old cold case, offer $10K reward

Police continue to investigate death of Joseph Warner, a Brinks employee

Warner was shot and killed while picking up deposit bag

Suspects got away in a stolen van and rented boat

Police said DNA developments have moved the case forward.

On Jan. 23, 1982, two men dressed as "Miami Elevator" repairmen were pretending to work on elevators at Robinson's Department store at Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg when they robbed and shot Joseph Warner, a Brinks employee, police said.

A Brinks armored truck was scheduled to make a pick up shortly after 3 p.m. Warner was leaving the store with a deposit bag when the two men confronted him and shot him once.

Warner died from the gunshot wound. Police said he left behind a wife and five school-aged boys.

The suspects' getaway van was stolen from the Orlando area and was dumped at the Jungle Prada Boat Ramp, where the suspects boarded a rented boat.

Police said a fraudulent Canadian license was used to rent the boat.

According to the report, the bag only contained non-negotiable checks and no cash, so the suspects tossed it overboard near Madeira Beach Elementary and abandoned the boat near the Clearwater Causeway.

This case received widespread attention and was profiled on the show Americas Most Wanted.

The suspects were described as two white men, one in his late 20s and one in his 40s (50s and 70s now). One witness described them as handsome.

While investigators pursued several suspects over the years, none panned out.

With the case reopened, police are asking anyone with information to call the SPPD at 727-893-7780.
Marion County authorities are looking for a man they say tried to lure a Belleview Elementary School student into his car.

Police: Man in white car approached girl Tuesday

Asked her to step closer to his vehicle

Belleview police say on Tuesday between 2-3 p.m., an 11-year-old girl was walking home by herself when a man in a newer model white Ford Focus pulled up near her in the area of SE Campbell Road and SE Oak Road.

Police say the man was bald, had a blonde mustache and asked the girl where she was coming from.

"The next thing that gentleman who was driving the car said is, 'step closer to my vehicle.' She didn't do that, she started backing away, walking away and the only other thing he did was laughed out loud and then drove off," said Lt. Lawrence Bryan with the Belleview Police Department.

Police say the car was captured on Winn-Dixie surveillance cameras.

Police are adding four extra officers at the school and are passing out fliers about the incident and reminding parents to take precautions.

If you have any information, you're asked to call Crimestoppers of Marion County at 352-368-STOP.




In the wake of their 2016 election drubbing, Florida Democrats are proposing legislation to establish a text message-based election alert system that would notify voters when balloting is underway.

HB 409 would require county elections supervisors to sent texts when voting begins

Daytona Beach FL Rep. Patrick Henry sponsored the bill

Will struggle with a Republican legislature

Under the legislation, HB 409 by Rep. Patrick Henry (D-Daytona Beach), election supervisors would be required to send texts on the first day of early voting as well as on Election Day. The messages would also direct voters to their local polling place.

Democratic turnout was robust during Florida's 2016 early voting period but all but collapsed on Election Day, when Republicans flooded the polls and delivered the state to President Trump. Many progressive-minded voters, some Democrats have suggested, were unaware of where and when to cast their ballots.

"People get discouraged if they can't go down the street because it's not in their precinct or they don't know exactly where their precinct is," said Florida A&M University student Osbee Sampson. "So having something to actually tell them, 'this is where you need to go at this time, today's the voting day,' so that definitely would increase numbers of voting."

Sampson acknowledged campus enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket didn't translate into significant turnout.

The bill, however, faces difficult prospects in a state Capitol controlled by Republicans. During the fall campaign, Gov. Rick Scott pointedly refused to extend the state's voter registration deadline, which fell during the days following Hurricane Matthew.

"If you...whether it's the registration date, everybody has had a lot of time," Scott told reporters in October, days before he was rebuffed by a federal judge.

The argument against an election alert system is a similar one: that Floridians have ample time and resources to find out for themselves where and when they can vote. Still, the legislation's supporters say leveraging technology to communicate with voters can only improve democracy.

"All of us, we're on our phones," said Raven Riggins, who cast her first ballot -- for Hillary Clinton -- in November. "So, if something comes up on our phones, of course we're going to see it. When we see it, it's marked in our minds, so now we know where to go, when to go, what time to go, so it would definitely make a bigger difference."
A babysitter is facing a first-degree murder charge, accused of throwing an infant across a room in Marion County.

11-month-old boy injured in September, died a day later

Officials say Nora Boles gave them varying statements on what happened

She is in the Marion County Jail

According to a Marion County Sheriff's Office arrest report, 11-month old John William Smith's injuries were so severe, he was found unresponsive on Monday, September 5, 2016.

He died a day later.

Smith was buried on what would have been his first birthday on September 14, 2016, cementing the tragedy forever in the hearts and minds of his family members.

When he was alive, Smith's family said the boy was always smiling.

He was a really happy baby," said Elizabeth Smith, the child's aunt.

Smiths mother thought the home were he was being cared for was a safe place. Even now, you can see childrens toys in the front yard of the home on NE 42nd Place in Ocala.

We honestly thought at first it was an accident, so we didnt want to falsely accuse anybody of anything because accusing somebody of killing somebody, thats a big accusation," Smith explained.

Nora Boles, 21, made her first appearance in court at the Marion County Jail Friday.

Boles, who was arrested Thursday, is accused of causing the infant's death when she was babysitting him last September.



John Smith was just a few days shy of his first birthday when he was found unresponsive in September. Deputies have charged his babysitter with his death. (Elizabeth Smith)

He made his first three steps the day before he died," said Smith's grandmother, as she sat next to her daughter Elizabeth.

Especially in the preliminary information given to us by the defendant in this case, did lead it to be believed as an accident. But our investigation unveiled that her statements were just not matching up with the injuries," said Lauren Lettelier, a spokesperson for the Marion County Sheriff's Office.

Investigators said Boles, who advertised her services on a Facebook group called "Ocala Sitters Exchange" had only been babysitting the child for less than a month before the deadly incident.

After several interviews, deputies said Boles story finally matched the evidence.

"She made admissions to being frustrated with the child and throwing the child across the room, causing the childs fatal head injury," Lettelier continued.

It was a long five-month wait for an arrest and answers but for Smiths family, the grieving process has just begun.

Its just hard to understand as what it boils down to, we just cant understand," Smith said.

Boles is being held without bond at the Marion County Jail.
DIMMITT -- Come August 2018 or thereabouts, Castro County will have a free-standing senior living facility on the south side of Dimmitt. The facility will have 48 nursing home rooms and 12 assisted living units. These 60 rooms will be private and have bathrooms.

The nursing home section will have dedicated dining, lounge and patio areas. There will be four intimate living pods with 12 residences in each pod. There also will be an on-site exam room for the convenience of the residents.

The assisted living apartments will have dedicated dining, lounge and patio areas. There will be two intimate living pods with six residences in each pod.

The plan by Korte Design, based in Illinois, calls for neighborhood-like setting features: chapel, market, wellness room, salon, library, rehab, a pub, games and a media room. The rooms and bathrooms will be ADA accessible. The Korte Company will be the builder, and the architect is by Korte Design, Inc.

There will be a commercial laundry room with two washers and two dryers that will provide services to the facility and Plains Memorial Hospital.

Linda Rasor, CEO of Castro County Hospital District, reports that the board of directors for the district approved pursuing such a facility in October 2016. The project will be paid for by a revenue bond, which requires no vote by taxpayers. First United Bank of Dimmitt will buy the hospitals revenue, which will be used as collateral. The hospital district will repay the loan in monthly payments.

Revenue bonds are municipal bonds that finance income-producing projects and are secured by a specified revenue source. These bonds can be issued by any government agency that is managed in the manner of a business, having both operating revenues and expenses.

Rasor said that she received a termination letter in the summer of 2015 from Louis Nickelson who is with the parent company of Castro County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, the only nursing home in Castro County. Razor said that the letter stated that the center would no longer use the services of Castro County Hospital District (Plains Memorial Hospital and Medical Center), except for 911 emergencies and for patients of Dr. Adams, who is employed by the Hospital District. Rasor said that Nickelson said the hospital district had never supported the nursing home. She said that the hospital district does not recommend a facility to its patients needing the services of a nursing home. Rasor said that the Hospital District lost $500,000 to $550,000 a year after the center discontinued using the services of the Hospital District. A message was left for the administrator of the nursing home facility, but there has been no response.

Rasor said that the community the hospital district services wants a new facility, such as the planned senior living facility. This is an opportunity to capture some people needing these services, Rasor said. The nearest such facilities to Dimmitt are in Friona and Hereford.

She said that a feasibility study was done in a 45-mile radius from Dimmitt, adding that there is a significant baby-boomer generation residing in Castro County. She said the study indicated that the facility would likely lose money for the first two years, and it is anticipated that the facility will be full in 18 months from its opening.

The facility will offer skilled nursing, and Plains Memorial Hospital will also continue to offer that. The facility will be funded from Medicaid payments, private pay residents, Medicare and long-term insurance that some residents will have.

The district is in the process of closing on the purchase of 15 acres at the corner of Butler and Front Streets on which the facility will be built. This land is owned by Hazel Nelson, Dorothy Nutt Webb and Gary and Connie Nutt. Rasor said the closing should be completed about Jan. 31. The purchase price is $67,500. The cost of the facility is expected to be in the ballpark of $10.5 million, and Rasor said that the board agreed to spend no more than that amount.
BERLIN  Town Councilor Kristin Campanelli is considering a run for mayor in November.



She released a statement Friday saying that she would be forming an exploratory committee for the mayoral election.



Its a pretty recent decision, said Campanelli, a Democrat.



This year will be the first time the mayor is elected by voters. A Town Charter change went into effect last year after a referendum. Previously, the Town Council elected one of its members as mayor.



Mayor Mark Kaczynski, a Republican, said Friday he was not aware of Campanellis statement.



I dont know what she is planning, he said.



Kaczynski said he is focusing on the budget and search for a new town manager.



My opinion is that the election could wait, he said.



Campanelli said her decision was based on recent national and local happenings.



People are allowing partisanship to cloud their decisions, she said.



The former Board of Education member has been vocal on a number of issues during her first year as a councilor.



Campanelli expressed her concern about a charter proposal last year to make the board partisan. Recently she, along with the other Democratic councilors, criticized a decision to part ways with Town Manager Denise McNair, who left last week.



We need to look at whats best for Berlin, she said.



Campanelli said currently she has no timeline on a decision to run.



When asked whether he was planning to run again, Kaczynski said he has considered it but added: There are more important issues to deal with.



akus@record-journal.com 203-317-2448 Twitter: @KusReporter






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No chain drugstore in Oakland has generated as much enthusiasm or consternation as the planned Walgreens that broke ground this week in a low-income neighborhood not far from Mills College.

The 27,000-square-foot store will anchor a development that represents the first significant retail investment in the area in more than two decades, city officials say. The project is scheduled to create 125 jobs, 54 of which will be permanent, in a neighborhood that has long grappled with crime.

This neighborhood has been plagued with addiction for years, said Dwayne MacArthur, who runs a charter tour bus company across the street from the Walgreens site at Foothill Boulevard and Seminary Avenue. With jobs in the area, a child might decide to go work at Walgreens because he has an opportunity other than standing on that corner over there selling drugs.

On Monday, MacArthur was among the business owners and residents who showed up for a groundbreaking ceremony after waiting nearly a decade through false starts and setbacks that punctuated the path from empty lot to shopping center.

I know that weve been waiting for a long time, Councilwoman Desley Brooks told a group of 60 or so community members before picking up a ceremonial shovel. I want everybody  everybody  to say, Finally.

Finally! chorused back the crowd.

The shopping center will have space for about half a dozen businesses in addition to the pharmacy. In a city that already has plenty of drugstores, including nine other Walgreens locations, Brooks and other promoters of the project say this one will benefit the elderly and youth who cant drive or walk long distances.

To help revitalize the area ahead of construction, the city poured money into repairing the surrounding streets  putting in new sidewalks, gutters, trees and old-fashioned street lamps. Their efforts didnt go unnoticed.

Outside a convenience store across the street, Marlin Godfrey Jr., who runs a nonprofit, and his friend and barber shop owner Don Tutson talked about how the composition of the community might change as new retail comes in, concluding that a little gentrification would be tolerable in order to stem the gang violence. Godfrey pointed out a line of colorful flags affixed to the new street lamps overhead reading eat, drink, shop, play, along with the name of a merchants group in the corridor.

I guess this is the Heartlands now, he said, reading one. A third friend riding his bike overheard and interjected, Nah, man, this will always be the Seminary.

Godfrey corrected the friend as he rode away, Nah, man, look at the flags.

To deal with the difficulty of attracting business to the site, the city gave the project $14 million in federal tax credits. And City Council members at one point even considered waiving a requirement that Walgreens pay its workers Oaklands living wage, now nearly $15 per hour, before the company withdrew its request to be exempted from the ordinance.

The millions of dollars in tax credits, according to the projects backers, are needed to bridge the gap between how much construction will cost and how much business tenants are willing to pay in rent. New Markets Tax Credit, a federal program designed to spur economic growth in low-income communities, is filling in the shortfall.

These types of tenants we can attract here are not what we can attract, lets say, in downtown Oakland or downtown San Francisco or Walnut Creek, said Larry Gallegos, a development program manager for the city. You still have the same type of construction costs as we do here, but over there they can at least attract higher on the actual leases.

On top of persuading Walgreens to anchor the site, the project was stalled by obstacles large and small, like the 2011 dissolution of the citys redevelopment agency and later the discovery of lead and hydrocarbons in the soil of the lot.

At first it was frustrating, said Yakpasua Zazaboi, who owns a computer repair store nearby. We cant just stick a shovel in and start building, I understand that now.

Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov
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A two-alarm fire that started in the basement of a grocery market in San Franciscos Chinatown Friday morning left one person injured, officials said.

A call came in to the San Francisco Fire Department about 7:45 a.m. reporting a blaze around Stockton and Pacific streets, said Sgt. Francis Feliciano of the San Francisco Police Department.

The fire was burning at 1199 Stockton Street, a two-story commercial building that houses the Chong Hing grocery market  where the fire occurred  along with Natural Tea Shop, San Francisco Poultry and a Verizon Wireless Infinitel Communications store.

One person, only identified as an adult victim, was rescued from the building sustained minor injuries, according to fire officials.

Mayor Ed Lee arrived on scene shortly before 10:30 a.m., patting firefighters on the back, and meeting with senior citizens affected by the fire. The Red Cross was on scene providing services.

Four fire trucks responded to the scene where the busy intersection of Stockton and Pacific streets was roped off. Firefighters searched the building to look for potential victims. The fire was contained in about two hours.

Feliciano said the cause of the fire was under investigation after firefighters found the origin.

They went inthey couldnt find the source. They went up to look for it and they still couldnt find it, Feliciano said. Then it turns out it was in the basement.

Smoke poured out of a seafood market as firefighters battled the blaze and a long yellow fire hose snaked into the building. Concerned employees of several businesses in and around the building were milling around outside the scene, unsure of how much damage to expect.

No evacuations were ordered, but fire officials told those in the area to close windows and doors due to the heavy smoke.

Filipa Ioannou and Jenna Lyons are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com, jlyons@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi, @JennaJourno
Evan Vucci/Associated Press

The countrys tech giants  including Bay Area bigs Google, Facebook, Apple and Uber  are joining forces in a letter penned to President Trump opposing his travel ban on seven majority-Muslim countries.

A draft of the letter obtained by the website Recode expressed concerns to Trump that his executive order signed last week will affect many visa holders who work hard here in the United States and contribute to our countries success.
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(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump has needled Mary Barra at General Motors Co. Hes troubled Doug McMillon at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and gone after Boeing Co., once headed by Jim McNerney.

Those business leaders, and about a dozen others, sat down on Friday with Trump to talk trade, regulation and more.

Welcome to The Apprentice: CEO Edition.

In his first two weeks as president, Trump has rewritten the Washington playbook for corporate America, as he has for U.S. allies. In the process, he has opened rifts between companies over how to approach matters ranging from taxes to immigration and revealed the first cracks in companies tentative embrace of him, drawing criticism from some of the chief executives who were in the room Friday morning.

And from one who wasnt: Uber Technologies Inc.s Travis Kalanick on Thursday quit the presidents Strategic and Policy Forum after coming under fire from drivers and customers.

Trump opened the meeting while the press corps was in attendance by flattering the CEOs, calling them the biggest and best minds in the country. With the topic of women in the workforce on the agenda, Trump positioned Barra to his left and PepsiCo Inc.s Indra Nooyi and IBMs Ginni Rometty to his right.

The gathering of the 18-member group, led by Blackstone Group LP CEO Steve Schwarzman, will give Americas first billionaire commander-in-chief a chance to reprise his Apprentice role on a grand scale. Business, after all, is Trumps world. And after decades of globalization, that world is shifting rapidly as a confluence of forces, both economic and political, signal an end to an era of unbridled trade.

The format for the meeting is somewhat fluid, according to a person familiar with preparations for the session, and Kalanicks departure upsets the plans. Walt Disney Co.s Bob Iger didnt attend as well due to a previously scheduled board meeting.

Emboldened CEOs

Later in the day, Trump is scheduled to order reviews of a requirement that investment advisers work in the best interests of their clients, and the Dodd-Frank Act, a White House official said.

After introductions, the CEOs and Trump discussed topics ranging from tax reform to infrastructure, with some executives presenting prepared remarks on specific issues.

Im pleased to have been part of a very constructive discussion on how we can all work together on policies that support a strong and competitive U.S. economy, create jobs and address safety and environmental issues, Barra said in a statement.

Barra was expected to talk about the auto industrys desire for a second look at fuel-economy rules that the Obama administration affirmed just before leaving office. The Environmental Protection Agency mandates a fleet average of 50.8 miles per gallon by 2025, from 35.3 mpg today. Trumps comment that automakers are being so stymied, so restricted with regulation, suggested that the subject had come up.

Immigration, particularly sensitive for the technology industry, was at one point to be first on the agenda -- a week after Trumps controversial action to halt immigration from seven mostly Muslim Middle Eastern countries that sparked nationwide protests and pushback from U.S. companies, including Nike Inc. and Coca-Cola Co.

Kalanick and Tesla Inc.s Elon Musk had volunteered to lead that discussion, the person said. Kalanick, who was criticized by employees and customers for engaging with Trump, told Uber staff in a memo last week that he would raise his objections directly with the president.

Will the Uber co-founders former colleagues in the group challenge Trump?

On the issue of immigration at least, they are emboldened, said David Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision PR Group in Atlanta. The protests against the executive order gives them cover.

Uneasy Times

Musk expressed his objections to Trumps executive order on immigration and suggested changes, in what Schwarzman told CNBC were straightforward, easy discussions.

BlackRock Inc. CEO Larry Fink, a member of the forum, sent a memo to employees Thursday about the uneasy times, reiterating the firms commitment to diversity and inclusion and concerns about the backlash against globalization. What he will say at the meeting is anyones guess.

Given the presidents penchant for surprise attacks against companies on Twitter, and his stance as a hard-bargainer in his real-estate career, the men and women in the room may be wary, Johnson said. The big question is what Donald Trump do they get. People say that the Donald Trump in these private meetings is different than the public Donald Trump.

Taxes were on the agenda after battle lines were drawn this week on a proposal, spearheaded by House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, that would reshape the corporate code. A coalition of retailers and automakers announced its opposition to the so-called border-adjustment tax on Wednesday. The next day, a group of big industrial companies went public with its support.

Billions at Stake

At stake is billions of dollars in potential taxes. Both sides were represented at the meeting, with Wal-Marts McMillon against the plan and former Boeing CEO McNerney supporting it, Schwarzman told CNBC.

The dueling arguments appeared to have pull with Trump, Schwarzman said. Supporters say it would boost U.S. job creation by favoring exports. Critics call it a new tax on American families -- because prices for goods would increase -- that might pay for companies that export a lot to reduce their taxes significantly.

Perceived support or criticism of the president could generate boycotts on either side of the countrys partisan divide, Johnson said.

If it leaks out that they went along and didnt say anything after taking stands publicly, their entire brand will look fake, Johnson said. Trump supporters will attack them as all mouth and no action. People who bought into the stand they were taking automatically turn on them.

The meeting is the latest in a series of White House events designed to allow Trump to solicit feedback from business leaders -- and burnish his image as a can-do businessman ready to strike deals. Since taking office, the president has welcomed corporate executives from the pharmaceutical and automobile industries to the West Wing, as well as union leaders and the heads of large American manufacturers. On Thursday, executives from Harley-Davidson Inc. rode their motorcycles up the south driveway of the White House.

(Updates with comments from General Motors CEO in 11th paragraph.)

--With assistance from Hugh Son Molly Smith Jennifer Kaplan Sabrina Willmer Christopher Palmeri David Welch and Jennifer Jacobs To contact the reporters on this story: Matt Townsend in New York at mtownsend9@bloomberg.net, Justin Sink in Washington at jsink1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, David Gillen at dgillen3@bloomberg.net, Derek Wallbank, Mark Schoifet

2017 Bloomberg L.P.
President Trump on Friday signed an executive order that will begin chipping away at the landmark Dodd-Frank Act, a set of financial regulations passed in the aftermath of the Great Recession, according to Bloomberg News.

The order directs the Treasury Department to initiate a sweeping review of the law and report back on portions that can be cut away.

Flanked by a number of high-profile corporate executives in a meeting Friday morning, Trump said that his administration expects to be cutting a lot out of Dodd-Frank.

Critics have long assailed the regulations as placing undue burdens on investment banks, stifling their ability to lend money. Proponents of the law, however, say it provides key protections from consumers against risky financial behavior by big instituions.

Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press

I have so many people, friends of mine that have nice business, they cant borrow money because the banks wont let them borrow because of the rules and regulations in Dodd-Frank, Trump said at the Friday morning meeting.

Passed in 2010, Dodd-Frank sought to curb a variety of risky banking industry practices deemed to have contributed to the financial crisis. It was also responsible for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency expected to face tough scrutiny of its own from the Trump administration as it looks to continue loosening regulations and cutting taxes.

One provision of the law, known as the Volcker Rule, prohibited banks from making certain speculatory bets with investors money.

Congress would have to approve any changes to the law.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., tweeted: After literally standing next to Wall St CEOs, @realDonaldTrump made it easier for investment advisors to cheat you out of your savings.

Previously:

 Trump seeks to cut regulatory load

 Trumps lack of board service may explain disdain for ethics

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
Carlos Osorio

Houston is one of five cities where Delta Air Lines will add daily flights as the carrier boosts its presence at one of its hubs.

Delta announced this week it will add daily flights between Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Orlando and Toronto.
San Antonio theme parks and hotels have begun hiring for hundreds of positions ahead of the 2017 summer tourism season with a slate of job fairs.

The JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa plans to hire almost 100 workers as front desk clerks, housekeepers, lifeguards, cooks and bakers among other positions, the hotel said in a news release.
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An activist investor that played a key role in pushing San Antonio-based CST Brands Inc. into a $4.4 billion sale last year is now taking aim at the parent company of fast food restaurant chains Taco Cabana and Pollo Tropical.

JCP Investment Management, an activist investor based in Houston, is trying to get three candidates on the board of Addison-based Fiesta Restaurant Group, the investor announced earlier this week. JCP is nominating Sbarro Chief Operating Officer John B. Morlock; James C. Pappas, managing member of JCP Investment Management; and private investor Joshua E. Schechter.
College night at LIVE Ultra Lounge  a self-proclaimed best college night in the city  calls for a light show, a fearless DJ, high energy, good friends and one packed dancefloor.

That was the scene at the Stone Oak-area spot Thursday, when San Antonios young didnt waste time kicking off an action-packed weekend.
Houston police are searching for the assailants in a shooting in southeast Houston that sent two people to the hospital.

The shooting happened about 4 p.m. Thursday along the 5100 block of Myrtlewood, HPD officials said.
Courtesy of the Humane Society of Southeast Texas

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Some "extensive private investigative work" recently helped reunite an 11-year-old dog found at a Beaumont high school with its owner, who lives more than 1,000 miles away.

Snow - named for her fluffy, white fur - was picked up from a West Brook High School parking lot last month and brought to the Humane Society of Southeast Texas, said executive director Angelia Gates.

When shelter workers scanned the purebred Bichon Frise for a microchip, they found the dog's unique ID and looked her up in a recovery database. It turns out Snow is from sunny Arizona.

Efforts to reach Snow's owners, however, got no where fast.

The phone number linked to Snow's microchip ID was disconnected and her owner no longer lived at the address listed.

If the Humane Society's staff cannot find an owner through a microchip or word of mouth, the animal is put up for adoption, Gates said.

That's what would have happened to Snow if shelter manager Carrie Fontnow hadn't decided to do a bit more digging.

A Google search for Snow's address led Fontnow to a real estate website, where she found contact information for Greg Zonno, a Scottsdale, Airzona, realtor.

(Story continues below.)

Zonno, a Houston native and a "big dog lover," said he was confused when he first received the call from Fontnow, but was determined to help.

Zonno researched tax records and the sales history on the condo where Snow once lived.

He then called the agent who sold the condo. The agent put him in touch with Lee Miller.

Zonno said he called Miller and told her Snow's story.

"It didn't really register with her at first," he said. "Then, everything came back to her."

Miller said she became close friends with Sheila Kornbluh in 2004 when she started working as Kornbluh's nurse.

Miller gifted Snow to Kornbluh.

"Miss Sheila was uppity," Miller said of her decision to get Kornbluh a purebred dog. "She had to had to have the best."

"She loved that dog," Miller said.

When she was about 4 years old, Snow disappeared from Kornbluh's condo balcony while the women were at the grocery store, said Miller. They thought Snow was either stolen or taken by a coyote.

Years after Snow's disappearance, Kornbluh, who died in 2014, kept a picture of her little white dog on her mirror, said Miller.

After hanging up with Zonno, Miller said she called Fontnow at the Humane Society.

The next day, a Friday, Miller was en route to Beaumont to meet Snow.

She picked up the dog - now named Miss Sheila - and then made the 17-hour drive back to Mesa, Arizona, on Sunday. Miller said she had to work on Monday and she couldn't miss jury duty on Tuesday.

"I had to adopt my own dog," Miller said. "I thought that was kind of cute."

The happy ending gave the Humane Society of Southeast Texas an opportunity to reiterate the importance of microchipping pets. The recovery database, however, is "only as good as the updated information you send in," Gates said.

For Zonno, the experience was a lesson in humility, he said.

"Sometimes you just need to stop what you're doing if someone needs help ... You could make a huge difference in someone's life," he said.

For Miller, the experience is "just weird."

"It's like having my friend come back," she said.

ERobinson@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/eeelizzzabeth
Cassie McKean would say timing is an interesting thing. The Faces of Children director at First Presbyterian Midland did not expect todays headlines to reflect the churchs new art exhibition that has been planned for months. But that could also be fortuitous.

The show, Face of the Forgotten: Seeing the Unseen Children of the Syrian and Rohingya Refugee Communities, is a series of 12 ink and watercolor portraits of refugee children by artist Ryan McCabe, an employee with Partners and Relief Development.

The exhibition will be open Sunday in the church commons; a reception set for Wednesday.

We suspected this could become a bigger issue, McKean said. Its always an important topic but more important in todays climate. This can make us take a hard look at ourselves.

McKean has seen how news outlets focused on the recent immigrant ban, and Facebook feeds critical of both political parties have turned the term refugee into more of a buzzword than a person.

This is a contentious issue. I think by looking at their faces here in a compelling way, it can encourage our community to look past the scary them and look at how Jesus wants us to love those nobody notices, she said. Most of the world is trying to push us into polar opposites in political conversations. Youre either a cold-hearted conservative or a bleeding-heart liberal, but we have other choices.

In short, to look at the issue in black and white is dangerous to the people this show is drawing attention to, she said.

IF YOU GO: "Face of the Forgotten: Seeing the Unseen Children of the Syrian and Rohingya Refugee Communities" reception and sale, 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Commons Gallery in First Presbyterian Church, 800 W. Texas. fpcmid.org. See More Collapse

According to McKean, the other conversation to have begins with God.

I think this exhibition invites a third way to look at it, she said. Our prayer is that people look at this gallery and they can respect the fact that this could be them, their children. And then ask God what he wants me to do and where is the position of my heart toward these families.

The path to the art show began close to seven months ago.

Partners and Relief Development is a grassroots nonprofit that works in communities affected by conflict and oppression such as in Burma and Syria. PRD is also an organization supported by First Presbyterian. While perusing PRDs Facebook page, McKean happened upon McCabes work. She then commissioned 12 pieces by him for this exhibition.

All money raised from the sales will go to the church for refugee relief, she said.

The art will be on view during church hours including this Sundays service, which kicks off the Faces of Children 2017 annual campaign Misplaced Not Displaced.

The sale will be part of Wednesdays reception. The framed pieces will sell for $600.

Although a specific end date to the exhibition has not been announced, McKean said Face of the Forgotten is expected to be up at least throughout the month of February.






Albany

In the last few weeks, it's been hard to miss that a challenger to Common Councilwoman Judy Doesschate has emerged in the 9th Ward in Albany.

Albany Law School student Al Thoma, 28, has taken to social media to share what he will focus on if he's elected to the council  the public's concern for safety and promoting "people not politics."

Thoma will be running as an independent against the incumbent Democrat seeking a second four-year term in the general election in November.

"We need to re-establish that level of trust between the people and their local government," Thoma said. "My philosophy is ground up. It's going to be as direct as possible."

Thoma, who grew up in Pine Hills and lives on Edison Avenue, said many elected officials have privileged backgrounds furthering the disconnect, but "I don't come with that kind of privilege."

During her first term, Doesschate, 62, aimed to foster dialogue in the community, developing an email community newsletter and participating in neighborhood association meetings.

"The reason why I do this is it's all about improving the community dialogue and serving the people," she said.

Doesschate noted her work bringing together residents affected by the August 2014 flooding in Pine Hills to find a solution. The city now is finishing a $1.9 million flooding abatement project at Woodlawn Park.

Both candidates want to focus on safety and quality of life in the New Scotland business corridor.

Doesschate said this can include better lighting and streetscape improvements.

She said she looks forward to learning more about Thoma and noted that she has later worked with people whom have run against.

"I think it's great that people in the 9th Ward have a choice, and I am very hopeful that I will be re-elected," she said.

Thoma said it's time for something new and this year's local election is the right time to get involved.

"I'm a neighbor, I grew up here, I understand it," Thoma said. "I want to help make this a better place to live."
BRIDGEPORT  Gregory Weathers was facing life behind bars for fatally shooting a construction worker when his wife raised her hand from the back of the courtroom.

She wanted to speak on her husbands behalf.

He was just having a bad day, LaTravia Weathers told the panel of three state Superior Court judges as a packed courtroom looked on incredulously. I mean, anyone could have one.

Fortunately for Weathers, his own tearful remorse and mental health background convinced Judges John Kavanewsky Jr., Robin Pavia and Earl Richards to impose a sentence of 45 years, rather than the maximum of 75 years.

Mr. Weathers has struggled with mental illness and regrets what happened that day, added his lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Bradford Buchta.

Weathers, 34, was found guilty of murder and two gun charges for fatally shooting a man at a construction site on Chopsey Hill Road on March 26, 2015.

Authorities said Weathers walked into the construction site, was told he would have to fill out an application if he wanted a job, and then shot 31-year-old Jose Araujo, of Milford. Araujo, the father of a young son, was working in a ditch on the site.

I replay what happened, what I did, the pain I caused Jose and his family, ... to take someone elses life I cant give it back to you and Im sorry, Weathers said, facing the victims family in the courtroom.

I didnt want to cause this much pain but I dont know what happened that day, and Im saying to the judges, I think your judgment will be fair and Im sorry, so sorry.

As members of the Araujo family sobbed in the courtroom, Tony Dossantos told the judges his nephew came from the Cape Verde islands as a boy and worked hard to fulfill the American dream.

His child ... will never see his father again, Dossantos said.
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Muslims and non-Muslims joined together in prayer Friday at an interfaith service hosted by the Al Hadaya Islamic Center.

The crowd of over 40 participants included about a dozen non-Muslims from Christian, Jewish and Bahai faiths. Several visiting women wore headscarves provided by the center, and the whole group listened to a unifying sermon, participated in prayers and socialized afterward.

Dr. John Woodall, a representative of the Bahai faith to the Newtown Interfaith Association, initiated the gathering on Facebook, encouraging people of other faiths to attend the service as a show of support to the Muslim community.

Eman Beshtawii, co-founder of the center, said the idea came at a perfect time to uplift the spirits of Muslims.

With what happened with the executive order of the president and what happened in Quebec, the community was down and feeling sad and confused, Beshtawii said. We were so happy to see [the visitors]. You could feel the positive energy in the room, the kindness and love.

The service came on the heels of an executive order issued last week by President Donald Trump, which placed a 90-day visa suspension on anyone from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Hassan Kadhim, who gave the sermon, also mentioned several times last Sundays mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec City, ending with a prayer for the six victims and their families.

His sermon focused on a dialogue found in the Quran between Musa and Allah, who Jews and Christians refer to as Moses and God. Kadhim said the passages three lessons of faith, accountability and community are especially relevant today.

We need our neighbors to support us and we need to support them, Kadhim said. We must stand with the cause for humanity against any injustice.

He went on to discuss the Muslim communitys responsibility to present a message of peace, noting that Allah tells Moses to use gentle speech instead of violence against Pharaoh.

Beshtawii saw the service as an opportunity for non-Muslims to get to know Muslims in their community and learn more about Islam.

Michelle Ku, a Newtown resident and non-Muslim, said she attended to support her Muslim friends.

I decided to come here today because I know some folks who are part of this community, Ku said. Its important that we can support our friends and neighbors in peace. Thats what brings us together in humanity.

The Al Hadaya Islamic Center serves 100 Muslim households in the Greater Danbury area. In addition to religious services, it offers educational and language programs, seminars, special events and workshops.

Beshtawii said some participants in Fridays service told her they have other friends who want to learn more about the Muslim community. She plans to make one or two Fridays each month an open-to-all service.

She hopes it will help people learn more and counter stereotypes.

I always feel the American public has no idea about our faith because all the things they hear are so negative, Beshtawii said. So, any questions are welcome. We truly in sincerity will answer.
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MILFORD  For two years and two months, Fadi Kassar dreamed of this night, a chance to share the family he loves with the country he loves.

He couldnt wait to bring his wife, Razan Aghandour, and their two daughters, 8-year-old Hanan and 5-year-old Lian, to the United States, a world away from the civil war in Syria.

On Thursday, the family wept and rejoiced at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, in a reunion that nearly collapsed under the pen of an executive order.

On Friday, with about 100 friends and relatives wedged into the Olive Tree restaurant on Bridgeport Avenue in Milford, Kassar kissed his girls and fell helplessly into his wifes eyes.

Finally, they were together. The laughter, the handmade Welcome Home signs, the TV cameras and the long microphones, everything signaled the joy of a man who was whole again.

The effusive celebration marked the end of nearly a week of tense negotiations after President Donald Trumps executive order banning the U.S. entry of all refugees and nationals from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Renee Redman, Kassars immigration lawyer, said his family should have been allowed into the U.S. with a minimum of bureaucracy.

They were on the plane, ready to come and join him, and then this happened, Redman said of the travel ban. Unfortunately, I have many more clients who are still over there.

U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy both lobbied to reunite Kassar with his wife and daughters.

Its a bittersweet moment, said Blumenthal, who attended the hastily organized rally at the Olive Tree, not far from Milford Hospital. While we celebrate the arrival of these little girls and their mom, we have to keep in mind the tens of thousands of little children still over there.

Murphy said the travel ban has turned the lives of thousands upside-down.

Lets not forget that many of our grandparents and great-grandparents took similar risks to get here, Murphy said. And when the travel ban was put in place, the United States of America was made a little bit smaller.

For Kassar, the journey from his native Syria to the United States has been a prolonged tale of expired work visas, detainment by authorities, flights to strange places and not knowing what would happen to him  or his family  next.

In 1994, he left Syria for the United Arab Emirates, where he worked at a car rental agency. Every year he returned home to Syria. On one trip in 2006, he met Razan and they were married.

The couple returned to the UAE where Kassars two daughters were born. But the UAE isnt like the United States  being born there doesnt confirm citizenship. So Hanan and Lian were considered citizens of Syria.

In 2011, Kassar made his last visit to the Syrian town where he grew up, Harasta al-Basal, outside of Damascus.

It was the start of the revolution  very dangerous, Kassar said through Olive Tree owner Sammer Karout, his brother-in-law. Shootings, bombings. I was in fear for my life. If they have a problem with you, youre dead.

In 2014, Kassar lost his job at the car rental business in the UAE. He was given two weeks to leave. Kassar took his family to Jordan, where he immediately began looking for a way to enter Europe as a refugee.

First he went to Algeria, then to Tunisia.

He planned to cross the Mediterranean to get to Europe, but he was arrested by Tunisian security forces. The Tunisian police sent him to Turkey, and from there, he went back to Jordan to see his family.

But there was no work for me in Jordan, Kassar said through Karout. No work for Syrians there, at least not legally.

Kassar had previously applied for work visas in both Mexico and Brazil, but by then, his Mexican visa had expired. So getting to Brazil was his only option. But to get there, he had to find a direct flight  a stopover in Europe would not be allowed.

So I went back to Turkey, which has a direct flight to Brazil, Kassar said.

Once in Brazil, Kassar went to Mexico. From there, he crossed the border into Texas, where he was promptly arrested by Homeland Security agents.

Kassar was transferred first to Miami and then  with the help of Karout  to Hartford, where he was granted asylum in 2015, after about a year of consideration by the court.

Last year, visas were finally issued for his family in Jordan. Kassars wife and daughters underwent an intense screening process, Karout said, only to be turned away by Trumps executive order.

But not for long.

On Friday night, two years and two months after Kassar left his family behind in Jordan, little girls clutched dolls while their parents clutched hope.

jburgeson@ctpost.com
Nancy Mecca, 78, grew up in Port Chester, and spent her life between there and Greenwich. She was interviewed at the Greenwich Senior Center.

J: I would love to hear about downtown Port Chester when you were younger.

N: You know, it was a very innocent time, a very trusting time. There was no fear of walking downtown Port Chester in the evening. Today, parents would not let their children go out. I mean, we are talking about when I was a teenager, from like seventh grade. Today, I see all these kids get driven around, picked up here and there and more involved in organized sports. We werent. As a girl, I didnt take dance lessons, and my friends didnt either. I mean, we all grew up on that block virtually the same way. We played in the street. We played, you know, Kick the Can, we ate ice cream sticks sitting on a curb. It was a neighborhood, you know, it was a neighborhood.

People knew one another, people looked out for each others children. And you know, there were mothers that went to work, but there were mothers that were home.

Meccas mother supported the family after her father had a stroke. Her mother, Mecca said, would do anything she had to for the house.

J: What would she do when she got home from work? Would they watch TV or anything together, or did she do things to help him? How did they maintain their closeness?

N: Well, number one, we didnt have a TV then!

J: Oh yeah! Youre right.

N: Yeah, 1949. I didnt have a telephone either. My mother would come home and she would do laundry and cook dinner for us, see that we got our homework done, and was just being a wife and a mother. She got dinner on the table. It was how it done in those days. She was a hardworking woman. My mother was forced to go to work, but before that she was home.

J: And what about the style? The fashion and what you wore?

N: We wore saddle shoes, we wore penny loafers, bobby socks, kerchiefs tied around our necks. Little small kerchiefs. When we were maybe 14, then we were starting to get to know who we were. Then you start being the clique of girls, and Thursday nights going down to the Village, going down and walking up and down Main Street.

J: And by the Village, you mean downtown?

N: Yeah, Port Chester, the Village. It was the Village. Yeah, the boys would cruise in their cars and we would be walking up and down, and there were boys from Mamaroneck, Chickahominy. And then we had dances at St. Marys. Now everybody meets everybody and they talk on their cells, they text, they meet on the Internet. Well, we met at those dances.

J: In Italian families I know that food is so important. Is there any recipe that your mother used to make that was your favorite that you still make today?

N: Oh, she was such a good cook. I mean, I make a lot of dishes my mom used to make. But you know, I have to say our Sunday gravy was wonderful.

J: What was in it? Well, without giving away the secret!

N: Well, it is no secret, but I mean she would put meatballs. When I would leave the church, my mother would be frying those. When I came home, there was a nice dish of fried meatballs. They were absolutely fabulous. And she used to make a fantastic gravy with Italian sausage and pieces of pork, and God, that gravy was so good. And she used to make this other thing too, and to this day Ive made it over the years, but it never comes out like my moms.

J: What was that?

N: She would make a small roasting chicken, and she would stuff it with egg and cheese and bread and parsley.

J: Wow!

N: Yeah, she would stuff and then brown this chicken in a deep roasting pan, and then throw all the tomatoes on top of it, you know the cans of tomato. Im sure you see your mother do  plum tomato, crushed tomato, basil and garlic  and just let that simmer for a couple of hours. And then shed take that out of the gravy  which of course we used for pasta sauce  and take the chicken out, and then take everything she put on the inside out, and then slice it. Oh my God. It was delicious.

J: Ive never heard of anything like that. It sounds amazing.

N: Oh it was delicious. And of course, Italian bread and cheese, ricotta, olives on the table. Oh yeah we ate well. We may not have had a television but we ate well!

J: Haha! Well people have television now and awful food.

N: Oh yeah, and people eat while watching TV and have some ... meal with no idea what they are putting in their mouths. But that aroma when I came home and walked in the kitchen, I mean, thinking about it my mouth is watering!

I think Im going to get a chicken tomorrow.

To this day, Mecca said she follows her mothers example in the kitchen. No canned beans for her. She cooks lentils on the stove top, with celery and onion, letting it simmer down. Her husband, Nick, is a very appreciative eater, she said.

J: Hes lucky. Not everyone has somebody making them those kinds of dishes regularly. And so Nick is your second husband?

N: Yeah, and you know when you have a second marriage, whatever went on before is your past life. Now you have a second chance at a new life, so you have to embrace that. You have to let that first life go, no matter how it ended. You really do. Its very important because youll never move on. And you have to move on in life, to have a full life. I know some women are very bitter. Theyre just bitter against men, bitter against this. Bitter, bitter, bitter.

J: Do you have advice for people who feel bitter? How did you get past your first husbands death and maintain a full life? Sometimes, its hard.

N: Well for one, I had children, and I felt like I needed to be an example for them. But whatever happens in your life, that doesnt define who you are. If I wasnt willing to move forward  Nick and I will be married 27 years in June  this life wouldnt have even been possible.

J: There are some people whose first marriages dont last 27 years.

N: Exactly. So I was married 30 years to Pete, and now 27 years to Nick. Thats a lot of marriage. A lot of sharing. And you cant just let whatever happened define who you are for the rest of your life. Thats just a little part of your life. But you learn these things and you decide for yourself. Who do I want to be? Who am I now? Now Im not Petes wife, so who am I? Im still a mother, still a daughter.

J: And at the end of the day, you are you. You are Nancy.

N: Exactly. When Michael left for college, I think that was when it hit me that I was really alone. But you know, maybe a year ago I said to my older son, You know Peter, at times I feel so alone. And he said, Mom, you are not alone. You have me.

J: Thats sweet. Thats also the result what you did for your family. You created the family that your mother provided for you when you were younger.

N: And the children have seen that. They were part of it, and theyve seen family come to the rescue. Maybe now their lives have changed, a great deal yes, but the core is still there. And you see Jenn, you keep going back to that core. You just keep going back to it and thats what defines you. Thats who you are. Thats who you are. And sometimes people forget that.
Michael Cummo / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  The Student Cultural Arts and Literary Program will hold its 13th annual student exhibit, which this year is focused on black women leaders.

The program encouraged participants to discover black women who pursued careers in science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
Destiny Woolridge, stage name Vin Zeal, a junior at Atascocita High School, is a passionate and aspiring musician picked to perform on one of the stages at Super Bowl Live at Discovery Green.

Her entire persona revolves around positive energy and accomplishing whatever goal she sets for herself, hence the meaning behind her chosen stage name.

"My middle name is Vinay and Vin in Latin means conqueror and Zeal comes from the word Zealous, which is kind of like go after what you want. Basically the whole metaphor is, my goals that I go after, I will achieve them," Zeal said.

Zeal grew up always singing wherever she went, but her introduction to The Ensemble Theatre gave her the exposure she needed in order to grow and really harness her musical talent.

"When I was 6, I was enrolled in The Ensemble Theater in their Young Performers Program, and I went until I was 12. After that, I recorded my first song called 'In The Dark', and eventually I was signed into an independent label, and it kind of just took off from there," Zeal said.

Balancing music and school has proven to be a challenge but with considerate administrators and her desire to spread positivity through her music, she was able to work out an unconventional agreement.

"It's definitely pretty crazy. Today I had to leave school to come here, and then I have the performance for the Super Bowl (Live) later, but we have a little bit of an agreement with the school to where the absences that I have are considered school-related absences because I also do an anti-bullying campaign with Houston ISD and Aldine ISD," said Zeal.

The anti-bullying campaign that Zeal, her producer and father established as an initiative to combat bullying through her music, stems from her own past regrets.

"A part of the guilt that I always live with is that I was always a bystander. There was this girl named Caitlyn that I saw in elementary (school), and I saw her being bullied, first hand. Kids would poke her with pencils and say that she was fat. I knew in my heart that it was wrong because there's this thing that my dad calls 'God given discernment,' basically saying that you know in your heart when something isn't right, and at the time I felt like there was nothing I could do to help her just because I thought that I would get bullied if I tried helping her out," Zeal said.

Along with fighting to create an equalizing space for all those who are different and to dispel bullying, Zeal says she struggles with her own internal battles of knowing that she's different.

"From a young age I always knew I wasn't like everybody else and that kind of inspired me to write the song I have called 'Outsiders', which describes how I feel on a daily basis, talking about how I always feel like I don't really fit in and that there's something that's different about me, but me writing that song made me realize that being different is a good thing. There's going to be things I have to go through, but it's all for a reason," Zeal said.

Through her experiences, and the people she has met, Zeal said there is one encounter that has changed her entire outlook and really made her realize the magnitude her words have on those around her.

"I met this little girl, and she completely changed my whole outlook on my entire career and my entire purpose. She made me realize that I have a reason for doing what I'm doing. She came up to me after the show and told me that she had been bullied and people weren't looking at her for what's inside of her. I was so upset because I knew that other people weren't seeing that. Her teacher told her to find a way to help her study and that she would listen to my music to do that," Zeal said.

Zeal hopes one day her music will spread across the country as a positive message to people of all ages.

"My whole platform isn't limited to just one age group and I hope that other people can see that in the future and that it will be for people of all ages and that everyone will be able to experience what it's like to know self-worth and self-love and just have positivity vibrating everywhere across the country," Zeal said.
The Liberty County Historical Commission is celebrating and honoring Black History Month in February by sponsoring county historical markers for two of the oldest and most historic black churches in the county. Turkey Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Liberty and Our Mother of Mercy Catholic Church in Ames will receive markers honoring their long and unique histories.

Turkey Creek Missionary Baptist Church was established in 1866 after emancipation. The newly freed people gathered together to worship on a hill near Turkey Creek and later prayer meetings were held in private homes. Members gathered resources to build their first church building made of logs daubed with mud, used pine torches for lighting and a fireplace for warmth. The creek was used for baptisms.

A frame structure was soon built and in 1923, members dedicated a larger and better church building. This building was severely damaged by weather and had to demolished, leaving the congregation homeless.

Shortly afterward, the pastor died, leaving the congregation with no building in which to worship and no pastor to lead the congregation. Members' faith and dedication never wavered and several other church buildings were constructed and enlarged as the membership grew. The current church was dedicated in 2003. Turkey Creek Missionary Baptist Church celebrated its 150th anniversary in November 2016.

Our Mother of Mercy Catholic church in Ames owes its establishment to natives of New Iberia, La. Several prominent families including the Wickliffs, Trahans and Cormiers purchased farmland in the area. Attending the church in Liberty was difficult because of road conditions prompting the Ames Catholics to build a chapel in 1897 known as Sacred Heart Chapel. Josephite priests from Houston serviced the mission. In 1912 a second building was constructed and rectory built in 1915 insured a full-time priest. With the establishment of a school in 1914, the Catholic presence grew. By 1929, the community required a larger church and it was renamed Our Mother of Mercy. Mission churches sprang forth in Raywood and Dayton. Through the years, the church complex has grown to include a parish hall and education center. Since 1937 the church has sponsored an Easter Sunday rodeo. Priests from the Missionary Society of St. Paul in Nigeria have served since 1993 and Our Mother of Mercy continues to be the hub of church and social life in Ames.

The precursor to Black History Month was created in 1926 in the United States, when historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History announced the second week of February to be "Negro History Week." This week was chosen because it coincided with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln on Feb. 12 and of Frederick Douglass on Feb. 14. Both of these dates had been celebrated together by Black communities since the late 19th century.

Initially, primary emphasis was placed on encouraging the coordinated teaching of the history of American blacks in the nation's public schools. In 1976, as part of the United States Bicentennial, the informal expansion of Negro History Week to Black History Month was officially recognized by the U. S. Government. Then President Gerald Ford urged all Americans to "seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history."
Town Center Park in Kingwood will be decorated in purple, green and gold for the 2017 Mardi Gras Festival and Parade at Town Center Park in Kingwood on Saturday, Feb. 25, from 12 to 6 p.m.

This Mardi Gras Festival and Parade has been one of Town Center Park's main annual events for more than a decade.

"We thought, 'Why not hold a Mardi Gras parade as an annual event,'" said Tony Austin, director of the Town Center Park Association. "We decided to try it out, and it was very popular."

The Mardi Gras Festival and Parade event will feature a variety of food vendors, arts and craft booths and live music.

DJ KDub will be the event DJ from 12 p.m. up through the parade.

The parade begins at 2 p.m. and lasts about 45 minutes. During the parade, approximately 20-or-so floats designed by various local entities, including schools, rescue groups and nonprofits, will proceed around the park tossing Mardi Gras beads to onlookers.

From 2:30 to 6 p.m., guests can enjoy the music of zydeco artist Leroy Thomas.

Whether it's Christmas in the Park, the July Fourth Festival, or the spring and fall car shows, Town Center Park's main annual events are free to the public. The Mardi Gras Festival and Parade is no exception.

Austin said these free, family-friendly events are important to offer.

"Because we are a community," Austin said, "this is a way we can get together, and it's something for people to do here at home; right in the middle of Kingwood."

Town Center Park is at 8 N Main Street in Kingwood.

For more information, visit http://www.towncenterevents.com/mardigras.html.
Jason Fochtman/Staff photographer

Detectives are investigating a vandalism incident at Magnolia West High School that left more than a dozen windows shattered and computers damaged.

Someone broke into the school, located in the 42200 block of FM 1774, sometime Wednesday night, according to Montgomery County Precinct 5 Constable's Chief Chris Jones. Vandals broke more than 20 windows, smashed computers and vandalized some of the school's cameras, school officials said.
When communities that give the most in taxes to the state also cut back to balance their own budgets, the governor takes aim at any funds they have left.

Good news: Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsens office earns a gold sheriffs star for helping our state crawl out of the red inkwell. Jepsen held companies accountable for misleading investors and won settlements for Connecticut. Congratulations!

Bad news: Connecticut cannot continue relying on Sheriff Jepsen to ride in on his trusty steed, litigation, to save budgets in distress. There just arent enough handlebar mustache-twirling villains to keep paying the states bills.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. If we dont take proper action, it definitely will be a train.

Instead of new revenue  tolls, recreational marijuana, tax increases  its time to take a hard look at spending. Legislators must review each budget item and decide: Is this the best way to spend state taxes?

Politicians and voters compare state budgets to their household budgets. If living expenses, not income, go up, you decide what is and isnt necessary and rein in certain costs. Turn down the thermostat and wear more sweaters. Switch from the name brand to store brand. Maybe get rid of cable altogether?

Governments choices are different. It cant exactly clip coupons. It must examine where it spends state resources and see if its getting its moneys worth. Do programs produce the expected results? Are better, more affordable options available?

We arent living in an old West melodrama. No hero is coming to save the day. Legislators must stop playing the damsel in distress and save Connecticut.

Voters elected us to take on this responsibility. Our constituents are tired of taxes and bloated government. The small businesses that make up 70 percent of our economy are struggling at best, closing at worst.

Municipalities and schools made difficult budget decisions and tightened their belts. They asked employees to contribute more for health care and pensions. They created health savings accounts.

Now it gets ugly.

Rather than follow towns example, our governor wants to take town funding and give it to large cities that demonstrated poor fiscal management. He says town problems pale in comparison to the state. He ignores towns hard work to achieve financial stability and a blueprint the state and distressed cities could follow to resolve their own budget problems.

Right now, many towns in the 26th State Senate District receive only one or two cents for every dollar sent to the state. If that small amount of funding is going away, the onerous, unfunded mandates dictating where towns allocate dollars must go with it.

We cannot tie municipalities to the train tracks with unfunded mandates and take away all escape options, including any certainty about the funding they will receive from the state.

In a recent Hartford Courant letter to the editor, state Tax Commissioner Kevin Sullivan said a slow economic recovery in Connecticut created lower than expected revenue growth. While revenue collections grew each year following two historically high tax hikes, they were not enough to cover the growth in the states fixed costs.

Likewise, state unemployment is down to 4.4 percent, but Labor Department numbers show Connecticut lost 3,200 jobs over the course of 2016. Additionally, Connecticut  called the poster-child for out migration by some  lost population for the third straight year, reducing the labor force.

Unemployment is down, tax revenue is rising, but we continue the free fall of budget deficits, and employment and population decline. State uncertainty about budget allocations makes local budget planning from year to year nearly impossible.

Municipalities have shown we can change that light at the end of the tunnel from an oncoming train into a better, more financially sound future. Not through lawsuits, tolls or tax increases. We must address our fixed costs, enact pension reform and create sustainable, truly equitable funding for education and municipalities.

As we look to the horizon, its time for legislators to take responsibility and save the day. Our villain is the state budget deficit and runaway spending.

Lets saddle up, Connecticut. There is work to do.

State Sen. Toni Boucher represents the 26th State Senate District, which includes the communities of Bethel, New Canaan, Redding, Ridgefield, Weston, Westport and Wilton.
LUBBOCK  The Bayer Museum will host a Character Brunch from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Feb. 11 to support Special Olympics Texas athletes in the South Plains area. The brunch includes all-you-can-eat pancakes, sausage, fruit and muffins, and plenty of games provided by LubbockForKids.com, The United Family and the Knights of Columbus.

The cast from Moonlight Musicals, Peter Pan, the Masked Rider, Raider Red and Lubbocks Comic-Con will have many characters on hand. Literacy Lubbock will be providing story times and local Special Olympics athletes in attendance will be the superheroes for the day.
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The Glass House is the recipient of a grant from the Bank of America 2016 Art Conservation Project. This grant will provide funding for the complete replacement of the Glass House ceiling, consisting of approximately 1,800 square feet of self-colored plaster.

The Glass House, built in 1949 by architect Phillip Johnson, is a site of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Johnson and his partner, David Whitney, hosted legendary gatherings at the house during their life together, which brought together artists, architects, philanthropists and other cultural figures. Today the Glass House hosts exhibitions, performances and programs.

The Bank of America Art Conservation Project is a unique program that provides grants to nonprofit museums throughout the world to conserve historically or culturally significant works of art that are in danger of deterioration. Since the programs launch in 2010, Bank of America has provided grants to museums in 29 countries supporting over 100 conservation projects.

Among the graduates

Ian Schmertzler of New Canaan has earned a masters degree in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

Joining Waveny

Two women have been appointed to key leadership roles within the nonprofit eldercare organization Waveny LifeCare Network. Both will play active roles on the organizations leadership team.

Lynn Iverson has been named campus administrator and will oversee the operations of the healthcare-focused services, programs and residences on Wavenys main campus.

A registered nurse and licensed administrator with more than 30 years of both clinical and managerial experience in acute, sub-acute, rehabilitation and long-term care nursing settings, Iverson most recently served as administrator for St. Joseph Living Center, a 120-bed non-profit skilled rehabilitation and long-term care facility in Willimantic for nine years. Simultaneously, she held volunteer leadership positions with Leading Age of Connecticut, a membership organization representing over 130 non-profit healthcare provider organizations within the state, of which Waveny is a long-standing member.

Edlira Curis has been named vice president of development and will be responsible for directing Wavenys fundraising efforts and major campaigns.

A professional fundraiser with experience in all aspects of development, including soliciting major gifts for annual giving programs and capital campaigns, Curis was most recently involved with The Giving Collaborative, a philanthropy firm that provides counsel and assistance to nonprofit organizations seeking to grow their philanthropy programs.

Tim Tebows Night to Shine

The Tim Tebow Foundation selected Grace Community Church in New Canaan, partnering with STAR, Inc., Lighting the Way, to be one of the 350 locations to host an unforgettable prom night for young adults with disabilities and their buddy peers. The event will take place simultaneously worldwide on Feb. 10.

The nondenominational evening celebrates the unique value of every individual, with a focus on people with special needs ages 14 and older.

Guests will be celebrated as kings and queens, supported by their typical peers (age range 16-21) and event volunteers for activities, including greeting, crowning ceremony, decorations, food and beverages, paparazzi, photography, parking, safety and more. Volunteers of all ages are welcome to participate.

For more information, go to nighttoshinegcc.event

brite.com.

Preserving old burial grounds

Connecticut State Archaeologist Brian Jones and Director of the Greenwich Conservation Commission Denise Savageau will speak at the Conservation Commission meeting at New Canaans Town Hall on Feb. 9 at 7:30 p.m.

The program will be hosted by Cam Hutchins, the New Canaan Conservation Commission chairman.

Savageau, director of the Greenwich Conservation Commission which has formed the Greenwich Cemetery Committee, will speak about recent findings at an ancient African-American cemetery, referred to on some charts as the colored cemetery, which is part of a trio of adjacent old cemeteries that also include the Byram Cemetery and the Lyon Cemetery in Greenwich. Savageau's talk will also cover municipal and state resources available to preserve and restore old burial grounds.

Jones will present a general overview of the heritage value of local burial grounds, statutes that protect them, the role of the state archaeologist in overseeing the exploration of and preservation strategies for historic ancient burial grounds like the Maple Street Cemetery in New Canaan.

This event is free but space is limited. RSVP by Feb. 7 to CitizensForNewCanaan@gmail.com to reserve a seat.

On the deans list

John Fiorito, of New Canaan, made the dean's list at the College of New Jersey in Ewing, N.J., for the fall semester. To achieve this honor, a student must carry 12 or more credits that semester and earn at least a 3.5 grade-point average. Fiorito is studying finance.

Five New Canaan natives received deans list honors for the fall semester at Fairfield University: Anna Carmella Borea, Michael Alexander Donofrio, Erika Leigh Jensen, Alexandra Marie Tubridy and Robert James Valente.

To be placed on the deans list, students must have completed a minimum of 12 credit hours in a semester, have no outstanding or incomplete grades for that semester, and have attained a semester grade-point average of 3.50 or better.

Sara Connick, of New Canaan, made the dean's list for the fall semester at Furman University in Greenville, S.C. Furman's dean's list is composed of full-time undergraduate students who earn a grade-point average of 3.4 or higher on a four-point system. Connick is the daughter of Jill and Harry Connick.

New Canaans Charles Steele, a member of the class of 2019 majoring in mechanical engineering, was named to Worcester Polytechnic Institutes dean's list for academic excellence for the fall semester.

The criteria for the WPI dean's list differs from that of most other universities as WPI does not compute a grade-point average.

Instead, WPI defines the dean's list by the amount of work completed at the A level in courses and projects.
ACBI Insurance, 2150 Post Road, has been named a Best Practices agency by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America Inc.

ACBI is one of five agencies in Connecticut to be honored and one of three in Fairfield County. Agencies achieve Best Practices status based on their growth, profitability, productivity and financial stability.

Chambers of commerce plan Danube cruise

The Fairfield Chamber of Commerce, together with the Greater Norwalk, Westport-Weston and Danbury chambers, will be taking a group trip to the scenic Danube River, stopping at imperial cities along the way, departing Sept. 28 and returning Oct. 7.

Chamber members, guests, family and the public are invited to visit one of the most spectacular rivers in the world, the Danube. Included in the trip are stops in Munich, Passau, Melk, Vienna, Budapest, Bratislava and Linz, with an optional, three-night extension stay in Prague.

Chamber trips are affordable, while providing the same high-quality travel of other tour groups.

For those who may be interested, there will be a travel overview presentation at 5:30 p.m. Feb. 21 by Chamber Discoveries at The Boathouse at Saugatuck, 521 Riverside Ave., Westport. Light appetizers and beverages will be served.

Attendees will see photographs, videos and hear about the imperial cities along the river, unchanged over the centuries, as they cruise along and pass through four European countries. Each city boasts unique and beautiful architecture, fine culture and specialty stores for shopping. On board the ship, with only 71 cabins, providing comfort without crushing crowds, guests experience superb dining with all meals included during the cruise, including complimentary, quality red and white wines from Europes great wine regions with every dinner onboard the ship.

Trip reservations made by March 3 will receive a $200 discount off the regular tour price. With the early bird discount, the starting price is $3,999, double occupancy.

If interested in learning about the trip, call the Fairfield Chamber at 203-255-1011 to reserve a seat. Walk-ins also welcome.

This trip is open and available to all interested travelers. Nonmembers are welcome to attend.

On the deans list

Matthew Coppola, of Fairfield, was recognized for outstanding academic achievement and earned deans list recognition for the fall 2016 semester at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

Deans list recognition is given to cadets registered for 12 or more semester hours and whose grade-point average is 3.2 or higher with no grade below a C for the previous semesters work.

Elizabeth Groenstein, of Fairfield, earned deans list honors at Saint Josephs University in Philadelphia for the fall 2016 semester. Groenstein studies elementary education in the universitys College of Arts and Sciences.

Students must achieve a grade-point average of 3.5 or above, a B or greater in all their classes, and complete at least 15 credits to earn deans list status for a semester.

Nineteen Fairfield natives have been named to the University of Delaware deans list for the fall 2016 semester: Molly Blumenthal, Clare Burns, John Cogan, Isabella Corrales, Eliza Elliot, Leah Epstein, Jennifer Hoffman, Kiera McNeil, Jordan Michaels, Madalena OBrien, Hilary Pacelli, Nicole Pierpont, Emma Roth, Hailey Siegel, Joshua Streger, Matthew Wittstein, Michael Wittstein, Kristen Young and Gabriella Zarlenga.

Meghan Lynch, of Southport, made the deans list at the Newark, Del., university. To meet eligibility requirements for the deans list, a student must be enrolled full-time and earn a grade-point average of 3.33 or above for the semester.

Three Fairfield natives were among 1,424 students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute named to the universitys deans list for academic excellence for the fall 2016 semester.

Robert Bellitto, a member of the class of 2020, is majoring in aerospace engineering. Nicholas Mears, a member of the class of 2019, is also majoring in aerospace engineering. Anna Carriero, a member of the class of 2020, was named to the universitys deans list.

The criteria for the WPI deans list differs from most other universities as WPI does not compute a grade-point average. Instead, Worcester, Mass. school defines the deans list by the amount of work completed at the A level in courses and projects.

Call for photos

The Fairfield Museum and History Center will host its ninth annual IMAGES Juried Photography Show to celebrate the exceptional work of talented photographers in the region.

Entries will be accepted through Monday.

Professional, serious amateur and student photographers from Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island and Massachusetts are invited to participate.

The show will be on display from March 9 to April 30. The photography of Joe Standart will be on display, as well.

Visit fairfieldhistory.org/exhibitions-2/images for information or to enter.
NORWALK  The public school district would face a mass layoff of employees, including teachers, if a budget proposal by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is put into place, school officials said.

The proposal would require towns and cities that now pay nothing into the retirements plans of local teachers to contribute more than $400 million a year.

Malloy made the announcement during a late-morning news conference, saying its only fair that the municipalities pay a third of the annual $1.2-billion cost that the state pays and which is supplemented by 6-percent contributions from 50,000 active teachers. There are about 36,000 retirees.

The employer share of Norwalks teacher-pension costs next year is scheduled for $27.6 million. Under Malloys proposal, the city would have to pay $6.3 million of that cost.

If imposed, we'd have to lay off many employees, including teachers, to balance our budget, said Mike Lyons, chairman of Norwalks Board of Education. Considering that we are underfunded $20-30 million by the state already, this imposition on Norwalk would be unconscionable.

However, Malloy said Connecticut has caused its own problems and the ones it hasnt caused, it ignored. We need to change the way we pay for teachers and schools. The General Assembly is currently facing a $1.7-billion deficit in the budget scheduled to start July 1.

Officials across the state immediately complained of the proposed shift in the retirement program, which has never required municipalities to give to the plans.

More Information Teacher pension payments by town. Under Malloy's budget proposal, towns and cities would be responsible for paying one-third of these employer costs. Ansonia - $4.1 million Bridgeport - $38.7 million Derby - $2.9 million Easton- $3.9 million Fairfield - $27.6 million Milford - $16.7 million Monroe - 9 million Oxford - $4 million Shelton - $11.2 Stratford - $16.2 million Trumbull - 16.4 Bethel - $7 million Bridgewater - $509,000 Brookfield - $6.4 million Danbury - $22.2 million New Fairfield - $6.2 million New Milford - - $9.3 million Newtown - $11.8 million Redding - $5.2 million Ridgefield - $13.2 Norwalk - $27.6 million Darien - $13.7 million New Canaan - $12.6 million Weston - $7 million Westport - $17.6 million Wilton - $12 million Stamford - $42.6 million Greenwich - $30.2 million See More Collapse

State Sen. Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said Malloys school plan is merely an attempt to push the states budget problems onto the towns and cities.

State Rep. Gail Lavielle, R-Wilton, called the proposal a major tax increase in disguise.

Shifting such a massive cost to towns and cities means an enormous hit to municipal budgets, she said. While it makes the state budget look better on paper, the total expense is still borne by Connecticuts taxpayers.

Municipal officials and taxpayers should, Lavielle said, prepare for the potential impact on their finances if the proposal goes through.

Lyons said that impact would be a huge imposition on Norwalk and that it would pull vitally-needed funding away from critical educational programs when the school district needs them most.

I never cease to be amazed at the states mistreatment of this city, he said.

Fairfield First Selectman Michael Tetreau said he is at a loss to understand what the transfer would accomplish.

From a taxypayers standpoint it is not worth the paper its written on to make the change, Tetreau said. It doesnt accomplish anything and lowers no ones taxes.

Tetreau said its also unfair to stick municipalities with the burden of paying for a mistake the state made when it underfunded the pension system.

And it is a deal we had no hand in making, Tetreau said. It smacks of taxation without representation.

Joe DeLong, executive director of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said the shift of pension payments would mean about a billion dollars more over the next two-year budget cycle.

Such a colossal cost transfer  even given the current fiscal realities and the need to look at all areas of state and local spending  only reinforces the urgency to address the structural changes needed to give municipalities new tools for revenue diversification to keep in line with the overwhelming number of other states, DeLong said.

Trumbull First Selectman Tim Herbst said Malloys plan is a way to elude the responsibility of addressing the projected $1.7 billion deficit.

The governor has shown time and again an inability to make the tough decisions and this latest charade shows how the Hartford insiders are ill-equipped to dig Connecticut out of the hole we are in, said Herbst, who has filed an exploratory committee for a campaign for statewide office in 2018, but who has been raising money by promising to run for governor.

KSchultz@thehour.com; 203- 354-1049; @kevinedschultz
NORWALK  A New York man is facing a host of charges after police say he trashed an acquaintances South Norwalk apartment in view of minor children.

Kyshawn Myers, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was charged with second-degree criminal mischief, disorderly conduct, risk of injury to a minor, and second-degree failure to appear.

Police were dispatched to a Lowe Street residence at approximately 8:17 p.m. Thursday on a disturbance complaint.

The complainant said she was watching a movie with a male friend when Myers came downstairs, went to the kitchen and returned with three knives, which he allegedly waved in a threatening manner while telling the man to leave.

The male agreed to leave and the female drove him home, but police said that when she returned to the residence, Myers banged on her car windows and yelled at her to leave and to get her two children out of the home.

The woman went to get clothing for her children when she said that Myers got in her face and was yelling and cursing. Police said the commotion alarmed the two juveniles who witnessed the incident.

Police said that the home was in disarray  there was a serrated knife sticking from a chair, blinds had been cut, and a television had been damaged.

It was unclear what Myers relationship was to the woman.

His bond was set at $25,000 and he was given a court date of Feb. 3.

llake@hearstmediact.com
NORWALK  After climbing to the pulpit in St. Josephs Chapel at the private Kent School two months ago, Emelia Worth said she had to speak frankly to faculty members and her fellow students.

For once, Ive actually chosen my words very carefully ... Let me explain myself to you, not as Carl the experienced senior giving a chapel talk. But as Carl, the really scared child who is worried that they may have waited too long to get real.

She was battling depression, she said, and then announced: I am transgender. I puzzle every day why I came out a boy.

Worth, a former Westport resident who attended church at St. Pauls on the Green, where her mother held an associate clergy position, took her own life last Saturday. She was 18.

She had told close friends about her gender identity in the fall, and school officials and students who knew had embraced her, friends said. It was her peer and school support that gave her the courage to tell a crowd, said Elsa Worth, her mother.

She wanted to speak because she was sure others were hurting, too.

I dont think Im unique in being transgender, being depressed, or being at a loss for the meaning of my own life. Maybe hearing about my still-ongoing exploration may help somebody in here, Emelia said.

After her 11-minute Dec. 8 speech, Emelia went to a special place on campus that was a source of calm for her.

And thats where she was found on Saturday. On Sunday, the bell at St. Josephs rang 18 times for her.

Forty percent of transgender people report that they have attempted suicide in their lifetime, according to a recent survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality.

But Emelia wasnt just a number, Hazel Garrity, a friend and fellow senior at 570-student boarding school.

She was just a role model for everybody. She was everybodys friend, Garrity said. Ive never met someone like that in my life, and I dont think I will. Someone that could talk to so many people. She was the most amazing, genuine person. She stood up for everybody.

It wasnt a lack of support from family, friends or school officials that led to Emelias death, her mother said. It was suicidal depression, she said.

She was the sunshine of our home, Elsa Worth said. There are some things that well never understand about depression  at least I wont."

Emelia Worth was a kind, remarkably bright, family-oriented person, Elsa Worth said. She picked Emelia for a name because Elsa told her it would have been her name had she been born a girl.

She was born Dec. 27 in 1998, and lived in several Connecticut towns before her family moved to Keene, N.H., last August. Before she began her time at the Kent School  on a near-full scholarship  she had been a lifetime camper at Camp Washington in Lakeside. She was proud member of St. Pauls Church in Norwalk, and was on the churchs choir and a member of their music ministry for 8 years.

At the school she was a class representative each of her four years and served as a senior prefect this year after being voted in as a student leader by faculty and students. She played bass in the orchestra  a Kent School first  and the jazz band. She was also a percussionist in the concert band.

Before her death, she was applying to colleges. She had already been accepted to the University of New Hampshire and University of Massachusetts  Amherst. She planned to study linguistics and become a professor, her mother said.

Emelia planned to start correcting what she described as an astrological coin flip come March with hormone treatments, Garrity said.

Hormone treatment, or not, her school and friends had already tried to make her more comfortable. The school was planning to allow her to live in the girls dormitory rooms, Garrity said. And no one knew of bullying or harsh words for Emelia.

If anyone was to say anything to her, they knew everyone would have risen up and protected her, Garrity said.

She is survived by her mother, Elsa, her father, Steven Worth, and two brothers, Bo and Orion. A memorial service will be held at St. James Church in Keene, N.H., on Feb. 10, and another will be held at the Kent School on Tuesday, Feb. 14, at 7 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, her family asks donations be made to The Emelia Carl 17 Scholarship at the school.

blytton@hearstmediact.com; 203-731-3411; @bglytton
Two people were arrested in a Montgomery County Internet Crimes Against Children sting recently.

Deputies with the Precinct 1 Constable's Office arrested Elisa Joyce Hill, 25, and James Thomas Cepak, 31, on separate charges of attempted child sexual assault. Both were charged with separate child pornography charges as well, officials stated in a release.

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: 4 suspects arrested in string of burglary cases

Hill is facing one second-degree felony attempted aggravated sexual assault of a child charge as well as four third-degree felony counts of possession of child pornography. Deputies stated Hill allegedly intended to sexually assault a 12-year-old boy. She is being held in the Montgomery County Jail on $150,000 worth of bonds.

Cepak allegedly intended to sexually assault an 8-year-old girl, deputies stated. He was also arrested on four third-degree felony counts of promotion of child pornography. Deputies stated Cepak has a criminal history of similar offenses in Minnesota and Michigan. He is being held in the Montgomery County Jail with no bond, jail records show.
Harris County Sheriff's Office

A 55-year-old west Houston man will spend the rest of his life in jail following a trial and conviction for indecency with a child.

Louis Henry West, whose last address was listed in the 14500 block of Beechnut Street, was indicted on two counts of indecency with a child, a first-degree felony. West was sentenced to life in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was convicted of touching the children's genitals.
Texas Rangers are in charge of the investigation surrounding an officer-involved shooting early Friday morning in Panhandle.

A suspect died at the scene, which was the Texas Department of Public Safety building in the Carson County town of Panhandle. No other injuries were reported.
NEW YORK: Gold was little changed on Wednesday as caution set in ahead of a US Federal Reserve policy meeting verdict and uncertainty lingered over a US Congress coronavirus relief package.



Spot gold was flat at $1,959.55 per ounce by 1:32 p.m. EDT (1732 GMT), trading below a record high of $1,980.57 scaled on Tuesday. US gold futures settled 0.5% higher at $1,953.4.



Any consolidation that were seeing in gold is a direct result of a bit of wait-and-see attitude ahead of the Fed meeting today and negotiations in Washington over the stimulus package as well, said David Meger, director of metals trading at High Ridge Futures.



Though the environment remains supportive for bullion, if the market believes any pullback in stimulus is likely, that would be a disappointment and the biggest threat to the gold market at this point, he added.



Investors are eyeing the Feds policy statement, due at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) for clues about the central banks monetary stance and its outlook for the economy.



US President Donald Trump said his administration and the US Congress remained far apart on a coronavirus relief bill and suggested he was not in a hurry to strike a deal.



Some support from fiscal policy should prove dollar supportive and would also reduce the pressure on the Fed to deliver additional easing, HSBC analysts wrote in a note.



This would also be gold bearish and could take some of the steam out of the upside for bullion and lead to consolidation, they wrote.



Massive stimulus packages to aid economies reeling from pandemic-driven woes and a low interest rate environment have helped drive gold prices up over 29% so far this year.



Investors continued to pile into gold-backed exchange-traded funds, with holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust at an over seven-year peak.



Silver dropped 1.5% to $24.20 per ounce, platinum fell 2.2% to $927.45 per ounce and palladium slid 5% to $2,168.35 per ounce.Reuters




Update at 5:25 p.m.: Kiara Soto was found safe Friday afternoon after she went missing on Jan. 27, according to The Center for Search and Investigation for Missing Children.

Original Story: Authorities are asking for the public's assistance in locating a missing 15-year-old girl from San Antonio.
SAN ANTONIO  Multiple emergency response teams, including a bomb squad and K-9 units, responded to reports of suspicious bag on the city's West Side Friday after one dog unit got two "hits," according to authorities.

The reports of the bag came in around 8:40 a.m. at the intersection of Poplar Street and Zarzamora Street.
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For the fourth time in more than two weeks, Animal Care Services has picked up a wandering pig.

Friday morning, ACS officers responded to a call from a West Side resident about a pig that family members had tied in their yard. Thursday night, the pig showed up on their property and tried to follow the family as they entered their home. The small pig banged his head on the door several times until family members contained him by tying him to a tree in the yard.

The residents said their visitor expressed displeasure with his plight by squealing throughout the night.

ACS spokeswoman Lisa Norwood said their latest arrival is a micro-pig, a breed of pig bred to keep as an exotic pet and also used for medical research.

RELATED: Animal Care Services catches elusive pot-bellied pig asleep at dawn on Northwest Side

Shelter staff members named the pig Boss Hogg. He weighs 75 pounds, is gray with dark spots and a streaks of ginger through his coat.

Norwood said residents should take care if they ever encounter a stray pig, because they are very strong, intelligent and can be a public safety issue.

The current law is pigs are not allowed in San Antonio, she said. This is about so much more, no family wants to wake up to a large farm animal at their house or have to figure out how to keep it out of their home. These are not wild pigs, its not an issue of encroachment or driving out an existing population, this burgeoning pig population is very mysterious.

RELATED: Alamo Heights residents concerned after coyote sighting

The spate of sightings started two weeks ago.

In the first case, ACS officers picked up a wild piglet saved from several roaming dogs by a Good Samaritan. The piglet was only at the ACS campus for a few hours, before it was taken to a local wildlife rescue organization.

On Tuesday, at dawn, an ACS team caught Buttercup, a Vietnamese Pot-bellied pig that had eluded capture for weeks near Leon Valley. The team enticed her to a cage with a marshmallow and a bag of donuts.

Thursday morning, ACS officers picked up Polly, an American Yorkshire, from a neighborhood near Babcock Road that backs up to Bamberger Nature Park. Norwood said a rescue group is on the way to transport Buttercup and Polly to their new home in Colorado; they're hoping that Boss Hogg can also hitch a ride.
SAN ANTONIO  Highlands High School was placed on lockdown Friday afternoon after a burglary suspect was arrested on campus property.

Police said they responded to a burglary of a vehicle call on Hiawatha Street and two people are now in custody.

One of the robbery suspects did not enter the building, but fled from a nearby scene to the high school's campus on the Southeast Side, said Leslie Price, San Antonio Independent School District spokeswoman.

READ ALSO: Police: 6 children injured after woman crashes SUV into Cibolo day care

Price said campus was put on lockdown at 1:15 p.m. The San Antonio Police Department arrested the suspect on the sidewalk in front of the school. Price did not know if the suspect was armed at the time.

She also said another suspect had been apprehended, but was unsure if they were on school grounds.

The lockdown on the Highlands campus was lifted at about 2:45 p.m., according to a release from SAISD.

This is a developing story and more information will be added as it becomes available.

Staff writers Alia Malik and Tyler White contributed to this report.

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
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Tyler G. Scott Burns was a traveler who enjoyed meeting new people and striking up conversations, but often preferred being on his own, his mother Donalee Burns said.

He loved his family but needed to be by himself, she said. He would go for walks all night long ... walking and thinking about things.

Although he hadnt ventured far from home on Jan. 23, he reached a Northwest Side bus stop just after 2 a.m. in the 13500 block of Interstate 10 West where he was fatally struck by a drunken driver, according to a San Antonio Police Department report.

Juan Jose Cortez-Guidel, 26, is facing a charge of intoxicated manslaughter in Burns death, according to the report.

RELATED: Records: 20 bars linked to the most DWIs in San Antonio since 2015

Investigators initially thought Burns was thrown from the vehicle after he was discovered lying in front of a 2003 Infiniti G35 sedan when officers arrived, according to preliminary information.

After examining the scene, police determined Burns was waiting at a VIA bus stop when the car left the road and hit him, the report states.

His mother was told by investigators that Burns had been caught under the vehicle, which was traveling 60 miles per hour, when it flipped over after leaving the road.

Burns was then dragged several feet before hitting a fence, the report states. He was pronounced dead when first responders arrived, police said.

RELATED: 'I did this s--t because I was all f---ed up,' bank robbery suspect says while handcuffed

He would not hurt anybody. It really upsets me the way he died, Burns mother said. You know God says whenever your time is ... but he did not deserve to die like this.

Police on scene noted they smelled intoxicants in Cortez-Guidels breath before he was taken to University Hospital.

Cortez-Guidel was tested for intoxication but the results were not available in the report, which notes he was detained at the hospital.

Burns travels had taken him as far as New York, his mother said, noting that he made many friends along the way and back. He had been living with his mom and brother prior to his death.

He just liked to go and come back. He always knew where home was and kept one of my sisters numbers on him, Donalee Burns said. I loved him more than anything in this world and so did his family.

jbeltran@express-news.net

Twitter: @JBfromSA
A woman who was fatally shot following a domestic disturbance Tuesday night in a Southeast Side apartment complex has been identified.

Rose Marie Limon, 33, died as a result of gunshot wounds to her face and neck at about 8:45 p.m. in the Spanish Spur Apartments, 6835 Pecan Valley Drive, according to the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office.
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A South Texas jury on Friday acquitted Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector Tony Yzaguirre Jr. of bribery and abuse of official capacity charges.

After two days of deliberations, the jury in Nueces County found Yzaguirre not guilty on eight counts of bribery, six counts of abuse of official capacity and one count of official oppression.

A day before, the jury had been unable to reach a decision on the official oppression charge. Senior State District Judge Manuel Banales released the jurors, advising them to be prepared to deliver a verdict on Friday.

Yzaguirre and three tax office employees were arrested in January 2016 on allegations they had issued fake vehicle registrations in exchange for cash.

RELATED: Texas public officials in trouble with the law

Texas Rangers began investigating Yzaguirre after a confidential informant alleged that he had met with the tax-assessor collector to register three vehicles to three different people and addresses.

The informant allegedly paid to register the vehicles, then placed $300 in an envelope for Yzaguirre, according to court documents. The informant told the Texas Rangers that when there was a problem with a vehicle registration the informant could arrange to meet with Yzaguirre for a fee of $100 per vehicle, an affidavit shows.

During an undercover investigation dubbed Operation Dirty Deeds, another confidential informant paid Yzaguirre to register two vehicles without identification documents because the persons seeking to register the vehicles do not exist, an affidavit alleged.

But an investigator with the District Attorneys Office in Cameron County could not trace any ill-gotten proceeds to Yzaguirres bank accounts.

RELATED: Wild wrong-way police chase ends in S.A. neighborhood

Yzaguirre was reelected in November, prevailing over two write-in candidates with 75 percent of the vote. After staying away from the office while the criminal case was pending, Yzaguirre said he was eager to return to work.

anelsen@express-news.net

Twitter: @amnelsen
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SAN ANTONIO  Police arrested a man Thursday suspected in at least two bank robberies in after receiving a tip on the suspect's identity.

Samuel Miranda, 27, is now charged with aggravated robbery and possession of a stolen vehicle.

"I did this s--t because I was all f---ed up at the time," Miranda said while being transported to the Bexar County Jail, adding he had loved ones he needed to provide for.

Officer Doug Greene, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department, said Miranda is accused of robbing a bank in the 200 block of South Zarzamora Road on Jan. 14.

Days later, he allegedly robbed another bank at gunpoint in the 1000 block of Goliad Road on Jan. 15.

READ ALSO: Mugshot: Son charged with gunning down 62-year-old mom in Windcrest home

Greene said police are still investigating the case because they believe Miranda might have robbed several other banks.

"This investigation is far from over," Greene said.

Police arrested Miranda without incident around 11 a.m. at the intersection of Guadalupe Street and Zarzamora Road after receiving a tip that Miranda was tied to the robberies.

When asked if anyone else had assisted in the robberies, Miranda said he was the sole actor.

"Who else would do it?" he said.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

cdowns@mysa.com

Twitter: @calebjdowns
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A professional photographer from San Antonio was arrested Wednesday afternoon after a data recovery firm reported finding videos depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct on a hard drive.

Christopher Alexander Reilly, the 46-year-old owner of Chris Reilly Photography, faces one count of receipt of child pornography, according to the U.S. attorney's office.

RELATED: Man accused of lighting garage on fire after wife didn't make dinner

A federal complaint unsealed Thursday accuses Reilly of downloading child pornography onto a hard drive last month. The complaint says Reilly sent the hard drive to a data recovery firm, which discovered the videos of the minors. The firm notified the FBI.

On Tuesday, agents executed a search warrant at Reilly's residence. Agents seized his cellphone and an "assortment of photography equipment, computers and storage devices," according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office.

FBI agents have not linked any of the subjects of Reilly's professional photography to the videos on the hard drive.

"As this investigation moves forward, the FBI will continue to focus significant resources on identifying and notifying those who were potentially victimized by the defendant to ensure they are provided appropriate access to victim services and support," FBI Special Agent Christopher Combs said.

RELATED: Son charged in gunning down of 62-year-old mom in Windcrest home

According to records from the Texas secretary of state and the Bexar Appraisal District, Reilly has lived in a home about a half a mile away from Wilderness Oak Elementary School in the Stone Oak area.

A biography on his photography website states Reilly is a married father of two who served in the Air Force for five years and graduated from Southern Methodist University with a master's degree in business.

Reilly remains in federal custody and made his first appearance in federal court this morning. He faces between five and 20 years in federal prison if he's found guilty.

His next hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Feb. 7.
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San Marcos police arrested five Houston men Friday morning following a break-in at a medical supply distribution center, according to a news release.

The men arrested were James Edward Jackson, 25; Calvin Louis Clayton, 30; Tyrone Donnell Anderson, 41; Darion Marlon Williams, 24; and Antoine Sharod Benson, 34. The suspects all have Houston addresses and several of them are confirmed gang members, according to a news release.

RELATED: After blaze guts two-story East Side home, structure faces demolition

San Marcos police officers responded just before 4 a.m. Friday to the 2000 block of Medical Parkway for a burglar alarm at the business.

The first officer on the scene reported seeing a suspicious vehicle that was running with a piece of cloth covering the license plate. As other officers arrived, police learned that a business had been burglarized and a safe had been removed from the inside of the building, a news release said.

The officers set up a perimeter and found the five suspects after several hours of searching. They were primarily found near Broadway Street.

RELATED: Police: Man fleeing reported downtown shooting scene drives wrong way on I-35, crashes near home

There was incredible teamwork involved, said Assistant Chief of Police Bob Klett. With multiple suspects all running in different directions, it took the efforts of multiple shifts, along with our partners at Texas State UPD, to work together across this wide geographic area. Our specialized units such as K-9, motors, and criminal investigations also played very important roles in this case, for which I am very grateful. The San Marcos Fire Department also assisted with helping to provide roof access to the business.

Several items were recovered and video of the burglary has reportedly been obtained by police.

RELATED: Police: Man was struck, dragged to death by DWI suspect

This is the second time this business has been broken into this year, with a previous burglary on Jan. 17. Prescription drugs were taken in that incident.

Text "Breaking" to 48421 for breaking news alerts from mySA.com

twhite@mysa.com

Twitter: @tylerlwhite
SAN ANTONIO  The police department is reminding residents to keep track of bank account information after finding two more gas pump credit card skimmers in parts of the Alamo City this week.

On Wednesday, skimmers were found at locations in the 6100 block of Walzem Road and the 800 block of East Mulberry Avenue. SAPD spokesman Douglas Greene said the department has been working with the gas pump industry and convenient stores in order to tackle the problem of skimming devices.
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VICTORIA -- Five days and more than $1 million in donations later, the grounds of the Victoria Islamic Center were busy Thursday.

A demolition crew picked up an overturned dome that had fallen from the mosques roof, destroyed in an early morning blaze Saturday. Imam Osama Hassan stood in the ash picking out singed pages from several Qurans while Irfan Qureshi, a board member, rolled out a sign that read Rebuilding with Love.

While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, mosque members made a deliberate effort to keep the focus on the outpouring of support from the community, rather than the possibility that the fire was deliberately set, an act that could have much broader implications of anti-Muslim sentiment in this small southeast Texas city.

RELATED: Texas mosque destroyed in early-morning blaze; cause unknown

Were not focusing on the obvious damage, Qureshi said. It is what it is, whether its an accident or someone did it. Instead we want to look at what people of different backgrounds were able to do.

Even though several area churches, including a local synagogue, offered up their space to the mosques congregation, leaders decided they wanted to get back to their own property as soon as possible, to give members a sense of continuity and normalcy.

With the mosque structure uninhabitable, Qureshi and company relocated the five daily prayers to a temporary building next door. But without water and electricity, they had to improvise. They brought flashlights and LED lights to light up the room during the early morning and nighttime prayers. They brought in bottled water so people could wash up before prayer.

RELATED: Dozens of cars, homes tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti in San Antonio Jewish community

The blaze came a couple of weeks after a mosque under construction in Lake Travis caught fire, yet two separate fundraisers for the fires have had dramatically different outcomes. While Lake Travis has raised 16 percent of its $400,000 goal, Victoria has surpassed its original $850,000 goal by a couple hundred thousand. Qureshi doesnt know why the two have had such different results.

Some speculated that perhaps the executive order issued by President Donald Trump last week that severely curtailed immigration from seven Muslim majority countries and led to protests throughout the nation could have played a factor. Also, the day after the Victoria fire, a gunman stormed a Quebec City mosque, killing six people inside.

Qureshi said news from Quebec City sent chills through his body.

RELATED: Graffiti defaces S.A. church with 'No to wall' and 'Islam or Die'

We have to be even more vigilant, he said. Its not just a hypothetical anymore.

frahman@express-news.net
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West Texas law enforcement officials are investigating Friday after finding human remains in a shallow grave near Alpine.

The remains were found Friday during a routine border patrol operation northwest of Alpine in Sunny Glen, the Alpine Police Department said in a news release. Police have not yet identified the remains and are continuing to investigate.

On the Alpine Police Department's Facebook page, commenters are speculating that they remains may be that of Zuzu Verk, a 22-year-old Sul Ross State University student who went missing in October of last year. Some commenters said they are praying the remains are not Verk's.

RELATED: Missing Texas college student's boyfriend named a suspect, drones used to search

Verk was last seen on a date with her boyfriend, Robert Fabian, 25, on Oct. 11, 2016, and was reported missing three days later. Fabian, who reported Verk missing, was named a suspect in her case in October, but at the time was being uncooperative with authorities.

The day after Verk disappeared, Fabian made two phone calls to Christopher Estrada. Estrada was arrested in January 2017 and charged with driving while intoxicated and evading arrest.

At the time of his arrest, he was driving the same white Ford Mustang that Fabian borrowed on Oct. 12, 2016, the day after Verk was last seen. Estrada had the vehicle cleaned three times in the days following Verk's disappearance.

RELATED: Person of interest in West Texas college student's disappearance arrested

Friends of Verk's have begun posting comments in a Facebook group dedicated to the missing student.

Many are asking for prayers for Verk and her family on the page.

"Sweet girl, I sit here in tears thinking that they have found you. Your parents are the strongest people I have ever met," one commenter said. "I know this would bring closure to them if it is you, I know they need to know, but it's so painful to think that it could be you."

kbradshaw@express-news.net

Twitter: @kbrad5
The Plainview/Hale County Crimestoppers Committee will pay a reward of up to $350 to anyone with information that will lead to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for the following crimes:

--On Jan. 28, at about 11:38 p.m. the Plainview Police Department responded to a call of shots fired in the 1500 block of West 10th Street. Several rounds of gunfire struck a home, which was occupied by a family. The Plainview Police Department is also requesting anyone in the immediate area with surveillance video to contact them.
San Antonio Congressman Lamar Smith surprised me last week when he indicated a disrespect for Fox News.

True, his brief speech on the House floor was mainly a complaint about how the national liberal media are covering President Donald Trump, but its conclusion was more sweeping.

Smith listed a number of early accomplishments by the president, including a spike in the consumer confidence index and said the liberal media wont print that, or air it, or post it.

Actually, I Googled spike in consumer confidence index and the very first entry was a Dec. 27 report from that pillar of the liberal media, the New York Times.

It read: A measure of consumer confidence shot to its highest level in more than 15 years in December as Americans saw more strength ahead in business conditions, stock prices and the job market following the election of Donald J. Trump as president.

But dont sweat the details. Smith is right that the media have been tough on Trump. Its Smiths solution that intrigues.

Better to get your news directly from the president, he said. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.

Thats where he disrespected the fair and balanced cable channel. But Fox can fend for itself.

Smiths proposal is quite innovative for America. Weve never really tried getting all our news from our top elected official. It has been tried elsewhere, however.

North Korea comes to mind.

If Americans were to adopt this approach, here are some of the unvarnished truths we would have learned.

That Trumps inauguration crowd was the biggest ever.

That he gets far bigger crowds than Beyonce and Jay Z.

That Trump would have won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.

That Americans arent interested in his tax returns.

These are just some of the things we would have learned since his inauguration. During his campaign we would learn that thousands and thousands of Arabs in New Jersey publicly celebrated as the World Trade Center towers collapsed on 9/11.

We would learn Congressman Smith is right in thinking climate change is a hoax but that Trump was only kidding when he tweeted that it was created by the Chinese to hurt Americas competitiveness.

And, of course, we would learn, as Trump recently taught, that members of the media are the most dishonest human beings on Earth.

That, as Smith understands, is why media outlets have debunked every one of the above alternative facts.

Smith also appears to be getting all his news from the White House regarding Trumps temporary bans of immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim nations.

I appreciate President Trumps effort to protect innocent Americans from those who enter the United States to do us harm, he said in a press release that mirrored several White House talking points.

Smiths young colleague Will Hurd, the other Republican congressman from San Antonio, hasnt got the message. Hurd, a former CIA agent, told USA Today that Trumps order has caused a rift with U.S. allies in the fight against terrorism.

Lets look at a place like Iraq and the men and women of the U.S. armed services, he said. Who protects the perimeter of the base? Iraqis.

He added that Iraqis are also fighting ISIS, and he has friends in Yemen fighting al-Qaida alongside Yemenis.

Pulling no punches, he said Trumps order has put a target on the back of the almost 10,000 U.S. service members and diplomats and intelligence officers who are in those regions.

Hurd also noted that some terrorist groups are touting Trumps order as proof that the United States is at war with Islam.

When terrorist groups are excited about this executive order, thats not a good sign, Hurd said. Its a tool that terrorist groups get to use to recruit more followers.

Would we ever have learned that from President Trump?

This column first appeared as the Last Word on KLRNs Texas Week with Rick Casey. The program appears Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

George Orwells words from his classic novel 1984 are making news again. Newspapers and websites report that recently this book has zoomed to the top of Amazon.coms best-seller list and the publishers have ordered at least 75,000 more copies.

The political climate connected with the advent of the Trump administration and the swirling controversies over the use of phrases such as post truth, truthful hyperbole and alternative facts are undoubtedly driving sales of the book.

Winston, the main character in Orwells dystopian story, works in the Ministry of Truth, which in truth is the ministry of propaganda.

My first understanding of propaganda came in my college freshman speech class taught by a Dr. Abernathy, whose textbook we used, of course. Oh, I had heard the word before, but to me as a child of the Cold War, propaganda was mainly what the lying Commies said about us.

Dr. Abernathys definition of propaganda was any device used to induce acceptance or rejection of a proposition without proper consideration of its merits. Dictionary.com defines it as information, ideas or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc.

There are several types of propaganda depending on the source one consults, even more types if rhetorical devices used in argumentation and polemics are included. One idea that was new to my callow freshman mind was how much advertising is propaganda.

One type of propaganda is called glittering generalities. This is a phrase that sounds good, even great, at first, but when examined more closely turns out to be quite vague or even devoid of meaning  insert slogan here! Another type is called transfer. Why would an ad selling air conditioners be plastered with American flags even if there is no occasion of a national holiday? Could the merchant be hoping that some of the warm feelings that many people have for the flag are transferred to the merchandise?

Sex appeal is a much-used form of transfer. Just add an attractive model or spokesperson and watch the widgets fly out the door. Speaking of spokespersons, testimonial is another form. Testimonial can be more rational and effective if the famous person endorsing the product or idea actually uses the product or practices the idea. Of course, back in the day, some doctors sometimes endorsed certain brands of cigarettes  not a cough in a carload.

Bandwagon is a type of propaganda that got its name from actual wagons containing bands. First used in the 19th century by circuses and later by politicians, the bandwagon would circuit the town to drum up interest and support. Later this term came to mean joining a cause, buying a product, or participating in a fad because everyone is doing it! Usually this is done quickly; thus, jumping on the bandwagon.

There are many more, but the simplest and perhaps the most widely used form of propaganda is the big lie. Tell a colossal lie and repeat often. Even when debunked, vestiges of the lie will remain in peoples minds.

Critical thinking is not for the weak, but it is the main tool we have to combat the deception of propaganda.

John Eubanks is author of the book Life Support of Another Sort and a former teacher and actor who lives in Converse.
Its too soon to know the cause of a fire that engulfed an exquisite gold-domed mosque in the city of Victoria.

Time will tell if it was an act of arson  the mosque was burglarized a week before the blaze. Much clearer at this point has been the response, deep and heartfelt from Texans of all faiths. As Express-News journalist John MacCormack reported, hundreds of Texans drove to the mosque to offer their love, prayers and support.
Parents of special education children should not feel the need to withdraw their child from public schools because the school fails to provide the necessary and correct education.

As someone who has a younger brother with autism, I want him to receive the best education a school can offer so that he can reach his potential. Growing up with an autistic brother has opened my eyes to the fact that every child, regardless of his or her disability, should be given a chance at the best education.

It is the schools responsibility to provide that education and a nurturing environment. No child should be neglected and kept from receiving the proper education because of a disability. The school should encourage them to love learning. I believe state institutions should make it mandatory that schools get specific training in enforcing education for special ed children, as well as regularly monitor to check how the schools are doing.

Sadia Rahman

1984 in 2017

I must congratulate the Trump team for coining the phrase alternative facts. I am sure George Orwell would approve. It remains to be seen whether the president will establish a Ministry of Truth to continue its use of an alternative reality.

Allister W. Ogilvie, Port Isabel

A dis to the office

To the Democrats who boycotted the inauguration, you showed disrespect to the office of the president.

Christine Hammes

So what?

Rep. Joaquin Castro boycotting the inauguration.

Who cares?

Bill Kriz

Ted over Hillary

Re: Start in Fresno? Your Turn, Jan. 19:

Ill take Ted Baxter any day over crooked Hillary!

Angie Cornejo, Jourdanton

Round two?

Perhaps instead of a recount of the November ballots, we could get a poll of how many Trump voters want to re-vote.

Craig Bell
GREENWICH  Lt. Daniel Allen retired this week from the Greenwich Police Department after 43 years of service.

According to the department:

A Greenwich native, Lieutenant Allen was sworn in as a Greenwich Police Officer on July 29, 1974, after graduating from the 110th Class of the Connecticut Municipal Police Basic Police Academy. During his career, he held numerous positions in GPD, including Patrol Officer, Youth Officer, and Detective. He also served as a Police Instructor and was a long-standing member of the Departments Special Response Unit. During his tenure as a Youth Officer, Lieutenant Allen received praise from local educators for his sensitivity in handling juvenile cases and compassionate care of juvenile victims. His keen investigative skills helped him excel in his next role as Detective in the Detective Division, where he led investigations of some of Greenwichs most serious crimes.

Lieutenant Allen was promoted to Sergeant in 1994, assigned to the Training Section. In this leadership role, he planned and coordinated training for the entire police department, and earned recognition such as Officer of the Month for his exceptional management of GPDs recruitment efforts.

In 2003 Lieutenant Allen was promoted to Lieutenant in the Patrol Division, a role in which he continued to show exemplary police service. Besides many departmental commendations for his work, Lieutenant Allen received numerous letters and calls from Greenwich residents expressing appreciation and gratitude for his compassionate help.

Danny is a hometown officer who loves his community, said Chief Heavey. With 43 years of service in Greenwich Police Department, he clearly sees public service as his calling. We are extremely fortunate that Danny chose to spend his career in our Department and we wish him the very best in retirement.

Lieutenant Allen will continue to serve the town as a Special Police Officer.

Allen was the first African-American supervisor in the departments ranks when he was promoted to sergeant.
School children attend the recently-concluded 30th Beijing Book Fair with newly published books. Kids' books are the fastest-growing genre and account for the largest market segment.[Photo provided to China Daily]

A recent book fair points toward emerging publishing trends. Xing Yi and Mei Jia report.

The recently concluded 30th Beijing Book Fair examined not only the recent past but also the near future.

The January fair is viewed as a compass of the domestic market in the coming year.

A highlight was the BBF Top Forum of China Press and Publishers, co-hosted by the fair's organizing committee and China Publishing & Media Journal.

Hot spots in Chinese publishing will include literature - both translated and in original Chinese, the journal's president Wu Xusheng says.

Also popular will be "chicken-noodle soup" books on psychology and life outlook. Books about science, and particularly artificial intelligence, will be big. So, too, will be kids books, especially titles dealing with art education.

More books will be integrated with augmented and virtual reality, Wu adds.

He expects last year's strong performance of calligraphy titles to extend into 2017. This reveals a potent demand for traditional-culture themes, Wu points out.

Industry monitor Openbook also released its annual report on China's 2016 market, based on data from over 3,000 bookstores and major online-retail websites.

It says the market exceeded 70 billion yuan ($10 billion), an increase of 12.3 percent year-on-year.

Online book sales contributed 36.5 billion yuan to the market, marking the first time online sales surpassed offline sales.
GREENWICH  A Greenwich selectman is urging support for a bill to ban so-called conversion therapy for young people in the state of Connecticut.

Selectman Drew Marzullo is engaged in a campaign to back the proposed law  which would outlaw the practice that claims to change a persons sexual orientation from homosexual or bisexual to heterosexual  by seeking support from local organizations and Greenwich state legislators.

If passed, Connecticut would join New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Oregon, California and Illinois in enacting some form of state restrictions on conversion therapy. The Connecticut law would prohibit any licensed professional from engaging in conversion therapy with a person under the age of 18 in the state.

I really cant think of any reason whatsoever why this bill would not receive close to unanimous support, said Marzullo, who is gay. One of the goals of conversion therapy is to convince gay children and adolescents to hate themselves for who they are, and to subsequently force change. Conversion therapy has to lead to depression, drug use, homelessness and suicide.

Numerous co-sponsors have added themselves to the bill, none from Greenwich. The bill has been sent to the Public Health Committee.

Marzullo in a letter to Greenwich legislators urged them to not only vote for the bill, but to add their names as co-sponsors. Reached this week, members of the Greenwich delegation offered mild support or pledged to do more study at this point.

From everything that I have read, there is no scientific evidence that conversion therapy is efficacious, said state Rep. Livvy Floren, R-149th.

State Sen. L. Scott Frantz, R-36th, said he was concentrating on budgeting issues in the legislature and had not had time to look at the proposed bill. I am so focused on keeping the state solvent in all respects that I have not had the time to review committee bills out of my cognizance. If there is time, I will look into this issue, he said. Frantz said he considered Marzullos input valuable.

State Rep. Mike Bocchino, R-150, said, Although this is the first time that Im seeing this bill, it appears to make complete sense and if this treatment is as arcane and detrimental as Selectman Marzullo suggests, then I would be very happy to support it moving forward. He said he wanted to look at the final language before making any firm decisions.

Similarly, state Rep. Fred Camillo, R-151st, said he was unfamiliar with the specifics of the bill and wanted more time for study of the proposed legislation. On the issue of conversion therapy, he said, From what Ive read about it, it doesnt seem like something we should promote in this day and age.

State Rep. Jonathan Steinberg of Westport, the co-chairman of the public health committee, said Friday, It will get a hearing.

State Rep. Jeff Currey, a Democrat from East Hartford, introduced the bill in the General Assembly. He said there were no active conversion-therapy programs in Connecticut that he was aware of.

While there may be no specific retreat locations, there are organizations that offer referrals for services aimed at suppressing ones sexual orientation. I, along with my colleagues who have signed on to our legislation, believe that the responsible thing to do is act in a proactive manner to support and protect the youth of our state, he wrote in an email.

In the case of conversion therapy, it became evident quite quickly that the nations leading medical, mental health and human services professional organizations do not recognize conversion therapy as a legitimate therapy and have condemned the practice, Currey said. While its always beneficial to have the support of professionals, as an openly gay man, I didnt need anyone to tell me that this is a horrific practice.

Conversion therapy methods, and other efforts to make gay people straight, came under renewed discussion last year during the campaign season, when Vice President Mike Pence was running for office.

A campaign statement of Pences in 2000, when he was running for Congress, said, Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.

A campaign spokesman of Pences last year said he does not support the practice of conversion therapy, but gay advocacy groups have been skeptical of his convictions.

Democratic state Sen. Beth Bye, a native of Greenwich now living in West Hartford, introduced the bill in the state Senate. She and her wife were the first gay couple to marry in Connecticut in 2008.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
It was intended to help San Francisco come up with a plan for alleviating its housing crisis.

But the analysis by San Francisco City Controller Ben Rosenfield, finalized Wednesday, has generated nearly as much debate around City Hall as consensus, an indication of the political fights to come and just how challenging the problem is.

The question before city officials is how much affordable housing developers should have to rent or sell in new market-rate buildings. Thats a huge issue in places like the Mission, where the construction of luxury apartment buildings has dwarfed the creation of housing for low- and middle-income residents.

Rosenfields analysis concluded that developers can afford to rent up to 18 percent of new apartments and sell up to 20 percent of new condominiums at below-market prices without jeopardizing overall housing production. Thats less than the current requirement of 25 percent to get approval for new construction, but more than the 12 percent mandated by the city for most of the past several years.

Supervisors Jane Kim and Aaron Peskin announced legislation Wednesday that would require developers to rent 24 percent of new units and sell 27 percent of new condominiums at below-market prices. Kim described it as pro-housing legislation that would encourage developers to build bigger, denser buildings.

The proposal generated a harsh response from Mayor Ed Lee. We have got a city that is emotionally making decisions and putting out numbers there that have no relevance to what we economically can accomplish, Lee said Thursday.

He supports legislation that sets the affordability requirement at between 16 and 18 percent for rentals, and between 18 and 20 percent for condominiums.

The problem is what to do about a state law that allows developers to make their buildings 35 percent more dense  including adding more floors than zoning allows  if they provide a certain number of affordable housing units. The factors are complicated, but theoretically a 100-unit rental building could grow to 135 units if it meets certain requirements.

Rosenfield said that if developers take advantage of that law to get whats known as a density bonus, they could afford to rent up to 24 percent of units and sell up to 27 percent of condominium units at below-market prices.

Thats how Kim and Peskin get to the numbers in their legislation. Of the affordable units, 60 percent would be designated for low-income residents, those earning up to $59,250 per year for a family of four. The other 40 percent would be for middle-income residents, those earning up to $107,700 for a family of four.

We think this will encourage developers to take advantage of the density bonus, Kim said. Were arguing that density is a good thing. We all need to build a little more.

But critics point out that if developers dont take advantage of the density bonus law, they may not be able to afford to rent or sell so many units at below-market prices. So far, just one San Francisco developer has taken advantage of the law, although more are expected to do so.

There are certain neighborhoods in the city like mine  the outer neighborhoods  where if you set the inclusionary percentage too high, you run the risk of killing projects altogether, said Supervisor Ahsha Safai, who represents the Excelsior.

Safai, Kim and representatives from the mayors office all say that their preference would be to simply set higher affordability requirements for developers who take advantage of the density bonus program. But thats against the density bonus law. To get around that barrier, Rosenfield recommends that developers who take the density bonus option pay an extra fee that would go into a city fund that pays for the construction of low-income housing.

I think its a really elegant solution. On-site units are good. Fees are good, too, said Dan Adams, direction of real estate development for Bridge Housing, a nonprofit developer. He was part of a group of outside consultants and nonprofit and private developers who helped Rosenfield conduct the analysis.

But John Elberling, executive director of nonprofit developer Todco, criticized the recommendation, saying it would result in a windfall for developers because the fees are too low. He also said allowing developers to fee out will mean residents have to wait longer for the construction of new, affordable units.

We dont get more units and the developers get a big windfall, Elberling said.

Emily Green is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: egreen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @emilytgreen
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Last months temperatures caused a nearly month-long January thaw.

In fact, the average temperature recorded at Sikorsky Memorial Airport in Stratford was the warmest January on record.

The Bridgeport area temperature was 6.8 degrees above Januarys normal average of 30.1 degrees, according to National Weather Service data.

While not setting any records last month, White Plains airport, near Greenwich, saw January temps rise 7.3 degrees higher than average, Danbury 6.4 degrees and Stamford 5.5 degrees above normal.

The warmest day was on Jan. 13, when the temperature peaked at 63 degrees in Greenwich, 61 in Danbury, 60 in Stamford and 56 in Bridgeport.

Average January temperatures at 35 East Coast cities ranged from 5.2 degrees above normal in Wilmington, Del. to 11 degrees higher in Burlington, Vermont, the third warmest, according to the Northeast Regional Cimate Center.

Januarys average temperature was much warmer than December when the temperature was 37.8 degrees, or 2.4 degrees above normal at Sikorsky. In Greenwich Decembers saw temps 1.7 degrees higher and 0.9 of a degree in Danbury. Stamford was the South Pole of Fairfield County with an average December temperature of 33.9 degrees that was 0.9 degrees below normal.

NASA says 2016 was the saw the earths warmest temperatures since modern record keeping began in 1880. Globally-averaged temperatures in 2016 were 1.78 degrees warmer than the mid-20th century avareg. That made 2016 the third consecutive a new record for global average temperatures was set.

Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 16 of the 17 warmest years on record occurring since 2001.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said We dont expect record years every year, but the ongoing long-term warming trend is clear.

January did however, have some cold nights.

The coldest was on Jan. 9 when the thermometer bottomed out at minus 5 in Danbury, 2 in Stamford 6 in Greenwich and 9 degrees in Bridgeport.

And, if youre someone who likes winters colder temperatures theres good news in the air.

The Climate Prediction Center says temperatures through the middle of February are expected to average below normal.

This will be a noticeable change to the relatively mild weather that was experienced during much of January, the NWS says.
1 Yemen conflict: Yemeni security officials say they suspect U.S. warships have been firing cannons and rockets targeting al Qaeda militants in the countrys southern coastal areas. They said on Thursday that the naval strikes, under way for five days, targeted mountainous areas north of the coastal town of Shakra where militants have been massing fighters. Al Qaeda in Yemen, considered by Washington to be one of the most dangerous of the groups offshoots, has exploited the chaos of Yemens civil war to seize territory.

2 Ukraine fighting: Two Ukrainian troops have been killed in the countrys industrial east as both government forces and rebels reported shelling on their positions overnight, Ukraines government said Thursday. At least 10 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since Monday and dozens wounded including civilians on both sides of the front line. Separatist rebels have been fighting government troops and volunteer brigades in eastern Ukraine since April 2014 in clashes that have killed more than 9,700 people. A peace deal signed in 2015 called for a cease-fire, and for a political resolution. The agreement has been observed only fitfully and skirmishes and artillery fire have persisted.
Former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon announces on Wednesday he will not seek South Korea's presidency. Son Hyung-ju via Reuters

Former United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon abruptly ended his attempt to seek South Korea's presidency on Wednesday, dropping a lifetime of diplomacy to denounce his country's political establishment.

Ban, 72, returned home last month after a decade in New York and was widely expected to run in elections due this year, but his anticipated candidacy ran into a series of stumbles and he struggled for backing.

"I will give up my pure intention to bring about a change in politics under my leadership and to unify the country," he said at a news conference. "I'm sorry for disappointing many people."

His support in public opinion polls had rapidly declined from 20.3 percent when he returned to 13.1 percent before his announcement.

Although he never officially declared he was running, the former UN chief embarked on a series of public appearances.

But he struggled to secure party backing in South Korea's highly partisan political system, and corruption allegations were made against some of his relatives.

Pictures of him trying to put two bank notes into a ticket machine at the same time made him appear out of touch.

"My pure patriotism and aspirations have fallen victim to slander that was close to character assassination," he said Wednesday, before bowing briefly, shuffling his papers and leaving the stage to a barrage of camera flashes.
TEN people were yesterday burnt to death, some of them beyond recognition when they were trapped in a mountainous area by a raging FIRE at a farm in Esigodini, Matabeleland South province.

The tragedy occurred at lot 43 farm belonging to Mr Abel Moyo.

The veld fire which swept through the farm, later spread to areas bordering the farm.

In some cases charred remains of the victims and pieces of clothing as well as gumboots were later retrieved from the mountain.

Thick cloud of smoke and distinct odour of burnt human flesh lingered in the air.

When a Chronicle news crew arrived at the farm at around 4PM, police officers with the help of other members of the security services and farm workers were retrieving the bodies.

The veld fire according to eye witnesses started in the morning and the 10 were part of a group of 15 people who had been called to put it out.

The ten were trapped by the raging fire which was worsened by strong winds resulting in some of them being burnt beyond recognition. Four of the fire fighters escaped with burns of varying degrees.

One person however escaped unscathed. The burnt bodies were ferried to Esigodini Hospital mortuary.

One of the survivors, Mr Mhlaliswa Ngwenya who had burns on his hand and head said he owes it to God for his survival.

We were battling to put out the fire as a group and unfortunately were surrounded byflames of the raging fire which covered a large area. There was a gust of wind that blew the fire towards our direction. We ran to the mountain but we were surrounded by flames of the raging fire making it difficult to escape, said Mr Ngwenya.

He said he had not option but to run through the flames to escape hence he was burnt.

I was burnt on the arms and head. I could hear the screams of the men being consumed by the fire.

I collapsed when I got to the dust road and that is where a man helped me up and started seeking help.

Mr Ngwenya went to Esigodini District Hospital yesterday in the morning and was discharged in the evening. He said when they returned to the mountain that is when they found the charred bodies of his colleagues at different locations.

He suspects illegal gold miners started the fire.

What we saw was horrific. I have never seen or experienced something like that. I want to thank God, because I really survived. I didnt think I would survive but Im here narrating my ordeal. Im from the hospital and my blood pressure is very high, said Mr Ngwenya.

The owner of the farm Mr Moyo said he was left dumbfounded following the death of 10 people who were killed trying to rescue the farm and its property from the raging fire.

When I heard about the fire and that it had killed people, I was devastated. I came and we were told that there were nine people but when we started looking around the area, we found one more body.

People just trespass and nothing is done. They move around and even stay in your land without permission. And when such things happen no one is held accountable. We are afraid to protest, confront or say anything, said Mr Moyo.

One of the men who retrieved the bodies, Mr Trynos Ndlovu, said it has become the norm to help each other when veld fires break out.

When such veld fires break out, we help each other as a community and as the norm we grouped each other to fight it. These veld fires destroy our grazing land. However, this time when these people tried to help out, the fire tragedy struck.

These are men who we saw in the morning battling to put out the fire and their death is therefore a very sad incident.It will take time for us to recover from this tragedy and loss of human lives to a veld fire, said Mr Ndlovu.

Matabeleland South provincial police spokesperson Inspector Loveness Mangena said she had not yet received the information.

Matabeleland South EMA provincial manager Mr Descent Ndlovu described the incident as a tragedy.

Ten people were burnt, five of them according to the information Im getting, beyond recognition, but the others can be identified. They are yet to be identified because their next of kin have not been informed. It is not good for the province as this tragedy has left a huge dent, especially losing lives of people in the process of putting out a fire. They were doing the right thing but something went wrong, he said.

Last month, EMA announced that Zimbabwe is on a medium to high risk of fires amid revelations that the fire season has also been extended owing to climate change.

Communities have since been encouraged to be cautious and enforce sound fire management systems to mitigate against the impact of veld fires.

 Chronicle

Breaking News via Email
SALEM, Ore.  Oregon Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward had introduced legislation that would raise the tobacco buying age in the state to 21, KATU-TV reports. I am proud to continue working toward making Oregon the healthiest state in the nation by chief-sponsoring Tobacco 21, Steiner Hayward said. This is good for individuals' well-being and good for our state overall.

David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria, told KATU in a statement that the company would prefer Congress address this issue. We support a minimum age of 18 for the sale of all tobacco products, as established in the federal Tobacco Control Act of 2009. That statute sets the national minimum age at 18, and required the FDA to study the public health implications of increasing the minimum age.  This is a complex issue and Congress has established a thoughtful process to better understand it.  We believe states and localities should defer to this process and give Congress the opportunity to evaluate this issue before enacting different minimum age laws.

Arizona lawmakers are considering a similar proposal, introduced by state Rep. Paul Boyer, who said a group of high school students inspired him to ask the state to raise the tobacco buying age to 21, The Arizona Republic reports.

Already, approximately 200 U.S. localities, including Kansas City, Chicago and St. Louis County, restrict the sale of tobacco products to those 21 and older. Hawaii and California have similar prohibitions statewide. For more, read Must Be 21 to Buy in NACS Magazine.
Architect Chun Qing Li says it's time people start taking Chinese design seriously.

Chun Qing Li, founder of China Britain International Design Week. [China Daily]

"We have a reputation for being copycats, but this is mainly because of what the media chooses to focus on," Li says at a restaurant in London's Chinatown.

"Ten years ago, I set myself a targetI wanted to be a good designer representing China and to change the way that Western people see us."

In that decade, Li has gone some way to changing perceptions. Three years ago, the Shenyang native won a Structural Awardstructural engineering's highest prizefor his design of a London pavilion that judges described as "seminal".

He walked away with one of 2016's Chinese Business Leaders Awards in the Rising Star category last year, for his work and contribution as founder of China Britain International Design Week.

"I dreamt of creating a platform where all the best Chinese designers could come and be represented abroad, to raise awareness about who we are and what we do," Li said with a smile.

Two of Li's most obvious attributesa diligent work ethic and a refusal to take no for an answerare likely to be as infuriating as they are inspiring to those around him.

While raising funds to get his pavilion built in time for the 2012 Olympics, his wife would often find him at work on his computer at 6:30 amjust in time for him to shower and leave for a day's work without sleep.

Li says he lost seven kilos in the lead up to China Britain International Design Week's inaugural event in 2014 during President Xi Jinping's visit to the UK.

"From an employer's point of view, education is one thing, but they want to see how hungry you are," Li says. "I work bloody long hours and I have a burning desire to do something different."

Before attending university in Liverpool and working for a number of leading firms in the northern city and the capital, Li arrived in Britain from China as a teenager with limited English.

His parents were supportive, he says, though he felt pressure to make right on the money they were investing in his education abroad. Li attributes his motivation to both his mother, who worked her way up from factory floor to chief executive, and the training he underwent to swim competitively for Liaoning province while at secondary school.

"I used to swim 25,000 meters every day, you need incredible discipline for that," he says.

His affinity for design was evident at a young age, when he would accompany his father, a surveyor, to building sites in the summer holidays. "My grandmother was sick, so my parents used to take me to work," he recalls. "I used to draw all the buildings on scraps of paper. That was my early inspiration."

Li now works for himself at his own firm, KREOD, and plans to bring the same robotic design tools and digital fabrication that he used to create the London pavilion to large scale projects in the UK.

"We have a responsibility as architectswe shape the built environment, and the environment changes people, it affects mood and wellbeing," he says.

"I want to bring high-quality buildings that are affordable to people, built with tools of the future, not in the old, traditional way."
The American University of Nigeria (AUN) was established in 2003. The institution was conceived as Africa's first Development University. Its mission is to pioneer service learning and build leaders who will be prepared to tackle societal concerns. Located in Yola, Adamawa State, the University is a world-class career-oriented institution missioned to be an agent of change in the development of the region. AUN has a strong commitment to providing the skills and the leadership essential to solving the continent's critical social and economic problems.Location: YolaDepartment: School of LawThe School of Law of the American University of Nigeria (AUN), located in Yola, Adamawa State of Nigeria, is seeking exceptionally qualified and experienced candidates for academic positions.We invite applications to fill four (4) full-time contract-based faculty positions in the categories of Instructors and Assistant Professors to commence July 1 2017.In addition to teaching responsibilities, these positions will also require the publication of high-quality legal scholarship and effective participation in law faculty committees, the AUN law clinic, the AUN Moot Court and the AUN Access to Justice Programs.Candidates with strong professional connections to the Nigerian Bar and legal community who can mentor students and promote externship and career opportunities for them will be viewed favorably.Candidates must hold at least the LL.M degree from an accredited University and Bar membership in Nigeria, and a terminal doctoral degree in law for higher ranks.The ideal candidates will have some experience in legal practice, excellent written and oral communications skills, proficiency in ICT, a strong commitment to legal scholarship, and a high degree of professionalism in all aspects of lawyering.Some exposure to the US or comparable legal system or law school system will be added advantage.The AUN School of Law is a private, not-for-profit institution, with a strong commitment to public interest, practical and clinical education, and advancing social justice through the law.Salary is commensurate with applicants qualifications and experience and conform to the existing conditions of employment at AUN.Location: YolaDepartment: School of LawThe School of Law of the American University of Nigeria (AUN), is seeking exceptionally qualified and experienced candidates for academic position, to teach required law courses in private, commercial and corporate; labor and real estate law, among others. The position is full-time contract-based and will commence July 1, 2017.The person for this position must be a skilled teacher, clinical supervisor and an experienced attorney in the areas of private and business law.The successful candidate will display excellent written and oral communication skills, demonstrated knowledge and experience with a variety of lawyering and teaching methods and outstanding lawyering skills. In addition to clinical supervision, the position is responsible for teaching outside the clinics, subject to the needs of AUN.This position will also require the publication of high-quality legal scholarship and effective participation in law faculty committees, the AUN law clinic, the AUN Moot Court and the AUN Access to Justice Programs.Furthermore, as head of the AUN law clinic, the position will oversee all aspects of clinic management, including curriculum design and client intake. Candidates with strong professional connections to the Nigerian Bar and legal community who can mentor students and promote externship and career opportunities for them will be viewed favorably.Candidates must hold a terminal doctoral degree in law from an accredited University and Bar membership in Nigeria.The ideal candidate will have some experience in legal practice, excellent written and oral communications skills, proficiency in ICT, a strong commitment to legal scholarship, and a high degree of professionalism in all aspects of lawyering.Exposure to the US or comparable legal or law school systems will be an advantage.The AUN School of Law is a private, not-for-profit institution, with a strong commitment to public interest, practical and clinical education, and advancing social justice through the law.Description of BenefitsSalary is commensurate with applicant's qualifications and experience and conform to the existing conditions of employment at AUN.Applicants should send their cover letter and CV's highlighting their qualifications and teaching interests, resume, a writing sample (preferably a peer-reviewed publication), and a list of references to: recruitment@aun.edu.ng NoteThe position being applied for should be the subject of the email. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.AUN is an equal opportunity and non-discriminatory employer and strives to provide a culturally diverse workforce; we do not discriminate in employment on the basis of race, creed, colour, nationality, origin, age, sex, religion and marital status.31 March, 2017
The Wall Street Journal has an important new story, The End of Employees, on how the big company love of outsourcing means that traditional employment has declined and is expected to fall further.

Some key sections of the article:

Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people. The outsourcing wave that moved apparel-making jobs to China and call-center operations to India is now just as likely to happen inside companies across the U.S. and in almost every industry. The men and women who unload shipping containers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouses are provided by trucking company Schneider National Inc.s logistics operation, which in turn subcontracts with temporary-staffing agencies. Pfizer Inc. used contractors to perform the majority of its clinical drug trials last year. The shift is radically altering what it means to be a company and a worker. More flexibility for companies to shrink the size of their employee base, pay and benefits means less job security for workers. Rising from the mailroom to a corner office is harder now that outsourced jobs are no longer part of the workforce from which star performers are promoted For workers, the changes often lead to lower pay and make it surprisingly hard to answer the simple question Where do you work? Some economists say the parallel workforce created by the rise of contracting is helping to fuel income inequality between people who do the same jobs. No one knows how many Americans work as contractors, because they dont fit neatly into the job categories tracked by government agencies. Rough estimates by economists range from 3% to 14% of the nations workforce, or as many as 20 million people.

As you can see, the story projects this as an unstoppable trend. The article is mainly full of success stories, which naturally is what companies would want to talk about. The alleged benefits are two-fold: that specialist contractors can do a better job of managing non-core activities because they are specialists and have higher skills and that using outside help keeps companies lean and allows them to be more agile.

The idea that companies who use contractors are more flexible is largely a myth. The difficulty of entering into outsourcing relationships gives you an idea of how complex they are. While some services, like cleaning, are likely to be fairly simple to hand off, the larger ones are not. For instance, for IT outsourcing, a major corporation will need to hire a specialist consultant to help define the requirements for the request for proposal and write the document that will be the basis for bidding and negotiation. That takes about six months. The process of getting initial responses, vetting the possible providers in depth, getting to a short list of 2-3 finalists, negotiating finer points with them to see who has the best all-in offer, and then negotiating the final agreement typically takes a year. Oh, and the lawyers often fight with the consultant as to what counts in the deal.

On the one hand, the old saw of a contract is only as good at the person who signed it still holds true. But if a vendor doesnt perform up to the standards required, or the companys requirements change in some way not contemplated in the agreement, it is vasty more difficult to address than if you were handling it internally. And given how complicated contracting is, its not as if you can fire them.

So as weve stressed again and again, these arrangements increase risks and rigidity. And companies can mis-identify what is core or not recognize that there are key lower-level skills theyve mis-identified. For instance, Pratt & Whitney decided to contract out coordination of deliveries to UPS. Here is the critical part:

For years, suppliers delivered parts directly to Pratts two factories, where materials handlers unpacked the parts and distributed them to production teams. Earl Exum, vice president of global materials and logistics, says Pratt had a couple hundred logistics specialists. Some handlers were 20- or 30-year veterans who could look at a part and know exactly what it is, he adds. Most of the UPS employees had no experience in the field, and assembly kits arrived at factories with damaged or missing parts. Pratt and UPS bosses struggled to get the companies computers in sync, including warehouse-management software outsourced by UPS to another firm, according to Pratt..

The result was $500 million in lost sales in a quarter. Pratt & Whitney tried putting a positive spin on the tale, that all the bugs were worked out by the next quarter. But how long will it take Pratt & Whitney to recover all the deal costs plus the lost profits?

Theres even more risk when the company using contractor doesnt have much leverage over them. As a Wall Street Journal reader, Scott Riney, said in comments:

Well managed companies make decisions based on sound data and analysis. Badly managed companies follow the trends because theyre the trends. A caveat regarding outsourcing is that, as always, you get what you pay for. Also, the vendor relationship needs to be competently managed. There was the time a certain, now bankrupt technology company outsourced production of PBX components to a manufacturer who produced components with duplicate MAC addresses. The contract manufacturers expertise obviously didnt extend to knowing jack about hardware addressing, and the management of the vendor relationship was incompetent. And what do you do, in a situation like that, if your firm isnt big enough that your phone calls get the vendors undivided attention? Or if youre on different continents, and nothing can get done quickly?

Weve discussed other outsourcing bombs in past posts, such as when British Airways lost tens of millions of dollars when its contractor, Gate Gourmet, fired employees. Baggage handlers and ground crew struck in sympathy, shutting down Heathrow for 24 hours. Like many outsourced operations, Gate Gourmet had once been part of British Airways. And passengers blamed the airline, not the wprkers.

Now admittedly, there are low-risk, low complexity activities that are being outsourced more, such as medical transcription, where 25% of all medical transcriptionists now work for agencies, up by 1/3 since 2009. The article attributes the change to more hospitals and large practices sending the work outside. But even at its 2009 level, the use of agencies was well established. And you can see that it is the sort of service that smaller doctors offices would already be hiring on a temp basis, whether through an agency or not, because they would not have enough activity to support having a full-time employee. The story also describes how SAP has all its receptionists as contractors, apparently because someone looked at receptionist pay and concluded some managers were paying too much. So low level clerical jobs are more and more subject to this fad. But managing your own receptionists is hardly going to make a company less flexible.

Contracting, like other gig economy jobs, increase insecurity and lower growth. I hate to belabor the obvious, but people who dont have a steady paycheck are less likely to make major financial commitments, like getting married and setting up a new household, having kids, or even buying consumer durables. However, one industry likely makes out handsomely: Big Pharma, which no doubt winds up selling more brain-chemistry-altering products for the resulting situationally-induced anxiety and/or depression. The short-sightedness of this development on a societal level is breath-taking, yet overwhelmingly pundits celebrate it and political leaders stay mum.

With this sort of rot in our collective foundation, the rise of Trump and other populist candidates should not come as a surprise.
Back to the roots: Germanium outperforms silicon in energy efficient transistors with n- und p- conduction (Nanowerk News) A team of scientists from the Nanoelectronic Materials Laboratory (NaMLab gGmbH) and the Cluster of Excellence Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed) at the Dresden University of Technology have demonstrated the world-wide first transistor based on germanium that can be programmed between electron- (n) and hole- (p) conduction.

Transistors based on germanium can be operated at low supply voltages and reduced power consumption, due to the low band gap compared to silicon. Additionally, the realized germanium based transistors can be reconfigured between electron and hole conduction based on the voltage applied to one of the gate electrodes. This enables to realize circuits with lower transistor count compared to state-of-the-art CMOS technologies.

Energy-efficient germanium nanowire transistor with programmable p- and n- conduction. Transmission electron microscope image of cross section.

Todays digital electronics are dominated by integrated circuits built by transistors. For more than four decades transistors have been miniaturized to enhance computational power and speed. Recent developments aim to maintain this trend by employing materials having higher mobility than silicon in the transistor channel, like germanium and indium-arsenide.

One of the limitations in using those materials is the higher static power loss in the transistors off-state, also originating from their small band gaps.

The scientist team around Jens Trommer and Dr. Walter Weber from NaMLab in cooperation with cfaed succeeded in solving this issue by conceiving the germanium-nanowire transistor with independent gating regions.

Dr. Weber who leads cfaeds Nanowire Research Group points out: For the first time the results demonstrate the combination of low operation voltages with reduced off-state leakage. The results are a key enabler for novel energy efficient circuits.

The work has been published in the journal ACS Nano ("Enabling Energy Efficiency and Polarity Control in Germanium Nanowire Transistors by Individually Gated Nanojunctions").
Independent Tipperary TD Mattie McGrath has welcomed cross-party and government support for the Rural Independent Groups Dail Motion on Roads and Roads Funding which was initiated earlier this week.

Deputy McGrath was speaking after the Minister for Transport Shane Ross described the Motion as containing constructive and very pragmatic proposals:

I was delighted to see our Motion receive considerable support from right across the political spectrum. It certainly gave me an opportunity to highlight the urgent need to address so many of the on-going concerns about roads and road safety in County Tipperary.

We were told that by the Minister that on a conservative basis, expenditure of 580 million per annum is needed to keep the regional and local road network in a steady state condition.

Unfortunately we are 250 million below of the required amount.

I stressed to the Minister that we must not adopt a penny wise, pound foolish approach on this matter. Under investment in roads is one area that will practically double and treble the costs of future maintenance works.

I am delighted however to not the initial investments in a number of Road Safety works in County Tipperary for 2017 which will include:

 1. R691-2 Quinlans Cross,Fussough, Dualla, 30,000.00 .

2. L1156-1 Toem Village, 45,000.00

3. R438 / L1084-0 / L5042-0 Fortmoy Junction, 100,000.00

4. L-3604-0 Pallas Road, Borrisoleigh, 40,000.00

5. Tipperary Outerath, Cahir, Co. Tipperary, 40,000.00

6. R515 Lisobehane, 60,000.00

7. R438 / R489 Walsh Park Junction Upgrade, 35,000.00

8. Boffanna ditch removal, 8,000.00

9. R-433-0026 Clonmore Village ,40,000.00 to improve sightlines

10. R505 Knockavilla 10,000.00 for Improved signage,

11. LP-2107-1 The Commons ,8,000.00 for signs to remind drivers what speed they are travelling at

12. L-2128-0 Ballymalone, Ballina, to set back the existing land boundaries, 75,000.00

13. R660 A raised roundabout was constructed at this junction on the R660 and a local urban road approx. 10 years ago , 75,000.00

I will certainly be holding the Minister to account on this matter and will continue to highlight the immediate need to improve and upgrade so many of the primary and secondary roads in rural Ireland but particularly in County Tipperary, concluded Deputy McGrath.
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The Trump administration was set to release an executive order Friday calling for a review of the Dodd-Frank Act, the clearest sign yet of the White House's intent to roll back the onslaught of regulations since the 2010 law was passed.

But the immediate questions about the order focused on what authority the White House has to enact real change, since congressional Democrats are resistant to rolling back the law and those running the regulatory agencies are still Obama administration appointees.

News of the order, which appeared to be timed with President Trump's scheduled meeting with business leaders, first came out in a media interview with National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn. He spoke of possible reforms including changes to the Financial Stability Oversight Council, the "living wills" process, a facility for resolving failed companies and even reforms for the housing finance system.

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about the Trump policy:

What will be the immediate impact of this executive order?

The impact will likely be small in the short term. For now, the order appears to be coming in the form of "principles" on how the administration will review the effect of the law. (The administration was also expected to call for a rollback of the Labor Department's fiduciary duty rule.)

"The president has very little direct authority to change Dodd-Frank, repeal the fiduciary duty rule or revamp Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. As a result, his orders will urge other parts of the government to make changes," wrote Jaret Seiberg, an analyst at Cowen Group. "With the possible exception of the fiduciary duty rule, actual changes for the banks are unlikely to occur quickly."

It seems unlikely the White House could roll back Dodd-Frank regulations on its own without legislation from Congress, and that does not seem imminent.

"We don't thinkthe financial services industry is at the top of the list in terms of what we will see legislatively," said Margaret Paulsen, managing director of the financial services advisory practice for PwC. "Broad-brush legislative solution in the financial services industry we think are going to be hard to accomplish."

The administration would also face an uphill climb in persuading the independent agencies responsible for implementing the law to ease back on Dodd-Frank regulations. The heads of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Reserve Board and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency were all installed by the prior administration and have said they will serve out their terms.

"In the short run, rules changes will need support from the heads of regulatory agencies who were appointed by President Obama, and we think will slow down this process," KBW analyst Brian Gardner said in a note Friday.

Just two weeks into the new administration, the White House has already called for a halt on regulations among executive departments, but many see the banking regulators  as independent agencies  as exempt.

Yet the White House has apparently decided to anchor the regulatory review in the FSOC, a panel created by Dodd-Frank that is made up of the heads of all the regulators and is chaired by the Treasury secretary. In addition to designating "systemically important" nonbanks for tougher supervision, FSOC's broad charge is to identify risks to the financial system to aid regulatory policy.

Treasury Secretary-designate Steven Mnuchin would chair the council once he is confirmed.

"We believe that the White House is using the Treasury secretary's role as the head of FSOC as a 'hook' to open a discussion with independent financial regulators that would otherwise be exempt from the executive order," said Ed Mills of FBR Capital Markets.

What will be the long-term impact?

Trump's executive order could focus congressional efforts to reform, or repeal, sections of Dodd-Frank. Yet such an undertaking faces obstacles in the Senate, where Democrats still hold a sizable enough minority to block measures.

But the administration would have more power to influence policy once it appoints new heads of the agencies.

Cohn, Trump's head of his economic council, appeared to hit on this point in his comments to The Wall Street Journal, including how a new CFPB director in particular could make a difference. The administration's position on financial regulation makes it ever clearer that officials are interested in replacing Richard Cordray as head of the consumer bureau.

Speaking about the CFPB's leadership, he was quoted as saying, "Personnel is policy."

Observers agreed with the assessment that the makeup of the agencies matters in determining future policy.

"The rubber hits the road with the regulatory agencies; tell me who the regulators are going to be and I'll tell you what the regulatory policy will look like," said Thomas Vartanian, a partner at Dechert LLP.

Meanwhile, Cohn also mentioned the possibility of additional executive orders dealing with how the FSOC operates and how the government resolves failing institutions.

On FSOC, the administration appears interested in rolling back the oversight's council's ability to designate nonbank firms as "systemically important financial institutions."

"This just shows that the administration is focused on reversing the swing of the regulatory pendulum," said David Portilla, former senior policy adviser at the Treasury for the FSOC and a partner at Debevoise & Plimpton. "There's going to be change, and I think the agencies are going to likely adjust their approach to a number of issues."

Does this mean that Dodd-Frank will be repealed?

No. Not only is a complete unwind of the 2010 law unlikely in the current political environment in Washington, but even Trump officials themselves have said there are aspects of tougher regulation that they like.

For example, in his nomination hearing, Mnuchin voiced support for the Volcker Rule, the Dodd-Frank provision that bans banks proprietary trading. And in his comments to the Journal, Cohn said, "I'm not sitting here saying we want to go back to the good old days."

Yet the administration's swift action so early in its existence still makes clear President Trump's hope to reduce the impact of the 2010 law on the financial services industry.

Trump "has asked us to start attacking the regulatory issues that we think are slowing down economic growth and one by one we will pick up these issues," Cohn said in an interview Friday morning on CNBC. "When we come to him with an ideahe is more than happy to get involved and he is giving us the latitude to fix what we think is wrong."

But how can the Trump administration reshape Dodd-Frank without congressional action?

Even though Dodd-Frank was sweeping, it still left considerable authority in the hands of the regulators to interpret the law when writing rules and implementing them.

While Congress wrote the law, many in the industry see the steps regulators took in the Obama administration as resulting in how the reforms have affected the industry. This ranges from the CFPB's rules on mortgage underwriting, to how Obama's Treasury supported FSOC's efforts to designate nonbank firms, to how the FDIC constructed its resolution authority for megabanks, and much more.

How future regulators interpret the law  or rather re-interpret law  could be the focus of the Trump administration's efforts.

"Dodd-Frank provides regulators substantial discretion in many places," Aaron Klein, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Generally, Congress draws the lines for bank regulation and lets the regulators fill in the details. And the details matter a lot."

John Heltman and Ian McKendry contributed to this article.
A federal appeals court on Thursday denied efforts by 16 Democratic attorneys general, several consumer groups and two Democratic lawmakers to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in a critical case that could determine the fate of Director Richard Cordray.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied three separate motions filed by Democrats and consumer groups last week to intervene in the controversial case, PHH Corp. v CFPB.

The same panel ruled in October that the CFPB's single-director structure was unconstitutional. That controversial ruling found that a provision of the Dodd-Frank Act that only allowed the CFPB's director to be removed for cause was unconstitutional. The panel said that the CFPB's director can be removed at will by the president, but the decision was stayed by Judge Brett Kavanaugh while the case is on appeal.

The CFPB has requested an en banc rehearing of the case to the full D.C. Circuit. But the panel's ruling further limits the agency's ability to prevail in the case.

If the D.C. Circuit denies the CFPB's appeal, a Justice Department under Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions is unlikely to defend the CFPB before the Supreme Court. By denying the ability of Democrats to intervene, the panel took away the chance for another party to step in to defend it.

The attorneys general for 16 states and the District of Columbia had cited the Trump administration's opposition to Dodd-Frank Act reforms and the impact the ruling would have on coordinating with the CFPB to enforce consumer financial protection laws.

The consumer groups that also sought to intervene in the case included Americans for Financial Reform, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Self-Help Credit Union, United States Public Interest Research Group and Maeve Brown, the executive director of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates.

Republicans have long assumed that one of the first orders of business under a Trump Justice Department would be to end the CFPB's appeal of the PHH case. Doing so would allow the three-judge panel's decision to stand, and allow the president to remove the director at any time.
CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

Matic Insurance Services Inc. said that Jeff Snyder has joined the company as head of insurance.

In addition to overseeing all insurance operations for Matic Insurance, he will be responsible for expanding the company's national footprint, recruiting new agents to its Columbus, Ohio, operations center and overseeing the development of its internal agency management platform.

Snyder began his career as a mortgage consultant.

INDIANA

INDIANAPOLIS

Assurant Valuations has appointed Marc Hinkle as senior vice president.

Prior to joining Assurant Valuations, he served as senior vice president at Mortgage Contracting Services.

Before Mortgage Contracting Services, Hinkle was vice president at PHH Corp. where he managed default and escrow administration, customer service and contact center operations.

Assurant Valuations has also appointed Donna DelMonte as vice president of operations.

DelMonte joined StreetLinks Lender Solutions  now part of Assurant Valuations  in 2010, where she worked to grow the organization's technology offering.

MARYLAND

BETHESDA

Rob Coleman has joined Walker & Dunlop Investment Sales as senior vice president.

Based out of the company's Raleigh, N.C., office, Coleman is responsible for the marketing and sale of multifamily assets across the Southeast, with a focus on the North Carolina and South Carolina markets.

Prior to joining Walker & Dunlop, he served as vice president of operations at Bell Partners Inc.

NEW YORK

NEW YORK

Hunt Mortgage Group said that Ted Nasca has joined the firm as managing director.

Nasca, who will operate out of the firm's Chicago office, will focus on sourcing opportunities for both the proprietary lending and conventional agency businesses.

Prior to joining Hunt Mortgage Group, he was a managing director and originator at Greystone & Co., where he was responsible for establishing Greystone's CMBS platform in the Midwest and California regions.

NEW YORK

Greystone Affordable Housing Initiatives has appointed Yolanda Winstead as head of finance.

Prior to joining Greystone, Winstead served for 15 years at CAHEC, a nonprofit regional tax credit equity syndicator, as senior acquisitions manager.

Before CAHEC, she was a vice president and project manager with DHIC, a regional nonprofit affordable housing developer.

VIRGINIA

TYSONS CORNER

First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. has appointed Nanette Epperson as national wholesale sales director, TPO production.

She brings to the company more than 25 years of sales leadership in the mortgage lending industry, with primary emphasis in third-party origination lending.

Epperson previously served with Homeward Residential, Nationstar Mortgage, Countrywide Mortgage, Aegis, Principal Financial Group and Mellon Mortgage.

Are you a mortgage professional who recently changed jobs? Let us know! Send your announcement and photo (if available) to Glenn McCullom at glenn.mccullom@sourcemedia.com.
Thursday, February 02, 2017 by: Daniel Barker Tags: Britain , health care system failure , NHS This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) British doctors and nurses are warning that the nations government-run healthcare system is in such bad shape that many patients lives are being put at risk.

A group of leading doctors from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) have sent a letter to prime minister Theresa May saying that the NHS will fail without immediate extra funding and that patient care will continue to deteriorate throughout this winter  a season which has been already been described as the worst ever in terms of A&E waiting times and hospital bed shortages.

RCP president Professor Jane Dacre told the BBC:

Our members tell me it is the worst it has ever been in terms of patients coming in during a 24-hour period and numbers of patients coming in when there are no beds to put them in

Our members fear that patients lives are at risk because they cant get round to see patients who arent in the emergency and accident department or are waiting for results to come back.

Meanwhile, members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) expressed serious concerns regarding the level of care they are able to give amidst the worst conditions they have ever experienced.

One trauma center nurse reported:

Today I ran our major treatment area. Patients were waiting more than 12 hours for beds.

My staff were broken and distressed. By the end of the day you could see their care-worn, exhausted faces, feeling like theyve failed. But really its the Government that has failed.

British politicians have denied that a humanitarian crisis exists regarding health care, while doing their best to play down the seriousness of the issue and shifting the blame back onto physicians. Theresa May has been accused of scapegoating GPs and attempting to distract the public from the real causes of the crisis. (RELATED: Stay informed about the failures of modern medicine at Medicine.news.)

But warnings from within the medical community continue to increase in urgency as accounts of actual patient deaths due to long waiting times and understaffing become more commonplace.

And leaked documents that surfaced just as the RCP and RCN warnings were issued revealed that this years NHS winter crisis is all too real  nearly a quarter of all A&E patients were forced to wait at least four hours before being seen, and those who were admitted to the hospital after seeing A&E staff were also typically subjected to long waits before being assigned a bed.

During the course of one week, nearly 500 British patients waited more than 12 hours on trolleys or in hallways before being given a bed. Another 18,000 endured trolley waits of four hours or more.

In some hospitals, there have been reports of wait times approaching 24 hours.

In light of all this, it would not seem an understatement to label the situation a humanitarian crisis after all, and one which is likely to worsen before it can improve.

Theresa Mays government claims it has given the NHS enough money, but the RCP disagrees, saying that only an immediate bailout can address the problem  not promises of future funding to a system that is underfunded, underdoctored and overstretched.

The British healthcare system  like that of the United States  is struggling to cope with an aging population and a spiraling demand for its services.

Of course, much of the looming healthcare crisis both in the United States and Britain could be averted by implementing natural health principles which prevent most diseases, rather than merely treating their symptoms.

Until such an approach is adopted, we can expect our health care systems to continue to fail and put millions of lives at risk.

Sources:

BBC.com

TheGuardian.com

NWEMail.co.uk

EastLothianCourier.com

BBC.com
(Natural News) Older individuals living with Alzheimers disease are often prescribed antipsychotic drugs. This controversial practice has been frowned upon for many years. New research has now found that the use of these drugs in Alzheimers patients substantially increases their risk of mortality  which begs the question: is this risky practice being conducted with malicious intentions?

The majority of people who suffer from Alzheimers disease are 65 years of age or older. It affects over five million people in the United States alone, but it is estimated by the year 2050, that number will reach up to 16 million. And in 2016, it was estimated that Alzheimers disease and other types of dementia would cost the US roughly $216 billion. It is costly and time-consuming  by 2050, it is expected the costs of caring for people with some form of dementia will reach a devastating $1 trillion.

In other words: to promoters of the depopulation agenda, old people with Alzheimers disease are an easy target. Theyre costly and they cant function independently; a more cynical person might even say that they are a drain on the system. And in many nursing homes, patients with dementia or Alzheimers disease are often given antipsychotic drugs simply to keep them quiet and placid in their new environment  even in spite of the tremendous risks they pose.

Study shows antipsychotics increase mortality risk

Between the years of 2005 and 2011, a team of researchers studied some 58,000 patients with Alzheimers disease. Just over 25 percent of the patients in the study were prescribed some type of antipsychotic medication. Those taking the drugs exhibited a stark increase in mortality risk; they were 60 percent more likely to die because of their medication.

The risk of death was at its peak when patients first began to take the new drugs, but the patients mortality risk remained elevated even when the drugs were taken long-term. Patients that were taking more than one antipsychotic exhibited an even higher risk than those taking just one of the risky medications; taking two nearly doubled the chances of dying early. [RELATED: Keep up with the latest research at Scientific.news]

While the study found a correlation between taking an antipsychotic and a higher risk of death in Alzheimers patients, a direct cause-and-effect link was not ascertained. The research team, led by Marjaana Koponen, a doctoral student from the School of Pharmacy at the University of Eastern Finland, does say that their findings support previous data, however.

Unapproved and Unsafe

Antipsychotic drugs have never been approved for use in dementia or Alzheimers patients by the FDA, but the practice remains frighteningly common. Approximately one-third of dementia patients who spend at least 100 days in a nursing facility will be given some type of antipsychotic  roughly 300,00 people each year. [RELATED: Keep up with the latest regulatory headlines at FDA.news]

Along with the increased risk of mortality, antipsychotics increase the risk of other health conditions in older people. They can cause low blood pressure, movement disorders, and also tend to increase the patients risks of falling and getting hurt.

Attorney Joni Moore says that she has sued numerous nursing homes in the state of California for failing to get informed consent when they use antipsychotic drugs, as required by law. Moore told NPR, We learned that the families really werent told anything other than, The doctor has ordered this medication for you; please come sign a form,' says Moore.

One of her clients was a Ms. Kathi Levine, whose mother Patricia Thomas, had Alzheimers disease. Thomas had appeared to be doing well until she had a nasty fall and fractured her pelvis. After a brief hospital stay, Thomas went to a nursing home for rehabilitation. Within a week of her arrival at the facility, [S]he was in a wheelchair, slumped over, sucking on her hand, mumbling to herself, completely out of it, not even aware that I was there.

Thomas was so out of it, she was unable to participate in her rehabilitation exercises, so she was discharged. It was then that her daughter learned that the nursing home had loaded her mother up on heavy-duty antipsychotics. Ms. Thomas had been prescribed both Risperdal and Haldol  two very strong drugs. It is worth noting that this drug combination is known to be potentially life-threatening to begin with. She never spoke again and two months after being discharged, she passed away.

Levine and her attorney, Moore filed a class-action lawsuit against the nursing home and a settlement was eventually reached.

Its not just the failure of nursing homes to get informed consent  it is the very concept of using drugs to quiet patients that should be intolerable. It seems rather unlikely that most doctors who prescribe these drugs to the elderly are totally unaware of the potential risks; its not even an FDA-approved practice, and these drugs come with black-box warning labels on them that explicitly state they are risky for patients with dementia. So you have to wonder: is it really on purpose? (RELATED: Follow more news on brain health at Brain.news.)

Sources:

ANH-USA.org

USNews.com

Alz.org

NPR.org
(Natural News) In nearly every major city since before the November elections, bands of hired thugs posing as protesters have caused mayhem, damage and destruction on levels not seen since the turbulent 1960s, when the forefathers of todays Alt-Left movement were just getting started.

The riots that occurred this week on the UC-Berkeley campus in response to a planned event by Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos, is just the latest incident in which violent Alt-Left planners like financier George Soros, egged on by the establishment media and leaders in the Democratic Party, have obviously chosen a strategy of urban warfare and domestic terrorism to advance their political goals. (Follow more news about the insanity of college campus nut jobs at CampusInsanity.com)

Whats insane about all of the violence is that its being blamed on President Donald J. Trump and his top aide and advisor, Kellyanne Conway, and its the media spreading that narrative  the same media that has attacked the president mercilessly since he became a candidate, and which has given a platform to a host of sycophants and idiots who have said preposterous and irresponsible things. (RELATED: Keep track of the lying mainstream media at MediaFactWatch.com)

Whats going on out there is whats going on all across the country, Conway told Fox and Friends, as reported by The Hill.

You have protesters who feel very emboldened, she continued. Theyve got media cameras following them; they give interviews.

I dont even know if they know what theyre protesting. Really, what is it, the free speech? Having someone on your campus who has a dissenting point of view or wants to present an alternative point of view?

Thats certainly what Yiannopoulos thinks. The Hill reported that he wrote on his Facebook page, One thing I do know for sure: The Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

And that includes beating fellow students and Trump supporters unconscious, setting fire to things on campus, smashing windows and destroying both public and private property.

Its all part of a campaign designed to accomplish a number of objectives, as is every Leftist-inspired campaign of violence:

 Youre to think that this movement is well-staffed and very wide;

 That theres no point in resisting;

 That the Left is ultimately correct and that you should just get out of the way and let them have the country; and

 That continuing to support Trump is what is causing all of this violence  not the Left-wing agitators.

What is telling throughout all of this violence is that the Democratic Partys leaders are either silent or are actively supporting and condoning the violence. The only thing weve heard from former President Obama is his lie that he didnt do anything like what Trump has done with the latters ban on immigrants and refugees from terrorist-infested countries; we certainly havent heard the ex-president use his influence to call for an end to the violence. (RELATED: See what trouble the Alt-Left is causing today at Terrorism.news)

We also havent heard from Hillary Clinton, except tweets that supported the vulgarity of the so-called Womens March, distastefully staged the day after Trumps inauguration.

But we have heard from that goofball vice presidential nominee of hers, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. Hes gone on MSNBC to call for continued fighting and resistance to Trump, even if it means they have to fight in the streets.

These people are, of course, clinically delusional, writes Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger. Their minds have been programmed with so many layers of disinformation and fear that they can no longer recognize the difference between whats real vs. fiction. They are trapped in a mental prison of fear, carefully constructed by the leftist media for the sole purpose of exerting absolute control over the psychology of the electorate. (RELATED: Follow more news about establishment disinformation at Disinfo.news)

The Left and the Democratic Party  now known as the Anarchy Party  seem to be agitating for a war with Trump and his supporters. If theyre not careful, they just might get what they ask for, because one day there will be one riot too many.

And of course, the media will claim that its Trumps fault.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

NaturalNews.com

Breitbart.com

TheHill.com

GoodGopher.com
Friday, February 03, 2017 by: David Gutierrez Tags: Dicamba , Monsanto , superweeds This article may contain statements that reflect the opinion of the author

(Natural News) A coalition of farmer and environmental groups has filed a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to follow the law in approving Monsantos newest herbicide, XtendiMax (active ingredient dicamba), for spraying directly on a new generation of genetically modified crops.

The plaintiffs in the suit are the Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, National Family Farm Coalition and the Pesticide Action Network.

Federal regulators have abandoned the interests of farmers, the environment, and public health, plaintiffs counsel George Kimbrell said. We wont allow our food to be dragged backward into a pesticide-soaked nightmare  not without a hell of a fight.

The approval is expected to lead to a tenfold increase in the amount of dicamba sprayed. This will not even offset the use of other chemicals; the new herbicide is approved for use on soybean and cotton crops genetically engineered to resist both dicamba and glyphosate (Roundup). Thus, spraying of Roundup will continue.

Dicamba has been linked with cancer and birth defects, while glyphosate is classified by the World Health Organization as a probable carcinogen. Both have been shown to have devastating effects on wildlife and to contaminate water supplies.

Dicamba in particular is known to drift large distances from the fields where it is sprayed. Even prior to the latest approval, farmers in 10 states had already reported damage to thousands of acres of crops from dicamba use in nearby fields. In fall 2016, a farmer was shot dead in a dispute with another farmer over dicamba drift.

The lawsuit notes that although the EPA noted that increased dicamba use would place dozens of endangered species at risk, it failed to consult the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees endangered species) before issuing its decision.

Once again the EPA is allowing staggering increases in pesticide use that will undoubtedly harm our nations most imperiled plants and animals, said Nathan Donley of the Center for Biological Diversity. Iconic species like endangered whooping cranes are known to visit soybean fields, and now theyd be exposed to this toxic herbicide at levels theyve never seen before.

The rationale for the increased dicamba use is to fight a new generation of superweeds that have evolved resistance to Roundup. But scientists are in consensus that it was the use of Roundup-resistant GMO crops and the attendant explosion in Roundup use that led to the evolution of the superweeds in the first place.

A 2016 study by the National Academy of Sciences noted the evolution of superweeds as one of many ways that GMOs had failed to keep their promises to farmers. Rather than reducing costs as promised, GMOs drove the evolution of superweeds that have now overrun large tracts of farmland, rendering them unusable and costing farmers enormously. The study noted that GMOs also increase, rather than decreasing use of herbicides and other dangerous chemicals, and that they have not increased farmers yields. Nor has there been sufficient research into the crops safety for health or the environment, the study concluded.

The whole system of genetic engineering threatens plant and animal health, said Margot McMillen of the National Family Farm Coalition. Because of cross-pollination, the original non-GMO and wild weed genomes are fast disappearing, while the fight against weeds requires more and more potent chemicals. These new crops and their unintended consequences were predictable and avoidable, but the safe and healthy alternative offered by sustainable and organic agriculture has been ignored.

Experts warn that increased dicamba use will merely lead to the evolution of still tougher superweeds. The lawsuit notes that the EPAs plans to decrease this risk are all but useless, as they fail to place any limits on dicamba use and leave almost all implementation and enforcement decisions up to Monsanto. (RELATED: Stay informed about environmental science news at ENVIRON.news)

Monsantos dicamba-resistant crop system will drive up sales of this outdated pesticide, spur more superweeds and damage vulnerable crops, said Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, Ph.D., PAN senior scientist.

If Trumps administration wants to serve farmers, it will invest in healthy, long-lasting solutions to farmers needs, not pander to corporate greed.

Sources:

NaturalBlaze.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) The modern progressive movement, which is really just a code phrase for communism, began on Americas college campuses in the 1960s, with liberal professors leading the countercultural revolution and filling young heads with ideas that were anathema to our nations founding.

American traditions  man-woman marriage; the Christian faith; hard work; taking responsibility; capitalism  were all attacked, replaced with Marxist-Leninist ideas of the community over the individual, down with the establishment, and America is racist, bigoted and the root of all evil in the world.

Back then, there were violent protests, conflicts with police, death, destruction of public and private property, and no shortage of Leftist agitators. Were seeing the same thing today, in what has become not simply a movement to oppose Trump, but one which seeks to bring about violent revolution and a change in the way we are governed.

Back then, the Leftist movement relied heavily on the Constitution, noting that the First Amendment protected their right to voice alternative viewpoints and to assemble, peaceably, to voice them. When crowds turned violent and confrontational, they were dealt with. (RELATED: Stay current with all the news about Americas societal turmoil at Collapse.news)

The University of California-Berkeley was an epicenter for this progressive agenda, and in the mid-1960s, protesters there carried banners emblazoned with free speech to signify they had every right to say and support whatever they chose, even if it was a political ideology our forefathers knew was oppressive and authoritarian.

Today, on that same campus, the First Amendment still applies  as long as youre speaking out in support of progressive, Left-wing Marxist-Leninist ideals. If not, youre shunned, censored, banned and attacked; your mere presence is used as justification for violence and lawlessness, which of course has nothing to do with fighting the good fight.

This was in evidence Wednesday night, as Left-wing domestic terrorists (theyre not protesters, so lets call them what they really are) disrupted an event featuring Breitbart senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay, conservative activist and loud-proud supporter of President Donald Trump. (RELATED: Find conservative news at Conservative.news)

Using steel bars as clubs, the mob beat at least one man unconscious, while setting fires across campus and causing damage to public and private property. One video shows a young lady wearing a Make America Great Again t-shirt sprayed with pepper spray as she was being interviewed by local media; another showed a man battered and bleeding from his forehead; others showed crowds of domestic terrorists burning trees, lighting and other equipment.

In 1964, UC-Berkeley was different. That year, Mario Savio, a student there, talked about how campuses should be harbingers of free speech, no matter what the point of view. In a speech to his fellow students and school faculty, he implored all to consider that all ideas are valid, and that even people who disagree should be allowed to do so peacefully, without suppression and without repercussion, as Breitbart reported. (RELATED: Keep track of the angry Left as they attempt to destroy America at Bugout.news)

Its been said, that you know weve been revolutionaries, and all this sort of thing uh in a way thats true, said Savio, leader of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. Weve gone back to a traditional view of the university. The traditional view of the university is a community of scholars of faculty and students get together who um you know, with complete honesty who bring the hard light of free inquiry to bear upon important matters in the sciences but also in the social sciences the question of just what ought to be not just what is.

Later, in that same speech before students and other attendees, Savio laid out his movements demands: Were asking that there be no restrictions on the contents of speech, save those provided by the courts. In other words, if it is legal to say (not slanderous or libelous) then people should be allowed to say it.

Todays generation of Berkeley students and university Leftist academics have gotten so far away from Savios FSM that they no longer tolerate anything they dont agree with. And if they have to attack, burn and riot in order to get contrary speech censored, thats what theyll do.

Thats not free speech, of course, thats tyranny.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for Natural News and News Target, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources:

Breitbart.com

YouTube.com

GoodGopher.com
Transportation remains to be a growing field worldwide, and South Korea refuses to be left out of the picture. Its government-run transportation research institute plans to make its own super-speed train.

According to Inhabitat, the train, courtesy of Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI), will be able to travel as fast as 1,000 kilometers (around 621 miles) per hour. It will also be ready in the not-too-distant future.

This appears to be a train of the century, akin to Hyperloop trains. South Korea's new near-supersonic train will be able to get travelers between Seoul and Busanin just half an hour rather. Currently, the trip takes about an hour via plane or five hours via public transportation.

A KRRI spokesperson said they are hoping to make an ultra-fast train that can travel inside state-of-the-art low-pressure tubes. They are collaborating with agencies such as Hanyang University to check the possibility of using these technologies called the hyper-tube format.

Korea Times said the "hyper-tube technology" is similar to Elon Musk's Hyperloop technology. The latter is currently being developed by a number of companies. These hyper-tubes are pods rocketing through tubes that can fly really fast because of the lack of friction. Maglev trains are free from friction but still have to battle air resistance.

Regardless, KRRI said it will work with other institutions in order to solve the setbacks and drawbacks that the Hyperloop technology has. After all, countries such as the U.S., Canada and China are already competing to take the lead in this futuristic technology.

This is a good plan for Korea, as China already has the world's largest network of bullet trains. Elon Musk and Tesla are not far behind, given that they are also currently developing their own Hyperloop technology with their electric vehicles.
Having trouble getting some shut-eye? Maybe it's time to pitch a tent and catch some on sleep somewhere outdoors. According to a recent study published in Current Biology, camping could be the perfect solution in getting your internal biological clock in order.

The lure of so many other things to do -- television, video games, mobile phones -- can keep people from sleeping for hours. Camping not only takes you back to basics, but it also cuts back your usage of artificial light. Going outdoors for a spell lets the body follow its natural sleeping patterns -- in sync with the rise and fall of the sun -- without disturbance, a report from The Guardian revealed.

A team of scientists observed five people aged 21 to 39, who went on a camping trip to the Rocky Mountains for six days on December. They were equipped with no gadgets nor torches. Instead, their sources of light were limited to sunlight, moonlight and campfire.

The researchers discovered that people tend to sleep two and a half hours earlier than they did at home when they're dropped somewhere without their usual gadgets and artificial light. The campers also slept longer, an average of almost 10 hours of sleep compared to their usual seven and a half hours.

Upon testing back at the laboratory after their camping trip, the campers retained the positive effects. The melatonin, also known as the sleep hormone, increased in the body two and a half hours earlier than it did before their expedition outdoors.

"Even with a small number of people we saw robust effects," Kenneth Wright, University of Colorado in Boulder director of sleep and chronobiology, explained. "It was the same in everyone. How our circadian clock responds to the natural light-dark cycle is part of our fundamental physiology."

The team sent a different group of nine people aged 19 to 37 to the same mountains. This time, they only spent a weekend outdoors and they were allowed to bring torches and headlamps. As a comparison, five other people stayed at home. Even with the shorter period of time, the campers in this case slept two hours earlier than the others.

Even without camping, Wright believes the study shone a light on the significance natural light plays on sleeping patterns.

"We're not saying camping is the answer here, but we can introduce more natural light to modern life," he told BBC News. "It is something we as a society can regulate without people having to change behaviors."

Creating homes and offices that allow more natural light in can go a long way, as well as modern "tuneable" lightbulbs that can be adjusted to shine brighter during the day and be dimmed during nighttime. Taking a walk early in the morning and cutting back on the use of artificial light at night can also work wonders to an individual's sleeping habit.
A lot of theories have already surfaced suggesting that the red planet is not as "dead" as it is today. Aside from the belief that water once flowed on Mars, a new study suggests that the planet had active volcanoes from 2 billion years ago.

If the data is correct, that would mean volcanic eruptions ruled planet Mars for at least half of its existence. The study suggests that a Mars meteorite called Northwest Africa (NWA) 7635 solidified 2.4 billion years ago, a date that is considered 2 billion years ahead than the rest. This means the planet is home to some oldest volcanoes in the Solar System.

Researchers from the University of Houston, led by professor Tom Lapen, conducted the recent study. To come up with the findings, the team analyzed a sample called NWA 7635 discovered in Algeria back in 2012. The 0.07 ounces (2 grams) of material was identified as a type of volcanic rock "shergottite" that solidified 2.4 billion years back.

In 2014, a number of meteorites were identified to have originated from Mars, according to a report. The researchers then compared NWA 7635 to a set of shergottites from Mars that were 327 to 574 million years old. These shergottites are believed to be from Mars blasted by an impact 1.1 million years ago.

"We see that they came from a similar volcanic source," professor Tom Lapen said in an interview. "Given that they also have the same ejection time, we can conclude that these come from the same location on Mars."

This means Mars was volcanically active 2 billion years ago to create a meteorite like NWA. The study was published in the journal Science Advances last Feb. 1. Some experts also suggest that the volcanic activity on Mars 2.4 billion years ago could have made the Martian environment conducive for life forms to exist.

"If these conditions have been going on for 2 to 3 billion years, if I was living on Mars as a microbe, that would be a good place to be as opposed to somewhere that's freezing," Jim Head, a geological sciences professor at Brown University who conducted a 2014 study said in an interview with Inverse.

The recent study drastically strengthens the knowledge of scientists about the volcanic activities on Mars.




A UC Berkeley structural engineering professor is expected to be the star witness Thursday at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors hearing on the sinking and tilting Millennium Tower building.

It would appear to anybody that corners were cut, Supervisor Aaron Peskin said about the troubled 58-story high-rise project, which has sunk 16 inches since it was built.

On Thursday, he said, he wants to press the Berkeley professor who signed off on the now sinking foundation in a letter to the city in early 2006.

That expert, Jack Moehle, refused to voluntarily appear and had to be subpoenaed to City Hall. Moehle declined to comment Wednesday, saying he prefers to wait until his testimony.

Peskin said he intends to press Moehle about a document uncovered by NBC Bay Areas Investigative Unit.

The document is a memorandum summarizing results of testing done in 2005 involving specially instrumented piles driven into the ground.

Were interested in asking Professor Moehle about that; were interested in asking Professor Moehle a number of other questions, Peskin told us. Im looking forward to Thursday.

In the document, engineer D. Michael Holloway of InSituTech in Orinda, said the test results were generally good, but they also raised questions about the suitability of the foundation design.

The plan was to use 900 slender 14-inch square piles. But Holloway noted that the soil layers, or strata, had a rather complicated variability, and said less was known about the layers on the south side of the project. Such variations could lead to some piles not holding fast in the ground.

Our findings need to be factored into the design of the overall foundation system, Holloway concluded in his November 2005 memo.

After some additional testing on the south side of the site, the developers pushed forward with the foundation as designed, which was not tied to bedrock.

Peskin says that should never have happened. He says he is confident he will learn why it did as a result of the hearings.

Slowly but surely all of this is trickling out and we intend to get to the bottom of it regardless of how long it takes, he said.
An adult victim was rescued Friday morning during a two-alarm fire in San Francisco's Chinatown neighborhood, the fire department tweeted.

The victim was taken to the hospital in serious condition, firefighters said, adding later that the injuries were described as minor.

Firefighters said that people should avoid the 1100 and 1200 blocks of Stockton near Powell streets because of the fire at the Golden Plaza building.
Berkeleys mayor tweeted an apology for calling Milo Yiannopoulos a white nationalist in a statement following a Breitbart article accused him of inciting violence and smearing a controversial editor known for his polarizing rhetoric and offensive speech.

Mayor Jesse Arreguins original statement called for inclusion and peaceful protests. But he also called Yiannopoulos a white nationalist in an emailed statement, which has been since taken offline.

Violence and destruction is not the answer  Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

"Unfortunately, last night, a small minority of the protesters who had assembled in opposition to a speaking engagement featuring a prominent white nationalist engaged in violence and property damage," he said in a statement sent to the news media and which he also posted online. His tweet has since been deleted.

I consider much of what Mr. Yiannopoulos says to be hateful. But I regret and apologize for the white national label.  Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

In an article on Breitbart, Yiannopoulos demanded an apology.

Later Thursday, Arreguin modified his statement to call Yiannopolous a "prominent alt-rightist." He did not provide an explanation.

Speaking to NBC Bay Area, Arreguin also bristled at President Donald Trump's threat to cut federal funding to UC Berkeley, if the university does not support free speech and condones violence.

"Just because you disagree with the views of Berkeley residents doesnt mean that it gives you the right to bully us and to cut funding for not only research, but education," he said.

The cancellation of Yiannopoulos' speech, the destruction to businesses in downtown Berkeley, and the Breitbart articles prompted a barrage of hateful tweets on Arreguin's social media account. The internet users questioned law enforcement's handling of the protest, denigrated his Latino heritage and questioned his birthplace in Fresno.

Breitbart has promoted conspiracy theories and was described by its former chief as "the platform of the alt-right." The alt-right is an Internet-based movement widely seen as espousing white supremacist and anti-Semitic views.

Yiannopoulos has equated feminism to bowel cancer, frequently targets Muslims and students of color, and has called out transgender students by name in his speeches. He was banned from Twitter for inspiring a racist harassment campaign against actress Leslie Jones.

He claims he speaks out in the name of free speech and to fight against political correctness, especially on college campuses.

But Yiannopolous, who calls himself an Internet troll, wasnt satisfied with the term "alt-rightist" either.

Revised statement to reflect updated information. pic.twitter.com/w9iykrWveB  Jesse Arreguin (@JesseArreguin) February 2, 2017

The description "attributes to MILO an ideology he has repeatedly rejected. MILO is demanding a second apology and retraction," Breitbart's follow-up article complained. Breitbart News did not return an email requesting comment.

His speech at UC Berkeley was cancelled Wednesday night amid a large protest when some demonstrators set a generator on fire and smashed the windows of the student union.

He was invited to speak by the Berkeley College Republicans. UC administrators said that as a public university, they were legally bound by the First Amendment to protect free speech, meaning even offensive and hate speech cannot be banned or censored.
The Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County on Friday led a Ring of Solidarity to show support for local Muslims at the Walnut Creek Islamic Center, or Dar Ulislam.

The event was designed to show support for a community that many people feel is under attack: Hate crimes are accelerating, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and President Donald Trumps executive order on immigration has blocked refugees and immigrants from seven majority-Muslim countries.

"Some folks in our interfaith community are saying this is the most stressful and most afraid that they've been as a Muslim in America in the last three decades," said Rev. Will McGarvey of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County. "They belong. They're our neighbors. We love them. And we don't agree with our own government targeting them ostensibly right now to be able to use as a basis for going to war in Iran."

Avi Rose, the executive director of the Jewish Family and Community Services East Bay, agreed.

"We have been responding to the executive order all week," Rose said, deeming Trump's moves "anti-refugee" and "anti-Muslim."

"Weve been alarmed, weve been horrified," he stressed.

The order has caused fear among many immigrants, even from countries not on those lists, and prompted an unknown number of travelers to get questioned for hours at airports across the country.

"I have family that are green card holders and I have concerns about their futures will be," said Yasser Moten of Walnut Creek. "To me, it's not only a Muslim issue. It's a human rights issue."

To show support and togetherness, people will be joining hands and forming a human circle around the mosque. The ring of solidarity will continue during prayer time for people of the Muslim faith, called the Jumaah, and all "peaceful people" have been invited to attend.

Members of many faiths were expected to attend. Several Jewish groups have been present at the protests and rallies; many fear that bigotry will prevail if they don't speak out against discrimination.

Rev. Carolyn Wilkins said that Friday's circle of unity was the community's way of "letting them know that we understand."

But standing up for humanity is what all religious leaders should do, McGarvey said.

"We agree with treating all of our citizens and all of our neighbors, whether they're documented or not, as human beings in need of love and community," he said. "This is what we're about. This is what interfaith councils do. We stand up for the rights of religious minorities, especially when they're being targeted."

NBC Bay Area's Lisa Fernandez contributed to this report.
As things got back to normal Thursday night on the UC Berkeley campus, the group that invited Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at the university says the chaos may have been a blessing in disguise.

While the night after seemed peaceful, there was still tension on the Cal campus in the aftermath of Wednesday night's violent protests. Republicans wearing the red "Make America Great Again" caps couldn't walk across campus without being taunted.

The Berkeley College Republicans feel even though the violence ultimately canceled their event, their message has been taken to another level.

"What happened last night was basically domestic terrorism," said Matt Ronnau of the Berkeley College Republicans.

Ronnau and his collegues watched out for each other as they walked through campus Thursday, the potential for violence keeping them on edge.

"We essentially invited Milo Yiannolopous to speak because he brings up taboo and not politically correct topics that we want a discussion of," he said.

Some of the violence Wednesday night included people being attacked and their hats being burned. The attacks didn't stop Thursday as one of the club members was assaulted by two nonstudents passing by.

On Thursday night, the Berkeley College Republicans were moving forward with a regularly scheduled meeting on campus.

"Were going to continue to stand up for free speech," club President Jose Diaz said.

Diaz welcomed first-time attendees. Many in the group believe the failure to exercise free speech Wednesday night was a win for their growing group.

"In essence, what these people are trying to shut down, they put a microphone to it," Diaz said. "It became national news."
When the travel ban for refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority counties was issued last week, one of the first religious groups to show up en masse at the airports were Jews.

Jews for Muslims, Never Again, and signs showing red Xs through swastikas dot the scene in the Bay Area, and throughout the country.

Amanda Fried spent her Sunday at San Francisco International Airport with her two young daughters to welcome passengers flying in from across the world. "My family escaped from Holocaust and I promised grandparents I would never let it happen again, she said.

The extra vetting of passengers based on where they were born, and where Muslims comprise the vast majority of the population, is extremely concerning to many Jews. That's because they remember what it was like during the Holocaust, a war that started with words and scapegoating, long before the gas chambers. And even though the two religious groups often disagree vehemently over the state of Israel and Palestine, members of the Jewish faith say they are standing behind Muslims over what they see as blatant discrimination.

But some Holocaust survivors, who are indeed concerned about some of the rhetoric coming from the White House, do not see exact parallels between now and then.

Protesters Against Trump's Immigration Policies Take Over SFO

For me, its scary, said Misia Nudler, 89, of Oakland, who spent three years hidden in Poland on a farm with her sister starting in 1939. But the Holocaust was different. All the world was quiet. Im so glad to see all the people protesting and the young people standing up.

Hennie Hecht, 76, also of Oakland, is also scared of President Donald Trump. Theres a lot of resemblance, we should be extremely wary and be aware of whats going on, she said. Hitler played on weakness of not having jobs. Isnt Trump doing the same thing? Hopefully weve learned not to go that route.

Hecht was born in Amsterdam in 1941 and during the war was saved by a righteous Gentile in Holland when she was 18 months old. Her father ended up in a concentration camp. The others were sent to the gas chambers. She too, feels its imperative that the populous let the government know how they feel.

Letting the government know how he feels is exactly the reason that Daniel Sokatch, CEO of the New Israel Fund, went to SFO with family and signs in tow last weekend. He, like some other Holocaust survivors dont think that the United States has become Nazi Germany  yet.

Sure, its frightening, and some of whats happening reminds us about 75 years ago in Germany and Europe. A person we thought was a clownish, buffoon got elected, there are all these xenophobic, anti-religious feelings with, refugees being denied entry. But do I think theres another Holocaust brewing, no? Do I think that something terrible? Yes.

Whats different for Sokatch is that many still remember the lessons of the past and will fight not to let bigotry win. And, he also believes that American democracy will prevail. Thats because the U.S. Constitution comes with equality clauses for all people, he said, and because it comes with an independent judiciary.

We can take inspiration from history to speak up and stand up, he said. Its not impossible for things to go really bad. But it wont be nearly so easy for them to do or succeed. Theres a lot of people who will say, Hell no, not on my watch.
Tensions remain high at UC Berkeley a day after people violently opposed a Milo Yiannopoulos event by setting fires, damaging buildings and injuring students  some of whom are now questioning whether police responded forcefully enough to protect them.

Pranav Jandhyala recalled people smashing windows of the MLK student union building before turning on him.

I was just assaulted by a group of people in masks, he said.

Jandhyala, who writes for a student-run newspaper said he has since received treatment for a concussion.

It was just horrific, he said. People were assaulting people indiscriminately.

Fellow student Robert Smith said he heard a loud boom. The sound marked the moment when protesters knocked over this large generator.

And I think that was the start of it, he said of the ensuing chaos.

Smith, a photographer who took pictures of the protest, recounted attacks on several fronts, but very little police presence. He believes campus police let it get out of hand.

I definitely think that as soon as the fireworks started coming up, they should have stepped in, he said.

However, university spokesman Dan Mogulof said dozens of police officers were brought in from nine of the UC systems 10 campuses to assist with the Yiannopoulos event that was scheduled for 8 p.m. He argued that the violence didnt escalate further because police officers did not respond aggressively to protesters.

They used paramilitary tactics, were armed, covered from head to toe, wearing masks, he said of the violent protesters, which he deemed totally unprecedented on this campus.

Most protesters were not UC Berkeley students, he insisted.

I think our police did an admirable job, particularly given that as of now weve had no reports of serious injuries, Mogulof said.

However, Jandhyala disagreed. When asked if he thought police had done enough to ensure students safety, he replied: I dont think so.

Meanwhile, several UC Berkeley students agreed that the violent protesters were not representing the students who were there to protest peacefully.

"They're definitely not a part of the university," senior Danny Phan said. "These are not the values that we have here. They're a third-party group that came from somewhere else."

Yvette Felarca organized a different protest group. She's glad the actions were taken to shut out Yiannapoulos.

"We were united in the many diverse and different ways people express their determination to stop fascism and stand up against racism," said Felarca, an organizer for By Any Means Necessary. "We knew what had to be done, had to be done."

She said the vandalism is a small price to pay and that the university is responsible.

"Because they absolutely could have shut down the event," she said. "They could have canceled it. They could have found a way to make sure it didn't go forward."

The UC Berkeley police department declined NBC Bay Areas request for a comment.
Police arrested two carjacking suspects in Oakland on Thursday after a chase led them to crash the stolen vehicle on a Highway 13 onramp, according to the Oakland Police Department.

The carjacked vehicle driven by the suspects overturned on the Broadway Terrace onramp to Highway 13 while it was being pursued, police said. A man and a woman fled the car, and after a brief search, were taken into custody, police said.

The incident began when Oakland officers responded to the 5100 block of Shafter Avenue on a report of a carjacking about 4:35 p.m. When the officers arrived, they spoke with the victim and got a description of the vehicle taken, police said.

The victim's family said one of the suspects pulled a gun on the man while he was unloading groceries.

About 10 minutes later, officers spotted the vehicle traveling in the 4800 block of Telegraph Avenue. They tried to pull over the vehicle, but the driver failed to comply, which prompted the chase, police said.

The car appeared to take out a tree on the shoulder of the roadway when it crashed. Police found a gun inside the vehicle.

Police and CHP officers established a perimeter around the area of the 5800 block of Pinewood Road. They made verbal contact with the suspects, gave the suspects commands to surrender, and then both suspects were safely taken into custody without further incident.

"We called in K-9, but officers saw them and got them to surrender once they saw them," police spokesperson Demertrio Lozares said.

Police said the pair were hiding underneath a deck.

Neighbors were a little shaken up by the heavy police presence.

"This is very disturbing for sure," resident Maya Hiersoux said. "You never see this many cops here; you never want to see this many."

No injuries were reported.
San Francisco Police Department officials announced Wednesday that they have suspended participation with the FBI's controversial Joint Terrorism Task Force.

According to San Francisco Police Commission protocol, all contracts require approval by the Board of Supervisors after 10 years.

The JTTF Memoranda of Understanding was signed in 2007, so that time has come, according to department officials.

The department will update its guideline for First Amendment activities and will "seek clarification" from the Police Commission as to this guideline's application to JTTF investigations.

Once that new guideline is adopted, the department may consider renegotiating the JTTF memoranda with the FBI with guidance from the police commission.

Last month, the Asian Law Caucus, the Council on American-Islamic Relations' San Francisco Bay Area office and the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California sent a letter to San Francisco Police commissioners urging them to cease the department's participation in the JTTF.

In the Jan. 5 letter, the groups speculate that, following President Donald Trump's inauguration, the JTTF would likely increase surveillance of Muslim communities like the New York City police did after Sept. 11, 2001.

According to the FBI, 71 JTTF field offices have been established since 2001. The first was established in New York City in 1980.

"The SFPD is committed to public safety and will continue to work diligently to keep San Francisco safe for everyone," San Francisco police Sgt. Michael Andraychak said in a statement.
Using President Donald Trump's tweets and news interviews as some of the basis for a federal lawsuit, three California university students have sued the president over his travel ban, saying he is unconstitutionally trying to fulfill a campaign promise to ban Muslims from this country.

The 36-page suit follows on the heels of a plethora of other suits filed this week against the president; from the American Civil Liberties Union, which raised about $24 million last weekend alone during the height of the airport protests over the ban, to a prominent Muslim group, to the city of San Francisco.

The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, is a class action complaint seeking declaratory and injunctive relief from President Donald Trump's Jan. 27 executive order imposing a 120-day moratorium on refugees and a temporary ban on travelers who hail from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

An email to the U.S. Department of Justice seeking comment was not immediately returned Friday to the Associated Press.

According to the suit, Hadil Al-Mowafak - a Stanford University freshman - is now unable to visit her husband in Yemen. She hopes to visit him this sumer, but she's afraid to because she fears not being able to re-enter the country, the suit states, and therefore not be able to finish her studies.

"I can't imagine not seeing [him] for a year, let alone four years," the 21-year-old said.

Al-Mowafak said also that she is proud to fight for the freedom to travel, adding: "I am holding on to hope."

Protesters Against Trump's Immigration Policies Take Over SFO

Wasim Ghaleb, 23, also a citizen of Yemen - has been unable to return to resume studies in business administration at Grossmont College in San Diego. He was told on Jan. 28 at the Los Angeles International Airport, he was told that he could not fly back to California to start school on Jan. 30, the claim states. He showed the agents his paperwork, Form 1-20 and his F-1 entry visa, but he was told he "had no choice but to return to Jeddah" in Saudi Arabia.

And an unnamed Iranian national who is a Ph.D. candidate and who has published articles in "prestigious scientific journals" at UC Berkeley fears losing a job opportunity. He is stuck in Saudi Arabia where he was visiting family and now can't return because of the executive order, according to the suit. He currently lives in Alameda and is trying to finish his final year of study in engineering. He is fearful he won't get the necessary authorization to continue living in the United States and will have to turn down a job he got at a "top Fortune 50" company in Silicon Valley, according to the suit.

All three hold valid F-1 visas, the suit says.

Because of the ban on citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries these students now are enduring unconstitutional hardships, the suit claims, and there is "chaos and confusion" in the country.

Specifically, the suit alleges that the president's executive order violates the First Amendment because it is a "thinly veiled attempt to discriminate against Muslims by barring them from entry into the United States." And thhe Immigration and Nationality Act ensures against this, the suit states.

Plaintiff lawyers are arguing that Trump's executive order is fulfilling a campaign promise to ban Muslims from entering the country.

Many citations in the lawsuit provide a direct link to Trump's tweets, including one he made on Dec. 7, 2015 that read "DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON PREVENTING MUSLIM IMMIGRATION," with a link to this proclamation.

The suit also references a July 2016 interview with NBC News "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd and Trump, where the then-candidate said: "We must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time has proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place."

When Todd asked him if a plan he supported back them was a "roll back" from the "Muslim ban," Trump answered: "I don't think so. I actually don't think it's a rollback. In fact, you could say it is an expansion."

Plaintiffs lawyers include Julia Harumi Mass of the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and Adam Lauridsen and others, who are also representing Jewish Family and Community Services of the East Bay.

The reason the Jewish agency is a plaintiff, the suit says, is because the nonprofit "supports those refugees and immigrants who are already present in the area, and stands ready to welcome and provide services to additional refugees and immigrants who are able to gain entry into the United States."

NBC Bay Area's Jean Elle contributed to this report.
Uber employees received a memo from their boss on Wednesday, saying he is cutting his ties with the Trump administration after days of protests and pressure.

Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick announced he is stepping down from the president's advisory council. The news came just hours before two protests were scheduled against the ride-hailing company here in the Bay Area. The protests were in response to President Donald Trump's immigration orders.

A protest was scheduled for Thursday night at Uber headquarters in San Francisco. Earlier Thursday, about a dozen protesters gathered outside the Uber office in Palo Alto to voice their concerns with the tech giant's perceived involvement with the Trump administration.

Grace Martinez helped organize the planned protest in San Francisco targeting Kalanick. Shes applauding the announcement that Kalanick will resign his post on the advisory council.

Another protester said they were making a statement.

"We need to tell President Trump there is a cost for your hate," Jeffrey Buchanan said. "This is what we need to see from Uber."

Earlier this week, Kalanick tweeted that he would use his position on the council to stand up for what is right. A statement from the company Thursday said in part, "Uber strongly opposes the president's unjust immigration ban, which is harming many innocent people, many of whom are drivers."

The statement went on the say that the company created a legal defense fund to help Uber drivers who are stranded abroad by the president's new travel ban.

In his memo to employees, Kalanick wrote that joining the advisory council was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda.
America's self-image is forever intertwined with the melting pot. It's a nation that welcomes the world's wretched refuse, a nation built by immigrants, a nation whose very motto is "E Pluribus Unum"  Out of Many, One.

America's history also is replete with efforts to shut the golden door to arrivals from China, from Eastern and Southern Europe  and most recently, from predominantly Muslim nations.

America's relationship with immigration is ... complicated.

"Many of us  politicians, people who are speaking out against the impact of the administration's actions  are saying, 'We are a nation of immigrants. This goes against our most important values.' And that is absolutely true," said Erika Lee, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota. "But we also have a long record of barring immigrants, denigrating them, building walls. That's the flip side."

Said Mae Ngai, a professor of history at Columbia University and author of "Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America": "We struggle over these things. Both strains have always been present."

The leaders of colonial America knew they needed immigrants to populate their new land. But Benjamin Franklin grumbled about an influx of "swarthy" Germans, and the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 made it harder to attain citizenship and easier to deport non-citizens deemed dangerous.

The acts were controversial; most were allowed to expire in a few years, but the deportation law remains, even today. And their justification  that some or many immigrants were dangerous interlopers  has been invoked again and again.

The rise of the Know Nothings, a nativist and populist movement of the 1840s and '50s, was spurred by the rise in German and Irish immigration, and by fears that the Catholic newcomers were loyal to a foreign entity  the pope  and incompatible with American values.

"If you substitute 'Muslim' for 'Catholic,' they would sound very similar to what you hear today," Lee said.

In 1868, the U.S. signed a treaty encouraging Chinese migration; 24 years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act turned away immigrants from what was even then the world's most populous nation.

What had happened in between? The Chinese immigrants who had shouldered much of the work of building the West had come to be seen as a threat  the "Yellow Peril."

Fear and bigotry were intermixed. In 1917, Congress passed legislation requiring a literacy test for immigrants, though only after four presidential vetoes. "They knew they couldn't say, 'Keep out the Jews and the Italians,'" but that was the purpose, Ngai said.

In 1921 and 1924, in the aftermath of World War I and the Red Scares that followed the Russian Revolution, the first quotas took effect, setting limits for immigration from countries that were seen as undesirable. There was to be little immigration from Africa, none from Asia or Arab countries, and the flow from southern and eastern Europe was curtailed.

Jewish refugees from Europe were blocked during and after World War II  first because of fears that they might be German sympathizers, then because of fears that they were Communists. "History doesn't look too kindly on this, because we know how preposterous this was," said Rebecca Kobrin, an assistant professor of history at Columbia.

But for all Americans' suspicions of immigrants, said Maria Cristina Garcia, professor of American studies at Cornell University, there has been an appreciation of what they did.

"Since the early republic, Americans have recognized that immigrants are essential to nation-building: Immigrants farmed the prairies, worked in the factories, built the streets, canals and railroad tracks. They mined the ore, planted and harvested the crops, and provided basic services. Government and business actively recruited foreign labor to facilitate economic growth," she said.

As hard as it often was  and as much bigotry as immigrants endured  immigration became central to the American narrative.

"It's fundamental," said William Thiesen, 37, a New Yorker visiting the city's Tenement Museum on Tuesday. "I think being an American is being an immigrant. It's the American fabric. We're all immigrants."

It was Israel Zangwell, a British writer, who dubbed America "the Melting Pot" in his 1908 play of the same name. His Russian-Jewish immigrant hero proclaims: "what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!"

More than 100 years later, despite some apprehensions of the moment, that feeling persists.

"America has been the dream for every educated young person," said Sontu Barua, a government employee in the sprawling Indian city of Lucknow. "It remains a land of opportunity."

More than 700,000 citizenship applications were filed from October 2015 to June 2016, about 25 percent more than the year before. The U.S. issued more than 10 million visas in 2015.

But the United States is far less inviting than it once was: The number of immigrants obtaining legal permanent resident status in 2010 was just over a million  almost precisely the same number as it was a hundred years earlier, when the population was less than a third of what it is now.

American ambivalence is reflected in the Statue of Liberty. Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus," with its siren call to "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore," is inscribed on a tablet in the statue's base. Lady Liberty herself, a gift from France to commemorate the American and French revolutions, is not placed to welcome immigrants.

"She faces the city," said Columbia's Ngai. "She doesn't face the arrivals."
A federal judge in Boston has denied a temporary injunction against President Donald Trump's travel ban.

A seven-day restraining order was granted Sunday in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two state university professors who were detained at Boston's airport as they returned home from an academic conference.

The professors are Muslims from Iran and lawful permanent U.S. residents.

"We stand here proudly today to challenge this clearly unconstitutional, illegal and unpatriotic executive order from the Trump administration," said Carol Rose, executive director of ACLU Massachusetts. "How the court rules today is going to set an important precedent nationwide."

She called Trump's order "a clear abuse of power" and said it must be pushed back.

An amended lawsuit filed this week added new plaintiffs, including the international aid group Oxfam America and several noncitizens who are legally in the U.S. but fear if they leave they'll be unable to return. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey also has joined the lawsuit.

"We're proud to stand beside the ACLU and the attorney general of Massachusetts," said Darius Teter, Oxfam America's vice president of global programs. He said the organization assists 2.5 million refugees in four of the seven countries named in the travel ban, and said the executive order has "severely constrained" its ability to do that work.

Healey issued a statement Friday calling Trump's travel ban "reckless" and saying that it violates the constitutional rights of Massachusetts residents and threatens the state's economic vitality. She said she looks forward to "permanently overturning this unconstitutional Executive Order."

U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton said Friday he was reviewing arguments and would rule by Sunday

The Boston hearing was one of several similar hearings being held Friday in courtrooms across the country, including in Washington, Virginia, New York and Michigan.
A Massachusetts bill providing nearly $18 million in pay raises for top lawmakers, statewide elected officials and judges became law Thursday after the Democratic-controlled Legislature overturned a veto by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker.

The Senate voted 31-9 after an earlier 116-43 vote in the House, both above the two-thirds threshold needed to override a veto by Baker, who along with other critics had said the raises were inappropriate at a time when the state's fiscal outlook remained cloudy.

"Raises of any type are always the subject of disagreement," House Speaker Robert DeLeo told reporters minutes before the override vote. "I don't think there is ever a right time or a right place."

The measure would immediately increase the salaries of constitutional officers including the governor and boost pay for judges by $25,000.

Not all members of the Legislature will receive raises under the new law, as an earlier constitutional amendment ties the base pay for lawmakers  currently $62,547  to biennial changes in the state's median household income. But the new law calls for substantial increases in additional compensation that is paid to House and Senate leaders and chairmen of legislative committees.

The annual stipends paid to DeLeo and Democratic Senate President Stan Rosenberg would increase from $35,000 to $80,000, bringing their aggregate salaries to $142,547. Those stipends were last increased in 1982.

A handful of Democrats joined the Legislature's heavily outnumbered Republicans in voting to sustain Baker's veto. Rep. Jonathan Hecht, a Watertown Democrat, complained the new pay structure widens the gulf between rank-and-file lawmakers and Beacon Hill power brokers.

"I have serious concerns that this bill will make the House more unequal, more hierarchical and less representative," said Hecht.

Baker said he would not accept the salary increase from $151,800 to $185,000, along with a new $65,000 housing allowance provided to the governor. Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito also planned to decline a raise to $165,000, Baker said.

"Authorizing this drastic salary increase with limited debate defies this obligation and places an undue financial burden on the people of Massachusetts," Baker said in a statement following the Senate vote.

Under the new law, Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey and Democratic state Treasurer Deb Goldberg would see their pay increase to $175,000.

A spokeswoman for Healey said she was "opposed to this increase when it was first proposed two years ago, and will not accept the increase for the remainder of her term."

An aide to Goldberg said she will not be taking the raise.

State Auditor Suzanne Bump, a Democrat, said she would accept a hike to $165,000.

Massachusetts is hardly the only state wrestling with contentious issues surrounding compensation for public officials.

In November, a special commission charged with reviewing whether the $79,500-a-year salary for New York state lawmakers should be increased for the first time since 1999 rejected a pay hike that Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie called "long overdue."

Legislative pay has been stagnant in most U.S. states in recent years. Several have moved to freeze the pay of lawmakers and other elected officials. Others have decided to remove politics from the process altogether.

In Minnesota, where lawmakers haven't had a raise since 1999, voters passed a constitutional amendment handing off authority over legislative pay to an independent commission.

Base pay for Massachusetts lawmakers was the seventh highest in the nation in 2016, according to a survey by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
A student's threat launched a lockdown at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, which has since been lifted, the school and police confirmed Friday afternoon.

"Pinkerton's lockdown is over and no threat of any kind was found," Pinkerton Headmaster Griffin Morse said in a message on Twitter. "Thank you for your cooperation and we are all relieved to report that everyone is safe and no safety or security was compromised."

The high school was placed in lockdown around noon due to a possible threat on campus, school officials said. Students and staff were ordered to shelter in place, and parents were asked to not call or come by the school.

A student allegedly said he had a firearm and was planning to shot someone. That student, whose name and grade have not been released, was found at school and arrested by Derry police. He did not have a firearm in his possession at the school, according to police.
A 2-year-old girl who went missing in Manchester, New Hampshire early Friday morning and was found hours later is in good condition after her ordeal, according to family and officials.

Zoey Rose Guerrero Pena was reported missing from her home on Mitchell Street around 3:30 a.m. She was found around 9 a.m. inside a nearby home and was checked out at Elliot Hospital, police said.

The child had last been seen asleep in her crib around 9:30 p.m. Thursday. Police believed she might have wandered away from her home on Mitchell Street.

In a statement, her mother Geraldine Pena said she was grateful for how strangers sprung into action.

"I want to thank everyone from the core of my soul. People who don't even know us were out in the cold trying to help," she said.

Her aunt, Rosalina Pena said was "a nightmare" for the family.

"Ive never seen my family so broken and I've never seen my sister so broken. I'm so happy she is found and she is well," she added.

The search focused mostly on her home and the surrounding neighborhood. Officers were seen knocking on doors and scouring a nearby playground.

According to police, initial investigation shows the child wandered away from her home and into the Brown Avenue apartment.

No further details were immediately available. Police said the investigation remains fluid.
A group of local activists spoke out Thursday against the Ohio pastor who told President Donald Trump that he was preparing to sit down with Chicago gang leaders to discuss ways to lower the body count.

During a press conference Thursday, crisis counselors and activists were outraged that someone from outside the city would try to speak for Chicagoans.

Why would a guy in Ohio be more credible than someone in Chicago, activist Dawn Valenti said. Thats total disrespect of the community.

During a "listening session with African-American leaders Wednesday at the White House, Dr. Darrell Scott, an Ohio pastor who campaigned for Trump, told the president that some of Chicagos top gang thugs reached out to talk about lowering the body count in exchange for "social programs."

Trump called Scotts proposal a great idea," while continuing to threaten federal intervention in the city.

Longtime Chicago mentor Phillip Jackson, the founder of the Black Star Project, said he would welcome Trumps help with fighting the citys violence, but also pointed to other struggling American cities.

Were here to help President Trump get America under control, Jackson said.

Activist Mark Carter told reporters Thursday that the city would accept federal resources, no matter who they come from.

If we have an opportunity to bring a sitting president into Chicago, to make some change, bring some resources into Chicago, then we welcome those resources, whether they come from Republicans or Democrats, Carter said.

After repeated threats from Trump, Mayor Rahm Emanuel explicitly urged the president Wednesday to send more federal law enforcement agents to the city.

Send more FBI, DEA, ATF agents, Emanuel told reporters. We dont have to talk about it anymore. Just send them.

When asked if Emanuel wanted the president to visit the city, he simply said, No.

What I would really like is the federal resources, the mayor said.

Chicago Police Department Supt. Eddie Johnson reacted to Pastor Scotts comments Thursday as the next class of Chicago police officers prepared to graduate.

Talking to gang members is not a new strategy, Johnson said. We talk to them everyday.

Scott has since clarified his statement, claiming that he meant "former street guys that are now community activists," not "gang thugs."

"MY BAD," he tweeted. "No harm or disrespect intended! (I'm a former street guy too)."
A summit expected to be held with Chicago gang leaders this month, organized by Cleveland Pastor Darrell Scott, who has been on President Trumps transition team, is running into more pushback.

Scott was at a White House meeting this week and suggested a meeting with city gang leaders would help lower the body count as Chicago fights a spike in gun violence.

Trump called Scotts proposal a great idea," while saying Chicago is "totally out of control."

Pastor Corey Brooks is pulling out of attending that summit, slated for Feb. 15, and has forwarded to NBC 5 the letter he sent to Pastor Scott saying he will not participate in the upcoming meeting in Chicago.

We will continue our daily work at New Beginnings church and ProjectHOOD in changing the trajectory of violence that has taken hold in our city, Brooks said.

I will not be participating in the meeting with @PastorDScott scheduled for February 15 in Chicago.I wish you and the brothers much success  Corey Brooks (@CoreyBBrooks) February 3, 2017

Scott, who supported President Trump in the November election quoted Dale Carnegie on Twitter Friday morning saying Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most do. He did not identify who he was directing that Tweet to.

Several Chicago activists have criticized why Scott has been recognized as a voice for Chicago. Father Michael Pfleger said people went all the way to Ohio to reach out to somebody when all the people working here in Chicago?

I never heard of this guy," Pfleger said.

Superintendent Eddie Johnson also responded to questions of a meeting with gang leaders saying, talking to gang members is not a new strategy. We talk to them every day.

Scott, on Twitter, defended why he intervened on lowering the body count in Chicago at his White House meeting, saying, What influence in Chicago? I got a call, I responded.

"Thats all I couldnt say no to them," he said.

Scott has since clarified his statement, claiming that he meant "former street guys that are now community activists," not "gang thugs."
After a meeting in Milwaukee was abruptly canceled, President Donald Trump met Thursday with a group of Harley-Davidson employees, who arrived at the White House on a fleet of motorcycles.

Trump was planning to meet Thursday with Harley-Davidson executives at a Milwaukee factory, but the company reportedly pulled out earlier this week, fearing protests.

During Thursdays meeting, Trump lauded Harley-Davidson as a "true American icon, thanking the steel workers and machinists who traveled to Washington for the meeting.

In this administration our allegiance will be to the American workers and to American businesses, like Harley-Davidson, Trump told reporters.

Throughout the press conference, Trump pushed his America first, pro-business agenda, championing changes to the tax code and pushing an overhaul of the healthcare system.

Were gonna be competitive with anybody in the world, Trump said.

Trump also emphasized the use of tariffs and promised to restructure existing trade deals, claiming America is being taken advantage of.

We have to make America the best country on earth to do business and thats what were in the process of doing, Trump said. Were redoing [the North American Free Trade Agreement], were doing a lot of our trade deals. And were negotiating properly with countries, even countries that are allies."

On Thursday, Trump complained about a deal that former President Barack Obama struck to accept roughly 1,600 refugees from Australia. The president reportedly had a "blunt" conversation Wednesday with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turbull, NBC News reports. Nevertheless, White House spokesman Sean Spicer confirmed Wednesday that Trump had agreed to honor the deal, according to the report.

A previous administration does something, you have to respect that," Trump said. "But you can also say, why are we doing this. Thats why were in the jams that were in.

Trump conceded that the country has some wonderful allies, but insisted that America has to be treated fairly.
As a kid, Gov. Bruce Rauner was more interested in artifacts than politics.

The Illinois governor told a group of students in Rockford Thursday that his dream as a third-grader was to become an archaeologist.

Boy did I ever want to dig up dinosaur bones, Rauner said. I thought that was going to be so great.

Rauner noted that his dream job changed throughout his childhood. He wanted to become a police officer in first grade, a doctor in seventh grade and a scientist in high school.

The governor ultimately chose to pursue economics during his time at Dartmouth College, and later received an MBA from Harvard University.

I saw how economics can create jobs and have a better life for everybody, and I got really drawn into economics and business, he said.

Prior to being elected governor in 2014, Rauner served as the chairman of Chicago-based private equity firm GTCR, where he worked for over 30 years.

Rauner urged students to keep their eyes and minds "open to all the possibilities.

You can be whatever you wanna be, he added.
Rep. Peter Roskam defended President Donald Trumps controversial executive order on immigration during a radio appearance earlier this week

"By being provocative and by provoking action, he stirred up a lot of things, Roskam told AM560 Monday. "But heres what we know, the country is safer this morning than it was 72 hours ago.

Roskam, a Republican whose district includes portions of Cook, DuPage, Lake, Kane and McHenry counties, said Trump is merely making good on his campaign promises. Roskam backed the billionaires candidacy in the lead-up to the November election.

President Trump is doing exactly what candidate Trump promised hed do, Roskam said.

Nevertheless, the Republican claimed that, in some ways, Trump is in a no-win situation.

Can you imagine if there hadnt been any sort of action, he asked. "People wouldve said, well, he campaigned on these things. He promised to do things. He failed to do it and this terrorist got through.'

Roskam called the countrys immigration system "a mess," faulting the previous administration.

This is unfortunately the consequence of bad policies that Barack Obama allowed, that was tolerance at the borders for people who came in with bad intend as it relates to the U.S.," Roskam told Proft.

Is it chaotic? Yes," Roskam said, referring to Trump's order. "Is it ideal? No. Is it going to continue to be bumpy? For sure."

Trumps executive order halts all refugee resettlement into the U.S. for 120 days, imposes an indefinite ban on refugees from Syria, and suspends entry of immigrants from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen - all Muslim-majority nations - for 90 days.

Questions have been raised about the measure's implementation, which led to hundreds of detainments and sparked widespread protests at airports across the country. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security's independent Office of the Inspector General launched a formal investigation into the implementation and legality of Trump's travel order, as move that was requested by Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

"It's clearly not an ideal situation and there's gonna be a lot of review and a lot of discussion and a lot of discovery," Roskam said Monday. "But I think when it all comes down to it, we've got an executive branch now that is putting the security of the United States at the top of the priority list."

"They're gonna give the benefit of the doubt to American citizens," he added. "They're going to look to look a scant at people that are coming in from countries that are hostile to the U.S. This is a difficult, complicated world that we're in."

Trump has also lauded the order as a necessary step to bolster the country's security, dismissing criticism about the plans implementation.

Everyone is arguing whether or not it is a BAN, Trump tweeted Wednesday. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!"
Holocaust survivor in suburban Skokie expressed their opposition to President Donald Trumps executive order banning Syrian refugees indefinitely and temporarily suspending immigration of nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

At an event at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, Fritzie Fritzshall and Aaron Elster shared their personal stories in the hopes of putting a spotlight on the presidents banning of immigrants and refugees from certain countries.

The museums mission and motto is Remember the Past, Transform the Future.

The Museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Holocaust by honoring the memories of those who were lost and by teaching universal lessons that combat hatred, prejudice and indifference, its website reads.

For survivors like Elster and Fritzshall, that mission is personal.

We survivors know what it is like to be put upon, to be isolated, to be ultimately eliminated, Elster said Thursday. They died of disease, they died of hunger and I observed all of that.

Elster said his parents and his 6-year-old sister died in the Holocaust. He said he survived by living in an attic in Poland for two years.

Fritzshall said news of the executive order made her feel as if she were back in timewhen she was at the now infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

Hunger came back to me, she said.

She said she remembered facing the cold, immigration lines and not being able to leave the country.

Because nobody would accept the Jews, she added.

Fritzshall and Elster say that by speaking out, they are not trying to make a political statement, they just want to make sure that immigrants are treated with respect.
Multiple luxury vehicles were stolen from car dealerships in Evanston and Naperville over the past week by what appears to be an organized ring of thieves, police said.

Evanston police were dispatched to the Autobarn Volkswagen in the 1000 block of Chicago Avenue around 12:15 a.m. Friday in response to a disturbance reported in an adjacent alley. The manager at Patrick Jaguar and Land rover says four cars were stolen from the Naperville dealership last week.

Upon arrival at the Evanston dealership, no one was found, but officers discovered a door of the car dealership had been forced open, police said.

Inside the dealership, police found an unoccupied vehicle that had been left running. The office where the dealerships keys were kept had also been broken into, police said.

Autobarns manager was notified by police and soon confirmed at least three BMWs were missing from the dealership: X4, 335, and X2 models.

Two of the cars were recovered by authorities Friday morning.

Chicago police found the X4 and 335 models near Lake Shore Drive and Fullerton Avenue in the citys Lincoln Park neighborhood. Police also found one of the Naperville Jaguars in Chicago.

No one is in custody. Investigation into the incident is ongoing. Detectives are working with management of the dealership as they continue to go through its inventory to see if any additional vehicles were stolen.
A person is dead after an accident at Geneva Commons shopping mall in west suburban Geneva Friday afternoon, according to the Kane County Coroner.

The man was identified as Donald Tentler, 47, who officials said was a husband and father.

Authorities say Tentler and another man were stuck in the bell tower of the mall. The other man was brought to safety, but Tentler was "somehow crushed" against the top of the tower, said Geneva fire Chief Mike Antenore.

Employees in the area at Geneva Commons said earlier in the day it appeared someone was stuck inside a bell tower, which might have been under construction. First responders could be seen working for hours at the mall's bell tower in a cherry picker.

Officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration were on scene and have opened an investigation.

Kat Smith, who works at the mall's Starbucks, brought flowers to lay at the bell tower.

"I'm sure we must have crossed paths at some point, and like I said, my heart really goes out to the family," she said, adding that she'll never look at the tower the same.

Ill always remember, she said.

An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.
In the wake of President Donald Trumps controversial extreme vetting immigration ban, which targets seven Muslim-majority countries, an uptick in Global Entry membership revocations is beginning to appear.

The expedited customs and immigration program known as Global Entry comes with TSA pre-check and requires travelers to undergo voluntary vetting for approval. But, some say they are now being notified that their memberships are being revokedwith little explanation.

For air travelers, long lines and intrusive security checks are a given.

I appreciate what you have to go through and just understand its a necessary evil, Nancy Jens, a traveler, recently told NBC 5.

Some have turned to TSA pre-check and Global Entry membership to bypass the congestion. Last year, Customs and Border Protection enrolled its five-millionth trusted traveler.

Totally worth it, said traveler Steve Price. No socks, no shoes, keep everything on, you keep your belt onlove it.

The vetting process is rigorousrequiring a background check, fingerprinting and photographing and an in-person interview.

One immigration attorney tells NBC 5 its a new phenomenon. She says she now has three new revocation clients from Syria and Jordan.

It may be unwritten at this time but these policies are in motion and theyre being applied without giving any advanced notice to people that theyre being changed, attorney Vivian Khalfa said.

One woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being further targeted, told NBC 5 she just got a revocation notice.

I was surprised because this was a whole over six-month process, she said.

She is a green card holder originally from Iran and has been living and working in Chicago for nearly two years. Her letter simply reads You do not meet the program eligibility requirements.

I understand their concerns with the security of the country, its just that Im not a security threat, she said.

Its unclear what has changed since her original approval into the program.

Under its frequently asked questions section about the presidents executive order, CBP makes no reference to enrollees of the global entry program.

Officials from CBP did not respond to request for comment.
A tumultuous journey ended with a warm embrace after a Chicago-area doctor trying to returning to the United States was left stranded amid President Donald Trump's travel ban this week.

Dr. Amer Al Homssi arrived at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to a crowd of colleageus and his attorney, who fought to help him return.

"I'm very grateful to be back in the United States," he said. "Grateful to my lawyers and the government lawyers who were gracious enough to allow me in."

Homssi was stranded abroad after traveling to the United Arab Emirates to get married but a federal judge ruled Wednesday he could return to the city despite his education visa being suddenly canceled amid Trump's travel order.

Homssi holds citizenship in both Syria and the United Arab Emirates and he was married on Jan. 23 in the UAE. He attempted to return to his residency from Abu Dhabi International Airport to OHare Airport on Sunday, his attorneys say, but was stopped by U.S. security who said his Visa was canceled.

"This is a pretty serious issue," said his attorney Thomas Durkin. "He's a doctor. This isn't... it wasn't like he was coming to ride the Staten Island ferry."

Durkin said the government agreed that Trump's executive order to restrict travel from several countries should not include those with green cards or special visas, like the one Homssi had.

"There's language in there that says he has to pass inspection," Durkin said. "What that means is they want to make sure nothing happened between the time he left for the airport this afternoon and tonight."

Had the resident in internal medicine been banned from coming back to the U.S., it would have had "horrible serious consequences" for his career as well as his patients, his attorneys said.

A lawsuit was filed in federal court Tuesday on Homssi's behalf.

Trumps executive order, signed Friday, temporarily bars travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries as well as refugees across the globeincluding Syria. Lawyers for Homssi say it is unmistakably clear that Trumps executive order targets Muslims.

Trump in a statement Sunday said the order was not about religion but keeping the country safe from terrorists. The president said the seven countries on the travel ban list were previously identified by the Obama administration as sources of terror.

To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting, Trump said.

[NATL] Trump Immigration Order Triggers Protests Across US

Homssi's attorneys said the state department was still finalizing documents in the case Wednesday evening, but U.S. Customs has agreed to let the doctor back into Chicago when he landed Thursday morning at O'Hare.

Late Wednesday night, Homssi was finally boarding a plane back to the city.

"Im really happy to be here and I would like to thank everyone -- my family, friends, colleagues, residents and program, hospital, lawyer and everyone who made it possible -- all the support I got all over the media, if it werent for you guys I wouldnt be here," he said in a video message as he prepared to board his flight. "Thank you so much."
Someone is throwing rocks through the front windows of Chicago businesses and no one knows why.

At least seven businesses have been hit, owners and police confirm, the most recent one happening Thursday morningmost of them in the Lincoln Park and Old Town neighborhoods over the past month.

I just felt sad and violated, said Pure Barre owner Rachel True.

True says this is the second time this week her business, in the 1300 block of North Wells Street, has been vandalized.

She was supposed to spend Thursday greeting clients at her new Pure Barre studio in Lincoln Square on the citys North Side, but instead shes cleaning up a mess at her other location in Old Town.

There was glass all over the floor, they threw the rock so hard we found glass all the way in the back of the studio, the rock was in the middle of the floor, she said.

Surveillance video shows an employee discovering the damage early Thursday morning.

Unless you work for a glass company, I cant possibly imagine what anyone would be gaining from this, True said.

Josh Moulton says vandals broke the front window of his fine art gallery in the 2200 block of North Clark Street twice in one week.

Next door, someone threw a rock through the front window of Essential Nail Spa, before apparently making their way up and down the street where Mellos Restaurant, Stanley Galleries and Happy Play Cafe were all vandalized.

Im hoping by spreading the word about what happened that people will be more aware about it, Trues said. Maybe we'll catch these guys in action so they don't hurt anyone else.

Police say they are investigating but no one was in custody as of Thursday night.
Syfy is bringing the four shark-men to cable with a fifth installment of "Sharknado."

The franchise, which has become something of a cult classic, has taken on cities around the United States for its first four films. From D.C. to New York to Los Angeles, shark-slaying team Fin and April have slashed through their nemeses. But despite their efforts, Sharknado: the 4th Awakens left North America in ruins, with sharks everywhere poised for an international attack.

Tornadoes filled with sharks will cause a global environmental crisis as actors Ian Ziering and Tara Reid reprise their roles later this year. Sharknado 5 will be shot in more than five countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia. Filming has already begun.

No premiere date has been released for the sequel, but earlier installments have hit screens in summer, specifically July.
Three men have pleaded guilty to armed robberies at the West Haven Post Office and a Hamden bank in April, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Malcolm Haynes, 26, of New Haven, pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of armed robbery of a postal employee and one count of armed bank robbery.

On Jan. 25, Derrick White pleaded guilty to one count of armed bank robbery and Howard Booker, 19, of Hamden, pleaded guilty Jan. 30 to one count of armed robbery of a postal employee.

Officials said Haynes, White and Bookert, as well as another person, drove White's vehicle to the area of the Allingtown Post Office on Farwell Avenue and Haynes pointed a gun at people in the lobby, as well as the clerk behind the counter. White hopped over the counter and handed the money to Bookert, officials said. They left with almost $500.

In the afternoon, the group robbed the Wells Fargo Bank at 1647 Whitney Ave., according to federal officials. Haynes pointed the rifle toward several employees and White went behind the counter and stole nearly $10,000, federal officials said.

All three pleaded guilty in Hartford federal court, according to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut.
Dreams of adopting and becoming parents are now in danger for hundreds of families across the country and here in Connecticut.

Many had invested thousands of dollars in Independent Adoption Center, but the non-profit suddenly announced this week it was declaring bankruptcy, leaving hopeful parents wondering what to do next.

We were shocked. Then we got really angry, Ben Pelletier of East Haven, said.

For three years, Ben and Crystal Pelletier have worked tirelessly to adopt a child.

NBC Connecticut met the couple years ago as they raised thousands of dollars online to help the two teachers with the nearly $20,000 adoption cost.

Were just two normal people who just want to bring a baby into our home and give a baby love they wouldnt have otherwise, Crystal Pelletier said.

The couple traveled to New York City and signed up with an apparently trustworthy organization, Independent Adoption Center.

Twice they were paired with birth moms and even prepared a nursery. But both times fell through.

We thought that was as bad as it was going to get, Ben Pelletier said.

Then on Tuesday, the East Haven couple received an email from the adoption agency, explaing that the non-profit was declaring chapter 7 bankruptcy and were closing after 34 years.

We were just like this cant be real, Ben Pelletier said.

The Pelletiers werent alone.

Hundreds of hopeful parents are potentially affected coast-to-coast because Independent Adoption Center operated in nine states.

In a statement on its website, the organization blames the shutdown on fewer birth parents and more hopeful adoptive parents.

It wrote in part that it, has worked tirelessly to adapt to this changing environment, but the many efforts we implemented were ultimately unsuccessful.

Many, including the Pelletiers, are not sure what to do next since they do not have money to go through the process again.

Its all gone. And its not about the money. Its about the child. So were leaving there with nothing, Crystal Pelletier said.

The adoption organization says once the bankruptcy proceedings are underway people can apply for refunds.

Any money given out will be up to a trustee and the court.

People looking for help here in the state were encouraged to contact DCF.
An NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters analysis reveals the number of homeowners directly affected by crumbling foundations may be three times more than the nearly 500 homeowners who have filed complaints with the state. The reason is condominiums.

Ed and Bobbie Oswecki love condo living, but problems with their unit arose several years ago.

"In 2010, my front wall was bulged in and was ready to collapse and was replaced, "says Oswecki.

They didn't know the cause until the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters started reporting on crumbling foundations and Ed went to a concrete coalition meeting a year ago.

"When I saw the pictures and the reports that they gave, I knew we had a problem here," says the Vernon resident.

Ed is President of the Lakeview Condominium Association and took immediate action, hiring a structural engineer to inspect the entire complex. he engineer called three buildings unsound and told Ed that eventually, they will begin to collapse.

The Osweckis' neighbor Phil Bambera is dealing with the same issues: map cracking of his basement walls that's progressively getting worse.

"If this is happening this fast in 8 months, what's it going to look like in another 8 months?," says Bambera.

They brought in a contractor to give a quote to lift the buildings and replace the concrete in ten unit: 865 thousand dollars. Ed pulled together all the condo owners to show them the engineers report and the quote. He also encouraged each owner to file a complaint with the state.

Consumer Protection Commissioner Jonathan Harris says the number of homeowners filing a complaint continues to grow.

"We have 488 total complaints and of those, 136 are condo unit owners in five different associations," says Harris.

Harris acknowledges that count doesn't capture the true number of homeowners directly impacted by the concrete issue. Those 5 associations have 456 owners who share financial responsibility.

"If you extrapolate that out, our universe now would show about 944 homeowners affected in some way," says Harris.

The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters did an analysis of the nine condominiums and planned unit developments that have identified the crumbling foundation problem in the towns of Enfield, Manchester, South Windsor, Stafford, Tolland, Vernon and Willington.

There are more than 800 owners in these complexes, the vast majority of whom share financial responsibility to fix the concrete basements in their associations.

The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters also looked at the entire universe of condo owners in those same seven towns. There are nearly 8000 owners in 156 associations built since 1983 who are potential victims of the crumbling foundation problem.

Ed Oswecki says each owner at Lakeview will either pay a 19 thousand dollars up front or $190 per month for ten years.

As painful as it may be, he believes there's strength in numbers.

"There's other condo associations that are reluctant to come forward yet, they're in shock they don't know what to do with this. They are impacted. Their sales are impacted. There is an onus on your complex. Everyone is going to chip in and pay for this. Right now, there are state and federal officials looking at this problem, but the numbers are small, so they look at it as a little problem. It isn't."

Another impact that's harder to quantify is that anyone who lives in an affected condo association or planned unit development is dealing with the fact that the mere presence of the deteriorating concrete in their complex, makes it very difficult for them to sell

Property managers tells the NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters several sales in recent months have fallen through because more and more potential buyers are learning about the concrete problem.
The governor is trying a new approach to his budget strategy in 2017.

Instead of keeping the entire document and plans a secret, he's decided to provide bits and pieces early, as he send up test balloons for response.

The proposal rolled out Thursday pleased Hartford's mayor, but could make the leaders in other communities uneasy.

Governor Dannel Malloy wants to see more accountability for the money sent to cities and towns each year that totals more than $5 billion. To achieve that accountability, he wants to establish a Municipal Accountability Review Board.

What I envision in the future is a Connecticut that is more cognizant of the restraints that we have put on these communities and what I think we should stop doing is making it harder for them to be successful rather than make it easier for them to be successful," Malloy said during a press conference in Waterbury City Hall.

The governor picked Waterbury because the city emerged from a version of state oversight in 2006, after it failed to even make payroll before oversight was established in 2001.

Waterbury Mayor Neil O'Leary helped run the Waterbury Police Department back then, and said state oversight helped the city to emerge stronger.

I think its a great idea personally and I was a bit nervous about oversight but I can tell you firsthand, we lived through those years of oversight and the city has survived many fiscal crisises because of the oversight board, O'Leary said. "Waterbury is a survivor in 2017 because of the great work of the oversight board."

The proposal from the the governor would provide four tiers of oversight, with the fourth seeing the highest levels of scrutiny. Despite Hartford's fiscal struggles, the city is facing a $50 million deficit in 2018, he says no single city would instantly be classified as a "Tier 4" city.

"I think the discussion is highlighted by the plight of Hartford but it isnt about the plight of Hartford.

The board, the governor suggests, would be able to provide funds for deficit mitigation, help refinance debt, and would analyze all city expenditures.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin praised the idea, saying in a statement, saying, "Citizens deserve to know that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely and responsibly, and Hartford's books are open."

Last year, Mayor Bronin proposed a state oversight panel that would be specifically tasked with helping the capital city meander tough times, and it was met with fierce opposition from some lawmakers, but especially from organized labor.

Labor unions that represented city workers, firefighters, and police were concerned that such a deal could see cuts to benefits.

Malloy said his proposal he hopes doesn't stir up the same kind of controversy, but added that if a city is in dire fiscal condition, then the state needs to have a mechanism to look at all expenses, even those that were reached through collective bargaining.

Under the severest of circumstances at the very least we should be opining on that issue if not otherwise taking action.
Connecticut lawmakers will hear open arguments for and against state level expansions on women's health insurance coverage.

Lawmakers approved public hearings to be held later in the legislative session.

One of the bills that was approved would mandate that contraceptive coverage be part of insurance plans, the way it's currently covered under the Affordable Care Act.

Sen. Mae Flexer said the state would have to step in to cover such treatments if the ACA, also known as Obamacare, is repealed.

I think its critical that Connecticut stand up and fill whatever gaps may be available and healthcare coverage for Connecticut residents if the Affordable Care Act goes away," she said.

Peter Wolfgang, the Family Institute of Connecticut Action, says the state must make sure any health insurance coverage requirements would abide by settled law that came out of the Supreme Court. Specifically, Wolfgang says contraception should not be covered by religions groups if they oppose such treatments.

Wolfgang said, "Our concern is that people of faith not be forced against their will to provide things that are to be coerced by the government to provide things that are against their faith.

A less controversial topic for the Family Institute would be mandated coverage for nursing mothers, things like breast pumps. Such pumps are currently guaranteed to be covered under the Affordable Care Act. Before it became law, there were no such guarantees for all insurance plans.

We want to provide good options for women, ones that will actually help them instead of put them in a precarious position and thats one that we can probably get behind," Wolfgang said.

Amy Farotti, from North Branford, had one breast bump not covered by insurance for one of her children, but her second child she did have coverage for.

The first pump cost her well over a hundred dollars, but the second pump, she said made her life much easier.

I got the best breast pump out there, it was a lot smaller than the one I previously had. I was able to bring it back and forth to work much easier because of the size and it was one financial burden I didnt have to worry about.

Farotti says she hopes the state takes steps to mandate that all women who want to provide breastmilk for their children, can do so without an onerous financial burden.

It should be a priority in Connecticut to make sure that this is covered for every mom.
Civic and faith leaders piled into city hall in New London to strengthen their commitment to immigrants and refugees Thursday.

It was one of hundreds of stands taken against President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration.

Some of the people in the room had a political message. Others, not in the position to take a side, reaffirmed they will not discriminate based on race nor religion.

"Respectfully sir, you are wrong," said Anthony Nolan, New London City Council President. He directed his comments toward Trump.

Words, spoken and written, pierced through the lobby as community leaders and faith leaders reaffirmed their commitment to refugees and immigration in the wake of the controversial actions by the president.

"These challenging times call for a basic recommitment to the basic human rights," said Katherine Bergeron, Connecticut College's president.

"(We're) committed to protecting the rights of everyone, regardless of status," said Acting New London Police Chief Peter Reichard.

"Our diversity is our strength. Welcoming refugees just builds a strong met community here," said New London Mayor Michael Passero.

For decades the city has welcomed refugees into the community, he said, calling the gathering and opportunity publicly announce they're still welcome.

Recent events hit close to the heart of Sara Ofner-Seals, who helped resettle a Syrian refugee family in Norwich.

"It's who we are as Americans to welcome those who are seeking a better life, who are seeking freedom and refuge," she said.

Some even showed up to support Trump.

Joann Barrowman of East Lyme called herself the "silent majority" and thanked the President for working to make the country safer.

"I do believe that we should be more careful with our vetting. I am not against immigration. I am not against refugees entering the country," said Barrowman, who donned a 'Make America Great Again' cap.

The chairwoman of the Republican Town Committee of New London, Shannon Brenek, said the city should be focusing on the people already here first, like those in the blighted Crystal Avenue High-rises.
A Milford resident from Syria has been reunited with his wife and two young daughters after President Donald Trump's executive order to temporarily ban refugees and immigrants from seven mostly Muslim countries put the brakes on their plans last week.

Milford resident Fadi Kassar greeted his wife and 5- and 8-year-old daughters Thursday night at New York's Kennedy Airport with tears flowing down his face and arms wide open.

Kassar had not seen his family for more than two years and spent years saving the money for his family to fly to the United States and go through the asylum practice.

Despite securing approval to travel to the United States, Kassar's wife and 5- and 8-year-old daughters were stopped from boarding their flight last week because of Trump's ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy says he worked with the Kassar family, immigration lawyers, the State Department and Customs and Border Protection to make sure the reunion happened.

In a news release on his website, Murphy said he contacted Kassar's family after the NBC Connecticut report last weekend to work to reunite the family.

Tonight, the Kassar family gets to breathe a huge sigh of relief. My staff worked tirelessly with the family, their lawyer, and the delegation to make sure Fadi could see his wife and two little girls tonight. I know the Milford community is ready to welcome them with open arms. But theres no sugar-coating this. It's outrageous that Trumps dangerous executive order forced them through unconscionable hoops to get here, part of a statement from Murphy says.

On Monday, presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway called the travel ban a temporary and mild inconvenience and press secretary Sean Spicer said it was a small price to pay to keep Americans safe.

Spicer said Wednesday that waivers would no longer be required for green card holders, the latest change to the implementation of the order.

Trump has said that visas will once again be issued to all countries "once we are sure we have reviewed and implemented the most secure policies."
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has quit President Donald Trump's council of business leaders, according to an internal memo sent to employees Thursday.

Kalanick wrote to his employees that he'd spoken with Trump on Thursday to "let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."

His departure came on the eve of the first meeting of the group at the White House, planned for Friday.

White House officials did not respond to requests for comment.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced Thursday on Twitter that he plans on attending the meeting and vowed to express his objections "to the recent executive order on immigration and offer suggestions for changes to the policy.

Regarding the meeting at the White House: pic.twitter.com/8b1XH4oW6h  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2017

Earlier this week, Musk asked his Twitter followers to read the immigration order and send him specific amendments he could present to the president. Musk has said that the refugee order "is not the best way to address the country's challenges."

"Advisory councils simply provide advice and attending does not mean that I agree with actions by the Administration," Musk tweeted, adding he believes "engaging on critical issues will on balance serve the greater good."

Led by Stephen Schwarzman, chairman and chief executive of the private equity group Blackstone, the council has about 15 members, including the leaders of Wal-Mart, Tesla, the Cleveland Clinic and Pepsi.

The council is "designed to provide direct input to the president from many of the best and brightest in the business world in a frank, non-bureaucratic, and nonpartisan manner," according to a Blackstone press release in December announcing its formation.

Yet public outcry about Trump  specifically his executive order suspending the country's refugee program and halting other aspects of immigration  has put some business leaders in an uncomfortable spot.

Uber, a ride-sharing company popular in urban, largely Democratic areas, has been buffeted all week by boycott campaigns that began when people perceived it as trying to break a taxi strike to and from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport that was in response to the executive order.

Kalanick condemned the executive order and has contributed to relief groups, but calls for a boycott had continued. One woman urging boycotts for all companies tied to Trump said only total resignation from the Trump business forum would satisfy her.

"This is not a 'seat at the table' moment. This is a flip-the-table moment," said Shannon Coulter, one of the organizers of the anti-Trump social media campaign "Grab Your Wallet."

Other forum members said they'd keep their commitment.

Toby Cosgrove, CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, is planning to attend.

"He has an opportunity to talk directly to the president, and that is a good opportunity," said spokeswoman Eileen Sheil.

Sheil said the clinic employs doctors and caretakers from many countries, and was directly affected by the travel ban. She said a Sudanese citizen who is a first-year resident at the Cleveland Clinic is stuck in Sudan and unable to return to work.

General Motors Co. CEO Mary Barra remains a member of the advisory group and plans to attend the Friday meeting, spokesman Patrick Morrissey said.

Disney CEO Bob Iger won't attend either; instead he will be at a company board meeting in California, according to a person close to Iger who requested anonymity to discuss the CEO's schedule.
One of the surest ways to see the power and relevance of James Baldwin's words today would be to look at some of the signs of recent protesters. "If I love you I must make you conscious of things you do not see," read one. "The only way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain," read another.

Or you could see Raoul Peck's urgent and clarion documentary "I Am Not Your Negro." It resurrects Baldwin's words  his eloquent poetry of injustice  with the same fire with which they were blazed. Peck's film, which is nominated for best documentary at the Academy Awards, bears no talking heads. There's no analysis of Baldwin's influence in literature or interpretation of his politics. But there is his voice: clear, direct and piercingly prescient.

"I wanted the confrontation to be direct from his words, himself to the audience," Peck, who shares his screenwriting credit with Baldwin, said in a recent interview. "I was the messenger."

It took Peck, the Haitian-born filmmaker of "Lumumba" and "Sometimes in April," years to find the right avenue into Baldwin for "I Am Not Your Negro," which opens in theaters Friday. A great responsibility hung over the decade-long endeavor, Peck says, to bring Baldwin to the forefront.

"I read Baldwin as a teenager and his writing never left me," said Peck. "His writing structured the man I am today and the filmmaker I am today. I wanted to make sure the next generation had access to Baldwin."

Peck was welcomed by Baldwin's estate, which is managed by Baldwin's younger sister, Gloria Karefa-Smart. But the key to the film only emerged when Karefa-Smart gave Peck the pages of "Remember This House," which Baldwin completed 30 pages of before his death in 1987 at age 63. The unfinished book was intended to stitch together reflections on three assassinated civil rights leaders: Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers.

"Remember This House" is used as the prism through which to view the novelist, essayist and activist. Passages from the manuscript and other works by Baldwin are narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. And there is copious footage of Baldwin speaking and of his arresting appearances on shows like "The Dick Cavett Show."

But "I Am Not Your Negro" isn't a time capsule. It's about today. Peck juxtaposes Baldwin's words with images of police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement and other recent events. Other images flicker at times  John Wayne and Doris Day  that question the white picture of America promoted by Hollywood.

As he toiled, Peck found his film increasingly timely, a relevance that has only increased since the election. When the Ferguson protests grew, he sent a crew to document it.

"I knew how fundamental Baldwin's words were and I knew they were important to understand the confusion we were in," said Peck. "What I did not expect is that it would become so obvious and I would have so many examples and illustrations of what I was working on."

Aisha Karefa-Smart, Baldwin's niece, says Peck's film, which includes excerpts from the FBI's extensive file on Baldwin, was revelatory. "It made me understand my family more in terms of the hushed tones that people spoke in and the unspoken fears that permeated the household."

At festival screenings, she has watched the film help resurrect her uncle. "A lot of kids are upset they didn't know who he was," says Karefa-Smart. "He was kind of the background for a while."

That has changed in recent years. Baldwin is widely taught in universities. The Library of America has published his essays, novels and stories with introductions from Toni Morrison. The James Baldwin Review was begun in 2015. When Chris Rock spoke at a Harlem church on Martin Luther King Day last year, shortly after a second-straight year of all-white acting nominees to the Oscars, he read "My Dungeon Shook," Baldwin's letter to his nephew.

And perhaps most influential has been author Ta-Nehisi Coates, whom Morrison famously called the spiritual heir to Baldwin. His best-selling "Between the World and Me" was modeled on Baldwin's "My Dungeon Shook," from "The Fire Next Time."

What many respond to in Baldwin is his searing directness, his willingness to confront the deep-seated ills of America and to reposition questions of race. "The country's image of the Negro, which hasn't very much to do with the Negro, has never failed to reflect with a kind of frightening accuracy the state of mind of the country," he wrote in "Nobody Knows My Name."

Peck believes his film is ultimately an intimate one intended to provoke the kind of personal inquiry demanded by Baldwin, who warned against "purposeful blindness."

"You cannot, whether you are white or black or Latino or whoever, you cannot come out of this film an innocent person," says Peck. "You know. You know all you need to know in order to face it, to react, to do something or not. As far as Baldwin is concerned, you have no excuse anymore. The elements, as he would say, are all on the table."

The film opens Feb. 3 in selected theaters across America.
For people with life-threatening food allergies the EpiPen is the first line of treatment. The price of the pen has gone sky high, retailing at more than $600 for a pack of two in New York City. But what if a pill could one day replace the needle?

Jaime Riskin and her daughter, Gabby Riskin, spend a lot of time reading food labels.

"I'm allergic to nuts and shellfish," Gabby said.

They found out Gabby had severe food allergies when she was two years old and her preschool served peanut butter.

"She was covered in hives and her whole face swelled up," explained her mother.

Experts say food allergies in this country are on the rise.

"About three percent of children might be at risk of anaphylactic reactions due to food allergies. The first line of treatment should be epinephrine," said Mutasem Rawas-Qalaji, Ph.D., a pharmaceutical researcher at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

That means families like the Riskins need to keep an EpiPen with them at all times.

"There's always one in her backpack, there's always one in my purse, there's always one at school," Jaime Riskin said.

Gabby said she hopes she never needs the life-saving treatment.

"Because it's a needle and I've always been a little scared of needles," explained Gabby.

So, Rawas-Qalaji and his research team at Nova Southeastern University are working on an easier more user-friendly option that involves, "a specialized developed tablet, under the tongue of the patient."

The tablet would deliver the same amount of epinephrine the injection does, minus the needle.

"Once you place these tablets under the tongue they should disintegrate within ten seconds," Rawas-Qalaji said.

"I think the pill is an awesome idea," Gabby said.

Until then, Gabby and her mom will keep the EpiPen on hand and always read the ingredients first.

The research team has met with the Food and Drug Administration and the plan is to start human trials in the next two years.
Children's Health has paid an almost $3.2 million federal penalty after a multiyear investigation into patient data privacy breaches.

Scott Summerall, a spokesman for the health system, said Thursday that the Children's Medical Center of Dallas self-reported the breaches that were part of the federal investigation. He said hospital administrators don't think the stolen data has been used in a way that has negatively affected patients or their families.

"We have also enacted many levels of protection across our variety of devices. We train our colleagues on the importance of protecting patient information, and the methods by which they do so," he wrote in an emailed response to questions from The Associated Press.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights said Wednesday that the finding against the hospital was the result of "impermissible disclosure of unsecured" health information. The hospital self-reported the loss of three devices, two of which contained patient data.

According to the report, a BlackBerry containing unencrypted patient information for 3,800 individuals was lost at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport in 2009, and an unencrypted laptop containing information for almost 2,500 patients was stolen from the hospital in 2013.

"Children's issued unencrypted BlackBerry devices to nurses and allowed its workforce members to continue using unencrypted laptops and other mobile devices until 2013," according to the statement published on the Health and Human Services' website.

Summerall said the system decided to pay the fine rather than contesting the determination because it would be a "long and costly distraction from our mission to make life better for children."
Across the country, self-proclaimed "preppers" say they feel the heat of a changing global political climate.

Cylde Scott, owner of the Rising S Company in Murchison, Texas, makes his living by making underground bunkers for those who want to be prepared for anything that may come. He said since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, he's seen a large increase in business and interest.

In the past week and a half, our sales went up 250 percent, Scott said. Typically we sell one [or] maybe two bunkers a month. I sold five this week, Monday to Thursday."

Sparks fly from welders torches in his Henderson County shop as they ship and install secret shelters across the nation.

We have sold quite a bit in Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia. We sell them all over the United States," Scott said. "Some people will even have me put them in on weekends so neighbors won't know."

Scott started his storm shelter-building company 13 years ago, but his upbringing challenged him to be even more creative.

"When I was young, I was raised as a prepper. I always thought my parents might be a little crazy, he laughed. I guess it's bred into me. I grew up and I became one."

Hes now added underground survival shelters and those have become his primary business.

"A lot of people say being a prepper is kind of a negative attitude and why would you do that, Scott said. Usually my first response to those kind of people is 'Why do you buy car insurance? Why do you have health insurance?'"

Scott said that he is not alone, and in the past two weeks, hes met even more.

"The phone calls I've been receiving and the people I've been talking to everybody thinks World War III is coming," he said.

Survivalism has become more popular under the super-wealthy in Silicon Valley and New York City as well, according to a recent article in the New Yorker. It found that people like tech executives and hedge fund managers have been buying up homes or bunkers, getting citizenship in remote and self-reliant New Zealand and even getting eye surgery so they won't need glasses in the event of a global meltdown.

Scott said his customers come from all walks of life, but most are affluent.

"An average bunker for a family runs around $100,000," he said.

The larger models can fit six to 10 people and are solar powered with air and water filtration.

"As long as you have food and water, you can go underground and live for a year if you need to," Scott said.

He currently has a staff of around 25 people, with 22 of them dedicated solely to welding.

"We're building bunkers as fast as we can get them. I receive emails and phone calls daily. So, I imagine that my sales will probably be nine to 10 bunkers a week for probably the next six months to a year, he said. Because I know the direction we are headed and we are going to be needing more people. Right now Im looking to staff up maybe 10 more people.

Now Scotts American dream of owning a business has come to a point where it is prepping for what he hopes is not a worldwide nightmare.

"At the end of the day, my ultimate goal is to know that if we do go to World War III with Iran, Russia, China, Turkey, whoever it may be, that my family is going to be able to survive," he said.
The trial is underway for a former neurosurgeon accused of maiming and killing patients during botched spinal surgeries.

Christopher Duntsch has not practiced medicine since 2013 after the Texas Medical Board revoked his license for violating the standard of care.

Duntsch wasn't arrested until 2015 after two patients died and others were paralyzed.

Now, his surviving patients and fellow surgeons are testifying against him in court.

"I trusted him and I trusted that he would do what was right," said Mary Efurd, who now uses a wheelchair after prosecutors say she endured a near fatal surgery at the hands of Duntsch.

"I couldn't move my feet and legs," she said. "I couldn't turn over in the bed, and my thoughts were 'something is wrong.'"

Efurd described the excruciating pain she endured moments after waking up from spinal surgery back in 2012. The former neurosurgeon who performed that procedure sat in the same courtroom Thursday, emotionless as his patient described how fearful she was of him afterwards.

"I said, 'No, he will never touch me again,'" she said.

"He didn't create any kind of fusion that was going to work," Dr. Robert Henderson testified.

Henderson performed the corrective surgery and days later filed a complaint against Duntsch with the Texas Medical Board.

"He didn't do the procedure he told the patient he was going to do," Henderson said in court.

On Friday during the trial, former patient Barry Morguloff told jurors Duntsch botched his second back operation, putting the surgery device in crooked, breaking off bone fragments and leaving them lodged in his nerves.

I cant feel my left foot, so if I close my eyes, I fall over," said Morguloff.

Even after another surgeon remove some of the fragments, Morguloff still uses a cane and foot brace to walk.

It is hard. It is hard to live day to day and truthfully, if it wasnt for my daughter, I dont think that I would be here, said Morguloff. When I decided to have a child, I gave up every right to hurt myself. But there are days that go by that make it tough to live."

In 2014, Duntsch told NBC 5's media partners at The Dallas Morning News that he was a victim on misunderstandings, rival surgeons and personal injury lawyers  claims and a fate now up to a jury to decide.

The trial is expected to last several weeks.

NBC 5's Holley Ford and Kevin Cokely contributed to this report.
A man is dead after being shot early Thursday morning in what police suspect may have been one of a series of aggravated robberies.

During a news conference Thursday afternoon, Dallas police Maj. Jimmy Vaughan said 44-year-old Brent Randall was shot and killed early Thursday while waiting to go to work.

Randall, Vaughan said, was outside his employer's building on the 1800 block of Mockingbird Lane, sitting in the passenger seat of a coworker's parked car as they waiting for the building to be opened.

Randall's coworker told police they became uneasy when they noticed a gray 2012-2014 Chevrolet Malibu approaching them slowly. Feeling like they were in an unsafe situation, the driver tried to leave the area. That's when he said a Latin male sitting in the passenger seat of the Malibu fired into his vehicle, fatally striking Randall.

The driver was not injured and was able to provide a partial description of the vehicle and gunman to police. The witness said the gunman was a Latin man with straight hair who was wearing a red bandana over his face. The witness added the driver of the Malibu was a Latin male who had spiked hair.

The witness told police they had no interaction with the gunman before the shooting; Vaughan said investigators suspect the pair may have planned to rob Randall and his coworker.

"This could have been an aggravated robbery on their part and they could have been frustrated they ended up driving off as they fumbled their approach to the robbery," Vaughan said.

Vaughan said another aggravated robbery reported earlier in the morning may be related. That robbery took place outside the Anchor Inn on the 10200 block of Harry Hines Boulevard. In that case, the victim's description of the robbers and their car matched the descriptions provided in the Mockingbird Lane shooting.

No injuries were reported in that robbery, Dallas police said Thursday afternoon. Due to the geographic proximity and the matching descriptions, police believe the cases are related

Another shooting and robbery, this one on the 2600 block of Walnut Hill Lane, was also reported Thursday morning. After initially believing it could be related to the other two, police now say it's likely unrelated because the descriptions didn't match up. In that robbery, the victim was shot in the leg and the injury was not considered life threatening.

Anyone with information on the identity of these suspects are asked to call North Texas Crime Stoppers at 1-877-373-TIPS (8477). All tipsters remain anonymous.
Parents are demanding answers months after health issues started popping up at an Arlington junior high school, and they're no closer to finding a solution.

"We're losing teachers, the principal. Students are falling ill as well. It's a lot to deal with," said Delilah Perreira, PTA president for Nichols Junior High School.

Mysterious illnesses have plagued the school since September. Dozens of people who work at Nichols have gotten sick since then, some of them several times, with symptoms like headaches, nausea and dizziness.

It's become so bad that some teachers have taken to holding class outside.

Just this week, a staff member was transported to the hospital by ambulance. The school district doesn't know if that one is related, but until this is resolved, many Nichols parents are fearful of bringing their children to school.

Now, the school's principal is out and an interim leader has stepped in. The district isn't saying why she's gone, but it's raising a lot more questions.

"It's been the main focus of the school year," said Perreira. "That's all we talk about. It's all anyone is talking about."

It has been more than four months since Nichols had to be evacuated over health concerns. The illnesses continue but staff and students, like Perreira's eighth grade daughter Aaliyah, are no closer to knowing what's going on.

"I know some teachers have left the school and now have a permanent sub, and some teachers who used to get up and walk around, they really just sit there and say, 'Oh, my head hurts. I just don't feel good today,'" Aaliyah said.

The Tarrant County Health Department has interviewed about 60 staff members regarding ongoing symptoms. The principal is among them and now she's gone.

"I assume it's the health problems," Perreira said. "She has fallen ill multiple times over the last year, so I definitely assume it has to do with the air quality issue."

The district won't comment on personnel matters.

"She is out at this point and that's really all we can say," said Leslie Johnston, director of communications for the Arlington Independent School District.

But they do say they're doing everything they can to find a cause.

In a statement to NBC 5 late Thursday night, AISD Superintendent Dr. Marcelo Cavazos said, The district continues to address concerns promptly and comprehensively and share information with staff and parents as it is received in order to resolve the situation and ensure the safety and health of our staff and students. We continue to work diligently to identify and address any possible conditions that may be causing the concerns reported by some staff members.

So far, nothing has come back as a significant health threat. But while air quality and HVAC testing continues, parents like Perreira want everyone out of the school.

"It's been very hard," Perreira said. "I've thought about transferring her. But at the same time, I would feel like I'm leaving everyone hanging over there."

Her daughter has been tested for breathing problems, and she's seen classmates getting sick, too.

"They try to stay through the school day and then they just can't," Aaliyah said. "I'm scared that my friends and everybody else I know will get so sick, that they will have to be hospitalized."

A recent test of the HVAC system revealed some mold and something called "dirty sock syndrome," that's basically a bad smell. The district says it is resolving those issues, but says neither should cause the problems they're seeing.

They are waiting on one more big report and say if that identifies a serious problem, they may move the students out of the school.

Perreira is asking any Nichols parents who take their student in for a checkup to tell the doctor and the school what's happening, to keep better track of any student illnesses.

Parents had planned to speak out at a school board meeting Thursday night, but they did not sign up to address the board. The district continues to ask for patience as more tests are done.

"The health and safety of our students and staff is of the utmost importance, said Board President Jamie Sullins. The Board and district are committed to reviewing and addressing concerns to find a resolution to this issue. We are confident in the results of the testing and analysis done thus far that indicate nothing that would cause a health risk, and we will continue to work with industry experts to correct any potential issues in the building.
What to Know Zuzu Renee Verk, 22, was last seen in Alpine Oct. 12, 2016 and was reported missing by her boyfriend two days later.

Robert Fabian, Verk's boyfriend, was named a suspect; police say he's uncooperative in the investigation.

A reward of $200,000 has been offered for information in the case.

Police say unidentified human remains have been found outside a small West Texas town where law enforcement and volunteers have been searching for missing 22-year-old college student Zuzu Verk since last October.

Alpine police said the remains were located in a shallow grave off Wagon Road in Sunny Glen, northwest of Alpine. Officials have released no descriptive information about the remains or shared any details about how and when they were found.

Additionally, police have not said whether or not they believe the remains could be Verk. The remains will be sent to The University of North Texas for positive identification. It is not known when the identification will be made.

Verk was reported missing Oct. 14, 2016 by her boyfriend Robert Fabian, who told police he'd last seen her two days before. Police said last fall Fabian had been named a suspect in the woman's disappearance and that he'd refused to answer any questions in the investigation since reporting her missing.

Verk, who is originally from the Fort Worth area, was a student at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.

The Brewster County Sheriff's Department and the Texas Rangers are assisting the Alpine Police Department with the investigation.

Anyone with information in the woman's disappearance is asked to contact Alpine police at 432-837-3486. Callers may remain anonymous. A reward of $200,000 for information leading to an arrest and indictment in the case was previously offered.
Dallas police are searching for a woman suspected in the deadly shooting of a 29-year-old man Thursday night, officials say.[[412680923,C]]

Officers responded to a shooting call in the 1800 block of East 11th Street at about 8:06 p.m.

According to police, the incident began as an argument over money between Devotric Johnson, 29, and Rosalind Jones, 46.

It escalated to the point where Jones said, "You will give me my money," before shooting Johnson in the back, according to the arrest affidavit.

A witness to the shooting was able to positively identify Jones in a six-photo lineup, police said.

Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 214-373-8477 (TIPS). A reward of $5,000 was offered to anyone who can help find Jones.
A U.S. judge has temporarily blocked President Donald Trump's ban on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries after Washington state and Minnesota urged a nationwide hold on the executive order that has launched legal battles across the country.

U.S. District Judge James Robart in Seattle granted the two states a temporary restraining order Friday while the court considers the lawsuit, which aims to permanently block Trump's order.

"The state has met its burden in demonstrating immediate and irreparable injury," Robart said. "This TRO (temporary restraining order) is granted on a nationwide basis ..."

Lawyers for the U.S. government argued that the states don't have standing to challenge the order and said Congress gave the president authority to make decisions on national security and admitting immigrants.

Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued, the first state challenging the president's order, saying the order is causing significant harm to residents and effectively mandates discrimination. Minnesota joined the suit this week.

The Constitution prevailed today, Ferguson said after the ruling. The law is a powerful thing  it has the ability to hold everybody accountable to it, and that includes the president of the United States."

Washington Solicitor General Noah Purcell added that the Trump administration's argument that the president has unfettered discretion on immigrant entry is "not the law. It's a scary view of the law."

White House spokesman Sean Spicer called the order "outrageous" in a statement released late Friday and said the DOJ plans to file an emergency stay to defend the president's executive action. Soon after, the White House sent out a new statement that removed the word "outrageous."

"The presidents order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people," the statement from the Office of the Press Secretary said.

Trump responded to the judge's ruling on Twitter Saturday morning, writing he's confident it will be overturned.

"The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!" Trump wrote.

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 4, 2017

The presidents order is intended to protect the homeland and he has the constitutional authority and responsibility to protect the American people.

A Department of Homeland Security official tells NBC News, the judge's order will have no immediate practical effect because all preciously issued visas from the seven affected countries were canceled by last week's executive order. Travelers with passports from those countries hoping to come to the U.S. would have to reapply for a visa, the officials said.

Trump's order, issued last Friday, temporarily bans travel for people from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen. It also temporarily halts the U.S. refugee program.

Legal battles played out across the U.S. this week as opponents of the presidents travel ban took their fight to the courtroom. Hearings were also being held Friday in Virginia and Massachusetts.

A federal Judge in Boston refused to extend a temporary injunction against the travel ban.

U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton late Friday declined to renew an order prohibiting the detention or removal of persons as part of Trump's executive order on refugees and immigrants.

That means a seven-day, temporary injunction granted Jan. 29 will expire as scheduled Sunday.

In a hearing in Alexandria Friday, a federal judge allowed Virginia to join a lawsuit challenging President Trump's travel ban, transforming a case that had been focused on a narrow sliver of those affected to a battle that could affect the rights of tens of thousands of would-be immigrants and visitors.

Erez Reuveni, a lawyer with the Justice Department's Office of Immigration Litigation, urged U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to keep the lawsuit focused only on lawful permanent residents, who were the subject of the initial lawsuit. Virginia sought to intervene in the case and expand it to include other people traveling to the U.S. on visas.

Brinkema asked Reuveni how many people were affected by the executive order. He said the number of cases involving lawful permanent residents is very small. But including all visas covered by the order, he said, "over 100,000 visas have been revoked." He did not provide details.

[NATL] Trump Immigration Order Triggers Protests Across US

"I think you could almost hear the collective gasp in the courtroom when the government attorney stated that number," Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center said at a press conference after the hearing, according to NBC News.

The State Department disputed the government lawyer's number, claiming less than 60,000 individuals' visas were "provisionally revoked" to comply with the order. Will Cocks, a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs, clarified the figure after the court hearing.

"Fewer than 60,000 individuals' visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the executive order," Cocks said. "We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the executive order. To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and nonimmigrant visas in fiscal year 2015. As always, national security is our top priority when issuing visas."

Brinkema questioned the logic of that. "People who've already got permission (to enter the country on visas), why should that not be honored?" she asked.

She said she was pleased that the government seemed to be willing to accommodate some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit on a case-by-case basis, but said that would ultimately be insufficient. She also acknowledged that the executive branch has "almost unfettered discretion" in setting immigration policy, but not absolute discretion. She suggested existing visa holders wanting to travel to the U.S. could have valid cases, but that new applicants might not be successful in bringing a challenge.

Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, said after the hearing that "there is no legal justification to cancel all these visas."

Meanwhile, a federal judge in Detroit says U.S. green-card holders shouldn't be affected by the order.

The Arab-American Civil Rights League argued in a suit filed this week in Detroit's U.S. District Court that the executive action is unconstitutional and targets immigrant communities.

A restraining order released Friday from U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts covers legal permanent residents, not some others that also are part of the lawsuit. She says lawyers for the government clarified to her that the ban doesn't apply to "lawful" permanent residents.

A Brooklyn judge on Thursday extended a temporary restraining order to Feb. 21, but the Justice Department said it will ask her to throw out the case.

U.S. District Judge Carol Amon's ruling extended a stay that had been issued Saturday by a different judge and would have expired Feb. 11. Amon extended the order to give more time the government and civil liberties organizations to file paperwork.

Three California university students are challenging the travel ban. Their federal suit, filed Thursday in San Francisco, says the ban is unconstitutional and has created hardships for the students.

It alleges that a freshman at Stanford University now can't visit her husband in Yemen; another Yemeni at San Diego's Grossmont College can't resume studies there; and an unidentified University of California Berkeley doctoral candidate from Iran fears losing a job opportunity.

Meanwhile, Hawaii joined a growing number of states suing the federal government to block Trump's travel ban, filing a lawsuit in federal court in Honolulu on Friday.

Attorney General Doug Chin says Trump's executive order keeps Hawaii families apart and keeps residents from traveling. He says it degrades values Hawaii has worked hard to protect.

Chin says the order also will make foreign travelers feel unwelcome, which is a problem for Hawaii's tourism-powered economy.
When is a groundhog a tortoise?

It sounds like it might be a riddle from a whimsical storybook or some age-old philosophical question, the kind of brainteaser that makes us ponder the nature of animalia, nature and the world.

But here's the straightforward answer: A groundhog is a tortoise when Californians speak of Mojave Maxine, and not Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil, at the start of February.

The furry superstar Punxsutawney Phil is the impressively toothed prognosticator who predicts if spring season will arrive early, or if winter will persist. On Feb. 2 each year, Phil emerges from his burrow to look at his shadow. No shadow? Spring's on the way. Shadow seen? Better bundle up for six more weeks. (Phil said there's more winter to come for 2017.)

Mojave Maxine's claim to animal-cute, season-predicting fame doesn't involve her shadow. At The Living Desert animal park in Palm Desert., Maxine's mavens -- devotees of the desert tortoise and schoolkids across the region -- keep an eye on her scrubby, rock-lined burrow, waiting for her to trundle out after a brumation, a reptile's hibernation period.

Now that Punxsutawney Phil's big moment has wrapped, when will Mojave Maxine emerge in 2017? Giving us all the tortoise-authenticated sign that spring in California, or at least the California desert, is definitely nigh?

There's a contest each year for students to guess the date and time the hard-shelled star will make her first cameo of the year.

One clue as to her pattern? Mojave Maxine left her burrow on Feb. 8 in 2016, so we may see her soon. Keep a watch on The Living Desert, which will announce the tortoise's emergence and the end of California winter.
A substitute teacher in northern Oklahoma was arrested on an indecent exposure complaint after reportedly doing a cartwheel in front of students while wearing a skirt but no undergarments.

Police Chief Scott Laird said the incident happened during a high school choir class in Pawhuska, about 100 miles northeast of Oklahoma City.

The substitute teacher, identified as 34-year-old Lacey Sponsler, was arrested Tuesday afternoon. She remained jailed Wednesday morning.

School administrators told NBC affiliate KJRH that Sponsler is no longer allowed to work at the school.
How does a primate find a date when they're confined to an urban jungle?

Orangutans in a Dutch zoo may get a high-tech helping hand thanks to a research project that is being likened to a Tinder dating app for apes.

The research at the Apenheul primate park, on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Apeldoorn, is investigating the emotional responses of orangutans and bonobos to images of the same species they are shown on a touch screen.

Biologist Thomas Bionda said Wednesday the screen could help determine an ape's preference between prospective mates as part of a breeding program.

"We want to help our animals and maybe other zoos' animals to make a choice," Bionda said in a telephone interview. "Animals have to like each other."

Bionda hopes that having apes check out images on a computer screen could help determine the compatibility of a prospective pair.

In the meantime, the primate park has another problem  building an orangutan-proof touch screen. The screen in the primates' sleeping area was recently destroyed by a young female called Samboja.
Thursday was Groundhog Day.

I am one of those meteorologists who doesn't particularly care for Groundhog Day. I prefer to keep our forecasting scientific and don't much trust the opinion of a rodent from Pennsylvania.

But Rick Mitchell's wife, Kim, made these wonderful confections that I just can't ignore. It's a no-bake chocolate-oatmeal-peanut butter no-bake cookie with a Tootsie Roll groundhog peeking out!

In addition to being Groundhog Day, Feb. 2 marks the anniversary of the coldest temperature ever recorded in North Texas since records began in 1898. On Feb. 2, 1899, the temperature dropped to minus-8 degrees. It was so cold in Texas on that date that ice formed on parts of Galveston Bay.

Since then, Dallas-Fort Worth has dropped below 0 on only three other occasions:

Minus-1 on Jan. 18, 1930

Minus-2 on Jan. 31, 1949

Minus-1 on Dec. 23, 1989

So, in the past 67 years, DFW has dropped below 0 only once.
It was a very special express delivery at one San Diego-area post office Thursday morning when San Diego Police officers helped a woman and her boyfriend deliver their baby in the parking lot.

Vanessa Prado and her boyfriend, Dennis, were sleeping in their Mira Mesa home at approximately 4 a.m. when Vanessa started having contractions.

"I thought it was no big deal, so I just hopped in the bathtub," Vanessa said.

But shortly after, her water broke. That's when she called her boyfriend, Dennis, into the bathroom and told them they were going to the hospital, four weeks ahead of her due date.

Dennis said he was trying to remain calm, but his first thoughts were: "Let's go, time to go, it's showtime."

In the car, Dennis tried to work with his girlfriend to slow down the baby, which seemed to be coming out faster than expected.

"I tried to tell her, hold on, keep your breathing, lets just try to make it there as quickly as possible," Dennis said.

As the couple recounted the story from the hospital later that morning, Vanessa laughed. She said she told her boyfriend the baby was coming out, and he was coming out now.

"There was no stopping him," she recalled.

The couple made it a few blocks from their house when Vanessa said she started to crown.

"I just said, 'Im not going to make it, and weve got to pull over, now,'" Vanessa said.

The couple had a choice: they could either pull over at the U.S. Post Office on Mira Mesa Boulevard, or at the McDonald's across the street, so they went with the Post Office. When they pulled over, Dennis called 911.

SDPD Officers Matt Enderlin and Eric Hustad, on patrol just a few blocks away, responded to the call and were at the post office in less than two minutes.

Meet Pierce Dillard, parents joke they'd name him Pierce Postal Dillard after @SanDiegoPD officers delivered him @ post office this AM #NBC7 pic.twitter.com/Ds8MIelydy  Astrid Solorzano (@solorzanoastrid) February 2, 2017

Officer Hustad said from there, instinct and training took over. SDPD officers only have a couple of hours of training if a situation like this arises, the department said.

"This is it, this is the stuff that you prepare yourself for," said Officer Enderlin.

Everything moved quickly once the officers arrived on scene. Officer Hustad offered to hold Vanessa's hand while Officer Enderlin positioned himself to help with the birth.

"It honestly just happened so fast," Officer Enderlin recalled. "All of a sudden, I'm like, 'Oh my Gosh,' holding the baby."

Officer Enderlin said he made sure the baby was okay and the mother was okay.

"Its one of those moments youre like, 'Wow, this really just happened right now,'" he said.

The birth happened in minutes, Vanessa said, once they pulled over.

"Honestly, he just came out so fast and then Matt held him and after he said, 'I got him, I got him,' I couldnt even go to grab him, I was just so relieved the pain was over," said Vanessa, who is studying to be a nurse.

Vanessa said she was so thankful to have someone else there with her and her boyfriend.

"It just happened so fast, I was just glad someone else was there other than us two," she said.

Minutes later, paramedics arrived on scene and the officers went with the family to Scripps Memorial Hospital.

Six-pound newborn Pierce Dillard may have a new nickname going forward.

2 @SanDiegoPD officers deliver baby at Mira Mesa post office. Mom enroute to hospital w dad says, "THIS IS HAPPENING," Tonight on #NBC7 pic.twitter.com/dkc6SSkPVv  Astrid Solorzano (@solorzanoastrid) February 2, 2017

"We joked that we were going to name him Pierce Postal, but I dont think thats going to happen," Vanessa said, laughing.
A 50-year-old man was critically injured and his dog killed Thursday after they were attacked by a pair of dogs in Lincoln Heights, police said.

The attack was reported about 5:20 p.m., according to Los Angeles police Officer Sal Ramirez.

Firefighters responded to the 2600 block of North Lincoln Park Avenue, according to Margaret Stewart of the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Witnesses said the two dogs attacked the man after killing his dog. He was taken to the hospital.

Frank Carrasco said he saw the man walking his dog up the sidewalk before two pit bulls came around and started attacking them.

A neighbor who declined to give her name said the pit bulls were friendly most of the time.

"I'm more worried about the gentleman that got attacked," she said. "Of course I'm a big animal lover so, when I saw pieces of the dog, it broke my heart."

Angela Llerenas of LA Animal Control said the dogs were taken into custody and will be held at the shelter until there's a hearing, where the examiner will determine whether the dogs should go back to their owners or be euthanized.

No action was planned against their owners, Llerenas said.
Heads-up, Angelenos: Roofing scams are popping up in the wake of recent storms.

Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer warned residents Thursday about falling victim to roofing scams, saying his office has already received complaints.

Feuer said his office has only received several complaints so far this year, but he is putting out the warning because "we are at this moment where we can prevent ... complaints if we do our work collectively well.''

At a news conference at City Hall East, Feuer highlighted a recent case where an elderly couple paid an unlicensed contractor $5,900 for roof repairs that instead made the problem worse.

Feuer's office is seeking more than $95,000 in restitution for the couple. The man was convicted of contracting without a license and must perform community service and was placed on probation for three years.

Feuer said consumers should be wary of contractors who show up at their door unsolicited, ask for a large down payment in advance, or say they will do the work without a permit.

Numerous problems are associated with hiring unlicensed contractors, Feuer said, noting that they often are not bonded, typically do not have workers' compensation insurance and are frequently not trained to do the work.

Rick Lopes, chief of public affairs for the California State Licensing Board, said some scam artists will prey on elderly, physically infirm couples, make up a non-existent roof repair problem and then pretend to do the work before making off with an easy payment.

Lopes estimated there are 60,000 to 70,000 unlicensed contractors working in the state and said his office gets roughly 20,000 complaints per year, but he could not say how many are related to roofing scams.

With the state having been in a severe drought the last few years, the scams change, Lopes said. He pointed out that roughly a year ago, he and Feuer held a similar news conference to warn about scams related to the drought.

"The fact is there are going to be people out there (doing scams) no matter what's happening,'' Lopes said.
Police say a woman has been arrested in connection with a New Year's Day crash that killed her spouse, an off-duty Los Angeles police officer.

Simi Valley police say 25-year-old Alayna Monroe was arrested Thursday on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving. It wasn't immediately clear if she had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.

Police said Monroe was behind the wheel when she crashed into an Uber car shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 1.

Her spouse, LAPD Officer Heather Monroe, who was a passenger in the vehicle, was killed.

Police said last month that they believed one of the cars didn't stop at a red light.

Authorities say the Uber driver and a passenger in her car suffered injuries that weren't considering life threatening.
Neighborhood activists and elected officials have lined up on both sides of the debate for a controversial -- and sometimes confusing -- ballot measure.

We break down Measure S, on the ballot in the March 7 Los Angeles election, for you here.



What It Is: One of four city-wide measures up for vote on the ballot in the next election. Also known as the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative, Measure S would do the following:

Stop any new high-density construction projects (such as apartments) for the next two years

Prohibit "project-specific" changes that would create loopholes in the city of Los Angeles's General Plan for urban development

Require the city to complete studies of environmental impact of new projects rather than the developers behind the project.

Scroll down to read the full text.



What It Means: Basically, advocates of Measure S want to stop high-rises from being built in LA's neighborhoods, but opponents argue that real estate development is key to the prosperity of the city and of its overcrowded residents.



The city of LA maintains plans for individual communities governing height and density restrictions for most real estate projects. According to CurbedLA, 29 of 35 community plans are at least 15 years old  meaning out of date in the real estate world. Most developers have to seek special approval for their project through the city. This measure would put the brakes on high-profile projects, which typically are signs of a thriving economy and can provide jobs and tax revenue as well as more spaces for people to live in the second largest city in the nation. Approximately one-third of construction in Los Angeles would be affected.



When It's Up for a Vote: March 7, 2017  the same election in which the mayor, other city officials, and school district officials are on the ballot.



Who's Behind It: Measure S supporters have largely organized behind the Yes on S LA banners you may have seen on billboards around LA. The group's efforts, led by former LA Weekly editor Jill Stewart, are paid for by the Coalition to Preserve LA which is sponsored by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Foundation president Michael Weinstein has been involved in political advocacy campaigns before, such as the fight to require condom usage on adult film sets.



Weinstein and the AHF began organizing the Yes on S group in February 2016; the following month, a developer won City Council approval to build two residential high-rises next door to the foundation's headquarters, saying that the project was too tall and dense for its location. Weinstein told the LA Times that they "intend to to exhaust every legal avenue, including filing suit, to stop the Palladium towers." Other members of the Yes on S LA coalition include the Los Angeles Tenants Union, former LA mayor Richard Riordan, environmental advocates, and numerous homeowner associations and neighborhood councils.



What They Say: The language of the measure specifically addresses concerns about developers making political donations to elected officials to ensure city approval of their projects. Measure S supporters say these developments, intended to accommodate Los Angeles's growing population, will increase local traffic, ruin the character of neighborhoods, and contribute to the eviction of residents such as senior citizens and low-income Angelenos. They've been waging an aggressive public relations campaign, posting videos on social media and hosting events almost every week highlighting people affected by the real estate development.



"City leaders are approving luxury housing projects that my community can't even afford," said South LA resident Damien Goodmon in a Yes on S LA YouTube video.



Who Opposes It: The opposing group organized in response to the measure is paid for by the Coalition to Protect LA Neighborhoods, which says it gets the majority of its funding from CH Palladium LLC, the developer behind the project that incited Weinstein's legal battle. But it's also garnered support from a number of local officials such as Mayor Eric Garcetti, chambers of commerce, nonprofits like the United Way of LA, philanthropists like Eli Broad, urban planning professors, homeless advocates, both the Los Angeles County Democratic and Republican parties, and homeowners associations and neighborhood councils as well.



What They Say: Opponents fear that this two-year moratorium would significantly hurt the economy of the second largest city in the nation, contributing to an already severe housing shortage and blocking thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in taxes for education and parks. Los Angeles pays for public education via property taxes, so the more dollars there are in an area the more funding there are for the schools.

"If Measure S passes, if you think the housing crisis is bad now, it's going to get worse," Garcetti said at an event opposing Measure S. "Rents will rise even more quickly than they are today. Our strategy to move people from the streets into housing will be stuck."

According to an economic report on the Vote No on Measure S website, Measure S could cost over 12,000 jobs each year and $27 million in property tax revenue over the two years of the moratorium.



"Placing a ban on construction of residential development will result in higher rents throughout the city," said low-income housing developer Robin Hughes.



Official Summary of Measure S (What you'll see on the ballot):

"BUILDING MORATORIUM; RESTRICTIONS ON GENERAL PLAN AMENDMENTS; REQUIRED REVIEW OF GENERAL PLAN. INITIATIVE ORDINANCE S. Shall an ordinance amending City laws related to the General Plan, including to: 1) impose a two-year moratorium on 80 YES 81 NO projects seeking General Plan amendments or zone or height-district changes resulting in more intense land use, an increase in density or height, or a loss of zoned open space, agricultural or industrial areas, with exceptions including for affordable housing projects and projects for which vested rights have accrued; 2) prohibit geographic amendments to the General Plan unless the affected area has significant social, economic or physical identity (defined as encompassing an entire community or district plan area, specific plan area, neighborhood council area or at least 15 acres); 3) require systematic, public review of the General Plan every five years; 4) prohibit project applicants from completing environmental impact reports for the City; 5) require the City make findings of General Plan consistency for planning amendments, project approvals and permit decisions; and 6) prohibit certain parking variances; be adopted?"



The full text of the measure is available here.
An Iranian man's family reunited with hugs, tears and cheers at LAX Thursday after he became the first person allowed to return to the U.S. under a federal judge's ruling on President Donald Trump's travel ban.

A crowd of supporters sang "This Land is Your Land" as the 61-year-old Iranian immigrant embraced his family.

Ali Vayeghan, who had been waiting 12 years to emigrate to the U.S., became the first person to return to the U.S. as a result of court action since Trump's travel ban took effect, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

He was barred from entering the United States under President Donald Trump's travel ban, even though he had a valid visa.

The president's executive order restricted travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries, including Iran.

"We were all singing along and the LAPD was singing along too, and I thought it was beautiful," said Vayeghan's niece Marjan K. Vayghan as she awaited her uncle at the airport.

Marjan and her father came to Los Angeles International Airport last Friday to pick up Ali. But the day he arrived was the same day the president's travel ban went into effect, touching off confusion and protests at countries around the country, including LAX.

Vayeghan boarded a flight a day earlier from Tehran. The ACLU and immigration attorney Stacy Tolchin fought for Vayeghan's safe return to the U.S. after he was detained overnight at LAX and sent to Dubai Monday.

Ali has a green card, which he finally received after applying 12 years ago. He told his brother and attorneys that when he arrived at LAX last week, Customs and Border Protection personnel pressured him to sign documents revoking his visa and then forcibly carried him back onto a plane bound for Dubai.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee issued an order instructing federal officials to transport Vayeghan from Dubai and admit him to the U.S. under the terms of his visa. She reasoned that Vayeghan would face "irreparable harm" if deported to Iran.

The judge's order allowing him back into the U.S. arrived minutes too late when he was already on the plane.

Trump's executive order barring people from Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria for 90 days has resulted in travelers being detained, sent back from the United States or stranded in other countries. Vayeghan was among dozens of U.S. visa holders who were detained at airports since Trump signed the order, according to The Associated Press.

Then came Thursday when Ali was finally on his way back to LAX.

The agency provided a photo of a smiling Vayeghan holding his travel documents at an airport in Yerevan, Armenia.

"We're just so overwhelmed by this level of love and amazingness," said niece Marjan Vayghan as she waited for her uncle at LAX. "Last Friday, we felt like the loneliest three people in the whole world. There's just so much love. This is the city I know."

As Ali arrived, cheers rang out as crowds of supporters, family and Mayor Eric Garcetti greeted him.

"He says this is humanity, this is what human rights looks like and he's shocked, humbled and honored by it," his niece said.

Ali had no comments on President Trump or the travel ban, only saying he's happy to be reunited with his family. His wife and son live in Indiana. His wife also has a green card and his son is a U.S. citizen.

NBC4's Jonathan Lloyd and City News Service contributed to this report.
A federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered the U.S. government to allow people holding immigrant visas from seven majority-Muslim nations into the United States despite President Trump's executive order banning them.

In a temporary restraining order issued late Tuesday, Judge Andre Birotte Jr. ordered the government not to cancel any validly obtained immigrant visas or bar anyone from the seven nations holding them from entering the U.S.

But it was unclear whether the order will have any effect. The State Department ordered all visas from the seven countries revoked on Friday, and the government has maintained that orders similar to Birotte's do not apply because the visas are no longer valid.

The State Department declined comment Wednesday on Birotte's order, saying it does not comment on pending litigation.

Stacey Gartland, a San Francisco attorney who represents a 12-year-old Yemeni girl whose parents and siblings are U.S. citizens living in California, acknowledged Wednesday that her client and hundreds of others with immigrant visas still may not be allowed in the U.S. under Birotte's order, but said she's optimistic.

"This court order is a major victory and definitely gives us a path forward," Gartland said. "It's just a matter of getting it into the right hands of someone who'll obey the court order."

Julie Goldberg, the Los Angeles-based immigration lawyer who filed the lawsuit that prompted Birotte's order, is trying to arrange flights for dozens of Yemeni citizens who have immigrant visas and are stranded in the tiny African nation of Djibouti, including the 12-year-old girl Gartland represents.

Gartland said two major airlines have turned them down but they are trying to work with smaller airlines that will follow Birotte's order.

"These are all children, parents and the spouses of U.S. citizens," Goldberg told The Associated Press from the Horn of Africa nation, emphasizing that those stranded are not refugees, though Yemen is engulfed in civil war. They received visas last week, she said.

Mohamed Mosleh Jeran is one of the many waiting. After his family's home was blown up in Yemen's conflict, he and his wife and two young children spent two years in Djibouti. Last month, their younger son died during what should have been routine surgery.

Last Thursday, the family received their U.S. visas and looked forward to joining Jeran's father, a U.S. citizen, in New York City.

But Trump the next day announced his executive order suspending immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries. On Saturday, Jeran's family was turned away at the Turkish Airlines check-in counter, Goldberg said. A spokesman for the airline did not respond to a call for comment.

"Finally I am leaving Djibouti, but in my heart I was upset, I lost one of my kids," Jeran recalled to the AP. "But what can you do? This is life. I was happy my wife and son were leaving Djibouti, finally." But when they were turned away, "my wife, she was like a child, crying, my son, too.'"

Jeran has been accepted to the University of Toledo to begin a masters' program in March, Goldberg said.

"It's super frustrating," she said. "They're running out of money. Djibouti is very expensive. They can't go back to Yemen, they would be killed."

Yemen has been gripped by conflict since 2014. A Saudi-led coalition, backed by the United States, has been carrying out an air campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels for nearly two years. Many Yemenis have fled on boats across the Bab al-Mandab strait to Djibouti or other Horn of Africa countries.

In the United States, relatives of the stranded Yemenis are anguished.

Esam Molhi and his wife, both green card holders from Yemen, now fear leaving for Djibouti to reunite with their 3-year-old daughter because Trump's order might keep them from returning home.

The girl was born in Yemen, and the U.S. Embassy there refused to let her fly with her mother to join Molhi in the U.S., Goldberg said. The family has been pursuing a U.S. visa for the girl since then.

The child is staying in a rented room in Djibouti with her Yemeni grandfather, Molhi told the AP from his home in San Francisco, where he works as an Uber driver. He has not yet seen her in person, and his wife has not seen her since she was a month and a half old.

"This is unfair," Molhi said of Trump's order. "I want him to feel as I feel, you know?"

The U.S. Embassy in Djibouti has posted an urgent notice online telling people, including those with dual nationalities, from the countries affected  Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen  not to schedule visa appointments or even attend existing visa appointments.
Thursday, sailors from both the Unites States and Cuba competed in an annual regatta race from Miami to Havana. Friday, both sides worry if the recently revived battle will continue.

With President Donald Trump saying he is only willing to continue restoring relations with the island nation if a better deal is made, sailor from both sides wonder if 2017 may be the last edition.

"We're optimistic. We believe that at least in this first semester we will be able to develop all our events and that nothing should happen (regarding US and Cuban relations), said Jose Miguel Diaz, an official with the Ernest Hemingway Nautical Club in Havana.

The event  organized with boating clubs from Key West and other areas  resumed in 2015 for the first time in over a decade as former President Barack Obama looked to thaw the previously cold relations that had been existing since the 1960s.

Business is still restricted between the counties as the longstanding embargo still exist. The Trump administration and some Republican members of Congress have said they will continue working to keep those restrictions in place unless a new deal is worked out.
A Florida babysitter is facing a murder charge after the infant she was watching died after being thrown across a room, authorities said.

Nora Boles, 21, was arrested Thursday on a first-degree murder charge in the death of 11-month-old John William Smith, Marion County Sheriff's Office officials said.

Boles, of Ocala, was being held without bond Friday. Attorney information wasn't immediately available.

Sheriff's office officials said Smith's mother had dropped him off with Boles on her way to work back on September 5. Later that day, Boles communicated with the mother that Smith wouldn't wake up and was only partially responsive.

The mother took Smith to a nearby hospital for treatment for a head injury and the baby died the next day. Hospital staff alerted authorities that due to the severity of the head injury, the possibility of abuse was high.

Officials said Boles' statements to detectives changed several times during the investigation. She later admitted she became frustrated with the boy and had thrown him across a room, causing the head injury, officials said.
NBC 6 anchor Jackie Nespral participated in Friday's daily White House press briefing using the Trump Administration's new "Skype seats."

Nespral was the only South Florida reporter sitting in the virtual press room conference seats, and participated from the NBC 6 newsroom in Miramar.

Nespral thanked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer for the opportunity and asked a two-part question on relations between the United States and Cuba.

"Miami as you know is home to the largest Cuban-American community in the country and during the campaign President Trump talked about his discontent with the warming of US-Cuba relations implemented by President Obama, and in the last days of his administration he ended the wet foot, dry foot policy leaving thousands of Cubans in limbo, so my question is two-fold: A. Has there been any contact between your administration and the Cuban government? and B. Are there any plans to change the current policy right now?" Nespral asked.

"We are in the midst of a full review of all US policies toward Cuba, the president is committed to an agenda of ensuring human rights for all citizens throughout the world and as we review those policies in Cuba, that will be forefront in their policy discussions but there is nothing that we have on that front at this point," Spicer responded.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott weighed in on the Trump administration's stance on Cuba. He tweeted "We need to implement a policy with Cuba that supports Democracy & doesn't coddle dictators. Glad @POTUS is committed to human rights in Cuba."

Nespral is the host of NBC 6s local political program, "Impact," and has covered numerous presidential conventions, debates and inaugurations, including last month's inauguration of President Donald J. Trump.
The North Miami police commander involved in the controversial shooting of an unarmed man wants his job back. Emile Hollant spoke publicly for the first time and exclusively to NBC 6 Thursday.

Charles Kinsey, a black behavioral therapist, was lying on his back when he was shot in the leg by the Jonathan Aledda on July 18, 2016. Video of the shooting went viral and captured the nation's attention.

Commander Emile Hollant was in charge of the scene. One of the radio transmissions released in the investigation revealed that Hollant told dispatch Kinsey was armed. He was suspended without pay after Councilman Scott Galvin said Hollant violated public trust.

Now, Hollant has put the City of North Miami on notice that he will take them to court to get his old job back. His attorney says an official report shows the commander did nothing wrong.

NBC 6 obtained the State Attorney's findings on Hollant and it turns out that Hollant went to his patrol unit to get his binoculars when the shot rang out. The report says: "Commander Hollant was thus, not physically present when Officer Aledda fired his weapon nor did he witness the actual shooting. We conclude that Commander Hollant did not lie, and that there was no intent by Commander Hollant to mislead or obstruct investigators or command staff officers regarding his involvement in the police shooting."

The finding is the reason why Hollant is willing to sue now to return to uniform.

I have served the community for the last 17 years and I really want to go back to work. But, I have to go through this process. But, I can't talk. As much as I would like to talk to you about this, I can't, said Hollant.

His attorney is Michael Joseph, Esq.

I think they jumped the gun and they needed somebody to fall and for a lack of a better way of saying it, the closest thing to an excuse, said Joseph.

Hollants attorney says the police commander has been defamed.

You're a good cop. You love your community and all of a sudden the next day you've been branded as some bad example dirty cop, said Joseph.

Councilman Galvin told NBC 6 Thursday that another report from the state attorney still has to be completed.

One is still on going and that's the one that's going to be key in deciding what to do next, said Galvin.

The City of North Miami said Thursday Hollant is being paid while on leave now and that it hasn't completed its investigation into his actions that day to see if any of the city's rules were violated. Its also waiting on the State Attorney to finish its report into the entire matter, not just Hollant.
Border patrol agents on the lookout for the body of a 16-year-old boy swept away from his migrant family while crossing the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, brought a still-unidentified body to shore this week -- the first person to apparently drown this year on this stretch of the river.

Eleven died in the mighty river in 2016  only five of those who died were Mexicans.

But in the Mexico border town of Piedras Negras, the fear of death is not deterring Julio Lopez.

He has already tried to swim across the river into the United States once.

It's too big a river, Lopez, 42, told NBC 6 Investigator Tony Pipitone. Too many dead people there, it's not easy.

Lopez may be what President Donald Trump envisions when he speaks of bad hombres down there. The Salvadoran was deported from Missouri three years ago after being convicted of domestic violence.

His wife and children are waiting for him to return to Missouri.

He awaits his chance while getting help at a church in Piedras Negras.

I need to go there, he said. I need to go see my kids.

Lopez says hes waiting until the river goes down to make his daring cross.

Nobody will stop us, Lopez said. I'm not going to stop. If Im dead, Im dead. I don't care.

UNDOCUMENTED IN MIAMI

Julio Calderon was 16 when he made it across the Rio Grande.

If we had stayed in Honduras, I don't think we would even be alive right now, Calderon said.

The now 27-year-old man lives in Miami as an undocumented student going to FIU. Hes undocumented but hes not a criminal. Still hes under a deportation order for failing to appear in immigration court.

He doesnt think a wall on the border would have prevented him from making the perilous journey.

Whatever it takes and that's why you see people die every day, he said.

Calderon says he didnt know how to swim when he crossed the river. Grief, sympathy and perhaps a hint of survivors guilt sweeps over him when he thinks about those who dont make it across.

You hope you're going to make it and once you make it you see the images of the people who were left behind, youre just thankful you made it, he said through tears.

SMUGGLING DRUGS

As President Trump calls for massive spending on border security from a wall to more border patrol and deportation officers, it puts additional attention on life and death on the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

One reason for the additional measures is to reduce the flow of illegal drugs. The Mexican Cartels send it across the border in many different ways.

Some gets intercepted at the border.

Just this week, 13 pounds of heroin was confiscated from one womans car, a Mexican man driving a Volkswagen across a bridge was caught stashing 19 pounds of heroin, an American man riding his bicycle across a bridge was found with 3 and a half pounds of heroin and small bindles of the drug was found inside a mans bowels.

At the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Weston, intelligence analysts like Justin Miller know heroin exports from Mexico to the United States are increasing.

For one, the Mexicans have gotten into the market, Miller said. They're seeing there's an expanded base in the United States who wants this product.

Miller, a DEA field intelligence manager, was based for years on the Texas border.

Would a border wall stem the flow of drugs into the United States and South Florida from Mexico? NBC 6s Tony Pipitone reports from Laredo, Texas.

He says the Mexican cartels are eager to feed Americas drug habit. Cartel territories have expanded from its traditional territories in the southwestern U.S. and now serve territory west of the Mississippi, including south Florida.

We see a lot of heroin coming through ports of entry, Miller said.

By ports of entry, he means the bridges over the river. And most often brought in passenger vehicles.

Its one reason why Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber doesnt think a wall will prevent heroin from getting in to the U.S.

People can just cross in many ways, in their persons, in their shoes or whatever, Schmerber said.

His family helped settle the county seat, Eagle Pass, in the 1860s. The town is now connected to Mexico over the Rio Grande by two bridges.

Sheriff Schmerber spent 26 years with the border patrol before becoming sheriff in 2012.

He knows how creative smugglers are.

They could cross them in a corpse or whatever, that died, Schmerber said.

He believes even if a wall is built, the drug smugglers will find a way across.
President Donald Trump is spending his first weekend at his Florida estate since taking office two weeks ago.

Trump arrived Friday afternoon at the airport in West Palm Beach and was greeted by his wife, first lady Melania Trump, before the short drive to his Mar-a-Lago estate in nearby Palm Beach.

Trump traveled with a handful of staff, including chief of staff Reince Priebus.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer says Trump will spend the weekend meeting with advisers to plan "another big week of action on behalf of the American people."

While Trump will attract attention from supporters and those who hope to catch a glimpse of the Commander-in-Chief, protesters are also expected to come out  wanting to send a message to the President after recent executive orders that have proven to spark sharp opinions on both sides of each issue.

Demonstrators are expected to gather outside the pricey club Saturday. Theyre marching against Trumps moratorium on refugees from seven primarily Islamic countries and other issues.

Trump is defending his controversial executive orders, saying he wants people to come into America, but wants people to "love us and to love our values, not to hate us and to hate our values."

More than 2,000 people have registered to attend the Palm Beach protest on Facebook.

In advance of Trump's visit, the U.S. Coast Guard has re-activated the water security zones surround Mar-a-Lago when the First Family will be in South Florida.
A dive team has found the body of a Canadian filmmaker who went missing while diving in the Florida Keys earlier this week, U.S. Coast Guard officials said Friday.

Officials said the Key Largo Volunteer Fire Department dive team found the body of 37-year-old Rob Stewart, who went missing Tuesday after diving to film sharks in the area near Alligator Reef.

The body was reportedly found at a depth of 220 feet off the Keys, officials said.

https://twitter.com/USCGSoutheast/status/827650042341236737

Confirmation is still pending from the medical examiner, officials said.

At a press conference earlier Friday, Coast Guard officials said they were suspending the search at sundown.

"Our hearts and prayers go out to Mr. Stewart's family and friends, especially his parents Brian and Sandy, and the Canadian community during this very difficult time," Coast Guard Capt. Jeffrey Janszen said in a statement. "The decision to suspend a search is always difficult and is made with great care and consideration."

Stewart and three others had just finished a dive at the wreck of the Queen of Nassau, about 220 feet below the surface. Stewart resurfaced briefly then disappeared.

The search has been by boat and by air and has covered some 6,000 square miles, officials said.

Coast Guard crews were joined by officers from the U.S. Navy, FWC and the Monroe County Sheriffs Office in the search.
Shes a billionaire from Michigan who has spent years and millions of dollars promoting charter schools and denigrating public education in that state. Now Betsy Devos is a senate vote away from becoming the Secretary of Education, alarming those who think shes unqualified for the job.

Karla Hernandez-Mats, with the United Teachers of Dade, opposes Devos confirmation.

This is not about party lines, this is about doing whats right for children and our children deserve better than this, said Hernandez-Mats.

The United Teachers of Dade joined the National Teachers Unions in criticizing Devos when she showed little knowledge of educational policy at her senate confirmation hearings. Devos refused to say guns dont belong in schools, drawing ridicule for citing a school in Wyomings bear country.

Two Republican Senators have said they will not support Devos, who has never worked in a school system and supports spending taxpayer dollars on private school vouchers.

Im worried about funding. Im worried about a leader who has no education background trying to make education policy on things she has no knowledge of, said Mats.

Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho says if Devos is confirmed, she needs to educate herself about the nations public schools.

I think Secretary Devos needs to have a greater level of interaction with greater America, where 90% of kids are taught with teachers and principals across the country to make a more hopeful perspective of the reality of education in America. It is not as dark as some people paint it. It needs to be improved, but it is through collaboration, not accusation, that we get that done, said Superintendent Carvalho.
The Miami-Dade School Board confirmed Thursday the death of a student who was found unresponsive at Thomas Jefferson Middle School.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue responded to the school located on Northwest 147th Street and 5th Avenue just after 2 p.m.

The unresponsive 12-year-old boy was rushed to Jackson North Hospital where he later died.

Trained personal on campus used two defibrillators in an attempt to revive the student, officials said.

The cause of death is unknown. School officials have not identified the student.

The school board released a statement regarding the 12-year-old's death:

It is with a heavy heart that we mourn the passing of one of our students today. We offer his grieving family our deepest sympathies. Our priority is, and will continue to be, the safety and wellbeing of our students. As such, all Miami-Dade County Public Schools have trained personnel and resources to assist in cases involving medical emergencies. Preliminary information indicates that school staff, including an on-site contracted nurse, equipped with two defibrillators responded to the student and began administering CPR. Once fire rescue personnel arrived, they assumed care of the child. Additional details are not available as this sad incident is under investigation. Our entire school community extends its thoughts and prayers to all who knew and cared for this child.

The school's assistant principal has requested a crisis team to campus to assist students and staff affected by the sudden death.
About $175,000 worth of jewelry and property was stolen from rapper Nicki Minaj's home in Beverly Hills, police say.

The burglary occurred sometime between Nov. 24 and Jan. 24, according to Officer Liliana Preciado of the Los Angeles Police Department. Preciado said police were notified on Jan. 27.

Police noted the estimated $175,000 worth of items stolen could change because police had not received an itemized list of what was taken.

No suspect description was available Thursday, but Preciado said officers were working to obtain surveillance footage.

NBC4 reached out to representation for Minaj for comment and had not received a response early Thursday afternoon.

Anyone with information about the incident was asked to call the Los Angeles Police Department at 1-877-527-3247.
As White House immigration policies thrust U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) into a higher-profile role at airports and the southern border, the agency is giving NBC 4 New York an exclusive look inside a high-tech facility that will train thousands of agents and officers this year.

"What we teach here is, I would say, the most important in all of law enforcement, said Chris Lein, acting deputy director of the Advanced Training Center in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. "CBP officers and agents have one of the most dangerous jobs in the entire world."

NBC 4 New York found there's no talk of politics at the training center, only the mission. This year, that will mean training more than 6,000 officers and agents -- many from other law enforcement agencies -- in everything from use of force to trade enforcement.

"We start with law and policy to make sure they have a solid foundation," said Lein. We want to keep our officers safe and agents safe but we also want to make sure that we protect the public and use our authority in the way it was intended to be.

While lessons start in the classroom and include conventional training exercises like how to physically subdue a suspect, officers and agents can also drill in a mock, full-size border crossing and an airport terminal complete with a working luggage carousel.

"The more immersion it is the better education process you're going to get out of it," said Assistant Director Pete Lobur.

To make that happen, CBP has also built a state-of-the-art use of force simulator. It allows trainees to experience more than 120 virtual reality scenarios -- from a subway meltdown to a terrorist ambush -- that test their skills.

New scenarios can also be created in the simulator as the world changes.

"If we know we have a problem out there and it's in a particular area, this system gives is the ability to create that problem in that area in a simulated environment," said Lobur. "Now our agents can work and train for it before they experience it in real life."
What to Know The I-Team and Telemundo 47 Investiga sent surveys to hundreds of people serving time for robbery in New York and New Jersey prisons

A whopping 70 percent of muggers were always or sometimes under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they committed robberies

Surprisingly, a majority of muggers didn't have a preference as to the sex of their targets, though 43 percent said they targeted men

David Solano figures he's mugged more than 100 people in his life, and he does not particularly care who you are - he's probably going to get you if he wants you.

My favorite target was anyone alone, said Solano, who is currently serving a 25-to-life prison sentence in Stormville, New York. The 48-year-old convict says hes equal opportunity when it comes to his victims.

It didnt matter whether it was a man or a woman, it was just basically whether they were alone.

In an unprecedented crime prevention project, the I-Team and Telemundo 47 Investiga sent surveys to hundreds of convicted robbers in New York and New Jersey the last week of December, asking them questions about how they pick their targets and what you can do to avoid becoming a victim.

About 55 percent of the dozens who responded to the questionnaire said their targets sex made no difference, but appearances were most important.

Flashy was a popular answer for muggers when asked to describe their ideal person to rob. Flash means cash, they said: designer jacket or Rolex watch are targets on your back according to 45 percent of muggers, who said nice clothing or jewelry immediately caught their eye.

Those who look defenseless make good victims; 23 percent of muggers said they targeted people who looked lost or drunk because they were easy to overpower.

A mugger thought Elyse Rosales was a vulnerable target when she came home to her Harlem apartment one night. She says someone in the building let him in before he followed her, threw her down the stairs and stole her cellphone.

I heard the buzzer go off and someone in my apartment building actually let him into the building, she said. When he first grabbed me, initially I knew he was gonna mug me. The entire time I just remember mostly I was screaming, 'Help!

Most survey respondents said they were looking to steal cash. Jewelry came in a close second, followed by cellphones. A majority said they preferred to strike between 6 p.m. and midnight.

If youre attacked by a mugger, its best not to fight back. Mayco Castro, a convicted robber serving a nine-year bid in Dutchess County, fired four shots at neighbors who tried to apprehend him after he stole jewelry, a cellphone and a strong box from his victims apartment on 190th Street and Broadway.

It was going to be my life or their life, he said. The victim could have been murdered, he could have been dead."

Like Castro, 70 percent of the hardened felons who responded carry a weapon and nearly half have used them during an attack. But if you do decide to take matters in your own hands, muggers candidly told the I-Team a kick between the legs or jabs to the eyes or the throat are effective ways to ward them off.

Bottom line, muggers say, "Just give it up. Everything can be replaced, but life cannot."

While more survey respondents struck in the bustling city than in the suburbs, most were impartial. The street was the most common place for them to attack in the city, followed by inside or outside a building and on the subway, where muggers said they most often looked for victims in a train car or at the entrance or exit to a station. In the suburbs, muggers said they were most likely to strike as victims entered their homes, but many said they targeted people on the street or in driveways as well. And most convicted muggers responding to the I-Team/Telemundo survey reported attacking with no prior verbal exchange. Those who did speak said it was often to ask for money.

The most common reason they gave for an attack? To pay the bills.

While residents may believe home surveillance equipment is a deterrent to robbers, 74 percent of survey respondents said it never stopped them.

This survey is the first-of-its-kind joint project between NBC 4 New York's I-Team and Telemundo 47 Investiga. Tune in to NBC 4 New York at 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 2 and Friday, Feb. 3 for the exclusive four-part series.
What to Know Hundreds of thousands of people across the nation have protested President Trump's executive order since it was issued last Friday

JFK Airport, where several people were detained, was the site of a number of protests over the weekend

On Thursday, a group of Yemeni business owners shut down their delis, grocery stores and bodegas across NYC to protest the order

Faith leaders, immigrants and local advocates gathered at John F. Kennedy International Airport Friday for an interfaith action and prayer demonstration against President Trump's executive order imposing travel restrictions on people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

About 150 people showed up for the peaceful protest and prayer at JFK's Terminal 4, an event organized by the New York Immigration Coalition and the Islamic Leadership Council (Majlis Ash-shura) of Metropolitan New York.

Muslims and immigrants could be heard chanting "No ban, no wall, this is our New York!" throughout the airport Friday afternoon.

Protesters later took to the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, where they were joined by lawmakers.

"The unity that the people have shown and the support for those touched by the Executive Orders made it clear that we are together defending justice, equality and religious freedom," the coalition said in a statement.

Representatives of the New York Immigration Coalition and other legal counseling organizations have responded to JFK en masse to offer translating services, advice and assistance since last week's presidential decree prompted the detention of dozens of people across the country, including several at the Queens hub.

Demonstrator Hadiya Abdel Rahman works with refugees. For her, the ban is personal: her mother, who is a green card holder, faces uncertainty as she awaits her return to the U.S.

"My mom is currently out of the country and a green card holder," she said. "The executive order is flip-floppy, so it's very stressful for our family to figure out if my mom comes back into the country."

Today's protest is a stark contrast to last weekend's less restrained demonstrations at airports across the country. Diana Dinh gets emotional when she thinks of the families detained.

"It's deeply personal as Americans to show sustained support for our community and send a strong message to the White House  this is un-American," she said.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi interpreter landed at the airport with his family on Friday, one week after they were pulled off a plane because of President Trump's immigration order. The administration reversed course and said interpreters who supported the U.S. military could come to America.

Munther Alaskry and his family spent more than five hours doing paperwork after landing at JFK Airport, but he said they were treated very well.

The airport's Terminal 4 was the site of protests through the weekend.



Hundreds of thousands of people across America have engaged in protests since Trump signed the executive order last Friday afternoon establishing a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. for immigrants and refugees from Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. The order indefinitely bans Syrian refugees from entering the United States.

On Thursday, a group of Yemeni business owners shut down their delis, grocery stores and bodegas across New York City for eight hours in protest of the executive order. Many rallied at Brooklyn Borough Hall Thursday evening, waving U.S. and Yemen flags and chanting, "No ban, no wall, N-Y-C for all."
What to Know Jersey City is officially joining cities across the U.S. as a "sanctuary city"

The cities don't cooperate with federal immigration officials working to identify and arrest people who are in the U.S. illegally

President Trump has vowed to strip federal funds from the cities; New York City stands to lose the most, about $701 million

The mayor of Jersey City plans to sign an executive order re-affirming the citys so-called sanctuary city status at the risk of losing federal funding and support.

Mayor Steven M. Fulop will join the City Council and immigration advocates Friday as he signs the executive order, which will outline a detailed policy for the citys police department and other city agencies who work with immigrant communities.

Lawmakers in sanctuary cities dont cooperate with federal immigration officials working to identify and arrest those who enter the U.S. illegally.

By signing the executive order, which was drafted with help from immigration advocates and the ACLU, Jersey City joins other cities in New Jersey like Newark and Passaic as a sort of safe haven for undocumented immigrants.

The order puts the city in direct conflict with President Donald Trump, who has signed executive orders tightening immigration laws, including an order that strips sanctuary cities of federal funds.

The order also pits the city against Gov. Chris Christie, who has vowed to punish cities in the state that harbor undocumented immigrants.

Nearly 270,000 immigrants and refugees have entered the U.S. over the past 10 years from seven countries that President Trump named in the travel ban he announced last week. The ban sparked widespread protests last weekend, including in New Jersey and New York.

The Jersey City mayors office says that 40 percent of its residents are foreign-born.

New York is among the six states that have accepted the most immigrants and refugees from the countries in Trump's travel ban, but thousands more have landed in less populated states like Maine, Utah and Nebraska.

Trump has already signed an executive order to withhold federal grant money from sanctuary cities, a move that has the support of Gov. Christie.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has vowed to fight Trump's executive order blocking federal grants to sanctuary cities.

De Blasio says that instead of filling its stated purpose of increasing public safety, the executive order would undermine it by damaging police and community relations, and putting cuts first and foremost on the NYPD.

Other sanctuary cities across the country have also vowed to fight the White House, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Washington, D.C.

Of Trump's executive order, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last month that "we're going to strip federal grant money from the sanctuary states and cities that harbor illegal immigrants. The American people are no longer going to have to be forced to subsidize this disregard for our laws."
Chaos erupted at NYU when controversial personality Gavin McInnes arrived to speak Thursday evening, with angry protesters coming to blows, people getting arrested, and McInnes himself getting hit with pepper-spray.

McInnes, a conservative actor, comedian and co-founder of Vice Media (he severed ties with the company in 2008), was invited to speak at the Kimmel Center on campus by the NYU College Republican group, according to the student blog NYU Local.

His appearance sparked a protest by other students, including the NYU Anti-Fascists, who said McInnes "has a long track record of using incendiary language to attract media attention and frenzy."

McInnes is the founder of a group called the "Proud Boys." He dubs himself a "western chauvinist," uses racial epithets in his essays and has argued that women make less money because they are less ambitious than men.

Protesters began gathering and chanting outside the building before McInnes arrived, and when he showed up, they began cursing and shoving, video posted to social media shows.

"There was a good deal of protesting and provocation," NYU spokesman John Beckman said.

A fight broke out among the people who were gathered outside, though it's not clear who they were. McInnes, meanwhile, was hit with pepper spray, according to Beckman.

"I'm dumbfounded that NYU would invite somebody who is a hate speaker. He is a fascist," Tamara Fine said.

But one student who went to attend the event said protesters took things too far.

"We just wanted to come and listen to the speaker," the student said. "As soon as we got here, a bunch of individuals came, tried to Mace us, tried to punch us several times. I've been called a Nazi."

McInnes went on into the building and carried on with the event, but when protesters began streaming into the room and shouting over him. At one point McInnes said he was "relieved" his attackers outside the school "were not Muslim." He later insulted the school's head of student affairs and then after about a half-hour, abruptly left.

"The decision to end the event when he did was his own," Beckman told The Associated Press. "Moreover, within the student center - to which only those with NYU IDs were admitted - there was no violence and no arrests."

Beckman said there was no violence inside the building or at the event, but video on Periscope and Twitter shows heated scuffles between protesters and police outside. [Warning: Graphic language in Twitter video linked above]

Video showed police vans filling up with protesters. Police said 11 people were arrested on charges including criminal mischief and disorderly conduct. No students were arrested.

McInnes said on Twitter: "Thanks for asking if I'm OK guys. I was sprayed with pepper spray but being called a Nazi burned way more."

The visit came a day after another controversial conservative's planned speech prompted clashes at a university on the West Coast.

Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos was unable to speak at the University of California, Berkeley Wednesday amid protests that turned violent. President Donald Trump suggested federal funds could be withheld from the school if Berkeley "does not allow free speech and practices violence on innocent people with a different point of view."

Trump tweeted about protests again Friday morning, saying "Professional anarchists, thugs and paid protesters are proving the point of the millions of people who voted to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!"

NYU College Republican President Elena Hatib had said of the club's decision to invite McInnes, "Even though I dont personally agree with everything he says, I think he brings up interesting conversation topics, especially for NYU and the current campus culture."

She said the club is interested in hearing his opinions on the recent election, the so-called culture wars, campus censorship.

"Students need to recognize that our members dont always agree with what he says or many of his views, but we believe its important to preserve free speech on campus," Hatib wrote, adding that "people need to know hes also a comedian and you cant take everything [he says] too seriously."

A rhetoric professor at Hofstra believes the heated debates could continue for awhile.

"You know, there's a lot of dissatisfaction, particularly among millenials. A lot of it came out in the campaign with support for Bernie Sanders," MaryAnne Trasciatti said. "People have really strong ideas, and they're increasingly feeling empowered to express them, on both sides."
What to Know Sarah Stern vanished from her Neptune City home the afternoon of Dec. 2

Her fully operational vehicle was found on the side of the Route 35 Bridge in Belmar; investigators found no evidence in the water

The young woman's body still hasn't been found

Investigators returned to a New Jersey river Friday to continue their search for the body of Sarah Stern, the 19-year-old woman who was allegedly killed and thrown off a bridge after a botched robbery at her home in early December.

Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Gramiccioni, who joined law enforcement at the Route 35 Bridge in Belmar, said the search would be difficult, but investigators were hopeful for resolution.

"The search of the Shark River continues as we partner with the State Police and we hope to locate the remains of Sarah Ster," he said. It is possible due to oceanic currents and tides that her remains might have been swept out of the river into the Atlantic. But we are hoping for a miracle."

The search to locate Stern's remains is expected to continue into the weekend.

A day earlier, his office announced the arrests of two 19-year-old men in connection with Stern's death. One, a childhood friend named Liam McAtasney, is accused of strangling the aspiring artist. The other, Preston Taylor, is accused of helping McAtasney get rid of the body.

Prosecutors say Taylor was also a longtime acquaintance of Stern. All three lived in Neptune City. Gramiccioni would not go into detail Friday on what evidence his office has against the defendants.

Divers and helicopter units first scoured the Shark River in early December after finding Stern's fully operational car parked on the shoulder of the southbound lanes of the bridge, the keys still in the ignition, Dec. 3. It was the day after she had last been seen. Many assumed she had jumped off. Prosecutors say some had hoped she simply ran away after withdrawing thousands of dollars from her bank account.

A Crime Stoppers tip led police to McAtasney as their suspect, alleging he somehow knew about the cash withdrawal and came to Stern's home to rob her. McAtasney is charged with felony murder and other crimes in Stern's death; Taylor is accused of hindering apprehension and concealment of human remains, among other offenses. Both men appeared in court Thursday; it wasn't clear if either entered a plea.



No one answered the door at their respective homes Friday.

Stern's father, Michael, was in court for the initial hearing. An attorney asked media to respect the grieving father's privacy, and said Michael Stern was feeling "overwhelmed, as any parent would be."

Stern is a graduate of Neptune High School, where she played softball and was a member of the swim team. She went to Brookdale Community College for a year, where she studied art and TV production.
A top aide to President Donald Trump has cited a 2011 "massacre" in Kentucky that never happened as a reason why the administration's temporary ban on immigration from seven Muslim-majority nations is necessary.

During an interview with MSNBC's Chris Matthews that aired Thursday, Kellyanne Conway defended Trump's executive order on immigration last week by saying that former President Barack Obama instituted a similar policy for Iraqi refugees in 2011.

"President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and they were the masterminds between the Bowling Green massacre. Most people don't know that because it didn't get covered," Conway said.

Conway is referring to a tightening of security checks for entry into the U.S. after the May 2011 arrest of two men on charges of plotting to send weapons and money to al-Qaida operatives waging an insurgency in their native Iraq. Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, were mistakenly admitted to the U.S. as Iraqi refugees in 2009 and resettled in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

On Twitter Friday morning, Conway said she was referring to the two men arrested in Kentucky and meant to call them terrorists.

"On @hardball @NBCNews @MSNBC I meant to say "Bowling Green terrorists" as reported here," she wrote and included a 2013 article that mentioned the two men.

Calling the Obama administration's actions a "ban" on Iraqi refugees is misleading. A formal ban wasn't announced by that administration, though there was a dramatic decline in the number of Iraqis allowed to move the U.S. in 2011. Officials at the time cited an enhanced security clearance process for delaying Iraqi visa applications.

Alwan and Hammadi are in prison after pleading guilty. They were never accused of plotting to launch attacks inside the U.S.

Shortly after Conway's comment, a parody website soliciting donations for the "victims and families directly affected by the" now famous fake tragedy was established.

"We all still carry the vivid memories of what horrors occurred at Bowling Green, but some still relive those moments everyday as they work to rebuild a community torn apart," a quote on The Bowling Green Massacre Victims Fund site states.

While it is unclear who or what group is behind the website, visitors attempting to make donations are redirected to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) donation page. Following Trump's immigration order, the ACLU has seen a surge in donations and memberships.

Conway's comments have also made fodder for jokes among social media users. "Bowling Green massacre" quickly became a top trending topic on Twitter with a flurry of tweets mourning the nonexistent victims.

Chelsea Clinton even jabbed Conway on Twitter, writing:

"Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack ...or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks."

Very grateful no one seriously hurt in the Louvre attack ...or the (completely fake) Bowling Green Massacre. Please don't make up attacks.  Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) February 3, 2017

The mayor of Bowling Green, Bruce Wilkerson, said in a statement Friday that he appreciated Conway's clarification and understands live-TV interviews can lead to mishaps.

I understand during a live interview how one can misspeak and we appreciate the clarification, he said.
Some 40 families currently detained at a Berks County detention center could finally face immigration hearings after waiting more than a year to appear before a judge.



The Berks County Residential Center (BCRC), located about an hour outside of Philadelphia in Leesport, holds 77 asylum-seeking women and their children predominantly from the Golden Triangle region of Central America -- comprising El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. The region has been riddled with extreme violence and poverty in recent years.

Some of the youngest detainees at the BCRC have spent half their lives in detention, according to multiple attorneys working with the families. Activists and lawyers worry that conditions are not suitable for children -- they are woken up every 15 minutes during bed checks, do not have access to home-cooked meals and can only go outside with guard supervision.

Last year, a 40-year-old guard was found guilty of institutionally raping a 19-year-old Honduran woman. He was sentenced to 23 months in prison.

The detention center is one of four facilities in the U.S. where the federal government detains women and children who enter the country without authorization. The other three are in Texas.

A new memo issued earlier this week by the Department of Justice could expedite hearings for these detainees, who have been held inside the facility for up to 16 months in some cases.

The women and children at Berks are stuck in limbo, said Bridget Cambria, volunteer attorney at the Peoples Justice Center. They cant be released and they cant be deported.

The DOJ memo, written by MaryBeth Keller, the federal governments chief immigration judge, rescinded portions of former President Barack Obamas controversial rocket docket immigration policy, which prioritized immigration proceedings for families with children and unaccompanied minors who crossed into the U.S. without documentation.



Instead, the DOJ will now focus on detained adults without children, detained adults with children and minors who do not have U.S. sponsors.



We think this is a good thing, said Matthew Archambeault, a private attorney in Philadelphia. The moms and children in Berks have been denied due process for too long.



All of the detainees housed at the BCRC came to the U.S. seeking asylum. Many of them freely approached immigration officials at the border in hopes of finding protection and shelter following their journeys north. Some, like the Honduran rape victim, were initially turned away at the border but later returned on their own.



Its not against the law to seek asylum, Cambria explained.

Once inside Berks, many of the detainees simply waited indefinitely. The goal of Obamas so-called rocket docket policy, instituted in 2014 in response to the flood of undocumented immigrants from Central America, was to direct a surge of resources to ensure cases are processed fairly and as quickly as possible, ensuring the protection of asylum seekers and refugees while enabling the prompt removal of individuals who do not qualify for asylum or other forms of relief from removal, Obama said in a memo.



But a recent report by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse found that 70 percent of these cases were processed through immigration courts without legal representation. The processing took only a few weeks or less, according to the report. In at least 43 percent of those cases, decisions were made with or without the asylum-seekers present at the hearing.



In September, 22 families staged a 16-day hunger strike in protest of their indefinite detention.



We have relatives and friends who would be responsible for us and who wait for us with open arms, but your Department of Homeland Security has denied our release, the group wrote to former United States Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson.



We risked our own lives and those of our children so we could arrive on safe ground. While here, our children have told us they sometimes consider suicide, made desperate from confinement. The teenagers say that being here, life makes no sense, the letter read.



Those stuck inside Berks remain in a legal gray area. A federal stay prohibits families from being removed despite having sponsorship from loved ones living in the U.S. Their detentions have continued with no end in sight, prompting Archambeault, Cambria and others to repeatedly call on Gov. Tom Wolf to intervene and shut down the detention center.



You have to make the brave move to say you care more about children, Cambria said.



While immigration officials grapple with the fate of detainees, the BCRC itself faces uncertainty. In 2016, the state Department of Human Services issued a license revocation and non-renewal notice after finding that the current use of the Berks County Residential Center ... as a family residential center is inconsistent with its current license as a child residential facility, a DHS spokesperson said in a written statement.



The detention center appealed, allowing it to continue operating status quo until a judge issues a decision, according to a BCRC spokesperson.



Archambeault wont wait that long. He is preparing to file a new habeas complaint in federal court as early as Friday. Several such lawsuits have been filed in recent years, but the federal government has argued that habeas corpus, the right to challenge imprisonment, does not apply to these detainees.

Unfortunately, sometimes these things come down to politics, he said. Does Wolf want to be part of [President Donald Trumps] machine?

The governor has called on both DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services to consider community-based alternatives instead of detention.

"Child mental health experts, court rulings, and previous federal policy all support the principle that these children should be served in a non-secure setting," said J.J. Abbott, a spokesperson for Wolf's office.

"The governor would like to see the center closed."

In a statement, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement tell NBC10 that detainees live in an open environment with play rooms, medical care and educational services.

"Over the last 15 years, the center has consistently met or exceeded rigorous state and agency operational standards. During its decade and a half in operation, the agency has taken great care to ensure the centers operations were fully transparent through regular facility access to all stakeholders," the statement read in part.
Forced into a closet by inmates at Delaware's largest prison, Sgt. Steven Floyd called out to officers coming to his aid, warning them that inmates had set a trap  saving their lives with his final actions, the head of the state corrections officers' union said.

"Even in his last moments as the inmates attempted to take over the building, Sgt. Floyd told a couple of lieutenants to get out of the building and that it was a trap," union President Geoffrey Klopp said.

Floyd was found dead early Thursday after authorities used a backhoe to smash through a barricade of footlockers and end a nearly 20-hour hostage standoff at the prison. A second hostage, a female counselor, was safely rescued minutes after tactical teams forced their way into a building at the all-male, 2,500-prisoner James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. [[412642613, C]]

Delaware Gov. John Carney called the uprising a "torturous" ordeal. In a statement, he said authorities will hold accountable those responsible and "make whatever changes are necessary to ensure nothing like it ever happens again."

Authorities did not immediately explain how Floyd died. They have said the inmates used "sharp instruments" to seize Building C and hold the 47-year-old hostage along with two other prison guards and a counselor.

Klopp said inmates staged a fight to lure Floyd, who radioed for help. They then turned on him, forcing him into the closet. [[412621323, C]]

The inmates eventually released two hostages and got authorities to turn the water back on, saying they needed it for drinking and washing. Instead, they filled up metal footlockers and built barricades.

Klopp said the footlockers were used to hold inmates' belongings. "Footlockers are a necessary evil in prison," he said. "You've got to have some place to store and transport their personal belongings."

During negotiations conducted via an officer's walkie-talkie  which were broadcast online for more than an hour before officials blocked the transmission  the mediator tried to coax an unidentified inmate into letting him talk to Floyd to make sure he was OK.

The inmate responded that the negotiator would only be able to talk to Floyd once the inmates got to talk to the governor. He told the negotiator that the prisoners wanted a "formal apology" from Carney for "decades of oppression." [[412445893, C]]

Floyd, a 16-year veteran with the prison, is the first Delaware corrections officer to be killed, according to Klopp.

The union president described Floyd as a wonderful husband and correctional officer who went the "extra mile for any human being he could help." Last year, he received the warden's award for outstanding performance.

Two separate Friday night vigils were planned in Floyd's memory: The Correctional Officers Association of Delaware host a candlelight vigil at 6 p.m. at the Smyrna Municipal Park in Smyrna while another vigil will be held at 6:30 p.m. at Legislative Hall in Dover.

An AP reporter who visited Floyd's house earlier Thursday was told the family had been through a lot and did not want to speak.

Dave Dowty, a retired court-transportation worker for the Department of Correction, said he occasionally worked with Floyd.

"I just know he was a pretty good guy. He was quiet, professional," Dowty said in a telephone interview.

Former Vaughn Correctional Center inmate Kenneth Guinn, of Dover, had a low opinion of Floyd.

"He harassed inmates. He's been doing it for years," Guinn said in a telephone interview.

The others guards who were taken hostage were beaten severely by their captors and suffered broken bones, cuts and eye injuries, Klopp said. Authorities said their injuries were not life-threatening. [[412606483, C]]

It wasn't immediately clear how many inmates took part in the uprising. About 120 were in the building when it began, but dozens were let out as the standoff dragged on. Authorities said all inmates who were in the building are being considered suspects.

One inmate told a local newspaper via phone that they were demanding better education and rehabilitation programs and were also upset over President Donald Trump and "all the things that he's doing now." [[412476253, C]]

"We know that the institution is going to change for the worse," he told The News Journal in Wilmington.

Isaiah McCoy, a former death row inmate at the prison, told The Associated Press that several prisoners who were in Building C called him while the standoff was underway. McCoy said the inmates told him they are sick of what he called "inhumane" conditions at the facility.

The inmates have filed grievances and tried nonviolent protests but haven't gotten anyone's attention, McCoy said.

"Now this is world news. This is being broadcast all over the world," said McCoy, who was released from prison last month after being acquitted of all charges in a retrial for a drug-related killing.

Associated Press writers Sarah Rankin and Alanna Durkin Richer in Richmond, Virginia; David Dishneau in Baltimore; Brian Witte in Dover, Delaware; and Sarah Brumfield in Washington contributed to this report. AP researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York also contributed.
The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test, increasing pressure on Tehran without directly undercutting a landmark nuclear deal with the country.

Those targeted by the Treasury Department's action include various agents, companies and associates involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. Iranians, Lebanese, Chinese and Emirati individuals and companies also are now blacklisted from doing any business in the United States or with American citizens.

"Iran's continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide and to the United States," John E. Smith, the Treasury Department's acting sanctions chief, said in a statement.

"We will continue to actively apply all available tools, including financial sanctions, to address this behavior," Smith said.

The sanctions are the first against Iran in Donald Trump's new presidency, reflecting his desire to take a tougher stance toward Tehran. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being weak on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump said: "Iran is playing with fire  they don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me."

None of the new sanctions appear to reverse the Obama administration's suspension of sanctions as part of the 2015 nuclear deal.

Nevertheless, the action will almost surely increase tensions with Iran.

A day after the sanctions were announced, a senior commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard said Iranian missiles would come down on the country's enemies if they do wrong.

"If the enemy does not walk the line, our missiles come down on them," Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh said.

Hajizadeh's comments came during a military exercise by the Revolutionary Guard aimed at testing its missile and radar systems.

The Islamic republic has insisted that new sanctions violate the deal and that it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear program has been sharply curtailed. The U.S. and Western countries argue otherwise, noting that Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago. That agreement was concluded in parallel, but separately to the nuclear accord.

"This is fully consistent with the Obama administration's commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions," said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hard-line U.S. position on Iran.

The sanctions come after Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Tehran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemen's internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

"As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, said earlier this week. Trump then backed up that statement in a tweet.

Associated Press writers Josh Lederman and Julie Pace contributed to this report.
Kathi Copeland said when she met her husband Michael Copeland, the attraction was instant.

Three weeks, he said we're going to get married; three weeks in and I said, you're crazy', but we did, Copeland said describing how she and Michael met and fell in love.

They were married for more than 30 years. Kathi said Michael loved to fly.

That was his passion, she said.

August 16, 2015, is the day everything changed, Kathi said. That day a twin-engine Sabreliner and a single-engine Cessna 172 were destroyed when the planes collided near Brown Field Municipal Airport. Two pilots and two mission specialists on the Sabreliner and the pilot of the Cessna, Michael, died in the crash.

It was a perfectly clear day when it all took place, Glen Winn, an aviation instructor at The University of Southern California said.

According to a report from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) mistakes by a San Diego air traffic controller caused Michael's Cessna 172 and the Sabreliner to collide mid-air near Brown Field.

Click here to learn more about the deadly crash.

After reading the NTSB report, Winn, who's not connected to this investigation, said, the person who was in the control room was overwhelmed quite frankly.

According to the report, the Lead Controller working that day told investigators the maximum number of planes he could oversee is seven. That day he had nine and was working with a trainee.

Click here to learn more about the report.

The report says the controller took over radio communication from the trainee three minutes before the accident and when the controller did, the report said, he had incomplete situational awareness due to the high workload at the time of the accident.

A simulator used by the NTSB shows views from both aircrafts. According to the reenactment, the pilots saw clear skies, nothing wrong, until a moment before colliding. According to the report, in that three minutes before the collision, the controller misidentified one of the planes, giving instructions to the wrong Cessna.

You think you're safe when you're in a plane, Kathi said. To find out there are mistakes that caused his death, it's horrible.

Air traffic controllers in Southern California oversee one of the busiest airspaces in the nation with active military, commercial and private aviation. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), on a typical day, more than 11,000 aircraft take to the skies.

Theyre highly trained individuals, Winn said.

It's a very important job, Kathi said.

As a result of NTSBs investigation into the Brown Field accident, the agency is recommending there be more focus on the number of hours air traffic controllers are working, along with their workload. The agency is also suggesting this accident be part of training nationwide and is urging more technologies be used to alert pilots of approaching aircraft.

Kathi said she's still figuring out her world without Michael and while helping to make sure the mistakes from that day don't happen again. Kathi has also filed a lawsuit against Serco, the company who employed the air traffic controller. The case is scheduled to go to trial in August.

In a statement, a representative with Serco said, "Our hearts go out to the families affected in the tragic accident. We fully cooperated with NTSB during the investigation. In the 17 years that we have provided air traffic control services at Brown Field Municipal Airport we have always strived to maintain an outstanding standard of safety."

Due to pending litigation, the company representative said they could not comment further.
A 12-year-old Yemeni girl may be able to come to America after all, thanks to a Southern California district court's temporary restraining order against President Donald Trump's immigration order.

Since Saturday, the girl and her father have been in limbo, blocked from coming to America, despite going through all the necessary legal steps.

Even though the court ruling is in effect, the attorney for the Ali family says it's not that simple. They can't just show the document and get on a plane because there's so much confusion over how the executive order works. So, for now, they have to wait until it can all get sorted out.

"She is really sad," Ahmed Ali said about his daughter Iman. "She is expecting to go to the USA to see her mom, her sisters and everything will be OK."

From his hotel room, stuck in Djibouti, Ahmed told NBC Bay Area how he and Iman were steps away from boarding a plane Saturday, only to be turned away because of the president's order. The rest of Iman's family lives in Los Banos, citizens of the United States. Iman was born in Yemen.

"They've waited for so long for this process to go through, and they've followed all the rules that have been established," said Katie Lewis, Ali's attorney. "So at the eleventh hour to not be able to board the plane is quite upsetting, frustrating."

It's taken six years for the Ali family to obtain Iman's visa. On Wednesday morning, their ordeal traveled to the House of Representatives, where Congressman Jim Costa directed criticism and a plea to the president.

"Mr. President, Secretary Kelly, I appeal to your compassion, your common sense," Costa said. "This 12-year-old girl, Iman, has been extremely vetted for six years or whatever you'd like to call it. She is not a threat to our country. Let her join her family."

Ali's attorney said they are also trying to contact airline executives to make sure they understand the court ruling. They are also trying to get the State Department to issue a transportation letter saying that Iman is Legally welcome in the U.S.
Authorities were searching for a man who threw a "homemade pyrotechnic device" containing gunpowder into a crowded downtown Pasadena restaurant Thursday night, sending diners scrambling for cover, police said.

Nobody was hurt in the explosion after 6 p.m. at the Cheesecake Factory on Colorado Boulevard in Old Pasadena, according to police. As of Friday morning, nothing suggested that it was "anything other than a really bad prank," said Lt. Vasken Gourdikian of the Pasadena Police Department.

The device was a "glorified firecracker" that didn't appear to be made to injure anyone, a police spokesman said Friday.

Police safely evacuated diners from the restaurant and found the expended device, according to a Pasadena Police Department news release.

Untouched plates of food and personal belongings were left behind in the deserted restaurant.

"People were jumping over one another, fighting to get over bar stools. People were tripping, falling...stuff going everywhere. It was very chaotic," said Garrett Gunkle, who went back to the scene to try to collect the belongings he left behind.

A man opened the door of the restaurant, lit the device, threw it inside and fled southbound on Fair Oaks Avenue, police said. The device landed under an unoccupied table.

Gunkle said he saw an explosion, and he and his wife bolted out of the restaurant as quickly as possible.

"According to the Los Angeles County (Sheriff's Department) Bomb Squad, it was a crude, homemade pyrotechnic device," Gourdikian said. "It wasn't meant to be destructive in the sense that it didn't have associated fragments or shrapnel. It was intended to make a loud bang, which is what it did. It's still harmful, but it wasn't intended to injure or maim."

The man who threw the device was described as about 6 feet tall with a thin build and heavy beard. He wore all black clothing and a black beanie.

The motive is not known, police said.

The Cheesecake Factory, police, and the FBI did not receive any threats, Gourdikian said.

A spokeswoman for the Cheesecake Factory, Alethea Rowe, gave the following statement to NBC4 Southern California Friday morning.

"This evening, an incendiary device exploded within our Pasadena restaurant. Thankfully, none of our guests or staff was injured. Law enforcement is actively investigating the incident, and we hope to reopen in Pasadena on Friday, as usual," read the statement.

Anyone with information can reach Pasadena police at 626-744-4241. Tips may also be submitted anonymously to L.A. Regional Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.

Jonathan Gonzalez and Jessica Rice contributed to this report.
A new service has launched in San Diego offering to deliver the citys most carefully-crafted commodity directly to your front door: craft beer.

CraftHounds  formed by a group of friends and family with a passion for sharing good beers and hosting bottle swap parties at their homes  is a delivery service dealing solely in craft beer.

The concept is simple: customers hop on the CraftHounds website and enter their home address to generate a list of craft brews available for delivery in their area. They make their sudsy selections online, pay and, within 30 to 60 minutes, the beer is delivered to their home.

Partnering with 26 local bottle shops around the county and a few breweries, the company delivers six-packs, bombers and freshly-filled growlers seven days a week.

We have about 4,000 craft beers right now that you can order, Adam Gendler, director of product and marketing for Crafthounds, told NBC 7.

[G] Craft Beer Delivery Service Launches in San Diego

The vast inventory includes everything from well-known local labels like Ballast Point Brewing Co. and Green Flash Brewing Co., to bottles from around the world and beloved beers that are notoriously difficult to track down.

Gendler said rarer gems include Russian River Brewing Companys Pliny the Elder and Firestone Walker Brewing Companys Stickee Monkee.

We really take pride in being able to offer those kind of rare finds that you might not be able to find somewhere else, he explained.

Gendler said a major reason for CraftHounds beer bounty is Servall Liquor, one of the companys biggest retail partners. The store, located at 1279 University Ave. in Hillcrest, is also known as Craft City.

They have over 2,000 beers which is what allows our website to be so great, Gendler said.

Other partner retailers include Keg N Bottle locations throughout the county and Chips Liquor in Pacific Beach.

As CraftHounds customers peruse their options online, they can compare prices and even hone in on the perfect beer by filtering through characteristics that will best suit their tastes.

You can sort by style, flavor, even down to IBUs, ABV, or even the type of hops, if you want to, so you can really find the kind of beer that youre looking for, said Gendler.

For now, CraftHounds partner breweries include 32 North and Amplified Ale Works. Ten more local breweries will be added to the companys lineup this month, but those have yet to be announced.

As Gendler calls it, this online craft beer superstore, aims to open up beer enthusiasts to trying new things and discovering new beers.

Thats the best part about craft beer  is the incredible selection that we have to choose from  especially here in San Diego, he said. Thats what makes this craft beer scene so awesome.

Gendler said CraftHounds current delivery route stretches from Del Mar in San Diegos North County to Chula Vista in the South Bay, and from Ocean Beach in the west to La Mesa in the East County.

Drivers are based in zones and matched with customers depending on where the customer is located. When a customer places an order, the driver is immediately dispatched to pick up the beer and make the delivery. Once the driver arrives, he or she checks the customers ID to verify they are at least 21 years old.

We make sure that we take our compliance with state regulations very seriously  and once everything is good to go, the beer is yours, Gendler added.

Customers must spend a minimum of $12 to use the delivery service  about the price of a six-pack or a couple of 22-ounce bomber bottles. The delivery fee averages between $3 and $6, depending on a customers distance from the store that is selling their selections.

Gendler said customers can also place an order ahead of time to have it delivered on a specific day, like for a party or even as a weekend treat.

If you want a bottle  youre feeling it on a Monday, but you dont want it delivered until Friday at 6 p.m.  you can place that order and it might even beat you home from work on Friday.

Gendler said the companys busiest times are Friday and Saturday evenings, as people are at home unwinding from a long week. On weekends, Crafthounds averages about five deliveries per hour.

We see a lot of people ordering in or, if theyre at a party, and they dont want to leave, he explained.

As CraftHounds catches on, Gendler said the company has plans to expand to other beer-centric cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Boston and New York City.

But, for now, he said San Diego  with its healthy, burgeoning craft beer culture  is the perfect place for the company's pilot launch.

The [craft beer] culture of San Diego is probably the sole reason that we decided to launch here. The craft beer community is incredibly supportive, he said. Its something that makes San Diego really unique and special.

He hopes CraftHounds will fit into the spirit of the community and, in his words, bring breweries and bottle shops and craft beer lovers together.

Theres that saying: When the tide rises, all the boats float. And, I think, that is really what were trying to do. Were trying to bring together the craft beer community and make one centralized place where everyone can come to just really enjoy craft beer, he added.

Raise a glass. Salute our veterans. We'll make a donation for every eligible order! https://t.co/MyJjWwKRYi pic.twitter.com/iN0cxVeNIG  CraftHounds (@CraftHounds) February 1, 2017

This month, CraftHounds has partnered with Paralyzed Veterans of America and 15 breweries across the city to raise funds for the organization. For any order that comes through Crafthounds for a product from one of those breweries (including Belching Beer, Coronado Brewing Co., Latitude 33, to name a few) the company will donate $1 to Paralyzed Veterans of America.

To learn more about CraftHounds, click here.
A 77-year-old famous French artist named Jean-Pierre Rousseau is donating more than 100 paintings to benefit our local military at the Warrior Foundation  Freedom Station.

The $2.2 million collection includes pieces by the former painter for Princess Grace of Monaco as well as other celebrities.

Rousseaus reason for the donation is based on a fond memory with American troops 70 years ago, a friend told NBC 7.

When I was a little boy, I remember being with my father watching the American troops march into Paris (this is World War II), liberating Paris, and I owe them a debt of gratitude, Rousseau said, according to friend Dina Eliash Robinson.

Locally, his art was featured in a La Jolla gallery until the owner died.

Instead of sending his work back to France after her gallery closed, Rousseau asked for his paintings to be donated to help wounded veterans in San Diego.

Warrior Foundation  Freedom Station helps members of the military who are seriously injured after returning from war, those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, those undergoing physical therapy and warriors who are medically retired.

A volunteer with the organization and the Vice President of the Navy Nurse Corps of Southern California, Ellen Citreno, said even if they sell 10 percent of the paintings it will help the organization do more for veterans.

So, for him to remember us and what he sees on the news and what he sees over in France that are still happening to our troops and the injuries that are phenomenon that just we cant imagine being without legs and arms and trying to live a life where you can get back into society, Citreno said.

The art will be on display for donations to the Warrior Foundation  Freedom Station on Saturday and Sunday at the Scottish Rite Events Center in Mission Valley (1895 Camino del Rio South, San Diego) from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. both days.

Purchases are tax-deductible. For more information about the art sale, visit the website.
Investigators believe a fatal traffic collision that ended in the deaths of three member of one family was die to a red light violation. For now, detectives say they're not sure which vehicle failed to stop.

Lizbeth Soto, 18, Jose Alexander Soto, 12, and Camila Nava, 8, were killed Wednesday in the crash at the corner of Massachusetts and Lemon Grove avenues.

They were traveling in an Acura that collided head-on with a Dodge Durango. One of the vehicles was impaled on a road sign and several victims were pinned in, a witness told NBC 7.

The driver, 20-year-old Emili Soto, was still hospitalized Friday along with 4-year-old girl Malina. Both were in critical condition.

San Diego County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Jorge Dueno said the investigation into what caused the crash is ongoing.

The driver of the Dodge Durango is distraught over the incident, Dueno said.

Both drivers told deputies they had the green light.

A surveillance camera run by the Metropolitan Transit System was not pointed at the area where the collision occurred, Dueno said.

Deputies have gathered witness statements and are looking for any other evidence that may point to what led the crash.

There was no evidence pointing to alcohol or distracted driving as playing a role in the crash, Dueno said, but investigators have not ruled either out.

An online fundraiser has been created for the family to pay funeral and medical expenses.
A San Diego woman's personal investigation exposed the local pickup artist community and led police to three men who were ultimately convicted of raping her and sentenced to prison.

Jason Berlin, 28, is the third defendant sentenced in the investigation launched three years ago. He along with Jonas Isaac Dick and Alexander Markham Smith, took the victim to an apartment in the Gaslamp Quarter where they raped her.



Berlin later bragged about the act on a website designed to teach men how to "up your lay count."

Berlin's victim, identified only as Jane Doe, faced him in a downtown courtroom Friday. Her recollection of the night she was raped was so powerful, one person in the gallery began sobbing uncontrollably and left the room.

She read archived posts from "Efficient Pickup" a locally-operated website offering a "boot camp" on how to meet, seduce and sleep with women in one night." Berlin was a client.

The young professional spent $2,000 a month to rent a downtown apartment the group called "The Train Station." The location was key, prosecutors say, so as to quickly move intoxicated women from the bars into the bedroom.

Jane Doe told the court Friday that Berlin's own blog posts on the website revealed his goal was to have sex with 15 girls in three months.

However, the boot camp, apartment and website were shut down - exposed after the victim went to San Diego police describing what happened to her on October 13, 2013.

The victim was found by a friend unconscious, face down on a bed and surrounded by vomit with two of the defendants nude around her.

That night is still fuzzy for me. I vaguely remember being woken up and told to put my dress back on, the victim said.

The friend dragged the victim from the room and they reported what happened to San Diego Police, according to the initial criminal complaint.

Police launched an investigation but it wasn't until the victim used her knowledge about computers to track down the defendants.

The only reason they made the arrest was you," Judge Jeffrey F. Fraser told the victim Friday. "You put together the packet and dropped it off on the detectives desk.

Berlin's own words, bragging about the assault, along with similar posts by Dick led to his arrest and ultimately, his conviction of raping a woman who was intoxicated.

They were so brazen and so proud of what they did, Deputy District Attorney Lisa Fox said. He was a student and he liked what he was learning and he wanted more and more and more.

Fox described so-called "train games" in which the men took turns having sex with women they knew were drunk.

He did not still, three years later, understand what he did and show remorse, Fox said. He did not understand the gravity of what he did to the victim in this case.

Berlin, described as a socially awkward college graduate with a 3.42 GPA does not have the ability to show emotion because he lives with Aspergers or an Autism Spectrum Disorder, his defense attorney argued.

In fact, the defendant showed no emotion when he addressed the judge and apologized for his actions. However, he cried openly when his mother turned and faced the victim and apologized to her.

"I became impatient and embarrassed when I was unsuccessful in developing friendships and relationships with women," Berlin said. "I then made the biggest mistake of my life and began paying thousands of dollars for what I naively believed was a mentorship."

His instructors were also convicted.

Jonas Dick pleaded guilty in January 2016 to rape of an intoxicated woman. He also pleaded guilty an additional forcible rape of a 17-year-old woman, which was discovered during this investigation, according to the San Diego County District Attorney's Office. He was sentenced to eight years in the state prison.

Alex Smith took his case to trial and was convicted by a jury of both counts: rape of an unconscious person and rape of an intoxicated woman, the DA's office said. He was sentenced to eight years in prison in December.

The website has since been shut down.

"This mentality is disturbing, it's dangerous, it's detrimental," Fox said adding that rape by intoxication is often really difficult to prove.

This case was unique.

But for them bragging and blogging about it online, we probably wouldnt be here today," she said.
A La Mesa mans electricity was shut off after a fire nearly burned his house down in October but that didnt stop electricity bills from piling up in his mailbox.

So this is apparently where the fire started, this line coming out of the circuit breaker, Glenn Simpson said.

When Glenn smelled smoke in his home last October, he said he had no idea where it was coming from.

All of a sudden my ADT alarm starts screaming, he said. I go up with a mag light and I start looking around and sure enough theres smoke billowing out of the insulation the blown in insulation in the attic.

Glenn said he started pulling up insulation and found hot spots along attic wires that were smoking. Within minutes, he said fire crews arrived and got to work.

Smoke started to fill his home but the fire was put out. He said fire crews blamed his homes 67-year-old wiring for the fire.

The box failed, the circuit breaker failed and the wires that they tested loaded have failed, Glenn said.

Early that morning Glenn said San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) came to his home, shut off his electricity and removed his electric Smart Meter.

No more power to the house, it has to get fixed and it has to get inspected before we return electrical energy back to the house, Glenn said the company told him.

While Glenn was without power, he was still receiving electricity bills each month. The bills totaled more than $80 a month and showed the amount of electricity he was supposedly using.

Glenn said he explained the problem to SDG&E over the phone but, according to him, they told said when they dont get a signal from a Smart Meter, they estimate the usage from past bills.

Youve pulled my meter, theres no electricity, he said. How is it possible that Im getting charged for electricity Im not using?

Glenn said he continued calling SDG&E but the bills kept coming. After three months with no results, he turned to NBC 7 Responds for help.

NBC 7 Responds spoke to employees at SDG&E and they agreed to review Glenns account. A week later, the company acknowledged the problem and wiped out the charges. Glenn doesnt owe a thing for the electricity bills.

In an email, Amber Albrecht, a representative for SDG&E said, At SDG&E we strive to provide exceptional service to our customers every day. We apologize to Mr. Simpson because we should have resolved his concern sooner. We appreciate you [NBC 7] raising this issue and identifying an opportunity to improve our process so that we can better serve all of our customers.
A caregiver shot her husband and then took her own life in a San Carlos murder-suicide shooting, San Diego homicide detectives said.

James Smith, 68, and his wife, Candace Smith, 69, were found dead inside their home on the 6600 block of Bell Bluff Avenue at approximately 10:25 a.m. Wednesday, the San Diego Police Department (SDPD) said.

A relative concerned about the well-being of the couple asked police to conduct a welfare check on their loves ones. Police said there have been no previous calls to this residence.

When police entered the home, they learned James and Candace had both suffered gunshot wounds.

James suffered a traumatic brain injury 26 years ago after a car crash and required full-time care since the accident. Candace became her husband's care provider.

Homicide Lt. Mike Holden said the preliminary investigation revealed that James' condition had worsened recently. Detectives believe Candace shot her husband and then took her own life.

The San Diego County Medical Examiner's office will conduct an investigation and determine a cause of death.

All day Wednesday, detectives could be seen going in and out of the couple's home as they took photographs and collected evidence.

The blinds of the home where the bodies were found were drawn shut; some cardboard boxes lined the path leading to the front door of the home. Evidence markers were placed near those boxes. A night stand was also set aside, outside the home, near the boxes.

The investigation into the possible murder-suicide is ongoing. Anyone with information on this case can call the SDPD Homicide Unit at (619) 531-2293 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477.
Growing up, Starr Mirza was the picture of good health, but knew something wasn't right.

"I would faint. I would pass out," Mirza, of Silver Spring, Maryland, said.

Doctors would say, "'Oh, she just didn't have enough to eat.'"

Mirza said she would notice a constant ticking in her chest, but no one could explain it.

Then, at 23 years old, Mirza went into cardiac arrest.

"I remember watching my first customer walking through the door up to my teller window and that's about it. That's about the last thing I remember," she said. "I woke up and had already had the pacemaker and defibrillator implanted inside of me."

Now 37, she will need the device for the rest of her life. Mirza was diagnosed with Long QT syndrome, a heart rhythm condition that can cause fast, chaotic heartbeats. Some symptoms of Long QT syndrome are fainting and seizures.

Mirza also suffers from heart failure, in which the heart can't pump enough blood.

"My heart is having a hard time knowing when to beat, how to beat," she said.

She is now sharing her story in the hopes of helping other women who may be unaware that they suffer from a heart disease.

Mirza is one of the faces of a new campaign called "#KnockOutHeartDisease" from WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease and Burlington Stores.

"It's important to get your blood pressure checked, to know your BMI, to have your pulse checked and to get a look at what your cholesterol is," said Susan Campbell, with WomenHeart.

Mirza's message to women: Listen to your heart.

"Get screened. Know your body. Know who you are, you know, and trust yourself. Trust yourself and trust your heart."

WomenHeart is offering free heart health screenings on Friday at Burlington locations in Silver Spring from 5 to 8 p.m.
Virginia will be allowed to join a lawsuit challenging aspects of President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration, a judge ruled Friday.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema greatly expands the scope of the lawsuit, which was initially focused only on legal permanent residents, commonly called green-card holders.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring also is seeking protections for those on student and work visas, and those with refugee status.

"We're going to be working to help folks now who are harmed by the immigration ban, including students, professors, workers in Virginia," he said.

More than 100,000 people have had visas revoked since the ban went into effect, a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer told the judge during the hearing. Erez Reuveni of the Department of Justice's Office of Immigration Litigation, Civil Side provided the information when the judge pressed him for numbers.

"The number 100,000 really sucked the air out of my lungs. I think you could almost hear the collective gasp in the courtroom," Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center said.

However, following the hearing, a U.S. Department of State spokesman said that number was, in fact, fewer than 60,000.

"Fewer than 60,000 individuals' visas were provisionally revoked to comply with the executive order," a statement from spokesman William Cocks said. "We recognize that those individuals are temporarily inconvenienced while we conduct our review under the executive order. To put that number in context, we issued over 11 million immigrant and non-immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015. As always, national security is our top priority when issuing visas. "

The order has disrupted families expecting reunions and students expecting to get back to campus, Brinkema said.

"It has obviously thrown hundreds of thousands of people into states of great discomfort," she said.

The commonwealth based much of its argument to join the lawsuit on the impact this case has had on public colleges and universities. Stuart Raphael, who argued for the commonwealth, said at least 350 students and faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia Tech, George Mason University (GMU), William and Mary and the University of Virginia are fearful of leaving the United States now because they worry they'd never get back.

A 23-year-old GMU student, Najwa Elyazgi, is stranded in Turkey after officials told her she could not board a plane back to Virginia.

Elyazgi, a college senior with nearly a 4.0 GPA, is from Libya and has attended GMU since 2014. She visited family at home on her winter break. As she was in the air, Trump signed the order. She was told during a layover in Istanbul that she could not board her flight to the U.S.

"We are working really hard to try to get her back," Herring said, "and we're hopeful that we'll be successful there."

Brinkema said she is encouraged that the government is trying to resolve the cases involving those legal permanent residents who were detained at U.S. airports and sent back.

Brinkema -- who was the judge for the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, who was convicted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks -- said she had never seen the public outpouring that she has seen in this case.

"This order touched something in the United States that I've never seen before. People are quite upset," she said.

Brinkema said Trump's order was issued so quickly that it was "quite clear it was not all that thought-out. As a result, there has been chaos."

Brinkema called the revoked visas a problem.

"It's a problem when the government has gone through a vetting process and without any significant kind of fact-finding or any kind of hard evidence, that there is need to rescind those decisions, to revoke them," she said of people suddenly stripped of visas.

The next hearing in the case is next Friday.

The executive order signed by Trump suspends immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries for 90 days and all refugee resettlement for 120 days. It provides exceptions for refugees who practice a religion that makes them a minority in their home country; Trump has said he wanted to give persecuted Christians priority treatment in the refugee program.

A federal judge in Seattle temporarily blocked the ban Friday at the request of Washington state and Minnesota. U.S. District Judge James Robart granted a temporary restraining order that's effective nationwide.

This story has been updated to include the new numbers provided by the U.S. Department of State.
Nearly a year after an 83-year-old retired World Bank economist was found shot inside his Virginia home, police are asking for help locating a truck that was seen in the area.

Investigators believe Johan De Leede was inside his Lorton home on June 20, 2016, when he was shot several times. The first officers to arrive to the scene discovered a broken window at the home near De Leede's body, according to police audio.

No arrests have been made in the case.



On the night De Leede was killed, a neighbor saw a dark pickup truck leaving the area quickly, police said.

Anyone with any information about De Leede's death is encouraged to contact police.

"The information you have, regardless of how trivial you feel it may be, could be the critical link in solving the case," Fairfax County police said in a press release Thursday.



Anyone with information that can help police is asked to contact Crime Solvers online at www.fairfaxcrimesolvers.org, text a tip to TIP187, call 866-411-TIPS (8477), or call Fairfax County Police at 703-691-2131.
A local nonprofit offering computers as inexpensive as $25 to low-income residents and residents with disabilities in Montgomery County for 20 years brought those deals to southeast D.C. Friday.

The reopened Frederick Douglass Community Center offers those deals plus job training. After being closed for more than 15 years, the renovated community center includes a space for refurbishing computers.

Volunteers with Project Reboot refurbish computers donated by local businesses. The computers then are sold to residents in need.

Wilderness Technology Alliance President Lou August drove to the community center Friday with computers and other technology his nonprofit no longer needs and would otherwise discard.

Its a win in not ending up in a landfill and its a win by providing it to a low-income person, August said.

We also wanted to demonstrate to other businesses and nonprofits what kind of impact they can have by donating surplus equipment to Project Reboot, he added.

More than 16,000 computers have been refurbished for the poor and people with disabilities in the Washington metropolitan area, Project Reboot President Dennis Courtney said.

That part of the city has a growing need for community assets like this, city officials said.

Our students are being asked more and more in school to show proficiency in technology and access at home is key to building that, D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hanseul Kang said.

In addition to being able to buy a computer for as little as $25, residents will also be able to get computer training at the community center -- life skills and job skills.

Mable Carter, who has lived in the Congress Heights neighborhood for more than three decades, said it is important for young students and residents of her generation alike to be connected these days.

Its very important for us to stay in the loop, she said. It helps us to keep us alive.

She was part of the effort to reopen the community center.

It was an eyesore, she said. And our history is one of the things that was lost here.

To get involved with Project Reboot, go to its website here.
A trial date has been set for the man accused of killing a couple, their young son and their housekeeper in a Northwest Washington mansion over a year and a half ago.

The trial for Darron Wint will begin Sept. 4, 2018, at 11 a.m.

The victims -- Savvas Savopoulos, 46; his wife, Amy, 47; their 10-year-old son, Philip, and housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa, 57 -- were found dead inside the Savopoulos family's multi-million-dollar Northwest D.C., mansion in May 2015.

Wint of Lanham, Maryland, kidnapped the victims inside their home, extorted $40,000 from them, killed them and set fire to the $3 million house, according to police. He allegedly held the victims captive for roughly 18 hours.

Prosecutors had been pushing for a trial date for some time, but at the last status hearing, the defense said it needed more time to test the evidence.

The prosecution said it has tested hundreds of items found in the Savopoulos home, and DNA linked Wint to five items.

Wint pleaded not guilty last year to the 20 felony charges he's facing in the brutal crime. The murder charges include four counts each of felony murder in the course of a kidnapping, felony murder in the course of a burglary and felony premeditated murder.

Wint faces life in prison without possibility for release on each murder charge. The minimum sentence is 30 years on each murder charge.

Police previously said they believed Wint had help from others holding the Savopouloses and Figueroa captive, according to charging documents, but no other suspects have been identified.
The Rhode Island state attorney general has closed a criminal investigation into 38 Studios, after the state settled with the final defendant in its lawsuit over the failed $75 million deal with the company started by former Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.

Peter Kilmartin announced the dormant investigation's closure Friday, blaming his decision on the State Police.

Kilmartin and the State Police announced in July there would be no criminal charges after a yearslong investigation.

Kilmartin said Friday he had planned to reactivate the criminal case under certain circumstances, including the civil litigation's resolution.

He says he broached the idea with new State Police Col. Ann Assumpico, who told him she wouldn't commit further resources.

In a statement from state police, Assumpico said. In my view, the case is closed. If presented with new evidence or leads, I will direct the State Police to reopen the criminal investigation. That is exactly what I told the Attorney General when we spoke yesterday.

Assumpico added, "When I met with the Attorney General yesterday, I told him I would be willing to reopen the investigation if we had new, solid, credible leads. The information the Attorney Generals Office has provided to us is not persuasive enough to reopen the case at this time.
A "welcome rally" was held at Boston's Logan International Airport on Friday afternoon as Lufthansa passengers affected by President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration arrived in the country.

On Thursday, Lufthansa began allowing passengers affected by the travel ban to board planes bound for the U.S. in accordance with the temporary order issued by a federal judge in Massachusetts Sunday.

One man, who said he did not want to be identified, touched down in Boston Thursday through Air France.

"I was the first one to get on the plane," he said.

He was visiting his sick mother in Syria, and said it was a little more difficult to get back to his family and home in Watertown.

"He had to make a dangerous journey from Damascus to Beirut to Paris to Boston," a family member said of the man.

Their return came as a U.S. district judge in Boston ordered a State Homeland Security Department memo be released Thursday afternoon. The order revoked all visas, with a few exceptions, from people from the seven Muslim-majority countries listed in President Trump's executive order last Friday.

"It's completely shocking that they included immigrant visas," said immigration lawyer Jeff Goldman. "That means green card holders."

Goldman believes it's unconstitutional and also affects people already in the U.S.

"This specific memo from the state department canceling their visas absolutely affects people who are already here, because it means that they can't leave and come back," Goldman said.

It has the Watertown resident wondering if he'll ever see his sick mother in Syria again.

"It was hard to have to leave her suddenly," he said.

A federal court hearing was held on the temporary order in Boston on Friday.
The long, painful nightmare for the families of murder victims Jonathan Rizzo and Phillip McCloskey will never end, but another important chapter is closed.

The man who admitted to killing them and a third man in a week-long crime spree in July 2001, Gary Lee Sampson, has now been formally sentenced to death for a second time.

"It was about not giving up and it was about making sure we got justice, but now we want it to be over," said Jonathan Rizzo's father, Michael.

"I think that he's just a waste of space, waste of breath," said Phillip McCloskey's son, Scott. "He can rot in hell and stay in prison for the rest of his life until he's put to death."

Sampson's first death sentence was thrown out for juror misconduct. Last month, a second jury sentenced him to die.

"Not just one, but two Massachusetts juries have decided that the just punishment for torturing and brutally murdering three men is a sentence of death," acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb said.

Friday, Sampson refused to go quietly, swearing at the prosecutor when he called Sampson a coward, and swearing at the judge when he tried to restore order in the courtroom.

"He's just showing what kind of guy he is," McCloskey said. "He's showing exactly where he's coming from and why he deserves the death penalty."

"I think until that happens, we will still be living on the edge thinking that something else could go wrong," Rizzo said.

Sampson will soon be brought to death row in Terre Haute, Indiana.

It's unclear how long his appeals will last, but relatives of both victims say they plan to be there in person for his execution.
The Massachusetts Senate has released a unanimous statement condemning President Trumps recent executive order establishing a travel ban which bars entry to the United States for certain nationals from seven Muslim-majority nations.

The letter says the edict has impacted people arriving at Logan airport, including two professors from UMass Dartmouth.

Senate President Stan Rosenberg said in the letter, Freedom of religion is central to our strength as a democracy, both as a nation and as a Commonwealth. We will continue to defend the Constitutional rights of the citizens and immigrants of Massachusetts who contribute so much to our culture and our economy.

Protesters have gathered at the State House in opposition of the order.

Governor Charlie Baker has also issued a statement on the order, saying "I believe focusing on countries' predominant religions will not make the country safer as terrorists have showed they intend to strike from across the world. The confusion for families is real. The unexpected disruption for law abiding people is real. And the lack of guidance associated with such an abrupt and overwhelming decision is hugely problematic for all involved," he said.
A number of people affected by President Trump's immigration orders arrived at Boston's Logan Airport Thursday.

Lufthansa began allowing them to board planes bound for the U.S. in accordance with the temporary order issued by a federal judge in Massachusetts Sunday.

One man, who does not want to be identified, also touched down in Boston Thursday through Air France.

"I was the first one to get on the plane," he said.

He was visiting his sick mother in Syria. It was a little more difficult to get back to his family and home in Watertown.

"He had to make a dangerous journey from Demascus to Beirut to Paris to Boston," said a family member of the man.

Their arrival comes as a U.S. district judge in Boston ordered a State Homeland Security Department memo be released Thursday afternoon. The order revoked all visas, with a few exceptions, from people from the seven countries listed in President Trump's executive order last Friday.

"It's completely shocking that they included immigrant visas," said immigration lawyer Jeff Goldman. "That means green card holders."

Goldman believes it's unconstitutional and also affects people already in the U.S.

"This specific memo from the state department canceling their visas absolutely affects people who are already here, because it means that they can't leave and come back," Goldman said.

It has the Watertown resident wondering if he'll ever see his sick mother in Syria again.

"It was hard to have to leave her suddenly," he said.

There will be hearing on the temporary order in Boston Friday.
When cops pulled over a woman accused of driving at a police officer in Connecticut on Thursday, she said the reason was because she was upset with police officers and President Donald Trump.

Eileen Marie Pierce, 58, of Harwinton, was driving north on Route 69 in Burlington when she intentionally veered into the northbound lane directly toward an officer patrolling a work site, state police said.

The trooper was able to get out of Pierce's way, "barely avoiding being struck." When Pierce drove pass the officer, she was shaking her fists out her car window and yelling, according to police reports.

Pierce veered back into the southbound lane, almost colliding with tree service trucks that were at the active work site. Police described Pierce's driving on Route 69 south toward Bristol as "irate."

When the car was stopped, police asked if Pierce had intentionally attempted to strike the trooper with her car.

Pierce, during an "emotional ramble", said she was upset with police, that she had been victimized over her lifetime and that "police are being murdered because the police tend to abuse our rights," police paraphrased in the report.

The Bristol resident also said she was angry over a lot of issues, including the fact that Donald Trump was president, according to the report.

Pierce was charged with reckless endangerment, reckless driving and failure to drive in a proper lane. She was also charged with attempt to commit assault in the first degree and attempt to commit assault on a police officer.

When she appeared in court, Pierce said she is a good driver.

A judge ordered her to go to a mental health clinic and not to operate a vehicle.

Bond was set at $150,000, a public defender was appointed and Pierce is do back in court on March 8.
A student-run charity effort at a Vermont Catholic school wrapped up Friday, but not without last-minute changes forced by presidential policies.

Students at Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington gathered more than 2,000 individual donations, such as shampoo, lotion, toothbrushes, warm hats, gloves, and more.

As a Christian community, as a Catholic community, that is a core valuethat we help people who are in need, said Rice senior Maura Thompson.

The donations were meant for 100 refugees, mostly from Syria, with some from Iraq, who had been scheduled to move into Rutland this year after they were approved by government officials to find new, safer lives in the United States.

However, only two Syrian families arrived before resettlement froze.

President Donald Trump said tougher vetting for asylum-seekers is a must, to protect our nations security from what Trump warned could be dangerous people who may attempt to sneak into the U.S. among refugees.

They've been vetted many times, Rice senior Jack Lyons said of Syrian refugees waiting to enter the United States. There's nothing different between us and themjust an ocean.

Lyons and other students leading the project said some of their donations will still go to the two Rutland families. The rest, instead of to more Syrians in Rutland, will go to refugees in the Burlington area from other lands also torn apart by fighting or persecution.

To be fair, many Americans across the country have said over the past week that they agree with President Trumps recent executive orders.

On the issue of indefinitely suspending the Syrian refugee resettlement program, a recent Gallup poll found 36 percent approval among 1,018 Americans polled.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents to Gallup disapproved of the policy, in the poll conducted over the last two days of January. Six percent had no opinion, according to Gallup.

On the issue of halting the arrival of Syrian refugees, 71 percent of Republicans said they approved of the measure, but only 10 percent of Democrats did, Gallup reported.

Back at Rice, Sister Laura Della Santa, the schools principal, said she hopes the charity project collecting donations for refugees reminds her students that kindness, as an ideal, knows no boundaries.

We're all Gods people, Della Santa said. We're all empowered to be respectful of one another, respectful of the earthand be welcoming.
A captain of the Middlesex Sheriff's Office was arraigned in court Friday on charges of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 in connection with an alleged incident at a Malden, Massachusetts restaurant last month.

John Panaggio, 38 of Stoneham, has been released on personal recognizance, according to the Middlesex District Attorney's Office.

He was arrested Thursday following an investigation into the alleged sexual assault that occurred at the Dockside Restaurant on Jan. 20 at 8:45 p.m.

The victim said Panaggio entered her parked car and touched her inappropriately. She asked him multiple times to get out of the car before he left the vehicle and the scene, according to officials.

Panaggio turned himself into police after he was identified through surveillance footage.

The incident remains under investigation.

Panaggio is due back in court on Wednesday, March 15. He has been ordered to stay away from the victim.

It's not clear if he has an attorney.
Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, is getting national attention, and pressure. She is seen by some as a potential swing vote against some of President Trump's controversial cabinet picks, and people from around the country have been calling her to try and influence her votes.

"We are certainly getting a lot of calls and almost 90 percent of them are from out of state," Sen. Collins said in a written statement. "That's a little bit frustrating because I want to hear from Mainers on these nominations...unfortunately our phone lines are being jammed."

Some constituents in Maine have complained about busy signals, or full voicemail boxes, when they try to call one of Senator Collins' offices.

"Regardless of which office you call, the phone lines are jammed," said Sarah Lachance, trying to reach Sen. Collins to ask her to oppose Scott Pruitt as head of the EPA.

"Senator Collins is now something of an unusual Senator," said University of Southern Maine political science professor Ron Schdmit. He said in a "hyper-partisan" political climate, Senator Collins is one of the few "moderates" remaining who could potentially break from party-line votes.

On Wednesday, she did. Collins announced she would break with her party, and vote against Trump's education nominee, Betsy DeVos.

That gives some of her constituents hope -- that their unprecedented efforts to calls, visit, and contact the Senator -- can work.

"There's a possibility of swaying her opinion in these situations," said Alex Steed, who has considered coordinating carpools to get constituents to Collins' offices, instead of having people make phone calls.

"We're going to hit a point very soon where the volume of calls won't matter, because there will be so many," said Steed. "People need to actually be sure they're being heard."

Senator Collins said she hopes people from out of state trying to contact her will use her website, instead of jamming phone lines at her offices.

She said Mainers have been trying to reach her to ask questions, especially about her proposal to replace the Affordable Care Act, but havent been able to get through.
While we've all been busy watching for the newest iPhone 8 leaks, Apple has apparently been selling iPhone 7 and 7 Plus smartphones like crazy. With all the buzz about , iPhone 8 rumors had to take a back seat.

But enough about the iPhone 7...

Even More Expensive iPhones

At $650 or $770 for an iPhone 7 or 7 Plus, respectively, Apple's smartphones certainly aren't cheap. But Apple might be asking patrons to pay even a bit more for the iPhone 8, if the latest reports can be believed.

Building the phones with what are expected to be energy-efficient wraparound OLED displays that allow for brighter and sharper images could come at a cost to Apple and its customers. The Wall Street Journal, quoting Cowen & Co. analyst Tim Arcuri, suggests that the success that Apple has had with the pricier than usual iPhone 7 Plus means that there is "even more room" for Apple to jack up prices on future smartphones. They pulled that [pricing] lever like never before with the 7 Plus, Arcuri is quoted as saying by the WSJ.

Though as 9to5Mac details in a report on fresh data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the iPhone 8 is going to have to be really good and different to get iPhone 6, 6S, 7 and 7 Plus customers to upgrade, given that their phones are only a year or two old.

Among those who might not be sold on a new model just because it has a fancy OLED screen is Forbes contributor Ewan Spence, whose "New iPhone 8 Leak Reveals Apple's Boring Breakthrough" points out that Samsung will have such a screen out months in advance for its next Galaxy device and that Google won't be far behind with its next Pixel phone. Apple's software, processors and other strengths will probably need to take the lead.

2 new iPhone 8 concept designs

You've seen one iPhone 8 concept design video, you've seen them all, right? Nope.

Iskander Utebayev and Ran Avi's "Just iPhone 8" conceives the camera lens being sort of in the middle of the smartphone, in the Apple logo. Now that's a fresh twist.

Separately, ConceptsiPhone has posted a new iPhone 8 and iOS 11 video on YouTube, credited to designer Taheu Bradao, that tries to spin your head with a constantly twirling iPhone featuring rounded edges, a bigger screen and dynamic home button.
Microsoft today asked the U.S. government to create a mechanism for granting exemptions to last week's executive order on immigration that would meet "the pressing needs of real people," including scores of company employees and their families.

In the letter to the heads of the Department of State and Department of Homeland Security, Brad Smith, Microsoft's chief legal officer, asked for exemptions that would apply to people with non-immigrant work visas, student visas or family members. The exceptions would let them come to and go from the U.S. for business trips and family emergencies, those trips not to exceed two weeks.

The executive order, which was signed Jan. 27 by President Trump -- and that created chaos at airports when some travelers were unexpectedly detained -- included provisions for an exemption process, Smith noted. "We therefore believe that the process we are proposing here is not only consistent with the Executive Order, but was contemplated by it," he wrote in the letter.

In the letter and in a Thursday post to a company blog, Smith described the particulars in Microsoft's instance.

"We have seen these needs first-hand through some of our 76 employees who are impacted by last week's order and, together with their 41 dependents, have nonimmigrant visas to live in the United States," Smith wrote. Some have "pressing needs," asserted Smith, including families with one or more parents stranded outside the borders who "therefore cannot re-enter the country."

In another case, a worker has been unable to leave the U.S. to visit a "critically-ill parent" for fear she or he would not be allowed back in.

Those people, Smith argued, "do not present the types of safety and security risks described by the Executive Order," because they were vetted earlier and the government already has copious data on them. Those for whom exemptions would be given "are not people trying to avoid detection," said Smith. "Rather, these individuals are 'known quantities' in their communities."

Smith said that Microsoft expanded its request to include those with student visas because they "have placed a bet on our country's higher education system" and are "among the promising young minds of the next generation." Microsoft, like other technology companies, relies heavily on recent college graduates to staff its workforce.

The letter and Microsoft's request were separate from other initiatives the company has launched or joined related to Trump's immigration order. "We recognize that this proposal will not and should not end the broader debate and deliberations regarding last week's executive order," Smith said. "Our company is one among many that has expressed its views, and we will continue to participate energetically and constructively in the public discussions that help define our democratic processes."

Microsoft, for example, is one of several tech firms -- others include Amazon, Alphabet, Apple and Facebook -- that are reportedly drafting a letter to Trump spelling out their objections to and concerns over the travel ban.

A preview of the letter was forwarded to some media outlets, including Recode. "We are concerned ... that your recent executive order will affect many visa holders who work hard here in the United States and contribute to our country's success," the letter said.

Other companies have taken their complaints to court, notably Amazon and Expedia, which filed supporting declarations in a Washington State lawsuit brought by its attorney general.

Neither the Department of State or the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment on Microsoft's request.

This story, "Microsoft asks Trump administration for travel ban exceptions" was originally published by Computerworld .
This week, global software-defined WAN (SD-WAN) provider Aryaka announced its series D financing round. The round was led by two new investors, Third Point Ventures and Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), displaying strong endorsement of the companys global SD-WAN platform. Existing investors participated in the round, too, demonstrating its belief in the potential of SD-WAN and Aryaka.

SD-WANs have been seen by some to be the death knell for traditional service providers offering MPLS and IP VPN, and until now, no investment in the technology has been made by a major telecommunications company.

To better understand what preceded DTCPs positive appraisal of the SD-WAN market and why it chose to invest into Aryaka, I interviewed Jack Young, partner and head of venture capital at DTCP.

You, as a venture capitalist, look at hundreds of potential investments every year. What is the investment philosophy at DTCP?

Jack Young, partner and head of venture capital, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners

Jack: Before I get into the details, I would first like to provide a bit of background information to DTCP. As the name suggests, our firm is the investment arm of the global network operator Deutsche Telekom (DT). We have $2 billion in assets under management and advisory across multiple funds, and our portfolio includes over 70 companies. We operate autonomously from DT, who is the single LP for the funds.

Aryaka will be DTCPs tenth new venture investment in the last 18 months. We typically aim for an investment timeframe of about five years, despite having enjoyed two quick exits so far. The first one was Replay which was acquired by Intel, and second Nexmo, which was recently purchased by Vonage.

Every VC has a different strategy when it comes to investing. DTCP is primarily driven by financial returns, and we invest across a variety of deep-tech digital start-ups in the TMT space with enterprise-proven business models. DT has long-standing business relationships with most of the Fortune 500 companies in Germany and many enterprises across Europe. We strive to add value to our portfolio companies by leveraging DTs network.

We understand that telecommunication companies are facing a challenge from the over-the-top providers, and we want to better understand this transition.

Telecoms are aware of the risk of becoming dumb pipes, so we are investing in companies that are gaining traction in cloud computing and/or enterprise software. We also like vendors catering to businesses of all sizes. One last positive factor is the companys plan to expand overseas. If Europe is a target market, we hope to leverage DT to make inroads easier.

What does DTCP like about the SD-WAN market?

Jack: There are several things about SD-WAN that fall into our investment thesis. First, the technology has been around for about five to six years but has been driven by traction in the U.S. Now that there is some movement to Europe, it provides us with an opportunity to use our strengths to help it grow. Also, after an initial wave of hype, where it was hard to understand what an SD-WAN is and is not, the framework for an SD-WAN seems much better defined and the technology innovation is aligned in the right direction.

There are a number of things we like about Aryaka. Its biggest strength is that it owns the network where the biggest source of application performance challenges lies: the 'middle mile.'

The pilot deployments we have seen offer good ROI, and the market is starting to shift towards SD-WAN and away from MPLS, which for decades was the preferred technology. Increasing cloud usage has been fueling this trend. When a business uses a SaaS-based application, there is nothing to install, so deployments can move much quicker and MPLS, in comparison, just cannot keep up. Right now, MPLS is a $10 billion-plus market, and we believe SD-WAN will take a big bite out of the market as it becomes the de facto standard for the enterprise WAN.

Why do you believe SD-WAN has sustainability over the long term?

Jack: I think its already showing its long-term promise. If you look at the Gartner Hype Cycle, most technologies go into the trough of disillusionment after they reach the peak of inflated expectations, as it seems customers rarely get the payback expected from a technology when the level of hype is the highest. SD-WAN seems like it never went through the trough, and now we should start to see broader and faster adoption.

One important thing to note is that SD-WAN technology is not reinventing the wheel. Its an evolution of the WAN with a new type of network topology. Therefore, we believe SD-WAN is much better positioned than data center software-defined networking (SDN). Its the way of the future.

The SD-WAN market is crowded right now with lots of mature vendors and start-ups. What was it that you liked about Aryaka?

Jack: There are a number of things we like about Aryaka. Its biggest strength is that it owns the network where the biggest source of application performance challenges lies: the middle mile. By building its own middle mile, Aryaka can provide end-to-end application performance optimization, which makes it ideal for companies with a global presence, particularly if their countries of residence provide challenging networks.

Switching over to an SD-WAN from MPLS overnight can pose a risk, as the internet isnt designed for performance. Many of the other solutions, particularly the do it yourself (DIY) ones rely too heavily on the internet for transport. This may work in the U.S. where networks are ubiquitous and bandwidth is plentiful, but in other parts of the world, DIY solutions can be hard to architect.

Since Aryaka owns the middle mile, it is ideally suited for global scalability, and thats what we feel is its biggest differentiator. The best proof of Aryakas potential is that hundreds of customers currently use their service.

DTCPs investment can be used by Aryaka to invest more in sales and marketing to further accelerate growth.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Indian auto manufacturers, eyeing more markets, are showcasing their cars, tractors, two-wheelers in the first ever Indo-Bangla Auto Expo in Dhaka. Bangladesh has a growing market with sales forecast of as much as USD 2.5 billion a year.

Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Hero Motocorp, Bajaj, Eicher, Mahindra, TVS, Maruti made reached the capital city of Dhaka as their capacity, competence and geographical proximity to Bangladesh, puts them in an ideal position to meet this demand, an official in Indian High Commission told the New Indian Express.

The demand for automobiles has gone up in Bangladesh with rapid economic growth and improving road infrastructure in the last few years. This had led to an increase in interest from Indian companies in the Bangladesh automotive market. There is also interest in Bangladesh in collaboration with Indian companies, the official said.

India is the 6th largest producer of automobiles in the world with an average annual production of 24 million vehicles and Bangladesh is 5th largest automotive market. Automotive sector accounted for 7.1 percent of Indias GDP. India is exporting more than 3.5 million vehicles annually and global acceptance to its companies has given them the confidence to venture into other South Asian markets. Sri Lanka has been a big market for Indian automotives. We would like to replicate the success in Bangladesh as well, an Indian government official said.

As per statistics, the size of Bangladesh automotive market as per the trend is  36,000 for commercial vehicles; 2,50,000 for two-wheelers; 25,000 in passenger car segment. Some of the Indian auto giants have already forged partnership with Bangladesh counterparts. Tata Motors is setting up an assembly plant in Jessore in collaboration with Nitol Niloy Group, Hero Motor Corp is also setting up two-wheeler plant in Jessore; Ashok Leyland is also establishing their plant in Bangladesh. In total Indian investments in the sector in Bangladesh are pegged to be around $ 3 billion.

EOM/

NEW DELHI: Indian auto manufacturers, eyeing more markets, are showcasing their cars, tractors, two-wheelers in the first ever Indo-Bangla Auto Expo in Dhaka. Bangladesh has a growing market with sales forecast of as much as USD 2.5 billion a year. Tata Motors, Ashok Leyland, Hero Motocorp, Bajaj, Eicher, Mahindra, TVS, Maruti made reached the capital city of Dhaka as their capacity, competence and geographical proximity to Bangladesh, puts them in an ideal position to meet this demand, an official in Indian High Commission told the New Indian Express. The demand for automobiles has gone up in Bangladesh with rapid economic growth and improving road infrastructure in the last few years. This had led to an increase in interest from Indian companies in the Bangladesh automotive market. There is also interest in Bangladesh in collaboration with Indian companies, the official said. India is the 6th largest producer of automobiles in the world with an average annual production of 24 million vehicles and Bangladesh is 5th largest automotive market. Automotive sector accounted for 7.1 percent of Indias GDP. India is exporting more than 3.5 million vehicles annually and global acceptance to its companies has given them the confidence to venture into other South Asian markets. Sri Lanka has been a big market for Indian automotives. We would like to replicate the success in Bangladesh as well, an Indian government official said. As per statistics, the size of Bangladesh automotive market as per the trend is  36,000 for commercial vehicles; 2,50,000 for two-wheelers; 25,000 in passenger car segment. Some of the Indian auto giants have already forged partnership with Bangladesh counterparts. Tata Motors is setting up an assembly plant in Jessore in collaboration with Nitol Niloy Group, Hero Motor Corp is also setting up two-wheeler plant in Jessore; Ashok Leyland is also establishing their plant in Bangladesh. In total Indian investments in the sector in Bangladesh are pegged to be around $ 3 billion. EOM/
By PTI

WASHINGTON: Top American IT company Microsoft has requested the Trump administration to ease travel restrictions for its employees affected by the US President's executive order on immigration, visa and border security.

In a letter to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary Gen (rtd) John Kelly, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Bradford L Smith said 76 Microsoft employees along with 41 dependents have non-immigrant visas to live and work in the US and are impacted by the executive order.

"After contacting these employees and their families, we have learned that some of them have particularly pressing needs. For example, we are concerned about families that have been separated as one or both parents were outside the US last Friday and therefore cannot re-enter the country and are

stranded away from their homes," he wrote.

"We are also concerned about an impacted employee inside the US with a desperate need to visit a critically-ill parent abroad. These situations almost certainly are not unique to our employees and their families. Therefore, we request that you create an exception process to address these and other responsible applications for entry into the country," he said.

In another significant development signifying the unease in the corporate world over the immigration ban, Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick quit Trump's business advisory group, as a movement grew to dump the ride-sharing service because of his connection to the new administration.

In his letter seeking exception, Smith also said he believes such an exception under the existing framework of the order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the order's security-related objectives.

From the perspective of safety and security, a wide range of personal information is known about individuals holding non-immigrant work visas, including their occupation, place of work, place of residence, family members, state identification/driver's license information, and the existence of any criminal history, he wrote.

These are not people trying to avoid detection. Rather, these individuals are "known quantities" in their communities: their character, personalities, conduct, and behaviour is well recognised and understood by their employers, colleagues, friends, and neighbours, he added.

Smith said these individuals fill critical roles in the organisations that employ them, whether they are doctors, scientists, engineers, medical technicians, researchers, architects, software developers, or any number of other highly skilled professionals.

They are deeply valued contributors to the innovation, research, and business acumen of the US, and they serve critical roles in the successful operations of American companies, he said.

Smith said the individuals who would be eligible for the proposed exception have already been vetted on numerous levels by the US government for security risks in order to be approved for employment on a non-immigrant visa.

Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

WASHINGTON: Top American IT company Microsoft has requested the Trump administration to ease travel restrictions for its employees affected by the US President's executive order on immigration, visa and border security. In a letter to US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary Gen (rtd) John Kelly, Microsoft Chief Legal Officer Bradford L Smith said 76 Microsoft employees along with 41 dependents have non-immigrant visas to live and work in the US and are impacted by the executive order. "After contacting these employees and their families, we have learned that some of them have particularly pressing needs. For example, we are concerned about families that have been separated as one or both parents were outside the US last Friday and therefore cannot re-enter the country and are stranded away from their homes," he wrote. "We are also concerned about an impacted employee inside the US with a desperate need to visit a critically-ill parent abroad. These situations almost certainly are not unique to our employees and their families. Therefore, we request that you create an exception process to address these and other responsible applications for entry into the country," he said. In another significant development signifying the unease in the corporate world over the immigration ban, Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick quit Trump's business advisory group, as a movement grew to dump the ride-sharing service because of his connection to the new administration. In his letter seeking exception, Smith also said he believes such an exception under the existing framework of the order would help address compelling personal needs without compromising the order's security-related objectives. From the perspective of safety and security, a wide range of personal information is known about individuals holding non-immigrant work visas, including their occupation, place of work, place of residence, family members, state identification/driver's license information, and the existence of any criminal history, he wrote. These are not people trying to avoid detection. Rather, these individuals are "known quantities" in their communities: their character, personalities, conduct, and behaviour is well recognised and understood by their employers, colleagues, friends, and neighbours, he added. Smith said these individuals fill critical roles in the organisations that employ them, whether they are doctors, scientists, engineers, medical technicians, researchers, architects, software developers, or any number of other highly skilled professionals. They are deeply valued contributors to the innovation, research, and business acumen of the US, and they serve critical roles in the successful operations of American companies, he said. Smith said the individuals who would be eligible for the proposed exception have already been vetted on numerous levels by the US government for security risks in order to be approved for employment on a non-immigrant visa. Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: The president of Bengaluru's Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) was shot at in broad daylight on Friday morning, suspected to be a fallout of a gang war or political rivalry. The incident took place at Kogilu Cross near Yelahanka at 11:30 am when two bike-borne men fired eight rounds at the car in which K Srinivasmurthy alias Kadabagere Srinivas (51) and his friend Sridhar Murthy were travelling.

Srinivas, who was seated next to the driver, suffered three bullet injuries, and was later admitted to a private hospital. While Murthy escaped unhurt, the driver Rajamouli sustained minor injuries. The shooting took place when Srinivas and Murthy were heading towards Bagalur in a Honda City after attending a Raitha Sante (farmers' fair) in Yelahanka. When the car stopped at a signal, the unidentified gunmen opened fire and fled the scene

Police said that Srinivas, who hails from Kadabagere village in Nelamangala, faced several criminal cases and is the elder brother of Poison Rama, a notorious rowdy. Traffic was thrown out of gear for a while on the busy Ballari Road as well as towards Doddaballapur Road. Senior police officials, including City Commissioner Praveen Sood, visited the spot and inspected the crime scene.

Forensic Science Lab (FSL) experts also examined the spot while 10 special teams have been formed to crack the case. "We are waiting for the forensic report to ascertain the weapon used by the gunmen. We can't come to a conclusion whether it was a country pistol or revolver," said a senior police officer.

Soon after the incident, police put checkpoints across the city to find the suspected vehicle. The officials are also verifying CCTV footage from over 20 CCTV cameras installed in the surrounding areas to identify the attackers.

Meanwhile, Columbia Asia hospital authorities in a press release said the bullets on Srinivas' body were removed and he was stable.

BENGALURU: The president of Bengaluru's Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) was shot at in broad daylight on Friday morning, suspected to be a fallout of a gang war or political rivalry. The incident took place at Kogilu Cross near Yelahanka at 11:30 am when two bike-borne men fired eight rounds at the car in which K Srinivasmurthy alias Kadabagere Srinivas (51) and his friend Sridhar Murthy were travelling. Srinivas, who was seated next to the driver, suffered three bullet injuries, and was later admitted to a private hospital. While Murthy escaped unhurt, the driver Rajamouli sustained minor injuries. The shooting took place when Srinivas and Murthy were heading towards Bagalur in a Honda City after attending a Raitha Sante (farmers' fair) in Yelahanka. When the car stopped at a signal, the unidentified gunmen opened fire and fled the scene Police said that Srinivas, who hails from Kadabagere village in Nelamangala, faced several criminal cases and is the elder brother of Poison Rama, a notorious rowdy. Traffic was thrown out of gear for a while on the busy Ballari Road as well as towards Doddaballapur Road. Senior police officials, including City Commissioner Praveen Sood, visited the spot and inspected the crime scene. Forensic Science Lab (FSL) experts also examined the spot while 10 special teams have been formed to crack the case. "We are waiting for the forensic report to ascertain the weapon used by the gunmen. We can't come to a conclusion whether it was a country pistol or revolver," said a senior police officer. Soon after the incident, police put checkpoints across the city to find the suspected vehicle. The officials are also verifying CCTV footage from over 20 CCTV cameras installed in the surrounding areas to identify the attackers. Meanwhile, Columbia Asia hospital authorities in a press release said the bullets on Srinivas' body were removed and he was stable.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: An unusual petition came up before the High Court on Thursday. A former rowdy sheeter wanted the court to allow flowers to be showered from a helicopter on his newly-built house. Reason: The cops had denied him permission while he had printed the details in his invite and he would be the butt of ridicule if the flower shower didnt happen. Moreover, he claimed that his neighbour, also an ex-rowdy sheeter, had got permission for a similar spectacle during his housewarming ceremony.

But the court was not amused. Why all this? asked Justice A S Bopanna. What is the need for providing such details in the invitation? You are competing with your neighbour... Is this competition or you are claiming violation of equality?

The judge told the complainant M Muniraju that he has to show legal obligations to seek directions to the police. Muniraju, in his petition, claimed, The operation of helicopter for one-and-a-half hours wont affect law and order.

The judge observed that a businessman, on his daughters advice, spent money meant for her wedding to build 90 houses for the homeless while in contrast a former minister (read G Janardhana Reddy) splurged on his daughters wedding invitation.

The government advocate said that Muniraju, whose name was struck off the rowdy sheet last year, had issues far graver than flowery ones. That the Varthur site on which Munirajus house was built is under dispute and that he had to seek no objection certificate from the civil aviation ministry for the chopper and forward it to police commissioner.

Justice Bopanna issued notice to the city police commissioner and police officials before adjourning the hearing to Monday.

Muniraju had approached Deccan Charters Ltd in December for the event to be held on February 9 in Mullur village of Varthur Hobli in Bengaluru East Taluk. But Deccan Charters asked him to seek police permission first.

BENGALURU: An unusual petition came up before the High Court on Thursday. A former rowdy sheeter wanted the court to allow flowers to be showered from a helicopter on his newly-built house. Reason: The cops had denied him permission while he had printed the details in his invite and he would be the butt of ridicule if the flower shower didnt happen. Moreover, he claimed that his neighbour, also an ex-rowdy sheeter, had got permission for a similar spectacle during his housewarming ceremony. But the court was not amused. Why all this? asked Justice A S Bopanna. What is the need for providing such details in the invitation? You are competing with your neighbour... Is this competition or you are claiming violation of equality? The judge told the complainant M Muniraju that he has to show legal obligations to seek directions to the police. Muniraju, in his petition, claimed, The operation of helicopter for one-and-a-half hours wont affect law and order. The judge observed that a businessman, on his daughters advice, spent money meant for her wedding to build 90 houses for the homeless while in contrast a former minister (read G Janardhana Reddy) splurged on his daughters wedding invitation. The government advocate said that Muniraju, whose name was struck off the rowdy sheet last year, had issues far graver than flowery ones. That the Varthur site on which Munirajus house was built is under dispute and that he had to seek no objection certificate from the civil aviation ministry for the chopper and forward it to police commissioner. Justice Bopanna issued notice to the city police commissioner and police officials before adjourning the hearing to Monday. Muniraju had approached Deccan Charters Ltd in December for the event to be held on February 9 in Mullur village of Varthur Hobli in Bengaluru East Taluk. But Deccan Charters asked him to seek police permission first.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Protests against 33% reservation for women in urban local bodies (ULBs) in Nagaland spilled over from commercial hub Dimapur to capital Kohima, where the protestors on Thursday evening set afire the office of the Kohima Municipal Council (KMC) and around a dozen government vehicles, including a bus. The protestors in Dimapur burnt down a rented house of the chief minister which was located near his private residence at 3rd Mile. Five columns of Army have been deployed to bring the situation under control in Kohima.

The police said around half a dozen government offices, including the regional transport office and private residences also were burnt as the fire spread.The violence broke out soon after a meeting between the government and Naga Tribes Action Committee (NTAC) ended.The protestors were demanding the resignation of Chief Minister T R Zeliang along with his ministerial colleagues and had set a deadline of 4 pm, nullification of the polls that took place in some of the 32 ULBs on Wednesday and suspension of police officers who had ordered Tuesdays firing in Dimapur that claimed the lives of two youth.

Under pressure, the State Cabinet decided to declare the process of elections to ULBs as null and void and transfer Dimapur Police Commissioner and the DCP, Dimapur, immediately to facilitate an impartial judicial inquiry which has been already ordered.

In a statement issued later in the night, the chief minister appealed to people to not indulge in senseless vandalism and arson destroying public properties and spreading fear and panic in the minds of peace-loving citizens. The government is of the considered opinion that it has been lenient enough to give in to the demands of the agitators even though it was steadfastly abiding by the Constitution to which it had sworn its solemn allegiance. And making unreasonable and unconstitutional demands such as asking the entire Cabinet to tender resignation when the ministry has undisputed, unquestionable majority and support of the entire Assembly, is simply unacceptable and non-negotiable, the statement said.

Commenting on the fire at the CMs rented house, Nagaland DGP L L Doungel said: It is apparently a farmhouse (which the protestors set afire in Dimapur) in an isolated place. It belongs to the CM or his relatives. They are targeting these for publicity. In Kohima, the protestors tried to burn down the office of ruling Naga Peoples Front (NPF).

The incidents came a day after the offices of district magistrate, election department and NPF were ransacked by the protestors in eastern Nagalands Mokokchung. Curfew continued in both Dimapur and Kohima.

GUWAHATI: Protests against 33% reservation for women in urban local bodies (ULBs) in Nagaland spilled over from commercial hub Dimapur to capital Kohima, where the protestors on Thursday evening set afire the office of the Kohima Municipal Council (KMC) and around a dozen government vehicles, including a bus. The protestors in Dimapur burnt down a rented house of the chief minister which was located near his private residence at 3rd Mile. Five columns of Army have been deployed to bring the situation under control in Kohima. The police said around half a dozen government offices, including the regional transport office and private residences also were burnt as the fire spread.The violence broke out soon after a meeting between the government and Naga Tribes Action Committee (NTAC) ended.The protestors were demanding the resignation of Chief Minister T R Zeliang along with his ministerial colleagues and had set a deadline of 4 pm, nullification of the polls that took place in some of the 32 ULBs on Wednesday and suspension of police officers who had ordered Tuesdays firing in Dimapur that claimed the lives of two youth. Under pressure, the State Cabinet decided to declare the process of elections to ULBs as null and void and transfer Dimapur Police Commissioner and the DCP, Dimapur, immediately to facilitate an impartial judicial inquiry which has been already ordered. In a statement issued later in the night, the chief minister appealed to people to not indulge in senseless vandalism and arson destroying public properties and spreading fear and panic in the minds of peace-loving citizens. The government is of the considered opinion that it has been lenient enough to give in to the demands of the agitators even though it was steadfastly abiding by the Constitution to which it had sworn its solemn allegiance. And making unreasonable and unconstitutional demands such as asking the entire Cabinet to tender resignation when the ministry has undisputed, unquestionable majority and support of the entire Assembly, is simply unacceptable and non-negotiable, the statement said. Commenting on the fire at the CMs rented house, Nagaland DGP L L Doungel said: It is apparently a farmhouse (which the protestors set afire in Dimapur) in an isolated place. It belongs to the CM or his relatives. They are targeting these for publicity. In Kohima, the protestors tried to burn down the office of ruling Naga Peoples Front (NPF). The incidents came a day after the offices of district magistrate, election department and NPF were ransacked by the protestors in eastern Nagalands Mokokchung. Curfew continued in both Dimapur and Kohima.
Harpreet Bajwa By

Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: With Punjab going to the polls on Saturday, reports of clashes have emerged from different parts of the state over alleged distribution of liquor and money to voters.

Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh and AAP candidate Jarnail Singh, both contesting from Lambi, alleged Shiromani Akali Dal leader Vicky Middukhera was distributing money at Hakkuwala village in Lambi constituency. He reportedly fled the village leaving back his Toyota Fortunerwhich has been damagedafter the mob chased him down.

Middukhera denied the allegations terming them baseless. I had gone to the village to condole the demise of a villager. The police has recorded my statement. The opposition is trying tarnish my image, he said.

Violence has also been reported in Pattithe constituency of food supplies minister Adesh Partap Singh Kairon who is the son-in-law of CM Parkash Singh Badal.

Reports indicate that a case has been registered against two Akali Dal members for an alleged attack over Congress partymen.

Former Sarpanch and Congress leader Harjinder Singh had tried to stop Akali Dal leader Sukhdev Singh and his workers from distributing money to voters.

However, later Sukhdev and his workers reportedly attacked Harjinder and his aide with sharp weapons, badly injuring their hands. The two have been hospitalised.

Deputy superintendent of police Ashwani Kumar said the accused have fled and the police is trying to track them. He further added a woman was also involved in the attack.

In another incident in Rampura Phul, Aam Aadmi Partys youth coordinator, Robby Brar, was shot in the thigh allegedly by SADs former market committee chairman Rocky Kansal. Kansal and his aides were allegedly distributing liquor and cash to lure voters.

The AAP alleged that Congress workers were distributing liquor in Nangal Kalan village of Mansa district. AAP worker Ajaib Singh said, Congress workers, including former sarpanch Jagmel Singh, were distributing liquor and when I objected, they attacked me. Jagmel Singh has denied the charges.

Meanwhile, the Election Commission has transferred Harinder Singhthe deputy superintendent of police, Jalalabadfollowing a complaint by Sangrur MP and Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Jalalabad, Bhagwant Mann.

CHANDIGARH: With Punjab going to the polls on Saturday, reports of clashes have emerged from different parts of the state over alleged distribution of liquor and money to voters. Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh and AAP candidate Jarnail Singh, both contesting from Lambi, alleged Shiromani Akali Dal leader Vicky Middukhera was distributing money at Hakkuwala village in Lambi constituency. He reportedly fled the village leaving back his Toyota Fortunerwhich has been damagedafter the mob chased him down. Middukhera denied the allegations terming them baseless. I had gone to the village to condole the demise of a villager. The police has recorded my statement. The opposition is trying tarnish my image, he said. Violence has also been reported in Pattithe constituency of food supplies minister Adesh Partap Singh Kairon who is the son-in-law of CM Parkash Singh Badal. Reports indicate that a case has been registered against two Akali Dal members for an alleged attack over Congress partymen. Former Sarpanch and Congress leader Harjinder Singh had tried to stop Akali Dal leader Sukhdev Singh and his workers from distributing money to voters. However, later Sukhdev and his workers reportedly attacked Harjinder and his aide with sharp weapons, badly injuring their hands. The two have been hospitalised. Deputy superintendent of police Ashwani Kumar said the accused have fled and the police is trying to track them. He further added a woman was also involved in the attack. In another incident in Rampura Phul, Aam Aadmi Partys youth coordinator, Robby Brar, was shot in the thigh allegedly by SADs former market committee chairman Rocky Kansal. Kansal and his aides were allegedly distributing liquor and cash to lure voters. The AAP alleged that Congress workers were distributing liquor in Nangal Kalan village of Mansa district. AAP worker Ajaib Singh said, Congress workers, including former sarpanch Jagmel Singh, were distributing liquor and when I objected, they attacked me. Jagmel Singh has denied the charges. Meanwhile, the Election Commission has transferred Harinder Singhthe deputy superintendent of police, Jalalabadfollowing a complaint by Sangrur MP and Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Jalalabad, Bhagwant Mann.
Hemant Kumar Rout By

Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: Tightening its screw on the multi-crore ponzi scam, the CBI on Friday arrested managing director of Green Ray International Limited (GRIL) Mir Sahiruddin, who was on the run for nearly three years. A native of Balasore district, Sahiruddin was hiding with his family in Nigeria. He had entered India on Bangladesh passport by impersonating him as Ahmed Hussain and was arrested from Kolkata.

Confirming his arrest, a CBI official from New Delhi said Sahiruddin of Sasanbad village under Jaleswar police limits had returned from Nigeria a few days back. Earlier a look out circular was issued against him and other directors of the company. He will be brought to Bhubaneswar on Saturday, he said. GRIL is accused of duping nearly Rs 2,000 crore from poor and unsuspecting investors of Odisha and 13 other states on the pretext of providing them astronomical returns in a short span of time. 'The Express' was first to expose the dubious activities of the company and carried a series of investigative reports.

On September 28, 2015, CBI sleuths had raided different branch offices of the ponzi firm. The raids were conducted at 13 places in Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Keonjhar, Khurda and Nayagarh districts. Corporate office and houses of the company officials at Jaleswar and relatives house at Tarpur in Jajpur were also raided simultaneously. The national probing agency had seized documents related to the chit-fund scam and schemes floated by the company, which has foreign connections and alleged links with anti-national forces.

Sources said, Bhubaneswar CBI SP Rajiv Ranjan had been tracking Sahiruddin since long. Altogether 13 cases were registered against the company authorities under various sections of IPC and Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act 1978 in Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Ganjam, Sonepur and Khurda districts in 2013. Chhattisgarh police also had registered five cases and arrested one director Ayub Saha and one branch manager. Sources said GRIL which dealt in gold and silver trading possessed nearly 20.68 acres of land in Balasore district that had been confiscated by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch.

The company had a deposit of Rs 57,41,541 in 46 accounts, which was frozen while the EOW had seized Rs 9,55,745 in cash, 246 gram gold coins worth Rs 4,15,751 and 9.5 kg silver coins worth Rs 6,66,200. Apart from the 41 branches in the State, GRIL had 67 more branches in Maharashtra, Goa, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat besides its international branch in Bar Dubai. Earlier, Sahiruddin was arrested by State Security Service (SSS), the primary domestic intelligence agency of Nigeria on July 15, 2015 on the grounds of suspected money laundering. Later, he managed to obtain bail. The accused was hiding at Abuja, Nigerias capital, with family to hoodwink the CBI. He was also allegedly involved in gold trading. Investigations revealed that his company had transferred crores of rupees from India to Dubai and then Nigeria through hawala brokers.

BHUBANESWAR: Tightening its screw on the multi-crore ponzi scam, the CBI on Friday arrested managing director of Green Ray International Limited (GRIL) Mir Sahiruddin, who was on the run for nearly three years. A native of Balasore district, Sahiruddin was hiding with his family in Nigeria. He had entered India on Bangladesh passport by impersonating him as Ahmed Hussain and was arrested from Kolkata. Confirming his arrest, a CBI official from New Delhi said Sahiruddin of Sasanbad village under Jaleswar police limits had returned from Nigeria a few days back. Earlier a look out circular was issued against him and other directors of the company. He will be brought to Bhubaneswar on Saturday, he said. GRIL is accused of duping nearly Rs 2,000 crore from poor and unsuspecting investors of Odisha and 13 other states on the pretext of providing them astronomical returns in a short span of time. 'The Express' was first to expose the dubious activities of the company and carried a series of investigative reports. On September 28, 2015, CBI sleuths had raided different branch offices of the ponzi firm. The raids were conducted at 13 places in Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Jajpur, Keonjhar, Khurda and Nayagarh districts. Corporate office and houses of the company officials at Jaleswar and relatives house at Tarpur in Jajpur were also raided simultaneously. The national probing agency had seized documents related to the chit-fund scam and schemes floated by the company, which has foreign connections and alleged links with anti-national forces. Sources said, Bhubaneswar CBI SP Rajiv Ranjan had been tracking Sahiruddin since long. Altogether 13 cases were registered against the company authorities under various sections of IPC and Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act 1978 in Balasore, Mayurbhanj, Ganjam, Sonepur and Khurda districts in 2013. Chhattisgarh police also had registered five cases and arrested one director Ayub Saha and one branch manager. Sources said GRIL which dealt in gold and silver trading possessed nearly 20.68 acres of land in Balasore district that had been confiscated by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Crime Branch. The company had a deposit of Rs 57,41,541 in 46 accounts, which was frozen while the EOW had seized Rs 9,55,745 in cash, 246 gram gold coins worth Rs 4,15,751 and 9.5 kg silver coins worth Rs 6,66,200. Apart from the 41 branches in the State, GRIL had 67 more branches in Maharashtra, Goa, Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Bihar, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat besides its international branch in Bar Dubai. Earlier, Sahiruddin was arrested by State Security Service (SSS), the primary domestic intelligence agency of Nigeria on July 15, 2015 on the grounds of suspected money laundering. Later, he managed to obtain bail. The accused was hiding at Abuja, Nigerias capital, with family to hoodwink the CBI. He was also allegedly involved in gold trading. Investigations revealed that his company had transferred crores of rupees from India to Dubai and then Nigeria through hawala brokers.
By PTI

BANKURA: The body of a woman, who was supposed to have left for the US in June last year, was found buried in the house of her boyfriend in Bhopal whom she had met through social media, a month after her parents lost contact with her, police said today.

Akansha Sharma (28) was reported missing by her parents following which police tracked her to Bhopal. During a search yesterday, they found her body buried in a kitchen in the house of Udayan Das, a resident of Saket Nagar, Superintendent of Police, Bankura, Sukhendu Hira said.

The woman's father Shibendra Sharma had lodged a complaint with the police. He said his daughter was supposed to go to the US via Delhi on June 23, 2016 and had left home on June 22, the SP said.

Akansha was in touch with her parents until December 2016 but later all communications stopped. As a result, he lodged a complaint with police on January 5, the Bankura SP said.

The officers of Bankura police started looking for Akansha and finally tracked her to Bhopal following which a team went to the city on February 1.

During investigation, the police found out that Akansha had met Udayan through a social media website.

BANKURA: The body of a woman, who was supposed to have left for the US in June last year, was found buried in the house of her boyfriend in Bhopal whom she had met through social media, a month after her parents lost contact with her, police said today. Akansha Sharma (28) was reported missing by her parents following which police tracked her to Bhopal. During a search yesterday, they found her body buried in a kitchen in the house of Udayan Das, a resident of Saket Nagar, Superintendent of Police, Bankura, Sukhendu Hira said. The woman's father Shibendra Sharma had lodged a complaint with the police. He said his daughter was supposed to go to the US via Delhi on June 23, 2016 and had left home on June 22, the SP said. Akansha was in touch with her parents until December 2016 but later all communications stopped. As a result, he lodged a complaint with police on January 5, the Bankura SP said. The officers of Bankura police started looking for Akansha and finally tracked her to Bhopal following which a team went to the city on February 1. During investigation, the police found out that Akansha had met Udayan through a social media website.
Manish Anand By

Express News Service

ALIGARH: Even while Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati is seeking consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of her party, the minority community appears divided in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh indicating that the voting pattern of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections may return to haunt the anti-BJP political outfits.

With the UP polls setting a stage for multi-cornered contests, the minority community seems to be searching for party candidates who can defeat the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), while they stress that the BSP chiefs political track record makes her unreliable. This despite a section within the community debating to change their preference for the Samajwadi Party.

Its true that the Muslims in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections could not make the judgment to strategically vote in favour of one anti-BJP political outfit. There is a sense of deep regret within the Muslim community that not a single person from the community could win the Lok Sabha elections from UP. But situations have not changed much in the face of a multi-cornered contest in the state. The Muslims continue to search for a candidate who can stop the BJP in an Assembly constituency, said Mohammed Zameel, a trader in Aligarh.

While the BSP supremo has fielded 100 candidates in the 403 strong UP Assembly elections with an explicit objective to anchor her social engineering with the minority community along with Dalits as the core support group, she does not appear to be winning the battle for the vote bank politics. Mayawati has done her most of politics in alliance with the BJP. The BSP founder Kansi Ram favoured the construction of a toilet complex at the site of the demolished Babri mosque. How can the Muslims be confident that she would not strike an alliance with the BJP in future, said Syed Shehzad Hussain of Kabir Colony in Agra.

However, a few Muslims speak in favour of the BSP supremo. The law and order situations in her rule had been very good, besides her government keeps a tight leash on price rise. In the Samajwadi Party (SP) government, the police have harassed us a lot, said Shanu Rehman in Aligarh.

With even Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidates giving tough contests to the BJP in a few of the constituencies in the first phase of the elections for 72 seats, the Muslims appear backing even them in their quest to see a BJP loss in the state. There are half a dozen seats in Mathura, Agra and Aligarh where the RLD candidates are in a better position to defeat the BJP. The Muslims are firming up their views that the community should back them, said Mohammed Nadeem in Mathura.

However, the minority community appears to look at the SP-Congress alliance with hope in the elections. There has been no government which did as many developmental works the way Akhilesh Yadav has in the last five years, said Sayed Kaleem in Agra.

ALIGARH: Even while Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati is seeking consolidation of Muslim votes in favour of her party, the minority community appears divided in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh indicating that the voting pattern of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections may return to haunt the anti-BJP political outfits. With the UP polls setting a stage for multi-cornered contests, the minority community seems to be searching for party candidates who can defeat the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), while they stress that the BSP chiefs political track record makes her unreliable. This despite a section within the community debating to change their preference for the Samajwadi Party. Its true that the Muslims in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections could not make the judgment to strategically vote in favour of one anti-BJP political outfit. There is a sense of deep regret within the Muslim community that not a single person from the community could win the Lok Sabha elections from UP. But situations have not changed much in the face of a multi-cornered contest in the state. The Muslims continue to search for a candidate who can stop the BJP in an Assembly constituency, said Mohammed Zameel, a trader in Aligarh. While the BSP supremo has fielded 100 candidates in the 403 strong UP Assembly elections with an explicit objective to anchor her social engineering with the minority community along with Dalits as the core support group, she does not appear to be winning the battle for the vote bank politics. Mayawati has done her most of politics in alliance with the BJP. The BSP founder Kansi Ram favoured the construction of a toilet complex at the site of the demolished Babri mosque. How can the Muslims be confident that she would not strike an alliance with the BJP in future, said Syed Shehzad Hussain of Kabir Colony in Agra. However, a few Muslims speak in favour of the BSP supremo. The law and order situations in her rule had been very good, besides her government keeps a tight leash on price rise. In the Samajwadi Party (SP) government, the police have harassed us a lot, said Shanu Rehman in Aligarh. With even Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) candidates giving tough contests to the BJP in a few of the constituencies in the first phase of the elections for 72 seats, the Muslims appear backing even them in their quest to see a BJP loss in the state. There are half a dozen seats in Mathura, Agra and Aligarh where the RLD candidates are in a better position to defeat the BJP. The Muslims are firming up their views that the community should back them, said Mohammed Nadeem in Mathura. However, the minority community appears to look at the SP-Congress alliance with hope in the elections. There has been no government which did as many developmental works the way Akhilesh Yadav has in the last five years, said Sayed Kaleem in Agra.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: Defence Expert Brigadier (Retd.) S. K. Chatterji on Friday said that Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeeds house arrest clearly indicates that Pakistan is acting under pressure at the moment.

As Saeed is now being put under house arrest along with other four-five people and it appeared that there was some sort of pressure under which the Pakistanis were working, Brigadier (Retd.) Chatterji said.

The Pakistani Interior Ministry also made a statement that Hafiz Saeed works against the interest of Pakistan which is quite a departure (from the earlier stand), he added.

Meanwhile, another Defence Expert Ashok Kumar Behuria said this development is a signal from Pakistan to India and the world that Islamabad is serious in taking action against terrorists.

Let us see how it unfolds, but if you look at it closely I would say there could be some truth in the analysis that the civilian administration is signalling it to India and the wider world that they are serious about taking actions against all kinds of terrorists. In that sense, its a good step, Behuria told ANI.

There is some amount of consensus between the civilian administration and the military at the moment because you have a new chief, who has just come in and he is not as much in control over army as the ex chief was. May be he is not opposed to the steps taken by the civilian government, he added.

Behuria further said that similar actions have taken place in the past as well.

Terrorist outfits have been banned, they have been allowed to come back in different names and they have been put behind bars then again released and used against India, he added.

Pakistans Interior Ministry has included the names of Hafiz Saeed and 37 others, who are affiliated with JuD or Lashkar-e-Taiba, on the Exit Control List.

The Ministry has sent letters to all the provincial governments and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

The move, which bars the 38 individuals from leaving Pakistan, comes two days after authorities placed Saeed under house arrest along with four others namely Abdullah Ubaid, Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Niaz.

NEW DELHI: Defence Expert Brigadier (Retd.) S. K. Chatterji on Friday said that Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) chief Hafiz Saeeds house arrest clearly indicates that Pakistan is acting under pressure at the moment. As Saeed is now being put under house arrest along with other four-five people and it appeared that there was some sort of pressure under which the Pakistanis were working, Brigadier (Retd.) Chatterji said. The Pakistani Interior Ministry also made a statement that Hafiz Saeed works against the interest of Pakistan which is quite a departure (from the earlier stand), he added. Meanwhile, another Defence Expert Ashok Kumar Behuria said this development is a signal from Pakistan to India and the world that Islamabad is serious in taking action against terrorists. Let us see how it unfolds, but if you look at it closely I would say there could be some truth in the analysis that the civilian administration is signalling it to India and the wider world that they are serious about taking actions against all kinds of terrorists. In that sense, its a good step, Behuria told ANI. There is some amount of consensus between the civilian administration and the military at the moment because you have a new chief, who has just come in and he is not as much in control over army as the ex chief was. May be he is not opposed to the steps taken by the civilian government, he added. Behuria further said that similar actions have taken place in the past as well. Terrorist outfits have been banned, they have been allowed to come back in different names and they have been put behind bars then again released and used against India, he added. Pakistans Interior Ministry has included the names of Hafiz Saeed and 37 others, who are affiliated with JuD or Lashkar-e-Taiba, on the Exit Control List. The Ministry has sent letters to all the provincial governments and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). The move, which bars the 38 individuals from leaving Pakistan, comes two days after authorities placed Saeed under house arrest along with four others namely Abdullah Ubaid, Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Niaz.
Namita bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: As poll fever peaks in western UP with first phase just a week away, the BJP has released its second list of its 40 star campaigners for the third and fourth phases of polls here on Thursday.

While partys first list had surprised many as the names of established star campaigners including, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, young and firebrand Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi and former state chief Vinay Katiyar were missing in it, the current list consists of all these names except Advani. Varun seems to have replaced mother and Union minister Maneka Gandhi in the second list which has partys top brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah, veteran party leader and Kanpur MP Murli Manohar Joshi. Moreover, chief ministers Shiv Raj Singh Chouhan and Vasundra Raje of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, respectively, will also pitch in during the third and fourth phases of state polls to be held on February 19, 23 respectively.

On why Varuns name was not there in the first list but has been included in second, BJP state secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak says that the party has a galaxy of star campaigners. There is no dearth of strong leaders in our party. Everyone is campaigning and working for the party in the elections. Since there is an EC limit of 40 star campaigners for all parties, so we are rotating our campaigners phase-wise, says Pathak.

Joshi, Varun are MPs from Kanpur and Sultanpur and they enjoy a special appeal among the voters of central UP, so it will be good for the party if they campaign in central UP, says a BJP leader.

LUCKNOW: As poll fever peaks in western UP with first phase just a week away, the BJP has released its second list of its 40 star campaigners for the third and fourth phases of polls here on Thursday. While partys first list had surprised many as the names of established star campaigners including, L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, young and firebrand Sultanpur MP Varun Gandhi and former state chief Vinay Katiyar were missing in it, the current list consists of all these names except Advani. Varun seems to have replaced mother and Union minister Maneka Gandhi in the second list which has partys top brass including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, party president Amit Shah, veteran party leader and Kanpur MP Murli Manohar Joshi. Moreover, chief ministers Shiv Raj Singh Chouhan and Vasundra Raje of neighbouring Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, respectively, will also pitch in during the third and fourth phases of state polls to be held on February 19, 23 respectively. On why Varuns name was not there in the first list but has been included in second, BJP state secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak says that the party has a galaxy of star campaigners. There is no dearth of strong leaders in our party. Everyone is campaigning and working for the party in the elections. Since there is an EC limit of 40 star campaigners for all parties, so we are rotating our campaigners phase-wise, says Pathak. Joshi, Varun are MPs from Kanpur and Sultanpur and they enjoy a special appeal among the voters of central UP, so it will be good for the party if they campaign in central UP, says a BJP leader.
The leaders of the US, the UK and the Soviet Union gathered at a secret location on February 4, 1945 in the Black Sea region to discuss the final phase of the war against Germany. It was later revealed that the conference, codenamed Argonaut (after heroes in Greek mythology), was held at the former imperial palace in Yalta

Leaders of the US, the UK and the Soviet

Union at Yalta in Feb. 1945

Look East

Though Nazi Germany was crumbling, it looked as if the war against Japan might take longer. So, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill discussed with USSR dictator Joseph Stalin the conditions under which the Soviets would enter the war against Japan

A Red Promise

At Yalta, the Allies also decided that a government of national unity comprising both non-communists and communists would be set up in Poland. Free elections were to be held in the countries of eastern Europe. However, Stalin reneged on his promise and arrested the non-communist Polish leaders. The Eastern European nations became Soviet satellites

A new president and a new PM

Yalta was the second of three major Allied wartime conferences. The Tehran Conference took place in December 1943, while the Potsdam Conference was held in July 1945. A number of changes took place between Yalta and Potsdam

American President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and vice-president Harry S Truman, who had assumed the presidency, was in charge of the US at Potsdam

And during the middle of the Potsdam conference, the UK election results came out. Winston Churchills party had lost and Britain had a new prime minister in Clement Attlee

The leaders of the US, the UK and the Soviet Union gathered at a secret location on February 4, 1945 in the Black Sea region to discuss the final phase of the war against Germany. It was later revealed that the conference, codenamed Argonaut (after heroes in Greek mythology), was held at the former imperial palace in Yalta Leaders of the US, the UK and the Soviet Union at Yalta in Feb. 1945Look East Though Nazi Germany was crumbling, it looked as if the war against Japan might take longer. So, US President Franklin Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill discussed with USSR dictator Joseph Stalin the conditions under which the Soviets would enter the war against Japan A Red Promise At Yalta, the Allies also decided that a government of national unity comprising both non-communists and communists would be set up in Poland. Free elections were to be held in the countries of eastern Europe. However, Stalin reneged on his promise and arrested the non-communist Polish leaders. The Eastern European nations became Soviet satellites A new president and a new PM Yalta was the second of three major Allied wartime conferences. The Tehran Conference took place in December 1943, while the Potsdam Conference was held in July 1945. A number of changes took place between Yalta and Potsdam American President Roosevelt died in April 1945 and vice-president Harry S Truman, who had assumed the presidency, was in charge of the US at Potsdam And during the middle of the Potsdam conference, the UK election results came out. Winston Churchills party had lost and Britain had a new prime minister in Clement Attlee
By Express News Service

KOCHI: As if negotiating the states tumultuous roads were not jittery enough for parents of school children, an alarming number of school bus drivers were booked on Friday for drink-driving. As many as 38 drivers were found operating their vehicles, with children on board, in an inebriated state in five police districts under the Kochi Police Range.



The police cracked down on errant school bus drivers in Kochi City, Ernakulam Rural, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Idukki police districts. Starting around 6 am and continuing up to 11 am, 200 vehicles were checked.

Amit Bandre

Officers said the highest number of drivers booked for driving under the influence of alcohol was from Ernakulam Rural - 14. Alappuzha followed with 13 cases while five cases each were registered in Kochi City and Kottayam.

Idukki accounted for a single case. The assistance of the MVD is being sought to suspend the driving licence of the culprits.

Kochi Range IG P Vijayan told Express the number of cases registered during the drive was quite surprising.

Finding drivers in an inebriated state in the morning shows they are severely alcoholic, Vijayan said.

They risk the lives of young children. We found some drivers dropping kindergarten students too were under the influence of alcohol, he said.



Students themselves had passed on vital information to the police to conduct the surprise check. Inputs from Student Police Cadets and interactions with other students during the Clean Campus Safe Campus too proved useful.



Students had told our officers some of the school bus drivers operated after consuming liquor. There were also complaints about misbehaviour from drivers under such a state, Vijayan said. Having registered cases against these drivers, the cops have decided to take the matter up with school authorities and parents.

Parents can at least ensure they are sending their children in safer hands. Similarly, school authorities should check whether they have appointed a severely alcoholic driver, said Vijayan.

Sunil CK, a government servant sending his children to school in private carriages, said it was high time parents appointed responsible drivers. This development raises huge safety concern for schoolchildren, Sunil said.

KOCHI: As if negotiating the states tumultuous roads were not jittery enough for parents of school children, an alarming number of school bus drivers were booked on Friday for drink-driving. As many as 38 drivers were found operating their vehicles, with children on board, in an inebriated state in five police districts under the Kochi Police Range. The police cracked down on errant school bus drivers in Kochi City, Ernakulam Rural, Alappuzha, Kottayam and Idukki police districts. Starting around 6 am and continuing up to 11 am, 200 vehicles were checked. Amit BandreOfficers said the highest number of drivers booked for driving under the influence of alcohol was from Ernakulam Rural - 14. Alappuzha followed with 13 cases while five cases each were registered in Kochi City and Kottayam. Idukki accounted for a single case. The assistance of the MVD is being sought to suspend the driving licence of the culprits. Kochi Range IG P Vijayan told Express the number of cases registered during the drive was quite surprising. Finding drivers in an inebriated state in the morning shows they are severely alcoholic, Vijayan said. They risk the lives of young children. We found some drivers dropping kindergarten students too were under the influence of alcohol, he said. Students themselves had passed on vital information to the police to conduct the surprise check. Inputs from Student Police Cadets and interactions with other students during the Clean Campus Safe Campus too proved useful. Students had told our officers some of the school bus drivers operated after consuming liquor. There were also complaints about misbehaviour from drivers under such a state, Vijayan said. Having registered cases against these drivers, the cops have decided to take the matter up with school authorities and parents. Parents can at least ensure they are sending their children in safer hands. Similarly, school authorities should check whether they have appointed a severely alcoholic driver, said Vijayan. Sunil CK, a government servant sending his children to school in private carriages, said it was high time parents appointed responsible drivers. This development raises huge safety concern for schoolchildren, Sunil said.
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Industries Minister A C Moideen said small and micro enterprises (SME) in Kerala had the potential to employ and rehabilitate expatriates who are forced to return to the state due to financial crisis in foreign countries.

After inaugurating Vyapar-2017, the three-day Kerala business-to-business meet at Bolgatty here on Thursday, Moideen said the government was ready to help small and micro entrepreneurs in the state.

For Kerala, small and micro enterprises are more suitable than big industries. They have a huge potential to generate employment, besides manufacturing quality products and marketing them globally. Future generations can look to the SME sector, which has always been a true reflection of Keralas distinctiveness, for employment, he said.

This sixth edition of Vyapar, organised by the Department of Industries and Commerce, is expected to witness around 7,500 business meeting.

The meet provides a platform for small and medium industries to market their products directly to buyers from the other states and abroad. Delegates from more than 46 countries are participating in the meeting, including special delegations from Japan and Sri Lanka.

The Department of Industries and Commerce has selected 200 sellers who are showcasing their products at the venue.

Participation of special delegates shows the meet has gained global importance, said K V Thomas MP.

Industries and Commerce director P M Francis said the purpose of Vyapar-2017 was to expand business, strengthen the states economy and explore business potential abroad.

On the occasion, Moideen gave away the Best Seller Award to Chalakkudy-based Rapol Saniplast.

KOCHI: Industries Minister A C Moideen said small and micro enterprises (SME) in Kerala had the potential to employ and rehabilitate expatriates who are forced to return to the state due to financial crisis in foreign countries. After inaugurating Vyapar-2017, the three-day Kerala business-to-business meet at Bolgatty here on Thursday, Moideen said the government was ready to help small and micro entrepreneurs in the state. For Kerala, small and micro enterprises are more suitable than big industries. They have a huge potential to generate employment, besides manufacturing quality products and marketing them globally. Future generations can look to the SME sector, which has always been a true reflection of Keralas distinctiveness, for employment, he said. This sixth edition of Vyapar, organised by the Department of Industries and Commerce, is expected to witness around 7,500 business meeting. The meet provides a platform for small and medium industries to market their products directly to buyers from the other states and abroad. Delegates from more than 46 countries are participating in the meeting, including special delegations from Japan and Sri Lanka. The Department of Industries and Commerce has selected 200 sellers who are showcasing their products at the venue. Participation of special delegates shows the meet has gained global importance, said K V Thomas MP. Industries and Commerce director P M Francis said the purpose of Vyapar-2017 was to expand business, strengthen the states economy and explore business potential abroad. On the occasion, Moideen gave away the Best Seller Award to Chalakkudy-based Rapol Saniplast.
By Express News Service

GODAVARIKHANI (PEDDAPALLI DISTRICT): The four-day second international mining workers conference began in the coal belt at Godavarikhani in Peddapalli district here on Thursday. The conference, organised by International Coordination Group (ICG) and Indian Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), will be held till February 5.

Coal belt area reverberated with hundreds of slogans from workers who came from Poland, Germany, Bangladesh, China, South Africa among others and also from different parts of India. Miners from 22 countries took out rally for about 3 kilometres from Vitalnagar to GM colony where public meeting was held. Cultural troupes led the rally singing revolutionary songs on workers rights.

Delegates from foreign countries raised the slogan Long Live Solidarity. It may be recalled that the first international mining workers conference was held in Peru in 2013.

GODAVARIKHANI (PEDDAPALLI DISTRICT): The four-day second international mining workers conference began in the coal belt at Godavarikhani in Peddapalli district here on Thursday. The conference, organised by International Coordination Group (ICG) and Indian Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), will be held till February 5. Coal belt area reverberated with hundreds of slogans from workers who came from Poland, Germany, Bangladesh, China, South Africa among others and also from different parts of India. Miners from 22 countries took out rally for about 3 kilometres from Vitalnagar to GM colony where public meeting was held. Cultural troupes led the rally singing revolutionary songs on workers rights. Delegates from foreign countries raised the slogan Long Live Solidarity. It may be recalled that the first international mining workers conference was held in Peru in 2013.
By AFP

Valletta: European Union leaders voiced concerns about US President Donald Trump at a summit in Malta on Friday, saying they needed to stick together to face an increasingly uncertain global future.

The 28 countries showed a flash of unity by backing a plan to curb mass migration from Libya by helping the north African state's coastguard to stop boats making the dangerous crossing to Italy.

But worries about the new US administration overshadowed the talks, with French President Francois Hollande slamming Trump's "unacceptable" comments backing Britain's decision to leave the EU.

"He shouldn't meddle in in the European Union's business," Hollande told reporters.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be."

Other leaders said that while they wanted to maintain transatlantic ties they also had to be realistic faced with a president who has backed further exits from the EU and called NATO "obsolete".

"Obviously there was some concern on some decisions taken" by Trump, said Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, the summit's host, but there was still a "sense we need to engage with the US."

British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hollande all briefed their colleagues on their contacts with Trump, with May saying Trump was "100 percent committed" to the NATO alliance.

Rhetoric had run high in the lead-up to the meeting with EU President Donald Tusk listing Trump with Russia, China and Islamic extremism among the main "threats" to the EU in a quickly-changing world.

He toned down his comments on Friday, saying that US ties were the EU's "highest political priority", but still stressed that Europeans would have to stand on their own feet now.

"We know that today we have no other option than to regain confidence in our own strength," Tusk added.

Trump's ban on arrivals from seven mainly Muslim countries has caused particular concern in Europe, with Austria's Chancellor Christian Kern saying it was "highly problematic."

- Libya migration plan -

The EU still faces its own migration problems, and the Malta summit was billed as a major step forward on tackling the Libyan route over which more than 181,000 people risked their lives last year.

Attention has turned to north Africa after the EU managed largely to shut the route Syrian refugees have taken to Greece over the Aegean, thanks to a controversial deal with Turkey.

As the EU leaders boarded a luxury yacht to cross Malta's historic harbour to their lunch venue, rescue ships off Libya saved hundreds more people including babies from rickety boats on Friday.

"It's an absolute nightmare in the Med right now," said the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

The EU leaders signed off on a new strategy to "break the business model" of traffickers who helped 181,000 mainly African economic migrants enter the EU via Libya and Italy last year.

The plan involves funding and training the Libyan coastguard to make it better able to intercept migrant boats before they reach international waters, and helping neighbouring countries to close routes into Libya.

The EU will also enlist the help of nomadic tribes in southern Libya to stem the flow over the border, Muscat said.

Italy meanwhile reached an agreement with Libya to establish an EU-funded camps for illegal immigrants pending their deportation to their home countries.

Rights groups however warned that sending boats back to Libya could result in children being sent back to squalid detention centres.

The summit wrapped up with leaders -- minus Britain's May -- discussing a major declaration on the EU's future that they plan to unveil at a summit in Rome in March marking the 60th anniversary of the bloc's founding treaty.

The twin shocks of Brexit and Trump's election have prompted deep soul-searching in the EU about its place in the world, and how to counter populist and eurosceptic movements that want to dismantle the bloc.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told Time magazine in an interview that it was time for the EU to take "very strong decisions".

"In the last few months we have seen the Brexit, we have seen the election of Trump -- it means that it is time now to move in Europe," he said.

Valletta: European Union leaders voiced concerns about US President Donald Trump at a summit in Malta on Friday, saying they needed to stick together to face an increasingly uncertain global future. The 28 countries showed a flash of unity by backing a plan to curb mass migration from Libya by helping the north African state's coastguard to stop boats making the dangerous crossing to Italy. But worries about the new US administration overshadowed the talks, with French President Francois Hollande slamming Trump's "unacceptable" comments backing Britain's decision to leave the EU. "He shouldn't meddle in in the European Union's business," Hollande told reporters. "It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be." Other leaders said that while they wanted to maintain transatlantic ties they also had to be realistic faced with a president who has backed further exits from the EU and called NATO "obsolete". "Obviously there was some concern on some decisions taken" by Trump, said Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, the summit's host, but there was still a "sense we need to engage with the US." British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hollande all briefed their colleagues on their contacts with Trump, with May saying Trump was "100 percent committed" to the NATO alliance. Rhetoric had run high in the lead-up to the meeting with EU President Donald Tusk listing Trump with Russia, China and Islamic extremism among the main "threats" to the EU in a quickly-changing world. He toned down his comments on Friday, saying that US ties were the EU's "highest political priority", but still stressed that Europeans would have to stand on their own feet now. "We know that today we have no other option than to regain confidence in our own strength," Tusk added. Trump's ban on arrivals from seven mainly Muslim countries has caused particular concern in Europe, with Austria's Chancellor Christian Kern saying it was "highly problematic." - Libya migration plan - The EU still faces its own migration problems, and the Malta summit was billed as a major step forward on tackling the Libyan route over which more than 181,000 people risked their lives last year. Attention has turned to north Africa after the EU managed largely to shut the route Syrian refugees have taken to Greece over the Aegean, thanks to a controversial deal with Turkey. As the EU leaders boarded a luxury yacht to cross Malta's historic harbour to their lunch venue, rescue ships off Libya saved hundreds more people including babies from rickety boats on Friday. "It's an absolute nightmare in the Med right now," said the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF). The EU leaders signed off on a new strategy to "break the business model" of traffickers who helped 181,000 mainly African economic migrants enter the EU via Libya and Italy last year. The plan involves funding and training the Libyan coastguard to make it better able to intercept migrant boats before they reach international waters, and helping neighbouring countries to close routes into Libya. The EU will also enlist the help of nomadic tribes in southern Libya to stem the flow over the border, Muscat said. Italy meanwhile reached an agreement with Libya to establish an EU-funded camps for illegal immigrants pending their deportation to their home countries. Rights groups however warned that sending boats back to Libya could result in children being sent back to squalid detention centres. The summit wrapped up with leaders -- minus Britain's May -- discussing a major declaration on the EU's future that they plan to unveil at a summit in Rome in March marking the 60th anniversary of the bloc's founding treaty. The twin shocks of Brexit and Trump's election have prompted deep soul-searching in the EU about its place in the world, and how to counter populist and eurosceptic movements that want to dismantle the bloc. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told Time magazine in an interview that it was time for the EU to take "very strong decisions". "In the last few months we have seen the Brexit, we have seen the election of Trump -- it means that it is time now to move in Europe," he said.
Express News Service

JAFFNA: Indian entrepreneurs who participated in the Jaffna International Trade Fair held here between January 27 and 29, have suggested strategies to industrialize Jaffna and the rest of Sri Lankas Tamil-speaking Northern Province making use of local resources and talent.

Amandeep Azad of Azad Engineering Company of Gaziabad, who manufactures small and medium sized machines to process coconuts and make coconut based products, said that with coconuts being available aplenty in the Northern Province, coconut based industries which can even be run by housewives in their homes have a bright future.

He delineated the wide range of products which can be made out of the coconut tree which includes a method of using a particular coconut product for water retention in agriculture. This is will be useful as water is scarce in most parts of the Jaffna Peninsula.

Azad regretted that a coconut, which is available in Jaffna at LKR 34 ( as against LKR 4 in Colombo), is sent to Colombo for oil extraction and sent back to Jaffna for sale at a high price.

We must follow the Chinese practice of locating factories at the source, he suggested.

The Gazhiabad entrepreneur, who is one of the 65 Indian entrepreneurs brought to the Jaffna Fair by ASSOCHAM, said that India can supply machines of various sizes and capabilities.

I have a coconut processing machine which can be operated at home by a housewife. This will turn women into income earners without leaving their homes, he said.

Azads ideas fully tally with the approach of the Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, who has been seeking the establishment of small and medium industries in place of the big ticket and large scale industries planned by the Sri Lankan government.

According to Wigneswaran, a region like the Sri Lankan North which was battered by war and is lacking in livelihood opportunities, needs projects which can provide a large number of jobs to people with minimal skills.

Jaffna today looks like the India of the 1970s. India changed because government put money into the development of small and medium industries, Azad said.

Rajneesh Mehrish of Sindhuri Biotec of Palam, New Delhi, stressed the importance of acquiring language skills if Jaffna is to come out of its shell.

Few local businessmen were able to communicate with us. We knew no Tamil and they knew no English. We tried to recruit some bilingual people but this is no substitute for having a common language of communication between the seller and buyer, Mehrish said.

He cited his experience at the Guanghou Trade Fair in China where the local government gave each foreign stall, two trained Chinese-English translators.

Harish Singla of Goyum Screw Press of Ludhiana, which makes oil extraction machines, joined Azad in highlighting the absence of the entrepreneurial spirit in Jaffna.

In our interactions with local businessmen at the Jaffna Chamber of Commerce we found that they were traders and not manufacturers .Therefore there is little we can do in terms of setting up Joint Ventures to manufacture products here, Singla said.

Indentifying the roots of the problem, the Indian entrepreneurs pointed to a lack of exposure to the outside world and non-availability of micro and medium scale finances in Jaffna.

All of them said that opening of a road ,sea or air link between Jaffna and India will lead to the flow of ideas and open locals to the immense possibilities of entrepreneurial development in their own areas.

R.Vignesh, the President of the Jaffna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the basic problem in the Northern Province is the apathy of the administration. A disconnect between the government and the private sector prevents the development of entrepreneurship.

The other problem is the easy availability of credit for buying consumer goods which encourages imports from other parts of the country and overseas and discourages local manufacturing.

There are 350 financing and leasing companies in Jaffna district. People getting remittances from their relations overseas go for consumer goods. And the lifestyle they exhibit becomes the norm for others, Vignesh said.

The Northern Provincial administration and the Northern political parties focus on political rights and some economic rights such as those relating to land seized by the Sri Lankan military. But they do not take note of the absence of industrial development.

The provincial administration does not realize that economic development will strengthen the peoples ability to secure political rights, Vignesh observed.

He pointed out that the Industrial Estate at Achchuveli has not developed to the extent it should have because of a lack of infrastructure. Vignesh laid responsibility for this lacuna at the door of the provincial administration.

JAFFNA: Indian entrepreneurs who participated in the Jaffna International Trade Fair held here between January 27 and 29, have suggested strategies to industrialize Jaffna and the rest of Sri Lankas Tamil-speaking Northern Province making use of local resources and talent. Amandeep Azad of Azad Engineering Company of Gaziabad, who manufactures small and medium sized machines to process coconuts and make coconut based products, said that with coconuts being available aplenty in the Northern Province, coconut based industries which can even be run by housewives in their homes have a bright future. He delineated the wide range of products which can be made out of the coconut tree which includes a method of using a particular coconut product for water retention in agriculture. This is will be useful as water is scarce in most parts of the Jaffna Peninsula. Azad regretted that a coconut, which is available in Jaffna at LKR 34 ( as against LKR 4 in Colombo), is sent to Colombo for oil extraction and sent back to Jaffna for sale at a high price. We must follow the Chinese practice of locating factories at the source, he suggested. The Gazhiabad entrepreneur, who is one of the 65 Indian entrepreneurs brought to the Jaffna Fair by ASSOCHAM, said that India can supply machines of various sizes and capabilities. I have a coconut processing machine which can be operated at home by a housewife. This will turn women into income earners without leaving their homes, he said. Azads ideas fully tally with the approach of the Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, who has been seeking the establishment of small and medium industries in place of the big ticket and large scale industries planned by the Sri Lankan government. According to Wigneswaran, a region like the Sri Lankan North which was battered by war and is lacking in livelihood opportunities, needs projects which can provide a large number of jobs to people with minimal skills. Jaffna today looks like the India of the 1970s. India changed because government put money into the development of small and medium industries, Azad said. Rajneesh Mehrish of Sindhuri Biotec of Palam, New Delhi, stressed the importance of acquiring language skills if Jaffna is to come out of its shell. Few local businessmen were able to communicate with us. We knew no Tamil and they knew no English. We tried to recruit some bilingual people but this is no substitute for having a common language of communication between the seller and buyer, Mehrish said. He cited his experience at the Guanghou Trade Fair in China where the local government gave each foreign stall, two trained Chinese-English translators. Harish Singla of Goyum Screw Press of Ludhiana, which makes oil extraction machines, joined Azad in highlighting the absence of the entrepreneurial spirit in Jaffna. In our interactions with local businessmen at the Jaffna Chamber of Commerce we found that they were traders and not manufacturers .Therefore there is little we can do in terms of setting up Joint Ventures to manufacture products here, Singla said. Indentifying the roots of the problem, the Indian entrepreneurs pointed to a lack of exposure to the outside world and non-availability of micro and medium scale finances in Jaffna. All of them said that opening of a road ,sea or air link between Jaffna and India will lead to the flow of ideas and open locals to the immense possibilities of entrepreneurial development in their own areas. R.Vignesh, the President of the Jaffna Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that the basic problem in the Northern Province is the apathy of the administration. A disconnect between the government and the private sector prevents the development of entrepreneurship. The other problem is the easy availability of credit for buying consumer goods which encourages imports from other parts of the country and overseas and discourages local manufacturing. There are 350 financing and leasing companies in Jaffna district. People getting remittances from their relations overseas go for consumer goods. And the lifestyle they exhibit becomes the norm for others, Vignesh said. The Northern Provincial administration and the Northern political parties focus on political rights and some economic rights such as those relating to land seized by the Sri Lankan military. But they do not take note of the absence of industrial development. The provincial administration does not realize that economic development will strengthen the peoples ability to secure political rights, Vignesh observed. He pointed out that the Industrial Estate at Achchuveli has not developed to the extent it should have because of a lack of infrastructure. Vignesh laid responsibility for this lacuna at the door of the provincial administration.
By IANS

A suburban Chicago doctor, Neil Sharma, has been convicted of receiving bribes in a deal that he claimed could provide the briber millions of dollars in business, according to federal prosecutors.



Sharma appeared on Thursday before federal Judge Frederick J. Kapala in Chicago and admitted that in 2015 he asked for and accepted bribes totalling $10,000 for sending patients to a company that provided skilled nursing services.



Sharma, 36, was the medical director of managed care services company that had a contract with Illinois to provide skilled nursing services to patients covered by two government health insurance programmes, Medicare for senior citizens and Medicaid the poor.



His company, in turn, made contracts with three other companies for the skilled nursing services.



The person who gave the bribe and the company the person worked for were not identified by the prosecutors.



Sharma admitted that the additional business he promised in exchange for the bribe would have brought in millions of dollars, according to the prosecution.

A suburban Chicago doctor, Neil Sharma, has been convicted of receiving bribes in a deal that he claimed could provide the briber millions of dollars in business, according to federal prosecutors. Sharma appeared on Thursday before federal Judge Frederick J. Kapala in Chicago and admitted that in 2015 he asked for and accepted bribes totalling $10,000 for sending patients to a company that provided skilled nursing services. Sharma, 36, was the medical director of managed care services company that had a contract with Illinois to provide skilled nursing services to patients covered by two government health insurance programmes, Medicare for senior citizens and Medicaid the poor. His company, in turn, made contracts with three other companies for the skilled nursing services. The person who gave the bribe and the company the person worked for were not identified by the prosecutors. Sharma admitted that the additional business he promised in exchange for the bribe would have brought in millions of dollars, according to the prosecution.
By AFP

MOSCOW: The Russian embassy in Damascus came under shell fire on Thursday and Friday, the foreign ministry in Moscow said, blaming an attack by "terrorists."

One shell fell about 20 metres (yards) from the embassy's main entrance and the other hit the ground inside the compound, between offices and a residential building, it said in a statement.

The shells "did not cause casualties but inflicted material damage," it said.

The ministry said the attack came from a district held by "terrorists" who sought to wreck the truce in Syria and derail Russian-backed efforts for a "political process" leading to lasting peace.

"This crime will not go unpunished," it warned.

The embassy came under similar attack several times in late December, but also without suffering casualties.

Russia is a major player in the Syrian war, intervening militarily in favour of President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

More than 310,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 2011.

MOSCOW: The Russian embassy in Damascus came under shell fire on Thursday and Friday, the foreign ministry in Moscow said, blaming an attack by "terrorists." One shell fell about 20 metres (yards) from the embassy's main entrance and the other hit the ground inside the compound, between offices and a residential building, it said in a statement. The shells "did not cause casualties but inflicted material damage," it said. The ministry said the attack came from a district held by "terrorists" who sought to wreck the truce in Syria and derail Russian-backed efforts for a "political process" leading to lasting peace. "This crime will not go unpunished," it warned. The embassy came under similar attack several times in late December, but also without suffering casualties. Russia is a major player in the Syrian war, intervening militarily in favour of President Bashar al-Assad's regime. More than 310,000 people have been killed in the conflict since 2011.
By PTI

SINGAPORE: A Singapore court today sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to 26 months and one week in jail and four strokes of cane for twice molesting a young hotel intern and using criminal force on her. Bander Yahya A Alzahran, a father of three, was on a holiday here with his family when the offences were committed at a hotel on the Sentosa resort island in August last year.

The 39-year-old, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, The Straits Times reported. Alzahran was found guilty on Wednesday after an eight-day trial of kissing the 20-year-old on her neck and hugging her while wrongfully restraining her inside the hotel room.

He was also found guilty of kissing the victim's neck a second time, touching her improperly and forcing her to touch him in return. District Judge Lee Poh Choo had found him "unusually convincing". She rejected the defence assertion that the whole incident was a set-up and that the victim conspired with other staff to level false allegations against Alzahrani to extort money from him.

The victim had been reluctant to divulge anything as she was "confused" and did not know what to do. She had said to a colleague, who had noticed the victim's distress and unusual behaviour, that the guest had told her this was a "top secret" between them. Cajoled for hours by her colleagues, the victim eventually told and demonstrated her version of events to various persons, including the front office manager and a security executive, at different times that day.

The maximum penalty for aggravated molestation is between two and 10 years in addition to caning on each charge. For using criminal force, the maximum penalty is three months' jail and a Singapore dollar 1,500 fine.

SINGAPORE: A Singapore court today sentenced a Saudi Arabian diplomat to 26 months and one week in jail and four strokes of cane for twice molesting a young hotel intern and using criminal force on her. Bander Yahya A Alzahran, a father of three, was on a holiday here with his family when the offences were committed at a hotel on the Sentosa resort island in August last year. The 39-year-old, who is attached to the Saudi Arabia Embassy in Beijing, is appealing against his conviction and sentence, The Straits Times reported. Alzahran was found guilty on Wednesday after an eight-day trial of kissing the 20-year-old on her neck and hugging her while wrongfully restraining her inside the hotel room. He was also found guilty of kissing the victim's neck a second time, touching her improperly and forcing her to touch him in return. District Judge Lee Poh Choo had found him "unusually convincing". She rejected the defence assertion that the whole incident was a set-up and that the victim conspired with other staff to level false allegations against Alzahrani to extort money from him. The victim had been reluctant to divulge anything as she was "confused" and did not know what to do. She had said to a colleague, who had noticed the victim's distress and unusual behaviour, that the guest had told her this was a "top secret" between them. Cajoled for hours by her colleagues, the victim eventually told and demonstrated her version of events to various persons, including the front office manager and a security executive, at different times that day. The maximum penalty for aggravated molestation is between two and 10 years in addition to caning on each charge. For using criminal force, the maximum penalty is three months' jail and a Singapore dollar 1,500 fine.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: The Trump Administration is planning another controversial executive order which if signed by the President will provide individuals and organisations the option to deny services, employment and other benefits to people based on religion, according to media reports.

The draft order titled 'Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom' lays out many of the proposals that conservative Christians have been requesting for years, including legal protections for organisations that claim religious objections to providing a range of services, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"Such an order, if signed, would likely plunge President Donald Trump into a debate over religious freedom, gay rights and reproductive rights, which has churned through states and courts for years -- most recently with the disputes over transgender people's use of bathrooms," the report said.

In another report, The Washington Post said the draft order "would provide individuals and organisations wide latitude in denying services, employment and other benefits on the basis of their religious beliefs."

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, however, said the administration has no such plan to issue a directive on this issue.

"There is right now no executive orders that are official or able to read out. We maintain that there is nothing new on that front," he said.

"There are a lot of ideas that are being floated out. I mentioned this the last couple days. But that doesn't mean -- part of it is as the President does all the time, he asks for input, he asks for ideas, and on a variety of subjects, there are staffing procedures that go on where people have a thought or an idea and it goes through the process," he said.

"But until the President makes up his mind and gives feedback and decides that that's final, there's nothing to announce," Spicer said in response to a question.

"We have freedom of religion in this country, and I think people should be able to practice their religion, express

their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. And I think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way in the name of political correctness," Spicer told reporters at his daily news conference.

Trump had last week signed a controversial executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America.

Spicer said the President and the Vice President both understand that one of the things that makes the country and this democracy so great, is the people's ability to express their religion, to believe in faith, to express it and to live by it.

"That's where I think the important part is, whether it's a small business-owner or an employee, who wants to have some degree of expression of faith at the company. And too often, those voices get you know, pushed out in the name of political correctness," he said.

"So he is going to continue to make sure that we not only speak up for it, but find ways in which we can keep that line a little less blurred, and make sure that the pendulum against people. We shouldn't impose a religion on anybody. We're free to express our religion or not have one. That's obviously in our country an equally valid way of living your life," Spicer said.

"But at the same time, I think people who want to express their faith shouldn't be ostracised because they want to live that," he added.

WASHINGTON: The Trump Administration is planning another controversial executive order which if signed by the President will provide individuals and organisations the option to deny services, employment and other benefits to people based on religion, according to media reports. The draft order titled 'Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom' lays out many of the proposals that conservative Christians have been requesting for years, including legal protections for organisations that claim religious objections to providing a range of services, The Wall Street Journal reported. "Such an order, if signed, would likely plunge President Donald Trump into a debate over religious freedom, gay rights and reproductive rights, which has churned through states and courts for years -- most recently with the disputes over transgender people's use of bathrooms," the report said. In another report, The Washington Post said the draft order "would provide individuals and organisations wide latitude in denying services, employment and other benefits on the basis of their religious beliefs." White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, however, said the administration has no such plan to issue a directive on this issue. "There is right now no executive orders that are official or able to read out. We maintain that there is nothing new on that front," he said. "There are a lot of ideas that are being floated out. I mentioned this the last couple days. But that doesn't mean -- part of it is as the President does all the time, he asks for input, he asks for ideas, and on a variety of subjects, there are staffing procedures that go on where people have a thought or an idea and it goes through the process," he said. "But until the President makes up his mind and gives feedback and decides that that's final, there's nothing to announce," Spicer said in response to a question. "We have freedom of religion in this country, and I think people should be able to practice their religion, express their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. And I think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way in the name of political correctness," Spicer told reporters at his daily news conference. Trump had last week signed a controversial executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America. Spicer said the President and the Vice President both understand that one of the things that makes the country and this democracy so great, is the people's ability to express their religion, to believe in faith, to express it and to live by it. "That's where I think the important part is, whether it's a small business-owner or an employee, who wants to have some degree of expression of faith at the company. And too often, those voices get you know, pushed out in the name of political correctness," he said. "So he is going to continue to make sure that we not only speak up for it, but find ways in which we can keep that line a little less blurred, and make sure that the pendulum against people. We shouldn't impose a religion on anybody. We're free to express our religion or not have one. That's obviously in our country an equally valid way of living your life," Spicer said. "But at the same time, I think people who want to express their faith shouldn't be ostracised because they want to live that," he added.
By IANS

WASHINGTON: White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that US President Donald Trump is "unbelievably disappointed" at the refugee deal that the Obama administration signed with Australia.



However, Spicer suggested that Trump will allow the deal to move forward, while stressing that the refugees will go through "a very extreme vetting process", Xinhua news agency reported.



"The President's goal is to make sure that every single one of those people, in accordance with the deal and as discussed in the telephone conversation with the (Australian) Prime Minister (Malcolm Turnbull), is subject to extreme vetting," Spicer said on Thursday.



The spokesman added that Trump has "tremendous respect" for Turnbull and for the Australian people.



The Washington Post reported Thursday that over a telephone conversation on Saturday, Trump blasted Turnbull over a refugee agreement.



"This is the worst deal ever," Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention centre.



On Wednesday, Trump returned to the topic, tweeting: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"

WASHINGTON: White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that US President Donald Trump is "unbelievably disappointed" at the refugee deal that the Obama administration signed with Australia. However, Spicer suggested that Trump will allow the deal to move forward, while stressing that the refugees will go through "a very extreme vetting process", Xinhua news agency reported. "The President's goal is to make sure that every single one of those people, in accordance with the deal and as discussed in the telephone conversation with the (Australian) Prime Minister (Malcolm Turnbull), is subject to extreme vetting," Spicer said on Thursday. The spokesman added that Trump has "tremendous respect" for Turnbull and for the Australian people. The Washington Post reported Thursday that over a telephone conversation on Saturday, Trump blasted Turnbull over a refugee agreement. "This is the worst deal ever," Trump fumed as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the United States would honor its pledge to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention centre. On Wednesday, Trump returned to the topic, tweeting: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"
By Associated Press

BEIRUT: The U.N.'s top official on refugees pushed back against a proposed initiative that has gained recent traction to create "safe zones" in Syria for refugees, saying the country was "not the right place" for the initiative.

"Let's not waste time planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe for people to go back," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees.

"Let us concentrate on making peace so that everywhere becomes safe. That should be the investment," he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump has floated safe zones as a substitute for resettling refugees in the United States and elsewhere around the globe.

The president explored schemes with Jordanian King Abdullah II in a face-to-face meeting in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. Jordan is host to some 650,000 Syrian refugees.

Turkey and Lebanon, which both border Syria, are also pushing for safe zones across their borders. The two countries host 3.75 million refugees between them.

Grandi cited terrorism and the fragmentation of Syria and its warring parties as obstacles to creating working safe zones in the country.

Damascus has expressed its deep concern over the various proposals, saying they would have to be set up in coordination with the Syrian government.

Trump plunged the international refugee system into crisis last week when he issued an executive order forbidding refugees to enter the U.S. for 120 days.

Grandi called the executive order a "dangerous weakening" of the established international norms to protect refugees.

He spoke in Beirut a day after returning from a field mission to Syria. He said the war-torn country was "devastated" and likened many urban zones to "ghost cities."

"These are people that flee from danger, they are not dangerous themselves," he said of refugees. The six-year-long war has displaced half the country's population.

Grandi criticized the U.S. and Western nations for "not doing enough" to share the burden of resettling Syrian refugees.

"(Lebanon) hosted more than 1 million people in the last three years, why can't rich countries host even a much smaller number?" he said.

Meanwhile, Turkey hosted talks with Syrian opposition members on Friday ahead of U.N.-backed negotiations with the Damascus government in Geneva later this month.

Participants included political and military representatives of the Syrian opposition such as Riad Hijab of the High Negotiations Committee, and Syrian National Coalition President Anas al-Abdah, according to Turkish Foreign Ministry officials.

Those attending denounced "federalism" as a solution for war-torn Syria and spoke out against a "new constitution, autonomy and federalism." They also affirmed that those opposing Syria's unity have no place in Geneva, according to Turkish officials who requested anonymity in line with government regulations.

A Syrian Kurdish group recently in Moscow had proposed creating federal units in Syria to resolve the war. Ankara regards the Syrian Kurds as an extension of its own Kurdish insurgency.

In Syria, opposition activists and IS said Friday that U.S.-led coalition aircraft were behind airstrikes that destroyed the main pipeline supplying water to the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State group, as well as two bridges linking it with the southern countryside.

The coalition has been targeting IS in the area for more than two years and U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters have been on the offensive in nearby areas, mostly north of Raqqa. The city is the de facto capital of IS's self-declared caliphate and has been held by the extremist group since January 2014.

The attacks on Raqqa are similar to those conducted in Iraq late last year when Iraqi forces began their offensive to capture the city of Mosul from the extremists. Destroying bridges makes it difficult for IS to move fighters but many complain that the adverse effects are worse for civilians.

In a statement Friday, the U.S.-led coalition said it carried out 21 strikes near Raqqa, destroying 53 oil barrels, 39 oil storage tanks, four oil wellheads, four tunnel entrances, two tunnels, as well as damaging eight supply routes. It didn't provide further details. There was no immediate word about targeting the water pipeline.

Syrian state news agency SANA and an IS-affiliated website said early Friday that the city's main water pipeline was damaged in an airstrike. It added that two other bridges outside of the city were also hit.

The IS-affiliated website also reported that the only two bridges on the Euphrates river on the southern edge of the city have been hit.

Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a local media collective, criticized the destruction of the two bridges and the cutting off of the city's water supply, saying that such acts are "absolutely unacceptable." One of the bridges carried the water pipeline. The activist-operated group later said the city's water flow had been partially restored after militants fixed the pipeline.

The anti-IS group blasted the U.S.-led coalition, saying it is trying to "besiege the civilians of Raqqa by demolishing bridges and destroying the infrastructure." The bridges had been hit before but the damage this time is more severe, according to the group.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of on-the-ground activists to track Syria's war, reported clashes between IS fighters and the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces north of the city. It said the U.S.-led coalition has been providing air cover to SDF fighters during Friday's fighting.

The attack comes at a time when Iraqi forces are on the offensive against IS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul where the U.S.-led coalition has destroyed much of the bridges on the Tigris river.

BEIRUT: The U.N.'s top official on refugees pushed back against a proposed initiative that has gained recent traction to create "safe zones" in Syria for refugees, saying the country was "not the right place" for the initiative. "Let's not waste time planning safe zones that will not be set up because they will not be safe for people to go back," said Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees. "Let us concentrate on making peace so that everywhere becomes safe. That should be the investment," he said. U.S. President Donald Trump has floated safe zones as a substitute for resettling refugees in the United States and elsewhere around the globe. The president explored schemes with Jordanian King Abdullah II in a face-to-face meeting in Washington, D.C. on Thursday. Jordan is host to some 650,000 Syrian refugees. Turkey and Lebanon, which both border Syria, are also pushing for safe zones across their borders. The two countries host 3.75 million refugees between them. Grandi cited terrorism and the fragmentation of Syria and its warring parties as obstacles to creating working safe zones in the country. Damascus has expressed its deep concern over the various proposals, saying they would have to be set up in coordination with the Syrian government. Trump plunged the international refugee system into crisis last week when he issued an executive order forbidding refugees to enter the U.S. for 120 days. Grandi called the executive order a "dangerous weakening" of the established international norms to protect refugees. He spoke in Beirut a day after returning from a field mission to Syria. He said the war-torn country was "devastated" and likened many urban zones to "ghost cities." "These are people that flee from danger, they are not dangerous themselves," he said of refugees. The six-year-long war has displaced half the country's population. Grandi criticized the U.S. and Western nations for "not doing enough" to share the burden of resettling Syrian refugees. "(Lebanon) hosted more than 1 million people in the last three years, why can't rich countries host even a much smaller number?" he said. Meanwhile, Turkey hosted talks with Syrian opposition members on Friday ahead of U.N.-backed negotiations with the Damascus government in Geneva later this month. Participants included political and military representatives of the Syrian opposition such as Riad Hijab of the High Negotiations Committee, and Syrian National Coalition President Anas al-Abdah, according to Turkish Foreign Ministry officials. Those attending denounced "federalism" as a solution for war-torn Syria and spoke out against a "new constitution, autonomy and federalism." They also affirmed that those opposing Syria's unity have no place in Geneva, according to Turkish officials who requested anonymity in line with government regulations. A Syrian Kurdish group recently in Moscow had proposed creating federal units in Syria to resolve the war. Ankara regards the Syrian Kurds as an extension of its own Kurdish insurgency. In Syria, opposition activists and IS said Friday that U.S.-led coalition aircraft were behind airstrikes that destroyed the main pipeline supplying water to the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State group, as well as two bridges linking it with the southern countryside. The coalition has been targeting IS in the area for more than two years and U.S.-backed Kurdish-led fighters have been on the offensive in nearby areas, mostly north of Raqqa. The city is the de facto capital of IS's self-declared caliphate and has been held by the extremist group since January 2014. The attacks on Raqqa are similar to those conducted in Iraq late last year when Iraqi forces began their offensive to capture the city of Mosul from the extremists. Destroying bridges makes it difficult for IS to move fighters but many complain that the adverse effects are worse for civilians. In a statement Friday, the U.S.-led coalition said it carried out 21 strikes near Raqqa, destroying 53 oil barrels, 39 oil storage tanks, four oil wellheads, four tunnel entrances, two tunnels, as well as damaging eight supply routes. It didn't provide further details. There was no immediate word about targeting the water pipeline. Syrian state news agency SANA and an IS-affiliated website said early Friday that the city's main water pipeline was damaged in an airstrike. It added that two other bridges outside of the city were also hit. The IS-affiliated website also reported that the only two bridges on the Euphrates river on the southern edge of the city have been hit. Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, a local media collective, criticized the destruction of the two bridges and the cutting off of the city's water supply, saying that such acts are "absolutely unacceptable." One of the bridges carried the water pipeline. The activist-operated group later said the city's water flow had been partially restored after militants fixed the pipeline. The anti-IS group blasted the U.S.-led coalition, saying it is trying to "besiege the civilians of Raqqa by demolishing bridges and destroying the infrastructure." The bridges had been hit before but the damage this time is more severe, according to the group. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of on-the-ground activists to track Syria's war, reported clashes between IS fighters and the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces north of the city. It said the U.S.-led coalition has been providing air cover to SDF fighters during Friday's fighting. The attack comes at a time when Iraqi forces are on the offensive against IS in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul where the U.S.-led coalition has destroyed much of the bridges on the Tigris river.
By Reuters

WASHINGTON: Chief executives of major U.S. companies huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday as the business community is increasingly split over how to respond to his policies, especially a travel ban announced last week.

Trump kicked off the meeting with CEOs including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase & Co and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc, saying the group would discuss peeling back banking rules and declaring that companies would bring new jobs to the United States.

Chief executives including Elon Musk of Tesla Inc have said they planned to raise objections at the talks to Trump's week-old executive order halting travel to the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Business leaders have been divided in their approach on taxes and immigration, and some are wary of working with a president who uses his platform to attack companies that vex him, such as threatening penalties for manufacturing outside the United States.

The leaders, which also included Mary Barra of General Motors Co and Jim McNerney, formerly of Boeing Co, are part of a business advisory panel Trump announced in December. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit the group under pressure from activists over the order. Musk defended his own decision to participate, saying that going to the meeting did not mean he agreed with Trump's actions.

Tech companies, which have broad concerns about Trump's immigration plans, raised the sharpest outcry among firms at the travel ban.

The White House said in a statement on Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger."

Executives from Ford Motor Co also criticized the ban, but others, including General Motors and JPMorgan Chase have not taken a position.

On Friday, former General Electric Co leader Jack Welch said on his way into the White House that he expected immigration would come up.

SPLIT ON TAX REFORM

Trump has also met with executives from the U.S. pharmaceutical and auto industries as part of a push to step up U.S. job creation.

Division in the corporate world is also developing over taxes. Boeing Co and General Electric on Thursday joined a group in support of a congressional plan to tax all imports. But that plan, which does not have universal support among Republicans, is opposed by many U.S. retailers, which say it could raise prices for consumers.

Republican leaders say tax reform is a top priority, but they have acknowledged it could take until the end of 2017 or longer to finish legislation.

"If I were a company, I'd be worried about tax reform," said Bernie Williams, chief investment officer at USAA Investment Solutions, in San Antonio.

The White House meeting with the group is also set to cover trade, regulatory relief and infrastructure.

WASHINGTON: Chief executives of major U.S. companies huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday as the business community is increasingly split over how to respond to his policies, especially a travel ban announced last week. Trump kicked off the meeting with CEOs including Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase & Co and Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo Inc, saying the group would discuss peeling back banking rules and declaring that companies would bring new jobs to the United States. Chief executives including Elon Musk of Tesla Inc have said they planned to raise objections at the talks to Trump's week-old executive order halting travel to the United States for people from seven Muslim-majority countries. Business leaders have been divided in their approach on taxes and immigration, and some are wary of working with a president who uses his platform to attack companies that vex him, such as threatening penalties for manufacturing outside the United States. The leaders, which also included Mary Barra of General Motors Co and Jim McNerney, formerly of Boeing Co, are part of a business advisory panel Trump announced in December. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick quit the group under pressure from activists over the order. Musk defended his own decision to participate, saying that going to the meeting did not mean he agreed with Trump's actions. Tech companies, which have broad concerns about Trump's immigration plans, raised the sharpest outcry among firms at the travel ban. The White House said in a statement on Thursday evening that did not mention Uber that Trump "understands the importance of an open dialogue with fellow business leaders to discuss how to best make our nation's economy stronger." Executives from Ford Motor Co also criticized the ban, but others, including General Motors and JPMorgan Chase have not taken a position. On Friday, former General Electric Co leader Jack Welch said on his way into the White House that he expected immigration would come up. SPLIT ON TAX REFORM Trump has also met with executives from the U.S. pharmaceutical and auto industries as part of a push to step up U.S. job creation. Division in the corporate world is also developing over taxes. Boeing Co and General Electric on Thursday joined a group in support of a congressional plan to tax all imports. But that plan, which does not have universal support among Republicans, is opposed by many U.S. retailers, which say it could raise prices for consumers. Republican leaders say tax reform is a top priority, but they have acknowledged it could take until the end of 2017 or longer to finish legislation. "If I were a company, I'd be worried about tax reform," said Bernie Williams, chief investment officer at USAA Investment Solutions, in San Antonio. The White House meeting with the group is also set to cover trade, regulatory relief and infrastructure.
Budget 2017: Political reforms will invite more people join politics without fear, says Goyal

New Delhi , Feb. 1 : Commending Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for announcing a cap on anonymous donations to political parties at Rs. 2000 during the Budget presentation, Power Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said the measure would help more people to join political process without fear or favour.





(Posted on 01 February 2017, 1667669636 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/india-news.php  (Posted on 01 February 2017, 1667669636 173O212O198O32)

"The political reforms announced by Finance Minister are long awaited. I think people of India were looking for a clean and transparent political funding. I am delighted that this is one big measure will help more and more people to join the political process without fear or favour. Donate liberally so that bad money can be removed from politics and only good honest money will help finance politics in future," Goyal told ANI.Jaitley, during his budget speech, reduced the maximum donation that a political party receives in cash at Rs 2,000 from any one source.He said that no transaction of more than Rs 3 lakh will be permitted in cash."Political parties will be entitled to receive donations by cheque or in the digital mode from their donors."Earlier the limit from once source was Rs 20,000.Asserting that the Budget has 'recognised the effects of demonetisation', Goyal said the budget aims to give benefit to every sections of society."Allocation has been increased for housing, infrastructure, rural development, social sectors across the board. I think this is a budget which will satisfy every section of society. Fantastic job done by the Finance Minister," he added.He said significant impetus has been given in infrasyructure particualy in road and railways sector which will not only help in asset creation but will create more jobs in the market."Significant impetus and investments have been promoted in infrastructure particularly the road and railways sector. Affordable housing which is probably got one of the largest job creating capability has been given a thrust. Concession have been given to Start Up India Stand Up India.Lot of thrust has been given to small and medium industries and small and medium enterprises with a turiover of over Rs. 100 crores. There is a special focus on skill development," Goyal added.
PPFA appreciates President Trump on Indo-US relationship

Guwahati, Feb 1 : Patriotic Peoples' Front Assam (PPFA) has appreciated newly crowned US President Donald Trump for his gesture to India terming the largest democracy of the globe as 'a true friend and partner in addressing challenges around the world.





(Posted on 01 February 2017, 1667669637 173O212O198O32) https://www.newkerala.com/more-news.php  (Posted on 01 February 2017, 1667669637 173O212O198O32)

The northeast India based patriotic forum also expressed happiness that President Trump called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Jan 24 last, to invite the latter for visiting the United States later this year.Both the powerful politicians discussed opportunities to strengthen the partnership between the US and India in broad areas such as the economy and defense. They also talked about the security scenario in the region of South Central Asia and finally resolved that both the democratic nations stand shoulder to shoulder in the global fight against terrorism.We find no reason to condemn President Trump for his American first policy and believe that every nationalistic leader has the right to pursue his patriotism without harming other nations interest, said a statement issued by Rupam Barua, Nava Thakuria, JagadindraRaychoudhury, Dev Saikia etc for the PPFA.The forum also denounced the apprehension of some non-resident Indians taking shelter in the US because of President Trumps aggressivenationalistic policy and argued that the proposed anti-terror strategy of the Republican leader would finally benefit India as a whole in thelong run.We visualize Indias enhancing role in the international arena after President Trump joins hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin to counter international terrorism affectively. We are optimistic that New Delhi would nurture the relationship for a greater cause without compromising our national interest, concluded the statement.(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath,Image: US President Twitter page)
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Japan to provide technical training to 40K Indians in 10 years

New Delhi , Feb.2 : Japan would skill 40,000 technical people in 10 years by collaborating with engineering colleges and other institutions said Japanese Ambassador to India, Kenji Hiramatsu in Delhi on Thursday.





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While speaking at the prestigious International Engineering and Technology Fair (IETF), the ambassador stated that Japan is keenly interested in transferring technology to India.Speaking on this occasion, Anant Geete, Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, assured Indian manufacturers that the Government would take concrete steps for re-energizing the capital goods, automotive and heavy industries. Over 500 companies from 25 countries are expected to participate at this event held by the Confederation of Indian Industry every two years. IETF 2017 is supported by 10 Ministries of Government of India and Government of NCT of Delhi, besides several relevant industry associations."The Budget contains a number of proposals to give a critical push to the manufacturing sector and Indian industry must take advantage of these for higher investments," stated the Minister, calling for focused inputs from the private sector for meeting the Government's targets of Make in India.The minister added that technology should play a major role in revamping the manufacturing sector. The industry should adapt state-of-the-art technology developed elsewhere and, at the same time, should encourage more indigenous innovation and research and development.Countries like Japan could provide the relevant technologies and investments in the core sectors of Indian industry. Japan is the partner country for the IETF for the fifth time.Referring to the Capital Goods Fund, the Minister said that it would work as a growth engine particularly for engineering, automotive and capital goods sectors to spur employment.Sumit Mazumder, Immediate Past President, CII said that it should be the effort of all stakeholders to take investment in the capital goods sector to USD 150 billion from the present level of US$ 48 billion. The capital goods industry employs around 8.5 million people. He added that the proposed GST will be a force multiplier for Indian industry, which can ride on the back of Make in India Program.Deep Kapuria, Chairman, CII-IETF, said that in the era of disruptive technologies like internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence etc., Indian industry has to undergo a transformation to bridge the technology gap. CII-IETF is showcasing the state-of-the-art technologies for Indian industry to gain first - hand knowledge about latest technologies in health, gaming, green tech etc.
Dangerous conditions in Ukraine after heavy fighting be repaired.

New York, Feb 2 : More than 2,500 children in the Donetsk region of Ukraine are without heat, electricity or water, prompting the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to call for an end to fighting in the area so that the infrastructure can be repaired.





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Intense fighting in the town of Avdiivka on 29 and 30 January disabled electricity and water, including the Donetsk Filtration Station and the backup reservoir.With temperatures plummeting to 1 degree Fahrenheit (minus 17 degrees Celsius), the situation could have catastrophic consequences for the residents of Avdiivka, according to a statement from UNICEF.The UN agencys representative in Ukraine also voiced concern about the fighting, which has also caused six schools and four kindergartens in the area to shut down.Not only are the lives of thousands of children in Avdiivka, and on all sides of the conflict, at risk, but to make matters worse, the lack of water and electricity means that homes are becoming dangerously cold and health conditions deteriorating as we speak, said Giovanna Barberis.In addition to the 17,000 residents in Avdiivka, the non-functional filtration station supplied some 400,000 people in area with water.Water is now rationed and there is a possibility that the piped household water supply will stop altogether, UNICEF said.The UN Security Council has also voiced concern about the fresh fighting. On 31 January, the Council issued a press statement saying its 15 members were gravely concerned about the situation in the countrys eastern region and its severe impact on the local civilian population.Photo: UNICEF/Aleksey FilippovSource: www.justearthnews.com
Mexicans venting their ire by beating the life out of 'Trump Pinata'

Washington D.C. [U.S.], Feb. 3 : Fuming over President Trump's plan to erect a wall between U.S. and Mexico and the threats to use a 20pc tariff on Mexican goods to finance it, Mexicans have taken a 'traditional' route to vent their ire at the troubling developments.





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According to CNN, Donald Trump pinatas have flooded the Mexican markets and are selling like hot cakes.Papier mache dolls with his trademark shock of yellow hair and business suits have appeared alongside Batman and Disney princesses at stalls.The only problem is they sell out fast!"As soon as we get them, they're gone," said shop owner Genoveva de la Cruz, as she displayed the last Trump piAata left at her stall.Meanwhile, campaigns have been launched on social media, urging Mexicans to boycott McDonald's (MCD), Starbucks (SBUX), Coca-Cola (KO) and Walmart (WMT) after Trump signed an executive order for the construction of the wall.The hashtags #AdiosStarbucks and #AdiosProductosGringos quickly started trending.However, Starbucks defended itself, saying that its local division is a Mexico-owned franchise which provides jobs to around 7,000 Mexicans and features Mexican-grown coffees.Tensions between the two countries rose after Trump insisted that Mexico pay for the wall and Mexican President Enrique PeAa Nieto cancelled a meeting with Trump over the standoff.The Trump's administration then floated the idea of charging a 20% import tax on goods coming from Mexico.And on the other hand, six million U.S. jobs depend on trade with Mexico. Taxing Mexican imports affects many U.S. companies that send parts south of the border to be assembled.Analysts say PeAa Nieto has a few cards up his sleeve. For instance, Mexico could stop cooperating on issues like security and drug trafficking.
Chidambaram, Congress have lost their mental balance post demonetisation: BJP

Kolkata (West Bengal) . Feb. 3 : Taking a jibe at senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram's remark where he commended the Union Budget for not being 'reckless' like demonetisation, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday said that the former and the grand-old party, who use to plunder the people during their regime, have lost their mental balance post demonetisation.





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"Chidambaram and his party plundered the people first and in response, they have been plundered by demonetisation. As a result they have lost their mental balance. Hence it is obvious to condemn the Budget and demonetisation," BJP leader Rahul Sinha told ANI.Sinha further claimed that due to demonetisation, the growth rate of the agricultural and industrial sector increased making the economy of the country stronger.On Thursday, Chidambaram said that the Union Budget had done nothing to boost demand, something that would have been possible if indirect taxes had been slashed."It is obvious that demonetisation and its inevitable consequences have demoralised the government. Government has retreated from reforms," he said in a press meet here.Moreover, he also dubbed the tax slash as tokenism and said cutting indirect taxes would have benefitted crores of people.He further said that there was nothing in the Budget for people most affected by demonetisation, such as farmers, farm workers, manual labourers, who lost money in wages and others.
Muslim ban fallout: Uber CEO drops out of Trump's business advisory council

Washington D.C. [U.S.], Feb. 3 : In a shocking fallout to the recent immigration order by the United States President, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has dropped out of Trump's business advisory council.





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Kalanick said he was not participating because of the president's immigration order in a memo to employees, reports the CNN."Earlier today I spoke briefly with the president about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community," Kalanick said in the memo obtained by CNN."I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the president or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that."Kalanick was one of 16 business leaders on the council, which was scheduled to have its first meeting on Friday.Last Friday, Trump issued a sweeping executive order imposing a temporary travel ban on people from seven Muslim-majority countries, following which many tech companies were outraged at the order, especially as many companies were founded by immigrants."There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that," Kalanick said in the memo. "The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America. Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there's a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants."
Marching towards peace, FARC-EP begins turning in arms - UN Mission in Colombia

New York, Feb 3 : More than 200 men and women of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) marched on Thursday to demobilization camps, two months after a peace deal that ended the Western Hemisphere's longest running conflict, United Nations monitors coordinating the process reported.





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The UN Mission in Colombia said the Transitional Point of Normalization of Pondores, department of La Guajira, in northern Colombia, according to figures from tripartite Monitoring and Verification Mechanism, composed of the Government, the FARC-EP and coordinated by the UN Mission.Members of the FARC-EP some of them pregnant or breastfeeding walked about nine kilometres from four pre-grouping points near to the Pondores transitional point, where the FARC-EP camp will be located and where the separation of forces will take place, a task which the UN Mission will verify.As a UN Mission, this moment is crucial because it means we will continue to verify the ceasefire and cessation of hostilities through our participation in the Tripartite Mechanism, and we will be able to begin the operational part of the verification of the laying down of arms, explained the Deputy Head of Observers of the Mission, Jos Mauricio Villacorta.According to the Mission, the women and men marching on Thursday join more than 6,300 FARC-EP members who began mobilizing on Saturday, 28 January, to zones and points using 36 travel routes in 14 departments of the country, according to preliminary figures from the Colombian Governments High Commissioner for Peace, on one of the countrys largest logistics operations.FARC-EP members were received on Thursday at the Pondores site by High Commissioner for Peace Sergio Jaramillo, FARC-EP leader Ivan Mrquez, Colombian authorities and Mauricio Villacorta, in a symbolic act to highlight the parties commitment and the imminent start of the laying down of arms, which the UN Mission will verify, to enable the transition to civilian life.This shows that we are bringing the agreement to reality, said Jaramillo, who added: This is a moment of joy.Ivn Mrquez, who headed the FARC-EP negotiating team in Havana, Cuba, where four years of negotiations on the eventual peace accord took place, stated: Something good is happening in Colombia: its peace [] This peace is irrepressible, unstoppable; let us go forward.To date, we have focused on the planning and preparation phase so that the Mission can carry out the tasks of registering and storing weapons, said Mauricio Villacorta.Once FARC-EP members are in the camps the first step for the laying down of arms is the registration of arms and weapons. Unstable armaments such as gunpowder, grenades and anti-personnel mines will be destroyed in site. After 180 days, the UN Mission in Colombia is set to remove all the weapons from the camp.In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the Government and the FARC-EP. That deal led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November.Photo: UN Mission in ColombiaSource: www.justearthnews.com
CSS Corp Wins Prestigious 'NETGEAR Partner of the Year' Award 2016

New Delhi , Feb. 3 : CSS Corp, a leading IT Services and Tech Support company recently won the prestigious 'Partner of the Year - 2016' Award from NETGEAR, a global networking company.





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The award was announced at the NETGEAR vendor summit held in Santa Clara, CA, USA in January this year. CSS Corp bagged this award by scoring high across four major partner criteria of being the Most Innovative and Value Added Partner, the Best in Class Overall Performer, the top Performer in Premium Tech Support, and World Class Customer Experience Management.CSS Corp is NETGEAR's key global tech support partner. Their specialised technical support solutions help optimise and create superlative customer experiences in every interaction through automation/self-service, with an Omni channel experience across all social and support channels based on the customer needs."Our relationship with NETGEAR goes back a long way. We understand their need for smart support in today's IoT world with pressures on shorter product cycles. They are continually pushing their own team, and ours, to think bigger and do more to enhance the overall customer experience," said Manish Tandon, CEO of CSS Corp.All of this is driven by an analytics platform that makes the support engine intelligent and pro-active. CSS Corp's Tech Support services not only helps simplify support but also enhances brand stickiness and creates new revenue streams whilst reducing support costs."At NETGEAR, we are very serious about providing great customer experiences. We believe that connecting with customers pro-actively and in greater frequency will bring us richer insights. This will help us know where we are falling short, and move beyond a traditional support model to a place of listening and truly understanding," said Jennifer Khouri, VP Customer Support at NETGEAR."Our aim is to forge stronger ties with our customers and for that to happen we need to be more proactive in our approach. This is where our support partner CSS Corp plays a key role. We are glad to partner with them, and wish them continued success," Khouri added."They have embarked on incredibly innovative initiatives which have poised them to become a customer experience leader. We are delighted to partner with them in this journey of creating fundamentally strong customer relations in the technology world," said Tandon, speaking on NETGEAR's new initiatives."This honour of being awarded their prestigious 'Partner of the Year - 2016' is recognition of the cohesive efforts between both the companies. On behalf of CSS Corp, we humbly accept this recognition and will strive to continually deliver our best," added Tandon.
Kejriwal dubs PM Modi 'shameless dictator'

New Delhi, Feb 3 : Firing a fresh salvo, Delhi Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal has dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi a 'shameless dictator'.





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Forecasting BJPs result in the Punjab and Goa polls, the Delhi Chief Minister said that the party will lose badly, while suggesting victories for his party in both the states.Modijis dirty tricks. Losing badly in Goa n Punjab, he tries to de-register the winning party 24 hrs before elections. Shameless dictator, Kejriwals tweet read.
Afghanistan: Five Taliban hideouts destroyed in anti-terror operations

Kabul, Feb 3 : At least five Taliban hideouts have been destroyed in joint military raids in Afghanistan, local Khaama Press reported.





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The raids were conducted in Helmand province.At least 18 militants died, while three suffered injuries, the agency quoted officials as saying.Senior Taliban commander Furqani is reportedly one among the 18 killed.The group is yet to comment on the report.
Mobile mental health outreach teams will hit the road

Coming soon to your community: a new boots on the ground approach to behavioral health care.
Janakiram Seshu, associate professor of biology and associate dean of The Graduate School at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has received a $404,250 grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease to support his research to better understand and prevent the spread of Lyme disease.

"Dr. Seshu's top-tier efforts in infectious disease research are a source of immense pride for the UTSA College of Sciences," said George Perry, Semmes Foundation Distinguished University Chair in Neurobiology and dean of the UTSA College of Sciences. "His work will undoubtedly have a great impact on our knowledge of Lyme disease, as well as our efforts to fight it."

"As Lyme disease-carrying ticks increasingly spread to new areas of the country, we need to improve our understanding of the disease. Dr. Seshu's bacteria research will help us limit Lyme disease's spread and allow folks here in Texas and across the nation to live healthier lives," said U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro. "Thanks to UTSA's continued leadership, science thrives in San Antonio."

Seshu, a member of the South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, is best known by his peers for his inventive approach to stop the spread of Lyme disease. His work, described in a recent paper, leverages medication that is normally used to lower cholesterol.

"As a member of The South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (STCEID), Dr. Seshu's work is always interesting and innovative. With Lyme disease-carrying ticks now present in over half the country, his research and findings will provide new insights in the treatment against the particular bacterium," said Bernard Arulanandam, UTSA interim vice president for research.

The big question at the heart of Seshu's research is how the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, called Borrelia burgdorferi, is able to adapt to its immediate environment inside the tick vector or infected mammalian hosts. Mammalian bodies are very rich in nutrients and fatty acids, which make it very easy for the bacteria to thrive. The tick's body is very different. It's very poor in nutrients. Yet the bacterium adapts very quickly and allows the disease to spread.

To limit the transmission of the disease, Seshu's entire laboratory is focused on understanding how the Lyme disease-carrying bacterium can reinvent itself to live for so long in such a disagreeable environment.

"This award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is an exciting investment to tackle a major debilitating disease in the US," Seshu said. "I'm looking forward to advancing our understanding of this disease, so we can start finding better solutions."
The prospect of regenerating bone lost to cancer or trauma is a step closer to the clinic as University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists have identified two proteins found in bone marrow as key regulators of the master cells responsible for making new bone.

In a study published online today (Feb. 2, 2017) in the journal Stem Cell Reports, a team of UW-Madison scientists reports that the proteins govern the activity of mesenchymal stem cells -- precursor cells found in marrow that make bone and cartilage. The discovery opens the door to devising implants seeded with cells that can replace bone tissue lost to disease or injury.

"These are pretty interesting molecules," explains Wan-Ju Li, a UW-Madison professor of orthopedics and biomedical engineering, of the bone marrow proteins lipocalin-2 and prolactin. "We found that they are critical in regulating the fate of mesenchymal stem cells."

Li and Tsung-Lin Tsai, a UW-Madison postdoctoral researcher, scoured donated human bone marrow using high-throughput protein arrays to identify proteins of interest and then determined the activity of mesenchymal stem cells exposed to the proteins in culture. A goal of the study, says Li, is to better understand the bone marrow niche where mesenchymal stem cells reside in the body so that researchers can improve culture conditions for growing the cells in the lab and for therapy.

The Wisconsin researchers found that exposing mesenchymal stem cells to a combination of lipocalin-2 and prolactin in culture reduces and slows senescence, the natural process that robs cells of their power to divide and grow. Li says keeping the cells happy and primed outside the body, but reining in their power to grow and make bone tissue until after they are implanted in a patient, is key.

The ability to precisely manipulate mesenchymal stem cells in the laboratory dish and keep them poised to divide and form bone on cue helps pave the way for using cell-bearing three-dimensional matrices to reconstruct large swaths of bone lost to tumors or major trauma. Because bone has some natural healing properties, things like breaks and fractures can often mend themselves. But when large pieces of bone are lost, clinical intervention is required.

"We're seeking better treatments for bone repair," says Li, who is affiliated with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.

To engineer the growth of new bone in the body through regenerative medicine first requires generating large amounts of good quality cells in the lab, notes Li. In the body stem cells are rare. But if cell growth, differentiation and quality can be controlled in the lab dish, it may be possible to create stocks of cells for therapeutic applications and prime them for bone regeneration once implanted in a patient.

The Wisconsin team successfully tested human cells treated with lipocalin-2 and prolactin to regrow bone by implanting them in mice with a calvarial defect, where part of the skullcap has been surgically removed to model critical-sized bone loss.

The human marrow used in the new Wisconsin study was donated by patients undergoing hip replacement surgery. Thus, a caveat to the study is that the protein factors identified by Li and his colleague came from donors with osteoarthritis. However, Li expressed confidence that the factors from the marrow used in the study would be similar or identical to what occurs in a healthy patient.

The new study, says Li, demonstrates a key improvement to the lab culture environment, which seeks to mimic the bone marrow niche where mesenchymal stem cells are found in the body.

Source: http://news.wisc.edu/uw-scientists-find-key-cues-to-regulate-bone-building-cells/
Northwestern University researchers studying the gut bacteria of Scott and Mark Kelly, NASA astronauts and identical twin brothers, as part of a unique human study have found that changes to certain gut "bugs" occur in space.

The Northwestern team is one of 10 NASA-funded research groups studying the Kelly twins to learn how living in space for a long period of time -- such as a mission to Mars -- affects the human body. While Scott spent nearly a year in space, his brother, Mark, remained on Earth, as a ground-based control.

"We are seeing changes associated with spaceflight, and they go away upon return to Earth," said Fred W. Turek, the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Biology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. He is a co-leader of the study.

"It's early in our analysis, so we don't know yet what these changes mean," said Martha H. Vitaterna, study co-leader and research associate professor of neurobiology at Northwestern. "We don't know what it is about spaceflight that is driving the changes in gut microbes."

The research team includes collaborators from Rush University Medical School and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"We will be working closely with the other Twins Study teams to piece together a more complete picture of the effects of long space missions," Turek said. "What we learn will help us safeguard the health of astronauts, and it will also help us improve human health on Earth."

Turek reported his team's preliminary research results at NASA's Human Research Program's annual Investigators' Workshop, held last week in Galveston, Texas. This was the first meeting where the researchers with the 10 Twins Study teams, which are looking at different aspects of the twins' physiology, could share their data with each other.

"We were very excited to learn what the other teams have discovered and to start thinking about how it fits with our findings," Vitaterna said. "This is a big milestone -- we now know things we didn't know before."

The Northwestern study is unique: The researchers are comparing the effect of living at zero gravity for a year on a human's gut microbiota -- the 'bugs' found naturally in the gastrointestinal tract (GI) to aid digestion -- with the normal fluctuations in these populations over the same time period in an on-Earth identical twin.

The team's findings include:

There was a shift in the balance between the two dominant groups of bacteria (Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes) in Scott Kelly's GI tract when he was in space. The balance returned to pre-flight levels when Scott Kelly returned to Earth.

Fluctuations in the same bacterial groups were seen in Mark Kelly, the control on Earth, but the fluctuations were not as great as those seen in Scott Kelly in space.

Differences in the viral, bacterial and fungal populations between Scott Kelly and Mark Kelly were pronounced at all time points; however, this was expected when comparing different individuals, even identical twins.

The surprise finding was that a change in diversity of gut microbes (the number of different species) was not observed in Scott Kelly while in space.

The researchers cautioned that the findings are preliminary and that they have not had a chance to dig deeply to figure out what the data mean.

"This will happen in the coming months when we look at our findings in the context of what the other teams are finding," Vitaterna said. "Right now, we do not see anything alarming or scary -- the Kelly twins seem to have healthy gut microbiomes."
New research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggests that young patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL  the most common type of pediatric cancer  and their parents are likely to report to their physician that they took more of their anti-cancer medication than they actually did.

The study, published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology, reports that 84 percent of patients with ALL or their parents over-reported adherence to a regimen of 6-mercaptopurine, an oral maintenance therapy for pediatric ALL. Physicians prescribe 6MP for two years after chemotherapy for patients to achieve durable remissions, and studies show that more than 95 percent of prescribed doses must be taken to be effective.

"Because this therapy is administered orally every day, we cannot supervise our patients to make sure they are taking their pills," said senior study author Smita Bhatia, M.D., professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology in the UAB School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. "Findings from this study suggest that we need better ways to monitor intake of medications as prescribed."

This study builds on trends observed among children with chronic illness with at-home treatment regimens, and is the first to directly compare self-reporting against electronic monitoring in pediatric cancer patients.

Bhatia and colleagues gave 416 pediatric ALL patients from 87 participating institutions across the United States prescription pill bottles for their 6MP that contained a microprocessor chip in the cap to log the date and time the bottle was opened. These logs were then compared against self-report questionnaires completed by patients or their parents and provided to their physicians at monthly checkups.

In addition to observing a majority of patients over-reporting the number of days that they had taken their medications, researchers observed a direct inverse trend in over-reporting. Of those found to adhere to their regimens  defined as taking their prescribed dose 95 percent of the time  a small percentage, 8 percent, over-reported their intake. However, among those found non-adherent, a substantially larger percent, 47 percent, over-reported.

In order to find out why patients were not taking their prescribed medication, lead study author Wendy Landier, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatric hematology/oncology at UAB, organized separate one-on-one interviews with patients and their parents. In these interviews, Landier noted that forgetfulness was the primary reason for non-adherence.

"We found that partnering with a parent was very conducive to our patients' adherence, playing a key role in combatting forgetfulness," she said.

Recognizing the importance of parental involvement in patient adherence, the team was inspired to conduct further research to make parents more involved. In a trial that builds on this study, physicians send personalized text messages to both patients and their parents at a prescribed time, reminding them to take their medicine. Both patient and parent then report back, via text, that the indicated dose was taken.

"Our first study showed that non-adherence was prevalent, increasing the risk of relapse," Bhatia said. "We then found that parental vigilance was an important facilitator to adherence, while forgetting to take the medication was the most commonly reported barrier. We used these findings to inform the intervention trial to help families improve adherence to treatment. We hope that this will be a real step in improving outcomes in children with leukemia."
Online ratings and discussions about the quality of care American doctors provide can add to their stress levels. Patients, on the other hand, feel that such information empowers them to make better informed health-related choices. This is according to a study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer. Led by Alison Holliday of Harvard Medical School in the US, the study highlights how important it is to monitor the impact of independent and health system physician rating websites on both physicians and patients.

Independent sites are hosted by private companies such as Healthgrades.com, and reflect crowd sourced numerical ratings and free-text narrative comments freely posted by online users. These sites tend to carry reviews on a small percentage of physicians, and then only a handful of comments per doctor at that. Health systems sites, in contrast, portray numerical ratings and explanatory comments collected from standardized health system patient experience surveys. These surveys are carried out as part of internal quality improvement programs of hospitals and health practices.

To get a sense about the views and use of such sites, Holliday's team surveyed physicians and patients from four hospitals in a large accountable care organization in Massachusetts in the US. Their web-based survey was completed by 828 doctors, and a mailed survey by 494 patients.

One in every two doctors (53 percent) said that they had read online reviews about themselves, while two in every five patients (39 percent) used the web to look up comments about their doctors. It was a more popular practice among younger people, women, and those with a college education.

In general, doctors were less supportive than patients of sharing data publicly. They trusted information on health system websites more, while independent sites were the preferred go-to source for patients.

"Patients may lack trust in health system websites due to concerns regarding bias, as these publish reviews regarding their own physicians," says Holliday. "Health systems seeking to publish patient experience survey data will therefore need to engage patients in their trust of what is very likely a new and complicated data source to them."

It was found that online ratings and comments place an extra weight on doctors' shoulders. The majority (78 percent) surveyed noted that the possibility of negative online comments increases their job stress. Among physicians, 46 percent thought the practice could harm physician-patient relationships.

Patients were more supportive of making in-house health system patient experience data available publicly. One in every four patients (29 percent) surveyed, however, said that their comments might be less candid if they knew beforehand that these would become public knowledge online.
A large population worldwide is affected by bipolar disorder and the heritability stands at around 80%.

A recent medical research published in Sri Lanka Journal of Psychiatry, which is available on the Sri Lanka Journals Online platform supported by INASP, has assessed the association between family history of bipolar disorder and the risk of violence among patients admitted to the hospital for mania.

The study found a strong correlation between family history and risk of violence.

"Patients with a family history of bipolar disorder were significantly more likely to engage in violence than those without family history," says the lead author of the article Dr Miyuru Chandradasa, of the Department of Psychiatry at University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka. "The findings will be helpful in better allocation of resources in hospital wards as patients who are more likely to be violent can be identified at the time of admission and nursing and other care can be arranged for."

According to Dr Chandradasa, "Bipolar spectrum disorders affect about 4.5% of the general population. It is a mood disorder marked by alternate depressive and manic episodes. During depressive episodes, patients may have low energy, feel lethargic and suicidal while during manic episodes, they may have high energy and be very active".

The risk of violence to others occurs mostly during the manic episodes.

Dr Chandradasa, along with Dr Layani Champika from the Teaching Hospital Peradeniya, Kandy, and Dr Thilini Rajapakse of the Department of Psychiatry at University of Peradeniya, conducted the study with patients admitted at two tertiary hospitals in Kandy for treatment of bipolar disorder over a period of six months. A total of 148 patients were included in the study, of which 74 had a family history of bipolar disorder and the other 74 did not have a family history of bipolar disorder. All 148 patients were assessed for risk of violence at the time of admission and at weekly intervals after that, using the Historical, Clinical, Risk Management Scale-20 (HCR-20) by a researcher who was unaware of the family history status of the patients.

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The assessment showed that participants with a positive family history of bipolar disorder had significantly higher risk of violence compared to participants with a negative family history.

However, significantly higher rates of unemployment, harmful use of alcohol and absence of confiding relationships were also found in participants with a positive family history. Therefore it could not be established whether the high rate of violence among patients with family history was associated with genetic factors or other causes like alcohol abuse.

"Although we planned to conduct the study as a cohort, we could not continue the cohort as patients did not come for follow up after they were discharged, a behaviour seen among many patients in developing countries," said Dr Chandradasa. "We plan to conduct community-based research on the same topic so that we will have a clearer understanding as hospital-based research has many limitations."
Studying mice, scientists at Johns Hopkins have fortified evidence that a key purpose of sleep is to recalibrate the brain cells responsible for learning and memory so the animals can "solidify" lessons learned and use them when they awaken -- in the case of nocturnal mice, the next evening.

The researchers, all of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, also report they have discovered several important molecules that govern the recalibration process, as well as evidence that sleep deprivation, sleep disorders and sleeping pills can interfere with the process.

"Our findings solidly advance the idea that the mouse and presumably the human brain can only store so much information before it needs to recalibrate," says Graham Diering, Ph.D., the postdoctoral fellow who led the study. "Without sleep and the recalibration that goes on during sleep, memories are in danger of being lost."

A summary of their study appears online in the journal Science on Feb. 3.

Diering explains that current scientific understanding of learning suggests that information is "contained" in synapses, the connections among neurons through which they communicate.

On the "sending side" of a synapse, signaling molecules called neurotransmitters are released by a brain cell as it "fires"; on the "receiving side," those molecules are captured by receptor proteins, which pass the "message" along. If a cell receives enough input through its synapses, it fires off its own neurotransmitters.

More specifically, experiments in animals have shown that the synapses on the receiving neuron can be toggled by adding or removing receptor proteins, thereby strengthening or weakening them and allowing the receiving neuron to receive more or less input from nearby signaling neurons.

Scientists believe memories are encoded through these synaptic changes. But there's a hitch in this thinking, Diering says, because while mice and other mammals are awake, the synapses throughout its brain tend to be strengthened, not weakened, pushing the system toward its maximum load. When neurons are "maxed out" and constantly firing, they lose their capacity to convey information, stymying learning and memory.

One possible reason that neurons don't usually max out is a process that has been well-studied in lab-grown neurons but not in living animals, asleep or awake. Known as homeostatic scaling down, it is a process that uniformly weakens synapses in a neural network by a small percentage, leaving their relative strengths intact and allowing learning and memory formation to continue.

To find out if the process does occur in sleeping mammals, Diering focused on the areas of the mouse brain responsible for learning and memory: the hippocampus and the cortex. He purified proteins from receiving synapses in sleeping and awake mice, looking for the same changes seen in lab-grown cells during scaling down.

Results showed a 20 percent drop in receptor protein levels in sleeping mice, indicating an overall weakening of their synapses, compared to mice that were awake.

"That was the first evidence of homeostatic scaling down in live animals," says Richard Huganir, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience, director of the Department of Neuroscience and lead author of the study. "It suggests that synapses are restructured throughout the mouse brain every 12 hours or so, which is quite remarkable."

To learn specifically which molecules were responsible for the phenomenon, the team turned to a protein called Homer1a, discovered in 1997 by Paul Worley, M.D., professor of neuroscience, who was also part of the team conducting the new study. Studies showed that Homer1a -- named for the ancient Greek author and the scientific "odyssey" required to identify it -- is important for the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, and for homeostatic scaling down in lab-grown neurons.

Repeating his previous analysis of synaptic proteins, Diering indeed found much higher levels of Homer1a -- 250 percent more -- in the synapses of sleeping mice than awake mice. And in genetically engineered mice missing Homer1a, the previous decrease of synaptic receptor proteins associated with sleep was no longer present.

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To sort out how Homer1a senses when the mice are sleeping or awake, the researchers looked to the neurotransmitter noradrenaline, which drives the brain to arousal and wakefulness. By blocking or enhancing noradrenaline levels, both in lab-grown neurons and in mice, the researchers confirmed that when noradrenaline levels were high, Homer1a stayed away from synapses; when it was low, it collected there.

To directly test whether the location of Homer1a was related to sleep, the team kept mice awake for four extra hours by placing them in an unfamiliar cage. Some then got two and a half hours of "recovery sleep." As predicted, levels of Homer1a in the receiving synapses were much higher in the sleep-deprived mice than in those that got recovery sleep. That suggests, says Diering, that Homer1a is sensitive to an animal's "sleep need," not just what time of day it is.

Diering emphasizes that sleep need is controlled by adenosine, a chemical that accumulates in the brain as an animal stays awake, provoking sleepiness. (Caffeine, the world's most widely consumed psychoactive drug, directly interferes with adenosine.) When mice were given a drug during sleep deprivation that blocks adenosine, Homer1a levels no longer increased in their synapses.

"We think that Homer1a is a traffic cop of sorts," says Huganir. "It evaluates the levels of noradrenaline and adenosine to determine when the brain is sufficiently quiet to begin scaling down."

As the final test of their hypothesis that scaling down during sleep is crucial for learning and memory, the researchers tested the mice's ability to learn without scaling down. Individual mice were placed in an unfamiliar arena and given a mild electrical shock, either as they woke up or right before they went to sleep. Some mice then received a drug known to prevent scaling down.

When an undrugged mouse received a shock just before sleep, its brain went through the scaling-down process and formed an association between that arena and the shock. When placed in that same arena, those mice spent about 25 percent of their time motionless, in fear of another shock. When placed in a different unfamiliar arena, they froze sometimes, but only about 9 percent of their time there, probably because they were relatively good a telling the difference between the two unfamiliar arenas.

Expecting that drugged mice that couldn't scale down during sleep would have weaker memories and therefore freeze less than undrugged mice, Diering was surprised that they were motionless longer (40 percent of their time) when returned to the arena where they were shocked. But the drugged mice were also motionless longer (13 percent of their time) when in a new arena. When the shock was given after the mice woke up, the drug made no difference in how long the mice froze in either arena, confirming that scaling down only occurs during sleep.

"We think that the memory of the shock was stronger in the drugged mice because their synapses couldn't undergo scaling down, but all kinds of other memories also remained strong, so the mice were confused and couldn't easily distinguish the two arenas," says Diering. "This demonstrates why 'sleeping on it' can actually clarify your ideas."

"The bottom line," he says, "is that sleep is not really downtime for the brain. It has important work to do then, and we in the developed world are shortchanging ourselves by skimping on it."

Huganir says that sleep is still a big mystery. "In this study, we only examined what goes on in two areas of the brain during sleep. There are probably equally important processes happening in other areas, and throughout the body, for that matter," he adds.

Among the events that require further exploration is how learning and memory are affected by sleep disorders and other diseases known to disrupt sleep in humans, like Alzheimer's disease and autism. Huganir also says that benzodiazapines and other drugs that are commonly prescribed as sedatives, such as muscle relaxants and other sleep aids, are known to prevent homeostatic scaling down and are likely to interfere with learning and memory, though that idea has yet to be tested experimentally.
Some cells excite the immune system. Others soothe it. Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are one type of soothing cell, and previous work shows that cancer may specifically boost production of MDSCs as a way to tamp down immune response against tumors. At least that's how it works in mice. Now a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the journal Cancer Immunology & Immunotherapy for the first time characterizes the uptick of these cells in the spleens of human cancer patients, paving the way for therapies directed against these suppressor cells that collude with cancer.

"I would estimate that the majority of basic immunology has been worked out in mice, specifically in the spleens of mice because they offer ready access to large numbers of lymphocytes or splenocytes. Many versions of vaccines and tumor models rely on the responses of these mouse splenocytes. But it turns out we don't know as much about human splenocytes and their immunologic importance. There's a big leap of faith that mouse models are applicable to humans," says Martin McCarter, MD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and surgical oncologist at the University of Colorado Hospital.

In fact, when McCarter, first author Kim Jordan, PhD, and colleagues examined the spleens of 26 patients with a variety of cancers, they found important differences between human and mouse splenocytes. First, whereas mouse splenocytes are plentiful, human splenocytes are less abundant. Second, while mouse splenocytes are easy to isolate, human splenocytes may include a complex mix of markers, making them more difficult to separate from the many other kinds of cells found in the spleen.

"Basically, this means that it's really easy to find and study these splenocytes in mice and really hard to get your hands on enough human splenocytes to study," says Jordan, who is assistant director of the CU Cancer Center Human Immune Monitoring Shared Resource and assistant research professor in the CU School of Medicine Department of Immunology and Microbiology. "Now with this paper we show how future researchers can isolate these human splenocytes, hopefully leading to more work in this area."

However, when the team compared these spleens from cancer patients to spleens from patients with benign pancreatic cysts, they found an important similarity with existing mouse models: Splenocytes were indeed more prevalent in cancer patients than in the non-cancer control group.

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The team went an important step beyond characterizing and isolating these cells: "It's one thing to identify these cells and another to show their function," McCarter says. "We show that these cells are functionally immunosuppressive in humans, working to block T-cell responses."

When increased splenocytes blocked T-cell responses, patients suffered - in this study, higher splenocyte counts were "associated with a significantly increased risk of death and decreased overall survival," the authors discovered.

Many successful anti-cancer immunotherapies direct T cells to target tumors. For example, PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors prevent tumor cells from holding up a sort of biological "white flag" that disarms T cells that would otherwise target them. Another immunologic strategy called CAR-T cell therapy seeks to genetically equip T cells to recognize proteins specific to tumor tissue. Both therapies depend on T cell responses. And in both cases, a tumor's ability to spur the growth of myeloid-derived suppressor cells may blunt this response.

"In recent years, we've started to crack open the shell of the immune response to tumors. Still, there are many elements of the immune system we don't understand, for example how tumors manipulate or utilize a patient's own immune system to block the immune response against their own tissue. Now we are taking steps to understand this process, and understanding the basic science allows us the opportunity to intervene with therapies to stop it," McCarter says.

The group has already taken the obvious next step, running an investigator-initiated human clinical trial targeting myeloid-derived suppressor cells in combination with existing immunotherapies in a way that could allow immune response to go forward. McCarter, Jordan and colleagues are excited to report the results of this small trial in a forthcoming publication.

"Currently only about 20-40 percent of melanoma patients respond to these immune therapy checkpoint inhibitors for a variable amount of time," McCarter says. "By blocking or knocking down the myeloid-derived suppressor cells, we hope to improve this response rate."
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New Delhi: The death of former MOS external affairs E Ahamed rocked Lok Sabha again on Friday with MPs from Kerala demanding answers from the government on why the announcement on the IUML leader's death was delayed.



The family and supporters of Ahamed have insinuated that the government deliberately kept news of the death a secret for several hours because they did not want to postpone the budget.



Cutting across party lines, protesting MPs from Kerala forced an adjournment of the House and demanded a high-level enquiry into Ahmed's death and subsequent treatment in Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital. The MPs also plan to submit a memorandum in this regard to the Prime Minister, Speaker and health minister.



Raising the matter in Lok sabha, NK Premchandran of CPI said, "We went to the hospital and most of the MPs were sure that Ahamed's death happened when he collapsed on the floor of the House. The doctors said that he is being taken care of but we saw that his eyes were shut with band aid. Why?"



Raising the matter in Rajya Sabha, Sitaram Yechury alleged the decision not to announce Ahamed's death was taken by the highest office. He said, the sort of maneuvering we saw in E Ahamed's death is unacceptable. I am told there was interference from the highest office. There should be an investigation."



By convention, Parliament adjourns for the day after making an obit reference when a sitting member dies. In this case, the House cited a precedent and decided to go ahead with the Budget presentation despite the protests of Opposition parties as it is a Constitutional requirement.



Ahamed had collapsed while listening to the president's joint address to the two houses on January 31. He was rushed to Ram Manohar Lohia hospital where doctors declared him dead at around 2 am the next day.



Ahamed's family had alleged that they were prevented from seeing the MP at RML by bouncers at the ICU gate of the hospital.I'm not being allowed to see my father, it's my right. How can I not be allowed?" his son was quoted by PTI on 31st night.








New Delhi: Former CBI Director Joginder Singh passed away here on Friday after a prolonged illness. He was 77.



Singh, who was selected for the Indian Police Service at the age of 20, served as Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) chief between 1996 and 1997.



The cremation will be held on Saturday afternoon at the Lodhi Crematorium in New Delhi.



Before joining the CBI, he remained Superintendent of Police in Bihar, Deputy Inspector General and Inspector General in Karnataka, Director of Youth Services in Karnataka, Special Home Secretary to the government of Karnataka, Director in Ministry of Commerce, Director General in Narcotics Control Bureau, Director General in Indo-Tibetan Border Police and Special Secretary in the Home Ministry among other postings.



He also served as Inspector General in the Central Reserve Police Force, and led a number of delegations to the UK, USA, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Iran, UAE, Hong Kong and Switzerland on behalf of the government.



Singh also authored books like 'Make a Way Where There is None', '50 Days to Top', Inside CBI', 'Some Untold Tales', 'Without Fear and Favour' and 'Inside India'.



Singh wrote articles, features and columns on terrorism, corruption, good governance etc. in national dailies in different languages.
Welcome!

Welcome to FH & Other Things! One of my favorite things is studying The Male Form in Art, photography, the media and culture. Although you will find many great looking men on the blog, I strive to showcase talent, both in front of, and behind the camera. You will also find some of my favorite things, not just from today, but from years gone by. FH also loves to focus on upcoming talent; actors, photographers and models. So sit back, relax and spend a bit of time with some of my favorite things
New Delhi: Ever since the Centre went public about the surgical strikes to dismantle terror networks operating near the Line of Control across Pakistan, much has been debated on whether the strikes were really effective and should India go for such overt operations.



Here are seven reasons why India thinks Surgical Strike may work:



- Deterrent for Pakistan which will have to factor in the retaliation from India if it uses terrorists to attack India.



- More terrorists are waiting to infiltrate India and surgical strikes may be the most effective way to dismantle the terror infrastructure in PoK.



- Direct attack on Pakistan will bring home more body bags whereas no casualties happened when India undertook the surgical strikes



- Escalation has bought India temporary peace, for eg. mobilization of Indian troops on borders after Parliament attack led to a peace on the borders till 2008 Mumbai attacks.



- Past India-Pakistan military crisis has seen quick international involvement and pressure to defuse tensions. Delhi could redirect that international pressure onto Pakistan.



- An aggressive stance will further expose Pakistan's incompetence and duplicity of supporting terrorists, much akin to what happened after American special forces killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden at Abbottabad.



- India's aggression could be helpful in demolishing the halo around the all powerful Pakistan Army establishment and expose its vulnerabilities.



- It is also necessary to call Pakistans bluff on the use of its nuclear weapons against India.




He also said nabbing fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, who is said to be hiding in Pakistan, was just a matter of time.

Talking about his home state Uttar Pradesh that is holding assembly elections in two weeks time, Singh expressed faith that BJP will win over 250 of the 403 seats.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said India cannot rule out more surgical strikes in Pakistan-controlled territory, delivering an uncharacteristically strong warning to Islamabad four months after Indian commandos carried out widespread and deep cross-border raids in response to a terrorist attack on a military base in Kashmir last September.Pakistan is our neighbour. If it changes for good, we may not need such a step again. But if terror organisations or others target India, we cant guarantee that surgical strike will not be repeated, Singh toldEditor-in-Chief Rahul Joshi in a rare exclusive interview, his first to any media outlet since the surgical strikes.Singh, effectively the No.2 in the government, also said the recent house arrest of Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed was an eyewash, and that if Islamabad is really serious about tackling terror, it should pursue legal options, charge him and put him behind bars.I am confident that we will succeed in getting him back. It is just a matter of time, the home minister said,While Singh took a hardline towards Pakistan, he was more measured when it came to China. He refused to criticize it for repeatedly blocking the designation of another of Indias most wanted  Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar  as a terrorist at the United Nations.Maybe China did not support us because of their own internal deliberations. But am hopeful they will support us in future, he said.Interestingly, the home minister also refused to criticize the US decision to put a blanket ban on travelers from seven Islamic nations entering America, a decision that has triggered widespread opprobrium for President Donald Trump. Singh gave Trump a wide berth, saying he must have taken such a decision after assessing local terror situation.He said the BSP and the SP-Congress alliance should decide who is the main opposition to BJP, and observed who the real opposition would varies from region to region.Singh, a former CM of the state, ruled himself out of the race to become the UP chief minister. I am already the home minister, it would be injustice if others are not given a chance, he said, noting that going ahead with the poll campaign without declaring a CM candidate would not affect his partys chances.
Kohima: Nagaland Chief Minister T R Zeliang has refused to resign following the death of two persons in anti-ULB (Urban Local Bodies) poll agitation in Dimapur and appealed to the people to stop violence and not fall prey to rumour mongers.



A statement issued by CM Zeliang's office reads, "Making unreasonable and unconstitutional demands such as asking the entire Cabinet to tender resignation when the Ministry has undisputed, unquestionable majority and support of the entire Assembly, is simply unacceptable and non-negotiable."



There was palpable anger in the state since the killing of two protesting youths in Dimapur on Tuesday.



On Thursday, the Nagaland Tribes Action Committee (NTAC), representing different tribal organisations, had served an ultimatum to the state chief minister and his entire cabinet to resign by 4 PM for going ahead with the ULB polls despite opposition from powerful tribal groups that are against 33% reservation for women in the municipal bodies.



Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, Kiren Rijiju is likely to meet the protesters (NTAC) to ease tension in the state. It is officially not yet known on where and when the meeting will happen.



There was palpable anger in the state since the killing of two protesting youths in Dimapur on Tuesday, the tempers rose further after the decided to keep the body in the heart of Kohima town on Wednesday evening.



The Angami Public Organisation (APO) and Kohima Ao Union (KAT) had demanded the resignation of the entire cabinet by 4pm Thursday, taking moral responsibility of the death of the two protestors. They had also asked for an independent judicial enquiry and the suspension of Commissioner of Police, Dimapur and all officers responsible for the shootout.



Though the cabinet agreed to declare the election process of the ULBs 'null & void' and transferred the CP & DCP of Dimapur, in a bid to facilitate 'Independent Judicial inquiry', the crowd still went on a rampage, as the Chief Minister refused to step down.



On target was the private residence of the Chief Minister TR Zeliang in Dimapur, State Election Commission's office and the Kohima Municipal Council building. All these buildings were vandalised and attempts were made to set them ablaze.



Some of the locals say the extent of damage is huge though administration is yet to spell out official position. The Regional Transport office and that of the Excise Department were also vandalised.



The Regional Transport office and that of the Excise Department were also set ablaze by violent mobs demanding Zeliang's resignation and his entire cabinet for going ahead with the ULB polls.



A large part of both the towns are now under curfew. Nagaland DGP L.L. Doungel told News18 that' the situation is under control in Dimapur. There was some violence in Kohima but situation is under control now.'



In Kohima, 5 columns of Army has been deployed to aid the civil administration. Amidst tight security the Chief Minister and the cabinet were in a meeting till late Thursday night.



In view of the violence, the Kohima District administration has promulgated prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC in certain areas including Raj Bhavan, Ministers' Hill, and Jail Colony.



"The curfew came into effect from 9:30 on Thursday and would continue till further order," a notification said.



"The Government is of the considered opinion that it has been lenient enough to give in to the demands of the agitators (withholding ULB polls) even though it was steadfastly abiding by the Constitution to which it had sworn its solemn allegiance," the CMO statement said.



Zeliang appealed to all not to indulge in vandalism and arson destroying public properties and spreading fear and panic in the minds of the peace-loving citizens of the state.



Resorting to violent activities to convey one's point of view is irrational and has no place in a civilised modern society, he said.



The Chief Minister also urged users of social media to desist from spreading rumours as untruths were being fed to innocent people by people with vested political interests.



The statement said MLA of Northern Angami Constituency Neiphrezo Keditsu was forced to tender his resignation as the Chairman of Nagaland State Mineral Development Corporation on moral ground as one of the two persons killed in Dimapur happens to be from his own village.



Apart from him, no other legislator has resigned and Chief Minister enjoys full support of not only the NPF and Independent MLAs but also of BJP legislators, it said.







Earlier the Guwahati High Court had today ruled that the State Government should constitute the Municipalities and Town Councils in the State with 33% reservation of seats for women.



The judgment came in the wake of a petition filed by one Naga woman who prayed that some extra constitutional bodies, who are opposed to election, are creating hurdles in holding the election freely and fairly and that the State Government be directed to ensure holding of free and fair elections to the ULBs with 33% reservation of seats for women.



The order said, "Having regard to the fact situation of the case, we are prima facie convinced that as per Notification dated 21.12.2016 of the State Election Commission, the election to constitute the Municipal Councils and Town Councils in the State of Nagaland with 33% reservation of seats for women should be held freely and fairly."



The Court went on to direct the State "to ensure that the election, in question, is held freely and fairly and if necessary, adequate security provided to the candidates and voters."



However, the government claims that considering the fluid situation prevailing in several towns and Municipal areas, the State Cabinet wrote to the State Election Commission to postpone holding of polls to the following seven Municipality and town councils. Now decision has been taken to annul the entire electoral process.



At the root of the protest lies the revolt of mostly male members of the Naga groups, who refused to accept the reservation of women in the urban bodies. These protests have been going on since the decision to provide reservation was announced. But with the brutal suppression of the protest in Dimapur, it turned into a massive uprising against the government in power.
The ninth edition of the India Art Fair that began here on Thursday exhibits a rare mix of colours, grandeur and, with its continued focus in nurturing global interest in South Asian arts, showcases works of emerging as well as established artists from the region.



The three-day fair is joined by participating South Asian galleries like Britto Arts Trust from Dhaka, Nepal Art Council from Kathmandu, Theertha International Artists' Collective from Colombo and Blueprint 12 from New Delhi.



An extensive array of art programmes, ranging from the exhibitions on the works of renowned artists like M.F. Hussain to the subtle narratives that emerge from the sketches of the 20th century political artist Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, find display spanning the outdoor and indoor fair space.



The Speakers' Forum at the fair will also have an exciting programme that presents artists, curators, critics, administrators, academics, gallerists and collectors.



In an attempt to explore the future of museums, Richard Armstrong (Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, New York) and Sheena Wagstaff (Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) will come together in a panel discussion on Friday.



The two experts will together explore the subject in a lively discussion before the audience here.



"BMW Art Talk: The Art of Collecting" is another much anticipated session in which Thomas Girst (Head of Cultural Engagement BMW Group, Munich) and Sheikha Hoor Al Qasimi (President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation) will look at the diverse field of collecting on Saturday.



Sharing their perspectives on South Asian art will be Pooja Sood (Director of Khoj International Artists Association, New Delhi), Alessio Antonelli (Director of Gasworks, London) and Boon-Hui Tan (Director, Asia Society Museum, Singapore) in a session "Perspectives from Networks of South Asian Art" on Sunday.



The Speakers' Forum will also facilitate intimate conversations between collectors from India and across the globe with speakers who will provide a glimpse into their private collections.



Some of the well-known names featuring in the segment are French art collectors Jean-Conrad and Isabelle Lemaitre; Brussels based collector Frederic de Goldschmidt and one of India's leading art collectors, Anurag Khanna.



"Focused initiatives are planned with individual collectors, large groups and delegates from prestigious institutions, many of whom are coming for the first time, including Santa Barbara Museums, Singapore Art Museum, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, Rhode Island School of Design, United States and The Guimet Museum in France," the organisers, MCH Group, Angus Montgomery and founding director Neha Kirpal said.



The 2017 edition of the fair is also featuring both longstanding representatives of Indian art and new exhibitors from around the globe who are keen to develop relationships with the Indian art market, including Kalfayan Galleries (Athens), Grey Noise (Dubai), 1x1 Gallery (Dubai), Sabrina Amrani (Madrid) and Lukas Feichtner Galerie (Vienna).



Founded in 2008, India Art Fair is one of South Asia's leading platform for modern and contemporary art.



The fair that opens for the public tomorrow at NSIC grounds in the Capital will conclude on February 5.
Of all exciting things Lakme Fashion Week has to offer, the most significant is the union of models from all walks of life. With its 18th edition, LFW brings on Indian ramp a social gender bender, which more than anything makes the right noise, about breaking free from the set gender stereotypes.



Petr Nitka, the first-ever gender neutral model, is elated to be the face of this initiative. I feel great. Only in modeling I can express my personality, my look, and my opinions. Now I can finally be who I really am."



I have always felt different and being gender neutral model means being unique. This is the best way to meet new people with different stories," she adds.



Considering that most societies have their prejudices against anything beyond the dictionary definition of men and women, was it difficult to shatter the grass ceiling? Petr says no. To be honest, it was not so difficult. I was born as a gender neutral and being a model has always been my dream to express myself. I am from the Czech Republic and there is no other model who is different! I have been the first one. I used to call myself as an androgynous model, but African designer Roman Handt told me "Petr, you are not androgynous. You are a gender neutral. Andreja Pejic used to be first androgynous model. And I am the first gender neutral model. Its all about the title.



While the professional stint started with a photoshoot with Bharathan Kangatharan in Perth when Petr realized looked like someone between a boy and girl, Petr always knew he was a little different. I grew up just with my mom. She has always been like my best friend; she has supported me and respected my difference. I didn't use to be like other boys, I didn't play with cars. I've always been interested in fashion, makeup and girly stuff. But when I was a kid I was disappointed that I couldn't wear makeup. I've always felt more like a girl, but I haven't wanted to change my sex.



One day I realised that I feel like a unisexual person, Petr tells us in a freewheeling chat.



Petr is aware of the societys outlook towards them but none discerns him from being the strong person. I know there are so many people who are hateful to minorities. I always say, that if someone judges people because of their sexuality, gender, race or religion; the person is probably unhappy with his own life. I feel like a strong person. Thats why I want to fight for LGBT people and minorities all over the world.



It's about our society which is changing and definitely about culture which is different in every part of the world. As our society begins accepting minorities and different sexualities - the fashion gets better in the way of difference. According to him, fashion has always been a reflection of the modern and open-minded thinking and he doesnt shy away from acknowledging the symbiotic relationship of societal standards and fashion trends.



Hes of the view that being in fashion shows means making news and thats the only way one can initiate discussions about their acceptability. Some people see homosexuals or transsexuals as a problem of our society. I would like them to get to know us so they can find out that we are just people full of love and kindness. I wish to share my opinions with others and I want people to realise, that all we need is love and we cannot hate each other only because they have different beliefs or preferences. Judging people because of their race or gender is so wretched.



The international model, whos enthusiastic to be in India for the first time, admits that Europeans consider India to be a very stern place. I need to say that South Africa was so welcoming and I was pretty surprised. But to be honest the biggest amazement comes from Lakme Fashion week. You know - European people see India as a really strict place. But I do not agree. I am receiving such positive messages from Indian people. I am so happy I got the opportunity to come to India.



Apart from Indian designs and fashion, which Petr says are vastly different from rest of the world, what excites him the most is the culture. This is going to be my first time in India and I'm really excited. I love Indian culture and people and I want to see real India. Not a hotel resort, but an authentic life with Indian people. I can't wait to try Indian food. I am addicted to getting to know different cultures.



And of course- Indian guys are handsome. I would like to visit a typical Indian market! a thrilled Petr tells us.



Even though hes happy with the improving situations all across the world, he has no qualms in highlighting the worst. People are getting to be more open-minded and I am so happy for that. But situation in Arabian and some African countries for gays, lesbians, and trans people is worse than bad. In Russia too! You can be arrested or receive death penalty just for being who you are or loving who you love.



I would like to get in those countries, and change the way, how people see LGBT community and women, he says.


A month of the new year has flown by and many of us are still relying on the fashion trends of 2016. But it's high time that we moved and caught up with new fashion trends. And who better than noted Indian fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani to tell us what shall work this year and what is absolutely passe.



"Very sexy, silky pant-suits, a lot of midriff. Indian women wearing a cool blend of western and Indian, not being one or the other. I think now we are really getting into a wonderful space that's a true fusion just like we speak English but are Indian," Tahiliani told News18.com during a Vogue India event at the capital which was held to felicitate Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino.



"I think it is very passe to try and look like some gudia (doll) from 1922, it's over," the veteran designer added.



In an exclusive interview with News18.com, the ace designer also spoke transgender models making their way to the runway. He said, "Honestly, it's just shows acceptance. It's representative of an acceptance of the new world and yet on this very day Muslims are being banned from going to the US, so one wheel is turning this way and one the other way."



Incidentally, transgender model Anjali Lama and gender neutral model Petr Nitka will walk the ramp at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week Summer/Resort 2017.



Tahiliani will be showcasing his latest Mughal-inspired collection Chashme Shahi at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week Summer/Resort 2017. His line will reveal clothes based on the theme of fantasy and romance, presented in an array of elegant and cool garments to create an offering reminiscent of summer and all that it brings.
In the year 2015, Bollywood actress Bipasha Basu made her television debut with the reality series Darr Sabko Lagta Hai. The actress decided not to follow the norm and went ahead supporting the horror genre in the television industry. She has previously worked in films like Alone, Raaz, Aatma and Darna Zaroori Hai  all of which belong to the same genre.



While talking to News18.com at the ongoing Lakme Fashion Week, the actress expressed that shes still open to do reality television but that fiction will take time. Yes, I m open to television but mostly Id like to think reality show at this point of time. Ill get to fiction in a bit.



With shows like POW Bandi Yudhh Ki and 24, the remake of American series of the same name, one may see some progression of content on Indian television. To this, the actress said, Absolutely. The fiction is growing, but very slowly. Were still catering to a very different kind of audience but the mindsets are changing.



Bipasha, who turned the showstopper for Falguni Shane Peacock, credited her husband Karan Singh Grover for choosing her show outfit. She said, Actually Falguni sent two outfits, Karan chose this one. He said youre looking like a princess and youve to wear that. The actress sashayed down the runway in a pastel gown.


New Delhi: The Shunglu Committee probing allegations of irregularities against the Aam Aadmi Party-led Delhi government has indicted them on several counts in its report.



Accessed by CNN New18, the report has said that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi government threw the rulebook out of the window.



The Shunglu Committee was formed by former Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi Najeeb Jung after several allegations of irregularities were made against the state government.



First of all, the report accuses Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain of promoting nepotism. Then, it says that the type five bungalows allotted to AAP MLAs are in violation of the law.



It further accuses the Delhi government of not taking not taking permission from the Centre before it increased salaries of MLAs four times. The report also accuses Kejriwal of conducting a witch hunt against officials who disagreed with him, throwing out any bureaucrat who disagreed with him.



Kejriwal acted against the spirit of the constitution, the report alleges.



The report further says foreign travels were undertaken without any clearance from the Delhi LG or with any valid reason.







Reacting to the newsbreak, AAP sources told CNN News18 that the Shunglu Committee itself is an illegal committee. We dont believe in the media reports. The matter is pending in the Supreme Court, they said.
Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, Sekhowal in Hoshiarpur district is just 15 km from Punjabs border with Himachal Pradesh. According to the 2011 Census, there were nearly 99 lakh unemployed people in Punjab. Sekhowal fares no better than the rest of the state.

Ask Santokh Ram what problems his community faces and he says he doesnt know where to begin.The village is divided along caste lines and the Harijan settlement has the least facilities. For starters, we get running water in our homes for only seven minutes in a day. We have to ensure that we fill up as much water as we can in those seven minutes, says Ram, a former Sarpanch of his village.The power situation is no better. I only light two bulbs in my house. I dont have any heaters or air conditioners either. Yet, my electricity bill for this month is Rs 8,200. This is despite the fact that we get power for only six hours every day, he adds.As a result, many of the villages young men and women are forced to migrate to Himachal Pradesh for jobs. Many of those who dont, say village elders, end up falling into the drug trap. For many, the blame lies squarely on the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) government.My daughter is 20-years-old and she was forced to stop studying and go to Himachal Pradesh. She found work in a factory there and she has been supporting the family by working there. I used to be an ardent Akali supporter, even when Congress used to sweep this region. But over the last ten years, I have seen them destroy my village. Us Dalits are the worst affected and we are not going to stay quiet this time. We are waiting eagerly for the Akalis to be wiped out, Ram says.As a former Dalit Sarpanch, Ram is a respected figure among the others in his settlement. As he starts talking of the problems that Dalits face, a small crowd starts to gather near his house to talk of the problems they all face.Gurmeet Kaur is a 59-year-old Angwanwadi worker. I started working 30 years ago and I used to earn Rs 100 per month. Today, I only earn Rs 2,500. Even after 30 years, the government hasnt made me a permanent employee. If I have to buy milk for guests, my entire budget gets upset. They say they will retire me soon. Badal is 90-years-old. Maybe they should ask him to retire first! she says.Vimla Devi, who works as a cook at the local government school she earns only Rs 1,200 a month and the workload is a lot. Neelam Devi and her husband Blabir Singh are both physically challenged. My husband and I walk using crutches and we have four children to support. We live off government pension but he havent received pension for six months. How are we expected to survive?While the SAD government had launched its much-hyped Atta-Dal scheme for below poverty line families, Dalit families in Sekhowal say they have never received any pulses under the scheme. Many said that they had not even received payment for work they performed under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.The drug menace in Punjabs Majha region has been widely reported but villages in Punjabs eastern frontier have not remained unaffected. A Sekhowal resident, who does not wish to be named, says, My son got into bad company a few years ago and he started taking chitta, one of the worst drugs available in the region. I have spent Rs 12 lakh over the last few years trying to get him out of the habit, paying hospital bills and bailing him out when the police catches him. Whenever Sukhbir Singh Badal and Narendra Modi say that the drug problem in Punjab is exaggerated, it makes my blood boil. There have been five drug-related deaths in our neighboring villages. They tell me that drugs come from Pakistan, which is to the west of Punjab. We are on the other end of the state. This means that drugs have spread all over the state. This could not have happened without government support.In addition to struggling for their livelihoods, Dalits in the region also struggle against caste barriers which have not quite disappeared. None of us have any land, says Ram, So, when we have to get firewood we get it from the forest. Most of the forest land either belongs to the Jatt-Sikhs, Rajputs or Gujjars. They often object to us getting wood from their land.When they arent battling the shackles of caste, they are battling the elements. Kaur has lost count of the number of times wild animals from nearby forests have invaded her house.Dalit houses are at the edge of the village. I cant tell you the number of times I have been cooking rotis at home and a band of monkeys just snatch the rotis from our hands. Most of our houses are at the edge of a cliff and are made of mud. One bad monsoon and there could be a major tragedy here. The government has never bothered to build houses here, she says.The Congress manifesto, which promised homes to poor families, has appealed to Dalits here. However, it is Captain, not Congress, which will draw them to the polls. Captain Amarinder Singh is an old leader. When he was Chief Minister, there were no drugs. It doesnt matter which party he belongs to. In fact, some of the Aam Aadmi Party candidates are better than Congress ones. But still, all of us will support Congress because of Captain. He is somebody who isnt scared of the Badals. He is somebody who understands Punjab, Ram says.As the Sun sets over the hills, people gathered at Rams house start dispersing. That is when he calls out to the crowd, "Button sadde hathch aa. Aidki aapa Akali Dal da safaya karange (The button is in our hands. This time, we will wipe out Akali Dal)."
New Delhi: Rajnath Singh, Union Home Minister and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, is a busy man these days. Back from a whirlwind tour of Punjab and Goa, he is just about to begin his campaign in UP that is going to polls from February 11.



Singh sat down with Network 18 Group CEO Rahul Joshi for an exhaustive interview, his first in more than a year, where he discussed a range of topics from Pakistan, policies of new US President Donald Trump, his equation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the candidature of his son Pankaj Singh, and of course, his partys plan to conquer Lucknow.



Here is the full interview:



Q. My first question is, as the Union Home Minister do you think Pakistan has acted against Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Saeed by putting him under house arrest? Are they doing this because they are scared of sanctions by US President Donald trump or is it all just an eyewash?

A. Hafiz Saeed has been put under house arrest once before, after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks. I feel this is a dikhawa (eyewash). If Pakistan is serious about taking action against Saeed, his terror organisation and other leaders of the terror group, they should take legal action. India has given so many dossiers to Pakistan, Saeed should be chargesheeted and put behind bars.



Q. What will be Indias next step?

A. We are continuously trying to ensure that action is taken against such terrorists, terror organisations and their bosses. Our Prime Minister has tried to get the international community on board on the question of terror, and in a lot of ways he has been successful.



Q. Our channel CNN-News18 had exposed that Dawood Ibrahim lives in Pakistan. In fact, we even showed visuals of his house in Pakistan. Yet Pakistan denies his presence in that country. Do you think Indian government can get Dawood back?

A. I am confident that sooner or later we will be successful in getting Dawood Ibrahim back to India. Our efforts are on. There is no two ways about the fact that Dawood is in Pakistan. We have repeatedly told the Government of Pakistan that Dawood is nowhere else but in Pakistan. Where exactly he is in Pakistan, that too we have told the Pakistani government. Our efforts are continuous and I am confident that sooner or later we will succeed in getting him back.



Q. This is your first big interview after the surgical strike. It must have been a well-thought out decision for you. What were the circumstances under which you decided that surgical strike is the only way left?

A. The PM took this decision after a lot of deliberation. All of us sat down to decide. We had to do this because an attack happened and we were told that after the attack the terrorists were hiding on the other side of the border in Pakistani launchpads. Then our soldiers crossed over (to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir) 2 or 3 km inside. I cant give details, but they crossed over. And they succeeded in eliminating a number of terrorists in and around the launchpads. We also gave this message to the world that if any one attacks India we have the wherewithal to give a befitting reply.



Q. Even after surgical strikes tension on the border continues. Pakistan has refused to mend its ways. You think in the near future you will have to take such strong steps again?

A. Pakistan is our neighbour. If it mends its ways then it will be a good thing and such an action will not be required in future. But if there is any mischief by terror organisations or by anyone else then I cant guarantee that India will not carry out actions like the surgical strike again.



Q. The option of surgical strike will remain open?

A. We dont want to take such action but if circumstances force our hand, then there is no other option left for us.



Q. You are apprehensive about a rise in hostilities with Pakistan in near future?

A. We always tried to ensure that hostilities with Pakistan should go down. Pakistan is a neighbour and we want good relations with all our neighbours. But Pakistan also will have to take steps. India has taken the initiative a number of times. Atal Bihari Vajpayee and prime ministers before him and after have all taken initiatives but we didnt get the kind of positive response we should have got from Pakistan.



Q. A number of questions were raised about India's involvement in Balochistan. Especially after the Indian Prime Minister spoke about this publicly. Pakistan made this an issue at international platforms. What is our reaction on Balochistan?

A. I want to make it clear that India has no role in Balochistan. However, it is true that if a violation of human rights happens anywhere, then India does give its reaction sometimes. There were some human rights issues there and keeping those in mind our Prime Minister made some comments. Beyond this we have no role in Balochistan. But Pakistan should introspect that a state created on the basis of religion has not been successful in keeping together any of the cultural identities. Be it Pakhtuns, Sindhis or Kashmiris, no cultural identity has been kept together by Pakistan. They should introspect why that has not been the case. On the other hand, in India, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Parsis all live together.



Q. Kashmir is the other issue linked with Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi told me in an interview that Kashmir needs both vikas (development) and vishwas (trust). Do you think you have managed to inculcate vishwas in the hearts of common Kashmiris?

A. I can say that majority of people in Kashmir  and by majority I am not referring to religious majority, I mean most people there in general  trust India. I have said this before, we want Kashmir to be with India, not by terrorising them but by their love for India. You must have seen when Kashmir was hit by floods, our PM reached Kashmir without wasting time. To the extent possible we ensured relief for Kashmiris.



Q. So you think in the last few months the situation in Kashmir has improved? People are more receptive? Things are more under control now than before. The decision of Donald Trump to ban travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries has seen a lot of protests. Are you disappointed that Pakistan is not among the seven banned countries?

A. Why should I be disappointed on Trump not banning Pakistan? What a sovereign country does is not an issue for me to react. The fact that they have not named Pakistan as one of the seven Muslim countries (who are banned) is not a question to be disappointed about. Today some other country (Kuwait) has released a list of countries whose citizens are banned and Pakistan is one of them.



Q. The US has said in future if needed they could ban Pakistan.

A. Whether US does it in the future is their decision.



Q. But do you agree with the decision taken by Trump?

A. I think terrorism is not an issue for one country. The world community should come together on the question of terrorism. Like you have seen, right from the start India and our PM have worked in this direction. A country like Saudi Arabia too has joined the world community's fight against terror. But whether the decision of US President is right or wrong, is not for me to react or judge. He has made this decision based on his countrys assessment of the terror situation and threats.



Q. The best friend and supporter of Pakistan right now is China. What impact does this friendship have on Indo-China relations?

A. What relations China and Pakistan share is not for me to comment on. But India shares a good relationship with China and it will only better with time.



Q. China has never supported India be it the question of UN Security Council membership or membership of Nuclear Suppliers Group or banning Masood Azhar. Why?

A. Our efforts are on...we are not disappointed.



Q. But you are still hopeful that our relations will improve?

A. We are hopeful China will stand by India on the question of terrorism and in UN on the Security Council seat.



Q. Masood Azhar was not proscribed as a terrorist because of Chinas objection. Are you disappointed?

A. I believe he should be jailed and his organisation should be banned. In this we need the support of all. Perhaps China didn't support us because of its own internal issues but in future they will support us. That is my hope. They will support us to ban Masood Azhar.









Q. The Modi governments biggest move has been demonetisation. Do you think this has impacted black money? What is the real benefit to the ordinary person?

A. Note ban was a big decision and it showed the determination of the Prime Minister. This decision was not taken keeping in mind any potential political gains, but keeping in mind national interest. It has been successful to a large extent in stopping and bringing out black money. Even terror financing has been hit. In Naxal-affected areas people who tried to change old notes have been intercepted and their activities have been affected. Hawala channels have been disrupted and money flowing through those channels has come down a lot. We are trying to minimise corruption and stop the generation of black money. Thats why we are trying to steer the country towards cashless transactions. To be hundred percent cashless is not possible, but our efforts are in that direction.



Q. To what extent was terrorist financing and fake currency reasons for demonetisation?

A. There were a lot of reasons which were considered before taking the decision. A lot of thought was given to what will be the gains of demonetisation.



Q. A lot of economists have criticised the move.

A. But a lot of economists have praised the move. A lot of articles have been written, and economists of international standing have supported the move.



Q. But a lot of economists have also said that it was a political move  and not an economic one  starting with a jolt to the SP and BSP in UP and improving the image of the BJP.

A. I want to ask the critics: What is the political benefits that PM Modi and the government sought to reap? I want to clarify that we practice politics for the benefit of society, not just to form governments. This decision was taken after a lot of thought in national interest. We wanted to stop the extent of black money and end the income disparity between rich and poor. Also, we wanted to end terror financing.



Q. Amit Shah told me in an interview a few days ago that all the money that has come back into the system is not white money, there is a component of black in it.

A. Thats correct.



Q. Will there be an income tax crackdown in the coming years to unearth black money?

A. The nation as a whole has been supportive of the decision to demonetise. We didnt intend to harass anybody. There was an income disclosure scheme and it now has become clear who had how much. Whatever we do we will do it with sensitivity.



Q. Do you think an income disclosure scheme along with demonetisation would have netted more money?

A. No, we decided to go step by step. We thought that if people wanted to disclose income they will. A lot of people did, but not as much as expected. Black money has come back into the banking system. The law will take its own course, but there will be no harassment.



Q. Coming to UP elections, you are the biggest face from the state in BJP. But the BJP is fighting the UP polls without projecting a face. Why is this so?

A. Every political party has a strategy. As far as the BJP goes, there have been many Assembly elections where a CM candidate has not been projected. Also some where a CM candidate has been projected. For example, Chhattisgarh, where I was the in-charge, we didnt project a CM face. In Haryana we didnt declare a CM candidate, but were voted to power and formed the government. In Maharashtra too we didnt declare a CM candidate. This is a well-thought out strategy that in UP we will not project a CM candidate. But I believe that the BJP will form the government in UP with a clear majority.



Q. The party must have surely approached you with a proposal to project you as the chief ministerial candidate. Was this issue discussed within the party to make Rajnath Singh as the face of UP campaign?

A. I was the Chief Minister of the state before 2002. A lot of time has lapsed since then. There are many faces in the party who can become the chief minister of UP.



Q. But it is being said that Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar may go back to Goa if there is a need, so if an opportunity arises will you become the CM?

A. There is no such proposal. Manohar Parrikar is a popular leader of Goa. The people of the state trust Parrikar. What we have said is that he will continue to guide the state and government work.



Q. Even Parrikar has said it himself, given a choice he would not have come to national politics. He would have stayed in Goa. My question to you is that if you face such a situation would you want to go back to UP? If the party asks you to consider it.

A. It is a hypothetical question.



Q. You are not saying yes or no

A. I am the Home Minister, I cannot have all the posts for myself. That would be unfair. Others should get a chance too.



Q. How will you fight Boys of UP (UP ke ladke, the campaign slogan of the SP-Congress alliance) that is Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav? Like in Bihar they had created a campaign knit around Bihari vs Bahari. Now in UP Akhilesh and Rahul say outsiders are coming to the state to manage elections. You are the face of the party in UP, how will you take this issue up?

A. I feel Congress and SP are making these allegations out of sheer despondency and dejection. They are trying to mislead the people. UP elections are being managed by the local people. Our own BJP leaders are managing the polls. They are the ones campaigning. The PM is an MP from Varanasi and hence from UP. I am starting my campaign from today. Everyone is campaigning. There is no substance in this allegation.



Q. What is the possibility of BJP winning UP polls? How many seats do you think party will win?

A. I will not comment on the number of seats. But I do feel that under any circumstances the figure should not be less than 250. This is what I feel. This figure can go upward, but it cannot be less than 250.



Q. Amit Shah too talks about a two-third majority.

A. This is an estimate. I cant say much about it. After analysing the current equations and candidates it is my assessment that BJP should not win less than 250 seats.



Q. Which party are you in direct contest with?

A. Samajwadi Party and BSP will have to decide who is directly challenging the BJP. Had they been confident about their prospects, SP and Congress would not have joined hands. And you have seen how Mulayam Singh Yadav who established the SP expressed his disappointment on the Congress-SP tie-up. He was hurt. Mulayam said that he could never imagine that SP would align with a party like Congress, a party which has destroyed the country for 70 years after Independence. Poverty, unemployment and corruption has increased during this period. SP today is tying up with such a party.



Q. But you will agree that people have forgotten about the anti-incumbency factor because of the family feud within SP?

A. No. People will never forget it.



Q. It is being said that Akhilesh did development work and then by striking this deal he has stitched an alliance between Muslims, Yadavs and the core Congress vote bank including a section of Brahmins

A. The people of UP are politically aware. It would not be correct to say that people vote only on caste lines. As far as BJP is concerned, we get support from all sections of the society. We do not indulge in politics of caste and religion. And no one should think on these lines. As far as the SP feud is concerned, no one would be happy if such a situation prevails within a family. But yes, it has been detrimental to the state because the entire family was part of the power structure. Had the family not been in power, the matter would have been sorted out. The people of the state have had to suffer because of the war within the family. As far as the state government is concerned, law and order is in very bad shape. What is the development that has taken place under Akhilesh? How many people have got employment? Do people feel safe? UP has seen a flood of communal riots. Whenever SP comes to power, there is a spurt in communal riots. Why does this happen? There is peace and tranquility when BJP is in power.



Q. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat raised the issue of reservations just before the Bihar polls and BJP had to face the consequences. Now once again RSS spokesperson Manmohan Vaidya has given BSP supremo Mayawati a handle by raising the issue of reservations

A. I want to make it very clear. BJP has a very clear policy regarding this. That the current policy of reservations will not be touched or tampered with.



Q. But why does RSS make such statements before the elections?

A. No. They clarified later that the statement was misintrepreted. BJP has repeatedly made its position clear on the issue of reservations. Those doing politics of caste and religion unnecessarily rake these issues up.



Q. But dont you think that leaders should be a little careful while making statements, especially during elections? These are sensitive issues and by raising them you are exposing yourself to political attacks.

A. Yes, one must be careful in making statements. And one must be alert.



Q. BJP isnt aggressively making demonetisation part of its election campaign

A. No, no. Why not?



Q. So you are saying with full confidence that the note ban was a correct move and its an important election issue?

A. In all the election meeting we have addressed, not only in UP, we have got a tremendous response from the people on demonetisation.



Q. But it does not reflect in your campaign.

A. I am starting my UP campaign from today. I have spoken about it while campaigning in Punjab and Goa. And we have got tremendous response on it. We will take this issue to the people.



Q. But the manifesto speaks more about migration, cow slaughter, triple talaaq and even about helicopter services to Hindu pilgrimage sites like Varanasi, Chitrakoot and Mathura. Is the party returning to soft-Hindutva?

A. First we will have to define Hindutva. And SC has already done that. Atleast, please do accept Hindutva the way it has been defined by the SC. As far as exodus is concerned, I want to assure people of UP that we will ensure that if BJP is to come to power in UP we will stop migration. We will make fool-proof arrangements for that. And strong action will be taken against those who force people to migrate.

As far as helicopter facilities are concerned. It is the responsibility of the government to provide facilities to the people of all faith, whether one is Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Buddhist. This should not be linked to Hindutva.



Q. How big is the issue of migration in western UP and who do you hold responsible for it?

A. Governments should take care that such situations dont arise. Whatever has happened is unfortunate. All I can say is that in the future, we will make sure that nobody has to flee from not just Kairana or western UP but from anywhere in the state.



Q. Yogi Adityanath compared Kairana to the exodus of Pandits from Kashmir. Do you really think the situation is that bad?

A. You cant say the situation is that much out of control. But you need a government whose intentions are clear.



Q. And youre saying the SP and BSP dont have clear intentions?

A. No, they dont have. All other parties play politics of religion and caste. Politics should not be done by dividing society. Politics should be done by bringing society together. That is why, you must have seen when we were fighting the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Prime Minister gave the slogan  Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikaas.



Q. How important do you think the Ram Mandir issue will be in this election? Even now, you have mentioned Ram Mandir in your manifesto. However, every time you bring up Ram Mandir you talk of Constitutional provisions. So people say that BJP always raises the issue but doesnt take any concrete steps to build the Ram Mandir.

A. First of all, I would like to make it very clear that the Ram Mandir issue is not a political issue for us. Not at all. On the question of Ram Janmabhoomi, the High Court has issued its verdict and the matter is sub-judice in the Supreme Court. I think we should wait for the SC verdict.



Q. As the election draws closer, some of BJPs motor-mouths have started playing the communal card. Take Sangeet Som, for instance. Sakshi Maharaj went as far as to say our religion doesnt talk of 4 wives, 40 kids. Some leaders attack Shah Rukh Khan as soon as they get an opportunity. What would you like to say to party leaders such as these?

A. My opinion is that politics should never be based on communal card  whether it is by Congress, SP or BSP. I have seen that these other parties, whenever they get the chance and whenever the need arises, play the communal card. But we should avoid this. If we want to take a big nation like India to new heights, we have to bring everyone together. We cannot make this a great country by sparking hatred in peoples hearts. It can only be done by bringing out the love in peoples hearts.



Q. Will you condemn Sakshi Maharajs statement?

A. I cannot condemn someones statement without seeing what has been said. I have not heard the statement or what context it was said in. I am just giving my opinion.



Q. There is a lot of talk around the BJP and the SP-Congress alliance but not so much around the BSP. She has given tickets to 100 Muslims and a lot of strongmen, who have quit the SP, have joined BSP. Many of these people, like Mukhtar Ansari and Ateeq Ahmad, have influence over a few seats. Do you think Mayawati is a dark horse in this election?

A. I cant say who is a dark horse or blue horse or yellow horse. In some areas, our main competition is against the alliance and in some places BSP will be our competition. But the BJP is in a fighting position all over the state. I am certain that BJP will get a clear majority in this election.



Q. BJP workers seem angry over two issues. First, they are angry over outsider candidates, who have joined from other parties, getting tickets. Second, they are angry that despite the PMs plea, a lot of children of senior leaders have been given tickets. How will you deal with this?

A. First, I would like to say that no political party keeps its doors perpetually shut. Unless people from outside join, it will be difficult to increase the partys support base. In the history of political parties in India and all over the world, people have often forsaken their old ideologies and joined new political parties. Even here, people have joined BJP, like they have in the past. However, I would like to assure my partys workers that we are sensitive to the fact that workers be accorded the respect that they deserve.



Q. There is also some unrest over family members of politicians getting tickets. Kalyan Singhs grandson has got a ticket. Your son Pankaj Singh is also contesting from Noida. What would you like to say on this?

A. First of all, let me talk about Pankaj. In 2007, when AB Vajpayee and LK Advani were in-charge of the partys election committee and I was BJP national president, Kalyan Singh had proposed Pankajs name as a candidate. I said I would not accept it but Vajpayee said that the entire election committee wanted Pankaj to contest. He said that it should be on record that the committee did not agree with me, the party president. I still did not agree and Vajpayee asked Ananth Kumar to announce Pankaj Singhs name as a candidate. Then I came home dejected and Pankaj wondered why I was upset. He asked me if I was unhappy with the decision and I said I cant give a ticket to my own son while I am the national president. It would not be fair. That is why I was upset. Pankaj was upset over his ticket getting cancelled but I asked him to meet Vajpayee, seek his blessings and say that I cannot accept the ticket since my father is not happy about it. He went to Vajpayee and apologized. Even then I had said that just because someone is a leaders son, it doesnt mean they will never fight elections. However, they should work as a common worker for at least 10 years. I have no role to play in Pankaj getting a ticket.



Q. Another major election is taking place in Punjab. Polls suggest the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress are gaining. What do you think?

A. I think the BJP and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) alliance will form the government again.



Q. But all the opinion polls suggest that AAP and Congress are leading and there is massive anti-incumbency.

A. Opinion polls arent necessarily correct.



Q. The Akali Dal says that if AAP wins the elections it will lead to a rise in militancy since they are close to Khalistani extremists. As the Home Minister, are you worried?

A. As Home Minister, all I can say is that we will control any situation that arises.



Q. Looks like there is a close race in Goa too so much so that BJP President Amit Shah has talked about sending Manohar Parrikar back to the state. Why is it that BJP is having a tough time there?

A. No, there is no tough time for us in Goa. We are heading towards a clear majority. We are getting a tremendous response from Goa.



Q. Coming back to the national capital, people say former Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung quit abruptly because he was tired of the brinksmanship between the Delhi state government and the Central government. That he ended up becoming a punching bag.

A. That interpretation is not correct. He was a very efficient L-G.



Q. Then why did he resign all of a sudden?

A. See, he has been saying earlier also that its been a long time he didnt quit because of any other difficulties. He was a good, efficient governor. I want to congratulate him for that. He was an impartial governor. And he is on record saying that there was no pressure on him from the part of the Centre. You must have noticed that he also said specifically there was no pressure on him from the Union Home Minister.



Q. But usually, governors dont resign like that before their term ends.

A. L-Gs dont have any such fixed terms



Q. But the fight between the Centre and Delhi state government is a fact. Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal says Centre doesnt let him work. That the L-G does what he wants and besides, the state government doesnt have any control over Delhi Police.

A. Well, you would agree with me that governments should work within the framework of the Constitution. The Delhi government has gone to the courts many times against us, and every time they had to return empty-handed. If they make demands that are not within the framework of the Constitution, how can we agree to them?



Q. They complain that the Centre has put CBI and Enforcement Directorate after them

A. Well, the CBI is autonomous. They do their job, and I dont want to comment on what they do. We dont ask CBI to raid someone or put someone behind bars.



Q. But almost the entire Opposition alleges that this government misuses CBI for political gains. Mamata Banerjee says this, the Gandhis say this. They dont agree with you that CBI is autonomous?

A. All I want to say is that before tarnishing autonomous bodies, they should look at their own past.



Q. When Narendra Modi was announced the prime ministerial candidate of BJP, the party had to embark on a heavy consensus-building drive. The party had to bring aboard a lot of veteran leaders. So, how is your personal equations with PM Modi now? Besides, how is it to be like working with a workaholic Prime Minister?

A. I dont understand why you have to ask this question (laughs)



Q. You have been working with him for a while now

A. I am reluctant to talk about this because this question itself is irrelevant.



Q. No, I have nothing else in my mind in asking this. I just wanted to know how your personal equation with the PM is

A. Well, if you look back at my life, I became an MLA from Mirzapur, UP, when I was just 26 years old. The friendships I make, I see to it that they never break. The friendships I have made when I was just 26 have stayed on with me till today. With regard to your question on working with a workaholic PM, he is has amazing energy. I sometimes ask him how do you manage to work all the time. Its not possible for people like me to do work hard like this and still not show any sign of tiredness. God has blessed him a lot.



Q. You mentioned that you keep the friendships you make. In fact, people say, you are friends with the Opposition leaders too

A. Well, I talk to everyone (laughs).



Q. They say you are friends with even those who oppose the BJP.

A. (Laughs) I speak to everyone and will speak to everyone. I am not going to stop that if someone tells me not to.



Q. How do you manage this?

A. There is nothing to manage. If you are impartial there wont be any room for animosity towards any one.



Q. I have heard you use to play kabaddi in your youth. Does that help in politics?

A. Yes, I use to play kabaddi before I was in the 8th standard. It has now been recognised as a big sport. As for politics, there is no need to play kabaddi. In politics you play fair and with good intentions. What has to happen, will happen, there is no point worrying about anything. In politics you always think about what you can contribute to the society.
Lucknow: Terming Congress-SP alliance as "opportunist and immoral", Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the family drama of ruling Samajwadi Party is "heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy".



"The alliance between Congress and SP is opportunist and immoral. Akhilesh Yadav has made an alliance but did not give space to his father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) even on the carrier of the 'bicycle' (SP symbol) and gave its handle to Congress.



"The family drama of SP is heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy," the senior BJP leader said at a press conference here.



Asking voters to discard the alliance, Naidu said if they wanted to remove the tag of "BIMARU" state from Uttar Pradesh, they should shun it and elect BJP.



BIMARU is an acronym formed from the first letters of the names of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh.



It has a resemblance to a Hindi word "Bimar" which means sick and used to refer to the poor economic conditions in these states.



"We will work on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's motto -- reform, perform and transform -- and change the face of UP," Naidu said appealing to people to repeat their 2014-like support to BJP in the assembly polls.



BJP and its ally Apna Dal had bagged 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014.



The Urban Development Minister alleged that Akhilesh Yadav government in the state did not send proposal for PM Awas Scheme even after several reminders sent by his ministry.



"We had got a survey done in UP that showed requirement of over 30 lakh houses. When UP was asked, it said requirement was of over 17 lakh houses only. But even after several reminders, we did not get a proposal from the state," he rued.



The BJP leader said Uttar Pradesh would progress only if it voted his party to power to enable the state to work in tandem with the BJP-led NDA at the Centre.
Indian IT sector leaders will meet both US lawmakers and officials from US president Donald Trump's administration later this month to lobby against any major changes to visa regulations that could hurt the country's $150 billion industry.



R Chandrashekhar, head of Indian IT industry body Nasscom, said details of the visit were still being finalised, but chief executives from some of India's big IT companies would be part of a delegation visiting Washington in the week of February 20.



India's software services industry is concerned about a bill introduced in the US Congress seeking to double the salary paid to H-1B visa holders which would dramatically increase the costs for the Indian companies employing them.



Indian IT service companies use H-1B visas to fly engineers to the US, their biggest market, to service clients, but some opponents in the United States argue they are misusing the programme to replace US jobs.



Earlier in the week, Nasscom warned that a bill, introduced last month by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California, unfairly targets some of its members and will not solve a US labour shortage in the tech sector.



Chandrashekhar told Reuters that the visit would also seek to emphasise the "the economic partnership that is being built between the two countries."



India's IT firms, led by Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Wipro, have seen growth slow in 2016, as customers delayed spending ahead of the US presidential election.



IT players told Reuters late last year they planned to speed up local hiring, acquire US firms with bigger local workforces and make a renewed push on automation to counter the regulatory threat.
ZTE Blade A2 Plus on February 3 joined the league of big battery smartphones to compete with the likes of the recently-launched Xiaomi Redmi Note 4, and the Asus Zenfone 3S Max (Which will launch on February 7). Despite being one of the early Chinese entrants in India, the company is still struggling to gain a foothold in the market.Read more: Moto M Grey Colour to Go on Sale From Monday, to be Available for Rs 2,999 on Flipkart ZTE Blade A2 Plus competes head-on with the Redmi Note 4 in this fiercely-competitive price segment.Read more: Asus Zenfone 3S Max Review: Battery Powerhouse With Stylish Looks Will it be worth spending your money on; here is our detailed break-down for you.ZTE Blade A2 Plus features a 5.5-inch Full HD 2.5D display along with a 13MP rear camera with dual LED Flash and an 8MP front camera with screen flash. The phone will be available with 4GB RAM and 32GB internal memory with support for expandable memory of up to 128GB.The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM and costs Rs 12,999, and a 3GB RAM and 32GB ROM version at Rs 10,999.The ZTE Blade A2 Plus is powered by a 1.5 GHz 64-bit octa-core MediaTek MT6750T processor with Mali T860 GPU and runs Android Lollipop operating system. The Redmi Note 4, meanwhile, has a better and more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor along with Android Marshmallow OS. On top of the Android operating system, you get Xiaomi's own MIUI 8 bloatware UI.The Blade A2 Plus is backed by a massive 5,000mAh battery with fast charging. while the Redmi Note 4 packs in a massive 4,100 mAh battery which has better battery management and it lasts easily for a day and a half for an average user.The ZTE Blade A2 Plus costs Rs 11,999 and offers dual SIM with 4G support, weighs189 grams, and has a metal finish with a fingerprint sensor. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 on the other hand has a full metal uni-body design with a curved back and has a fingerprint scanner at the rear too.
More than 125,000 birds of 93 species have been spotted in Himachal Pradesh's Pong Dam wetlands. Among them, greater flamingoes, a common migratory species in India's coastal areas, have been recorded for the first time here, an official said.



A total of 52,530 bar-headed geese, the world's highest-altitude migrant and a rare winter migrant in other Indian wetlands, were also recorded. They are regular winter migrants here.



During a three-day census of waterfowl species -- birds that depend on water bodies for roosting and feeding -- 127,200 birds were spotted in the Pong Dam wetlands, spread over 307 sq km, Assistant Conservator of Forests D.S. Dadwal, who was associated with the exercise, told IANS.



Besides the bar-headed goose, the other largest influx is of the common coot (15,632), northern pintail (11,470), common teal (10,284), common pochard (8,746), little cormorants (6,434), tufted pochard (3,838), northern shoveller (2,350) and ruddy shelduck (1,900).



The other noticeable species recorded are the great crested grebe, graylag goose, red crested pochard, ferruginous pochard, common merganser, Eurasian spoonbill, Richard's pipit, Blyth's pipit and many species of larks.



The man-made Pong Dam wetlands, one of the largest such in the foothills of the Himalayas in the picturesque Kangra Valley, are located 250 km from state capital Shimla.



Dadwal said four greater flamingoes were recorded in the Pong Dam wetlands for the first time.



The bird, which stands four feet tall with its S-curved neck and is a common migrant to the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, has been spotted in the marshy areas of Nagrota Suriyan.



In 2013, a rare winter migrant, the whooper swan, was spotted here for the first time.



In the last census conducted at the Pong wetlands in February last year, 105,000 birds of 87 species were recorded.



With the onset of winter, thousands of migratory birds from central and northern Asia start arriving in the Pong wetlands for their annual sojourn.



The influx of birds can be seen at swamps near Nagrota Suriyan, Budladha and Sansarpur Terrace.



The bar-headed geese are regular and prominent winter visitors in the Pong Dam wetlands. A staggering 71,800 of them were recorded in winter of 2015, a new record.



The gregarious bar-headed geese, which start arriving in October and stay till March-end, fed at night in the grasslands on riverbanks and breeds in high-altitude lakes in Central Asia, as also in Tibet and Ladakh.



Listed under Schedule IV of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, the global population of the bar-headed geese is believed to be around 130,000, wildlife experts say.



The Pong wetlands are also home to many native birds like the red jungle fowl, large Indian parakeet, Indian cuckoo, bank myna, wood shrike, yellow-eyed babbler, black ibis, paradise flycatcher, crested lark and the crested bunting.



The Pong wetlands occupy an area of at least 18,000 hectares and extend up to 30,000 hectares in the peak monsoon season. An area of about 20,000 hectares within a radius of five kilometres has been notified as a buffer zone dedicated to wildlife.



A total of 425 species of birds, 18 species of snakes, 90 species of butterflies, 24 species of mammals, 27 species of fish have so far been recorded in Pong Dam Wildlife Sanctuary.
If you are planning a trip to this remote valley in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, rest assured you will be welcomed with a glass of chhang, a pungent home-brewed local beer made from millet or rice.



Welcoming a guest with chhang is a traditional common trait among the locals in the valley -- a mere 30 km from the Sino-Indian border in West Siang district -- which otherwise is inhabited by a large number of tribes whose distinctive cultures are as diverse as chalk and cheese. Be it dress or dialect, there is little in common among the major tribes -- Memba, Tagins, Bokar and Pailibo -- as also the smaller ones.



"Try our own welcome drink. It is better than tea or coffee. We consider our guests as god, don't refuse," said Yape Yorung serving a glass of the brew after District Tourism Officer Rita Yorung took this IANS reporter to her sister-in-law's home.



Chhang is a must during festivals and celebrations among the locals, besides the staple food of rice and millet. Many also consume it on a daily basis.



At the same time, chhang is considered an effective remedy to ward off the cold and chill in the mountains. It has its varieties like "rice-beer" and "ara" -- a distilled beer, Yorung explained.



"We make millet and rice beer on a regular basis. Since it lasts for a year, we usually prefer making the beer in bulk. The distilled variety lasts even longer," she explained.



"While other variants of chhang leave a bitter aftertaste, the distilled chhang is flavoured and has little aftertaste," she added.



In Mechuka, almost every family has a chest in their home exclusively for fermenting millet or rice for making chhang. Usually, the complete fermentation process takes about 15-20 days.



The room where the fermentation is done is always kept neat and clean.



"For making the beer, the millet is boiled and then spread on to the very clean floor to cool. Dry yeast (locally called "oppop") is mixed with this millet," Yabung Samyor, busy making the brew said.



About three-four kilos of millet is required for making a litre of beer, she said.



The yeast, too, is made by mixing millet powder and chhang. "Oppop is the yeast used in the beer-making process. Making oppop is similar to making curd by using the curd residue in milk. Here we use the chhang residue and mix it with millet powder," Yorung explained.



Getting the right temperature is crucial while mixing the oppop with the boiled millet. "If the millet is too hot and the yeast is added, it will sour the brew. If the millet is too cold, it will take longer to ferment," Samyor said.



The mixture is kept in a thoroughly-washed and dried container with a lid for fermentation.



"Leave it for 15-20 days in a warm place. Don't open the lid in the meantime. When we started to smell the fermentation strongly, it would be ready," Samyor said.



Water should be added depending on whether one wants to make the chhang strong or weak.



"The alcohol content is low, but it produces an intense feeling of warmth," said Kumar Noasing, a young Tagin tribal.



"The locals, who can't afford to buy branded alcohol, prepare the chhang very meticulously to satisfy their own tastebuds," he said.



Generally, a bottle of chhang is sold for Rs 40.



Consuming chhang to endure temperatures which go well below freezing in winter is in line with the food habit of taking dry, roasted and boiled pork, chicken, squirrel, birds from local forests, Noasing added.
Leaders of the three biggest US airlines are seeking to meet with new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to revive their stalled complaint that rivals from the Middle East are getting unfair government subsidies.



The issue took on new urgency last month when one of the fast-growing Middle Eastern carriers, Emirates, announced plans to begin a new route between Athens, Greece, and Newark, New Jersey, just outside New York City. Such flights would entirely bypass Emirates' home nation, the United Arab Emirates.



American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said Thursday that Emirates' announcement  coming as the Obama administration was leaving and before the Trump administration was at full speed  "certainly looks like a shot across the bow."



American, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines charge that Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways have received billions of dollars in subsidies from their governments, allowing them to offer below-market fares and violating so-called open-skies treaties. The Middle Eastern carriers deny receiving subsidies, and they have allies in some smaller U.S. airlines, including JetBlue Airways, and cargo carrier FedEx, which oppose renegotiating the airline treaties.



American, Delta and United asked Washington to open negotiations with Qatar and the United Arab Emirates over the issue. The Obama administration promised to hold informal talks but left office last month without taking action.



Emirates began flying between Milan and New York in 2013 but didn't add other flights after the U.S. airlines raised their subsidy claims. Parker said that letting Gulf carriers operate more such flights would pose a threat to U.S. airlines.



"If those carriers are allowed to fly routes like Dallas-Fort Worth to Paris, it makes our ability to fly that route incredibly difficult," and shorter flights that feed passengers to Dallas-to-Paris planes could also "begin to unwind," he said in an interview.



Some consumer advocates side with the Gulf carriers, however, saying the competition would lead to lower fares.



Parker said late Thursday that the airlines had not yet heard back from the State Department about meeting Tillerson, who was sworn in only the day before.



The US carriers are pinning their hopes on President Donald Trump's campaign promises to put American interests first in matters such as trade deals.
Valleta: French President Francois Hollande on Friday criticised "unacceptable" pressure on the European Union from his US counterpart Donald Trump, who has predicted a break-up of the bloc.



"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be," Hollande told reporters at an EU summit in Malta.



"Who really knows what the US president wants, particularly for the transatlantic alliance, and on the sharing of expenses that he calls a burden," Hollande added.



Asked what he thought about the apparent support for Trump coming from the leaders of Poland and Hungary, Hollande said "There can be no future with Trump if it is not defined together" by the EU, adding that "what is at stake is the destiny of the EU".



"A lot of countries should think that their future is first with the EU, rather than imagining who-knows-what bilateral relationship with the US."



Trump has alarmed many in Europe by backing Britain's decision to leave the EU, predicting that more countries will jump ship and calling the US-led NATO military alliance "obsolete".



German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile said the best way for the 28-nation bloc to deal with a US administration that seems ambivalent to Europe is to push forward with its own plans.



"I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands," Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.



"And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations," she added.



"That is why for me, talks about Europe are here in the foreground and not to deal with other parts of the world."



Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern meanwhile criticised Trump's controversial migration curbs.



"The entry bans against seven Muslim countries are highly problematic," Kern said. "We should win them over in the fight against Islamism and not define them as adversaries.



"There is no doubt that America shares responsiblity for the refugee flows by the way how it intervened militarily ... It is unacceptable for the international community that America wants to evade its responsiblity on this," he added.



Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel meanwhile said Trump's policies were "really not the values I'm fighting for in politics".



In Malta, the EU leaders are to discuss relations with Trump during the second half of the summit, after major talks about cutting illegal migration across the Mediterranean from Libya.




Tehran: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Friday that Tehran was "unmoved" by the United States threats and only relies on its own defence means amid hostile rhetoric against the country, including hints of military aggression, emanating from Washington.



"Iran is unmoved by threats as we derive security from our people," Zarif said on his Twitter account.



"We will never initiate war, but we can only rely on our own means of defence," the Iranian minister pointed out.



In another tweet, published minutes later, Zarif challenged Iran's enemies to verifiably and sincerely declare the defensive nature of their military programme.



"We will never use our weapons against anyone, except in self-defence. Let us see if any of those who complain can make the same statement," he said.



Zarif's tweets also contained a video of him responding to reporters on Iran's defensive missile programme during a conference in Wellington, New Zealand, in March 2016.



Referring to Iraq's eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s, Zarif said during the conference, "We are entitled to the rudimentary means of defence which we need in order to prevent another (executed Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein around the corner (from) attacking us with chemical weapons because the international community has failed miserably in protecting the Iranian people, in safeguarding international humanitarian law."



Just days earlier, the US president threatened Iran that military options were "not off the table" in response to the country's missile test.



The US claims that a recent missile test by Iran violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), reached between Iran and the world powers, including Washington.



Iranian Defence Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said on Thursday that Iran's "successful" recent ballistic missile test had neither breached the deal nor the resolution.



"Iran's missile tests are not, and have never been, in violation of the JCPOA or Resolution 2231," Dehqan added.
When President Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, arrived unannounced in the White House press room Wednesday and announced that "we're officially putting Iran on notice" -- a position the President clearly agrees with, as he made clear in a tweet Thursday morning -- after its latest ballistic missile test and several attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen, the most immediate question was this: or else what?



Over the past week, the President has burned a whole lot of his diplomatic capital.



Gen. Flynn said the US, or at least he, was particularly upset because Iran was "threatening friends and allies in the region." The bigger question is whether the US really has very many friends and allies in that region or anywhere else. And without anyone standing shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump, could this be read as a pretty empty threat?



Let's examine just what kind of room for bluster and challenge this administration might muster. The President could make good on yet another of his campaign promises and "tear up" the Iranian nuclear deal. The problem is that this is not simply a pact between the US and Iran, but rather between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, France, Russia, China, and the US) plus Germany. None of these other countries seems prepared right now to rush with the US into such an impetuous and ill-conceived action.



The other possible action the US could take would be to "snap back" a broad array of economic sanctions against Iran, the removal of which was the carrot for Tehran to agree to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.



With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to pay Trump a visit at the White House in two weeks and with Israel eager to see the treaty removed and sanctions reinstalled, this could be an appealing move.



It's not so attractive to the rest of the world, however.



Europe has embraced both the lifting of sanctions and the freeze of the Iranian nuclear program. But at the same time, Europe has also embraced a continuation of another series of sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine and the seizure of Crimea.



Due to be renewed in July, President Trump has thus far failed to endorse any renewal. So, the recent step-up in hostilities over the past week by pro-Russian elements in eastern Ukraine could be seen as a test as to whether President Putin might be able to drive a further wedge between Western European leaders and the Trump administration.



Instead, there's a broad and growing sense that Trump is becoming the third rail of international diplomacy. What European leader is going to embrace Trump or his ideas if they're only going to get gob-smacked like British Prime Minister Theresa May, who invited the President to visit the Queen, only to see him turn around as soon as she's airborne and come out with his immigration ban? By the time she arrived back in London, following a brief stop in Turkey, some 1.6 million Brits had signed a petition demanding that her invitation on behalf of the Queen be rescinded and Parliament scheduled a debate on the issues for February 20. (To be fair, 114,000 signed another petition supporting Trump.)



At the same time, broad parts of the world are holding their breath to see where Trump might even expand his list of pariah nations whose tired, poor and huddled masses will have to look for other shores where they might breathe free.



There are, after all, a host of non-banned countries with large Muslim populations. India, for one, is calculating that Muslim-dominated Pakistan will be impacted next, while Pakistan sees the Trump immigration program as a potential tilt by the US toward India.



Even such a perception is a dangerous idea, especially if Pakistan reacts by stepping up aid and comfort it has long given to Taliban forces in Afghanistan and its own nearby border provinces. The US, of course, accounts for at least 9,800 of the 13,000 NATO troops that remain in Afghanistan.



In Europe, France, Britain and Belgium -- each with longstanding colonial-era ties with Muslim-dominated countries in Africa and the Middle East -- are all worried that some of these might be next on Trump's immigration ban list.



More critically, of course, Europe, but especially Germany, has been ground zero for the tsunami of refugees pouring out of the Middle East and that Trump has now banned. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces her own fraught battle for re-election later this year, has not minced words. "I have made it clear once again that the fight against terrorism does not justify a general advance against certain countries and people with a certain belief," Merkel said on Tuesday, referring directly to Trump.



Finally, Trump used a telephone call with the Prime Minister of Australia last weekend to build another wall -- with one of America's most reliable allies -- perhaps pushing it even more firmly into the arms of China, with whom it already enjoys a warm and profitable trading relationship.



Trump terminated the call early after an acrimonious exchange when Malcolm Turnbull demanded that the United States honor a pledge by President Obama to accept 1,100 Iranian and Iraqi refugees that Australia had parked on the South Pacific island of Nauru. Then the President rounded out the insult by tweeting about the "dumb deal."



So, with all these bridges burned, it's worth reflecting, just what political capital can Gen. Flynn and President Trump muster to confront Iran with threats that, to the mullahs in Tehran, can only appear empty? Broad swaths of his own State Department -- at least 1,000 officials in American embassies from Jakarta to Nairobi, across Europe and back to Washington -- have already signed a letter condemning his immigration ban and by implication questioned his entire world view -- one that will in no way make America or the world safer.



Oh, and incidentally, it might be useful at the same time if President Trump were to get his enemies straight. Russia and Iran are both fighting ISIS -- which the President has identified as America's biggest existential threat. So if that's still the case, why pick a fight with a country that should be your ally in this battle?



On so many fronts, Trump has already dug himself into a deep hole. It's time he stopped digging.
Mexico City: Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray is on his way to New York, where he plans to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres amid the diplomatic crisis with US President Donald Trump's administration.



Videgaray plans to meet "with the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Antonio Guterres, in an effort to address Mexico's priorities at the UN and discuss the organisation's role in light of the challenges in the current international context," the Foreign Relations Secretariat said on Thursday.



The Mexican official also plans to meet with Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) members to discuss Mexican-US relations, Efe news reported.



The trip comes a day after a controversy started over press reports that Trump allegedly threatened to send troops to Mexico during a telephone conversation last Friday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.



Estevez, who writes for Forbes, reported on Wednesday that they obtained part of the transcript of the telephone conversation between the Presidents. Citing sources she said that "it was a very offensive conversation where Trump humiliated Pena Nieto".



The White House, for its part, described the tone of Trump's statement as "lighthearted."



The Mexican government said the media reports were inaccurate and Foreign Relations Secretariat communications director Claudia Algorri told the press that the stories lacked substance and the January 27 conversation between the Presidents had been "constructive".
Washington: U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted early on Friday that "Iran is playing with fire" and "they don't appreciate how kind President Obama was to them. Not me!"



Trump plans to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities, seeking to ratchet up pressure on Tehran while crafting a broader strategy to counter what he sees as its destabilizing behavior, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.



Iran's decision to test-fire a ballistic missile on Sunday helped trigger Trump's decision, which could be announced as early as Friday, they said.
United Nations:  U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley condemned Russia's "aggressive actions" in eastern Ukraine on Thursday and warned Moscow that U.S. sanctions imposed after its annexation of Crimea will remain until the peninsula is returned to Ukraine.



But the new American envoy tempered her criticism, saying it was "unfortunate" that she had to condemn Russia in her first appearance at the U.N. Security Council.



"We do want to better our relations with Russia," Haley said, echoing President Donald Trump who has also said he wants a better relationship with President Vladimir Putin.



Moscow has applauded Trump's promises to rebuild U.S.-Russian relations, which have been pushed to their worst level since the Cold War, and Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin reacted calmly to Haley's criticism saying he "detected quite a bit of change of tone."



"It was friendly enough, given the circumstances and given the subject we were discussing," he said of Hayley's statement at the council meeting called by Ukraine after a major escalation of violence. "I wouldn't want to call it friendly."



Churkin said the Trump administration is just in its early days and both countries are dealing with very difficult problems.



"We are thinking, how are things going to develop?" he said. "Our position is very obvious. ... If there is an opportunity for us to work better with the United States to deal with various international problems which are extremely complicated and acute then we should take this opportunity."



One of those complex and urgent issues is Ukraine, where there are definitely major differences.



Anti-government protests in Ukraine culminated in President Viktor Yanukovych fleeing the country in February 2014 to Russia. Later that year, Russia seized and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine, and Russian-speaking separatists in the country's east launched protests that escalated into a war that has killed more than 9,600 people.



The Minsk agreement in February 2015 aimed at ending the conflict helped to reduce fighting, but skirmishes have continued and there was a major escalation of violence in recent days.



Churkin blamed Ukrainian security forces for starting it and Ukraine's U.N. Ambassador Volodymyr Yelchenko blamed the Russian army and the separatists.



Haley made clear the Trump administration's strong support for Ukraine, despite the president's overtures to Russia.



"The United States stands with the people of Ukraine who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military interventions," she said. "Until Russia and the separatists it supports respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity this crisis will continue."



Haley said the recent sudden increase in fighting in the east has trapped thousands of civilians and destroyed vital infrastructure  "and the crisis is spreading, endangering many more."



"The dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions," she said.



Haley called for an immediate end to fighting and "full and immediate implementation" of the Minsk agreement.



Churkin also called for an immediate cease-fire and swift de-escalation of the situation "to prevent disaster and to return the situation to the political track."



He expressed hope that the Trump administration "will play a more active role in making sure that the violence stops" than the Obama administration did, saying the U.S. should use its influence with Ukraine's government to push for implementation of the Minsk agreement "and putting an end to this conflict."



Russia's annexation of Crimea, however, remains a major obstacle.



Haley said "the United States continues to condemn and call for an immediate end" to Russia's occupation.



"Crimea is a part of Ukraine," she said. "Our Crimea-related sanctions will remain in place until Russia returns control over the peninsula to Ukraine."



Churkin, exercising his right of reply, pointed out that the U.S. Constitution starts with the words "we the people," and in Crimea the people voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia.



He also used the reply to welcome Haley, saying "from time to time we may have differences emerging on various issues, but your work will hold the key to whether the Security Council" can operate collectively and carry out its primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security.



Later, Churkin told reporters: "We are going to be there to try to make that possible from our perspective."
Correction appended

Virginias elected leaders have known for quite some time that the states mental health system is deeply flawed, if not outright broken. And we have to wonder if those elected leaders  from Gov. Terry McAuliffe down the ladder to the members of the General Assembly  are serious about fixing the system.

Weve seen the signs going back a decade at least. When a deranged gunman stalked the campus of Virginia Tech in 2007, killing almost three dozen students and professors, we quickly learned how he had slipped through the cracks in the states mental health system where it interacted with the court system.

Just over three years ago, in November 2013, the story of state Sen. Creigh Deeds narrow escape from death at the hands of his mentally ill son gripped Virginia and the nation. Deeds had taken his son to the community service board in his county, seeking commitment of his son to a psychiatric facility. After hours of waiting while officials supposedly searched for an available bed, Deeds and his son were sent home. Less than 24 hours later, Gus Deeds attacked his dad with a hunting knife before killing himself with a gun.

After both high-profile incidents, blue-ribbon commissions and panels of experts probed and studied what went wrong. The answer was right before their faces: Virginias mental health care system is woefully underfunded and short of properly trained staff and needed treatment facilities and options. Indeed, Sen. Deeds is chairman of the Assemblys Joint Subcommittee Stydying Mental Health Services in the Commonwealth in the 21st Century, a panel created in the wake of his attack.

We know whats wrong; we know what it will take to begin to fix it. So why then is Gov. McAuliffe proposing in his budget $4.5 million to study and redesign Virginias mental health care system? Why is the governors office proposing sending tight resources to the pockets of outside, private consultants, rather than allocating the money directly to a system we already know doesnt have the financial resources it needs?

Thats the question that mental health advocates are asking. A spokesman for the governor contends the scope of the study hes proposing is more far-reaching than the Deeds committees mandate.

Deeds wants to increase money spent on supportive housing for the mentally ill in the upcoming fiscal year by $10.2 million. He wants to require and pay for same-day screening at all local Community Services Boards in Virginia, something only a few of the 40 now provide. Advocates want wider use of so-called PACT teams; PACT stands for Program of Assertive Community Treatment, an approach that has proven highly effective where its been implemented. In the last fiscal year, as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, 25 PACT teams across the state provided that intense local treatment to 1,807 individuals. (A full-size team costs about $850,000 to establish, but theres no money in the current budget proposal for any new teams.)

Studying ways to reform or redesign the care system for the future is, in theory, a good idea. But there are needs in the current system that have been identified yet are unfunded, needs that could help real people now. Unless the governor and legislators are willing to pay for care that works now while also studying a future redesign, we believe the states dollars would be best spent on helping the mentally ill now in the system we have.

Correction

Supportive housing for the mentally ill is provided by only a few of the 40 Community Services Boards in Virginia, not all 40.
RICHMOND  The fight over municipal broadband will continue in the General Assembly as a revised bill by Del. Kathy Byron makes its way to the floor of the House of Delegates.

A second substitute to Byrons Broadband Deployment Act passed the House Commerce and Labor Committee 11-9 with one abstention.

The fight that started early in the session focused on legacy broadband providers versus taxpayer-funded government broadband initiatives but shifted into a dialogue on government transparency Thursday.

The latest version of HB 2108 from Byron, R-Bedford, requires municipal broadband authorities to maintain transparent records showing how they revise their rates, fees and charges  a provision Frank Smith, president and CEO of the Roanoke Valley Broadband Authority, argued would hurt their business.

In front of the committee, Smith argued the Virginia Freedom of Information Act stipulations already codified in the Wireless Services Authority Act are sufficient and the new requirements in Byrons bill could require the broadband authority to reveal proprietary information about its customers.

Under this bill, the broadband authority could have been forced to reveal information about Meridium  that GE Digital was planning to purchase the Roanoke-based company for $495 million, Smith said.

Theres nothing hidden under the table, Smith said. The Wireless Services Authority Act is sufficient because you all did your job in 2003.

The broadband authoritys rates, books and board meetings already are open to the public.

Byron argued the rewritten bill, which was criticized initially because opponents said it would limit municipal broadband initiatives, would not deal with proprietary records, and municipal broadband authorities would still be able to strike up economic development deals behind closed doors.

Those against the substitute are essentially acknowledging their opposition to FOIA and to government being open about how they are spending the taxpayers dollars, she said.

The bill will go to its first of three floor votes in the House on Friday.
More than 70 percent of Virginians think that electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. should be able to open company-owned stores in Virginia rather than selling through independent franchise dealers, according to a recent survey.

The poll results were released Thursday, as about 35 Virginians owning Teslas battery-powered vehicles visited the General Assembly to advocate for the companys right to sell its cars directly to consumers, which in most cases state law prohibits automobile manufacturers from doing.

Tesla, a California-based company founded by tech industry tycoon Elon Musk, has been opening company showrooms and retail stores around the country, but its attempt to open one in the Richmond area has ended up in court after hitting resistance from the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association.

The trade group for independent dealers opposed Teslas application last year to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles to open a store on West Broad Street in western Henrico County.

State law prohibits automobile manufacturers from owning dealerships except under certain circumstances, such as when no independent dealer is available in a community to sell a companys cars.

The Automobile Dealers Association says there are dealers in the Richmond area willing to sell Teslas cars, but Tesla contends independent dealers could not do so profitably because its business model only works through direct-to-consumer sales.

The survey was conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla., from Jan. 5 through Jan. 10. About 72 percent of the 625 registered Virginia voters who were polled think the company should be able to open its own stores.

The margin of error for the survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. Tesla paid a fee to Mason-Dixon Polling to have the question included in a survey that was already being conducted on various topics, a representative for the company said.

It just rubs people the wrong way that (Tesla) is restricted from opening its own stores, said Bill Chen, a Henrico businessman who has owned a Tesla vehicle for three years and was among the advocates who visited the Capitol on Thursday.

Chen said Teslas direct-to-consumer model and the independent dealer model should be able to co-exist and compete fairly.

Don Hall, president and CEO of the Virginia Automobile Dealers Association, said Thursday that despite the survey results, the Tesla business model is not in consumers best interests.

Numerous other electric or hybrid vehicles made by other manufacturers are being sold by independent dealers, he said.

What the dealers offer is real competition, from pricing to service, Hall said. The Tesla model, he said, is designed so that only Tesla can deliver everything, and anything, and they control the whole process.

In December, Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Richard D. Holcomb ruled in Teslas favor, reversing a DMV hearing officers earlier recommendation that the companys application be denied.

The Automobile Dealers Association has appealed Holcombs decision to Richmond Circuit Court, where it is pending.

Teslas only store in Virginia, near Tysons Corner, opened in February 2015 after the company reached a legal agreement with the DMV and the dealers association.

In the survey, support for Teslas view was strongest in Northern Virginia, where 84 percent of respondents backed the companys position.

Support was weakest in Lynchburg and Southside Virginia, though a slight majority  52 percent  still said Tesla should be able to open more of its own stores. About 35 percent said it should not, and 13 percent said they were not sure.

In the Richmond area, 73 percent of the survey respondents said they thought the company should be able to open more stores, while 18 percent said no and 9 percent said they were not sure.

Support for Tesla cut across party lines, with 75 percent of Republicans, 68 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents saying the company should be able to have its own stores.
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Home News Sports Social Obituaries Events Letters Post Falls hiring event February 8 February 2, 2017 This month's Idaho Department of Labor hiring event will be held from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, February 8, at their Post Falls office, N600 Thornton Street.



This event is an opportunity for job seekers to meet employers with active job listings. Dress for meeting your potential employer, be prepared to complete an employment application and bring your resume.



Employers with representatives on hand include Kootenai Health, Cascade Windows, Modern Woodmen Fraternal Financial, Pointe Pest Control, American Building Maintenance, New Horizons Computer Learning Center, Dave Smith Motors, Qualfon, Jan Jesberger Insurance, Humanix, Sunshine Minting, Integrated Personnel, Addus Homecare, Family HomeCare, ResCare Home Care, Industrial Systems, Vacation Rental Authority, Idaho Fence, Lightning Tool and Manufacturing and Ultra Lawn. Questions or comments about this article? Click here to e-mail!
Cops to target drunk drivers after fetes

The warning came yesterday from Head of the Police Highway and Traffic Branch, Senior Superintendent Baldeo Nanan who also revealed that voluntary testing camps will be set up outside f?tes. Nanan said those who decide to bypass the free voluntary testing and proceed to their vehicles to drive will be greeted by officers armed with their testing kits and, if persons are found to be over the legal alcoholic limit, they will be arrested, charged and taken to court.

He said it is during the Carnival season in particular that many people lose their senses resulting in them consuming alcohol excessively and, in some cases, not having designated drivers thereby placing themselves and other road users in danger.

This, Nanan said, will not be tolerated since he and his team of officers have adopted a zero tolerance approach to motorists who drive while intoxicated. He said such persons need to put support systems in place to ensure that they arrive to their respective destinations safely.

Newsday was told that for the year, 750 people were subjected to a breathalyser test resulting in 59 drivers being arrested after they failed the test. Nine persons who refused to submit themselves to the test were also arrested and charged.

The exercises were carried out along the East West Corridor, South and Central.

On Tuesday the Police Traffic and Highway Patrol Branch received two awards for general performance and the detection for speeding. The two awards came with two checks amounting to $40,000. The awards were presented at the St James Barracks where Acting Police Commissioner, Stephen Williams, also laid out his anti-crime plan for 2017.
Here Are the Most Overrated

Tourist Spots in the US
Conservationists of all kinds are protesting a Republican lawmaker's proposal for the "disposal" of an area of federal land the size of Connecticutand their outcry seems to have worked, for now. The House bill introduced by Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz called for the immediate sale of 3.3 million acres of public land in 10 states, Outdoor Life reports. "The long overdue disposal of excess federal lands will free up resources for the federal government" and boost economic development, Chaffetz initially said in a statement. But, following massive uproar, Chaffetz announced Wednesday night he would withdraw the bill.

A rule change introduced in January means the federal government is no longer required to make money when it sells off public lands. The bill Chaffetz introduced stated that the land had "no purpose for taxpayers," though hunters and other outdoor enthusiasts strongly disagreed, calling the move a "land grab" that will deprive them of access to large areas of wilderness. "Last I checked, hunters and fishermen were taxpayers," Backcountry Hunters and Anglers spokesperson Jason Amaro told the Guardian. He represents a chapter that includes New Mexico, where a chunk of land the size of Rhode Island would have been sold off under the bill. "That word 'disposal' is scary," Amaro said. It's not 'disposable' for an outdoorsman." Over at Outside Online, Abe Streep warns that this won't be "the last fight between the Republican Congress and the outdoor industry." (Read more Bureau of Land Management stories.)
Stephen Peterson, son of convicted murderer and former police sergeant Drew Peterson, has come to believe his dad is guilty of more than killing Wife No. 3, for which he's been sentenced to 38 years in prison. He also thinks his father killed his fourth wife, and said so on a Lifetime show in January and again to the Chicago Tribune this month. "I don't want to come out and say he did it ... but, I'm sure he did it," Stephen now says. Since his father's conviction in 2012 for the 2004 killing of Kathleen Savio, his third wife, Stephen has lived in his father's home and raised his dad's kids. He has his suspicions about the 2007 disappearance of Stacy Peterson, in which his father remains a suspect. Stephen says that at first he believed his dad's stories that Savio drowned accidentally and that Stacy left him for another maneven though, Stephen says, the day after Stacy went missing his father brought over his guns and more than $200,000 in checks for safekeeping.

Stephen lost his job as an Oak Brook, Ill., police officer for failing to disclose details of interactions he had with his dad after the disappearance. And he's run through his pension raising his father's children. So when Lifetime called with a $10,000 offer to be on the show Monster in My Family, Stephen took the deal. He says he told his father about the show, which details the life Stephen, now 37, has had with Drew and Stacy's two children, who are in middle school; Stephen also looked after Drew's sons with Savio, who are now young adults. Stephen says there was no "a-ha moment," when he changed his mind about his father's role in Stacy's disappearance, but he does recall her fear after Savio's death. "You kind of look back and think, maybe she did know something, or maybe something did happen," Stephen says. Drew, now 63, is imprisoned at Menard Correctional Center; he was recently sentenced to another 40 years for conspiring from prison to kill the prosecutor who put him there. His family has yet to visit. (Read more Drew Peterson stories.)
The Trump administration finally did what many feared it would do: rolled back sanctions on Russia. Or did it? USA Today reports the Treasury Department on Thursday granted an exemption that allows US businesses or individuals to do business with Russian spy agency FSB, as long as payments are less than $5,000 per year. You may remember FSB as the Russian spy agency that allegedly hacked Democratic National Committee emails during the election.

But wait, this may not be as nefarious as it seems. An expert on international trade law tells the Fiscal Times that Thursday's exemption is simply fixing an accidental consequence of a sanction enacted on FSB by then-President Obama in December. The exemption will allow US companies to buy a needed license from FSB in order to sell products containing encryption capabilities, such as Microsoft Word or "really any Microsoft product," in Russia. Meanwhile, Nikki Haley told the UN that Russian sanctions would remain in place until Russia pulls out of Crimea, CNN reports. The new US ambassador to the UN asked Russia to stop violence in the Ukraine during an emergency UN meeting on Thursday. (Read more sanctions stories.)
Yes, President Trump took the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to drag Arnold Schwarzenegger and his weak Celebrity Apprentice ratings. But he also brought up something arguably just as important: the Johnson Amendment, which he vowed to "totally destroy." Here's what you need to know:

The Washington Post has a great explanation of the Johnson Amendment, which basically bans churches and charities from participating in political campaigns unless they give up tax-exempt status.

Getting rid of the Johnson Amendment is part of Trump's emerging "agenda of religious nationalism," in which the president is linking being American with being Christian, the Atlantic reports.

MSNBC weighs in on why promising to "totally destroy" the Johnson Amendment is important. One such reason is that it would allow political parties and candidates to "funnel campaign donations through tax-exempt churches" with no oversight.

While the Johnson Amendment is wildly unpopular with the religious right, that's not necessarily the case elsewhere, the Independent reports. A survey last year found 79% of people didn't think pastors should endorse candidates. And some religious leaders believe churches would be hurt by entering the partisan world of politics.

In addition to the Johnson Amendment and Celebrity Apprentice, Trump also discussed foreign relations, telling those in attendance, "just don't worry about" the "tough phone calls I'm having," apparently in reference to threatening to invade Mexico and picking a fight with Australia, MarketWatch reports.

Outside the National Prayer Breakfast, around 150 members of local churches were protesting Trump's Muslim travel ban. One Christian author at the protest tells Yahoo News it's important for the church to "stand up and be on the right side of history."

(Read more Donald Trump stories.)
Beyonce, Tim Tebow, or the Norse god Thor for prez? Those were some of Florida's more unusual picks for president this past election. And the number of Florida voters who didn't cast a vote for either Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or any other valid contender spiked in 2016, apparently in protest over the ballot choices, the AP reports. A report released by state officials Wednesday showed more than 161,000 Florida voters who took part in the elections either at the polls or by mail didn't cast a valid vote for president. The "non-valid votes" include those who wrote in such names as Mickey Mouse or Bernie Sanders and others who simply left the ballot blank. It also includes those who voted for more than one candidate.

All told, the invalid ballots outnumbered Trump's margin of victory over Clinton of nearly 113,000 votes. And the rate of invalid votes for president in 20161.69% overallwas more than double the rate it was in 2012 and 2008 when Barack Obama won the state. "There were some people who were very disgruntled," said Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles, giving the read of some fellow election officials on the report. Florida's reportcompiled from data collected by all 67 countiesis required after every major election. It got its start after the chaotic 2000 presidential election, which hinged on a contentious recount in Florida famously involving "hanging chads" and more. (Read more Election 2016 stories.)
Melania Trump is holed up in New York City until at least the end of son Barron's school year, already redefining the role of first lady. The New York Times reports on that upended role, and whether Melania will even play much of one at all, noting it was Trump's daughter Ivanka, not his wife, who accompanied him to Dover Air Force Base to honor a US Navy SEAL killed during last weekend's Yemen raid. A first-lady historian tells the Times that Melania is "far behind the curve" in terms of conventional duties, including organizing the tour requests that are already stacking up. People said to be close to Mrs. Trump, though, say she'll eventually increase her presence but is in no rush to do so. Other ruminations about the first lady from around the web:

AFP expands on the "low-profile" first lady, with a Connecticut College professor observing that the first lady's agenda has traditionally emerged in March or April of inauguration years.

Melania has made one major move: She hired Lindsay Reynolds, a private fundraising organizer, as her chief of staff, per Politico, which calls the first lady's office the "loneliest place in the White House."

Despite an Us Weekly report earlier this week that Melania and 10-year-old Barron may never leave New York, an aide to the first lady tells ABC News that Melania (and presumably Barron) will indeed relocate to DC at the beginning of the summer. The rep adds Mrs. Trump takes "the role and responsibilities of the First Lady very seriously."

Melania's defamation lawsuit against the Daily Mail was tossed by a Maryland judge because the state court did not have jurisdiction to take on a foreign entity, BuzzFeed reports. Her suit against a blogger continues.

(Read more Melania Trump stories.)
Gina Haspel ran a "black site" CIA prison in Thailand where detainees were torturedand now she's a step away from running the entire CIA. The veteran officer was named Thursday as deputy director, making her the first female spy to hold the No. 2 position, reports Reuters. Critics fear this could signal a return to waterboarding, though many in the intelligence community praised President Trump's choice, with CIA Director Mike Pompeo calling her an "exemplary intelligence officer" with "an uncanny ability to get things done," Politico reports. At the CIA site in Thailand, one of the things Haspel got done was destroying videotapes of al-Qaeda suspects being waterboarded, congressional and intelligence sources tell Reuters.

Haspel oversaw "harsh interrogation" at the site in 2002 that included having detainee Abu Zubaydah waterboarded 83 times in a month, among other methods, the New York Times reports. As second-in-command, she won't require Senate confirmation, though some senators joined the ACLU in expressing deep misgivings about Haspel's appointment. "I appreciate Ms. Haspel's many years of service at the CIA, yet I want some reassurance from her that she intends to comply with both the spirit and the letter of the law, like Director Pompeo testified that he would during his confirmation process," said Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. (Trump says he believes torture works.)
When her repeated calls failed to convince Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania to vote against Betsy DeVos as secretary of Education when the vote is held Monday, Katherine Fritz decided to "buy" his vote instead. Aware that DeVos has donated about $55,800 to the Republican's campaign, the teacher at a Philadelphia community college turned to GoFundMe to raise that exact amount, report Mashable and New York. On Thursday, her effort was "getting more traffic than any other active campaign," a GoFundMe rep tells the Huffington Post. The campaign has now beat its target and raised more than $62,000. Toomey won't see any of it since bribing a politician is indeed a no-nothe money will instead go to three education groupsbut Fritz hopes to make a point anyway.

The campaign is "about using satire to point out the various ways in which our elected officials canlegally!take money from the same people that now seek political office," she writes on GoFundMe. Of course, Fritz still hopes Toomey will vote no on DeVos; the Huffington Post notes the moderate senator had earlier this week been identified as the likeliest one to flip, though he has gone out of his way to quash that idea. Two Republican senators have said they won't support DeVos. If one other colleague joins them and all Democrats oppose her, DeVos' confirmation would be denied. But for now, that appears unlikely to happen. "I will absolutely be voting for Betsy DeVos ... I'm a big fan," Toomey tells the Philadelphia Inquirer, signifying next week's vote will likely end in a tieone that Mike Pence would then break. (Toomey keeps a candy desk.)
Amazon isn't content just being the "everything store." Increasingly, it looks like it wants to be its own deliveryman, too. The company's announcement this week of a new air cargo hub in Kentucky is merely its latest foray into building out its own shipping and logistics unit, the AP reports. Amazon plans to build a worldwide air cargo hub at a northern Kentucky airport about 13 miles southwest of Cincinnati. The nearly $1.5 billion investment is expected to create 2,700 jobs. If successful, the move could ultimately mean lower costs for Amazonand possibly faster delivery and low prices for consumers. But it could also pit Amazon against package deliverers like FedEx and UPS.

"It's not a big surprise," Cathy Roberson, founder of consulting firm Logistics Trends & Insights, says of Amazon's Kentucky announcement. "By utilizing that location they can reach anywhere in the US in two days." Amazon has long plowed its profits back into its business investments. To speed up its delivery, it has invested in opening new distribution centers and leasing fleets of trucks. In May, Amazon leased 40 Boeing jets from Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings and Air Transport Services Group, a fleet it dubbed "Prime Air." But to build a network to rival FedEx, UPS, and DHL, Amazon will have to at least double what it's already spending, Roberson estimates. (Read more Amazon.com stories.)
Ethnic Yemeni business owners who operate New York City corner bodegas and neighborhood delis closed shop in more than 1,000 locations Thursday in protest of President Donald Trump's travel ban on people from Yemen and six other Muslim-majority countries. The shops were locked at noon and remained shuttered until 8pm, the AP reports. The Yemeni-run small businesses are a part of many New Yorkers' daily lives, said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. As night fell, a raucous but orderly crowd of at least 1,000 people, including many of the shopkeepers, filled a plaza in Brooklyn to protest the travel ban that has caused travelers to be detained, sent back from the US, or stranded in other countries.

Haron Zokari closed his Manhattan deli at noon. He said his wife and baby are stuck in Yemen after almost completing a four-year green-card process. "We are trying to stay strong," he told the AP. "There's people there who are refugees and who are starving and running for their lives, so thank God we don't have it as bad as they do." At the Golden Deli in Manhattan, a customer told Reuters he was disappointed he couldn't get his usual pastrami and Swiss sandwich, but that he supports the protest. "This is like the best deli out here," he said. "Trump is a jerk." (More than 1,000 State Department officials have signed a memo protesting the travel ban.)
Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway caused a stir in an interview on MSNBC by justifying the president's new travel ban with a reference to "the Bowling Green massacre." As countless media outletsincluding CNN, the Guardian, and the Hillalong with seemingly all of Twitter were quick to point out, no such massacre ever took place in the Kentucky city. Amid the hoopla, Conway tweeted Friday morning that she misspoke. Here's the original quote, to Chris Matthews: I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre. Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered.

In her tweet, Conway said she meant to say Bowling Green "terrorists," not "massacre," with a link to this ABC News story from 2013. It references two Iraqi citizens who were arrested in Bowling Green in 2011 and sentenced to prison for trying to send money and weapons to al-Qaeda. The Department of Justice said neither of the men planned any attacks in the US. As for Conway's comparison of Trump's move to Obama's in 2011, the Washington Post, USA Today have declared it to be bogus. For one thing, the Iraqi refugee program slowed in 2011 after the Kentucky arrests as stronger vetting was put into place, but it never was actually halted. Meanwhile, Twitter was having fun with the mistake. "Here are all the names of the people that perished in the Bowling Green massacre," said one user, sharing a photo of a blank plaque. (Read more Kellyanne Conway stories.)
There'll be one person to blame for for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, and it isn't Mitch McConnell or President Trump. "God bless Harry Reid," Charles Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post. The conservative commentator argues that while Trump nominated Gorsuch and McConnell kept his seat from an Obama nominee, Reid inadvertently cleared the path for Gorsuch back in 2013 when he abolished the filibuster for all sorts of appointments and judgeships. Reid exempted Supreme Court justices from that, but the precedent was set nevertheless.

Now if Democrats try to filibuster the nomination of Gorsuch, McConnell can use the "nuclear option" already taken once by Reid. "Reid never fully appreciated the magnitude of his crime against the Senate," Krauthammer writes. Abolishing the filibuster isn't the big deal, but rather the way in which Reid did it, he argues. By getting rid of the filibuster using a simple majority instead of a supermajority, Reid essentially "rendered the place lawless." "There are no rules" if a simple majority can change an "institution's fundamental rules," Krauthammer writes. Republicans should now take advantage of Reid's mistake to approve Trump's nominees before working with Democrats to make a supermajority a requirement to change major rules. Read the full piece here. (Read more Neil Gorsuch stories.)
A former prime minister of Norway was caught up in the chaos at US airports this week, though it's not clear which president's actions caused the issue. Kjell Magne Bondevik, the country's PM from 1997 to 2000 and 2001 to 2005, flew from Europe to DC's Dulles airport Tuesday to attend the National Prayer Breakfastand was detained for an hour, the Guardian reports. The problem? Customs agents looked at his passport and saw he traveled to Iran in 2014. He says officials told him he was being held because of a law then-President Obama signed in 2015 that requires citizens of certain countries (including Norway) to have a visa to enter the US if they've visited specific countries (like Iran) since 2011. But there are exceptions (ABC 7 explains in greater depth), and Bondevik says he's never before experienced any trouble coming into the US with that passport stamp.

Further, his office checked with the US embassy in Oslo before this trip to ensure he would have no issues. Bondevik tells ABC 7 he possesses a diplomatic passport, which clearly states that he is the former PM of Norway. "Of course I fully understand the fear of letting terrorists come into this country," he says, but "it should be enough when they found ... [I'm a] former prime minister." He says he was made to wait for 40 minutes, then questioned for 20 minutes about the Iran trip, which he took so he could speak at a human rights conference. Though Bondevik wasn't quoted mentioning President Trump by name, he had this to say: "I fear the future," he tells the Local. "This gives great cause for concern, in line with the authoritarian leaders we see controlling other major countries." (Read more Trump travel ban stories.)
The head of North Korea's secret police, a man who reportedly "spearheaded the move" to execute Kim Jong Un's uncle in December 2013, has himself been removed from his key slotone handed to him by Kim in April 2012. Reuters quotes a rep for South Korea's Unification Ministry as confirming reports that Kim Won Hong is no longer minister of state security as of mid-January. Yonhap quotes sources as saying the 72-year-old was removed after the ruling party's surveillance of his agency turned up alleged corruption and abuse of power. The sources offered no further detail on the charges, but suggested Kim Won Hong's military rank no longer stands at full general.

The Guardian reports North Korea has not confirmed the news, and notes it's not clear whether Kim Won Hong is permanently on the outs or will be subjected to "re-education" in the aim of returning him to the fold. CNN reports the country's infamous prison camps were under Kim Won Hong's purview, and points out that he was one of a handful of top officials sanctioned in January by the US Treasury Department, which didn't mince words: It cited the "beatings, forced starvation, sexual assault, forced abortions, and infanticide" that happened in the camps under his watch. Reuters got famed recent defector Thae Yong Ho to weigh in on the news. "If the demotion ... is really true, then that's another sign of a crack in the North Korean elite group." Thae recently predicted that North Korea could soon have a popular uprising on its hands; here's why. (Read more North Korea stories.)
Mars says a miscommunication with a subcontractor led to a defective batch of its Skittles, reportedly on their way to becoming cattle feed, ending up scattered across a highway, the AP reports. The spill captured widespread attention after a Facebook post by a Wisconsin sheriff showed a road covered in the colorful candy. The sheriff wrote that they had fallen off the truck of a farmer who was going to feed them to cattle. Selling food byproducts for use in animal feed is not uncommon, but Mars had said that the factory that made the spilled Skittles was not approved to do so. The candy maker also said that it only sells to third party processors that mix unused candy with other ingredients to make animal feed, not to individual farmers.

Now Mars says the mishap was the result of miscommunication between a vendor that handles its waste management and a subcontractor. The company says it doesn't believe there was "ill intent" and that "corrective action" is being taken. Mars said it can't say for certain whether the candy was given to the subcontractor to be turned into animal feed. Mars has said the Skittles were supposed to be destroyed because a power outage during the manufacturing process left the candies without the "S'' on them. (Read more Skittles stories.)
The Trump administration on Friday imposed sanctions on 13 people and a dozen companies in response to Iran's recent ballistic missile test, reports the AP. Those targeted by the Treasury Department include various individuals and companies involved in procuring ballistic missile technology for Iran. They include Iranians, Lebanese, Chinese, and Emirati individuals, all of whom are now blacklisted from doing business in the US or with US citizens. Under the landmark nuclear deal struck with Iran under President Obama, the US cannot impose nuclear-related sanctions, and it says these don't violate that agreement.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump said: "Iran is playing with firethey don't appreciate how 'kind' President Obama was to them. Not me!" The action will almost surely increase tensions with Iran. Tehran insists it has the right to conduct ballistic missile tests now that its nuclear program has been sharply curtailed. The US and Western countries say Tehran agreed to an eight-year extension of a ban on ballistic work in nuclear negotiations two years ago. That agreement was concluded in parallel, but separately to the nuclear accord. (Read more Iran stories.)
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New Delhi:

The iPhone lovers in India should gear up for Made in India Apple gadgets as Karnataka government has officially issued a release welcoming the tech giants proposal to commence initial manufacturing operations in Bengaluru.

As Apple plans to setup its manufacturing factory in Bengaluru, Indians have started getting super excited with rumours of Made in India iPhone 8 prices going down.

Apple had announced in May, 2016 to set up a design and development accelerator in Bengaluru to help iOS developer community grow. Local manufacturing is expected to help Apple price its phones more competitively in India as it currently attracts 12.5 per cent additional duty on imports.

Also Read: Apple iPhone turns 10, Tim Cook says the 'best is yet to come'



Apples intentions to manufacture in Bengaluru will foster cutting edge technology eco system and supply chain development in the state, which are critical for India to compete globally, an official release signed by Karnataka IT Minister Priyank Kharge said.

The release did not detail about what the initial manufacturing operations would be. However, reports quoting highly placed government sources had earlier said that the iconic iPhones would be manufactured in Bengaluru by Wistron, a Taiwanese OEM maker for Apple.

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New York:

West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh on Thursday described the city-based nodal investigating officer of Enforcement Directorate against whom ED has ordered a probe as "very efficient" and said everything will come to light in course of time.

"He is a very efficient officer. He has recovered Rs 850crore chit fund money. CCTV footage has shown that he had gone to a hotel and stayed there. But he said that he has kept relations with the woman in the interests of investigation, "Ghosh told reporters.

Purported CCTV grabs of the IO allegedly checking in a hotel in Delhi with the estranged wife of Gautam Kundu, the main accused in Rose Valley chit fund scam, prompted ED to order a probe into his role.

Taking cognisance of the reports, the ED said it has ordered a probe into the incident and "strict disciplinary action" would follow if the charges are proved true.

"His department is investigating it. Everything will be revealed in course of time. I don't think what we are seeing is correct," the BJP leader said.
New Delhi:

BJP President Amit Shah on Friday called off his foot march in Meerut after the murder of a businessman's son. Shah also lashed out at Samajwadi Party government for making Uttar Pradesh India's crime capital and vowed to make it a poll issue.

The morale of criminals is so high in the state, even police personnel are not safe let alone the common man. The way incidents of crime against the common man have risen under the Akhilesh Yadav government, an atmosphere of fear and terror prevails in the state.

BJP will fight for the issue of law and order in the streets of Uttar Pradesh and Parliament as well. Restoring the law and order and sending criminals behind bars will be our priority after a BJP government is formed, he said in tweets.

24-year-old Abhishek was killed last night when he was with his father Sushil Verma, who owns a gutka business along with three workers near his house at Sharda road in Brahmpuri area.

ALSO READ | Rahul baba should answer what did they do for Kashmir in two-and-a-half-years: Amit Shah at Hapur rally

Addressing a rally in Pilkhuwa of Hapur in Uttar Pradesh on Friday, Shah said, Rahul Baba should answer, what did they do in two and a half years for Kashmir? But you won't be affected because you are wearing an Italian chashma.

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New Delhi:

BJP national president Amit Shah addressed a rally in Pilkhuwa of Hapur in Uttar Pradesh on Friday. All the four parties including, Congress, BJP and Samajwadi Party, BSP have started their respective rallies and erecting the flags of promises in the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh.

Where Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav began their joint road show in Agra on Friday, BJP national President Amit Shah addressed a rally in Hapur, attacking the SP and Congress for looting the country and now UP.

Here are the Live updates:

#Rahul Baba should answer, what did they do in two and a half years for Kashmir? But you won't be affected because you are wearing an Italian chashma.

#All those whose land has been grabbed we will start working on freeing the land within 15 minutes.

#In our manifesto, we have promised that we farmers loan will be waived off and interest also.

#Two dukes have come to UP, one has already looted the country, the other is now eyeing to loot Uttar Pradesh.

#Law and order situation in UP has worsened.

ALSO READ | UP polls: Rahul Gandhi, Akhilesh Yadav begin joint road show in Agra

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New Delhi:

More than 80 per cent of the clean -up operation after the oil spill off Kamarajar Port in Tamil Nadu has been completed and most of the residual work is expected to be over within two to three days, the Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.

Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan also told the House that the Directorate General of Shipping has instituted an inquiry under the Merchant Shipping Act to ascertain the cause and contributory factors that led to the accident last Saturday.

Two vessels, M T BW Maple and M T Dawn Kanchipuram, had collided in the wee hours on January 28 off the Kamarajar harbour and one of the ships carrying 32,813 tonnes of oil suffered damage, leading to the spill. There was no casualty or injury to the crew members, he said.

The total quantity of sludge which has been cleaned up till today is 65 tonnes. In addition, super suckers have removed 54 tonnes of oil mixed with water. More than 80 per cent of the work has been completed and most of the residual work is expected to be over within two to three days, he said.

The Indian Oil Corporation has provided special bio-remediation material for treatment of the collected oil sludge for its safe disposal, he said.

After examination, the damaged vessel was towed safely and berthed at Kamarajar Port on January 30 and it has already discharged 30,013 Tonnes of POL (petroleum, oil and lubricants) and the remaining quantity is expected to be discharged today. This major step has prevented any further possibility of oil spill, he said.

Radhakrishnan said a massive clean-up operation was launched in Tiruvallur, Chennai and Kancheepuram districts by engaging more than 2,000 people at various sites including Ernavur, Chennai Fishing Harbour, Marina Beach, Besant Nagar, Kottivakkam, Palavakkam, Neelankarai and Injambakkam beaches.

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Rajnandgaon:

A police jawan was on Friday killed and another injured in an exchange of fire with naxals in a Maoist-affected area of Chhattisgarhs Rajnandgaon district, police said.

The skirmish took place at around 11:45 am in the forests of Bhave village under Gatapar police station limits while a team of district force was out on a search operation, a district police official told PTI.

Assistant Constable Sukhuram Netam (33) died in the incident and another assistant constable Asharam Tekam sustained minor splinter injury, he said.

The patrolling party had launched the operation from Bakarkatta area on Thursday.

When security forces on Friday advancing through jungles of Bhave, bordering Balaghat area of Madhya Pradesh, they came under heavy fire from a group of ultras leading to a gun-battle between both the sides, he said.

However, rebels soon escaped into core forests, the official said adding that during searches, security forces recovered Maoist-related documents, bags and other items from the spot.

Blood stains found at the spot indicate that some naxals were also injured in the gun-battle but their colleagues managed to take them away, he added.

Injured---Sukhuramwho was hit by bullet in his abdomen and Asharaam were immediately airlifted to Raipur for treatment at a private hospital.

While Sukhuram was declared dead after examination at the hospital, another jawan was said to be out of danger and undergoing treatment there, he added.

The body of the martyred jawan will be brought to Rajnandgaon after the postmortem, he added.

Sukhram who was posted with police line in Rajnandgaon was a native Sandewahi village under Sitagaon police station limits of the district.

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New Delhi:

The government has ordered a high-level inquiry into Chennai Coast oil spill that took place after collision between two ships.

To nail the guilty behind the oil spill the probe is headed by Director General Shipping. A big damage control exercise was carried out in the wake of the collision, containing a major problem, and the ship has been emptied safely this morning, the Shipping, Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari said.

Oil spill has been a cause of concern ever since "M T BW Maple" leaving after emptying Liquefied Petroleum Gas on January 28 collided with M T Dawn, Kanchipuram, loaded with petroleum oil lubricant (POL) off Ennore Port, which is among top 12 major ports in the country.

Oil spill has been cleaned. From the tank, it did not leak. Oil was leaked from the engine. There is no leakage from the ship, Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan said.

ALSO READ | Chennai : 80 per cent oil spill clean-up operation completed, informs government

The Shipping Ministry has sought an audit report on whether the ports handling oil are well equipped as 50 per cent subsidy is given to ports handling oil to get equipment.

Whatever deficiencies they had pointed out, instructions were given to remove them and I had been told by Ennore Port they had the equipment which is prescribed under the Crisis management Plan,  Shipping Secretary Rajive Kumar said.

He further added that the team was coordinating the efforts with Coast Guard as well as with the State Governments.

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi:

Convicted Indian Mujahideen terrorist Yasin Bhatkal is planning to escape Tihar jail with the help of IS, sources say on Friday. The security at Tihar Jail has been beefed up after Bhatkal was shifted to the prison complex last week.

Indian Mujahideen militant was given death sentence by a Hyderabad court in 2013 Dilsukhnagar twin blast case in December. Earlier in 2015, security agencies had intercepted a call made by Bhatkal to his wife wherein he spoke about getting out of jail with help from Syria.

Also Read: Production warrant issued against Yasin Bhatkal in 2011 Mumbai blasts case

Sources said that Bhatkal had been lodged in jail number 1. Being a death-row convict, he has been kept in solitary confinement with guards and CCTVs keeping a watch on him round the clock.

Also Read: IM co-founder Yasin Bhatkal, 4 others sentenced to death by special NIA court in 2013 Hyderabad blasts case

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Bhopal:

In a grisly incident, a man has been arrested for allegedly murdering his live-in partner and virtually entombing the body under a marble platform at his residence in Bhopal.

The body of the woman, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was exhumed in the wee hours on Friday and it took police six hours to recover it, they said.

The accused Udyan Das (32) strangulated the woman to death, stuffed the body in an iron box and then constructed a marble platform over it to hide the crime.

West Bengal police have arrested Udyan Das (32) here on charges of murdering his live-in partner Akanksha (28) alias Shweta Sharma. The accused admitted to killing her in December last year and then burying the body under a marble platform on the first floor of his house, Govindpura City Superintendent of Police Virendra Mishra told PTI on Friday.

We exhumed the body from under the platform at around 4 AM with the help of drilling machines. It has been sent for postmortem and further interrogation is underway, he said.

The incident came to fore yesterday when West Bengal police arrived in the state capital in search of Akanksha following a complaint lodged by her father Shivendra Sharma after the family lost touch with her.

According to police, Udyan had befriended the victim on a social media site.

ALSO READ | Youtube kissing pranks victims say they knew about prank, but unaware it'd be put online: Police

The accused told police that he killed Akanksha in a fit of rage by strangulating her in the last week of December 2016, after they had a dispute over an issue.

Das further told the police that after strangulating Akanksha, he packed her body in an iron box and then buried it under the platform, police informed.

The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform, he said.

According to police, the accused has been changing his statements on various aspects, including his relationship status with the victim.

Das initially said that he had married Akanksha at the local BHEL Kalibadi temple. Later, he said that he married her in New York. But it was found that he never visited New York. So, we are still in the process of ascertaining the details given by him, an officer at Govindpura police station said.

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New Delhi:

The unrest in Kohima calmed down late on Thursday night after the Army was called in, Around 375 soldiers were deployed across the city, which witnessed violent protests on Thursday against Nagaland Chief Minister's refusal to postpone the municipal elections, in which seats were reserved for women.

Nagaland Chief Minister T R Zeliang has rejected the demand for his governments resignation following the death of two persons in anti-ULB poll agitation in Dimapur. He appealed to the people to stop violence and not fall prey to rumour mongers.

Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju on Friday said that it was wrong for attacking the Cabinet over the issue.Have to save Nagaland CM. We understand peoples sentiments but not right to attack Cabinet. Appeal to people to talk to the government, Rijiju said.

The Nagaland Tribes Action Committee (NTAC), representing different tribal organisations, had on Thursday served an ultimatum to Zeliang and his cabinet to resign by 4 PM.

ALSO READ | Nagaland: Violence erupts over urban local bodies polls in Kohima; Municipal Council building on fire

Assure to ppl of North-East we're sensitive about their security & have provided all arrangements incl Army & Air Force-MoS Defence S Bhamre pic.twitter.com/J8FOnIpfLN  ANI (@ANI_news) February 3, 2017

Well aware of situation of North-East, PM & Defence Minister sensitive about it. We've taken due precautions: MoS Defence Subhash Bhamre pic.twitter.com/w0U4dAuTDO  ANI (@ANI_news) February 3, 2017

In view of the violence, the Kohima District administration has promulgated prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC in certain areas including Raj Bhavan, Ministers Hill, and Jail Colony.

ALSO READ | Violence in Nagaland: CM Zeliang rejects resignation demand, urges people to stay calm



The curfew came into effect from 9:30 tonight and would continue till further order, a notification said.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Chennai:

Nearly a week after the oil spill due to collision of two ships off Chennaias coast, hundreds of volunteers have removed about 60 tonnes of sludge in a massive clean-up effort.

The strong winds and waves have caused the oil spill to spread as it has crossed the Marina Beach and is moving to other beaches in Chennai.

After the collision between two ships took place near Chennai's Kamarajar Port, more than 20 tonnes of thick oil spilled into the Bay of Bengal, affecting the marine life and a 30-km stretch of shoreline.

The Coast Guard said: "It is estimated that more than 20 tonnes of oil has spilt from MT Dawn Kanchipuram as against the initial report of two-three tonnes."

Hundreds of volunteers including students from engineering colleges and fishermen are involved in clearing the thick sludge that machines have failed to remove. Oil spill dispersants and neutralisers are being sprayed by Coast guard ships and choppers.On Thursday, the Coast Guard said tremendous progress had been made and no major oil patches were seen seawards.



The clean up work on a war-footing was carried out in several areas, including the Ennore shoreline, Marina and Elliots beaches by multiple agencies including Coast Guard along with the help of volunteers and local people.

Tiruvallur (TN): Coast Guard trainees removing oil sludge collected at Ennore coast manually #ChennaiOilSpill pic.twitter.com/Z4ndHOSaZ4 a ANI (@ANI_news) February 3, 2017

aApproximately 1,100 personnel braving the hot sun came forward and assisted in removal of approximately 21 tonnes of oil with sludge and about 17 tonnes of sand mixed with sludge, sand mixed with oil and oil mixed with water,a a Coast Guard release said.

aAt present, no significant oil patches are observed seawards from Ennore to Mahabalipuram. Only sheen of oil can be seen at some places which is likely to clear off in one or two days. Tremendous progress has been made towards sludge removal,a it said.

Apart from Coast Guard, personnel from Tamil Nadu Police Coastal Security Group, pollution control board, fire and rescue department, state Highways, port trust, corporation, panchayat besides volunteers from various colleges, universities and NGOs joined the operation.



The mishap had occurred when M T BW Maple, with a flag of Isle of Man, was leaving after emptying Liquefied Petroleum Gas and M T Dawn, Kanchipuram, loaded with petroleum oil lubricant (POL), was on its way to berth at the suburban port, formerly Ennore port.



(With inputs from PTI)

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New Delhi:

Pakistan is now acting under pressure against JuD chief Hafiz Saeed after the US threatened it with sanctions and the 2008 Mumbai terror attack mastermind should be arrested and prosecuted as his detention is meaningless, BJP MP R K Singh on Friday said.

Pakistan is definitely acting under pressure. It was warned that if it does not act, then it will be blacklisted by the Financial Action Task Force. Pakistan was against the Security Council Resolutions (SCR). SCR had named JuD as terrorist organisation and Hafiz Saeed as terrorist.

US had kept a reward on his (Hafiz) head as well. The US threatened Pakistan with sanctions which is why Pakistan took these steps, said former home secretary Singh.

India had on Thursday dismissed Pakistans demand for concrete evidence against Saeed in the 26/11 case, saying the required proof is already available in that country as the entire conspiracy was hatched there and all it needs to find is requisite political will to take action.

The detention is meaningless. It is not an arrest. He should be arrested and prosecuted. He is the main accused of the Mumbai terror attack and it was he who organised and planned and executed it. India is using all its diplomatic options. India is telling various countries what actions should be taken, he said.

Saeed and four other Jamaat-ud Dawa leaders - Abdullah Ubaid, Zafar Iqbal, Abdur Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Niaz - were put under house arrest after an order was issued by Punjab Provinces Interior Ministry on Monday in pursuance to a directive from the Federal Interior Ministry on January 27.

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New Delhi:

The Supreme Court will hear the plea against the Bombay High Court order appointing a panel to review the Akshay Kumar-starrer Jolly LLB 2 on February 7. The apex court deferred the hearing as the matter will be heard by the Bombay High Court on February 6.

On February 1, A bench comprising Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justices N V Ramana and D Y Chandrachud had said that it would hear the appeal of Fox Studio, the producer, on February 3.

Senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for the film producer, said the movie, which is releasing on February 10, has already been cleared by the CBFC and the appointment of the panel is not as per the law.

ALSO READ | 'Jolly LLB 2': Akshay Kumar thanks Arshad Warsi for showing him way



Recently, the Bombay High Court has appointed a 3-member committee to review the film following the allegations that it has made the legal and judicial system a laughing stock.

Watch | Jolly LLB 2 trailer out, Akshay Kumar introduces his character Jagdishwar Mishra

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New Delhi:

In a shocking incident, a village sarpanch and two of his associates have been arrested in Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh after a video clip of them brutally beating a woman went viral on social media.

This incident took place on Sunday evening in Jallipalli village of Kuderu mandal and it came to notice only after the video clip went viral on social media after it was posted by a youth whose identity is still not known.

In the viral video Nagaraju along with two of his associates is seen trashing the widow women, kicking and dragging her. The sarpanch is also seen punching the lady on her face, stomach and punching her on head and face.

This issue took a political turn after YSRCP backed the victim and demanded police action against the accused who belong to the ruling party.

According to Kuderu police sub-inspector V Raju, Sudha had objected installation of a drinking water tank in front of her house.

aShe picked up an argument with the sarpanch over the relocation of the water tank. An enraged Nagaraju started beating her up and the others joined him,a he said.



The accused and two others have been booked under Sections 354 (assault on woman with intention to outrage her modesty) and 355 (assault to dishonour a person) and 332 (hurting a person without provocation) of the Indian Penal Code. They were initially released on bail but were taken back into custody.

Case filed at Kuderu Police Station (Andhra Pradesh) against sarpanch & his friend for beating the woman. a ANI (@ANI_news) February 3, 2017

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New Delhi:

Just after two weeks of Trumps presidency, majority of Americans want Barack Obama back as President suggests a poll. The new polls shows a significant percentage of voters already thinking that the real estate tycoon-turned-politician should be removed from office

A survey by Public Policy Polling reflects what the current American mind thinks of their newly-elected President.

The polls elaborate 52 percent saying they would rather have Obama as President, to only 43 percent who are glad that Donald Trump is at the helm.

Usually a newly elected President is at the peak of their popularity and enjoying their honeymoon period after taking office, said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling.

But Donald Trump's making history once again with a sizeable share of voters already wanting to impeach him, and a majority of voters wishing they could have Barack Obama back, he said.

The poll reveals that 40 percent of voters already want to impeach Trump. That is up from 35 percent of voters who wanted to impeach him a week ago, added the survey.

But when you get beyond the overall package, the pieces of the executive order become more clearly unpopular. 52 percent of voters think that the order was intended to be a Muslim ban, to only 41 percent who don't think that was the intent. And the idea of a Muslim ban is extremely unpopular with the American people -- only 26 percent are in favour of it, to 65 percent who are against it, the poll further elaborated.

43 percent of voters support the idea of US indefinitely suspending accepting Syrian refugees, while 48 percent are opposed to that.

The survey also throws a light on what Americans have to say on the competency of newly-elected President and the way popular orders were executed.

ALSO READ | Immigration ban: Microsoft urges Trump to ease travel restrictions for its employees

39 percent of voters think it was well executed while 55 percent make up those who believe it was poorly executed, the survey found.

Americans think last week's executive order is a Muslim ban and they don't like it, Debnam said. And beyond that, they think the order was executed in an incompetent fashion, he said.

ALSO READ | Trump not planning any executive order on H-1B visas: Republican Hindu Coalition

The survey figures were compiled after Public Policy Polling surveyed 725 registered voters on January 30 and 31.

With PTI Inputs

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New Delhi:

Newly-appointed US Defence Secretary James Mattis on Friday said that United States stands 100 percent with Japan. His remarks came on a visit meant to confirm the importance of the countries' security alliance.

We stand firmly, 100 percent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and (the) Japanese people, Mattis told Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe after arriving on his first visit since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump.

I wanted to make certain that Article Five of our mutual defence treaty is understood to be as real to us today as it was a year ago, five years ago and it will be a year and 10 years from now, he added in remarks at the start of their meeting.

Mattis visit marks the first overseas trip of any senior official from US President Donald Trump's administration.

ALSO READ | Majority of Americans disapprove of Trumps executive orders, want Obama back as President, suggests poll

Mattis on his campaigning trail raised the possibility of Japan and South Korea arming themselves with nuclear weapons, and accused Seoul and Tokyo of not paying their fair share for US troops stationed in their countries.

Some 47,000 US troops are stationed in Japan and another 28,500 in South Korea.

Abe stressed on the importance of alliance between the two countries. He is also set to hold a summit with Trump next week in US.

I do have a hope, and also I am convinced, together with you and President Trump we will be able to demonstrate the unwavering alliance between Japan and the United State both to the public inside Japan as well as outside Japan, Abe said.

Abe also praised Mattis as the right person for the job of US defence chief.

While Mattis didnt hesitate to stress on tit-for-tat approach as he said that any nuclear attack by North Korea would trigger an effective and overwhelming response.

With PTI Inputs

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Washington:

US-Iran relationship hits the rough road as the United State imposed fresh sanctions on more than two dozen Iranian entities. The Friday sanctions come two days after the Islamic republic dismissed President Donald Trumps warnings over its latest missile test as baseless and provocative.

The ballistic missile launch was the first by Iran since Trump became president.

The announcement also comes a day after Trump put Iran on notice for its alleged destabilising behaviour and carrying out ballistic missile test in violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls on Tehran not to test missiles capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.

According to reports, Irans missile test occurred at a well-known site outside Semnan, about 225 km east of Tehran. The Khorramshahr medium-range ballistic missile flew 600 miles before exploding.

Also Read: US puts Iran 'on notice' after nuclear missile launch

In a statement, the Treasury Department said the multiple entities and individuals slapped with sanctions were involved in procuring technology and materials to support Irans ballistic missile programme, as well as for acting for or on behalf of, or providing support to, Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF).

This action reflects the United States commitment to enforcing sanctions on Iran with respect to its ballistic missile program and destabilising activities in the region and is fully consistent with the United States commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Treasury said.

Irans continued support for terrorism and development of its ballistic missile program poses a threat to the region, to our partners worldwide, and to the United States, said John E Smith, Acting Director at the Department of Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Todays action is part of Treasurys ongoing efforts to counter Iranian malign activity abroad that is outside the scope of the JCPOA, he added.

The Treasury said OFAC designated several networks and supporters of Irans ballistic missile procurement, including a critical Iranian procurement agent and eight individuals and entities in his Iran - and China-based network, an Iranian procurement company and its Gulf-based network, and five individuals and entities that are part of an Iran-based procurement network connected to Mabrooka Trading, which was designated on January 17 last year.

It also designated a key IRGC-QF-run support network working with Hizballah, including IRGC-QF official Hasan Deghan Ebrahimi, his associates Muhammad Abd-al-Amir Farhat and Yahya al-Hajj, and several affiliated companies in Lebanon.

Iran has previously warned that new US sanctions could constitute a violation of the nuclear deal, setting up a scenario in which the agreement could unravelsomething that hardliners in both countries would welcome.

The row comes against a backdrop of already strained ties between Washington and Tehran over Trumps travel ban on citizens from Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries.

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* Abadi for the time being fends off pro-Iranian factions

* Shi'ite leaders accepted need to keep United States on side

* Those close to Iran bolstered by Trump travel ban

* After Maliki, Abadi has kept Tehran at arm's length

By Maher Chmaytelli and Ahmed Rasheed

BAGHDAD, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Iraq's prime minister has squashed a move by pro-Iranian factions in his government who wanted to retaliate against President Donald Trump's travel ban. The struggle shows the difficult position the Iraqi leader finds himself in - pulled between his most powerful neighbour and the United States under Trump.

For Haider al-Abadi, the situation had looked difficult on Sunday night. At a meeting of the most powerful Shi'ite leaders and their representatives, he faced calls to respond in kind to the ban affecting seven mainly Muslim nations, including Iraq.

Trump's order had triggered angry reactions among Shi'ite politicians in Iraq. Those who are closest to Iran were insisting that Iraq should retaliate with a ban on U.S. nationals, just like Tehran did the day before.

But matters were resolved smoothly in Abadi's favour. The prime minister warned the Shi'ite leaders that a ban on Americans would jeopardise U.S. support for the war on Islamic State. So they were prepared for the time being at least to reject the demands of the pro-Iranian lobby.

While the Shi'ite leaders agreed that the U.S. order was unfair, it was understood that Iran's allies had no alternative plan on how to finish the battle in Mosul, the last major city under the control of IS militants, without U.S. help.

Abadi said at a news conference on Tuesday that Iraq was best served by preserving the U.S. alliance. "We are ... in a battle and we don't want to harm the national interest."

Iran's allies are, nevertheless, preparing to press their cause again should relations deteriorate further between Washington and Iran after the battle of Mosul, said Ahmed Younis, a professor of international relations at the University of Baghdad.

Story continues

SYMBOLIC VOTE

One prominent Shi'ite member of parliament warned the situation could change if the ban was extended.

"The Americans promised to review the ban in three months," said Hassan Khalati, a lawmaker close to Sayyid Ammar al-Hakim, a prominent Shi'ite cleric and politician who hosted Sunday's meeting. "If it is maintained, there will be (further) pressure" on the government to retaliate, he said.

In a sign of lingering dissatisfaction a show of hands in parliament on Monday signalled that the majority of lawmakers would have preferred a retaliatory travel ban. The show of hands was symbolic because Shi'ite leaders had backed down at the meeting the day earlier.

The new American president has indicated a cooling of relations with Iran, unlike the previous administration of Barack Obama which reached a deal providing for curbs on the Iranian nuclear programme in return for easing international sanctions.

Washington on Friday ratcheted up pressure on Iran, putting sanctions on 13 individuals and 12 entities days after the White House put Tehran "on notice" over a ballistic missile test.

Iran's dominant influence in Iraqi politics was eroded after IS routed the Iraqi army commanded then by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was a close ally of Tehran. This forced Maliki to seek U.S. help to fight the IS militants.

But the U.S. travel curbs - which bar the admission of people from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen - fuelled the arguments of pro-Iranian political factions who seek to bolster Tehran's influence at the expense of Washington.

Iranian officials state their support for Iraq in the war on Islamic State but make no public comments on U.S.-Iraqi affairs to avoid causing embarrassment for Baghdad.

AT ARM'S LENGTH

Unlike Maliki, Abadi has kept Iran at arm's length. Iranian Major-General Qassem Soleimani, who oversaw the formation of the Popular Mobilisation units receded from public view mid-2015.

But several policy-makers and analysts said the travel ban was changing the dynamic, in particular by empowering the pro-Iranian factions.

"Why should we trust the new American administration?" asked Iskandar Witwit, a lawmaker from Maliki's bloc, the biggest in parliament. "We have the right to get closer to Iran as a secure ally in order to preserve our national interests."

Trump's travel ban has "definitely muddied the waters" between the two nations, Witwit added.

One veteran Iraqi politician, who declined to be named, also pointed out that Baghdad's relationship with Washington was not a direct reflection of the assistance that has poured into Iraq.

"When you look at the level of military and financial support Iraq gets from Washington you would expect it to be as close an ally of the U.S. as Jordan or Morocco," he said.

"And yet, Iraq appears like a reluctant ally of the U.S.; we rarely hear Iraqi officials praising the Americans when talking to an Iraqi audience," he said.

RESISTING PRESSURE

For now, however, Abadi has pushed back the pro-Iranian factions.

At the meeting on Sunday, Abadi won the argument over those who wanted retaliation with the critical backing of Hakim, who chairs the National Alliance, an umbrella for the main Shi'ite groups.

Hakim was unavailable for comment but one of his aides said the influential leader was convinced of the pressing need to defeat IS with American military might.

In particular, Hakim's critical support allowed Abadi to resist pressure exerted by representatives of the most radical groups within Popular Mobilisation, paramilitary units trained mainly by Iran to fight IS, who wanted Iraq to follow Iran's lead in imposing a retaliatory ban on American travellers.

"Iraq should not become a ground where Iran and the U.S settle scores," said MP Khalati, explaining the opinion of Hakim, the heir of one of a revered clerical dynasty whose members suffered under former dictator Saddam Hussein.

"Iran is supporting Iraq and the U.S. is supporting Iraq, our interest is to get rid of terrorism," he said.

After the meeting, Iraq's Foreign Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari asked the U.S. ambassador to Iraq to convey a request to reconsider the ban, arguing for the need to cooperate against IS and saying no Iraqi was involved in attacks on U.S. soil.

(Editing by Peter Millership)
Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN might have to drop one of its competitive strategies against brick-and-mortar stores in Arkansas if a proposal advanced by an Arkansas Senate panel on Wednesday is accepted.

Over the last one year, the stock has outperformed the Zacks Electronic Commerce industry. It has gained 51.19% compared with the industrys gain of 45.07%.

The Senate Revenue and Taxation Committee proposed that out-of-state companies that do not have any physical presence in Arkansas should collect sales tax if they exceed $100,000 worth sales or 200 separate sales transactions. The proposal will go before the full Senate on Thursday.

Taking Advantage of an Old Court Ruling

Amazon has been taking advantage of a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that bars states from forcing out-of-state sellers lacking a physical presence to collect tax.

Amazon even terminated contracts with its Arkansas-based affiliates back in Jul 2011 to avoid paying sales taxes from this state.

Amazon.com, Inc. Net Income (TTM)

Amazon.com, Inc. Net Income (TTM) | Amazon.com, Inc. Quote

Whats Behind the Move?

Per The National Conference of State Legislatures, the state had to forego more than $23 billion in tax revenues from online and catalog sales in 2012.

Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson believes that the step could generate $32 million to $100 million of additional revenues. The state will enact a deeper income tax cut before the 2019 session.

To Conclude

The court ruling dates back to the pre-online shopping era. We believe that it lacks significance today when companies can sell at a place without having a physical presence.

Zacks Rank and Stocks to Consider

Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

Better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector include NVIDIA Corporation NVDA, Linear Technology Corporation LLTC and Intersil Corporation ISIL, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Story continues

For the current year, estimates for NVIDIA and Intersil have stayed unchanged while the same for Linear Technology went up 1.83% in the past 60 days.

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Americas massive lead problem: 1.2M miles of lead pipe deliver brain-damaging water to the sheeple

If you thought the problem with lead-tainted water was confined to Flint, Michigan, think again. The United States could be on the brink of that scenario playing out in many towns and cities across the country unless lead water pipes are replaced  pronto.

Diamonds may be forever, but lead pipes certainly are not. In fact, lead pipes typically only last for about 75 years before they need to be replaced. Many of the water pipes in the United States are about that old, and those aged-out pipes collectively measure about 1.2 million miles across about 3,000 different towns and cities. Needless to say, replacing such a massive number of pipes would require extensive numbers of hours, level of effort, and planning. And the kicker: It would cost about $1 trillion. But obviously, something has to be done, because the health risk is simply too high.

The health risks that lead water pipes introduce

Exposure to lead, which can happen when pipes in the home contain lead that leaches into the water, can cause some serious health problems. For children who grow up with such an exposure, there is a heightened risk for developing physical disabilities, cognitive problems, mood issues, abdominal pain, and many other symptoms. Adults who have been exposed to lead also experience disruptive symptoms, including irritability, nausea, high blood pressure (hypertension), and headaches.

It is possible to detox from at least some of the lead, but it is far better to not be exposed to lead in the first place. Natural detox can include vitamin C, cilantro, milk thistle, garlic, and chlorella. Saunas and rebounding are also excellent for any type of detoxing. Preferably work with your natural health practitioner when attempting to detox and heal from lead exposure.

Responding to the lead pipe risk

President Trump said in his inauguration speech on January 20, 2017 that the United States infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay. Indeed. Places throughout the country have experienced reduced spending on infrastructure, as well as less testing to identify early indications that lead poisoning is occurring. The new president promised that We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation.

He did not mention water pipes made of lead and whether they would be replaced, but given that he talked so emphatically and specifically about other aspects of infrastructure needing attention, lets hope he will also work to address the issue of lead water pipes.

Meanwhile, what can you do if you are concerned about the water pipes in your home? Contact your local water department to find out how old your pipes are and whether lead pipes are an issue in your area. If they are getting to the point of aging out, ask what is being done to replace them. No matter how old or new your water pipes are, it is always a wise idea to test your homes water, not just for lead but also for all sorts of other toxic substances like aluminum, arsenic, and other heavy metals.

You can also purchase a high-quality water filtration system for your home, and remember to install a filter on each shower and bathtub in your home. Address any other exposures to lead, such as through paint, older homes, toys, and cosmetics. Avoid products like this that contain lead.

There are ways to cope with the issue of aging lead pipes while the United States works out a plan for dealing with it on a broader level. Follow these guidelines to keep yourself and your family safe and healthy.

Sources:

BoingBoing.net

CNN.com

DrAxe.com

MayoClinic.com

Submit a correction >>
The presidential inauguration is well behind us, and Super Bowl LI is tomorrow. Come Monday, what will we have to look forward to? Valentines Day, of course.

For many of us, especially couples, this day set aside in celebration of romantic love often is the one bright spot in the otherwise dreary month of February. And celebrate we do!

CNN reports that Americans will spend $18.6 billion on Valentines Day, including $1.6 billion on candy, $1.9 billion on flowers and $4.4 billion on diamonds, gold and silver. In 2015, Hallmark alone sold 4.25 billion Valentine greeting cards!

Its almost inconceivable that all this spending and celebration is done in the name of an obscure 3rd century Catholic bishop and martyr. That he lived and died during this period is one of the few certainties we have about the man known formally as Saint Valentine of Rome.

In 1969, the Church removed him from the General Roman Calendar  the annual calendar of feasts and holy days, including days set aside to honor particular saints  because we know so little about him. He is still considered a saint, however, and is honored on Feb. 14, the date traditionally held as the day of his execution around the year 269.

The story behind his being martyred  that is, executed for his fidelity to his faith  gives us the rationale for his long association with love and romance. In the 3rd century, the Catholic Church was strongly being persecuted by Claudius Gothicus (Claudius II), the Roman emperor. Valentine, then a priest in Rome, was arrested for marrying Christian couples in secret (so that the husbands wouldnt have to go to war) and generally assisting Christians who were being persecuted.

Both were serious crimes. Nonetheless, while in jail, a cordial relationship began to grow between Valentine and the emperor. It lasted until Valentine attempted to convince him about the truth of Christianity. Claudius became so enraged that he ordered Valentines execution.

Another legend has it that Valentine was arrested and imprisoned for refusing to offer sacrifice to the pagan Roman gods. While imprisoned, he restored the sight of the jailers blind daughter. On the day of his execution, he left the girl a note signed, Your Valentine.

A few other events also may have contributed to the saints name being associated with an annual celebration of love. Some scholars believe the February 14th date became mingled with the pagan feast of Lupercalia, a festival of love. There was also an ancient belief that birds first mated in mid-February.

Whatever the reason, Valentine has been celebrated for centuries as the patron saint of love, of engaged couples, and of marriage. But what is a patron saint, exactly?

We Catholics often are asked if we worship saints  like the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph or Saint Valentine  in the same way that we worship God Himself. The answer is an emphatic no. Catholics, like all Christians, as well as Jews and Muslims, are monotheistic in faith and practice. That is, we worship only one God.

A saint is someone we believe has achieved eternal life with God in heaven as a reward for having lived a virtuous life while they were alive on earth. We think of them as role models of faith-full Christian living. We also pray to the saints - asking that they, in turn, pray for us before God.

An engaged couple, then, might pray to Saint Valentine asking for Gods blessings on their engagement and their future married life together. Whatever your status - whether single, engaged, or married - may your Saint Valentines Day be blessed, happy and loving!

Deacon Peter Kuhn ministers at St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Brookfield. You can contact him at deaconpeterk@parishmail.com.
By Drazen Jorgic KARACHI (Reuters) - Chinese companies are in talks to snap up more businesses and land in Pakistan after sealing two major deals in recent months, a sign of deepening ties after Beijing vowed to plough $57 billion into a new trade route across the South Asian nation. A dozen executives from some of Pakistan's biggest firms told Reuters that Chinese companies were looking mainly at the cement, steel, energy and textile sectors, the backbone of Pakistan's $270 billion economy. Analysts say the interest shows Chinese firms are using Beijing's "One Belt, One Road" project - a global trade network of which Pakistan is a key part - to help expand abroad at a time when growth has slowed at home. A Chinese-led consortium recently took a strategic stake in the Pakistan Stock Exchange, and Shanghai Electric Power acquired one of Pakistan's biggest energy producers, K-Electric, for $1.8 billion. "The Chinese have got deep pockets and they are looking for major investment in Pakistan," said Muhammad Ali Tabba, chief executive of two companies in the Yunus Brothers Group cement-to-chemicals conglomerate. Tabba said Yunus Brothers, partnering with a Chinese company, lost out in the battle for K-Electric, but the group is eyeing up other joint ventures as part of a $2 billion expansion plan over the coming years. Mohammad Zubair, Pakistan's privatisation minister until a few days ago, told Reuters China's steel giant Baosteel Group is in talks over a 30-year lease for state-run Pakistan Steel Mills. Baosteel did not respond to a request for comment. The negotiations come as Pakistani business sentiment turns, with companies betting that Beijing's splurge on road, rail and energy infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will boost the economy. The Chinese charge is in contrast to Western investors, who have largely avoided Pakistan in recent years despite fewer militant attacks and economic growth near 5 percent. It is welcomed by many in Pakistan: foreign direct investment was $1.9 billion in 2015/2016, far below the 2007/2008 peak of $5.4 billion. At the stock exchange signing ceremony, Sun Weidong, China's ambassador to Pakistan, said the deal "embodies the ongoing financial integration" between Chinese and Pakistani markets. "This will facilitate more financial support for our enterprises," Sun said. RESERVATIONS CPEC will connect China's Western region with Pakistan's Arabian Sea port of Gwadar through a network of rail, road and pipeline projects. That will be funded by loans from China, and much of the business will go to Chinese enterprises. The scale of Chinese corporate interest beyond that is difficult to gauge, but in Karachi, Pakistan's financial centre, sharply-dressed Chinese appear to outnumber Westerners in hotels, restaurants and the city's airport. Rising skyscrapers testify to a construction boom in the city, businesses are printing Chinese-language brochures and salaries demanded by Pakistanis who speak Chinese have shot up. Miftah Ismail, chairman of Pakistan's Board of Investment, said Chinese companies were interested in investing in the telecoms and auto sectors, with FAW Group and Foton Motor Group planning to enter Pakistan. FAW said the Pakistan "project is going through internal approvals", but did not offer more details. Foton declined to comment. But not everyone is excited by China's growing role in the Pakistan economy, including trade unions, who said Chinese companies' alleged mistreatment of local workers in Africa in the past had alarmed them. "We have concern and reservations that the Chinese might use the same methods in Pakistan," said Nasir Mansoor, deputy general secretary of National Trade Union Federation, Pakistan, the national trade union body. The Chinese government and Chinese companies have dismissed such accusations in the past. And doing business may not be easy for newcomers. Security remains a concern despite a drop in Islamist militant violence, and in the World Bank's ease of doing business index, Pakistan ranks 144 out of 190 countries. NEXT PHASE The Chinese interest comes as Islamabad and Beijing discuss the next phase of CPEC: how to build Pakistan's industry with the help of Chinese state-owned industrial giants. Pakistani officials are drafting plans for special economic zones which would offer tax breaks and other benefits to Chinese businesses. But even before zones are established, Chinese investors are scoping out land deals. "A lot of companies ... don't care about CPEC. They just want 500 acres of land to set up shop," said Naheed Memon, head of the Sindh province's Board of Investment. Faisal Aftab, manager of private investment firm Oxon Partners, said Oxon was in talks with two state-run Chinese companies and a wealthy Chinese businessman to purchase and develop land for high-end residential and commercial properties. "They are seeking land in prime markets such as Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad," Aftab said. Yunus Brothers' Tabba urged Western investors to overcome their "phobia" of Pakistan. "If they came here, they would see the momentum, the buzz of growth." (Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in KARACHI and Mehreen Zahra Malik in ISLAMABAD; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
BROOKFIELD - Bridgeport Bishop Frank Caggiano plans to visit Saint Joseph School Saturday to announce the fate of the struggling elementary school.

The 9 a.m. visit would mark the Bishops fourth trip to a parochial school this week to announce how the diocese plans to grow low enrollment and put schools on stable financial footing.

On Monday Caggiano visited Danbury to announce that none of three struggling Catholic elementary schools would close.

On Wednesday, the bishop announced a three-year plan in Stamford to create a single school from four Catholic elementary schools.

On Friday, he was scheduled to visit Trumbull to announce the fate of three Catholic elementary schools in the Shelton and Monroe area.
Do you remember the image during the credits of the movie Forrest Gump, where a feather is floating through the sky, being carried in whatever direction the wind would take it? That is a perfect visual of what not to do, when trying to build a business.

Business success requires an almost religious level of focus on the goal at hand, while not letting the whims or pet projects of our customers, investors or employees blow us in different directions. The entrepreneur that can keep the team focused and not easily distracted is the one that will most successfully get to the finish line.

What is focus?

The best way to define focus might be to give you a personal example of what focus is not. Yes, even yours truly has fallen victim to a loss of focus during the early days of my executive career. And, this example from my iExplore days will pound home the point.

iExplore was a consumer portal to research and purchase adventure tours, where our primary strength was consumer marketing online, while relying on ground operator partners to run the trips. But, in our early days, we got lured into the corporate incentive travel business by one of our customers. The notion of selling 100 passengers per booking, instead of two passengers per booking, sounded worth it to a startup trying to scale its business.

Related: 4 Strategies for Scaling Up From a Business Guru

But, in chasing that business, we quickly learned that the corporate incentive business is driven by a B2B sales team, not consumer marketers. We didnt have the right kind of team, with meeting planner relationships. Also, the skill sets required for customer success were a lot more than marketing. We needed professional event planners and boots on the ground to be really successful. And that just wasnt our consumer model, since we didnt actually have to run the trips ourselves.

Attempting to get into the corporate incentive business was the equivalent of me leading the team down a rabbit hole. That flavor of the month looked like a good move, based on the financial upside of a business like that, but without the right sales and operations team involved, it was simply a fools errand. It ultimately distracted us from focusing on continued success in our consumer business. So, the point here: Dont let a flavor of the month lead you down any rabbit holes, as those rarely bear fruit, long term.

Don't confuse focus with stubbornness.

There was a major pivot point in our history, when iExplore began to sell advertising on our website. I really wanted to stay focused on being a travel-revenue-only business, as I thought the ads were going to clutter up the site and hurt the user experience. But, my fellow executives passionately made their case to do a small advertising test on our website. And, the result was a new-found revenue stream and a 75 percent profit margin business that far exceeded the 10 percent profits margins we were getting from our travel revenues.

Related: Revenue Is the Only Funding Your Startup Should Seek

The point here was, had I stay solely focused on being a travel business, we would have missed an even bigger opportunity to evolve into a big travel media business. Once we learned that 30 percent of our revenues were driving 75 percent of our bottom line profits, the team shifted directions toward what we saw as the future of our business success.

You can only build 1 business at a time.

Once iExplore made the decision we were shifting our focus to being a media business, from a travel business, that changed everything from a website design perspective. And, that ruffled a lot of feathers internally from our travel department, which believed that the media business was actually hurting the company. There was a constant tug-of-war between the travel business and media business, fighting for prominence and positioning on the web pages. What was good for one was bad for the other.

I actually thought having the two lines of business fighting with each other would create a good balance on the website, by not letting the user experience get bogged down by too many ads. But what I should have done was pull the plug on the travel business altogether and let the high-margin media business drive the train. The media business required fewer people to build, drove three times the profitability and was very sticky with a high level of repeat clients. Hindsight is 20/20, but we should have had better focus on that one business line to truly maximize our success.

Related: A 3-Step Process to Making Better Decisions

But, it was a scary thing to do, exiting the core business upon which the company was founded. But never be scared to make the right business decision, even if it means killing your sacred cows.

Defining the goals to focus on.

To define the key business goals that the management team needs to focus on, a more formal strategic business planning process is required. Most entrepreneurs dont know how, or dont take the time, to run that process. It's a vital process to implement. Even if you do it in abbreviated fashion, taking the time to define your strategic plan will make sure the voices of all stakeholders are heard and ensure you are truly focused on the right objectives to maximize success for your business, long term.

Keeping the team focused on those goals.

Once a plan is set, your job as CEO is to make sure your entire management team stays focused on hitting those goals and not running down any new rabbit holes. At your next strategic planning process, any new ideas -- and the odd rabbit hole -- can be considered. You cant have your CFO building a sedan, your COO building a minivan and your CTO building an SUV, when all agreed during the planning process you were going to build a luxury coupe. Focus, more focus and still more focus will help you achieve your business goals a lot faster.

Related:

Focusing Like a Laser Will Increase Your Odds of Success

Here's Why You Need to Stop Worrying About the Worst-Case Scenario

How Online Businesses Can Prepare for 2017



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
We see several reasons why Democrats and Republicans with a backbone should not support President Trumps nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch for the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But this reason alone suffices: He would favor the National Rifle Association and its profit-making agenda of weaponizing as many Americans as possible. This path is insane. As it is, the United States has the highest gun ownership in the world with 270 million guns owned by civilians, according to the Small Arms Survey reported in the Washington Post in 2012. For comparison, India had the second highest with 46 million.

Not surprisingly, the United States had the highest percentage of firearms homicides  67.5 percent of all homicides. The correlation between gun ownership and gun homicides is irrefutable.

Judge Neil Gorsuch of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, was nominated by President Donald Trump late Tuesday for the seat left vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died last February. Gorsuch, a fellow conservative, adheres to Scalias principle of originalism, that is, looking at the Constitution through the founders intent, not interpreting with modern considerations that did not exist 230 years ago.

We do not want to see the Democrats in Washington become obstructionists, much the way the Republicans were during the Obama administration. But the reality that the Republicans blocked then-President Obamas nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court cannot be ignored. Republican leadership would not even let the nomination come to a vote, leaving the court split.

Harm, not harmony, would ensue if the minority party would acquiesce on this nomination.

Critics of Gorsuch point to his votes on gun issues during his decade on the Colorado bench, including a 2012 decision in favor of a man who said he didnt know he was a felon when he illegally owned a gun. The Second Amendment protects an individuals right to own firearms and may not be infringed lightly, Gorsuch wrote. While we would agree that any right should not be infringed lightly, no right should be stretched out of the realm of common sense. The right to bear arms does not infer the right to bear militarized weapons.

President Trumps alliances are clear  he met with NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre at the White House the day after nominating Gorsuch.

Our allegiance is equally clear  rooted in the tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown on Dec. 14, 2012 that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators. The shooter used an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle with a large-capacity magazine.

In response to the tragedy, the Connecticut General Assembly enacted some of the toughest gun laws in the country, including reducing the number of bullets allowed in a magazine. The Connecticut Citizens Defense League challenged Connecticuts 2013 laws, and this week the divided U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the organizations appeal.

In the time since the elementary school deaths in Newtown, the country has seen 1,279 mass shootings, as of Feb. 2. Mass shootings, as defined by the Gun Violence Archive, are when four or more people are shot at the same general time and location. It will take many avenues to turn around the culture of gun violence in our country.

At age 49, Gorsuch could be a Supreme Court justice for a long time to come. He would likely be guiding decisions across generations and administrations from both sides of the aisle. On a divided bench, there is no room for an extremist.
Reportedly, Apple AAPL will set up its iPhone assembly line in India by the end of Apr 2017. The iPhone-maker will set up its first manufacturing unit in Bangalore, Karnataka and has teamed up with Wistron Corp. from Taiwan to take care of the assembly of the iPhones.

Why India?

The decision comes at a time when the smartphone market is witnessing a slowdown in other parts of the world except India, which remains the fastest growing market in the segment.

With Narendra Modi at the helm, the tagline of Make in India is fast catching up with global manufacturing majors. The Apple deal could open the doors for other global players to set up their manufacturing units in the country.

However, China still remains a major contender in the manufacturing space.

Apple Inc. Price and Consensus

Apple Inc. Price and Consensus | Apple Inc. Quote

What Does This Mean for Apple?

Currently, the smartphone scene in India is being dominated by Samsung Electronics Co. and other comparatively cheap Chinese brands such as Oppo.

As per a Counterpoint Research report, in 2016, Apple shipped 2.5 million iPhones to India. However, the company ranked 10th in the top smartphone vendors list for the December quarter. An estimated 750 million smartphones are projected to be sold in the country by 2020, where Apple currently has only a 2% market share.

As per capita income in the country is on the rise, this trend is likely to witness a major shift with people turning to premium-priced phones such as the iPhone in the future.

Moreover, Apples strategy to remain a fabless firm by handing over capital intensive processes such as manufacturing, factory building and staff hiring to third parties (in this case Wistron Corp.) are expected to positively impact the companys bottom-line going ahead.

Stock Performance Overview

Shares of Apple have performed more or less in line with the broader Zacks Computer - Mini Computers industry over the last one year. While the industry gained 33.1%, the stock gained 32.7%

Story continues

The in-line performance of the stock could be primarily attributed to good growth in its services revenues, especially with regard to Apple Music and App Store. However, as mentioned above, the company is seeing sluggish demand for its flagship offering, the iPhone in major markets worldwide. Also, intensifying competition and macroeconomic headwinds remain concerns for the company.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

At present, Apple carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Some better-ranked stocks in the broader technology space include Acxiom Corporation ACXM, Aspen Technology, Inc. AZPN and Inphi Corporation IPHI, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Notably, the consensus estimate for Acxioms current year has remained stable at 29 cents over the last 60 days.

Similarly, the consensus estimate for Aspens current year has improved to $1.67 from $1.62 over the last seven days.

Also, the consensus estimate for Inphis current year has remained stable at 85 cents over the last 90 days.

The Best Place to Start Your Stock Search

Today, you are invited to download the full list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 "Strong Buy" stocks  absolutely free of charge. Since 1988, Zacks Rank #1 stocks have nearly tripled the market, with average gains of +26% per year. Plus, you can access the list of portfolio-killing Zacks Rank #5 "Strong Sells" and other private research. See these stocks free >>



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DUBAI, UAE, Feb. 3, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Following the recently announced moratorium on the Hungarian Residency Bond Program and the upcoming March deadline for new applications, Arton Capital is happy to announce a significant improvement in the investment conditions for new and existing clients of the program.

Instead of locking 300,000 of their capital over a period of 5 years, applicants now have the option of financing the residency bond purchase for a one-time interest prepayment of 125,000. This option allows our clients to gain access to the most popular residency by investment program in Europe and obtain permanent residency within 30 days. To qualify applicants will need to meet the program's due diligence and procedural requirements.

The attractive financing option makes Hungary's residency program the best in the world, as ranked by Arton Index, the industry benchmark for residency and citizenship programs based on attractiveness from investors' point of view.

Furthermore, the 2017 Passport Index, which ranks the world's passports has ranked Hungary's passport at the 8th place in the Global Passport Power Rank, with access to 151 countries visa-free or with visa on arrival.

Thanks to Arton Capital's proven track record of more than 5,000 invested clients and our strong relationship with major financial institutions, the company has managed to secure a syndicated loan from key European and international banks for the required investment.

In addition, by the second half of 2017, we expect to extend this financing offer to current clients who have already purchased government bonds and obtained residency. Applicants who invested between 2014 and 2016 will be offered a buyback option of their bonds at a rate relative to the bond's maturity.

New investors have a limited time before March 31, 2017, to benefit from this extraordinary opportunity. For more details, please contact our team of experts or visit our page dedicated to Hungary's Residency Bond Program.

About Arton Capital

Arton Capital empowers individuals and families to become Global Citizens by investing in a second residency or citizenship around the world. As a global financial advisory firm, Arton plays a critical role in helping investors, industry professionals and governments meet their goals quickly, efficiently and effectively.

For more on Arton's bespoke services, please visit www.artoncapital.com.

About the Hungarian Residency Bond Program

Established in 2012, the Hungarian Investor Residency Bond Program offers investors a 30-day pathway to permanent residency in one of the most-visited, culturally rich and well-located countries in Europe.

Learn more on the Hungarian Residency Bond Program.

SOURCE Arton Capital

For further information: John Hanafin, CEO, Arton Capital - Empowering Global CitizenshipE, [email protected], T (Dubai) +971 4 456 9220

Related Links

www.artoncapital.com


TORONTO, Feb. 3, 2017 /CNW/ - As Canada prepares to celebrate its 150th birthday, RBC asked high school students to reflect on the contribution of black Canadians over the past 150 years and what future generations can learn from them. 30 winners were chosen from a record-number of entries, including the top three winners:

$5,000: Kharissa Edwards, Mississauga, ON. Kharissa wrote about Josiah Henson and the pathway that he helped pave for future generations.

$2,500: Sarah Konermann, London, ON. Sarah wrote about the power of words to create change, specifically those of Canadian author Lawrence Hill.

$1,500: Britney Trieu, Calgary, AB. Britney wrote about Rosemary Brown, the first black Canadian woman elected to a provincial legislature.

Winners were selected by a panel of individuals from all across the country who have each made a tremendous impact within their communities. Among them are lawyer Doug Ruck of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Carlton University professor Nduka Otiono, and museum professional Julian Kingston of Oakville, Ontario.

"Not only was it fantastic that so many submissions came in, the quality, caliber and diversity of the students' work was also very impressive," said Douglas Ruck, former Chair of the Nova Scotia Labour Board and former Vice Chair of the Canada Industrial Relations Board. "While I consider myself well-versed in Black history, there is no doubt I learned a lot and acquired a fresh perspective after reading the essays! Sincere congratulations to all the students who entered the competition, and especially to Kharissa, Sarah and Britney for earning the top three awards."

The other winners, who will each be receiving a $500 scholarship from the RBC Foundation, are:

Darian Agapay , Moose Jaw, SK

, Brandon Anakeu-Kake, Winnipeg, MB

Jessica Blatta, Winnipeg, MB

Dante Bresolin , Windsor, ON

, Pronoy Chaudhuri, Brampton, ON

Maya George , Ajax, ON

, Hannah Gunther-Wexler , Winnipeg, MB

, Rachel Holland , South Farmington, NS

, Rachel Hughes , Calgary, AB

, Davis Legree , Brooklin, ON

, Albert Li , Calgary, AB

, Jade Li , Edmonton, AB

, Ahmed Mohamoud , Calgary, AB

, Lauryne Mvuezolo, Ottawa, ON

Liam Nicolle , Moncton, NB

, Tiana Parker , Conception Bay, NL

, Conception Bay, NL Lucy Rattan , Barrie, ON

, Aurora Rivera , London, ON

, Sandra Ruszewska, St. Catharines, ON

Jasmine Saulnier , Moncton, NB

, Omolara Soyinka , Mississauga, ON

, Matthew Suchan , Courtice, ON

, Zachary Taylor , Riverview, NB

, Katie Tolley , Prince Albert, SK

, Isaiah Williams , Hamilton, ON

, Joy Xu , Ottawa, ON

, Andrew Yin , Richmond Hill, ON

"These students have done an exceptional job in shining a light on many significant people and events in our nation's history," said Kris Depencier, RBC Regional President, Greater Toronto. "It is important that we all recognize these contributions to our diverse heritage that often fall through the cracks, and I encourage everyone to learn more by reading these essays throughout the month."

Read eight of the winning essays each Monday at rbc.com/essay starting on February 6, with the Top three essays being published on February 27.

RBC's scholarship programs are part of our "all in" approach to engage young people, rewire systems and drive change to help them prepare for the future of work and have equitable access to opportunities.

ABOUT RBC

Royal Bank of Canada is Canada's largest bank, and one of the largest banks in the world, based on market capitalization. We are one of North America's leading diversified financial services companies, and provide personal and commercial banking, wealth management, insurance, investor services and capital markets products and services on a global basis. We have over 80,000 full- and part-time employees who serve more than 16 million personal, business, public sector and institutional clients through offices in Canada, the U.S. and 36 other countries. For more information, please visit http://www.rbc.com/.

RBC helps communities prosper, supporting a broad range of community initiatives through donations, community investments and employee volunteer activities. For more information please see: http://www.rbc.com/community-sustainability/

SOURCE RBC Royal Bank - Public Affairs & Community Relations

For further information: Ciaran Dickson, [email protected], RBC Communications, 416-313-7947
EDMONTON, Feb. 2, 2017 /CNW/ - Tree Canada, the nation's leading national tree planting charity, today announced a more than $1 million investment to restore the forests destroyed by the devastating Fort McMurray wildfires last year. Following overwhelming support from corporate partners and everyday Canadians, Tree Canada announced that plantings will begin this spring.

Tree Canada's "Operation ReLeaf - Fort McMurray" program will begin planting trees in publically-owned natural, forested areas to facilitate forest regrowth according to Fire Smart standards. Discussions are also underway to replace trees lost in adjacent First Nation communities. The restoration project will continue at least into 2018, and possibly into 2019 with a focus on residential trees and street trees scheduled to be planted. A planned 2018 project will aim to restore the tree canopy in Beacon Hill, one of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by the blaze that consumed an area approximately the size of the province of P.E.I.

"We are deeply grateful to Tree Canada and all of its partners for this very generous donation," said Melissa Blake, Mayor of the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo. "This support will undoubtedly lift the spirits of the entire community and help us restore so much of the natural beauty that was impacted by the wildfire."

"We're dedicated to returning this community to its former beauty and would like to thank our corporate partners and individual Canadians for making it possible," said Michael Rosen, President of Tree Canada, who personally visited the region last year to assess the damage and prioritize areas for reforestation. "We deeply sympathize with residents who lost their homes and have had their lives so disrupted by the fire. It is my sincere hope that this initiative will help to bring back a sense of normalcy."

To support the Operation ReLeaf Fort McMurray program, Tree Canada's long-time partner CN generously donated $1 million.

"Fort McMurray is an important community for CN, and our own employees were personally affected by the disaster. We are proud to support an initiative that will not only help restore the tree canopy but will also contribute to the wellbeing of this community with lasting benefits," said Mike Cory, CN Executive Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer. "We encourage other Canadian businesses to join CN in support of Fort McMurray's reforestation."

In addition to CN, Tree Canada has collected generous donations from TELUS, IKEA Canada, FedEx Express Canada, U-Haul, BP Canada Energy Group and Unilever Canada, as well as many individual Canadians.

If you wish to continue the support for Tree Canada's efforts to replenish Fort McMurray's forests, please donate online at www.treecanada.ca. To learn more about Operation ReLeaf - Fort McMurray, visit https://treecanada.ca/en/programs/operation-releaf/.

About Tree Canada



Tree Canada is a not-for-profit charitable organization established to encourage Canadians to plant and care for trees in urban and rural environments. Tree Canada engages Canadian companies, government agencies and individuals to support the planting of trees, the greening of schoolyards, and other efforts to sensitize Canadians to the benefits of planting and maintaining trees. Since 1992, more than 80 million trees have been planted, over 580 schoolyards have been greened, and Tree Canada has helped organize twelve national urban forest conferences. The next Canadian Urban Forest Conference will take place in Vancouver, BC in 2018. More information about Tree Canada is available at www.treecanada.ca.

About Operation ReLeaf



Tree Canada's Operation ReLeaf programs have been helping communities recover from natural disasters and pests since 1996 when the organization responded to the tragedy of Quebec's Saguenay floods. ReLeaf programs are already well entrenched in Alberta, where Tree Canada helped replace urban forests damaged by the 2014 September snowstorm in Calgary, trees lost to the massive floods that devastated southern Alberta in 2013, and since 2010, has helped residents and land owners replace trees lost to the mountain pine beetle.

SOURCE Tree Canada

To view this news release in HTML formatting, please use the following URL: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2017/02/c8872.html

For further information: Paul Jorgenson, Tree Canada, 613 567 5545 ext. 224, [email protected]
The Wall Street Journal indicates a forthcoming report from the US Government Accountability Office focuses most closely on issues with turbopumps in SpaceXs Falcon 9 rocket. The report has found a pattern of problems with the turbine blades within the turbopumps, which deliver rocket fuel into the combustion chamber of the Merlin rocket engine. Some of the components used in the turbopumps are prone to cracks, the government investigators say, and may require a redesign before NASA allows the Falcon 9 booster to be used for crewed flights. NASA has been briefed on the reports findings, and the agencys acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, told the newspaper that he thinks we know how to fix them.

A spokesman for SpaceX, John Taylor, said the company already has a plan in place to fix the potential cracking issue. We have qualified our engines to be robust to turbine wheel cracks, Taylor said. However, we are modifying the design to avoid them altogether. This will be part of the final design iteration on Falcon 9. This final variant of the Falcon 9 booster, named Block 5, is being designed for optimal safety and easier return for potential reuse. According to company founder Elon Musk, it could fly by the end of this year.

The new report also cites other problems with the commercial crew development efforts by SpaceX and Boeing. The latter company, for example, may be having difficulty with ensuring the reliability of its parachute systems to bring crews safely back to a land-based landing.

Spacex and Boeing are struggling to meet NASAs mission requirement for a loss-of-crew probability of 1-in-270. NASA has previously acknowledged this issue, citing the challenge of dealing with micrometeoroid and orbital debris
 Opposition party asks protesters to defy police order

Onyebuchi Ezigbo in Abuja

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) have criticised the move to stop a nationwide peaceful protest spearheaded by a pop musician, Tuface Idibia, billed to take place this weekend.

The protest rally which is being planned to take place simultaneously in some major cities across the country, including Lagos State, Abuja and Asaba, is seen as an avenue provided by the organisers to enable Nigerians voice out their worries over hardship in the land.

However, against the background of reports yesterday stating that police authorities in Lagos had warned that it might not allow the protest to hold, both the APC and PDP were in agreement on opposing the police move, saying it would amount to a breach of the constitution to carry out such an order.

Speaking in a telephone interview with THISDAY, the National Publicity Secretary of the APC, Mallam Bolaji Abdulahi, said there was nothing wrong in people holding peaceful protest under a democracy.

He said the party was not opposed to any form of expression of opposing view point by anyone so far it is done in a peaceful and non-violent manner and did not constitute disruption of public peace.

For us, it is about the constitution of Nigeria, Tuface or any other citizen of the country has the right to stage a peaceful protest, that is the position of our constitution. We as a party will not be part of anything that will abridge or take away the right of citizens to protest, especially in a democracy.

The APC spokesman justified the partys position by saying it would be wrong to stifle peaceful protest since APC benefitted from such citizens right to expression of dissent during its days as opposition party.

We have as a party benefited greatly from citizens right to express their democratic rights and our being in government is not going to change that orientation to promote the liberties and right of citizen hold dessenting views, he said.

On what the party would be advising the security forces and the organisers of the protest to do under the circumstances, the party spokesman said: Well I dont know exactly what the police are saying about banning the protest. I think what the police will probably be saying is that they are concerned about the issue of safety and threat to lives and property in the course of the protest.

There are always fears that hoodlums might hijack a peaceful protest and use the opportunity to perpetrate violence on innocent citizens. I suspect this might be the consideration of the police. But this should not be good enough reason to deny citizens the full enjoyment of their constitutional rights however they wish to express them.

Speaking on the motive of such protests and whether it would impact negatively on the image of the federal government controlled by his party, Abdullahi said:  We believe that protests are a form of feedback, although we may not agree with the grievances but at same time, it may be an opportunity for us to communicate more about what we are doing that the citizens may have had sufficient information on. It may an opportunity for us to give better clarification on what our government is doing.

But fundamentally, it will be a form of feedback for us to do more in citizens engagement and enlightenment and to focus more on our commitment to the promises we made to our people. I do not see it as anything that is antithetical to our democracy.

But on its part, the PDP described the reported ban of the protest as an undemocratic act which should be resisted.

The PDP spokesman, Dayo Adeyeye, who spoke with THISDAY on the matter, urged the protesters to defy any such order by the police, adding that stopping people for engaging in peacefully assembly is not only undemocratic but against the spirit and letters of the countrys constitution.

It is illegal and very undemocratic, the people have the right to protest, the freedom of assembly and freedom to protest are two strong ingredients of a democracy. In America, people have been protesting everywhere and nobody has made any effort to curtail it or to ban them or prevent them from holding.

People have the rights to peaceful assembly and people had the right to protest under the previous regimes of Presidents Goodluck Jonathan, Umaru Musa YarAdua and Olusegun Obasanjo, how could these people now want to stop peaceful protest. These were the same people organising protests in those days against PDP governments.

This shows clearly that we are now under a dictatorial regime. It is an illegal ban and I will urge the organisers of the protest to go ahead with it and defy the police ban because it is wrong.

In an effort to shore up, the federal government yesterday approved a new tax regime, just as it announced its intention to raise taxes on luxury goods.

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) also approved the pursuit of an initiative to force down the prices of food in the country.

But the PDP spokesman reacted to the move to force down food prices as attempt to bring back an archaic economic policy that didnt work many years ago.

This is part of the archaic economic policies of President Muhammadu Buhari that he implemented during his first time in power as a military man. We are back to that again. It never worked and can never work.

We are not in a communist country, prices of goods should be determined by demand and supply, market forces simple. You cannot force it, there is no way to force it. So the Minister of Finance should be better educated, it will not work and the policy is dead on arrival. You cannot force me to sell at prices below my cost price, he said.
From all indications, it appears that President Muhammadu Buhari has now resolved to appoint Justice Walter Onnoghen as the substantive chief justice of Nigeria.Since Justice Onnoghen was sworn in by President Buhari as the acting chief justice of Nigeria (CJN) on November 12, 2016, there has been concern over whether Onnoghen would become substantive CJN since the president was yet to forward his name to the Senate barely a week to the end of the three months that he can hold the post on acting capacity. The period expires on February 7, 2017.However, an impeccable source close to the presidency, who asked not to be named, told LEADERSHIP that the presidency and the attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice had a meeting with Justice Onnoghen at 2am last night.They presented to Onnoghen the dossier the security agencies have on him to go through, showing why they delayed to confirm him. He would have to guard against some of these things when he takes full charge of the judiciary, the source said.With this development, acting President Yemi Osibanjo will forward a letter on behalf of President Buhari to the Senate for Justice Onnoghens confirmation any moment from now.LEADERSHIP Friday recalls that the National Judicial Council (NJC) headed by the immediate past CJN, Justice Mahmud Mohammed, had on October 12, 2016, recommended and forwarded Onnoghens name to the president for appointment as the next CJN in line with Section 231 (1) of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).By the virtue of this provision, the president is to forward NJCs recommendation to the Senate for confirmation. This and other conditions related to the CJNs appointment, such as security screening, were left hanging till the day the then CJN, Justice Mohammed, was to retire after attaining the compulsory retirement age of 70 years on November 10, 2016.Consequently, President Buhari swore in Justice Onnoghen who was the most senior justice of the Supreme Court as the acting CJN in line with Section 231 (4) of the 1999 Constitution, as amended.However, the delay by President Buhari to forward Onnoghens name to the Senate for confirmation and subsequently to appoint him as the substantive CJN began to generate heat in the polity and drew reactions from some individuals and groups in the country.Federal lawmakers from Cross River State under the aegis of Cross River Lawmakers Caucus had on Tuesday raised concerns that for exactly two months and 15 days, the presidency has delayed and withheld to forward his name to the Senate for confirmation as CJN as required by Section 231(1) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.On January 28, 2017, former president of the Nigeria Bar Association, Chief Wole Olanipekun, SAN, warned the federal government against the creation of a hazardous uncertainty in the polity by the presidents refusal to transmit Onnoghens name to the Senate for confirmation as the substantive CJN, saying the Buhari government was setting a dangerous precedent by causing Onnoghen to linger on the post of acting CJN since November 10 last yearBut faulting Olanipekun, the chairman, Presidential Advisory Committee Against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay (SAN), declared that President Buhari was not bound to ratify Onnoghens name as recommended by the NJC. He specifically said that since Buhari was neither a rubber stamp of the NJC, nor a robot for the conveyance of a recommendation from the NJC to the Senate, Onnoghens recommendation, or that of any other name, did not give him automatic entitlement to the CJN chair.LEADERSHIP
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, has described the persons behind the rumoured death of President Muhammadu Buhari as wicked and callous.A statement issued on Friday in Abeokuta by Mr Kehinde Akinyemi, Obasanjos Media Aide, quoted the former president as saying, President Buhari needs our prayers rather than bad wishes.He said that prayers from well meaning persons, particularly, Nigerians would help Buhari to get well quickly and ginger his morale to return to the country stronger and better.Obasanjo, who warned Nigerians against politicisation of the presidents health, recalled that he had also been a victim of such rumoured death while he was President in 1999. Obasanjo said: No normal human being will wish an elderly person dead irrespective of their differences.If you dont like him, wait for another election and stop spreading rumour that he is dead.No matter what his health situation, maybe, we should pray for him to recover quick and come back stronger and better.For anyone wishing him dead, such person or group of persons are callous, wicked and treacherous.I was also rumored to have died almost 12 times.I dont know what they derive from doing so, but, they should seek for forgiveness.Even if we know that the President is sick, he is in a better position to know what to say or what to do and not wishing him dead.We should just stop politicising everything, especially with the elderly in the country.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that recently, there were rumoured reports in the social media of Buharis death at a London hospital.The presidency however dismissed the reports saying Buhari was on a ten-day vacation leave and was not on admission at any hospital in London.Femi Adesina, Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President, said the President intended to undergo routine medical check-up during his vacation in London.
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos confirmed on Friday he will not run in this years presidential election, calling an end to 38 y...

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos confirmed on Friday he will not run in this years presidential election, calling an end to 38 years as head of state, but he will retain control of the powerful ruling party.Dos Santos, aged 74, said in March 2016 he would not run in elections due in August but opponents remained suspicious given he had reneged on similar pledges during nearly four decades running Angola.Defence Minister Joao Lourenco will be the presidential candidate for the ruling Peoples Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), dos Santos said ahead of a party meeting where candidates for the vote will be confirmed.Dos Santos, will remain president of the MPLA, retaining sweeping powers that include choosing parliamentary candidates and appointing top posts in the army and police.His inscrutable public demeanour belies his tight control of Angola, a former Portuguese colony where he has overseen an oil-backed economic boom and the reconstruction of infrastructure devastated by a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002. The MPLA won parliamentary majorities in the three elections since the end of the war.Lourenco, deputy president of the MPLA, is viewed as a dos Santos ally. Angola, an OPEC member and Africas second biggest oil exporter, has been hit hard by the slump in global crude prices in the last two years.Oil export revenues account for more than 90 percent of foreign exchange revenues. Inspite pf its oil wealth, most people live in poverty and critics accuse dos Santos of enriching himself and his associates, including his billionaire daughter, Isabel, named by Forbes as Africas richest woman.Isabel dos Santos was appointed by her father as head of the state oil company Sonangol last year and his son Jose Filomeno is chairman of Angolas sovereign wealth fund.
The APC Northern Musicians Forum on Friday said it would not participate in the planned protest by Nigerian music icon, 2face over alleged...

The APC Northern Musicians Forum on Friday said it would not participate in the planned protest by Nigerian music icon, 2face over alleged sufferings in Nigerian.Haruna Ningi, Chairman of the Forum, who made the remark at a media briefing in Kaduna, said that the protest was different from the ideology of the forum.He, however, agreed that Nigerians were suffering, but insisted that the present administration met nearly an empty treasury and had to increase savings, to get Nigerians out of the present situation.Ningi urged Nigerians to be patient with the present administration, adding that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government would get the country out of the present difficulties.There is hunger in the land and the president is going to give us a life-saving change that our sufferings will not come back again.But they need time for the change to come. Ningi debunked the claim that the forum was influenced by politicians.The president has integrity and will not pay any musician to sing for him.He said that the forum was meant to mobilise the electorate through music at the grassroots to disseminate correct and factual information on national challenges.Such songs in hard times will imbibe in the minds of common men that they have a role to play in the journey of change.
The federal government is launching a forum in which private sector stakeholders will interact with the government to discuss solutions to...

The federal government is launching a forum in which private sector stakeholders will interact with the government to discuss solutions to the problems of the country's ailing economy.As part of the development process, a Forum is being organised for the Private Sector to actively engage with Govt on the NERGP ProposalsThe forum is scheduled for noon on Monday, February 6, 2017, and will be chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo.
President Donald Trump, who was strongly backed by Evangelical Christian voters, has promised to totally destroy a 1954 US law barring c...

President Donald Trump, who was strongly backed by Evangelical Christian voters, has promised to totally destroy a 1954 US law barring churches from politics.Trump promised to equally put an end to the ban on other religious institutions from political activity, if they wanted to keep tax-exempt status.He made his comments about a measure called the Johnson Amendment during remarks at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.I will get rid of and totally destroy the Johnson Amendment and allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution, Trump told an audience including politicians, religious leaders and guests such as Jordans King Abdullah.I will do that, remember.The Johnson Amendment prohibits tax-exempt organisations such as churches, charities and educational institutions from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign in favour or against a political candidate.It is named after Democratic former President Lyndon Johnson and is an important statutory barrier between politics and religion.Trump previously spoke out against the amendment during the campaign and won the support of evangelical Christian leaders including Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr.A change in the law would require action in the Republican-led US Congress.After Trumps remarks, Paul Ryan, speaker of the house of representatives, told reporters he had always supported eliminating the Johnson Amendment.Critics including the group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State expressed, are unhappy with the move.President Donald Trump and his allies in the religious right seek to turn Americas houses of worship into miniature political action committees, said the groups executive director, Barry Lynn.It would also lead some houses of worship to focus on supporting candidates in exchange for financial and other aid. That would be a disaster for both churches and politics in America.Scrapping the Johnson Amendment has been a goal of Christian conservatives, who contend it violates free speech and religious freedom rights.The US constitutions First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion and bars the government from establishing an official religion.A Trump executive order a week ago put a 120-day halt on the US refugee programme, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.Trump defended his directive as crucial to ensuring religious freedom and tolerance in America, and said he wanted to prevent a beachhead of intolerance from spreading in the US.He also called terrorism a fundamental threat to religious freedom.The world is in trouble, but were going to straighten it out. OK? Thats what I do, I fix things, he said.
Mirroring US President Trump's Muslim ban, Citizens from five Muslim-majority countries will no longer be able to obtain Kuwaiti visas...

Mirroring US President Trump's Muslim ban, Citizens from five Muslim-majority countries will no longer be able to obtain Kuwaiti visas, after reports the Gulf state issued tight entry restrictions.Citzens from the countries that include:will not be able to obtain visit, tourism or trade Kuwaiti visas with the news coming few days after the US slapped its own restrictions on seven Muslim-majority countries.Passport holders from the countries will no lot be allowed to enter the Gulf state while the blanket ban is in place and have been told not to apply to visas.Kuwaiti sources told local media that the restrictions were in place due to the "instability" in the five countries and that the ban would be lifted once the security situation improves.Pakistan and Afghanistan have all witnessed violence from extremist groups, while Syria and Iraq are embroiled in internal conflicts.Although mainly peaceful, tensions between Iran and the Gulf have ratcheted up over the past year with the GCC powers accusing Tehran of attempting to destabilise the region.Kuwait is concerned about the threat of extremist groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group with both militant organisations have a presence in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.Kuwait has issued a number of laws targeting foreigners in recent years, and made it one of the most unfriendly Gulf states towards expatriates.In 2015, Kuwait was named as the worst place in the world for expatriates in a 64 country InterNations survey.Meanwhile, Trump's Muslim ban has been met with widespread outrage since it was signed on Friday, although Gulf states have remained quiet on the issue.Dubai security chief Dhahi Khalfan outraged Syrians and other nationalities included in the ban when he publically backed Trump's decision.However, Khaleej Times reports that Pakistan's ambassador in Kuwait said that Kuwait hasn't placed any visa ban on Pakistani nationals. Ghulam Dastagir was quoted as saying that news on social media about the ban was baseless.
Following the release of a tell-all memoir documenting her relationship with Maje Ayida, Nigerian media personality Toke Makinwa, has been...

Following the release of a tell-all memoir documenting her relationship with Maje Ayida, Nigerian media personality Toke Makinwa, has been asked to stop the sales of the book and all forms of promotional activities.The request was made of Makinwa by Maje Ayida, whos lawyers have also sent the on-air-personality, a letter of demand.Makinwas book, On Becoming, had detailed her account of her relationship/marriage to Ayida, a fitness expert.In the book, the television personality accused Ayida of giving her sexually transmitted diseases, being a serial cheat and committing adultery.The legal documents describe the book as nothing but exaggerated fabrication.The book which was published November 27, 2016, by Kachifo Limited, was said to contain defamatory words.TheCable Lifestyle has learned that Maje Ayida has hired law firms in both the United Kingdom and Nigeria to handle the case.They are Carter-Ruck, a leading defamation law firm in the UK to top figures like Simon Cowell, Elton John and Chelsea FC while Kemi Pinheiro (SAN) of Pineiro LP is heading the legal front in Nigeria.According to the letter of demand sent to Makinwa, her estranged husband was said to have requested legal separation from her within 6 months of their marriage in January 2014  when it became clear that the marriage was breaking down.Makinwa was alleged to have signed a legal separation agreement in July 2014, TheCable Lifestyle was informed.The letter said it was well documented that Makinwa and Ayida had agreed to separate by July 2014, which the book failed to record.The book misleadingly describes the circumstances at the time, the letter read.Pinheiro LP, the Nigerian law firm, said it was untrue that Maje had given her an STI in the past or at any stage in their relationship.The law firm also noted that it was highly misleading for the book to allege that Maje did not financially contribute adequately to the marriage.The publicity sought by you has been relentless, and limitless, said Adebowale Kamoru in the letter of demand, on behalf of Pinheiro LP.The law firm further noted that the publication has brought public ridicule on Maje, noting that his reputation has been assaulted, injured and damaged.His professional integrity as one of the leading health and wellness practitioners in Nigeria, and his professional credibility built over the years through dedicated hard work have been besmirched, the letter said.According to the law firm, Makinwas representation of Ayida in the book was not a true reflection of who he is, his character and his background.Maje Ayida, through his lawyers, has, among other things, informed Makinwa to retrieve the already-sold books and stop all forms of distribution, TheCable Lifestyle understands.The letter mandated Makinwa to withdraw from circulation all copies of the book and take immediate steps to call in all copies of the book already distributed and deliver up same at the place to be agreed upon by our client for destruction.It further said a failure by the popular celebrity to retract the published words and tender a full page unreserved apology to Maje Ayida in three national dailies will result in the commencement of legal action.Makinwa was also advised to take immediate steps to stop the distribution of the books on Amazon, iTunes and all forms of promotion on her social media accounts.She was given seven days upon receipt of the letter to comply with the demands or theyd be forced to seek legal redress.The warning letter was said to have been delivered to Makinwa on Monday, December 23, 2016.Makinwa is set to hold a book reading in Ghana on Friday, February 3.It cant be immediately confirmed whether she received the letter of demand.Source: TheCable
Toke Makinwa's estranged husband, Maje Ayida has hired British lawyers to sue Toke Makinwa over her tell all book 'On Becoming' which he says is an exaggerated fabrication.He has also asked her to stop the sales of the book and all forms of promotional activities.According to Maje, it is untrue that he gave Toke Makinwa a sexually transmitted disease in the past or at any stage in their relationship. It is alsohighly misleading for Toke's book to allege that Maje did not financially contribute adequately to their marriage.Maje's lawyers have also sent the on-air-personality, a letter of demand which says Toke Makinwa's book contains defamatory words. See the demand letter below.Toke Makinwas tell-all book, On Becoming, had detailed her account of her relationship/marriage to Ayida, a fitness expert.In the book, the television personality accused Ayida of giving her sexually transmitted diseases,being a serial cheat and committing adultery.
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) contingent that joined the ECOWAS force to The Gambia to reinstall democracy and possibly, militarily oust t...

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) contingent that joined the ECOWAS force to The Gambia to reinstall democracy and possibly, militarily oust the former and embattled President of The Gambia, Yahaya Jammeh who lost the December presidential election to the current President, Adama Barrow but refused to step down has returned home. The contingent returned to Nigeria on Thursday from Dakar, Senegal.Jammeh had refused to step down a week after he called Barrow, then President-elect to concede defeat. After much persuation by ECOWAS body that he cede power, Jammeh adamantly stayed put, prompting the ECOWAS bloc to send in both ground, sea and air troops to oust him.This decision became even necessary then when the countrys army boss, Ousman Badjie initially declared unalloyed support for Jammeh. However, he later made a volte face, declaring total suppport and allegiance to the new President, Barrow when the tension became high with Senegalese and Nigerian troops among the ECOMIG force pushing to enter Gambia to oust Jammeh.Ousman then stated strongly that he would not order his men to engage the ECOWAS troops, calling such a stupid fight. However, despite the advancement of the ECOWAS troops to The Gambias borders, Jammeh stayed put, claiming it was the will of Allah that he defend The Gambia.But, in a last minute dialogue, Jammeh gave in and stepped down after saying that none of the ECOWAS member leaders loved The Gambian people more than himself. Barrow who had fled the country to neighbouring Senegal was sworn-in as the President of The Gambia in Dakar, Senegal. Barrow has since come home to lead his country men. Meanwhile, as the storm seems to have died down, the troops have started to dismantle for their various countries.
The convener of the Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG group, Oby Ezekwesili, has reacted to plans by the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fata...

The convener of the Bring Back Our Girls, BBOG group, Oby Ezekwesili, has reacted to plans by the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, to truncate the planned nationwide protest by music icon, Tuface Idibia, against the Buhari-led government.The nationwide protest, slated for February 6 in the state, has since become a subject of controversy.Owoseni had vowed to stop the protest, saying the command wasnt ready for that kind of demonstration and as such would not allow it to hold.Despite warnings, the Benue State born has vowed to go ahead with his planned nationwide protest against the government.But responding to the order, the former Minister said the Federal Government or police had no right to repress citizens who have decided to speak out against obnoxious policies.On her Twitter handle  @obyezeks, she tweeted: Please all join in praying for the #IStandWithNigeria Citizens that their march goes well & for the FG that it hears their agitation.Citizens and NOT POLITICIANS have decided to activate their #OfficeOfTheCitizens through the #IStandWithNigeria march. DO IT WITH DECORUM.As for me, I wish the #IstandwithNigeria Citizens well with their march. Please be ABSOLUTELY CIVIL. Be guided by CORE VALUE of RESPECT.WE shall await what FG& @PoliceNG does on the 5th & 6th. One prays that WISDOM will prevail& the #IStandWithNigeria Citizens do their thing.CULTURE of Govt insulting, assaulting, denigrating, disparaging maligning, slandering&attacking dissenting voices is CRUDE DEMOCRACY. STOP!Let the FG & @PoliceNG desist from ESCALATING TENSION in an already brittle public space. STOP threatening the #IStandWithNigeria Citizens.We thought that FG& @PoliceNG learnt something from their failure to STIFLE our @BBOG_Nigeria Citizens RIGHT TO PROTEST. #IStandWithNigeria.WE all have a DUTY to DEFEND the principles and ethos of Democratic Practice in our country. No authority is greater than CITIZENS. NONE.My free counsel to Pres @MBuhari & acting Pres @ProfOsinbajo is YOU CANNOT WIN AGAINST YOUR AGITATED CITIZENS. Call @PoliceNG to order NOW.If the FG & @PoliceNG have a shred of honor ard for our Constitution, they must RECANT their stance against #IStandWithNigeria protest.Citizens can decide to agitate on ANYTHING as long as it is done within their Constitutional RIGHT. No Govt has a RIGHT to REPRESS citizens.The greatest TRAGEDY of our current cycle of Democracy is that a Govt which was once in Opposition is now INTOLERANT of citizens agitation.
The Lagos Police Command has issued a statement on the arrest of Toyin Aimakhu's ex-boyfriend, Seun Egbegbe.





The Lagos Police Command has issued a statement on the arrest of Toyin Aimakhu's ex-boyfriend, Seun Egbegbe.Read statement issued by Lagos Police below:Arrest Of Notorious FraudstersToday at about 1300hrs one Seun Karim aka Egbegbe and one Ayo Oyekan disguise as the MD of Gbagada general hospital and the other as a patient. They lured one Alhaji Isa Adamu and Abdullahi Haruna both bureau de change members , from different location that they needed 9000dollars and 3000pounds. The unsuspecting victims brought same to the suspects at the hospital where they collected the said amount and attempted to escape with the money.The victims raised alarm and subsequently the suspect were arrested by the policemen attached to the hospital.Further to the arrest of the fraudsters many members of bureau de change are trooping to the office with similar complaint against the suspect.Case is under investigation.
BOCA RATON, FL / ACCESSWIRE / February 3, 2017 / Nursing homes are often desperate to get as much income as possible, and sometimes that means admitting people who shouldn't be there. With the closing of state facilities for those with serious psychiatric issues, some of those who otherwise would be placed there end up in nursing homes instead. Other residents may be substance abusers supposedly getting treatment. Having such a mixed population in a nursing home can be a recipe for disaster if elderly patients are not kept safe from others who may pose a threat, says Boca nursing home abuse lawyer Joe Osborne. If you have concerns about potential abuse of a loved one by another resident, and would like to read more about nursing home neglect, read Ask Questions to Find the Right Nursing Home says Boca Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer.

One Illinois facility is an example of what can go wrong. As reported in the Chicago Tribune1, state and federal regulators are seeking to fine a Chicago nursing home more than $100,000 after five residents overdosed on heroin inside the facility earlier this year.

The Continental Nursing & Rehabilitation Center residents were hospitalized and recovered, but at least two used heroin again hours after they returned, although they were supposed to be on close watch. One of them overdosed again. A sixth overdose was reported in 2015.

Continental is facing fines from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services totaling $76,000 and another $25,000 fine from the state public health department, which claims the facility failed to properly monitor and treat residents with drug addictions. Not surprisingly, Continental is contesting the fines.

Continental, which had a mix of older residents, younger adults with mental illnesses, and residents who are substance abusers, did not admit deficiencies when it stated what corrective actions it would take in response to the overdoses, but stated that, "The facility has ceased admitting any residents with active substance use."

Story continues

The 208 bed nursing home (which pulled in $11 million from Medicaid and Medicare last year) reported to Illinois officials in March that 108 of its residents were younger than 65, 129 had been diagnosed with mental illnesses and 29 had felony records. What can happen with this combination of residents?

Chicago police responded to sixty reports of alleged batteries at Continental from 2011 through 2015, according to a Tribune analysis of police data.

Police came to the Continental in October 2015 after residents told staff of drug abuse inside the facility. Staff searched rooms and found paraphernalia for cooking and shooting drugs that were turned over to police.

Police also came to the facility in 2014 after a 61-year-old patient (admitted for treatment of bipolar disorder, depression, and alcohol abuse) broke his hips and suffered a collapsed lung after he tried to escape the facility by rappelling from a 4th floor window using six sheets tied together. The resident had been drinking before his escape attempt and a subsequent test showed he had a blood alcohol level over four times the legal limit. He was found on the ground with a broken glass bottle and a beer can beside him.

Continental is part of an Indiana based company with over fifty nursing home facilities in eight states.

If a long term care facility can't provide proper care for someone, that person should not be admitted. If such a person is younger, mentally ill, and/or is using drugs, the nursing home is under a duty not only to keep that person safe but all the other residents who may suffer injuries caused by such a person, reports nursing home neglect attorney Osborne. Nursing home facilities trying to profit from as wide a range of residents as possible without proper programs, management, and staffing are asking for trouble for themselves and their residents.

If you or a loved one have suffered an injury caused by a fellow resident of a nursing home in the South Florida area, contact Boca nursing home abuse lawyer Joe Osborne at (561) 800-4011 or fill out this online contact form. You can discuss your case, how the law may apply, and your best legal options to protect your rights and obtain compensation for your loved one's injuries.

Press Contact:

Personal injury lawyer Joseph Osborne

561-800-4011

Footnotes:

1 www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-continental-nursing-met-20161113-story.html

Source: http://www.oa-lawfirm.com/boca-nursing-home-abuse-lawyer-thinks-mixing-addicts-seniors-bad-idea/

SOURCE: Personal injury lawyer Joseph Osborne via Submit Press Release 123
The Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has faulted the decision of the Lagos State Police Command to stop a protest spearheaded by f...

The Governor of Ekiti State, Ayodele Fayose, has faulted the decision of the Lagos State Police Command to stop a protest spearheaded by foremost musician, Tuface Idibia, to protest the harsh living conditions in the country.The nationwide protest, facilitated by Enough is Enough Nigeria, a coalition of individuals and youth-led organizations committed to good governance and public accountability, is scheduled for Monday.In Lagos, protesters would march from the National Stadium to the National Theatre, a four-kilometre distance, to call for urgent attention to the economic downturn across the country.On Wednesday, Fatai Owoseni, the Lagos State Police Commissioner, was quoted as saying that the police had received intelligence reports that criminals were planning to hijack the protest and unleash mayhem in the state.We know that Tuface does not have the capacity to contain such a crowd and we will not fold our hands and watch while things go out of hand, Mr. Owoseni was quoted as saying.Newsmen reached out to Dolapo Badmus, the Lagos police spokesperson, to confirm if Mr. Owoseni actually made the comments.Please confirm from CP (Commissioner of Police), she said in a text message response.On Thursday, Mr. Fayose described the Lagos police boss statement as puerile.Apart from Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution, which provided that Every person shall be entitled to assemble freely and associate with other persons,, the Court of Appeal already affirmed that protest or gathering do not require police permit or interference, Mr. Fayose said in a statement issued by Lere Olayinka, his media aide.Court of Appeal affirmed in its judgement in Inspector General of Police Vs All Nigerians Peoples Party that protest or gathering do not require police permit or interference as obtainable in advanced democracy, said Mr. Fayose, who had earlier indicated interest to participate in the protest.Most importantly, the protest is said to be for and about good governance. So who is afraid of the protest? Who does the police represent or is representing in this issue?Nigerians are hungry and angry, our currency is now above N500 to $1. If Nigerians want to show their anger, no one should prevent them. Nepotism, extrajudicial killings, disobedience to court order and human rights abuses must stop.The conscience is an open wound and the guilty is afraid. If the APC-led Federal Government is now acting as if the protest is against it, it means the federal government has accepted to be guilty as charged.Similarly, a Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, said it is illegal for the police to seek to ban a lawful assembly.For the information of the police commissioner, Nigeria is a democratic country governed strictly in accordance with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution, Mr. Adegboruwa said.Section 39 of the Constitution grants freedom of expression, including the right to be heard and to disseminate information and ideas.Section 40 grants the right to associate and gather together.Section 38 grants the right to freedom of movement and peaceful assembly.I believe that Mr Fatai Owoseni has a copy of the Constitution, to guide his actions and utterances on this matter, instead of threatening innocent and law abiding citizens, who are responsible for his salary.Mr. Adegboruwa said the issue of police permit for citizens to gather freely expired with the coming into force of the 1999 Constitution and we cannot now go back to the military era of shutting up citizens from legitimate expressions.I therefore urge the good people of Nigeria, especially those who reside in Lagos, to join us en mass at Ikeja, for the rally on February 6, 2017, he said.This is not a rally by miscreants or thugs as to warrant the fears being expressed by the police commissioner. The statutory duty of the police is to offer us protection on Monday and help to maintain orderliness, throughout the period of the rally.We cannot be intimidated in our own country, by the same people who are paid to protect us.
A 31-year-old repentant Boko Haram fighter claims he was amputated by his colleagues to whom he revealed his intention to surrender to fed...

A 31-year-old repentant Boko Haram fighter claims he was amputated by his colleagues to whom he revealed his intention to surrender to federal troops.The man who simply identified himself as Mohammed Abubakar told journalists in Maiduguri that he joined the militant group late 2014.The man also claimed that he was a member of the ISIS recognised Mamman Nur faction of the Boko Haram until his surrender.He was brought before journalists for questioning during a live press conference convened by the Theatre Commander of the Operation Lafiya Dole, Major General Lucky Irabor.Abubakar claimed that he was forcefully recruited alongside his childhood friend at the Gamboru Ngala axis of Borno state in the wake of insurgency operations in that area.After realising the futility of the militancy, Abubakar claimed he confided in his childhood friend and persuaded him to join him in planning an escape to surrender.According to him, I was betrayed by my supposed friend who leaked my plans to other fighters and on the day we planned to take off together, they found us and amputated my right hand and left leg as punishment, and left me to die.He survived the brutality and continued with his mission until soldiers found him and turned him over to the Safe Corridor officials.While advising others to take advantage of the initiative and surrender, he confessed that many of the fighters were misled into becoming militants and also described the hardship they were going through in the trenches.During the conference, General Irabor also revealed that a total of 3,332 civilians were arrested as BHT suspects while five BHT members surrendered to troops during operations conducted between January 11 and February 1, 2017.Also, a total of 26 foreigners were arrested comprising 17 Chadians and nine Nigeriens.
The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris has said the suit by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike challenging the probe into the...

The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Ibrahim Idris has said the suit by Rivers State Governor Nyesom Wike challenging the probe into the violence the rerun election is intended to cover his tracks.The IGP said the decision by Wike to investigate the violence, for which he is being investigated, was a desperate move to pre-empt outcome of the probe by the Special Investigating Panel (SIP), constituted by the IGP.The police boss spoke through the notice of preliminary objection against the suit filed by Wike at the Federal High Court in Abuja.In the objection filed for him by Femi Falana (SAN), the IGP argued that the Judicial Commission of Enquiry set up by Wike had no power to investigate the crimes committed during the rerun election in Rivers and prosecute the culprits.He argued that pursuant to Section 150 of the Electoral Act, the crimes committed during the rerun were federal offences, which could not be investigated and prosecuted by the plaintiffs.The suit, marked: FHC/ABJ/CS/13/2017, filed by Mike Ozekhome (SAN) for the plaintiffs, has Wike and the attorney general as plaintiffs.Named as defendants are the IGP, Department of State Services (DSS) amd Damian Okoro (a deputy Commissioner of Police).The IGP, who gave reasons for his panel, painted a picture of the violence during the rerun of December 10.Even thought a combined team of the Army, police and other security personnel were on ground during the election, criminal elements committed many crimes and unleashed violence on unarmed voters and electoral officers.Two policemen were beheaded by a criminal gang. Based on complaints received from several members of the public, coupled with the crimes committed in the presence of security personnel, the 1st defendant (IGP) decided to set up a special investigation panel of the police headed by the 3rd defendant to investigate the killings and other electoral offences which occurred during the rerun election.The 1st and 3rd defendants have made progress in the investigation being conducted into the crimes. Among the several arrests of the criminal suspects made, is that of the fellow, who stole the telephone handset of the beheaded Deputy Superintendent of Police.The bodies of the beheaded policemen have also been recovered while the tape of the telephone conversation between Governors Wike and Ayodele Fayose on the rerun election is being analysed.The policemen, who accompanied the 2nd plaintiff (Wike) when he stormed polling units and the collation centre, have been identified, investigated and dismissed by the Police Service Commission (PSC), while the 1st defendant has ordered that they be tried for contravening the provisions of the Electoral Act when they illegally accompanied the 2nd plaintiff to polling units and collation centre.In a desperate move to cover up the grave crimes perpetrated during the rerun election and shield him from investigation, the 2nd plaintiff is praying this honourable court to stop the 1st and 3rd defendants from carrying out their statutory duty of investigating the crimes on the ground that he had set up a judicial commission of enquiry.Based on the questions for determination and the reliefs sought by the plaintiffs, the defendants have challenged the jurisdiction of this court to hear and determine this case, the 1st and 3rd defendants said.Justice Gabriel Kolawole of the Federal High Court, Abuja before who the case is pending, had on two occasions declined Wikes request for an interim order stopping the investigation by the police.The latest of such refusals was on January 30.Justice Kolawole, in a ruling on January 30 said: As I observed in my ruling of 16th of January 2017, the plaintiff is, by his office, the chief security officer of Rivers State.The 1st defendant, by virtue of the provision of Section 215(1)(a) of the Constitution, is the chief law enforcement officer of the federation, who equally has the statutory duties to prevent, to detect and investigate any crime within the Nigerian borders.Both the 1st, 2nd plaintiffs and the 1st defendants appear to be exercising powers conferred on them by laws.The proceedings for today was for the defendants to show cause and for the plaintiffs motion on notice to be argued in the context of the defendants responses to the plaintiffs motion on notice.The question, which tasked my thought is whether the filing of a notice of preliminary objection, strictly speaking, is a process by which the defendant, against whom an order of interim injunction. Is sought, ought to file? I really do not think so, the judge said.Justice Kolawole said the facts in the case did not present themselves as the case of Lagos State and Ojukwu, decided by the Supreme Court in 1986, which Ozekhome relied on to apply for an order maintain the status quo.In distinguishing this case from that of Lagos and Ojukwu, the judge noted that there were constitutional issues bordering on the exercise of statutory and constitutional powers, which both the plaintiffs and the 1st defendant have.He said: The only issue is whether, as between both parties, the said powers were being exercised in good faith and for public interest.These are the issue on which I can hardly express any judicial opinion until I am able to listen to detailed forensic legal arguments on the provisions of the Constitution and the duties which it imposes on all persons and authorities, to apply and execute its provisions in good faith and for the public good.I really do not see any irreparable lost or damage, which the plaintiffs would suffer if no order is made even at this stage.Even though the ideal situation, especially when the Nigeria Police Force, established primarily to enforce law and order, is a party to the suit, is for them to stay action pending when issues in doubt are as to the extent of its statutory powers vis a vis that of the 1st plaintiff, is judicially enquire into and resolved.But, it seems that most of the time in our democratic polity, we are yet to reach the pristine level where all forces and authorities will see themselves and subject themselves to the supervisory jurisdiction of the court, established by the Constitution, as the proverbial guidance of the Constitution.The question, which I seem to have found an answer to is that even the 1st and 3rd defendants,perhaps, as an act of defiance to the courts pending processes, precede with the investigation.This court, as one of the superior courts of record, created by the Constitution, still retains the inherent jurisdiction, pursuant to the provision of Section 6(6)(a) of the Constitution and in the exercise of its disciplinary jurisdiction, to set aside or nullify 1st and 3rd defendants report of investigation and or order that it shall not be acceptable as a report to conduct any prosecution in any court of law.It is a power this court can exercise where, at the end of the day, it comes to the conclusion that the investigation ought not to be conducted whilst the proceeding was pending.Let me also state that it is a constitutional fallacy for anyone to assert that the court cannot or has no jurisdiction to restrain a party from exercising its statutory or constitutional duties.To hold this as a principle is to canvass legal proposition that an occasion may arise in the exercise of its judicial powers, that courts, created by the Constitution, will be hamstrung in being able to intervene in a matter by such order, even when it may be shown or proved that genuine constitutional powers, duly conferred, are being abused or misused.In the light of these postulations, I will still refrain from acceding to the plaintiffs councils request and leave the defendants council with a clear choice to make either to suspend the action or to continue with it when they realise that the final say, as to the validity of their investigation report will be a matter of judicial determination sooner or later, Justice Kolawole said.The judge adjourned further hearing to February 10.
Some Nigerians have expressed goodwill for President Muhammadu Buhari and condemned the negative rumours about his health.

Some Nigerians have expressed goodwill for President Muhammadu Buhari and condemned the negative rumours about his health.The respondents in interviews in Abuja on Wednesday expressed optimism that the president was `hale and hearty in spite of the rumours. Dr Edet Imuk, a soil scientist with University of Calabar, said, `what binds Nigerians together actually precedes the whims of ethnic, socio-cultural or political divide. Nigerians need to realise that the Office of the President is not a product of mere political will.The occupant of such office has paid dearly mentally and spiritually, which oftentimes costs him sleepless nights. He said the presidents well-being should be of concern to all Nigerians. Dr Bello Babaumma of Nasarawa State University, said that Buharis anti-graft crusade had singled him out as a fearless leader. He said that the president is justified in taking time out for vacation and to take care of his health, considering that physical fitness was necessary for him to discharge his duties effectively.Buhari is a fearless leader who openly brought the fight to corruption with enthusiasm. We are hopeful that he is fine. Therefore, there is certainly no cause for alarm as the present economic recession will not last forever. At this point, we should show empathy as what affects the president affects us all, Babaumma said.He added that all adverse statements and beliefs associated with the president should be discredited. Similarly, Mr Innocent Wiku, a civil servant, said that even those who peddle idle rumours about the presidents health concerns are missing him at the helm of affairs. It is because people are worried about his health which makes them come up with unfounded rumours. Mr Augustine Okafor, a Wuse Market leader in Abuja, said things are difficult no doubt, nobody is smiling because of the high cost of goods and services.He, however, said that `material things are not to be compared with human life which is more valuable. He said that no matter what was happening in the country, Buhari is our elected president, therefore we should show concern over his well-being.In recent times, Nigerians have been discussing the health of the president as a result of which the government has reacted and given assurances on the well-being of the president. Buhari travelled out of the country for a 10-day medical vacation beginning from Jan. 23 to Feb. 6. In a letter to the Senate, the president said that the Vice-President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, would act in his stead while he was away.
Lufthansa, German carrier, has ruled out the option of flying to Kaduna airport during the closure of the Nnamdi Azikwe international airp...

Lufthansa, German carrier, has ruled out the option of flying to Kaduna airport during the closure of the Nnamdi Azikwe international airport in March.Despite criticisms from different quarters, the federal government has insisted on closing the facility for six weeks in order to carry out repair on its runway.Kaduna airport has been chosen as alternative during the period, but quoting Lufthansas spokesman, Reuters said the airline has promised not to make use of Kaduna."We wont fly from Kaduna during the closure of Abuja airport for six weeks, the spokesman reportedly said on phone.Hadi Sirika, minister of state for aviation, had earlier said the runway of Abuja airport exceeded its lifespan 21 years.During the period of its closure, Abuja-bound passengers will have to fly to Kaduna and travel by bus to the nations capital, guarded by security.A new terminal is under construction at the Kaduna airport.Commenting on the matter, Wolfgang Goetsch, managing director of Julius Berger, said the airport would not have been closed if it was a case of spot repairs on the runway but the runway had to be closed because of a case of new construction.
CAMDEN -- A former Ventnor resident convicted a decade ago for running a lonely hearts-style scheme to defraud women of cash admitted he returned to his old tricks, pleading guilty Thursday to money laundering in connection with attempts to rip off yet more women.

Paul J. Fishman, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, (Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger)

Patrick Giblin, 52, posted ads on telephone dating services for nearly two years beginning in January 2013, eventually establishing relationships by phone with women across the country. Giblin told his victims he would either move or travel to where they lived in order to continue the relationship, but also requested loans for travel expenses.

His victims wired money to Giblin or transferred cash to his debit card. Giblin then spent at least some of the money to buy phone minutes which he used to call yet more women, authorities said.

In October 2014, he travelled from his home in Atlantic County to Albany County, N.Y., violating a parole provision from a previous conviction barring him from leaving the state. He continued the scam while traveling in New York, eventually defrauding 10 women in a number of states of up to $40,000

Giblin's criminal history includes a 2007 conviction for 10 counts of wire fraud in connection with a similar scam targeting women on dating services, a 2015 conviction for violating the terms of his parole and a 2013 conviction for escaping from the Philadelphia halfway house where he lived after finishing his sentence for the 2007 conviction. Giblin launched his latest scam after escaping from the halfway house and resumed it after finishing his sentence for the escape conviction.

Giblin faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for his latest offense when he's sentenced in May. He must also make restitution to his victims.

Paul Milo may be reached at pmilo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@PaulMilo2. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
PARAMUS - A Bergen County corrections officer from Lyndhurst was arrested Thursday and charged with sexually assaulting a girl over a decade ago, authorities said.

Alan Carrino Jr. (BCPO)

Alan Carrino Jr., 42, was arrested in Paramus and charged with aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal said in a statement.

A woman contacted the prosecutor's office on Jan. 25 and told them Carrino sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions in 2003 and 2004 when she was ages 12 and 13, Grewal said.

After his arrest, Carrino was taken to the Morris County Jail, where he was held pending an arraignment scheduled for Friday in Bergen County, Grewal said.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
LYNDHURST - The owner of Schuyler Diner is facing theft charges for allegedly buying restaurant supplies on his credit cards and then later reporting the cards stolen, police said Friday.

Sanjiv Kumar (Paramus PD)

Sanjiv Kumar, 46, of Paramus, was arrested following an investigation that began in June 2014, Paramus Police Chief Kenneth R. Ehrenberg said in a statement.

Kumar made purchases of restaurant supplies on his own credit cards. Several months later, he would contact the Paramus Police Department to report the cards were stolen and fraudulently used to make unauthorized purchases of restaurant supplies, Ehrenberg said.

"The total value of the fraudulent activity on his credit cards was in excess of $138,000," Ehrenberg said.

The chief said most of the purchases were made at Restaurant Depot stores, which are wholesale cash-and-carry food suppliers for independent restaurants and caterers.

Ehrenberg said Kumar made false claims to police on four occasions.

Paramus Police Detective Robert Brack, assisted by white-collar crime Detective John Misskerg from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office conducted "an extensive examination of these reported crimes," Ehrenberg said.

Kumar was arrested last Friday at Paramus police headquarters and charged with theft by deception, hindering apprehension or prosecution and giving false statements to authorities.

Ehrenberg said Kumar was booked, processed and released on his own recognizance.

Police are asking anyone with additional information about the case to call Paramus police at 201-262-3400, ext. 1398.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyAttrino. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The ongoing emergency work on the Delaware River Bridge connecting the New Jersey and Pennsylvania turnpikes will close the span until at least April, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission said Friday.

Authorities shut down the bridge Jan. 20 after inspectors found a sizable crack in a steel support under the westbound lanes on the Bucks County, Pa. side. The bridge is owned by both states' turnpike commissions.

Crews are currently erecting eight, temporary tower supports on the Pennsylvania side to repair the crack, which has been patched. The crack caused the bridge to shift and settle, and that needs to be repaired too, officials have said.

The Pennsylvania commission said an emergency task force of two dozen public and private engineering officials from both states reported Friday that an early April opening is the "best-case scenario."

That scenario is one that doesn't involve a more complex, partial reconstruction of the span, "or possibly even replacement of the entire structure," the commission said in a statement.

"We recognize that those who travel through, live, or work in this region have been considerably inconvenienced by this closure, and we are as excited as anyone to see it reopen," Pennsylvania Turnpike Chairman Sean Logan said in the statement.

Logan said the crews are working around the clock to resolve it. "It would be reckless to put a single vehicle back onto this structure before we trust its stability," he said in the statement.

The Pennsylvania commission said the task force is preparing several plans. But they hope that repairing the cracked I-beam by constructing a permanent splice will complete it.

They will not know until the towers are in place, the splice is made and sensors analyze the loads and stresses on the bridge and compare estimated outcomes from computer models, Pennsylvania commission chief engineer Brad Heigel said.

"This monitoring -- which involves affixing about 50 sensors to the structure -- is the only way we can confirm that the splice is successful before we reopen the bridge," Heigel said.

"If more extensive repairs would be required, it is not possible to offer even a rough estimate on the scope or duration of further construction because we simply do not have adequate information to make that projection," Heigel said.

New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Richard T. Hammer, who serves as chairman of the New Jersey Turnpike Authority board, also said everyone wants the bridge opened as soon as possible, but safety is the key.

"We understand the inconvenience this closure creates for tens of thousands of drivers every day," Hammer said. "But we won't allow a single car to cross that bridge until we are absolutely certain that it is safe."

Earlier this week, the New Jersey Turnpike Authority commissioners approved a total of $9.15 million in contracts to build foundations and the eight, 80-foot towers that will jack up the bridge for the repairs.

The 1.25 mile bridge handles 42,000 vehicles daily. In addition to the bridge, the westbound lanes of the five-mile highway - called the Pearl Harbor extension - from exit 6 on the New Jersey Turnpike remain closed to traffic.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
TEANECK -- A Fairleigh Dickinson University official who wrote a book critical of the Food and Drug Administration is one of President Donald Trump's top choices to lead the federal agency, reports say.

Joseph Gulfo, executive director of Fairleigh Dickinson's Lewis Center for Healthcare Innovation and Technology, is one of the names being vetted for the FDA commissioner job, according to the political website The Hill and several pharmaceutical industry publications.

Gulfo did not respond to requests to comment on the reports.

However, last week the Bergen County native used his Twitter page to retweet stories about his name being floated for the job. Fairleigh Dickinson officials also posted links to a story about the possibility of Gulfo being named FDA commissioner on the school's official social media accounts and website.

Other possible candidates for the job include Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA deputy director currently working on Trump's transition team, and Jim O'Neill, managing director at Mithril Capital Management and a frequent critic of the FDA, the reports said.

FDU's @josephgulfo is on President Trump's short list to head the FDA https://t.co/NRF1iM1S07 pic.twitter.com/3zb6bkeUru  Fairleigh Dickinson University (@FDUWhatsNew) January 25, 2017

Gulfo, a former biotech executive and entrepreneur, has written frequently about how to reform the FDA, the Maryland-based federal agency that oversees food safety and the approval of drugs. Last month, he wrote an article offering Trump advice on picking a new FDA chief.

"If he truly wants to reform the FDA to put greater focus on the need of patients for new and innovative medical products, his new commissioner absolutely must be a strong leader who can reverse the culture of fear and inertia that has hamstrung the delivery of innovative medical products to patients," Gulfo wrote.

Gulfo, 53, grew up in Haworth and earned his medical degree from New Jersey Medical School at the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (now part of Rutgers University). He also holds a master's in business administration from Seton Hall University, according to his bio.

Before his appointment at Fairleigh Dickinson in 2015, he spent more than 25 years in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. He wrote a book, titled "Innovation Breakdown: How the FDA and Wall Street Cripple Medical Advances," after his own battles with the agency as his company tried to get a medical device approved.

Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find her at KellyHeyboerReporter on Facebook.
SAO PAULO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Homebuilder Cyrela Brazil Realty SA Chief Executive Elie Horn said in a newspaper interview published on Friday that he believes clients should lose their down payments if they cancel a residential purchase.

Speaking to Valor Economico, Horn adopted his stance as the government, consumer groups and homebuilders are negotiating industry rules for buyers to keep a share of a home's value in the event they scrap its acquisition.

Cyrela's net sales have been hurt by cancellations, keeping a lid on revenues, impacting net income and causing the company to burn through cash, according to securities filings.

Currently, there are no Brazilian industry standards for how much, if any, of a down payment should be returned to a buyer who decides not go ahead with the purchase.

"The right thing would be the buyer losing everything," Horn told the newspaper, adding that it was not enough for clients to lose only part of their down payment.

Horn did not specify how much of the price of Cyrela-built residences were requested as down payments.

Brazilian courts sometimes have ruled in favor of homebuyers receiving all or part of their down payment should a purchase not reach fruition.

Typically, Brazilian homebuyers pay a down payment on a residence and then complete the purchase after securing a mortgage for the balance.

Press representatives for Cyrela were not immediately available to confirm the accuracy of Horn's remarks. The company, based in Sao Paulo, is a leading homebuilder for the Brazilian high-end market.

Setting industry-wide cancellation rules would help homebuilders retain part of the revenue they have already booked while cutting general and administrative expenses, which tend to rise with the legal costs associated with the canceled purchases, Banco BTG Pactual said in a report on Jan. 29.

Without clear rules, homebuilders are "at the mercy of case-by-case rulings," BTG Pactual analyst Gustavo Cambauva wrote.

(Reporting by Ana Mano Editing by W Simon)
Frankfurt expects up to 10,000 financial industry workers to relocate from Britain to Germany's banking capital as a consequence of Brexit , according to a Frankfurt lobby group.

"We're going to benefit most," Hubertus Vath, managing director at Frankfurt Main Finance, told reporters in London on Thursday.

"Within the eurozone you need to be in Frankfurt to service the area," he added.

Several U.K. based banks are poised to announce at least part of their business operations are being moved from London to another European city , with countries on the continent scrambling to attract top financial officials.

City lenders are attempting to maintain their services throughout the bloc as the U.K. begins its withdrawal from the European Union (EU).

Brexit negotiations have not yet started, however, the U.K. took a step closer to beginning formal negotiations with the bloc as parliament cleared its first legislative hurdle. The U.K. parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of starting the formal two year negotiation process with the EU on Wednesday.

Britain could be set to complete the legislative process by March 7 which would meet Prime Minister Theresa May's self-imposed April deadline.







UK has 80% of EU 'high earners'

Angela Merkel 's financial powerhouse has been touted as a potential relocation hotspot for London's bankers given it can boast somewhat of a financial hub given its significant euro flows and the presence of the European Central Bank .



However, Frankfurt is reasonably small in size, has a relatively unexciting reputation and must compete with several other European cities. Paris is a key competitor of Frankfurt although smaller cities such as Amsterdam, Dublin and Luxembourg are also vying to lure banks, insurers and fund managers throughout Brexit negotiations.

The U.K. reportedly has over 80 percent of the continent's "high earning" financial professionals, according to the latest research by the European Banking Authority.

Britain boasts 4,133 of the 5,124 bankers, fund managers and compliance professionals across the EU that earned over 1 million euros ($1.07 million) in 2015, according to the new research.

The European Banking Authority is based in London although has announced it would leave its office post-Brexit.
(Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC is a Liberal Democrat member of the UK House of Lords and a barrister who practices constitutional and human rights law in London. The opinions expressed here are his own.)

By Anthony Lester

Feb 2 (Reuters) - On his inauguration as president of the United States, on Jan. 20, Donald Trump took the oath of office in accordance with the U.S. Constitution. He swore that he would to the best of his ability "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." A week later, on Jan. 27, he signed an executive order on immigration that was manifestly unconstitutional. It indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days, and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - from admission for 90 days.

After the order was signed, students, visitors and holders of green cards who were lawful U.S. residents - as well as refugees from around the world - were stopped at airports in the United States and abroad. Some were blocked from entering the country and others were sent back overseas. U.S. Customs and Border Protection instructed airlines to stop passengers from the banned countries from boarding flights and to remove any who had already done so. Airline crew members from the seven countries were also barred from the United States. American diplomats were told to stop visa interviews from those countries and to halt any pending visas. University presidents tried to reassure foreign-born faculty and students that they would not be harmed.

In making his order, Trump showed his supporters that he would keep the promises he made to them during his campaign. But his presidential oath of office was not made only to his supporters. He promised to God to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution in the interests of all the people.

The order was made while British Prime Minister Theresa May was in flight to Ankara to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and conclude an arms deal with him. A few hours earlier, she had paid tribute to Trump in the hope of securing a favorable trade deal after the UK leaves the European Union. Trump spoke of the "very special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom.

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It is unclear whether Trump warned his new friend May of what he was about to do. She appeared to be humiliated and flailing when she met the press in Turkey. Later she had to tell her Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, to protest about the effect on British passport holders and to secure an exemption for them. So much for the "very special relationship."

Trump has awakened the light sleeper of anti-Americanism abroad, weakening alliances on which Washington depends for peace and security. He has emboldened the far right across Europe. The invitation for a state visit to the UK, made with undue haste by the prime minister on behalf of Queen Elizabeth, has aroused massive protests across Britain.

More than 1.5 million people have called for the invitation to be withdrawn. Parliamentarians are campaigning to prevent him from addressing their members. London's Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has said that the visit should be postponed until the "cruel and shameful ban" is lifted. The visit will go ahead anyway, but under massive protest. Across Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, Iraq and Iran there is an angry backlash and credible threats of retaliation.

It was unwise of May to rush to embroil her queen in political controversy by inviting Trump to a state visit in his first days in office. It was not smart for Trump, the renowned deal-maker, to encourage the breakup of the European Union, or to question the value of NATO, or to make enemies of Muslim-majority countries. America needs strong and loyal European allies in dealing with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his threats to Ukraine and the Baltic states. The United States needs allies, in addition to Israel, in the Middle East. Trump's mantra is "America First," but he is leading his nation into dangerous isolation from the rest of the world.

Before Trump rushed out the immigration order he did not appear to seek advice from the intelligence community or the Justice, Defense and State Departments.(Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly said his department knew the order was coming, but that doesn't tell us whether they had any power to refine it.) It is not clear which government lawyers, if any, were consulted. Trump has clearly acted in disregard of the Constitution and American values and the United States' international obligations under the United Nations convention on the status of refugees.

Trump boasts that he will eliminate Islamic State and al Qaeda from the face of the earth. However, British experience in combating Irish Republican and Islamist terrorism underscores the importance of winning cooperation from communities in whose name the extremists claim to act. By alienating Muslims across the world, Trump has made enemies of those he needs as friends. His flagrant disregard for the refugee convention's protection of those fleeing from religious and political persecution, and his would-be preferential treatment of Christian asylum seekers, make a mockery of America's commitment to the rule of law.

In addition, he fired acting Attorney General Sally Yates for doubting the legality of his use of his executive power. Even Republicans who approve of Trump's policy are dismayed by the incompetent way it was rushed into effect.

Trump's ban is under legal challenge in the federal courts. The ban is based on national and religious discrimination and is surely unconstitutional. Federal judges across the country have already ruled against him. The legal challenges could go all the way to the Supreme Court, which seems unlikely to endorse his ill-conceived handiwork, even if meanwhile Neil Gorsuch, Trump's pick for a conservative new Justice, is confirmed.

The U.S. president has no experience in public office and will have to learn that the American Republic can be governed only with respect for the American values protected by the Constitution. The one that he promised to preserve, protect and defend.

(Reporting by Anthony Lester)
Yes, we have an agenda. But it's not a liberal one.
Michael Finnie, 36, entered into a plea agreement with state prosecutors on Jan. 20 that allowed him to plead guilty to two lesser counts of manslaughter and five counts of attempted second-degree murder as the alleged wheelman in the Burgundy Street drive-by shooting on Aug. 10, 2014. Finnie's agreement calls for a flat 20-year sentence.
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.
trump wnriqe pena nieto

On Wednesday, journalist Dolia Estevez reported that during a brief, blunt phone call the previous Friday, US President Donald Trump threatened and cajoled Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto.

According to Estevez, who cited "confidential information" obtained from sources on both sides of the call, Trump disparaged Mexico and Mexicans, threatened to levy taxes on Mexican imports, and went so far as to hint at sending US troops to confront drug traffickers who, Trump said, Mexico's military had been incapable of stopping.

The incendiary comments attracted instant attention, both for their vitriol and for their verisimilitude, as Trump frequently inveighed against Mexico throughout his campaign and has kept up his harsh rhetoric during the first days of his administration.

Estevez's report also characterized Pena Nieto's response as "stammering." Much of the Mexican public has been frustrated with Pena Nieto's response to Trump's attacks, and the Mexican president has seen his approval rating fall to 12% in recent weeks.

Estevez described Trump as threatening Mexico with a 35% tax "on those exports that hurt Mexico the most" and referred to White House spokesman Sean Spicer restating the 35% tax idea after the call.

Donald Trump Enrique Pena Nieto Mexico meeting

However, while Trump has mentioned a 35% tariff on exports from US companies in Mexico, the most commonly floated number is a 20% tax on Mexican goods entering the US. The White House lists no press briefing by Spicer on January 27, the day of the call.

Hours after Estevez's report surfaced, a report from The Associated Press corroborated some of the content of the conversation, but downplayed the tone.

"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there," Trump told Pena Nieto, according to an excerpt seen by the AP. "You aren't doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn't, so I just might send them down to take care of it."

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But, the AP said, the excerpt did not make clear who Trump was referring to as "bad hombres," nor did it make evident the tone or context of Trump's remark. Moreover, the excerpt did not include Pena Nieto's response.

Trump Nieto Mexico

The Mexican government also issued a statement around the same time totally rejecting Estevez's report.

"[It's] necessary to clarify that the publication is based in absolute falsities and with evident ill intention," Mexico's Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Twitter.

"During the call, President Pena Nieto was clear and emphatic in signaling the differences of position in respect to some statements made by President Trump in public and which he repeated during their dialogue," the ministry said, adding:

"You assert that you obtained information from confidential sources from 'both sides of the border.'"

"Only [Pena Nieto] and the foreign minister participated in that call and neither of them remember knowing you or having spoken with you ever. Whoever has been your confidential source on this side of the border, lied to you."

Eduardo Sanchez, Mexico's presidential office spokesman, said the conversation was respectful, not hostile or humiliating, as described by Estevez.

"It is absolutely false that President Trump has threatened to send troops to the border," he said during a Wednesday-night interview with Mexican journalist Carlos Loret de Mola.

Later on Wednesday, the Mexican government issued a statement disputing the AP's initial report, saying the details of it "did not correspond to reality."

"The negative expressions to which [the AP report] makes reference, did not happen during said telephone call," the statement, posted on Twitter, said. "On the contrary, the tone was constructive ..."

donald trump calling oval office australia prime minister associated press AP_17028804202967

The White House also disputed the account of a contentious call between Trump and Pena Nieto.

"The White House tells me POTUS did not threaten to invade Mexico," Andrew Beatty, the AFP's White House correspondent, tweeted a little before 7 p.m. on Wednesday.

Jim Acosta, CNN's senior White House correspondent, also tweeted a comment he attributed to a White House official: "Reports that the President threatened to invade Mexico are false. Even the Mexican government is disputing these reports."

A more in-depth report from CNN published Wednesday night cited a transcript of the call that differed from the text published by the AP:

"You have some pretty tough hombres in Mexico that you may need help with. We are willing to help with that big-league, but they have be knocked out and you have not done a good job knocking them out."

A source told CNN that the AP's report was based on a readout of the conversation between Trump and Pena Nieto written by aides, not on a transcript.

In a further qualification, the White House characterized Trump's "bad hombres" remark as "lighthearted" to the AP in a story published on Thursday morning.

Donald Trump Michael Flynn Steve Bannon Reince Priebus

The White House said the comments were "part of a discussion about how the United States and Mexico could work collaboratively to combat drug cartels and other criminal elements, and make the border more secure."

A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told the AP the conversation was "pleasant and constructive."

While both sides has downplayed the content of the conversation and dismissed the reportedly hostile tone, the exact nature of the phone call is still unclear, and may remain so until a full transcript or audio (which the Mexican government traditionally does not record) is revealed.

In any case, Trump's dealings with foreign leaders during his first two weeks as president have been concerning for observers, both at home and abroad.

"(Trump's) interactions are naive in that he keeps suggesting we will have the best relationship ever with a broad departure of countries, but there is no substance to back it up," a government official with knowledge of Trump's interactions with foreign leaders told CNN.

Trump and May

"Source familiar with Trump foreign leader calls says the POTUS convos are turning faces 'white' inside the" White House, Acosta tweeted late on Wednesday.

"When he encounters a policy challenge, like with Turnbull, he responds with a tantrum," the official told CNN, referring to a phone call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

During that call, Trump bragged about his election victory and said Australia was going to send the US "the next Boston bombers" as part of an Obama-approved deal to take in refugees held by Australia, which he criticized.

Descriptions of Trump's calls are at odds with "sanitized" White House accounts, The Washington Post, which first reported the nature of the Turnbull call, said of Trump's discussions with foreign leaders, adding:

"The characterizations provide insight into Trumps temperament and approach to the diplomatic requirements of his job as the nations chief executive, a role in which he continues to employ both the uncompromising negotiating tactics he honed as a real estate developer and the bombastic style he exhibited as a reality television personality."

The contentious nature of the Trump's call with the Australian leader was especially troubling, in light of the longstanding and close-knit ties Washington and Canberra have developed over decades.

Mexico Donald Trump protest Ciudad Juarez

While the call with Mexico's president appears to be less sensational that initially reported, that correction will likely do little to sooth the nerves of Mexicans and people of Mexican descent in Mexico and in the US.

Trump has made no indication of backing off his pledge to construct a border wall  Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly has said the wall could be completed in two years, and Kelly is already traveling to the border area to study plans for the wall's construction.

Moreover, Mexicans appear to have been caught up in the "extreme vetting" Trump has targeted at citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries.

We have reports of Mexicans who have been held for more than 12 hours ... We have a case of a family who were held for more than 10 hours and were looking into that, Marcelino Miranda, consul for legal affairs at Mexico's consulate in Chicago, said on Tuesday,

mexican american flag

Miranda said he believed stringent questioning faced by those Mexicans had nothing to do with the newly intensified vetting process, though others from the country likely see it as part of a broader hostility to the US's southern neighbor.

Trump "wants to make an example of Mexico to show how he will deal with countries around the world," Maria Eugenia Valdes, a political scientist at the Autonomous Metropolitan University in Mexico, told journalist Ioan Grillo.

"This man is capable of anything," she added.

"When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it, just don't worry about it," Trump said during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday morning.

"We're going to straighten it out," Trump added. "That's what I do. I fix things."

NOW WATCH: ROGER STONE: Trump is 'never going to change'





More From Business Insider


At least 19 area fire departments are affected by the Fire Service Training Bureau testing scandal.

More than 1,700 firefighters and emergency responders in Iowa were improperly issued credentials during a four-year span, according to findings by the Iowa Department of Public Safety, which led to criminal charges against John McPhee, the former coordinator.

The bureau sent letters to 560 departments, a majority of those in the state, to notify them that one or more firefighters on your department may have been erroneously granted certificates in recent years and will be expected to undergo retesting.

Carter Lake Fire Coordinator Phil Newton said that three department members will have to retake certification tests after an investigation into misconduct by the bureaus former accreditation manager.

It makes us look bad, in a way, Newton said. Not us as individuals. But it makes the process look bad, knowing how it was done and what was affected by it.

Newton said not only were three members of the Carter Lake Volunteer Fire Department affected, but additionally a woman from Nebraska that went through a certification process through the department in Iowa was also affected.

She was pretty disheartened. Its disheartening all the way around. If they want the certification, theyre going to have to retest, he said. Its just an all around bad deal.

Kyle Gorsh is a special agent in charge with the Iowa State Fire Marshals Office and is acting chief of the Iowa Fire Service Training Bureau. He said letters were sent to departments and individual firefighters and emergency personnel that will have to retest.

We let (departments) know they had staff affected by the review, he said.

Firefighters will have until June 30 to retake the test or face starting the certification process over from scratch. The bureau is offering refresher courses to affected firefighters and emergency personnel for free. Eighteen classes will be offered throughout the state in February, with southwest Iowa courses held in Harlan, Red Oak and Carroll.

Each city will host classes on Feb. 11 and 12 as well as Feb. 18 and 19. The courses will run 12 hours over two days, Gorsh said, with a chance to take certification tests for free at the end.

Well provide these so theyll have ample opportunities to retake those tests, Gorsh said.

In addition to Carter Lake, letters were sent to the volunteer departments in Treynor, Underwood, Neola, Lewis Township, Glenwood, Avoca, Shelby, Missouri Valley, Logan, Woodbine, Persia, Pisgah, Minden, McClelland, Crescent, Hancock, Oakland and Atlantic.

Avoca City Manager Clint Fichter said he knows of at least one firefighter in the city that will have to retake a test. Treynor Fire Chief Russ Maguire said his department has had trouble contacting the state about rectifying the situation.

Messages left with the Glenwood, Underwood and Lewis Township departments were not immediately returned.

The certificates were in the following disciplines: hazardous materials operations, firefighter I, firefighter II, driver operator pumper, driver operator aerial, fire officer I, fire officer II, instructor I and fire inspector I.

The certification and accreditation programs are voluntary and are not required by the state of Iowa or nationally. However, some local agencies either require or recommend certification of their employees, the bureau noted.

McPhee was charged with felonious misconduct in office. He waived his preliminary court hearing and has pleaded not guilty in the case.

 Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press contributed to this story.
More than two-thirds of Iowas legislators  including all who represent Council Bluffs  are paying hundreds of dollars less per month than they should be for their health insurance, costing taxpayers about $350,000 a year and possibly breaking a state law.

An analysis conducted by The Des Moines Register shows that 92 of Iowas 149 legislators pay as little as $20 a month in health insurance premiums, rather than the $142 to $334 a month those plans call for. Nearly 40 other lawmakers pay up to $344 a month for coverage plans, rather than as much as $446 their plans call for.

The newspaper, according to The Associated Press, found the total underpayments are costing taxpayers more than $29,000 a month, or about $350,000 a year.

Lawmakers from Council Bluffs who could be reached by The Nonpareil said they were unaware of this.

No, I didnt know that at all, said Rep. Greg Forristall, who represents eastern Council Bluffs and most of Pottawattamie County. Basically, this is all handled by our legislative personnel office. They deduct from my paycheck. This is the first I knew about it.

His next step, Forristall said, is for that office to tell him what he owes, if anything, and also for them to fix the mistake.

Rep. Charles McConkey, who represents Carter Lake and western Council Bluffs, said he was glad that this issue was brought to his attention.

We should obey the law and pay our fair share, he said. Im going to try to find out how to rectify this.

Rep. Mary Ann Hanusa, who represents central and southern Council Bluffs, said she was leaving Des Moines late Thursday afternoon and had not yet reviewed The Registers reporting, so she said she would wait to comment on the newspapers findings.

Sen. Tom Shipley, who covers eastern Council Bluffs, said lawmakers had considered increasing how much they pay for health insurance but the proposal never reached the floor of the chamber.

Were looking to rectify this, he said. Well see what we can do.

The investigation comes as state lawmakers are discussing possible changes to state workers benefits.

Its an issue that will come up, Hanusa said of health insurance coverage.

The nearly 35-year-old law that governs Iowas executive branch extends health insurance to legislators but says theyre eligible only for insurance plans made available under group plans to non-union employees.

The Register found that state lawmakers are paying the lower health insurance premiums available to union members, while receiving the better benefits afforded in non-union plans. That means their out-of-pocket maximum costs are decreased.

Danny Homan, president of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 61, said this situation is particularly unfair given that the Legislature has said it intends to rewrite the states collective-bargaining law.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers say they were unaware of the problem before the newspaper contacted them.

Our premiums do seem to conflict with the law, said Rep. Dave Deyoe, R-Nevada, and chairman of the House Labor Committee.

Drake University constitutional law professor Mark Kende said the issue raises statutory construction questions, meaning they may need to be resolved by a court.

Theres just something about it that seems questionable, Kende said.

Both the states Department of Administrative Services, which provided the data, and Attorney Generals Office declined to comment, the AP reported. The Nonpareil couldnt reach Sen. Dave Dawson, who represents Carter Lake and most of Council Bluffs, on Thursday afternoon.
President Donald Trumps promise to overturn an IRS rule that prevents pastors from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit without risking their churches tax-exempt status produced mixed responses from four Council Bluffs pastors Thursday.

The Rev. Dan Arnold, lead pastor at First Church of the Nazarene, strongly supports the idea.

I believe it would be a good step and would help the country immensely, he said. I think that rule came about from a misinterpretation of the separation of church and state. It was never meant to prevent the church from having a role in government, it was meant to keep the government from having a role in the church. I think this would be a step toward getting back to the essence of the Constitution.

The Rev. Chuck Kottas, pastor at St. Peters Catholic Church, agreed that the rule should be abolished.

Thats freedom of speech, as far as Im concerned, he said.

However, Kottas said he would never endorse a candidate from the pulpit.

The pulpits just too powerful a position, and you have a captive audience that cant respond, he said.

Kottas said a discussion of specific political candidates or parties rather than issues should be done in a forum setting where people can have an open dialogue. In addition, it allows the clergy member to speak as an individual.

If Im in the pulpit on Sunday, Im representing the church, he said. You have to have an open forum to talk about these things, because otherwise people will get angry and walk out of the church.

As Kottas remembers it, the so-called Johnson Amendment was passed for political reasons.

He passed it because the Baptists down in Texas were railing on him, he said. In my opinion, that law never should have been passed  period.

Kottas added that churches arent exactly tax-exempt, either. They dont have to pay property taxes, but they have to pay sales tax on what they purchase, income tax on money they make on raffles and half of the Social Security taxes on staff salaries.

The Rev. Lanette Plambeck, lead pastor at Broadway United Methodist Church, doesnt think promoting a particular political candidate or party should be a ministers role in the church but acknowledged that pastors preach about issues that may be interpreted as political.

Clergy should not see themselves as Republican, Democrat, independent or Green Party  thats not where our identity is, she said. If we preach for any of the parties, then we are not preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, were preaching the gospel of ourselves.

Plambeck said she doesnt believe the IRS should loosen the reins.

The IRS and government ought to be tightening the reins on that, she said.

At other churches she has served, she has invited candidates of both parties to speak during forums at the church and answer questions, making sure to let members hear both sides, she said.

The Rev. Lowell Hennigs, pastor at Emanuel Lutheran Church, said he does not think repealing the law is a particularly good idea.

I dont think thats my role  to endorse a political candidate, he said. Thats different from saying things that might be construed as political.

Hennigs said he is the pastor for the whole church.

I always serve people with a variety of political views, Hennigs said.

Furthermore, as long as the law is in place, pastors shouldnt violate it and endanger their churchs tax-exempt status, Hennigs said.

Thats not a decision that one person  even the pastor  should make on his own, he said.
Two assistant attorneys general representing Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad in a lawsuit brought by a fired state agent who blames the governor for destroying his reputation contend the governor is too busy and should not be deposed in connection with the lawsuit.

State lawyers defending Branstad filed a motion on Wednesday seeking to block a videotaped March 24 deposition scheduled by lawyers for former Division of Criminal Investigation special agent in charge Larry Hedlund. Assistant attorneys general Jeffrey Peterzalek and Julie Bussanmas argued the deposition would significantly interfere with Branstads duties during the busy legislative session and his preparations to become U.S. ambassador to China under President Donald Trump.

Hedlund is suing the state, Branstad and three former superiors at the Iowa Department of Public Safety for claims that include retaliation and defamation.

Hedlunds attorney, Tom Duff, said Wednesday he would resist the states effort to quash Branstads deposition.

Hedlund contends he was fired for reporting wrongdoing, including an incident in which a trooper driving Branstad was clocked going 84 mph in a 65-mph zone but not pulled over once officers saw who was inside. Hedlund had called a dispatcher to report the speeding SUV going a hard 90 after it zipped past Hedlunds unmarked state vehicle.

The following day, he told superiors that Branstads driver should have been ticketed and complained that the governors security detail had a practice of driving at excessive speeds with apparent impunity. Hedlund was removed from duty and placed on leave days later. The department later fired Hedlund for alleged misconduct that included insubordination.

An investigation commissioned by Branstad found that the governors office wasnt involved in the termination.

Duff is also seeking personnel files of several employees who allegedly committed far more serious misconduct than Hedlund but were allowed to keep their jobs. The state is also resisting that request.

Hedlunds attorneys want to ask the Branstad under oath about his claims at a 2013 news conference that Hedlund was fired for moral and safety reasons that were unrelated to the speeding complaint. Hedlund, a 25-year state employee noted for his criminal investigation skills who has since been hired by the Fort Dodge Police Department, contends the governors remarks were defamatory and falsely painted him as a safety risk that made it hard to find other law enforcement jobs.

Branstad was last deposed in a civil case in November 2014, when he was questioned for hours in a lawsuit brought by former Iowa Workers Compensation Commissioner Chris Godfrey.

Were confident that Branstads heir apparent, Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds, can handle the governors duties during the busy legislative session while Branstad is deposed. And granting Branstad a pass because he is preparing to be U.S. ambassador to China would be a sham.
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A court in the Netherlands on Thursday decided that two subsidiaries of debt-laden Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA (OIBR4.SA) would not start bankruptcy proceedings, the company said in a securities filing.

The filing confirmed a Reuters report that Oi Brasil Holdings Cooperatief UA and Portugal Telecom International Finance BV, would remain operating under "suspension of payments" legal status.

Creditors had sought to convert the companies' status from "suspension of payments" to bankruptcy proceedings

Oi's two Dutch subsidiaries issued about 5.8 billion euros (5 billion pounds) of debt, representing most of the company's outstanding bond debt of approximately 8.5 billion euros.

The company did not provide additional details of the court decision, saying it did not have access to a full translation of the Dutch ruling.

Rio de Janeiro-based Oi made Brazil's largest ever bankruptcy filing in June, and is seeking to restructure about 65 billion reais ($20.8 billion) of bond, bank and regulatory liabilities.

($1 = 3.12 reais)

(Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
(Tweaks lead and headline, adds details of Oi statement)

SAO PAULO, Feb 2 (Reuters) - A court in the Netherlands on Thursday decided that two subsidiaries of debt-laden Brazilian phone carrier Oi SA would not start bankruptcy proceedings, the company said in a securities filing.

The filing confirmed a Reuters report that Oi Brasil Holdings Cooperatief UA and Portugal Telecom International Finance BV, would remain operating under "suspension of payments" legal status.

Creditors had sought to convert the companies' status from "suspension of payments" to bankruptcy proceedings

Oi's two Dutch subsidiaries issued about 5.8 billion euros ($6.2 billion) of debt, representing most of the company's outstanding bond debt of approximately 8.5 billion euros.

The company did not provide additional details of the court decision, saying it did not have access to a full translation of the Dutch ruling.

Rio de Janeiro-based Oi made Brazil's largest ever bankruptcy filing in June, and is seeking to restructure about 65 billion reais ($20.8 billion) of bond, bank and regulatory liabilities.

($1 = 3.12 reais) (Reporting by Ana Mano; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Good news: Now you can get an EpiPen alternative known as generic Adrenaclick for as little as $10 for a two-pack at CVSand you don't need insurance to get it.

What's more, there are other alternatives such as generic EpiPen and Auvi-Qa third competitor soon back on the market that you can get for free, depending on your insurance and manufacturer coupons.



EpiPen's manufacturer, Mylan Pharmaceuticals, has steadily increased the price of a two-pack over several years to $600 or moreeven for people with insurance. The sharply higher price shocked parents last summer when they went to buy EpiPen devices for their children for the new school year.

The public furor over the cost of this lifesavingand once affordablemedication for severe allergy reactions prompted Mylan to offer discount coupons in August that cut the EpiPen price down to $300 per two-pack. For some familiesespecially those who needed more than one EpiPen pack to protect their kids during severe allergy attacksthat price was still way too high.

Read on for are all the details to get the lifesaving allergy protection you need now--at a much lower price.

Adrenaclick (generic): $10 at CVS

Up until this fall, generic Adrenaclick has been the single competitor to EpiPen. Using the exact same drug (epinephrine) and similar technology to inject the drug yourself, it had been priced at just under $300 for a two-pack.



Then, through a deal with the manufacturer, CVS was able to lower the price to $110 last month. Apply a $100 discount coupon from the drug's manufacturer, and that will get you to a final price of $10. You can buy up to three two-packs at that price with a prescription.

Best of all, no insurance is needed. The deal won't work if you try to use the coupon with Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal or state insurance. If you are covered by any of those, simply instruct the pharmacist to not run the purchase through your insurance.

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If there is no CVS near you, you can still use the $100 coupon to lower your co-pay at other pharmacies if you have commercial insurance. That could get your payment to zero.

If you aren't insured and don't live near a CVS, the $100 coupon can be applied to the full price of generic Adrenaclick, which we've seen hover around $200 or so at Walgreens and Rite-Aid on GoodRx.com. The coupon would get your final price to around $100.



Important to know: Our medical experts recommend that anyone switching to generic Adrenaclick ask for a training session on how to use the injector before leaving the pharmacy. They should also refer to the training video on the manufacturer's website.

EpiPen: $300 to $630, or Free With Insurance

Mylan introduced its generic version of EpiPen in December after the public outcry over the company's $600-plus price tag for a two-pack of branded EpiPen (which was a 500 percent price hike since 2007). Mylan priced its two-pack generic version at $300.

There is no difference between the branded and generic versions of EpiPen, although your insurance may only cover one or the other.



If you have commercial insurance, a $25 discount coupon could lower your copay to zero, depending on your insurance coverage.

The coupon, however, won't work for anyone trying to use it in conjunction with Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal or state insurance.

For those without insurance, use a coupon from GoodRx.comthis could lower your price for the two-pack generic EpiPen to around $200 at Walgreens or RiteAid.



The branded version of EpiPen is still available and still expensive, ranging anywhere from $630 to more than $700 for a two-pack, according to prices listed at GoodRx.com.



So who would still want to use branded EpiPen instead of generic Adrenaclick? If you have commercial insurance and it only covers EpiPen, you could apply a manufacturer discount co-pay coupon that will knock off up to $300 off from your out-of-pocket costs for a two-pack.



And, there are some who could get EpiPen for free: Mylan offers free EpiPens through its patient assistance program for uninsured and underinsured patients with a household income of less than $97,400 for a family of four.

(This week, the Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into whether Mylan acted illegally to block EpiPen competition, including a lower-cost generic epinephrine auto-injector, thereby violating anti-trust laws.)



Auvi-Q: $360 or Free With Insurance

Auvi-Q, an auto-injector that features voice prompts to guide its use, was first available in 2013 but was taken off the market in 2015 because of potentially dangerous dosing problems. But it will be returning to drugstores with those problems addressed, according to Kaleo, the manufacturer, in mid-February for about $360 for a two-pack.

The good news is that whether you have commercial insurance that covers Auvi-Q or not, Kaleo offers a discount program to reduce your copay to zero.

That program won't work for people with Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal or state insurance. Or for anyone who is not insured. You'll face the $360 charge for a two-pack. Once the product is released, you may want to check out GoodRx.com for possible further discounts.

If you earn less than $100,000 and are uninsured, you may qualifiy to get Auvi-Q for free through Kaleo's patient assistance program.

One reason you may want to seek out the Auvi-Q auto-injector is because you need no training to use it. That can be especially helpful for children.

"I prefer Auvi-Q because it talks you through administering it, which is great for caregivers, teachers, or even strangers who may need help during an emergency, says Jenny Sprague, of Gray, Maine, the mother of 7- and 11-year-old sons who both have food allergies.

Kaleo told Consumer Reports that the company addressed the earlier Auvi-Q recall by investing heavily in manufacturing improvements and enhanced quality checks.

Editor's Note: This article and related materials are made possible by a grant from the state Attorney General Consumer and Prescriber Education Grant Program, which is funded by the multistate settlement of consumer-fraud claims regarding the marketing of the prescription drug Neurontin (gabapentin).





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
Although it still has to be officially unveiled, this 5.2-inch handset has been apparently listed as available for pre-order in Finland, being expected to begin shipping on February 17.

In addition to the above, a fingerprint reader is also included. The recommended price for this handset is 269 EUR - roughly $289 USD, but it seems this is only the price for Finland. We expect to find out more about the international availability of this handset at the end of the month.

The Honor 8 Lite has been in the rumor mill for a while, and it looks like Huawei will bring it to the Mobile World Congress at the end of the month. However, this handset has just surfaced in Finland and, apparently, it will hit the local market on February 17.

- 5684 articles published on Notebookcheck since 2013 Codrut Nistor - Senior Tech Writersince 2013

In my early school days, I hated writing and having to make up stories. A decade later, I started to enjoy it. Since then, I published a few offline articles and then I moved to the online space, where I contributed to major websites that are still present online as of 2021 such as Softpedia, Brothersoft, Download3000, but I also wrote for multiple blogs that have disappeared over the years. I've been riding with the Notebookcheck crew since 2013 and I am not planning to leave it anytime soon. In love with good mechanical keyboards, vinyl and tape sound, but also smartphones, streaming services, and digital art.
* EU offers 200 mln euros this year to Libyan coast guard, camps

* Libya anarchy hampers efforts at control, deportation

* Summit also discusses responses to Trump (Adds Muscat, MSF)

By Gabriela Baczynska and Alastair Macdonald

VALLETTA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - European Union leaders placed a bet on Libya's fragile government to help them prevent a new wave of African migrants this spring, offering Tripoli more money and other assistance to beef up its frontier controls.

Meeting in Malta - in the sea lane to Italy where more than 4,500 people drowned last year - the leaders addressed legal and moral concerns about having Libyan coastguards force people ashore by pledging to improve conditions in migrant camps there.

"If the situation stays as is now, in a few weeks we will have a humanitarian crisis and people will start pointing fingers, saying Europe has done nothing," said Joseph Muscat, the prime minister of Malta, which currently holds the presidency of the bloc.

"With this agreement... there is one first decent shot in trying to get a proper management of migration flows across the central Mediterranean."

Aid groups, however, accused the EU, of abandoning humanitarian values and misrepresenting conditions in Libya, where the U.N.-backed government of Fayez al-Seraj has only a shaky and partial hold on the sprawling desert nation.

Medecins Sans Frontieres, which works on the ground, said the summit proved EU leaders were "delusional" about Libya.

"Today was not about saving lives; it's clear that the EU is ready to sacrifice thousands of vulnerable men, women and children in order to stop them reaching European shores."

The chaos in Libya has thwarted any hope of a quick fix in the way that a controversial EU deal with Turkey a year ago led to a virtual halt to a migrant route to Germany via Greece along which more than a million asylum-seekers travelled in 2015.

On Thursday, Seraj signed an agreement with Italy, which offered 200 million euros ($215 million) of its own. Rome fears new arrivals this spring, following a record 181,000 irregular immigrants last year, would put pressure on services and risk a popular backlash - especially since its EU neighbours are no longer letting most migrants travel north out of Italy.

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There are legal and security challenges in cooperating on migration with Libya, where camps for migrants are run by the government and the militias alike, and offer dire conditions.

The bloc would be in violation of international law if its own vessels sent people back to Libya. Hence it wants to beef up Libya's coast guard to do it for them, and help Tripoli seal its southern border so fewer people get in.

Many EU governments are sceptical that the latest measures can have much effect on migration. One senior diplomat called it a "long shot". Several said the declaration was intended partly to appease Italian demands that the Union be seen to be acting.

SIGNALS

Longer term, Europeans are placing hopes in using their aid muscle in Africa to reduce incentives for people to leave and give governments there incentives to take back citizens who fail to win asylum in Europe. Deporting more of those who reach Italy is part of a wider plan to send signals to Africans not to risk the Sahara and Mediterranean in the vain hope of a better life.

At Agadez in Niger, numbers gathering to cross the Sahara have plunged in recent months, which some EU officials think may indicate that strategy of deterrence is working. However, people smugglers may just have altered routes.

British Prime Minister Theresa May attended despite her plan to start negotiations by next month to take Britain out of the EU - a reminder, British officials said, that she wanted to go on cooperating with European neighbours after Brexit.

May also had briefed peers on her visit last week to U.S. President Donald Trump, whose backing for Brexit, doubts on free trade, barring of refugees and warmth toward Russia have all raised alarm in Europe. Some European leaders disapprove of May's rush to embrace Trump, although some, notably in the east, have endorsed his tough line against Muslim immigration.

French President Francois Hollande said European governments should stick together, not seek special favours from Washington.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said: "Europe has its fate in its own hands ... The clearer we are about how we define our role in the world, the better we can also take care of our Transatlantic relations."

(Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Chair of state Democratic Party visits N. Platte; motivates support in community

Jane Kleeb smiled as she recalled something she had heard over and over: I didnt know you were a Democrat.

Kleeb spoke to a packed banquet room at the Lincoln County Democrats meeting Thursday night, at Wild Bills Wings and Bowling. Many said the Nebraska Democratic Party chair brought more attendance than usual.

Kleeb helped found Bold Nebraska in 2010 with her husband Scott, a rancher near Hastings, and later helped fight the Keystone XL Pipeline project. As she spoke, she encouraged the countys Democrats to bring to their whisper to a shout  literally.

We want people to start feeling proud that they are a Democrat, Kleeb said.

She spoke of hopeful shifts in the states Democratic party  such as shifting away from lobby funds and into grassroots donations.

Kleeb encouraged members to go door to door in their

communities and recruit others to vote, with plans to increase voter turnout by 5 percent. She also encouraged people to run for elections at the state and local levels, hoping to fill in ballots where there may be only candidates from one party. The states Democratic party plans to hold free training for elected officials to recruit people from more walks of life, she said.

We should always have a choice, she said.

Kleeb said that in Nebraskas 150th year, the state Democratic party plans to host 150 events, such as Thursdays speaking event.

Kleeb also touched on President Donald Trumps recent executive order calling for work to begin on the Keystone XL pipeline, among other pipelines, after work was halted under former president Barack Obamas administration. In an interview before the event, Kleeb said Nebraska was the only state that has not issued proper permits to TransCanada, which hopes to run the oil pipeline across the United States to Canada. She mentioned nearly 100 landowners who refuse to give up their land for the pipeline, and told the crowd imminent domain can only be used for public purposes such as schools  not private interests.

After Kleeb spoke, members of the crowd mentioned shifting away from a corporate identity and becoming more accessible to the working class. Others pointed out how members once had specific interests and now feel like they stand for everything. Kleeb agreed that Democrats once had tunnel vision and now stand with multiple groups  people of color, immigrants, the working class and others. She spoke of corruption, both within the Democratic National Committee and within the 2016 election itself. But she pointed to events like the recent Womens March and protests against Uber, a ride share service that advertised services during last weekends travel ban unveiling. She encouraged members to attend town hall meetings and not feel too daunted to speak at them, and to write letters with a return address in the letter itself and a question needing responded.

Ann Rasmussen attended the meeting with a friend. Afterward, Rasmussen said Kleeb motivated her to vote.

Watch out, 2018, she said.
Recently-hired executive director of Neb. commission traveling across state

The new executive director of the Nebraska Tourism Commission has jumped right into his job by traveling across the state during his third week.

John Ricks was in North Platte on Thursday to meet people involved in the tourism industry. The North Platte/Lincoln County Convention and Visitors Bureau hosted a reception where he listened to ideas and shared some thoughts on how to grow tourism in the state.

Im not three weeks old in terms of destination marketing, Ricks said. Ive been in it for 25 years and Im excited to be here, because Ive worked on a number of different states that are what I call challenger brands. Theyre not the leading destinations nationally.

Ricks, who came from Colorado, said that state is one of the top destination states.

Ive worked on Wyoming, Wisconsin, and theyre not the top echelon, so I really like the challenge of the challenger brands, Ricks said. I like them because you just work harder and be smarter and have really good relationships with the industry.

Ricks pointed out that the commission itself doesnt have a product of its own.

Our product is the industry, Ricks said. Thats why Im in North Platte right now and why I was in Kearney the other day.

He is scheduling other visits across the state as well.

The reason is because each tourism industry has a different vibe and culture and a different feel, Ricks said. And I have to really understand that  whats going on, what are the issues  so we can do our work.

Ricks described the work of the commission as basically economic development.

Its getting the visitors here, increasing the number of visitors, increasing their spending and generating tax dollars, Ricks said.

He said tourism is big business in Nebraska. Its the third leading industry in the state, generating $5 billion of visitor spending, $600 million of taxes and over 45,000 jobs.

I know from my experience, you can market it, Ricks said. It is very growable, if you will, and thats what were looking to do here.

Ricks wants to look at where the state markets itself.

A lot of the marketing dollars right now are spent in state, Ricks said. Its great to have people move in and about the state because they live here and should find out about it. My experience tells me that increasing the number of visitors from out of state is going to be a better place to go in terms of marketing dollars spent.

He said those visitors spend more, and his goal is to capture that revenue to help grow Nebraska tourism.
Histories of Black Elk, Neihardt intersect with history of states

The relationship between author John Neihardt and Black Elk led to the writing of a book, Black Elk Speaks, which was published in 1931.

On Thursday at the noon Brown Bag Luncheon at the North Platte Public Library, Humanities Nebraska speaker Nancy Gillis shared the interesting history of The Legacy of Neihardt and Black Elk.

Gillis, of Cherokee and Choctaw heritage, introduced herself in the language of her ancestors.

First I greeted everyone, then called on the Creator to be present, and then told you I was a member of the Cherokee Nation, then told you what my clan is, and only then did I tell you what my name is, Gillis said. In Native culture thats the order of things  the Creator, then everybody else, my group, my smaller group and only then me.

In some ways, she said, that turns Western philosophy on its head. The individual is not the pinnacle of creation but is actually at the bottom.

Gillis began by talking about the early life of Hehaka Sapa  Black Elk.

The history of the United States, the history of Nebraska and South Dakota and lives of these two men intersect, intertwine with some fascinating events in our history, Gillis said.

Black Elk was born in 1863 when his family and extended family were camped along the Little Powder River in Wyoming.

He was born into a world where life was one long ceremony, Gillis said. Every moment in traditional Native American life, particularly before contact with Europeans, was constant prayer and activities throughout the day every day.

She said the day-to-day existence was seen as a mystical event. Growing up in a constant life-and-death environment had a profound effect on Black Elk.

It not only meant growing up fast, but learning early to be tuned in to the various nuances of the physical and spiritual world around him, Gillis said.

Black Elk began hearing voices when he was a young boy.

When he was 9, he fell into a coma for 12 days and he was pronounced dead, Gillis said. During that time he had an out-of-body experience, and later he would call it his great vision.

As his life changed, he believed his role was to break down the unknowable into the knowable. In 1868, Black Elk joined Buffalo Bill Codys Wild West Show. Cody took the show to Europe and Black Elk saw thousands of white men there.

It was both exciting and disheartening to him, Gillis said. He saw so many white men, while on his reservation he only saw small numbers of his people.

He believed the future of his people appeared to be bleak.

After experiencing the tragedies of the Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee, many things changed for Black Elk.

In the 1930s, he met Neihardt and they eventually became close friends.

Through the years, Gillis said, they communicated through an interpreter, Black Elks son Ben Black Elk, while Neihardt procured the information for his book.

Gillis also gave a presentation Thursday evening at the Lincoln County Historical Museum about the five recognized tribes of Nebraska: Omaha, Ponca, Pawnee, Santee and Winnebago.

Although many other tribes were in Nebraska, these are the ones that currently have a presence in Nebraska, Gillis said. The presentation is a brief history of when they entered the state and then the current history, what theyre doing now.
The bank's exposure to the beleaguered group is around $637m.

As Ezra is foreseen to face liquidation, CIMB expects DBS to be hit the hardest, as the bank's exposure to the group is estimated to be $637m.

Ezra has called for a trading halt at the start of the month pending the release of an announcement. CIMB said this could be related to the results of its discussions with lenders and other stakeholders regarding its financial position, which could result in the group, its JV or subsidiaries liquidation in the worst case scenario.

"As of 31 Aug 2016, the group had US$989m of term loans and bills payable to banks, including US$568m from 75.46%-owned EMAS Offshore Limited and US$150m from 60.9%-owned Triyards Holdings Limited," CIMB explained.

The firm pointed out that DBS has the largest exposure to the Ezra group of companies at $637m, followed by OCBC at $300m and UOB at $166m. DBS's exposure is due to its lending to EMAS Chiyoda Subsea, given that it was the co-lead arranger for the loan facility for EMAS Chiyodas main vessel, the Lewek Constellation.

"Should the entire Ezra group go into liquidation, the banks will have to recognise their exposures as NPLs and make adequate provisions for the unrecoverable amounts," CIMB stated.

It furthered, "Based on 40-80% write-down in book value of fixed assets across the group, we estimate DBS will have to make specific provisions (SPs) of 8-16bp, OCBC: 9-12bp and UOB: 6-7bp. This assumes no SPs have been taken yet and will impact DBSs FY17F net profit by 6-12%, OCBC: 5-8%, and UOB: 4-5%."





More From Singapore Business Review


The Regional Development Authority is searching for a firm to do a market study on the viability and potential benefit of a new convention center in Northwest Indiana.

A request for proposals describes two main tasks for the market study. First is whether there is market demand for a convention center and what its economic impact would be. Second is what location would be best and what characteristics it should have such as size, design and amenities.

Respondents have until March 3 to submit a proposal to perform the study.

The Lake County Council asked the RDA last year to perform the feasibility study.

South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority President and CEO Speros Batistatos last year renewed his proposal for a new convention center after announcement of the closure of the conference space at the Radisson Hotel at Star Plaza, in Merrillville.

Batistatos has suggested funding the project, and other tourism-related projects, with a 3 percent food and beverage tax.

State legislation permits the RDA to participate in "destination" development in Lake and Porter counties, in addition to the RDA's main tasks of promoting public transportation and lakeshore redevelopment.

The RDA's request for proposals has a target date of April 24 for awarding a contract. The term of the contract would be 10 months.

The RFP is available on the RDA's website, in.gov/rda/.
GOP border tax may leave United States with no friends in the Middle East, analyst says

The United States could find itself with few friends in the Middle East if Republicans pass a border tax without carving out loopholes for oil imports, Helima Croft, RBC Capital Markets global head of commodity strategy, said Thursday.

The so-called border adjustment tax would put a tariff on imports, but not exports. That system would favor U.S. drillers and refineries set up to process American crude into gasoline and other fuels.

In addition to angering refiners that rely on foreign crude, it would rile key U.S. allies on the Arab Peninsula, including top oil exporter Saudi Arabia , Croft told CNBC's "Power Lunch."

"I think the Saudi government is probably very happy with the Trump administration," she said. "This is the one issue where I think that you could really see a problem in the U.S.-Saudi reset relationship."

U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia deteriorated under the Obama administration, which brokered a historic deal with Riyadh's regional rival, Iran . That accord allowed Iran to expand its oil exports and relieved pressure on its economy.





Croft said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis could push the White House and Republican lawmakers to create a carve-out to the border tax for oil imports. They could argue the loophole is necessary for national security as the Cabinet seeks deeper cooperation with Gulf allies on fighting Islamic State militants, she said.

The White House already raised tensions with Iran on Wednesday, putting Tehran "on notice" over its ballistic missile tests and intervention in Yemen's civil war. Implementing the border tax would further complicate U.S. relations in the Middle East.

"So not only do we have this hostility with Iran, we have no friends in the Middle East" if the border adjustment tax passes with no oil loophole, she said.

In 2015, nearly 16 percent of U.S. crude imports came from Persian Gulf countries. Saudi Arabia was the largest single-country oil exporter to the United States, after Canada.

Croft also noted that Gulf Coast refineries process heavier crude, including Saudi oil. Since American drillers tend to produce lighter crude, there is no U.S. substitute for Saudi supplies.

On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs (GS)' Jeff Currie told "Power Lunch" U.S. consumers would pay for the border tax at the pump.
U.S. Steel announced during a Wednesday conference call with investors it plans to pump an additional $200 million into its steel mills over the next few years.

Chief Executive Mario Longhi said the steelmaker would do multiple projects, many less than $10 million, over the next three to four years to improve profitability and competitiveness. Some of the projects will involve rolling mills that recently had trouble, causing production to dip in the fall.

Spokeswoman Erin DePietro said the company would not comment on where the projects would be. Some of the investment would almost certainly come to Northwest Indiana though, where U.S. Steel operates Gary Works, its largest mill. Locally, the steelmaker also runs East Chicago Tin and the Midwest Plant in Portage.

U.S. Steel lost $440 million last year, a significant improvement from the $1.6 billion it lost in 2015. The company coped with the lowest steel prices since 2004, but is starting to see dividends from all the trade cases it's filed against foreign steel dumpers.

"We have also been investing in our facilities, and as we indicated last quarter, increasing both the pace and magnitude of our efforts in this area is a priority for this year," Longhi said on the conference call.

Analysts on the call questioned whether $10 million really went that far in a steel mill, and Investor Relations General Manager Dan Lesnak said the projects would have a cumulative impact. He said U.S. Steel was looking at smaller projects, so they could be moved around so as not to interfere with the order book.

"You could have a $5 million project to replace a drive on a line somewhere," he said. "You could have a couple of millions to replace sensors or upgrade the sensors or side-trimming, anything and everything. So, there is not any one big-ticket project. You will have multiple projects on an individual facility that will add up over time."

Longhi said the plan is a comprehensive one that will help the steelmaker provide customers with higher quality steel, and can be scaled back if the market worsens again.

"We will be implementing this plan over the next 3 to 4 years in order to minimize disruptions to our operations and to ensure we continue to support our customers throughout this process," he said. "Our asset revitalization plan is not just sustaining capital and maintenance spending. These projects will deliver both operational and commercial benefits."
EAST CHICAGO  The new Indiana superintendent of public instruction contends she is interested in finding an off-the-shelf test to replace the troubled ISTEP-Plus assessment and will revamp the education department's outreach division to help schools with rigor and relevance, and make it a solid resource for schools.

Jennifer McCormick visited the School City of East Chicago on Thursday at the invitation of Superintendent Paige McNulty, who invited other local superintendents to meet with McCormick over lunch. McNulty then took the state superintendent and department Chief of Staff Lee Ann Kwiatkowski on a tour of East Chicago school buildings.

ISTEP-Plus is the state-mandated test for students in grades three through eight in Indiana. High school students take an end of course assessment to measure what they have learned in English and Algebra I.

Educators repeated a longstanding refrain that the problem with ISTEP is that students are tested in the spring and the results are not back until the following school year, too late to revise instruction because students are already in the next grade. Other problems include that the testing time period is too long and there have been numerous computer glitches during test-taking.

School Town of Munster Superintendent Jeffrey Hendrix said the original intent of ISTEP was to be for summer remediation but that's not what it is today. "What is the purpose of the assessment. Is it to rate us compared with other states?" he asked.

Under federal law, Mccormick said the schools are required to test because they have to measure performance and growth at every level. "Indiana has to come in line with that," she said.

"If we have to develop our own test, you have to field test questions for several years and it's going to take a lot of time to get that right. I would argue that we don't have a lot of time to get it right and we look at an off-the-shelf test. Many states are doing that. It saves on cost. It saves on heartache in the field."

McCormick said several people were laid off in the division of outreach. Previous Superintendent Glenda Ritz created the outreach division to assist schools in improving instruction rather than to recommend a state takeover of schools.

McCormick said she, too, prefers not to take over schools but to help them improve.
Steve Meyer, Porter County adult probation chief officer, is among 61 county officials from across the state calling on Medicaid officials to reconsider coverage of the sublingual film version of the drug Suboxone, which has posed a contraband problem at jails and prisons.

The group is hoping to win backing for the change from the Indiana Family & Social Services Administration Therapeutics Committee, which is meeting Friday morning.

The tiny, paper-thin version of Suboxone is particularly easy to sneak into jails and prisons between people and through the mail as it can be hidden under stamps and in book bindings, according to a letter the group wrote to the director of the state's Medicaid program.

The Suboxone sheets also can be liquefied and added to nearly any material to become undetectable.

"To address this influx we have had to deploy precious manpower and resources to oversee our mail operations and tighten security around visitations  further stretching our limited resources," the letter states.

Suboxone is a drug used to treat opiate addiction. The sheets are similar in appearance to the Listerine-brand breath strips.

According to the group's understanding, Medicaid buys millions of dollars of the sublingual drug each year. The demographics of the inmates and their families suggest that many are Medicaid eligible, "which could be a key source in the rising level of film contraband we are experiencing," the letter states.

Medicaid officials are called upon to consider limiting the drug to formulations that are not as prone to become contraband.

"Please know we did not experience high contraband issues with buprenorphine prior to the release of the Suboxone film in Indiana," according to the letter.

The Porter County Sheriff's Department said it recently broke up a smuggling effort involving the film, which was selling for $100 each.

William Merriweather Jr., 46, of South Bend, faces a felony count of dealing a controlled substance.

Aaron Myers, 36, and Randall Madaras, 26, both with addresses of the jail, are charged with a felony count of aiding in the dealing of a controlled substance, according to court records.

LaPorte resident Amber Malstaff, 32, was charged in December with a felony count of trafficking with an inmate based on allegations of attempting to smuggle the sublingual drug into the county jail by hiding it within the binding of a book.

The Westville Correctional Facility reported that it had caught the mother of one of its inmates attempting to smuggle the same form of Suboxone into the prison Jan. 14.

Polly Smart, of Huntington, Indiana, was caught with 50 small strips believed to be Suboxone in sealed packages, officials said. She faces felony counts of attempted trafficking with an inmate and possession of Suboxone.

The Lake County Jail employs two full-time officers to screen incoming and outgoing mail and has not had a problem with Suboxone, sheriff's department spokesman Mark Back said.

A spokesman for the LaPorte County Jail could not be reached to comment on whether officials there have discovered problems with the drug.
VALPARAISO  One of five portable defibrillators donated to police late last year was successfully put to use Thursday night.

Officer Michelle Kodicek responded to a call of a 43-year-old not breathing, police said.

When Kodicek was unable to find a pulse and saw the man turning blue, she used her defibrillator and began chest compressions.

Officer Jason Hamilton arrived and both continued CPR and chest compressions.

Valparaiso Fire Emergency Medical Services arrived and began treating the subject, police said. The patient was transported to the hospital and is in intensive care.

Five defibrillators were donated to the Police Department in November by the local Firehouse Subs.
PORTAGE  Several NIRPC Environmental Management Policy Committee members said Thursday they want to help East Chicago as an EPA Superfund cleanup continues there. The city is grappling with the discovery of elevated lead levels in its drinking water, but some noted a lack of guidance.

Jaime Brown, of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, updated committee members on EPA's work at the USS Lead Superfund site in East Chicago's Calumet neighborhood and discussed drinking water.

Brown, who spoke to the group via a video conferencing system, presented the same slideshow EPA officials went over with residents during an open house Saturday at Carrie Gosch Elementary School.

EPA tested drinking water at 43 homes within the Superfund site as part of a pilot study intended to determine if excavation of lead- and arsenic-contaminated soil at those homes caused lead in pipes to become dislodged and enter the water supply. Lead in water comes from old pipes or plumbing equipment and is not related to lead in soil.

The agency found elevated lead levels in drinking water before beginning excavation at 18 of the 43 homes tested. Several slides showed lead levels decreased in some cases after excavation, which Brown characterized as indicating excavation did not affect lead in drinking water.

However, EPA officials at Saturday's open house said they have not come to any conclusions about whether excavation affected lead in pipes, and they recommended everyone on the city's water system  even those outside the Superfund site  use a kitchen tap water filter with an NSF/ANSI 53 certification mark.

The committee and the Urban Waters Partnership tentatively plan to hear from Peg Donnelly of EPA at 9 a.m. April 6, according to NIRPC staff.

Committee member Reggie Korthals, a stormwater specialist with Butler, Fairman and Seufert, asked what guidance EPA has offered about lead in drinking water.

Brown said the agency has information on the Internet. EPA previously said employees called residents whose water was tested and gave them filters. EPA can't distribute water filters to people outside the Superfund site, Brown said.

Korthals said some residents may not have access to the Internet, and the complexity of the situation will require careful messaging.

"You have to develop a process, so all of the messages are not lost," she said. "Some guidance is needed on how you want us to put that out to the community. I don't think the guidance is there."

Korthals said after the meeting a number of groups could help develop a messaging plan and that there's no reason to reinvent the wheel.
CROWN POINT  As part of a plea agreement with Lake County prosecutors, a Hammond man was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison for a shooting that left a man paralyzed from the neck down.

Joel Victor Valle, 36, pleaded guilty to the level 3 felony charge of aggravated battery. He was originally charged with felony 1 attempted murder for shooting into the Stop and Go Liquors in the 5600 block of Calumet Avenue on May 22, 2015.

Defense attorney R. Brian Woodward said Valle previously suffered a traumatic brain injury from a gunshot wound to the head resulting in blackouts and drug abuse. He asked that his client have access to any drug rehabilitation or mental health programs available in prison.

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Eric Randall said there wasnt any victim impact statement and agreed to dismiss the charges of attempted murder and battery.

Pro-Tem Judge Michael Lambert presided in Lake Criminal Court Judge Diane Boswells courtroom, and gave Valle a total of 555 days credit for time served.

Valle was remanded to the Lake County Sheriffs Department for transport to the Indiana Department of Correction.
Michigan City native Carter Hugh Manny Jr., whose time with well-known architects Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe led to a successful architectural career that included a hand in the development of OHare International Airport, died Wednesday at 98.

Manny, who worked with the Chicago architectural firm of Naess & Murphy until his retirement in 1983, also oversaw or was involved in such other projects as the FBI building in Washington, D.C., and Mercy Hospital, the Richard J. Daley Center and the First National Bank in Chicago.

Growing up in Michigan City, his family was friends with the family of Wright as well as artists such as Grant Wood, who gave Manny a drawing he later donated to the Art Institute of Chicago.

Manny was born Nov. 16, 1918, to Carter Hugh Manny and Ada Gage (Burnes). He attended Harvard University and continued his architectural studies at the Graduate School of Design. World War II intervened and Carter switched to the Harvard Business School, feeling he would be more useful to the country.

He pursued his architectural studies again after returning to Indiana, during which time he had a short apprenticeship with Wright at Taliesin in 1946, studied with Mies van der Rohe and graduated from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 1948. He began working with Naess & Murphy in 1948.

Manny was president of the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, a lifetime member of the Society of Architectural Historians and served on many boards.

A highlight of his career was the circus parade he organized during the installation of the The Flamingo sculpture on the Daley Plaza in Chicago.

Two of his drawings were exhibited in 2013 at the Art Institute of Chicago where some of his scrapbooks on Calder, Chagall and the Worlds Fair of 1933 already are included in the collection. Some of his drawings and writings are at the Chicago Historical Society.

He traveled widely to China, Japan and throughout the Americas and Europe.

At age 94, according to his family, Manny was busy raising funds to purchase headstones for colleagues he felt had been overlooked.

He is survived by his wife of 20 years, Maya; two children, Elizabeth Manny in Taos, New Mexico, and Carter Manny III in Cumberland, Maine; four stepsons; and eight grandchildren.

He was preceded in death by his first wife of more than 50 years, Mary Alice Kellett.

In lieu of flowers, it is requested donations be made to Hospice by the Bay, 17 E. Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Larkspur, CA 94939 or hospicebythebay.org.

The family also suggests a memorial to any of the following: The Department of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago (www.artic.edu/join-and-give/support-museum); The Society of Architectural Historians (www.sah.org/); the LaPorte County Historical Society Museum (www.laportecountyhistory.org/); or the Michigan City Public Library (www.mclib.org/).

To sign a guestbook, visit carlislefh.com.
VALPARAISO  More than 160 guests attended MRAcademy on Wednesday at Ivy Tech. The one-day technical seminar included presentations and hands-on demonstrations.

Tin Rinks, area sales manager for Reinhausen, which led the seminar, said the daylong event was for maintenance professionals, engineers and anyone who works with electrical substations.

"We get a host, like NIPSCO, and we tailor the day for them," Rinks said. "The people who attend today will be learning maintenance practices on Reinhausen equipment."

Reggie Adams came to the seminar from Jacksonville, Florida.

"I'm an electrical engineer with Gerdau and we use this (Reinhausen) company," Adams said. "I am here to see what new technology there is for transformers."

Russ Atkins, vice president of NIPSCO, greeted the crowd and was happy to be part of a partnership with industry and education.

"This is a great opportunity for engineers," Atkins said.
With one swoop of his pen, President Barack Obama put hundreds of drug offenders back on the street. Can anyone believe this man wants what is right for the American people? How can Chicago spend millions of dollars to build a library in his name?
February is a great month for children to learn about history, from honoring the central role of African-Americans in U.S. history to celebrating the nations presidents.

While nestling inside the home escaping the cold temperatures outside, reading is a great way to learn about these contributions, and theres several kids books on the market that explore our past. Here are a few available at local bookstores or online.

'Blast Back!: The American Revolution'

As part of the Blast Back! series that celebrates history, this book allows readers to peek into the American Revolution to see what life was like. Authored by Nancy Ohlin and illustrated by Adam Larkum, this book engages readers with illustrations and covers everything from how the war started to little-known facts about George Washington.

'Freedom in Congo Square'

Winner of a Caldecott Honor and a Coretta Scott King Honor for illustration, this nonfiction story is about a little-known piece of African American history. Written by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, this poetic piece demonstrates how New Orleans Congo Square - a place where slaves were briefly able to congregate - was freedoms heart.

'Fancy Party Gowns: The Story of Fashion Designer Ann Cole Lowe'

This picture book is about designer Ann Cole Lowe, a little-known African-American fashion designer who battled personal and social adversity to pursue her passion of making beautiful gowns. By Deborah Blumenthal and illustrated by Laura Freeman, this story shares Lowes journey as she became one of societys top designers.

'I Am Abraham Lincoln'

As part of the Ordinary People Change the World series, this childrens book tells the story of one of Americas icons in a conversational way. Each book by Brad Meltzer and illustrated by Christopher Eliopoulos focuses on a particular character trait that made that role model heroic, inspiring children to strive and dream.

'The Youngest Marcher: The Story of Audrey Faye Hendricks, a Young Civil Rights Activist'

In this book written by Cynthia Levinson and illustrated by Vanessa Brantley Newton, children will meet the youngest known child to be arrested for a civil rights protest in Birmingham, Ala. in 1963. This picture book proves its never too late and no one is too little to make a difference.
FILE PHOTO: People line up at the entrance of Macy's Herald Square ahead of early opening for Black Friday sales in Manhattan, New York, U.S., November 24, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

By Greg Roumeliotis and Michael Flaherty

(Reuters) - Hudson's Bay Co has made a takeover approach for struggling retailer Macy's Inc, people familiar with the matter said, trying to push further into the U.S. market where it already owns the Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue chains.

While the Toronto-based company faces major financing and operating challenges in completing a deal to buy Macy's, which is trying to overhaul its operations, it could use its existing foothold in the U.S. to save on administrative costs and have more negotiating power with its vendors.

Shares of Macy's closed up 6.4 percent at $32.69 on Friday. Hudson's Bay rose to C$10.39.

Talks between the companies are at an early stage, one of the people said. The sources asked not to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Hudson's Bay said it does not comment on rumors or speculation, while Macy's declined to comment.

Macy's, the host of New York's annual Thanksgiving Day parade, is in the midst of a turnaround engineered by Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren, who assumed leadership of the company in 2004.

Lundgren is set to step down this year, and could earn $80.24 million if there is a change of company control, according to a filing.

Macy's has also been under pressure from activist hedge fund Starboard Value LP since 2015 to separate its real estate from its retail business to better monetize its real estate assets. Starboard estimated those assets to be worth $21 billion.

Starboard held around 1 percent of Macy's stock as of Sept. 30 last year, making it the company's 15th largest shareholder.

Starboard founder Jeff Smith did not return calls seeking comment.

PRIME REAL ESTATE ASSETS

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Macy's has around 900 stores in the U.S., which includes its Bloomingdale's outlets and its flagship store in New York City's Herald Square.

Hudson's Bay is well known for making money off its real estate assets. After buying Saks for $2.9 billion in 2013, it secured a $1.25 billion 20-year mortgage for its Fifth Avenue flagship location in New York, valuing the property at $3.7 billion.

Story continues

Should Hudson's Bay acquire Macy's, it will likely bring similar real estate prowess to the jewel locations owned by the retailer. Still, should Hudson's Bay opt to sell some of Macy's less desirable locations, it would have to compete with a flood of properties for sale, as other struggling retailers also shed properties.

Hudson's Bay has traditionally financed deals through its joint ventures, giving it the ability to pull off deals that many peers might struggle to do without impacting their credit rating.

It has a partnership with Canada's RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust and with U.S.-based Simon Property Group Inc.

Hudson's Bay could raise equity and debt against its real estate portfolio to fund the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news.

Cowen and Company said in an analyst note that Macys has attractive qualities for a buyer, including a low price to earnings valuation of 10 times, $2.8 billion of free cash flow and a large real estate portfolio. But chances of a deal were dim, the note said.

Macy's struggling turnaround and the continued pressure it faces from Amazon make a deal unlikely, Cowen said in the note, adding that Amazon itself could be a potential buyer of the company, given its expansion into physical stores.

Amazon did not immediately return a request for comment.

Founded in 1670, Hudson's Bay began as primarily a fur trading business and once owned more than 40 percent of what is now Canada, and also a significant portion of Minnesota and North Dakota.

It was acquired in 2008 by mall developer NRDC Equity Partners, headed by Richard Baker. The company, which is still run by Baker, went public in 2012.

(Additional reporting by Lauren Hirsch in New York, Solarina Ho in Toronto, Nandita Bose in Chicago and Siddharth Cavale in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Bernadette Baum and Bernard Orr)
MUNSTER  Police arrested two suspects inside a fitness center early Friday after a shooting at another location on 45th Street, an official said.

A woman was shot and wounded about 5:40 a.m. as she arrived to work at the FedEx Home Delivery business at 101 45th St. in Munster, police Lt. Ed Strbjak said.

While investigating the shooting, police received several calls about two suspicious men and eventually took them into custody in the foyer at Fitness Pointe, 9950 Calumet Ave., he said.

The woman knew the suspects, and the shooting is not believed to be random, Strbjak said. Police do not believe there is any threat to the community.

After the shooting, police received a call from the Family Christian Center, 340 W. 45th St., about two men pulling on doors, Strbjak said. The men did not get inside.

The call from the church was followed by a 911 call from a business in the 500 block of Progress Avenue about the men and another call from Fitness Pointe about two suspicious men in the foyer, police said.

The men were taken into custody at Fitness Pointe, and police searched the foyer for evidence. About 7 a.m., several brown paper bags could be seen lined up as police combed the area wearing gloves.

A weapon was recovered, Strbjak said.

The woman who was shot at FedEx was taken to a hospital. Strbjak did not immediately have information on her condition.

The circumstances surrounding the shooting remain under investigation, Strbjak said.

Dyer, Highland and Lansing police assisted, Strbjak said.
The death of a 3-year-old Brooklyn boy badly beaten in November has been ruled a homicide, according to the city's medical examiner.



The medical examiner said Thursday afternoon that Jaden Jordan died of abusive head and neck trauma.

He was found beaten, unconscious, and covered in feces at his home in Gravesend on Nov. 28, according to police. He died in the hospital a week later.

The boyfriend of Jaden's mother has been charged with assault.

Child protection workers had knocked on the wrong door two days earlier after they received an anonymous tip of child abuse.

The mother's boyfriend is charged in the case.

The Brooklyn district attorney's office intends to seek to upgrade the charges in the grand jury, Acting District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said Thursday night.

This is just one of several devastating cases at the agency in the last several months. Zymere Perkins, 6, was beaten to death in September  allegedly by his mother's boyfriend.

In late-January, a Brooklyn mom was charged with beating her 4-year-old son, Zamair Combs, to death.

A few days earlier in Jamaica, Queens, 5-year-old Michael Guzman was found unconscious in an apartment on 109th Ave. He was later pronounced dead, according to police.

An independent investigation has found that the city's child welfare agency, the Administration for Children's Services (ACS), could have saved Jaden's life.

The city's department of investigation found the "depth of errors over this two-day period was so significant" that they went to the heart of the agency's core mission of protecting children. It said this was another example of systemic problems at the agency.

It found child welfare workers had access to databases to check the Brooklyn address. It also found that the unit this tip went to, which works on nights and weekends, is poorly trained and inadequately staffed.
NEW YORK - Nearly a dozen people were arrested Thursday night during a protest at NYU over a scheduled appearance of conservative actor and media entrepreneur Gavin McInnes.

The Vice Media co-founder was invited to speak to NYU's College Republicans at the school's Kimmel Center on Washington Square South near Thompson street.

The protest was organized by a group called NYU Anti-Fascists, who say McInnes is known for using "incendiary language."

A spokesman for NYU says fights broke out at the protests and that McInnes was hit with pepper spray at one point.

McInnes' speech was stopped when protesters rushed the room.

There was some minor damage to the nearby NYU Catholic Center.

Eleven people were arrested, and at least two were charged with criminal mischief.

McInnes later tweeted: "Thanks for asking if I'm OK guys. I was sprayed with pepper spray but being called a Nazi burned way more."
MONROVIA, Liberia  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton landed in Liberia in the driving rain Thursday morning and sent a strong message of support to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has recently come under scrutiny for her role in the countrys conflict-ridden past.

Mrs. Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist, instantly became a symbol of womens empowerment and a departure from war in this long-suffering nation in 2005, when she became Africas first woman to be elected head of state.

But in late June, Liberias Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended barring her from public office for 30 years because she had been one of the political leaders and financiers of different warring factions during the countrys intermittent armed conflicts from 1989 to 2003.

Mrs. Clinton backed her up 100 percent.

I look at what President Sirleaf has done over the past three years and I see a very accomplished leader, she said.
But American and Panamanian officials were still trying to understand why the ships crew had fought so hard to repel a boarding party as the ship tried to traverse the Panama Canal. After all, the equipment they were protecting would make a nice exhibit in a museum of cold war military artifacts. Were talking old, one official briefed on the episode said. When this stuff was new, Castro was plotting revolutions.

Image Credit... The New York Times

The Cuban Ministry did not seem to be offended, describing the equipment to be repaired as two antiaircraft missile complexes, Volga and Pechora; nine missiles in parts and spares, two MiG-21bis and 15 motors for this type of airplane, all of it manufactured in the mid-20th century.

The episode also offered a window on the desperate measures North Korea is taking to keep hard currency and goods flowing at a time when its ships are tracked everywhere, old customers like Syria and Iran are facing sanctions and scrutiny of their own, and its partners have dwindled to a few outliers.

Still, Cubas role was puzzling  at a time when Washington has talked of relaxing restrictions and Cubas leadership has seemed more eager to improve its ties with the West than to strengthen relations with cold war-era partners.

Even by the measure of bizarre stories about North Koreas black-market dealings, the events of the past five days in Panama set some records. In recent times North Korean shipments to Myanmar and the Middle East have been tracked and in some cases intercepted, a testament to how closely American spy satellites follow the countrys aging cargo fleet.
By Mehreen Zahra-Malik ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Hyundai Motor Company plans to set up a car assembly plant in Pakistan in a joint venture with local textile firm Nishat Mills, an official from Nishat said on Friday. Hyundai's return to Pakistan will boost the government's efforts to shake up the Japanese-dominated car market and loosen the grip of Toyota, Honda and Suzuki, who assemble cars in Pakistan with local partners. Hyundai and South Korea's Kia Motor used to assemble cars in Pakistan until 2004 but withdrew after their local partner Dewan Farooque Motors Limited went bust. It was not clear how much capital Hyundai, South Korea's largest automaker, would itself invest in the Pakistani venture. Representatives for Hyundai could not immediately be reached for comment. Nishat Mills is a subsidiary of Nishat Group, a giant in the Pakistani banking, textiles, energy and cement sectors. Its share price rose 1.4 percent after the announcement. "Today we have signed a memorandum of understanding between the two companies and we will set up a ... project for the assembly and sales of both passenger and commercial vehicles," Nishat Mills company secretary Khalid Chauhan said. Nishat Mills filed a statement with the Pakistan Stock Exchange saying the deal was "subject to applicable statutory and regulatory approvals". Last year, French carmaker Renault agreed to invest in a new factory in Pakistan and South Korean carmaker Kia Motor Co said it would start assembling cars in a joint venture with Karachi-listed Lucky Cement, part of the vast conglomerate Yunus Brothers Group. The government believes increased competition should bring down exceptionally high car prices in Pakistan, and in March it introduced a new auto policy favouring new entrants into the market by offering generous import duties. The incentives have angered existing market players, some of whom have said publicly they should get similar terms. Pakistan, with a population of nearly 200 million people, is a potentially huge market, but just 180,000 cars were sold in the 2014/2015 fiscal year. That compares with more than 2 million passenger vehicles a year in neighbouring India. (Additional reporting by Drazen Jorgic; Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik. Editing by Jane Merriman and Elaine Hardcastle)
As the committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities on State Enterprises, headed by Bugweri MP Abdu Katuntu, continues to look into the oil money 'handshake', ALON MWESIGWA looks at the role of the top eight beneficiaries, according to URA documents.

URA lawyer Ali Ssekatawa and commissioner general Doris Akol. Each got Shs 242 million

Ernst Rubondo, Shs 266m



He was commissioner for the Petroleum Exploration and Production department (PEPD) in the ministry of energy.

He was the chief technical adviser to government during the period the arbitration was undertaken. He also provided technical expertise and helped in the reconstruction of Heritage Oil and Gas journey from initial contract negotiation to the point of sale of the companys interests in Uganda.



Honey Malinga, Shs 263m

He is an oil and gas subject matter expert and provided technical advice and expertise. URA documents show that he was key in preparation of witness statements and helped in reconstruction of the Heritage operational journey in Uganda.

He was also key in identification of documentary evidence that supported Ugandas case.

Alex Nyombi, Shs 246m

The petroleum operations subject matter expert provided technical advice and expertise. He supported the process of identification of documentary evidence, which was crucial in supporting Ugandas case but also helped in preparation of factual witness statements.

Allen Kagina, Shs 242m

She was the Uganda Revenue Authority boss at the time but she has since been appointed the director of Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra).

Documents we have received show Kagina, as the former URA team leader from the inception of the case, and led the pursuit of the tax money.

She led a government crusade not to sign a proposed arbitration agreement submitted by Heritage that demanded that government waive its claim to sovereignty at arbitration.

Doris Akol, Shs 242m

She was the commissioner legal in February 2011 when the cases started. Documents state that she participated in the pre- assessment stage, assessment and objections management. She headed the URA legal team and she was lead counsel in the Ugandan proceedings in the Tax Appeals Tribunal, and the High court Commercial division.



Ali Ssekatawa, Shs 242m

The URA lawyer was among the top beneficiaries of the handshake. URA documents show that he was co-counsel in Ugandan proceedings in the Tax Appeals Tribunal, High court Commercial division and during the Arbitration proceedings at the International Court of Arbitration, London.

Robinah Nakakawa, Shs 242m

The head of the natural resource management unit in URA. She reviewed the tax laws for taxability of the transaction, initiated and raised the assessments, reviewed the objections, provided tax and accounting expertise as technical team member throughout the duration of the case with only a break when she went for further studies.



Harriet Lwabi, Shs 242m

She was the acting solicitor general until the position was substantively filled. She acted as lead counsel for the government of Uganda team and subject matter expert for arbitration proceedings. She was also involved in the initial pre-assessment discussions for settlement offers by Heritage.

amwesigwa@observer.ug
ALISO VIEJO  Paola Anderson was heartbroken when her 14-year-old Pomeranian, Sherman, was given just weeks to live.

An animal advocate and owner of Laguna Pet Spa, she scoured the Internet for help. She read about an experimental medicine that might be able to slow the growth of a tumor on his adrenal glands that threatened to crush his organs.

After seven unsuccessful efforts to find a veterinarian willing to treat Sherman with the medication, Anderson found Maria Bromme, a veterinarian at Alicia Pet Care Center in Mission Viejo.

Bromme, 30, got in touch with a researcher who gave her guidance on dosage and symptoms to watch for. A year and a half later, Sherman is alive and the tumor doesnt appear to have grown.

On Sunday, Anderson will say thanks by opening her pet spa in Aliso Viejo for a fundraiser to benefit Veterinarians International, a nonprofit near and dear to Brommes heart.

Bromme, director of communications and recruitment for the group, is one of several veterinarians going in March to Todos Santos Cuchumatan, a small town in the Guatemalan highlands. The group plans to educate children and adults about preventing human diseases stemming from dogs and about responsible pet ownership.

They will also do hundreds of spays, neuters and vaccinations.

Instead of just helping with the fundraiser  where she will donate 100 percent of her profits to Veterinarians International  Anderson will join Bromme on the trip. In all, the group hopes to raise $10,000 to pay for surgeries, supplies and vaccines.

I think a big part of the thoughts that ran through my head when she offered me to be part of this trip was  She helped me save my dogs life. What better way to repay her than to go into the world and possibly be able to save another dog together. said Anderson, 38.

A common bond

Anderson and Bromme started talking about teaming up during one of Shermans checkups. Anderson told Bromme about a recent trip she had taken to Mongolia where she helped veterinarians with animal and human health care in rural communities.

She related her own story of growing up in poverty in Argentina  and about her lifelong dedication to neglected animals and the poor.

Bromme couldnt believe her luck. She told Anderson about last years trip to Todos Santos and how much of an impact it made.

Bromme, who was born in Germany and got her veterinary degree in Scotland, has had a lifelong passion for traveling and learning about other cultures.

I felt such frustration watching stray dogs and cats foraging for food scraps and having no access to veterinary care, she said about her world travels. It bothered me how helpless I was in providing them with any sort of assistance.

She said those images stayed with her throughout veterinary school and prompted her to find ways to get involved locally and internationally.

Bromme, a veterinarian for four years, met Scarlett Magda, the founder of Veterinarians International, last year through a mutual friend. A veterinary emergency clinician in New York, Magda said she wanted to learn more about the role dogs played in human health in other parts of the world.

The Centers For Disease Control estimates that about 75 percent of emerging diseases and more than 60 percent of all human diseases originate in animals. So, improving animal health will dramatically improve human health, Magda said.

In 2014, she founded Veterinarians International and focused on a rabies epidemic in Todos Santos. It partnered with the Global Alliance for Animals and People, a Chilean veterinary group.

When Scarlett asked if I wanted to come to Guatemala in just a few short months, I was thrilled, Bromme said.

Mission: Bonding with humans and animals

For the first two days in Todos Santos, the vets concentrated on training children and adults in animal health, food production, nutrition and disease control. The idea was that the communities would continue these practices even after the veterinarians and their technicians leave, Bromme said.

The second part was hands-on help for dogs and cats. Bromme and three other veterinarians set up surgery tables in a gymnasium and spayed and neutered 226 animals. They also vaccinated 732 animals.

Access to veterinary care in this country is slim to none, Bromme said. Our aim is that by helping the animals by extension were also helping people.

In the three years Veterinarians International has worked to eradicate rabies in Todos Santos, they have seen some success, Bromme said. There are now fewer dog bites and the community has become more educated about the importance of animal care, she said.

I do what I can here, said Bromme, who also works with the Pet Rescue Center in Mission Viejo founded by Matthew Wheaton, a Laguna Beach veterinarian. At the same time, I love traveling and extending my skill set to a broader population to pets and people in need.

The chance to join Bromme and Veterinarians International continues Andersons commitment to help animals and the under-privileged. For 10 years she has assisted rescue groups in Southern California and in Mexico.

I live with a purpose every day, she said.  I drive myself to do something different, whether its people with animals or animals with people.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2254 or eritchie@scng.com
After a fiery week of demonstrations critical of President Donald Trump for doing exactly what he promised, lets consider a healthy dose of perspective from a five-term Republican congressman and former Chapman law school dean.

During a wide-ranging discussion, Tom Campbell said we shouldnt be surprised that a presidential candidate who talked tough about immigration acts tough.

I was not shocked, Campbell said. This was well-telegraphed by candidate Trump and by President-elect Trump.

Still, Campbell is troubled with some things Trump did. He said they were over the line, especially when the president stepped out of bounds with his green card policy, an issue that took several days to correct.

Worse, Campbell  a man with a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago, a Harvard University law degree and a deep commitment to helping developing nations  looks to the future and sees dark clouds gathering.

Far-reaching ripples

Campbell is not a checkers kind of guy. Hes more like a chess player, thinking many moves ahead on a global scale and considering long-term ripple effects.

In 1978, Campbell honeymooned in Kenya. Since then, he and his wife, Susanne, have worked and taught more than a half-dozen times at the university level in Ghana, Eritrea and Rwanda.

As a congressman, Campbell served on the Africa Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations.

In short, Campbell understands immigration issues on deep and personal levels.

From where I stand, that kind of long-term  perhaps even short-term  thinking was absent a week ago when our hyperactive White House suddenly announced a hold on all new refugees for 120 days, indefinitely banned Syrian refugees and put a 90-day block on visitors from six other Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

If nothing else, the White House should have closely collaborated with both State Department and Department of Homeland Security experts before proclaiming such public policy.

Campbell is more erudite.

I was surprised the order had not been properly researched, Campbell said. Whether youre a Democrat or a Republican, you want to rely on and take advantage of the institutions in place.

Campbell said the White House should have approached those institutions and offered, Heres what I want to do. Does it look good to you?

The former UC Berkeley business school dean added that the lack of collaboration inside the Beltway resulted in rudimentary questions such as retroactivity not being anticipated.

As for the green card mess, Campbell said, It caused problems that a minimal level of review would have prevented.

Green cards confer constitutional rights and are in some respects similar to citizenship, Campbell said. If holders are inside the U.S. or even outside, they have a statutory right to live in the country.

Theres a very serious question of depriving liberty without due process of law, Campbell said.

He added the White House also crept close to crossing a constitutional line by considering exceptions for members of minority religions.

Campbell went so far as to admit he has concerns about future White House decisions. I hope, Campbell allowed, this is a one-time oversight.

A more pessimistic interpretation is that they have a disdain for the more routine aspects of government.

It is that kind of concern that caused the Republican to think long and hard about his vote last November. Unlike many Americans, he chose not to vote for what some considered the better of two evils.

Instead, Campbell voted for the best person he thought should be president, writing in John Kasich, governor of Ohio.

After a decade in Congress, Campbell understands the intricacies, interconnections and nuances of immigration. Simple solutions can backfire, fuel resentment, create anger and cause chaos.

Two years ago, Campbell wrote about refugees fleeing to Europe, Muslims persecuted in Burma, Christians in Iraq facing crucifixion. He concluded, The refugees permanent residence should be assigned by lottery among many countries.

Today, Campbell goes beyond that idea, saying that whenever possible, decently funded refugee camps should be set up in or near countries of origin. Additionally, he calls for compassionate treatment.

A Reuters poll on Trumps new immigration policies reports that 10 percent of Americans are undecided about supporting it, 41 percent disagree with the blocks and a whopping 49 percent agree.

But are our assessments based on knowledge or are they simply visceral?

Contact the writer: dwhiting@scng.com
SANTA ANA  An Orange County jury convicted a 48-year-old man of multiple felony counts on Thursday for stealing an idling SUV with three children inside.

Prosecutors said a father in April 2015 was running errands with his 5-, 7- and 11-year-old children when he stopped at a water store on Bolsa Avenue near Magnolia Street in Westminster to fill up jugs and left his Lexus SUV idling in the parking lot with his kids inside.

Thien Hoang Nguyen hopped behind the drivers wheel and sped off with the children still in the inside of the vehicle, prosecutors said. About a half-mile away, Nguyen came up to a congested intersection, where he sideswiped one vehicle and rear-ended another, prosecutors said.

As Nguyen was distracted, the 11-year-old, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, grabbed his fathers cell phone from a center console, called 911 and told his younger siblings to get out of the vehicle and run for safety, prosecutors said.

The children escaped unharmed.

Nguyen was later taken into custody and charged with 10 felony counts including kidnapping, child endangerment, evading an officer and assault with a deadly weapon other than a firearm.

His defense attorney argued Nguyen stole the SUV, but did not intentionally kidnap the children. Nguyen is due in court for sentencing on March 3.

Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com
LOS ANGELES  Los Angeles County officials have filed documents seeking to become the guardian of a California man with dementia who was found disoriented and alone at a British bus station two years ago and became the subject of a TV documentary, according to a newspaper report.

Earl Roger Curry, 76, was returned to the U.S. last year by British authorities after the BBC aired the show examining how he was found so far from home.

He is now in a Los Angeles-area nursing home, with county officials seeking conservancy of him, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

No one in his family is prepared to accept responsibility for him, said the document filed by the Los Angeles County public guardian.

The BBC documentary alleged that Currys family simply left him in England, though no charges have been filed against them. Currys son has denied the allegation, which was also noted in the county documents.

Currys family members could not be reached Thursday for comment.

Curry spent months at a nursing home in central England as British police investigated his origins with help from Interpol. All he could recall was his name was Roger Curry, according to the documentary.

With few clues, investigators made an international public appeal last March for help identifying the man, and internet detectives around the world took up the challenge.

One woman came forward to say she had gone to high school with Curry.

Authorities eventually figured out that Curry lived in the Los Angeles County city of Whittier, where some neighbors told the BBC that he often roamed the neighborhood in a disoriented state.

The Los Angeles County public guardian said it was examining the circumstances of how Curry came to be on his own in Britain.
It didnt start with a roar but with a quiet woo-hoo. Riding the escalators up to baggage claim at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, we were greeted by two women holding homemade signs that welcomed participants of the Womens March on Washington to the nations capital.

A clenched fist came up automatically  although just up to the chest  and the three ladies woo-hooed at the same time.

Two nights before the big day, we could see just the tiniest trickle of pink hats at the hotel, including one worn by a burly man who smiled as I sprinted toward the vending machine. The next morning  the day of the presidential inauguration  the number of rose-colored knitted caps with cat ears had doubled. As my friend and I walked the streets of Arlington on Friday, Jan. 20, we could see what was coming  a sea of determined women and men spilling out of giant buses and metro stations, many with a wide variety of homemade and store-bought hats, each with something to roar about.

On the day of the march, we joined hundreds of thousands at the National Mall before walking toward the White House. We asked fellow marchers where they were coming from. Tennessee. New Mexico. Florida. Democrats. Independents. Republicans. Any woman or man who showed up at any of the marches around the world on Jan. 21 has a personal story or a name to share. That day, compassion and solidarity became a democratic act for each one.

At one point, we had to make way for a few vans full of police officers coming down 14th Street, and as the first van approached, a flash of apprehension rippled through the crowd, then turned to thunderous shouts of gratitude. The officers were cheering marchers on, pumping their fists and grinning. We marched on, next to tiny tots, 90-year-olds and those who cared for both, carrying signs of all sizes that drew more woo-hoos: Judge Me By Whats In My Head, Not On My Head. Mom, Im Fighting For You. Men of Quality Support Gender Equality. Fight Like A Girl.

Leading the five-person Munoz contingent on Saturday was my niece, Sarika. She was raring to go long before we got there, designing posters, printing out signs and making sure we each had a message to share. Sarika led our fiery group of scientists, artists and writers with as much resolve as if she had been going into battle  a militant Moses parting the pink sea. Like the rest of us, she wanted to chant, yell and march, rather than stand around listening to Ashley Judd. No offense, Ashley.

Sarika is half Puerto Rican, half Indian, all-American, smart, passionate, compassionate and oh so talented. She is impulsive and a nonconformist. She takes after me, of course.

And because nonconformity comes in many ways, sometimes just being yourself and advocating for others can seem like revolutionary acts. That day, Sarika joined millions of others in the hope that we could stop defending the indefensible and enabling the reprehensible.

So many of us who showed up that day are the privileged  with no race, color or gender assigned to it but stepping in for those who are not as lucky. For the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, those who feel threatened and afraid. For refugees, for immigrants of all nations and faiths, for science and equal pay and womens rights and human rights. For those who still have to hear: You shouldnt have said that, He didnt mean it, You were provoking him. For all the liberties so many of us take for granted and for the rights we enjoy today but may not have tomorrow.

Women and men of the Munoz contingent joined us in different parts of the country Jan. 21, as did friends all over the world. This is what democracy looks like, we chanted that day. Democracy wont conform. Democracy looks like Sarika.





Sarah Munoz is a writer and communications specialist at Cal State Fullerton. The daughter of an Air Force veteran flight surgeon enjoys announcing flight departures in the Greek islands, romping with llamas and fishing for her dinner along the Baja California peninsula.
Reports of the Trump administrations plan to revamp a U.S. government program designed to counter all violent ideologies and going forward only focus on Islamist extremism, is raising concerns among those working to counter violent extremism at the international, national and local levels.

Reuters reported Wednesday that the federal government program Countering Violent Extremism (CVE), would be changed to Countering Islamic Extremism or Countering Radical Islamic Extremism. This would mean the program would no longer target groups such as white supremacists who have also carried out attacks in the United States, according to Reuters.

Such an approach could strip some of the benefit from having a CVE program, which was established in February 2015 to counter radicalization and terrorist acts through community partnerships, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino.

Our most prominent terrorism threat today in the United States does come from violent Salafist Jihadists, he said. But we also have the most diverse set of extremist movements threatening the country, from neo-Nazis, black separatists and sovereign citizens to animal liberation and environmental extremists. Its like a logjam.

A study by the Anti-Defamation League shows that of the 52 extremism-related deaths in 2015 in the U.S., 38 percent were caused by white supremacists, 37 percent were a result of domestic Islamic terrorism, 19 percent were linked to anti-government extremism and 6 percent were tied to anti-abortion extremism.

According to the same report, of the 295 domestic extremist-related deaths from 2006 to 2015, 70 percent involved white supremacists, 15 percent anti-government extremism and 13 percent domestic Islamic extremism.

The CVE initiative was introduced by the Obama Administration in 2015 as a pilot program in Los Angeles, Boston and Minneapolis. It created its own controversy and division within Muslim communities in Southern California and nationwide.

While officials said the initiative is a tool to reach out to Muslim groups through community events, mentoring and youth programs, its broader goal was to prevent radicalization and identify potential extremists.

Some groups, such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), became partners in the initiative but others, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), backed away, suspecting the effort was just another way Muslims would be targeted and vilified.

The CVE program, even under the Obama administration, was a smokescreen for targeting the Muslim community, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of Anaheim-based CAIR-LA.

Even though they made it seem like it was going to encompass all groups, it was apparent to us from the documents and where the funds were going that Muslims were the focal point. It is a program that already unfairly targets Muslims and now, itll do so openly.

Muslims are no more prone to violence or extremism than anyone else, Ayloush said.

Salam Al-Marayati, MPACs executive director, said by changing the name of the CVE program, the Trump administration will essentially kill whatever positive relationships or partnerships were built with the Muslim community.

MPAC took a different approach than CAIR in terms of cooperating and partnering with law enforcement in the CVE initiative.

The red flag here is that the Trump administration is deliberately killing this partnership, Al-Marayati said.

He said MPACs work with local law enforcement would continue as before, or even expand, but that would change if the federal program shifts focus.

Extremism is not a Muslim problem, but a human problem, said LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing, who also heads the citys Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau.

There are violent extremist ideologies across the board, he said. Of course, radical Islamist extremism is the white elephant in the room. But if you single that out, you are leaving out other ideologies that have led to violent acts around the country.

Downing said his department will continue to approach countering extremism in a broad manner, despite what the Trump administrations stance might be.

Some experts, including Berlin-based Daniel Koehler, who has been working on deradicalization efforts in the U.S. and around the world, have sharp criticism for the Trump administrations approach.

It will essentially kill counter-extremism in the United States, further alienate Muslim communities, play into the hands of ISIS and other jihadist groups and burn one of the most effective counter-terrorism tools, said Koehler, a fellow of George Washington Universitys new Program on Extremism at the Center for Cyber and Homeland Security.

Koehler

said the Trump administration, by excluding right-wing extremists from the CVE program, is sending a message to jihadists and mainstream Muslims alike that violence and terror from the far right can operate freely.

Europeans made the same mistake of singling out a specific target group and are still suffering from the backlash, he said. Muslim communities, families and civil society are our first line of defense against violent extremism and they are the most effective partners in intervention work.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7909 or dbharath@scng.com
Planned Parenthood, the nations largest abortion provider, is on the brink of losing fully half a billion of its federally funded budget, assuming President Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress live up to their campaign promises.

But lets set aside for a moment the issue of abortion and address the concern that has many reasonable people worried, some of whom even consider themselves pro-life: that women, especially those in poor communities, will lose access to basic health care.

Heres the little secret that those who support Planned Parenthoods $500 million federal subsidy do not want you to know: There are thousands of federally qualified community health centers as well as non-taxpayer-funded charitable clinics, like Obria, which are already providing annual pap smears, STD testing and treatment, breast exams, cervical cancer screenings, prenatal care and the like to underserved women.

In fact, for every Planned Parenthood facility, there are 15 high-quality, community-based clinics that provide an array of medical services, including contraception and abortion referrals. Yet, the perception is that Planned Parenthood is the only game in town when it comes to womens health care, no doubt in large part because of its massive government funding.

Defunding Planned Parenthood and redirecting those funds to community clinics would end the abortion providers perceived monopoly on reproductive health care. Restricting the ability of states to tie these funds to abortion referrals is equally critical to ensuring more women have greater access to a wider variety of clinics that offer reproductive health care and prenatal services.

The Affordable Care Act permanently reauthorized federal spending to the tune of $11 billion over five years to support FQHCs. Yet, an estimated 3 million people in California alone still remain uninsured, according to the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics. This is where charitable clinics like Obria, which operates five nationally accredited medical clinics in Orange and L.A. counties, are critical to filling in the gap and serving the uninsured.

Currently, many faith-based charitable clinics arent eligible for federal funding. This is simply because states like California, which administer the federal health care dollars, require recipients to refer for abortion  which we do not (and will not) provide  despite the array of other valuable sexual health services that Obria does provide.

Take, for example, a less controversial, but popular, service: STD testing.

Rates of new STD infections have been skyrocketing. In fact, the Orange County Health Care Agency just last week released figures showing alarming increases in syphilis (330 percent), gonorrhea (138 percent) and chlamydia (46 percent) between 2011 and 2015. Our clinics offer STD testing and treatment for men and women, including HIV testing, providing 1,826 STD tests last year alone. STD testing has been the most popular service offered though our mobile clinic stationed at Cal State Fullerton for several years.

If clinics like ours had access to public funds that did not require us to refer for abortion, we could dramatically expand our capacity to serve more sexually active young people who are most at risk for these diseases. The same is true of prenatal care. More funding would allow us to expand prenatal care through the third trimester at all of our clinic locations, and serve more women and young families.

But what of those who worry that access to abortion and contraception in California will be dramatically curtailed as a result of Planned Parenthood losing its federal funding?

The reality is that California is touted by abortion advocates as a national model for abortion access.

In 2013, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 154, which allows nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives and physician assistants to perform first-trimester abortions. In fact, the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthoods research arm, notes that Californias access to abortion is among the best in the country, estimating that less than 10 percent of women in the state live in a county without an abortion clinic.

Additionally, under current California law, girls as young as 12 may obtain contraceptives, as well as medication-induced and surgical abortions, without parental consent. Most, if not all, of these minors may obtain both at little or no cost under Medi-Cal.

Another California law signed by Brown in 2013 but implemented just last year allows girls of any age to obtain birth control pills, patches, injections and vaginal rings without a doctors prescription at her neighborhood pharmacy. All she must do is fill out a form.

Such laws to preserve liberal abortion access will likely be protected, and probably even expanded, under Californias new Democratic supermajority.

The question is: Will the new Trump administration and Congress end Planned Parenthoods monopoly and give women more options for health care at community clinics like ours? Only time will tell.

Clare Venegas is president of Obria Medical Clinics, which operates five licensed community health clinics that provide reproductive health care in Orange and L.A. counties.
Huge protests, among the largest since the fall of communism, have rocked Romania after the government passed a law that would effectively allow official corruption.

More than 250,000 Romanians took to the streets, about half of them in the capital, Bucharest. Thieves, thieves, they shouted, denouncing the government and corruption. A few demonstrators clashed with riot police.

The protests  which continued Thursday night and were expected to swell further over the weekend  erupted after the government adopted an emergency law Tuesday night that would make official misconduct punishable by prison time only in cases in which the financial damage is more than 200,000 lei, about $47,000.

The measure had been debated for several weeks, but the government decided to adopt it abruptly late Tuesday, stunning observers. Officials including Liviu Dragnea, the leader of the governing Social Democratic Party, stand to benefit from the measure. Dragnea faces charges of abuse of power involving a sum of 24,000 euros, about $25,800.

Romanias top judicial watchdog, the Superior Magistrates Council, on Wednesday issued a constitutional court challenge to the decree. Another body, the Higher Judicial Council, which helps oversee the court system, has also challenged the law.

President Klaus Iohannis, whose role as head of state is largely ceremonial but who commands respect in many parts of the country, asked the constitutional court to strike it down.

I am very impressed by the scale of demonstrations that took place last night in the entire country, he said in a statement Thursday, praising the latest in a series of protests at which he has turned up.

Iohannis, who was elected in 2014 as the first president from the countrys German-speaking minority, called Tuesday a day of mourning for the rule of law.

In the northwestern city of Cluj, Raluca Sandor, a 30-year-old pharmacist, braved cold weather to take part in the demonstrations.

This decree will drag Romania back in time, she said. The Social Democratic Party is the most corrupt party, and they are trying to save themselves from prosecution. I want the government to resign and these decrees to be canceled.

Another demonstrator in Cluj, Alexandrin Pop, 30, said, Im protesting because I see this as an assault on the judiciary and the rule of law.

Alexandra Zaraf, 27, one of many young protesters in Bucharest, asked, What self-respecting government issues emergency ordinances at 9 p.m. and publishes it in the middle of the night? She added, In a world where we talk about corruption, they want to change legislation and encourage it or go easy on punishing it.

Until recently, Romania, which joined the European Union in 2007, along with Bulgaria, was seen as making slow but steady progress on corruption. The new law threatens to create a new problem for the blocs executives in Brussels, who are troubled by problems like the Greek debt crisis, sluggish growth among the countries that use the euro currency and Britains plans for withdrawing from the bloc.

Analysts feared that the government could further reverse the countrys progress and that an open conflict between the government and the president could create a lasting deadlock.

The fight against corruption needs to be advanced, not undone, Jean-Claude Juncker and Frans Timmermans, the president and vice president of the European Commission, said in a joint statement Wednesday.

But the government appeared to stand its ground. On Wednesday night, Florin Iordache, the minister of justice, whose portfolio the measures belong to, published a message on his Facebook page, urging the protesters to read the text of the decree.

I dont understand what the protesters are upset about, Dragnea said before the decree was passed Tuesday.

What infuriated the crowds was that the decrees gave people the impression that the government is legislating in its own benefit, said Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, a professor at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, who runs a website that monitors corruption in the country.

In fact, senior political and business figures, including Dragnea, were under investigation and likely to be convicted under the rules the decree was concerning.

Romania is far from being a success story, Mungiu-Pippidi said in a telephone interview. We ended impunity, we managed to put in jail very important people. But the problem is that corruption has not gone down  people who replaced those people behave similarly.

The countrys anti-corruption prosecution service, which was behind many of those arrests, is investigating more than 2,000 cases of abuse of power. It warned its work would be hampered by the new regulation. In a statement before the decree was passed Tuesday, the service said it would benefit future infractors and those being investigated for abuse of power.

Romanias new government was elected at the end of last year by a large majority but on low turnout, less than 40 percent. The Social Democrats came back to power only a year after they were ousted by similar demonstrations. According to analysts, they succeeded with a platform that appealed to the countrys struggling middle classes  many of whom live and work elsewhere in Europe, but send money home  promising lower taxes and higher wages.

This is a disaster for the Social Democratic Party, which wanted to change its image of a corrupt party and show that there is a new generation prepared to rule, said Sergiu Miscoiu, a professor of political science at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj.

Miscoiu described the ruling party as a rural conservative party with a left-wing component in social and economic policies that was more similar to the ruling conservatives in neighboring Hungary and Poland than their leftist counterparts. He said the Social Democrats could follow the playbook of the right-wing leaders in those countries, consolidating power and clashing with the EU, and playing a little bit on the populist, nationalist side, trying to show that Romania has the right to have its own policies, including in justice.

The party was behind a measure last year to scrap the mandatory television license, fees from which support public broadcasting  a move that critics said would compromise the independence of the state television and radio stations. Dragnea this month also pushed for more control over nongovernmental organizations that receive funds from abroad. Organizations backed by U.S. financier George Soros had financed evil in Romania, Dragnea was quoted as saying.
WASHINGTON  Congress rush to dismantle President Barack Obamas health care law, once seemingly unstoppable, is flagging badly; Republicans are getting little traction on a replacement health law and a key senator has declared that the effort is now more a repair job than a demolition.

It is more accurate to say repair Obamacare, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and chairman of the Senate health committee, said this week. We can repair the individual market, and that is a good place to start.

The struggles and false starts have injected more uncertainty into insurance markets that thrive on stability. Republican leaders who once saw a health law repeal as a quick first strike in the Trump era now must at least consider a worst case: unable to move forward with comprehensive health legislation, even as the uncertainty that they helped foster rattles consumers and insurers.

Insurers are threatening to exit the Affordable Care Acts market unless the Trump administration and Congress can quickly clarify their intentions: Will they support the existing public marketplaces, encourage people to sign up and keep federal assistance flowing to insurers, or not?

We need some certainty around the rules, said Dr. J. Mario Molina, CEO of Molina Healthcare, which has been a stalwart in the Affordable Care Act market and is making money under the system.

We have a few months, but we dont have a lot of time, he said.

With the official end Tuesday of what was supposed to be its final open enrollment season, the Affordable Care Act is looking more resilient than it seemed just a month ago. At their annual retreat last week, in Philadelphia, several congressional Republicans edged away from their powerful promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. It would, they said, be more accurate to say they intend to fix a law that they blame for the cancellation of many insurance policies, soaring premiums and a shrinking choice of health plans in many states.

Many Republicans say their resolve to dismantle the law, a central element of Obamas legacy, is undiminished.

We are looking to repeal this law, just like we told the voters we were going to do, just like we promised them we would do, said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and a leader of the Houses most conservative wing. After all, there was an election where that was one of the most important issues.

But after waging and winning many elections with a promise to kill it, Republicans still have no agreement on how to replace it. They will, they say, pursue a piecemeal approach because they have no desire to supplant the giant 2010 health law with a single comprehensive Republican plan cooked up in Washington.

When Congress convened this year, Republicans immediately introduced a budget resolution clearing the way for legislation to gut the health law, with strong support from Donald Trump, who took office 17 days later. But President Donald Trumps rocky start has slowed the momentum, depleting his political capital and dimming prospects for bipartisan cooperation.

In addition, many senators are preoccupied with fights over the confirmation of Trumps nominees to the Supreme Court and top jobs in his administration. What was once considered Congress Job No. 1 is being eclipsed for some lawmakers by more immediate matters.

Insurers say Republicans mixed messages and slowing pace could send premiums soaring next year while making the market much less stable. The deadline to file rates for 2018 is this spring, and insurers say they need time to decide what kinds of plans to offer and to set prices.

We need stability and predictability, said Marilyn B. Tavenner, CEO of Americas Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for the industry.

Unless Congress continues cost-sharing subsidies, to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income people, and a reinsurance program, to help pay large claims, she said, more insurers will pull out of the market.

Insurers are also concerned about signs that the Trump administration may not enforce the so-called individual mandate, which requires people to have insurance or face a tax penalty. The penalty, or some way to encourage more participation, is seen as central to having enough young and healthy people sign up to keep premiums low.

Its very important to indicate how they are going to stabilize the market, said Karen M. Ignagni, CEO of EmblemHealth, who was instrumental in the development of the current law.

At the very least, analysts say the uncertainty for insurers could lead to much higher rates.

The end game is perhaps predictable. In the Senate, Republicans will need help from Democrats to replace the health law because they hold 52 seats but will need 60 votes. Several Republican senators, like Susan Collins of Maine and Bob Corker of Tennessee, say they will not vote to repeal the law unless they have a clear picture of what will replace it. And Democrats will not support any replacement unless Republicans scrap the idea of an outright repeal, which conservatives have been demanding for years.

Trump chose Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., to be his secretary of health and human services, with the expectation that he would work closely with Republicans in Congress on the details of a replacement plan. Democrats have delayed his confirmation, and that in turn has delayed Republican efforts to devise an alternative to the health care law they detest.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee voted Wednesday to recommend confirmation of Price, overriding objections by Democrats, who boycotted the proceedings.
FULLERTON  Police have arrested a 35-year-old man for groping two women in their crotch at Fullerton College.

Police did not identify the man or provide a photo, because of the on-going nature of this investigation, said Sgt. Jon Radus of the Fullerton Police Department.

The incident occurred around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. Police received a report of an unidentified man who had sexually assaulted two women, several minutes apart, on a campus walkway before fleeing the scene.

The following day, Fullerton College Campus Safety detained a man who was acting erratic and displayed signs of being under the influence of a controlled substance, police said. Campus police called the Fullerton Police Department because the man matched the suspects description of the assault.

People with additional information are asked to contact the Police Departments Family Crimes Division at 714-738-6580.

Contact the writer: 714-796-2443 or jpimentel@ocregister.com
FRESNO  Authorities say two Central California police officers who shot and killed an unarmed 19-year-old man violated their departments policy.

The Fresno Bee reported the finding of Fresnos independent police auditor.

It follows the June 2016 shooting of Dylan Noble during an afternoon traffic stop. Officer body cameras revealed that Noble refused repeated commands to show both hands, or be shot.

The auditor says the shooting was not within department policy.

He says, however, that the Fresno Police Department has reduced the number of citizen complaints since Nobles shooting.

Police Chief Jerry Dyer in December said the officers acted within policy. But he faulted one officer for firing the fourth and final shot at the downed teenager.

Nobles parents have each filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the city.
BUDAPEST, Hungary  When President Vladimir Putin of Russia last paid a visit to Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban was under siege for his autocratic style, Russia was isolated for its seizure of Crimea, and both men were called xenophobes for their hard-line stance on immigration.

Two years later, as Putin landed Thursday for his first foray into Europe in the Trump era, it was a different story. Both men feel vindicated. There is talk of lifting the economic sanctions placed on Russia for its land grab in Ukraine. Their brand of nationalism has moved from the fringe to the mainstream.

There was a note of triumphalism, even a bit of swagger, in the air.

We all sense, its in the air, that the world is in the process of a substantial realignment, Orban said in a news conference after Thursdays meeting. We believe this will create favorable conditions for stronger Russian-Hungarian relations.

Even so, beneath the triumph lies a strain of uneasiness. The visit is expected to be fairly low-key, an indication of the uncertainty surrounding the new Trump administration, analysts say. President Donald Trumps intentions remain unclear, and the prospects of a grand bargain between Washington and the Kremlin are highly uncertain.

In the meantime, leaders across Europe have been forced to recalculate the best way to balance pressures in the East and West. Nowhere is that challenge felt more keenly than in Central and Eastern Europe, historically torn between Russia and the West.

That means European and global leaders are closely scrutinizing the visit. They are looking for hints of how aggressive Putin and populist leaders like Orban will be in capitalizing on this new international climate and on Trumps stated desire for better relations with Moscow.

It was not clear how significant a role, if any, the thorniest issue between Russia and the West  the sanctions imposed by the EU and the United States after the seizure of Crimea  would play in the meeting. But Putin is clearly eager to have the sanctions lifted, and to sow divisions in the EU on that policy and others.

Trump has said that it is too early to revisit the issue, but that he remains open to easing sanctions down the road.
SANAA, Yemen  Yemeni security officials said on Thursday that warships, which they believe to be American, have been firing cannons and rockets at al-Qaida militants in the countrys southern coastal areas.

But the United States promptly denied the allegations, with Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, saying U.S. warships were not involved.

According to the Yemeni officials, the naval strikes have been underway for five days and targeted mountainous areas north of the coastal town of Shakra where militants have been massing fighters.

Dozens of al-Qaida fighters are assembling there as well as north of the nearby town of Zinjibar, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters. They also said that al-Qaida militants on Thursday attacked the town of Lauder, further to the east, killing six Yemeni soldiers.

U.S. officials said they were unaware of any firing in the southern Yemeni coastal region in the last several days. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Al-Qaida in Yemen, long seen by Washington as of the most dangerous of the groups offshoots, has exploited the chaos of Yemens civil war to seize territory in the countrys south and east, and the Islamic State group has also claimed attacks.

The two-year-old civil war began after Shiite Houthis rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and forced the president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, to flee the country. In March 2015, a Saudi-led military coalition launched an extensive air campaign aimed at restoring Hadi and his government to power. The northern region remains under Houthi control.

Fighting and U.S. involvement has appeared to pick up since Donald Trump assumed the U.S. presidency last month, with drone strikes and a surprise commando raid on al-Qaida militants. The Houthis also attacked a Saudi frigate in the Red Sea, killing two crew members and wounding three.

The U.S. raid on the al-Qaida base in the central province of in Bayda on Sunday left nearly 30 dead, including an estimated 14 militants, as well as civilians. A U.S. Navy SEAL was also killed, the first known U.S. military combat casualty since Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20. Four other U.S. service members were wounded during the raid.

In the attack on its frigate, Saudi Arabia said on Monday that a suicide gunboat belonging to the Iranian-backed Houthis rammed the ship in the Red Sea that was patrolling off the Yemeni port of Hodeida.

The Houthis gave a different version, claiming that the frigate was hit by a rocket they fired, starting a fire on board the ship.
In recent news that is likely surprising to no one, Irvine is a financially well-managed city. Thats according to a recent study from Marc Joffe, director of policy research for the California Policy Center.

Compiling the Fiscal Health Index for the Fiscal Times, Joffe ranked the cities based on the ratio of a citys general fund balance to its expenditures; the ratio of its long-term obligations to revenues; the ratio of pension contributions to revenues; change in local unemployment rate and change in property values, the Register reported. Irvine ranked No. 1, with a perfect score, of the 116 cities evaluated.

The city has no bond obligations and a general fund balance equal to 75 percent of annual expenditures, Joffe wrote in a post explaining his methodology on the California Policy Centers blog. Pension obligations, when measured against overall revenue, are modest compared to other major California cities, in part, because the city contributes extra funds to its CalPERS plans each year (over and above the actuarially determined amount).

Irvines success is no secret, though. Weve often praised the citys typically steady hand on the taxpayers purse. But a few other local cities also made the list, including two in the top five  and one of those was rather surprising. Huntington Beach came in fourth and Santa Ana came in fifth.

Santa Ana probably isnt a city that comes to mind when it comes to fiscal health. It was not that long ago that the city was facing down the very real threat of municipal bankruptcy. But the city largely turned itself around under the stewardship of the previous City Council and former City Manager David Cavazos, who was recently removed from his position under dubious, and seemingly political, circumstances. Santa Ana is, by no means, perfect. It still spends too much and has sizeable pension liabilities, but a great deal of progress has been made.

In general, I have found that governments get into trouble when they have a heavy debt burden, suffer declining revenue and have an insufficient general fund balance, Joffe wrote.

The new Santa Ana City Council would be wise to remember that  and the sacrifices made by the previous City Council to get it to where it is today.
TOKYO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said on Friday that the Bank of Japan's monetary policy was aimed at domestic objectives of defeating deflation, not at weakening the yen.

Speaking to reporters after a cabinet meeting, Aso declined to comment directly when asked about U.S. President Donald Trump's criticism of what he called Japan's weak-yen policy.

Aso said Japan would stick to the G20's commitment against competitive currency devaluation.

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim)
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration is preparing to levy new sanctions on Iran, U.S. officials said Thursday, in the first punitive action since the White House put Iran on notice after it test-fired a ballistic missile.

Up to two dozen Iranian individuals, companies and possibly government agencies could be penalized as part of the move, expected as early as Friday, said the officials and others with knowledge of the decision. The individuals werent authorized to discuss the unannounced sanctions publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The sanctions, coming in the first weeks of President Donald Trumps term, reflect his administrations desire to take a strong stance toward Iran from the start. Throughout his campaign, Trump accused the Obama administration of being insufficiently tough on Iran and vowed to crack down if elected.

The White House and the State Department declined to comment.

It was unclear exactly which entities would be sanctioned. Many sanctions on Iran that had been imposed in response to its nuclear program were lifted in the final years of the Obama administration as part of the nuclear deal the U.S. and world powers brokered. Some of those penalties could be re-imposed under separate sanctions authorities unrelated to nuclear issues.

That prospect raises the possibility of a fresh confrontation between the U.S. and Iran, which has forcefully argued that it considers any new sanctions a violation of the nuclear deal. The U.S. has maintained that it retains the right to sanction Iran for other behavior such as supporting terrorism.

This is fully consistent with the Obama administrations commitment to Congress that the nuclear deal does not preclude the use of non-nuclear sanctions, said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which advocates for a hardline U.S. position on Iran.

The impending sanctions come the same week that Trump and his aides issued cryptic warnings about potential retaliation against Iran for testing a ballistic missile and for supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen known as the Houthis. The U.S. accuses Iran of arming and financing the rebels, who this week claimed a successful missile strike against a warship belonging to a Saudi-led coalition fighting to reinstall Yemens internationally recognized government. Iran denies arming the Houthis.

As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice, said Trumps national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

U.S. lawmakers from both parties have encouraged Trump not to let the missile test go unpunished. On Thursday, the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee joined more than a dozen other lawmakers to urge Trump to act.

Iranian leaders must feel sufficient pressure to cease deeply destabilizing activities, the lawmakers wrote.

Iran has reacted angrily to the threats of retaliation. Ali-Akbar Velayati, foreign adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Irans supreme leader, predicted this week that the U.S. will be the final loser.

It is not for the first time that a naive person from the U.S. poses threats to Iran, Velayati said, according to Irans state-run IRNA news agency.

Though Trump has long derided the nuclear deal, under which Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, recently he has avoided repeating his campaign pledge to renegotiate it. Iran has insisted the deal wont be re-opened, and the other world powers that negotiated it with the U.S. have little appetite for revising it.

The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, has stated that Irans ballistic missile testing doesnt violate the nuclear deal itself. But as part of the final negotiations for that deal, Iran agreed to an eight-year extension of a U.N. ban on ballistic missile development.

The U.N. Security Council later endorsed the agreement, calling on Iran not to carry out such tests. But Iran has flouted the prohibition regularly in the past year-and-a-half, drawing sanctions from the U.S. but also diplomatic cover from Russia.
IRVINE  A 27-year-old Orange County man was arrested Thursday evening on suspicion of stealing high-end jewelry, including an engagement ring from 1892, from at least four people who had asked him to do work on the pieces, police say.

Daniel Cervantes faces seven counts of grand theft but has yet to tell police what he did with the jewelry, said Kim Mohr, spokeswoman for the Irvine Police Department.

Were trying to locate the property, Mohr said. We think there are more victims out there.

The victims either knew the suspect or were referred to him. They asked Cervantes, a former employee at Nathan Alan Jewelers, to do work on the engagement or wedding rings  such as polishing them or resizing the bands  and never got the rings back, Mohr said.

Police began investigating around August, though they didnt initially know where Cervantes was. He was known to live with his parents in Santa Ana and a girlfriend in Irvine, Mohr said.

And with just one victim at the time, it was difficult to build a case.

So that victim, Nicole Sarber, started posting on Facebook and Yelp about Cervantes, and eventually three other victims came forward.

We never thought wed see this day, said Sarber, a San Diego resident. Its amazing knowing he will be held accountable.

In July, Sarbers boyfriend of three years, Julio Cuellar, asked her parents for permission to marry her. Sarber said her overjoyed mother gave Cuellar a family heirloom: a 2-carat diamond ring that was worn by Sarbers great-great-grandmother when she got engaged in Cork, Ireland, in 1892.

Before proposing, Cuellar wanted to get the ring polished. So he went to Cervantes, whom he knew through mutual friends. Initially, Cuellar said, Cervantes told him the ring would take a couple of hours to clean.

The two hours came and went, and Cervantes kept postponing when the ring would be ready: in a couple of days, then a week, then another week.

I freaked out, Cuellar said of realizing hed been duped by a man hed known for five years.

Cuellar struggled to tell Sarber and her parents that the ring was gone.

I was having trouble hanging out with her, he said. It was very hard because shes my best friend and I couldnt tell her.

In August, he broke the news to her  both that he wanted to marry her and that the ring was stolen.

I was in shock, said Sarber, noting that since she was a child, she had spoken to her mom about the ring. To have the happiest moment of your life stolen from you was devastating.

So they went to the police.

The ring was appraised at about $40,000, but Sarber said it means so much more to her family.

Im a sentimental person, she said. Having that history, that value, where you have that support behind you, means something.

Sarber is holding out hope that the ring will be recovered.

Although only four victims have come forward, Cervantes faces seven counts because some of the victims made multiple payments to him, Mohr said. Each payment is a count of grand theft.

Hopefully this urges other victims to come forward, Mohr said. And warns people to stay away from him.

Cuellar said the wedding is set for March 2018.

Contact the writer: 714-796-6979 or chaire@scng.com
Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi says the story that became The Salesman came to him in pieces over a period of years, only emerging as a compelling and suspenseful tale after he added a uniquely American  but also universal  ingredient to the mix.

That his patience and his instincts were right is evident in the reception The Salesman has received from audiences and awards ceremonies alike, including last week, an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. Farhadi won an Academy Award in that same category in 2012 for A Separation.

The Salesman is the story of Emad and Rana, a married couple who are actors in an Iranian production of American playwright Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman. The film builds slowly, introducing their lives and those of the cast around them. But after something bad happens to Rana at home one day, the ways in which she and Emad react send events hurtling in an unpredictable and dangerously life-changing direction.

In the beginning, though, all Farhadi had in mind was a married couple and the triggering incident, and that wasnt working, he says.

I had the story of this couple and the incident that befell them for many years, he says by phone from Tehran with a translator helping the Farsi-speaking filmmaker chat with an English-speaking reporter in Southern California. But I felt that a part of the story was empty, and I did not feel convinced by it.

He says he considered what their occupation might be, and it occurred to him that they might be actors.

This might go back to my own history in the theater and my wish to go back to the theater once again, Farhadi says. When I realized that they were actors, it was as though a great window opened up for me. Because whats unique to actors is that they can put themselves in the shoes of another, and they can play anothers part.

I asked myself, Could they put themselves in the place of that old man who came into their house? And then I was also looking for a play that could reinforce this theme.

I read a great number of plays until I reached Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman, and it was though that empty part of the story was suddenly filled in, and I became very excited to make this film, Farhadi says.

He had read the play more than 20 years earlier as a theater student at university and says Death of a Salesman is a much-loved play in Iran, with productions staged there every few years.

What is interesting to me is (Emad) was playing the part of a salesman onstage and now he was encountering an Iranian version of this salesman, he says. And the question was: Would he be able to empathize with him or not?

The Salesman, as with A Separation and many of Farhadis films, focuses on the small decisions people make that end up having large and often unexpected consequences on their lives and the lives of those around them.

This is a belief of mine that I have drawn from real life, he says. We mistakenly always think that they are the large decisions that determine the path of a life. But the truth is that the very delicate and small details are the things that determine our destiny.

While his films have been popular at home in Iran and abroad, Farhadi says he doesnt think of those audiences when he is writing and directing.

I would answer that by telling you something that might seem very strange, he says of those for whom he creates. When I am writing my films, I really have only one audience in mind, one spectator in mind, and that is myself. If something is not credible to me, my feeling is that nobody anywhere in the world would find it credible.

I always have this experience as though I were sitting in an empty theater by myself, watching the screen and asking myself, What is your reaction to what is going on on that screen? When this is your enterprise, people  because people everywhere in the world are so similar, because people resemble each other so greatly  they can understand you.

As a storyteller, Farhadi says, his first influence was literature, particularly Iranian authors he read as an adolescent. Italian neo-realist filmmakers such as Vittorio De Sica and his masterpiece Bicycle Thieves were an important early inspiration, as was Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu and his film Tokyo Story.

But it is Charlie Chaplin who stands above all others, Farhadi says.

All of Chaplins body of work has always awed me, he says. In my opinion the greatest filmmaker in the history of the world cinema is Chaplin. People everywhere in the world, no matter from what cultural background, understand Chaplin films.

Farhadi won best screenplay for The Salesman at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and his leading actor, Shahab Hosseini, who plays Emad, won best actor there. Hosseini and actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who plays Rana, have appeared in three or more of Farhadis films, a connection that allows them to work together almost intuitively, he says.

Im completely aware of their capabilities and aware of which portions of their ability I can use, Farhadi says. And they too have grown aware of what kind of acting Im looking for, so we are on the same track.

With his rising prominence in the West have come opportunities to work beyond the borders of his homeland. His most recent film, The Past, was filmed in France. His next project is set in Spain. And if the right opportunity comes along he would love the chance to work in the United States.

That might be a challenge now after President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning travel to the U.S. by nationals of Iran and six other Muslim-majority countries a few days after Farhadis nomination.

At the time of the interview, he was looking forward to returning to Hollywood for the Oscars. After the travel ban was announced, Farhadi issued a statement saying he would not attend even if he were to receive an exemption from the new rule.

Hard-liners, despite their nationalities, political arguments and wars, regard and understand the world in very much the same way, he wrote. I believe that the similarities among the human beings on this earth and its various lands, and among its cultures and its faiths, far outweigh their differences.

Even so, the unjust conditions forced upon some of my compatriots and the citizens of the other six countries trying to legally enter the United States meant he would stay home, he said.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@scng.com
It was time for all things Scottish at the Pacific Symphony on Thursday night, and in case anyone forgot, there was a kilted piper wailing away on the plaza in front of Segerstrom Concert Hall, giving us Scotland the Brave and other greatest hits of the bagpipe.

The enthusiasm was echoed inside, although the concert, which continues through Saturday, included the work of only one bonafide Scotsman. Ironically, the bulk of the program was provided by a couple of Germans, Felix Mendelssohn and Max Bruch, and presided over by an Austrian, guest conductor David Danzmayr. But any son or daughter of Scotland would have been proud of the result.

The short concert opener, Hamish MacCunns The Land of the Mountain and the Flood, is a charming and frolicsome bit of highland horseplay  much better than that derivative pastiche that George Bernard Shaw described in his withering review (he was Irish, which explains a bit). Its full of proud trombone announcements, folksy melodies passed back and forth through the strings, and a rousing, extended ending worthy of Beethoven. MacCunn died fairly young, and hes not well known outside of his native Scotland, but he clearly had mastered the craft of late Romantic symphonic writing.

Bruchs Scottish Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 46, was a revelation. Bruch was an under-appreciated composer who outlived the late Romantic era, where his style is firmly fixed. He never went to Scotland, but that didnt stop him from writing a thoroughly Scotch-sounding work, full of affecting melodies based on Scottish folk sources.

Its a finely crafted piece full of long-lined melodies, and violinist Ning Feng made them sing. His sound is sweet, burnished and perfectly controlled, with a gorgeous pianissimo that is feathery but distinct. There are plenty of opportunities for rollicking triple stops and high-velocity showmanship, though, in the final movement, marked Allegro vivacissimo  as fast and lively as possible. Feng gave us more of his gorgeous, limpid tones in his encore, the Largo from J.S. Bachs Sonata No. 3 in C Major, BWV 1005.

Mendelssohns Symphony No. 3 in A Minor, usually called the Scottish, was the main event, and it was a showcase in several respects. The woodwinds were a standout; principal clarinettist Joseph Morris had a stellar night with a memorable solo. The strings were lucid and pure in the first movement, and their sense of ensemble was impeccable in the faster second and fourth movements.

The biggest source of enjoyment, though, was Danzmayr. Compact and energetic, hes a fascinating conductor to watch. He was masterful with the constantly changing speed of the works first movement, and his tempo choices always seem intrinsically right. His arm movements are large yet economical, and his dynamic can change on a dime, carving space in huge arcs with his arms then pulling the ensemble into a sudden pianissimo with a sharp, precise contraction of his hands.

Danzmayr was assistant conductor of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra; he seems to have the lands music in his blood. As Mendelssohn and Bruch proved, you dont have to be Scottish to make music like a native.

Contact the writer: 714-796-7979 or phodgins@scng.com
WASHINGTON  Dismayed by the Trump administrations first days, former President Barack Obamas loyalists, former aides and even his spokesman are speaking out and even actively resisting the new American leader. Its a warning to President Donald Trump that his actions wont go unchallenged by those who occupied the White House before him.

While it doesnt appear that anyone is coordinating the flurry of tweets, public statements and direct challenges to Trump, former Obama administration officials said theyre taking cues from their longtime boss. In his final weeks, Obama pledged to be an unobtrusive and deferential ex-president, but pointedly reserved the right to protest if Trump violated what Obama considered core American values.

It took Trump barely a week to cross Obamas threshold, with an executive order cracking down on refugee admissions and a ban on travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. Obama, on a post-presidential vacation in California, broke his silence this week through a spokesman. Obama fundamentally disagrees with religious discrimination, the spokesman said.

Obamas loyalists already were weighing in.

His U.N. ambassador, Samantha Power, tweeted the day Trump was inaugurated: Raise your hand if youre ready to defend everything we have built together these last 8 years  at home and abroad! A week later Obamas national security adviser, Susan Rice, called Trumps restructuring of the National Security Council stone cold crazy.

Yet Obama, who polls showed had left office popular and trusted, had appeared more cautious about diluting his influence by quickly second-guessing Trump. Doing so could make it easier for Trump to dismiss critiques as predictable partisan nitpicking. And becoming the face of Trumps opposition could make it harder for the next generation of Democratic leaders to emerge.

So Obama said nothing Monday when Trump fired his former appointee Sally Yates, who was serving as acting attorney general. He also wont opine on Trumps announcement of a Supreme Court nominee, former White House aides in touch with Obama said.

Following his lead, Team Obama is applying what former aides call a Mitt Romney-John McCain test to Trump. If Trumps actions seem like something the former GOP presidential nominees might have done, Obama wont criticize. Actions outside the Republican mainstream are fair game.

Dan Pfeiffer, Obamas senior White House adviser, and three other former aides have launched a podcast called Pod Save America, a kind of public group therapy session for despondent Obama loyalists.

Their latest episode decried Trumps unconscionable Muslim ban and discussed Trumps Supreme Court deliberations with a former White House lawyer. The Trump administration says the travel order doesnt target Muslims, and focuses on terrorism-prone countries.

The perspective we bring is as people who have sat in those offices and understand the seriousness and the decisions that cross the presidents desk, and we are deeply concerned about what is happening, Pfeiffer said in an interview.

Denunciations reached a fever pitch after Trumps order on refugees and travel to the U.S by people from seven Muslim-majority countries. Obamas former national security spokesman, Ned Price, said the Trump administrations claim that it only affected a minority of travelers was absurd and un-American.

Price added: Nearly every racist & xenophobic movement in history could be said 2 target a minor portion of a population.

When Trumps White House claimed Obama, too, temporarily banned Iraqi refugees, the ex-presidents deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes shot back: This is a lie.

Obama loyalists said the expressions of opposition arent part of an organized campaign. They reported being energized by a series of group text messages, Facebook groups and email chains in which some of the thousands of one-time Obama staffers are sharing their dismay.

One notably silent figure: Former Vice President Joe Biden, who has yet to criticize Trump since leaving office. An aide said Biden planned to speak out on matters he cares most about, such as foreign policy and womens issues. The aide wasnt authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity.

A few who served in Obamas administration have registered objections formally.

Hundreds of diplomats signed a memo to State Department leadership this week criticizing Trumps immigration order, defying a White House warning that they should get with the program or resign. The move was striking because the diplomatic corps is comprised mostly of career diplomats who serve presidents of both parties.

It was Yates, Obamas deputy attorney general, who mounted the boldest act of resistance. She directed the Justice Department to stop defending Trumps immigration order in court.

Trump had elevated Yates to acting attorney general until his own nominee could be confirmed. After her protest, Trump quickly fired her and called her weak on immigration.

Obamas own attorney general, Loretta Lynch, rushed to Yates defense. She called the decision to defy Trump courageous.
AVDIIVKA, Ukraine  Salvos of artillery shook eastern Ukraine on Thursday, the fifth day of escalated fighting between government troops and Russia-backed separatist rebels. Two Ukrainian troops were killed overnight and 10 others wounded, the government said, while rebels said one of their fighters was killed.

Shelling appeared to intensify after nightfall and both sides reported civilian deaths  two in Avdiivka and one in Donetsk city.

Reporters for The Associated Press heard Grad rocket launchers fired on both sides of the conflict during the night. In the afternoon, shelling was heard in the distance from Avdiivka, a government-held town just north of Donetsk, the largest rebel-controlled city.

At least 15 people have been reported killed since the fighting around Avdiivka surged over the weekend.

More than 9,700 people have been killed since the war with separatist rebels began in April 2014. An agreement reached nearly two years ago called for a cease-fire and a pullback of heavy weaponry by both sides, but skirmishes persist.

Ukraines U.N. ambassador, Volodymyr Yelchenko, told the Security Council that the Russian army and Russian-backed separatists had started the latest escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine. Russias U.N. ambassador, in turn, said that Ukraine had provoked the fighting.

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of starting the escalation to rally support from the new U.S. administration and other Western powers.

Ukraine is concerned that President Donald Trump could roll back some sanctions imposed on Russia for its actions in Ukraine, and that European Union members could follow suit.

The Ukrainian leadership needs money, and the best way to get the EU, the U.S. and international organizations to pay is by posing as a victim of aggression, Putin said in Budapest after a meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Later Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley condemned Russias aggressive actions in eastern Ukraine and warned Moscow that U.S. sanctions imposed after its annexation of Crimea will remain until the peninsula is returned to Ukraine.

The new American envoy said it was unfortunate that she had to condemn Russia in her first appearance at the U.N. Security Council, saying we do want to better our relations with Russia.

But Haley said the dire situation in eastern Ukraine is one that demands clear and strong condemnation of Russian actions.

Shelling over the weekend damaged water, heating and electricity supplies in Avdiivka amid a strong cold snap. Residents nerves were raw.

I was born in 1941. I was in a war at birth and now I see it again, said Valentina Pasternak, as she stood on her porch clutching two loaves of bread brought by aid workers. A shell had landed in her yard.

By Thursday, water and heat had been partly restored, but Avdiivka remained without electricity.

In Brussels, European Union President Donald Tusk urged Moscow to pressure the separatists to make sure the flare-up of fighting ends and a cease-fire is restored.

Russia should use its influence to disengage the Russia-backed separatists, Tusk said.

U.N. Undersecretary-General Jeffrey Feltman called on international community to help revitalize peace negotiations between Ukraines government and the separatists to prevent the current crisis from becoming a catastrophe.

The United Nations political chief told the Security Council that since Jan. 7, and especially in the last few days, there has been a dangerous intensification of the conflict between government and rebel forces in eastern Ukraine.

He said European monitors on Wednesday reported over 10,000 explosions in the eastern Donetsk region over 24 hours, the highest number ever recorded.

Feltman said the monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also registered frequent use of heavy weapons banned by the Minsk peace agreements.

He noted damage to houses and schools in populated areas of Avdiivka, which is a government-held town just north of Donetsk, the largest rebel-controlled city. He said the damage raises serious concerns about possible violations of international humanitarian law by all sides.

Officials from both Russia and the Ukraine called for an end to the fighting and the implementation of a peace agreement.
Whats not to love about Hawaiis perfect waves?

The water is so warm, youll never hear the word wetsuit on the lips of locals. The sea is crystal clear and many places are surrounded by lush, green hills and pristine, sandy beaches that will make you feel like youve found a slice of heaven.

For some, Hawaii is where they fell in love with surfing, the warm water inviting to newcomers and the islands rich history a lure for inquisitive adventurers. For experienced surfers, Hawaii has long been the proving ground where someone looking for fame can charge big waves and land on the cover of a magazine or earn respect among surfing peers.

Whether youre a novice just learning how to pop up on your board or an expert seeking monster surf, Hawaii has it all for every level. Here are a few places to check out if you want to ditch the mainlands chilly waters.

1. Waikiki, Honolulu, Oahu: The long, rolling waves are well-known at this surf spot in the heart of Honolulu. The forgiving surf is perfect for beginners or for longboarders who like slow-peeling waves. If youre bringing your own board, be prepared to park in a lot in the middle of a bustling city. And be warned, Waikiki is crowded  very crowded  and you may have to navigate through some heavy traffic in the water.

If youre looking for a lesson, make sure to check out faithsurf school.com, operated year-round by the Moniz family, who have run the school since 2000. They have three locations throughout Waikiki and offer group or private lessons. They also offer personalized surf tours, stand-up paddle lessons, outrigger canoe surfing and surfboard rentals.

Post-surf grind: One of my favorite finds was a Vietnamese/Hawaiian fusion restaurant in Waikiki call The Pig & The Lady. Dont miss the pho French dip sandwich, made with a tender beef normally found in the traditional Vietnamese soup in the center of crisp French bread, with the broth used as a dip.

2. Pipeline, North Shore, Oahu: Who hasnt heard of the Banzai Pipeline? While this area is flat as a lake during summer months, the beast awakens during winter and produces what some say is the best barrel in the world. The heaving tubes crash over a shallow reef right off the beach, making it a spectator favorite for those who want to post up on the sand and watch the show.

Each year, the best surfers in the world battle it out on these waves during the Pipe Masters, the last contest of the year for the competitive surfing circuit. Even if you miss the event, you can see some of the best surfers in the world take on this heavy wave during winter months. Theres even a good chance you can see current World Tour champion John John Florence charging Pipeline since he calls the break his front yard, with his house just a stones throw away.

Dont even try it: If youre not an expert, stay on the sand with your camera.

3. Waimea Bay, North Shore, Oahu: Another legendary spot, where pro surfers in the early days of big-wave surfing took out their big guns to prove their worthiness in the lineup.

The waves from November through February draw some of the best surfers in the world. Its where an invitation-only group competes in the In Memory of Eddie Aikau surf contest, which only takes place when the waves are at least 20 feet tall. The famous saying is the bay calls the day.

During summer, the waves go into hibernation and the bay is calm enough for swimming.

Where to stay: Nearby Turtle Bay Resort. The two-bedroom condos can be reasonably priced, especially if split among a larger group.

4: Hanalei Bay, Kauai: Go to this area surrounded by lush mountains in winter months, and youll find 60-foot waves. If youre on a summer trip, youll find fun little 2-foot peelers perfect for beginners.

Sitting out in the turquoise water at Hanalei Bay is breathtaking, especially if you look back toward land, where waterfalls spill down lush hillsides.

The small town nearby has a few surf shops to rent boards, and plenty of quaint shops to check out post-surf.

Get a drink: The Dolphin restaurant is a fun stop after a day of catching waves. Outside tables overlook a river, where kayaks and other small boats saunter downstream.

5. Kealia Beach, Kauai: This punchy beach break has plenty of spread-out surf peaks, with the north end of the beach heavier than the middle.

While the waves arent necessarily the best in Hawaii, its what the beach represents that makes it so special. On the shore, a modest memorial honors Hawaiian legend and three-time surfing world champion Andy Irons, who died in 2010 at age 32. A blue sign reads: Aloha Andy Irons, mahalo for everything. Kauai loves you. The break is about 20 minutes north of the airport on the east side of the island.

Post-surf adventure: Drive another 20 minutes to the north end of the island to check out Princeville Ranch Adventures for an afternoon of zip-line tours, horseback riding or riding ATVs to waterfalls.
SANTA ANA  A Costa Mesa man was sentenced to 50-years-to-life in prison on Friday for killing his girlfriend over a business dispute.

Thomas Michael Wilhelm, 52, was drunk when he shot Christine Marie Murray, 45, multiple times in their Costa Mesa home in July 2012. Prosecutors said he had listened to a Gun N Roses song with the lyrics I used to love her, but I had to kill her right before the shooting.

Wilhelm had owned Wilhelm Sprinkler Co. for more than 20 years and asked Murray to step in and take part ownership when the business began faltering, prosecutors said.

They split as a couple, but Murray refused to give up her part of the business, which enraged Wilhelm, prosecutors said. Authorities said he became distraught over losing his business and planned to kill Murray out of revenge.

The defense had argued that Wilhelm lost control and acted impulsively because he was drunk and devastated over the business situation. But in handing down the sentence on Friday, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals said Wilhelms anger was no excuse.

Its still difficult to make sense of what happened here, Goethals said. I accept after hearing the evidence that you were angry and frustrated, but that doesnt mean you didnt have alternatives.

Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com
A young tattoo artist in Yekaterinburg, Russia, has been getting a lot of criticism on social media after a video of him inking his pet Sphynx cat recently went viral. To make matters worse, the owner admitted that this was not the animals first tattoo, and probably not the last.

The owner of the hairless cat admits that he is basically forcing the animal to share his passion for tattoos. Of course, I feel sorry for tattooing her, because its not something she wants, he says in the video. But apparently the temptation to turn the Sphynx into a walking, meowing work of art is too great. Bes already sports a large tattoo on her back, featuring a woman, a deck of cards, a prison tower and a cigarette, and in this video her owner adds a star as well.

The Yekaterinburg artist said that tattoos are a bit harder to do because the cats skin is a bit different than a humans, but added that he doesnt believe the procedure is harmful for the cat. This isnt her first tattoo, he says. She just goes under and doesnt feel a thing. She always wakes up fine from the anesthesia and behave normally after that.

However, Elizabeth Skorynina, head of an Animal Rehabilitation Center in Russia doesnt agree with the actions of the tattoo artist. Any person who has a tattoo can tell you thats it is a painful -process, and for animals its even more so, she says. Sphynx cats have very sensitive skin and any irritation causes them discomfort and pain. If the tattoo artist uses muscle relaxants like xylaxine, the animals life is in danger. It switches off all motor functions, but the brain operates normally, so the cat feels everything! Plus, any anesthesia is dangerous, especially if used more that once a year.

The feedback to the video on Russian social network VKontakte was almost entirely negative, with many people accusing the tattoo artist of animal cruelty.

Interestingly, this is not the first time this has happened in Russia, nor the second. They apparently have a thing for tattooing Sphynx cats. Five years ago, we wrote about Timur, a tattoo artist from Russias Republic of Tartastan, who also sparked outrage online after sharing photos of his tattooed Sphynx. And I also found a few photos from 2009 showing a Sphynx cat with an actual sphinx tattooed on its chest.

Why cant people just ink themselves and just leave these poor animals alone

Sources: LIFE.ru, NGZT.ru
It could be argued that Donald Trump is continuing to campaign after the election is over. His polarizing presidency so far can be characterized by a delirious ambition to ensure his plans are promptly put into action without adopting the due diligence to surpass the checks and balances that prevent mere campaign promises from being codified into law.

Already Trump has issued a dizzying barrage of executive orders that have sent even the most rabid political buffs racing to catch up. In the two weeks since taking office, hes signed executive actions to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, enacted a temporary ban on refugees and travelers from seven majority-Muslim nations, revived the Keystone XL pipeline, withdrawn the U.S. from Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, mandated limits on federal regulations and rolled back requirements for the Affordable Care Act.

Similarly, Trump recently made somewhat good on his oft-repeated campaign pledge to drain the swamp in Washington, passing rules ostensibly meant to barricade that revolving door whereby public servants and special interests intermingle. On January 28 he signed an executive order prohibiting branch appointees from lobbying the agency at which they were stationed for a period of five years after leaving their posts. Most notably, he also prohibited administration officials from ever lobbying the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government.

Both measures could be seen as a potential disincentive to would-be lobbyists, and can also be interpreted as an extension of the anti-lobbying rules enacted by President Obama upon his appointment to office in 2009. Trump also preserved Obamas rule for incoming executive administration officials, which required new appointees to sign an ethics pledge that bans them from working on issues they lobbied on during the last two years.

However, Trumps executive action actually eases some of the lobbying restrictions Obama put into place, notably, the former Presidents controversial rule that lobbyists could not join any agencies theyd lobbied in the last two years. That rule is now gone. Trump also removed a key provision requiring the administration to disclose, through annual reports, how the executive branch is enforcing its own lobbying rules.

According to Craig Holman, Ph.D., a government affairs lobbyist for non-profit consumer rights advocacy group Public Citizen, this calls transparency into question, as it makes it very difficult for us to know how many waivers to his lobbying rules Trump will sign for incoming officials.

Holman also said Trumps lobbying restrictions ultimately arent that meaningful when it comes to outgoing administration officials, because it merely makes exceptions to what they can lobby on, which isnt particularly restrictive.

Overall, its really not a big deal for the lobbying profession, Holman, said. I think the foreign ban element is a bit more substantive than the five-year ban, and [the executive order] has one very positive element in that it preserves the core of Obamas executive order for incoming executive administration officials, which is what made Obamas administration scandal free. It has a good conflict of interest element, but when it comes to actually affecting the lobbying industry, it does quite little.

Gadi Dechter

Its certainly not more onerous than Obamas rules. If anything, its less restrictive, said Gadi Dechter, who runs APCO Worldwides public affairs practice in D.C.

Dechter, a former senior advisor to the National Security Council and National Economic Council in the Obama administration, said concerns about revolving doors and suspicions regarding the lobbying industry have always been around. In reality, however, theres a trade-off at play.

You can restrict people from serving in government and maybe you can reduce potential interest, but I think government is better served when it has access to information and when the people advising others on how to make policy are experts, Dechter said.

It isnt the first time that Trump has scaled back on regulatory promises. Another refrain he made during the election campaign was to battle the rising costs of prescription drugs. Trump planned to address the problem by allowing Medicare to directly negotiate drug prices. He now appears to have walked back on that pledge as well; during a late January meeting with PhRMA lobbyists, Trump referred to the idea as a form of price fixing. He now said he wants to lower taxes for drug companies instead.

Theres a lot of uncertainly regarding what direction things are taking. It seems like this administration is flying by the seat of its pants and just making it up as they go along, which is creating a great deal of uncertainty for businesses and public policy, said Hal Dash, chairman and CEO of Los Angeles-based public affairs firm Cerrell Associates. Theres concern across the board. Virtually every department, from the Health and Human Services department to the Department of Education is wondering whats going to get undone, and what they can and cant do. Any lobbyist in the healthcare industry is scratching their heads over whats going to happen with Obamacare. Theyre almost freaking out.

Hal Dash

Regardless of the uncertainty, Dash said the anecdotal concerns hes heard from clients and colleagues may actually result in an increased demand for public affairs services, be it in K Street firms adding staff in a bid to accommodate this new landscape, or at PR firms, which arent affected by the latest wave of lobbying regulations and may now see a growth industry in setting up a public affairs practice. Political TV ad spends have also been a boon, as evidenced by the millions conservative groups have recently poured into campaigns to help Judge Gorsuch get confirmed to the Supreme Court.

The general consensus is that the Trump administration is a pro business environment, and we might safely predict an easing of regulations that, on the surface, will be beneficial for the private sector. Not all regulations are made equal, however; what may be helpful for one industry can increase the cost of business for others.

This election has created an explosion in demand from clients that are interested in gaining insight into whats happening in Washington and how to constructively engage the administration and manage stakeholders across the spectrum while protecting themselves from risk, Dechter said. Some of them are energized about the administration and others are feeling alienated by it. There are always going to be some customers, suppliers and business partners who have different reactions  thats why its important to have a seat at the table, so that when things change you can make sure your perspective is reflected in the regulations. Its all created an enormous amount of demand for the advice and types of services we offer and we dont expect that to diminish anytime soon.
dulles

As many as 60 foreign nationals were deported last weekend as part of President Donald Trump's new immigration order after being coerced into giving up their visas or green cards upon arriving in the US, a new lawsuit alleges.

The Virginia lawsuit was filed in a federal court on Sunday on behalf of two Yemeni brothers with valid visas  Tareq Aqel Mohammed Aziz and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz  and "others similarly situated." According to the lawsuit, they were detained by Customs and Border Protection agents at Dulles Airport and "forced to sign" I-407 forms "against their will and without their knowledge or consent."

The forms, if signed, mean the signatory has "voluntarily" abandoned their status as a "lawful permanent resident of the United States," according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The agents "lied to immigrants arriving after the executive order was signed, falsely telling them that if they did not sign a relinquishment of their legal rights, they would be formally ordered removed from the United States, which would bring legal consequences including a five-year bar for reentry to the United States," the lawsuit claims. Their legal immigrant status was subsequently "revoked without due process of law."

Trump last Friday signed an executive order barring citizens of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen from entering the US for 90 days while the federal government revisits its screening processes. The order also suspended the US's refugee-admitting program for 120 days, indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from resettling in the US, and gave priority status to minorities fleeing religious persecution.

A government attorney revealed in a Virginia federal court on Friday that over 100,000 visas have been revoked as a result of Trump's travel ban.

Story continues

The Intercept reported on Sunday that the visa terminations began in the days leading up to the official ban and that several visa-holders were charged with violating immigration law even though they had not been informed before boarding their flights that their visas were no longer valid.

dulles

The alleged coercion was not isolated to Dulles. Two Iranians with green cards on separate flights from Germany and Qatar to Los Angeles International Airport last weekend were also prompted to sign I-407 forms, an immigration attorney who advised them told Business Insider this week.

The passengers said they contacted their family members for advice after being handed forms to sign that said I-407, according to their attorney. Their families, waiting for them at the airport, were then able to consult with a triage of immigration attorneys on the ground at LAX.

"This was highly, highly unusual," one of the attorneys, Ally Bolour, told Business Insider. "These forms are supposed to be signed in front of a federal officer, not under duress. I've never seen anything like that before, and I've been doing this for 20 years."

Reached for comment, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security directed Business Insider to the "frequently asked questions" section of the DHS website. The spokesman refused to comment on the lawsuit's claims specifically.

A confusing rollout

The forms were handed out as the CBP scrambled to implement the executive order signed by Trump last Friday.

DHS initially interpreted it to mean that green-card holders from the designated countries would still be allowed to enter the US, CNN reported. Green-card holders undergo a lengthy vetting process by the DHS before they are granted permanent US residency.

But the White House overruled that decision by Saturday morning, according to CNN, and green-card holders were detained at airports across the country. Those with valid visas were detained, too  some for as long as 18 hours.

lax airport protest

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday that 109 people were detained or inconvenienced by the immigration order on Saturday. Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly updated that figure on Tuesday when pressed about reports that the number had been much higher.

The CBP's acting commissioner, Kevin McAleenan, told reporters on Tuesday that the 109 figure referred to the ban's "initial hours" and that "721 travelers from the affected countries" who had visas to enter the US were denied boarding in their countries of origin.

One Iraqi man had his visa revoked before he could travel to Boston to visit his young son, who was flown there late last year for medical treatment after being severely burned at an Iraqi refugee camp.

Several other people were deported shortly after they landed in the US, including the two Yemeni brothers who were sent back to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, after relinquishing their green cards under duress, according to the lawsuit.

"Asylum law requires CBP officers to affirmatively ask if an applicant fears return when placing them into expedited removal," an immigration official told The Intercept. "By pressuring them to simply get on a plane without going into formal removal proceedings, they are violating our obligations under the refugee convention. We are violating international law."

NOW WATCH: Watch Former CIA director James Woolsey explain why he wont advise the Trump transition team anymore





More From Business Insider


Whoever Is Hacking Radio Stations To Play YGs FDT Is A Hero Elijah C. Watson Elijah Watson serves as Okayplayer's News & Culture Editor. When

Hackers have been dropping YGs FDT onto radio stations across the country.

The Associated Press, BuzzFeed and local outlets have reported various incidents in which radio stations unintentionally played the song on different days.

This past Monday night Sunny 107.9 in Salem, South Carolina, reportedly played the anti-Donald Trump track for 15 minutes straight. President Frank Patterson of the Lake Keowee Broadcasting Group took to Facebook shortly to explain the hacking.

Our internet has been hacked at our transmitter site and the station has played anti-Trump songs. This is not our broadcast! We at WFBS do not take political views, Keowee wrote. After acknowledging the hacking Keowee added in another post If they [the hackers] do not like President Trump then get a sign and stand on a street corner.

A hacking also happened in Mooresville, North Carolina. In a report from the Mooresville Tribune the hacking occurred on January 24, where the song proceeded to play on loop for 30 minutes.

Prior to that, multiple hackings had occurred at different radio stations on January 20, including Sunday Morning Glory Radios 100.5 in San Angelo, TX; El Jefe 96.7 in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Mother of the Redeemer Radio 103.5 in Evansville, Indiana; and Crescent Hill Radio in Louisville, Kentucky.

In a report from Radio Insight, it turns out that the hack was done through a Barix Exstreamer, an unsecured device. When contacted by BuzzFeed, Johannes Rietschel (the owner of Barix) said that the companys devices are often used by small radio stations because of their simplicity, but should be used with a firewall whenever linked to the internet.

Its like with your home router, your car, your house, Rietschel said. With significant interest to take over the devices for political messages or even blackmailing, there will be more takeovers and maybe even hacks.'

YG has been consistent in his critique of Trump. During last years presidential election the rapper offered free F**k Donald Trump bagels to Compton voters.
(Updates with details of Virginia judge's decision)

By Scott Malone and Dan Levine

BOSTON/SEATTLE, Feb 3 (Reuters) - A federal judge in Virginia ordered the White House to provide a list of all people stopped from entering the United States by a travel ban imposed last week on citizens of seven majority-Muslim countries by President Donald Trump.

The ruling came on a day that attorneys from four states were in courts challenging the executive order. The Trump administration justified the action on national security grounds, but opponents labeled it an unconstitutional targeting of people based on the religious beliefs.

The State Department said on Friday that less than 60,000 visas previously issued to citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen had been invalidated as a result of the order. That disclosure followed media reports that government lawyers were citing a figure of 100,000.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia ordered the federal government to give the state a list by Thursday of "all persons who have been denied entry to or removed from the United States."

At Boston's Logan International Airport, at least four college students from Iran and Iraq who had previously been blocked from entering the United States by the order, arrived with new visas on Friday, according to a Reuters witness.

The new Republican president's order signed on Jan. 27 triggered chaos at U.S. airports last weekend. Some travelers abroad were turned back from flights into the United States, crowds of hundreds of people packed into arrival areas to protest and legal objections were filed across the country.

The order also temporarily stopped the entry of all refugees into the country and indefinitely halted the settlement of Syrian refugees.

The state of Hawaii on Friday joined the challenge to the order, with officials saying they were suing to block enforcement of the travel ban. Federal judges in Boston and Seattle also were weighing arguments.

Story continues

SKEPTICISM IN BOSTON

In Boston, a federal judge expressed skepticism about a civil rights group's claim that Trump's order represented religious discrimination.

Civil-rights advocates called on U.S. District Judge Nathan Gorton to extend a restraining order issued early on Sunday that for seven days blocks the detention or removal of approved refugees, visa holders, and legal permanent U.S. residents who entered from the seven countries.

"Where does it say Muslim countries?" Gorton asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU.

Segal responded, "If your honor's question is, 'Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?,' my answer is that it doesn't. But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out."

Gorton shot back, "Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?"

Gorton asked U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joshua Press how the seven countries had been selected.

Press said the list had come from a law passed in 2015 and amended early last year requiring that citizens of those countries apply for visas to enter the United States, "out of concern about the refugees that were coming, mainly from Syria at that time and terrorist events that were occurring in Europe."

Trump has told a Christian broadcaster that Syrian Christians would be given priority in applying for refugee status.

In Seattle, the states of Washington and Minnesota were together asking a judge to suspend the entire policy nationwide, which would represent the broadest ruling to date against Trump's directive.

Should the Seattle judge rule that Washington state and Minnesota have legal standing to sue, it could help Democratic attorneys general take on Trump in court on issues beyond immigration.

(Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg in New York, Brian Snyder in Boston and Lawrence Hurley, Lesley Wroughton and Susan Heavey in Washington; Editing by Janet Lawrence and Jonathan Oatis)
LINCOLN  A bill introduced by Sen. Tom Briese of Albion aims to carve out a new class of information that the states electric utilities could withhold from the public.

Under Legislative Bill 494, public utilities like the Omaha Public Power District and Lincoln Electric System could shield from records requests information like data and maps related to physical and cybersecurity infrastructure.

In light of potential risks to critical (energy) infrastructure, this expansion is justified, Briese said at a committee hearing Thursday.

Shelley Sahling-Zart, general counsel for Lincoln Electric, testified in support of the proposal and said that such an exemption would not restrict utilities from sharing information about the location or height of transmission structures with crop dusters, for example. But it would give utilities the authority to withhold the identification of employees affiliated with the operation, security or maintenance of such structures.

This is really aimed at information related to the critical electric and energy infrastructure that could be used by bad actors  terrorists, if you will  to take down the power grid, she said. Sometimes, its a little hard for us here in Nebraska to think that were subject to that, but it is a reality today.

Proponents of the bill acknowledged that the proposal is based on new federal regulations promoted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which in November adopted a nearly identical rule.

That rule, which is yet to be codified into the Federal Register, is somewhat narrower in scope than the Briese proposal, however. It does not extend to the withholding of names of personnel charged with control or maintenance of such assets, which is information the Briese proposal aims to protect.

That ought to tell you something about how important the federal government thinks that is, said attorney Shawn Renner, who testified in opposition to the bill for Media of Nebraska, a nonprofit group comprising print and broadcast media interests in Nebraska.

Given that a federal version has already been adopted, Renner said enabling another public records exemption would duplicate a rule that already applies and pre-empts what LB 494 aims to achieve.

The proposal would increase to 21 the number of public records exemptions allowed by state law. The bill would first have to be advanced to the floor of the Legislature by the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee.

Other exemptions permitted by state law include records related to corporate trade secrets, personal information like Social Security numbers held by public entities and medical records.

Representatives of the Nebraska Rural Electric Association and Black Hills Energy also testified in support of the bill. David Corbin, vice chair of the Sierra Clubs Nebraska chapter, filed testimony in opposition.

The hearing for LB 494 was preceded by hearings for LB 365, a proposal introduced by Sen. Carol Blood of Bellevue that would allow public entities to charge nonresidents for salary costs incurred for especially large records requests.

The committee also heard testimony on LB 127, introduced by Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte. That bill would require political subdivisions to publish notice of public meetings in newspapers within those entities jurisdiction.

OPPD didnt give public testimony in favor or in opposition to any of the proposals.
The driver of a car that plunged into the Boyer River near Denison, Iowa, in January now faces a homicide-by-vehicle charge in connection with the death of one of his teenage passengers.

Ramon Hernandez, 25, was formally charged Thursday in connection with the crash and the death of Yoana Acosta, 15, whose body was found in the river a week later.

In addition to vehicular homicide, Hernandez is charged with three counts of distributing a controlled substance to a minor, one count of distributing a controlled substance to an adult, and four counts of providing alcohol to underage people, according to a press release from the Crawford County Attorneys Office.

The alcohol charges are misdemeanors. The rest are felonies.

About 3 a.m. Jan. 19, a car containing Hernandez and four teens entered the river outside Denison.

Hernandez and three of the teens made it to safety, but Yoana was missing. Her body was found Jan. 26.
LINCOLN  After four days of debate, lawmakers on Friday took a step to close a nearly $900 million budget gap.

The Nebraska Legislature voted 46-1 to give first-round approval to Legislative Bill 22, a budget proposal largely modeled after a plan recommended by Gov. Pete Ricketts.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha was the lone opponent.

Sen. John Stinner of Gering, chairman of the budget-crafting Appropriations Committee, and others argued that passing the proposal to address the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, is a necessary move in working to address the states overall fiscal situation.

They also warned that tougher decisions are ahead when lawmakers debate the 2017-19 biennial budget.

The fact of the matter is the governor and his staff reacted in a logical, commonsense way to a revenue shortfall and budget problem that we have to confront, Stinner said, noting that his committee treated Ricketts proposal as a template and made changes reflected in an accompanying committee amendment.

Under the proposal that advanced, budget cuts total about $157 million. They are partly offset by $20 million in proposed spending increases.

Ricketts had proposed budget cuts totaling $171 million, also offset by $20 million in proposed spending increases.

While the plan makes across-the-board cuts to most state agencies, it spares K-12 education, corrections and some Health and Human Services programs.

Under the advanced proposal, about $5.2 million in unspent 2015-16 Nebraska Research Initiative money would go back to the University of Nebraska to pay off research equipment. Ricketts had recommended that money be cut.

The committee also restored $4 million that Ricketts proposed be cut from the Supreme Court to preserve funding that covers treatments meant to keep low-level offenders out of overcrowded prisons. And it brought back $3.5 million to providers of developmental disability services to help make up a $7 million shortfall.

Fridays vote came after debate on the proposal spanned four days. During debate, senators raised concerns about the governors approach to closing the gap between projected spending and tax receipts.

Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha and others objected to Ricketts withholding money from all state agencies, not just those under the governors control, in an effort to control their spending.

The Governors Office has argued that state law gives it authority to manage the state budget through its state budget director.

This is Ricketts circus that you all are participating in, Chambers said this week.

Sen. Dan Hughes of Venango said Friday that it was clear there was a division within the body and the attempt to take a lot of time on something, in my opinion, that should be relatively easy for this body to move forward with.

Ricketts had requested that lawmakers work swiftly on the budget plan and that it reach the floor by early February.

Sen. Paul Schumacher of Columbus defended the days-long discussion as genuine debate.

We are in the midst of a good debate, laying a good foundation for some hellish decisions we will make this session and beyond, he said.

Sen. Burke Harr of Omaha said Friday that while he supports the underlying proposal, hes still disappointed about the governors decision to unilaterally make decisions without talking to state lawmakers.

I think were going to continue to have a conversation about how we cut our budget, and I think it will evolve into the biennial budget, he said.
LINCOLN  Lawmakers will not consider an abortion-related bill introduced by former Papillion State Sen. Bill Kintner because no senators stepped forward to take it over.

Kintner, who resigned last month, introduced Legislative Bill 59, which would have required the websites of abortion clinics to link to information about fetal development and ultrasound videos maintained by the state.

The bill would have required the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services to maintain the videos on its website, along with existing information about fetal development, alternative options to abortion and places that provide free ultrasounds.

The bill had three co-sponsors, Sens. Lydia Brasch of Bancroft, Tom Brewer of Gordon and Steve Erdman of Bayard. None offered to take over the bill, leaving it without a sponsor.

Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, which had backed the proposal, called the situation frustrating.

If the Legislature is full of pro-life senators, why wouldnt someone pick it up? she asked. Its very disappointing.

Schmit-Albin acknowledged that getting the bill passed would have been unlikely, but she said it would have been useful to bring out the issues at a public hearing.

The next step will be to talk with HHS officials about voluntarily adding the videos to the department website, she said. Past agency leaders had been reluctant to add the information without backing from a state law, she said.

Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston, chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee, said Speaker of the Legislature Jim Scheer advised committees to kill any of Kintners bills that were not adopted by other senators. HHS committee members voted 7-0 on the motion to kill LB 59.
LONDON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Mozambique's finance ministry said on Friday it had not approached the Paris Club of wealthy creditor nations for debt relief, the country's finance ministry said in a statement.

"The Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Mozambique wishes to deny recent rumors in the media erroneously reporting that the Republic has approached the Paris Club for debt relief," the statement said, without giving any further details.

The southern African country, one of the world's poorest said in January it would not make a coupon payment to holders of its 2023 dollar-bond. Mozambique, whose foreign obligations are roughly equivalent to its GDP, said its financial difficulties made its ability to repay debt this year "extremely limited".

(Reporting by Karin Strohecker, editing by Sujata Rao)
This article appeared Jan. 17, 1997

A 3-year-old girl found huddled over her twin sister in a snowy alley near downtown early Friday said to rescuers: "Help my sister."

The twins -- Jennifer and Kourtney Woracek -- apparently struggled into their coats and boots, packed a snack and then headed outside on a pre-dawn adventure that nearly cost them their lives, police said.

The girls are the daughters of Thomas and Marlene Woracek, 1908 S. 13th St.

While their parents slept, the twins walked across 13th Street and down an alley north of Center Street before one of the girls collapsed. It was 9 below zero at the time.

Police, called to the house at 4:05 a.m. by a distraught parent, searched for 45 minutes before finding Jennifer and Kourtney near death in the alley.

"The one was covering and huddling over the other, " said Sgt. William Mul - doon, a police spokesman. "She said, 'Help my sister."'

Police bundled both girls into coats and rushed them to St. Joseph Hospital in their police cruisers.

Jennifer, who was found unconscious, was in critical condition at Childrens Hospital at noon. Kourtney was in serious condition at St. Joseph.

When officers arrived at the Woracek house, Woracek told them that he had awakened to a light down the hall. He investigated and found that his twin daughters were not in bed. Downstairs, he found more lights. Games and toys were spread through the living room, and the front door was open.

He called police.

"What they surmise occurred is that the girls woke up and decided to play, " Muldoon said. "They went downstairs ... then they set out on this adventure. They had packed a backpack with a snack."

The girls put on their pants and shirts, coats and boots. They did not take mittens or headgear. The father found one of the coats near the front door along with the knapsack.

The parents told police that the girls may have been heading for their day - care center, Christ Child Center, at 10th and William Streets.

When officers arrived, they searched the house to see whether the two girls were hiding. Meanwhile, more than a half dozen officers with search dogs scoured the neighborhood for any sign of the girls.

"They just started out from the house ... checking porches and doorways and anywhere a child might be getting cover and hiding, " Muldoon said.

Officer Allen Wagner, who helped in the search, said officers knew the situation was urgent.

Then, almost 45 minutes after police were called to the house, Officer Troy Kister noticed a small footprint across 13th Street near an alley.

"He's not sure why he looked at that, " Muldoon said. "It was a simple footprint, and he just got the feeling he had to follow up on that and track it."

Child-size boot prints weaving north up the alley in 5 1/2 inches of snow led officers to the children.

The tracks remained visible hours later on the edge of the alley in the trampled snow.

The alley is on a hillside above the businesses along 13th Street. It is lined on the west by cedar, pine and scrub trees and on the east by chain-link fences and detached garages to houses on 12th Street.

An abandoned refrigerator sits in the alley behind one house.

About 100 yards north of where the officer spotted the footprints, police found some children's boots. More than 15 feet away from the boots, Kister and Officer Warren Walter found Jennifer lying face - down in the snow. Kourtney, wearing an unzipped coat, was leaning over her.

"Her hands and feet were frozen, " Wagner said, referring to Jennifer. "It was a no - choice situation. We had to get her (to the hospital) quick."

Wagner said he bundled Jennifer into his coat. Police believed she was the most critical of the two children because the other child appeared to be somewhat alert.

"We ran to the car with her, " he said. Wagner, who is also the rescue chief for the Bellevue Volunteer Fire Department, said she still was breathing.

"All I could do was keep her as warm as possible, " he said. Two other officers grabbed the second child.

They rushed both to St. Joseph. Jennifer was later taken by medical helicopter to Childrens Hospital.

Muldoon said if the discovery was made a few minutes later, the children likely would have died.

Police are conducting a routine investigation into the incident, although no wrongdoing is suspected, Muldoon said.

Mrs. Woracek, accompanied by her parents and older daughter, Lindsay, left the house shortly after 8 a.m. en route to the hospitals. She declined to comment. Her husband left moments later.

The Woracek house is a white one - and - a - half story frame house on a block that has few other residences. It is about a mile south of downtown. South 13th Street is a busy commercial thoroughfare between downtown and the Henry Doorly Zoo - Rosenblatt Stadium complex.

The Woraceks' 13th Street neighbors are mostly antique shops and other small businesses, including a gasoline station, grocer, tavern and funeral home.

Neat and well-kept, the Woracek house sits on a double lot. A 6-foot wood privacy fence screens the side yard from the street, and a chain-link fence installed after the twins were born separates the property from the alley. The sloped back yard is landscaped and terraced into a hill with railroad ties.

Red and green Christmas lights remain strung along rain gutters on the four - pillar porch and the roof eaves.

Neighborhood Watch stickers are posted on some neighbors' doors, but people interviewed said they knew little about the Woraceks.

Bobbie Jo Haith and her grandfather, Gus Scholting, who live across 13th Street from the Woraceks, said they were awakened about 5 a.m. by their barking dogs. Looking out their front window, they counted 12 police cars blocking most of 13th Street in the cold dark more than two hours before dawn.

"I thought the Ginn got robbed, " Ms. Haith said, referring to a nearby gas station.

A teen-age neighbor, David Escamilla, who was outdoors watching the coming and going of police officers as he ate a chocolate-covered ice cream bar, said the twins were rarely outside without their mother.

"They're pretty strict, " he said of the Woraceks. "They watch them close. They're nice people."

The Woraceks are active in nearby St. Francis Cabrini Church. Lindsay is a fifth-grader at All Saints Catholic School a few blocks away on South 10th Street. The Woraceks, including the twins, attended a parent-teacher association meeting at the 222-pupil school Tuesday night.

Diane Cronin, principal of All Saints, said schoolchildren were making spiritual bouquets with colored paper for the twins Friday morning. The paper bouquets include a prayer or hope written on each petal.

"They're wonderful people. It's a tragedy, " Ms. Cronin said. "We remember when the twins were born. Now all we can do is pray, and we're doing a lot of it."
Omahas waste pickup contractor expects to be able to pick up Omahans yard waste and trash separately this summer.

Waste Management is putting Omaha employees through a new program aimed at helping them get commercial drivers licenses. That should help the company hire enough drivers to resume its normal yard waste pickup routine this summer.

Waste Management has struggled to maintain enough drivers for its trash pickup operations in Omaha because of a nationwide shortage of people with commercial drivers licenses.

Because of the shortage, for the past two years Mayor Jean Stothert has allowed the company to pick up yard waste and trash together and take it to the landfill.

Now the company has announced a program at its Florida training center that would help employees get their commercial driver's licenses.

The company has 84 Omaha drivers, and a spokeswoman said it would like to see six more.

The company also offers a $4,000 sign-on bonus to new drivers, spokeswoman Lisa Disbrow said.

The company announced the training initiative in a press release that said two of the first graduates of the helper to driver program are from Omaha.

Beau Vaughn and Robert Bergman were among those with a permit who acquired their license through the three-week program.

I was surprised when I was approached about going to Florida, Bergman, now a driver, said in the release. It was a big commitment to leave for three weeks and go through the training program.

The Stothert administration has said its goal is to encourage the company to collect yard waste and trash separately.

But Stothert has said when the city negotiates the next waste pickup contract, she believes trash and yard waste should be picked up together.
WASHINGTON  Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., announced her support Thursday for Betsy DeVos, rebuffing an impassioned, last-minute lobbying campaign by those opposed to President Donald Trumps pick for secretary of education.

While I do not agree with Mrs. DeVos on every issue, I do believe she has the ability and commitment to lead the department, Fischer said in a press release. Moreover, I have received assurances from her in writing that the Department of Education will not impose new federal mandates related to vouchers on our schools. Local educators, schools boards, and parents should be the decision makers, not bureaucrats in Washington.

The move dismayed the many DeVos critics who said Fischer had put party allegiance above principle, while Fischer insisted that she had done her due diligence in extracting promises from the nominee.

Fischers support may have just clinched DeVos confirmation, though if Democrats stand united in opposition to her it will require Vice President Mike Pence to cast the tie-breaking vote.

Nearly all other Republican senators, including those from Nebraska and Iowa, are expected to back DeVos when she comes up for a final vote sometime in the next few days.

DeVos has proven to be one of Trumps more troubled nominations, particularly in the wake of her rocky confirmation hearing.

She was plunged into fresh turmoil this week when two GOP senators announced that they would vote against her, citing reasons that included concern about her grasp of the issues. As a result, one more Republican nay could stop the nomination.

Fischer quickly emerged as one of the few Republican senators who had not publicly announced a position on DeVos.

That prompted those against the nomination in Nebraska and elsewhere to focus on Fischer, flooding her office switchboard and lighting up her social media accounts as they urged her to reject DeVos.

At times Thursday, those trying to reach her complained online about jammed phone lines.

Fischer tweeted at one point: Its all hands on deck in my offices answering phones. If you are a Nebraskan who cant get through, try my website.

Opponents hammered away with their message that DeVos is unqualified for the position and that she would undermine public education with her devotion to using charter schools and vouchers as a way to help struggling communities.

They also questioned whether DeVos understands the needs of students with disabilities  concerns that stem in part from stumbles during her confirmation hearing.

Opponents put their hopes on Fischer in part because she recently reiterated her long-standing opposition to vouchers. They also called on the senator to embrace her public education roots.

Fischer earned her bachelors degree in education in 1988 and her mom was a longtime elementary teacher in the Lincoln Public Schools.

Fischer served on the school board of a country school and the Valentine High School board. She also was state president of the Nebraska Association of School Boards.

But the Nebraska senator ultimately ended the suspense at midday with her statement of support, in which she cited her roots in the field and focused on the various assurances that DeVos provided her.

She has also made a commitment to me in writing that she will work to protect all students, especially those with disabilities, Fischer said in her statement. As a longtime champion of public education and the daughter of a public school teacher, I will continue to fight to ensure all Nebraska children have access to a quality education.
50,000 bullet-proof jackets procured for Indian Army

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Feb 3: The Indian Army has procured 50,000 bullet-proof jackets in the past two years and 186,138 more vests were in the process of being purchased from an Indian manufacturer, the Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.

Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre in a written reply told the house that bullet-proof jackets were being provided to soldiers as per the laid down specifications and authorisation.

"The procurement of these jackets for the authorised quantity as per Annual Provisioning Review is an on-going process. In the past two years, 50,000 (such jackets) have been procured for the Indian Army," the minister said.

IANS
Amit Shah cancels padyatra over murder of gutka trader's son

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, Feb 3: BJP president Amit Shah on Friday cancelled his padyatra scheduled to be held in Meerut after a gutka trader's son was shot dead on Thursday night.

Sushil Verma, a gutka trader, was finalising the day's account alongwith his son Abhishek when three unidentified people entered their office and shot at Abhishek who succumbed to his injuries while in hospital.

Shah will be meeting the family of the businessman on Friday. The BJP president's padyatra was scheduled on Friday following which he was to interact with the traders. However, keeping in mind the above incident the foot march was cancelled.

Shah, however, addressed a rally on Friday in Meerut where he took a jibe at the SP-Congress aliiance and said that the BJP would make UP a 'gunda-free' state. "We will have anti-Romeo squad in every college so that out girls will be safe," Shah said during his rally.

OneIndia News
'Gandhada Gudi' box office collection: Here's how much it collected in the US

Anbumani Ramadoss suffers heart attack, hospitalised

India

oi-Anusha

Bengaluru, Feb 3: Former Union minister Anbumani Ramadoss was admitted to Narayana Health city on Friday evening. The member of parliament suffered a mild heart attack following which he was rushed for medical assistance.

Ramadoss was at a meeting in Dharmapuri near Hosur when he complained of chest pain and giddiness. He was rushed to Narayana Health City in Bengaluru from there.

The 48 year old leader of the Paatali Makkal Katchi suffered a mild attack at around 1 PM on Friday. Hospital sources said that he underwent angio procedure at around 6 PM. Hospital sources suggested that he has been responding well to the treatment and is likely to be discharged in the next 24 hours after observation.

Anbumani Ramadoss had actively taken up the cause of Jallikattu recently.

OneIndia News
Answer to the Indian law, SC tells Maxis owner

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The Supreme Court on Friday said that it will not allow the merger of Reliance Communication wireless with Aircel to pay off debts unless the Maxis owner answers to the Indian law. On the last date of hearing, the court had taken strong exception to the fact that the owner of the Malaysian firm Axis, Ananda Krishnan had not honoured the summons issued by the court after the Central Bureau of Investigation had filed a chargesheet in the Aircel-Maxis scam.

The SC said that it would not allow the merger of Reliance Communication Wireless with Aircel for Rs 20,000 crore to pay off debts unless Krishnan answers to the Indian law. "He does not care for the law or the SC of this country. You people stand up and defend them," the SC told the counsel.

"We will adopt any means to see that nobody absconds from debts of laws of this country," the bench headed by the Chief Justice of India said. The court also reiterated its January 6 order in which it said that Krishnan and 3 others charge-sheeted by the CBI must appear in court.

On January 6 the Supreme Court restrained Maxis from earning any revenue from Aircel-Maxis's 65 million mobile phone connections. "You have to appear wherever you are and cannot run away after earning revenue," the bench observed. The court said that it will not permit someone to benefit from the allotted spectrum unless he submitted to the process of the law and SC. The matter has been adjourned to Friday to permit Aircel-Maxis to file documents supporting their arguments.

OneIndia News
Bengaluru: Uber, Ola defy government order, cabs impounded

India

prnewswire-Anusha

Bengaluru, Feb: 4 Defying Karnataka government's order against extending shared cabs services proved costly for cab aggregator companies Uber and Ola on Friday. Officials of the transport department impounded over 30 cabs attached to the aggregators for plying 'illegally'. Representatives of the companies later met officials of the transport department and requested for an extension on deadline. In a relief, the government agreed to extend them the grace period.

"We did seize some cabs today since they were offering shared can services illegally. The companies then requested for 15 days Grace time and we have agreed to give them that much time. Safety is our priority but they claim that other states have allowed pooling. We are not opposed to car pooling, we only as to ensure that it is within the legal framework," said Transport Minister Ramalinga Reddy.

Uber and Ola have submitted a plea requesting permission to order shared can service and it is currently under consideration, the minister told OneIndia. The government is in the process of verifying how other states are allowing this service and how transport directives can be changed to suit the aggregators as well as safety of passengers.

Even as they have filed for permission to extend shared services, Old and Uber have taken to social media and online platforms to garner support for pooling and cab sharing. Meanwhile, reports of Chennai considering a ban on shared rides also emerged following in the footsteps of Karnataka government.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, February 4, 2017, 2:45 [IST]
Why is the DMK continuing to oppose the imposition of Hindi? - 50 years of struggle and the truth!

Chennai oil spill: 10 days to clean Ennore alone, says coast guard

India

oi-Anusha

Days after the toxic oil spill in Ennore port in Chennai, the coastguards involved in the clean-up believe that it may take up to 12 days to clear the sludge from Ennore port alone. The spill on Chennai's coastline, the coastguard claim has almost been cleared.

"We were informed of the collision on January 28, and launched helicopter operations immediately. The coast guard has been dispersing the oil and neutralising it. The oil spill has spread and 19 helicopter sorties have been launched to see over the situation. Almost 90 per cent of the spill in north Chennai has been cleared. Ennore alone will take 10 or 12 days to clean up," said Rajan Bargotra, IG, coast guard on Friday.

About 2,800 litres of oil spill dispersant has been used to neutralise the spill in Chennai. The major collection of the sludge has been close to the shore with rocks and sand being affected by the deposits. The coastguard assured that the Marina stretch would be cleaned up by Saturday but the real challenge lies in R K Kuppam area.

"Oil is accumulating at R K Kuppam and the thick sludge that has been formed is a posing a challenge. As of today, 72 tonnes of sludge has been removed from R K Kuppam and 42 tonnes were from the beach. In all an estimate on accumulation stands at 170 tonnes," he added.

After facing severe criticisms by environmentalist and rights activists alike, scientists have now been asked to visit the oil spill location to suggest the best way forward. Agents to help the bio

degradation of the spill is being considered and the authorities suggest that the entire sludge will be reduced to sand, but the entire process is time-consuming.

Authorities also suggested that investigations have been launched into the matter and the actual quantity of oil spill will be ascertained only after reports are filed. While acknowledging that the spill will leave a lasting damage on the environment and marine life, authorities said that the accident was huge and the spill was minor in comparison.

Brushing aside the possibilities of the oil spill resulting in the death of turtles, authorities maintained that while turtles are expected to visit the shore for nesting purposes, it was unlikely that the oil spill caused any deaths, a statement that environmentalists were in agreement.

OneIndia News
Why is the DMK continuing to oppose the imposition of Hindi? - 50 years of struggle and the truth!

Chennai Oil spill: FIR against cargo ship companies

India

oi-Anusha

Chennai, Feb 4: The Tamil Nadu police on Friday registered a FIR against the management of the two cargo ships that collided leading to the toxic oil spill on the Chennai coastline.

The FIR came on the day the Madras High Court asked for FIRs to be filed against those responsible for the collision. On January 28, MT Dawn Kanchipuram, carrying petroleum oil lubricants and MT BW Maple, loaded with LPG, collided off Kamarajar Port in Tamil Nadu.

While authorities claimed that there was no oil spill initially, a thin sheet of oil spill began forming along the coastline on Sunday.

Crude oil from one of the cargo ships spilled into the sea and the oil has spread over a 30 km stretch along the coast.

The Minjur police in north Chennai filed cases on the basis Kamarajar port authorities and asked the captains of both oil tankers to submit their reports immediately. Cases were registered under sections including charges of polluting the sea waters. Meanwhile, a separate inquiry has been initiated by port authorities to find the cause of the collision. The demand for both companies to take up the cost of clean up is now being made even as more than 1000 people are attempting to clean up the oil spill.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Saturday, February 4, 2017, 2:57 [IST]
Winter makes an early entry in Kashmir with snowfall, heavy rain

Mehbooba Mufti gets notice to vacate official bungalow 'meant for J&K CMs'

Accession Day: Valley lights up on this day when J&K became part of India

2 non-local labourers shot at by terrorist in J&K's Anantnag

Indias first floating financial literacy camp in Dal Lake

Clashes in Srinagar after Friday prayers

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Srinagar, Feb 3: Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces after Friday prayers here, police said. Unidentified youths threw a petrol bomb at a CRPF contingent deployed in Nowhatta area which was followed by heavy stone pelting.

A Central Reserve Police Force trooper was injured in the incident. Security forces used batons and tear smoke to disperse the protesters. Clashes also broke out in north Kashmir's Sopore town.

Separatists have called for post Friday prayer protests against a West Bengal court's decision to sentence to death Muzaffar Ahmad from Kulgam in south Kashmir.

Authorities placed separatist leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq under house arrest in a bid to foil mass protests.

IANS
Tax-free no more: Saudi Arabia, UAE to impose 5% tax in 2018

Fuel price: Tax cut unlikely, Centre may wait for states to act

The truth hurts says Hardeep Puri, asks why Maharashtra didnt reduce VAT on petrol, diesel

No new VAT or tax hike in near future: Yogi

Consumers' forum says no VAT can be charged on discounted items

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

The goods sold by shops at a discounted price on MRP cannot charge Value Added Tax, said the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission. The NCDRC said that the MRP already includes all taxes and cess in accordance with Section 2(d) of Consumer Goods Act, reported TOI.

The order came after the NCDRC rejected a plea by Woodland franchises last month after it had denied to refund VAT charged on jackets sold at 40 percent discount, said reports.

NCDRC president Justice D K Jain said that the advertisement of discount was to lure the customers to buy the mechandise and was not intended to be the real bargaining price.

The commission upheld the verdicts of district and state forums and directed the shop owners to refund the extra amount to complainants.

It also ordered the shop owners to pay compensation ranging between Rs 2,000 and Rs 5,000 and the litigation charge borne by the complainants.

OneIndia News
Jaitley statue at Kotla: Angry Bedi asks DDCA to remove his name from stands, quits membership

Reforms in India being done by conviction, not compulsion: PM Narendra Modi

BJP leaders pay tribute to former minister Arun Jaitley on his third death anniversary

Draft bills on GST to be introduced in second part of budget: FM

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia

New Delhi, Feb 3: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Friday addressed a post-budget interactive session with Industry associations at Vigyan Bhawan.

While addressing, Jaitley said that hopefully once the GST is implemented, the scope for generation of more black money itself becomes difficult. He further said that there were several issues in terms of policy in relation to the draft GST legislations.

''My target is to finalise those drafts and take them in the second part of budget session of Parliament,'' Jaitley said. Jaitley further said that setting up a "bad bank", or a kind of asset reconstruction company set up to buy non-performing assets of banks at market price, could be a solution to deal with the festering problem of NPAs.

"It (bad bank) is also a possible solution. We will take it on board for discussion," Jaitley said here at the post-Budget interaction with India Inc.

The Economic Survey 2016-17 has suggested establishment of a bad bank to deal with the NPA issue.

OneIndia News (with IANS inputs)

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 17:57 [IST]
ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) -- Chocolate maker Nestle is moving its U.S. headquarters from California to Virginia, relocating to a part of the country where the company says it has more customers.

Nestle USA, a subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestle S.A., announced the move Wednesday in the Rosslyn section of Arlington County at an event with Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

Nestle USA is currently based in Glendale, California. Lisa Gibby, a Nestle representative, said there are about 1,200 employees at the existing headquarters. About 750 jobs are moving to Virginia and the others will head to the company's divisions in Ohio and Missouri.

Nestle expects to complete the move by the end of 2018.

The Rosslyn headquarters will occupy more than 200,000 square feet of office space in the tallest building in the D.C. region. That building has been vacant since its 2013 opening. The Rosslyn area, just across the Potomac River from the nation's capital, has suffered from a slowdown in federal job growth. McAuliffe has been working to diversify northern Virginia's job base and reduce its reliance on federal spending.

"I am particularly proud that this great company will locate in a property that has sat empty as the area and our entire state grappled with defense cuts and sequestration." McAuliffe said in a statement.

To lure the company, the state approved a $10 million in economic incentives and grants, and Arlington County contributed $6 million.

Nestle USA said 85 percent of its top customers and 75 percent of its factories are in the eastern U.S.
Independents, rebels hope to steal the show in Uttarakhand elections

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

The contest in more than 18 assembly seats in Uttarakhand has gone beyond the conventional fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress. Miffed with their respective parties not giving them tickets, leaders of the BJP as well as the Congress are contesting as independents. With the last day for withdrawal of nominations coming to a close, many rebel candidates who have refused to withdraw their nominations as independents have left both, the BJP and the Congress hassled.

Uttarakhand is all set to go to polls on February 15 and the contest is as expected, a straight fight between the Congress and the BJP. This time around, the Bahujan Samaj Party making inroads and the rebel independent candidates are sure to take away a major chunk of the conventional competitors. 51 candidates have withdrawn from the electoral fray on the last day for nomination withdrawal.

While eleven former Congress MLAs are in the fray this time battling as BJP nominees, Congress has also fielded three former BJP MLAs. 18 candidates including three former BJP MLAs are contesting as independents. Both the Congress and the BJP have fielded candidates for all 70 seats. However, in 20 seats located in Haridwar and Udhamsingh Nagar districts, BSP can very well make the contest triangular, believe political observers.

The Congress has expelled 24 members for defiance and refusing to withdraw their nomination against official party candidates while BJP has expelled 18 rebels for six years. The rebels who are contesting are sure to dent the vote share if not win the seat on their own.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 16:18 [IST]
ISI spy ring boss had worked with NATO in Afghanistan

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Feb 3: The probe being conducted into the ISI's spying ring in India has revealed that one of the accused had worked with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in Afghanistan. Gulshan Kumar who was arrested for being part of the spying ring was also running an illegal telephone exchange in Uttar Pradesh through which he would spoof calls and gather information from Army officials.

During the course of investigations, it was revealed that Kumar had worked with the NATO in Afghanistan with the US Army. He said that he applied for the post through an online interview and was selected to work as one of the technical support.

A probe official told OneIndia that he could have gathered skills on spying during his stint in Afghanistan. He was tapped by ISI agents while he was in Afghanistan and sent to India to start a spying ring. When his house was raided they found that he was running an illegal telephone exchange. It resembled a call centre, a Delhi police officer part of the raid informed.

The case came to light after the Military Intelligence found that some officers had received suspicious calls. The accused persons would call from numbers that were identical to an Army officer's superiors and gather information about troop movement and deployment.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 10:14 [IST]
Man strangles live-in partner to death, buries her under marble platform

India

oi-PTI

Bhopal, Feb 3: In a grisly incident, a man has been arrested in Bhopal for allegedly murdering his live-in partner and virtually entombing the body under a marble platform at his residence. The body of the woman, who hailed from Bankura in West Bengal, was exhumed in the wee hours on Friday and it took police six hours to recover it, they said.

The accused Udyan Das, 32, strangulated the woman to death, stuffed the body in an iron box and then constructed a marble platform over it to hide the crime.

"West Bengal police have arrested Udyan Das on charges of murdering his live-in partner Akanksha alias Shweta Sharma. The accused admitted to killing her in December last year and then burying the body under a marble platform on the first floor of his house," Govindpura city superintendent of police Virendra Mishra told PTI on Friday.

"We exhumed the body from under the platform at around 4 am with the help of drilling machines. It has been sent for postmortem and further interrogation is underway," he said.

The incident came to fore on Thursday when West Bengal police arrived in the state capital in search of Akanksha following a complaint lodged by her father Shivendra Sharma after the family lost touch with her.

According to police, Udyan had befriended the victim on a social media site. The accused told police that he killed Akanksha in a fit of rage by strangulating her in the last week of December 2016, after they had a dispute over an issue. Das further told the police that after strangulating Akanksha, he packed her body in an iron box and then buried it under the platform, police informed.

"The accused poured in cement inside an iron box after stuffing the body. He then put the box inside another bigger box and again filled cement in it. These boxes were then covered with a marble platform," he said.

According to police, the accused has been changing his statements on various aspects, including his relationship status with the victim.

"Das initially said that he had married Akanksha at the local BHEL Kalibadi temple. Later, he said that he married her in New York. But it was found that he never visited New York. So, we are still in the process of ascertaining the details given by him," an officer at Govindpura police station said.

PTI
Manipur polls- Congress declares list of all 60 candidates

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Imphal, Feb 3: The Congress on Friday declared 60 candidates for the Manipur assembly elections, fielding Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh from his traditional seat of Thoubal.

The list, released by party general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, came almost a month before the polls in the state. Manipur would witness a two-phased election on March 4 and March 8 for its 60-member assembly.

The ruling Congress is the first and only party in Manipur which has announced the names of all 60 candidates for the elections. The Bharatiya Janata Party had announced the names of 31 candidates few days ago and is yet to come out with the remaining 29 candidates.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh told IANS that the policy is to give tickets to the sitting MLAs. However, tickets were given to those who have a bright chance to win. Two-time winner, Okram Landhoni, Chief Minister Singh's wife, is not contesting the elections this time. A few weeks back she had announced her retirement to make room for her son Surjakumar. He was given the party ticket from the Khangabok constituency from where his mother won for two consecutive terms.

Okram Henry, a nephew of the chief minister, also got the party ticket for the Wangkhei constituency. The sitting Congress MLA Yumkham Erabot had joined the BJP. Last time, Henry contested unsuccessfully. Prominent Congress minister N. Biren recently resigned to join the BJP. In his place, another politician, N. Rajen was given the Congress ticket in Heingang constituency.

Thounaojam Shyamkumar, a TMC MLA, was one of the MLAs who had joined the Congress sometime back. Despite the police claim that he has a nexus with militants, the party ticket was given to him. Shyamkumar, however, denied the police charge. The names of 60 candidates which were recommended by the state election committee was approved on Thursday by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh and Manipur Congress president T.N. Haokip had rushed to Delhi to have the list approved. Congress leaders said that they are not expecting mass resignations as was the case with the BJP. The disappointed aspirants had resigned and joined some other parties.

A party leader said: "Of 60 constituencies, there were single applications for the Congress tickets in 41 seats. In case of the remaining seats, there is no dissatisfaction over the selection of the party candidates." In the 2012 elections, the ruling Congress faced a ban from six insurgent groups. There was bloodshed to drive home the message that the armed groups mean business.

However, the Congress scripted political history by winning 42 seats, something never done by any other party. Besides, it is the only party which has been in power for three consecutive terms with Ibobi as the undisputed leader. No chief minister could even complete a five-year term before.

IANS
Mulayam Singh Yadav chooses brother over son

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Lucknow, Feb 3: Former Samajwadi Party chief and now its mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav on Friday announced he will campaign for his younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav first.

After that, he would go to seek votes for the candidates named by his son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister told mediapersons that on February 9, he would go to Jaswantnagar in Etawah and seek people's support for Shivpal, who has been sidelined by his nephew Akhilesh.

In a series of flip-flops ever since he was overthrown by Akhilesh, Mulayam has been making contradictory noises. First, he said he asked his supporters to contest against Congress candidates in the 105 seats given to them according to the alliance conditions and had even threatened not to campaign for the Samajwadi Party and Congress candidates.

He, however, retreated and told reporters in Delhi on Wednesday that Akhilesh was his son and that he had very little option but to canvass. Shivpal, after filing his nomination in Jaswantnagar earlier this week, had announced he would form a new party after March 11 when election results are declared.

He has also been taking potshots at Akhilesh saying he got everything due to luck and legacy whereas people like him who slogged all through for the Samajwadi Party were given a raw deal. Opposition parties including the Bahujan Samaj Party and Bharatiya Janata Party have been alleging that the family feud in the Yadav clan is a staged attempt to deflect people's mind from lawlessness and corruption in the state.

Uttar Pradesh BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said "Mulayam's flip-flop is not only scripted but also a clever attempt to save his son from being made responsible for an imminent loss in the state polls". BSP chief Mayawati has also castigated arch-rivals Mulayam and Akhilesh for being engaged in a "family drama" even as the people of Uttar Pradesh were suffering.

IANS
Punjab elections: Why a win is crucial for the AAP and the Congress

India

oi-Anusha

By end of Saturday, voters of Punjab would have decided for themselves the leadership they want for possibly the next five years. A triangular contest between the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party has made everyone take notice of the Punjab assembly polls. While a win in Punjab for their alliance will be a shot in the arm for the BJP in the 2019 parliamentary polls, for the Congress and the AAP, the win is a do or die for the image of the party as well as its leaders.

Thanks to the anti-incumbency sentiment against the current SAD government, the Congress was hoping for a comfortable win in Punjab, in fact, its best chance at victory out of all five state going into assembly polls stood in Punjab. The entry of AAP, however, has raised the stakes for all other parties. The massive undercurrent of support that AAP enjoys has come as a threat both, to the BJP as well as the Congress but AAP has its own drawbacks. The assembly polls in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh potentially has the power to change the future course of Indian politics.

Why a win is important for the Congress?

For far too long now, Rahul Gandhi's elevation in the Congress has been pushed. With the election commission asking the Congress to hold its internal polls before June 2017 the need to enhance Rahul Gandhi's image as its leader has become important. With Sonia Gandhi's health issues and Priyanka Gandhi's reluctance to join active politics any time soon and in the absence of any other leader out of the Gandhi family to become the torch bearer of the Congress, this is a make or break election to project Rahul Gandhi as the obvious choice. The onus of reversing Congress' losing streak since 2013 (with certain exceptions like Bihar) is now on Rahul Gandhi. The need is not just to revive the party but emerge as a leader independent of the family he belongs to or the legacy he carries.

Moreover, the Punjab elections where Congress is fighting as an independent entity unlike in Uttar Pradesh where it is in alliance with the SP, a win will be the Congress' alone. The victory in Punjab will decide who Narendra Modi's nemesis would be, Rahul Gandhi or Arvind Kejriwal. The Congress needs to cement its position as the entity for the BJP to reckon with in Punjab instead of the AAP, who is a debutante. Congress' fight in reality is first with the AAP to establish supremacy and then the BJP-SAD alliance to gain power in the state.

Claiming its place as BJP arch rival means more support from like-minded regional parties like the Trinamool Congress and Janata Dal-United to the Congress. Mamata Banerjee's TMC cosied up to the Congress during agitations against demonetisation as much as it did to Arvind Kejriwal's AAP. Politics of convenience was at play and none can deny that regional parties with an interest in national political scenario, especially an anti-BJP outlook, will seek alliances that can be a formidable force to reckon with against the BJP in general and Modi in specific. The results of Punjab election will decide if this 'alliance' will be with Rahul Gandhi or Arvind Kejriwal.

What the AAP stands to gain

The AAP started focusing on its poll campaign much before any political party in Punjab. With no evident foothold, the AAP managed to win seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls but assembly elections are a different ball game and Arvind Kejriwal realised this only too soon. Candidates of the AAP began campaigning as early as August in 2016. The efforts seem to have paid off with people trusting in the positive image of the AAP.

For the AAP whose political fortunes have not been successful so far except in Delhi, Punjab and Goa are in all likelihood, their gateway to national politics. Often ridiculed as a party of part-time politicians, the AAP is in dire need of stretching its legs beyond Delhi. They need to establish themselves as a national party and a win in Punjab will give them just that.

Most opinion polls have predicted a favourable result to AAP in Punjab. In the case of a comfortable victory, Kejriwal will become the face of anti-BJP brigade. A victory in Punjab will lead the AAP to other states like Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, where the electoral battle is largely between the BJP and the Congress.

Kejriwal has never minced words when it comes to criticising the prime minister as well as the Congress. The Congress has always maintained an agenda based campaign while the AAP has followed a person-bashing campaign. The response to AAP's direct, straight attack on leaders seems to have inspired the Congress this time around in Punjab with the party also coming forward to mount direct attacks on specific leaders. The jitters that Congress, AAP and BJP have for Punjab is evident. While for the BJP winning in Punjab will come as a face-saver, for the AAP and the Congress, the win will have implications beyond the state of Punjab.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 18:02 [IST]
Rajnath Singh campaigns in Uttar Pradesh

India

oi-PTI

Lakhimpur Kheri, Feb 3: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh today said the "political mud" created by the SP and the BSP with their "deeds" will only help the lotus (BJP symbol) to bloom.

"Whether it be SP or BSP government, both created only political mud and it is only lotus (BJP symbol) which can grow in mud," he said at an election rally here in Kasta constituency in support of BJP candidate Saurabh Singh Sonu. Singh also attacked the SP and Congress in his 30-minute speech.

Taking a jibe at the SP-Congress alliance, he said "Mulayam Singh opposed Congress tooth and nail but UP Chief Minister forged an alliance with that party. "He (Akhilesh) forged alliance with the Congress whose youth leader held meetings on 'khatiyas' (cots)," he said. Attacking Congress, the Minister said "Arey cycle hi pakadni thi to kayde ki pakadte, aisi cycle pakdi jo puncture hai" (If you had had to hold a cycle, you should have chosen a better one, why to choose a punctured one)."

Reacting to the family tussle in SP, Singh said, "If they had to fall out, they should have done it five year back." Hailing the BJP government at the Centre, Singh said, "For the first time in political history of India, a non-Congress government came to power at the Centre with full majority and it has held the India's head high during its two-and-a-half years in power.

"Even our political opponents cannot raise a finger of doubt at any of the ministers in Modi government that he or she is tainted," he said. Referring to his journey to Pakistan, he said that he was not intended to visit the neighbouring country, "but when it came to my knowledge that terrorists in Pakistan are opposing my visit, I decided to go." "I visited Pakistan and I challenged them on their soil, saying they (Pakistan) are promoting terrorism by differentiating between good and bad terrorism," Singh said, adding that he returned without even taking any food there.

Justifying the surgical strikes, he said "Through the surgical strikes, we were able to send a message to the world that if need be, India can strike not only within its borders but across the borders." He said that it was a message by our brave army that it could act anywhere if need arose.

PTI
RML denies it tried to suppress news of Ahamed's death

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Feb 3: The Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital here on Friday denied that it tried to suppress the news of senior Kerala Parliamentarian E. Ahamed's death. It said the former Union Minister was alive when brought to the hospital, but died at 2.15 a.m. on Wednesday.

"There was no political pressure on us. The protocol is to not allow any one in the ICU when the treatment is on. Ahamed was alive when brought to the hospital. He died at 2.15 a.m. I am hurt by the allegations," RML Medical Superintendent A.K. Gadpayle told CNN News.

According to Gadpayle, Ahamed's daughter was shown the monitor and she was "very much satisfied" with the information given on her father's condition.

"We have given and shown the monitors and data and they were very much satisfied," said Gadpayle. The clarifications come as the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Friday alleged attempts, including by the Prime Minister's Office, to "suppress" the news of the Ahamed's death and demanded a probe.

The Opposition has been accusing the Narendra Modi government of deliberately keeping the news of Ahamed's death under wraps to ensure the Union Budget was presented as scheduled on February 1.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor told the media outside Parliament: "It is a serious matter. There is a tragic death and you are trying to hide it from his family members just for a petty administrative issue -- a Budget. This is very unfortunate."

The RML hospital had earlier issued a press statement denying the allegations of suppressing the news of Ahamed's death, earlier levelled by Congress MP K.V. Thomas. According to RML, Ahamed was resuscitated by the hospital doctors after he was wheeled in. "On arrival he was in cardiac arrest. A team of experts revived him by putting him on a pacemaker, ventilator and cardiopulmonary resuscitation," Gadpayle said in the statement.

"All possible efforts were made by the RML doctors. However, he succumbed at 2.15 a.m. due to complete heart blockage, cardiogenic shock, diabetes with hypertension," he said.

IANS
Shootout in Bengaluru: Assailants open fire at APMC chairman

India

oi-Anusha

Bike-borne assailants opened fire at the chairman of APMC committee at Bengaluru's Yelahanka police station limits on Friday. Two people were reportedly injured in the assault. The unidentified assailants fled the spot after opening fire on Kadabgere Srinivas, the chairperson of the APMC committee. Miscreants opened fire in broad daylight targeting the car even as hundreds of commuters were passing by under a flyover at Kogilu cross of Yelahanka.

The injured persons were shifted to nearby hospitals by the police that arrived at the spot and cordoned off the area. CCTV footages are being collected to help ascertain the identity of the assailants or the registration number of the bike that they used. Srinivas, who was targeted is said to be a confidante of Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Vishwanath but had recently switched to the Congress party. Political as well as personal rivalry angles are being considered by investigating authorities.

Forensic teams that visited the spot collected evidence while the police have sought complete details of the victim's history from the Bengaluru rural police. Srinivas who was recently elected to the post of Chairman was facing criminal charges including murder, rioting and criminal intimidation. His brother is also said to be a history-sheeter. The reason for the attack is yet to be ascertained.

OneIndia News
Smart fencing along Indo-Pak border soon: Rijiju

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Feb 3: With the testing process already in final phases, the government on Thursday expressed hope that work on installing 'smart fence' along 3,323-km-long Indo-Pak border will begin soon.

The testing for the fence is in final stages and soon work for erecting it along the Indo-Pak border will begin, Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said in New Delhi on Thursday. The new fencing is likely to have a multi-tier security ring comprising an alarm to alert security force personnel in case of any infiltration bid or attempts to cut the fence.

"The testing for the smart fencing is in the final stage. Pretty soon it will be done and it will be soon erected at the India-Pakistan border," Rijiju told reporters. He said the testing is being done at many places and its details can't be divulged now due to security reasons. "We will have smart fencing at all our borders in phases but priority would be Indo-Pak frontier," he said.

A Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) is also being worked out by the government where the security of Indo-Pak and Indo-Bangladesh borders, both sensitive and difficult terrain, will shift from the regular troops patrolling system to a quick reaction team pattern where guards strike once they notice a blip of infiltration on their surveillance radars.

There have been several attempts of infiltration by terrorists who cut the fences to enter into India from Pakistan side. India's border with Pakistan runs through four states, Jammu and Kashmir (1,225 km which includes 740 km of Line of Control), Rajasthan (1,037 km), Punjab (553 km) and Gujarat (508 km).

The government has set a target of completely sealing the India-Pakistan border by December 2018.

PTI

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 9:16 [IST]
Northrop Grumman (NOC) said Wednesday it was dropping out of the U.S. Air Force's T-X trainer jet contest with partner BAE Systems (London Stock Exchange: BA.-GB), making it the second team to leave the competition in the past week.

The T-X, a contract valued at more than $16 billion, would replace the aging T-38 Talon pilot training aircraft manufactured by Northrop in the 1960s.



Last week, Raytheon (RTN) exited the competition after failing to reach terms with Italian defense company Leonardo S.p.a.



"The companies have decided not to submit a proposal for the T-X Trainer program, as it would not be in the best interest of the companies and their shareholders," Northrop said in a statement.

Northrop said it and BAE still "remain fully committed to performing on current and future U.S. Air Force programs, to deliver critical capabilities to America's airmen."

International teams from Lockheed Martin (LMT) and Sweden's Saab (Stockholmsborsen:SAAB.B-SE) as well as Boeing (BA) and Korean Aerospace remain in the competition for the Air Force's next-generation trainer. The contract is seen as a must-win for Boeing's tactical aircraft business since the government last year rejected the company's protest of Northrop winning the long-range strike bomber.

Also, Sierra Nevada is teamed with Turkish Aerospace Industries and there's been talk Textron (TXT) could propose its Scorpion jet as a trainer.



A Textron spokesperson said Wednesday the company is "still evaluating the requirements" of the training program and does not have a decision to share at this time.

The Air Force issued a final request for proposals for the T-X jet trainer program last month. The program involves the purchase of 350 aircraft with operational capability of the trainer by the end of the government's fiscal 2024.



Northrop management had previously pointed out the costs of the T-X competition would vary between companies since there would be both a clean-sheet design in the contest as well as vendors with derivative airplanes. Northrop and Boeing designs fall in the clean-sheet category.



Last week, Northrop CEO Wes Bush hinted the company had not made a final decision on whether to submit a bid for the T-X contract. "We're presently assessing the terms presented by that RFP to determine whether we see an appropriate business opportunity for us to submit a bid," he said.
SP heading towards tragedy: Venkaiah Naidu

India

oi-PTI

Lucknow, Feb 3: Terming Congress-SP alliance as "opportunist and immoral", Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday said the family drama of ruling Samajwadi Party is "heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy".

"The alliance between Congress and SP is opportunist and immoral. Akhilesh Yadav has made an alliance but did not give space to his father (Mulayam Singh Yadav) even on the carrier of the 'bicycle' (SP symbol) and gave its handle to Congress.

"The family drama of SP is heading towards tragedy from melody and comedy," the senior BJP leader said at a press conference here. Asking voters to discard the alliance, Naidu said if they wanted to remove the tag of "BIMARU" state from Uttar Pradesh, they should shun it and elect BJP.

BIMARU is an acronym formed from the first letters of the names of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh. It has a resemblance to a Hindi word "Bimar" which means sick and used to refer to the poor economic conditions in these states. "We will work on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's motto -- reform, perform and transform -- and change the face of UP," Naidu said appealing to people to repeat their 2014-like support to BJP in the assembly polls.

BJP and its ally Apna Dal had bagged 73 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state in 2014. The Urban Development Minister alleged that Akhilesh Yadav government in the state did not send proposal for PM Awas Scheme even after several reminders sent by his ministry.

"We had got a survey done in UP that showed requirement of over 30 lakh houses. When UP was asked, it said requirement was of over 17 lakh houses only. But even after several reminders, we did not get a proposal from the state," he rued. The BJP leader said Uttar Pradesh would progress only if it voted his party to power to enable the state to work in tandem with the BJP-led NDA at the Centre.

PTI
Tobacco farmers disappointed by hike in excise on cigarettes

India

oi-PTI

New Delhi, Feb 3: The livelihood of tobacco farmers has been dealt a blow by the crackdown of the government on cigarettes and tobacco products, which increased tax on the items in the Budget while ignoring their plight, according to FAIFA. The Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA), a body representing farmers across states, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Gujarat, said the increase in excise duty on cigarettes will lead to further drop in earnings of domestic tobacco growers.

"The duty increase announced in the Budget is a blow to the livelihood of FCV (cigarette) tobacco farmers, who have been facing unprecedented hardships due to sharp drop in demand for their produce," FAIFA General Secretary Murali Babu said in a statement.

The resulting loss in earnings of farmers and the acute financial distress faced by them has even led to unfortunate cases of suicides by farmers in the tobacco growing states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka last year, he added. The farmers' body said despite an appeal to the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley "to salvage tobacco farmers from the onslaught of heavy taxation on the legal cigarette industry in order to help bring stability in farm prices and farmer earnings", their request hasn't been heeded to. "We are extremely concerned that the Union Budget 2017-18 has once again increased the excise duty on cigarettes.

The increase in duty rates will lead to further drop in farm earnings as illegal cigarettes will continue to increase and cause a further drop in the off take of domestic tobaccos grown by Indian farmers," it added. In the Budget, Jaitley had hiked excise duty on unmanufactured tobacco to 8.3 per cent from 4.2 per cent earlier, while that on pan masala to 9 per cent from 6 per cent. Likewise, excise duty on cigar, cheroots were increased to 12.5 per cent or Rs 4,006 per thousand from 12.5 per cent or Rs 3,755 per thousand earlier. Excise duty on chewing tobacco, including filter khaini and jarda scented tobacco was also doubled to 12 per cent from 6 per cent earlier.

Excise on paper-rolled handmade bidis was hiked to Rs 28 per thousand from from Rs 21 per thousand and the same for paper rolled bidis to Rs 78 per thousand from Rs 21 per thousand earlier. While appreciating the focus of Budget on agricultural growth, FAIFA, however, said, "the plight of tobacco farmers whose earnings have reduced sharply in the past recent years has been completely neglected and no relief whatsoever or export incentives have been provided which will increase offtake of our produce".

"FAIFA appeals to the government to take appropriate measures to protect the livelihood and earnings of farmers in the country so that unfortunate incidents of farmer suicides are not repeated in future," it said.

PTI
Ugliness, handicap cause dowry' says Maha textbook; activists slam board

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Women rights activists have condemned the Maharashtra State Education Board over a class 12th text book listing ugliness as one of the reasons behind social evil dowry.

The chapter, titled 'Major Social Problems in India', in the sociology textbook states, "If a girl is ugly and handicapped, then it becomes difficult for her to get married. To marry such girls bridegroom and his family demand more dowry."

It goes on to say that the girl's parents 'become helpless' and pay the demanded dowry.

Taking a strong exception to the issue, the National Commission for Women chair Lalitha Kumaramangalam told news agency ANI that girls are 'not just about their looks.

She said that the NCW has written a letter to Maharashtra education minister Vidod Tawde to look into the matter.

Speaking to ANI, Tawde said that he has asked the education board to look in to the matter and make the appropriate changes. He also said, "Politics and academics should not be mixed," while asserting that that he never 'interferes in the curriculum and the academic matters'.

Among other reasons for dowry mentioned in the textbook are 'social prestige', 'expectation of the bridegroom' and 'compensation principle'. It also reportedly lists marriage between a higher caste man and a lower caste woman as one of the reasons.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 12:20 [IST]
UP assembly polls 2017: Mulayam puts brother before son

India

oi-Anusha

Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav on Friday said that he would first campaign for his brother Shivpal Singh Yadav and only then his son and Chief Minister Akhilesh. Mulayam's statement comes days after Shivpal spoke of floating a new party after assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. Through his statement on Friday, Mulayam reiterated where his favour lies.

Mulayam is all set to hit the campaign trail starting February 9 after keeping everyone guessing. His first campaign, he said, will begin from Jaswantnagar where the SP has fielded the four-time MLA, Shivpal as its candidate. It may be noted that before becoming Shivpal's bastion, the Jaswantnagar assembly constituency was Mulayam's own.

Mulayam has earlier refused to campaign for the SP-Congress alliance in the state. The Rashtriya Janata Dal had attempted to woo the SP veteran to campaign for them but Mulayam once again made a flip-flop and announced that 'Akhilesh was after all his son', hinting that he would campaign for the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister. His statement had come after Akhilesh had confidently quipped that the Patriarch would campaign for the alliance.

Mulayam's statement to campaign for Shivpal before Akhilesh came as a measure to show his support to his brother and dissuade him from floating another party.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 17:08 [IST]
UP police busts Rs 3,700 crore online racket; 3 arrested

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Noida, Feb 3: At a time when Narendra Modi government is stressing on the need to go digital, a massive online racket has come to light in the national capital region on Thursday. The news of the internet fraud has sent shock waves among customers across the country.

Three persons alleged to have duped nearly 6.5 lakh people of Rs. 3,700 crore through an online portal have been arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police. Busting one of the biggest internet frauds, the Special Task Force of the police arrested the trio of Anubhav Mittal, Sridhar Prasad and Mahesh Dayal from Sector 63 in Noida on Wednesday and seized nearly Rs. 500 crore.

Noida: Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force busts Rs 3,700cr online fraud racket involving 7 lakh people; 3 arrested. pic.twitter.com/NXMJUQxoA6  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) February 3, 2017

Over 1lakh non-payment complaints exist on their server;Arrested3,seized docs;Issued letters to authorities to freeze Rs524cr in a/c-SSP STF pic.twitter.com/exCc0GzBr1  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) February 3, 2017

"The accused used to run a portal 'socialtrade.biz' under which an investor had to pay anything between Rs. 5,750 to Rs. 57,500 in the company's account to become the member and earn Rs. 5 per click.

"Registered under the name of Ablaze Info Solutions Pvt Ltd in Noida, they used to constantly change the portal's name. So far, they defrauded over 6.5 lakh people collecting around Rs. 3,700 crore," Superintendent of Police (Uttar Pradesh, STF) Triveni Singh, told IANS.

Mittal, said to be the kingpin, holds a B Tech degree and hails from Ghaziabad. Prasad is from Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam and Dayal is from Mathura in Uttar Pradesh.

Launched in August 2015, the portal offered four different 'packages' to the investors to earn money. After paying the money to the company, the investors were asked to like pages and click on the links they were sent.

"The company claimed it earned Rs. 6 for every click and gave Rs. 5 of it to the investors. However, the links sent by the company were fake," said the officer, adding that they were looking for other people suspected to be involved in the fraud.

Besides seizing Rs. 500 crore from a bank, police have seized various documents including the balance sheet of the company, list of directors and other officials and list of investors.

The STF has also informed the Reserve Bank of India, the Income Tax department and market regulator SEBI about the case.

OneIndia News
UP polls: In riot-hit Muzaffarnagar, BJP talks about development

India

oi-PTI

Muzaffarnagar (UP), Feb 3: In 2016, nearly two and a half years after the Muzaffarnagar riots, when bypoll was held in this constituency following the death of the then sitting Samajwadi Party Member of Legislative Assembly Chitranjan Swaroop, the Bharatiya Janata Party won the seat battling a sympathy wave in favour of the leader's son.

Many analysts had then said the saffron party was able to exploit the communal faultlines through its campaign which was led by riot-accused BJP leaders. The BJP had deployed local Member of Parliament and Minister of State for Agriculture in Modi government, Sanjeev Balyan, MP Hukum Singh and MLA Suresh Rana for campaigning in February-2016 bypoll, the first after the communal riots.

They were all named as accused in cases related to the 2013 riots which left at least 60 dead and thousands displaced. However, for the upcoming elections, the party seems to have adopted the much-publicised narrative of development. Western UP, where tension had prevailed during the 2014 Lok Sabha election too in the wake of riots, is calm and elections would be held peacefully with development being the major issue, Balyan told PTI.

He talked of how despite facing difficulties people have supported demonetisation in national interest. The BJP leader targeted the Akhilesh Yadav Government over alleged corruption and mining mafia. He also said it was his party's strategy not to declare its chief ministerial face.

"In the United Progressive Alliance government, it was said that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is honest but the government is corrupt. Now Akhilesh Yadavji is also saying 'I am honest and removed one minister over allegations of corruption' but he reinstated him again after 15 days," Balyan said.

"Now who is accountable? If there is corruption by the state government, it's the Chief Minister who is accountable," he said. He alleged mining mafia "continues to operate" in the state "as it did" during the previous Bahujan Samaj Party dispensation.

"If there is no corruption how can mafia continue to operate?" he asked. Balyan also claimed that the state government waived Rs 2,000 crore that sugar mills owed to farmers.

"It was money of the farmers and the government had no right to waive it. If there was no corruption, then what was the reason to waive the money the sugar mills owed?" Balyan asked attacking the rival SP.

PTI
UP: Rahul, Akhilesh bonhomie in Agra

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Congress vice president and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav held a joint roadshow in Agra on Friday.

This was the second roadshow of the two leaders in the politically crucial state which will see a seven-phase election for its 403 assembly seats.

Agra(UP): UP CM Akhilesh Yadav & Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi hold joint roadshow. pic.twitter.com/wmFEL9rvWA  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) February 3, 2017

The two politicians, who are seen by their party cadre as youth leaders, had on Tuesday shared the stage for a joint press conference in Lucknow. The two parties forged an electoral alliance to keep the Bharatiya Janata Party out of power in the state.

Earlier, Rahul compared the alliance between the two parties as being similar to the merging of the rivers Ganga and the Yamuna at the Sangam.

Reports say that although joint campaigns are going on smoothly, the two allies have not reached any consensus on some crucial seats. The picture is not clear on the 10 assembly constituencies in Rae Bareli and Amethi.

[Akhilesh-Rahul meet on Jan 9 to finalise Cong-SP alliance in UP]

After several rounds of negotiations, the two parties finally agreed that Congress would fight in 105 seats and SP on 298 seats.

OneIndia News
Who will win Punjab elections? Poll guru decodes the 'secret'

India

oi-Vicky

Chandigarh, Feb 3: Punjab goes to polls on Saturday and none can really give a clear picture as to who the winner would be. There have been several developments on the political front in the past few months. Navjot Singh Sidhu has joined the Congress and the Aam Admi Party too has thrown its hat in the ring.

Amandeep Sandhu, writer, researcher and journalist, has been travelling the length and breadth of the state to get a clear assessment about how the elections would pan out. Sandhu took time off his busy schedule to have an informal chat with OneIndia and in his assessment of things he finds that there would be no clear winner in Punjab.

Punjab has no secrets

Sandhu says that Punjab has always been a minefield of counter narratives. "Everyone thinks that Punjab always had secrets. However, what I found this time that there are none. People just do not know who will win or which party they would vote for."

"It appears to me that it would be a split verdict. One big factor is that nobody is openly giving support to any party. Punjabis normally take a stand, but this time a large population is silent. I have visited several constituencies and none are giving a clear picture," Sandhu adds.

Punjab and media

Sandhu talks about how the media covers elections in the state. "The media too has not dwelt deep into Punjab. The media goes just to Haryana and makes a projection. In the southern part of Punjab, I found that there was an Aam Admi Party effect. However, the Dera Sacha Sauda may have an impact here since it can influence the Dalit votes."

Sidhu and demonetisation factor

Sandhu feels that Sidhu's entry into the Congress has had no impact at all. It was a very late decision and he has not been seen in too many rallies either. "Captain Amarinder Singh has said that he would retire after this election. The Congress would need a second rung of leadership and in this scenario Sidhu would fit the bill," Sandhu adds.

About demonetisation, Sandhu says that it has had a very bad effect on the people especially in the rural areas. "The decision was made during the sowing season. People had no money at that time and they are clearly angry about it till date. While parts of the urban areas have not protested, there is a lot of resentment in the urban sector."

"There is another thing that I want to point out about the media. Why nobody is speaking to the women voters? They form half the electorates. When I spoke to women voters, mostly they tell me that they would vote according to the wishes of the male members in their families. I did speak to some of the men about it and they told me that this time they feel the women would not listen to them," Sandhu adds.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 8:47 [IST]
With emphasis on security, NSCS gets fund allocation of Rs 333 crore

India

oi-Vicky

New Delhi, Feb 3: The Union Government is giving utmost priority to provide security to the citizens. The decision to give more teeth and funds to the National Security Council Secretariat is an indicator that the Centre wants to focus more on the security aspect, both within the country and its border areas.

The NSCS which reports to National Security Adviser Ajit Doval has seen an increased allocation of budget this year. From Rs 33 crore in the last fiscal year to Rs 333 crore this year, the budgetary allocation to the agency has increased tenfold.

Highly placed sources tell OneIndia that the NSCS is an important security agency for the country. The security body plays a very crucial role in this age of international terrorism. It is a body comprising of academics and eminent professionals, who give advice to the Prime Minister on strategic and security issues.

"Current situation demands global cooperation to tackle terrorism. In order to study the changing trends in the world of terror, such a body becomes very crucial," an official informed.

The official added that the funds that were allocated to the NSCS were always insufficient. In the last fiscal year, the budgetary allocation to the NSCS was Rs 33 crore. However, the agency ended up spending Rs 80 crore.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 9:21 [IST]
'Severe' yet again: Delhi air continues to remain toxic with AQI at 431

Anand Mahindra's tweet about UPI at country's 'last tea shop' is every Indian's emotion

Yechury blames Modi govt over Nagaland protests

India

oi-IANS

By Ians English

New Delhi, Feb 3: After violent protests in Nagaland against 33 per cent quota for women in urban local bodies, CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury on Friday questioned the Modi government over the Nagaland peace accord.

"Nagaland is burning. Fair to ask what happened to the 'Naga Accord' (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) signed with great fanfare on live TV," the Marxist leader tweeted. Expressing concerns over the situation in some northeastern states, Yechury accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of being focused on power grabbing.

"Besides Nagaland, Manipur troubled. Situation in Assam volatile. Security concerns in Arunachal Pradesh. And BJP focused solely on grabbing power." Nagaland capital Kohima on Thursday witnessed violence as a mob went on the rampage, burning government properties and vandalizing official vehicles in protest against Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang's refusal to meet their demand on local body polls.

The tribal bodies have been opposing the Naga People's Front government's decision to hold the elections with 33 per cent women reservation, saing it infringes on the special rights for Nagaland guaranteed by Article 371 (A) of the constitution.

IANS

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 13:54 [IST]
By Joachim Dagenborg

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway has picked Germany as its strategic partner for new submarines, making Thyssenkrupp (TKAG.DE) the likely supplier, Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said on Friday.

Norway plans to buy four submarines and Germany two, while fellow NATO members Poland and the Netherlands may add to the order at a later stage, she said, adding that the cost of the vessels has not yet been determined.

"We first and foremost sought a strategic partner ... When Germany offered to buy identical submarines together with us, that opened the path to close cooperation throughout their expected lifetime," Soereide told Reuters.

The Nordic country said last April France's DCNS and ThyssenKrupp were the strongest candidates to supply submarines to replace its existing "Ula class" fleet, built between 1987 and 1992.

"The (decision) means that Germany will accelerate its plans to buy new submarines," the German Defence Ministry said in a statement, adding it would secure the country's role in a key technological area for years to come.

The deal will relieve pressure on Thyssenkrupp (TKAG.DE) to intensify restructuring or even sell its naval business, after it lost out to DCNS, which is 35 percent-owned by defence electronics giant Thales (TCFP.PA), in a $38 billion Australian submarine tender last year.

"Norway will now enter into final negotiations with German authorities. When a government-to-government agreement is in place, a German-Norwegian negotiation towards the German submarine supplier Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems will commence," Norway's Defence Ministry said in a statement.

The submarines will be based on the so-called 212-design already in service in Germany and Italy.

Norway's Kongsberg Gruppen (KOG.OL) is expected to be a key supplier of equipment to the submarines.

Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems CEO Peter Feldhaus said the agreement would be valuable to industry in both countries.

"We are extremely pleased and proud that we managed to convince Norway of the superiority of our proven technology," he added.

Story continues

France's DCNS said it regretted the decision and stood ready to come back into the bidding if German talks with Norway break down.

"We remain convinced that our offer was superior, in particular in the anti-submarine warfare area, crucial for operations and patrols in the High North," it said in a statement.

Norway said its aim is to sign a common contract for submarines in 2019, enabling deliveries from the mid-2020s to 2030.

European NATO members are under pressure from new U.S. President Donald Trump to spend more on defence.

Thyssenkrupp is 20 percent owned by activist investor Cevian, which wants the group to speed up its streamlining.

DCNS said after winning the Australian contract it was prepared to enter talks with its German rival "as soon as the German side has got over its loss", although it denied a report it had proposed an alliance.

The German steel-to-elevators group said afterwards it was not in talks with any potential buyers or joint venture partners for the naval business.

Shares in Thyssenkrupp erased earlier losses on the news to trade flat at 1126 GMT, underperforming the German blue-chip DAX (.GDAXI), which was 0.3 percent stronger.

($1 = 1.3079 Australian dollars)

(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt, Tim Hepher in Paris, Tom Kaeckenhoff in Duesseldorf and Andrea Shalal in Berlin, writing by Terje Solsvik, editing by Nerijus Adomaitis, Ralph Boulton and Adrian Croft)
China to sell AR-2 air-to-surface missile to foreign countries

International

oi-PTI

Beijing, Feb 3: China plans to sell to foreign countries its new short-range air to surface missile which can be mounted on drones and is designed for anti-terrorism operations. The China academy of aerospace aerodynamics, the country's largest military drone exporter by number of products sold overseas, said it recently conducted live-fire tests on the AR-2 short-range air-to-surface missile in northwestern China.

The AR-2 is seen as tough competition for US, French and Israeli missiles, state-run China Daily reported today. With a weight of about 20 kilograms and a 5 kilograms warhead, an AR-2 has a maximum range of 8 kms and a top speed of 735 kms per hour.

It is effective against personnel, armoured cars, houses or bunkers, its designers said. A CH-4 reconnaissance/combat drone was used in the tests, though the missile can also be mounted on other CH drones, officials said.

The academy's CH-series drones have been sold to military users in over 10 countries, it said. The missile also can be carried by Chinese attack helicopters and other unmanned aircraft after minor technical modifications, they said. Zeng Like, project manager for the AR-2, said that the academy hopes to win market share from the United States' AGM-114 Hellfire, widely used in the 1990s and 2000s. At least 29 nations, including Australia, France and South Korea, deploy the Hellfire.

"There are a lot of counter-terrorism operations and low-intensity conflicts in the world that create a huge demand for low-cost, high-efficiency weapons to hit cars or light-duty, armored vehicles," he said.

"We believe that most ground targets designated for drones are soft targets or lightly armoured vehicles, so using a heavier missile such as the AGM-114 Hellfire for such operations is a waste," Like said.

Smaller, cheaper missiles like the AR-2 are powerful enough to handle those targets, and their lighter weight enables a drone to carry more missiles, Zeng said.

The AR-2's biggest competitors are the US' AGM-176 Griffin, currently the best-selling lightweight precision-strike weapon, France's Lightweight Multirole Missile and Israel's Whip Shot missile, he said.

But, Zeng said, "the AR-2 features strong capabilities and a lower price, so we are positive it will have good market prospects".

The academy also said trainees from one of its foreign clients performed a test in which four CH drones were networked to perform as a fleet. It however has not named the foreign client. Ground controllers from the unnamed foreign nation who were trained at the academy guided four CH-4B drones via satellite to work together in a patrol.

Huang Wei, a senior researcher who oversaw the test, said the networking of multiple drones is useful for joint operations in combat. He claimed only China and the US are capable of conducting joint operations using multiple drones.

PTI

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Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 12:48 [IST]
Donald Trump says call with Australian PM was civil

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, Feb 3: President Donald Trump on Friday targeted some US media houses by calling them "Fake News" after the Washington Post published transcript of his telephonic conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull.

"Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that 'FAKE NEWS' media lied about. Very nice!" Trump tweeted.

Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017

According to the Washington Post transcript, published on Saturday, Trump blasted Turnbull over the refugee agreement and called the deal as "dumb". Trump also said that his phone call with Turnbull "was the worst call by far".

The Australian Prime Minister on Friday described his phone conversation with Trump as "very frank", the media reported. Trump had earlier called the CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post as "fake news" and "dishonest".

The President made attacks on the media a cornerstone of his campaign and has continued the assault them as President. Several members of Trump's staff, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, chief counsel Kellyanne Conway and chief of staff Reince Preibus have joined the attacks in interviews given to various news outlets since the President took office.

IANS
French President says Trump pressure on EU 'unacceptable'

International

oi-PTI

Valletta, Feb 3: French President Francois Hollande on Friday criticised 'unacceptable' pressure on the European Union from his US counterpart Donald Trump, who has predicted a break-up of the bloc.

"It is unacceptable that there should be, through a certain number of statements by the president of the United States, pressure on what Europe should or should not be," Hollande told reporters at an EU summit in Malta.

"Who really knows what the US president wants, particularly for the transatlantic alliance, and on the sharing of expenses that he calls a burden," Hollande added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meanwhile said the best way for the 28-nation bloc to deal with a US administration that seems ambivalent to Europe is to push forward with its own plans.

"I already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands," Merkel told reporters as she arrived in Valletta.

"And I believe the stronger we state clearly how we define our role in the world, the better we can take care with our transatlantic relations. That is why for me, talks about Europe are here in the foreground and not to deal with other parts of the world," she added.

In Malta, the EU leaders are to discuss relations with Trump during the second half of the summit, after major talks about cutting illegal migration across the Mediterranean from Libya. Trump has alarmed many in Europe by previously backing Britain's decision to leave the EU, predicting that more countries will jump ship and calling the US-led NATO military alliance 'obsolete'.

PTI
Hollywood star Angelina Jolie slams ban on Muslims entering US

International

oi-PTI

New York, Feb 3: Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has slammed President Donald Trump's controversial immigration ban on seven Muslim-majority countries, saying that shutting the door on refugees or discriminating among them will not make America safer.

A special envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees since 2012, Jolie, in an editorial in the New York Times, said refugee policy should be based on facts not fear as such people are "men, women and children caught in the fury of war" and are a victim of terrorism themselves.

Without naming Trump, Jolie said the new decision has been met with shock by US' friends around the world. While accepting that there was a need to secure the borders considering the threat from terrorism, Jolie said it should not be done at the cost of vulnerable people.

"Every government must balance the needs of its citizens with its international responsibilities. But our response must be measured and should be based on facts, not fear," said the actress.

Jolie, who raises three biological and three adopted children, said being a mother she wants her country to be safe for them but she also wants the refugee children who qualify for asylum to have a chance "to plead their case to a compassionate America."

Stating that refugees go through the highest level of screening of any category of traveler to the United States, Jolie said the world is going through the worst refugee crisis since World War II. "If we send a message that it is acceptable to close the door to refugees, or to discriminate among them on the basis of religion, we are playing with fire. We are lighting a fuse that will burn across continents, inviting the very instability we seek to protect ourselves against," she said.

"The lesson of the years we have spent fighting terrorism since September 11 is that every time we depart from our values we worsen the very problem we are trying to contain. We must never allow our values to become the collateral damage of a search for greater security."

Jolie said shutting the door on refugees or discriminating among them is not the American way or makes the country safer. "Acting out of fear is not our way. Targeting the weakest does not show strength. This is where I would hope any president of our great nation would lead on behalf of all Americans," she said.

Trump last week signed the sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America.

PTI
In Iran, men and women are 'equal' only in torture

Iranian infant's surgery in US cancelled due to Trump travel ban

International

oi-PTI

San Francisco, Feb 3: US President Donald Trump's controversial immigration policy on seven Muslim-majority countries has led to the cancellation of a life-saving surgery on a 4-month-old Iranian infant for a heart condition.

Baby Fatemah and her family were supposed to fly in for an appointment for a surgical consultation at at Oregon Health & Science University next week, but they were not able to finish their trip because of Trump's executive order on immigration, KPTV reported.

The gravely ill baby is Iranian, but Fatemah's family has decided they did not want her to have surgery in her birth country due to concerns about the quality of medical services.

"Over there, it's a very high risk because it's open heart surgery," her uncle, Sam Taghizadeh, said.

Fatemah parents were hoping to meet with doctors in Oregon on February 5 for the emergency surgery and travelled to Dubai to get the US visa. Their embassy appointment was cancelled because of the executive order preventing Iranian nationals, among others, from travelling to the US, Taghizadeh, who is a US citizen and lives in Portland, told reporters.

"All the paper, everything was ready, and just in the last minute they cancelled everything," Taghizadeh said.

"It's like a nightmare. You know, in the one night everything changes. Now you don't know what you're going to do," said Taghizadeh.

"Why we came to US, we came here for freedom. For a better life. I'm feeling nowhere is safe," Taghizadeh said.

Fatemah and her family left Dubai and are they are now back in Iran. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has expressed outrage and said the Empire State would be glad to help little Fatemah.

"Here's the consequence of this un-American policy," Cuomo tweeted on Thursday.

"An exception should be made. If OR has issue, NY will provide care," New York Post reported.

"The pain and damage of this flawed federal policy is especially repulsive in this case preventing a child from getting life saving treatment," said Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.

Trump last week signed a sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

PTI
James Mattis resigns as US Defence Secretary; Cities differences with Trump as reason

James Mattis warns N Korea against using nuclear weapons

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Seoul, Feb 3: US Defence Secretary James Mattis on Friday reiterated Washington's security commitment to Seoul and vowed to overwhelmingly respond to any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

"America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told the media here.

Mattis made the remarks during a press briefing before he began talks with South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo, to discuss ways to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The retired Marine Corps general arrived in Seoul on Thursday for a two-day visit for talks with top South Korean officials.

On Thursday, he met with South Korea's acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn to underscore the "priority" that the US President Donald Trump's administration places on the Seoul-Washington alliance.

It is his first overseas trip since he took office less than two weeks ago.

Mentioning ways to counter saber-rattling by North Korea, Mattis, on Thursday said: "Due to North Korea's threatening rhetoric and destabilising behaviour, we are taking defensive steps like deploying the highly effective Terminal High Altitude Area Defence anti-missile unit to South Korea to protect its people and our troops that stand with our ally."

In July 2016, Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the THAAD anti-ballistic missile system to South Korea this year to better defend against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

In other efforts, Mattis stressed the need to expand "trilateral venues of cooperation with Japan, where the mutual defence of the three countries is best served through teamwork."

Mattis is scheduled to depart for Japan on Friday afternoon after paying his respects at the National Cemetery in southern Seoul.

IANS


Trump refutes reports, says have not eased sanctions against Russia

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Feb 3: US President Donald Trump on Thursday refuted reports that his administration has eased sanctions against Russia. Earlier the Treasury Department reported that it has amended former president Barack Obama's most recent sanctions to allow US technology companies to export products to Russia.

However, Trump refuted the reports. "I haven't eased anything," he told reporters when asked if his administration has eased sanctions against Russia, which were imposed by the previous Obama administration in retaliation of the latter's alleged hacking into the emails and servers of the Democratic party and its presidential nominee.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said it is "common for Treasury after sanctions are put in place to go back and look at specific carve outs for different industries or products and services".

"It is a regular course of action that Treasury does often when sanctions are imposed," he said at his daily news conference.

PTI
Trump's wall on immigrants: Twitter donates USD 1.5 mn to fight visa ban

International

pti-PTI

San Francisco, Feb 3: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and about 1,000 of his colleagues have donated over USD 1.5 million to a leading rights group that has pledged to fight President Donald Trump's temporary ban on refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The donation has been made to American Civil Liberties Union that has reportedly raised more than USD 24 million in online donations in the past few days. Initially, 925 Twitter staff pulled together a donation of over USD 530,000. That was then matched by CEO Dorsey and Executive Chairman Omid Kordestani to take the total to USD 1.59 million, TechCrunch reported, citing a company-wide email.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed the donation and the numbers involved to the tech industry news website. "Our work is far from done. In the coming months we'll see a flurry of legal challenges, legislative pushes and public pronouncements. But as long as civil liberties are threatened, I'm proud to know that as individuals we will stand up to defend freedom and look after people," Twitter General Counsel Vijaya Gadde wrote in the memo.

"The Executive Order's humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting," Dorsey said on Twitter over the weekend. "We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the US," he said. Also, Microsoft has requested the Trump administration to ease travel restrictions on its employees affected by the executive order on immigration, visa and border security.

Trump last week signed the sweeping executive order to suspend the arrival of refugees and impose tough new controls on travellers from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen as part of new measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists" out of America.

Silicon Valley's top executives, including India-born CEOs Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella, had condemned Trump's immigration ban, voicing concern that the move could directly hit their own staffers and stop bringing great talent to the US.

Executives from Microsoft, Google, Apple, Netflix, Tesla, Facebook, Uber and other top American companies slammed Trump's immigration order that sparked widespread protests across the US. Tech giant Google also created a crisis fund that could raise up to USD 4 million for four immigrant rights organisations, including ACLU and UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was one of the first to address the ban publicly. "We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that by focusing on people who actually pose a threat. Expanding the focus of law enforcement beyond people who are real threats would make all Americans less safe by diverting resources...," he had written on Facebook.

PTI
On Imran Khans assassination bid, US says no place for violence

US fully committed to bilateral alliance with Japan

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Tokyo, Feb 4: The Defence Secretary of the United States reaffirmed his country's "100 per cent" commitment to its bilateral military alliance with Japan, in a bid to soften the impact of controversial statements made by US President Donald Trump on the subject.

"The US stands firmly, 100 per cent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and (the) Japanese people", Efe news quoted James Mattis as saying in his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday in Tokyo.

Mattis, who flew from South Korea to Japan for a two-day visit, was attempting to tone down the effect of Trump's remarks from his election campaign, when he had threatened to pull US troops out of the two countries if Tokyo and Seoul did not increase their funding contributions.

The Japan-US defence treaty in question is "as real to us today as it was a year ago," stressed the defence secretary.

Abe, in turn, told the Pentagon chief that Japan wants to create an unbreakable alliance in the region, where Tokyo is battling China's growing influence as well as threats from North Korea.

Earlier on Friday, the retired US general held a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo, reaffirming Washington's "ironclad" commitment to defending its key allies, and to deploying the anti-missile system THAAD on South Korean soil, to intercept any missiles the North may launch.

Mattis' trip to Japan and South Korea is the first official visit abroad by a member of the Trump cabinet, a clear sign of the new administration's intention of retaining key allies in the Asia-Pacific region.

--IANS

vgu/
What is the risk of Putin using a nuclear weapon?

'If NATO clashes with Russian army, it will lead to global catastrophe,' says Putin

US, Germany agree on NATO's role despite Trump's criticism

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, Feb 3: US and Germany have reaffirmed the role of NATO to preserve stability on both sides of the Atlantic despite strong criticism of the military alliance by American President Donald Trump, the White House announced.

US vice President Mike Pence and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel 'agreed on NATO's centrality in ensuring the security and stability of North America and Europe. Both leaders reaffirmed that all NATO allies must meet their obligations and contribute their fair share to our collective security," according to a White House statement.

However, the two 'also underscored that NATO must adapt to confront threats to our countries such as violent extremism and terrorism', Efe news reported.

The White House said that Pence will attend the Munich security conference at the end of the month and also travel to Brussels to discuss ways to strengthen the alliance with European partners.

Last year, Trump had criticised the European members of NATO for not paying enough to fund the alliance and said he might reduce US support to NATO, while expressing his willingness to improve ties with Russia.

However, during his conversation with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel this weekend, Trump agreed on the 'NATO alliance's fundamental importance' despite previously calling the alliance obsolete.

IANS

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, February 3, 2017, 13:23 [IST]
* Norway plans to buy four submarines, Germany two

* Germany accelerates procurement

* Deal eases pressure on Thyssenkrupp (Adds German government, Thyssenkrupp, DCNS reaction)

By Joachim Dagenborg

OSLO, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Norway has picked Germany as its strategic partner for new submarines, making Thyssenkrupp the likely supplier, Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said on Friday.

Norway plans to buy four submarines and Germany two, while fellow NATO members Poland and the Netherlands may add to the order at a later stage, she said, adding that the cost of the vessels has not yet been determined.

"We first and foremost sought a strategic partner ... When Germany offered to buy identical submarines together with us, that opened the path to close cooperation throughout their expected lifetime," Soereide told Reuters.

The Nordic country said last April France's DCNS and ThyssenKrupp were the strongest candidates to supply submarines to replace its existing "Ula class" fleet, built between 1987 and 1992.

"The (decision) means that Germany will accelerate its plans to buy new submarines," the German Defence Ministry said in a statement, adding it would secure the country's role in a key technological area for years to come.

The deal will relieve pressure on Thyssenkrupp to intensify restructuring or even sell its naval business, after it lost out to DCNS, which is 35 percent-owned by defence electronics giant Thales, in a $38 billion Australian submarine tender last year.

"Norway will now enter into final negotiations with German authorities. When a government-to-government agreement is in place, a German-Norwegian negotiation towards the German submarine supplier Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems will commence," Norway's Defence Ministry said in a statement.

The submarines will be based on the so-called 212-design already in service in Germany and Italy.

Norway's Kongsberg Gruppen is expected to be a key supplier of equipment to the submarines.

Story continues

Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems CEO Peter Feldhaus said the agreement would be valuable to industry in both countries.

"We are extremely pleased and proud that we managed to convince Norway of the superiority of our proven technology," he added.

France's DCNS said it regretted the decision and stood ready to come back into the bidding if German talks with Norway break down.

"We remain convinced that our offer was superior, in particular in the anti-submarine warfare area, crucial for operations and patrols in the High North," it said in a statement.

Norway said its aim is to sign a common contract for submarines in 2019, enabling deliveries from the mid-2020s to 2030.

European NATO members are under pressure from new U.S. President Donald Trump to spend more on defence.

Thyssenkrupp is 20 percent owned by activist investor Cevian, which wants the group to speed up its streamlining.

DCNS said after winning the Australian contract it was prepared to enter talks with its German rival "as soon as the German side has got over its loss", although it denied a report it had proposed an alliance.

The German steel-to-elevators group said afterwards it was not in talks with any potential buyers or joint venture partners for the naval business.

Shares in Thyssenkrupp erased earlier losses on the news to trade flat at 1126 GMT, underperforming the German blue-chip DAX , which was 0.3 percent stronger. ($1 = 1.3079 Australian dollars) (Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in Frankfurt, Tim Hepher in Paris, Tom Kaeckenhoff in Duesseldorf and Andrea Shalal in Berlin, writing by Terje Solsvik, editing by Nerijus Adomaitis, Ralph Boulton and Adrian Croft)
US, Jordan discuss IS, Syria conflict

International

oi-IANS

By Ians English

Washington, Feb 3: US President Donald Trump and the King Abdullah II of Jordan met in Washington and discussed the joint fight against the Islamic State and the Syria conflict, the White House said.

On Thursday, Trump expressed Washington's commitment to 'stability, security, and prosperity' in Jordan, a country he lauded for its 'leadership in promoting peace and stability in the region', the White House said.

He also stressed Jordan's role as a 'model of tolerance and moderation', Efe news reported.

Trump and King Abdullah II discussed the conflict in Syria, with the former highlighting Jordan's 'critical contributions' in the fight against IS terrorists and proposing the possibility of establishing 'safe zones' in Syria.

Jordan is a member of the US-led international coalition against the IS in Syria and Iraq.

In June 2016, Jordan was the target of a car bomb attack near the border with Syria in which six soldiers were killed. Another suicide attack 15 days later claimed the lives of seven soldiers.

The IS also carried out an attack in December in the historic city of Al-Karak in southern Jordan, which killed 14 people.

IANS
White House: US reviewing its policy with Cuba

International

oi-PTI

Washington, Feb 3: The US is reviewing its policy with Cuba, the White House said today without elaborating any further.

"We are in the midst of a full review of all US policies towards Cuba," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, told reporters at his daily news conference.

"The President is committed to an agenda of ensuring human rights for all citizens throughout the world. And as we review those policies in Cuba, that will be forefront in their policy discussions. But there's nothing that we have on that front at this point," Spicer said.

During the election campaign, Trump had indicated that he would review the Cuba policy. His predecessor Barack Obama had reestablished diplomatic ties with Cuba, listed sanctions and resumed direct flights.

PTI
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zero dark thirty

The Pentagon released video clips from 10-year-old Al Qaeda propaganda on Friday to justify the weekend raid by Navy SEAL Team 6 in Yemen in which "almost everything went wrong."

US Central Command uploaded video it said was seized from a computer during the operation, which featured a masked man teaching "would-be terrorists" how to build bombs.

Shortly after this article was published, however, the videos were removed from the Pentagon's image and video distribution site. According to CNN's Jim Sciutto, CENTCOM said it mistakenly uploaded old videos that weren't from the Yemen raid.

The Associated Press reported that the videos were made public about 10 years ago. A Pentagon spokesman said the video was indeed found in Yemen but told reporters it "does not matter" when the video was made.

It's not yet clear whether CENTCOM would release newer videos found in the raid. A spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an email release to reporters with the old video, CENTCOM said that "one of the videos demonstrates the process for making triacetone triperoxide, an explosive used in numerous terrorist attacks, including the attempted 'shoebomber' attack in 2001 and the attacks across the London transportation system in 2005."

Not mentioned, however, is that the method to create TATP can be found within seconds on Google, along with how-tos for many other incendiary devices and other weapons. It's also easy to find Al Qaeda and terrorist propaganda online, such as the fiery sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Al Qaeda cleric, who despite being killed in 2011, has continued to inspire other militants to carry out attacks.

The release of the videos would be unusual  the Pentagon is usually tight-lipped about raids such as these, as they are often carried out in secret by elite special operations forces. Besides the videos, CENTCOM also said it believes Sultan al Dhahab and Abd-al-Ra'uf al-Dhahab  operational planners and weapons experts  were among the 14 militants killed.

Story continues

The video release seemed to have been meant to put a positive spin on the operation, which was initially planned during the Obama administration and approved by President Donald Trump, that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL and innocent civilians.

The operation in Yemen quickly went downhill after the SEALs, along with troops from the United Arab Emirates, moved closer to their target in Yakla. The approach was guarded by land mines, and the militants were somehow tipped off to the SEALs' presence, resulting in a fierce firefight that lasted nearly an hour, according to The Washington Post.

Trump Yemen raid

"They kind of knew they were screwed from the beginning," a former SEAL Team 6 official told The New York Times.

One SEAL, Chief Petty Officer William "Ryan" Owens, was killed in the operation, and three other troops were injured. A Marine V-22 Osprey, called in to evacuate the commandos, made a "hard landing" and had to be deliberately destroyed in place because it was unable to take off.

Though the Pentagon initially denied there were any civilian casualties, local news reports revealed that numerous civilians were killed, including Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, the 8-year-old daughter of Anwar al-Awlaki.

His daughter's death will likely be used in militant propaganda efforts, especially since she is the second of al-Awlaki's children killed by the United States.

"The perception will be that it's not enough to kill al-Awlaki  that the US had to kill the entire family," Karen Greenberg, director of Fordham University's Center on National Security, told NBC. According to the Middle East Monitor, the US was already being accused on social media of "assassinating children."

This article was updated with additional information on February 3 at 10:58 a.m. PDT.

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By Brian Love PARIS (Reuters) - Francois Fillon fought to keep his place as French conservative presidential candidate on Friday amid sliding opinion poll ratings and speculation about his ability to carry on after accusations his wife got public money for work she did not do. Police carried out searches at the Senate in connection with the fake job allegations on Friday, searching in particular for information concerning payments there to Charles and Marie, two of Fillon's children, the public prosecutor said. Senate President Gerard Larcher, one of Fillon's most loyal allies, took to Twitter to deny a report in news publication L'Obs that he was about to withdraw support for the presidential contender. A second opinion poll in two days showed a large majority of voters believed the former prime minister should pull out of the election, a two-round contests that opens on April 23. The 62-year-old vowed at an overnight rally in northeastern France to fight what he called a "demolition exercise", telling a crowd of around 1,000: "People are not seeking justice. They are seeking to destroy me, and beyond me to destroy the Right and steal an election." Until the scandal over payments to his wife and family surfaced last week, Fillon was enjoying what looked like a near unassailable lead over other presidential contenders, ahead of far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen and independent centrist Emmanuel Macron. An Odoxa poll for franceinfo radio showed 61 percent believe Fillon was wrong to persevere in his presidential bid. Sniping from his own right-wing political camp continued, primarily from politicians connected to party grandees he beat to win the presidential ticket of The Republicans party. "A million euros is no small sum," said Rachida Dati, justice minister during the mandate of Nicolas Sarkozy, president from 2007 to 2012 but loser to Fillon in the ballot that picked the candidate for the 2017 election. "He (Fillon) does not command unanimous backing," she told RMC radio. Fillon has denied any wrongdoing since Le Canard Enchaine newspaper last week accused him of paying British wife Penelope hundreds of thousands of euros for work as an assistant that she appeared not to have done. ASSISTANT That scandal, subject of an official inquiry, has broadened since then with further reports by the newspaper of payments 10 years ago to children Marie and Charles, who are now lawyers in their 30s. On Thursday, a prime-time TV program broadcast an old interview in which Fillon's wife appeared to say she had no role as an employed assistant. "I have never been actually his assistant or anything like that. I don't deal with his communication," she said in that 2007 interview with Britain's The Telegraph newspaper. Fillon had presented himself as a clean-cut, clean-living candidate. Opinion polls have shown Fillon sliding hard to equal with rival Macron. Whichever of the two makes it to the May 7 runoff round is expected to face Le Pen, and beat her convincingly. (Additional reporting by Dominique Vidalon and John Irish; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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The FOURTH DAY of Parliament session today saw the Opposition Leader Don Pomb Polye took the Prime Minister Peter ONeill to task over the fishy election preparations undertaken by the Electoral Commissioner Patilias Gamato.Below are the questions without notice Mr Polye directed to the Prime Minister;Some announcements made by the Electoral Commissioner as to the changes of the 2017 General Election dates are devoid of legal basis especially the change of Issue of Writs from April 20 to May 20.Mr Speaker, my QUESTIONS are;1. Mr Speaker, can the Prime Minister tell the people of Papua New Guinea and this Honourable House, who is the agent in PNG of the Indonesian company Pura Group, which is responsible for printing the electoral papers for transparency sake, please?2. Mr Speaker, can the Prime Minister confirm or deny whether Treid Print was awarded the contract to print ballot papers, which then subcontracted it to Pura group in Indonesia, please?3. Mr Speaker, can the Prime Minister also deny or confirm whether the bidding of the contract for the ballot papers for 2017 Elections was a closed-door deal or a secretive tender process rather than an open bidding as always, please?4. Mr Speaker, can the Prime Minister confirm or deny whether Treid Print is the same company, which was awarded the contract to supply educational kit products to schools across the country but failed miserably, please? The Prime Minister would kindly inform this house and the people of PNG on who owns Treid Print?5. Mr Speaker, the costing excuse to print ballot papers outside of PNG given by the Electoral Commissioner has been clearly rebutted by the government printers, the former and the current one. Can the Prime Minister give us some clarification as to this discrepancy in the costing by the two very important institutions, please? The Electoral Commission gave an excuse that he already outsourced it to an overseas company because it was expensive onshore whilst the Government Printing Company maintains that it is very cheap, competent and it has a capacity to print our ballot papers like they have always done over the last 40 years. Can we get some clarifications, please?I also ask the Prime Minister that the justification or the explanations which the commissioner gave implies that the PNG printers are incompetent, they do not have the business expertise, they cannot do it properly, too expensive and therefore, he resorted to overseas printing companies. That means that the governments SME policy is almost useless because the Electoral Commissioner has lost confidence in PNG businesses. In this country the Prime Minister has spent so much money on uneconomic projects like the flyovers and other infrastructures here in Port Moresby. Almost all these contracts were given to foreign investors. Giving only a K12 million cost of printing to PNG printing companies was a big problem to the government. Therefore, the Electoral Commission has deprived of our SMEs from that job.6. Can the Prime Minister confirm that the erratic behaviour of the Electoral Commissioner is a sign of weakness? Can this be influenced by an outside influence or rogue elements in the electoral process? What will Prime Minister do to strengthen the Electoral Commission so that free and fair democratic election is realised in 2017?7. Mr Speaker, finally, Prime Minister, this might make you angry. Can you confirm that your government is influencing the Electoral Commission to act in this erratic behaviour? Can you confirm that you are doing that to this constitutional office?
Dalmardan Kami, 44 -- a reputed Dalit political and social activist -- has fallen ill, with a 2.5-cm. hole in his heart, as diagnosed officially as the ASD Secundum by Dr. Navin Chandra Gautam of Shahid Gangalal National Heart Centre, Kathmandu. The doctor has guessed that his heart problem must have already cropped up about 25 years ago. His doctor has advised him to seek a major method of treatment abroad at the earliest. Dalmardan, who lives in Kathmandu with his wife and two children, must have found his complete rest painful not because of his health crisis but because of his habit of becoming active on social-justice issues.

Occupied with socio-political struggles in favor of the marginalized communities, he seems to have not noticed what was going on about his own health. The nature of Dalmardan's involvement in political and social struggles for Dalits reflects that he is an extremely agile person, seeking accelerating changes in the lives of the deprived in the country. Marked by struggles for others, his own life now has to struggle with a very risky heart problem, which renders his blood circulation irregular and his respiratory process tough.

Dalmardan stands for those Dalit youths who want concrete and rapid changes in their lives. He has demonstrated his constant inner search for a more capable political organization that could cater to the transformative aspirations of Nepalis like himself. Dalmardan is publicly vociferous for fully proportional representation of Dalits to ensure their access to mainstream development process.

Dalmardan has already spent Nepali rupees 600,000.00 raised by his friends and colleagues at home and abroad. Indeed, he is a social capital and deserves life.

Dalmardan has admitted to having had financial inability for his decisive treatment abroad. Apparently, he has been active for 18 years as a socio-political activist for the sake of Dalit emancipation and transformation.

As there currently exists no welfare system for social and political activists in Nepal, concerned political and social organizations need to take an initiative for setting up a welfare fund to address their humanitarian crises.

Dalits are politically and economically the most marginalized and excluded community in Nepal. Dalits' political and economic marginalization and exclusion have often been reflected in their social status more vividly, for example, in educational and health sectors. A more recent instance can be seen in the extreme financial difficulty Dalmardan faces in his treatment process.

Dal Mardan Kami has handed over his personal request letter seeking financial assistance from the prime minister's office and health ministry. However, he has not heard from them yet.



Dalmardan Kami

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Nepal government is currently working on a policy of making health services affordable for the majority of ordinary masses. Media reports at times let people know that Nepal's political bigwigs spend millions of rupees from the government treasury for their nominal treatment abroad. However, there seems to be no clear-cut health policy for the working class people despite the accelerating and appalling privatization of health services across the country. While the vagueness of democratic public health policy remains dominant, it still is uncertain as to the fate of thousands of Nepalis' major health crises.

At times, Dalit activists try to expose their outrage against the deep-rooted caste-based discrimination and exclusion. But the major question why the Nepali society has not been able to eliminate this caste apartheid deserves a serious investigation, to which neither the political forces nor the social-advocacy groups have paid any serious attention. Most of the struggles have continued and degenerated through reactions after reactions. The most scientific answer to social injustice lies in Buddhist teachings that entirely stand for the emancipation from mental slavery and reactionary psychological patterns. All the 84,000 lectures (preserved under the Tripitaka) that the Buddha delivered to his students 2,500 years ago are more or less dedicated to analyzing the biochemical and psychosocial causes, effects and solutions of life problems. Dalmardan, too, regards the Buddha as a leading figure engaged against caste-based untouchability practices. If all other social activists like Dalmardan positively understand the Buddha as a social-justice educator, it is more advisable that they dig into Buddhist teachings and seek out profound strategies as Buddhism is apparently related to the science of becoming the master of one's own mind.

Honestly saying, Nepal's overall political mindset is basically reactive, not proactive. The Buddha, whom we honor as Nepalis' own ancestor, has taught human beings to become proactive, not reactive. Those who learn to become proactive can investigate and solve problems in a scientific manner while those with a reactive cultural setup tend to ventilate wrath against others, without ever striving to emancipate their own mind from slavery, hatred and greed. Indeed, Nepali Dalit activists could be more change-oriented by adopting more pragmatic and policy-centered strategies, which could be instrumental in empowering the marginalized and in transforming their mind and matter in essential terms.

Had Nepalis understood and applied Buddhism in their daily life, theirs would have been a very peaceful, prosperous and happy society long ago.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"In Bottom-Up, Rob Kall offers a blueprint for human surviving and thriving that everyone can follow. Using personal stories from his many famous contacts (from Capra to Quinn), he shows how in every aspect of life we can reconnect with that which is in our DNA by replacing our artificial and oppressive hierarchical priorities via a return to a consciousness based on the kind of egalitarian relationships that we honored for most of human history."



Four Arrows, aka Don Trent Jacobs, PhD, EdD, author of Unlearning the Language of Conquest and Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education
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From Counterpunch

In his January 13 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson made an extraordinary comment concerning China's activities in the South China Sea. The U.S., he said, must "send a clear signal that, first, the island-building stops," adding that Beijing's "access to the those islands is not going to be allowed."

President Trump's Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, repeated the threat on January 24.

Sometimes it is hard to sift the real from the magical in the Trump administration, and bombast appears to be the default strategy of the day. But people should be clear about what would happen if the U.S. actually tries to blockade China from supplying its forces constructing airfields and radar facilities on the Spratley and Paracel islands.

It would be an act of war.

While Beijing's Foreign Ministry China initially reacted cautiously to the comment, Chinese newspapers have been far less diplomatic. The nationalist Global Times warned of a "large-scale war" if the U.S. followed through on its threat, and the China Daily cautioned that a blockade could lead to a "devastating confrontation between China and the US."

Independent observers agree. "It is very difficult to imagine the means by which the United States could prevent China from accessing these artificial islands without provoking some kind of confrontation," says Rory Medcalf, head of Australia's National Security College. And such a confrontation, says Carlyle Thayer of the University of New South Wales, "could quickly develop into an armed conflict."

Last summer, China's commander of the People's Liberation Army Navy, Wu Shengli, told U.S. Admiral John Richardson that "we will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway." Nansha is China's name for the Spratlys. Two weeks later, Chang Wanquan, China's Defense Minister, said Beijing is preparing for a "people's war at sea."

A certain amount of this is posturing by two powerful countries in competition for markets and influence, but Tillerson's statement did not come out of the blue. In fact, the U.S. is in the middle of a major military buildup, the Obama administration's "Asia Pivot" in the Pacific. American bases in Okinawa, Japan, and Guam have been beefed up, and for the first time since World War II, U.S. Marines have been deployed in Australia. Last March, the U.S. sent B-2 nuclear-capable strategic stealth bombers to join them.

There is no question that China has been aggressive about claiming sovereignty over small islands and reefs in the South China Sea, even after the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague rejected Beijing's claims. But if a military confrontation is to be avoided, it is important to try to understand what is behind China's behavior.

The current crisis has its roots in a tense standoff between Beijing and Taiwan in late 1996. The People's Republic of China (PRC) was angered that Washington had granted a visa to Taiwan's president, Lee Teng-hui, calling it a violation of the 1979 U.S. "one-China" policy that recognized the PRC and downgraded relations with Taiwan to "unofficial."

Beijing responded to the visa uproar by firing missiles near a small Taiwan-controlled island and moving some military forces up to the mainland coast facing the island. However, there was never any danger that China would actually attack Taiwan. Even if it wanted to, it didn't have the means to do so.

Instead of letting things cool off, however, the Clinton administration escalated the conflict and sent two aircraft carrier battle groups to the region, the USS Nimitz and USS Independence. The Nimitz and its escorts sailed through the Taiwan Straits between the island and the mainland, and there was nothing that China could do about it.

The carriers deeply alarmed Beijing, because the regions just north of Taiwan in the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea were the jumping off points for 19th and 20th century invasions by western colonialists and the Japanese.

The Straits crisis led to a radical remaking of China's military, which had long relied on massive land forces. Instead, China adopted a strategy called "Area Denial" that would allow Beijing to control the waters surrounding its coast, in particular the East and South China seas. That not only required retooling of its armed forces -- from land armies to naval and air power -- it required a ring of bases that would keep potential enemies at arm's length and also allow Chinese submarines to enter the Pacific and Indian oceans undetected.

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Feb 3 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories in the Wall Street Journal. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

- The Trump administration is set to impose fresh sanctions on dozens of Iranian entities for their alleged role in missile development and terrorism, in a move likely to escalate U.S. tensions with Tehran, according to people close to the deliberations. http://on.wsj.com/2knPJxg

- President Donald Trump's administration said on Thursday night that the growth of Israeli settlements "may not be helpful" in achieving a goal of peace in the Middle East, an abrupt shift that signals a potentially tougher stance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. http://on.wsj.com/2knPNxc

- Snap Inc lifted the veil on its highly anticipated initial public offering, revealing a business that is growing at a torrid clip but that also faces challenges keeping users engaged, attracting new ones - and justifying a valuation that could reach $25 billion. http://on.wsj.com/2knQRBi

- President Donald Trump vowed on Thursday to repeal a ban on churches engaging in political campaigning, while his administration also was exploring other steps to expand religious rights, including increased protection for individuals, organizations and employers acting on their faith. http://on.wsj.com/2knTfrx

- Uber Technologies Inc chief executive Travis Kalanick said he is stepping down from President Donald Trump's economic advisory council, saying that his participation has been misunderstood as an endorsement of the new administration's policies. http://on.wsj.com/2knJwkU

- Amazon.com Inc on Thursday said fourth-quarter profit jumped 55 percent to $749 million, topping the company's own guidance. http://on.wsj.com/2knK0b5

- A dispute over creative control led Ralph Lauren Corp Chief Executive Stefan Larsson to leave the struggling luxury fashion brand after less than two years at the helm. http://on.wsj.com/2knKo9b (Compiled by Bhanu Pratap in Bengaluru)
From Paul Craig Roberts Website

150 masked "protesters" at Cal Berkeley, precisely 0.0039 percent of the 38,000 student body was all it took to shut down free speech at the University of California, Berkeley.

The protesters are so confused that they see the shutdown as a victory for free speech.

Something is wrong here. The 150 violent protesters are masked, so we don't know if they are students or a Deep State operation against President Trump. The protesters are behaving as fascists by shutting down free speech. By associating the exercise of free speech with fascism, the protesters appear to be too stupid to be Cal Berkeley students. When I was a graduate student at Cal Berkeley, there were high admission standards. Perhaps those standards have been declared to be racist and were thrown out with the bath water.

What is most odd about the protests is that the protesters are protesting a government whose goals are to reduce tensions that could lead to war with Russia and to bring back jobs for the working class. Normally, these are things that people protest in favor of, not against.

How do we explain that the liberal/progressive/left has abandoned its traditional agendas and aligned instead with the ruling One Percent and the arms merchants?

These protests make no sense on their face. For 15 years, indiscriminate slaughter of Muslins has been tolerated. Now suddenly a ban on Muslim immigrants brings violent protests into the streets.

I conclude that The Saker is correct that these protests are orchestrated by the One Percent and the Deep State.

Even Al Jazeera is caught up in the disinformation. Reporter Rob Reynolds described the protests as a liberal push-back against a right-wing president. In my day, the right-wing wanted to nuke the Russians. Now it is right-wing to desire to be at peace with Russia. Of course, youth are devoid of historical perspective, but this level of confusion seems too extreme to flow from sincerity.

Fifty-six years ago President Eisenhower warned us about the military-industrial complex. We paid no attention. Consequently, today they have us, along with the liberal/progressive/left, in their clutches. I wonder if even Donald Trump can rescue us.
From The Nation

This should scare the wits out of Americans of every partisanship and ideology.

Most Americans had not thought much -- or, for that matter, heard much -- about Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Then Donald Trump went nuts on Turnbull, reportedly cutting short a Saturday phone conversation with the leader of one of the closest allies of the United States over the past century after growling out a complaint that it was "the worst by far" of his calls with global figures.

On a "day of diplomacy" featuring "cordial congratulations given to the new leader of the free world," Trump's conversation with Turnbull should have been uneventful. But the new US president blew up when the prime minister mentioned a deal that had been struck with the Obama administration to allow the resettlement of roughly 1,250 asylum seekers (mostly from Iran, Afghanistan, and Iraq) to the United States.

That was the point at which Trump is reported to have -- how shall we put this delicately? -- lost it. According to the Time magazine report from Sydney: "The agreement, Trump reportedly told Turnbull on Saturday, 'was the worst deal ever.' It would get him 'killed' politically at a time when domestic sentiment was pushing him to secure American borders against would-be terrorists. Australia, by urging him to honor the deal, was seeking to export 'the next Boston bombers.'" The Washington Post reported that what has been planned as a one-hour call was cut short after 25 minutes.

Reaction in Australia was intense. Television networks and newspapers labeled the incident " Phonegate." Programs were devoted to debates about how best to respond to diplomatic "bullying" and commentators ripped Trump's "offensive" behavior. Bruce Springsteen, having read the papers, opened his Melbourne show by announcing: "We stand before you embarrassed Americans tonight." Then the American rocker played the 1965 Orlons song "Don't Hang Up" as a way "to send a letter back home." Click Here to Read Whole Article

Congressman Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, tweeted: "Before @POTUS shows such disrespect again, he should consider only one nation has stood with us in every war of the last century -- Australia."

There is no reason to believe that Turnbull was looking to rumble with the new president of the United States. That's not this prime minister's style. A savvy political veteran who knows how to keep things cool, he is comfortable debating with people from across the political spectrum; and he is skilled at engaging in civil discourse with dissenters and critics of his policies.

Yes, Turnbull is fast on his feet. Yes, he can get the better of those who are ill-prepared and uninformed. But he knows how to do so gracefully, and with an eye toward settling disputes rather than inflaming them. That has earned him criticism from the left and the right in Australia. But Turnbull has kept the lines of communication open, at home and abroad.

I know. In my other life as a writer and commentator on global media policy, I have shared platforms with Malcolm Turnbull. I've listened to his speeches and he has listened to mine. We have engaged in reasonably complex discussions about broadband service, public broadcasting, and coverage of politics. As I recall, he disagreed with some of my arguments, and I certainly disagreed with some of his. But he struck me as a worldly conservative who was engaged, informed, and inclined toward finding common ground -- precisely the sort of international figure that Donald Trump is going to need to work with if the United States hopes to function on the global stage.

When I wrote about Australian politics for The Spectator several years ago, the editors headlined the piece: "If only the US had a Malcolm Turnbull." In that article, I observed that...

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baby

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Donald Trump speaks. This is a narcissistic megalomaniac, who in my opinion is probably the most ignorant president United States has ever had.

Everyone wanted Sen. Bernie Sanders to win the Democratic nomination,but it was stolen from him by the DNC and everyone knew it. That destroyed the Democratic Party and The thing is that Sanders isn't the great Messiah that everyone thinks is. He never mentions that 54% of our budget goes to the military. That is because Vermont has been building the F 35 fighter plane and to call for cuts in the military would hurt the state of Vermont.

I've told people before that we spend more than military and we did at the height of World War II. We neglect our roads are schools are infrastructure and serve water filled with lead to our children. Nobody mentions Flint Michigan anymore. Meanwhile, the children of Flint are still exposed to lead in the water.

Instead of worrying about refugees and choosing one religion of being the source of all our problems, the people of the United States and the people of the world need to realize that this planet cannot support 8 billion people. I'm sure the climate change is a big deal many people and it should be. But would also be a big deal to people is that this planet cannot support a population of 8 billion people.

The only humane way of cutting the population of the world is to impose a worldwide rule that couples can only have one child. If the world got together and made this happen and strictly enforces rule, the population of the earth would decline by 50% in about 50 years. The population would go from 8 billion people to 4 billion people.

I know many people think it's a radical idea and that the governments of the world should not have the right to tell people how many children they can have. The People's Republic of China has already done this. Every country of the world should incorporate this rule and make it law. The only way we are going to say this fun and make it habitable for human beings is to decrease the population. The only humane way to do this is to stop people from having more than one child.

Humanity is headed for annihilation. We will either do it to ourselves to a nuclear war or will do it by over populating the planet and watch the social strife and the revolutions that will come when people will have enough to eat. This is not conjecture is the fact. The most pressing problem that humans has is overpopulation.

It would only take about 50 years to reduce the population by half. 4 billion people living on the planet is sustainable, 8 billion people living on this planet is not sustainable. Still, none of the politicians will talk about things like this, they would rather argue whether women should have abortions or whether two people of same-sex can love each other. This is a weapon of mass distraction. Don't think for a moment that the governments of the world don't understand that overpopulation is eventually going to wipe out humanity.

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From Palestine Chronicle

Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump is about to do just that, reversing an historical course that has been in the making for 100 years.

The inexperienced, demagogic politician hardly understands the danger that lies in his decision to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

If he goes through with this, he is likely to unleash an episode of chaos in an already volatile region.

The move, which is now reportedly in the "beginning stages," is not a mere symbolic one, as some naively reported in western mainstream media.

True, American foreign policy has been centered mostly on military power, rarely historical fact.

But Trump, known for his thoughtlessness and impulsive nature, is threatening to eradicate even the little common sense that governed US foreign policy conduct in the Middle East.

If the new president moves forward with his plan, unsympathetic to Palestinian pleas and international warnings, he is likely to regret the unanticipated consequences of his action.

History for the Wise

A century ago, British forces under the command of General Sir Edmund Allenby occupied the Palestinian Arab city of Jerusalem.

That ominous event in December 1917, has disturbed the cultural and political equilibrium that existed in Palestine for nearly a millennia.

It also initiated a war that has proved the longest and one of the most bloody and destabilizing in modern human history.

Although Palestine was wrestled from the hand of its governing bodies operating under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, its new British rulers understood the unequaled importance of Jerusalem to its people.

That understanding was always present, even when France and Britain signed the Sykes-Picot agreement in May 1916, dividing Ottoman territories amongst themselves, Jerusalem's status was designated as an international area due to its shared religious significance.

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by Javier M. Gonzales

Published in Fortune Magazine on Feb 01, 2017

With two pen strokes, and just days into his administration, President Donald Trump has already signed two executive orders signaling his intent to be the most immigrant-hostile president in more than a generation.

Now, some may think the true impact of Trump's policies will be felt in far-off lands. And it's true: The lives of many who dreamed of coming to this country have been deeply disrupted.

But if you are a mayor like me, you know that many of the hardest hit communities will be in cities and towns all over this country. Places like Santa Fe, with the highest proportion of new immigrants in its region and a vibrant culture and thriving economy, are a living testament to the rewards a community can reap if it opens its doors.

For 400 years, Santa Fe has seen the benefit of being a welcoming community. Immigrants in our city are business owners, children attending our schools, artists contributing to our culture and economy, veterans who served our country in uniform, and hard-working people on whom local businesses rely.

Like other cities, we've built the dream of our community as much on the contributions of immigrants as those of the natural-born citizens with whom they work, hand in hand. So when the president attacks them, he is attacking all of us.

We've heard all the arguments, but here are the facts. Immigrants aren't criminals, and refugees aren't terrorists. As immigration rose for nearly 25 years after 1990, violent crime dropped almost 50%, and there is no evidence that sanctuary cities have higher crime rates. And not one of the terrorist attacks on this country since 9/11 has been carried out by a refugee.

Immigrants and refugees alike put it all on the line to live the American dream. Santa Fe has seen generation after generation grab hold of the opportunity to do better by their children, exemplifying hard work, fairness, love for equality, and belief in diversity as a strength. These are the last people we should be turning away.

And while the definition of a sanctuary city is an unsettled debate nationwide, in Santa Fe it's simple and principled: We don't discriminate against people based on immigration status, and we don't use scarce local police resources to do federal immigration authorities' jobs.

That doesn't mean we're a safe haven for violent criminals. Communities are safer when they focus police department time on preventing crime and catching those who break the law. When a federal court issues a criminal judicial warrant, we regularly work with federal officials to enforce it, regardless of the individual's immigration status.

What we don't do is enforce what are known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) administrative warrants. This constitutionally questionable practice is essentially an informal request from ICE, asking local police to step in when there's someone they'd like to pick up but would rather not use their own resources to do so.

Even if the orders are legal, our policies don't violate any of the federal laws cited in Trump's executive order threatening sanctuary cities. But then again, legality isn't really the point.

President Trump, the classic schoolyard bully, wants to force us to make a choice: Stand up for who we are and what we believe in, or give in, out of fear of lost revenue in one case, or terrorism in the other. Well, that's an easy one for Santa Fe. We won't turn against one another. We won't forget or abandon the values and ideals that we believe in. We won't shut out whole groups of people just because someone tells us we should be afraid.

As one of our country's first openly gay Hispanic mayors, I know how it feels to be shut out because of who you are. But I also know that America is at its strongest when we welcome the world, when we celebrate its diversity, and when we choose hope over fear.

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The ban on people from 7 Muslim nations is not only unconstitutional because it violates both the Geneva Accords and the Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 banning immigration based on national origin, race, or religion, many astute analysists now see it as a form of what Naomi Klein calls the Shock Doctrine. Shocking events are used to confuse and divide the public while more important and radical changes are made without drawing much attention. This is the strategy by which the US was transformed into a spy and police state after 9/11. This is the means by which radical right wingers have tranformed our nation into an incipient fascist state.

Here are some of the experts who have looked beneath the surface of the news-dominating outrage about the Trump ban.

" "What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night's ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries-- is creating what is known as a "shock event." Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos," theorized Political History Professor at Boston College, Heather Cox Richardson, in a Facebook Post. "People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order. When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event "My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one's interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won't like. . There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event."

The Observer's John Schindler explained in an op-ed that during the hysteria over the Muslim Travel Ban, "accomplished what may have been its actual purpose--distracting everyone from the White House's far more consequential changes to the National Security Council." Those changes included removing the he Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from the National Security Council, and adding Trump's Chief Council Steve Bannon to the Committee. This provides Bannon and General Michael Flynn, two wholly unqualified persons whose hiring have no congressional oversight, significant authority over the National Security Council."

Former Blackwater CEO Eric Prince is advising Trump, who is keeping private security in order to bypass constraints on Secret Service: is he doing the same with the National Security Council, putting it under his direct control without Congressional oversight?

" Yonatan Zunger offered a similar theory. "Trump is likely to want his own intelligence service disjoint from existing ones and reporting directly to him; given the current staffing and roles of his inner circle, Bannon is the natural choice for them to report through. (Having neither a large existing staff, nor any Congressional or Constitutional restrictions on his role as most other Cabinet-level appointees do)," wrote Zunger, explaining his theory that Trump's recent reshuffling is an attempt to consolidate power within the executive branch. "Especially if combined with the DHS and the FBI, which appear to have remained loyal to the President throughout the recent transition, this creates the armature of a shadow government: intelligence and police services which are not accountable through any of the normal means, answerable only to the President."

Thus, the criticism of the disorganized Muslim ban may be missing the point: that the chaos and resulting media domination and public outcry is a distraction from the much more dangerous rearrangement of national security power into the hands of a fascist dictator.

For more detail, see the counterpunch article at click here

Trump is a master of distraction, often being criticized for being "off task" without understanding how he uses lesser outrages to mask more radical changes which, if offered without distraction, would become objects of outrage. What we may be witnessing is the execution of a coup d'etat that goes far beyond regime change but undermines the entire constitutional structure of government.

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This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: As you may have noticed, in the era of Donald Trump and "alternative facts," a wave of old dystopian novels headed by George Orwell's 1984 has hit the bestseller list. It's a striking phenomenon. At Dispatch Books, our own publishing line, we sensed that this might be coming and recently put out TomDispatch regular John Feffer's stunning dystopian novel, Splinterlands. Unlike the older ones, from Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World , it reads as if you had stumbled upon the work of a journalist on a shattered planet in the very near future. If you're in a dystopian mood, get yourself a copy as soon as possible (and lend us a little helping hand at the same time). Alternatively, if you go to the TomDispatch donation page and contribute $100 ($125 if you live outside the USA), Feffer will send you a signed, personalized copy of the book. Either way, it's the perfect reading for our dystopian moment. Tom]

Last Friday, Donald Trump made his first visit to the Pentagon where he spoke of signing an order to begin "a great rebuilding of the armed services of the United States," something he's been advocating for quite a while. As TomDispatchregular Bill Hartung indicates today, this will mean a massive surge in federal dollars pouring into the abyss of the Pentagon, which has shown itself quite capable of absorbing such moneys in the past and seems to lack the slightest ability to account for what's done with them. (The Pentagon has never even managed to pass an audit.) We already know that this will mean more troops, more ships, more planes, and as a draft executive order for the new president put it, "a desire to invest in a host of military capabilities, including Special Operations forces and nuclear weapons."

These are two areas in which "build up" is already the operative phrase. At approximately 70,000 personnel, the elite Special Operations forces are now an enormous, secretive military -- larger than the armies of some sizable countries -- cocooned inside the regular armed forces. Special ops types are now dispatched annually to about 70% of the nations on the planet. As for those nuclear forces, under President Obama who won a Nobel Peace Prize in part for his abolitionist sentiments, they were already launched on a trillion dollar, three-decade "modernization" program, involving the creation of new delivery systems and "smart nukes" as well. If each of these forces is now to be expanded even more rapidly and expensively, that's a genuine upping of the military ante on the planet.

As former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who, with President Ronald Reagan, came remarkably close to negotiating nuclear weapons out of existence, pointed out recently in Time magazine, "it looks as if the world is preparing for war... Today,... the nuclear threat once again seems real. Relations between the great powers have been going from bad to worse for several years now. The advocates for arms build-up and the military-industrial complex are rubbing their hands."

Indeed, at the dawn of the Trump era, it's worth remembering that, despite the obvious power of the United States, this is no longer a one-way planet. Take the new "nationalism" of the president (and his close adviser Steve Bannon). As the guiding principle of American foreign policy, nationalism will prove a distinctly two-way street, as is already the case in Mexico where Trump's wall, his immigration policies, and his tax threats against Mexican products may only stoke Mexican nationalism, uniting an otherwise riven country in a fierce spirit of anti-Americanism.

And don't expect a staggering American military build-up to be a one-way phenomenon either, especially on the nuclear front. Before he's done, Donald Trump, who has a yearning for the 1950s, could well put the planet on the kind of military footing that hasn't been seen since at least the height of the Cold War. He could well spark a potentially out of control three-way arms race that would include China and Russia, while heightening increasingly pugnacious nationalist feelings across the planet. Worse yet, as Hartung points out today, if your money is going to head massively into the military (while civilian spending is slashed), when problems or crises arrive, as they will on such a planet, it's obvious where you're most likely to turn. At this point, only two weeks into his presidency, the Earth looks like a distinctly more dangerous place. No wonder the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has just moved its Doomsday Clock 30 seconds "closer to catastrophe" at 2 minutes to midnight. Tom

What Happens When All We Have Left Is The Pentagon?

Trump's Vision of a Militarized America

By William D. Hartung At over $600 billion a year and counting, the Pentagon already receives significantly more than its fair share of federal funds. If President Donald Trump has his way, though, that will prove a sum for pikers and misers. He and his team are now promising that spending on defense and homeland security will increase dramatically in the years to come, even as domestic programs are slashed and entire civilian agencies shuttered. The new administration is reportedly considering a plan -- modeled on proposals from the military-industrial-complex-backed Heritage Foundation -- that would cut a staggering $10.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. The Departments of Energy, Commerce, Transportation, and State might see their budgets slashed to the bone; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be privatized; and (though the money involved would amount to chicken feed) the National Endowments for the Arts and for the Humanities would be eliminated altogether. In the meantime, the ranks of the Army and Marines would be expanded, a huge naval buildup would be launched, and a new Star Wars-style missile defense system would be developed -- all at a combined cost of up to $1 trillion beyond the already munificent current Pentagon plans for that same decade. The specifics won't be known until Trump's first budget becomes public in perhaps April or May, but as we wait for it, Republican Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain has just taken the unusual step of releasing his own spending blueprint for the military. It suggests that a key senator and the president and his team are on the same page when it comes to military funding. At an extra $430 billion over the next five years, the numbers in McCain's plan are similar to the potential Trump buildup. One thing is already clear: this drastic tilt toward yet more Pentagon spending and away from investment in diplomacy abroad and civilian needs at home will only further militarize American society, accelerate inequality, and distort the country's already highly questionable foreign policy. After all, if your military is the only well-funded, well-stocked arm of the government, it's obvious whom you're going to turn to in any crisis. This process was already visibly underway even before Donald Trump took the oath of office. His gut decision to entrust national security policymaking only to military figures was particularly troubling. From National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Secretary of Defense James Mattis to head of the Department of Homeland Security John Kelly, retired generals and other ex-military types now abound in his administration. Defense analyst and former White House budget official Gordon Adams summed up the risks of this approach recently in this way: "Putting military officers in charge of the entire architecture of national security reinforces the trend toward militarizing policy and risks cementing in place 'the military-industrial complex' that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of. To borrow the psychologist Abraham H. Maslow's words, if all the men around President Trump are hammers, the temptation will be 'to treat everything as if it were a nail.'" How the Military Came to Dominate Foreign Policy President Trump won't, of course, be starting from scratch in his urge to further elevate the military in foreign and domestic affairs. He's building on a process that's already well under way. In the Obama years, for instance, there were a record number of drone strikes, especially outside official U.S. war zones -- 10 times the number launched by the Bush administration. Similarly, the Obama administration paved the way for various Trumpian urges by waging wars on multiple fronts and instituting a historic crackdown on whistleblowers in the military and the intelligence communities. It also approved record levels of U.S. arms sales abroad, $278 billion worth of them, or more than double those of the Bush years. (In Trumpian terms: jobs!)

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In the wake of Donald Trump's abrasive January 27th immigration order, some critics have described a White House in chaos and characterized Trump's policy czar, Steve Bannon, as "in his over his head." Wrong. Trump and Bannon know exactly what they are doing. Trump's immigration orders portend a devastating campaign against immigrants, one that will lead to war in the Middle East.

It's useful to remember why Red voters turned to Trump; he promised to create jobs, stifle immigration, and cut taxes. So far Trump hasn't presented any semblance of a jobs plan. House Republicans have been busy with plans to cut taxes; the beneficiaries appear to be corporations and the rich.

Meanwhile, the focus of the Trump White House has been on immigration. It's an issue that meets three of their objectives: it's red meat for their base; by claiming that immigrants are lawbreakers, it plays to Trump's "law and order" theme; and this issue paves the way for major policy changes in the Middle East.

Trump's immigration orders are based upon lies. Not surprisingly, the justifications for Trump's immigration policIes are lies. In his January 25th "Border Security" order, Trump claimed, "The recent surge of illegal immigration at the southern border with Mexico has placed a significant strain on Federal resources..." There is no "recent surge;" illegal immigration declined under Obama and, recently there has been a net exodus to Mexico.

In his January 27th order, "to protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States," Trump claimed, "While the visa-issuance process was reviewed and amended after the September 11 attacks... these measures did not stop attacks by foreign nationals who were admitted to the United States." Wrong again; the recent attacks -- such as Orlando -- were committed by native-born Americans. Trump's order names Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen but immigrants from these nations have nothing to do with recent domestic attacks.

Even thought these lies were noted by the mainstream media, they are accepted by Trump's base -- who get their news from Fox News. (Meanwhile, the Trump White House demonizes the mainstream media.)

Trump's immigration orders are popular with his base. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll found: "49 percent of American adults said they either "strongly" or "somewhat" agreed with Trump's order, while 41 percent "strongly" or "somewhat" disagreed and another 10 percent said they don't know." The findings were strongly influenced by party preference.

The 538 website reported research about characteristics that make someone "truly American:" one third of poll respondents said it was, "Having been born in the United States" and "Being a Christian." No doubt this was Trump's base; folks who agree with his policy of keeping non-Christians out.

(The news is not all bleak: a more recent Gallup Poll found that 57 percent of respondents disapproved of Trump's order.)

Trump's immigration order is a convoluted Muslim ban. The January 27th ban calls for suspension of the US refugee program for 120 days (and totally suspends the admission of Syrian nationals). It includes this wording: "[prioritize] refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality." Since all 7 named countries are Muslim majority, this (potentially) gives preference to Christian refugees from these countries.

To be noted is that one of the 7 countries, Iraq, is a strong US ally in the war on terror.

Trump's order is a portend of things to come. The Los Angeles Times reported: "Trump's top advisors on immigration, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior advisor Stephen Miller, see themselves as launching a radical experiment to fundamentally transform how the U.S. decides who is allowed into the country and to block a generation of people who, in their view, won't assimilate into American society." Thus the Trump ban would eventually impact ALL Muslim-majority countries -- not just Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan Syria, and Yemen but also countries such as Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

Trump and his top advisers (particularly Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn, and Stephen Miller) believe the US is at war with Islam. (Foreign Policy magazine reported that Bannon "predicted 'a major shooting war in the Middle East' in the coming years. 'To be brutally frank, I mean Christianity is dying in Europe, and Islam is on the rise,' he said in January 2016.")

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In 2011, American citizens Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were murdered -- killed without charge or trial -- on the orders of then-president Barack Obama.

Two weeks later, al-Awlaki's teenage son, Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, was murdered -- again, killed without charge or trial -- also on Obama's orders. When questioned on the propriety of murdering American teenagers, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs asserted that if Abdulrahman al-Awlaki had wanted to live, perhaps he should have had "a more responsible father."

On January 29, Anwar al-Awlaki's eight-year-old daughter, American citizen Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki, was murdered, along with about 30 other civilian non-combatants, in the course of a raid by the US Navy's SEAL Team Six in Yemen.

I have now thrice mentioned that particular murder victims were American citizens. The fact that they were American citizens isn't really that important in the scheme of things. Murdering people is wrong regardless of the victims' nationalities. But it does explain why we KNOW about these particular murders.

New US president Donald Trump has a decision to make. Is he going to prosecute American war criminals who murder eight-year-old girls, or is he going to be a war criminal himself?

Because he is new to the job, I'm trying to give Trump the benefit of doubt. It's quite possible that the mission resulting in young Nawar's death was planned and on rails before he was ever inaugurated, and that his approval was pro forma and not in full cognizance of what it implied. After all, he's been a pretty busy guy these last couple of weeks.

If that's the case, then Trump's clear duty as commander in chief of the US armed forces is to initiate an investigation aimed at identifying and prosecuting the criminal conspirators whose actions culminated in the murder of dozens of civilians, including Nawar Anwar al-Awlaki.

Otherwise, he himself becomes one of those conspirators.

Of course, it's possible that he was informed in detail of the mission and signed off on it in full knowledge of its nature. In that case he joins all of his living predecessors (and quite a few long-dead ones) in the rogues' gallery of war crimes kingpins.

Trump campaigned as a candidate of real change, including in the area of US foreign policy. That would be a good thing for many reasons, not the least of which is that with a quarter century of continuous war comes the near certainty of atrocities and the absolute certainty that when those atrocities go unpunished they will multiply in number and worsen in effect.

The murder of an innocent eight-year-old is a pretty clear decision point: Was Trump serious or was just blowing smoke? How he handles this situation will tell us which.
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When President Donald Trump spoke by phone Saturday, January 28, with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, he was speaking (above) from the White House, before an audience of two aides, National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn and his top strategist, Stephen K. Bannon.

Trump's conversation with the leader of a major U.S. ally, was supposed to last an hour. Instead, Trump hung up after 25 minutes.

The Washington Post reported: "It should have been one of the most congenial calls for the new commander in chief -- a conversation with the leader of Australia, one of America's staunchest allies, at the end of a triumphant week".

Instead, President Trump "blasted Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over a refugee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win." The details of the call were leaked from "senior U.S. officials briefed on the Saturday exchange."

Trump's diplomatic style is, to say the least, different. "At one point, Trump informed Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day -- including Russian President Vladimir Putin -- and that 'this was the worst call by far.'"

Someone in the White House wanted this exchange made public. Bannon and Flynn were there to hear it live. It should be safe to assume they made it public. Trump's bellicosity is what they want the American public, and the world, to hear.

Trump also wants the world to know, through Twitter, how he feels about "refugees." His explosive conversation with the Australian Prime Minister involved what Trump, in a Tweet called, a "dumb" Obama-era "deal."

The Washington Post provides a different reading on the "deal":

"Last night, President Trump went off on Australia, criticizing a 'dumb' Obama-era 'deal' that would, in Trump's words, force the United States to take 'thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia.' "Except that's not really what the deal says. Not at all. "Trump is referring to a deal signed in November. According to the agreement, which took months of negotiation, America would accept about 1,200 refugees (not, as Trump called them, 'illegal immigrants') from Australia. "The United States would prioritize families and children, and all candidates would be subjected to a thorough vetting process. America's Department of Homeland Security would conduct two rounds of interviews with each candidate."

The President is following an Islamophobic script, a theme of hatred and fear shared with his aides, Stephen K. Bannon and Michael T. Flynn, that contributed mightily to Trump's election victory. Australian Prime Minister Trumbull knows this. In a public statement he said he would not comment on the "domestic issues" of other nations.

In a January 30 editorial, entitled,"President Bannon?" the New York Times laments:

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Global Corneal Neovascularization Market Driven by Increasing Demand for Advanced Treatment Options

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Corneal neovascularization is a disorder of the eyes, which is mainly characterized by the incursion of novel blood vessels into the cornea of the individuals suffering from the disease. This disorder is majorly caused due to disruption of the balance between the factors that protects and maintain the corneal transparency. The two factors that need to be balanced include angiogenic and antiangiogenic factors. The incursion of new blood vessels, which are relatively immature, hence can cause lipid exudation as well. Other major symptoms include scarring in eyes, persistent inflammation, which leads to diminishing corneal transparency and visual perception.Download PDF Brochure:The corneal neovascularization disorders if left untreated it may lead to high growth of new blood vessels that may reach visual axis to permanently threat the vision of the affected individual. Presently, several patients suffering from various eye problems, many a times undergo corneal grafts; corneal neovascularization may lead to rejection of such grafts as well. Thus, timely and proper treatment (may include surgical intervention and therapeutic drugs) of corneal neovascularization is necessary for effective management of the disease to ensure proper eye vision.Major driving factors for the growth of corneal neovascularization market include increasing incidences of ophthalmic disorders, rising number of corneal grafts, aging population, increasing obesity rate, increasing number of diseases such as diabetes and hypertension and increasing demand for advanced treatment options. Ophthalmic disorders are one of the leading disorders that affect very large population globally; several eye related disorders require ophthalmic interventions that may increase the risk of developing corneal neovascularization, hence accompanied by graft rejections.Increasing geriatric population will also contribute towards the growth of this market as aged individuals are more prone to several disorders and hence, tend to suffer from ophthalmic disorders. Increasing obesity rates are also adding to various eye related disorders mainly the lipid deposition increase the chances of developing corneal neovascularization, hence will contribute towards the growth of this market. Several diseases like diabetes, hypertension and others also lead to ophthalmic diseases, in turn require diagnostics and therapeutics from this market, thus will contribute towards the growth of corneal neovascularization market. Several pharmaceutical companies are having many therapeutic drugs for the effective treatment of this disorder in different phases of clinical trials, which will soon hit the market.Geographically, North America and Europe are expected to dominate the corneal neovascularization market. Major factors responsible for their expected dominance in the corneal neovascularization market are high prevalence of ophthalmic disorders in the region, aging population, rising overweight as well obese population, and high awareness levels of the population.However, emerging economies like China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and Malaysia among others from Asia-Pacific, LATAM, Middle East and other regions will present tremendous opportunities towards the growth of this market. Major factors responsible for the growth of the corneal neovascularization market in these regions are availability of high patient population, high prevalence of diseases like diabetes and hypertension, increasing healthcare awareness in these regions and increasing purchasing power of the people in APAC and RoW.View Report:Some of the major players operating in this market include, Amakem NV, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., GTx, Inc., and Sirnaomics, Inc. that have their drugs in different phases of clinical trials, which will soon be commercialized in the global corneal neovascularization market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Increase in Number of Hearing Impairment Cases and Rising Costs of Hearing Aids are Expected to Drive the Growth of Global Hearing Amplifiers

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Hearing loss can occurs when inner ear or nerve is damaged, which may be caused due to diseases, aging, loud noise, and medications. Hearing amplifier is a small part of hearing aid which makes the sound louder. Hearing amplifiers increase the power of signals and then send them to the ear through speakers.Hearing aid is useful in improving the hearing and speech of patients. An otolaryngologist investigates the cause of the hearing loss. An audiologist is a hearing health professional who identifies and measures hearing loss and will perform a hearing test to assess the type and degree of hearing loss.Download Exclusive Sample of this Report:Increase in number of hearing impairment cases coupled with rising costs of hearing aids are expected to drive the growth of the global hearing amplifiers market during the forecast period. Majority of the consumers use hearing amplifiers or personal sound amplification products (PSAPs) as they are considered cheaper alternatives of hearing aids. Hearing amplifiers or PSAPs, are designed to amplify sounds in any recreational environment and are exempt from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Hearing amplifiers are sold directly to consumers as electronic devices without the requirement of a physician prescription.According to National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), approximately 324,200 cochlear implants have been implanted worldwide. About 15 percent of Americans (26 million people) between the ages of 20 and 69 have high frequency hearing loss due to exposure to noise at work or during leisure activities. Major driving factors for the growth of the global hearing amplifiers such as an increase in the number of prevalence of hearing impairment patients in old and young population, increasing investment in research and development in ENT field among others.Hearing amplifiers market is segmented into five major regions: North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. In 2015, North America lead the global market of hearing amplifiers followed by the Europe in terms of revenue. According to statistics compiled by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), 37.5 million adults aged 18 and older in America report some form of hearing loss.According to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), 28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from using hearing aids and more than 90 percent of deaf children are born to parents suffering from some kind of hearing disorder. Globally, the hearing amplifiers market is expected to witness a healthy CAGR in terms of revenue during the forecast period.Latin America, Middle East & Africa and Asia Pacific regions are the emerging markets in the global hearing amplifiers market. Increasing awareness among the various distribution channels as well as consumers in these regions is anticipated to propel global market growth of hearing aids and amplifiers during the forecast period.Browse Research Report:The key players in the global market develop hearing amplifiers in analog and digital forms. Some of the top companies in the global hearing amplifiers market are Sound Hawk, Resound, Foshan Vohom Technology Co. Ltd., Sound world solution, Shenzhen LA Lighting Company Limited, Austar Hearing Science and Technology (Xiamen) Co., Ltd., Huizhou Jinghao Electronics Co. Ltd., Ziphearing among others.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Clinical Trial Management System Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 15% by 2022

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Market Research Future published a half-cooked research report on global clinical trial management system market. The global clinical trial management system market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 15% during the period 2016 to 2022.Test the market data and market information presented through more than 60 market data tables and figures spread over 90 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content (TOC) & market synopsis on Clinical Trial Management System Market Research Report- Global Forecast to 2022.Market Highlights:Clinical trial management system maintains and record the information which are used to track the clinical trials. Information extracted during clinical trials are vast and highly complex and they are need to be routinely processed through multiple regression, simulation and other models. To maintain the information scientists and industry players are working towards the development of management and maintenance of this data. The market for clinical trial management system is booming due to increasing demand for the management of the clinical trial data collected at the time of clinical research and track the milestones for the further studies to make new and improved products by the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.Request a Sample Copy @Some of the key functions of CTMS includes cataloging the history of the clinical trials associated with the organizations and individuals, site management, subject tracking among others. On the basis of type of CTMS they are segmented into standard CTMS, CTMS accelerator and customized CTMS. Standard CTMS are Out-of-the-box system without organization-specific customizations while CTMS accelerator are pre-configured version of a standard CTMS that includes requested configurations and enhanced functionality of the trials. They can satisfy many of the organizations key requirements without additional development and the customized CTMS are those which includes standard or accelerator system that is tailored to organization specific configurations.These are commonly used by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organizations and medical device companies among others.Key Players of Clinical Trial Management System Market: PAREXEL International Corporation Wipro Limited (India) GCP-Service International Ltd. & Co. KG (Germany) Oracle (US) Intrinsic Clinical Systems (UK) Acceliant (US) SGS SA (Switzerland) Telerx (US)Segmentation:Global clinical trial management system market has been segmented on the basis of type which comprises of standard CTMS, CTMS accelerator, customized CTMS and others. On the basis of application; market is segmented into in house, hosted and others. On the basis of end users; market is segmented into pharmaceutical & biotechnology companies, medical devices companies, CROs and others.Global Clinical Trial Management System Market:The Global Clinical Trial Management System Market has been evaluated as a growing market and it is expected that the market will touch high growth figures in future. Factors such as the growing prevalence of chronic diseases and increasing advancement in clinical trial management will drive the growth of the market. The global clinical trial management system market is expected to grow with CAGR of ~15% during the forecasted period.Brief TOC for Clinical Trial Management System:1 Introduction1.1 Definition1.2 Scope of Study1.3 Research Objective1.4 Assumptions & Limitations1.5 Market Structure:2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Process2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research3 Market Dynamics3.1 Drivers3.2 Restraints3.3 Opportunities3.4 Challenges3.5 Macroeconomic Indicators4 Market Factor Analysis4.1 Porters five forces model4.1.1 Bargaining Power of suppliers4.1.2 Bargaining Power of Customer4.1.3 Intensity of Competitors4.1.4 Threat of New EntrantsContinue...Access Report Details @Regional Analysis:Depending on geographic region, clinical trial management system market is segmented into four key regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Globally North America is the largest market for Clinical trial management system as they deploy the most advanced healthcare technologies and increasing demand for the reliable and cost effective products. Europe is the second-largest market for clinical trial management system. Asia pacific region is expected to be fastest growing region in clinical trial management system market due to increasing healthcare expenditure.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Web content, search portals and social media Global Market Report 2017

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The Web content, search portals and social media market comprises establishments mainly engaged in publishing and/or broadcasting content on the Internet exclusively and web search portals. This does not include non-internet versions of published or broadcasted data.Request Sample Report Here:Reasons to Purchase Outperform competitors using accurate up to date demand-side dynamics information. Identify growth segments for investment. Facilitate decision making on the basis of historic and forecast data and the drivers and restraints on the market.Create regional and country strategies on the basis of local data and analysis.Stay abreast of the latest customer and market research findings Benchmark performance against key competitors. Develop strategies based on likely future developments. Utilize the relationships between key data sets for superior strategizing. Suitable for supporting your internal and external presentations with reliable high quality data and analysis Gain a global perspective on the development of the market. Report will be updated with the latest data and delivered to you within 2 working weeks of order.DescriptionWhere is the largest and fastest growing market for Web content, search portals and social media? How does the market relate to the overall economy, demography and other similar markets? What forces will shape the market going forward? The Web content, search portals and social media global market report from the Business Research Company answers all these questions and many more.The report covers market characteristics, size and growth, segmentation, regional and country breakdowns, competitive landscape, market shares, trends and strategies for this market. It traces the markets historic and forecast market growth by geography. It places the market within the context of the wider media market, and compares it with other markets. The market characteristics section of the report defines and explains the market. The market size section gives the market size ($b) covering both the historic growth of the market and forecasting the future. Drivers and restraints looks at the external factors supporting and controlling the growth of the market. Market segmentations break down market into sub markets. The regional and country breakdowns section gives an analysis of the market in each geography and the size of the market by geography and compares their historic and forecast growth. It covers all the regions, key developed countries and major emerging markets. It draws comparisons with country populations and economies to understand the importance of the market by country and how this is changing. Competitive landscape gives a description of the competitive nature of the market, market shares, and a description of the leading companies. Key financial deals which have shaped the market in recent years are identified. The trends and strategies section highlights the likely future developments in the market and suggests approaches companies can take to exploit this. The Web content, search portals and social media market section of the report gives context. It compares the Web content, search portals and social media market with other segments of the media market by size and growth, historic and forecast. It analyses Expenditure Per Capita, Expenditure Per Household, Web content, search portals and social media Indicators Comparison, Internet Penetration, Mobile Internet Penetration, Smartphone Penetration, Tablet Penetration across selected countries.Browse Report Summary with TOC:ScopeMarkets covered: Social Media, Internet Publishing, Internet Broadcasting and Web Search PortalsMarkets compared: TV And Radio Broadcasting, Print Media, Information Services, Web content, search portals and social media, Film and Sound.Companies mentioned: Google, Facebook, Tencent, Baidu, Netflix, Yahoo, Linkedin, Naver Corporation, Twitter and others.Countries: Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, Russia, UK, USA.Regions: Asia, Americas, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Oceania.Time series: Five years historic and forecast.Data: Ratios of market size and growth to related markets, population, GDP, Web content, search portals and social media Indicators Comparison, Internet Penetration, Mobile Internet Penetration, Smartphone Penetration, Tablet Penetration.Data segmentations: country and regional historic and forecast data, market share of competitors, market segments.Sourcing and Referencing: Data and analysis throughout the report is sourced using end notes.Enquiry Before Buying:About Us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.Contact Us:ReportBazzarMary Jane30 Wall Street, 8th floor,New York, NY 10005.US: +1 (212) 389-6363India: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
Global Digital Microscope Market by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application, Forecast to 2021

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A Digital Microscope is a variation of a traditional optical microscope that uses optics and a digital camera to output an image to a monitor, sometimes by means of software running on a computer. A digital microscope often has its own in-built LED light source, and differs from an optical microscope in that there is no provision to observe the sample directly through an eyepiece. Since the image is focussed on the digital circuit the entire system is designed for the monitor image. The optics for the human eye are omitted.Download PDF Sample of Digital Microscope Market@Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Digital Microscope in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversOlympus CorporationMoticKeyenceHiroxCarl ZeissJeolNikonLeica MicrosystemsTQCVision EngineeringAnMo Electronics CorporationBYKBrowse Full Report with TOC:Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America, Middle East and AfricaMarket Segment by Type, coversDesktop Digital MicroscopePortable Digital MicroscopeWireless Digital MicroscopeOthersPlace Purchase Order for this Report@Market Segment by Applications, can be divided intoIndustryCosmetologyBiomedicineScientific ResearchOthersThere are 13 Chapters to deeply display the global Digital Microscope market.Chapter 1, to describe Digital Microscope Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Digital Microscope, with sales, revenue, and price of Digital Microscope, in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Digital Microscope, for each region, from 2011 to 2016;Chapter 5, 6, 7 and 8, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 9 and 10, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2011 to 2016;Chapter 11, Digital Microscope market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2016 to 2021;Chapter 12 and 13, to describe Digital Microscope sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, appendix and data source.Table of Content:1 Market Overview2 Manufacturers Profiles3 Global Digital Microscope Market Competitions, by Manufacturer4 Global Digital Microscope Market Analysis by Regions5 North America Digital Microscope by Countries6 Europe Digital Microscope by Countries7 Asia-Pacific Digital Microscope by Countries8 South America, Middle East and Africa Digital Microscope by Countries9 Digital Microscope Market Segment by Type10 Digital Microscope Market Segment by Application11 Digital Microscope Market Forecast (2016-2021)12 Sales Channel, Distributors, Traders and Dealers13 AppendixList of Tables and Figures:List of Tables and FiguresFigure Digital Microscope PictureFigure Global Sales Market Share of Digital Microscope by Types in 2015Table Digital Microscope Types for Major ManufacturersFigure Desktop Digital Microscope PictureFigure Portable Digital Microscope PictureFigure Wireless Digital Microscope PictureTable Digital Microscope Sales Market Share by Applications in 2015Table Olympus Corporation Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and CompetitorsTable Digital Microscope Type and ApplicationsTable Olympus Corporation Digital Microscope Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2015-2016)Table Motic Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and CompetitorsTable Digital Microscope Type and ApplicationsTable Motic Digital Microscope Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2015-2016)Table Keyence Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and CompetitorsTable Digital Microscope Type and ApplicationsTable Keyence Digital Microscope Sales, Price, Revenue, Gross Margin and Market Share (2015-2016)Orbis Research is a single point aid for all your Market research requirements. We have vast database of reports from the leading publishers and authors across the globe. We specialize in delivering customised reports as per the requirements of our clients. We have complete information about our publishers and hence are sure about the accuracy of the industries and verticals of their specialisation. This helps our clients to map their needs and we produce the perfect required Market research study for our clients.Hector CostelloSenior Manager  Client Engagements4144N Central Expressway,Suite 600, Dallas,Texas - 75204, U.S.A.Phone No.: +1 (214) 884-6817; +912064101019Email ID: sales@orbisresearch.com
Bromine Market to Exceed by 4.1% Revenue CAGR by 2024

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Global demand for bromine market will reach 483 kilo metric tons (KMT) in 2016, up from 470 KMT in 2015. Demand will be impeded by growing regulation and legislation, especially in the European Union (EU), where the use of certain brominated flame retardants is banned or restricted.A sample of this report is available upon request:Flame retardants will continue to remain the largest application segment, accounting for 203 KMT volume in 2016, a y-o-y increase of 2.8% over 2015. Use of bromine in oil and gas drilling will continue its upward momentum in 2016, growing at 4.3% in terms of volume  the fastest among all the application segments.The chemicals industry will remain the largest consumer of bromine, accounting for 292 KMT volume in 2016, representing market value worth 1,284 Mn. Use of bromine in the oil and gas sector will also continue to witness steady growth, as clear brine fluids gain traction for drilling purposes. Demand will be offset by sluggish adoption in the electronics industry, as use of brominated flame retardants continues to face stricter regulations. Demand for bromine from electronics sector will witness a growth rate of 2.1% in 2016 over 2015.Asia Pacific will remain the largest market for bromine, representing annual revenues worth US$ 1,087 Mn in 2016, up from 895 Mn in 2015. This is primarily due to expansion of end-use industries such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and electronic in APAC. Latin America will continue to offer growth opportunities to manufacturers, with global demand witnessing a 2.0% volume growth in 2016 over 2015. Demand will face constraints in the mature markets of North America and Western Europe in 2016 as well.Israel Chemicals Limited, Chemtura Corporation, Albemarle Corporation, Gulf Resources Inc., Tosoh Corporation, Tetra Technologies Inc., Tata Chemicals Limited and Hindustan Salts Limited are the key players in the market. Top players are continuously focusing on expanding their product offerings, especially in flame retardants segments. Collaborations and joint ventures are key business strategies to develop green brominated flame retardants.Request to view Table of Content:Long-term Outlook: PMR projects the global bromine market to witness moderate growth during the forecast period 2016-2024. APAC will continue to remain the largest market for bromine, growing at 4.1% revenue CAGR during the forecast period.To Buy Full Report for a Single User: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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
North and South Americas ICT Spends in Retail Banking Sector  Future Perspective to 2019

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SummaryNorth and South Americas ICT Spends in Retail Banking Sector  Future Perspective to 2019; report is a comprehensive outlook built using Kables extensive market research covering spends across ICT markets in North and South Americas. The statistics within the report provides a top-level overview and detailed insights into the operating environment of the Technology and Retail Banking sector in North and South Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United States).Kable has considered buying behavior / ICT spends across hardware, software, services, communications and staff. It acts as an essential tool for companies active across the ICT market and for new players considering entering the market; ensuring right business decision making.Request Sample Report Here:*This is an on-demand report and will be delivered within 2 working days (excluding weekends) of the purchase.Key FindingsNorth and South Americas ICT Spends in Retail Banking Sector  Future Perspective to 2019 provides the readers with potential spends value on ICT within Retail Banking sector of North and South Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United States) during the period 2016 through to 2019In particular, it provides information of potential spends by individual countries for the following categories at segment level: BPO Services Cloud Services Enterprise Communications Services IT Hardware IT Services SoftwareSynopsisNorth and South Americas ICT Spends in Retail Banking Sector  Future Perspective to 2019; is an exhaustive research report outlaying future perspectives of ICT project spends in North and South Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United States). The report provides year on year opportunity spends value within the Retail Banking sector; split across BPO Services, Cloud Services, Enterprise Communications Services, IT Hardware, IT Services, and Software categories and further at segment levels for the period 2016 to 2019.Browse Report Summary with TOC:Reasons To Buy Understand the opportunities for ICT market in North and South Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United States) Retail Banking sector and how it is set to change in future. Make effective business decisions by recognizing the opportunities within each of the core areas of ICT sector Realign your sales initiatives by understanding the current strategic objectives of the North and South Americas (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, United States) ICT Sector. Enhance your market segmentation with detailed breakdown of opportunities within selected technology categories.Enquiry Before Buying:About Us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.Contact Us:ReportBazzarMary Jane30 Wall Street, 8th floor,New York, NY 10005.US: +1 (212) 389-6363India: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
Micro Display Market to 2025-Industry Analysis, Applications, Opportunities and Trends |The Insight Partners

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The Micro Display Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Technology, Application, Industry Verticals report provides a detailed overview of the major factors impacting the global market with the market share analysis and revenues of various sub segments.Browse market data tables and in-depth TOC of the Micro Display Market to 2025 @Micro displays are a miniaturized display that have high resolution, user configurable technology and intense pixel density. These micro displays have major application in smart glasses, smart watches and smart bands in order to provide the consumers with high contrast and quality image ratio. Furthermore, this display technology also offer SEGA resolution (Super Extended Graphics Array) for enhanced angle visibility and better brightness.The report aims to provide an overview of Global Micro Display Market along with detailed segmentation of market by technology, application, industry verticals, and five major geographical regions. Global Micro Display market is expected to witness notable growth during the forecast period due to large deployment in the military & defense sector.Request Sample Copy @The objectives of Micro Display Market report are as follows: To provide overview of the global Micro Display market To analyze and forecast the global Micro Display market on the basis of Technology, Application and Industry Verticals. To provide market size and forecast till 2025 for overall Micro Display market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA), and South America (SAM), which are later sub-segmented across respective major countries To evaluate market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend To provide exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions To profiles key micro display players influencing the market along with their SWOT analysis and market strategiesInquire about discount on this report @Some of the important players in micro display market are Universal Display Corporation, Syndiant Inc., Sony Corporation, Microvision Inc., Micron Technology Inc., LG Display Co. Ltd., KopIn Corporation Inc., Himax Technology Inc., eMagin Corporation and AU Optronics Corp.About The Insight Partners:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.comThe Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Bariatric Surgery Devices Market, 2015-2025 by Segmentation Based on Product, Application and Region

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Market OverviewUndertaking a bariatric surgery has become relatively necessary for the majority of the global population, especially the obese and the overweight demographic. The fact that obesity is one of the most prevalent and endangering health disorders has increased the awareness about bariatric surgery and devices. The demand for bariatric surgery devices has registered a considerable surge by the virtue of growing preference for less-invasive bariatric surgeries. Additionally, the rising expenditure on weight loss procedures has promoted the sales of bariatric surgery devices at the individual level. Regional government initiatives are also influencing the growth of the global market for bariatric surgery devices.Demand for Bariatric Surgery Devices: Drivers & RestraintsThe high occurrence of obesity cases is regarded as the primary driver of the global bariatric surgery devices market. The growing awareness among the obsess population is expected to fuel the demand for bariatric surgery devices. Apart from that, the other factors driving the growth of the bariatric surgery devices market include,Availability of surgeons specialised in bariatric surgical techniquesSince bariatric surgeries are gaining demand, the existing as well as the new medical surgeons are developing and qualifying their surgical skills accordingly. As a result, the demand for bariatric surgery devices is experience a positive impact.Request Free Report Sample@Prevention of weight-related risksIncidence of diabetes, hypertension, gastric reflux disorders and blood pressure complications are at a higher risks among obese patients. As the surgeries intend on preventing occurrence of such diseases, the demand for bariatric surgery devices has surged extensively.Less-incisive methodsBariatric surgeries such as the sleeve gastrectomy require lower incision, which helps the patients adopt the surgeries without apprehension. This results more consumption of bariatric surgery devices by hospitals and weight-loss clinics.However, the implications arriving post-surgery are posing to be the major challenge in the global market for bariatric surgery devices. Since the surgical procedures are operated on the stomach and the intestines of the patient, there is a high risk of acquiring infections. Gastrointestinal ulcers, internal bleeding, small bowel obstruction, gastric band slippage, and hernias are some of the common implications that lower the use of bariatric surgery devices.Market Segmentation & Regional OutlookThe global market for bariatric surgery devices can be segmented on the basis the type of bariatric surgery and the device used.Based on the different kinds of bariatric surgery procedures, the market is classified into,Gastric Bypass SurgerySleeve Gastrectomy SurgeryGastric Banding SurgeryOthersBy device-type, the global market is further segmented into,Stapling DevicesGastric BandsGastric BalloonsBased on the regional segmentation, North America is expected to lead the global bariatric surgery devices market on the account of the high obesity levels in the US and Canada. Subsequently, the higher risks of diabetes and blood pressure disorders are equally inciting the demand for bariatric surgery devices. Asia Pacific & Japan are anticipated to expand at a remarkable CAGR, owing to the rising expenditure on weight-loss treatments in APEJ countries.Request For TOC@Key PlayersJohnson & Johnson, Covidien Plc, Cousin Biotech, and Pare Surgical, Inc., among others are the some of the key companies in the global bariatric surgery devices market. Pharmaceutical and medical devices leaders such as Medtronic has launched flagship devices for sleeve gastrectomy, indicating the positive expansion of the global market. The government funding is also playing a major role in providing manufacturers with the capital required to produce enhanced devices for bariatric surgeries.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
(Adds protest numbers)

By Radu-Sorin Marinas

BUCHAREST, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Romania's ombudsman has challenged in the Constitutional Court a cabinet decree passed earlier in the week decriminalising some graft offences, in an apparent watering down of an anti-corruption drive that sparked mass protests and international condemnation.

The decree would decriminalise abuse-of-power offences in which the sums do not exceed 200,000 lei ($48,000), potentially scuttling an ongoing trial of the governing Social Democrat party chief and benefiting dozens of other public officials.

Tens of thousands took to the streets of Bucharest and 70 other cities and towns across Romania on Friday in the fourth day of nationwide, peaceful protests in which people have demanded an immediate halt to the legislation.

"Repeal it, repeal it," "Corruption kills," read banners carried by demonstrators in Bucharest's main square in front of the government building, many waving the national red, yellow and blue flag.

About 120,000 gathered in Bucharest alone, according to riot police, and overall about 300,000 protested around the country and in several western European capitals.

The government has firmly rejected calls to rescind the decree, though cracks in cabinet unity emerged on Thursday with the resignation of a minister and a call from a vice-president of the ruling party for the measure to be withdrawn.

Ombudsman Victor Ciorbea's move echoed a plea from the Black Sea state's general prosecutor and added to a challenge by the CSM council of magistrates to the top court and by centre-right President Klaus Iohannis.

General Prosecutor Augustin Lazar said on Friday he welcomed the Constitutional Court challenge and that his office had its own case before the Court of Appeals (CA).

Experts say the CA itself could suspend enforcement of the decree as it can rule on the legality of such measures. The decree is due to take effect in a little over one week.

The government adopted the measure in an emergency procedure late on Tuesday, saying this was needed to align ex-Communist Romania with a European Union legal directive to member states that aims "to consolidate some aspects of presumption of innocence and the right to be present at trials".

Story continues

It has cited a need to ease overcrowding in Romanian prisons as further grounds for the "proposed legislative measures", as the government refers to the decree.

Ciorbea said there was no urgency to the decree as the EU's deadline for compliance with the measure is April next year.

"There would have been plenty of time to discuss such things in a regular, parliamentary procedure, so no one can claim any urgency. The court will now decide whether the decree is constitutional or anti-constitutional," he said.

The decree has triggered some of the biggest nationwide demonstrations since Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in an uprising that ended with his death and his wife by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989.

Eight Western powers including Germany and the United States have said they are deeply concerned the decree could undermine Romania's partnerships in the EU and NATO. Romania belongs to both, and hosts a U.S. anti-missile system, but has struggled to combat endemic graft and remains among the poorest EU states.

The Constitutional Court had given the government, parliament and the CSM until Feb. 7 to submit their opinion. -

The government said their legislative changes were also meant to alleviate overcrowding in Romanian prisons.

"As soon as we get all opinions and arguments, on Feb. 7 we will decide a timing for talks," court President Valer Dorneanu told reporters.

"(The court magistrates) will respect the constitution, the laws, our internal rules and our own conscience." (Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Impact of Existing and Emerging Advance Wound Dressing Market Trends And Forecast 2015-2025

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Advancement in Wound Dressing Market begins years before when the film and hydrocolloids introduced. Advanced Wound Dressing accelerates the healing process by keeping moist environment around the wound along with medicines like antibiotic and painkillers.Advanced Wound Dressing used to heal acute and chronic wounds especially in chronic wounds. Advanced wound dressing has shown very significant results in diabetic patients as well in chronic wounds that takes a long time or cannot be healed by traditional wound dressings.Advance Wound Dressing Market: Drivers and RestraintsAdvanced Wound Dressing market is growing as the number of diabetic and chronic patients increasing rapidly worldwide. Major drivers for the Advanced Wound Dressing Market is ageing population, increase in incident of accidents, increase in adoption rate of Advanced Wound Dressings like hydrocolloids and wound contact layers, continuously advance improvement in dressing like combination of antibiotics and painkillers with dressings. However, high price and lack of adequate reimbursement policies in developing countries are the main hindrance of the market growth.Request Free Report Sample@Advance Wound Dressing Market: SegmentationAdvance Wound Dressings global market is segmented into following types:HydrocolloidsNon-Antimicrobial Hydrocolloid DressingsAntimicrobial Hydrocolloid DressingsHydrofibersNon-Antimicrobial Hydrofiber DressingsAntimicrobial Hydrofiber DressingsAlginatesNon-Antimicrobial Alginate DressingsAntimicrobial Alginate DressingsHydrogelsNon-Antimicrobial Hydrogel DressingsAntimicrobial Hydrogel DressingsCollagensNon-Antimicrobial Collagen DressingsAntimicrobial Collagen DressingsFoamsNon-Antimicrobial Foam DressingsAntimicrobial Foam DressingsFilmsNon-Antimicrobial Film DressingsAntimicrobial Film DressingsWound Contact LayersNon-Antimicrobial Wound Contact LayersAntimicrobial Wound Contact LayersAdvance Wound Dressing Market: OverviewAdvance Wound Dressing Market is growing with a significant CAGR because of its high adoption rate in treatment of chronic wounds. Developing countries is growing with a higher CAGR compared to other parts of the world.Advance Wound Dressing Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic region, global Advanced Wound Dressing market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.North America contributes maximum in global Wound dressing Market Share. European countries showing a good growth as the adoption rate for Advance Wound Dressing is increasing for diabetic patients, burns, and chronic wounds. Asia Pacific is growing with a significant CAGR for Advance Wound Dressing market due to increase in healthcare awareness. Amongst the Asian countries, India and china are more promising due to large population pool and increased number of hospitals.Request For TOC@Advance Wound Dressing Market: Key PlayersKey players of Advance Wound Dressing market includes Smith & Nephew, Molnlycke Health Care, Paul Hartmann, Covidien, ConvaTec, B. Braun Melsungen, BSN medical, 3M Health Care, Systagenix Wound Management, Derma Sciences, Coloplast, Laboratoires Urgo, Johnson & Johnson, Kinetic Concepts, Inc and Others. Local Players also have a significant presence in Advance Wound Dressing Market.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Chiral Chromatography Columns Market Set to Grow Exponentially by 2020

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Chiral chromatography column is a variant of column chromatography in which the stationary phase contains a single enantiomer of a chiral compound rather than being achiral. In the recent year, due to the technological advancements in the chiral chromatography columns market has led to an increase in the application areas of chiral chromatography columns. For instance, chiral chromatography columns are widely used in different industries such as food and agriculture, pharmaceuticals, environmental testing and others. The chiral chromatography columns market is segmented on the basis of materials into plastic, glass and metals. The chiral chromatography columns market can be segmented on the basis of application into liquid chromatography systems, gas chromatography systems, supercritical fluid chromatography systems and thin-layer chromatography systems. The chiral chromatography columns market can be segmented on the basis of end-users into pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, food and beverages, hospitals and others. The liquid chromatography system is the fastest growing segment of the chiral chromatography columns market.A sample of this report is available upon request @North America represents the largest market for chiral chromatography columns. The major factors related to the growth of chiral chromatography columns market in the North America region include large number of conferences related to chiral chromatography columns, regular government investments in the chromatography instrumentation market and large number of research for drug and biological development. Europe is the second largest market for chiral chromatography columns. Asia-Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for chiral chromatography columns. A business-friendly regulatory policy in the Asia-Pacific region has led to an increase in the R&D activities in this region. Asia-Pacific is hub for clinical trials and has witnessed a high growth in the Clinical Research Organizations (CRO) industry in countries such as China and India. According to ClinicalTrials.gov, in June 2013, 11,496 clinical trials are conducted in the world out of which 3,588 clinical trials are being conducted in the Asia-Pacific region. Growth in the R&D activities and Clinical Research Organiztion industry boosting the demand for chiral chromatography columns.Increase in technological advancements, government investment in chromatography techniques and increasing tie-ups with research laboratories and academic institute are some of the major driving force for chiral chromatography columns market.Request to view Table of content @The major companies operating in the chiral chromatography columns market include Phenomenex, Inc., Waters Corporation, Agilent Technologies, Shimadzu Corporation, GE Healthcare and Sigma-Aldrich Corporation.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Saffron Market To Make Great Impact In Near Future by 2026

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Saffron is derived from the flowers of saffron crocus and it is used in different sectors such as spice in food, for dyeing in textile industry and as an herbal medicine for health care treatment. In context to its characteristics, it is rich in color, essence, taste, aroma, fragrance and also has higher calories in terms of carbohydrates, protein and fiber. Due to its exotic nature it has higher demand from food and beverage sector as an ingredient where it has wide application in culinary food, dairy, confectionery, beverages etc. In global level market, saffron is one of the priciest food spice in world and also considered as an expensive as gold. This super premium product saffron has very hot demand in global level market and its demand is fulfill by the Iran as it is the largest saffron producer of in the world. On the other side in terms of consumption, U.S. lead the global saffron market.Market Dynamics of Global Saffron Market:There are certain drivers which are supporting the demand of saffron in global level. Demand from the food and beverage sector is one of the key driver which is making impact on global saffron market. Increasing demand of saffron especially in multi-cuisine food at global level has increased its demand as a key food ingredient in the culinary dishes for making it more pungent. In consideration to trend, its herbal nature and its demand from health conscious consumers due to its rich nutritional components, natural quality and the properties which enables to cure with various health diseases is expected further drive the market growth in the near future.Request Free Report Sample@Market Segmentation of Global Saffron Market:Global saffron market is segmented on basis of different aspects such as form, application. On the basis of form, it is segmented into threads and powder. Thread segment covers the maximum share in global saffron market in terms of value and volume. In context to application it includes food and beverages, pharmaceutical, textile and cosmetics. Further the market segment of application is sub-segmented as in food and beverage it has wide application as food ingredient in culinary food, dairy products, confectionery and beverages. In context to its application as herbal medicine in pharmaceutical sector as it is rich in nutritional components which help to fight with health issues related to digestion, blood pressure, cold, cough etc. In textile industry, it is used for coloring or dying purposes whereas in cosmetic products, saffron is used as herbal ingredient in skin care products. On assessing the market share of global saffron market on pie chart, it is assessed that figures will impel towards the saffron application in food and beverage segment followed by pharmaceutical. Reason behind outstrips performance of saffron in global level market is because of its widespread applications in food, dairy, confectionery, beverages etc. Such as in food it is used as spice to enhance the flavor, color and taste of the food recipes. Similarly in dairy it is used in ice-creams, yogurt, flavored milk etc. In addition to this it also gaining its demand from confectionery as it is used as key ingredient in sweets and desserts and in beverage segment it is has application in flavored drinks, liquors etc.Regional Segment of Global Saffron Market:In perspective to regional segment it is segmented into seven regions of the world which includes North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. More than 90% of the worlds saffron is produced by Iran followed by India and Spain. In terms of consumption, North America and European region accounts to highest share of consumption in global level market.Request For TOC@Major Market Players in Global Saffron Market:Major market players of Saffron are Grandor Company, Gohar Nab Sara Co., Baby Brand Saffron, Great American Spice Company, Rowhani Saffron, Green Saffron, Royal Saffron Company, King Kesariya, Safrante Global Company and HEA & Co Spanish Saffron are some of the largest saffron sellers of the world.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Greek Yogurt Market Growth and Segments, 2016-2026

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Currently, greek yogurt is one of the most popular dairy products across the globe. Since greek yogurt is prepared through the straining process in order to separate the yogurt from the excess watery whey, it is also known as strained yogurt. The straining process makes the yogurt much thicker and creamier as compared to the regular or traditional yogurt. Greek yogurt contributes significantly to the growth of the global yogurt market. This is mainly attributed to its benefits such as higher protein and lower carbohydrates value as compare to traditional yogurt. Presently, greek yogurt is the highest growing product category among others including regular yogurt and yogurt drinks and second holds largest market share in terms of revenue, after traditional yogurt in the overall yogurt market. Demand for greek yogurt market is expected to increase in the next five to six forecast years owing to increasing lunch of new product with variety of flavours such as blueberry, vanilla, honey, chocolate and others.Request Free Report Sample@Global Greek Yogurt Market Segmentation:On the basis of product type, the global greek yogurt market is segmented into regular greek yogurt and non-fat greek yogurt, which is made from skim milk. Owing to increase the consumption of fat free and healthy products, non-fat greek yogurt products are gaining increasing popularity among the consumers.On the basis of distribution channel, the global greek yogurt market is segmented into supermarket/ hypermarket, grocery stores, convenience stores, and online retailing. In terms of revenue contribution, supermarket / hypermarket is expected to hold the highest share among all the other segments. However, online retail for global greek yogurt market witnesses steady growth in the forecasted years. This is attributed to increasing visibility of greek yogurt especially through online retailing.Geographically, global greek yogurt market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, and Middle East and Africa (MEA). North America and Western Europe are the two most lucrative market for greek yogurt in the world. In North America around half of the yogurt sold is greek yogurt.Global Greek Yogurt Market Dynamics:Increase in health consciousness among consumer has led to shift in eating preference towards healthy and nutrition food products. Availability of high nutritional value, which includes high protein, probiotics, vitamin such as vitamin D, B12, minerals such as potassium, iodine and calcium in greek yogurt is key factor that has led to increased adoption of greek yogurt among consumers and thus, fuelling the global greek yogurt market growth.Increasing application of greek yogurt is another growth driver for greek yogurt market since it is used for various medium in different countries. For instance, in Mediterranean region greek yogurt is mainly used as savoury but in the US, Mexico and Canada it is used as sweet snack with added fruits and flavours. Greek yogurt is also used in making many sauces for instance beef and lamb sauces. Greek yogurt is also used as a substitute products, for instance it is used as a substitute product for sour cream, cream cheese and butter. Thus, increasing its application among food products.Among dairy products, greek yogurt is a good option for the consumers who have slight lactose intolerance, since in the production process much of the lactose is removed from the greek yogurt. This leads to drive the scope of greek yogurt among such consumers globally. However, high lactose intolerance is restrain for adoption of greek yogurt, thus restricting the market growth. There is a high opportunity to expand and increase the revenue for greek yogurt in the Asia Pacific excluding japan and Middle East countries.Visit For TOC@Global Greek Yogurt Market Key Players:Some of the key players operating in the global greek yogurt market are Chobani LLC, Stonyfield Farm, Inc, FAGE International S.A., GROUPE DANONE, and General Mills, Inc. Owing to have strong distribution and marketing strategies companies are able to meet the increasing demand for global greek yogurt.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.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Endoscope Reprocessing Device Market Forecast and Segments, 2016-2026

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Endoscope are important diagnostic tool and therapeutic tool in modern age. Endoscope reprocessing device are used for cleaning, sterilization and disinfection of an endoscope. Physician uses endoscope for number of time to diagnose and treat various disease. Endoscope are used on number of patients, after use it is contaminated with microorganism and it is necessary to clean it and make it microorganism free. To avoid risk of infection endoscope must be sterile before use. Endoscope are cleaned with special care and cleaned by a professional person. Proper technic and methods are performed to clean the endoscope. Design of endoscope are in such a way that it is reprocessed easily and properly. Flexible endoscope poses high level of microorganism, because they are used in various cavity of body for diagnosis. Each endoscope have been different type of cleaning and sterilization process, it is given by manufacturer on the label of the product. For cleaning, sterilisation and disinfection of endoscope and use of endoscope reprocessing device, one must follow the manufacturers direction and various standard organisation process to achieve the micro- organism free cleaning and to avoid the future complications.Endoscope Reprocessing Device Market: Drivers and RestraintsEndoscope reprocessing device market is expected to rise due to increase in the number of the endoscope surgical procedures and also rise in the hospital acquired infections. Apart from this, increased awareness about sterilization and disinfection and ageing population who are more prone to disorders and requires frequent medical check- ups, this positively impact endoscope reprocessing device market over the forecast period. However limitation in cleaning the endoscope such as heat sensitive material or chemical sensitive material, skilled and professional person are required to use the device to avoid future complications may hamper the growth of endoscope reprocessing device market over the forecast period.Request Free Report Sample@Endoscope Reprocessing Device Market: SegmentationGlobal endoscope reprocessing device market has been segmented on the basis of product type, modality, end user and region.Based on the product type, the endoscope reprocessing device market is segmented into the following:Ultrasonic washersPasteurizersWasher-disinfectorsSterilizersAutomated endoscope reprocessors (AERs)Single basin automated endoscopic reprocessorsDouble basin automated endoscopic reprocessorsBased on the modality, the endoscope reprocessing device market is segmented into the following:Stand- alone endoscopic reprocessorsBench top endoscopic reprocessorsBased on the end user, the endoscope reprocessing devicemarket is segmented into the following:Hospital500 Bedded+250-499 BeddedLess than 250Ambulatory Surgical CentersSpecialty ClinicsEndoscope Reprocessing Device Market: OverviewEndoscope reprocessing device market is changing continuously due to increase in the uses of endoscope in various disease and disorders. Furthermore several companies in the market place increasing their product portfolio in endoscope reprocessing device market may change the market dynamics over a given period of forecast. By product type segment such as automated endoscope reprocessors (AERs) in the global endoscope reprocessing device market are expected to grow in positive traction and success rate in cleaning endoscopes. Automated endoscope reprocessors (AERs) has two types i.e. single basin automated endoscopic reprocessors and double basin automated endoscopic reprocessors are like to show positive impact on the market. By modality, bench top endoscopic reprocessors are tend to show higher growth rate as they are easy to handle and can be move freely with less efforts. The bench top endoscopic reprocessors can perform at bedside of patient or in Operation Theater.Endoscope Reprocessing Device Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically, endoscope reprocessing device market is classified into regions viz. North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Japan, Middle East and Africa. North America and Europe will remain key markets for endoscope reprocessing device market due to high number of the endoscope surgical procedures and strong presence of big players in the market. Asia Pacific is tend to show a positive growth owing to large number of patient pool, rising geriatric population and increased scope medical tourism.Request For TOC@Endoscope Reprocessing Device Market: Key PlayersSome of the key players in the Global endoscope reprocessing device market are STERIS Plc., Cilag GmbH International, Soluscope, ENDO-TECHNIK W.Griesat GmbH, Getinge AB, Wassenburg Medical B.V., Steelco S.p.A., MEDIVATORS Inc. (Cantel Medical Corp.), Johnson & Johnson and Minntech Corp.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Coronary Stents Market Estimated to Register a CAGR of 6.6% Between 2016 and 2026

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Future Market Insights provides an in-depth analysis of the global coronary stents market in a new report titled Coronary Stents Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026. Coronary stents is a billion dollars industry that occupies a significant market share in the cardiovascular market. In terms of revenue, the global coronary stents market is estimated to reach a market valuation of US$ 6,002.9 Mn by 2016 end and is expected to register a CAGR of 6.6% during the forecast period. The global coronary stents market is expected to represent incremental opportunity of US$ 5,318.7 Mn between 2016 and 2026.According to Future Market Insights, factors such as an increase in the prevalence of coronary artery disease, obesity, and minimal invasive procedures; and an increasing preference for advanced stenting procedures by cardiologists are some of the factors fuelling the growth of the global coronary stents market. Economic factors such as an increase in awareness campaigns about cardiovascular diseases conducted by government bodies, rapid progress in medical technology, and extended reimbursement support are also expected to boost the growth of the global coronary stents market over the forecast period.Segmentation highlightsThe global coronary stents market is segmented on the basis of Product Type (Drug Eluting Stent, Bare Metal Stent, Bioresorbable Vascular Stent); Raw Material (Cobalt Chromium, Stainless Steel, Platinum-Chromium, Nickel-Titanium, Polymer); and End Use (Hospitals, Ambulatory Surgical Centres, Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratories).The Drug Eluting Stent product type segment is estimated to be valued at US$ 8,750.2 Mn by 2026. The Bioresorbable Vascular Stent segment is estimated to account for 11.0% revenue share by 2016 endRequest Free Report Sample@The Polymer raw material segment is estimated to account for the highest market share of 29.2% by the end of 2016. The Cobalt Chromium segment is expected to register a CAGR of 5.6% during the forecast periodThe Hospitals end use segment is anticipated to account for 70.9% value share of the global coronary stents market by the end of 2016. The Cardiac Catheterisation Laboratories segment is estimated to be valued at US$ 2,526.8 Mn by the end of 2026, registering a CAGR of 8.0% over the forecast periodRegional projectionsThe global coronary stents market is segmented on the basis of region into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, MEA, and Japan. The APEJ market is estimated to be valued at US$ 4,165.2 Mn by 2026, exhibiting a CAGR of 8% during the forecast period. The North America coronary stents market is expected to dominate the global coronary stents market in terms of revenue by 2016 end and is likely to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. The coronary stents market in North America is estimated to account for 29.2% market share of the global coronary stents market by 2016 end. The North America region is likely to be the second most attractive market with an attractiveness index of 2.5 during the forecast period. The markets in North America, Western Europe, and APEJ represent the highest growth opportunities in the global coronary stents market owing to a large patient population and an increasing demand for coronary stents in these regions.Send An Enquiry@Vendor insightsThe global coronary stents market report profiles some of the top companies operating in the market. Leading market players featured in the report include Terumo Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Medtronic, Vascular Concepts, B. Braun Melsungen AG, Biotronik SE & Co. KG, Abbott Laboratories, Biosensors International Group, Ltd., Hexacath, and Stentys SA. Key market players are focussing on increasing their footprints in emerging markets such as Asia Pacific and are expanding their manufacturing facilities and distribution network to gain a larger share of the global coronary stents market.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Micro Guide Catheters Market 2016 Top Manufacturers in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa

Micro Guide Catheters Market

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The report, titled Global Micro Guide Catheters Market 2016 is a methodical research study based on the Micro Guide Catheters market, analyzing the competitive framework of the industry in the world. Using efficient analytical tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis, the report provides a comprehensive assessment of the Micro Guide Catheters market.The report estimates the market size in terms of volume (kilo tons) and revenue (US$) produced, whereas, the key segments and the geographical subdivision of the Micro Guide Catheters market are also analyzed in detail. The market drivers, limitations, and growth prospects of each segment are discussed in this report and, based on that, analysts have determined the future of the market for Micro Guide Catheters in the global arena.Get full report with TOC @The report covers each aspect of the market for Micro Guide Catheters in globally, starting from the basic information about the market and advancing to the various criteria on the basis of which the market is classified. The major applications of the Micro Guide Catheters market are also discussed in the report.The report studies the Micro Guide Catheters market by evaluating the market chain, prevalent policies, and regulations as well as the manufacturers, their manufacturing chain, cost structures, and contribution in the industry. The regional markets for the global Micro Guide Catheters market are examined by analyzing the pricing of products in the region compared to the profit generated. The production capacity, demand and supply, logistics, and the historical performance of the market in the given region is also evaluated in this market report.Get Free sample report @The report determines the leading players in the global market. The company profiles of the major participants operating in the global Micro Guide Catheters market have been reviewed in this study.Market Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651Email: sales@marketresearchstore.com
Asia Pacific Automotive Telematics Market Revenue is expected to reach US$ 15,248 Mn by 2020

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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.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.Request Free Report Sample@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.comWebsite:
Hydro-processing Catalysts Market Trends and Segments 2014-2020

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In last two decades, the business of refining catalyst has grown from regional to global level. Refinery product values are dependent on process catalysts of refined products, petrochemical products and chemicals alongwith other refinery operations. One of the major concerns in the refinery is to reduce the sulphur content to the required limit. Hydro-processing catalysts (HPC) are primarily consumed in the hydro-processing operation of crude oil fractions. Such crude oil fractions include kerosene, naphtha and diesel. As a common practice, hydro-processing of crude oil fractionsis carried out at an elevated temperature and pressure.Hydro-processing is required to remove pollutants such as sulphur, heavy metals and nitrogen from fuel oils. These catalysts also help in the catalytic hydrocracking process to crack larger hydrocarbon molecules into smaller sizes,to be used as fuel oils. Thus, hydro-processing catalysts enable conversion of heavy feedstock into lighter products for efficient processing. Hydro-processing catalysts market is the fastest growing refinery catalysts market segment in the world. In addition, hydro-processing catalysts supplement the process control and operational efficiency improvement activities. Therefore, it is expected that the hydro-processing catalyst market will dominate the global refinery catalyst market by 2020.The global hydro-processing catalysts market can be categorized on the basis of its product type as molybdenum oxides, cobalt oxides, nickel oxidesand tungsten oxides. These metal oxides are carried on a carrier or matrix of silica, alumina and silica/alumina. Further, global hydro-processing catalysts market can also be categorized on the basis of their applications such as creating cleaner fuels, ultra-low sulphur levels in diesel fuels (ULSD) and others. On the basis of technology, global hydro-processing catalysts market can be segmented as hydro-treating catalysts, hydrogenation catalysts, hydrocracking catalysts, isomerisation catalyst and reforming catalyst. Among these, hydro-treating catalysts are dominant segment at present,accounting for more than half of the global hydro-processing catalysts market.Request Free Report Sample@Refiners are more focusing to maximize residue feedstock yield through hydro-processing catalysts as petroleum product prices are rising globally. This is one of the key supply side drivers of the global hydro-processing catalysts market. Moreover, stringent environmental regulations and legislations are expanding, which, in turn, affects the heaviercrude processing and sulphur elimination process market.Enhanced refinery capacities coupled with the rising oil production are driving the growth of global hydro-processing catalysts market.Environmental fuel specifications regulations introduced by Europe, the U.S.and few Asia Pacific countries have been driving the global hydro-processing catalysts market.Further, developed countries have mandate to reduce sulphur content whereassulphur restrictions are implemented in the developing countries such as India, China and Mexico. As hydro-processing catalysts are advantageous to reduce sulphur content, these countries are likely to open up opportunities for hydro-processing catalysts market.Due to presence of giant oil and gas chemical manufacturers in the refinery catalyst market; the market competition is quite high. Expansion of production facilities in oil producing fields along with the strategic alliances are few of the major market strategies in the global hydro-processing catalysts market.Request For TOC@Some of the major market participants of global hydro-processing catalysts market include HaldorTopse, W. R. Grace and Company, Albemarle Corporation, Axens, UOP- Honeywell International Inc., Chevron Corporation, Royal Dutch Shell plc, BASF SE, Criterion Catalysts & Technologies, Criterion catalysts & Technologies and others. Among these, BASF has increased its R&D efforts since it acquired Engelhard. Further, BASF SE has come up with new developments in the processing of residue to increase the quality of yield.W.R. Grace and Companyhas introduced new products inthe hydro-processing catalysts market in the past five years. Thus, it is clear that global hydro-processing catalysts market participants are focused to expand their business through innovative product launches with specific market application. These innovative products include catalyst to eliminate sulphur content upto mandate limits. The worldwide hydro-processing catalysts market stands ready to meet the challenges, where energy costs significantlyfluctuate. However,fluctuating raw material prices, price spike, price collapse along with the governments enact legislation for certain related products or technologies, the demand of hydro-processing catalyst market are expected to undergo fluctuation.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.616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Hand Hygiene Market - Emergence Of Advanced Technologies And Global Industry Analysis

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Hand hygiene is the act of keeping one's hands clean with water, soap, or other related substance to remove soil, dirt and microorganisms. There are high importance of hand hygiene for health of individual and community. It is relevant in all establishments such as home, workplace and schools however the significance of hand hygiene is far above the ground in hospitals or other healthcare related setup.Download PDF Brochure:Hand washing helps to prevent many airborne diseases such as measles, influenza, tuberculosis and chickenpox. At the same time high protection against diseases transmitted through fecal-oral route and direct physical contact can be ensured by it. Hand hygiene in any setup includes different products such as soap and detergents, hand antiseptic and antiseptic rubs by various techniques similar to washing, rubbing and drying.All the leading healthcare related organizations such as World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have stated specific guidelines for hand hygiene with specific attention on healthcare set ups considering the burden of health care-associated infections all across the world. According to CDC, in the United States alone, patients in hospitals gets 722,000 infections each year, which can be reiterated as one in every 25 patients gets infected with some kind of infection in hospital. The infections acquired in hospitals sometime can cause severe complications; hand hygiene is one of the important tools to prevent these conditions. Tufts Medical Center, the prestigious medical center in United States estimates that approximately USD 4.5 billion extra cost is added every year because of hospital acquired infection in U. S. alone.The requirement to prevent and manage healthcare acquired infections (HCAI) affecting millions of people every year in the world is driving the hand hygiene market all across the globe. On the other hand, major outbreaks of various infectious diseases in many countries serving towards the positive growth for market. However, potential for hand hygiene market fluctuates across the regions and geographies. Poor awareness, lack of education, and training on hand hygiene, along with lack of standard procedure for hand hygiene in many countries hindering the growth prospects of the market.Hand hygiene market can be segmented according to different categories such as regional geography and types of products used for washing hands in different establishments. Geographically, this market can be segmented in four regions namely North American, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World, out of all these segments North America region have highest contribution in terms of value because of high awareness towards hygiene, standard guidelines and training to healthcare workers and general public.Followed by this Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World respectively are major segments of the market. This market can also be segmented according to types of products used such as hand wash, soaps, detergents, antiseptic wipes, rubs and others. Recently hand hygiene compliance monitoring systems are introduced in the market where institutions using these kinds of devices have claimed that number of infection cases have drastically reduced.Currently various established companies in hospital and healthcare based business catering varied range of products such as hand wash, surgical sanitizers, antiseptic soaps and other hand hygienic products in this market out of which companies such as Kutol, Whiteley Corporation, Deb Group, GOJO Industries, Inc., Medline Industries, Inc., EcoHydra are leading contributors, on the other hand Meritech and Kimberly-Clark are major companies in hygiene monitoring systems.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:
Google Diane Greene

Snap just filed for a $3 billion IPO, giving us a peek behind the curtain at the company that makes Snapchat.

And what we've learned is that, earlier this very week, Snap entered into a $400 million-a-year deal with the Google Cloud Platform, to provide the infrastructure and services that keep the Snapchat app running.

"The agreement has an initial term of five years and we are required to purchase at least $400.0 million of cloud services in each year of the agreement, though for each of the first four years, up to 15% of this amount may be moved to a subsequent year," says Snap's S-1 IPO filing.

For context, Snap says it generated $404.5 million in revenue in 2016.

Google Cloud Platform is what technical types would call a "public cloud" service, where engineers like Snapchat's can pay by the minute for unlimited supercomputing services. To this day, Snapchat remains one of the largest users of Google's cloud infrastructure, although it's recently brought a data center specialist in house.

Importantly, the terms of Snap's agreement with Google allow it to use other public cloud providers, too. An example of a company that uses more than one provider is HTC, which as of mid-2o15 used Amazon Web Services for some stuff, Google Cloud Platform for a lot of its image processing, and Microsoft Azure in China, where Google doesn't do business.

At the same time, though, if Snap doesn't meet its $400 million per year spending minimums with Google, it's on the hook for the difference. It's a big deal for Google, which has been jockeying for position with the leading $10 billion Amazon Web Services cloud and the second-place Microsoft Azure.

Notably, Alphabet's investment arm, Google Capital, previously made an investment in Snap.

Google declined to comment.

NOW WATCH: WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell on Snapchat becoming the 'third force' to Google and Facebook





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"Early Toxicity Testing" 2017 Drug Development spend Around USD 50 billion (Market Players Accelrys, BD Biosciences, Beckman Coulter, Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Gene Logic, Invitrogen, Covance, IDBS, Thermo Fisher)

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Albany, New York, Jan 03,2017"Early Toxicity Testing Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2016 - 2019" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description-Toxicity is an extent to which a particular substance can damage the living organism; it is important parameter to be evaluated during all stages of drug development. Toxicity is one of the major reasons for failure of drug development and rejection of drug candidate. Toxicity can be because of dosage, form, half life and other parameters of drug. Since long time toxicity is measured at the later stage of the drug development process but considering higher rejection rate of drug in recent years citing high toxicity level and cost impact of later stage failure, companies started early toxicity testing and taken measures accordingly to reduce the attrition rate in drug discovery.Get Sample Report With TOC @Early toxicity testing can be of three types namely in vivo, in vitro and in silico. In vivo toxicity testing is performed on living animals, in in vitro technique testing is performed in laboratories using biochemical assays and cellular assays without animals whereas in in silico technique testing is done by data analysis on computer with the help of data mining and data modeling tools. Out of all these techniques, there are significant advancements happened in in vivo technique; while other two techniques are still in development stage. According to industry leader, cost of drug those get rejected because of late toxicity is 40% of overall drug development spending, where there is around USD 50 billion spend on drug development put together. Many organizations which are working towards environment and animal protection are opposing in vivo approach, and are pressurizing governments to make companies opt for in silico approach. Several initiatives such as FDAs Critical Path Initiative and the European Unions Seventh Research Framework Programme are aimed at improving toxicity evaluation process during drug development stages.Therefore in coming years there may be considerable shift of paradigm from in vivo to in vitro and in silico. There are some studies conducted for usage of nanoparticles in toxicological testing, along with this developments are also in progress for producing 3 dimensional human tissues for toxicity testing. Organovo is one of the players focused on replacing animal testing and biological assays by producing model of human liver. This model mimics the form and functions of human liver and therefore can be used for toxicological testing.Early toxicity testing market can be segmented in various categories such as on the basis of regional geography, approach of technique and according to market share by major companies. According to technical approach early toxicity testing market is segmented in in vivo, in vitro and in silico, among all these in vivo market contributing highest followed by in vitro and in silico. Pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and companies related to food products are main customers for early toxicity detection testing players.Some of the market players in this industry segment are Accelrys, BD Biosciences, Beckman Coulter, Inc., Charles River Laboratories, Gene Logic, Invitrogen, Covance, IDBS, Thermo Fisher.This research report analyzes this market depending on its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeRest of the World This report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis. Reasons for Buying this ReportThis report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamicsIt provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growthIt provides a six-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to growIt helps in understanding the key product segments and their futureIt provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitorsIt helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segmentsIt provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsResearchMoz 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.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Nanomaterials in Cosmetic and Personal Care Market - Global Industry Analysis & Key Insights by 2024

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Nanomaterials are being increasingly adopted across cosmetic and personal care industries owing to their superior physical and chemical properties. They are usually added in small quantities to enhance the performance of the base material. The majority of the nanomaterials commercially available in the market are at the nascent stage of the product lifecycle. Globally, various private organization along with government institutions are pouring large funds into research and development activities, which is resulting in the advancements of existing technologies. Therefore, the global nanomaterials in cosmetic and personal care market is likely to witness a phenomenal growth in the near future.Download PDF Brochure:The research report on the global nanomaterials in cosmetic and personal care market is a professional study collated using a various number of paid and unpaid sources including presentations, white papers, and journals. It provides a detailed description of the drivers, restraints, and opportunities and the extent to which they impact the growth of the market. For a clear understanding, the report segments the market on the basis of principal material, nanomaterial preparation form, and geography. It offers quantitative and qualitative insights into the competitive landscape of the market. It profiles prominent players in the market along with their revenue generation, latest developments, business strategies, and contact information.Global Nanomaterials in Cosmetic and Personal Care Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe rising demand for anti-aging products utilizing nanocarrier delivery systems is triggering the adoption of nanomaterials in cosmetic and personal care industries. Moreover, the increasing demand for titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles in the manufacturing of sun care cosmetics is working in favor of the growth of the market. The growing availability of several methods in the field of nanotechnology and the introduction of novel methods for fabricating the patterned nanostructures are providing a fillip to the growth of the market.Nanomaterials have the potential to enhance the quality of products. However, these materials can potentially be hazardous to the environment and human health and safety. The rising concerns are limiting the widespread adoption of nanomaterials in cosmetic and personal care industries. In addition, stringent regulatory scenario is hampering the growth of the market. Furthermore, the high cost of implementing nanotechnology is adversely affecting the growth of the market.Global Nanomaterials in Cosmetic and Personal Care Market: Geographical SegmentationThe regional markets analyzed in the report are North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. North America will be a prominent market for nanomaterials in cosmetic and personal care industries. The growth of the region can be attributed to the increasing investments in research activities and high consumer affordability. Europe will also account for a large share in the market during the forecast period. The declining prices of nanomaterials due to the escalating mass production are contributing to the growth of the region.Asia Pacific is likely to rise at a noteworthy CAGR during the same period. The booming demand for sun protection cosmetics and increasing funding by governments towards nanotechnology research are providing a significant boost to the growth of the market. The demand for nanomaterials is strong in emerging countries such as India and China.Companies Mentioned in the Report:The key players in the global nanomaterials in cosmetic and personal care market established companies in the cosmetics and personal care business including Procter and Gamble, L'Oreal, Unilever, Henkel, Avon, Kao Corp, Zelens, Johnson and Johnson, and Sircuit Cosmeceuticals.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:
2017 Network "SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Ecosystem" Most fastest Compound Annual Growth Rate 46% in 2017-20 with Explanation on Mobile Operators And Internet Service

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Albany, New York, Jan 03,2017"The SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Ecosystem: 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts" The Report covers current Industries Trends, Worldwide Analysis, Global Forecast, Review, Share, Size, Growth, Effect.Description-While the advantages of SDN (Software Defined Networking) and network virtualization are well known in the enterprise IT and data center world, both technologies also bring a host of benefits to the telecommunications service provider community. Not only can these technologies help address the explosive capacity demand of mobile traffic, but they can also reduce the CapEx and OpEx burden faced by service providers to handle this demand by diminishing reliance on expensive proprietary hardware platforms. The recognition of these benefits has led to the emergence of the NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) concept that seeks to virtualize and effectively consolidate many service provider network elements onto multi-tenant industry-standard servers, switches and storage.Get Sample Report With TOC @Mobile operators and internet service providers have already begun making SDN and NFV investments in a number of functional areas including but not limited to EPC/mobile core, IMS, policy control, CPE (Customer Premises Equipment), CDN (Content Delivery Network) and transport networks. SNS Research estimates that service provider SDN and NFV investments will grow at a CAGR of 46% between 2016 and 2020. As service providers seek to reduce costs and virtualize their networks, these investments will eventually account for over $18 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.The SDN, NFV & Network Virtualization Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the SDN, NFV and network virtualization ecosystem including enabling technologies, key trends, market drivers, challenges, use cases, deployment case studies, regulatory landscape, standardization, opportunities, future roadmap, value chain, ecosystem player profiles and strategies. The report also presents market size forecasts from 2016 till 2030. The forecasts are segmented for 10 submarkets, 2 user base categories, 9 use cases, 6 regions and 34 countries.* Key Findings: The report has the following key findings:SNS Research estimates that service provider SDN and NFV investments will grow at a CAGR of 46% between 2016 and 2020, eventually accounting for over $18 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.At present, virtualized CPE, EPC/mobile core, IMS and policy control platforms represent nearly 70% of all VNF (Virtual Network Function) software investments.SNS Research estimates that by 2020, nearly 80% of all new EPC investments will be virtualized.Although the use of SDN is widespread in the enterprise and data center domain, service providers are only beginning to adopt the technology to programmatically manage their networks.Investments on orchestration platforms will account for over $1.6 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020, representing nearly 10% of all service provider SDN and NFV spending.The growing adoption of SDN and NFV has created a natural opportunity for silicon and server OEMs to combine their server platforms with a networking business stream. Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:SDN, NFV and network virtualization ecosystemMarket drivers and barriersEnabling technologies, protocols, architecture and key trendsUse cases, applications, PoC (Proof of Concept) and deployment case studiesCapEx saving potential of SDN and NFVOrchestration and management platformsRegulatory landscape and standardizationIndustry roadmap and value chainProfiles and strategies of over 240 leading ecosystem playersStrategic recommendations for ecosystem playersMarket analysis and forecasts from 2015 till 2030 Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets, user base and use case categories: SubmarketsSDN Hardware & SoftwareNFV Hardware & SoftwareOther Network Virtualization Software User Base CategoriesService ProvidersEnterprises & Data Centers NFV SubmarketsHardware AppliancesOrchestration & Management SoftwareVNF Software Service Provider SDN SubmarketsSDN-Enabled Hardware AppliancesOrchestration & Management SoftwareSDN Controller SoftwareNetwork Applications Software Enterprise & Data Center SDN SubmarketsSDN-Enabled Hardware AppliancesSDN-Enabled Virtual SwitchesSDN Controller Software Service Provider Use Case CategoriesCDNCPEData CenterEPC/Mobile CoreFixed Access NetworksIMS & VoLTEPolicy, OSS & BSSRAN (Radio Access Network)Transport & Backhaul Regional MarketsAsia PacificEastern EuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaWestern EuropeResearchMoz 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.Researchmoz Global Pvt. Ltd.90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States,Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free),Tel: +1-518-621-2074
Saudi Arabia Pharmaceutical Market to Grow at a CAGR of 9.0% by 2026

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The significant rise in lifestyle-related diseases and the developments in healthcare infrastructure are expected to influence the demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia. In 2016, the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is anticipated to procure value worth US$ 5,209.5 Mn at a y-o-y growth of 6.0 % over 2015. The mounting demand for branded drug products will continue to incite the growth of the Saudi Arabian pharmaceutical market in 2016.The demand for pharmaceuticals in Saudi Arabia is expected to register substantial growth owing to the increasing penetration of health insurance companies and the rising incidence rate of non-communicable diseases. Furthermore, the exceptional rise in the per capita income of Saudi Arabia is also expected to foster the demand for branded pharmaceutical drugs. Another key factor driving the growth of the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is the countrys strategic move to allow 100% FDI in the pharmaceuticals sector. Although, the shortage of profound indigenous research capacity in the pharmaceutical industry and the delayed registration of drug and medicine patents is expected to limit the expansion of the market in 2016 and beyond.Based on the product type, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is expected to witness an upsurge in the prescription-type branded drug products. In terms of market value, the branded drugs are estimated to reach US$ 2,760.8 Mn by 2016-end. The demand for generic drugs is projected to secure steady growth, attributing to the insisting promotion of generic drug adoption by healthcare insurance providers.Request Free Report Sample@On the basis of the diseases, the pharmaceutical drugs used for treatment of cardiovascular diseases will continue exhibiting robust growth in 2016. The demand for cardiovascular medications will continue to surge due to the prominence of circulatory disorders in Saudi Arabia. Additionally, the rising prevalence of disorders related to body sugar levels is expected to make diabetes a rapidly growing disease-based sub-segment in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market.The pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is also segmented on the basis of distribution channel, where retail pharmacies will continue to account for 80% market share compared to hospital pharmacies. The westernised modernisation of retail pharmacies in Saudi Arabia has led to the availability of a wide range drugs and medicinal products, thereby attaining a considerable growth in the retail pharmacy sub-segment in 2016 and further.The rising resource potential in Saudi Arabia is projected to positively reform the production environment for pharmaceutical manufacturers. In order to expand the markets size, structuring alliances with well-established native companies is predicted to be a key strategy for global pharmaceutical leaders. The key players in the Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market include Novartis AG, SPIMACO, Pfizer Inc., and Glaxosmithkline plc., Jamjoom Pharma, and Tabuk Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Co. among others.Send An Enquiry@Long-term Outlook: The Saudi Arabia pharmaceutical market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% over the forecast period 2016-2026. In terms of market value, the pharmaceutical market in Saudi Arabia is estimated to be worth US$ 12,281.4 Mn by the end of 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.comWebsite:
Global Fungicides Market Estimated to Grow Strongly by 2022

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Fungicides is a type of pesticide used to kill the fungi or fungi spores. Fungicides finds major use in the agricultural sector for crop protection. It is used to prevent the damage to crops caused by the attack of fungicides. It gives higher yield with better quality of the crops. It is also used to kill the fungal infections in animals. The use of fungicides differ according to the type of crop. Different types of fungicides available are translaminar, systemic and contact fungicides. The active ingredients include chlorothalonil, mancozeb, prochloraz, propicanazole, prochloraz, propicanazole and many more. One of the most common active ingredient in the fungicides is sulfur. Some fungicides are dangerous to human health and so the major laws governing the use of fungicides in different countries is expected to hamper the growth of global fungicides market in the near future. However, the global fungicides market is expected to witness a moderate single digit growth in the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @The most significant demand driver for the global fungicides market is the increasing demand for fungicides in the crop protection sector for ensuring higher crop yields. The growing population is also expected to be the major driving factor for the global fungicides market. The increasing concerns pertaining to the disease control is anticipated to drive the global fungicides market. The shrinking arable land and the growing demand for food is projected to increase the demand for fungicides, thereby driving the global fungicides market.The growing technological advancements in the seeds is expected to restrain the global fungicides market in the upcoming years. The use of genetically modified crops is projected to restrain the growth of global fungicides market in the near future.The development of new organic fungicides is expected to create new opportunities in terms of revenue for the major players in the global fungicides market.Request to view Table of content @The global fungicides market is segmented into five key regions on the basis of geography as North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Asia pacific holds the largest market share in the global fungicides market, owing to the large agricultural business in this region. India and China is expected to be the maximum market share holding countries in the global fungicides market. Use of fungicides in the European countries is also expected to increase in the near future due to the stringent regulatory authorities in this region. The consumption of fungicides is also anticipated to escalate in the European countries in the upcoming years. The consumption of fungicides in Middle East and Africa is projected to demonstrate a stagnant growth in the forecast period.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Automotive Steering System Industry is Grow with CAGR of 6%, VENDORS- Mitsubishi Electric and TRW Automotive

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Scope of the reportThis study provides an overview of the Automotive Steering Systems industry, tracking market segments across the categorized five geographic regions. The report provides a six-year forecast for the market size in terms of value for North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America. The scope of the study segments the Automotive steering system market based on Vehicle Type, Steering System, Components, & End market.Market HighlightsSteering is the connection point between car and driver. It plays a key role in the vehicles personality and performance. Increasing demand for driving comfort & fuel efficient vehicle from the consumers are the primary driving factors of the Automotive steering system market. In addition, factors such as increasing vehicle production globally are also the driving factor for the Automotive steering system market. However high cost of system, restraint the automotive steering system market and is expected to register a significant growth of 6% in the next six years.Ask for your specific company profile and country level customization on reports.Request a Sample Report @Key PlayersMitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan)TRW Automotive Holdings (U.S.)Sona Koyo Steering System Ltd. (India)JTEKT Corporation (Japan)Robert Bosch Automotive Steering Gmbh (Germany)Nexteer Automotive (U.S.)China Automotive System Inc. (China)Thyssenkrupp Presta AG Aktiengesellschaft (U.S.).Regional AnalysisEuropean region hold the largest market share in Automotive Steering Systems market, due to the rising production of technologically advanced vehicle. This region will witness slow growth in the forecast period. Asia-Pacific region will show the fastest growth in forecast period because increasing automotive manufacturing activities and increasing eco-friendly initiatives in this region will increase the Automotive steering system market.Brief TOC of Automotive Steering Systems Market1.Report Prologue2.Introduction3.Research Methodology3.1. Research Process3.2. Primary Research5.Market Dynamics5.Automotive Steering System Market, By Vehicle Type5.1. Introduction5.2. Commercial Vehicle5.3. Passenger Vehicle6.Automotive Steering System Market, By Steering System6.1. Introduction6.2. Manual6.3. Electrically Powered6.4. Electro-Hydraulic Powered7. Automotive Steering System Market, By Components7.1. Introduction7.2. Hydraulic Pump7.3. Steering Sensor & ColumnContinued.Browse full TOC, Tables, Figures and Companies mentioned @LIST OF TABLESTable 1 Global Automotive Steering System Market SnapshotTable 2 Drivers for the MarketTable 3 Restraints for the MarketTable 4 Automotive Steering Systems Market, By Vehicle Type, (USD Million)Table 5 Automotive Steering Systems Market, By Region, (USD Million)Continued.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 40 market data tables and figures spread in 100 pages of the report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Automotive steering system Market Information- Global Forecast to 2022"Related Report:Global Coiled Tubing Market Research Report - Forecast to 2022, Coiled tubing is essential equipment primarily used in oil & gas industry for well interventionAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Laminating Adhesives Market Sizing with Competitive Landscape by 2020

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Adhesives are use for joining and assembling of different materials surfaces. Both dry lamination technique and wet lamination technique are widely used in laminating adhesive. Laminating adhesive has its application in various industrial and domestic uses. It is particularly designed to attach or fix two different surfaces together. The different chemical compositions of laminating adhesives include polyurethanes, polyvinyl acetate, epoxy, styrenic block, and ethylene vinyl acetate. It is widely applicable in minimizing weight, vibration-dampening joint and leakage control of fluids or gases.A sample of this report is available upon request @Based on the different technology, the laminating adhesive the market can be broadly categorized in four different market segments namely; water-borne, solvent-borne, reactive, and hot melt. On the basis of different applications of the laminating adhesive, the market can be segmented as pressure sensitive adhesives, packaging, building & construction, automotive, woodwork & furniture, footwear, and others.The increasing demand of low volatile organic compound (Voc) and environmentally sustainable adhesives are some of the predominant driver of the global laminating adhesive market. Moreover the major end user market of laminating adhesive such as automobiles construction, woodworking, transportation, footwear, and packaging has witnessed a healthy growth over the last few years which in turn driving the growth of the global laminating adhesive marketInstability in raw material prices of the laminating adhesive coupled with stringent environmental regulations by EPA (environment protection agency) and REACH (registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals) in Europe and North America is acting as challenge for laminating adhesive market in this region.Asia Pacific is the largest producer and consumer of laminating adhesive, followed by Europe and North America. North American market of laminating adhesive is heading towards maturity and the growth is mainly anticipated from the emerging market of Asia Pacific and Latin America. India and China are the two biggest market of laminating adhesive in Asia Pacific. Brazil is one of the fasted growing market laminating adhesive in Latin America region.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major companies operating in global laminating adhesives market include, Ashland Inc, BASF SE, Bostik SA, Dymax Corporation, Henkel AG & Company, Sika AG, The Dow Chemical Company, ADCO Global Inc. and Henkel AG & Company.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Tetanus Treatment Market Research, market Share, Competitor Strategy, Industry Trends, Forecast to 2022

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Market Synopsis of Tetanus Treatment Market:Tetanus is an infection caused by bacteria called Clostridium tetani. When the bacteria invade the body, they produce a poison (toxin) that causes painful muscle contractions. Tetanus is different from other vaccine-preventable diseases because it does not spread from person to person. The bacteria are usually found in soil, dust and manure and enter the body through breaks in the skin - usually cuts or puncture wounds caused by contaminated objects. Tetanus is uncommon in the United States, with an average of 29 reported cases per year from 1996 through 2009. The market for Tetanus treatment is growing slowly.Study Objectives Tetanus Treatment Market: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 7 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Tetanus treatment market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the Tetanus treatment market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segments by type, end user and its sub-segments.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players for Tetanus treatment Market: Accord Healthcare Inc., BB-NCIPD, Bharat Pharmaceuticals, Biological E, GlaxoSmithKline, Massachusetts Biological Labs, PT Bio Farma, Sanofi, Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd., Shanha Biotechniques Pvt Ltd.Analysis also includes consumption. Import and export data for Regions North America, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 50 market data tables and figures spread in 110 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Global Tetanus Treatment Market Research Report- Forecast To 2022Intended Audience Vaccine manufacturers Vaccine suppliers Research and Development (R&D) Companies Government Research Laboratories Independent Research Laboratories Government and Independent Regulatory Authorities Market Research and Consulting Service Providers Medical Research Laboratories Academic Medical Institutes and UniversitiesRequest TOC, Tables, Figures and Companies mentioned @The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:North America US Canada MexicoEurope Germany France Italy U.K Rest of EuropeAsia Pacific China India Japan Rest of Asia-PacificRoW Brazil Argentina Egypt South Africa OthersKey questions answered in this report What will the market size be in 2027 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?Related ReportGlobal Prostate cancer Information, by product type hormone therapy, targeted therapies, therapeutic vaccines and others), end users (hospitals, clinics and others) - Forecast to 2027. Know more about this report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Baby Food in Singapore Forecast to Rise From 13.3kg in 2014 to 16.0kg in 2020

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Albany, New York, February 03, 2017: Market Research Hub has recently announced the addition of a new report to it broad database titled as Baby Food in Singapore. Baby Food in Singapore is a new report by ERC that analyzes the Baby Food industry demand prospects in Singapore, key segments, features & developments, future projections based on various trends.Request for Sample Report:This report also examines trends which are currently affecting the industry. Furthermore, it profiles various companies in the Baby Food industry in Singapore along with the foreign trade involving the Baby Food industry.Key FindingsThe Singapore market is small in terms of total size, but highly developed in terms of per capita consumption of baby food. As such, fluctuations in the number of births have a clear effect on sales. Increases in birth numbers in 2012 and 2014 boosted overall volume sales, despite a gradual reduction in per capita consumption.Almost 90% of the market in value terms consists of baby milks, with the bulk of the remainder split between baby meals/drinks and baby cereals. The share of baby milks has been declininggradually, with wet meals/drinks showing the most growth in both volume and value terms.Meals and drinks combined are expected to increase their share of the baby food market, from 12.3% of volume sales in 2014 to 14.2% in 2020, stimulated by new products, advertising and their convenience appeal. Consumption per capita is forecast to rise from 13.3kg in 2014 to 16.0kg in 2020.Make an Enquiry:SynopsisBaby Food in Singapore report is a qualitative report providing extensive and highly detailed consumption data on the Baby Food industry in Singapore.This report is the result of ERCs extensive market research covering Baby Food in Singapore. The report provides consumption data based upon a unique combination of industry research, fieldwork, market sizing work and our in-house expertise in the Baby Food industry in order to offer extensive data about the trends and dynamics affecting the Baby Food industry in Singapore.This report is aimed at companies operating in the Baby Food industry and for new companies considering entry into Singapore Baby Food industry.This report provides detailed data for the various companies operating in the Baby Food industry in Singapore along with their key focus product sectors.Market profile of the various product sectors of the Baby Food industry has also been provided in this report with the key features& developments, segmentation, per capita trends and the various manufacturers & brands.This report also provides an overview of Food Retailing in Singapore, with a mention of the major Food retailers in the country, along with the Food distribution in Singapore.This report also provides future projections of the Baby Food industry in Singapore considering various trends which are likely to affect the industry.Get Full Report with TOC:Reasons To BuyBaby Food companies require a detailed understanding of Baby Food consumption by individual product categories in order to align their sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market. This report clarifies in detail, by product category, where the growth opportunities are in Baby Food industry to enable effective marketing planAs consumers product demands evolve, the dynamics between different Baby Food types also change  favoring some product categories and leaving others increasingly out of line with demand patterns. As a result, understanding the shifting market dynamics is key to ensuring maximum sales in the futureThe differing growth rates in overall product category sales drive fundamental shifts in the market. This report provides detailed, authoritative data on these changes for marketersThe report provides the latest data on market dynamics in the Baby Food industry in Singapore market, providing marketers with essential data in order to understand their own position in the market and to identify where to compete in the futureAbout Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:
Super League In-Depth Analysis: BNP Paribas Wealth Management

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SummaryBNP Paribas is the worlds seventh-largest wealth manager (as measured by published assets under management). In 2014 BNP Paribass profits were negatively influenced by a settlement with US authorities that resulted in an exceptional charge of $7bn in 2014 and a profit development of -61%. BNP Paribas is continuing to implement its 2014-2016 Business Development Plan, which has impacted its wealth operations in terms of both cost-cutting measures and synergy efforts such as upstreaming clients. As part of BNP Paribass strategy of targeting UHNW clients, its US subsidiary Bank of the West launched a new ultra-high net worth (UHNW) unit, Family Wealth Advisors, in October 2015. BNP Paribas strengthened its brokerage capabilities in India by acquiring retail brokerage Sharekhan in July 2015.Request Sample Report Here:Key Findings BNP Paribas is predominantly a retail bank, with BNP Paribas Wealth and Asset Management contributing 7.2% of overall group revenues. BNP Paribas Wealth Management is looking to the higher wealth tiers, particularly the growing UHNW wealth in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Bank of the West has launched a new UHNW unit in the US, which means better positioning to target the growing UHNW wealth. The firm targets entrepreneur clients and corporates with a service proposition integrating its expertise in corporate and investment banking. In its domestic markets, BNP Paribass private banking operations target new clients by upstreaming wealthy customers from the groups retail banks. BNP Paribas Wealth Management has implemented a cost-cutting plan but still has a cost-revenue ratio higher than its competitors. For wealth management, the plan included the introduction of a multi-channel strategy with common customer relationship management and digital solutions across international entities and domestic digital synergies.Browse Report Summary with TOC:SynopsisVerdict Financials Super League In-Depth Analysis: BNP Paribas Wealth Management competitor profile is a comprehensive analysis of BNP Paribass wealth management and private banking operations. It offers insight into the companys strategy, financial results, and marketing activities. It also covers the wealth managers recent merger and acquisition (MandA) activity, customer targeting, and product innovation. Insight into BNP Paribas Wealth Managements growth strategy. Overview of the firms organizational structure. Clear presentation of its geographical coverage and expansion strategy, including MandA activity. Analysis of the firms financial performance at group and divisional level, including comparison to other global wealth managers. Examination of the key target client groups. Analysis of BNP Paribas Wealth Managements service and product proposition and how it is unique compared to its competitors. Review of BNP Paribass marketing and social media activities at group and divisional level.Reasons To Buy Examine the financial performance and key ratios for BNP Paribas Wealth Management and benchmark this competitor against other global wealth managers. Explore BNP Paribas Wealth Managements recent MandA and growth strategies and their impacts on its AUM growth and financial performance. Understand BNP Paribas Wealth Managements client targeting strategies and examine whether these have been successful. Learn more about BNP Paribas Wealth Managements marketing strategy and social media presence.Enquiry Before Buying:About Us:Reportbazzar.com is your trusted source for the most inclusive and informative assortment of market research reports designed to empower you with the latest in industry information that translates to time and cost savings for your business. We not only help you give wing to your latent business ideas but also facilitate you in taking the best informed and strategic decisions that guarantee success in your most promising business endeavors.Contact Us:ReportBazzarMary Jane30 Wall Street, 8th floor,New York, NY 10005.US: +1 (212) 389-6363India: +91 20 66528525Email Id: sales@reportbazzar.comWebsite:
jeremy liew lightspeed

Snapchat just filed its paperwork to go public. And its 26-year-old CEO isn't the only one who's about to get paid.

Lightspeed Ventures was the first venture capital firm to invest in Snapchat, and it owns a meaningful chunk of the company worth about $2 billion.

Lightspeed found the startup thanks to one of its partners, Jeremy Liew. And in March 2012, Liew's Facebook profile picture was of himself and US President Barack Obama.

He didn't know it at the time, but that picture would help him land a crucial early stage investment.

When Liew first found Snapchat, the disappearing photo app had fewer than 100,000 installs. Liew's VC partner had seen it on his teenage daughter's phone. She told her father there were only three apps high school kids were using: Angry Birds, Instagram, and Snapchat. Liew was familiar with the first two. But he had never heard of Snapchat.

The comment was enough to pique Liew's curiosity. He made it his mission to find out who was behind the mysterious app.

Liew did a Google search and came up dry. No articles had been written about Snapchat. There was no contact information on the startup's website except for a generic email address. Liew messaged it and heard nothing back. Liew looked up the company on LinkedIn and sent a message.

lightspeed sand hill road

Again, there was no response.

Determined, Liew did a WhoIs lookup on the domain name, Snapchat.com. It had been registered by Toyopa Group, the former parent company of Snapchat. Spiegel had named it after the street his father lived on, Toyopa Drive.

Liew did a Google search for Toyopa Group and found Evan Spiegel's name. He was a student at Stanford, where Liew had also gone to school. Liew was able to message him on Facebook through the Stanford alumni network.

Story continues

When Liew sent the Facebook message, Spiegel finally replied. He wasn't looking to raise a round of financing; Liew was fine with that. Liew invited Spiegel to meet him at his office on the most famous street in the entrepreneurial world, Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. A few feet to the left sits Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. To the right sits Khosla Ventures.

During the meeting, Spiegel shared his vision for Snapchat. Facebook, he said, was a place where you could share superficial feelings with the world. It was for sharing times when you were happy, confident, and enjoying life. But what about all the other times when you were sad, feeling crazy or even depressed?

jeremy liew obama

Spiegel felt there should be a place where intimate feelings could be expressed privately via fleeting messages. After all, true friendships are formed when people share both positive and negative experiences. And negative experiences can't be housed on a public, identifying platform like Facebook.

Spiegel's app hadn't been downloaded many times, but engagement metrics were strong. "People were using it like crazy and staying for a really long time," Liew recalls.

Eventually, Spiegel let Lightspeed invest in his company. It was the only investor in a $485,000 seed round, which Spiegel raised in May 2012. He was still three classes shy of graduating. On Thursday afternoon, Snapchat filed for a $3 billion IPO.

Liew later asked Spiegel why he returned the Facebook request and none of his other messages.

"It was because you had President Obama in your profile picture," Spiegel said.

"There's serendipity involved in all this stuff," Liew said.





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Gene Editing Market 2016: Market Segments, Landscape, Company Profiles, Demand and Forecast  2024

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Market OverviewGene Editing has generated a lot of excitement in academia and drug development. It promise is two-fold: the unique ability to correct genetic mutations that may cause disease; and its utility in creating and controlling genetic information within patient cells. Emerging science suggests that permanently fixing or editing mutated cells, or creating safer and more potent cell-based products with this technology could provide curative, one-time treatments for patients suffering from a broad range of diseases.Request a Sample Report @Gene Editing Market Key Players: Lonza Group Ltd. (Switzerland), New England Biolabs, Inc. (U.S.), OriGene Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Sangamo Biosciences, Inc. (U.S.), Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (U.S.) GenScript USA Inc. (U.S.), Horizon Discovery Group plc (U.K.), Integrated DNA Technologies, Inc. (U.S.),Gene Editing Market Growth Influencer:Gene Editing Market drivers includes: Increased R&D expenditure and growth of biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, increased funding for genomics research, increasing demand for synthetic genes, global rise in production of genetically modified crops and technological advancements.The restraints of the Gene editing market is strict regulatory policies and adverse public perception related to genetic research.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 60 market data tables and figures spread in 124 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Gene Editing Market Research Report- Global Forecast to 2024"Gene Editing market Application:Gene editing has various applications such as HIV would be cured by destroying the gene for CCR5. Some researchers are doing experiment and exploring the possibility of using gene editing to make heritable changes.The new technology CRISPR is showing good results in this market. CRISPR is becoming an increasingly routine practice in the world of agriculture. For instance, introduction of mutations or other genetic changes into plants can enhance breeding of certain crops such as rice and wheat. But CRISPR can work beyond improving crops; it has the potential to manipulate mammalian genomes for therapeutic purposes. Gene Editing Market Regional AnalysisNorth America:Gene Editing Market is dominated by North America due to the strong growth trend in the pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries and is followed by Europe.Asia:The Asian region is showing good opportunities in Gene editing market due to the expansion of leading genome editing companies and increased R&D spending.Access Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.ContactAkash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Now Available Global Smart Insulin Pens Market Forecast And Growth 2016-2026

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Diabetes is a metabolic disease in which a person is suffering from high blood sugar or high blood glucose owing to inadequate response to insulin by the body. Patients with high blood glucose will experience symptoms of frequent urination or polyuria, disproportionate thirst, fatigue, slow healing of wounds and intense hunger. According to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2012, around 11.2 million people aged 65 and above are suffering from diabetes which account for 26% of the U.S. population. There are various treatments available to overcome diabetes. Insulin pens are alternative to traditional syringe method to inject insulin. Moving towards the advanced high-technology for managing diabetes condition new feature is added to smart insulin pen devices with inbuilt Bluetooth feature in insulin pens which enables patients to track their doses, send alerts and reminders, and can transfer the insulin data to a smartphone. In addition to that, a smartphone app is also developed and are compatible with other Bluetooth devices which help in sharing the data for the most complete picture of blood sugar level for patients who prefer latest technology solution and immediate data for self-management. Smart insulin pens also help in transfer the insulin data wirelessly and made visible to physicians and patients who want an easy solution and still not willing to use smartphones or other devices.Smart Insulin Pens Market: Drivers and RestraintsSmart insulin pens market is witnessing a maximum growth owing to increase in prevalence of diabetes among geriatric population, technology advancement in insulin delivery, accuracy with the device and awareness about diabetes care. Also, the surge in the adoption of smartphones to have data available at every point of time that simplify the treatment leads to the surge in mobile health technologies and services is expected to expand the smart insulin pens market during the forecast period. However, the cost of the pen is high compared to syringes, alternative treatment options, lack of dose flexibility for what patient need and device inaccuracy may hamper the growth of smart insulin pens market.Request Free Report Sample@Smart Insulin Pens Market: SegmentationThe smart insulin pens market has been classified on the basis of product, application and end user.Based on products, the smart insulin pens market is segmented into the following:Reusable/ Durable Insulin PensPrefilled/ Disposable Insulin PensAccessoriesInsulin CartridgePen NeedlesTimesulin Pen CapBased on Fabrication Material, the smart insulin pens market is segmented into the following:MetalPlasticBased on Technology, the smart insulin pens market is segmented into the following:Spring loadedJet InjectorsBluetoothBased on end users, the Smart Insulin Pens Market is segmented into the following:Hospital PharmaciesRetail PharmaciesDrugstoresE-commerceSmart Insulin Pens Market: OverviewWith the rapid increase in the modern high-technology and e-healthcare services include healthcare apps on smartphone devices which help patients with dose reminders or alerts to witness the growth of smart insulin pens market in near future. Moreover, with an increase in the healthcare infrastructures for patients suffering from diabetes, an advanced wireless technology that transmits data to a mobile app, positive outcomes of devices, digitalization of diabetes management and wide acceptance of device among patients exhibits the growth of smart insulin pens in near future.Smart Insulin Pens Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on the geographic region, Smart Insulin Pens Market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. North America held the largest share in the Smart Insulin Pens Market followed by Europe, Japan, and Asia Pacific owing to the high prevalence of diabetes, growing aging population, reimbursement for treatment by health insurance companies and developed healthcare infrastructure. The developing nations in Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa hold huge potential for growth in the smart insulin pens market, due to increasing in the acceptance of insulin pens among diabetic patients which reduces dependency on others and increasing prevalence and awareness about diabetes.Visit For TOC@Smart Insulin Pens Market: Key PlayersKey players of Smart Insulin Pens Market are Emperra GmbH, Jiangsu Delfu medical device Co.,Ltd, Eli Lilly and Company, Novo Nordisk A/S and Digital Medics Ptd Ltd and Vigihealth.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.Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Drywall and Building Plaster Market Will Continue to Grow by 2021

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Drywalls are panels made of gypsum plaster pressed between thick sheets of paper. Drywalls are used for interior walls and ceilings in residential and non-residential buildings as a quicker alternative to traditional plaster and lath.A sample of this report is available upon request @Increasing demand from rising construction activities in the U.S. and China is expected to drive demand for drywall and building plaster. After the economic turndown between 2008 to 2011 in the U.S. and Europe, the market is expected to revive in both the regions. There is a significant increase in repair and maintenance of residential building activities in the U.S. and Western Europe which in turn is expected to turn into demand for drywall and building plaster.The drywall and building construction market can be segmented into two key end-user segments, viz., residential construction and non-residential construction. Globally, residential construction segment is projected to register faster growth owing to increased demand for housing in urban areas across all regions. Non-residential construction activities are also increasing at an above average rate in emerging BRICS nations as well as in Middle East and Africa.Demand from North America, especially the U.S. and Western Europe are projected to grow at high rate. Asia Pacific, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Middle East and Africa are projected to show above average demand growth on account of increased residential construction activities. Drywall use is expected to increase in residential construction owing to its rising popularity. However, building plasters segment is expected to lose share due to slower construction process and higher expense on wet construction methods.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major manufacturers in the blowing agents market include BNBM (China), USG (US), Saint- Gobain (France), Knauf (Germany) and Etex (Belgium). These players account for near about half of the global drywall and building plaster market supply.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Global Formic Acid Market to Register a Strong Growth By 2020

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Formic acid, also known as methanoic acid is a vital intermediate in chemical synthesis, occurring naturally, mostly in ant venom. It belongs to the group of carboxylic acids having a colorless appearance and a highly pungent odor, and is soluble in various alcohols, acetones and ethers. The applications majorly require formic acid in concentrations of 99%, 94%, 90%, and 85%., with 85% being the industry standard acid. A large amount of formic acid is produced as a byproduct in the manufacturing of other chemicals such as acetic acid and hydrogenation of carbon dioxide. Formic acid is widely used as a silage and animal feed preservative, antibacterial agent in livestock feed, production of leather, pharmaceutical, rubber chemical, and as a substitute to mineral acids in various cleaning products. It is also used to regulate the pH of various chemical processes.A sample of this report is available upon request @The global market for formic acid has been witnessing a noticeable growth on account of growing demand for preservatives and feed additives. Improving living standards internationally has resulted in the growing consumption of meat thereby boosting the demand for formic acid in animal feeds and silage preservatives. Europe accounts for the largest market for formic acid since the banning of antibiotic growth promoters by the European Union in 2006. The market for formic acid in other regions such as Middle East, South America and Central America has also been well-established in tanning and leather applications. In addition, presence of significant textiles and natural rubber industries in Southeast Asia has made the formic acid industry lucrative in the region.Formic acid is one of the basic organic chemical raw materials widely used in rubbers, pharmaceuticals, dyes, leather and pesticides. The high quality nature of formic acid coupled with the global environmental acceptability is one of the major influencing factors creating an upsurge in the demand in the industry. Moreover, the upcoming safety regulations for the production of formic acid is also anticipated to be one of the key influencing factors for the growth of formic acid with an increased emphasis on different types of products and their respective applications.Increasing demand for formic acid in animal feed additives and silage preservatives is expected to be one of major growth factors driving the formic acid market. Moreover, growing textile, leather and rubber industries in emerging economies such as China and India is also anticipated to contribute towards the growing demand for formic acid. Moreover, the ban of antibiotics as a growth promoter in Europe in 2006 has led to an increased demand for formic acid as a substitute. However, fluctuating weather conditions are expected to negatively affect the production of certain application industries such as silage preservative and animal feed additives, which in turn is expected to result in declining demand for formic acid. Focus on research and development activities for the development of innovative products is expected to provide new opportunities for the growth of the market.Request to view Table of content @Chongqing Chuandong Chemical (Group) Co. Ltd., BASF SE, Alfa Aesar, Perstorp AB, Helm Italia S.R.L, Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilizers Co. Ltd., Feicheng Acid Chemicals Co. Ltd., Shanxiyuanping Chemicals Co. Ltd., Samsung Fine Chemicals Co. Ltd., and Taminco Corporation are some of the key formic acid manufactures dominating the market.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Medical Adhesives and Sealants Market Size, Share, Applications and Competitive Landscape 2017-2021

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Market Research analysts forecast the global medical adhesives and sealants market to grow at a CAGR of 9.04% during the period 2017-2021.The following companies as the key players in the global medical adhesives and sealants market: 3M, Ashland, CryoLife, H.B. Fuller, and Henkel.Other Prominent Vendors in the market are: Advanced Medical Solutions, Adhesive Research, Baxter International, Dentsply Sirona, and Johnson & Johnson.Commenting on the report, an analyst team said: The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is increase in the number of surgeries carried out worldwide. Due to an increase in disposable income and health awareness in the developing and developed regions, the demand for surgeries is increasing. This is boosting the medical adhesives and sealants market.Download Sample Report @According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is growing importance of adhesive dentistry. The global dental service market is growing at an impressive rate; there has been a significant increase in the number of people looking for dental care services recently. Technological advances have led to the emergence of better dental care procedures. These advanced dental care procedures are replacing traditional dental care procedures. Currently, advanced procedures and technologies account for more than 50% of the financial profit of the dental care service market.Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is conformance to stringent regulations and statutory norms. Manufacturers of medical adhesives and sealants need to comply with strict environmental regulations. An example of such a regulation is the European Union's Restriction on the usage of certain Hazardous Substances directive which bans the use of chemicals such as cadmium, lead, and other hazardous materials in medical components.The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.About medical adhesives and sealantsMedical adhesives and sealants are usually used for surgical procedures and the bonding of medical appliances. Medical adhesives and sealants are used for the fabrication of an extensive range of medical appliances. These medical appliances are either disposable or can be used several times. Some medical adhesives and sealants are ideal for fixing an extensive range of substrate surfaces including plastics, metals, and rubbers, whereas others are suitable for skin applications.Complete Report Details @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global medical adhesives and sealants market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of medical adhesives and sealants market.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:APACEuropeNorth AmericaROWGlobal Medical Adhesives and Sealants Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors3MAshlandCryoLifeH.B. FullerHenkelOther prominent vendorsAdvanced Medical SolutionsAdhesive ResearchBaxter InternationalDentsply SironaJohnson & JohnsonMarket driverGrowing importance of adhesive dentistryFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeConformance to stringent regulations and statutory normsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncrease in the number of surgeries carried out worldwideFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.....ContinuedDiscount On This Report @For more information, please visitMarket Reports Center is an e-commerce platform obliging the needs of knowledge workers, experts, professionals who are subject to market research information for their work, or to make strategic business decisions. Market Reports Centers team consistently works to update and extend our existing repository of market research reports by partnering with new publishers and adding their studies to our website.Sam Collins303, Astral Court,Aundh, Pune,MH - 411045, Indiainfo@marketreportscenter.com
Global Herbicides Market to Maintain Healthy CAGR by 2020

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Herbicides are pesticides used to kill unwanted plants. Herbicides are generally used to clear waste ground, industrial sites and kill all plant material with which they come into contact. Herbicides are widely used in agriculture and landscape turf management. Herbicides are toxic in nature and cause several health diseases with the direct contact. Health effects ranging from skin rashes to death can arise from intentional or unintentional direct consumption of herbicides. In addition, improper application resulting in the herbicide coming into direct contact with people or wildlife. Herbicides are used to protect wide variety of grains, cereals, oilseeds, vegetable crops from infestation of weeds.A sample of this report is available upon request @On the basis of product type, Herbicides market can be segmented into Atrazine, Acetochlor, Glyphosate and others. On the basis of crop type, herbicides market is classified as Oilseeds, Cereals & grains, Fruits & Vegetables and others.North America is the largest market for herbicides, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market. China and India hold the key for future market trends in herbicides market due to changes in farming practices, rapid growth in agriculture sector and increasing acceptance of modern farming and protected agriculture in these regions.Some of the major drivers contributing the overall market growth of herbicides include limited availability of cultivable land, change in farming practices and technology and increasing acceptance of modern farming and protected agriculture. Growing concern towards environment and genetically modified crops are some of the major restraints for herbicides market. Strict approvals and regulations and ban and restriction imposed by regulatory authority are expected to pose severe challenge to the growth of herbicides market. Rapid growth in the organic herbicides market can act as an opportunity for herbicides market.Request to view Table of content @Some of the major companies operating in the herbicides market include Chemtura Corporation, Dow Chemical Company, Cheminova A/S, BASF, Monsanto Company, Nissan Chemical Industries Ltd, Syngenta AG, Drexel Chemical Company, E.I. Dupont De Nemours & Company, Nufarm Limited, FMC Corporation, Marrone Bio Innovations Inc., Valent Biosciences Corp and Wilbur-Ellis Company.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.Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Gourmet Salts Market Globally Expected to Drive Growth through 2025

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Gourmet salts are unrefined and high quality salts used in cuisine in order to enhance taste and appeal of the food. Gourmet salts are used for to enhance the texture and flavor. In addition, these type of salts possess better solubility and also high mineral content. Gourmet salts are also blended with other type of herbs, spices and flavors in order to enhance the flavor and color of spices. Gourmet salts are used in various applications such as bakery, savoury, confectionery, poultry and sea food. Fleur de sel is one of the widely used gourmet salts, which is used in variety of food products such as roasted meat, vegetable dishes and salads. Gourmet salts are also used in for preserving canned food products in order to store food item for longer duration.Gourmet Salts Market: SegmentationGlobal Gourmet salts market is segmented on the basis of product type, application and region. Based on the product type segmentation includes fleur de sel, Himalayan salts, sel gris, and flake salts. Of which, fleur de sel is used widely in various food applications such as meat and salads. Fleur de sel is anticipated to be the dominating segment during the forecasted period, followed by other gourmet salts. On the basis of application, gourmet salts is segmented into savoury, bakery and confectionary, poultry and seafood products and others. However, among all the segments, bakery and confectionary segment is expected to contribute maximum revenue to the overall gourmet salts market. Global gourmet salts market is segmented on the basis of regions into North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa and Japan. Gourmet salts market is dominated by European region, followed by North America and Asia Pacific excluding Japan. In Europe, France and Spain are expected to contribute maximum revenue share to the overall gourmet salts market. However North America is projected to witness fastest growth in the next four to five years owing to the high disposable income of consumers in this region.Request Free Report Sample@Gourmet Salts Market: Region-wise OutlookThe Global gourmet salts market is expected to witness vigorous growth during the forecasted period due to the rising awareness among consumers related to changing food or cuisine preferences among consumers .Globally, among all regions, Europe is expected to witness significant growth in the gourmet salts market and contribute maximum market share, followed by North America and Asia Pacific over the forecasted period. However, North America is expected to experience fast growth due the high disposable income of the consumers, which results in buying patterns for products rich in gourmet salt. Since, these products are expensive in nature.Gourmet Salts Market: DriversVarious factors that fuel the growth of gourmet salts market includes rising living standard of consumers, increasing commercialisation of food industry by various media shows and also awareness regarding benefits of gourmet salts in the traditional food. However, factors that hampers the growth of gourmet salts market are high price associated with gourmet salts in comparison to conventional salts. Other major factor that restraints the growth of gourmet salts market that hinder the growth of gourmet salts market is lack of awareness among consumers in developing countries. Companies operating in gourmet salts market are mainly adopting new product development strategy in order to enhance their product portfolio and also to expand into new markets.Request For TOC@Gourmet salts Market: Key PlayersMajor companies that operate in gourmet salts market includes Cargill Inc., Morton Salt Inc., Murray River Salt, Alaska Pure Sea Salts Co., Infosa, Amagansett Sea Salt Co., Maldon Crystal Salt Co., Pyramid Salt Pty. Ltd.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: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Emerging Economies in Asia Offer Growth Opportunities for the Hearing Aids Market

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Globally, the hearing aids market is witnessing high growth due to factors such as increasing aging population, high prevalence of hearing loss, and technological advancements. On the other hand, low penetration rate of hearing aids is expected to restrain the growth of this market during the forecast period. Key players are focusing on enhancing their products to increase their shares in the market. Companies are focusing on the strategies of new product launches, regulatory approvals, partnerships, agreements, & collaborations, acquisitions, and expansions to strengthen their foothold in the market.Based on products, the hearing aids market is segmented into hearing aid devices and hearing implants. Hearing aid devices is further segmented into receiver-in-the-ear, behind-the-ear, in-the-ear, canal hearing aids and other hearing aids. Hearing aid devices is expected to account for largest share of the market. Hearing implants is categorised into cochlear implants and bone anchored systems. Hearing implants showcase a high growth potential owing to increasing technological advancements.Download PDF Brochure @Based on type of hearing loss, the hearing aids market is segmented into sensorineural and conductive. The sensorineural segment is projected to witness the highest growth rate in this market and represents a new revenue pocket for the hearing aids market. The growth in this market is likely to be driven by the high prevalence of sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL).Based on end-user, the hearing aids market is segmented into adult and pediatric. The adult segment is poised to witness the highest growth rate in this market due to rising aging population coupled with incidence of hearing loss.In the coming five years, growth in the hearing aids market is likely to be centered in Asia. Growth in this region can be attributed to the high prevalence of hearing loss. Furthermore, increasing initiatives by companies to expand their distribution network and large customer base in the Asia region is further driving the growth of this market.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.Contact:Mr. RohanMarkets and MarketsUNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZMagarpatta city, HadapsarPune, Maharashtra 411013, India1-888-600-6441Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com
Synthetic Biology Market Globally Expected to Drive Growth through 2026

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Synthetic Biology is one of the breakthrough technologies developed by mankind from chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering which ultimately changed the approach towards therapeutics. It has a varied areas of applications in biofuels, industrial enzymes, vaccine and antibody production, bio-based chemicals and synthetic biology life science research. Synthetic biologists develop such biological systems using by molding the core components (genetic circuits, part of enzymes and metabolic pathways) and understanding their performance while using these smaller parts or devices into the specific integrated systems. The production of new medicines is now done by using synthetic biology on a cellular, molecular and genetic level to address the emerging health issues.Synthetic Biology Market: Drivers & RestraintsInternationally, companies have started investing in Synthetic biology as many governmental bodies are turning towards biomass and climate change. In past few years synthetic biology has gained industrial interest which has a large scale applications and potential of new gene editing techniques are some of the drivers for this market. Traditional medicines are being replaced by genetically engineered products, DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis technologies. This market though has a potential there with any advances there are risks and hindrance like government regulations and policies, biosafety and biosecurity issues, bio-war but these issues are being addressed by the regulatory bodies and research institutions. The synthetic biology market has changed the complete approach towards traditional ways of combating with newer diseases and genetic challenges with the advanced computing and design systems.Request Free Report Sample@Synthetic Biology Market: SegmentationSynthetic Biology market is basically can be classified into products, technology and applications.The Synthetic Biology market based on product can be subdivided into following:Core Products.Synthetic DNASynthetic GenesSynthetic cellsDNA & RNA Purification KitsRecombinant ProteinsThe Synthetic Biology market based on technology can be subdivided into following:MutagenesisDNA sequencingGenome engineeringThe Synthetic Biology market based on applications can be subdivided into following:Pharmaceutical CompaniesResearch OrganizationsChemical IndustriesUniversitiesSynthetic Biology Market: Market OverviewSynthetic biology market is a technology which has now a massive demand in the biotechnology sector, chemical and biofuel industries and their products will outstrip the products of the other industries in the near future. There is progress towards making this technology useful in the therapeutic areas from which the society can be directly benefited. The success of synthetic biology in DNA sequencing and synthetic microbes in vaccines, faster and efficient modular DNA assembly methods has proved to be a potential market and thus there is a significant investment done by the pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.Synthetic Biology Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global radiofrequency ablation system market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Request For TOC@Europe is a leading market followed by North America, Europe has invested in developing synthesis of biologically based or biologically inspired systems. In North America Defense is a major contributor in the investment done in the past years. In Asia, India and China are said to progress in developments over future to be a part of the Synthetic biology market. The success of this market will depend upon the conversion from basic research to applications which will rise the future opportunities to understand the natural biological systems. Thus the market for synthetic biology is showing no sign for slowing down but managing the future social, ethical and legal responsibilities will lead to innovation.Synthetic Biology Market: Key PlayersThe major key players in the synthetic biology market are Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Agilent Technologies, GEN9, Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC., Amyris Biotechnologies, Epoch Life Science Inc., Gevo Inc., Intrexon Corporation, Sangamo Biosciences and Gingko Bioworks.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: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market 10-Year Market Forecast and Trends Analysis Research Report

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Remote patient monitoring devices supports in monitoring of patients physical condition. Patient does not need to visit the medical practitioner. Digital technology is used in remote patient monitoring devices to gather health and other forms of medical data to securely pass on to healthcare providers situated at different location for clinical review. The accuracy of remote patient monitoring devices allows reliable diagnosis, leading to a more specific and efficient treatment. Remote patient monitoring devices helps to reduce costs of hospital stays by continuing to monitor patient condition, irrespective of patient location and also it helps to reduce overcrowding at clinics and diagnostic centers. Remote patient monitoring devices systems are used for continuously monitoring important physiological parameters like, heart activity, body temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and other clinical conditions. Remote patient monitoring devices is based on real time data sharing which helps physicians to take vital decisions to ensure better patient treatment. Physician and healthcare providers are extending the use ofremote patient monitoring devices to enhance the excellence of patient care and reduce expenses by prognosis.Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market: Drivers & RestraintsRemote patient monitoring devices market is fueled by great technological advancements. The increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases like heart conditions and diabetes requires compulsory life-long monitoring will also contribute to remote patient monitoring devicesglobal market. Increase in geriatric population around the globe is leading to enhanced global market forremote patient monitoring devices. Awareness among the medical practitioners and improved private sector and government involvement in remote patient monitoring devices is supporting the global market for remote patient monitoring devices dwell in developing countries. Deficiency of trained and expert professionals are hampering the growth of remote patient monitoring devices.Request Free Report Sample@Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market: SegmentationGlobal remote patient monitoring devices market is segmented as following:By Product Type:Heart Rate MonitorsBlood Pressure MonitorsHeart MonitorsBreath MonitorsSleep Apnea MonitorsBlood Glucose MonitorsWeight MonitorsBody Temperature MonitorsInfusion PumpsBy End User:HospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersHomecare settingsRemote Patient Monitoring Devices Market: OverviewIncreased technological improvement, rise in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases along with increase in aging population, enhanced demand for remote monitoring, private sector and government involvement in remote patient monitoring devices, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices market is expected to have a healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2016-2026).Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global remote patient monitoring devicesmarketis segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa.North America is the leading global remote patient monitoring devices market due to the high volumes of surgical procedures being performed. Also, the availability of established healthcare infrastructure, high influence of healthcare to economy are the reasons for the high demand in North America. Europe is also a lucrative market for remote patient monitoring devices due to rapid technological advancement in terms of healthcare sector. Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a good rate as compared to NA and Europe as there is ample market opportunity in countries like India and China due the large population.Request For TOC@Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating global remote patient monitoring devicesmarketare Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., AMD Global Telemedicine, Honeywell International Inc., Omron Healthcare, Smiths Medical, Medtronic, and others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 3 (Reuters) - South Africa's Sibanye Gold Ltd said it is considering tapping shareholders for up to $1.3 billion to partly fund a $2.2 billion takeover of Stillwater Mining Co, the only U.S. miner of platinum and palladium.

Sibanye had initially penciled in a minimum of $750 million in rights issue but said on Friday it reconsidered after some shareholders expressed concerns about the company's debt levels.

"Sibanye believes that increasing the equity component would be prudent in the current strong rand environment, allowing the company to maintain a strong balance sheet," it said in statement accompanying a half-year trading update.

(Reporting by Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Randy Fabi)
Research Offers 10-Year Forecast on Macadamia Market

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Macadamia nut was introduced in the early 1960s to the Kenyan highlands from Australia. Macadamia is a member of the family Proteaceae, native to Australia. Australia and Hawaii are the major producing areas of macadamia with others including eastern and southern Africa, and Central and Latin America. Several species of macadamia exist in Australia but only two species such as M. tetraphylla and Macadamia integrifolia and their hybrids are grown commercially. Production of macadamia nuts in Australia is mainly in eastern shore of Australia (northern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland). Currently, Hawaii is the largest producer of global macadamia, accounting for around 70 percent of total macadamia production worldwide followed by Australia, around 22 percent, rest is produced by other countries including Malawi, South Africa, Kenya, Guatemala, Mexico, California, Costa Rica, Brazil, New Zealand and China.Tree nuts include almond, cashew, hazelnut, pistachio, walnut, macadamia, and pecan. Currently, macadamia accounts for around only one percent among all the tree nuts available across the globe. Almond nut dominates the nut segment, accounting for around 34 percent. Increasing health claims for macadamia have witnessed a surge in recent years, which if succeeded is expected to increase the consumption of macadamia nuts among consumers.Request Free Report Sample@Global Macadamia Market Segmentation:On the basis of application the global macadamia market is broadly segmented into food industry, and cosmetics industry. In food industry macadamia is widely used in confectionaries including chocolate bar, chocolate covered candy, ice cream and other baking products. In cosmetics industry it is used in shampoos, sunscreens, soaps and others.Geographically, global macadamia market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa. Currently, North America and Western Europe account for major market share for macadamia however, Asia Pacific excluding Japan is expected to grow significantly in the forecasted years.Global Macadamia Market Dynamics:Owing to increasing variety of applications of macadamia, various workshop are taking places in order to increase the international trade for macadamia and since capitalise the growing demand for macadamia. Adoption of macadamia in chocolate and ice cream among consumers is expected to drive the demand for global macadamia in the near future. The biggest restraint for macadamia market is increasing crop losses due to immature nuts and moldy / rotten nuts. The crop losses due to these type of nuts accounts for around 50 percent of the total macadamia wastage globally. Thereby, reducing inclination of crop growers for macadamia and thus, hampering the market growth.Request For TOC@There is a high opportunity to increase the market share of macadamia in terms of revenue across countries such as Mexico, China, South Africa and others. Companies are investing in these countries through promotional activities in order to increase the footprint of macadamia worldwide.Global Macadamia Market Key Players:Some of the key players operating in the global macadamia market are Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Corp., Hamakua Macadamia Nut Company, MacFarms, Wondaree Macadamias, NAMBUCCA MACNUTS Pty Ltd, Golden Macadamias, Royal Macadamia (Pty) Ltd., Kenya Nut Company Ltd. and MWT Foods Australia.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: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Union budget 2017 gives a new hope for Orident oral healthcare

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As the union budget 2017 presented, the people from the education, housing, infrastructure, and healthcare industry cheered with joy. The budget shows more concern towards the major requirement of every human decreasing the cost investments and making it affordable.Especially the healthcare industry, which has become one the largest growing sector in the Indian market, has made the healthcare expensive and unaffordable to a common man since many years. Including the dental care - one of the most important sectors of healthcare is highly ignored because of unaffordable dental treatments.Dr.Conal C Nelson, MDS, Orident said the 2017 budget has presented forward-looking proposals for the population. With key reforms in tax laws and affordable housing, the budget has brought in a welcome aspect for the middle-income segment. Health and healthcare institutions have also received a boost, as it levied focus on wider accessibility of Health Wellness Centres across the country, promises reform of healthcare in the country.He added, A proposed amendment in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act is a welcome move and will allow expand access of essential healthcare. Extensive availability of crucial drugs and the reduction in the cost of life-saving drugs will ease the heavy health financing burden that is currently overtaking a large population. We are also looking forward to the regulation of manufacturing, import and sales of the medical device industry which will help in bringing quality healthcare to the people.Hence, the new budget 2017 is more positive and supportive said Dr. Nelson -one of the board-of-directors of Orident.Orident is Indias first complete oral care solution provider at an affordable cost. A complete dental coverage using the state of the art technology facilitated with its unique features and benefits. Focused on providing all the necessary dental services to sustain a healthy smile through preventive care solutions.For more information log on toOr you can also write us at smile@orident.inOrident, Indias first complete oral care solution provider at an affordable cost. Provides you a complete dental coverage with its unique features like one payment for one whole year, risk transfer mechanism for sharing your unused membership, unlimited number of session and much more, better than having a dental insurance.Quality dental treatments by top-notch dental specialists with services available in best dental care clinics in Bangalore, Hyderabad and other states of India. Specialized centres for dental services and multispecialty dental hospitals coming all over the country.71/2, 71/3, Nehru Road, Arvind nagar, Kammanahalli, Bangalore-560084
Orthopedic Biomaterials Market will Reach USD 38,100.2 Million by 2020 from USD 22,074.0 Million in 2015

Orthopedic Biomaterials Market

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Orthopedics is one of the most prominent applications of biomaterials. Orthopedic biomaterials are being increasingly used for treating various musculoskeletal and joint related disorders. This upsurge in the demand of orthopedic biomaterials is driven by augmenting hip and knee replacement surgeries, growing geriatric population, and rising aging population. Furthermore, rising awareness regarding orthopedic disorders and its treatment has also propelled the demand of orthopedic biomaterials. Moreover, citing the demand and potentials of orthopedic biomaterials, the governments of various countries are also providing funds and grants for developing new and advanced biomaterials. However, rising failure of joint implants and high cost of production of biomaterials are some factors which can hinder the growth of the market up to some extent.The global Orthopedic Biomaterials Market type is expected to reach $38,100.2 million by 2020 from $22,074.0 million in 2015 at a CAGR of 11.5% from 2015 to 2020.Report CoverageThe report provides comprehensive view about the Orthopedic Biomaterials Market. The reports includes four types of biomaterialsMetals Stainless Steel Titanium Alloy Cobalt and Chromium Alloys Precious MetalsMedical Ceramics Alumina Zirconium dioxide Calcium Phosphate Calcium Sulphate Carbon Bioactive Glass CeramicsMedical Polymers Polyethylene Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) Silicone Polyester Polyetheretherketone (PEEK)Natural Biomaterials Collagen Chitin & Chitosan Hyaluronic AcidOrthobiologics Demineralised Bone Matrix (DBM) Growth Factor Proteins Bone Morphogenetic Proteins Stem CellsRequest a Sample Report @Metals are most widely used orthopedic biomaterial and find wide application in arthroplasty and fracture fixation devices. However, ceramics, polymers, and orthobiologics segments are poised to witness high double digit growth in the coming five years.List Of TablesTable 1 Growth Drivers: Impact AnalysisTable 2 Growth Barriers: Impact AnalysisTable 3 Growth Opportunities: Impact AnalysisTable 4 Global Orthopedic Biomaterial Market, By Type, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 5 Global Orthopedic Biomaterial Market, By Region, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 6 North America: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 7 Europe: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 8 Asia: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 9 Global Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Metals, By Region, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 10 North America: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Metals, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 11 Europe: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Metals, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 12 Asia: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Metals, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 13 Global Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Metals, By Type, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 14 Global Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Stainless Steel, By Region, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 15 North America: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Stainless Steel, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 16 Europe: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Stainless Steel, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 17 Asia: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Stainless Steel, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 18 Global Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Titanium Alloy, By Region, 2013  2022 (Million$)Table 19 North America: Orthopedic Biomaterial Market For Titanium Alloy, By Country, 2013  2022 (Million$)Continue..Browse Report @List Of FiguresFigure 1 Natural Biomaterials Market To Witness The Highest GrowthFigure 2 Arthroplasty Application To Dominate The Market (Billion $)Figure 3 North America Holds Largest Share In 2015Figure 4 Market DynamicsFigure 5 Population Aged Above 60 Years In Major Regions, (2015  2050)Figure 6 USA: Musculoskeletal Procedures, 2011Figure 7 Obese Populations in Major Countries, 2012Figure 8 Health Expenditure (% of Gdp)Figure 9 Porters Five Forces AnalysisFigure 10 Supply Chain AnalysisFigure 11 Increasing Demand of Orthobiologics Triggers the Growth of Natural BiomaterialsFigure 14 Meniscus Repair Tracks Biomaterials: The Swiftly Growing Fracture and Tissue Fixation Devices ApplicationFigure 15 India, China, & Japan: Growth HotspotsFigure 20 Expansion Was the Key Growth Strategy Adopted By Orthopedic Biomaterial Players, 2010-2015Figure 21 Expansions: The Major Strategy Adopted By Purac Biomaterials, 2010-2015Figure 22 Agreements, Partnership, & Collaboration: The Major Strategy Adopted By Heraeus, 2010-2015Figure 23 Acquisitions: The Major Strategy Adopted By Purac Biomaterials, 2010-2015ContinueThe report also provides in-depth analysis of various applications in which orthopedic biomaterials are used. Furthermore, the report also provides detailed analysis of various geographies including North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World. These geographies have been sub divided into countries such as the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the U.K, Spain, India, China, and Japan. The report also covers the Global Orthopedic Biomaterials market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years.Related ReportGlobal Radio pharmaceutical Information, by types (Diagnostic and Therapeutic Radio pharmaceuticals) by application (cardiology, thyroid, oncology, neurology, others) by end users (hospitals, research centers, clinics)- Forecast to 2022About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Future of Global Travel Vaccines Market 2015 - 2021

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The driving factors for the growth of this market include increase in awareness about vaccine preventable diseases and rise in global travel traffic. Moreover, innovation of novel vaccine technologies and technological advancements towards molecular genetics is further boosting the growth of market in coming years. However, requirement of expertise for the production of vaccines and unfavorable healthcare funding towards vaccination could pose a challenge for the growth this market.A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @Geographically, North America will be the leading market for global travel vaccines market, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. The major contributing factors for North America to lead the market include involvement of large number of companies in the production of vaccines and introduction of superior range of vaccines in the market. However, Asia-Pacific market is forecast to grow at a significant growth rate in coming years.The leading players of this market include GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi Pasteur, Merck, Novartis, and Pfizer. Other key participants of this market include ALK  Abello A/S, Bavarian Nordic A/S, Crucell N.V., CSL Ltd. Medimmune Inc. and Vaxin Inc.To View TOC of this Report is Available Upon Request @Key geographies evaluated in this report are:North AmericaU.SCanadaEuropeFrance, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UKEastern EuropeCISAPACChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaOthersLatin AmericaArgentinaBrazilOthersKey features of this reportDrivers, restraints, and challenges shaping the Travel Vaccines market dynamicsLatest innovations and key events in the industryAnalysis of business strategies of the top playersTravel Vaccines market estimates and forecasts(2015 -2021)About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated re-search, 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, Con-sumer 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 en-gagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Postmenopausal Osteoporosis Therapeutics Market is Expected to Gain Popularity Across the Globe

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Osteoporosis is an orthopedic condition where the bone density and bone mass decreases and eventually increases the risk of bone fracture. Osteoporosis is one of the most common age related diseases worldwide and also represents a major public health problem. Osteoporosis is common among females than in the male population. Women with age more than 50 years are more prone to osteoporosis due to hormonal changes occurring after menopause. The currently available technologies fail to cure postmenopausal osteoporosis completely and thus healthcare professionals prefer medicinal therapy for treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis.A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @Considering the relation of age in postmenopausal osteoporosis, aging of population worldwide is the major factor that is increasing the morbidity rate of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Increasing prevalence of this condition and innovations in the corresponding drug market are major driving forces of the postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market. While high standards for approval of any new product to launch into the market, competition from the emerging alternative technologies and intense competition from generics are restraining growth of this market. Mergers and acquisitions taking place in the market is one of the major restraining force of postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market.Based on the type of medicines used, postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market is segmented as follows:BisphosphonatesHormonesStrontium ranelateRaloxifeneDenosumabOthersGeographically, the global postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market is segmented into:North AmericaEuropeAsia PacificRest of the WorldTo View TOC of this Report is Available Upon Request @Currently, North America dominates the postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market and is closely followed by Europe. Asia-Pacific is a lucrative regional market for such drugs considering factors such as increasing healthcare spending and improving healthcare infrastructure. Gradual; development of the medical tourism industry in the region is also expected to further spur the growth of postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market in Asia-Pacific. Some of the major companies contributing to the global postmenopausal osteoporosis therapeutics market are Eli Lilly, Pfizer, Inc., F. Hoffman La Roche, Procter & Gamble and Merck.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated re-search, 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, Con-sumer 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 en-gagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
Global Global Dysphagia Management Market Accounting for US$ 4,101.3 Million by 2024

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Rapid improvement of healthcare services is ensuring a qualitative development of medical treatments for dysphagia. The number of outpatients seeking dysphagia management services is also expected to be on a rise globally. More patients are opting for OTC (over-the-counter) drugs over prescription-based medications, which will continue to be a key determinant for growth in demand for dysphagia management since such diseases can be cured orally, without a mandatory medical supervision.According to Persistence Market Researchs report, titled Dysphagia Management Market: Global Industry Analysis & Forecast, 2016-2024, by the end of 2024, the global dysphagia management revenues are likely to reach US$ 4,101.3 million value, a majority of which will be accounted by nutritional solutions products. The report also predicts that global sales of thickeners in nutritional solutions (as dysphagia management products) will net revenues worth over US$ 1,700 million during the forecast period.A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @According to the report, over the forecast period, the global dysphagia management market will expand at a healthy CAGR of 6.2%. Growth in global demand for dysphagia management will be paralleled with improvement of medical services & facilities in the global healthcare sector. Increasing presence of specialty clinics and retail pharmacies will further add to the distribution of dysphagia management drugs and treatment solutions.In terms of global revenues, however, hospital pharmacies will continue to lead the worldwide dysphagia management market by reaping more than US$ 1.5 billion by 2024. Although, growth of the global dysphagia management market is likely to be restrained by side-effects of products sold as dysphagia drugs & tubes. Additionally, losing out on market exclusivity is also a key challenge incurred during sales of dysphagia drugs as OTC medications.North Americas dysphagia management market is projected to grow substantially, owing to the surging incidences of strokes. Excessive addiction to smoking and binge-drinking is a major factor triggering occurrence of dysphagia-related disorders in North America. By 2024, nearly US$ 1,500 million revenues from sales of dysphagia management will be accrued in North America, among which, oropharangeal dysphagia indications will account for more than a billion dollars in revenues. Europe is also projected to be a key region, lucrative for the growth of dysphagia management market.In terms of global market share, Europes dysphagia management revenues will be contributing to about 27% of global revenues throughout the forecast period. Likewise, increasing production of pharmaceuticals in Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is also expected to favor the growth of dysphagia management in that region. By 2024-end, the APAC dysphagia management market will expand rampantly, registering the highest regional CAGR at 6.9%. On the other hand, Latin America and Middle East & Africa (MEA) regions are likely to incur nascent growth in terms of dysphagia management market value, over the projection period.To View TOC of this Report is Available Upon Request @Japanese pharmaceuticals manufacturer, Eisai Co. Ltd. is globally recognized for specializing in production of drugs for treatment of peptic ulcers and dysphagia. The company is also projected to be developing its businesses in generics production, and will continue co-marketing medications developed by industry leaders such as Johnson & Johnson. North American drugmakers, C. R. Bard, Inc. and Cook Medical Inc., along with Louisiana-based Kent Precision Foods Group, Inc. are also leading players in the global dysphagia management market. Besides, Nutricia Advanced Medical Nutrition, Cipla Ltd., Nestle Health Science, and Astra Zeneca plc. are other leading companies profiled in the report.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a U.S.-based full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated re-search, 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, Con-sumer 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 en-gagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.ContactPersistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.com
North America and Europe dermal filler market is projected to register a promising CAGR of 6.4% over the forecast period 2016-2026

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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the North America and Europe dermal filler market in its latest report, titled North America and Europe Dermal Filler Market: Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026. In terms of revenue, the North America and Europe dermal filler market is projected to register a promising CAGR of 6.4% over the forecast period, owing to numerous factors, about which FMI offers thorough insights and forecasts in this report.The factors powering demand for dermal fillers are aging population, increasing expenditure on aesthetics and beauty procedures, introduction of new areas of application such as HIV induced facial lipoatrophy, enhancement of dorsal area of hand and rising demand for non-invasive aesthetic procedures over surgical aesthetic procedures.Request Free Report Sample@However, higher cost associated with the dermal filler procedure, patch up or reinjection needed for achieving the desired facial rejuvenation for absorbable dermal fillers and some post procedure complications associated with dermal fillers like bruising, redness and granulation are some factors expected to hamper growth of the North America and Europe dermal filler market over the forecast period.Key trend defining the market is the prominent players acquiring smaller players in aesthetics product domain, consequently increasing their infrastructure along with expanding their product portfolio. Also, big players are partnering with local and smaller companies for distribution of their products on a regional level in pursuance of capturing the market share. Furthermore, dermal filler manufacturers are also increasingly concentrating on end user engagement to retain and expand their market share.Segmentation highlightsThe market is segmented based on product type, filler material, distribution channel and region. Based on product type, the market is segmented into absorbable fillers and non-absorbable fillers.Among the product type segment, absorbable product type segment is expected to exhibit the highest revenue growth over the forecast period. The absorbable product type segment is expected to register a significant CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period in terms of value. The non-absorbable product segment is projected to register CAGR of 4.5% over the forecast period.To provide in-depth insights on the pattern of demand for dermal fillers, the market is segmented into different type filler material such as hyaluronic acid (HA), poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA), calcium hydroxylapatite (CaHA), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and collagen. The hyaluronic acid material segment is projected to register a significant CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period in terms of value.The market has also been segmented by distribution channel into retail pharmacies and drug stores, clinics and hospital pharmacies and online sales segments. Clinics and hospital pharmacy distribution segment is expected to be the highest in terms of revenue over the forecast period, with the segment registering a CAGR of 7.8%.Retail pharmacies and drug stores are projected to witness a CAGR of 6.8% over the forecast period. One of the major growth supporter for the dermal filler market is the office based procedure and small time required for procedure (30 to 60 minutes).Regional market projectionsThis report assesses trends in driving growth of each segment on the collective as well as regional level and offers potential takeaways that could prove substantially useful to dermal filler manufacturers looking forward to enter the market. North America market is expected to dominate the dermal filler market, accounting for maximum revenue share by 2016 end. Western Europe market is expected to account for approximately 28.5% revenue share of the North America and Europe dermal filler market by 2016 end. Among the emerging markets, Germany is projected to exhibit a significant CAGR of 7.2% over the forecast period, followed by France, due to rising demand for non-invasive aesthetics procedures and increasing expenditure on aesthetic procedures.Send An Enquiry@Vendor insightsSome of the key players in the North America and Europe dermal filler market include Allergan plc., Galderma Pharma S.A., Sinclair Pharma S.A., Anika Therapeutics Inc., Suneva Medical Inc. and Merz Pharma GmbH and Co. KGaA. In this report, FMI has discussed individual strategies followed by these companies in terms of enhancing their product portfolio, creating new marketing techniques, mergers and acquisitions. The Competitive Landscape is included to provide report audiences with a dashboard view and company share collectively.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
automotive washer systems market remains positive, with the market expected to register a 5.4% value CAGR during 2016-2026

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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the global automotive washer system market in its latest report titled, Automotive Washer System Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 20162026. Global sales of automotive washer systems including headlamp and windshield washer systems is expected to reach US$ 17.5 Bn in 2016, witnessing a y-o-y growth of 4.2% over 2015. The long-term outlook on the global automotive washer systems market remains positive, with the market expected to register a 5.4% value CAGR during the forecast period 2016-2026. Passenger car segment will account for maximum share of the total sales, extending the market share to 76.7% in 2026 as compared to 74.5% in 2016.In terms of volume, the global sales of automotive washer systems is expected to reach 1,453.4 Mn units in 2016 and is expected to expand at a CAGR 3.5% over the forecast period 20162026.Request Free Report Sample@Increasing vehicle production and adoption of efficient wiper and washer technologies are primary factors bolstering the sales of washer systems globally. Moreover, high replacement rate of washer system components is expected to result in high sales in the aftermarket segment. The emergence of newer wiper blade and windshield cleaning technologies is resulting in higher cost of end products, which is a major factor restraining adoption of these products among consumers. High market penetration of relatively low-cost wiper and washer system alternatives restricts demand for wiper de-icer, nozzle integrated wipers and heated nozzle washer systems.Segmentation highlightsThe global automotive washer system market is segmented on the basis of Component (Nozzles, Reservoirs, Hose & Connectors, Pumps, Windshield Wipers, Wiper Motor); Sales Channel (OEM, Aftermarket); Technology (Electric, Mechanical); Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, Light Commercial Vehicles, Heavy Commercial Vehicles); and Application (Windshield Washer System, Headlamp Washer System).Windshield wiper was the largest segment by component in 2015 and this will remain unchanged in 2016Nozzle and hose & reservoir segments are expected to be the next large segment in terms of volumeBy value, wiper motor segment is expected to remain dominant over the forecast period. The segment is expected to account for share of 45.9% in 2016 and is expected to maintain dominance over the forecast periodBy product type, windshield washer segment was the largest segment in 2015, and this segment is anticipated to hold 72.3% of the market revenue by 2026. Advancements in wiper blade technology and nozzle design will support growth of the market over near futureHeadlamp washer system segment is anticipated to witness a relatively high value CAGR than windshield washer system. Increasing sales of premium and luxury vehicle globally is anticipated to bolster the growth of headlamp washer system. Furthermore, automakers in the market are focussing on introducing value added features in their mid-range vehicles, so as to earn competitive edge in the marketRegional projectionsThe global automotive washer system market is segmented into the regions of North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, APEJ, MEA, and Japan. Asia Pacific, the largest market for automotive washer systems is expected account for US$ 5.5 Bn revenue in 2016. Increasing adoption of headlamp washer systems in semi-luxury and mid-sized cars is major trend witnessed in the region. North America is expected to be the next big market, the region accounted for 21.1% of the total revenue share in 2015 and is anticipated to hold 20.7% in 2016. The recent relocation of automobile production facilities to developing nations such as Mexico will impact the OEM sales of washer systems in the region. Western Europe is expected to account for US$ 3.3 Bn revenue in 2016. The market for headlamp washer systems in the region is majorly driven by the existing stringent regulations to deploy these systems with high intensity headlamps.Send An Enquiry@Vendor insightsRobert Bosch GmbH, Denso Corporation, Valeo S.A., continental AG and Mitsuba Corporation are the top five players in the global automotive washer system market, accounting for about 30% market revenue share in 2015. The leading players in the market are focusing on acquisition, collaboration and partnerships of/with technology providers to increase their product portfolio and market presence. Furthermore, expansion of production facilities, particularly in developing nations, is the key strategy adopted by major players in the market.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Industrial and Institutional Cleaning Chemicals Market is expected to increase at a CAGR of 5.2% over the forecast period 20162026

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Future Market Insights delivers key insights on the global industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals market in its latest report titled Industrial and Institutional Cleaning Chemicals Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026.Global sales revenue of industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals is projected to be valued at US$ 40.13 Bn by 2016, witnessing a Y-o-Y growth of 3.9% over 2015. The APEJ regional market is expected to register high growth followed by the Latin America industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals market.Request Free Report Sample@The modern healthcare sector uses various devices and procedures to treat patients. The devices used in medical procedures are prone to serious infections. With the number of patients increasing in hospitals, the associated healthcare infections have emerged as a severe health issue in the past few years, posing a big threat to patient safety. It is estimated that over 20%-30% of these healthcare related infections can be prevented by intensive hygiene and control programs. Moreover, National Action Plan to Prevent Health Care-Associated Infections set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is also focussing on decreasing the number of such infections by 2020. Thus, due to continuation of promotional campaigns designed to increase awareness among consumers regarding the advantages of cleaning products, the cleaning chemicals demand is projected to increase over the projected period.Demand for meat products is increasing, mainly due to the rapid growth in population, westernisation of economies and changing food preferences. This increasing demand, in turn, is likely to lead to a rise in cold storage capacities and the need for a high level of hygiene. Combination of all these factors is projected to drive the consumption of industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals during the assessed period.Segmentation highlightsBased on a primary source, the global industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals market can be segmented by application as commercial, Industrial and domestic. Industrial application is further classified as hand hygiene chemicals, building care chemicals, and others. The Commercial and domestic application segments are further bifurcated as laundry care chemicals, building care chemicals, kitchen care chemicals, hand hygiene chemicals, and others. Each sub-segment can be further categorised based on chemicals as citric acid, lactic acid, formic acid, phosphoric acid, acetic acid, hydrochloric acid, chlor alkalis, surfactants, chelating agents, phosphates, biocides, and solvents.The commercial segment will hold significant share in the global industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals market, registering a significantly high CAGR in terms of value during the period of assessment. The segment is estimated to create incremental opportunity of US$ 12.33 Bn during projected period.Laundry care chemicals sub-segment in industrial application segment is estimated to exhibit a CAGR of 5.9% in terms of value during the studied period. The segment is anticipated to create incremental opportunity of US$ 5,052.6 Mn which is approximately 34% of the total incremental opportunity.Regional market projectionsThe global industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals market is segmented on the basis of region as North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), Japan and Middle East and Africa. APEJ is expected to register relatively high CAGR in terms of value during the assessed period. China and India are highly focussed on increasing hygiene awareness. Western Europe and North America are estimated to collectively account for a share of market value of over 51.5% by 2016 end.Send An Enquiry@Vendor insightsThe major companies in the industrial and institutional cleaning chemicals market include Procter & Gamble Co., Huntsman Corporation, The Dow Chemical Company, BASF SE, Akzo Nobel N.V., Lonza Group Limited, Henkel AG & Co. KGaA, Betco Corporation, Solvay SA, Eastman Chemical Companyand Croda International Plc. These players have adopted a strategy of increasing their production capacities across the world.About Us  Future Market Insights is the premier provider of market intelligence and consulting services, serving clients in over 150 countries. FMI is headquartered in London, the global financial capital, and has delivery centers in the U.S. and India.Contact Us:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way,Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage,New York 10989,United StatesTel: +1-347-918-3531Fax: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Modular Instruments Market: Global Analysis, Top Players, Future Trends, Forecast 2024

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Modular instruments are devices that are utilized for the configuration of automated test and measurement (T&M) equipment. T&M equipment is used for the development, design, maintenance, verification, and repair of various electronic and mechanical products. The modular instruments market is segmented by product type, by end user, and by geography. Based on product type, the market is segmented into PXI platform, VXI platform, and AXIe platform. Among these product types, the PXI platform segment accounted for the maximum share of the global modular instruments market in terms of revenue in 2015 and is expected to retain its market dominance in the coming years. The PXI platform is based on peripheral component interconnect (PCI) that minimizes the cost of modular instruments and also enhances their performance. Regular software upgrades and easy availability will boost the demand for modular instruments based on the PXI platform from various end user industries, especially the defense and military sector. The market is also segmented on the basis of end user into aerospace and defense, semiconductor and electronics, and telecommunication. Semiconductor and electronics industry dominated the global modular instruments market in 2015 and this trend is expected to continue throughout the next few years. The electronics industry uses modular instruments in various processes such as photonics production, submicron and nano-precision technology, mechanical and electrical engineering, and nanotechnology. Demand for modular instruments has increased due to rising R&D investments in the electronics industry, and various technological innovations.Get PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:The global modular instruments market is segregated geographically into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. Asia Pacific was the leading market in 2015 and this region is projected to retain its dominance over the forecast period. Asia Pacific accounted for major market share due to increasing demand for modular instruments from emerging countries such as Japan, China, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia. Among these countries, China has emerged as one of the major manufacturers of modular instruments, and is becoming a highly lucrative market for availability of low cost modular instruments in the world. Furthermore, the modular instruments market is likely to be majorly dominated by technologically advanced nations in the coming years.The modular instruments marketis highly competitive with the presence of a large number of well established local, regional, and international players who provide test and measurement equipment, though they appear to be fragmented. Rapidly growing number of vendors creates intense competition in this market. Competition in the market will intensify further with the emergence of more players.Most of the modular instruments manufacturing companies in the domestic and regional market have started to manufacture application specific products for different end users and are posing a strong challenge to international modular instruments vendors. Over time, local and regional vendors will find it increasingly difficult to compete with the international vendors based on parameters such as product quality, product reliability and durability, product price, and technological innovations. An increase in mergers and acquisitions, and technological innovations will further intensify the level of competition among existing market players. Moreover, international vendors are expected to acquire domestic players to strengthen their market presence in the coming years.Some of the key players in the modular instruments market are Cobham, Rohde & Schwarz, Keysight Technologies and National Instruments among others. The other prominent vendors in the market are Anritsu, EXFO, Aplab Limited, Ixia, Fastech Telecommunications, Qmax Test Equipments, TEKTRONIX, JDS Uniphase, Premier Measurement Solutions, SPX, Scientech Technologies, and Yokogawa Electric.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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
By Fumbuka Ng'wanakilala

DAR ES SALAAM, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Tanzania signed a deal worth $1.215 billion with a consortium of Turkish and Portuguese companies on Friday to construct a 300-kilometre railway line, part of plans by the east African country to boost trade with its land-locked neighbours.

In total, Tanzania wants to build a 2,561 km standard gauge railway network connecting its main Indian Ocean port of Dar es Salaam to eastern and southern Africa's hinterland.

The port's vast hinterland loops in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.

In a statement, state-run railway firm, Reli Assets Holding Company Ltd (RAHCO), said it had signed an agreement with a joint venture of Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi and Portugal's Mota-Engil Engenharia e Construcao Africa, S.A.

The firm said construction of the railway line would start next month and take 30 months to be completed.

It did not give details on how the infrastructure project would be financed but last July Tanzania said it had secured a $7.6 billion loan from China's Export-Import Bank (Exim) to build part of the new railway network.

Tanzanian government officials said 40 foreign companies had initially expressed interest in the project, but only the Turkish-Portuguese consortium submitted a bid and was picked.

RAHCO said winners of bids for four other tenders for construction of additional standard gauge railway lines covering about 1,000 km would be announced in April.

Last month Tanzania also asked for a loan from state-owned Export Credit Bank of Turkey (Eximbank) to help finance a 400 km stretch of new railway.

President John Magufuli made the funding request to visiting Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan during talks in Dar es Salaam.

In recent years Turkey has sought to deepen trade ties with Africa and moved to expand influence on a continent where China and more traditional donors such as Britain, France and the European Union have a strong presence.

Tanzanian government sources said Chinese companies would probably be awarded tenders for construction of other sections of the railway line.

(Editing by Elias Biryabarema; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Low-Concentration Photovoltaic Market : Trends, Analysis of Recent Development By 2026

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Low-Concentration Photovoltaic cell converts the solar energy into direct current which is used in semiconductor materials. A photovoltaic system consists of solar panels and solar cells, which converts the solar energy into electricity. The solar panels absorbs the solar energy through direct sunlight which is stored into the solar cells that are made up of layers of semiconductors, the energy stored in the solar cells are then transformed into electricity and are used for household as well as commercial applications. The solar cell used for storing the solar energy is a photoelectric cell and it is capable of producing electric current without external voltage source. The various low-concentration photovoltaic process includes photoelectric effect, and electro chemical process. The low concentrated photovoltaic offers many advantages than the high concentrated photovoltaic cell such as they require only single axis tracking, less sensitivity to track errors, capture the large fraction of diffuse and circumsolar content. The advanced technologies and rapid innovations in the low-concentration photovoltaic is expected to create lucrative opportunities for the low-concentration photovoltaic market. The global Low-Concentration Photovoltaic market anticipated to exhibit a significant CAGR as well as annual growth rate over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @The Low-Concentration Photovoltaic market is primarily driven by the following factors, the technological advancements and innovations in the photovoltaic market and favorable public policies attributed to low-concentration photovoltaic cell which is increasing the adoption rate of low concentration photovoltaic cell which in turn driving the global market for low-concentration photovoltaic. Increased disposable income along with government awareness programs regarding renewable energy sources are also driving the global low concentration photovoltaic market. The government initiatives to generate and adopt the photovoltaic have a tremendous impact on low concentration photovoltaic market. For instance, Japanese government is expanding solar power by enacting subsidies and Feed-in-Tariff (FIT). However, low-concentration photovoltaic cells are operated most efficiently in concentrated sunlight, in order to reach the maximum efficiency photovoltaic cell must be located in plentiful sunlight which can be challenge for low-concentration photovoltaic market in some geographies. Comparatively, the low-concentration photovoltaic is costlier than the conventional devices, which acts as a bottleneck for global low-concentration photovoltaic market.Low-Concentration Photovoltaic Market: SegmentationGlobal Market can be segmented as following typesBased on technology typeRefractorReflectorBased on applicationCommercial scaleUtility scaleGlobal Low-Concentration Photovoltaic market is gaining traction across the globe due to increased awareness among people towards low concentration photovoltaic market. The global Low-Concentration Photovoltaic market is witnessed to unlock the potential over the forecast period.Low-Concentration Photovoltaic Market: Region-Wise OutlookGlobal market is segmented into seven key regions, those are North America (N.A), Latin America (L.A), Eastern Europe (E.E), Western Europe (W.E), Asia-Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Japan.Western Europe is currently holds the largest market share in low concentration photovoltaic market due to advanced technologies and innovations in photovoltaic in the region. Germany has a significant contribution in European region followed by Italy, Belgium. Asia-Pacific offers a robust market share in global low-concentration photovoltaic market owing to the drastic change in Asian countries demographics as well as economy industry in China, Japan, and India. China is highly agile industry with 400 photo voltaic companies in the country as of 2016. China is one of the leading producer of photovoltaic power with 43 GW capacity. North America market for low-Concentration photovoltaic is anticipated to have significant market share over the forecast period followed by Europe due to the increased awareness among the people in the countries like US and Canada for renewable and environment friendly source of energy. The global low-concentration photovoltaic market is anticipated to account for significant CAGR as well as lucrative opportunities for the companies over the forecast period.A TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the major key players identified in the low-concentration photovoltaic market includes:Arzon Solar, LLC.Trina SolarYingli SolarHanwha Q CELLSSoitecSolar Electric Supply, Inc.Semprius, Inc.Solar JunctionSunPower Corporation.Suncor Energy Inc.SolarSystemsZytechMagpower, Inc.ZincoRavano Power Ltd.GT Advanced Technologies.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 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
Individual Mobility Services Market Trends and Competitive Landscape Outlook By 2026

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The changes in the life style of people coupled with advanced technologies enables open a new era in individual mobility services market. The transportation services from private and public transporters manages the trip, which users can pay the money. They can pay for a single trip for a particular distance. The mobility services market is gaining traction in urban areas. The paradigm shift to innovative technologies such as mobile applications, ride sharing, e-hailing, bike sharing enables attract the passengers towards mobility services. The ride sharing option enables unlock the potential due to increase the affordability. The mobile application play pivotal role in book a trip and enables user to avoid interaction with multiple gate ways. The technological advancements and innovations in individual mobility services spur new opportunities for the companies plunged in mobility services market. Global individual mobility services market is expected to exhibit a significant CAGR over the forecast period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Factors contributing to the growth of individual mobility services market are increasing the disposable income of people enables to adopt for advanced mobility services. Mobility service companies are adopting to advanced software technologies in order to reach customers, promote mobility services enables drive the mobility service market. Changes in the life styles and increase awareness among the people regarding the mobility services enables drive individual mobility services market over the forecast period. However, stringent transportation regulations and pollution regulations hamper the global individual mobility services market.Individual Mobility Services Market: SegmentationGlobal market can be segmented as following typesBy Product TypeSports Utility Vehicle (SUV)Multi Utility Vehicle (MUV)CarsBikesIndividual Mobility Services Market: OverviewThe demand of individual mobility services market is gaining traction, owing to increased adoption of advanced transportation facilities like individual mobility services. The global individual mobility market is expected to account for a significant growth over the forecast period.Individual Mobility Services Market: Region-Wise OutlookGlobal market is segmented into seven key regions: Those are North America, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Western Europe, Japan, Middle East and Africa.North America is expected to dominate the global individual mobility services market due to increased awareness among the people in countries like US and Canada. European region anticipated account robust market share due to its adoption of advanced technology. Germany, U.K, France spur the opportunities for the individual mobility market. Asia Pacific countries Singapore, Japan, China, and India offers lucrative market for individual mobility market. Global individual mobility services market is anticipated to unlock the potential of market over the forecast period.A TOC of this report is available upon request @Individual Mobility Services Market: Key playersSome of the key players areUber Technologies, Inc.Sidecar Technologies, IncLyft, Inc.Curb, Inc.OlaBla Bla CarMeruGet TaxiGrab TaxiCabifyThe 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 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
Counter-IED Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share | Future Trends 2024

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Counter-improvised explosive devices (IEDs) are essential systems in conflict operations, primarily created for military forces and law enforcement with help from financial and diplomatic communities. These equipment are used to detect explosives precursor components and to defeat IEDs as a part of broader counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, and efforts on the part of law enforcement agencies. This involves an inclusive approach to counter threat networks which employ IEDs, defeating these systems themselves while training others. Counter-IED equipment are primarily against adversaries and not only against IEDs as these devices are a subset of many classes of asymmetric warfare put to use by terrorist groups and insurgents. For instance, lightweight vehicles and battle tanks are some devices for countering IED threats. Modern day warfare has further highlighted the usage of detection systems and electronic jammers for the location and prevention of explosives hidden underground.Get PDF Brochure for more Professional and Technical industry insights:The key drivers behind the growth of the global counter-IED market include territorial disputes, external and internal security threats, technological innovations, modernization initiatives, and considerable demand for counter-IED equipment from the Afghanistan coalition forces and other regions affected by terrorism and insurgencies. Other forces boosting the market are the constant prioritization of expenditure on equipment which combat the threat from IEDs, the appreciation that improvised explosive devices are effectively and extensively employed by insurgent groups, the efficiency of some counter-IED equipment in casualty reduction, increasing IED attacks, development of counter-IED use in global peacekeeping missions, the focus of NATO to acquire counter-IED equipment, and mass demand of the U.S. expected to continue in the near future, that is going to be sustained moderately over the next few years. Besides, IEDs have proved to be increasingly preferred and effective weapons by insurgents, mainly in Afghanistan and Iraq, apart from several other regions worldwide. Many major armed forces in the world have reacted by spending severely on counter-IED systems such as jammers blocking radio signals for IED detonation, mine-resistant vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and robots, and detection and disposal devices. Since IEDs are relatively cheaper for making with commonly available materials, these devices will continue to threaten in future encounters. Hence the expenditure on counter-IED systems continues to be vital.However, there are certain restraining factors which have been impeding the growth of the global counter-IED market. These restraints include the strategic withdrawal of the U.S. led coalition from Iraq and Afghanistan, the challenges imposed by the defense budget cuts in several nations, a probable market saturation, market concentration in terrorism prone areas, restricted access to attractive markets due to protectionist policies, the U.S. and European economic crises, and the disinclinationof some countries towards heavy investment in counter-IED equipment more than those meant for a minor fraction of the armed forces. The market has been declining ever since international operations in Iraq and Afghanistan ended.In spite of the adverse influences, the global counter-IED market is expected to grow at a robust rate in the near future. This is owing to the growth in demand for unmanned systems such as driverless trucks and lighter robots, and demand for counter-IED equipment developing in homeland security.The global counter-IED market is segmented on the basis of system type, end use, and geography. On the basis of system type, the market is segmented into electronic countermeasures, counter-IED vehicles, unmanned systems, and detection systems. On the basis of end use, the market is segmented into law enforcement agencies, and military forces. According to geography, the market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America.The key players in the global market are BAE Systems Land Systems, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Rheinmetall Defense, Oshkosh Defense, Defense land Systems India, Boeing Defense, Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., and iRobot Corporation.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:
Distributed Acoustic Sensing Market Trends and Competitive Landscape Outlook By 2026

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Distributed acoustic sensing is a technology which is used in distributed fiber optic sensing. Distributed acoustic sensing technology measures acoustic energy across the length of an optical fiber. Major advantage of distributed acoustic sensing technology is as it banks on optical fiber for its sensing needs, so it is free from electromagnetic disturbances. The long range of distributed acoustic sensing technology is another advantage it has over other technologies used in fiber optic sensing. Distributed Acoustic Sensing is an optoelectronic system, it records the acoustic signal continuously along the path of sensing fiber. Distributed acoustic system is a type of optoelectronic system which continuously records the acoustic signal along the path of sensing fiber.A sample of this report is available upon request @Distributed acoustic sensing allows underground fiber-optic cables, to be turned into a giant string of microphones. It can then be used to monitor all sensitive locations, from oil and gas pipelines to railway tracks, military bases and international borders.There are various trends of distributed acoustic sensing market such as the use of distributed acoustic sensing for hydraulic fracturing which is a highly efficient way to release oil and natural gas trapped in rocks. Another trend is, the use of the existing fiber optic infrastructure for implementing distributed acoustic sensing is the ongoing trend in the distributed acoustic sensing market.Deployment of the acoustic technology in safety and security system is a driving factor for the growth of distributed acoustic sensing market. For Instance, now a days the security systems made for homes are being equipped with distributed acoustic sensing due to its robustness and advanced sensing capabilities. Another driving factor is systems long range is also a driving factor for the market growth. As long range ability of the distributed acoustic sensing is aiding to expand its usage to oilfield services. In areas such as oil field continuous evaluation is necessary this is where distributed acoustic sensing comes to play in evaluation, production and completion services in oilfield. Additionally, the need for pipeline management is another factor driving the distributed acoustic sensing market growth. In Pipeline management system distributed acoustic sensing is helpful in leak detection, PIG detection, in detection of third party activities that may harm the pipeline.Rising security concern is also boosting the distributed acoustic sensing market growth. This distributed acoustic sensing is helpful to tackle situations and provides continuous monitoring and stringent security. The applications of distributed acoustic sensing in military is helping the distributed acoustic sensing market to grow. As distributed acoustic sensing is helpful in border surveillance, monitoring of sites in harsh weather conditions.Distributed acoustic sensing is helpful to monitor traffic, asset condition monitoring, infrastructure monitoring is increasing the demand of distributed acoustic sensing and further boosting the distributed acoustic sensing market.Guidelines for the use of distributed acoustic sensing equipment and the developing standards is a restraint for distributed acoustic sensing market. On the other hand, management of the data sets generated by the technology is again a restraint.Segmentation of Distributed Acoustic Sensing MarketThe Distributed Acoustic Sensing market is segmented on the basis of fiber type, by end user and by region. By fiber type global distributed acoustic sensing is segmented into single mode and multimode fiber based DAS. Segmentation of global distributed acoustic sensing market by end user is done as oilfield services, pipeline integrity management, site security, military and transport industries. The Distributed acoustic sensing market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.A TOC of this report is available upon request @Some key players of the distributed acoustic sensing market are Halliburton Co., Schlumberger NV, Omnisens SA, Ziebel AS, Baker Hughes, Inc., Fotech Solutions ltd, Silixa Ltd., Qintiq Group PLC, Future Fiber Technologies Ltd., Northrop Grumman Corp and Opta Sense.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
Luxury Pens Market Expecting Worldwide Growth by 2022

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The luxury pens market is a niche market, and also there are not much retailers available in the market, which can hamper the luxury pens market. Likewise, the import duty of such luxury pens is high enough to impact its market. Due to its high range the inventory cost of the dealers increases, hence it requires more working capital management which can decline the luxury pens market. Moreover, there is an increase in e-communication among people which would further decline the luxury pens market.The growing e-communication among the corporates and other social class people around the world has become a threat for written communication. Due to the increasing brand awareness and high disposable income of people (especially among young adults), the luxury pens market is witnessing a decent growth. Likewise, luxury pens key players which are having brands such as Lamy, Aurora, Mont Blanc, Grayson and Parker are trying to encash the opportunities in this growing luxury pens market. The major players are opting to make their luxury pens more royal by making it diamond studded and gold plated, to grab the maximum market share. One of the key trend in the market is that the manufacturers are strategically investing in product development by modifying the luxury pen nib with platinum and other expensive metals. In spite of the sluggish market and curtailed discretionary spending, the luxury pens market is growing at a good rate. Hence, the global luxury pens market has got a great potential in the forecast period. The global luxury pens market is anticipated to witness a moderate single digit growth in the upcoming years.The growing global luxury pens market can be attributed to the growing disposable income and brand awareness amongst people. Growing population coupled with the changing lifestyle of people in the developed countries is anticipated to drive the demand for global luxury pens market. Moreover, possessing a luxury pen has become a status symbol these days and hence, high class society people are opting for luxury pens. Likewise, the attractiveness of luxury pens again plays a great role for boosting its market.A sample of this report is available upon request @Asia Pacific is the fastest growing region in the global luxury pens market. Countries such as India and China are the upcoming countries where demand for such luxury items are at peak because of the increase in disposable income of people. Even, North America is a flourishing luxury pens market due to the improving brand awareness of luxury pens amongst people.Request to view table of content @Some of the key players identified in the global luxury pens market are Paradise Pen Company, Montblanc International GmbH, C. Josef Lamy GmbH, Grayson Tighe, Parker Pen Company, A.T.Cross Company, Sanford L.P.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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market to See Potential Growth till 2020: Rising Geriatric Population Increases the Demand

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According to the report, in 2013, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices was worth US$0.38 bn and is anticipated to reach US$0.98 bn by the end of 2020. The market is expected to register a progressive 14.20% CAGR between 2014 and 2020. The rising economic burden on medical clinics and hospitals for patient admission is the major factor propelling the global remote patient monitoring devices market in the forecast period. However, the inadequacy in maintaining the security and privacy of the data is the key factor hampering the growth of this market.Obtain the Upcoming Market Trends of Remote Patient Monitoring Devices at:On the basis of type, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices has been divided into breath monitors, physical activity monitors, heart monitors, hematological monitors, and multi-sign monitors. The growing prevalence of various chronic diseases that need constant monitoring, such as blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disorders, is driving the global market for monitoring medical devices. In 2013, the heart rate monitors segment led the overall market due to the rising prevalence of cardiac diseases across the globe.On the basis of end-use, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices is classified into ambulatory care centers and home healthcare. In 2013, the ambulatory care center segment held the biggest share in the global remote patient monitoring devices market. The dominance of this segment is due to the growing geriatric population, as aging people are at a greater risk of developing various infections and diseases. Nevertheless, the home healthcare segment is also expected to grow at a fast pace in the forecast period.On the basis of major geographies, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices has been segmented into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America, and Rest of the World. In terms of revenue generation, the North America region dominates the global remote patient monitoring devices market and is also anticipated to remain in that position throughout the forecast period. The dominance of this region is due to the growing geriatric population and increasing healthcare cost in the U.S., making the remote healthcare monitoring treatment option attractive.In addition, the rising incidence of diabetes in this region is another factor that is anticipated to boost the demand for hematology monitoring devices in the global remote patient monitoring devices market. On the other hand, the Asia Pacific remote patient monitoring devices market is projected to witness rapid growth due to several factors including the increasing costs of healthcare services and the booming medical tourism industry in countries such as Thailand and India.Read the Present Market Status of Remote Patient Monitoring Devices at:Furthermore, the research report analyzes the competitive landscape of the global remote patient monitoring devices market based on key criteria such as company profile, financial overview, business strategies, and recent developments. Some of the key players mentioned in the research report are Honeywell HomMed LLC, F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., AMD Global Telemedicine, Covidien plc, Omron Healthcare, Aerotel Medical Systems, Smiths Medical, and Abbott Laboratories.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Business Rule Management System Market Trends and Competitive Landscape Outlook By 2026

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A Business Rule Management System or BRMS is a system software which is used to define and deploy along with execution and monitoring to maintain the complexity and variety of decision logic which is used by operational systems in an organization or enterprise. Business rule management system provides solution to react quickly for all sorts of business policies and rules way more efficient than traditional methods. For example- Firms keeps its data safely locked in various multiple software systems its retrieval is not easy for key leaders and managers but business rule management system provides this readily.A sample of this report is available upon request @The deployment of business rule management system into various verticals such as information technology and manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, retail, travel and transportation industry is the rising trend in the business rule management system market.The advantages of business rule management system such as its ability to safeguard the integrity of decision logic and to identify the conflicting or incomplete circular logic rule is boosting the business rule management system market. Business rule management system also compiles down rules to executable file for open system integration and scales endlessly regardless of complexity of rules is aiding business rule management system market. The ability to promote fast, easy and accurate rules also clear identification is another factor driving the business rule management system market.Enterprises increasing demand for organizational receptiveness and agility are among some factors driving the business rule management system market with additional benefits such as reduction in time to market, reduction in total operational and maintenance cost, consistent business planners and by providing highly robust platforms for businesses. Business rule management system enables information technology firms and business to easily communicate rule changes and maintenance work for more consistent distribution of work across the enterprises.There are various factors which are driving factors for the business rule management system market.First being business, government, organization or any entity that is administered by rules needs BRMS. Second is organization with policies that affects its staff, vendors and customers use business rule management system. Third is entrepreneurs who want to quickly capture market segment opportunity are deploying business rule management software. Reusable rules and regular updates is increasing the adoption rate of business rule management system and in turn aiding the business rule management market.Due to the various driving factors of business rule management system there is increased revenue opportunities for business rule management system market. Rising number of small and medium scale enterprise will provide additional revenue opportunities for the business rule management system market.The restraints of business rule management system market, first one is the lack of business rule management system use in various verticals. Another restraint is the high initial switching cost to business rule management system acts as a restraint for business rule management system market.Segmentation of business rule management system on the basis of industry verticals is done into retail, healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace & defense, logistics, government, IT and telecom, travel & transportation. Global business rule management system market segmentation on the basis of region is done into seven regions which includes, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Eastern Europe, Japan and Middle East & Africa region.A TOC of this report is available upon request @The key players of business rule management system market are Bosch, Decisions on Demand, FICO, Progress Software Corporation, Fujitsu, Oracle Corporation, InfoTrellis Inc., Red Hat, SAP, Software AG, IBM, CA Technologies, Sparkling Logic Inc. and others.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 customized report on the Immunohistochemistry Market explores the breakthrough strategies and growth factors of the top industry players

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Global Immunohistochemistry Market: Brief AccountThe global immunohistochemistry market is poised to make a bold statement with an impressive growth rate on the back of its irreplaceable application in the detection of the expression of different cancer biomarkers, such as PD-L1, NGS, RBM4, and SASH1. Immunohistochemistry also finds a vital position in Philips and Illuminas collaborated pipeline solutions based on integrated genomics for oncology cases. It is also used to validate the proteins that hold a profound association with prostate cancer, in order to develop biomarker protein panels with a substantial prognostic and diagnostic potential. Besides this, it is essentially employed in the recently discovered experimental treatment for Parkinsons disease which gives an early promise.With such handsome demand in the biotechnology sector, the global market for immunohistochemistry is foretold to showcase a stallion growth. Considering the segmentation portion of the report, the international immunohistochemistry market can be categorized by product type, application, and end user. The geographical segmentation presented in the report will help the global players in the market to gauge their growth potential internationally and make the necessary amendments in their business strategies.Request a Brochure of the Report @The customized report on the global immunohistochemistry market explores the breakthrough strategies and growth factors of the top industry players. The overall scenario of the existing and latent competitive landscape of the international market is extensively elucidated by the analysts. The market intelligence solution offered here presents a valuable blend of trends analysis and quantitative forecasting.Global Immunohistochemistry Market: Trend and OpportunitiesWith a close to healthy CAGR, the global immunohistochemistry market is envisioned to project a tall rise while riding on the fattening rifeness of chronic diseases and forging advancement of geriatric population. The international market is also anticipated to take advantage of the rising physical awareness, aggressive building of diagnostic facilities, and demand for histopathology. Glaring opportunities for growth in the market are expected to be built upon the inflating want for personalized medicine and whistle-stop development in the emerging economies of Latin America and Asia Pacific.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Immunohistochemistry Market: Key GeographiesIt is significant to study the important regions such as North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific alongside Latin America and the Middle East and Africa in the Rest of the World classification. The further classification of these regions at a country level will also help to gain a keen insight into the competitive landscape of the global immunohistochemistry market. India, China, and Brazil are predicted to be under high focus in terms of growth for their regional markets. The rising per capita income, elevating number of cancer patients, and swiftly developing healthcare infrastructure are reckoned to boost the growth in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa regions.Global Immunohistochemistry Market: Market GiantsMerck Millipore (U.S.), Bio SB Inc. (U.S.), PerkinElmer, Inc. (U.S.), Agilent Technologies, Inc. (U.S.), Abcam plc (U.K.), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (U.S.), Cell Signaling Technology, Inc. (U.S.), Danaher Corporation (U.S.), F. Hoffman-La Roche AG (Switzerland), and Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc. (U.S.) are some of the dominant players in the global immunohistochemistry market. The report customizes the company profiling section as per the business wants of the buyers.Read Complete Report @About TMR Research:TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Pressure Relief Devices Market is Expected to Remain Strong as Business Alliances Opens New Growth Opportunities

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Strong customer relations to attain long-term business goals is a key growth model that companies in this market are adopting. A case in point is ArjoHuntleigh, the company is focused on developing strong relations with customers by means of providing customized services.Get the Future Market Forecast for Pressure Relief Devices at:Investment in emerging markets to increase market share is also what key companies in this market are looking upon. For example, Covidien plc has substantially invested in the emerging markets of APAC to leverage the opportunities available in this region.Limited Mobility of Geriatrics Pose a High Risk of Developing Pressure UlcersAn increasing number of obese population worldwide is boosting the growth of the global market for pressure relief devices, points out a TMR analyst. The prevalence of obesity has doubled between 1980 and 2014, according to the World Health Organization. The increasing obese population is displaying an increased demand for pressure relief devices such as mattress overlays and specialty beds to prevent pressure ulcers.The increasing geriatric population is also fuelling demand for pressure relief devices. This is because elderly people have high chances of developing pressure ulcers due to reduced blood flow, damaged nerves, and limited mobility.Unfavorable Reimbursement Policies Adversely Affect Uptake of Pressure Relief DevicesHigh cost of pressure relief devices and unfavorable reimbursement policies for the same are impeding this markets growth. Changes in reimbursement policies for pressure relief devices in recent years have been detrimental to the markets growth. This is because treatment of pressure ulcers is an expensive affair, for which reimbursement is essential for the patient. For example, the price range of an air fluidized therapy bed is from US$15,000 to US$25,000. Moreover, adoption of reimbursement restrictions for pressure ulcers on the part of private insurers, especially in developing nations such as China, India, Brazil, and Mexico is restraining the markets growth.The global market for pressure relief devices is expected to reach a valuation of US$2.8 bn by 2020. On the basis of device type, low-tech devices led with 86.9% of the overall market in 2013. This segment is expected to display a higher growth rate over its counterpart hi-tech device segment in the coming years. This growth is mainly owing to the advantages of low-tech devices pertaining to prevention of ulcer, easy operability, and cost effectiveness.Read the Current Market Status of Pressure Relief Devices at:In 2013, North America stood as the leading market for pressure relief devices. However, Asia Pacific is anticipated to display the fastest growth rate in the coming years due to an increasing geriatric population base in this region.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Nitride Ceramic Coating Market 2016 Global Analysis To Grow At CAGR Over period 2022

Nitride Ceramic Coating

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Global Nitride Ceramic Coating Market Research ReportThe MRS Research Group Nitride Ceramic Coating report by QY Research represents an inclusive evaluation of the Nitride Ceramic Coating Market and comprises considerable insights, historical data, facts,and statistical and industry-validated data of the global market.Additionally,it consists of estimated data that is evaluated with the help of suitable set of methodologies and assumptions.The MRS Research Group report research highlights informative data and in-depth analysis of Nitride Ceramic Coating market and its corresponding segments that are based on technology,geography, and applications.The report comprises precise information, comprehensive analysis in two ways qualitative and quantitative industry experts inputs, and information provided by industry analysts and industry participants involved in the entire value chain.The report highlights exhaustive study of major market and their present trends,along with corresponding market segments.Click Here For Sample Research Report @The Nitride Ceramic Coating report also provides data regarding various market factors and their impact on the overall market and its segments.Every market segment of the Nitride Ceramic Coating industry is analyzed in a quantitative as well as qualitative way in order to provide the customers with a relative estimation of the global market. Essential information such as definition, the industry value chain and its analysis, and the trends are also explored in the MRS Research Group Nitride Ceramic Coating report.MRS Research Group is the worlds giant collection of the Market research Reports. Where we specialized in global publisher, tailor made reports and specialists consulting. Global Publisher provides in-depth analysis of global and Chinese market. Tailor-made reports represent methodologies deliverable to proper insight of the client. While, expertise research specialist helps to provide strategic solution in specialists consulting.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com
rattlesnake in toilet

When young Isac Mcfadden of Abilene, Texas, got up to use the bathroom recently, he found an unexpected surprise in the toilet.

But he knew the "clump" wasn't the sort to handle on his own, so he called for his mom.

"I found this big clump and I knew it was (a) snake," he told the local CBS affiliate WTSP.

Not just any snake. A western diamondback rattlesnake, one of the most dangerous species in the US.

The boy's mother took a shovel and killed the unwelcome toilet explorer. But the family also called Big Country Snake Removal, just to make sure the issue was taken care of.

It wasn't.

rattlesnakes texas

As Nathan Hawkins, the owner of the snake-removal business, found out shortly after he arrived, 23 more of the rattlesnakes were nearby. Thirteen were hiding out in a cellar, and 10 were under the house, including five babies.

On the Big Country Snake Removal Facebook page, the team explained how so many of the creatures could be there and escape notice: "It's actually quite simple; rattlesnakes are secretive and can be very cryptic  They rely heavily on their camouflage. This is simply how they survive. Just because you don't see them doesn't mean they aren't there..."

rattlesnakes texas

With the proper tools, as the Big Country team told Business Insider via Facebook, such snakes can be removed without killing them, and the team was able to do just that for the remaining snakes at the Mcfadden abode.

In general, Hawkins told CBS News, snakes can be relocated to safer locations or donated to schools, where they can be studied.

Western diamondbacks tend to gather in dens during the winter to keep warm, which is why he knew to keep looking even after the Mcfaddens had disposed of the first one.

In these cases, calling an expert is always a good idea. Inexperienced people who try to kill a snake more likely to be bitten, Hawkins said.

"They're actually very, very amazing creatures that are really misunderstood," Hawkins told CBS.

Story continues

Related:

Watch TV shows, movies and more on Yahoo View, available now on iOS and Android.

NOW WATCH: The US government just sank a giant ship on purpose  and the footage is amazing



More From Business Insider
Crude Sulfate Turpentine Market : Report provides information and data analysis of the market with respect to market segments

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Global Crude Sulfate Turpentine Market: OverviewWith the increasing demand for fragrance ingredients from personal care products sector, the global crude sulfate turpentine market is poised to tread along a healthy growth track. The growing popularity of crude sulfate turpentine can be attributed to the cheap raw materials and their eco-friendly nature. Moreover, the high percentage of forests assigned for production activities in Nordic countries and increasing production of paper are escalating the growth of the market.The study compiled on the basis of primary and secondary resources available helps both existing and new players operating in the global crude sulfate turpentine market in forming important business strategies. It presents detailed information about the development trends of the market. Market dynamics, key growth observations, regional information, and competitive landscape are also extensively covered in the report.Request a Brochure of the Report @Global Crude Sulfate Turpentine Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe growth of the market is hampered by the high capital investment requirements in fractional distillation that limits manufacturers from efficiently utilizing raw materials. Furthermore, the low rate of recovery of black liquor through Kraft process is hindering the growth of the market. The growth of the market is also challenged by the dependence on the paper and wood industries for raw materials.However, the rapidly growing middle-class population in emerging regions such as Asia Pacific are paving way for strong demand for high-value personal care products. This is likely to create substantial growth opportunities for the market. Moreover, the increasing dependence on crude sulfate turpentine as a substitute to petrochemicals owing to its safe and eco-friendly nature is estimated to augur well for the growth of the market in the near future.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Crude Sulfate Turpentine Market: Geographical SegmentationThe key regions studied in the report are North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. North America is expected to command a large share in the market throughout the forecast period. Countries such as Canada and the U.S are prominent producers, exporters, and users of turpentine. The widespread adoption of crude sulfate turpentine across chemicals and paint industries is augmenting the growth of the region. Asia Pacific is estimated to rise at a tremendous CAGR during the forecast period. The growth of the region will be driven by high population base countries such as India and China. The demand for personal care products is increasing at a brisk pace, which in turn is fuelling the growth of the region.Global Crude Sulfate Turpentine Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the prominent players in the global crude sulfate turpentine market are Harting S.A., Arizona Chemical Company LLC, Dujodwala Paper Chemicals Ltd., Derives Resiniques et Terpeniqes, Pine Chemical Group, International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., and Privi Organics Limited. The key players in the market are acquiring small players to strengthen their reach across different regions. They are increasingly focusing on enhancing their product portfolio in order to stay relevant in the market.Read Complete Report @About TMR Research:TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
N-ethylmorpholine Market 2016 Global Analysis To Grow At CAGR Over period 2022

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Global N-ethylmorpholine Market Research ReportThe MRS Research Group N-ethylmorpholine report by QY Research represents an inclusive evaluation of the N-ethylmorpholine Market and comprises considerable insights, historical data, facts,and statistical and industry-validated data of the global market.Additionally,it consists of estimated data that is evaluated with the help of suitable set of methodologies and assumptions.The MRS Research Group report research highlights informative data and in-depth analysis of N-ethylmorpholine market and its corresponding segments that are based on technology,geography, and applications.The report comprises precise information, comprehensive analysis in two ways qualitative and quantitative industry experts inputs, and information provided by industry analysts and industry participants involved in the entire value chain.The report highlights exhaustive study of major market and their present trends,along with corresponding market segments.Click Here For Sample Research Report @This report studies sales (consumption) of N-ethylmorpholine in Global market, especially in United States, China, Europe, Japan, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringHuntsmanBasfDajiangDongfangTianyuYaxiangQuzhou mingfengThe research report analyzes the scope of N-ethylmorpholine industry including size, share, analysis, sales, supply, production, definition, specification, classification, demands, application, forecast trends, industry policy, and news.MRS Research Group is the worlds giant collection of the Market research Reports. Where we specialized in global publisher, tailor made reports and specialists consulting. Global Publisher provides in-depth analysis of global and Chinese market. Tailor-made reports represent methodologies deliverable to proper insight of the client. While, expertise research specialist helps to provide strategic solution in specialists consulting.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com
The report provides strategic analysis of the Cutting Equipment, Accessories, and Consumables Market 2017 - 2025

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Global Cutting Equipment, Accessories, and Consumables Market: General OutlineCutting equipment are at the backbone of any manufacturing industry, and the related accessories and consumables are frequently required in order to maintain consistent production. Some of the common cutting equipment are handheld and mechanized plasma cutters, high definition plasma cutters, CNC plasma cutting tables, retrofit solutions, pipe and tube cutting machines, structural steel fabrication, shape cutting controllers, and plasma torch consumables. Due to the rising population across the world, which is not only escalating the demand from manufacturing industry but also encouraging the set-up of new production outlets and in turn fueling the demand for cutting equipment, accessories, and consumables.This report on global cutting equipment, accessories, and consumables market is a comprehensive analysis of all the factors that are expected to influence the growth rate during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025. The report segments this market by technology, equipment, accessories and consumables, and geography. By technology, the market can be divided into carbon arc cutting, plasma cutting, laser cutting, oxy-fuel cutting, and water jet cutting. Bu equipment, the market is segmented into manual cutting equipment and mechanized cutting equipment. The segment of manual cutting equipment is further sub-segmented into oxy-fuel cutting, plasma cutting, gouging, portable cutting and, air or fuel torches. The segment of mechanized cutting equipment can be sub-segmented into oxy-fuel, plasma cutting, cutting tables, and cutting machines. By accessories, the market is divided into gas regulators, gas filters, gas flow meters, gas manifolds, gas panels, check valves, flow controllers, and gas cabinets. By consumables, the market is segmented into shielding gases and oxy-fuel gases.Request a Brochure of the Report @Global Cutting Equipment, Accessories, and Consumables Market: Trends and ProspectsThe credits the growing demand from the end-use industries such as commercial, residential, institutional, infrastructure, and marine are the prominent factor fueling the demand in global cutting equipment, accessories, and consumables market. Moreover, rapid industrialization, especially in the emerging economies in Asia Pacific such as India and China, is enticing players in this market to stretch their production capacity and meet the demand. The report anticipates consumables such as shielding gases and oxy-fuel gases to gain maximum traction over the period of next few years, due to the rising demand for argon gas by the industries. Also, plasma cutting as a technology is projected for robust growth rate, particularly from China and India, which are ranked as the first and second most lucrative country-wise market in the global cutting equipment, accessories, and consumables market.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Cutting Equipment, Accessories, and Consumables Market: Key RegionsGeographically, the report studies the regional markets of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world, and rates Asia Pacific as the most lucrative market due to its vast population. The developed region of North America is rated as the second most prominent region.Colfax Corporation., Lincoln Electric Company, Illinois Tool Works Inc., Air Liquide, and the Linde group are identified as the key players in the global cutting equipment, accessories, and consumables market. Other prominent players in this market identified by the report include GCE holding AB, Messer group, Fronius international GMBH, Matheson tri-gas Inc., Bug-O, Gentec, and Muller.Read Complete Report @About TMR Research:TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Fermented Ingredients Market : The study discusses the key regional trends contributing to the growth by 2025

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Global Fermented Ingredients Market: OverviewThe increasing efforts for eco-friendly production systems and the advantage of easy and convenient production of bioethanol which has a myriad of industrial applications are the primary factors driving the global fermented ingredients market. There has been a sharp rise in the demand for fermented ingredients from the food and beverage industry for several uses including food preservation and enhancing the shelf life of food products. The growth of the market will also be assisted by strong demand in different product segments such as amino acids, antibiotics, biogas, and vitamins.Request a Brochure of the Report @This research report provides a comprehensive outlook on the global fermented ingredients market by segmenting the overall market on the basis of various criteria including product, applications, and geography. Each segment has been methodically examined in terms of both revenue and volume. The report offers insights into the historic and current data pertaining to the market and uses it to estimate future trends. It uses Porters five force analysis and market attractiveness analysis to derive the competitive landscape of the market. It profiles key players of the market along with their business strategies, latest development, and contact information. It also presents a detailed description of the factors influencing the market and the extent to which they impact the growth.Global Fermented Ingredients Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe rapid growth of end-user industries such as food and beverages and pharmaceutical is providing a fillip to the global fermented ingredients market. The rising health consciousness among consumers is paving way for higher awareness regarding quality fermented food ingredients, thereby augmenting the market. Moreover, the growing demand for personal care products is fuelling the market. On the other hand, the erratic availability of quality raw materials is creating a bottleneck in the growth of the market. Furthermore, the high operating costs along with the high capital investment requirements for research and development activities are adversely affecting the profit margins of the players in the market.Request for TOC of the Report @Global Fermented Ingredients Market: Regional SegmentationOn the basis of geography, the global fermented ingredients market can be fragmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific is expected to be a lucrative market throughout the forecast period, with countries with a high population such as India and China being major contributors. The increasing demand for high-quality personal care products and food is working in favor of the growth of the region. The growth of the North America region can be attributed to the flourishing growth of the pharmaceutical industry in the U.S. However, due to the mature nature of the market in North America and Europe, these regions are likely to progress at a sluggish pace.Read Complete Report @Global Fermented Ingredients Market: Competitive LandscapeThe global fermented ingredients market is characterized by moderate competitive rivalry. Some of the prominent players in the market are Ajinomoto Corporation Inc., Angel Yeast Co. Ltd., BASF SE, Cargill, Chr. Hansen A/S, Dohler Group, and E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Mergers are acquisitions are among the commonly adopted strategies by key players to enhance their market shares.About TMR Research:TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Electric Vehicles Market is Expected to Surpass US$ 596.56 Billion by 2030

Electric Vehicles Market, Electric Vehicles, Electric Vehicle Market, Electric Vehicle

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Electric vehicles are self-propelling transportation machines for passengers as well as goods utilizing the power stored in the batteries via electric motors or with the help of both internal combustion engine and electric motors working in tandem. Electric vehicles are considered to be the vehicles of the future and are highly likely to make conventional vehicles obsolete.Request to view Table of Content @The global electric vehicles market is projected to grow at an impressive CAGR of 15.6% in terms of revenue generated over the forecast period from 2016 to 2030, primarily driven by the growth of eco-friendly alternatives considered for transportation.Factors influencing the Global Electric Vehicles Market growthThe growth of electric vehicles is attributed to the ever increasing production and sales of automobiles. Vehicles are becoming an increasingly affordable commodity owing to the growing disposable incomes across the world. Though the percentage share of electric vehicles in the automotive industry is extremely small in the current scenario, it is highly likely to expand at a faster rate than expected due to rise in fuel prices owing to higher current usage and growing rate of depletion, the government regulations to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by vehicles, high fuel efficiency offered by the electric vehicles and soundless operation of the electric vehicles. Another important factor which is pushing the surge of electric vehicles market is the attractive incentives provided by the governments of various countries with a motive to push the sale of electric vehicles. Customers are offered benefits such as tax exemption, reduced selling prices, and free charging of electric vehicles at various charging points.Though electric vehicles have proven to be advantageous over conventional vehicles, the market is not without restraints hindering the growth of the market over the forecast period. Electric vehicles come along with a high price tag which might evoke customer apathy towards this market. Scarcity of charging points within major cities is a massive hurdle in the growth of the global electric vehicles market. The electric vehicles lack alternate source of fuel which often put the schedule of the commute in jeopardy. The complete drainage of the battery can stall the car and can put the traveler at risk. These loopholes in the electric vehicles are a major drawback for the market.Electric vehicles provide excellent torque at low speeds but its performance drops at higher speed in comparison with conventional vehicles, this difference in performance can also act as a restraint to the growth of the global electric vehicles market.Global Electric Vehicles Market segmentation and forecastOn the basis of technology, the electric vehicles market is divided into hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and battery electric vehicles. Though plug-in hybrid electric vehicles hold the least amount of share in the market, it is projected to grow at the fastest rate with a CAGR of 17.9% in the forthcoming years owing to higher flexibility in terms of its usage.Global Electric Vehicles Market analysis, by product typePassenger cars, commercial vehicles, two wheelers, and others comprise the vehicle type segmentation. In terms of volume, two wheelers segment to dominate the market due to astonishing rise of sale in China. Passenger cars segment is predicted to expand at a CAGR of 15.1% within the forecast period. Battery powered electric vehicles do not follow the system architecture of parallel hybrid, series hybrid and combined hybrid, which make up the powertrain segment. Hence, this segment excludes market volume numbers of battery electric vehicles leaving the market value far less than the overall market value. Parallel hybrid powertrain is currently dominating the market and is also projected to grow faster than series and combined hybrids with a CAGR of 16.8% till 2030.Sample of this report is available upon request @Global Electric Vehicles Market analysis, by regionThe use of electric vehicles is highly prevalent in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific regions. Well developed and extensive charging infrastructure along with the incentives provided by the governments of these regions are expediting the growth of the electric vehicles. In contrast, Latin America and Middle East & Africa regions show a slower adoption of electric vehicles owing to the availability of flexible fuel. Latin America is projected to create a total incremental $ opportunity of US$ 1,332.6 Mn between 2016 and 2030. The segment is expected to account for 0.3% share of the global market absolute $ incremental opportunity during the same period.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @Key players dominating the Global Electric Vehicles MarketAlmost all the major manufacturers of automobile with a global reach have manufactured and supplied electric vehicles. Honda Motor Co., Ltd., Toyota Motor Corporation, Tesla Motors, Inc., Ford Motor Company, Nissan Motor Corporation Ltd., Bayerische Motoren Werke AG are some of the prominent companies engaged in the manufacture of electric vehicles releasing hybrids, plug-in hybrids or pure battery electric vehicles variants.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
North America Recreational Vehicle Market Sales Revenue is Expected to Reach US$ 26.19 Billion by 2024

North America Recreational Vehicle Market, North America Recreational Vehicle, Recreational Vehicles, Recreational Vehicle,

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The soaring recreational vehicles markets of U.S and Canada are expected to change the face of the North America recreational vehicles market in the forthcoming yearsThe North America recreational vehicles market is expected to expand at a value CAGR of 7.9% during the forecast period. The U.S. is the largest market for recreational vehicles and was estimated to hold more than 80% share of the market till 2016 end. The North America recreational vehicles market is estimated to cross US$ 26,100 Mn by the end of the assessment period. The market is also likely to showcase a considerable incremental dollar opportunity till the end of 2024. By volume, the North America recreational vehicles market is anticipated to register a CAGR of 5.8% and is likely to go above 583,000 units by the end of the foreseen period.Request to view Table of Content @North America is nurturing a trend of becoming more eco-friendly, and when it comes to recreation, using eco-friendly recreational vehicles has become very popular in the region. Manufacturers are offering recreational vehicles with more fuel efficiency and improved design. Recent models of recreational vehicles are equipped with fuel-efficient diesel engines and lighter composites, which could improve the overall fuel efficiency and contribute to reduced emissions. The North America recreational vehicles market is slated to witness significant growth in the hybrid recreational vehicle segment. Hybrid models of recreational vehicles are the combination of diesel engines and batteries. Like hybrid cars, these recreational vehicles depend on battery power for slower driving, and both the diesel engine and battery for higher driving speeds.Sample of this report is available upon request @The role of U.S and Canada in the growth of the North America recreational vehicles marketOver the next few years, U.S is expected to drive revenue growth of the North America recreational vehicles market. The Canada recreational vehicles market will also exhibit significant growth in the years to come. Canada will gain more than 15 BPS and is expected to hold more than 10% share of the North America recreational vehicles market till the end of the foreseen period. On the other hand, U.S might lose more than 10 BPS, but it will occupy more than 80% share of this regional market till the end of 2024. In terms of CAGR, Canada is more lucrative than the U.S. in the North America recreational vehicles market; however, the U.S. is a more attractive market in terms of market share owing to growing personal disposable income levels and tax relaxation.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @Segmental performance analysis of the U.S and Canada recreational vehicles marketU.S: The motorhomes segment is expected to record more than 500 BPS in the U.S. recreational vehicles market between 2016 and 2024, accounting for more than 40% value share by the end of 2024. The motorhomes segment is estimated to register significant growth over the forecast period In terms of volume, the motorhomes segment is estimated to cross 43,900 units by 2016 end and is expected soar beyond 77,200 units by 2024, exhibiting a volume CAGR of 7.3% over the forecast period Travel trailers & campers segment revenue is expected to increase 1.7X by 2024 as compared to that in 2016 In terms of volume, the travel trailers & campers segment is estimated to reach 14,003 units by 2016 end and is expected to increase to 23,636 units by 2024, exhibiting a volume CAGR of 6.8% over the forecast period The aluminum segment is expected to emerge as a relatively attractive segment by exterior construction materialCanada: Travel trailers & campers segment is expected to emerge as a relatively attractive market in terms of value over the forecast period The camping trailers segment is expected to lose more than 8 BPS in the Canada recreational vehicles market between 2016 and 2024 Motorhomes segment is anticipated to cross US$ 1,200 Mn by the end of 2024, registering a CAGR of 10.2% over the forecast period. This segment is expected to create incremental $ opportunity close to US$ 700 Mn between 2016 and 2024 Conventional travel trailers segment revenue is projected to increase 1.5X by 2024 as compared to that in 2016 The aluminum segment is expected to gain more than 70 BPS in the Canada recreational vehicles market between 2016 and 2024 The fiberglass segment is estimated to register significant growth over the forecast periodAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Healthcare Business Intelligence (BI) Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends And Forecast, 2013 - 2019

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Healthcare Business Intelligence (BI) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends And Forecast, 2013 - 2019" to its huge collection of research reports.During the forecast period healthcare providers overtake healthcare payers significantly in terms of growth in the market. Conventional business intelligence leads the global healthcare business intelligence market, by technology, when it comes to revenue. Although mobile business intelligence or cloud business intelligence pose a huge market growth potential due to rising usage of mobile by the healthcare society, and growing demand of health systems and hospitals for a more cheaper, accessible, flexible, scalable and agile form of business intelligence in this expenditure constraint healthcare environment.Rising demand for decline in healthcare costs coupled with federal healthcare mandates enhancing the usage of business intelligence solutions are some of the factors which are expected o drive the market. Even though, the market is expected to grow there are some factors restraining the growth such as lack of cross-functional skilled resources, complexity of it systems and lack of flexibility.The global healthcare business intelligence market is mainly segmented by function, technology, application and end user. On the basis function the healthcare business intelligence market can be segmented into query and reporting tools, online analytical processing (OLAP) and visualization tools and performance monitoring/management and alerts. Furthermore, when is market is segmented on the basis of technology it includes traditional business intelligence, mobile business intelligence and cloud business intelligence.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis application the healthcare business intelligence market can be segmented into clinical care optimization (quality and safety), physician performance monitoring and benchmarking, financial analysis, regulatory compliance and reporting and operational performance and cost management. The financial analysis is further sub-segmented into claims analysis and revenue cycle. On a similar note, the operational performance and cost management is sub-segmented into service line analysis and supply chain management, human and resource capital management, marketing analysis. Lastly the market is segmented on the basis of end user into payers, hospitals, providers, physician practices, IDN, ACO, MCO and HIE.Mobile BI and cloud BI is expected to record highest growth among the healthcare business intelligence market in the forecast period. Their constructive growth is endorsed to the growing swing of healthcare organizations towards cloud computing representation and increasing usage of Smartphone by the medical society. Clinical application is expected to be the major driver for the market growth in the forecasted period. Among all functions, online analytical processing (OLAP) and visualization tools market is expected to have an edge over reporting and monitoring tools.Based on geography, North America, especially the U.S. dominates the market and is also expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Asia Pacific is emerging to be an opportunistic market with growing adoption of healthcare and information Technology (HCIT), and consequently business intelligence tools. In Japanese market a variety of encouraging government initiatives are designed and developed. These new IT reform strategy, e-Japan policy and iJApan Strategy 2015 are some of the government initiatives which are focusing on escalation of healthcare service.Leading players of the healthcare business intelligence market are Information Builders, IBM Corporation, MicroStrategy, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, SAP AG, Qlik Technologies, Inc., SAS Institute, Inc., Tableau Software , TIBCO Software Inc., and other players such as CitiusTech, Accenture, Computer Sciences Corporation, Jaspersoft, Dimensional Insight, Klipfolio Inc., Agilum Healthcare Intelligence, Perficient, Inc., Siemens Healthcare, , Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Hexaware Technologies Limited and Wipro Limited among others.This research report analyzes this market depending on its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report include- North America- Asia Pacific- Europe- Rest of the WorldThis report provides comprehensive analysis of- Market growth drivers- Factors limiting market growth- Current market trends- Market structure- Market projections for upcoming yearsThis report is a complete study of current trends in the market, industry growth drivers, and restraints. It provides market projections for the coming years. It includes analysis of recent developments in technology, Porters five force model analysis and detailed profiles of top industry players. The report also includes a review of micro and macro factors essential for the existing market players and new entrants along with detailed value chain analysis.Reasons for Buying this Report- This report provides pin-point analysis for changing competitive dynamics- It provides a forward looking perspective on different factors driving or restraining market growth- It provides a technological growth map over time to understand the industry growth rate- It provides a seven-year forecast assessed on the basis of how the market is predicted to grow- It helps in understanding the key product segments and their future- It provides pin point analysis of changing competition dynamics and keeps you ahead of competitors- It helps in making informed business decisions by having complete insights of market and by making in-depth analysis of market segments- It provides distinctive graphics and exemplified SWOT analysis of major market segmentsMake 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 @
Global Wave and Tidal Energy Market Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016  2024

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Wave and Tidal Energy Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.Wave and tidal energy are methods of harnessing energy of oceans for power generation. Countries across the world are increasingly looking to utilize these forms of renewable energy as these provide a constant and steady source of clean energy. Abundance of ocean surface and significant potential of energy generation in several nations has induced governments to pursue ocean energy generation as an important part of their future renewable energy mix. Venture capital funding and government grant schemes are the vital aspects of this sector. Currently, technology development and commercial deployment of projects are in a nascent stage.This research is designed to estimate, analyze, and forecast the market volume and revenue for the wind and tidal power generation market. It provides an in-depth analysis of the market size of wave and tidal power in terms of volume (installed capacity) and revenue (investments in the sector for adding capacity). The report analyzes the wave and tidal energy sector in detail along with deep dive research spanning three regions and eight countries. It provides detailed analysis, historical data, and statistically refined forecast for wave and tidal energy plants regionally. Country wise markets for wave, tidal, or both forms of energy have been provided individually, depending upon the investment sentiment in the respective economies. The company market share in the sector for both wave and tidal energy plants has been provided separately for 2014.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The market size for wave and tidal power generation has been estimated by studying the possible future technology trends in the market. Detailed research of countries and region-specific wave and tidal energy associations has been undertaken to estimate and forecast the installed capacity and investments in the wave and tidal energy sector. Regionally, the market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. An important aspect of this report is the upcoming project details for both wave and tidal energy. This provides a clear idea of country wise projects planned and the tentative timeline by which the industry would achieve commercial deployment of its technologies.Wave and tidal power plant technologies are likely to experience significant changes in terms of individual market share from 2014 to 2024. The technology development is still in the initial phase for both wave and tidal energy. This leaves ample scope for new players to enter the market by introducing new and advanced technologies. Detailed cost breakdown analysis of wave and tidal energy plants has been provided in the study. Cost projections of individual cost components have been done for the forecast period, supported by qualitative analysis. Major players in the wave and tidal energy business have been profiled in the study to identify market penetration strategies and winning imperatives for them.Key players in the global wave and tidal energy market include Pelamis Wave Power Ltd., Carnegie Wave Energy Ltd., Ocean Power Technologies, Inc., Ocean Renewable Power Company LLC, Tenax Energy, AquaGen Technologies, Atlantis Resources Ltd., S.D.E. Energy Ltd. (WERPO Wave Energy), Marine Current Turbines Ltd., and Aquamarine Power Ltd. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial revenues (on availability), business strategies, SWOT analysis, and recent developments. The global wave and tidal energy market has been segmented as follows:Wave and Tidal Energy Market: Type analysis- Wave energy- Tidal energyWave and Tidal Energy Market: Geography analysis- North America- U.S.- Canada- Mexico- Europe- U.K.- Scotland- France- Norway- Russia- Others- Asia Pacific- South Korea- Australia- China- Others- Rest of the World- South Africa- Ghana- OthersMake 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 @
United Kingdom Renewable Power Market Analysis, key market trends, and challenges And Forecast Till 2030

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The report analyzes and presents an overview on "United Kingdom Renewable Power - Market Analysis And Forecast Till 2030" worldwide.The Future of the United Kingdom Renewable Market Economy, Power Outlook, Capacity, Consumption, Levelized Cost of Energy, Investment Opportunities, Regulations and Company Profiles and Forecasts to 2030 published by Techsila.SynopsisThe report provides detailed analysis on the United Kingdom by all renewable technologies. The report examines the overall economy of the country, estimates the power consumption, and analyzes the different renewable technologies and also forecasts their growth for next fifteen years.This report offers detailed analysis of United Kingdom renewable market with capacity forecasts covering the next fifteen years. This report will also analyze factors that influence demand for the industry, key market trends, and challenges faced by industry participants. In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following United Kingdom renewable market size and drivers: detailed analysis of the United Kingdom renewable market during 2014-2030, including highlights of the demand drivers and growth stimulators for the market. It also provides a snapshot of the countrys economy and power outlook.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report:The report highlights installed capacity trends from 2001 to 2030 in United Kingdom renewable market. The research provides data related to investments and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for all renewable technologies in United Kingdom during 20132030.The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants. The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.The report analyzes the power market scenario in United Kingdom (includes thermal, hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030.The research provide details economy and renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030.Reasons To BuyUnderstand the industry dynamics, growth trends and key challenges to assist in decision makingIdentify business opportunity across the value-chain with information on product prices, and opportunity analysisBenchmark various industry participants present and identify performers, laggards and emerging playersUse the data and analysis to develop business plan, formulate strategies, analyze companies and benchmark countries for investmentLeverage the data and insights to save time on your research project while doing so economically. This will help you in spending time in adding additional values.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Philippines Solar PV Power Technology, Market Analysis And Forecast Till 2030 (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV)

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The report analyzes and presents an overview on "Philippines Solar PV Power - Market Analysis And Forecast Till 2030" worldwide.The Future of the Philippines Solar PV Market Economy, Power Outlook, Capacity, Consumption, Levelized Cost of Energy, Investment Opportunities, Regulations and Company Profiles and Forecasts to 2030 published by Techsila.SynopsisThe report provides detailed analysis on the Philippines bv Solar PV sector. The report examines the overall economy of the country, estimates the power consumption, and analyzes the different power technologies and also forecasts their growth for next fifteen years.This report offers detailed analysis of Philippines Solar PV market with capacity forecasts covering the next fifteen years. This report will also analyze factors that influence demand for the industry, key market trends, and challenges faced by industry participants. In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following Philippines Solar PV market size and drivers: detailed analysis of the Philippines Solar PV market during 2014-2030, including highlights of the demand drivers and growth stimulators for the market. It also provides a snapshot of the countrys economy and power outlook.The report highlights installed capacity trends from 2001 to 2030 in Philippines solar PV market. The research provides data related to investments and levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for solar PV in Philippines during 20132030.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report:The research also provides company snapshots of some of the major market participants. The report is built using data and information sourced from proprietary databases, secondary research and in-house analysis by team of industry experts.The report analyzes the power market scenario in Philippines (includes thermal, hydro and renewable energy sources) and provides future outlook with forecasts up to 2030.The research provide details economy and renewable power market outlook in the country (includes wind, small hydro, biopower and solar PV) and provides forecasts up to 2030.Reasons To BuyUnderstand the industry dynamics, growth trends and key challenges to assist in decision makingIdentify business opportunity across the value-chain with information on product prices, and opportunity analysisBenchmark various industry participants present and identify performers, laggards and emerging playersUse the data and analysis to develop business plan, formulate strategies, analyze companies and benchmark countries for investmentLeverage the data and insights to save time on your research project while doing so economically. This will help you in spending time in adding additional valuesAbout usMarketResearchReports.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.To View The Latest Industry Press Releases:ContactMr. Nachiket90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E-Mail: sales@marketresearchreports.bizFollow us on LinkedIn:Thanks..!!!!!!!!!!!MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
It's the first major budget intended to boost growth outside Bangkok.

On January 27, the Thai parliament approved an additional THB190bn (USD5.4bn) in public spending for the current fiscal year (October-September), which is to take place outside of the capital Bangkok.

BMI Research analysts see this as a step in the right direction in terms of addressing the huge gap in wealth between the Thai provinces and the capital, which has not only held back the economy's development but has also been a key driver of the rise in social tensions that has taken place over the past decade.

Here's more from BMI Research:

The majority of the additional budget will go into funding local initiative projects, according to an official document detailing the spending plan, and will be the first major budget allocated by the government to specifically boost growth outside of Bangkok.

We have written on previous occasions about the economic and political threat posed by the high level of income inequality and the concentration of power at the central level, and while such spending plans do not exactly get to the heart of the problem, they are at least a recognition of the problem.

According to Reuters, Finance Minister Apisak Tantivorawong told the parliament that 'we want the country to be able to compete in the global market, but we can't only keep investing in Bangkok.'

While we do not agree with the government's assumption that the extra spending will boost economic growth by 0.4-0.5 percentage points this year, it will go a long way towards shoring up support for the military government in the run up to the next elections, which look likely to be held in 2018.

The northeast was the only region of Thailand to vote against the military-backed constitution in last year's referendum, and former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, a foe of the military government, still holds sway there.





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In-depth study on Cost-effectiveness of Point of Care Devices to Boost Point of Care Devices Industry

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"The Report Global Point of Care Devices Industry 2015 Market Research Report provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"MarketResearchReports.biz has added a new report, titled Global Point Of Care Devices Industry 2015 Market Research Report, to its offering. This report on the point of care devices industry is a work that has been meticulously undertaken and has been compiled by collecting data from leading industry experts. Various penetrating insights have been presented by undertaking primary as well as secondary research. The study provides a sweeping overview, clear definitions, extensive analysis, and crisp classification of the overall industry for point of care devices. Descriptions of various market dynamics also form an important part of this study, wherein the various factors have been evaluated on the basis of their effect on the growth of the market. These market dynamics include drivers, inhibitors, opportunities, and trends prevalent in the industry.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @The report starts with the industry overview section and this part throws light on the specifications along with the definition of point of care devices. This part of the report also includes the applications and classifications of point of care devices. Point of care testing is medical testing performed near or at the site of patient care. These tests include blood gas and electrolyte analysis, blood glucose testing, rapid coagulation testing, rapid cardiac markers diagnostics, urine strip testing, pregnancy testing, food pathogen screening, infectious disease testing, and cholesterol screening, among others. Point of care devices are medical tools used for diagnosing diseases at the site of patient care. These include portable, handheld, and transportable instruments such as nerve conduction study devices and blood glucose meters, among others. These devices make the point of care testing extremely cost-effective for a number of diseases, including carpal tunnel syndrome, diabetes, and acute coronary syndrome.Moving further, the industry chain structure is provided for point of care devices. The regional segmentation of point of care devices market and the status of the key regions prominent in the industry for point of care devices also forms an integral part of this research report. The next section of the report highlights an evaluation of the manufacturing cost structure of point of care devices industry. This part also includes the price evaluation, coupled with an evaluation of the suppliers of raw materials. The evaluation of equipment suppliers and price analysis of this equipment are also important parts of this study. An analysis on the labor cost of point of care devices and analysis of the manufacturing cost structure are also presented in this report.View Press Release atThe next section of the report includes an evaluation of the manufacturing plants utilized for making point of care devices. This part elaborates upon the commercial production date of the prime suppliers of point of care devices in 2014. The distribution of manufacturing plants and the prime manufacturers of point of care devices in the same year are also elaborated upon in this section of the report. The production, price, revenue, supply, export, consumption, and import of point of care devices in the period from 2010 to 2015 is given for the U.S. the EU, China, and Japan. The prime companies operating in the industry include Roche, Johnson & Johnson, Beckman Coulter, and Bayer Healthcare, among others.About usMarketResearchReports.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.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
UK Pet Insurance: Distribution and Marketing 2016 | Now Availble At Researchmoz.us

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "UK Pet Insurance: Distribution and Marketing 2016" to its huge collection of research reports.2016 saw the UKs supermarkets and major retailers confirm their role in the distribution of pet insurance, with a significant proportion of consumers now seeking alternative channels to obtain their policies. While many pet owners still prefer to approach their insurer directly, supermarkets and retailers are benefiting from those who value convenience and the opportunity to purchase insurance cover at the same time as other products. Much of the growth in this channel can be attributed to the marketing and advertising strategies employed by these groups. Direct mailing is a favored option, as these groups often have a wide customer base and many subscribers to their internet channels, and have a tendency to offer simpler online purchasing platforms than traditional insurers.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Key Findings- Retail/affinity providers are now the second most popular channel of distribution for pet insurance.- The internet, using desktop PCs, continues as the preferred method of arranging pet cover.- Switching levels are low among pet insurance customers, although many are inclined to compare prices on an aggregator platform before ultimately committing to their initial provider.- Price remains a significant influence on the decision-making process for pet customers.SynopsisVerdict Financials UK Pet Insurance: Distribution and Marketing 2016 explores consumer purchasing behavior and how consumer preferences are changing over time. This report discovers what is most influential to customers when purchasing a policy and also reveals the most popular providers in the market. New trends and innovations are highlighted, as well as the key factors that will influence the market over the next few years.Reasons To Buy- To understand consumer purchasing decisions and how these will influence the market over the next few years.- To improve customer engagement by recognizing what is most important to them and how insurers can adapt their products and services to meet their needs.- To discover which providers lead the way in the travel insurance space and how providers are revolutionizing the market through new innovations.- Adapt your distribution strategy to ensure it still meets customer purchasing behavior.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 @
Global Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market Size, Key Trends & Forecasts 2016-2020

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"The Report Global Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020) provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Scope of the ReportThe report titled Global Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020), provides an in-depth analysis of the global online takeaway food delivery market by value and by penetration rate. The report also gives an insight of the global food services market and takeaway food delivery market.The report provides a regional analysis of the online takeaway food delivery market, including the following regions: US, Canada, UK, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Spain and France.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global online takeaway food delivery market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.The competition in the global online takeaway food delivery market is fragmented with several new players emerging in the industry. However, key players of the online takeaway food delivery market, Just Eat, GrubHub and Rocket Internet (Foodpanda and Deliver Hero) are profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.View Report @Country CoverageUSCanadaUKAustraliaDenmarkItalySpainFranceCompany CoverageJust EatGrubHubRocket Internet (Foodpanda and Deliver Hero)Get Sample Copy Of This Report @Executive SummaryThe food services industry is experiencing a revolution. Even the food delivery market is undergoing a dynamic change. It is the online mode that is reaping attention in the current scenario. The food delivery market is both online and offline. The online food delivery market is also known as online takeaway food delivery market.Online takeaway food delivery market provides an online and mobile platform for food takeaway. The platform is essentially a marketplace where consumers are matched with restaurants. Consumers choose to order on takeaway restaurant (TR) webpage or an app rather than directly on restaurant websites because they can easily compare multiple cuisine options, and also pay safely. In online mode mobile apps are available for iOS and Android of either the restaurants or TR. Customers select restaurants that deliver to their locations, make selection from menus and prices, and make purchases using a mobile device or via the web without the need for phone calls.In recent years online food delivery market is gaining popularity because of the increased internet penetration across nations and increased smartphone dependence.The online food delivery market has three business models namely pure-media, fully integrated and on-demand delivery models.The global online takeaway food delivery market is expected to increase at a significant CAGR during the years 2016-2020. The global online takeaway food delivery market is expected to increase due to increase in urban population, increase in spending of global middle class population, increasing technological innovations, increase in smartphone usage, increase in internet penetration, etc. Yet, the market faces some challenges such as, fluctuations in profit earning, threat to aggregator business model, data server crash, etc.Table of Contents1. Executive Summary2. Introduction2.1 Online Food Order-and-Delivery: An Overview2.1.1 Key Developments in Online Food Delivery2.1.2 Online Food Order-and-Delivery by Revenue Model2.1.3 Online Food Order-and-Delivery by Business Model2.1.4 Working of Online Food Order-and-Delivery Business2.1.5 Virtuous Circle for Online Takeaway Delivery Platforms2.1.6 Advantages & Disadvantages of Online Food Order-and-Delivery2.1.7 Takeaway Restaurant Food Delivery Lifecycle Comparison By Channel3. Global Market Analysis3.1 Global Food Service Market: An Analysis3.1.1 Global Food Service Market by Value3.2 Global Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis3.2.1 Global Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Value3.2.2 Global Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Segments3.3 Global Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis3.3.1 Global Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration3.3.2 Global Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Value4. Regional Market Analysis4.1 UK Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.1.1 UK Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Value4.1.2 UK Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration and Players4.2 US Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.2.1 US Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Value and Segments4.2.2 US Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration4.2.3 US Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Value4.3 Italy Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.3.1 Italy Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration4.4 Spain Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.4.1 Spain Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration4.5 France Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.5.1 France Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration4.6 Australia Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.6.1 Australia Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration4.7 Canada Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An Analysis4.7.1 Canada Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market by Penetration4.8 Denmark Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: An AnalysisAbout usMarketResearchReports.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.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Cloud Computing Industry Analysis, Growth, Trend and Strategic Focus Report | Researchmoz

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Strategic Focus Report - Cloud Computing: Technology and market trends" to its huge collection of research reports.This Strategic Focus report analyses the current trends, drivers, and inhibitors impacting the cloud computing market. The report outlines the evolution of cloud computing solution, and identifies and assesses the best performing vendors in the market. This report also presents Kable's view of the revenue opportunities in the cloud computing market through to 2018, highlighting the market size and growth by technology, geography, sector, and size band. Moreover, following in-depth ICT decision maker surveys, the report outlines enterprises' investment priorities in the cloud computing segment.Key Findings- The adoption of hybrid cloud is gradually gaining momentum amongst enterprises, and in the coming years, this cloud delivery model is expected to go mainstream.- The rising acceptance of the consumerization of technology, and developments in the field of enterprise mobility and cloud computing has transformed the way enterprises undertake their operations.- With market shares of 13.5%, 10.8%, and 10.4%, respectively, the retail, healthcare, and government sectors, have also invested significantly in cloud computing solutions in 2013.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @SynopsisThis Strategic Focus report analyses the current trends, drivers, and inhibitors impacting the cloud computing market. The report outlines the evolution of cloud computing solution, and identifies and assesses the best performing vendors in the market. This report also presents Kable's view of the revenue opportunities in the cloud computing market through to 2018, highlighting the market size and growth by technology, geography, sector, and size band. Moreover, following in-depth ICT decision maker surveys, the report outlines enterprises' investment priorities in the cloud computing segment.This product covers the latest trends in the cloud computing market, coupled with insight into the vendor landscape and market size in the cloud computing domain.In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following:- The latest trends impacting the cloud computing market.- The market drivers (both supply-side and demand-side) that will facilitate the growth of the cloud computing market.- The market inhibitors that may hinder the pervasive adoption of cloud computing solutions.- Identification of the top ICT vendors in the cloud computing market, coupled with an overview of the top 5 vendors.- The report also covers the primary findings from Kable's view of revenue opportunities in the cloud computing market through to 2018, highlighting the market size and growth by technology, geography, sector, and size band.- An identification of enterprises' investment priorities based on their budget allocations relating to cloud computing.Reasons To Buy- Helps the reader to understand the cloud computing market landscape, the recent trends, drivers, and inhibitors shaping the cloud computing segment.- The report will provide an assessment of cloud computing vendors and their relative performance in the cloud computing market.- The most exhaustive and up-to-date report providing revenue opportunity forecasts in the cloud computing market from 2014 to 2018, spanning three technology segments, six regions, 14 verticals, and two size bands.- Extensive technology growth predictions based on adoption indicators, end-user technology demand, Kable's in-house ICT survey results, and macroeconomic factors.- The report provides a detailed breakdown of the opportunities within the cloud computing segment and its sub categories.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 @
EMerging Evolution The 5G Wireless Ecosystem Technology Innovation, Advancement 2016 - 2030 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts

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Worldwide Market studies the current scenario as well as future market potential of "The 5G Wireless Ecosystem: 2016 - 2030 - Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts"While LTE and LTE-Advanced deployments are still underway, mobile operators and vendors have already embarked on R&D initiatives to develop so-called 5G technology, with a vision of commercialization by 2020. 5G is essentially a revolutionary paradigm shift in wireless networking to support the throughput, latency and scalability requirements of future use cases such as extreme bandwidth augmented reality applications and connectivity management for Billions of M2M (Machine to Machine) devices.Although 5G is yet to be standardized, vendors are aggressively investing in 5G development efforts with a principal focus on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming. With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, we estimate that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025.The 5G Wireless Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Technologies, Applications, Verticals, Strategies & Forecasts report presents an in-depth assessment of the emerging 5G ecosystem including key market drivers, challenges, enabling technologies, use cases, vertical market applications, spectrum assessment, mobile operator deployment commitments, case studies, standardization, research initiatives and vendor strategies. The report also presents forecasts for 5G investments and operator services.The report comes with an associated Excel datasheet suite covering quantitative data from all numeric forecasts presented in the report.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report:Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:Although 5G is yet to be standardized, vendors are aggressively investing in 5G development efforts with a principal focus on new air interface transmission schemes, higher frequency bands and advanced antenna technologies such as Massive MIMO and beamforming.Driven by regional, national government, mobile operator and vendor initiatives, we expect that over $6 Billion will be spent on 5G R&D and trial investments between 2015 and 2020.With large scale commercial deployments expected to begin in 2020, we estimate that 5G networks will generate nearly $250 Billion in annual service revenue by 2025.5G networks are expected to utilize a variety of spectrum bands for diverse applications, ranging from established sub-6 GHz cellular bands to millimeter wave frequencies.The report covers the following topics:5G requirements, use cases and vertical market applications5G market drivers and barriersAir interface and antenna technologies: new waveforms, millimeter wave radio access, MIMO, phased array antennas and beamformingSpectrum technologies: cognitive radio, spectrum sensing, aggregation and LSA (Licensed Shared Access)D2D (Device to Device) communications and self-backhauling networksComplimentary technologies for 5G: NFV (Network Functions Virtualization), SDN (Software Defined Networking), HetNet (Heterogeneous Networking), C-RAN (Centralized RAN), Cloud RAN, MEC (Mobile Edge Computing), drones and satellitesMobile operator commitments, case studies and 5G spectrum assessment5G Standardization and research initiativesCompetitive assessment of vendor strategiesR&D, commercial infrastructure and operator service forecasts till 2030Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for each of the following submarkets and their subcategories:5G R&D InvestmentsNew Waveforms & Millimeter Wave Radio AccessMIMO, Beamforming & Antenna TechnologiesInterference & Spectrum ManagementC-RAN, Virtualization & Other Technologies5G Commercial Infrastructure InvestmentsTo Get More Signals And Systems Telecom Market Research Reports:Distributed Macrocell Base StationsSmall CellsRRHs (Remote Radio Heads)C-RAN BBUs (Baseband Units)Mobile CoreFronthaul & Backhaul Networking5G Operator ServicesSubscriptionsService RevenueRegional SegmentationAsia PacificEastern EuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaWestern EuropeKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:How much will vendors and operators invest in 5G R&D commitments?What will be the number of 5G subscriptions in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?What will be the key applications of 5G networks?What trends, challenges and barriers will influence the development and adoption of 5G?Which regions and countries will be the first to adopt 5G?Will 5G networks utilize new spectrum bands?Who are the key 5G vendors and what are their strategies?Will 5G networks rely on C-RAN architecture?What are the prospects of millimeter wave technology for 5G radio access networking?What will be the impact of 5G on the M2M and IoT ecosystem?Will drone and satellite based communication platforms play a wider role in 5G networks?List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)5G Americas5G Forum, South Korea5G Lab (TU Dresden)5G PPP (5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership)5GIC (5G Innovation Center, University of Surrey)5GMF (Fifth Generation Mobile Communications Promotion Forum, Japan)5GRUSAlcatel-LucentAlpental TechnologiesAmerica MovilARIB (Association of Radio Industries and Businesses)AscentaAT&T MobilityAthena Wireless CommunicationsATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions)AVC Networks CompanyCableLabsChina MobileCisco SystemsCohere TechnologiesDT (Deutsche Telekom)du (Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company)EricssonEtisalatETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research)ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute)FacebookFraunhofer FOKUSFraunhofer HHIFraunhofer-GesellschaftFujitsuFuture Forum, ChinaGoogleGSMAHiroshima UniversityHuaweiIEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)IMDEA Networks InstituteIMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, ChinaIntel CorporationInterDigitalITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute)ITU (International Telecommunication Union)KDDIKeysight TechnologiesKT CorporationKumu NetworksLG UplusMegaFonMitsubishi ElectricMOEA (Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan)MoogsoftMOST (Ministry of Science & Technology, China)MOST (Ministry of Science & Technology, Taiwan)MSIP (Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, South Korea)MTS (Mobile TeleSystems)NEC CorporationNew Mexico Spaceport AuthorityNGMN (Next Generation Mobile Networks) AllianceNI (National Instruments)NokiaNTT DoCoMoNYU WIRELESS (New York University)OfcomOptusOrangePanasonicQualcommRF DSPRohde & SchwarzSamsungSESSiBEAMSingTelSK TelecomSmall Cell ForumSoftBankSwisscomTAICS (Taiwan Association of Information and Communication Standards)Telecom ItaliaTelefonicaTeliaSoneraTelstraTIA (Telecommunications Industry Association)Titan AerospaceT-Mobile USATokyo Institute of TechnologyU.S. Department of CommerceU.S. FCC (Federal Communications Commission)U.S. NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)U.S. NSF (National Science Foundation)UN (United Nations)University of KaiserslauternUniversity of OuluVerizon WirelessViterbi School of Engineering (University of Southern California)Vodafone AustraliaVodafone GroupVTT Technical Research CenterWWRF (World Wireless Research Forum)XilinxZTEAbout UsMarketResearchReports.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.To View The Latest Industry Press Releases:ContactTel: +1-518-621-2074E-Mail: sales@marketresearchreports.bizWebsite:MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Global Retail IT Spending Market Expected To Grow At CAGR Of 4.0% Between Years 2016-2020

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"The Report Global Retail IT Spending market 2016-2020 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"A report recently added to the vast repository of MarketResearchReports.biz states that the global retail IT spending market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of almost 4.0% from 2016 to 2020. The report is titled Global Retail IT Spending Market 2016-2020 and indicates that the growing need to gain customer insights from a massive data pool is the key factor driving the global market.The research publication also sheds light on the contribution of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) technology towards the growth of the retail IT spending market. The need to improve customer satisfaction has grown drastically in recent years, forcing retailers to focus on key aspects such as local customer demand, product assortment for the right store, product preference, and store attributes.On the basis of product, the retail IT spending market is segmented into software, hardware, and IT services. Accounting for 35.0% of the overall market in 2015, IT services emerged as the leading segment. Increased demand from the e-commerce sector is projected to push this segment to expand at the highest CAGR by 2019.On the basis of geography, the global retail IT spending market is segregated into Asia Pacific, the Americas, and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. North America surpassed the retail software market in BRIC countries in 2015, emerging as the leader in the global retail IT spending market. Driven by increasing investments in omnichannel integrations, payment systems, and data security, and the proliferation of mobile engagement, this regional market is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of over 5.0% during the forecast period.Download Sample copy of this Report at:An examination of the vendor landscape of the retail IT spending market reveals that the entry of several new players within the global market has resulted in intense competition. In addition to growing demand from end users, the retail IT spending market is also witnessing several remarkable innovations. Moreover, thanks to advanced computing capabilities and evolution of retail solutions, productivity and efficiency has improved. Players within the retail IT spending market have been focusing on effective promotional and marketing strategies to keep up with rising customer demand for quality products.View Press Release at:The most prominent players operating in the global retail IT spending market include International Business Machines Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cisco Systems, Inc., and Dell Inc. These companies are studied in terms of business segmentation, geographical segmentation, and revenue. Other key companies involved in the retail IT spending market are Magstar, TIBCO Software, MicroStrategy, RedPrairie, Microsoft, SAS, Epicor, Fujitsu, Genesis Software Systems, Cybex Systems, ECR Software, NCR, Bitam, Chain Drive, Comcash, Oracle, eBay, UTC Retail, PayPal, JDS Solutions, Retail Pro International, SYSPRO, JDA Software Group, Tableau Software, PCMS, Amazon.com, MICROS Systems, Arcplan, Retail Information Systems, CAM Commerce Solutions, Intuit, Informatica, and Pinnacle Cart.About usMarketResearchReports.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.Contact us:Mr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E : sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Veterinary Examination Tables Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Growth, Trends Analysis For 2023

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Veterinary care or animal care has experienced increased demand in the past few years. Animal health, especially farm animals has gained key focus after human invasion of animal viruses. Increased food safety and related government policies have fueled veterinary healthcare market globally. In addition, there is also a surge in regular check up of pets in the developed countries. According to American Veterinary Medical Association, in 2012, over 36% households owned dogs while 30% owned cats in the U.S. To meet these demands, it is expected that there would be an increase in veterinary practitioners.Download Research Brochure PDF@Global veterinary examination tables market is anticipated to grow at a faster rate owing to worldwide increasing number of veterinary clinics. Various types of veterinary examination tables are available in the market which includes wall-mount, pedestal base exam table, fold-up exam table, hydraulic lift table and electric lift table. Wall-mount and fold-up examination tables are beneficial to manage clinic space. They provide flexibility and also avoid any accidents caused by animals. The market for veterinary examination tables has a wide product portfolio, thus providing most suitable options to veterinary doctors. Fragmented market with low product differentiation and easy availability of raw materials has reduced the barriers to entry. Currently the market is dominated by large number of local layers. In spite of such lucrative opportunities in the future, the market would suffer from low profit margins due to constant increasing competition. Low volume sales and numerous options to choose from, makes the market even competitive.North America leads the veterinary examination tables market. According to statistics published by American Pet Products Association (APPA), total United States pet industry expenditure increased from USD 32 billion in 2003 to over USD 55 billion in 2013. Of the total expenditure in 2013, approximately USD 27 billion was spent on supplies, OTC medicines and vet care. Another contributing factor is regular annual check-ups due to increasing awareness about animal diseases and their threat to human health. International Federation for Animal Health Europe published data suggesting that Europes animal health industry in 2012 was over 3% of the European human pharmaceutical industry. The data also mentions that in the EU there are more than 200 million pets of which 66 million are cats while 60 million are dogs. Thus a huge market opportunity exists for veterinary examination tables in these regions. Asia Pacific is expected to witness faster growth rate owing to changing life style and growing per capita income. Rising disposable income and increasing fear of acquiring animal diseases has also added to the market surge. A survey conducted in 2012, by the Pet Food Institute of Japan, reveals that over 25% of domestic households have a pet cat or dog. Various publications suggest that the pet industry in Japan is on the rise and has created lucrative opportunities for global veterinary medical care providers. Being the second largest healthcare market globally, Japan has been on the main focus for veterinary care market.Some of the key players in the global veterinary examination table market include Paragon Medical Supply, Inc., DRE Medical, Inc., VSSI, Inc., Olympic Veterinary, Midmark Corp., Alvo Medical, Shor-Line, Technik Technology, McDonald Veterinary Equipment and Diagnostic Imaging Systems.Browse Full Report@About Us:-Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact Us:-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Global X-Ray Equipment Market (CT, Mammography, C-Arms, Dental, Mobile X-Ray): Analysis By Region, By Country (2016-2021) | Now Available at Researchmoz.us

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global X-Ray Equipment Market (CT, Mammography, C-Arms, Dental, Mobile X-Ray): Analysis By Region, By Country (2016-2021) (By Segment-Computed Tomography, Mammography, C-Arms X-Ray, Dental X-Ray, Mobile X-Ray, Others:By Region-North America, Europe, APAC, ROW:By Country-U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, China, India, Japan)" to its huge collection of research reports.A comprehensive research report (355 Pages, 240 Figures, 10 Tables) created through extensive primary research (inputs from industry experts, companies, stakeholders) and secondary research, the report aims to present the analysis of global x-ray equipment market on the basis of segments (Computed Tomography, Mammography, C-Arms X-Ray, Dental X-Ray, Mobile X-Ray, Others), By Region (North America, Europe, APAC, ROW); By Country (U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, China, India, Japan).Rising awareness for diagnosis of lifestyle diseases coupled with improved technology in imaging has shifted demand for x-ray equipment market. Market for x-ray equipment is growing steadily due to rise in the lifestyle diseases, which has led to early diagnosis among the population. Also, due to the definite lifecycle of the equipment, growing replacement demand has also been fuelling demand for x-ray equipment.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Among the segments, market is expected to be driven by mobile x-ray equipment due to the increase in the number of emergency cases, apart from bed ridden patients in ICUs, where these machines can be wheeled to the bed-side of the patient, making it convenient in diagnosis.While developed regions will continue to dominate the market in terms of revenue, emerging nations are expected to respond to the market optimistically due to the developing healthcare infrastructure, leading to increase in hospitals and rising focus on healthcare among the growing middle class population.Global x-ray equipment Market is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 6.27% during 2016 2021F, on account of rising lifestyle diseases among the population.North America region remains the major market followed by Europe in the actual period. In the forecast period, APAC region will witness strong growth driven by the countries such as India and China.According to Azoth Analytics research report, Global X-Ray Equipment Market (CT, Mammography, C-Arms, Dental, Mobile X-Ray): Analysis By Region, By Country (2016-2021), Global X-Ray Equipment market is projected to exhibit a CAGR of over ~6.27% during 2016 - 2021. On the basis of market segment, Global X-Ray Equipment Market has been segmented on (By Equipment: Computed Tomography, Mammography, C-Arms X-Ray, Dental X-Ray, Mobile X-Ray and Others; By Region-North America, Europe, APAC, and ROW; By Country: U.S., Canada, UK, Germany, France, China, India, Japan).Scope of the ReportThe report provides Segmentation by EquipmentComputed TomographyMammographyC-Arms X-RayDental X-RayMobile X-RayOthersThe report provides coverage by RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificROWThe report provides coverage by CountryUSACanadaUKGermanyFranceJapanIndiaChinaMake 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 @
Telecom Growth Of Mobile Data Market Estimated to grow at a CAGR of 18.1% during 2016-2021

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"The Report Mali: Mobile Data and Value-Added Services to Support Telecom Growth provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"Telecom services revenue in Mali is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.5% during 2016-2021, driven by growth in fixed broadband and mobile data revenue. Mobile voice will continue to remain the largest revenue-contributing segment through 2021. Mobile data will be the fastest-growing segment in the telecom market and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 18.1% during 2016-2021, mainly driven by operators' attractive data packages to stimulate data adoption. Going forward, operators plan to invest in 3G network expansion, infrastructure development and fiber-optic deployments to increase Internet connectivity, which will create significant opportunities for vendors and investors.View Report @Key Findings- The overall telecom service revenue in Mali will grow at a CAGR of 7.5% during 2016-2021, mainly driven by growth in the mobile segment.- Mobile revenue will account for 92.5% of the total telecom revenue in 2021; mobile data will be the fastest-growing segment over 2016-2021.- 2G will be the most adopted mobile technology through 2021. However, its share of the overall mobile subscriber base will decline over the 2016-2021 forecast period, owing to adoption of 3G and 4G services in the coming years.- The top two operators, Orange Mali and Malitel, will account for 100.0% share of overall service revenue in 2016. We expect the entry of a fourth mobile operator and MVNO will further intensify the competition in the telecom market.- Mobile money services will be a key revenue source for operators to strengthen their market position.Synopsis"Mali: Mobile Data and Value-Added Services to Support Telecom Growth," a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Mali today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, and mobile, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.Get Sample Copy Of This Report @The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following:- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Mali compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in Mali.- The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more.- A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data markets.- Service evolution: a look at changes in the breakdown of overall revenue between the fixed and mobile sectors and between voice, data and video from 2016 to 2021.- The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.- In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data services: a quantitative analysis of service adoption trends by network technology and by operator, as well as of average revenue per line/subscription and service revenue through the end of the forecast period.- Main opportunities: this section details the near-term opportunities for operators, vendors and investors in Mali's telecommunications markets.ReasonsToBuy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Malis telecommunications markets, service providers and key opportunities in a concise format to help executives build proactive and profitable growth strategies.- Accompanying GlobalDatas Forecast products, the report examines the assumptions and drivers behind ongoing and upcoming trends in Malis mobile communications, fixed telephony, broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares.- With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality.- The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Malis telecommunications markets.- The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Mali.Table of ContentsExecutive summaryMarket and competitor overviewRegional contextEconomic, demographic and political contextRegulatory environmentDemand profileService evolutionCompetitive landscapeMajor market playersSegment analysisMobile servicesFixed servicesIdentifying opportunitiesOverall market opportunitiesList of TablesMali telecom market size and growth prospects in a regional context, 2016ECountry indicatorsRegulatory structure and policyMajor telecommunications policy issuesMali communications market revenue, 2014-2021, US$Segment revenue CAGRs, 2016-2021,US$Segment revenues 2014-2021Service revenue mix: voice, data & video, 2016, 2021Service revenue mix: fixed & mobile, 2016, 2021Service revenue by operator, 2016Key telecom market playersMajor telecommunications market playersMobile subscriptions and penetration, 2014-2021Key mobile market indicators, 2016Mobile data revenue mix, 2016, 2021Total mobile ARPS; data percentage of total mobile ARPS, 20142021Mobile market shares by subscriptions, 2014-2021Mobile subscriptions by technology family, 2014-2021Fixed-line penetration of population, 2014-2021Key fixed market indicators, 2016Fixed voice revenue, 2014-2021Internet revenue, 2014-2021Fixed market Opportunities in the Mali telecommunications marketAbout usMarketResearchReports.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.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem Technology Advancement, Emerging Growth, Evolution 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts

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The report analyzes and presents an overview on "The Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem: 2016 - 2030 - Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts" worldwide.Given the increasing prevalence of expensive household goods, cars and consumer electronics, insurance has become an unavoidable and often necessary cost in modern life. Mobile phones, and smartphones in particular are no exception to this trend.Most major wireless carriers, insurance specialists, device OEMs, retailers and even banks now offer insurance plans that cover theft, loss, malfunctions and damage of mobile phones. Many policies now also integrate enhanced technical support and additional protection features such as data backup facilities, allowing users to securely backup their phone data online.SNS Research estimates that the global mobile phone insurance market is expected to account for nearly $20 Billion in revenue by the end of 2016. The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 12% over the next four years, eventually accounting for over $30 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.The "Mobile Phone Insurance Ecosystem: 2016  2030  Opportunities, Challenges, Strategies & Forecasts" report presents an in-depth assessment of the mobile phone insurance ecosystem including market drivers, challenges, opportunities, value chain, future roadmap, case studies, ecosystem player profiles and strategies. The report also presents market size forecasts from 2016 through to 2030. The forecasts are segmented for 5 regional and 25 country level markets.Get The Sample Copy Of This Report:Key Findings:The report has the following key findings:SNS Research estimates that the global mobile phone insurance market is expected to account for nearly $20 Billion in revenue by the end of 2016.The market is further expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 12% over the next four years, eventually accounting for over $30 Billion in revenue by the end of 2020.In an effort to boost the uptake of mobile phone insurance, wireless carriers and insurance providers have extensively enhanced their insurance offerings with the addition of location tracking, data protection/recovery features and integrated technical support.The success of mobile phone insurance plans has driven several wireless carriers, such as NTT DoCoMo and Orange, to invest in the sales of other insurance products through mobile phones and their retail outlets.New insurance models are also beginning to emerge, such as London-based So-Sures social insurance for mobile phones, which allows customers to get up to 80% of their money back, if they and their friends dont claim.Device OEMs are beginning to invest in tailored plans to suit the specific requirements of certain regional markets. A good example is Xiaomis Mi Protect plan in India, which covers accidental and liquid damage, for as little as $7 per year.Topics Covered:The report covers the following topics:Mobile phone insurance ecosystemMarket drivers and barriersInsurance policy structure, distribution channels and key trendsCase studies of mobile phone insurance initiativesIndustry roadmap and value chainProfiles and strategies of over 40 leading ecosystem playersStrategic recommendations for ecosystem playersMarket analysis and forecasts from 2016 till 2030Forecast Segmentation:Market forecasts are provided for the following regional and country level submarkets:Regional SegmentationAsia PacificEuropeLatin & Central AmericaMiddle East & AfricaNorth AmericaCountry Level SegmentationArgentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, UK & USAKey Questions Answered:The report provides answers to the following key questions:How big is the mobile phone insurance opportunity?What trends, challenges and barriers are influencing its growth?How is the ecosystem evolving by region?What will the market size be in 2020 and at what rate will it grow?Which countries will see the highest percentage of growth?Who are the key market players and what are their strategies?What risks are typically covered in mobile phone insurance offerings?How can insurance plans help wireless carriers in reducing churn?What strategies should wireless carriers, device OEMs and insurance providers adopt to remain competitive?Countries covered:ArgentinaAustraliaBrazilCanadaChinaColombiaFranceGermanyHong KongIndiaIsraelItalyJapanMexicoNetherlandsPolandRussiaSaudi ArabiaSingaporeSouth AfricaSouth KoreaSpainTaiwanUKUSABrowse More Signals And Systems Telecom Market Research Reports:List of Companies Mentioned:The following companies and organizations have been reviewed, discussed or mentioned in the report:A WirelessAIG (American International Group)Allianz InsuranceAllianz SE GroupAmerica MovilAmTrust International UnderwritersAonAppalachian WirelessAppleAssurantAsurionAT&TAT&T MobilityAvivaAXABarclaysBest BuyBouygues TelecomBrightstar CorporationBT GroupCellebriteChubbCWS (Connected World Services Distributions)Diamond WirelessDixons CarphoneDT (Deutsche Telekom)EEeSecuritelFonesureFortegraGeek SquadGoCareGroupamaHollard GroupHSBCInhance TechnologyiQmetrixLiberty Mutual Insurance GroupLifestyle Services GroupLookoutMarkerstudyMicrosoftMobi PCSMobile Rhino (Stuckey & Company)MTNNIA (New India Assurance)Nippon Life InsuranceNokiaNQ MobileNTT DoCoMoOptusOrangePier Insurance Managed ServicesProtectCELLSafewareSalt MobileSamsung ElectronicsSFRSingtel GroupSoftBank CorporationSo-SureSpark New ZealandSPBSprint CorporationSquareTradeSun CorporationSupercover InsuranceSwisscomTelefonica GroupTelefonica InsuranceTelstraT-Mobile USATokio MarineVerizon CommunicationsVerizon WirelessV-Key SolutionsVodacomVodafone GroupAbout usMarketResearchReports.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.To View The Latest Industry Press Releases:ContactTel: +1-518-621-2074E-Mail: sales@marketresearchreports.bizWebsite:MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Overdraft protection on your bank account can be useful. When the bill comes at a restaurant, you won't be embarrassed if you don't have enough cash in your bank account. Or if you make an important payment at a merchant, it'll be sure to go through.

But the protection also can come with a fee when you overdraw your account using your ATM card or debit card. And a few banks have been accused by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of deceiving consumers into signing up for the service and not informing them of the costs.



The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently sued TCF National Bank, a Minnesota-based regional institution with approximately 360 branches in seven states, for allegedly tricking hundreds of thousands of customers into signing up for "overdraft service."



For those customers, every time they overdrew their account, they were hit with a fee of $35.



Part of the problem facing many consumers is that they are confused by what overdraft protection means. The term "protection" is actually a misnomer, because when you opt in for the service, you are actually authorizing the bank to let you overdraw your account by using an ATM or debit card and then charge you penalties that can amount to $30 or more each time you overdraw your account.



Keep in mind that banks don't need your opt-in permission to charge you overdraft penalties when paper checks and automatic electronic bill payments bounce.



Consumers who sign up for overdraft protection often find themselves caught in a cycle of spending more money than they have in their account. As the fees add up, it becomes even harder to recover, leading them to overdraw their accounts further, which, of course, leads to more fees.



The problem hasn't always been so onerous. There was a time when you could overdraw your account as an occasional courtesy. Today, though, overdraft fees have become a regular source of income for banks and credit unions generating nearly $33 billion in revenue annually, according to Moeb Services, a Chicago-based research firm that tracks bank and credit union pricing.

Story continues

About 15 percent of consumers overdraw at least once a year, according to a Pew research study conducted in 2013, the latest data available. Among overdrafters, about one-third paid three to nine penalties in the previous year, and 16 percent paid at least 10 to 20 penalties.

"Many consumers dont understand that if they dont opt in for overdraft protection, [their transactions] will be declined and the bank cant charge them a fee," says Thaddeus King, an officer with the Pew Charitable Trust's consumer banking project.

Making matters worse is that the CFPB says some banks are getting their customers to sign up for overdraft protection through deceptive means.



In the case of TCF National, the complaint alleges that TCF placed the overdraft protection opt-in agreement after a series of other mandatory agreements customers had to accept when they opened a new account in a bank branch or online. It also said that branch employees called existing customers to get them to opt in using bank-provided scripts. Those scripts did not explain that the overdraft program was optional, or that it would result in overdraft fees.



The complaint also said bank employees were offered cash incentives to hit high opt-in targets, that senior bank executives partied after 300,000 customers signed opt-in agreements and then again when 500,000 opt-ins were signed. The bank's CEO at the time even named his boat "Overdraft."



The result was that 66 percent of TCF customers opted in, three times the average rate at other banks, according to the CFPB.

TCF said in a statement that it "rejects the claims" and "will vigorously defend against the CFPB's complaint."

The CFPB has gone after other banks as well. Last July, it slapped a $10 million fine on Santander Bank, which is based in Delaware and the nation's 29th largest bank, for allegedly deceiving consumers into signing up for an overdraft service they didnt want and charging them fees.



At the time, Santander Bank said in a prepared statement, "We regret that the vendor we hired to promote our overdraft service may not have followed our instructions and we did not supervise them as closely as we should have." The bank said it ended its relationship with that vendor and took steps to improve oversight.



In April 2015, a CFPB enforcement action led Alabama-based Regions Bank, the nation's 18th largest bank, to refund $49 million to customers who were allegedly charged overdraft fees but hadn't opted in for overdraft coverage. Regions also paid a $7.5 million fine.



Regions did not admit or deny the CFPB's findings. The CFPB, however, credited Regions for reporting the erroneous overdraft fees to the agency and for promptly reimbursing consumers.

How to Avoid Overdraft Fees

Consumers need to be aware that overdraft protection is not mandatory and that banks aren't always upfront about the costs involved. You can protect yourself by:



Saying no to overdraft protection. If you choose not to agree to sign up for overdraft protection, the bank will simply deny your debit or ATM transaction, sparing you the big fee. If you do sign up, there are other steps you can take to avoid being hit with an overdraft fee, such as linking your checking and savings accounts to help cover payments and signing up for online and mobile banking account alerts so you always know your balance.

Opening a bank account that doesn't allow for overdrafts. The nations biggest banksBank of America, Chase, Citi, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargooffer so-called lower-risk accounts, which offer just about all the same services a regular checking account but won't put through a payment if you don't have the funds in your account. These accounts aren't always promoted, so ask your bank about them.

Checking to see if your bank offers "friendly overdrafts." About 34 percent of banks and 13 percent of credit unions won't charge a penalty if you overdraw your account by small amounts, generally $10 or less, according to Moebs Services. Ask your bank if it has this policy.







More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright  2006-2017 Consumers Union of U.S.
Global Hip and Knee Orthopedic Surgical Robots Market Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2016 to 2022

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Hip and Knee Orthopedic Surgical Robots: Market Shares, Strategy, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2016 to 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The 2016 study has 145 pages, 64 tables and figures. Worldwide Hip and Knee Orthopedic surgical robot markets are poised to achieve significant growth. The accuracy provided by the robot is not reproducible by the human surgeon, so ultimately all surgeons will want to perform the orthopedic implants using this technology.Robot assisted medial knee arthroplasty: orthopedic surgical robots are poised to take knee and hip surgery quality far beyond what has previously been available. The quality of knee arthroplasty is improved with robotic capability. All the advantages of surgical robots carry into the Stryker Mako orthopedic reconstruction surgical products.. When the knee and hip surgical robots are used, patients have less bleeding, reduction of post-operative pain, fewer re-admissions to hospital and faster recovery. Robots support high-precision surgery. A clinic in Switzerland, La Source, has reported a reduction in the average days of hospitalization from 10 to 6.Knee and hip surgical robots provide consistent reproducible precision. This capability is so significant for implant surgery that the robots are positioned to become the defacto standard of care for knee and hip surgery within five years. Any one getting a knee or hip replaced will demand attention to quality of life, to maintenance of lifestyle provided by a robot when they have a joint replacement.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @As next generation systems, hip and knee robotic units provide a way to improve traditional orthopedic hip and knee replacement surgery. Total hip replacement surgery has evolved dramatically as advances in technology have brought improved surgical techniques. Surgical robots are a significany [art of that advance.Once, the penetration achieves this 35% level, all orthopedic surgeons will demand that hospitals offer robotic orthopedic surgical capability because the outcomes are more predictable and better. If the hospital does not offer the robot, the surgeon will move to a more modern facility.Knee and Hip Surgical Robots have been impacted by the reduction in insurance payments. Payment reductions have forced hospitals to start acting as businesses. The cost of delivering care has become as much a factor as providing quality care when making decisions about patient improvement in condition. Cost-cutting has been made in the supply chain. Suppliers were examined closely for quality and cost.The number of suppliers is reduced to put pressure on the ones that remain. Those remaining are pressured to improve prices and efficiencies. Hospitals, physicians, and care providers have been financially incentivized to create accountable care organizations (ACOs). Coordinated patient care plans and value-based purchasing were rewarded. The med device buyer shifted from physicians to the ACOs and smart buying groups.Stryker has thrived in this cost efficient environment with a surgical robot that permits faster surgeries, more cost efficient surgeries. In addition, Stryker offers an integrated system. The ability to include a Mako total knee application with Stryker Triathlon total knee system is anticipated to increase market share for Stryker. Stryker market leading Triathlon total knee system is helped in the market by the robot simply by the improved surgical technique possible. Surgical robots are proving themselves in a variety of disciplines, lending credibility to the Stryker robotic initiative.Use of the robot with the orthopedic implant represents a key milestone in reconstructive surgery. Robots provide an opportunity to transform orthopedics. By furthering the growth of robotic-arm assisted surgery, patients can get better treatment. By enhancing the surgeon and patient experience is is likely that the entire orthopedics implant market will grow more rapidly than it would otherwise.Stryker uses the Mako to perform partial knee resurfacing and is happy to add robotic capability to total knee resurfacing. Technology is enhancing a wide variety of procedures in many surgical specialties.The aging US population has supported demand, since the occurrence of health issues that require medical devices is higher in the elderly population. Buoyed by strong demand and sales, industry profit margins have increased considerably during the past five years.Hospitals are adopting robotic surgical devices to improve their outcomes numbers. Hospitals are measured on outcomes, robots for surgery, when used by a trained physician are improving outcomes significantly. Hundreds of universities worldwide have research programs in robotics and many are awarding degrees in robotics. These roboticists are increasingly being hired by Global 2000 organizations to link mobile robots (mobile computers) into existing IT systems.Robot-assisted surgery gives the surgeon better control over the surgical instruments and a better view of the surgical site.Hip and knee orthopedic surgical robot device markets at $84 million in 2015 are anticipated to reach $4.6 billion by 2022 as next generation robotic devices, systems, and instruments are introduced to manage surgery.The complete report provides a comprehensive analysis including procedure numbers, units sold, market value, forecasts, as well as a detailed competitive market shares and analysis of major players success, challenges, and strategies in each segment and sub-segment. The reports cover markets for knee and hip robotic orthopedic surgery medical specialties and sub-specialties.Companies ProfiledMarket Leaders- Stryker / MakoMarket Participants- Johnson & Johnson / DePuy- Synthes- Shenzhen Advanced Institute- Spinal Surgical Robot- Smith & Nephew- Stryker / Mako- THINK Surgical- Wright Medical Technology- Zimmer BiometMake 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 @
Global Radiology Oncology Surgical Robots Industry Key Trends, Size, Growth, Shares And Forecast Research Report 2016 to 2022

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Radiology Oncology Surgical Robots Market Shares, Strategies, and Forecasts, Worldwide, 2016 to 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The 2016 study has 557 pages, 82 tables and figures. Worldwide Radiology Oncology surgical robot markets are poised to achieve significant growth as next generation systems provide a way to improve traditional open surgery and use radiology for cancer surgery. New systems pinpoint the delivery of radiation precisely, eliminating the radiological overdosing that has been such a problem previously, limiting the quantity of radiation that can be delivered.Radiosurgery robots take cancer surgery far beyond what has been available, promising a cure for cancer. Radiology oncology surgical robots use mechanical mobility and continuous image guidance to remove tumors. The Accuray CyberKnife robotic system follows the oncology target throughout treatment, intelligently delivering sub-millimeter precision, sparing healthy tissue. A robotic manipulator and a compact, lightweight linear accelerator, can deliver beams from thousands of non-coplanar, isocentric or non-isocentric angles. Treatments have excellent tumor coverage, steep dose gradients, and tight dose conformality.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The radiation oncology market is growing globally due to a number of factors centered around the aging of the population and the benefits accrued from new technology. The number of new cancer cases diagnosed annually is projected to increase from 14.9 million in 2015 to 20 million by 2025. The increase in new cases is due to a steadily aging population. Both developed and developing countries have aging populations.Technology advances improve the precision and applicability of radiotherapy and radiosurgery. Expanding uses of radiotherapy and radiosurgery equipment occur because the units are able to treat a broader range of cases. Advances in hardware and software are creating a market for replacing an aging installed base. New designs are able to deliver higher standards of care.The rise in cancer cases, together with the increase in sophistication of new treatment protocols, have created demand for more automated products. Automation depends on integration of several devices into clinically practical systems. Integrated systems make treatments rapid and cost effective.Technology advances lead to improvements in patient care. The availability of advanced, automated and efficient clinical tools in radiation therapy has brought more precise forms of radiotherapy treatment (IMRT, IGRT, VMAT, SRS, SBRT, brachytherapy and proton therapy). Technology includes the EDGE and Truebeam, and the Accuray TomoTherapy H Series and CyberKnife M6 platforms that enable treatments that reduce treatment times and increase patient throughput .International markets are under-equipped to address the growing cancer incidence. Patients in many foreign countries must frequently endure long waits for radiotherapy.9,000 additional treatment machines will be required by 2020 in developing countries. China, India and Brazil are estimated to require over 3,800, 1,200 and 400 additional machines. Demand in emerging markets, coupled with ever increasing incidences of cancer, represent additional drivers for continued growth.Radiology oncology surgical robot market driving forces relate to an opportunity to achieve change in medical practice regarding the treatment of cancer. Change would lead to utilization of stereotactic body radiosurgery more regularly as an alternative to surgery or other treatments. Radiosurgery is poised to revolutionize the treatment of cancer by eradicating tumors while not harming surrounding healthy tissue.The ability to use high doses of radiation to precisely eliminate a tumor while leaving healthy tissue unharmed is compelling. It means that high doses of radiation can be delivered without killing the person, that doses of radiation delivered can be enough to kill the cancer without killing the person, this represents a change in what has been possible previously.The Varian, Elekta, and Accuray radiology oncology surgical devices offer robust clinical treatment capabilities. Flexibility of the Accuray InCise Multileaf Collimator and robotic delivery permit treatment of tumors previously thought untreatable. With radiosurgery and SBRT cancer can be treated efficiently and effectively. The device offers accuracy.Existing open brain and abdominal cancer surgery can be replaced in large part during the forecast period by robotic radiological oncology surgery. Radiologic robotic surgical approaches complement existing open surgery techniques, but will replace them as more physicians and surgeons become skilled in manipulating the x-ray devices. Soon, all oncology surgery will be considered in the context of what part of the oncology procedure will be undertaken with at least some aspects of robotic radiologic surgery replacing or complementing open cancer surgery.The aging US population has supported demand for robotic Radiology Oncology surgery. Since the occurrence of health issues that require medical devices is higher in the elderly population the more astute baby boomers have been looking to understand what surgical alternatives are open to them. . Buoyed by strong demand and sales, industry profit margins have increased considerably during the past five years.Hospitals are adopting robotic surgical devices to improve their outcomes numbers. Hospitals are measured on outcomes, robots for surgery, when used by a trained physician are improving outcomes significantly. Hundreds of universities worldwide have research programs in robotics and many are awarding degrees in robotics. These roboticists are increasingly being hired by Global 2000 organizations to link mobile robots (mobile computers) into existing IT systems.Robot-assisted surgery gives the surgeon better control over the surgical instruments and a better view of the surgical site. Surgeons no longer have to stand throughout the surgery and do not tire as quickly. Hand tremors are filtered out by the robots computer software. The surgical robot can continuously be used by rotating surgery teams.Radiology Oncology surgical robot device markets at $4 billion in 2015 are anticipated to reach $7.3 billion by 2022 as next generation devices, systems, and instruments are introduced to manage cancer surgery through radiation excision that eliminates open cutting in the body. Patients tolerate the surgery well, walking out of the hospital after the procedure no longer bothered by healing or infection from an incision.The complete report provides a comprehensive analysis including procedure numbers, units sold, market value, forecasts, as well as a detailed competitive market shares and analysis of major players success, challenges, and strategies in each segment and sub-segment. The reports cover markets for Radiology Oncology robotic surgery medical specialties and sub-specialties.Companies Profiled- Market Leaders- Varian- Elekta- AccurayMarket Participants- Best Theratronics, Ltd- Brainlab AG- Mitsubishi Heavy Industries- ViewRayMake 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 @
Neurology Endoscopy Devices Market Size, Share, Trends, Analysis and Forecasts To 2021

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Market Research analysts forecast the global neurology endoscopy devices market to grow at a CAGR of 7.20% during the period 2017-2021.The following companies as the key players in the global neurology endoscopy devices market: adeor medical, Aesculap, and KARL STORZ.Other Prominent Vendors in the market are: Ackermann, Hawk, Kapalin Biosciences, MACHIDA Endoscope, NICO, Pro Delphus, Renishaw, Richard Wolf, Rudolf Medical, WANHE Medical, and Visionsense.Commenting on the report, an analyst from Technavios team said: The latest trend gaining momentum in the market is integrated neuro endoscopy with surgical devices. Neurology endoscopes are integrated with surgical devices, so there are a few companies that are focusing on surgical devices that can improve the efficiency of surgeries. NICO developed the NICO Myriad system, which is an automated disposable resection device that can be used during neurology endoscopy. The resection device is used for the resection of pituitary tumors, craniopharyngiomas, colloid cysts, and for other neurosurgical disorders.Download Sample Report @According to the report, one of the major drivers for this market is government initiatives and demand for brain surgeries. An increase in the prevalence of brain cancer and brain tumor cases led to a rise in healthcare costs. To reduce the burden on citizens, governments of various developed countries such as the US and the UK took some initiatives. If detected at an early stage, the disease can be treated completely and causes less psychological and financial burden on patients and the healthcare system.Further, the report states that one of the major factors hindering the growth of this market is lack of trained neurologists. The adoption of minimally invasive surgery such as endoscopy is increasing worldwide. However, most surgeons are not qualified to perform the surgery. In addition, because of the benefits, most patients prefer minimally invasive procedures. Therefore, companies are providing training to surgeons to overcome this hurdle.The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to a SWOT analysis of the key vendors.About Neurology Endoscopy DevicesEndoscopy is a minimally invasive (MI) medical procedure that is used for the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of complications in the internal organs of the body. A neurology endoscopy device, which is a type of endoscope, is inserted into the patient's brain through a small incision. The camera or the light source at the tip of the endoscope allows the physician or medical professional to view the brain and perform complex surgeries. Neurology endoscopy devices are used to perform brain tumor, brain cancer, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke-related surgeries. Brain tumor is one of the most common condition for which there is growing adoption of minimally invasive treatment.Complete Report Details @Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global neurology endoscopy devices market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of various types of neurology endoscopy devices.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEAGlobal Neurology Endoscopy Devices Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsadeor medicalsculapKARL STORZOther prominent vendorsAckermannHawkKapalin BiosciencesMACHIDA EndoscopeNICOPro DelphusRenishawRichard WolfRudolf MedicalWANHE MedicalVisionsenseMarket driverGovernment initiatives and demand for brain surgeriesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLack of trained neurologistsFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIntegrated neuro endoscopy with surgical devicesFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.....ContinuedDiscount On This Report @For more information, please visitMarket Reports Center is an e-commerce platform obliging the needs of knowledge workers, experts, professionals who are subject to market research information for their work, or to make strategic business decisions. Market Reports Centers team consistently works to update and extend our existing repository of market research reports by partnering with new publishers and adding their studies to our websiteSam Collins303, Astral Court,Aundh, Pune,MH - 411045, Indiainfo@marketreportscenter.com
Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry Trends & Forecast to 2021- Industry Analysis by Manufacturers, Regions, Type and Application

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The Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry is expected to grow at a high CAGR during the forecast period. Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry report focuses on the major drivers and restraints for the key players. It also provides granular analysis of the market share, segmentation, revenue forecasts and geographic regions of the market. The Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry research report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry.In depth analysis of Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry is a crucial thing for various stakeholders like investors, CEOs, traders, suppliers and others. The Market research report is a resource, which provides technical and financial details of the industry.Browse more detail information about Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry at:Key Benefits for Stakeholders The study provides an extensive assessment of both the current and emerging industrial trends backed by in-depth information on business environment Evaluation of the effective marketing strategies and business channel outlined in the report forms an important part of the study SWOT analysis of the major brands exhibits the major strengths and weaknesses of key players The research further examines competitive landscape to enable business owners identify the competitive scenario and business prospects across different regions The research pinpoints new policies, news and technology development contributing to the market growth.Next part of the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry analysis report speaks about the manufacturing process. The process is analysed thoroughly with respect three points, viz. raw material and equipment suppliers, various manufacturing associated costs (material cost, labour cost, etc.) and the actual process.To provide information on competitive landscape, this report includes detailed profiles of Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry key players. For each player, product details, capacity, price, cost, gross and revenue numbers are given. Their contact information is provided for better understanding.Following are the key players covered in this Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry research report: ALCON Abbott Bausch + Lomb HOYANo. of Report Pages: 120Price of Report (Single User Licence): $ 4000Get a PDF Sample of Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry Research Report at:After the basic information, the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry report sheds light on the production. Production plants, their capacities, global production and revenue are studied. Also, the Market growth in various regions and R&D status are also covered.Topics such as sales and sales revenue overview, production market share by product type, capacity and production overview, import, export, and consumption are covered under the development trend section of the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry report.Key Topics Covered in the Robotic Sample Preparation System Report: Introduction Research Methodology Executive Summary Premium Insights Market Overview Industry Insights Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry, By Type Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry, By Application Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry, By End User Geographic Analysis Competitive Landscape Company ProfilesPurchase the Report Now @Further in the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry Analysis report, the Market is examined for price, cost and gross. These three points are analysed for types, companies and regions. In continuation with this data sale price is for various types, applications and region is also included.The Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry for major regions is given. Additionally, type wise and application wise consumption figures are also given.Scope of the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry on the basis of region: North America Europe China Japan Southeast Asia IndiaLastly, the feasibility analysis of new project investment is done in the report, which consist of a detailed SWOT analysis of the Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry. Both established and new players in the industry can use this report for complete understanding of the market.Key questions answered in Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry report: What are the key trends in Robotic Sample Preparation System Industry? What are the Growth Challenges of this market? What will the market size & growth be in 2021? What are the key factors driving this market? Who are the key vendors in this market space? How key drivers and challenges impact this market? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors? What are the market opportunities, market risk and market overview? How revenue of this market in previous & next coming years?About Absolute Reports:Absolute Reports is an upscale platform to help key personnel in the business world in strategizing and taking visionary decisions based on facts and figures derived from in depth market research. We are one of the top report resellers in the market, dedicated towards bringing an ingenious concoction of data parameters.Mr. Ameya PingaleyAbsolute ReportsSilverSpring Baner, PUne 411045+1-408 520 9750Email  sales@absolutereports.com
BFSI Security Market - Global Industry Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Banking, Financial services and Insurance sector usually include insurance companies, commercial banks and cooperatives. Furthermore, it also includes non-banking financial companies, mutual funds and pension funds among others.Download Research Brochure PDF@The growing demand for integrated security solutions is one of the major factors driving the global BFSI security market. Furthermore, growing preference for a common security platform which reduces the cost and complications of financial services is also contributing to the positive growth of BFSI security market. Moreover, increasing mobile data usage and growing digitization is also stimulating the demand for BFSI security at the global level. Stringent government regulations pertaining to data security along with increasing penetration of internet of things is also expected to have a positive impact on the BFSI security market. In addition, increasing number of cyber-attacks in BFSI sector in the last few years, the demand for security solutions and services has grown to protect confidential data in the BFSI sector. However lack of awareness about modern BFSI security systems across developing economies and the need for convergence of various security solutions are the major factors restraining the BFSI security market.The BFSI security market can be segmented into three categories based on types, end use and region. By types the market is divided into physical security and information security. Physical security is further segmented into access control, video surveillance, intrusion and fire detection, physical security information management (PSIM), system integration, maintenance and support and design and consulting. Furthermore, information security segment is further segmented into identity and access management, risk and compliance management, encryption, disaster recovery, unified threat management (UTM), firewall, web filtering, data loss protection among others. By end use the BFSI security market is segmented into banking and insurance companies among others.By geography, the market is segmented into four major regions including North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the world including Middle East, South America and Africa. North America and Europe are the early adopters of technology and hence accounts for majority of the market share and are expected to follow the same trend throughout the forecast period. However, Asia Pacific region is expected to be the fastest growing market for BFSI security owing to the presence of developing nations such as India, South Korea, Australia and China among others. Rapid urbanization and increasing number of users on the online platform is one of the major factors fueling the demand in this region. Moreover, increasing demand for data security of the confidential data is also expected to have a positive impact on the demand for BFSI security market. In addition, due to changing financial regulations a large number of banking and financial institutions are expected to provide their service which in turn is also expected to contribute to the demand for BFSI security.Some of the major players operating in the BFSI security market are Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. (United States), Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) (United States), EMC Corporation (United States), Cisco Systems Inc.(United States), Honeywell International, Inc. (United States), Mcafee, Inc. (United States), IBM Corporation,(United States), Sophos Group PLC.(United states), Symantec Corporation (United Sates) and Trend Micro Incorporated (Japan) among others.Browse Full Report@About Us:-Transparency Market Research is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact Us:-Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
Omega 3 Ingredients in High Demand as Awareness of Health Benefits Increases, reports TMR

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Koninklijke DSM N.V., BASF SE, and Croda International Plc.  the three leading companies for omega 3 ingredients in 2014  held a collective share of 48.2% in terms of market value. Most of the key omega 3 ingredients manufacturers have been in the market for a long time and possess a history of business consolidation through various business strategies and mergers and acquisitions.As stated in a research report released by Transparency Market Research, the competitive intensity in the global market for omega 3 ingredients is expected to remain very high till 2021. The market is extremely concentrated in developed economies and relatively sparser in emerging ones. Additionally, the key players hold a large part of the market share, leaving little scope for regional players or new entrants to prosper in the market. The overall threat from new entrants is also expected to remain very low over the coming years, owing to the high entry barriers and the overall lack of consumer awareness in untapped regions.The global market for omega 3 ingredients is expected to generate a revenue of US$7.49 bn by 2021. It is projected at a CAGR of 15.2% from 2015 to 2021 and is predicted to reach US$3.70 bn before the end of 2016. Supplements and functional foods have consistently been the leading application segment in omega 3 ingredients. By the end of 2021, this segment is expected to accrue a total revenue of US$3.91 bn.View exclusive Global strategic Business report:North America Pushes Demand for Omega 3 Fatty AcidsBy the end of 2021, North America is expected to generate US$3.62 bn in revenue from the demand for omega 3 ingredients. It is the dominant region in the world for EPA/DHA consumption since quite a few years and is expected to remain at the top till 2021. A large portion of this regions omega 3 ingredients demand comes from supplements and pharmaceuticals, but there is a strong growth rate in the demand for omega 3 ingredients in infant formula as well.Comparatively, the demand for omega 3 ingredients in Europe is much lower due to a lower rate of awareness. The awareness level reduces even further in the case of Asia Pacific. However, both regions are showing immense potential due to a gradual improvement in the flow of nutritional information within urban areas.Omega 3 Ingredients Demand Spurred by Growing Health ConcernsAt the moment, the primary driver boosting the demand for omega 3 ingredients is the growing level of concern over physical health. People are becoming increasingly aware of the high rate of diseases such as cancer and asthma around the world and are looking for ways to mitigate the risks of contracting them. One of the proven ways to do so is the regular consumption of DHA/EPA. Both fatty acids are known to reduce the chances of a person falling prey to prostate or skin cancer, and are also known to abate bronchial inflammation and asthma, states a TMR analyst.The growing consumer awareness is attributed to the increasing marketing efforts put in by nutrition companies, along with the release of scientific research which proves the benefits of consuming omega 3 fatty acids.EPA/DHA Consumption Still Marred by Low AwarenessThere is still, however, a large percentage of population in the world that is not aware of the benefits of omega 3 fatty acids. They still cannot differentiate between fatty acids that are beneficial or harmful when consumed. The overall public opinion of all fatty acids therefore remains negative. This can be dismissed by increasing awareness efforts through drives and other activities.Manufacturers of omega 3 ingredients can look to Asia Pacific for future endeavors. This region is ripe with a large number of consumers in urban areas that have positive disposable income. As the awareness of omega 3 fatty acid benefits spread, so will the demand for them in this region, adds the analyst.The information presented in this review is based on a Transparency Market Research report, titled, Omega 3 Ingredients Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2021.Key Takeaways:Global demand for omega 3 ingredients expected to fetch US$7.49 bn in revenue by 2021.Total revenue in supplements and functional foods by 2021 expected to reach US$3.91 bn.North America expected to generate US$3.62 bn in omega 3 ingredients revenue by 2021.Key segments of the Global Omega 3 Ingredients MarketGlobal Omega 3 Ingredients Market, by Application Type:Supplements and Functional FoodsPharmaceuticalsInfant formulaPet and Animal FeedOthersGlobal Omega 3 Ingredients Market, by Geography:EuropeNorth AmericaAsia PacificMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaAbout 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:
Global Intravascular Ultrasound Industry Will Grow Steadily At A CAGR Of 6.56% During The Period 2016-2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Intravascular Ultrasound Market 2016-2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Intravascular ultrasound (IVUS) is a catheter-based diagnostic device that uses sound waves to view the inside of a coronary artery by providing a real time view. IVUS is also called intravascular echocardiography as it is a combination of echocardiography and cardiac catheterization. Intravascular ultrasound device comprises a specially designed catheter with small ultrasound transducer or probe that is connected to the distal end. The proximal end is attached to a computerized electrocardiogram machine with a monitor. This ultrasound equipment is used for monitoring the function of the heart and examining the structure. It measures the size of cavities, observes the functioning of arteries, ventricles, and valves, and detects structural defects.Technavios analysts forecast the global intravascular ultrasound market to grow at a CAGR of 6.56% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global intravascular ultrasound market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top three vendors operating in the market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Intravascular Ultrasound Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsPhilips VolcanoBoston ScientificGE HealthcareSiemens HealthineersOther prominent vendorsAvingerHitachi Aloka Medical AmericaInfraredxMedtronicSamsung MedisonSilicon Valley Medical InstrumentsSt. Jude MedicalMarket driverIVUS ensures perfect stents placement than angiography.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeLack of uniform reimburse policy discourage individuals to choose IVUS.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncreasing demand for portable ultrasound equipment.For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?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 @
Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales Market: Expert Review, Study, Augmentation, Research and Forecast to 2021

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Global Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales Industry 2021 Market Research Report analysed the current state in the definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The report also focuses on the development trends as well as history, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions etc in the international markets.Global Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales Industry 2021 Market Research Report is a professionally prepared report comprising of in-depth information as well as knowledge which is helpful to the new entrants and the established players. Key statistics on the state of the industry and the complete demand analysis of the industry is showcased in the report.Get the Exemplified Analysis for the Products of Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) at:The development policies, plans as well as the bill of materials, cost structures are well studied and explained within the report for a better understanding. It also includes the study of the sales, import/export consumption, supply and demand Figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins. Also, the complete analysis of the prices, revenue share, growth rate etc.Through combining the well-integrated data with the deep analytical skills valid findings are detected. It gives out a strong prediction about the growth of the Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales industry in the future years to come. Furthermore, each and every important variable which is responsible for shaping the Global Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales Industry in the incorporated during the preparation process of the report.The report begins with the industry overview furnishing the details about the specifications, classification, applications, industry chain structure as well as gives out the policy analysis of the industry. It moves further on towards determining the manufacturing cost structure analysis, technical data as well as the manufacturing plant analysis. A lot of insightful predictions about the production, export/import, and consumption is provided in the report.For Sample Copy, click here:Future Development Trends in the Global Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales Company through the market share, SWOT analysis, revenue, gross margin is indicated through the report. Apart from it the report also provides great prospects of the new projects investments, SWOT analysis of the new projects, details about the key consumers with the complete contact details for the new entrants to engage in better opportunities.The competitive landscape of the market state showcases the study of the most renowned players in the China markets in the field of Global Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales industry. A detailed and thorough analysis of the company profiles, production as well as consumption, traders, marketing distributors along with the impact is covered throughout the report. The overall research conclusions with the investment avenues are prevalent in the report. Through the report, the new entrants are able to get the complete overview of the current state of the Global Power Line Carrier Communications (PLCC) Sales which will be beneficial for them.About Us:Market Reports Center is an e-commerce platform obliging the needs of knowledge workers, experts, professionals who are subject to market research information for their work, or to make strategic business decisions. Market Reports Centers team consistently works to update and extend our existing repository of market research reports by partnering with new publishers and adding their studies to our website.303, Astral Court,Aundh, Pune,MH - 411045, IndiaEmail - info@marketreportscenter.com
Hydrogen Electrolyzer Market Explores New Growth Opportunities By 2026

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Global Hydrogen Electrolyzer Market DynamicsGovernment regulations and public-private partnerships for promoting the use of hydrogen as an automotive fuel and energy carrier are expected to emerge as the most significant growth driver for electrolyzers market over the forecast period. Moreover, in geographies where transportation of hydrogen from long distances is either not cost effective or generation cost from natural gas is comparatively higher, end-users are preferring small scale electrolyzers for on-site generation.TOC of this report is available upon request @Although, technological advancements in hydrogen electrolyzers are bringing the overall hydrogen production cost down, still there is a long way to go to make electrolysis as cost efficient as other conventional methods of production i.e. steam methane reforming, etc. Ongoing process level developments for increasing overall electrolyzer efficiency, such as advancements in catalyst & membrane effectiveness, are expected to make the process of electrolysis more cost effective over the coming decade. Further, development of efficient hydrogen storage system and high-pressure electrolyzers are expected to provide significant growth opportunities in the global hydrogen electrolyzer market over the forecast period of 2016-2026.The key trends involved in the global hydrogen electrolyzer market include a use of renewable energy resources such as wind & solar coupled with electrolyzer system for hydrogen production and, in turn, for electricity generation.Global Hydrogen Electrolyzer Market SegmentationGlobal hydrogen electrolyzer market is segmented on the basis of type, end-user, and regions.On the basis of type, global hydrogen electrolyzer market is segmented into Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) Electrolyzer Alkaline Water Electrolyzer Solid Oxide ElectrolyzerOn the basis of end-user, global hydrogen electrolyzer market is segmented into Chemicals Automobile Energy Food and beverages Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Electronics Glass Metal production and FabricationGlobal Hydrogen Electrolyzer Market: Regional OutlookNorth America and Western Europe are expected to hold significant shares in the global hydrogen electrolyzer market. The market in Asia-Pacific is still in its nascent phase in terms of an untapped opportunity it holds, however, over the forecast period, a market in Asia-pacific is expected to create significant growth opportunities owing to increasing use of hydrogen across various end-use industries such as glass, electronics, welding & metal fabrication etc.Global Hydrogen Electrolyzer Market: Key PlayersKey players involved in the value chain of global hydrogen electrolyzer market includes Itm-power, Ballard Power Systems, Plug Power, Proton Power Control Pvt Ltd., Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies worldwide Inc., HyperSolar - Technology, Kingkar technologies, Acta S.p.A and others. Companies are largely focused on research and development to reduce overvoltage of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in electrolyzers in order to make the process more cost efficient.Sample of this report is available upon request @The report covers exhaustive analysis on: Market Segments Market Dynamics Market Size Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Key playersRegional analysis includes: North America Latin America Asia Pacific excluding Japan Japan Western Europe Eastern Europe Middle East & AfricaReport highlights: A brief introduction of global market of hydrogen electrolyzer. Market trends In-depth market segmentation Recent industry trends and developments Strategies of key players and products offered Potential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growthAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential Devices Market Will Continue to Grow by 2021

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In terms of geographic market, North America dominates the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. This is due to increased awareness about importance of brain monitoring devices in the region. The U.S. represents the largest market for EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices followed by Canada in North America. This is due to improved healthcare infrastructure in the region. For instance, in 2012, according to the American Hospital Association (AHA), about 5,723 registered hospitals were reported in the U.S.. Registered hospitals are those hospitals that fulfill all the AHA criteria. These increased hospitals have resulted significant rise in the demand of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices in the U.S.A sample of this report is available upon request @In Europe, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and France holds major share of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. However, Asia is expected to show high growth rates in the next five years in global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. This is due to many companies constructing their R&D facilities in the region. In addition, increasing awareness about various neurological diseases is also supporting in the growth of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market in the region. Japan, China and India are expected to be the fastest growing EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices markets in Asia.In recent time, increasing prevalence of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, is key driver of the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Rising number of geriatric populations and technological advancement in brain monitoring devices are also contributing in the growth of global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Introduction of scientifically advanced digital EEG equipments with innovative features, such as high precision monitoring abilities and ease handling, enhance the market growth. Moreover, increasing number of hospitals, healthcare academic and research institutes, clinics and nursing homes have also fueled the demand of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices.However, stringent regulations obstruct the growth of EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. In addition, cost containment, lack of skilled labors and inadequate reimbursement policies also hampers the growth of global ECG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market. Rapid product launches and increasing mergers and acquisitions between manufacturing companies and government associations are some of the major trends in the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the major companies operating in the global EEG, EMG and Evoked Potential devices market are Cadwell Laboratories Inc., Compumedics Limited, Covidien Limited, Electrical Geodesics Inc., Natus Medical Inc., NeuroWave Systems Inc., Nihon Kohden America Inc. and Noraxon.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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
(Adds Tillerson spoke by phone with Israeli prime minister, paragraphs 2, 11)

By Lesley Wroughton

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for unity and understanding on his first day at the State Department amid internal dissent over policies of President Donald Trump, which have also antagonized a range of allies.

Within hours of starting the job, Tillerson reached out by phone to counterparts from Mexico and Canada, spoke by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and met with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, department officials said.

Hundreds of State Department officials greeted the former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive with applause as he entered the building. Louder cheers broke out when Tillerson thanked acting Secretary of State Tom Shannon for standing in after the departure of John Kerry.

"Hi, I'm the new guy," said Tillerson, who was sworn in on Wednesday after the Senate confirmed him to his post despite concerns about his ties with Russia. Trump has called for closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In remarks that did not touch on foreign policy specifics, Tillerson addressed the dissent within the department that emerged this week in a memo signed by more than 900 officials in protest against Trump's decision to suspend the U.S. refugee program and restrict travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"One of the great challenges and thrills for the State Department staff is deciding how to confront changing conditions in every corner of the world," said Tillerson, "I encourage all of you to use your natural and well-developed skills to adapt to changes here at home as well.

"I know this was a hotly contested election and we do not all feel the same way about the outcome," said Tillerson.

"Each of us is entitled to expression of our political beliefs, but we cannot let our personal convictions overwhelm our ability to work as one team," he added.

Story continues

He also signaled he would impose changes to improve the functioning of the department and said the security of diplomats was a priority.

There was no readout after his meeting with Gabriel at the State Department, although discussions were likely focused on the NATO alliance, the future of the Iran nuclear agreement and trade.

His separate phone calls with foreign ministers from Canada and Mexico coincided with Trump saying on Thursday he wanted early talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement, which he wants to renegotiate or repeal.

Tillerson also spoke by phone with Netanyahu, the State Department said in a statement. It did not say whether they discussed a White House statement that said Israeli settlements in occupied territories may not be helpful in achieving peace with Palestinians, adopting a more measured tone than its previous pro-Israel announcements.

Tillerson inherits a messy globe, with war in Syria and Iraq, nuclear-armed North Korea threatening to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, and increased violence in eastern Ukraine.

Over the past 48 hours, more foreign policy challenges piled up as tensions erupted between the United States and ally Australia over an existing refugee swap, which Trump called a "dumb deal."

Strains with Iran also increased after the White House said it was putting Tehran on notice for test-firing a ballistic missile and the new administration moved to impose sanctions on several Iranian entities on Friday, according to sources familiar with the matter.

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton; Editing by Grant McCool and Peter Cooney)
Construction Equipment Rental Market Growth to be Driven by Technological Advancements - 2026

Construction Equipment Rental Market, Construction Equipment Rental, Equipment Rental, Equipment Rental market

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Construction Equipment Rental Market: Drivers and restraintsDevelopments in the infrastructure sector, clubbed with a varied range of advanced construction equipment in rental fleets are expected to drive demand for the construction equipment rentals market. Companies in the construction equipment rental market are skilful in identifying customers; they relocate construction equipment to different locations to monopolize on increasing demand from real estate industries in commercial and residential sectors. Strict regulations, increasing ownership cost and financial constraints are some of the key reasons fueling the construction equipment rental market.TOC of this report is available upon request @On the other hand, fluctuating fuel prices and expenditure of picking up and delivering machinery, especially if the contractor is working in remote areas, is expected to obstruct demand in the construction equipment rental market over the forecast period.Construction Equipment Rental Market: SegmentationThe construction equipment rental market can be segmented on the basis of product type. Earthmoving machinery (loading shovels, excavators, site dumpers and dump trucks) Material handling machinery (shelves, frames, sliding racks, bulk containers, bins, silos, conveyors, pallet trucks, fork lifts, platform trucks, hand trucks, cranes, etc.) Concrete & road construction (trenchers, planers, pavers, rollers, hot boxes, etc.)Construction Equipment Rental Market: Region wise outlookThe construction equipment rental market can be segmented by geographies as North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East & Africa and Japan. Among these regions, Asia pacific is expected to dominate the construction equipment rental market over the forecast period. Developing countries like India and China are expected to offer better opportunities owing to rising population and urbanization, along with growth in the IT sector that propels demand for the construction equipment rental market over the forecast period. North America is expected to show robust progression due to increasing investments in the residential sector. European countries like Spain, Germany, Poland and France are expected to drive the construction equipment rental market. In the Middle East, countries like Saudi Arabia focus extensively on sustainable practices and promote ecofriendly construction of buildings. Rising capital investments in transportation, hospitality, infrastructure and energy, coupled with easy availability of machinery has led to a boost in the construction equipment rental market.Construction Equipment Rental Market: playersSome examples of recognized players in the construction equipment rental market are listed below: Zahid Group. Industrial Supplies Development Co. Ltd JCB Ahern Equipment Rentals Caterpillar Inc. Gemini Equipment and Rentals (GEAR) Hertz Equipment John Deere KOMATSU EQUIPMENT Maxim Crane Works Neff RentalThe 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.The report covers exhaust analysis on: Market Segments Market Dynamics Market Size Supply & Demand Current Trends/Issues/Challenges Competition & Companies involved Technology Value ChainRegional analysis includes: North America (U.S., Canada) Latin America (Mexico. Brazil) Western Europe (Germany, Italy, France, U.K, Spain) Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia) Asia Pacific (China, India, ASEAN, Australia & New Zealand) Japan Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, S. Africa, Northern Africa)The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.Sample of this report is available upon request @Report Highlights: Detailed overview of parent market Changing market dynamics in the industry In-depth market segmentation Historical, current, and projected market size in terms of volume and value Recent industry trends and developments Competitive landscape Strategies of key players and products offered Potential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growth A neutral perspective on market performance Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprintAbout UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients business needs.PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMRs engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.commedia@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Cable Management System Market - North America to Dominate the Market by 2024

Cable Management System Market

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New York, February 03: Market Research Engine has published a new report titled as Cable Management System Market by Product Type (Cable Duct, Cable Trunking, Cable Tray, Cable Ladder, Raceway, Cable Conduit, Cable Connector, Cable Gland); by Material type (Metallic, Non-Metallic) and by End Users - Global Industry Analysis and Forecast 2016 - 2024How Big is the Cable Management System Market?The cable management system market is expected to exceed more than US$ 34 Billion by 2024; Growing at a CAGR of more than 9.6% in the given forecast period.Browse Full Report:Cable management is refers to the setting up of all equipment to secure cables for electrical services in a building. Cable management is essential in power distribution, communications and information technology.Cable management guarantees the traceability of particular connections in order that they will be valid for code compliance and alternative quality mandates by the regulatory authorities. Cable bend radius, weight and diameter are the key parameters effecting cable management.Cable management system market deals with the setting up or installing different cable management tools so as to shield cables for data electrical services or digital communication in a building, vehicle, organization and industry. A correct installation or deployment of cable management tools helps in traceability of specific connections for their validation in terms of code and quality conformity as started by the regulatory authorities. Cable management delivers end users with different benefits include increase adaptability and low maintenance, enhanced safety and reduction labor and operational cost.The major driving factors of cable management system market are as follows:Rising construction industry will be seen as the main driving factor for the cable management system market globally.Increasing demand for different bandwidth requirements.High acceptance of cable trays as an alternative for cable management systems.The restraining factors of cable management system market are as follows:Continuous instability of raw material costs is expected to be restraining the market growth.Download Free Sample Report:The cable management system market is segmented on the lines of its product, material, end user and regional. Under product segmentation it covers cable duct, cable lug and tools, cable chain and reel, cable gland, cable connector, cable conduit, cable trucking, raceway, cable tray and others such as cable tags and route markers. Based on material segmentation the cable management system market covers metallic and non metallic. End user segmentation covers construction, oil and gas, mining, logistics and transportation, healthcare, energy and utility, manufacturing and IT and telecom. The construction end user is further segmented into residential and commercial. The cable management system market's geographic segmentation covers various regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa. Each geographic market is further segmented to provide market revenue for select countries such as the U.S., Canada, U.K. Germany, China, Japan, India, Brazil, and GCC countries.This report provides:1) An overview of the global market for cable management system and related technologies.2) Analyses of global market trends, with data from 2013, estimates for 2014 and 2015, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2024.3) Identifications of new market opportunities and targeted promotional plans for cable management system.4) Discussion of research and development, and the demand for new products and new applications.5) Comprehensive company profiles of major players in the industry.REPORT SCOPE:The scope of the report includes a detailed study of global and regional markets for Cable Management System with the reasons given for variations in the growth of the industry in certain regions.The report covers detailed competitive outlook including the market share and company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include Schneider Electric SE, Legrand SA, Thomas & Betts Corporation (ABB Ltd.), HellermannTyton Group PLC, TE Connectivity Ltd., Marco Cable Management, Chatsworth Products, Inc., Cooper Wiring Devices (Eaton Corporation), Allied Tube & Conduit (Atkore International Holdings Ltd), Niedax Group, Vantrunk International, Panduit Corp., Leviton Manufacturing Co. Inc. and Enduro Composites Inc. Company profile includes assign such as company summary, financial summary, business strategy and planning, SWOT analysis and current developments.The Top Companies Report is intended to provide our buyers with a snapshot of the industrys most influential players.The Cable management system market has been segmented as below:By Product Segment AnalysisCable ductCable lug and toolsCable chain and reelCable glandCable connectorCable conduitCable trunkingRacewayCable trayOthers (cable tags and route markers)By Material AnalysisMetallicNon metallicBy End-user AnalysisConstructionResidentialCommercialOil and GasMiningLogistics and transportationHealthcareEnergy and UtilityManufacturingIT and TelecomBy Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificRest of the WorldAbout MarketResearchEngine.comMarket Research Engine is a global market research and consulting organization. We provide market intelligence in emerging, niche technologies and markets. Our market analysis powered by rigorous methodology and quality metrics provide information and forecasts across emerging markets, emerging technologies and emerging business models. Our deep focus on industry verticals and country reports help our clients to identify opportunities and develop business strategies.Media ContactCompany Name: Market Research EngineContact Person: John BayEmail: john@marketresearchengine.comPhone: +1-855-984-1862, +91-860-565-7204Country: United StatesWebsite:Address: 3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8942, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442, United States
Global Pet Food Market to Expand at 4.20% CAGR till 2017, Driven by High-quality Nutritious Pet Food

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The featured report from Transparency Market Research, titled Pet Food Market - Global Scenario, Trends, Industry Analysis, Size, Share And Forecast 2011 - 2017, offers the latest intelligence on the market. The report states that the global pet food market will expand at a modest CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period from 2011 to 2017. In 2011, the global pet food market was estimated at US$58.6 bn and by 2017, the market is expected to be worth US$74.8 bn.Download exclusive Sample of this report:Pet owners around the world are demanding the best products for their pets. This is evolving beyond the usual standards such as flavor. Pet owners want products with a high nutritional value and manufacturing safety standards, similar to human food. This is projected to drive the global pet food market greatly in the coming few years. According to a study, a quarter of American pet owners worry if the pet food they are buying will make their pet obese.The global pet food market is also driven by trends such as the changing lifestyle, growing urbanization, and rising level of disposable incomes. In addition to this, the accelerating trend of nuclear families will further boost the global pet food market in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, the rising obesity in pets, regulatory issues, and pet allergies will suppress the global pet food market.By pet type, the global pet food market is divided into cat food, dog food, and others. According to food type, the global pet food market is classified into snacks/treats, nutritious food, wet/canned food, and dry food. The global pet food market is dominated by the dry pet food segment, with a market share of 39%. The second largest segment in the global pet food market is that of snacks/treats, holding a market share of 21%.Browse the full Pet Food Market - Global Scenario, Trends, Industry Analysis, Size, Share And Forecast 2011 - 2017 report at:Geography-wise, the global pet food market is segmented into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World (RoW). Currently, North America dominates the global pet food market with a market share of almost 40%. The North America pet food market is projected to expand at a 3.5% CAGR in the given forecast period. In 2011, the North America pet food market was worth US$21.7 bn and by 2019, it will be worth US$26.6 bn.Europe is the second largest regional market in the global pet food market and is expected to progress at a 4.4% CAGR during the forecasting horizon. The Asia Pacific pet food market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming few years and emerge as the fastest growing regional market by the end of the forecast period. The rising trend of keeping pets at home is driving the regional market of Asia Pacific in the global pet food market.The key players operating in the global pet food market are Del Monte Foods Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Proctor & Gamble Co., Nestle SA, Marc Inc., Total Alimentos SA, Nutriara Alimentos Ltd., Uni-Charm Corp., and Agrolimen SA. Players in the global pet food market are increasingly broadening their product portfolio to offer nutritious products such as organic pet food.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Osteoporosis Drugs Market is Anticipated to Grow US$ 14.8 Billion by 2022

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According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research Global Market Study on Osteoporosis Drugs: AsiaPacific to Witness Highest Growth by 2022, the global osteoporosis drugs market is estimated to be valued at US$11,226.1 Mn by the end of 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.0% from 2014 to 2022, to account for US$14,786.7 Mn by 2022.The global osteoporosis drugs market is witnessing significant growth due to rising geriatric population and changing lifestyles impinging bone health. Prevalence of osteoporosis is high among people aged 60 years and above. Moreover, increasing the prevalence of osteoporosis in postmenopausal women, growing awareness about osteoporotic care, and increasing investment in drug discovery and development are also driving the growth of the market. However, there are various side effects and complications associated with osteoporosis drugs such as heartburn, irritable bowel syndrome, nausea, and ulcers in the stomach or esophagus. Furthermore, patent expiration of osteoporosis drugs also inhibits the growth of the market.The osteoporosis drugs market is anticipated to grow from an estimated US$11,226.1 Mn by the end of 2015 to account for US$14,786.7 Mn by 2022 at a CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period.In North America, the prevalence of osteoporosis is high primarily due to increasing geriatric population, growing obesity, and rising prevalence of lifestyle associated diseases in the region. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, in 2013, approximately 54 million people in the U.S. aged 50 years and above were affected by osteoporosis and low bone mass. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in the U.S., approximately 250,000 hip fractures are associated with osteoporosis.In Europe, increasing aging population, changing lifestyles, and increasing consumer awareness about osteoporosis care are driving the growth of the osteoporosis drug market. According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation, approximately 5.5 million men and 22 million women suffered from osteoporosis in 2010. Moreover, according to International Osteoporosis Foundation, approximately 27.5 million people in Europe suffered from osteoporosis in 2010 and the number is expected to reach 33.9 Mn by 2030.A Sample of this report is available upon request @However, the growth of osteoporosis market in Asia Pacific is much due to rising geriatric population and changing lifestyles in the region. Osteoporotic patients have a higher risk of hip fractures, owing to a major cause of morbidity and mortality. According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation, by 2050, approximately 50% of the worlds osteoporosis hip fractures would occur in women in Asia. In addition, according to a study on Epidemiology in Osteoporosis in Japan by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, in 2011, approximately 15 million people suffered from osteoporosis in Japan.Request to view Table of content @Eli Lilly and Company, F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd., Merck & Co. Inc., Novartis AG, Amgen, Inc., Actavis plc, Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd., and Pfizer, Inc. are some of the major players of osteoporosis drugs market.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Germany Proton Therapy Market, Forecast, Reimbursement Policies & Patients Treated at Centers

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Germany Proton Therapy Market, Forecast, Reimbursement Policies & Patients Treated at Centers" to its huge collection of research reports.Germany Proton Therapy Market, Forecast, Reimbursement Policies & Patients Treated at Centers is a market research report published by Renub Research. According to this report Germany Proton Therapy Industry has a market potential of US$ 2 Billion by 2021. Currently Germany has 6 operational proton therapy centers. Rising cancer incidence in Germany is the major key driver to boost Germany proton therapy market. Adoption of technological up-gradation that has more utilization rate will shorten the length of time per patient.In this report we have studied the market in two parts a) Actual Market and b) Untapped Market. The report also talks about list of all operational and Future Proton Therapy centers; Economics of proton therapy including reimbursement policies. Proton Therapy revenues from 3 companies ( IBA, Varian Medical Systems, Elekta) has been studied in the report.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Untapped Market is the market which can be achieved; but it has yet not been achieved due to demand and supply gap. At present only a few proton therapy centers are available that can treat a limited number of patients each year.Germany Proton Therapy Market has been analyzed from four view points- Germany Proton Therapy Actual Market & Forecast (2009  2021)- Germany Proton Therapy Untapped Market & Forecast (2009  2021)- Germany Proton Therapy Treated Patient Volume & Forecast (2009  2021)- Germany Proton Therapy Untapped Patient Volume & Forecast (2009  2021)Key Companies Covered- IBA (Overview, Sales Analysis)- Varian Medical Systems (Overview, Sales Analysis)- Elekta (Overview, Sales Analysis)Key Questions Answered in the Report- What are Germany Proton Therapy Market and its Future Potential- What is the Proton Therapy Potential Market in Germany and its Future- What is Number of Proton Therapy Centers operating in Germany- What is the Number of People being treated in these Proton Therapy Centers yearly- What are Proton Therapy Reimbursements policies of Germany- What are the sales of Proton Therapy Companies Globally (IBA, Varian, Elekta)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 @
Demand of Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market in Global Industry : Overview, Size, Share, Trends, Analysis and Research 2017

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Albany, NY, 2nd FEB : Online Takeaway Food Delivery Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020), provides an in-depth analysis of the global online takeaway food delivery market by value and by penetration rate. The report also gives an insight of the global food services market and takeaway food delivery market.The report provides a regional analysis of the online takeaway food delivery market, including the following regions: US, Canada, UK, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Spain and France.For more Professional and Technical insights @The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global online takeaway food delivery market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.The competition in the global online takeaway food delivery market is fragmented with several new players emerging in the industry. However, key players of the online takeaway food delivery market, Just Eat, GrubHub and Rocket Internet (Foodpanda and Deliver Hero) are profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Country CoverageUSCanadaUKAustraliaDenmarkItalySpainFranceCompany CoverageJust EatGrubHubRocket Internet (Foodpanda and Deliver Hero)Executive SummaryThe food services industry is experiencing a revolution. Even the food delivery market is undergoing a dynamic change. It is the online mode that is reaping attention in the current scenario. The food delivery market is both online and offline. The online food delivery market is also known as online takeaway food delivery market.Online takeaway food delivery market provides an online and mobile platform for food takeaway. The platform is essentially a marketplace where consumers are matched with restaurants. Consumers choose to order on takeaway restaurant (TR) webpage or an app rather than directly on restaurant websites because they can easily compare multiple cuisine options, and also pay safely. In online mode mobile apps are available for iOS and Android of either the restaurants or TR. Customers select restaurants that deliver to their locations, make selection from menus and prices, and make purchases using a mobile device or via the web without the need for phone calls.Make An Enquiry @In recent years online food delivery market is gaining popularity because of the increased internet penetration across nations and increased smartphone dependence.The online food delivery market has three business models namely pure-media, fully integrated and on-demand delivery models.The global online takeaway food delivery market is expected to increase at a significant CAGR during the years 2016-2020. The global online takeaway food delivery market is expected to increase due to increase in urban population, increase in spending of global middle class population, increasing technological innovations, increase in smartphone usage, increase in internet penetration, etc. Yet, the market faces some challenges such as, fluctuations in profit earning, threat to aggregator business model, data server crash, etc.ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMoz90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States
Pest Control Global Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts 2017 - 2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Pest Control Global Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts 2017 - 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.The report entitled Global Pest Control Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts (2016-2020) provides a detailed analysis of the global pest control market with analysis of market size by value, segments and etc.The report also includes a detailed regional analysis of the global pest control market, such as, Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, comprising of their market by value along with the major countries in the particular region. Under competitive landscape, the global pest control market has been compared on the basis of players, which includes comparison on the basis of revenue and market capitalization followed by comparison of pest control players in the USA and UK.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.The competition in the global infant and toddler nutrition market is stiff and dominated by big players such as Rentokil Initial Plc. Ecolabs Inc. and Rollins Inc. are some of the key players operating in the global pest control market, whose company profiling is done in the report. In this segment of the report, business overview, financial overview and the business strategies of the companies are provided.Country CoverageNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Company CoverageRollins Inc.Ecolabs Inc.Rentokil Initial PlcExecutive SummaryThe global pest control market can be segmented on the basis of pest type, services and end-users. On the basis of pest type, the market can further be sub-segmented into insects, mites, nematodes, vertebrate pest, micro-organism & weeds and parasitic plants. On the basis of services, the market can be divided into chemical, biological and other pest control services, which consist of mechanical pest control services. On the basis of end-users, the market can be segmented into commercial, residential and others, which includes use of pest control for agricultural and industrial purposes.The global pest control market is expected to grow at a healthy rate during the forecast period (2016-2020). The growth is expected on account of many factors, such as an increase in population and economic activity, rising urbanization, prevalence of high global temperature and upsurge in disposable income.However, the market also faces some challenges, which includes stringent industry regulations, staff management problems on the part of pest control service companies and high cost for customers. Introduction of new biocides, use of smart technologies such as route optimization software & mergers and acquisitions are some of the latest trends in this industry.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 @
Alarmingly High Prevalence of Diabetes helps Global Diabetic Food Market to Register 5.90% CAGR from 2014 to 2020

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In a recent market study published by Transparency Market Research, the global diabetic food market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.90% from 2014 to 2020. If the growth rate holds true, the market will reach a valuation of US$11.1 bn by 2020 increasing from US$7.4 bn in 2013. The title of this report is Diabetic Food Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020.Download exclusive Sample of this report:The report provides a comprehensive analysis of reasons that are governing the growth of the diabetic food market. Based on the historical and current market size, projections are made for the forecast period. This report assesses vital market indicators such as drivers and trends to gauge the consumption of diabetic food during the forecast period.Although diabetes is on a consistent rise, most cases are preventable with the adoption of a healthy lifestyle. Not only this, in some cases, diabetes can be reversed with proper disease management. This includes consuming the right foods and adequate physical exercises for burning excess calories. In modern times, changing lifestyles and demanding jobs are reasons for a high number of lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and obesity, especially among the youth. This is driving sales of diabetic food. This, along with increasing awareness among consumers for proper disease management, is driving the sales of functional foods such as nutraceuticals and diabetic foods.Diabetics are susceptible to conditions related to the heart, nerve disorders, and eye diseases that need proper management in terms of food and physical exercise. To cater to these individuals, health food manufacturers are introducing food products that use sugar substitutes and are low in calories to help with diabetes management. Manufacturers are also widening distribution channels to reach out to consumers in remote regions of the world. These factors are collectively enabling the growth of the global diabetic food market.Browse full Diabetic Food Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020 report at:In terms of geography, North America led the diabetic food market in 2013 and will retain its position till the end of the forecast period. An increasing incidence of obesity among kids due to the excessive consumption of fast food is driving the sales of diabetic foods. Also, with increasing health awareness, individuals are seeking low-calorie foods for good health in the long run. The U.S. will exhibit an exponential growth in the diabetic food market in the coming years. In Europe, Germany and the U.K. are leading markets for diabetic food due to a large pool of geriatrics who are consciously consuming healthy foods.In Asia Pacific, China and India are leading markets for diabetic foods. Remarkable economic development and rising Westernization are reasons for the increasing purchase of convenience foods that have health benefits as well. In the Rest of the World, increasing awareness about the adoption of a healthy lifestyle is favoring the growth of the diabetic food market.Some companies that are actively involved in the global diabetic food market are Unilever Plc, Mars Inc., David Chapmans Ice Cream Limited, Kellogg Company, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo Inc., Cadbury plc., Nestle S.A., and Fifty 50 Foods Inc.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Report: Global FPSO Market, 2015-2021

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Zion Market Research has published a new market research report analysing the latest trends and developments in the global FPSO Market, titled FPSO Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecasts 2015-2021.FPSO stands for Floating Production, Storage, and Offloading. An FPSO vessel is a type of floating production system that is used for the offshore production, storage, and offloading of oil and gas. Usually, it is a vessel that is a converted oil tanker or a newly constructed FPSO unit. An FPSO often resembles a ship, equipped with production and processing facilities onboard. FPSOs comprise offloading facilities for the transportation of processed oil and gas to onshore receiving facilities through a shuttle tanker. These vessels are used to extract or receive raw hydrocarbons from sea beds, which are then processed in onboard processing facilities.Get a copy of Sample Report @The installation of fixed processing and production facilities is technically very complex and costly in remote oil and gas production areas; this, in turn, increases the demand for FPSOs excluding the need for fixed processing facilities. Marginal fields and challenging environments have been others factors that act as driving factors of FPSO market expansion. The considerable expansion in oil & gas exploration and production in deep water, ultra-deep water, and offshore fields is expected to boost the global FPSO market growth over the forecast period. Increasing consumption of oil & gas globally, particularly in power generation and transportation sectors has made companies explore more hydrocarbon reserves.On the basis of type, the global FPSO market is segmented as converted FPSO systems, new-build FPSO systems, and redeployed FPSO systems. Presently, the market is dominated by the converted FPSO systems segment. On the other hand, the demand for new-build FPSO systems has decreased owing to the reduced costs of oils in oil and gas exploration industries. Based on the water depth, the market has been segmented into shallow water, deepwater, and ultra-deepwater systems. On the basis of equipment, the FPSO market is segmented as nitrogen generation, seawater injection, fuel gas treatment, produced water, crude oil separation, and chemical injection.Browse detail report with in-depth TOC @North America and Europe are the dominant players of the global FPSO market and are anticipated to witness considerable growth in coming years owing to mature oil & gas reserves. In addition, South America and East Africa are also expected to experience significant growth due to recent offshore E&P developments and deep water oil field discoveries. Further, Brazil is expected to emerge as a major FPSO market in this region due to rising oil & gas activities along with considerable government support. Recent deep sea oil & gas reserves in South China Sea, North Sea, and Gulf of Mexico are expected to positively impact the global market growth in the near future.Major players dominating the global FPSO market are Bumi Armada Berhad, MODEC, Inc., BW Offshore, Bluewater Energy Services B.V., COSCO Shipyard Group Co. Ltd., and Yinson Holdings Berhad. Other key players in the market are Sembcorp Marine Ltd., Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd., Teekay Corporation, and SBM Offshore N.V.For more Inquiry Contact our Sales Team @ sales@zionmarketresearch.comAbout UsZion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the clients needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to usafter allif you do well, a little of the light shines on us.Contact US:Zion Market Research4283, Express Lane,Suite 634-143,Sarasota, Florida 34249, United StatesTel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.comWebsite:
Switzerlands Cards and Payments Industry: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Switzerlands Cards and Payments Industry: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Timetrics 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Switzerland: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in the Swiss cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including direct debits, check payments, payment cards and credit transfers during the review period (20112015).The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry, and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, and transaction values and volumes during the review period and over the forecast period (20162020). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure.SummaryTimetrics 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Switzerland: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Swiss cards and payments industry, including:Current and forecast values for each market in the Swiss cards and payments industry, including debit card, credit and charge cards.Detailed insights into payment instruments including direct debit, credit transfers, checks and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.E-commerce market analysis.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Swiss cards and payments industry.It provides current values for the Swiss cards and payments industry for 2015, and forecast figures to 2020.It details the different demographic, economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting the Swiss cards and payments industry.Reasons To BuyMake strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Swiss cards and payments industry and each market within it.Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Swiss cards and payments industry.Key HighlightsThe Swiss Competition Commission (Comco) lowered the interchange fees of Visa and MasterCard credit cards from August 1, 2015. Under the new regulation, the interchange fee for credit cards is capped at 0.70%; reduced from the existing 0.95%. The Comco is planning to further reduce it to 0.44% from August 1, 2017. According to Comco, the reduction in fees is expected to result in a saving of US$5262.3 million (CHF5060 million) annually for merchants. However, it is anticipated to have a major impact on the profitability of the card issuers over the forecast period (20162020). With a reduction in revenue, issuers are likely to cut down on card offerings and benefits for consumers.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 @
US President Barack Obama

The most famous lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) right now are probably those 14 filed by Scott Pruitt, the anti-regulation Oklahoma Attorney General that Trump picked to lead the agency.

But there's another category of EPA lawsuits that don't make headlines as often these days: those designed to force the agency to write stricter environmental rules, not relax the ones that already exist.

And the first such lawsuit  concerning an Obama-era EPA decision  is already headed for a courtroom, as Inside EPA first reported.

A lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club and a group of petitioners from California argues that the EPA has failed in its legal responsibility to regulate three air pollutants.

The case, which heads to oral argument in front of the DC Circuit Court February 10, gets a bit into the weeds of procedures for EPA rulemaking. But here's what you need to know:

In 1990, Congress introduced a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act, which is the foundational law behind all those specific emissions rules that come out of the EPA.

Among other things, the amendments required that the EPA develop a list of emissions sources* for seven dangerous airborn toxins (Hazardous Air Pollutants, or "HAPs") that build up in living things and may cause cancer and other major health issues.

Once the list was officially recorded, it was the EPA's job to write regulations for those HAP sources that would reduce HAP emissions as much as reasonably possible.

For more then two decades, the EPA avoided going through the official process for writing the list it came up with into the federal rulebook

A separate lawsuit in 2015 forced the agency's hand. So in 2015, under Obama, the EPA wrote the list into the Federal Register.

But the EPA never actually created regulations targeting the seven HAPs. Instead, it relied on regulating "surrogate pollutants." That is, it regulated pollutants that tend to get emitted alongside the seven HAPs, under the theory that reducing them would reduce HAP emissions as well.

In this new lawsuit, which began in June 2016, the Sierra Club argues that the EPA has therefore failed to meet the requirements Congress established in 1990, and thus must write new regulations to comply with the law.

Story continues

Obama's Department of Justice defended the EPA, arguing that the Sierra Club was attacking an established, accepted regulatory approach long after the legal period for challenging it ended.

Now, if the EPA loses, Pruitt and the Trump Administration could find themselves forced to write new regulations, even after promising to reduce the total count on the books.

*A technical point: The list didn't actually have to include all sources, but the sources on the list did have to add up to 90% of total emissions.

NOW WATCH: NASA is bringing back one of its most experimental and dangerous programs





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Medical Document Management Systems Market Estimated to Grow Strongly by 2021

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In terms of geography, North America dominates the global medical document management systems market. This is due to the improved health care infrastructure and increased government funding in the region. In addition, technological advancements in document management systems and increasing adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) in medical practices have also propelled the growth of the market in North America. The U.S. represents the largest market for medical document management system in North America, followed by Canada. In Europe, Germany, France, and the U.K. hold major shares in the medical document management systems market.A sample of this report is available upon request @The medical document management systems market in Asia is also expected to exhibit high growth during the next five years. This is due to various initiatives undertaken by governments to implement health care IT technologies in the region. In addition, increasing pressure of government on health care organizations to improve the quality of care and minimize health care costs, have also propelled the growth of the medical document management systems market in the region. India, China, and Japan are expected to be the fastest growing markets for medical document management systems in Asia.Various initiatives undertaken by government organizations to implement health care IT technologies in health care organizations and rise in number of hospitalization cases are some of the major driving factors for the growth of the global medical document management systems market.Lack of health care IT professionals and increasing data privacy and security concerns in document management systems are the major restraints of the global medical document management systems market. Increasing number of mergers and acquisitions between various health care IT companies is a key trend observed in the global medical document management systems market.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @The major companies operating in this market are 3M Company, McKesson Corporation, Siemens AG, Hyland Software, Inc., Epic Systems Corporation, Kofax Limited, Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation, Cerner Corporation, Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. and GE Healthcare.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.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Dental Implants and Prosthetics Consumption Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2021

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ResearchMoz presents this most up-to-date research on "Dental Implants and Prosthetics Consumption Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2021".The Global Dental Implants and Prosthetics Consumption 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Dental Implants and Prosthetics market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the Dental Implants and Prosthetics industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Secondly, the report states the global Dental Implants and Prosthetics market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the Dental Implants and Prosthetics market analysis is provided for major regions including USA, Europe, China and Japan, and other regions can be added. For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the Dental Implants and Prosthetics industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @In a word, the report provides major 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 Content1 Industry Overview of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.1 Definition and Specifications of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.1.1 Definition of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.1.2 Specifications of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.2 Classification of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.3 Applications of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.5.1 Industry Overview of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Dental Implants and Prosthetics1.7 Industry News Analysis of Dental Implants and Prosthetics2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Dental Implants and Prosthetics2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Dental Implants and Prosthetics2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Dental Implants and Prosthetics2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Dental Implants and Prosthetics2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Dental Implants and ProstheticsMake 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 @
Global Ascorbic Acid Market to Expand Their Businesses USD 1083.8 Million by 2021

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Zion Research has published a new report titled Ascorbic Acid Market for Pharmaceutical, Food & Beverages, Personal Care and Other End-user Industries: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis and Forecast, 2015 - 2021. According to the report, the global ascorbic acid market was around 150.2 kilo tons in 2015. The global ascorbic acid market revenue accounted for USD 820.4 million in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 1083.8 million by 2021, growing at a CAGR of around 4.8% between 2016 and 2021.Request Sample Report:The global Ascorbic Acid market is expected to witness moderate growth over the forecast period on account of increasing demand from pharmaceutical industry. Majority of ascorbic acid manufactured is used as an antioxidant. The major end-user industries of ascorbic acid are pharmaceuticals, food & beverages, personal care and others. Pharmaceutical industry is largest consumer of ascorbic acid. Vitamin C helps to recycle vitamin E. About one-third of total production of ascorbic acid is used for vitamin preparations in the pharmaceutical industry. The rest is mainly applied as an additive to food and feed to enhance product quality and stability. Ascorbic acid added to foodstuffs during processing or before packing protects color, aroma, and nutrient content. The usage of ascorbic acid in food & beverages industry is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR during the forecast period.Ascorbic acid production is hugely dependent on availability of raw material. Thus, any fluctuation in availability and prices of raw material can severely affect ascorbic acid market. This is expected to curb the growth of ascorbic acid market over the years. However, investments in research and development by major industry players coupled along with exponential technological advancements in pharmaceutical industry is expected to act as a major opportunity for ascorbic acid market.Do Inquiry before buying:In terms of geography, Asia-Pacific was largest consumer of ascorbic acid in 2015. The consumption in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a rapid pace mainly due to availability of low cost manufacturing facilities in China. China is the largest consumer and producer of ascorbic acid. Moreover, the ever increasing demand for food and health supplements primarily in Asia Pacific is expected to boost the demand for ascorbic acid in this region. Europe and North America also consume ascorbic acid on large scale. The demand for ascorbic acid in this region is also expected to grow in coming years as a result of increasing demand from personal care and food & beverages end-user industry. Ascorbic Acid demand is increasing in emerging nations such as Brazil, India and China.Some of the key players of the market include, DSM, DuPont, BASF SE, Northeast Pharmaceutical Group, Shandong Luwei Pharmaceutical, Bactolac Pharmaceutical Inc, CSPC Pharmaceutical Group, Hebei Welcome Pharmaceutical Co, North China Pharmaceutical Group, Dishman Group, Aland Nutraceuticals Group, NBTY Inc., GlaxoSmithKline Plc. and others.Browse the full "Ascorbic Acid Market for Pharmaceutical, Food & Beverages, Personal Care and Other End-user Industries: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2015  2021" report atThis report segments the global ascorbic acid market as follows:Global Ascorbic Acid Market: End-user Segment AnalysisPharmaceuticalFood & beveragesPersonal CareOthersGlobal Ascorbic Acid Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyUKFranceAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaSimilar Reports :-Browse the full "Plasticizers (Low Phthalate, High Phthalate and Non Phthalate) Market for Floor Wall & Coverings, Wires & Cables, Consumer Goods, Film & Sheets and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2014  2020" report atBrowse the full "Silicone (Resins, Elastomers, Gels, Fluids and Other) Market for Chemical Industry, Plastics, Paper, Building and Construction, Automotive and Transportation, Aviation and Aerospace, Textile, Medical and Personal Care, Electrical and Electronics and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2015  2021" report atBrowse the full "Polyester Polyol (Aliphatic Polyester Polyols and Aromatic Polyester Polyols) Market for Flexible Foam, Spray Foam, Rigid Foam (Panels & Boardstock), Refrigeration, CASE (Coatings, Adhesives, Sealants, Elastomers) and Other Applications: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Segment, Trends and Forecast, 2015  2021" report atAbout UsZion Research 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. Zion Research experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants uses 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.Contact US:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@marketresearchstore.comWebsite:
Automotive Coatings Market Forecast By End-use Industry 2015-2021

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The report covers forecast and analysis for the Automotive Coatings market on a global and regional level. The study provides historic data of 2015 along with a forecast from 2016 to 2021 based on volume and revenue (USD Million). The study includes drivers and restraints for the market along with the impact they have on the demand over the forecast period. Additionally, the report includes study of opportunities available in the Automotive Coatings market on a global level.Get a copy of Sample Report @In order to give the users of this report a comprehensive view on the Automotive Coatings market, we have included a detailed competitive scenario, and product portfolio of key vendors. To understand the competitive landscape in the market, an analysis of Porters five forces model for the Automotive Coatings market has also been included, strategic development along with patents analysis is included in this report. The study encompasses a market attractiveness analysis, where in type segments are benchmarked based on their market size, growth rate and general attractiveness.All the segments have been analyzed based on present and future trends and the market is estimated from 2015 to 2021.The regional segmentation includes the current and forecast demand for North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa with its further bifurcation into major countries including U.S. Germany, France, UK, China, Japan, India and Brazil.Get in-depth TOC (Table of Contents) with Tables and Figures @The report covers detailed competitive outlook including company profiles of the key participants operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report include BASF SE, PPG Industries Inc., Kansai Paint Co., Ltd., Bayer AG, Solvay SA, Akzonobel N.V., Axalta Coatings System LLC, Arkema SA, Nippon Paint Holdings Co., Ltd., and Valspar Corporation.This report segments the Automotive Coatings market as follows:Automotive Coatings Market: Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKFranceGermanyAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East and AfricaBrowse detail report @About Us:Syndicate Market Research provides a range of marketing and business research solutions designed for our clients specific needs based on our expert resources. The business scopes of Syndicate Market Research cover more than 30 industries including energy, new materials, transportation, daily consumer goods, chemicals, etc. We provide our clients with the one-stop solution for all the research requirements.Contact Us:Joel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suite #8138Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@syndicatemarketresearch.comWebsite:
Vacation Rental Software Market - Industry Trends, Opportunities & Competitive Landscape Analysis

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Vacation rental is a house, apartment or a resort rented on temporary basis to tourists as an alternative to a hotel. The term vacation rental is used mainly in North America, whereas in Europe it is known as villa holiday or villa rental. They are also referred as holiday lettings, bed & breakfast, homestay and gites. The vacation rental software enables the house/property managers to manage leads, cash flows, distribution channels and partners or distribution channels. It also offers an efficient point of sale system, efficient documentation system to property managers and increases automation in vendor payables system. Lead management functionality generates the price quote automatically according to the requirements of the customer. Further, it also assists sales managers to create personalized quotes in less time and thus eliminates the hassle of manual price calculation. The vacation rental software contains reporting suite which enables the renting entity to evaluate the financial performance of the rented property. Renting entity refers to the property owner organization, property manager or the property owner.As the Internet penetration is increasing tremendously, the renting entities are moving to online platform. The vacation rental software enables the renting entity in building adaptive/responsive websites which provides optimized viewing experience independent of the type of devices (smartphone, personal computers or tablets) being accessed with. This supports the growth of the vacation rental software market. With the support of rental software, the organizations could enhance automation in their regular processes such as vendor payment, partner management and bulk mail system, driving the growth of vacation rental software market.Get Sample Report Copy :The rising awareness about vacation rental homes through travel websites such as tripadvisor.com and airbnb.com has also generated a demand of vacation rental software to manage the customers and their details such as check-in time, check-out time and their invoice. The vacation rental software could be easily integrated with the travel websites, thus reduces hassle of deploying different software for different websites. The rising complexities in vacation rental business such as payment processes, check-in & check-out processes and customer management is expected to create ample opportunities for vacation rental software market. However, absence of pricing regulations for vacation rentals and fierce competition by hotels is expected to provide hurdles in the adoption of vacation rentals by the tourists. This is further anticipated to curb the growth rate of vacation rental software market.Vacation rental software market is broadly segmented on the basis of deployment type, end-users and geography. On the basis of deployment type, global vacation rental software market is segmented into on premise and cloud deployment. On the basis of end-users, the global vacation rental software market is further segmented into vacation rental owners, property managers, innkeepers, bed & breakfast (B&B) and vacation rental property agency. Moreover, in terms of geographies, the global vacation rental software market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East & Africa (MEA) and Latin America region. Europe and North America lead in deployment of vacation rental software due to presence of world famous tourist destinations in the region such as California (the U.S.), Miami (the U.S.), Paris (Europe) and Switzerland (Europe). Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the fastest growing region owing to a large number of vacation rentals present in the tourist destinations such as Maldives, Bangkok and Indonesia.The major participants in the vacation rental software market include companies such as BookingSync, Ciirus Inc., Kigo Inc., VRM Solutions Inc., LiveRez Inc., OwnerRez Inc., 365Villas.com Ltd, Convoyant LLC, Rental Network Software Corp. and Trekadoo LLC.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:
Beneficial Applications Of Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Industry 2017

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Qyresearchreports include new market research reportGlobal Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Research Report 2017 to its huge collection of research reports.This market intelligence report examines extensively the trends in the global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops market. It highlights the latest market state, the progress pattern in the previous years, and the prospects present for market participants in the near future. The research methods and tools employed in the achievement of this research publication are both secondary and primary. The market intelligence study also provides facts about the investments initiated by several organizations, institutions, government, and non-government authorities and regulatory bodies.Enquiry For Discount Visit @The publication further presents a valuation of the facets that are likely to prevent or encourage the expansion of the global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops market. The global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops market has been examined scrupulously based on aspects such as application, technology, product, end user, and geographical segment. An examination has been carried out in the research report of the chief regional segments and their respective place and share in the Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops market. The estimated revenue and volume valuation of the global market for Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops has also been stated in the study.An estimate of the market attractiveness and the level of competition that new entrants along with their new products are likely to offer to the experienced products and players has also been delivered in the market research publication. The market report also discusses the new expansions, the innovations, branding techniques, marketing approaches, and products of the chief players operational in the global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops market. The vendor landscape has been broadly scrutinized employing the Porters five forces and value chain analysis to deliver a strong conception of the market. The challenges and opportunities in the near future for the key participants have also been stressed upon in the research publication.Table of ContentsGlobal Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Research Report 20171 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops1.2 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Segment by Type1.2.1 Global Production Market Share of Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops by Type in 20151.2.2 Single component1.2.3 Multi-component1.2.4 Others1.3 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Segment by Application1.3.1 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Consumption Market Share by Application in 20151.3.2 Building1.3.3 Road & infrastructure1.3.4 Others1.4 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market by Region1.4.1 North America Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops (2011-2021)Order a copy of complete Research Report @2 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.3 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Average Price by Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.4 Manufacturers Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2011-2016)3.1 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production and Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.2 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2011-2016)3.3 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.4 North America Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.5 Europe Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.6 China Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.7 Japan Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.8 Southeast Asia Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)3.9 India Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2011-2016)4 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2011-2016)4.1 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Consumption by Regions (2011-2016)4.2 North America Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2011-2016)4.3 Europe Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2011-2016)4.4 China Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2011-2016)4.5 Japan Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2011-2016)4.6 Southeast Asia Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2011-2016)4.7 India Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2011-2016)5 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.2 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)5.3 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Price by Type (2011-2016)5.4 Global Hydrophilic(Swelling) Waterstops Production Growth by Type (2011-2016)Explore New Reports on Chemicals market @QYResearchReports.com is an unimpeachable source of market research data for clients that comprise acclaimed SMEs, Chinese companies, private equity firms, and MNCs. 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Increase in the development of vaccines Drives the Intravenous Access Devices Market

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The rise inincidences of diseases along with the increasing number of diagnostic and treatment procedures are fuelling the demand for access devices such as intravenous access (IV) devices, arterial access devices and inter-muscular access devices. This is due to the fact that these access devices will enable the administration of various drugs such as analgesics, chemotherapy for its treatment, blood extraction for the diagnosis and delivery of nutrition.Request a PDF Brochure with Report Analysis:Among these access devices, intravenous access devices play a major role for the aforementioned purposes. Various IV access devices are available in the market such as IV needles, IV infusion pumps and IV catheters.The overall market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8% from 2013 to 2019 to reach an estimated value of USD 46.4billion in 2019. This growth is attributed to rise in number of various surgeries in different regions of the globe. Similarly, rise in geriatric population worldwide will also support the growth of the market since they are more prone to various diseases due to decreased immunity in this age group. In addition, launch of technologically advanced products by various companies will also propel the growth of this market.For instance, Becton, Dickinson and Company launched worlds smallest pen intravenous needle which pierces the skin without causing much pain to the patients. Likewise, Smiths Medical launched Medfusion 4000 syringe infusion pump which is more precise in terms of drug volume administration over old version of syringe infusion pumps.The market for intravenous catheters accounted for the largest market in terms of revenue among all IV access devices market in 2012 and is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the future. This is attributed to its wide application areas andalso its utilization with other access devices such as infusion pumps and needles. Similarly, reasonable price over infusion pumps will also support its growth. In addition, catheters presence in the market is from long timethat has accounted for its popularity among the physicians.The North American region accounted for the largest share by revenue for intravenous access devices in the year 2012 owing to large number of patient pool and geriatric population. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to show the highest growth rate of 9.4% from 2013 to 2019. This is attributed to rise in geriatric population, target diseases, increase in healthcare expenditure and improving healthcare infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region.It is estimated that around 456,303 million people will be aged above 65 years by 2025 in Asia-Pacific. In addition, rise in disposable incomes due to economic development will also propel the growth of the market in the region since it will increase the purchasing power of individuals for various medical services such as surgeries.The major players of the market include Hospira, Inc., Becton, Dickinson and Company, CareFusion Corporation, Baxter International, B. Braun Melsungen AG and Smiths Medical. Hospira, Inc., Becton, Dickinson and Company, CareFusion Corporation and Baxter International accounted for more than 50% of the total market till 2012. This is due to various business strategies adopted by them to have strong presence in the market such as entering in long term contracts with hospitals and diagnostic labs.View Full Research Report:Similarly, these companies are investing heavily for the development and launch of advanced version of devices, for instance, Medfusion 4000 syringe infusion pump is an advanced version of Medfusion 3500 syringe infusion pump that led to an increased demand for newer version.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Industrial Vehicles United States Market Industry Research Report 2022

Industrial Vehicles Market

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SAMPLE REQUEST@Notes:Sales, means the sales volume of Industrial VehiclesRevenue, means the sales value of Industrial VehiclesThis report studies sales (consumption) of Industrial Vehicles in United States market, focuses on the top players, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player, coveringToyota Industries CorporationKion Group AGHyster-Yale Materials HandlingCrown Equipment CorporationJungheinrich AGHangcha GroupKonecranesMitsubishi Nichiyu ForkliftAnhui HeliMarket Segment by States, coveringCaliforniaTexasNew YorkFloridaIllinoisSplit by product types, with sales, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoForkliftsTow TractorsAisle TrucksContainer HandlersSplit by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Industrial Vehicles in each application, can be divided intoIndustrial ApplicationsCargo ApplicationsCOMPLETE REPORT DETAILS @Table of ContentsUnited States Industrial Vehicles Market Report 20171 Industrial Vehicles Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Industrial Vehicles1.2 Classification of Industrial Vehicles1.2.1 Forklifts1.2.2 Tow Tractors1.2.3 Aisle Trucks1.2.4 Container Handlers1.3 Application of Industrial Vehicles1.3.1 Industrial Applications1.3.2 Cargo Applications2 United States Industrial Vehicles Competition by Manufacturers2.1 United States Industrial Vehicles Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2015 and 2016)2.2 United States Industrial Vehicles Revenue and Share by Manufactures (2015 and 2016)2.3 United States Industrial Vehicles Average Price by Manufactures (2015 and 2016)3 United States Industrial Vehicles Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by States (2012-2017)3.1 United States Industrial Vehicles Sales and Market Share by States (2012-2017)3.2 United States Industrial Vehicles Revenue and Market Share by States (2012-2017)3.3 United States Industrial Vehicles Price by States (2012-2017)...5 United States Industrial Vehicles Sales (Volume) by Application (2012-2017)5.1 United States Industrial Vehicles Sales and Market Share by Application (2012-2017)5.2 United States Industrial Vehicles Sales Growth Rate by Application (2012-2017)5.3 Market Drivers and OpportunitiesCONTINUEDBUY THIS REPORT @Contact Us :NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports features an exhaustive list of market research reports from hundreds of publishers worldwide. We boast a database spanning virtually every market category and an even more comprehensive collection of market research reports under these categories and sub-categories.WISE GUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Veterinary Antibiotics Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024

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Europe Planning to Tighten its Grip on Veterinary AntibioticsThe proposed European Union regulation that governs the use of antibiotics on animals can also have an impact on sales in Europe. The proposal focuses on collecting, compiling, and reporting antibiotic use in animal feed and for disease mitigation. Regulatory authorities in Europe have been monitoring the state of veterinary healthcare and in 2015, EFSA, ECDC, and EMA concluded, in a joint report, that certain antimicrobials were associated with resistance to these antimicrobials in humans and animals.For Any Queries Get Solutions With A PDF Sample :While demand for antibiotics in developed countries may decline in the future, manufacturers can look to consolidate their position in developing regions, where regulations on use of antibiotics arent as stringent as they are in the U.S. and Europe. The Asia Pacific veterinary antibiotics market is expected to grow at a higher CAGR than North America and Europe markets, owing to laxer regulations.Commonly used antibiotics in animal healthcare include tetracyclines, penicillin, and cephalosporins. These antibiotics have remained sought-after owing to their easy availability and low cost. According to a report by FDA, sales of veterinary antibiotics in the U.S. increased by nearly 23% between 2009 and 2014. The staggering growth is another key factor that has brought the alleged antibiotic abuse into limelight in the U.S.Veterinary Antibiotics Market: Key PlayersThe key players in the veterinary antibiotics market are Bayer Animal Health, Phibro Animal Health Corp.,Merial, Ceva Sante Animale S.A., Bioniche Animal Health, Fort Dodge Animal Health, Elanco Animal Health, Merck Animal Health, Virbac Animal Health, Zoetis, Inc., and Novartis Animal Health.Impact of FDA Regulations on Animal Antibiotics MarketThe U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been working on regularizing the use of antibiotics in veterinary healthcare. From defining medically significant antibiotics in 2003 to setting up the Veterinary Feed Additive (VFA) rule, the FDA is keeping a strict watch on the non-prescribed use of antibiotics in animal feed. The VFD final rule, which will come into effect from January 1, 2017, makes it mandatory to present a prescription to a veterinarian for buying a feed containing a covered antibiotic. Although these regulations are anticipated to serve well in the long-term, they can stymie demand for veterinary antibiotics in the short-term.Mounting concerns over antibiotic resistance in humans and increasing demand for meat, milk, and eggs will continue to influence discussion on veterinary healthcare. While the US, Canada, and countries in Western Europe have some of the strongest animal healthcare standards  backed up by strong legislation  developing countries are also joining the fray with government support and legislation witnessing an uptick in recent years.View exclusive Global strategic Business report :The global veterinary healthcare market is currently valued at nearly US$ 35 billion, and is expected to witness steady growth rates in the next decade. However, there are a plethora of changes currently underway in this highly lucrative market that can have an impact on the stakeholders. Among rising concerns on the effect of long-term antibiotics use, many farm- and pet-owners are making the shift to vaccines. The move is being supported by veterinary healthcare activists. In view of anticipated growth of the veterinary vaccines market, which is estimated to reach $9.5 bn by 2020, Elanco LLC (Eli Lilly & Co.) recently opened a 48,000-square-facility in Indianapolis. The facility is expected to focus on developing vaccines for farm animals, which according to estimates total 70 billion. However, antibiotics arent expected to disappear anytime soon, as they remain a credible method of disease prevention and management around the globe. The global veterinary antibiotics market is expected to witness moderate growth during the forecast period 2016-2024.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Latin America Home Healthcare Market Value Share Analysis, By Product Type 2016-20.

Latin America Home Healthcare Market

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Home healthcare represents use of medical devices and community based services to support patients suffering from chronic diseases. Currently, the home healthcare market is moving towards a precision-based model of personal care. Home-based medical devices and services play an important role in providing personal care to patients in managing variety of disease conditions such as diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and blood pressure. Increasing patient population with chronic diseases such as diabetes, blood pressure, cardiovascular conditions and respiratory diseases globally (including Latin America) would drive the demand for home-based medical devices and services. These diseases require continuous monitoring, and thus involve high cost due to repeated visits to healthcare centers that inflate medical expenses. Thus, home healthcare devices and services are being rapidly adopted by consumers to measure parameters on a regular basis and to cut down medical costs. The Latin America home healthcare market is estimated to be USD 9,796.8 million in 2013 and is expected to reach USD 17,550.0 million by 2020, growing at a CAGR of 8.7% from 2014 to 2020.Browse Full Research Report on Latin America Home Healthcare Market -Latin America home healthcare market is mainly segmented into device types and services. Latin America home healthcare device segment is considered to be the largest segment and is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020. This growth was mainly attributed to high acceptance of medical devices coupled with technological advancements (introduction of automated and portable devices) to fuel the growth of the home healthcare devices market in Latin America. The market of ventilators and CPAP devices segment is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR of 11.4% from 2014 to 2020. The mobility assist devices segment is further categorized into wheelchairs, cranes and crutches and other home mobility assist devices.Latin America home healthcare market, by services is segmented as rehabilitation services, intuition therapy services, telehealth and telemedicine services, respiratory therapy services and unskilled home healthcare services. The Latin American market of unskilled home healthcare services accounted for the largest market share i.e. more than 45% of total Latin American home healthcare services market in 2013.The telehealth and telemedicine services segment is estimated to grow at the highest growth rate from 2014 to 2020.Latin America home healthcare market, by geography is segmented as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina and others. Brazil contributed for the largest share, i.e. around 35%, in 2013 of the Latin America home healthcare market. Increasing healthcare awareness and rising healthcare expenditure on chronic diseases in Brazil drive the market of home healthcare in Brazil. Mexico contributed the second largest share i.e. over 25% of the total market in 2013 and is expected to witness fastest growth during the study period. High prevalence of diabetes and cardiovascular diseases and increasing healthcare investment by the Government of Mexico will support the growth of home healthcare in Mexico. The growth of home healthcare market in Argentina and Colombia is mainly attributed to the introduction of new technologies coupled with new product launch by key companies.Some of the prominent players in the Latin America home healthcare market are Omron Healthcare, Inc., Phillips Healthcare, Medtronic, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, Praxair Technologies, Inc., Teleflex Corporation, Bayer Healthcare, ResMed, Inc., GE Healthcare, Cardinal Health, Gentiva Health Services, Inc., Invacare Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories and others.latin-america-home-healthcare-marketRequest A Sample Of This Report :-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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
US President Donald Trump signs an executive order directing the Treasury Secretary to review the Dodd-Frank financial oversight law in the Oval Office of the White House on February 3, 2017 (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)

Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump ordered a review of key reforms enacted after the 2008 financial crisis, in the first step towards scaling back toughened regulations on the banking industry.

The so-called Dodd-Frank law aimed to curb the actions of the finance sector that led to the "Great Recession," but critics claim it created red tape that stifles the industry.

"Today we are signing core principles for regulating the United States financial system," Trump said in the Oval Office as he signed two executive orders aimed at scrapping parts of the 2010 law.

"Doesn't get much bigger than that, right?" he said.

The president's move gives the upper hand to opponents of the landmark legislation who have long battled attempts to rein in Wall Street excesses.

Addressing a White House meeting with industry leaders earlier in the day, Trump said: "We expect to cut a lot out of Dodd-Frank."

"I have friends who can't start businesses because the banks wouldn't let them borrow because of rules and regulations and Dodd-Frank."

Trump's directives were quickly denounced by Senator Chuck Schumer, the leader of the minority Democrats in the upper house of Congress, who vowed to fight to prevent the law's undoing.

- Campaign promises kept? -

"President Trump promised to stand up to the big banks, now he's letting them write the rules of the road," Schumer said in a statement. Like Trump, the Democratic senator hails from New York state, home to the financial industry's largest global hub.

The mammoth Dodd-Frank legislation was adopted after a systemic crisis in the global financial system caused by the failure of widely traded but complex derivatives backed by poor-quality mortgages.

The resulting taxpayer bailout of failing banks and financial institutions deemed "too big to fail," or so large their collapse could cause widespread economic harm, provoked lasting public outrage.

Story continues

"If we allow Wall Street to go unchecked again, it's only a matter of time before history repeats itself," Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said on Twitter.

The Dodd-Frank rules required banks to demonstrate their solid financial grounding in annual "stress tests" as well as refrain from certain risky transactions, and significantly expanded the role securities regulators play in overseeing the investment industry.

Trump's twin decrees came on the heels of his meeting with business leaders including chiefs of the largest banks and investment firms, such as JP Morgan Chase, Blackstone and BlackRock, which may stand to gain from looser rules.

The directives will also delay a fiduciary rule adopted under the previous administration, which had yet to take effect but would have required investment advisors handling retirement funds to put their clients' interests before maximizing their own profits.

Among the many provisions of the 2,300-page legislation, Dodd-Frank also gave rise to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency meant to police how banks and others provide services to the public.

Republicans and industry lobbyists have made no secret of their criticism of the CFPB and other checks on industry imposed by Dodd-Frank, waging battles against it in court and on Capitol Hill.

The Federal Reserve, which plays a key role in banking regulation, had yet to react to Trump's move.

Any repeal of Dodd-Frank itself would require congressional action but the Trump White House is keen to send a signal that it is ready to slash red tape.

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs president who now heads Trump's National Economic Council, told The Wall Street Journal ahead of the signing that freeing up the financial services sector again would be a boon to consumers.

- How far will changes go? -

"The banks are going to be able to price products more efficiently and more effectively to consumers," Cohn was quoted as saying.

John Berlau of the Competitive Enterprise Institute welcomed the moves, saying they would "greatly benefit middle-class investors, entrepreneurs, and consumers."

But Bartlett Naylor of the consumer activist group Public Citizen called Trump's actions "a betrayal of his campaign promises" and a gift to big banks.

Market analyst Jasper Lawler at the London Capital Group believes that "unwinding some of Dodd-Frank is a good thing because it will enable smaller community banks to compete, offering competition to consumers."

However, repealing too much of Dodd-Frank "puts the entire system at risk of a repeat of 2008," the analyst said.
Spectrometry Market Value Share Analysis, By Product Type 2014-20.

Spectrometry Market

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Spectrometry is a technique that involves ionization and separation of a test sample for detection of specific substances such as chemical compound, impurities, contaminants or pollutants with the help of interaction between mass and energy. There are three major types of spectrometry techniques divided on the basis of method of analyzing the test sample: atomic spectrometry, mass spectrometry and molecular spectrometry. These techniques are further divided into sub-categories according to specific characteristics such as source for sample separation, energy source and method of analysis.The global spectrometry market can be segmented into three techniques, atomic spectrometry, mass spectrometry and molecular spectrometry. In 2013, out of all these three segments, molecular segment had highest contribution in terms of value, while atomic and mass spectrometry techniques were at second and third positions respectively. Among all these three segments, growth of the mass spectrometry segment is the highest and value wise it is expected to overcome other two segments by the year 2020. Spectrometry techniques are applicable in many industries such as pharmaceutical, healthcare, biotechnology, food and beverages, industrial chemistry and environmental. In pharmaceuticals, spectrometry techniques are used majorly for identification of new chemical entities, analyzing the reaction process, pharmacokinetic screening and analyses during all stages of drug discovery. In healthcare and clinical, these techniques are applied majorly for diagnostic purpose where it provides access to DNA and protein sequencing, for tissue and tissue fluid analysis, and identification of toxicity by metabolites in body organs, especially in kidneys. In environmental analyses spectrometry technologies are used for identification of pollutants, whereas in food and beverages it is applied for detection of toxicity.Browse Full Research Report on Spectrometry Market -Geographically, North America which includes the United States and Canada continues to be a leading market for spectrometry. The United States market accounts for major contribution owing to larger large number of research institutes, higher spending on research and development activities and favorable funding environment compared to other regions. Although Canadas contribution in North America revenue is significantly low as compared to the United States, yet there has been a positive shift in trend towards usage of spectrometry instruments considering the rise in awareness about food safety, pollution control and increased in research related activities.Asia-Pacific region during the forecast is the fastest growing region owing to an estimated shift of research and development related activities to countries like China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan and Malaysia. This is proven by recent development in which Waters Corporation signed a joint agreement with Chinese Pharmacopeia Commission to establish an open laboratory. Overall drivers to Asia-Pacific market for spectrometry include increasing investment in research and development activities especially in countries such as China, India and Malaysia and growth in government funding to projects. Rest of the World market is still at nascent stage and is expected to grow where countries like Brazil and South Africa driving the market growth.Some of the key companies operating in this market include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Bruker, Shimadzu, Waters Corporation, Agilent Technologies, PerkinElmer and AB Sciex.global-spectrometry-marketRequest A Sample Of This Report :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.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
The rapid growth of the Artificial Lift Systems Market can be attributed to the rising deepwater oil production and growing presence of matured reserves

Global Artificial Lift Systems Market

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Transparency Market Research, a global market intelligence firm, has recently made an announcement regarding the publication of a new market research report made available on the company website. The research report, titled Artificial Lift Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020, provides a comprehensive analysis of the artificial lift systems market, emphasizing on the market overview, product segmentation, market drivers and barriers, market trends, geographical segments, and competitive landscape of the market.According to the research report, in 2013, the global artificial lift systems market was valued at US$13 bn and is estimated to reach a value of US$19.8 bn by the end of 2020. The market is projected to exhibit a significant 6.20% CAGR between 2014 and 2020.Download the Exclusive report sample Here :Artificial lifts comprise the usage of artificial means to enable the flow of liquids such as water or crude oil from a production well. An artificial lift is required in wells when there is inadequate pressure in the reservoir in order to lift the manufactured fluids to the surface; however, many times, it is used in naturally flowing wells to escalate the flow rate beyond what would be flowing naturally. The manufactured fluid can be water, oil, or even a combination of water and oil, characteristically mixed with some quantity of gas.The rapid growth of the global artificial lift systems market can be attributed to the rising deepwater oil production and growing presence of matured reserves, which hold a high volume of crude oil. In addition, unconventional production of gas is considered as a major opportunity for the major players in the global artificial lift systems market. On the other hand, the decreasing cost of crude oil is the major factor that is hampering the growth of the global market.By product, the global artificial lift systems market has been classified into hydraulic pumps, progressive cavity pumps, plunger lifts, gas lifts, electrical submersible pumps, and rod lifts. Currently, the electrical submersible pump segment accounts for the largest market share in the global market due to its low operational costs and high extraction rate. On the other hand, high efficiency and longer lifespan are the key factors that are estimated to propel the demand for gas lifts, resulting in steady overall growth of the global artificial lift systems market.Browse the full Artificial Lift Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020 report atThe global market for artificial lift systems has been divided on the basis of geography into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. The market shares and estimates of every segment have been discussed in the scope of the research report.Furthermore, the research study talks about the competitive landscape of the global artificial lift systems market. The profiles of major companies and their contact information, financial overview, product portfolio, business strategies, SWOT analysis, and recent developments such as major mergers and acquisitions have been discussed in the scope of the research report. Some of the prominent players operating in the global artificial lift systems market are Schlumberger Limited, Weatherford International Ltd, Borets Company LLC, Flotek Industries, Inc., National Oilwell Varco, Inc., Superior Energy Services, Inc., Dover Artificial Lift, Kudu Industries, Inc., Halliburton Company, and Baker Hughes, Inc.Key segments of the Artificial Lift Systems market:Artificial Lift Systems Market: Product Type AnalysisElectrical submersible pumpRod liftProgressive cavity pumpHydraulic pumpGas liftPlunger liftArtificial Lift Systems Market: Regional AnalysisNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificRest of the World (RoW)About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
Advancement in offshore liquefaction technology & offshore gas discoveries, and fluctuation in supply of crude oil are some of the factors driving the Planned LNG market :2024

Global Plaaned LNG Market

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Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) is a natural gas that can be converted into the liquid state by cooling it to below -163C. Setting up an LNG chain entails investment in exploration and production, liquefaction, shipping, and storage and regasification. Planned LNG is a term associated with expansion of storage and regasification terminal capacities. The planned LNG market can be segmented into liquefaction terminal and regasification terminal. Liquefaction and regasification terminals are further categorized into onshore and offshore terminals. Planned LNG terminal helps lower transportation costs. LNG is a clean burning fuel; hence, it is used for long haul vehicles. It lowers emissions as compared to alternative fossil fuels. This has encouraged many fuel service providers to adopt LNG as alternate fuel. In turn, this is propelling the demand for planned LNG.Download the Exclusive Report Sample Here :Development of unconventional gas sources, advancement in offshore liquefaction technology & offshore gas discoveries, and fluctuation in supply of crude oil are some of the factors driving the global planned LNG market. Development of planned liquefaction plants and increase in demand for LNG are also contributing to market growth. Rise in exploration of shale gas has lowered the dependence on natural gas imports and created surplus for LNG exports. This, in turn, is boosting the planned LNG market. However, increase in number of domestic and foreign terminals that are already completed, rise in cost of building LNG terminals, and storage of LNG may hamper the planned LNG market. Introduction of floating terminals and floating production storage offloading (FPSO) platforms has provided immense opportunities to market players to limit the need of LNG storage tanks, undersea pipelines, and related construction. This has helped lower the cost of LNG production. Floating LNG production terminals can be stationed directly over an offshore field, and relocated once the field is depleted, or in case of bad weather. Hence, development of floating terminals is anticipated to augment the demand for planned LNG terminals.In terms of region, the planned LNG market has been segmented into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific are estimated to dominate the planned LNG market in the near future. Rise in demand for energy in countries such as India and China has led to the development of planned LNG terminals at various locations. Increase in demand for natural gas, rise in consumption of gas in power generation, and cold weather in Europe are some of the factors driving the planned LNG market. Growth in LNG liquefaction capacity has also led to the development of planned LNG terminals in the U.S, Australia, Iran, and Papua New Guinea. Increase in gas discoveries and investment by foreign market players are further fuelling the establishment of planned LNG export terminals. Difference in spot gas prices in the U.S., Asia Pacific, and Europe, and increase in the drilling of shale gas in the U.S. and Canada are driving the growth of planned LNG export terminals.Major players operating in the planned LNG market include Shell Plc, LNG Croatia LLC, Chevron Corporation, Petrobras, Southern Union Company, Corpus Christi Liquefaction, LLC, Freeport LNG Development, L.P., Sempra Energy, ConocoPhillips Co., Queensland Gas Co. Ltd, Inpex Corporation, Skangass AS, Emirates LNG LLC, Nippon Gas Co. Ltd., and Prometheus Energy Company.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 global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Conditional Access Systems Market - Witness Strong Growth due to Various Advancements

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Conditional access systems (CAS) are the content protection solutions used to manage and deliver content only to the authorized subscribers. The main function of conditional access systems is to descramble and decrypt the receiving signals into intelligible format. Conditional access systems are used for content protection in pay television (pay TV) services, internet-based services and digital radio.These CAS solutions are installed on the subscribers receiving devices such as set-top box. Conditional access systems, also called as revenue protection, is one of the most important network components for service providers for curbing revenue losses occurring due to piracy.The most significant factor fuelling the growth of conditional access systems market is the ongoing digital television transition worldwide. Due to mandatory installation of digital television globally, the demand for set-top boxes is predicted to witness high demand in the coming years, thereby driving the market for conditional access systems. The demand for conditional access systems is also driven by the rising piracy issues growing across the globe.Another significant factor boosting the market growth is the rising advancements in digital television, internet services and digital radio services. However, the market growth of conditional access systems is mainly hampered due to the high operational costs borne by the CAS providers. This is mainly in the regions where customer base for digital television is less.The global conditional access systems market is also driven by the growing penetration of internet-based services such as internet protocol television (IPTV), on-demand video and others in different geographic regions. The demand for conditional access solutions in these applications is mainly fueled from the developed regions having large penetration of IPTV and on-demand video services.Request A Sample Of This Report:Further, the global conditional access systems market is predicted to witness strong growth due to various advancements in the conditional access solutions. Most of the companies are now focusing on development of advanced solutions such as cloud-based conditional access systems, multi-screen CAS and others.The global conditional access systems market is segmented into type of solutions, application and geographic regions. On the basis of solution type, the market is segmented into smartcard-based CAS and card-less CAS. In 2014, the smartcard-based CAS segment accounted for the largest share, in terms of revenue and adoption, in the global conditional access systems market.This was majorly due to the prolonged existence of these solutions in the market. However, the card-less CAS segment is estimated to witness the highest demand during the forecast period.This is attributed to high advantages such as low costs, easy upgrading and maintenance offered by these solutions over smartcard-based CAS. Another factor driving the growth of card-less CAS segment is its less susceptibility towards hacking. Furthermore, on the basis of applications, the global conditional access systems market is segmented into television, internet services and digital radio.The global market for conditional access systems was dominated by the television segment in 2014. The highest market share of television segment is attributed to the rapidly growing penetration of digital television worldwide. In addition, the television segment is predicted to hold its dominant position throughout the forecast period due to ongoing digital television transition in countries such as China, India, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and others.In 2014, North America accounted for the largest share of over 31%, in terms of revenue, in the global conditional access systems market. This is due to the high penetration of advanced digital television services such as high definition (HD) television and substantially growing adoption of Ultra HD (UHD) television.However, the global conditional access systems market is estimated to witness the highest growth in Asia Pacific during the forecast period. This is due to the rapidly increasing adoption of digital television in China and South Asia.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:
Factor boosting the Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether (MTBE) Market is a rise in the demand for gasoline additives : 2026

Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether (MTBE) Market

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The methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) market in Asia Pacific is presently dominated by key players in China. These include Sinopec Corporation, PetroChina Company Limited, Shandong Yuhuang Chemical (Group) Co., Ltd., Zibo Qixiang Petrochemical Group Ltd., and Heilongjiang Anruijia Petrochemical Co., Ltd.Download the Exclusive Report Sample Here :Transparency Market Research has noted that China, one of the largest producers as well as consumers of MTBE in the world, has been primarily focused on business and production expansions in order to retain its lead in the APAC market. For instance, Wanhua Chemical Group Co. Ltd.s MTBE plant in Shangdong and Huntsman Corp. and Sinopec Jinlings plant in Nanjing are two promising ventures to look forward to in 2016.Other leading companies in the APAC methyl tertiary-butyl ether market include Evonik Industries AG, PETRONAS, LyondellBasell Industries Holdings B.V., and Reliance Industries Limited.The MTBE market in Asia Pacific was valued at US$6.7 bn in 2015 and is anticipated to reach US$10.9 bn by 2026, expanding at a CAGR of 4.6% therein.asia pacific methyl tertiary butyl ether marketChinas 81.9% Share in APAC MTBE Market a Key Growth BoosterThe gasoline additive segment of the MTBE market accounted for a whopping 93.11% share in the APAC market in 2015, emerging as the clear leader. An increase in the demand for gasoline additives in ASEAN countries and China is expected to propel the demand for methyl tertiary-butyl ether in this segment. Gasoline additives is also projected to register significant growth over the course of the forecast period, exhibiting a CAGR of over 4.0% in terms of both revenue and volume.Accounting for an 81.9% share in the APAC MTBE market in 2015, China is forecast to continue its dominance through 2024, presenting lucrative investment opportunities to market players. Registering a 4.7% CAGR during the forecast period, China is also projected to exhibit the fastest growth in the methyl tertiary-butyl ether in Asia Pacific.The ASEAN sub-region is also likely to present a rather lucrative scenario, owing to a rise in the demand for gasoline additives.ASEAN Automotive Sector Driving Demand for Gasoline AdditivesA key factor driving gasoline blending across the Asia Pacific region, and therefore the MTBE market, is the declining prices of raw material as well as final products. This can be primarily attributed to China.China is one of the major methanol producers in the world and the country is likely to account for nearly 50% of the global methanol production in the next few years, the author of the study finds. The total methanol production in China is estimated to reach nearly 51 million tons in 2016, a trend that will potentially check the prices of downstream products, including MTBE, in the near future.Another factor boosting the market for methyl tertiary-butyl ether is a rise in the demand for gasoline additives, particularly in ASEAN.The automotive industry in the ASEAN sub-region has been witnessing an upward trend in the last few years, with the number of total vehicles in major countries rising from around 130 million in 2015 to 200 million by 2025, the lead analyst states. The significant growth of the automotive sector is likely to propel the demand for gasoline additives, thereby supporting the MTBE market during the forecast period.In contrast, the availability of a wide range of petroleum-based and non-petroleum-based substitutes and the hazardous environmental effects of methyl tertiary-butyl ether pose significant challenges to the MTBE market in Asia Pacific.This review is based on the findings of a TMR report titled Methyl Tertiary-Butyl Ether (MTBE) Market - Asia Pacific Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2026.This report segments the MTBE market in Asia Pacific as follows:MTBE Market  Application AnalysisGasolineIsobuteneSolvent & ExtractantOthers (MMA, etc.)MTBE Market  Country/Sub-region AnalysisAsia PacificChinaIndiaASEANAbout UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.com
CAGR of 2.85% by installed capacity for Small Hydropower Market

Small Hydropower Market

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Transparency Market Research (TMR) has published a new market study on the global small hydropower market. According to the report, the global small hydropower market is set to expand at a slow pace, exhibiting a 2.85% CAGR in the period from 2015 to 2023. The total installed capacity of small hydropower, which was 110.77 GW in 2014, is expected to rise to 146.65 GW by 2023. The report is titled Small Hydropower Market, by installed capacity - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast, 2015 - 2023 and contains fruitful information on the global small hydropower market. The report provides a broad perspective and analysis of the key companies in the market, along with data about the markets competitive landscape. It analyzes the market dynamics and offers a comprehensive industry analysis along with the industry trends and growth opportunities.Download the Exclusive Report Sample Here :Small hydropower is the development of hydroelectric power on a smaller scale, serving a smaller community or a small industrial plant. Small hydropower can be connected to conventional electrical distribution networks and serve as a source of low-cost renewable energy. They can be used in isolated or remote areas where there is no electrical distribution network. One of the major benefits of small hydropower is its relatively lower impact on the environment. SHP or small hydropower is thus an efficient and emission-free renewable source of electricity and can be used for both on-grid and off-grid applications.Constructed using existing dams or the flow of rivers, SHP systems comprise generators, turbines, transformers, and reservoirs. The market is driven by the adoption of SHP systems in rural areas, where there is no infrastructure, such as electricity distribution and transmission lines. Another major reason why SHP is being adopted is the fact that the energy produced by small hydropower systems is the cleanest form of renewable electricity and does no harm to the environment by releasing harmful gases or pollutants. These are the factors that are driving the small hydropower market.The report segments the small hydropower market on the basis of region into South and Central America, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. Out of these regions, 70% of the global market for small hydropower was held by Asia Pacific in 2014, wherein China ranked first in terms of SHP installations, closely followed by India and Japan. The growth of the SHP market in China can be attributed to initiatives taken by the government to promote small hydropower by means of extending tax credits and incentives.Europe turned out to be the second largest market for SHP in 2014 and was led by Italy, which benefitted from the large funding available for the development of small hydropower systems as well as the well-structured energy policies in the country. North America was the third largest market in 2014 and was led by the U.S.A. and Canada, which held the maximum number of SHP installations. The report forecasts that the market in the MENA region will witness significant growth in the future due to the high demand for renewable energy from countries such as Egypt, Kenya, and Nigeria.The leading players in the small hydropower market are: ANDRITZ HYDRO GmbH, Voith GmbH, Alstom S.A., StatKraft AS, and BC Hydro.The global Small Hydropower market has been segmented as follows:Small Hydropower Market: By RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificMiddle East and AfricaSouth and Central AmericaAbout UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.ContactTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
eDiscovery Market - Extremely Fast Growing Demand for eDiscovery Platforms in Asia Pacific

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The amount of electronically stored data for businesses of all sizes  from small startups to top conglomerates  is increasing at a very fast pace. Most companies make high volume usage of social networking portals, emails, internal communications systems, and cloud computing services and platforms.In fact, it is estimated that the volume of ESI for each organization is increased at more than 65% per year. This is a very significant marker from where clients derive their ever-growing need for eDiscovery platforms and services.The use of social media inside corporates, especially, has bolstered the need for eDiscovery platforms and services. Companies are making an increasing usage of social media tools including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to make the most of the online communities, which also makes it a high priority source of evidence for civil litigation.There is, however, the high costs of eDiscovery processes that companies need to bear. The total amount spent on not just asset deployment, but also services, consultations, and deployment of internal staff, can become a severe hindrance for the adoption of eDiscovery services by small-scale companies.With the above factors in effect, the global market for eDiscovery services and platforms is expected to expand at a CAGR of 16.2% from 2014 to 2022 on the basis of revenue. This revenue is expected to reach US$8.31 bn by the end of 2016 and approximately US$21.08 bn by 2022.Request A Sample Of This Report:North America to Retain Lead in eDiscovery Solutions UsageTill recently, a majority of the market share in eDiscovery services was taken up by North America. By the end of 2022, North America is expected to generate a revenue of US$10.71 bn in eDiscovery platforms and services. Although this is a relative fall in percentage shares, North America still holds the leading share among all key regions.The drop in percentage is due to the extremely fast growing demand for eDiscovery platforms in Asia Pacific, where the rapid industrial evolution of India and China is making way for a well-developed IT infrastructure.The need for eDiscovery solutions is much more in North America and Europe than other regions, owing to the government regulations that require an organization to preserve company data for sake of eDiscovery itself. This has created a staggering rise in the ESI volumes in the regions, further boosting the need for eDiscovery platforms and services.Off-premise eDiscovery Software Solutions to Gain Lead SoonOn-premise eDiscovery solutions were highly sought after due to the greater simplicity and higher safety that they offered. They trumped off-premise eDiscovery solutions primarily due to the high concerns over data integrity and security.This is expected to change in the immediate future, as off-premise eDiscovery solutions are not only becoming capable of providing high level security, but also platforms and services of eDiscovery at considerably lesser costs than on-premise providers.By the end of 2022, a high difference in market values between on-premise and off-premise eDiscovery platforms is expected to be seen, with off-premise eDiscovery solutions taking up an estimated US$4.83 bn.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:
Welcome to Best Bets, a weekly column in which The Oregonian's arts desk highlights selected theater, classical music and dance performances and visual arts events. Here are our picks for Feb. 3-9.

Ethel Waters

Ethel Waters had three of her recordings inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, was nominated for Emmy and Academy awards, and had a U.S. postage stamp issued in her honor. But success came with much struggle. Waters' stormy life story is the subject of Portland Center Stage's latest production, the one-woman musical play "His Eye is on the Sparrow." Various times and dates, Feb. 4-March 26 (updated), Ellyn Bye Studio, Portland Center Stage at The Armory, 128 N.W. 11th Ave. $30-$40, pcs.org or 503-445-3700.

"Veils"

Pacific University's Department of Theatre & Dance gets topical with "Veils," a play about two young Muslim women, one American and one Egyptian, who meet as students in Cairo just before the Arab Spring revolution in 2010. The play, which won the 2015 American Theatre Critics Association's M. Elizabeth Osborn Award, is presented in partnership with the university's Muslim Student Association and Center for Peace and Spirituality. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 9-11, 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 12, Teatro Barbara, Warner Hall, Pacific University, 2043 College Way, Forest Grove. $5-$8, tinyurl.com/pacutickets or 503-352-2918.

Dvorak's "New World" Symphony

The Oregon Symphony will perform one of the best-known symphonies of all time - famous in part because of its "Goin' Home" movement, which inspired the spiritual of the same name. The program also includes music by Beethoven and performance by Grammy Award-winning pianist Yefim Bronfman. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 5, 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 6, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway. Tickets start at $23; orsymphony.org or 503-228-1353.

Going Home, Dvorak's Largo, Harlem Lyric Theater & Opera Co. from Harlem Lyric Theater & Opera Co. on Vimeo.

Arvo Part Festival

Arvo Part, an Estonian Orthodox composer, has been called "the most performed living composer in the world" and has received France's most prestigious award, the Legion of Honor. Find out why at this festival, which according to the organizer, the Portland choral group Cappella Romana, is the first in North America to celebrate Part's vocal, choral, orchestral and instrumental works. The festival finale includes a performance by Third Angle New Music and the U.S. premiere of the 2012 choral-string orchestral work "Alleluia-Tropus." Various times, dates and locations, Sunday, Feb. 5-Sunday, Feb. 12. Tickets start at $12; apfest.org or 503-236-8202.

"Timsila & the Cypress Tree"

Put together Lakota creation stories, Zen riddles and Japanese Butoh dance, and you get this production, overseen by Portland choreographer Meshi Chavez. The production, which explores the human condition and the spirit worlds, features Cleveland High School students and is the culmination of a nine-week training series. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 4, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 5, The Headwaters Theatre, 55 N.E. Farragut St., Suite 9. $20, Brown Paper Tickets or 971-258-0748.

"Yellow Terror"

Seventy-five years ago this month, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the internment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, including several thousand from Oregon. The anniversary is the ideal context for the exhibit "Yellow Terror: The Collections and Paintings of Roger Shimomura," a Pop artist, Seattle native and former internee who explores the role of media and pop culture in what he calls "sociopolitical issues of ethnicity." On view, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, noon-3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 5-July 16, Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center, 121 N.W. Second Ave. $3-$5, oregonnikkei.org or 503-224-1458.

If you would like your event to be considered for inclusion in Best Bets, email the details to fineartsbestbets@oregonian.com.
Christine Todd Whitman

\Christine Todd Whitman, who oversaw the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George W. Bush, called President Donald Trump's approach to the highly complicated task of official oversight reckless. "I can't think of a single regulation that has no basis in fact," she said. "It's going to be hard to find regulations that aren't important to protecting human health."

(Aaron Davidson//Getty Images for Eisenhower Fellowships)

By David Lazarus

Joan Claybrook, head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration during the Carter administration, had an immediate reaction when informed of President Donald Trump's executive order requiring that federal agencies scrap two existing regulations for every new one adopted.

She burst out laughing.

"That's a completely illogical way of doing things," Claybrook told the Los Angeles Times. "It's going to harm the public. People are going to die if you start eliminating safety standards."

The Times reached out to a number of former federal regulators after Trump's order was announced to find out how such an arbitrary approach to rule-making squared with their real-world experience of keeping the public safe and monitoring businesses.

Every one of them, Republican and Democrat, said Trump's approach to the highly complicated task of official oversight is reckless and irresponsible.

"I can't think of a single regulation that has no basis in fact," said Christine Todd Whitman, head of the Environmental Protection Agency under former President George W. Bush. "It's going to be hard to find regulations that aren't important to protecting human health."

She called Trump's executive order "mindless."

In signing his order, Trump called it "a big one" and said his goal is "the largest-ever cut by far in terms of regulations."

"There will be regulation, there will be control, but it will be a normalized control where you can open your business and expand your business very easily and that's what our country has been all about," he said.

Trump's order specifically requires that the cost of any new regulation be offset by eliminating existing rules with the same costs to businesses. Military regulations are excluded.

Inez Tenenbaum, head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission under former President Barack Obama, said Trump doesn't seem care which regulations are abandoned, as long as there are significantly fewer rules for businesses to follow.

"That's not a formula for rule-making," she said. "That's a formula for just pulling things out of the air."

As with many of Trump's pronouncements, details are a work in progress. But the order suggests a sweeping emphasis on deregulation affecting numerous aspects of peoples' lives, from environmental protection and health care to banking practices and workplace safety.

"What the president is talking about is reducing public health protection," said David Michaels, who oversaw the Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Obama.

Even so, he pointed out that getting rid of regulations can be just as hard as implementing new ones. It's not a matter of simply crossing out rules in some regulatory ledger book.

To scrap a regulation, a federal department or agency needs to notify the public, businesses, unions and others of its intentions, explain the rationale for the move, receive comments, and undergo the horse trading that typically surrounds decisions with potentially far-reaching ramifications. This can take years.

"Responsible companies want regulations," Michaels said. "They want a level playing field with rules that everyone has to follow."

As with his ban on travel from some predominantly Muslim countries, Trump's 2-for-1 approach to deregulation represents fulfillment of a campaign promise. His position prior to the election was that businesses are burdened by too many rules and we can easily get rid of most of them.

He's said his objective is to eliminate 75 percent of existing regulations.

That might work as a sound bite, but in reality he's tackling a highly complex, deeply nuanced process that cuts across virtually all aspects of society and commerce, with trillions of dollars in economic activity on the line.

For example, Trump said Monday that he intends to "do a big number" on Dodd-Frank financial regulations that have become part of the corporate DNA of financial-services companies and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Gerald Sachs, a former senior attorney with the CFPB, said banks have spent millions figuring out how to comply with Dodd-Frank. They'd have to spend just as much, he said, figuring out any significant changes to the law.

"Having no regulation is just not practical," Sachs said. "What we can't have is a race to the bottom."

Trump lacks the power to demand specific changes from independent government agencies such as the CFPB and the Federal Communications Commission that operate outside the control of Cabinet secretaries. However, he can sack agency leaders under certain circumstances or use the Republican-controlled Congress to slash their budgets.

"There are lot of ways presidents can take action against an agency that doesn't follow an executive order," said Lisa Heinzerling, who served as associate administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Policy under Obama. "It's very unsettling."

Whitman, the former EPA administrator and New Jersey governor, told The Times that "everyone is scared" at the agency as a result of Trump nominating Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to take charge. Pruitt, a strong supporter of the oil and gas industries, has described himself as a "leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda."

Whitman said a likely scenario is that the EPA and other agencies will stop seeking new regulations so they can protect existing rules. "I think people will go to extremes to avoid running afoul of this administration," she said.

There's always room for revisiting regulations once their true impact on businesses or the public becomes known. Some might be discarded. Most simply need to be improved.

Trump's 2-for-1 deal is governing by foolishness, treating the public interest like a cheesy offer on late-night TV.

He might just as well offer free steak knives to the regulator who does the most cutting.

David Lazarus, a Los Angeles Times columnist, writes on consumer issues. He can be reached at david.lazarus@latimes.com.
Earns Microsoft

In a letter sent Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017, to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft said that visas sponsored by companies or academic institutions should bypass the Trump administration's immigration ban because they have already gone through a rigorous vetting process.

(The Associated Press)

SEATTLE -- Microsoft on Thursday asked the U.S. government to carve out exceptions to President Donald Trump's U.S. entry ban for people with visas sponsored by companies or academic institutions.

In a letter sent to the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said people on work and student visas have already gone through a rigorous vetting process. Smith proposed that, in cases of family emergencies or business travel, they should be allowed to travel abroad and re-enter the U.S.

"These are not people trying to avoid detection," Smith said in the letter, addressed to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. "Rather, these individuals are 'known quantities' in their communities: their character, personalities, conduct, and behavior is well recognized and understood by their employers, colleagues, friends, and neighbors."

Trump's executive order, signed last Friday, set a 90-day ban on entry into the U.S. for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, and set a 120-day halt on entry for all refugees. It sparked protests nationwide and drew opposition from a wide range of civil liberties groups, companies and academic institutions.

Microsoft called the move a "fundamental step backwards" that endangered the country's values and reputation.

In Smith's request Thursday, he highlighted some of the hardships presented to Microsoft employees caught up in the order.

One woman who has accepted a job offer in the U.S. has been unable to enter the country. Some employees have been separated from spouses, and at least one is confronted with the choice of visiting a dying parent overseas and perhaps not being allowed to return.

Other large companies have voiced dismay over the ban. Intel's Brian Krzanich and Nike's Mark Parker were among several high-profile chief executives to issue statements condemning the order.

Microsoft's request asked that holders of temporary work or student visas, and their visa-holding immediate family members, be allowed to travel abroad for up to two weeks on business trips, or to address family emergencies.

In a blog post, Smith said Microsoft's request wasn't the end of the company's involvement in the debate around the executive order.

"But even amidst these debates, there is an opportunity under the executive order to address the pressing needs of real people," Smith said.

- The Seattle Times
Donald Trump aipac

President Donald Trump reportedly issued a surprise warning to Israel on Thursday to stop announcing settlements that "undermine" his administration's efforts to create peace in the Middle East.

A White House official told The Jerusalem Post that Trump is committed to a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and that the White House was surprised by Israel's announcement of thousands of new settlement housing units in the West Bank.

"As President Trump has made clear, he is very interested in reaching a deal that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is currently exploring the best means of making progress toward that goal," the official reportedly said. "With that in mind, we urge all parties to refrain from taking unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress, including settlement announcements. The administration needs to have the chance to fully consult with all parties on the way forward."

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The official, according to the report, also elaborated on the two-state solution Trump envisions.

"The United States remains committed to advancing a comprehensive final-status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians that results in two states living side-by-side in peace and security," the official told the newspaper.

The White House said in a later statement that it had "not taken an official position on settlement activity."

"While we dont believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal," press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement. "As the President has expressed many times, he hopes to achieve peace throughout the Middle East region."

Trump was a staunch advocate of Israel during his campaign for president. In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Trump said he is a "true friend" of Israel and said there is "no daylight between America and our most reliable ally the state of Israel."

Story continues

Trump is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on February 15.

NOW WATCH: Here are all the musicians who declined to perform at Trump's inauguration so far





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Senate Democrats, with new leader Chuck Schumer, have slow-walked all President Donald Trump's cabinet nominations with only four of 15 nominees confirmed so far (AFP Photo/Aaron P. Bernstein)

Washington (AFP) - Two weeks after Republican Donald Trump took the oath of office, Senator John Cornyn deplored the "mindless obstruction, foot-dragging and delay" by Democrats over the US president's nominations for vital posts.

"I hope soon our Senate Democrats will start working with us and not against us," the Republican told Senate colleagues Thursday.

Good luck with that.

Trump has moved at a blistering pace to fulfill various campaign promises, issuing a stream of executive orders warmly cheered by the Republican base.

But he needs the Senate to confirm his cabinet picks, and Democrats furious over the controversial executive orders -- not to mention his propensity to provoke longstanding US allies -- have hit the brakes.

Of the 15 people nominated to Trump's all-important cabinet, only four have been confirmed.

At this point in Barack Obama's administration, 12 cabinet members were in place. By February 2, 2001, all of George W. Bush's lieutenants were on the job.

This year is different.

"These are not normal times, this is not a typical president," Senate Democrat Chris Coons told reporters.

"We're in a difficult place."

Anti-Trump demonstrators outside the US Supreme Court this week had a blunt message for Democrats: "resist."

- No 'tit for tat' -

Lawmakers appeared to be listening.

Deep gridlock has seized the chamber: boycotts of votes, procedural road blocks, heated confrontations.

Senate Democrats, with new leader Chuck Schumer, have slow-walked all nominations.

"I've never seen a cabinet this full of bankers and billionaires, folks with massive conflicts of interest and such little experience or expertise in the areas they will oversee," Schumer said Thursday.

Angry Democrats have boycotted three nominees whom they have described as ethically flawed, refusing to show up for committee votes.

Republicans took the extraordinary step of changing committee rules in order to advance Trump's nominees for US Treasury, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Environmental Protection Agency, without participation by Democrats.

Story continues

The three are expected to get final Senate confirmation votes next week.

With partisan tensions soaring, Democrats were forced to contemplate another nomination, one that could have far-reaching impact on the nation: Trump's pick to fill a vacancy on the US Supreme Court.

The choice of Judge Neil Gorsuch has triggered a sense of urgency among Democrats. They still bristle over last year's refusal by Senate Republican leadership to consider Obama's nominee to fill the vacancy following the death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

The seat has remained open for 11 months. Democrats are considering whether to fight tooth and nail to block Gorsuch's confirmation, as several progressive groups have urged.

Senator Richard Blumenthal remains "deeply" troubled by how Republicans treated Obama's nominee Merrick Garland, saying it led to the politicization of the high court.

"But I'm not playing tit for tat," Blumenthal stressed.

Indeed, his party must be wary of taking the same obstructionist tack as Republicans did in 2016. Waging war over a qualified nominee could alienate middle-of-the-road voters so crucial in 2018, when 10 Senate Democrats face re-election in states that Trump won.

- A crack in the armor -

What Democrats will do, Schumer has insisted, is demand a 60-vote threshold in the 100-member chamber, rather than a simple majority, for Gorsuch's confirmation.

Republicans hold 52 seats, meaning at least eight Democrats would hold the key to Gorsuch's confirmation.

A months-long battle is expected. If Republicans are unable to sway enough Democrats to confirm Gorsuch, they may employ the "nuclear option:" changing the rules to allow confirmation by a simple majority.

"They can slow it down, but they can't stop it," Cornyn said of confirmations, as he accused the opposition of seeking to "undermine this new president" at every turn.

As Democrats dug in, a crack appeared in the Trump armor Wednesday as two Senate Republicans announced they would oppose his education secretary nominee.

Betsy DeVos, married to a billionaire heir to the Amway fortune, has faced intense criticism for her lack of education experience, and advocating the use of tax credits and vouchers to allow parents to opt out of the public school system.

If all Democrats and two Republicans oppose DeVos, her nomination would be deadlocked at 50-50, meaning Vice President Mike Pence, president of the Senate, would break the tie.

"Is there not one more Republican senator who will stand with the American people against Betsy DeVos?" fiery Senator Bernie Sanders pleaded in a tweet.

That remained to be seen. A DeVos procedural vote occurs Friday, while her full confirmation vote is expected Monday.
Former Midland resident Nathan Ohle has been selected as a winner in the economic development professions 40 Under 40 awards.

An independent six-member selection committee evaluated and chose the winners based on their contributions to the economic development industry. The awards program was managed by Development Counsellors International (DCI), a New York-based firm that specializes in economic development marketing.

Nathan Ohle is, without question, leading a new generation of progressive-minded economic development professionals, who understand diversity, inclusiveness, innovation, collaboration and skills development are key ingredients for creating economic opportunity in distressed communities across the country, said Jay Williams, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. It was a uniquely rewarding experience serving with him in the Obama Administration, as we worked successfully to bring the country back from the greatest economic decline since the Great Depression.

Ohle has been a leader in economic development for more than a decade at both the federal and state levels. He recently served as the senior advisor at the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), where he was responsible for overseeing the implementation of policies and programs for EDA and conducted outreach for EDA with stakeholders, federal departments and agencies on policy issues and partnerships. He was the U.S. Department of Commerces leading expert on economic mobility, helping to create economic opportunity for some of the countrys most distressed communities. Ohle worked to create locally-driven, place-based economic development plans in partnership with other federal agencies, and shaped two of President Obamas executive orders around economic development.

He also served as the deputy director of the Detroit Federal Working Group, working directly with Mayor Duggan and his team on economic development issues. Prior to coming to D.C., Ohle worked in economic development in Michigan, leading the Michigan Economic Development Corporations efforts to grow and expand businesses in the state.

Ohle is the son of Rick and Nancy Ohle of Midland.
Family and Childrens Services has received a $15,600 grant from the Midland Area Community Foundation to form two LGBTQ psycho-educational groups.

The groups, one for adults and one for teens, will be called Compass and will provide a confidential, therapeutic environment for people who are questioning or identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender or allies. The grant will allow them to receive support and information with a goal of promoting health, well-being and reducing risk through acquisition of skills in building self-esteem, healthy life styles and relationships, including strategies to deal with family rejection, social isolation and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Wednesday marked the end of a two-week Subject Matter Expert Exchange (SMEE) between U.S. and Philippine military members here.





Over the last two weeks, approximately 30 U.S. and Philippine service members participated in a series of exchanges and discussions focused on how the acquisition and analysis of satellite imagery can support Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HA/DR) operations.



A culminating table-top exercise served as the capstone event for the SMEE. The exercise used satellite imagery of an area impacted by Typhoon Haiyan. The U.S. and Philippine service members used Eagle Vision, an unclassified commercial satellite U.S. Air Force system, to gather before and after imagery of areas ravaged by the tropical storm in November 2013. Pre-typhoon imagery was compared to current images of affected areas. Imagery captured by Eagle Vision was then developed into geospatial maps by U.S. Army geospatial engineers with the 5th Engineer Detachment Geospatial Planning Cell. The bilateral training partners then used the maps to plan a disaster response operation for the simulation.



"Today's table-top is about bringing together HA/DR experts from both countries," said Lt. Col. Peter Day, commander of the current Rotational Air Contingent Philippines. "Over the past two weeks we've focused mostly on the theory of how satellite imagery can help direct operational decisions for HA/DR missions. Today we are applying what we've learned to discover new tactics, techniques and procedures to ultimately enhance how we work together," said Day.



Typhoon Haiyan devastated certain communities when it hit the Philippines. More than 6,000 Filipinos lost their lives because of the storm. An estimated 20 percent of the population impacted by the Haiyan received aid during the relief efforts following the storm.



"I see this exchange as an opportunity to enhance our abilities. I see after these exchanges how I can use my intelligence skills to improve our speed and efficiency for delivering aid when disasters happen here," said Philippines Air Force Airwoman 2nd Class Jane Ralcel Bernardo, Air Logistics Command Intelligence Production Branch's enlisted person-in-charge.



Following Haiyan, BBC reported the city of Tacloban as a "war zone" due to the extensive damage the typhoon caused. Tacloban was one of the hardest hit locations and a topic of serious discussion during the simulation.



"Damage assessment is an area where I've learned I can help with disaster aid. The satellite images let us know have much damage there is or that we think there will be. This information makes it possible for us to know where to bring the most relief to help people," said Bernardo.



Eagle Vision is capable of deploying to any location in the world. The system and personnel fit entirely into a single C-17 Globemaster III cargo aircraft and can be set up in eight hours.



"Oftentimes disasters impact communications infrastructure which makes delivering files and information a challenge, said Capt. Jay Munechika, Eagle Vision 5 Officer in Charge. For HA/DR operations it's paramount we know the status of an area to help drive the decisions that impact people's lives. Eagle Vision can provide imagery quickly and to a level-of-detail that is very useful for commanders and first responders on-the-ground so they provide the best disaster response possible," said Munechika.



Eagle Vision and the U.S. military have a longstanding history of working with the Philippines in relief operations. Eagle Vision was in the country in 2006 and provided satellite imagery of Southern Leyte, which aided the Philippine military's response to a massive mudslide that killed 1,126.



"The U.S. and Philippine alliance has been a cornerstone in the Asia-Pacific. Our nations continually work together when responding to crises and this simulation builds upon the teamwork necessary to deliver aid following a disaster, Day said.
Q: Last week I received the results of some recent blood work. A few of my values fell just outside the normal range. My doctor says it's fine, but I'm still worried. Do I need to be?

A: A printout of lab results typically indicates normal ranges for each blood test next to your personal results. If your personal result is right in the middle of the normal range, you'll likely feel relief.

But what if your result is at the very low or high end of normal, or even slightly outside the normal range? Should you worry? Unfortunately, there's no straightforward answer. Here's why.

With most blood tests, different laboratories would all come to pretty much the same result. However, with some tests there is more variation in the results from one lab to the next.

Another source of variation is you. The levels of many molecules in our blood change, sometimes from hour to hour. Blood sugar levels, for example, vary depending on what and when we ate. Other results are affected by how hydrated you are. Other results change with age.

The genes you inherited can affect results and may cause your results on particular tests to be outside the normal range every time tests are done. The question is not whether the result is "abnormal," but whether it is becoming even more "abnormal."

Results that change significantly over time are important even when a lab result is normal. For example, I had a patient whose PSA test for prostate cancer was in the low normal range every year for 20 years. Then, one year it was in the high normal range -- still normal, but quite different for him. I caught his prostate cancer at an early and curable stage.

There's no magic about the cutoff point for calling a test result abnormal. Just as in the man with prostate cancer, a result in the normal range can still be a sign of disease. And results that are outside the normal range ("abnormal") don't mean a person has a disease.

With some tests there is danger if the result is abnormally high or abnormally low. With other tests, it's worrisome only if the abnormality is in one direction.

So, here's my general advice for dealing with laboratory test results. If the results are near abnormal or definitely abnormal, and your doctor says not to worry:

Suppose that the result has changed significantly from when it was tested previously. If so, ask if that change means it should be tested again sooner than usual.

Suppose that the result is well into the abnormal range (not just over the line), but has not changed significantly. (For example, if a liver test has a normal range of 30-50, and your result remains 80, that is more worrisome than if your result remains 52.) If your result is way outside the normal range, ask if there are any diseases that the result could indicate, and any other tests for those diseases that should be ordered.
BLOOMINGTON  Bloomington resident Brenda Wernick came to the Not In Our Town rally Wednesday to show support for immigrant neighbors and the Twin Cities' diversity.

She also carried away 10 "Welcome Neighbor" signs.

The yard signs come with the message, No matter where you are from, we're glad you're our neighbor," printed in Spanish, English and Arabic.

"We have friends and neighbors who have expressed interest in getting them so I came here to pick the signs up for them," she said.

"I think it's important to send a message in the community that we are a welcoming community  and as Americans we do not support these hateful messages that are being communicated to the world," said Wernick.

"We had a lot of people (Wednesday) night picking up signs already ordered and then a lot more people asking how they could order online and taking the ordering instructions with them," said Mary Aplington, a NIOT member who is helping Pamala Eaton distribute the yard signs.

Eaton, a Dimmitt's Grove resident, introduced the signs after she brought back two from Harrisonburg, Va.; the Dimmitt's Grove Neighborhood Association sponsored the printing and sales of the initial 400 signs.

To obtain a $10 sign, online ordering forms can be completed at: https://goo.gl/forms/R4CP2t1D8ABD0ehf2.

"This is amazing how two signs coming from Virginia can all of a sudden turn into 700-plus signs with maybe a thousand by the end of the month," Eaton told nearly 1,200 people who filled the Bloomington Center for Performing Arts to capacity during the rally.

By Thursday, the number of signs ordered had increased by 100 to a total of more than 800, she said.

The signs convey what the 26-block historic neighborhood near downtown Bloomington is about, said Brad Williams, Dimmitt's Grove Neighborhood Association president.

"We have always been very accepting of diversity," said Williams. "The Dimmitt's Grove Neighborhood Association has always considered its neighborhood to be the most diverse place in the city. We've always celebrated that."

He and Eaton said the signs were never meant to be a political statement.

"We have over 500 households in our neighborhood  and not everybody who lives here is part of the protest against the U.S. president," said Williams. "I don't want to get into a political battle, which is very complicated. I want to keep the message very simple and positive."

Dimmitt's Grove Neighborhood Association, NIOT and YWCA McLean County have partnered to provide the yard signs.
LINCOLN  A 32-year-old Springfield man was killed early Thursday morning in a two-vehicle crash on Interstate 55 in Logan County.

Illinois State Police officials said the crash occurred at 12:02 a.m. in the northbound lane at mile post 113, about 2 miles south of Elkhart.

The victims name has not been released, pending notification of family. An autopsy is pending, said police.

Police said the driver of a 2001 Ford pickup truck was speeding the wrong way in the northbound lane when his vehicle hit a semitrailer truck head-on.

The pickup driver was pronounced dead at the scene; the semi driver was not injured, said police.

The northbound lanes were rerouted onto the Route 66 frontage road for several hours.
The current occupant of the White House recently signed an executive order stating that for 90 days people from seven majority-Muslim nations cannot enter the United States: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Syrian refugees are to be excluded indefinitely.

Exempted from this ban are people from the majority-Muslim countries where the occupant has property or financial dealings: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. Ostensibly to prevent the arrival of refugees and visitors who might be radical Islamic terrorists, this ban is just the latest in a history of national actions grounded in xenophobia, racism and religious or political bias.

In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, signed by President Arthur, which, with various extensions, effectively prohibited Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. until 1943. The ostensible cause was protecting whites from job competition and wage-lowering, but racist lynchings and massacres had long branded the Chinese as the Yellow Peril."

In 1920, during the First Red Scare, Attorney General Palmer rounded up and deported hundreds of Germans, Irish and Eastern European immigrants and laborers demanding higher wages, on the assumption they might be revolutionaries, Bolsheviks, and bomb-throwing anarchists. In 1942, the Roosevelt administration rounded up and threw into prison camps over 110,000 Japanese-Americans whose loyalty was suspect in time of war.

These official actions violate the guarantees of equality and justice afforded by the United States Constitution. If Americans hope to preserve their democracy, they must recall and acknowledge their history.

Robert D. Sutherland, Normal
Paris 5:59: Theo & Hugo



The first explicit 18 minutes of this insanely good film by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (The Adventures Of Felix) is set in a French gay sex club. That's where Theo (Geoffrey Couet) and Hugo (Francois Nambot) hook up. And, aside from a nerve-jangling trip to a hospital emergency room, they spend the rest of the night wandering the streets of Paris until morning, getting to know each other. In the style of movies like Weekend, there's a freshness and honesty here but also the touching romanticism of those initial romantic meetings that seem so full of promise. The two leads are remarkable, not to mention endowed with even more than talent. But they bring a sweetness and naturalness. There are also nice interactions during the evening, with a Syrian man working in a sandwich shop and a woman on the subway heading to work, that ground the film with interesting shadings.

I Am Not Your Negro

Courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

This stunning film by Raoul Peck is about the brilliant writer James Baldwin, particularly focusing on an unfinished novel he was writing on his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and his unflinching view of race relations in the United States. Baldwin fled the country for Paris when he was 24 in disgust over the racial injustices and prejudices of this country, but returned to support his friends' fight for equality--only to witness one assassination after another. Using news clips, voiceover by Samuel L. Jackson and footage of Baldwin eloquently and angrily speaking on talk shows and at colleges, it's a devastating look at how far we haven't gone.

Dark Night

Courtesy of Sundance

An artful, deeply unsettling portrait of a movie theater mass shooting like the 2012 one in Aurora, Colorado. Beginning with a shell-shocked girl sitting on a curb bathed in flashing police lights, the movie flashes back to the banal everyday activities of several people. A selfie-loving girl going out for auditions. A skateboarder getting his hair dyed orange. Two girls working in a store. The suspense is not only derived from worrying who will be an eventual victim of this random violence, but who might be the perpetrator. The antisocial loner kid, the disturbed war veteran, the angry young man ominously wandering his suburban neighborhood with a rifle? Director Tim Sutton's elegantly shot film captures the gun culture, instant celebrity dreams and the crushing ennui lurking behind this horror.

Chapter & Verse

Sir Lance (Daniel Beaty) has just been released from a 10-year stretch in prison. He is in a half-way house in Harlem with a curfew and working at a meals-on-wheels food delivery service while fixing computers on the side at his old friend Jomo's (Omari Hardwick) barber shop. One contentious delivery with a client on his route, Maddy (Loretta Devine), makes him eventually a part of her family and he watches warily as her nephew, hanging out with a bad crowd, is headed down the same doomed road he already walked. The film, directed by Jamal Joseph, heads down a familiar path too, but there is a solidness, strength and sadness in Daniel Beaty's performance that is riveting. And then there's the sublime Loretta Devine who brings Maddy roaring to life, with infectious humor and great compassion.



Stake Land II

The original Stake Land was a terrific 2010 Jim Mickle film set in an apocalyptic future where the land is overrun with vampires, or worse, a violent sect of religious fanatics called The Brotherhood. Nick Damici played Mister, the fearsome vamp killer roaming the land with young orphan Martin (Connor Paolo) under his wing. In this sequel, nicely directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen, Connor Paolo returns. He's older, bearded and haunted by tragedy and seeking revenge, searching for his mentor to help him bring down a fearsome vampire queen named Mother who lords over an army of undead and human acolytes. Nick Damici returns as Mister and also wrote the screenplay, which has a nice, hard-boiled, neo-western pulpiness. Connor Paolo, who was fantastic in the first film, is even better here, with a real kick-ass, sexy appeal.

I Am Michael

A disturbingly interesting film directed by Justin Kelly and based on a true story about gay activist Michael Glatze (James Franco) who was the managing editor for Y/X magazine in San Francisco when he was living with his boyfriend Bennett (Zachery Quinto). When Bennett gets a new job in Halifax, Canada, they move there and Michael suffers a series of panic attacks which he convinces himself is a spiritual awakening. His struggle to balance his faith with his lifestyle causes him to renounce his homosexuality and head off to Bible school. Yes, it's a story of a man's battle with faith but at least it's not as long as Silence. But you will fight the urge to climb up onto the screen and slap the shit out of him. He's such an insufferable, sanctimonious, asshole. Later scenes with him counseling sexually confused teens to pray the gay away will really tick off audiences, but Franco gives a subtle and playfully subversive performance. And while the movie plays it straight (sorry, couldn't help myself) it's not hard to see the filmmaker's point of view.

Splash photo by Dan Budnik, courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.


Men's Fashion Week came and went! It's a very special time of year in New York, when the genetically-blessed males of the species hit the streets en masse to flaunt their cheekbones, scowl handsomely, and test out whether or not their most outlandish hairstyles and accessories are "a thing." We braved the cold and snow to document these magnificent creatures in the wild, and divine the trends that the menswear vanguard will be rocking in 2017. We're seeing lots of faux fur, lots of real fur, western hats, head-to-toe monochrome looks, John Hughes movie realness, and in one instance, fishnet stockings.

Check out our favorite snaps from our street style safari below...
Yesterday, over 1000 bodegas around New York closed in protest of Trump's Muslim Ban, with many of the owners and employees gathering at Brooklyn's Borough Hall to decry the discriminatory, xenophobic and unconstitutional executive order. We joined the strikers and protesters last night and spoke to a few about what this ban means to them and why it's more important to fight now than ever. If you're outside NYC or missed yesterday's protests, you can also help by donating to a GoFundMe supporting the financial losses incurred by participating bodega employees yesterday.

Osama Althail, Harlem

Why did you decide to join the protest today?

I think my religion and all mankind is equal. What the President said is inhumane. People escape for a reason ya know? People die in my country, we come here to make a better life for ourselves and or families.

How does the ban personally affect you?

My family will not be able to come here. Two of my cousins are trying to bring their families here for a better life but now they cannot. It breaks my heart.

Are you concerned about the potential wages lost?

Yes, but life is more than money.

What is one thing you would tell President Trump, if you got the opportunity to talk with him?

"You cannot judge a book by its cover. Take time to learn about Muslim people and our culture, we are no different than the next man. A good example of this is when you have salt and sugar. You can never tell the difference until you taste it. Until you study our religion, our ways and our lifestyle, please do not judge us. "

Makee Dakhlaoui, Lower East Side





Why did you decide to join the protest today?

I learned today that my mom has been taking off her hijab because she is afraid to go to her house keeping job and have people accuse her of being a thief or Muslim.

How does the ban personally affect you?

I am Tunisian. This divides people as a whole, and I am an enemy against any type of segregation.

Will you continue striking?

Yes, until everyone can see eye to eye.

What is one thing you would tell President Trump, if you got the opportunity to talk with him?

"This new executive order brings discomfort to my mother and makes her feel unsafe to be a Muslim woman. "

Katie Laphan, Brooklyn









Why did you decide to join the protest today?

I am a school teacher who works with mostly Yemeni students. I love my students and the world needs to know they are not terrorists and that the Muslim ban is un-American.

Are you concerned about the potential wages lost?

I know how hard it is for small businesses, so yes I am concerned. My local bodega family took turns running the store while each family member came down to protest.

What is one thing you would tell President Trump, if you got the opportunity to talk with him?

I would say, "I don't think its principled." I don't know, I would tell him to just GET OUT!

Tanzilla Rahman, Harlem

Why did you decide to join the protest today?

This issue directly affects my Muslim community. A lot of people move here for stability. Things like water are not available in my country.

How does the ban personally affect you?

My sense of security of the future is gone now.



What is one thing you would tell President Trump, if you got the opportunity to talk with him?

"WHAT MUSLIM WOMAN HURT YOU!"

Abdullah Adaliy, Brooklyn

Why did you decide to join the protest today?

My mother can't get her green card. We are afraid of what's going to happen to us.

Are you concerned about the potential wages lost?

Money doesn't matter to me, my freedom does.

What is one thing you would tell President Trump, if you got the opportunity to talk with him?

"Don't be racist, don't judge us."
A struggling single father from Minnesota, 24-year-old Shane Bouvet, recently received a big gift from no less than a very important person. President Donald Trump gave him a $10,000 check after America's chief read about the dad's passion and dedication as a blue-collar worker and Trump supporter. They recently met face-to-face.

KHOU reported Bouvet first received what he thought was a prank call telling him that he has been invited to the inaugural ball. He later realized he really was talking to Trump's staff and was offered the best seats to the special event last Jan. 20, along with some of his friends.

That night when America installed its new president, Bouvet was whisked by the Secret Service to meet him in person, as well as meet First Lady Melania Trump. Apparently, the president learned about the single dad when The Washington Post ran a profile on him.

In it, he told the news outlet that as he was helping the Trump campaign in his rural town of Springfield, he's also taking care of his father with bladder cancer. Sitting down with the president in their meeting, Bouvet said he couldn't believe his luck.

Trump apparently promised Bouvet he's going to get a $10,000 check. He also handed the single dad an autograph for his son and a note that says, "You're a great guy!"

That promise came through on Monday, the Sacramento Bee reports. Bouvet finally got the $10,000 and he told the news outlet he's using it to help pay for his father's chemotherapy.

When asked why he supported Trump, Bouvet, who works as a delivery guy for Fedex, expressed that he wanted job security, which was top on the president's agenda. "I am a blue collar guy, there [are] about 800 people in my small town and we are losing jobs," he said, according to Inside Edition.
President Donald Trump's nominee for Education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has lost the support of some Republicans. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are reportedly not going to vote to confirm DeVos and the tip in the balance of the votes could jeopardize the nominee's post assignment.

According to Reuters, Democrats are sure to oppose DeVos' nomination via a block vote. The party only requires three Republican votes to ascertain the charter-school advocate's nomination is rejected. With Collins and Murkowski openly expressing their rejection, only one Republican vote could turn things around.

New York Times reports the reasons why Collins and Murkowski are going to oppose DeVos' confirmation. Collins, who is from Maine, failed to see the nominee's plans for alternative or special education. Murkowski, who is from Alaska, does not see DeVos' clear understanding of the public education system.

"She may be unaware of what actually is successful within the public schools, and also what is broken and how to fix them," Murkowski said. Collins, on the other hand, cited that because of DeVos' focus in on charter and vouchers, the senator is not sure if DeVos "fully appreciates that the secretary of education's primary focus must be helping out states and communities."

Murkowski also said her constituents in Alaska have written and called her to express their opposition against DeVos' confirmation. "I have heard from thousands - truly thousands - of Alaskans who shared their concerns about Mrs. DeVos as secretary of education," the senator revealed, according to Vox.

USA Today predicts DeVos' confirmation could end up with a 50-50 tie. Vice President Mike Pence is tasked to break this up as the Senate president and so far, Pence has been loyal to Trump's choices.

It's still unclear when the final vote will take place as the date has not been set. For now, what's only certain is the Senate has endorsed this nomination to proceed for a full vote on the floor.
A college focusing on technology is Zurich, Switzerland, emerged as the top international university in a new ranking done by an education magazine. The United States didn't land any schools in the Top 10 but it's the country with most colleges at 64 in a ranking of 200 schools.

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, also known as Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule or ETH, earned the top spot and was graded 97.1 in a survey that chose the world's Most International Universities. According to Times Higher Education, the survey determined which schools around the world provide the best experience and learning opportunities for students to become "global citizens." The site looked into the school's international reputation, its curriculum and the population of international students, teachers and staff.

The survey also revealed that Swiss schools provide the best and ideal proportion. Following ETH in the top rank is also another Switzerland college, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, which was graded with an overall score of 96.7.

The rankings, however, revealed five of the Top 10 are U.K. universities. These are The Imperial College London (5), the University of Oxford (6), the University of Cambridge (8), the University of London (9) and London School of Economics and Political Science (10), according to Forbes. Other international universities that made the top 10 list are the University of Hong Kong (3), National University of Singapore (4) and Australian National University (7).

The rankings have a total of 200 universities and from this, 64 are U.S. colleges, making America the country with most number of schools in the list. Its best performing international university, however, ranked in the 22nd place - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Harvard ranked 33rd and Stanford is at 36.

The next country with the most number of schools on the list is Germany with 15 and with Free University of Berlin ranking in the 44th spot. Aside from the five in the top 10, U.K. has seven other institutions on the list.
A teenager from Howard County, Missouri took his own life. It is believed he committed suicide because he was the constant target of bullying.

The 17-year-old high school junior, identified as Kenneth Suttner, allegedly shot himself on Dec. 21 near his home. Lexie Graves, Suttner's best friend, said in a statment that the way he talked due to a speech disability and his weight were two of the things that bullies took notice off, CNN reported.

Suttner worked at a local Dairy Queen and the manager of that restaurant was charged after his death. Authorities ruled the case as second degree involuntary manslaughter two months after the alleged suicide.

Howard County Coroner Frank Flaspohler made the inquiry about the possible reason for the suicide of the teen. An inquiry is like those given to the grand jury but it is held in front of the public.

He called the coroner's inquiry to bring attention to the seriousness of bullying. Flaspohler added, "In this case, it was obvious that he'd suffered a great deal of bullying (that) had pushed him to this point."

Testimonies from witnesses revealed that 21-year-old Harley Branham, the manager of Suttner, was bullying the victim. Co-workers said she repeatedly mocked Suttner while on the job and she made him clean the floor by hand while lying on his stomach.

She also reportedly threw a cheeseburger at the teenager after he did not follow her orders correctly. A jury then recommended the charge against Branham after 20 friends, witnesses, and co-workers told their stories about the bullying.

Branham believes she was not the reason why the teen killed himself. She said in a statement she was just joking around with the Suttner and does not understand why a lot of people would blame the kid's suicide on her. She will be arraigned this Feb. 14, New York Daily News reported.

Dairy Queen also released a statement saying they only learned about the situation after the manager was charged. Branham is no longer part of the company.

The school district was also blamed in the death of the teen. The school Suttner attended, however, said he never told teachers he was being bullied. They argued they could have done something if only he said something about what was happening.
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Yesterday a "personal property damage' lawsuit was filed against Apple in the California Northern District Court. The lawsuit will try to convince the judge to grant it Class Action status. The complaint states that "This is a consumer class action brought by Plaintiff on behalf of herself and all others similarly situated who owned an Apple iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S that was operating on iOS 6 or an earlier operating system, and therefore lost the ability to use Apple's 'FaceTime' video conferencing feature when Apple intentionally broke FaceTime for iOS 6 and earlier operating systems on April 16, 2014.

Nature of the Action In-Part

The following is the 'Nature of the Action' as presented to the court in-part against Apple:

Apple Chief Executive Officer ("CEO") Tim Cook ("Cook") has described the iPhone as "one of the most important, world-changing and successful products in history." Since introducing the iPhone in 2007, Apple has sold more than one billion units.

All iPhones operate through Apple's proprietary "iOS" operating system, which is the software that controls the device's functions and operations.

FaceTime is Apple's immensely popular real-time video messaging and chat feature that enables FaceTime users to engage in real-time video (and audio) communications. FaceTime is proprietary to Apple products and therefore users can only communicate via FaceTime with Apple products. Since first releasing FaceTime in 2010, Apple has heavily marketed the feature's ability to close the gap between friends and loved ones separated by great distances, particularly at life's most meaningful milestones. Apple heavily touted FaceTime as a centerpiece in the company's advertisements for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. In the years following its release, FaceTime became one of the most popular and valued iPhone features. Indeed, at Apple's 2013 annual stockholders' meeting, CEO Cook revealed that fifteen to twenty million FaceTime calls were made on a daily basis.

There are two types of ways that participants in a FaceTime call can exchange audio/video media: (1) the so-called "peer-to-peer method," where a direct connection is formed between the caller and the callee; and (2) the so-called "relay method," where the caller and the callee connect to a relay server that relays the data on behalf of the devices. During the period relevant to this action, the servers used by Apple for relaying FaceTime calls were owned by a company called Akamai Technologies, Inc. ("Akamai"). Unlike peer-to-peer FaceTime calls, Apple made significant payments to Akamai for "relay usage" (i.e., bandwidth) on Akamai's servers.

Prior to November 7, 2012, approximately 90-95% of FaceTime calls were connected through the peer-to-peer method, and only 5-10% through the relay method. Thus, Apple's relay usageand the expense to Apple arising therefromwere relatively low.

On November 7, 2012, however, a jury found that Apple's peer-to-peer method of connecting FaceTime calls infringed on patents held by VirnetX, Inc. ("VirnetX"). The only way for Apple to avoid knowingly and intentionally continuing its infringement on VirnetX's patents was to shift 100% of FaceTime call volume to the relay method.

Upon shifting 100% of FaceTime call volume to the relay method, Apple's relay usage soared. As a result, Apple began to incur multi-million dollar monthly charges for its use of Akamai's servers. Therefore, as internal Apple emails reveal, Apple undertook a concerted effort to find a way to reduce its relay usage by reducing the volume of FaceTime calls connected through the relay method. Indeed, an internal Apple email chain circulated during this time period bore the subject "Ways to Reduce Relay Usage," and explored potential strategies for doing so.

On September 13, 2013, potential relief from Apple's high relay usage fees arrived. On that day, Apple introduced iOS 7, a next generation operating system that could connect FaceTime calls through the peer-to-peer connection method in a way that had not yet been found to infringe on VirnetX's patents. The introduction of iOS 7 therefore helped Apple reduce its relay usage and the resultant payments from Apple to Akamai.

More than seven months after the introduction of iOS 7, however, millions of Apple users' devices still operated on iOS 6 or earlier operating systems and thus could only be connected via FaceTime through the relay method. Because of this, Apple was still amassing significant relay usage and, therefore, facing substantial payment obligations to Akamai.

Consequently, to further reduce its relay usage costs, Apple devised a scheme to force millions of its usersi.e., users running iOS version 6 and earlierto stop using FaceTime on their devices. As Apple's internal emails and sworn testimony at the VirnetX trial revealed, Apple formulated a plan by which its engineers caused a digital certificate necessary to the operation of FaceTime on iOS 6 or an earlier operating system to prematurely expire. Upon the expiration of that certificate, and as a direct result of Apple's actions, the valuable FaceTime feature immediately and abruptly stopped working for millions of users running iOS 6 or an earlier operating system (the "FaceTime Break"). To regain FaceTime capability, those users had to either transition to iOS 7, or buy an entirely new Apple device with iOS 7 preinstalled.

Apple did this knowing that for millions of users, moving to iOS 7 was highly problematic because it was essentially incompatible with certain Apple devices. For iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users, for example, the coerced move to iOS 7 subjected their devices to slowness, system crashes, erratic behavior and/or the elimination of their ability to use critical functions on their phone. As succinctly stated in one of the media reports that discussed these widespread functionality problems, "[t]he older handsets buckle under the weight of the new software." Thus, for millions of Apple's customers, a move to iOS 7 would significantly harm the functionality of their device.

Internal Apple emails eliminate any doubt that Apple intentionally broke FaceTime, and did so in order to reduce relay usage and the high costs related thereto. For example, weeks or months after the FaceTime break, Apple engineering manager Patrick Gates ("Gates") sent the following email to various Apple personnel: "Hey, guys. I'm looking at the Akamai contract for next year. I understand we did something in April around iOS 6 to reduce relay utilization." Apple engineer Gokul Thirumalai responded to Gates, stating the following: "It was a big user of relay bandwidth. We broke iOS 6, and the only way to get FaceTime working again is to upgrade to iOS 7."

Following the FaceTime Break, millions of iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users whose devices were operating on iOS 6 or an earlier operating system faced two options for continuing to use their device: (1) remain on a pre-iOS 7 operating system, but without the ability to use FaceTime; or (2) transition to iOS 7, and accept the significant reduction in functionality that their iPhone would suffer as a result. To quote the colorful language used by an Apple employee in an internal Apple email sent within hours of the FaceTime Break, as a result of the break "our users on [iOS 6] and before are basically screwed[.]" (Emphasis added by plaintiff.)

Plaintiff brings this action on behalf of herself and all other similarly situated consumers who, at the time of the April 16, 2014 FaceTime Break, owned an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S that was running on iOS 6 or an earlier operating system, and who therefore lost the ability to use FaceTime on their device. Plaintiff alleges trespass to chattels and violations of the Unfair Competition Law, California Business and Professions Code 17200, et seq. (the "UCL").

The First Cause of Action against Apple: Trespass to Chattels Under California Law

The Second Cause of Action against Apple: Violation of California's Unfair Competition Law California Business and Professions Code 17200, et seq.

The case was filed in the California Northern District Court yesterday February 2, 2017. The judge assigned to this case is Nathanael M. Cousins

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On January 22 Samsung finally revealed the final results explaining the cause of the fires in the Galaxy Note7. Samsung's experts revealed why both manufacturer batteries failed, forcing them to remove the product from market. The odds of two top battery maker batteries failing were one in a million but it happened. The result of that appears to have left Samsung looking to replace one battery supplier as a backup supplier for the new Samsung Galaxy S8 to make it appear like they're making changes since the Note7 fires. It's a clean slate marketing move and one that's understandable.

According to several new Korean reports published today on this story, Samsung Electronics is reportedly considering the use of Japanese batteries in its upcoming Galaxy S8 flagship smartphone. This seems a follow-up measure after the company announced to seek for a third battery supplier after the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco last year.

According to Samsung Electronics and industry sources on Feb. 2, the company is considering a plan to be supplied with lithium polymer batteries for the Galaxy S8 to be launched in April from Japan's Murata Manufacturing Co. Murata Manufacturing acquired Sony's battery manufacturing subsidiary in June last year.

An official from Samsung Electronics said, "We are still discussing whether to use Japanese batteries additionally while using Samsung SDI's batteries first. We haven't still decided yet whether to use batteries from China's ATL at the same time."

Yet a second source said that a Samsung official was quoted as saying by Seoul Economic Daily that "We are considering Murata as a possible battery supplier together with Samsung SDI. We have not yet decided on the use of ATL batteries."

ATL accounted for 30% of Samsung's battery supply and so Murata may be replacing ATL as backup supplier should demand for the Galaxy S8 call for such a move. Whether Samsung is serious about the shift or is using the news as a tactic to obtain lower prices from ATL is unknown at this time.



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Last week, Franklin Graham said the following:

Its not a biblical command for the country to let everyone in who wants to come, thats not a Bible issue.

Well, I have news for Grahamfollowing his logic, its not a biblical command for this country to ban abortion, either. No, really. Comb the Bible. Nowhere does it say to ban abortionnot even in the Old Testament levitical code, which outlined the law for the nation of Israel. Using Grahams logic, I can deduce that it is certainly not a biblical command for the U.S. to ban abortionits not a Bible issue.

Graham went on, adding the following:

We want to love people, we want to be kind to people, we want to be considerate, but we have a country and a country should have order and there are laws that relate to immigration and I think we should follow those laws.

Following the logic here, we can see that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and we need to stop fighting about abortion and follow that law. But of course, Graham would never say that. He opposes abortion even though Jesus does not once mention it (and neither does the levitical law). But despite the fact that the Bible actually has a lot to say about welcoming immigrants and refugees, that is not a Bible issue.

I am so sick and tired of the hypocrisy I am seeing from evangelical leaders. Do you know what isnt in the Bible? Customs. The Israelites didnt exactly have passports. You know what? Im going to declare visas unbiblical.

Yeah. I just did that.

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3801 Lancaster: American Tragedy is a 57-minute documentary focusing on the crimes of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortion provider in Philadelphia. In February 2010, an FBI raid on his practice uncovered a horrific scene that belonged more to a horror film than a health professional, including blood-stained floors, human remains and body parts.

David Altrogge wrote and produced the film to shed light on a case that many people are most likely not prepared to process. In this exclusive interview with Reel Faith, he speaks about the unimaginable crimes exposed by the raid and the unapologetic doctor at the center of the outrage.

What made you want to cover this case in a documentary?

This film started in early 2011I was waiting for my coffee to come up at a coffee shop in Pittsburgh (where I live). I grabbed the newspaper and I saw this tiny little article about this case that just broken in Philadelphia. There was this abortion physician named Kermit Gosnell who had recently been accused of running this, what the district attorney described as, a house of whores. The article briefly touched on the fact that women had died at this clinic, that babies were born alive and killed at the clinic, and that the Pennsylvania Department of State and Health had turned a blind eye. A couple of days later, a friend of called and informed me that the district attorney in Philadelphia was going to testify before the Pennsylvania State Senate in Harrisburg and theyre going to allow press in. My cinematographer and I got in the car and made the drive to Harrisburg to film this 3-hour hearing. We walked out of there knowing we had to make a film about this case.

I think there are a lot of things about this case that specifically hit me very hard. When they described some of the procedures they practiced and how it was incredibly painful for these babies . . . that affected me. It also affected me that the Department of State and the Department of Health knew about the unsafe procedures being performed and yet nothing was done. They had report after report after report spanning over decades, and yet they chose to do nothing. That is what made me want to make this documentary.

From the idea to the final production, what were some of the findings that most surprised you?

The things that most surprised me was how clear it was that Gosnell could have been stopped years ago. The Department of State and the Department of Health had ample reason to go into Gosnells clinic and shut it downyears ago. The Grand Juror report talks about a young woman named Marcella, who worked at Gosnells clinic briefly who said she was so horrified by what she saw that she filed a complaint and described the unsanitary conditions. She described that young girls, who did not want to have abortions, were brought in there by their mothers, and Gosnell proceeded with the abortions. This employee of Gosnell described how unsafe it was there, yet they didnt go into his clinicnot once! It would have taken only one visit for them to see how unsafe it was and it would have been shut down immediately.

Doing the interviews with Gosnell was very surprising. The media had described him as a monster. I had been working on the film for five years before we were able to get in touch with him. I braced myself because I didnt know what to expect. But I was surprised . . . he was very intelligent. Hes very thoughtful and charming. He has thought through what he has been accused of and come to justifications for why he did what he did. Not that I agree with his justifications at all, but I think its very easy to slap the label monster. If you listen to him talk and you didnt know anything about the case, he doesnt sound very different from a lot of people in our culture today. That is very scary.

I would assume people would be outraged as they watch this film. Do you hope this film will lead to further action by viewers?

My hope for this film is that viewers watch it from both sides of the abortion debate. I hope we wrestle with how did this happen in the state of Pennsylvania. What were the policies and politics that would allow something like this to happen? Secondly, my hope would be that people would have more compassion towards the women who are in unthinkably hard situations to even consider an abortion.

In your conversations with Gosnell, how were you able to gain his trust and also remain unbiased during his justification for his actions?

Gaining his trust took about a year of phone calls, letters, and visits with him in prison. We told him what we told everyone that was involved in the film, we didnt want to put our own spin on the story, we wanted to let the people involved in the story to tell their story, to speak for themselves as outlined by the juror report and by the people stories and testimonies. So, we wanted Dr. Gosnell to tell his side of the story and he appreciated. It was challenging during the interview and there were times I was frustrated, but you cant let your feelings get in the way when you are doing a film like this. The journalist job is to present facts. I just wanted to present his take on what happened in his own words.

What has been the reaction to the film?

It strikes a nerve with people. There are some that get angry with us, the filmmakers. I think we all have our opinions about abortion and when a film presents the facts that call into question those opinions, we get angry, but overall its been a positive reaction. I think everyone who watches the film is deeply troubled and walks away with their own takeaways.

For more information or to watch the film, click here.
Decades of Demonization Behind the Ban On Muslims

02/02/17

By Shireen T. Hunter (source: LobeLog)



Film still from "300: Rise of an Empire"



President Donald J. Trump's executive order banning the entry of citizens of seven countries with majority Muslim populations shocked many people in the United States and many more in Europe and elsewhere. It also elicited a wave of criticism from a variety of quarters-including business, academia, and human rights organizations-both in the United States and elsewhere.

In the United States, most universities with large international student bodies and faculty understandably reacted negatively to the decision and began to devise means of limiting the impact of this decision on their students and faculty. Others pointed out how immigrants from the countries on the banned list have made significant scientific and financial contributions to the United States. For example, people were reminded that Steve Jobs the founder of Apple, was of Syrian origin and the founder of E-bay is an Iranian-American. These are of course the more famous people. Many more serve the United States at universities, hospitals, science labs, and in many other walks of life. The overwhelming majority of those living in America who trace their ancestry to the banned countries make a positive contribution to American society. Further, many of the people subjected to the ban oppose the authoritarian governments in their countries of origin. Many have left because of opposition to the non-democratic ethos of those governments.

Yet this ban or something similar to it was almost bound to happen. For at least three decades, Islam and Muslims have been designated by people who should know better as enemies of the Western world and of Western values. In a 1990 article in the Atlantic, Professor Bernard Lewis attributed what he styled as the roots of Muslim rage to the envy and resentment that Muslims supposed to feel towards the West because of its scientific and other successes and Muslim decline and backwardness. In one fell swoop he reduced a long, multifaceted, and complex relationship between the West and the Muslim World to simple envy.

After the Soviet Union fell and the world faced an ideological and paradigmatic vacuum, Samuel Huntington offered to substitute the theory of a "clash of civilizations," which designated Islam as the West's most hostile "other."

These arguments were advanced before al-Qaeda became a threat and long before the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Indeed, in the early 1990s, several Western countries were willing to use groups such as the Taliban for political and strategic purposes. More recently in Syria, al-Qaeda affiliates like Jabhat al Nusra were characterized as moderate opposition.

Understandably, 9/11 gave more credence to extreme views about the very nature of Islam. But the reaction was disproportionate. Indeed, after 9/11," Islamo-fascism" became a buzzword in popular discourse to characterize an entire religion and its adherents. Americans were told to prepare for a hundred-year war with this Islamo-fascism. Websites proliferated that painted an absolutely black image of Islam and Muslims that did not allow for any shades of gray. They warned that Europe was being Islamized, with America to follow. Some commentators deliberately tried to provoke Muslims and thus to elicit reactions that were bound to increase anti-Islam sentiments. By contrast, academics and others who tried to explain the complexities of the issues involved were characterized as naive at best and pernicious at worst.

Iran was treated even worse than any of the other Muslim-majority countries. The West laid just about every problem it faced in the Middle East and southwest Asia at Iran's doorstep. Iran was not only portrayed as the most serious threat to its neighbors and the West but, according to Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, "the greatest threat to world peace." Even ancient, pre-Islamic Iran has not escaped unscathed. The film 300 portrayed the Persians as about as bad and uncivilized as it is possible to be. I've even heard it said that the Persians invented "evil"-not discovered it, not recognized, it but invented it.

With all this popular and even academic demonization of Muslims (and their forebears, as in Persia) it should be no surprise that President Trump wants to protect America from these evil peoples. What we are seeing is the actualization of the Biblical saying: sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Of course, the behavior of some Muslims in their own regions and in the West have contributed to the widespread vision of an Islamic enemy, especially the terrorist actions carried out by Muslim extremists against their own peoples and Western targets. Bombings in America, England, France, Germany, and elsewhere cannot be ignored or in any way justified. Muslims who have abused Western democracies and their democratic immunities to propagate extremism and hatred from the mosques where they preach bear a significant responsibility for the crimes that have followed. Those Iranians who for 40 years have been chanting "death to America" cannot expect to be welcome in the country that they call the Great Satan. The irony is that those are not the Iranians who are being punished. On the contrary, President Trump's executive order punishes the enlightened, moderate, and even pro-Western Iranians who either already live here or would like to come to America.

Ideas, including religious ideas, are inextricably linked to power. Sadly, ideas are often placed at the service of power rather than the other way around. Both the "West" and "Islam" as abstract concepts delinked from their human representations have been abused and manipulated for base purposes. But America is not a root cause of Iran's problems, nor more broadly, of the rest of the Middle East, even though there have been major miscues of policy. By the same token, neither Islam in particular (nor Iran specifically - the current principle target of US hostilities) can be blamed for all of America's or Europe's problems in the Middle East or, in the case of extensive migration, problems at home.

All parties must realize the complexities and multiplicities of causes that have led us to this time of confusion and conflict with its epicenter in the Middle East and some other parts of the Muslim world. No single enemy can explain all the problems of those involved, whether they are from the Muslim world or the West. The first step needs to be more mutual tolerance for differences, more dialogue, and, yes, more humility-rather than arrogance, scapegoating, and self-righteousness.





About the Author:



Shireen T. Hunter is a Research Professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Her latest book is Iran Divided: Historic Roots of Iranian Debates on Identity, Culture, and Governance in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).




Iranian-Dutch Dual National and Dissident Imprisoned in Tehran Denied Medical Care

02/03/17

Source: International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran

The officials of Evin Prison are denying Sabri Hassanpour, an Iranian-born citizen of the Netherlands and outspoken critic of the Islamic Republic who has been imprisoned in Iran since March 2016, open-heart surgery, according to an informed source.





Sabri Hassanpour



The source told the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that prison officials continue to refuse requests by Hassanpour for hospitalization outside the prison to receive the surgery, which was recommended by a doctor.

"We don't know what the Dutch government or embassy have done for him, if anything," said the source.

Hassanpour's wife is unable to follow up on his case because she lives in Holland with their child and can't travel to Iran to pursue his case with the Judiciary without also risking arrest, added the source.

Political prisoners in Iran are routinely singled out for harsh treatment, which often includes denial of medical care.

The Revolutionary Guards' Intelligence Organization arrested Hassanpour, 65, in April 2016 in the southern city of Khorramshahr while he was visiting his relatives for the Persian new year, the source told the Campaign.

Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court put him on trial in late November 2016 for "propaganda against the state and acting against national security" said the source.

He is still awaiting a verdict.

Hassanpour has described himself as a "film director, cameraman, and theater and film actor," on his Twitter account. He was also the host of Rahaaee TV, a small satellite channel and YouTube account promoting anti-government views.
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Updated In our mSecure password manager review, we take an in-depth look at this password manager to help you decide if its the most secure way to handle your sensitive data.
Over the next five years, the company behind Snapchat will pay Google at least US$2 billion in cloud bills.

On Thursday, Snap revealed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it signed a five-year contract to pay Google at least $400 million a year for cloud services. Thats a steep figure, considering that Snap made roughly $404 million last year.

In return for the massive commitment, Snap will receive reduced pricing, though its not clear how deep the companys discounts will be. Sinking a bunch of money into Google Cloud makes sense, because Snapchat began its life built on top of Googles AppEngine platform-as-a-service offering.

Furthermore, Snaps commitment to Google is a massive vote of confidence in the latters cloud capabilities, at a time when theres heavy competition in the cloud market.

Right now, Googles cloud is an underdog compared to Microsoft and Amazon. But being tied to a rising star in the social media landscape like Snapchat could help draw other companies to at least give Googles platform a chance.

However, the contract is not without risk. If Snap doesnt use $400 million worth of Google Cloud services in a year, its still on the hook for the full value of the contract. Whats more, the company said in the filing that it uses Google for the vast majority of its computing, storage, bandwidth, and other services. If something goes wrong with Google Cloud, or if the tech titan gets out of the public cloud business, it could be bad news for Snap.

That last scenario seems highly unlikely, considering that Google continues increasing its investment in its cloud platform. Urs Holzle, Googles vice president of technical infrastructure, said last year that the company plans to launch new cloud data centers at the rate of roughly one each month this year.

All of this is tied to Snaps plans to pursue an initial public offering in the near future. The filing released on Thursday is one of the companys steps along that path. Snaps IPO is being closely observed by the tech industry because of the companys high-flying status.

It remains to be seen how Wall Street will receive the company, especially since its far from profitable and its losses have widened year over year. Plus, the deal with Google means that Snap will be saddled with hundreds of millions of dollars in liabilities for the foreseeable future.
Apple plans to start assembling the iPhone in Bangalore by end April under a contract manufacturing arrangement with Taiwans Wistron.

The move by the company comes even as it awaits approval from the federal government for some of its proposals for lowering the import duties on components and for creating an ecosystem of local manufacturers who can supply components for the smartphones, according to sources close to the situation.

The Karnataka state, of which Bangalore is the capital, has announced Apples intentions to make the iPhone in the city.

Priyank Kharge, state minister for information technology, confirmed on telephone that the company had been cleared to make the phones in Bangalore and said it was a validation of the states industry-friendly policies. Having a leading tech company making its products in the state could also have spin-off benefits in terms of app development and work in the area of artificial intelligence by the states highly-skilled manpower, he added.

Apple announced last year the setting up of a facility in Bangalore to assist developers on best practices and improved app design around its iOS platform.

The company has not been extended any special incentives by the state to assemble the phones in Bangalore, Kharge said.

Apple did not immediately comment. The company has been planning to make its phones in India as well as set up its own retail stores in the country to address the booming local market, which is expected to see higher demand for Apple devices because of the rollout of 4G networks. iPhone sales were up over 50 percent in the country in fiscal 2016 over the previous year.

Getting the price down by local assembly is critical for Apple as the market is very price-sensitive. In the third quarter, Samsung Electronics, followed by Chinese and Indian brands like Lenovo and Micromax, led the Indian smartphone market, according to IDC estimates, largely because they have been able to deliver their products at various price points.

Apple has tried to get the Indian federal government to allow it to import refurbished phones that it could sell at low prices, but that proposal has run into criticism from some sections of government because of the environmental consequences of bringing into the country end-of-life products. Assembling phones in Bangalore would help Apple meet local sourcing rules for single-brand, foreign-owned retail stores, thus giving momentum to this other plan of the company.
On Friday, Microsoft announced the launch of its bug bash for the Windows 10 Creators Update, a sign that its beginning to slowly wind down its development process before it finally releases the next major version of Windows.

Historically, Microsoft begins each iteration of its milestone Windows 10 releases by fixing a few last-minute bugs from the previous version. It then begins rolling out and testing all the new features of the upcoming milestone to Windows Insiders in the preview program.

At some point, though, Microsoft moves into the last phase of its development process, fixing all of the bugs that Microsoft employees and its Windows Insider beta testers discover in the imminent release. That phase typically begins with a huge bug-fixing exercise, known as the bug bash, which in this case runs through February 12. Microsoft uses the information it gathers to determine which bugs are the most serious and prevalent, so it can prioritize which to fix first.

Microsoft hasnt said when the Creators Update will actually ship; its still due in early 2017. The blog post announcing the bug bash notes that Microsoft developers will be working on fixing these bugs for the next several weeks, however, meaning that our guess that the Creators Update could be released at the end of March is still valid.

Why this matters: Most users know on some level that adding a new software feature introduces new bugs to go along with it. The annual bug bash/bug-fixing phase is critical, however, to help shape the publics opinion. Not every bug will be found or eliminated before the softwares release. The idea is to at least prevent headline-grabbing glitches such as those that disabled webcams in the Anniversary Update.

How the Windows 10 CU bug bash works

Any motivation to assist Microsoft in its bug bash is primarily a charitable one, with the end goal of simply improving Windows. Nevertheless, Microsoft is offering special Bug Bash badges for the Feedback Hub as prizes for those who participate.

Insiders need to check the Windows 10 Feedback Hub for new Quests, tasks that Microsoft would like beta testers to perform to check for bugs. Leaving feedback within the Hub is also encouraged. Youll need to make sure that youre running the latest Windows 10 preview, Insider Build 15025, which includes a feedback mechanism that consolidates similar reports into a single response.

Microsoft will also hold live webcasts with engineers from 2 through 4 P.M. PT on Feb. 7, and from 7 through 9 P.M. on Feb. 7, to walk users through some of the quests. Those quests will change over the course of the week, Microsoft said.

As always, we recommend that Insiders test out Windows 10 on a secondary PC, one that you dont do anything truly important on. Stumbling across glitches or bugs that can break or force you to reset your PC is part of the Insider experience. Cruising on an Insider machine, though, can also be an awful lot of fun.
After more than four hours of sometimes contentious testimony, Southern Californias air quality agency on Friday, Feb. 3, decided to wait a month before voting on a 15-year air pollution cleanup plan that relies heavily on voluntary compliance and cash incentives for industry.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District board voted 9-3 to delay a decision following remarks by new board member Sheila Kuehl, a Los Angeles County supervisor, who said the plan needed to be strengthened to ensure more pollution cuts.

It still falls short in a number of ways, Kuehl said. There doesnt seem to be, as my dentist would call them, teeth.

Several board members also said they wanted to wait until March 3 because board member Clark Parker had to leave early to attend a funeral.

The delay allowed the board to avoid dealing with concerns over the plans lack of rules or emission reduction goals for the regions ports, warehouses and railroad yards. Air district officials had instead planned to work with the cargo hauling and storage industries to secure volunteer emission reductions before going to rule-making mode.

Kuehl, a Democrat, introduced a motion that, among other provisions, would have required staff to draft regulations that would kick in should volunteer reductions not come to fruition.

She also wanted the district to seek legislative authority to require zero-emission vehicles for publicly owned fleets.

Republicans Dwight Robinson, a Lake Forest councilman; Shawn Nelson, an Orange County supervisor; and Janice Rutherford, a San Bernardino County supervisor, all said the plan should be approved as it was, and a delay was not necessary.

First proposed in June by new executive officer Wayne Nastri, the plan called for nearly $1 billion a year in cash incentives to get industry to retool with cleaner machinery.

The meeting at the air district headquarters in Diamond Bar drew about 500 people. About 200 had to watch from video screens in three overflow rooms and a cafeteria.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District regulates air pollution in Orange County and the urban portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Most speakers opposed the plan, saying it needed to have tougher rule-making to more quickly reduce emission, and should not rely on tax dollars to pay industry incentives.

Many spoke of pollution-related illnesses they or their family members had suffered.

Esther Portillo of Riverside said her grandmother, who lived in Colton, recently died of lung cancer, and her mother-in-law has COPD or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and several of her nieces and nephews suffer from asthma.

You have a choice to side with the polluters or to side with the people, Portillo said to the board.

Plan opponents, many with the Sierra Club, rallied outside the air district building, holding signs depicting a bird wearing a gas mask and saying, Please care.

Philip Fine, the air districts deputy executive office told the board that incentives and volunteer reductions are only part of the pollution cleanup plan.

The rate of regulatory reductions in this plan is more than the previous plan, Fine said.

The plan was supported by several business leaders, who argued it should be approved without any changes.

Tracy Hernandez, founding CEO of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, said the plan has been vetted and is the result of collaboration with affected businesses and other interested parties. It has the support of 300 employers in the federation.

It is time to move this plan forward, Hernandez said.

Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said the ports are dedicated to making more emissions reductions voluntarily, and the plan doesnt need rules to force such pollution cuts.

The ports clean-air plans already have reduced diesel soot emissions by 85 percent and smog-causing nitrogen oxides by 50 percent, and more emission cuts will come, he said.

We expect to make more breakthroughs.

RELATED

Riverside County Supervisor Marion Ashley joins AQMD board

Air district will seek voluntary emissions cuts from ports, rail yards and warehouses

Air pollution linked to Alzheimers disease, study says

Contact the writer: 951-368-9471 or ddanelski@scng.com or @DavidDanelski
Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, today introduced legislation seeking to establish firmer controls on the use of animals in chemical, drug and food safety tests, with the goal of cutting taxpayer expenses and saving critters lives.

Calverts H.R. 816, the Federal Accountability in Chemical Testing  FACT  Act, would strengthen standards in a 2000 law authored by the congressman mandating that the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food & Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies issue biennial reports detailing how animals are used in tests.

The FACT Act would go a step farther, requiring that all reports contain specific information on the specific number of animals used and why.

For two decades, I have played a key role in the efforts to replace wasteful government animal tests with modern alternative tests that save significant time, taxpayers money and animals lives, Calvert said. The FACT Act will ensure that Congress has the information necessary to determine if federal agencies are meeting their mandates to replace expensive and unnecessary animal testing whenever possible, because evidence suggests they are not.

The congressman pointed out that some animal tests can run as high as $4 million and span more than five years.

Calvert cited a study last year by the nonprofit White Coat Waste Project to emphasize the need for improved techniques. According to the Washington, D.C.-based groups findings, tests involving cosmetics, foods, natural supplements, tobacco products and industrial chemicals have been conducted using hundreds of dogs, mice, monkeys, rabbits and rats.

The study estimated that $12 billion a year is expended by the federal government on wasteful, painful and ineffective animal experiments.

The White Coat Waste Projects chief spokesman, Justin Goodman, praised the FACT Act as a means to ensure that taxpayers are not funding cruel animal experiments.

RELATED

Rep. Raul Ruizs bills target elected officials spending on own businesses

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Not surprisingly, congressional reaction to President Donald Trumps pick of federal appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch to fill the U.S. Supreme Court vacancy is split along party lines.

Californias two U.S. senators, both Democrats, are expressing reservations about Gorsuch, who is seen as a solid conservative in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Judge Gorsuch voted twice to deny contraceptive coverage to women, elevating a corporations religious beliefs over womens health care.  Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) February 1, 2017

I am troubled by the nomination of Judge Gorsuch and will fight to ensure the voice of the American people is heard in this process.  Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) February 1, 2017

House Republicans, on the other hand, are lauding Gorsuchs credentials, although unlike Harris and Feinstein, House members wont have a say in whether Gorsuch is confirmed.

I believe Neil Gorsuch is a strong choice to serve on our Supreme Court. Heres my full statement: pic.twitter.com/HycdxTFeKu  Ken Calvert (@KenCalvert) February 1, 2017

Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, initially had a more nuanced take on Gorsuch.

Just like Merrick Garland, Neil Gorsuch is a respected judge. He should receive the same type of fair & honest consideration in the Senate.  Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) February 1, 2017

Asked to elaborate, Takano spokesman Josh Weisz made clear his bosss reservations about the judge. Rep. Takano certainly objects to Neil Gorsuch on the basis of his extreme conservative judicial philosophy, Weisz said in an emailed statement.

His record of hostility towards womens rights, environmental protections, and the rights of employees reflects no appreciation for the Courts role in defending and advancing the principles of fairness and equality. Gorsuch, who is considered to be more extreme than Antonin Scalia, will push the court to the far right for a generation.

This is particularly offensive given the circumstances of his nomination, Weisz added. After refusing to even consider a well-qualified and universally respected judge in Merrick Garland, Senate Republicans are demonstrating shameless hypocrisy in demanding that Gorsuch be quickly confirmed. It is important for the American people to recognize that Republicans blatantly violated democratic norms for the sole purpose of stealing a seat on the Supreme Court.

Given that more Americans voted for Secretary Clinton than President Trump, and given that more Americans voted for Senate Democrats than Republicans in the 2016 election, it is President Trumps responsibility to pick a mainstream judge who will serve as a unifying voice on the Court. Gorsuch does not meet that requirement and his nomination should be rejected.
Youd think that fighting heart disease is a nonpartisan issue. But a misunderstanding involving an Inland assemblywoman caused some heartburn for the American Heart Association.

Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, R-Lake Elsinore, is speaking this morning at a Rock the Red event in Wildomar. The association-organized event comes on National Wear Red Day, when the public is encouraged to wear red to promote womens heart health.

Melendez was all set to talk about empowering women. But her office received a phone call Thursday, Feb. 2 disinviting her from the event  the current political climate being the reason, said Melendez, who took to Twitter to express her disappointment.

Disappointed Ive been uninvited by the @American_Heart Assoc to speak at their event tmrw because of the current political climate MM  Melissa Melendez (@asmMelendez) February 2, 2017

Melendez isnt shy about sharing her conservative beliefs. She attended Donald Trumps inauguration in Washington, D.C., accused womens march protesters of spitting on one of her sons and cursing at her daughter for wearing Make America Great Again hats and called out Democrats for booting her off the Assemblys public safety committee.

But later that day, Melendez tweeted that she had been reinvited to the Wildomar event.

Im pleased to announce that the @American_Heart Association has reconsidered and has re-invited me to speak at their Rock the Red event MM  Melissa Melendez (@asmMelendez) February 3, 2017

Heart disease does not see political party, Melendez said in a news release. I look forward to sharing my commitment to everyones heart health and the empowerment of women.

Elena de la Cruz, an association spokeswoman, said that as a nonprofit, the association doesnt endorse political candidates. A staff member wrongly interpreted that to mean that Melendez couldnt participate, de la Cruz said.

Were so honored that shes coming today, de la Cruz said. This was just an honest mistake.

The association also apologized to Melendez via Twitter.

@asmMelendez Were so sorry for the miscommunication. We will connect with your office ASAP to work it out. We would never uninvite anyone  American Heart Assoc (@American_Heart) February 3, 2017

Melendez, a former Lake Elsinore councilwoman, is not a candidate for political office this year, having been re-elected last November. Her district includes Lake Elsinore, Canyon Lake, Murrieta, Menifee, Wildomar and part of Hemet.
A man was found hiding in an apartment attic after fleeing from deputies who tried to arrest him during a Perris traffic stop, officials said.

About 8 a.m. Thursday, deputies stopped a vehicle for a vehicle code violation in the area of Wilson and East San Jacinto avenues in the city, wrote Deputy Mike Vasquez in an email.

Vasquez said those deputies detained the vehicles male driver, a convicted felon, and found a firearm inside it.

When the deputies went to arrest the suspect, he fled on foot and entered an apartment in the 200 block of Wilson Avenue, wrote Vasquez.

The apartment complex was evacuated as a precautionary measure. The man was found hiding and was arrested, according to Vasquez.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9693, agroves@scng.com or @AlexDGroves on Twitter.
A Eastvale transgender Army veteran has settled a civil rights lawsuit against a Rancho Cucamonga barbershop that refused to cut womens hair.

Kendall Oliver alleged that The Barbershop denied the haircut because the owner perceived Oliver to be female.

Richard Hernandez, who owns the Milliken Avenue business, said his Christian religious beliefs barred him from cutting womens hair.

Hernandez, an Ontario resident, admitted breaking the law and discriminating against Oliver, according to a settlement agreement signed by both sides that represents a fair and reasonable resolution of the case.

The settlement requires The Barbershop to serve all customers.

Oliver, who could not be reached for comment, sued in May in San Bernardino County Superior Court, alleging that Hernandez violated Californias Unruh Civil Rights Act by refusing service. The law guarantees all people full and equal access to all business establishments in the state without regard to their sex, race, religion and other characteristics.

Oliver was born as a female but identifies more male than female. In adulthood, Oliver came to terms with being transgender. As a self-description, Oliver uses gender-neutral pronouns such as they rather than she or he.

The lawsuit was settled in January and announced Wednesday, Feb. 1, by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a Los Angeles-based organization that advocates for LGBT people and represented Oliver.

Im glad this is over and that the business has promised not to do to others what it did to me, Oliver, who grew up in Ontario and has served about seven years in the Army Reserve, said in a news release from Lambda Legal.

Hernandez declined comment, as did Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, a Sacramento-based conservative legal organization that represented him.

Hernandez, who belongs to the Church of God, said he was following a practice of not cutting womens hair that was customary in Christian denominations until the early 20th Century.

When Oliver arrived at The Barbershop for a March 8 appointment, Hernandez perceived Oliver as female and told Oliver he doesnt cut womens hair, the lawsuit stated.

Oliver left and a few minutes later called Hernandez to explain about being transgender and identifying more as male than female. Hernandez again refused and said he wouldnt cut the hair of any kind of woman, the suit stated.

The situation caused Oliver to feel more insulted, hurt and upset, the suit states.

Hernandez has said he apologized to Oliver and offered to reimburse the cost of a haircut. He said he did nothing wrong and treated Oliver with the utmost respect.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9292 orstwall@scngTwitter: @pe_swall
The Associated Students of UC Riverside Senate voted Wednesday night to recommend removing Sabra hummus from campus stores and food stations. The move is meant to send a signal to companies that the governing body believes supports the oppression of the Palestinian people.

Sabra reportedly provides support to the Israeli military.

UCR administrators said they dont plan to take any action in the wake of the vote.

The University has no plans to change brands offered for sale or consumption in its stores and dining facilities, said a statement released by campus spokesman James Grant. He cited the universitys policy on community principles as precedent for the decision.

Oscar Loera Gonzalez, vice president of external affairs for the student association, said hes hoping that isnt the end of the discussion.

I highly doubt that they will completely ignore the students, Gonzalez said. This is clearly what our student government wants.

Gonzalez said the senate vote to support the measure was 13-0 with one abstention.

I dont think theyre completely set about it, he said of UCR administrators. Im planning on meeting with a few of them (along) with the author of the resolution.

If the product is removed, he said, he thinks it might spur greater action.

I believe this can have an affect on other UCs, he said. If they vote to remove similar products or divest from any companies, it could impact UC investments as a whole.

This is the second time in two years that the issue has been raised on the campus.

In 2015, the student senate passed a resolution of divestment, encouraging the campus administrators to not do business with companies that in some way are tied to the Israeli military. Sabra is jointly owned by Pepsico and the Israel-based Strauss Group, each with a 50/50 stake in the company. Strauss Group reportedly contributes to the Golani Brigade, a unit of the Israeli army.

A spokeswoman for Sabra, Ilya Welfeld, said Sabra has been falsely accused of supporting the Israeli military. She did not deny the Strauss Groups support.

Proposed bans were considered at a number of universities in 2010 and 2011.

For a brief time that year, Sabra was removed from stores and dining spots on the UCR campus. It was replaced by another brand of hummus. University officials later said the removal of the Sabra product was a mistake and reintroduced it. The school then sold both brands.

Contact the writer: mmuckenfuss@scng.com or 951-368-9595
Hemet Unified School District will soon begin accepting registration for its free after-school programs for the 2017-18 school year.

Sign ups for the S.A.F.E. program  which operates at all elementary sites  and Zone Middle School Expanded Learning Programs will be available between Monday, Feb. 6 and March 10.

Both programs are available until 6 p.m. each day school is in session. They offer homework assistance, literacy, physical activities and a variety of enrichment activities.

Registration forms will be available starting Monday at school sites or at hemetusd.org.

Information: 951-765-5100, ext. ex 3901.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9086 cshultz@scng.comTwitter: @PE_CraigShultz
Pet licensing will be getting a little bit easier for residents of southwest Riverside County served by the regional animal shelter in Wildomar.

As of Wednesday, Feb. 1, the Southwest Communities Animal Shelter began opening its doors at 8 a.m. for licensing. The daily opening time for adoptions, vaccinations and other services remains at 10 a.m.

Next month, shelter operator Animal Friends of the Valleys plans to start up an online licensing service at animalfriendsofthevalleys.com. The target launch date is tentatively set for March 10.

Animal Friends board member Kristine Anderson said the web offering should cut down on foot traffic at the often busy facility at 33751 Mission Trail.

If (pet owners) dont want to come to the shelter or mail it in, they can put in all their information in online and give us their credit card (information), she said.

The innovations were announced by the nonprofits Assistant Executive Director Monty Jordan in a meeting Thursday, Feb. 2, of the Southwest Communities Financing Authority Board of Directors. The board consists of representatives from the jurisdictions that jointly financed the construction of the shelter, which opened in October 2010.

The coalition consisting of Lake Elsinore, Canyon Lake, Wildomar, Murrieta, Temecula and Riverside County continues to oversee funding.

Board members on Thursday approved a $2.4 million budget for operating the shelter and providing animal control in the year starting July 1, of which the authority will pay $1.3 million. The budget includes two new positions  an assistant director and a donor development director. The assistant director will help with shelter management and serve as a backup to the executive director.

The donor development director will reach out and cultivate relationships with those who financially help support the shelter.

This is kind of getting to know your donors, basically, Anderson said. If we can develop a relationship with them and see whats their interests are, maybe they would be willing to give us more.

Animal Friends Board President Tammi Boyd said the position, which will cost about $105,000 in salary and benefits, should generate more than enough money to pay for itself.

Contact the writer: 951-368-9690 or michaelwilliams@scng.com
Jurupa Valley residents will have a chance to weigh in on an environmental study for a proposed power line project at a public meeting Wednesday, Feb. 8.

The study is being prepared as part of an application before the California Public Utilities Commission by Riverside Public Utilities and Southern California Edison to build a 10-mile, 230-kilovolt transmission line that would run through Jurupa Valley and Riverside.

The scoping session for the environmental report  determining what issues will be studied  will be held at 6 p.m. at the Jurupa Valley High School Auditorium at 10551 Bellegrave Avenue in Jurupa Valley.
The Majority in parliament has described explanations offered by former Deputy Minister of Finance Cassiel Ato Forson regarding the GHS7billion expenditure which Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia described having been hidden by the Mahama administration, as pathetic.



Mr Forson had said the conduct of Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia smacked of hypocrisy and double standards. The Vice President said on Tuesday that: As we interrogated the data to see exactly why our public finances are in the state they are, we found that there is GHS7billion of expenditure that has not been disclosed.



Mr Forson, who is the Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Essiam, explained that the GHS7billion expenditure was captured in a special government data system at the Finance Ministry, which Dr Bawumia should be aware of.



He added that the expenditures were captured under a new financial management system called the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), which the current government does not understand.



However, responding to these explanations at a counter press conference in parliament on Thursday, Dr Mark Assibey-Yeboah, the Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament, said: In a response that could be best be described as pathetic, the Minority in parliament sought to explain that the GHS7billion of expenditures uncovered was due to reforms being undertaken on government contracts and expenditures, which is part of the GIFMIS project. So, clearly, there is admission by the Minority that the GHS7billion expenditure which had been kept out of the purview of the books of government constitutes real expenditures that have been undertaken.



The reaction by former Deputy Minister Ato Forson is sad and deeply worrying and depicts a team that is grossly unaware of the extent to which the nations books may have been cooked to provide a false sense of good economic management and to deceive investors. More worrying is the fact that the former Deputy Minister attributed the arrears accumulation to reforms underway and the way in which data is captured. What the former deputy minister describes as creative accounting management is unethical and dangerous.



We are of the view that given the fact that implementation of the ECF programme is still underway, the IMF stands in a better position to make some of these issues clear. As to whether those represent a breach of the ECF programme conditionalities, we will know by the end of next week when the mission chief is expected to brief donors on his findings. We may recall that under the programme, the government is not allowed to accumulate arrears. This may yet represent another serious breach of the programme and if care is not taken punitive actions could be meted out against Ghana. Let us not forget that a similar occurrence in 2000 led to Ghana being fined $39million.



Watch video of the Majority's press conference below





Source: Classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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There is an ongoing clean-up at the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) where dismissed Chief Executive Dr. Stephen Kwabena Opuni allegedly supervised widespread malfeasance.



Top managers at Cocobod have been asked to proceed on leave; and the directive was reportedly issued by Minister of Food and Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie-Akoto.



Already, President Akufo-Addo has fired Dr. Opuni, but the government is determined to clean up both Cocobod and Cocoa Marketing Company Limited, who have purportedly contributed to the dwindling fortunes of the cocoa sector.



Those to proceed on leave include Deputy Chief Executive (Finance & Administration), Deputy Chief Executive (Agronomy & Quality Control), Deputy Chief Executive (Operations) and the Director of Finance.



The rest are Deputy Director of Finance, Deputy Director of Audit, Director of Civil Works and the Procurement Manager.



At the Cocoa Marketing Company Ltd, the Managing Director (MD), Deputy MD, Director Legal Services, Deputy Director and the Finance Director have reportedly been asked to go home.



Under Opuni, workers were dismissed and transferred by heart according to sources



Cocoa Sector Rot



A source has already described the rot in the cocoa sector as very awful, as people were reportedly awarded contracts without laid-down regulations and fertilizers purportedly smuggled to neigbouring countries for individuals interest.



Already, unionized workers in the cocoa industry are calling for investigations into alleged dubious deals by the sacked CEO and his officers.



The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) and the General Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU) alleged that Dr. Opuni sold some of the cash crops and kept the proceeds and according to them, such deals had cost the country in excess of $10 million, adding that the monies could have been used to develop the country.



Fierce Fight



Kingsley Nkansah, General Secretary of GAWU, in April last year, disclosed at a meeting with journalists that Thousands of tonnes of cocoa are sold by the management of Cocobod which is hidden from the government and for which no proper accounts are maintained either. This is known as Special Sample Residue.



He continued, The Special Sample Residue is done by drawing an average of 0.3kg of cocoa beans from each bag taken over and sold by the Cocoa Marketing Company. So for every 1,000 tonnes of cocoa, they (management) get on the average 4.6875 tonnes, an equivalent of 75 bags.



No Action



The workers claimed that information on the underhand dealings at Cocobod was passed on to the former Employment and Labour Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, and the former Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah, as well as the former Commissioner on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), but all to no avail.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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President Akufo-Addo has narrated how he helped to secure victory for former Secretary to President John Dramani Mahama in the recent election for African Union (AU) top job during the just-ended 28th Summit of the AU.



Diplomat and former Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs under the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, Thomas Kwesi Quartey, contested and won the position of Deputy Chairman of the AU Commission (AUC).



But that did not come on a silver platter as he himself has admitted and has since been thanking President Akufo-Addo and his New Patriotic Party (NPP) government for the support offered him.



Quartey, who contested the election with five others, was not certain of victory without the backing of the new administration.



Revelations



At a meeting with the Ghanaian community in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa Tuesday evening, the president narrated how he defied even the counsel of his own party faithful to throw his weight behind Mr Kwesi Quartey.



Present at the meeting was Ghanas Ambassador to Ethiopia, Albert Yankey and members of the mission; Foreign Minister, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey; Secretary to the President, Nana Asante Bediatuo; Deputy Chief of Staff, Francis Asenso-Boakye; Minister-designate for Aviation, Cecilia Dapaah and Minister-designate for Information, Mustapha Hamid.



The rest included former Foreign Minister, James Victor Gbeho; former National Security Coordinator, Lt Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey and former anti-corruption crusader whose subtle defence of corruption under President Mahama government made people to doubt his credibility, Daniel Batidam.



Nana Akufo-Addo recalled that immediately after the 2016 general election which saw him becoming president, his predecessor, President Mahama, informed him about the candidature of Mr Kwesi Quartey, who was contesting as Deputy Chair of the AU Commission.



Details



I think he was a little bit hesitant; thinking that his association with Quartey will put me off, Nana observed.



But when he [Mahama] told him and asked of his view, President Akufo-Addo recalled telling then President Mahama, Thats a very good idea; I know the man and I know his competence and I know he is capable of the job and that he will fly the flag of Ghana very high so I have no hesitation in my mind the idea of supporting his candidature.



The president said when he told a few of his colleagues [obviously referring to his party men], their responses were a little bit different; the idea being that he has been deputy minister in an NDC government; he has been Secretary to the President.



According to President Akufo-Addo, he could not but stand his ground and supported the man, claiming, I said no; he is a Ghanaian and he has the ability and we have to mobilise all the talents; so I have no hesitation, Im going to tell the Foreign Minister-designate at that time to make sure that our service here and around the world is mobilized to support his candidature.



Principle



That, he said, was due to the fact that Ive never believed in uniformity of ideasI dont believe that Im president and everybody should agree with me. No! I dont think thats correct.



Instead, he indicated, I think we should have our differences in opinion; what we need to do is to as much as possible find a way of building consensus so that the various opinions can harmonise.



He could not but thank Ambassador Victor Gbeho, who went from country to country campaigning for Kwesi Quartey, saying, At least your work was not in vain; it has been crowned with resounding success. We are all grateful to you.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Vice President, Alhaji Mahamudu Bawumia, has revealed that as part of measures to make corruption unattractive, the government of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is determined to ensure that the canker would no more be a misdemeanour but a felony.



We will also amend the criminal code to move corruption from a misdemeanour to an act of felony to make corruption unattractive in the country, he stated.



He also reiterated governments resolve to fight corruption in the country by making the needed resources available to eliminate the menace.



He said, though government recognises the huge financial implications of this commitment to our already constrained fiscal space, we are resolved to make resources available to put in place an effective and efficient beneficial ownership regime in the country.



The Vice President was speaking at a regional workshop organised by Transparency International, an anti-corruption organisation, in Accra yesterday aimed at promoting the use of beneficial ownership information to tackle corruption on the sub-region.



It had the theme Supporting New Beneficial Ownership Transparency Champion in Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria and was attended by civil society organisations, government officials, law enforcement agencies and other stakeholders from the three countries.



Dr Bawumia, delivering a keynote address at the meeting, made it clear that government had taken steps to pass the Right to Information bill this year and establish the office of Special Prosecutor to prosecute persons culpable of corrupt activities as means of tackling the problem.



The Executive Director of Ghana Integrity Initiative, Linda Ofori-Kwafo, bemoaned Ghanas drop in the Global Corruption Index last year and called for stricter sanctions for persons found culpable for corruption.



We have a government that has promised so much on how to eradicate corruption and has already hinted of a special prosecutors office, procurement law among others which is a good sign so we will be on the look out to hold government accountable on its promises to reduce corruption in Ghana, she stated.



The Board Chair of GII, Moses K. Gyasi, for his part, stated that transparency and accountability were the surest ways to tackle corruption and attain desired national development.





Source: The New Statesman









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is not enthused about recent revelations by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia that the previous government failed to account for GH7 billion spent while in office.



The immediate past NDC administration also expressed concern about the $14 million put out by Dr Bawumia on the yet-to-be-completed vice presidents official residence at Cantonments, Accra, which has since set tongues wagging.



The NDC, in a statement yesterday, expressed its displeasure with the vice presidents revelation of the missing GH7 billion which was never captured in the books as liabilities to the state, describing it as most unfortunate.



The NDC indicated, We are displeased by the tendency of the vice president to rush with information to the public and the media, particularly the structural measures and reforms without taking time to understand the rationale for the reforms and initiatives.



The party explained that the GH7 billion that Vice President Dr. Bawumia was talking about is as a result of a major initiative or reform on government contracts and expenditure, which is part of the GIFMIS project that the new administration is expected to continue implementing. The framework is also covered in the new Public Financial Management (PFM) Act, under the Budget Responsibility provisions.



The NDC explained that the fund was used for part of the contract database and outstanding commitment, and does not constitute conventional definition of arrears. The government is obliged to incorporate the commitments, as a first charge on the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) budget 2017.



Revelation



Dr. Bawumia on Tuesday blew the cover of the NDCs attempts to conceal the GH7 billion arrears, especially when it was not covered in the transition notes.



The money was spent by the previous NDC government and was never accounted for, according to Dr Bawumia.



Speaking on the topic: The Role of Integrity and Transparency in Accelerating Ghanas Development at the launch of the Ghana Corporate Governance Initiative in Accra under the auspices of Action Chapel International, Dr. Bawumia said the current government discovered this while interrogating data on the previous governments expenditure.



Dr. Bawumia added that the previous government failed to disclose this backlog of expenditure.



Shock



In preparing for this years budget for example, we have been very surprised by the fiscal data, the data on our expenditure and our revenue. As we interrogated the data, we realized to our shock that expenditure amounting to GH7 billion was made by the previous government, but never disclosed. These came from 2014, 2015 and 2016, so where have they been hiding all these years?



How are you supposed to manage an economy with faulty data? And so we have to emphasize that getting the data right is really very key because you are going into 2017 and suddenly you are told by the way that there is GH7 billion you have to pay next year that you did not anticipate. This is the reality, Dr Bawumia lamented.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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IT IS being speculated that National Youth Organizer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sammy Awuku, has refused the opportunity to serve as a deputy minister of Local Government and Rural Development, in favour of party work.



According to sources at the seat of government  the Jubilee House  many elders of the NPP had expressed apprehension about the likely departure of Mr. Awuku from the partys headquarters to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, which is being headed by Hajia Alima Mahama.



Several party elders, DAILY GUIDE learnt, are calling on the youth organiser to take a second look at the decision to go into government since the president recognizes his immense contributions towards the NPPs victory in 2016, while others are also pushing him to accept the portfolio.



But it is turning out that Mr Awuku still wants to hang on to party works, contrary to speculations that he had already picked up the job of a deputy minister.



Under his leadership, the youth wing of the NPP last year was credited with the massive mobilization of supporters and sympathizers, winning the students front and the young voters at large.



Some youth of the NPP have reportedly been pressuring him to take the job offered him by the president in order to serve their interest over the next four years of the NPP administration, which promises to better the lives of Ghanaians.



There were speculations also last year that the NPPs National Organizer and Acting General Secretary, John Boadu, was being considered for government appointment, but that was resolved.



It is however, unclear what step Mr. Awuku might take, concerning his continuous stay at the partys Asylum Down head office in Accra.

Source: Daily Guide









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Minority in Parliament has boycotted the approval of minister-designate for Gender and social protection, Otiko Afisa Djaba.



Otiko Djaba, refused to apologise to former president John Mahama for describing him as wicked and evil when she appeared before the Appointments Committee for her vetting.



Addressing supporters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the electioneering at Asawase in the Ashanti region, the NPP National Womens organizer said: President Mahamas time is uppresident Mahama is extremely wicked and so he must step down.



The Minority caucus on the Appointments Committee made a fruitless attempt to get her withdraw the comments when she appeared before them on Tuesday.



Ms. Djaba, however, said she does not owe the former president any apology, arguing that she was simply exercising her freedom of speech.



Meanwhile, the Majority side of the House have reportedly approved her nomination as Minister for Gender and social protection.

Source: starrfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Otiko Afisa Djaba, Minister-designate of Gender, Children and Social Protection, lied under oath about when she last spoke to her mother when she appeared before the Appointments Committee of parliament, Wa West MP Joseph Yieleh Chireh has said.



According to the lawmaker, that, and the fact that Ms Djaba did not do her national service, were reasons the Minority were against her approval to become a minister.



The Minority argued on the floor of parliament on Friday February 3 that not participating in a one-year service to the nation after her undergraduate studies at the University for Development Studies disqualified her from holding public service although the Appointments Committee as a whole recommended Ms Djaba and other nominees for approval by majority decision. This comes despite Ms Djabas refusal to apologise for describing former President John Mahama as evil, wicked and an embarrassment to people of the regions up north.



Justifying why Ms Djaba does not deserve to be made minister of state, Mr Chireh told Citi FMs Richard Sky in an interview: She lied under oath when she said that she had seen or talked to the mother a week to the election. These are all issues we are talking about.



Asked if he had any proof Ms Djaba lied about talking to her mother, the lawmaker said: Im saying that she lied on oathI am not sending her to court for perjury, but Im saying that we should vote on her... If you listened to her response, anytime she was asked when was the last time you spoke to your mother, she said: Is that an issue? three times until the chairman directed her to answer the question. What Im saying is we want a Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection to be a family woman. One who holds family dear, particularly the mother, dear; she didnt show that.



Meanwhile, other Ministers-designate including Samuel Atta Akyea  Works and Housing, Dan Botwe  Regional Reorganisation, Ignatius Baffour Awuah  Roads and Highways, John Peter Amewu  Lands and Natural Resources, Anthony Akoto-Osei  Monitoring and Evaluation, were all approved by the house.

Source: classfmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Member of Parliament for Wa Central Constituency, Rashid Pelpuo, says Otiko Djaba, the Minister-nominee for the Gender, Women and Social Protection Ministry, would have to apologize for her comments against former President John Mahama, before she is considered for approval. Ms. Djaba is on record to have directed at Mr. Mahama words considered insults by some members of the Minority in Parliament, and Mr. Pelpuo believes such conduct is not befitting of someone looking to head the Gender Ministry.

Speaking on the floor of Parliament on Friday before Ms. Djabas approval was put on hold, the MP said he was amazed by her posture during her vetting, which he said depicted a lack of humility and compassion. My surprise is that, she is coming to occupy a ministry that demands a lot of compassion. She is going to occupy a ministry that demands a lot of humility, but she did not show any of these things when she was confronted with the question of insulting a former President. In our tradition, you dont look in the face of the elderly and say; you are stupid, your head is big and you are evil; Nobody does that in our tradition. Mr. Pelpuo explained that, Ms. Djaba would be expected to relate with the vulnerable sections of society and for these areas the person occupying them would have to show that she can forgive. She should also show that she can draw people together and can also demonstrate that they can show humility but she did not show an inkling of humility, respect for elders and a demonstration that she can bring people together.

Otiko must withdraw everything Mr. Pelpuo further suggested that, Ms. Djaba should withdraw her comments in the media, and use the same medium to apologize to Mr. Mahama and the people of Ghana. If she has the opportunity, she should withdraw everything she said because the whole of the county was watching her, the psyche of the young people who were watching her was pricked negatively and I think that it has to be repaired. Mr. Speaker, because she did not reflect the kind of person who should occupy that position, I want to reflect that we suspend her approval and bring it up at a later time she should go to the same media she went to insult the president and tell the people of Ghana that the position she is occupying does not merit the utterances she made, an adamant Mr. Pelpuo stated.

I dont owe Mahama an apology

The Gender Minister Nominee has already refused to withdraw her comments made against Mr. Mahama. Speaking during her vetting Ms. Djaba said she owes the former President no apology for her comments. Queried by some of the Minority members on the panel for describing the former president as wicked, evil and someone with a heart of the devil, Ms. Djaba said she spoke out of conviction and would not apologize or withdraw her comments.

Parliament approves Dan Botwe, 4 others; Otiko put on hold Meanwhile Parliament today [Friday], approved the nomination of five additional ministerial nominees to serve in the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government. The House, after about 2 hours of debate on the third report of the Appointments Committee for the approval on the nominees, passed five out of the six nominees to serve in their respective ministerial portfolios. The nominees are John Peter Amewu (Lands and Natural resources), Ignatius Baffuor Awuah (Employment and Labour relations), Samuel Atta Akyea (Works and Housing), and Dan Botwe (Regional reorganization and Development), and Anthony Akoto Osei (Monitoring and Evaluation). The approval of the minister nominee for Gender, Women and Social protection, Otiko Afisa Djaba, was however put on hold over challenges raised by the minority side of the vetting committee. Aside the issues of her temperament and attitude raised by the minority, they are also rejecting her nomination on grounds that she did not undertake the mandatory national service, something she confessed to during her vetting. The Speaker of Parliament has set Tuesday February 7, 2017, for the House to vote on Otiko Djabas approval, since the House is unable to reach a consensus following the minoritys rejection.

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.

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Cooperate Affairs Manager for Group Ndoum, Richard Keelson has challenged President Nana Akufo-Addo not to be reluctant in cracking the whip if he wants to run a successful administration.



He further cautioned him to move away from the practice of blaming others when things go wrong and institute strict measures to punish offenders to regulate and enhance their work rate towards work.



Mr. Richard Keelson believes the rich political experience the president has puts him on top of issues and gives him an advantage to address the main challengings facing Ghana.



He posits that Ghana under Nana Akufo-Addo, would only hit a snag if the president decides to allow it happen by switching the country to an autopilot mode.



In his view Ghana is a small country and President Nana Akufo-Addo can do his best to make it great again.



Speaking on ATVs current affairs show dubbed Asem Yi Di Ka, Mr. Keelson noted that Nana Addo knows every problem in Ghana. When I was a young reporter I followed him around abit during the Kumipreko days in 1995. He should develop the political will and institute strict measures to punish those who go against them.

Source: ATV









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Joe Addo expressed his admiration for the creative work of Bisa Kdei, saying he is part of the rich tradition composers like Koo Nimo, Jerry Hansen etc.



He disclosed this on Eezy FM during its Eezy Friday Conversation segment on The Morning Edition. He was full of praise for the young musician as he touted the creativity at play within the Ghanaian music industry.



In 2004, Joe Addo moved back to Ghana after a period of studying and working in the United Kingdom and the United States.



He is currently the Principal of Constructs LLC; a firm that combines architecture, urban planning, landscaping, and building technology into creating 'inno-native' design solutions to contemporary African architecture. 'Inno-native' is the condition where solutions are developed smartly and are indigenous.



Joe believes the development of Africa needs to be contextual, inspired, developed and implemented by Africans, and must address the core issues of effectiveness, need, and be sustainable.



He is Chairman of ArchiAfrika, a platform that initiates and facilitates research and projects on the terrain of African architecture and architecture in Africa.



On his new passion, Joe Addo said, he has shifted attention from his practice to advocacy. He seeks to promote our unique culture via the exhibition our history. Considering this, he has set up a design gallery at James Town.



Watch the video excerpt below







Source: ATV









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Its being reported that Nicki Minajs home in Los Angeles was robbed early last week, and details have now been released to the public.

Police told E! that USD $200,000 (AUD $260,000) worth of belongings were stolen from Minajs home, including jewellery.

Its not completely clear to police how the burglars entered the home, but there were some signs of forced entry.

So far no suspects have been named, but sources say police believe the crime may have been committed by someone who actually knows the rapper.

Police are now trying to find CCTV footage due to the fact that Minaj lives in a gated community, and the rental listing for the mansion stated the house and community was equipped with a security system and CCTV cameras.

TMZ is reporting that Minaj has now spent a large amount of money on a security system that includes cameras to cover every inch of her huge mansion, and is also hiring security guards around the clock.

Well update this story as more information arises.

Source: E! / TMZ.

Photo: Barcroft Media / Getty.
When you come at the king, you better not miss. The same goes for popular science icons, too.

One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has committed a flagrant self-own by attempting to argue about climate science with Dr Karl bloody Kruszelnicki, and hes been swiftly rebuffed by your favourite Hawaiian-shirted boffin.

In an ongoing series of posts, the avowed climate science denier took issue with a video Dr Karl reposted.

The clip in question, compiled by the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), shows how much Earths surface temperatures have climbed in the past 140-odd years:

The thing is, Roberts doesnt have much time for any of the actual experts in this field, including the poor ol NOAA. Read: he legitimately reckons they have fudged the numbers.

So, Roberts responded by claiming the data had been tweaked to align with the supposed human-induced climate change narrative, and that the info is meaningless in terms of proving human involvement:

@sircrankset the surface temp has been upwardly manipulated so unscientific. It is also not evidence of causation. @doctorkarl  Sen. Malcolm Roberts (@SenatorMRoberts) February 3, 2017

Dr Karl responded in typical fashion, straight-up rubbishing both of Roberts assertions:

The senator arced up again, questioning the doctors logic:

@DoctorKarl How is a temperature trend (manipulated or not) evidence of human causation?  Sen. Malcolm Roberts (@SenatorMRoberts) February 3, 2017

@MackayIM @DoctorKarl The kind doctor just claimed temperature is a human causation of temperature!!  Sen. Malcolm Roberts (@SenatorMRoberts) February 3, 2017

To which Dr Karl responded with this academic put-down:

TBH, Dr Karl never actually made any comment on the video. He just asked people to check it out. With that in mind, this one is a pretty clear L for Roberts, whose distrust of legitimate science has veered into full-blown conspiracy mode.

In any case, he wants to debate this further, as if his thorough scientific bollocksing at the hands of Professor Brian Cox on Q&A wasnt enough:

@DoctorKarl When are we going to debate Karl?  Sen. Malcolm Roberts (@SenatorMRoberts) February 3, 2017

If Dr Karl can win an Ig Nobel for his work on discovering how lint winds up in bellybuttons, perhaps he can find out how this bloke made it into parliament.

Source: @DoctorKarl / Twitter.

Photo: @doctor_karl / Instagram.
Sure, Star Wars was filmed here, and so was The Matrix sequels and that new Thor film was shot here, and so was Superman Returns and that new Pirates of the Caribbean flick and one of the Mission Impossible films and that godawful-but-amazing Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie too.

But they are all SCUM compared to this! Bah! I spit on them all!

After four films of airborne fish wrecking the shite out of North America, the Sharknado series is now setting its sights on the rest of the world.

And that 100% includes Australia.

SyFy and film producers The Asylum have not only confirmed that production on Sharknado 5 is underway as of today, but that part of it will be shot right here in the merry old land of Aus.

The new film, which carries a working title only at this point, is confirmed to feature both Tara Reid and Ian Ziering who will be returning to their shark-punching roles one more time.

The fifth episode of weather-based shark insanity will be shot in more than five countries (so, six?) and filming began today in Bulgaria. Beyond that, the production will take in the UK and Australia as the deadly sharknados cause global chaos.

Where exactly filming will take place remains to be seen, and theres no firm plot details other than what if sharknados but too much? (really though, if youre searching for a rich narrative here youre dead set mugging yourself). But producers did leak a little bit of the script for the new flick, which looks a little something like this:

Yea yeah right.

Theres no release date on the horizon for the movie just yet. But if your morning train is delayed due to flying fish any time soon, now you know the reason.

I swear, if I dont get to see a giant goddamned shark doesnt eat the Sydney Harbour Bridge I will wreck shit.

Source: Supplied.
Those sweet, nourishing Bintangs just got a hell of a lot harder to acquire, pals. Low-cost carrier Tiger Airways has announced theyre permanently cancelling all flights to and from Bali.





Tigerair Australia confirmed they will no longer be flying in to Denpasar, after failing to gain regulatory approval from the Indonesian government to operate out of the airport.

Indonesian authorities today stated they would not be providing the airline with final approval, and that an alternative regulatory solution would need to be sought. However, such a solution would reportedly take around 6-months to source, which would compromise the airlines ability to operate as a low-cost carrier.

As a result, the airline has confirmed it will be pulling out of the Australia  Bali route altogether, with all planned flights in the near future cancelled. Tigerair confirmed that customers who had booked travel to Bali with the airline will be receiving full refunds.

Airline CEO Rob Sharp issued a statement a short while ago, asserting that any travellers stranded in Bali by todays decision will have the full support of the airline, and that Tigers parent company Virgin Australia will be assisting them to make alternative travel arrangements.

We have been advised by Indonesian authorities that in order to continue operating our flights to Bali, we would have to transfer to a new operating model that would take at least six months to implement and would compromise our ability to offer low-cost airfares to Australians. Providing a reliable, low-cost service is critical for Tigerair Australia and our customers, and therefore our only option is to withdraw from flying to Bali altogether. We will continue to work with Virgin Australia to support any passengers still in Bali and needing to travel home to Australia. We will also provide full refunds to customers who were booked to travel to and from Bali with us. Again, we sincerely apologise to our customers who have been caught up in this and we will continue to work around the clock to support them as best we can.

The airline had previously asserted that regular operation to and from Bali would recommence today, however a statement posted last night reneged on that, sending the airlines call centre into meltdown as customers attempted to gain information about their flights.

Tigerairs Australian domestic operations are not affected by todays decision.

Source: 9News.com.au.

Photo: Scott Barbour/Getty.
Protein, carbohydrates and narcotics? According to police in Philadelphia, a cafeteria worker allegedly put drugs on the menu for some students at George Washington High School.

According to 6ABC, Robert Lumpkin, 31, a cafeteria worker at the school, was caught on surveillance video "engaging in a transaction with students."

Police tell 6ABC the video shows him then going into a bathroom with the students for short periods of time.

The Philadelphia School District contacted police about the allegations Tuesday, and Lumpkin was arrested following a traffic stop Wednesday.

A search warrant turned up a total of $280 of marijuana in Lumpkin's home and vehicle.

However, police did not detail the kinds of drugs he was allegedly selling to students, referring to the contraband only as "narcotics."

Lumpkin is charged with possession and possession with intent to deliver.
Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

2017 Valentine's Day hotel packages in Philadelphia

Looking to spend a romantic weekend in the City of Brotherly Love? Philadelphia hotels are rolling out the red carpet with packages centered around couples. Check out some of the best Valentine's Day (and weekend) hotel packages in Philadelphia in this slideshow.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Hilton Philadelphia at Penn's Landing

201 S. Christopher Columbus Blvd., Philadelphia. 215-521-6500; Hilton.com

Enjoy wine or cider as part of the Hilton Philadelphia at Penns Landing Romance Package. Theres also a free full breakfast included for two at one of the hotels restaurants. The package also includes access to the hotels fitness center and pool.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Hotel Palomar

Its a night you wont forget with the Drunk in Love package at the Hotel Palomar. Youll be staying overnight at the hotels Presidential Suite to start things off. Youll also score a boudoir photo shoot with Boudoir Philly (including professional makeup). As for food, therell be an in-room tasting menu by Chef Robert Bobby Surdam and custom cocktails. Youll also be given an intimacy kit full of goodies. Its a popular package -- only Feb. 17 remains free. Itll cost you $1,999.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Hyatt at the Bellevue

200 S. Broad St., Philadelphia. 215-893-1234; philadelphiabellevue.hyatt.com

Nothing says welcome quite like a complimentary bottle of sparkling wine and chocolate-covered strawberries, both of which will greet you if you go with the Romance Package at the Hyatt at The Bellevue. The next morning indulge in a gourmet breakfast in bed, or, if you prefer, at XIX Cafe. Take your morning slow, because youll have a 2 p.m. late checkout too. The package starts at $239 for a king-sized bedroom.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Best Western Independence Park Hotel

Overnight parking is included in the Romantic Escape Package at The Independence Park Hotel. Youll also be greeted with a chilled bottle of champagne. After your evening at the hotel, enjoy a hot breakfast buffet. Package price starts at $117 per couple.

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Photo via Independent Hotel Twitter

Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

The Independent Hotel

Enjoy a taste of Philadelphias food scene with The Independent Hotels Romance Package. Youll be given a $40 gift certificate to Little Nonnas restaurant (1234 Locust St.) to enjoy some Italian food such as fontina-stuffed meatballs ($11), Pork Chop Parmigiana ($23) and Linguine Vongole ($22). The package also includes a bottle of wine, a box of artisanal chocolates and of course overnight accommodation at the hotel. The package starts around $259, but prices vary depending on the type of room and the day of booking.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

The Logan

Youll have your choice of white wine, red wine or champagne with the Romance Package at The Logan. The next day, enjoy an up to $30 breakfast for two at Urban Farmer, which boasts a menu that includes Bleu Crab Omelet with grilled onions, bacon, bearnaise and foraged mushrooms ($18) and Honey Biscuit with fried egg, sausage gravy, lemon marmalade and a crispy chicken leg ($15).

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

The Rittenhouse

A Rittenhouse Romance is the name of a package that includes not only a stay in the luxury hotel, but also $100 to use at the hotels spa or restaurants. Youll get free valet parking too and breakfast in bed. Theres also a romance-themed welcome amenity in your future.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Rittenhouse 1715

Rittenhouse 1715 offers various Valentines Day-themed add-ons to your stay at the hotel. Add $40 to your bill for two glasses of champagne, fresh strawberries and a Love Bar chocolate. For $15, you can have two mimosas made for you the next day with freshly squeezed juice. Upgrade it for $110 for a bottle of champagne and a dozen roses or to $150 for the bottle of champagne, six chocolate-covered strawberries and a dozen roses.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

The Ritz-Carlton

10 Avenue of the Arts, Philadelphia. 215-523-8000; ritzcarlton.com

Theres not one, but two Valentines-themed packages at the Ritz-Carlton. Hearts and Kisses packages include chocolate-covered strawberries from the hotels pastry team and a bottle of sparkling wine. It starts at $379 a night. The Lux Valentines Day Package includes a stay in a more luxurious room, rose petal turndown and bottle of sparkling wine. This is the package for chocolate lovers, as it includes chocolate-covered\ strawberries, truffles, chocolate French macarons, chocolate tarts and chocolate cupcakes. It starts at $449 a night.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotel

Chocolate-covered strawberries and sparkling wine await you as part of the Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotels Romance Package. Youll also enjoy a full American breakfast and, if youre lucky, 4 p.m. late checkout (thats depending on availability). Rates start at $224.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Sofitel Philadelphia

Chocolate or flowers? Thats the question facing you if you book the Romance package at Sofitel. One or the other will await you, its your choice of what you wish to be greeted with. Youll also be given a bottle of champagne on ice (so you can enjoy it whenever you like). Start your morning off with breakfast in bed too.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

Sonesta Philadelphia Hotel

Nothing beats breakfast in bed, which youll get with the Sonesta Philadelphia Hotels Romance Package. Youll also get a plate of chocolate-covered strawberries, sparkling wine or cider and a 2 p.m. late checkout. The package starts at around $200 for Valentines Day itself.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

The Windsor Suites

1700 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia. 877-784-8379; thewindsorsuites.com

Start your romantic stay off right with welcome drinks at Irish bar Con Murphys, part of the Romance Package at The Windsor Suites. Also included in the package: in-room breakfast, chocolate-covered strawberries and sparkling wine. Theres also early check-in and late check-out as part of the deal. If youre lucky you may even score an upgrade to a balcony room.

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Julia Hatmaker | jhatmaker@pennlive.com

More Valentine's Day

Need help getting into the Valentine's Day mood? Watch this video to see how adorable and wonderful love can be. Learn all about the history of Valentine's Day here. Be sure to get your sweetie this new Hershey treat too. And, if you're staying in, check out one of the most romantic movies of all time.

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Wing Bowl has come and gone, but for those of us who attended it will forever live in our memory.

Especially when it comes to the entourage processions.

The eating competition, which was held at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on Feb. 3, is more than just about wings. At Wing Bowl, the entrance of competitors and their entourages is a big deal. Each eater comes in with a solid crew, sometimes in costume and sometimes on a massive float. There's always a few Wingettes involved.

This year's entourage entrances were top notch and while there were many great ones, there were ten that caught our eye either because of the sheer extravagance, commitment to the spirit of the event, or just because they made us laugh.

Check out our top ten in the video above -- you'll find it doesn't agree with the official Wing Bowl verdict (the top entourage procession prize went to Meat Sack).

Want more Wing Bowl in your life? Check out the gallery below.

Craving more Philadelphia news? Check out all of our coverage from the City of Brotherly Love.
Wing Bowl 2017 has arrived and with it the consumption of thousands of wings.

That's right, thousands.

The Philadelphia-based eating competition sold-out the 20,000 seat Wells Fargo Arena, loading it with spectators eager to cheer on their favorite eater, boo competitive eater Pittsburgh Paulie (it is a Philly crowd after all) and ogle the scantily-clad Wingettes.

Notorious B.O.B. (aka 50-year-old Bob Shoudt) took the top prize, consuming 409 wings. The Wingette of the Year award went to Cathrine Clee of New Jersey.

The competition began at 6 a.m. It's finished around 9 a.m.

Last year, winner Molly Schuyler consumed 429 wings. Schuyler, by virtue of her win, was unable to compete in the competition this year. She did, however, get to face her wing-eating rival, El Wingador in a special eat-off. Schuyler won, consuming 95 wings in five minutes.

Relive Wing Bowl, as it happened, in the storify below.

This post has been updated to include information on the winner of the competition.
The Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture oversees restaurant inspections in the state. Inspection reports are "snapshots" of the day and time the inspections took place. In many cases, violations are corrected on site prior to the inspector leaving.

The following restaurants and other establishments in Lebanon County that handle food were inspected during the week of Jan. 8-14 and were recorded as of Jan. 27.

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Jan. 12

J & S PIZZA LIONS

31 W. MAIN ST., ANNVILLE

Regular inspection.

Dried-food residue on the microwave plate; dust accumulation on the cooling unit and fan guards inside the walk-in cooler.

Jan. 11

LEBANON CO. CAREER AND TECHNOLOGY CENTER

833 METRO DRIVE, LEBANON

Regular inspection.

Several stored and ready-to-use food containers had food residue and were not clean to sight and touch; shelving used to stored clean food-contact items not clean to sight and touch and is a source of potential contamination of the stored items.

PINE MEADOWS GOLF COURSE

319 PINE MEADOW ROAD, LEBANON

Regular inspection.

No sanitizer test strips or test kit to determine appropriate sanitizer concentration for the mechanical dishwasher; deeply scored cutting board at the bain-marie unit; chlorine chemical sanitizer residual detected in the final sanitizer rinse cycle of the low-temperature-sanitizing dishwasher was 0 ppm, and not 50-100 ppm as required; dust and grease accumulation on the wall exhaust fan above the two-compartment sink.

Jan. 10

99 EXPRESS

613 W. MAIN ST., UNIT 4, PALMYRA

Regular inspection.

Non-handled single-use containers stored in bulk ingredient bins; frozen food stored in non-food-grade plastic shopping bags; heavy frost build-up inside both chest freezers, not allowing the lids to shut tightly.

Establishments with no violations.

Jan. 12

KINDRED PLACE

1 KINDRED PLACE, ANNVILLE

Regular inspection.

Jan. 11

CHINA MOON

457 W. PENN AVE., CLEONA

Regular inspection.

JACKSON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

558 W. MAIN AVE., MYERSTOWN

Regular inspection.

MYERSTOWN SENIOR COMMUNITY CENTER

59 N. RAMONA ROAD, MYERSTOWN

Regular inspection.

UNION CANAL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

400 NARROWS DRIVE, LEBANON

Regular inspection.

Jan. 10

FIORELLO'S

123 E MAIN ST., PALMYRA

Change-of-owner inspection.

MAY'S WOK

181 S. LANCASTER ST., JONESTOWN

Regular inspection.

RITE AID #1662

950 E. MAIN ST., PALMYRA

Regular inspection.
You can tell a lot about people by the way they decorate their offices.

Take Marilyn Kulkin.

Behind her desk, a large glittery star reminds visitors they are in the presence of a "rock star." A nearby sign declares, "It ain't easy being queen." An almost life-sized Marilyn Monroe, signed by employees, serves as a reminder of her return from knee-replacement surgery. A shelf behind her desk holds a large collection of toys from McDonald's Happy Meals, one of her favorite treats.

Marilyn has had lots of time to accumulate all the goodies in her office. This weekend she celebrates her 60th anniversary as an employee of Bon-Ton.

Marilyn, a very young 80-year-old, began working at what was called Allied Bon-Ton in Lebanon on Feb. 4, 1957. Her pay at the time was 32 cents an hour.

She was a country girl from Frystown who spoke Pennsylvania Dutch to friends on neighboring farms. Back then, going to Lebanon was considered a special event.

"I thought Lebanon was like New York City," she recalled.

Years later, the country girl saw the differences first hand when she moved into a buyer's job at the Bon-Ton and traveled to the Big Apple twice a year.

Her career also included managing various store departments, but her favorite remains cosmetics. She still reminds friends who are retiring not to give up wearing makeup just because they are no longer working.

Her boss, store manager Susan Lynn, said Marilyn will tell friends and co-workers what outfits flatter them and, very pointedly, which don't. And she cautions never to walk in sandals near Marilyn if your pedicure isn't perfect.

Marilyn has been known to decorate her own perfectly coiffed hair with glitter on holidays and red streaks at Christmas.

Today, she wears many hats at the Colonial Park store, which she has called home since it opened. She runs the store's credit department, heads its Community Day events, hires the Christmas help and assists Susan Lynn with scheduling.

Why does she keep on working at 80?

"I'm staying because I love it," she said. Besides, she added, "It keeps your mind busy. It's good for you."

Marilyn said she never thought of herself as old until a couple of years ago "when I hired a young lady whose grandma used to work for me."

But, as they often say, age is just a number, and 80 doesn't seem to fit Marilyn.

She drives a PT Cruiser with red leather seats and looks forward to after-work cocktails, lunches with friends and trips to the beach, as long as that beach isn't too far from Atlantic City's casinos.

She's also something of a social butterfly. Susan said Marilyn's office is a gathering place for employees and shoppers alike. Everyone seems to know Marilyn, and many like to raid the candy jar she keeps on her desk.

She is also a boss' dream. She insists on working Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Saturdays, and Susan said, "Anything we throw at her, she learns."

Retailing might just be in her blood. When Marilyn was little, instead of playing dolls or school in her bedroom, she pretended she was selling items in a store.

Later, when she was a young wife and mother, she would listen to friends complain about their jobs. She would tell them, "I'm not carrying a lot of money, but I am happy."

All these years later, she remains happy.

Chuckling, she says, "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I guess I'll go into retail."

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net
AMISH RECESS

Each year, children die when their parents deny them medical care based on faith principles. While most orders of the Amish do not have doctrinal opposition to medical care, harmful inadequacies in health care usually happen because of the Amish religious opposition to insurance and public assistance, because of their attraction to folk and "natural" remedies, and because of trust that God will provide.(AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

(AMY SANCETTA/AP)

Reports of a two-year old Berks County girl having died after police said her parents withheld medical care for her based on religious grounds has once again drawn attention to what advocates say is the need for reform to state law.

Pennsylvania is one of 38 states and the District of Columbia that have religious exemptions in their civil codes on child abuse or neglect, or failure to report. Pennsylvania law exempts faith-healing parents from civil abuse charges when they refuse to get medical help. Exemptions do not apply if the actions result in the death of a child.

PennLive this week reported news out of Berks County detailing the Nov. 8 death of two-year-old Ella Foster, who died of pneumonia last November in her father's arms, after her parents failed to get her medical treatment because to do so violated their faith.

Jonathan Foster, 34, and his wife Grace Foster, 32, of Upper Tulpehocken Township, are members of Faith Tabernacle, a non-denominational church that has branches in Lebanon, Carlisle and Mechanicsburg.

Jonathan Foster, 34, and his wife Grace Foster, 32, of Upper Tulpehocken Township, are members of Faith Tabernacle, a non-denominational church that has branches in Lebanon, Carlisle and Mechanicsburg, which is pictured here. The Fosters have been charged in the death of their daughter.

The Fosters have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of children in connection with their daughter's death.

Authorities said the girl would have lived had she been put through a course of antibiotics.

Court papers show Jonathan Foster said:

"Any illness or injuries that occur within their lives are considered acts of God, and they leave all of their faith in God to keep them safe, healthy and debt free."

Faith Tabernacle prohibits immunizations, well-child checkups, medication, medical diagnosis, and even home monitoring of illness as with a fever thermometer.

Ella Foster is one of dozens of children who have died in recent years under similar circumstances.

Here is rundown of other cases. The information was provided to PennLive by Rita Swan, president of CHILD, Inc., (Children's Healthcare is a Legal Duty), an educational and advocacy group based in Lexington, Ky.

Swan notes two points in her research:

Most orders of the Amish do not have doctrinal opposition to medical care. Harmful inadequacies in health care among the Amish usually happen because of the Amish religious opposition to insurance and public assistance, because of their attraction to folk and "natural" remedies, and because of trust that God will provide. Many Amish communities show little interest in prevention and have low vaccination rates, but will get medical care for serious illnesses.

If criminal charges are not mentioned in accounts below, then no charges were filed in the case.

Hope Delozier, 18 months: Wyalusing, 2015

Hope Delozier, 18 months old, died of meningitis Feb. 23, 2015. The family lived in Wyalusing, but her parents Christine and Ebed Delozier had been members of Twelve Tribes in Vermont. They cited religious beliefs as a reason for not getting the child medical care as well as confidence in herbal remedies and lack of money for medical care. They were charged with manslaughter and endangerment and pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter.

Amish child D.S., 3 months old: Lancaster County 2013

Parents Naomi and John Stoltzfus of Lancaster County pled guilty to charges in the death of their child known as D.S., who died April 21, 2013 of sepsis due to bronchopneumonia. The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare cited the case as: "The parents stated that the child had been sick for 10 days with high fevers for a period of eight days. The parents are of the Amish faith and stated that they were using natural remedies to treat the child."

The investigation determined that the child could have been treated and survived with prompt medical attention and as little as $5 worth of medication. Amish doctors were available to the family but they chose not to take the child to one. The parents have acknowledged that they should have sought medical attention for the child. This was the family's only child. The family was not known previously to Lancaster County Children and Youth Services. State police charged both parents with one count misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child and one count misdemeanor recklessly endangering another person.

The Stoltzfuses were sentenced to seven years probation and ordered to attend parenting classes.

Kent Schaible, 2: Philadelphia 2009

On Jan. 24, 2009, Kent died of of pneumonia at the First Century Gospel Church in Philadelphia. A social worker and nurse visited the home two days after Kent's death to check for symptoms of pneumonia among his six surviving siblings. The children were not feverish, and a religious exemption statute prevented further monitoring so the Department of Human Services closed the case. The Schaibles were charged with and convicted of involuntary manslaughter and felony child endangerment. They were sentenced to 10 years' probation and ordered to obtain medical care for their surviving children. The prosecutor and even a defense attorney implored the court to require supervision by Child Protection Services, but the court instead required only that they meet with probation officers.

Brandon Schaible, eight months: 2013

Brandon died April 18, 2013 of bacterial pneumonia after suffering for a week with diarrhea, irritability, loss of appetite and labored breathing. Brandon was seen by a licensed health care provider only once and that was when he was 10 days old. Even though the Schaibles were on probation with a court order to get medical care for illnesses of their children, they relied on their church instead. They were convicted by plea agreement of third-degree murder but sentenced to only 31/2 years in prison. The prosecutor is appealing the lenient sentence.

Amy Fox, 3: 2009

Amy died at age 3 on March 11, 2009, of HIB meningitis, which is vaccine-preventable and also treatable with antibiotics.

"The child's family belongs to a church that eschews modern medicine," the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on April 1, 2009.

Benjamin Reinert, 2: Philadelphia 2002

Benjamin Reinert died at his home at the age of 9. The medical examiner found that the boy had been severely anemic and his brain was swollen. The cause of death was ruled acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Benjamin's family were members of Faith Tabernacle. Friends and family gathered to pray, but did not seek medical help.

Benjamin's aunt explained to authorities that under Faith Tabernacle beliefs, seeking medical help is turning "your heart against God" and "serv[ing] Satan."

"We are completely dependent on God for everything we need, financially, spiritually and physically. We trust God to heal us and . . . nine times out of ten he does. [When someone dies], "God wants that person. He takes life. He gives life," she said.

The boy had been checked on by child social workers.

Pennsylvania law exempts the faith-healing parents from civil abuse charges when they refuse to get medical help. The law directs county social workers to "closely monitor" the sick child and to intervene only if long-term damage is threatened.

Medical authorities say social workers are not competent to diagnose.

Amish baby, 21 hours: Lancaster County 2005

The newborn died of untreated pneumonia. The baby was delivered by an unlicensed midwife. The state medical board examines cases only after a complaint is made.

Melinda Friedenburger, age 4 and 1/2 months, of Altoona

Melinda died April 25, 1991 of severe malnutrition and dehydration. Parents Kathy and John Friedenberger were convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1992. Kathy Friedenberger was a member of Faith Tabernacle.

Kimberly Wilson, 18 months: Philadelphia 1992

Kimberly died March 12, 1992, of pneumonia and myocarditis. Her parents belonged to Faith Tabernacle.

Baby Boy Houston, childbirth, 1994: possibly Philadelphia

The baby died before delivery because his mother was hemorrhaging and died during delivery.

Curtis Houston, 16: 1994

Curtis died of a leg infection in 1994 a few months after his mother and baby brother died. He had broken his leg a year earlier. The Houstons belonged to Faith Tabernacle.

Shannon Nixon, 17: Altoona 1996

Shannon Nixon died of diabetes June 27, 1996 in Altoona. Her parents Dennis and Lorie Nixon belonged to Faith Tabernacle and had been convicted for letting her brother die in 1991. They were given prison sentences for the second death. Authorities said they should have known diabetes ran in their family because Dennis' brother, also a member of the Faith Tabernacle church (N.J.), let two of his children die of untreated diabetes.

Dean Heilman, 22: Philadelphia 1997

Dean, a hemophiliac, bled to death on July 8, 1997, in Philadelphia. His Faith Tabernacle parents were convicted of manslaughter and endangerment and sentenced to 17 years probation.

6 children who died of measles complications in 1991

Philadelphia in 1991 saw an outbreak of measles that resulted in more than 1400 reported and confirmed cases. Among the children who died were: Karyn Still, age 9, of Olney; Monica Johnson, age 9, of Germantown; Tina Louise Johnson, age 13; James Jones, 19 months; Linnette Milnes, age 13; Nancy Evans, age 5. Nancy's parents belonged to First Century Gospel Church; the other five children were in Faith Tabernacle families.

There were 486 cases among the two churches. The outbreak spread beyond those churches making a total of 938 measles cases in the city. Three babies not associated with the faith healing churches also died in the epidemic. The babies were all too young to be vaccinated.

Unnamed baby boy, 8 months: Danville 1991

The boy, who belonged to an Amish community near Danville, died of the rare genetic disease adenosine deaminase deficiency (ADA). Effective, but very expensive medical treatment for ADA is available. The Amish, however, have strong religious beliefs against buying insurance and accepting public assistance. Their community traditionally contributes to pay medical bills of members. The parents, their bishop, and other church members decided not to provide the medical treatment because of the enormous financial burden upon the church. They also refused to accept Medicaid. The drug company offered to provide the drug free, and a doctor offered to show the parents how to do procedures at home to save money, but the parents still refused.

Lisa and Leroy Carpenter: Philadelphia

Lisa Carpenter, 15, died of meningitis in 1984 in Philadelphia. Leroy Carpenter, Jr., 17, died of a ruptured appendix in 1989. He was Lisa's brother. The Carpenters belonged to the Faith Tabernacle Church.

Premature twins: 1990

Premature twins belonging to Sharon and Jeffrey Still died Feb. 6 and 7, 1990, in Philadelphia following an unattended home delivery. Their sister Karyn, age 9, died in the measles outbreak the next year. The family belonged to Faith Tabernacle.

Clayton Nixon, 8 years old, of Altoona

Clayton died Jan. 6, 1991 of severe malnutrition and dehydration after contracting ear and sinus infections, which caused him to vomit repeatedly. He was 49 inches tall and weighed only 32 pounds at his death. His Faith Tabernacle parents, Dennis and Lorie Nixon, were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment, but placed on probation.

This is an incomplete list. Dozens of other children are listed as having died after parents, citing religious beliefs, denied them medical care.

Note: Pennsylvania's Child Protective Service Law (2014) states that if "the failure to provide needed medical or surgical care causes the death of the child" the religious exception does not apply. The religious exception bills enacted in 2013/2014 strengthened the language to allow Children and Youth Services to monitor and intervene even if there is a religious exception, and for death of the child to void the exception.

Religious exception provisions do not apply to mandated reporters, who must report suspected abuse. Mandated reporters must report all suspected abuse immediately to Childline at 1(800) 932-0313.
Former Harrisburg City Councilman Kelly Summerford is expected to face off against a sitting city councilwoman in the race for a district judge's seat.

Kelly Summerford

Summerford launched a website and posted fliers announcing his candidacy for the 12-1-05 seat currently held by George Zozos. Zozos reportedly is not seeking to retain his seat.

City Councilwoman Destini Hodges previously announced her bid for the same job.

Summerford, 61, is a an arts management consultant who served on Harrisburg's City Council from 2010 to 2014, when he lost his reelection bid.

Summerford describes himself as a "well-seasoned senior level administrator" with more than 35 years experience in unions, mental health, computer technology and cultural competency. He said he grew up in Harrisburg and graduated from Harrisburg public schools.

"District Magistrate Judges are important positions," he wrote in his campaign announcement, "more than ever with the turmoil we find our country and local communities in today. We need to have a person sitting in that important seat who is fair and just with a clear idea on how their decisions will affect lives."

Summerford worked 13 years as a computer programmer and 12 years as a liaison for the Pennsylvania Child and Adolescent Service System Program (CASSP) Training and Technical Assistance Institute.

Some of the "unique" qualifications that Summerford cited were his service on the Harrisburg Civil Service Commission, Swatara Police Community Advisory Council and Federal Courthouse panel.

The primary election is set for May 16. The district he is seeking to represent as judge covers city of Harrisburg wards: 9-3, 9-4, 9-5 and 13.
Magisterial District Judge David O'Leary, who was appointed last year to the the seat vacated by Marsha Stewart, would like to keep his job for six more years.

O'Leary recently announced his candidacy for the seat, which will be one of three up for grabs in this year's election. He is a lawyer and retired partner from Rhoads & Sinon.

O'Leary won the job last year through a competitive process and was appointed by Gov. Tom Wolf. He has lived in the city's third ward for more than 10 years.The district covers wards 3, 4, 8, and Precinct 1 of ward 9 in Harrisburg - and includes Allison Hill, downtown Harrisburg, and the Capital Area neighborhoods.

He is expected to face at least one challenger on the ballot: Beverly Johnson, a fair housing manager.

O'Leary said he loves the people he meets every day and wants to continue to treat the residents of the 12-1-04 district fairly, impartially and compassionately.

"Magisterial district judges have a lot of discretion," he said in his campaign announcement. "But discretion is wasted when a judge does not have good judgment. I think I have good judgment because I listen to everyone in my court with respect, courtesy, and an open mind; because I have decades of legal experience to draw on; and because I make an honest effort to explain the law and my rulings clearly - avoiding unnecessary legal terms as much as possible."

Another thing O'Leary loves about his job is performing weddings, a practice he said he initiated at the court at 1520 Walnut Street.

O'Leary graduated with honors from Suffolk University School of Law in Boston and helps organize weekly breakfasts on Saturdays at his church, Cathedral Parish of St. Patrick.

"I serve the grits," he said of the events for the homeless and poor. "Some of our guests call me judge. Most call me the grits man."Dauphin County inmate found dead in cell had just asked to meet with psychiatrist
A Lancaster County man is facing charges after arranging a meeting with a man he believed was going to allow him to have sex with his 14-year-old daughter, officials said.

But Harry G. Creek Jr., 63, of Elizabethtown, later learned both the father and the daughter were both actually undercover agents with the state attorney general's office, according to court records.

On Jan. 23, agents found an online ad they say was written by Creek where he explained he was looking for "that special daddy/daughter relationship" and "I know there are girls out there looking for a daddy...we just need to find each other," records state.

An undercover agent sent Creek an email saying he had a 14-year-old daughter and began corresponding and texting with him over the next several days.

Creek responded with a message saying "Nice...but not sure I want to go to jail...but it sounds like a fantasy come true...I bet she is really sweet," records state.

An agent posing as the girl also began texting Creek, he responded by detailing the sexual acts he wanted to perform with her, records state.

Creek eventually agreed to meet with the undercover agents on Jan. 27 at a hotel in the Hershey area, records state.

On the day of the meeting, Creek sent a text message to the agent he though was the girl saying "Good morning...Hope you slept well...Have a great day at a school...Hope I can meet you tonight," records state.

The agent posing as the father met Creek at the hotel room, shook his hand and said he wanted to make sure everything was safe before he dropped his daughter off, records said.

Creek replied "Yes, I wouldn't hurt her," records state.

Agents then came into the room and arrested Creek.

Creek has been charged with unlawful contact with a minor and criminal use of a communication facility.

He is currently being held in the Dauphin County Prison on $100,000.

Investigators encourage anyone with additional information about this suspect to call 1-800-385-1044. Individuals who suspect an online predator or child sexual abuse can also send an anonymous tip to the Office of Attorney General by texting PAKIDS + YOUR TIP to 847411.
A Waynesboro-area man is in Franklin County prison in lieu of $300,000 after being charged with molesting an 11-year-old girl.



District Attorney Matthew D. Fogal said Friday that Kristopher L. Rebo, 33, of Washington Township, was charged by county detectives with rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, statutory sexual assault, aggravated indecent assault and indecent assault.



Investigators said the crimes occurred in May 2012.




WILLIAMSPORT - A Lycoming County man committed suicide a day before his preliminary hearing on charges from a traffic accident that seriously injured his passenger.

Coroner Charles E. Kiessling Jr. Thursday confirmed Damian D. Abbott, 22, of Hughesville, took his own life Wednesday.

District Justice Allen P. Page III said he learned of the possible death when Abbott failed to appear for his Thursday afternoon hearing, but witnesses did.

Page did not dismiss the charges because he said Williamsport police told him they would withdraw them once they had confirmation of the death.

Abbott had been charged in connection with an accident at 5 a.m. on July 4, 2016, on the westbound on ramp to the Market Street Bridge from Interstate 180.

The accident report states Abbott was traveling in excess of 75 miles an hour on the ramp that has a 35-mile-per-hour speed limit when his car struck a concrete barrier.

A passenger, Robert Vanemon, 38, of Linden, was critically injured and still is confined to a wheelchair.

His injuries included 23 broken ribs, a collapsed lung, and a broken back and neck, police said.

Abbott, who had a Lewisburg address at the time of the accident, had been charged with aggravated assault by vehicle and the same charge while drunk, drunken driving, recklessly endangering another person and a number of traffic violations.

His blood alcohol level was .15 or nearly twice the legal limit to drive, the charges state.
Patrick Toomey

Opponents of the nomination of Betsy DeVos for Education have launched an online campaign on GoFundMe in the hopes of persuading Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to vote against her. The Senate is expected to vote on her confirmation next week. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

(Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Dorothy Laincz doesn't have children, but she feels passionate enough about them to dive into a little political activism.

Laincz is one of more than 2,000 people who have donated to an online fundraiser aimed at persuading Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to vote against the confirmation of Betsy DeVos, President Donald Trump's controversial pick for Education. Toomey has vowed to vote for her.

Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2017, at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

With the vote set for sometime next week, opponents of DeVos are hoping to change Toomey' mind: They are aiming to raise $55,800 on a GoFundMe - the amount the Michigan billionaire philanthropist donated to Toomey's campaign.

"I have friends that have kids with disabilities," said Laincz of Carlisle. "I don't think this nominee is going to fight for them, definitely not based on her record and her statements in the hearings. I firmly believe don't ask for their circumstances and it's up to everyone to make sure they contribute in helping take care of them."

The GoFundMe page, which was launched Wednesday by Katherine Fritz of Philadelphia, has so far registered donations from 2,329 people for a total of $38,371.

Writes Fritz:

"Betsy DeVos has never set foot in a classroom, did not send her children to public school, cannot distinguish between proficiency and growth, and thinks that guns should be allowed in schools in the event of grizzly attacks. That fictitious grizzly is about as qualified as Ms. DeVos to run the Department of Education.



If Betsy DeVos can buy Senator Toomey's vote, we should be allowed to do the same."

Trump's nomination of DeVos has met with fierce opposition from teachers unions and groups opposed to her support of charter schools and tuition vouchers. DeVos, who attended private schools, has also come under attack for her lack of experience in public education.

The looming Senate confirmation vote could not be tighter. This week, two more Republican lawmakers - Senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) came out in opposition of DeVos, setting up a potential 51-50 vote in the Senate to confirm DeVos.

Opponents who have turned to the GoFundMe campaign hope that their efforts will sway Toomey to tip the scale in their favor by voting against her.

"Constituents are very frustrated," said Laincz, a registered independent. "The accusations that we aren't over the election are constant. The point of frustration is that we have moved on and we are in the next phase and that is governing and leadership and I don't see that we are being afforded neither."

Toomey has not wavered from his stance on DeVos, whom he praised for her work in "ensuring that poor children trapped in failing schools have the same opportunities that wealthy and middle class kids already have."

"She has worked for children, parents, and teachers to give low-income children the chance to escape crime and poverty," Toomey said in a statement. "And let's face it, too many students are not getting that chance. Their families cannot afford tuition for a private school. Nor can they afford to move to a more affluent neighborhood with a good public school."

Toomey praised DeVos for her efforts to expand charter and cyber schools, school choice and tuition tax credits.

Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., has pledged a vote of opposition. Conservatives have tried to persuade him otherwise.

Casey earlier this month grilled DeVos after she admitted she would not follow Obama administration Title IX guidelines, which among its provisions, direct how schools, colleges and universities treat sexual assault and harassment allegations. He derided DeVos for having worked to dismantle the Campus SaVE Act, which Casey sponsored and expands on federal law on campus sexual assault.

We must take action to prevent the erosion of the protections that we have won for victims of sexual assault. https://t.co/dcHuxvaEyU  Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) February 1, 2017

Fritz writes on the GoFundMe page that if Toomey declines the money raised, the funds will be donated to Camp Sojourner, the Pennsylvania Arts Education Network, and the Children's Literacy Initiative.
Travis_Kalanick_LeWeb.jpg

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

With protests against President Donald Trump's travel ban expected to continue this weekend, Pittsburgh tech companies are joining those speaking out against the measure.

Pittsburgh's tech scene is growing rapidly, and the industry itself has been quick to condemn Trump's recent executive order restricting arrivals from seven "terror-prone" middle eastern countries. The pushback involves concerns about the ban's economic impacts, Silicon Valley's reliance on foreign-born talent and, generally speaking, the tech industry's liberal inclinations.

For example, Google, a company that arrived in Pittsburgh in 2006, joined other tech titans in drafting a letter opposing Trump's travel ban earlier this week.

"Since the country's birth, America has been the land of opportunity -- welcoming newcomers and giving them the chance to build families, careers and businesses in the United States," the draft reads. "We are a nation made stronger by immigrants. As entrepreneurs and business leaders, our ability to grow our companies and create jobs depends on the contributions of immigrants from all backgrounds."

Uber, whose move into Pittsburgh brought widespread attention to both the company and city last year, also said it opposes the travel ban. This after a #DeleteUber consumer protest that sought to punish the company for its actions amid physical protests against the travel ban in New York City on Saturday. The outrage also cited Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's inclusion on a Trump administration economic advisory council.

In an email to PennLive on Thursday, the San Francisco-based company stressed that Kalanick was strongly opposed to the travel ban, calling it "wrong" and "unjust," and pointing out that Kalanick was "one of only two CEOs" on Trump's economic advisory council to have spoken out against the executive order.

On Thursday, Kalanick withdrew from the council amid the blowback and the #DeleteUber push. As many as 200,000 people are said to have deleted the app from their phones as part of the #DeleteUber campaign.

Meanwhile, Amazon, another tech company with a growing Pittsburgh presence, was one of a handful of tech companies exploring legal action against Trump's executive order barring travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries, according to the Washington Post.

Amazon also joined a lawsuit brought by the state of Washington against the immigration ban, the Post added in a Wednesday article.

In Pittsburgh, the Post-Gazette newspaper also reported that the Pittsburgh Technology Council had reached out to "legal experts and to the offices of Pennsylvania Senators Bob Casey, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican," about its concerns with the ban's potential impacts on the city's tech industry and institutions of higher learning.

"Any high-tech company is going to look globally for talent, and universities have always attracted global talent," Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the technology council, told the paper. "People who attend those universities have looked at opportunities in the region. They pay taxes and contribute to the community."

In addition, homegrown tech companies like Duolingo, an East Liberty-based language learning company, and Schell Games, a Station Square-based game design and development company, both spoke out against the travel restrictions put in place by Trump late last week.

"Since Duolingo has several foreign visa holders on our team, this issue hit very close to home for us," spokeswoman Michaela Kron told the Post-Gazette.

Christopher Arnold, general council and human resources director for Schell Games, added: "The problem with the executive order is its speed and arbitrariness."

Protests against the travel ban have been seen in Pittsburgh and cities across Pennsylvania and the country in the last week. Those protests are expected to continue into and likely through the weekend as well.
CAPITOL DOME OPINION ART.jpg

(PennLive file photo)

By Rick Bloomingdale

February is the official start of the Pennsylvania budget process. In the first week of the month, the Governor has the opportunity to outline his budget priorities in an address made to a joint session of the General Assembly.

Rick Bloomingdale (PennLive file)

Later in the month, the House and Senate Appropriations committees hold hearings with each state department to hear their budget requests.

By the end of spring, the General Assembly synthesizes all of these requests and, ideally, passes their own final version of the budget by June 30.

This is going to be a difficult budgeting year and the state will undoubtedly have to make some tough decisions.

The state's Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) estimates that the deficit will be $1.7 billion next fiscal year and $3 billion by 2021-22; this bad news is coupled with lower revenue numbers than were previously estimated.

Before the sausage-making adventure begins, I want to urge the Governor and the General Assembly to put Pennsylvania families first as they seek to balance the budget and fund core services.

We have seen too many one-time revenue gimmicks in recent years that just don't add up.

The Pa. AFL-CIO has joined forces with the state's public sector unions to form the CLEAR Coalition, and together we've found more than $2.5 billion in savings, efficiencies and revenue enhancements that we think will ease some of the state's fiscal problems.

The state could right-size the management to worker ratio, reform the process of state contracts, monitor and enforce Medicaid fraud committed by providers, and end giveaways to charter and cyber schools.

These are common sense reforms that fall within the Governor's promise of "Government that Works."

For revenue enhancements, Pennsylvania is missing out on millions of dollars that could be raised from a severance tax and ensuring that Marcellus shale drillers pay their fair share.

We remain the only state with active shale that does not impose an extraction tax on its drillers.

We can close corporate loopholes in lieu of making harmful cuts to health and human service programs.

While there are cuts that should be made and reforms that may produce savings, we cannot stray from the essential services of state government.

Public, K-12 education has been underfunded for years; Pennsylvania ranks in the bottom five states in its share of funding basic education.

We've lagged behind in state share for so long that reports estimate our schools need an additional $3 billion more than we currently give them.

The state increase would also ease the burden of homeowners who see their property taxes increase every year to make up the difference.

Even if a student completes K-12 education, getting a college degree from the state is no bargain.

The cost of higher education is on the rise and attending even a public university is out of reach for most lower and middle-class families without burdening students with a decade worth of debt.

Political realities make the likelihood of a broad based revenue enhancement like an increase in the personal income tax or the sales tax highly unlikely, but year after year of austere budgeting has left middle-class families hurting. These families need a raise.

An increase to the state minimum wage is overdue. Moving the wage up to $10.10 per hour immediately, with an eventual increase to $15 (as many other states have done) would give 1.2 million Pennsylvanians a desperately needed raise.

The vast majority (90 percent) are adults over the age of 20, and 60 percent of them are women. An increase in their wages would help families immensely, while driving up the wages of all working Pennsylvanians.

As we put more money into the pockets of Pennsylvanians, they're going to spend it. That means businesses will have to hire more employees to keep up with more families dining out, going to the movies and shopping retail.

The higher spending would create enough work to generate 6,000 new jobs.

This is an important budgeting year; the middle class can't sustain another year of cuts without meaningful reforms, investments to the services they need, or a raise in their wages.

Gov. Tom Wolf and the Republican-controlled General Assembly must use the 2017-18 fiscal year budget to show Pennsylvanians that their concerns have been heard.

Rick Bloomingdale is president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO. He writes from Harrisburg.
DAVID KORNEGAY ART.jpeg

David Kornegay (submitted photo)

By Anwar Curtis

A parent's love for their child is unconditional.

Anwar Curtis (PennLive file)

Joy, fear, and excitement are all emotions that overtake both parents' psyche the moment of conception, but the most important component of parenting is the urge to protect ones child.

So what happens the moment a parent loses the ability to protect?

Parents know they can't shadow every moment of their child's life. But they can hope that the "seed of morality" is shadowing the child when they're not around.

So when a child makes a life-changing mistake and ends up behind bars, parents sometimes ask themselves if it's their fault. Did they fail to protect their child when it mattered most?

Some parents might agree with words written by Harrisburg author Madonna "Sankofa The Poet" Awotwi and conclude, "When you take my child away from me, it's like taking my life away."

The author also wrote that "the streets pay refuge to black children lost." '

On Oct. 3, 2014, 16-year-old David Kornegay, a former Harrisburg resident who was living in Georgia at the time, took what many would look at as a most unfortunate gamble.

After leaving school one day, he robbed an acquaintance, taking less than $100.

According to Kornegay's mother, Phyllis Smith, police did not make an arrest until three weeks later after several other robberies in the area had taken place. Investigators were trying to tie her son to the other crimes, she said.

Despite the fact that there was no proof of his involvement, Kornegay cooperated with investigators in those other cases.

Not quite a year later, on June 8, 2015, Kornegay, who had been indicted for armed robbery, pleaded guilty. His parents believe he was made a scapegoat for those other offenses.

Smith said their attorney convinced them that, if Kornegay pleaded to a lesser charge of robbery and waived his first-time offender rights and declined his right to take the case to juvenile court, he'd be sent to a Georgia boot camp instead of prison.

"I'm thinking as a mother, 120 days in boot-camp sounds a whole lot better than twenty years. I'm not knowing that my child can receive First Time Offender, and can go to juvenile court," Smith told me.

He got 20 years in prison instead.

Kornegay's parents were in shock.

"Prior to his court date, probation went and sat with David. Probation wrote up a summary stating that David would be a good candidate for boot camp or probation. So for the judge to get that recommendation and still sentence my brother to 20 years is absurd," Kornegay's older sister, Ebony Smith, said.

Kornegay, only a teen at the time, waived his rights to juvenile court and a first-time offender adjudication, thinking that was the best way to go after consulting with his lawyer.

And all this for $100.

It was a terrible mistake.

But two years into his 20-year term at Dooly State prison in Unadilla, Ga., Kornegay is making the best of it and trying to turn his life around.

He's since earned his GED; is tutoring other inmates and, through his sister's intervention, he's been accepted into Harrisburg Area Community College. And all this while racking up a record for good behavior.

"Everyone deserves a second chance, but take advantage of your first," he told me in a phone conversation.

Even so, a judge denied a petition for sentence re-modification, dashing his hopes that he would have been released last summer.

And while it's true that Kornegay may have made some terrible decisions, but, with the support of his family, he's been making up for it.

Life is about the mistakes you make, learning and having a fair chance to do better. Some say life begins the moment a person discovers his or her purpose.

Maybe Kornegay's purpose is in sharing this story to possibly protect another life from the very mistake he made as a mere child, while his family continues to fight for justice because "the system cannot have our sons."

Anwar Curtis, of Harrisburg, is a PennLive Opinion contributor. His work appears biweekly.
Donald Trump,Omarosa Manigault,Ben Carson,Lynne Patton

President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting on African American History Month in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017. From left are, Omarosa Manigault, Trump, Housing and Urban Development Secretary-designate Ben Carson, and Lynne Patton. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

(Evan Vucci)

By Jonathan Capehart

On any level, President Donald Trump's "listening session" to mark Black History Month was an unenlightened hot mess.

Jonathan Capehart (PennLive file)

When Trump read from the sheet of paper in front of him, he did so with the confidence of an unsure student delivering a book report in front of the class. When the president veered off that single-page lifeline, he betrayed stunning ignorance. Frederick Douglass, anyone?

Or how about the reference to Thomas Jefferson? A Founding Father and the third president of the United States, he was also the owner of slaves and had six children with one of them, Sally Hemings. At the start of Black History Month, it probably would have been better to just not mention him at all.

But what made the car wreck in the Roosevelt Room of the White House all the more rubber-necky was who was in the room.

To the president's left was Ben Carson, a Trump punching bag during the primaries, now his secretary-designate of housing and urban development. And to his right was Omarosa Manigault, "Apprentice" alum, communications director for the White House office of public liaison and the person I'm told who organized the session.

During an interview with me on MSNBC in 2015, when I asked Omarosa if she would vote for Trump, she said, "I'm a die-hard Democrat. Come on. I've got Hillary Clinton tattooed on my left arm."

So much for that. But it makes what happened at the White House on Wednesday all the more interesting.

With the exception of Carson, a sweetheart of movement conservatives, not one person at the table was a black Republican of national stature. It's not like they don't exist. The GOP is filled with history-making members, none of whom was mentioned by Trump or even in the room.

Where was Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina? He's the first African American elected from the South since Reconstruction. He's the only black Republican in the Senate and the first since Edward Brooke of Massachusetts. In 1966, Brooke was the first African American ever popularly elected to the Senate. He served until 1978.

Where was Rep. Will Hurd of Texas? He won a surprise victory in his majority Hispanic district in 2014 and won reelection last November. According to the Texas Tribune, Hurd became "the first incumbent to hold onto the Texas 23rd District in eight years."

Where was Rep. Mia Love of Utah? She's only the first African-American Republican woman elected to Congress and the first black person to ever be elected to the body from that overwhelmingly white and conservative state.

Where was Michael Steele? The former lieutenant governor of Maryland is the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and was also the first African American to lead the GOP. Or how about former representative J.C. Watts of Oklahoma?

The table could have been filled out with others, such as former HUD secretary Alphonso Jackson; Kay Cole James, former director of the federal Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush; Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King; and Star Parker, the conservative founder of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. And do I even need to mention former secretary of state, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and general Colin Powell?

But this is what happens when a lifelong Democrat plans the Republican president's Black History Month event.

One's display of ignorance about the history of African Americans in the GOP was only outmatched by the other's stunning ignorance of the history of blacks in the country he leads.

Jonathan Capehart is is a member of The Washington Post's editorial board and writes for the PostPartisan blog. Subscribe to his podcast Cape UP, available on iTunes and Stitcher.
The Pennsylvania State Police Academy suffered from complacency and a lack of leadership in recent years, Commissioner Tyree Blocker said Friday, as he worked to reassure the public that those problems are being addressed.

"From my perspective, there was an awful lot of complacency at the academy," he told PennLive, shortly after the release of an Office of Inspector General report. "That no longer will be allowed to exist."

In December 2015, the academy was rocked by cheating allegations after a staff member discovered a handwritten "cheat sheet" on the premises. During an internal investigation, 26 cadets resigned and another 16 were dismissed by the agency. Eight more were investigated, exonerated and are now troopers.

Cadets and staff members, however, told PennLive last March that dysfunction at the academy went far beyond any one incident of cheating. Shortly therafter, Blocker called on the OIG, which investigates state agencies, to perform an independent review.

In addition to changes in personnel and the tests themselves that were rolled out last year, Blocker said many of the OIG's recommendations have been or are currently being implemented.

Blocker, who was appointed to lead the agency in 2015, said the academy will instate a term limit on instructors. He said the school's administration, which is led by a major and two captains, don't usually stay there for more than five years due to promotions.

State Police Commissioner Tyree Blocker outlined a number of changes to academy policy, as well as technology upgrades, designed to address what he called an "awful lot of complacency" in recent years.

The agency has also begun working with academics from Elizabethtown College to scrutinize the academy's curriculum. Those outsiders will provide input on both the tests themselves and teaching techniques tailored to the facility's adult students.

Currently, cadets must be at least 20 years old to apply. In order to be appointed to the academy, they must be between 21 and 40 years old.

As recently as last year, much of the academy's non-physical curriculum was based on rote memorization. The OIG found that the tests themselves had not changed for years on end, with some instructors reporting that no substantial overhaul had been completed since the 1990s. Some instructors provided answers directly from those exams and cadets handed down study guides from one class to the next.

The teaching techniques at the academy are expected to change as a result of the Elizabethtown review although it was too soon for Blocker to provide specific examples.

"This is something long overdue," the commissioner said. "Training is a critical component of 21st century policing. It's absolutely essential we have the right framework for our troopers and the right learning environment and instructional framework."

Blocker said the agency will also invest in a computerized testing system that will create "test banks" that allow the academy to create randomized questions for each new class.

That new system is tentatively set to launch with the start of the 148th cadet class this March, he said. The agency has already received approval via the Office of Administration, and with Gov. Tom Wolf's blessing, to spend the necessary funds to launch that system.

So far, Blocker said, the agency does not have an estimate on the costs.

As for what happens to the cadets who left the academy or may have graduated under the flawed system outlined by the OIG?

First, Blocker said, none of the cadets from the 144th class who were dismissed or resigned will be allowed back into the academy.

"The 16 individuals who were dismissed and terminated--that occurred after a full and complete investigation," he said, referring to the academy's internal process that played out in the winter of 2015 and 2016. "Once you resign, that will continue to stand. It's a voluntary resignation. People resign for a whole host of reasons."

Blocker said he's not concerned that troopers who are currently in the field may not have thoroughly absorbed the material taught at the academy under the old system of recycled tests and instructor-provided answers.

In terms of the inadequate medical training and exam, he said, the agency has worked with the American Red Cross to ensure the requisite number of hours are met for certification.

Troopers also have mandatory in-service training that is completed every year.

"If a cadet has successfully gone through our academy and has graduated, I am of the opinion that they have the requisite skill and ability to adequately perform the duties of a Pennsylvania state trooper," Blocker said.
FILE - In this Thursday, Mach 17, 2016 file photo, World chess champion Hou Yifan of China holds the trophy at an award presentation ceremony of the FIDE World Chess Championship in Lviv, Ukraine. The worldAos top female chess player has given up her last game to protest being paired against mostly female players at a major tournament where male contestants outnumbered them.(AP Photo/Pavlo Palamarchuk, File)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, speaks with other EU heads of state during an EU summit round table meeting at the Grand Masters Palace in Valletta, Malta, on Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. European Union heads of state and government gathered Friday for a one day summit to discuss migration and the future of the EU. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)
Glenn Cooke, President of Cooke Seafood, Inc. will be the guest speaker at the Petersburg Chamber of Commerce Annual Meeting and banquet to be held at the Sons of Norway Hall on February 25. In June 2016 Cooke Seafood, Inc. purchased Icicle Seafoods.

In addition to regular business, the Business of the Year will be announced by Chamber President Seth Scrimsher.

Tickets will be available Tuesday, Feb. 7 at the Chamber office or from board members.

...
WRANGELL  A Wrangell resident was among the travelers detained following a selective travel ban issued by the White House last week.

Sylvia Ettefagh was returning from a 10-day vacation in Costa Rica with her husband, John, and friends the Stroms on Saturday. The group was at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on its way to connecting with an Alaska Airlines flight to Seattle.

At customs, Ettefagh attempted to enter the Global Entry section of the Trusted Traveler program. The expedited screening is offered by US Customs and Border Protection for frequent travelers, and potential...
Here, there, everywhere  why car washes seem to be on every corner
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Scottish brand Endura needs little introduction these days, having cemented itself as a go-to brand for highly functional and well-priced mountain bike clothing. Choosing the right clothing for the winter is a tricky task with so much choice in any well-stocked bike shop or online retailer, but the Endura MTR Shell Jacket ticks all the boxes. Its a packable, waterproof jacket that is extremely good at keeping you dry and sheltered from the elements; and that goes a long way towards helping you deal with unpredictable weather.



Endura MTR Shell Jacket Details

 Exoshell40 3 Layer waterproof fabric

 Fully seam-sealed construction

 Ergonomically-positioned, stretch shoulder panels

 Stretch waterproof cuffs and sides

 Detachable hood

 Reflective details

 Colors/sizes: Blue - Small through XX-large

 MSRP: 119.99, $199.99

 Contact:  Exoshell40 3 Layer waterproof fabric Fully seam-sealed construction Ergonomically-positioned, stretch shoulder panels Stretch waterproof cuffs and sides Detachable hood Reflective details Colors/sizes: Blue - Small through XX-large MSRP: 119.99, $199.99 Contact: Endura Sport

Some reflective details for extra visibility.

Dropped tail for extra coverage and more reflective details.



On the Trail

Silicone shoulder details for extra durability.

It's a slim fit, but well shaped and comfortable.



Pinkbike's Take:

There is a huge choice of waterproof jackets, but the Endura strikes a good balance. I like that it's really lightweight and minimalist in design, fits well and is comfortable. It works brilliantly in bad weather with impressive breathability, and all that at a price that really won't break the bank. - David Arthur

The most important part of a jacket is obviously the fabric, its what protects you from the elements. The Endura MTR Shell Jacket is made from a fabric called Exoshell 40 and it's comprised of three-layers, with a membrane sandwiched between the inner and outer layer that the company says is 50% thinner than standard membranes. The external face of the fabric is then finished with a DRW treatment to repel rain waterThe advantage of a thinner membrane, according to Endura, is really good breathability. To put some numbers on it, the breathability rating is 40,000g/m/24hr while the waterproof rating comes in at 20,000mm. It also keeps the weight and bulk low, so this size small jacket weighs 176g and packs down extremely small, easily fitting into a jersey or backpack pocket. If youre environmentally conscious, the fabric is made without harmful substances and the DWR treatment is PFC-free.All seams are sealed in the construction of the jacket to further aid the waterproof factor. And to keep the focus on being a lightweight shell, Endura has kept the list of features short. There is just a detachable hood, stretchy waterproof cuffs, a hidden loop for rolling it up, and silicone shoulder details to prevent wear or slippage when using a hydration pack. You don't even get any pockets, such is the focus on keeping the weight and bulk low.The MTR Shell Jacket has a slim but not skinny fit - thats a size small in the photos in case youre wondering - and the size range is generous. Endura has a good track record for realistic, real-world sizing and that is reflected in the good fit of the jacket. That upside of the slim fit is that theres very little excess fabric to flap in the wind when riding and less fabric means less weight. It also feels very lightweight to wear; there's none of the bulk of chunkier, winter jackets.The lack of bulk and material weight is a bonus when youre riding: its really comfortable. Theres no restriction of movement at all. The jacket moves with you and the shape around the shoulders and arms is just right, with a good length in the arms to avoid exposed wrists and a dropped tail for bum coverage. The jacket doesnt provide any insulation, so you do need to layer up to keep warm, but theres space under the jacket for a base layer and lightweight jersey. I found the hood less than useful. I prefer a headband or skull cap when its really cold, but its removable should you feel the same way as me. Its a personal preference. You may really dig hooded jackets.When it comes to riding in the rain, the MTR Shell Jacket puts in a stellar performance. The three-layer fabric might be thin between the fingers, but it does an excellent job of keeping the rain out. The weather has been abysmal recently and it seems just about every other ride is run out in constant rain. The Endura has been a reliable and trusted shield in such weather. Rain visibly beads off the surface and continues to do so deep into a long ride.Testing breathability is a tricky task, but to really put the jacket through its paces I conducted rides in similar conditions and mixed up the layers I was wearing under the jacket to see how it coped. Through the different clothing and riding tests, the MTR comfortably passed my personal breathability tests, which basically amounts to whether I ended up a soggy mess half an hour into a ride or not. I didnt, nor did I at any point during any rides wearing this jacket.The breathability is good enough that you can comfortably wear the jacket for an entire ride. For fast-paced rides in warmer conditions, I found a long sleeve top underneath was sufficient to keep the core temperature nicely regulated. Cold rides required another layer; the addition of a short-sleeve, base layer was sufficient to provide the necessary insulation without compromising the breathability.One of the MTR's strongest assets it its packability--when rolled up and stuffed in a spare pocket, it takes up almost no space nor adds much weight. Even if the weather looks nice at the start of the ride Ill take the MTR with me just in case everything changes. Its better to be prepared, and the MTR does a really good job of keeping you dry when the weather takes a turn for the worse. Ive had no issues with the jackets durability so far. The MTR has been through several washes and endured many muddy rides, been dragged through the undergrowth and had a hydration pack sliding around on its back, but its showing no sign of wear and tear at all.
Daiso Japan in Malaysia Will Increase Price in March 2017

There are so many people complaining about the petrol increase of 20 sen this month. Well, yesterday someone posted a notice from Daiso Japan in Malaysia that stated they will increase their pricing in March 2017. Yeah, even now Daiso Japan stores in Malaysia will increase their price from RM 5.30 to RM 5.90 for each normal item.

To be fair, the Malaysian Ringgit has weakened against Japanese Yen for a while now. 100 Yen is at RM 3.90 now. It was hovering around RM 3.50 to RM 3.70 (for 100 YEN) last year and it was around RM 3.00 (for 100 YEN) two years ago. With high shopping mall rentals and high operating costs, it is not surprising to see the increment to RM 5.90 for each normal item.

So you can go crazy and shop at Daiso Japan stores in Malaysia this month before the increment. There is no official statements from Daiso Japan yet but if there is, we will update this story.

Picture source from Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SAYSSeismik

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
A Denver transit police officer who was wearing a dark blue uniform was ambushed and killed Tuesday night.

Scott Von Lanken, 56, was killed while working as a transit security officer with Allied Universal. Denver's RTD contracts with Allied Universal to provide security services, the Denver Channel reports.

Through investigation, police say they learned two witnesses were talking to Von Lanken before the shooting when a suspect approached from behind, pointed a gun at the victim's neck and fired.

After taking the man into custody, police identified him as Joshua Cummings, a 37-year-old who has an out-of-state criminal history. Police in Denver have no history with the man.

Cummings is from Texas and reportedly a convert to Islam with radical beliefs.

The Denver Muslim community raised flags to federal agents in late December that a convert named Joshua was very radicalized, according to an email obtained by Denver7.

Muslim leaders in Denver on Thursday told Denver7 Cummings had attended an event at an area mosque on Dec. 24 and another open house at the mosque earlier that month, and that several others at the meetings were concerned about his talk and behavior.

They were concerned enough that they sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that same day tipping federal agents off about Cummings behavior.
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After the first 13 days of Donald Trump, many Americans are wondering what in the world is wrong with new president  including the highest ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi.

After hammering Trump for naming white supremacist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council while dismissing actual national security figures, Pelosi brought up GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetzs idea to require presidents to pass a mental exam.

She said she cant wait until the Republican congressman introduces the legislation.

Video:

Pelosi said:

Whats making America less safe is to have a white supremacist named to the National Security Council as a permanent member while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Director of National Intelligence are told, Dont call us, well call you. Youre no longer permanent members.  Its a stunning thing that a white supremacist, Bannon, would be a permanent member of the National Security Council  You probably are aware of this, but I found it intriguing that House Oversight Committee Chairman [Jason] Chaffetz told the Washington Post that he was weighing legislation that, in essence, says that if youre going to have your hands on the nuclear codes, we should probably know what mental state youre in. I cant wait until he introduces that legislation to be able to join as a cosponsor of that  I think its a very good idea.

After less than two weeks of his presidency, Trump has proven what so many of people, including his former Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said about him during the campaign  that hes reckless, temperamentally unfit, and simply isnt competent enough to hold this office.

After throwing tantrums about crowd sizes, causing chaos at Americas airports, threatening war with two countries, and making a deadly and ill-formed foreign policy decision, Pelosis concern about the mental state of the new president is shared by millions of people across the country.

The country is just 13 days into the new administration, and a psychological exam of the new president is already long overdue.
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A new poll shows that a strong majority of Americans oppose Donald Trumps recent executive order that bans refugees and Muslims from seven countries from entering the United States.

According to Gallup, 55 percent oppose Trumps temporary ban on entry into U.S. for most people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Only 42 percent support the policy.

The survey also shows disapproval of the presidents suspension of the Syrian refugee program even higher, with 58 percent of Americans saying they dont support it, likely due to the fact that extreme vetting already exists and Syrian refugees admitted to the U.S. are most commonly vulnerable women and children.

On his other executive action to start the process of constructing a wall along the southern border, Trump again fails to attract the support of a majority of Americans. Only 38 percent support the idea, while 60 percent oppose it.

The numbers:

These executive actions may align with Trumps controversial rhetoric from the campaign, but it appears the voters  a majority of which voted for Hillary Clinton last fall  are not at all impressed. Instead, opposition to the president only seems to be growing.

While Trump was able to get 46 percent of the total national popular vote last November, his approval rating in the poll stands at a historically dismal 43 percent. To put things in perspective, George W. Bushs approval rating in 2005, just after Hurricane Katrina, stood at 42 percent  an all-time low for Bush at that point in his presidency.

There hasnt yet been a natural disaster like Katrina during his young presidency, but Trumps insistence on pursuing unpopular and reckless policies have driven his numbers into the ground in two short weeks.
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*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*

The idiom, the blind leading the blind, is self-explanatory and has been around for ages, including in the Christian bible where it says if the blind lead the blind, they will both fall into the pit. The 2017 version of that archaic idiom could just as well say if a know-nothing white nationalist leads a know-nothing president they could bring the world close to a nuclear holocaust.

Of course, this is in reference to know-nothing Donald Trump, and his equally ignorant chief advisor Steve Bannon who Trump stupidly placed on the Trump version of the once effective and respected National Security Council as he eliminated two experts who actually know everything about foreign policy as it pertains to national security.

When the Republican ignoramus in chief, Donald Trump, listened to Breitbarts alt-right Nazi Steve Bannon and reorganized the National Security Council, he obeyed the alt-right know-nothing and did what any reputable know-nothing would do; he removed the director of national intelligence (DNI) and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from the committee. That committee is, in normal times, the meeting for the most senior national security officials who actually have an abundance of foreign policy and national security experience; the one and the only reason they are uniquely qualified to advise a president.

In fact, under the previous two administrations, those two positions were permanent seats at a very crucial national security table. Instead, Trump installed a Breitbart maniac, Steve Bannon, and reassigned the DNI and Joint Chiefs chairs to insignificant roles where they might be called on if Bannon permits it and only if Bannon thinks that what is being discussed is relevant to their responsibilities and expertise; which in the real world is expertise on everything to do with foreign policy and national security.

The unprecedented move has garnered a world of criticism if for no other reason than Bannon has no relevant knowledge about national security. Bannons specialty is promoting the conspiracy theories that Breitbart, Alex Jones, and racial and religious purists advertise to start wars around the world and snuff out non-white, non-Christian, non-American human beings who fail to comply with their vision of the world.

As Robert Reich noted, never before has a political strategist been allowed to participate in National Security Council meetings because the NSC is tasked with providing a president with non-partisan, factual advice; something Bannon considers anathema to his personal agenda that is now Trumps personal agenda. As professor Reich reminded Americans, This is the Trump administration; forget analysis and forget facts.

In fact, Mr. Reich echoed the sentiment this column and no small number of real national security and foreign policy experts expressed fears about. He said that Trump replacing the DNI and Joint Chiefs chairman is truly scary because the only thing Bannon knows is promoting far-right conspiracy theories and pushing white nationalism; in America and around the world.

It wasnt just Professor Reich who sounded the warning about Bannon and Trump. Former national security adviser and United Nations ambassador Susan Rice said of Bannons elevation to a position he does not belong:

This is stone cold crazy. After a week of crazy. Who needs military advice or intel to make policy on ISIL, Syria, Afghanistan, DPRK? Chairman of Joint Chiefs and DNI treated as after thoughts in Cabinet level principals meetings. And where is CIA?? Cut out of everything?

Robert Gates, a Republican who served as defense secretary under both President Obama and George W. Bush, and as CIA director under President George H.W. Bush was also quick to say what everyone else already knows that what Trump is doing is a mistake. Mr. Gates continued:

My biggest concern is there are actually, under the law, only two statutory advisers to the National Security Council and thats the Director of Central Intelligence, or the DNI, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pushing them out of the National Security Council meetings is a big mistake. I think that they both bring a perspective and judgment and experience to bear that every president, whether they like it or not, finds useful.

Senator John McCain, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said,

I am worried about the National Security Council.  The appointment of Mr. Bannon is a radical departure from any National Security Council in history. Senator McCain also said, that the one person who is indispensable would be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in my view. But Senator McCains view, although informed over decades of experience and knowledge, doesnt count; only Bannons does. It is possible that Trump may have left the DNI and Joint Chiefs chairman on the NSC, but Bannon knew they would overrule any advice he gave Trump. So his advice to the Trump has put them out to pasture far away from his vision of an alt-right world ruled by white Christians.

As Professor Reich rightly noted, Trump is unhinged and ignorant. Bannon is nuts and malicious. If not supervised by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, their decisions could endanger the world.

It is a sad commentary, but that is exactly what Bannon wants; the entire world quaking at what an alt-right America will do if its demands are not met. It has been less than two weeks since Bannon was installed as de facto president of America and already he and Trump have begun, as Robert Reich stated:

Alienating America from the rest of the world, destroying Americas moral authority abroad, and risking everything we love about our country. Unsupervised by people who know what theyre doing, Trump and Bannon could also bring the world closer to a nuclear holocaust.

Robert Reich is not one to fear monger or promote conspiracy theories. Everything he, Susan Rice, Robert Gates and John McCain are growing very nervous about, an alt-right political strategist sitting in the place of importance on the National Security Council, is relevant and borne of experience that neither Bannon nor Trump will ever achieve if they live for another 200 years. Even then it will still be the incredibly stupid leading the abominably ignorant right into an alt-right created nuclear wasteland.

The above commentary is the opinion of its author and several other Americans.
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After President Trump had signed two executive orders that weakened protections for consumers that are in place to help prevent another financial crisis, Senate Democrats vowed to put up a firewall and block any Trump repeal of Wall Street reforms in Congress.

Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a statement:

President Trump promised to stand up to the big banks, now hes letting them write the rules of the road. He promised to stand up for the forgotten man and woman, now hes leaving them out to dry. If there was any doubt that President Trump had absolutely no intention to follow through on his campaign promises to working families across the country, this executive order should erase that doubt. It seems President Trumps campaign promises to rein in Wall Street werent worth the bank notes they were printed on.

Since its passage, Wall Street reform has protected crises and protected consumers, all while the stock market flourished and rose to unprecedented heights. Wall Street reform worked, plain and simple. The Presidents attempts to repeal Wall Street reform will be met with a Democratic firewall in Congress. We will do everything in our power not let it be repealed, no ifs ands or buts.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tweeted:

And @realDonaldTrump issued an order that puts 2 @GoldmanSachs execs in charge of gutting the rules that protect you from financial fraud.  Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2017

The Wall St bankers may be popping champagne, but Americans haven't forgotten the 2008 financial crisis  and they won't forget today.  Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) February 3, 2017

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) noted that Trumps Executive Orders will harm seniors, Rolling back rules for the same Wall Street banks whose reckless behavior crashed the economy and cost millions of middle class families in Pennsylvania and across the nation their jobs and lifes savings during the Great Recession is wrong and dangerous. By delaying a requirement that workers and savers receive investment advice that is in their best interest, this executive order will also adversely impact seniors who will now have less protections when seeking investment advice.

President Trump just picked a fight with Democrats that he has zero chance of winning. Trumps Executive Orders are bad, but Democrats are not going to let him and his Republican Congressional cronies repeal Wall Street reform.
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One has to imagine it was in the tradition of alternate facts that Kellyanne Conway constructed a fable about a terrorist attack by two Iraqis that never happened as an excuse for Donald Trumps Muslim ban as having a firm foundation in an imagined 2011 ban by President Obama.

She told Chris Matthews on MSNBCs Hardball that,

I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre.



Most people dont know that because it didnt get covered.

Watch Conway lie courtesy of MSNBC (begins at 2:50 mark):

Sadly, Chris Matthews, as he so often does, let the lie pass. Kentucky journalist Joe Sonka did not.

There were two Iraqi men and they were arrested but there was no massacre. They were arrested in Bowling Green, Kentucky but not for killing anyone, or even planning to kill anyone. As the Department of Jusice made clear in 2012,

Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.

Rather, they wanted to send money and weapons to al Qaeda. And Twitter is not giving Conway a free pass. The hilarity is to be found under hashtag #BowlingGreenMassacre. Just as an example,

And that is as valid a presentation of any massacre in Bowling Green as can be found, though one other deserves comment:

Kellyanne Conway's comment about the #BowlingGreenMassacre was disrespectful to all who died that day, myself included.  Peter Sullivan (@CitizenSullivan) February 3, 2017

Condolences to the late lamented Peter Sullivan, but the real victim here was the truth, may it never rest in peace.

Sadly, Trump has decided large red mascots  or liars like Kellyanne Conway  should not be affected by his ban.
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Kellyanne Conway got caught  and mocked  for inventing a massacre by two Iraqi men on Chris Matthews Hardball last night and shes now playing the innocent victim for her employment of alternate facts.

Her first tweet employed a news report that turned out to be inaccurate:

As the Toronto Stars Daniel Dale, who so thoroughly fact-checked Donald Trump, pointed out, however,

This is, again, highly dishonest  links to old story about fears there were more refugee terrorists. There weren't. https://t.co/BMa2oBDo9y  Daniel Dale (@ddale8) February 3, 2017

So dishonesty to excuse lies. All too typical in the Trump administration. But Conway wasnt done by a long shot. Her persecution tale had yet to come, but we did not have to wait long. First, it became Chris Matthews fault that she lied:

NBC reporter texted me at 632am re:a diff story; never asked what I meant on @Hardball b4 slamming me on @TODAYshow Not cool,not journalism  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 3, 2017

Then she heaped abuse on an unnamed prominent liberal site:

1/2: Honest mistakes abound. Last night, prominent editor of liberal site apologized for almost running a story re: tweet from fake account  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 3, 2017

Before praising her own imaginary class and grace:

2/2: yet won't name him, attack him, get the base 2 descend upon him. Same with MLKJr bust fake story. It's called class, grace, deep breath  Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) February 3, 2017

Clearly, Kellyanne Conway takes her example from Trump, with a persecution complex and an imaginary self-image so far out of whack that it can scarce be comprehended. Her unhinged and far from gracious rants demanding Trumps critics be fired, are near as epic as her bosss.

Kellyanne Conway got caught lying, and lying big, and rather than praising her imaginary class and self-image, she ought to be issuing a mea culpa and apologizing for her frequent use of alternate facts as an excuse for Donald Trumps inexcusable actions.
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The Senate voted today 52-47 along party lines to kill a SEC rule that required energy companies (thats oil, gas and mining) to disclose their payments to U.S. and foreign governments. The rule was meant to fight corruption and had bipartisan support. However, Trumps acting SEC chair Michael Piwowar called the rule misguided on Tuesday.

Elizabeth Warren yesterday criticized Exxon CEO Rex Tillersons lobbying against the rule, saying,

[A] handful of powerful oil and gas companies have been after this requirement from the start  and Exxon is at the top of that list.

Now, however, Tillerson has had his way. The Republicans reign supreme in Washington and to no ones surprise, corruption reigns supreme.

Senator Charles E. Schumer released the following statement in response:

One of the top priorities of President Trump and the Republican Congress was to allow oil and gas companies to cover up payments and bribes to foreign dictators  something Secretary Tillerson has lobbied for years. Its beyond outrageous and exactly the type of special interest giveaway the American people resent. If the President is actually serious about fighting corruption in Washington and draining the swamp he will show some courage and veto this bill immediately.

Of course, Donald Trump never intended to drain the swamp and his every action has had the opposite effect, with corruption piling on corruption. The basic complaint of oil companies has been that theyre put at a competitive disadvantage if they cant freely bribe governments like their overseas competitors.

Donald Trump is certain to sign the resolution as President Obamas regulatory legacy of defending the American people from corrupt corporations takes another hit.
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The Republican War on Women is heating up and the photo above explains much of the reason why. Having a president who brags about sexually assaulting women surrounded by a cabinet of white misogynist males, emboldens those who hate women, and just a few days into Trumps presidency we are seeing the evidence. Worse, the floodtide of hate began even before the inauguration. Emilys List reports that as of January 12, there were already 46 anti-abortion bills introduced in 14 states.

The Nation obtained a leaked draft from the White House which presages further trouble for American women:

A leaked copy of a draft executive order titled Establishing a Government-Wide Initiative to Respect Religious Freedom, obtained by The Investigative Fund and The Nation, reveals sweeping plans by the Trump administration to legalize discrimination.

NARAL Pro-Choice explains Make no mistake, this is a license to discriminate based on: contraception, premarital sex, abortion or being LGBTQ.

Then there is this Trump nominee, a strong signal of where Trump stands on womens reproductive rights:

With this kind of support for extremists on the Religious Right, the Republican response is, therefore, no surprise. There was not a Republican candidate in 2016 who supported a womans right to choose

Indiana and Missouri want to ban all abortions in defiance of Roe v. Wade and Missouri has even proposed allowing a court to declare custody, not over a child, but an embryo.

Anti-abortionists in Missouri were so gung-ho at having control of all branches of government that they had 14 bills ready to go when the legislative session began. You can see a list of them here.

Kentucky and Indiana, meanwhile, have proposed mandatory ultrasounds. Senate Bill 118, referred to Committee on Health and Provider Services in Indiana on January 4, says,

Mandatory ultrasound before abortions. Provides that an abortion provider must do the following at least 48 hours before an abortion is performed: (1) Inform the pregnant woman of the availability of fetal ultrasound imaging and auscultation of fetal heart tone services to enable the pregnant woman to view the image and hear the heartbeat of the fetus. (2) Immediately perform the fetal ultrasound imaging and allow the pregnant woman to hear the auscultation of the fetal heart tone if the fetal heart tone is audible. Requires the pregnant woman to view the fetal ultrasound imaging and listen to the auscultation of the fetal heart tone if the fetal heart tone is audible. Removes provisions allowing a pregnant woman to decline to view the fetal ultrasound imaging and hear the fetal heart tone.

Thats right. The women, we can only call her a victim now, does absolutely not have the right to decline to view the imaging or to hear the heart tone.

Guttmacher Institute reveals that 14 states require verbal counseling or written materials to include information on accessing ultrasound services, while 26 states regulate the provision of ultrasound by abortion providers.

Kentuckys Senate Bill 5, AN ACT relating to abortion and declaring an emergency based on junk science and passed by a 14-man committee that asked no questions, bans abortion after 20 weeks. Roe v. Wade protects a womans right to an abortion up to 22 weeks.

In Arkansas, House Bill 1032, The Unborn Child Protection From Dismemberment Abortion Act, was signed into law last week by Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson which not only bans a certain type of abortion (D&E procedures) but allows the husband to sue the doctor to stop his wife from having an abortion. The ACLU is not amused. Holly Dickson, who is the legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas said,



They created a whole new right  the right of a husband or family member to sue a doctor on behalf of an adult patient. I cannot begin to tell you what the intent was, but we have raised concerns about that provision and the entire rest of the bill, which is unconstitutional.

Huffington Post reports that Six other states have passed nearly identical laws, and in all four states where the law was challenged  Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia  it was struck down by the courts.

These are just a sampling of the onslaught of attacks on womens reproductive rights in the Age of Trump, but as you can see, women are not going to do well by Trump. According to Guttmacher Institute, 57% of women 1544 live in a state hostile or extremely hostile to abortion rights.

Never mind that if state governments are hostile the majority of Americans are not, as this is an extremist religious minority trying to overrule the majority. Pew Research Center tells us 69 percent of Americans oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, a number which has been steadily climbing since 1992.

Just 28 percent who want to overturn Roe v. Wade, but then the majority of Americans didnt vote for Donald Trump either.
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A growing number of Congressional Republicans are voicing opposition to paying for Donald Trumps wall along the Mexican border. Congress may not be able to fund the wall because many members of Congress dont want to give Trump the money.

CNN reported, A growing number of congressional Republicans are objecting to the cost and viability of a proposal that was a rallying cry for the billionaire businessman during his insurgent campaign. Interviews with more than a dozen GOP lawmakers across the ideological spectrum suggest Trump could have a difficult time getting funding for his plan approved by Congress. Many bluntly told CNN theyd likely vote against any Trump plan that is not fully offset with spending cuts, while others questioned whether Trumps vision would adequately resolve the problems at the border.

The fact that Congress is raising opposition to paying for the wall is not a surprise to anyone who has been backing attention. Less than a week after Trump won the election in November 2016, House Republican leadership announced opposition to paying for Trumps wall.

Congress is also not going to pass an import tax on Mexico to fund the wall. So if Congress wont appropriate the funds or tax Mexico to pay for it, the wall is in big trouble.

Trumps dream wall could find itself lost in the same place where ideas both good and bad have gone to die for almost a decade. Congressional Republican dysfunction could kill the wall.

With each passing day, it is looking more and more likely that Trump isnt going to build a wall, and Mexico isnt going to pay for it.
...Hogwarts meets beer hall - Caru' cu Bere are the self-proclaimed custodians of "the old spirit of Bucharest", said spirit possibly being their 19th century beer recipe...



Sometime in the winter of 2014 I booked an Uber from the deepest, darkest depths of South London (Streatham is amazing for unearthing designer treasures at charity shops, if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty) to Shoreditch. My driver was a very chatty man who, delightfully, shared the same name as Hagrid's pet dragon in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone. What would've been a painful hour-long crawl in rush hour traffic was made delightful by the vivid picture Norbert painted of his native Romania. So inspired by his depiction of the rugged, almost barbaric wilderness and gothic mythology of Transylvania; I immediately booked a flight from London to Bucharest, where I would then take a train to Brasov as my base for exploring the fabled castles that inspired the most famous vampire of all time.

I had but one night in Bucharest, so I sought to spend my few hours with a visit to one of the capital's most famous historic restaurants - Caru' cu Bere . Describing themselves as custodians of "the old spirit of Bucharest" - said spirit possibly being the beer made from an 1879 recipe - Caru' cu Bere is like Hogwarts meets beer hall; with Neo-Gothic archiecture, stained glass, mosaics and carved panelings meets buxomy wenches wielding tankards of beer the size of your head and men in traditional costume bearing platters of meat fit for a despotic ruler of old.




The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to West Columbia-based Nephron Pharmaceuticals saying has not gone far enough in its response to concerns raised during an annual inspection, threatening possible seizure and injunction" if violations were not quickly corrected. Read moreFDA says West Columbia drug maker not done enough to find cause behind 3.8M dose recall
S.C. Education Superintendent Molly Spearman wasnt dreaming up hypothetical problems when she went to the Statehouse in 2019 to ask for authority to remove school boards in districts the state has to take over. Read moreScoppe: Allendale interventions show SC school takeovers work  while they last
Just south of the North Carolina state line is one of Horry Countys last undeveloped stretches of oceanfront property, and everyone should celebrate now that a decades-long effort to keep it that way has finally paid off. And everyone should encourage South Carolinas political leaders and  Read moreEditorial: Waties Island deal a win not only for SC environment but also for taxpayers
Night after night, the stars in our Rochester celestial dome present us with a plethora of pictures and patterns that roam across the sky. Most of what we see are individual constellations that were used by ancient cultures as rough visual aides to tell tales of mythology that vary from culture to culture. Most of the best known tales in this part of the world are spinoffs of Greek and Roman mythology. While different cultures have their own unique stories, all of the constellations are pictures of the characters that make up these soap operas of the night sky.

Another common thread is that most of these constellations don't look much like what they're suppose to portray. As I say at my star parties, you really have to put your imagination into overdrive to see these constellations as what they allegedly represent. That's OK in my book, though, because it's part of what makes casual stargazing so fun and challenging.

Many constellations display some pretty unique geometrical shapes and asterisms. The connecting lines of stars in the bright constellation Cassiopeia the Queen resemble a giant W or M in the heavens, depending on where it is in the sky. Right now it resembles an M in the high northern heavens. In the low eastern sky the leading edge of the constellation Leo the Lion looks just like a backward question mark. Very high in the northern sky the constellation Auriga the Chariot Driver looks like a lopsided pentagon.

One of the best pictures is made by the seven brilliant stars that make up the Big Dipper, which is actually the rear end and tail of the constellation Ursa Major the Big Bear. The Big Dipper is on the rise, standing on its handle above the northeast horizon on these early February evenings.

There are much larger asterisms in the sky that use stars from several adjoining constellations. These can be great tools in learning constellations. One of these is known as the Summer Triangle, made up of the brightest stars from three separate constellations. At the corners are Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra; Deneb, in the constellation Cygnus the Swan; and Altair, in Aquila the Eagle.

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Each one of these stars is the brightest shiner in their home constellation. The Summer Triangle is easy to see at a glance in both the summer and autumn sky, and can be a very good tool in helping you find your way around that part of the celestial theater.

The very best asterism of the night sky, in my opinion, is the Winter Triangle, now on display these late winter evenings in the southern sky. It's a perfect equilateral triangle made up of three bright stars from three separate constellations.

As you can see in the diagram, it's made up of Betelgeuse, from the constellation Orion the Hunter; Procyon, the brightest star in the small constellation Canis Minor the Little Dog; and Sirius, the brightest star in Canis Major the Big Dog. Unless you're viewing from a lit-up shopping mall parking lot, you should have no trouble spotting the perfect Winter Triangle because of the brilliance of its member stars. In fact, Sirius, at the bottom of the triad, is the brightest star in the night sky.

Sirius and Procyon are almost twice the diameter of our sun and are more luminous than our home star, but the main reason they're so bright in our heavenly dome is because they're relatively close to the Earth. Procyon is 11 light-years away and Sirius is just over 8 light-years away.

Sirius can be a whole lot of fun to view through even a small telescope. That's because it never gets up very high in the sky and its light has to travel through much more of Earth's blurring atmosphere to reach our eyes. If upper air winds are strong and there's a lot of turbulence, Sirius can appear as a changing kaleidoscope of colors as its light rays get bounced around.

The third star of the perfect winter triangle is Betelgeuse, a huge star well over 500 light-years away. This super red giant star is almost a billion miles in diameter, and sooner or later will burst in a colossal supernova explosion  maybe within the next million years, if you feel like waiting up for it. Until then, you can see the upper right hand member of the Winter Triangle shining brightly, sporting an easily seen reddish hue.

It's just amazing to me that these three stars that make up the perfectly proportioned Winter Triangle just happen to be positioned the way they are in the winter sky. Coincidence? Or not?

Celestial hugging

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The Venus and Mars show continues in the southwest early evening sky. The planets are only about 5 degrees apart, which is less than the width of your fist held at arm's length. Venus is by far the brighter of the two planets, and in fact is the brightest star-like object in the early evening sky. Mars is just to the upper left of Venus, and while it's not nearly as bright, it has a very distinctive reddish hue to it. Mars and Venus are actually nowhere near other physically. They just happen to be in the same line of sight.
CALEDONIA  A former jailer at the Houston County Jail who was acquitted of criminal sexual conduct charges has filed a civil suit against the county, alleging jail policies put him in a position to be accused of just such a crime.

A jury in May 2015 found Bruce Hugo Muenkel, now 65, not guilty of one count each of third-degree and fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct by a correctional employee after being accused of inappropriate contact with a female inmate.

He and wife, Dianne Muenkel, filed a personal injury lawsuit against Houston County in July, claiming three counts of negligence and one count each of failure to provide a safe workplace and loss of consortium .

They're asking for more than $50,000 in damages, court documents say.

A pre-trial hearing is set for Oct. 12, with a jury trial set to begin Nov. 15.

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While employed as a jailer, Muenkel was placed in situations where he was required to interact with female inmates in areas of the jail where there were no surveillance cameras or other recording devices, the suit alleges, creating "an environment conducive to female inmates making accusations ... of sexual assault."

That's exactly what happened to Muenkel, who was accused of inappropriate sexual touching while in parts of the jail with no cameras, the suit alleges. As a result, he suffered "severe emotional distress, humiliation, embarrassment and anguish that has manifested itself by physical symptoms" and "required him to incur significant out-of-pocket expenses" to defend himself.

In addition, the court document says, the county breached its duty by failing to hire adequate female jail staff to deal with the female jail population, nor did it follow its own policy manual.

Prior to January 2013, if no female jailers were on duty when female inmates returned from work release or counseling, the jail's policy required the inmate to remain outside the jail in a vestibule until a female jailer could be called from home, or a female Caledonia police officer could arrive and perform a strip search.

That became costly, so the jail changed its policy, the complaint says; Muenkel was "taught by observation and instruction" to unlock the vestibule door into the women's locker room, let the female inmate in, unlock the door that leads to the interior of the facility, then unlock the woman's locker.

He was taught to "always keep one foot outside the locker room so it would be visible on camera, to protect himself," the document continues, before stepping into the interior hallway to wait for the female inmate to change clothes, then escort her to a holding cell to await search by a female jailer.

The document goes on to say that "inmates are not honest (and) it is known that inmates look for leverage to improve their situation."

A criminal investigation against Muenkel began Jan. 16, 2014, when a former inmate told her social worker she'd "had an affair" with a jailer named Bruce. The woman was in and out of jail from December 2012 through February 2013 after numerous violations of a DUI conviction, the original complaint says.

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The social worker told the chief deputy, who reported the information to law enforcement in Olmsted County, which took over the investigation.

Muenkel's last day of employment with the county was Feb. 27, 2014; he'd been hired in July 2009.
Mayo Clinic CEO John Noseworthy used "a simple story" Thursday night to show how Rochester's business community supports the world famous clinic.

He told a crowd of 700 business leaders gathered for the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce's annual meeting that a dying patient at Saint Marys Hospital last fall asked nurses for a piece of pumpkin pie. Unfortunately, there was no pumpkin pie in the hospital.

The nurses went across the street to Joe Power's The Canadian Honker, which was also out of pumpkin pie. But the restaurant staff asked why the nurses wanted it and quickly moved to bake a pie, when they heard the reason.

"Now Joe (Powers) didn't say make the pie. He wasn't there. But the staff knew it was the right thing to do for the patient and the right thing for the community," Noseworthy said.

He said that is just one small example of the teamwork between Rochester's businesses and Mayo Clinic that happens every day.

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Noseworthy, who recently met with President Donald Trump to discuss health care, also acknowledged the current "challenging times."

He said that while the new administration is looking to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare, he hopes the approach would be "review and replace."

Noseworthy told the crowd that while morale is good at Mayo Clinic, there is a lot of competition.

"And there's lot of pressure for patients to stay near home," he said.

The annual presentation of business awards followed Noseworthy's speech.

 Volunteer of the Year:Scott Heck of RBC Wealth Management. He was recognized for years of service with the chamber and associated groups like, Journey to Growth. Heck was out of town, so Chamber President Rob Miller accepted the award for him.

 Chamber Ambassador of the Year:Ken MacIver of CHS Inc. While he works for a larger company now, MacIver reminded the crowd of how he used to run a downtown Rochester record store with his brother called Face The Music. "Always support the little guys," he urged the audience.

 The Lamp of Knowledge award:Aaron Benike of Benike Construction. He was honored for his work promoting the building trades. He reminded the crowd that education has a great return on investment. "One of the best returns on investment for this community has been GRAUC (Greater Rochester Advocates for Universities and Colleges)."

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 The Nonprofit of the Year:The Reading Center - Dyslexia Institute of Minnesota. Executive Director Cindy Russell accepted the award acknowledging the 65 years the center has worked to help people dealing with the challenge of dyslexia.

 Large Business of the Year:Rochester City Lines. Owner Dan Holter told the audience that it felt like he'd won "the golden ticket." He recalled how the Rochester Area Chamber had reached out to his parents to start a bus line in Rochester in 1956. Holter referenced tough times his family-owned business faced when the city award the bus contract to another company almost five years ago. "I remember seeing 70 percent of our service hours disappear overnight," he said. However, with "faith and trust," his company has persevered as a commuter bus firm.

 Small Business of the Year:Tilson's Auto Repair. Ben Jr. and Joe Tilson accepted the award, though their father Ben Tilson Sr. couldn't attend due to a hip replacement surgery. Ben Jr. thanked the chamber for all of the networking opportunities that have helped make their business successful.
It's been nearly a week since President Trump issued an executive order temporarily restricting travel from seven predominately Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa. Plenty of confusion about it remains, but administration officials have tried to clarify some of the particulars. When Trump first issued the order last Friday some lawful permanent U.S. residents were detained at American airports, or blocked from boarding planes altogether.

Kamaal Mohamed of Minneapolis  a U.S. citizen  tried to travel with his family from Somalia this week. But in a Facebook video posted Tuesday, Mohamed said airline officials would not allow his wife  who was recently granted a green card  to get on the plane.

"It looks like I'm being denied to bring my family along with me and it's very devastating," Mohamed said.

On Saturday, Fateme Farmad of Minnetonka, a permanent U.S. resident originally from Iran, was detained at the Los Angeles airport. She was traveling with her mother, brother, and 11-month-old son. They were on their way back from a wedding in Iran.

Immigration officials were polite, but provided her with few answers.

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"After five hours, an officer said to me that you're almost done, just wait for 10 minutes," Farmad said. "One hour passed, two hours. It never happened. I don't know why he kept promising me you're almost done."

Farmad and her family were made to wait 13 hours before they could leave the airport. They were never told why.

Also seeking answers are many members of Congress, including Tim Walz of southern Minnesota. The DFLer says he has always had a good relationship with Customs and Border Protection officials at the Twin Cities airport. And they've always answered his questions, whether about security procedures or screening lines.

But not this time.

"They just had a prepared statement. And they were very clear that they've been instructed not to answer any questions. And these are folks I've known for a decade," Walz said.

Walz sent a long list of questions to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on Tuesday. Among them: How many people, if any, have been detained at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport? Are dual citizens being screened for removal? Are CBP officials in the Twin Cities complying with the temporary restraining orders issued by four federal judges?

So far, Walz says he has no indication that anyone has been detained at MSP. But he says it's illegal for the Trump administration to evade Congressional oversight.

"Whether it becomes a constitutional crisis or not depends on how well they're willing to fix this. But you as the executive branch do not get to say no to the oversight of the legislative branch."

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At a news conference Wednesday, Homeland Security officials tried to clarify how Trump's executive order is being implemented. Secretary John Kelly says the agency is complying with all court orders. And acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said in the first 72 hours of the order, around 500,000 foreign nationals were allowed in to the United States.

"We denied boarding to 721 travelers who had visas from the affected countries. But we actually processed for waivers 1,060 lawful permanent residents of the United States as well as an additional 75 waivers granted to immigrant visa and non-immigrant visa holders."

McAleenan said visa-holders from the seven affected countries, Somalia, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Iran and Iraq, will be denied boarding at overseas airports. And travelers with dual citizenship will be vetted based on the passports they present. On Wednesday, White House spokesperson Sean Spicer said green card holders no longer need a waiver.

Twin Cities immigration lawyer Chris Lee is urging his clients to be patient while opponents of Trump's order figure out their next moves in court.

"Just give it time so that we can fight back. All the organizations are getting together, and hopefully we can push back," Lee said.

More legal challenges are already in the works. Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson Wednesday joined a lawsuit by Washington State. It alleges Trump's action violates the Constitution's equal protection and due process clauses, as well as a 1965 immigration law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of nationality.
Attorneys gathered in St. Paul Thursday said that President Trump's approach to immigration is creating a crisis unseen in past administrations.

In below-freezing temperatures, dozens of attorneys stood outside the State Capitol and recited what's known as the lawyer's oath under Minnesota statute. It begins, "You do swear that you will support the Constitution of the United States and that of the state of Minnesota ."

Kim Hunter, an immigration attorney with the National Lawyers Guild of Minnesota, said she had "always thought that lawyer's oath should actually be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

"The times that we are in demand much more of us than affliction, however," she said. "I think these are the times that we all took the oath originally and went to law school for. And these are the times that call on us to become the best lawyers we can become."

Several dozen volunteer attorneys who have been assisting Twin Cities families affected by Trump's immigration order applauded when she asked the crowd to "shut him down."

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Another speaker, Amir Malik, civil rights director at CAIR Minnesota, said he's been encouraged by non-Muslim supporters.

"I was heartened when we had our open house to see a broad spectrum of Minnesota society coming in, and they were there for one thing," he said. "They said, 'We heard what's been happening, and we wanted to know what we can do to help.'"

He said these were people from neighborhoods far beyond the Twin Cities.

"It was just people from the area who said they want to help, and that was uplifting," he said. "And so thank you, Minnesota."

After the speeches, John Keller of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota stepped inside the Capitol to describe what he and other attorneys have been experiencing.

"A lot of people, particularly in the Muslim community and the countries named," he said  referring to Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen  "are calling with a basic fear about travel, about what will happen if they travel, about loved ones who are or were en route to the United States," he said.

He said the immigration order is in flux and, depending on the airport, irregularly applied, so families don't know what's prohibited. And further executive orders are expected.

"With each one of these pieces of information, or leaked pieces of information, your very liberty, or your loved ones' safety, if they're abroad, or your future if you have to travel, being able to know you can get back into your new home  all of that causes a level of very normal fear and anxiety that I've not seen on this level, and this pervasive, in my 18 years of practice," he said.

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Keller said the effect of the president's immigration order is harsher than people might expect.

"If people sat in my chair ... and heard first hand individuals talk about a small child who can't come, about an elderly parent who is sick and dying, who maybe has days or a week to live, and who you haven't seen, but you're too fearful to go because you won't come back to the children you'd leave behind," he said, "I know there would be a human connection, because we have the ability feel empathy."

That empathy has meant an increase in membership for the ACLU of Minnesota, one of the organizations represented at the Capitol event. The organization's former membership of 7,000 has more than doubled since Trump's election.
The Philippines previous Department of Defense Secretary and retired Army Gen. Voltaire T. Gazmin is visiting Guam this weekend.

Gazmins visit is in connection with his role as grandmaster for a nearly century old fraternity called the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the Philippines.

The fraternity traces its official beginnings in Guam back to 1918, according to a press release from the fraternity.

Gazmin will meet with fellow masons for a conference on the island.

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He was defense secretary under then-President Benigno Aquino III, from 2010 to 2016.

Scheduled of events

Gazmins scheduled visit this weekend is expected to include his attendance at the Masonic District of Guam annual convention, class sessions with the Institute of Masonic Education Studies, a wreath laying ceremony at the Mabini Shrine in Asan and a presentation of manuscript copies of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo to the Micronesia Area Research Center at the University of Guam.

Filipino hero and martyr Jose Rizal wrote Noli Me Tangere in 1887, and the satirical novels sequel, El Filibusterismo, in protest of Spains rule in the Philippines.
Recently expanded legislation would allow eligible veterans who served in Guam, the Northern Marianas and American Samoa during the Vietnam War to receive expedited consideration for Department of Veterans Affairs benefits if they suffer from diseases the U.S. government has linked to the herbicide Agent Orange.

House Senior Deputy Majority Whip Dennis A. Ross, from Floridas 15th District, on Thursday introduced the expanded Agent Orange legislation, called Fighting for Orange-Stricken Territories in Eastern Regions (FOSTER) Act.

In a statement from Ross office, he said the legislation would:

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grant presumptive Agent Orange exposure status to U.S. service members who served in Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa during the Vietnam War; and

enable eligible veterans to receive expedited consideration for VA benefits if they suffer from any of the diseases the U.S. government has linked to Agent Orange.

Master Sgt. Foster

The legislation is named after Master Sgt. Leroy Foster, of Florida, who has said he personally sprayed Agent Orange in Guam while serving at Andersen Air Force Base during the Vietnam War.

Foster has claimed he has more than 30 diseases and multiple cancers due to his exposure to Agent Orange in Guam, but does not qualify for VA benefits for his ailments under current law.

Ross has also sent letters to former U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry and House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Phil Roe requesting a briefing and information on the use of Agent Orange in Guam.

The congressmans staff met with Department of Defense officials two weeks ago, and requested more information on specific chemicals, herbicides and pesticides used during the Vietnam War, after the Air Force maintained its position that Agent Orange was not used outside of Vietnam and Thailand.

Gov. Eddie Calvo, last month instructed the Guam Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a full battery of tests on drinking water sources and soils for traces of chemicals found in Agent Orange.

Media coverage

Since national and local news coverage broke about the alleged authorized use of the tactical herbicide Agent Orange on Guam, Guam EPA officials have been involved in discussions with Department of Defense and U.S. EPA to engage them in an investigation into the claims made by Foster and other veterans who were stationed in Guam in the 1960s and 1970s, according to the governor's office.

Guam EPA officials informed the governor that requests for signed affidavits from individuals who have publicly stated that Agent Orange was used in Guam have been made, with the intent of documenting and pinpointing any and all areas where the herbicide may have been allegedly used on the island.

In 2014, the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, led a project to clean up contamination from Agent Orange in areas in Vietnam where it was stored and handled during the war.
Senate Democratic Chuck Schumers fake tears over President Trumps puported travel ban is a moment that signifies and resonates. Good grief! Is that the best you can do, man? As political theater, that was pathetic.

Schumer cant fake sincerity. Hes not a touch feely kind of guy. What a phony. If hes a genuine article of any kind, it would be the thug kind. He didnt rise in New York politics through immersion in the techniques taught by Dale Carnegie in ages past.

Schumers tears represent political impotence. Schumer and his fellow Democrats want to put up a fight over President Trumps cabinet selections, but former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid deprived them of the weapon they now require when he served as Senate Majority Leader. But Reid did not act alone. Why, he had the invaluable assistanceof Chuck Schumer himself.

Schumer conceals the causation in his rumination on current events. Certainly it would have been easier to defeat them had the rules not changed. Ah, the uses of the subjunctive mood.

One more time: Certainly it would have been easier to defeat them had the rules not changed. You dont say  you being one of the guys who changed the rules. Lets call it a Schumination.

I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, youll regret this, then Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Schumer and his Democratic colleagues at the time. And you may regret it a lot sooner than you think.

You mean Senator McConnell was right? Now that must hurt. Schumer isnt crying, but hes feeling the pain.

The Democrats lack the power to block Trumps cabinet appointees so they have availed themselves of the kind of procedural devices with which Wisconsin Democrats embarrassed themselves to oppose Governor Walker. In 2011 Wisconsin Democrats hightailed it to Illinois to prevent a quorum in the state legislature. This week Senate Democrats took a powder in order to block votes in committee on Trumps cabinet nominees.

If only they had repaired to the Democratic safe houses of Illinois that proved so useful to Wisconsin Democrats. But no, theyre back. They were just hiding under the desks in their offices.

As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Utahs venerable Orrin Hatch engineered a rule change to overcome the Democrats maneuver in his committee. He even provided the quote of the week in response to the FOX News anchor who asked him what the Democrats temporary disappearance says.

Senator Hatch drily commented: It says theyre a bunch of juvenile idiots is what it says.

He added: Its one thing to wage a good fight and do the best you can. And we understand that. But to just not even show up, not even come? Thats another matter. And so today I invoked the rules. We went ahead and put both nominees, Mr. [Steven] Mnuchin and the congressman [Tom Price] out.

Now Schumer et al. have refused to meet with Judge Gorsuch as he makes the rounds to introduce himself. Perhaps they will summon the stupidity to filibuster a vote on Judge Gorsuchs appointment to the Supreme Court as well, but I doubt they are that stupid.

Via Jeff Poor/Breitbart.
An aging power grid means trouble for all concerned, and in the United States, that rapidly aging power grid is proving to bring increasing problems with it. Recently, we saw proof of exactly that happen with several substations going down in New Mexico, showing us how important it is to have power protection systems.

The outage started at about 1:30 in the morning, reports noted, hitting the northwest side of Albuquerque the hardest. That wasn't where it stopped, though, as the outage subsequently hit throughout the city, impacting five substations before spreading into Santa Fe, where two substations were hit.

The result was about 20 percent of PNM's customer baseroughly 144,000 customerslost power for several hours. Power was expected to be back on by five that morning. The cause of the outage was still under investigation, reports noted, though updates were likely to follow. A look at PNM's interactive outage map, meanwhile, suggested that outages were comparatively limited in scope as of this writing, with about three people currently without power.

In the end, the investigation's results will likely turn up one of several familiar causes: an animal in a transformer, a simple mechanical failure, or any of a dozen other possibilities. What really matters here is our response to this issue, and how we engage in power protection methods suitable to keep us operating even through such a disaster. While many of us think of bandwidth first when it comes to keeping a business running, we must first think of power, and how to keep it going even when the grid can't, or won't. That's why power protection is so vital; whether it's the simple uninterruptable power supply that offers just enough to save work and shut down safely or the full generator that lets power continue, power protection measures are a sane, sensible precaution in an environment where too many things could go wrong with something that we simply can't afford to work without. We need power almost as much as we need online bandwidth, and having those protection measures in place is what separates a completely lost business day from one moderately inconvenienced.

It was once said that the time to think about a generator is when the lights are still on. That's the same case for power protection, so before encountering another Albuquerque or Santa Fe, consider how you'll keep the lights on when the grid goes down.

Edited by Stefania Viscusi
hehehehe...Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking a low key approach to dealing with U.S. President Donald Trump, seeking to avoid clashes while indirectly signaling the two leaders' differences to a domestic audience.Insiders acknowledge the cautious strategy could anger progressives whose support helped bring Trudeau to power in 2015 but say for now, he has no choice but to hold fire: Canada sends 75 percent of its exports to the United States and could suffer if it is targeted by Trump."Why poke a grizzly bear while it's having lunch? Trump has just got into office and he is formulating his economic plans," said one senior political source.While Trudeau's close friendship with former President Barack Obama was often referred to as a "bromance" and "dude-plomacy,"Canadian prime ministers have not always had close ties with U.S. presidents.Still, few in Ottawa have experienced anything like Trump, insiders said."He is totally unpredictable," said another government source.Although Canada regards the United States as its closest ally, Trudeau has yet to visit Washington to see Trump.A visit tentatively scheduled this week was canceled after a shooter killed six Muslims in a Quebec mosque and no new date has been set, said two people familiar with the matter.Michael Kergin, a former Canadian ambassador to Washington, said Trudeau's caution was wise."He's been playing it pretty well by restraining the temptation to be publicly critical of the president. At the same time, it's a delicate balance," said Kergin, now a senior adviser at law firm Bennett Jones.Trudeau was also right not to follow British Prime Minister Theresa May in rushing to Washington to "gin up a special relationship," only to watch Trump make an unpopular move on immigration after she left, Kergin said.Trump labeled a refugee swap deal with Australia "dumb" on Thursday after a telephone call with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull that the Washington Post reported was acrimonious. Turnbull kept any sparring behind closed doors.Trudeau, however, has taken indirect shots. When Trump signed orders banning people from seven Muslim-majority states, Trudeau tweeted that Canada was open to those fleeing war.His chief spokeswoman blasted U.S. network Fox News on Tuesday for a tweet falsely claiming the Quebec gunman was of Moroccan origin. But she said nothing publicly when Trump's spokesman said the attack on Muslims showed why it was important to suspend immigration from Muslim nations.This approach infuriates the opposition New Democrats, who have called on Trudeau to denounce Trump's "racist" immigration policy.Trudeau team members acknowledge that over time, Liberals could lose support before a 2019 election if the prime minister is deemed not to be standing up for Canadian values such as inclusiveness."That is a risk, but we'll address it closer to the time," said the first Ottawa insider.Surveys show the Liberals have a healthy, but narrowing, advantage over their nearest rivals.Pollster Nik Nanos of Nanos Research said it was too early for Trudeau to be aggressive."He has to avoid making any kind of criticism. Trump has a very thin skin and he's quick to lash out," he said.
Hahahaha...who's the biggest snackbar!Pierre Vogel, a 38-year-old who converted to Islam in 2001, is considered one of the countrys most prominent Islamist preachers.The Salafist preacher, who insists on being called Abu Hamza, is a former professional boxer with an undefeated record.However, his latest fight has taken place outside the ring, when he and Sabri ben-Abda came to blows in a car.The fight began after ben-Abda allegedly said he was a true devotee and his former best friend Vogel was no longer radical enough.In the aftermath a violent scuffle broke out between the pair, according to reports.more
President Andrzej Duda has invited US President Donald Trump to visit Poland.

Polish presidential minister Krzysztof Szczerski extended the invitation on Dudas behalf during a meeting with Trump adviser Michael Flynn in Washington on Thursday.

In extending the invitation, Krzysztof Szczerski was also acting on behalf of Croatias President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic. After talks at the White House, the Polish minister said that the leaders of Poland and Croatia would like Trump to visit Poland during a Three Seas Initiative meeting scheduled for July.

"The invitation was accepted and we will now wait for President Trumps response regarding his calendar," minister Szczerski said.

While in Washington on Thursday, Krzysztof Szczerski secured assurances from representatives of the new US administration that US policy toward Poland would not be a result of US policy toward Russia.

Minister Szczerski also suggested that the new US administration has "no plans to revise the decisions of the NATO summit in Warsaw."(info. PAP)
The war on drugs is heating up, thanks in part to the ever-changing, more potent market for illegal drugs that kill users at a much higher rate than before.

Taylor Police Chief Mary Sclabassi said she worked on an undercover team in the 1990s where it was a huge deal that she bought a couple of bindles of heroin. Now its common to find large amounts of the drug during routine traffic stops.

Hundreds of people, from teens to elected officials, turned out at Wayne County Community College on Thursday evening for the first of what likely will be many town hall meetings on heroin and other opiates. Heroin and other illegal opiates kill more than 90 people a day nationwide.

This isnt just a problem, its an epidemic, 23rd District Judge Geno Salamone said. Just 10 years ago almost no one had a heroin story; now most everyone in that room does.

Attendees learned about the increasing number of users, deaths and other statistics; where to turn for help if friends or families become addicted; and many other ways to identify issues relating to the problem.

According to a report released by the Wayne County Medical Examiners Office, there were 19 deaths in Wayne County between August and September 2016. For the entire year, there were thousands of overdoses and 507 deaths in the county.

Eight communities in the county had at least five opiate-related deaths in 2016, including Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Southgate and Taylor in the Downriver region.

During the town hall meeting, which lasted more than two hours, speakers from the city of Taylor, Beaumont hospitals and many other organizations spoke on their perspectives of what opiates are doing to society.

Of the 507 opiate-related deaths in Wayne County last year, 486 were accidental. Sclabassi said that is because drugs are now far more potent than they were just a few years ago and people are accidentally overdosing themselves.

People are dying, not because they are choosing to, she said. When people are dabbling in prescription drugs, at some point that is no longer satisfying that high and they move on to heroin.

Lt. Mary Capp of the Michigan State Police said part of the problem is that drugs such as fentanyl are far more potent than heroin, and are cheaper to produce.

Fentanyl is used to treat terminally ill patients, she said. It is 80 times more potent that morphine. It is being cut into heroin because it gives people a better high and its cheap.

She said drugs are coming in from Mexico and are laced with both fentanyl and carfentanyl -an even more potent drug- because the average user doesnt know the difference and it increases profits on the sale of the drug.

They put the fentanyl in there and sell it as heroin and make a lot more money, Capp said. The non-pharmaceutical forms come from Mexico and China.

Lethal doses of fentanyl are about the size of 32 grains of salt; carfentanyl can be lethal at about nine grains of salt.

No one knows what they are buying if they buy it off the street, Capp said.
Closely Watched Case Could Have Expanded Government's Reach in Cloud Computing AgeMicrosoft has prevailed after a U.S. appeals court reaffirmed the company does not have to turn over emails that are stored overseas to federal authorities investigating a crime. The closely watched case explored the territorial boundaries of U.S. law in the cloud computing age.In a 4-4 decision on Jan. 24, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that the federal government cannot request through a warrant any emails maintained outside the U.S. The court denied rehearing the case, which the government sought, although federal officials could now petition the Supreme Court.The case tested the limits of the Stored Communications Act, passed by Congress in 1986, which outlines how the government can obtain electronic communications. The law does not address communications stored in another country.In denying the rehearing, Circuit Judge Susan L. Carney wrote that the SCA is long overdue for a revision given today's data storage landscape and the needs of law enforcement. But the act as written - and in line with Supreme Court precedent - would not apply to data stored outside the U.S."Although the realities of electronic storage have widely outstripped what Congress envisioned in 1986, we are not so far from the context of the SCA that we can no longer apply it faithfully," Carney writes.The technology industry widely backed Microsoft's resistance to turning over the emails, with support coming from companies including Salesforce.com, HP, Cisco, eBay and Verizon Communications.In a statement provided to Information Security Media Group, Microsoft Chief Legal Office Brad Smith called on Congress to modernize the law in order to keep people safe and ensure that governments respect each other's borders. "This decision puts the focus where it belongs, on Congress passing a law for the future rather than litigation about an outdated statute from the past," Smith writes.The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which backed Microsoft in the case, agreed that the SCA has not kept up with the times. "The technical and business infrastructure of electronic communications and data storage has changed; indeed, in the United States, our legal and social understandings of privacy, including the Fourth Amendment, have changed as well," Lee Tien, the EFF's senior staff attorney, tells ISMG.more
NEW YORK  CEOs of some of the worlds biggest companies are fighting back against President Donald Trumps temporary immigration ban, calling it un-American and bad for business.

The heads of Apple, Ford and Goldman Sachs said that they dont support the executive order the president signed last week, which bans immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. Google said it is donating cash to organizations that support immigrants. Other companies said they will help employees affected by the ban or, in the case of Starbucks, hire refugees.

Businesses already have a complicated relationship with Trump, who has been openly critical of companies planning to build plants in Mexico or charge what he sees as too much for fighter jets. Some have announced hiring plans and investments in the U.S., saying they like Trumps plans to reduce regulation and lower corporate taxes.

But the corporate reaction to the executive order was strong, quick and harsh.

This is unprecedented, said Bill Klepper, an adjunct management professor at Columbia Business School in New York. Trump said the executive order, signed Friday, was necessary to stop radical Islamic terrorists from coming to the U.S. It included a 90-day ban on travel to the U.S. by citizens of Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, or Yemen, and a 120-day suspension of the U.S. refugee program. The White House did not respond to a request for comment Monday.

It could be risky for businesses to speak out publicly, since Trump likes to fight back and criticize companies from his Twitter account. But public-relations experts said businesses have no choice, especially if the ban negatively affects their employees or customers.

No company has gone out of business putting their customers and employees first, said Matt Friedman, co-founder of Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Executives at technology companies, which employ many immigrants, were some of the first to speak out. Tim Cook, the CEO of iPhone maker Apple Inc., told employees in a memo obtained by The Associated Press that his company does not support the order. Apple would not exist without immigration, Cook said.

CEOs from e-commerce companies Amazon.com Inc., eBay Inc. and Etsy Inc. also said they did not support Trumps order, as did the head of video-streaming company Netflix Inc.

Coca-Cola Co. CEO Muhtar Kent said the soda maker was against the travel ban, and General Electric Co. CEO Jeff Immelt said the industrial conglomerate would make its voice heard with the new administration and Congress.

Ford Motor Co. said it does not support the policy or any other that goes against our values as a company, according to a letter signed by the automakers CEO Mark Fields and Executive Chairman Bill Ford. But other automakers, including General Motors Co., Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., were silent.

The auto industry, a frequent target of Trumps ire for moving jobs overseas, is walking a fine line, trying to avoid punishing tariffs and hoping Trump gives them some relief on corporate taxes and fuel economy standards.

And Goldman Sachs Group Inc., whose former employees are some of Trumps most trusted advisers, also pushed back.

This is not a policy we support, said the banks CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, in a voicemail to employees.

DONATING CASH

Google, the internet search company owned by Alphabet Inc., plans to give as much as $4 million to four organizations that provide legal assistance and other services to immigrants. The crisis fund will consist of $2 million from the company and $2 million in employee donations. Google is worried that Trumps executive order will harm many of its current workers and their families, and will make it more difficult to hire technically skilled workers from outside the U.S. in the future.

Ride-hailing app Lyft said it will give $1 million over the next four years to the American Civil Liberties Union. Lyfts co-founders, Logan Green and John Zimmer, said they will not be silent on issues that threaten the values of our community.

EMPLOYEE HELP

Drugmaker Merck & Co. said it will offer legal advice and other assistance to its employees, as did furniture seller Ikea.

Uber, the ride-hailing app, said it will offer financial help to employees affected by the ban. The companys CEO, Travis Kalanick, is part of Trumps economic advisory group and said he will bring up the issue with the president on Friday in Washington.

Uber, however, already faced backlash on Saturday after Twitter users criticized the company and encouraged riders to delete the app for charging less than it could at JFK Airport in New York as taxi drivers had halted service for an hour to protest the ban. The move was perceived by some as an effort to profit off the protests as more passengers would need to seek alternatives to cabs.

HIRING REFUGEES

Starbucks Corp. said it will hire 10,000 refugees over the next five years at its coffee shops around the world and focusing on employing those that have served with U.S. troops as interpreters. But taking a position on political matters can be risky for companies; the hashtag #BoycottStarbucks was trending on Twitter Monday after the company announced its move.

CEO Howard Schultz said he plans to reach out to employees more frequently.

I am hearing the alarm you all are sounding that the civility and human rights we have all taken for granted for so long are under attack, he said in a letter to workers.
UPPER DEERFIELD TOWNSHIP  State Senate President Steve Sweeney on Thursday pushed his School Funding Reform Plan, which he said would provide full funding to New Jersey schools.

During the roundtable at Cumberland Regional High School, Sweeney said the school district is part of the 80 percent of school districts receiving less money than they should.

Sweeney also took aim at Gov. Chris Christies proposed school funding plan, which he said would cut the districts funding by another $3.7 million. That means the district would receive only 53 percent funding, instead of the 75 percent it currently gets, he said.

Cumberland Regional accepts students from Fairfield, Stow Creek, Greenwich, Hopewell, Deerfield and Upper Deerfield townships and Shiloh. Each sending district also would lose additional funding under Christies plan, said Sweeney, D-Salem, Gloucester, Cumberland.

The state Senate created the bipartisan Select Committee on School Funding Fairness, which examines the current school funding formula and recommends reforms. The committee is holding hearings throughout the state.

Every school district in New Jersey should be fully funded so that every student has a fair and equal opportunity for quality education, Sweeney said. The original funding formula that was put in place in 2008 would have met that standard if it wasnt altered with fatal flaws that have resulted in some districts being shortchanged while others are funded above the formula, Sweeney said.

He wants to increase state support for schools $100 million per year for five years. He also said he wants $680 million in adjustment aid overfunding some school districts to be reallocated so all districts get full funding.

Bruce D. Harbison, Cumberland Regionals business administrator, said in a statement that Sweeneys plan will help rectify the inequities in the distribution of state aid that leaves too many districts like ours short of the funding we deserve.

Cumberland Regional had 1,254 students in 2015-16.

Almost 25,000 people live in the seven municipalities served by Cumberland Regional, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
ATLANTIC CITY  The partner of police Officer Joshlee Vadell was given a bulletproof vest Friday and praised for saving Vadells life the night he was shot by a gunman during a robbery attempt.

Officer Thomas McCabe, who returned fire and killed Vadells assailant, was given the vest to replace his own, which police said was damaged. After shooting the suspect, McCabe and other officers rushed Vadell to the hospital. Their quick actions early Sept. 3 helped save his life.

McCabe received the new bulletproof vest as Vadell and his wife, Laura, Mayor Don Guardian, city police Chief Henry White and other officers applauded.

During the ceremony at the citys tow lot, McCabe received a new 3A custom-fit ballistic armor vest to replace his damaged vest.

The vest was presented by Dominick Provisiero of Safariland Group and Alex Broder of Atlantic Tactical through the Heroic Action Replacement Program.

Toms instincts kicked in and directly affected the outcome we have today, with both officers sitting before us Broder said.

At 2:30 a.m. Sept. 3, McCabe and Vadell were investigating an armed robbery near the Caesars Atlantic City parking lot when Vadell was shot by one of the suspects. McCabe returned fire and shot and killed Jerome Damon, 25, of Camden.

Its good that McCabe can be recognized, White said Friday.

Last week, an Atlantic County grand jury cleared McCabe in the shooting, deciding his actions were justified. Officials previously had not identified McCabe as the officer with Vadell that morning.
A Cape May man who admitted inappropriately touching an adolescent boy and grooming another to have sex was sentenced Thursday to one year in jail and a lifetime of probation.

Frank L. Sandy Thomson, 70, who taught for more than 25 years at a Philadelphia private school and volunteered with a Boy Scouts of America Troop in West Cape May, is genuinely remorseful for his crimes, his attorney Joseph Rodgers said in court.

He was arrested in 2015 after authorities discovered he was trying to manipulate an 11-year-old boy into having sex, Assistant Prosecutor Dara Paley said.

Paley said Thomson had met the boy through Cape Mays Corinthian Yacht Club, where Thomson served as treasurer.

Thomson also admitted to inappropriately touching a 15-year-old boy in 2001 in Cape May.

Paley said she has been contacted by former students of Thomsons at Chestnut Hill Academy, an elite private school in Philadelphia, since the plea bargain was reached. Those former students have alleged Thomson had sexual contact with them decades ago, she said. Paley said the statue of limitations on any crimes alleged by the students means those crimes could not prosecuted.

Thomson was a teacher at the school from 1972 to 1998.

One story told by a former student was eerily similar to the 2001 incident, Paley told Superior Court Judge John Porto.

She said Thomson developed a method of grooming in which he gained a boys trust before manipulating and betraying him.

Thomson was sentenced Thursday after pleading guilty to criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child in connection to the two Cape May incidents.

He is applying to undergo house arrest for a year instead of jail time. Thomson, a retired EMT, owns a house on Windsor Avenue blocks from the beach in Cape May assessed at nearly $750,000.

Thomson was an assistant scoutmaster at Boy Scout Troop 73 in West Cape May but is no longer involved in the organization, Rodgers said.

His name also will be added to the sex offender registry under Megans Law and he will not be able to contact either victim or their families as part of the plea bargain.

Neither the victims nor their families were present for the sentencing, but Paley say they supported the plea agreement and did not wish to make a statement.
Steve Haucks babyface looked on as a 150-ton home was slowly set into place.

Hauck instructed his crew, shuffling from one point in the Ventnor front yard to another.

Some workers are much older than him, with paunch bellies and five oclock shadows. Hauck looks like he would struggle to grow a beard.{div style=width: 372px; height: 255px; float: right; margin: 10px;}{img src=http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/app/images/millennial-entrepreneurs.png alt=Millennial Entrepreneurs Interactive /}{/div} But the boss is used to it.

To be honest, the biggest struggle that I have is that not only am I young but I look younger, said the 29-year-old business owner.

Hauck is part of a small group of millennials  whose ages range from teens to early 30s  who are their own bosses in South Jersey. There are reasons why they are relatively few and have lower rates of business ownership than earlier generations, experts said.

Across the country, this age group may be choked with student debt. They may have trouble getting a loan from anyone other than a relative. And quite simply, they may be afraid of taking such a risk.

The self-employment rate for people ages 16 to 34 in Atlantic, Cape May, Ocean, Cumberland and Salem counties is 2.4 percent, according to 2015 American Community Survey data. The state rate is similar.

Hauck formed his business, S.J. Hauck House Movers, in 2010 after working in the industry with his father. When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, he saw a spike in people who wanted to raise their houses in shore towns.

Haucks business has grown from 10 employees to 56 over 3 years. He borrowed private money to start the business. No bank would loan him money.

There were times when I met with bankers and theyd joke about my age, asking me if Im 12 years old. I tell them, No, Im 13, is that a problem? said Hauck, 29, of Somers Point. He recently received his first line of credit.

Hauck sees potential in more millennials being bosses.

I hate to say it, but I see a lot of older people stuck in their ways. The world is changing, he said.

In New Jersey and the country, the ranks of millennial entrepreneurs are dwindling compared to prior decades, said Daniel Wilmoth, research economist for the Office of Advocacy with the U.S. Small Business Administration.

He found that at the same age in life, baby boomers reported self-employment rates nearly twice as high.

Wilmoth began his study with a different expectation. He thought of 32-year-old Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who started the social media giant from his dorm room 13 years ago. Zuckerberg is now the worlds fifth-richest person, worth $57 billion, according to Bloomberg.

But Wilmoth discovered that people become entrepreneurs later in life.

Millennials do want to be business owners.

An October 2014 Bentley University survey found 16 percent of this group wanted to start a business. Only 13 percent wanted to climb the corporate ladder.

Matt Pittaluga, Brian Hank Ruxton and Josh Jaspan started their business, Hank Sauce, which includes a Sea Isle City restaurant, in 2011 after college.

Their hot sauce company broke ground on a Millville factory, which they hope to open by the summer.

Until then, boxes of hot sauce are stacked up against the walls, waiting to be shipped to countless states.

Ruxton, 30, said college was the perfect time to start a business. He didnt have much experience, but he was enthusiastic.

As far as risk factors, I have a baby now. I couldnt have started what we started now, said Ruxton, of Sea Isle.

Ballooning student debt could be discouraging young people from starting a business, according to a 2015 report from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which measures entrepreneurial success.

The average outstanding loan was $27,689 in 2014, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Thats nearly $9,500 more than it was just seven years earlier.

Stephanie and Brent Young know the feeling. The married couple came out of school with debt. That didnt stop them from starting a wedding photography business.

When I played pretend as a kid, I had my own business, Stephanie Young joked.

At 24, she started Saltwater Studios. She photographs, and Brent shoots video.

The 28-year-olds edit from their Hammonton home.

The decision to start a business and work as a couple  with one source of income for the two of them  wasnt something they sought out, but theyre happy with the little empire theyve created.

Wedding work is slow in the offseason. Theyve also looked into other businesses through Stockton Universitys Small Business Development Center, which assists South Jersey entrepreneurs and business owners.

Carol Waties, regional director for the center, said she is seeing a huge influx of under-30 participants.

About 20 percent of the 500 to 600 clients at the center are millennials.

This is no surprise to Waties.

Young people see opportunity. They have skills that may not neatly fit into an employers box yet work very well for entrepreneurship, Waties said.

Waties said millennials need to challenge the belief that businesses need a large investment of funding. Many businesses, she said, can and are funded using a microloan  less than $35,000.

She said the opportunity for future success drives the younger entrepreneurs she sees.

Pittaluga said its all about staying persistent.

We keep chipping away and believing in it, he said.
Atlantic City resident Mohammad Haque immigrated to America in the 1980s from Bangladesh, where most residents are Muslim.

His experiences in the United States then are starkly different from the present after President Donald Trumps executive order halted immigration from several majority Muslim countries. While Bangladesh is not one of those countries, Haque said there is worry now among people of Muslim faith.

I never saw that kind of environment here and now we dont feel safe, said Haque, 62.

Local residents and faith leaders are coming out against Trumps order, calling the ban un-American and saying it creates a dangerous climate for Muslims.

What Ive been mainly hearing is extreme concern, especially for Muslims who are from other countries, very concerned about the tone of President Trumps rhetoric, Atlantic City Councilman Kaleem Shabazz said.

Trumps executive order signed Saturday halts the Syrian refugee program, suspends refugee admissions for 120 days and immigration from seven majority Muslim countries for 90 days. These countries are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

South Jersey residents, including many of the Muslim faith, made their concerns known this week, protesting Trumps order outside U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondos office in Mays Landing Tuesday and holding a vigil Thursday at Atlantic City City Hall.

Thursdays vigil included representatives from the Jewish Community Relations Council, Anti-Defamation League, and others.

Shabazz, who is Muslim, said there is there is extreme anxiety in the Muslim community and from other faiths, including the local Jewish population.

Rizwan Malik, a former 5th Ward councilman in Atlantic City, was glad to see people support the Muslim community.

To Trump, he suggested the president read the Bill of Rights.

And follow them, he said. Dont divide our country, dont divide our people.

On Wednesday, Stockton University Student Senate President Maryam Sarhan, 21, of Somers Point, organized the schools third annual World Hijab Day.

The event, which began in 2013, encourages a greater understanding of why Muslim women wear the head covering called the hijab. The timing, she said, was very relevant.

I think that there are deep-rooted perceptions that are simply not the reality, Sarhan said, of Muslim culture.

Sarhan hopes the event dispelled those prejudices.

Two protests were staged outside LoBiondos office Tuesday.

Dozens of protesters carried signs reading, No Ban No Wall, among other references to Trumps policies.

Lynn White, 74, of Smithville, attended a Tuesday protest.

My granddaughters significant other, his family comes from Syria, White said.

She said they have concerns over their family being separated.

The issue has reverberated with across nationalities and religions.

The last protest I took part in was for the Vietnam War, Brian Fitzpatrick, 61, of Linwood, said at a Tuesday protest. Nothing has pissed me off that much until now.
BERLIN  A Tunisian man suspected of being a recruiter for the Islamic State group and building a network of supporters to carry out an attack in Germany was arrested Wednesday in Frankfurt as authorities raided dozens of locations. Authorities said that Tunisian officials also suspect the man of involvement in a deadly attack on a museum in his homeland in 2015.Frankfurt prosecutors said their investigation focused on 16 people aged between 16 and 46. The main suspect, a 36-year-old Tunisian whom authorities didn't identify, was arrested on suspicion of supporting a foreign terrorist organization.more
Beach replenishment is an expensive and temporary method of maintaining barrier-island beaches. In the absence of alternatives  and many have been tried in vain  the federal and state governments and most of society are committed to pumping sand from the ocean floor for the foreseeable future.

As the post-Hurricane Sandy rebuilding of all the beaches along New Jerseys 127-mile Atlantic coast nears completion, an additional potential cost is becoming clear: Replenishment might be creating dead zones on land and at sea. Thats not sufficient reason to stop sand dredging (without a new and better option), but its worrisome enough that governments should adjust their practices and possibly even their funding mechanisms.

Even casual beachcombers can see the loss of natural life on the maintained beaches that dominate the Jersey Shores tourism towns. Compared to the increasingly rare beach that isnt periodically buried under dredged ocean-bottom material and mechanically raked clean regularly, a maintained beach is like a desert, a big sandbox for people to relax and play in.

Recently, a researcher with the Program for the Study of Developed Coastlines at Western Carolina University said studies have shown something similar happening on the other end of the fat, miles-long dredging pipe. Small to minute forms of ocean life  clams, crustaceans, sponges, worms and much tinier creatures  are vacuumed from the ocean floor, dumped on the beach and buried under sand, killing them. The dredged area where life has been removed sometimes fills with silt, further delaying its recovery.

Governments are planning to continue dredging ocean sand onto beaches for at least another half-century, so there is a danger it will create enough dead-zone acreage to adversely affect the richly complex coastal web of life. Recreational and commercial fishers say it already is.

Hundreds of sand ridges line the Mid-Atlantic ocean bottom. Theyre the dunes, beaches and barrier islands of an ice age tens of thousands of years ago. That means they have sand exactly the right size and composition for beach replenishment. And that means theyre the preferred sand source for such projects.

Biologists and fishing experts say the underwater sand ridges are also especially rich with life, which makes them preferred fishing grounds. They say dredging can destroy that life and ruin the fishing grounds.

Unfortunately, the science on this issue is thin. Details on dredgings effect on living ocean ridges and even beaches arent known. An environmental review of planned dredging of a ridge off Manasquan, for example, found no significant impact.

Steps to minimize the creation of dead zones could include making the effect of dredging on beach and ocean floor life a significant part of the consideration. Maybe some ridges have more biomass, maybe the ones closer to shore that are fed by the richness of the nearby coastal habitat.

Beach-replenishment projects, of course, also prefer to mine sand from ridges closer to shore, which reduces the already high cost. A better understanding of the long-term effects of dredging might support doing more of it from the 800 million cubic yards of available sand in federal waters at least 3 miles off New Jersey, and less from the 450 million cubic yards in closer state waters.

To cover the higher costs, government might consider an assessment on barrier-island properties, which are direct beneficiaries of the massively expensive projects. People living inland already chafe at the amount of general tax revenue spent on coastal communities, so barrier-island user fees would help maintain societys support for such projects. Sort of replenish it.
County, towns OKd PILOT with 13.5% share

In his Jan. 28 commentary, New PILOT requires different county share, Mayor Donald Guardian argues that Atlantic Countys non-casino taxpayers should be content with a smaller share of the casino PILOT rather than the 13.5 percent mutually agreed upon. He now proposes the county share be 9.92 percent  over $4 million less per year to county taxpayers and over $40 million less for the PILOTs 10-year term.

The mayor misses two important points. All 22 other county municipalities were opposed to the PILOT because they believed it unfair they should bear any costs for Atlantic Citys financial mismanagement. Second, as a result of the PILOT, casino valuations are artificially low. Borgata sold 50 percent ownership for $900 million while its total assessment is $880 million!

The mayor also ignores the fact that since 2008 county taxpayers will have refunded the city $65 million because of improper assessments. Although property tax refunds are not unusual, the magnitude of these are  more than 40 times higher than the county with the lowest refund and three times higher than the next highest in New Jersey. This cost must be paid by non-casino taxpayers. The PILOT freezes casino taxes until 2026.

The county and the Mayors Association agreed to the 13.5 percent so taxpayers would not have to pay a larger share of taxes because of Atlantic Citys fiscal mess. We recognized the PILOT was flawed and would negatively impact taxpayers. But the state and Atlantic City insisted it was vital. The county and municipalities gave their reluctant support only when the 13.5 percent was guaranteed.

Dennis Levinson

Atlantic County Executive

Linwood

Advisory board offers hope in Little Egg Harbor

We will work together as a team, stated the newly appointed Republican Mayor Raymond Gormley, referring to the Little Egg Harbor Township Committee. Gormley went on to say that the past few years have been tough times within the township. That may be an understatement.

Its been four years since Superstorm Sandy made its destructive landfall that produced a drop of hundreds of millions in ratables and the largest tax increase in township history, and some people are still not back in their homes. The ratable decrease was followed by a municipal reassessment that made for some very upset taxpayers.

Enter the Democratic Party, which captured two seats and an opportunity of taking control of the longstanding Republican committee. 2016 produced a year of political confrontation, unsubstantiated accusations of systemic corruption and fake news.

In an effort to put all this behind him, Gormley said that his first goal is to work toward returning residents to their homes by establishing a community advisory board so that representatives from all sections of the township can meet once a month and share ideas to bring us together as a community.

If successful, maybe he could make Little Egg great again.

Art Mooney

Little Egg Harbor Township

Marino good freeholder

We were saddened to learn that Freeholder Alex Marino would not be running for re-election. He truly cares about his constituents and his reason for not running is commendable. He truly is one of the good ones.

Jim and Peg Fuoti

Egg Harbor Township
Kellyanne Conway made up a fake terrorist attack to justify Muslim banIn an interview with MSNBCs Chris Matthews that aired on Thursday night, Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway managed to get two huge things wrong in a short, 19-second answer. First, she said that the Obama administration banned Iraqi refugees from entering in the United States for six months in 2011  which is flatly untrue.Second, and more significantly, she made up a terrorist attack committed by Iraqi refugees that never happened  the Bowling Green Massacre:Joe Sonka is, to be clear, 100 percent correct about this. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Kentucky committed by Iraqi refugees.Conway claims that most people don't know that because it didn't get covered. Most people dont know about it because it didnt happen.Where Conway is coming from (I think)In 2011, two Iraqi refugees, Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, were arrested in Bowling Green, KY, on federal terrorism charges. Allegedly, they had been plotting to send money and weapons back home to Iraqi insurgents.During the investigation, the FBI found something worrying: fingerprints from Alwan on a roadside bomb in Iraq. This suggested there was a very specific flaw in Americas refugee screening process: Databases of fingerprints from Iraqi militants were not well-integrated into the broader State Departmentrun refugee admissions process. As a result, the Obama administration initiated a new review of all roughly 57,000 Iraqi refugees who had been recently admitted into the United States.This process was manpower- and time-intensive, and resulted in a significant slowdown in Iraqi refugee admissions to the United States for six months. But it was not a ban, as Conway, Trump, and many in the conservative media claimed: Refugees from Iraq entered the United States in all six months.So, to recap:No one was killed by refugees in Bowling Green.There was never even a plan to kill anyone in Bowling Green.There was no ban on Iraqi refugee admissions afterwards.It is, I suppose, possible that Conway was referring to the other Bowling Green Massacre, which is a local haunted house.
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.




I'm paraphrasing.TRUMP ASKS PEOPLE TO PRAY FOR 'APPRENTICE' RATINGS, SCHWARZENEGGER RESPONSE: 'LET'S SWITCH JOBS'The current host of "Celebrity Apprentice" and the former host of the show -- also known as former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and current President of the United States Donald Trump -- are feuding.On Thursday morning, Trump said during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast that he wanted to "pray for Arnold" due to Schwarzenegger bringing in low ratings on "The Celebrity Apprentice."Schwarzenegger suggested in a short clip posted to social media that the two swap roles.."Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs?" Schwarzenegger said. "You take over TV because you're such an expert on ratings and I take over your job and then people can finally sleep comfortably again."A spokesman for Schwarzenegger, Daniel Ketchell, expanded on the former governor's remarks in a statement."Arnold is praying that President Trump can start improving his own approval ratings, which were the worst in history for an incoming President, by taking his job seriously and working inclusively," Ketchell said in an email to CNNMoney.The Whole episode left a bad taste in the mouths of some Chicago religious leaders, especially many Muslims who have felt persecuted by Trump's executive order which limits their ability to travel to and from the U.S."Rather than focus on a reality television show, there is serious social and political strife in this country right now. We're seeing social upheaval, disunity, issues left and right," said Armen Abdul Halim, Council of Islamic Organizations Chicago.Mark Burnett, the television producer who with Trump created "The Apprentice," was around for the feud as well -- he introduced Trump at the breakfast.Schwarzenegger was announced as Trump's replacement on the show in September 2015, after Trump decided to run for office.Trump praised Schwarzenegger at the time, saying on Twitter, "Congrats to my friend @Schwarzenegger who is doing next season's Celebrity Apprentice. He'll be great & will raise lots of $ for charity."Trump's tone was a bit different Thursday."The ratings went right down the tubes," Trump said at the breakfast. "It has been a disaster."Trump then said to the audience, "I want to just pray for Arnold ... for those ratings."The comment appeared to be a joke, but it was not the first time that Trump has commented dismissively about the ratings for "Celebrity Apprentice" since Schwarzenegger's version of the show premiered last month.The president called out Schwarzenegger when the new host brought in smaller viewership for the premiere of the new season than Trump had in his final season as host."Wow, the ratings are in and Arnold Schwarzenegger got "swamped" (or destroyed) by comparison to the ratings machine, DJT," the then-president-elect tweeted last month.Schwarzenegger responded to these remarks by wishing Trump "the best of luck" and saying that he hopes Trump will "work for ALL of the American people as aggressively as you worked for your ratings."TRUMP HAD HEATED EXCHANGE WITH AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTERPresident Donald Trump's roller coaster ride toward diplomacy continued late Wednesday night with a tweet calling an Obama-era agreement with Australia to accept refugees a "dumb deal."During the US President's call with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Saturday, Trump objected to an agreement over the US receiving refugees, sources told CNN. All this a day after a call with Mexico's President, where a transcript showed Trump complaining about Mexico's "handling" of "tough hombres."Australia is an ally of the United States, with the two countries joining three other English-speaking countries in an intelligence sharing arrangement known as the "Five Eyes."The disagreement came as the two leaders discussed a deal, reached under the Obama administration, for the US to accept refugees from Australia who are living on islands in detention centers off the mainland due to strict government policies.Many of them are from the seven countries affected by Trump's travel ban. Trump on Friday also suspended the entry of all refugees for 120 days, along with indefinitely suspending the entry of Syrian refugees.Sources say Trump insisted it was a very bad deal for the US to take 2,000 refugees and that one of them was going to be the next Boston bomber.Turnbull told Trump several times the agreement was for 1,250 refugees, not 2,000. He also said Australia was asking to submit them to the US for refugee screening, and if the refugees did not pass the US screening process, they would not come.Trump expressed concern as to how this agreement from President Barack Obama's administration would go forward given his executive order the day before temporarily suspending the US refugee program.Trump abruptly ended the call because he was unhappy, a source told CNN. White House press Wednesday night, Trump tweeted, "Do you believe it? The Obama administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"Turnbull said the call ended "courteously" in a radio interview Thursday.On Thursday, Trump used his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast -- an annual tradition attended by many world and religious leaders -- to weigh in on the reports circulating on his phone calls."When you hear about the tough phone calls I'm having, don't worry about it. Just don't worry about it. They're tough. We have to be tough. It's time we're going to be a little tough, folks," he said. "We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen anymore. It's not going to happen anymore."The Washington Post was the first to report on the details of the Australian call.When asked about the tweet labeling the agreement brokered with Obama's administration a "dumb deal," Turnball said, while the deal may not have been one Trump would've done or considered a "good deal," the President and his administration have committed to honor it.Earlier this week, Spicer said the Trump administration would honor the agreement, saying the refugees would be submitted to "extreme vetting."Turnbull attempted to keep some semblance of diplomacy, declining to elaborate on details of the call."Look, I'm not going to comment on a conversation between myself and the President of the United States other than what we have said publicly, and you can surely understand the reasons for that," he said. "I'm sure you can understand that. It's better these conversations are conducted candidly, frankly, privately. If you'll see reports of them, I'm not going to add to them."One person familiar with the circumstances on Saturday notes that President Trump's phone call with Turnbull came after a long day of conversations with other foreign leaders -- Turnbull was the fifth call after conversations with Japanese Prime Minister Abe, French President Hollande, German Chancellor Merkel, and Russian President Putin, each of which lasted close to an hour.Trump, this source said, was feeling some fatigue after his first major bout of diplomacy. And while his earlier conversations weren't necessarily contentious, they did involve some tense moments. Merkel and Hollande pushed back on the travel ban over the phone. Merkel felt she had to explain the Geneva Convention to Trump -- a lecture a source has said Trump chafed at.A government official familiar with Trump's interactions with foreign leaders said, "(Trump's) interactions are naive in that he keeps suggesting we will have the best relationship ever with a broad departure of countries, but there is no substance to back it up. When he encounters a policy challenge, like with Turnbull, he responds with a tantrum."WHITE HOUSE EXPECTED TO IMPOSE MORE SANCTIONS ON IRANThe White House is expected to impose additional sanctions on Iranian entities under existing executive orders that predate President Donald Trump, according to sources familiar with the move.The additional designations are in response to Iran's ballistic missile test Sunday and were first reported by Reuters.The additional sanctions are similar to actions taken by former President Barack Obama after Iran's previous ballistic missile tests.Following a meeting Thursday with Harley-Davidson executives in the White House, Trump declined to rule out the prospect of military action against the Islamic Republic."Nothing's off the table," he said.Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn condemned Wednesday Iran's recent ballistic missile test launch, calling it a "provocative" breach of a UN Security Council resolution. Iran denies that's it's violated any UN mandate."As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice," Flynn said from the White House briefing room.The news of the Iran sanctions came the same day that the US Treasury Department said it will allow for some companies to do limited business with Russia's Federal Security Service, known as the FSB. The move is a minor easing of a sanction put in place at the end of the Obama administration that limits business to $5,000 for any calendar year.Copyright 2017 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Germans now find US as trustworthy as RussiaGermanys faith in the US has taken a nosedive since the election of Donald Trump with the country viewing their longtime ally as trustworthy as Russia, a new poll has found.Just 22 per cent of respondents trusted the US under its new leader  compared with 59 per cent just before the November election.The sample of just over just 1,000 voters also found Germanys trust in Russia had declined four points between November and February to just 21 per cent. However, this is up from a low of 15 per cent in March 2015 following the downing of MH17 and the annexation of the Crimea.The results, gathered by Cologne-based radio station WDR, found that only 26 per cent of believe it is good that Mr Trump is following through on his campaign promises to ramp up protectionism, build a wall on the Mexican border and ban people from seven Muslim-majority countries.A further 69 per cent disapproved of his policies, but 80 per cent still believed the European Union must cooperate closely with him.The survey was part of a wider trend report polling Germans on politics ahead of the federal elections later this year.It also found 90 per cent of Germans were worried about the state of democracy in Turkey.Eighty-three per cent of respondents believed the government should be more opposed to the Turkish governments crackdown on dissent but 50 per cent still believe Chancellor Angela Merkel should do everything she can to save the refugee agreement agreed in March last year.
NEUSTADT AN DER AISCH, Germany, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Congratulations from technology partner Heidelberger

Onlineprinters starts the new year with news of success: Having expanded its clientele by 100,000 new customers in 2016, the company welcomed its 600,000th client in January 2017. "Last year, we defended our position as one of the market leaders in the European online printing sector, producing more than 2.1 billion printed products shipped to over 30 countries," says Dr. Michael Fries, CEO of Onlineprinters. Rainer Hundsdorfer, CEO of Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, congratulated him on achieving this milestone. The manufacturer of offset printing presses is a long-term technology partner of Onlineprinters. Onlineprinters GmbH is the biggest print shop in Europe to process 3b sheet sizes. In the offset printing department, the company uses only printing presses from Heidelberger for its successful business model. For its in-house digital printing and LFP operations, the provider of online print services relies on technology made by HP and Durst.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/464410/Onlineprinters_600_000th_customer.jpg )



One-stop shopping experience: Around 80 new products

"Having offset printing, digital printing, LFP and processing under one roof allows us to introduce new products and services promptly when our customers want them," Fries emphasises and says that this allows his company to respond easily to market needs and win new customers.

In 2016, Onlineprinters added almost 80 new items to its range of products. "This has taken us another big step closer to our goal of offering a one-stop shopping experience to our customers," CEO Fries explains the corporate strategy. Onlineprinters is the only major European print shop to offer self-adhesive labels on rolls with optional same-day production. Moreover, new formats were introduced for various products. Brochures are now available in the handy 17 x 24 cm pocket format, business cards can now be ordered in 5 x 5 cm square size. Personalisable advertising tools include two ballpoint pen designs, sticky notes in various sizes and shapes with and without die punching. Since December 2016, customers have also been able to purchase exclusive letterpress-printed business cards.

More service for existing products

Also the service was further upgraded. "Labels on rolls are a good example of our ongoing efforts to improve our service. By investing into new technology, we have slashed production times by several days for this product," CEO Fries explains. The trend towards smaller print runs requires an increasing number of printed products to be available more quickly, because they are ordered on shorter notice. Onlineprinters has catered to this trend by expanding the same-day print option to standard folders and folders with matt lamination. This means that the folders are produced on the same day the order is received. Writing pads are another example of shorter delivery times.

Global expansion course is continued

After taking the two new investors Bregal Unternehmerkapital and Project A Ventures on board, the company's 2017 objectives include two-digit sales growth, profitability increase and the addition of new products. Dr. Michael Fries announces: "We will continue to push our international growth efforts. In January, our Czech web shop went online. 2017 will see even more activities to this end. We are already operating web shops in ten languages. We are now realising more than half of our turnover abroad; this trend will become stronger in the next years."

About Onlineprinters

Onlineprinters GmbH is one of Europe's leading online print providers. In line with the motto "Print simply online!" the company sells printed products to 600,000 customers in 30 European countries through its 16 web shops. Internationally, the company is known under the brand name "Onlineprinters"; in Germany it operates under the name "diedruckerei.de". The product range comprises 1,400 printed products from business cards, stationery and flyers to catalogues, brochures and large-format advertising systems. The formula to successfully produce customised prints in terms of Industry 4.0 rests on three pillars: online sales, fully integrated production from ordering to shipping and gang run printing. The latter uses so-called combined forms to collectively produce print jobs, therefore minimising costs and reducing the environmental impact. Selected products allow customers to choose the option of same day printing (produced on the same working day), overnight delivery, climate neutral production and custom size specification. Onlineprinters GmbH employs a staff of 650 and produces over two billion printings per year.

The video "A look behind the scenes of Onlineprinters":

https://youtu.be/1uIQE_QFYIs?list=PLEriQeICU0iuXDVlzuMg8mXs75QhR8tGa

Press contact:

Onlineprinters GmbH

Patrick Piecha

Head of Press & Public Relations

Rudolf-Diesel-Strae 10

91413 Neustadt an der Aisch

Germany

Phone: +49-9161-6209807

+49-174-3077250

press@onlineprinters.com

http://www.onlineprinters.com



SOURCE Onlineprinters GmbH
STOCKHOLM, Feb 03, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Press release - 3 Febuary 2017, 08:20 CET

G-ESS is one of Sweden's major independent distributors of professional workwear and footwear. The company holds a strong position in the Stockholm area, with four stores in Bromma, Jarfalla, Taby and Huddinge. The company generates annual sales of approximately SEK 120 million and employs a workforce of 37. Its customers operate in the installation, construction, industry and service sectors.

Johan Nilsson, President and CEO of Ahlsell AB (publ) says, "The acquisition of G-ESS extends our product portfolio and strengthens our position in the field of professional workwear and footwear in the Nordic market. G-ESS also adds new and interesting clients to our customer base, which opens up potential new business opportunities".

G-ESS will continue to operate under its own brand and with its existing sales organisation.

The take-over is expected to take place in early March and it is anticipated that the acquisition will have a marginal positive impact on Group earnings in 2017.

For further information, contact:

Johan Nilsson,

President and CEO,

Ahlsell AB (publ)

Tel: +46 (0)8-685-70-00

Anna Oxenstierna,

Investor relations

Tel: +46 (0)708-15-84-85

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/ahlsell-ab/r/ahlsell-acquires-g-ess-yrkesklader,c2179779

The following files are available for download:

http://mb.cision.com/Main/13374/2179779/623295.pdf Ahlsell acquires G-ESS Yrkesklader

SOURCE Ahlsell AB
MOLNDAL,, Sweden, Feb 03, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Arcam AB will publish the Year End-report 2016 on February 7 at 14:00 (CET).

Please note the new time.

Contact:

For further information:

Magnus Rene,

CEO and President, Arcam

Cell: 46-702-79-89-99 or 1-781-266-6957

E-mail: magnus.rene@arcam.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/arcam/r/arcam-year-end-report-2016,c2179655

The following files are available for download:

SOURCE Arcam
MADRID, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The best businesses from Spain were honoured at an exclusive event last night at the British Ambassador's Residence in Madrid, for The European Business Awards sponsored by RSM.

(Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/464605/European_Business_Awards_Madrid.jpg )

The 34 firms were chosen by a panel of independent judges, including senior businesses and academic leaders, to be 'National Champions' in Europe's largest business competition.

At the event attendees had the chance to speak to leading businesses in their field and hear from guest speakers including Simon Manley, British Ambassador to Spain and Jose M Gasso and David Garcia, partners of RSM Spain.

Simon Manley, British Ambassador, said: "I was delighted to host this event for the European Business Awards. Congratulations to the companies that have been selected to represent Spain as National Champions, they play an important role in creating a stronger business community right across Europe."

Lead sponsor RSM, is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms worldwide, and has supported the European Business Awards since its inception.

Jose M Gasso and David Garcia, partners of RSM Spain said: "We are very impressed by the level of innovation and motivation of the Spanish companies participating this year, and are fully confident that these award winning companies will powerfully represent Spain's business strength in the next phase of the competition."

All the National Champions are also currently taking part in the Public Vote, which opened on 9 January at http://www.businessawardseurope.com. Category winners and the overall winner of the public vote will be announced at the Gala Final in May 2017.

The European Business Awards was set up to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe. This year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries.

Further information about the National Champions and the Awards can be found at http://www.businessawardseurope.com and http://www.rsm.global

About the European Business Awards:

The European Business Awards' primary purpose is to support the development of a stronger and more successful business community throughout Europe.

For all citizens of Europe, prosperity, social and healthcare systems are reliant on businesses creating an even stronger, more innovative, successful, international and ethical business community - one that forms the beating heart of an increasingly globalised economy.

The European Business Awards programme serves the European business community in three ways:

 It celebrates and endorses individuals' and organisations' success

 It provides and promotes examples of excellence for the business community to aspire to

 It engages with the European business community to create debate on key issues

The European Business Awards is now in its 10th year. This year it engaged with over 33,000 businesses from 34 countries. Last year's public vote generated over 227,000 votes from across Europe. Sponsors and partners include RSM, ELITE and PR Newswire.

http://www.businessawardseurope.com.

About RSM:

RSM is the sixth largest network of independent audit, tax and consulting firms, encompassing over 120 countries, 760 offices and more than 38,000 people internationally. The network's total fee income is US$4.64 billion.

RSM is the lead sponsor and corporate champion of the European Business Awards promoting commercial excellence and recognition of entrepreneurial brilliance.

RSM is a member of the Forum of Firms, with the shared objective to promote consistent and high quality standards of financial and auditing practices worldwide.

RSM is the brand used by a network of independent accounting and advisory firms each of which practices in its own right. RSM International Limited does not itself provide any accounting and advisory services. Member firms are driven by a common vision of providing high quality professional services, both in their domestic markets and in serving the international professional service needs of their client base. http://www.rsm.global

About ELITE:

ELITE is a full-service programme designed to share best practice and increase growth opportunities for fast growing companies, with a focus on understanding the capital markets. ELITE is an innovative programme based on exclusive training and a tutorship model, supported by access to the business and financial community. Its aim is to prepare companies for their next stage of growth and investment.

For further information on the programme, companies and the full list of partners, please go to:

http://www.elite-growth.com

About PR Newswire:

PR Newswire is the leading global provider of PR and corporate communications tools that enable clients to distribute news and rich content. We distribute our client's content across traditional, digital and social media channels in real time with fully actionable reporting and monitoring.

Combining the world's largest multi-channel, multi-cultural content distribution and optimisation network with comprehensive workflow tools and platforms, PR Newswire enables the world's enterprises to engage opportunity everywhere it exists. PR Newswire serves tens of thousands of clients from offices in Europe, Middle East, Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region.

For more information on PR Newswire please visit http://www.prnewswire.co.uk

SOURCE European Business Awards
LONDON, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Material (Wool (Glass Wool, Stone/Rock Wall), Plastic Foam (Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), Extruded Polystyrene (XPS), Polyurethane Foam (PUR & PU), Others) and by Location (Roof (Pitched, Flat), Wall, (Internal, External, Cavity), Floor)

Visiongain's new 161 page research report assesses that the global Building Thermal Insulation market will reach $25.1billion in 2017.

Are you involved in the Building Thermal Insulation Market or need to understand its market dynamics? If so, then you must have this report

It's vital that you keep your knowledge up to date. You need this report.

Market scope: This brand new report from visiongain is a completely fresh market assessment of the Building Thermal Insulation market based upon the latest information. Our new market study contains forecasts, original analysis, company profiles and, most crucially, fresh conclusions. The report provides detailed forecasts and analysis of Building Thermal Insulation markets by region and end-use sectors.

The Building Thermal Insulation Market Analysis & Forecast 2017-2027 report responds to your need for definitive market data:

 Where are the Building Thermal Insulation market opportunities?

- 148 tables, charts, and graphs reveal market data allowing you to target your strategy more effectively

 When will the Building Thermal Insulation market grow?

- Global, national and Building Thermal Insulation submarket forecasts and analysis from 2017-2027 illustrate the market progression

 Which Building Thermal Insulation submarkets will flourish from 2017-2027?

Wool Insulation Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Glass Wool Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Stone Wool Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

Plastic Foams Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- EPS Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- XPS Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- PUR Foams Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Other Applications Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

Wall Insulation Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- External Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Internal Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Cavity Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

Roof Insulation Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Flat Roof Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Pitch Roof Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

Floor Insulation Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

 Where are the regional Building Thermal Insulation market opportunities from 2017-2027?

Focused regional forecasts and analysis explore the future opportunities

Regional forecasts from 2017-2027

- North America forecast 2017-2027

- Western Europe forecast 2017-2027

- Central and Eastern Europe forecast 2017-2027

- Asia-Pacific forecast 2017-2027

- Middle East & Africa forecast 2017-2027

- South America forecast 2017-2027

National forecasts from 2017-2027

- US forecast 2017-2027

- Canada forecast 2017-2027

- Mexico forecast 2017-2027

- Germany forecast 2017-2027

- UK forecast 2017-2027

- France forecast 2017-2027

- Spain forecast 2017-2027

- Italy forecast 2017-2027

- Poland forecast 2017-2027

- Russia forecast 2017-2027

- Brazil forecast 2017-2027

- Japan forecast 2017-2027

- India forecast 2017-2027

- China forecast 2017-2027

- South Korea forecast 2017-2027

- Philippines forecast 2017-2027

- Indonesia forecast 2017-2027

- Malaysia forecast 2017-2027

- Vietnam forecast 2017-2027

- Argentina forecast 2017-2027

 What are the factors influencing Building Thermal Insulation market dynamics?

- SWOT analysis explores the factors.

- Research and development (R&D) strategy

- Supply and demand dynamics

- Advances in material technologies

 Who are the leading 10 Building Thermal Insulation companies?

- We reveal a competitive landscape analysis positioning, capabilities, product portfolios, R&D activity, services, focus, strategies, M&A activity, and future outlook.

- BASF SE

- Beijing New Building material (Group) Co. Ltd.

- GAF

- Johns Manville

- Kingspan Group

- Knauf Insulation

- Owens Corning Corporation

- Paroc

- Rockwool International

- Saint Gobain

Who should read this report?

- Anyone within the Building Thermal Insulation value chain, including

- Construction companies

- Raw material suppliers

- R&D specialists

- CEO's

- COO's

- CIO's

- Business development managers

- Marketing managers

- Technologists

- Investors

- Banks

- Government agencies

- Contractors

Get our report today Building Thermal Insulation Market Analysis & Forecasts 2017-2027: Material (Wool (Glass Wool, Stone/Rock Wall), Plastic Foam (Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), Extruded Polystyrene (XPS), Polyurethane Foam (PUR & PU), Others) and By Location (Roof (Pitched, Flat), Wall, (Internal, External, Cavity), Floor). Avoid missing out - order our report now.

To request a report overview of this report please emails Sara Peerun at sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com or call Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 6100

Or click on : https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1784/Building-Thermal-Insulation-Market-Analysis-Forecasts-2017-2027

Companies Mentioned in This Report

AK Construction

Akterm LLC

Alchimica S.A. Building Chemicals

Barozzi Vernici Srl

BASF

Beco Products Ltd

Beijing new building materials

Blandain

Building Regulations Services Ltd

Buitex

Celotex

Certain Teed

Changda Composite Materials Co.,Ltd

Ecosism Srl

Exclusive Wood Group

Exoandamiajes

Fibralco S.A.

Frame

GAF materials Corporation

Geocell Schaumglas Gmbh

Gris Clair

Hengshui Shenlong Industry Co,Ltd

Ireprotect Ltd

Isomar

Izocam Isoroc

Izoclass Construct

Izomar Izolasyon Taah. Yapi Ve Cephe Sist. San. Tic. A.S

Izotum Yalitim

Jiangsu Zhaosheng Building Material Co.,Ltd

Johns Manville

Joris Ide

Kingspan Group

Knauf insulation

Linerock

MAG Celotex

Natura Group

Nestaan

Nevper Minerals Co.

Owens Corning

OY Preloc Ltd.

Paroc

Pavle

Permatherm

Rockwool International

Saint Gobain

Siderise Ltd

Structa Geometria, Uab

The Dow Chemical

Thermafiber Inc

Tianjin Huali Thermal Insulation Material Co,.Ltd

Tianjin Yuzhong International Trading Co., Ltd

Topox

Tovo Gomma Spa

Zaklad Uslug Melioracyjnych I Rekultywacyjnych. Stepien Elzbieta

Zao Isoroc

Zhejiang Pengyuan New Material Co.,Ltd.

Zhongyang United International Trade Co. Ltd

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

SOURCE Visiongain Ltd
LONDON, February 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

In-Depth Analysis by Particle Form (Solid, Hollow), By Material (Glass, Ceramic, Fly Ash, Metallic and Polymer, Other), By Industry Application (Construction Composites, Medical Technology, Life Science & Biotechnology, Personal Care & Cosmetics, Paints & Coating, Oil & Gas, Automotive, Aerospace, Other) & By Region Plus Analysis of Leading Manufacturers

Visiongain's new 182 page report assesses that the global Microspheres market will reach $4.6 billion in 2017.

Are you involved in the Microspheres Market or need to understand its market dynamics? If so, then you must read this report

It's vital that you keep your knowledge up to date. You need this report.

Market scope: This brand new report from visiongain is a completely fresh market assessment of the Microspheres market based upon the latest information. Our new market study contains forecasts, original analysis, company profiles and, most crucially, fresh conclusions. The report not only gives detailed forecasts and analysis of Microspheres markets by region and end-use sectors.

The Microspheres Market Forecast Report 2017-2027 report responds to your need for definitive market data:

 Where are the Microspheres market opportunities?

- 169 tables, charts, and graphs reveal market data allowing you to target your strategy more effectively

 When will the Microspheres market grow?

- Global, national and Microspheres submarket forecasts and analysis from 2017-2027 illustrate the market progression

 Which Microspheres submarkets will flourish from 2017-2027?

By particle form

- Hollow Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Solid Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

By raw material

- Glass Submarket Forecast 2017-2027



- Ceramic Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Fly Ash Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Polymer Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Metallic Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Other Raw Materials Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

By industry application

- Construction Composites Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Medical Technology Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Life Science & Biotechnology Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Paints & Coatings Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Cosmetics & Personal care Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Oil & Gas Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Automotive Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Aerospace Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

- Other Applications Submarket Forecast 2017-2027

 Where are the regional Microspheres market opportunities from 2017-2027?

Focused regional forecasts and analysis explore the future opportunities

- Asia Pacific forecast 2017-2027

- Europe forecast 2017-2027

- North America forecast 2017-2027

- Middle East and Africa forecast 2017-2027

- Latin America forecast 2017-2027

- U.S. forecast 2017-2027

- Canada forecast 2017-2027

- Germany forecast 2017-2027

- U.K. forecast 2017-2027

- France forecast 2017-2027

- Italy forecast 2017-2027

- Spain forecast 2017-2027

- Russia forecast 2017-2027

- Poland forecast 2017-2027

- China forecast 2017-2027

- Japan forecast 2017-2027

- India forecast 2017-2027

- South Korea forecast 2017-2027

- Thailand forecast 2017-2027

- Middle East forecast 2017-2027

- Africa forecast 2017-2027

- Brazil forecast 2017-2027

- Argentina forecast 2017-2027

 What are the factors influencing Microspheres market dynamics?

- SWOT analysis explores the factors.

- GDP growth

- Infrastructure development

- Research and development (R&D) strategy

- Supply and demand dynamics

- Advances in product quality

 Who are the leading 10 Microspheres companies?

- We reveal market share, positioning, capabilities, product portfolios, R&D activity, services, focus, strategies, M&A activity, and future outlook.

- 3M Company

- AkzoNobel N.V.

- Momentive Performance Materials Inc

- Sigmund Lindner

- Trelleborg AB

- Matsumoto Yushi-Seiyaky Co.Ltd.

- Luminex Corporation

- Chase Corporation

- Potters Industries

- Mo Sci Corporation

 Who should read this report?

- Anyone within the Microspheres value chain, including

- Construction Composites companies

- Pharma and Medical Technology companies

- Personal Care and Cosmetics companies

- R&D specialists

- CEO's

- COO's

- CIO's

- Business development managers

- Marketing managers

- Technologists

- Investors

- Banks

- Government agencies

- Contractors

Get our report today Microspheres Market Forecast Report 2017-2027: In-Depth Analysis by Particle Form (Solid, Hollow), By Material (Glass, Ceramic, Fly Ash, Metallic and Polymer, Other), By Industry Application (Construction Composites, Medical Technology, Life Science & Biotechnology, Personal Care & Cosmetics, Paints & Coating, Oil & Gas, Automotive, Aerospace, Other) & By Region Plus Analysis of Leading Manufacturers. Avoid missing out - order our report now.

To request a report overview of this report please emails Sara Peerun at sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com or call Tel: +44 (0) 20 7336 6100

Or click on : https://www.visiongain.com/Report/1775/Microspheres-Market-Forecast-Report-2017-2027

Companies Mentioned in This Report

3M Company

Advanced Polymers International

AkzoNobel N.V.

Asia-Pacific Microspheres

Aveka Inc.

Bangs Laboratories Inc.

Chase Corporation

Cospheric LLC

Dennert Poraver GmbH

Durgesh Group

HOS-Technik Vertriebs- und Produktions-GmbH

Imperial Microspheres

InnoCore Pharmaceuticals

Luminex Corporation

Matsumoto Yushi-Seiyaku Co. Ltd.

Merit Medical Systems Inc.

Microsphere Technology Ltd

Microtek Laboratories, Inc.

Mo Sci Corporation

Momentive Performance Materials Inc

Nanjing Jianzun Plant Co. Ltd

Novum Glass, LLC

Petra Buildcare Products

PolyMicrospheres, Division of Vasmo, Inc.

Polysciences Inc.

Potters Industries

PRUI Nanoparticles & Microspheres Co. Ltd

Sigmund Lindner

Sinosteel Maanshan New Material Technology

Spherotech Inc.

Suncolor Corporation

Tate & Lyle

The Kish Company Inc.

Trelleborg AB

Zumir

To see a report overview please email Sara Peerun on sara.peerun@visiongainglobal.com

SOURCE Visiongain Ltd
LINKOPING, Sweden, Feb 03, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

For the third continuous year, international medical imaging IT and cybersecurity company Sectra (STO: SECT B) has been named 'Best in KLAS' for Global (Non-US) PACS. This category represents hospitals in all countries other than the US. Earlier this week Sectra announced that, for the fourth consecutive year, it has been given the same award in the category US PACS. Sectra is now ranked #1 in customer satisfaction by its healthcare provider customers worldwide.

Sectra PACS was first installed in 1993 and, today, manages over 75 million annual radiology and pathology examinations worldwide and is an integral part of Sectra's Enterprise Image Management solution.

"To receive these accolades from users all over the globe, demonstrates the quality of our people and our software, regardless of where in the world or where in the hospital these customers work. It also shows our dedication to making our customers successful in every discipline we choose to enterin radiology as well as in the broader field of enterprise imaging or cybersecurity," says Dr. Torbjorn Kronander, President and CEO of Sectra.

The awards are presented in the "2017 Best in KLAS: Software and Services" report by the research firm with the same name. KLAS is a research firm on a global mission to improve healthcare delivery by enabling providers to be heard and counted. Working with thousands of healthcare professionals and clinicians, KLAS gathers data on software, services and medical equipment to deliver timely reports, trends and statistical overviews. The research directly represents the provider voice and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance. To learn more about KLAS and our reports, visit www.KLASresearch.com .

Meet Sectra at HIMSS and ECR 2017

Sectra's Enterprise Image Management solution, including Sectra PACS, will be showcased at the HIMSS and ECR trade shows. Visit us at booth #714 at HIMSS and at booth #411 at ECR to learn more about our solutions.

Book a meeting at HIMSS: www.sectra.com/himss

Book a meeting at ECR: www.sectra.com/ecr

For further information, please contact:

Dr. Torbjorn Kronander,

CEO and President Sectra AB,

Tel: 46 (0) 705-23-52-27



Marie Ekstrom Tragardh,

Executive Vice President Sectra AB and President Sectra Imaging IT Solutions,

Tel: 46 (0)708-23-56-10

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/sectra/r/sectra-is-rated--1-in-customer-satisfaction-worldwide-2017-best-in-klas--for-global--non-us--pacs,c2178580

The following files are available for download:

http://news.cision.com/sectra/i/sectra-best-rated-pacs-in-the-world,c2067890 Sectra Best Rated Pacs in the World

SOURCE Sectra
BALTIMORE, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Society of Academic Urologists (SAU) and American Urological Association (AUA) are pleased to announce the results from this year's highly competitive Urology Residency Match Program, which includes the largest number of positions offered, and filled, in the Program's history.

Nearly 480 applicants wishing to specialize in urology registered for this 2017 Urology Match, an increase from the 468 who registered in 2016. Of those who registered, 422 (88 percent) submitted preference lists, vying for a record 319 available positions across the country. When the matching algorithm was processed, 75 percent matched to a vacancy within 130 U.S. registered and accredited training programs, including six American Osteopathic Association accredited programs, leaving just two vacancies unmatched.

"We are proud of the continued success of the Urology Residency Match," said SAU President, Stephen Y. Nakada, MD, FACS. "The record number of programs registered, positions filled and the inclusion of American Osteopathic Association, is a positive trend for the specialty, and a testament to the increased level of interest many have in urology."

Urology Match Day is an annual rite of passage for U.S. medical students and other applicants from around the world. Medical students begin their residency application process at the start of their final year in medical school. After applying to various registered programs across the country, select candidates are invited by programs for interviews, which are held in the fall and early winter. Once the interview period is over, both registered parties submit their preference lists to the AUA who has performed the Match annually on behalf of the SAU (formerly Society of University Urologists) for more than 30 years.

"Each year we look forward to helping a growing number of medical students start their journey toward becoming urologists," said AUA Residents Committee Chair Hans C. Arora, MD. "We are pleased to be a part of such a critical milestone for these talented men and women."

2017 Urology Residency Match Highlights

A record 130 U.S. accredited training programs registered for the 2017 Urology Match, an increase from 124 in 2016.

On average, participants submitted 68 applications, 3 more than in 2016.

Programs received an average of 248 applications, three less than in 2016.

Programs granted an average of 36 interviews in 2017 and 2016.

Potential residents took an average of 11 interviews this year, an increase of one than in 2016.

Matched applicants had an average of 14.07 programs on their preference lists in 2017 compared to 14.26 in 2016.

Female graduates applying for and matching with urology programs also grew in 2017. This year, 82 of 109 female participants (75 percent) matched with programs, compared to 63 of 93 (68 percent) in 2016.

A total of 291 (82 percent) of senior medical students were matched in 2017, 60 more than in 2016.

A total of 15 (47 percent) of previous U.S. graduates (not seniors) were matched in both 2017 and 2016.

A total of 11 (33 percent) of international medical students and graduates were matched in 2017, five more than in 2016.

The AUA uses a computerized mathematical algorithm to match applicants with programs using the preferences expressed on their ranked lists.

Statistics on the 2017 Match and past Match results can be found by visiting: https://www.auanet.org/education/urology-and-specialty-matches.cfm

About the American Urological Association: Founded in 1902 and headquartered near Baltimore, Maryland, the American Urological Association is a leading advocate for the specialty of urology, and has more than 21,000 members throughout the world. The AUA is a premier urologic association, providing invaluable support to the urologic community as it pursues its mission of fostering the highest standards of urologic care through education, research and the formulation of health policy.

CONTACT: Christine Frey, AUA

443-909-0839, [email protected]

SOURCE American Urological Association

Related Links

http://www.AUAnet.org


NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC applauded the Trump Administration's quick and firm response to the latest illicit Iranian test of a ballistic missile. The UN Security Council deemed in a July 2015 resolution that such tests are illegal. It was adopted soon after the P5+1 and Iran signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran's nuclear program.

"Nefarious Iranian behavior cannot go unchecked," said AJC CEO David Harris. "Rigorous monitoring of Iran's compliance with the JCPOA and related international measures, such as the UN ban on ballistic missile tests, is imperative to successfully curtailing Iran's threats to regional and global security."

The U.S. sanctions imposed today on 13 people and a dozen companies follow a Security Council meeting earlier this week to discuss Sunday's missile test. Iran has violated the UN resolution a number of times.

The 2015 Security Council resolution called "upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology." It bars Iran from conducting ballistic missile tests until 2023.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee

Related Links

http://www.ajc.org


MORRISVILLE, N.C., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Alliance One International, Inc. (NYSE: AOI) today announced that it will hold a conference call to report financial results for its third quarter ended December 31, 2016, on February 7, 2017 at 8:00 a.m. ET. The dial in number for the call is (888) 632-3384 or outside the U.S. (785) 424-1675 and conference ID 1742731. Those seeking to listen to the call may access a live broadcast on the Alliance One website. Please visit www.aointl.com fifteen minutes in advance to register.

For those who are unable to listen to the live event, a replay will be available by telephone from 11:00 a.m. ET Tuesday, February 7, 2017 through 11:00 a.m. ET Sunday, February 12, 2017. To access the replay, dial (888) 203-1112 within the U.S., or (719) 457-0820 outside the U.S., and enter access code 1742731.

Any replay, rebroadcast, transcript or other reproduction of this conference call, other than the replay accessible by calling the number above, has not been authorized by Alliance One and is strictly prohibited. Investors should be aware that any unauthorized reproduction of this conference call may not be an accurate reflection of its contents.

Alliance One International is a leading independent leaf tobacco merchant serving the world's large multinational cigarette manufacturers. For more information on Alliance One, visit the Company's website at www.aointl.com.

SOURCE Alliance One International, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.aointl.com


Altus Power will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony together with the Town of Framingham and DDR in early spring. Tom Athan, President of Altus Power America, said, "Shoppers World is exactly the type of solar project that the State of Massachusetts has encouraged and America needs. The large rooftop, which was once vacant but for some HVAC RTUs, now generates clean energy that saves money for, and is used by, the people in the Town of Framingham. Thank you DDR, Eversource, Town of Framingham and Massachusetts DOER for all your help in making this project a reality."
HOUSTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In a victory for property owners, the Texas Supreme Court found the plain reading of an insurance policy favored a payout for damages to a homeowner's fence during Hurricane Ike, overturning lower courts which dismissed the claim.

The judgment could result in increased coverage for policyholders in future disputes with insurers, said Caj Boatright of Houston-based law firm Arnold & Itkin who argued on behalf of homeowners Elie and Rhonda Nassar of Richmond, Texas.

"This decision means that if a policyholder has a reasonable 'plain language' interpretation of a policy, that should be given weight in court," Boatright said. "Insurance companies should not be allowed to confuse consumers with legalese."

The judgment issued on Jan. 27 sent the nine-year-long insurance policy dispute between the Nassars and Liberty Mutual Insurance Company back to the trial court.

The original dispute centered on whether a fence should be considered a "structure attached to the dwelling" -- a distinction that made a significant difference on the payout. The Nassars argued that the "plain language" of the insurance policy could reasonably be interpreted to include the fence because it was attached to the house at four separate points. Liberty Mutual argued that other provisions of the policy defined fences in a different way.

The trial court sided with Liberty Mutual and granted summary judgment, deciding the case before it went before a jury. The Court of Appeals for the Fourteenth District upheld the trial judge's decision, and the homeowners appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, which agreed to review the case.

Boatright argued that weight should be given to the policy's plain reading by ordinary people.

"Most people don't hire a lawyer to review every insurance policy they buy," Boatright said.

In the opinion, the Supreme Court states, "Our taskis not to find new meaning in relatively common words or to make difficult what is actually simple." The Black's Law Dictionary definition of "structure" ultimately won out over the insurance company's explanation.

The Supreme Court's decision may have the effect of discouraging trial court judges from making adverse summary judgment rulings against policyholders in common disputes, resulting in more cases like the Nassars' reaching quicker settlements or going to trial, Boatright said.

"Who else is better suited to interpret the 'plain language' of an insurance policy," asks Boatright, "than a jury of your peers."

To learn more about Arnold & Itkin, please visit them online today at www.arnolditkin.com.

SOURCE Arnold & Itkin LLP

Related Links

http://www.arnolditkin.com


HOUSTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In Parr v. Aruba, a case that has been closely followed by the oil and gas community, a Texas court of appeals on February 1 reversed a $2.9 million judgment against Aruba Petroleum Inc., holding that the plaintiffs failed to establish that the company's natural gas operations constituted an intentional nuisance.

The suit stemmed from drilling and production activity in the Barnett Shale in Texas. The plaintiffs, who owned land in the area, claimed Aruba's natural gas operations caused them various personal injuries, mental anguish, and property damages. The plaintiffs' lawyers claimed the suit was the first fracking trial in the nation  even though most of the evidence presented at trial did not concern hydraulic fracturing.

At the April 2014 trial, the jury found that Aruba created an intentional nuisance and awarded the plaintiffs $2.9 million in damages.

But the Fifth Court of Appeals in Dallas reversed and rendered a take-nothing judgment. The court concluded that the plaintiffs failed to establish a claim for intentional nuisance because there was "no legally sufficient evidence that Aruba intentionally created or maintained a condition that substantially interfered with [the plaintiffs'] use and enjoyment of their land."

"Aruba Petroleum is pleased with the opinion of the appellate court, as we believe the original verdict was without merit," said James L. Poston, Aruba's chief executive officer. "We seek to operate in compliance with all industry health, safety and environmental standards, as we believe we did in this particular matter."

Aruba was represented by the law firm of Haynes and Boone, LLP.

"I'm happy for Aruba," said Haynes and Boone Partner Michael Mazzone, Aruba's lawyer at trial. "They are good people and should not have been sued for drilling and producing gas wells in the Barnett Shale. We appreciate their principled stand, and we're proud that we were able to help them get justice."

Mazzone tried the case with Ben K. Barron of Ben K. Barron, PC. Haynes and Boone lawyers Christina Crozier and Mike Stewart assisted during the trial. Anne Johnson, Nina Cortell and Christina Crozier, of Haynes and Boone, handled Aruba's appeal.

About Haynes and Boone

Haynes and Boone, LLP is an international corporate law firm with offices in Texas, New York, California, Chicago, Denver, Washington, D.C., London, Mexico City and Shanghai, providing a full spectrum of legal services in technology, financial services, energy and private equity. With more than 600 lawyers, Haynes and Boone is ranked among the largest U.S.-based firms by The National Law Journal. The 2016 American Lawyer Corporate Scorecard rated the firm as one of the top two handling equities work for non-U.S. companies.

CONTACTS: Nathan Koppel

Haynes and Boone, LLP

512.867.8431 (office)

646.334.5180 (cell)

[email protected]

For Aruba Petroleum:

Fred Stern, Sunwest Communications, Inc.

214-373-1601 (office)

214-616-1764 (cell)

[email protected]



SOURCE Haynes and Boone, LLP

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PONTE VEDRA, Fla., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- At an awards ceremony held this week in Scottsdale, Arizona, Warranty Solutions, an AmTrust Company, awarded top honors to Automotive Assurance Group, naming the company the top producing agency in the United States for 2016.

"Automotive Assurance Group are leaders in the industry and have achieved great success with Warranty Solutions. We congratulate them on being the top producer for 2016 and look forward to continued success with them in the future," stated Paul McCarthy, National Sales Director for Warranty Solutions.

"We are thrilled to have once again achieved the title of number one top producing agency in the country. We have a long and successful history with Warranty Solutions and look forward to continuing to build on that success in the future," states Nick D'Amico, President of Automotive Assurance Group.

Automotive Assurance Group has been representing Warranty Solutions for over 14 years and has achieved top agent status in various categories over the years. This is the second consecutive year being recognized for top producing agent in the country. Automotive Assurance Group offers a wide variety of Warranty Solutions vehicle service contracts to automobile dealerships nationwide. Warranty Solutions designs, markets, administers and underwrites vehicle service contracts for new and used automobiles.

About Automotive Assurance Group:

Founded in 1995, Automotive Assurance Group is a full service, AFIP Certified, Finance and Insurance consulting firm that specializes in offering dealerships the latest in F&I training, individualized attention, along with suitable F&I products in order to assist business growth and increase profits. Representing such companies as Warranty Solutions, Allstate Dealer Services, The Warranty Group and others. Automotive Assurance Group has earned the title of Presidents Club Platinum Agency and holds the number one position in the country with Warranty Solutions, an Am Trust Company. Automotive Assurance Group is comprised of a highly experienced team of employees with years of expertise in creating wealth building programs, such as Participation and Reinsurance Equity programs. For more information please visit www.automotiveassurance.com or call 844-242-6626

Warranty Solutions:

Warranty Solutions has been providing quality Vehicle Service Contracts and auto-related finance and insurance products to automobile dealerships nationwide. Our wholly-owned insurance company, Heritage Indemnity Company has earned an A (Excellent) rating by A.M. Best Company. Heritage's rating is a clear indication that we will be with you for the long run. To learn more about Warranty Solutions VSC, GAP and Ancillary products please visit please www.warrantysolutions.com.

Press Contact:

John D'Amico

Automotive Assurance Group

[email protected]

770-578-9500

SOURCE Automotive Assurance Group

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MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Editorial Advisory and Securities Review Committee of BetterInvesting Magazine today announced Amgen Inc. (NDQ: AMGN) as its April 2017 "Stock to Study" and Qualcomm Incorporated (NDQ: QCOM) as its April 2017 "Undervalued Stock" for investors' informational and educational use.

"The committee selected Amgen for the company's history of growth coupled with potential easing of regulations and a reasonable current valuation," said Adam Ritt, editor of BetterInvesting Magazine. "For the Undervalued selection, the committee cited Qualcomm's strong market position, potential for improved fundamentals and reasonable P/E."

Check BetterInvesting's April issue for more details about these selections. Go to the trial version of BetterInvesting's online tools to study the investment potential of Amgen and Qualcomm by viewing their fundamental data and applying judgments.

Committee members are Robert M. Bilkie, Jr., CFA; Daniel J. Boyle, CFA; Marisa Bradbury, CFA; Philip S. Dano, CFA; Donald E. Danko, CFA; Maury Elvekrog, CFA; and Walter J. Kirchberger, CFA.

As stated, the BetterInvesting committee's Stock to Study and Undervalued Stock choices are for the informational and educational uses of investors and are not intended as investment recommendations. BetterInvesting urges investors to educate themselves about the stock market so they can make informed decisions about stock purchases.

About BetterInvesting

BetterInvesting is a national nonprofit organization that has been empowering individual investors since 1951. Founded in Detroit, the association (formerly known as National Association of Investors Corporation) was borne out of the conviction that anyone can become a successful long-term investor by following commonsense investing practices. BetterInvesting has helped more than 5 million people become better, more informed investors by providing webinars, in-person events, easy-to-use online tools for analyzing stocks, a monthly magazine and a community of volunteers and like-minded investors. For more information about BetterInvesting, visit its website at www.betterinvesting.org or call toll free (877) 275-6242.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

SOURCE BetterInvesting

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SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- RegTech startup BIGcontrols, a SaaS solution for government incentives compliance management, recently announced that Karen Gyulbudaghyan (pronounced: Kar-ren Gool-boo-dag-yan), a strategic advisor and former Director of Strategic Partnerships and Business Incentives for Yahoo! Inc., has joined the company's Advisory Board.

Mr. Gyulbudaghyan brings over 20 years of a distinctive experience in high-tech, Big 4 public accounting, government and small business. His expertise and synergistic approach in converging multiple disciplines and resources drives strategic value that's greater than the sum of their separate benefits. During his tenure at Yahoo, Mr. Gyulbudaghyan developed and led a multifaceted program, focused on the wide range and the entire lifecycle of the business and government incentives.

Mr. Gyulbudaghyan's addition to the Advisory Board provides further guidance for growth as the company looks to deploy its technology solutions to global enterprises. His broad perspective and industry expertise fills a unique roll on the Advisory Board, which includes a former KPMG national practice tax partner, and CXOs from enterprise SaaS companies and corporate compliance firms.

"I'm beyond delighted to welcome Karen onto our Advisory Board," said Scott Nelson, Founder & CEO of BIGcontrols. "Based on his diverse background and recent position at Yahoo, he brings tremendous value to so many areas of our company  all of which will ultimately benefit our customers."

San Francisco-based BIGcontrols saves corporations millions of dollars by automating the tracking, reporting and regulatory compliance management for their government incentives. We deliver our Software-as-a-Service solution through technology workflows and methodologies that are specific to incentives, including an industry-first API that provides real-time statutory incentives data.

About BIGcontrols

Headquartered in San Francisco, CA, BIGcontrols develops and markets regulatory technology solutions specifically designed for government incentives compliance management. Their proprietary technology conforms with the proposed FASB Topic 832 Accounting Standards Update: Disclosures by Business Entities for Government Assistance. BIGcontrols is the only software company in the market providing a comprehensive compliance management solution for government incentives. For more information, visit www.bigcontrols.com.

Media Contact

Scott Nelson

[email protected]

415-840-7090

This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com.

SOURCE BIGcontrols

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LONDON, Feb. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Energy crisis is an emerging issue and the world is struggling to find a suitable environment-friendly energy option for its denizens. The global energy market is expanding rapidly. The soaring demand for energy is presently greeted with the help of fossil fuel. Industry experts believe that the demand in the energy market will grow manifold in the forthcoming years. There is an urgent need of an alternate source of environment-friendly energy to fill up this gap in the market. An environment-friendly energy source is a must, as greenhouse emissions are acutely disturbing the environmental balance. The growth of biogas as an alternate and green energy source is the only hope for the modern world.



The global biogas market is likely to soar within the assessment period. The market will witness a CAGR of 6.5% in terms of value in the years to come. The global biogas market showcased a promising growth in 2015 as the sales spurred and the total value of the market swelled above US$ 24 Mn. The regions such as Latin America and Asia Pacific will play an important role in the growth of the global biogas market within the period of assessment.



North America and Western Europe ruled the roost until the end of 2016, but the Asia Pacific region is predicted to propel its growth within the next few years. North America is projected to gain 200 BPS over the period of forecast. Western Europe is estimated to gain 230 BPS over the projected period and is projected to remain dominant during the period of forecast. Owing to increasing demand for electricity and vehicle fuels in the region, Asia Pacific is anticipated to gain 310 BPS over the assessed period.



Anatomy of the Asia Pacific biogas market



Asia Pacific is the land of hope for investors as it is predicted to double up its market worth and is likely to cross US$ 6000 Mn by 2026 end. This particular region of the global biogas market is predicted to represent a bright incremental dollar opportunity within the foreseen period. Asia Pacific is likely to emerge as the most attractive region in terms of market share and CAGR in the next 10 years. The sale value of the regional biogas market is anticipated to cross US$ 6800 Mn from an approximate current value of US$ 2800 Mn by the close of the assessment period.



The favourable climatic conditions and massive availability of live stocks is likely to keep the market afloat in this region. The Asia Pacific market will register a CAGR of 9.2% in terms of value over the foreseen period. In terms of volume, consumption of biogas in Asia Pacific is anticipated to reach above 8,700 ktoe by the end of the forecasted period, registering a CAGR of 8.2% over the projected period. Countries such as India and China are predicted to fuel the development of the regional biogas market. Biogas sales are currently soaring in India and this market will project a suitable incremental dollar opportunity within the period of assessment.



Countries such as India and China are passing through a rapid industrial evolution. These countries are blessed with an agriculture friendly climate and possess a massive reserve of agricultural waste. These factors are likely to expedite the expansion of the Asia Pacific regional biogas market.



Agriculture segment is estimated to lose 110 BPS by 2026 end. The segment is indicated to incline towards high value-medium growth during 2016  2026. The municipal segment is predicted to gain 130 BPS during the studied period. Biogas from sludge, landfills, etc. can offer lucrative growth opportunities in this region. Industrial & others segment is likely to witness sluggish growth during the assessment period.



The application segment of the Asia Pacific biogas market is likely to witness several prominent market shifts within the foreseen period. The electricity segment is indicated to lose more than 35 BPS by the end of the forecasted period while the heat segment is projected to gain more than 68 BPS during the period of assessment. Biogas fuelled heating systems installed in China, India and other countries of the Asia Pacific region are expected to create a growth opportunity for this segment by the end of the period of forecast. Vehicle Fuel & others segment is projected to incline towards low value-low growth during 20162026.

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DOVER, Del., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware (CPBD), the advocacy group supporting TransPerfect employees and Delaware's incorporation-driven economy, filed an opposition with the Court of Chancery in Delaware opposing a motion of custodian Robert B. Pincus, in the TransPerfect case, to close the courtroom to the public on February 7, 2017, and restrict public access to its transcript and record. In the opposition filed by the CPBD, the CPBD assert that "the public has a right of access to civil proceedings" and the Custodian does not justify "the Court closing the courtroom for the entire Hearing."

"We find the motion - and the continued attempts to keep the public and the TransPerfect employees in the dark  outrageous. This decision impacts the lives of not only the 4,000 employees and their families who work at TransPerfect, but also the million people who live and work in Delaware; it is unjust to continue to have these conversations kept confidential and to make these decisions behind closed doors," said Chris Coffey, Campaign Manager for Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware. "How can we keep our government accountable if there is no transparency in the courts?"

This motion comes just days after the CPBD released a new television ad urging Delawareans to contact their elected officials to support the TransPerfect Bill which would require a three-year 'work it out' period before the Chancery Court can order the sale of a solvent company in deadlock. The ad features TransPerfect employees who have been silenced by the courts through out judicial proceedings in The Delaware Court of Chancery has ordered the sale of the global translation services company. Senator Colin Bonini, who is working with CPBD on the Bill and has continued to support CPBD's efforts, also submitted an opposition to closing the courtroom.

"Public confidence in the courts quickly erodes when judicial proceedings are kept clandestine," Senator Bonini's lawyer wrote in the letter she submitted to the Delaware court. The Senator "has a long history of advocating for transparency in the government, and has been following this matter closely, as it presents issues that are important to his constituency."

Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware is a group made up of more than 2,200 members including employees of the global translation services company TransPerfect, as well as concerned Delaware residents, business executives, and others. They formed in April 2016 to focus on raising awareness among Delaware residents, elected officials, and other stakeholders about the issue.

For more information on Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware, visit DelawareForBusiness.org. Links for Senator Bonini's (http://bit.ly/2l5YtYb) and CPBD's motions read them here (http://bit.ly/2jHbTh2).

Contact: Mary Urban, [email protected]

Julijana Englander, [email protected]

SOURCE Citizens for a Pro-Business Delaware

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VENTURA, Calif., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Author, Valerie Pike, has released her audio book, Crimson and the Battle of Lonely Mountain, narrated by Tracy Turner, on Author's Republic Platform.

Distribution through Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Findaway, and Audiobooks.com will begin on February 9, 2017. The book includes 10 chapters in 47 minutes; it is the first in a fantasy/adventure and romance series for boys and girls ages 5 to 10.

1st in the Crimson the Dragon Adventure Series

Ms. Pike is adapting the book into a play for children's theaters. It has 12 characters and takes place in the Land of Dragons during Renaissance Time, with the setting in the Kingdom of Nosmir, a place of snowy peaks like the Himalayas, and dramatic seascapes like Iceland or Norway. The lesson is Karma and the theme is to love and be loved.

Valerie will be at the Arizona Renaissance Festival on Tuesday, February 28th from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. for Student Days, and will be signing books at the Ann Chamberlin bookstore.

About the Author

Author, Valerie Pike, is a Creative Writing Award Winner in Adult Fiction of the Art Tales Contest 2013 with her short story, The Ventura Pier at Sunset. Ms. Pike was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and now lives in Ventura, California.

Adventure and Romance lovers can also buy Crimson and the Battle of Lonely Mountain on Amazon.com, Kindle, Nook and Barnes & Noble online. Mrs. Pike's website is www.CrimsontheDragon.com.

Author's Republic the publisher of the audio book's website is www.AuthorsRepublic.com. You can listen to the 49 minute book at this link.

http://www.audiobooks.com/audiobook/crimson-and-the-battle-of-lonely-mountain/283707

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SOURCE Authors Republic

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NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Beginning today, the New York City based private jet startup Encore Jets will offer direct flights to Cuba from 24 United States cities and their respective airports, including Miami, Atlanta and New York. The brokerage has partnered with the tour operator and travel agency International Expeditions, recognized for its ongoing experience in tourism and government relations with Cuba. Together, the two travel companies have introduced private charter flights and customized experiences through Encore Jets' Discover Cuba, while complying with all FAA regulations.

The New York City based private jet startup Encore Jets will offer direct flights to Cuba from 24 United States cities and their respective airports.

Chris Bannister, CEO of Encore Jets, explains that all clients are still required to secure the necessary approvals and visas that are required of all U.S visitors to Cuba; however, with their new partnership this process is handled in-house for their convenience. The companies recognized the increasing demand from current and potential clients seeking destinations in transition and have taken on the market together. President Sami Belbase expressed, "We never saw challenges in flying to Cuba; we were just waiting for the right time and the right partners to offer the experience."

Encore Jets fliers can have a fully customized private travel experience to Cuba, from choosing the perfect private jet to curating the finest details of their travel itinerary. The program offers one of kind experiences for jetsetters and executives alike, beyond just getting to Havana by private jet. Enjoy activities such as private rum tastings with master distillers and intimately orchestrated evenings at the Buena Vista Social Club. Prices for a group of six travelers flying to Havana for a three-night itinerary begin at $30,000 and the company is currently offering the program exclusively to its members.

For more information, visit www.encorejets.com.

Media Contact:

Sam B

[email protected]

646-724-4857

SOURCE Encore Jets

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LONDON, Feb. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Summary

The Future of the Peruvian Defense Industry - Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2021, published by Strategic Defence Intelligence, provides readers with detailed analysis of both historic and forecast defense industry values, factors influencing demand, the challenges faced by industry participants, analysis of industry leading companies, and key news.

Key Findings

- The Peruvian defense budget values US$2.3 billion in 2016, and recorded a CAGR of 2.18% during the historic period. Expenditure is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 3.54% over the forecast period to value US$2.4 billion in 2021. The Peruvian defense budget is mainly driven by the modernization efforts to replace its aging military hardware, threats from the Shining Path separatist group, the country's participation in international peacekeeping missions, and volatile relationships with its neighbors, especially Chile.

- On a cumulative basis, the country is expected to invest US$11.8 billion for defense purposes, of which US$1.6 billion is earmarked for capital expenditure to fund defense procurements. The government's well-defined military modernization plans to counter influence of narco-terrorists, drug traffickers, human traffickers and weapon traffickers is expected to fuel procurement of defense equipment.

- The MoD is expected to invest in transport aircrafts, frigates, multi-role aircrafts, training aircraft and main battle tanks (MBT) over the coming years.

Synopsis

This report offers detailed analysis of the Peruvian defense industry with market size forecasts covering the next five years. This report will also analyze factors that influence demand for the industry, key market trends, and challenges faced by industry participants.In particular, it provides an in-depth analysis of the following:

- The Peruvian defense industry market size and drivers: detailed analysis of the Peruvian defense industry during 2017-2021, including highlights of the demand drivers and growth stimulators for the industry. It also provides a snapshot of the country's expenditure and modernization patterns

- Budget allocation and key challenges: insights into procurement schedules formulated within the country and a breakdown of the defense budget with respect to the army, navy, and air force. It also details the key challenges faced by defense market participants within the country

- Porter's Five Force analysis of the Peruvian defense industry: analysis of the market characteristics by determining the bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitution, intensity of rivalry, and barriers to entry

- Import and Export Dynamics: analysis of prevalent trends in the country's imports and exports over the last five years

- Market opportunities: details of the top five defense investment opportunities over the next 10 years

- Competitive landscape and strategic insights: analysis of the competitive landscape of the Peruvian defense industry. It provides an overview of key players, together with insights such as key alliances, strategic initiatives, and a brief financial analysis

Reasons To Buy

- This report will give the user confidence to make the correct business decisions based on a detailed analysis of the Peruvian defense industry market trends for the coming five years

- The market opportunity section will inform the user about the various military requirements that are expected to generate revenues during the forecast period. The description includes technical specifications, recent orders, and the expected investment pattern by the country during the forecast period

- Detailed profiles of the top domestic and foreign defense manufacturers with information about their products, alliances, recent contract wins, and financial analysis wherever available. This will provide the user with a total competitive landscape of the sector

- A deep qualitative analysis of the Peruvian defense industry covering sections including demand drivers, Porter's Five Forces Analysis, Key Trends and Growth Stimulators, and latest industry contracts

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Tel: +44 208 816 85 48

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SOURCE ReportBuyer

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WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, leaders from across the country will be honored at the Georgetown University Alumni Association (GUAA) Awards Banquet in Washington, D.C., with an Alumni Service Recognition Award. Selected by GUAA's Board of Governors, these awards recognize Georgetown University alumni for their professional achievements and outstanding service to the Georgetown community.

"This year's estimable Alumni Service Award honorees embody our mission and advance our value of commitment to service," said Bill Reynolds, executive director, Georgetown University Alumni Association. "Our Board of Governors was inspired by their significant professional accomplishments and dedication to developing the next generation of students and alumni around the globe."

Honorees include:

Elias Schulze of Tyler, Texas , and Eileen Shields-West of Washington, D.C. , will receive the 1820 Graduate Award for outstanding leadership and service by graduate alumni to their fellow alumni;

of , and of , will receive the 1820 Graduate Award for outstanding leadership and service by graduate alumni to their fellow alumni; Thomas Kadar of Haddonfield, N.J. , will receive the Apollonian Alumni Award for demonstrated exceptional efforts on behalf of the alumni of the School of Dentistry;

of , will receive the Apollonian Alumni Award for demonstrated exceptional efforts on behalf of the alumni of the School of Dentistry; Jenifer Aventuro Luck of Potomac, Md. , Andrea Giacometti of Arlington, Va. , Daphne Keshishian of Potomac, Md. and Charles Melone, Jr. of New York , N.Y., will all receive the Founders Alumni Award, named for the founders of the Georgetown University School of Medicine and conferred upon notable alumni of the medical school;

of , of , of and of , N.Y., will all receive the Founders Alumni Award, named for the founders of the and conferred upon notable alumni of the medical school; Frank Ciatto of Bethesda, Md. , will receive the Reed Alumni Award, an honor conferred upon one member of the GUAA Board of Governors during the most recently completed fiscal year;

of , will receive the Reed Alumni Award, an honor conferred upon one member of the GUAA Board of Governors during the most recently completed fiscal year; Robert Barone of Mendham, N.J. , and Stephen Cashin of Washington, D.C. , will receive the William Gaston Alumni Award, which recognizes outstanding service by undergraduate alumni, who have exhibited leadership across many activities such as alumni clubs, class programs or participation in other Georgetown University activities; and

of , and of , will receive the William Gaston Alumni Award, which recognizes outstanding service by undergraduate alumni, who have exhibited leadership across many activities such as alumni clubs, class programs or participation in other activities; and Trae Stephens of San Francisco, Calif. , will receive the Young Alumni Service Award, which recognizes outstanding leadership and service of a Georgetown undergraduate alumnus prior to his or her 15th reunion year.

Additional details about award criteria and recipients, will be made available on GUAA's recently launched Facebook page or at http://alumni.georgetown.edu.

About Georgetown University Alumni Association

Founded in 1881, the Georgetown University Alumni Association (GUAA) has grown to include more than 185,000 alumni from all 50 states and more than 160 countries. Its mission is to generate goodwill and support for the University and to foster a lifelong connection among alumni, the alma mater and the global Georgetown community. GUAA contributions are evident across campuses and schools. Alumni Association programs facilitate networking with fellow alumni and help establish social, service, and career opportunities around the world. For more information and to connect with GUAA, visit our website and find us on Facebook and LinkedIn.

SOURCE Georgetown University Alumni Association

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CHICAGO, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today marks the national kickoff and 15th anniversary of the ADA Foundation's Give Kids A Smile (GKAS) program, through which hundreds of thousands of children in need receive free oral health education, screening, preventive care, and treatment services from volunteer dentists, dental team members, and others each year. Thanks to more than 550,000 volunteers, more than 5.5 million children have received free oral health services through GKAS since its inception.

Rutgers School of Dental Medicine in Newark, New Jersey, is hosting this year's national GKAS kickoff. More than 300 children are expected at today's event. All of those kids will receive pro bono dental screenings, examinations, and preventive treatments delivered by more than 100 Rutgers student and faculty volunteers. Hundreds of children from Essex County grade schools will receive a cleaning, a fluoride treatment, an oral health goody bag, and advice on taking care of their teeth and gums. The RSDM Galloway, Somerdale, and Northfield clinics, and Rutgers' School of Health Related Professions in Scotch Plains also participate in the GKAS program.

"This is a time to celebrate all that GKAS has accomplished during the past 14 years. So many good things have occurred, but we realize there is still more to do in the years ahead," said Dr. William R. Calnon, President, ADA Foundation. "The passion obvious at Rutgers is what energizes the program. It is driven by people wanting to truly make a difference."

"Rutgers is honored to host the kick-off of Give Kids A Smile today," said Cecile A. Feldman, Dean of Rutgers School of Dental Medicine. "Since it began 15 years ago, GKAS has been tremendously successful at raising public awareness of the importance of oral healthcare for children, especially those who ordinarily don't have access to dentists and whose families may lack knowledge of proper care. Dentists and dental students all over America have been reminded that we can make a difference in the lives of kids who aren't fortunate enough to get a check-up every six months. Because of GKAS, millions of smiles are brighter."

Rutgers' event is one of at least 1,300 Give Kids A Smile events scheduled to take place throughout 2017. Events range from those similar to Rutgers', which provide services to hundreds of children in a day, to individual dentists providing pro-bono oral health services and a dental home to one or several children under the Give Kids A Smile banner.

The program would not be possible without the support of its generous sponsors, including Henry Schein, Inc., which has served as the program's official products sponsor since its launch in 2003.

"No matter how many years go by, our commitment to the Give Kids A Smile program only grows stronger," said Stanley M. Bergman, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Henry Schein. "Poor oral health is a silent epidemic affecting our children, and we are pleased to support the dedicated oral health professionals who give so generously of their time and talent. Together with our supplier partners, the ADA Foundation, and the thousands of volunteers who help kids in need throughout the year, we are truly 'helping health happen.'"

CareCredit, a provider of healthcare financing, is the founding donor of the ADA Foundation's Give Kids A Smile Fund. A portion of CareCredit's annual donation will be used to help fund oral health services rendered during the national kickoff event at Rutgers.

"As the Founding Donor of the ADA Foundation's GKAS Fund and member of the GKAS National Committee since its inception, CareCredit is continually impressed by the high level of nationwide private/public collaboration to serve our country's underserved, most vulnerable children," said Cindy Hearn, Senior Vice President, Marketing for CareCredit. "The impact on millions of children is undeniable and remarkable."

The GKAS program originated in 2002 in St. Louis. The ADA launched it nationally in 2003 as a way for dentists to join with others in the community to provide free dental services to underserved children. Initially a one-day event in February, the program has since grown to include events of all descriptions, year-round. Give Kids A Smile is also the anchor event of the ADA's National Children's Dental Health Month.

For more information about how Give Kids A Smile programs are organized across the country, please visit ADAFoundation.org/gkas. For more information about Give Kids A Smile programs taking place in your area, please call Give Kids A Smile at 844.490.GKAS (4527) or contact your state or local dental association. The ADA Foundation's website, ADAFoundation.org, offers additional resources to help find free or reduced-cost dental care for children. To learn about mouth healthy habits, please visit MouthHealthy.org, which features fun quizzes, slideshows, videos and articles about dental health topics for every age and stage of life, plus the ADA Dental Symptom Checker.

Editor's Note: Reporters are invited to follow the ADA on Twitter @AmerDentalAssn

About the ADA Foundation

As dentistry's premier philanthropic and charitable organization, the ADA Foundation is a catalyst for uniting people and organizations to make a difference through better oral health. The ADA Foundation provides more than $800,000 in grants, scholarships, and awards annually to programs that are in alignment with the organization's four mission pillars: Charitable Assistance, Access to Care, Research, and Education (C.A.R.E.). As part of these efforts, the ADA Foundation oversees Give Kids A Smile and also oversees the ADA Foundation Volpe Research Center in Gaithersburg, Maryland (formerly the Paffenbarger Research Center). For more information about the ADA Foundation, visit www.adafoundation.org.

About the American Dental Association

The not-for-profit ADA is the nation's largest dental association, representing more than 161,000 dentist members. The premier source of oral health information, the ADA has advocated for the public's health and promoted the art and science of dentistry since 1859. The ADA's state-of-the-art research facilities develop and test dental products and materials that have advanced the practice of dentistry and made the patient experience more positive. The ADA Seal of Acceptance long has been a valuable and respected guide to consumer dental care products. The monthly The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) is the ADA's flagship publication and the best-read scientific journal in dentistry. For more information about the ADA, visit ADA.org. For more information on oral health, including prevention, care and treatment of dental disease, visit the ADA's consumer website MouthHealthy.org.

Contact:

Cathy Haibach

[email protected]

312.440.2544

SOURCE ADA Foundation

Related Links

http://www.adafoundation.org


NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Vilcek Foundation is pleased to announce the winners of the annual Vilcek Prizes, recognizing outstanding immigrant contributions to the American arts and sciences. The Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science will be awarded jointly to Chinese-born Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan, a collaborative research duo and professors of molecular physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. The Vilcek Prize in the Arts recognizes Jamaican-born Nari Ward, a New York-based visual artist known for found-object assemblage art. Each prize includes a $100,000 cash award.

"Like all great artists and scientists, these immigrant prizewinners challenge our very perceptions of the world," said Rick Kinsel, president of the Vilcek Foundation. "Their works are attempts to understand fundamental questions and concepts in American society, from the neurological underpinnings of the self to the institution of democracy."

This year, the Vilcek Prize in the Arts is awarded in the fine arts, marking the completion of an 11-year cycle through various disciplines in the arts and humanities. The recipient, Nari Ward, was born in Jamaica and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12. He is known for found-object assemblage artworks that invite both a public conversation and an intimate dialogue with the viewer around topics of race, immigration, and the Caribbean diaspora identity. His usage of found objects aims to highlight the history of a place and the urgency of the moment; his installation Naturalization Drawing Table features a large deskbuilt out of Plexiglas bodega barrierscovered with dense linear drawings made over copies of Immigration and Naturalization Service applications. On select days during the exhibition, viewers are invited to "apply" for naturalization by lining up and filling out an application, giving them a taste of the bureaucratic process of applying for citizenship. Ward has won several prestigious art prizes, including the Joyce Award, the Rome Prize, a Bessie Award, and several other awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

Lily and Yuh-Nung Jan were both born in China and raised in Taiwan. They came to the U.S. as graduate students of physics at the California Institute of Technology but switched their focus to biology, in part inspired by their mentor, the renowned biophysicist Max Delbruck. Over the course of a collaborative career spanning over four decades, the husband-and-wife team have made many significant discoveries in the field of neuroscience, with far-reaching clinical implications. They isolated the gene encoding a protein that shuttles potassium ions across cell membranes, enabling the characterization of a molecular player important to functions as vital as maintaining heart rate and controlling muscle movement. Today, this type of ion channel is implicated in diseases such as epilepsy, ataxia, and hypertension. Simultaneously, the Jans identified genes and principles underlying the processes by which neurons acquire distinct identities, burgeon into thickets, and establish precise circuits; their work in this area may help unravel human diseases such as autism and schizophrenia. Currently professors of molecular physiology at the University of California, San Francisco, the Jans have been honored with membership in the United States National Academy of Sciences, as well as with Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator awards.

The Vilcek Foundation also awards the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise, given to younger immigrants who have shown substantial talent and ability early in their careers. Each prize includes a $50,000 cash award. The winners in the fine arts are the following:

Iman Issa, a conceptual artist, creates objects and installations in an attempt to address complex philosophical questions. Her original area of study was phenomenology, a branch of philosophy that examines the structures of consciousness that organize subjective experienceor, put another way, how we take meaning from things we individually experience. Later, Issa realized that art allowed for nuanced exploration of those topics, and continued her philosophical questioning through art. She is particularly interested in monuments and memorialsaesthetic forms tasked with a function that hold a shifting relevance based on their location in time and relationship to history. Her work has been shown at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the 8th Berlin Biennial, and the New Museum, and she has received the DAAD 2017 Artist in Residence Award, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, and the HNF-MACBA Award. Issa was born in Egypt.

Meleko Mokgosi is a slow, considered painter; behind every painting he produces are hours of research, reading, and conversations with people. Mokgosi is interested in depictions of Africa and its people; he believes that the widespread misrepresentation of Africa and Africans has done a violence to the people of the continent, and through his art he attempts a representation that is fair and just. He is deeply concerned with politics, and seeks to understand and illuminate the relations of power that shape people, families, villages, regions, and nations. Mokgosi has been named the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters Grant and the Jarl and Pamela Mohn Award, and he has shown his work at Art Basel, the Armory, the Hammer Museum, and the Whitney Museum. He was born in Botswana.

Carlos Motta works in a variety of mediaincluding video, performance, photography, and sculptureto explore questions of identity, sexuality, and politics, and to identify and dissect the relations between an individual and the culture that forms them. Since moving to the United States in 1996, Motta has become more interested in questions of representation and the experience of democracy, the emotional underpinnings of political awareness, and the ways that dominant accounts of history have become biased. Motta has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Future Generation Art Prize from PinchukArtCentre, and grants from Creative Capital and New York State Council on the Arts, and his work has been shown at the Perez Art Museum Miami, The Tanks at Tate Modern, and at MoMA/PS1. Motta was born in Colombia.

The winners of the Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science are the following:

Michaela Gack has uncovered potential molecular targets for the design of antiviral drugs and vaccines for a range of infectious diseases. Early in her career, Gack identified the molecular mechanism by which a protein called RIG-I tips off the human immune system to lurking viruses and triggers a defensive response. The mechanism turns on an enzyme called TRIM25, which activates RIG-I by tagging it with proteins called ubiquitins. Following Gack's discovery, it was found that ubiquitin-tagging by TRIM enzymes is a common immune defense strategy. Because flu viruses block TRIM25 to sidestep the resulting immune response, her findings have yielded a potential target for designing antiviral drugs and vaccines. More recently, Gack has focused on mosquito-borne viruses such as dengue and West Nile virus, and her work could pave the way toward the rational design of vaccines against emerging infectious diseases. Gack, now an associate professor at the University of Chicago, was born in Germany.

Michael Halassa has illuminated how the brain filters sensory noise and sustains attention. By making mice a viable model for cognitive neuroscience, Halassa has probed aspects of attention and perception that have long eluded mechanistic study. His work revealed how the thalamus, a brain region primarily thought to be a sensory relay station, plays a broader role, contributing to cognition. Specifically, he found that thalamic circuits involved in sensory processing operate as tunable filters, enabling the brain to suppress sensory noise during selective attention. He also identified a form of autism in which this filtering process is deficient, paving a potential path to treatment. More recently, he has shown that the thalamus amplifies functional connectivity in the brain's cortex, sustaining attention and perception. His findings could help understand how the brain generates the mind. Halassa, an assistant professor at New York University, was born in Jordan.

Ahmet Yildiz has used his expertise in visualizing molecules found in living cells to uncover the precise mode of action of molecular motors, which are proteins that ferry cargo along the cellular backbone to support vital functions like neuronal development and cell division. Visualizing the stepwise movement of these motorskinesins, myosins, and dyneinsalong cellular scaffolding had long remained technically challenging. Yildiz developed a technique to localize fluorescent dyes within cells at 1 nanometer resolution, surmounting the challenge and imaging the march of molecular motors on cellular tracks. In related work, Yildiz used super-resolution microscopy techniques to suggest how a protein complex called shelterin protects the ends of chromosomes from the deleterious action of DNA repair enzymes. Because damage to chromosome ends has been tied to premature aging and cancer, Yildiz's findings may yield clinically relevant targets for the treatment of such diseases in the future. Yildiz, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was born near Turkey.

The prizewinners were selected by panels of experts in each field; they will be honored at an awards gala in New York City in April 2017. For more information about the prizewinners and jurors, please visit vilcek.org.

The Vilcek Foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation, to honor the contributions of immigrants to the United States and to foster appreciation of the arts and sciences, was inspired by the couple's respective careers in biomedical science and art history, as well as their personal experiences and appreciation for the opportunities they received as newcomers to this country. The foundation awards annual prizes to prominent immigrant biomedical scientists and artists, and manages the Vilcek Foundation Art Collections, a promised gift from its founders.

To learn more about the Vilcek Foundation, please visit Vilcek.org.

SOURCE The Vilcek Foundation

Related Links

http://www.vilcek.org


Preparing for any test can be a seemingly daunting endeavor for students. And when high school students looking to pursue post-secondary education take the ACT, most are undoubtedly aware of the impact it will have.

Its a test that can make or break students. Get them into the college of their choice, or crush their young spirits when they come up just a few points shy.

And while that statement perhaps is a bit dramatic, theres no denying the impact the exam has on students from a practical standpoint, but also an emotional one. And while eliminating students stress is impossible, the Fremont Public School District has taken sizable steps in regard to helping its FHS junior students tackle the exam with confidence.

Heres where John Baylor comes in. Baylor, voice of Nebraska Volleyball and creator of John Baylor Prep, has been to Fremont High School twice recently meeting face to face with the approximately 300 juniors who will take the ACT free of charge this spring.

Baylors ACT program is utilized by more than 300 high schools in 15 different states, with his online course generally raising an entire schools ACT scores by 1-2 points, information from johnbaylorprep.com says.

In years past, numerous FHS students utilized his online ACT prep course, consisting of 12 modules/classes covering tested material in Math, Science, Reading and English. Students also received a 200 page study guide with practice exams and worksheets.

Students paid $20 for the course and received $10 back if they attended all classed and submitted their ACT results.

Previously, students completing the course watched instructional videos and were taught/monitored by a proctor.

In December, the Fremont Public Schools Board of Education unanimously voted to appropriate $19,600  which breaks down to $56 per student  to improve its John Baylor Program.

The expenses pay for three live instructional sessions at the school with Baylor, two additional instructional sessions with a John Baylor representative and all of the necessary books, videos, PDF documents and webinars provided to give students the best possible opportunities to succeed.

One live refresher session with Baylor will take place in early April, one week before the exam.

Merrill Mitchell, FHS junior, is preparing to take her first ACT examination on Feb. 11. Prior to Baylors sessions, Merrill said she felt pretty unsure and uneasy about the task at hand.

And while the nerves are still there, she has a new level of confidence, composure and understanding of content that will be presented on the examination.

I really wasnt expecting it to be as beneficial as it has been, she said during an interview inside of Fremont High school. When I went in there it was amazing  I was taking notes the entire time. Everything John Baylor said was perfectly applicable to the ACT. Walking out of the auditorium  after those two minor sessions  I felt so much more ready for it.

Hes such a likeable person who just makes it fun to learn about the ACT and going into the ACT.
VISTA, Calif., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Dr. Bronner's, family-owned maker of the top-selling natural brand of soap in North America, launched a new website this month. The new site features a completely revamped store section making it easier than ever to order Dr. Bronner's unique range of best-selling products. The new site was also designed to create an updated mobile-friendly shopping experience and allows consumers to click on featured ingredients on product pages and learn more about the story behind the company's activism as well as its dedicated fair trade and organic sources for major ingredients. View the brand new Dr. Bronner's website at www.drbronner.com.

"We are proud of our new website as a reflection of our growth and development as a company in both size and strategy," says Michael Bronner, President of Dr. Bronner's. "The site represents both the "soap" and "soul" sides of our company. Our products have never looked better, and you can navigate seamlessly between those products and stories that reflect the deeper principles of our company. From our ancestral roots in the German-Jewish soapmaking tradition, to our modern day fair trade and organic sourcing across the globe, the breadth of our "All-One!" mission as family soapmakers dedicated to making a better world shines for all to see and understand on this site."

The website is organized into six sections: Ourselves, Our Customers, Our Employees, Our Suppliers, Our Earth, and Our Community. Each section is structured around the six cosmic principles that guide Dr. Bronner's "All-One!" mission: 1) Work hard and grow, 2) Do right by customers, 3) Treat employees like family, 4) Be fair to suppliers, 5) Treat the earth like home, and 6) Fund & fight for what's right! These six principles define the brand's "most important relationships, from soap-making to peace-making" and each section provides information spanning Dr. Bronner's history, employee policies, fair trade supply chains, the activist and charitable causes that the company fights for, and more.

"We are a company with a big heart, a lot of soul, and a powerful message. Our new website is the perfect platform to convey everything we feel should be known about our products, our history, our work, and our mission," says David Bronner, Cosmic Engagement Officer (CEO) of Dr. Bronner's. "I'm particularly excited about our new All-One blog. We used it just this week to highlight a statement underscoring our support for immigrants and refugees in light of the President's travel ban. This is the kind of important message my brother and I will use this blog to communicate more and more."

The website's All-One blog offers a window into company activities, including the latest information about the various causes and activism the company is involved in, giving voice to David and Michael Bronner as well as other company leadership and staff. Regular articles will also include tips about using Dr. Bronner's products from Lisa Bronner, highlighting her writing and videos from her popular and well-established "Going Green" blog.

The site's newly improved webstore is featuring extraordinary discounts of 25% off all items in the month of February and will feature special rotating discounts on different items each month throughout the year. For the first time ever, the site will make available scents previously only sold in overseas markets, on a limited and temporary basis, starting in April with Cherry Blossom and Green Tea scented liquid and bar soap. The site also now offers exclusive merchandise like T-shirts, toiletry bags, gift-baskets, and the newly released Sisters & Brother's spoken word record, featuring original recordings of Emanuel Bronner's Moral ABC.

Dr. Bronner's is a family business committed to honoring the vision of founder Emanuel Bronner by making socially and environmentally responsible products of the highest quality, and by dedicating profits to help make a better world. Dr. Bronner's commitment to social justice, environmental sustainability and progressive business practices is part of the company's mission to put into practice the principles that inform the philosophy printed on the company's iconic soap labels written by founder Emanuel Bronner. The company is the top-selling natural soap maker in North America and a major brand worldwide. Based on 2015 sales, a bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap was sold, on average, every 3 seconds throughout the year.

For further information on Dr. Bronner's, please visit: http://www.drbronner.com.

SOURCE Dr. Bronners

Related Links

http://www.drbronner.com


ISELIN, N.J., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Many great ideas are often born from a simple dreamand Lightbridge Academy is no exception. With more than two decades of experience in the corporate world, Guy Falzarano helped his wife, Julia, turn her passion for children and education into a reality. In 1997, the husband and wife duo opened their first child care center in Iselin, New Jersey near Metropark train station. The center provided early education and child care to children ages six weeks through kindergarten, as well as special programming for children up to 10 years old during school holidays, breaks and summer camp. But they quickly saw that when trains often ran late, parents would frantically run into the center to pick up their children just before closing.

"I felt awful that they were so stressed out. With three children of our own, we knew exactly how they felt and wanted to find a way to support them. It seemed as though the child care industry only cared for the needs of the child, but the needs of working parents were forgotten," said Guy Falzarano, Founder and CEO.

From that moment on, Lightbridge Academy was on a path to its own unique brand of child care. Seeing so many parents that were stressed out, worried or feeling guilty about leaving their children behind while they went to work, Falzarano and his team decided that there was an untapped opportunity to meet the needs of both the child and the working parent. Over time, Lightbridge Academy implemented many programs and services to support them, such as higher levels of security, extended hours and the ParentView internet monitoring system to help parents stay connected to their children. Gradually though, Falzarano realized there were others that needed to be considered and cared for, as well. So the team structured its company around their Circle of Care philosophy taking into consideration the needs of parents, staff, the local community and owners to form a supportive relationship to create a nurturing and supportive educational environment for every child.

"The Lightbridge Academy Circle of Care isn't some catchy tagline. It's a belief that we all hold dear. Along with our core values, this philosophy attracts like-minded owners, staff, vendors and families that value caring relationships. If everyone is happy and supported, they will  in turn - care and watch out for one another," Falzarano said. "Our goal is to become an extended family and serve as an integral part in their lives. It's about treating all of our families as part of our own."

The concept resonated with the community, and under Falzarano's leadership, Lightbridge Academy's growth took off. His secret to success was simple: build strong relationships and stay true to the company's core values. Seeing an opportunity to take Lightbridge Academy to the next level, he decided to launch a franchise opportunity in 2011. Since then, Lightbridge Academy has grown from a single location in Iselin, New Jersey, to 85 child care centers either open, under construction or in development throughout Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. As the company continues to grow, Falzarano believes those core values are more important than ever before. So much so, in fact, that they become a part of the franchise owners' lives too.

"We have a culture of care that is unique to our organization and it flows from the top down and from the bottom up," Falzarano said. "It's very difficult for others to replicate. Our franchisees experience a culture of care, and our training programs show them how to create the culture within their Lightbridge Academy center. It's a simple philosophy that everyone can use when making a decision to join our family."

Franchisees that thrive with Lightbridge Academy are those that believe in the company's core values and are passionate about making a difference in the lives of families. "We use our core values to manage the entire business. When we're bouncing decisions off of our 'Circle of Care' belief and we find that someone ends up being negatively affected, we look for another path," said Mark Mele, the senior vice president of Lightbridge Franchise Company. "Before a franchisee comes on board we ask them questions such as: 'How do you demonstrate caring?' If they don't have a clear answer, they're probably not a fit for the organization. As we grow our business, the most important thing is that the culture is replicated within each of those franchise businesses."

Creating a strong foundation of core family values and growing a culture that lives by and reinforces them has helped the brand achieve explosive success. In 2015 and 2016, Lightbridge Academy was ranked as a Top New Franchise by Entrepreneur magazine. Most recently, the brand was listed in the Entrepreneur 500 ranking for the first time ever. Now, fueled by last year's momentum, Lightbridge is entering the new year with an emphasis on increasing its density in the markets it has already entered, while also expanding its presence into new markets where the need for the brand's unique services are in high demand. And as the educational child care sector continues to grow in the years to come, Lightbridge Academy is positioning itself to be at the forefront of this important industry in 2017 and beyond.

"As Innovators in Educational Child Care, Lightbridge Academy wants to set the trends in the child care industrywe don't want to be a trend follower. We consider ourselves experts, and we're always evolving and looking for new ways to provide the best experience possible for children and parents," Falzarano said. "It's our goal to continue meeting the care and educational needs of both parents and children. This will continue to set Lightbridge Academy apart in the future."

ABOUT LIGHTBRIDGE ACADEMY

About Lightbridge Academy: Established in 1997, Lightbridge Academy provides early education and child care to children ages six weeks through kindergarten, as well as special programming for children up to 10 years old during school holidays, breaks and summer camp. The company franchised in 2011 in an effort to expand their distinctive concept throughout the Northeast; it currently has over 85 child care centers either open, under construction or in development throughout Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Founded by Guy and Julia Falzarano, the family remains deeply involved in the company, from Guy Falzarano as CEO to multiple grandchildren enrolled in the child care facilities. To learn more about Lightbridge Academy, prospective families and franchisees are encouraged to visit www.LightbridgeAcademy.com or call 866-470-0262.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Lauren Kaminski

No Limit Agency

312.526.3996

[email protected]

SOURCE Lightbridge Academy

Related Links

http://www.lightbridgeacademy.com/


BOSTON, Feb. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE: SAM) today announced that Martin Roper, President and Chief Executive Officer, plans to retire in 2018 after leading the Company for more than 17 years. The Board of Directors has created a search committee and retained Korn Ferry to assist in identifying and evaluating the best candidates to succeed Roper as CEO.

In announcing his planned retirement, Roper said, "I have advised the Board of Directors of my intentions a year in advance to assure a very smooth transition and a full and thorough search process for my replacement. I remain fully engaged and committed to leading the business as CEO until a successor is found and a seamless transition is completed. I am incredibly proud of everything that the employees of Boston Beer have accomplished and believe our future is very bright."

Commenting on the announcement, Jim Koch, Founder and Chairman, said, "The Board has been discussing Martin's plans for over a year. We are appreciative that his continued commitment to Boston Beer affords us the time to conduct a comprehensive search for his successor, while continuing to make progress against our 2017 business objectives."

"Our performance under Martin's stewardship has been incredible, and I am very grateful for his leadership, partnership and friendship over the last 22 years, during which the Company has grown eight fold," Koch added. "With the strong leadership team he has built, we are set up for success, and I am confident we will find a very capable CEO to steps into his big shoes and lead Boston Beer into the future."

ABOUT THE BOSTON BEER COMPANY

The Boston Beer Company began in 1984 with a generations-old family recipe that Founder and Brewer Jim Koch uncovered in his father's attic. Inspired and unafraid to challenge conventional thinking about beer, Jim brought the recipe to life in his kitchen. Pleased with the results of his work, Jim decided to sample his beer with bars in Boston in the hopes that drinkers would appreciate the complex, full-flavored beer he brewed fresh in America. That beer was aptly named Samuel Adams Boston Lager, in recognition of one of our nation's great founding fathers, a man of independent mind and spirit. Little did Jim know at the time, Samuel Adams Boston Lager would soon become a catalyst of the American craft beer revolution.

Today, The Boston Beer Company brews more than 60 styles of beer. It relentlessly pursues the development of new styles and the perfection of classic beers by searching the world for the finest ingredients. Using the traditional four vessel brewing process, the Company often takes extra steps like dry-hopping, barrel-aging and a secondary fermentation known as krausening. The Company has also pioneered another revolution, the 'extreme beer' movement, where it seeks to challenge drinker's perceptions of what beer can be. The Boston Beer Company has been committed to elevating the image of American craft beer by entering festivals and competitions around the globe, and is one of world's most awarded breweries at international beer competitions. As an independent company, brewing quality beer remains its primary focus. Although Samuel Adams beer is America's leading craft beer, it accounts for only one percent of the U.S. beer market. The Boston Beer Company will continue its independently-minded quest to brew great beer and to advocate for the growth of craft beer across America. For more information, please visit www.samueladams.com.

Samuel Adams and Samuel Adams Boston Lager are registered trademarks of The Boston Beer Company.

SOURCE The Boston Beer Company, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.samueladams.com


Hot 100 2017 honors the most successful mortgage professionals who had stellar achievements in 2016. "It's a tremendous distinction to have three leaders acknowledged by MPA," said Christy Bunce , New American Funding's COO. "We're proud of the significant impact Rick, Patty, and Brenda are making and how they're changing the face of the mortgage industry."

The husband-and-wife duo orchestrate overall growth for New American Funding; and in 2016, led the company into record-breaking profitability, increasing New American Funding's workforce to over 2300 employees and expanding its national locations to more than 130 branches. Due to their progressive business approach, Ernst & Young recognized them as 2016 EY Entrepreneurs of The Year for Orange County.

Rick and Patty maintain an active advocacy role within the industry. Rick serves as Chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association Political Action Committee (MORPAC) and Patty sits on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee and the Consumer Affairs Advisory Council for the Mortgage Bankers Association. She also resides on Freddie Mac's Community Lender Advisory Board and the Corporate Board of Governors for the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals.

Since joining New American Funding in 2011, Dintino has been a top producer, generating more than $97 million in volume in 2016 with 274 units. Scotsman Guide has recognized her as a Top Originator in the nation and she was honored with the 2016 Five Star Mortgage Professional Award.

The Hot 100 list is featured in MPA's digital magazine.

About New American Funding

New American Funding is a Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae Direct Seller/Servicer, FHA Direct Endorsement and VA Automatic mortgage lender. The company is licensed in 48 states, has 130+ branch locations, and offers a variety of home loan options, including: Conventional, FHA, Cash Out, Fixed Rate and Adjustable Rate Mortgages, VA, HARP 2.0, Jumbo, and Reverse Mortgages.

RELATED LINKS

http://www.newamericanagent.com/

https://www.facebook.com/newamericanfunding

https://twitter.com/newamericanteam

SOURCE New American Funding

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http://www.newamericanfunding.com


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will host a media teleconference at 3 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 8, to discuss research investigations launching aboard the next SpaceX commercial resupply flight to the International Space Station. Among the investigations are experiments with potential to fight human disease and a new autonomous spacecraft docking technology for testing.

The SpaceX Dragon spacecraft is targeted to launch no earlier than mid-February, on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This will be the first mission from the historic launch pad since SpaceX began to modernize the pad's structures in preparation to fly astronauts on NASA missions for the agency's Commercial Crew Program.

To participate in the science preview teleconference, reporters must contact Tabatha Thompson at 202-358-1100 or [email protected] by 1 p.m. Wednesday for dial-in information.

The briefing participants will include:

Danielle Gibson and Will Castro , students at Craft Academy at Morehead State University , to explain their experiment to use and evaluate smooth muscle cells to test theories about muscle contraction in the absence of gravity;

and , students at Craft Academy at , to explain their experiment to use and evaluate smooth muscle cells to test theories about muscle contraction in the absence of gravity; Paul Reichart , associate principal scientist at Merck Research Laboratories, who will discuss a Merck investigation that tests growth in microgravity of antibodies important for fighting a wide range of human diseases;

, associate principal scientist at Merck Research Laboratories, who will discuss a Merck investigation that tests growth in microgravity of antibodies important for fighting a wide range of human diseases; Michael Freilich , director of NASA's Earth Science Division, to brief two Earth science payloads: NASA's Stratospheric Aerosol Gas Experiment III mission and Lightning Imaging Sensor, which will provide continuity for key climate observations and data records;

, director of NASA's Earth Science Division, to brief two Earth science payloads: NASA's Stratospheric Aerosol Gas Experiment III mission and Lightning Imaging Sensor, which will provide continuity for key climate observations and data records; Ben Reed , deputy division director of the Satellite Servicing Projects Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, to discuss Raven, a technology demonstration to test autonomous rendezvous capability on the International Space Station; and

, deputy division director of the Satellite Servicing Projects Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, to discuss Raven, a technology demonstration to test autonomous rendezvous capability on the International Space Station; and Dr. Anita Goel , chairman and scientific director for Nanobiosym, to discuss an experiment to provide data valuable for antibiotic drug development.

The uncrewed Dragon cargo spacecraft will carry crew supplies, scientific research and hardware to the orbital laboratory to support the Expedition 50 and 51 crew members. This launch is the tenth contracted mission by SpaceX under NASA's Commercial Resupply Services contract.

Audio of the teleconference will stream live online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/live

For launch countdown coverage, NASA's launch blog, and more information about the mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spacex

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA has opened media accreditation for the next Orbital ATK launch of a commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station. The Cygnus spacecraft is targeted to launch March 19, during a 30-minute window that opens at approximately 10:56 p.m. EDT.

Cygnus will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. The spacecraft will carry crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbital laboratory to support the Expedition 50 and 51 crews.

Media prelaunch and launch activities will take place at CCAFS and NASA's nearby Kennedy Space Center.

International media without U.S. citizenship must apply by 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15 , for access to Cape Canaveral and Kennedy.

on , for access to and Kennedy. International media without U.S. citizenship must apply by 4:30 p.m. on Monday, March 6 , for access to Kennedy.

on , for access to Kennedy. U.S. media must apply by 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 9 .

All media accreditation requests should be submitted online.

International media are required to upload a scanned copy of their media visa and passport or green card with their accreditation requests. Media must present two forms of unexpired, government identification to enter Kennedy. One form must include a photo, such as a passport or driver's license.

Questions about accreditation may be addressed to Jennifer Horner at [email protected] or 321-867-6598. For other questions, or additional information, contact Kennedy's newsroom at 321-867-2468.

Investigations scheduled on this launch include an Advanced Plant Habitat, which will integrate new technology to increase overall efficiency, reliability, and robustness of plants grown on station. This experiment will build on the success of NASA's Veggie, the first fresh food growth system on station, and will provide ongoing research for the development of food production systems for long-duration exploration missions.

Manipulating cell cultures in space is challenging as the cells can spontaneously grow in 3-D. Another new investigation bound for the U.S. National Laboratory will look at using magnetized cells and tools to make it easier to handle cells and cultures, and improve the reproducibility of experiments.

The Slosh Coating experiment will investigate a special type of coating that can repel liquids when applied to container walls. If effective, the liquid repellent could be used to design more efficient storage tanks for propellant and other fluids used in space exploration.

There also will be a number of CubeSats onboard Cygnus that will be deployed from the NanoRacks CubeSat Deployment on the space station, including a NASA science payload known as IceCube, which will provide data to scientists' understanding of ice clouds and their role in climate change.

The International Space Station is a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The space station has been occupied continuously since November 2000. In that time, more than 200 people and a variety of international and commercial spacecraft have visited the orbiting laboratory. The space station remains the springboard to NASA's next great leap in exploration, including future missions to an asteroid and Mars.

The NASA TV schedule and video streaming information is available online. Visit the agency's website for more information about the mission including launch countdown coverage and NASA's launch blog.

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen now beckons hot dog and hamburger enthusiasts with the debut of Kings of Kobe at 790 9th Avenue. The bricks-and- mortar embodiment of a popular Summer 2015 New York City pop-up of the same name, the new eatery is dedicated to the presentation of all natural American Wagyu "Kobe style" beef in the guise of hot dogs and hamburgers in brioche buns and graced with imaginative toppings.* Witness the Manhattanite, wasabi aioli, caramelized apples, frisee, shaved cheddar; the Banh Mine, marinated cucumbers and carrots, cilantro, sriracha aioli and the Sweet Munchies, Coca-Cola soaked caramelized red onions, cream cheese, among the offerings for dog devotees, as well as the Better Than Caesar, burrata, baby arugula, stone fruit relish and the Queen Rules, prosciutto, pepper Jack, frisee, sweet garlic jam from the burger half of the menu.

Three of Kings of Kobe's delectable dogs: the Banh Mine, marinated cucumbers and carrots, cilantro, sriracha aioli; King's Classic, red onion marmalade, sauerkraut, yellow mustard; and Manhattanite, wasabi aioli, caramelized apples, frisee, shaved cheddar. Kings of Kobe King's Classic with roasted tomato, white cheddar, pickles, cherry pepper aioli

Snacks such as Mac & Cheese Balls, roasted garlic aioli and Waffle Dogs, Cheddar, spicy maple syrup and sides like Sweet Potato Tots, spicy maple aioli and Red Onion Rings, complement the menu's 10 main beef attractions (augmented by the Vegan Republic, three bean and roasted vegetable burger, roasted tomato, vegan herb mayo.) On the beverage front, beer, wine, milk shakes and sweet bubbly teas will be some of the options available.

Kings of Kobe is brainchild of managing partner, Etai Cinader, a life-long hot dog and hamburger aficionado, who considers them gastronomic symbols of an equalitarian American way of life. "Hot dogs and hamburgers embody the essence of the American social experience; no matter the social status or political views, everyone enjoys a great dog or burger," notes Cinader. "Kings of Kobe was created to honor hot dogs and hamburgers by enhancing them in a manner consistent with New Yorkers' cosmopolitan palates."

Cinader is particularly excited about the opportunity Kings of Kobe affords for the culinary elevation of hot dogs, which he feels have not enjoyed the innovative attention hamburgers have received in recent years. In addition to his menu's offerings, Cinader plans seasonal specials that will further explore hot dogs' creative potential.

Despite Cinader's belief in the food equalitarianism his Kings of Kobe concept represents, the new brand's tagline is "The Burger & Hot Dog Monarchy," a theme carried out in the Ninth Avenue space with the statement-making black and gold palette. Any possibility of eye boredom is dispelled by the massive mural that colorfully dominates one wall depicting a regal lion surveying the skyline of his realm, that of iconic New York City buildings and an enchanting turreted castle. The work by emerging street and stencil artist Lambros was commissioned by Kings of Kobe to symbolize the new culinary monarchy.

Kings of Kobe is open daily  noon to midnight, Sunday through Thursday and noon to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday  for eating in, taking out or delivery at 790 9th Avenue, New York, NY 10019, (212) 247-3703, www.kingsofkobe.com

* About Wagyu Beef

Prized for its high degree of marbling, succulence and extraordinary depth of flavor, Wagyu beef is the most expensive American beef on the market. It is often referred to as "Kobe beef," Kobe being the region in Japan where the breed was originally raised. Therefore, while all Kobe beef is Wagyu, but not all Wagyu is Kobe. Bred in the U.S. since the late '70s Wagyu cattle yield what is now commonly characterized as "American Kobe Style Beef," which research has shown possesses more Omega 3, 6 and good fat than regular beef. For more information about Wagyu beef, visit the American Wagyu Association's Web site at www.wagyu.org

Media Contact:

Shelley Clark

[email protected]

(646) 489-8582

SOURCE Kings of Kobe

Related Links

http://www.kingsofkobe.com


NEWTOWN, United Kingdom, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The founder and CEO of Nidec has visited Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer to outline his vision for the future of the businesses.

Shigenobu Nagamori, who launched Nidec in Kyoto, Japan in 1973, presented to Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer staff at their respective headquarters in Newtown, UK and Angouleme, France on February 2 and 3. The events were simultaneously broadcast to Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer staff across the world.

Mr Nagamori spoke about the opportunities presented to both businesses following the pre-announced acquisition, and was positive about the impact Nidec could have in the future. Questions were invited from existing staff members regarding investment, job security and proposals for future growth. The First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones AM, attended a meeting with Mr Nagamori to discuss the future of Control Techniques.

Mr Nagamori said, "We are pleased to welcome Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer into the Nidec family. We have strong ambitions for both companies to grow, and Nidec is committed to providing the necessary support and investment to make that happen.

"Industries which require the use of electric motors, and therefore drives, will form the backbone of the world's economy in the future. Look at the expansion in the use of robots, electric vehicles and drones. All these items need motors, and all those motors need drives. There are clear opportunities for Control Techniques, Leroy-Somer and ultimately Nidec to prosper here.

"Our policy is to put the systems in place which will encourage growth. We will hire and train high calibre people, and encourage those already working for the businesses to enhance their abilities. We will put great emphasis on research and development. As an R&D engineer myself, I know that it is technology which will ensure our businesses succeed. Control Techniques, Leroy-Somer and Nidec offer each other great synergy, and working together we can improve and make our goals a reality."

Nidec boasts a strong track record of facilitating growth among its business, through investment in engineering, design and resources. It has also demonstrated a clear strategy to drive growth in both companies, as well as providing considerable benefits to customers through a far wider range of available products and services.

Both Control Techniques' and Leroy-Somer's product ranges offer a complementary fit with the Nidec line-up, bringing significant benefits for all parties and, importantly, their respective customer bases. The combination will now allow Nidec to sell the entire range of products as a package into all key market spaces, while also allowing Control Techniques and Leroy-Somer access to new markets.

Nidec manufactures electric motors and related components, including small precision motors, motors for automotive, commercial and industrial applications, and medium voltage motors and generators. It employs around 140,000 people worldwide and has operations in over 40 countries. It has been actively developing a new growth platform with particular focus on appliance, industrial and commercial business.

Xavier Trenchant, President of Leroy-Somer said, "We are proud to integrate a business striving to become the world's No.1 comprehensive motor manufacturer and to join forces to meet the needs and expectations of our worldwide customers. With such a dynamic and trustworthy company, we look towards the future with confidence."

Scott Anderson, president of Control Techniques, said, "We believe this is a tremendous opportunity for us to join, work with and contribute to an industry-leading brand which believes in our products and will enable us to grow as businesses."

Press contact: [email protected]

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This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com

SOURCE Nidec

Related Links

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NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- North 6th Agency , Inc. (N6A), an award-winning communications agency based in the heart of SoHo in New York City, today announced its monthly "N6-Accolades" program to reward the highest performing individuals and teams for the month of January 2017.

To kick off 2017, N6A unveiled www.CompeteandCare.com, a one-step destination for all things related to N6A's signature "Compete and Care" perks, culture and competition programs. On the "Compete and Care" website current and future N6Aers can learn more about N6A's unique culture and perk programs. There is also a log-in portal for N6A employees to check their monthly performance and KPIs on N6A's 6PA system.

Earlier in the month, N6A announced the promotions of John Hannaway and Robert Vanisko. Hannaway has been promoted to the position of Senior Vice President of Operations, and will report directly to N6A CEO Matt Rizzetta. Vanisko has been promoted to the position of Director of the N6A Cannabis Group, and will report directly to Executive Vice President Daniela Mancinelli.

N6A unveiled the destination choices for the winner of the 2017 "N6-get-Away" performance competition. In its 4th year, the "N6-get-Away" competition rewards the highest-performing N6Aer for the first half of the year with an all-expense paid trip to a destination of their choice. The winner is unveiled at the N6A Summer Bash in June 2017, and will win a trip to any of the following destinations: Cape Town, Dubrovnik, Galapagos Islands, Havana, Prague, or Tokyo.

The N6A/PMX Agency account team captured "N6A Team of the Month" honors in January. The "N6A Team of the Month" program rewards the account team that demonstrates the most impressive results, service, and collaboration for an N6A client throughout the month.

The N6A Ikuzo Group took home the "N6A Golden Group" trophy as the highest-performing group for the month. The "N6A Golden Group" competition is awarded monthly, with cash bonuses being awarded to the winning group lead, as well as an extra week of vacation for the entire group.

Additionally, the following N6A staff members were named "N6A Producer of the Week" in January. The "N6A Producer of the Week" program was created to reward individual N6A staff members who achieve the highest level of production and contribute the most to N6A on a weekly basis. "N6A Producer of the Week" winners receive an extra $1,000 base salary increase for every week they take home the prize.

Week of January 2 : Lexie Gracey, Account Coordinator

Week of January 9 : Shayla Ridore, Account Executive/Night Owl Specialist

Weeks of January 16 & 23 : Andrew Krepow , Account Executive

For more information on N6A please visit www.n6a.com, follow N6A on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and click on this video to learn more about N6A's roots and culture.

ABOUT NORTH 6TH AGENCY, INC. (N6A):

North 6th Agency, Inc. (N6A) is an award-winning brand communications agency based in the heart of SoHo in New York City. Representing leading and emerging companies from more than 30 different industries, N6A has been awarded several prestigious industry recognitions, including being named the #1 Fastest-Growing Firm in its revenue category by O'Dwyer's, and one of the 50 Most Powerful Agencies in the United States by the NY Observer.

N6A's "Compete and Care" culture and "Embrace the Pace" atmosphere have been lauded as one of the most rewarding, collaborative and unique in the agency world. For more information on N6A, visit www.n6a.com, and for more information on N6A's "Compete and Care" culture and perks, visit www.competeandcare.com.

Media Contact: North 6th Agency, Inc. (N6A)

212.334.9753

[email protected]

SOURCE North 6th Agency

Related Links

http://www.n6a.com


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) welcomes the letter by 22 bipartisan U.S. Senators to President Donald Trump, demanding that the Administration hold Iran accountable for its January 29, 2017 ballistic missile test, conducted in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231 as well as other provocative actions.

Joining Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Bob Corker (R-TN) on the bi-partisan letter are Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Bob Casey (D-PA), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), as well as Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Todd Young (R-IN), Cory Gardner (R-CO), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Tom Cotton (R-AR), John Barrasso (R-WY), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Jim Risch (R-ID), and Rob Portman (R-OH).

In this light, OIAC believes that as the next step and as suggested by a number of senior House Members, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) must be placed on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations list. And that the human rights nightmare inside the country must be highlighted. The IRGC controls Iran's economy and is the oppressive machinery, which maintains the regime by suffocating internal dissent. As such, its designation would significantly help to deprive the Iranian regime from the means to oppress the people of Iran at home and spread its terrorism beyond Iran's borders.

Experiences of the past 38 years suggest that the destructive influence of Islamic fundamentalism, godfathered by the regime in Tehran, will not be mitigated until and unless a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic replaces that regime. We look forward to working with our representatives to hold Iranian regime accountable for its terrorism, nuclear weapons program, and for the frightening human rights record and to work towards bringing freedom to the Iranian people in a #FreeIran.

SOURCE Organization of Iranian American Communities - U.S. (OIAC)

Related Links

http://www.oiac.org


FAIRFAX, Va., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Olio2go.com announces a distribution partnership with Il Palagio, the Italian estate owned by musician Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler. Il Palagio extra virgin olive oil is now available at Olio2go.com.

Olio2go.com will offer the Il Palagio brand of extra virgin olive oil. The olives for this line of extra virgin olive oil are grown on olive trees on the estate near the Tuscan town of Figline Valdarno that date back hundreds of years. Each season the olives are hand-picked and then cold-pressed to ensure the highest quality and robust flavor.

Il Palagio extra virgin olive oil

"There is a rising demand for premium Italian extra virgin olive oil and we are excited to work with Sting and his staff at Il Palagio to market and sell his line of extra virgin olive oil in the United States. They make an outstanding classic Tuscan extra virgin olive oil," said Luanne O'Loughlin, Manager of Olio2go.

"Il Palagio is delighted to offer a delicious and healthy Message in a Bottle with its extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany," says Sting. "Thanks to Olio2go LLC for being the hard working and passionate voice of Il Palagio."

ABOUT OLIO2GO LLC

Olio2go was founded in 2000 and is the leading online retailer for gourmet Italian olive oil, balsamic vinegar and other Italian specialties. Based in Fairfax, Virginia, Olio2go imports, distributes, and sells directly to consumers and other stores. The company's mission is to find the very best olive oils produced in Italy and offer these for sale to the public. Olio2go.com provides information about olive oil to aid consumers in appreciating the differences in the regions from which these oils come, and in the ways that the olive oils enhance food.

Media Contact:

Luanne Savino O'Loughlin

Olio2go LLC

703-876-4666

[email protected]

For more information, visit http://www.olio2go.com

SOURCE Olio2go LLC

Related Links

http://www.olio2go.com


MOUNT LAUREL, N.J., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Holman Automotive, one of the largest privately-owned dealership groups in the United States, with over 38 retail franchises 17 brands from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest, today announced that Petter Witt will be joining the company as Platform Vice President, Northeast. He will be responsible for Holman's 10 stores located throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey; the general managers of each store will report to Witt.

"We are very pleased to welcome Petter to the Holman Automotive family," said President and CEO of Holman Consumer Services Brian R. Bates. "His wealth of experience in the retail automotive sector combined with his global perspective of the automotive industry will bring tremendous value to the organization. I could not imagine a better fit and we are glad to have him on board." Witt will report to Gene Welsh, Executive Vice President for Holman Automotive.

Witt joins Holman Automotive from BMW, where he was for 17 years. He has held numerous strategic leadership positions within the organization, most recently serving as Executive Vice President, Operations for BMW North of America, responsible for all of BMW's sales operations within the U.S. He joined BMW of North America in 1999 as a Management Associate, and held several different positions with increasing responsibility, eventually moving to Munich to serve as Sales Director for Africa, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe. In 2013, he became the Managing Director of BMW Sweden, and returned to the U.S. in 2014 to serve as the Regional Vice President, Western Region for BMW of North America. During his time in this role, the Western Region became the largest market in the U.S. for the first time since 2006.

A native of the Philadelphia region, Witt received a B.S. in Business Administration from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

About Holman Automotive

Holman Automotive is one of the largest privately-owned dealership groups in the United States, with over 38 retail franchises 17 brands from the East Coast to the Pacific Northwest. Beginning in 1924 as a single Ford dealership, Holman is a family-owned business that focuses on building relationships and investing in people. With values rooted in the principles established by founder Steward C. Holman, the company continues to promote a culture of philanthropy, which supports organizations such as the United Way and others important to the Holman team. Holman Automotive is one of six businesses owned by Holman Enterprises, which include Steward Financial Services, an auto retail finance company; Holman Insurance Services, a commercial and consumer insurance services company providing a full array of insurance products to retail customers and customized insurance and risk management solutions to commercial clients; Holman Parts Distribution, a national multi-brand powertrain parts distributor; Auto Truck Group, a truck up-fitting business; and ARI, the largest privately-owned fleet leasing and management company in North America.

SOURCE Holman Automotive

Related Links

http://www.holmanauto.com


SAN DIEGO, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- On July 27, 2016, Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. and certain of its affiliates ("Atlas") filed voluntary petitions for relief under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.

Limited partnership interests like those issued by Atlas are typically high risk ventures suitable only for the most sophisticated investors. If you purchased Atlas securities based upon the recommendation of a broker and/or brokerage firm and you believe such was not suitable for your investment needs and/or that you were not provided all information necessary for you to make an informed investment decision, my firm would like to speak to you about your investment.

The following is a list of limited partnerships issued by Atlas and/or affiliates over the last six years:

Atlas Resource Partners, L.P. Atlas Resources Series 31-2011 L.P. Atlas Resources Public #19-2010 (A) L.P. Atlas Resources Series 32-2012 L.P. Atlas Resources Public #19-2010 (B) L.P. Atlas Resources Series 33-2013 L.P. Atlas Resources Public #19-2011 (C) L.P. Atlas Resources Series 34-2014 L.P. Atlas Resources Series 30-2011 L.P.



If you are an Atlas Resource limited partnership investor and are interested in learning more about your legal rights and remedies, please contact Richard A. Nervig ([email protected]) at 760-451-2300. If you email, please include your phone number. Also see our website at www.nerviglaw.com.

FREE CONSULTATION

Toll Free Tel. (800) 837-0441

Email: [email protected]

www.nerviglaw.com

SOURCE Richard A. Nervig, P.C.

Related Links

http://www.nerviglaw.com


NEW YORK, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Seatrade Cruise Global, the leading global business-to-business event for the cruise industry, announces Mercy Ships as its non-profit partner for 2017. Benefitting the groundbreaking non-profit, Seatrade Cruise Global is donating a portion of proceeds from the Professional Woman in Cruise Brunch and a matching contribution for each customer insight survey gathered at Seatrade Cruise Global, March 13-16 2017.

"On behalf of the Seatrade Cruise Global team, we are humbled by the extraordinary efforts of the caring volunteers at Mercy Ships and the work they do each and every day to make a difference in the lives of thousands around the world," shares Robyn Duda, Portfolio Director for Seatrade Cruise Global. "We look forward to raising funds as well as awareness of this nonprofit's ongoing remarkable mission during Seatrade Cruise Global 2017."

Using hospital ships to transform lives and serve nations, Mercy Ships is an international organization bringing hope and healing to the world's forgotten poor. The organization has performed services valued at more than $1.3 billion, impacting more than 2.56 million of the world's most impoverished people since its inception in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens. Mercy Ships has completed more than 581 port visits in 57 nations to date.

"The maritime industry has a long history of generosity supporting the mission of Mercy Ships throughout our organization's 38-year history," explains Russ Holmes, Director of Development/Corporate Relations for Mercy Ships. "And through this partnership with Seatrade Cruise Global seek to engage the cruise industry in helping us bring hope and healing."

Mercy Ships currently consists of the Africa Mercy, the world's largest non-governmental hospital ship and is dedicated to the continent of Africa. It has an average of 1000 volunteer crew, from up to 40 nations, serving onboard annually. The non-profit works with host nations to strengthen the local healthcare delivery system while serving the surgical needs of the host country. Mercy Ships also provides a variety of training opportunities for medical professionals (surgeons, nurses, anesthesia providers, administrators and community health workers). Collaborating with qualified local and international partners, Mercy Ships has provided services and materials in developing nations valued at over $1.3 billion. For more information on Mercy Ships, visit www.mercyships.org.

About Seatrade Cruise Global

Seatrade Cruise Global 2017 is taking place 13-16 March 2017 at the Fort Lauderdale Broward County Convention Center. The exhibition is the leading annual global business-to-business event for the cruise industry. Bringing together buyers and suppliers for a four-day conference and three-day exhibition, the gathering draws more than 10,000 registered attendees, over 700 exhibiting companies from 93 countries and more than 300 international journalists to become the cruise industry's epicenter of ideas, products and services. A who's who of the industry participate in a comprehensive panel of discussions featuring experts, leaders and thought-makers including the State of the Global Cruise Industry Keynote with the chief executives of the world's largest cruise companies. Call +1-212-600-3260 or visit www.seatradecruiseglobal.com/ for more information.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Mike Hicks / Arden Hare

Lou Hammond Group

561-655-3836 / 843-628-3426

[email protected] / [email protected]

ABOUT MERCY SHIPS:

Mercy Ships uses hospital ships to deliver free, world-class healthcare services, capacity building and sustainable development to those with little access in the developing world. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, Mercy Ships has worked in more than 70 countries providing services valued at more than $1.3 billion, treating more than 2.56 million direct beneficiaries. The Africa Mercy is crewed by 400 volunteers from up to 40 nations, an average of 1000 each year. Professionals including surgeons, dentists, nurses, healthcare trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturalists donate their time and skills to the effort. With offices in 16 nations, Mercy Ships seeks to transform individuals and serve nations one at a time. For more information click on www.mercyships.org

For More Information Contact:





For USA: Pauline Rick For Int'l: Diane Rickard US Public Relations Coordinator International Media Manager Mercy Ships Mercy Ships Office Tel: (903) 939-7000 [email protected] Mob: (972) 922-5442 www.mercyships.org Email: [email protected]



Hi-res photos and general Mercy Ships B-Roll video footage are available upon request.

SOURCE Seatrade Cruise Global

Related Links

http://www.seatradecruiseglobal.com


CONNERSVILLE, Ind., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Stant USA Corporation ("Stant"), a leading manufacturer of automotive and aerospace parts, today announced that Gary Masse has joined the company as chief executive officer, effective February 6, 2017. Lou Braga, who has led Stant since 2015, has announced his resignation to pursue other opportunities.

Mr. Masse joins Stant from Coveris SA, a $2.6 billion global packaging and coatings company headquartered in Chicago where he held the position of President and CEO. During his 30-year career, Mr. Masse has held manufacturing leadership roles of increasing responsibility at GE, Danaher, and Cooper Industries.

"Stant is committed to providing the high quality, innovative products for which they have been famous for over 100 years, and we look forward to their future growth under Gary's leadership," commented Travis Kelly, Vice Chairman of Stant and Chief Financial Officer of Cerberus Operations & Advisory Company, LLC. "I have known Gary for some time, as he led the successful turnaround of Precision Partners, a former Cerberus portfolio company. Gary's strong background in both turning companies around and driving profitable growth will ensure Stant's continued leadership position in the automotive and aerospace sectors."

"For more than 100 years, Stant's mission has been to deliver innovative, high quality products to our customers," said Mr. Masse. "I am looking forward to becoming a part of the company's rich history. Together we will build on the company's leading market position to the benefit of both the manufacturers who buy our products and the consumers who will use them."

Regarding Mr. Braga's departure, Mr. Kelly said: "I would also like to thank Lou Braga for his contribution during the past two years, and wish him well in the future."

About Stant USA Corporation

Stant USA Corporation is the foremost global supplier of Vapor Management systems, Fuel Delivery systems, Thermal Management systems and Engineering Services. Founded in 1898, and headquartered in Connersville, Indiana, Stant's mission is to achieve profitable growth and increase stakeholder value by designing, engineering and manufacturing products that deliver to our customer's expectations.

SOURCE Stant USA Corporation
CHICAGO, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Stout Risius Ross, Inc., a premier global advisory firm, announced today that it has reached an agreement in principle to acquire the assets and assume certain liabilities of FMV Opinions, Inc. The two firms anticipate the deal will close by February 28, contingent on confirmatory due diligence.

"FMV has a great reputation for its technical excellence in the valuation advisory space, especially in the trust and estate community," said Craige Stout, Chairman and CEO of Stout. "We could not have asked for a better firm to combine forces with as we continue to expand our trust and estate valuation practice."

Lance Hall, Founder and President of FMV Opinions, commented, "This is a very exciting opportunity to join a truly exceptional firm whose broad portfolio of service offerings complements our traditional focus on valuations for estate and gift tax purposes. Our clients will benefit from the reach and resources of Stout, while receiving the combined expertise of two well-established market leaders in our industry."

About Stout Risius Ross, Inc.

Stout is a premier global advisory firm specializing in Investment Banking, Valuation Advisory, Dispute Consulting, and Management Consulting. We serve a range of clients from Fortune 500 corporations to privately held companies in numerous industries around the world. Our clients and their advisors rely on our premier expertise, deep industry knowledge, and unparalleled responsiveness on complex financial matters. For more information visit www.SRR.com.

About FMV Opinions, Inc.

FMV is one of the nation's preeminent firms offering a broad range of financial advisory services to private and public companies, and their advisors. For almost two decades, the firm has served its clients by providing intricate and highly specialized financial opinions, property appraisals, complex litigation support, tax and business valuations, as well as investment banking services focused on mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Founded in 1991, FMV is headquartered in Irvine, California, with additional offices in New York City; San Francisco, California; and Dallas, Texas.

Stout is a trade name for Stout Risius Ross, Inc. and Stout Risius Ross Advisors, LLC, a FINRA registered broker-dealer and SIPC member firm.

SOURCE Stout Risius Ross, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.srr.com


BOSTON, Feb. 2, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Swift Current Energy ("Swift Current") today announced that it is developing the 175 to 200MW HillTopper Wind Energy Project ("HillTopper") in Logan County, Illinois. Swift Current acquired the rights to HillTopper from Relight Enterprises in late 2016. Swift Current will complete development and construction of HillTopper and plans to bring the project online in late 2018.

"We are excited to have the opportunity to develop the HillTopper Wind Project and look forward to bringing clean, locally-made energy to Illinois and the Midwest," said Tony Lent, Swift Current's Chief Executive Officer. "We are so grateful to the people of Logan County and Mt. Pulaski who have welcomed us into their community as we work to bring this exciting project online. We look forward to continuing to work with residents and local officials as we finalize the design and layout of the wind farm."

"Logan County is wind country. We are fortunate to have attracted excellent developers to our region in recent years and are excited to have Swift Current join our community," said Bill Thomas, the Executive Director of the Logan County Economic Development Partnership. Thomas continued, "Construction of the HillTopper project will bring well-paying jobs and investment to Logan County. The commitments Relight made during the permitting process, which Swift Current has an obligation to uphold, will provide payments in aggregate of $560,000 per year to Unit School District 23, Mount Pulaski Zion Lutheran School, Heartland Community College, Lincoln Land Community College, and to community benefit funds in each of the Broadwell, Elkhart, and Mt. Pulaski townships for the coming decades. Businesses in Logan County look forward to the HillTopper project getting built."

Formerly known as the Meridien wind project, Swift Current recently changed the name to the HillTopper Wind Project to more closely associate the Project with its surrounding community. "As folks in Logan County know well, the city of Mt. Pulaski sits on a hill surrounded by some of the most fertile farmland in the region. We wanted to recognize the community and the five towns that send students to Mt. Pulaski High School by renaming the project after its high school mascot, the HillToppers," said William Kelsey, Executive at Swift Current. Mr. Kelsey helped Relight permit the project with Logan County and has joined the Swift Current team. "I am pleased to be able to continue to work with the good people of Mt. Pulaski, Lincoln and Logan County as we move towards construction and build a great project that delivers clean energy to the region and great benefits for the community."

Announcing the Formation of Swift Current Energy

Swift Current Energy is also proud to announce its formation. Comprised of a small team of wind and energy industry veterans, Swift Current launched in late-2016 with a mission to bring large-scale, 2016 production tax credit qualified, energy projects to the market and attract long-term investment in clean, renewable power for America's future.

"Our team knows what it takes to get projects into operation," said Eric Lammers, Chief Investment Officer and former principal at Arclight Capital, an active sponsor in the energy arena. Lammers continued, "Collectively our team has developed, financed, constructed, operated and either sold or bought nearly 8GW of energy assets in the last decade. We look forward to bringing our expertise and deep industry experience to this new effort."

Swift Current is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

Contacts:

Swift Current

Will Havemeyer

[email protected]

866-319-1949 x. 702

Logan County Economic Development Partnership

Bill Thomas

[email protected]

(217) 648-5077

SOURCE Swift Current Energy
Releases on each of the top 10 growth states and the top U.S. Growth Cities are available at myuhaulstory.com. Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri complete the top five growth states. Illinois continues to rank 50th the top net-loss state, preceded by California's slide to No. 49 after cracking the top five for 2015.

Growth States are calculated by the net gain of one-way U-Haul truck rentals entering a state versus leaving a state during a calendar year. Migration trends data is compiled from more than 1.7 million one-way U-Haul truck rental transactions that occur annually.

While migration trends do not correlate directly to population or economic growth, U-Haul growth data is an effective gauge of how well states are attracting and maintaining residents.

Arrivals outpaced departures 50.8 to 49.2 percent in Texas last year thanks to locations such as Austin, the No. 2 U.S. Growth City in the 50,000-plus population category behind Madison, Wis.

Granbury, McKinney, Richardson, Temple, New Braunfels, Dallas and College Station are other notable Texas growth cities to see a bump in U-Haul arrivals in 2016.

"Everything in Texas is growing exponentially," said Zane Rowland, U-Haul Company of North East Dallas president. "Our market is strong. Lots of major companies are moving to Texas because of the tax breaks. Between the low cost of living, the abundance of job opportunities and the ability to start a business, many people want to move to Texas."

The Lone Star State has gained large operations, or seen expansions of existing operations, with the likes of Toyota, Apple and Amazon to increase employment opportunities.

"I am proud that Texas continues to be the state of choice for those looking for expanded economic opportunities," Governor Greg Abbott said in response to his state's U-Haul growth ranking. "In the Lone Star State, we recognize that increased regulations and higher taxes are barriers to success for businesses, individuals and families. That is why, as governor, I will continue to work to ensure we promote a pro-growth environment across the state that gives everyone the opportunity to thrive, leading to a more prosperous Texas."

In 2016, U-Haul registered a net gain of about 80 neighborhood dealers across the state, making it more convenient for customers to access U-Haul trucks, trailers, self-storage, moving supplies, hitches, propane and many other products and services.

"When a customer comes to a U-Haul store, something significant is happening in their life," said Kenneth Birch, U-Haul Company of Fort Worth president. "Maybe they just got married, they're moving a child to college, or they got a new job. People come to us because they need help, and our services allow them to move at an affordable cost."

Find U-Haul stores and neighborhood dealers in Texas at uhaul.com/locations.

U-Haul is the authority on migration trends thanks to its expansive network that blankets all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. The geographical coverage from more than 21,000 U-Haul locations, including neighborhood dealers and Company-owned and -operated stores, provides a comprehensive overview of where people are moving like no one else in the industry.

U-Haul 2016 Growth States

1. Texas 2. Florida 3. Minnesota 4. Wisconsin 5. Missouri 6. Maine 7. Idaho 8. Louisiana 9. Vermont 10. Arkansas 11. Colorado 12. Tennessee 13. Iowa 14. New Hampshire 15. Delaware 16. Washington 17. Connecticut 18. South Dakota 19. District of Columbia* 20. Kansas 21. Alabama 22. South Carolina 23. Nebraska 24. Oregon 25. West Virginia 26. Wyoming 27. Montana 28. Alaska 29. Mississippi 30. Virginia 31. Kentucky 32. North Dakota 33. New Mexico 34. Oklahoma 35. New York 36. Rhode Island 37. Maryland 38. Utah 39. Indiana 40. Ohio 41. New Jersey 42. Massachusetts 43. Nevada 44. North Carolina 45. Pennsylvania 46. Arizona 47. Georgia 48. Michigan 49. California 50. Illinois

* Washington, D.C. is its own U-Haul territory and is listed among states for migration purposes. Hawaii is not included since state-to-state truck rentals are not applicable.

About U-Haul

Since 1945, U-Haul has been the No. 1 choice of do-it-yourself movers, with a network of more than 21,000 locations across all 50 states and 10 Canadian provinces. U-Haul customers' patronage has enabled the U-Haul fleet to grow to more than 139,000 trucks, 108,000 trailers and 38,000 towing devices. U-Haul offers more than 536,000 rooms and more than 50 million square feet of self-storage space at owned and managed facilities throughout North America. U-Haul is the largest installer of permanent trailer hitches in the automotive aftermarket industry and is the largest retailer of propane in the U.S. www.uhaul.com

Contact

Jeff Lockridge

Sebastien Reyes

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 602-760-4941

Website: uhaul.com

SOURCE U-Haul
ST. LOUIS, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TricorBraun WinePak, North America's leading wine packaging solutions source, has issued the following statement on the wine packaging industry, according to Andrew Bottene, Senior Vice President:

For the past 35 years, TricorBraun WinePak has been a driving force in the wine packaging industry. As our industry's leading wine bottle distributor, we have watched the industry grow and evolve, as we have continued to focus our efforts on delivering unique, custom packaging solutions for our many customers.

Today our industry, like many other industries, is shifting. Global competition continues to impact product quality, pricing and availability. New suppliers have entered our industry and traditional channels will continue to change. In some cases, long-standing manufacturers have made the decision to 'sell direct.'

For our many customers, these shifts can be confusing. Questions such as, "Who should I buy from?" and "Should I simply opt for the lowest price?" become real decisions. For TricorBraun WinePak, these shifts provide an opportunity to reaffirm our unique and long-standing position in the wine packaging industry:

We are not simply a distributor of products, but a supplier of value. Many competitors can sell a bottle. At TricorBraun WinePak, we are in the business of selling success.

We are experts on the full-spectrum of wine packaging issues, not just the bottle. The wine business is a complex, relationship-driven industry. With an average of 20 years of experience each, our Packaging Consultants offer advice and expertise not found elsewhere.

We are not biased toward one product, or one set of products. As a true distributor, we source from all manufacturers and work to bring our customers the very best solution for their given situation. Our existing supplier partners will continue to be our existing supplier partners.

We focus on the right solution, not simply the next sale. With a 35-year history of building deep relationships with customers and suppliers, we are committed to upholding a reputation that always puts the best interests of our customer, first.

We balance scale with personalized service. We have sales of more than $150 million and our Fairfield, California, facility features more than 360,000 square feet of warehouse space and a $2-million auto repacking system. We have additional warehousing space throughout the major wine growing regions in America and Canada.

Our industry will continue to change, but we will not. Evolution in our industry is inevitable. We are committed to never stray from our focus of providing customers with better, more innovative solutions. As packaging options evolve, so too will our solutions.

TricorBraun WinePak proudly looks forward to continuing our industry-leading success now and well into the future.

TricorBraun WinePak is the largest wine bottle distributor in North America and a subsidiary of TricorBraun. With more than 115 years of experience, TricorBraun is one of the world's leading suppliers of bottles, jars and other rigid packaging components with annual sales approaching $1 billion and more than 41 locations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Asia and Europe. For more information, please contact Suzanne Fenton, VP, Brand Marketing at 314-983-2010, or at [email protected]

SOURCE TricorBraun

Related Links

http://www.tricorbraun.com


CENTREVILLE, Va., Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Army Mission Command announced the award of a multi-million dollar contract to Systematic Inc. for its Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) C4I product, SitaWare.

The U.S. Army has selected Systematic Inc. as a new supplier of IT solutions to the US military. With the SitaWare solution, the U.S. Army gets a command and control system that provides the warfighter with greater situational awareness at all levels of command, as well as easier cooperation with other forces and greater security.

Systematic Inc. President and retired U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres is excited to bring the capability to the Army.

"SitaWare meets most of the Army's C4I requirements straight out-of-the-box," said Torres.

In addition, he highlighted SitaWare's open architecture which allows for integration with legacy and third party systems.

"It also has built-in support for international information exchange standards providing unmatched interoperability with international allies and intra-operability between U.S. forces," Torres said.

"With this award, SitaWare will become a key component of the Army Common Operating Environment, and Systematic will work with Mission Command and industry partners to develop a common framework to enhance intra-operability between U.S. and Coalition Partners."

Press information: https://www.systematicinc.com/

https://defensetech.org/2017/02/02/command-and-control/

http://www.afcea.org/content/?q=Blog-army-awards-contract-command-and-control-planning-system

About Sitaware

SitaWare is a software product suite providing robust situational awareness of blue and red force data at all levels of command. Each dedicated product in the suite is specifically designed for the challenges facing commanders in headquarters, mounted and dismounted environments, to provide unrivalled tactical data communication.

SitaWare was selected as the architecture framework for the Command Post Computing Environment, allowing for immediate third party development of integrated Command Post, Mounted and Dismounted tactical computing capabilities.

About Systematic Inc.

Systematic Inc. was incorporated in 1997 and has offices in Centreville, Virginia. It supplies software products and services to the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and Homeland Security on some of the nation's most sensitive programs.

Further information

Rafael Torres

(Col Ret) US Army

President, Systematic Inc.

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Systematic Inc.

Related Links

http://www.systematicinc.com


"What interested me about Virgin Hotels is the innate power of the brand," remarked Wetzel. "It's a chance to be a part of a team that develops something from the ground up, one that will really have an impact on the hotel industry within my lifetime. I'm looking forward to working with a passionate team that has diverse repertoires in hospitality."

Wetzel brings more than 20 years of experience as a chef and culinary executive to the Virgin Hotels team. Most recently, he worked as the senior corporate director of food & beverage at Rosewood Hotel Group, overseeing both food & beverage operations and project-related developments for the brand. Wetzel has also served as an executive chef with Hyatt International.

Raul Leal, CEO of Virgin Hotels, commented, "The food and beverage experience at Virgin Hotels is a key component of our overall offering. Through our signature concept, the Commons Club, we intend to deliver enticing experiences by top culinary talent across the country. We are thrilled to have an individual of Jay's qualifications on board with broad culinary experience both domestic and international."

Virgin Hotels Chicago opened in 2015, and the brand recently announced plans to open additional properties in New Orleans, Silicon Valley, Nashville, and Palm Springs. Hotels in Dallas and New York City are currently under construction, slated to open in 2018 and 2019, respectively.

About Virgin Hotels:

Virgin Hotels is a lifestyle hospitality brand that combines heartfelt service, straightforward value and a seamless, personalized hotel experience with the track record of innovation and smart disruption that Sir Richard Branson's global Virgin Group has pioneered for over 40 years. Each property will intermix a passion for food and beverage with music and culture, fusing with the local landscape and providing a vibrant and inclusive environment for travelers and locals alike. Virgin Hotels Chicago, which was named the "#1 Hotel in United States" by Conde Nast Traveler's Readers' Choice Awards 2016, is now open and accepting reservations at virginhotels.com, with Nashville, Dallas, Palm Springs, New Orleans, New York, Silicon Valley, and others to follow. Virgin Hotels continues to explore hotel and office conversions as well as ground-up development in cities such as Boston, Los Angeles, Miami, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, and London.

SOURCE Virgin Hotels

Related Links

http://www.virginhotels.com


WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A report from the Center for Immigration Studies covers the asylum seeker resettlement deal the Obama administration entered into with Australia, which is currently on hold. President Trump is considering honoring the agreement, which would bring to the U.S. 1,250 detainees  mostly men (1,161 men, 49 women and 44 children) from Iran. But he questions the security risk of offering permanent resettlement to the population who refuse to return to their country of origin or to accept an offer of asylum from Cambodia.

The asylum seekers reside at Australia's offshore detention centers on the small island nation of Nauru and on Manus Island, part of Papua New Guinea. The Australian government spent at least $3.6 billion on offshore processing at these detention centers between 2013 and 2016, but is now closing the facilities and hopes to transfer the costs and security risks of resettling these individuals to the U.S.

Nayla Rush, a senior researcher at the Center and author of the report said, "Convincing the U.S. to take Australia's unwanted asylum seekers would be a great achievement for Australia, but one of America's worst deals."

Although negotiations between the two governments were ongoing for months, President Obama did not announce the agreement until just a few days after the U.S. presidential election. Australia is unwilling to take the detainees as the nation follows a policy of mandatory and indefinite detention of unlawful noncitizens, including asylum seekers.

View the entire report at: http://cis.org/rush/australias-unwanted-asylum-seekers-mostly-iranians-be-resettled-us

The detainees were offered the opportunity to return home or to resettle in Cambodia. To encourage resettlement to Cambodia, Australia offered cash incentives of $15,000 per person and promises of family reunification with the same cash amount given to these family members. Five refugees accepted the offer.

Rush writes, "The refugee resettlement program is not about 'picking and choosing' one's resettlement country. Resettlement, by definition, is to be implemented when no other viable option is available. Cambodia (or other countries) might not be ideal for asylum seekers trying to reach Australia and family members already settled there. But America is no consolation prize either."

CONTACT:

Marguerite Telford

[email protected]

202-466-8185

SOURCE Center for Immigration Studies
MIAMI, Feb. 3, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- #BankSocial 2017 (http://www.banksocialmediaconference.com/) is just around the corner, and organizers are pleased to announce that Jay Baer  founder of Convince & Convert, an Inc. 5000 firm  will be the keynote speaker. Bank and credit union representatives can expect to receive a wealth of practical, actionable insights from this veteran of social media marketing. Advanced registration pricing for the conference ends in less than a month; to register and learn more about what to expect at #BankSocial, visit http://www.banksocialmediaconference.com/event-registration/.

"Social media is more important than ever for banks and credit unions, and it's fantastic that #BankSocial dedicates an entire event to showcasing social media best practices in financial service. I'm honored to be a part of the 2017 speaker lineup," said Baer.

Baer's presentation, "Hug Your Haters," will dive into the latest research on why and where customers complain. Given the explosion of social media platforms this century, customers have more outlets than ever before to voice displeasure  and they're certainly taking advantage. Baer suggests that rather than a source of frustration, this increased feedback from customers presents an enormous opportunity. He will explain how embracing complaints and taking real action to make things right is a powerful and effective way to retain customers, keep them happy, grow a business and build a highly respected brand.

"Jay Baer is absolutely one of the best content marketers and strategists in the industry," says John Siracusa, founder of #BankSocial. "Since getting his start over 20 years ago, he's advised hundreds of companies, including members of the Fortune 500, on how to optimize their customer service and build value in a rapidly changing world. Baer's contributions to strategic thinking are invaluable, and I'm honored to give banks and credit unions a unique opportunity to learn from a real titan and trendsetter."

Miami, Florida is the location for #BankSocial 2017. Last year's event generated an enthusiastic response, which has fueled lots of anticipation for this year's conference. The metrics don't lie: #BankSocial 2016 saw over 3,000 interactions on the conference's proprietary app over a two-day span, and the #BankSocial hashtag trended on Twitter. A complete conference agenda is available at http://www.banksocialmediaconference.com/agenda/.

About #BankSocial

Banking isn't like every other industryregulations have made social media a nerve racking territory. That's why #BankSocial was created to inspire bank and credit union marketers and executives to be the best at exceeding customer's expectations, while navigating through the red tape. Whether you're a social media rock star or a beginner, you'll gather a wealth of knowledge from industry leaders through content innovation, open discussions, networking, and so much more. Learn more at http://banksocialmediaconference.com.

Contact:



Ally Davis

#BankSocial

201-941-1458 ext. 703

[email protected]

http://banksocialmediaconference.com

SOURCE #BankSocial

Related Links

http://www.banksocialmediaconference.com


If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





Got news tips, gossip, suggestions, complaints?E-mail us: progressivecharlestown@gmail.com We strive to avoid errors in our articles. Our correction policy can be found here
Berlin, Jan 30 : Brunhilde Pomsel, the former secretary to Nazi Germany's propaganda boss Joseph Goebbels, has died aged 106.

Her job brought her into close contact with Goebbels -- one of the worst war criminals of the 20th century, the BBC reported on Monday.

She began working for Goebbels in 1942 as he stepped up his propaganda campaign against Jews, desensitising Germans at the height of the Holocaust.

Pomsel was one of the last surviving members of staff from the Nazi hierarchy, who only spoke about her experience later in life.

She died in her sleep in Munich on Friday and her death was confirmed on Saturday by Christian Kroenes, the director and producer of a documentary about her, A German Life.

In the 2016 documentary, she said she had known nothing of the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust and that she felt no guilt -- "unless you end up blaming the entire German population".

Born in January 1911, Pomsel worked as a writer for a Jewish insurance broker for a number of years during her late teenage years, before taking a similar job with a right-wing writer.

Although she claimed that she had always been apolitical, she joined the Nazi party when they took power in 1933, in order to take a government job with German national radio, reported the BBC.

She described Goebbels as "a good looking man... a bit short", who was always well-groomed and well-dressed but arrogant.

Pomsel said she was simply a secretary and knew little of the Nazi's brutal actions during the Holocaust.

"The people who today say they would have done more for those poor, persecuted Jews...I really believe that they sincerely mean it," she said in interviews for her documentary. "But they wouldn't have done it either."

But Pomsel always maintained that she did not share in the blame for the actions of her superiors.

"I wouldn't see myself as being guilty," she said. "Unless you end up blaming the entire German population for ultimately enabling that government to take control. That was all of us. Including me."

Pomsel was captured by Soviet troops at the end of World War II -- and spent the following five years in detention camps, before rejoining German broadcasting in 1950, where she worked for the next 20 years.

She would not speak openly about her time serving the senior Nazi official until a 2011 newspaper interview, and more extensively in the 2016 documentary.

She died in Munich a few weeks after her 106th birthday.
Brussels, Jan 31 : The European Union should create an asset management firm to tackle huge bad loans that threaten to destabilise the euro-zone economy, the head of the bloc's banking watchdog has said.

In a seminar on Monday in Luxembourg at the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), European Banking Authority (EBA) Chairman Andrea Enria said "urgent and actionable" method was needed as the non-performing loans (NPLs) piled up in the EU, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

As a possible solution to tackle those NPLs, and "to deal with those bad loans" he proposed establishing an Asset Management Company (AMC), which is not designed for crisis prevention, but aims to repair the lending function of banks.

Tougher actions were needed as EBA has identified "market failures" in tackling bad loans, he said.

Klaus Regling, head of the ESM, welcomed Enria's idea of the AMC as "a valuable policy proposal" to reduce NPLs.

"Banks need to aggressively reduce NPLs, which are keeping down profitability, particularly in some countries," Regling said at the same event.

According to data released by the EBA, the EU has more than 1 trillion euros ($1.069 trillion) of bad loans, with Italian banks accounting for 276 billion euros ($295 billion), or 27.6 per cent of the total, the largest among the EU member states.

Moreover, there are 10 EU countries whose NPL ratios stand above 10 per cent.
Mumbai, Feb 1 : Superstar Shah Rukh Khan is working with new age directors who tackle sensitive subjects -- like "Dear Zindagi" on mental health -- but he says he sometimes fails to understand the beauty of such projects.

The 51-year-old actor was lauded for his film "Dear Zindagi" with Alia Bhatt. Shah Rukh says he is happy to get associated with such issues even though he doesn't completely understand it.

"I may not be able to convince you with my love story at my age and stage, but I come from a different world. I work with new directors but I don't understand the beauty of it," Shah Rukh told IANS.

He added: "To be honest, I understand the essence, I understand the empowerment of women, I understand the issues about young girl. For instance, I didn't understand 'Dear Zindagi'. But they (makers) knew it. This is very essential.

"But I was out of touch with that part. For me also to participate in films like this even if I don't understand it... At least I am part of it."

The actor, who is currently riding high on the success of "Raees", feels nowadays mostly people are just out the rightness in everything including cinema, and turning everything into a big debate.

He says one should debate a little less and converse more.

"I keep telling people that it's a time to have conversations. Let's not take a side... Don't just be 'I think, what do you think?' For a moment, can we all have a conversations without thinking?

"If I was to look back at 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge' or 'Kuch Kuch Hota Haiin' in today's time, then you guys might just be picking out the rightness in everything... People might say 'He is just a sneaky guy. He just lied to all the family. Will you marry a lair like Raj?'"

Shah Rukh also emphasised that all the debates are a sign of changing times.

"I think the next step is going to be once we have debated everything, is to accept what it is. I think the reason for debate mainly is because there are debatable issues. We curbed ourselves for a very long time, now it's time to come out in open," said the actor, who is known as Bollywood's 'Badshah' and 'King Khan'.

Now, the actor will next be seen in Imtiaz Ali's next project with Anushka Sharma.
New Delhi, Feb 1 : The Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital here on Wednesday said its doctors had revived former union minister E. Ahamed when he was brought after collapsing in Parliament.

The Lok Sabha member from Mallapuram in Kerala on Tuesday suffered cardiac arrest during the President's address to Parliament.

The hospital administration said although it tried its best to save the Indian Union Muslim League leader, he passed away at 2.15 a.m. on Wednesday.

Earlier, Congress MP K.V. Thomas claimed he was told by the hospital that Ahamed died on Tuesday.

Thomas told IANS on Wednesday that when he reached the hospital on Tuesday, "I was told Ahamed is no more".

According to RML, Ahamed was resuscitated by hospital doctors after he was wheeled in.

"On arrival he was in cardiac arrest. A team of experts revived him by putting him on a pacemaker, ventilator and cardiopulmonary resuscitation," RML Medical Superintendent A.K. Gadpayle said.

"All possible efforts were made by the RML doctors. However, he succumbed at 2.15 a.m. due to complete heart blockage, cadiogenic shock, diabetes with hypertension," he said in a statement.
Moscow, Feb 2 : The Russian Defence Ministry has summoned the Ukrainian military attache in Moscow and handed a protest note over plane manoeuvres over the Black Sea, a media report said on Thursday.

The attache to the Ukrainian Embassy was summoned on Wednesday evening, the Ministry's spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said, Xinhua news agency reported.

The note emphasised that the low-altitude manoeuvres by a Ukrainian An-26 military transport plane endangered personnel and equipment at two Russian drilling platforms in the Black Sea.

The Russian side considered these actions as being "provocative," said Konashenkov.

The Russian Black Sea Fleet said earlier on Wednesday that the Ukrainian military plane carried out two provocative approaches at an extremely low altitude to Russia's Tavrida and Crimea-1 drilling platforms.

The Russia-Ukraine relations have strained over the Ukraine crisis and Crimea situation since 2014.
Washington, Feb 2 : US President Donald Trump has sparked a fresh diplomatic row -- this time with Australia -- by branding a refugee deal with the country as "dumb", days after holding a heated conversation with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Senior US officials said on Wednesday that during the call on January 28, Trump blasted Turnbull over the refuAgee agreement and boasted about the magnitude of his electoral college win. Then, 25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it, the Washington Post reported.

Trump also told Turnbull that he had spoken with four other world leaders that day, including Russian President VladiAmir Putin, and that "this was the worst call by far".

Australian government officials, who said the Post's account of the call was "substantially accurate", described the conversation as "robust" and admitted it was "shorter than expected", ABC News reported.

"This is the worst deal ever," Trump fumed during the call, as Turnbull attempted to confirm that the US would honour a deal made with the Obama administration to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention centre off the country's coast at Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, according to the Post.

Trump, who on January 27 signed an executive order temporarily barring the admissions of refugees and citizens from seven Muslim majority countries, complained that he was "going to get killed" politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the "next Boston bombers".

During the call, Trump was joined by chief strategist Steve Bannon, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues.

But Trump kept his focus on the issue and said: "I don't want these people."

He also repeatedly mis-stated the number of refugees called for in the agreement as 2,000 rather than 1,250, according to the officials.

Finally, Trump ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and French President Francois Hollande, according to the report.

The US President returned to the topic late Wednesday night, writing in a message on Twitter: "Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!"

Australia, according to the report, is one of America's staunchest allies. They share intelligence and have fought together in a number of wars, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Turnbull, on Thursday, refused to comment on reports of the conversation. He said conversations with world leaders are conducted "candidly, frankly, privately", but stressed Australia's solid relationship with the US was still in place.

"I can assure you the relationship is very strong," he said.
New Delhi, Feb 2 : The Human Resource Development Ministry on Thursday signed an MoU for the third phase of Technical Education Quality Improvement Programme (TEQIP-III) with 18 states and a Union Territory for improving the overall standard and quality of technical institutes.

To be implemented as a 'central scheme' from April 2017 with assistance from the World Bank, the project has an outlay of Rs 2,660 crore. It will be co-terminous with the 14th Finance Commission (2019-20).

An estimated 200 government and government-aided engineering institutes and Affiliating Technical Universities (ATUs), including Centrally Funded Technical Institutions (CFTIs), will benefit from the project.

Autonomous institutes will be entitled to funds of up to Rs 15 crore, non-autonomous institutes up to Rs 10 crore, ATUs up to Rs 20 crore and mentor institutions up to Rs 7 crore.

Speaking on the occasion, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said the programme was vital for the much-needed technical up-gradation in educational institutes.

"Innovation and research can happen only when physical infrastructure and trained manpower is available," he said.

The MoU was signed with seven low-income states of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh; three hill states of Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttarakhand; and eight north-eastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.

The sole UT involved in the project is Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The TEQIP commenced in 2003 with World Bank assistance as a long-term programme to be implemented in three phases. The first phase ended in March 2009 whereas the second phase commenced in August 2010 and is scheduled to conclude in March 2017.

India on Wednesday signed an agreement with the World Bank to facilitate credit of $201.50 million for TEQIP-III.
Islamabad, Feb 3 : Pakistani authorities have refused to issue identity documents to the family members of an imprisoned doctor, who helped the CIA to hunt down Osama Bin Laden.

"The authorities have refused to issue identity documents on the pretext that Shakeel Afridi (the doctor) is on the list of people who are not allowed to leave the country," said the doctor's counsel, Qamar Nadeem.

The lack of these documents prevents them from voting, travelling and causes problems during enrolment at educational institutions, Efe news reported.

According to Nadeem, Afridi's wife and two of his three children, above 18, applied for the documents in December 2016.

He said the two adult children are facing problems in getting enrolled at university due to lack of documents.

A spokesperson of the National Database and Registration Authority, which issues the identity documents, refused to comment on the situation of the doctor's family.

Zahid Hamid, minister for law and justice, recently said in the Senate that Pakistan will not free the doctor or hand him over to the US.

The doctor's case had come into the limelight again when the US President Donald Trump said, during his election campaign, he would get Afridi set free in two minutes if he won the elections.

Afridi took part in a false vaccination campaign in the northeastern Pakistani city of Abbottabad that was orchestrated by the CIA to obtain Bin Laden's DNA samples and he was arrested shortly after Bin Laden was killed in a special operation by US Special Forces on May 2, 2011.

A year later, Afridi received a 33-year prison sentence for links to terrorist groups, although it was subsequently reduced to 23 years in 2014. The sentence was severely criticized within and outside the country, and the US has termed it unjust and unnecessary.
Moscow, Feb 3 : The Syrian cease-fire monitoring group, made up of experts from Russia, Turkey, Iran and the United Nations, will meet next week in Astana, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

Monday's gathering will be the first technical meeting between the UN and the three countries acting as guarantors for the cease-fire following peace talks in late January in the Kazakh capital between Syrian government and opposition representatives, Efe news reported.

"The group meetings for Syria in Astana will be on a regular basis and will have representatives from the the Syrian government and the armed opposition," the Russian Defence Ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

The objective of the first meeting is to "develop measures for the control and prevention of cease-fire violations, increase trust between the Syrian authorities and the opposition, and the handling of humanitarian issues", the ministry said.

According to the ministry, the meeting will also serve to address "the separation between the units belonging to the moderate opposition and the al-Nusra Front terrorist group, a step that the guarantor countries see as the most important objective".
Panaji, Feb 3 : Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has strongly defended a charge levelled by the Congress leadership on Thursday, questioning the mutation of a land tract, purchased by the former Goa chief minister's son and a business associate in 2013, in one day.

Speaking to IANS on Thursday Parrikar said that mutation was a fundamental right and can be legally completed in one day.

"It is nothing new. The law says that it should be done in 24 hours, if documents are presented properly. What is the illegality in getting mutation done. Mutation is a fundamental right of a person."

Earlier on Thursday, Congress secretary Girish Chodankar and All India Congress Committee general secretary Digvijaya Singh, while releasing a "charge-sheet" of corruption by ministers and legislators in the incumbent state BJP-led government, had also alleged that laws were broken to allow mutation of the land tract in Sanguem sub district's Netravali village, which was purchased by Abhijat Parrikar, the Defence Minister's son and his associate Krishnaraj Sukerkar.

"Mutation cannot take place in one day. There are processes involved. Laws were broken to allow the mutation to happen in one day," Chodankar had alleged.

Mutation refers to the process involving transfer or change in the title of property in the state's land records.

Parrikar in turn, argued that the media should ask the Congress party for documentation in the said case, adding that under state laws "if all documents are perfect, the mutation has to be carried out in one day...though in his case, it was not one day.

"It took seven days and if a Chief Minister's son cannot get rightful as per law what is his due, how will people get it," Parrikar also said, adding that there were over 250 cases in which mutation was carried out in one day and that the records were available with the state legislative assembly.
United Nations, Feb 3 : At least 92,000 people have been displaced since the last October attacks on police posts in Myanmar's northern Rakhine State, UN officials told reporters here.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric on Thursday made the remarks by citing information from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Xinhua news agency reported.

This includes some 69,000 people who have fled across the border into Bangladesh, Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The UN estimates that 23,000 people remain displaced in the north of Maungdaw Township where security operations continue, the spokesman said.

"After a three-month interruption in most aid deliveries provided by UN agencies and partners in northern Rakhine, the government has allowed an incremental resumption of some activities," Dujarric said.

"With international staff still facing severe movement restrictions, national staff are distributing food and other items in most villages," he said.

"While health clinics and nutrition centres have re-opened in most areas, few people have been accessing them, as the situation remains tense," he said. "People are still afraid to move freely to access services, and movement is restricted by a travel pass requirement."

The UN is calling for the relaxation of travel restrictions in northern Rakhine, both for local people who are impeded in accessing humanitarian aid and basic services, as well as for staff from aid organizations, he added.
Mexico City, Feb 3 : Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Videgaray is on his way to New York, where he plans to meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres amid the diplomatic crisis with US President Donald Trump's administration.

Videgaray plans to meet "with the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Antonio Guterres, in an effort to address Mexico's priorities at the UN and discuss the organisation's role in light of the challenges in the current international context," the Foreign Relations Secretariat said on Thursday.

The Mexican official also plans to meet with Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA) members to discuss Mexican-US relations, Efe news reported.

The trip comes a day after a controversy started over press reports that Trump allegedly threatened to send troops to Mexico during a telephone conversation last Friday with Mexican President Enrique PeAa Nieto.

Estevez, who writes for Forbes, reported on Wednesday that they obtained part of the transcript of the telephone conversation between the Presidents. Citing sources she said that "it was a very offensive conversation where Trump humiliated PeAa Nieto".

The White House, for its part, described the tone of Trump's statement as "lighthearted."

The Mexican government said the media reports were inaccurate and Foreign Relations Secretariat communications director Claudia Algorri told the press that the stories lacked substance and the January 27 conversation between the Presidents had been "constructive".
Washington, Feb 3 : The US government has said that Israel's construction of new settlements on occupied Palestinian land "may not be helpful" in achieving peace, a White House statement said.

Although it clarified that the Donald Trump administration has not taken an official position on the matter, Efe news reported.

"While we don't believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace," said the White House in the statement on Thursday, admitting "construction of new settlements or expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal."

The White House was responding to Israel's decision on Tuesday to build 3,600 new homes on Palestinian territory in the West Bank.

The new authorisation came a week after Tel Aviv had given the green light to building another 2,500 homes.

This was the first critical statement about Israel made by the new US administration, which had appeared to be adopting a much more favourable stance toward Israeli policies than former President Barack Obama.

In the statement, the White House said that - before adopting an official position on the matter - it hoped to be able to discuss the problem directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on February 15 when he visits Washington.

Since Trump took office on January 20, Israel has authorised construction of 5,500 homes in settlements on the West Bank and 566 in the Palestinian zone of East Jerusalem.

The UN Security Council in December 2016 - with the abstention of the US - approved a resolution urging Israel to halt all settlement expansion activity, but Trump, who at the time was President-elect, criticised that diplomatic move.

European nations such as Spain and France have "condemned" the recent Israeli decisions to increase the size of its settlements in the occupied territories, while the UN and the European Union have expressed "concern."

Palestine, meanwhile, has asked the UN Security Council to "take responsibility" and act to force Israel's compliance with the resolution.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : We can master our life simply by listening to our heart again and again, says the practitioner of "Heartfulness Meditation" Kamlesh D. Patel, affectionately known as Daaji.

"And the whole exercise of fine-tuning the heart with the mind is through this meditation on the heart. That is why we call this process 'Heartfulness Meditation'," said Daaji, who practices this mediation method, which, according to him, has little to do with religion.

The best thing about this meditation technique, however, is that it requires no rigorous training and the effects can be felt the moment you sit for meditation in the comfort of your home and close your eyes, as long as your heart is prepared, added Daaji, who provides free online master classes for the uninitiated and the willing.

The meditation master classes with Daaji combine ancient wisdom and modern science to help people understand the nature of mind and consciousness, the role of the nervous system and how to move from stress to relaxation within minutes.

"The heart is the most mysterious thing and the most beautiful thing that we can have," Daaji, a spiritual guide in the Sahaj Marg system of Raja Yoga meditation, told IANS in an e-mail interview.

Over 800,000 people worldwide accessed the online master classes by Daaji in January, the Heartfulness Institute, which offers a rich variety of simple, gradual relaxation and meditation solutions.

These classes aim to provide an opportunity to many more people to learn the introductory Heartfulness techniques, empowering individuals and institutions with a set of simple and effective techniques that are easily integrated into hectic modern living.

Daaji explained that to start the process, one needs to gently sit and relax with eyes very softly closed.

"Think of the presence, of the source of the light within the heart. That is all. Stay on this one idea and go ahead with this one idea for as long as you can," he noted.

"Even if it takes an hour to achieve twenty-three hours of a good day, it is a good investment of time - the choice is yours," Daaji said.
Seoul, Feb 3 : US Defence Secretary James Mattis on Friday reiterated Washington's security commitment to Seoul and vowed to overwhelmingly respond to any use of nuclear weapons by North Korea.

"America's commitments to defending our allies and to upholding our extended deterrence guarantees remain ironclad: any attack on the United States, or our allies, will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons would be met with a response that would be effective and overwhelming," Mattis told the media here.

Mattis made the remarks during a press briefing before he began talks with South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo, to discuss ways to maintain stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The retired Marine Corps general arrived here on Thursday for a two-day visit for talks with top South Korean officials.

On Thursday, he met with South Korea's Acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn to underscore the "priority" that the US President Donald Trump's administration places on the Seoul-Washington alliance.

It is his first overseas trip since he took office less than two weeks ago.

Mentioning ways to counter saber-rattling by North Korea, Mattis, on Thursday said: "Due to North Korea's threatening rhetoric and destabilizing behavioor, we are taking defensive steps like deploying the highly effective THAAD anti-missile unit to South Korea to protect its people and our troops that stand with our ally."

In July 2016, Seoul and Washington agreed to deploy the THAAD -- Terminal High Altitude Area Defence -- anti-ballistic missile system to South Korea this year to better defend against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.

In other efforts, Mattis stressed the need to expand "trilateral venues of cooperation with Japan, where the mutual defence of the three countries is best served through teamwork."

Mattis is scheduled to depart for Japan on Friday afternoon after paying his respects at the National Cemetery in southern Seoul.
New York, Feb 3 : As it pursues a legal battle against President Donald Trump's temporary immigration ban, Microsoft has made a formal plea to the US administration seeking an exemption for students and workers from the order.

In his recent executive order, Trump has authorised the Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to grant exceptions on a case-by-case basis, consistent with the national interest, to issue visas and other immigration benefits.

"Microsoft is filing a formal request asking the cabinet officers to create a process to grant exceptions that will permit 'Responsible Known Travelers with Pressing Needs' to re-enter the country while protecting the nation's security," Brad Smith, Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft, wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft has urged the administration that people with employer-sponsored work visas or student visas in "good standing at an accredited university should be exempt from the ban".

"These are not people trying to avoid detection. Rather, these individuals are 'known quantities' in their communities," Smith added.

The ban has created chaos and outrage around the world, while numerous travellers found their access to the US territory blocked and protests were staged at several US airports.

The executive order temporarily bans immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen under measures to "keep radical Islamic terrorists out".
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Lok Sabha was adjourned till noon on Friday after opposition members, including the Congress and Trinamool Congress disrupted the proceedings over different issues.

Soon after the house met, Congress members sought permission from the chair to raise their issue but Speaker Sumitra Mahajan disallowed, saying the matter could be raised after Question Hour.

The TMC members meanwhile trooped near the Speaker's podium, shouting slogans against the union government.

Mahajan urged the agitating members to allow smooth functioning of the house during the Question Hour and raise their issue later. But opposition members kept shouting slogans.

This prompted the Speaker to adjourn the House till noon.

Earlier, the TMC members staged a protest near Mahatma Gandhi's statue in the parliament complex against the arrest of Sudip Bandopadhyay.

Bandopadhyay and Tapas Paul were arrested by CBI in connection with the alleged Rose Valley chit fund scam.

TMC, the ruling party in West Bengal, has been at loggerheads with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government over various issues, including demonetisation.
Los Angeles, Feb 3 : Actress Angelina Jolie has appeared in a video to promote her latest directorial film "First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers".

The film will be released on Netflix, reports aceshowbiz.com.

The movie is based on a Cambodian genocide memoir of Cambodian human rights activist as well as Jolie's friend, Loung Ung.

It tells the story of the massacre in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge in 1975-79 in which more than two million of the seven million population were killed. The victims included Ung's parents and two sisters.

"The heart of it is Loung's story. It is the story of war through the eyes of a child but it is also the story of a country," Jolie explains in the video.

Ung, who serves as screenwriter of the film, added: "(The movie is) for the country. What Angie's doing is an amazing gift."
Los Angeles, Feb 3 : Bringing together more than 5,000 engineers and designers from across the globe to network, learn, share and discover the latest in 3D technologies, the global 3D design software company Dassault SystAmes on Friday announced "SOLIDWORKS World 2017".

Set to take place in Los Angeles in the US from February 5 to 8, the 19th annual conference will showcase latest innovations in SOLIDWORKS 3D applications and engineering technologies that help millions of SOLIDWORKS users create compelling customer experiences.

"The 'SOLIDWORKS' community shares a passion for innovation, collaboration and design that is unique," said Gian Paolo Bassi, CEO, SOLIDWORKS, Dassault SystAmes, in a statement.

"'SOLIDWORKS World' fuses this unbridled energy with product development and technology strategies that are pushing the evolution of the internet of things, model-based definition, additive manufacturing and other approaches," Bassi added.

Among the speakers is Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American engineer who, as the first female private space explorer, spent eight days aboard the International Space Station (ISS). She is also the co-founder and chairman of Prodea Systems, a platform for the internet of things.

Jason Silva a media artist and futurist who created "Shots of Awe", a short film series that explores innovation, technology creativity, futurism and the metaphysics of the imagination, will also address one of the sessions.

Sustainability expert and social visionary Duane Elgin, with Jon Friedman, co-founder of Freight Farms, will discuss how the company modifies shipping containers to create year-round agriculture in any environment and empower local food production;

Amir Abo-Shaeer, founder and director of the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy, will explain how the next generation of physicists, engineers, and mathematicians are being cultivated today within our communities.

Motiv Robotics, a partner with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), will discuss the design of advanced robotic systems for industrial applications, disaster relief, defense, and extreme environments.

Over 100 exhibitors will display new technologies and products amid 200 interactive training sessions at the SOLIDWORKS World 2017.

"It's the place to be for innovators looking to connect with each other, learn new skills, and transform how products are designed, manufactured and supported," Bassi said.

Dassault SystAmes, the 3DEXPERIENCE Company, provides business and people with virtual universes to imagine sustainable innovations.
Paris, Feb 3 : A man has reportedly attempted to attack a French soldier near Paris' famed Le Louvre art gallery on Friday.

The soldier opened fire in self-defence near the Carrousel du Louvre shopping centre around 10 a.m., according to the local media.

French daily L'Express reported that the suspect was carrying a knife. He is said to have been injured in the shooting.

A spokesperson for the French Interior Ministry said a "serious public security incident" was underway, saying security forces were at the scene, the Independent reported.

The Carrousel du Louvre has been evacuated amid a heavy police presence following the incident.
Chandigarh, Feb 3 : With only a couple of hours left for the February 4 Punjab assembly elections to get unerway, leaders and workers of various political parties on Friday moved from door to door in a last-ditch effort to woo voters amid tight security in the border state.

Nearly 1.99 crore voters will decide the fate of 1,145 candidates, including 81 women and a lone transgender candidate, in polls from 117 assembly constituencies from 8 a.m. onwards on Saturday.

"All arrangements have been made to ensure smooth and peaceful polling tomorrow (Saturday)," Punjab Chief Electoral Officer V.K. Singh said here on Friday.

The security arrangements are particularly tightin the districts of Pathankot, Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Tarn Taran, Ferozepur and Fazilka in Punjab's border belt with Pakistan.

Punjab's borders with neighbouring Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir have been sealed by security forces and vehicles are being allowed entry only after thorough checking.

Voting for the Amritsar Lok Sabha by-election will also be held on Saturday.

Counting of votes will take place on March 11 along with those in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.

For the first time, Punjab is witnessing three-cornered contests in all 117 seats with the entry of the Aam Aadmi Party.

The undercurrent of "silent" voters has made things uncertain for the main contenders like the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance, the Congress and AAP.

The Election Commission is closely monitoring the situation in different assembly constituencies, particularly high-profile and sensitive ones.

Thousands of security personnel of paramilitary forces and Punjab Police have been stationed across all assembly constituencies, manning polling stations and buildings where the electronic voting machines (EVMs) have been kept overnight.

Candidates and their supporters switched to door-to-door campaigning after canvassing through public meetings and roadshows came to an end at 5 p.m. on Thursday.

The notable contests are in Lambi between Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal and Punjab Congress President Amarinder Singh, where AAP candidate Jarnail Singh is also in fray; in Jalalabad between Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal and sitting MPs Bhagwant Mann (AAP) and Ravneet Singh Bittu (Congress); in Patiala Urban between Amarinder and former army chief Gen. J.J. Singh (SAD); and in Lehra between former Chief Minister Rajinder Kaur Bhattal (Congress) and Finance Minister Parminder Singh Dhindsa (SAD).

The influence of religious 'deras' (sects) like the Radhasoamis in Beas, Sacha Sauda in Sirsa, Sachkhand Ballan near Jalandhar and many others is being closely watched. Each one of these has lakhs of followers in Punjab and neighbouring states.

Dera Sacha Sauda's support will help the Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party combine in the Malwa belt.

Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi and other top party leaders too have in recent weeks visited the Radhasoami Beas dera and the Sachkhand Ballan dera to seek their support.
Srinagar, Feb 3 : Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces after Friday prayers here, police said.

Unidentified youths threw a petrol bomb at a CRPF contingent deployed in Nowhatta area which was followed by heavy stone pelting.

A Central Reserve Police Force trooper was injured in the incident.

Security forces used batons and tear smoke to disperse the protesters.

Clashes also broke out in north Kashmir's Sopore town.

Separatists have called for post Friday prayer protests against a West Bengal court's decision to sentence to death Muzaffar Ahmad from Kulgam in south Kashmir.

Authorities placed separatist leader Mirwaiz Umer Farooq under house arrest in a bid to foil mass protests.
Seoul, Feb 3 : Defence chiefs of South Korea and the US agreed on Friday to hold larger-scale joint war games early this year to contain possible provocations from North Korea, Seoul's defense ministry said.

Visiting US Defence Secretary James Mattis and South Korean Defence Minister Han Min-koo shared the need for stronger Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint war games that tend to be conducted between March and April every year, Xinhua news agency reported.

Pyongyang denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for northward invasion.

During the joint exercises, the US can reportedly mobilise an aircraft carrier and other strategic assets such as nuclear-capable bombers.

Mattis arrived in South Korea on Thursday and met senior officials, including Prime Minister and acting President Hwang Kyo-ahn as well as top presidential security adviser Kim Kwan-jin.

The first Pentagon chief under Trump administration flew to Japan for another two-day travel.
Nellore (Andhra Pradesh), Feb 3 : Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday urged IFFCO Kisan special economic zone (SEZ) to allot land to investors at a lower rate.

Inaugurating Spanish wind turbine major Gamesa's Rs 500 crore integrated facility here, Naidu said: "I wanted to bring a fertiliser plant here. The land was given to IFFCO."

The fertiliser cooperative IFFCO did not set up a fertiliser plant but converted its business plan into an agro based SEZ.

The SEZ is being developed on 2,775 acres here.

In a voice that sounded to be stern, Naidu said IFFCO should reduce its land rates so that investors can come and set up their units.

Naidu said a meeting with the fertiliser cooperative IFFCO will be called to discuss the issue.

He also stressed the need for creating employment opportunities within the country so that Indians need not go abroad.

According to him, Andhra Pradesh is an attractive investment destination as land, labour, power and water are available in plenty.

The state also has several deep draft ports which eases exports.

According to Jose Antonio Cortajarena, Chief Corporate-General Secretary, Gamesa said India accounts for close to 30 per cent of sales for Gamesa global.

"With the inauguration of the Nellore facility, one of the largest for the company in the world, Gamesa India will be integrated even more strongly to cater to the growing energy demands of the country," he added.

According to Ramesh Kymal, Chairman and Managing Director, Gamesa Renewable Private Ltd, the new plant is an integrated plant that will make blades first followed by inverters and generators.

Around Rs 500 crore has gone into the Nellore facility out of the company's over all investment plan of Rs 1,000 crore.

Andhra Pradesh is turning into a renewable energy manufacturing hub with companies like Gamesa, ReGen Powertech, Suzlon, Windar and others setting up their plant in the state.
Thiruvananthapuram, Feb 3 : The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) has said Kerala's award-winning "Responsible Tourism" initiative is a model for other tourist destinations to replicate.

According to the Kerala Tourism Department, UNWTO has commended the work done by the state and is impressed by its model of responsible and sustainable tourism.

UNWTO Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific, Xu Jing, congratulated Kerala for the its success.

"The projects can be included as part of UNWTO's global programmes and the report can be a case study for other destinations. We are eager to strengthen our relationship and discuss matters of common interest," Jing was quoted as saying in a statement issued by the state Tourism Department.

The UNWTO also invited Kerala Tourism to make a presentation at the Joint Commission Meeting to be held in Bangladesh in May and also at the UNWTO's International Conference on Tourism Statistics to be held in Manila from June 21 to 24.

Kerala Tourism Director, U.V. Jose, presented the report on the Responsible Tourism campaigns at the UNWTO headquarters in Madrid.

The report included details of Responsible Tourism policies and practices implemented in the state and the campaign's success.

It said the initiative has empowered the local communities economically through activities that prioritise cultural and ecological conservation.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday said that the law and order situation in Uttar Pradesh had worsened over the years under the Samajwadi Party (SP) rule and now even the police was not safe from goons.

Citing a slew of incidents of heinous crimes such as murder, loot and rape, BJP spokesman Sambit Patra said the law and order situation in the state was bad but the two "shahzade" (two princes, referring to Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi) were unperturbed.

"Even the official figures of crime in Uttar Pradesh are worrisome. There are on average 24 rapes and 13 murders per day in UP. But the two shahzade are totally unperturbed," Patra said here.

The Samajwadi Party has formed an alliance with the Congress to fight the UP polls and Akhilesh Yadav and Rahul Gandhi are campaigning together in the state.

"Only last night a youth named Abhishek was killed in Meerut when he resisted a loot attempt. Two days ago, Dr. A.K. Bansal was shot at inside his hospital in Allahabad. Even as Akhilesh Yadav was releasing his poll manifesto, a loot was on near Tappal," Patra said.

He said that BJP President Amit Shah raised these issues during his padyatra in Meerut on Friday.

"What is happening in Uttar Pradesh? In Jawahar Bagh incident we saw that even the policemen themselves are not safe from goons," he said.
Valletta, Feb 3 : Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern said on Friday that US President Donald Trump's controversial politics could be a catalyst for a stronger and more united Europe.

"Trump is a wake-up call for Europe, his politics could be a catalyst for us to reunite Europe," said Kern, who is in Valletta for an informal summit of the EU.

"We have many common issues to support this (unity)," he was quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying.

The informal EU summit in Malta on Friday is the first meeting of the leaders of the 28-member bloc after Trump was sworn in.

It is an occasion for EU leaders to discuss the bloc's future following the June 23 Brexit referendum.

The leaders will discuss the migration crisis amid warnings of more people trying to reach Europe through the dangerous Central Mediterranean route from Libya.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Federation of All India Farmer Associations (FAIFA) on Friday voiced concern at the excise duty hike on cigarettes in the Union Budget, which it termed a blow to Indian tobacco growers.

FAIFA, representing millions of farmers and farm workers of commercial crops across India, said it is extremely concerned that the Union Budget 2017-18 has once again increased the excise duty on cigarettes.

"The increase in duty rates will lead to further drop in farm earnings as illegal cigarettes will continue to increase and cause a further drop in the off take of domestic tobacco grown by Indian farmers," said a statement issued by FAIFA.

Appreciating the government's focus on agricultural growth seeking doubling of farmer incomes, FAIFA said the plight of tobacco farmers whose earnings have reduced sharply in the recent years has been completely neglected.

"The duty increase announced in the 2017 Budget is a blow to the livelihood of FCV (cigarette) tobacco farmers, who have been facing unprecedented hardships due to sharp drop in demand for their produce. The resulting loss in earnings of farmers and the acute financial distress faced by them has even led to unfortunate cases of suicides by farmers in the tobacco growing states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka last year," said the statement quoting Murali Babu, General Secretary, FAIFA.

FAIFA appeals to the government to take appropriate measures to protect the livelihood and earnings of farmers in the country so that unfortunate incidents of farmer suicides are not repeated in future.
Meerut, Feb 3 : BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday asked Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to explain why law and order in Uttar Pradesh is "in shambles".

Shah suspended his 1.5-km 'padyatra' (march) in Meerut on Friday in view of a trader's killing.

Referring to the killing, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President said that lawlessness prevailed in the entire state.

Attacking the poll alliance between the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress, the BJP leader dubbed Akhilesh and Rahul Gandhi as "princes out to destroy the state".

Shah claimed that traders, doctors and other innocent people were being killed in the state while the Samajwadi Party government seemed to be looking the other way.

"This alliance is nothing but coming together of two leaders - one who has plundered the state and the other who has looted the country," Shah said.

He came down heavily on the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and said the time had come for the people of Uttar Pradesh to give a decisive mandate to the BJP to usher in good governance.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital here on Friday denied that it tried to suppress the news of senior Kerala Parliamentarian E. Ahamed's death. It said the former Union Minister was alive when brought to the hospital, but died at 2.15 a.m. on Wednesday.

"There was no political pressure on us. The protocol is to not allow any one in the ICU when the treatment is on. Ahamed was alive when brought to the hospital. He died at 2.15 a.m. I am hurt by the allegations," RML Medical Superintendent A.K. Gadpayle told CNN News.

According to Gadpayle, Ahamed's daughter was shown the monitor and she was "very much satisfied" with the information given on her father's condition.

"We have given and shown the monitors and data and they were very much satisfied," said Gadpayle.

The clarifications come as the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Friday alleged attempts, including by the Prime Minister's Office, to "suppress" the news of the Ahamed's death and demanded a probe.

The Opposition has been accusing the Narendra Modi government of deliberately keeping the news of Ahamed's death under wraps to ensure the Union Budget was presented as scheduled on February 1.

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor told the media outside Parliament: "It is a serious matter. There is a tragic death and you are trying to hide it from his family members just for a petty administrative issue -- a Budget. This is very unfortunate."

The RML hospital had earlier issued a press statement denying the allegations of suppressing the news of Ahamed's death, earlier levelled by Congress MP K.V. Thomas.

According to RML, Ahamed was resuscitated by the hospital doctors after he was wheeled in.

"On arrival he was in cardiac arrest. A team of experts revived him by putting him on a pacemaker, ventilator and cardiopulmonary resuscitation," Gadpayle said in the statement.

"All possible efforts were made by the RML doctors. However, he succumbed at 2.15 a.m. due to complete heart blockage, cardiogenic shock, diabetes with hypertension," he said.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : Emerging artists again have the opportunity to apply for a promising artists in residence programme, spanning three months, where they can focus on their craft, interact with the best minds in the industry and improve their talent -- in Scotland..

Glenfiddich, one of the world's most-awarded single malts, together with Best College Art, are now calling for entries from emerging Indian artists for the sixth edition of the prestigious "Emerging Artist of the Year Awards".

The highlight of the Emerging Artist of the Year Award is a three-month residency at the Glenfiddich distillery in Dufftown, Scotland. The highly acclaimed and culturally important annual programme opened its doors to entries from artists across India at the ongoing India Art Fair on Thursday.

The programme saw over 2,500 submissions by 760 artists from India last year, with Subir Hati being declared the winner.

The winner of the programme will then represent India at the widely acclaimed Artists in Residence programme, which brings together 10 artists from around the world.

"The artists have complete freedom to develop projects that are inspired by their surroundings and whisky making crafts. In fact the program has seen many contradictory themes explored due to the dual nature of the surroundings -- rich, rural yet at the same time industrial," the organisers said in a statement.

This year, the submissions will be judged by an esteemed panel of 13 members, including leading artists, gallery owners, art critics and art collectors. The winner will be announced on March 25.

Submissions to be considered for the residency will be accepted till March 5.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested a Delhi Police sub-inspector for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 17,000 from a businessman to get his water tanker, impounded in a case, released, it said on Friday.

The CBI team laid a trap and arrested Rahul Kumar -- who was deputed at west Delhi's Mundka police station -- red-handed while accepting the bribe on Thursday.

"The Delhi Police sub-inspector was demanding Rs 25,000 from the complainant to release his water tanker which was impounded by him in another case. He later agreed to receive the initial amount of Rs 17,000. He has been booked under Prevention of Corruption Act," CBI spokesperson R.K. Gaur told IANS.

The officer said the raiding team also searched the residence of the sub-inspector and recovered some incriminating documents.
Chandigarh, Feb 3 : Punjab Congress President Amarinder Singh on Friday alleged that the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal's activists were trying to distribute money among voters to lure them to vote for the party in Saturday's assembly elections.

"In Hakkuwal village, there were some tense moments as the local Congress leaders complained to Captain Amarinder of distribution of money by Vicky Middhukhera, cousin of Sukhbir Badal's close aide, Tejinder Singh Middhukhera, on Thursday night," a spokesman for Amarinder said.

"Vicky, who was caught in the act by the villagers, also threatened them with dire consequences if they did not vote for (Parkash Singh) Badal. The villagers then called the local Congress leaders. Though Vicky and his goondas fled, the locals seized his car," the spokesperson added.

Amarinder, who is challenging Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in the latter's traditional Lambi assembly constituency, told media on Friday that Akali Dal leaders were trying to lure voters with money.

The former chief minister, who campaigned in Lambi on Friday, said that voters in the constituency were fed up with the Akali Dal and gave him an overwhelming response.

"I will not spare any of them. I will throw them all in jail," Amarinder told the villagers after they complained that Akali leaders were threatening them.

Badal has been the legislator from Lambi since 1997.

Voting for Punjab assembly's all 117 seats will be held on Saturday (February 4).

The main contenders in the fray are the Akali Dal-BJP combine, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Meerut (Uttar Pradesh), Feb 3 : With the crucial first phase elections in western Uttar Pradesh just a week away, all parties have pumped in their best to woo voters. While Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo began her electoral campaign from here, Uttar Pradesh chief minister and national president of ruling Samajwadi Party (SP) Akhilesh Yadav too has had a whirlwind tour of the region.

Over to Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now, which is out to ensure that the gains of 2014 are not squandered by a resurgent BSP or the Congress-SP alliance. And it is hence that within a span of two days, BJP president Amit Shah and prime minister Narendra Modi will be in this region to seek voter for the party.

While Amit Shah will be staying overnight in the region on Friday and partake in a 1.5 km long 'pad Yatra' (tour on foot) from Purani Chungi to Ghantaghar, in support of party candidates Laxmikant Bajpayi, Satya Prakash Agarwal and Somendra Tomar and would then address a public rally in Dhaulana for party candidate Ramesh Chandra Tomar and at the Polytechnic college in Khruja for Virendra Khatik while he will spend the night in Mathura, where he will review the party's poll preparedness.

A slew of its star campaigners -- from Mahant Adityanath to many union ministers and Hema Malini, all are currently criss-crossing the region to win over the electorate. And the 'mother of all rallies' to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on the anvil for Saturday. While arrangements for a sizeable presence of people and party supporters are underway and party strategists expect the Saturday rally of Modi to be a game changer, they have also rolled out a "value addition".

The rally will reach more than two crore people across the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Goa and Uttarakhand. Incidentally people in Punjab and Goa would be voting on the day when the PM would be speaking in Meerut. The Information Technology (IT) section of the BJP is working overtime for the Meerut rally of the prime minister. A central server has been established at the Lucknow party headquarters and a dedicated team is going to host a 'live talk channel'.

The speech would be beamed direct to mobiles and laptops through special technology. The BJP has more than 42 lakh followers on its national official Twitter handle and several lakh on Facebook and other social media networking sites. The party would like to make the best use of these available channels to reach out to maximum people, Amit Malviya, the state in-charge of the IT section informed.

The communal flavour of the region is still its biggest issue. Stung in the past as it got sandwiched between the hostilities of Jats and Muslims, even the SP is playing safe this time and has refused alliance with the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the party of influential Ajit Singh. The party feared loosing its minority base post-alignment with the Jat dominated party and hence said a no to RLD at the last minute.

People, mostly Jatav in this area are favourable disposed to BSP, whose chief Mayawati comes from this region only.A Western UP will vote in the Phase I on February 11 and decided the fate of 73 seats spread across 15 districts.

(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in
Mumbai, Feb 3 : Actress Kriti Sanon, who will next be seen in "Raabta" and "Bareilly Ki Barfi", has been busy shooting for both the films and dabbling between "different worlds".

Kriti's two-and-half month-long shoot for "Raabta" in Budapest was challenging for her due to cold weather conditions, especially when she was asked to wear clothes suitable for summer.

On the other hand, her one-and-half months' shoot for "Bareilly Ki Barfi" in Lucknow demanded her to don winter clothes in humid weather conditions.

"Both 'Raabta' and 'Bareilly Ki Barfi' are completely different worlds altogether. It was a lot of fun to shoot in Budapest and then going to Lucknow. Both the schedules were long so I got a lot of time to soak in their respective cultures, observe and learn," Kriti said in a statement.

"Raabta", a romantic-drama, also stars Sushant Singh Rajput and is scheduled to release on June 9.

"Bareilly Ki Barfi" will feature Kriti alongside Ayushmaan Khurana and Rajkummar Rao. The film will release on July 21.
Washington, Feb 3 : President Donald Trump on Friday targeted some US media houses by calling them "Fake News" after the Washington Post published transcript of his telephonic conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull.

"Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that 'FAKE NEWS' media lied about. Very nice!" Trump tweeted.

According to the Washington Post transcript, published on Saturday, Trump blasted Turnbull over the refuAgee agreement and called the deal as "dumb". Trump also said that his phone call with Turnbull "was the worst call by far".

Rhe Australian Prime Minister on Friday described his phone conversation with Trump as "very frank", the media reported.

Trump had earlier called the CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post as "fake news" and "dishonest".

The President made attacks on the media a cornerstone of his campaign and has continued the assault them as President.

Several members of Trump's staff, Press Secretary Sean Spicer, chief counsel Kellyanne Conway and chief of staff Reince Preibus have joined the attacks in interviews given to various news outlets since the President took office.
Imphal, Feb 3 : The Congress on Friday declared 60 candidates for the Manipur assembly elections, fielding Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh from his traditional seat of Thoubal.

The list, released by party general secretary Madhusudan Mistry, came almost a month before the polls in the state.

Manipur would witness a two-phased election on March 4 and March 8 for its 60-member assembly.

The ruling Congress is the first and only party in Manipur which has announced the names of all 60 candidates for the elections.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had announced the names of 31 candidates few days ago and is yet to come out with the remaining 29 candidates.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh told IANS that the policy is to give tickets to the sitting MLAs. However, tickets were given to those who have a bright chance to win.

Two-time winner, Okram Landhoni, Chief Minister Singh's wife, is not contesting the elections this time. A few weeks back she had announced her retirement to make room for her son Surjakumar. He was given the party ticket from the Khangabok constituency from where his mother won for two consecutive terms.

Okram Henry, a nephew of the chief minister, also got the party ticket for the Wangkhei constituency. The sitting Congress MLA Yumkham Erabot had joined the BJP. Last time, Henry contested unsuccessfully.

Prominent Congress minister N. Biren recently resigned to join the BJP. In his place, another politician, N. Rajen was given the Congress ticket in Heingang constituency.

Thounaojam Shyamkumar, a TMC MLA, was one of the MLAs who had joined the Congress sometime back. Despite the police claim that he has a nexus with militants, the party ticket was given to him. Shyamkumar, however, denied the police charge.

The names of 60 candidates which were recommended by the state election committee was approved on Thursday by Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Chief Minister Okram Ibobi Singh and Manipur Congress president T.N. Haokip had rushed to Delhi to have the list approved.

Congress leaders said that they are not expecting mass resignations as was the case with the BJP. The disappointed aspirants had resigned and joined some other parties.

A party leader said: "Of 60 constituencies, there were single applications for the Congress tickets in 41 seats. In case of the remaining seats, there is no dissatisfaction over the selection of the party candidates."

In the 2012 elections, the ruling Congress faced a ban from six insurgent groups. There was bloodshed to drive home the message that the armed groups mean business.

However, the Congress scripted political history by winning 42 seats, something never done by any other party.

Besides, it is the only party which has been in power for three consecutive terms with Ibobi as the undisputed leader. No chief minister could even complete a five-year term before.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The PUC (Pollution Under Control) system - the only one to check emissions from on-road vehicles - is extremely weak and incompetent, said the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on Friday.

Calling for a strong and updated system emission testing system, CSE, a member of the Supreme Court appointed Environment Pollution (Prevention & Control) Authority (EPCA), noted that India can not deal with the "emission fraud" with the present system.

Citing the example of 'Emissiongate' or the 2015 Volkswagen emission scandal, the report said India needs strong compliance regulations to make manufacturers responsible for on-road emissions. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in September 2015 found that the German automaker intentionally programmed its diesel engines for controlled nitrogen oxides emissions to pass the laboratory tests.

"India will be in deep trouble if massive motorisation happens without strong compliance with emissions limits. This will enhance the public health risk," said a CSE report.

Pointing out some of the major incompetence of current emission testing, the report said the PUC can't even check the particulate emissions (the particles lesser than 2.5 or 10 mm in air) which cause major pollution problems in cities.

"New data from the Delhi Transport Department shows that failure rate is as dismal as five per cent -- nearly all vehicles pass the test. There is no data, however, on how many vehicles show up for test," said the study.

The Supreme Court has recently given directions to the EPCA to audit all the 614 PUC stations, given the serious concerns about their quality and credibility.

The report added that the PUC norms for on-road vehicles are extremely lax for the older pre-Bharat Stage IV vehicles or older vehicles, often responsible for the maximum emission.

"Without a robust system of emissions monitoring and compliance, the investments in emission control systems in vehicles to meet tighter standards can go waste and negate air pollution control efforts in our cities," the report said.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : On the eve of crucial polls in Punjab and Goa, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday dared "bluffmaster, liar and egoistic" Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for a debate on his 70 poll promises that the AAP government has failed to fulfil after nearly two years of governance in the national capital.

Delhi BJP President Manoj Tiwari told reporters here that the AAP government hasn't kept the promises of regularising unauthorised colonies, opening 500 schools, installing CCTV cameras, increasing the patient capacity in government hospitals and providing safe and clean drinking water in the city.

"I haven't seen a bluffmaster, liar and egoistic leader like Kejriwal," Tiwari said.

He said "till today not a single meeting has been held" over the issue of regularising hundreds of unauthorised colonies in Delhi where electricity connections and water supply and several other amenities have not been provided.

"And I am not saying this on my own, but all this has been revealed through a Right to Information reply from the Delhi government."

The BJP MP from northeast Delhi said that he had "found people crying for water supply" when he spent four nights in slum areas and visited villages on Delhi's periphery.

He said ironically it was the people from the slums who supported Kejriwal's party the most during the 2015 assembly elections and their voices were not being heard now.

Targeting the Delhi government over its poll promise of building 500 new schools, Tiwari said: "Till date only four schools have been made and out of four only two are functional."

He also took a dig at the Delhi government for not installing 15 lakh CCTV cameras in the city as Kejriwal had promised for the safety of women.

"I still remember Nirbhaya. I still remember the night of December 16 (2012)," Tiwari said, adding "only seven cameras have been installed till date" out of the 15 lakh CCTV cameras Kejriwal had promised.

He said the Delhi government has not met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh even once and has not put forth any proposal for women's safety in the city.

"I dare Kejriwal to have a debate with me over the issue of development in the city," Tiwari said.

Leader of Opposition in the Delhi Assembly, Vijender Gupta alleged that cases of corruption were rampant in Delhi despite Kejriwal's promise that "they shall end corruption".

Gupta also slammed the AAP leader over his silence on the corruption charges against his cabinet minister Satyender Jain.

The BJP leader alleged that all AAP MLAs had indulged in corruption and asked: "Will Kejriwal act against his MLAs and relatives found involved in corruption cases?"

BJP MP from New Delhi Meenakshi Lekhi alleged that Kejriwal had been given a new name on social media and "is being called farjiwal (fake)".

She said Rs 900 crore were sanctioned by the central government for drainage system and pipelines in the city but not a single rupee has been used in the last two years.
Lucknow, Feb 3 : Former Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and now its mentor Mulayam Singh Yadav on Friday announced he will campaign for his younger brother Shivpal Singh Yadav first.

After that, he would go to seek votes for the candidates named by his son and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav.

The former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister told mediapersons that on February 9, he would go to Jaswantnagar in Etawah and seek people's support for Shivpal, who has been sidelined by his nephew Akhilesh.

In a series of flip-flops ever since he was overthrown by Akhilesh, Mulayam has been making contradictory noises.

First, he said he asked his supporters to contest against Congress candidates in the 105 seats given to them according to the alliance conditions and had even threatened not to campaign for the Samajwadi Party and Congress candidates.

He, however, retreated and told reporters in Delhi on Wednesday that Akhilesh was his son and that he had very little option but to canvass.

Shivpal, after filing his nomination in Jaswantnagar earlier this week, had announced he would form a new party after March 11 when election results are declared.

He has also been taking potshots at Akhilesh saying he got everything due to luck and legacy whereas people like him who slogged all through for the Samajwadi Party were given a raw deal.

Opposition parties including the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been alleging that the family feud in the Yadav clan is a staged attempt to deflect people's mind from lawlessness and corruption in the state.

Uttar Pradesh BJP general secretary Vijay Bahadur Pathak said "Mulayam's flip-flop is not only scripted but also a clever attempt to save his son from being made responsible for an imminent loss in the state polls".

BSP chief Mayawati has also castigated arch-rivals Mulayam and Akhilesh for being engaged in a "family drama" even as the people of Uttar Pradesh were suffering.
Mumbai, Feb 3 : The BJP, at the last minute on Friday, cobbled together an alliance with three parties - barring traditional partner Shiv Sena - for the upcoming elections to the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

The BJP finalised a seat-sharing agreement with Republican Party of India-A, Rashtriya Samaj Party and the Shiv Sangram, allotting them a total of 34 seats in the 227-member BMC.

It would also give up the post of deputy mayor for RPI-A, whose president Ramdas Athavale is a union cabinet minister, and had earlier demanded around 45 seats.

The deal allots 25 seats to RPI-A, six to the Mahadeo Jankar-led RSP and four to Vinayak Mete-led Shiv Sangram while the BJP will contest 192 wards in the BMC.

These parties comprise the ruling 'Grand Alliance' in Maharashtra which also includes the Shiv Sena which is contesting all the civic bodies elections independently.

They also represent the crucial Dalit and Maratha communities on whose backing the BJP is banking on to defeat its ally, Shiv Sena, as well as the formidable opposition comprising Congress, Nationalist Congress Party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, AIMIM and others in the fray to capture the country's richest civic body.

The BJP is currently in the process of finalising similar seat-sharing deals with strong local parties in other civic bodies, considered as a 'mini-assembly election' and a mid-term verdict on the performance of Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis' two-and-a-half-year-old government.

Nearly 10 crore voters will exercise their franchise in the two-phased election to 10 municipal corporations, 26 Zilla Parishads and 283 Panchayat Samitis across the state, on February 16 and 21.

Polling for 15 Zilla Parishads and 165 Panchayat Samitis will be held on February 16 and elections to the remaining 11 Zilla Parishads, 118 Panchayat Samitis and 10 Municipal Corporations will be held on February 21.

The counting for all the elections will take place simultaneously on February 23 and the results are likely to be declared the same day.

The much anticipated, high-stakes elections will cover 25 of the state's 36 districts with the participation of nearly 85 per cent of the electorate spread across 246 out of the state's 288 assembly constituencies.

Elections due to the Nagpur Zilla Parishad and Panchayat Samitis under its jurisdiction shall not be conducted due to a Bombay High Court stay.
Islamabad, Feb 3 : The Pakistan Army is fully prepared to give a befitting response to any "misadventure" from across the border, the army chief said on Friday.

"India is trying to divert world's attention from its atrocities against innocent Kashmiris," the media's military wing quoted General Qamar Javed Bajwa as saying during his visit to the Lahore Garrison.

The restive Himalayan region saw a rise in violence last year after the killing of militant leader Burhan Wani in July in a gun battle with security forces.

According to the Inter-Services Public Relations, Bajwa was briefed in detail about operational preparedness and other matters at Corps Headquarters and Headquarters Pakistan Rangers Punjab.

Gen Bajwa expressed satisfaction at the operational readiness, and appreciated Pakistan Rangers' response to the "continuing ceasefire violations" along the International Border by Indian troops.
Chennai, Feb 3 : Tamil Nadu police on Friday registered cases against the management of two tankers that collided last week leading to a massive oil spill along the coast, that has affected marine life in the area.

On January 28, MT Dawn Kanchipuram, carrying petroleum oil lubricants (POL), and MT BW Maple, loaded with LPG, collided off Kamarajar Port in Tamil Nadu.

Several tonnes of crude from MT Dawn spilled into the sea. The oil has spread over a 30 km stretch along the coast, from Ennore where Kamarajar port situated.

Based on a report filed by the Kamarajar port authorities, the Minjur police station in north Chennai filed cases and asked the captains of both oil tankers to submit their reports immediately.

Cases were registered under six sections, including on charges polluting the sea waters.

A senior official from Kamarajar port said that officials of the Directorate General of Shipping were conducting a detailed enquiry to ascertain the reason for the accident.

ICG East region Inspector General Rajan Bargotra said the oil spill was around 34,000 square metres in area. He said the oil patches near the shore have to be removed manually.

Meanwhile, the Madras High Court has refused to detain the two oil tankers.

When a PIL came up for hearing, Chief Justice S.K. Kaul and Justice M. Sundar said it was up to the Central and the state governments to take necessary action in the matter.

The Coast Guard said it had recovered 40 tonnes of oil and 27 tonnes of oil and water mix and were using super-sucker pumps to clean the oil and NGOs were also involved in the clean-up operation.

On January 31, the Coast Guard said in a statement: "It is estimated that more than 20 tonnes of oil has spilt from MT Dawn Kanchipuram as against the initial report of two-three tonnes."

Many turtles and fishes have died and washed ashore due to the oil pollution, environmentalists have said.
Kabul, Feb 3 : Expressing disappointment at the way she was treated in Pakistan, NatGeo's famed "Afghan Girl" Sharbat Gula, said she was taken aback by the treatment meted out to her by Islamabad.

"I had lived for 35 years in Pakistan. It was a very good life. I did not expect the government to behave so harshly and put me behind bars," Gula told the BBC.

Her time in Pakistan was not all roses. "We were facing a lot of problems. We were refugees in someone else's country. My husband and eldest daughter died of Hepatitis C."

"Now I have come to my homeland and I am very happy. President Ashraf Ghani, former President Hamid Karzai and all the Afghans helped me."

Speaking about whether she would have done anything differently if given the choice, she said, "If I could go back to being 10 again, I would have studied. I wouldn't have married at 13."

At first, she said, the famed National Geographic cover photo "created more problems than benefits".

"It made me famous but also led to my imprisonment. After all these problems, I want to establish a non-governmental organisation to offer people free medical treatment."

"Before this, I was a villager. I did not like the photo and the media. Now I am very happy that it gave me honour and made me popular among people. The income from the photo has helped a lot of widows and orphans. Now I am proud of it."

"I want peace and I pray to God no one is forced to leave their country and become a refugee," she said.

The portrait of Gula, whose sea-green eyes and piercing gaze, made her an international symbol of refugees facing an uncertain future, first appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985.

Photographer Steve McCurry photographed her as a young girl living in the largest refugee camp in Pakistan, where almost three million Afghans sought shelter in the wake of the 1979 invasion by the Soviet Union. In 2002, McCurry tracked Sharbat Gula down, now married and mother of five, and photographed her again.

That photo has been likened with Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

National Geographic also made a short documentary about her life and dubbed her the "Mona Lisa of Afghan war".
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Delhi government on Friday announced that the Badarpur Thermal Power Plant will remain shut until further orders in view of the "very poor" air quality in the city.

The decision came days after the Supreme Court empowered Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) on Tuesday asked the Delhi government to extend the closure of the thermal plant, which is a major source of air pollution in the capital city.

The decision was taken during Delhi Environment Minister Imran Hussain's meeting with senior officers of the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) and the Environment Department.

"On the basis of EPCA directions to Delhi government, directions have been issued by the DPCC to the Badarpur Thermal Power Plant for closure till further orders," a government statement said.

During last EPCA meeting, its chairperson Bhure Lal said it was better to keep the Badarpur Power Plant shut as there was "hardly any power crisis in the city" and it would also help keeping the air pollution under check.

The Air Quality Index (AQI) for Delhi had a value of 332 units on Friday which is labelled "very poor".

Shutting down the coal-based Badarpur Thermal Power Plant falls under the measures taken under Graded Response Action Plan (GRAP) when Delhi's air-quality worsens. The EPCA has been given the responsibility to implement the plan.

There are a total of five units in Badarpur Thermal Power Plant, of which only one unit of 210 MW was operating till November 2016.

The government in November last year issued directions for closure of all the units till January 31 due to "severe" ambient air pollution levels in Delhi experienced during the October-November period, which were expected to continue further.
London, Feb 3 : The European Union's (EU) way to deal with immigration is cooperation and partnership, not walls and bans, EU Foreign Policy chief Federica Mogherini told the press ahead of an informal summit on Friday.

Mogherini said EU leaders would show cooperation and partnership as a European approach to solve the migration issue, which is different from the American way, Xinhua news agency reported.

"For sure, Europeans differ when it comes to a certain approach, for instance to migration, and I think today we will show our way is cooperation and partnership," she said.

"We do not believe in walls or bans," she added.

Mogherini said EU leaders would agree at the summit on a package of measures that would help the EU manage immigration flows better and save lives, in partnership with United Nations agencies in Libya.

The Malta summit is an occasion for the EU leaders to discuss the bloc's future following the June 23 Brexit referendum and the first gathering of the EU leaders after Trump became the US President.

In the morning session of the summit, the 28 leaders, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, will address the migration crisis amid warnings of more people trying to reach Europe through the dangerous Central Mediterranean route from Libya.

The afternoon session will be an occasion for the leaders without May to prepare for the upcoming 60th anniversary of the Rome Treaties, which falls on March 25.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : Independent Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrashekhar on Friday sought discussion and passage of his private member's bill seeking to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism and to end trade relations with it.

Seeking consideration of his "The Declaration of Countries as Sponsor of Terrorism Bill, 2016", Chandrasekhar said that the Uri attack of September 18, 2016, "marked a turning point...I publicly promised that I would take on the important responsibility of calling Pakistan for what they are and have been for several years -- a sponsor of terrorism."

The bill, which was introduced on November 18 during Parliament's winter session, intends to "declare any country as state sponsor of terrorism and withdraw economic and trade relations with the such country and to create legal, economic and travel sanctions for citizens of that country" among others.

It holds that Pakistan "propagates and harbours agents of international terror who have repeatedly attacked the territory and people of our country" and "poses a continual risk to the peace and security of the region".

Speaking to IANS about his bill, Chandrasekhar said that the most important objective is to have Parliament debate what most people feel.

"Since 1994, when Parliament passed a resolution against Pakistan, it has never passed any resolution. I think Parliament should reflect popular public view which is Pakistan must be made to account for its actions," he said.

Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution on February 22, 1994, emphasising Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India, seeking Pakistan vacate parts of the state under its occupation and condemning the support it is extending to terrorist activities in the state.

On bilateral relations, Chandrasekhar said: "Let us start a comprehensive dialogue on Pakistan. In addition to military action, like surgical strike, should our country not introduce trade, business, economic and cultural sanctions against Pakistan?"

His bill also calls for "India to oppose any loan or other use of the funds of any International Financial Institution to a state sponsor of terrorism".
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The death of Kerala MP and former union minister E. Ahamed snowballed into a major row with allegations of "deliberate" attempts to delay the announcement of his demise. Both Congress and Left demanded a probe.

Besides complaining that those accompanying the late Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) leader, including his family, were made to wait endlessly at the Ram Manohar Lohia (RML) Hospital, the RSP asked why Ahamed was shifted out of the intensive coronary care unit.

Raising the issue in the Rajya Sabha, CPI-M General Secretary Sitaram Yechury alleged attempts, including by the Prime Minster's Office (PMO), to suppress the news of Ahamed's death.

"The way in which the news of his death was sought to be suppressed and there is interference, is what I hear, from the highest authority in the country, the PMO," alleged Yechury, demanding a thorough probe into the death.

Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge alleged in the Lok Sabha pressure from the government on the RML to keep the news of Ahamed's death under wraps to ensure the Union Budget was presented as scheduled on February 1.

"The body was kept in the hospital in an inhuman way. His family was not allowed to meet Ahamed for several hours. The government pressurised the doctors to ensure the Budget is presented," said Kharge.

The Congress leader asked the government to issue a statement and called for parliamentary committee to probe the issue.

Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) member N.K. Premachandran claimed that Ahamed might have died soon after collapsing in Parliament on Tuesday.

"We were at the hospital along with other IUML MPs and from the versions of the doctors we had this impression that Ahamed may have died soon after collapsing," Premachandran told the media.

"We could not fathom why he was shifted form the intensive coronary care unit to trauma care," said the MP from Kerala who gave a notice for adjournment of business of the Lok Sabha to probe into the "ill treatment and grave disrespect" by the hospital to Ahamed.

The notice, along with other adjournment notices, was not accepted by Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.

Echoing the RSP member's views, Congress General Secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad told the media Ahamed passed away "much earlier" then declared by the hospital.

"The government wanted to keep the news under wraps until the budget was presented. So nobody was allowed to meet (him)."

Meanwhile, IUML Lok Sabha member E.T. Mohammed Basheer said that all those accompanying Ahamed, including his family, had a harrowing time at the hospital.

"The doctors were not allowing anyone inside the trauma centre where Ahamed was kept. No doctors were coming out of it either and there was no update about his health," Basheer told IANS.

Basheer alleged that the doctors and the security staff were not behaving properly even with MPs and Ahamed's family. Among those to visit the hospital were Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

"I believe he was dead long back. Why were they not letting us know or not giving any update on his health?" Bahseer asked.

RML Hospital Medical Superintendent A.K. Gadpayle denied allegations of suppressing the news of Ahamed's death.

"There was no political pressure on us. The protocol is to not to allow anyone in ICU when treatment is on. Ahamed was alive when brought to the hospital. He died at 2.15 a.m. I am hurt by the allegations," he said.

The Kerala Congress flayed Speaker Sumitra Mahajan for not adjourning the Lok Sabha on February 1 and also held Prime Minister Narendra Modi responsible.

"Mahajan has totally failed in upholding the courtesy of the house. The union government owes an explanation and apology to the nation, to the Lok Sabha and to Ahamed's family," Kerala Congress chief V.M. Sudheeran said.

"The Prime Minister is also responsible. Without their knowledge such things don't happen," he said.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The Indian Army has procured 50,000 bullet-proof jackets in the past two years and 186,138 more vests were in the process of being purchased from an Indian manufacturer, the Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.

Minister of State for Defence Subhash Bhamre in a written reply told the house that bullet-proof jackets were being provided to soldiers as per the laid down specifications and authorisation.

"The procurement of these jackets for the authorised quantity as per Annual Provisioning Review is an on-going process. In the past two years, 50,000 (such jackets) have been procured for the Indian Army," the minister said.
Bengaluru, Feb 3 : Britain is offering 198 scholarships collectively worth one million pounds (Rs 8.4 crore) for Indian students to study in 40 universities across Britain, Ireland and Scotland, a British Council official said on Friday.

"This is the first time Britain is offering 198 scholarships to Indian students through in subjects ranging from art and design, engineering, law and management in 40 universities," said British Council Director Mei-kwei Barker at an event here.

Of the scholarships, 29 will be under-graduate and 169 for post-graduate courses.

The scholarships will be awarded to students who qualify for admission to the universities on merit, which is assessed on the basis of their grades at school and college levels, scores in entrance tests and International English Language Test.

"The new education is part of the great campaign and designed to promote the best of British education overseas so that Britain is the first choice for the students the world over," asserted Baker.

The Council also organised an expo 'Study UK: Discover You' on Friday to generate interest in the Indian youth for pursuing higher studies in British universities, with details on its website.

"The exhibition focused on experiences, knowledge and confidence students can gain from UK study, whether in Britain or overseas, or through distance learning, online provision, and other models," pointed out Baker.

Representatives from 50 British universities briefed several aspirants on education opportunities in Britain, on course choices, visas, applications and scholarships.

"Students at the exhibition benefited from career seminars on MBA, IT and engineering and manufacturing, with sessions by experts on visas," noted Baker.

The Council will soon unveil a mobile app (application) on Android and iOS devices to help students and parents with information on British institutions, registering for seminars and selecting a course of choice or field of study at a specific university.

"Studying in Britain offers Indian students a world-class education, being part of an international student body and the chance to work post study, added Baker.

The British government also offers the Chevening global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign & Commonwealth office and partner organisations.

The India programme is the world's largest with a budget of 2.6 million pounds (Rs 21.8 crore) for 2016-17 with 130 scholarships being offered.
Mumbai, Feb 3 : An Israeli-designed Integrated Under Water Harbour Defence and Surveillance System for the Indian Navy was inaugurated by Western Naval Command chief, Vice Admiral Girish Luthra here on Friday.

He said that the IUHDSS will enhance the security of valuable naval assets against asymmetric threats, both on surface and sub-face (underwater).

Termed as "a significant step in strengthening Harbour Defence and Security" at Mumbai, the UUHDSS is a state-of-the art system designed and developed by Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) ELTA for surface and sub-surface surveillance of the harbour.

It comprises high resolution Radars, Electro-Optic Cameras and Sonars.

The sensors have been strategically installed around the Mumbai Naval Harbour to provide comprehensive realtime situational awareness for monitoring and analyses.

Besides detecting large targets, the IUHDSS can also detect small targets like boats, divers and swimmers at adequate ranges.

The system will boost the security in and around Mumbai where 10 Pakistani terrorists had sneaked in via the Arabian Sea route and wreaked havoc during the November 26, 2008 terror strikes.
Ankara, Feb 3 : The Turkish state media watchdog has imposed limitations on the coverage of terrorist attacks, amid a state of emergency. TV channels will face suspensions if they break the new rules, it was reported on Friday.

The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTUK) introduced the restrictions on TV broadcasters during a meeting on Wednesday. According to Hurriyet Daily newspaper, coverage of terrorist attacks will be strictly limited, as will anything under the notion of "breaking news".

Any footage or pictures from the scene of an incident concerning national security is banned, except if provided by state officials. The restrictions include the moment of the attack, its aftermath, images of fear and panic at the scene, as well as images of emergency services working at the scene and sound clips from witnesses.

Although TV broadcasters can still report on terrorist attacks, they were prohibited from providing details on where they took place, showing maps, or mentioning the suspected terrorist organisations.

Reporting must also avoid "exaggerated statements involving agitation" or "criticism and commentary" that could serve the terrorists' purposes.

According to the Turkish Minute newspaper, information can be provided only from officials "assigned by the Prime Minister to report on the incident or to issue a broadcast ban."

TV stations were also not allowed to run a 'breaking news' ticker for several hours after the incident.

The TV watchdog paid special attention to the broadcasting of incidents or attacks in the cities of Istanbul, Izmir and Antalya, which were among the most popular tourist destinations in Turkey.

If Turkish broadcasters break the rules, they will face suspension. A first violation will bring a one-day broadcast ban. After a second infringement, the penalty will increase to five days, or 15 if within a year of the first. Should a channel break the rules a third time, it could face cancellation of its license.

The new regulations were made possible under Turkey's state of emergency, imposed after a failed coup attempt in July 2016 and still in effect. It was followed by a crackdown on the media, in which more than 130 outlets were closed and dozens of journalists arrested. The state of emergency was further extended by three months on January 3.
Chandigarh, Feb 3 : Over one lakh security personnel, including central paramilitary forces, will be on high alert as Punjab voters on Saturday exercise their franchise in 117 assembly segments as well as the by-election for the Amritsar Lok Sabha seat.

Punjab Chief Electoral Officer V.K. Singh told the media here on Friday that over 2.07 lakh state government employees would also be deployed to conduct the "mahayagya of democracy".

Nearly 1.99 crore voters will decide the fate of 1,145 candidates, including 81 women and one transgender candidate, Singh said, adding that all arrangements were in place to ensure free, fair and peaceful elections.

Of the total voters, six lakh are first-time voters.

"All district authorities are taking adequate steps to motivate first-time voters, including honouring them with certificates and mementos," Singh said.

Voting will take place from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A total of 22,614 polling stations have been set up with 31,460 electronic voting machines (EVMs).

"The Election Commission has identified 786 critical polling stations and 23 constituencies have been declared sensitive. As many as 5,573 trouble-makers have been identified and 4,200 people bound down (detained) to ensure free and fair elections," Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Elections, V.K. Bhawra said.

Singh said for the first time, 45,000 police personnel opted for postal ballot and till the last reports came in, over 21,000 (45 per cent) had already exercised their franchise through postal ballot.

"This is a revolutionary step as last time only a negligible number of policemen could exercise their voting right through postal ballot," the CEO said.

Giving a demonstration of the VVPAT (Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail) system, Singh said: "Punjab is proud to initiate this experiment of transparent system of voting in 33 constituencies for the first time in India. This experiment will later be extended throughout the country after monitoring its success level."

"Police teams will conduct thorough search to check the flow of liquor, narcotics and money. It was due to intensive searches that Punjab Police could make record seizure of liquor valued at Rs 80 crore and 416 illegal weapons during this period," ADGP Bhawra said.

"All Deputy Commissioners and Senior Superintendents of Police are on their toes to check distribution of liquor, narcotics and money for inducing voters and raids will be conducted immediately on receiving information or complaints," Singh said.
Longding (Arunachal Pradesh), Feb 3 : A cadre belonging to the Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang was killed and another injured during an exchange of fire with the Assam Rifles here on Friday, police said.

The incident was reported at Ozakho village in Longding district of Arunachal Pradesh.

"The incident was reported around 12.30 p.m. The exchange of fire was between Assam Rifles and NSCN (K). We are yet to get further information," Sandeep Goel, Director General of Arunachal Pradesh police, told IANS.

Ozakho is located approximately 50 km from the India-Myanmar border.

This was the second such incident in the last one week. Earlier one soldier from the Sikh Regiment was injured during an exchange of fire with the NSCN-K.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : The 'One Billion Rising' campaign that started five years ago as a mass revolution to end rape and sexual violence against women, is back in the national capital.

To give expression to the rise of a billion movers and shakers and leverage the power of global solidarity and collective action, the One Billion Rising (OBR) day will be organised here at Central Park on February 5.

The campaign focuses on the various oppressive structures that affect women and girls -- capitalist patriarchy, corporate media, mindless consumerism, cosmetic industries and exorbitant dowries.

Therefore, the emphasis is on questioning these and other frameworks that perpetuate the psychological and economic abuse of women.

Many communities and groups will gather on the OBR day and use various cultural and artistic forms to express their zero tolerance for violence against women and their solidarity with millions of women who are struggling to secure the rights they are entitled to as workers.

"Over the last five years, the OBR has brought together over half a million young people, rural and urban women, men and a cross-section of communities from as many as 25 states and 300 districts," OBR South Asia Coordinator Kamla Bhasin told the media here on Friday.

She spoke of how OBR has expanded and deepened friendships and networks locally and globally and enhanced creativity.

"This global campaign has strengthened our resolve and courage. During 2017, we will be raising our voices against the exploitation of women workers and reiterating our solidarity with them," she said.

"The numbers are also growing globally with 200 countries, including the eight South Asian nations, observing OBR Day," she said, adding: "As attacks on women and girls shake the country, OBR has emerged as a global platform to amplify women's voices to challenge structural injustices."

Recently, students of Karve Institute of Social Services decided to make common cause with the OBR campaign.

This year, OBR also joined hands with the activist collective "I Will Go Out", which was a campaign against street harassment.

"We are revelling in the joys of the night, occupying the streets and demanding rightful access to public transport; thereby altering people's perceptions of women as the weaker sex that must be kept caged within four walls," she explained.

The organisations that are partnering and shaping the OBR event will also take this campaign forward across slums and settlements in Delhi and NCR on February 14.
New Delhi, Feb 3 : Service voters including armed forces personnel from five assembly constituencies in Punjab and in all the 40 constituencies in Goa will get the option of casting their vote through e-ballot this time.

Polling for 117 seats in Punjab and 40 seats in Goa is scheduled for Saturday.

The Election Commission (EC) had last year amended rules to allow service voters to receive their ballot papers through electronic mode (Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot System or ETPBS).

However, the voters, having marked their choice, would have to return the ballot physically to their respective returning officers through the normal postal service, the EC said.

The EC has not gone with the two-way electronic transfer of ballot papers for the time being.

Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Nasim Zaidi had announced the decision to extend the facility of e-ballot to defence and central para-military forces personnel while announcing the dates for the assembly polls in January.

The system was first used on a trial basis in the by-election for the Nellithope assembly seat in Puducherry last year.

Although a large number of people from Punjab join the armed forces, the ETPBS will be available to the voters from Ludhiana East, Ludhiana North, Amritsar North, Atmanagar and Jalandhar West assembly constituencies.

However, service voters from entire Goa can avail the facility.

The reason for including only five seats from Punjab, EC sources said, is that while Goa is a "small sector", Punjab is a big state and it requires "a lot of preparations including the training of the electoral staff at both ends" before starting a new facility like ETPBS.

The CEC had clarified that voting through ETPBS "will be implemented in a few classified assembly constituencies on a pilot and trial basis" in the five poll-going states.

The assembly constituencies where ETPBS will be implemented "shall be selected on certain criteria based on logistics, connectivity and operational requirements", the EC had said.

The new system will considerably cut short the time in the process of casting of votes by service voters.
Kolkata, Feb 3 : Attacking the central government's decision to introduce electoral bonds, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said the issue and electoral funding should have been discussed with the political parties first.

"They (the central government) should have called all the political parties and sought their opinion. Issues like political funding and floating of electoral bonds should have been discussed," Banerjee told media persons here.

Pointing out that her Trinamool Congress has for years been pitching for state funding of elections, she saw some "bigger motive" in Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's proposal for electoral bond in the Union Budget presented on February 1.

"Just before the assembly polls in five states they made this announcement. I wonder what their motive is. It may well be that later on we will find there was a much bigger motive that propelled them to go for this announcement," she said.

The Trinamool would hit the streets in the coming days demanded central agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Enforcement Directorate return the money looted from the people by the Rose Valley and Saradha ponzi firms, said Banerjee.

"When they have seized the assets of these companies, why aren't they returning the money?" she asked.
Tokyo, Feb 4 : The Defence Secretary of the United States reaffirmed his country's "100 per cent" commitment to its bilateral military alliance with Japan, in a bid to soften the impact of controversial statements made by US President Donald Trump on the subject.

"The US stands firmly, 100 per cent, shoulder-to-shoulder with you and (the) Japanese people", Efe news quoted James Mattis as saying in his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday in Tokyo.

Mattis, who flew from South Korea to Japan for a two-day visit, was attempting to tone down the effect of Trump's remarks from his election campaign, when he had threatened to pull US troops out of the two countries if Tokyo and Seoul did not increase their funding contributions.

The Japan-US defence treaty in question is "as real to us today as it was a year ago," stressed the defence secretary.

Abe, in turn, told the Pentagon chief that Japan wants to create an unbreakable alliance in the region, where Tokyo is battling China's growing influence as well as threats from North Korea.

Earlier on Friday, the retired US general held a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Han Min-koo, reaffirming Washington's "ironclad" commitment to defending its key allies, and to deploying the anti-missile system THAAD on South Korean soil, to intercept any missiles the North may launch.

Mattis' trip to Japan and South Korea is the first official visit abroad by a member of the Trump cabinet, a clear sign of the new administration's intention of retaining key allies in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Wolf of Main Street by David Yarrow, taken in a Montana ghost town is one of 16 images in a new Jackson Hole exhibition presented by WRJ Design and Visions West Contemporary ( David Yarrow). I wanted to capture the visual feast represented by the old Wild West, says David Yarrow.

Dramatic fine art images by Europes best-selling wildlife photographer David Yarrow will be on display in a new exhibition, The Most Amazing View, at the WRJ Design showroom in Jackson, Wyoming, Feb. 20  March 4, 2017. Jackson-based WRJ has partnered with Visions West Contemporary to introduce Yarrows internationally acclaimed photography to the Rocky Mountain West.

WRJ Design is uniquely suited to collaborate with Visions West on The Most Amazing View, which features 16 of the photographers timeless images from around the world. In addition to creating stunning interiors inspired by the surrounding Jackson Hole landscape, WRJ has a history of designing remarkable exhibitions  including over 40 for Sothebys in New York City. More than a display of photos, WRJs presentation of The Most Amazing View will transform its downtown Jackson showroom, pairing the photographs with carefully selected furniture, fabrics and lighting to showcase Yarrows work while demonstrating how such dynamic large-scale pieces can be beautifully incorporated into an interior setting.

Every day, we see the great beauty of the American West outside our windows, and every day it inspires us, says WRJ Design principal Rush Jenkins, so were thrilled to work with Visions West Gallery to bring David Yarrows wildlife photography to our Jackson Hole community. Davids passion for photography and his eye for natural beauty are extraordinary. To have this opportunity to capture the emotional spirit of his work is exciting, especially since the exhibition includes some of his first-ever images of Americas West. Our exhibit honors Yarrows art while creating harmony, understanding and beauty, Jenkins continues, because whether its in a home, through art and architecture, or with exhibits, that is always WRJs goal.

Globe-trotting Scottish photographer David Yarrow is renowned for his often surprising images capturing the beauty of the planets remote landscapes, cultures and endangered animals. The 16 works presented at the WRJ showroom include a storytelling series of wolves, bears and mountain lions based on photographs Yarrow made in ghost towns in Montana. Those images, including The Wolf of Main Street shown above, are works of interpretive art rather than literal photography, Yarrow explains.

I have worked a great deal in two ghost towns in Montana. The result has been conceptual staged shots which have proved hugely popular in America, says Yarrow. I wanted to capture the visual feast represented by the old Wild West. The images require a double take in terms of the proximity of man and animal. I love to tell stories that ask questions with no consensual answer. The purpose of the Montana images is to provoke and entertain rather than to inform, explains Yarrow, who adds, about his Jackson Hole exhibition, WRJ Design is a class act  with constancy in their commitment to excellence. That resonates with me.

The David Yarrow exhibition The Most Amazing View, will be available for public viewing at the WRJ Design Showroom, 30 South King Street, Jackson, Wyoming, from Feb. 20  March 4. The showroom is open to the public from 10 a.m.  6 p.m., Monday through Saturday.

The Most Amazing View includes images from a recent book of Yarrows work, Wild Encounters, published by Rizzoli. A longtime supporter of the group Tusk Trust that initiates conservation projects, community development and environmental education programs across Africa, Yarrow contributes a percentage of his photography and book sale proceeds to the conservation charity. After the Jackson Hole exhibition created in collaboration with WRJ Design, Visions West Contemporary will continue to show Yarrows photographs in its Bozeman, Montana, and Denver galleries.

About WRJ Design:

Headquartered in Jackson, Wyoming, WRJ Design imparts the special serenity of its local Teton landscape to interior designs in Jackson Hole and across the country. Begun out of a passion for great design by Rush Jenkins and Klaus Baer, WRJ creates experiences and environments through its designs that provide timeless reflections of the homeowners or collectors. WRJ is also known for exhibition designs that offer insight into the lives of luminaries as they showcase the objects they loved. The WRJ Design blog, Hunt X Gather, was named one of the Top 100 Interior Design Blogs on the web. For more information visit http://www.wrjdesign.com.

Media Contact: Amy Stark, amy(at)wordprmarketing(dot)com, 307.734.5335
It was the old story of 'I like the product so much I bought the business

Leeds based entrepreneur, Matt Haycox, has invested in Las Vegas Dessert chain, Sticks and Shakes. Matt Haycox, a consultant to Access Commercial Funding, which provides businesses funding for growth, decided to invest in the chain after a chance meeting with the founder at the end of last year.

"It was the old story of 'I like the product so much I bought the business!'" says Matt. "I was out for the afternoon with my daughter and we popped in to the store to buy a couple of milkshakes. I got talking with the owner who had aspirations to grow the business from its current 3 locations and 20 minutes later we had scribbled a deal on the back of a napkin for me to finance a national rollout and become partners!"

Sticks and Shakes was started by Mark Glassman in 2014, when having left the UK to live in America. He quickly realised that unlike the UK where there are many Milkshake bars, there were very few dedicated ones in the USA.

The Sticks and Shakes dessert & milkshake bars tag line is If we can mix it, well make it. The brand serves milkshakes in the flavour of any chocolate bar or sweet, including Snickers, M&Ms, Skittles and Oreos. They also produce delicious desserts on sticks including; Gelato, Sorbet, Fruit and Cheesecake.

Now with three stores in the USA and over a million dollars a year in turnover, the duo are hoping to turn Sticks and Shakes into a household name.

Matt Haycox says: "I love scalable business models and strong brands. And we sell a product that I genuinely love and believe in too. There is huge 'roll out' potential for the company and the potential size on food 'chain' businesses in the USA is unmatched anywhere else in the world. The opportunity here excites me more than anything i have been involved with for quite a while."

Mark Glassman says: The road map for Sticks and Shakes in the next eighteen months will be to establish a stronger position in the Las Vegas Market with a couple more corporate stores. Then to roll out across other states in the USA via corporate and franchised stores.

I partnered with Matt because he has the same passion as me for the products we sell and the brand as a concept. His energy and business acumen should help steer this company forward in the right direction.

The investment comes weeks after Matt helped raise money for 9 year old Alfie Smith, who has cerebral palsy. Unfortunately the surgery Alfie needs is not available on the NHS, so Alfie needed help to raise around 50k to pay for this treatment (and 2 years aftercare). Matt pledged to match all donations towards Alfies surgery, pound for pound, to fund his life-changing operation, in a generous act of kindness and donated 16k to Alfies fund just after Christmas
Blendo, an ETL as a service platform that helps companies integrate and load data seamlessly from multiple SaaS tools into their data warehouse, announced today that it has joined the Confluent Partner Program to expand ETL as a service solution and help drive the adoption and implementation of Apache KafkaTM.

Nowadays organizations are being transformed rapidly by the utilization of data that increase and vary day by day. Companies need to access multiple sparse data sources to create value and insights for their business and customers, and they implement sophisticated data pipeline systems to build their data analytics infrastructure.

Blendo helps companies get their data from anywhere into their data warehouse, and reduces the time of building full data pipelines from months to minutes.

At Blendo, we offer an ETL-as-a-service on steroids. By joining the Confluent Partner Program, Blendo can better serve its customers, do the heavy-lifting, so they can connect the dots, combine data from different sources and answer questions about their business that span across varied data sources, said Blendo CEO and co-founder Kostas Pardalis.

Were excited to welcome Blendo into the Confluent Partner Program, said Jabari Norton, vice president of business development at Confluent. With Confluent, enterprises of all sizes can easily create streaming data pipelines and stream processing applications. By partnering with Blendo, mutual customers can benefit from our Apache Kafka expertise while integrating different data sources.

Confluent, provider of the first streaming platform based on Apache KafkaTM, designed the program to enable a rapidly growing ecosystem around Apache Kafka and Confluent. It is the largest ecosystem of technology vendors, consulting and system integrators and authorized training partners offering Kafka-based solutions and services.

Confluent Open Source is 100 percent open source and includes Apache Kafka, as well as software that extends the capabilities of Kafka and makes it easier to use. Confluent Partner Program members have the opportunity to develop robust data connectivity based on Kafka Connects API, easily build stream processing applications with the streams API in Kafka and promote the solutions to customers worldwide.

About Confluent

Confluent, founded by the creators of open source Apache KafkaTM, provides the streaming platform that enables enterprises to maximize the value of data. Confluent Platform lets leaders in industries such as retail, logistics, manufacturing, financial services, technology and media, move data from isolated systems into a real-time data pipeline where they can act on it immediately. Backed by Benchmark, Data Collective, Index Ventures and LinkedIn, Confluent is based in Palo Alto, California. To learn more, please visit http://www.confluent.io. Download Apache Kafka and Confluent Platform at http://www.confluent.io/download.

Connect with Confluent

Read our blog: http://www.confluent.io/blog

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/ConfluentInc

About Blendo

Blendo is a simple, ETL-as-a-service platform on steroids, designed to support the integration of data from multiple SaaS applications like Zendesk, MailChimp or Intercom and loading into a data warehouse like Google BigQuery, Amazon Redshift or Microsoft SQL Server. With Blendo, you can build data pipelines and support your team of analysts or build your Analytics or BI stack in minutes. Backed by Venture Friends VC, Elevator Fund and IQbility is based in Palo Alto and Athens. To learn more, visit https://www.blendo.co/ or read our blog.

Connect with Blendo

Read our blog: https://blog.blendo.co/

Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/blendoapp
This month marks the eighth anniversary of CIO Source, an IT Strategy and Leadership consulting firm of senior architects, program managers, and executives. Started in the challenging economic market of 2009, CIO Source has exceeded the expectations of company Founder and President, Greg Sparks. This has been an amazing eight years, reported Sparks. The CIO Source team has grown significantly, and the team has been blessed with some amazing clients.

Over the past eight years, CIO Source has developed a solid consulting practice around performing IT Assessments, developing Strategic Roadmaps, implementing strategic projects, and providing interim leadership. Typical clients are mid-market or large organizations which need to transform their IT capabilities and business systems to be in line with business needs. Merger and Acquisition (M&A) clients also benefit from CIO Sources Assessment and Strategic Roadmap services.

Building on its strong consulting practice foundation, CIO Source recently added new services for Business Strategy development and IT Service Management. "These new services complement our existing practice nicely, emphasizing the company's focus to add business value to our clients," said Sparks.

For more information, please contact:

info(at)CIOsrc(dot)com

888.807.0818

http://www.CIOsrc.com
A' Fashion, Apparel & Garment Design Competition

Today, A' Design Award & Competition has released its last call for entries to International Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design Awards for Fashion Designers, Fashion Brands, Stylists, Couturiers, Fashion Houses, Tailors, Outfitters and Garment Manufacturers worldwide.

The A' International Fashion Design Awards is a two-phase competition. The first phase is free to join, fashion designers can register at A Design Awards to submit their works and get a preliminary score while on second stage projects that pass the preliminaries can proceed with nomination, however it shall be noted in advance that there is a nominal fee to be paid.

Deadline for entries to A' Fashion Design Awards is on February 28, 2017, projects are accepted on the conceptual stage as well as realised products. The following are some example projects that could be submitted to A' Fashion Design Awards - Runway Collections, Suits, Skirts, Trousers, Jackets and More, for a detailed descriptions, check at https://competition.adesignaward.com/competitions/fashiondesign.html.

Laureates of the A' International Fashion Design Awards will be granted the A Design Prize which contains a series of PR, marketing and publicity tools to celebrate the status of winning the Fashion Awards that guarantees the prestige and fame. Moreover, winners will be invited to join Gala Night Award ceremony and Exclusive Exhibition in Italy.

About A' Design Award

The A Design Award & Competition has been established to select and honor the very best design works from across the globe from. Thus A Design Award & Competition annually organizing International Fashion Design Award in order to create a global awareness and understanding of good design principles by highlighting the best designs. Morever, A' Fashion Design Awards aims at pushing designers, companies and brands worldwide to create superior products and projects that create a positive social value. To learn more about the A Design Awards and the A' International Fashion, Apparel and Garment Design Awards please visit http://www.designaward.com.
Since its inception, EIXSYS has treated over 1,000 patients

For the third year EIXSYS (pronounced x-sis) Healthcare System, Inc., a non-profit organization, operate the EIXSYS Free Clinic every Saturday from 10AM to 1PM at North Austin Muslim Community Center (NAMCC), located at 11900 N Lamar Blvd, Austin TX. With the financial support of NAMCC and a host of volunteers and sponsor organizations, the clinic has made great strides to improve access to affordable care for anyone in need. The clinic allows all patients, regardless of income, citizenship status or insurance status to access a primary care physician at no cost. Many selfless primary care physicians, including medical director Dr. Lamia Kadir, have donated their time. EIXSYS has also partnered with Virginia College, organized through Professor Cristal Finke, and UT Nursing School to provide medical student extern-ships. Legal support is contributed by Richards Rodriquez & Skeith, LLP, and additional support from businesses like Southwestern National Bank, The Property Center, LLC, EIX Systems and MAKDA, Inc., have been integral to the continuous operation of the clinic.

Patients of the clinic mainly reside in Austin, Pflugerville and Round Rock areas with nationalities from over 50 countries representing with Christian, Muslim, Hindu and other faiths.

Why A Free Clinic?

At the age of seven, EIXSYS Healthcare System founder Amin Salahuddin was in a coma and put on life support after being hit by a car while playing on the street with his cousins in suburbs of London. Soon thereafter, the young boy was pulled off life support as doctors had lost all hope for him to regain any consciousness.

The story did not end there, however. Amin Salahuddin miraculously woke up from the coma without medical intervention and the rest is history. This very personal experience is the inspiration behind the establishment of EIXSYS Healthcare System, Inc. In a September 2016 article by the Asian Contractor Association of Austin, Mr. Salahuddin said, Our mission is to care for patients in need regardless of religion, race or citizenship status.

What drove him to this charitable cause with such dedication? There was a Christian lady, Amin recounted, that came to my rescue immediately after I was hit by the car. She gave herself completely over to saving me. Although Amin only remembered what happened before the accident, this lady, he learned later, rushed to his side and is now forever edged in Amins memory for her compassionate act. She didnt have to do what she did for me, he said, adding when you work together for the cause of humanity, things change.

Since its inception, EIXSYS has treated over 1,000 patients, said Amin, and has a goal of raising $200,000 per year to expand services offerings and clinic days to five days per week. If you would like to learn more about the organization or to contribute, please visit the website at http://www.eixsys.org.
OnPrintShop at PrintPack 2017 Indian Print Industry is going to witness the biggest revolution owing to digitization of the economy. It is the time when you redefine your existing strategy and embrace automation. Meet team OnPrintShop to define the change tailored to your business.

OnPrintShop, an integrated print order management solution, announces its participation at the 13th PrintPack commencing on 4th February 2017 until 8th February 2017. IPAMA is 3rd largest international exhibition and is even recognized by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India.

India ranks second last (61st) in terms of productivity and there is a huge scope for improvement. OnPrintShop surveyed over hundred Indian printers and found that 7 out of 10 printers were still using manual processes and were struggling with managing orders. Demonetization and digitization also had a significant impact on the event and overall print business this year. So the focus of PrintPack 17 will be on Print Order Management.

After being recognized at Drupa and Graph Expo 16 for flexible and customizable solutions for large printers and SMEs, OnPrintShop will be unveiling one of the most affordable Print Order Management System designed and developed keeping the economic changes and needs of growing print service providers and small print shops in mind. The launch of the solution couldnt have come at a better time looking at the current economic changes in the country.

We have been investing extensively in research on fast-changing print industry challenges, economic ordering patterns in India and globally and best practices to increase repeat sales and new customers, said Naresh Bordia, V.P. Business Development at OnPrintShop, Our team is very excited to launch SOHO  Print Order Management Solution as it reflects our client-centric approach and how we strive to match their changing needs with our various solutions and integrations.

OnPrintShop will be organizing three interactive sessions daily at 11.00am, 2.30pm and 4.30pm to help printers understand global challenges and opportunities. OnPrintShop will be sharing a free Handbook on Automating Print Order Management which outlines step-by-step process to automate processes from online ordering through to payment and shipping.

To learn about industry insights and how to leverage technology and transform business, attendees can visit OnPrintShop at PrintPack Hall 7 | Booth D 29. Also can book an appointment to schedule a one-to-one session with OnPrintShop Sr. Web-2-Print Consultant who will understand ones business need and strategy and provide the right print order management solution.

About OnPrintShop

OnPrintShop is a flagship product of Radixweb, catering print service providers with a wide range of solutions including Platinum W2P, Online Photobook, Trade Printer, Multi-Store W2P Central Admin, Book Module, Custom-made Solutions. With over 9+ years experience delivering SaaS to custom Web-to-Print Software from start-ups to large PSPs & Fortune 500 companies. OnPrintShop has been recognized at Drupa and awarded Must See EMS at Graph Expo. For details, please visit http://www.onprintshop.com
A well-informed consumer is said to be a wise consumer. Today, thanks to the proliferation of websites, online forums, apps, and other digital platforms that offer information about retail products and services, shoppers have ever greater opportunities to arm themselves with data.

But buyer beware, says Ravi Aron of Johns Hopkins University.

Third-party infomediary websites that aim to inform the public about products are sometimes, inadvertently, doing a disservice to the people theyre trying to help, Aron and two colleagues write in a new study for the Journal of Management Information Systems.

The problem arises when a manufacturer notices the activity of an infomediary and then elects to free ride on the third partys product reviews.

Clearly the infomediary means well. But its actions can cause the manufacturer to scale back and post less product information on its own site. This enables the manufacturer to save on marketing costs, though at the same time it leaves consumers with less overall information than they would have received in the absence of the infomediary, says Aron, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

The paper cites a 2008 studys finding that makers of high-quality running shoes reduced their advertising expenses by 30 percent in reaction to infomediary activity; sellers of lower-quality running shoes cut their ad expenses by 70 percent.

In some cases, an infomediarys comments will be further disseminated on blogs, news feeds, and social media accounts. The upshot is even less incentive for the manufacturer to put out information, especially if it means not having to produce expensive graphics, videos, and other promotional tools for the company website.

Aron and his co-authors  Lecturer Panos Markopoulos of the University of Cyprus and Professor Lyle Ungar of the University of Pennsylvania  used a game theoretic model in their study. They focused on the ways in which infomediaries address product fit. These are the attempts to help consumers assess whether a computer keyboard, a camera lens, a computer game, or a streaming TV series, among other products, has the attributes that would turn a shopper into a buyer. Does the keyboard click softly or loudly during typing? Is the camera lens effective both indoors and out? Whats the learning curve for the video game? Does the TV series have a complex plot?

Previous papers on consumer behavior have looked at the impact of third-party information. The authors state theirs is the first to examine the setting in which buyers get information from both manufacturers and infomediaries, and in which the product makers can free ride on third-party reviews.

Trying to provide the kind of information that should come from manufacturers is the wrong role for the third-party sites, Aron argues. Rather than attempt to supply the depth of fit-related data that manufacturers can best provide, infomediaries should act only to verify or correct the companies claims about their products.

In this way, the infomediaries can provide a valuable service to consumers, says Aron. In the process, any incentives that manufacturers have to free ride on infomediaries will vanish and they will provide more relevant information, to the benefit of consumers. A video game company, say, might offer a downloadable demo on its website instead of relying merely on comments from a third-party site.

The paper by Aron, Markopoulos, and Ungar, Product Information Websites: Are They Good for Consumers, was published in December 2016 on the Journal of Management Information Systems website.
Vote for PIs SiP Alignment Solution (voting closes Feb 21) http://www.picawards.net/vote

When alignment speed is critical and accuracy needs to be at the nanoscale, for projects from planar testing to packaging, PI has the award-winning solution. The FMPA Fast Multichannel Photonics Alignment system is a 2017 PIC Awards finalist, which rewards excellence, innovation, and success in the worldwide PIC industry. Voting is open until February 21st, with the winners of this prestigious award announced on March 7th at the PIC International Conference in Brussels, Belgium. Already a winner of R&Ds Top 100 most significant products of the year in 2016, the FMPA was recently showcased at Photonics West 2017 in San Francisco.

The SiP Solution

The FMPA Fast Multichannel Photonics Alignment Engine is an advanced alignment system based on a highly specialized digital motion controller with embedded advanced alignment and tracking functionality and a hybrid precision scanning and tracking mechanism combining the advantages of piezoelectric on servo-motorized drives. It addresses the market need for fast, parallel, nanoscale-accurate, multi-degree-of-freedom global optical alignment optimization required in key SiP production steps from planar test to packaging.

Vote for PIs SiP Alignment Solution (voting closes Feb 21)

Standard and Custom Solutions

PI has over 4 decades of experience providing in-house engineered precision motion control solutions, and can quickly modify existing product designs or provide a fully customized OEM part to fit the exact requirements of the customers application.

About PI

PI is a leading manufacturer of precision motion control equipment, piezo motors, air bearing stages, and hexapod parallel-kinematics for semiconductor applications, photonics, bio-nano-technology and medical engineering. PI has been developing and manufacturing standard & custom precision products with piezoceramic and electromagnetic drives for 4 decades. The company has been ISO 9001 certified since 1994 and provides innovative, high-quality solutions for OEM and research. The PI group employs more than 1,000 people worldwide in 15 subsidiaries and R&D / engineering centers on 3 continents.
I am really excited about working for Midland IRA. The experience has been great so far, and the onboarding process very smooth."

Midland IRA, headquartered in Fort Myers and Chicago, hires new client services associate, Ashley Honda. She is to work in the expanding Chicago office.

Midland IRA is a self-directed retirement plan administrator that provides tax-deferred and tax-free investment opportunities, superior customer service, and educational tools to assist investors in realizing the maximum benefits possible in their retirement accounts. The company sets a high standard in providing personal, professional service to their clients across the nation. Ashley Honda will learn all aspects of the company and will begin her position in the client services department.

Honda is originally from Chicago, Illinois. Prior to relocating back to Chicago, she was living in Columbus, Ohio where she attended and graduated from Ohio State University with a bachelor of science degree in personal financial planning. Before being hired at Midland IRA, Honda worked and interned at a wealth management firm in Ohio.

When asked about how she felt about her new job Honda replied, I am really excited about working for Midland IRA. The experience has been great so far, and the onboarding process very smooth. The culture at the company is one of closeness and collaboration, and I am happy just to be here every day learning something new with my coworkers. The staff is pleased to welcome Honda on board.

About Midland IRA

Midland IRA is a self-directed IRA administrator that provides service to clients who prefer to choose their own assets in their retirement plans. As a leader in the industry, the firm makes it easy to use self-directed retirement plans to invest in assets that the individual investor knows, understands, and can control. Midland IRA is also a 1031 exchange qualified intermediary with Certified Exchange Specialists on staff to assist the unique needs of all investors. To learn more visit www(dot)MidlandIRA(dot)com.
Rentec Direct's Tech Mastery Scholarship is open to undergradate and graduate students pursuing a degree in computer science or software development. This year, 2 outstanding students were awarded the scholarship from Rentec Direct, Albert Appouh from New Jersey and Jared Dalka from Utah.

Rentec Direct is excited to announce the winners of the Tech Mastery Scholarship offered by the real estate industrys leading property management software solution.

The Tech Mastery Scholarship is offered to college and graduate students pursuing an education in computer science, technology, or related field.

Supporting tech education and the great minds behind it, means a better future for us all, explains Rentec Direct president, Nathan Miller. Its an honor to represent a company that values the academic achievements and career pursuits of future generations who will directly impact and enhance the evolution of technology.

As part of the award process, Rentec Direct asked applicants to submit an essay that explains, in their view, how technology has evolved to make an everlasting impact for internet based organizations in the last 5 years. Essays are judged on creativity, humor and content.

This year, 2 outstanding students were awarded the $500 scholarships from Rentec Direct, Albert Appouh from New Jersey and Jared Dalka from Utah.

Appouh is a senior at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Appouh is completing a triple major in Computer Science, Applied Mathematics and Economics and hopes to be a Software Developer one day.

Dalka is a freshman at Western Governors University in Salt Lake City, UT. Dalka is studying Information Technology with an emphasis in Information Security and hopes to be work in Cyber Security for law enforcement or the government one day.

Rentec Direct introduced the Tech Mastery Scholarship in 2016 for students pursuing an education in computer science or technology. The next deadline for the Tech Mastery Scholarship is April 15, 2017.

To read the award winning essays for the 2016 Tech Mastery Scholarship visit https://www.rentecdirect.com/blog/scholarship-winners-2016/.

About the Rentec Direct Tech Mastery Scholarship

Rentec Direct will offer up to four $500.00 scholarships per year to outstanding college students pursuing an education in Computer Science, software development or other closely related fields of study. For more information about eligibility, requirements, and upcoming deadlines visit Rentec Directs Tech Mastery Scholarship page.

About Rentec Direct

Rentec Direct offers industry leading property management software and tenant screening solutions for real estate professionals. Features include online rent payments, tenant and owner portals, the industrys largest vacancy listing syndication network, full property, tenant, and owner accounting, 1099-MISC reporting, QuickBooks Sync and more.
Many great ideas are often born from a simple dreamand Lightbridge Academy is no exception. With more than two decades of experience in the corporate world, Guy Falzarano helped his wife, Julia, turn her passion for children and education into a reality. In 1997, the husband and wife duo opened their first child care center in Iselin, New Jersey near Metropark train station. The center provided early education and child care to children ages six weeks through kindergarten, as well as special programming for children up to 10 years old during school holidays, breaks and summer camp. But they quickly saw that when trains often ran late, parents would frantically run into the center to pick up their children just before closing.

I felt awful that they were so stressed out. With three children of our own, we knew exactly how they felt and wanted to find a way to support them. It seemed as though the child care industry only cared for the needs of the child, but the needs of working parents were forgotten, said Guy Falzarano, Founder and CEO.

From that moment on, Lightbridge Academy was on a path to its own unique brand of child care. Seeing so many parents that were stressed out, worried or feeling guilty about leaving their children behind while they went to work, Falzarano and his team decided that there was an untapped opportunity to meet the needs of both the child and the working parent. Over time, Lightbridge Academy implemented many programs and services to support them, such as higher levels of security, extended hours and the ParentView internet monitoring system to help parents stay connected to their children. Gradually though, Falzarano realized there were others that needed to be considered and cared for, as well. So the team structured its company around their Circle of Care philosophy taking into consideration the needs of parents, staff, the local community and owners to form a supportive relationship to create a nurturing and supportive educational environment for every child.

The Lightbridge Academy Circle of Care isnt some catchy tagline, its a belief that we all hold dear. Along with our core values, this philosophy attracts like-minded owners, staff, vendors and families that value caring relationships. If everyone is happy and supported, they will  in turn  care and watch out for one another, Falzarano said. Our goal is to become an extended family and serve as an integral part in their lives. Its about treating all of our families as part of our own.

The concept resonated with the community, and under Falzaranos leadership, Lightbridge Academys growth took off. His secret to success was simple: build strong relationships and stay true to the companys core values. Seeing an opportunity to take Lightbridge Academy to the next level, he decided to launch a franchise opportunity in 2011. Since then, Lightbridge Academy has grown from a single location in Iselin, New Jersey, to 85 child care centers either open, under construction or in development throughout Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. As the company continues to grow, Falzarano believes those core values are more important than ever before. So much so, in fact, that they become a part of the franchise owners lives too.

We have a culture of care that is unique to our organization and it flows from the top down and from the bottom up, Falzarano said. Its very difficult for others to replicate. Our franchisees experience a culture of care, and our training programs show them how to create the culture within their Lightbridge Academy center. Its a simple philosophy that everyone can use when making a decision to join our family.

Franchisees that thrive with Lightbridge Academy are those that believe in the companys core values and are passionate about making a difference in the lives of families. We use our core values to manage the entire business. When were bouncing decisions off of our Circle of Care belief and we find that someone ends up being negatively affected, we look for another path, said Mark Mele, the senior vice president of Lightbridge Franchise Company. Before a franchisee comes on board we ask them questions such as: How do you demonstrate caring? If they dont have a clear answer, theyre probably not a fit for the organization. As we grow our business, the most important thing is that the culture is replicated within each of those franchise businesses.

Creating a strong foundation of core family values and growing a culture that lives by and reinforces them has helped the brand achieve explosive success. In 2015 and 2016, Lightbridge Academy was ranked as a Top New Franchise by Entrepreneur magazine. Most recently, the brand was listed in the Entrepreneur 500 ranking for the first time ever. Now, fueled by last years momentum, Lightbridge is entering the new year with an emphasis on increasing its density in the markets it has already entered, while also expanding its presence into new markets where the need for the brands unique services are in high demand. And as the educational child care sector continues to grow in the years to come, Lightbridge Academy is positioning itself to be at the forefront of this important industry in 2017 and beyond.

As Innovators in Educational Child Care, Lightbridge Academy wants to set the trends in the child care industrywe dont want to be a trend follower. We consider ourselves experts, and were always evolving and looking for new ways to provide the best experience possible for children and parents, Falzarano said. Its our goal to continue meeting the care and educational needs of both parents and children. This will continue to set Lightbridge Academy apart in the future.

ABOUT LIGHTBRIDGE ACADEMY

About Lightbridge Academy: Established in 1997, Lightbridge Academy provides early education and child care to children ages six weeks through kindergarten, as well as special programming for children up to 10 years old during school holidays, breaks and summer camp. The company franchised in 2011 in an effort to expand their distinctive concept throughout the Northeast; it currently has over 85 child care centers either open, under construction or in development throughout Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Founded by Guy and Julia Falzarano, the family remains deeply involved in the company, from Guy Falzarano as CEO to multiple grandchildren enrolled in the child care facilities. To learn more about Lightbridge Academy, prospective families and franchisees are encouraged to visit http://www.LightbridgeAcademy.com or call 866-470-0262.
The MIAMI Association of REALTORS (MIAMI) has elected Miami Realtor Christopher Zoller, CRS as its 2017 chairman of the board. He and all of the 2017 MIAMI leadership boards will be installed this afternoon at MIAMIs 2017 Inaugural and Awards Celebration at the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood.

The MIAMI Corporate Board is dedicated to leadership in the industry, the real estate profession, and the communities they serve. MIAMI represents 45,000 residential, commercial, and international real estate professionals.

Im honored to be leading the nations largest local Realtor association, Zoller said. As elected leaders for one of the nations most dynamic real estate markets, the 2017 MIAMI Corporate Board will analyze trends and information and make key policy decisions affecting the real estate industry in Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Martin counties.

Born in Mount Vernon, N.Y. and raised in Fairfield County, Connecticut, Zoller began selling real estate in Connecticut in 1973. Zoller moved to several U.S. cities before settling into Miami in the late 1980s. He began working with EWM Realty International, Inc. and Christies International Real Estate in 1990.

Zoller specializes in custom properties for commercial and residential clients. In 2009, Zoller was named the MIAMI Residential Realtor of the Year.

Zoller served as MIAMI Residential President in 2015. He serves as a director for the Florida Realtors and the National Association of REALTORS (NAR).

In addition to his volunteer work with various Realtor associations through the years, Zoller devotes countless hours to the local community. He first joined the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce in 1988. He became chair of the Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce Board in 2000-01. His chamber connections resulted in participating in nonprofit work with United Way and the American Red Cross.

As a member of the Rotary Club of Coral Gables, his community work included numerous outreach projects such as Habitat for Humanity. Other volunteer activities include: business community representative for the Coral Gables High School Educational Excellence School Advisory Council (EESAC), serving on the Coral Gables Property, Budget & Finance and Transportation boards and serving on the Professional Standards Committee of the Coral Gables Board of Realtors. He currently sits on the City of Coral Gables Code Enforcement Board.

Announcing the 2017 MIAMI Corporate Board

Joining Zoller are: Chairman of the Board-Elect George C. Jalil, RAA, TRC of First Service Realty, Real Living; 2016 Chairman of the Board Mark Sadek of The Keyes Company, Inc.; Secretary Nancy Hogan, CIPS of Avatar Real Estate Services; Treasurer Jack H. Levine, ABR, ABRM, CRB, CRS, SRES of Levine Realty Inc.; 2017 Commercial President Jose Maria Serrano, CCIM of New Miami Realty Corp.; 2017 Residential President Christina Pappas of The Keyes Company; 2017 Broward President Ellen R. Mitchel, CRS, CDPE of RE/MAX Executive Realty; 2017 YPN Chairman Alberto Carrillo of The Keyes Company, Inc.; 2017 JTHS President Lynne Rifkin, ABR, PMN, MRP, SRES of Keller Williams Realty/Jupiter; Commercial President-Elect Brian Sharpe of Sharpe Properties Group; Residential President-Elect Jorge L. Guerra, Jr. of Real Estate Sales Force; Broward President-Elect Patricia C. Anglero of Galleria International Realty; YPN Chairman-Elect Jorge H. Fernandez of Caribe Homes Realty; JTHS President-Elect Barb Fox, RSPS, ePRO of One World Realty; Director Terri Bersach, CRB, CRS, CIPS, SFR, TRC of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate; Director Nancy Lubeck of One World Realty; Director Jay Phillip Parker of Douglas Elliman; Director Natascha Tello, CDPE, CIAS of Keller Williams Realty Partners SW; Director Moe Veissi of Veissi & Associates, Inc.

Teresa King Kinney, CAE, CIPS, GRI, RCE, TRC serves as the CEO for the MIAMI Association of REALTORS.

About the MIAMI Association of REALTORS

The MIAMI Association of REALTORS was chartered by the National Association of Realtors in 1920 and is celebrating 97 years of service to Realtors, the buying and selling public, and the communities in South Florida. Comprised of six organizations, the Residential Association, the Realtors Commercial Alliance, the Broward Council, the Jupiter Tequesta Hobe Sound (JTHS) Council, the Young Professionals Network (YPN) Council and the award-winning International Council, it represents nearly 45,000 real estate professionals in all aspects of real estate sales, marketing, and brokerage. It is the largest local Realtor association in the U.S., and has official partnerships with 160 international organizations worldwide. MIAMIs official website is http://www.miamire.com

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It is a great honor to host Mr. Brooks. The Jewish community and the NAACP have a long history, and its time that we recommit the mission of this illustrious organization.

Historic First: Leader of NAACP to Visit Sinai Temple

Next Saturday, February 11th, Sinai Temple has the honor of welcoming Cornell William Brooks, President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Mr. Brooks will be speaking as part of Shabbat morning services.

This will be the first time a leader of the NAACP has made a visit to Sinai Temple. Mr. Brooks will be discussing the history and evolution of the NAACP over the past 107 years. Craig Taubman, founder of the Pico Union Project, who coordinated Mr. Brooks' visit, had this to say, It is a great honor to host Mr. Brooks. The Jewish community and the NAACP have a long history, and its time that we recommit the mission of this illustrious organization.

Cornell William Brooks is a graduate of Yale Law School, where he was a member of the Yale Law and Policy Review. During his time as a civil rights attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Mr. Brooks championed various causes, including housing discrimination. As the 18th President and CEO of the NAACP, Mr. Brooks' tenure has focused on advocacy and action regarding several major issues in the following areas: racial profiling, police misconduct, and voter suppression.

Media Contact:

Cassandra 818.760.1077

media(at)craignco(dot)com
The Center for Advanced Engineering and Research (CAER) building in Bedford County, Virginia.

Liberty University is moving forward with plans to purchase the Center for Advanced Engineering and Research (CAER) building in Bedford County after the Virginia Tobacco Revitalization Commission approved the move on Tuesday. The CAER will become the new home of Libertys School of Engineering & Computational Sciences. The center is located on Lot 1 at the New London Business and Technology Center Park on U.S. Route 460.

The goal is for the university to work with companies in the energy sector, establishing a research-focused campus within the park that will lead to new technologies and create new business opportunities. With a focus on all forms of energy generation, storage, transmission and control, the vision is for students, educators, and industry leaders to work side by side in state of the art laboratories.

Liberty University Vice President of Special Projects Jonathan Whitt said, Liberty University is excited to build upon the initial investment in the CAER by the Tobacco Commission and others to develop a campus focused on advanced energy research. As home to our School of Engineering & Computational Sciences, we will have the opportunity to build much needed bridges between academia and the private sector. We view the energy sector as the new enernet  a fast growing sector that promises exciting economic development and job creation.

We feel the future is very bright for Liberty University and, with this move, for Bedford County, Liberty University President Jerry Falwell said. Our investment in this facility is another example of our desire to increase our presence as a research university. It also paves the way for us to expand our partnerships with business and industry and offer exciting new opportunities for our students.

Bedford County leaders expect the move to have a substantial impact on the local economy.

Its exciting that Liberty University is looking to grow its School of Engineering on Lot 1 in our premier, high tech business park, said Traci Blido, economic development director. The New London Business and Technology Center is already in a state-approved Technology Zone and we believe that LUs focus in energy research will only help us in attracting new private sector growth and development there.

Bob Bailey, executive director of the CAER said: The CAERs vision has always been the development and growth of a strong research university environment in the region. This exciting new collaborative project with Liberty Universitys School of Engineering and Bedford County is a significant milestone in achieving this vision.

Liberty University and the CAER have been among the Tobacco Commissions most reliable partners, said Delegate Kathy Byron, a member of the Tobacco Commission. The joining of these two forces, focused on advanced engineering and emerging technologies, will promote the vision of the Commission to establish a research industry environment that has tremendous potential to attract new businesses and investment to our area.

Construction to complete the original master plan, including classrooms, offices and laboratories, is expected to start early this spring.

About Liberty University

Liberty University, founded in 1971, is the largest private, nonprofit university in the nation, the largest university in Virginia, and the largest Christian university in the world. Located near the Blue Ridge Mountains on more than 7,000 acres in Lynchburg, Va., Liberty offers more than 500 unique programs of study from the associate to the doctoral level. More than 250 programs are offered online. Libertys mission is to train Champions for Christ with the values, knowledge, and skills essential for impacting tomorrows world.
Our mission is to present the leading authorities of eating disorders and co-occurring addictions with the intent to generate understanding among professionals and promote effective treatment for patients, said Bonnie Har

The International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals (iaedp) Foundation, recognized for its excellence in providing education and training standards to an international community of healthcare providers who treat eating disorders, proudly announces the schedule of world-class keynote speakers for its 31st annual Symposium.

The 2017 iaedp Symposium is slated for March 22  26, 2017 at the Green Valley Resort and Spa in Las Vegas. Registration information and the program schedule can be found at iaedp.com.

Our mission is to present the leading authorities in research and treatment of eating disorders and co-occurring addictions with the intent to generate greater understanding among professionals and promote effective treatment for patients, said Bonnie Harken, Managing Director at The iaedp Foundation.

During the 2017 Symposium, the keynote speaker line-up will join the more than 60 other presenters, and all will provide their innovative presentations to the more than 750 healthcare professional expected to attend this years conference.

On Thursday, March 23, Peggy Orenstein, BA, will present Girls & Sex, Navigating the New Landscape as the opening day keynote speaker. Orenstein is the author of The New York Times best-sellers Girls & Sex, Cinderella Ate My Daughter and Waiting for Daisy as well as Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World and the classic SchoolGirls. Named one of the 40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years by The Columbia Journalism Review, Peggy is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, and has written for such publications as The Los Angeles Times, The London Times, Slate, Mother Jones, The Oprah Magazine and The New Yorker.

Brian Cook, PhD, will present Examination of the Management and Therapeutic Potential of Exercise in Eating Disorders on Friday, March 24. Dr. Cook has developed an original line of research focused on examining the etiological role, management, and therapeutic potential of exercise in eating disorders. His graduate training at the University of Florida and a National Institute of Mental Health-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the Neuropsychiatric Research Institute has allowed him to train under leading experts in the eating disorder field. This has resulted in consistently presenting research and invited talks at conferences throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, chairing paper sessions on eating disorders and associated illnesses at international conferences, and publications in leading journals and invited book chapters.

Ovidio Bermudez, MD, FAAP, FSAHM, FAED, CEDS, Cindy Pikus, PhD and Elizabeth Easton, PsyD will present Overview of ARFID: Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder on Saturday, March 25.

Dr. Bermudez is the Chief Clinical Officer and Medical Director of Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center in Denver, Colorado. He holds academic appointments as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is Board certified in Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

Dr. Pikus has treated children, adolescents and adults with eating disorders for more than 17 years. Dr. Pikus received her Bachelor of Arts degree and doctorate in Clinical Psychology from UCLA. She currently serves as Clinical Director of Adult Inpatient and Residential Services and Associate Chief Clinical Officer at Eating Recovery Center in Denver, Colorado. She brings to this position her extensive experience and expertise in working with eating disorder patients in multiple treatment modalities and at multiple levels of care.

Dr. Easton is Clinical Director of Child and Adolescent Services at Eating Recovery Center. As a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Easton is a clinician, supervisor, and speaker passionate about educating and empowering patients and parents to engage in the treatment and recovery process for eating disorders. She graduated with a Doctorate in Psychology from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. Dr. Easton completed her pre-doctoral internship and post-doctoral fellowship at The Childrens Hospital of Denver, specializing in individual, family and group therapy with The Eating Disorders Program, Anxiety and Mood Disorder Outpatient Clinics, and General Psychiatry Inpatient Units.

Michael E. Berrett, PhD, will present The Competency of Compassion: A Cornerstone of Healing and Recovery on Sunday, March 26, closing day of the iaedp Symposium. Dr.Berrett is a Licensed Psychologist and is CEO and Co-founder of Center for Change, a specialty hospital and program for Eating Disorders. He is the author of the APA bestseller, Spiritual Approaches in the Treatment of Women with Eating Disorders, and various other books, book chapters, and peer review professional journal articles. He is a nationally known presenter and clinical trainer.

About the iaedp Foundation:

Since 1985, the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals Foundation has provided education and training standards to an international and multidisciplinary group of various healthcare treatment providers and helping professions.
Milton Hershey School senior, Derek Proctor, recently was selected for All-Eastern Honors Chorus by the National Association for Music Education Derek will perform under the leadership of nationally prominent conductors. -Ed Varner, MHS Director of Visual and Performing Arts

Milton Hershey School senior Derek Proctor will join more than 800 musically talented high school students from the Eastern region of the United States for the 2017 National Association for Music Education (NAfME) All Eastern Honors Ensemble festival. Students were selected from Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Washington D.C., Delaware, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Europe.

Derek will perform as a Tenor 2 vocalist in the ensembles mixed chorus group, which includes 350 students. His is one of 67 vocalists representing Pennsylvania in the mixed chorus ensemble. Derek is the first Milton Hershey School student to be selected for the All-Eastern Choir since 2011, and only the second student in MHS history to perform at the festival.

Derek has been a strong musician, actor, scholar, citizen, and representative of the Visual and Performing Arts Department at MHS for a very long time, said Ed Varner, MHS Director of Visual and Performing Arts. His latest accomplishment as a member of the 2017 All-Eastern Honors Choir is particularly notable and will certainly be an exciting and rewarding experience for him.

Derek will prepare over the next two months for the All-Eastern chorus. In April, he will join the ensemble for three days of rehearsal. Throughout the festival, other student musicians will perform in the All-Eastern concert band, symphony orchestra, treble voice chorus, and jazz ensemble.

Derek is an exceptional student and will prepare remarkably challenging music, Varner said. He will perform under the leadership of nationally prominent conductors.

The NAfME All-Eastern Honors festival will be held in the historic Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey from Wednesday, April 5 to Saturday, April 8, 2017. Thousands of people are expected to attend the performances on April 7 and 8.

The National Association for Music Education partners with state music educators to form a network of resources for high school musicians, including conferences, seminars, festivals and competitions. Milton Hershey School works with NAfME to provide opportunities for visual and performing arts students to perform at national and local levels.

More information about Milton Hershey Schools comprehensive visual and performing arts program can be found at mhskids.org.

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ABOUT MILTON HERSHEY SCHOOL

Milton Hershey School is one of the worlds best private schools, offering a top-notch education and positive home life to children in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade from families of lower income at no charge.
Spinal Simplicity Logo

Spinal Simplicity, a medical device company developing innovative solutions to treat complex surgical problems, has received its third 510(k) clearance from FDA for the Minuteman G3-R spinal implant, part of the Minuteman family of supplemental fusion and fixation devices. The Minuteman G3-R may be implanted via a minimally invasive lateral approach and will have a lower profile upon placement of the device.

The lower profile of the Minuteman G3-R provides an aesthetic enhancement while maintaining the key elements of strength of the device and its minimally invasive nature. The interest that surgeons have expressed in this new product has been outstanding, says Todd Moseley, Co-Founder and CEO of Spinal Simplicity. Spinal Simplicity continues to raise the bar in the industry as we bolster our product portfolio and provide physicians with diverse options for patient treatments that utilize minimally invasive technologies.

The Minuteman G3-R is a sterile packed, posterior, non-pedicle supplemental fusion and fixation device for use in the non-cervical spine (T1-S1). As an alternative to traditional pedicle screws, it is a plating system intended for supplemental fusion in patients with degenerative disc disease, spondylolisthesis, trauma and tumor. The device is available in the U.S. with hydroxyapatite coating and a removable 12mm portion of the implant body. The Minuteman is intended for use with bone graft material and is not intended for stand-alone use.

About Spinal Simplicity

Spinal Simplicity, LLC, headquartered in Overland Park, KS, is dedicated to the creation of simple solutions for the treatment of complex spinal disorders. Spinal Simplicity has regulatory clearance for the Minuteman system in the US, Europe and Canada. Our vision is to be the global leader in innovative, simplified surgical solutions, while delivering uncompromising quality. For more information, please visit http://www.spinalsimplicity.com
Wendy West, chairwoman, Everest Holding Company, parent of Northwood Realty The changes reflect Northwood Realtys growth across the continuum of real estate services it offers to customers in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio.

Everest Holding Company, the new parent company of Northwood Realty Services, has named Wendy West chairwoman of its board of directors. Wests appointment coincides with the creation of Everest Holding Company as the parent of Northwood Realty Services, West Penn Financial Service Center, Inc. (Pennsylvania), People First Financial (Ohio) mortgage companies, Everest Insurance, LLC, and Everest Settlement. Northwood Realty has also expanded its services with the addition of a commercial division.

The changes reflect the companys growth across the continuum of real estate services it offers to customers in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. The holding company now connects this broad range of services under one entity. West will remain executive vice president, Northwood Realty Services, and president of Everest Settlement. Tom Hosack will remain president and CEO of Northwood Realty Services, a family-owned company that celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2016.

As weve continued to grow and expand, including most recently into Cleveland and with our new commercial division, Wendy serves as an exemplary leader, said Tom Hosack, president and CEO of Northwood Realty Services. Her contributions are integral to so many of the forward-thinking real estate programs weve introduced over her 24-year career with Northwood. Wendy is a great role model as our companys top leader, particularly in an industry that employs many women with relatively few of them in management. She cares about offering the best tools, training and support so that womenand all our agentshave the opportunity to succeed in real estate.

Over the years, West has been instrumental in Northwood Realtys growth to become one of the largest real estate brokers in the region. Her career began in 1983 when she played a key role in the start-up and ongoing operation of West Penn Financial, a licensed mortgage banker. Thirty-four years later, West Penn enjoys continued success as a respected, competitive and local source of financing for home owners. Since 1990, West has been a member of Northwood Realtys executive committee and has worked for Northwood and its associated businesses in varying capacities. Previous titles include director of marketing and executive vice president.

Ms. West was fundamental in establishing the Northwood Charitable Foundation in 2006, which marked the occasion of Northwoods 50th anniversary. The foundation is governed by a board that includes sales executives, office managers, employees, and West serves as its president. In its 10 years, the foundation has raised more than $280,000 and made donations to numerous housing-related charitable organizations across Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Since becoming president of Everest Settlement in 2007, West has overseen the implementation of a new business model and in recent years, significant operational changes in accordance with regulatory legislation. Last year, she was also named president of Everest Insurance, a provider of property and casualty coverage.

Along with Northwood Realty, West is a member of Realty Alliance, whose members comprise the largest and most successful real estate firms in the US. She received her BA in Economics from RandolphMacon Womans College in Virginia and is also a licensed insurance producer. She and her husband are parents of two adult children and reside in Hampton.

Northwood Realtys Commercial Division

Marvin Levin, an industry veteran with more than three decades of commercial real estate experience, has joined Northwood Realty as an associate broker and vice president of its new commercial division. Levin began his career in commercial real estate and expanded his expertise to include property management.

Levin will be based at the companys headquarters in Wexford, where he will also begin offering agent training programs that focus on commercial real estate topics starting this spring. He has taught real estate classes at LaRoche College, Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC) and for the Realtor Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh (RAMP).

Were thrilled that Marv has joined to lead this initiative for us. Weve already had more than $3 million in commercial listings, as well as closed sales, in only a few short months, said Hosack. Were also looking forward to our agents gaining valuable professional knowledge in commercial marketing, financing, zoning and occupancy permits.

About Northwood Realty Services

Founded in 1956, and celebrating 60 years of service, Northwood Realty Services is one the regions largest real estate services providers, serving customers across 22 counties from 37 offices in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. Northwood and its affiliates provide clients with full-service real estate solutions that cover every step of the home buying and selling process. Northwood consistently leads the industry by employing new technologies, best-in-class training and experienced leadership to ensure that its agents are positioned to assist buyers and sellers with unparalleled customer service. Northwood has earned a reputation for integrity, accountability and hard work. Guided by these principles and a desire to serve others, Northwood agents are changing the face of real estate.

For more information about Northwood Realty Services visit: http://www.northwood.com/
Apple Montessori NJ February Preschool Info Sessions

Enrollment for spring, summer, and fall sessions at Apple Montessori Schools are now open. Expectant parents and families with children ages 6 weeks to twelve years (programs vary by school) are invited to attend an information session in early February to learn how Apple can prepare your child for school and life. Apple Montessori offers 15 schools throughout north and central New Jersey.

Families are welcome to bring their child to experience the Apple Plus Advantage. Attendees will learn about the schools unique approach to early childhood and elementary level education. They will also have the opportunity to see our hands-on, active, whole child teaching methods in action.

The event will also provide an opportunity to meet with our trained, nurturing educators who will guide their children through their early learning experiences. The event will include a tour of the school, which has been safety certified by Secure Education Consultants, a group of former White House security agents.

Research has demonstrated that the Montessori Method gives students a measurable academic advantage and promotes emotional and social development. Apple Montessoris own successes support this. Our programs consistently help children reach their unique potential: Many of our kindergarten students scored at least one year above their grade level and are considered early readers.

Our schools in Wayne and Mahwah will host their Info Session on Thursday, February 9. All other schools will hold Info Sessions on Friday, February 10. On both days, parents are welcome to join the event from 9am to 11am or from 1pm to 3pm. Apple Montessori Schools are located in Cliffside Park, Edgewater, Edison, Hoboken, Kinnelon, Mahwah, Metuchen, Morris Plains, Oakland, Randolph, Towaco, and Wayne.

RSVP are welcome. Email info(at)applemontessorischools(dot)com and indicate your session (school, date, and time) of interest.

About Apple Montessori Schools: Family owned Apple Montessori Schools have inspired a life-long love of learning for 45 years. The infant, toddler, preschool/kindergarten, and elementary programs are designed to nurture the whole childintellectually, socially, and emotionally. The Apple Montessori approach recognizes that no two children are the same and cultivates each and every students unique potential in a caring, safe, and supportive school environment.

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Christopher Pohle, C2P Government Sales Lead Our goal is to provide small to mid-size companies a competitive advantage in identifying government contracting opportunities for a fraction of the price of our competitors. Past News Releases RSS

Capture 2 Proposal (C2P) is set to release its enterprise market intelligence module to several government contracting businesses in February 2017, with additional modules set to release March 2017. This follows a year and a half product development phase, heavily funded by a San Francisco Venture Capitalist.

The highly sought after solution provides customers with a user-friendly interface that leverages a google-like machine-learning technology. This allows users to find government contract bid opportunities faster and more accurately than any other solution.

Our goal is to provide small to mid-size companies a competitive advantage in identifying government contracting opportunities for a fraction of the price of our competitors, Christopher Pohle, C2Ps Government Sales Lead explains. We leverage an underlying technology we have been developing for over a year, specifically designed to associate information from various sources to provide optimal intelligence to the business developer. This context and insight is unique to C2P, and will bring immediate benefit and advantages to our customers.

With C2P, users can search by a wide range of data elements, including customer, programs, and topics or keywords within solicitation documents. This is complemented with C2Ps unique Historic Spending Insight of incumbent contracts related to new opportunities. C2Ps powerful, intuitive analytics and visualizations provide insight to prime and sub funding, spending to date, contract modifications, and much more.

This highly anticipated solution was developed by experienced business developers that have an understanding of the data needed to make well-informed decisions. The product development phase was completed in conjunction with multiple market-viable product releases to reputable business development teams within mid-sized companies including Curo International, Informatica LLC, and others.

C2P is a secure, cloud-based, all-in-one business development solution that empowers business developers to effectively: identify federal contracting opportunities; evaluate win probability; oversee pipeline and capture efforts, and manage proposal efforts. Their Opportunity-Centric Intelligence aggregates the solicitation, historic award, agency forecast and industry briefs to provide a holistic view of past, current, and future procurements.

C2Ps CTO, Emma Sulm explains, Through massive data integration and the utilization of Natural Language Processing and data extraction technologies, C2P intends to set the bar for providing increased accuracy of the market intelligence of opportunities to its federal contracting consumers.

ABOUT C2P

Founded in 2015, Capture 2 Proposal is a California-based software development company offering business development solution for small to large business in the government contracting market. For more information about Capture 2 Proposal products visit http://www.capture2proposal.com
French Sales Engineers at the 2016 Rubber Expo, showcasing French's hydraulic press systems.

French Oil Mill Machinery Company, a custom machinery manufacturer, has announced their 2017 trade show and event schedule for their hydraulic press, rubber mixer, polymer and oilseed equipment product lines.

At each event, French sales engineers will be pleased to discuss manufacturing requirements and how French can improve customers' processes with custom engineered and manufactured equipment or with service of existing equipment.

The event schedule covers a wide range of domestic and international markets and industries from composite, rubber and printed circuit boards to biodiesel and oilseeds.

The French hydraulic press group will display their wide range of custom hydraulic press systems at the IPC Apex Expo, JEC World, SAMPE, CAMX and the International Rubber Expo. Information on TMP style rubber mixers and French dewatering and drying screw presses will also be available at the Rubber Expo.

In addition, the French polymer group will attend the 4th World Elastomer Summit and the IISRP Annual General Meeting.

The French oilseed group attended the National Biodiesel Conference last month and will also attend the IOMSA Summer Convention and 4th High Oleic Oils International Congress later this year. Their Achiever oilseed extraction screw press and other oilseed processing equipment will be featured at the AOCS Annual Meeting and Industry Showcase, the AOCS Latin Congress and the Oils and Fats International Trade Fair. The latter two shows and the HOC Congress are new to French's event schedule this year.

Please contact French if you would like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with one of French's sales engineers at any of the 2017 trade shows and events. For more detailed information about the products displayed at each event and for event dates and locations please visit the posted trade show and event schedule on http://www.frenchoil.com/trade-shows.
Greenberg Traurig Co-President Hilarie Bass and Shareholder Dawn I. Giebler-Millner participated in the Florida Association for Women Lawyers (FAWL) winter meeting, held Jan. 26, at the Gaylord Palm Resort & Convention Center in Kissimmee, Florida.

Bass presented on Implicit Bias in the Workplace, including how to recognize the bias we all carry and steps to address the issue. Giebler-Millner took part in a panel discussion titled, #FAWLstrong: Corporate & Outside Counsel Unite to Advance Gender Equality.

We all carry implicit biases. Although we may not realize it, we feel less comfortable around people who do not look and act like we do, said Bass, who is president-elect of the American Bar Association and will take over as president in August. This bias can unconsciously filter into decisions about everything from hiring to compensation. It is important that we work together to confront that bias in order to create a more level playing field for all women and minorities.

The FAWL panel, which included both corporate and private practice attorneys, examined the opportunities and challenges faced by women in the legal profession. Other panelists included Dorian Denberg, Past President, National Association of Women Lawyers; Assistant Vice President, Senior Counsel, Technology Operations, AT&T; Margaret D. Mathews, Partner, Akerman LLP; Kristy Johnson, Consultant to The Alderman Law Firm; and Nyea Sturman, General Counsel, Orlando Magic. The panel was moderated by Leora Freire, President of FAWL; Jennifer A. Sullivan, Shareholder, Guilday Law; and Marcie Anthony, Assistant Vice President, Old Republic National Title Insurance Company.

This is an important conversation for women lawyers of all ages and experience levels, Millner said. I enjoyed sharing my personal story and also learning from the experiences of my fellow panelists. While the challenges are real, it was a great opportunity to hear how others are tackling these issues. I left feeling inspired about the future for women in the legal profession.

As Co-President of international law firm Greenberg Traurig and a prolific trial attorney with a highly successful 30-plus year career, Bass is one of the most recognized women attorneys in the United States. She is currently President-Elect of the American Bar Association, the worlds largest voluntary professional organization with more than 400,000 members. At Greenberg Traurig, Bass helps chart the course for the multi-practice firm with more than 2,000 attorneys across 38 offices worldwide. She currently serves on the firms Executive Committee and previously served an eight-year term as national chair of its 600-member litigation department. She is also the founder and former chair of Greenberg Traurigs Women's Initiative.

At Greenberg Traurig, Giebler-Millner is chair of the firm's Orlando Litigation Practice and focuses her practice in the areas of product liability, employment, consumer, commercial, and complex civil litigation. She has served as trial counsel in numerous cases involving claims of product liability, breach of contract, fraud, breach of various state and federal consumer statutes, employment discrimination, and land contamination. She previously served as lead jurisdictional coordinator for hundreds of tobacco cases throughout Central Florida. She was also responsible for developing and coordinating discovery for hundreds of toxic substance cases on a nationwide basis.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GTLaw) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. A single entity worldwide, GTLaw has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the second largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2016, and among the Top 20 on the 2016 Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.
InsurEye InsurEye Launches Media-Integrated Insurance Reviews

There are many insurance rate comparison platforms online, but InsurEye has dug deeper to combine real user experiences with a comprehensive insurance consumer review tool to help Canadians find and understand the insurance products they need. Now, after two and a half years of improving the insurance experience for Canadians, InsurEye is adding even more features to its platform.

Insurance reviews at InsurEye are complemented by an insurance rate comparison tool that compares your current insurance rates to hundreds of similar policies to determine if you are overpaying for your coverage, but its not just about getting the best rate, explains InsurEyes co-founder and CEO, Alexey Saltykov. By having a platform to explore real consumers experiences with claims, call centres, receiving payments and more, Canadians can make empowered choices about their insurance needs.

Saltykov continues, Insurance rates and reviews provide a lot of important data for decision making when getting an insurance policy, but there is another source of useful information that has been untapped until now: public stories and media coverage. These offer important insights about consumersinsurance claim experiences and brings to light how insurers deal with negative reviews. Are they working to improve? Do they care about the consumer experience? These are important things for consumers to know.

Now, consumers can access this knowledge.

InsurEye is integratingour consumer review streams with the newest media stories about insurance companies, informs Saltykov. This allows for a clearer perspective for policyholders as well as more transparency into how various insurance companies operate. For example, here is a review wall for Industrial Alliance insurance that contains both consumer reviews and a heartbreaking story from cbc.ca about an accident insurance claim. Our new angle and integrated insurance review wall allows for a fuller qualitative insurance perspective and better engagement with consumers. At the end of the day, it is all about helping consumers  and insurers do the right thing.

Saltykov points out that other areas of InsurEyes popular website are also being upgraded.

We have not stopped enhancing our other tools, such as our premium comparisons. Now we have enriched the comparison tool with additional insights for each customer segment,taking into account people's age, gender and location. We hope that our users will like this additional functionality. For example, see special insights for Ontario male drivers who are 25-30 years old.

InsurEye hopes that by adding more media stories and additional comparative data to their site, more Canadians will become educated about the insurance products they need, and that insurers will be encouraged to improve and provide ethical, prompt service.

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About InsurEye:

InsurEye is a leading provider for insurance reviews that also offers access to the best auto insurance quotes, home insurance quotes and life insurance plans.

Contact Details:

1 Yonge Street, Suite 1801

Toronto, Ontario M5E 1W7, Canada

InsurEye.com

Facebook: facebook.com/InsurEye/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/2244836

Source: InsurEye
Attorney Lloyd Herman Fifty years of being able to do this is very satisfying from a personal and professional standpoint. Being able to add value to human beings through legal, psychological and moral support has been extremely gratifying. Past News Releases RSS

Attorney Lloyd Herman, founder of Lloyd Herman & Associates, is celebrating his fiftieth anniversary as a legal professional. Its been a pleasure to be able to help injured victims take on a system that is stacked against them and bring them favorable outcomes against heavy odds, said Herman. Fifty years of being able to do this is very satisfying from a personal and professional standpoint. Being able to add value to human beings through legal, psychological and moral support has been extremely gratifying.

Herman received his Juris Doctor from Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, WA, in 1966. He worked in several different areas until he found his niche thirty years ago doing personal injury claims. Since then Herman has settled approximately 1,500 cases, of which he has made case law on a couple. Herman is renowned for settling almost all of his cases out of court. Just in the sixteen years I have been here, I have gone to trial less than ten times, added Herman, who devotes 90 percent of his practice to the area of litigation.

During the course of his illustrious career, Herman has been instrumental in changing the law in Washington state in favor of consumers in the Supreme Court and Division III in the Court of Appeals, which had the effect of aiding people against bad faith acts of the insurance companies. He also helped expand the law in the area of automobile coverage and in favor of tenants of defective apartment houses and rentals.

About Lloyd Herman, Lloyd Herman & Associates

Attorney Lloyd Herman is licensed to practice before the Western and Eastern Federal District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, including Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho. He focuses his practice on personal injury law, workers compensation law and wills and trusts. For more information, please call (509) 922-6600, or visit http://www.lloydhermanlaw.com. The law office is located at 213 N. University Road, Spokane, WA 99206.

About the NALA

The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers through new media. As a single-agency source, the NALA helps businesses flourish in their local community. The NALAs mission is to promote a business relevant and newsworthy events and achievements, both online and through traditional media. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361.
Not only does the pet industry contribute more than $221 billion to the economy, but that also includes an impressive $23 billion in federal, state and local taxes.

The pet industry generated more than $221 billion in direct, indirect and induced economic impact, according to a new study conducted by George Mason University and released today at the Pet Industry Leadership Conference in Laguna Beach, California. The economic analysis also showed the pet industry supported over 1.3 million U.S. jobs in 2015 that paid more than $60 billion in salaries, wages and benefits.

While annual spending for the pet industry is reported each year, this is the first time that anyone has looked at the widespread impact of the pet industry as a whole on the U.S. economy, said Dr. Terry L. Clower, Professor of Public Policy at George Mason Universitys Schar School of Policy and Government and Director of its Center on Regional Analysis, who headed the study. Not only does the pet industry contribute more than $221 billion to the economy, but that also includes an impressive $23 billion in federal, state and local taxes.

Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) President Mike Bober said that the study proves taking compassionate care of pets is also good business.

As we continue our efforts to provide for and protect the health and well-being of our companion animals, this report is an encouraging sign that responsible pet ownership is on the rise and that this industry is having a positive impact on our country, both in terms of the benefits we derive from pets and those that we provide them in return, said Bober, whose group funded the independent study in partnership with the Pet Leadership Council (PLC). Bober joined Dr. Clower and PLC Chair Bob Vetere to present the studys results to hundreds of industry leaders at the pet industrys annual leadership conference.

To determine the industrys total economic impact, Clower and his team analyzed data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Census Bureau, the National Pet Owners Survey conducted biannually by APPA, and other resources using the IMPLAN economic model. This analysis yielded estimates of direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts resulting from initial industry spending.

Weve always known that the pet industry is a significant one, but this study solidifies exactly just how big of an impact it has not only on pet owners but the country as a whole, said Vetere. Beyond the well-known benefits pets provide of love, companionship, fun, joy and health, they also help our countrys economic vitality.

According to this report, consumers spend over $77 billion on their pets annually. Pet food and veterinary services are the two leading sources of spending within the industry. Other sectors considered in the study include manufacturing of pet supplies and toys, pet pharmaceuticals, grooming, boarding and other services, wholesale and retail trade involving pet products, and the emerging pet health insurance industry.

The study is the second conducted by Dr. Clower and the Center for Regional Analysis showing benefits derived from the pet industry. In late 2015, Dr. Clower found that the pet industry saves $11.7 billion in healthcare costs as a result of pet ownership.

The pet industry is one of the fastest growing industries in large part because Americans are becoming increasingly aware of how pets improve our lives; mentally, physically and emotionally, added Doug Poindexter, PLC trustee. We are committed to continuing efforts to promote and advance the responsible pet industry.

The study will help to inform legislators, regulators, and consumers about the role the pet industry plays in state and local economies, as well as at the national level.

An executive summary of the report can be found on the PIJAC website, http://www.pijac.org.

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George Mason Universitys Center for Regional Analysis is the premier university-based regional economic research center in the National Capital Region. The Center provides economic analysis and forecasting services to decision-makers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. George Mason University is the largest public research university in Virginia.

Since 1970, the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) has protected pets, pet owners and the pet industry  promoting responsible pet ownership and animal welfare, fostering environmental stewardship, and ensuring the availability of pets. PIJAC members include retailers, companion animal suppliers, manufacturers, wholesale distributors, manufacturers representatives, pet hobbyists, and other trade organizations. http://www.pijac.org

The Pet Leadership Council is made up of pet industry leaders, animal welfare, veterinarians and academia and advocates for pets and those who serve and support them by promoting responsible pet ownership and educating the public on efforts to improve the health and well-being of companion animals. http://www.petleadershipcouncil.org
Thomas Atchison, Founder Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation Mavericks decided to look to cloud computing and virtual desktops (VDIs).

EpiGrid today announced that Rocket Mavericks is using EpiGrids VDI solutions to improve product development collaboration worldwide. EpiGrids solutions enable any mechanical engineering application to be deployed in the cloud. Using EpiGrid VDIs with a private cloud, Rocket Mavericks, the world's leading pioneer and enabler of civilian space exploration, users can collaborate more effectively with team members located around the world.

It was exciting to work with the Rocket Mavericks, said Chad Garrish, EpiGrid Chief Technology Officer. Sure the rockets made it more interesting, but their design challenges are the same that many companies face  working with distributed teams, meeting tight deadlines, and accommodating peak compute requirements. EpiGrid enables companies to speed product development and increase collaboration with the use of cloud computing for their engineering applications.

Rocket Mavericks is officially named the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, a non-profit organization created to combine the resources of academia, amateur rocket enthusiasts, and professionals -- with the goal of bringing space exploration to the masses.

It isnt practical to have one team create the whole rocket design on their own, said Thomas Atchison, founder of Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation. It is more practical to learn from the efforts of others and to collaborate when possible using the work and success accomplished by others. The desire is to create an open source style community for space exploration vehicles and technology so that we can leverage the experience of contributors while fostering the open exchange of design information. Design and engineering teams focus on certain elements of the rocket design. Creating the final product is truly a collaborative effort.

Mavericks is made up of design teams from around the world. Nearly fifty individuals residing in dozens of locations around the globe made up the several design teams that comprise the Mavericks organization. Teams from universities in Cambridge and Oxford, England must collaborate with teams from Stanford University in California. Engineers from Canada need to coordinate their design and analysis work with engineers in the United States. Teams are organized around functional elements of the rocket such as Payload Management Systems, Propulsion, Stabilization and Trajectory Analysis and of course Mechanical Structure design.

To accommodate this worldwide collaborative of engineers, scientists, designers and rocket experts while dealing with the monumental computational and IT challenges, Mavericks decided to look to cloud computing and virtual desktops.

Using EpiGrids flexible, scalable and secure private cloud environment, the Mavericks accelerated rocket design and validation. Meet the aggressive timelines and computational demands of Mavericks simulation, analysis, and design data collaboration.

EpiGrid enables engineering computing from anywhere and from any device. With EpiGrid, companies no longer need on-site IT or application administration, which saves time and money along with giving them more control. EpiGrid uses a private cloud implementation to provide the performance needed, the security required and a predictable cost structure.

EpiGrid provides the following hosting and application management services:



VDI hosting on a private cloud for increased value, control and security

VDI on-premise cloud hardware for VDI functionality within your firewall

Hybrid-computing, blending cloud and on-premise computing when required

GPU computing for the best visual graphic performance/experience

Managed IT services for network and OS management, including Windows 10 support

Managed application services for SOLIDWORKS CAD, SOLIDWORKS PDM, ProEngineer, Driveworks and others

Click here to read the full Rocket Mavericks story.

ABOUT EPIGRID

EpiGrid enables cloud computing for engineering applications with VDI access from anywhere from any device, including thin clients. EpiGrid deployments are implemented with a private cloud. A private cloud offers control, security, and persistence which gives the user a regular desktop experience. Cloud computing combined with on-premise computing, EpiGrid can deliver a hybrid, seamless engineering computing environment that is reliable, secure, economical, and optimized. For the latest news, information, or an online demonstration, please contacts us at http://www.epigrid.com, info(at)epigrid(dot)com or call +1-470-248-1013.
Summer is a great time to learn SEO.

February 2, 2017. Jason McDonald, a San Francisco Bay Area expert consultant in SEO and social media marketing at https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/, is proud to announce his summer, 2017, course at Stanford Continuing Studies to be taught in Palo Alto, California, on the Stanford University campus. The five week course will overview both the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social Media Marketing for small business marketers, entrepreneurs, and others.

SEO Training San Francisco Bay Area

Summer is a fantastic time to learn about Search Engine Optimization for small businesses, explained Dr. McDonald, Director of the Jason McDonald SEO Consulting Agency. I am excited to offer this five week course, which meets 7-9:30 pm on the Stanford Campus beginning June 28, 2017. It is convenient to students in the Bay Area, from San Francisco in the north to San Jose in the south.

To learn more about this upcoming summer, 2017, SEO / Social Media Marketing training, visit https://www.jasonmcdonald.org/training/internet-marketing/. There interested parties can view a syllabus as well as register online at the Stanford website.

Bay Area Entrepreneurs and SEO Training

SEO is the art and science of getting to the top of search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Among the tactics to be taught in this intensive summer, 2017, workshop are both "on page" and "off page" SEO. "On page" SEO refers to building websites that effectively communicate keyword priorities to search engines, and "Off Page" SEO refers to tactics to solicit inbound links and real customer reviews that search engines rely on as validation.

The five week course has two weeks on SEO, and three weeks on social media marketing. Students at the Stanford campus will learn about how to market their businesses on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. The course uses Jason's popular SEO Fitness Workbook (http://amzn.to/2gD8PBB) and his Social Media Marketing Workbook (http://amzn.to/2gFM9gg), both best sellers on Amazon in their respective categories.

About Jason McDonald

Jason McDonald is director of The JM Internet Group, a leading online training company. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1992, and now both teaches and consults to San Francisco Bay Area businesses in SEO, Social Media Marketing, and AdWords. In addition to those services, he has been recognized as an expert witness in litigation on Internet marketing. He has several popular books on Amazon on the topic of Internet marketing.

Media Relations, Tel. 800-298-4065
Wheaton Divorce Attorneys William J. Stogsdill & Brett T. Williamson Attorneys William J. Stogsdill and Brett T. Williamson of The Stogsdill Law Firm, P.C. have been nominated as 2017 Super Lawyers Rising Stars in Illinois.

The Stogsdill Law Firm, P.C., located in Wheaton, Illinois, announces that Attorneys William J. Stogsdill and Brett T. Williamson have been selected as 2017 Super Lawyers Rising Stars in Illinois. This year marks the second straight Super Lawyers nod for both Stogsdill and Williamson.

Super Lawyers, a Thomson Reuters company, is an online rating service of exceptional lawyers across the United States. On an annual basis, Super Lawyers recognizes the top attorneys in each state based on peer evaluations, endorsements, and independent research. Super Lawyers Rising Stars account for only 2.5 percent of attorneys in Illinois, and qualifying attorneys must be 40 years old or younger, or in practice for 10 years or less.

Wheaton Divorce Attorney William J. Stogsdill graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Financial Management from Clemson University, and went on to earn his J.D. from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago. Stogsdill is admitted to practice law in both Illinois and Florida. In 2015, Stogsdill was named a 10 Best Under 40 Attorney by the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys. He concentrates his practice in family law including complex financial estates, custody disputes, the negotiation of property, and orders of protection.

He is a member of the Illinois State Bar Association, the Florida Bar Association, the Robert E. Jones AIC of DuPage County, and the DuPage County Bar Association, where he has served on the Young Lawyers Committee. In 2012, Stogsdill co-authored a chapter within the Illinois State Bar Association Family Law Handbook entitled, Division of Retirement Benefits in Dissolution Proceedings.

Wheaton Family Law Attorney Brett T. Williamson graduated with his B.A. with honors from Butler University, he then attended The John Marshall Law School to obtain his J.D. Williamson concentrates his practice in family law and handles cases related to complex divorce including: financial matters, custody disputes, child support, and the division of property.

He is a member of the Illinois State Bar Association, the Chicago Bar Association, the Will County Bar Association, and the DuPage County Bar Association, where he served as a mentor to new attorneys. He also serves as general counsel and associate board president for Griffith Tutoring. From 2015-2016, Williamson was named a 10 Best Under 40 Attorney by the American Institute of Family Law Attorneys, and the National Trial Lawyers Organization also named him a Top 40 Under 40 attorney.

About The Stogsdill Law Firm, P.C.:

The Stogsdill Law Firm, P.C., located in Wheaton, Illinois, was named the 2013 Law Firm of the Year for over 500 hours of pro bono service within the local community. The veteran DuPage County attorneys collectively possess more than 210 years of legal experience.

The firm represents individuals and families located in the towns of Naperville, Lisle, Glen Ellyn, Downers Grove, Winfield, Lombard, and throughout Northern Illinois. For more information call 630-462-9500 or visit http://www.stogsdilllaw.com to schedule your initial consultation.
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U.S. President Donald Trump has plunged the United States into a dispute with Australia over the fate of 1,300 refugees primarily from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

The refugees are among thousands of migrants who, fleeing conflict or poverty, are being held in camps on the Pacific islands of Nairu and Papua New Guinea, where Australia is paying to detain them rather than admit them into the country.

Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, agreed to consider taking in about 1,300 migrants -- most of them from Iran, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and Sudan -- in exchange for Australia taking in Latin American refugees, officials said.

But Trump denounced that as a "dumb deal" this week and said he was reviewing it. He made headlines when word leaked of a contentious phone call over the weekend with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during which the two discussed the matter.

The Washington Post reported on February 2 that Trump called the agreement the "worst deal ever" and accused Turnbull of seeking to export the "next Boston bombers."

Trump has suggested since then that he is still mulling whether to honor the deal, but Turnbull insists that Trump agreed to it out of respect for the strong ties between the countries.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man jumped out of his bedroom window Thursday following an explosion in the basement of his home in what authorities are calling a suspicious fire.

A cause of the fire at 1144 Glenny Ave. hasnt been determined, but Fire Chief Pat Treloar said the departments K-9 Radar was used in the investigation, and samples were taken to test for possible flammable substances.

Waterloo Fire Rescue was dispatched to the home just after 11 a.m. Thursday. Smoke could be seen billowing from the doors of the single-story home. Firefighters extinguished a fire in the basement of a residence just before noon Thursday.

Battalion Chief Mike Moore said the fire likely began near the basement stairs, and it was contained to that area, he said. He said the remainder of the house suffered extensive heat damage.

The resident told officials he jumped out of his first-floor bedroom window when he heard a boom, then ran to a neighbor's house.

"He said he heard a 'boom' in the basement after turning up the furnace," Moore said. "That's the kind of stuff we have to look at."

The man was taken to Covenant for evaluation due to smoke inhalation and possible exposure. A dog in the house was not injured, according to Moore.

Neighbors Nicki and Todd Kimberly, who live three doors down, said they heard a boom. They said the occupant of the home was taken from the house by firefighters.

"He came out in stocking feet and wrapped in a blanket," Nicki Kimberly said.

The one-story house is owned by Michael D. Morehouse, according to public records.
DES MOINES | Iowa lawmakers seemed generally favorable to a pitch to prohibit motorists from using hand-held communication devices, but didnt agree on the best way to stop drivers from texting while driving.

A coalition of law enforcement, insurance companies and wireless phone service providers encouraged the House Transportation Committee Thursday to start by making a texting while driving a primary offense. Its now a secondary offense in Iowa, one of five states where drivers cannot be stopped for texting.

That makes the law unenforceable, said Susan Cameron, a lobbyist for the Iowa State Sheriffs & Deputies Association.

More than two-thirds of fatalities over the past five years involved lane departure crashes, Cameron said, which generally is an indication of someone who is distracted.

In Iowa, according to the Stay Alive: Dont Phone and Drive coalition, the number of crashes involving distracted driving increased 66 percent from 659 in 2010 to 1,100 in 2015, injuries increased more than 100 percent from 388 to 601 and fatalities increased from four to 14.

The total number of fatalities increased from 315 in 2013 to 403 last year, according to Iowa Department of Transportation statistics, while the number of arrests for operating while intoxicated dropped by 14 percent from 16,382 to 13,938.

As convincing as the statistics were, lawmakers werent sure how to stop the increase. A bill being proposed by the Department of Public Safety would make texting while driving a primary offense punishable by a $30 fine. It would be a moving violation, so a drivers license could be suspended after a third offense.

It might take a stiffer penalty to convince drivers to put down their phones, said Rep. Gary Worthan, R-Storm Lake, a commercial truck owner-operator.

In my business, its $2,750 for the driver and $11,000 for the owner. First offense, he said. Under federal law, commercial truck drivers may only use hands-free devices.

Lawmakers who voted for that probably would get tarred and feathered, Transportation Committee Chairman Gary Carlson, R-Muscatine, said. However, he plans to continue the conversation.

There seems to be agreement that we need to do something, he said, but theres not unanimity of how to do it. We heard some pretty strong voices today, but not everyone spoke and Im not sure how to read their silence.

Much of the discussion dealt with whether legislation should target cellphones or all distracted driving. Legislators shared anecdotes about drivers they have seen not only texting, but reading, applying make-up or holding pets in their arms.

Its early, Carlson said. Well keep talking about it and Im sure whatever we do will be a compromise.
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A cookie is a small text file that a website saves on your computer or mobile device when you visit the site. Cookies are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.Website use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google, Inc. ("Google") to help analyse the use of this website. For this purpose, Google Analytics uses"cookies", which are text files placed on your computer.The information generated by the cookies about your use of this website - standard internet log information (including your IP address) and visitor behaviour information in an anonymous form - will be transmitted to and stored by Google including on servers in the United States. Google will anonymize the information sent by removing the last octet of your IP address prior to its storage.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the website and compiling reports on website activity.We not use, and not allow any third party to use the statistical analytics tool to track or to collect any personally identifiable information of visitors to this site. Google may transfer the information collected by Google Analytics to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google`s behalf.According to Google Analytics terms of service, Google will not associate your IP address with any other data held by Google.You may refuse the use of Google Analytics cookies by downloading and installing Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The add-on communicates with the Google Analytics JavaScript (ga.js) to indicate that information about the website visit should not be sent to Google Analytics.Cookies are also used to record if you have agreed (or not) to our use of cookies on this site, so that you are not asked the question every time you visit the site.You can control and/or delete cookies as you wish. You can delete all cookies that are already on your computer and you can set most browsers to prevent them from being placed.Most browsers allow you to:If you chose to delete cookies, you should be aware that any preferences will be lost. Also, if you block cookies completely many websites (including ours) will not work properly and webcasts will not work at all. For these reasons, we do not recommend turning cookies off when using our webcasting services.
We Need Diverse Books announced in Minneapolis during this years annual gathering of booksellers at Winter Institute that nominations are now open for its inaugural Bookseller of the Year Award, which honors a bookstore or an individual bookseller for best exemplifying WNDBs mission to promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people" through the combination of the store's inventory, events, newsletters and social media, book displays, and personal interactions with customers.

The recipient of the annual award will receive one years custody of WNDBs Bookseller of the Year trophy, featuring the art of illustrator LeUyen Pham, and $500. The inaugural award and trophy will be presented at the 2018 WNDB Walter Awards ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. WNDB will also sponsor an event at the winning bookstore with contributors to Flying Lessons, an anthology of essays by multicultural authors edited by WNDB founder Ellen Oh, three Gold Member subscriptions to WNDBs soon-to-be-launched OurStory app providing access to 1,200 curated titles with diverse themes and characters, and other WNDB swag.

The deadline for nominations is October 1, 2017; nominations by industry professionals as well as by bookstore customers can be submitted electronically at www.weneeddiversebooks.org/bookseller.
Vivek Shanbhag, trans. from the Kannada by Srinath Perur. Penguin, $16 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-0-14-311168-9

It is one of the strengths of families to pretend that they desire what is unavoidable. For the unnamed narrator at the heart of this concise and mesmerizing novel, what is unavoidable for his family is their fraught commitment to one another, remaining together even though (or because) its this very solidarity that sends everyone else away. Set in Bangalore, the family members situation reflects that of 21st-century India itself, as they are intoxicated by and slightly unprepared for the surge of wealth in which they find themselves. The narrator is a tenuously married young man, whose uncle has started a spice business, altering almost overnight what had been the modest, hand-to-mouth existence their family had previously known. And yet when the family moves to a new home, the narrators mother is unnerved by the size of the kitchen, his sister rushes into a ridiculously opulent wedding only to find herself miserable with the groom, and the narrator himself becomes aimless, spending his days at a coffee shop, once he realizes that he earns the same salary whether he accomplishes anything or not. Day-to-day, the family members drink tea, share meals, and watch one anothers every move. Shanbhag has been a prolific writer in his native South Indian language of Kannada for decades, but this firecracker of a novel is the first of his work to be translated into English. Absorbing, insightful, and altogether a wonderful read.
CHICAGO (AP)  A Chicago-area doctor is back in the U.S. after being barred from re-entering the country for several days by President Donald Trump's executive order on immigration.

Dr. Amer Al Homssi is a Syrian citizen who on Jan. 18 traveled to the United Arab Emirates where he is a legal resident to get married. However, when he tried to return to Chicago on Sunday, he was told his visa had been canceled.

Al Homssi on Thursday told supporters he was happy to back. He said without their support, which he learned of through social media, he wouldn't have had hope of getting back into the U.S.

Attorneys for the internal medicine resident say federal authorities acknowledged Wednesday Al Homssi shouldn't have been barred from the country based on the president's executive order.
MOLINE  It is too early to tell if the moves by the Trump administration to prevent terrorism will be effective, Professor Dean Alexander of Western Illinois University told the 55 in attendance at a terrorism question-and-answer session.

"Terrorism Challenges Facing the Trump Administration and Prospective Counter Terrorism Responses" was held Thursday night at the Moline Public Library, 3210 41st St.

Mr. Alexander, the director of the Homeland Security Research Program at Western Illinois University, led the discussion. He also had an article of the same title published on securitymagazine.com and is the co-author of the 2015 book "The Islamic State: Combating the Caliphate Without Borders."

The recent move by the Trump administration to ban foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. was a hot topic during the question-and-answer portion.

"There has been this notion that as a result of this ban it will be easier for the radicals to entice other individuals," Mr. Alexander said. "That might be the case, but they were already doing it without it. The notion that oh that just because of this change in policy all of a sudden they are now going to say 'I want to kill people,' it may aggravate, but they were already on that path."

One concern the professor brought up was some terrorists have developed skill sets over the years that have made acts of terror more effective, in particular the quality of bombs being used.

Mr. Alexander also noted that for the past three-plus years, the U.S. government has aggressively focused on creating some "off-ramps" for those who might want to carry out an act of terror.

"There is some question about whether countering violent extremism will be used more aggressively in the incoming administration," Mr. Alexander said. "CVE has been utilized with mixed success globally."

Those acting on terrorism are not operating in a vacuum, he said.

"They have friends; they have families; they have co-workers," Mr. Alexander said.

One attendee asked what do citizens of the Quad-Cities need to be concerned about with regards to terrorism.

"If you look at the Harvard Law Center, they have a list of different hate groups, that are located in Illinois or Iowa; they also have a list of quote-unquote patriot groups," Prof. Alexander said. "Some of these people are transversing borders, some have been long situated in communities, and some are new arrivals."

Another attendee questioned whether vetting those coming to the U.S. from foreign countries truly works.

"Part of the challenge with vetting is in war zones, you don't necessarily have any data," Mr. Alexander said.
DES MOINES  The GOP-led Iowa Senate voted Thursday to earmark about $3 million in state money to fund womens health-care clinics that do not offer abortion.

Opponents claimed the change would result in more unplanned pregnancies and fewer services in a political move to target Planned Parenthood.

Senate File 2, which passed 30-20, would discontinue a federal Medicaid waiver on July 1 that provides millions of dollars in funding to family planning providers across the state. The 29 co-sponsoring Republicans voted for the bill along with independent Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan, while 20 Democrats opposed it.

Proponents of the bill that now goes to the Iowa House for likely passage and has Gov. Terry Branstads support would create a new state-funded program that would exclude facilities that provide abortions from receiving the funds. To cover the new program, the state would shift money from a federal block grant that pays for child and family services.

This bill will not eliminate family planning funding for services for needy Iowa women. This bill does not change laws regarding abortion, said Sen. Amy Sinclair, R-Allerton, the bills floor manager.

Its a measured attempt to balance the reproductive health-care needs of Iowas working poor with the objections of the taxpayers to tangibly subsidize that option through public support in shared facilities, she added, noting that some Medicaid and teen pregnancy/sex education programs would not be affected.

More than 12,000 Iowans received services through the federal waiver program, including Pap smears, birth control and cancer screenings. No state or federal dollars are used to fund abortions.

Minority Democrats charged the bill guts Iowas Family Planning Network, a program that they said has helped more than 80,000 Iowa women and men access family planning services since 2006.

Ive never seen such a horrible bill come before this chamber. This bill is taking us back to the Middle Ages, said Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines.

We know the Iowa Family Planning Waiver works. It has helped reduce abortions and Medicaid costs in Iowa, said Sen. Janet Petersen, D-Des Moines.

This bill is bad for Iowa women and families. It will create more unintended pregnancies, more high risk pregnancies, and cost Iowa taxpayers more. Iowans dont support it. Doctors warn against it. We should listen to them and reject it, she added.

During a sometimes rancorous debate that spanned nearly three hours, Democrats contended the legislation action was a rushed political response to fulfill GOP campaign promises to defund Planned Parenthood of the Heartland at the expense of Iowa women without a clearly defined program and funding stream to replace it.

Republicans agreed that it was a pro-life priority but said Planned Parenthoods operations would not be affected because they would be free to continue operating their clinics in Iowa minus any taxpayer funding.

Our debate in this room affects real Iowans who are receiving real services today. Our focus needs to be on those Iowans and our responsibility to them, said Sen. Nate Boulton, D-Des Moines. What we are doing here is harming a working system based on old political battle lines and Iowa women are going to receive less access to health care as a result.

Boultons comments that included references to the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court abortion ruling drew a pointed response from Sinclair, who told him, I dont know how old you are but your mom could have chosen for you to not to be here.

Democrats immediately objected and Sinclair retracted the statement and apologized to Boulton and his mother after a brief meeting of senators with Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, to cool things down in the Senate well.

Earlier during the debate, Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, took Democrats to task, telling his Senate colleagues I am so ashamed of the tone of this debate -- catty, accusatory and argumentative. Come on, we can do better than that.

Wearing a hospital gown, Gina Mostafa stood on the Capitol staircase outside the Senate chambers representing thousands of Iowans that could lose their access to family planning if Senate File 2 becomes law.

Despite the election outcome that favored lawmakers opposed to funding abortion providers, Mostafa, a sophomore from Bettendorf at the University of Iowa where she is co-president of Student Advocates for Planned Parenthood, said she and others will not give up their fight because agencys services are vital for control over own lives and our own bodies.

At times in my life when I was ready to make choices about my own body and health care I knew I could turn to Planned Parenthood for compassionate and non-judgmental health care, said Mostafa, who described herself as a past, current and future client of Planned Parenthood.

Rachel Lopez, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Midwest, issue a statement after the Senate vote saying the legislation would endanger the health of thousands of Iowans by limiting their access to vital services.

The Republican lawmakers who continue to advance this bill should be ashamed of themselves. They are playing political games, with the lives of low-income Iowans at stake, said Lopez.

After the vote, Bob Vander Plaats of the pro-life Family Leader organization sent an email to his members urging them to thank the senators who endured very tough debate and helped pass the bill Thursday. Also, please continue to pray for and contact your Iowa representative regarding supporting the God-given right to life of babies in the womb, he added.
The Rock Island Police Department has begun an outreach program meant to inform the public as well as to build bridges between members of that public and the officers who serve and protect.

Meetings are held on the third Wednesday of each month at the Community Room at RIPD, now located at 1212 5th Ave.

At the Jan.18 meeting, two human officers and two canine officers were put through their paces.

Chief Jeff Venhuizen welcomed questions during and after the presentation. It was both informative and reassuring to know that modern policing makes use of many resources to keep us safe.

Our police force cannot be everywhere at once. I encourage people to bring their friends and neighbors to these meetings. Everyone benefits from such a dialogue!

Law Enforcement members in America are under great stress at present. Show your support and thanks for RIPD members attention to duty. Attend the February meeting!

Caryl Altemus,

Rock Island
Donald Trump's wise and humanitarian move to reinstate the Reagan-era "Mexico City policy," which prohibits U.S. foreign-aid dollars from going to non-government organizations that perform or provide referrals for abortions, has incited a torrent of liberal outrage.

Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire seethed that the edict "(favors) ideological politics over women and families." Yet she favors a policy that requires Americans to fund activities they find morally offensive. So much for "pro-choice."

The restoration of the Mexico City policy is a great start, but Trump should take a much bolder step: Stop all non-emergency foreign aid now. Virtually every poll of the last two decades shows that voters hate foreign aid, for good reason. The programs don't work to bring development to Nigeria or Mexico City anymore than domestic-aid programs have revived inner-city Detroit or Milwaukee.

Why are American taxpayers funding birth control or, for that matter, any overseas family-planning programs in foreign countries? We can't even afford our own government health programs, yet we are supposed to fund condom-distribution programs in Asia and Africa?

Foreign aid, when including military aid, costs up to $50 billion a year. Liberals say this is a trivial amount given that the entire federal budget exceeds $4 trillion. How is $500 billion over a decade trivial?

One of the world's experts on foreign aid is William Easterly, an economist at New York University. He has noted that the developed countries could save as many as 5 million deaths from malaria and other preventable infectious diseases at a cost of less than $5 per life saved. This would simply require bed netting and cheap medicines. But it doesn't happen.

Meanwhile, Easterly notes, the Western world spent almost 25 times this amount -- over $2 trillion from 1950 to 2000 -- on foreign aid. And what did it buy for all this spending? As Easterly puts it: "The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families." This is almost an inhumanely irresponsible misallocation of taxpayer dollars.

Or think about this: According to the Cato Institute, "Since the 1960s, sub-Saharan Africa has received nearly $500 billion in aid, yet the region has become poorer in the past several decades." The Cato Institute's analysis found that aid spending in Africa is negatively correlated with development.

Why do these programs so tragically fail? One reason is that the money flows through organizations and advocacy groups that are often hostile to free enterprise. Government bureaucrats are the problem, not the solution, in poor nations. They are corrupt and intercept money and spend it on themselves. The West put tens of billions of dollars behind Millennium Development Grants to try to bring economic development to the former Soviet Union nations, but the aid had almost no effect in bringing prosperity.

Just as the welfare state here at home has created cycles of poverty in families, aid abroad fosters dependency, not self-sufficiency. Local initiatives don't take shape, because the attitude is that the foreigners will take care of the busted pipe or the downed power lines.

How did India and China and other Asian Tiger nations develop so quickly? As the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom points out, they moved to free-market economics at a rapid pace and shed governmental controls. To paraphrase Heritage Foundation economist Anthony Kim: These nations privatized state-owned enterprises, encouraged entrepreneurship and cut taxes and red tape.

America should be exporting sound economic ideas -- free-market capitalism -- not taxpayer dollars. It's time to stop funding the vast foreign-aid empire that has gotten rich off of other people's misery.

If the returns for certain aid programs are as positive for women across the globe as Sen. Shaheen and others think they are, then surely there are millionaire donors who will pick up the tab for groups such as Planned Parenthood. But let's see if any of these programs can pass a market test and persuade charitable donors to fund their activities. The left would rather lobby Congress. Maybe that is because there is no real value -- and these programs do more harm than good.

The best way to promote prosperity abroad is to fix America's problems first. Then we can serve as a beacon of freedom and opportunity for nations around the globe. If we lead, the rest of the world will follow.
"These tournaments are about getting better and building into the big game, so we'd like to think that we'll see more improvement tomorrow," Gardiner said.

20 minutes ago
CAMANCHE | Police are investigating the death of a 22-year-old man who was found shot on the street of a small town in eastern Iowa.

An autopsy was scheduled Thursday on the body of Nicholas Jordan Luskey.

Police in Camanche say they received a call Wednesday of shots fired in a residential neighborhood. Officers found Luskey lying near a vehicle with an apparent gunshot wound to the chest.

Investigators didn't release any information about who is suspected of shooting Luskey.

In a statement, the Division of Criminal Investigation said the shooting was believed to be "an isolated incident" and that the public isn't in danger.

Many friends took to Facebook to share memories of Luskey.
C3 is the largest work package and will interface with many of the other work packages. It includes the design, construction and system testing and commissioning of the majority of the stations and tunnels, while working with the C7 contractor, which covers systems, integration, testing and commissioning, which is responsible for fire and life safety, tunnel ventilation and fire engineering, track, electrification, communications and signalling, systems engineering and achieving operational readiness.

C3 includes the construction of two stations. Aotea station will be built using cut and cover construction, and will be 15m deep and 300m long. Karangahape Road station will be 32m deep and will have 150m-long platforms. Twin-bored 7m- diameter tunnels will link Mount Eden station and the southern end of Aotea station. C3 also includes station maintenance and cleaning.

City Rail Link will extend Aucklands commuter rail network beyond the existing city centre terminal at Britomart, which will become a through station, to connect with the Western Line at Mount Eden which will be redeveloped. The underground link will be 3.4km long and up to 42m below the city centre streets.

Construction of the early works package on Albert Street and at Britomart started in December 2015 and June 2016 respectively. Expressions of Interest were sought in January for the design, procurement, installation and commissioning of all tunnel track work and rail systems between Britomart and the Western Line at Mount Eden. The main works are expected to start in 2017-18, with completion in 2023-24.

For detailed data on rail projects globally, subscribe to IRJ Pro.
The first part of the contract covered the supply of 12 Citadis trams which will enter service at the end of April this year.

CTS is expanding its fleets in readiness for the extension of Line A to Illkirch-Graffenstaden and the opening of the cross-border line linking Strasbourg to Kehl, Germany.

The first technical and gauge tests on the German section of Line D began on February 3 with the new Citadis trams. These vehicles will be cerified to by German federal BoStrab standards which govern the manufacture and operation of trams in Germany.

The 45m-long LRVs will have a capacity for 288 passengers and will be fitted with LED lighting and full glass doors. The trams are fitted with accessible buttons for opening doors, wider seats and zones reserved for wheelchair users and pushchairs.

For detailed data on LRV orders around the globe, subscribe to IRJ Pro.
Freight car demand weakened in 2016 as lackluster economic and industrial activities as well as sluggish economies abroad dampened commodity flows and intermodal movements, according to the most recent market analysis conducted by Economic Planning Associates.

After two consecutive years of strong growth, 2016 annual deliveries amounted to 62,433 cars and intermodal platforms, a 24.1% drop from the 82,296 units that were assembled in 2015, noted EPA principle Peter Toja. More significantly, orders last year amounted to only 22,684 railcars, approximately 56% below the previous year. As a result, backlogs dropped from 111,000 at the beginning of 2016 to 66,700 units at the end of the year. Thus, carbuilders are beginning 2017 with backlogs that represent only 4.47 quarters of production at the current rate of assemblies.

2016 was a difficult year for the railroads, primarily due to a sharp decline in commodity movements and a modest easing in intermodal traffic, Toja said. Among the major commodity categories, only grain, chemicals, motor vehicles, coke, and scrap scored year-over-year gains. All other categories declined, with the most significant drops occurring in coal (-20.1%) and petroleum (-21.4%). And, railroad financial performances reflected the poor traffic environment, with BNSF, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, CN and Canadian Pacific indicating relatively weak revenues last year. As a result, 2017 capital spending plans among the railroads have been downgraded.

Yet, says Toja, growth may be on the horizon. We expect that stronger commodity growth trends over the forecast horizon will enhance traffic and profitability, leading once again to increased capital outlays, including the purchases of locomotives and rolling stock, he said. President Trump has already implemented procedures to ease regulations in the energy sector. In his first 100-day action plan, he said he would save the coal industry and other industries threatened by the extremist agenda of the previous Administration. At the heart of the anticipated revival in coal demand will be a reversal of the Clean Power Plan, which has been a major impediment to coal activities.*

As to the foreseeable future, due to the strength in boxcars, hi-cube covered hoppers, and mid-sized hoppers, our 2017 estimate of total railcar deliveries edged up from 41,000 cars to 43,000 cars, Toja said. However, weaknesses in tank cars, coal cars, flat cars, and mill gons will serve to keep 2018 assemblies flat at 42,500 cars. Longer term, railcar deliveries will expand from 46,300 in 2019 to 53,500 in 2021.

*(Editors note: The drop in coal traffic is largely attributable to the low cost of natural gas, which has replaced coal at a significant number of electricity generation plants, not to the Obama Administrations Clean Power Plan and related environmental policies and efforts to reduce human-activity-generated greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. And global warming is not a concept . . . created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive, as Trump has asserted.)
Interim MTA Executive Director Ronnie Hakim on Feb. 2 named Darryl C. Irick Acting President of MTA New York City Transit (NYCT).

Irick, the current NYCT Senior Vice President-Department of Buses and President of MTA Bus Company, steps in for Hakim at NYCT while a nationwide search takes place for a permanent MTA Chairman and CEO. Current MTA Vice-Chairman Fernando Ferrer is serving as Interim Board Chairman. Thomas F. Prendergast, Railway Ages 2017 Railroader of the Year, retired Feb. 1 after 25 years at the MTA. A seven-member committee is tasked with finding and recommending candidates to New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to replace Prendergast.

Irick joined the MTA in 1986 as a bus operator at the Kingsbridge Depot in Manhattan, moving to progressively senior positions in operations and planning. His father also was a NYCT bus operator and maintainer. He was named to his current post in 2011.

The MTA said Irick views the delivery of services as a business model and has overseen improvements such as Select Bus Service, security cameras on buses and the rollout of MTA Bus Time and GPS tracking, which provides real-time bus location information. As part of the MTAs ongoing commitment to improving safety across all agencies, he is currently overseeing the installation and testing of pedestrian turn warning and collision avoidance systems. Under his leadership, his team devised new approaches to winter storm response with the creation of an Incident Command Center resulting in a much improved, coordinated and efficient delivery of service and customer information during inclement weather.

I rely daily on Darryl for his judgment, advice and incredible depth of knowledge, Hakim said. AI know with Darryl leading NYCT, I can focus on the broad mission at hand: assuring the entire MTA network provides the service our customers deserve while we search for a permanent Chairman.

It is a great honor to be asked to lead New York City Transit, an agency that has been part of my family and my life for as long as I can remember, Irick said. I look forward to working with my colleagues at NYCT to face the challenges ahead as we work together to provide our customers with safe, reliable service.
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Discovery Networks is adding 16 Southeast Asia productions to both its flagship channel and TLC this year, as part of its commitment to invest in local content.





The Asia Pacific division of the US broadcaster has collaborated with local producers to co-create content to appeal to audiences in Southeast Asia.Firstly, Frontier Borneo showcases Borneos tropical landscape and rich biodiversity. The series is produced by Beach House Pictures and Kyanite TV, with the support of the Info-communications Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Perbadan Kemajuan Filem Nasional Malaysia (FINAS).Also from Malaysia is Matavia Rekas Surviving Borneo, a series following local TV host Henry Golding, who embarks on a journey to discover his roots as a descendant of the once feared Iban tribe of Sarawak.Other locally produced programmes include You Have Been Warned Asia by Jesuit Communications Foundation and Montero Productions Worst Vacation Ever starring Filipino celebrity brothers KC and Troy Montero. Oz Chanarat, aka Bangkok Hooker, embarks on a series of wild fishing adventures in Thailand, produced by Singapores InFocus Asia.Produced by Endemol Shine Group, the Asian version of the global hit franchise Say Yes to the Dress will bring the diversity of Asian weddings to TLC. While the relationship of businessman, car connoisseur, and transgender woman Angelina Mead King and her model-host wife Joey Mead King is the focus of The Kings, also for TLC, from Active TV.Finally, a series of short films under the banner JumpCut Asia will bring together heart-warming and surprising stories from Southeast Asia on Discovery s digital platforms.Based on data-driven insights, we understand the power of telling home-grown stories. In 2017, we are taking the lead and investing in more local content than ever before, bolstering our flagship channels and broadening the appeal for the millennial generation, said Rohit Tharani, director of content curation, Discovery Southeast Asia.We are well positioned to take risks and be experimental with the content we are curating across platforms. This presents a unique opportunity to deepen our connection with existing and new audiences across Southeast Asia.
Little more than a day after pulling its station feeds from Charter Communications, Hispanic broadcaster Univision has been ordered by a judge to restore them.





Univision sued Charter in July after its $80 billion mega-merger with Time Warner Cable  Charter began paying the grandfathered rate that TWC had paid, which was lower than what Charters original footprint had contracted for. TWC had 11 million video customers, so it paid a smaller per-station rate compared to Charters 4.1 million because of volume discounts, essentially.Amid the legal squabbles, the two have been negotiating for months, until Univision, claiming a deadlock, pulled its feeds on Wednesday. However, a judge has issued a temporary restraining to Charter for seven days.This order only lasts until 9 February, when the judge permanently assigned to the litigation is back in court, Univision said in a statement. For the seven-day period that it is receiving Univisions services, Charter Spectrum will be required to post a bond covering the actual market value of Univisions programming, rather than the inadequate rates that Charter Spectrum has been paying.Univision is the largest Spanish language broadcaster in the US, with about 23 stations across the country. It reaches 2.5 million Hispanics on Charters system, and says that Charter has a public obligation to provide for its carriage.Charter has an obligation to its customers to provide them with access to content that is in-language and in-culture, which is vitally important during these politically volatile times, Univision said. This is part of a continuing fight against mega mergers to ensure that there are diverse voices and opportunities for minorities in the media marketplace. Univisions top priority remains steadfast: providing critical news and information to empower and serve the Hispanic community. We are ready to resume good faith negotiations immediately and hope Charter will do what is right for its Hispanic customers.
Russian government approves bill on asset seizure upon foreign courts request

MOSCOW, February 3 (RAPSI)  Russias government has approved a bill on forfeiture of assets upon the request of foreign courts, the Cabinets official website announced on Friday.

The bill is to be submitted to the State Duma, according to the statement.

Amendments would establish the procedure of recognizing and execution of foreign courts judgments on seizure of assets in Russia obtained by criminal means.

The bill, among other matters, stipulates the jurisdiction of foreign authorities requests for recognition of court rulings and determines agencies and persons authorized to participate in relevant court hearings.

The draft law also fixes grounds for refusal to fulfill such requests.

Earlier, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that legislation amendments concerning execution of foreign courts judgments on forfeiture of assets and proceeds of crime would enhance combatting corruption and cross-border criminality.
Council of Europe launches search engine to follow execution of ECHR judgments

MOSCOW, February 3 (RAPSI)  A new search engine which aims to make process of execution of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) more transparent was launched by the Council of Europe, according to the Councils Friday statement.

Based on the existing search engine of the ECHR, new system uses a single unified interface and provides access to relevant information and documentation in all cases pending before the Committee of Ministers. The Committee is responsible for monitoring implemented of ECHR rulings as well as publication of corresponding reports.

As of today, 3844 cases are listed as appeals filed against Russia. According to the Committee, Russia was on a third place, behind Italy and Turkey, regarding the amount of unimplemented ECHR rulings. In fact, Russia exhibited a negative trend with amount of unimplemented rulings rising by 5% in 2015.

At the end of 2015, Russia's Constitutional Court was granted the right to recognize decisions of international courts, including Strasbourg based European Court of Human Rights, as non-executable. The legislation was developed taking into account the respective Constitutional Courts ruling establishing that each case of the ECHR decision implementation should be reviewed individually and these decisions should be executed only on the principle of supremacy of the Russian Constitution.

The Council of Europe expressed its concern with the ruling of the Constitutional Court, especially after January 19 ruling of the latter, allowing Russia not to pay 1.9 billion compensation awarded to former Yukos shareholders by ECHR. According to the Court, the ECHR ruling contravenes the Russian Constitution.
CLEAR LAKE  Winter Dance Party crowds paid tribute to Tommy Allsup Thursday at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake.

Austin Allsup, 32, of Fort Worth, took the stage in place of his father, who died at 85 Jan. 11, and was originally scheduled to perform this weekend.

Its obviously an honor with the event itself, the historical importance, the personal value that I take with this venue and with my dad, Austin said. Its very bittersweet because the reason Im here is because of my dad.

Austin covered some of his fathers favorites, some Buddy Holly originals and more for the concert.

That room ... theres something very special about that room and it feels magical up on that stage, Austin said. Im very humbled to be here today and I hope that I can come every year, it would mean a lot to me to do that.

Tommy was the original guitarist for the 1959 Winter Dance Party, part of Buddy Hollys band. He was scheduled to perform Thursday.

Its been 58 years since the plane crash claimed the lives of Holly, Ritchie Valens, J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson and pilot Roger Peterson. Popular legend has it that Tommy flipped a coin with Valens to see who between them would get a seat on the plane.

Austin was able to meet Valens' sister, Connie, who emailed him after his father's death offering her sympathies. They met for the first time at the funeral.

I told Connie Valens that now Ritchie and dad can finally finish the tour they started all those years ago with Buddy, Austin said. Theyre jammin and talking about all the stuff that dad got to do and they didnt get to do because they had to go home early. It was really neat.

In the years following, Tommy became a frequent performer at the Winter Dance Party.

For me, I can kind of find comfort and peace in knowing how loved he was by everybody, Austin said.

This was Austins first time performing at the Surf but not his first visit.

I visited here back when I was 19, with my dad, Austin said. He was doing a separate tour and we just stopped in, he wanted to show me the building. It was closed, he called somebody and they came and opened it up for us.

At the time, Austin remembers, it was freezing and he worried that it would be very cold this time.

It was snowing, it was like negative-something crazy degrees, Austin said. Dad loved it up here.

Austin gathered up plenty of memorabilia from the Surf gift shop Thursday. He walked through the museum wearing a Surf Ballroom jacket, finding several photos of his father.

Thats awesome, Austin said, taking a picture with his phone of a large photo on canvas of his father performing. Thats my dad, in the middle with the hat on!

Austin competed on "The Voice last year, a TV singing competition, where he made it to the top 10.

My dad got to come out and be part of that which was very exciting, Austin said. Thats the last time he got to spend some time with his grandkids. That was real special for him to come and be part of that with us.
The prestigious Mobile World Congress is on the threshold to a dazzling start in Barcelona, and one of the most upscale releases is the launch of LG G6. The more we draw closer to the main event, the more leaks we come across, and there is certainly no less. In the latest leak, a G6 prototype has surfaced.

1 of 3

By the looks of it, this replica is unlikely to be LG G6, as it has a semi-finished back panel, which is in contrast to the recent reports that the device has a metal unibody design. However, the positions of the dual rear camera and fingerprint sensor are same as anticipated.

The USB Type-C port, a mono speaker, and a microphone hole are found at the bottom of the device, while there is nothing on the front panel, as the display has occupied most of the space. There are also minimal bezels as showcased by the prototype. LG G6 is expected to come with Qualcomms Snapdragon 821 SoC, a 5.7-inch QHD Display with a resolution of 28801440 pixels, and maybe even the Google Assistant built-in.

Source | Via
Detroit is Americas poorest big city and its children are the biggest victims. According to the National Kids Count report by the Anne E. Casey Foundation, 59 percent of Detroit children are living in poverty. In 2014, more than 80 percent of the children born in Detroit were to unmarried mothers. The problems of educating such a high percentage of at-risk children would be difficult for even the best-run public school system. Sadly, the children of Detroit are served by a severely struggling and compromised K-12 system dominated by a teachers' union that is concerned first and foremost with feathering its own nest.

In a sign of just how much corruption exists inside the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) system, 12 principals were convicted last year of federal bribery charges for a kickback scheme with a school supplier vendor that robbed Detroits kids of $12 million. I shudder with sheer anguish over this. So many children and young adults were robbed of resources that were intended for their benefit but instead enriched the very adults entrusted to prepare them for a better future.

As a former teacher and creator of highly-specialized educational programs for adjudicated, delinquent and abused youth, then as an educator-business leader who worked directly with Detroit Empowered School principals and local leadership councils (from 1991 through 1994), I was fortunate enough to work with many of the citys earliest charter school founders. Those first courageous pioneers risked everything to create better opportunities for Detroits children. They are the unspoken heroes of the past 25 years, able to move forward because of the quiet, persistent and out-of-the-spotlight work of another hero  Betsy DeVos.

DeVos, Donald Trumps nominee for education secretary, has fought valiantly against union bosses and the political leadership in Detroit that continues to make excuses for failure and incompetence. DeVos has advocated passionately for school choice in order to give children trapped in failing schools a chance to learn and develop skills to find meaningful jobs.

Predictably, the defenders of a broken DPS have attempted to blame DeVos for the citys failure to educate kids. Much of the teachers' union ammunition currently finding its way into the national media coverage of the DeVos nomination is the handiwork of Stephen Henderson, the Detroit Free Presss liberal editorial page editor. Henderson has cherry picked data to discredit the enormous contributions that DeVos has made in education. But where has Henderson decided to send his own children to school? The Henderson kids attend a high-performing charter school that wouldnt be available to them were it not for the efforts of DeVos, who spearheaded the Michigan law that authorized it.

Like Henderson and scores of other elites in the city, Detroits parents are voting with their feet and abandoning the failing DPS. Today, more than 50 percent of Detroit kids attend a charter school. Heres why:

According to the results of the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, the states standardized test, Detroits charter school students are outperforming their counterparts in traditional public schools in math, English language arts, science and social studies. Furthermore, 80 percent of the citys highest performing math schools are charter schools and 84 percent of Detroits best schools for English language arts are also charters. And research conducted by Stanford University found that Detroit kids in charter schools are obtaining the equivalent of three months of additional learning each school year in comparison to DPS students.

The teachers' unions and education establishment have also claimed that DeVos is opposed to accountability measures for charter schools in Detroit. Nothing could be further from the truth. DeVos proudly defeated a teachers' union-supported scheme to give the Detroit mayor the power to arbitrarily shut down charter schools to stop the hemorrhaging of students from the citys failed public schools. But DeVoss attackers fail to acknowledge the fact that she then successfully advocated for passage of a new Michigan law that gives every Detroit public school and charter school an A-F grade. Schools receiving a failing grade for three consecutive years would be shut down.

The gains in student achievement driven by charter schools in Detroit have been replicated around the nation and in other large urban school districts such as New York City and Washington, D.C., where demand for these schools is high because parents are yearning for better educations for their children. In New York, more than 40,000 kids are on waiting lists for charter schools and in Washington there are nearly 9,000 families on waiting lists. DeVos has stood shoulder to shoulder with these families.

The reason the teachers' unions and education establishment are lying about DeVos is simple. They know she is a game-changing education reformer. DeVos is a fierce advocate for the interests of children, especially at-risk kids that are too often left behind by failing public schools. Thanks to DeVos, hundreds of thousands of children in every corner of the nation have gained access to better schools and a brighter future.

As secretary of education, DeVos will always put the interests of children first. She will help raise the bar on education, give parents a larger voice in their child's education and hold our K-12 schools accountable for doing a better job of preparing the next generation to succeed in the modern economy.

Dr. Anna Amato is the President and CEO of edtec central, a charter school organization serving the Detroit metropolitan area
(This account of the wholesale destruction of Manila and its people is based on affidavits of victims and eyewitnesses of Japanese atrocities. Their testimony was collected by U. S. forces which liberated Manila. The affidavits were contained in a report made to the War Department by the Commander-in-Chief of the Southwest Pacific Area. For the sake of brevity, the actual wording of the original affidavits has been in most cases condensed, but the stark facts are exactly as related under oath. For security reasons, many of the persons making affidavits must remain unidentified.)

Manila has been destroyed. The once proud city of the Far East is dead. Its churches, convents, and universities are piles of rubble, bombed and burned beyond recognition. Its civilian population have been raped and burned, starved and murdered, its women mutilated, its babies bayoneted.

The order that brought this about came directly from Tokyo. Reliable evidence based on interrogation of prisoners of war, military personnel, Philippine officials and civilians, and Japanese documents reveals the staggering fact that the Sack of Manila and its attendant horrors were not the act of a crazed garrison in a last-ditch, berserk defense, but the coldly planned purpose of the Japanese high command.

Early in December, 1944, the puppet President Laurel, made a futile attempt to have Manila declared an open city. General Yamashita made a vague promise and even drafted plans for that possibility, then flew to Tokyo. But on his return, he moved his headquarters and the puppet government to Baguio. From that date, accelerated defense preparations in Manila forecasted its doom.
MASON CITY | An anti-Trump policy demonstration, sponsored by the 4th District chapter of the Green Party, will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday in front of City Hall in Mason City.

Green Party spokespersons, in a news release, said the peaceful demonstration is in response to recent "unconstitutional and mean spirited executive orders against both legal and illegal immigrants."

The press release says the Green Party seeks dialogue with community leaders requesting that the city "will in no way help Mr. Trump carry out his illegal immigration practices."
President Donald Trump discussed mutual cooperation in defeating ISIS with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a phone call Saturday, according to an official readout from the White House. That the pair discussed working together to defeat the scourge of terrorism garnered little news coverage  but indicates a potentially significant realignment of U.S. foreign policy.
And if Europe comes undone, France will come undone too.Vincent Peillon, former French Socialist presidential candidates campaign manifesto

With all due respect to Mr. Peillon, it is the other way around: If France comes undone, Europe comes undone.

For France, 2016 was, without a doubt, an incredibly difficult year. Tragic terrorist events and a deep sense of malaise weighed heavily on the country, as well as President Francois Hollandes incredibly low popularity (it hovers around 3 percent), fueling feelings of rejection of elites, the political system, and an interconnected world in general. An ongoing state of emergency since November 2015, as well as anger and frustration against the government, were compounded by a barely noticeable economic recovery: French gross domestic product (GDP) grew by only 0.2 percent in the third quarter compared to the three previous months (1.1 percent year-on-year) after a -0.1 percent dip in the second quarter; unemployment hovers around 10 percent (a 0.1 percent increase compared to the second quarter); and the budget deficit is still above the 3 percent of GDP (projected to be 3.3 percent in 2016), a requirement of the increasingly ignored EU Stability and Growth Pact. It is against this backdrop that the race for Frances next president begins with the first round slated for April 23 and the decisive second round on May 7.



It goes without saying that the forces of opposition in France have been substantially bolstered. On the right, Les Republicains (LR) have selected former prime minister Francois Fillon as their presidential candidate in a surprising primary where he defeated centrist frontrunner Alain Juppe and his former boss, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Fillons economic platform is traditional center-right: a 100 billion reduction in public spending over five years, tax cuts worth about 40 billion for businesses, and raising the retirement age to 65. He also plans to do away with Frances sacrosanct 35-hour work week, both in the private and public sectors. LR maintains a practical and pragmatic approach toward the European Union and recognizes the need for France to implement reforms to become a stronger counterpart to Germany on the European stage. Yet his foreign and security policy, as well as social agenda, are strongly conservative as he campaigns for more positive relations with Russia, increased spending on internal security, and socially conservative causes such as repealing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adoption.



Fillons victory symbolized the elevation of the very conservative and traditional spectrum of the party and an erosion of Frances political center. Fillons views are now more closely aligned with the more extreme and populist tendencies and discourse represented by the far-right National Front (FN) party and its leader, Marine Le Pen. Because his socially conservative platform appeals to and is viewed in similar light to that of FN voters, Fillons primary victory had the unintended result of disincentivizing Frances left-leaning voters to support Fillon in a hypothetical second presidential round that pits Fillon against Le Pen.



As an establishment candidate, Fillon is not considered a change agent, and his candidacy could be a devastating reminder to the French electorate of the seemingly perpetually scandal- and corruption-plagued center-right party (former president Sarkozy remains under investigation). Although presenting himself as the honest candidate, it was recently reported that Mr. Fillons wife and two children received generous salaries for working in his parliamentary office (Mrs. Fillon received 500,000), although it is unclear what, if any, tangible work his wife and children performed. Known as Penelopegate (Mrs. Fillons first name), these allegations have prompted the public prosecutors office to open a preliminary investigation. Ironically, Fillon argued during his primary that any presidential candidate under active investigation should not be allowed to run. Fillon may have jeopardized his own campaign by announcing in a televised interview that he would withdraw from the race were a judge to conclude that a formal and active investigation is warranted. The scandal has already seen Fillons approval ratings slide by 4 points in a matter of days.



On the far right stands FN, which holds very different views on the European Union and NATO. Although softening her rhetoric recently, Ms. Le Pen has stated that she will hold a French referendum on Frances continued participation in the European monetary union. She also does not support Frances integration into NATOs military command structure (which occurred in 2008), and although she has not officially advocated for France to exit NATO, Le Pen had adopted a wait and see approach regarding possible changes President Donald Trump might take regarding NATO. FN largely rejects globalization, supports stronger ties with Russia, and has repeatedly called for greater trade protectionist measures, similar to the extreme elements of the Socialist and far-left parties. Uncertainty still surrounds the partys full platform, which will be unveiled in February. Although the FN has had strong showings in local elections and has focused on growing its grassroots base, it has struggled to win in runoffs for higher offices and faces ongoing internal divisions between its economic and identity wings.



On the other side of the political spectrum, following its first ever primary and President Hollandes decision to not seek a second term, the candidate who will lead the French Socialist party is the relatively unknown former education minister Benoit Hamon. Hamons victory over former prime minister Manuel Valls is a clear rejection of Hollandes fairly tepid attempts at economic reform and a reaffirmation of the French Socialist partys turn to a more extreme left agenda. Hamon supports a living wage (750 per month, or about $805), a 32-hour work week (even below the current 35-hour work week), and a tax on automationthe robot tax.



Now that both the Socialist party and LR have selected candidates who are at the ideological extremes for both parties, Frances political center is wide open, making way for Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former investment banker and former economics minister, who left the Hollande government in August 2016 to form his own political movement, En Marche or Onward. Macron currently has the highest favorable opinion ratings of all presidential contenders (45 percent), and his campaign rallies have drawn surprisingly large crowds. He has also announced that he would field candidates for all districts in the June legislative elections, which could consolidate his political movement, in an attempt to bring change to a static, two-party system. Macrons political platform has not yet been detailed, but he is perceived as economically liberal and against economic protectionism. He is one of the few European politicians still campaigning on a strongly pro-EU platform.



And now the race begins in earnest to determine the top two candidates in the first round. A poll released on Sunday shows that Le Pen would receive 25 percent of the vote, Macron and Fillon are statistically tied at 21 percent and 22 percent respectively, and Hamon would receive 15 percent in the first round. Far-left party candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon receives 10 percent. Eventssuch as additional terrorist attacks, greater global and European economic uncertainty, and the continued success of populistsover the course of the next three months will shape the electoral picture. Will voters make a decisive break from Frances current political and economic stagnation, or will the slate of candidates dissuade voters from participating in the vote? Which candidate best captures this particular political moment?



Whomever is ultimately selected, he or she will not only determine the future of France but also the future contours of Europe. All eyes are on France as we inch closer to April 23.
On Jan. 28, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the phone. The White House statement about the call was innocuous, describing a 25-minute conversation in which both leaders emphasized the enduring strength and closeness of the US-Australia relationship. Four days later, on Feb. 1, The Washington Post published a different account of the phone call. According to the Post, Trump was both dismissive and hostile toward Australias prime minister and ended the planned hour-long call after only 25 minutes. Who leaked what and why will be grist for the global rumor mill for a few news cycles. The important context to keep in mind is that the U.S.-Australia alliance is extremely important for both countries.

Those familiar with Geopolitical Futures writing already know that Australia needs the United States. Australias economy depends on global trade. Australia does not possess a global naval force capable of protecting maritime trade routes. This means Australia must have a tight relationship with a country that does. For much of Australian history, that was the United Kingdom. Since 1945, it has been the United States. China is by far Australias most important trading relationship  in 2015, 29.6 percent of Australian exports went to China, and 22.8 percent of Australian imports came from China. But a maritime trading relationship is meaningless if the goods cannot get from one country to another. This is the reason Australia needs the U.S.: The U.S. guarantees that maritime trade will move freely.

The less appreciated aspect of this alliance is that the United States also needs Australia. The U.S. is the stronger power of the two, but the relationship is not one-sided. It has been a foundation of U.S. strategy since World War II. The U.S. needed Australia when it fought the Japanese in the Pacific in World War II and during the Cold War to help contain the Soviet Union. The U.S. has called on Australia to commit troops to every war fought by the Americans since 1945, and Australia has answered the call each time, contributing much-needed credibility and support to U.S.-led military engagements. The U.S. and Australia are bound together formally by multiple treaties and share intelligence as part of the Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. The U.S.-Australia alliance is one of the closest security relationships in the world.

The U.S. reliance on Australia will become more acute in the coming years. For much of both countries histories, the Atlantic Ocean was the most important and strategic body of water in the world. This is no longer the case. Trans-Pacific trade has outpaced trans-Atlantic trade since the early 1980s. The second and third largest economies in the world  China and Japan, respectively  are in East Asia. The Strait of Malacca, located at the tip of the Malay Peninsula, is the worlds busiest trade route, with roughly two-thirds of the worlds oil and a third of the worlds bulk cargo transiting to and from the Indian and Pacific oceans. The U.S. holds no sovereign territory in this part of the world  Guam is the closest U.S. territory. U.S. power projection in the Pacific depends on good relationships with U.S. allies  Australia, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines the most important among them. Of these partners, Australia is the most reliable for the U.S. To maintain its superiority in the Pacific, the U.S. must have a close relationship with Australia.

This relationship is not just about maintaining a foothold in the region, however. It is about meeting new strategic threats by relying on U.S. allies to maintain a balance of power that benefits the U.S. in key parts of the world. The U.S. does not have the capability to intervene every time a potential problem arises. This means the U.S. must rely on alliances to prevent the problems from arising in the first place. The United States is the worlds strongest military and economic power, but this does not mean the United States is omnipotent. Under the Barack Obama administration, the United States began to shift the burden of defense and security to its security partners throughout the world. This shift was gradual and often polite, which masked the fact that it was happening. But the shift was no less tangible because it was courteous. The U.S. has signed new agreements on basing and deployment rights in Australia in recent years, but the U.S. has also pushed Australia to develop its own military capabilities and to assert itself in both its near abroad and the South China Sea.

Under the Trump administration, this process will accelerate. The new U.S. secretary of defense said in his confirmation hearing that the U.S.-led global order is facing its biggest challenge since World War II, and he identified threats from Russia and terrorist groups as well as Chinese aggressiveness in the South China Sea as the key challenges currently facing the United States. The most serious of those issues from Australias vantage point is China. The U.S. is prioritizing China as one of its main issues, both from an economic and security perspective. The U.S. will not withdraw from its security commitments to its allies, but it will insist that the burden of defense be shared more equally. The U.S. wants Australia to take a more active role in managing the South Pacific, but it also needs Australia to play a bigger role in the Pacifics balance of power at large. The problem is that China, the country Australia is primarily balancing against, is Australias most important trading partner. This puts Australia in a difficult position, which is no different than the usual state of affairs. The U.S.-Australia relationship could be summed up as a series of instances where the U.S. has asked Australia to support U.S. moves in challenging situations.

As for why Trump would choose to embarrass such a close strategic ally publicly, the most we can offer is an educated guess. Trump campaigned on the immigration issue and has made it a defining part of his first 100 days in office. The fact that the U.S. had a prior agreement to take 1,250 refugees, most from countries Trump banned from entering the U.S. in last weeks executive order, from two Australian offshore detention centers might anger his base, whose support he must maintain. Perhaps someone intentionally leaked parts of the conversation between Trump and Turnbull to The Washington Post so that Trump could score domestic political points at Turnbulls expense, while still behind the scenes begrudgingly living up to a prior U.S. commitment to a key ally. The fact that Trump tweeted about the immigration issue a few hours after the Post article appeared increases the likelihood of the possibility, but there is no way to confirm where the leak came from and the intention of the person responsible.

What can be said is that the U.S.-Australia alliance goes beyond personalities. Personality clashes between U.S. and Australian leaders have happened before, but the two countries imperatives have kept them close and will continue to do so. Australia does not have a viable option to replace the U.S. security guarantee, and the U.S. must maintain a close relationship with Australia to secure its position in the Pacific and keep the containment line against Chinas ambitions in the region robust. Need is a more stable basis for an alliance than affection.
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OSAGE | The Mitchell County attorney said in statement Friday the board of supervisors was misled by a non-profit citizens environmental action group in its decision to deny two hog confinements.

Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), who oppose construction of two, 2,500-hog confinement buildings in southeast Mitchell County, were involved in scoring an application for Grey Owl Farms II, Inc. that was denied Tuesday.

It was the first application the county has denied. Mitchell County says it has relied on applicants scoring their own master matrix applications, with the board approving them as presented.

"This group informed the board that the application was missing information and did not meet the required matrix score," attorney Mark Walk said in the statement.

A second public hearing has been scheduled for 9:15 a.m. Feb. 21 to reconsider construction of the confinements.

State law requires the board to submit its recommendation to the DNR within 30 days of the application being filed, which was Friday.

According to Mark Walk, any information provided by the board, such as reporting its error to the DNR, could not be provided because of notice requirement under open meeting laws.

During a public hearing Tuesday, the board considered applications for the hog confinement buildings and review their matrix score.

Osage resident and CCI resident Penney Morse during that hearing told supervisors four items were missing from Grey Owl Farms II's application. Morse prior to the meeting had submitted documentation for evaluation by Erica Blair, an organizer on CCI's farming and environment team.

Mitchell County Supervisors deny two hog confinement applications OSAGE | After reviewing an analysis submitted by a non-profit citizens environmental action 

Based on the information provided to Blair, she determined Grey Owl Farms II had erroneously scored their master matrix, causing them to receive a failing score.

The board voted 2-1 not to recommend the application, based on concerns stating the applicant was missing items to receive the minimum passing score. Supervisor Stan Walk voted to move forward with a recommendation to the Iowa DNR.

The matrix is a determined on a pass/fail scoring basis.

CCI is standing by its scoring of the matrix, according to Blair.

Blair said via phone Friday she viewed the supplemental items in question in the application, but says information was still missing.

"The provider needs to still answer those questions raised," she said.

If the application is re-scored and Grey Owls Farms II receives a passing grade, Blair said the board "still misunderstood their roles in scoring the master matrix."

Confinement permits under the microscope DES MOINES | The Iowa Department of Natural Resources reports 88 of 99 Iowa counties plan to

The farm in a statement Friday says "it appears the concerns expressed with the four missing items were unfounded."

"It was also determined that the matrix did meet the required score," the statement said.

Operators are required to score a minimum of 440 points on the application. Grey Owl Farms II says it scored 445, but Blair's analysis indicates the company took in 105 erroneous points for not meeting DNR standards. That left a score of 340, well below the required 440.

The board and Mark Walk on Tuesday will consider participating in the master matrix application process in the future. A master matrix is a scoring system that can be used to evaluate the siting of permitted confinement feeding operations, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The DNR allows counties to have the option of scoring the matrix themselves or using an outside group, like CCI, to score the matrix for them.

Eleven Iowa counties  Davis, Decatur, Des Moines, Keokuk, Lee, Mahaska, Osceola, Plymouth, Wapello, Warren and Washington  do not use the matrix. Instead, animal producers in those counties must meet higher standards, such as choosing a site and using practices that reduce impact on air, water and the community.

The Globe Gazette's Des Moines Bureau contributed to this report.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 02/03/2017



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

The Bachelor franchise alum Wells Adams admits that while Rachel Lindsay might seem like producers' dream for Season 13's star to finally address the franchise's diversity issue, America may not root for her."I think the franchise wants to so badly break out of its cookie-cutter, white-person shell, but I don't think that America will embrace it, sadly enough," Adams confessed on Vinny Ventiera 's Wrong Reasons podcast.Lindsay is a frontrunner for Nick Viall 's heart on The Bachelor's currently-airing 21st season. She received the First Impression Rose and had a romantic date with Viall in New Orleans, during which he told the Dallas attorney he was absolutely "crazy" about her.Adams, who competed on JoJo Fletcher 's recent season of as well as Season 3 of Bachelor in Paradise, revealed that it's quite possible the next Bachelorette could actually be the villain on Viall's season instead, Corinne Olympios "I think what they're going to do is it will be misdirection. I think it's going to be... Rachel, and then at the last second, they'll have Corinne," the radio personality said.Adams believes producers might change their minds last minute because they've made a habit of doing so.For Season 12, Bachelor Ben Higgins ' ex Caila Quinn -- who is part Filipino -- was initially selected to star as the Bachelorette until the rug was unexpectedly pulled out from beneath her and producers went with Fletcher instead."Remember, we all thought it was Caila, and that was exactly what they were trying to do a- that was diversity being the forefront," Wells said, referencing the franchise's desire to cast a woman or man of color in the leading role to squash complaints about the show's lack of diversity."And then they kind of took stock of how America felt about it, they kind of leaked that information, and they realized America wasn't superpumped about that choice."Wells explained, however, that Bachelor Nation may not have responded to Quinn for a number of reasons."Regardless of the diversity issue, it might've just been they didn't really love her personality or persona. But when they found out it was JoJo, people were very excited about that," Wells noted.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 02/03/2017



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
A perfect storm of bad news, good news, and overcrowding has caused a glitch in the fastest growing segment of the shooting industry  and silencer manufacturers are dealing with their first real market adjustment.

State of the industry, 2012

Silencerco has the #1 most-civilian-transferred suppressor on the market, with 3,672 ATF Form 4 transfers processed for their Sparrow .22LR model that year. The once-underground community of silencer enthusiasts formerly buying via special order through small, specialty gun shops that had the rare Class III license needed to order direct from the handful of silencer manufacturers, was starting to see major distributors pick up lines of silencers for them to push to mainstream megastores. Back in 2009, Remington purchased AAC and after some legal problems, was poised to take them to the next level. Enthusiastic silencer evangelists from Gemtech were getting results of years of networking with mainstream gun manufacturers, as Smith & Wesson, Savage, and Browning took a chance on offering Silencer Ready models with threaded barrels sporting suppressors in their SHOT Show booths and catalogs. The levee was about to break and this underground was about to go mainstream.

The American Silencer Association

In 2011, a group of silencer manufacturers figured it was time to push hard on the politics holding their industry back. The American Silencer Association formed in D.C. with a lobbying purpose to widen up the skinny straw of the ATFs National Firearms Act Branch and stop it from being the logjam to silencer ownership that it's been since its inception.

You might ask, what was the National Rifle Association doing to help? It was quiet; according to a conversation with a senior leader of the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action at the time, the organization was concerned it could love silencers to death. Too much attention paid to easing the path to silencer ownership by such a high-profile group might attract the attention of the gun control crowd before a properly educated support base was formed to combat them.

Suggestions were made at the roundtable of manufacturers, lawyers, and lobbyists on how to improve the NFA Branch. The NRA mentioned avenues such as getting funds re-allocated towards ATF and earmarking money to stay in the Branch to streamline the NFA process. All wanted to help the ATF fix their broken e-filing system. But first, congress would have to learn that this wasn't about assassin's tools and Hollywood myths: So the ASA at first went ahead somewhat alone on an educational mission to spread the word that these silencer things werent all James Bond and movie silliness.

Adam Kraut, an attorney who specializes in state and federal firearm legal issues, and who is running for election for the NRA Board, commended these efforts noting, One great thing the industry and ASA did is they went to lawmakers and educated them on what a silencer actually is. That gave lawmakers a chance to understand that their preconceived notions weren't correct on silencers.

Flash forward to 2017

Subsidiary of the $2 billion-dollar Vista Outdoor/ATK company, Blackhawk is promoting silencers front and center in their huge SHOT Show booth. Over 20 new silencer manufacturers have popped out of nowhere. Major firearm manufacturers with forward-looking CEOs, such as Mike Fifer of Ruger, joined the market with smart, low-risk approaches to silencers. Every salesman seems to know the once-underground lingo of first round pop and free bore boost (probably having been taught about silencers just hours before the show via PowerPoint briefs given to older gents that were pushing sporting clays equipment only weeks ago). Silencers have finally come to the mainstream, and one buzzword seemed to be on everyones lips: HPA.

The Hearing Protection Act

The Hearing Protection Act, a legislative bill to take away the $200 tax and the painfully-long waiting period of the NFA, turning silencers into Title 1 firearms, is the free-market dream of de-regulation. Silencers would be as simple for consumers to buy, and for dealers to stock, as a rifle. The same useful and timely criminal background checks as buying a pistol would be used. No NFA bottleneck. This author checked his notes from the ASAs formative planning meeting and it turns out I had suggested that goal at that meeting. At the time, it was quickly filed as too soon  and it was. It may still be.

What is most certainly too soon is the unfortunate assumption by tens of thousands of potential customers that HPA is as good as done. Kraut points out the ASA and Silencerco may have broadcasted too loudly that the chances of the bill passing have increased because the President is on our side. But even if Congress was overwhelmingly Republican, there are far wider impacting issues to the majority of public gun owners than gun suppressors. I would think more people would be affected by National Carry Reciprocity than silencers.

Instead of presenting it as we have an opportunity to make this law, and we need your help in the process, Silencerco came across as it's a done deal, Kraut said.

It's still going to take work to get it to the floor for a vote, continues Kraut. The way the Senate is made up there's 52 Republicans and 2 independents, so there's not a 60 vote or supermajority, and political goodwill might not be expended to push something niche like silencers across. The bill still needs to get out of committee, and that's where people's help is needed  calling specific members asking to get it out of committee and on the floor for a vote. Because if it's stuck in committee it'll die again  the most common death of a bill.

The conventional wisdom coming from those that know how laws are made, especially gun laws, is that counting on HPA to pass before buying what they want is a recipe for a very long wait. Anybody who is waiting for the HPA to pass to buy a suppressor is going to be waiting a very long time, says Todd Rathner, Chairman of the NFA Freedom Alliance and NRA Board Member. The reality is that we still need 60 votes in the US Senate to pass a bill, and it's a big question as to whether those votes are there or not. People should take a deep breath, and if you want a silencer BUY ONE! Waiting on the HPA makes no sense.

This 41F Bullsh*it

Before we can adjust to what would be good news of HPA if it does pass, and how awareness of this bills good news is affecting the market, its important to understand the industry is still just now adjusting from the bad news of last year: 41F. Sales of silencers had taken a beating last year when ATF proceeded with the nearly-unanimously protested ruling number 41F, which was perceived as closing the door on the purchase of silencers through legal instruments called trusts. This hurt sales nationwide.

One dealer offered, This 41F bullsh*t slowed cans WAY down at our shop. Went from dozens a week to maybe a can or two a month. As backstory, buying a silencer via a Trust, instead of as an individual, was somewhat necessary, because again the onerous NFA Branch requirement of having to get a local anti-gun police chief to sign off on your application could be impossible in many areas. Using a Trust skipped past the local law enforcement requirement and went directly to national background checks. Trusts also offered the benefit of being a problem-free method to acquire and pass down NFA items to heirs.

But, there was an infinitesimal chance of a felon getting a restricted item by breaking the law and lying on a Trust. A collectors association, the National Firearms Act Trade and Collector Association brought that to the ATFs attention, hoping for good changes, but got bad ones. (Be careful what you wish for!) Instead of modifying the process as NFATCA desired, the ATF took it upon themselves to put a clumsier end to the fun, killing some of the benefits of everyones favorite way to buy silencers. Which, in turn, caused a huge run on NFA items as the community made that one last purchase of everything they wanted to ever add onto their trust.

Years of normal buying activity got crammed into one election-year-sized panic buy. So the skinny straw of how many NFA registrations could be processed a year got clogged: Just when pretty much everyone decided it was time to buy a short-barreled CZ Scorpion and a Silencerco suppressor.

Next person to ask me about the HPA is getting strangled.  Corey Shaffer, Thompson Machine suppressors, overheard during SHOT Show, 2017.

Everywhere at SHOT Show 2017, the rumor of good news that HPA was all but signed by Trump  that friend of the Second Amendment!  and would be passed. Subcontract machine shops, previously totally unaware of the silencer segment, were trolling around the show, offering their services for when HPA passes. Everyone knew that soon, very soon, will be the time to buy a suppressor. Just not now, of course. Waiting for HPA seemed to be the customers mantra, frustrating silencer manufacturers offering some of the industrys most evolved designs and lowest prices.

Gary Hughes of Dead Air Suppressors said, Everything is in a holding pattern. customers and wholesalers both are taking a wait and see attitude  business is down a significant degree. Upon Trump's election, everyone figured it was a foregone conclusion, when it is anything but.

Thompsons Shaffer echoed this saying, Customers are definitely in a holding pattern. Which, as you can imagine, hurts direct sales and distributor/dealer reorders. The act of letting people know what the Bill is seems accomplished; the education of the process that the Bill has to overcome before it means something seems a little slower. Unfortunately, some think its a 100% done deal or that its already passed. Luckily for us we are big enough that we can endure the slow times. I fear it is going to put lots of smaller can companies out of business during the wait.

Dave Saylors of Liberty Suppressors commented that, We are debt free, so slow sales isnt hurting us too bad, but it is really annoying when you hear people say they will buy once the HPA passes. It is almost like the industry has been led to believe that the legislature is going to do some special miracle this session or something. According to Josh Waldron, SilencerCo's CEO, nothing happens fast in Congress and this is no different. As he said on NRA TV, the public awareness campaign had unintended consequences People are sitting on their hands and waiting for the miracle.

Silencerco, the largest promoter of the HPA, felt these unintended consequences hardest with reportedly sizable layoffs reported this week. Planning ahead big for deregulation, but getting caught in the same bottleneck of the NFA Branch, has apparently caused a need for the companys right sizing for current industry conditions as Willie Vernon, Silencercos Senior Director of Products and Marketing at SilencerCo, told RECOIL.

Its been really slow.- a recently-downsized SilencerCo employee via social media.

With an estimated 180 employees 15 months ago, and with a high concentration of capital equipment in a field where most silencer manufacturers subcontract and probably have less than twenty employees, any really slow hiccup in sales can bring headcount quickly into revenue-management crosshairs. Add to this that during the pre-election scare, many gun stores overspent on AR15s and accessories (which are having their own market adjustment, post-panic), and might not have the cashflow available to buy Silencercos silencers even if they wanted to.

The recent breakup between Silencerco and megadealer Silencer Shop (which has a unique way of stocking and distributing suppressors so local dealers dont have put out funds to stock items) also removed an income stream from cash-strapped SilencerCo dealers.

2016-17 is turning out to be a strange speedball of all-time awareness, excitement, and new product availability in the silencer world, but is hampered by the reality of customers still being stuck with almost year-long waits to receive product through the ATF's NFA Branch and 41Fs consumer-unfriendly processes.

It's Not So Simple

The ASAs Knox Williams tempers the easy excuse of blaming slowdown in sales on the HPA as a gross simplification of what's happening. HPA is a factor  a big factor  but it's an oversimplification of the gun market as a whole right now, and the suppressor industry in particular.

Williams says, If you look at the market, gun sales in general are down because everyone hedged their bets on Hillary getting elected. Dealers and distributors stocked up on things they thought were going to be banned  They hedged their bets for good reason, but lost. They didn't want the same shortages they saw in 2008, 2012 but now there's no sense of urgency that there had been over the past eight years. Another major factor is 41F, which we fought tooth and nail. We got some form of victory there with no CLEOs, but it's still an imperfect system that causes people to hold back on purchases.

Williams continues, It's important to understand [the ASA is] working to make suppressors more accessible to everybody, and focusing on the current conditions of the industry alone is forgetting the most important part: better consumer access to suppressors. Which in turn will be better for preserving hearing, and then creating new American jobs as further expansion of the industry happens.

The Bottom Line

If you want a suppressor, buy the ticket, take the ride. The HPA Bill may or may not pass in the two year Congressional class it is now in. While things actually do look positive, the firearms legal community has more widely-impacting laws it may burn its clout on to pass (notably nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry). Support the HPA and the ASA  they need your help since this *isnt* a done deal. The best thing for supporters to do is to call and email legislators in support of the HPA, and ask to bring the bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote.

There are some impressive cans coming out on the market this year, and buying them today supports the very manufacturers that brought us to this point in technology, advocacy, and availability. Yeah, youre going to have to wait a bit to get them. Just like all the old-school suppressor owners that you see at the range did. You know, those guys who are enjoying their cans now, with a bit of a smirk at the new kids waiting for HPA Christmas to come before they can enjoy theirs. But shooting suppressed is worth the wait. Hopefully, one day everyone will have easier access to the health and shooting benefits of suppressors  until then, man up for the wait and enjoy being one of those insiders that had them before it was cool.

Kel Whelan is a consultant to industry and government on silencer business and technology with more than 20 years of experience in manufacturing, design, sales, distribution, branding, and politics throughout the NFA industry. Before it was cool.

David Merrill contributed to this report.
MASON CITY | Hal Winston is being remembered today as a leader in the the legal profession who never lost his curiosity about life around him and his quest for learning.

Winston, who would have been 85 on Feb. 7, died Thursday in Texas.

Michael Byrne, his law partner for 30 years, said Winston had many distinctions. "He was on the forefront of bringing computers into law practice in Mason City and was one of the best trust lawyers in the country," Byrne said.

Winston was born in Atlantic and was raised on a farm in Cass County where he and his brother rode ponies to a one-room country school, family members said.

He was admitted to the Iowa Bar in 1958 after graduating from the University of Iowa. He was also admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals, U.S. District Court and U.S. Tax Court.

He was a member of the Cerro Gordo County Bar Association. When he was president, the Iowa State Bar Association rated Cerro Gordo County as having the best county bar in 1977, citing its work with legal aid programs.

"He was a great family man," Byrne said. "One of his rules in the office was we always take calls from family and judges.

"Hal and I would disagree on things from time to time but we always made things work. One of the things we disagreed on was politics," Byrne said with a laugh.

"He always believed people could disagree but do it with respect. You treat people with respect and value the relationship you have with them. That's what Hal believed."

Byrne said Winston was like both friend and family to him. "When I think of him five years from now, my first thought will be that I will still miss him greatly."

O. Jay Tomson, chairman of First Citizens Bank, knew Winston well through his work with the bank's trust department and as a friend.

"He grew up on a farm and never got agriculture out of his blood," said Tomson. "He loved to reminisce about it. And he was a great Iowa Hawkeye fan. He would come over to the house and we would watch games together and high-five each other when the Hawkeyes scored."

Tomson said Winston was conservative but was always tolerant of others. "He didn't let identity politics get in the way of any of his relationships," he said.

"He was not self-indulgent but one of the things he loved to do was travel," said Tomson. "He traveled all over the world and took his family with him. It was a real form of enrichment for him."

Winston and his wife, Carol, traveled overseas every year for about 20 years and took their three daughters to Europe with them several times.

Tomson said another facet to Winston was his love of books, particularly biographies. He read good books up until the day he died, he said.

"You think about the people you walk with in your life, all the things you have in common  small town upbringing, agriculture, love of books, the Hawkeyes  all things that when you get together, you can have a good visit over.

"And Hal Winston was a generous man," said Tomson. Then he paused and said, "He did things right."

Winston was a loyal Republican who chaired all three of Bill Schickel's campaigns for mayor.

"We lost a wonderful man," said Schickel. "I considered him a mentor. He had great influence on my own community participation."

He said Winston and Carol, who died in 2011, supported many activities but liked to stay behind the scenes. They had a large role in the development of the Stebens Children's Theater, he said.

"One of the things I admired about Hal is that even as he got older, he always maintained his curiosity," said Schickel.

"He always asked intriguing questions, but he did it with a sparkle in his eye."
The government plans to exit its holding in three PSUs -- Bharat Pumps & Compressors, Bridge & Roof Co and Hindustan Fluorocarbons -- by selling its stake to strategic buyers.

Besides, armed with the 2017-18 Budget proposal of merger and acquisitions between PSUs, the finance ministry wants to merge four PSUs -- Hindustan Prefab, Engineering Projects (India) Ltd, HSCC (India) Ltd and National Projects Construction Corporation -- with similarly-placed CPSEs.

The government intends to divest 100 per cent equity in Bharat Pumps & Compressors Ltd through strategic sale with transfer of management control.

The Union Cabinet, in September, had cleared the strategic sale of the Allahabad-based PSU, which is into manufacturing and supply of heavy-duty pumps, CNG gas cylinders required in petroleum exploration and refineries and the fertilisers and power sectors.

Further, the government intends to go in for strategic sale of 99.53 per cent equity and transfer of managementcontrol in Bridge & Roof Company, which is under the control of the ministry of heavy industries.

The mini ratna PSU is operates in the engineering and construction sector.

The department of investment and public asset management is scouting for investment bankers and legal advisors to carry forward the transactions.

Furthermore, the government plans to sell the entire 56.43 per cent shareholding of Hindustan Organic Chemicals Ltd in Hindustan Fluorocarbons through strategic sale.

The ministry of chemicals and fertiliser is looking for advisors for the strategic sale of HFL, which is engaged in the manufacturing of poly tetra fluoro ethylene and fluoro methane.

Besides strategic sale, the government intends to disinvest its entire shareholding in four PSUs by way of strategic disinvestment through merger with similarly placed CPSEs.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech had said there are opportunities to strengthen CPSEs through "consolidation, mergers and acquisitions" so that they can be integrated across the value chain of an industry.

"It will give them capacity to bear higher risk, avail economies of scale, take higher investment decisions and create more value for stakeholders," Jaitley said.

The government has budgeted to raise Rs 15,000 crore through strategic sale of PSUs next fiscal.
The study found that 50% of the people were receiving either nothing or less cash than they were entitled in lieu of the subsidised grains that were stopped under the pilots starting from September 2015 till May 2016.

Image: File photograph of a queque outside a ration shop to collect kerosene in Chandigarh. Photograph: Ajay Verma/Reuters.

After more than a year of their launch, the governments pilot programmes to replace subsidised food grains with cash in three Union territories -- Chandigarh, Dadra Nagar Haveli, and Puducherry -- have failed, suggests results of an ongoing study commissioned by the Niti Aayog and the department of food of the Union government.

These results were submitted in August 2016.

The research found that 50% of the people were receiving either nothing or less cash than they were entitled in lieu of the subsidised grains that were stopped under the pilots starting from September 2015 till May 2016.

The study also concluded, based on sample study, that 17% received more cash than what they were entitled to.

For more than 40% of the money transferred in lieu of food grains since the beginning of the pilots it could not be verified that the money has reached the hands of the beneficiary.

Households on average have ended up spending Rs 103-207 per month more on average from their earnings in the three Union territories to buy as much grain from market as they got through ration shops earlier.

The amount per family has consistently fallen short for people in the three UTs to buy grains from market.

The study was meant to assess if the pilots had achieved their goal of all the beneficiaries receiving 100% of entitlements 100% of the time. The pilots have not though there has been some marginal improvement over the year.

The study concludes that in two of the three Union Territories, Chandigarh and Pondicherry, a year after the pilots were launched, only 40% households prefer cash over subsidised food grains even after a year of the scheme being rolled out.

The study, Process Monitoring of Direct Benefit Transfer in the PDS Second Quarterly Report, was carried out by J-Pal South Asia which is based at the Institute for Financial Management and Research and an associate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology based research group by the same name.

The researchs findings on Puducherry are particularly revealing considering that the Union Territory had in just two months of the experiment reverted back to giving 10 kgs of subsidised food grains as well as cash after facing a public uproar. Yet the cash scheme has not found many takers, the study suggests which stays quiet on the fact that Puducherry provides grains as well as cash.

The reports findings gain importance in context of the advocacy in the latest Economic Survey favouring a Universal Basic Income at the cost of existing social sector programmes of the government, such as the Public Delivery System (PDS).

A UBI to replace social sector spending in kind has earlier also been termed as cash transfer scheme -- exactly what the government has attempted under the National Food Security Act in the three Union territories.

Business Standard reviewed the results of the research presented to the Union government.

While Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in a post-budget interview told Business Standard that UBI is a fantastic and beautiful idea, but added Indias politics is yet to mature and in a politics that has not matured UBI is impossible.

The study results show that the systems and infrastructure may not yet be in place to roll out a UBI or cash transfer scheme.

The three UTs presented an easier bet for the government to pilot the cash transfers as all three locations are relatively well urbanised with much better infrastructure and a greater say of the Central government in implementing the pilots.

The study was done over two rounds, the latest being concluded in August 2016 and it still found high levels of problems though the study did register some improvement over the two rounds.

In its analysis the authors of the study concluded, A Significant proportion of the total disbursement is still not identifiably reaching beneficiaries.

It also concluded that significant proportion of beneficiaries were still receiving no money at all with payments either going to bank accounts beneficiaries did not access or there was a processing error.

There were also significant variations in the overall monthly disbursements. This bit was independently confirmed by Business Standard also for one union territory where data was available in public domain.

The study reported to the Union government, Of the amount disbursed from Union territory administrations for sample households, less than 60% is verifiably getting into the hands of beneficiaries.

From September 2015 to June 2016 the governments of three UTs claimed they had distributed Rs 1,05,50,207 into beneficiaries accounts after stopping their subsidised grains. But the study found that Rs 42,42,323 could not be traced to the beneficiaries.

The researchers were also unable to pin down how some beneficiaries were receiving more cash than what they were entitled to. After a year of implementation of pilots, the proportion of beneficiaries receiving full transfers month on month continued to fluctuate and was far from hundred percent.

During the sample study the research also found that there had been a slippage in the scheme over time with a significant 17.6% of sampled beneficiaries who initially got the cash stopped receiving it as the scheme rolled out through the months.

From the sample study, researchers also found that nearly a quarter of people had formally lodged grievances against the scheme but none of them had used the toll free number given to do so with less than a third being even aware of it.

Most of the complaints were about the fact that the money given was not enough to buy equivalent 5kg of rice from the market.

The time study conducted along with found people actually spent additional time and money to access the cash as compared to the PDS earlier from the ration shops with people paying between Rs 90-75 per month extra to access the cash in lieu of grains.

In all people had ended up paying between Rs 103-207 per month per household on average more from their pockets to buy the same amount of grains that they got through ration shops.
Nothing, according to Deepak Lal.

He argues that the contemporary attempts to control immigration in the US and UK are not nativist.

IMAGE: On a derelict building in Bristol, England, is a mural of former London Mayor Boris Johnson, right, one of the biggest names leading Brexit campaign, and Donald Trump, who supported Brexit. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images.



Nativism has been an important feature of the US -- though a nation of immigrants.

It was characterised by John Higham, in his magisterial study Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925, as the hostility shown by native-born Americans towards immigration outside the Anglo-Saxon fold.

It was invented in the 1850s to describe the programme of the anti-Catholic, anti-foreign political party, the Know-Nothings.

But there have been waves of Nativism going back to the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts to exclude or deport the European radicals who were seen as a threat to the infant republic.

Subsequent nativist waves have occurred when there is a 'political or economic crisis, combined with a loss of faith in American institutions and a sense that the national community is gravely fractured.'

With the nation's problems seemingly intractable, people seek scapegoats in the form of the 'Other' (James Crawford: 'Cycles of nativism in US History,'www.immigrationforum.org, 2001).

But are the contemporary attempts to control immigration in the US and UK nativist?

Higham in his later work, some unpublished, thought not. (See Jerry Kammer: 'It's not all about nativism: Historian John Higham's widening views on modern efforts to limit immigration',www.cis.org/higham).

For the central point about recent immigration is that it occurs in welfare States, where the immigrant has access to the purses of existing citizens through the public goods (education, health and housing) provided and financed by the State.

It thus creates property rights for immigrants, which existing citizens are justified in questioning.

Thus, despite the undoubted benefit to economic growth from immigration, there are also costs associated with the dilution of the property rights of existing citizens.

Furthermore, the failure to enforce the laws against illegal immigration brings the law into disrepute.

Finally, low skilled immigration damages the wages and welfare of the poorest wage earners.

Higham approvingly noted the Harvard economist George Borjas' claim that a 'high level of immigration is an astonishing transfer of wealth from the poorest people in the country, who are disproportionately minorities, to the richest.'

Thus, the desire to control immigration today is not necessarily nativist: A reflection of racism, xenophobia, and hostility toward immigrants.

Higham also warned of the need to enforce immigration laws in order to maintain comity and respect for the law. He expressed concern that narrowing economic opportunities for unskilled workers would constrain the social mobility that he saw as vital to the health of American society.

Finally, he was concerned that multiculturalism would undermine the benign nationalism that he saw as an alternative to nativism and weaken immigrants' identification with their adopted homeland.

Ethnic ghettos would prevent the traditional American melting pot from functioning.

Hence, Mr Trump's desire to deport illegal immigrants and control Mexican immigration is not nativist. After all he is married to a recent legal immigrant from Slovenia, who is only the second foreign-born First Lady of the US.

Nor are the supporters of Brexit nativists.

They are against the free movement of people from Europe -- a necessary commitment to being in the EU. They are particularly concerned by the pressure being put on British social services by immigrants from Eastern Europe.

They do not want to end immigration, but to control it to suit the needs of the UK economy, and diversify it to include other areas of the world, in particular the Commonwealth.

IMAGE: British Prime Minister Theresa, left, may with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC on January 27, 2017. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque/Reuters.



What of nationalism?

In a previous column I had outlined the various waves of nationalism identified by Benedict Anderson in his Imagined Communities: The Creole nationalism of the Americas, the vernacular nationalism of the rising European bourgeoisie, the official nationalism of the European dynasts to co-opt vernacular nationalism, and the anti-colonial nationalism of the subjects of Western imperial powers.

I noted how most 19th century thinkers like Karl Marx did not expect nationalism to survive the powerful cosmopolitan forces unleashed by the first period of globalisation under Pax Britannica. Yet with the nationalist passions unleashed by the two World Wars and the economic disorder of the Great Depression, these expectations were belied.

It was only with the second period of globalisation since 1980, associated with the Pax Americana, that cosmopolitanism has come to contest the nationalist impulse. A global cosmopolitan class has emerged.

English is increasingly its lingua franca.

It is educated in the same elite Western universities.

It is inter-married.

It works in public international organisations or private multinationals and global financial institutions with transnational interests and loyalties.

It was hoped that with the spread of free markets, free trade and free immigration, countries led by this cosmopolitan elite would lead to a prosperous world free of ethnic, religious and national conflicts. It was hoped that economic growth and liberalisation would lead to democratisation and a prosperous middle class, providing political stability.

This was to be Francis Fukuyama's 'end of history.' But this hope has been increasingly belied.

There has also been a growing cultural gulf between the cosmopolitans and their more locally based national citizens.

This has created a tension between the cosmopolitan openness demanded by globalisation, and the sense of loss of national identity with the transnational flow of labour, capital, goods and services which has removed former economic and social niches.

This has created a problem for Western political parties faced by the demands for economic liberalism and the resentment of the 'creative destruction' it requires. Mr Trump's economic nationalism is the response. It threatens to dismantle the liberal economic order which the US has espoused since the Second World War.

But it is still early days to see if this will be a wholesale or merely a piecemeal retreat, largely as part of a foreign policy response to an increasingly assertive China.

For Britain, regaining its sovereignty from the unelected supranational technocracy controlling the EU is also a form of benign nationalism. As Ms May has recently outlined in her plans for Brexit, after leaving the EU, Britain will be an outward-looking free-trading country.

This is not a programme of an economic nationalist. Thus, using nativism and nationalism to explain the recent political earthquakes in the US and the UK would seem to be maladroit.
Programme officer of Ford Foundation connived with director of Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Limited for granting around $2.9 lakh (Rs 1.94 crore) foreign donations in violation of Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, a Central Bureau of Investigation chargesheet says.

The document, which was filed by the central agency last month against social activist Teesta Setalvad, her husband Javed Anand and Sabrang, the publishing company run by them, for alleged violation of foreign funding rules, was given to the accused on Friday.

According to the chargesheet, Sushma Raman, programme officer of Ford Foundation, received the first proposal from Sabrang for receipt of grant in 2004.

Investigations revealed that Raman was aware that Sabrang was not eligible to receive funds since it was not in accordance with the provisions of FCR Act. She had communicated with Javed at that time of processing of the proposal for the grant. To circumvent the compliance requirements Raman connived with Anand who was trying to project the grant as consultancy charges, the chargesheet mentions.

It also said that Sabrang was a private limited company engaged in publications which is not entrusted to receive foreign contributions under any circumstances. Still if the company thought otherwise they could have applied for proper permission before accepting the foreign grant by not doing so they have violated FCRA, the chargesheet said.

As per project modules submitted to foreign donor it is mentioned that Sabrang as part of its public campaign would lobby with government in public sphere to deepen and broaden the concept of minority/minorities. Lobbying with political parties is not allowed as per the provision of FCRA, the charge sheet reads, adding, that it mixed foreign contributions with their domestic ones.

The chargesheet also said they did not maintain exclusive books of account for receipt of foreign contribution and Sabrang could not produce segregated books of accounts for checking.

It said Sabrang could not produce a minutes book to the inspection team for scrutiny and also the records prior to FY 2009.

Sabrang had been publishing a monthly periodical and two of its directors have been writing columns and articles in leading newspapers and as per FCRA they are totally prohibited to receive foreign contribution, the chargesheet said.

The agreement was signed on September 2006 between Sabrang and Ford Foundation and under the clause it is mentioned that the funds may be expended only for charitable, scientific, literacy or educational purpose.

As it has been clearly stated in the agreement that the funds have been given for charitable, scientific, literary or education purpose, thus this fund could not be treated as amount provided for propose of rendering any service, the chargesheet mentions.

The probe agency had in July 2015 registered a case against Setalvad, who was at the forefront of campaign for 2002 Gujarat riot victims, and others for alleged violation of FCRA in receiving funds from abroad without taking prior permission from the home ministry.

The chargesheet has been filed under Section 120 B of the Indian Penal Code (criminal conspiracy) along with FCRA 2010 and FCRA 1976.
A united Opposition is expected to move amendments to the motion of thanks for the President's address on how note ban was a mess. Archis Mohan reports.

In the Budget sessions of Parliament in 2015 and 2016, a united Opposition in the Rajya Sabha embarrassed the Narendra Modi government in the debate on the President's address to the joint sitting of Parliament.

This year, the Modi government is set to face a hat-trick of such embarrassments.

The Opposition, which has more numbers in the Rajya Sabha than the ruling benches, plans to again move an amendment to the official motion of thanks, this time to include how demonetisation caused widespread pain and led to deaths of over 100 people.

On Thursday, the Rajya Sabha took up the discussion on the motion of thanks.

Opposition parties criticised the government for the "ill-conceived" demonetisation decision. Their members also moved amendments to the motion.

The President's address on Tuesday had stated that note ban was done to combat "the evils of black money, corruption, counterfeit currency and terrorist financing".

The leader of the Opposition, Ghulam Nabi Azad and others argued that demonetisation failed to accomplish any of its objectives.

Opposition members are likely to demand a vote to have the government include a paragraph that the note ban was badly planned, poorly implemented and caused hardships to the people.

The address is drafted and vetted by the Cabinet and is a vision statement of the government for that year. It is read out by the President on the first day of the first session of each year.

Usually, opposition members withdraw these amendments on the express request of the government of the day and also as a mark of parliamentary cooperation.

There have, however, been five occasions, all in the Rajya Sabha and two of these in the tenure of the Modi government, when the Opposition has voted to successfully amend the government's motion of thanks.

These were in 1980, 1989, 2001, 2015 and 2016, indicative of the bad blood between the Opposition and the government of the day.

In 2015, opposition leaders even went to the length of not talking with each other on their mobile phones to keep their coordinated efforts to embarrass the government a secret.

They successfully voted against the motion to have it include the line that the House regretted there being "no mention in the address about the failure of the government to curb the high level of corruption and to bring back black money".

In 2016, the Opposition amendment regretted the address did not mention that the government was committed to securing the fundamental rights to contest elections at all levels, including panchayat elections.

This came in the backdrop of laws in Rajasthan and Haryana having been changed to make matriculation mandatory for contesting these polls. Both the states have the Bharatiya Janata Party governments.

On Thursday, Azad targeted the government on the situation in Kashmir and on demonetisation. He said the government had become intolerant of criticism, where those opposing its policies are denounced as anti-nationals. An "undeclared Emergency" had been imposed.

From the government's side, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad pointed at the sundry scams during the Congress-led governments and how the Modi government had ushered in corruption-free administration.
A potpourri of political parties are in the fray in Goa.

Aslam Hunani gives us a glimpse of the contestants. Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

India's Sunshine State elects a new government on February 4.

Aam Aadmi Party, Bharatiya Janata Party, Congress, Goa Forward, Goa Suraksha Manch, Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, Shiv Sena candidates are contestesting the 40 seats in the state assembly.

Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, a former chief minister (March 2012 to November 2014), has led the BJP charge, completely overshadowing his party colleague, Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar.

Parrikar has addressed more then 30 Vijay Sankalp rallies across Goa, and there is talk that he will abandon his office in New Delhi's South Block after the election for a perch in the state secretariat in Panaji.

Not surprisingly, the Congress campaign is in some disarray with Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh -- the man who calls the party's shots in Goa -- at loggerheads with state Congress boss Luizinho Faleiro.

The disagreement is over the number of seats the Congress will contest.

After declaring it would contest 36 seats, leaving four for its ally, Goa Forward, the Congress has now fielded 37 candidates including a nominee for the Fatorda seat, which it had left for Goa Forward mentor Vijay Sardesai earlier.

Another Congress ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, is contesting the election separately and has announced a roster of 18 candidates.

The Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party, a BJP ally, is flying solo too.

The MGP has fielded 26 candidates, the other seats will be contested by its partners, the Shiv Sena and the Goa Suraksha Manch, which is led by Subhash Velingkar, a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh rebel.

The Aam Aadmi Party, a debutante in Goa politics, is projecting Elvis Gomes, a former inspector general of police, as its chief ministerial candidate.

The AAP is leading a typical high decibel campaign, promising to cleanse Goa's very murky politics.

How the parties fared in the 2012 assembly election

IMAGE: The map shows the constituency-wise victors in 2012.

In 2012, the Parrikar-led BJP easily defeated then chief minister Digambar Kamat's Congress coalition.

The BJP-MGP alliance won 24 seats (BJP: 21. MGP: 3).

The Congress suffered a drubbing, winning just 9 seats.

Independents won 5 seats while the Goa Vikas Party bagged 2 seats.

After the 2007 assembly election, the Congress formed the government with the support of the NCP and the Save Goa Front.

The Congress won 16 of the 32 seats it contested; the NCP and SGF won 3 and 2 seats respectively.

The BJP won 14 of the 33 seats it contested in 2007.

Infographic: Seats won by the major parties in the 2007 and 2012 assembly elections. Design: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

Votes polled

Infographic: KBK Graphics

In 2007, the BJP polled 30.32% votes; the Congress won 32.25% votes.

In 2012, the BJP increased its vote share to 34.68%; the Congress' vote share fell to 30.78%.

Independents and other parties had a 37.43% vote share in 2007; this declined to 34.54% in the 2012 election.

Women in the Goa assembly

Infographic: KBK Graphics

Women constitute about 49.32 per cent of Goa's population.

The state is also seen as being progressive and women-friendly, has a high literacy rate and per capita income among women.

For a state once ruled by a woman chief minister -- Shashikala Kakodkar, whose father Dayanand Bandodkar was the first chief minister -- Goa elected just one women to the assembly in 2012.

Jennifer A Monserrate, the Congress MLA from Taleigao, was later joined by the BJP's Alina Saldanha who won a by-election after her husband, Jose Matanhy de Saldanha, a sitting MLA, died.

Four women were elected MLAs in the 1994 election -- Kakodkar of the MGP, Congresswomen Sangeeta Parab and Fatima D'Sa and Victoria Fernandes Romeo, an Independent.

Mrs Kakodkar -- whose brother Siddharth Bandodkar was once married to actress Leena Chandavarkar; he died mysteriously -- will not contest this election. She passed into the ages last October.
A French soldier guarding the Louvre museum in Paris has shot a man who tried to attack a security patrol with a machete shouting "Allahu Akbar" on Friday, police said.

IMAGE: French police secure the site near the Louvre Pyramid in Paris after a French soldier shot and wounded a man armed with a machete after he tried to enter the Louvre museum. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters

The man, who tried to gain entry to the Louvre's shopping centre, was shot five times and is alive despite his serious injuries.

One soldier was injured in the assault.

Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the attack was "terrorist in nature". The Louvre, home to numerous celebrated art works, is the most visited museum in the world.

The shooting comes with France on its highest state of alert with thousands of troops patrolling the capital following a string of attacks in the last few years.

IMAGE: French police and firefighters are seen in front of the street entrance of the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters

"The people who were in the museum -- there were about 250 of them -- were held at a distance and confined in secure areas of the Louvre," city police chief Michel Cadot said.

France has suffered a string of attacks in recent years, beginning in January 2015 when jihadist gunmen killed journalists at the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper in Paris.

Another attacker went on to kill shoppers in a Jewish supermarket, with a total of 17 people dead in three days of bloodshed.

IMAGE: French police and emergency services are at the shooting site. Photograph: Christian Hartmann/Reuters

Ten months later, gunmen and suicide bombers from the Islamic State jihadist group attacked bars, restaurants, a concert hall and the national stadium in Paris on November 13, 2015, killing 130 people.

And last July, a Tunisian extremist rammed a lorry through crowds celebrating Bastille Day in Nice on France's south coast, crushing 86 people to death.

In November, French police broke up an alleged jihadist terror ring which was thought to be planning to attack Paris.
Over 1,00,000 visas have been revoked as a result of President Donald Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries, an attorney for the government said today.

The number came out during a hearing in a lawsuit filed by attorneys for two Yemeni brothers who arrived at Dulles International Airport on Saturday and were quickly put on a return flight to Ethiopia in response to the President's executive order.

The government attorney could not say how many people with visas were sent back to their home countries from Dulles in response to the travel ban, the Washington Post reported.

An executive order signed by Trump over the weekend had halted the US refugee programme for 120 days and indefinitely banned all Syrian refugees.

A separate order also suspended all entry from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Syria on national security grounds.

Meanwhile, Vice President Mike Pence defended Trumps executive order halting immigration, saying that any fair-minded person would understand the directives intent.

Any fair-minded person looking at the Presidents action knows that what President Trump has done is essentially imposes a pause on countries that have been compromised by terrorism, so that we can evaluate the screening process and establish an extreme vetting so that people coming into this country dont represent a threat to our families and to our communities, Pence was quoted as saying by Fox News.

Its an indefinite pause with regard to Syria, but with regard to the other countries, were going to be calling on the Department of Homeland Security, all of our team to work together to evaluate how we can continue to go forward with immigration from those countries but not compromise the safety and security of the American people, he said.

Pence asserted that the ban imposed on seven Muslim-majority countries is not a Muslim ban.

Clearly, its not a Muslim ban. Its not in any way associated with religion, he said.

This president made it clear in this executive order that we are not going to compromise the safety and security of the American people with regard to these seven countries that the Obama administration identified as compromised by terror, that the Congress has identified. Were taking a pause. We're going to step back and we're going to put safety and security of the American people first, Pence said in response to a question.

Pence said they are now reviewing the list.

This list has really garnered around whether the countries that were looking at have the internal systems that we can be certain that people are who they say they are, he said.

And with regard to other countries, Saudi Arabia being among them, we have confidence that they have the kind of safeguards, the kind of law enforcement, the kind of screening in their country that when a person presents a visa or attempts to come into the United States, that we know they are who they present as, Pence said.

The Obama administration and the Congress have identified these seven countries as having systems that have been compromised through strife, through the advent of terrorism, in the case of Syria through civil war, so that we need to step back to make sure that we have the additional safeguards, Pence said.

Trump has a lot of priorities, but his number one priority is the safety and security of the American people.

And thats why this decisive action took place, he said.

Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
The government has ordered a high-level probe, headed by director general shipping, to nail the guilty behind the oil spill that took place off the Chennai Coast following collision between two ships and the report is likely in a month, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari said on Friday, even as the Madras high court directed the state government to urgently look into the issue and take necessary steps.

A big damage control exercise was carried out in the wake of the collision, containing a major problem, and the ship has been emptied safely on Friday morning, the shipping, road transport and highways minister said.

Based on the outcome of the probe, action would be initiated against the guilty, he said.

Oil spill has been a cause of concern ever since M T BW Maple leaving after emptying Liquefied Petroleum Gas on January 28 collided with M T Dawn, Kanchipuram, loaded with petroleum oil lubricant (POL) off Ennore Port, which is among top 12 major ports in the country.

Minister of State for Shipping Pon Radhakrishnan said the vessel had more than 32,000 tonne of oil and has been emptied.

Oil spill has been cleaned. From the tank, it did not leak. Oil was leaked from the engine. There is no leakage from the ship, Radhakrishnan said.

Radhakrishnan also informed the Lok Sabha that more than 80 per cent of the clean-up operation after the oil spill has been completed and most of the residual work is expected to be over within two to three days.

The total quantity of sludge which has been cleaned up till today (Friday) is 65 tonnes. In addition, super suckers have removed 54 tonnes of oil mixed with water. More than 80 per cent of the work has been completed and most of the residual work is expected to be over within two to three days, he said.

The Indian Oil Corporation has provided special bio-remediation material for treatment of the collected oil sludge for its safe disposal, he said.

Radhakrishnan said a massive clean-up operation was launched in Tiruvallur, Chennai and Kancheepuram districts by engaging more than 2,000 people at various sites including Ernavur, Chennai Fishing Harbour, Marina Beach, Besant Nagar, Kottivakkam, Palavakkam, Neelankarai and Injambakkam beaches.

The clean up work on a war-footing was carried out in several areas, including the Ennore shoreline, Marina and Elliots beaches by multiple agencies, including Coast Guard, along with the help of volunteers and local people.

'Approximately 1,100 personnel braving the hot sun came forward and assisted in the removal of oil with sludge and sand mixed with sludge, sand mixed with oil and oil mixed with water,' a Coast Guard release had said on Thursday night.

Apart from Coast Guard, personnel from Tamil Nadu Police Coastal Security Group, pollution control board, fire and rescue department, state Highways, port trust, corporation, panchayat besides volunteers from various colleges, universities and NGOs joined the operation.

Shipping Secretary Rajive Kumar said that like with the provisions of enquiry by Director General of Civil Aviation, in case of accidents involving air planes, there is a similar provision in the Merchant Shipping Act for enquiry and fixing responsibility.

He said final findings were expected in a month as all possible evidences are being collected to fix the liability.

Action will be taken and the primary responsibility for paying for this clean up will rest with the ship which has erred in this particular event, Kumar said.

Also, he said, the Shipping Ministry has sought an audit report on whether the ports handling oil are well equipped as 50 per cent subsidy is given to ports handling oil to get equipment and last year we got OISD (Oil Industry Safety Board) which looks after the safety of oil installations in the country.

Whatever deficiencies they had pointed out, instructions were given to remove them and I had been told by Ennore Port they had the equipment which is prescribed under the Crisis management Plan, he said.

He said pollution control measures have already been initiated as per the Crisis Management Plan and the government has deputed a high level committee to oversee operations comprising joint secretary shipping, additional secretary shipping as well as additional secretary from petroleum.

We were coordinating the efforts with Coast Guard as well as with the state governments... There was absolute coordination. People were working which were provided by both the ports as well as from the Maritime institutions. The NGOs and other volunteers, they have done outstandingly good work, Kumar said.

He explained that one tonne of oil leaked gets 10 times bigger after being mixed with water and debris and by Friday morning 116 tonnes of sludge had been collected. The shipping secretary said that as per the estimates of the Coast Guard, about 20 metric tonne of oil might have originally leaked at the first instance of impact.

The assessment is based on the fact that immediately after the incident, the port authorities had placed a boom which is basically a floating device to contain any more spill, Kumar said.

He also said that the ship was stabilised to avert threat, with the help of Indian Registrar of Shipping and DG Shipping experts, as it contained 32,000 tonnes of oil.

They certified that the ship can be safely taken to the berth and it was taken there and was emptied safely. It was a huge and risky operation. This morning that exercise has been completed and a much larger problem which could have arisen has been averted, he said.

He said as per a report from the principal secretary, environment, Tamil Nadu a committee has been formed comprising experts in Marine Biology and to ensure that the collected sludge does not leak into the soil, bio remedial measures including releasing bacteria which eats into the sludge has been initiated.

Fifty bags of agent have been provided by the R&D Centre of IOCL. It has already reached the site. They have put it in a pit which is guarded by a thick plastic sheet...we expect residue will also be taken care of, Kumar said.

Oil spill has occurred in nearly 72 km of the eastern coast from Ennore Port to Mahabalipuram. About 12 km has got affected with oil slick and about 250 metres, particularly in R K Nagar Kuppam area, is reported to be most affected.

The HCs direction came on a PIL seeking a direction to authorities to take action against the ships which had collided, resulting in crude oil leakage from Dawn Kanchipuram.

The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M Sundar, before which the PIL came up, said, On hearing the counsel for parties, it transpires that the apprehension of the petitioner is that on a principle of Polluter pay if the ship crosses the territorial waters, the government may not be able to recover anything.

This of course, in no manner absolves the government of the responsibility to take necessary steps to remove the pollutant, for which the National Green Tribunal, Chennai Bench, is already stated to have been approached.

We are of the view that no direction can be issued in the matter, except to observe that the state government may look into the issue urgently to take such steps as deemed proper in the given situation, especially keeping in mind that as per the petitioner there has been some recent developments in terms of registration of FIR and some action post filing of the petition, the bench said.

According to petitioner M E Raja, president, National Union of Fishermen, Royapuram, Chennai, the two ships collided off Ennore Port, Chennai, within the territorial waters of India and this resulted in leakage of crude oil from Dawn Kanchipuram which was reported to be fully loaded tanker vessel carrying tonnes of oil.

He further submitted that crude oil started spreading on the sea water and within a day reached the shores of Ennore Beach resulting in death of many turtles and fish.

The oil spill completely stopped fishermen in the region from venturing into the sea as almost all the fish in the area covered with the oil spill have either died or moved to the deep sea, the petitioner submitted.

Apprehending that if the vessel moves out of territorial waters, the petitioner said it would be very difficult to prosecute or to recover the costs and sought a direction to authorities to take steps for initiating prosecution against the erring parties.

Meanwhile, political leaders in Tamil Nadu expressed concern over the oil spill and urged the Central and state government to expedite steps to clear it as early as possible.

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Working President and Opposition Leader M K Stalin said fishermen had been severely affected due to the oil spill.

The Central and state government should quickly clear the spill, he said.

Pattali Makkal Katchi leader Anbumani Ramadoss, who also wanted the slick to be cleared quickly, also warned of possible health hazards to the people concerned.

He sought deployment of modern equipment to clear the oil spill.

Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam founder Vijayakant, who visited the affected area, said work on clearing the spill was going at slow pace.

While lauding those engaged in clearing the oil slick, he also wanted modern gadgets to be used to clear it.

The Kamarajar Port Ltd said the oil spill was noticed in the shores only one-and-half days after the collision as it could have moved far away in Bay of Bengal due to wind and sea current.

Referring to reports about its release on the day of the incident that there was no damage to environment, the port said, The report was prepared at the time of inspection at the site by various agencies on January 28.

The Coast Guard was informed by port authorities soon after the incident following which their ships and helicopter started monitoring the situation, the port said adding the spillage was noticed in the shores only after one and half days.

It appears that bunker oil would have spilled when accident happened and it moved far away due to wind and current of the sea during dark hours which could not be seen by the Port officers, a port release this evening said, clarifying its earlier stand.

Enquiries were being conducted to find out the facts, it said, adding action would be taken based on the report.

IMAGES: Coast Guard, State revenue personnel, local volunteers and fishermen removing black oil washed ashore as a thick oily tide from the sea lapped at the coast on Thursday, a day after an oil tanker and an LPG tanker collided near Kamarajar Port in Ennore in Chennai. Photographs: PTI Photo, @indiannavy/Twitter
The Association for Democratic Reforms slams the Budget proposals on political funding, says they lack teeth and show the "lack of political will" in proposing real reforms. Archis Mohan reports.

Election watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms has said the measures announced in the Union Budget on political funding would be "inconsequential" in cleansing of hidden wealth.

In a detailed critique, the ADR said the government showed "lack of political will" in proposing real reforms.

It said the proposed measures lacked teeth and political funding would continue to remain "opaque".

It said the measures fell way short of Election Commission and Law Commission recommendations.

"The Budget fails to address the issue of transparency, disclosure and penalties of political parties" and how these measures would be implemented.

The Budget has proposed that the maximum in cash donation a political party may receive will be Rs 2,000. Existing law allows up to Rs 20,000.

Such amounts from 'unknown sources' constitute 71 per cent of political donations.

Donations above Rs 20,000 are the only 'known sources' of income. 'Unknown sources' are income declared in the income tax returns by political parties without giving any source of income and is, therefore, believed to be unaccounted money.

The ADR said the proposal to limit cash donations to Rs 2,000 was flawed on three counts.

First, the Budget does not provide for scrutiny of income declared by parties from various sources.

The Budget also doesn't specify any penal provisions.

The ADR said the declared income of parties was unlikely to reflect their true income unless scrutiny of their accounts is taken up by an audit body approved by the Comptroller & Auditor General or the EC.

More importantly, the Budget does not make it mandatory for the parties to provide details of all donors who give above Rs 2,000 to the I-T department or any audit body. Even if donors make donations by cheque or electronic transfer, unless their complete information is available for audit scrutiny, the sources of donations below Rs 20,000 to political parties will continue to stay hidden.

On the proposal that political parties were "entitled to receive donations in cheque or digital mode", the ADR said this was a reiteration of existing rules.

Parties already have the option of accepting donations in only such forms that can be traced to a donor.

On the proposal to introduce electoral bonds for political funding, the ADR said it was waiting for the government to frame a scheme on this.

According to the finance minister, donors would be allowed to buy these bonds and donate to any party or parties; these may be redeemed in the account of a registered party. These bonds will be available only on issuance of cheque or via digital payment. ADR demands that these contributions not be anonymous and details of such donors be compiled.

The final proposal was that only political parties which file their return of income within the prescribed time and which fulfil the specified conditions would enjoy 100 per cent tax exemption.

The ADR said section 13A of the I-T Act already provides that if the treasurer of a political party or any other person so authorised fails to send a report under sub-section (3) of Section 29C of the Representation of the People Act for a financial year, no tax exemption shall be available for that party for that year.

Also, that the EC, as part of its transparency guidelines, has specified that parties are required to file their return of income.

"The legal provisions were already in place. Reiterating an existing rule of law does not add anything new to the proposed electoral reform," it said.

RPA says for a party to claim tax exemption, its treasurer has to send a donations report, declaring details of donors who contributed above Rs 20,000. However, there is no legal provision where political parties are barred from disclosing details of donors who donated below Rs 20,000.

"This only shows a lack of political will," ADR said.

According to an analysis by the ADR, between 2010-11 and 2014-15, the Bharatiya Janata Party defaulted in the sending of its report to the EC by an average of 182 days and the Congress by 166 days on average. The Nationalist Congress Party defaulted for an average of 87 days and the Samajwadi Party by 42 days.

The ADR said this was the first Budget to raise the issue of transparency in political funding, but it was "unfortunate to note" that complete transparency in the finances of political parties has still not been adopted and the proposed reforms are inconsequential, as political funding will continue to remain opaque.

The Budget proposes to encourage digital modes of payment but not to curtail other forms of anonymous donations, such as sale of coupons. The ADR said political parties must provide all information on their finances under the Right to Information Act.
Punjab has around 19.7 million voters, of whom 53% are below the age of 40 years. Sahil Makkar reports.

Amandeep Singh, 21, and his friends would be casting their first vote on February 4. They would also be breaking a tradition where parents or elders would decide the preferred candidate for other family members during an election.

Singh wants to go with the new wave, whereas his parents want to stick with the Congress, represented by former Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal at Bhatinda. Deepak Bansal, a youngster who failed to crack the UPSC exams in two attempts, is contesting from the Aam Aadmi Party.

"Times have changed. We youngsters want someone new," Singh says, seated outside the kite shop of his friend, Sanjeev Singla, 28.

"I am a postgraduate and selling kites for my livelihood. I would be again jobless once the kite season is over. I need a permanent job and I am hopeful the AAP government would help me," adds Singla.

The friends spoke minutes after Badal shook hands with them and sought their votes.

Badal, however, was confident he would win.

"It is a traditional Congress seat."

Punjab has around 19.7 million voters, of whom 53 per cent are below the age of 40 years.

Another 47 per cent are above 41 years, an almost equally divide between youth and elderly.

Data suggests till 2012, people of all age groups were equally divided between the Shiromani Akali Dal and the Congress.

With AAP joining the fray, it is expected that both traditional parties, especially the SAD, would lose a substantial chunk of their youth voters, which has the traditional voters of SAD worried.

"Nayi hawa jor pakad rahi hai, pind vich nojawaan AAP de picche ja rahe ne (A new wave is growing, with youth in the village going with AAP)," says Milkha Singh, 71, a contract farmer in Baba Bakala constituency.

"The youth dont listen to us. My family has around 20 voters and I believe half of them would vote for a change."

He rues that though demonetisation had put him in financial trouble, he did not have any other option except to vote for the ruling Akalis (in coalition with the Bharatiya Janata Party).

"Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal had waived electricity charges for running tubewells but Amarinder Singh (the Congress chief) brought it back," he says.

Milkha Singh had to sell his crop at throwaway prices because of the cash crunch in the market during the demonetisation between November 8 and December 30.

Some 25 km away from Baba Bakala, Manpreet Kaur pledges support for Badal in the Khadur Sahab Assembly segment of Tarn Taran district. Kaur said she would benefited from the state government's atta-dal scheme, under which it provides wheat and pulses at highly subsidised rates to the poor.

In the district, though, close to the Pakistan border, many families have decided to punish the Akalis for failing to prevent rise of drug abuse and controlling of hooligans.

"Most families have a drug addict in the villages here. The problem is more among the unemployed youth. We hold the present government responsible. They have ruined the entire young generation. The Akali sarpanch (village headman) is pressing us to vote for the SAD but we will change the government, says a mother of a drug addict in Kaka Kandiala village.

Devender Singh Mardana, a SAD activist in Amritsar, admitted the average use of drugs has risen in Punjab. However, he said, political parties were blowing it out of proportion to make it an election issue.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday made it clear that it cannot guarantee that surgical strikes wont happen in future as any such action will depend on the situation prevailing at that time.

"Pakistan is our neighbouring country. If they correct themselves it will be good, but if some terror attack takes place, we cannot guarantee that there won't be surgical strike in future. We don't want, but if situation demands, there is no second way," Singh said.

He said Prime Minister Narendra Modi had taken this well thought-after decision in which all sat down together to explore the option.

In an interview to CNN-News18, Singh said there were inputs that after carrying out terror strikes in Kashmir, terrorists return to the launching pads on the Line of Control.

Our soldiers went across the Line of Control and hit those launching pads and cause significant damages, the home minister said.

Hafiz Saeed has been put under house arrest earlier also. If Pakistan is serious about acting against Saeed and terrorists, it must take legal action against them.

He also dismissed as 'a mere eye wash' the house arrest of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba chief Hafiz Saeed, saying if Pakistan was serious about acting against Saeed and terrorists, it must take legal action against them.

"Hafiz Saeed has been put under house arrest earlier also. After 26/11 he was put under house arrest. My input is, this is his second house arrest but I feel this is just an eye wash. If Pakistan is serious about acting against Saeed and terrorists, it must take legal action against them," he said.

He said there is a first information report registered against him and Indian government has submitted dossiers against him.

"He must be charge-sheeted and put behind bars. Our efforts are continuing. Action must happen against such terrorists. The PM has tried to bring together international community against terrorists," he said.

Singh refused to comment on recent the United States government's travel ban on the citizens of seven countries--Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen--for 90 days saying it was a decision of sovereign nation.

On the question of Indias most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, Singh said, I am confident that Dawood will be brought back to India. Our efforts are continuing. We have told Pakistan where he is hiding. It is a matter of time that we will be able to bring him back sometime in future.

I am confident that Dawood will be brought back to India. Our efforts are continuing.

Singh said that it is our efforts that hostilities should not increase with Pakistan as it is our neighbour but Pakistan will also have to think about making relations better.

We made efforts but did not get adequate response, the home minister said.

Singh said India has no role in Balochistan but only gives its reaction whenever there are human rights issues.

Pakistan will have to think that it was formed on religious lines but failed to keep cultural identities but India does not have any such issue, Singh said.

The home minister said, We want to keep Kashmir with us but not by creating fear in their hearts and we keep making efforts like the prime minister visited Kashmir when there was recent flood.

We do not worry about how a sovereign country keeps its relations with others. Our relations with China are good. Our relations will continue to keep getting better. We are not disappointed. Our efforts are continuing, we are hopeful that some time in future China will come on the same page as far as terror is considered, he said.

On the question of on Chinas decision to block the declaration of JuM Chief Masood Azhar as an international terrorist by the United Nations, he said, May be there are some situations that they have not supported but we are hopeful that in future they will support us.

Singh said demonetisation was a big decision and it was not taken for any political gain.

There is dip not only in black money but also terror funding. Out efforts are that generation of black money should be stopped hence promoting digital payments, he said.

Singh said there was no single reason behind the move and discussions were going on implications of demonetising Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes.

Asked about why is the Bharatiya Janata Party contesting Uttar Pradesh election without a chief ministerial candidate, We have contested number of elections where we did not declare Chief Ministerial candidate and in many cases we did. We have taken conscious decision not to project a CM candidate.

We want to keep Kashmir with us but not by creating fear in their hearts and we keep making efforts like the prime minister visited Kashmir when there was recent flood.

We have many faces in UP who can be the chief minister. I am Home Minister I do not think that one should have any problem, he said.

In a lighter tone, he said he was the home minister and it is not right that he would take all the positions.

Had the Congress and the SP (Samajwadi Party) been confident, they would not have contested together. Mulayam Singh Yadav who promoted the SP in his life was pained at this arrangement..., he said, adding that family feud do not give a happy feeling to anyone.

There will be no modification in the reservation policy, Singh said on the question of recent statement of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary Manmohan Vaidya. He said his statement was distorted and clarification was issued.

Not just before elections, people should always be cautious before speaking, he said.

On the contentious issues of alleged exodus in Kairana, cow slaughter, love jihad etc, Singh said, Once the BJP forms government, a system will be placed that no one has to undergo exodus and if some forces, they will be dealt firmly by law.

The government should ensure that such a situation should not arise. Whatever happened (in Kairana), it is sad. The situation is not that bad. It has not gone out of control, Singh said when asked about the Yogi Adityanath statement comparing Kairana to Kashmir.

Singh said that Ram Mandir is not a political issue for us and the matter is sub judice before Supreme Court, the decision should be awaited.

Politics should not be done on communal cards by any party be it the Congress, the SP or the BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party). We will not make country great by creating hatred, he said on polarising statements issued by politicians.

He said in 2007 he has objected to ticket proposed by election committee in which Atal Bihari Vajpayee was also supporting his ticket.

If son of a politician wants ticket, I feel he must work for at least 10 years in the party, he said.

Lauding the role of former Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, Singh said he was impartial.

The Aam Aadmi Party had repeatedly challenged our decisions in courts and their contentions have been rejected. If the Delhi government had wanted us to do something which is outside Constitutional arrangement, how can it be done, he said.
In a significant development, the Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear afresh the aspect of awarding death penalty to four convicts in the sensational December 16, 2012 gang rape and murder case.

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra prima facie agreed with the contention of senior advocate Raju Ramachandran, who is assisting it as the amicus curiae, that the provision of the Code of Criminal Procedure, relating to sentencing of convicts, has not been followed in letter and spirit by the trial court in the case.

It was submitted that section 235 of the CrPC provides that an accused, in the event of conviction, would be heard by on the question of sentencing individually before the trial judge passes the order awarding punishment.

The bench, also comprising justices R Banumathi and Ashok Bhushan, then mulled ways to rectify the apparent error and said there are two modes: either the case be remanded back to the trial court to pass a fresh order on sentence or the apex court itself hears this aspect of the matter afresh.

The bench then said, We think the second mode is more appropriate. We would like to give opportunity to accused persons to file affidavits along with documents stating mitigating circumstances.

It then permitted M L Sharma and A P Singh, lawyers representing the convicts, to visit the condemned prisoners in Tihar jail here to apprise them about Fridays order so as to enable them to file affidavits detailing mitigating circumstances in their favour.

The court, which said the convicts are required to file affidavits by February 23, decided to keep hearing the appeals on the substantial issue of conviction in the matter.

It will decide the future date for hearing afresh the arguments on sentencing on February 6.

The 23-year-old paramedic was brutally assaulted and gang-raped by six persons in a moving bus in south Delhi and thrown out of the vehicle with her male friend on the night of December 16, 2012. She had died in a Singapore hospital on December 29.

The trial court had awarded death penalty to convicts, Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh. While the fifth, and one of the key accused, Ram Singh allegedly committed suicide inside jail during the trial. Earlier also, the court had asked the convicts to file their responses detailing mitigating circumstances favouring them on the issue of sentencing.

Besides senior advocate Ramachandran, another senior lawyer Sanjay Hegde is also assisting the court as amicus curiae in the matter.

While Ramachandran is assisting the court in appeals of convicts Mukesh and Pawan, Hegde is assisting in appeals of other two convicts, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh.

Ramachandran had said that the trial court and the high court were so overwhelmed by the nature of the crime that they did not follow the proper procedure for sentencing the accused in the instant case.

He had submitted that the courts below did not consider the mitigating circumstances of individual accused in the case.

These four convicts had approached the apex court against the Delhi high courts March 13, 2014 verdict which had observed that their offence fell in the rarest of rare category and had upheld the death sentence awarded to them by the trial court.

The prime accused, Ram Singh, was found dead in a cell in Tihar Jail in March 2013 and proceedings against him were abated.
The White House says President Trump is 'extremely upset' with the 'poorly-crafted' refugee deal with Australia.

Donald Trump on Friday praised Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for telling the truth about their civil conversation on the bilateral refugee deal, a day after the United States President described the Obama-era agreement as a dumb deal.

Trump called their conversation very civil in a tweet, adding that fake news media had lied about details of the exchange during their first telephonic talk held last Saturday.

Thank you to Prime Minister of Australia for telling the truth about our very civil conversation that FAKE NEWS media lied about. Very nice! Trump tweeted.

The US-Australia deal to take 1,250 refugees from Manus Island and Nauru was brokered in the closing weeks of the Obama administration.

Many of the refugees are from the seven Muslim-majority countries affected by Trumps recent travel ban.

Details of a tense phone conversation with Turnbull, which Trump reportedly described as the worst by far, were published by the Washington Post on Thursday.

Trump reportedly accused Turnbull of seeking to export the next Boston bombers to the US, and complained that the deal was going to kill him politically.

Trump followed up the conversation with a tweet in which he railed against the dumb deal.

Look, I'm not going to comment on a conversation between myself and the President of the United States other than what we have said publicly, and you can surely understand the reasons for that, the Australian prime minister had said on Thursday.

Turnbull also said he was disappointed the details of the call -- which he described as very frank and forthright -- had been leaked.

Overnight, Trump slightly moderated his language, telling a Washington event that: I have a lot of respect for Australia, I love Australia as a country -- but we have a problem.

He urged people not to worry about the tough phone calls he was having with world leaders.

A lot of countries are taking advantage of us. Terribly taking advantage of us, he said.

Australias Ambassador in Washington Joe Hockey met top Trump adviser Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus at the White House on Thursday amid ongoing discussions over the agreement.

Earlier, the White House had said that President Trump is 'extremely upset' with the 'poorly-crafted' refugee deal with Australia but will go ahead with the agreement by enforcing 'extreme vetting' of each of the 1,250 refugees to ensure that they do not pose a threat to the US.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer lashed out at the Obama-administration for the refugee agreement with Australia, saying the new president was 'unbelievably disappointed' to have inherited the deal.

Spicer, however, said Trump 'had a very cordial conversation' with the Australian prime minister.

"The President is unbelievably disappointed in the previous administration's deal that was made and how poorly it was crafted and the threat it put on US national security," said Spicer.

"He (Trump) has tremendous respect for the Prime Minister and the Australian people and has agreed to continue to review that deal and to ensure that as part of the deal, was always part of it, that we would go through a very, very extreme vetting process to ensure that every single person that is being offered up is coming here with peaceful intentions and poses no threat to the United States," he said.

"So he has ensured that while he has respect for the Australian people and respect for PM Turnbull, that we do not pose a threat to the US, that the deal that he was cut by the last administration is something that he is extremely, extremely upset with. He does not like it," Spicer said.
The 'Artery Top 500 Works' list features the most expensive Indian works of art that have been sold since modern Indian artwork was first included in a mainstream international auction in the mid 1960s.

Their collective realised price? $367.9 million!

As the demand and value of Indian artists grows internationally, Monali Sarkar looks at the record setters.

$4,415,008

Untitled: Vasudeo S Gaitonde

Gaitonde topped this list after an untitled painting of his was bought by an anonymous buyer at a Christie's, Mumbai, auction for $4,415,008 in December 2015.

This oil on canvas by one of India's foremost abstract painters is the most expensive Indian artwork to be sold since 1965, according to Artery India, an art market intelligence firm.

The Artery list consists of 32 artists -- 17 Modernists, 5 Pre-Modernists, and 10 Contemporaries.

The artworks that made it to the list were sold at global auctions since 1965 -- the year that marked the first inclusion of a Modern Indian artwork in a mainstream international art auction.

They have been ranked according to their realised sales prices (inclusive of buyer's premium) in US dollars.

Their collective realised price is $367.9 million (Rs 1,936.6 crores/Rs 19.366 billion).

Photograph: Kind courtesy Christie's



$4,085,000

Birth: Francis Newton Souza

This oil on board, painted by Souza in 1955, sold for a sum north of $4 million at a Christie's, New York, auction in 2015.

Birth is considered one of the most important paintings of the Goa-born artist's career and was included in his first solo show at Gallery One in London.

Interestingly, this painting was sold at a Christie's auction in 2008 for $2.5 million -- then a record price for a work of modern Indian art.

Artery founder Arvind Vijaymohan said in a statement, 'The Indian art market has witnessed exponential growth since 2001. Following the predictable repercussions of the art fund wave that at its outset heavily polluted, and thereon, purified the art market operations, we are now on a path that spells slower, albeit stable growth.'

$3,792,400

Untitled: Vasudeo S Gaitonde

This 1979 painting was one of Gaitonde's earliest works -- done soon after he graduated from the J J School of art.

The painting, bearing his signature in Hindi, went to a private collector from the US.

The sale of this oil on canvas in 2013 kicked off Christie's first auction in India with a world record for modern Indian art.

While 11 auction houses find mention in 'Artery Top 500', out of the top 10 works, 7 were sold by Christie's, 2 by Pundole's and 1 by Sotheby's.

$3,486,965

Saurashtra: Syed Haider Raza

The auction of this acrylic on canvas by Christie's, South Kensington, in 2010 was a record setter then.

The price was owed to the fact that Raza himself considered this to be one of the 10 most important works of his life.

Saurashtra was painted in 1983 after Raza had already explored Ecole de Paris and Abstract Expressionism, and had begun to incorporate elements of his Indian heritage into his art.

The auction allowed a private Indian museum to bring the painting back to India.

Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

$3,387,900

Radha in the Moonlight: Raja Ravi Varma

This 1890 oil on canvas was originally in the collection of Shungrasoobyer Avergal, the dewan of Travancore. It was inherited by his great-grand children who sold it to the current owner.

According to Pundole's, which auctioned the painting in 2016, 'This particular Radha is conceivably one of the most beautiful of Ravi Varma's uttama nayikas, the high-minded women of many virtues and qualities that are intrinsic to goddesses and women in classical Indian literature... Varma subsequently painted other canvases of Radha in varying moods and emotions.'

Photograph: Kind courtesy Pundole's

$3,240,077

Untitled (Figure on Rickshaw): Tyeb Mehta

Mehta, a key member of the Bombay Progressive Artists Group, was inspired by the rickshaw pullers he'd see during his annual summer holidays in Kolkata.

The oil on canvas was sold by Christie's, South Kensington, in 2011.

The earliest and oldest record to qualify within the Artery list is Tyeb Mehta's Celebration, which was sold by Christie's, New York, in September 2002.

The painting ranks 473 on the list, with a realised price of $317,500.

Photograph: Kind courtesy Christie's

$3,165,200

Mahishasura: Tyeb Mehta

This acrylic on canvas, pictured centre, was sold by Christie's, Mumbai, in 2013.

Mehta has several other million dollar paintings to his credit, including Kali and Untitled-Falling Bull.

Photograph: Reuben NV/Rediff.com

$3,105,000

La Terre: Syed Haider Raza

Raza's acrylic on canvas sold for $2.54 million in 2008 and appreciated by more than half-a-million dollars when it was auctioned again by Christie's, New York, in 2014.

Raza, a modernist painter and one of the pioneers of the Bombay Progressive Movement, emerged as the artist with the most number of works -- 77 -- featured in the Artery list.

$3,049,283

Untitled: Vasudeo S Gaitonde

Gaitonde returns to the list for a third time thanks to another oil on canvas that was sold by Pundole's, Mumbai, in April 2015.

Photograph: Kind courtesy: Pundole's

$2,920,000

Untitled (Self-portrait): Amrita Sher-Gil

This oil on canvas by the artist who is considered India's greatest female painter made an impressive sale at a Sotheby', (New York, auction in 2015.

It was given by the artist to her cousin-niece and husband during Sher-Gil's visit to Europe circa 1933.

The painting was in the family's posession and was acquired from them by the current owner.

Photograph: Kind courtesy Sotheby's
Somewhat lost amid the uproar resulting from President Trump's executive order on travel last weekend were changes he made within the National Security Council.

Each president is, of course, entitled to organize the White House, including the NSC, in any way he wishes, but one Trump change in particular - the promotion of political strategist Steve Bannon to a prominent place within the NSC process - gives us pause.

First formed in 1947 during the administration of President Harry Truman, the NSC is described as the principal forum used by the president for consideration of national security and foreign policies.

Trump's reorganization of the NSC for the first time invites a president's political strategist to attend any meeting of the NSC and gives him or her regular membership on the influential, most-senior NSC Principals Committee. (By contrast, the director of national intelligence and chairman of the Joint Chiefs will not be regular members.)

"Now, politics finding its way into a president's national security decision-making is nothing new. But it rarely (if ever) gets a seat in the White House Situation Room - for good reason," Kelly Magsamen, who served on the NSC staff for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, wrote for The Atlantic. "To place a purely political operative on the NSC - alongside Cabinet members with national-security responsibilities or expertise - is an unprecedented move with profound implications for how national-security policies are developed and executed.

"To be clear, that concern is not confined to Steve Bannon," Magsamen continued. "This would be the case no matter who it was."

Or, who the president was.

The last place you want to put somebody who worries about politics is in a room where theyre talking about national security, Leon Panetta, a former White House chief of staff, defense secretary, and C.I.A. director, said to The New York Times.

Because he possesses no experience in national security or foreign policy, we don't see how the addition of Bannon contributes anything to the NSC process other than the disturbing potential for introduction of political considerations into discussions where they don't belong.

Bottom line: Bannon shouldn't have a seat at the table.

This editorial was published in the Feb. 1 edition of the Sioux City Journal, another Lee Enterprises publication.
The new administration recently made a very prudent decision. Regardless of your opinion of our new president, his order expediting critical infrastructure projects, such as the Dakota Access Pipeline and the proposed Keystone XL, will prove beneficial to our nation.

The opposition to these projects became more about symbol than substance. Americans should feel safer knowing the economic and national security advantages these pipelines advance.

We no longer will rely as heavily on unstable, foreign countries for energy resources. More North American-produced energy sounds like a particularly good idea in the middle of this winter, when Iowans' dependence on heating our homes and fueling our cars and offices increases right along with our bills.

This move sends a consistent message to our energy industry -- America is open for business. Harnessing our energy resources and delivering the necessary key infrastructure puts American manufacturers and laborers to work.

While oil is only one key component to a comprehensive energy strategy, pursuing an all-of-the-above energy approach is crucial for our nation moving forward.

Gary Wattnem, Mason City

Retired Major General; chairman, Iowa Vets4Energy Board
Heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine extracting heavy civilian toll, UN Security Council hears

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Heavy fighting in eastern Ukraine extracting heavy civilian toll, UN Security Council hears, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589439ff40c.html [accessed 5 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.

2 February 2017 - Briefing the Security Council on the situation in eastern Ukraine, the top United Nations political and humanitarian officials underlined today that continuing fighting in the region, with only short periods of respite, have exasperated human suffering.

"Since 7 January this year, and in particular over the last few days, we have seen a dangerous intensification of the conflict," Jeffrey Feltman, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs told Council members today.

"The entire length of the 'Contact Line' has seen a serious escalation of hostilities, and there is still a risk of further deterioration of the situation," added Mr. Feltman.

According to reports, there were more than 10,000 explosions in the Donetsk region over 24 hours, and heavy fighting has been reported near Mariupol, Popasna and the Svitlodarsk/Debaltseve areas, both in Government-controlled and non-government controlled areas, along with use of heavy weapons such as multiple-launch-rocket systems which are prohibited by the Minsk Agreements.

Furthermore, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission has recorded damage to civilian houses and a school in populated areas of Avdiivka, raising serious concerns about possible violations of international humanitarian law by all sides.

Since the start of the conflict, almost 10,000 people have been killed (Ukrainian armed forces, civilians and members of armed groups), and over 23,000. Over 2,000 of those killed were civilians.

VIDEO: Secretary-General Guterres expressed "deep concern" over recent intensification of conflict in eastern Ukraine - UN political affairs chief, Jeffrey Feltman, told the Security Council meeting earlier today.

Mr. Feltman also spoke of the statement agreed yesterday at the meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk which laid down urgent measures that both sides should take not only in the Avdiivka-Yasynuvata-Donetsk airport area, but along the entire contact line in order to prevent further ceasefire violations that could in turn spiral out of control.

"This is a positive development, but the test will be in the implementation of the measures," he said noting that the pattern of successive ceasefire agreements broken by fresh violence left civilians caught in the crossfire and trapped in suffering.

"With every new day of fighting, the conflict becomes more entrenched and difficult to resolve. There is no military solution to this conflict," he said.

Also briefing the Security Council today, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Stephen O'Brien highlighted the impact of the conflict to civilians underlined the need for a political solution to the crisis.

"Civilians living on both sides of the frontline [] are not only traumatized, living a precarious and dangerous existence, but damage to critical services is making survival an issue," said Mr. O'Brien, adding that damage to critical infrastructure such heating in places such as Avdiivka and the freezing temperatures could trigger large-scale displacement.

VIDEO: UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, depicted a grave humanitarian situation in Ukraine, while re-emphasising the need for unhindered humanitarian access for the vulnerable population.

The latest escalation of violence is exasperating the ongoing needs of an estimated 3.8 million civilians who require various degrees of humanitarian assistance. More than 60 per cent of those (about 2.3 million people) reside in non-Government controlled areas, and over 70 per cent are elderly, children and women.

Further, noting that the while some humanitarian response efforts continue, undue bureaucratic restrictions which have been imposed since July 2015 by the de facto authorities in Donetsk and Luhansk regions have severely affecting humanitarian access.

He also reported that, Government-imposed bureaucratic impediments, particularly in relation to the ban on commercial trade and importation of food and medicines across the 'contact line,' remained a serious constraint to alleviating the humanitarian crisis and that suspension of social payments by the Government have severely affected hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

In his briefing, Mr. O'Brien also alerted the Security Council of the risk of serious environmental impact of the hostilities, he said:

"Damage to the Phenol plant near Novgorodske village means that waste chemicals, including deadly sulfuric acid and formaldehyde, are now at critical levels [and] leakage into the surrounding land and the Seversky Donets River would have disastrous humanitarian consequences in a highly industrialized part of Europe."
Marching towards peace, FARC-EP begins turning in arms  UN Mission in Colombia

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Marching towards peace, FARC-EP begins turning in arms  UN Mission in Colombia, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58943a6b40e.html [accessed 5 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.

2 February 2017 - More than 200 men and women of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) marched today to demobilization camps, two months after a peace deal that ended the Western Hemisphere's longest running conflict, United Nations monitors coordinating the process reported.

The UN Mission in Colombia said the Transitional Point of Normalization of Pondores, department of La Guajira, in northern Colombia, according to figures from tripartite Monitoring and Verification Mechanism, composed of the Government, the FARC-EP and coordinated by the UN Mission.

Members of the FARC-EP - some of them pregnant or breastfeeding - walked about nine kilometres from four pre-grouping points near to the Pondores transitional point, where the FARC-EP camp will be located and where the separation of forces will take place, a task which the UN Mission will verify.

"As a UN Mission, this moment is crucial because it means we will continue to verify the ceasefire and cessation of hostilities through our participation in the Tripartite Mechanism, and we will be able to begin the operational part of the verification of the laying down of arms," explained the Deputy Head of Observers of the Mission, Jose Mauricio Villacorta.

According to the Mission, the women and men marching today join more than 6,300 FARC-EP members who began mobilizing on Saturday, 28 January, to zones and points using 36 travel routes in 14 departments of the country, according to preliminary figures from the Colombian Government's High Commissioner for Peace, on one of the country's largest logistics operations.

FARC-EP members were received today at the Pondores site by High Commissioner for Peace Sergio Jaramillo, FARC-EP leader Ivan Marquez, Colombian authorities and Mr. Mauricio Villacorta, in a symbolic act to highlight the parties' commitment and the imminent start of the laying down of arms, which the UN Mission will verify, to enable the transition to civilian life.

"This shows that we are bringing the agreement to reality," said Mr. Jaramillo, who added: "This is a moment of joy."

Ivan Marquez, who headed the FARC-EP negotiating team in Havana, Cuba, where four years of negotiations on the eventual peace accord took place, stated: "Something good is happening in Colombia: it's peace [] This peace is irrepressible, unstoppable; let us go forward."

"To date, we have focused on the planning and preparation phase so that the Mission can carry out the tasks of registering and storing weapons," said Mr. Mauricio Villacorta.

Once FARC-EP members are in the camps the first step for the laying down of arms is the registration of arms and weapons. Unstable armaments - such as gunpowder, grenades and anti-personnel mines - will be destroyed in site. After 180 days, the UN Mission in Colombia is set to remove all the weapons from the camp.

In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the Government and the FARC-EP. That deal led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November.
Dangerous conditions in Ukraine after heavy fighting shuts down power, water - UNICEF

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Dangerous conditions in Ukraine after heavy fighting shuts down power, water - UNICEF, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58943b7140c.html [accessed 5 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.

2 February 2017 - More than 2,500 children in the Donetsk region of Ukraine are without heat, electricity or water, prompting the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to call for an end to fighting in the area so that the infrastructure can be repaired.

Intense fighting in the town of Avdiivka on 29 and 30 January disabled electricity and water, including the Donetsk Filtration Station and the backup reservoir.

With temperatures plummeting to 1 degree Fahrenheit (minus 17 degrees Celsius), the situation could have catastrophic consequences for the residents of Avdiivka, according to a statement from UNICEF.

The UN agency's representative in Ukraine also voiced concern about the fighting, which has also caused six schools and four kindergartens in the area to shut down.

Not only are the lives of thousands of children in Avdiivka, and on all sides of the conflict, at risk, but to make matters worse, the lack of water and electricity means that homes are becoming dangerously cold and health conditions deteriorating as we speak, said Giovanna Barberis.

In addition to the 17,000 residents in Avdiivka, the non-functional filtration station supplied some 400,000 people in area with water.

Water is now rationed and there is a possibility that the piped household water supply will stop altogether, UNICEF said.

The UN Security Council has also voiced concern about the fresh fighting. On 31 January, the Council issued a press statement saying its 15 members were gravely concerned about the situation in the country's eastern region and its severe impact on the local civilian population.
Iran: Halt imminent execution of juvenile offender, urge UN human rights experts

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Iran: Halt imminent execution of juvenile offender, urge UN human rights experts, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58943bf140c.html [accessed 5 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.

2 February 2017 - Calling on the Government of Iran to immediately halt the execution of a juvenile offender whose trial was reportedly marred with lack of due process and fair trial guarantees, a group of United Nations human rights experts have urged the authorities to adopt a moratorium on juvenile executions.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the offender, Hamid Ahmadi, was 17 years old when he was sentenced to death in 2009 for the fatal stabbing of a young man in a fight between five boys, the year before. The court relied on confessions reportedly obtained under torture and ill-treatment at a police station. Mr. Ahmadi was also denied access to a lawyer and his family.

To our knowledge, in the case of Hamid Ahmadi, the most stringent guarantees of fair trial and due process contained in international human rights instruments have been disrespected and, the allegations of torture and confessions extracted under duress were not taken into consideration nor did the lead to any investigation, the human rights experts said.

Any death sentence undertaken in contravention of a Government's international obligations, and particularly when a conviction is based on confessions extracted under torture, is unlawful and tantamount to an arbitrary execution, they stressed.

Mr. Ahmadi's execution, planned to take place  by hanging  on Saturday, 4 February, is the third time it has been scheduled. In the two previous instances, they were halted at the last minute.

Any death sentence undertaken in contravention of a Government's international obligations, and particularly when a conviction is based on confessions extracted under torture, is unlawful and tantamount to an arbitrary execution

OHCHR further noted that the Iranian Supreme Court had overturned the death sentence in 2009 due to some doubts about the testimony of several key witnesses but ultimately upheld the death sentence a year later.

Furthermore, following the adoption (in 2013) of new juvenile sentencing provisions of the Islamic Penal Code, Mr. Ahmadi was granted a retrial but was eventually re-sentenced to death by a Provincial Criminal Court in December 2015.

Unprecedented rate of scheduling and even conducting executions of juveniles

The experts also condemned that execution of juveniles continue to be scheduled and even conducted at an unprecedented rate in the country since the beginning of the year.

On 17 January, we already intervened to halt the execution of another juvenile, they noted.

Since then, we have learned that two other juveniles have been hanged on 15 and 18 January. Arman Bahr Asemani and Hassan Hassanzadeh were both juveniles at the time they allegedly committed the offence for which they were sentenced to death.

Underlining that that international standards unequivocally forbid the imposition and execution of the death penalty on persons below 18 years of age, the UN experts urged Iran to observe its international obligations by putting an end to the execution of juvenile offenders once and for all.

The human rights experts voicing their concern included:

Independent experts and Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva based UN Human Rights Council  an inter-governmental body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights around the world  to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
Iraq: Men Fleeing Mosul Held in Secret

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 2 February 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Iraq: Men Fleeing Mosul Held in Secret, 2 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58943c954.html [accessed 5 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.

Groups within the Iraqi military are screening and detaining men fleeing Mosul in unidentified detention centers where they are cut off from contact with the outside world.

The groups, the Popular Mobilization Forces (known as the PMF or Hashd al-Sha'abi), are apparently screening the men for suspected involvement with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). Given these groups' lack of training in screening, the irregular nature of these screenings and detentions, and the detainees' lack of contact with the outside world, the detained men are at heightened risk of abuse, including arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance.

"In case after case, relatives are telling us that their male family members are being stopped by PMF fighters and disappearing," said Lama Fakih, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "While we cannot know exactly what has happened to the men detained, the lack of transparency, particularly for their families as to their whereabouts, is cause for real concern."

Iraqi authorities should only allow bodies with a screening mandate to screen people and ensure that anyone detained is held in a recognized detention center accessible to independent monitors and granted their due process rights enshrined in international and Iraqi law. All detention should be based on clear domestic law, and every detainee should be brought promptly before a judge to review the legality of their detention. Iraqi law requires that authorities bring detainees before an investigative judge within 48 hours of their detention.

The authorities should ensure that detainees' families know where they are and publicly issue information about the number of people detained as part of the operation to retake Mosul from ISIS.

Human Rights Watch interviewed families from one village, Nzara, who said that PMF fighters had taken all the villagers to another town for 15 days in November 2016, then to refugee camps. But five men who had left the village to sell their sheep never returned and later were seen on a television broadcast identified as captured ISIS fighters. Another man who had left to sell his sheep described being attacked and detained by PMF fighters and eventually reunited with his family, but three men who had been with him in the car have yet to reappear.

Human Rights Watch also interviewed members of four displaced families who traveled between December 26 and January 15, 2017, through a screening site about two kilometers south of eastern Mosul that was under the control of the Iraq Security Forces' ninth division. The families each said they arrived with large numbers of civilians fleeing, between 1,500 and 4,000 people. They said they also saw between 7 and 20 local PMF fighters there, distinguishable by their badges, accents local to the area, and by their civilian dress. One heard the local fighters being called Abu al-Hashad, signifying their PMF affiliations.

The families who passed through the site all described the same screening process, which was carried out overnight. When they arrived, usually in the evening or at night, men and boys aged 15 and above were separated from women and other children, who went into one of four tents. The military checked each of the men and boys' IDs against lists of people wanted by various Iraqi authorities for suspected ISIS-affiliation.

This is the common procedure facing all men and boys fleeing the current conflict, usually at the first screening site they reach, and sometimes repeated at multiple other sites, dozens of men and boys who fled have told Human Rights Watch. The men from two of the families said that at least eight men screened with them were detained after the ID check.

After that, the men said, they were separated into groups by their Mosul neighborhoods, and four masked men came and pointed at a few men, whom they took away. The men said that as many as seven other men also were taken away, with no explanation from the military and PMF officers. The seven detained men did not reappear before the rest of the group left on buses with their families for the camps the next morning. They did not personally know any of these men, so did not know if they had been with their families or alone.

On January 10, one soldier from the ninth division working at the screening site told Human Rights Watch that he had been stationed there for several weeks and that every night, PMF fighters from the area, known as Tashkeelat Nawadar, led by Abdulrahim al-Shammiri, would come and detain groups of men who were not included on the authorities' "wanted lists." A fighter with the Nawadar Hashad, based at the site, confirmed that his forces were detaining men on a nightly basis, because they were sure these men were ISIS-affiliated. He would not divulge what happened to the detained men. One man who passed through the screening site referred to the PMF there as Hashad Nimrud, and another as the Hashad Nineveh, two different local Hashad groups.

A nongovernmental organization working in the area confirmed to Human Rights Watch that the screening site is under Iraqi military control, but the road and area are under PMF control. Human Rights Watch has been unable to locate the detained men or any families of men detained at the site.

The PMF do not have an official mandate to carry out screenings, and as far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine, have not been trained to carry out screening, raising concerns about possible ill-treatment.

The authorities should ensure that no groups are carrying out screening without legal authority. They should inform family members of the location of anyone detained, allow family members to contact them, and ensure that anyone detained is brought before a judge within 48 hours to comply with Iraqi law. The authorities should publicly issue and update numbers on how many people are being held, where they are from, and where they are being held.

"Some men appear to be vanishing into the night even after official screenings by Iraqi security forces confirmed they were not on their wanted lists" Fakih said. "It is crucial for the authorities to take all measures to ensure that their whereabouts are known and the scale of detention is documented."

The Men from Nzara

Human Rights Watch interviewed three men from the village of Nzara, which residents call Nzaza, 40 kilometers west of Mosul. They all said that on the morning of November 4, at about 7 a.m., five other men from the village, which was under ISIS control at the time, left to sell sheep at a market in Tal Abtah, 30 kilometers south and also under ISIS control. One of those interviewed said that two of the five were his brothers, and that he saw them set out that morning.

Two of the men interviewed said that a few hours later, over 100 fighters from Badr, one of the most prominent groups within the PMF, took control of Nzara and forcibly bused all the residents, about 260 families, to the village of Jurn, 25 kilometers east. The Badr fighters were recognizable from their badges and banners. Once in Jurn, the PMF checked the men's identity cards and cleared everyone for release. They kept the residents in Jurn for 15 days, providing food, drinks, and shelter, then bused them to refugee camps.

The five men who had gone to Tal Abtah did not join their relatives in Jurn, the men interviewed said. Instead, about 10 days later, they saw the men on film on al-Walaa TV, a channel affiliated with Badr. A banner under the footage said they were ISIS fighters in the custody of Badr's third brigade in the village of Um Hijarah al'Ulya, six kilometers south. The men said the families have tried to locate the detained men through negotiations led by tribal leaders but have found out nothing more about them.

Another Nzara villager, "Ahmad," 44, said that he and three other men had left the village at 6:30 a.m. that morning for Tal Abtah to sell some of their sheep and that PMF, also recognizable by badges and banners, attacked them on their way home. He was wounded and detained, along with the villager who had driven the truck with the sheep to market, and did not know what happened to the other two men in the car. He said the fighters helped stabilize his condition, blindfolded them, and drove them somewhere about 30 minutes away.

There, he said, he was moved into a room, where he was held blindfolded for the next seven days. On the first day, the fighters took his documents, including his identity card and about US$660 from selling the sheep. He did not know what happened to the driver. Someone else was in the room with him, but he did not know who, and was afraid to ask. People there treated his wounds. No one interrogated him or raised any specific allegations against him, he said, but he was not allowed to contact a lawyer or his family. On the eighth day, they put him in an ambulance and took off his blindfold. The ambulance drove him to Jurn, where he found his family.

Ahmad said that the brother of the driver who was with him the day of the arrest told him that he called a friend in the Iraqi Security Forces who said that he had located his brother, who was getting medical treatment for injuries at Tal Afar airport, 60 kilometers west of Mosul, which the PMF was using as a base. A PMF fighter told Human Rights Watch that the forces have a detention center in the area, but would not divulge where. Ahmed said he has not received any news about the other two men he was with.

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Chile: Rights and obligations of permanent residents; instances under which permanent residence is lost

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 25 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol CHL105735.E Related Document(s) Chili : information sur les droits et obligations des residents permanents; situations dans lesquelles un resident permanent peut perdre son droit de residence. Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Chile: Rights and obligations of permanent residents; instances under which permanent residence is lost, 25 January 2017, CHL105735.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58943f054.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Rights and Obligations

The website of the Department of Immigration (Departamento de Extranjeria y Migracion) indicates that permanent residence (Permanencia Definitiva) is a permit issued to foreigners allowing them to reside indefinitely in Chile and to perform any lawful activity (Chile n.d.a). The same source further indicates that once the permit for permanent residence is granted, the foreigner has 30 days to register the permit at the National Headquarters of Foreign Affairs and International Police (Jefatura Nacional de Extranjeria y Policia Internacional), or at the Police, if the previous service is not available at the place where the foreigner lives; and, to apply for a Foreigners' Identity Card at the Civil Registry and Identification Service (Servicio de Registro Civil e Identificacion) (ibid. n.d.b).

According to the website of the Department of Immigration, the permanent resident must personally inform the [translation] "competent authority" of any changes of address or activities within 30 days (ibid.). In cases of change of address, it must be reported to the "competent authority" located in the new place of residence (ibid.).

2. Loss of Permanent Residence

The website of the Chilean Department of Immigration provides the information contained in the following paragraph:

The permanent residence permit will be automatically revoked if the individual spends an uninterrupted period of more than one year outside of Chile. Foreign Service (Consular) officials can prolong the validity of the permit if a permanent resident is unable to return to Chile during the year for "justified reasons," including study or illness. The extension is stamped on the Permanent Residence Certificate (Certificado de Permanencia Definitiva) and must be requested within the 60 days prior to the expiration of the one-year period. A maximum of four consecutive extensions can be granted for the permanent residence permit, and each extension is valid for one year. Once an extension expires, and if a new one is not obtained, permanent residence status will be automatically revoked if the permanent resident continues to remain outside the country (Chile n.d.b).

The Department of Immigration website also indicates that the permanent resident can contact the Provincial Government (Gobernacion Provincial) corresponding to their place of residence, or the Department of Immigration of the Regional Metropolitan Administrative Division (Departamento de Extranjeria de la Intendencia Regional Metropolitana) in Santiago de Chile (ibid.)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Chile. N.d.a. Departemento de Extranjeria y Migracion, Ministerio del Interior y Seguridad Publica. "Permanencia definitiva." [Accessed 20 Jan. 2017]

Chile. N.d.b. Departemento dor Extranjeria y Migracion, Ministerio del Interior y Seguridad Publica. "Advertencia." [Accessed 20 Jan. 2017]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Chile - Embassy in Ottawa.

Internet sites, including: Chile  Bibioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile, Embajada de Chile en Canada, Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo.
Brazil: Domestic violence, including legislation; recourse and support services available to victims (2014-January 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 20 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol BRA105714.E Related Document(s) Bresil : information sur la violence conjugale, y compris les lois, les recours et les services de soutien a la disposition des victimes (2014-janvier 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Brazil: Domestic violence, including legislation; recourse and support services available to victims (2014-January 2017), 20 January 2017, BRA105714.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589440134.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

The US Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 states that in Brazil, "intimate partner violence remained both widespread and underreported to authorities, due to fear of retribution, further violence and social stigma" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 13). A September 2015 article in the UK-based news source The Independent cites an undated Brazilian "government report" as stating that 700,000 women in Brazil "continued to face abuse" despite a domestic violence law approved in 2006 (The Independent 5 Sept. 2015).

A document provided in correspondence with the Research Directorate by Fundo ELAS, a Brazilian fund investing in women's leadership and the rights of women (Fundo ELAS n.d.), cites figures from "Call 180 [Dial 180], a 911 service for domestic violence," as stating that, in 2015, 2,052 aggression reports were filed per day (ibid.15 Dec. 2016). The US Country Reports 2015 describes Call 180 as a government-run "toll-free nationwide hotline for women to report instances of intimate partner violence" (13 Apr. 2016, 13). The Guardian reports in December 2015 that 63,090 women called Brazil's "domestic violence helpline" that year, which was 40 percent more than in 2014 (3 Dec. 2015). Thomson Reuters Foundation, a foundation that aims to promote "free independent journalism, human rights, and the rule of law" and focuses on global issues (Thomson Reuters Foundation n.d.), reports that, in 2015, Call 180 hotline received "nearly" 4,000 calls about cases of "private prison," "a form of domestic abuse in which [women] are held against their will" and which "can refer to cases of women who are not allowed to see family or friends, not allowed access to email or telephone, or are never permitted to be unaccompanied in public to prevent them from having contact with others" (ibid. 11 Apr. 2016).

According to the Associated Press (AP), the President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, stated in March 2015 that 15 Brazilian women are killed per day, many through domestic violence (AP 10 Mar. 2015). The Fundo ELAS report indicates that, according to the Map of Violence [Mapa da Violencia] [1], 4,762 women were murdered in 2013, 33 percent of whom were murdered by partners or ex-partners (15 Dec. 2016). Agencia EFE cites a study by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety and Brazilian government agency Institute of Applied Economic Research as stating that in 2014, 4,757 women were killed by their partners or ex-partners, which represents an increase of 11.6 percent over the past ten years (Agencia EFE 23 Mar. 2016).

1.1 Culture

According to an article in the Global Press Journal and published by the Global Press Institute, an organization which aims to "create a more just and informed world by employing local women journalists to produce ethical, accurate news coverage from the world's least-covered places" (Global Press Institute n.d.), experts attribute domestic abuse in Brazil "to a deep-rooted culture of violence in which men are socialized to believe they can control women and women have little independence" (Global Press Journal 10 Sept. 2012). Similarly, in a telephone interview with the Research Directorate, a representative of the Sao Paulo Women's Union (Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo), a feminist organization in Brazil that focuses on raising awareness of women's rights (Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo 15 Dec. 2016), and the Patricia Galvao Institute (Instituto Patricia Galvao), a Brazilian social organization that works in the area of communication and women's rights (Gender IT n.d.), stated that Brazil has a "very sexist culture," and that there is not enough education on gender violence in the country (Representative 16 Dec. 2016).

An article in the New Internationalist, an "independent, non-profit media cooperative" that reports specifically on issues concerning "human rights, politics, social and environmental justice" (New Internationalist n.d.), cites a police officer from a police station in the city of Ariquemes, in northern Brazil, as stating that in Brazil "men still believe that women are their property, and this happens in all parts of society, from lawyers to manual labourers" (ibid. 13 May 2016).

1.2 Black Women

According to figures provided by Call 180 as presented in a Fundo ELAS report, 59.4 percent of victims of domestic violence in 2013 were black women (Fundo ELAS 15 Dec. 2016). The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute similarly indicated that racism is an important topic linked to domestic violence, as black women represent the majority of victims of such cases (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). She indicated that although policies to reduce domestic violence have been effective for white women, and the rate of murders of white women is down, the murder rate for black women is up (ibid.). The same source also noted that black women face two challenges when reporting domestic violence: they experience both a gender and a racial bias (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. Legislation

Sources report that in 2006, Brazil adopted a law on domestic violence, which was named the Maria da Penha law (New Internationalist 13 May 2015; Perova and Reynolds Nov. 2015, 3; BBC 22 Sept. 2016) "after a women's rights activist who was left paraplegic by her violent husband" (ibid.). The full text of the Law in English can be found attached to this Response. For further information on the Law, refer to Response to Information Request BRA102959 of September 2008.

Sources further report that in March 2015, Brazil adopted a "femicide law" (AP 10 Mar. 2015; Thomson Reuters Foundation 10 Mar. 2015), which legally defines femicide as the killing of a woman by a man because of her gender (ibid.). Sources indicate that the law sets penalties of 12 to 30 years for femicide, with longer jail terms for the killing of a woman who is pregnant, girls under 14, women over 60, women with disabilities (ibid.; US 13 Apr. 2016, 13; AP 10 Mar. 2015), women who recently gave birth, or women killed in the presence of the victim's child or parent (ibid.).

2.1 Effectiveness of Legislation

According to a National Public Radio (NPR) article published, Brazil's laws on violence against women and femicide "haven't been working" (NPR 24 July 2016). The same source indicates that "[n]ew laws have not deterred violent crime, with police and courts failing to follow through," and that "[a] lack of budget and facilities to protect women only makes things worse" (ibid.). A BBC article on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Maria da Penha law, cites Maria da Penha as stating that the law was "'just a first step'" and that "'[n]owadays women are coming forward, but the violence continues. They are coming forward to press charges, but it's only in the cities or the state capitals where there are shelters and specialised police units and all the facilities'" (22 Sept. 2016).

The New Internationalist article further reports that the legislation concerning domestic violence is "often poorly implemented, leaving many women reluctant to report domestic violence" (New Internationalist 13 May 2016). The same source reports that the police officer in the city of Ariquemes "matter-of-factly admitted that although on paper women have protection, and legislation has helped to raise awareness of the issue, in practice the law doesn't always work" (ibid.).

The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute stated that the mechanisms, elements and institutions to fight violence against women included in the Maria da Penha law in itself are good, and that where all elements are present and in practice, the law works (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). However, the same source added that these elements and institutions are not present everywhere, and that the mandated services are unevenly distributed, not only in rural areas but also in cities (ibid.). She further indicated that there is more service coverage in the south and east of Brazil, but less in the centre and north, which are the areas where violence against women, and especially femicide, is higher (ibid.). The Maria da Penha Law mandates every police station to assist women who report domestic abuse, but in practice, the police do not have the capacity, training and gender sensitivity, or resources to do so, and often will send women home (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Recourse and Protection

3.1 Special Police Stations

According to the US Country Reports 2015, "[e]ach state secretariat for public security operated police stations [that are] dedicated exclusively to addressing crimes against women" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 14). In a report entitled Women's Police Stations and Domestic Violence: Evidence from Brazil, Elizaveta Perova from the World Bank and Sarah Reynolds from the School of Public Health at the University of California Berkeley state that specialized police services for women, or Delegacias Especializadas de Atendimento a Mulher (DEAMs) [also known as Delegacias Especializadas de Atendimento das Mulheres; Delegacias Especializadas de Atendimento as Mulheres; Delegacia Especializada no Atendimento a Mulher], are a part of the Civil Police and are focused on crimes that target women such as rape and domestic violence (Perova and Reynolds Nov. 2015, 5). The same source indicates that with the adoption of the Maria da Penha law, the establishment of DEAMs became a federal responsibility (ibid.). Sources indicate that the first police station offering such services was opened in Sao Paulo in 1985 (ibid.; Representative 16 Dec. 2016). The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute stated that there are less than 600 women's police stations found within the approximately 5,600 municipalities of Brazil (ibid.). Similarly, The Guardian states that in 2015, 397 of a total of 5,565 municipalities had a specialized police station for women (3 Dec. 2015). Country Reports 2015 notes that "the stations provided psychological counseling, temporary shelter, and hospital treatment for survivors of intimate partner violence, including rape, as well as criminal prosecution assistance by investigating incidents and forwarding evidence to courts" (13 Apr. 2016, 14). According to Perova and Reynolds, DEAMs have similar duties to the regular police, and in addition, "are charged with requesting urgent protective measures from the judge in case of domestic violence" (Perova and Reynolds Nov. 2015, 5).

Perova and Reynolds indicate that specialized services for female victims of violence are "primarily staffed with women," although this is not a legal requirement (ibid.). However, the representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute stated that despite calls from the women's movement, women's police units do not have all female staff and that "usually" the deputy is a woman, but the rest of the officers are men (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). According to the same source, since the deputy cannot take all statements, often a woman reporting domestic violence has to talk to a man; female victims are reportedly "not guaranteed" to receive a good or attentive hearing, and sometimes there is "bad treatment" (ibid.). Similarly, The Guardian reports that women registering sexual assaults "must often speak to male police officers who might be unprepared to deal with such crimes" (The Guardian 3 Dec. 2015). According to the same source, when women report sexual violence to the police, "victim-blaming is not unusual" (ibid.). The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute indicated that some deputies have insisted on the provision of sensitivity training for their staff, but in the majority of the special women's police stations, this is not the case (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to the representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute, women's police stations are only open during business hours, Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., even though most cases of domestic abuse happen after 5 p.m. or on weekends, and some cases of domestic violence are so urgent that they require immediate attention (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). The same source stated that there is one women's police unit in Sao Paulo that is now open 24/7 (ibid.). The same source further noted that because domestic violence is not prioritized in Brazilian security policy or the security system, officers assigned to the women's police units often see this as a punishment as such postings are seen as not being career positions or carrying no prestige (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.2 Judiciary and Legal Assistance

The New Internationalist article cites a reverend who runs a safe house in the city of Ariquemes as stating that "even in the court system, there are some judges or lawyers who say when a husband and wife fight, we have no right to intervene, it's a private matter" (1 May 2015). The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute stated that "[e]ven in law schools gender violence is not addressed" as a result of sexist cultural attitudes (Representative 16 Dec. 2016).

The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute indicated that after the Maria da Penha law was adopted, members of the judiciary received training, and that there is an increased number of judicial officials who are aware of gender violence (ibid. 16 Dec. 2016). The same source added that whereas before the implementation of the law

there was really no talking about gender violence and domestic violence among agents of the state,  now we can find with some ease at least 10 to 15 people in the judiciary in every federate unit of Brazil who really carried the topic of domestic violence, about 300 people engaged. (ibid.)

Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.3 Hotline

According to the US Country Reports 2015, the Call 180 hotline has the authority to mobilize military police units to respond to reports of domestic violence and to follow up on the status of the case (US 13 Apr. 2016, 13). The same source notes that in March 2015, an international component of the hotline, "which enables Brazilian victims of gender-based violence to call from abroad, was expanded to 13 more countries" (ibid.). The source cites the Secretariat for Women's Policies as indicating that "if [an international] complaint is credible, the secretariat works with the Ministry of Justice, Federal Police, and foreign governments to ensure the victim has access to necessary support services" (ibid.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.4 Reference Centres

According to the representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute, women's reference centres provide women with services such as psychological counseling, social work, and legal assistance via the Public Defenders, a branch of the judiciary that provides legal assistance to those without access to private legal services (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). The representative added that the reference centres also offer services such as training, job referral, food aid and food aid for children (ibid.). The same source indicated that in Sao Paulo, there are 12 to 15 reference centres and that state shelters refer women there to access the services listed above (ibid.). The US Country Reports 2015 similarly indicates that "state and local governments operated reference centers" for women (US 13 Apr. 2016, 14). According to the US Country Reports 2014, there were 223 such reference centers (ibid. 25 June 2015, 21). Country Reports 2015 also notes that women's centers "house special women's precincts, psychological specialists, legal advisers, and employment services for victims of gender based violence," and that two centers were inaugurated in 2015: one in Campo Grande [state of Mato Grosso] and one in Brasilia (ibid. 13 Apr. 2016, 13).

3.5 Restraining Orders

The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute provided the information in the following paragraph:

Restraining orders in domestic violence cases are available, but according to the law, they need to be issued within 48 hours, and this does not always happen in practice. Moreover, judges often do not see the merit of domestic violence cases, and judicial officials commonly hold very strong sentiments against "'taking families apart'." A woman can go to the police to ask for help in getting a restraining order, but often, at police stations, there is a lot of prejudice against women and blame will be put on the victim. Another option is to go to the women's "'reference centers'" for support, where public defenders can provide assistance in applying for a restraining order without having to go through the police. However, this is not always a solution, as public defenders only help people with a low income; women experiencing domestic violence from rich families may find these services inaccessible even though their husbands often control all of the family's finances (Representative 16 Dec. 2016).

The same source added that

[t]he challenge with restraining orders is that when they are issued, there is still the question of "now what?" In the end it is just a piece of paper and many men see it that way. Often the police is going to follow up either, so there is a lot of impunity, and men know that. So restraining orders may sometimes help women, because men will realize that the state is watching. But at the same time, men know that the state does not have the capacity and the resources to protect women everywhere they go. It is not rare that a woman who has a restraining order is still killed by her husband or partner. (ibid.)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.6 Shelters

According to the US Country Reports 2014, there were 77 temporary shelters operated by state and local governments (US 25 June 2015, 21). The US Country Reports 2015 cites figures from the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatistica, IBGE) as stating that "8 percent of municipalities had a dedicated space [shelters or reference centers] for the protection and care of survivors of gender-based violence" (ibid. 13 Apr. 2016, 14). The New Internationalist article states that "only" 2.5 percent of cities in Brazil offer safe house services (13 May 2015). The representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute indicated that there are two types of shelters: transitional shelters, the locations of which are publically available, allow victims to stay for up to 90 days, and are meant to take a woman out of an "immediately dangerous situation"; and "more permanent" shelters, the locations of which are secret and where women can stay up to six months (Representative 16 Dec. 2016). The representative further provided the example of Sao Paulo, a city with 12 million people, which has six transitional shelters and "two or three" secret ones (ibid.). The same source added that since people from the surrounding municipalities rely on the Sao Paulo shelters, these shelters provide services for a population of 30 million people (ibid). Many other cities in Brazil reportedly do not have shelters at all (ibid.).

According to the representative of the Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute, the services offered by shelters are "basic" and consist of a roof, food and security (ibid.). The same source indicated that a woman can bring her children, but that many women only bring their dependents if they are also in danger (ibid.). The same source further stated that a woman in a shelter "cannot have contact with people she knows in the outside world" (ibid.). The representative also indicated that the quality of Brazilian shelters is often criticized; the institutions provide an emergency solution to violence but they "do not help address the situation" (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The New Internationalist article describes how one safe house in the city of Ariquemes which is supported by the Anglican Service of Diakonia and Development (SADD), an organization of the Brazilian Anglican church that aims to support its social work (IEAB n.d.), can house 10 women and their children at a time, and serves a population of 150,000 people from 8 different cities in northern Brazil (New Internationalist 13 May 2015). The same source adds that this safe house provides psychological support and shows women "how to access the basic state benefits they are entitled to" (ibid.). Without providing further detail, the New Internationalist states that a woman "stays a maximum of three months and continues to receive care and support afterwards" (ibid.). The same source indicates that the shelter also provides women with "opportunities to learn new skills, such as baking and handicrafts, so they are able to make their own money" (ibid.). Further and corroborating information on non-state shelters or safe houses could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Other Programs

4.1 Women's Ministry

According to Perova and Reynolds, the Brazilian government established a ministry for women in 2003 called the Secretariat for Women's Policies (Secretaria de Politicas para Mulheres, SPM), which "triggered an increase in governmental funding to services aimed at prevention and treatment of domestic violence" (Nov. 2015, 3). However, Al Jazeera indicates that after the Michel Temer government took over in 2016, the Ministry of Women was folded into the Ministry of Justice and this move "eliminated the key post in charge of promoting and protecting [women's] rights," while also eliminating "any policy negotiations and proposals that the previous Ministry of Women was engaged in" (Al Jazeera 21 Aug. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4.2 "Women, Living Without Violence"

The US Country Reports 2014 indicates that a program called "Women, Living Without Violence" [Mulher, vivir sem violencia] was launched in 2013, "to increase the capacity of the violence hotline, to provide more public health-care options for women and construct women's centers throughout the country" (US 25 June 2015, 20). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] The Map of Violence tracks homicides by fire arm in Brazil from 1980 until 2014, and is produced by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, FLACSO) (Mapa da Violencia n.d.).

References

Agencia EFE. 23 March 2016. "Murders on the Rise in Brazil." (Factiva)

Al Jazeera. 21 August 2016. Kimberley Brown. "Is Brazil's Government Rolling Back Women's Rights?" [Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]

Associated Press (AP). 10 March 2015. "Brazil Promotes Tough Penalties for Gender Killings of Women." (Factiva)

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 22 September 2016. Pablo Uchoa. "Maria da Penha: The Woman Who Changed Brazil's Domestic Violence Laws." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

Fundo ELAS. 15 December 2016. "Brazil." Document provided by a representative in correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Fundo ELAS. N.d. "About ELAS Social Investment Fund." [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]

Gender IT. N.d. "Instituto Patricia Galvao." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

Global Press Journal. 10 September 2012. Thais Moraes. "Government, NGOs Uproot Culture of Domestic Violence in Brazil." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

Global Press Institute. N.d. "Global Press Institute." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

The Guardian. 3 December 2015. Marcela Xavier. "The Campaigners Challenging Misogyny and Sexism in Brazil." [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

Igreja Episcopal Anglicana do Brasil (IEAB). N.d. "Anglican Service of Diakonia and Development." [Accessed 22 Dec. 2016]

The Independent. 5 September 2015. Donna Bowater. "Curiosity Saves: Brazilian Viral Campaign Aims to Take Secrecy Out of Domestic Violence." [Accessed 22 Dec. 2016]

Mapa da Violencia. N.d. "Mapa da Violencia." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

National Public Radio (NPR). 24 July 2016. Luli Garcia-Navarro. "For Brazil's Women, Laws Are Not Enough to Deter Rampant Violence." [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

New Internationalist. 13 May 2015. Melanie Hargreaves. "Brazil's 'Machismo': a Licence for Abuse." [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

New Internationalist. N.d. "About New Internationalist." [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

Perova, Elizaveta and Sarah Reynolds. November 2015. Women's Police Stations and Domestic Violence: Evidence from Brazil. World Bank Group Policy Research Working Paper 7497. [Accessed 2 Dec. 2016]

Representative, Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute. 16 December 2016. Telephone interview.

Representative, Uniao de Mulheres de Sao Paulo and the Patricia Galvao Institute. 15 December 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Thomson Reuters Foundation. 11 April 2016. "Condemned to 'Private Prison': The Brazilian Women Subjected to Secret Abuse." (Factiva)

Thomson Reuters Foundation. 10 March 2015. Anastasia Moloney. "Brazil Passes Femicide Law to Tackle Rise in Gender Killings." (Factiva)

Thomson Reuters Foundation. N.d. "Thomson Reuters Foundation." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. Department of State. "Brazil." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

United States (US). 25 June 2016. Department of State. "Brazil." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2014. [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Brazil - Special Secretariat for Women's Policies; Christian Aid Brazil; Lawyer specialized in civil law; Marcha Mundial das Mulheres; Professor, Nucleo de Estudos e Pesquisas sobra a Mulher (NEMGE), University of Sao Paulo; Professor of Anthropology, University of Sao Paulo; Sao Paulo  Coordinator of the Network for Domestic and Family Violence against Women; Viva Rio, Domestic Violence Prevention Program; Women's Reference Centre of Mare.

Internet sites, including: Agence France-Presse; Amnesty International; Brazil  Special Secretariat for Women's Policies; Compromisso e Atitude; Ecoi.net; Factiva; Federation internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; Freedom House; Fundo ELAS; Human Rights Watch; Institute for War and Peace Reporting; IRIN; UN  Development Programme, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Refworld, ReliefWeb, WOMEN, World Health Organization.

Attachment

Brazil. 2006. Maria da Penha Law. Law No. 11.340. [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]
Brazil: Information on the Party of National Mobilization (Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional, PMN), including political platform and objectives; information on membership procedures; information on the treatment of PMN members by authorities (2014-October 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 28 October 2016 Citation / Document Symbol BRA105668.E Related Document(s) Bresil : information sur le Parti de la mobilisation nationale (Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional - PMN), y compris le programme et les objectifs politiques; information sur les procedures d'adhesion; information sur le traitement reserve aux membres du PMN par les autorites (2014-octobre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Brazil: Information on the Party of National Mobilization (Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional, PMN), including political platform and objectives; information on membership procedures; information on the treatment of PMN members by authorities (2014-October 2016), 28 October 2016, BRA105668.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589440b64.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

According to a 1999 Working Paper by Scott Mainwaring et al. and published by the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Party of National Mobilization (Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional, PMN) was created in 1985 (Mainwaring et al. Mar. 1999, [18]). Europa World Online indicates that the PMN was founded in 1984 (n.d.). Without providing further detail, a report on party configuration in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies from 1998 to 2010 authored by Ana Lucia Henrique of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, states that the PMN was "registered" in October 1990 (Henrique 29 May 2009, 28).

According to Europa World Online, the President of the PMN is Telma Ribeiro dos Santos and the Secretary General is Lucas Albano Ribeiro dos Santos (n.d.). Further information about the PMN's leaders could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota who specializes in politics in Brazil stated that the "PMN has no clear ideology" and it has "allied with the left and the right" (Professor 17 Oct. 2016). Mainwaring et al. describe the PMN as a "Center-Right" party (Mar. 1999, [18]). A doctoral dissertation on partisan politics in Brazil, submitted in 2009 to the School of Law & Government at Dublin City University, describes the PMN as a "centrist party" (Doyle Jan. 2009, 90). In contrast, a 2015 doctoral dissertation submitted by Cassio de Silva Muniz to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, titled Ideology Versus Clientelism: Modernization and Electoral Competition in Brazil, describes the PMN as "small, programmatic[1] [vs. clientelistic], and left" (Muniz Aug. 2015, 101).

According to Muniz, the PMN has participated in the following coalitions:

In 2006, it was a member of a coalition of "parties on the right, center, and left of the political spectrum" alongside the Brazilian Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Brasileiro, PSB), the Labour Party of Brazil (Partido Trabalhista do Brasil, PT do B), the Communist Party of Brazil (Partido Comunista do Brasil, PC do B), the Humanist Party of Solidarity (Partido Humanista da Solidariedade, PHS), the Socialist People's Party (Partido Popular Socialista, PPS), the Liberal Party (Partido Liberal, PL), the Brazilian Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro, PTB), and the Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) (ibid., 119)

In 2010, it was part of a coalition of parties "from the center and [the] right," formed by Rosalba Ciarlini Rosado, from the Democrats (Democratas, DEM), which included, in addition to the PMN, the National Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Nacional, PTN), the Social Liberal Party (Partido Social Liberal, PSL), the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira, PSDB), and the Christian Social Party (Partido Social Cristao, PSC) (ibid. 120)

In 2010, Geddel Vieira Lima, from the Brazilian Democratic Party (Partido do Movimento Democratico Brasileiro, PMDB), "ran for governor on an extensive coalition formed mostly by small rightist parties," including: the PMN, the PMDB, the PTN, the Christian Labour Party (Partido Trabalhista Cristao, PTC), PTB, the PT do B, the Christian Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrata Cristao, PSDC), the PSC, the Brazilian Labour Renewal Party (Partido Renovador Trabalhista Brasileiro, PRTB), the Progressive Republican Party (Partido Republicano Progressista, PRP), the Party of the Republic (Partido Da Republica, PR), and the PPS (ibid., 124).

Further information on the ideology of the PMN, including political platform(s), could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. Membership Procedures

According to a translation of the membership section of the PMN website, the applicant must complete the online form and include their name, voter's card, email, telephone number, and the state and municipality of residence (PMN n.d.). After submitting the online application, a municipal representative of the PMN will contact the applicant to have them sign the membership card (ibid.). In a case where there is no PMN representation in the applicant's city, someone from the PMN state office will contact the applicant to sign the card (ibid.). According to the site, the applicant will not be considered "affiliated" until they sign the membership card (ibid.).

The Professor stated that citizens who are registering to become a member of any political party in Brazil must "fill out a form," after which the membership is "officially registered [with] both the national party office and with the [N]ational [E]lectoral [C]ourt, the Tribunal Superior Eleitoral [TSE]" (Professor 17 Oct. 2016). The same source further stated that, "in theory," party memberships can be checked on the website of the TSE, however, "the record-keeping is often spotty" and as such, "not having a record there is probably not evidence of not being a member, of any party" (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to a 2015 report produced by the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a non-profit and nonpartisan NGO that supports democracies and democratic institutions around the world, including work to "establish and strengthen political and civic organisations" (NDI n.d.), the TSE has party member data, including

date of registration, voter ID number and geographic location by state, city, electoral zone and electoral section. For former party members, it includes date of and reason for cancellation, as well as the date of renewal/reinstatement for those who have rejoined parties. (ibid. 2015, 89)

Further information on the availability or appearance of membership documents or cards could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Treatment by Authorities

Information on the treatment of PMN members by authorities, including incidents of arrest or violence, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Involvement in Elections and Federal Government 2014-2016

Media sources report that Aecio Neves and Dilma Rousseff were the presidential candidates in the October 2014 runoff vote (Vice News 6 Oct. 2014; BBC 26 Oct. 2014; The Guardian 21 Oct. 2014). According to Trade Bridge Consultants, which provides advisory services to "politicians and the business community at [the] local, national and international level" (Trade Bridge Consultants n.d.a), during the 2014 presidential elections, the PMN was part of the coalition "Change, Brazil" that supported presidential candidate Aecio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB) (ibid. n.d.). The Professor similarly stated that during the "last election [2014], the PMN allied with the losing candidate's party, but that party is now part of the government (in principle) after the impeachment of Dilma [Rousseff]" (Professor 17 Oct. 2016). Reuters reported in April 2016 that the PSDB, Brazil's "largest opposition party," would "support an [interim] government led by Vice-president Michel Temer from the aisles of Congressbut the party is split over whether to join his cabinet" (25 Apr. 2016). On 31 August 2016, Al Jazeera reported that Temer was sworn in as Brazil's new president after Rousseff was removed from office. According to the Professor, the PMN "elected no deputies to the National Chamber" (Professor 17 Oct. 2016). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] According to a 2011 report by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, an "intergovernmental organization" that assists in "democratic reform" (International IDEA n.d.), "a true programmatic party would not mobilize support using patronclient linkages (the strategy of clientelistic parties), nor make appeals and advocate policies that are explicitly designed to advance the interests of just one group (the behaviour of an ethnic party)" (ibid. Dec. 2011, 10).

References

Al Jazeera. 31 August 2016. "Brazil: Michel Temer Sworn in as New President." [Accessed 26 Oct. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 26 October 2014. "Brazil Election: Rousseff and Neves in Tight Contest." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Doyle, David. January 2009. "Partisan Politics in the Southern Cone: Is there Anything Left for the Left? Political Institutions, Privatisation, and Policy Outcome." Doctoral dissertation, School of Law & Government, Dublin City University. [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016]

Europa World Online.N.d. "Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional (PMN)." London: Routledge.

The Guardian. 21 October 2014. Jonathan Watts. "Rebel v Patrician: Rousseff and Neves Face Off in Brazil's Presidential Duel." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Henrique, Ana Lucia. 29 May 2009. Brazilian Chamber of Deputies. Brazilian Political Reform: Sheep's Clothing for Leopard's Propositions? [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016]

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). December 2011. Programmatic Parties. [Accessed 26 Oct. 2016]

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA). N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Mainwaring, Scott, Rachel Meneguello, and Timothy Power. March 1999. The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies. University of Notre Dame. Conservative Parties, Democracy, and Economic Reform in Contemporary Brazil. Working Paper No. 264. [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]

Muniz, Cassio da Silva. August 2015. "Ideology Versus Clientelsim: Modernization and Electoral Competition in Brazil." Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. [Accessed 15 Oct. 2016]

National Democratic Institute (NDI). 2015. Unleashing the Potential of Election Data. [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016]

National Democratic Institute (NDI). N.d. "Who We Are." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional (PMN). N.d. "Filie-se!" [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016]

Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Minnesota. 17 October 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Reuters. 25 April 2016. Anthony Boadle. "Brazil's Main Opposition Party Split on Joining a Future Temer Government." [Accessed 26 Oct. 2016]

Trade Bridge Consultants. N.d.a. "About Us." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Trade Bridge Consultants. N.d.b. "Brazil: Brazilians Go To the Polls." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Vice News. 6 October 2014. Lucy Jordan. "Brazil's Presidential Run-Off Pits Dilma Rousseff Against Centrist Aecio Neves." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Associate Professor, School of International Service, American University; Brazilian Studies Programme, University of Oxford; Partido da Mobilizacao Nacional.

Internet sources, including: Amnesty International; ecoi.net; Factiva; Human Rights Watch; Latin American Monitor; LatinNews; The North American Congress on Latin America; Political Handbook of the World; Rio Times; Transparency International; UN  Refworld; US  Department of State.
Ethiopia: Information on the Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM), including history, goals, and methods; whether the group uses violence and has participated in armed conflict; treatment of members by the authorities (2012-October 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 2 November 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105660.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information sur le Mouvement de liberation des Sidamas (Sidama Liberation Movement - SLM), y compris son histoire, ses objectifs et ses facons de proceder; information indiquant si le groupe a recours a la violence et a pris part a un conflit arme; le traitement reserve a ses membres par les autorites (2012-octobre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: Information on the Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM), including history, goals, and methods; whether the group uses violence and has participated in armed conflict; treatment of members by the authorities (2012-October 2016), 2 November 2016, ETH105660.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589443ab4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a lecturer in international development at the University of East London who has researched ethnic groups in Ethiopia, including the Sidama [1], characterized the Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM) as a "political organisation" that aims to "ensure Sidama peoples' national self-determination within the context of Ethiopia" (Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a research professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who has researched history and culture in the horn of Africa, particularly Ethiopia, similarly stated that the SLM is "ethnically based and has a primarily Sidama-limited agenda" (Research Professor 21 Oct. 2016). The same source described the SLM as an "old-style (1970's) 'liberation movement'," and indicated that the group is "rather small and not very significant" (ibid.). The Research Professor further added that although the "SLM claims to be the 'main voice of the Sidama people', [it] is not a big and flourishing organization," and that although it is part of the opposition, it has no representation in parliament (ibid.). According to the Lecturer, the SLM "claims to enjoy significant support within Sidama, although it is difficult to provide precise figures given [the] authoritarian political environment in Ethiopia" (23 Oct. 2016). The Political Handbook of the World 2015 (PHW) lists the SLM as a "[s]mall formation" (PHW 2015, 479).

According to the PHW, the SLM is led by Yilma Chamola (ibid.). Other sources identify Dr. Million Tumato as the chairperson of the SLM (SLM n.d.b; Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016). The Lecturer indicated that Tumato has been the SLM chairperson since 2009, and that he is "a public health expert" (ibid.). The Reporter, an Addis Ababa-based newspaper, notes that the party's head of public relations is Tilahun Endesahw (18 July 2015). Further information on the leadership and structure of the SLM could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

A copy of the "SLM Political Program" and its "Vision, Mission and Goals," as posted on the SLM's website, are attached to this response (Attachment 1 and 2, respectively).

1.1 Medrek Coalition

Sources indicate that the SLM is part of the Medrek coalition (Research Professor 21 Oct. 2016; Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016; The Reporter 16 Mar. 2015), also known as the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (FORUM) (ibid.; Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016; PHW 2015, 475). The PHW notes that the word "Medrek" means "forum" in Amharic (ibid.). According to sources, the coalition consists of four parties: the SLM, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), the Union of Tigreans for Democracy and Sovereignty (Arena), and the Southern Ethiopia People's Democratic Union (The Reporter 16 Mar. 2015; Addis Fortune 11 Jan. 2015). The PHW states that the Medrek coalition "advocates land ownership for farmers and economic improvement by bolstering manufacturing and services in the country" (2015, 475). Sources indicate the coalition was formed in 2008 (Addis Fortune 11 Jan. 2015) or early 2009 (PHW 2015, 475). Sources further state that the Medrek won one seat in Parliament in the 2010 elections (Addis Fortune 11 Jan. 2015; PHW 2015, 475), despite being the "most formidable opposition to the EPRDF [Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front]" with 421 federal legislative and 861 regional council candidates (ibid.). An article by The Reporter indicates that the Medrek did not win any seats in the 2015 parliamentary and regional council elections [2] despite having presented "the most number of candidates from opposition parties;" the coalition did however receive "64.3 percent of the votes (over one million) that went to the opposition" (The Reporter 17 Aug. 2015).

Information on the role of the SLM within the Medrek could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. History of the SLM

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a senior researcher from the Chr. Michelsen Institute [3] who has worked on the Sidama region and provided information based on her doctoral dissertation research covering the period of 2005 to 2008, stated that the SLM was founded in 1975 (Senior Researcher 24 Oct. 2016). However, the Lecturer stated that the movement was founded in 1976 (Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016). In his book Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers, John Markakis, a professor of African studies who specializes in the political economy of Ethiopia (Markakis n.d.), states that the SLM was founded in 1977 (ibid. 2011, 200). According to the Research Professor, the SLM was founded in 1982 (Research Professor 21 Oct. 2016).

Sources indicate that the SLM was founded by Woldeammanuel Dubale [also spelled Wolde Emannuel Dubale] (Markakis June 2011, 200; Senior Researcher 24 Oct. 2016; Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016). The Lecturer stated that other founding members of the SLM included Roda Utala, Kebede Fokora, Amare Gunsa, Argata Gunsa, and Ginbo Basha (ibid.). Corroborating and additional information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The Research Professor indicated that the SLM has its roots in the Sidama Liberation Front, which was involved in an armed struggle against the Derg [4] government (ibid.). The Senior Researcher also stated that the SLM was "a Sidama nationalist movement mobilizing against the Derg" that was involved in a "guerilla war against the government," first from peripheral areas of Sidama and later from Somalia during the 1980s (Senior Researcher 24 Oct. 2016). Markakis notes that after 1977, the SLM "established an armed presence in three woreda  and managed to fight off the Derg until 1982[,]" after which the insurgents were defeated, and the SLM leadership fled abroad (Markakis 2011, 200). According to the Senior Researcher, the SLM trained "approximately 5,000 soldiers" in Somalia, and had another 6,000 soldiers who were operating on Sidama soil (ibid.). Corroborating information on the number of SLM fighters active during the 1970s and 1980s could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to the Lecturer, the SLM's "methods of operation [are] better captured by dividing [them] into two periods: The first is from 1976 to 1991 when it waged armed struggle against the military Derg government of Ethiopia from its base in Somalia," and the second phase from 1991 to the present where it has "opted for peaceful methods of struggle" (23 Oct. 2016). Similarly, the Senior Researcher indicated that the SLM engaged in armed struggle until 1991, after which it became a political party (24 Oct. 2016).

Sources stated that after 1991, the SLM had a presence within the transitional government with two representatives in the transitional parliament (Markakis 2011, 285; Senior Researcher 24 Oct. 2016). According to the Lecturer, the SLM was part of the transitional government until 1993-1994, when it became an opposition party to the ruling EPDRF (Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016). The Senior Researcher indicated that when the transitional government fell apart in 1992, the SLM left the government and its members were subsequently persecuted by the ruling EPRDF regime (Senior Researcher 24 Oct. 2016). The same source noted that in 2005, an agreement between the EPRDF and Dubale, the founder of the SLM, was reached, allowing Dubale to return to Ethiopia from exile (ibid.). According to the Senior Researcher, this caused a split within the SLM; the faction that broke with Dubale continued to be persecuted by the EPRDF government (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Activities of the SLM

The Lecturer stated that the activities of the SLM include raising political awareness among the Sidama, promoting its political agenda within the Sidama community, campaigning during elections, and carrying out peaceful demonstrations on government agenda issues relevant to its constituency (23 Oct. 2016). Sources indicated that the SLM has also participated in elections (Senior Researcher 24 Oct. 2016; Research Professor 21 Oct. 2016; Addis Fortune 7 Apr. 2015). Further and corroborating information on specific incidents or activities of the SLM could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.1 Use of Violence and Involvement in Armed Conflict

The Research Professor stated that the SLM "allegedly has an armed wing" and that there are reports of training camps in Somalia (21 Oct. 2016). In contrast, the Senior Researcher indicated that the SLM was an armed group until 1991 and that, to her knowledge, the SLM has not been involved in organized violence since then (24 Oct. 2016). The Lecturer similarly stated that, to his knowledge, since 1996, the SLM has not engaged in violence (23 Oct. 2016).

Information on incidents of violence involving the SLM or its members between 2012 and 2016 could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.2 Activities of the Medrek

Media sources have reported on the following events concerning the Medrek:

In January 2015, the Medrek accused the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) of partiality after the NEBE appointed election observers for the May 2015 elections who, in the opinion of the Medrek, were affiliated with the ruling party (Addis Fortune 11 Jan. 2015; The Reporter qtd. in BBC 7 Jan. 2015).

On 13 March 2015, the Medrek published its election manifesto for the May 2015 elections which focuses on "politics, security, foreign relations and national interest, and economic and social development" (The Reporter 16 Mar. 2015). The manifesto includes a proposal to introduce "an alternative working language based on the number of population," the creation of "a favorable environment for local private investors" for electricity generation projects, and a commitment to work on "arriv[ing] at national consensuses" (ibid.).

In June 2015, the Medrek called for the establishment of an "independent body of inquiry to inspect possible infringements of the constitution and other electoral laws" that allegedly occurred before and during the May 2015 elections (The Reporter 2 June 2015).

Information on the use of violence or armed activity by the Medrek could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Treatment of SLM Members

The Research Professor provided the opinion that SLM members "were [and] are harassed and arrested regularly in Ethiopia, like members of virtually all other opposition movements and parties" (Research Professor 21 Oct. 2016). The Lecturer stated that leaders and members of the SLM "claim to be routinely discriminated, marginalized, treated inhumanely, mentally and physically tortured, and even killed" (Lecturer 23 Oct. 2016). According to the same source, there are "some" cases of SLM members who have been forced to leave Ethiopia because they feared "persecution" (ibid.). The Lecturer also noted that harassment of SLM members took place during the elections of 2005, 2010, and 2015 (ibid). The Senior Researcher indicated that the SLM "complained [about] a lack of an even playing field, intimidation, harassment, and imprisonment of supporters, members and candidates" during elections (24 Oct. 2016). An article by Addis Fortune, an Addis Ababa-based newspaper, reports that the SLM announced the withdrawal of its candidates from the April 2013 elections claiming "repression from the EPRDF[,]  including the death of one if its members in Dale Wereda in the Southern Region" (22 Apr. 2013).

In its submission to the 2014 UN Universal Periodic Review for Ethiopia, Amnesty International (AI) states that

[i]n 2012, a large number of ethnic Sidama were arrested in the Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples [SNNPR] region, including around the celebration of Fichee, the Sidama New Year. The arrests were reportedly in response to calls for a separate regional statehood for the Sidama. Many of those arrested were detained only briefly, while some of the community leaders were charged with crimes against the state. (AI Oct. 2013, 4)

Further and corroborating information on incidents of conflict between SLM leaders, members, or supporters, and authorities, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4.1 Treatment of the Medrek

Information on treatment of SLM members in the context of the Medrek could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The US Department of State's Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 2015 indicates that opposition parties reported the death of six party members in the SNNPR, Oromia, Amhara, and Tigray, including four members of the Medrek (US 13 Apr. 2016, 2). Similarly, on 18 July 2016, The Reporter indicated that the Medrek announced that one of its members was murdered in the Kafa zone of the SNNPR, "increasing the number of murdered party members to five" (The Reporter 18 July 2016). The same source cites Endesahw, Medrek's head of public relations, as stating that "'[t]he killings and mass detention on the members of the party is mounting in different corners of the country in an alarming rate'" (ibid.). Further information on the treatment of the Medrek members could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] The website of the Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM) indicates that the Sidama people live in the south-central part of Ethiopia (SLM n.d.a). The Joshua Project, a Christian research initiative on ethnic groups throughout the world (Joshua Project n.d.a), states that the Sidama are an ethnic group that live in "a cone-shaped area of the middle of southern Ethiopia" (ibid. n.d.b). Common River, a "US-based non-governmental organization  implementing a community development program in the heart of the Sidama coffee-growing region" (Common River n.d.a) notes that the Sidama are located in the Sidama Zone of the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples Region (SNNPR) in southern Ethiopia (ibid. n.d.b). According to the SLM website, the capital city of Sidama is Hawassa (SLM n.d.a). The same source cites the Ethiopian Central Statistical Agency as indicating that there were 3.8 million Sidama people in 2012 (ibid.).The website of the Joshua Project indicates that its population is 4.2 million (Joshua Project n.d.b).

[2] Sources indicate that in the May 2015 elections, the ruling EPRDF party won all seats in parliament (Human Rights Watch 23 June 2015; US 13 Apr. 2016, 1), a total 547 seats (ibid.).

[3] The Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) is a "development research institute" based in Norway (CMI n.d.).

[4] Europa World Online indicates that the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), "known popularly as the Dergue [Derg] (Committee)," was the military regime that came to power in Ethiopia after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 (n.d.).

References

Addis Fortune. 7 April 2015. Dawit Endeshaw. "Election Campaign Steaming Up." (Factiva)

Addis Fortune. 11 January 2015. Dawit Endeshaw. "Opposition Parties Go Ahead Despite Complaint Over Observers' Election." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

Addis Fortune. 22 April 2013. Ashenafe Endale. "Ballots Talk! [column]" (Factiva)

Amnesty International (AI). October 2013. Ethiopia: Failure to Address Endemic Human Rights Concerns. Amnesty International Submission to the UN Universal Periodic Review, May 2014. AFR 25/004/2013. [Accessed 14 Oct. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 7 January 2015. "Ethiopian Opposition Calls for Re-election of Local Observers." (Factiva)

Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI). N.d. "Who We Are." [Accessed 25 Oct. 2016]

Common River. N.d.a. "Creating Self-reliance in Ethiopia's Coffee Country." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Common River. N.d.b. "Sidama Tribe." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Europa World Online. N.d. "Ethiopia: Historical Context." London: Routledge.

Human Rights Watch. 23 June 2015. Felix Horne. "Dispatches: Alarm Bells for Ethiopia's 100% Election Victory." [Accessed 28 Oct. 2016]

Joshua Project. N.d.a. "Joshua Project." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Joshua Project. N.d.b. "Sidama in Ethiopia." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Lecturer on international development, University of East London. 23 October 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Markakis, John. 2011. Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers. Suffolk: James Currey, Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

Markakis, John. N.d. "John Markakis." [Accessed 25 Oct. 2016]

Political Handbook of the World 2015 (PHW). 2015 "Ethiopia." Edited by Thomas Lansford. Washington, DC: CQ Press.

The Reporter. 17 August 2015. Neamin Ashenafi. "Medrek Calls for Swift Merger of Member Parties." (Factiva)

The Reporter. 18 July 2015. Neamin Ashenafi. "Ethiopia: Death of Medrek Members Increase to Five." [Accessed 21 Oct. 2016]

The Reporter. 2 June 2015. Neamin Ashenafi. "Medrek Calls for Establishment of Independent Inquiry Body." (Factiva)

The Reporter. 16 March 2015. "Medrek Proposes Alternative Working Language." (Factiva)

Research Professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. 21 October 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Senior Researcher, Chr. Michelsen Institute. 24 October 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). N.d.a. "The Sidama People." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). N.d.b. Million Tumato Tucha. "Happy Sidama's New Year! (Fichee) - Ayidde Cambalaalla: IILLe!!!!" [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). N.d.c. "SLM Political Program." [Accessed 14 Oct. 2016]

Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). N.d.d. "Mission, Vision and Goals." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. Department of State. "Ethiopia." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 20 Oct. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Ethiopian Advocacy Network; Human Rights Watch; Professor of international development, Roskilde University; Professor of political science, California State University; Rift Valley Institute.

Internet sites, including: Africa Confidential; Africa Research Bulletin; AllAfrica; Bertelsmann Stiftung; Capital; ecoi.net; Ethiopian Satellite Television Service; Europe World Plus; Factiva; Federation internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; Freedom House; Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; Institute for Security Studies; Institute for War and Peace Reporting; International Crisis Group; Minority Rights Group; Radio France internationale; Stanford University  Mapping Militant Organizations; Transparency International; UN  Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Refworld, ReliefWeb; Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization; US  Central Intelligence Agency; University of Maryland  Global Terrorism Database, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

Attachments

Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). N.d. "Mission, Vision and Goals." [Accessed 24 Oct. 2016] Sidama Liberation Movement (SLM). N.d. "SLM Political Progam." [Accessed 14 Oct. 2016]
Ethiopia: Availability of fraudulent identity documents; state efforts to combat document fraud (2014-January 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 28 July 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105567.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information sur la disponibilite de pieces d'identite frauduleuses; information sur les efforts deployes par l'Etat pour lutter contre la fraude documentaire (2014-janvier 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: Availability of fraudulent identity documents; state efforts to combat document fraud (2014-January 2016) , 28 July 2016, ETH105567.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589444d84.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Availability of Fraudulent Identity Documents

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an operations officer at the International Organization for Migration's (IOM) office in Addis Ababa stated that, based on the experience of document verification at their duty station, fraudulent identity documents were not prevalent in Ethiopia (IOM 19 July 2016). The same source explained that the IOM in Ethiopia runs a document verification program for the "immigration authorities of third countries" and is usually requested to check the authenticity of documents such as birth or death certificates, marriage certificates and school reports; reportedly, less than 4 percent of the documents verified by the IOM are fraudulent (ibid.). According to the Operations Officer, the IOM office verifies identity documents with relevant Ethiopian government departments as "[a]ll documents issued by Governmental offices are registered in their records and copies are kept in their files" (ibid.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

1.1 Identity Cards and Passports

According to sources, Ethiopia does not have a universal format for their national identity card (World Bank and ESAAMLG May 2015, 5; FSS 2015, 46; US July 2015). The US Department of State's 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report for Ethiopia states that "the lack of a uniform national identification card" in Ethiopia has "allowed for the continued issuance of district-level identification cards subject to fraud" (ibid.). A joint report by the World Bank and the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) [1] on anti-money laundering and the financing of terrorism in Ethiopia states that there is no national or regional Ethiopian identity card but rather "[e]ach kebele (similar to a ward) has its own identity card and there have been instances when false identity documentation has been used - particularly when receiving money transfers" (World Bank and ESAAMLG May 2015, 5, 6). A report on Ethiopian labour migration to the Gulf countries and to South Africa, prepared by the Forum for Social Studies (FSS), an Ethiopian research institute, similarly indicates that various types of ID cards are issued by "thousands of kebele within the country" and it is thus "very difficult for the immigration department [which relies on kebele cards to issue passports to Ethiopians] to check the veracity of these documents. This opens the door for the business of forging ID cards which is, unfortunately, rife in the country" (FSS 2015, 46). For information on identity cards issued in Addis Ababa, see Response to Information Request ETH104950.E.

According to the US Department of State's 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report for Ethiopia, "[r]eports suggest district level officials accepted bribes to change the ages on district-issued identification cards, enabling children to receive passports without parental consent" (US July 2015). The FSS report, similarly states that many kebele officials "provide identity cards for underage teenagers and children testifying that they are above 18 years old" due to their acquaintance with the applicant or for financial favours (FSS 2015, 46). According to the same source,

[t]he main requirement to obtain a passport is to present valid kebele residential Identification Card (ID). However,  the use of a kebele identity card to issue a passport is found to be fraught with profound problems. There are problems of forgery. (ibid.)

The FSS also notes that there is no "universal/national birthday certification system in the country" and it is therefore "very difficult for the Immigration Department to verify age claims of passport applicants" (ibid.). For information on the requirements to obtain an Ethiopian passport, including the passport's features, see Responses to Information Request ETH105301.E, ETH105190.E and ZZZ105007.E.

1.2 Driver's Licences

A December 2015 article by the Ethiopian Herald, an English-language newspaper published by the Ethiopian Press Agency, quotes the Director of Ethiopia's Federal Road Transport Authority [RTA or Federal Transport Authority (FTA)] as stating that there is a "huge number" of fraudulent driver's licences in circulation (the Ethiopian Herald 11 Dec. 2015). The Director added that, out of 900 driver's licences that the RTA was requested to verify for one company, 380 turned out to be fraudulent (ibid.). A June 2016 article by the Addis Fortune, an Ethiopian English-language weekly newspaper, reports that a two-year investigation conducted by the RTA identified 83 persons who were using fraudulent licenses; the results of the investigation found that the forgery of driver's licences "was prevalent in Dessie, Amhara Region; Somali Region, and Nekemte and Shashemene in Oromia Region" (7 June 2016). Further information on fraudulent driver's licences in Ethiopia could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. State Efforts to Combat Document Fraud

Information on state efforts to combat document fraud was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. A 2013 report by the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation (CGCC) [2] on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism in Ethiopia indicates that in 2012 Ethiopia adopted a new law --Proclamation No. 760/2012: A Proclamation on the Registration of Vital Events and National Identity Card -- that would introduce national ID cards with a photograph, fingerprints and a "unique national ID number" for all Ethiopians 18 years of age or older (Feb. 2013, 9). Further information on the introduction of national ID cards could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

A June 2015 article by the Addis Fortune states that, in 2013, the RTA introduced plastic driver's licence cards, renewable every four years, but that "many licence holders still carry[] paper licences, renewable every two years" (Addis Fortune 15 June 2015). According to the same source, in June 2015, the RTA opened a bid to develop a biometric driver's licence system that would include a collection of fingerprints "to prevent the creation of fraudulent licences" (ibid.). However, further reporting by the Addis Fortune indicates that, as of February 2016, the selection of the company to develop the system had not yet been finalised due to the ongoing complaints revision process by the RTA (ibid. 1 Feb. 2016). Further information on the introduction of biometric driver's licences could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] The Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG) is a regional intergovernmental body based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania that was established in 1999 with the purpose of combating money laundering (FATF n.d.).

[2] The Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation (CGCC), presently known as the Global Center on Cooperative Security (Global Center), describes itself as a "nonprofit, nonpartisan policy institute dedicated to strengthening international counterterrorism cooperation." (Global Center n.d.b). According to information available on the website of the Global Center, the organization "works with governments, international organizations, and civil society to develop and implement comprehensive and sustainable responses to complex international security challenges through collaborative policy research" and has offices in Washington, DC, London and New York (ibid. n.d.a).

References

Addis Fortune. 7 June 2016. "Ethiopia: Transport Authority to Charge 83 for Forged Licences." [Accessed 22 July 2016]

Addis Fortune. 1 February 2016. Dawit Endeshaw. "Bidders for New Driver's Licence Wait with Bated Breath." [Accessed 22 July 2016]

Addis Fortune. 15 June 2015. Brook Abdu. "Ethiopia: Biometric Driving Licences Bid Sees 10 Companies Participate." [Accessed 22 July 2016]

Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation (CGCC). February 2013. Tu'emay Aregawi Desta. The Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Terrorist Financing Regime in Ethiopia. Second Assessment Report. [Accessed 14 July 2016]

The Ethiopian Herald. 11 December 2015. Abiy Hailu. "Djibouti Corridor Road Safety Awareness Programme Launched." [Accessed 22 July 2016]

Financial Action Task Force (FATF). N.d. "Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG)." [Accessed 21 July 2016]

Forum for Social Studies (FSS), Ethiopia. 2015. Asnake Kefale and Zerihun Mohammed. Ethiopian Labour Migration to the Gulf and South Africa. FSS Monograph No. 10. Addis Ababa: Forum for Social Studies.

Global Center. N.d.a. "About Us." [Accessed 14 July 2016]

Global Center. N.d.b. "East Africa." [Accessed 22 July 2016]

International Organization for Migration (IOM). 19 July 2016. Correspondence from an operations offcer in Addis Ababa to the Research Directorate.

United States (US). July 2015. Department of State. "Ethiopia: Tier 2." Trafficking in Persons Report 2015. [Accessed 18 July 2016]

World Bank and the Eastern and Southern Africa Anti-Money Laundering Group (ESAAMLG). May 2015. Mutual Evaluation Report: Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism. The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. [Accessed 18 July 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Assistant Professor, School of Social Work, Addis Ababa Univeristy; Global Center on Cooperative Security; Human Rights Watch; Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat.

Internet sites, including: Africa Confidential; Amnesty International; Anti-trafficking Review; Business Anti-corruption Portal; ECADF Ethiopian News; ecoi.net; Ethiopia  Ethiopian Press Agency, Federal Police Commission, Government Portal, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Policy Study and Research Center, Road Transport Authority; European Union  Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union, European Commission, European Council, European Delegation to Ethiopia; Ethiopian Satellite Television Service; Factiva; Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces; Institute for Security Studies; Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa; International Centre for Migration Policy Development; International Security Sector Advisory Team; Interpol; Jane Intelligence Review; Migrating Out of Poverty; North Africa Mixed Migration Hub; United Kingdom  Government Portal; United Nations  High Commissioner for Human Rights, High Commissioner for Refugees, Office on Drugs and Crime, Refworld, United Nations University Migration Network; United States  CIA World Factbook, Embassy in Addis Ababa.
Ethiopia: Whether the Semayawi Party (Blue Party) issues letters to supporters; format, language and signatories of letters; verification process of party membership and involvement prior to issuance of letters (2014-July 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 18 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105564.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information indiquant si le Parti Semayawi (Parti Bleu) fournit des lettres a ses partisans; information sur le format, la langue et les signataires de ces lettres; le processus par lequel sont verifies l'adhesion au parti et la participation du membre a ses activites avant que les lettres ne soient fournies (2014-juillet 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: Whether the Semayawi Party (Blue Party) issues letters to supporters; format, language and signatories of letters; verification process of party membership and involvement prior to issuance of letters (2014-July 2016), 18 August 2016, ETH105564.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5894481c4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Chairperson and leader of the Semayawi Party (Blue Party) stated that in some situations, the Semayawi Party provides letters of support to supporters to establish their membership or involvement in the party (Semayawi Party 4 Aug. 2016). He explained that the Semayawi Party "may issue letters of support for members who are part of the executive committee or the national assembly" (ibid.). He noted that there are approximately 325 members in the national assembly (ibid.). However, he also explained that the party "rarely" issues letters of support to "regular members" because:

There are a lot of members who don't like [to have] their name in the party's database for fear of persecution.

The party doesn't have the resources to trace the activities of all members. (ibid.)

The Chairperson indicated that there is no specific format for letters of support issued by the Semayawi Party, but that the letters would include the letterhead of the party (ibid.). Information about the letterhead of the party, including appearance, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The Chairperson indicated that letters of support are "usually" signed by the General Secretary or an executive member of the party (ibid.). He further stated that the President [Chairperson, leader] "does not usually sign the letter" (ibid.). He also indicated that support letters written by the party are "usually" written in the Amharic language (ibid.).

Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

For further information about the Semayawi Party, including its origin, mandate, leadership, structure, legal status, election participation, party membership, and treatment of party members and supporters by authorities, see Response to Information Request ETH104974 of October 2014. For information about membership procedures to join the Semayawi Party, membership cards, membership dues and receipts for dues, see Response to Information Request ETH105565 of August 2016.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Reference

Semayawi Party. 4 August 2016. Correspondence from the Chairperson to the Research Directorate.

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Human Rights Watch; Professor, California State University San Bernadino.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Europa World Plus; Factiva; Political Handbook of the World; Semayawi Party; UN - Refworld.
Ethiopia: Whether state security agents have distinguishing facial marks or tattoos (2014-May 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 26 May 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105557.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information indiquant si les agents de securite de l'Etat ont des marques faciales ou des tatouages particuliers (2014-mai 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: Whether state security agents have distinguishing facial marks or tattoos (2014-May 2016), 26 May 2016, ETH105557.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589449624.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

Information on facial markings of state security agents was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Tigrai Online, an online Ethiopian media source, writes that people of the Tigrayan ethnic group use facial scarification as an expression of cultural identity, and this includes cutting small incisions in the person's temple as a child (Tigrai Online 12 Dec. 2012). The same source notes that sometimes, these cuts can also appear on the eyebrows (ibid.). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an assistant professor of African Studies at the University of Florida, whose research specializes in ethnic identity, religion, and politics in Ethiopia, explained that state security agents do not have facial markings, but that "Tigrayans often have carved out two short stripes at the side of one of their eyes , but that is something cultural. The fact that many Tigrayans are in the Agazi  the anti-rioting police  might have created this misunderstanding" (Assistant Professor 22 May 2016).

Similarly, in correspondence with the Research Directorate, a researcher for Human Rights Watch explained that "state security agents per se" do not have facial markings; however, "increasingly state security agents belong to the Tigrayan ethnic group" (Researcher 24 May 2016). The same source noted that

[m]any Tigrayan men and women have two parallel scars on their temples [close to their eyes]. In some cases, this [is] on the edge of their eyebrows. This scarification is done when they are very young, sometimes it is very noticeable, sometimes not so much. It is one of the easiest ways to physically identify a Tigrayan [person]. I am not aware of any of the other major ethnic groups of Ethiopia having these scars. Women and men, particularly from rural areas, sometimes also have a tattoo of a small cross on their foreheads. (ibid.)

Tigrai Online similarly writes that "only the Tigrai people [] mark their faces with these small straight incisions side by side on their face" (12 Dec. 2012).

Further information on facial markings of security agents, including on the eyelids, could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Assistant Professor, University of Florida. 22 May 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Researcher, Human Rights Watch. 24 May 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Tigrai Online. 12 December 2012. "Face Marks as Expression of Cultural Identity." [Accessed 25 May 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: associate professor of history and anthropology of Eastern Africa, Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales; professor of development studies, University of London; professor of sociology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Factiva; Minority Rights Group International; UN  Refworld; US  Department of State.
Ethiopia: The Ethiopian Satellite Television media group (ESAT), including objectives and activities in Canada, particularly in the Kitchener-Waterloo area; reports of surveillance by Ethiopian authorities (2012 - March 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 1 April 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105485.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information sur le groupe de medias Television satellitaire ethiopienne (Ethiopian Satellite Television - ESAT), y compris ses objectifs et ses activites au Canada, en particulier dans la region de Kitchener-Waterloo; les rapports de surveillance par les autorites ethiopiennes (2012-mars 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: The Ethiopian Satellite Television media group (ESAT), including objectives and activities in Canada, particularly in the Kitchener-Waterloo area; reports of surveillance by Ethiopian authorities (2012 - March 2016), 1 April 2016, ETH105485.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58944cbe4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources indicate that the Ethiopian Satellite Television Service (ESAT) is an independent TV and radio news service run by members of the Ethiopian diaspora (Freedom House 2015a; Reporters without Borders 6 Mar. 2014; Human Rights Watch Mar. 2014, 85). According to its website, ESAT was established in 2010 and is headquartered in Amsterdam, with branches in Washington, DC and London (ESAT n.d.). The same source indicates that ESAT is funded by individual donors and members of the Ethiopian diaspora and that its primary objective is to "provide free access to information to the people of Ethiopia" (ibid.). In a telephone interview with the Research Directorate, a representative of ESAT stated that the media network has approximately one million viewers and broadcasts TV and radio programming around the world, including in Ethiopia (ibid. 21 Mar. 2016). The same source noted that ESAT's aim is "to give voice to the voiceless" and explained that the organization is challenging the Ethiopian government and bringing forward their human rights violations (ibid.). Other sources similarly describe ESAT as "critical of the Ethiopian authorities" (Reporters Without Borders 6 Mar. 2014) or "pro-opposition" (CPJ 13 July 2012). According to the Washington Post, ESAT "mainly employs journalists who left Ethiopia in the face of government harassment, torture or criminal charges" (12 Feb. 2014).

2. Objectives and Activities in Canada

Sources indicate that ESAT is active in Canada (ESAT 21 Mar. 2016; EAN 23 Mar. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative of the Ethiopian Advocacy Network (EAN), a US-based organization established in 2015 that promotes "democracy, human rights and justice in Ethiopia through advocacy, civic education and grassroots mobilization," stated that the primary objectives and activities of ESAT in Canada are to provide Ethiopian communities in Canada with an alternative and independent information source about the conditions in Ethiopia and to "expand the base of support for ESAT within the Ethiopian communities in Canada by forming support groups in various cities" (ibid.). The ESAT representative indicated that there are ESAT support groups all over Canada (ESAT 21 Mar. 2016). She explained that support groups are involved with membership and fundraising (ibid.). Sources specifically noted that there are support groups in Toronto, Calgary (ibid; EAN 23 Mar. 2016), Vancouver (ibid.) and Edmonton (ESAT 21 Mar. 2016).

Regarding ESAT activity in Kitchener/Waterloo, the ESAT representative stated that a small support group established itself in the region over the past year (ibid.). The EAN representative indicated that ESAT has "supporters" in the Kitchener/Waterloo area, as well as in other cities in Canada (EAN 23 Mar. 2016).

According to the EAN representative, the ESAT IT team support head lives in Vancouver, but he was not aware of any ESAT reporters who live in Canada (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Government Surveillance and Treatment of ESAT Staff and Supporters

Sources report that Ethiopian authorities have targeted ESAT employees in the US and Belgium with surveillance spyware (Citizen Lab Mar. 2015, 1-2; The Washington Post 12 Feb. 2014). The Citizen Lab, a lab based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto that focuses on research related to "Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), human rights, and global security" (n.d.), analysed e-mails and attachments sent to ESAT employees in the US, and found that the correspondence contained Remote Control System (RCS) spyware and linked the attack to a governmental agency in Ethiopia (Citizen Lab Mar. 2015, 1). Hacking Team, the developer that sells this RCS spyware, reportedly only sells their products to government agencies (Reporters Without Borders 6 Mar. 2014; Freedom House 2015; Human Rights Watch 9 Mar. 2015). Sources note that if the spyware is successfully installed, it would allow the user access to the target's e-mails, files, contact lists, and audio and video from the device's microphone and camera (ibid.; The Washington Post 12 Feb. 2014). The Citizen Lab reports that ESAT journalists were targeted with spyware on at least five occasions between 20 December 2013 and 19 December 2014 (Citizen Lab Mar. 2015, 15).

Sources indicate that ESAT's television broadcasting into Ethiopia has been jammed on a number of occasions (Human Rights Watch Mar. 2014, 85; ESAT 21 Mar. 2016). The ESAT representative specified that it has been jammed by the Ethiopian government over 20 times (ibid.). Human Rights Watch reports that ESAT's short-waved radio programming in Ethiopia is also "routinely jammed" (Human Rights Watch Mar. 2014, 87).

According to a 2015 Human Rights Watch report entitled "Journalism is not a Crime": Violations of Media Freedom in Ethiopia, members of the Ethiopian diaspora who appeared on ESAT have reported being "intimidated" by Ethiopian security officials outside of Ethiopia or have had family members inside Ethiopia targeted after appearing on the ESAT network (Human Rights Watch Jan. 2015, 27-28). The same source reports that Ethiopian diaspora journalists have received threats via telephone, Internet and in person (ibid., 28). Freedom House similarly states that Ethiopian journalists in the diaspora have been "targeted for harassment" (Freedom House 2015b).

Sources report that three individuals were charged and tried in absentia by Ethiopian authorities in 2012 because of their activities with ESAT (Human Rights Watch Mar. 2014, 85; Reporters without Borders 6 Mar. 2014; CPJ 13 July 2012). The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) indicates that the ESAT journalists were convicted under "vague" and "baseless" terrorism charges; two were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, while one was sentenced to life imprisonment for the second time (ibid.).

Reports of incidents of surveillance of ESAT affiliates and supporters in Canada by Ethiopian authorities could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. The EAN representative stated:

While we [EAN] cannot confirm specific cases of surveillance against ESAT supporters in Canada, there are multiple reports on the Ethiopian authorities' use of cyber surveillance and cyber-attacks/hacking against journalists, human rights activists, and political dissidents residing in US and Europe. It is also not uncommon to see supporters of the Ethiopian government with cameras at ESAT and other events. There is a widespread fear among the Ethiopian communities that the government is engaged in intimidating Ethiopians living abroad through surveillance. Thus we have no reason to believe the regime will refrain from targeting anyone who is affiliated with ESAT, human rights activists or political dissidents who live in Canada. (EAN 23 Mar. 2016)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

The Citizen Lab. March 2015. Bill Marczak, John Scott-Railton and Sarah McKune. Hacking Team Reloaded? US-Based Ethiopian Journalists Again Targeted with Spyware. [Accessed 19 Feb. 2016]

The Citizen Lab. N.d. "About." [Accessed 23 Mar. 2016]

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). 13 July 2012. "Ethiopia Sentences Eskinder, 5 Others on Terror Charges." [Accessed 16 Mar. 2016]

Ethiopian Advocacy Network (EAN). 23 March 2016. Correspondence from a representative to the Research Directorate.

Ethiopian Satellite Television Services (ESAT). 21 March 2016. Telephone interview with a representative.

Ethiopian Satellite Television Services (ESAT). N.d. "About ESAT." [Accessed 16 Mar. 2016]

Freedom House. 2015a. "Ethiopia." Freedom of the Press 2015. [Accessed 16 Mar. 2016]

Freedom House. 2015b. "Ethiopia." Freedom on the Net 2015. [Accessed 16 Mar. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. 9 March 2015. "Ethiopia: Digital Attacks Intensify." [Accessed 22 Mar. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. January 2015. "Journalism Is Not a Crime": Violations of Media Freedom in Ethiopia. [Accessed 22 Mar. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. March 2014. "They Know Everything We Do": Telecom and Internet Surveillance in Ethiopia. [Accessed 22 Mar. 2016]

Reporters Without Borders. 6 March 2014. "Ethiopia: Full Online Powers." [Accessed 16 Mar. 2016]

The Washington Post. 12 February 2014. Craig Timberg. "Foreign Regimes Use Spyware Against Journalists, Even in U.S." [Accessed 19 Feb. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Ethiopian Association in the GTA; Human Rights Watch; Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Political Prisoners; Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia; Two professors.

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; Article 19; ecoi.net; Ethiopian Association in the GTA; Factiva; International Crisis Group; Solidarity Committee for Ethiopian Political Prisoners; Solidarity Movement for a New Ethiopia; UN  Refworld; US  Department of State
Ethiopia: The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), including aims and objectives, leadership, structure; information on how to become a member; treatment of members and supporters by authorities (2014 - March 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 22 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105476.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information sur le Congres federaliste oromo (Oromo Federalist Congress - OFC), y compris ses buts et ses objectifs, ses dirigeants et sa structure; la facon d'en devenir membre; le traitement que les autorites reservent a ses membres et a ses partisans (2014-mars 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), including aims and objectives, leadership, structure; information on how to become a member; treatment of members and supporters by authorities (2014 - March 2016), 22 March 2016, ETH105476.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589450634.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Several sources describe the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) as "Oromia's largest legally registered political party" (Human Rights Watch 7 Jan. 2016; IPS 26 Jan. 2016; Addis Standard 22 Jan. 2016). Sources indicate that the party is an "opposition" party (The Washington Post 15 Jan. 2016; Human Rights Watch 21 Feb. 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who specializes in Ethiopia and Eritrea, stated that the OFC is only active in Oromia (11 Mar. 2016). Sources indicate that the OFC was created following the merger of the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (OFDM) and the Oromo People's Congress (OPC) (PHW 2015, 476; AI Oct. 2014, 6; Addis Standard 18 May 2015) in 2012 (ibid.; PHW 2015, 476). The OFC belongs to the Ethiopian Federal Democratic Unity Forum (Medrek), a coalition of four parties which together comprise "the largest opposition party in the country" (The Reporter 17 Aug. 2015). Human Rights Watch notes that the OFC participated in the May 2015 elections, but did not win any seats, as the ruling coalition won all 547 parliamentary seats (Human Rights Watch 7 Jan. 2016).

2. Aims and Objectives

According to the preamble to the OFC's platform, despite being the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia, the Oromo people "have been playing a minimal political role for centuries" and "like all other peoples of Ethiopia, have been denied [their] political, democratic and human rights for centuries" (OFC n.d.). The OFC platform indicates that their aim is "to struggle in a peaceful and lawful manner for the respect of the human, political and democratic rights of our people; to struggle for the respect of our peoples' economic and social rights; to struggle to bring about a genuine democratic system in the country" (ibid.).

3. Leadership

Sources report that the leadership of the OFC is comprised of the following individuals:

Merera Gudina is the leader (or chair) of the OFC (PHW 2015, 476; The Washington Post 15 Jan. 2016). He founded the Oromo National Congress (ONC) in 1998, which was later changed to the OPC (PHW 2015, 476).

Bekele Gerba is the deputy chairman of the OFC (Human Rights Watch 7 Jan. 2016; AI 17 Feb. 2016; Addis Standard 22 Jan. 2016). Sources indicate that he was imprisoned from 2011 to 2015 on charges of belonging to the banned Oromo Liberation Front (ibid.18 May 2015; Human Rights Watch 7 Jan. 2016), a charge that Human Rights Watch indicates is "often used to silence politically engaged ethnic Oromos who oppose the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF)" (ibid.).

Bekele Naga is the Secretary General of the OFC (DW 13 Jan. 2016; Zehabesha 31 Dec. 2015).

Dejene Tafa is described by one source as the party secretary of the OFC (AI 17 Feb. 2016) and by another as the chief legal counsel to the OFC (Human Rights Watch 11 Mar. 2016).

Desta Dinka is the OFC Youth Wing Chair (Human Rights Watch 11 Mar. 2016).

4. Structure and Membership

Information on the structure and membership of the OFC was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to the Human Rights Watch researcher, the structure of the OFC "seems to vary substantially," depending on the local area (Human Rights Watch 11 Mar. 2016).

The Human Rights Watch researcher stated that he was not aware of any restrictions that would prevent someone who resides in Oromia from becoming a member of the OFC, but noted that he was unsure of whether members were required to be ethnic Oromo (ibid.). The same source indicated that that he had seen OFC membership cards in 2013 and/or 2014, but that he had not seen them more recently (ibid.). The researcher further expressed the opinion that "the granting of ID cards to members is quite inconsistent, particularly for new members, and particularly since the May 2015 elections" (ibid.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

5. Treatment by Authorities

Amnesty International (AI) quotes OFC sources as indicating that in March 2014, an OFC supporter was targeted and shot dead by security forces for leading a demonstration against the police killing of a former Oromo opposition member that occurred on the previous day in Ginmir town in Bale (AI Oct. 2014, 76).

In April and May 2014, AI reports that there were protests in many universities and towns throughout Oromia against the government's "'Addis Ababa and Oromia Special Zone Integrated Development Master Plan'" because many Oromo considered it to violate the Constitution and feared it would lead to large scale evictions from land (ibid., 27). AI further indicates that security forces responded to the protests with "unnecessary and excessive force," including shooting at peaceful protesters in Ambo and Gudur towns and at Wallega and Madawalabu universities, and "beating hundreds of people during and after the protests" (ibid.). The same source notes that "thousands" of people were arrested in the wake of these protests, including OFC party members (ibid., 27-28). AI quotes OFC informants as stating that 350-500 of their members, including local party representatives and committee members, were arrested in May, June and July 2014 in Kelema Wallega, Gimbi, Ambo and Dembi Dollo; the OFC office in Dembi Dollo was also broken into and their membership list was taken (ibid., 40). Information given to AI by the OFC further indicates that in September and October 2014, over 200 additional arrests occurred, including some OFC members, and that as of October 2014, a number of local OFC party officials were detained incommunicado (ibid.).

Regarding the fate of OFC members who were arrested, the AI report states the following:

[b]y early October 2014, the OFC reported that some of its members who had been arrested in the wake of the protests had been released on bail, some had been released without charge, while others continued to be detained without charge. Some OFC members, as well as students and other people, had been convicted in rapid trials on charges relating to the protests. (ibid.)

According to AI, in the run up to the May 2015 elections, the police shot and killed an OFC/Medrek member, Gidila Chemeda, arrested 500 Medrek members at polling stations across Oromia, and physically assaulted 46 people (AI 23 June 2015).

Sources indicate that Ethiopian security forces violently suppressed protests throughout Oromia that began in November 2015 in response to the government's "'Master Plan'" to expand Addis Ababa into Oromia territory (The Washington Post 15 Jan. 2016; IPS 26 Jan. 2016; Human Rights Watch 21 Feb. 2016). According to sources, authorities arrested and detained a number of people in connection with the protests, including OFC leaders (AI 17 Feb. 2016; Addis Standard 22 Jan. 2016; Zehabesha 31 Dec. 2015). Security forces reportedly carried out killings, beatings and arrests (Human Rights Watch 21 Feb. 2016; IPS 26 Jan. 2016; The Washington Post 15 Jan. 2016), and shot at protesters (DW 13 Jan. 2016; Human Rights Watch 21 Feb. 2016; AI 17 Feb. 2016). According to AI, there were "thousands of people injured, mass arrests, enforced disappearances and hundreds dead" resulting from the state response (ibid.). Sources report that approximately 140 protesters were killed as a result of crackdowns (Human Rights Watch 7 Jan. 2016; IPS 26 Jan. 2016; Addis Standard 22 Jan. 2016).

Sources report that the OFC deputy chairman, Bekele Gerba, was arrested on 23 December 2015 and taken to a prison known for "torture and other ill-treatment" (Addis Standard 22 Jan. 2016; Human Rights Watch 21 Feb. 2016). According to Human Rights Watch, he appeared in court on 22 January 2016 and "prosecutors were granted an additional 28 days for investigation, suggesting he is being investigated under the abusive Anti-Terrorism Proclamation" (ibid.). The same source indicates that other prominent OFC leaders were "arbitrarily arrested" or "said to be under virtual house arrest" in December 2015 and January 2016 (ibid. 7 Jan. 2016). Sources report that other OFC leaders who were arrested around this time include Dejene Tafa (AI 17 Feb. 2016; Zehabesha 31 Dec. 2015; Human Rights Watch 11 Mar. 2016), Desta Dinka (ibid.; Zehabesha 31 Dec. 2015) and Adisu Bulala (ibid.). In a letter published on the Ethiopian opposition website Zehabesha, Bekele Nega wrote that on 31 December 2015, men who identified themselves as police, forced him into a car, beat him, and made death threats against him and his family if he left his house or spoke to the media (ibid.).

An article by the Ethiopian newspaper The Reporter quotes the OFC as stating that "more than 500" OFC members were arrested (The Reporter 30 Dec. 2015). The same source notes that none of the arrested OFC members were brought before the courts within 48 hours as mandated by the Constitution, although they were all eventually brought before the courts (ibid.). However, Bekele Nega stated in his 31 December 2015 letter published by Zehabesha that 4,000 OFC party members were arrested as part of the crackdown in Oromia (Zehabesha 31 Dec. 2015).

In February 2016, the Walta Information Centre, an Ethiopian news platform based in Addis Ababa, reported that the Minister of Ethiopia's Government Communication Affairs Office made a statement accusing the OFC of "using both legal and illegal means" during the protests, and of "instigating violence" (Walta Information Centre 26 Feb. 2016). Students who were detained reportedly told Human Rights Watch that they were accused of belonging to the OFC or other opposition groups during interrogations by authorities (Human Rights Watch 21 Feb. 2016). Human Rights Watch also quotes an Ethiopian intelligence officer as reporting that authorities were purposefully targeting "'respected Oromos,'" including Bekele and others with "'the ability to mobilize Oromos," as part of a deliberate government policy (ibid.).

The Human Rights Watch researcher explained the situation for OFC members and supporters as follows:

[t]he scale of the arrests in Oromia over the last 6 months are without precedent in Oromia's recent history. There are a variety of profiles of arrested individuals depending on location, but any individuals who are identified as not supporting the government and supporting opposition groups [including OFC] have been targeted. In some cases, this may involve OFC members with active membership, but that isn't the critical factor--what matters is the perception that you oppose the government, or that your family has had historical connections to groups that opposed the government [either lawful or unlawful opposition]. Students, farmers and others that were identified as being at the protests were also targeted, as were influential Oromos [teachers, artists, etc]. (ibid. 11 Mar. 2016)

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Addis Standard. 22 January 2016. Mahlet Fasil. "Update--European Parliament Adopts a Powerful Ethiopia Resolution." (Factiva)

Addis Standard. 31 December 2015. "White House 'Deeply Concerned' by Ethiopia's Arrest of Journalists, but Fails to Mention Massive Crackdown Against Oromo Protestors." (Factiva)

Addis Standard. 18 May 2015. "Bekele Gerba Speaks!" (Factiva)

Amnesty International (AI). 17 February 2016. "Urgent Action. Detained Oromo Protesters Must Be Released." [Accessed 10 Mar. 2016]

Amnesty International (AI). 23 June 2015. "Ethiopia: Investigate Suspicious Murders and Human Rights Violations." [Accessed 10 Mar. 2016]

Amnesty International (AI). October 2014. 'Because I am Oromo.' Sweeping Repression in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia. [Accessed 10 Mar. 2016]

Deutsche Welle (DW). 13 January 2016. Merga Yonas. "EU Asked to Break Silence on Alleged Killing of Oromo Protesters in Ethiopia." (Factiva)

Human Rights Watch. 11 March 2016. Correspondence from a researcher to the Research Directorate.

Human Rights Watch. 21 February 2016. "Ethiopia: No Let Up in Crackdown on Protests." [Accessed 9 Mar. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. 7 January 2016. "Dispatches: Arrest of Respected Politician Escalating Crisis in Ethiopia." [Accessed 9 Mar. 2016]

Inter Press Service (IPS). 26 January 2016. Anuradha Mittal. "Time to Repeal Anti-Terrorism Law in Ethiopia." (Factiva)

Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC). N.d. "Platform." [Accessed 8 Mar. 2016]

Political Handbook of the World 2015 (PHW). 2015. "Ethiopia." Edited by Thomas Lansford. Washington, DC: CQ Press. [Accessed 8 Mar. 2016]

The Reporter. 30 December 2015. "Ethiopian Police Charge Suspects Linked to Protests." (Factiva)

The Reporter. 17 August 2015. Neamin Ashenafi. "Medrek Calls for Swift Merger of Member Parties." (Factiva)

Walta Information Centre. 26 February 2016. "Opposition Parties Try to Benefit from Chaos in Southern Ethiopia--Minister." (Factiva)

The Washington Post. 15 January 2016. Paul Schemm. "Ethiopia Confronts Ethnic Violence Amid Heightened Protests." (Factiva)

Zehabesha. 31 December 2015. "Ethiopian Opposition Leader Threatened with Death." (Factiva).

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Oromo Federalist Congress  International Support Group; two professors.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Europa; Factiva; FIDH; International Crisis Group; IRIN; UN  Refworld; US  Department of State.
Ethiopia: Information on exit screenings at Bole International Airport, including whether a person released on bail from Gondar When Bet jail on the condition not to leave Gondar would be stopped during exit screenings at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa when attempting to leave Ethiopia (2014-February 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 18 February 2016 Citation / Document Symbol ETH105426.E Related Document(s) Ethiopie : information sur les controles de sortie a l'aeroport international de Bole; information indiquant si une personne liberee sous caution de la prison When Bet de Gondar conditionnellement a une interdiction de quitter Gondar serait arretee lors des controles de sortie a l'aeroport international de Bole a Addis-Abeba si elle tentait de quitter l'Ethiopie (2014-fevrier 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia: Information on exit screenings at Bole International Airport, including whether a person released on bail from Gondar When Bet jail on the condition not to leave Gondar would be stopped during exit screenings at Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa when attempting to leave Ethiopia (2014-February 2016), 18 February 2016, ETH105426.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589451974.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

Information on whether a person released on bail from the Gondar When Bet jail on the condition not to leave Gondar would be stopped during exit screenings at the Bole International Airport could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

1. Release on Bail

Article 28 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ethiopia [No. 185/1961] provides for release by the police on bond for certain offences:

Where the offence committed or complained of is not punishable with rigorous imprisonment as a sole or alternative punishment, or where it is doubtful that an offence has been committed or that the summoned or arrested person has committed the offence complained of, the investigating officer may in his discretion release such person on his executing a bond with or without sureties that he will appear at such place, on such day and at such time as may be fixed by the police (Ethiopia 1961)

Article 63 of the same law relates to bail bond for offences not punishable by the death penalty or 15 years or more of imprisonment (ibid., Art. 63). According to Section 2 of Article 63, "[n]o person shall be released on bail unless he has entered into a bail bond, with or without sureties, which, in the opinion of the court, is sufficient to secure his attendance at the court when so required to appear" (ibid.). Article 68 of the same law states that "[w]here the application is allowed, the court shall fix the conditions on which the bail is granted" (ibid.).

Article 7 of the Immigration Proclamation [Proclamation No. 354/2003], entitled "Persons Prohibited not to Depart from Ethiopia," stipulates that "[a]ny person may only be prohibited not to depart from Ethiopia by an order of a court given in accordance with the law" (Ethiopia 2003).

2. Exchange of Information Between Courts and Immigration Officials

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Executive Director of the Borders Institute, "an independent, multinational, non-profit, non-governmental organisation" based in Kenya that provides research, training and expertise on border issues in Africa (The Borders Institute n.d.), stated the following:

There is no system in Ethiopia that ensures persons released on bail on condition [not to leave Ethiopia] do not leave the country through border exit points. Usually travel documents are impounded to prevent flight of suspects.

It is up to the prosecutors to obtain [a] court order that requires immigration officials (and/or other law enforcement authorities) to put the details of the person in question on their watch lists. This information will be revealed when details of exiting passengers are entered into a database at the airport.



If the prosecutor is concerned that the person is a flight risk, s/he will either oppose bail or request the judge to rule that the accused deposit his/her travel documents with the court. This request will also include informing all relevant law enforcement agencies (including immigration) to ensure that the person does not leave the jurisdiction of the court.

Sometimes depending on the gravity or seriousness of the matter/case, court judges take their own initiative to provide the orders, but that is only due to the whim of the judge rather than out of compliance with any established system.

It [is] due to [the] lack of exchange [of] information in a systematic manner between law enforcement agencies that enables people facing charges before courts to flee justice and the country. (ibid. 8 Feb. 2016)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. However, the Ethiopia Human Rights Project (EHRP) [1] states in its legal analysis report on the judicial proceedings of six bloggers and independent journalists arrested by Ethiopian authorities in April 2015 that one defendant was granted a bail that "include[d] an order for the relevant authorities to ban [him] from traveling abroad" (EHRP Nov. 2015, para. 1, 37). Without providing details, the report also states that another defendant, who was released and was planning to attend an event in France, had his passport confiscated by "immigration authorities at Ethiopian Airlines  [who] denied him from boarding to the plane" (ibid., para. 38). Similarly, according to Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontieres, RSF), though there were no restrictions placed on his movement after his release, the blogger had his passport confiscated by Ethiopian immigration officials who said that he could not leave the country because he had previously been arrested (RSF 19 Nov. 2015).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] The EHRP is an Ethiopian NGO that advocates for the "exchange of probative research and critical information with an ultimate goal of heightening awareness of human rights condition[s] in Ethiopia" (EHRP n.d.).

References

The Borders Institute. 8 February 2016. Correspondence from the Executive Director to the Research Directorate.

The Borders Institute. N.d. "Profile." [Accessed 2 Feb. 2016]

Ethiopia. 2003. Proclamation No. 354/2003 Immigration Proclamation. [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]

Ethiopia. 1961. Proclamation No. 185 of 1961 Criminal Procedure Code of Ethiopia. [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]

Ethiopia Human Rights Project (EHRP). November 2015. Legal Analysis for FDRE Public Prosecutor Vs Soleyana Shimeles et al (Ten Individuals) Criminal Case (Phase 1). [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]

Ethiopia Human Rights Project (EHRP). N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 10 Feb. 2016]

Reporters sans frontieres (RSF). 19 November 2015. "Zone9 Blogger Banned from Attending RSF Award Ceremony." [Accessed 11 Feb. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Addis Ababa Bole International Airport; African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum; African Union  Borders Programme; Ethiopia  Embassy of Ethiopia in Canada, Federal Prisons Administration; Ethiopian Airlines; International Committee of the Red Cross in Ethiopia; International Organisation for Migration  Immigration and Border Management Division, office in Ethiopia; Justice Education Society; Justice For All Ethiopia; Lufthansa in Addis Ababa; Prison Fellowship Ethiopia; Researchers at Addis Ababa University, International Centre for Prison Studies at Birkbeck University of London, Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa), Harvard Kennedy School, Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology at United Nations University; UN  UNHCR and UNDOC offices in Ethiopia.

Internet sites, including: African Borderlands Research Network; Amnesty International; CANADEM International Civilian Response Corps; ecoi.net; Ethiopia  Embassy in Washington, Ethiopian Government Portal, Ethiopian Revenues and Customs Authority, Federal Police Commission; EU  European Commission, European External Action Service; Europol; Factiva; Fikadu Asfaw and Associates Law Office; Germany  Federal Criminal Police, German Information Office Africa, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Human Rights Watch; International Air Transport Association; International Civil Aviation Association; Interpol; Pretrial Rights International; UK  British Embassy in Addis Ababa; US  Department of State, Embassy in Addis Ababa; World Prison Brief.
Iran: Student protests, including treatment of protestors by authorities (2013-January 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 16 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol IRN105716.E Related Document(s) Iran : information sur les manifestations d'etudiants, y compris le traitement reserve aux manifestants par les autorites (2013-janvier 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Iran: Student protests, including treatment of protestors by authorities (2013-January 2017) , 16 January 2017, IRN105716.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589455784.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

A 2014 report by Amnesty International (AI) states that

[a]t various periods throughout the history of the Islamic Republic, students, teachers and academics have been among those particularly targeted by the Ministry of Intelligence and other security authorities for expressing dissent or leading protests. Often, they have been arrested and detained in harsh conditions, tortured or subjected to other forms of ill-treatment, and tried before grossly unfair Revolutionary Courts on vaguely-drawn charges, and convicted and sentenced to prison terms and, in some case, flogging. (AI June 2014, 44)

However, in a 2014 report, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) [1] reports that "[f]ollowing Hassan Rouhani's election as president [on 14 June 2013], some measures against students were eased" (GCPEA 2014). According to a BBC article from October 2014, the Iranian President "has called for greater academic freedom in Iran's universities," while speaking to students at Tehran University (BBC 7 Oct. 2014).

A September 2013 article from University World News, an international email-newspaper and website covering developments in the field of higher education (University World News n.d.), quotes Tehran-based Mehr news agency as reporting that the Ministry of Science's interim head had "insisted" that the "ministry would no longer target students for their political or personal beliefs,  that there would be no more 'starred' students'" [2] and that "a special committee" had been established in the ministry to review the cases of "'starred' and excluded" students (ibid. 19 Sept. 2013). The same source reports that in September 2013, the Ministry of Science announced that students who faced restrictions from universities for their political activism were allowed to resume their studies, although this pertained only to students who faced restrictions since 2011 (ibid.).

According to AI, in August 2013 the Ministry of Science stated that "126 formerly banned students had been allowed to resume their studies" (AI June 2014, 9). Further, according to a 2014 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran,

[m]ore than 10 student groups (anjoman) in various universities whose activities were previously suspended were permitted to resume operations during the past year. At least 10 additional student groups also received permission to function for the first time. (UN 27 Aug. 2014, para. 35)

However, the 2014 AI report indicates that "there appears to have been no change" for hundreds of banned students and "they remain barred from university either because of their peaceful exercise of freedom of expression or the rights to peaceful assembly and association" (AI June 2014, 9). The same source indicates that of the university academics arrested after the 2009 elections "for engaging in peaceful protests or exercising their right to freedom of expression,  many were still imprisoned as of March 2014" (ibid., 64). In a 2014 press release, AI further reports that there have been "some fresh arrests [of students] since President Hassan Rouhani's election" (AI 2 June 2014).

Human Rights Watch states that of the students and professors suspended for their political activities from 2005 to 2012, "dozens remained unable to continue their studies or teach" (Human Rights Watch Mar. 2014). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Founder and Executive Director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) [3] similarly stated that "although some 'starred students' have been able to resume their studies since Rouhani's election, most have not" (ICHRI 14 Dec. 2016). Similarly, in correspondence with the Research Directorate, an affiliate of the Graduate Faculty of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa who has researched Iranian politics, indicated that, for the period of 2013 until December 2016,

[t]here are no reports of the common practice during Ahmadinejad's presidency of giving student activists 'stars' and then using 'star branding' to prevent them from pursuing their education. However, at least one student who was given a star during Ahmadinejad's presidency has stated that her status has not changed since 2013 and she is still prevented from entering the university. In her public letter to President Rouhani, she states that there are still some other students in a similar position. (Affiliate 9 Dec. 2016)

Freedom House's Freedom in the World 2016 report states that

[a]cademic freedom remains limited in Iran, despite attempts by Rouhani's government to ease the harsh repression universities have experienced since 2009. In the past two years, about a dozen student associations that had been suspended under the previous administration were allowed to renew their work. Several new student groups also received permits to operate. (2016, 5)

The US Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 states that

[t]he government significantly restricted academic freedom and the independence of higher education institutions. Authorities systematically targeted university campuses to suppress social and political activism by prohibiting independent student organizations, imprisoning student activists, removing faculty, preventing students from enrolling or continuing their education based on their political or religious affiliation or activism, and restricting social sciences and humanities curricula Although universities reportedly re-admitted a number of students previously expelled under a "star" system,  other "starred" students reported that government authorities still prevented their university enrollment because of their political activities. (US 13 Apr. 2016, 21)

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a researcher at York University, Toronto, who has researched Iranian politics, indicated that

[s]tudent associations have not reorganized themselves as before. However, the punitive power of disciplinary institutions supervising student life is weakened. This includes the Discipline Committees, assigned by Ministry of Higher Education and responsible for penalizing students who commit administrative, political, and moral violations. They have abandoned their harsh policies of suspending and purging dissident and protesting students. The heads of universities obtained more power over three other institutions, including Harasat (affiliated to the Ministry of Intelligence), Office of the Supreme Leader Representative at universities, and Student Basij [4] (student members of the Revolutionary Corps). The power of the last two institutions remains enormous and they play a key role in keeping the student body silent and suppressed (Researcher 3 Jan. 2017).

2. Legislation

The US Country Reports 2015 states that the government restricted the freedom of assembly and prevented "anything it considered as antiregime protests," including student meetings and protests (US 13 Apr. 2016, 23).

The 2014 AI report indicates that

The Constitution guarantees the right to freedom of association in Article 26 but stipulates that associations "must not violate the criteria of Islam or the basis of the Islamic Republic", while freedom of peaceful assembly is guaranteed under Article 27 so long as this is not "detrimental to the fundamental principles of Islam". The main law restricting freedom of association and the right to assembly is the Law on Political Parties, Societies, Political and Guild Associations, and Islamic or Recognized Minority Religious Associations. Article 10 of this law requires the licensing of all organizations and associations by an official commission created under the law, and that all demonstrations and other public assemblies are authorized in advance by the authorities. (AI June 2014, 84)

The researcher indicated that

[a]ccording to the Cultural Revolution Law, students can assemble as [a] political body only in associations with an "Islamic" suffix. While the Islamic student associations remain the main form of organization for collective activity in recent years, the Rouhani government has encouraged the activities of Student Councils which are defined to deal with students' welfare issues and Students' Cultural Clubs, which embed the students' cultural activities. The Islamic Student Associations, the widespread unitary reformist bodies of strong mobilizing power across the country in the 1990s have disappeared from the scene as a result of suppression under the rule of headliners (2005-2013). In the absence of a student union like Tahkim Vahdat which brought together all Islamic student associations in the 1990s, in the recent years, active students of prominent universities have created informal networks and websites to organize their collective activities. (Researcher 3 Jan. 2017)

Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Student Activities and Protests

The affiliate indicated that there have been a number of student protests throughout Iran since 2013, including in Tehran and in a number of provinces, but that they have been "relatively small, localized, and mostly focused on student issues (such as tuition increases in state-run universities, quality of food, lack of suitable dormitory conditions, increases in the cost of dormitories and so on)" (Affiliate 9 Dec. 2016). The researcher similarly indicated that

There have been some protests over welfare issues, including a sit-in in front of the Ministry of [Science, Research and Technology], demanding the expansion of dormitories in Tehran and other large cities. Even the annual meetings of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with representatives of the university students have recorded such protests. (Researcher 3 Jan. 2017)

The affiliate indicated that, according to a Mehr News Agency report, in the beginning of the 2014-2015 academic year, there were student protests at Sistan and Baluchistan University, Art University of Isfahan, Tehran University, Shahid Chamran University in Ahwaz, and Khajeh Nasireddin Tusi University in Tehran (Affiliate 9 Dec. 2016). The affiliate further stated that according to the Iranian University Students News website, there have been "approximately 40 protests  regarding various student-related problems in particular universities" in the 2016-2017 academic year (ibid.). The Media Express, a Paris-based news agency focusing on issues related to the Middle East and North Africa Region (Media Express n.d.), reports that September 2016 "saw a wave of student protests" and that "[s]tudents have been demanding improved resources at their universities" (The Media Express 5 Oct. 2016).

The ICHRI Founder and Executive Director stated that

there were numerous protests at Tehran University and Amir Kabir University in Tehran during late 2014 and into 2015, involving hundreds of students, protesting the acid attacks against women in Isfahan in late 2014 and the lack of prosecution for those attacks. (ICHRI 14 Dec. 2016)

According to the same source,

[t]here are also student protests each year on the birthday (December 21) of imprisoned student activist Sayed Ziaoddin Nabavi at his university, Babol Noshirvani University of Technology in city of Babol, in Mazandaran Province in the north of Iran. Sometimes protests on this anniversary extend to Tehran University as well. Nabavi, arrested in 2009, is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence for "creating unease in the public mind" due to his peaceful student activism. (ibid.)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.1 Incidents

Sources report the following incidents of student protests:

In September 2013, "a group of 70 protestors, including students of Allameh Tabatabai University in Tehran who had been suspended or expelled, demonstrated outside the university calling for the right to continue their studies" (University World News 19 Sept. 2013);

On 22 July 2014, "[l]arge crowds of Iranian students and teachers" protested the "killing of women and children in the Gaza Strip" in front of the UN mission in Tehran (ISNA 22 July 2014);

In May 2016, there was a 6-day student protest over the price of food at the University of Zanjan (Affiliate 9 Dec. 2016);

On 1 October 2016, the Media Express reported that "a group of students in Khajeh Nasir University in Tehran held a demonstration and staged a hunger strike on the university's campus to protest against the poor condition of dormitories and hikes in enrollment charges, as well as the low quality and rising prices of the food served at the university" (The Media Express 5 Oct. 2016). The same source indicates that on the same day, students of Amir Kabir University in Tehran "stage[d] a demonstration  while speeches by university officials were taking place," to protest "the same problems voiced by the Khajeh Nasir students" (ibid.).

In October 2016, students gathered outside Bou Ali University in Hamadan "to protest the lack of internet service," and at Tehran's Oil Industry University "students called for changes in the quotas of student employment in the Oil Ministry" (ibid.).

3.2 Student Day Protests

The ICHRI Founder and Executive Director stated that

[d]uring the past several years there have been student protests on every Students [sic] Day (November 17), which marks the anniversary of the murder of three students of the University of Tehran on December 7, 1953. These protests typically involve large numbers of students, from several hundred to as many as thousands of students, often involving almost the entire student body. Topics covered include political freedom; government corruption; the ongoing (nearly six years now) house arrests of opposition Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard; permission to form independent student associations (largely shut down after the 2009 protests); permission to publish independent student newspapers (also largely closed since 2009); as well as living conditions inside the universities. The protests have taken place at Tehran University as well as in other universities in approximately a dozen other major cities in Iran. (ICHRI 14 Dec. 2016)

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reports in December 2014 that "some students in Iran" celebrated Student Day on 7 December to "call for the release of opposition figures and jailed students" (RFE/RL 8 Dec. 2014).

Iran Focus, an independent news service that focuses on events in Iran, Iraq and the Middle East (Iran Focus 14 Mar. 2004), reports in December 2016 that Student Day protests occurred across Iran, with students expressing "their anger against the Mullah's regime" (Iran Focus 7 Dec. 2016). According to the same source, on 5 December 2016, students at Zahedan University protested rising university costs and "chanted slogans," including that "political prisoners must be freed" (ibid.) The same source indicates that on the same day, students at Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran "repeatedly interrupted the speech" of the Minister of Environment "with chants about freeing political prisoners" and protests against pollution levels in Iran (ibid.). Without specifying a date, the same source states that students at Khajeh Nasir University in Tehran installed large protest banners with texts including "political prisoners must be freed" on an amphitheatre (ibid.).

Sources report that on 6 December 2016, students protested at Tabriz University, (NCRI 7 Dec. 2016; Iran Focus 7 Dec. 2016) in front of the university despite the presence of militia forces, chanting "'[o]ur last message to the incompetent regime: the freedom-loving nation is ready to rise up!'" (ibid.).

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), "a parliament-in-exile" with more than 500 members from "a broad coalition of democratic Iranian organizations, groups, and personalities" (NCRI n.d.), reports that "universities across the country marked Students [sic] Day on 6 December 2016," including at Amir Kabir Tech University, "despite Bassij paramilitary forces attempting to prevent" the protest; Sharif Tech University; Science and Industrial University; Teachers Training University; National University; the law school in the city of Yazd; the universities in Mazandaran and Ahvaz; Asfarain Tech University; Andimeshk University; and Semnan University (NCRI 7 Dec. 2016).

According to an article by the ICHRI on Student Day activities in Iran in 2016, the government tried to "extinguish displays of political dissent by cancelling speeches that had permits while issuing them for 'happy shows,' including musical concerts and stand-up comedy" (ICHRI 8 Dec. 2016). The NCRI report indicates that the "mullahs' regime" held a program called "War of Joy" at the same time as demonstrations for Student Day, in an attempt "to quell student protests" (NCRI 7 Dec. 2016). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Treatment of Protestors by Iranian Authorities

The affiliate stated that, to her knowledge, the "localized and student-focused protests have not led to arrests of students" (Affiliate 9 Dec. 2016). However, the same source further expressed the opinion that "it is difficult to assess [from] the outside the extent to which these student protesters have been harassed" (ibid.). According to the affiliate, harassment of students by authorities since 2013 "seem to be mostly in the form of outside interference in meetings and intimidation of students involved in university activities" (ibid.).

The ICHRI Founder and Executive Director stated that

[m]any of the students participating in the Student Day protests, the Nabavi protests, and the acid attacks protests  were summoned to the disciplinary committees of their respective universities for questioning and were threatened with being handed over to the security agencies, which would mean prosecution and jail time. (ICHRI 14 Dec. 2016)

In its 2014 Universal Periodic Review submission on the status of human rights in Iran, Human Rights Watch states that

[t]he government has either shut down or severely interfered in the internal affairs of various civil society groups and nongovernmental organizations such as the Tahkim-e Vahdat (one of the country's largest university student groups)  (Human Rights Watch March 2014)

In a 2014 report, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran indicates that "between March 2013 and March 2014, at least 28 students were arrested by security forces and eight student publications were suspended by the university authorities" (UN 27 Aug. 2014). A "non-exhaustive list" (UN 28 May 2015, 52) of students and student activists arrested and imprisoned that is included as an annex in the 2015 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, is attached to this Response.

The US Country Reports 2015 states that medical treatment is "routinely denied" to prisoners and that authorities "continued to deny treatment at external facilities for Bahareh Hedayat, a women's and students' rights defender sentenced in 2010, who suffered from serious gynecological problems" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 7).

The ICHRI Founder and Executive Director stated that

[s]tudent protestors, and indeed many Iranian citizens who engage in any form of peaceful public protest, are typically not given due process when arrested. Denials of due process typically include: arrest without explanation of cause; search and confiscation of the arrested individual's personal belongings without warrant; prolonged detention without charge and without access to counsel, often under conditions of solitary confinement; interrogations held without the presence of counsel and often under conditions of intense psychological pressure to "confess;" brief, closed trials in which the attorney representing them is often not the one of their choice and often denied full access to case files; and court proceedings in which evidentiary standards are well below international standards. In addition, hardline judges are often hand-picked by intelligence and security agencies to preside over political cases, and convictions are frequently made on the basis of forced "confessions." (ICHRI 14 Dec. 2016)

4.1 Incidents

Sources report that in March 2014, student activist Maryam Shafi'pour was sentenced to seven years in prison by a revolutionary court for "spreading propaganda" against the system (AI June 2014, 5; The Guardian 3 Mar. 2014). An article in The Guardian, a UK-based newspaper, notes that "[s]he was arrested in July [2013] after being summoned for questioning and was kept in solitary confinement for more than two months without access to a lawyer" (ibid.).

In a 2016 report before the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran reports that "several students were allegedly injured" on 29 November 2015 in Yasuj, when an attempt to give a speech by a former member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front and a current member of reformist United Iran Party was "reportedly disrupted by a group of hard-line members of the Basij" (UN 26 May 2016, para. 51). The same source states that the government authorities indicated that "tear gas canisters were thrown by those accompanying the speaker but that incident had nothing to do with the security forces" (ibid.).

The ICHRI Founder and Executive Director stated in December 2016 that

[m]ore severe consequences have recently followed a group of students who tried to publish a student publication at Tehran University and Amir Kabir University (also in Tehran). Independent student publications have been largely shut down since the widespread 2009 protests that followed the disputed presidential election in Iran that year. It was relayed to [ICHRI] directly by one of the students that approximately ten students were summoned and detained in Evin Prison's Ward 2A (which is controlled by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Intelligence Organization) for two or three days after their arrest by IRGC security agents. The student who reported this to [ICHRI] was herself summoned and detained. She reported that the students have been in court repeatedly waiting for a decision. (ICHRI 14 Dec. 2016)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] GCPEA is a coalition of "organizations from the fields of education in emergencies and conflict-affected fragile states, higher education, protection, international human rights and international humanitarian law" that advocates for the protection of students, teachers, schools, and universities from attack (GCPEA n.d.).

[2] According to the US Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015, a "'star' system was inaugurated in 2005 by then president Ahmadinejad to mark politically active students" (US 13 Apr. 2015, 21).

[3] The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI) is a New York-based human rights organization composed of lawyers, researchers and journalists, that aims to support "the Iranian people's struggle for human rights," and which provides "relevant, verified, and up-to-date information about the human rights situation in Iran" (ICHRI n.d.).

[4] According to an article written by Saeid Golkar, a post-doctoral scholar at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, "[t]he Student Basij are organized and run in a top-down fashion with the main headquarters in Tehran at the helm" (Golkar Summer 2010, 26). The Researcher at York University further indicated that "the head of the Student Basij is also a member of the Discipline Committee and its members serve as informants for Harasat" (Researcher 3 Jan. 2017).

References

Affiliate, Graduate Faculty of Political Science, University of Hawai'i. 9 December 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Amnesty International (AI). June 2014. "Iran: Silenced, Expelled, Imprisoned: Repression of Students and Academics in Iran." (MDE 13/015/2014) [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Amnesty International (AI). 2 June 2014. "Persecution in Universities as Iran 'Squeezes the Life out of" Academic Freedom." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 7 October 2014. "Iran Universities: Rouhani Calls for Academic Freedom." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

Freedom House. 7 March 2016. "Iran." Freedom in the World 2016. [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). 27 February 2014. "Iran." Education Under Attack 2014 Country Profiles. [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA). N.d. "Who We Are." [Accessed 4 Jan. 2017]

Golkar, Saeid. Summer 2010. "The Reign of Hard-line Students in Iran's Universities." The Middle East Quarterly. Vol. 17, No. 3. 21-29. [Accessed 3 Jan. 2017]

The Guardian. 3 March 2014. Saeed Kamali Dehghan. "Iran Sentences Student Activist to Seven Years in Prison for 'Peaceful Protest'." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. March 2014. "UPR Submission Iran." [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI). 14 December 2016. Correspondence from the Founder and Executive Director to the Research Directorate.

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI). 8 December 2016. "Iranian Government Subdues Politically Charged Student Day with 'Happy Shows'." [Accessed 14 Dec. 2016]

International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI). N.d. "Background." [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Iran Focus. 7 December 2016. "Iran-wide Spread Protests and Activities Across Iran on Students Day." [Accessed 14 Dec. 2016]

Iran Focus. 14 March 2004. "About Us." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA). 22 July 2014. "Iranian Students Hold Protest Rally on Israeli Crimes in Gaza Before UN Mission." [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016]

The Media Express. 5 October 2016. Craig Davison. "A New Wave of Peaceful Student and Worker Protests Takes Place in Iran." [Accessed 14 Dec. 2016]

The Media Express. N.d. "About." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). 7 December 2016. "Iran: Protesting Students Demand Release of Jailed Students, Workers." [Accessed 14 Dec. 2016]

National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). N.d. "Our Resistance." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). 8 December 2014. Golnaz Esfandiari. "Calls for Release of Jailed Students, Opposition Figures on Iran's Student Day." [Accessed 20 Dec. 2016]

Researcher, York University, Toronto. 3 January 2017. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

United Nations (UN). 30 September 2016. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed. Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (A/71/418). [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 26 May 2016. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (A/HRC/31/69). [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 28 May 2015. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed. Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (A/HRC/28/70). [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 27 August 2014. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ahmed Shaheed. Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (A/69/356). [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. Department of State. "Iran." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

University World News. 19 September 2013. Shafigeh Shirazi and Yojana Sharma. "Partial Reprieve for Students Barred from Universities." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

University World News. N.d. "About Us." [Accessed 15 Dec. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Assistant Professor, DePaul University; Assistant Professor, Maxwell School, Syracuse University; Assistant Professor, the University of California Los Angeles; Baha'i International Community; Democracy Council; Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack; Human Rights Watch; Iran Human Rights Documentation Center; Lecturer, Dublin City University; Lecturer, Northwestern University; PhD Candidate, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Postdoctoral Research Associate, Watson Institute at Brown University; Professor, Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

Internet sites, including: Al Jazeera; Daneshjoonews; Mehr News; The New York Times; UPR Info; UN  Development Program, High Commissioner for Refugees, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Refworld, UN Women.

Attachment

United Nations (UN). 28 May 2015. Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Ahmed Shaheed. "Annex II: List of Detained Baha'is and Student Activists - Table 1, 2 and 3." Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran. (A/HRC/28/70). [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]
Ethiopia and Eritrea: The treatment of Eritrean refugees by Ethiopian government authorities; the rights granted to refugees, including access to employment, education and medical care, and entry and exit rights (2014-April 2015)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 22 April 2015 Citation / Document Symbol ZZZ105147.FE Related Document(s) Ethiopie et Erythree : information sur le traitement reserve aux refugies erythreens par les autorites gouvernementales de l'Ethiopie; information sur les droits accordes aux refugies, y compris sur l'acces a l'emploi, a l'education et aux soins medicaux et sur le droit d'entree et de sortie (2014-avril 2015) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ethiopia and Eritrea: The treatment of Eritrean refugees by Ethiopian government authorities; the rights granted to refugees, including access to employment, education and medical care, and entry and exit rights (2014-April 2015), 22 April 2015, ZZZ105147.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/589458ab4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview of the Situation of Eritrean Refugees in Ethiopia

Human Rights Watch states that, according to information the organization received from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHRC), there were 73,000 Eritrean refugees registered in Ethiopia on 30 June 2013 (Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 19). The UNHCR states that at the end of October 2014, Ethiopia was ranked the second largest country of asylum with 106,859 Eritrean refugees and that Sudan was the main country of asylum with 109,594 refugees (UN 14 Nov. 2014). At a press briefing on 14 November 2014, the UNHCR spokesperson in Geneva stated that there had been a [UN English version] "sharp increase" in the number of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia (ibid. 14 Nov. 2014). According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), [IOM English version] "[i]n the last quarter of 2014 Eritrean refugee arrivals shot up to an average of 5,000 per month. This represented a dramatic increase from an average of 800 to 1,000 a month between 2010 and 2012 to 2,500 since March 2013" (OIM 20 Jan. 2015). The UNHCR states that there were 129,816 Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia on 28 February 2015 (UN 28 Feb. 2015).

According to UNHCR, Eritrean refugees [UN English version] "mostly live in four refugee camps in Tigray region and [in] two [camps] in Afar region in north-eastern Ethiopia" (UN 14 Nov. 2014). A report in a press briefing from the UNHCR in Ethiopia from January 2012 states that, in the Ethiopian refugee camps, Eritreans "face a harsh life in the arid [] crowded landscape which offers very little opportunities for a living" (ibid. Jan. 2012, 3).

The UNHCR states that about 90 percent of the Eritreans who arrived in Ethiopia in October 2014 were between 18 and 24 years old and [UN English version] "[g]rowing numbers of the predominantly young refugees in Ethiopia and Sudan have become frustrated with the shortage of services and absence of self-reliance opportunities in the camps" (ibid. 14 Nov. 2014). Sources note that some Eritreans leave the refugee camps and Ethiopia looking for a better future, particularly by trying to cross the Mediterranean (ibid.; Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 20).

Sources state that a [UN English version] "large number" of Eritrean refugees arriving in Ethiopia are unaccompanied minors (UN [2015]; US 27 Feb. 2014, 19). According to the UNHCR, at the end of October 2014, there were 1,591 unaccompanied children among the Eritrean refugees (UN 14 Nov. 2014). The UNHCR states that these unaccompanied minors are at risk of being victims of human and illegal migrant trafficking (ibid. [2015]). Similarly, the 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report published by the United States Department of State, indicates that "Ethiopia is a source and, to a lesser extent, destination and transit country for men, women, and children who are subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking" (US 20 June 2014). The report adds that

Eritreans residing in Ethiopia-based refugee camps, some of whom voluntarily migrate out of the camps, and others who are lured or abducted from the camps, face situations of human trafficking in Sudan and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. (ibid.)

2. The Treatment of Eritrean Refugees by Ethiopian Government Authorities

Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013, published by the United States Department of State, indicates that the Ethiopian government cooperated with the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations in providing protection and assistance to asylum seekers and refugees in the country and that, more specifically, the Administration for Refugee and Returnee Affairs (ARRA), an Ethiopian government agency, provides basic services to refugees in camps (ibid. 27 Feb. 2014, 16, 19). Similarly, the UNHCR states that the Ethiopian government allows humanitarian organizations access to those seeking refuge on its territory, to provide them with protection and assistance (UN [2015]).

In Country Reports 2013, the United States Department of State indicates, without providing details about the services in question, that there were no reports of discrimination in access to public services towards refugees living outside of camps (US 27 Feb. 2014, 19). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Rights Granted to Refugees

3.1 Access to Employment and Education

According to the UNHCR, [UN English version] "[p]rovisions under Ethiopian law for refugees local integration are very limited" (UN [2015]). Country Reports 2013 states that the government "welcome[s] refugees to settle permanently in the country but d[oes] not offer a path to citizenship" (US 27 Feb. 2014, 19). The UNHCR states that the "limited funding" for the government Eritrean refugee program, both in Ethiopia and Sudan, has resulted in a lack of secondary and post-secondary education , as well as vocational training and job opportunities (UN 14 Nov. 2014).

Sources state that the Ethiopian government had reservations about applying the UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, especially regarding access to employment (ibid. [2015]; Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 20). A UN document listing the conditions to which the member countries adhered with respect to the 1951 Convention notes specifically that Ethiopia recognized Articles 17(2) and 22(1) of the Convention [which concern the wage-earning employment and public education, respectively (UN 1951)] [UN English version] "only as recommendations," and not as legally binding obligations (UN n.d.). Human Rights Watch explains that, as such, Ethiopia may restrict refugees' right to work, to protect the national labour market, and their access to education (Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 20).

According to Country Reports 2013, the Ethiopian government does not grant refugees work permits (US 27 Feb. 2014, 19). According to UNHCR, it allows them to [UN English version] "engage in informal livelihood opportunities" (UN [2015]). An article published in August 2010 by the UN News Centre states that [UN English version] "[m]any Eritreans in Ethiopia work in the informal sector" (ibid. 10 Aug.2010). However, in February 2014, Human Rights Watch stated that "Eritreans find it very difficult to find informal work in Addis Ababa and other major cities," and this is "underscored by the tens of thousands of Ethiopians who leave their country every year in search of work (Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 20).

According to Country Reports 2013, the government provided "some support" to Eritrean refugees who were pursuing higher education (US 27 Feb. 2014, 19). The UNHCR states that the refugees can attend university and that the Ethiopian government will pay 75 percent of their education fees and the UNHCR will pay the remaining 25 percent (UN [2015]). Further information on access to education could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.2 Access to Medical Care

According to Country Reports 2013, the ARRA and the UNHCR, with support from NGOs, provided refugees in camps with basic services (US 27 Feb. 2014, 19). Further information on access to medical care for Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.3 Free Movement

According to Human Rights Watch, "refugees are generally not allowed to leave the camps to move freely in Ethiopia, in violation of their free movement rights" (Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 19). Country Reports 2013 states that, although Ethiopian law provides for freedom of internal movement, foreign travel, emigration and repatriation, the Ethiopian government restricted some of these rights (US 27 Feb. 2014, 16). Country Reports 2013 also states that prior to the policy allowing refugees to leave the camps (described below), the government gave permission to leave the camps primarily to attend higher education institutions or undergo medical treatment, and that it gave such permission to "avoid security threats at the camps" (ibid., 17). Human Rights Watch also states that refugees may apply for a permit to temporarily leave the camps, mostly for medical reasons (Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 19).

3.3.1 Policy Allowing Certain Eritrean Refugees to Live Outside of the Camps

According to an article from the UN News Centre, in 2010 [or in 2008, according to Human Rights Watch (Feb. 2014, 19)], Ethiopia created a policy enabling Eritrean refugees to live outside of the camps, anywhere in the country, as long as they [UN English version] "can sustain themselves financially or have relatives or friends [in Ethiopia] who commit to supporting them" (UN 10 Aug. 2010). Similarly, sources state that Eritrean refugees may live outside of the refugee camps if they are able to financially support themselves (US 27 Feb. 2014, 17, 19; Human Rights Watch Feb. 2014, 19). Human Rights Watch states however that this policy applies only after a person has lived in a refugee camp for six months and allows them to live in urban areas; a person may also exercise this right if any relatives living in such areas can support them (ibid.). According to the UN News Centre article, the policy only applies to Eritrean refugees who do not have a criminal record (UN 10 Aug. 2010). According to the UNHCR, this policy [translation] "relaxes the restrictions on movement" imposed on Eritrean refugees and improves their access to services (ibid.). The UNHCR states that the policy [UN English version] "also involves skills training and educational opportunities" and is extended to refugees from other countries (ibid.). Country Reports 2013 states that, according to the numbers provided by the ARRA, the agency that controls the application of the policy, 3,412 refugees from all origins lived outside of the camps in 2012, compared to 1,294 in 2011 (US 27 Feb. 2014, 17).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Human Rights Watch. February 2014. "I Wanted to Lie Down and Die": Trafficking and Torture of Eritreans in Sudan and Egypt. [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

International Organization for Migration (IOM). 20 January 2015. "L'OIM en Ethiopie transporte les refugies erythreens en lieu sur." [Accessed 13 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). 28 February 2015. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "Refugees and Asylum-seekers in Ethiopia." [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). [2015]. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "Profil d'operations 2015  Ethiopie." [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). 14 November 2014. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "Forte hausse du nombre de refugies et de demandeurs d'asile erythreens en Europe, en Ethiopie et au Soudan." [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). January 2012. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "UNHCR Representation in Ethiopia  Briefing Note." [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). 10 August 2010. United Nations News Centre. "Ethiopie : le HCR salue l'allegement des restrictions imposees aux refugies erythreens." [Accessed 13 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). 1951. Convention relative au statut des refugies. [Accessed 21 Apr. 2015]

United Nations (UN). N.d. Collection des traites. "Recueil des traites : Chapitre V - Refugies et apatrides; 2. Convention relative au statut des refugies (Geneve, 28 juillet 1951)." [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

United States (US). 20 June 2014. Department of State. "Ethiopia." 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report.[Accessed 16 Apr. 2015]

United States (US). 27 February 2014. Department of State. "Ethiopia." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013. [Accessed 10 Apr. 2015]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: The following persons and organizations were unable to provide information: senior communications assistant, International Organization for Migration; professor, California State University, San Bernardino.

Attempts to contact the following persons and organizations were unsuccessful within the time constraints for this Response: senior information assistant, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees; senior researcher, African Studies Centre; Horn of Africa research specialist, Human Rights Watch; professor of African Studies and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University.

Internet sites, including: Addis Ababa University; Amnesty International; ecoi.net; Ethiopar; Ethiopian Human Rights Commission; Ethiopia  Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ombudsman; Factiva; Forced Migration Online; Freedom House; The Guardian; International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement; Refugees International; Sudan Tribune; Tigrai Online; United Nations  Refworld; United States  U.S. Committee for Refugees; Voice of America; Zegabi; Zehabesha.
Pakistan: The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), including its objectives, leaders, and affiliations; treatment by authorities and society; situation near the Line of Control (2012 - July 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 12 July 2016 Citation / Document Symbol PAK105578.E Related Document(s) Pakistan : information sur le Front de liberation du Jammu-et-Cachemire (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front - JKLF), y compris ses objectifs, ses dirigeants et ses affiliations; le traitement qui lui est reserve par les autorites et la societe; la situation pres de la ligne de controle (2012-juillet 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Pakistan: The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), including its objectives, leaders, and affiliations; treatment by authorities and society; situation near the Line of Control (2012 - July 2016), 12 July 2016, PAK105578.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58945b1c4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Division of Kashmir

Sources indicate that the Pakistan-controlled areas of Kashmir include Gilgit-Baltistan [formerly the Northern territories] and Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK) [Azad Kashmir or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir] (EU Aug. 2015, 65; Hindustan Times 9 Feb. 2016). According to an article written by Musarat Javed Cheema, an assistant professor at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan, approximately 35 percent of the former British territory of Kashmir is in Pakistan, while 45 percent is in India and 20 percent is in China (Cheema 30 June 2015). Sources indicate that both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir and have fought two wars over the territory (ibid.; Xinhua 11 July 2014). Cheema explains that Pakistan views the sovereignty of Kashmir as "an unfinished agenda of the division of India in 1947," as the region was the only Muslim-majority territory not given to Pakistan (Cheema 30 June 2015). According to the same source, the AJK technically has its own president and prime minister, but is controlled by Pakistan's Federal Ministry of Kashmir Affairs (ibid.).

2. JKLF

2.1 Structure, Leaders and Affiliations

Sources report that the JKLF was founded by Amanullah Khan in 1977 (BBC 1 Aug. 2012; Dawn 27 Apr. 2016; SATP n.d.) in the UK (ibid.; Dawn 27 Apr. 2016). Sources further indicate that there were two branches of the JKLF, one headed by Amanullah Khan and the other by Yasin Malik (ibid.; SATP n.d.). According to the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), an Indian news agency, during the 1980s, the JKLF was an "armed separatist movement" that provided military training to youth in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (IANS 26 Apr. 2016). Malik reportedly denounced the use of violence in 1994 (ISSI 30 Sept. 2012) or 1995 (Dawn 27 Apr. 2016) and split from Khan in 1995 (ibid.; SATP n.d.). Malik is based in India-held Kashmir (Dawn 27 Apr. 2016), while Khan lived in Pakistan (IANS 26 Apr. 2016). According to the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, the two factions reunited in 2012 (Dawn 27 Apr. 2016). Khan died in April 2016 (ibid.; IANS 26 Apr. 2016).

Sources indicate that the Malik faction of the JKLF is part of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) (SATP n.d.; PHW 2015, 650; ISSI 30 Sept. 2012), a "pro-freedom political alliance" (ibid.). According to the Political Handbook of the World (PHW), APHC was founded in 1993 as a coalition of 26 political groups, has offices in India, Kashmir, and Pakistan, and aims to end "the division of the 'occupied territories' through peaceful means, including civil disobedience and protests" (PHW 2015, 650).

2.2 Aims and Ideology

The BBC describes the JKLF as "a nationalist secular group that has sought the independence of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan" (BBC 1 Aug. 2012). The Kashmir Observer similarly indicates that JKLF's goal is Kashmiri independence, as the territory that existed prior to 1947, and not a merger of Kashmir with Pakistan (Kashmir Observer 23 Mar. 2016). According to the JKLF's website, among their aims and objectives is

[t]o struggle against foreign occupation, gain independence and attain an honourable position amongst free nations of the world. Struggle to establish a political and social infrastructure based on the values of democracy, public welfare and social justice in the country. (JKLF n.d.)

Concerning the Pakistan-administered territories of Kashmir, the JKLF states that one of their aims is:

Pending the final settlement,  to merge Gilgit/Baltistan territories with Azad-Kashmir and to establish therein a democratic representative government with full powers to serve as a base-camp in accordance with the objectives of the Provisional Azad (Free) Government established on 4th October 1947. (ibid.)

Media sources report that JKLF leaders have spoken against plans for Gilgit-Baltistan to become a province of Pakistan (Hindustan Times 9 Feb. 2016; Dawn 27 Apr. 2016).

2.3 Support and Areas of Operation

According to the India-based South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), the JKLF is "reportedly supported by expatriates of the Mirpur community that belongs to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir" (SATP n.d.).

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a research analyst with the Islamabad-based Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), a non-governmental think tank that "conducts wide-ranging research and analysis of political, social and religious conflicts" within Pakistan and internationally (PIPS n.d.), stated that JKLF activities are limited to Kashmir and are focused on the rights of Kashmiri people; they also "have more political objectives than militant ones" (ibid. 5 July 2016). According to Cheema, pro-Kashmiri groups in general "are not too extreme against Pakistan" (Cheema 30 June 2015).

3. Treatment by Authorities, Militant Groups and Society

According to the Kashmir Observer, Pakistan initially armed and sheltered the JKLF (Kashmir Observer 23 Mar. 2016). The BBC cites Khan as stating that the JKLF was initially supported by Pakistani authorities, but that after the insurgency began in 1988, Pakistan withdrew its support and instead supported groups that advocated for Kashmir's accession to Pakistan (BBC 1 Aug. 2012).

According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) entitled Religion and Militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen (HM), one of the largest Kashmiri militant groups, is believed to have been formed by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) "to limit the growing influence" of the JKLF (CSIS June 2012, 30). The Jamestown Foundation reports that the JKLF became "marginalized" in Pakistan by "Kashmiri pro-Pakistan groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen (HM), which soon gave way to Pakistani terror outfits such as Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jaish-e-Mohammed" (Jamestown Foundation 15 Apr. 2016).

The BBC states that the JKLF

found itself sandwiched between Indian security forces and pro-Pakistan militants. By 1990, much of its cadres had either been dispersed, destroyed or absorbed into other groups. Its leadership also split into factions, some of them renouncing militancy. (BBC 1 Aug. 2012)

The BBC further indicates that, according to the JKLF, Pro-Pakistan groups such as Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Harkatul Mujahideen, "not only fought Indians but also persecuted JKLF activists" (ibid. 28 Sept. 2010). Human Rights Watch reported in 2006 that "[a]s the ISI-backed militant groups gained strength and dominance, Kashmiri nationalist militants left the JKLF-led nationalist movement or were sidelined and eventually began to be persecuted by the authorities and their proxies" (Human Rights Watch Sept. 2006, 20).

The 2006 Human Rights Watch Report indicates that political groups that do not support Kashmir's accession to Pakistan, such as the JKLF, are not allowed to contest elections in Pakistan (ibid., 41). The same source states that the JKLF tried to participate in the 2001 elections to the AJK Legislative Assembly, but were subjected to "arbitrary arrest often accompanied by ill-treatment," including being beaten with batons, denied access to family while in detention, and jailed with criminals (ibid., 41, 42). According to interviewees who spoke with Human Rights Watch, protesters who demonstrated for the JKLF candidates' release were also arrested, as well as all JKLF candidates across AJK for announcing a boycott of the elections (ibid., 43, 45). The same report states that the JKLF was also barred from the 2006 elections in AJK and, according to Khan, they were "'threatened with beatings and arrests'" for attempting to field over 30 candidates in the election; such threats reportedly did not lead to actions (ibid., 49-50).

Amnesty International (AI) reported in February 2006 that Khan was arrested and detained, along with other protesters, for peacefully demonstrating against the building of a dam in the Gilgit region (AI 16 Feb. 2006). The same source expressed concern that Khan was being denied adequate medical care while in detention (ibid.).

Information on specific cases of arrests or detention of JKLF members in Pakistan between 2012 and 2016 could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response

4. Situation near the Line of Control

Sources indicate that there was a ceasefire agreement between Pakistan and India in 2003 (Pakistan Observer 17 Aug. 2013; ISSI 30 Sept. 2012; Xinhua 11 July 2014). The Chinese news agency Xinhua explains that the Line of Control (LoC) is the "cease-fire line" that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan (ibid.).

In 2010, the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reported that "dozens" of people, most of whom lived near the LoC, had gone missing after being arrested by intelligence operatives in Azad Kashmir (AHRC 24 Jan. 2010). The same source indicates that many of the disappeared were former jihadists or former informants who had tried to stop working for the ISI (ibid.).

According to Xinhua, the Pakistani and Indian armies "intermittently exchange fire on the LoC" (Xinhua 11 July 2014). The same source indicates that, in 2013, there were over 200 cease-fire violations on the LoC (ibid.). According to the Pakistan Observer, there was an "escalation of violence" at the LoC in early August 2013 after "Indian soldiers were ambushed and killed" in Kashmir, leading to "tit-for-tat shelling" between the Pakistani and Indian armies (Pakistan Observer 17 Aug. 2013). The EU's European Asylum Support Office (EASO) states that there were "very few" attacks in AJK in 2014, but there "were occasional cross-border attacks along the LoC" (EU Aug. 2015, 65). New Delhi Television (NDTV) quotes India's Minister of State for Home as stating that in 2015, there were 152 incidents of cross-border fire on the LoC (NDTV 16 Mar. 2016).

According to an article by a retired Indian Colonel in Asian News International (ANI), a New Delhi-based news agency (ANI n.d.), "the artillery shelling that is carried out to facilitate infiltration [of Jihadists] elicits a massive response from the Indian side which causes great damage and loss of life and property to the villagers who reside along the Line of Control" (ANI 11 Feb. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Amnesty International (AI). 16 February 2006. "Medical Concern/Possible Prisoner of Conscience: Amanullah Khan (M), Aged 77." (ASA 33/005/2006) [Accessed 6 July 2016]

Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). 24 January 2010. "Pakistan: Disappearances in Pakistani Kashmir Need the Attention of Legislators." [Accessed 7 July 2016]

Asian News International (ANI). 11 February 2016. Jaibans Singh. "Maqbool Bhat: Pakistan's Perfidy and a Lost Cause." (Factiva)

Asian News International (ANI). N.d. "Asian News International." [Accessed 12 July 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 1 August 2012. "Who Are the Kashmir Militants?" [Accessed 7 July 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 28 September 2010. Zulfiqar Ali. "Pakistani Militants 'Hijacking' Kashmir Cause." [Accessed 7 July 2016]

Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). June 2012. Mariam Mufti. Religion and Militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan: A Literature Review. [Accessed 4 July 2016]

Cheema, Musarat Javed. 30 June 2015. "Pakistan India Conflict with Special Reference to Kashmir." Journal of South Asian Studies. Vol. 30, No. 1. (Factiva)

Dawn. 27 April 2016. Tariq Naqash. "JKLF Supreme Head Amanullah Khan Dies." [Accessed 6 July 2016]

European Union (EU). August 2015. European Asylum Support Office (EASO). Country of Origin Information Report: Pakistan, Country Overview. [Accessed 30 June 2016]

Hindustan Times. 9 February 2016. Tarun Upadhyay. "Gilgit-Baltistan Residents Protest Against Kashmiri Separatist." (Factiva)

Human Rights Watch. September 2006. "With Friends Like These " Human Rights Violations in Azad Kashmir. [Accessed 6 July 2016]

Indo-Asian News Service (IANS). 26 April 2016. "JKLF Founder Amanullah Khan is Dead." (Factiva)

Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI). 30 September 2012. "Kashmir: the Challenges to Non-Violent Movement." (Factiva)

Jamestown Foundation. 15 April 2016. Sudha Ramachandran. "New Generation of Militants Emerging in Kashmir." Terrorism Monitor. Vol. 14, Issue 8. [Accessed 30 June 2016]

Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF). N.d. "JKLF Aims and Objectives." [Accessed 30 June 2016]

Kashmir Observer. 23 March 2016. Prem Shankar JHA. "Negotiation, not Repression, Key to Ending Insurgency in Kashmir." (Factiva)

New Delhi Television (NDTV). 16 March 2016. "405 Incidents of Cross Border Firing in Jammu and Kashmir in 2015." [Accessed 4 July 2016]

Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS). 5 July 2016. Correspondence from a research analyst to the Research Directorate.

Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS). N.d. "About PIPS." [Accessed 12 July 2016]

Pakistan Observer. 17 August 2013. "De-escalation on LoC is an Urgent Priority." (Factiva)

Political Handbook of the World (PHW). 2015. "India." Edited by Thomas Lansford. CQ Press: Washington, DC. [Accessed 4 July 2016]

South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP). N.d. "Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front: Incidents and Statements Involving Jammu and Kahsmir Liberation Front: 2014, 2013". [Accessed 6 July 2016]

Xinhua News Agency. 11 July 2014. Peerzada Arshad Hamid. "Kashmir Separatists Protest Closing of UNMOGIP's New Delhi Office." (Factiva)

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; International Security Program, New American Foundation; Jinnah Institute; Professor, University of Waterloo.

Internet sites, including: ecoi.net; Factiva; Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; International Federation for Human Rights; IRIN; Jane's Intelligence Review; Jinnah Institute; National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Response to Terrorism; New America Foundation; UN  Refworld, UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan.
Pakistan: Information on state efforts to prosecute terrorist groups, including through special courts; activities to combat and prosecute Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) (2015-December 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 6 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol PAK105672.E Related Document(s) Pakistan : information sur les efforts deployes par l'Etat pour poursuivre en justice les groupes terroristes, y compris par l'entremise de tribunaux speciaux; les activites menees pour lutter contre le groupe Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) et amener ses membres devant les tribunaux (2015-decembre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Pakistan: Information on state efforts to prosecute terrorist groups, including through special courts; activities to combat and prosecute Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) (2015-December 2016), 6 January 2017, PAK105672.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58945db64.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview: Prosecution of Terrorist Groups

According to the US Department of State's Country Reports on Terrorism 2015, Pakistan has various laws regarding the combat and prosecution of terrorism, including the Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA) of 1997, and the Protection of Pakistan Act (PPA) [POPA] of 2014 (US 2 June 2016, 254). In a report entitled "Terrorism Prosecution in Pakistan," Syed Manzar Abbas Zaidi, a researcher who has published books and several papers on terrorism and extremism in Pakistan, states that in Pakistan, terrorism cases are tried in "special-jurisdiction courts" called Anti-Terrorism Courts (ATCs). ATCs "operate in parallel to the broader civil and criminal court system" (Abbas Zaidi Apr. 2016, 6). The same source indicates that terrorism cases are also tried in special courts, created under the PPA, and in military courts that were formed after a constitutional amendment in January 2015 (ibid.). Sources also report that in response to an attack on a school in Peshawar [1], Pakistan lifted the moratorium on the death penalty for terror cases in December 2014 (AFP 7 Jan. 2015; AI 16 Jan. 2015).

2. The Anti-Terrorism Act and ATCs

Abbas Zaidi indicates that an amendment to the ATA in 1999 broadened the definition of terrorism, defining the act as an offense that "creates terror among the public" and making this "the sole criteria for an offense to be tried under the ATA" (Apr. 2016, 7-8). Amnesty International (AI) similarly states that the ATA's definition of terrorism "is so vague that almost all crimes can fall under this definition" (AI 16 Jan. 2015). According to Abbas Zaidi, "[i]t was originally envisaged that an ATC trial would take less than seven working days, but with numerous offenses being tried in the ATCs, the cases can now take months or even years to run their full course;" some ATCs in Karachi having a backlog of more than three hundred cases, although other ATCs in the rest of the country have far fewer cases pending (Apr. 2016, 9). Similarly, Al Jazeera reports that the ATCs are "clogged with cases not related to terrorism, such as murder, drug trafficking, and even kidnapping for ransom" (Al Jazeera 11 Jan. 2015). The US Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 similarly states that "the judiciary moved slowly in processing terrorism and other criminal cases, likely due in part to the overly broad definition of terrorism offenses listed in the ATA" (US 2 June 2016, 254). According to Abbas Zaidi, as of January 2016, there were 54 ATC courts in Pakistan (Apr. 2016, 6). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

According to Al Jazeera, in January 2015 there were about 17,000 cases under trial in the ATCs; the same source cites the Supreme Court as indicating that as many as 85 percent of these cases were not related to terrorism (11 Jan. 2015). The US Country Reports on Terrorism further states that, in some provinces, ATCs have introduced reforms to reduce backlogs, including transferring "'non-true' terrorism cases" to the regular courts (US 2 June 2016, 254). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Abbas Zaidi states that "[t]he processes to produce evidence in [cases of terrorist attacks] are slow and flawed, resulting in a high dismissal rate when the cases are finally brought to court," adding that the "majority of 'hardcore terrorist' cases are acquitted and rarely reach the higher courts" (Abbas Zaidi Apr. 2016, 5). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. According to Abbas Zaidi "the ATA has failed to secure a reasonable conviction rate for terrorists, who continue to slip through the cracks" (ibid., 7). A report written by Tariq Parvez, the former national coordinator of the National Counter Terrorism Authority in Pakistan, and Mehwish Rani, a psychologist who researches counterterrorism, cites the prosecutor general for Punjab as stating that during 2014, ATCs in Punjab heard 785 cases of terrorism which resulted in 196 convictions, representing an acquittal rate of about 75 percent (Parvez and Rani Aug. 2015, 2).

According to Abbas Zaidi, "ATC trials are commonly delayed by frequent adjournments, notably due to absent defense counsels and witnesses" (Abbas Zaidi Apr. 2016, 9). Sources indicate that law enforcement officials and employees of the judicial system face threats when investigating terrorism-related cases (ibid., 12; US 2 June 2016, 254). According to Abbas Zaidi, some of these officers and workers have been targeted and/or killed (ibid.). He also notes that witnesses often do not testify out of fear, and that "unprotected witnesses from the public are most vulnerable to reprisals" as there is "no effective witness protection program in Pakistan today, and no anonymity is afforded to witnesses, despite there being special provisions" in the ATA (ibid.). Parvez and Rani similarly state that the lack of protection for participants and practitioners in the criminal justice system has been highlighted as a "major reason for the large-scale acquittals of terrorists;" provisions in the ATA that require the protection for witnesses, police investigators, prosecutors and judges have "gone totally unimplemented" (Aug. 2015, 6). According to Abbas Zaidi, "[s]ometimes, the courts dismiss seemingly obvious cases of conviction, which raises the suspicion of threats being made behind the scenes" (Apr. 2016, 12).

3. Protection of Pakistan Act

According to a report by Pakistani newspaper Daily Pakistan, four special courts to try terrorism cases were created under the PPA in Quetta, Lahore, Karachi and Peshawar (Daily Pakistan 14 July 2016). Abbas Zaidi indicates that the PPA served to create a parallel Act to the ATA, and that, generally, prosecutors and judges work under both laws as a result of a lack of resources to staff the courts under the PPA, which "actually triples the workloads in some cases; an ATC judge may also serve as a [PPA] judge as well as a magistrate designated under [PPA] to issue preventive detention orders for suspects" (Apr. 2016, 6). The US Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 states that the PPA's provisions "have been only sporadically implemented in 2015" (US 2 June 2016, 254). Similarly, Abbas Zaidi notes that "while some [PPA] courts have been formed [up to April 2016], no cases have actually been tried under the law" (Apr. 2016, 6). A press release from the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a commission of "60 eminent judges and lawyers from all regions of the world" focused on the promotion of human rights and the rule of law (ICJ n.d.), cites the ICJ Asia Director as stating that "in these two years, not one suspect has been convicted under [PPA]" (ibid. 30 June 2016).

The US Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 further indicates that human rights advocates and legal experts have criticized the PPA for "granting broad immunity to security forces in the use of lethal force, expanding the power of arrest without a warrant, and eliminating the presumption of innocence" (US 2 June 2016, 254). ICJ states that the special courts are allowed to hold secret hearings and "do not meet international standards for fair and public criminal proceedings before a competent, independent and impartial tribunal" (30 June 2016). Similarly, Human Rights Watch indicates that the PPA's provisions "open the door for the violation of fundamental rights to freedom of speech, privacy, peaceful assembly and a fair trial" (Human Rights Watch 21 July 2014). According to the same source, the PPA "removes the burden of proof of criminal conduct from government prosecutors and requires criminal suspects to prove their innocence" (ibid.). ICJ also cites its Asia Director as stating that "we can conclude that the [PPA] doesn't really protect people in Pakistan from terrorism and other violent acts, but instead it undermines their basic human rights protections" (30 June 2016).

According to sources, the PPA was due to expire in July 2016 (US 2 June 2016, 254; Daily Pakistan 14 July 2016; The News International 14 July 2016). However, sources indicate that the Pakistani Government was contemplating extending it by two years (ibid.; Daily Pakistan 14 July 2016). Further information about the expiry and extension of the PPA could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Military Courts

According to the US Country Reports on Terrorism 2015, a January 2015 amendment to the Pakistani Constitution allowed military courts to try civilians for "'offenses relating to terrorism, waging of war or insurrection against Pakistan, and prevention of acts threatening the security of Pakistan by any terrorist group using the name of religion or a sect and members of such armed groups, wings, and militia'" (US 2 June 2016, 255). The Amendment reads:

1. Short Title and Commencement



(3) The provisions of this Act shall remain in force for a period of two years from the date of its commencement and shall cease to form part of the Constitution and shall stand repealed on the expiration of the said period. (Pakistan 2015)

Sources indicate that the military courts were set up as a response to the Peshawar school attack in 2014 (US 2 June 2016, 255; The Wall Street Journal 20 Jan. 2015). The Wall Street Journal reports that nine military courts had been set up by 20 January 2015 (ibid.). According to Abbas Zaidi, military courts try terrorism cases referred to them by provincial governments, and "it seems [that these courts] primarily take on the most challenging cases - ones that the provinces have been unable to prosecute because of time delays in the ATCs" (Abbas Zaidi Apr. 2016, 6-7). The same source adds that the military courts "seem capable of quickly handling the problematic cases" (ibid., 7).

However, Abbas Zaidi also states that "little comment can be made on how [military courts] prosecute terrorist cases," as they are held "behind closed doors;" the same source characterizes such cases as "problematic in terms of access to a fair trial" (Apr. 2016, 6). A 2016 ICJ report on the Pakistani military courts for terrorism-related cases describes the system as placing Pakistan "in clear violation of its legal obligations and political commitments to respect the right to life, the right to a fair trial, and the independence and impartiality of the judiciary" (June 2016, 3). Deutsche Welle (DW), a German news broadcaster, cites Kamaran Murtaza, the President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in Pakistan, as stating that the Constitution enshrines the right of all citizens to a fair trial "and this is not possible in military courts" (DW 7 Aug. 2015). The President of the Supreme Court Bar Association in Pakistan is also quoted as saying, "[f]orget about the fair trial, nobody even knows the names of the convicts the military courts have thus far sentenced" (ibid.).

According to the ICJ report, the government has set up 11 military courts since January 2015 to hear terrorism-related cases (ICJ June 2016, 4). These courts have conducted 105 trials and convicted "at least" 81 people, including sentencing 77 people to death and 4 more to life in prison (ibid.). The ICJ report further indicates that 12 people, out of those given the death penalty, have been hanged "after trials that [were] grossly unfair" as the government did not make publicly available "the time and place of their trials; the specific charges and evidence against the convicts; as well as the judgments of military courts including the essential findings, legal reasoning, and evidence on which the convictions were based" (ibid., 3-4). Similarly, a joint letter by AI and Human Rights Watch published in December 2015 indicates that they were "alarmed at death sentences imposed by military courts," and provided the example of the execution of four men at Kohat jail on 2 December 2015 who allegedly participated in the Peshawar attack, where the exact charges have not been made public (AI and Human Rights Watch 17 Dec. 2015).

5. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi

Sources describe Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) as a "banned Sunni militant group" (BBC 29 July 2015) or a "Sunni  terrorist outfit" (SATP n.d.a). The website of Public Safety Canada states that the group has a reputation for "being one of the most violent Islamist extremist organizations in Pakistan," and that it has been responsible for killing "hundreds of Shiites since its formation in 1996" (Canada 2 Dec. 2015). The BBC similarly reports that the group was "behind some of the most violent attacks on Shia Muslims in recent years" (29 July 2015). Sources indicate that the group has links to Al-Qaeda ((BBC. 11 Jan. 2013; Canada 2 Dec. 2015) and the Taliban (SATP n.d.a; BBC 11 Jan 2013). Sources indicate that since 2003, LeJ is on the lists of terrorist organizations produced by the governments of Canada (Canada 2 Dec. 2015) and the United States (US n.d.).

5.1 Efforts to Combat and Prosecute LeJ

In a telephone interview with the Research Directorate, an independent researcher and journalist, whose work covers militancy and security issues in Pakistan and has been published in various international publications, provided the information in the following paragraph:

The Pakistani authorities have undertaken strict actions against LeJ, particularly in Punjab. However, the authorities are not arresting LeJ members, they are killing them, in an extrajudicial way. If someone is threatened by LeJ, asking for protection from the police is not effective because the Shia community is too large, and the police cannot provide security to everyone. Courts are not effective either, because in many cases witnesses do not come to testify out of fear; courts therefore release suspects due to a lack of evidence. This applies to all courts, including the ATCs, the high courts and other courts that may deal with terrorism cases. There are cases where LeJ members were tried and many have been given death sentences. The courts are more effective in Punjab, where there is the courage to confront LeJ. Court proceedings can take years, since they are very slow in Pakistan (Independent Researcher 13 Dec. 2016). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

5.2 Incidents

Media and government sources have reported on the following cases of Pakistani authorities responding to LeJ:

On 7 January 2015, Pakistani authorities hanged two members of LeJ in Multan, who had been sentenced to death by an ATC in 2002, one for killing a senior police official, and the other for killing three people (AFP 7 Jan. 2015).

On 20 January 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported that, "[i]n recent weeks Pakistani courts granted bail to high profile militants," including Malik Ishaq, the head of LeJ (The Wall Street Journal 20 Jan. 2015).

Government officials reportedly indicated that they had arrested suspects affiliated with LeJ who were connected to a suicide bomb attack on a Shia mosque in the Shirkarpur on 30 January 2015 (US 2 June 2016, 253).

In April 2015, law enforcement agencies arrested Tahir Farooqi, the alleged maker of suicide jackets for LeJ, in Lahore (The Nation 26 Apr. 2015).

In July 2015, the leader of LeJ, Malik Ishaq, was killed in a police shootout along with 13 others (AFP 13 Dec. 2015; US 13 Apr. 2016, 20; BBC 29 July 2015), including his two sons and 11 militants (ibid.; US 13 Apr. 2016, 20). According to the independent researcher and journalist, Ishaq had been arrested a number of times before, but was released because people were "too afraid to come forward and testify" (Independent Researcher and Journalist 13 Dec. 2016). BBC similarly indicates that Ishaq "was wanted in hundreds of sectarian killings but government prosecutors always failed to bring sufficient evidence to get him convicted in a court" (BBC 29 July 2016). Ishaq had been detained a week before his death and was reportedly killed when militants attempted to free him (ibid.). The same source adds that "the circumstances of [his] killing are not clear, and many believe the gunfight may have been a 'fake encounter', staged to kill a suspect who could be freed if taken to court," similar to the killing in 2002 of Riaz Basra, previous LeJ leader (ibid.). Similarly, sources state that the killing was seen by analysts as an extrajudicial killing by the state (AFP 13 Dec. 2015) or that at least some of these killings were orchestrated by security forces (US 13 Apr. 2016, 20).

In November 2015, the deputy to the leader of LeJ was killed in a shootout with police, similar to the one in which Ishaq was killed (AFP 13 Dec. 2015).

In February 2016, the police indicated that they killed 12 people who were affiliated with Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent as well as LeJ in two "encounters" in the Pipri and Gadap areas in Karachi (Dawn 22 Feb. 2016; The News International 23 Feb. 2016). Pakistani newspaper The News International reports that on the same day, in Dera Ghazi Khan, police arrested "a key LeJ operative" named Asif Chotu who was wanted for a bomb attack on a justice in 2013 "and other heinous crimes" (ibid.).

In July 2016, the Sindh High Court maintained the acquittal of Muhammad Ajmal, a LeJ leader, who was accused of the murder of the owner of the Pak-Iranian Tea Company in 2002 (PTI 9 July 2016; The Express Tribune 8 July 2016). Pakistani newspaper The Express Tribune indicates that he had been acquitted earlier by "Karachi's anti-terrorism court-V" (ibid.).

In November 2016, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of the police arrested two alleged LeJ members for murder (Dawn 20 Nov. 2016; The News International 24 Nov. 2016). The News International reports that during the interrogation, the accused admitted their involvement in "20 target killings over the past year" (ibid.).

Information about LeJ members being prosecuted in military courts could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] On 16 December 2014, a terrorist attack against the Army Public School in Peshawar resulted in the deaths of more than 140 students and staff members (The Guardian 16 Dec. 2014).

References

Abbas Zaidi, Syed Manzar. April 2016. "Terrorism Prosecution in Pakistan." United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Peaceworks. No. 113. [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

Agence France-Presse (AFP). 13 December 2015. Lehaz Ali. "Pakistan: At Least 23 Killed, Dozens Wounded in Pakistan Market Bombing." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

Agence France-Presse (AFP). 7 January 2015. "Pakistan Hangs Two More Men Convicted of Terror Offences." [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Al Jazeera. 11 January 2015. Asad Hashim. "Army Courts to Try Pakistan Terror Suspects." [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

Amnesty International (AI). 16 January 2015. "Pakistan: End Wave of Executions in Wake of Peshawar Attack." [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Amnesty International (AI) and Human Rights Watch. 17 December 2015. "Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Pakistan: Reimpose the Moratorium on the Death Penalty." (ASA 33/3023/2015). [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 29 July 2015. "Malik Ishaq: Pakistan Sunni Militant Chief Killed by Police." [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 11 January 2013. Asif Farooqi. "Profile: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi." [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Canada. 2 December 2015. Public Safety Canada. "Currently Listed Entities." [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

Daily Pakistan. 14 July 2016. Ali Zain. "Government Mulls Extension as Protection of Pakistan Act Expires." [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

Dawn. 20 November 2016. "Two 'Militants' Remanded in Three More Cases." (Factiva)

Dawn. 22 February 2016. Imtiaz Ali. "Police Kill 12 'Militants' During Alleged Encounters in Karachi." [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016]

Deutsche Welle (DW). 7 August 2015. Shamil Shams. "Pakistan's Military Courts - A Solution or A Problem?" [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

The Express Tribune. 8 July 2016. Naeem Sahoutara. "SHC Maintains Acquittal of Chief of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

The Guardian. 16 December 2015. Jon Boone. "Peshawar School Attack: One Year on 'the Country Is Changed Completely'." [Accessed 12 Dec. 2016]

Human Rights Watch. 14 July 2014. Phelim Kine. "Pakistan's Dangerous Anti-terrorism Law." [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Independent Researcher and Journalist. 13 December 2016. Telephone interview.

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). 30 June 2016. "Pakistan: ICJ Urges Government Not to Extend Oppressive Couter-terrorism Law." [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). June 2016. Military Injustice in Pakistan: A Briefing Paper. [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

International Commission of Jurists (ICJ). N.d. "About." [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

The Nation. 26 April 2015. "Tahir Farooqi Suicide Jacket Expert of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Arrested." [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016]

The News International. 24 November 2016. "Court Extends Remand of Two 'LeJ Terrorists' Till Dec 5." (Factiva).

The News International. 14 July 2016. Azas Syed. "Protection of Pakistan Act May Be Extended for Two Years." [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

The News International. 23 February 2016. Salis Bin Perwaiz. "12 al-Qaeda, LeJ Terrorists Killed in Karachi Encounters." [Accessed 9 Dec. 2016]

Pakistan. 2015. Constitution (Twenty-first Amendment) Act, 2015. [Accessed 19 Dec. 2016]

Parvez, Tariq and Mehwish Rani. August 2015. United States Institute of Peace (USIP). "An Appraisal of Pakistan's Anti-Terrorism Act." Special Report. No. 377. [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]

Press Trust of India (PTI). 9 July 2016. "Pak Court Maintains Acquittal of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi Chief." [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP). N.d.a. "Lashkar-e-Jhangvi." [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]

South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP). N.d.b. "A Profile." [Accessed 8 Dec. 2016]

United States (US). 2 June 2016. Department of State. "Pakistan." Country Reports on Terrorism 2015. [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. Department of State. "Pakistan." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 28 Nov. 2016]

United States (US). N.d. Department of State. " Foreign Terrorist Organizations." [Accessed 8 December 2016]

The Wall Street Journal. 20 January 2015. Syed Shoaib Hasan. "Prosecutors in Pakistan Face Routine Threats in Terror Cases." [Accessed 29 Nov. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources, including: Asian Human Rights Commission; Independent Researcher, Islamist groups in Pakistan; Pakistan  Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights; Researcher, Jamestown Foundation; Researcher, Pak Institute for Peace Studies.

Internet sites, including: Daily Times; Ecoi.net; Factiva; Federation internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; Freedom House; Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; IRIN; Pak Institute for Peace Studies; Pakistan  Ministry of Law, Justice and Human Rights; Stanford University  Mapping Militant Organizations; UN  Refworld, ReliefWeb; University of Maryland  National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.
Pakistan: Religious and ethnic groups in Rabwah, including population size and regional distribution; availability of employment and housing for Ahmadis; situation of Ahmadis, including social discrimination (2015-2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 11 January 2017 Citation / Document Symbol PAK105713.E Related Document(s) Pakistan : information sur les groupes religieux et ethniques a Rabwah, y compris la taille et la composition de la population; l'acces a l'emploi et au logement pour les ahmadis; la situation des ahmadis, y compris la discrimination sociale (2015-2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Pakistan: Religious and ethnic groups in Rabwah, including population size and regional distribution; availability of employment and housing for Ahmadis; situation of Ahmadis, including social discrimination (2015-2016), 11 January 2017, PAK105713.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/58945f6f4.html [accessed 5 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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources indicate that Rabwah [state of Punjab, Pakistan] has been the Ahmadis' headquarters [or spiritual centre (Valentine May 2014, 101)] since 1948 when the religious group moved from Qadian [state of Punjab, India] (Bajwa and Khan Mar.-Apr. 2015, 1616; Valentine May 2014, 101) after the partition with India in 1947 (ibid.). According to sources, Rabwah is called Chenab Nagar by Pakistani authorities (US May 2009, 67; TPA 31 Dec. 2015, 90). In a paper on the Ahmadis in Pakistan, Simon Ross Valentine, a freelance British lecturer and researcher of Islam and comparative religions who has taught at Leeds University and Bradford University (Oxford University Press n.d.), states that the Punjab Assembly "forced" the Ahmadis to change the name of Rabwah first to Nawan Qadian and then to Chenab Nagar in 1989 (Valentine May 2014, 100).

In a paper [1] published in the academic journal Science International (Lahore), Shaheer Ellahi Khan, an assistant professor of anthropology at Bahria University, and Lubna Sausan Bajwa from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the same institution, indicate that

Rabwah is situated around 7 km from a historical city of Chiniot and covers around 24 square kilometers of land. It is approximately halfway between Faisalabad and Sargodha. The area is higher than the surrounding plains due to the dry hills which dot the landscape (thus aptly named "Rabwah" - meaning raised area) (Bajwa and Khan Mar.-Apr. 2015, 1616)

1.1 Population and Religious Composition

According to sources, the Ahmadi population in Rabwah is approximately 60,000 (Valentine May 2014, 101) or 70,000 (Bajwa and Khan Mar.-Apr. 2015, 1616). Sources indicate that Ahmadis in Rabwah represent around 90 percent (Shackle Apr. 2014, 43) or 95 percent of the population (TPA 31 Dec. 2015, 62; Valentine May 2014, 101). Further information on the religious and ethnic structure of Rabwah could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2. Situation of Ahmadis

Valentine states that Ahmadis in Rabwah "enjoy considerable freedom and prosperity" (May 2014, 101). Similarly, according to Bajwa and Khan, "compared with other cities of Pakistan, Rabwah allows a great level of freedom to the Ahmadis to organize themselves, and carry out their religious activities peacefully" (Bajwa and Khan Mar.-Apr. 2015, 1617). However, sources report that Ahmadis are not permitted to hold religious conferences in Rabwah (TPA 31 Dec. 2016, 62) and that peaceful gatherings by the religious group are not permitted by authorities (AHRC and IHRC 2015, 53). Bajwa and Khan cite "a local" from Rabwah as stating that "[c]ommunity meetings at local mosques take place under armed security men  while a congregation larger than 30 people is not allowed within the city" (Bajwa and Khan Mar.- Apr. 2015, 1617). The same source further states that "despite being a city that is predominantly Ahmadi, [Rabwah] remains a sensitive place, where individuals are beleaguered by an undying sense of threat, which effectively compromises their daily life and routine activities" (ibid.). The UK Country Information and Guidance report on Ahmadis similarly indicates that

[w]hilst some Ahmadis see Rabwah as a secure place, which allows a greater level of freedom than other areas, daily life and routines are compromised due to the underlying sense of threat. Ahmadis living in Rabwah may also face threats from opponents who target the area because of the large number of Ahmadis in the city. (UK May 2016, para. 2.4.3)

A report on the findings of a fact-finding mission on the situation of Ahmadis in Pakistan [2], published by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the International Human Rights Committee (IHRC) states that

whilst in the very short term there may be some shelter in the safety of numbers, the ever present threat for Ahmadis manifests itself with greater force in Rabwah. This is because opponents of the community are fully aware that there is a concentration of Ahmadis in Rabwah and seek to focus their attention upon this city.  [E]ach entrance to the town is controlled by guards who vigilantly enquire into the business of all entrants to the town. Notably we learned that 100% of the local police force and local councillors are non Ahmadi and that the city is hemmed in by the Muslim Colony where madrassas have sprouted and that neighbouring Chiniot is reportedly a hotbed of anti Ahmadi activity. (AHRC and IHRC 2015, 74)

Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2.1 Anti-Ahmadi Rallies

Sources indicate that anti-Ahmadi rallies are held several times a year in Rabwah (AHRc and IHRC 2015, 53; TPA 31 Dec. 2016, 62). A report documenting incidents of violence against Ahmadis in 2015 produced by The Persecution of Ahmadis (TPA), a website by the Ahmadi community "where they collate material on persecution including reports and articles by national governments, organizations such as Amnesty International, newspapers, and others" (Balzani 2014, 123), provides information on the following incidents in Rabwah:

On 4 January 2015, Muslim clerics held a "number of very hostile" anti-Ahmadi rallies in Rabwah. One cleric reportedly stated that "'[t]his mission will continue until the liquidation of the deniers of the Khatme Nabuwwat: Maulana Zahid ur Rashidi." The report further states that "[s]everal resolutions were made in the rally and published in the daily Aman of Faisalabad," including that "[t]he blasphemers should be given death punishment," that "[a] record of all persons attached with Qadiani (educational) institutes in Chenab Nagar and all over the country should be checked," and that "Qadianis should be removed from key posts in civil services and in the armed forces, as also from foreign service" (TPA 31 Dec. 2015, 23).

Between 29 and 30 October 2015, a "conference" was held with the approval of authorities and with attendants predominantly from outside Rabwah. Attendants reportedly "spoke rabidly against the Ahmadiyya community and its elders," including making statements such as: "Qadianis are traitors to the nation and the country," and "Qadiani periodicals use Islamic terms and thereby hurt the sentiments of Muslims." "Resolutions and demands" made at the conference included the following: "Qadiani 'terrorist organization' Khuddamul Ahmadiyya (Ahmadi youth) should be banned" and "Qadianis should remain on watch-list; dual nationality holder Qadianis should be monitored and actively tracked all the time" (ibid., 65-66).

On 24 December 2015, a rally of about 2,500-3,000 men was held in Rabwah to commemorate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad. The rally stopped at the city centre where clerics reportedly used "foul language against Ahmadis and their elders;" derogatory statements issued by the clerics included the following: "Qadianis are apostates and destined for hell" and "Qadianis should mend their ways  otherwise we shall undertake a campaign that will wipe them off from the face of the earth" (ibid., 57-58).

Further and corroborating information on these events could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

2.2 Other Events

Valentine indicates that in December 1989, authorities filed a charge sheet against the whole population of Rabwah for inscribing Quranic verses "'on their graves, buildings, offices of Ahmadiyya community, places of worship and business centres' in contravention of  legal prohibitions" and for "persistently preaching their religion to Muslims in different ways" (May 2014, 108). An English translation of the First Information Report (FIR) on this incident, which is included in the AHRC and IHRC report, is attached to this Response (Attachment).

According to sources, in May 2008, the Ahmadi community in Rabwah organized a celebration of their faith (US May 2009, 67; Valentine May 2014, 108) but were interrupted by the police, who put the promoters of the celebrations under house arrest (ibid.). The 2008 US Commission on International Religious Freedom report indicates that "two weeks later, police lodged charges against the entire community under the anti-Ahmadi laws" (US May 2009, 67).

The AHRC and IHRC report cites a police officer who served in Rabwah four times between 2009 and 2014 as stating that there used to be an individual who went to police stations in Rabwah "on a daily basis to file blasphemy charges against various individuals" but that these attempts to file FIRs were not "entertained by the police" (AHRC and IHRC 2015, 42). The same report quotes the police officer as stating that that there is another man who "regularly files FIRs against individuals in Rabwah" (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The TPA report indicates that on 12 January 2015, boys from a madrassa threw stones at Ahmadis' gravestones in Rabwah, damaging the gravestones (31 Dec. 2015, 146). According to the same source, such acts by Ahmadi opponents "happen quite often" (ibid., 82). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Sources report that the owner of a bookstore located in Rabwah (The Huffington Post 1 Aug. 2016; TPA 31 Dec. 2016, 31) was detained alongside his non-Ahmadi assistant on 2 December 2015 (ibid.). A Huffington Post article, written by a member of the bookstore owner's extended family, reports that his shop sold Islamic books, "mostly" published by the Ahmadi community (The Huffington Post 1 Aug. 2016.). Sources report that the man was charged under Section 298-C of the Pakistani Penal Code and the Anti-terrorism Act, and sentenced to eight years in prison (ibid.; TPA 31 Dec. 2016, 31). Section 298-C of the Pakistan Penal Code reads as follows:

298-C. Person of Quadiani group, etc., calling himself a Muslim or preaching or propagating his faith : Any person of the Quadiani group or the Lahori group (who call themselves 'Ahmadis' or by any other name), who directly or indirectly, poses himself as a Muslim, or calls, or refers to, his faith as Islam, or preaches or propagates his faith, or invites others to accept his faith, by words, either spoken or written, or by visible representations, or in any manner whatsoever outrages the religious feelings of Muslims shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to three years and shall also be liable to fine. (Pakistan 1860)

Sources indicate that on 5 December 2016, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of the Punjab police raided the offices of the Tehrik-e-Jadid [Tehreek-e-Jadid] (Rabwah Times 5 Dec. 2016; SAAPK 7 Dec. 2016), a Rabwah-based Ahmadi monthly journal (ibid.). Sources further report that the CTD also closed the printing press used to publish Tehrik-e-Jadid and Al Fazl [AlFazal] (ibid.; Rabwah Times 5 Dec. 2016), the Ahmadi community's daily newspaper (ibid.). Four workers were arrested (ibid.; SAAPK 7 Dec. 2016). The raid was reportedly executed without producing a search warrant (ibid.; Rabwah Times 5 Dec. 2016). A press release by Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya, [Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya Pakistan Rabwah (SAAPK)], the Central Ahmadiyya Council that "look[s] after the administrative affairs" of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community (Al Islam n.d.), states that the police "assaulted and harrassed" the workers at the Tehrik-e-Jadid offices, and "assaulted" an employee whom they arrested at the printing press (SAAPK 7 Dec. 2016). The same sources notes that the CTD confiscated "various computers, laptops, mobile phones, office papers and books" from the Tehrik-e-Jadid offices, and "various papers, ink, films, diesel and other material" from the printing press (ibid.). Sources indicate that the government had banned Tehrik-e-Jadid and AlFazl in December 2014 (ibid.; Rabwah Times 5 Dec. 2016). However, the Rabwah Times reports that, according to the Ahmadiyya community, the courts granted a stay in June 2015 (ibid.). SAAPK states that appeals were filed against the ban, and quotes a June 2015 court injunction as indicating that "'until the next date of hearing, no coercive measures shall be adopted against the petitioner'" (7 Dec. 2016). Rabwah Times quotes the CTD Chief as stating that his legal team had informed him that "there [was] no stay order intact until now" and that the CTD team decided that "there '[was] no judicial bar' on conducting a raid" (5 Dec. 2016).

3. Employment and Housing

Based on information gathered during research for his paper on the Ahmadis in Pakistan, Valentine states that

Ahmadi in Faisalabad, Lahore and Rabwah [indicated] that the Government persistently discriminated against members of their communities in hiring for the civil service and in admissions to government institutions of higher learning. It was argued that they were prevented from being promoted to senior positions and that certain government departments refused to hire or retain qualified Ahmadi. Ahmadi businessmen, even solicitors, were often ostracized by other members of their trade or profession and by the local community generally. (May 2014, 107)

Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Information on Ahmadi's access to housing in Rabwah could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response. For information on the situation of Ahmadis in Pakistan, see Response to Information Request PAK105369 of January 2016.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] Bajwa and Khan state that the methodology employed for the research of their paper involved a process in which "[t]he researcher participated in a small mahalla of Dar-ul-Yemen [Darul Yuman, one of Rabwah's neighbourhoods] while relying on a number of qualitative tools for data collection, including participant observation, interview guides, key-informant technique, field notes, as well as memos and pictures" (Bajwa and Khan Mar.-Apr. 2015, 1615). "During the study, the researcher participated in most of the rituals, ceremonies and rites of passage within the community" (ibid.). "Data was derived by conducting 15 in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of respondents living in Rabwah comprising of Waaqfeen-eZindagi (devotees), family members of Mirza Ghulam Ahmed, the authority persons heading the organization as well as the locals living within the community" (ibid. 1615-1616). "The findings are presented in [the] form of qualitative descriptions that echo a combination of observations made by the researcher and narratives of the respondents" (ibid., 1616).

[2] AHRC and IHRC indicate that they jointly produced and comissioned the fact-finding mission, but that the report was written by independent parties not associated with either AHRC or IHRC, who were not paid for their contribution (AHRC and IHRC 2015). The same source states that the "Ahmadiyya Muslim Community" met the expenses for the mission (ibid, 22). The mission was carried out between 8 and 13 December 2014, by six "independent inquirers diplomats, journalists, lawyers and non-governmental organisations[,]" who, for "security, welfare and political reasons" were granted anonymity (ibid.). The mission included visits to Lahore, Islamabad and Rabwah, and included interviews with "various state actors, human rights activisits, members of the media, civic society and lawyers" and "took evidence from individuals who claimed to have been victims of persecution" (ibid.)

References

Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and International Human Rights Committee (IHRC). 2015. A Beleaguered Community: On the Rising Persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. Report of the Fact Finding Mission to Pakistan. [Accessed 16 Dec. 2016]

Al Islam. N.d. "A Brief History of Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam." [Accessed 16 Dec. 2016]

Bajwa, Lubna Sausan and Shaheer Ellahi Khan. March-April 2015. "Exploring Rabwah as an Identity Marker for the Ahmadiyya Community: A Baseline Qualitative Study." Science International (Lahore). Vol. 27, No. 2, Special Issue. 1615-1618.

Balzani, Marzia. 2014. "An Ethnographer Among the Ahmadis: Learning Islam in the Suburbs." Studying Islam in Practice. Edited by Gabriele Marranci. London: Routledge

The Huffington Post. 1 August 2016. Ahmed Khan. "A Country where Selling Books Is an Act of Terrorism." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

Oxford University Press. N.d. Force and Fanaticism. [Accessed 16 Dec. 2016]

Pakistan. 1860. Pakistan Penal Code. [Accessed 21 Dec. 2016]

The Persecution of Ahmadis (TPA). 31 December 2015. A Report on Persecution of Ahmadis in Pakistan During the Year 2015 (Summary). [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

Rabwah Times. 5 December 2016. "Pakistan Arrests 4 Ahmadis During Rabwah Raid." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

Sadr Anjuman Ahmadiyya Pakistan Rabwah (SAAPK). 7 December 2016. Press Section. "Press Release." [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

Schackle, Samira. April 2014. "A Question of Belief." New Internationalist. Issue No. 471. 42-43.

United Kingdom (UK). May 2016. Home Office. Country Information and Guidance, Pakistan: Ahmadis. Version 2.0. [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

United States (US). May 2009. US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). "Pakistan." Annual Report 2008. [Accessed 13 Dec. 2016]

Valentine, Simon Ross. May 2014. "Prophecy after the Prophet, Albeit Lesser Prophets? The Ahmadiyya Jama'at in Pakistan." Contemporary Islam. Vol. 8, No.2. 99-113.

Additional Sources Consulted

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; BBC; ecoi.net; EU  European Asylum Support Office; Factiva; Federation internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; Freedom House; Human Rights Watch; Institute for War and Peace Reporting; International Crisis Group; IRIN; Jane's Terrorism and Security Monitor; Minority Rights Group; The Muslim Times; Norway  Landinfo; Punjab  Police; Radio France internationale; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Reuters; Switzerland  State Secretariat for Migration; United Nations  Refworld, ReliefWeb; United States  Central Intelligence Agency, Department of State.

Attachment

Punjab. 15 December 1989. Police. "FIR Against the Whole Population of Rabwah." Page 96. [Accessed 16 Dec. 2016]